Residents of for-profit nursing homes in Ontario are far more likely to be infected with COVID-19 and die than those who live in non-profit and municipally-run homes, the Star has found.

A Star analysis of public data on long-term-care homes shows the facilities have been hit by outbreaks at approximately the same rate, regardless of ownership. But once COVID-19 makes it into a nursing home, the outcomes have been far worse for residents of for-profit homes.

In homes with an outbreak, residents in for-profit facilities are about twice as likely to catch COVID-19 and die than residents in non-profits, and about four times as likely to become infected and die from the virus as those in a municipal home.

Im not one bit surprised, said Sharleen Stewart, president of the SEIU Healthcare union, which represents personal support workers and other front-line staff in both for-profit and non-profit nursing homes.

Stewart said that based on the experiences of the unions members, for-profit nursing homes use more part-time and casual staff and have lower staffing levels overall compared to non-profit homes. She said non-profit homes have better infection controls and for-profit homes are less prepared to handle outbreaks. This is old news for us.

Judy Irwin, a spokesperson for the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA), which represents about 70 per cent of Ontarios long-term-care homes of all ownership types, questioned the Stars analysis, saying there will need to be much more rigour in both the data accuracy and the analysis before any conclusions can be drawn. To proceed down a path of loose interpretation of incomplete data at this point would not be responsible.

Long-term care is the front line of Canadas battle with COVID-19, accounting for as many as four out of every five deaths. In an international study released earlier this week, Canada had the highest proportion of long-term care deaths from COVID-19 among 14 countries. Those deaths are occurring at a disproportionate rate in for-profit homes.

The Stars analysis is based on a home-by-home database of every COVID-19 outbreak in Ontario as of Friday morning. Using it, we took the total number of beds in long-term-care homes as reported to the province and sorted them according to the ownership: for-profit, non-profit and municipal. Then, using the number of cases and deaths reported in each home, we calculated the rate of infection and mortality per 100 beds for each type of ownership.

The results were stark.

A resident in a for-profit home has been about 60 per cent more likely to catch COVID-19 and 45 per cent more likely to die than a resident in a non-profit home. A for-profit resident has also been about four times more likely to catch COVID-19 and four times more likely to die than a resident in a municipally run home.

Non-profit and municipal homes have also suffered severe outbreaks, including the city-run Seven Oaks in Scarborough, which has 108 cases, including 40 deaths among its 249 beds, and the Salvation Armys Isabel and Arthur Meighen Manor, where there have been 103 cases, including 42 deaths for 168 beds.

Overall, however, there are higher rates of infection and death in for-profit homes.

The province has recorded outbreaks  at least one lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 in a resident or staff member  in about a third of its 651 long-term-care homes, and for-profit, non-profit and municipal homes have been hit at about the same rate.

But where COVID-19 is present, the for-profit homes have fared worse in controlling the outbreak and preventing deaths: For-profit facilities with outbreaks had 16 cases per 100 beds, compared to eight in non-profits and four in municipal facilities. Likewise, there have been four deaths per 100 for-profit beds, compared to two per 100 beds in non-profits and one in municipal facilities.

Overall, for-profit homes make up less than 60 per cent of long-term-care homes in the province, but they account for 16 of the 20 worst outbreaks.

The Stars data uses the cumulative totals of cases and deaths in each outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic. This approach differs from the counts published daily by the Ministry of Long-Term Care. The ministry says its counts refer to active cases and therefore exclude both deaths and resolved illnesses from each homes current case count. The ministry says its data is meant as a snapshot in time, not as a record of total infections over the entire course of an outbreak.

Irwin, with the OLTCA, said the type of home ownership is not relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic in long-term care.

All types of homes have been affected by COVID-19 and each has had a different experience with the disease based on a range of factors. These include factors such as whether the home has an aging infrastructure and shared washrooms and/or 4-bed rooms, the staffing situation both pre-outbreak and during, and how rapidly homes have been able to access PPE and staffing support when they need assistance, she said.

Staffing levels in long-term-care homes are not publicly reported and the Star was not able to verify whether staffing levels are typically lower in for-profit homes. The claim has also been made in court filings, labour board applications and in academic research.

More than 190 residents at the 233-bed Orchard Villa long-term-care home in Pickering have been infected with COVID-19, giving the privately run home one of the highest rates of infection in Ontario. To date, 66 residents have died of the virus  the highest death total at a long-term-care home in the province.

A Star investigation published last week found that the home has a lengthy history of citations for failing to comply with provincial regulations.

Orchard Villa is owned by Southbridge Care Homes, which operates 37 long-term-care and retirement homes in Ontario. Orchard Villas executive director Jason Gay did not directly address the Stars findings, but in an emailed response to questions said that COVID-19 is an aggressive virus, especially among seniors who are immune compromised or have pre-existing conditions.

The impact across the long-term care community, in our home and to our residents, our families and our staff, is challenging and tragic, he said. Our singular focus at this time is on the safety and well-being of our residents and staff.

The highest total number of resident infections  209  has been reported at the for-profit 240-bed Forest Heights Revera in Kitchener. There have been 45 deaths at the facility  the fourth-highest total as of Friday.

The home is owned by Revera Long Term Care Inc., a big player in the industry that runs more than 500 nursing and retirement homes across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Revera is owned by PSP Investments, the pension fund manager for the federal Public Service, the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Asked to respond to the Stars findings, Revera issued a press release criticizing media stories attempting to draw a link between the ownership model for long-term care and the passing of residents from COVID-19.

This focus on an issue that is not core to the challenges facing the system is becoming a distraction from discussions about the real reform needed, said Revera spokesperson Larry Roberts. Long-term care has not been, until recently, a high priority, and our most vulnerable citizens have paid a heavy price.

We need to close the prioritization gap between acute care (e.g. hospitals) and chronic care (long-term), he said in the release, by prioritizing PPE and increasing funding so that pay and staffing levels in long-term care are equal to those in hospitals.

The Camilla Care Community in Mississauga and the Altamont Care Community in Scarborough have among the highest infection rates in the province, with both homes at about 80 per cent. They also have the second (48) and third (47) highest number of deaths, respectively. Both facilities are owned by Sienna Senior Living Inc., a publicly traded company which runs 70 retirement and long-term-care homes in Ontario and B.C. and last year reported a net income of $7.5 million. In its latest report to shareholders, the company said it has generated a total shareholder return of more than 250 per cent since it went public in 2010.

We have adhered to provincial directives and protocols prior to and during this pandemic, wrote Sienna spokesperson Natalie Gokchenian in an email.

Gokchenian called into question the Stars methodology, saying that deaths should not be included in the total of confirmed cases and suggesting that it would be more appropriate to use the metric of active cases, which exclude both people who have died of COVID-19 and those who have recovered.

The data you have provided is not correct, she wrote. It is premature to draw conclusions on industry wide outcomes. Statistics are being collected in different ways and not all of them are up to date.

Gokchenian said Sienna plans to hire independent experts to conduct an internal review of the companys practices and protocols during the crisis. The company also suggests the provincial government should undertake a review of the entire sector.

Earlier this week, the Ontario Health Coalition did its own analysis of the outbreaks and deaths in long-term-care homes and came to a conclusion that corroborates the Stars findings: for-profit homes are faring far worse than non-profits and municipally run centres.

We cant say definitively what the causal relation is for the higher death rates in the for-profit homes, but the key element is staffing, said executive director Natalie Mehra. (For-profit homes) have lower staffing levels, they have lower wages and worse working conditions. While there was a critical staffing crisis across all types of homes before COVID-19, now its beyond words.

The provincial decision to limit staff to working in a single home has exacerbated problems at the for-profits, she said.

Given that the staff have to choose one home to work in, very likely theyve chosen a home where they have better wages and working conditions. And thats having an impact on the homes with the most precarious, most fragile staffing, which are really in very serious trouble now.

All types of long-term-care homes in the province have similar budget restraints: they receive funding from the province according to the same formula and their fees are capped at the same level, Mehra said. But the for-profit homes generally extract profits from their budgets, while the non-profits and municipally run homes often supplement their budgets with fundraising and local taxes.

The differences are profound, she said. In non-profit settings, there are more staff and they can provide more hours of care for each resident.

Staff working in for-profit homes have also been hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus: For-profit home staff currently make up nearly 70 per cent of all front-line health-care worker infections.

Eatonville Care Centre in Etobicoke has to date recorded 104 cases of COVID-19 among its staff, the most in the province. The for-profit home also has one of the highest rates of infection among residents with 182 cases reported in the 247-bed facility. Hawthorne Place Care Centre in North York has the second-most staff cases with 83.

Both homes are owned and operated by Rykka Care Centres, a subsidiary of Markham-based Responsive Group Inc. The company also operates Anson Place Care Centre in Hagersville, where 27 deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded. That home also has one of the highest rates of infection in Ontario.

Linda Calabrese, vice-president of operations for Responsive Management Inc. and spokesperson for Responsive Group, said all long-term-care homes receive funding from the government in envelopes that are complex, highly prescriptive and tightly regulated and monitored.

Every dollar for nursing and personal care, programs, and food is spent and if not spent, is returned to the province, she said.

Calabrese added that many of the companys homes where outbreaks have occurred are turning the corner and many staff members have been cleared to come back to work. She said the company is seeing residents recover fully and is hopeful the outbreaks at Anson Place and Eatonville can be declared over soon.

Responsive Group was named in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court two weeks ago alleging the company failed to properly and adequately plan for and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result, the virus has run rampant through many of their homes, the claim alleges.

Among the allegations in the statement of claim: that residents who had tested positive for the virus were being kept in the same spaces as healthy individuals, that the homes had inadequate staff, had failed to provide sufficient personal protective equipment and conduct proper screening.

The lawsuit has not yet been certified by a judge.

In a statement to the Stars Betsy Powell, the company said it recognizes the rights of individuals to advance their concerns through litigation.

It is equally important that all parties in such matters have the opportunity to present information to the court and for it to be reviewed and thoughtfully considered. The court will then have to determine whether a concern merits certification, the company said.

Pat Armstrong, a sociology professor at York University who has researched long-term care in Canada for more than 20 years, said she was unsurprised by the Stars findings.

The main reason, she said, is the incentive of for-profit companies to reduce labour costs. Her research has found that for-profit homes tend to have lower staffing levels, lower wages and a greater reliance on part-time and casual staff, she said.

Managerial practices taken from the business sector are designed for just enough labour and for making a profit, rather than for providing good care, Armstrong and her co-authors wrote in a report published last month by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. These include paying the lowest wages possible, and hiring part-time, casual and those defined as self employed in order to avoid paying benefits or providing other protections.

Armstrong said the expansion of privatized long-term care can be traced back to former Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harriss time in government when he removed minimum staffing levels and set up a competitive bidding process for government contracts.

Harris is currently the chair of the board of directors for Chartwell, one of the largest private owners of long-term care and retirement homes in the province.

Laura Tamblyn Watts, president of CanAge, a seniors advocacy organization, said the government needs to figure out the reasons for the disparity in the rates of COVID-19 infection and death between for-profit and non-profit homes.

Is it staffing levels? Is it staff training? Is it availability of PPE? Is it something else? Its not just about whether or not theyre making money, its about what is happening at each home that seems to have these outcomes and we need to learn what that is quickly.

The main issue, she said, is the lack of national standards.

If we had national standards about the quality of care, the funding of the care, the funding of the staff, then in the end, whether or not its provided by a for-profit or not-for-profit is not as important, she said. Whats important is that anyone whos providing the care lives up to the standards.

Ed Tubb is an assignment editor and a contributor focused on crime and justice for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @edtubb
An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump Suggests CCP Virus Spread From Wuhan Lab Probably Due to Incompetence

President Donald Trump implied on Thursday that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus spread from the Wuhan P4 laboratory due to incompetence.

Something happened, he responded when asked about the connection between the CCP virus and the Wuhan lab during an Oval Office meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas).

Its either they made a terrible mistake, probably it was incompetence, somebody was stupid, and they didnt do the job that they shouldve done.

He also reaffirmed that the virus originated from China.

Whether people like to say it or not, everybody knows that, he said.

In an April 30 statement via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) said that the CCP virus originated from Wuhan, China, and was not manmade or genetically modified.

Its unclear how the office came to this conclusion.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), aligned with the Intelligence Community about the nature of the virus.

If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and whats out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated, he said during an interview with National Geographic. Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.

The IC has also committed to investigating whether the virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab.

The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, they said.

Incompetence and Lack of Transparency

The CCP virus, also commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has been linked to at least 268,877 deaths globally and infected over 3.8 million people as of Thursday afternoon, according to official government data collated by Johns Hopkins University.

The numbers are considered inaccurate by many because of a lag in data collection by governments as well as significant underreporting of known cases and deaths by the regime ruling mainland China.

There are over 1.2 million confirmed cases and 75,447 deaths in the United States, the data shows.

Though it remains to be seen whether the virus came from the Wuhan lab, a lack of transparency there has caused serious concerns.

State Secretary Michael Pompeo warned on Thursday about the risks that virology labs run by the Chinese regime have taken in the past.

This is not the first time there has been a risk. The SARS virus when it broke out, there were leaks from their labs, he said.

He also criticized the CCP for not sharing data about the outbreak with the free world.

We still dont have samples of this virus, Pompeo said.
Elon Musk's electric car company plans to reopen its one and only factory in the United States as soon as Friday, for 'limited operations,' in a county where coronavirus lockdown is ongoing.

Bloomberg reported the news first on Friday, citing an email from the company to its staff.

Here is a copy:

CEO Musk has been vocal on Twitter and elsewhere about his desire to reopen the Fremont factory, and the rest of the economy, despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic.

Reuters:

The move comes a day after California allowed manufacturers in the state to reopen operations, shut due to coronavirus-led lockdowns, which drew an enthusiastic "Yeah!!" on Twitter from Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. Musk, who recently became a father, has been criticizing the lockdown and stay-at-home orders calling them a "serious risk" to U.S. business, even tagging them "unconstitutional" and saying they would not hold up before the U.S. Supreme Court if challenged. Musk said Tesla aims to restart its Fremont factory on Friday afternoon, according to the Bloomberg report. (here) Even though the lockdown in Alameda, the county in San Francisco Bay Area where Tesla's factory is located, is scheduled to last until the end of May. So according to a county order, the Fremont factory is not allowed to operate regularly. California's order from Thursday does not supersede the county plan, Alameda Sheriff's Office spokesman Ray Kelly told Reuters on Thursday.

REUTERS:

Tesla aims to restart Fremont plant as soon as Friday: Bloomberg News

BLOOMBERG:

Tesla Aims to Restart California Plant Despite County Order

PREVIOUSLY:

'What the f*ck'  Elon Musk coronavirus meltdown on Tesla earnings call, 'Give people back their god damn freedom'

Musk sent this email tonight to Tesla employees saying the Fremont factory will reopen on Friday afternoon. Alameda County is still under shelter in place orders until the end of the month. This will likely cause some problems in the morning. pic.twitter.com/3uHyypE1nL  Ryan Mac  (@RMac18) May 8, 2020

Read the emails Tesla CEO Elon Musk and HR boss Valerie Workman sent out to US employees. Tesla is asking them to resume 'limited operations' and vehicle production Friday in Fremont via @cnbctech https://t.co/QcYklBEho4  Lora Kolodny (@lorakolodny) May 8, 2020
The UN voiced alarm Friday at reports that countries are failing to help migrants in distress on the Mediterranean Sea, blocking assistance by NGOs and coordinating pushbacks of their boats. UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville warned during a virtual press briefing that such measures "are clearly putting lives at risk". "We are deeply concerned about recent reports of failure to assist and coordinated pushbacks of migrant boats in the central Mediterranean, which continues to be one of the deadliest migration routes in the world," he said. More than 100,000 migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean last year with 1,200 dying in the attempt, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration. And so far this year, more than 250 migrants have perished trying to make the perilous crossing. Colville pointed to claims that distress calls to Maritime Rescue Coordination centres "have gone unanswered or been ignored". "If true," he said, this "seriously calls into question the commitments of the states concerned to saving lives and respecting human rights." He especially decried reports that Maltese authorities had asked commercial ships to push boats with migrants and refugees in distress back to the high seas. And he lamented that humanitarian search and rescue vessels that usually patrol the central Mediterranean have been prevented from helping migrants, even as the numbers of attempted crossings surge. - 'Horrendous conditions' - During the first three months of this year, departures from war-torn Libya increased four-fold compared to the same period in 2019, Colville said, stressing that migrants and refugees embarking on such journeys were entitled to protection under international law. "Yet, since April 9, both Italy and Malta have declared their ports 'unsafe' for disembarkation due to COVID-19," he said. Italy, the most common destination for rescue boats, has been one of the most affected countries in the pandemic, with nearly 30,000 deaths. As a result of port closures, at least three vessels with migrants onboard are awaiting disembarkation, Colville said. He pointed to reports that a small group of adults, including pregnant women, and children were allowed to disembark on Thursday after the Maltese government made a concession on humanitarian grounds. "While we welcome this effort, we call for all migrants currently being held on board these vessels to be urgently disembarked, as the conditions on merchant vessels are not suitable for long-term accommodation," he said. He also decried that the Libyan Coast Guard continues to turn vessels back to its shores and to detain all intercepted migrants in "horrendous conditions", warning that overcrowding there also made detainees vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. Since the summer of 2018, the European Union has tasked Libya's coastguard with coordinating search and rescue operations in a vast stretch of the Mediterranean beyond their territorial waters. But the UN and others have long warned that it is not safe for migrants to be returned to the conflict-ravaged country. "Libya cannot be considered to have a safe port for disembarkation," UN refugee agency spokesman Charlie Yaxley told Friday's briefing. More than 250 migrants have perished trying to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea so far this year
Kohls announced it is reopening stores in 10 more states starting Monday.

The company said it has been working for several weeks to implement new in-store measures to keep customers safe due to the coronavirus.

Stores in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana and Texas, as well as the majority of stores in Florida and Tennessee will reopen.

"We are pleased to begin welcoming our customers back to Kohls," said Michelle Gass, Kohls chief executive officer. "As we all adjust to a new normal, we will continue to provide the easy and efficient store experience that Kohl's customers love, while implementing many new rigorous procedures that prioritize the safety of our associates and customers. We are taking an informed, measured approach based on a number of factors to reopen our stores on a phased timeline, with about twenty-five percent of our stores open by next week. As we reopen and operate in a new environment, I want to thank our associates and customers for their ongoing loyalty and support. We're thrilled to have you back."

Kohl's stores in Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah reopened earlier this week.

Store hours will be reduced from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. until further notice.

Kohl's added that drive-up service for buying online is still available in states where stores are not open.

Seniors and at-risk shoppers can visit stores from 11 a.m. to noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

There will be an increased emphasis on social distancing.

Fitting rooms will remains closed and beauty testers will not be offered.

All employees will be required to wear masks and gloves while in stores.

The company did not say when other stores might reopen.
Dubai -- The first wave of a massive exercise to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Indians stuck abroad began Thursday, with two flights landing in India from the United Arab Emirates.

Delhi banned all incoming international flights in late March as it imposed one of the world's strictest virus lockdowns, leaving vast numbers of workers and students stranded.

Some 15,000 nationals will be repatriated from 12 countries on planes and naval ships, in a mammoth exercise which saw the civil aviation ministry's website crash Wednesday as panicked citizens rushed to register.

Two warships have steamed to the Maldives and another to the UAE -- home to a 3.3-million-strong Indian community which makes up some 30 percent of the Gulf state's population.

The consulate in Dubai said it had received almost 200,000 applications, appealing on Twitter for "patience and cooperation" as India undertakes the "massive task" of repatriation.

The two flights which landed in Kerala state from Abu Dhabi and Dubai Thursday were carrying 354 people, including nine infants.

Health workers take a blood test from a child carried by an Indian woman at the Dubai International Airport before they leave the Gulf Emirate on a flight back to their country on May 7, 2020. Photo: AFP

"I'm relieved that I'm home," a man on the flight from Abu Dhabi told AFP by telephone as he waited to disembark in Kerala state.

"People were sitting next to each other -- at least the row I was sitting, we were all sitting next to each other. They are making people get out of the plane right now in shifts -- first a few people left the plane and we have been asked to wait," he continued.

Indian citizens with coveted tickets, arriving at Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports, were greeted by medics in masks, gloves and plastic aprons who took blood samples for antibody tests.

"The results came out in 10 minutes. Mine has been negative. I'm super relieved," one 40-year-old passenger at Abu Dhabi airport told AFP.

"I've lost my job in the company I was working with. I'm feeling a bit weird going home -- while I'm happy that I am going home there is also a sense of uncertainty."

The oil-rich Gulf is reliant on the cheap labour of millions of foreigners, mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Many live in squalid camps far from the region's showy skyscrapers and malls.

But the novel coronavirus and its devastating economic impact have left many workers sick and others unemployed, unpaid and at the mercy of sometimes unscrupulous employers.

Indian nationals gather at the Dubai International Airport before leaving the Gulf Emirate on a flight back to their country, on May 7, 2020. Photo: AFP

"We have one or two flights planned every day now for the next five or six days," Consul General Vipul, who goes by one name, told AFP at Dubai airport.

Vipul said most of those aboard were workers who had lost their jobs, together with pregnant women, the elderly and some stranded tourists.

"Some people will be left out, it's inevitable in this kind of situation... not everyone can be accommodated immediately," he said.

Delays and frustration

A naval vessel is expected to arrive at Dubai's Port Rashid. The Indian High Commission in the Maldives posted images on Twitter of one of its warships entering Male harbour ahead of Friday's planned evacuation of some 1,000 people.

Other flights will leave Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as London, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Washington.

A flight planned for Thursday from Qatar has been postponed until the weekend, however.

Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa arrives to evacuate stranded Indian citizens, in Male on May 7, 2020. Photo: AFP

Indian media have reported delays triggered by the need to test air crew for coronavirus.

But frustrations have mounted over the slow pace of the exercise, as well as the fact that evacuees will have to pay for their passage home and spend two weeks in quarantine on arrival.

"There are so many people who have lost their jobs here -- they're literally going hungry," Yasin, a 50-year-old restaurant manager who is now out of a job, told AFP as he checked in for his flight.

"And now the government has asked for people to pay for the tickets. I sincerely want to request the government to waive that," he said.

"People do not have money to survive here, paying for flights is not possible at all."

Those who haven't managed to get a ticket home have voiced their frustrations in a torrent of posts on social media, while some turned up to try their luck.

Ajith, a 43-year-old IT engineer whose mother died two days ago, waited anxiously at Dubai airport, checking with the official who held the all-important waiting list for the first flight out.

"My mother was old and had medical issues... there is no one in India to take care of things, so I made an emergency request to the consulate," he told AFP, before finally managing to secure a seat on the plane.
Sir Frederick Ballantyne made his mark as early as when he was a student at Upstate Medical University.

Former Governor General of Sir Vincent and the Grenadines  Sir Frederick Ballantyne has been accorded, posthumously, an honorary degree by his alma mater, Upstate Medical University (Syracuse, New York).





The degree was bestowed during a virtual Commencement Ceremony held on May 1.





In recognizing Sir Frederick, Upstate Medical University wrote in a release: "Sir Frederick Ballantyne, (is) an Upstate alumnus who has been a visionary leader, physician, statesman and humanitarian on the island of St. Vincent for five decades. His various roles have resulted in a remarkable number of health care improvements, public health, medical education, improved access to care, and the philanthropic support for children on St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





From a business family





Sir Frederick Nathaniel Ballantyne, GCMG, MD was born in the eastern coastal town of Layou, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on July 5, 1936. He was an only child of Samuel and Olive Ballantyne, a prominent business couple in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





The Ballantynes, among other business endeavours, owned and operated Olives Hotel, a small hotel in capital Kingstown. Little wonder therefore, that Sir Frederick often referred to himself as "coming from a business family.





Sir Frederick passed away in his beloved homeland, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on January 23, 2020. He served as Head of State (Governor General) of St. Vincent and the Grenadines from 2002  2019.





Breaking the norm

Sir Frederick was the first member of his family to attend high school. Having successfully completed his secondary education at the then Boys Grammar School, and matriculation for tertiary level studies, he was advised by an old friend to pursue his tertiary level studies in the USA. This was a break from the norm; Vincentian students more often than not chose to study in Britain and/or Canada.





His mind set on a career in medicine, Sir Frederick chose the United States and completed an initial degree in chemistry at Howard University (in Washington, D.C.), and then went on to the SUNY Upstate Medical University (in Syracuse, New York) to study medicine.





He was to find himself the sole black individual enrolled in that medical school, but that did not prevent him from impressing himself on his peers. He was soon elected to the student government, and would be for every year of his degree. To crown it, he was elected president of the student government in his final year.





Sir Frederick interned at the Montreal General Hospital after graduation, from medical school, and then completed his residency in internal medicine in Rochester, New York, followed by a fellowship in cardiology.





Impacting SVGs health scene





The young man from Layou returned to his native St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 1971.





He was soon appointed Chief of Medicine at the newly constructed Kingstown General Hospital (now called the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital), the countrys primary health care institution, and in 1985 was appointed this countrys Chief Medical Officer. He served in that capacity, in addition to fulfilling his duties as a general practitioner and this countrys lone cardiologist, until 1992.





As Chief of Medicine and later Chief Medical Officer, Sir Frederick lobbied for and oversaw the upgrades in the facilities of both the hospital and district health clinics. It was he who marshalled the expansion of the Hospitals Immunisation Programme.





He also instituted the hospitals Visiting Specialist Programme, which recruited overseas medical specialists to volunteer in St. Vincent, in exchange for free accommodation in the countrys resorts. This has blossomed to the extent that this country is now the hub for the World Paediatric Programme (WPP), a free tertiary level service to children here and in the rest of the OECS.





Sir Frederick is also credited with working steadfastly to establish this country as a feasible location for Offshore Medical Schools and Colleges. There are currently four such institutions operating in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





But that was not the end of his contribution to the development of health services here. He remained active after his official retirement in a consulting role.





The Upstate Medical Universitys honorary degree is the second such degree bestowed on Sir Frederick. In June 2009, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree by the University of the West Indies (UWI), as one of sixteen regional figures being recognised for their contributions.




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.




Justice Dahiru Saleh, Nigerian judge, who annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election, has passed on.

The late Justice died today May 7 in Azare, Bauchi state after a brief illness.

Until his death, he held the title of Mutawalle of Katagum emirate in Bauchi. He was the Chief judge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High court.

In June 12, 1993 election, he annulled the election adjudged as one of the most credible in the history of the country.

The Social Democratic Party candidate, MKO Abiola was leading his rival Bashir Tofa, of National Republican Convention by a wide margin, but the election was cancelled ahead of the final announcement of results. Abiola was later arrested by the Abacha regime and he died in detention.
Home  Just In  30,000 test kits stuck in Malaysia arrive in Nepal; Swiss envoy hands over to minister

Kathmandu, May 8

After weeks of being dispatched, 30,000 coronavirus test kits to be gifted by the Swiss government to Nepal have arrived in Kathmandu on Thursday evening.

Swiss Ambassador to Nepal, Elisabeth von Capeller, handed over them to Minister for Health and Population, Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal, at the Tribhuvan International Airport of Kathmandu, yesterday.

Earlier, it was reported that the kits were stuck in Malaysia as the government of Nepal failed to collect and transport them in Kathmandu, resulting in a halt in tests in many labs of the country. But yesterday, the Nepal Airlines widebody aircraft chartered by the Australian Embassy to evacuate its citizens stranded in Nepal transported the kits from Singapore on its way back to Kathmandu.

Efforts had been made to reroute the aircraft via Malaysia. But owing to the Australian Embassys disagreement, the kits were taken to Singapore from Malaysia via a land route.

Previous to this, the Swiss government has already handed over 4,000 PPE sets, 1,000 infrared thermometres, and 8,000 N95 masks to the Nepal government.
(Natural News) Four McDonalds employees, including two minors, were injured at an Oklahoma City restaurant Wednesday night after telling a customer to leave the dining area, which was closed due to coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions. Police say that the angry customer shot one of the workers and injured three others.

The Oklahoma City Police Department stated that the suspect, identified as Gloricia Woody, entered the McDonalds but was told by employees to leave as the dining area was closed. Woody, however, refused to leave but was eventually forced out after a physical altercation broke out that left one worker with a head injury.

Woody then reentered the restaurant with a handgun, police said. She fired approximately three rounds, hitting one worker in the arm and injuring two others with shrapnel.

Suspect in custody, employees to make full recoveries

Three of the workers were taken to a local hospital to be monitored. According to police, the injuries sustained by the employees were non-life threatening.

Woody, 32, was found by police a few blocks away from the McDonalds, where she was immediately taken in on four counts of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, according to police Capt. Larry Withrow.

[Woody] was asked to leave but refused, leading to a physical altercation between Woody and an 18-year-old female employee, stated to Withrow. The suspect was forced out of the restaurant by employees. She reentered the restaurant with a handgun and fired approximately three rounds in the restaurant.

Two of the victims, including the one who was shot, were 16 years old, while the other two were 18.

A spokesperson for McDonalds USA later released a statement, saying that the employees are expected to make full recoveries.

The safety and security of our employees and customers is our top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those involved and the good news is that we can report the employees who sustained injuries are expected to make a full recovery, the spokesperson said. This is a heinous crime on our restaurant employees who were trying to support public health efforts.

McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski also weighed in on the incident in an interview on Good Morning America Thursday.

I think what youre seeing in this situation is really what youre seeing in a variety of situations across the country, which is this tension about opening, said Kempczinski. But theres absolutely no excuse for violence, particularly gun violence.

So Im just happy our people are going to be okay, he added.

Violent responses to social distancing

The shooting at McDonalds comes amid rising tensions over restrictions from efforts to slow down the coronavirus pandemic.

Elsewhere in Oklahoma, in the city of Stillwater, store owners and city officials received threats of violence after the latter implemented emergency rules requiring shoppers to wear face masks in stores.

To the people who resort to threats and intimidation when asked to take a simple step to protect your community: shame on you. Our freedom as Americans comes with responsibilities, too, stated Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce. We must find common ground and work together to deal with the circumstances our society is facing. Whether or not we agree on the details, we have to find ways to cooperate in the task before us.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, four people were recently charged for the fatal shooting of a security guard at a Family Dollar in Flint, which happened on May 1. Ramonyea Bishop and Larry Teague had confronted security guard Calvin Munerlyn after the latter had an argument with Teagues wife Sharel over another family members lack of a face mask. It was during this confrontation that Bishop allegedly shot Munerlyn.

The three have since been charged with murder, while Bishops sister Brya has been charged with tampering with evidence, lying to police and being an accessory to a felony.

Ramonyea Bishop and Larry Teague are currently at large, federal marshalls are now offering a $5,000 reward for their capture.

Sources include:

KOCO.com

ABCNews.GO.com

Fox6Now.com

CBSNews.com

APNews.com
President Moon Jae-in speaks during a meeting with senior secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday. His approval rating exceeded 70 percent according to an opinion poll released Friday. Yonhap



By Kim Rahn



President Moon Jae-in's approval rating has surpassed 70 percent, largely backed by positive reviews on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an opinion survey showed, Friday.



It is the first time since the third week of July 2018 that his approval rating has exceeded 70 percent.



According to the survey by Gallup Korea of 1,004 adults from Wednesday to Thursday, 71 percent of the respondents said they believed Moon was doing a good job, up 7 percentage points from the previous week.



Another 21 percent took a negative view, 5 percentage points down, while the others said they did not know.



Moon's approval rating, which reached 79 percent right after the local elections in June 2018, had dropped to 49 percent by the first week of September that year, but rebounded to over 60 percent after the third inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in the middle of that month. It declined again to hover below 50 percent until the third week of March this year, but went upward again along with good reviews of the government's response to the coronavirus crisis.



Ahead of the third anniversary of his inauguration this Sunday, Moon is the first President since 1987  when the current Constitution was adopted following pro-democracy movements  to hold onto such a high approval rating three years into a five-year term. In similar times, former President Roh Tae-woo had a 12 percent approval rating; Kim Young-sam, 41 percent; Kim Dae-jung, 27 percent; Roh Moo-hyun, 27 percent; Lee Myung-bak, 43 percent; and Park Geun-hye, 42 percent.



Over half of those who expressed approval of Moon, or 53 percent, cited the Moon administration's COVID-19 response as the reason for their approval, while 6 percent said he was doing his job well in general. Among those who did not support him, 22 percent said his policies were insufficient to fix the sluggish economy, while 11 percent said he was too focused on North Korea issues and was too pro-Pyongyang.


It was with considerable dismay that I read the May 5 front-page article HHS official shifted stockpiles focus, about Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary of health and human services. Dr. Kadlec, like any passionate and aggressive defender of our national security, will always have more than his share of detractors and backstabbers. I have known Dr. Kadlec professionally and personally for almost 25 years, and I know we are quite fortunate as a nation to have such a skillful and dedicated patriot at HHS. This feeling is shared by numerous colleagues and scientific professionals.
Representative image

Gurgoan-based biotech Premas Biotech is the latest entrant into the COVID-19 vaccine race. Unlike single-protein vaccines currently under trials across the world, Premas Biotech is developing a multi sub-unit vaccine with three antigens.

"The vaccine contains the Spike (S), Envelope (E), and Membrane (M) proteins in multiple formats, the idea is to provide a good chance of immunity against Covid-19," Dr Prabuddha Kundu, co-founder and Managing Director of Premas Biotech told Moneycontrol.

Kundu said researchers have found mutation in the spike protein region of the SARS-CoV-2 virus  which makes the virus more contigous and possibly threw spanner in the efforts of vaccine makers who were targeting only the spike protein alone as vaccine.

The multi-antigenic approach is being designed to try to overcome presently known and possible future mutations of novel coronavirus, which, if successful, would result in the development of an effective vaccine, the company said.

Premas said it has successfully completed expression of the three coronavirus antigens and is now moving forward with developing the scale up designs and is applying for animal trials.

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

Also Read | In race to get COVID-19 vaccine, are we setting the bar low?

Instead of using the live attenuated virus or inactivated virus, biotech companies are making vaccines by using the protein subunits of virus or simply parts of the virus. The vaccine that uses virus protein sub-units too will trigger immune response same like the conventional vaccine.

Kundu said the vaccine is based on company's D-Crypt technology that is developed and improved upon by the biotech over the past decade. The platform uses a modified version of baker's yeast to recombinantly produce the antigens.

Also Read | COVID-19 vaccine hunt heats up globally, still no guarantee

"This makes the potential vaccine relatively easy to manufacture and produce at a mass scale to cater to large populations, not only in India but all over the world," Kundu said.

Yeast host has been successfully used to produce many drugs, including drugs like insulin and many blood products and hormones.

US-based Ackers Biosciences has acquired the license to further develop Premas coronavirus vaccine candidate.

"We are working closely with our partners and the authorities to plan and roll out our next steps," said Kundu.

Led by Kundu, Premas Biotech was founded in 2005. The company has earlier partnered with Israel-based Oramed to produce proteins required to develop an oral insulin. The oral insulin of Oramed has has successfully cleared Phase IIb trials in US.

In the past 14 years, Premas Biotech has worked on more than 650 proteins for the top 20 Pharma and Biotech organizations across the world. Having developed over 30 difficult-to-express proteins, which are similar in properties to S, E and M proteins of the Covid-19, the biotech firm is confident of their technology going forward.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
Amid the recent surge of online hacking and network invasions, Microsoft is stepping up its security with its custom Linux OS.

To add to this, it's also making sure that it knows whatever weakness its product has, which is why the company is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who can hack it and reveal the possible ways it could be breached.

The new compact OS was created last year by the company for use by its Azure Sphere. It also features specialized chips for its Internet of Things (IoT) platform.

The custom build is specially made for the platform, which ensures that it runs the necessary services and that it runs apps in an isolated sandbox that enhances security.

Hack, and get paid?

Microsoft has announced its interest in having hackers try to break into the security of the Azure Sphere OS with a hefty $100,000 reward for anyone skilled enough to pull off the feat successfully.

The OS features a Pluton security subsystem as well as a Secure World sandbox, both of which are considered top-tier security features.

The challenge is part of a three-month test that stretches from June 1 to August 31. A security program manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center explains they are offering up to $100,000 in bounty to anyone that can reveal specific scenarios during the program period.

The company has emphasized that the program is focused on the Azure Sphere OS. The company is looking for a team of experts to try and break through the security of its Linux OS. Anyone who wants to take part in the challenge can apply for it here.

Last year's Build developer conference brought with it the announcement for Azure Sphere, making it relatively new to the scene. The OS is being utilized by popular businesses like Starbucks to maintain high-level security for its store equipment that contains data points on its ingredients and processes.

Read Also: Beware! This Ransomware Self-Spreads At An Alarming Rate! What Can You Do To Keep Your Network Safe?

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, believes IoT devices play a crucial role in the companies that it is used in, while also describing its cloud business as Microsoft's most prominent hardware front early this year.

Nadella is currently targeting to produce billions of IoT devices that are predicted to be continuously used over the next ten years.

The Azure Sphere OS is a defining part of Microsoft's mission in winning the heart of the world that is moving towards cloud computing.

Threats in the cybercommunity

The move by the company can also be considered a safety precaution with the number of hacks that have happened recently, along with one imminent threat to significant companies, businesses, and personal network owners, LockBit.

LockBit is a self-spreading ransomware that is capable of breaking into massive networks or servers in a matter of a few hours. It was just recently discovered and is already considered to be a top threat in the world of cybercrimes.

The developers of the ransomware have designed it so that it requires minimal input by the criminal by self-downloading and self-activating after the initial breach. This causes it to spread to all other devices on the network that the original host is connected to.

Read Also: Pizza Hut Customers At Risk Of Being Hacked By Fake Website Created To Access Personal Information
This week, some businesses in Ontario are being allowed to reopen their doors to the public, albeit under strict guidelines.

Its the first step in the provinces gradual reopening of the economy and many business owners are eagerly looking forward to reopening.

But others arent so excited.

Jake Somerville owns Bodh Salon & Photography with partner Michelle in Guelph. Since Somerville has a compromised immune system, they were extra careful when the pandemic began and closed their salon a week earlier than the provincial government mandated.

The business is not eligible for the federal $40,000 loan and has not yet received rent relief, but both partners are receiving CERB  Somervilles half is going toward keeping the business afloat while its closed.

With reopening looking like a distinct possibility in the near future, Somerville is faced with a difficult choice.

The problem  is that the businesses will be forced to make a very serious ethical choice, Somerville said. Do you keep your business closed to protect the health of the community and, as a result, contribute to the loss of your business and the collapse of the economy, or do you reopen and risk further spread of this contagious airborne virus?

For many businesses, its not really a choice, said Somerville. Without enough financial relief to keep their businesses shut but afloat, Somerville believes many will reopen because they need the money.

If there was proper support, I believe more businesses would choose to remain closed until were through  this unsafe zone with this virus.

Since their business is a salon, Somerville feels theres no way they can operate safely right now, even with the strictest of protocols.

Were not set up to have control over an airborne virus.

They still dont know whether they will open their doors when allowed. But if it was today? No.

Law firm Borden Ladner Gervais LLP says it will not be business as usual when people start going back to work.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses will be a logistical one, especially in settings where social distancing is difficult, says BLG partner Stuart Aronovitch, who works in the firms labour and employment practice. Businesses will need to figure out how to rearrange the workplace and whether to mandate personal protective equipment  and if so, how to source it.

What the office setting will look like, I think, will be different and will need to be adjusted, he said.

Its also important for businesses to plan ahead for how to bring employees back to work. For example, how many will they bring back in the first wave and how will they decide who is in that wave? Should it be random? Volunteer? The least vulnerable?

With these options may come some privacy issues, said Aronovitch.

As well, employers must think about their employees mental health. Many will be fearful to come back to work and may refuse; employers must be able to offer accommodations, such as working from home or different hours.

For some businesses, these adjustments will be more difficult than others, such as for Somervilles salon. For others, they wont be as hard to handle.

Graeme deRoux runs Alpine Print Company, also in Guelph. The business has been doing delivery and pickup throughout the pandemic, since its technically a manufacturing business and therefore allowed.

Its been going well: the shops lobby makes a great place to safely drop orders, deRoux said. But he misses being able to talk to his clients and is looking forward to reopening.

When he does, he will still give clients the option to do things the lockdown way, through delivery or a safe drop.

Id rather do whats best for my clients, he said.

For those who are comfortable stepping into the shop, deRoux will offer masks and gloves, and will stay two metres away at all times.

Eric Matusiak, national retail leader with BDO Canada, said some businesses, like deRouxs, will have fewer issues opening their doors again. But regardless of the business, its important to plan ahead.

Business owners cant expect customers to react exactly the same as they did before the pandemic, he said.

Theres going to be a lingering psychological effect here.

Any business that is vulnerable to the effects of e-commerce, or isnt able to offer a digital experience, will suffer the most, said Matusiak  the pandemic has pushed Canada in the direction it and many other countries were already heading.

I think this is a bit of a tipping point, he said, especially for groceries and pharmacies.
By Trend

BASF company, based in Germany, is prepared to serve entire SOCAR group with its solutions, Tolga Baysinop, BASF Azerbaijan LLC, Managing Director told Trend.

"For refinery and petrochemical plants we also supply high quality raw materials to add value on customers final products. With this respect, we are prepared to serve entire SOCAR group, with our wide range of solutions and global experience," he said.

Baysinop pointed out that Azerbaijan has been a very important country for BASF with its rapidly growing potential and numerous business opportunities.

"BASF continues its activities in Azerbaijan since 2006. We have a very strong experience in this country that we had gained within many years starting from our construction chemicals business. Now, following the carve-out of Construction Chemicals business globally, we are moving on our path with BASF Azerbaijan LLC, serving to other critical sectors in the country which we also have deep knowledge about. These sectors are agriculture, oil & gas, petrochemicals, food & beverage and other chemical sectors including construction business in different fields," said the managing director.

Baysinop went on to add that BASF is closely monitoring Azerbaijani governments actions for the development of agriculture and non-oil industries and focusing its efforts in this direction.

BASF portfolio is organized into six segments: Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, Surface Technologies, Nutrition & Care and Agricultural Solutions.

---

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AKRON, Ohio  Akron Summit County COVID-19 Emergency Support Fund organizers on Friday announced a third round of funding totaling $286,000 to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus and to help county residents affected by the pandemic.

This round of funding brings the total amount distributed to local pandemic relief efforts to $641,000.

The relief fund was created through a partnership between United Way of Summit County, the city of Akron, the County of Summit, Akron Public Schools, the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, Summit County Public Health and Job & Family Services. Since it was started earlier this year, the fund has raised more than $1.3 million.

Some 14 organizations were selected to receive funding this round.

The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank will receive $50,000 for food acquisition and distribution. The food bank has seen a steep increase in the need for food as a result of the pandemic and related business closures.

Goodwill Industries of Akron will receive $40,000 to make reusable and washable cloth masks for community members.

Goodwill and its industrial sewing team are honored to be able to supply face coverings to the community through this award, said Goodwill Industries of Akron spokeswoman Nancy Ellis McClenaghan in a news release. Since April 6, our 12 sewers and two cutters have made more than 11,000 face coverings for various entities and these funds will allow us to make at least 18,000 more. We are very proud to be able to help keep people in our community safe through the use of face coverings.

The fund will also split $30,000 between Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army and the International Institute of Akron. These organizations will use the funds to offer utility assistance to people who have been financially harmed by the pandemic.

The Battered Womens Shelter will receive $25,000 to continue to provide service during the pandemic and to increase staff to meet the demand for its services.

The United Way of Orrville will receive $25,000 to help its pandemic response efforts.

AxxessPointe, which offers primary health care in Summit Countys medically underserved areas, will receive $25,000 to expand its telehealth capabilities.

Project Ujima will receive $21,000 to distribute essentials such as supplies for babies and families in need because of the pandemic.

Akron Childrens Hospital, Cleveland Clinic Akron General and Summa Health will each receive $15,000 to meet the needs of health-care providers.

Direction Home Akron Canton Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities will receive $15,000 to assist senior citizens, who face greater health risks from COVID-19.

Stewarts Caring Place, which offers free supportive services and programs for individuals and families facing a cancer diagnosis, will receive $10,000 to support the increased need for case management during the pandemic.

Everyone in our community has been affected by this crisis in some way, said Jim Mullen, president and CEO of United Way of Summit County in a news release. Weve seen it transform our neighborhoods, our schools, our businesses  our way of life. Our focus is to ensure that these funds will go to help those who need it most. Our community is resilient. We will overcome this crisis by taking care of each other, by listening to one another, and by rising to meet the challenges our community faces, together.

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TRAVERSE CITY  Gift commitments to the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation for the Urgent Needs Fund have reached more than $530,000.

The Urgent Needs Fund was established in mid-March to mobilize individual giving and create a resource to support community response efforts to the coronavirus.

The giving response from our community has been incredible, said David Mengebier, president and CEO of the Community Foundation. Donors particularly responded to two matching opportunities  one from an anonymous donor and one from Rotary Charities  which made a big difference in seeing our gift commitments rise significantly over just a few weeks.

Mengebier added that though he is encouraged by the response from donors so far, its critical that donations continue to come in.

We know that the needs of individuals and families for food, clothing, shelter, transportation and other basic services will continue to be very significant in the coming weeks and months, said Mengebier.

To date, $299,750 in grants has been awarded from the Urgent Needs Fund to nearly 30 different organizations across Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Leelanau Counties. Mengebier added that they are striving to maintain resources so that grant dollars continue to be available now and in future months as the impacts of the virus continue to be felt.

Recent grant recipient Goodwill Northern Michigan has used funding to continue critical programs supporting people without a place to call home and without sufficient and healthy food to eat, said Dan Buron, executive director of Goodwill Northern Michigan.

"The Urgent Needs fund is making a real difference," said Buron. "During an unprecedented crisis, it's inspiring to see our community and its philanthropic leaders jump in and ensure that essential support continues for our most vulnerable neighbors."

Local organizations are also seeing an increase in demand for services; funding from the Urgent Needs Fund is helping to meet these increased needs of people across the region.

We are focused on supporting individuals and families by providing tools, skills and resources to promote well-being and stability, said Kerry Baughman, NMCAA executive director. Grant dollars from the Urgent Needs Fund play a critical role in our ability to directly respond to increasing needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A steering committee of representatives from the Community Foundation, Oleson Foundation, Rotary Charities, United Way of NWMI, and the Herrington-Fitch Family Foundation meets weekly to review funding requests.

The steering committee leverages our collective experience and perspective to apply Urgent Needs Fund grant dollars to where they are most needed and can have the greatest impact in support of individuals and families across our entire five-county region, said Mengebier.

For more information on the Urgent Needs Fund, including to donate online, apply for a grant, or to view a full list of grantees, visit www.gtrcf.org/give/urgentneeds. Donations can also be made by mailing a check to the Community Foundation at 223 Lake Ave., Ste. B., Traverse City, 49684.
Armando Mendoza, 53, of Anaheim, who spent 45 days at St. Joseph Hospital battling COVID-19, hugs his wife Lilia after he was released Tuesday. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Another five people have died from the coronavirus in Orange County, bringing the county's total death toll to 71, health officials announced Friday.

Since last Friday, the county has confirmed 21 new deaths linked to COVID-19.

Sixteen of the 71 total victims were residents of nursing facilities, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency. Those facilities, whose elderly residents tend to be particularly at risk, continue to be hot spots of coronavirus activity throughout the state.

Of those who have died from the coronavirus in Orange County, 49 have been at least 65 years old, and 37 have been at least 75.

Still, Orange County's observed mortality rate associated with COVID-19 is about 2.2%  well below the statewide rate of roughly 4%.

Orange County health officials reported another 153 coronavirus infections Friday, the second-highest one-day total since the outbreak began.

The latest cumulative case count of 3,240 includes 316 at nursing facilities and 251 in the county jail system.

As of the latest update, 188 patients were hospitalized countywide and 74 of them were in intensive care. Both those figures have stayed relatively flat over the past week, though they vary from day to day depending on when and how many hospitals report their data.

To date, 46,372 COVID-19 tests have been conducted countywide  including 812 that were reported Friday.

Effective Wednesday, "counts of Orange County COVID-19 tests performed replaced the count of people tested," according to the Health Care Agency.

"This change more accurately reflects testing conducted by Public Health, clinical and commercial labs," officials wrote on the county's data portal.

Despite continued coronavirus activity throughout the state, California allowed more retailers and other venues to reopen Friday.

Orange County's beaches  which Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered closed last week because of crowding concerns  are also back open in a limited capacity for what's shaping up to be a picture-postcard sque weekend.

Newsom said earlier this week that bookstores, music stores, toy stores, florists, sporting goods stores, clothing stores and others can reopen for curbside pickup  unless local restrictions forbid it.

Some businesses, though, have taken things a step further. One, Nomads Canteen in San Clemente, has recently offered dine-in service despite the state's prohibition.
Miranda Kerr has been quarantining with her husband and three children at their home in Los Angeles, all while running her skin care brand Kora Organics.

And it turns out the Australian native is among those who have opted to keep it super-casual in the fashion department, while going about her busy day working and parenting her three boys.

'Ill be in my pjs all day,' Kerr, 36, confessed in the caption of two photos she posted on Instagram this past weekend.

Sleepwear casual: Miranda Kerr, 36, shared two photos of herself dressed only in a bathrobe while in quarantine at home in Los Angeles

But being among the highest paid models in the world during her career, Kerr still oozed glamour dressed in just a white bathrobe.

In the first photo, taken on a backyard deck with the City Of Angels in the backdrop, she flashed an infectious smile while sitting on a chair.

Her long brown tresses were pulled back off her face with a matching white headdress.

The family's pet pooch tried to jump onto her lap in a similar second photo.

Easy does it: The Australian supermodel confessed she has stayed in her pajamas all day while in quarantine; she's pictured as her pet pooch tried to jump onto her lap

Proud mama: Kerr wore a white mini-dress as she proudly displayed her son's cake for his second birthday on Thursday

Fast forward to Thursday, May 7, and Kerr heaped her attention on her son Hart in another series of photos taken at her home.

'What a magical day Today we celebrated my little angel Harts 2nd birthday,' she wrote in the caption before adding, 'My heart is full of joy and gratitude for my gorgeous son.'

The first photo showed Kerr beaming with pride as she carried her boy's birthday cake that was shaped into a car that came complete with green, blue and red icing.

For the party, she opted to change out of her sleepwear and into a casual white mini-dress that showcased her long legs.

Revving up the celebration: The Victoria's Secret Angel also posted a solo pic of the car-cake with two lit candles

Birthday bubbles: Kerr also shared a photo of her son's mini-table and chairs as birthday bubbles floated all around

The Victoria's Secret Angel also posted a solo pic of the car-cake with two lit candles on the top and another of her son's mini-table and chairs as birthday bubbles floated in air.

Kerr also has a seven-month-old son Myles with husband and Snapchat co-founder/CEO Evan Spiegel, whom she married in May 2017.

She also has a nine-year-old son Flynn that she shares with ex-husband and actor Orlando Bloom. The former couple divorced in 2013 after about three years of marriage but they have reportedly remained friends.

Bloom is currently engaged to pop superstar Katy Perry, and they are expecting their first child together in the summer.

Family matters: Kerr married Snapchat co-founder/CEO Evan Spiegel in May 2017; they share sons Hart, two and Myles, seven months
By Subhadip Sircar

India is taking its first baby steps to tackle a growing offshore market for its currency.

Two exchanges -- India International Exchange (IFSC) Ltd. and NSE IFSC Ltd. -- on Friday began trading foreign-exchange settled rupee derivatives, part of a push to bring the market back home.

The launch comes amid the worlds most expansive coronavirus lockdown, which has crippled businesses and hurt trading volumes in the countrys financial markets. The timing may make it harder for the contracts to gain traction even as volumes in rupee trading overseas continue to grow.

For latest updates and live news on coronavirus, click here

Volumes in an exchange typically take time to pick up, said Abhishek Goenka, chief executive at India Forex Advisors Pvt. The bid-ask spreads have to come down and a lot of market-making has to happen to get decent activity.

Indias policymakers have been increasingly concerned about the growing heft of the rupee trades in venues overseas. The average daily volume for the rupee in London totalled $47 billion in April 2019, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Thats a fivefold jump from 2016, and more than the $34.5 billion of trades executed locally at the time.

CORONAVIRUS SPECIAL COVERAGE ONLY ON DH

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched trading on the two exchanges, both of which are located at a special hub in the GIFT City in western India, envisioned by then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to rival Singapore as a financial services centre.

This new reform will help India to become a net exporter of financial services, presently being lost to other financial centres across the world, said Tapan Ray, managing director and group chief executive at GIFT City said.

NDF Market

Offering onshore rupee derivatives is similar to what Indonesia attempted in 2018, when it launched non-deliverable forward contracts settled in rupiah.

While the forex-settled rupee derivatives may take time to take off, the move will help the Reserve Bank of India get a better grip on the working of the NDF market and help investors get better quotes than the spreads they are charged offshore, India Forexs Goenka said.

Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on May 8

INX India, one of the exchanges launching the contract, is looking at positioning itself against venues in Singapore or Dubai offering similar rupee contracts. The lot size for a standard contract on INX is one million rupees while the NSE has it at two million rupees.

This is a rock star product for us, said V Balasubramaniam, chief executive at INX India. We are looking getting at least 50% of volumes generated by these exchanges in the first quarter of operations.

The RBI has allowed local banks to participate in the offshore currency market from June 1, which could pose another obstacle to onshore contracts from becoming popular, analysts say.

NDFs, nominally a tool for hedging, are popular with investors who want to bet on the currency without taking delivery. Theyre often used in major financial centers in place of currencies that dont trade round-the-clock.

Some central banks have blamed NDFs for causing disruptions in local markets when spreads widen overnight. In March, the spread between the one-month onshore and offshore dollar-rupee contract widened by more than one rupee, compared with a gap of less than 10 paise seen normally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The spread was at 23 basis points on Friday.

The onshore currency market should be kept at distance from the NDFs to weaken the transmission of speculation, said Ananth Narayan, a professor of finance and former South Asia head of financial markets at Standard Chartered Plc.

I would prefer if the bridges between the onshore and offshore were made thinner, he said. Entities with genuine interest should be encouraged to trade onshore by easing hedging rules.

Contract specifications:

*India INX will offer trading on dollar/rupee futures and options contracts for 22 hours daily from 4:30 am to 2:30 am of next business day

*The market regulator has set gross open position across all contracts at 15% of total open interest, or $1billion, whichever is higher, for brokers, institutional investors and eligible foreign investors. The limit cant exceed 6%, or $100 million, for other clients.
According to the African Development Bank Group, of Africas nearly 420 million youth aged 15-35, one-third are unemployed, another third are vulnerably employed and only one in six is in waged employment ( www.nepad.org ). While skills development and policymaking play a vital role in long term transformation efforts, youth entrepreneurship serves as a viable way to achieve tangible impact on a local, national, and even continental scale.

Choosing an entrepreneurial path is a commendable and courageous decision by African youth  particularly as there are not always strong support systems for entrepreneurship in Africa. Entrepreneurship is often seen as going against the grain, and not always favourable received by typically traditional parents and societies within African regions.

However, some young African entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge and shaking up the status quo. Demonstrating leadership qualities, they are pursing entrepreneurship with the goal of being part of the solution (and not the problem) facing the continent in terms of high youth unemployment rates. A few stand-out young entrepreneurs are taking even more of a lead by incorporating positive societal impact into their business models. These innovative young entrepreneurs are not only identifying viable opportunities for business, but also recognising specific needs within their own communities that they can help alleviate.

Three such young entrepreneurial leaders are examples of this progressive approach, have become forces of positive change in their respective regions of residence. While each has a very different focus when it comes to the societal challenges that they tackle, they all have one thing in common: their contributions are significantly benefitting those around them.

Yannick Kimanuka grew up in the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a region ravaged with war for over two decades. The violent and unstable climate stifled socio-economic progress in the area, resulting in poor and outdated educational infrastructures. In order to receive any sort of modern education, learners had to travel into the city. As a large majority of inhabitants are from farming backgrounds, this was not a viable option for most parents. Having had the opportunity of attending university, Yannicks goal was to improve the level of education for students in her community by providing modern, quality teaching methods that equip students with the knowledge and practical skills needed to be globally competitive.

Her vision led to her founding KIMs School Complex, a nursery and primary school establishment centred on the values of education, personal development, social emancipation and good citizenry. The project, which has been endorsed by the DRCs Ministry of Education, is now an impactful mechanism for social, youth and educational upliftment in the area, as well as a successful business in its own right - reflecting a year-on-year increase in profits. Passionate about the school serving as an instrument for sustainable and long-term societal growth, at present Yannick has invested these profits back into the school, building additional classrooms to cater to the rising demand for quality education in the region.

Hailing from the Republic of Congo, Osvaldo Mokouma was exposed to the agricultural industry from a young age, having assisted his grandmother sell her farmed goods to city-dwellers. Over the years, Osvaldo observed several issues with the local agricultural system, the most concerning being that most of the regions food was imported and contained high levels of pesticide. These pesticide-heavy agricultural goods resulted in large numbers of people falling ill, and even dying, due to consuming it over long periods of time.

Despite this, people still purchased the poor-quality imported food as it was much cheaper than locally grown produce. This prompted Osvaldo to develop a sustainable system of producing organic goods that are of high quality yet still affordable. This resulted in him establishing an enterprise called AquagriTech. AquagriTech uses an advanced urban bio-waste management process that drives an organic food production system, the products of which are sold to the community.

The closed-circuit system is also duplicated on a smaller scale, in form of home kits that people can purchase and use to produce their own food thus boosting self-sustainability. The tech-savvy entrepreneur also has an app that consumers and farmers can use to network and connect with labour, hiring equipment and other goods, further supporting the local food production system. Osvaldo plans to upscale his initiative, aiming to supply reasonably priced quality organic goods to an even broader segment of his region and employ a growing number of local employees.

Kenyan Cecil Chikezie is another pioneering young African entrepreneur merging business objectives with social responsibility. While still at university, Cecil realised that the government-issued ban on charcoal posed a major challenge to families like his, as well as an opportunity to make a difference.

He focused on finding a sustainable and cheaper fuel alternative as the carbonised options were both expensive and difficult to access. After much research and planning, he formed a company called Eco Makaa that uses carbonised agricultural waste (such as sugarcane bagasse and discarded charcoal dust) to manufacture eco-friendly and sustainable fuel briquettes.

He then supplies the briquettes to the community at a more affordable cost. He further promotes social upliftment by his innovative and business-smart system of networking with local suppliers. Instead of owning machinery or manufacturing premises, he collaborates with community members who already own the required machinery and assets  thus helping with income generation as well as ensuring a stable local production process. Eco Makaa continues to grow from strength to strength, with corporate clients including five-star luxury hotels such as Sankara and Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi.

These young entrepreneurs are proving that business success and social impact are not mutually exclusive  you can win in business while positively contributing to the good of society. Its all taking a more holistic and co-operative approach.

As emphasised by the World Economic Forum (WEF), by dismantling monopolies, creating new demands, and tackling old problems with new technology, young entrepreneurs prove to foster more competitive economies and are enablers of shared prosperity, while adapting more rapidly to ever more globalized societies.
IndiGo will cut salaries of senior employees from May onwards and also implement a "limited, graded leave without pay program" for them during the months of May, June and July, its CEO Ronojoy Dutta said on Friday.

The aviation sector has been hit hard due to the suspension of all commercial passenger flights during the coronavirus-induced lockdown in the country which began on March 25. Bookings for flights have been cancelled till further orders.

"While we had paid employee salaries in full for the months of March and April, I am afraid that we are left with no option but to implement the originally announced pay-cuts from the month of May 2020," Dutta told employees in an email which was seen by PTI.

IndiGo had announced pay cuts for its senior employees on March 19. However, it rolled back the decision on April 23 in deference to the "government's wishes".

On March 23, the Modi government had asked public and private sector companies not to cut salaries or lay off employees during the COVID-19 lockdown.

In his email on Friday, Dutta said, "In addition (to pay cuts), given the gradual build-up of capacity, I am afraid we have to take the additional painful step of implementing a limited, graded leave without pay program for the months of May, June and July."



"This leave without pay will range from 1.5 days to 5 days depending on the employee group. While doing so, we will make sure that Level A employees, who form a majority of our workforce, will not be impacted," he said.

Dutta said, "As you all know, our operations have been pretty much grounded ever since March 25, 2020, except for a few rescue and cargo flights, resulting in practically no revenues since then."



"In addition, as and when we resume operations, it is likely that the airline will start with a much lower capacity initially and gradually build up capacity in succeeding months," he noted.

On March 19, Dutta had announced that the airline was instituting pay cuts for senior employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the aviation industry hard. He had said he would take the highest cut of 25 per cent.

"I am personally taking a 25 per cent pay cut, SVPs (senior vice presidents) and above are taking 20 per cent, VPs (vice presidents) and cockpit crew are taking a 15 per cent pay cut, AVPs (assistant vice presidents), Bands D along with cabin crew will take 10 per cent and Band Cs five per cent," he had said.

All Indian airlines have implemented cost-cutting measures like pay cuts during the last few weeks due to the drastic decline in revenue.

GoAir has sent the majority of its employees on leave without pay till May-end.

Vistara has instituted a compulsory leave without pay for up to six days in April for its senior employees. In May and June, the same set of senior employees will go on leave without pay for up to four days each month.

AirAsia India has cut salaries of its senior employees by up to 20 per cent, while Air India has cut salaries for its staff by 10 per cent.

SpiceJet has cut salaries of mid and senior level employees by 10-30 per cent.

As the majority of aircraft with Indian airlines are on lease, they are currently seeking deferral of lease rentals by six months.

While no commercial passenger flights can fly during the lockdown period, cargo flights, medical evacuation flights and special flights permitted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) are allowed to operate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Air Force base in Gettysburg on market for $4.5 M

A former air force base near Gettysburg is up for sale. The base is listed as having 50 beds and 15 bathrooms on a 42-acre parcel of land.
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.
Inflows into equity mutual funds dropped to a four-month low of Rs 6,108 crore in April as the broader market witnessed extreme volatility on concerns over the coronavirus pandemic

New Delhi: Inflows into equity mutual funds dropped to a four-month low of Rs 6,108 crore in April as the broader market witnessed extreme volatility on concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, the mutual fund industry witnessed net inflows of Rs 45,999 crore across all segments, data by the Association of Mutual Funds in India showed on Friday.

In comparison, an outflow of Rs 2.13 lakh crore was seen in March.

April #MFData | Equity inflows in the month of April come in 47% lower at Rs 6,108 cr, lowest in 2020 pic.twitter.com/iwSlvOsG09  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) May 8, 2020

As per the data, inflows into equity and equity-linked open-ended schemes stood at Rs 6,213 crore, while an outflow of Rs 105 crore was seen from close-ended funds, taking the net inflow to Rs 6,108 crore.

In March, such schemes attracted a net infusion of Rs 11,485 crore, which was the highest level in a year.

Prior to this, equity schemes saw an investment of Rs 10,760 crore in February, Rs 7,547 crore in January and Rs 4,432 crore in December.

Fears of deepening global slowdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns have spooked the markets globally, including in India.

Almost all the equity-oriented mutual fund categories registered net inflows last month.

Large-cap, multi-cap and ELSS (equity-linked savings schemes) saw inflows of Rs 1,691 crore, Rs 1,240 crore and Rs 752 crore respectively during the month under review.

In addition, mutual funds investing in fixed-income securities saw a net inflow of Rs 43,431 crore in April.

Among fixed-income securities, credit risk funds witnessed a pullout of Rs 19,239 crore.

Besides, gold ETFs too saw an inflow of Rs 731 crore last month, after withdrawals of Rs 195 crore in March.

The assets under management of the 44-player mutual fund industry stood at Rs 23.93 lakh crore in April-end, from Rs 22.26 lakh crore in March-end.
For nearly a quarter-century, President Donald Trump has envisioned boats docking at Mar-a-Lago, his swanky club set on 17 acres of prime real estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that rambles across manicured grounds between the beach and the placid waters of the Lake Worth Lagoon and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Trump's quest has, predictably, irked his wealthy neighbors, sparking one of those pesky territorial squabbles that occupy town halls and zoning boards in tony neighborhoods across the country. But the attempt by Trump and his legal team to squeeze through approval of his dock while the nation's attention is trained on the coronavirus pandemic is now surfacing a potentially nettlesome problem for the president.

Digging into the catacombs of local records to build an argument against the dock, a small group of loosely aligned preservationists, disgruntled neighbors and attorneys have unearthed documents that they assert call into question the legality of Trump's much-publicized decision late last year to change his official domicile from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago and to register to vote in Florida using the club's address. According to those documents, and additional materials obtained by The Washington Post, Trump agreed in writing years ago to change the use of the Mar-a-Lago property from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation he controls.

The distinction is significant. The property is taxed as a private club - not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump's own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there. Mar-a-Lago's website says only that Trump maintains "private quarters" at the club.

"It's one or the other - it's a club or it's your home," Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents a neighbor opposed to Trump's dock plan, said in a recent interview. "You can't have it both ways."

If Stambaugh and his client have their way and persuade Palm Beach to stand firm on its long-standing agreement, Trump will be forced to make a choice, he said: Stop operating Mar-a-Lago as a club and make it a single-family home again or change his official domicile to someplace else.

White House and Mar-a-Lago officials did not respond to interview requests.

- - -

The saga traces back to another era in the president's life, long before he occupied the White House. In the mid-1980s, a time when Trump was being celebrated as a business savant, he said he scooped up Mar-a-Lago at a bargain-basement price. The storied Mediterranean-style mansion was built in the 1920s by the cereal-fortune heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post and her then-husband, the financial mogul E.F. Hutton.

When Post died in the early 1970s, she left the estate to the U.S. government, envisioning it as a winter retreat for high-ranking officials. It was named a National Historic Landmark. But her plan to make it a government redoubt was never put into effect. As the cost of maintaining the property soared, the government gave it back to Post's foundation.

Enter Donald Trump.

It seemed like a dream pairing for the businessman: a grand property now owned by one of America's most aggressively self-promoting dealmakers. After buying the estate, Trump set about restoring the property. He hosted grand galas.

The halcyon days were short-lived. By the early 1990s, Trump's business empire was in peril. His foray into the Atlantic City, New Jersey, gambling scene was a mess. In 1991 and 1992, four of his ventures filed for bankruptcy protection: Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino, and the Plaza Hotel in New York.

He began grumbling about the cost of maintaining the mansion and grounds of Mar-a-Lago, saying he was spending $3 million a year in upkeep. Ever the master of spin, Trump claimed he could afford the upkeep but quipped to the Miami Herald that "I just feel foolish doing it. You know, for $3 million you can buy the nicest house in Miami."

Trump hit upon a solution to his ownership of a money pit that was true to his developer's heart: Carve up the Mar-a-Lago property into pieces and sell as many as 10 luxury homes. But the notion of tampering with the landmark property angered preservationists and the moneyed denizens of Palm Beach.

The town council shot down his plan.

Trump, drawing from his well-worn smash-mouth playbook, sued the town. At the same time, he and his attorney were birthing yet another clever plan: He'd convert his personal residence into a private club. The town's leaders were wary but slowly started warming to the idea as a way of preserving the historic mansion.

During lengthy talks with the council, Trump's attorney, Paul Rampell, addressed a question on a lot of minds in those days: Would Trump live at the club?

"The answer is no," Rampell said, according to a summary transcript of a 1993 council meeting, "except that he will be a member of the Club and would be entitled to use its guest rooms."

In August 1993, Trump got his club, signing an extraordinarily detailed document called a "use agreement" that governs to this day how Mar-a-Lago can be used. The document makes clear that Mar-a-Lago would no longer be a single-family residence and was now a private club.

Trump agreed to convey the title of the property from his personal possession to a corporate entity he controlled named Mar-a-Lago Club, Inc. He promised he wouldn't put up condominiums or co-op units. He also took care of a worrisome issue for some council members: the question of what would happen if the club failed. In that event, Trump agreed in writing to the same provision his attorney had promised: "The use of the Land shall revert to a single family residence."

The deal he struck made it clear that no one could live permanently at the property. It stated that the guest suites could be used only by members for a maximum of three times a year for no longer than seven days at a time, and that those seven-day stays couldn't be strung together consecutively.

Trump also made a promise that has come back to create problems for him in the fourth year of his presidency: He said he wouldn't put up a dock.

But just because he'd made that pledge about the dock didn't mean he planned to keep it.

In 1996, he told New York magazine: "Now at some point we are looking at building a marina out at the Intercoastal," misidentifying the Intracoastal Waterway, the lengthy patchwork of navigation channels, natural bays and inlets that stretches across large swaths of the East Coast.

Aware that this plan would not be greeted with applause, Trump told the magazine reporter, "You are the first to know this because the world is going to crack when they read this."

- - -

Trump had his deal and his club, but he wasn't satisfied.

He unsuccessfully sued the town in 1996, attempting to lift many of the restrictions he'd agreed to three years earlier. He wanted out of the limits on the guest suites, for instance, and he also wanted to drop a requirement that half the members of the club be Palm Beach residents or business owners.

With Trump always asking for more, his relationship with the town frayed.

At one point, Mayor Paul Ilyinsky told one of Trump's attorneys who was working with Rampell - James Green - that "to listen to this trash coming from you and Mr. Rampell, frankly, is going to make me throw up," according to a transcript included in Trump's lawsuit.

When Green called his bluff, the mayor responded, "I may do so on you."

Jack McDonald, a former Palm Beach mayor and councilman who was a charter member of Mar-a-Lago, said in an interview that the town was ever wary of taking on Trump because he is litigious. McDonald had figured Trump was living part of the year at the resort, but said "it's one of those things that's been able to slide by" because no one was willing to make a public fuss about it.

As for the provision about club members not using guest rooms more than three times a year, McDonald said, "if that's what the agreement says, he's violating the agreement."

More than two decades after cutting his deal for the club, Trump still wants his dock. He asked for it in 2018, saying that it was necessary "for safety and security reasons to protect the President of the United States and his family." His attorneys went on to say that the request had been endorsed by the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

That last part grabbed the attention of attorneys for Mar-a-Lago's neighbors, who feared the appearance of rowdy booze cruises, loud boats and damage to precious underwater coquina rocks that they believe would be destroyed by dredging to deepen the channel and allow boats to pull up to the dock. The Palm Beach sheriff had weighed in to back the dock plan, citing similar security concerns. But the attorneys had seen nothing from either the Secret Service or the Coast Guard. A person familiar with the submission said the Secret Service and Coast Guard provided only oral endorsements. The Secret Service and Coast Guard declined to comment.

Stambaugh and others managed to stall the dock plan when it came up on the council's agenda in February 2019. Among those who weighed in against the proposal - and has been fighting behind the scenes and helping develop legal tactics ever since - was Glenn Zeitz, a pugnacious Philadelphia-area attorney who owns a home in Palm Beach and had defeated Trump in the mid-1990s in an eminent domain lawsuit related to one of Trump's Atlantic City casinos.

The dock request, not unlike others of its type, trudged slowly through the system in Palm Beach, a town with a population of just over 8,000. In the meantime, Trump made a surprise move. In early October, the New York Times reported that he changed his official domicile to Palm Beach, Florida. Trump quickly confirmed that he'd done so via Twitter.

The address he listed was 1100 S. Ocean Blvd.- Mar-a-Lago.

Reading about the switch, Jane Day - a respected preservationist in South Florida - screamed in frustration.

"That made me crazy!" she said in a recent interview.

Day knows practically every inch of Mar-a-Lago from more than a decade serving as Palm Beach's preservation consultant. She'd developed a deep affection for the place. She'd climbed on ladders to show Trump the intricacies of 16th-century tapestries that were included in the sale when he bought Mar-a-Lago. She was there when Marla Maples, then Trump's wife, brought home their baby, Tiffany, Day recalled.

And Day knew that Trump had promised not to live at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump's switch to Florida also tossed a quirky legal puzzle into the mix. Trump - who has traveled to Mar-a-Lago repeatedly as president and has referred to the club as his Winter White House - has said that he voted by mail in Florida's Republican primary last month. Florida law requires voters to register using their "legal residence" addresses under penalty of perjury.

What would happen to his voting status, some of his adversaries in the dock fight have begun to wonder, if Palm Beach declares that he doesn't have the legal right to use Mar-a-Lago as his official domicile?

Zeitz called Trump's possible violation of his agreement with Palm Beach "a substantial and serious potential legal impediment" to the president using Mar-a-Lago as his voter-registration address and official domicile.

In Florida, a state with a long, florid history of voting controversies, a person needs to cross multiple hurdles to legally register at a particular address, according to Ronald Meyer, a Florida lawyer and election law expert, who spoke about the law in general rather than the specifics of Trump's situation.

First, voters have to state an intention to reside somewhere, Meyer said. But that's not enough. They also have to demonstrate that the address they're using for their voter registration is legitimate by taking concrete steps such as buying or renting the home at that address, registering a vehicle there, using the address to apply for a driver's license or for tax purposes.

"There is no litmus test; but there must be some confluence of the subjective intention to declare a residence with objective factors which demonstrate actual residency," Meyer said.

While Day stewed about Trump's moves, a local attorney was starting to craft a strategy to block Trump. Stambaugh is a 5th-generation Palm Beach native whose grandfather Gleason N. Stambaugh Sr. was the chairman of the Florida Inland Navigation District. He hoped to resolve the matter politely, without litigation.

News of the internecine battle of the elite in Palm Beach was soon overtaken by the coronavirus pandemic. A thousand miles to the north, Trump took to television on March 15 and encouraged people around the country to stay at home to help limit the spread of the virus. Businesses and government offices shut down or shifted to sometimes balky remote operations.

Four days after Trump's stay-at-home announcement - with little fanfare - the president's attorneys sent another dock plan to the town of Palm Beach, with the idea of it being heard by the town's Landmarks Commission, which oversees historic properties and makes recommendations to the town council, on April 22. At that time, U.S. coronavirus cases had topped 830,000 and deaths surpassed 47,000. (The request was signed by Trump's son, Eric, on behalf of Mar-a-Lago Inc. On the president's financial disclosure forms, Donald Trump's revocable trust is listed as the owner of Mar-a-Lago Inc.)

Stambaugh was furious.

"It's unconscionable that Donald Trump and his club Mar-a-Lago would expect to have a proper public hearing during the coronavirus crisis," Stambaugh said in an interview. "It's obvious that Mar-a-Lago is attempting to subvert the political participation process."

Trump's Palm Beach attorney, Harvey Oyer III, declined to comment.

Amid the pandemic, the town's historic properties oversight board delayed hearing the dock request until late May.

When they eventually get to it, the town's leaders may encounter a new wrinkle. Trump, who'd previously argued that the dock was necessary for security reasons and made no mention of using the club as his home, has now pivoted to asserting that Mar-a-Lago is his "personal residence."

"The request is simply to add an accessory structure, a dock for private family use only," the application.

That claim, Stambaugh argues, simply doesn't match up with the agreements Trump has signed and the promises he's made that Mar-a-Lago would be a club rather than his home.

And so, the Town of Palm Beach, Trump's frequent foil, won't just be faced with a decision about a dock. It'll also be pressed to answer an existential question about Mar-a-Lago.

Just what is it?

- - -

The Washington Post's Alice Crites and David Fahrenthold contributed to this report.
(JTA)With many of its normal activities interrupted because of the coronavirus pandemic, Hillel International, the umbrella organization for centers for Jewish student life on college campuses around the world, has laid off or furloughed 30 positions at its Washington, D.C., headquartersover 20 percent of its workforce.

The cuts were made last week, according to an email announcement sent Friday to Hillel staffers across the country. There are approximately 1,000 employees at Hillels around the world, most of which operate as independent organizations but work with Hillel International on fundraising, talent recruitment and program support.

The groups top official explained the decision in the email.

Major areas of our activities and operations have been disrupted; and the far-reaching financial implications of the pandemic are negatively impacting our current fiscal year results and producing a very challenging and uncertain fundraising and financial outlook for the future, wrote Adam Lehman, Hillel Internationals president and CEO.

The organization did not disclose which staff positions were eliminated and which were furloughed, but the nearly 100-year-old group operates some activities that are not possible during the pandemic. Hillel International runs Birthright trips to Israel for approximately 7,000 college students each summer, but the free 10-day identity journeys have been called off through at least June and are unlikely to happen with the same frequency or enrollment in the coming year, if at all.

Staffers at the D.C. headquarters also support in-person programs run by campus Hillels, many of which have been canceled or moved online as a result of the pandemic.

In the email, Lehman said the affected employees would be employed for the next several weeks and that those who were laid off would receive a generous severance package, as well as a stipend to defray health expenses and support in seeking new jobs. Furloughed employees will continue to receive health benefits during the length of their absence. Lehman also said that Hillels senior leadership team would be taking a voluntary salary reduction.

Matthew Berger, a spokesman for Hillel International, confirmed the layoffs and furloughs in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency but said the group would continue to be able to serve students even as their colleges have shifted online.

We have taken numerous steps to support the professionals impacted by these changes, and were confident these moves will best position us to continue supporting Hillels across our movement and to serving students, who will need us more than ever in the weeks and months to come, said Berger.
We used to tease her all the time because she had all the outfits," Davison said. "But she had so much fun with that, so that was wonderful to see how much fun she was having.
Orji Kalu, a Nigerian senator who was jailed for allegedly stealing public funds, is expected to be released this week following a Supreme Court ruling, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt.

Mr Kalu had been accused of pilfering and mismanaging funds belonging to Abia State during his days as governor between 1999 and 2007.

He pleaded not guilty but was sentenced in December 2019 to 12 years in prison. He was jailed alongside his former finance commissioner, Ude Udeogo.

The duo appealed the convictions by the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court up to the Supreme Court.

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial of the case.

A seven-member panel of the apex court, in a unanimous verdict delivered by Justice Ejembi Eko, invalidated the conviction.

Justice Eko declared that Justice Mohammed Idris, who convicted the duo was already a justice of the Court of Appeal, when he ruled and sentenced Mr Kalu and his co-defendant.

He held that a Justice of the Court of Appeal cannot operate as a judge of the Federal High Court, and ordered the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to reassign the case for trial, the report said.

Associates initially told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr Kalu was released on Friday after the ruling. Shortly after, the former governor released a statement thanking prison officials for their care while in custody.

On Wednesday, PREMIUM TIMES learned from a top official of the Nigerian Correctional Services that Mr Kalu is actually expected to be released later this week and his release papers will be processed on Thursday. The official did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.

Mr Kalus lawyer could not be immediately reached for comments, but another source close to him confirmed he was expected home this week.

Editors Note: This post was updated after new details emerged regarding Mr Kalus release date.
DALLAS, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas 2036 today launched a comprehensive COVID-19 online dashboard that presents critical health and economic data in one easy-to-visualize format  both statewide and for all Texas counties currently reporting COVID-19 data  giving Texans a daily snapshot of how the pandemic is affecting Texans' lives and livelihoods.

Texas 2036 created the dashboard to distill the best available data into an easily understandable format for state leaders and the public. Texas 2036 consulted with medical experts at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin to spotlight the most important information about the pandemic.

"Every decision in a crisis is critical, and the weight of those decisions highlights the importance of data. Toward that end, our team at Texas 2036 stepped forward to bring the best data possible into the conversation to help reopen the Texas economy safely and to monitor the health and economic impacts as we take incremental steps," said Texas 2036 Founder Tom Luce. "With the cooperation of the Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas 2036's data team produced this unique tool, which we will continue to improve and revise. Transparent, accessible tools like this dashboard will help guide understanding and action on the difficult choices and opportunities facing Texans as we fight this unpredictable, deadly virus."

The new public dashboard, which can be found at covid19.Texas2036.org, represents the most comprehensive Texas data tool to date, with both county information and statistical modeling information. The public will find on the site:

Reopening Analysis : The federal government established initial criteria for states to follow as they consider opening up their economies. This analysis shows how Texas and its individual counties continue to measure up against these criteria.

: The federal government established initial criteria for states to follow as they consider opening up their economies. This analysis shows how and its individual counties continue to measure up against these criteria. State Explorer : COVID-19's impact on Texas has been both wide and deep. The State Explorer includes data visualizations that track the toll the virus has taken on Texans' health, as well as the deep economic hardship it has created across the state.

: COVID-19's impact on has been both wide and deep. The State Explorer includes data visualizations that track the toll the virus has taken on Texans' health, as well as the deep economic hardship it has created across the state. County Explorer: Not every community has felt the effects of COVID-19 equally. Through partnerships with many stakeholders across the state, the dashboard documents local impacts playing out across Texas' counties.

"This information vividly illustrates how Texas is doing right now and where our state needs to improve," said Margaret Spellings, CEO of Texas 2036. "Texans can use these tools to get a better sense of their state's progress  and their community's  and of continued challenges across a wide variety of metrics."

The data is compiled daily from a variety of different sources, ranging from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services to Homebase (a private-sector scheduling and time-tracking tool) to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The data sets and visualizations allow the viewer to simultaneously track health and economic impacts of the epidemic across various communities. Additional data sets will be added in upcoming weeks to continue to build on this comprehensive, multifaceted platform to better inform policymakers and the public.

Taken together, the data sets demonstrate the breadth of interconnected challenges Texas faces in protecting its 254 counties and 29 million people, and in reviving the economy on which those people and communities depend. The dashboard dovetails with the mission of Texas 2036, a nonprofit group created both to pull together a wide range of data sets covering the spectrum of issues  including government performance  that will shape Texas' future, and to help leaders make decisions ensuring the state's continued prosperity when Texas reaches its bicentennial in 16 years.

"This information vividly illustrates how Texas is doing right now and where our state needs to improve," Luce said. "Reliable, credible data can help move Texas forward."

At this time, the COVID-19 tracking tool includes the following information:

COVID-Cases, Testing and Morbidity

New COVID-19 Cases Per Day

Daily Positive Test Rate

Daily Test Volume

Test Positive Rate

COVID-19 Growth Rate from the Previous Day

Total Tests per Capita

Daily New COVID-19 Deaths

Symptoms:

Influenza-Like Illnesses

COVID-Like Illnesses

Hospitals:

Hospital Beds

Percentage of Available Beds

Percentage of Available ICU Beds

Available Adult Ventilators

Available Pediatric Ventilators

Economic Impact:

Texas Jobless Claims

Estimated Change in Businesses Open

Estimated Change in Hours Worked by Hourly Employees

Estimated Change in Number of Hourly Employees Working

The Texas COVID-19 Data Resource utilizes data "as is" from multiple sources and bases analysis upon such data. Texas 2036 assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions which may exist in the underlying data set or subsequent calculations. The data is obtained directly from the cited sources and is updated regularly. The teams that assembled the tools could not see any personal identifying information about the individuals behind the data, and such identifying information is not available or visible to anyone using the tools.

About Texas 2036

Texas 2036 is a nonprofit organization building long-term, data-driven strategies to secure Texas' prosperity through our state's bicentennial and beyond. We offer non-partisan ideas and modern solutions that are grounded in research and data on issues that matter most to all Texans. For more information visit www.texas2036.org.

SOURCE Texas 2036

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A 17th-century cloaked plague doctor was seen walking the streets of London during the coronavirus lockdown.

The eerie figure wandered through Crouch End, much to the amazement of locals who peered through their windows.

The bizarre pictures come just days after police revealed that a plague doctor who was terrifying residents in a Norwich village was a teenage boy.

A 17th-century cloaked plague doctor was seen walking the streets of London during the coronavirus lockdown

The bizarre pictures come just days after police revealed that a plague doctor who was terrifying residents in a Norwich village (left) was a teenage boy. Right: A plague doctor from the 17th century

As he went about his business in London, the prankster popped into a local supermarket and 'tipped his hat' to people as he passed them.

During the plague in the 17th century, European doctors would wear the outfit when they tended to patients because they believed the masks could purify poisonous air.

Resident Chloe McLaren told Ham&High that the character was 'walking along, tipping his hat to people'.

As he went about his business in London, the prankster popped into a local supermarket and 'tipped his hat' to people as he passed them

Plague doctors thought beaked masks containing lavender would protect them During the plague doctors dressed in certain clothes they believed protected them from the airborne diseases. They wore long, ankle-length overcoats and bird-like beak filled with plants and herbs that had a smell, usually lavender. During the plague doctors dressed in certain clothes they believed protected them from the airborne diseases They also wore gloves, boots and wide hat. Historians think the outfit was invented in 1619 by Charles de Lorme who got the idea for head-to-toe clothing from a soldier's armour. Advertisement

She added: 'My girlfriend bumped into him. He was just stood by the melons at the newsagents. It was a little bit of a shock.'

It isn't the first time a plague doctor was spotted roaming the streets after a teenage boy dressed up as the figure in Norwich.

Many people in the community were worried the outfit would frighten children so reported him to the police.

Jade Gosbell, who saw the walker, said: 'It was like 20 degrees, he was wearing a full black suit, it just looked ridiculous.'

'It's clearly for attention or something like that, because normal people just wouldn't do that.'

Jade said she was worried her mum, who has a phobia of masks, would bump into the person in costume.

'Kids would be frightened, my mum would be frightened, however some people really don't think it's that deep, they just think that he's having a laugh, he's just trying to find something to do with himself during isolation and lockdown,' she said.

A police spokesperson told Eastern Daily Press: 'Officers from the local neighbourhood team have identified the individual as a boy in his late teens.

'The individual has been spoken to about the consequences his actions may have on some people in the local community and was given words of advice as a result.'
Katie Nall is the mother of three children, and grandmother to four. But there was a time when Mother's Day was a difficult day for the Florida woman.

It's been several years since Nall's mother died, but when she was alive, Nall says they had a troubled relationship that led to her running away from home as a teenager, even landing in the foster care system for a time before living with her father during her college years.

"Growing up, I always felt like I was never good enough," Nall told TODAY Parents. "As an adult, I struggled with how to have a healthy relationship with my mother."

Nall with daughter, Elizabeth, and granddaughters, Laine, 3, and Emmeline, 1.

Nall said she spent many years reading pertinent books and seeing a counselor, and finally reached a point where she "emotionally divorced" herself from her mother.

"I decided I didn't have to participate in my mother's dramas," Nall said. "I didn't have to take sides in her predicaments. I didn't have to listen to her criticism, complaining and condemning."

According to Dr. Barbara Greenberg, a family psychologist, Nall's situation is not unique.

"The mother-daughter relationship is complicated," said Greenberg. "It is fraught with pride, celebration and love, but in some cases it can also be full of envy and competition."

Greenberg says in some cases, mothers see their daughters as competitors, which can lead to emotional, verbal or physical abuse. As adults, many of those daughters become estranged from their mothers in an effort to distance themselves from the pain of negative behavior patterns.

For these women, Mother's Day can be especially painful.

Greenberg says women who have separated themselves from their mothers still often feel a "strong mother hunger," wishing for a mother figure who wants to be involved with their lives. On Mother's Day, this hunger may be greater, as greeting-card aisles and Facebook feeds are filled with reminders of a holiday designed to celebrate moms.

Story continues

But Greenberg says women who are estranged from their mothers can take steps to help them deal with feelings of sadness and loneliness on Mother's Day.

1. Borrow other people's mothers

Greenberg suggests finding a way to show appreciation for other women who have been mentors or nurturers in the absence of a mother.

"We can find a way to honor those people  maybe an aunt or an older woman who you grew up around  who gave us things that our mothers were incapable of giving us," said Greenberg, who suggests taking the time to send cards or messages of thanks to these women on Mother's Day.

2. Create your own ritual

"If Mother's Day is too aversive for you to deal with," said Greenberg, "maybe that weekend you do something else every year. Go to the beach or visit a special friend."

Greenberg cautions that Mother's Day can be a long, emotional day for those without a mother in their lives, and says making distracting plans can be beneficial.

3. Focus on gratitude

"Mother's Day can be a good time to think about what you were able to achieve without a mother in your life, and to focus on giving gratitude for all of your accomplishments," said Greenberg.

4. Celebrate your own family

"If you are a mother yourself, take pride in your own role as a mother," said Greenberg, adding that women who are not mothers should take a moment to be appreciative of the friends who feel like a family to them.

"Enjoy your friends and family celebrating you," said Greenberg.

5. Plan ahead

"Don't let the day sneak up on you," said Greenberg. "Plan to stay off social media because you are going to see a lot of things about people honoring their mothers, and that can be hard."

Greenberg stresses the importance of being proactive, planning out the day ahead of time and avoiding triggering places like the greeting-card aisle or the flower shop.

6. Be prepared for questions

When well-meaning friends ask about your plans for Mother's Day, Greenberg says there is no need to go into details about your troubled relationship with your mother.

"Answer generically," said Greenberg. "You don't have to get into your story or get specific about who is coming with you that day. Just tell them what your plans are  they probably won't ask you whether or not your mother is coming with you."

Nall says as a mother and a grandmother, she has worked to break the chain of bad mother-daughter relationships and behave differently than she was taught.

"For me, I wanted peace and to be satisfied with myself  to know that I was good enough," Nall said. "I have peace now. My next goal is to have the ability to grow into a more heartfelt, loving and kind mother."

Editor's note: This article was originally published on TODAY on May 12, 2017.
Announced in a tweet on April 30 by the French government spokeswoman, Sibeth Ndiaye, the page "desinfox coronavirus", a selection of fact-checking articles from some media about Covid-19, caused an instant outcry from the entire profession, in particular in a press release by two French affiliates of the IFJ, theSNJ and the SNJ-CGT, published on May 2. They denounced an unacceptable stranglehold on information policy: "By what right does the government authorise itself to decide what constitutes "good" and "bad" information?demandedthe unions. The quality of the articles put forward this way - emanating for the moment from only five editorial offices: Liberation, 20 Minutes, FranceInfo, AFP and Le Monde - is not in question, but what about the articles on the management of the pandemic, published by these same media or by others, pointing to the state's unpreparedness, the sad state of the public hospital, the lack of planning for the reopening of schools, etc.? Will they have the honor of being cited in "Desinfox Coronavirus"?"

The next day, Sunday May 3, on World Press Freedom Day, 36 journalists societies (SDJ) and editorial societies (SDR) followed in the footsteps of the unions and signed a column in the newspaper Le Monde: "The French press is independent of the state and of political power. It must even exercise, in its plurality and under the critical eye of its readers, listeners and viewers, its role as a counter-power. As underlined by the European Court of Human Rights, journalists are the "watchdogs" of democracy."

Emergency appeal

The final blow was finally given by the SNJ on Monday, May 4, when they submitted an urgent appeal before the Council of State - "an interim application (requete en refere-liberte) - asking the Council to order the Prime Minister to permanently remove this "desinfox coronavirus" page.

The following day, Tuesday, May 5, the Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, weakly defended the initiative in front of the National Assembly before announcing that this page would be removed from the government site.

The entire profession, led by unions of professional journalists, have forced the hand of a government that carries on turning a blind eye to the issue of freedoms in the face of deconfinement.

More than ever, wrote the IFJ last week, "Information must never be confined. Information must remain a public good."

Anthony Bellanger
GOVERNOR Nyesom Wike has ordered the prosecution of 14 persons who moved cattle from Adamawa State into Port Harcourt in breach of Rivers State borders closure and lockdown of Port Harcourt and Obio Akpor Local Government Areas in the fight against Coronavirus.

Wike also ordered auction of the cattle and the two trucks in which they were being conveyed after intercepting them at Rumuigbo, Obio Akpor LGA in the wee hours of Friday.

One of those arrested, Ahmed Aliyu, who said they were engaged from Adamawa to bring in the cattle to the new slaughter in Oyigbo further claimed they paid N1500 to security agents to breach the states closed borders.

Wike said: This fight has nothing to do with individuals. The law must take its course. Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor are under lockdown and the law must be obeyed. The trailers and the cows will be auctioned tomorrow.

You heard them saying they gave money to security agencies before they were allowed to cross the border. The owner of the cattle on the phone admitted they have fallen short of the law

He further directed the State Ministry of Health to conduct tests on the 14 persons to ascertain their Coronavirus status.

The Governor said he got wind of their movement on intelligence gathered from well-meaning Nigerians, but did not confirm if the informant would get the N100,000 reward he earlier promised for whistleblowers over breach of the state Covid-19 restrictions.

Meanwhile, A Mobile Court sitting at the Covid-19 Elekahia Isolation Centre in Port Harcourt has of the lockdown imposed by Rivers State Government on Port Harcourt City and Obio/Akpor Local Government Areas (LGAs) to contain Coronavirus.

The offenders were Thursday dragged to the court by Office of the Attorney General of Rivers for alleged breach of Executive Order RVSG 06 2020 which imposes the lockdown, prohibiting human and vehicular movement in the Port Harcourt metropolis.
LOS ANGELES, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumers are being encouraged to participate in a world-first dream event "Global DreamDay" on May 11th and create and share their bucket list.

Newly created "Global DreamDay" is the brainchild of Tim Carroll, the Founder and CEO of BUCKiTDREAM, the world's first dream App launched by Sir Richard Branson and Ellen DeGeneres.

"At a time when everyone is impacted by Covid-19, we need to be inspired; to believe and be motivated to get to the other side and focus on fulfilling our dream trips," Carroll said.

"Time is one of the biggest barriers to dreaming. Now millions of people have time on their hands to think about their dream trips and to embrace 'Global DreamDay.' Each one of us can share a powerful message of inspiration and hope with family and friends."

Carroll said Global DreamDay is also about demonstrating support to the travel and tourism industry, so everyone has a chance to reach their dreams sometime, someday.

"By creating and sharing our dreams we are letting the laid off employees, management and shareholders of OTAs, airlines, hotels, cruise ships, theme parks, restaurants, theatres and much much more know that we are all ready to support them as soon as it's safe," he said.

And one of the world's most influential dreamers Sir Richard Branson said we should all dream, share our dreams, then go out and grab them with both hands.

There are already millions of dreams on BUCKiTDREAM with Carroll divulging some interesting statistics: Top 5 places Americans want to travel to are:

Beaches of Bora Bora See the Northern Lights Visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris See the Colosseum in Rome Go on an African Safari

"Global DreamDay" kicks off on May 11th with every day in May is a "DreamDay". Download BUCKiTDREAM from the Apple and Google App store and its free. #globaldreamday

To see the impact fulfilling someone's BUCKiTDREAM, watch this clipping of Ellen DeGeneres surprising a mother and daughter with an experience of a lifetime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHUEEJzaHD8&list=PLuW4g7xujBWe7cuqlHZx8c45NjkI-Qowb&index=127

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Erik Fernandez: [email protected] +1 310 431 6755

Tim Carroll Founder & CEO BUCKiTDREAM Inc: [email protected] +61 403 044 700

RELATED LINKS

BUCKiTDREAM https://youtu.be/hj9M9xamERI

BUCKiTDREAM Web Site https://www.buckitdream.com

BUCKiTDREAM App Screen Shots https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pgpobrhxjyuc5n9/AAB7HO1GXTbJlnrXdFH84JHta?dl=0

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHUEEJzaHD8&list=PLuW4g7xujBWe7cuqlHZx8c45NjkI-Qowb&index=127

ABOUT BUCKiTDREAM

Launched by Sir Richard Branson and Ellen the world's first dream platform and is available for download in the Apple and Google App store, the dream app has received 5-star reviews across the board. The platform allows Dreamers to create their dreams and share them via their (aka Bucket List) on their social networks.

BUCKiTDREAM mobile platform includes the following features:

Create your travel bucket list in less than 60 seconds

Discover dreams: browse through experiences of dreams and add them to your customized Bucket list.

Document your dreams: With "Add a new post"; upload the photos related to your journey of the dream.

Share the dreams: Share your BUCKiTDREAM with your friends and family members on social networking sites.

Achieve your dreams: Once your dream is completed, use the tap saying, "Mark as complete."

Notifications that intelligently match your dream to curated bucket lists.

Notifications: Whenever someone comments on your dream or is inspired by it; you will be notified.

Privacy: You can maintain the privacy of your dreams according to your wish.

SOURCE BUCKiTDREAM

Related Links

www.buckitdream.com


Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 02:31:28|Editor: huaxia

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Medical workers conduct check-ups after migrants disembarked from a patrol boat at Boiler Wharf in Senglea, Malta, on May 7, 2020. A small group of eight migrants, including two children, arrived in Malta on Thursday evening after being allowed to be brought to land despite the closed ports. The six adults and two children disembarked after the Maltese government gave a concession on purely humanitarian grounds, a government spokesman said. (Photo by Jonathan Borg/Xinhua)

VALLETTA, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A small group of eight migrants, including two children, arrived in Malta on Thursday evening after being allowed to be brought to land despite the closed ports.

The six adults and two children disembarked after the Maltese government gave a concession on purely humanitarian grounds, a government spokesman said.

A second group of around 10 migrants, mostly women and children, are expected to arrive in Malta on Friday.

All of them will be kept in quarantine at the initial reception centre after disembarkation.

The 18 people are part of a larger group of around 123 migrants who were rescued by the Armed Forces of Malta in the island's search and rescue zone on Wednesday. The remaining 105 migrants will be placed on a second tourist cruise ship chartered by the government until a European solution to the migrant situation is found. Another chartered vessel currently has 57 migrants on board. Enditem
After a four-star review in the Free Press in February, business was very good at Altanour, Talal and Dounia Dalanks one year-old Lebanese restaurant in the West End.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a four-star review in the Free Press in February, business was very good at Altanour, Talal and Dounia Dalanks one year-old Lebanese restaurant in the West End.

But since the coronavirus hit and social distancing became a public health imperative, they had to lay off three staff. Now it is only family members left making and preparing takeout and delivery only.

"It is very hard in this situation," said Dounia Dalank. "We are trying our best to make ends meet. We are doing our best to stay open."

Even so, Talal made a point of telling a reporter that the family wants to show its appreciation for health-care workers by offering them 50 per cent discount on meals.

Altanour is one of about 2,600 restaurants in Manitoba facing the unprecedented shutdown and whose industry, many officials now believe, may face the cruelest of fates.

A new survey from Restaurants Canada shows that 70 per cent of restaurants in Manitoba might not have the cash flow to be able to reopen.

And while the province has released a reopening timetable, many believe that does not make the odds of success any better.

Shaun Jeffrey, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant & Foodservices Association (which is not affiliated with Restaurant Canada), said the notice that restaurants could reopen patios this week was a "kick in the head" to the industry.

"We were not given any notice about that," Jeffrey said. "We were blindsided by it. It has caused chaos. No one was prepared to open patios. Now everyone is scrambling to get some sort of revenue stream."

After operating on very low profit margins at the best of times, restaurants  in particular, independent restaurants  largely find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes the suite of federal financial support programs that has been getting pumped out by Ottawa.

James Rilett, Restaurants Canada vice-president, Central Canada, said the government programs that have deferred expenses have been welcome.

"But we are looking for any mechanism that will enable restaurants to get some cash in their pockets," he said. "If any of them could be forgiven rather than deferred that would help."

The program that allows access to a $40,000 business loan, 25 per cent of which would be forgiven, can be helpful for some, he said, "But unfortunately our industry is not well known for being able to get loans form the banking community."

The wage subsidy program only works if a business has been able to retain staff and at least 50 per cent of restaurants have remained closed completely, not offering pickup or delivery.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Altanour, a Lebanese restaurant in the West End, is one of about 2,600 restaurants in Manitoba facing the current pandemic-related troubles.

The survey said that 20 per cent have not been able to negotiate terms with landlords and Rilett said that theres probably another 20 per cent who just cant pay their rent at all.

"No one understands how bad the industry is right now," Jeffrey said. "These guys operate normally on a five per cent profit margin. They are losing atrocious amounts of money. It is brutal. The number of restaurants who are not going to come out of this will be substantial."

Norm Pastorin, executive chef of Cornerstone, The Grove and the Black Bird Brasserie, said all those restaurants are definitely planning to reopen.

He said they have chosen to make their staff and customers safety their first priority and have been closed even for pick-up and delivery.

"We do not feel it is completely safe, he said. "We are waiting for phase II."

Thats in reference to Manitobas Pandemic and Economic Roadmap for Recovery, which says that restaurants can reopen no earlier than June 1 at 50 per capacity.

Pastorin said they are sticking to the guidelines and have been grateful that they have "been afforded some concessions on rent."

Its one thing to say a business can only open at 50 per capacity, it is another thing to be able to figure out exactly how to practically do that (never mind figuring out how to be profitable with the same overhead but only 50 per cent of allowable revenue).

Jeffrey said next week the Manitoba association is unveiling a new training assistance program that it will be able to offer free to its members that will help them comply with the regulations.

It will also be making a formal request for more financial assistance from the province.

Many fear that when the dust settles, the majority of restaurant offerings that will be available on the market will be national chain restaurants.

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.

Even Rilett believes that the chains will have a distinct advantage.

"They would definitely have more resources behind them to help them with redo floor plans for social distancing and for sanitization and things like that," he said.

Restaurants will have to reorder supplies, maybe redo menus and maybe even redesign the restaurant.

He said, "A franchise would have some resources behind them and a better chance of staying at it. Yes."

In a survey the national organization did two months ago, it found that 50 per cent of independents would not able to reopen if the shut down lasted three months. Only 25 per cent of chains said they would have to close locations.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
A 13-year-old schoolgirl has won a court battle to force a county council to scrap its transgender 'toilets toolkit' which she said threatened her safety and privacy.

She took Oxfordshire County Council to the High Court and the authority has now confirmed the 'Trans Inclusion Toolkit' has been withdrawn.

But she said the council still hasn't apologised or admitted it was wrong in drawing up the toolkit.

The toolkit included advice that trans pupils should be able to use whatever toilets, changing rooms and school trip dorm rooms they prefer.

A 13-year-old schoolgirl has won a battle against Oxfordshire County Council to withdraw a transgender 'toolkit' which allowed transgender students to use the toilets of the gender they identify as

She said the 65-page guide threatened her safety, privacy and dignity when she wanted to spend a penny at school.

Oxfordshire County Council produced the toolkit last year, advising teachers in schools and colleges on how transgender students should be treated.

The guide said that transgender children should be allowed to use the changing rooms, dorms and toilets of their preferred gender.

That meant if child born as a boy said they identified as a girl, they could be allowed to use the girls' toilets.

The 13-year-old girl, who hasn't been named publicly, brought a legal challenge against the guidance, seeking a judicial review at the High Court.

She said it was unfair and made her feel powerless, and last month a judge allowed her to challenge the county council.

At the time, she said: 'I am very surprised that the council never asked the opinion of girls in Oxfordshire about what we thought before they published the toolkit.

'Under these guidelines I have no right to privacy from the opposite sex in changing rooms, loos or on residential trips.

'It makes me feel that my desire for privacy, dignity, safety and respect is wrong.

'It makes me feel sad, powerless and confused. I don't understand how allowing boys and girls to share private spaces is okay.'

Now the council has withdrawn the toolkit and said it will instead follow incoming national guidance on how transgender children should be treated instead.

Because the toolkit is no longer an official document, it means the judicial review can no longer go ahead.

The teenager said the case 'had a very significant impact' on her and Oxfordshire County Council have not apologised to her personally.

U-turn on trans toilets in schools: Parents force council to pull guidance allowing transgender pupils to use girls' loos and dormitories Parents forced a council to pull guidance to schools which allowed transgender pupils to use girls' toilets and dormitories. Warwickshire County Council said it had withdrawn its 'Trans toolkit', which offered advice to 300 schools, and placed it under review. Parents were furious that schools were being told to allow transitioning pupils to 'sleep where they feel most comfortable' and use whichever toilets they wanted. Tessa McInnes, 50, who has two children in Warwickshire schools, told the Times: 'The equal rights of girls are simply discounted and disregarded in this guidance. 'If they express any discomfort about a male coming into their spaces, the girl is presented as transphobic and told to go and change somewhere else. 'It's outrageous and defies the Equality Act 2010.' A spokesman for Warwickshire County Council said: 'Trans is an evolving complex area. It is our duty to provide schools with guidance to ensure all pupils are able to be themselves and reach their full potential in an inclusive school environment, without fear of judgement and discrimination. 'The toolkit was launched in January 2018 and is currently being reviewed.' Advertisement

She said: 'Although they have withdrawn it now, they haven't apologised to me or said they were wrong.

'I would like to know what Oxfordshire County Council is going to do to make schools a safe place for girls going forward.'

Her victory was welcomed by people on social media with one user writing: 'Thank goodness for that. Some good news.'

Another said: 'How much did all this nonsense cost to produce?

'What a waste of money at a time when councils say they don't have enough resources to deliver their services.'

The girl's legal battle had been supported by the Safe Schools Alliance, which crowd-funded to help pay the bills.

It is a network of parents and teachers concerned about safeguarding and was worried about abuses which could stem from the guidance.

Spokeswoman Tanya Carter said: 'We welcome the decision from Oxfordshire County Council to withdraw their 'Trans Inclusion Toolkit', however, we remain deeply concerned at the widespread undermining of child safeguarding and misrepresentation of the Equality Act that this case has revealed.'

A human rights lawyer hired by Safe Schools Alliance said the council 'had done the right thing' in withdrawing the toolkit.

Paul Conrathe, human rights solicitor from Sinclairslaw, said: 'The High Court has already considered the toolkit and ruled that it is arguable that it is unlawful.'

The county council said it would soon be adopting UK-wide guidance on transgender children which is being prepared by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

It said: 'Safeguarding children and young people is a critical part of our work.

'The Trans Inclusion Toolkit, which was published in November 2019, has been an important part of that work.

'However, the guidance in the Trans Inclusion Toolkit will soon be superseded by guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

'We anticipate that the EHRC will provide UK-wide information and resources to support trans and gender-questioning young people.

The girl's legal battle had been supported by the Safe Schools Alliance (above), which crowd-funded to help pay the bills. Spokesperson Tanya Carter said: 'We remain deeply concerned at the widespread undermining of child safeguarding'

'As we will be adopting this new national guidance, we have taken the decision to withdraw our toolkit and to withdraw from the judicial review of the toolkit that was due to be held in the coming months.

'We are very much aware of the challenges faced by young people who feel they are not the gender they were assigned at birth.

'We will do our utmost to safeguard these potentially vulnerable young people and help the schools who support them as part of our critical safeguarding work.'

A 2017 report by the LGBT charity Stonewall said that young transgender people often suffer from worse mental health problems than their peers and have a difficult experience of life in school.

The report said more than four in five trans young people have self-harmed, and more than two in five trans young people have attempted to take their own life.
Man, dog pronounced dead after early morning explosion, structure fire near Harbor Springs

A man and a dog have both died as the result of an explosion and structure fire early Tuesday morning in West Traverse Township near Harbor Springs.
Brisbanes dogs have been set free with more than 100 off-leash dog parks reopened on Friday afternoon.

Brisbane lord mayor Adrian Schrinner said the go-ahead was given for all the off-leash dog parks to reopen ahead of the weekend after consultation with Queenslands Chief Health Officer, Jeannette Young.

A first taste of furry freedom for 'George'. Credit:Lucy Stone

Cr Schrinner said council had seen a spike in the number of barking dog complaints made to council since the closure of the off-leash parks on March 30, but some of those complaints were attributed to more people working from home and being aware of noisy dogs.

Council officers were unlocking dog parks city-wide on Friday afternoon, with all off-leash parks set to be opened by the end of the day.
(TNS)  After weeks of withholding it from public disclosure, state officials on Wednesday released the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Floridas medical examiners.But the document was redacted to remove the probable cause of death and the description of each case.The omissions make the list meaningless, said Dr. Stephen Nelson, the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission.You have to take the word from the government that these are deaths related to COVID-19, said Nelson, who is also the chief medical examiner for Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties.It loses transparency, he said.The list never included the names of the dead, which many experts and medical examiners have said is also public in Florida.The move came several hours after attorneys for a coalition of media organizations, including the, sent a letter demanding the state release the information.As of early last month, the list was being released as it was updated.used it to report on April 11 that the states official count of deaths, produced by the Florida Department of Health, was about 10 percent lower than the medical examiners count.After thestory was published, health department officials called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which houses the medical examiners commission, the Times reported last week.After that, the Department of Law Enforcement decided to redact the list.The version released Wednesday showed the states count is now higher than the medical examiners.It was unclear why  especially given the mechanics of how coronavirus deaths are being tracked.Under Florida law, medical examiners are responsible for certifying every coronavirus death in the state. The health department has been verifying deaths independently by having epidemiologists follow up on every case.Whats more, the health department has said it is only including Florida residents in its count, although after thereport it began posting some data on non-resident deaths in feeds online.The medical examiners are counting anyone who died in Florida, including snowbirds and visitors.By their own admission, they are not counting every Florida death, Nelson said. Im surprised that they are ahead.The states official count is now 3.3 percent higher than the medical examiners. The data feed that includes non-resident deaths shows a count that is 7.8 percent higher.State health department spokesman Alberto Moscoso did not provide a comment by thedeadline Wednesday.It was also unclear why state officials needed 16 days to redact the list. They drew a black box over two of the columns and said the list was generated five hours before it was released.In withholding those columns, state Department of Law Enforcement officials cited two state laws that exempt certain records from public disclosure. One of the laws exempts the cause of death on death certificates. The other exempts patient records kept by hospitals.In the letter demanding the records be made public, Carol Jean LoCicero, an attorney for the coalition of media organizations, said no redaction was necessary because the list contains only public information. LoCicero also represents theBarbara Petersen, president emeritus of the First Amendment Foundation, said neither of the exemptions cited by the state applies to medical examiners records.Every exemption under the public records law has to be strictly construed and narrowly applied, she said. We are not talking about death certificates.  We are not talking about patient records.Petersen pointed out that other state agencies have withheld coronavirus-related information  most prominently the names of which nursing homes had infections, which wasnt released until the consortium of news organizations moved to sue.The governor and his administration are obfuscating, she said. They are withholding critically important information from the public.Medical examiners in Florida have been compiling a list of deaths in every statewide emergency since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The states 22 offices send information on their investigations to the Medical Examiners Commission to be included on a master list.Nelson said the lists have always been made available to the public without redactions.Both the health department and the law enforcement department acknowledged having conferred on privacy concerns related to the coronavirus list. But Moscoso said the health department didnt give any formal direction.Last month, thereported that the health department had reached out to the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Office and asked it to withhold its death records from the media. The Miami-Dade County attorney released the records anyway, saying she believed they were public records.Through a series of public records requests last week,reporters were able to obtain spreadsheets detailing coronavirus deaths or copies of the investigative reports from 18 of Floridas 22 medical examiner offices. Those records included the names of the dead.Nelson pointed out that the Medical Examiners Commission list provided less information than that.Individual offices can provide the names of the dead but this silly Excel spreadsheet is somehow sacrosanct? he said. It boggles my mind.Mark Caramanica, an attorney representing the coalition of news organizations, said his office was pleased FDLE released this critical information but is reviewing (the states) continued withholding of certain portions of the database that have been previously made public.Floridians deserve maximum transparency about COVID-19 deaths in our state, he said.
The NAACP Houston Branch is holding a dedication run tonight to honor Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed man shot while jogging near his neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia.

Arbery was killed on February 23 after being pursued by Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34. A cell phone video taken during the incident shows Arbery struggling with a man armed with a rifle or shotgun then collapsing.
The U.S. unemployment rate shot up to 14.7 percent as of mid-April, an increase of more than 10 percentage points in a single month that was the biggest spike dating back to 1948.

Connecticuts labor commissioner predicted Thursday that the states unemployment rate is likely as high as 20 percent or more as of early May. Gov. Ned Lamont has set May 20 as the date many businesses can resume operations with safeguards to limit the transmission of the coronavirus.

We had a very strong economy that was knocked off its kilter by a COVID pandemic, Lamont said Thursday afternoon. If we get this health [policy] right, if we do this in a deliberate way, were going to be coming back. Your jobs going to be coming back, and our economy will be coming back  perhaps even stronger for a state like Connecticut.

Lamont authorized the release on Friday afternoon of an initial set of specific protocols for businesses to reopen in Connecticut, under recommendations from a panel led by Dr. Albert Ko of the Yale School of Public Health and former Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi of Greenwich.

Many businesses have been walking a tightrope in gauging the timing for a resumption of commerce in their sectors, and what kind of a drop off they will see in accustomed cash flow.

Nationally, more than 18 million people were on temporary furloughs pending a possible resumption of their normal hours, but with the possibility their layoffs could become permanent depending on how long it takes for prior revenue levels to recover and other factors.

There was one group that saw a positive trend line  those who have been out of work for seven months or more, which dropped by 19 percent to below 940,000 people. But almost across the board otherwise, the news was grim, including 15 million full-time workers who have been reduced to part-time hours as a result of business disruptions, technically classifying them as employed but with their income reduced significantly.

Employment in the leisure and hospitality industry was down by half, with many more of those workers keeping their jobs only by virtue of the Paycheck Protection Plan which extends employers loans to cover eight weeks of payroll that is forgiven if they do not lay off workers.

On Thursday, the CEO of Booking Holdings indicated the company plans to lay off an unspecified number of workers, with the travel website giant headquartered in Norwalk and owning Stamford-based Kayak. CEO Glenn Fogel added he expects it will take years for the travel industry to recover fully.

We believe that either a vaccine or effective treatment is needed before people will feel fully comfortable traveling the way they did before the pandemic started  and even after ... it may be some time before there is sufficient quantity and distribution to give people and governments confidence for people to travel freely, Fogel said Thursday afternoon during a conference call. That will be dependent on the overall economy, [with] consumers financial health having gone through a very deep recession.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
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
[May 07, 2020] Global Busbar Trunking System Industry

NEW YORK, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Busbar Trunking System market worldwide is projected to grow by US$3.5 Billion, driven by a compounded growth of 6.6%. Industrial, one of the segments analyzed and sized in this study, displays the potential to grow at over 7.1%. The shifting dynamics supporting this growth makes it critical for businesses in this space to keep abreast of the changing pulse of the market. Poised to reach over US$3.6 Billion by the year 2025, Industrial will bring in healthy gains adding significant momentum to global growth.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05798084/?utm_source=PRN



- Representing the developed world, the United States will maintain a 7.5% growth momentum. Within Europe, which continues to remain an important element in the world economy, Germany will add over US$161.7 Million to the region's size and clout in the next 5 to 6 years. Over US$164.7 Million worth of projected demand in the region will come from Rest of Europe markets. In Japan, Industrial will reach a market size of US$321 Million by the close of the analysis period. As the world's second largest economy and the new game changer in global markets, China exhibits the potential to grow at 6.3% over the next couple of years and add approximately US$607.8 Million in terms of addressable opportunity for the picking by aspiring businesses and their astute leaders. Presented in visually rich graphics are these and many more need-to-know quantitative data important in ensuring quality of strategy decisions, be it entry into new markets or allocation of resources within a portfolio. Several macroeconomic factors and internal market forces will shape growth and development of demand patterns in emerging countries in Asia-Pacific. All research viewpoints presented are based on validated engagements from influencers in the market, whose opinions supersede all other research methodologies.



- Competitors identified in this market include, among others, ABB Ltd.

ARJ Holding LLC

Busbar Services

C&S Electric Ltd.

Dbts Industries Sdn. Bhd.

E.A.E Elektrik A.S.

Eaton Corporation PLC

Entraco Power Systems

GE Industrial Solutions

Gersan Elektrik Tic. Ve San . A.S

. A.S Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Graziadio & C. SpA

KGS Engineering Ltd.

Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

Legrand SA

Megabarre Europe Srl

Naxso S.R.L

NOVA Limited.

Pogliano S.R.L

Power Distribution, Inc. (PDI)

Power Plug Busduct Sdn. Bhd.

Powerbar Gulf LLC

Rittal GmbH & Co. KG

Schneider Electric SA

Siemens AG

Vass Electrical Industries

VMtec Maschinen-und Anlagenbau GmbH Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05798084/?utm_source=PRN



I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & REPORT SCOPE



II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



1. MARKET OVERVIEW



Global Competitor Market Shares

Busbar Trunking System Competitor Market Share Scenario

Worldwide (in %): 2019 & 2025





2. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS



3. MARKET TRENDS & DRIVERS



4. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE



Table 1: Busbar Trunking System Global Market Estimates and

Forecasts in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 2: Busbar Trunking System Global Retrospective Market

Scenario in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 3: Busbar Trunking System Market Share Shift across Key

Geographies Worldwide: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 4: Industrial (End-Use) Global Opportunity Assessment in

US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 5: Industrial (End-Use) Historic Sales Analysis in US$

Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 6: Industrial (End-Use) Percentage Share Breakdown of

Global Sales by Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 7: Commercial (End-Use) Worldwide Sales in US$ Million by

Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 8: Commercial (End-Use) Historic Demand Patterns in US$

Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 9: Commercial (End-Use) Market Share Shift across Key

Geographies: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 10: Large Residential (End-Use) Global Market Estimates &

Forecasts in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 11: Large Residential (End-Use) Retrospective Demand

Analysis in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 12: Large Residential (End-Use) Market Share Breakdown by

Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 13: Transportation (End-Use) Demand Potential Worldwide

in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 14: Transportation (End-Use) Historic Sales Analysis in

US$ Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 15: Transportation (End-Use) Share Breakdown Review by

Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 16: Other End-Uses (End-Use) Worldwide Latent Demand

Forecasts in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 17: Other End-Uses (End-Use) Global Historic Analysis in

US$ Million by Region/Country: 2009-2017

Table 18: Other End-Uses (End-Use) Distribution of Global Sales

by Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 19: Air Insulation (Insulation) World Market Estimates

and Forecasts in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018 to 2025

Table 20: Air Insulation (Insulation) Market Worldwide Historic

Review by Region/Country in US$ Million: 2009 to 2017

Table 21: Air Insulation (Insulation) Market Percentage Share

Distribution by Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 V 2025







Worldwide in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018 to 2025

Table 23: Sandwich (Insulation) Global Historic Demand in US$

Million by Region/Country: 2009 to 2017

Table 24: Sandwich (Insulation) Market Share Distribution in

Percentage by Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025





III. MARKET ANALYSIS





GEOGRAPHIC MARKET ANALYSIS

UNITED STATES

Market Facts & Figures

US Busbar Trunking System Market Share (in %) by Company: 2019 &

2025

Market Analytics

Table 25: United States Busbar Trunking System Latent Demand

Forecasts in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 26: Busbar Trunking System Historic Demand Patterns in

the United States by End-Use in US$ Million for 2009-2017

Table 27: Busbar Trunking System Market Share Breakdown in the

United States by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 28: United States Busbar Trunking System Market Estimates

and Projections in US$ Million by Insulation: 2018 to 2025

Table 29: Busbar Trunking System Market in the United States by

Insulation: A Historic Review in US$ Million for 2009-2017

Table 30: United States Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Breakdown by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

CANADA

Table 31: Canadian Busbar Trunking System Market Quantitative

Demand Analysis in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 32: Busbar Trunking System Market in Canada :

Summarization of Historic Demand Patterns in US$ Million by

End-Use for 2009-2017

Table 33: Canadian Busbar Trunking System Market Share Analysis

by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 34: Canadian Busbar Trunking System Market Estimates and

Forecasts in US$ Million by Insulation: 2018 to 2025

Table 35: Canadian Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Review by Insulation in US$ Million: 2009-2017

Table 36: Busbar Trunking System Market in Canada : Percentage

Share Breakdown of Sales by Insulation for 2009, 2019, and 2025

JAPAN

Table 37: Japanese Demand Estimates and Forecasts for Busbar

Trunking System in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 38: Japanese Busbar Trunking System Market in US$ Million

by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 39: Busbar Trunking System Market Share Shift in Japan by

End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 40: Japanese Market for Busbar Trunking System: Annual

Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Million by Insulation

for the Period 2018-2025

Table 41: Busbar Trunking System Market in Japan : Historic

Sales Analysis in US$ Million by Insulation for the Period

2009-2017

Table 42: Japanese Busbar Trunking System Market Share Analysis

by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

CHINA

Table 43: Chinese Demand for Busbar Trunking System in US$

Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 44: Busbar Trunking System Market Review in China in US$

Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 45: Chinese Busbar Trunking System Market Share Breakdown

by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 46: Chinese Busbar Trunking System Market Growth

Prospects in US$ Million by Insulation for the Period 2018-2025

Table 47: Busbar Trunking System Historic Market Analysis in

China in US$ Million by Insulation: 2009-2017

Table 48: Chinese Busbar Trunking System Market by Insulation:

Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2009, 2019, and 2025

EUROPE

Market Facts & Figures

European Busbar Trunking System Market: Competitor Market Share

Scenario (in %) for 2019 & 2025

Market Analytics

Table 49: European Busbar Trunking System Market Demand

Scenario in US$ Million by Region/Country: 2018-2025

Table 50: Busbar Trunking System Market in Europe : A Historic

Market Perspective in US$ Million by Region/Country for the

Period 2009-2017

Table 51: European Busbar Trunking System Market Share Shift by

Region/Country: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 52: European Busbar Trunking System Addressable Market

Opportunity in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018-2025

Table 53: Busbar Trunking System Market in Europe :

Summarization of Historic Demand in US$ Million by End-Use for

the Period 2009-2017

Table 54: European Busbar Trunking System Market Share Analysis

by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 55: European Busbar Trunking System Market Estimates and

Forecasts in US$ Million by Insulation: 2018-2025

Table 56: Busbar Trunking System Market in Europe in US$

Million by Insulation: A Historic Review for the Period

2009-2017

Table 57: European Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Breakdown by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

FRANCE

Table 58: Busbar Trunking System Quantitative Demand Analysis

in France in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018-2025

Table 59: French Busbar Trunking System Historic Market Review

in US$ Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 60: French Busbar Trunking System Market Share Analysis:

A 17-Year Perspective by End-Use for 2009, 2019, and 2025

Table 61: Busbar Trunking System Market in France by

Insulation: Estimates and Projections in US$ Million for the

Period 2018-2025

Table 62: French Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Scenario in US$ Million by Insulation: 2009-2017

Table 63: French Busbar Trunking System Market Share Analysis

by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

GERMANY

Table 64: Busbar Trunking System Market in Germany : Annual

Sales Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Million by End-Use for the

Period 2018-2025

Table 65: German Busbar Trunking System Market in Retrospect in

US$ Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 66: Busbar Trunking System Market Share Distribution in

Germany by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 67: Busbar Trunking System Market in Germany : Recent

Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Million by Insulation

for the Period 2018-2025

Table 68: German Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Analysis in US$ Million by Insulation: 2009-2017

Table 69: German Busbar Trunking System Market Share Breakdown

by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

ITALY

Table 70: Italian Demand for Busbar Trunking System in US$

Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 71: Busbar Trunking System Market Review in Italy in US$

Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 72: Italian Busbar Trunking System Market Share Breakdown

by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 73: Italian Busbar Trunking System Market Growth

Prospects in US$ Million by Insulation for the Period 2018-2025

Table 74: Busbar Trunking System Historic Market Analysis in

Italy in US$ Million by Insulation: 2009-2017

Table 75: Italian Busbar Trunking System Market by Insulation:

Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2009, 2019, and 2025

UNITED KINGDOM

Table 76: United Kingdom Demand Estimates and Forecasts for

Busbar Trunking System in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018 to 2025

Table 77: United Kingdom Busbar Trunking System Market in US$

Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 78: Busbar Trunking System Market Share Shift in the

United Kingdom by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 79: United Kingdom Market for Busbar Trunking System:

Annual Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Million by

Insulation for the Period 2018-2025

Table 80: Busbar Trunking System Market in the United Kingdom :

Historic Sales Analysis in US$ Million by Insulation for the

Period 2009-2017

Table 81: United Kingdom Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Analysis by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

REST OF EUROPE

Table 82: Rest of Europe Busbar Trunking System Addressable

Market Opportunity in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018-2025

Table 83: Busbar Trunking System Market in Rest of Europe :

Summarization of Historic Demand in US$ Million by End-Use for

the Period 2009-2017

Table 84: Rest of Europe Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Analysis by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 85: Rest of Europe Busbar Trunking System Market

Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Million by Insulation: 2018-2025

Table 86: Busbar Trunking System Market in Rest of Europe in

US$ Million by Insulation: A Historic Review for the Period

2009-2017

Table 87: Rest of Europe Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Breakdown by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

ASIA-PACIFIC

Table 88: Busbar Trunking System Quantitative Demand Analysis

in Asia-Pacific in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018-2025

Table 89: Asia-Pacific Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Review in US$ Million by End-Use: 2009-2017

Table 90: Asia-Pacific Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Analysis: A 17-Year Perspective by End-Use for 2009, 2019, and

2025

Table 91: Busbar Trunking System Market in Asia-Pacific by

Insulation: Estimates and Projections in US$ Million for the

Period 2018-2025

Table 92: Asia-Pacific Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Scenario in US$ Million by Insulation: 2009-2017

Table 93: Asia-Pacific Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Analysis by Insulation: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

REST OF WORLD

Table 94: Rest of World Busbar Trunking System Market

Quantitative Demand Analysis in US$ Million by End-Use: 2018 to

2025

Table 95: Busbar Trunking System Market in Rest of World:

Summarization of Historic Demand Patterns in US$ Million by

End-Use for 2009-2017

Table 96: Rest of World Busbar Trunking System Market Share

Analysis by End-Use: 2009 VS 2019 VS 2025

Table 97: Rest of World Busbar Trunking System Market Estimates

and Forecasts in US$ Million by Insulation: 2018 to 2025

Table 98: Rest of World Busbar Trunking System Historic Market

Review by Insulation in US$ Million: 2009-2017

Table 99: Busbar Trunking System Market in Rest of World:

Percentage Share Breakdown of Sales by Insulation for 2009,

2019, and 2025





IV. COMPETITION



ABB GROUP

ARJ HOLDING

BUSBAR SERVICES

C&S ELECTRIC

DBTS INDUSTRIES SDN. BHD.

E.A.E ELEKTRIK A.S.

EATON CORPORATION PLC

ENTRACO POWER SYSTEMS

GE INDUSTRIAL SOLUTIONS

GERSAN ELEKTRIK TIC. VE SAN . A.S

GODREJ & BOYCE MANUFACTURING

GRAZIADIO & C. SPA

KGS ENGINEERING

LARSEN & TOUBRO

LEGRAND SA

MEGABARRE EUROPE SRL

NOVA LIMITED

NAXSO S.R.L

POGLIANO S.R.L

POWER DISTRIBUTION, INC. (PDI)

POWER PLUG BUSDUCT SDN. BHD.

POWERBAR GULF

RITTAL GMBH & CO. KG

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC SA

SIEMENS AG

VMTEC MASCHINEN-UND ANLAGENBAU GMBH

VASS ELECTRICAL INDUSTRIES

V. CURATED RESEARCH

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05798084/?utm_source=PRN



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ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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(TNS)  New York State Attorney General Letitia James has announced an agreement with Zoom Video Communications that will provide security protections for more than 200 million users on the platform.New security measures are being put in place to support and protect consumers, students, schools, governments, religious institutions, and private companies using the application for work, education, prayer and socializing. After the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), cities and states across the nation began quarantine and social distancing procedures that forced businesses and schools, as well as many social interactions to be moved online.Zoom had a sudden surge in both the volume and sensitivity of data being passed through its network, but the exponential increase in users also exposed security flaws and vulnerabilities in Zooms platform and software, and a lack of privacy protections. Additionally, a number of people reported that their Zoom conferences had been Zoombombed, or interrupted by uninvited participants seeking to disrupt the conference. Attorney General James opened up an investigation into Zooms privacy and security practices in March culminating in todays agreement.Our lives have inexorably changed over the past two months, and while Zoom has provided an invaluable service, it unacceptably did so without critical security protections, James said. This agreement puts protections in place so that Zoom users have control over their privacy and security, and so that workplaces, schools, religious institutions, and consumers dont have to worry while participating in a video call. As the coronavirus continues to spread across New York State and this nation and we come more accustomed to our new normal, my office will continue to do everything in its power to help our states residents and give them every tool to continue living their lives.The agreement will protect New Yorkers and users nationwide by ensuring Zooms compliance with New York state and federal laws; and will ensure Zoom provides services that are more secure, that provide users with enhanced privacy controls, and that protect users from abuse, James said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  The agriculture sector got a big boost after various local government units (LGUs) purchased 1.58 billion worth of fresh produce from local farmers during the lockdown, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said on Friday.

Dar said 245 LGUs across the country bought mostly rice, fruits and vegetables, which were included in the relief bags distributed to residents affected by the coronavirus lockdown.

He said this came following the departments call on cities, municipalities and provinces in April to include in food packs nutrient-dense products, and not just canned goods.

A month ago, we recommended to local chief executives kung pwede di lang delata ang ipamamahagi sa constituencies nila [if possible, not only canned good are distributed to their constituencies], Dar said in a Laging Handa briefing.

In doing so, localities have been able to support farmers and at the same time contribute in improving the health of their constituents, the agriculture secretary said.

Meanwhile, Dar said that many farm and fishery producers want to adopt e-commerce in the wake of store closures and physical distancing rules.

He said a week after the department launched its online marketplace called eKadiwa, it has received 300 inquiries on how to be part of the platform.

He said over 50 merchants are currently applying so they could sell their products via eKadiwa.

This is one of the positive aspects brought by the COVID-19 pandemic," Dar said. "Ito na ang isang [This is one of the] new normal in agriculture and fishery sectors.
SC agrees to consider according hearing to plea seeking use of ballots instead of EVMs for polls.
Amazon India has partnered with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to deliver essentials to residents in containment zones in Mumbai, the company's blog noted.

Mumbai is one of the worst coronavirus-hit cities in India and this collaboration is intended to support the people in containment zones for them to access essential items conveniently and safely.

"We want to help keep India safe and we firmly believe that Amazon has a unique role to play in providing a critical service for customers to get the goods they need for their families without leaving their homes," said Prakash Rochlani, Director of Last Mile Operations at Amazon India.

Amazon stated that it has expanded its special delivery program in Delhi and Hyderabad where it also works with local authorities to make the deliveries.

The delivery service will operate in coordination with the point of contact (POC) at the society and designated BMC containment zone officer, the company noted.

The customers will have to add items to their carts like they usually are required to do. They must then select the delivery location based on their containment zone. They are then notified about the status of their delivery through SMS, email, and app updates. The packages once ready will be handed over to volunteers. These volunteers would then pick them up from common delivery points and place them at the doorstep of the customers.

The entire process of delivery will be carried out while adhering to social distancing norms. Amazon noted that all delivery associates are advised to take necessary precautions.

"Various e-commerce companies have prioritized deliveries to containment areas at society gates," said Jayshree Bhoj, Additional Commissioner of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

With the consecutive lockdowns in place, the e-commerce industry has been affected a great deal. Deliveries for non-essentials opened in green and orange zones from Monday. However, red zones still do not have access to these items.



Some cities like Ahmedabad are facing a stricter lockdown, with no services for essentials in the coming week. The residents will only have access to milk and pharmaceutical companies. All e-commerce companies have also been banned from making deliveries in the coming week.

These steps are being taken to contain the spread of COVID-19. The city saw the deployment of paramilitary forces on Thursday after a newly appointed team of bureaucrats took charge, The Indian Express reported.

Other e-commerce companies like BigBasket and Grofers have also collaborated with local authorities, a report by ET stated.




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Samsung plans to launch a Samsung Pay debit card later this year, according to a blog post by the company.

Samsung said the debit card will be backed by a cash management account that will be enabled through a partnership with personal finance company SoFi.

From the first day of our launch, Samsung Pay has continued to innovate and deliver new mobile payments experiences for an expanding range of financial tasks, Samsung said.

This summer we will help users take care of a critical area of life that impacts everyone  our finances and financial lives.

The company said that over the past year, it has been developing a mobile-first money management platform and this has led to the upcoming launch of a dedicated Samsung Pay debit card.

As a first step to this broader vision, this summer Samsung in partnership with SoFi will introduce a new Samsung Pay experience with an innovative debit card backed by a cash management account, Samsung said.

The company did not specify whether this new debit card would be available outside of the United States.

We are excited to share more details in the coming weeks.

Samsung Pay growth in South Africa

Samsung Pay has seen significant growth in South Africa, and it has continued to expand its support for local bank cards.

In April 2020, Samsung South Africa announced it had added support for Nedbank Visa and American Express cards to its Samsung Pay application.

Director of Integrated Mobility at Samsung South Africa Justin Hume said the company was pleased to welcome Nedbank to Samsung Pay.

This is a collaboration that will connect even more people to our innovative and secure technology. The momentum is now firmly in favour of the countrys most widely accepted contactless payment system, Hume stated.

The company has partnered with several other major South African banks to add support for Samsung Pay, including Absa, Standard Bank, FNB, RMB Private Bank, Discovery Bank, and Investec.

Samsung Pay will support millions of South Africans needs for additional uses of digital systems and their mobile devices, Hume added.

Now read: South African banks to let more employees work from home
New Delhi, May 8 : AAP legislator Prakash Jarwal has moved an anticipatory bail in a Delhi court in connection with a case pertaning to a doctor's suicide in the national capital in April. The Rouse Avenue court will hear the matter on May 11.

On April 18, Delhi Police had booked Jarwal and his supporter Kapil Nagar and others on charges of issuing death threats and abetment to suicide after Dr Rajinder Singh was found dead in his house and the names of both was allegedly found mentioned in his suicide note.

Dr Rajinder Singh, a private practitioner in Durgapuri area in south Delhi, was involved in supply of Delhi Jal Board water through tankers since 2007. The bereaved family had claimed that the accused had got Dr Rajinder's tankers removed from water supply service and also prevented clearance of dues of a large sum of money from the Jal Board.

In his application for anticipatory bail, Jarwal submitted that he will cooperate with the police in the investigation of the case, as and when called. He also pleaded that there was no reason to subject him to custodial interrogation.

The FIR was lodged on a complaint by the doctor's son.
Dialysis shortages in some areas

"I think everyone has read in the news about the fear of not having enough ventilators and needing to triage patients as to who gets a ventilator and who would not. In fact, the same problem is happening with our ability to provide dialysis in areas that have seen a surge of patients needing them, such as in New York City, says Palevsky.

These shortages have presented major challenges to patient care, he notes. There are more patients than machines for dialysis, as well as shortages of materials needed for performing dialysis, including disposable tubing and fluids. Usually one machine is used to treat patients with acute renal failure continuously for 24 hours a day for as long as a patient needs that therapy.

Some hospitals experiencing equipment shortages are now treating patients on a 24-hour-on, 24-hour-off basis, so they are able to treat twice as many patients with the same number of machines. Hospitals in areas that are past a COVID-19 surge also are trading dialysis equipment with those in the thick of the outbreak.

While dialysis shortages present an urgent problem in certain areas, there is hope on the horizon for reducing the risk of organ damage by COVID-19, says Hamid Rabb, M.D., professor of medicine and medical director of kidney transplantation at Johns Hopkins University.

At Johns Hopkins, for instance, there are many different trials currently underway to decrease the abnormal hyperinflammatory response of COVID-19, Rabb says. Some of the initial studies are very promising. I hope that in a few weeks we will have a better idea of how these trials are working."
How Californias $54.3 Billion Shortfall Compares to Great Recession

California is facing a $54.3 billion budget shortfall that will likely mean tax increases and deep cuts to education funding, Gov. Gavin Newsoms administration warned on May 7.

Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), chairman of the assembly budget committee, said in a news conference the same day that the states reserve fund is about $16 billion, only a third of what the state needs to cover the projected deficit.

Its devastating, because at a time when people need government the most, which is any recession, its also the time when we have limited ability to help, Ting said.

In May 2009, amid the Great Recession, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had announced a $24 billion budget shortfallless than half of what were seeing this May.

Californias unemployment rate was between 10 and 13 percent during the Great Recession. The state projects 2020s unemployment rate will be 18 percent.

While all indicators of financial trouble are worse than the Great Recessionincluding lower personal income, business revenue, and property incomehelp is expected to arrive more quickly.

Ting said the state is relying heavily on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for funding. Weve always been assuming for much of what we are spending this year to manage COVID-19, about 75 percent of that would get reimbursed by FEMA, he said.

So, its not so much a budget issue; its more of a cashflow problem for this current fiscal year.

Nonetheless, as with the Great Recession, balancing the budget will require cuts.

The deficit will likely mean an $18.3 billion cut in spending for public schools and community colleges, according to a fiscal update issued May 7. The cut to education comes because of the Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act, which mandates the amount of education spending relative to the budget.

Tax Revenues Expected to Fall



State general fund revenues from taxes are expected to fall $41.2 billion compared to Newsoms proposed budget in January.

Finance department officials expect personal income among Californians to plummet about 9 percent. And new housing construction is likely to drop more than 21 percent.

The Newsom administration asked the federal government to help states and local governments support an effective response to COVID-19, a timely and fact-based modification of the stay-at-home order, and a safe, expedited economic recovery, the May 7 memo states.

When the pandemic was escalating in February, Newsom had been confident in the states ability to weather the storm. In a Feb. 27 briefing, he had said, there is no better resource state in America to address this issue head-on.

I am not worried about the money, Newsom said at the time. Im not worried about resourcing this responsewe are well-resourced as a state. We are running record reserves and running surpluses.

The state was in a better position financially this year than it was ahead of the Great Recession.

A Legislative Analysts Office analysis of the Great Recession recovery notes that the troubles at that time caused the state to restructure its finances for greater resiliency in the future.

That analysis, published in 2018, states  the state is much better prepared for a recession today than it was when it entered the Great Recession ten years ago. It cites a $2 billion reserve deficit in 2007 compared to a reserve level of $16 billion in 2018 (the same level for 2020).

It took the state four years to recover from the Great Recession in the sense of having its first budget without a major shortfall in 2013.

The Department of Finances May 7 update states, While the COVID-19 Recession is causing an unprecedented loss of jobs and income, the projected deficit as a percent of General Fund spending is modestly smaller than the budget deficits faced by the state in 2003 and in 2009.

It does express concern about the impact the current recession will especially have on the low- and middle-income Californians. The state median income had only just returned to pre-Great Recession levels in 2018.

Ting said the state may consider extending unemployment benefits for when the federal additional benefits expire probably in the fall.

If they can keep people financially afloat over the next year or two years, rather than putting them on the street, and sort of making them homeless or driving them into some other larger levels of debt or poverty, it means that these are families that we dont have to assist in the long run, if we can just help them stay on their feet, he said.

Asking for More Detailed Accounting

Ting said he has urged the finance department to stop spending money in an ad hoc way, but give us a budget proposal. He has asked for daily updates.

My understanding is that theyre going to give greater detail as to where they believe the expenditures will be over the next few months in the [May] Revise, Ting said.

The May Revise is a revised budget proposal submitted each year by the governor after a series of hearings on the initial January proposal. This year the revise, expected to be released May 14, takes on greater significance with unprecedented changes occurring between the initial and revised proposals.

This is an emergency unlike anything else we have seen, Ting said. Usually the emergency affects thousands of people or a few million people. This pandemic [has] affected all 40 million Californians, and so the authority became fairly broad.

Newsom has had greater authority in this state of emergency to make financial decisions without consulting the Legislature.

Newsom came under fire recently over a controversial $1 billion deal with Chinese company, Build Your Dreams (BYD), for protective N95 masks and surgical masks. The deal has shown signs of being problematic, as BYD had to refund the state for masks that did not meet quality standards.

Its very difficult to do oversight on expenditures or to conduct business, Ting said. Its just not how the state is set up. Were not accountants or auditors. We are legislators that provide broad oversight.

Reopening the Economy

If the stay-at-home order lasts longer than expected, or if there are more severe outbreaks of the disease, the economic fallout could get even worse, Ting suggested.

The budget is going to be impacted the longer we have to stay at home or people are afraid of going out, he said. Until we have certainty, or a vaccine, or herd immunity, its going to be very difficult to go back to normal. And, if were not back to normal, its going to have an impact on our economy.

Also on May 7, Newsom unveiled conditions for the re-opening in the states economy, prompting a joint statement from Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Tehama) and Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City).

We listened and followed the Governors orders to stay home to protect the elderly and those with underlying health issues. Now, we must focus on the other crisisour economy, the statement reads.

Californians need to safely get back to work, without setting up unworkable barriers that prevent people from making a living, they said. Allowing people to safely return to work is the only way to get the state out of this eye-popping deficit.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty

It may not be a pardon. But the Justice Department has dropped charges against Donald Trumps former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Flynn, an important figure in the war on terror who gave Trumps 2016 run military validation, will avoid prison time after the Justice Department provided a deliverance on Thursday that Flynn had long sought. It is also the second redemption that Trump has provided the general, who served as his first national security adviser for less than a month.

The Government has determined, pursuant to the Principles of Federal Prosecution and based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice, wrote Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a former senior aide to Attorney General William Barr. Shortly before the filing, lead prosecutor Brandon Von Grack abruptly withdrew from the case.

The Justice Department filing, in essence, portrays Flynn as the victim of an FBI frame-up job, and his lies to the FBI as legally marginal. Shea wrote that Flynns lies needed to have been not simply false, but materially false with respect to a matter under investigation. Later in the filing, Shea referred to those lies as gaps in [Flynns] memory, rather than deliberate falsehoods Flynn conceded.

Even if he told the truth, Mr. Flynns statements could not have conceivably influenced an investigation that had neither a legitimate counterintelligence nor criminal purpose, Shea wrote.

It was an astonishing turnaround since 2018, when a federal judge said to Flynn in a sentencing hearing, arguably, you sold your country out. That judge, Emmet Sullivan, could still decide to reject Sheas filing and continue with Flynn sentencing. Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general, tweeted that the extraordinary move represented a pardon by another name and called it a black day in DOJ history.

Story continues

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the decision to drop charges was outrageous and revealed a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) added, If Barrs Justice Department will drop charges against someone who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and who the White House publicly fired for lying to the vice president, theres nothing it wont do, no investigation it wont taint.

Neither Flynn nor his attorney, Sidney Powell, responded immediately to requests for comment.

Speaking to reports on Thursday afternoon, Trump said he had no prior knowledge of the Justice Departments decision. He was an innocent man, Trump said, of Flynn. Now in my book hes an even greater warrior.

The dropped charges follow a years-long groundswell from Trumps base, and particularly Fox News, to clear Flynn. His advocates claim that Flynn was set up by the same disreputable FBI figures who they believe persecuted Trump over phantom collusion with Russia.

Flynns guilty plea, in December, 2017, has been no obstacle to the narrative, particularly since Flynn sought afterwards, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his plea. His sentencing, initially set for February, had also been delayed.

Last month, agitation for a Flynn pardon intensified after documents emerged from two of Trumps most hated ex-FBI figures, counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, discussing Flynns fateful January 2017 interview with the FBI. Page asked when and how to slip it in to Flynn that lying to an FBI agent is a crime, something that Flynns advocates believed showed the general being railroaded from the start.

But veteran FBI agents and prosecutors have pointed out that the FBI is not legally obligated to inform an interview subject that lying to them is illegal. Michael Flynn was very familiar with the FBI, said Stephanie Douglas, a former executive assistant director of the FBIs National Security Branch. He would certainly have been aware of his obligation to provide candid and truthful information. His claim he was tricked and manipulated doesnt sound valid to me.

Shea, in his Thursday court filing, suggested the FBI officials were fishing for falsehoods merely to manufacture jurisdiction over any statement. In Sheas view, Flynns lies were less germane to the prosecution than the FBI lack[ing] sufficient basis to sustain its initial counterintelligence investigation, and its pre-interview position that it ought to close the investigation before speaking with the then national security adviser.

Former FBI deputy head Andrew McCabe said on Thursday that the suggestion there was no reason to interview Flynn was patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised. He said Flynns lies added to the FBIs concerns about his relationship with Russia. Todays move... is pure politics designed to please the president, he added.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who was appointed by Barr to review Flynns and other high-profile cases, said on Thursday that he concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed, he said.

The FBI Didnt Frame Michael Flynn. Thats Just Trumps Excuse for a Prospective Pardon.

While serving as national security adviser, Flynn misled FBI interviewers about conversations he had with the then-Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. In one of those late 2016 conversations, according to court filings, Flynn asked the Russians to avoid escalatory actions in response to sanctions and diplomatic expulsions then President Barack Obama enacted as reprisal for Russian electoral interference. Shea, in his filing, called Flynns Kislyak calls entirely appropriate on their face.

The national security advisers lies prompted the holdover attorney general, Sally Yates, to warn the White House that Flynn had given the Russians leverage to blackmail him. But it would take weeks before Trump fired Flynn over an eroding level of trust concerning misleading Vice President Mike Pence on the Kislyak contacts. By May, Trump was said to have regretted dismissing the general.

Flynn in 2017 agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation. The general avoided charges for taking $530,000 in unregistered money from interests connected to the Turkish governmentsomething he only declared with the Justice Department after his downfall as national security adviser.

During a sentencing hearing in 2018, a federal judge castigated Flynn for disgracing the uniform Flynn wore for three decades. Arguably, you sold your country out, Judge Emmet Sullivan said. Two years earlier, on stage at the Republican national convention, Flynn had led a chant of lock her up about Hillary Clinton. Protesters outside Flynns courtroom did not let the general forget it.

Trumps enduring bond with Flynn is a testament to the importance of the role the general played in 2016.

A host of national security officials, many aligned with the Republican Party, rejected Trump in 2016 as unfit to be president owing to his nativism, his penchant for brutality and his benign view of dictators like Russias Vladimir Putin. Flynn was the exception. And the general was an exceptional figure. As the intelligence chief for the Joint Special Operations Command during the mid-2000s, Flynn is one of a select few people who can be said to have personally prosecuted the most sensitive missions of the war on terror.

Michael Flynn Putting Mueller Deal at Risk in Dangerous New Trial

It was a pivotal credential in another way. Flynn emerged from the war on terror endorsing Trumps view that the security apparatus, abetted by hidebound liberals and cowardly conservatives, had neutered the war on terror by refusing to see it was a civilizational conflict with Islam. Islam is a political ideology that hides behind this notion of being a religion, Flynn told the Islamophobic group ACT for America shortly after the 2016 convention. His hostility to Islam informed his sanguine view of Russia, which both Flynn and Trump saw as naturally aligned with the U.S. against what they called Radical Islamic Terror.

It also meant that Trump and Flynn shared a common bureaucratic enemy. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, was a lead architect of an intelligence assessment finding Russia intervened in the election on Trumps behalf. In 2014, Clapper fired Flynn as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was deeply embittering. Just four years earlier, Flynn had been hailed as an innovator after claiming U.S. military intelligence had misunderstood the Afghanistan war.

While Flynn portrayed himself as a martyr, victimized by the Deep State for daring to warn about radical Islam, Clapper and other intelligence leaders had fallen out with Flynn over what they considered an incompetent management style and an iffy relationship with the truth. Reportedly, Flynn believed Iran was involved in the 2012 assault on a CIA compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans, and claimed incorrectly that Iran was responsible for more American deaths than al-Qaeda. Aides referred to such untruths as Flynn facts.

Flynn facts did not disturb Trump. They validated his instincts on national security. Trump rewarded Flynn by making him national security adviser, one of the most important positions in the U.S. security apparatus. It was the first time Trump redeemed Flynn. Thursdays dropped charges represent the second.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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A police head constable deployed to



screen people for coronavirus at Tamil Nadu's border with Karnataka died in a mishap and Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Friday announced a solatium of Rs 50 lakh to his family.

While on duty at the Zuzuvadi checkpost near Hosur, the main inter-state border between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the policeman, Settu died instantaneously after sustaining serious injuries when a container lorry rammed into a median close to the spot where he was standing to screen people.

A native of Krishnagiri district, the constable was on coronavirus screening duty at the checkpostwhen he died on Thursday, an official release here said.

Expressing grief over his death, Palaniswami conveyed his condolences to the bereaved family.

Also, the Chief Minister announced Rs 50 lakh solatium and a government job to one of the family members of the dead head constable.

Palaniswami had last month announced that a financial aid of Rs 50 lakh and a government job will be provided to the kin of frontline workers who die while on anti-COVID-19 duties.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh



Tope on Friday expressed confidence that Mumbai will see a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases in the next 15 to 20 days.

Speaking to PTI, Tope said joint secretary of the Union Health Ministry Lav Agarwal was in the city on Thursday to discuss the situation here.

"All ward officers were present at the meeting, which was also attended by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. We discussed corrective measures that were being taken," the minister said.

Agarwal suggested that containment zones be properly demarcated and contact tracing, testing and treatment of positive patients should be done in these areas, Tope said.

Early detection will bring down the mortality rate, the minister said, adding that the government plans to increase institutional quarantine facilities.

"The Centre wants us to increase disease surveillance in the congested areas to stop the spread of the virus," he said.

With the steps taken by the government, the pandemic will be contained in the next 15 to 20 days in Mumbai, the minister assured.

The state government plans to rope in workforce from other departments if the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation falls short of manpower, the minister said, clarifying that there was no shortage of funds.

Of the 17,974 COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra, 11,394 were reported from Mumbai alone and the city had recorded 437 deaths from the toll of 694 in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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People of African descent are facing a disturbing wave of discrimination in China amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Human Rights Watch report released this week. The report comes after anti-African racism in Guangzhou, a city of 13 million people in Guangdong province, rose to international attention in a slew of viral social media posts last month. Examples included a laminated paper sign displayed at McDonalds with the words black people are not allowed to enter, a black woman being denied entry into a shopping center, and African migrants, forcibly evicted from their apartments, stranded on the streets.

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Chinese authorities claim zero tolerance for discrimination, but what they are doing to Africans in Guangzhou is a textbook case of just that, said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. Beijing should immediately investigate and hold accountable all officials and others responsible for discriminatory treatment.

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Guangzhou is home to the largest African community in China. While about 14,000 nationals of African countries are known to live in the city, researchers estimate that many more are there undocumented. At the end of the 2000s, according to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Africans lived there. Many work in the citys wholesale markets since theyre barred from other kinds of employment, such as factory work.

Anti-African discrimination came to a head in the city in April, after online rumors started circulating that parts of Guangzhou with large African communities were quarantined and two Nigerians who had tested positive for COVID-19 escaped, and a state news agency reported that a Nigerian man attacked a Chinese nurse in an attempt to leave an isolation ward. On April 12, Guangdong province began a campaign to test all foreigners, but Human Rights Watch says that, in practice, the authorities only targeted and quarantined Africans. Many of those targeted had no recent travel history or contact with individuals who had tested positive.

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Since early April, people of African descent in Guangzhou have been evicted, forced to sleep on the streets, barred from public transit, and refused services at hotels and restaurants, the report found, while other foreigners have generally not received similar treatment.

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For the most part, the Chinese government has denied any form of discrimination in Guangzhou. All foreigners are treated equally, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stated on April 12. We reject differential treatment, and we have zero tolerance for discrimination. As Human Rights Watch pointed out, Chinese state media also ran stories that attempted to debunk twisted reports of discrimination by claiming foreigners are treated equally and criticizing Western media for highlighting supposed misunderstandings and provok[ing] the problems between China and African countries.

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On Monday, however, the Chinese government finally announced new measures to combat racial discrimination in Guangzhou, Quartz Africa reported. The Chinese Embassy in Nigeria said that Guangdong province officials are implementing measures on ensuring equal services in nine sectors, which target sectors and businesses that have been denying Africans service. The authorities have also established a hotline for foreign nationals with concerns.

But it may be too little too late. You cant just tell people one day that the blacks have the virus, and the second day that black people are not that bad, a black Canadian man in Guangzhou told Human Rights Watch. You cant expect people to suddenly embrace that. Literally, people are running away from me on the street.

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Chinas new position comes after a diplomatic crisis ensued between China and several African countries. Over the past two decades, the economies of China and Africa have become increasingly intertwined, as China has become the largest trading partner for the entire continent. Because of this, its rare for African leaders to criticize Chinawhich has invested billions of dollars in African countries through loans and investmentsbut the conditions in Guangzhou have led to rare sustained pressure, condemnation, and demands from African leaders. Ghanas foreign affairs minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, called for the Chinese government to address the situation immediately. I regret and highly condemn this act of ill-treatment and racial discrimination, she said in a statement.

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While African leaders are now speaking up, anti-African discrimination in China is nothing new. As Hsiao-Hung Pai wrote in the Guardian, the pandemic has only exposed Chinas long history of anti-African racism. Even before the pandemic, Pai wrote, China had harsh immigration crackdowns and routinely prevented African migrants from living in certain areas of Guangzhou. Africans also have no legal recourse against racial discrimination, Pai pointed out.

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Its been clear for centuries that infectious diseases can bring out a societys worst tendencies to vilify the other and to find and target imagined threatsusually ethnic groupsfor invisible viruses. In medieval Europe, Jews were the scapegoats for the plague. In 19th-century America, it was Irish immigrants for outbreaks of cholera. During the coronavirus, people of East Asian descent, particularly from China, have been targets of violent discrimination in the U.S. and other western countries. Guangzhous treatment of Africans is yet another instance of a community that has been long been subject to unequal treatment receiving heightened abuse in a time of crisis.
Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

A Harris County Public Health team focused on testing for coronavirus in nursing homes has turned up 194 cases among staff and residents in 15 facilities.

The team had tested 1,170 staff and residents as of Wednesday, Harris County Public Health spokeswoman Elizabeth Perez wrote in an email.
Obviously, the governors plan is one that covers the entirety of the state, but theres a lot of differences between, you know, Chicago and Cairo, from us to Peoria, and Champaign-Urbana, she said. So I think the beauty of the governors plan is it allows us to use local specific data to dig down into particulars on how were going to protect the city of Chicago, based upon the data thats different here than it is in other parts of the state.
Iraq's Former Spy Chief Takes Office as Prime Minister

By VOA News May 07, 2020

Iraq swore in a new prime minister Thursday, ending a five-month period of squabbling among its political blocs.

Former intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi became the country's sixth prime minister since 2003.

He was the third candidate to try to form a government after the late November resignation of Adel Abdul Mahdi.

Al-Kadhimi noted the anti-government protests that pushed Mahdi from office, saying Thursday his government "will provide solutions, not add to the crises."

Those protesters rallied against a lack of jobs and called for Iraq's ruling elite to leave office. The coronavirus pandemic and a drop in oil prices have added economic pressure to the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke by phone with al-Kadhimi, welcoming his new government and discussing efforts to implement reforms and fight corruption.

The U.S. State Department also said it is granting a 120-day waiver for Iraq to import electricity from Iran.



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Luis Mora stands in front of the closed offices of the New York State Department of Labor on May 7, 2020 in Brooklyn, New York City.

The economy lost a record 20.5 million jobs in April, but nearly 4 in 5 workers surveyed by the government see their layoffs as temporary.

The number of employees who saw themselves as temporarily furloughed was 18.06 million, up from 1.84 million in March. The interviews were conducted as part of the household survey of about 23 million who have lost their jobs, including those who lost their job in April.

"It's high in a good way. The market could be reacting to that. If you see them move to permanent that's a problem," said John Briggs, head of strategy at NatWest.

Stocks opened higher on Friday, even after the dismal jobs report.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Finland's trade deficit widened in March with exports falling more than imports, preliminary figures from the Finnish Customs showed on Friday. The trade deficit increased to EUR 270 million in March from EUR 125 million in the same month last year. In February, the trade deficit was EUR 710 million. Exports dropped 8.8 percent year-on-year in March and imports fell 6.1 percent. Exports to the EU countries decreased 6.0 percent and imports from EU countries fell 2.0 percent. Shipments to countries outside the EU dropped 12.4 percent and imports from them declined 11.8 percent. For the January-March period, trade deficit was EUR 1.3 billion versus a surplus of EUR 270 million a year ago. Exports declined 13.1 percent and imports decreased 3.8 percent. 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.
Restoration ecologist Karen Holl explains why it's not that simple.

Last year there was some very encouraging research that found there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of canopy cover which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon. The researchers wrote that this wasn't "just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one."

Unfortunately, within a matter of days we had to take off our party hats when the workings of that study began to fall apart. And while a lot of us want to believe that the trees will save us, restoration ecologist Karen Holl explains why planting trees alone can't mitigate the climate crisis.

Holl hails from the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and penned a commentary in the journal "Science," the gist of which confirms that planting trees alone is not a fix for climate change.

"We can't plant our way out of climate change," says Holl, a professor of environmental studies at UCSC and a leading expert in forest restoration. "It is only one piece of the puzzle."

Holl and coauthor Pedro Brancalion, a professor in the Department of Forest Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, warn that just planting trees is not a simple fix for environmental degradation.

That said, planting trees is obviously not without benefit; reforestation improves biodiversity, water quality, and increases shade, they point out. And it's definitely good for our spirit.

"Trees are deeply entrenched in the human psyche," says Holl, "It's very satisfying to go out and put a tree in the ground. It's a concrete, tangible thing to do."

But depending on where and how it is done, tree planting can have the opposite of its intended effect; reforestation can be harmful to native ecosystems and species and stress the water suppl. It can also dispossess local landholders and increase social inequity.

"Planting trees is not a simple solution," she says. "It's complicated, and we need to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve. We need to be thoughtful and plan for the long term."

Holl and Brancalion arrived at four principles that they recommend for those undertaking forest initiatives:

Reduce forest clearing and degradation

Protecting and maintaining intact forests is more efficient, more ecologically sound, and less costly than planting trees, or replanting.

View tree planting as one part of multifaceted environmental solutionsEnhanced tree cover is one of the best options to offset a portion of the greenhouse gas emissions driven by human activities, but they represent only a small portion of the carbon reductions that are needed  and estimates vary by more than tenfold depending on variables used in modeling.

Balance ecological and social goalsAcknowledge competing land uses and focus on landscapes with the potential to generate large-scale benefits, such as the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, where regional planning of tree planting initiatives can lead to three times the conservation gains at half the cost.

Plan, coordinate, and monitorWork with local stakeholders to resolve conflicting land-use goals and ensure maximum effectiveness over the long term. Planting trees doesn't ensure they will survive; a review of mangrove forest restoration efforts in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami showed fewer than 10 percent of trees survived in 75 percent of sites.



It's easy to get carried away by the feel-good effect of planting trees, but there is just so much to consider, especially the impact these efforts have on local communities. As Holl notes, "Much of the land proposed for tree planting is already being used to grow crops, harvest timber, and other subsistence activities, so tree planting initiatives need to consider how landowners will earn income. Otherwise, activities such as agriculture or logging will just move to other lands"

An important point that she makes is that increasing forest cover is not the same thing as planting trees.

"The first thing we can do is keep existing forests standing, and the second is to allow trees to regenerate in areas that were formerly forests," says Holl. "In many cases, trees will recover on their own  just look at the entire eastern United States that was deforested 200 years ago. Much of that has come back without actively planting trees. Yes, in some highly degraded lands we will need to plant trees, but that should be the last option since it is the most expensive and often is not successful. I've spent my life on this. We need to be thoughtful about how we bring the forest back."

And of course, the most important part of mitigating climate change doesn't have to do with trees at all; we need to stop burning so much fossil fuel. "Trees are a small piece of what needs to be a broader strategy," says Holl. "We're better off not releasing greenhouse gases to begin with."

So go ahead and make a donation to a tree-planting organization and if you have the space, plant some trees! But more importantly, we all need to be doing whatever we can to whittle down our carbon footprints. And you can do both: Feel good by planting a tree ... while you're living a 1.5 degree lifestyle.
Some plants, like soybean, are known to possess an innate defense machinery that helps them develop resistance against insects trying to feed on them. However, exactly how these plants recognize signals from insects has been unknown until now. In a new study, scientists in Japan have uncovered the cellular pathway that helps these plants to sense danger signals and elicit a response, opening doors to a myriad of agricultural applications.

In nature, every species must be equipped with a strategy to be able to survive in response to danger. Plants, too, have innate systems that are triggered in response to a particular threat, such as insects feeding on them. For example, some plants sense "herbivore-derived danger signals" (HDS), which are specific chemicals in oral secretions of insects. This activates a cascade of events in the plant's defense machinery, which leads to the plant developing "resistance" to (or "immunity" against) the predator. But despite decades of research, exactly how plants recognize these signals has remained a bit of a mystery.

In a new study published in Communications Biology, a research team from Tokyo University of Science, Ehime University, Okayama University, The University of Tokyo, and Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, led by Prof Gen-ichiro Arimura, attempts to shed light on exactly how plant HDS systems work. They chose to study membrane proteins called "receptor-like kinases" (RLKs), which are found in soybean leaves. They based their study on previous evidence from plants like Arabidopsis, tobacco, and cowpea, in which RLKs play a major role in HDS systems. Prof Arimura says, "Scientists have been trying to understand the molecular mechanism of plant resistance for years, but the 'sensors' involved in plant recognition of insect pests are still not known. Thus, we wanted to get a detailed understanding of these mechanisms."

To begin with, the scientists focused on soybean RLK genes that were structurally and functionally similar to a RLK gene, which is known to trigger a danger response by recognizing "oligosaccharides" (small carbohydrate molecules) during pathogen attack. They speculated that owing to these similarities, soybean genes might also show a mechanism similar to that seen in pathogen resistance. They found 15 such genes through genetic analysis. Next, the scientists generated 15 types of Arabidopsis plants, each plant uniquely expressing only one of the 15 individual soy genes. When they tested these plants using oral secretions from the pest, they uncovered genes for two novel RLKs that showed a defense response specific to the oral secretions, called GmHAK1 and GmHAK2. These findings were unprecedented: the role of these RLKs in soybean HDS systems had never been revealed before. Moreover, when the scientists dug deeper into the mechanism of these regulatory factors in Arabidopsis, they found two proteins, a HAK homolog and PBL27 (which play a role in intracellular signaling), to be involved in this pathway. Accordingly, this confirmed what the scientists had initially expectedsoybean and Arabidopsis possess similar mechanisms for "danger response."

In agriculture, it is crucial to develop strategies for pest control in crop plants to avoid incurring losses. This study takes a massive step in this direction by uncovering an important cellular mechanism that triggers defense response in plants. Manipulating this innate cellular system may even help scientists to fuel the development of new agricultural products, potentially making life easier for farmers. Prof Arimura concludes, "It has been challenging to find new pest control methods that are effective and do not harm the ecosystem in any way. Our study offers a potential solution to this problem by uncovering the details of how certain plants develop resistance."
The German war is at an end, announced Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast 75 years ago. After six long years, endless losses and numerous atrocities, the conflict in Europe was finally over.

At 2.41am the previous day, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz signed a document of unconditional surrender, bringing to an end one of the darkest periods of human history. The Third Reich had finally capitulated and a new era was about to begin.

The news spread like wildfire across the world. Victory announcements were broadcast over the radio, while newspapers rushed to get headlines out as soon as possible.

Pretty soon, millions took to the streets to celebrate victory, and in some cases, their newfound freedom. The bunting was hung and flags put out; victory parades sprang up and joyous parties were thrown in towns, villages and cities. In many countries a national holiday was declared, so the wars sacrifices would not be forgotten by generations to come.

However, while celebration was a big part of VE Day, there was still an air of melancholy and sadness. While German capitulation had brought the Second World War in Europe to an end, the war in the Pacific was still raging and would continue to do so until Japan announced their surrender three months later.

For Nazi Germany and its collaborators there was fear of violent reprisals. There was also sadness for those who would never come home. The wars death toll is estimated at between 70 and 85 million.
Brazil's doctors are calling for stricter measures as the daily coronavirus death toll shows little sign of easing  while the nations turbulent politics threaten to undermine efforts to combat the spread of the outbreak.

Case numbers have been doubling approximately every five days, and according to a recent study by Imperial College London, Brazil has the highest transmission rate of any major country.

Last week, we reached the lowest peak of quarantine compliance, and this week more serious cases started to appear, said Amanda Ferreira Santa Barbara, 26, a doctor at Sao Paulos Unifesp training hospital.

She's one of several medical professionals who spoke to NBC News about their concern that Brazil needs more stringent lockdown restrictions to prevent further infection spread. I believe we are reaching the worst stage.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who last month summarily dismissed highly-respected Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta after publicly clashing with him over social distancing measures, has continued to downplay the impact of COVID-19 on Brazils more than 200 million residents. This takes place as gravediggers have carved out mass burial sites at the edge of residential neighborhoods in the commercial capital Sao Paulo for days at a time.

Brazils Ministry of Health says there have been more than 135,000 confirmed infections and more than 9,000 deaths as of Thursday night  but epidemiologists say a lack of testing capacity means those numbers likely fail to capture the grim reality. Brazil has the highest number of cases in the region.

Its only getting worse, said Luca Silveira Bernardo, 31, an emergency room doctor at Unifesp. The public health system is getting overloaded now. And we are experiencing a huge increase in the number of severe cases.

Last week, Bolsonaro responded to concerns in a manner that to many Brazilians epitomized a dismissive attitude that has seen his popularity ratings plunge precipitously during the crisis. So what? he said to a journalist who asked him about the rapidly climbing death toll. What do you want me to do?

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The president has squandered the political support of almost all the countrys 26 governors, and faces accusations from his recently resigned justice minister, Sergio Moro, a polarizing but high-profile prosecutor-turned politician, that Bolsonaro interfered in federal police investigations that involve his two sons.

"The city collapsed, the system collapsed"

The consequences of Brazils history of corruption have been most keenly felt in the northern city of Manaus, a metropolitan hub that serves as a gateway to the Amazon basin. Official statistics indicate there have been just 806 COVID-related fatalities there. But with its limited hospital capacity, authorities have registered a death rate over the past several weeks that is three times higher compared to the same period during the last three years.

Here in the Amazon, we don't have enough health care professionals to deal with the pandemic, said Adele Benzaken, 64, a public health expert from Manaus who ran Brazils HIV/AIDS prevention program at the countrys Ministry of Health until she was dismissed by Bolsonaro. A lesson that I hope that the politicians can get from this public emergency, is that we have to invest more in the public health system.

She says decades of political incompetence and the siphoning away of public funds  the states governor and the health secretary were both charged with corruption in 2018  have helped highlight the disparity in health care among Brazils regions and the weakness in Manaus. When COVID came, that was exposed, she said.

We do not have enough intensive care beds, she added. The city collapsed, the system collapsed, two or three weeks ago. She cited statistics that roughly 20 residents a day are dying at home of suspected COVID-19, due to a lack of capacity in the citys hospitals.

Image: (Amanda Perobelli / Reuters)

Paulo Eugenio Tavares, 33, who oversees several packed intensive care wards at two of Manaus' seven hospitals, the public Adriano Jorge Hospital Foundation and the private Check Up Hospital, agrees long-term investment shortfalls are an important factor behind the citys current challenges.

But even before Brazils first recorded case came in late February, he says national health administration officials failed to see the risk from COVID-19 early enough and have been trying to play catch-up with ICU capacity ever since.

Unfortunately we are treating only the serious cases, and the mortality is very high, said Tavares, who is one of the many medical professionals he knows to have been struck down by the disease in recent weeks. He recovered in late April after two weeks and immediately returned to work.

He said Manaus geographic isolation, surrounded by water and reliance on slow cargo boats, has exacerbated shortages of medical equipment and supplies. The fact that many doctors have gone months without wages meant hundreds had left the city in search of better working conditions elsewhere.

Indigenous communities face existential threat

Further upstream from Manaus, authorities have recorded COVID-19 cases in roughly two-thirds of the 62 administrative municipalities that make up the state of Amazonas. Outside Manaus, there are no intensive care facilities for a region that is almost four times the size of California, and advocates for the tens of thousands of indigenous residents say they face an existential threat from infection spread.

Its very difficult and very expensive to reach these remote areas, said Victor Salviati, head of institutional development at the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation, which has for more than a decade supported sustainable development for roughly 40,000 people, in 600 indigenous groups, stretching across Brazils Amazon region. You don't have the basic infrastructure to deal with, and to address this kind of pandemic that we are facing here in Brazil.

Related: "People die on top of me, people die while waiting, people die because they dont breathe," says a doctor, while Bolsonaro "doesn't care" if people stay home to combat the spread.

The indigenous population in Brazil are at particular vulnerability in light of COVID, said Maria Laura Canineu, Human Rights Watchs country director, after global celebrities including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey and Madonna signed an open letter calling on Brazilian authorities to safeguard the regions residents.

"Bolsonaro is a president that doesn't care about the indigenous people, Canineu said. But Brazil is made up of many other democratic institutions who are concerned about what's happening in the Amazon, what is happening with indigenous people." She said international pressure is necessary to make the different groups move forward.

If COVID is spread in this indigenous community, said Benzaken, who has worked for decades on HIV prevention in remote settlements and until last week sat on Manaus COVID crisis committee, it will be catastrophic.

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by Fady Noun

Seventeen Christian and Muslim organizations, movements and religious associations responded positively to the appeal. However, the official representative bodies of the Eastern Churches in Lebanon and Muslim communities have not yet responded to the call.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - Seventeen Christian and Muslim organizations, movements and religious associations responded positively to the appeal launched yesterday by the High Committee for Human Fraternity and accepted by the Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmad al-Tayyeb and Pope Francis, in in favor of a Day of Prayer, May 14, for God to remove the coronavirus pandemic from the planet and inspire scientists to find a cure.

Earlier this week, the Head of State welcomed this initiative, which the Nuncio had told him about, while also referring to "the Pope's closeness" in these decisive times for Lebanon and the Lebanese.

The membership of seventeen Muslim and Christian institutions is a real victory. This is especially true when we see in the list the Makassed, central institutions of the Sunni community, the "Religions and Cultures Forum for Development and Dialogue" of Sheikh Ali Fadlallah and the "Imam Sadr Foundation", two central institutions of the Shiite community, distinct from the movement Hezbollah politicians. Their presence side by side, at a critical moment in the political relations of power between the two communities, is of the utmost importance, as it pours into a dynamic of peace.

However, the official representative bodies of the Eastern Churches in Lebanon and Muslim communities have not yet responded to the call. An appeal from the National Committee for Islamic-Christian Dialogue chaired by Mohammad Sammak and Hares Chehab is expected in the coming days, according to informed sources.

Created after the meeting on February 4, 2019, in Abu Dhabi, between Pope Francis and Imam Ahmad el-Tayyeb (pictured), the High Committee for Human Fraternity states that this initiative is intended as a plea to God "so that saves humanity and helps end this pandemic and restore security, stability, health and prosperity in order to make our world more humane and more fraternal than before after the end of this pandemic."

Here is the joint press release published yesterday by the 17 institutions: "In response to the initiative of the High Committee for Human Fraternity launched under the auspices of Pope Francis and the Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, who invited all people around the world to individually turn to God in prayer, fasting, supplication and good works, Thursday 14 May 2020, each according to their religious faith, creed and rituals, so that God will remove the life-threatening coronavirus epidemic of millions of people, help us fight this scourge and inspire scientists to find a cure, and that save the world from the disastrous health, economic and human consequences of this dangerous epidemic.

"And as an expression of our national unity, of our social and religious responsibility and as a sign of our universal fraternal human solidarity, especially in these difficult circumstances that Lebanon is going through, having lost many of the means of a dignified daily subsistence, the population suffered from economic and financial difficulties and hunger.

"We and our institutions invite the Lebanese and all people to respond to this noble invitation through:

Spiritual solidarity

Firstly: the fast on Thursday 14 May, as an expression of our trans-community spiritual solidarity, knowing that it takes on special meaning since we are still in the blessed month of Ramadan.

"Second: prayer and supplication, each in his own way and according to his or her own rite, so that God will preserve humanity and help us overcome this pandemic, and help our fellow citizens and those who live on this earth to show solidarity and share their goods, so that no one loses his dignity or his life, for pure material need and that our world is more human and more fraternal. In Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, we have, in this Marian month of May, an unsurpassed model of supplication to God and trust in His providence.

"Third: the multiplication of our individual and institutional efforts to help the needy and assure them of what is necessary, starting to give everyone the value of what has been deprived of us, to the people close to him who are in greatest need and inviting everyone - according to their possibilities - to support humanitarian initiatives without discrimination, because our sense of human brotherhood prevents us from remaining indifferent when, among us, hungry people live or I'm in need. "

"This appeal will be followed, until May 14, by initiatives that will be announced in due course and by media campaigns to encourage participation in this activity and strengthen the sense of solidarity and brotherhood among all. We also ask all media to collaborate in dissemination of this information before the indicated date and to highlight its human and spiritual meanings by dedicating specific programs to it on May 14, 2020.

"We ask Almighty God to accept our fasting, our prayers and our good deeds."

The institutions participating in this invitation are: the Council of Churches of the Middle East; the Forum of Religions and Cultures for Dialogue and Development; the Islamic Association Al-Makassed; the institutions of Imam Moussa Sadr; the Druze Al-Ourfan Foundation; the Islamic-Christian meeting around Notre-Dame Marie; the Adyan Foundation; Forum pour le developpement, la culture et le dialogue; Darb Mariam; Filet de securite pour la paix civil association; the Institut d'etudes du Moyen-Orient ".
128 years ago, on May 5, 1892, poet Ahmed Javad, known for writing the words of the Azerbaijani anthem, was born. He lived only 45 years, but he is still remembered not only for his poems but also for his active civic stand. Javad was born in the village Seyfali of Shamkir district. For the first years, he studied at home - learned Turkish, Persian, Arabic and Oriental literature. At the age of 20, he graduated from religious seminary in Ganja and started working as a teacher.

Literary critics say that Javad was a lyricist who subtly felt all shades of his native language, skillfully recreated the feelings and thoughts of his contemporaries in simple and clear images. However, since 1918, when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) was formed, Javad became interested in politics: he was actively involved in the public life of his country, wrote poems that sound like a call to fight in the name of a high patriotic idea.

In those years, the young poet met with the journalist and playwright, leader of the Musavat party, Mammed Amin Rasulzade, who devoted his life to the idea of independence of Azerbaijan and unity of the Azerbaijani people.

Under the influence of Rasulzade, Ahmed Javad joined his party and wrote the ADR anthem to the music of Uzeyir Hajibeyov. At the same time, Javad continued to work as a teacher, actively helped the Minister of Education of ADR, Nasib Bek, in establishing the Azerbaijan University and continued to write wonderful poems.

After the Sovietization of Azerbaijan, Ahmed Javad concentrated on pedagogy - he taught Russian and Azerbaijani languages in the Narimanov Technical School. Studying at the historical and philological department of the Azerbaijan Higher Pedagogical Institute, he became the Executive Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers of Azerbaijan, headed the Department of Public Education of the Guba region and the literary department of the Ganja Drama Theater.

However, the poets relationship with the Soviet regime was controversial. In 1925, he was arrested, but quickly released - then the repressions were not as harsh as they turned out to be later.

After his arrest, Ahmed Javad was working a lot on translators. He translated into the Azerbaijani language Pushkins Copper Rider, Gorkys Childhood, Turgenevs prose, Shakespeares Otello, Romeo and Juliet, Rabelaiss Gargantua and Pantagruel, Hamsuns Hunger and even received an award for translating Rustavelis poem The Knight in Panthers Skin.  But, of course, in the 1930s, Javad was occupied not only with translations. He was writing a lot, large and mature works. In his poem "Kura, the river symbolizes the running of time, history of Azerbaijan, which survived the invasion of various kings, shahs and sultans. The poet calls on the Kura that was not conquered by foreign invaders, to humble before the people that have become the master of its fate. In "Singing Girl", Javad develops the lyrical-historical topic, talking about the girl who killed the tyrant, saving the country from disasters and devastation.

Perhaps, the new authorities found some unwanted hints in his poems, perhaps, recalled Javad's support for ADR, but in 1937, the poet was arrested for the second time. And this time everything turned out to be much more tragic than in 1925 - Javad was executed, his wife Shukriy was exiled to Kazakhstan, and their four children were separated.

In December 1955, Ahmed Javad was posthumously rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti in the case. And 55 years after the death of the poet, in 1992, the Azerbaijani parliament adopted a law according to which the "Azerbaijan March" by Ahmed Javad was approved as a national anthem.
By Maha El Dahan, Roslan Khasawneh and Anshuman Daga

DUBAI/SINGAPORE, May 8 (Reuters) - Phoenix Commodities Pvt Ltd, a trader of agricultural products with offices in Dubai and Singapore, is being liquidated after amassing more than $400 million in potential trading losses, according a document prepared by the liquidators seen by Reuters.

The business, founded 20 years ago, grew into a company generating $3 billion in revenue in 2019 trading grain, coal, metals and other products but it unravelled when the coronavirus outbreak upset financial markets.

Phoenix blamed the liabilities on currency volatility caused by the onset of the coronavirus, affecting financial derivatives linked to the U.S. dollar and other currencies, the document prepared by the liquidators said.

Executives from restructuring firms Quantuma LLP and KRyS Global were appointed as joint liquidators and notice was sent to the company's creditors on April 24, according to the document. They declined to comment.

The holding company was based in the British Virgin Islands, where the liquidation process took place. A notice was sent to creditors for a meeting with the liquidators on Friday, the document showed.

Prior to the appointment of liquidators, the group had available banking facilities of approximately $1.6 billion with a number of banks based in Singapore, Britain and Dubai, the document showed. The document did not name the creditors but sources familiar with the company said Standard Chartered was one the banks that extended financing to the group. Standard Chartered declined to comment.

The company's major shareholder, Gaurav Dhawan, who was executive chairman of the trading group, named in the document, could not be reached for a comment. Two sources said he had recently left Dubai for London.

"Following an accelerated review of the company's available financial and company records Quantuma established that the company was facing potential crystallised liabilities of over $400 million as a result of accrued losses incurred by its financial derivative trading desk in PGD," the document said.

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PGD refers to Phoenix Global DMCC, the company's Dubai-based arm that traded commodities via the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC).

The document said that Phoenix's senior management advised Quantuma that it should book a total of $450 million into the company's profit and loss account as of March 31, 2020 from the trading losses.

The Phoenix Group operated globally with about 100 corporate entities located in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North America and employed over 2,500 employees. (additional reporting by Clara Denina, Writing by Saeed Azhar, Editing by Louise Heavens)
Maryanne Fino and her son Jett. 'I decided to have my baby using a sperm donor' Maryanne Fino is mother to Jett, 9 I always assumed there would be kids in my future, but when I got to my late 30s and wasnt in any kind of long-term relationship, I began to think maybe it was a road Id have to go down alone.

I think I planned and prepared for becoming a single mum in a similar way to how I managed my career. At the time I was working as the chief financial officer for a large international company. It was long hours and a lot of international travel. As much as I loved it, I knew it just wasnt going to be a good fit for a single mum, and that I was going to need something with a lot more flexibility.

I decided to have my baby using a sperm donor and began IVF while I was still working. But after 10 failed attempts, I resigned from my job. It took a year to fall pregnant with my son Jett, and I used that time to build up a business of bookkeeping clients. I converted my front room into an office. It was a risk. I had a mortgage and now a small family to support. My clients were great  most of them are still with me! They have been really supportive and theyve referred me to other businesses, which I appreciate. I also had a lot of support from my family and friends. My friend Jenny, who is Jetts godmother, came with me to all my pregnancy appointments and was there when Jett was born. I knew that juggling work and single motherhood was going to be difficult, and it was, right from the beginning. Jett was six weeks premature  I was in labour and saying, But I have payroll to do! Jenny organised for my sister to bring my laptop to the hospital so we could do the payroll for a client!

Being a single mum running a business wasnt easy. When you work from home its hard to separate work and family life, and its never-ending. When Jett was in kindergarten, I had enough work to take on a full-time employee. And this year, with four employees, we moved into an office. Because its just the two of us, Ive always talked to Jett like hes an adult, and I think hes more aware of other people and how things impact them. The other day I walked into the laundry and saw him separating the whites from the colours. He is going to make a great husband one day! 'One of the hardest things is the loneliness' Amanda Bingham is mother to Daniella, 3

Amanda Bingham and her daughter Daniella. I met my daughters father when I literally almost ran into him in my car. I was fleeing a domestic violence situation and was really distressed. He got out of his car to yell at me, then saw my face and said, Are you okay? People always say that they dont understand why women stay in abusive relationships, but for me the alternative was homelessness. I was kicked out of home when I was 16 and had nowhere to go. Despite that, I managed pretty well. Loading It wasnt until I was in my 30s that I started to experience domestic violence. Then my daughters father introduced me to his extended family, who all lived together, and they took me in. It was really lovely. I became pregnant unexpectedly but I was happy and excited. Then things began to change at home. There were a lot of people living together, and a lot of arguing, and I knew I didnt want to bring my child into that.

I went to a womens refuge and then, a week before Daniella was born, I was moved into my first house. I am currently in a lovely house, right in the centre of Richmond. Ive been in transitional housing for almost three years, but at least its secure. One of the hardest things for me has been the loneliness of being a single mother. I have tried to connect with different mothers groups in my area but I couldnt really find many women whose experiences were like mine. Now that Daniella is in childcare, Im involved in programs with three not-for-profits. I want to eventually work in the field of homelessness and domestic violence. I have learned a lot through my own experiences and I want to be able to give other women a voice. 'I am proud of what I have achieved' Julie McCartin is mother to Sienna, 13

Julie McCartin and her daughter Sienna. This year I am finishing my masters law degree at Monash University, and I have done it while bringing up my daughter as a single mother. I think a large part of my decision to switch careers to law was because of my experiences as a single mother. When I discovered I was pregnant and my relationship ended, I was working as a journalist. It was hard. At the time we were only given six weeks paid maternity leave, and with annual leave I planned to take 12 weeks off. Sienna arrived a week late, so I had only 11 weeks with her before I had to return to work. It was exhausting. I was committed to breastfeeding as long as possible so Id rush out the door at lunchtime to go to the childcare centre to feed her.

I went through the Family Court, first with Legal Aid and then representing myself, and that gave me a lot of first-hand experience with the legal process and court system. Loading When I was self-representing, I was taking phone calls with the opposing solicitor, but even when I did have representation, I also studied up on the relevant law and did background research because the stakes were so high. Siennas future and my future depended on us getting this right. I loved journalism, but I did worry about the future. I saw people getting laid off and that got me thinking it was time to do that law degree. In some ways, studying was easier than working full-time, because your time is a little more flexible. But there have still been really difficult times.
The entire nation has been mourning the death of actor Rishi Kapoor. Most of us who never knew him personally, are feeling immense grief at the loss of one of the finest actors of Hindi cinema.

Naturally, the feeling of grief can't be explained that Rishi Kapoor's family, children, and his lovely wife Neetu Kapoor would be feeling. Giving Neetu Kapoor the support she would need to lead her life further, Riddhima Kapoor made sure to let her know that she and Ranbir have got her back.

Taking to her Instagram story, Riddhima Kapoor shared an old picture of herself with Neetu Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor. She captioned that photo by writing, "Got your back ma #Yourpillars".

Riddhima Kapoor Sahni / Instagram

This caption melted our hearts and showed us the real power and importance of family that we should never take for granted.

Neetu Kapoor had herself earlier shared an immensely happy photo where Rishi Kapoor can be seen posing with a drink of whiskey in his hand. It was the caption that broke the heart of all fans as Neetu Kapoor wrote, "End of our story."

While this certainly might feel like an end, a love like theirs will live forever surpassing generations.

Rishi Kapoor / Twitter

Rest in peace, Rishi Kapoor, you will always stay alive in our memories.
Syndey, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of Paul Budde Communications focus report on Oman outlines the major developments and key aspects in the telecoms markets.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Oman-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses





The Sultanate of Oman has established a progressive mobile sector which comprises substantial coverage of both 3G and 4G LTE networks. There have also been trials conducted, networks upgraded, and spectrum allocated, in readiness for 5G. In particular, the Regulator has allowed the major mobile operators, Omantel and Ooredoo the right to use a 100MHz 5G spectrum. Both operators have a similar, and sizeable, market share.

Oman already offers quite a competitive mobile landscape with MVNOs being introduced over the last decade, and they have captured a small market share.

The launch of a third mobile network operator in Oman in 2020 will increase competition further. The regulator signed a strategic MoU with The Vodafone Group, along with a local consortium of investors, to form a third mobile network operator in Oman, which will be branded as Vodafone. In early 2020 the consortium agreed to lease mobile towers from Oman Tower Company.

While Omans fixed broadband infrastructure penetration is considered low, it is being improved upon with the building of fibre-based networks as part of Omans National Broadband Strategy. By 2040 it is hoped that all homes and businesses will be connected to the national broadband infrastructure.

BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020 is having a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure. Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth.

Although it is challenging to predict and interpret the long-term impacts of the crisis as it develops, these have been acknowledged in the industry forecasts contained in this report.

The report also covers the responses of the telecom operators as well as government agencies and regulators as they react to the crisis to ensure that citizens can continue to make optimum use of telecom services. This can be reflected in subsidy schemes and the promotion of tele-health and tele-education, among other solutions.

Key developments:

Omantel launched an initial 5G network in late 2019.

The two mobile network operators (MNOs) were awarded 15 year licenses in 2019.

VoIP subscriptions are on the rise in Oman.

Oman is well positioned to be a technology hub in the Middle East as it is well located between Asia, Africa and Europe and has access to several submarine cable systems.

Assessment of the global impact of COVID-19 on the telecoms sector.

Companies mentioned in this report include:

Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel); Oman Mobile; Ooredoo Oman; Oman Broadband Company (OBC); FRiENDi, Majan Telecom (Renna); Integrated Telecommunications Oman (TeO); Awasr-Oman; Oman Future Telecommunications (OFT) consortium, Vodafone Group.

Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Oman-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses
The Lagos State Ministry of Health said on Friday that Akin Abayomi, the commissioner for health in the state, has not tested positive for COVID-19 as being rumoured.

Tunbosun Ogunbanwo, the director of public affairs of the ministry, said the news making rounds on social media platforms that the commissioner was positive is fake.

He said Mr Abayomi is in perfect health and free from the coronavirus infection.

A news emanated on social media on Thursday saying the commissioner had tested positive to COVID-19.

This was shortly after Mr Abayomi tweeted that 10 persons associated to the Lagos State House at Marina tested positive to the virus.

The attention of the Lagos State Ministry of Health has been drawn to fake reports making the rounds that the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi has tested positive to COVID19 infection.

We hereby urge the public to disregard this absolute falsehood and fabricated report in its entirety. This is the hand work of mischief makers who are out to create unnecessary panic and fear amongst the populace, Mr Ogunbanwo said.

Prof Akin Abayomi is hale and hearty, in good health and has continued in his capacity as the Deputy Incident Commander of the COVID-19 Lagos Intervention to coordinate activities and response in order to break the chain of transmission of the infection in Lagos, he added.

Verify news

The ministry urged citizens to rely only on the official and verified communication channels of the Lagos state government, including the Ministry of Health for all COVID-19 related news and information.

Mr Ogunbanwo implored Lagos residents to stop sharing unconfirmed news.

Lagos recorded 183 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the total cases in the state to 1,507.

A total number of 406 patients have also recovered from the infection in the state, while 33 deaths have been recorded.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Blair County, parked a mobile billboard in front of the Capitol in Harrisburg on a rainy Friday afternoon before Capitol Police asked him to move it from the no parking zone.

The billboard has over 2,000 signatures from Blair County residents asking Gov. Tom Wolf to end stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic.

At a press conference today Gov. Tom Wolf announced that 13 more counties are next to be lifted from the stay-at-home order, including Blair County.

Allegheny, Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Fulton, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties will move into the yellow phase of opening on May 15, the governors office said Friday.
While Missoulas annual International Wildlife Film Festival had to move to an online format this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event had its biggest reach yet, selling passes in nearly every state and 25 different countries. Now, the Roxy Theater-based nonprofit is looking at options for tacking on the virtual offering as a permanent component for years to come.

Using a virtual festival as sort of a more sustainable model of connecting with more people and connecting with people from far away in a more responsible manner is appealing, said IWFF director Carrie Richer. Were not going to make any serious decisions right now about next year obviously because who knows where well be, but I think we probably will consider doing a virtual package again.

This, of course, would be in addition to bringing back the in-person event as its traditionally been held, she added.

That is something we would never compromise or give up, but it would be really cool to tag on three or four days after those live screenings where people could soak up more films or get to see the films they didnt see, or where people from far away could feel like theyre part of the festival.

This year, some 1,600 passes were sold for the weeklong event that featured more than 80 films from around the world. Richer said the virtual nature of the festival allowed filmmakers to engage people in their hometowns, giving the IWFF a farther reach than it had in the past.

It really became international and I think thats because so many of our filmmakers from this year, and years past, are international and so they just shared with their communities and it became a cool global thing, Richer said, adding they had some films come out of nowhere with large amounts of views and realized the filmmakers had been promoting links to their festival screenings via Facebook and Instagram.

We had this one film, Wild and Wool, and it had more views than anyone else, Richer said, adding the Bozeman-based filmmakers wracked up more than 4,000 views on their 20-minute short film about the interaction between bighorn sheep and domestic herds in the American West. They just did such a great job of telling people about the event and sharing the link really well and I think it just shows you the power of social media and word of mouth.

With more than 50 of the films offered for free, the accessibility factor was key in getting as many people to tune in as possible. Passes were offered on a sliding scale with a minimum cost of $5, but Richer suspects many people paid more than just the baseline number.

I think the model of paying what you can and a sliding scale is a really powerful model  people who can pay a little more will pay a little more, she said. We came out looking really good, especially considering we didnt have as many hard expenses because we didnt have to wine and dine and rent a venue and print a big brochure  all stuff that is kind of important for a live film festival experience.

Organizers were surprised at how well the live events held via Facebook, Zoom and YouTube were attended, and said those aspects helped mimic the in-person festival.

The film Tigerland, a Sundance selection on tiger conservation, won the Best of Festival award and Richer said the timing couldnt be better considering the entire world was binge-watching the Netflix documentary Tiger King.

We didnt really want to directly talk about Tiger King, but we did want to make a big deal about reflecting what a movie could do in terms of tiger protections and those issues that were really an important part of that story, but got lost in the spectacle of Tiger King.

In addition, the film has Oscar-winning animations and graphics that Richer described as the best shes ever seen.

All in all, the virtual IWFF wracked up more than 49,000 views, signaling to organizers that its a viable option for the future.

We have lots of people asking us to do it again and just thanking us for making it available online, Richer said. I think people watched more movies than they really ever have, which is really cool.

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President Obama knew details of Michael Flynn's 2016 wiretapped phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and raised the issue following an Oval Office meeting about Russian interferance is U.S. elections, it has been revealed in declassified documents released on Thursday.

The documents, that have been used as exhibits in the government's motion to dismiss the case against Flynn, who at the time was due to become the U.S. National Security Advisor under the incoming Trump administration, show that Obama's knowledge of the call surprised then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

According to Fox News, on January 5 2017, fifteen days before Donald Trump assumed office, Sally Yates attended a meeting in the Oval Office with President Obama along other notable national security figures, according to the newly declassified documents, which include a 'FD-302 FBI' report, a document used to detail interviews the bureau conducts.

The other attendees were then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-directors of the FBI and CIA, James Comey and John Brennan respectively, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn arrives for his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington, December 18, 2018

The meeting was held to discuss Russian election interference, and also involved Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor who Flynn soon replaced, and other national security officials.

Following the meeting, the President asked Yates and Comey to 'stay behind' in the Oval Office, saying he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and the phone conversations about sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

Obama 'specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information,' according to the documents, which showed at this point 'Yates had no idea what the president was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation.'

In a separate memo from Susan Rice about the meeting, Joe Biden also stayed behind after the briefing.

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates appears before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing entitled, 'Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election' on May 8, 2017

Obama's knowledge of the phone calls, which at the time the FBI said were not criminal in nature, is notable due to his own history with Michael Flynn.

High-ranking FBI officials had secretly discussed whether their objective was to ultimately get the advisor fired when they interviewed Flynn in the White House on January 24, 2017.

Furthermore, in 2014, President Obama had fired Flynn as his head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and had warned the incoming Trump administration against hiring him as National Security Advisor, making it clear that he was 'not a fan', according to multiple sources.

In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the Russia probe.

He also admitted to failing to register as a foreign agent due to his lucrative work for the Turkish government while serving as a campaign advisor to the Trump campaign.

Obama's knowledge of the phone calls, which at the time the FBI said were not criminal in nature, is notable due to his own history with Michael Flynn. Pictured: Obama speaks during Obama Foundation summit in 2019

Attorney General Bill Barr insists he is NOT doing Trump's bidding by dropping charges against Michael Flynn Attorney General Bill Barr defended the decision not to pursue charges against fired Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday, who had pleaded guilty in court to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador during the Trump transition. Barr said he doesn't know how history will judge him because 'history is written by the winners' hours after the Justice Department said it would be dropping its criminal case against Flynn. The attorney general told CBS News that while Flynn did lie, the false statement was not 'material to a legitimate investigation.' 'It's on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on,' Barr said. 'They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.' Attorney General Bill Barr said he doesn't know how history will judge him because 'history is written by the winners' hours after the Justice Department said it would be dropping its criminal case against Flynn. Pictured: Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House in April The attorney general said that FBI investigators 'essentially' entrapped Flynn so that he would lie. The stunning turnaround drew immediate praise from Trump, who has long claimed Flynn was railroaded and had kept alive the possibility of a presidential pardon while attacking prosecutors he said were on a 'witch hunt.' Flynn celebrated by tweeting a picture of his toddler grandson Travis reciting the pledge of allegiance with the words 'justice for all.' The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over the case and has a reputation for fierce independence. Judges generally grant such motions, but Sullivan could demand answers from the department about its reversal or even deny the motion and sentence Flynn, a less likely scenario. Sullivan at a 2018 hearing expressed 'disgust' and 'disdain' toward Flynn's criminal offense, saying: 'Arguably, you sold your country out.' Donald Trump reacted in the Oval Office by saying Flynn 'was an innocent man.' 'Now in my book he's an even greater warrior,' the president said. Trump said he would reach out to Flynn at the 'appropriate' time. 'I think he's a hero. It's a scam. It was a scam and a hoax. I think he's a hero, the general,' Trump said. Democrats however slammed the move. 'President Trump doesnt care about you. He doesnt care about your health. He doesnt care about your family. He doesn't care about testing. He just cares that his cronies are taken care of,' Chuck Schumer tweeted. Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment of Donald Trump, said that Flynn was not exonerated by the move and added: 'But it does incriminate Bill Barr. In the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history.' Advertisement

Other newly declassified transcripts released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee revealed that top Obama administration officials had no concrete evidence that the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election.

The transcripts come from 57 witnesses who were interviewed by the committee during the Trump Russia probe. Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were among those who gave their testimony.

In her interview with the House Intelligence Committee, conducted on September 8, 2017, Rice admitted there 'wasn't anything smoking' that showed the Trump campaign had helped with Russia's election meddling.

'I don't recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect... prior to my departure,' she stated.

Newly declassified transcripts released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee reveal that top Obama administration officials had no concrete evidence that the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election. Susan Power (left) and Loretta Lynch (right) were unable to point to specific examples of collusion, coordination or conspiracy

Trump has described accusations that his campaign may have colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election as a 'hoax' and a 'witch hunt'

Meanwhile, former AG Loretta Lynch similarly stated that she 'could not say' whether evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy existed when she gave her interview on October 20, 2017.

Other officials who worked in the Obama Administration were also asked about whether or not there was any concrete evidence they had seen.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated: 'I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.

'That's not to say that there weren't concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. ... But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.'

Samantha Power, who was appointed by Obama to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations,told the House Intelligence Committee: ''I am not in possession of anythingI am not in possession and didn't read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community

Samantha Power, who was appointed by Obama to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations, was also among the 57 interviewees probed by the House Intelligence Committee.

'I am not in possession of anythingI am not in possession and didn't read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community,' Power stated, according to the newly released transcripts.

Also interviewed were people critical of the probe, and who worked closely with Trump on the 2016 campaign trail.

Donald Trump Jr., Hope Hicks, and Steve Bannon were among them.

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the transcripts of interviews with key Trump world figures during the Russia probe, with chair Rep. Adam Schiff complaining about a declassification delay

The release of the transcripts come after a tussle on whether or not they should have been declassified.

The House panel voted in 2018 to release the documents, but it wasn't until this week that acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell told the committee they were ready for release following a lengthy interagency classification review.

During the intervening period, the impeachment of President Trump and his trial has come and gone, the Mueller report has been released, and Trump has waged a long campaign against FBI agents and other key figures in investigations.

Panel chair Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who is a regular target of Trump's, complained in a release about the delay in the review, as his panel put out the information for all to see.

'These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests,' Schiff vented, despite the fact former Obama officials were unable to provide concrete evidence about collusion.

Donald Trump Jr. appeared before the committee
Social stigma and low testing are the key reasons for the high mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in West Bengal, where the disease, like elsewhere in the country, is still an urban phenomenon, experts say.

IMAGE: A girl reacts as a medic collects her swab sample for a COVID-19 test at a quarantine centre in Howrah district of West Bengal. Photograph: Swapan Mahapatra / PTI Photo.

The state's Trinamool Congress government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under-reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

As of May 7, the state has reported 1,548 COVID-19 cases and 151 deaths of people infected with the deadly virus.

However, the state's public health authorities have attributed only 79 fatalities to the contagion and the rest to concurrent illnesses called comorbidities in medical jargon.

The Centre recently rapped the state government over its COVID-19 management which, it said, was characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent, the highest in the country.

West Bengal, which had tested just about 4,400 samples by April 18 at a rate of 400 samples per day, is now testing more than 2,500 samples a day. The aggregate now stands at more than 30,000, according to state officials.

Experts in the field say given the fact that most cases were reported from Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas, the disease is still an urban phenomenon" but will spread to rural areas also sooner or later.

According to public health experts and medical practitioners in the frontline of the fight against the disease, not just the low number of tests but the social stigma and ostracism faced by patients and their families are acting as a deterrent to effective tackling of the pandemic.

Social stigma is a major issue in identifying a COVID patient. Since the spurt in the number of cases, people have stopped coming to hospital fearing social stigma and public shaming in their locality and instead prefer to stay home. And when they do turn up, its too late, professor and senior surgeon at SSKM hospital Diptendra Sarkar told PTI.

"The stigma associated with this disease needs to be addressed so that more people come forward for tests, he said.

Manas Gumta, a senior surgeon and general secretary of Association of Health Service Doctors, shared Sarkar's view and said it is the responsibility of the state government to chalk out a roadmap to remove the social slur associated with the disease.

"The government needs to engage social groups and NGOs to address the problem of social stigma. It is indeed a reason behind fewer people coming forward for tests," he said.

Gumta said the number of tests being performed now is still less than what has been recommended by ICMR. The numbers need to be increased substantially and also the testing facilities, he said.

While decoding the arithmetic behind the higher mortality rate, he said the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients in most countries was 2-3 per cent, but in Bengal it was so high due to fewer tests being conducted since the onset of the disease.

For example, if you test 20 people and 10 are found positive while two of those who test positive pass away then your mortality rate is 20 per cent. But, if you test 50 people and 40 are found positive and two of them die, your mortality rate is 5 per cent.

"So the answer to decreasing the mortality rate lies in conducting more tests, random tests of asymptomatic patients and ramping up life support infrastructure at hospitals, he said.

West Bengal, despite the increase in the number of tests, lags far behind states like Maharashtra and Gujarat where the number of tests has crossed two lakh and one lakh respectively.

In most of the death cases, the patients arrived when it was too late. But if intensive and critical care facilities can be ramped up, many lives can be saved. We are a bit late but we are trying to catch up with other states in terms of testing and treatment, said another senior doctor of a COVID hospital who did not wish to be named.

West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay had recently attributed the low tests and high mortality rate to initial lack of testing laboratories. Only one COVID-19 testing laboratory was functioning in the initial days of the outbreak of the disease.

Today, we have 16 testing laboratories and a few others are in the pipeline. The more testing you do, the more people you treat and then the mortality rate will also be low.

"The mortality rate appeared high not because Bengal was failing but because (adequate) infrastructural facilities were not present, Bandopadhyay said.

The West Bengal government had alleged last month that the COVID-19 testing kits supplied by the Centre were far less in number as compared to other states and many were defective.

Meanwhile, some experts feel that though the disease has so far been limited to urban areas, it will spread to rural Bengal in the coming months.

It is true that the contagion is still an urban phenomenon but in months to come it will spread to other rural areas. In urban areas, the intensity of the spread is high because of high population density which is not the case in rural areas, senior doctor and internal medicine specialist Rahul Jain said.

Out of the 23 districts of the state seven predominantly rural districts have not reported a single COVID-19 case so far, according to state government data.

At least 80 per cent of the cases have been reported from the four red zones districts of Howrah, North 24 Parganas, East Medinipur and Kolkata, with the state capital having the highest number of containment zones and cases.

South 24 Parganas and Hooghly districts have also reported quite a few cases.




Haiti - FLASH : 25% increase in active cases





The Ministry of Public Health informs that 21 new cases have been confirmed (+ 19.4%) or a total of 129 cases (35.65% of women and 64.34% of men) since the start of the epidemic (March 19, 2020) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30319-haiti-health-origin-of-the-first-2-cases-of-covid-19-in-haiti.html . A 16th healing has been reported.



The number of active cases in Haiti (excluding death and recovery) now stands at 101 cases (+ 24.6%) or +20 since the last report of the Ministry https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30715-haiti-covid-19-daily-bulletin-may-7-2020.html



257 people are in hospital quarantine (+ 4.9%) or 12 more and 660 (+ 13.6%) or +79 in home quarantine.



Number of suspected cases followed : 1,142 (+ 11.31%) or +116 cases since the last Ministry report.



All the details in the 11h00am daily bulletin



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30715-haiti-covid-19-daily-bulletin-may-7-2020.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















By Philissa Cramer

(JTA)New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio drew fierce criticism late Tuesday after he singled out the Jewish community in a trio of tweets announcing that he had instructed his police department to fine or even arrest social distancing violators.

De Blasio was responding to a funeral that had drawn hundreds of Orthodox Jews to the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to mourn a rabbi who died of the coronavirus.

Pictures of the funeral procession, first shared by Reuven Blau, a reporter for The CITY, showed streets densely packed with mourners who were later dispersed by city police officers. The synagogue of the rabbi who died, Chaim Mertz, later released a statement saying it had expected mourners to follow social distancing rules and regretted that they had not.

Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic, de Blasio tweeted. When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus.

A second tweet followed immediately afterward: My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.

The second message drew swift criticism from Jews and others who said de Blasio had unfairly targeted New York Jews, the majority of whom are following distancing rules. Critics said de Blasio ran the risk of inflaming anti-Semitism just months after a spate of violent attacks on Jews in the city and at a time when the Orthodox community is mourning many of its own losses from the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Mayor, your words are unacceptable, tweeted Kalman Yeger, an Orthodox Jewish member of the New York City Council. To condemn our entire community over one group of people is something you would not do to any other ethnic group, and I know you long enough to know that you know this.

The head of the Anti-Defamation League sounded a similar note. Hey @NYCMayor, there are 1mil+ Jewish people in #NYC, CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted. The few who dont social distance should be called outbut generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews. This erodes the very unity our city needs now more than ever.

Some of de Blasios critics acknowledged that the large crowd at the funeral had been a mistake. David Hazony, a prominent Israeli-American writer, criticized the mayor but noted that any rabbi who doesnt ban gatherings in middle of a pandemic is not just a hilul hashem, Hazony tweeted, using the Hebrew term for a desecration of Gods name. He is physically endangering everyone else. Knowingly.

Some noted that the mayor had not responded similarly earlier Tuesday when New Yorkers gathered in parks to watch military planes fly over the city in a show of support for city workers. Others pointed to the mayors own habit of walking in Brooklyns Prospect Park, where crowds sometimes gather on sunny days in spite of social distancing guidelines.

The Blue Angels flyover in NY City today was beautiful, but I didnt see any outrage over the lack of social distancing. That reaction is reserved for Jewish weddings & funerals, tweeted Joel Petlin, who runs the school district in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic town north of the city. Two wrongs dont make a right, but only one wrong makes the news and the condemnation of politicians.

And some of de Blasios detractors on the political right used the tweet as an opportunity to score points against him. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham were among the national figures who criticized the progressive mayors message.

The episode comes as New York Citys Orthodox population reels from the coronavirus, which has ricocheted through Hasidic neighborhoods in Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Borough Park. Those neighborhoods have had high rates of infection and at-home deaths, and some prominent community leaders have fallen victim to the virus.

The synagogue of the rabbi being mourned, Kahal Tolath Yakov, issued a statement overnight saying that it regretted both what had happened at the funeral and afterwards, according to a Twitter account that distributes news about Hasidic Williamsburg.

We understand Mayor Bill de Blasios frustration and his speaking out about the gathering, said the synagogues secretary. We thought that the procession will be in accordance with the rules, and we apologize that it turned out otherwise. It also hurts that this led to singling out the Jewish community, and for that we apologize to all Jewish people.

Six minutes after the tweet that ignited the firestorm, de Blasio posted a final message about the nights events, this one addressing social distancing violators broadly and explicitly not singling any population out.

We have lost so many these last two months + I understand the instinct to gather to mourn. But large gatherings will only lead to more deaths + more families in mourning, he wrote. We will not allow this. I have instructed the NYPD to have one standard for this whole city: zero tolerance.

As angry responses to the previous tweet continued to flow in, that message drew few reactions.
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The shadowy figures of well-armed Isis gunmen can be seen making an attack in the plains of northern Iraq on an outpost held by paramilitary fighters loyal to the Iraqi government.

Some four of the latter are killed by a roadside bomb. Isis specialises in publicising its successful military actions online to show that it remains a force to be feared, despite the destruction of the so-called caliphate and the killing last year of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The appalling atrocities committed by Isis at the height of its power ensure that any sign that the movement is back in business creates a thrill of horror at home and abroad. But, while it is true that Isis has been launching an increased number of pin-prick guerrilla actions in Iraq and Syria in recent months, the effect of these can be exaggerated. The assaults are still very limited compared to what happened in the years leading up to Isiss capture of Mosul in 2014, along with much of western Iraq and eastern Syria. Without the advantage of surprise this time around and with no military vacuum to fill, it is unlikely that Isis can resurrect itself.

Coronavirus appears to pose another dangerous threat to Iraq with its ramshackle public health system and millions of potential victims packed together. Iraq shares a long common border with Iran where Covid-19 is rife. Perhaps it is only a matter of time and the pandemic may yet devastate Iraq, but it has not done so for reasons that are obscure, but may include a young population and stringent curfews.

This focus on Isis and coronavirus as the prime threats to Iraq diverts attention from an even greater danger that faces the country, as it does other Middle East oil exporters. In Iraq the threat is at its most acute because its 38 million people are only just emerging from 40 years of crisis and war.

Iraqis remain deeply divided and have the ill luck to live in a country that is the arena where the US and Iran have chosen to fight out their differences. It feels like a bygone era, but it was only in January that the US assassinated the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani with a drone at Baghdad airport and came close to war with Iran.

The problem for Iraq is simple but insoluble: it is running out of money as its oil revenues fall off a cliff, following the collapse in the oil price brought about by the cataclysmic economic impact of coronavirus. It derives 90 per cent of government revenues from the export of crude oil, but in April it earnt just $1.4bn when it needed $5bn to cover salaries, pensions and other state expenditure.

It cannot pay the 4.5 million people on the government payroll and another four million receiving a pension. This may not seem like exciting news compared to an uptick in Isis killings or the potential ravages of Covid-19, but it may prove more profoundly destabilising than either.

The government has not paid pensions so far this month, though it keeps promising it will do so in a couple of days, says Kamran Karadaghi, an Iraqi commentator and former presidential chief of staff. They dont have the cash. Rumours are spreading in Baghdad that state salaries will be cut by 20 or 30 per cent. Immediate disaster can be fended of by borrowing and drawing down reserves, but there is a limit to how long these can replace lost oil revenues.

Iraq  and other oil exporters in the Middle East  will not get much sympathy internationally in a world suffering from lockdown and unprecedented economic turmoil. The future may be particularly bleak in Iraq, but the other oil states producers are under similar pressures. Indeed, the era of the super-rich oil producers that began with the great oil prices in the first half of the 1970s may be coming to an end.

The problem is that reliance on oil exports displaces most other forms of economic activity: everybody wants to work for the government because that is where the best jobs are. Private business becomes parasitic on a corrupt state to make money. Everything is imported and nothing is produced locally. A corrupt elite monopolises wealth and power.

Recommended Negative oil prices are an opportunity to move to a healthier economy

Iraq has just acquired a new government headed by Mustafa al-Khadimi, a former intelligence chief who was a long-term opponent of Saddam Hussein, and who will now have to grapple with horrendous financial problems. One former Iraqi minister told me several years ago, that the only time he had seen an Iraqi cabinet really panic was not when Isis was battering at the gates of Baghdad, but when the price of oil had fallen more than usually sharply. This time around, the decline in the price is much worse than ever before from the point of view of the producers, and though the price has rallied from its nadir in April, there is little chance of its full recovery

Protests started in Baghdad in October last year when demonstrators demanded jobs, an end to corruption and better public services, such as electricity and water. At least 700 protesters were killed and 15,000 wounded. People did not believe they were getting a fair share of the economic cake then, and the cake is about to get considerably smaller.

 UN chief calls for end to hate speech brought on by coronavirus pandemic

The same anger is felt against predatory elites in resource-rich states from Angola to Saudi Arabia, but the elites are not alone in benefiting from the present system whereby anybody with the right connections  family, sect, ethnicity, political party  can get a job. Ministries become the cash cows of different interests. It would not take much for the protests to start again.

Isis is not the threat to Iraq that some imagine and a young population may not be vulnerable to coronavirus, but the knock-on effect of a prolonged drop in the price of oil brought about by the pandemic will be profoundly destabilising for the Middle East as a whole.
Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to two people with knowledge of Miller's diagnosis.

Miller's positive diagnosis for Covid-19 puts the potential threat of the infection squarely into the presidents inner circle. Miller serves as the vice presidents top spokesperson, traveling with him frequently and attending meetings by his side. She is also married to another top White House aide and senior adviser, Stephen Miller, who writes the majority of Trumps speeches and spends copious amounts of time around the president, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

"Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes. Im doing well and look forward to getting back to work for the American people," Miller tweeted Friday night.

Katie Millers positive diagnosis raises the risk that, through both her and her husbands daily work, a large swath of the West Wings senior aides may also have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.

"She's a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time," President Donald Trump said on Friday during a meeting with congressional Republicans at the White House. "And then all of the sudden today she tested positive. She hasn't come into contact with me. She's spent some time with the vice president."

"This is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily great," the president continued. "The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test where it's good and then something happens and all of the sudden. She was tested very recently and tested negative, and then today I guess for some reason she tested positive. So Mike knows about it and Mike has done what he has to do. I think he is on an airplane, going to some far away place, but you'll be able to ask him later on. But they've taken all of the necessary precautions. I understand Mike has been tested, vice president, and he tested negative."

Story continues

President Trump is so close to the Miller couple that he attended their wedding in February 2020 at the Trump International Hotel, where he stayed at the party for roughly two hours and delivered a short speech to toast them.

He has worked closely with Stephen Miller  one of the key architects of his administrations immigration policy  since the 2016 campaign.

Katie Millers positive diagnosis of Covid-19 comes as the president promotes the re-opening of the economy in more than a dozen states and as he has started to travel outside of the White House again. This past week, he visited a Honeywell factory in Arizona where he toured the plant without wearing a face mask.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier on Friday confirmed that a member of the vice presidents team had tested positive for coronavirus  just one day after one of the president's personal valets contracted the illness  although she did not specify who the person was.

The vice president's trip to Iowa on Friday was delayed by more than an hour as six other Pence staffers who had been in contact with Miller were removed from Air Force Two.

The White House said that the Pence staffer had tested negative on Thursday before receiving positive test results Friday morning. A senior administration official told reporters that the president and vice president had not been in contact with the person recently.

Pence was tested on Friday and has been tested daily, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters traveling with the vice president.

We have put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing," McEnany told reporters during Fridays news briefing. "All of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers, we are now putting them in place here in the White House. So as America reopens safely, the White House is continuing to operate safely.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends anyone who has been exposed to a person with the coronavirus should stay home until 14 days after last exposure and maintain social distance (at least 6 feet) from others at all times.

The vice president is scheduled to meet with faith leaders in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday to discuss responsible religious gatherings, followed by a roundtable on securing food supply. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Iowa Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst also accompanied Pence on the trip.

While staff in the West Wing are tested regularly, according to the pool report, staff members in the Executive Office Building are not tested as frequently. About 10 people on Pences staff are tested daily.

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump's White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller, left, and Katie Waldman arrive for a state dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Trump at the White House in Washington. Trump went from the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, to attending the wedding of the two top members of his administration, Miller and Waldman, press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Both the president and vice president have avoided wearing masks at White House events and during travel. Just last week, Pence faced backlash for breaking the Mayo Clinic's mask policy when he toured the medical facility and met with patients. Citing how frequently he's tested for Covid-19 during a Fox News town hall over the weekend, Pence said, "I didn't think it was necessary, but I should've worn the mask at the Mayo Clinic."

During his meeting with GOP members of Congress on Friday, Trump was pressed on not wearing a mask when visiting with elderly WWII veterans earlier in the day. The president said he was not concerned because he was "very far away from them."

"I would have loved to have gone up and hugged them because they are great. I had a conversation with every one, but we were very far away. You saw," Trump continued. "Plus the wind was blowing so hard in such a direction that if the plague ever reached them, I'd be very surprised. It could have reached me, too. You didn't worry about me, you only worried about them, and that's OK because I think they're so pure, it will never happen. Alright? They've lived a great life. But no, the wind was howling. And I didn't see anybody with masks, I don't know, maybe there were. But they were great."

Trump on Thursday said both he and Pence had tested negative for coronavirus after they were informed that a member of the U.S. military who works at the White House had tested positive. That individual is one of the president's valets, military members who assist the president with personal tasks.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement: The presidents physician and White House Operations continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the president, First Family and the entire White House complex safe and healthy at all times. In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces.

Nancy Cook contributed to this report.


NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Smart Education And Learning Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Age, By Component (Hardware, Software, Service), By Learning Mode, By End User, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2020 - 2027







Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891723/?utm_source=PRN







The global smart education and learning market size is expected to reach USD 680.1 billion by 2027. The market is anticipated to witness a CAGR of 17.9% from 2020 to 2027. Demand for smart education and learning solutions is increasing among the growing population in corporate and academic sectors, owing to benefits such as improved education quality and easy access to educational content. Increasing adoption of consumer electronics, such as smartphones, e-readers, laptops, and e-learning applications, has altered conventional education methodology and has enhanced the efficiency of an individual to learn. Additionally, there are enormous opportunities for advancements in the market, owing to improved internet accessibility.



Also, the COVID - 19 outbreak has emerged an opportunity for the market with an increasing number of states and countries closing educational institutes. For instance, over 90.0% of the world's students are not attending their schools due to this pandemic, as mentioned by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization of The Commonwealth (Canada), has supported educational institutions and governments in building robust distance education solutions for quality e-learning practices. However, lack of awareness among end-users about the latest technologies and inadequate amount of resources for delivering quality education in developing regions is anticipated to hinder market growth.



The simulation-based learning segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest CAGR because this mode enables corporate professional and educational institutions to create a realistic experience in a controlled environment.It also allows professionals and learners to practice, navigate, explore, and obtain more information through a virtual medium before they start working on real-life tasks.



Growing awareness among people and the rising popularity of smart education are encouraging solution providers to invest in research and development for creating more reliable, better, and cost-effective solutions. Manufacturers are making substantial investments in developing new products for enhancing the user experience.



Smart education and learning market report highlights:

 Growing demand for smart educational practices can be accredited to factors, such as reducing expenses of online training, curbing geographic challenges in physically attending classes, and time constraints faced by aspirants

 Increasing penetration of the Internet of Things (IoT), enhanced internet accessibility, and rapid adoption of mobile technology have encouraged users to adopt smart education and learning solutions

 Innovative techniques, such as gamification, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), microlearning, and adaptive learning, which improve the overall educational process, are expected to drive the market over the projected period

 North America accounted for the largest market share in 2019 owing to its large consumer base for e-learning methods



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891723/?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.



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A source in Moscow has hit back at recent reports in Russian media about a fracture in Syrian-Russian relations, insisting that Syria has the full support of Russia writes Al-Watan.

All articles and analysis reporting a dispute between Russia and Syria are baseless, an Arab diplomatic source in Moscow told Al-Watan.

The source, who preferred not to be named, said that the campaign in Russian media is sourced and supported by those close to Turkey and Israel. Moscow has recently renewed its total support for the Syrian state and its president, Bashar al-Assad, in order to cut off speculation or analysis. Despite this, the campaign continues, coinciding with a similar campaign in Israeli media that is tied in one way or another to Russian media, which has published articles against the Syrian state.

The source said, There is ongoing, near daily communication between the Russian and Syrian leadershipnot only at the military level, but also on economics and health. Russia is helping Syria face the COVID-19 pandemic, and is studying what it can do to reinvigorate the Syrian economy. Moscow still supports the Syrian state to lay down its authority over all its territory, and to eliminate terrorism. On rumors of Russian interference in Syrias domestic affairs, the source said that Moscow has not done so, and that its relationship with Damascus was one of friendship. Moscow has no relationships inside Syria except with Syrian leadership.

The source concluded by confirming that the Kremlin has specified Russias support for the Syrian state in a number of statements, and that everything that has been published will not impact the deep relationship that ties the two countries.

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.
A precious little girl has made history by becoming the first Gerber baby to have been adopted  just in time for her first birthday.

Magnolia Earl, who turns one on Saturday, was named the winner of the 10th annual Gerber Baby Photo Search after beating out 327,000 contestants. The tot is following in the footsteps of the brand's other groundbreaking babies, including 2019's spokesmodel Kairi Yang, the first Gerber baby of Hmong descent.

The toddler from Ross, California, 'captured the hearts of the judging panel with her joyful expression, playful smile and warm, engaging gaze,' according to the announcement.

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Adorable: Magnolia Earl, who turns one on Saturday, was named the winner of the 10th annual Gerber Baby Photo Search on Friday after beating out 327,000 contestants

Breaking boundaries: The toddler from Ross, California, has made history by becoming the first Gerber baby to have been adopted

Magnolia's mother, Courtney Earl, opened up to Gerber about her daughter's adoption and how happy she is to be able to share their story.

'On May 9th, 2019 we received a call from the Adoption Agency that there was an expectant mom that was in labor and wanted to talk to us!' she said in the press release. 'We pulled off the highway, got a chance to connect with her amazing birth parents, and a few hours later, this sweet baby girl was born.

'Adoption is incredibly special to our familys story,' she added. 'Winning Photo Search is an opportunity to tell Magnolias story and shed light on all the beautiful and different ways families are made.'

Magnolia has two older sisters, 12-year-old Whitney and eight-year-old Charlotte, who is also adopted. Whether they're splashing in the kiddie pool or dancing to the Baby Shark song, the girls love playing with their baby sister.

Family: Magnolia appeared on the Today show on Friday with her adoptive parents, Courtney and Russell Earl, and her sisters, Whitney and Charlotte, who is also adopted

Exciting: Magnolia's family learned that she had won the photo search while appearing on the show. 'This is incredibly,' said Courtney, who praised Magnolia's birth parents

'Magnolia has brought so much joy to everyone she meets,' Courtney said. 'Her personality is beyond happy and joyful.'

Gerber announced the news on its Instagram page on Friday, sharing a close-up photo of Magnolia donning pink corduroy overalls and a headwrap while flashing a gummy smile for the camera.

'Hello and congratulations to Magnolia, our 2020 Gerber Spokesbaby!' the brand captioned the portrait. 'Were thrilled to welcome you to our growing Gerber family!'

Gerber President and CEO Bill Partyka said Magnolia's adoption story is an important reminder about the power of love amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Too cute: Kairi Yang was named the winner of the 2019 Gerber Baby Photo Contest

Amazing: Kairi, pictured with her parents Ying Vue and Peter Yang, made history as the first Gerber baby of Hmong descent

'At a time when we are yearning for connection and unity, Magnolia and her family remind us of the many things that bring us together: our desire to love and be loved, our need to find belonging, and our recognition that family goes way beyond biology,' he said in the press release.

Magnolia's family learned that she had won the photo search while appearing on the third hour of the Today show on Friday.

'This is incredible,' said Courtney, who was close to tears. 'It means that when people see our families, or if you see a family that doesn't necessarily match, that you don't have to question the belonging of anybody in that family.'

'Mommy always says a family is built on love,' her husband, Russell Earl, added: 'We may all look different, but we're one family.'

Winning smile: Lucas Warren became the first Gerber baby with Down syndrome in 2018

In good company: Riley Shines was chosen as the 2017 Gerber spokesbaby

Striking a pose: Mercy Townsend, left, was named the winner in 2010, while Isla Welch, right, was the spokesbaby in 2016

The proud mom shared that they are in regular contact with Magnolia's biological parents, who were watching them on the Today show at that very moment.

'We celebrate adoption in our family every single day,' Courtney said. 'The real hero in this story are Magnolia's birth parents. They chose her life, and they sent her on this incredible journey.'

Courtney revealed that she had spoken with Magnolia's birth parents on Thursday about her being a finalist in the Gerber contest.

'If you could hear the joy in their voice of how proud they are of this little girl," Courtney said, struggling to hold back tears. 'Together with them and our community and our family, we all this love this baby girl so much.'

'She brings so much joy and happiness to everybody,' she added.

Cute: Grace Pfautz was named the winner of the competition in 2014

Double trouble: Twin boys Levi and Paxton Strickland were named the Gerber babies in 2013

All smiles: Mary Jane Montoya, left, won the prize in 2012, a year after Tate Rosendahl, right, in 2011

As the winner of the photo search, Magnolia will be featured on Gerber's social media channels and marketing campaigns for the next year.

The family will also be taking home plenty of prizes, including a $25,000 award, $1,000 from Gerber Childrenswear, $1,000 from Walmart, and cellphones with a year of unlimited free service from Verizon.

Gerber's first national photo contest took place in 1928, with Ann Turner Cook being named the winner after her family submitted a charcoal drawing of her.

Ann, who is now 93, was the face of the brand until 2010. Gerber then launched its annual Photo Baby Search to celebrate even more babies and toddlers.

Gerber has been a champion of diversity over the past decade. In 2019, Kairi Yang, made history as the first Gerber baby of Hmong descent, while Lucas Warren became brand's first spokesbaby with Down syndrome in 2018.
Sure, it might be warm Wednesday, but what about the rest of the week?
AgroTrust by of Gaurav Somwanshi and Vilas Shinde is an attempt to create a transparent relationship between farmers and consumers amid the COVID 19 lockdown.

AgroTrust, the brainchild of Gaurav Somwanshi (Founder, EmerTech Innovations) and Vilas Shinde (Chairman, Sahyadri Farms) is an attempt to create a transparent relationship between farmers and consumers.

Farmers generally battle a myriad of factors on a regular to ensure good crop produce and sale. Amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, this process has become all the more precarious.

Combating this with their success story is Sahyadri Farms, a co-operative aimed at ensuring farmers remain the primary beneficiaries of the sales of their produce. Despite a majority of the country working in agriculture, the sector has remained largely unorganized and severely underpaid over the years.

From a lack of capital and infrastructure to middleman exploitation, there is no dearth of challenges faced by rural and urban farmers.

To eliminate the same and create a smoother end-to-end process, Mr Vilas Shinde began the blockchain technology initiative in collaboration with Gaurav Somwanshi's team.

This is a secure cloud-based ledger that can store amounts of information in a secure and transparent manner. In this manner, they are able to ensure transparency for farmers and traceability for consumers.

Introduced in March, it will soon be launched on a full scale to enable farmers to track the sale of their produce, and consumers to see exactly who produced it and how, and how much of their money went back to farmers.

By reducing the layers in between, they are able to provide better facilities to farmers for storing their produce and selling at a sustainable price, with quality assured to consumers as well.

Working with 8,000 farmers, they've sold Rs 4 crores worth of produce since the beginning of the lockdown. This was aided by introducing a basket system, with the different sized and priced baskets for families to be delivered in select slots. They are successfully delivering these baskets to select areas in Pune, Mumbai, and Nashik.

Digitization of agriculture is a slow process, and success stories of this scale especially in times like these bring a much-needed ray of hope for farmers and consumers alike.

Story by Gaurav Somwanshi.
Panaji, May 8 : Nearly 1,200 migrant workers left Goa by a Shramik Special train for Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior railway station on Friday.

The train, which left the Thivim railway station in North Goa, is expected to reach its destination by Saturday.

"The first Shramik Express train from Goa left for Gwalior (MP) today morning with around 1,200 migrants on it from Thivim railway station," Union Minister of State for AYUSH and North Goa MP Shripad Naik also tweeted.

The migrant workers were driven to the railway station by state transport corporation buses in a convoy, before boarding the train at around 11 a.m.

More than 80,000 migrant workers have registered with the state government for a passage back home, at a time when movement along interstate borders has been severely restricted on account of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant as well as industry leaders have urged the labour force not to migrate back to their home states, claiming Goa is safe and there are plenty of jobs to be availed of. Sawant said that departure of workers in large numbers would severely impact several labour intensive industries, especially construction, in the coastal state.
Politicians condole death of 14 migrant workers in Maharashtra

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

Aurangabad, May 08: Minutes after 14 migrant workers, who were sleeping on a rail track were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad on Friday, several political leaders took to Twitter and condoled the incident.

Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided."

14 migrants sleeping on railway track run over by goods train in Aurangabad; all dead

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that he was pained beyond words at the loss of lives due to a rail accident in Maharashtra. "I have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal, concerned authorities in the central government and railway administration to ensure all possible assistance."

Also, Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu expressed his sadness about the loss of lives in a train mishap and conveyed his heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families.

Coronavirus crisis: How Epidemic Disease Act, 1897, made its way to the Indian government

Meanwhile, Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi said that he was ashamed to see the migrant workers treated in such a way. In a tweet, Rahul Gandhi said, "We should be ashamed of the treatment being done to our nation builders. My condolences to the families of those killed and pray for the early recovery of the injured."

According to police officials, two labourers were injured in the tragic mishap which took place at 5.15 am under the Karmad Police station jurisdiction. The workers, who were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna in central Maharashtra along rail tracks, were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh.

They were sleeping on rail tracks due to exhaustion when a goods train ran over them that was coming from Jalna.
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Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 17:37 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d4232 1 Business Muslim,fashion,industry,industry-ministry,Idul-Fitri Free

The Muslim fashion industry is experiencing a sharp decline in revenue at a time when the Ramadan festivities would normally lead to peak sales, as COVID-19 impacts the economy.

The sales has dropped by up to 90 percent in April compared to March this year , according to Industry Ministry data. In response, the Muslim fashion industry had to lower its output due to growing stockpiles.

It impacts the stockpiling of [products] and also causes their revenue to drop, the ministrys small and medium enterprises (SME) director general, Gati Wibawaningsih, said in a virtual press briefing on Friday.

In response, some enterprises have shifted their production from Muslim clothing to protective personal equipment (PPE) or face masks to survive the economic downturn, according to the ministry.

The social restrictions enforced to contain the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 12,700 people nationwide as of Thursday, is deemed to cause dwindling sales.

With lower budgets and more worries, the middle-income population in Greater Jakarta was projected to reduce their Ramadan spending in general by 36 percent, according to a survey released in April by Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and SurveySensum.

Outside of Jakarta, spending by the middle-income population is projected to drop by 27 percent, the report reads.

To minimize the financial woes, the government is partnering with e-commerce company Shopee Indonesia in promoting local Muslim fashion.

Shopee Indonesia has seen the number of visitors to the website surge by 25 times compared to normal days since the start of Ramadan, the companys head of public policy and government relations, Radityo Triatmojo, says.

The e-commerce platform has pledged to provide three times more products than usual to promote an online shopping festival between May 12 and 20.

We understand that in this situation, many rely on the online marketplace, Radityo said at the same briefing. This opens the chance to seize the online business opportunity.

Elzatta, a local Muslim clothing retailer operating 200 stores across the country, is adapting to the coronavirus-induced economic downturn by participating in Shopee Indonesias online shopping festival, according to the companys vice president, Tika Latifani Mulya.

The company is also utilizing social media as well as its website and mobile application to promote its products.

We usually install a billboard and publish flyers during Idul Fitri, but not this year, Tika said at the same briefing. We are using social media as much as we can, because we cannot bear too much cost either.

Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said the Muslim fashion industry should not miss the opportunity from the booming global market for Muslim clothing.

Global spending on Muslim clothing was recorded at US$283 billion last year and projected to grow by 6 percent on average annually, according to the State of the Global Islamic Economy report released last year.

There is an opportunity for our Muslim fashion industry to become the number one and center of the worlds Muslim fashion in the not-so-distant future, Agus, a Golkar Party politician, said in the same briefing.

He added that the industrys success would have an impact on supporting sectors, such as tailors, raw material providers and logistics.
Physicists and engineers from nine countries helped build the Mechanical Ventilator Milano, which has been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Credit: MVM collaboration

In a little over a month, a team of physicists and engineers from around the world took a simplified ventilator design from concept all the way through approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This major milestone marks the ventilator as safe for use in the United States under the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization, which helps support public health during a crisis.

The Mechanical Ventilator Milano, or MVM, is the brainchild of physicist Cristiano Galbiati. The Gran Sasso Science Institute and Princeton University professor, who normally leads a dark matter experiment in Italy called DarkSide-20k, found himself in lockdown in Milan, a city hit hard by COVID-19. Hearing reports of ventilator shortages and wanting to help, Galbiati reached out to fellow researchers to develop a ventilator with minimal components that could be quickly produced using commonly available parts.

"The sense of crisis was palpable, and I knew the availability of ventilators was critical," said Galbiati, who obtained his Ph.D from the University of Milan. "We had been doing some complicated projects in physics that required working with gases, and I thought it our duty to find a way to push oxygen into the lungs of patients."

Word spread quickly, with engineers and physicists in nine countriesespecially Italy, the United States and Canadajoining in to help. At the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, the researchers who typically spend their days building and running delicate detectors quickly applied their skills and volunteered their time to build a device for delicate lungs.

"There's a huge benefit we've gained from the way particle physics collaborations work," said Steve Brice, the head of Fermilab's Neutrino Division. "The structure already in place has large, international, multidisciplinary groups. We can re-task that structure to work on something different, and you can move much more quickly."

The MVM is inspired by the Manley ventilator built in the 1960s. The design is simple, inexpensive, compact and requires only compressed oxygen (or medical air) and a source of electrical power to run. The modern twist comes from the electronics and the control system.

"We're concentrating on the software and letting the hardware be as minimal as it can be," said Stephen Pordes, a member of DarkSide and a Fermilab scientist stationed at CERN to work on a prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, known as DUNE. He has volunteered his time to coordinate some of the MVM efforts alongside Cary Kendziora from Fermilab's Particle Physics Division. "This project has been growing organically. People see a place where there is a need, and they take their own initiative to help and jump in."

The MVM is under assembly. Credit: MVM collaboration

And volunteers have jumped in with a wide range of skills. Fermilab technical editor Anne Heavey joined to work on documentation and the user manual, repurposing the formatting of the recently published Technical Design Report for DUNE. Elena Gramellini, an Italian neutrino physicist working at Fermilab, liaised with doctors on the front lines in Italy. Jen Raaf, a neutrino physicist who works on liquid-argon experiments, worked with the medical device manufacturer Elemaster and led the effort to bring together all the elements needed for FDA approval.

"I wanted to feel like I was doing something useful," Raaf said. "It's really nice to see humankind doing good things for other people."

The project has not been limited to the researchers. While working through the prototypes, the team made sure to engage doctors, medical device manufacturers and regulators to ensure they were making something useful for hospitals, creating something with a robust supply chain that could be quickly produced and building the ventilator to the right specifications.

"One of the key problems was translating between what the machine technically does and how operators would interact with the machine itself," Gramellini said. "It's been a lot of learning on my part in trying to see the ventilator the way that a clinician would operate the machine."

Experts from industry and medicine made themselves readily available for consults; doctors tested the MVM prototypes on breathing simulators. Underlying all the long extra hours and stress of the intense project was a sense of urgency and motivation for all involved.

"I have never seen anything come together at this speed," Heavey said. "It's just phenomenal."

With collaborators spread across 10 different time zones, work on various systems was able to proceed nearly around the clock, allowing MVM to progress from posting a preprint paper on March 23 to FDA approval on May 1.

Schematic of the Mechanical Ventilator Milano. Credit: MVM collaboration

"It's in our DNA to collaborate across borders and in real-time as particle physicists," Galbiati said. "As borders went up and supply chains became more difficult, it remained a beacon of hope to me to be able to collaborate internationally. It is important to see that while the virus is spreading around the world at the speed of jets, the research is spreading at the speed of the internet. And if there's one way that the virus will be defeated, it's if the research can prevail."

While physicists are used to collaborating from a distance, doing so while teleworking and social distancing added a new wrinkle. Working from home, researchers didn't have access to all the tools they would have in the labor all the parts they needed to test in one place. Instead, they connected various components over the internet. So a microcontroller in Italy could connect and receive software written in the United States, then have someone test the interface on a touch screen in Canada.

"If you had asked me before all this if it was possible, I would have said no, it would take months," said Marco Del Tutto, a neutrino physicist at Fermilab who worked on the software and microcontrollers along with Scientific Computing Division's Gennadiy Lukhanin. "I've never done anything like this before, and we weren't sure if we would succeed. But we all agreed we should at least try. We owed that to everyone."

By early April, completed prototype MVM units in temporary 3-D-printed cases were making their way through rigorous tests in Italy and with collaborators around the worldand they worked. Eric Dahl, a Fermilab and Northwestern University scientist, was able to use a breathing simulator at Northwestern Simulation (a clinical training center part of Feinberg School of Medicine) to test one of the first prototypes and provide input on the way to the approved design. The MVM now works properly in two modes: full ventilation of a patient and breathing support.

"This effort is the demonstration that the particle physics community pays attention to the application of basic research for social needs," said Fernando Ferroni, professor at Gran Sasso Science Institute and the past president of INFN, Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics. "Having applied the efforts of hundreds of people in a very efficient fashion was possible because of the level of organization and shared vision of this community. It's an amazing result, indeed."

The end result is an open-source ventilator with off-the-shelf parts that the MVM team hopes will close the gap between supply and demand on a short timescale. The hardware and software designs will be made publicly accessible, so in principle, anyone in the world could make their own version. Galbiati is now working with Elemaster and other manufacturers on the first bulk production and getting ventilators to where they are needed most.

"It has been wonderful to work with such a highly skilled and very motivated group of scientists and engineers," said Art McDonald, Nobel laureate and head of Canada's involvement in MVM. "Everyone has been working hard on this because they see it as a way that they can use their skills to help out in this worldwide crisis. We are very grateful for the contributions by our team members and for all the external support that we have received."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

More information: Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM): A Novel Mechanical Ventilator Designed for Mass Scale Production in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemics: Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM): A Novel Mechanical Ventilator Designed for Mass Scale Production in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemics: arxiv.org/abs/2003.10405v3 : arXiv:2003.10405v3 [physics.med-ph]
LOCKPORT, N.Y. -- State Police have charged a Lockport man with a misdemeanor assault charge today following an early morning turkey hunting accident in Niagara County that left two hunters injured.

Scott Brown, 59, of Lockport, has been charged with third-degree assault and reckless endangerment, second degree, another misdemeanor.

Troopers responded to reports of hunting accident on a field off Raymond Road in Lockport at about 6:20 a.m.

Upon arriving, troopers found two hunters  ages 44 and 37 -- who had been hit by turkey shot pellets. One had been shot in the face; the other, his back. Both injuries were not life-threatening.

Scott was charged for allegedly firing at the two men with his a 12-gauge black powder gun with turkey shot.

The 44-year-old man who had pellets lodged in his face was taken to Erie County Medical Center for treatment. The other hunter remained at the scene was treated by the Rapid Fire Company. He was also interviewed by troopers and conservation officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The two men, whose names were not released, told investigators they had permission to hunt the property. They said they came across some turkey decoys and turned to leave, believing someone was already hunting there.

Thats when they were shot, they told troopers. Scott reportedly approached the two men after the incident. He spoke to them, apologized and then left before troopers arrived, reported wgrz.com.

Scott was later located by troopers and arrested. He was issued an appearance ticket and is due back in Niagara Court later this month.

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A history of downtown Guelph could be written that goes simply from fire to fire, so often have flames marked turning points for old buildings and their occupants.

Certainly, this was the case for Thomas Joseph (usually T.J.) Hannigan. On Dec. 17, 1909, a fire gutted the Norrish block, on Carden Street opposite todays Market Square skating rink, where Hannigan ran his pool room on the third floor.

Whatever Hannigan was thinking as he watched the flames ravage his old place of business, he never looked back. Only recently, Hannigan had entered the real estate and insurance trades, forsaking his earlier, less prestigious and lucrative occupations.

Born in 1869 in Campbellford, Ont., Hannigan moved with his family to Guelph in 1888, where young T.J. tried his hand at trades, including tinsmith, cabinet finisher and carpet maker. Apparently not satisfied as an employee, Hannigan then moved to Plattsville, Ont., near Kitchener, where he ran a hotel.

Yet Hannigans love of the Royal City did not abate and he returned in 1895 to wed local girl Mary Tait in the Church of Our Lady. By 1901, the new Hannigan family had returned to Guelph, where Hannigan became manager of a pool hall on the second floor of the Macdonald block, over todays Cornerstone restaurant.

Besides running his own business, Hannigan enjoyed running in the open air. He helped to found the Guelph Cross Country Run and Road Race Association, which put on a number of competitions, culminating in an annual Thanksgiving Day meet. Over the years, Hannigan served as president, general manager and treasurer.

Around this time, Hannigan also got into the postcard trade. A small series of inexpensive cards featuring scenes of Guelph and its environs were run off for him by the W.G. MacFarlane Co. of Toronto. Perhaps he sold these in his pool hall as a side hustle. The most surprising view to modern eyes is that of the Ontario Agricultural College barns, situated along Trent Lane where Rozanski Hall is today.

In any event, by the time the fire of 1909 ruined his billiards business, Hannigan was ensconced in the realms of real estate and insurance  probably including fire insurance. His company motto was, Ask Hannigan  he knows.

He also began his political career. He was a city alderman for four years and joined the local Conservative party, in which he became an influential figure. He ran for the nomination in Wellington South against future premier George Drew in 1937 and ran for nomination in the 1939 federal election. In 1940, he made a bid as candidate for the National Government. However, he was unsuccessful each time.

He was perhaps most effective in his support for what became Ontario Hydro. In the early 1900s, an electrical grid was built to distribute electricity from Niagara Falls throughout southern Ontario. Controversy surrounded the issue of whether or not the grid should be publicly or privately owned. Like most Guelphites, who were happy with the citys own public electrical utility, Hannigan favoured public ownership. As sometime secretary and treasurer of the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, he ran the campaign for public ownership and defended the utility against attempts at privatization.

Hannigan also ran the Guelph Horticultural Society as president for many years, with a particular interest in gladioli. Such was his passion for flowers that, in the report of the fire in his residence on Wellington Place (now Riverview Drive, a suburb he helped to develop) in 1928, the Mercury noted that many valuable bulbs stored in the cellar were ruined. Also, no one was injured.

After his death in 1940, the Guelph Cross Country Run and Road Race Association named its one-mile Thanksgiving Day race the T.J. Hannigan special race, a fitting tribute to the man who enjoyed running so much.

More details at guelphpostcards.blogspot.ca.
Barbara Blatnik.

AKRON, Ohio  Police have made an arrest in the 1987 murder of a 17-year-old Ohio girl using DNA genealogical research.

James E. Zastawnik, 67, of Cleveland, has been charged with murder in the death of Barbara Blatnik, whose body was found in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

It is great to see justice done for Barbara Blatnik, Cuyahoga Falls Chief Jack Davis said in a news release.

Related Video: DNA Links Serial Killer Suspect to Deaths

Donna Zanath, Blatniks sister, said Wednesday evening that she was in shock that an arrest had been made after all this time. She credited Project Porchlight, a local effort lead by Akron author James Renner that took on her sisters case as its first attempt to generate renewed interest in a cold case. Project Porchlight raised $6,000 for DNA testing that helped with the Blatnik case.

Without James Renner, we wouldnt be talking right now, she said, choking back tears.

James E. Zastawnik.

Police tape is tied on a signpost near where the body of Barbara Blatnik was found in 1987 in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Blatnik was last seen Dec. 19, 1987, when a friend dropped her off in Garfield Heights around midnight. The next morning, her nude body was found alongside a narrow access road that leads to Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls. She had been strangled and raped.

The Cuyahoga Falls Police Department announced that it was reopening the case last August and was teaming up with Project Porchlight.

DNA samples taken from Blatniks body were provided to Identifinders, a California company that does forensic genealogy using DNA databases. This led detectives to Zastawniks family and then to him as a suspect, Renner said.

Its amazing, Renner said. Everybody at Porchlight is celebrating right now. Were anxious to get some more cases. This certainly helps. It feels very good. Hopefully, this is the answer the Blatniks have been waiting for.

Zanath shared the news on Facebook with family and friends, who were equally stunned and pleased. She said no one in the family has ever heard of or seen the suspect before.

Im thankful, she said.

Story continues

Follow reporter Stephanie Warsmith on Twitter: @swarsmithabj

Texas Supreme Court: Release jailed salon owner who illegally reopened

DOJ dropping case against MIchael Flynn: Former Trump adviser pleaded guilty to lying about Russia contact

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Barbara Blatnik: Cleveland, Ohio man arrested in 1987 murder of girl
Agartala/Guwahati, May 8 : Amid the nation-wide lockdown to battle the COVID-19, the celebrations of the 159th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore on Friday were very modest in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and other northeastern states.

To maintain the social distancing and other COVID-19 guidelines, the birth anniversary of Nobel laureate poet was observed in a less colourful manner with most places the event was on an average 30 to 40 minutes instead of day-long or week-long celebrations, held during the past several decades.

"Unlike previous years, there was no major celebration as no gathering was allowed by the government due to the Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown related rules," an Assam Cultural Affairs Department official said in Guwahati.

Except in few places, in many areas there were no stage and no singing programme in the northeastern states. The world famous bard Rabindranath Tagore had visited and stayed in Agartala (Tripura) and Meghalaya's Shillong (when the city was the capital of undivided Assam) several times between 1899 and 1927.

Tagore's close relations with the princely state of Tripura and its four successive tribal kings form an important chapter in the state's history. This relationship prompted him to visit the state as many as seven times between 1899 and 1926.

Tripura based Northeast India's largest cultural body "Chhandaneer" had been celebrating Rabindra Jayanti for the past five decades with the presence of artists and performers from Bangladesh, Kolkata and Assam, but this year it was a very simple event inside a small room.

Latest updates on Gandhi Jayanti 2019

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In mid-February, Dr. Peter Morris and fellow University of Kentucky faculty members attended the Society of Critical Care Congress in Orlando, Fla. While there, they saw a presentation linked to Wuhan, China, in which intensive care providers spoke about the coronavirus crisis as it was taking hold.

"And you just got a gut feeling after listening to themeven though the reports might have been technical at the timeyou could hear in their voices the strain and the volume of what they were seeing," Morris said recently. "I remember leaving one meeting after a session like that and it was pretty sobering. People were quiet. And many of us thought, 'This is a freight train. It's coming.'"

The coronavirus freight train did come, right to Central Kentucky where Morris, chief of pulmonary and critical care at the UK Hospital, along with respiratory therapist Larry White, are among those dealing hands-on with COVID-19 patients on a daily basis.

A New York native, Morris attended St. John's University and Cornell Medical School. It was midway through his time at Cornell that he decided he wanted to focus on critical care.

"I had a great mentor and he said, 'What do you want to do?'" Morris remembered. "This is in New York in the early '80s. And I said, 'I want to work in an ICU.' And he said, 'OK, that's kind of strange. What do you want to do in the ICU?' And I said, 'I think I want to do research.' He said, 'That's really strange, but I have something for you.'"

Morris was sent to the National Institute of Health, where he experienced "what high-level clinical research was like." That led to a scholarship residency at Vanderbilt University, one of the leaders in critical care research. This is his second tour of duty at UK, having spent six years at the university before leaving for Wake Forest. After nearly two decades in Winston-Salem, N.C., he returned to the university five years ago to become chief of pulmonary care.

He has seen pandemics before, but COVID-19 is an especially hard virus on the lungs. Those who test positive often experience breathing difficulties to the point where some are intubated and placed on ventilators.

"In the ICU now, the people that we are seeing who are testing positive really don't require anything different than what we've been providing for years for people in terms of the care and the support of their organs," Morris said. "What's different is there are a lot of them and they're really, really sick."

'Are we going to catch it?'

A native of Savannah, Georgia, White has lived in Lexington 23 years. He's been a respiratory therapist for five years. Before that, he was a restaurant manager at Cracker Barrel who decided he wanted a second career in the medical field. He looked into nursing, but after talking to a family friend who was a respiratory therapist, he opted to go in that direction.

"I'm glad I did," White said. "I love my job."

What is White seeing in his job now?

"It's been a lot of things, very enlightening, nerve-wracking. It's hard to explain," White said. "Coming to work when it first started, we were all very fearful of what it's going to be like. Are we going to catch it? That kind of thing. But as it has gone on and we've worked with the patientsI've been one of the people that has been up there since they started coming in, pretty muchit's gotten better. I feel more comfortable with it."

"May I insert here, that is just the marker of incredible professionalism," Morris said.

After returning from Orlando, Morris and his colleagues began planning for what was to come. Having planned for the Ebola pandemic in 2016 helped with preparations for COVID-19. Some facets, such as disaster management, were already in place. Hearing stories from New York and California provided doctors an idea of what to expect.

Still, there have been surprises. Though, at least through mid-April the volume of patients was not what some experts had predicted"We attribute that to social-distancing and the very courageous work done by the public health people," Morris saidthe caseload was still striking for a six-week period. Also, the number of young people infected was unexpected.

"In the work that Larry and I and our colleagues do, we see a lot of illness," Morris said. "But to see it in a short time period with so many younger people, this is really something."

Not surprising, but very gratifying is what Morris has seen from those who work in the critical care unit.

"They're incredibly brave," Morris said. "I think I would put it as the equivalent of people running into a burning house to save someone."

'A lot of silent heroes'

The respiratory therapists and nurses work together in other areas, such as turning patients onto a prone position while on the ventilatora practice that started around 2013.

"My biggest thing is the teamwork," White said. "We have always worked very well together in all the different disciplines, but specifically respiratory and nursing. We're doing things like I'm helping give baths or cleaning stations up or mopping the floors in the room, whatever it is. It's not stuff that we've ever done. So it's given me an appreciation, and on the flip side it's given them a greater appreciation for what we do as well."

"These people have volunteered for more shifts," Morris said. "I think there are a lot of silent heroes here."

As an example, Morris pointed to medical professionals who serve as "spotters," who help doctors and respiratory therapists into their personal protective equipment, then watch them while in the room to make sure the PPE isn't being compromised. The spotters then help remove the garb in a sequence that will prevent contamination.

"They're excellent," White said.

On the one hand, one of the more difficult aspects of dealing with the coronavirus has been comforting families who cannot be with their infected loved ones in the hospital. Morris called it "one of the most harsh things I've seen for families of critically ill people."

On the other hand, dealing with the crisis in a hands-on manner is not without its rewards.

"I think for many of us it has been reaffirmation of why we are here, to help people in a particularly skillful way," Morris said. "Few people have this training, and those who have it step up and take care of these patients."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

2020 Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A South Jersey county is raising the alarm about the devastating effect of the coronavirus at five of its nursing homes and asking the state to intervene.

Camden County officials on Friday sent a letter to Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli, asking her to assign a state monitor for five nursing homes.

For more than a month, county health officials have been inspecting and assisting 27 of the countys 56 long-term care facilities as part of an effort to limit the spread of the virus. Despite some improvements, five of those homes have continued to struggle with issues including infection control and are reporting significant numbers of cases and deaths, the county said in a statement.

The facilities are Avista Healthcare and Premier Cadbury in Cherry Hill, Genesis Voorhees Center and Lions Gate Continuing Care Retirement Community in Voorhees and United Methodist Communities at Collingswood.

Collectively, the five homes make up 42% of the total positives in the countys long-term care facilities, according to numbers reported by the state Friday. The 85 residents at the facilities who have died from the virus account for 39% of all county COVID-19 deaths, the numbers show.

As we watched this pandemic evolve it was immediately evident that many long-term care facilities were unprepared to face the challenge that was presented and to ensure the safety of their residents and staff, Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. said in the statement. Based on the reporting from our community we started taking on the task of inspecting these operations and we found a variety of issues including flawed infection control procedures, a severe shortage of PPE, and staffing shortages.

Dr. Richard Feifer, chief medical officer for Genesis Health, said the Voorhees Center, like all Genesis facilities, is taking steps to protect vulnerable residents, including screening patients and residents for symptoms three times a day and requiring staff to wear PPE at all times.

He said medical issues like dementia can make it difficult to enforce some precautions, such as restricting residents to their rooms and asking them to wear protective equipment. We are using techniques to distract and guide them to remain in their rooms and wear the protective equipment to the extent possible, he said.

I can assure you that we are working around the clock, doing everything in our power  and everything medical experts know as of at this time  to protect and keep our patients, residents and employees as healthy and as safe as possible, Feifer said in a statement.

Christine M. Fares Walley, a spokeswoman for Lions Gate in Voorhees, said that contrary to the letter sent Friday, county inspectors doing a surprise check on Thursday commented that Lions Gate is doing a great job in a very difficult situation.

Lions Gate, which features skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living facilities, remains fully staffed and so well equipped with PPE that it was recently able to donate six cases of gowns to a long-term care facility in Hamilton that was short, Walley said.

The facility has also been testing aggressively and has had 31 residents who have recovered from the virus, she said.

United Methodist Communities spokeswoman Robbie Voloshin said the Collingswood facility has been working with state officials to coordinate efforts throughout the pandemic.

Thankfully, we seem to be in a period of recovery, having no new cases of the virus since April, largely due to the courageous work of our amazingly dedicated associates, Voloshin said. At this time, we have an adequate supply of PPE, no staff shortages, and no recommendation for improvement on our infection control processes from the county department of health.

Premier Cadbury at Cherry Hill Administrator Mark Stratoti declined to comment. A message left for the administrator of Avista Healthcare was not returned Friday afternoon.

Nursing homes in New Jersey have been seriously impacted by the virus, in step with the rest of the country. Statewide, 24,874 residents spread across 513 long-term care facilities have contracted the virus and 4,556 have died. Just over half of all deaths in the state have been long-term care residents, the state reported.

State officials have issued guidelines and regulations for nursing homes to limit the spread of the virus. This week, the state announced the Attorney Generals Office will investigate nursing homes with disproportionate numbers of deaths.

Mayors in Cherry Hill, Voorhees and Collingswood joined county officials in calling for the state monitor in an effort to save lives.

The following is a breakdown of cases and deaths at the five homes as of Friday, as reported to the state.

 Genesis Voorhees Center a 190-bed facility at 3001 E. Evesham Road, reported 159 cases and 26 deaths. (Feifer said the facility had 105 resident cases and 38 positive staff members.)

 Premier Cadbury at Cherry Hill, a 118-bed facility at 2150 Route 38, reported 90 cases and 20 deaths.

 Lions Gate, a 110-bed skilled nursing facility at 1110 Laurel Oak Road in Voorhees, reported 71 cases and 11 deaths.

 Avista Healthcare, a 162-bed facility at 3025 Chapel Avenue in Cherry Hill, reported 58 cases and 17 deaths.

 United Methodist Communities at Collingswood, with 32 healthcare residents and 90 in assisted living at 460 Haddon Ave., reported 43 cases and 11 deaths.

This story was updated May 9 to correct the percentage that the five homes cases and deaths accounted for in the county.

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Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com.
The two works by Mozart to be heard here continue to delight the listener with their wonderful melodies more than 220 years after their creation.

Mozart was mortally ill as he wrote his final composition, the Requiem, running a race against time in an effort to complete it, so that it essentially became his own funeral mass.



His widow Constanze Weber invited several pupils and composing contemporaries to complete the work - a perfect masterpiece even in its unfinished state.



Eventually it was completed by Franz Xaver Sussmayr, and it is this version which is performed most frequently in concert halls and churches to this today.



However, fresh sketches came to light in the 20th century, while Mozart research reached a level where a number of attempts could be made to finish the Requiem in a manner faithful to the composer's conception - one of these being the version by pianist and musicologist Robert D. Levin.



Hitherto unfamiliar features of Mozart's swan song in this form are revealed to the listener, often creating the impression of something entirely new.



This beautiful programme of music was timely in that the ensemble regarded as the predecessor of today's Hungarian Radio Symphonic Orchestra was founded 80 years before, while the institution's choir is one of the most accomplished professional oratorio choirs in Hungary.



This recording was made at a concert held at Mupa Budapest on 1 November 2016.



The performance will be broadcasted on our website , Facebook-page and YouTube channel .
Doctors at a private hospital in Vietnam were able to save a man who had been critically injured from an electronic shock by actively lowering his core body temperature to around 33 degrees Celsius for 24 hours.

On Wednesday afternoon, Xuyen A General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City announced that they had successfully revived a patient who had been rushed to the institution after suffering from an electronic shock.

The patients miraculous recovery drew a lot of attention from the public because the hospital had used a method known as therapeutic hypothermia, where they lowered the patients core body temperature to 33 degrees Celsius for 24 hours straight to prevent damage to his brain.

N.V.P., 26, who lives in Hoc Mon, an outlying district of Ho Chi Minh City, was changing a light bulb at his home when he suffered from an electric shock and fell down onto the floor.

The young man went into a cardiac arrest and could not breathe either.

The patients relatives immediately gave him first aid and had him rushed to Xuyen A General Hospital in Cu Chi District.

When P. was brought into the emergency room, he had gone into a full cardiac arrest, according to Dr. Khuong Ke Hanh, a first-degree specialist and head of the infirmary's intensive care unit (ICU).

Given the patients critical condition, the hospitals red alert emergency procedure was immediately activated as health workers tried their best to resuscitate him.

After 20 minutes of consecutive resuscitation, the patient was brought back to life, regaining his pulse and blood pressure.

Although his limbs were responsive, he was still in a deep coma due to brain damage caused by the prolonged cardiac arrest.

The patient was then brought to ICU, where he was treated with therapeutic hypothermia to protect his brain.

As per this procedure, P.'s core body temperature was lowered to 33 degrees Celsius, effectively putting him in artificial 'hibernation' for 24 consecutive hours.

The patient regained consciousness after only five days of intensive treatment and was healthy enough to be able to eat normally and move his limbs easily.

According to Dr. Hanh, therapeutic hypothermia, which in this case is moderate hypothermia, is a method to quickly lower the patients core body temperature to a target point (32-36 degrees Celsius) for a certain duration.

This type of treatment aims to slow the bodys metabolic process, similar to the state of sleeping, in order to preserve the brain and other vital organs, improving the chances of recovery for the patient.

Therapeutic hypothermia has been proved to be highly effective in clinical treatment, especially to protect the patients nervous system. The treatment usually lasts about 24 hours.

This highly advanced technique is expected to be applied to other emergency cases.

Currently, this method has been included in the emergency procedure for patients who suffer a cardiac arrest and applied in many developed countries.

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With COVID-19 restrictions and an extended stay-at-home order still in place, many people are looking for ways to spend their free time. I, however, have been able to remain quite busy.

Luckily, the novel coronavirus hasnt fully taken away the ability to research our ancestors. No, you cant walk into the county offices to dig up a physical copy of your great-grandparents marriage certificate, but you might be able to find a lot online, and local cemeteries remain open.

Genealogy research can offer a lifetimes worth  and more  of fun and frustration, and much of it can be done during the pandemic.

Here are a few helpful tips for those wanting to know more about their family histories.

Before you start digging

First, remember that genealogy research comes with a few caveats.

Try to determine the accuracy and legitimacy of any information you find. Personal stories and book excerpts can be helpful in advancing your research, but they can also be wrong.

Understand that name spellings will vary. My last name  Larese, an abbreviated version of Larese De Pasqua  is spelled as Laresi in the 1930 U.S. federal census and Larise in the 1940 census.

My ancestors also include members of the Moras family, or perhaps better known in the metro Detroit area as the Moross family.

My third great-grandfather Francis Socia spelled his last name differently than his father and my fourth great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste Saucier.

And then you have Furton, Forton, Furtaw and Freton  all different, yet all the same name in my case. Its a similar situation with Tremblay, Tremble, Trombley, Trombly and other variations.

If you have French ancestors, prepare for a slew of dit names, which were used to distinguish families from other branches of the same family. Often, they related to occupations, places of origin, military service or physical characteristics.

Eventually, most subsequent generations would either adopt the familys ancestral surname or decide to use only the dit name. For example, most descendants of my eighth great-grandfather Jean Casse dit St. Aubin go by St. Aubin, the dit name.

Availability of information will differ depending on where your ancestor was born, lived or died. In my experience, it has been easiest to research my ancestors who lived in the United States and Canada. But I havent been able to make much progress with my Italian ancestors.

Online resources

There are a slew of online resources available, some for free and others requiring a paid subscription.

Names, locations and dates will make research much easier. But if you dont have them, try looking closely at any records you may have or records relating to other relatives for information like parents names and birth places.

You could try a general Google search, or dig into online databases.

I have been able to find the most information about my ancestors through Ancestry.com. I would recommend purchasing a subscription to be able to access everything the site has to offer if youre able. My current subscription includes access to military records through Fold3.com and historical newspaper pages through Newspapers.com. Ive found a few articles about my ancestors in historical newspapers, and as a journalist, theyre priceless to me. I even solved the mystery of how my great-grandmother died at age 56 in 1953. The only information I could find was that it was a result of accidental injuries. Thanks to newspaper articles, I found out it was a car accident.

I also found my fiances birth announcement that was published in 1987 in an Indiana newspaper, so historical is relative.

Library cardholders can access Ancestry Library Edition remotely through the end of May, and possibly longer. Pre-COVID-19, the service was only offered to patrons inside a library that offers it. The database includes census, vital, church, court and immigration records, among others.

A few websites offer information for free. At familysearch.org, users can create a free account, make a family tree and search through various historical records. Findagrave.com can be helpful in putting together your family tree. The website is owned and operated by Ancestry.com and features thousands of profiles featuring photos of gravesites taken by unpaid volunteers and information about deceased individuals.

Photos of gravesites can also help you locate your ancestors grave in a cemetery. The background could provide clues as to where the photo was taken.

Search for groups on Facebook that are related to your research.

Both Ancestry and 23andMe are still accepting saliva samples from those wanting to learn more about their ancestry through at-home DNA tests.

Finding your roots

If you have ancestors buried in local cemeteries, you can go see them, even during the pandemic. I recently visited the historic Mt. Elliott and Mt. Olivet cemeteries in Detroit for the first time and was able to find my ancestors who are buried there. It was an incredible experience.

Before visiting local cemeteries to find your ancestors graves, please take some time to prepare ahead of time.

Look up the cemeterys hours and find out if they have any rules. Some dont allow photography; some require permission to enter.

Be respectful. Remember that youre in a place that is sacred to the family and friends of those buried there. As Boy Scouts would say: Leave no trace.

If you see one of your family surnames on a grave but arent sure who it is, take a photo or write down the information on the gravestone if youd like to research how the person relates to you. Even if its a distant cousin, aunt or uncle, it could lead to the names of your direct ancestors.

Researching your ancestry can certainly be fun  but there can also be a lot of frustration. Dead ends, inaccuracies, records written in different languages and a lack of access to records make it a long, long process.

But I can say, in my experience, it has all been worth it.

Katelyn Larese is a Local News Editor at The Voice. She can be contacted at 586-273-6196 or klarese@medianewsgroup.com.
A paedophile bodybuilder who had more than 2,400 child abuse pictures and videos in his possession will not be jailed.

Daniel Jared Arriagada, 30, from Leichhardt, in Ipswich, Queensland, pleaded guilty to possessing child exploitation material which included images of toddlers in depicting sexual acts.

But rather than being jailed for the heinous material, Arriagada walked free from Ipswich District Court on Friday after being handed a 12 month Intensive Corrections Order to be served in the community.

Judge Alexander Horeman-Wren SC said the offences Arriagada committed can carry a maximum sentence of 14 years behind bars.

Arriagada, a former prison guard and soldier, also pleaded guilty last week to trafficking steroids into Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre while he worked there.



Daniel Jared Arriagada (pictured), 30, had more than 2,400 child abuse pictures and videos in his possession. Instead of being jailed, he will carry out an Intensive Corrections Order (ICO) over 12 months

Arriagada was caught with with 1,265 pictures and 1,158 videos of 'category one' child exploitation material at his Leichhardt home in Ipswich on December 6, 2018, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Category one child abuse material is the worst of its kind. Arriagada's stash showed

babies, toddlers and pre-pubescent girls under 13 performing explicit sexual acts.

The 2,423 pieces of multimedia were saved on two mobile phones, a laptop and two hard drives, which were all seized by police.

Judge Horneman-Wren SC said Arriagada's child porn stash was 'horrific'.

'Every child depicted is a victim. This (accessing child pornography) creates a market,' Judge Horneman-Wren said, according to The Telegraph.

Arriagada said his behaviour was due to a relationship breakdown but judge Horneman-Wren said it was 'not an explanation or an excuse to access such awful child abuse material'.

Arriagada was caught with with 1,265 pictures and 1,158 videos of 'category one' child exploitation material at his Leichhardt home in Ipswich on December 6, 2018. Arriagada's stash showed babies, toddlers and pre-pubescent girls under 13 performing sexual acts

Crown Prosecutor Amanda Robinson said Arriagada should spend no less than 15 months of actual jail time.

Defence barrister Scott Neaves proposed he serve a 12-month ICO instead, arguing if the Arriagada spent a short time in prison, he would be released without supervision.

In the end, Judge Horneman-Wren sentenced him to 12-months in jail to be served through an ICO.

During this time, Arriagada will have two weekly visits with corrective services officers, attend counselling programs and stay at residential facilities for up to seven days when directed.

Last week, the former prison guard received a suspended two-and-a-half year jail term for trafficking in steroids at the Supreme Court in Brisbane.

Arriagada pleaded guilty to to supplying and trafficking a steroids at Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, where he worked as a guard, in November and December 2018.

He and two others sold 1,000 units of the bodybuilding drug to prisoners over a four-week period but made no profit.

The former prison guard also promoted steroid use while working at World Gym Ipswich but was fired after being charged in December 2018.

He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years' jail suspended for four years.
The United States Senate Thursday fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to override President Donald Trumps veto of a war powers resolution that purported to limit his authority to wage aggressive war against Iran.

Forty-nine senators voted against the veto and 44 to sustain it. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting to override the presidents actions. This was similar to the lineup in the February Senate vote to pass the resolution, when eight Republicans joined Democrats in supporting it.

While the legislation was passed by the Senate in February and the House in March, it took nearly two months to get to the White House because of the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the White House. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The legislation was introduced in the wake of the criminal January 3 drone missile assassination of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, one of Irans most senior leaders, shortly after he arrived at Baghdad international airport on a diplomatic mission to meet with then Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. A top leader of Iraqs Shia militia movement, part of the countrys armed forces, was also killed in the attack, along with several other Iranians and Iraqis.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended Trumps veto in remarks delivered on the Senate floor Thursday, calling the war powers resolution misguided and defending the assassination of the Iranian leader, We must maintain the measure of deterrence we restored with the decisive strike on Suleimani.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of the principal sponsors of the legislation, used his own remarks to insist that the measure was not part of a strategy to hurt President Trump. He added, Ive advocated these same positions as have other members of this body under presidents who were both Democratic and Republican.

For his part, Trump issued two statements, one a formal presidential veto message and the other a crudely political statement issued from the Pentagon in which he described the bill as a very insulting resolution, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on November 3 by dividing the Republican Party. He accused the eight Republicans who voted in favor of the measure of having played right into their hands.

He continued by insisting that the resolution was unnecessary, declaring that the US not engaged in the use of force against Iran. He indicated that the assassination of Suleimani in Iraq followed by Iranian missile strikes on US bases in Iraq, in which no American personnel were killed, had ended the matter. As for the assassination, he claimed it was fully authorized by law, including by the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 and Article II of the Constitution.

He criticized the war powers resolution for implying that the US presidents right to launch a war without congressional approval was limited to the defense of the United States and its military against imminent attack.

That is incorrect, he wrote. We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognizes that the President must be able to anticipate our adversaries next moves and take swift and decisive action in response.

In other words, he claimed that the US Constitution recognized the right of an American president to wage preventive, i.e., aggressive war, a war crime under international law. What precise language in the US Constitution authorizes such criminal actions, Trump did not say.

In the separate formal statement addressed to the Senate, Trump said that the resolution was unnecessary and dangerous, adding that its apparent aim was to prevent an escalation of conflict with Iran. Yet no such escalation has occurred over the past 4 months, contrary to the often dire and confident predictions of many, the statement said.

Trumps assertion of the essentially unrestricted right of the president to wage war when and how he pleases, regardless of constitutional limitations or popular sentiment, is hardly an innovation. His predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, asserted the same right in relation to the US-NATO war for regime change in Libya in 2011.

The latest resolution on Iran, which is founded upon the War Powers Resolution passed by Congress in 1973 after the US withdrawal from Vietnam and over the veto of then-President Richard Nixon, was largely toothless in terms of restraining presidential power.

It called for the US president to end armed conflict with Iran absent a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force approved by Congress. It included a provision, however, ensuring the president the power to carry out military action in the face of an imminent attack without such approval.

Given that the initial defense of the US assassination of Suleimani was based on the phony claim that it was designed to forestall just such an imminent attack, the resolution provided a deliberately designed escape clause to assure that unlimited power to launch military aggression would remain in the hands of the White House.

The Trump administration later backed off of the claim that the murder of Suleimani was aimed at preempting any imminent attack on US forces, acknowledging that the killing had been designed to curb Irans malign activity in the Middle East, i.e., its interference in Washingtons imposition of undisputed hegemony in the region. Suleimani was killed as he was attempting to negotiate an easing of tensions between Iran and the Saudi monarchy, thereby threatening the anti-Iranian axis built up around the Saudis and other Gulf oil sheikdoms along with Israel.

Just two days before Trumps veto of the Iran war powers resolution, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 387 members of the House of Representatives issued a letter to the US State Department calling for the use of robust diplomacy to force an extension of an arms embargo against Iran that is supposed to expire in October as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal concluded between Tehran and the major powers.

The lifting of sanctions against Iran was offered under the agreement in exchange for Tehran drastically curtailing its nuclear program. The Trump administration abrogated the agreement in May 2018 imposing a series of increasingly punishing unilateral sanctions under a maximum pressure campaign that is tantamount to a state of war.

While Washingtons thuggish secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, has threatened to invoke the snapback of previously existing UN sanctions in order to maintain the embargo, Washington has no standing to do so having broken the nuclear deal. It may pressure its erstwhile European allies to pursue a continued embargo, but it is virtually certain that China and Russia, both signatories to the agreement, would veto such a maneuver.

The bipartisan congressional group calling for increased US pressure against Iran is led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel of New York. Its action underscores the support of both the Democratic and Republican parties for the campaign of US aggression against Iran.

Washington has steadily tightened US economic sanctions against Iran under conditions in which the country has faced one of the highest mortality rates in the world from the coronavirus pandemic, with over 103,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday and nearly 6,500 deaths. The sanctions regime has prevented Tehran from importing essential medicine and medical supplies needed to fight the pandemic and provide adequate health care, leading to thousands of unnecessary and preventable deaths.

The deadly pandemic is seen by Washington as another useful weapon of war in its protracted campaign to force the Iranian people into submission and effect regime change in the oil-rich and geostrategically important country.
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Viineet Kumar Singh, Ahana Kumra and Suchitra Pillai are up against a cursed bunch of zombies from the British era in the new Netflix horror series, Betaal. The trailer of the show, produced by Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies, has some bone chilling moments that would surely pique the interest of a horror lover.

The premise of the show is, after a haunted Betaal mountain is excavated to re-open a tunnel, a cursed two-century-old East India Company Colonel and his battalion of blood-thirsty zombie redcoats are unleashed on the villagers and the CIPD (Counter Insurgency Police Department). "Hired to displace tribal villagers to make way for a new highway, officials unearth an old curse and an army of British soldier-zombies," reads Netflix's official synopsis.

Betaal has been created, directed and written by Patrick Graham, the maker of Ghoul. Graham said in a statement published by Gadgets 360, "After Ghoul, I wanted to create a different kind of horror series, which was more action packed and accessible. The concept of a cursed mountain containing an ancient spirit takes inspiration from Indian mythology, and it's about time we saw some zombie redcoats in popular fiction. The series weaves its own ghost story to give backing to the action and suspense that then follows."

Viineet Kumar is known for his lead role in Mukkabaaz and was last seen in Saand Ki Aankh. Ahana Kumra's most prominent role was in Lipstick Under My Burkha, while her most recent project was the Voot Select series Marzi. Suchitra Pillai was last seen in the Amazon Prime Video series Made in Heaven.

Betaal premieres May 24 on Netflix. Watch the trailer here:

Follow @News18Movies for more
The Dallas salon owner who was jailed for refusing to close her business during the coronavirus pandemic has described her two-day stint in lock-up as 'not pleasant' - but says she doesn't regret the decisions that landed her there.

Shelley Luther spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night, hours after she walked free from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after the Texas Supreme Court ordered her release.

The owner of Salon A La Mode was sentenced to seven days in jail on Tuesday for refusing to shut down her business in accordance with the state's stay-at-home orders.

District Judge Eric Moye, who handed down the sentence, had given Luther the option of avoiding jail if she apologized for what he described as her 'selfish' behavior, paid a fine and kept her doors closed until salon restrictions were lifted.

But Luther didn't agree to those terms, and on Thursday she told Hannity she stands by that decision.

'That was the last thing I was going to do, honestly,' she said. 'I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to apologize.'

Scroll down for video

Shelley Luther, the Dallas salon owner who was jailed for refusing to close her business during the coronavirus pandemic, described her two-day stint in lock-up as 'not pleasant' in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night

The interview came hours after Luther walked free from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after the Texas Supreme Court ordered her release

Luther said the two days she spent in jail were 'not pleasant' - in part because she was lonely in her cell.

'The worst thing was that I didn't get to call anybody when I got there, the whole first night,' she said.

'And that's kind of scary, because I have a daughter that just turned 17 at home, and if my boyfriend wasn't there to tell, you know, to talk to her or anything, I would not have come home and she would not have known where I was.'

Luther, the owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced to seven days in jail on Tuesday for refusing to shut down her business in accordance with the state's stay-at-home orders. She is pictured in her mugshot

Luther complied with the shutdown orders when they were first handed down on March 22, but after weeks of seeing them extended again and again, she grew frustrated.

'The Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, kept pushing back the date of when we would open weeks out in advance, before we would hear any new comings of what was going on with masks or whatever,' she said.

'When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said: "I have to open, my stylists are calling me, they're not making their mortgage. I'm two months behind on my mortgage."

'My stylists were telling me that they wanted [to go] underground and go to people's houses,' she continued. 'I just said: "You know, that's not a good idea because we can't control the environment there. We don't know if it's been disinfected or anything like that," and I just decided I would open.'

On April 24 Luther reopened her salon in defiance of the stay-at-home order. She insisted that the salon instituted strict sanitation and social distancing measures at the time.

She said the stylists tried use gloves at first, but found that they couldn't work with them on.

'But,' she said, 'we made sure that I had no clients waiting inside the salon at all. I had chairs six feet apart outside of the salon, and when the stylist was ready and wearing a mask - we didn't let any clients come in without a mask -- they instantly sanitized their hands, the hairstylist sanitized their hands. They came in, they did the cut and that person left.'

Luther pictured being issued a citation by Dallas City officials on April 24

She received multiple citations for opening her business against the state orders - including a cease and desist letter from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins on April 24.

The following day at an Open Texas rally to reopen businesses in Frisco, Texas, she was seen ripping the letter into pieces before a cheering crowd.

She then received a court-issued temporary restraining order on April 28 mandating she close her business.

Luther continued to defy the court orders and shared a Facebook Live video last week saying she intended to remain fully open and that it was her right to.

'I'm still here, I'm standing for your rights and Salon A La Mode is open for business,' she said.

Luther argued that her business needs to be open because her hairstylists need to work to provide for their families.

She also said her salon is a safe and clean environment that doesn't pose a threat in spreading COVID-19.

Judge Moye found Luther in criminal and civil contempt of court and offered her the opportunity to avoid jail if she apologized for 'being selfish'.

She refused to admit that she did anything wrong, telling the judge: 'I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I am selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they'd rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids being fed, then please go ahead with your decision. But I'm not going to shut the salon.'

'The defiance of the court's order was open, flagrant and intentional,' Moye wrote in his decision.

'The defendants, although having been given an opportunity to do so, have expressed no contrition, remorse or regret for their contemptuous action.'

Luther is seen speaking at the Open Texas rally in Frisco on April 25. During the rally she ripped up the citation the state issued her for opening her salon

Luther's case has become a symbol for the divide ravaging America as protesters defy stay-at-home orders to march on capitol buildings demanding an end to lockdowns, which they say quashes their liberty and irreparably damages businesses, jobs and the economy.

Shelley Luther vs Texas's stay-at-home order April 24 - Shelley Luther defies Texas stay-at-home order and reopens Salon A La Mode. She is given a cease and desist letter from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. April 25 - Luther attends an Open Texas protest in Frisco and is seen ripping the judge's letter into pieces before a cheering crowd. April 25 - Luther receives a court-issued temporary restraining order mandating she close her business. May 5 - Luther appears in court where she is sentenced to seven days behind bars for repeatedly defying stay-at-home restrictions and court orders to shutter her business. May 6 - Senior state officials including Gov. Abbott call for her release and protesters gather outside the Dallas Municipal Court building Wednesday. May 7 - Gov. Abbott amends his executive order removing confinement as a punishment for non-compliance. Texas Supreme Court then orders Luther's release. Luther walks free from prison to crowds of supporters. Advertisement

The move to put her behind bars sparked an outcry from senior state officials and anti-lockdown protesters who demanded that she be freed.

It took the Supreme Court wading into the matter for that to happen.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott amended his executive order Thursday morning, removing the possibility for citizens to be imprisoned for violating stay-at-home orders.

His amendment applied to sentencing backdated to April 2.

There have been at least 36,000 cases of coronavirus in Texas and 985 deaths.

The governor had slammed State District Judge Eric Moye's decision to imprison Luther and joined calls for her to be released.

'Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,' he said in a statement Thursday morning.

'That is why I am modifying my executive orders to ensure confinement is not a punishment for violating an order.'

Abbott named the salon owner in the announcement saying his order 'supersedes local orders and if correctly applied should free Shelley Luther.'

Luther walked out of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center to a hero's welcome from crowds of supporters who had gathered demanding her release.

Crowds cheered 'Shelley's free!' and clapped as she stepped out of the jail, with many waving banners and holding balloons.

The emotional salon owner choked back tears as she thanked the crowds and said she was 'overwhelmed' by their support.

Luther walks out of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center on Thursday above

Luther teared up as she was given a hero's welcome when she emerged from jail on Thursday

The emotional salon owner hugged supporters gathered outside the jail where she has been serving her sentence in isolation and protective custody for the last two days
JOHANNESBURG  The dealer had a stash, but the young woman wasnt getting through the door without an introduction. Thats where her friend, already a trusted customer, came in. And even then there were complications.

The woman wanted Stuyvesants. The dealer had Courtleighs. But in a South Africa where the sale of cigarettes is newly illegal, quibblers risk nicotine fits.

She took the Courtleighs and high-tailed it out of there.

I feel like Im buying cocaine, said the woman, 29, who asked not to be named for fear of being fined or arrested.

In late March, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, the South African government banned the sale of tobacco and alcohol as part of a broad lockdown  one of the most strict anywhere. But even as the government has begun rolling back the lockdown, the bans remain in effect.
The Future Fund has promoted chief investment officer Raphael Arndt to the top job after David Neal resigned as chief executive in February to join fund manager IFM Investors.

Dr Arndt has held the role of chief investment officer at the $162 billion sovereign wealth fund since September 2014. He has previously served as investment director with Hastings Funds Management and has also held infrastructure policy positions with both the private sector and the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance.

In a statement, the University of Melbourne scholar said he was honoured to be appointed as chief executive.

"Investing for the benefit of future generations of Australians, the way we strengthen the governments long-term financial position and the support our investment activity provides to areas such as medical research have never been more important," Dr Arndt said.

The Future Fund was established in 2006 to manage funds on behalf of the federal government. Chairman Peter Costello praised the new appointment that had been decided after a global search.
Two persons were killed when the car they were travelling in rammed into an electric pole in Haryana's Hisar district, police said on Friday.

The deceased were identified as Sunny (21) from Hisar's Haibatpur village, and Bhim Singh alias Bholu (25) from Barah village of Jind district, they said.

Sunny and Singh were returning from Sirsa district on Thursday when their car rammed into an electric pole near Khedi Chopta village, about 45 km from here on Hisar-Jind road in Narnaund sub-division, the police said.

The two friends died on the spot, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will start lending in the hryvnia to Ukrainian entrepreneurs affected by quarantine restrictions, which was made possible thanks to the signing of an agreement between the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the EBRD on a swap of $500 million, according to the website of the Ministry of Finance.

"The agreement was concluded for two years with the possibility of prolongation. The minimum tranche amount under the agreement is $25 million, and the minimum tranche term is up to three months with the possibility of rollover," the statement said.

It is specified that the resources will be aimed at supporting liquidity, replenishing working capital and financing trade operations of Ukrainian enterprises affected by quarantine restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Businesses will get loans from the EBRD in hryvnias, thus they will not bear risks associated with currency exchange. At the same time, the NBU's buying currency from the EBRD on a swap basis will contribute to the growth of Ukraine's international reserves, which will enhance macro-financial stability and will also have a positive effect on the mood of market participants," the ministry said.

As reported, the parties plan that the first transaction in the framework of this swap will be carried out in the coming weeks.
Last year, Google launched an augmented reality feature within Search that lets you put virtual animals in the real world. Now, its adding more 3D objects you can view right from your Search results page on mobile, including Neil Armstrongs spacesuit and interactive anatomy models that can help you visualize the human body.

The tech giant has teamed up with interactive 3D software platform Biodigital to give you a way to view life-size interactive representations of 11 human body systems in your own space. These arent your typical flat textbook illustrations and can show you how the human heart pumps blood or how your bones all connect. Simply search for the body system you want  say, the circulatory system  scroll down to find its 3D model card and click View in 3D.

Google

Google has joined forces with Visible Body to create 3D models of animal, plant and bacteria cells, as well. Youll be able to zoom in on the cells organelles, making it much easier to get acquainted with them if youre studying for a test or if youre simply curious.

The tech giant is also giving you a way to turn your house into a virtual museum and perhaps provide you with a virtual escape during a time when you have to stay at home. You can search for Neil Armstrong to get a 3D view of his spacesuit or for Apollo 11 to see its command module in augmented reality. If youd rather get a close look at some of the oldest known cave paintings, though, just do a search for Chauvet Cave.

Finally, Google is rolling out the ability to record AR videos for Android devices. That makes them easier to share with friends and family, especially since you may not be able show them the 3D objects in person.
Every Friday, Fort Bend County Precinct 2 Constable Daryl L. Smith Sr., a group of Precinct 2 Constable Deputies and Houston Food Bank volunteers gather to hand out fresh vegetables and packages of food during weekly drive-through food distribution events held over the last two months in Missouri City. Each event draws between 450 and 500 cars.

Fort Bend County and Missouri City have been hit hard by COVID-19 and we continue to tell the residents of Fort Bend County Precinct 2 and Missouri City to continue practicing social distancing, to practice good hand washing habits and stay inside and away from crowds as much as possible, Fort Bend County Constable Daryl Smith Sr. said. In addition to food distribution events, community volunteers partnered recently with Smith and his team of deputies to host a pet food distribution drive for the community.
An Air India aircraft carrying 230 Indians from Singapore landed at Delhis Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) on Friday morning, the first flight to land in the city as part of the Union governments ambitious Vande Bharat repatriation programme. A second flight from Dhaka in Bangladesh, earlier scheduled to land in Delhi on Friday as well, was re-routed to Srinagar as all passengers on-board were from Jammu & Kashmir.

While passengers who landed in Delhi said it took most of them only around 30 minutes to complete their medical screening, immigration check, collect luggage and clear customs at the airport, some complained of long waiting hours, and said there was no social distancing on board the flight.

After completing their checks at the airport, passengers were sent to hotels around the city for mandatory 14-day quarantine.

A Delhi resident, whose 74-year-old father-in-law and friends 68-year-old father were travelling, said the two left the airport only around 4pm, even though the flight landed around noon.

Their flight had landed before 12pm, but there was a long waiting time. My father-in-law has blood pressure problems and my friends father is diabetic. They had left Singapore at 8am. They said they were only offered a packet of biscuits, some chocolate and juice, a bun and some fruit during the flight. But nothing was given after the flight, even though by the time they reached the hotel, it was almost 6pm, said the woman, who wished not to be named.

She said after arriving in Delhi, the two men were put in separate groups, based on their home states. Since both of them are old, we wanted them to stay together but one of them is from West Bengal and the other from Uttar Pradesh, and based on this they were sent to different hotels, in Dwarka and Noida, she said.

Some passengers also took to social media. One of them tweeted to the government of Rajasthan requesting deputation of an executive from the state at the airport. The passenger said that while there were representatives of other states, there was none from Rajasthan. He requested arrangements for him to be sent to Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

However, according to special secretary (health and family welfare), Shilpa Shinde, who is also the nodal officer for the operation, the entire process went smoothly.

The passengers did not have to wait for long hours to get through the entire process. It all went smoothly. From the airport, they are being ferried in government buses to the paid quarantine facilities, she said.

Shinde added that the passengers were given an option to choose from a set of hotels, which have been roped in to set up quarantine facilities.

An airport official, wishing not to be identified, said it took them not more than 25 to 35 minutes per person on an average for screening the passengers, escorting them to dedicated immigration counters for clearance, helping them collect their luggage and then reaching the triage area passing through the customs.

At the triage area at the airport, the director-general of health services (DGHS) had deputed as many as 20 health teams, comprising doctors and paramedical staff, to conduct screening of all passengers.

The CISF, which led the escort team, had also made additional deployment to streamline and expedite the process, officials said, on condition of anonymity.

Senior officials involved in the movement of the passengers, requesting anonymity, said that most of them were taken to hotel IBIS and hotel Red Fox in Aerocity. Some opted for Le Meridian in Central Delhi.

We have received around 15 people so far and have readied dedicated floors for them with separate entries. The rooms have been kept minimal so that the dedicated housekeeping team does not have to visit them frequently, said Meena Bhatia, general manager of the Le Meridian. When it comes to food, Bhatia said the hotel has kept the menu close to home cooked food.

Since they have been away from home for a long time, we are starting with fresh, homely meals for them which will be served in disposable boxes in their rooms. Because of the lockdown, we are working with limited services. To ensure our guests are comfortable, we are keeping in touch with them on WhatsApp. If they need anything, they alert us on WhatsApp, she said.

About 200 rooms at the Le Meridian hotel, 200 at Sheraton and 250 at Vivanta by Taj in Dwarka, have been reserved for the purpose, besides rooms at Red Fox and IBIS in Aerocity, Welcome Hotel by ITC and Red Fox in Mayur Vihar Phase 1. Rooms are being offered for prices between Rs 2,000 plus taxes and Rs 4,800 plus taxes, depending on the overall rating of the hotel and the choice of room (single or double bed).

Sylvain Laroche, director of operation, Ibis & Ibis styles India said, the team at ibis hotel in Aerocity received 34 guests for quarantining on Friday.

While we continue to maintain the same structure with separate entry & exits paths, food served in takeaway boxes and delivered outside their rooms, we are also implementing new ideas like sharing the menu on their TV screens with no physical contact. As done in the past, the hotel team will be in touch with the guests via calls to check on them and ensure that their stay is made as comfortable as possible, Laroche said.

We will be serving Indian/Chinese/Western vegetarian meals. In case there are any requests from these guests, we will look into it, he said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping bid farewell at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang after the latter's visit to North Korea in this June 2019 photo. / Korea Times file



By Kang Seung-woo



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's verbal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping praising Beijing's COVID-19 success was aimed at revitalizing the virus-dented bilateral economic ties, experts said, Friday.



According to Pyongyang's state-run news organization Korean Central News Agency, Friday, Kim "congratulated Xi, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic."



"Kim wished Xi Jinping good health, expressing conviction that the Chinese Communist Party and people would cement the success made so far and steadily expand it and thus win a final victory under the wise guidance of Xi," it added. However, it did not specify when and how the message has been delivered to the Chinese leader.



The report came as the coronavirus pandemic has devastated the North's economy mainly due to its border closure with China, which is the country's chief  or almost only  ally and economic lifeline, according to the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS). Bilateral trade with China accounts for about 95 percent of the North's total trade value.



In the wake of COVID-19, the North Korean regime sealed off its border in January.



"For the North, reviving the economy is the most pressing and important matter, and without economic cooperation with China, the North Korean regime cannot exist," said Park Won-gon, a professor of international politics at Handong Global University.



"All things considered, the North intends to break through the economic woes by normalizing the bilateral economic cooperation. In that respect, Kim sent the message to Xi."






An employee at a Brampton-based meat plant has died after contracting coronavirus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers.

UFCW Locals 175 and 633, which represents more than 70,000 workers across Ontario, confirmed an employee from the Maple Lodge Farms chicken processing plant has died. The union was notified of the death on Thursday.

To date, 25 employees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to both the union and the company.

Our thoughts are with the family at this difficult time, as well as with the other members at the plant who are also dealing with their own COVID-19 diagnoses, Local 175 president Shawn Haggerty said in a statement released by the union.

Maple Lodge Farms confirmed the death in a statement on its website. The company said it has been in touch with the deceaseds family to offer its deepest condolences.

We are also dedicated to providing the support and reassurance to help our employees through this incredibly difficult time, Maple Lodge said in its statement.

Through discussions between the company, the union said several safety measures have been put in place, including the use of personal protective equipment, staggering breaks and shifts, enhanced cleaning for all areas of the plant and provisions for staff to travel to and from the plant in a secure fashion.

Our members are performing essential work to keep Canadians fed, healthy and safe, Haggerty said.

The union is committed to ensuring that they are able to do that work in an environment that is as safe as possible and will take any reasonable action to protect them. Maintaining the food supply chain is important but it shouldnt come at the cost of workers health.

As of Thursday, Peel Public Health has reported 165 deaths across the region due to coronavirus, including 93 deaths in institutions.

There have been 2,864 total cases in Peel. The region said 286 people have recovered.

With files from Karen Martin-Robbins

May 8, 2020  Update: This story has been updated from a previous version to report that a worker has died.

icolpitts@mississauga.net Iain Colpitts is a reporter with The Mississauga News. He can be reached at

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The Delhi government is working on setting up a web pageand deliberating on creating a mobile phone applicationto enable the home delivery of liquor in the Capital, as a measure to reduce the massive crowds outside the limited number of open liquor shops. With the scaling down of the lockdown measures earlier this week, people started thronging the few liquor shops open for business.

We are drafting a standard operating protocol. So far, the excise department has had three meetings on this with the chief secretary and at least one with the finance minister (Manish Sisodia), a senior government official said on Friday.

Another senior government official said, The weblink is in progress but the app will need several technological changes. So, we require more time. The process would need to include a tie-up with a reliable payment gateway as well. The government has plans to launch the link by Monday.

On Friday, the Supreme Court observed that states should consider the indirect sale of liquor, either online or through the home delivery mechanism to ensure social distancing norms are not violated. So far, several states including Punjab, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, have initiated the process of enabling the home delivery of liquor.

Currently, the guidelines of the Union home ministry state that the e-commerce delivery of goods is limited to essentials (which does not include liquor) in red zones (all 11 districts of Delhi are red zones). Also, the Delhi Excise Act 2009 prohibits the buying and selling of liquor online.

However, a temporary provision can still be made under the ambit of other laws, such as the Disaster Management Act, the official said.

On Friday, the Delhi government also rolled out a web link with which it started issuing e-tokens, specifying the stores and timings, for residents to avoid crowds outside the shops and pick up liquor during allotted time slots.

Any person can apply for an e-token through the link https://www.qtoken.in/. His/her name and phone number will be required while applying. The e-coupon will be sent to the registered mobile number. With that e-token, the person will be allowed to buy liquor from the nearby shop, a statement issued by the government read.

Getting the tokens via the web link on Saturday, however, was a distant dream for most people with the page constantly reporting a server error. There were problems in the back-end too, due to which, a senior government official said, the excise department could not summarise the data on the total number of e-coupons issued on the first day.

Government officials maintained that it was because of too much traffic on the page and the issue would be resolved at the earliest. Excise commissioner Ravi Dhawan did not respond to phone calls and messages for comment on the issue.

Delhi has 864 liquor shops, of which only 172 have received permission to open so far, as they are stand-alone shopswhich means they are not located in markets, malls and commercial spaces, which the central government guidelines prohibit for red zone districts.

The government is open to the idea of allowing private liquor shops to operate too, but a survey by the municipal corporations showed that only 30 of them across the city qualify as stand-alone shops.
Eugene Block, 90, of Center City, a former leader of Rosenbluth Travel, died Monday, May 4, of complications from Alzheimers disease at his home.

Mr. Block joined the Rosenbluth familys travel business, then called Rosenbluth Bros. Travel Agency, in Philadelphia in 1959. In 1965, the firm got its first big corporate account, GE Aerospace.

In 1967, Rosenbluth Travel Inc. was created as a successor to Rosenbluth Bros. The firm purchased 1515 Walnut St. and moved its operation there. At that time, Mr. Block was a partner along with Joseph W. Rosenbluth and Harold Rosenbluth. Joseph was the brother of Mr. Blocks wife, Cecilie Rosenbluth Block, and Harold was her cousin.

Joseph Rosenbluth died in an airplane crash on March 5, 1968. Afterward, Mr. Block and Harold Rosenbluth served as co-chairmen until 2003, when Rosenbluth International Inc.  by that time the company name  was sold to American Express. Harold Rosenbluth died in 2016.

The travel agency was founded in 1892 by Marcus Rosenbluth to help Eastern European immigrants purchase steamship tickets to the United States. In 1980, the business was one of the 10 largest travel companies in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In a 1997 article, the New York Times said the key to Rosenbluths steady growth was cornering the lucrative market on corporate travel.

Mr. Block was instrumental in attracting some of Rosenbluths early corporate accounts, including Univac, ARCO, and Campbell Soup Co.

In 1979, Mr. Block opened talks with Bethlehem Steel about becoming a Rosenbluth client. He arranged a consulting deal at a nominal fee to establish a relationship.

Several months later, Mr. Block said to the steel companys travel manager: My mother always advised me to find out someones true intentions. Are we just dating, or is this going somewhere? Rosenbluth got the account, according to Mr. Blocks son, Charles X. Block.

During his time at Rosenbluth, Mr. Block invested in real estate, including student housing in University City. His real estate assets served as collateral for bank loans that funded Rosenbluths expansion and the creation of its first large travel reservation center, in what is now the Parc Rittenhouse.

As Rosenbluth expanded, it outgrew several headquarters. In 1993, Mr. Block spearheaded the purchase of 2401 Walnut St., which served as Rosenbluths headquarters from 1994 until the sale of the company.

Born in Tamaqua, Pa., Mr. Block graduated from Tamaqua High School. He worked at his fathers mens clothing store as a teenager and during breaks from classes at Temple University. He graduated in 1951 with a degree in business.

During the Korean War, he served in the Marine Corps and was stationed at the Opa-locka Marine Air Base in Florida. From 1953 to 1958, he returned to Tamaqua to work in the clothing store.

Six weeks after he met Cecilie Rosenbluth, the two eloped. They married in 1958 and settled in Merion.

The Blocks traveled widely, especially early in their marriage. They enjoyed cruising and crossed the Atlantic many times on the France, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr. Block and his wife moved to Center City in 1983 and became fixtures on Rittenhouse Square. They were supporters of the Friends of Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and Scheie Eye Institute. He served on the board of trustees of Friends Select School and Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

It was impossible to walk through Center City with my parents without running into some of their friends, his son said. My father was sharp-witted, kind, had a great sense of humor, and was a wonderful storyteller. He impacted the lives of so many people. He will be greatly missed.

The Blocks vacationed on Long Beach Island, where Mr. Block kept a small rowboat. One of his greatest pleasures was rowing around the bay.

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Block is survived by three grandchildren and a brother.

Services were Wednesday, May 6.

Donations may be made to the Penn Memory Center. Checks payable to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania may be sent to Liz Yannes, 3535 Market St., Suite 750, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104. Write Penn Memory Center on the memo line.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Maintaining that a decision on reopening schools will be taken after the lockdown is lifted, Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar suggested pruning of the curriculum in the event of a possible shorter academic calendar.

In a circular to the principal secretary and other senior officials of the department, Kumar said the coronavirus pandemic may impact the new academic calendar and there could be fewer working days. He asked the officials to mark out excess curriculum in textbooks for classes 1-10 and PUC which can be dropped if need be. He, however, stressed on retaining the essentials in the textbooks.

Estimating a time loss of 15 days to two months, identify the parts of the textbooks that need to be dropped, he said in the circular. The minister also sought an action plan for a module on Covid-19 for schoolchildren and a booklet on it to be distributed among them.

Asking for an action plan on measures to ensure social distancing in day to day activities in schools, he underlined the need for a training for teachers to instil confidence among students and parents against the backdrop of the pandemic.

The department plans to rope in distinguished teachers to contribute content to its Youtube channel Makkalavahini for classes 1-10 both in English and Kannada mediums. Officials are instructed to announce the timetable for the (Teacher Eligibility Test) TET immediately after the schedule for the SSLC examinations is announced.
A 40-year-old man who had returned from Gujarats Surat and showed symptoms of Covid-19, died in a quarantine centre in Odishas Ganjam district on Friday.

The deceased, a resident of Madhupali village under Polasara police station area of district, had returned from Surat in a special Shramik Special train on May 6. He was kept in a quarantine centre at Dhunkapada grampanchayat since May 6 evening.

Officials in Odishas Ganjam said the man died at around 2.30 pm when he was about to have his lunch at the quarantine centre. He was complaining of fever, nausea and persistent cough and taking medicine. Sources said though an ambulance was called, it did not come.

The mans swab samples were not taken before his death, sources said.

Police officials from Polasara police station reached the spot and took the body to the hospital.

Ganjam has registered 71 cases, the highest number of Covid-19 positive cases in the state. The state has so far reported 270 positive cases, most of them with travel history from Surat, a Covid hotspot. So far there have been 2 covid cases in Odisha.
The architect who designed Portlands fabled Pittock Mansion, which cost $2 million in 1914 dollars, grew up in a charming Queen Anne in the citys Lair Hill neighborhood. That more humble property is for sale at $475,000 in todays dollars.

Edward Thomas Foulkes, who was born in Oregon in 1874 and studied at the worlds finest architectural universities, was responsible for creating stellar city landmarks, exposition pavilions, hotels, banks and grand residences over his long career.

His father, Robert Foulkes, was a typesetter for The Oregonian newspaper, but that wasnt the reason publisher Henry L. Pittock and his equally influential wife, Georgiana, hired Edward Foulkes more than a century ago to design their trophy residence: A 16,000-square-foot French Renaissance Revival-style chateau on a bluff overlooking the emerging downtown.

Edward Foulkes had serious international credentials. He attended Stanford University and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He worked at architectural firms in Boston and New York before accepting a prestigious scholarship to attend Paris esteemed Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1903.

He then travel for two years across the U.K., Europe, Near East and Far East to study classic architecture.

Foulkes established firms in three cities -- Portland, San Francisco and Fresno, California -- and received acclaim for his plans for the 22-room Pittock Mansion (take a virtual tour of the city-owned estate while its temporarily closed during the coronavirus pandemic).

The classically trained architect also designed, with partner Chester Hogue, the 1913 Colonial Revival residence for Dr. Ammi S. Nichols in Portland Heights, which, like the Pittock Mansion, earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Before leaving to attend Stanford University, Foulkes lived in the Lair Hill area of South Portland, which turned out to be a prime investment area in the late 1800s, as immigrants poured into the area from southern and Eastern Europe.

Over time, the old railroad line morphed into Southwest Barbur Boulevard and the sweeping Ross Island Bridge ramp grabbed up a large swath of land.

The Lair Hill neighborhood, at the base of Marquam Hill south of downtown, is near Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU)s Marquam Hill campus, the Gibbs Street Foot Bridge and the South Waterfront neighborhood.

Architectural historian Eric Wheeler of Positively-Portland-Walking-Tours compares Lair Hill to New Yorks Greenwich Village. Its serendipity [Lair Hill] was saved," he underscores. "It was slated for demolition.

When bulldozers were plowing down buildings for mid-20th century urban renewal projects, neighborhood residents took a stand and made the city redirect its ambitions. The 17-acre Lair Hill neighborhood was declared a City of Portland Conservation District in 1977.

The residents preserved not only their homes, stores and a settlement house, but the stories of the original newcomers, who crossed an ocean to join the citys prosperity during an economic boom in the late 1800s, which would be repeated after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.

Lair Hill was named after William Lair Hill, a pioneer attorney, historian and editor of The Oregonian who briefly owned property in the area.

The 1892 Victorian house in which Foulkes lived, according to National Register documents, is recognized as a fine example of a Queen Anne in the Stick/Eastlake style and is significant as part of the larger grouping of residential development that occurred in the South Portland area.

His former home at 14 S.W. Whitaker St. is called the Laura Foulkes House #1. Laura was Edward Foulkes mother, who immigrated from Wales in 1873 with his father, Robert Foulkes. The family first lived in Monmouth, where Edward, one of six children, was born.

The Laura Foulkes House #2 is next door at 16 S.W. Whitaker St. The lookalike Queen Anne was also built in 1892. The turquoise-painted Victorian is the office Allison Smith Design, and the longtime owners believe this was Edward Foulkes childhood home.

It was love at first sight, says Allison Smith. As a true Victorian enthusiast, my husband and I bought this amazing Victorian 20 years ago. We slowly updated, making sure that we did not modernize it. We wanted it to feel homey, and also keep its architectural timelessness. We had our interior design business in the basement, but as the business expanded, we needed more room. My family moved to another home and we now use this original, beautiful Victorian as our design studio.

On the corner at 3405 S.W. Naito Pkwy. is a Queen Anne called the Robert Foulkes House, which was built in 1890, two years before the twin houses. The larger house, painted pink, shares features of the other two: It is a two-and-one-half story, wood-frame structure with a daylight basement and bay windows, topped by a hip roof.

Rumor is the pink house on the corner was the parents home and they built the twin houses for their daughters, says Kristine Scott of Premiere Property Group, who listed the property at 14 S.W. Whitaker St.

Wheeler says census records would confirm who lived where and when in the various Foulkes houses.

But the main point is Foulkes lived in Portland as a youth, attended public school and went on to have a brilliant career as an architect in California and designed Portlands most celebrated mansion. Good enough, says Wheeler.

Edward Foulkes must have been influenced by his parents building three houses in close proximity in booming South Portland in the 1890s.

The twin Foulkes homes have the classic features of Queen Anne architecture: Bay windows, narrow horizontal siding and ornamental woodwork. The covered front porches and second-floor balconies have ornately decorated cutouts. Also dressing up the structure are elaborate posts, spindle work and fish-scale shingles.

The Queen Anne house for sale at 14 S.W. Whitaker St. sits on a 1,301-square-foot lot.

The home has fir floors and white walls, with thick molding, that rise to 10-foot ceilings. Original features also include wood window frames holding wavy glass and six-panel, wood interior doors with solid brass, vine-patterned hinges and brass doorknobs.

The updated kitchen has new appliances, lighting and fixtures. There are three bedrooms,1.5 bathrooms and 2,055 square feet of living space.

The attic and lower level could potentially become separate living quarters or live-work space, says Scott.

Annual property taxes are $5,010.

--Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories

Want to search Oregon real estate listings and use local resources? Click here.
(Newser)  After an Indianapolis man was killed by police on a livestream being watched by his family, a detective joked, "Think its going to be a closed casket, homie," apparently referring to Dreasjon Reed's funeral. The New York Times reports that detail in a larger piece on an 8-hour stretch in the city that saw three people killed by copstwo of them shot, and the third a pregnant woman who was hit by a police car. Protesters started gathering hours after Reed, 21, was shot and killed Wednesday night in the first of the three encounters; police say he was running from cops after a chase that started after officers saw him nearly strike several cars while driving recklessly, and that he exchanged gunfire with the officers. But activists are wary of that version of events, and some are calling for charges against the officer who shot Reed.

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The livestream, which Reed himself was streaming on Facebook Live, also captures that officer showing what the police chief says is "remorse, sadness, frustration and anguish" after shooting Reed, repeatedly crying out, "Oh my God" along with a number of expletives. Police say shots were fired after a Taser was "ineffective," USA Today reports. The next death came shortly thereafter Wednesday night, when 23-year-old Ashlynn Lisby was hit and killed, along with her unborn child, by an officer driving to work; police say she was in a lane of traffic on a highway on-ramp. Overnight, four police officers who went to investigate a burglary report at an apartment were confronted by a man holding a rifle, who fired at them. They returned fire and the 19-year-old was killed; it's not yet clear if he lured officers to the scene to ambush them or whether the incident had anything to do with Reed's shooting hours earlier. (Read more Indianapolis stories.)
Officers fatally shot two men and killed a pregnant pedestrian in three separate incidents just hours apart.

Indianapolis police faced protests on Thursday after officers fatally shot two men and killed a pregnant pedestrian in three separate incidents just hours apart.

Police did not have footage of either shooting from body cameras or dash cameras, but they said the two men exchanged gunfire with officers. The pregnant woman was walking along an expressway ramp when an officer driving to work struck her with his vehicle.

Events surrounding the first shooting were livestreamed on Facebook, including comments by a responding detective that the police chief called unacceptable.

Protesters converged on the first shooting scene on Wednesday night, and dozens more gathered Thursday at the City-County Building in downtown Indianapolis. Many wore face masks aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus and at times shouted, No justice, no peace.

Chief Randal Taylor of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) acknowledged that the tragic incidents had shaken the publics trust, but promised that the department would conduct thorough, transparent investigations into all three deaths.

We recognise and are saddened that this mutual trust, that we so value, has been eroded over the last 24 hours, but I remain steadfast in our commitment to be transparent with our community, not just today but throughout the entire process as we learn more about what happened last night, he said during a news conference.

The Marion County Coroners Office identified the man killed in the first shooting as Dreasjon Reed, 21, and the man killed later as McHale Rose, 19. Both men were African American.

The pregnant woman was identified as Ashlynn Lisby, 23. Lisby was white. Her fetus also did not survive.

Protests began after video of the events leading up to Reeds shooting appeared on Facebook. The video shows him being pursued by police before incoherent shouting and popping sounds are heard during a later foot chase. Later, a male voice says, I think its going to be a closed casket, homie, an apparent reference to a closed-casket funeral.

Montee Harris listening during a protest outside of the City-County Building in Indianapolis, Indiana, the US [Darron Cummings/AP Photo] [Daylife]

Taylor said Thursday that he was aware of inappropriate comments made by an IMPD detective that was broadcast live on social media during the incident. He said immediate disciplinary action would be pursued against the detective, who was responding to the shooting and was not present when it happened.

Reeds father, Jamie Reed, said hes seen the video of his son and was crushed by its contents.

It just shows me that were not really being protected and served. Were being hunted, he told reporters at Thursdays protest. My son was a great son. I love him to death. He was just a typical young adult like anybody else. He didnt deserve to die like that.

Relatives said Reed, whose nickname was Sean, had recently left the US Air Force. Military records show he served less than a year, in 2017. Details of separations cannot be released under privacy rules.

Reeds shooting happened around 6pm (22:00 GMT) Wednesday after a pursuit that began when officers, including Taylor, observed someone driving recklessly on Interstate 65, police said. The car chase and a subsequent foot chase were both captured on video, apparently by Reed.

Sean Reed was killed by Indianapolis PD. He was on Facebook Live and kept streaming after they shot him. You can hear officers mocking him as he lay dead: Looks like its gonna be a closed casket, homie! A detective then ends the stream while trying to hide his face. #seanreed pic.twitter.com/WviP3dmwCm  Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) May 7, 2020

At one point after police stop pursuing him, Reed is heard laughing and cheering. Im not going to jail today! he shouts.

Moments later, he appears unsure where he has driven and says in the recording, Please come get me. Please come get me!

Supervisors ordered an end to that pursuit because the vehicle was going nearly 145 kph (90 mph). An officer later spotted the car on a city street being parked and then chased Reed on foot, said IMPD Assistant Police Chief Chris Bailey.

On video, shouting and popping sounds are heard, then Reed appears to drop his phone or collapse. More popping sounds are heard.

According to police, the officer first tried to use a stun gun, then shot Reed as they exchanged gunfire. Bailey said it appears that a gun found near Reed had been fired at least twice.

Protestors at Noon, outside of the City-County Building demanding action in the shooting death of Dreasjon Reed. pic.twitter.com/m28QykWMcA  Darius Johnson (@DariusJohnsonTV) May 7, 2020

The officer who shot Reed is African American, The Indianapolis Star reported, and he has been placed on administrative leave.

The second shooting happened about eight hours later, as police investigated a burglary at an apartment complex. Police said a man armed with a rifle shot at four officers as they approached the apartment about 1:30am (05:30 GMT) Thursday. Police said officers returned fire, killing the man, later identified as Rose.

Taylor said the initial investigation suggests that Rose may have made the call with the intention of initiating an ambush-style attack on the officers when they arrived. He did not rule out the possibility that Reeds earlier fatal police shooting may have spurred Roses actions, but said there was no evidence to confirm that.

Between those two shootings, Officer Jonathon Henderson, a 22-year veteran, struck Lisby with his vehicle. Police said Henderson requested help and rendered first aid to the woman. Lisby was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The Greater Indianapolis NAACP said in a statement Thursday that it was monitoring information about both fatal police shootings.

All of us are trying to make a new normal in an un-normal time. Incidents like these do not help restore normalcy to our community, said Chrystal Ratcliffe, president of the NAACP branch.
Key Queensland Electoral Commission staff will be grilled at Parliament House on Monday about the time it took results to be published following the March 28 local government elections.

Technical problems also slowed the display of the vote count at the two state government byelections in Bundamba and Currumbin, which were held the same day.

Five key members of the QEC are due to give evidence to the public hearing of Queensland's Parliament's Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee on Monday.

Voters head to a polling booth in Ipswich. Credit:Darren England/AAP

Giving evidence will be Electoral Commissioner Pat Vidgen, Assistant Electoral Commissioner Wade Lewis, Election Event Management Executive Director Julie Cavanagh, Digital Technologies Executive Director Gary Whitelaw and Strategy, Policy and Governance Director Cecelia Nuttall.
A line of aircraft awaiting take-off.

Jingying Zhao/Getty Images

Flying on an airliner is different in every country as each has its own rules when it comes to aviation.

Each country can decide differently on how flights within its airspace and on its flagged airlines.

While the US is more conservative when it comes to the cockpit, overseas airlines largely regulate cabin safety aspects.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Video: Flight Attendants Explain How COVID-19 Has Affected Their Jobs

Safety is a concept that changes when borders are crossed and nowhere is that more pronounced than in aviation.

Not every flight operates under the same set of rules when it comes to passenger transport as every airline has its own policies and procedures and every country has its own aviation regulator. Despite the existence of a UN agency to oversee global aviation, the International Civil Aviation Organization, each country is given the freedom to decide on issues relating to safety and security.

What may be permissible in the US may not be allowed in neighboring Canada, for example, as each has its own opinion on what's safe when it comes to air travel. Airlines then are also given even more flexibility in deciding their own rules for the safe conduct of a flight.

Here are seven differences between US and overseas airlines when it comes to aviation safety.

US: Pilots must have 1,500 hours before they can fly as an airline pilot.

The cockpit of an Airbus A220, then a Bombardier CSeries.

CLEMENT SABOURIN/AFP/Getty

After a regional aircraft crashed in Buffalo, New York, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed stricter requirements for airline pilots. The new regulations require most pilots to attain 1,500 flying hours before acquiring an Airline Transport Pilot's license, or ATP, and stepping foot in the cockpit of an airliner, with exceptions for students of certain flight programs who only need 1,250 hours.

The rule was previously that anybody with a commercial pilot's license, which has a requirement of 250 hours, could become a first officer and build their hours to meet ATP requirements. Now, pilots must find new ways of filling the gap between 250 hours and 1,500 hours before they can fly passengers or freight, instructing, or even flying banners.

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Overseas: Headphones must be taken out for take-off and landing.

A airplane passenger working on a laptop.

EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

While it's entirely possible in the US to go from boarding to deplaning without ever turning off the music, some overseas airlines enforce a no-headphone rule during take-off, landing, and the safety briefing. In Canada, the rule is enforced by flight attendants on Porter Airlines to ensure maximum situational awareness during the most critical phases of flight.

US: Two people must be in the cockpit at all times.

A Virgin Atlantic Airways Airbus A350-1000 XWB cockpit.

Thomas Pallini/Business Insider

The Federal Aviation Administration requires two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times for safety reasons. In theory, if something was to happen to a pilot or one pilot attempts to take control of the aircraft for nefarious reasons, the other pilot or another crew member, such as a flight attendant, can step in.

European airlines only started adopting this rule in 2015 after a Germanwings pilot purposely crashed an airliner while the other pilot was in the restroom, away from the cockpit. Two years later, however, regulators started easing up on that rule as they believed it to be a security concern, according to Reuters.

Overseas: Window shades must be open for take-off and landing.

A JetBlue Airways A320 cabin.

Shoshy Ciment/Business Insider

Window shades play a critical role in safety during the take-off and landing phases of flight. Keeping the shades open allows for passengers' eyes to adjust better to the outside conditions in the event of an emergency.

If there's an evacuation, the seconds that it takes for the eyes to adjust to new conditions can prove vital to survival when maneuvering to get away from the plane. Flight attendants will usually open the shades when performing the pre-landing seatbelt check.

US: Seatbelt signs stay on longer after take-off.

The no-smoking and seatbelt sign on a Delta Air Lines Airbus A321.

Thomas Pallini/Business Insider

The seatbelt sign is at the discretion of the pilot with American pilots tending to be more conservative with when they turn it off. Reaching an altitude of 10,000 feet is usually a good marker of when to turn it off but some overseas airlines are known for letting passengers move about the cabin as early as minutes after take-off.

Turning it off too early when the aircraft is still climbing can be dangerous as the plane is angled up sharply during the initial stages of an ascent.

Overseas: Non-pilots can fly in the cockpit.

Pilots searching for the disappeared MH370.

REUTERS/Paul Kane/Pool

Since September 11, 2001, the US has heavily restricted in-flight cockpit access to airline pilots, flight dispatchers, and air traffic controllers only on standard commercial flights. Even flight attendants cannot be seated in the cockpit, except to briefly take the place of a pilot when needed to adhere to the two-man cockpit rule.

Despite fears of terrorism, the rule isn't followed worldwide, and overseas airlines have been known to allow non-pilot visitors in the cockpit of commercial flights for media purposes.

US: Passengers in the exit row must be at least 15 years old.

An exit row on a British Airways Airbus A320.

Thomas Pallini/Business Insider

The minimum age of any passenger sitting in the exit row on a US airline is 15 years old, with airlines requiring that passengers affirm their age before selecting the seat. On Air Canada and Icelandair, the minimum age for exit row passengers is 12 years old.

Every country is different, with Bahamasair reportedly allowing eight-year-olds to sit in the row, according to Runway Girl Network.

Business Insider
With state-owned FCI facing shortage of jute bags, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday said the government has allowed packaging of foodgrains in used gunny sacks and plastic bags during the ongoing procurement season.

Paswan said the ministry has constituted a task force to assess the situation arising out of shortage of jute bags/bales for packaging of foodgrains amid the COVID-19 lockdown.

He said the ministry has relaxed guidelines for packaging of foodgrains in used gunny bags and HDPE /PPE bags (commonly known as plastic bags) for packaging of foodgrains, especially wheat.

Paswan said the majority of the supply of jute bags comes from West Bengal.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is the government's nodal agency for procurement and distribution of foodgrains. The foodgrains are procured from farmers at minimum support price (MSP).

At present, the FCI is procuring wheat and paddy grown in the rabi (winter-sown) season.

Meanwhile, the government has bought 18 per cent less wheat so far in the rabi marketing season at 226.85 lakh tonnes as the procurement process started late because of lockdown.

Paswan said the procurement process is on track and assured that the government has sufficient foodgrains in buffer stock to meet the increased demand.

"As on May 8, cumulative procurement of wheat in rabi marketing season (RMS) 2020-21 is 226.85 lakh tonnes whereas corresponding procurement during RMS 2019-20 was 277.83 lakh tonnes.

"Therefore, procurement of wheat in the current season is less by 18.35 per cent than the previous season in the corresponding period," Paswan told reporters here.

The cumulative procurement of paddy, as on May 6, in terms of rice in Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2019-20 is 439.02 lakh tonnes as against 398.13 lakh tonnes in the corresponding period of the previous year.

"The procurement of wheat and paddy/rice during RMS 2020-21 normally commences on April 1. But due to COVID-19 situation, most of the states could commence their procurement operations around April 15," Paswan said



In view of the prevailing unprecedented situation, the government has decided that procurement of wheat during the ensuing RMS 2020-21 and procurement of paddy/rice of rabi crop in KMS 2019-20 may be carried out on provisional basis, while keeping the target same as previous year.

States have been advised to ensure that the procurement operations take place in a staggered manner to maintain social distancing. Token system could be used for this purpose.

The number of procurement centres could also be increased to the extent possible.

Paswan said the government is making efforts to ensure that foodgrains are readily available for distribution in all the states for meeting their requirements under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY).

Under this scheme, 5 kg foodgrains are being distributed per month free of cost to about 80 crore beneficiaries across the country. Free grains will be supplied for three months (April-June).

Paswan said the FCI has already loaded a total number of 2,641 rakes (including wheat and rice) towards this end and the approximately quantity loaded is 73.95 lakh tonnes (55.38 lakh tonnes rice and 18.57 lakh tonnes wheat).

He informed that 21 states/union territories (UTs) have completed more than 90 per cent distribution for the month of April under PMGKAY covering nearly 41.35 crore beneficiaries.

Some States/UTs namely, Andaman Nicobar Island; Dadra and Nagar Haveli; Daman and Diu; Madhya Pradesh; Odisha; Puducherry; Himachal Pradesh, etc are distributing foodgrains for two months in one go under the PMGKAY.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese-born Swedish citizen Gui Minhai is the highest-profile of five booksellers who disappeared in 2015, all linked to a bookshop in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong known for its gossipy texts on Chinese political leaders.

Such books are banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997 with guarantees of freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland.

A Chinese court convicted Gui in February and said he had asked to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated.

Sweden retorted he had not asked to have his Swedish citizenship revoked and reiterated demands that he be allowed consular access, and for his release.

Publishing house Kaunitz-Olsson said in an email the poems were written by Gui in prison.

The themes of the poems, which are printed in Chinese and Swedish, span from a longing for Swedish forests to his imprisonment, with one stanza reading "It would be embarrassing To stop writing poems Because the poetry has been caged".

Hong Kong was rocked by months of sometimes violent pro-democracy street protests last year, with demonstrators furious at perceived meddling my Beijing in the city's promised freedoms. China denies interfering in the city's affairs.
Somrita Ghosh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The rate of growth of fresh COVID-19 cases continues to surge in the national capital with 2,814 positive cases being reported within the first week of May, but the mortality rate remains low. There is also a lack of clarity as to where the new cases are emerging from. While new containment areas have not been announced over the past week, many such areas, instead, have been de-sealed.

"We have control over new cases as of now. Increasing numbers of new positive cases are increasing in quarantine centres," said a top official from the one of District Magistrate office. Another DM official though, noted that there is a mix of cases.

ALSO READ| North Delhi civic body launches campaign to prevent vector diseases in COVID-19 containment zones

"We are taking adequate measures to contain the virus. We are now focusing more on another strategy called micro-containment. In this we focus on containing micro areas such as a specific house or a cluster of houses. The micro-containment step is proving to be beneficial as we have achieved positive results so far," noted the official.

Over the past month-and-half, the Delhi government has been providing updates regarding coronavirus in the state through its daily health bulletin. However, over the period, multiple changes have been made to the bulletin.

The earlier bulletin which clearly classified new cases into three categories  those having travel history, those having tested positive from contacts (transmission from those with foreign travel history) and cases under investigation has now been dropped. From April 15, the government stopped shedding light on cases which were yet to be traced or their source of contamination. Till then, 85 COVID-19 positive patients were yet to be traced.

The government continued the other two categories  travel history and contacts and got a new category 'Others' instead of 'under investigation'. Based on that till April 17, the government had claimed 191 such cases whose source of contamination was yet to be identified.

ALSO READ| COVID-19 situation in India is better than that of western countries: Delhi minister Satyendar Jain

From April 18 onwards the health bulletin became even less detailed and replaced the previously mentioned categories with only one column, total positive cases. The column of discharged patients was removed and recovered was introduced.

An official from the state health department noted that recovered patients were not the same as discharged with many of them belonging to Tablighi Jamaat who have recovered but still stay in quarantine centres owing to lockdown.

The government also recently stopped providing details of testing and samples collected per day for COVID-19. Earlier the bulletin had details of total number of reports received per day or samples processed from private and government labs. The bulleting now only provides a cumulative figure. On certain days, the government did not even provide details on samples taken.

The government had introduced a new column providing data on those areas which are under containment and had a category on residents being tested in those sealed zones. However, the government has stopped providing this figure as well.
Six U.S. senators on Friday urged a federal contractor accused of failing to follow social distancing guidelines at a Mississippi call center to meet with workers worried about their safety.

Their letter came after a whistleblower claimed in an NBC News report that Maximus, which hired her to provide callers with coronavirus information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was not following CDC guidelines and exposed dozens of workers to the virus.

We are concerned by recent reports that Maximus held a training for 70 employees in a facility that was not large enough to allow for social distancing, the letter states. Allegedly, attendees were provided a single bottle of sanitizer to share, and were asked to sanitize their workstations themselves.

"Outside the training, Maximus call center employees have reportedly been asked to work in close proximity to one another, at times even having to share desks and equipment.

Brianna Flores. (Courtesy Brianna Flores.)

In their letter to Maximus CEO Bruce Caswell, the lawmakers said the company has yet to create a telework infrastructure to allow all workers to perform their jobs safely at home.

Adding to our concern is Maximuss paid sick leave policy, which leaves approval to managements discretion, and does not provide paid leave to many workers when a worksite is closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak, they said.

Also, the senators wrote, Maximus has put into place a payment program that may create a financial incentive for workers to come to work while sick.

It was signed by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Benjamin Cardin of Maryland.

They set a May 20 deadline for Caswell to respond with steps Maximus is taking to ensure workers are safe during the pandemic.

In response to a request for comment from NBC News, Maximus issued a statement that did not address whether the company would meet with workers. It said the company has, since March 16, offered paid leave to workers that exceeds the requirements of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

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"We have mandated social distancing, introduced more flexible schedules, increased sanitization and cleaning efforts, provided staff with face coverings and we continue to transition more and more employees to work from home," the statement says. "Mental wellness resources have been enhanced to support staff mindfulness and meditation along with virtual fitness training for exercise."

Maximus also included an email, which it said came from a worker in Albany, New York, who said she was proud to work for the firm and who called the company's response to the pandemic impressive.

The drive to improve safety at Maximus call centers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and elsewhere is being led by workers who are trying to unionize.

Its time for Maximus CEO Bruce Caswell to stop dodging his workers and meet directly with their organizing committee, Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America, said in a statement.

Whistleblower Brianna Flores told NBC News last month that when she arrived for orientation on March 23 at the Maximus center in Hattiesburg she could see the company was not social distancing.

We were packed like sardines in the space, Flores said.

Within days of the orientation, Flores said she was forced to go into quarantine for two weeks because a trainee in her group tested positive for the coronavirus.
UN Monitors Say Mercenaries From Russia's Vagner Group Fighting In Libya

By RFE/RL May 07, 2020

UN experts say mercenaries from the Vagner group, a Russian private security firm, are supporting Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar in his battle to capture the capital, Tripoli.

A UN panel monitoring Libya sanctions said in a report obtained by the AP, AFP, and Reuters news agencies on May 6 that the shadowy group has between 800 and 1,200 military contractors in Libya, including snipers and specialized military teams.

The Vagner group is believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Controlled by Kremlin-linked Russian financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, it is involved in conflicts ranging from those in Ukraine and Syria to African nations.

U.S. media has previously reported on Vagner deploying to Libya, but this is the first time its presence has been confirmed in a UN report. Moscow has denied the Russian state is responsible for any deployments.

An expert report provided to the UN Security Council on April 24 said that Vagner "has been providing technical support for the repair of military vehicles, participating in combat operations, and engaging in influence operations" in Libya.

'Specialized Military Tasks'

The private security firm is also involved in "more specialized military tasks such as acting as artillery Forward Observation Officers and Forward Air Controllers, providing electronic countermeasures expertise and deploying as sniper teams," it said.

More than two dozen civilian aircraft flights between Russia and eastern Libya from August 2018 to August 2019 were "strongly linked to, or owned by" the Vagner group or affiliated companies, the report said.

Libya has been torn by civil war since a NATO-backed popular uprising ousted and killed the North African country's longtime dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

The conflict pits Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army in the east against the internationally-recognized Government of National Accord in the western city of Tripoli, the country's capital.

The UN panel said it identified that the Vagner group has been in Libya since October 2018. Since then, it has "acted as an effective force multiplier" for Haftar's forces.

The report said forces affiliated with the Government of National Accord had captured arms "typical of the weaponry observed being used by [Vagner] operatives elsewhere in eastern Ukraine and Syria."

It also said Vagner forces use equipment typical of the Russian military.

However, the report said that there were tensions between Vagner and Haftar, who is known to be notoriously stubborn.

Libya's conflict has drawn in multiple regional actors, with Russia, France, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates backing Haftar's command.

Turkey, which deployed troops, drones, and Syrian rebel mercenaries to Libya in January, supports the government in Tripoli alongside Qatar and Italy.

The UN panel said that a Russian company has been recruiting Syrian fighters since at least the beginning of 2020.

"It is estimated from ground sources that the number of Syrian foreign fighters supporting Haftar's operations is less than 2,000," the report said.

The experts estimated the total number of Syrian fighters in Libya at around 5,000, but "this almost certainly includes those fighters recruited by Turkey" to support the government in Tripoli.

The report also confirms the private Russian security company, Rossiskie System Bezopasnosti (RSB) Group, is in Libya "providing maintenance and repair support for military aircraft."

It said that sanctions monitors are still evaluating reports that two other Russian private security organizations -- Security Group and Schit Security Group -- are active in Libya.

The UN experts said most Vagner contractors are Russian nationals, but there are also citizens of Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/wagner- un-russia-libya/30598355.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.

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Thiruvananthapuram, May 8 : Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday said that some states in the country are yet to give their clearance and hence, migrant labourers from those states continue to remain here.

" Till yesterday in 21 trains, 24,088 migrant labourers from here have gone to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Today one train is leaving for Lucknow," he said.

"Some states in the country are yet to give the sanction to receive their people from other states and hence we are unable to send them. In this, we have nothing to do. As and when they are ready, we will send them," added Vijayan.

Since the lockdown began, over 3.80 lakh migrant labourers are in over 18,000 camps across the state and are provided with food and at some places, provisions are supplied, as well are television and recreation facilities.
A Derry politician has called for caravan park fees to be waived during the coronavirus pandemic.

Sinn Fein Foyle MLA Foyle Martina Anderson said several caravan owners have spoken to her about having to pay fees despite not being able to use their caravans.

It was the right decision to close caravan parks, given the obvious dangers of people staying together in such close proximity during this pandemic," said Ms Anderson.

It is however unfair to expect all caravan owners, many of whom have seen their incomes affected, to continue to pay a pitch fee while they have no access to their caravan.

Park owners need to take into account the circumstances that many caravan owners are facing during these difficult times.

They should therefore consider reducing or waiving annual and partial fees given that owners are unlikely to be able to access their caravans during the summer months at least.

Rather that park owners collaborating to force caravan owner to pay their site fees regardless of the impact of this deadly pandemic, they should be uniting in their call on the Irish Government to put financial support in place to ensure that neither caravan owners or park owners are penalised as a result of this pandemic.
India began one of the biggest evacuation mission, named Vande Bharat Mission, on May 7 to bring back Indian citizens who were stranded in other countries due to a lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak. (Image: Twitter @DelhiAirport)

The first batch of Indian citizens from Abu Dhabi, arrive at the airport in Kochi, Kerala on May 7. (Government of Kerala via AP)

Air India started its largest repatriation operation from Delhi-Singapore flight on May 7. The first evacuation flight AI381 brought back Indians stuck in Singapore on May 8 morning. (Image: AP)

Security officers stand guard as Indians stranded in Singapore arrive at the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi on May 8. (Image: AP)

Health workers screen stranded Indians upon their arrival from Singapore at the Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi on May 8. (Image: AP)

Air India Express crew members seen in protective suits as the flight took all the precautionary measures amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Image: PTI)

First two flights from the UAE land in Kerala. (Image: Twitter @HardeepSPuri)

Two Air India flights carrying 363 passengers from the UAE reach Cochin and Kozhikode airports in Kerala. State government will now arrange for their 14-day mandatory quarantine. (Image: Twitter @HardeepSPuri)

All incoming baggage were disinfected, before handing them over to the people. Passengers having any health issues will be moved to hospitals for further treatment. (Image: News18 Kerala)

While the government is making their Vande Bharat Mission successful by repatriating Indian Nationals, the Indian Navy has also launched Operation Samudra Setu, as a part of the national effort to repatriate Indian citizens overseas from May 8. (Image: pib.gov.in)
Rishi Kapoors daughter Riddhima Kapoor is in Mumbai with her mother Neetu and brother Ranbir Kapoor as they grieve together, after Rishis death last week. Continuing the flow of throwback family pictures, she has now shared a positive note on Instagram stories about how the two siblings will support their mom after the passing of their father.

Sharing the picture, which shows Neetu with Riddhima and Ranbir on each side, she captioned it, Got your back Ma #yourpillars. The pictures show Ranbir and Neetu smiling for the camera while Riddhima looks on.

Riddhima has shared a throwback picture with Neetu and Ranbir Kapoor.

On the day of Rishis death, Riddhima was in Delhi and couldnt reach Mumbai for the funeral. She did not get permission to fly down to Mumbai due to the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. She had shared a heartbreaking post on Instagram along with a picture with her father. She wrote, Papa I love you I will always love you - RIP my strongest warrior I will miss you everyday I will miss your FaceTime calls everyday! I wish I could be there to say goodbye to you ! Until we meet again papa I love you - your Mushk forever.

She eventually travelled to Mumbai by road with husband Bharat Sahni and daughter Samara and was able to attend Rishis private prayer meet at home and the immersion of his ashes on Sunday.

Also read: When Amitabh Bachchan attended Rishi Kapoors wedding with a bandaged hand post injury on film sets. See pics

Rishi Kapoor with Neetu and Krishna Raj Kapoor.

Since then, she has been sharing happy memories of the Kapoor family on Instagram. A few days ago, she shared a couple of monochrome pictures: one of Rishi holding his mother, the late Krishna Raj Kapoors hand while dancing. Captioning the image, Riddhima wrote: Reunited with his most favourite person. The other image was from Rishi and Neetus wedding celebrations.

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One Terugwa Igbagwa, identified as the second most wanted militia kingpin in Benue state has been killed by the Troops of Operation Whirl Stroke (OPWS).

Igbagwa, popularly known as Orjondu, was said to be allegedly involved in atrocities in three Local Government Areas in Sankara axis of the state.

Coordinator of Defence Media Operations, Defence Headquarters, Major General John Eneche, revealed this in a statement on Friday.

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In a special commando operation, a combined team of Operation Whirl Stroke Tracking Team and Special Forces troops of Sector 2 deployed in Zaki Biam carried out a raid operation on a criminal hideout off Zaki Biam and Katsina-Ala highway.

The operation led to the neutralization of Terugwa Igbagwa alias Orjondu.

Read Also: Benue State COVID-19 Index Case Calls Out FG Over Incarceration

It would be recalled that Orjondu is the second most wanted criminal kingpin next to Gana in Benue State.

He was responsible for kidnapping, armed robbery, assassination, gun-running and other criminal activities around Katsina-Ala, Ukum and Logo LGAs for many years, the statement read in part.

Enenche listed items recovered from the deceased to include one AK 47 rifle, one locally made rifle, one AK 47 magazine with 30 rounds of 7.62mm special and some charms.
Help.org, a trusted online resource for individuals who struggle with addiction and their loved ones, has announced the Best Rehab Facilities in Orlando, Florida for 2020. The informational guide recognizes the top 8 rehab facilities based on cost, treatment options, location, accompanying services and more.

According to recent studies, drug overdose is the leading cause of death among people under age 50. In Orlando, deaths related to opioid abuse increased significantly from 2011 to 2015. Substance abuse among adolescents is also escalating in Orlando with 55 percent of high school students reported using alcohol, 38 percent reported using marijuana, 8 percent reported using prescription drugs without a valid prescription, and 2 percent reported using heroin. With the growing need for accessible and high-quality rehab programs, Help.org has developed a unique ranking process to help connect individuals with treatment providers that meet their needs.

The Help.org research team analyzed thousands of facilities across the country and then identified the most cost-effective and highest rated programs in larger cities like Orlando. Each facility was evaluated based on rehabilitation services, treatment approaches, cost, special programs for unique demographics and ancillary services. The website also provides information about drug use and side effects as well as educational articles. For a detailed listing of the Best Rehab Facilities in Orlando, Florida please visit https://www.help.org/drug-and-alcohol-rehab-centers-in-orlando-fl/

2020 Best Rehab Facilities in Orlando, Florida (in alphabetical order)

Aspire Health Partners

5151 Adanson Street, Suite 200 Orlando, FL 32804

407-875-3700

The Recovery Village

633 Umatilla Boulevard Umatilla, FL 32784

352-771-2700

Break the Cycle

4721 East Moody Boulevard, Suite 107 Bunnell, FL 32110

386-437-0026

LifeStream Behavioral Center Eustis Outpatient Clinic

201 East Magnolia Avenue Eustis, FL 32726

352-357-1550

Comprehensive Solutions

283 Cranes Roost Boulevard, Suite 111

Altamonte Springs, FL 32701

407-637-8095

Hope for Tomorrow Mental Health Services, LLC

401 Center Pointe Circle, Suite 1415

Altamonte Springs, FL 32701

407-834-0942

Meridian Behavioral Healthcare, Inc. Union County Clinic

10 West Main Street Lake Butler, FL 32054

800-330-5615

A Stepping Stone to Success

174 West Comstock Avenue,

Suite 203 Winter Park, FL 32789

407-718-8850

ABOUT HELP.ORG

Help.org is an online resource for individuals who struggle with addiction and their loved ones. The website provides the latest research through scientifically proven methods, community recovery resources as well as information about local financial assistance. Help.orgs team of researchers, activists and writers work together with addiction counselors and other professionals to offer useful and accurate resources to help individuals seeking recovery. To learn more, visit https://www.help.org/.






U.S. cities that have idled mass transit during coronavirus lockdowns are turning to an unusual partner to get essential workers to hospitals, warehouses and factories: ride-hailing company Uber.

Long criticized by officials in large U.S. cities for siphoning off transit riders and clogging up streets, some less-dense cities with reduced transit ridership are now turning to the Silicon Valley-based company to fill transportation gaps.

A handful of transit agencies are paying Uber and subsidizing rider costs during the pandemic to offer transportation at off-peak hours or in less busy areas.

Some give monthly bus-pass holders a limited number of Uber rides, others cover the entire cost for regular Uber rides to and from essential workplaces.

The model makes sense financially, as cities are able to offload insurance and fuel costs associated with maintaining nearly empty bus routes to Uber and its drivers, according to interviews with three transportation officials.

A bus costs around $150 an hour to operate and you might have a route with only five boardings an hour. Id rather move that bus to a corridor with 40 boardings an hour, said Alice Bravo, director of transportation and public works for Miami-Dade County, which offers fully subsidized Uber and Lyft rides along the routes of nine bus lines that have been suspended at night.

The new partnerships come at a time when Uber is grappling with a slump in demand across the United States, its largest market, due to stay-at-home orders. Data from analysts and interviews with drivers suggest trip requests in some cities were down by as much as 80% in April.

While an Uber spokesman said the initiative was not a significant revenue stream compared to Ubers pre-coronavirus business, it underscores the companys ambitions to expand further into the public transportation sector.

Uber currently integrates transit information from more than a dozen cities worldwide and allows passengers in Denver and Las Vegas to purchase transit tickets through its app.

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In its latest initiative, Uber is working with transit officials in Miami-Dade County; Indianapolis, Indiana; Livermore, California; Des Moines, Iowa; and Central Midlands, South Carolina.

Transit ridership has plummeted around 70% in most U.S. cities during the virus outbreak, forcing route reductions and less frequent service. Systems have also grappled with staff shortages as many operators and maintenance workers have taken medical leave to quarantine.

As we were considering how to balance our resources, we had some areas that we wouldnt have been able to service anymore, so we started talking to Uber, said Luis Montoya, chief planning officer at Des Moines Area Rapid Transit (DART).

While ridership decreased by up to 90% on some routes, Montoya said, DART noticed that many of those still commuting were going to work at hospitals, manufacturers and grocery distributors. In collaboration with local companies, the agency created a voucher system for Uber and local taxi rides on fixed routes to designated businesses.

Indianapolis officials set up a similar system after Uber reached out. Essential workers had to register for the service and for the price of their monthly transit pass can now book one daily Uber round-trip to and from work.

The service, which started on April 23, is also allowing the city to gather valuable data on transit gaps, said Inez Evans, the chief executive and president of IndyGo.

Evans plans to continue supplementing some routes with Uber even after the crisis, saying that fixed bus lines made sense for the most frequently used routes but were not efficient in less traveled areas. IndyGo is evaluating how to structure its Uber program in the long-term.

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Washington, May 8 : Crowds took to the streets in Indianapolis, the capital city of the US state of Indiana, protesting the police killing of two men and a pregnant woman in separate incidents, the media reported.

The protests on Wednesday night and Thursday occurred after Indianapolis police shot and killed a man after a car and foot chase in an incident on the city's north side.

The Indianapolis Police Department said the man shot at an officer, who returned fire.

A live video about the incident reportedly appeared on social media and civil rights groups had called for a thorough investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday night, dozens of people gathered near the shooting scene, demanding justice, according to local media.

The second shooting incident took place about eight hours later, as police officers approached an apartment complex to probe a burglary in-progress complex early Thursday.

Police said that an armed man shot at four responding officers, who returned fire and killed him.

The third incident involved an Indianapolis police officer who struck and killed a pregnant woman walking on an expressway ramp late Wednesday.

Indianapolis police chief Randal Taylor said it was a "tragedy".

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police has pledged "thorough and transparent" investigations into the incidents.
The son of a woman with dementia has won High Court permission to challenge a decision to reduce inspections at care homes in Northern Ireland

The son of a woman with dementia has won High Court permission to challenge a decision to reduce inspections at care homes in Northern Ireland.

Keith Gray was granted leave to seek a judicial review into claims the Department of Health unlawfully directed a watchdog body to suspend some checks on facilities during the Covid-19 emergency.

With related proceedings against the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) also clearing the first stage, a judge listed the case for a full hearing later this month.

Mr Gray's 73-year-old mother, Briege Gray, is a resident at a private nursing home in Castlewellan, Co Down.

Lawyers for the family yesterday contended the department unlawfully directed the RQIA to put some statutory inspections on hold. They also claim the direction was misinterpreted as providing flexibility to continue inspections remotely. According to their case, Mrs Gray's human rights are being breached.

With regulations requiring at least two inspections a year, barrister Frank O'Donoghue QC said none have been carried out at her home since last October.

Stressing the urgency of the case, he told the court: "Mr Gray's mother has dementia, he has not seen her since March and he knows nothing about what's actually going on in the home.

"The only means of assurance he has is through a competent assessment carried out by the independent regulatory body. That hasn't taken place."

Further concerns centre on personal protective equipment (PPE) usage, despite assurances from a manager at Mrs Gray's home that all staff are wearing face masks and eye shields as part of strict hygiene procedures.

Tony McGleenan QC, for the department, argued that it has the legal right to issue a direction which modifies the inspection arrangements.

He went on to stress that measures have been put in place to ensure care homes remain subject to scrutiny. "It's not correct that there's a vacuum and individuals are without oversight," Mr McGleenan added.

Mr Justice McAlinden acknowledged assurances being given to the public and relatives of those in care homes. But he maintained that a legal point remains to be determined.
The deal, however, began to unravel as quickly as it had come together.

In a matter of days, a bank had frozen funds that the state had wired to Mr. Oren-Pines because it found a transaction from his account suspicious. State officials were then warned by Mr. Oren-Pines and his business partners of possible shipping complications and were told that the ventilators might have to be routed through Israel, where they said they had connections.

Before long, Mr. Oren-Pines and his partners began accusing the state of breach of contract. State officials later tried to send inspectors to confirm the stockpile in China; that effort was unsuccessful, and the contract was terminated.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos office said that the contract was canceled because the states hospitalization rate fell far short of projections, and New Yorks need for ventilators lessened, diminishing the urgency to proceed with a contract mired in complications.

But interviews with state and federal officials, as well as emails obtained by The New York Times, underscore how the challenges of a pandemic may have clouded a decision that placed millions of taxpayer dollars at risk.

The voided contract illustrated the desperate measures New York took at the height of the pandemic to procure precious medical equipment, as officials scrambled to find as many of the 40,000 ventilators that the state believed it needed to stave off a catastrophe. As the state scoured the globe for supplies, it eschewed competitive bidding protocols to expedite acquisitions and resorted to vendors that had never done business with the state.
In a time when everything from happy hours to baby showers must be attended virtually, dreaming about lavish weddings seems like a faraway thought. Intimate gatherings like small elopements are easier to wish for, even when they are miles from home. Last year, photographer Rebecca Carpenter and event planner Valentina Ring worked together on this styled shoot on the island of Oia in Santorini, Greece, with the hopes of highlighting a couple's shared passion for travel and their adventurous love story. This romantic elopement showcased the beginning of a new chapter for Louise and Rob, as well as a celebration of their love for each other. The heartfelt beauty and simplicity of a wedding like this was able to highlight the intimate love the two share with each other.

On a romantic island in Greece surrounded by the sea, this gorgeous shoot revolved around the design idea of connecting the sky and the sea together in equal harmony. With dreamy celestial details and bright blue ocean backdrops, the cosmopolitan town of Oia offered charming views of every angle of the Caldera and the Aegean Seas, making every photo look as beautiful as a postcard. Pristine and minimal decor was used to truly embody the feeling of the new bride and groom being alone together on top of the world. From standing on top of a small church to enjoying intimate views only the two of them could see, every image was taken in the hopes of capturing the intimacy of their private love.

The bride was adorned in three designer gowns throughout the shoot - the first by Ersa Atelier, the second by Sottero & Midgley, and the third by Lee Petra Grebenau. Different hair and makeup looks were paired with each dress, making Louise look like a vision every time. From classical to sultry, the looks remained deeply romantic and very much in tune with the alluring feel of Santorini.

This gorgeous wedding eye candy is fueling our wanderlust and inspiring our future wedding planning, and we hope it does the same for you. Until weddings and special gatherings can happen in safe and healthy environments, dreaming about these sweet escapes makes it all the more exciting. Read ahead to see the gorgeous photos from the shoot, and get inspired to have a destination elopement of your own one day.

Related:

I'm a 2021 Bride, and I'm Dreaming of These Wedding Dresses Coming Next Year
David Tennant used his time as a presenter on Have I Got News For You to poke fun at Eamonn Holmes for sharing an unsubstantiated coronavirus conspiracy theory.

The weekly satirical panel show has kept filming in lockdown, with Tennant joining team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton and guests Ayesha Hazarika and Chris McCausland on Thursday.

During one segment, the team discussed the NHSs coronavirus contact tracing app that is being trialled on the Isle of Wight.

Addressing fears that the government was using the app to harvest personal data, the former Doctor Who actor joked: Doesnt bother me, said Eamonn Holmes, from the safety of his recently constructed tinfoil bungalow.

The TV presenter came under fire last month for giving validity to a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was linked to the rollout of 5G technology.

Holmes was presenting a discussion on Covid-19 fake news while presenting This Morning, when he said that the media had been too quick to dismiss the theory as false when they dont know its not true.

Its very easy to say its not true because it suits the state narrative, he said, adding: Thats all I would say, as someone with an enquiring mind.

The theory has been disproved countless times by scientists, with one microbiology professor recently describing it as both a physical and biological impossibility.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 01:12:14|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon is poised to do "robust and large scale" COVID-19 testing, Minister of Public Health Manaouda Malachie said on Friday.

"We will now test more people rapidly," Manaouda told reporters in the capital Yaounde, "this will significantly accelerate our battle on the field, especially at the airports."

Manaouda made the remarks after the country's president Paul Biya recently donated to the government 5,000 rapid test kits.

According to Africa CDC, Cameroon has registered a total of 2,265 confirmed COVID-19 cases from 10,268 tests. Enditem
Caracas, May 8 : Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has directly blamed Juan Guaido, the opposition leader and head of Parliament, for two failed maritime attacks as the latter kept mum while one of his top advisers acknowledged the link.

"He is capable of signing a contract to kill his political contender - who does that in the world? Sign a contract with a mercenary to kill his political contender?" Maduro said in an interview with state television Telesur on Thursday.

"He is a criminal. He did it, he prepared my murder," added the President.

The first attack took place on Sunday in the state of La Guaira, while on Monday authorities foiled the second raid on the coast of the state of Aragua, reports Efe news.

In these two raids, eight attackers died and 23 people were arrested, including two former US service members, according to the latest information on Thursday.

The US, Colombia and Guaido himself denied their participation in the attacks almost immediately after being accused by Venezuelan authorities.

But one of Guaido's most prominent advisers, Juan Jose Rendon told CNN that he had signed an "exploratory" agreement with US contractor Silvercorp as part of an "exploration" to carry out actions, including seeking the possibility of capturing several government officials and "deliver(ing) them to justice", that would lead to Maduro's overthrow.

Rendon also said that Guaido, who is recognized by almost 60 countries as interim president, did not sign the agreement.

But Rendon's remarks gave Maduro more fuel against the opponent, whom the Attorney General's Office is already investigating for various reasons.

"The document that is officially circulating has Juan Guaido's signature," Maduro said during Thursday's interview. "We are facing the political and moral degradation of the opposition." Amidst the new accusations, Guaido kept silent on Thursday and suspended a teleconference session of Parliament, which he controls with the support of 100 of the 167 deputies.

During the day, Guaido's team told journalists that he would issue a statement setting a position on the new elements of the case, which would include the statement of one of the two Americans arrested during the raid on Monday.
But even the best master plans need a little luck to make the leap from promising vision to satisfying reality, and so it was here: When there was no demand for the original planned use, an office building, Wolf Point East became a residential tower. That changed everything: The floor plates nearly shrank in half, which simultaneously made the tower thinner, and ensured it would not crowd the riverwalk or block views of, and from, the Salesforce Tower.
Writer Brian E. Clark paddles a hard-shell white-water kayak on an OARS trip down the Yampa River near the Colorado-Utah border. (Michael McCoy)

If and when life returns to normal  whatever the heck that will mean  this spring or summer, one of the first things I want to do is get on a river with my kids, blast through frothy rapids, sleep under the stars and have some adventure. I know Im not alone in that wish.

David Baker, a Seattle doctor whos been on the front lines of battling the coronavirus, said hes planning a white-water trip with his wife and two children to recharge his batteries and share some quiet time in the wilderness.

Well need it, said Baker, who was quarantined for a short time because of his exposure to patients with COVID-19. Its been a strange and scary experience."

Baker said he and his spouse and their two kids, ages 12 and 15, are looking forward to rafting the Grande Ronde River in northeast Oregon in July.

Their first family river outing was a four-day trip on the Class III (exciting, but suitable for kids as young as 7) Rogue River in southwest Oregon with Northwest Rafting.

The Rogue was the perfect introduction, and weve been on that river a couple more times since then, said Baker, who owns his own raft. The river was thrilling, the scenery sublime and the guides were great with the kids. Since then, weve graduated up and done longer and harder rivers, so much so that its become a pretty big part of our lives.

Jane Jones, who lives in Keystone, Colo., began rafting with her son and daughter, now 38 and 41, when they were in elementary school.

That got them jazzed about wanting to go again and again, said Jones, who has taken her two grandchildren and their parents on white-water river trips.

A two-person raft, shown here on the Yampa River, may be a good choice for social distancing. (Michael McCoy)

I dont give traditional gifts anymore, Jones said. I give family experiences like this because they mean so much more. And I especially like taking my family to wilderness places, away from cellphones and electronic devices, to slow down and enjoy nature.

Jones said one of her favorite excursions was an OARS  Outdoor Adventure River Specialists (oars.com)  trip on the Green River through the Gates of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border.

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The guides were great  they played fun and silly games with the kids  and we had a circle time at the end of each day where, unless you wanted to go for a hike or read a book, we sat and chatted, talked about the rapids and learned a lot about each other. The rest of the world and its worries seem far, far away.

Steve Markle, a spokesman for Angels Camp, Calif.-based OARS, said he hopes his company can start running trips by late June, though the timing is dependent on the easing of stay-at-home orders.

But he said the water will churn this spring and summer on the rivers of the West, regardless of whether rafts float on them.

A one-person kayak, shown here on the Rogue River in Oregon, makes social distancing possible on a rafting trip. (Vince Ready / Northwest Rafting)

Even though the Sierra snowpack is at about 50%, Markle said reservoirs, which provide releases for July, August and September flows, are in good shape because of 2019's ample snowfall.

Elsewhere in the West, the snow is more abundant, with the snowpack in much of the Rockies at 100% or more.

Here at OARS, we're in a hunker-down mode, he said. But people can certainly still dream about and plan for getting out on a rafting trip in the summer, when we hope things will be back to normal.

Zach Collier, who runs Northwest Rafting out of Hood River, Ore., said he's delayed the start of trips this season.

As for planning a trip, he said the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho is best for families from mid-July through August. In July, when runoff is diminished and the top of the river is unrunnable, trips usually start 25 miles downstream, and rafters are flown into a Forest Service airstrip at Indian Creek.

From there, the river is mellow but builds up to the biggest drops on the final day, he said. That works out well for families to get used to the rapids and even use inflatable kayaks on the easier stuff."





Here are 10 family-friendly, Class III rivers in California and the West:

1. Kern River, California. The closest stream to Los Angeles, about three hours away. The Jungle Run section of the Lower Kern tumbles eight miles through a canyon below Lake Isabella thats filled with granite boulders and is away from crowds.

2. Kings River, California. This stream is dependent on snowmelt, which means it will probably flow only into mid-July. Rafters boat a 10-mile stretch through the foothills of the Sierra east of Fresno in countryside covered with oaks and sycamores.

3. South Fork of the American River, California. In the foothills about an hour east of Sacramento, one of the most popular white-water stretches in the United States. Outfitters run a 21-mile stretch that can be done as part of a two-day trip. Or paddlers can do shorter one-day outings.

4. Rogue River, Oregon. Courses 40 miles through the Klamath Mountains in southwestern Oregon. Typically floated in three to five days; spectacular scenery and abundant wildlife.

5. Lower Klamath River, California. South of the Oregon border and similar to the Rogue, but the run is shorter at about 35 miles. Less of a wilderness experience because a road is beside much of it. Fun and bouncy Class II and III rapids, ideal for families with kids as young as 4.

6. Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho. Rumbles through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and peppered with numerous hot springs on its banks. One of the top white-water experiences in North America.

7. Green River, Colorado/Utah. The Green flows 44 miles between soaring canyon walls and through Dinosaur National Monument. Fun and bouncy Class III rapids, enjoyable side hikes and lots of wildlife, including bighorn sheep.

8. Yampa River, Colorado. Starts near Steamboat Springs, Colo., and flows west, eventually joining the Green in Dinosaur National Monument. The stunning canyons on this 70-mile journey are similar to the Greens, but its season is shorter and usually ends in mid-July. Native American ruins, hiking opportunities and one big Class IV rapid called Warm Springs, which I walked around last summer when I kayaked the river.

9. Lower Salmon River, Idaho. Runs through majestic gorges with white, sandy beaches ideal for camping. The river is gentle except for some punchy rapids, which makes it good for stand-up paddleboarding and learning how to manage an inflatable kayak. Abundance of Native American rock art.

10. Snake River, Idaho/Oregon border. Flows through Hells Canyon, with mountains rising to more than 7,000 feet on either side. It offers great hiking, fishing and Nez Perce pictographs.





Rafting safety in the time of coronavirus







Zach Collier, who runs Northwest Rafting, said his company may add boats and guides to trips to allow more space between passengers and will emphasize social distancing at campsites. Guides and clients temperatures might also be taken before trips start. Guides will prepare meals that are easier to serve and, he said, will definitely be wearing face masks.

Setting up safety protocols is a work in progress, Collier said. Were very aware of Centers for Disease Control guidelines and will do our best to keep passengers and guides safe.

Collier said rafting trips with 20 participants could be split into two groups on some rivers to lessen contact.

Boaters also may be able to paddle in one-person inflatable kayaks known as duckies, he added.

Keeping a family together in one raft is another option, he said. Or couples could paddle a two-person raft on easier stretches of river, with instruction from guides, and portage their boats around more difficult rapids.

Gear boats are 18 feet long, so passengers could ride at the front and back and still have nine feet between them and a guide rowing the raft.

Many companies supply sleeping bags and other gear, but he said outfitters are encouraging people to bring their own camping equipment.

Were lucky that we have twice as much of this equipment as we need for our trips so we can also let it sit for a week or two after a trip. We also have pretty strict protocols for cleaning our equipment if we need to do that, but its pretty intense work were trying to avoid.

Collier said all drinking water on trips is purified and, according to his understanding of CDC guidelines, hes unaware of any cases of known virus transmission through rivers or lakes.

The virus is spread through person-to-person contact, he said. We are boating on mountain streams that have some of the cleanest water youll find.
The Executive Chairman of Surfline Communications, John Taylor, has expressed satisfaction at the pace of work on the construction of a 100-bed infectious disease isolation and treatment facility at the Ga East Hospital in Accra.

The project, spearheaded by the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund, took off in the middle of April and is expected to be completed by the end of May. It will be used to treat those who become seriously ill after contracting Covid-19. When the pandemic is over, the facility will be used to patients with infectious diseases.

On a visit to the project site, Mr. Taylor, who is one of the Trustees of the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund, observed that the facility is critical to governments fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic, pointing out that it would be beneficial to all Ghanaians.

He encouraged all those involved in the project to put in more effort to bring it to fruition within the shortest possible time.

"Thank you very much for this project that you're working on. We very much appreciate the hard work that youre putting in, he told the workers on the project. I hear someone hasn't been home for 48 hours. For me this is for the benefit of all Ghanaians. So, if there is anything you can do to help, it's for our own benefit, not for any third party.

Mr. Taylor, who is also the founder of Woodfields Energy Resources, appealed to all well-meaning individuals and organisations to donate to the Covid-19 Private Sector Fund, so that the facility can be completed on schedule.

Where diseases are concerned, they dont care about where you belong, he said. Were hoping others will contribute to the fund so that we can make this a success case for all Ghanaians.

Mr. Taylor was accompanied on the tour by the Chief Executive Officer of the Bamson Group, Kwame Ofosu Bamfo, who is also one of the Trustees of the Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund.

Mr. Bamfo noted that the contributions and support received from all sectors of society for the project has revealed that Ghanaians care for each other and for their country.

This shows what a determined Ghanaian can do, Mr. Bamfo said.

The Ghana Covid-19 Private Sector Fund is an initiative by private business people who set it up with a seed fund of One Million Ghana Cedis, while campaigning to raise at least One Hundred Million Ghana Cedis from local and international businesses as well as the general public to aid the fight against Covid-19 in Ghana. For more information on how to donate/contribute, please visit: www.ghanacovid19fund.com

Watch video here:
The fiftieth meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) this week approved a strategy for the re-opening of economies in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The Council which is made up of Trade Ministers and officials agreed to a framework centered on the development and adherence to defined metrics related to the Covid-19 virus, which will guide in the reopening process.

The strategy recommends a graduated model which sees governments relaxing restrictions in a deliberate, phased and incremental manner based on the transmission risk profile of the pandemic in specified geographical locations, sectors or businesses.

The framework suggests establishing a national public private consultative mechanism to govern the relaunch of economic activity at the Member State level; minimum standards which must be attained before relaxation of restrictions and communications to build public trust. There is also the proposal for Certificates of Operation to be issued to businesses that have been verified to be compliant in the protocols established for the industry.

The fiftieth meeting of COTED held virtually yesterday, 6 May 2020 was chaired by the Grenada Minister of Economic Development, Trade, Planning and Labour, the Honourable Oliver Joseph; with Ministerial representation from most CARICOM Member States. The Premier of Montserrat, the Honourable Joseph E. Farrell also attended the meeting as well as representatives from the public and private sectors.
People who have recently experienced loss of smell are being urged to participate in a survey as a new global research group investigates the symptom as a marker of COVID-19.

Health organizations across the world have recognized anosmia - the loss of smell - as an indicator of COVID-19, following a wave of reports from patients and clinicians about rapid onset of smell loss, even in the absence of other symptoms.

Scientists worldwide, including experts at Newcastle and Northumbria universities, UK, have now united as the Global Consortium of Chemosensory Researchers (GCCR) to investigate the connection between the chemical senses and the COVID-19 virus.

Anyone who has recently experienced symptoms of respiratory illnesses or smell loss is urged to complete a 10 minute survey at https:/ / gcchemosensr. org/

Dr Duika Burges Watson, from the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University, and Professor Vincent Deary, Professor of Applied Health Psychology at Northumbria University, are part of this group of more than 600 clinicians, neurobiologists, data scientists, cognitive scientists, sensory researchers and technicians from over 50 countries.

Dr Burges Watson said: "Anecdotal reports are increasingly being supported by scientific findings demonstrating smell loss is a symptom of COVID-19 that clinicians and policy makers should be paying attention to.

"Newcastle experts have joined the consortium to help in firming up the scientific evidence of anosmia as a symptom of COVID-19.

"We are also leading in emphasising the importance of patient and public involvement in the GCCR through our membership of their Patient Advocacy Committee, alongside charitable organisations such as AbScent and Fifth Sense.

The sudden loss of smell and taste may be very distressing for sufferers and we are keen to support people dealing with this and to draw attention to the impact sensory losses in COVID-19 and other conditions." Dr Duika Burges Watson, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University

The GCCR will use data collected in a global survey to unravel key markers of the virus in order to further understand how to prevent its spread. The survey has been translated into more than 20 languages and is available to individuals and clinicians on the GCCR website.

Professor Deary said: "We really want to highlight the fact that reports from across the world, including from the King's College London symptom tracker app, are showing smell and taste loss as a symptom that clinicians need to pay attention to in relation to COVID-19.

"Dr Burges Watson and myself are also interested in the longer term impact of smell and taste loss for those who have recovered from COVID-19. Do the deficits in smell and taste also recover, and if not, are their interventions that can improve, or compensate for, smell and taste loss?

"Amidst all that is happening this may seem like a minor point, but from our research in other illnesses we know that loss of smell and taste can have a profound impact of daily life and wellbeing."

Dr Burges Watson and Professor Deary join the GCCR after their recently published letter in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), urging for more attention to be given to anosmia as a symptom of COVID-19. Professor Deary is a practitioner health psychologist and a practicing cognitive behavioural therapist. Both have a particular interest in altered relationships with food and eating, including loss of smell and taste.

Following a National Institute of Health Research funded grant examining changed relationships with food after head and neck cancer, Dr Burges Watson and Professor Deary established the Altered Eating Research Network as a public interface for the many whose difficulties with food and eating are under-recognised and unsupported.
However, given your willingness to continue, we would be grateful for the ongoing partnership, she wrote in correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post. I have instructed my team to ensure you have continued access to the data and to be available to answer any questions.
Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister's Office (CMO) on Friday (May 8) announced an ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of those who were killed in the Aurangabad train accident. "Rupees five lakhs each has been announced as ex gratia to families of the deceased in the Karmad (Aurangabad) train accident," said Maharashtra CMO.

BJP leader Ram Kadam expressed condolences on the tragedy, saying "The Aurangabad accident is tragic. The Maharashtra government has not made any arrangements for food for migrant laborers and hence people are forced to walk for miles."

At least 16 migrant labourers were killed when a freight train ran over them between Jalna and Aurangabad, informed Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) of South Central Railway (SCR) on Friday. A few others were seriously injured and two escaped unhurt, all of the workers are from Madhya Pradesh. The injured have been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital.

The mishap occurred early on Friday in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district. As per Railways officials, the migrant labourers, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, were sleeping on the railway track when the accident took place. In a statement released by the Railways, the persons run over are natives of Umarya and Shahdol of Madhya Pradesh and worked at SRG Company in Jalna, Maharashtra.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences at the tragedy in Aurangabad and promised all possible assistance in the matter. Taking to microblogging site Twitter, he wrote: "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided."
NEW HAVEN  Pastor Brenda Adkins and her husband, John, will give out a lot of bread to city residents Sunday, but its the kind thats baked and made possible with generous donations from Chabaso Bakery, 360 James St.

And there will be fish at times, porgies, scallops and more through donations by Joe Gilbert, a seafood producer and distributor who owns Briarpatch Enterprise of Milford and Enterprise Fisheries of Stonington. Gilbert has also donated money through buying groceries for the Adkinses to distribute in New Haven.

Im blessed to have the ability to help people, said Gilbert. The COVID-19 has added a lot of extra stress to the community. ... The thought of hungry kids is disturbing.

Gilbert said its a cause close to his heart because his mother struggled financially while he was growing up.

Kaitlin Tims, who is in Chabasos sales office and the contact for the Adkinses, said the need is high and while the bakery always donates to the community, donations are four times as high during this pandemic.

Times said she thinks what the Adkinses are doing is great.

She said the Adkinses received five cases of individually wrapped breads and rolls Friday, will get more Saturday and in future weeks.

The Adkinses are passing out the food Sundays at 3:30 p.m. - beginning this Sunday  from their apartment to anyone in the city who needs it. To get in on the bread giveaway, or to donate to the food cause, call Adkins at 203-836-6832.

The couple, who feed more than 1,000 people during their annual Day of Joy in November - to which Gilbert and Chabaso are big contributors  has stepped up during this pandemic-induced food crisis to distribute general groceries, as well - including meat, rice and more  to the elderly, unemployed school bus drivers and single mothers. They use their apartment at 330 Munson St. as a distribution center of sorts.

Those giveaways are limited to targeted vulnerable groups and not open to everyone in New Haven like the bread giveaway is.

Now, with the addition of bread from the bakery, and fish from Gilbert, who is poised soon to donate 200 pounds of porgies, they have developed a side program, Fish and Loaves, in reference to the biblical story, Brenda Adkins said.

We love what were doing. We cant feed the whole city, but were doing our best, she said. This is a greater opportunity to show love and comfort people.

Adkins said people would be amazed at how many in the community are in need. She said they are helping so many working people laid-off from their jobs and people who dont get SNAP benefits or who get a negligible amount.

These arent low-wage people. These are people that dont have jobs anymore, Brenda Adkins said. Were all on the same level now.

John Adkins said hes had to tell a lot of fathers in need of food for the kids to swallow your pride, and take groceries.

So far they have served 160-180 families during the pandemic, John Adkins said.

The Adkinses also are going through their Day of Joy list of contributors to ask for help and to find people who are struggling so they can reach out directly.

According to a Chabaso Bakery fact sheet sent by Tims, Chabaso is a family-owned bakery specializing in ciabatta and other artisan breads. The fact sheet said the bakery was founded more than 30 years ago by Charles Negaro when he started baking breads for his business Atticus Bookstore Cafe, located downtown. The bakerys breads are sold in grocery and specialty stores throughout the eastern United States.
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Were on the edge of our seats here.We know there are lots of fighters in the mountains, and we know that they can move around very easily, said Salwan Al-Dahlaki, 32, reached by phone in the city of Baqubah. He reeled off a list of small attacks in recent days. We are really worried that ISIS might take advantage of corona and increase their attacks in the city, Dahlaki said. If they come here, they will come to die, and they will make sure to kill many with them.
PPE supplies from Turkey are unloaded at RAF Brize Norton last month - Reuters

It was nicknamed "Air Jenrick"  a Royal Air Force plane left waiting at a Turkish airport for a vital shipment of medical gowns.

The UK's severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) had descended into farce, with officials scrambling to secure the equipment needed to keep front line NHS workers safe.

Now The Telegraph can reveal that the mission ended in disaster.

Thousands of gowns brought back from Turkey last month has been impounded in a warehouse outside Heathrow Airport after inspectors found the gear was "useless" and fell short of UK standards, senior sources said.

Most of the gowns were produced by a Turkish firm that switched from making tracksuits and T-shirts after coronavirus began to spread across the world in January.

On Wednesday night, ministers were facing questions over whether the money paid would be recovered and why the public were not told earlier.

Millions of masks bought from factories in China have also been seized and impounded after being found to fall below UK standards, it can be revealed. Some of the faulty masks are feared to have already been used by NHS staff while treating patients.

The developments come after the Government spent around 17 million on antibody test kits from China that were later found not to work.

The disclosure will be a major embarrassment after the high-profile Turkey delivery was beset by delays and led to an international row.

The RAF flight to pick up the gowns was nicknamed "Air Jenrick" after the Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick, promised on April 18 that 84 tonnes of PPE would arrive the next day.

Instead, the flight was delayed when it emerged that the Government had not checked whether the Turkish supplier had applied for an export licence. It eventually arrived on April 22, three days late, and carried only enough gowns to last the NHS for a few hours.

In the following days, further RAF flights brought back thousands more gowns.

Story continues

The gear was taken off the transport planes and transported to a giant warehouse  but when inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive examined the gowns, it was discovered that they were faulty and did not conform to UK standards.

NHS trusts who had been promised the vital PPE were then informed that deliveries had been cancelled.

Despite a fall in coronavirus hospital admissions, NHS workers in many areas are still struggling to access PPE, including gowns and masks.

Mark Roscrow, the chairman of the Health Care Supplies Association, which represents NHS procurement teams, said the Turkey shipment had clearly fallen short and questioned why Government officials had failed to carry out proper checks before spending taxpayers money.

"Something very wrong has happened here, he told The Telegraph. "It's not clear to me why we weren't able to obtain samples in the usual way, and to see that these gowns weren't fit for purpose.

We are being told that the people in charge know how to secure this vital equipment on our behalf, but the checks and balances clearly haven't been applied correctly. This equipment is still desperately needed at the front line, especially as hospitals begin to reopen other services which also require high quality PPE.

Senior sources have revealed that the Air Jenrick delivery was scrambled together at the last minute as pressure grew on ministers to solve the growing PPE crisis.

UK officials had first contacted Selegna, based in Istanbul, around two weeks earlier in response to an emailed offer of help. The final order was signed on Friday April 17, and Mr Jenrick made his promise at the Downing Street press conference a day later.

Today I can report that a very large consignment of PPE is due to arrive in the UK tomorrow from Turkey, which amounts to 84 tonnes of PPE and will include, for example, 400,000 gowns  so a very significant additional shipment, he said.

But the following day, Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, admitted at the briefing that the consignment was not yet ready, adding that he hoped it would arrive the next day.

The RAF had originally planned to send three planes to collect the gowns, but only one Airbus A400-M finally made the journey on the afternoon of Monday April 20. The plane then waited on the tarmac for more than 24 hours after it was discovered that an export licence to allow the gowns to leave Turkey had not been signed.

Amid frantic calls between UK officials and Selegna, the Turkish government stepped in at the last moment and ordered Ushas, a state-owned health company, to dispatch PPE so the military plane could finally take off for RAF Brize Norton.

Around 32,000 gowns were taken back on that first flight  enough to sustain NHS hospitals for only a few hours. Two larger RAF planes flew from Istanbul later that week, loaded with around 300,000 gowns supplied by Selegna.

But when UK officials inspected them, they found faults that rendered them too dangerous for use by NHS staff.

A spokesman for the Department of Health would not reveal exactly what was wrong with the equipment, but senior NHS sources suggested problems had been found with the type of material used and the length of the sleeves.

Selegna did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Workers unload boxes of PPE from one of the flights from Turkey - AFP

Last week, the NHS banned trusts from sourcing their own PPE because they were seen to be competing for the same vital gear. But procurement chiefs have complained that they have since been sent Chinese-made masks from the national stockpile that do not effectively repel fluid.

"We have FFP2 and FFP3 [masks] quarantined as not fit for use," Jacqueline Scroggs, the head of clinical products at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, said. "I really worry that not all trusts will pick these up and they will end up in use. Who is checking and ordering these? It's not rocket science."

Clare Nash, a clinical procurement chief at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, added: "Who is checking the specs before these products get shipped? It's so obvious they don't meet the specs just by looking at them."

Paul Ralston, the head of procurement at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said he had received three calls about sub-standard deliveries from the national stockpile. He added: "This has to be sorted  we could be putting staff at risk if this continues."

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: "This is a global pandemic with many countries procuring PPE, leading to shortages around the world  not just the UK.

"We are working night and day to source PPE internationally and domestically, and brought together the NHS, industry and the armed forces to create a comprehensive PPE distribution network to deliver critical supplies to the frontline.

"All deliveries of PPE are checked to ensure the equipment meets the safety and quality standards our frontline staff need. If equipment does not meet our specifications or pass our quality assurance processes, it is not distributed to the front line."
New Delhi: The Madras High Court on Friday (May 8) ordered the closure of state-run TASMAC liquor outlets across Tamil Nadu in the wake of violations of social distancing norms amid COVID-19 lockdown. The High Court, however, permitted online sale of liquor.

The court permitted liquor shops to open only under certain conditions and warned them against violation of norms.

The Tamil Nadu government on May 4 had announced that the state-run TASMAC liquor stores will be opened in non-containment zones from May 7. These outlets were being opened as the neighbouring states of Andhra and Karnataka opened their liquor stores and residents from Chennai and other bordering districts were crossing over to get alcohol.

On May 6, the High Court had refused to stay the decision of the Tamil Nadu governments to re-open state-run TASMAC liquor outlets. The decision was applicable for the whole state except for the shops falling under the Chennai City Police limits.

Some liquor outlets got a fresh coat of paint while the barricades were built to control and organise the crowd. The stock of liquor bottles safely stored away from the shops - where bottles were stolen in large numbers - were transported in trucks back to the shops.

The government had ordered social distancing of six feet to be maintained between two persons standing in the queue.

It also came out with liquor sales timings for different age groups - those over 50 years of age can buy from 10 am to 1 pm, those in the age group 40-50 between 1 pm to 3 pm and for below 40 years of age, between 3 pm and 5 pm.

Earlier in the day, a scuffle broke out between protestors including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers and Police in Madurai during an agitation against the state government`s decision to open liquor shops amid lockdown.

Women were leading the protest and some joined the protest with their children. On Monday, the Tamil Nadu government had announced the opening of TASMAC outlets (state-run liquor shops) in all areas except in containment zones.

DMK and its allies had on May 6 released a joint statement, announcing that they will wear black as a symbol of protest and raise slogans against the state and central governments "on their failure in handling COVID-19 situation".

"Condemning the opening of the liquor shops, we are going to wear black tomorrow in our respective homes at 10 am and raise slogans against AIADMK government saying `AIADMK government has failed in curtailing coronavirus`," the statement had said.

According to Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar, a total number of COVID-19 positive cases in the state stands at 600. Of these cases, 405 are male and 195 are female patients. Chennai has reported 399 COVID-19 positive cases today, he told media.

(With Agency Inputs)
An international study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists found that the global mean sea-level rise could exceed 1 metre by 2100 and 5 metres by 2300 if global targets on emissions are not achieved.

The study used projections by more than 100 international experts for the global mean sea-level changes under two climate scenarios - low and high emissions. By surveying a wide range of leaders in the field, the study offers broader assurance about its projections for the ranges of future sea-level rise.

In a scenario where global warming is limited to 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the experts estimated a rise of 0.5 metres by 2100 and 0.5 to 2 metres by 2300. In a high-emissions scenario with 4.5 degree Celsius of warming, the experts estimated a larger rise of 0.6 to 1.3 metres by 2100 and 1.7 to 5.6 metres by 2300.

Professor Benjamin Horton, Acting Chair of NTU's Asian School of the Environment, who led the survey, said that sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions.

Prof Horton said, "The complexity of sea-level projections, and the sheer amount of relevant scientific publications, make it difficult for policymakers to get an overview of the state of the science. To obtain this overview, it is useful to survey leading experts on the expected sea-level rise, which provides a broader picture of future scenarios and informs policymakers so they can prepare necessary measures."

Published in Nature Partner Journals Climate and Atmospheric Science on 8 May, the projections of sea-level rise exceed previous estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The NTU-led international study was a collaboration with researchers from The University of Hong Kong, Maynooth University (Ireland), Durham University (UK), Rowan University (USA), Tufts University (USA), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany).

"We know that the planet will see additional sea-level rise in the future," says co-author Dr Andra Garner, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Rowan University in the United States of America. "But there are stark differences in the amount of sea-level rise experts project for low emissions compared to high emissions. This provides a great deal of hope for the future, as well as a strong motivation to act now to avoid the more severe impacts of rising sea levels."

"This international study is based on the informed opinions of 106 sea-level experts and underlines the critical importance of pursuing a low emissions policy to limit sea-level rise," says Dr Niamh Cahill, Assistant Professor in the Dept of Mathematics and Statistics at Maynooth University in Ireland.

The 106 experts who participated in the survey were chosen as they were among the most active publishers of scientific sea-level studies (at least six published papers in peer-reviewed journals since 2014) identified from a leading publication database.

In response to open-ended questions, the climate change experts identified the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets as the greatest sources of uncertainty. These ice sheets are an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Satellite-based measurements show the ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate. However, the experts also noted that the magnitude and impact of sea-level rise can be limited by successfully reducing emissions.

Dr Andrea Dutton, Professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is not involved in this study, says, "One of the key take-aways from this study is that our actions today can make a profound difference in how much our coastlines will retreat in the future. That knowledge is empowering because it means that we can choose a better outcome through our actions."

###

Note for Editor:

The paper, "Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey", was published in Nature Partner Journals Climate and Atmospheric Science on Friday, 8 May 2020.

Media contact:

Mr Nur Amin Shah

Manager, Media Relations

Corporate Communications Office

Nanyang Technological University

Email: aminshah@ntu.edu.sg

Stephen R. Levine

Assistant Director, Office of Media & Public Relations

Rowan University

Glassboro, NJ, USA

Email: Levines@rowan.edu

Niamh Connolly

Head of Communications

Maynooth University

Email: niamh.connolly@mu.ie

Jonas Viering

Communications

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Email: press@pik-potsdam.de

About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.

NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes - the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering - and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Ranked 11th in the world, NTU has been placed the world's top young university for the past six years. The University's main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and it has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) building projects, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore's healthcare district.

For more information, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg.
IRVINE, Calif., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE: AYX), revolutionizing business through data science and analytics, today announced that Billy Spears has joined the company in a new role as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). As the company continues its strong growth, Billy's responsibilities include overseeing information security, enterprise cybersecurity and associated risk management practices. Billy will provide ongoing education on with information and cybersecurity best practices.

"I am thrilled to welcome Billy to our Alteryx executive leadership team as our CISO, an increasingly important role in today's environment," said Dean Stoecker, co-founder and chief executive officer of Alteryx. "As a data analytics company, we recognize the immense responsibility of information security, cybersecurity, and privacy, and are continuing to invest in our strategic approach to both internal and external information security. Under Billy's leadership, our cybersecurity capabilities will enhance data protection for our customers, partners, vendors and associates."

Billy brings more than 20 years of experience overseeing and building multidisciplinary teams while establishing collaborative information security and privacy environments within government, private, and public sector organizations. Most recently, he served as loanDepot's executive vice president, chief information security officer where he influenced positive change, advanced technical capabilities, and simplified core cybersecurity, privacy and related risk process using forward thinking techniques. Prior to loanDepot, Billy held a variety of leadership roles at Hyundai Capital America, General Electric, Dell and is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Billy is also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

"Architecting and implementing strategic solutions that build trust, enable resilience and incorporate core principles that drive digital transformation and simplify business processes has always been a passion of mine," said Spears. "I am excited to join Alteryx, a company whose vision empowers that passionunleashing the thrill of solving. I look forward to working with tremendously talented technologists developing complex solutions that are intended to improve our organizational information security protection posture. Our number one focus is to enhance the privacy and information security solutions that enable improved protections while reducing unnecessary friction interacting with our enterprise technology offerings for both customers, partners and associates around the globe."

About Alteryx, Inc.

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Maharashtra Chief Minister's Office has declared Rs 5 lakh each has been announced as ex gratia compensation to families of the deceased in the Aurangabad train accident, ANI has reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed anguish over the death of 14 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtra's Aurangabad.

He said all possible assistance was being provided.

Seventeen migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district on May 8 morning.

In a tweet, the prime minister said, "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation".

The workers were returning to Madhya Pradesh and had been walking along the tracks. They later slept on the rail tracks due to exhaustion.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday condoled the death of 14 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtra's Aurangabad. The workers were mowed down by a goods train early this morning.

"Deeply saddened to learn about the loss of lives in a train mishap in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. My heartfelt condolences to bereaved families," Naidu said on Twitter.

According to police, the workers were returning to Madhya Pradesh and had been walking along the rail tracks. They had slept on the tracks due to exhaustion.

[With PTI inputs]
Miller, who had handled communications for the coronavirus task force, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNBC.

Miller was at the White House on Friday morning before her positive result came in, a White House official told NBC. The official told NBC that Miller was showing "symptoms" while she was there.

President Donald Trump said earlier Friday that a "press person" named Katie was the Pence aide who tested positive. Earlier this year, Miller married senior Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller. Miller said she is asymptomatic, and that she tested negative a day before testing positive Friday, NBC reported.

Katie Miller, press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, is seen in the Capitol during the Senate Policy luncheons in the Capitol on Tuesday, February 11, 2020.

Trump's physician and White House staff "continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy at all times," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

"In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, every staff member in close proximity to the president and vice president is being tested daily for COVID-19 as well as any guests," Deere said.

On Thursday, news broke that Trump's personal valet has also tested positive.

Pence was scheduled to travel to Des Moines, Iowa, in the morning, but his departure from Andrews Air Force Base was delayed by nearly an hour as staff dealt with news of the diagnosis. Reporters traveling with Pence said several staffers disembarked from Air Force Two just before takeoff.

Those staffers left the plane because they had been in contact with the staffer who tested positive, NBC News reported. In response to the positive test, the White House medical office has embarked on a program of contact tracing for the individual, an official told NBC. Some of these staffers have already been retested.

As of Friday, more than 75,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, and more than 1.2 million have tested positive.

Yet Pence and Trump by and large refuse to wear masks, despite a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that face coverings be used to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump has never been inclined to wear a mask. Moments after the CDC issued its initial guidance on masks in April, the president said, "I don't think that I'm going to be doing it."

This has not changed, even with news of his valet's positive test. On Friday Trump attended an event to mark the anniversary of VE Day, and neither he nor first lady Melania Trump wore a mask.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Ministers of Economy and heads of customs services of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council) and observer countries discussed several issues and measures during and after the pandemic in a video-conference meeting on May 6.

The video conference was aimed to identify areas for joint action to implement the issues raised by the heads of state at the extraordinary summit of the Turkish Council held at the initiative and chairmanship of President Ilham Aliyev on April 10.

Moderated by Azerbaijan's Minister of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov, the meeting concentrated on the current economic situation in the partner countries, the development of joint proposals and practical measures against the negative socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as further strengthening cooperation in relevant fields in the post-pandemic period.

Mikayil Jabbarov stressed that the number of cases of coronavirus infection in Azerbaijan has been limited as a result of timely varied preventive measures taken under the leadership and direct control of President Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijan, which is a model of a well-thought-out and targeted policy, positively differs in this regard, he noted.

The Minister informed his counterparts about operative and systematic measures implemented, first of all, in order to protect people's health based on close state-citizen solidarity, aside from that, to reduce the impact of the pandemic on the national economy, to provide support to entrepreneurs and employees operating in affected areas, to keep jobs, to ensure social protection of the population, as well as to prepare a real basis for the application of a new model of economic development in the post-pandemic period.

In order for the effective use of the advantages generated by bilateral free trade agreements between member states of Turkic Council, for the development of e-commerce, Azerbaijans Minister of Economy proposed to implement measures for the mutual recognition of electronic signatures, use Azerbaijans experience in the establishment of the Turkish Trade House, as well as preparation of a catalog of available border and transit regimes in the member countries in the framework of the Turkish Council. Besides, Mikayil Jabbarov proposed to inform member States about any urgent or planned changes in the transport and transit regime, as well as to create an online information exchange system that will allow tracking of goods and procedures in the member countries in the near future.

Recalling the establishment of the Joint Investment Fund and promotion of Turkic Trade and Industry Chamber during the extraordinary Summit held by the heads of States of Turkic Council in order to remove the negative effect on trade and investments in the member countries, minister Mikayil Jabbarov noted that the establishment of such a fund will give a broad impetus to the development of entrepreneurship in the member countries, especially small and medium-sized businesses, the creation of new jobs, support for innovation, and ultimately the overall economic and social development of the countries by increasing mutual investment opportunities.

The minister said that Azerbaijan is ready for providing any support to establish the Joint Investment Fund in Baku.

Speaking about the digital economy, Mikayil Jabbarov recalled the decision to establish a branch of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Center of the World Economic Forum in Azerbaijan earlier this year. The minister also stressed that necessary measures will be taken to make the Center of regional significance so that the fraternal countries can benefit from its activities.

Mikayil Jabbarov noted that the formation of state reserves for food products is of special importance. In this regard, it is advisable to form a single list for all member countries.

During the video conference, the heads of relevant agencies of the participating countries gave information about measures taken in their countries to reduce the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic development and trade relations, and made proposals for joint measures within the Turkish Council. In addition, at the meeting, the sides also exchanged views between the heads of customs services of the Turkish Council member and observer countries, and the heads of customs authorities voiced their proposals on the implementation of practical steps during the pandemic.

It should be noted that the meeting was held with the participation of the Secretary General of the Turkic Council Baghdad Amreyev, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan Sardor Umurzakov, the Minister of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Ruslan Dalenov, the Vice-Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kairat Torebayev, the Minister of Economy of the Kyrgyz Republic Sanzhar Mukanbetov, the Minister of Trade of the Republic of Turkey Ruhsar Pekcan and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Peter Szijjarto, as well as the Heads of Customs Administrations of the Members States.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wrote his own tribute to veterans of WWII today adding that the government must protect them from the coronavirus as it rips through the country's care homes.

In an article saluting veterans on the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, he added that the care sector requires attention after the pandemic to protect those who 'protected our country in its darkest hour'.

His comments come the same day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on the public to engage the 'same spirit' used by the VE Day generation during the war.

Britain's Labour Party leader Keir Starmer speaks during the weekly question time debate in Parliament in London on Wednesday

Veterans observe a two minute silence as they attend a service at the National Memorial Arboretum 75th Anniversary of D-Day, Alrewas, Staffordshire yesterday

Parliament's House of Commons Chamber images of Boris Johnsons at Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions

Sir Starmer wrote in the article for the Telegraph newspaper: 'We owe so much to the generation of VE Day. We must do everything we can to care and support them through the current crisis.'

'We have all heard the harrowing stories of the virus spreading through care homes, with families unable to say their last goodbyes,' he added.

'The crisis in our care homes has gone on for too long, and we must do everything we can to protect our most vulnerable, many of whom protected our country in its darkest hour.'

It was revealed yesterday that the frontline had moved from hospitals to care homes where the R rate  the indicator of how many people each virus carrier infects  has increased despite the strict lockdown.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had estimated the R rate at between 0.5 and 0.9.

Mr Johnson wrote: 'But please allow us, your proud compatriots, to be the first to offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered'

This VE Day marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe (pictured, blind war veterans clapping for carers outside Blind Veterans UK, East Sussex)

Britain announced 539 coronavirus victims on Thursday, as the UK's official toll rose to 30,615

But John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told a Commons committee last night that the Reproduction rate had risen sharply in the past two weeks.

He said the figure could now be as high as 1.0, an increase 'driven by the epidemic in care homes'. If the rate exceeds this mark, infections could begin to spread, rather than decrease.

Office for National Statistics chief Sir Ian Diamond told yesterdays Downing Street press conference: That gives us a real challenge to reduce the epidemic in care homes and its one that I think  over the next few weeks  will happen.

He added: At the moment we need, certainly, to get on top of the epidemic in care homes and in hospitals.

In his letter sent to veterans today, Boris Johnson said: 'On this anniversary, we are engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus which demands the same spirit of national endeavour that you exemplified 75 years ago.'

'We cannot pay our tribute with the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past; your loved ones may be unable to visit in person,' he wrote.

'But please allow us, your proud compatriots, to be the first to offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered.'

VE Day will be marked with small commemorations in Parliament, with Speakers of both the Commons and the Lords expected to offer tributes (pictured, in New York)

The ban on mass events means the celebrations will be more low-key than initially anticipated (pictured, 94-year-old Doug Farrington in his front room window in Oldham)

The Prime Minister's letter comes at a time of division as Tory MPs urge him to lift lockdown restrictions soon to avoid an economic depression while Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warns of a potential second wave of infections.

In his letter, Mr Johnson described those involved in the struggle to defeat Nazism as 'quite simply the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived'.

He praised those who served on the front line and those involved in the home front effort, adding: 'Our celebration of the anniversary of the victory might give the impression that Hitler's downfall was somehow inevitable. You know better.

'You will remember moments of crisis, even desperation, as our country endured setback, defeat and grievous loss. What made the difference was your valour, fortitude and quiet yet invincible courage.'

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the British government opted to move the early May bank holiday - usually held on the first Monday of the month - to May 8 to allow the UK to mark the 75th anniversary of the 1945 Victory in Europe celebrations.

But the ban on mass events, brought in on March 23 to stem the spread of the virus, means the celebrations will be more low-key than initially anticipated.

The Conservative Party leader labelled the NHS 'invincible' in its fight against Covid-19 in a speech following his own release from intensive care last month, having suffered from coronavirus symptoms.

Tributes to veterans of the world war have come from across the political spectrum, echoing Mr Johnson's and Sir Starmer's words of gratitude.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 16:17:37|Editor: huaxia

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PARIS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The first suspected cases of COVID-19 infection in France could date back to Nov. 16 last year, some nine weeks earlier than the official record of the country's first confirmed cases, a hospital in eastern France said Thursday.

"Doctor Michel Schmitt, head of the medical imaging department at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Colmar, has reviewed 2,456 chest scans performed between Nov. 1 and April 30, for all reasons (cardiac, pulmonary, traumatic, tumor pathologies)," said the hospital in a press release.

The typical scans compatible with COVID-19 infection have been also reviewed in a second then a third reading by two other experienced radiologists. According to this retrospective study, the first cases of contamination with COVID-19 were thus identified from Nov. 16 in this hospital, it said.

Albert Schweitzer hospital added that it has launched a collaboration with France's National Center for Scientific Research to start an epidemiological exploitation of these results.

Before this announcement, the first case of COVID-19 infection in east France was officially identified in late February. It involved a 36-year-old man who returned from a trip to Lombardy, then hotspot of the epidemic in Italy.

The first COVID-19 infection cases officially recorded in France were on Jan. 24, 2020 relating to individuals who had recently arrived or returned from China.

France on Thursday registered 178 new deaths caused by the novel coronavirus, taking the tally to 25,987. As hospitalization data continued to slow, the government said on Thursday that the country would start to unwind the nearly-two-month anti-coronavirus lockdown from Monday.
A well-known market intelligence company, Infiniti Research, has worked with 100+ companies in the biosimilars market across the globe. Our expertise in the field of market research enables us to offer tailored solutions that empower biosimilars market leaders to gauge how prepared and well-positioned they are for the future. Request a free brochure to learn more about our solutions portfolio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005457/en/

"Although the biosimilars industry has developed rapidly and regulation has advanced significantly over the years with approval processes now in place in many countries, there may be several opportunities to further streamline the regulatory process and accelerate path to market," says a market research expert at Infiniti Research.

The global biosimilars market is set for continued growth owing to patent expirations of some of the best-known biologics in the coming years. Despite many practical biosimilars challenges in Europe and the US, both these regions will continue to mature and offer growth opportunities to players in the sector. However, the downward price pressure in the biosimilars market indicates intense competition among key players in the sector. In this scenario, a key differentiator for biosimilars companies will be the ability to design and implement new development and commercial models. By doing so, players can offset the impact of declining prices and rising competition. Our biosimilars market forecast estimates that sales in the sector will surpass 10 billion in size by 2022.

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In this article, healthcare industry experts at Infiniti Research identify some top-of-mind themes that are set to shape the biosimilars market in the years to come and also evaluates what players can do to stand out in the dynamic market:

Market development in the US and Europe: Due to the increasing acceptance of biosimilars as an equal to patented drugs in terms of safety, efficacy, immunogenicity, the sales in the biosimilars market in Europe is growing at an unprecedented rate. However, the progress in the biosimilars market across the European region remains uneven. The demand for retail products and self-injectable biologics have weaker demand. This indicates reflects to lower levels of awareness in these segments when compared to hospital-administered products. In contrast, the biosimilars market growth in the US remains fairly flat. In the US, only three biosimilars are currently actively marketed while others remain tied up in patent disputes or are awaiting patent expiry. Furthermore, several regulatory efforts in progress in the US add to the challenges of players in the US biosimilars market.

Price management to create value: Pricing is a vital factor that plays a crucial role in the success of a biosimilar product. Price optimization helps manufacturers create greater leverage in its commercial budget. This can, in turn, be used to enhance competitive positioning, improve business growth and even create product differentiation in the biosimilars market. As in the generics and MedTech sectors, a sound price-to-volume model is vital in the biosimilars market to make the right tradeoffs across accounts. A strong model can better support contract management based on a real-time understanding of the biosimilars market. Moreover, it can also enable quick decisions and help manufacturers calibrate risk/reward ratios.

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American professor angers Erdogan's son-in-law

15 years pass since Hrant Dink assassination

563 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Guterres offers Merkel job at UN

Armenian church revamped in Iran

World oil prices going up

Newspaper: ECHR rulings increase after Armenia revolution in 2018

Newspaper: Armenia ex-President Sargsyan to give interview instead of press conference

Azerbaijan MFA falls into hysterical rage by France FM statement

The Pope to donate 100,000 to help migrants on border of Belarus and Poland

Fourth vaccine against COVID-19 is not enough for Omicron

World is on verge of country defaults

French Foreign Ministry considers unacceptable Azerbaijan statements about Pecresse

US to return two valuable artifacts over 4,000 years old to Iraq

Germany may consider halting Nord Stream 2 if Russia attacks Ukraine

Israel successfully completes test of anti-ballistic missile system

Plane landing in Sochi struck by lightning

Putin and Aliyev discuss Ukraine situation

Greek PM Mitsotakis threatens Turkey with sanctions

Handelsblatt: US and EU abandon idea of disconnecting Russia from SWIFT international payment system

Artsakh President meets representatives of non-governmental organizations

Avalanche kills person in Iran

Erdogan says he is pleased with decline in volatility of lira

NEWS.am daily digest: 18.01.22

Turkey and Azerbaijan to start laying gas pipeline to supply Nakhichevan

UK begins to supply Ukraine with anti-tank weapons

Armenian PM holds meeting on Armenia's Transformation Strategy until 2050

Nagorno-Karabakh: Remains of another Armenian soldier found in Jrakan region

Tehran to not accept any border change in South Caucasus

Dollar holding relatively steady in Armenia

Armenia special representative: Future process depends on Turkeys constructiveness degree

Erdogan: Gas from Mediterranean to Europe can only be pumped through Turkey

Iranian Consul General discusses customs cooperation in Nakhijevan

Inecobank brings Apple Pay to customers

Parliament vice-speaker says he is familiar with Armenia proposals on border demarcation commission work

US Secretary of State to visit Kyiv

Russia, Iran and China to hold joint naval drills

OSCE Chairmanship on Aliyev statement: We reiterate our full support to Minsk Group Co-Chairs

Artsakh NSS denies rumors about penetration of Azerbaijanis into Karabakh villages

Indonesian parliament approves bill to relocate capital

Armenia PM to Bulgaria colleague: Our interstate relations are marked by continuous development of cooperation

Armenian President meets Abu Dhabi Crown Prince

Azerbaijan to ban foreigners from visiting Nagorno-Karabakh occupied part

European Parliament new speaker elected

Armenian National Interests Fund participates in Abu Dhabi Sustainable Development Week summit

North Korea fires missiles for fourth time this year

ECHR recognizes violation of Armenian PM's rights after 2008 elections

Turkey reveals plans to produce combat aircraft

Karabakh official: Azerbaijan presidents impudent behavior is due to OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs silence

Azerbaijan special services force Artsakh resident to intelligence work

Copper price is stable

Minister of State: OSCE MG Co-Chairs must accept exercise of Karabakh people's right to self-determination

Armenia President, UAE Minister of State discuss possibilities of cooperation in science and technology

Investigation into criminal case of several Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is over

Canada sends detachment of special forces to Ukraine

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan, former deputy PM now MP Gevorgyan case trial resumes

2 more persons die of coronavirus in Artsakh

Armenia family has 10th child

Converse Bank brings Apple Pay to customers

Gold is getting weaker

Lacote: French institute to operate in Armenia (PHOTOS)

Ardshinbank Brings Apple Pay to Customers

Armenia President in UAE, meets with Emirati environment minister

Armenia legislature approves changes to several laws

Differences in data on coronavirus deaths in Armenia are corrected

360 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Norway to begin Breivik early release hearing

Economy minister to head Armenia side of commission on economic cooperation with Kazakhstan

Mexico crime photojournalist killed

Newspaper: Criminal case against Armenia archbishop dropped

Newspaper: Opposition Armenia Bloc in parliament to toughen its tactics

Scientists discover large breeding colony of icefish in southern Antarctica

China creates low-gravity artificial moon

Tehran welcomes normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations

Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers discuss regional issues

UN Secretary-General: Vaccinate whole world to end pandemic

Giant asteroid to fly past our planet

Armenian President meets with Executive Director of Mubadala Investment Company

UAE counting on Turkey

Indonesia to move capital by 2024

Passenger traffic at Armenian airports decreased by 30%

Armenian Investigative Committee: Six soldiers captured in November arrested

Turkish government to discuss Rubinyan-Kilic meeting results

German FM threatens Russia in case of aggression against Ukraine

Armenian MFA senior staff meets with ambassadors to European countries

Turkish court acquits German journalist Mesale Tolu

Turkish UAV intercepted over Greek island

Protest in front of Armenian Health Ministry

France introduces vaccine passes

Bitcoin begins to lose out competitors

Exchange rates in Armenia

Safari browser caught leaking user data

Xi Jinping: Confrontation between major powers can have disastrous consequences

Lukashevich: Russia concerned that OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs may not be able to visit Nagorno-Karabakh

Court obligates Armenia ruling force MP to prove ex-President Sargsyan lost more than $100M in casinos

Ex-ruling party official: Armenia authorities may renounce Genocide, Karabakh

Armenian PM's party decides to provide free textbooks to non-state schools

Times: Johnson prepares cadre purge to save his own skin

Pecresse accuses French government of inaction after Aliyev's statements on her Karabakh visit

Armenia President attends Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week forum opening
Mining at the Grosvenor Coal Mine in Queensland where five workers were injured during an explosion will not resume until it is deemed safe to do so.

Paramedics were called to the blast, believed to be caused by gas, at the mine, about 150 kilometres south-west of Mackay, about 3.14pm on Wednesday.

The injured men were airlifted to Brisbane with significant upper torso and airway burns.

The five people burnt in the mine explosion were rushed to the local hospital while awaiting transfer to Brisbane. Credit:Glenn Hunt

Anglo Americans Metallurgical Coal chief executive Tyler Mitchelson, said Grosvenor's recovery team was working through a risk assessment and planning for safe re-entry of the mine to allow an investigation to begin.
SPRINGDALE, Ark. , May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) announced today that it has partnered with Axiom Medical, a leading occupational health services and incident case management provider, to help support team members during the COVID-19 crisis.



Tyson Foods has already put in place a host of safeguards and guidelines to help ensure team member health and safety at all of its facilities that meet or exceed CDC and OSHA guidance. As an additional step to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, Axiom will help case manage affected team members and enhance communications with those impacted individuals and their families by providing:

Health support, including medical monitoring of ill or exposed team members

24/7 telephone access to licensed medical professionals

Facilitation of return to work clearances once team members have recovered

Ongoing education and best practices to reduce the spread of illness in the workplace

Our top priority is the health and safety of our team members, their loved ones and our communities, said Tom Brower, Senior Vice President of Health and Safety for Tyson Foods. The additional services Axiom provides will help to ensure our team members receive appropriate medical attention when they need it and can return to work safely. We care deeply about the welfare of every team member and are committed to providing them the best support as they help us maintain a healthy and stable food supply for the nation.

I am delighted that we have been able to help Tyson and their team members with the challenges presented by COVID-19, said Axiom Medical President and CEO Mark Robinson. Tyson is an essential business critical to feeding America, and it is a privilege to contribute to keeping Tyson team members safe in the workplace.

Tyson Foods formed a coronavirus task force in January and has implemented numerous measures to protect workers. The companys efforts have included:

Taking worker temperatures before every shift and installing more than 150 infrared walkthrough temperature scanners in its facilities to assist in this effort.

Providing protective face masks to all team members and requiring that they use them while at work.

Helping team members adhere to social distancing guidelines on the job by installing workstation and breakroom dividers, providing more breakroom space, erecting outdoor tents where possible for additional space for breaks, clearly marking appropriate 6-foot distances in common use areas, and staggering start times to avoid large gatherings as team members enter the facilities and designating monitors at each facility to help enforce social distancing.

Partnering with Matrix Medical Network to help ensure the safety and health of team members and contractors as the company begins to reopen some facilities.

Temporarily employing furloughed nurses and nursing students who will augment the current Tyson staff dedicated to managing the safe return to work process for team members.

The company has doubled its thank you bonus for its frontline workers. Team members who cannot come to work because of illness or childcare issues related to COVID-19 will continue to qualify. Tyson Foods has also increased short-term disability coverage to 90% of normal pay until June 30 to encourage team members to stay home when they are sick.

About Tyson Foods

Tyson Foods, Inc. is one of the worlds largest food companies and a recognized leader in protein. Founded in 1935 by John W. Tyson and grown under three generations of family leadership, the company has a broad portfolio of products and brands like Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright, Aidells, ibp and State Fair. Tyson Foods innovates continually to make protein more sustainable, tailor food for everywhere its available and raise the worlds expectations for how much good food can do. Headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, the company has 141,000 team members. Through its Core Values, Tyson Foods strives to operate with integrity, create value for its shareholders, customers, communities and team members and serve as a steward of the animals, land and environment entrusted to it. Visit WWW.TYSONFOODS.COM .

About Axiom Medical

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in The Woodlands, TX, Axiom is a market leader in the occupational health sector in North America, with unrivaled service quality and a very strong return on investment for clients in the USA, Canada and Mexico. For more information, please visit the companys website at https://www.axiomllc.com .

Media contact:

Gary Mickelson

(479) 236-9022
COVID-19 has plunged our country - like many others - in a situation where survival has become a challenge for those who are underprivileged. While the pandemic is killing people every day, the unavailability of resources has also led to the loss of so many lives.

The lives that are being saved are thanks to our frontline workers and people like K Kamalathal.

K Kamalathal is a 80-year-old woman from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, who is known to sell homemade idlis for Re 1 to the poor and needy. Even at this age, she continues to work every day, waking up before the break of dawn to provide fresh fluffy idlis to her customers, most of who depend on her for their daily meals.

EPS

Doing this for the last 30 years, Kamalathal has never increased her prices because her motto is simple - she wants to help the poor and needy.

However, what's amazing is that even during a time like this when people's businesses are incurring huge losses, Kamalathal hasn't increased the price of her idlis even by a single paisa. According to an India Today report, the 80-year-old said, "The situation is a little difficult since Covid-19 started, but I am trying to provide idlis for Re 1 to the poor. I won't raise the rate but prices of ingredients are rising."

TOI

Disregarding profits and her own benefit, she is taking the well-being of the underprivileged into consideration, Kamalathal is a saviour for the people around her, and that's exactly what heroes look like.
The US is pulling out four of its powerful Patriot missile systems from Saudi Arabia.

The move comes after the country determined the threat from Iran that sparked an arms buildup in the region last year had waned, a Defense Department official said Thursday.

Two of the anti-missile batteries deployed following the September attacks on Saudi oil installations 'are now leaving,' the official said on condition of anonymity.

The US is pulling out four of its powerful Patriot missile systems from Saudi Arabia, after determining the threat from Iran that sparked an arms buildup in the region last year had waned, a Defense Department official said May 7. Above, a Patriot missile battery is seen near Prince Sultan air base at al-Kharj on February 20

Tehran and Huthi-backed rebels in Yemen were blamed for the combination rocket and drone attack which left two of state oil giant Aramco's processing facilities - one in Khurais and another in Abqaiq - heavily damaged, roughly halving Saudi Arabia's oil production.

Two other batteries had been kept in the region in March following an attack by pro-Iran factions on the Iraqi base of Taji, north of Baghdad. Two Americans and one British soldier were killed in the attack.

'I think everyone knew it was going to be temporary at the time, unless things got bad, ' the official said.

'Things did not get bad, so they had to go.'

The batteries' return will also mark the withdrawal of the 300 US personnel who operate them.

American soldiers inspect the site of Iranian bombing at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar, Iraq

Late last year the Pentagon deployed about 3,000 extra troops, fighter jets and other hardware along with the Patriots in the wake of the attack on oil installations and subsequent rise in tensions in the Gulf.

The US also expanded its naval presence in the region.

The aim was to augment the kingdom's air and missile defense against possible rocket attacks from Iran.

In February Greece said it would deploy some of its own Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia, in a program arranged by the United States, Britain and France.

Usually warm relations between the US and Saudia Arabia have been strained in recent weeks. As the United States pressed Saudi Arabia to end its oil price war with Russia, President Donald Trump gave Saudi leaders an ultimatum.

In an April 2 phone call, Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that unless the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) started cutting oil production, he would be powerless to stop lawmakers from passing legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from the kingdom, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A member of the US Airforce looks on near a Patriot missile battery at the Prince Sultan air base in Al-Kharj, in central Saudi Arabia, in February. Usually warm relations between the US and Saudia Arabia have been strained in recent weeks. As the United States pressed Saudi Arabia to end its oil price war with Russia, President Donald Trump gave Saudi leaders an ultimatum

The threat to upend a 75-year strategic alliance, which has not been previously reported, was central to the U.S. pressure campaign that led to a landmark global deal to slash oil supply as demand collapsed in the coronavirus pandemic - scoring a diplomatic victory for the White House.

Trump delivered the message to the crown prince 10 days before the announcement of production cuts.

The kingdom's de facto leader was so taken aback by the threat that he ordered his aides out of the room so he could continue the discussion in private, according to a U.S. source who was briefed on the discussion by senior administration officials.
Sarah watches her four-year-old daughter jump around a play structure she's not allowed on because of the pandemic.

They're just happy to be outside.

For eight days, Sarah  an asylum seeker from Haiti who crossed the U.S. border into Quebec at Roxham Road three years ago  was bedridden in their small Montreal-Nord apartment, her body feverish and aching.

It had started with some coughing and a slight fever she had tried to brush off at first. Her manager at the private long-term care residence in Ahuntsic where she works as an orderly wasn't happy when she'd asked to stop working, for fear of bringing the infection home to her asthmatic daughter.

Then more symptoms appeared. She was nauseous, and the cough and fever got worse. A test a couple days later confirmed she had COVID-19.

Now on the mend, three weeks after testing positive, Sarah says: "I'm proud. I was on the battlefield."

Sarah's refugee claim was rejected after her first hearing, then again on appeal. Her only hope at staying in the country now is to be granted residency on humanitarian grounds, a process for which she began the application before the pandemic.

Given her precarious immigration status, CBC has agreed not to identify her by her real name.

Sarah is far from the only asylum seeker working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many 'guardian angels' are asylum seekers

Marjorie Villefranche, executive director of Maison d'Haiti in Montreal's Saint-Michel district, estimates that about 1,200 of the 5,000 Haitian asylum seekers the organization has helped since 2017 have become orderlies.

Frantz Andre, who helped found the Action Committee for People without Status, an advocacy group that helps asylum seekers settle in Montreal, says there are many more who've flown under the radar.

Asylum seekers make up a large portion of the "guardian angels" Quebec Premier Francois Legault has praised in his daily briefings  the orderlies, or preposees aux beneficiaires (PABs), working in long-term care homes  who have no guarantee they'll be allowed to stay in Canada.

Story continues

Charles Krupa/Associated Press

"As quickly as they can, they want to find a job  and they're being directed to jobs that no one else wants to do: the caregivers, PABs, security agents," Andre said.

Without status, on the front lines

He and other refugee advocates have been calling on the Canadian government to allow asylum seekers already in the country to stay.

Many of them are hired by temp agencies, which offer people eager to work easy access to the labour market. For seniors' homes desperately short of staff, the agencies are a source of cheap labour, but they operate with little government oversight.

The workers are often shuffled from facility to facility  a practice Quebec's public health director, Dr. Horacio Arruda, has acknowledged is contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in long-term care centres, known in the province as CHSLDs.

Andre says the long hours they put in make the workers more prone to catching the virus and spreading it to their families.

He says it explains why Montreal-Nord, a low-income neighbourhood filled with newcomers, has the highest number of cases in the city.

Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada

"When you're tired, you don't eat well. You will go back home, and there's four, five, six and sometimes seven people living in a [one-bedroom]. The chances of the people catching it, the family catching COVID-19, is greater than anywhere else," Andre said.

It is also difficult for orderlies working for agencies to adhere to the province's request that they work in only one long-term care residence, because accepting shifts wherever they're asked to go is the only way to cobble together full-time work.

Another woman CBC spoke with works part time for a private residence and part time for an agency providing home care. Bouncing between visits to patients' homes and shifts at the long-term care residence increases the risk of spread, but the woman said she feels she has no choice.

Problematic use of agencies predates pandemic

Long-term care homes have long been reliant on temp agencies to fill staffing holes  and the people the agencies sign on are most often women and newcomers to Quebec.

"Even before the pandemic, they had a lot of trouble finding people to do the orderly work," said Prof. Nicolas Fernandez, a specialist in the relationship between health-care workers and patients who teaches family and emergency medicine at Universite de Montreal.

"The short-term solution is to go to agencies."

The reliance on temp agencies puts additional stress on CHSLDs struggling to contain outbreaks, said Fernandez, who has also served as a translator for asylum seekers.

CBC reached out to both federal and provincial departments requesting statistics on PABs, including how many are asylum seekers. Quebec's Labour and Immigration ministries said they did not collect that information.

The Health Ministry didn't provide a breakdown either, but offered up figures showing the vast majority of PABs are women  34,821 of 42,340 in both private and public facilities. The average salary in 2019 was $40,551.

Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press

Fernandez says the job of a PAB is gruelling and crucial: they are the backbone of CHSLDs.

From the moment they wake up, most residents require extensive care  at least three hours a day  to have qualified for a bed.

"In order for the person to feel cared for, and not just a number, you need someone who is going to be there every day," he said.

'There's no stability'

Sarah worked for two agencies to gain work experience after she finished her PAB course last year. She hated it  travelling as far away from Montreal as Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Monteregie, a 50-minute commute made longer by the stops the agency's van made to pick up other workers.

"There's no stability. Every time, you're sent to a different place. It gets really stressful," she said.

For the past couple of months, Sarah has worked in the same private long-term care facility in Ahuntsic.

She loves her work. She likes helping and caring for people. It's a far cry from the job she had in Haiti, working with a sports organization, but she hopes to be able to stay in Canada and work her way up in the health-care field, possibly becoming a nurse.

In the midst of this crisis, Sarah hopes the federal government recognizes how much asylum seekers have contributed to Canadian society and finds a way for them to stay.

"I hope the government will hear our calls, hear our voices."

Group wants special immigration program

Those calls grew louder on Thursday, with a community group devoted to the rights of Haitians who crossed into Canada in 2017 asking the provincial and federal governments to implement a special immigration program for those working in CHSLDs.

"We find it hard to believe that these guardian angels may be expelled from the country once the battle is won," the Concertation haitienne pour les migrant.es said in an open letter.

"We are counting on your leadership to make a humanitarian gesture to these citizens who are fighting alongside us every day."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada responded to a CBC inquiry about whether the federal government was considering giving asylum seekers already in Quebec special status.

A spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the government would stick with the current process.

"Our immigration system continues to be based on compassion, efficiency and economic opportunity for all, while protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians," spokesperson Shannon Ker wrote.
Amid the lockdown for the novel



coronavirus outbreak, Maharashtra Minister Anil Deshmukh on Friday said a "mischievous rumour" was being circulated about the deployment of Army in Mumbai, and added that police in the metropolis was competent to handle the situation.

He said any attempt to create such an impression, of military deployment, was "agenda driven".

"A mischievous rumour is being spread about the army being deployed in Mumbai. Let me place it on record that @MumbaiPolice is competent enough in handling the situation. Any attempt to create an impression otherwise is agenda- driven," Deshmukh tweeted.

Earlier in the evening, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had said his government might ask for additional manpower from the Centre, if needed, to enable police here to rest in a phased manner.

"This doesn't mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the Army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the- clock, some have fallen sick and a few of them have succumbed to the virus. They need rest," Thackeray had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dame Joan Collins exuded glamour and quaffed champagne as she lead a toast to the heroes of the Second World War from the balcony of her London apartment today.

The actress, 86, whose childhood home was destroyed in the Blitz while she slept in a Tube station, lead the Nation's Toast to the women of the war.

While the Dynasty star paid tribute to the servicemen and women, the public were encouraged to join her at 3pm, raising a glass with the toast: 'For those that gave so much, we thank you'  the first time such a tribute has ever taken place.'

Even though the parades have been cancelled due to the lockdown nothing has quelled the nation's spirit when it comes to celebrating todays 75th anniversary of VE Day.

Dame Joan Collins, 85, exuded glamour as she lead the 3pm toast from the balcony of her London apartment

Joan Collins (right) and her sister Jackie as children. The pair were evacuated from London with their mother duirng World War II

Although large-scale public events have been unable to go ahead, tributes have been paid by politicians and members of the royal family, as well as through a host of other events.

The actress cut an elegant figure in an all-white outfit as she lead the toast at 3pm today from her huge balcony.

Earlier this afternoon, she and her partner could be seen hanging out Union Flag bunting across pillars and a banister to create the VE Day spirit.

This morning, Dame Joan recalled her experience of the Blitz saying seeing boarded up beaches due to the coronavirus lockdown has reminded her of her childhood.

Dame Joan appeared ultra-glamorous in a chic all-white outfit as she lead the tributes to the heroes of the Second World War

The actress could be seen posing on the balcony of her home, having decorated the balcony with Union flags

The actress oozed glamour as she reclined on her baloncy in the sunshine to lead the toast and celebrate VE Day today

The actress had encouraged others to join in the 3pm toast as she paid tribute to heroes of the war with her toast

Speaking to Lorraine Kelly on Good Morning Britain, the acting legend said her memories of World War II have come back to her in the last few weeks.

She explained: 'I do remember the war a little bit, it's coming back to me more in the last few weeks, I was evacuated with my mother and her sister.

'I remember coming back to London during one of the pauses in the Blitz, but when we were there it started again.

'We went to a shelter in Marble Arch tube station. We could go down and sit in this very convivial atmosphere people passed around sandwiches and sang.

Dame Joan appeared ultra-glamorous for the occasion, opting for a white otufit with glittering gold jewellery as she raised a glass for the celebrations

Meanwhile Joan was also joined her husband Percy on the balcony for the 3 o'clock toast this afternoon

'The next morning we went back to our flat in Maida Vale and it had been completely destroyed'

Discussing the similarities between the current pandemic and war, Dame Joan added: 'I have been long concerned about this virus for a longtime, when I came from LA two and a half months ago in a mask and gloves I was derided by LAX staff, and by people when I was going to restaurants with wipes.

'In the war, I was evacuated 12 times, I never saw a banana until after the war, for a long time we were in Brighton, we'd look out at the sea and the wonderful beaches and we couldn't go out there, all your could see was barbed wire, rather like today.

Earlier today, Dame Joan and her husband Percy could be seen decorating their balcony for the celebration

Dame Joan's husband Percy could be seen hanging out Union flag bunting across the huge balcony for the celebration

Dame Joan, who was 11 when VE day was celebrated in 1945, added she was never really scared of the war as she didn't understand it, and at school Hitler and Mussolini were made out to be 'cartoon characters'.

'VE Day was incredibly catching, my parents relaxed for the first time, Daddy bundled us into his car and we went down to Piccadilly.

'People were dancing and singing, it was amazing, everybody was so so happy, it was a feeling of such relief.'

Dame Joan Collins has recalled her experience of the Blitz saying seeing boarded up beaches due to the coronavirus lockdown has reminded her of her childhood.

Discussing the similarities between the current pandemic and war, Dame Joan told Lorraine: ' I have been long concerned about this virus for a longtime, when I came from LA two and a half months ago in a mask and gloves I was derided by LAX staff, and by people when I was going to restaurants with wipes.

A two-minute national silence was observed at 11am to honour the memories of the British servicemen and women who gave their lives during the conflict.

It was led by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and broadcast from Balmoral where they are self-isolating.

Later today the Queen will address the nation to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day on an extraordinary day of virtual commemorations.

Dame Joan revealed how she wore masks and gloves before the lockdown - which she's been in for 52 days

As part of the revised plans to mark the occasion, Her Majesty's words will be broadcast on May 8 on BBC One at 9pm.

That was the exact moment her father King George VI gave a radio address in 1945, broadcast from bomb-scarred Buckingham Palace, in which he asked the nation to join him in giving thanks 'for a great deliverance' as the war in Europe had ended.

The message will be recorded at Windsor Castle under the same conditions as the Queen's national broadcast earlier this year - with a lone cameraman in protective gear standing more than two metres away, a royal source said.
A record-breaking haul of fins from endangered sharks has been seized by customs officials in Hong Kong.

Two cases were located at the Kwai Chung Customhouse on 28 April and 4 May, officials said. Inside, they found 13 tons of dried fins with an estimated market value of 6.9m ($8.6m), the largest single seizure to date.

The containers were intercepted by Hong Kong officials when the illegally trafficked products arrived from Ecuador.

After further investigation, a 57-year-old man was arrested in Sai Ying Pun area of Hong Kong on 29 April. He was released on bail as the investigation continues.

Hong Kong officials said in a statement that any person found guilty of importing or exporting an endangered species without a licence can be fined up to 8m ($10m) and faces a prison sentence of 10 years.

Shark finning is a brutal practice which involves cutting off the shark's dorsal fin, often while it is still alive. Some sharks are then dumped back in the water, suffering from blood loss. With no fin, it is impossible for the shark to stabilise, leaving it to slowly die, according to the Humane Society International.

The fins are used to make shark fin soup, although they do not have any taste. The dish is viewed as a delicacy in parts of Asia and is served at celebrations as a symbol of wealth.

Fins are worth around 390 ($450) per pound on the market and a bowl of soup can cost up to 87 ($100), according to Shark Allies. Some 72 million sharks are killed every year for shark fin soup.

Hong Kong Customs seized 13 tons of illegally trafficked dried fins from endangered sharks in recent weeks (Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department)

Full or partial bans on shark finning have been enacted in dozen of countries and a number of high-profile hotels and companies in Asia have taken the dish off the menu, according to the Animal Welfare Institute.

Hong Kong banned shark fin soup at government banquets in 2013. The region once had a burgeoning trade in shark fins but has moved to crack down on the illegal market, according to Pew. Over the past six years, Hong Kong has ramped up training for customs officers to spot illegally imported shark fins that are on the list of species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) international agreement.

An estimated 5 million metric tons of illegal shark fins have been confiscated in Hong Kong in that time, Pew reported.
Ivanna Vladkova-Hollar has been appointed head of the IMF Mission in Ukraine, IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine Goesta Ljungman has said.

"Ivanna Vladkova-Hollar, a citizen of Bulgaria, has been appointed as head of the IMF Mission in Ukraine," he said in a statement.

According to Mr. Ljungman, she has significant experience in developing economies.

Ms. Vladkova-Hollar, in particular, led the Mission in Moldova and the Republic of North Macedonia. In Ukraine, she replaced Mr. Ron van Rooden from May 1, 2020.

As Ukrinform reported, on May 7, IMF Spokesperson Gerry Rice said that negotiations between the IMF and Kyiv were aimed not at securing a three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for Ukraine, but at achieving the conditions for launching a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), which provides for smaller volumes and will last for 18 months.

In December 2019, the IMF reached an agreement with the Ukrainian leadership on a new $5.5 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

The amount of funding under the new Stand-By Arrangement has not been announced yet.

ish
By Jason Lim





The quality of Korea's public service corps could be one of the keys to its widely lauded success in combating the COVID-19 crisis. ABC News did a deep dive into the holistic system that Korea put into place in response to the coronavirus  this is how they describe what a potential patient might go through once he or she experiences the onset of symptoms.



"You call the COVID-19 hotline to get information on local testing sites, walk to the nearest one, have a brief one-on-one visit with a doctor, and have your nasal or oral sample collected. The whole process takes less than 30 minutes. Later that evening, you get a text message letting you know whether you're COVID positive.



"All this for free or just under $20  if you do test positive, again no need to panic. If you're really sick, you'll immediately get admitted to a designated hospital, free of charge. If you are asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms but are worried about infecting your family and if you qualify, you can go to a designated quarantine facility for two weeks.



"There you'll be given a personal necessity kit  a kind of care package with everything you need to stay safe including gloves, masks, garbage bags, soap and even disposable thermometers  and another box full of non-perishable food to last you through the quarantine, including basic foods and ready-made meals. The government may even pay you a salary during the isolation. Throughout the isolation, a health official will regularly call you to check how you're feeling and ask you if you've checked your temperature."



This system is also in play even if you are a foreigner visiting Korea. You have to pay out of pocket for a two-week stay at a government designated facility; however, you also get tested, given three meals a day, receive personal welfare check-ups, and every other support by a government employee.



Then there is also the app that the Korean government designed to track activities of people who might have been potentially exposed  all that data goes into who knows where, but it pops out as instant text alerts to people who might have encountered an infected person or live in an area close to where an infected person might have been. In fact, several days' worth of the infected person's detailed itinerary is made public so that people can actually calculate his or her risk of exposure and behave accordingly in line with detailed government guidelines.



Of course, let's not leave out the daily briefings by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and its incredible epidemiological effort to track down this disease. The performance of KCDC Director Jung Eun-kyeong has been so impressive that she was even featured in the global media.



Then there are other agency heads and leaders from seemingly unrelated but absolutely critical agencies (i.e. education, treasury, etc.) who also provide up-to-date information that is clear, well-thought-out, and organized, with guidelines and recommendations all vetted and deconflicted across the relevant agencies. If you have ever worked in a large organization, you know how impressive such clarity and agility is.



But have we stopped to think for a moment who makes this all happen? The unsung heroes of Korea's COVID-19 success story have clearly been the public servants who must have toiled day and night to support all these activities. Just imagine all the bottom-up effort that goes into preparing for one Cabinet member's announcement.



Triple that when it's a matter of life or death in a rapidly moving public heath crisis. Multiply that by 10 times when it's done every day across multiple offices with data and information that needs to be collected, aggregated, analyzed, interpreted, calibrated, and transformed into talking points for a scared public.



Absolutely Herculean. And it's ongoing.



What's even more amazing is that Korea is doing this with a relatively low ratio of public servants to total workforce. In South Korea, only 7.6 percent of the total workforce is part of the government.



According to Forbes, "Norway has the highest government employment levels, reaching 30 percent of total employment. Denmark (29.1 percent), Sweden (28.6 percent) and Finland (24.9 percent) all follow with larger than average public sector workforces. In North America, 18.2 percent of Canada's workforce is employed by the government while in the U.S., the share is slightly lower at 15.3 percent."



Traditionally, the incredibly steep competition to obtain a public service position in Korea has been ridiculed. In 2019, the average odds was 39.2 to 1, with the highest odds in Busan at 331.5 to 1 for local city public employment. Also, the public service tends to be an easy target for budget cuts and pension reform, which are thinly disguised attempts by the political class to appeal to their base by "othering" the public servants as an undeserving, privileged class.



Perhaps the current crisis should trigger a realization that making the public service attractive enough to recruit and retain the best of the best does have some utility after all.





Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
A nearly 30-minute clip from a movie called The Plandemic has taken over social media and was taken down by YouTube, over the last few days.

Its the latest coronavirus-related topic that has sent the Internet into a divided rage.

The film features Dr. Judy Mikovits, and in it, she is identified as a molecular biologist and medical researcher. Multiple media reports have also described her as an anti-vaccination advocate, but she says in the film that she is not one, RepublicWorld reports.

According to Syracuse.com:

The Plandemic, a 25-minute clip from an upcoming documentary, was taken off of YouTube this week for violating the Google-owned video sites community guidelines. The video centered on Dr. Judy Mikovits, a former chronic fatigue researcher who claims the federal government is behind a plague of corruption to inflate profits from a potential vaccine even as COVID-19 threatens lives.

Below, we try to answer some key questions being asked by viewers:

What is The Plandemic all about?

Its actually not all about the coronavirus, but also vaccinations and Mikovits life. A PRWire release promoting the film that was distributed by The Associated Press describes it as follows (references to she refer to Mikovits):

"When she was part of the research community that turned HIV-AIDS from a fatal disease into a manageable one, she saw science at its best. But when her investigations questioned whether the use of animal tissue in medical research were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases, such as autism and chronic fatigue syndrome, she saw science at its worst.

If her suspicions are correct, we are looking at a complete realignment of scientific practices, including how we study and treat human disease. Recounting her nearly four decades in science, including her collaboration of more than thirty-five years with Dr. Frank Ruscetti, one of the founders of the field of human retrovirology, this is a behind the scenes look at the issues and egos which will determine the future health of humanity.

Why is Judy Mikovits called a controversial researcher?

According to Science, Mikovits reportedly detected an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,' but by 2011, no other lab or scientist could replicate the findings.

Science published online a nine-lab study widely seen as the final blow to the theory, championed by Mikovits and colleagues in an October 2009 Science paper, that a recently detected mouse retrovirus might play a causal role in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the outlet wrote in 2011.

A letter in the same issue of Science from one of the contributing labs to the 2009 report revealed that a contamination had marred its contributionPCR detection and sequencing of the mouse virus, dubbed XMRV. Mikovits and colleagues defended the validity of the rest of the study, known as Lombardi et al., which detected the virus by several other methods, so Science issued a rare partial retraction of the original paper."

A full retraction was later issued, according to Snopes.

What does Anthony Fauci have to do with it?

According to Snopes, Mikovits claims that Fauci, who currently is part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and continues to be the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, once threatened her with arrest if she visited the National Institutes of Health to participate in a study to validate her chronic fatigue research. Fauci denies ever saying such a thing, as he told Snopes:

I have no idea what she is talking about. I can categorically state that I have never sent such an e-mail to Dr. Ruscetti. I had my IT people here at NIH search all my e-mails and no such e-mail exists. Having said that, I would never make such a statement in an e-mail that anyone would be immediately arrested if they stepped foot on NIH property.

Was Judy Mikovits arrested?

Yes, she was, according to Science. A 2011 article from the publication states:

Lois Hart, one of Mikovitss attorneys, says her client is being held for extradition to Reno, Nevada, in relation to a civil lawsuit against her filed by the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI). Mikovits worked as the research director at WPI, a nonprofit in Reno, for 2 years until she was fired by its president, Annette Whittemore, on 29 September. On 4 November, WPI filed suit against Mikovits, alleging that she had wrongfully kept her laboratory notebooks and other information about her work for the fledgling institute on her laptop, in flash drives, and in a personal e-mail account. A preliminary injunction in the case is set to be held by Nevadas Second District Judicial Court on 22 November. On that same day, Mikovits has a hearing in Ventura County, California, where she can contest extradition, Hart says.

According to MyNews4.com, Mikovits turned herself into authorities in late November 2011 and was released the same day. The charges were dropped in 2012, per Science, which wrote the following at the time:

Assistant District Attorney John Helzer, who filed the dismissal, says Whittemores legal troubles factored into his decision. Theres a lot going on with the federal government and different levels that wasnt occurring when we first became involved with prosecuting this case, says Helzer. And we have witness issues that have arisen.

Why are people sharing The Plandemic clip?

Clearly, some people find it to be truthful and thus are sharing it for that reason, while others are sharing it to dispute parts or all of the clip.

The team at MIT Technology Review writes:

"Anti-vaccine activists are particularly good at gaining views on virtually any social app, says Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory who works to combat this type of misinformation. They are on every single social platformeven TikTok, she says. If they can create content people will find if they search for a specific term, theyll invest the time.

You can read that full report here.

Can I still watch it?

The answer to that question seems to be changing by the minute: While some report it is still searchable on Facebook, others claim it is not. And, while reports say YouTube has taken it down, there also appear to be third-party recordings of the original clip that are now uploaded to the popular video site.

Authors note: This story was updated to include Mikovits response in the film related to vaccinations and also to add the titles listed for her in the film.
This image showing the entire disk of Jupiter in infrared light was compiled from a mosaic of nine separate pointings observed by the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLabon 29 May 2019. From a "lucky imaging" set of 38 exposures taken at each pointing, the research team selected the sharpest 10%, combining them to image one ninth of Jupiter's disk. Stacks of exposures at the nine pointings were then combined to make one clear, global view of the planet. Even though it only takes a few seconds for Gemini to create each image in a lucky imaging set, completing all 38 exposures in a set can take minutes -- long enough for features to rotate noticeably across the disk. In order to compare and combine the images, they are first mapped to their actual latitude and longitude on Jupiter, using the limb, or edge of the disk, as a reference. Once the mosaics are compiled into a full disk, the final images are some of the highest-resolution infrared views of Jupiter ever taken from the ground. CREDIT Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team Acknowledgments: Mahdi Zamani

Researchers using a technique known as "lucky imaging" with the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground.

These images are part of a multi-year joint observing program with the Hubble Space Telescope in support of NASA's Juno mission. The Gemini images, when combined with the Hubble and Juno observations, reveal that lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid. The new observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.

Three years of imaging observations using the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, have probed deep into Jupiter's cloud tops. The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet.

"The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule," said Michael Wong of UC Berkeley. "We used a very powerful technique called lucky imaging," adds Wong. With lucky imaging, a large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used. The result in this case is some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. According to Wong, "These images rival the view from space."

Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere. This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover.

The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Geminiand Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones. The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight not unlike the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth.

Mapping giant lightning storms

On each of its close passes over Jupiter's clouds, Juno detected radio signals created by powerful lightning flashes called sferics (short for atmospherics) and whistlers (so-called because of the whistle-like tone they cause on radio receivers). Whenever possible, Gemini and Hubble focused on Jupiter and obtained high-resolution, wide-area maps of the giant planet.

Juno's instruments could determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of clusters of sferic and whistler signals. With Gemini and Hubble images at multiple wavelengths, researchers now can probe the cloud structure at these locations. By combining these three pieces of information the research team found that the lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid.

"Scientists track lightning because it is a marker of convection, the turbulent mixing process that transports Jupiter's internal heat up to the visible cloud tops," explained Wong. The largest concentration of lightning seen by Juno came from a swirling storm called a "filamentary cyclone." Imaging from Gemini and Hubble shows details in the cyclone, revealing it to be a twisted collection of tall convective clouds with deep gaps offering glimpses to the water clouds far below.

"Ongoing studies of lightning sources will help us understand how convection on Jupiter is different from or similar to convection in the Earth's atmosphere," Wong commented.

Glowing features in the Great Red Spot

While scanning the gas giant for gaps in cloud cover, Gemini spotted a telltale glow in the Great Red Spot, indicating a clear view down to deep, warmer atmospheric layers.

"Similar features have been seen in the Great Red Spot before," said team member Glenn Orton of JPL, "but visible-light observation couldn't distinguish between darker cloud material, and thinner cloud cover over Jupiter's warm interior, so their nature remained a mystery."

Now with the data from Gemini, this mystery is solved. Where visible light images from Hubble show a dark semicircle in the Great Red Spot, images taken by Gemini using infrared light reveal a bright arc lighting up the region. This infrared glow, from Jupiter's internal heat, would have been blocked by thicker clouds, but can pass through Jupiter's hazy atmosphere unobscured. By seeing these features as bright infrared hotspots, Gemini confirms that they are gaps in the clouds. Even though earlier observations have seen dark features in the Great Red Spot, the rapidly swirling winds within it hid the true nature of these spots until the simultaneous Hubble and Gemini observations were conducted.

"NIRI at Gemini North is the most effective way for the US and the international Gemini partnership investigators to get detailed maps of Jupiter at this wavelength," explained Wong. Gemini achieved a 500-kilometer (300-mile) resolution on Jupiter. "At this resolution, the telescope could resolve the two headlights of a car in Miami, seen from New York City," said Andrew Stephens, the Gemini astronomer who led the observations.[1]

"These coordinated observations prove once again that ground-breaking astronomy is made possible by combining the capabilities of the Gemini telescopes with complimentary ground- and space-based facilities," said Martin Still, an astronomy program director at the National Science Foundation, which is Gemini's US funding agency. "The international Gemini Partnership provides open access to a powerful combination of large telescopes' collecting area, flexible scheduling, and a broad selection of interchangeable instruments."

Notes

[1] This corresponds to an angular resolution of the Gemini infrared "lucky imaging" observations down to 0.13 arc-seconds.

More information

The results were published in the April 2020 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Because of their value for ongoing and future research, Wong is making the processed Gemini and Hubble data available to other researchers through the Mikulski Archives for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

The publication team was composed of: Michael H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), Amy A. Simon (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Joshua W. Tollefson and Imke de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), Megan N. Barnett (University of Chicago), Andrew I. Hsu (University of California, Berkeley), Andrew W. Stephens (Gemini Observatory North), Glenn S. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), Scott W. Fleming (Space Telescope Science Institute), Charles Goullaud (University of California, Berkeley), William Januszewski and Anthony Roman (Space Telescope Science Institute), Gordon L. Bjoraker (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Sushil K. Atreya (University of Michigan), Alberto Adriani (Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali), and Leigh N. Fletcher (University of Leicester).

NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC-Canada, ANID-Chile, MCTIC-Brazil, MINCyT-Argentina, and KASI-Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai?i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachon in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O'odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.



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Quinn, like many severely ill COVID-19 patients, found that surviving the disease was merely the first leg of the journey to overcoming it. Each day in Illinois, more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients are fighting for their lives in intensive care units in hospitals across the state. But when they get past the worst of the illness, many are finding that they need help to return to normal life and must spend hours a day in therapy at special rehabilitation hospitals, rehab units within traditional hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient facilities or at home. And thats to say nothing of the longer-term health problems that some physicians say may follow COVID-19 patients.
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Srinagar, May 8 : The long wait has finally ended for the Kashmiri medical students stranded in Bangladesh after the lockdown was imposed in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Air India flight with 167 medical students from Dhaka has landed in Srinagar.

Divisional Commissioner P.K. Pole told IANS that the "returning students are being screened at the airport and samples are collected there." "They will be moved to a quarantine facility till the test reports come in which will take two days," he said.

Government Spokesperson Rohit Kansal told IANS that all of them will be tested and any positive cases will go to the hospital and the negative to home quarantine.

The Kashmiri students, who were stuck in Bangladesh, had been repeatedly making pleas for bringing them back home by posting video messages on the social media.

Before boarding the flight students expressed gratitude to the Government of India for evacuating them.

"I am thankful to the Indian High Commission and the first secretary who have been helping us throughout, thank you so much for the evacuation, we are happy to reach our homes," Hadiya Rashid medical student said. "Our college and embassy continuously helped us and we are all very thankful to them." "I am from Kashmir and we have been evacuated from Bangladesh to Srinagar on a direct flight, I am thankful to our Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking this enormous step," said Ausaf Majeed, Medical Student.

"Till now we are facing no problems here, the arrangements are very nice, we are the first batch of students leaving from Bangladesh, we are very happy and thankful to the Government of India," Majeed said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Barbara ran that giant law office with a secure hand and spent countless hours helping literally to change the complexion of the U.S. Judiciary, Ginsburg wrote in 1997, according to a profile in Stanford, a university magazine. Regarding her own appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., Ginsburg added: I do not believe I would have gained that good job without her constant endeavors to place and move up my name on the candidates list.
New Delhi: Following Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradeshs lead, Gujarat is also set to dilute its labour laws to revive economic activity and attract investment.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said in a statement his government is planning to exempt new projects from provisions of labour laws. However, the relaxation will be applicable if the unit is committed to work for at least 1,200 days.

He further said the rules under existing labour laws regarding minimum wages, safety and compensation in case of accidents will continue to be effective and there will be no relaxations in these three domains.

In a bid to lure companies relocating from China, Rupani also talked about plans of land pooling. He said the state will welcome companies that are currently operating in the United States, China and other countries and may want to shift in Gujarat.

He said his government is coordinating with Indian embassies in foreign countries, adding that the state provides plug and production facility for industrial projects available at various locations, including Sanand, Dahej, SEZs, GIDC estates and Dholera. As much as 33,000 hectares of land have been allocated for the purpose, the CM said.

On Thursday, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the requirement of filling 61 registers and 13 returns has been abolished, and only one register and the return will be sufficient to obtain licence. He also allowed overtime of up to 72 hours and increase in the period of working shifts in factories from eight hours to 12 hours.

Following suit, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath-led government relaxed labour laws (except three rules and one provision) for the next three years to provide a cushion to sagging businesses and factories in the state.

Now, the industrial units will also not have to worry about inspection or enforcement officials knocking on their doors as they would not be probing if labour laws are being implemented.

In Rajasthan, the Ashok Gehlot dispensation amended Industrial Disputes Act to increase the threshold for lay-offs and retrenchment to 300 from 100 earlier, besides raising working hours from eight to 12 hours per day.

Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have also amended their Factories Acts over the past one month to increase the work time to 12 hours every day and 72 hours every week, compared to 8 hours every day and 48 hours every week.

Meanwhile, the Centre is also seeking to lure more than 1,000 US businesses, including medical devices giant Abbott Laboratories, to relocate from China as President Donald Trumps administration steps up efforts to blame Beijing for its role in the coronavirus pandemic.

The government in April reached out to more than 1,000 companies in the US and through overseas missions to offer incentives for manufacturers seeking to move out of China.

India is prioritising medical equipment suppliers, food processing units, textiles, leather and auto-part makers among more than 550 products covered in the discussions, officials said.
Daesh terrorists kill 11 Syrian soldiers, allied fighters in eastern Syria: Monitor

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 6:03 PM

Members of the Daesh terrorist group have killed 11 Syrian government soldiers and their allied fighters, a monitoring group says.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday that the government and pro-government forces were killed when their vehicle came under attack by Daesh terrorists between al-Sokhna and al-Shula towns in an area straddling the central province of Homs and eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

The UK-based monitor did not give further details about the attack, but warned that the causality toll could rise.

About a month ago, a similar Daesh attack claimed the lives of at least 27 Syrian government forces and their allied fighters in the same area.

Observers say that border closures and mobilization of security resources due to the COVID-19 global pandemic could give rise to attacks by Daesh, which has already lost all of its urban strongholds in Syria and neighboring Iraq after receiving crushing defeats from government forces in both countries.

However, every so often, remnants of the terror group, hunkered down in desert hideouts, launch hit-and-run attacks against government forces and their allied fighters as well as on civilians in both courtiers.

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The Indianapolis chief of police denounced a detective's comment about a 'closed casket' after a 21-year-old man was shot and killed by officers on Wednesday during a high-speed chase that was streamed on Facebook Live.

Dreasjon 'Sean' Reed was gunned down just hours before police fatally shot another man and ran over a pregnant pedestrian, sparking massive protests in Indianapolis.

Events surrounding Reed's death were broadcast in real time on Facebook, including comments by a responding detective who is heard saying: 'I think it's going to be a closed casket, homie,' an apparent reference to a closed-casket funeral.

'Let me be clear, these comments are unacceptable and unbecoming of our police department,' Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor told reporters during a news conference Thursday.

Dreasjon 'Sean' Reed, 21, was shot dead while running from police as he streamed a video of the chase on Facebook Live on Wednesday afternoon

In this Thursday photo, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor, center, listens to family of Dreasjon Reed during a protest on Michigan Road in Indianapolis

'We'll be pursing immediate disciplinary action against that officer,' Taylor added, going to great lengths to assure the investigations into all of the deaths will be thorough and transparent.

'I hope you understand that I'm one that is willing to acknowledge that if we made mistakes here, we will address them,' he said.

'But let the investigation run its course before we jump to conclusions - either on our side or on the community's side.'

Meanwhile, on Friday, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears requested that an independent prosecutor take over the Reed case, citing Taylor's personal involvement in the high-speed chase, reported WISH-TV.

Chief Taylor and Deputy Chief Kendale Adams began pursuing Reed in their unmarked vehicles along Interstate 65 after noticing him speeding and driving recklessly.

Taylor and Adams quit the chase once marked patrol cars responded to the scene.

'He will undoubtedly be a material witness in this case,' Mears said of the chief.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett this afternoon tweeted out a statement, asking the the United States Attorneys Office and the FBI to 'actively monitor' the investigation into the officer-involved shooting.

'While I continue to have confidence in Chief Randal Taylor and IMPDs ability to carry out fair and thorough investigations, it is clear to me that more must be done to provide community confidence in the outcome of those processes,' Hogsett stated.

Protesters listen during a rally outside of the City County Building in Indianapolis on Thursday

People march on Michigan Road before the vigil for Sean Reed in Indianapolis on Thursday

'Through this monitoring, in conjunction with an ongoing investigation by the Marion County Prosecutors Office, we reaffirm our commitment to a transparent criminal and civil review of these incidents and the conduct of those officers involved.

'Importantly, it is my hope that our city may also reaffirm its dedication to channeling the sadness and anger felt by so many into displays of peaceful protest.'

On Thursday, protesters crowded the streets of Indianapolis decrying the shootings of Reed and McHale Rose, 19, and the death of a pregnant woman, 23-year-old Ashlynn Lisby, who was struck by a police vehicle. Lisby's baby could not be saved.

Officials said both Reed and Rose exchanged gunfire with officers, adding that the second shooting early Thursday morning could have been an ambush on police.

Police did not have body camera or dash camera footage of either shooting. Both of the men were black, as were most of the protesters.

Lisby, who was white, was walking along an expressway ramp when an officer driving to work struck her with his vehicle.

According to her Facebook posts, Lisby was a single mother of three who worked for FedEx. She is survived by her young son and two daughters.

Community members gather for a vigil and protest over Reed's fatal shooting on Thursday

Reggie Jones marches on Thursday while protesting the fatal shooting of Reed by Indianapolis police on Wednesday following a pursuit

People bow their heads for a moment of silence during the vigil for Reed in Indianapolis on Thursday

Protesters converged on the first shooting scene Wednesday night, and dozens more gathered Thursday at the City County Building in downtown Indianapolis.

Many wore face masks aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus and at times shouted, 'No justice, no peace.'

Several carried Black Lives Matter flags and signs.

Protests began after video of the events leading up to Reed's shooting appeared on Facebook.

The video, which appears to have been recorded by Reed, shows him being pursued by police both in his car and on foot before incoherent shouting and popping sounds are heard.

Protesters crowded the streets of Indianapolis on Thursday to voice concerns about police treatment after officers shot and killed two men, including Reed, and fatally struck a pregnant pedestrian in three separate incidents just hours apart

Deja Morse sits on the roof of a car during a community vigil and protest in Indianapolis on Thursday

As a car does a burnout, a man yells to police from the top of a car during the vigil and protest

Reed was fatally shot by Indianapolis police on Wednesday following a pursuit. The incident was livestreamed on Facebook

A protester holds a sign outside of the City County Building in Indianapolis on Thursday

Later came the detective's comment, which also was broadcast live on social media.

Taylor, the police chief, said Thursday that the detective was not present when the shooting happened.

Reed's father, Jamie Reed, said he had seen the video and was 'crushed' by its contents.

'It just shows me that were not really being protected and served. We're being hunted,' he told reporters at Thursday's protest.

'My son was a great son. I love him to death. He was just a typical young adult like anybody else. He didn't deserve to die like that.'

In an interview with TMZ, Jamie Reed insisted that his son did not fire a gun at the police, claiming that the video showed Sean running with his T-shirt in one hand and his cellphone in the other.

The father also pointed out that police tasered his son first before using deadly force, arguing that if Sean was armed and pointing a gun at them, they would have shot him without deploying the Taser.

Jamie Reed, Sean's father (pictured left and right), insisted that his son did not shoot at police. He said he was 'crushed' after seeing the Facebook Live video

'I want justice,' the elder Reed demanded. 'I don't want my son to be no statistic.'

Relatives said Reed had recently left the United States Air Force.

Military records show he served less than a year, in 2017. Details of separations cannot be released under privacy rules.

Reed's shooting happened around 6pm on Wednesday after a pursuit that began when officers, including Taylor, observed someone driving recklessly on Interstate 65, police said.

Video shows that at one point after police stop pursuing him, Reed laughs and cheers.

'I'm not going to jail today!' he shouts.

Moments later, he appears unsure where he has driven and says in the recording, 'Please come get me. Please come get me!'

Supervisors ordered an end to that pursuit because the vehicle was going nearly 90 mph, police said.

An officer later spotted the car on a city street before being parked, then chased Reed on foot, Assistant Chief Chris Bailey said.

According to police, the officer first tried to use a stun gun, then shot Reed as they exchanged gunfire.

Bailey said it appears that a gun found near Reed had been fired at least twice.

Taylor called the gun 'distinct-looking with an orange slide and elongated grip' and said photos on social media show Reed holding a similar weapon.

The man in the video was identified by family members as 21-year-old Sean Reed (pictured)

McHale Rose, 19, was shot and killed in the early morning hours on Thursday after police alleged he shot at officers while in the middle of a burglary

Pictured: Ashlynn Lisby, 23, a single mother of three with a fourth baby on the way, was struck and killed by an Indianapolis police officer just hours after Reed's death

The officer who shot Reed is black, The Indianapolis Star reported, and he has been placed on administrative leave.

The second shooting happened about eight hours later, as police investigated a burglary at an apartment complex.

Police said a man armed with a rifle shot at four officers as they approached the apartment about 1.30am on Thursday.

Taylor said the initial investigation suggests that Rose 'may have made the call with the intention of initiating an ambush-style attack on the officers when they arrived.'

Between the shootings, Officer Jonathon Henderson, a 22-year veteran, struck Lisby with his vehicle.

Police said Henderson requested help and rendered first aid to the woman. Lisby was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The Greater Indianapolis NAACP said in a statement Thursday that it was monitoring information about the shootings.

'All of us are trying to make a new normal in an un-normal time. Incidents like these do not help restore normalcy to our community,' said Chrystal Ratcliffe, president of the NAACP branch.
[May 08, 2020] Voya Joins 100Kin10 Network to Help Train and Retain 100,000 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Teachers by 2021

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), has announced that it has joined 100Kin10, a national network committed to providing children with an enhanced Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM) education. Voya's inclusion in this network will help to drive 100Kin10's pledge to add 100,000 STEM teachers to America's classrooms by 2021. 100Kin10 enlists the nation's top academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies and government agencies to make strong commitments; amplify their capacity and impact through collaboration, learning and funding; and catalyze solutions to large-scale problems by leveraging the strength of the network and its resources. Together, this leads to the systemic change needed to overcome the challenges of providing all students with high-quality STEM learning. "At Voya, we invest in educators as they build strong societies by cultivating and inspiring tomorrow's leaders," said Braeden Mayrisch, director, Social Impact. "Joining the 100Kin10 network is a step toward amplifying their contributions, and ensuring we are recruiting and training the next generation of educators to help students prepare for the workforce." Voya Financial and Voya Foundation - the company's charitable giving arm - are committed to serving K-12 and higher education communities. Through signature programs, Voya STEM Futures and Voya Teacher Voices, Voya is focused on providing students with STEM knowledge vital to be competitive in the 21st century workforce, as well as empowering educators. Voya's long-stading support of educators reinforces its commitment to investing in the communities where its employees live and serve. Voya has awarded more than $5 million in grants to approximately 2,260 educators across the U.S. through its signature program, Unsung Heroes, since the program's inception more than 20 years ago, and is now in its 16th year of support of the National Teacher of the Year program.



In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama issued a call for adding 100,000 STEM teachers to our nation's schools over the coming decade. 100Kin10 emerged in 2011 to activate the country to respond to that urgent call. With 28 founding partners, today 100Kin10 brings together over 280 of the nation's top academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies and government agencies to train and retain 100,000 STEM teachers over 10 years. About Voya Foundation

Voya Foundation's mission is to improve the quality of life in communities where Voya Financial operates and its employees and customers live. Voya Foundation provides grants and establishes signature partnerships in the areas of financial literacy and children's education and fosters employee engagement to deepen our positive impact on the community. For more information, visit www.VoyaFoundation.com. About Voya Financial Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), helps Americans plan, invest and protect their savings - to get ready to retire better. Serving the financial needs of approximately 13.8 million individual and institutional customers in the United States, Voya is a Fortune 500 company that had $7.5 billion in revenue in 2019. The company had $538 billion in total assets under management and administration as of March 31, 2020. With a clear mission to make a secure financial future possible - one person, one family, one institution at a time - Voya's vision is to be America's Retirement Company. Certified as a "Great Place to Work" by the Great Place to Work Institute, Voya is equally committed to conducting business in a way that is socially, environmentally, economically and ethically responsible. Voya has been recognized as a 2020 World's Most Admired Company by Fortune magazine; one of the 2020 World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute; as a member of the Bloomberg (News - Alert) Gender Equality Index; and as a "Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion" on the Disability Equality Index by Disability:IN. For more information, visit voya.com. Follow Voya Financial on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (News - Alert) @Voya. VOYA-IR View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005296/en/

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Mumbai, May 8 : The net investments into equity mutual funds schemes fell around 46 per cent to Rs 6,212.96 crore in April 2020, compared to March.

The month-on-month slump comes in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and the nationwide lockdown. In March the inflow stood at Rs 11,485 crore.

Data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India showed that inflow into equity schemes registered a year-on-year growth of 34 per cent.

Total assets under management of the mutual fund industry rose by 7.5 per cent to Rs 23.93 lakh crore in April 2020 as compared to Rs 22.26 lakh crore in April 2019.

Net flows for debt schemes return to positive to Rs 43,431.55 crore as on April 2020, driven by positive flows in to liquid schemes, corporate bond fund, banking and PSU fund, overnight fund and gilt fund, as compared to negative flows preceding month, March 2020 at Rs 1.94 lakh crore, as per the industry body.

As per AMFI data, redemptions for retail schemes including equity, hybrid, solutions-oriented as on April 2020 stood at Rs 16,868 crore, lower by Rs 50,076 crore as compared to Rs 66,944 crore in the preceding March 2020.

SIP AUMs stood at Rs 2,75,982.88 crore in April, higher by Rs 36,096.75 crore as compared to Rs 2,39,886.13 crore as on March 2020.

Further, SIP contribution for April 2020 stood at Rs 8,376.11 crore as compared to Rs 8,641.20 crore in March 2020.
Kozhikode : May 8 (IANS) The first evacuation flight from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia carring 153 passengers landed here at 8.05 pm on Friday.

The passengers include 10 from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the rest from various districts of Kerala.

Since pregnant women and other categories get preference, the third flight to land in Kerala since Thursday had 89 pregnant ladies, 22 kids, and three persons above the age of 70.

On Thursday, a flight landed here from Dubai with 182 passengers.

The aircraft are part of the evacuation undertaken by the central government to bring back Indians stranded in foreign lands due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The Kozhikode airport was under tight security since morning and all health protocols were observed in view of the Covid-19 situation.

All baggage of passengers will be disinfected before these are handed out to owners.

Pregnant women, those above 70 and children below 10 will be sent to their respective homes for quarantine for 14 days. Passengers with underlying health issues will be moved to hospitals for further treatment.

The remaining will be moved to corona care centres in their respective districts while those showing Covid-like symptoms would be taken to coronavirus dedicated hospitals here.

The 10 passengers from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will be quarantined in the state-run corona care centres.

Around 11 pm, the fourth evacuation flight from Bahrain will land at Kochi.
Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi have condoled the death of senior journalist, Pankaj Kulshrestha (50), who died due to Covid-19 infection in Agra on Thursday night.

Kulshrestha, a senior journalist from print media was on ventilator support for 36 hours and breathed his last in isolation ward of SN Medical College and Hospital where he remained admitted for three days.

In his condolence message, the deputy chief minister Maurya stated that he was deeply saddened by untimely demise of senior journalist Pankaj Kulshrestha and held it an irreparable loss for journalism.

Pankaj Kuldrestha (50) was a soft spoken and a sober man, leaving his mark in journalism and also setting an example for others while fighting his battle against Covid-19, said Maurya while praying for eternal peace to the departed soul and also adequate strength to his family members to bear the loss.

Deputy chief minister urged journalists, working in field as frontline warriors, to be extra cautious about their own safety and security while accomplishing their professionals tasks. He stressed on the need of self discipline in the fight against Covid-19 and also on maintaining social distancing while performing duties.

Pankaj Kulshrestha was on ventilator support for 36 hours after facing respiratory distress, informed Dr Ashish Gautam, the nodal officer for Covid-19 treatment at SN Medical College and Hospital. The journalist was under quarantine for some time and was admitted in SN Medical College and Hospital after his health started deteriorating. He was suffering from respiratory distress and fever, the common symptoms of coronavirus and was thus kept on ventilator for 36 hours during his 3-day day stay in the isolation ward of SN Medical College and Hospital, stated Dr. Ashish Gautam.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also expressed her sorrow on demise of journalist Pankaj Kulshrestha in her tweet. She applauded the tough task being undertaken by journalists in these times of coronavirus outbreak and advocated an insurance cover for journalists in Uttar Pradesh beside financial relief for family members of the Agra based journalist.

Kulshrestha is survived by his mother, wife and a teenager son.

Meanwhile Agra continued to be on top in the state with 678 Covid-19 positive cases.

The total of Covid-19 positive cases in Agra district stands at 678 after 8023 samples taken till date. As many as 275 Covid-19 patients have been discharged after being cured. According to an audit conducted, there have been 19 deaths of Covid-19 cases. In all, active cases are 384 in Agra, informed district magistrate Agra Prabhu N Singh.
Editors Note: In recognition of National Historic Preservation Month, local historian Cindy Reinhardt will tell the stories behind some of Edwardsvilles historic buildings in a series of articles during the month of May.

The beautiful home at 1023 St. Louis Street was built in 1923 for newlyweds Frederic Easton Springer and his bride, Frances Tiemann. Although the architect is unknown, the builder was Edwardsville contractor Ciro Erspamer.

Frederic Springer, the only child of Edward C. and Sarah (Robinson) Springer, grew up less than a block away at 923 St. Louis Street surrounded by relatives. His fathers sister, Ottilie Springer Tunnel, lived directly across the street from his childhood home at 918 St. Louis Street and his grandmother, Mary Ann Ray Robinson Fruit, lived just down the street at 901 St. Louis Street. His mothers sister, Margaret Robinson, also lived at 901 St. Louis Street so there were plenty of relatives to help raise Frederic, or to keep an eye on him.

Frederics father was a well-known Edwardsville attorney specializing in probate law and from an early age, Frederic intended to follow in his footsteps. He was an excellent student, graduating from Edwardsville High School in 1914 as valedictorian with grades that the superintendent called the highest ever recorded. That fall he left Edwardsville to attend Princeton University. His undergraduate studies were interrupted in his junior year when he enlisted with the 311th Field Artillery in World War I. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant while overseas. After the war, he returned to Princeton where he graduated in June 1919. He then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1922.

He returned to Edwardsville after graduation and immediately joined his father to establish the law firm of Springer and Springer. Like his father, Frederic specialized in probate law and the two worked together until Edward Springers death in 1939. After that, Frederic continued in probate law, sometimes with a partner, from his offices in the National Bank Building. He enjoyed his work and helped all the neighbors write their last will and testaments without charging his usual fees. He remained professionally active until the time of his death in 1981.

Florence Tiemann Springer was not from Edwardsville. She was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1895. Her father, Gustav Tiemann, was originally from Missouri, but managed manufacturing companies in numerous Illinois cities. Florences mother, Eleanor Ella Vollrath Tiemann, grew up in Marine. Two of Ellas sisters moved to Edwardsville and Ella lived the last years of her life with her sister, Emma Burroughs, on Fourth Street. Another sister, Matilda Vollrath Gerke, bought the house at 915 St. Louis Street in 1920, so when Fred and Florence built their house, they were both moving near family. Florence, as was then the custom, was a stay-at-home wife and mother to the three Springer girls  Sarah Jo, Eleanor and Helen. All three girls attended college at Vassar.

Former neighbors say they were a reserved couple who kept to themselves but were very nice people. Florence volunteered often at St. Johns Methodist Church and Frederic was involved with Rotary Club and the Moose Lodge. He also was president of an organization in the late 1940s that tried to bring a YMCA to Edwardsville. Frederic kept the grounds surrounding their home in meticulous condition, mowing the lawn every weekend, wearing a dress shirt and tie. Florence spent time in the yard too, but for a different reason. She enjoyed birds and could recognize many just from the sound of their calls.

Although the architect of the house is unknown, the builder was a local contractor  Ciro Erspamer. The house was solidly built with three courses of brick in the exterior walls making them 12 inches thick. Unlike many homes of its age, this house avoided renovations that might change its character. The Springers maintained the home as built until their deaths in 1980 and 1981 and subsequent owners, except for adding air conditioning, kept everything original, too. There have been no additions to the house and the woodwork, hardware, doors and windows are all original to 1923.

In 97 years, there have been only four owners of this house with the Springers occupying the home for more than half of that time. But the residential history of this property began long before this house was built. The Springer House, built on Lot 91 in 1923, was not the first house on the property.

An earlier house:

The 1873 Atlas of Madison County indicates that at that time Lot 91, was an oversized lot of approximately three acres that stretched from St. Louis Street to Grand Avenue. The map lists David Gillespie as the owner and there is a small black square to show the location of a house. The 1892 atlas shows the owner of the property is M. B. Sherman. It is unknown when the lot was sold to the Sherman family (records are not available during the COVID-19 pandemic), but it is known that Moses Barber Sherman and his wife Isabelle Gillespie Sherman lived there for decades. In their daughter Matties 1928 obituary, the reporter stated that Mattie Sherman Ramey was born in 1869 in the old Sherman house on St. Louis Street.

The earlier owner of the property, David Gillespie, was Isabelles half-brother. In another case of a family living near each other, two of Isabelles siblings also lived on St. Louis Street. David had a home at #825 and their sister, Eleanor Gillespie Brink, lived at #839. These siblings were well connected in Edwardsville since their father, Judge Matthew Gillespie, and their uncle, Joseph Gillespie, were friends of Abraham Lincoln who visited their home.

Isabelles husband, Moses Sherman (1837-1900), was born in Rhode Island and came west before the Civil War. He was a teacher and became the first school principal in Edwardsville, teaching first at a brick school built on the old courthouse square. One of the teachers at the school was Isabelle Gillespie who he married in 1862.

The old house on Lot 91 sat far back from the road as indicated by an old concrete pathway leading from what would have been the back door of the house to a well near what is now Randle Street. In the early years, Randle Street was not there. The rail bed for a streetcar line, some called it the Yellowhammer, was later turned into a street when the tracks were removed.

Isabelle lived in the old house at 1023 St. Louis Street after her husbands death in 1900, but by 1910 she had moved in with her daughter and son-in-law. The house was rented to others until it was moved to a new location, but thats another story.

Information for this article was obtained from resources at the Madison County Archival Library, the memoirs of Ed Fresen, and from the current owner. If you have questions about this article, contact Cindy Reinhardt at 618-656-1294 or cynreinhardt@yahoo.com.
Xiaomi has launched its new premium smartphone, the Mi 10 5G, in India. The handset marks the return of the companys flagship range to the country after it launched the Mi 5 back in 2016. The handset was launched via an online event alongside two more products, the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 and the Mi Box 4K.

Specifications

The new Mi 10 5G is powered by the latest Snapdragon 865 chipset and supports 5G connectivity. It comes with a 6.67-inch 1080p AMOLED display with a refresh rate of 90Hz and 180Hz touch response rate. The company says it offers a peak brightness of 1,120 nits and offers 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It will be offered in two variants in India, 8GB RAM + 128GB storage and 8GB RAM + 256GB storage. Xiaomi is making use of LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.0 storage standard.

In terms of camera, the Mi 10 houses a 108-megapixel camera with a 1/1.33-inch sensor along with OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation), the second camera is a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera with 123-degree FOV. The other cameras include a 2-megapixel macro sensor and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. The front camera of the device is 20-megapixels and is placed in the punch-hole cutout.

The battery is rated at 4,780mAh along with support for 30W fast wired and wireless charging. There is also support for 10W reverse charging that is Qi-compatible. The brand has further included Wi-Fi 6 to make for overall faster download and upload speeds via Wi-Fi networks. It runs on the latest MIUI 11 based on Android 10. Both variants will be available in Coral Green and Twilight Grey colour options.

Additionally, the company has also launched the Mi 30W Wireless Charger based on Qi standard. The charger will be an add-on accessory for the Mi 10 and comes with a built-in cooling fan. It is priced at Rs 2,299 and is available at a special pre-order price of Rs 1,999. Expect it to compete against the recently launched OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger.

Price and Offers

The Mi 10 5G is priced at Rs 49,999 for the base variant going up to Rs 54,999. According to the company, the pricing is a combination of the China price and 18-percent GST. Pre-orders start at 2PM today (May 8) on Amazon India and Mi.com. It will be available via Mi partner stores as well, however, the company hasnt shared the official availability date of the handset.

Xiaomi is offering a cashback of up to Rs 3,000 if you buy the phone using HDFC Bank cards. Customers pre-ordering the Mi 10 5G will also get a Mi Wireless Power Bank worth Rs. 2,499. There will also be no-cost EMI options for purchasing the phone online and offline.
El presidente @MartinVizcarraC informa sobre la situacion del Estado de Emergencia en el #Dia54 y las acciones que realiza el Gobierno para contener la propagacion del COVID-19. En vivo: https://t.co/jXYNpRKGpE https://t.co/H4j31avRml
Over the last two months, the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office has been working nonstop to follow up on establishments that have been reported to its hotline for violating Harris County and state-issued stay-home, work-safe orders and mandatory closures.

Since March 17, a total of 9,182 viable complaints have been made to the fire marshal's office, according to communications director Rachel Moreno. So far this week, from Monday through Friday afternoon, the office has received 1,104 complaints.

Once an establishment has been reported, the office confirms the address is valid, confirms if the report being made goes against a state or county-issued order and then sends the approved complaint to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

The office only responds to reports made within unincorporated Harris County. Other complaints are looked into by other jurisdictions, which follow their own respective protocols. If the complaint falls under the fire marshal's jurisdiction, the office sends investigators or inspectors out to the business.
CAMEROUN :: Primate traffickers arrests amidst COVID 19 :: CAMEROON

Three people have been arrested during two separate operations in Yaounde and Lolodorf for trafficking in mandrills. The operations were carried out by wildlife law enforcement officials in both towns. The first operation took place at theNkoabang neighborhood in Yaounde while the second at Lolodorf where live mandrills were seized.

During the first operation, the alleged trafficker wasarrested bywildlife officials of the Center Regional Delegation of Forestry and Wildlifein collaboration with the Gendarmerie Brigade of Nkoabangas he tried tosell the protected species. According to sources close to the casea veterinarian had earlier told the suspect that the animal was fast growing and he wouldnt be able to cater for it. Thesuspecttried to illegally sell the mandrill after being advised bythe veterinarian to part ways with the animal.After fierce opposition from family members of the suspecton the ownership of the animal, he finallyadmitted to own the animal and wanted to sellit.

Few dayslater,two other traffickerswere arrested in Lolodorf with another mandrill. The crackdown operation wasled by theForestry and Wildlife Control Post and the gendarmerie brigade of Lolodorf. The two alleged traffickers were arrested, shortly after they arrived on a motorbike with the young mandrill at Lolodorf from Bipindi. The mandrill sustained an injury during a motorcycle accident the traffickers had along the way, it was learned after their arrest. A rope was tied around its waist and the poor state of the animal indicated it may have been poorly treated during captivity.The two suspects were skillful and very careful not to be caught as they moved at night to pass undetected, declared a source close to the case. The same sources say because they used the cover of the night to move the mandrill, they knew the activity was illegal. The two operations were technically assisted by LAGA, a non-governmental organization.

The mandrill is a totally protected species according to the 1994 wildlife law that prohibits poaching and trafficking of the animal. Anyone found in possession of parts of a protected wildlife species is considered to have killed the animal and is liable to a prison term of up to 3 years and or a fine of up to 10 million CFA francs.

The Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has intensified the fight against illegal trafficking ofprotected species during this period of the COVID-10 pandemic. Rightly so if we consider the recent studies from the IUCN Wildlife Health Specialist Group that shows that the novelcoronavirus is a danger to both primates and humans. Josef Settele, abiologist atHelmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) positsthat The unregulated trade in wild animals is likely to have been the catalyst for the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in a live animal market. Scientists are still unsure exactly which species passed the virus to humans, but it is certain that the way we treat animals plays a part how contagious diseases begin and spread.
Unless youve been living under a rock, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was one of the decade's most brilliant animated films, period. Web-slinging through a captivating story, tons of fanservice and some of the most unique and skilful representation of comic book art the world has ever seen, making it more than just a movie.

However, an incredible plan has been revealed that didnt quite make the cut  cameos from all three previous live-action Spider-Men.

via GIPHY

During a recent Quarantine Watch Party of the film  which follows young student Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as opposed to the classic Spidey persona of Peter Parker  producer Christopher Miller told his followers there was actually a plan to have Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appear together.

We pitched the Sony brass an ambitious tag involving Spider-Ham, Tobey, Andrew, and Tom. They felt it was too soon#SpiderVerse #QuarantineWatchParty https://t.co/E91H1eLysr  Christopher Miller (@chrizmillr) May 7, 2020

Early in the movies development, the filmmakers had conceived an idea to have Maguire play the older Spider-Man who tutors Miles (who ended up being voiced by Jake Johnson), however, there was too much hesitation around confusing people - guess we get to blame the studio executives for this one.

 Sony Pictures

Co-director Rodney Rothman explained in earlier interview with Screen Crush:



There was. There were many thoughts about where we could put Tobey Maguire and others. I think after this film, those thoughts might have a little more traction. But before this movie, and introducing the idea of the Spider-Verse to the audience, I think everybody was afraid that it would just really confuse people. But wow, it would have been fun.

 Columbia Pictures

Fun would be an understatement - while the memes themselves would have been downright hilarious, it would be an excellent homage to a series of films (and reboots) which have captivated audiences for over 18 years.



Many credit the original 2002 Spider-Man with bringing superhero films back into vogue, and its likely that without its resounding success, wed have never seen the MCU ever take shape.

via GIPHY

While Macguirees OG Spider-Man started it all, wed be remiss to forget Andrew Garfields Amazing Spider-Man.



via GIPHY

Spider-Verse is one of the most successful superhero flicks of all time; as well as pioneering its own dazzling comic-panel style, it grossed more than $375 million worldwide and deservedly swiped the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

 Reuters

While the three Spider-Men didnt appear themselves, the cast had no shortage of surprises, with Peni Parker, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir (voiced by Nicolas Cage no less) all appearing. However, our current friendly neighbourhood web-head, Holland, is keen to enter the Spider-Verse one day.



 Sony Pictures

Of course I would love to make a movie with those guys, it would be so cool, said Holland. It would be amazing, it would be really, really cool. And its something that the fans really want. So whether Marvel and Sony decided to do that, its up to them. Its not up to me, I cant walk in like Kevin [Feige], this is what were doing on the next one. But it would be really awesome.



As for Spider-Verse, a sequel is in development, set for release on October 7, 2022  maybe well get the Spider-Men back together then.
Advertisement

European countries are marking the 75th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany today - amidst a new war on the continent against coronavirus.

Parades and public celebrations have been scaled back or cancelled altogether on a continent that has borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic, with 1.6million cases and more than 150,000 deaths reported there.

French President Emmanuel Macron led the celebrations in Paris by laying a wreath in front of a statue of General Charles de Gaulle before making his way to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier underneath the Arc du Triomphe.

Accompanied by former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, alongside military leaders and other politicians who kept their distance from each-other, he listened to an acapella version of La Marseillaise before laying a tricolore wreath.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel took part in a wreath-laying ceremony in Berlin today - after the city's residents were given an unprecedented public holiday to mark the occasion.

FRANCE: Emmanuel Macron led a toned-down ceremony marking VE-Day in Paris on Friday, first by laying a wreath at a statue of General Charles de Gaulle and then another at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider at the Arc du Triomphe (pictured)

Macron looks up at a statue of wartime General Charles de Gaulle after laying a wreath in front of it in Paris

Macron was accompanied by former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande along with other politicians and military figures during the ceremonies, after large parades were cancelled

Macron addresses former Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande among other prominent politicians as they keep their distance during VE-Day celebrations in Paris

GERMANY: Angela Merkel lays a wreath at the Neue Wache Memorial in Berlin after the city was granted an unprecedented public holiday to mark the end of Nazism and Germany's return to democracy

Merkel and other prominent politicians lay wreaths in front of an enlarged replica of Kathe Kollwitz's sculpture Mother with her Dead Son at the monument to the victims of war and dictatorship in Berlin, Germany, on VE-Day

BELGIUM: King Philippe and Queen Mathilde (centre), lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Brussels to commemorate the end of the Second World War in Europe

As with most other European countries, Belgium's commemorations were closed to the public to prevent the spread of coronavirus (pictured)

POLAND: A Polish veteran attends a wreath-laying ceremony to mark victory over Nazi Germany at the Monument of the Unknown Soldier in Lublin, eastern Poland

RUSSIA: Officials take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to Field Marshal Gregory Zhukov, who led the Red Army during the Second World War, in the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia

Germany does not typically celebrate May 8 - which marks the unconditional surrender of Hitler's forces - but this year decided on a public holiday in Berlin to mark the country's liberation from Nazism and return to democracy.

Merkel will join President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in laying wreaths at Neue Wache - the country's main memorial to the victims of war and dictatorship, followed by a speech by the president.

Macron had earlier urged the French public not to attend public celebrations but instead to put up flags and decorate their windows and balconies in tribute instead.

Large-scale parades across Europe have been scrapped, drastically downsized or moved online, as the continent grapples with its biggest crisis since World War II - this time an invisible enemy that has sickened more than 3.7 million worldwide.

With veterans already at an advanced age, organisers of marches had deemed it too risky for them to attend events even in countries which have begun to ease lockdown measures.

Russia had originally planned a huge military display on its May 9 Victory Day, with world leaders including France's President Emmanuel Macron on the guest list.

But now only a flypast will take place over the Red Square, as the country becomes Europe's new hotspot of coronavirus infections.

Two people walk among the headstones of some 8,000 American troops who died fighting in Europe at Belgium's Henri Chapelle World War II cemetery on VE Day

Servicemen during a flower laying ceremony at a monument to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov to mark VE-Day in Yakerterinburg, Russia

Vehicles heading to a flower laying ceremony at a monument to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Yekaterinburg

The honour guard as Polish veterans lay flowers at the Monument of the Unknown Soldier in Lithuanian Square, east Poland

Veteran Anatoly Dikovich, 94, is serenaded outside his house during a performance by members of the 120th Rogachev Guards Mechanized Brigade of the Belarusian Armed Forces as part of VE Day celebrations

Veterans hold the French national flag as they take part in the ceremony for the 75th anniversary of World War II victory in Europe at the Monument to the Dead in the French Riviera city of Nice

Mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi delivers a speech during the ceremony for the 75th anniversary of World War II victory in Europe at the Monument to the Dead

Russian orthodox priests gather at a Soviet war memorial in a park in Berlin, Germany, during a scaled-back ceremony to mark VE Day, or 75 years since the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies

Two women hold carnations before laying them at the Soviet war memorial in Berlin, which commemorates thousands of Red Army troops who were killed liberating the city from the Nazis in 1945

An American flag is positioned next to the French tricolore on a bullet-damaged statue in the village of Bennwhir, eastern France, which was liberated by the US Army in December 1944

Belarusian servicemen drive tanks along the street in a rehearsal for the Victory Day parade in Minsk, celebrated a day later on May 9

Veterans salute at a memorial to those killed during the Second World War in Lille, northern France, on VE-Day

Graves of French soldiers killed during the Second World War are seen at a military cemetery in Sigolshiem, eastern France

A worker washes a monument to Russian soldiers killed fighting in the Second World War in Vladivostok, far eastern Russia, on VE Day. Russia traditionally marks the victory a day later, on May 9

The Belarusian air force leads Aero L-39 Albatros jets during a military parade rehearsal ahead of Victory Day in Minsk, which is celebrated on May 9

Russia typically sees one of the largest parades in Europe on Victory Day - its own day of celebration on May 9 - but that has been postponed due to coronavirus (pictured, a worker washes a memorial in Vladivostok)

President Vladimir Putin will lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial, before making a TV address which will not only touch on the war, but is also expected to chart out the country's next steps on battling the virus.

Elsewhere, COVID-19 continues to make its presence felt.

In the US, President Donald Trump and his wife Melania will join a wreath-laying ceremony at the World War II memorial in Washington, DC.

The US Department of Defense will hold an online commemoration thank WWII veterans that will be streamed on Facebook and Twitter.

In the Czech Republic, where a lockdown has been completely lifted, politicians will be arriving at 10-minute intervals to lay wreaths on Prague's Vitkov Hill, to minimise contact.

Ceremonies across France have been drastically scaled down, although Macron will still be attending an event on the Champs-Elysees.

In Britain, street parades by veterans have been cancelled.

Queen Elizabeth II will make a televised address to the nation at 9:00 pm (2000 GMT), the same time that her father, king George VI, gave a radio address marking VE day in 1945.

Her son and heir, Prince Charles, will also read an extract from the king's diary from the day, which covers the royal family's appearances on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as massive crowds celebrated in the streets below.

That evening, the future queen - then known as Princess Elizabeth - and her sister Margaret were given permission to leave the palace and join the festivities.

Members of the armed forces are seen saluting during a service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London as the UK marks VE-Day with toned-down parades

The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade outside Buckingham Palace during a flypast in central London to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.
Early in the pandemic, the province was careful not to let the public see any dire official projections of COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba, but it gladly shared frightening fiscal forecasts.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Early in the pandemic, the province was careful not to let the public see any dire official projections of COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba, but it gladly shared frightening fiscal forecasts.

Those decisions may have now eroded public trust, some political experts say.

For weeks, the Pallister government has warned the province faces a pandemic-fuelled $5-billion deficit (more than three times higher than a recent RBC report predicts for Manitoba). The public sector was told to brace for cuts of up to 30 per cent in non-essential services, before the government tabbed the cuts at closer to two per cent.

Residents have been bracing for economic doom, but now that the province appears to have weathered the initial storm and is reopening the economy, don't expect them all to thank the premier, says one analyst watching from afar.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Premier Brian Pallister's government has warned the province faces a pandemic-fuelled $5-billion deficit

"I think the government has lost a little credibility," said University of Calgary political science Prof. Lisa Young.

"The dilemma for conservative governments who signalled they wanted to cut in advance of the pandemic is that it looks as though theyre using the pandemic as an a excuse to do it."

Tory Premier Brian Pallister has made it his mission to improve Manitobas fiscal situation, and has never shied away from cost-cutting.

"Timing is everything," Young said Thursday. "Because the Manitoba government asked so quickly for the public sector to think about very major cuts, before it was clear what the magnitude of the pandemic would be, it has exposed them as looking as though they were overreacting or over-preparing for the reality of the situation.

"The dilemma for conservative governments who signalled they wanted to cut in advance of the pandemic is that it looks as though theyre using the pandemic as an a excuse to do it."  University of Calgary political science Prof. Lisa Young

"It damages the image of the government in some way," Young said. "Seeing as they now have enough money to send $200 to every senior regardless of income, it raises the question about what the governments priorities are here."

On Thursday, Pallister couldn't explain why the RBC fiscal outlook for Manitoba predicts a $1.5-billion shortfall due to the pandemic, compared to the government's $5-billion figure: "That was an honest projection by our treasury board officials early on."

Procuring personal protective equipment alone will cost close to $1 billion, he said. By mid-April, the province had spent $400 million, and that number is expected to grow, a government spokeswoman said Thursday.

"As we review our numbers and experience the reality of this pandemic instead of the theory of it, we'll be able to give you better numbers," the premier said. "I won't apologize for giving you what we thought at the time was a pretty accurate number."

And he shouldn't, said Yaroslav Baran, managing partner of Ottawa-based strategic advisory firm Earnscliffe.

Seeing as they now have enough money to send $200 to every senior regardless of income, it raises the question about what the governments priorities are here.  Lisa Young

"Its a tricky business for politicians when they get into the prediction game, but there is a certain valid expectation from the public, from the news media, and from the opposition. So it is often not avoidable," said Baran, a campaign communications chief for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

"If you are going to get into the fiscal forecasting game for crises or emergencies, you definitely dont want to underestimate costs," he said. "You want to overestimate.

"Its far more forgivable after the fact if you ended up underspending in relation to worst-case predictions, rather than blowing right through them."

That may be a good political strategy in normal operations, but not during a crisis, said the head of the political studies department at the University of Manitoba.

"Governments should be more transparent in a pandemic," Prof. Royce Koop said. "Now is not the time to have these manoeuvres, these tricks.

"People want politicians to be honest  like what you saw from (Premier) Doug Ford in Ontario, which has a much tougher situation (more than 1,400 deaths, compared to seven in Manitoba). He seemed to figure out really quickly that people want more, not less, transparency."

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.

Ontario released its COVID-19 projections, including the scenarios where the number of potential deaths showed a 500 per cent variance. Manitoba refused to release its worst-case projections for COVID-19 until after it determined the health-care system wouldn't be overwhelmed.

Manitoba had the good fortune to record its first positive COVID-19 test much later than other jurisdictions, and the good sense to shut down quickly so the health-care impact of the pandemic has been limited, said Young.

"The bottom line here is there is a good-news story... Any government should've been able to take a victory lap."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
07.05.2020 LISTEN

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), through its sub-regional office for West Africa (SRO-WA) has had a virtual meeting to device strategies on the platform to harness synergies to contain COVID-19.

It was under the auspices of the Development Coordination Office (DCO) and the United Nations Resident Coordinators (RC) in West Africa and the Commission of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) were participants.

The meeting aimed to discuss the areas of collaboration between ECA-SRO-WA and the RCs in West Africa in integrating the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 into country-level frameworks and responses and leverage such partnership for greater support to countries recovery and their implementation of the Decade of Action for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The RCs in West Africa noted that the pandemic is a crisis but it is also an opportunity to showcase the relevance of the UN in delivering as one.

After giving a summary of the support of RCs to the COVID-19 responses in Africa, the Senior Programme Officer at the DCO, Themba Kalua said: In almost all the countries we see how by working together we are really adding value and supporting the Governments in the response.

The RCs and ECOWAS expressed the need to partner with ECA SRO-WA for a harmonized and coordinated response to COVID-19 at the regional level.

Presenting the findings of the video conference Summit of the 15 Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS on the situation and impact of the coronavirus held on 23 April 2020, the Vice President of ECOWAS, Finda Koromo said that the Heads of State confirmed the need for harmonized and coordinated approach as a regional body.

The Director of ECA SRO-WA, Ngone Diop said: Coming together to try to think how we can more strategically building on our partnership to responding as one, delivering as one, to the needs and responses of our countries is extremely important.

The participants to this meeting agreed to create with the facilitation of DCO, a platform that will bring all together on specific development issues.

We must make that platform a concrete one and start moving with it in a very concrete manner, concluded Ngone Diop.

Reflections between DCO, RCs in West Africa, ECOWAS, and ECA SRO-WA took place in the context of a sub-region that faces several challenges: COVID19, violent extremism, and terrorism and their consequences on development.
Its about to get hot in Portland.

Hotter than its been in eight months.

And area rivers and lakes may look like an enticing way to beat the heat.

But water temperatures are still chilly, and that can present danger to anyone looking to take a dip. Entering cold water can cause swimmers to gasp, inhale water then go under. Currents can keep swimmers from reaching safety.

Five boaters have died on Oregon waterways this spring, according to the Oregon State Marine Board, including two kayakers, a canoeist and two people in motorboats. At least four werent wearing life jackets, the Marine Board said.

We are concerned, Randy Henry, Marine Board Boating Safety program manager, said in a statement. People are anxious to get out and have fun, but water is serious business. If you go boating, wear your life jacket, buckle it up, and make sure its a snug fit. Always dress appropriately, and if youre paddling, dress for the water. A dunking this time of year can be deadly.

Early-season swimming and other water activities can be more dangerous because of colder water temperatures and river currents quickened by snowmelt.

If you swim, officials urge awareness of water temperatures and hazards, wearing life jackets and refraining from drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana. Swimmers should also keep an eye on children near the water, abide by posted rules, swim with others and be aware of their swimming skill.

The weekends over the past month have been as busy, if not busier, than a summer day with temperatures higher than 100 degrees, Multnomah County Marine Sgt. Steve Dangler said in a statement. We want people to enjoy our local rivers, but we also want people to think ahead, follow health and safety guidelines, and to be careful, as water temperatures are still very cold.

Such warnings are commonplace as temperatures rise and lakes and rivers exert a seemingly gravitational pull on swimmers. Cold water  which can seem warm near the surface  can quickly and unexpectedly cause a lack of muscle function in limbs.

And while temperatures over the coming days are expected to enter the 80s for the first time since mid-September, river temperatures are much colder.

The Willamette River in Portland and Columbia River in Washougal, for example, were in the mid-50s on Thursday. And the Clackamas River near Oregon City was even colder, in the high 40s.

The nonprofit National Center for Cold Water Safety advises people to treat any water temperature under 70 degrees with caution.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
Government may never be the same in Canada after the pandemic, but neither will its relations with business, from Bay Street to Main Street.

For all the havoc that the COVID-19 has wreaked on Canadian business, the crisis has rebuilt bridges between government and business that have been eroded over the past years by everything from tax policy to the political crackdown on lobbying and corporate donations.

Lobbying activity is way up, as companies look for help navigating their new dependence on the vast array of pandemic-relief measures on offer from the government.

Small and independent businesses are getting past the bad blood stirred up in 2017, when Justin Trudeaus government stumbled into a tax-reform plan that was seen as an all-out attack on small-business owners.

Its not like thats gone away entirely, says Dan Kelly, head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. But theres a warmer relationship and a need for everybody to work together and put aside some of the b.s. thats gone on over the years.

Big business, often an easy political target for parties of all stripes over the past few years, is also enjoying improved relations with Trudeaus government in the effort to keep Canadas economy afloat for the post-pandemic world.

Conversations with federal and provincial governments are up dramatically, says Goldy Hyder, head of the Business Council of Canada, which represents some of Canadas largest firms at the centre of the economic storm, including airlines, banks and telecom companies.

Trudeau may not be trotting out business leaders or reading off companies names at his briefings like Donald Trump does in the United States, but the federal and provincial governments are in frequent contact with firms that can pitch in with pandemic-fighting supplies, Hyder says.

That same level of co-operation is going to be needed to get out of the crisis, he adds.

The economic recovery that we have to undertake requires an all-hands-on-deck response, Hyder says. The visible collaboration amongst government, business and labour will be more needed now as we have to get Canadians to have confidence to re-engage in the restart of the economy.

For all the populist talk of government being too cosy with the private sector, the fact is that politicians of all stripes having been going out of their way to avoid being seen as business-friendly for a decade or more now.

It started when Jean Chretien cracked down on corporate donations to political parties, and continued when Stephen Harper introduced tough measures against lobbying, as well as strict, five-year cooling-off periods in the flow of executives between the public and private sectors.

Trudeau, after facing some early controversy over fundraisers with wealthy business donors, has also made efforts to keep some distance between his government and the business community. Kellys organization was repeatedly rebuffed in its requests for meetings with the Finance Department, even before the big tax-reform controversy of the summer of 2017.

Even nowadays, at the daily pandemic briefings, Trudeau and his ministers are careful to say that they are not bailing out businesses in Canada, but the people who work for those businesses. The distinction is clearly important to them  and to what they believe citizens want to hear. Helping business, bad; helping workers, good.

That old image of politicians rubbing shoulders with the titans of industry went out around the same time as two-martini lunches and cigar rooms  and not coincidentally, when political expense accounts were made transparent.

Its just not been very good politics for governments to be seen as too interested in business  that is, until the pandemic struck.

Kelly says hes changed, too. Long an opponent of subsidies for business, he finds himself now navigating how to get them for the devastated members of his organization. Hes had to endure some ribbing from friends about that turnaround.

But Kelly also says this government in particular has had to adjust its thinking about how business works in Canada, on the ground, at the real, human level. I think that they are figuring out the importance of small business and the Main Street business community in a bigger way, he says. That learning was unavoidable, he adds  unlike other crises that have hit big corporations first, this one shut down Main St; the service sector, retail, the restaurant business, recreation.

The whole phrase business as usual holds a special allure right now, as Canadians dream of a post-pandemic future. But when it comes to government relations with business, something other than usual will likely emerge from this crisis. It may not be the two-martini lunches of the days of old, but a new, sharper appreciation of how much they need each other.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison will marshall a group of leaders known as the "first movers" to ramp up pressure on the World Health Assembly for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Mr Morrison now has the support of the United Kingdom and the United States, which has backed down on its focus on an unproven theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, and will push G20 leaders to lobby China to accept independent inspectors.

The "first movers" group includes Australia, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Israel, Czech Republic, Greece and Singapore, which are the countries regarded as having most successfully managed the coronavirus outbreak. Mr Morrison met with the group on Thursday night and pressed the need for an independent review to be established when the WHA meets in less than 10 days.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The government will back a broad European Union motion calling for an inquiry into the lessons learned from the crisis and then steer it into two mechanisms.
By Azernews

By Akbar Mammadov

The Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan has issued a statement on the 28th anniversary of the occupation of Shusha.

"28 years have passed since the occupation of Shusha, one of the cultural centers of Azerbaijan. We do not lose hope and believe that we will definitely return to Shusha and rebuild our destroyed city".

On behalf of more than the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, numbering more than 80,000 people, including on behalf of more than 30,000 representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Shusha region, Ganjaliyev called on the world community to put an end to the aggression by Armenia against the Azerbaijani people and to support the just position of Azerbaijan to give an objective legal assessment to the occupation.

"We declare that a fair solution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is possible only after the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories and the return of the ethnic cleansed Azerbaijanis to their native lands. We, as the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, are ready to peacefully coexist with the Armenian community of the region within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. Only in this case, a sustainable and fair peace can be ensured in the region", the statement concluded.

It should be noted that Armenian armed forces occupied Shusha on 8 may, 1992. As a result of the occupation, 195 civilians were killed and 165 were injured. 114 Azerbaijanis captured by Armenians and detained in Shusha prison were later killed with special cruelty, 58 residents of the city are still missing. Before Shusha was occupied, about 25,000 people lived there, of which more than 24,000 people of Shusha have been become internally displaced persons and settled in 58 regions of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
By Trend

Another international document has been ratified in Azerbaijan, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani parliament.

The issue of approving the Protocol on Making Changes to the Charter of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM was discussed at the meeting of the Azerbaijani parliament on May 8.

Following the discussions, the document was put to a vote and adopted.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
The Deputy Minister of Information, Pius Hadzide, has accused the Minority in Parliament of engaging in unnecessary maligning of the Akufo-Addo's government fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Hadzide said there was no basis for the Minoritys complaints.

Hadzide made the comments on the backdrop of a press conference organised by the Minority on Thursday.

The Minority at the event claimed that the government was manipulating data on the virus spread in Ghana amongst others.

The Minority also called on the government to be more transparent with its data.

But Mr. Hadzide chided the Minority for not directing the queries to the appropriate institutions.

In the case that institutions and persons want to interrogate the data and find some information, they could properly approach the relevant authorities; in this case the Ghana Health Service, the testing centres, Noguchi that is coordinating the testing, and all that. But to go out in the manner and fashion that the NDC did suggests to me that they just want to find fault even when there is none and to create a gloomy picture of Ghana's fight.

Mr. Hadzide further noted that Ghana has been touted to be the country to be testing the most per capita and that should count for something.

One of the Minoritys concerns was that on two separate occasions in April, the number of confirmed cases under routine surveillance was revised downwards without any explanation whatsoever.

In response to this, Mr. Hadzide suggested that the Minority may have been responding to a typo from the Ghana Health Service.

If it is those typographical errors that the NDC prefers to dwell on to create the gloomy picture they are creating, maybe they will be in a better position to explain but I am not sure what it is they are talking about.

---citinewsroom
Washington Post photo

This week's selections include three fascinating roses. From Virginia, we have a tribute to the centenary of women's suffrage in a collaborative, elegantly packaged and delicious wine honoring 12 women in Virginia history. And when we think of rose, the Loire Valley in France may not leap to mind, but here are two delicious examples - a top-notch Sancerre rose of pinot noir and a moderately priced wine that can turn any meal into a party.

We also have a red and a white wine from a family producer in Perugia, in central Italy. It's a region that doesn't often get on our wine radar, but these wines are delicious.
Six more COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Hale County.

The new cases brings the overall case count to 37 since the first case was reported on March 24, according to a news release from the City of Plainview included with the daily COVID-19 report. The new cases marks the highest jump in case counts since weve

The newly diagnosed individuals include three females and one male who are at least 20 years old, a woman between the ages of 21 and 40 years old and a woman between the ages of 41 and 60 years old. Each of these individuals are in isolation at home.

Two of the females 20 years old or younger and the woman between 21 and 40 years of age all contracted the virus outside the county. Every other individual contracted it locally.

The new cases are reflected in the Plainview case count on the daily update, which shows the latest data reported to the Plainview/Hale County Health Department as of 5 p.m. Wednesday. Of the 37 cases reported in Hale County, 27 have been in Plainview. But the active case count is much lower. So far in Plainview, 13 people have recovered.

Other cases reported include seven in Hale Center, though four are recovered and two individuals have died; one recovery in Edmonson and two deaths in Petersburg. No cases have been reported in Abernathy or Cotton Center.

Recovered individuals include: three men and four women between 21 and 40 years old; three women and six men between 41 to 60 years old; and two men 60 years or older.

The total number of COVID-19 tests conducted across the county is up to 397. Of those tests, 322 have returned negative results and 51 test results are pending. This number includes tests conducted last weekend when the mobile testing unit was in town. Those test results were expected anywhere between five to seven days.

According to the report, 46 people are under monitoring. This number reflects the number of individuals who have come in close contact with an individual who has tested positive and/or those who have traveled to a known virus hot spot. There are no hot spots in Hale County.

Of the total confirmed cases, 20 have been local transmissions, 16 were transmitted outside the county and the transmission location of one remains undetermined.

The report breakdown also shows five cases have been confirmed in individuals at least 20 years old or younger, 11 in the 21-40 age population, 12 in the 41-60 age range and nine in the age range of 61 and above. Nineteen of the cases have been diagnosed in males and 18 in females.

While 37 cases have been confirmed overall since March, there are currently only 15 active cases in the county  and all but one are in Plainview. Of those cases, 12 individuals are in isolation at home and three are in a medical facility.

As new cases continue to be reported in the county, citizens are encouraged to continue washing your hands and practicing social distancing. Those experiencing what they believe are COVID-19 symptoms  shortness of breath, fever and coughing  are encouraged to call a doctor.

Residents are also encouraged to stay home and wear facial coverings when out in public. During an address to Hale Center residents last week, Jack McCasland, environmental health inspector for the Health Department, mentioned the masks dont necessarily prevent you from catching the virus. They prevent you from spreading it. He noted that several people are asymptomatic and may not be aware they even have the virus.

Those interested in learning additional information can call the McCasland at the Health Department at (806)293-1359 or visit www.plainviewtx.org/COVID19. The citys COVID-19 resource page has links to the latest virus information, links to directions for how to make facial covers and other information.
Persian Gulf carrier Qatar Airways, which reportedly plans to lay off an unspecified number of employees in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, said it will rebuild its flight network in a phased manner starting this month.

As part of this plan, the airline is looking to resume flights to India by June, subject to regulatory approval, Qatar airways said in a release.

At present, the airline continues to operate flights to more than 30 destinations around the world.

By the end of May, the airline plans to grow its network back to over 50 destinations (subject to approvals), resuming services to cities such as Manila, Amman, and Nairobi while a further number of destinations are planned to be added by the end of June.

Qatar Airways will be operating flights on Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Mumbai, Calicut, Kolkata, Kochi, New Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Chennai and Trivandrum routes by end of June, it said.

The gradual expansion will focus initially on strengthening connections between the airline's hub in Doha with the global hubs of its partner airlines around the world including London, Chicago, Dallas and Hong Kong.

It will also look at reopening many major business and leisure destinations such as Madrid and Mumbai, Qatar Airways said.

According to a report, Qatar Airways on Wednesday said it will lay off staff as the coronavirus pandemic has largely grounded the global aviation industry.

However, the Doha-based carrier offered no figures for the number of employees who will be laid off by it, as per the report.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- McGraw-Hill reported strong preliminary fiscal Q4 and 2020 results today with double-digit growth in digital billings and a greater than 50% increase in Inclusive Access billings.

The expansion of Inclusive Access, which delivers course materials to students by the first day of class at discounted rates (up to 70% off the retail cost of print textbooks) is in place on more than 1,100 college campuses and is a key component of McGraw-Hill's Affordability and Outcomes program. The Affordability & Outcomes initiatives, including Inclusive Access, textbook rental and loose-leaf print options, have saved students more than $200 million since the beginning of 2018.

Overall, billings for McGraw-Hill's Higher Education Group in January through March 2020 were up more than 13 percent compared to the same period in 2019 with billings from digital products up more than 18 percent.

The successful quarter was also marked by a surge in demand from schools and colleges for help transitioning instruction online after the COVID-19 outbreak. McGraw-Hill responded in a number of ways:

In higher education, the company provided free access, training and support for McGraw-Hill Connect  and ALEKS  digital learning platforms, responding to 7,000 instructors at 1,500 institutions serving more than 100,000 students.

and ALEKS digital learning platforms, responding to 7,000 instructors at 1,500 institutions serving more than 100,000 students. In K-12, the company provided free online resources to support remote learning for schools, educators, parents and students, assigning 130,000 new students seats across its digital platforms. It also offered free digital access to its 5 Steps to a 5 AP test prep materials with more than 30,000 accounts set up.

For professionals, McGraw -Hill offered free support and trials of its Access medical, engineering and science solutions to assist with distance learning and built a "COVID-19 Central" news site that provides information, developments and analysis on the virus from McGraw -Hill's medical experts.

-Hill offered free support and trials of its medical, engineering and science solutions to assist with distance learning and built a "COVID-19 Central" news site that provides information, developments and analysis on the virus from -Hill's medical experts. Internationally, the company offered free access and worldwide support across its digital platforms, responding to over 5000 customer support requests for access to courseware. Through the UAE Ministry of Education alone, the company provided 360,000 students with online resources.

"March and April were incredibly stressful times for educators and school and college leaders around the world," said Simon Allen, CEO of McGraw-Hill. "In the weeks that followed school and campus closures, we shifted our attention entirely to helping our customers transition online. With our learning science-backed digital solutions and deep relationships with educators, we're in a unique position to help address their challenges and support successful student learning going into the summer, the fall and beyond."

As the demand for online learning tools grows, McGraw-Hill has continued to invest in its digital platforms to remain a leader in the industry. So far in 2020, the company has announced cutting edge new writing assignment technology and a Virtual Labs product for its higher ed digital platform Connect, as well as a partnership with Proctorio to bring remote proctoring and browser locking capabilities to its courseware. Use of McGraw-Hill Connect and ALEKS have both continued to expand with 5.2 million unique student users of ALEKS across K-12 and higher ed and more than 4 million activations of Connect in higher education in fiscal 2020.

Going forward, the company will continue to focus on creating the world-class content it is known for, providing best-in-class digital platforms for learners and educators, and operating efficiently and effectively.

McGraw-Hill

McGraw-Hill is a learning science company that delivers personalized learning experiences that drive results for students, parents, educators and professionals. We focus on educational equity, affordability and learning success to help learners build better lives. Headquartered in New York City, McGraw-Hill has offices across North America, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and makes its learning solutions for PreK-12, higher education, professionals and others available in more than 75 languages. Visit us at mheducation.com or find us on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn or Twitter .

Contact:

Tyler Reed

McGraw-Hill

(646) 766-2951

[email protected]

SOURCE McGraw-Hill

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https://www.mheducation.com


From backpackers to billionaires, when international travel finally returns, were all going to have to get our head around some changes.

While you usually get a health check after your summer of sin, in light of recent circumstances, travellers may now have to seek a health passport before embarking on their Old World adventure.

As News.com.au reports, More and more destinations are flagging the potential introduction of health passports that would ensure tourists are virus-free when border lockdowns lift and travelling resumes.

The travel documents would be used in tandem with existing passports to prove tourists and other travellers arent bringing the virus with them.

In Greece, where international flight restrictions have put both its influencer industrial complex and general tourism on ice, authorities are already considering ways to re-ignite its travel industry, one of the key pillars of the countrys economy.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Luxurious Lifestyle (@feelingofluxury) on May 7, 2020 at 4:13am PDT

According to The Mayor.eu, Officials have already stated that this years summer season will only be three months long  between July and September, and in a best-case scenario, tourists might keep on arriving throughout October and November.

Yet the key question for officials not only in Greece but across all of Europe remains how exactly would tourists be allowed entry into other countries without being forced into mandatory quarantine.

One of the solutions pitched by the Greek Tourism Ministry is the introduction of a so-called Health Passport that would be used as proof that the individual carrying it is not sick with COVID-19, The Mayor.eu continues.

The coronavirus test will be performed in the country of origin before citizens are allowed to travel to their chosen destination.

Greeces minister of state Giorgos Gerapetritis has announced [health passport] negotiations are underway and claimed visitors will come with some sort of certificate (The Sun).

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tania (@welovegreece_) on May 6, 2020 at 11:39am PDT

Such an approach would require multilateral co-operation. So its crucial the rest of Europe gets on board. On that note: things are looking (cautiously) optimistic.

In Sardinia, where the pandemic has wiped out the local tourism industry, authorities are keen to introduce health passports in time for summer.

If Sardinias proposal were implemented, travellers would have to present their health credentials and have their temperatures checked before entering.

This way we hope to relaunch our tourism sector in June, the islands governor, Christian Solinas, told Arab News.

Whoever boards a plane or a ferry will have to show (the health passport) along with their boarding pass and their identity document.

I am sure that it will work fine: we will preserve health and save our economy at the same time. Now everything has to be done to boost tourism. It is the biggest source of income for Sardinia.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sardegna Geo (@sardegna.geo_official) on May 4, 2020 at 3:47am PDT

As Italy generates about 15 per cent of its GDP from tourism, changes of this kind are happening all throughout the country, with Sicily last week offering to subsidize tourists airfares and hotel fees.

Other Italian island destinations, such as Capri, Ischia and Panarea, and the southern coastal region of Puglia, are considering a similar health passport system too.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Aurelie | travel fashion inspo (@aureliestory) on May 5, 2020 at 9:12am PDT

Spains Balearic Islands, Turkey and Chile are all making similar noises (some, like Chile, floating the idea of even stricter entry requirements). Meanwhile, the European Union is discussing a scheme akin to Australia and New Zealands proposed travel bubble as we slowly, globally, come out of this crisis.

As for Australia, those in the know (notably, the PM Scott Morrison and Qantas CEO Alan Joyce) are optimistic about a return to domestic travel this year, but doubtful international travel (for pleasure) will be back on the cards any time soon.

RELATED: New Invention Could Change Economy Travel Forever

Even when it does return, as we reported last week, these health passports may be just one of many factors which have changed dramatically.

In terms of global institutions, The World Health Organisation has warned against countries against issuing immunity passports, because it is not yet clear whether contracting the virus makes people fully immune.

There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection, WHO said, adding false confidence carried the risk of another outbreak.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cavo Tagoo Santorini (@cavotagoosantorini) on May 5, 2020 at 5:42am PDT

Until then: a virtual tour of Europe will have to stand in for your summer of sand and sangria.

Read Next
That didnt stop Mr. Flynns lawyers, pro-Trump media and Mr. Trump himself from expressing outrage at the documents contents  especially a few pages of F.B.I. notes written down before Mr. Flynns interview. Mr. Trump said his former adviser was tormented by dirty, filthy cops at the top of the F.B.I.

But what the documents actually spoke to was the care taken by F.B.I. investigators in making sure they adopted an approach that even a Trump White House couldnt see as playing games when they interviewed Mr. Flynn. The documents certainly didnt offer exoneration: They didnt change the fact that hed lied or that hed later admitted hed lied. Yet, it gave Mr. Trump and his allies something they could claim was  enough.

Enough to do what? Not just exonerate Mr. Flynn, but also  heres the crucial part  condemn institutions: the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. And thats just what theyve done. Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr and those echoing them have used the Flynn case to make condemnation of federal law enforcement official U.S. government policy.

Never mind that the arguments made in the Justice Departments court filing on Thursday dont pass the laugh test. Never mind that even Mr. Barrs Justice Department surely doesnt intend to apply the same principles to every other case or possibly any other case. Never mind any of that: The point, really, isnt just to spring Mr. Flynn. Its to impugn federal law enforcement.

Heres the tell. The Justice Departments new position isnt that Mr. Flynn didnt lie  that couldnt be its position, because he did lie, and he admitted in federal court that he lied. Instead, the new filing argues that it was wrong for the F.B.I. to interview him in the first place. Look carefully at who the villain becomes in that narrative: not Mr. Flynn for lying, but the F.B.I. for asking the questions to which he lied in response.

And theres a second tell. If the goal was just to shield Mr. Flynn, Mr. Trump could simply have pardoned him. That would have been a regrettable abuse of the pardon power  but at least it would have left Mr. Trump owning the decision and would have spared the Justice Department of the patent, destructive corruption that its new filing represents. But that didnt happen  because institutional destruction isnt collateral damage for Mr. Trump. Its the very goal.

Fortunately, in our system, a prosecutors say-so is not enough to drop a prosecution; it requires the approval of the court. And while judges rarely interfere with such decisions, this is that rare case. Judge Sullivan, who still presides over Mr. Flynns case, has three important lines of inquiry available to him. First, he can examine why the highly regarded former prosecutor of Mr. Flynn withdrew from the case moments before the Justice Departments astonishing filing. Last year, after the Supreme Court essentially held that the Trump administration had lied about the census and several Justice Department attorneys attempted to withdraw from the case, the presiding federal judge refused and began an inquiry into the attorneys withdrawal. A similar inquiry is appropriate here.
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY  The New York State Department of Health is investigating after a five-year-old boy died of a rare pediatric inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday.

Speaking at his daily news briefing, which he held at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, Cuomo said there have been 73 reported cases in New York of children ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.

Calling it "painful news," Cuomo said "We were led to believe that the good news about this virus was that it didn't affect children."

According to doctors in Westchester County, 11 children have been hospitalized at the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital with the multi-system inflammatory syndrome. Most tested positive both for COVID-19 and new coronavirus antibodies. Most did not become seriously ill right after they had been exposed to or infected with the virus, but began getting sick up to a month later. They ranged in age from infant to teenager.

Parents should remain vigilant and seek care immediately if their child has symptoms, Cuomo said.



New York Governor's Office

Cuomo reported that the total number of hospitalizations was down statewide, to 8,196, with about 600 new cases entering the hospital per day. A total of 216 new deaths were reported statewide over the past 24 hours.

Health officials had hoped that the number of cases would keep declining, but hospitalizations daily have instead been steady, and projections suggest that there will still be new hospitalizations for COVID-19 every day in June, he said.

New York Governor's Office

Cuomo said he doubted that a dramatic change in the statistics would loosen up restrictions downstate after May 15, when the executive order that sent New Yorkers home will expire. Upstate communities will begin to reopen their economies, however.

Most of the new hospitalizations are occurring in New York City, on Long Island and in southern Westchester County. Most are in communities with higher-than-average minority populations.

Story continues

New York Governor's Office

State health officials are asking hospitals to report more details about new hospitalizations as they work to cut the number of new infections further.

This article originally appeared on the Nyack-Piermont Patch
I think the president made a very wise choice when he chose Chris Wray to be the next FBI director, and in my view, the directors been  since he came aboard  hes been earnestly focused on fixing and helping the department work through some very tough situations that were not of his making, said John C. Richter, a former U.S. attorney who worked with Wray in the Justice Department. So far as I can tell, hes acutely focused on getting the right outcomes, but getting them in the right way, and I expect to see more.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his seventh address to the nation appealed to the public to wear nose masks, his appeal later became mandatory as the various assemblies enforce a 'No mask, No entry' order, but many are yet to see reasons to adhere to the directive.



Almost 98% of residents of Chorkor, a suburb of Accra during a tour of the area by Happy FMs Joseph Nii Ankrah were found without the masks and also defying the social distance protocols.



For some, they would only wear the nose masks if the Government is ready to provide it for free.



My money is being deducted as tax and its being used to produce this thing; about 150,000 a day and yet Im at home, Im not going to work and you expect me to produce it and wear it. I dont have the money anyway so let him (President Akufo-Addo) bring my share of the 150,000 nose masks that he is paying for with our money, one resident asserted.



Other residents, however, noted that they dont wear the nose masks often because they are uncomfortable, thus making them run out of breath easily.



I am fasting, so I feel weak when I wear the nose mask for a very long period. However, I wear it often because I dont know where I may contract the disease from.



However, during the lockdown Chorkor was in the news for notorious reason when they ignored the Presidents lockdown directives, to chill at the beach on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020.



Hundreds of people who reside at the popular coastal area were out in their numbers in the afternoon to cool it off by swimming in the sea, unperturbed by the growing cases of Coronavirus in Ghana.

Source: Happyghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Bala Mohammed, Bauchi State governor has said he does not regret telling his health officials to treat COVID-19 patients with Chloroquine.

The Governor made this statement in response to the backlash from people who felt such authorizations are exclusively reserved for professional medical personnel.

Mr Mohammed, who was the index case of COVID-19 in Bauchi, told journalists last week that amongst the medications that he used in treating the deadly virus were Chloroquine, Zithromax, and Vitamin C.

The governor said he would rather ask medics managing the states COVID-19 patients to treat them with chloroquine and Zithromax than watch them die of the disease.

The National Agency for Food Administration and Control (NAFDAC) had last week reacted to the governors directive by warning Nigerians not to use any drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 other than what the NCDC approves.

The agency is concerned about reports on social and other media of drugs or vaccines to cure COVID 19, NAFDACs Director-General, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye said in a statement issued to the media.

The NAFDAC DG added that the agency has not granted any approval to any products for use as a cure or vaccine against COVID 19.

Asked if he was worried by the backlash trailing his pronouncement on the treatment of COVID-19, Mr Mohammed said he owed no apology on what he said.

Pertaining to what I said last week that I was misquoted, I was a COVID-19 patient. And I have been asked, how did I get cured? And I said how I got cured and I recommended what should be done. It was my own recommendation and not that of the state committee.

I have no apology for saying that I used Chloroquine, Zithromax, and Vitamin-C to get treatment and Allah cured me.

To me, its better you take something, rather than sit down and die. We have not recorded any death in Bauchi That one that died came after the test. And you can see we have plenty patients. And by the grace of God, Allah will heal our patients.

Other countries are using other forms of medication. It is not an issue of Chloroquine alone. It is a common knowledge that COVID-19 has no vaccine or drugs; we are just groping in the dark.

But still, if you have symptoms of fever you can take chloroquine. If you have the symptom of infection you can still take Zithromax and get well; if you have symptoms of pains you can still take panadol and get well; you dont even need a doctor for that.

But the doctors are the ones prescribing this. I didnt take the Chloroquine on my own, and I am not recommending that people should go and use this without the recommendations of their case managers.

All I was relieving was my experience.
Rival parties should get blame for legislation deadlock



The Moon Jae-in administration's efforts against real estate speculation are likely to suffer a setback because the National Assembly has yet to approve a government-initiated bill aimed at raising a property tax on owners of multiple homes or expensive properties. Both the ruling and opposition parties should be held accountable for the legislation deadlock.



The main opposition United Future Party (UFP) is opposing the plan, and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DKP) is not showing strong political will, either. It is worrisome that their reluctance may give a wrong signal to the housing market.



The tax increase plan, announced on Dec. 16, was the central pillar of the Moon administration's policy to curb property speculation and stabilize housing prices. The package calls for hiking the property tax rate by 0.1-0.8 percentage points this year for people who have two or more homes as well as expensive homes in Seoul and other speculation-prone areas.



The revision bill, however, has failed to pass even the Economic and Finance Committee at the National Assembly. On the surface, the ongoing impasse is due to the opposition party's refusal. Still, it is doubtful whether the governing party has real intentions to raise the tax rate.



The rival parties have neither discussed the issue, nor agreed on the schedule for reopening the committee, making few efforts to narrow their differences over the issue. Overlapping this deadlock is the DPK pledge to ease the property tax burden during the campaigning period for the April 15 general election, to win votes in Seoul's posh southern districts.



If the plan goes up in smoke eventually, both political parties will hardly be free from blame. If the current Assembly fails to deal with the revision bill this month, the bill will be automatically scrapped, and the next Assembly should start from the ground up. Lawmakers cannot avoid criticism for making empty promises and reneging on them for political reasons. Their failure on the tax bill will add one more example to the 20th Assembly's tainted reputation of neglecting its legislation duties.




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There are few places in all of France as forbidding as this abandoned 19th-century prison  as these eerie pictures show.

They were taken by French photographer Romain Veillon inside the city of Autun jail, which has a design much-dreaded among prisoners  panopticon, a word derived from panoptes, the Greek for 'all-seeing'.

The cylindrical nature of jails like this allows guards to see all the cells in one sweep.

French photographer Romain Veillon ventured inside France's last standing panopticon prison, in Autun

Surveillance: The cylindrical nature of jails like this allows guards to see all the cells in one sweep

The Autun prison has been abandoned since 1956 and is now a designated national monument

The Autun example was built between 1854 and 1856 on Saint-Louis Square  and in use until 1956. It's the last standing panopticon prison in France and is now a designated national monument.

The panopticon design was created in 1791 by English social reformer Jeremy Bentham.

Prisons built to his specifications have a central tower, so the Autun prison isn't a true example as it didn't have one. Prisoners were instead watched by guards who patrolled raised platforms.

The panopticon design was created in 1791 by English social reformer Jeremy Bentham

Romain said he found taking pictures inside a very 'peaceful' experience

While exploring the jail, Romain found messages etched into some of the cell doors

And the prisoners in the Autun jail had cell doors.

Floor-to-ceiling bars were the order of the day in some panopticon designs, meaning privacy was non-existent.

It would be impossible for guards to watch every cell continually, but the prisoners never knew if they were under surveillance, so had to behave as if they were.

Even with cell doors, it's certain that life in the Autun prison would have been a very uncomfortable one.

Romain said: 'This prison is very impressive and when you are standing in the middle, you can start to understand how it was before'

Floor-to-ceiling bars were the order of the day in some panopticon designs, meaning privacy was non-existent

It's not generally open to the public (although it occasionally hosts events and access is granted on certain days of the year)  but Romain was given special permission by the local authority, which now owns the building, to enter and take these haunting images.

He told MailOnline Travel: 'I was researching abandoned prisons in France and during my research, this one came to my attention.

'I was captivated by the unique architectural concept of the prison with its unique panopticon system and I decided I really needed to photograph it and see it with my own eyes.

Romain said: 'The architecture of the prison was, of course, unique but I knew what to expect after having read about its history online'

The Autun jail occasionally hosts events and public access is granted on certain days of the year

Romain said: 'Usually when I photograph an abandoned prison, it's actually haunting to witness the rooms where people were kept and where they had so much pain and loneliness'

Panopticon is a word derived from panoptes, the Greek for 'all-seeing'

'I had the whole day to capture the prison. They just locked me up inside, so I had the perfect conditions to explore it and decide how I wanted to show it through my pictures.'

Despite the prison's chilling nature, he found taking pictures inside a very 'peaceful' experience.

He added: 'Usually, when I photograph an abandoned prison, it's actually haunting to witness the rooms where people were kept and where they had so much pain and loneliness. You can suffer the effects they had in these four walls.

All bar one: The other panopticon prisons in France have been demolished

Romain had a whole day to explore the prison and take photos. He said: 'They just locked me up inside'

The narrow nature of the cells was the biggest challenge that Romain found when taking pictures. He said: 'Even with a wide-angle it takes a lot of time to find the perfect spot to shoot'

Romain said: 'It's very moving to see the old writings on the wall or the days engraved. It makes your imagination wonder how it was when it was full of prisoners'

'But in this case, the feeling went away. Maybe because the prison is really old and was abandoned for more than 60 years.

'Nevertheless, it's still very moving to see the old writings on the wall or the days engraved. It makes your imagination wonder how it was when it was full of prisoners.

'The architecture was, of course, unique but I knew what to expect after having read about its history online.

'Still, this prison is very impressive when you are standing in the middle - you can start to understand how it was before.'
Fitness & Lifestyle Groups chief data and technology officer, Adam Skinner, is leaving the organisation after just under two years in his current role. Skinner is the new chief technology officer at Brisbane-based advertising software provider, CitrusAd.

Skinner has worked in the fitness industry since September 2013 when he joined Ardent Leisure Group as IT project manager, health clubs. In November 2015, he became head of digital delivery at Goodlife Health Clubs. He moved into the chief information officer role at Fitness & Lifestyle Group in August 2016.

Skinner has pulled the ejection cord at the right time with fitness clubs Australia-wide temporarily closing their doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fitness & Lifestyle Group runs around 390 gyms across Australia and owns recognised brands Fitness First, Goodlife Health Clubs and Jetts. In June last year, Quadrant Private Equity, which owns the group, said it was offering the company for sale through investment banks UBS and Citi.

Fitness & Lifestyle Group Adam Skinner

Skinner announced his departure in a LinkedIn post on Thursday, saying he made a significant career decision to resign from Fitness & Lifestyle Group and accept a new role.

Whilst this is an exciting new chapter in my career, I will be forever grateful to my team, my mentors, my colleagues and strategic technology partners who have given me insight, their guidance, and put their trust in me over the past seven years.

It is both hard and an emotional task to summarise my thoughts and feelings of working for such a great company for a long time with such great people, he said in the LinkedIn post.

Like many other health and fitness providers, Fitness & Lifestyle Group has been forced to move its services online following government-mandated COVID-19 closures. The organisation has created more than 500 animated workouts, as well as on-demand classes from Les Mills and other providers. The workouts are streamed to the users TV, Apple AirPlay or Google Chromecast-enabled device.

Skinner told CIO Australia that he is joining CitrusAd with a remit to rapidly scale the technology, team and platform internationally ahead of a planned IPO in 2022.

Adam Skinner is an associate advisory board member of the CIO Executive Council.
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The task of introducing a vaccine for the coronavirus faces an uphill struggle in Africa, where a flood of online misinformation is feeding on mistrust of Western medical research. Across the continent, Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms have been swamped by messaging that characterises vaccine research as harmful or even part of a plot to kill black people. The world's poorest continent -- and the most vulnerable to the disease, given its poor health infrastructure -- Africa has recorded more than 48,000 COVID-19 cases, 1,900 of which have been fatal, according to an AFP tally as of Wednesday. The toll is below that of other continents, although the true figure may be considerably higher, given the lack of access to testing. The absence of a cure has sparked a flurry of claims for purported remedies. They range from consuming onions and ginger and drinking one's urine to a herbal formula touted by Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina -- assertions that fly in the face of stern scientific warnings. But it is the quest for a vaccine that has sparked particularly toxic disinformation, an investigation by AFP Fact Check has found. In Senegal, a rumour that seven children died after being given a COVID-19 vaccine was shared thousands of times in Facebook posts in English and French. In a video showing a crowd gathered in a Dakar street near a parked police car, a female voiceover presents the footage like a news report, explaining that the children "dropped dead" after receiving the vaccine. AFP found that the disturbance was in fact triggered when locals mistook a door-to-door cosmetics salesman for a health ministry worker. The government said that no children have died from a coronavirus vaccine. Another post shared on Facebook and Twitter refers to a US government experiment that started in the 1930s and saw health workers withhold treatment from black men with syphilis to study the disease. In 40 years, 28 of the test subjects died of syphilis and another 100 died of complications. "US government offers free healthcare to southern rural blacks. Intentionally injects them with syphilis. Still want a corona vaccine?" the post reads, next to a photograph of black men in flat caps and dungarees waiting to be seen by white health workers. And in another post widely shared around Africa, an illustration shows a black woman brandishing a machete towards a white doctor performing an injection. - Long history of mistrust - Experts point to entrenched suspicions in Africa that the continent's role is to be a test bench for novel drugs. "There is a long history of mistrust," Keymanthri Moodley, director of the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at South Africa's Stellenbosch University, told AFP. This explains why comments made last month by two French researchers had an outsized impact south of the Sahara, Moodley said. On television, the pair discussed the benefits of holding drug trials in Africa. Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at the Cochin hospital in Paris, suggested testing a vaccine in Africa "where there are no masks, no treatment, no intensive care, rather as was done with certain studies on AIDS, where things are tested on prostitutes because it's known that they are highly exposed". Vaccines are routinely tested in Africa and scientists point out that testing in a particular location can often provide key insights into how a drug works there. The pair later apologised for any offence -- but this did little to calm allegations that Africans were being manipulated or even used as guinea pigs. "It is as if we were back in the colonial era," Kenya's former justice minister Martha Karua told AFP. "I personally think it is racist and condescending." The storm unleashed a tsunami of misinformation and anti-vaccine sentiment online, including dozens of claims in several languages debunked by AFP Fact Check. A Facebook post shared thousands of times warned against a "Bill Gates" vaccine, after the billionaire pledged $250 million to fight COVID-19. The message, circulated widely in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Benin, falsely claimed that French doctor Didier Raoult -- a maverick who promotes the malaria drug chloroquine as a possible treatment -- said the vaccine "contains poison" and that "the West wants to destroy Africa". The World Health Organization (WHO) has flagged earning public trust as an urgent health challenge and warned of an "infodemic" -- a deluge of information, including misinformation on social media -- that is hampering the COVID-19 response. The body says concerns that Africa could be abused as a vaccine testing ground are unfounded. "I would really reassure people that the clinical trials currently ongoing on the continent respect international standards and follow the same protocol as other developed countries," Richard Mihigo, the WHO's Programme Area Manager for Immunisation and Vaccine Development in Africa, told AFP. There are more than 100 candidate vaccines in development around the world, with eight already being tested in human trials. One such drug developed by Britain's Oxford University was hit by misinformation last month when a widely-shared South African news article debunked by AFP claimed that a woman taking part in trials died shortly after being given the vaccine. The volunteer, Elisa Granato, later confirmed she was "absolutely fine". - 'Recognise the concerns' - Sara Cooper, senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council, said misinformation had to be tackled by targeting underlying sentiment. "Rather than dismissing these as 'false rumours' or 'erroneous beliefs', these concerns should be heard and recognised," she told AFP. She said ethical research led by African scientists rather than by "top-down" foreign programmes could "go a long way in rebuilding community trust and reducing resistance". In Nigeria, pharma giant Pfizer was sued when 11 children died in a meningitis trial in 1996. The families' lawyer claimed they could not have given proper consent as they did not speak English. Despite the problems of perception, the WHO's Mihigo was optimistic that when a coronavirus vaccine becomes available, it would be widely accepted in Africa. "Communities know very well that when immunisation is not given, outbreaks do occur. We've seen that with measles," he said. "People turn up overwhelmingly to vaccination campaigns. They know the benefits. They've seen people dying." cmb-burs/bh-gf-nla/ri/dl/kaf
United Arab Emirates (UAE) - Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles

Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov

Transmittal No: 19-68

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2020 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of the UAE of Excess Defense Articles (EDA) of up to four thousand five hundred sixty-nine (4,569) MRAP vehicles for an estimated cost of $556 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale today.

The Government of the United Arab Emirates has requested the sale of Excess Defense Articles (EDA) of up to four thousand five hundred sixty-nine (4,569) MRAP vehicles consisting of a mix of MaxxPro Long Wheel Base (LWB), MaxxPro Recovery Vehicle (MRV), MaxxPro LWB chassis, MaxxPro Dash, MaxxPro Bases Capsule, MaxxPro MEAP Capsules, MaxxPro Plus, Caiman Multi-Terrain Vehicles without armor, Caiman Base, Caiman Plus, Caiman Capsule, and MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles (MATV), logistics support services, and other related elements of logistical and program support. The estimated total program cost is $556 million.

The proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of an important regional partner. The UAE has been, and continues to be, a vital U.S. partner for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East. This sale is consistent with U.S. initiatives to provide key allies in the region with modern systems that will enhance interoperability with U.S. forces and increase security.

The UAE intends to utilize the MRAP vehicles to increase force protection, to conduct humanitarian assistance operations, and to protect critical infrastructure. Additionally, these MRAPs will enhance the UAE's burden sharing capacity and defensive capabilities. The UAE will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment and support into its armed forces.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not affect the basic military balance in the region.

These vehicles will be coming from U.S. Army stocks as EDA; the required EDA Congressional Notifications were made August 6, 2014. There are no known offset agreements proposed in conjunction with this proposed sale.

Implementation of this sale will not require the assignment of U.S. Government or contractor representatives to the UAE.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.

All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov.

-30-

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Some San Antonio groups wanting to provide assistance to very small local businesses seeking federal stimulus money turned to bankers at Frost Bank for tips.

They are targeting businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

On a conference call Thursday, Frost Bank CEO Phil Green and other bank officials shared the ins-and-outs of the Paycheck Protection Program  a stimulus program run by the Small Business Administration that is distributing millions to small businesses to use for payroll and other expenses like rent and utilities.

We applied the things that we learned from the very strenuous process of applying for those PPP loans through the SBA and kind of put a presentation together, Frost spokesman Bill Day said.

Frost Bank was among the banks that processed the most loans in San Antonio during the PPPs first round of funding, which provided $349 billion to businesses last month. The second round, with $310 billion, is under way.

On ExpressNews.com: Frost Banks 1Q profits sink 59% on coronavirus woes

The conference call was organized by San Antonio Economic Development Foundation CEO and President Jenna Saucedo-Herrera. She is part of a economic transition team formed last month by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff to figure out how businesses and activities paused by the pandemic can safely resume.

However, Gov. Greg Abbott last week opted to allow many businesses to reopen  before the group could issue its own report.

Among those also on the call were LiftFund CEO and President Janie Barrera, representatives from nonprofit groups San Antonio for Growth on the Eastside (SAGE) and Westside Development Corp., and officials with the UTSA Small Business Development Center.

Frost bankers shared their experience with the PPP process.

The thing that slowed down PPP applications the most early in the process was that the application was filled out incorrectly, Day said.

But the SBA also wanted information that wasnt in the loan application, such as a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, which classifies a business by its industry, Day said.

On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases

The SBA also required nine-digit ZIP codes on the applications. Those that contained a five-digit ZIP code would not go through.

We learned those lessons, Day said. Not everybody knows that, especially a real small business that has never done this before. Frost assembled the information into a checklist for businesses so they know what it takes to get an application correctly submitted to the SBA.

The funding for the PPPs second round is lasting longer than expected, so very small businesses may have a shot at getting money, he said.

Frost plans to donate the fees its gets from handling loan applications from small businesses helped through this process to the San Antonio Food Bank.

Frost has received approvals on 16,391 PPP loans totaling a little more than $3.4 billion. In Bexar County, it has received approvals on 3,461 loans totaling $630 million.

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
A man in his underwear climbed under a moving tanker truck carrying gallons of red wine before unscrewing a valve and guzzling it down, police allege.

Dashcam footage from the scene shows the suspect, Gabriel Moreno, leap onto the back of the big rig as it traveled along Highway 99 in Modesto, California, wearing only his boxers in a dramatic wine heist.

Moreno was later arrested by officers from the Modesto CHP. The truck company estimated that around 1,000 gallons of red wine, the equivalent of 5000 bottles, was lost in the incident, most of which spilled out onto the road.

The bizzare footage shows suspect Moreno, who is driving a Sedan, put his hazard lights on as he signals for the tanker to pull over to the side of the highway

Dashcam footage from the scene shows the suspect, Gabriel Moreno, leap onto the back of the big rig as it traveled along Highway 99 in Modesto, California, wearing only his boxers in a dramatic wine heist

The bizzare footage shows suspect Moreno, who is driving a Sedan, put his hazard lights on as he signals for the tanker to pull over to the side of the highway.

The truck driver obliges, fearing his vehicle may have a mechanical issue, only to see Moreno get out of the car wearing no shirt and no shoes, and run to the passenger side of the truck before going out of view.

As the truck pulls back onto the road, another camera captures the man jumping onto the back of the vehicle and riding on its side before climbing underneath as it travels at high speed.

As the truck pulls back onto the road, another camera captures the man jumping onto the back of the vehicle and riding on its side before climbing underneath as it travels at high speed

Mareno then allegedly unscrewed a valve underneath the tanker as it drove along the highway, releasing the red wine, and he guzzled down the liquid.

The driver called the CHP after noticing he was losing gallons of liquid on the dashboard gauge.

'I've listened to thousands and thousands of calls,' Modesto CHP officer Tom Olsen told CBS Local.

'This one's up there in the top 10.'

Officer Olsen said: 'This individual was able to release the wine from under the tanker, and he placed himself underneath the tanker in such a manner, the best way to describe this was somebody doing like snow angels.'
U.S. Justice Department Dropping Case Against Ex-Trump National-Security Adviser Flynn

May 07, 2020

The U.S. Justice Department is dropping the criminal charges against former national-security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn was among the first individuals swept up in the U.S. investigation into possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's election campaign team in 2016.

In court documents filed on May 7, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case against Flynn following a "review of all the facts and circumstances of this case," according to AP.

Flynn was fired by Trump in February 2017, having served as national-security adviser for less than a month, after it emerged he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty on charges of lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

In its filling, the Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn's January 2017 interview by the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn."

It also said that the interview was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis."

The May 7 move was quickly welcomed by Trump, who said Flynn was "an innocent man."

"I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price. They're scum," he added.

In recent months, Flynn's attorneys have leveled a series of accusations about the FBI's actions and asked to withdraw their client's guilty plea.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and dpa

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/30599814.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.

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We very much need to alleviate some of the burden on the working class and middle class and people who are striving to get to the middle class and to also pay for the services that the state has and needs to provide  as well as to deal with the structural deficit that already existed in this state, not to mention now the shortfall that will exist as a result of the attack of the coronavirus, he said.
Barbara Babcock, a legal trailblazer and champion for gender equality who became the first director of the D.C. Public Defender Service and first female faculty member at Stanford Law School, died April 18 at her home in Stanford, California. She was 81.

Her death was announced by Stanford University, which said she had cancer.

When Babcock studied at Yale Law School in the early 1960s, women made up fewer than 5 percent of the country's law students and "sex discrimination" scarcely existed as a concept. Male classmates asked why she bothered to pursue a career in the law, let alone in criminal defense, and few judges seemed interested in offering clerkships to women.

Yet over the next decade, Babcock helped usher in a new era for women in the legal profession. As one of only a few female criminal lawyers in Washington, she built what was arguably the country's preeminent public-defender service, offering indigent defendants the same level of service they could expect from white-shoe firms. At Stanford, where she began teaching in 1972, she brought a feminist approach and a focus on civil rights.

"In my opinion - shared by many - she was the best legal educator of her generation and beyond," said Toni M. Massaro, a former dean of the University of Arizona's law school who co-authored a civil procedure textbook with Babcock. In an email, she added that Babcock was "charismatic, inspirational, unforgettable, unique and above all committed to students' personal and professional well-being."

Babcock mentored "countless students at Stanford who were often living in the shadows" as a result of their gender, sexuality or race, said Mark G. Kelman, a professor and vice dean at the university's law school. "Her obvious charisma, coupled with a one-on-one authenticity that few charismatics possess, made her beloved by hundreds of students in a way no other professor I've known is beloved, even the most gifted ones."

An expert on criminal and civil procedure, Ms. Babcock taught some of the country's first "women and the law" courses and co-wrote a landmark 1975 textbook, "Sex Discrimination and the Law." She also helped found Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based legal organization dedicated to ending sex discrimination, and went on leave during the administration of President Jimmy Carter to join the Justice Department as assistant attorney general in charge of the civil division.

"I was often asked what it 'felt like to get my job because I was a woman,' " Babcock later wrote in a blog post. "I developed a stock answer: 'It's far better than not getting it because I'm a woman.' "

Babcock made her name with a job that she initially viewed as a sacrifice and duty, applying to become the director of Washington's Legal Aid Agency because, in her telling, the organization was having trouble finding anyone else to take the position. "Back then the director's salary was set at $16,000," she told a Stanford interviewer in 2016. "You couldn't raise a family on it."

She had previously worked at Edward Bennett Williams' powerhouse law firm, Williams & Connolly, but grew tired of defending the wealthy and joined the Legal Aid Agency in 1966, only to find that the organization was little more than "a guilty-plea mill."

Within two years, she was promoted to director, and began persuading Congress to grow the organization into the Public Defender Service. By 1972, according to a Washington Post report, the agency represented roughly a quarter of all criminal defendants in Washington, and boasted a staff of 40 lawyers, including Ivy League graduates and former Supreme Court clerks.

Her legal team found itself faced with an unexpected challenge in the spring of 1971, when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Washington to protest the Vietnam War. Going beyond her original mandate, Babcock oversaw legal efforts to represent the protesters, who were swept up in "the largest bust in U.S. history," said former Post journalist Lawrence Roberts, author of the forthcoming book "Mayday 1971."

Some 12,000 demonstrators were rounded up in a police dragnet, according to Roberts, with many held in a makeshift detention camp near RFK Stadium. "Barbara filed a mass habeas corpus case," he wrote in an email, "and led her PDS lawyers into a round the clock, thrilling legal battle that resulted in the release of the prisoners. ('It was like being in a war,' she told me.)"

Almost all the arrests were later found to be unconstitutional, and some rules on speech and assembly were changed for future demonstrations. In an email, Michael S. Wald, a longtime Stanford Law colleague of Babcock's, credited her and the PDS with helping "establish the contours of law in situations of mass arrests during mass demonstrations."

Barbara Allen Babcock was born in Washington on July 6, 1938. She was raised in part by her grandparents in Hope, Arkansas, her mother's hometown, while her father served in the Navy during World War II and her mother worked a government clerical job in Washington.

The family eventually settled in Hyattsville, Maryland, where her father "made being a lawyer seem both heroic and fun," tackling murder cases as well as mundane incorporation issues.

In a 2016 memoir, "Fish Raincoats," Ms. Babcock recalled that he was also an alcoholic whose drinking cast a shadow over her adolescence. "I thought of his periods of sobriety as our real life," she wrote, "and the rest as a bad dream that might not recur if we were lucky and good."

Babcock received a bachelor's degree in 1960 from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Yale in 1963, she clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for Judge Henry W. Edgerton, one of the few federal judges of his era to hire female and African American clerks.

As assistant attorney general, Babcock supervised 700 lawyers, presiding over "the world's largest law firm," as she called it. She also encouraged President Jimmy Carter to appoint minorities and women - including future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - to the federal bench.

"Barbara ran that giant law office with a secure hand and spent countless hours helping literally to change the complexion of the U.S. Judiciary," Ginsburg wrote in 1997, according to a profile in Stanford, a university magazine. Regarding her own appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., Ginsburg added: "I do not believe I would have gained that good job without her constant endeavors to place and move up my name on the candidates list."

At Stanford, Babcock aimed to promote the overlooked histories of women in the legal profession, launching an online biography project to spotlight female lawyers. She became a professor emerita in 2004 (by then, women made up half of the school's student body) and later wrote "Woman Lawyer" (2011), a well-reviewed biography of Clara Foltz, considered the first female lawyer on the West Coast and a pioneer of the public-defender role.

Her first marriage, to law professor Addison M. Bowman, ended in divorce. (She adopted his last name for several years while running the Public Defender Service.) In 1979 she married Stanford Law colleague Thomas C. Grey. He survives her, in addition to a stepdaughter, Rebecca Grey; two brothers; and a granddaughter.

Babcock was a colorful raconteur, frequently weaving stories from her life and career into classroom lectures. One of her favorites involved a Washington client known as Geraldine, who faced a 20-year sentence for heroin possession and had already spent 15 years behind bars for drug use.

Grasping at legal straws, Babcock sent her to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with "inadequate personality" - forming the basis of a long-shot insanity defense, which Babcock augmented in the courtroom with discussions of her client's addiction and impoverished background.

When the jury found her "not guilty by reason of insanity," Geraldine "burst into tears," Babcock wrote in her memoir. "Throwing her arms around me, she said, 'I'm so happy for you.' "

"Geraldine was right when, at the moment of the verdict, she saw that my life, too, had been saved," Babcock added. "Her case had become my case. And it had given me what I treasured most: the unalloyed pleasure of 'not guilty.' In life I have found few joys so pure."
<! President Buhari >

President Muhammadu Buhari has commended public-spirited Nigerians and organisations for their financial and material support for the efforts to contain COVID-19.

But he has called for more donations.

Buhari acknowledged the provision of isolation, treatment and laboratory centres/facilities by individuals and companies such as Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Alhaji Abdulsamad Rabiu, Guaranty Trust Bank and Thisday Newspapers among others in several states and Federal Capital Territory.

However, he called on other privileged Nigerians and bodies to emulate these laudable gestures.

We are facing a national challenge and all hands must be on deck to navigate this difficult course.

In this respect, all types of assistance are welcome, big or small. The spirit behind the contributions is salutary.

Records obtained from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation showed that N697.5 million has been contributed by 111 individuals and organisations into the FGN Covid-19 Eradication Support Accounts in the five designated banks between April 1-30.

The money came from small and big donors.

There were small payments of N5, N10, N14, N20 by individuals.

There were also huge deposits.

Dantata Property Development donated N200million; Ocean Trust Ltd N100million; NSITF N25 million ; Ebele and Anyichuks Foundation N20million.

Nizamiye Hospital Abuja donated N15 million, while Full Gospel Business Mens Fellowship and Association of Bureau De Change (BDC) donated N10million each.
For most Summer brands this summer has been challenging, quite literally. While Voltas was yet again all ready to charge towards a blockbuster season, the pandemic hit the world leaving the market standstill. The nationwide lockdown effected many brands across categories. The real question left unanswered was, how do brands matter in such times of crisis? How do you maintain the relevance as a leader brand for when the lockdown is lifted? Yes, the societal good in the form of providing services to all essential categories like Hospitals, Pharmaceutical companies, Data Centres, ATMs and Airports, is mighty important in such hard times, and the country shall remember the deeds performed by Voltas for a good cause. But it was also important for the brand to show empathy in the everyday life of a consumer, in order to not lose touch. And for the latter bit, we tried to strike a perfect balance of relevance & positivity, and created a piece of communication for every Indian.

Earlier this year, Voltas launched a Maha-Adjustable campaign for its new range of ACs that could adjust between multiple tonnage modes. And since the lockdown, the words Maha-Adjustable have been reborn with a very different message at their heart. A message that urges understanding, compassion and hopes to decompress the building stress in every home, through the small acts of helping out with household chores.

The video doing the rounds, sees Gajraj Rao speaking to his followers not as his character in the Voltas films, but as himself. He speaks about how the lockdown has changed him as a person. He makes light of his pre-lockdown habits, and how he is now a happy and willing participant in the domestic chores. In the end, he advises viewers to be more understanding and adjustable to the needs of their loved ones, in these trying times.

The challenge, objective and the idea:

As the quintessential domestic brand for the aspiring middle-class Indian family, Voltas has time and again captured the slice of life of the common man. With the entire country under lockdown for over a month, most Indians have felt the heat of staying home all day long. The new campaign addresses the status quo and offers a way for viewers to do their bit for each other, while staying indoors.

Ritu Sharda, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy India (North): This lockdown really has changed everything. Our Voltas Inverter ACs were Maha-Adjustable, and now weve also become maha adjustable. Not just in what we do in our homes, but also how so many of us from different cities have managed to come together to create this beautiful message in the most delightful way. It was an absolute joy to collaborate with Gajraj and his wonderful team, and his son, Nikhil, who directed this. Its work like this that makes one also look at all the good this new normal brings.

Conceptualised by Ogilvy and co-created with Gajraj Rao, the new chapter in the Voltas Maha-Adjustable story, maintains the quirky tone of its campaigns. It sends out a social message without being preachy about it.

Gajraj Rao (Creator) had this to say about the campaign: I feel these are extraordinary times which can only be overcome with some extra effort in our lives and homes.

Ritu Sharda and her team at Ogilvy Delhi have articulated this spirit in the most brilliant way in this unique film for Voltas. We are excited to present this special film where we could collaborate with our extended work family from their homes. The team was quite eager to try their hands in creating this labor of love with the limited resources at hand during lock-down, while also peeling onions or maybe washing the dishes from last night.

The campaign is a perfect example of how the Lockdown is changing Advertising as a whole. Not just in the way the film has been executed, but also in its message. How brands are more sensitive to the need of the hour. How they are participating in important conversations, in today's environment, rather than just trying to sell a product.

This DVC is an interesting launch pad for the idea, "Voltas Maha Adjustable Stories", a property which the brand wants to create, to engage with its audience in the long run; without deviating from the core brand promise.
A record-breaking 150 migrants have been picked up today from 10 boats in the English Channel trying to get to the UK in the last 24 hours, including 50 in one vessel.

The first boat is understood to have been picked up off Kent at around 2am, with 50 migrants believed to have been on it. Conditions were perfect for crossing with calm seas, good visibility and a full moon.

A huge search and rescue mission is underway involving the Coastguard helicopter, at least two Border Force vessels, a drone from Lydd Airport and two lifeboats from Dover and Littlestone.

Official figures are yet to be confirmed by the Home Office - but should the 150 stand it would beat the current record for a single day, which was 102 in February.

150 migrants are thought to have been picked up today, scene above, from 10 boats in the English Channel. The first boat is understood to have been picked up off Kent around 2am

Two dinghies, above, pictured today. A huge search and rescue mission is underway involving the Coastguard helicopter, at least two Border Force vessels, a drone and two lifeboats

They are the latest Channel crossings this month - with 76 refugees already landing in the first week of May.

April also saw a record figure cross the busy Dover Strait shipping lane, with 523 crossing in total.

It comes despite Home Secretary Priti Patel recently announcing a fresh crackdown on crossings - but they have continued.

Since lockdown was announced, at least 694 migrants have reached Britain - excluding today's crossings.

This year, 1,065 are known to have made the life-risking trip over the Channel.

Dover and Deal Tory MP Natalie Elphicke tweeted this morning: 'Today's brazen illegal crossings as we celebrate #VEDay75 is another reminder why firm action is needed to stop the ruthless smuggling gangs & return boats to France.

A Border Force vessel, pictured above, at the area off Kent today. They are the latest Channel crossings this month - with 76 refugees already landing in the first week of May

'Since December I have been calling on the Home Secretary to ensure small boats are returned to France and that we put an end to these illegal small boat crossings organised by criminal gangs.

'The Home Secretary has listened and taken action. This week she agreed fresh steps with France with more stringent patrols and work towards returns.

'Together with action to tackle the criminal gangs. I strongly welcome this action and her commitment to end small boats crossings.

'Only when migrants and traffickers alike know that they will not succeed in breaking into Britain in this way will these dangerous journeys cease.'

Up to sixteen migrants were picked up in Dover Harbour in Kent by Border Force and Immigration officials, pictured, in a separate crossing on Monday

Border Force officials and migrants, including a baby wrapped in a blue blanket, pictured at Dover Harbour in Kent earlier this week, on Monday

In a statement, Chris Philip, Minister for Immigration Compliance and the Courts, said: 'We are all working night and day to dismantle and arrest the criminal gangs who trade in people smuggling.

'This week, the Home Secretary spoke to her French Counterpart Interior Minister, Christophe Castaner who reaffirmed the commitment to carry out more returns at sea to stop these illegal crossings.

'This illegal and criminal activity is already subject to heavy law enforcement activity by Border Force, the National Crime Agency, Immigration Enforcement and French law enforcement and we will continue to take whatever action is necessary to stop this criminal trade, including changes to the law.

'Already over 1,100 migrants were arrested in France in the first quarter of this year and in 2019 Immigration Enforcement made 418 arrests, leading to 203 convictions for a total of 437 years.

'But the recent increase in crossings is totally unacceptable which is why we are stepping up action to stop the crossings, going after the criminals perpetrating these heinous crimes and prosecuting them for their criminal activity.'
Diane Dodds has warned of the impact the lockdown will have on Northern Irelands economy

ECONOMY Minister Diane Dodds has said there would be "catastrophic consequences" to a prolonged shutdown of Northern Ireland's economy.

She spoke as four chambers of commerce warned that Covid-19 would have a "deep and long-lasting impact" on business - with 60% of firms expecting turnover to be halved.

Addressing the Assembly's ad hoc committee on the Covid-19 response, Ms Dodds said the Executive's priority remained the preservation of life, but added: "It is important that we also start to get the economy moving and gradually see people safely return to work.

"We don't know for certain how long this will continue but we simply cannot shut down the economy for a significant period of time without catastrophic consequences."

She said efforts to get the economy going again should not be viewed as a trade-off against health "as the two are inextricably linked".

"There is a direct link between population's health and the health of the economy, and the longer people are away from the workplace, the greater the impact will be."

And she said the rate of recovery would not be as rapid as the decline.

Ms Dodds reflected on the four months since she had taken up the role of Economy Minister, adding: "In what seemed like a heartbeat, the brutal impact of coronavirus on our health and the economy had changed our priorities."

Since the lockdown, she said that the Executive had issued 19,000 emergency grants to struggling small firms of 10,000, totalling 190m. And the more recently introduced 25,000 grant scheme had attracted 3,000 applications, with over 800 payments made.

Ms Dodds said it was possible that the question whether either grant could be extended to cover more than one premises belonging to a business could be revisited.

Large numbers of firms had also availed of the UK's furlough scheme, she said. "By effectively putting the economy into deep freeze, we have ushered many businesses away from failure."

She said she also hoped to help TV and film-making body NI Screen - which has drawn productions such as Game of Thrones, Line of Duty and The Fall here - and that there could be "reprofiling of the budget".

"Many of us have followed some of the series that have been made and I want to see that capacity preserved."

A separate 40m hardship fund for microbusinesses would also aid "thousands of the smallest companies, as well as charities and social enterprises".

She said that one major bank here had informed her that it had received 1,100 applications for the Government's bounceback loan since the loan scheme launched on Monday.

Meanwhile, the chief executives of Belfast, Causeway, Derry and Newry chambers said a survey of members found that many think they will have to trim their workforce by 25% if the coronavirus job retention scheme stops in June.

Nearly 60% of businesses say that their turnover will more than halve over the next three months. Simon Hamilton of Belfast Chamber, Colm Shannon in Newry, Paul Clancy in Derry and Karen Yates in Causeway, said: "We have known for some time that the health emergency caused by Covid-19 is having a hugely damaging impact on the health of our economy, but these survey results illustrate how stark and indeed long lasting that effect is going to be."
"The Class of 2020 has shown perseverance and grit during a global time of uncertainty and their unwavering commitment to stand Bison strong demonstrates that their newly earned status as alumni is well-deserved," said President Frederick. "We salute this incredible cohort of scholars for their academic achievements, their mental fortitude, their commitment to service and their passion to pursue truth and excellence."

Howard University is awarding 1,358 degrees, including 153 master's degrees, 100 Ph.Ds., and 26 certificates. Nineteen percent of the Class of 2020 are first-generation college students. Among the class, 46 percent of the graduates will obtain degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences, followed by the School of Business at 21 percent and the School of Communications at 13 percent. The top states highlighted include Maryland, New York, Georgia and California, with international students hailing predominantly from Jamaica, Nigeria, Nepal, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Additionally, the various Howard University schools and colleges will host their individual 2020 celebration activities, ranging from recognition programs, virtual brunches, departmental celebrations, and more. Graduating seniors will receive additional instructions directly from their schools and colleges. For more information, visit the University's website.

Contact: Alonda Thomas, [email protected]

SOURCE Howard University

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http://www.howard.edu


Officials in New York state this week announced agreements with the videoconference platform Zoom designed to address privacy and security vulnerabilities that had affected schools in New York City and nationwide.

First, on Wednesday, New York Citys Department of Education publicized an agreement with Zoom that will allow educators there to resume using Zoom as a virtual classroom tool, one month after the department had imposed a Zoom ban . School employees and students will have access to a version of Zoom that complies with an agreement specific to New York Citys education department.

A day later, the office of New York state attorney general Letitia James announced the outcome of its negotiations with Zoom since opening an investigation into the technology provider:The company has agreed to a host of new security features for all nationwide users, not just schools and not just in New York.

Todays agreement will protect New Yorkers and users nationwide by ensuring Zooms compliance with New York State and federal laws; and will ensure Zoom provides services that are more secure, that provide users with enhanced privacy controls, and that protect users from abuse, states a press release from James office.

The videoconference platform, originally designed for workplace meetings, exploded in popularity earlier this year as the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of Americans to work from home and communicate with colleagues, friends, and relatives via videoconferencing. The rapid increase of users led to increased scrutiny from privacy experts and to the phenomenon of Zoombombing, in which online trolls visit chat rooms including classrooms and school board meetings uninvited to share obscene content.

Several state attorneys general last month pressed the company to make changes, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan even said in interviews that he had regrets about the tools newfound global ubiquity.

School districts have taken a range of approaches to using the tool . Some, like the Lumberton Schools in New Jersey , temporarily banned it after individual teachers signed up and reported issues, others have adopted it for use among teachers but not between teachers and students, and many have come around to using it to host virtual class sessions .

Heres a summary of the changes that will affect all Zoom users:



The companys head of security will lead a comprehensive data security program, as well as regular reviews of software code and risk assessment, and an annual software vulnerability management program.

Users with free accounts, or accounts associated with K-12 education, will have new privacy features, including:



By default, hosts will be able to require a password or host a digital waiting room to prevent unwanted guests from infiltrating private conversations.



Hosts can now control access to private chat messages and email directories.



Zoom will no longer share user data with Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hosts can now report meeting attendees for abuse, and the companys acceptable use policy now explicitly mentions abusive conduct based on race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. The company says it will ban users who violate the policy.

Below is a summary of the protections now afforded to users from New York City public schools under a new contract that will last a year. These protections could serve as a model for other school districts negotiating contracts with Zoom.



Zoom and the New York City education department have reached a confidentiality agreement with terms that meet and in certain respects exceed the requirements of N.Y. Education Law 2-d and FERPA, and which Zoom had not included previously for individual schools or individuals who signed up for Zoom on their own, according to the department.

New York City schools Zoom users now have access to a central, secure domain they can access from their logins sanctioned by the city Department of Education.

Participants who arent hosting a meeting cannot take control of the screen, share their screens, or rename themselves.

Only the host can invite participants to a meeting; recipients of a forwarded invitation wont have access. Users without New York City school logins can join meetings if a host provides them with a passcode.

By default, when a host removes a participant from the meeting, that person cannot rejoin.

By default, participants cannot join a meeting unless the host ushers them in from a virtual waiting room.

Image: Paula Merritt/The Meridian Star via AP
Striking Nigerian lecturers, whose salaries had been withheld by the federal government since February, were on Friday afternoon paid their February and March wages.

President Muhammadu Buhari had in April directed that the striking workers be paid their entitlements. It was, however, not clear why the April salary was not paid to the lecturers.

Confirming the payment to PREMIUM TIMES, the former chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Lagos (UNILAG) chapter, Adelaja Odukoya, said his colleagues across other federal universities have been paid.

Yes we received the payment this afternoon but that cannot change our resolute stance against our enrollment on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), Mr Adekoya said.

Some lecturers exchanged the news via an unofficial WhatsApp platform titled; Akada Development Watch.

ASUU had called the strike on March 23 after the government in February stopped its members salaries across the federal universities for their failure to enroll in the centralised payment platform for federal government workers, that is, IPPIS.

But at a meeting with the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige, in April, President Buhari directed that the withheld salaries be paid urgently.

The minister also said vice-chancellors had been asked to revalidate the affected lecturers bank verification (BVN) numbers and forward them to the office of the accountant-general of the federation for the payments.

READ ALSO:

But Mr Adekoya has said no lecturer provided any BVN before the payments were made on Friday.

Nobody supplied any BVN. But we dont know why the April salaries were not paid. Maybe because the President gave the directive in April, and we were only owed February and March salaries then. You know how government officials work, Mr Adekoya added.

Background

ASUU has been locked in a protracted dispute with the Nigerian government over its opposition to the use of IPPIS for lecturers, saying it does not consider some of the peculiar operations of universities.

The lecturers union then developed a prototype of the IPPIS, called University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), which it wants the government to adopt for universities.

Angry with the government for not implementing past agreements and other issues, the union embarked on an indefinite strike, also arguing that the implementation of the IPPIS was against the FGN-ASUU 2009 agreement.

Speaking earlier on the presidents directive that his members be paid, the National President of ASUU, Abiodun Ogunyemi, had told PREMIUM TIMES that the payment would pave way for meaningful engagement with the government.

Mr Ogunyemi could, however, not be reached on Friday for his comments on the payment, as calls to his lines were unanswered as of the time of filing this report.
Somebody at Channel 13, New Yorks liberal-biased public-television channel, must have been asleep at the switch when the station recently broadcast the politically tinged rom-com Ladies in Black. Its a movie about fashion, femininity, and courage and consequently the first film release that acknowledges Melania Trump and her unique role as our countrys first immigrant first lady since Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams.

The American premiere of Ladies in Black, a 2018 Australian film by Bruce Beresford that never opened in U.S. theaters, matched public televisions frequent emphasis on immigrant experience and female empowerment. Based on Australian writer Madeleine St. Johns 1993 novel about saleswomen working at Goodes high-end clothes emporium in 1950s Sydney, it prominently features a character  Slovenian refugee and fashion habitue Magda, played by Julia Ormond  who brings kindliness, self-assurance, and taste to her new country, just as Melania Trump has distinctly shown. In this context, Magda edges past public televisions stubborn liberal partisanship to reflect the emigrant optimism and style that has been marginalized by mainstream media.

Programming this film had to be an accident, given the political preferences of the cultural gatekeepers in left-of-Lenin New York. But its a happy accident that counters the deification of former first lady Michelle Obama in Netflixs new documentary memoir Becoming, a lesser, openly propagandistic film made, strangely, in an aggressive PBS mode.

The contrast of these two movies pinpoints the medias failure to be fair and balanced about these two first ladies.

It is the fashion-world setting of Ladies in Black, emphasizing presentation and etiquette as social principles, that makes the films Magda/Melania parallels so significant. St. Johns shopwomen professionally demonstrate Australias immigrant-nation cultural aspirations  their upmarket uniforms do not define or confine them  while also working out self-expression and romantic impulses.

Story continues

Beresford, who directed Driving Miss Daisy, Crimes of the Heart, and Breaker Morant, movies that portrayed eccentrics inhabiting societys borders, neither sentimentalizes these womens struggles nor makes them paragons of identity politics. Magdas outsider status awes her co-workers. Theyre fascinated by her decorum, the disciplined efforts to adjust her cultural heritage to the needs of her new home after surviving European turmoil. Ormonds past career as a 90s Hollywood aspirant inflects this role, as does her middle-aged hauteur and full-bosomed solidity. She perfectly matches St. Johns description of the kind of woman who always got what she wanted. . . . No one could even try to pronounce her frightful Continental surname. Although Magda is physically different from Melanias poised, sylph-like movements, her reserve and Eastern European accent mystify the uncouth, English-speaking Aussies. Her chic conveys depth of personality  exactly what our media have simply ignored about Melania Knavs Trump.

In The Dressmaker (2015) by Jocelyn Moorhouse and P. J. Hogan, Kate Winslet played a fashion designer who returns to her rural Australian hometown and confronts its backward sensibility. Ladies in Black has a similar effect, rectifying the cultural omissions of our supposedly enlightened female-empowered culture. Magdas mentorship to shopgirl Lisa (Angourie Rice) resembles the traditional first-lady advisory role; she responds personally to Lisas literary interests, yearning for sophistication, and passion for a particular high-style frock. Their friendship resonates as a reversal of Melanias first-lady relationship with the world  the traditionally sociable, maternalized, non-policy connection that was cut short by the media ever since her elegant Inauguration Day stride down Pennsylvania Avenue in the powder-blue outfit by Ralph Lauren Collection that rightfully should have reset the worlds fashion barometer.

Harpers Bazaar described Melanias milestone this way:

The slim-cut mock turtleneck dress and cropped cutaway jacket  with tonal suede gloves, pumps, and a clutch handbag to match  constituted a nod to Jackie Kennedys similarly ladylike ensemble during John F. Kennedys 1961 Inauguration. The choice seemed to bespeak the First Ladys implicit declaration of her commitment to this new, dignified, perhaps unexpected position she now assumes  to serving a nation that is not natively hers but which it is now her charge to represent before the world.

A measure of the fashion medias deranged defiance of Melania can be found in Netflixs Becoming, a blatant hagiography. Netflix promotes Becoming as an instruction manual and Michelle Obama as an identity-politics role model  as Oprah 2.0 and with Gayle King in tow. This cliche-spouting Michelle talks past her refusal to wear an Afro hairstyle; the bourgie image she projects denies everything that fashion statement represents.

Ladies in Black proves we have to project onto Melania simply because the media refuse to acknowledge her presence except negatively. Female networks of feminism in film, television, the press, and lecture circuits are missing when it comes to the way Melania is ostracized. The mania to promote Michelle Obama even into a new presidential administration is evidence of despondency over the peaceful transfer of power and its disruption of the medias command of fashion. It is Melanias background in fashion (Shes a beauty and thats all there is to it, designer Manolo Blahnik boldly declared) that exposes the left medias attempt to convert political figure Michelle into a dubious fashion icon. Netflixs Becoming does not evidence taste or even fairness. Instead, it suggests the latest step in private enterprise becoming state media.

More from National Review
Miss America was to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2021.

Now, pageant organizers have decided to push the upcoming pageant, scheduled for December, to the centennial year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The first Miss America was crowned in 1921 in Atlantic City, but the pageant has since left New Jersey.

In December, Camille Schrier, the former Miss Virginia, was crowned Miss America 2020 at Mohegan Sun Casino & Resort in Uncasville, Connecticut. The pageant had traditionally been a September affair. Before the postponement, the Sewell-based Miss America Organization had decided to stick with the winter schedule again this year.

It remains unclear where the pageant will take place.

For the safety, health and welfare of the enormous community necessary to make the Miss America competition possible, including participants, volunteers, organizers, and fans, the Miss America Board of Directors has unanimously voted in favor of postponing the Miss America 2021 Competition and has advised the 51 qualifying competitions across the country to do so as well," the organization said in a statement Friday.

(Miss America pageants are postdated  if all went to the original plan, Miss America 2021 would actually be crowned in 2020.)

Normally, the Miss New Jersey pageant, which determines who will represent the state at the national pageant, would take place in a few weeks. The reigning Miss New Jersey, Belmars Jade Glab, a student at Georgetown University, was crowned in Atlantic City in June 2019. The state pageant had originally moved its pageant week to Sept. 7-12 at Resorts Casino & Hotel, with an orientation scheduled for July.

David Holtzman, executive director of the stage pageant, tells NJ Advance Media that a decision has not yet been made regarding any postponement. He said he would likely know more next week.

Jade Glab, the reigning Miss New Jersey.Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

"As we all know, this moment in our history is one that will change the course of many programs, businesses, and institutions, and the Miss America Organization is not alone in navigating these challenges, Shantel Krebs, chairwoman of the Miss America board, said in a statement. At this time, as an organization, our greatest concern is to make sure the thousands of people who are involved in or volunteer for our program are safe. This coming year will be our 100th anniversary for this iconic American institution, and we want to make sure that we take the time to ensure our annual broadcast and the surrounding experiences reflect our time-honored tradition.

It remains unclear where Miss America 2021 will be crowned. In February, George Tibbitt, president of the Atlantic City Council, said that a representative from the Miss America Organization had been in touch about possibly bringing the pageant back to Atlantic City.

They called me and asked if we would consider the pageant for the 100th year coming back to Atlantic City," Tibbitt told NJ Advance Media at the time.

Release: The Miss America Competition postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19 https://t.co/uc6jDUnOQg  The Miss America Org (@MissAmerica) May 8, 2020

The pageant started in the 1920s when Atlantic City businessmen wanted a way to keep people on the boardwalk after Labor Day. The pageant first left New Jersey for Las Vegas in 2006. Miss America returned to Atlantic City in 2013, welcomed by a $6.8 million subsidy package from the state. Later, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority entered into another three-year contract with the pageant that provided $12.5 million. The pageant departed for Connecticut after state audit of the CRDA said the authority failed to monitor costs and contracts relating to Miss America.

Schrier, 24, the reigning titleholder, grew up in Newtown, Pennsylvania and attended the Hun School in Princeton. She won the pageant after performing a science experiment as her talent. Schrier gave a nod to her science background in her own statement about the postponement. She graduated from Virginia Tech with degrees in biochemistry and systems biology and is studying pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her social impact initiative is Mind Your Meds, through which she talks about prescription drug safety and addiction.

As Miss America 2020, a large part of my message is that science really is all around us," Schrier said. It is imperative that science and safety are at the forefront of our concern during this pandemic year, and it is with that in mind that I applaud the Miss America Organizations decision to move this years competition to 2021.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com.
The U.S. unemployment rate has hit 14.7%  the highest since the Great Depression  as Americans shelter from the coronavirus, according to numbers released today by the U.S. Department of Labor.

New York state wont release its official unemployment rate for April until the end of May.

Russell Weaver, an economic geographer with the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, projects that New York states official rate could be between 12.5% and 15% for April.

In his more conservative model, he estimates Central New York could be at 12.5%. In a less conservative estimate  one that takes into account the oddities of the current situation  he projects Central New Yorks April unemployment rate could be as high as 16%.

He predicts the highest levels will be in Western New York and New York City.

For comparison, the statewide unemployment rate in February was only 3.9%.

Economic models use the past to forecast the future. But whats happening now is uncharted territory, Weaver said.

The numbers below offer some perspective on the size of the workforce in each region and the number of people who have filed initial unemployment claims since the start of the government-ordered shutdown.

The chart shows how many people were working and how many were unemployed in February in each region. The last column shows new unemployment insurance claims filed between March 14 and the week ending May 2.

In Central New York, 66,592 people have filed new unemployment insurance claims since the pandemic hit. That is more than triple the number of people who were out of work in February.

CLICK HERE IF YOURE HAVING TROUBLE SEEING THE CHART

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186.
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 16:04 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6c8b93 1 Business household-consumption,consumer-confidence,bank-indonesia,BI,COVID-19,Sri-Mulyani-Indrawati,fitch-solutions,GDP-growth,economic-growth,unemployment Free

Indonesias household spending is expected to contract this year as consumers turn pessimistic amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted businesses and wiped out jobs.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than a half of the countrys GDP, grew by just 2.84 percent year-on-year (yoy) in the first quarter, a far cry from 5.01 percent growth recorded in the same period last year.

Indonesias consumer confidence index (IKK) nosedived to its lowest level in at least 12 years as consumers expressed pessimism amid the pandemic, a Bank Indonesia (BI) survey showed on Wednesday.

The index fell to 84.8 in April from 113.8 in the previous month, indicating pessimism among consumers regarding the domestic economy. An IKK reading above 100 reflects general hopefulness, while index values below 100 signify pessimism.

Consumer optimism weakened following the social restrictions, which have reduced peoples income, the survey result reads. Declining consumer optimism also occurred as companies laid off their employees because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 2 million people lost their jobs as of April 20, according to data from the Manpower Ministry, as the government imposed large scale social restrictions to contain the virus spread, which disrupted business activity. The government estimate that 2.9 million to 5.2 million workers could lose their jobs during the outbreak, which would erase last years gains of 2.5 million new jobs.

When Jakarta and Java in general implemented large-scale social restrictions, it was inevitable that consumer spending would not grow and might even contract, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told House of Representatives Commission XI overseeing financial affairs on Wednesday.

We need to anticipate reduced consumer spending in the second quarter as the large-scale social restrictions take effect more broadly, Sri Mulyani said, adding that Rp 5 quadrillion (US$333.39 billion) had vanished this year as people stayed at home while businesses closed.

Last years household spending amounted to Rp 9 quadrillion, with Java contributing 55 percent, more than Rp 5 quadrillion, Sri Mulyani said.

The government has allocated Rp 436.1 trillion for healthcare spending and a social safety net, as well as incentives for laid-off workers and businesses, among other things, as it works to soften the pandemics impact on the economy. Of this, Rp 110 trillion will be disbursed as social aid funds, which Sri Mulyani said would not be able to make up for the losses caused by the pandemic.

Indonesias economy grew 2.97 percent in the first quarter, the slowest pace in 19 years, as consumer spending and investment were battered by the virus. The growth was lower than the governments, BIs and economists projections of above 4 percent.

Fitch Solutions now projects the economy to contract 1.3 percent throughout this year from its previous expectation of 2.8 percent growth.

We now expect private consumption to contract by 1.5 percent yoy in 2020 from a previous forecast growth of 1.2 percent and from 5 percent in 2019, it wrote in a research note on May 6. It highlighted the fact that Indonesias economy did not actually face severe disruptions in the first quarter as the first COVID-19 cases were only detected in early March with no lockdowns imposed.

The steep drop in consumer spending growth, it added, suggested that external factors, such as a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy and a fall in tourist arrivals dealt a severe blow to consumer spending. China is Indonesias largest trade partner while tourism accounts for around 10 percent of GDP.

We do expect consumption to weaken during [Ramadan] and the Eid festival that will follow as COVID-19 awareness rises and people gradually start avoiding crowded places, Fitch wrote. Secondly, we believe that private consumption will remain under pressure over the year as employment conditions continue to worsen.

Perbanas Institute economist Piter Abdullah said the government should focus its efforts to contain the virus crisis in a bid to inspire optimism among consumers.

This [reduced consumer spending] is inevitable during the COVID-19 outbreak, but the key is to immediately end the pandemic, he stressed.
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Weird

By Olga Khazan

Hachette Go. 308 pp. $28

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'Weird" is a distinctly odd creation. A medley of social science reporting, autobiographical confession and in-depth interviews with an array of "weird" people, it is held together - just barely - by the singular voice of its author, Atlantic magazine writer Olga Khazan, a voice unlike any I can remember encountering on the page. By turns insouciantly candid, calmly authoritative and poignantly insightful, Khazan's persona has a startling freshness that ultimately wins over the reader, though not without inspiring a fair amount of head-scratching and eyebrow-raising along the way.

Khazan, she tells us, has evoked such bewildered reactions all her life. She has always felt weird, not like others - a painful and seemingly permanent state that she traces back to her childhood as a Russian immigrant transplanted to Midland, Texas. Her experiences growing up in this Bible Belt oil town are a mix of bafflement, biting mockery and rueful humor - often featuring her father, a larger-than-life personality notable for his strong opinions and gleeful penny-pinching. "One day, someone toilet-papered our house, and I had to explain to my parents that this is what American kids do to losers," Khazan recounts. "Undeterred, my dad eagerly raked the toilet paper into a garbage bag and put it in his bathroom for future use. 'Free toilet paper!' he said happily over dinner."

Now a successful magazine writer, securely partnered, living in Washington, Khazan nonetheless acknowledges that "having been weird for so long still haunts me in so many ways." It's a status that others seem to sense immediately. "Sometimes," she writes, "strangers ask me if I'm lost."

"Weird" is Khazan's attempt to find herself - in the psychological and sociological literature she regularly covers for the Atlantic, and in the narratives of other people who feel they don't fit. On her wide-ranging tour of the former realm, she examines research on norms, conformity, ostracism, prejudice, loneliness and "impostor syndrome" - a voluminous catalogue of the ways humans create groups that include some and exclude others. One framework to which Khazan returns repeatedly concerns tight vs. loose cultures. "Tight cultures are those in which social norms are strict and formal, and the punishments for breaking them are severe," she explains. Loose cultures, by contrast, "permit a wider range of behaviors." This distinction appears in a less academic form in many of the weird-people stories Khazan proceeds to tell: Although they range over a mind-bogglingly diverse group of individuals, most of these narratives trace a path of liberation from a rigidly rule-bound community to a more liberal and accepting milieu. "It's easier to be weird in a loose culture than in a tight one," she observes.

This is Khazan's own journey, of course, and the book is driven by her search for answers to her eternal questions: Why are some people made to feel weird? How do such "weirdos" come to feel more comfortable in their skin? To her credit, however, "Weird" does not lapse into a session of solipsistic self-analysis. Instead, Khazan trains her attention outward, on a cast of real-life outsiders and misfits. The first of these is Michael Ain, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Ain's difference from others is immediately apparent: He has achondroplasia, or dwarfism, and stands only 4 feet 3 inches tall. When he first interviewed for admission to medical school, Khazan reports, "some admissions officers would go through the motions. Others stared awkwardly, then dismissed him from the meeting. 'Patients won't respect you,' one said. 'They want tall doctors with long, white coats.' He was rejected from every single school."

More oddballs follow: a male preschool teacher, a female racecar driver, a Mormon missionary who doubts his faith, a rebellious teenager in an Amish order, a liberal professor in a conservative small town, a transgender city council member in another conservative small town - so many purportedly weird people, in fact, that their biographical details begin to blur. It's not clear, either, if there is any essential quality that unites this motley group; as Khazan herself hastens to acknowledge, she doesn't intend "to imply that I consider the low-level unease of, say, a white immigrant to be equivalent to the obstacles faced by people of color or those living with rare medical conditions."

Yet Khazan is looking for commonalities, and she finds them, making connections among her many sketches and drawing parallels to her own story. She notes that a common (if regrettable) strategy on the part of an excluded individual is to disparage someone even further outside the fold, thereby allying herself with the dominant group. Khazan takes the opposite tack, extending deep empathy and genuine curiosity to her subjects. Their shared weirdness, even if of different kinds, creates a bond. She tells the story of Asma, an African immigrant and devout Muslim who moved with her family to a small town in the American South when she was 10 years old. "When I asked Asma if she ever felt a distinct I-don't-belong feeling, she knew exactly what I meant," Khazan relates.

Toward the end of the book, the author experiments with trying to become less weird, while also advancing the notion that being odd is actually an advantage. Both of these efforts feel a bit halfhearted. "Weird" is at its strongest when Khazan allows herself to explore, with bracing candor and unexpected humor, what it feels like to be weird - a state that is "at once energizing and maddening, like trying to squeeze into a space where you might plausibly fit, but don't quite."

Even readers who have not organized their identity around being different, as Khazan has, will relate to the fundamentally human experience of being the odd man or woman out. In her memorable description: "Being weird feels like showing up alone to a party where you only know the host, except the host is in the bathroom, and Oh God, are you even in the right house? Except the party is your life."

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Paul's next book, "The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain," will be published next year.
On Tuesday, Californias 25th District will hold a special election to determine who will replace former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned last year after a relationship with a campaign staffer came to light. The race between California State Assemblywoman Christy Smith and defense contractor Mike Garcia has become a virtual toss-up, with the Republican Garcia holding a slight advantage according to the most recent public poll and voter registration numbers from early returns. Democrats hold a 30,000-registered-voter advantage in the district, which flipped to the Democrats in the 2018 midterm wave after 26 years as a Republican stronghold, but nearly 40 percent of registered Republicans had already turned out in early mail-in voting as of Thursday according to tracking data, compared with only 25 percent of registered Democrats.

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While the contest will likely be replayed in November no matter who wins, the victor will have the advantage of incumbency. Smiths campaign has sought to make the race a referendum on President Donald Trumps response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Garcias close ties to the president, while Garcia, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and outside groups have spent millions of dollars in attack ads against Smith. In a press release late last month, the NRCC accused Smith of hypocrisy in her support of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who faces an allegation by former Senate staffer Tara Reade of sexual misconduct, when Smith had supported a thorough investigation of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court.

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In an interview with Slate on Thursday, Smith said that she felt Biden had been forthcoming in his response to the allegations, laid out her vision for a stronger federal response to COVID-19, described the difficulties of campaigning in a pandemic, and blamed Republicans for trying to politicize Reades allegations against Biden.

The following transcript of our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Jeremy Stahl: What has it been like to run and campaign in the middle of a pandemic, when theres not much in-person campaigning you can do?

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Christy Smith: Its a challenge in the sense that, as a candidate, you like that contact with voters, and generating of interest in town halls, and especially knocking on peoples doors. At the same time, the silver lining of this is that I have this amazing core of volunteers helping with this campaign effort, who are also raising this as a way when were reaching out to voters not only to talk about the campaign but checking in with them and seeing where theyre at and seeing if theres any help or service that we can connect them with, at this moment with so many people struggling in one way or another.

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California is facing a $54 billion budget deficit through next summer, as was reported on Thursday, the biggest in history. What do you think another federal economic rescue package should look like?

We know the first CARES Act that went through included some relief for mid- to larger-size cities, those [with populations] over 500,000, but here in California weve got a lot of small cities who are struggling under the weight of this already, due to the loss of local sales tax revenue and the money that they depend on to run city governments. Theres going to be a whole lot more that the federal government is going to have to do in shifting its spending priorities over the next year or more until were in full recovery mode, keeping these cities and state governments operating and functioning.  Were talking about obligations and programs like our schools and law enforcement and things that just cant fall by the wayside. Here in California, with fire season right around the corner, we cannot afford to not be funding our first responder community either.

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Generally, what do you think is necessary from the federal government right now in terms of a coronavirus response?

This White House has proven incapable of providing the kind of material leadership, the type of moral leadership, thats required in this moment. Materially what we need is a national streamlining of the supply chain to get a national testing program. With the support of the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, we need a testing program that makes sense, a protocol for big counties and communities to know how and when to be testing people in order to reestablish some kind of economic productivity. So thats one.

Secondarily, we need to keep our public health infrastructure in place and we need to add to it. We need a federal jobs program right now that employs people who can be trained immediately in the public health space to go out into communities and, first of all, help businesses employ appropriate practices to keep communities safe, and secondarily, to be part of that necessary team of really important professionals that can help with contact tracing and helping communities or hot spots to isolate what cases begin to crop up and spread in certain areas.  Additionally, I would say that the government right now needs to deploy a team, a top-notch team of economic specialists and business leaders from across the country to charter what a good recovery model is going to look like. Weve got in this country the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and others who can be brought to the table to help us navigate this along with our nations leading economists. Why that work is not being done is beyond me.

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Can you please speak to the potential difficulties for your campaign in this specific type of race where you have many polling locations that are going to be closed on the day of the election itself as well as the general difficulties of special elections for Democratic candidates versus what you might anticipate in a November rematch?

Democratic voters are wonderful in presidential cycles. They are persistent and consistent, and they really turn out, and its these in-between cycles that prove more challenging for whatever reason. I would say that in this moment its a matter of being cognizant of where some of these voters might be. Were probably talking about people who are experiencing a loss of income, job loss, perhaps theyve had a loved one who has become ill. But just about every voter who weve spoken to has been impacted in one way or another by this. So whats front of mind for them is not necessarily I have to make it a priority to vote. Right now its I need to figure out how Im making my next rent payment and how Im getting food on the table next week. 

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To the credit of both Ventura County and Los Angeles County, the vote centers that they have been able to deploy have been very mindful of public health concerns. They have workers who are equipped with protective gear. The Los Angeles County ones are outdoors, so theres a free flow of air. Things are being cleaned, importantly. There will be social distancing. Were encouraging people who show up to please wear face coverings.  Were concerned about our community of Lancaster and the Antelope Valley. The County of Los Angeles neglected to put a vote center in that location and that is a higher minority and lower-income population, many of whom dont have access to a personal vehicle. And the voting center for them is going to be nine miles away.  There are still a lot of people in this momentwe saw it in Wisconsinwho want to turn up to vote. For some people it is really important to them to show up on Election Day. Were just glad that opportunity is being provided in a safe manner.

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What has your opponent been up to in recent weeks? Has he distanced himself from the presidents response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

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He ran a primary that put him squarely in this presidents back pocket. And they havent walked away from that since. And yet what hes done now in the course of this special election is to do nothing but attack me with erroneous content and hide. So right now, nobody knows where my opponent is. Hes not doing press. Hes not speaking to the public, talking about a proactive agenda. Hes certainly not addressing this crisis, because how do you defend the indefensible with the lack of leadership from this president who he supports so vehemently? So I cant really speak to the type of campaign that hes run, other than its been textbook Republican slash-and-burn, truth-be-damned campaigning, and its unfortunate.

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I did have one question about some of the messaging that Ive seen from your opponents camp, specifically from the National Republican Congressional Committee. They put out a press release at the end of last month where they flag a tweet that you wrote in September 2018 that says, Pause and investigate. Its fair, and in America we believe in fairness. #InvestigateKavanaugh #BelieveSurvivors, and then they note your support of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In your opinion, what specifically is the difference between the allegation that was made by Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh and the one that has been made by Tara Reade against Biden?

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In the case of Dr. Ford, we did not see a complete and robust investigation, and in fact there was sort of this cursory glance over that. What I appreciate about Vice President Biden is that he has said, Open the records. He is open to an investigation and the New York Times has already done a pretty deep dive there. I know other reporters will continue to look into it so that Ms. Reade does have the opportunity to have the case fully examined and be fully heard. So I see no inconsistencies in my position on that.

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But what I find really interesting is that this is where Republicans want to go right now. Right now, we have people starving. I have people in my district who have been waiting for their unemployment benefits for more than 20 days now. I have people in my district who are lining up at food banks once a week because that is their only way to [get] a meal. I have people in my district who dont know when theyre going to get back to work.

So, while I appreciate the importance still of the Me Too movement, and the fact that we need to grapple with that, Republicans in this moment are demonstrating a complete failure of leadership.  We saw this with Hillary Clinton, we saw this with Barack Obamawhen they dont have a positive agenda to run on, when they dont have a vision of America that is inclusive of everyone that speaks to American prosperity for everyone, that solves income inequality, that addresses climate change, that gets us on a better trajectory towards a more truly pluralistic society where every American has a chance to flourish, theyre going to continue to be in the gutter.

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I think what all of us need to say is: Yes, we rightly and righteously want woman to be heard. We want these investigations to happen, but at the same time we have got to start holding the opposition party responsible for misinformation and disinformation and make sure that they are selling the American public on what their vision is and not these bottom-feeding politics, because its got to stop. Its not serving any American. Theyve done it to every candidate, theyre trying it with me, and it is not enough: Being negative, being mean-spirited, spreading disinformation is simply not enough, and especially not in this moment.

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I take your point about the urgency of the moment. I would just ask as a follow-up to you saying that a thorough investigation was not conducted in the case of Justice Kavanaugh: Would you like the vice president to open up his Senate records at the University of Delaware, at least to this specific charge, which is something he has declined to do and which is something that the New York Times editorial board has called for?

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Im going to leave that to those two camps to decide. I think an investigation is warranted given the circumstances. I think that a lot of it has already been done, but I dont think that is a compelling component in my campaign. I have a whole lot to say on the Me Too movement, especially as a woman of my era and my generation. These are stories that need to be written and need to be told, and we need to come to a new understanding of how this movement can have meaning and serve women without being politicized, but its relevance and bearing in this campaign shouldnt be overstated.

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You said that you have a lot to say about this subject. Is there anything that you want to add about the Me Too movement more generally?

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As a woman my age and as someone who started professional life in my 20s in the 1980s, what we expect from behavior towards one another has really evolved and changed over time. And, unfortunately, in all of those intervening decades from the Anita Hill hearings until now, we still have not had the right conversations about interpersonal conduct that are meaningful. We have such discomfort in this country with fairly and adequately discussing human sexuality to begin with and womens sexuality very specifically, and that kind of precludes us from really being able to move into an era where we can reshape the public discourse and dialogue around this and set new expectations for the new generation.

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So, I think what you see is a younger generation having an expectation of purity a few decades back, when the standards for behavior were so decidedly differentand its not an excuse. It doesnt excuse the behavior, to be sure. But it alsofor each of these accusations you have to look at that moment in time and what the expectations of behavior were. And the standards now for the millennial generation, for this younger generation, they have very different standards, very different expectations.

But, unfortunately, in all of the eras that have preceded this, there has been a lot of nuance and unfortunately a lot of really inadequate conversations about it, and we need to get there. I think that we will, but its going to take I think a much more earnest conversation about womens roles and priorities in this country as well as what we expect from conduct from one another. Its a multigenerational approach and unfortunately, because this is human nature, it is an area where there is a lot of gray area. There simply is. But what we dont need to have happen, particularly on behalf of women, is have it be something that is politicized and destructive.

Is there anything else youd like to add?

I do want to be very, very clear on the point that I think that consistency is important. And I would have liked to see a more robust investigation of the Dr. Ford claims, and I find it a positive sign that Vice President Biden has been as forthcoming as he has been with these concerns and that there are people interested in finding the truth in all of this and thats the important thing.

For more on the impact of the coronavirus, listen to What Next.
HEALTH Minister Simon Harris has defended the response to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes as it emerged there has been 23-deaths in one facility in the North-East, many of them related to Covid-19.

Dealgan House nursing home in county Louth confirmed that 23 deaths have taken place there since April 1, with many of these linked to the virus.

Concerns about the home - which has been taken over by a HSE hospital group - were raised in the Dail yesterday where Sinn Fein TD Ruairi O Murchu said he had heard the deaths could have been as high as 26.

Mr O Murchu also said that staff at the home have been told that workers from the RCSI Hospital Group will no longer be present in Dealgan House by the weekend.

The nursing home offered a clarification on the situation this morning.

There were 84 residents at the home at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Dealgan House managing director Eoin Farrelly this morning said the nursing home "offers our sincere sympathies to the families and friends of those who have died due to Covid-19.

"Those 23 residents who tragically died since April 1 - many of which were Covid related - were people whom we got to know and love while caring for them, some over many years.

"All of us are heartbroken at their death and their familys loss.

He said that while not forgetting those who have passed away: "our emphasis now is on extinguishing the outbreak which we believe is under control with no new Covid 19 cases in our Nursing Home for more than 14 days."

Mr Farrelly added that there will also be a focus on "providing great care to our residents and trying to normalise life for them to the extent that Public Health measures allow.

He said Dealgan House has "received substantial external support comprising both personnel and equipment, to bring the Covid 19 outbreak under control.

"The assistance we received was supportive and greatly appreciated and will wind down gradually as our own staff return to work.

Mr Harris was asked about the home as he visited a new coronavirus assessment centre for marginalised communities at Dublin's Mater Hospital.

He said coronavirus is an "extremely infectious disease" and as in other countries there has been "particular challenges" in relation to long-term residential care facilities.

Mr Harris said he's encouraged by the large-scale testing programme that it testing residents and staff without any symptoms.

He said modelling suggests that there are now fewer new cases each day in nursing homes.

At one point in April there were around 100 new cases a day and that's dropped to about 50, he said.

He said he's been engaging with the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) and Nursing Homes Ireland.

Mr Harris said he doesn't want to do a disservice to nursing home staff and that many facilities are "handling the situation extremely well".

He said "an outbreak in and of itself is not a sign of failure in that nursing home" the same way an outbreak could happen in anyone's home.

He said nursing homes are getting " a huge amount of resources and priority". He said: "I do believe were beginning to make progress".
Service provider IENTC Telecomunicaciones has selected Telia Carriers IP Transit backbone services to provide low latency, high capacity services to its consumer and enterprise customers.

After more than 10 years in Mexico, IENTC Telecomunicaciones is scaling up its existing relationship with Telia Carrier to support the release of its upcoming television offering and recent MVNO business model without compromising the customer experience.

IENTC Telecomunicaciones offers high speed internet through its own fibre optic network and via microwave wireless technology, supporting customers in the government, corporate, manufacturing, retail, and banking sectors, among others. IENTC Telecomunicaciones chose Telia Carrier because of its extensive global network that ensures service availability and provides the low latency services end-users demand.

Carlos Arguimbau CEO, IENTC Telecomunicaciones, said: working with Telia Carrier allows us to confidently roll out new services and cost-effectively receive the capacity needed to ensure a seamless experience for all.

We are continuing to see an increasing demand from service providers in the LATAM market for our services, said Luis Velasquez, Mexico business manager, Telia Carrier. Operating the worlds #1 Global Internet Backbone, we are uniquely positioned to serve partners and customers with the network connectivity needed to meet their current demands and those of the future.

Telia Carrier expanded into Mexico in the Spring of 2018, providing wholesale IP Transit, Ethernet, IPX, and Cloud Connect for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), content and cloud providers in the region.
Deaths from COVID are often unexpected or sudden, which can increase our level of grief because we just had no preparation for that, said Schlueter. We might be wrestling with feelings of guilt or responsibility wondering if there was something that we could have done to prevent our loved one from getting sick. We might have extra concern for a surviving parent or loved one who are all of a sudden on their own now and doing so in isolation, where we cant be together and support them the way we normally would have. Likely those who lost a parent to COVID werent able to be with them in their final days, hours, minutes, and that is a loss. Thats something we tend to think we want to be able to do for our parents, but even more so, it really halts our ability to accept what happened because we didnt see it, we werent there, and it just feels unreal. It can diminish our ability to process our resulting grief because it just is such a surreal experience.
NSW Labor has questioned the decision to hand police chief Mick Fuller an $87,000 pay rise at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, making him one of the state's highest paid public servants.

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Adam Searle said Commissioner Fuller's pay rise was a "massive increase at a difficult time".

"At a time when the Berejiklian government is proposing to, in effect, cut the wages of public sector employees, it is just not appropriate to be giving a wage increase well outside the 2.5 per cent wage cap," Mr Searle said.

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller received a pay increase of almost $87,000 after Premier Gladys Berejiklian directed the state's remuneration tribunal to review his salary. Credit:Dean Sewell

"You should not have one rule for a select few, and a harsher rule that applies to everyone else."
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  Washington's commitment to the security of its Gulf allies is unchanged despite what appears to be a shift in force posture in the region, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told CNBC. "Our mission is not at all changed. We're standing with our partners and our allies in the region. We're doing everything we can to protect American interests," Hook told CNBC's Hadley Gamble in an exclusive interview Friday. The comments come on the back of news that the Pentagon is removing two Patriot anti-missile batteries from Saudi Arabia along with a number of military personnel, deployed last year in the wake of attacks in the region that Riyadh and Washington blame on Iran. The move is being seen as a scaling down of last year's large military build-up designed to deter Iran. Hook disputed the suggestion that this meant the U.S. no longer viewed its longtime adversary Iran as a threat. "No, it doesn't mean that Iran is no longer a threat," Hook said. "Our troop levels go up and down depending on the circumstances, but the mission set is the same. Our mission is not at all changed. We're standing with our partners and our allies in the region. We're doing everything we can to protect American interests."

A first military satellite named Noor is launched into orbit by Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, in Semnan, Iran April 22, 2020. WANA | Sepah News via Reuters

Amid Iran's economic crisis  the worst in the Islamic Republic's 41-year history  and the coronavirus outbreak that's made it the regional epicenter of the disease, many U.S. officials believe the regime is, for now, on the back foot. Hook emphasized what he saw as President Donald Trump's role in restoring "a credible military deterrent to act in self-defense, which is something that had been lost," noting the January killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. "Deterrence is something which is easy to lose," he said. "But maintaining it is ... a policy you'd have to implement every day, and we're going to continue working with the Saudis, the Emiratis, all of our partners in the region." The Trump administration has sent some 14,000 additional troops to the Gulf region since May of last year in response to dramatically heightened tensions with Iran. The U.S. accuses Iran of carrying out multiple sabotage attacks on foreign tankers in Gulf waters last year and of precision strikes on Saudi Aramco oil facilities in September, attacks the government in Tehran denies. Last year also saw a buildup of U.S. Navy vessels and patrols in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital conduit for 30% of the world's seaborne oil.

'Increase the burden-sharing' of defending Gulf allies

Some of the president's supporters have criticized the amount of U.S. manpower and taxpayer money sent to defend Saudi Arabia. That criticism has grown louder amid a crisis in oil markets that saw Saudi Arabia temporarily slash its oil prices as demand for the commodity was crushed by the coronavirus  a move that dealt a severe blow to the U.S. shale industry. Asked whether U.S. taxpayers would continue to accept the cost burden of defending Gulf allies, particularly amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Hook emphasized the administration's efforts toward burden-sharing.

"What the president has tried to do is to increase the burden-sharing," the diplomat said. "The president has demanded more from our partners and allies so that America doesn't have to do the lion's share of the work. And we've been very successful." Hook pointed to the International Maritime Security Construct, a consortium of countries led by the U.S. and formed last year to monitor regional waters in the Gulf and ensure freedom of navigation. "We've got a coalition together, which we think has done a good job of disrupting and deterring Iranian maritime aggression. We have a number of initiatives in the region that we're going to continue to work on."

Force posture 'goes up and down'

Hook also stressed the administration's determination to renew a U.N. arms embargo on Iran set to expire in October. Iran last month launched its first-ever military satellite into space, and while the State Department has not confirmed whether it was in operation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the launch. Friday's discussion with Hook coincided with the two-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and the start of Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. Given the escalation in attacks and force posturing since then, many criticize it as only having emboldened Iran to act out more aggressively. Hook denies that assertion, maintaining that support for allies and deterrence against Tehran are at all-time highs  despite the removal of the Patriot systems and a reported troop reduction.

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy vessels conducted unsafe and unprofessional actions against U.S. military ships by crossing the ships' bows and sterns at close range while operating in international waters of the North Arabian Gulf.
The best football team won't be winning the NRL premiership in 2020.

The most mentally tough team will. Because this won't be anything like a normal season - the challenges, particularly of the mind, will be immense.

Josh Addo-Carr at Storm's training session in Albury on Wednesday. Credit:Getty Images

We got a small glimpse in round two. No matter what anyone says, top-flight rugby league in empty stadiums is not the same.

In that round, the Knights' 42-24 belting of the Wests Tigers was plain weird by NRL standards. The Panthers-Dragons match wasn't far behind  it was close but high-scoring.

On the flipside, Manly's one-point win over the Roosters was as hard-fought as ever, as was the Broncos' 22-18 win over the Rabbitohs.

What I'm getting at is, some games will be kind of normal, but we will see far more blow-outs than we would normally expect as concentration wanes. Particularly as the season wears on.

I also think lower-ranked clubs will be gapped by better teams. When their seasons are gone, what will motivate the Titans, the Bulldogs and the Warriors?

St George Illawarra, too, for that matter. How can they get revved up if they quickly fall out of it? The coach is under pressure, star forward Tyson Frizell is leaving. They can't do it for the fans when they can't see them. They might tell themselves they're doing it for them, but when things are going bad in an empty stadium, where will the resilience come from?

Which is why mental toughness will reign this year. Week in, week out. In games and at training. Who's up for it?

Click here to read the full column.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh government on Friday constituted a five-member High-Power Committee to probe into the causes behind the leakage of styrene gas from the LG Polymer plant at RR Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam on Thursday, which claimed 12 lives, and take stock of the recovery steps being initiated. It will be submitting its final report within one month.

A GO was issued by Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney on Friday constituting the committee and spelling out its terms of reference. The committee will be headed by Neeraj Kumar Prasad, Special Chief Secretary (EFS and T department) and will have Karikal Valaven, Special Chief Secretary (Industries), Vinay Chand (Visakhapatnam district collector), RK Meena (Visakhapatnam Commissioner of Police) as members and Vivek Yadav (Member Secretary, AP Pollution Control Board) as member convenor.

As per the terms of reference, the committee will enquire into the reasons for the leakage, verifying if the company had adhered to all safety protocols. It will study if there are any long-term effects of the gas leakage on the surrounding villages. The committee will recommend the proposed action to be taken against the industrial unit in case of any negligence, that led to gas leakage.

Further, the committee will suggest measures to be taken by industry units, including safety audits, to prevent such mishaps in the future, and in case, there are any observations and suggestions for all similar industrial plants, they will be included in the report.

To ensure quality inputs of the highest standards by experts on the measures to be taken to avoid such incidents in the future, the chairman of the committee has been empowered to co-opt any individual or organization of national and international repute. The APPCB has been directed to provide assistance to the committee in preparing the report.
North Adams, Crane at Odds Over Reopening

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Crane Stationery apparently says its opening Friday. The city says it hasn't fulfilled all the obligations set out in an order by the mayor on Sunday and so can't open.

But what if it does?

"I hope it doesn't come to that. But we are prepared to intervene," said Mayor Thomas Bernard on Thursday night.

The legacy printer of fine papers and cards closed mid-March along with hundreds of other "non-essential" businesses at the order of Gov. Charlie Baker as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread within the state.

Last week, the company owned by Mohawk Fine Papers of Cohoes, N.Y., announced it had received a $2 million federal Paycheck Protection Program loan to bring its employees back.

Except the email sent out to employees sounded more like a layoff notice by telling them the plant would "wind down" operations and their jobs would end June 19. The next day, a press release said that wasn't true and that 15 percent of the workforce would stay on "to protect the future of the company."

The day after that, the mayor received a communication from Crane saying those 28 jobs would end in September. But that, too, the city was told, was not true.

The questions about the company's decision to reopen operations at the Curran Highway plant led to an order by Bernard that the printer submit a health and safety plan and ensure that it's only doing essential work as outlined the state during the novel coronavirus.

Elements of the company's products were deemed essential by the state Divison of Labor Standards because they supplied industries that fell in the essential list  like medicine and energy  or were being provided to individuals and organizations working remotely as allowed by the state.

The mayor said Thursday night the Crane had not complied with one of the four points in the order: how it would determine that only essential orders were being processed.

"They've substantially met three of them," he said. "They have not demonstrated or indicated how they plan to focus their time on essential work only and have challenged my right to make that requirement. And so, I have I told them this afternoon that they are not to open."

Bernard's order issued on Sunday said the company had to submit a plan in writing to the Board of Health explaining how COVID-19 precautions would be instituted; that the plant be inspected to confirm the precautions are in place; that it only do essential work; and, the piece at issue, "providing a list of essential operations businesses being served."

The mayor said the health and safety plan submitted by the company is "good and solid."

"I want to give them credit, they've done a very good job of putting a plan in place," he said. "What they have refused to do is indicate how they will focus on essential work."

Bernard said he was "absolutely within my authority" to prevent the plant from opening. He said he understood the company's desire to ensure the privacy of its clients but it was Crane's responsibility to come up with a plan that would show it's only doing essential business.

He referred to the situation in mid-April in Pittsfield, when Annie Selke's Pine Cone Hill began shipping material for personal protective equipment and other items deemed essential. Pittsfield officials ordered it to cease when it failed to make clear it was not continuing commercial activity. The state allowed it reopen but with a warning to stick to "essential" work only.

The mayor said his concern is for the employees and he's been frustrated by the miscommunications and changing stories that have left them in the middle of it. And other businesses have also been hurt by the pandemic, he said, not just Crane.

He'd prefer everyone take a step back and deep breath and come to an agreement.

"What is it that is in the best interests of the Crane employees and, to be fair, Crane's essential business customers."
The Madras High Court on Friday ordered immediate shut down of alcohol shops across Tamil Nadu amid rising number of coronavirus cases in the state. The high court was hearing a petition by actor-politician Kamal Haasan's political party Makkal Needhi Maiyam, CNBC TV-18 reported. However, the court subsequently allowed online sale of liquor in the state, the report added.

It comes days after the central government allowed sale of alcohol across the country, barring containment zones. As per the government order, only standalone shops will be allowed to sell liquor; malls or liquor shops in shopping complexes will remain closed. It prompted people to throng liquor shops in huge numbers, flouting social distancing norms.

Earlier, the Supreme Court today observed that the state should consider online sales and home delivery of liquor to maintain social distancing norms amid ongoing coronavirus lockdown. The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan refused to pass any orders on public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction from the court declaring the new guidelines dated May 01, 2020 by the central government as unconstitutional, null and void as these allow sales through direct contact amid lockdown.

"We will not pass any order but the states should consider indirect sale/home delivery of liquor to maintain social distancing norms and standards," Justice Ashok Bhushan said while disposing of the petition.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Maharashtra lockdown may extend to May-end, hints CM Thackeray; cases-17,974

Also read: Country needs to know when lockdown will be lifted; it's not on, off switch: Rahul tells govt
The coronavirus pandemic poses insuperable problems for live theater, at least for now. Even a one-man or one-woman show requires a live audience, and the loosest interpretation of social distancing makes that impossible. New York Citys Public Theater, however, aired an original substitute for live performance on its website last week.

A new play by Richard Nelson, What Do We Need to Talk About?, was presented in the form of what might be termed Zoom theater. The technology was used to bring together five characters in four different locations, in a drama set in the small town of Rhinebeck, New York, about 100 miles north of New York City. The five carry on their conversation via video chat. The technique is not the same as live theater, obviously, but it has potential as a form of dramatic intercourse. The play was available on the Public Theater website for five days, beginning April 29. Other theaters are beginning to experiment along similar lines.

Nelson is a prolific playwright, long associated with the Public Theater, and in recent years with an approach that presents fictional characters in a naturalistic setting, in real time. His latest play features the same four siblings of the Apple family that were brought to life in the so-called Apple plays of 20102013.

What Do We Need to Talk About? (Courtesy of the Public Theater)

Richard (Jay O. Sanders) is a lawyer who some years ago left a corporate job in New York City to work for the New York state government in Albany. He has three sisters: Barbara (Maryann Plunkett) is a high school teacher in Rhinebeck, Marian (Laila Robins) a grade-school teacher in the same town and Jane (Sally Murphy) a non-fiction writer, who had been living in New York City, but has since moved back to her hometown. Present as well is Tim (Stephen Kunken), Janes actor boyfriend, who is also running a restaurant in Rhinebeck.

The four earlier Apple plays were distinguished by the unusual fact that each premiered on the very day on which it was set: US Election Day in 2010, the ten-year anniversary of the September terrorist attacks in 2011, the presidential election of 2012 and the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2013. In our review of the second of these efforts, Sweet and Sad, we noted Nelsons ability to move between the personal and political aspects of his characters lives in a way that did not seem forced or didactic, and yet had something to say about humanity and history. The dates chosen for these plays illustrated this effort to make sense of the present and its roots in the past.

The latest play finds the siblings in lockdown mode, a decade older than when we first met them. Richard has moved back to Rhinebeck while he works from home. Barbaras story is the most grippingshe has recently returned from a hospital stay, where she was treated for a severe case of COVID-19 infection.

While only briefly addressed, this provides the somber background for the family conversation. Tim brings up the recent death of Mark Blum, the film and television actor he knew, from complications of COVID-19. At another point, Barbara remarks on the fact they are lucky to be able to quarantine, obliquely referring to the many millions who have no choice but to work, or who live in crowded and unsafe quarters.

The characters describe what they are working on, or their future plans. Richard, 67 years old, shocks his sisters when he announces he is thinking of retirement. His children are finishing school and have no student debt. Increasingly bored with his job in the bureaucracy, he speaks of writing history. At one point he brings up the somewhat unlikely subject of President Franklin Pierce, the fierce opponent of abolitionism who as US president during the 1850s signed the notorious Kansas-Nebraska Act and enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, helping to pave the way for the Civil War.

Richard Nelson

Barbara is still recovering her strength. She has assigned The Decameron, the 14th century classic by Giovanni Boccaccio, structured as a group of tales told by 10 women and men sheltering to escape the Black Death in a villa in northern Italy, as reading for her students.

Jane is at work on an essay dealing with Gladys Huntington, the little-known American author who committed suicide in 1959, three years after the anonymous publication of her novel Madame Solario. And Tim speaks about the problems of theater during the pandemic: he is discussing with others presenting plays online, possibly including Russian playwright Anton Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard (1904).

Toward the close of the conversation, Barbara plays a poignant recording of their uncle Benjamin Apple, a retired actor, reciting Walt Whitmans moving The Wound Dresser, based on the poets work in comforting gravely or mortally wounded soldiers during the US Civil War. Benjamin, who has since died, was a presence in the earlier Apple plays. Sweet and Sad, the strongest of these works, closes with Benjamin rehearsing, in 2011, for a public recital of this poem later that same day.

This is followed by an indirect allusion to current concerns, as Barbara uses her new smartphone, which she has finally substituted for her old cell phone, to play the Dona nobis pacem (Give us peace) from Bachs Mass in B Minor.

As indicated, there are a number of affecting moments in What Do We Need to Talk About? The performances are very strong, especially those of Sanders and Plunkett, as the two older siblings. Nelson has a natural and appealing way with dialogue.

The playwright has been compared to Chekhov in his style and subject matter. It is no accident that The Cherry Orchard receives a mention in this work. There is something appropriate in Tims description of the Chekhov play, which spoke of the need to heal, the need to go on and which was written when the dramatist knew he was dying of tuberculosis. The theme of perseverance is a serious one, and the viewer is left with a respect for the sincerity and generally humane instincts of the characters.

It must be kept in mind, however, that Chekhovs themes, including a certain resignation and disappointment, coupled with his honesty and respect for the audience member or reader, have had greater resonance and value at some historical moments than at others since they were first articulated. The social issues today are not what they were when The Cherry Orchard was written.

In this context, ones overall response to What Do We Need to Talk About? is disappointment at the missed opportunities. The greatest social, political and economic crisis facing everyone now alive is something that very much needs to be talked about and at length. And yet the issues raised by the pandemic, among them the ruling elites unpreparedness and criminal neglect of the health of the population, are simply ignored. This is especially glaring when one considers that ten years ago Nelson had much more to say.

What lies behind the shift or stagnation in outlook? Of course, an initial turn inward may be an understandable reaction to the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions have been jolted by the events of the past few months, and struggle to find their bearingseven if, unlike Barbara Apple, they have not fallen ill.

There is another important issue, and that is the impact of the ongoing economic and political crisis, a crisis that long preceded the pandemic. Deepening inequality and the growing danger of war and dictatorship have exposed the political dead end of capitalist politics, but two consecutive attempts to revive Democratic Party liberalism have ended with a whimper, demonstrating the impossibility of capitalist reform.

The Trump presidency, meanwhile, coupled with the rise of fascistic trends internationally, has shocked and intimidated a broad layer of the liberal middle class. Some are running for coverin the US this means back to the Democrats yet again. In Sweet and Sad, Richard spoke scornfully of the Wall Street Democrats and the Wall Street Republicans. In his latest play, however, everyone sings the praises of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for his supposedly brilliant leadership during the pandemic! Richard can only add, in the closing moments of the play, Lets not go overboard about Cuomo, as though to prepare his sisters for the inevitable disappointments ahead.

The Apples express in part the outlook of a social layer that does not know what has just hit it, or what is on the horizon. At the same time, there are some signs they are not quite ready to abandon all hope. In the struggles to come, it will be both possible and necessary to win a section of this layer to the side and behind the leadership of the working class.


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Andrew Westrope is managing editor of the Center for Digital Education. Before that, he was a staff writer for Government Technology, and previously was a reporter and editor at community newspapers. He has a bachelors degree in physiology from Michigan State University and lives in Northern California.
It is the 20th day in a row under 20 cases of infection and third under five. South Koreans can resume their daily activities, while respecting some basic precautions. Public facilities are open. From next month 19 air connections with foreign countries will be restored. 100 million masks to face a possible second wave.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The new cases of coronavirus infection remain at a minimum even if the easing of social distancing started yesterday. Today, 4 infections have occurred in the country, three of which imported from abroad: the 20th day in a row under 20 and the third day under five. In total there are 10810 infected and 256 deaths.

The government introduced restrictions in human contact and isolation measures in March. The drop in infections has allowed the authorities to remove many of these limitations. South Koreans can resume their daily activities, while respecting some basic precautions, such as wearing protective masks.

The population again has access to public facilities, such as train and subway stations, which have returned to the normal crowding. Schools will gradually reopen next week. Churches have been open for the celebration of Mass as early as April 26th.

The authorities remain vigilant. They fear the arrival of a second wave of infections after the summer. To prepare for the event, the government has allocated funds to produce 100 million new masks.

Strict quarantine measures remain in force for those entering the country. Despite this, Korean Air Lines, the main South Korean air carrier, has announced that it will reactivate 19 air routes from next month; the connections will be restored with some airports in Canada, Germany, China, Malaysia and the United States.

Thanks to an excellent health system and prompt intervention, South Korea is among the countries that have responded best to the global pandemic. It is seen as a model of democratic action, alternative to the draconian one used by Beijing.

Seoul immediately closed the borders with China, the epicenter of the pandemic, introducing strict quarantine measures for those entering the country. Health authorities then launched mass diagnostic tests to identify possible cases of infection, and trace all their contacts.
Nepal on Friday reported three new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total infections in the country to over 100, the health ministry said.

Nepal is among the nations with the lowest number of coronavirus infections.

On Friday, the three new cases included two teenagers and a 22 year-old man.

"The total number of corona virus cases has reached 102 in Nepal with three more tested positive on Friday. Two men aged 16 and 22 from Kapilvastu and a 16 year old man from Nepalgunj have tested positive for COVID 19," the health ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, eight coronavirus patients, including an Indian national, have recovered from the disease.

"So far, 30 people have been recovered from corona infection. At present there are 72 active coronavirus patients undergoing treatment in different hospitals across the country," the statement added.

Nepal has geared up its fight against coronavirus, with help from a few countries as well. The country has not reported any coronavirus-linked deaths.

The Swiss government on Friday gifted 30,000 PCR sets to the Nepal government to help fight coronavirus.

The Nepal government also has conducted coronavirus tests on the parliamentarians as the summer session of Parliament commenced on Friday.

"On Thursday coronavirus tests were conducted on 434 parliament members, both from Lower and Upper House ahead of Parliament session and all of them have tested negative for corona virus," Parliament sources said.

Globally, the outbreak, which began in China in December last year, has infected more than 3.8 million people. Some 270,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Margarite Hemedinger was studying abroad in Valparaiso, Chile, when asked to return to the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Seen here is the view of the neighboring city to Valparaiso, Vina del Mar. | Photo: Margarite Hemedinger

Maggie Baile's story

Touri Jousma and Maggie Baile in Certaldo Alto, Italy. | Photo: Maggie Baile

Sabree Flood's story

Sabree Flood and six of her study abroad classmates on an excursion to San Sebastian, Spain, to see the Basque Country. The background includes La Concha beach and the city of San Sebastian- Donostia. | Photo: Sabree Flood

Marguerite Hemedinger's story

Marguerite Hemedinger skydiving next to an active volcano in Pucon, Chile. | Photo: Marguerite Hemedinger

Marisa Kelly's story

Marisa Kelly in front of the ancient bridge in Cordoba, Spain, that goes over the Guadalquivir River. | Photo: Marisa Kelly

People around the world, and close to home, have had their lives upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many East Carolina University students studying abroad dealt firsthand with the emerging crisis early on, returning to the United States sooner than they expected when they left on their life-changing journeys.said Dr. Jon Rezek, assistant vice chancellor for global affairs.Rezek said.Maggie Baile is an Honors College student majoring in security studies and political science. She was studying abroad in the small city of Certaldo Alto, Italy, located in the Tuscany region, on ECU's Italian campus.Baile said.Her study abroad experience, which began Feb. 17, was supposed to last until mid-May, but she returned to the U.S. on March 4, flying from Rome to Philadelphia before landing at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.Baile was studying general education courses including fine arts, roman history, geology and art history.Baile said.Upon her return to the U.S., Baile said she self-quarantined and had little to no contact with others, including her family.Baile said.Baile said.Sabree Flood is a senior majoring in foreign languages and literatures with a concentration in Hispanic studies education. She traveled to Santander, Spain, on Jan. 17 and was scheduled to remain in Spain until April 28.Flood said.Flood was taking many courses, including face-to-face classes in Spanish culture, Spanish civilization, Spanish art history, the history of Spain (Iberian Peninsula), Spanish conversation, Spanish grammar and Spanish literature. However, she had to cut her trip short and returned to the U.S. on March 15.Flood said.Once she returned to the U.S., Flood said she immediately quarantined with her mother in South Carolina. She was on day 12 of her self-isolation at the time of this digital interview but was not showing any symptoms of the virus.Flood said.Marguerite Hemedinger is a junior majoring in both music education and Hispanic studies. She was studying on an exchange program in Valparaiso, Chile.Hemedinger said.Unfortunately, just like so many other students, COVID-19 cut her trip short. Hemedinger returned to the U.S. on March 19.Hemedinger said.Even though Hemedinger said she traveled through three international airports on her return trip, she never had to go through a CDC screening like many of her friends returning from Europe.Hemedinger said.she said.Marisa Kelly is a junior majoring in biology and minoring in Hispanic studies. Her study abroad experience began on Jan. 25, when she flew 18 hours to the city of Granada in the Andalusian region of Spain.said Kelly.Through her study abroad program, Kelly said she would have taken a full load of Spanish language and culture classes in the Centro de Lenguas Modernas at the University of Granada, running from the first week of February until the end of May.While she was in Granada, Kelly stayed with a host family that further assisted in her ability to learn the Spanish language as well as their culture.Kelly said.Kelly made her return trip to the U.S. on March 16, the same night that Spain began to close its borders.Kelly said.Kelly was on day 11 of a 14-day self-quarantine at the time of this digital interview, and she said it had been fairly boring, although she was keeping busy each day thanks to her online classes.said Kelly.
Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-41 ballistic missiles roll during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of communist China in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

China Needs More Nukes to Counter the US: Editor of Chinese State-Run Newspaper

China should expand its stock of nuclear warheads to 1,000 to counter the challenges posed by the United States, chief editor of the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper argued in a May 8 social media post.

The communist regimes nuclear arsenal should include at least 100 DF-41 strategic missiles, said Hu Xijin, who is known for his hawkish stance on foreign relations.

The DF-41, unveiled in mid-2019 by the rocket force of Chinas military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), is estimated to have a 12,000- to 15,000-kilometer range, the longest nuclear operating range in the world, and is capable of striking the continental United States.

We love peace and promise not to use nuclear weapons first, but we need a bigger nuclear arsenal to suppress U.S. strategic ambition and impulse against China, Hu wrote in a post on Weibo, Chinas Twitter-like social media platform. He posted a similar message, written in English, on Twitter, which is banned inside China.

Dont think that nuclear warheads are useless during peacetime. We are using every one of them, silently, to shape the attitudes of American elites toward us, he said on Weibo.

Military vehicles carrying DF-26 ballistic missiles participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on September 3, 2015. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

Official Position?

The Global Times is a controversial newspaper published by the Peoples Daily, the Communist Partys main mouthpiece. It often focuses on international issues, and regularly stirs up nationalist sentiment with inflammatory editorials.

At a news briefing on Friday, Chinas foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying refused to confirm if Hus remarks reflected the official line.

Asked about Hus post, Hua said, I think you should ask him directly. In China, there is freedom of speech.

But Hus latest comments have been given prominent coverage in Chinese state media.

The Global Times published an editorial on Friday afternoon in both Chinese and English, doubling down on the issue of nuclear armament.

China needs to prepare for a long-term challenge, said the English-language editorial, adding that we should strengthen and enhance our core scientific technology and military strategic power.

Although the U.S. advantage in terms of conventional military strength in Chinas offshore waters is dwindling, its superiority in nuclear weapons remains overwhelming, which is the biggest pillar that bolsters U.S. military arrogance toward China, it said.

Therefore, its an urgent task for China to expand its nuclear arsenal and strengthen its strategic strike capacities, concluded the editorial, which was widely re-posted on other mainland Chinese news portals.

The papers English-language edition also published a full translation of Hus Weibo post, and an article quoting Chinese military experts as saying that it is possible that China and the U.S. might engage in a regional conflict, and that If a nuclear weapon is dropped on China, Chinese nuclear weapons must be sufficient to wipe out the enemy in retaliation.

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told The Epoch Times that these actions were likely indicative of the Partys intentions. Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijins Weibo posting, the Global Times verbatim reprint, then an expanded Global Times article on the need for China to significantly expand its nuclear arsenal is about as close to a Chinese Communist Party press release on this subject we will ever get, he said in an email.

Nuclear Threats

Hus aggressive remarks came after U.S. President Donald Trump called for effective arms control that includes China and Russia, during a phone call on Thursday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trump has repeatedly argued for China to join the United States and Russia in an arms control accord to replace the 2010 New START treaty between Washington and Moscow that will expire in February 2021.

President Donald Trump attends a meeting with President Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated last June that China might have about 290 nuclear warheads. But Joseph Bosco, a former China country desk officer at the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, said the regime may have well over 1,000 nuclear weapons already.

As Russia and the U.S. have been reducing their numbers (at least Washington has, we can never be sure of Moscows cheating either), China has been building up its arsenal, with the apparent goal of meeting or surpassing their nuclear competitors, Bosco wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Chinese regime has repeatedly rejected Trumps arms control proposal, arguing that its nuclear force is defensive and poses no threat.

But senior PLA officers have previously issued threats that Beijing may launch nuclear attacks on the United States.

Zhu Chenghu, a PLA major general and dean of the Defense Affairs Institute for Chinas National Defense University, told the Wall Street Journal in 2005, If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on Chinas territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons.

He added that the Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds  of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.

In 1995, PLA general Xiong Guangkai told Chas Freeman, who was previously an assistant secretary of defense at the U.S. Department of Defense, that China would attack the United Statespossibly with nuclear weaponsif a war over Taiwan broke out.

These were not just empty threats, according to Rick Fisher.

The CCPs lying and lack of remorse for the China Virus [commonly known as novel coronavirus] should remind us that the CCPmay have little regard for using nuclear or biological weapons on its enemies, Fisher told The Epoch Times.

Right now, the main enemies of the CCP are the nations now uniting to deny the CCP what it wants most: global hegemony, control of global prosperity and sovereignty, he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.
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Two years into the pandemic, the story of Danny Burtch is the story of incalculable loss and choices: whether to be vaccinated, whether to leave the isolation of home for fellowship, whether to partake in a game of cards.
Story

After dropping throughout March and into early April, the transmission rate of COVID-19 is no longer falling and could be rising again in western Washington, according to the latest report from Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM).

A previous report issued last week found that the effective reproductive numberthe number of new cases stemming from each COVID-19 infectionhad dropped below the critical threshold of 1.0 in King County between March 29 and April 15.

However, updated case and mortality data from the Washington Disease Reporting System revised that estimate upward, showing the reproductive number had no longer been falling and likely has been inching up again since roughly April 6.

As of April 22, the number of new cases from each COVID-19 infection in King County was between 0.47 and 1.32 (best estimate 0.89). Overall in western Washington, the reproductive number on April 22 was between 0.61 and 1.39 (best estimate 1.0).

No longer definitely below 1.0, cases in western Washington can be expected to plateau or increase, if the trend continues.

Physical distancing remains the best tool for reducing COVID-19 transmission. Because most of the population remains susceptible across the state, relaxing distancing policies will likely result in increased transmission. However, researchers' ability to measure these increases are retrospective, delayed by weeks because of the time until symptom onset and delays in case reporting.

This report once again reminds us that our position is precarious and COVID-19 transmission and new cases remain unacceptably high, said Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health  Seattle & King County. We need to double down on distancing and other prevention steps at home, in the community, and in workplaces and we must see these numbers improve before relaxing our current restrictions.

It's clear that the course of the epidemic in Washington remains sensitive to changes in social distancing, said Dr. Mike Famulare, Principal Research Scientist at IDM. We allscientists, policymakers, everyone in Washingtonface a difficult challenge in the coming weeks as our day-to-day lives will be in flux as we are forced to respond quickly to slow transmission and save lives.

Case updates

Daily totals for new COVID-19 cases and deaths are available on Public Health's Data Dashboard webpage, which updates as soon as data are available, typically between 1-3 p.m.

Isolation and quarantine facilities update

Isolation and quarantine is a proven public health practice for reducing the spread of disease.

Forty-six people are currently staying in King County isolation, quarantine and recovery facilities. The number of residents at King County's isolation and quarantine sites is included in regular updates provided by Public Health. No other identifying or personal information will be provided.

Additional information
Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images

Wurzbach Ice House recently got a shout-out from that debonair character of the popular Dos Equis commercials, the Most Interesting Man in the World.



As per his usual, the most interesting man told the team at the icehouse to "Stay Thirsty." But, he also wants them to "stay healthy," considering the current coronavirus pandemic.



READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio

"Stay well and the best is yet to come," he signed off on a video clip sent to the team as part of a morale boosting effort by management. "Go get 'em, be well."



The bar's management said a request was made to Jonathan Goldsmith, the original actor who played the Most Interesting Man until 2016, to boost the morale of employees, who they say are "a very tight family."



Goldsmith was provided with the dialogue, which also introduced the icehouse's newly designed T-shirts for sale, according to management.
An Australian designer known for styling the likes of Meghan Markle and Rebel Wilson is sewing designer outfits for Australian health workers on the coronavirus frontline.

Karen Gee recently launched a line of designer scrubs for doctors and nurses in eight different colours after growing demand from healthcare professionals.

The fashionista rose to fame in 2018 when Meghan Markle wore one of her designs on her visit to Australia with Prince Harry.

Karen Gee (pictured) recently launched a line of designer scrubs for doctors and nurses in eight different colours after growing demand from healthcare professionals

Meghan attends a Welcome Event at Admiralty House on October 16, 2018 in Sydney

The concept was born out of a request from local hospitals for Australian made products, but exploded in popularity - allowing her to expand from two colours to eight.

Ms Gee told Seven News she usually operates in high end fashion but she's been forced to rethink that strategy during the pandemic.

'These sort of situations as dire as they are at times, you've just got to think outside the box and how you can still keep your brain going but not necessarily doing what you're known for,' Ms Gee said.

'Our business is primarily high end luxury, customised garments, and we've now been able to pivot to high-end luxury scrubs. We put your initials on the back of them so they are actual custom scrubs.'

The KG Sentiment scrubs are being sold for $250 a pair and according to Ms Gee's Instagram account a percentage of all sales will be going towards charity.

The designer's product listing said the scrubs will 'help raise funds (and spirits) while spreading awareness for those women who work tirelessly behind the scenes daily in Australia and around the world to care for others.'

An Australian designer known for styling the likes of Meghan Markle and Rebel Wilson is sewing designer outfits for Australian health workers on the coronavirus frontline
OTTAWA  They didnt ask for it, they lack the staff to use it, and they are afraid it could spread the coronavirus. Nevertheless, Ottawa plans to bestow a set of medical tents from Newfoundland upon a remote Manitoba reserve.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  They didnt ask for it, they lack the staff to use it, and they are afraid it could spread the coronavirus. Nevertheless, Ottawa plans to bestow a set of medical tents from Newfoundland upon a remote Manitoba reserve.

Bureaucrats wont say how they decided this or how much they spent, citing national security during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Paternalism is evident in the way that this process has been carried out," said Chief Lorna Bighetty of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.

Her community, known as Pukatawagan, got a strange phone call in mid-April from a company planning to bid on a federal contract to provide medical tents.

Thats the first time the First Nation, 700 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, heard about the contract.

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) awarded the contract last week to Dynamic Air Shelters, a Newfoundland company, which told the local CBC station it will provide nine medical units.

Thats how Pukatawagan leaders learned of the shipment, and they still lack any details.

The band council said it would much rather Ottawa pay a small amount to help them retrofit their nearly completed youth centre into a temporary quarantine space.

The community doesnt want to seem ungrateful or lose the tents its been offered.

Yet band councillors are perplexed, and arent sure they have the right staff to use the equipment.

Theyre also afraid of outside contractors bringing the coronavirus into their community, which is so far free of any positive tests.

"It is deeply concerning that the federal government is not listening to First Nations about what they need when it comes to COVID-19, and are instead sending in materials that they didnt ask for," said the regions NDP MP Niki Ashton.

ISC Minister Marc Miller was not made available for an interview Thursday.

Public Services and Procurement Canada spokeswoman Michele LaRose wrote Thursday that ISC asked for "medical, isolation and accommodations shelters to be delivered urgently to remote Indigenous communities," but couldnt immediately list which places are on that list.

"In this instance, a national-security exception was invoked and, as a result, this Request for Proposals was not published," wrote LaRose, who said the national-security exemption applies to all federal procurement related to COVID-19.

"Such solicitation documents are not publicly available," wrote LaRose.

Federal officials have been reluctant to disclose where personal protective equipment is located and how many masks and gloves Ottawa has, as this could reveal vulnerabilities in the health-care system and drive up costs in bidding.

Ashton said that when it comes to medical tents, "theres no reason that should be seen as a national-security issue."

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs was "blindsided" by the decision, which it learned about through media reports.

"This is yet another example of the lack of respect for First Nations in Manitoba, as demonstrated by the unilateral awarding of this contract by the central government in Ottawa," Grand Chief Arlen Dumas wrote in a Monday statement.

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.

Dynamic CEO David Quick wasnt aware of the local response, but said his company is glad to have business, and wants to assist those who need it.

"We are very fortunate to help," he said. "Were super busy trying to deliver things () there is probably a lot more work theyre doing."

Pukatawagan had never requested these facilities, though the Cross Lake and Norway House reserves, some 275 kilometres southeast, asked Ottawa in March for a joint field hospital and their requests were declined.

Island Lake, which was hard hit by H1N1 in 2009, has long asked for medical staging areas.

Bureaucrats stressed the Pukatawagan project is not a field hospital, which would require sophisticated medical devices. Instead, they are "mobile health-infrastructure units" used to test, screen and isolate patients.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
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Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Kuta, Bali  Fri, May 8, 2020 15:35 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6c68bf 1 National Bali-Police,foreigners,seminyak,Kuta,denpasar,COVID-19 Free

The Bali Police are investigating the deaths of three foreigners who were found lifeless in separate locations on the resort island.

A male US national identified as Darrel Carlton was found dead in a villa in the Seminyak subdistrict of Kuta district, Badung regency, on Thursday, the third foreigner who died in Bali after two Australians died on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Kuta Police investigation unit head First Insp. Bagus Nagara Baranacita said police were still investigating the cause of death but had found no signs of violence on Carltons body.

"We are still waiting for the COVID 19 test result before conducting further investigation," Bagus said on Thursday, adding that investigators would also search the victim's room.

Read also: Bali sees almost 100 percent drop in foreign tourists

Fifty-year-old Carlton, who ran a villa-rental business in Seminyak, was found dead after a tenant who was about to check out of their room contacted him. As Carlton did not answer the calls, the tenant went to check on Carlton and noticed a foul odor emitting from his room. The tenant then reported to the pecalang (traditional Balinese guard), who in turn contacted local authorities.

The head of the Bali Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), Gede Darmada, said the body was stiff with blackened skin. The victim had probably died three days prior to the discovery.

Gede said his agency had gone to the villa to remove the body after receiving a request from the Badung Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPDB) at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday. Basarnas then deployed six personnel for the process.

The personnel wore complete protective gear as part of the standard COVID-19 protocol.

The victim was taken to the Sanglah Hospital morgue, pending permission from the family for autopsy, Bagus added.

Read also: Bali hamlet put under lockdown after tests indicate over 400 people 'reactive' to virus

On Wednesday, 58-year-old Kevin James Nunn from West Australia was found dead in his rented house in North Denpasar.

Nunn allegedly died from consuming two cans of expired soft drinks. Denpasar Police chief Adj. Jensen Aviatus said Nunn had told his wife that he felt pain in the chest before he died.

Police had also started investigating the death to find out whether Nunn had died from drink poisoning.

His body was also removed using COVID-19 protocol, but a COVID-19 test on Nunn has come back negative.

The investigation is ongoing. However, one thing is certain, that he had no COVID 19 based on a rapid test, Jansen said.

On Tuesday, Australian man Christopher Steven Tolley was found dead in his hotel room in Seminyak. The 48-year-old was found dead on the bed in his hotel room on Tuesday afternoon after missing his check-out time.

His body was taken to the Sanglah Hospital for further investigation. Kuta Police are probing the cause of death.

Tolley too was declared negative for COVID-19 following a swab test, Sanglah Hospital director Wayan Sudana said.
Over the past one week, two separate instances of chat rooms on Instagram have sparked off numerous debates about the issue of internet usage among children, adolescents and teenagers. This has further raised the question of who is to be held accountable  should the kids be directly held responsible for their actions, or should the parents be blamed? Should the social media platforms be actively doing more, or should the government establish more stringent laws and make legal procedures more accessible for all? On this note, what also comes to light is Indias existing legal infrastructure, and the aspect of mental health that is being impacted by kids being predominantly online.

Why the bullying?

Cyber bullying is only one of the many problems that lead to mental health issues of this population. Bullying, in fact, has been a very common problem for kids for a very long time, well before the times of the internet. With the new platforms, bullying is much easier, and people can actually be nastier. For instance, its easier to say things to someone on Facebook, than in person. The effect is also amplified since a lot of people can see the act, and react to it, says Dr Chhitij Srivastava, secretary general of the Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (IACAM).

This can be compared with gambling  where you do something, and then you expect rewards which do not come consistently, and are largely unpredictable.

It is this effect that may be one of the key causing factors behind acts such as these locker room chats, and a skewed sense of reality among juveniles. Social media is a communication medium, where all exchanges are instantaneous, adds Srivastava. In humans, when they see a new message, it sparks certain expectations, and reactions in the human brain give us a kick. At a stretch, this can be compared with gambling  where you do something, and then you expect rewards which do not come consistently, and are largely unpredictable. This makes it easier for individuals to get hooked on to.

When a child largely grows up in such an environment, it has the potential of changing the brains neurology. Functionally, the human brain would adapt in a way that it looks for instant rewards, which would make the children impatient and often impulsive. Essentially, what they get is akin to a rush, which is caused by the activity of the dopamine chemical in the brain. The more kids use social media, the more likely is it to happen, he further adds.

Social media provisions

In response to our queries, a Facebook spokesperson told News18, We want Facebook to be a place where people feel safe and empowered to communicate, and we take seriously our role in keeping abuse off our service. Our Community Standards prohibit bullying and harassment and we will remove such content as soon as we become aware of it. We encourage anyone who comes across bullying and harassment on Facebook to report it to us. People can report Pages, Groups, Profiles, individual content, and comments.

For acts of bullying via direct messages, Facebook enables individuals to report profiles and support claims through screenshots. It also has a fully featured Bullying Prevention Hub in partnership with the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, which offers directed support for teenagers, parents and educators. While the feature set is comprehensive, Facebook can likely do more by putting these resources at a more accessible place for mainstream users. This might help more users report acts of bullying more frequently as well.

A spokesperson for Twitter pointed us to the companys joint work with UNESCO in terms of cyber bullying. However, based on the resource shared with News18, Twitter so far does not appear to offer a direct, in-platform recourse for users who are undergoing bullying. That said, the platform does allow users to block users, mute users to see less of them online, block certain keywords to avoid abusive tweets, reduce who can see tweets on the platform, and also hide tweets that may seem objectionable to them. The redressal procedure for Twitter direct messages remains similar to Facebooks redressal procedure for private messages.

Exposure and accountability

Srivastava believes that acts such as these locker room chats are, in effect, an extension of the content they consume on the internet. When the content a kid consumes is fundamentally bad, this can have proportionately worse consequences. When we talk about these chat rooms, the first aspect is the exposure to a far wider world on the internet, which is much bigger than the immediate physical world. This can lead to exposure to many uncontrolled things, says Srivastava.

It is this that highlights the aspect of parental accountability, but the answer to the problems is not straightforward. As Srivastava explains, Both the children and the parents of todays generation have learned social media at the same time. So, parents have not been able to guide kids properly, since they are themselves learning at the same time, and often, after the kids did. As a result, the children did not have guidance on the internet about what is acceptable and what isnt. Even normal, benign websites often have content that you wouldnt want your kids to see.

Legal awareness

N.S. Nappinai, lawyer at the Supreme Court of India and founder of Cyber Saathi, believes that this is exactly why it is important to increase awareness that every action online can also have far-reaching legal ramifications. She says, For cyber bullying, most people prohibit individuals from making a big issue about it, making suggestions such as why make a big thing about it?, it will die out automatically, etc. Today, cyber bullying has become an issue for the common man, and anyone can be victims of it  even from a very basic tweet. Even that has a legal remedy, against the common perception of whether cyber bullying is even legally punishable or not.

Laws impose a major deterrent factor in individuals. With proper awareness, 90 percent of the internet trolls would not do what they are doing. It is shocking to note the kind of offences happening online because people have no fear of retribution, says Nappinai. She adds that in order to enable this, the government must increase the ease of seeking legal recourse for the common man, which would go a long way to more cases being reported, and in turn, comparatively fewer acts of online bullying.

We must also look at children as the perpetrators, over and above conversations about children being bullied. We must not establish that children are not legally liable.

While India did have a fully codified law with regards to cyber bullying, under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the same has been struck down by virtue of misuse in many cases. However, Nappinai explains that this does not mean that there is no legal recourse to cyber bullying, and provisions such as Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 is one of the key ways to address such grievances. The section represents punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form.

Other provisions, such as Sections 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) are other such laws in the Indian Penal Code which can also apply to acts and cases of cyber bullying. In cases of underage offence, such as in these locker room chats, Nappinai further states that even the Juvenile Justice Act comes into play, and the extent of their legal impact can vary between cases. On a personal front, Nappinai also runs an initiative called Cyber Saathi, which aims to make such legal provisions more approachable for common people, and also ensure that victims do not resort to self flagellation as a by-effect of online bullying.

Given that children are certain to use the internet and social media platforms more extensively, Nappinai states that the first thing to do is instill a sense of legal responsibility among them. She says, With the locker room cases, we must also look at children as the perpetrators, over and above conversations about children being bullied. We must not establish that children are not legally liable, and such accountability would go a long way to improve these situations. At the same time, parents must also be compelled to be more educated about these things, and should not be allowed to get away with not knowing about what happened.

The online world is primarily about treating everyone as equals, but that also brings equality for both the good and the bad, which is where accountability comes in, concludes Nappinai.
SRINAGAR: After security forces eliminated wanted terrorist Riyaz Naikoo in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmirs Pulwama, the Pakistan-supporter terror group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen is most likely to replace him with Saifullah as its new commander in Kashmir.

According to intelligence sources, Saifullah, who is listed as a top terrorist in the A++ category, is most likely to succeed Riyaz Naikoo to fill the void in the group. A medical assistant in the past, he made a name for himself treating terrorists wounded in encounters with the security forces, according to intelligence sources.



He is said to be active in South Kashmir and is involved in recruiting Kashmiri youths for jihad. Saifullah", who is a resident of Malangpora in Pulwama, was part of the Burhan Wani group of 12 terrorists.



Saifullah began as a guide for terrorists in Pulwama, Tral, Kakapora and Kulgam areas. He has been active in Srinagar city as well, intelligence sources said.



Riyaz Naikoo, a top Hizbul Mujahideen commander, was killed on Wednesday (May 6) by security forces in a village in Kashmir's Pulwama district. On the run for eight years, Naikoo was actively involved in brainwashing and recruitment of young boys in South Kashmir to join the terror outfit.



Security forces had launched a massive operation to trap him in Jammu and Kashmirs Pulwama. The encounter, which started late on Tuesday night went on till Wednesday afternoon.



Riyaz Naikoo reportedly came to his native home in Pulwamas Beighpora village when the security forces including the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the local police, sealed all entry and exit points of the village.



With Naikoo, who carried a reward of Rs 12 lakh on his head, two other terrorists were killed in a separate encounter in Sharshali Khrew area of Awantipora where the encounter began late on Tuesday night.
Fourteen migrant workers were killed after coming under a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district on Friday, according to several media reports.

Sixteen migrant workers were killed after being run over by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district on Friday, according to several media reports.

The workers, who were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna, were returning to Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station told PTI.

They had been walking along the rail tracks and slept on the rail tracks due to exhaustion, he said.

They were mowed down by the train at 5.15 am, the official added.

As per a report in The Times of India, these workers were employed at a major steel plant in Jalna.

ANI reported that another five workers were injured and that they had been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital.

Four of the survivors, who are in shock, are being counselled by the police, senior police officer Mokshada Patil told NDTV. The fifth survivor has been admitted to hospital with injuries. Former Maharashtra speaker Haribhau Bagde, who is also the MLA from Phulambri, visited the accident site, as per the report.

The driver tried to stop the freight train when he saw the labourers on the tracks in Maharashtra, the railway ministry said, adding it had ordered an inquiry. Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to express his anguish over the incident:

Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 8, 2020

"I have just heard the sad news about labourers coming under the train, rescue work is underway," Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said on Twitter. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan offered his condolences to the families of the victims and announced Rs 5 lakh as compensation, NDTV further reported. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla took to Twitter to call the incident "tragic and unfortunate."

Under the lockdown, all public transport has been suspended so migrant workers heading home often have to walk long distances to get there.

The government has extended the lockdown until 17 May.

RPF and local police are on the spot, as per ANI.

More details are awaited.

With inputs from agencies
Belfast will take part in virtual celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

A series of events are planned as part of a weekend of remembrance, celebration and thanksgiving.

Back in 1945, City Hall was lit up to mark the end of the war. And while the technology used will be different, the building will once again be illuminated for this year's anniversary.

Commemorative events had been planned to take place in the city, including an afternoon tea for veterans at City Hall, as well as tea dances. But the celebrations have moved online with people marking the occasion in their own homes.

In Belfast, 100-year-old war veteran Teddy Dixon pre-recorded a short video to mark the anniversary. He gave a reading of the Nation's Toast and introduced a recording of a piper playing 'When the Battle's O'er'. The video will be broadcast on Belfast City Council's Facebook and Twitter channels at 3pm today as people across Belfast and beyond join in the Nation's Toast to the heroes of World War Two: "To those who gave so much, we thank you."

The Lord-Lieutenant of Belfast, Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle, has also recorded a special VE Day message to be shared on Belfast City Council's Twitter.

Later, people across Belfast are expected to take part in a nationwide sing-a-long of the Vera Lynn classic We'll Meet Again, from their windows and on their doorsteps, following an address by the Queen at 9pm.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development-GUAM Secretariat has condemned the occupation of Shusha city of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region by Armenian armed forces, the organization said in a post on Twitter on 8 May.

"ODED GUAM Secretariat condemns the occupation of the city of Shusha by armed forces of Armenia in 1992. We reaffirm our support to independence and sovereignty of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders", the post reads.

It should be noted that Armenian armed forces occupied Shusha on 8 may, 1992. As a result of the occupation, 195 civilians were killed and 165 were injured. Some 114 Azerbaijanis captured by Armenians and detained in Shusha prison were later killed with special cruelty, 58 residents of the city are still missing. Before Shusha was occupied, about 25,000 people lived there, of which more than 24,000 people of Shusha have been become internally displaced persons and settled in 58 regions of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Jitendra Bangar tried to save his cabbage crop. The farmer, who lives in Bhiwandi, India, on the northeastern outskirts of Mumbai, spent the first few weeks of April spraying water on the vegetables he had harvested and stored, hoping that it would keep them fresh until he could sell them. But with strict lockdown measures in place due to COVID-19, the trader from Mumbai who normally comes to buy Bangars produce didnt show up.

Bangar, 30, considered traveling the 25 miles to Mumbai himself to sell the cabbages, but he worried about catching the coronavirus and spreading ithe lives with 11 other family members, including his grandparents.

So instead, he sold some of his cabbage in the local market for a small fraction of the price it would normally fetch. He handed out the remainder of the crop to people in his village or threw it away.

Vegetables expire fast in the heat, he says. A lot of it went to waste.

Stories like Bangars show how the COVID-19 pandemic is profoundly disrupting the global food supply at nearly every level. Those problems, and the economic destruction caused by the virus, could have a devastating impact on the ability of people across the world to access and afford food. At least 265 million people are at risk of going hungry in 2020, according to an estimate made by the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Aprilalmost twice as many as in 2019. This is despite the fact that experts agree there should be enough food to feed the world this year.

Across the globe, harvests are going to waste because laborers are banned from working, cant travel to farms or dont want to work for fear of catching the virus. Meat processing plants in the U.S. have been shut down over COVID-19 outbreaks. Farmers in the U.S. and the U.K. have been forced to dump milk because demand from restaurants and coffee shops plummeted under lockdown. Transportation restrictions have made it difficult for farmers to obtain seeds and fertilizer to plant new crops, or to send the ones they harvest to local food markets, which have closed in some places. Exacerbating the problem, some countries have imposed export bansVietnam announced a ban on rice exports in March, though it was later lifted, and Russia announced in April a quota for wheat exports until Juneblocking trade that other countries rely on to feed their people.

Story continues

Jitendra Bangar and his cabbages in Bhiwandi, India | Photo courtesy of Nishi Kant Dixit and Rajnikant Prasad

Then theres the growing problem of affording food. With the collapse of the global economy, caused by lockdowns all over the world, millions who already struggled to feed their families are now facing dire situations as work dries up and jobs evaporate. And in places dependent on food imports, prices could skyrocket because of the supply chain disruptions. The tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati, for instance, has already seen the cost of rice increase by nearly 50%.

Enough food to go around?

The world has enough food stocks, and projections show 2020 should be a good year for crops, experts say.

A commodities market report released on May 7, based on assessments by several international organizations including the U.N Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Trade Organization, says that while soybean stocks may decrease slightly due to harvest conditions in several South American countries, wheat and corn stocks for this season will be better than last year. Rice stocks should also be about the same.

But while global supplies of basic foodstuffs remain abundant, the report warns that shocks created by COVID-19 started taking a toll on food markets last month. The question is whether the food can be harvested and sent to the right places in time.

The issue is more about food supply disruption rather than food shortages, Julie Howard, a senior adviser on global food security at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) tells TIME.

Protectionist trade policies, even temporary ones, have raised concerns about the flow of wheat and rice. A drop in oil prices, and a fall in ethanol production and feed demand, have meanwhile led to sharp drops in maize prices, according to the report.

Poorest at risk

Even before coronavirus swept across the globe, 135 million people in 55 countries faced acute hunger, mainly because of conflict, climate change and economic crises, the WFP estimated. If the pandemic is taken into account, that number nearly doubles to 265 million.

COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread. It is a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat if they earn a wage, WFP chief economist Arif Husain said in a press release. Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs. It only takes one more shocklike COVID-19to push them over the edge.

Many who are at risk of hunger will face more difficulty accessing food while shutdowns and movement restrictions are in place. The food system in low-income countries is made up primarily of micro and small businesses that produce, process, market and directly sell to consumers through restaurants and street stands, says Howard.

But even if they can access food, there are many who wont be able to afford it. The International Monetary Fund projected in April that the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020. The pandemic could wipe out the equivalent of 195 million jobs worldwide, according to the U.N. International Labor Organization.

Paul Teng, an adjunct senior fellow in international studies at Singapores Nanyang Technological University (NTU), says that he is concerned about millions of daily-wage workers all over Asia and Africa who have taken a hit to their income and have lost economic access to food.

Concern is greatest for people living in conflict zones and refugee camps, with countries of concern including parts of Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, according to the World Food Programme.

Humanitarian agencies say they are concerned that if trade flows are disrupted, they may not be able to provide aid to those most in need. Its critical that commercial trade continues to flow regardless of anything else taking place around it, warns Husain. Quite simply, millions of peoples lives depend on the flow of trade, and the impact of disruption on peoples food security is hugely concerning.

Import reliance

Countries that are dependent on imports are also facing strain. Net food import countries whose revenues are affected because of the recession will be seriously affected, Maximo Torero, the chief economist and assistant director-general of the economic and social development department at the FAO, tells TIME.

Depending on how hard COVID-19 hits the global economy, 80 million people in net food-importing countries could find themselves chronically without enough food in one scenario modeled by the FAO. Under a more optimistic mild scenario, almost 40 million people will be affected.

Howard says that countries in Africa import over $35 billion in food annually. Countries like Nigeria are large food importers but are now being doubly hitby COVID-19 and by plunging oil prices, the countrys main source of revenue, decimating the governments budget and making food and other imports even more expensive, she says.

Price volatility isnt helping the situation. Its quite unpredictable at the moment, some prices go up, some prices go down because of the restrictions and export bans, says Nicolas Bidault, senior advisor for food security at the WFPs Asia-Pacific office. Price fluctuations leave import-reliant countries extremely vulnerable to risks such as price swings during a global crisis, the WFP says.

Small Pacific island nations are of particular concern. In the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, residents of Kiribati are worried about what the future will bring. Ruiti Uriano Aretaake, a program coordinator at the local NGO FSP Kiribati says that people have started stocking up on imported items like rice, flour and sugar over fears that enough wont be brought inmost flights to and from the island have been halted.

Prices have already gone up significantly. A bag of rice that normally sells for about $10.75 now costs about $15.65.

We are worried about the future, she says.

Todays restrictions might cause food shortages in the future

Some experts are worried that disruptions occurring today could hurt the food supply in the future.

Howard of CSIS says that there is a significant risk that the impact on food supply could be extended if the pandemic disrupts farmers ability to plant and produce food during the next agricultural season.

There have already been logistical issues. In the Philippines, for example, where strict lockdown measures are being enforced, the countrys largest seed organization said in April said that seeds were getting caught at checkpoints.

An inability to plant now is a problem for regions across the world. Howard says the beginning of the next agricultural season starts in May across the tropics and sub-tropics. Most African agricultural systems are rain-fed, she says, which means that if farmers cant prepare land and plant before the rainy season, production will likely decline for the coming seasonextending the impact of the pandemic.

In Asia, where rice is a staple, April and May are important months for the grains production, according to Teng at NTU. He says that if planting is not done at the right time, the whole season may be in peril.

If the lockdown continues, if ports are not allowed to ship out, if farmers cannot harvest their produce and if farmers cannot plant for their next seasonthere are some really doomsday type scenarios being floated around that I hope dont turn to reality.

What the world needs to do

At the FAO, Torero called for several actions to avoid food shortages in a paper published at the end of March, including emergency food assistance, the expansion and improvement of social protection, and support for smallholder farmers to enhance their productivity and ability to bring goods to market. (In China, for example, e-commerce platforms have stepped in to market agricultural products that may otherwise have gone unsold.) Global food trade needs to be kept open and key countries that export staple foods should try to minimize logistics disruptions, his paper says.

Some experts say the crisis may have a long lasting impact on the food supply chain. Howard says that she expects the food supply chain to shorten so that countries dont have to rely on food being shipped across the world.

The devastating impacts of the pandemic may provide the key impetus for leaders, the private sector and donors to expand investments aimed at developing much more productive, climate-resilient and healthy home-grown food and agricultural systems, she says.

Bangar, the farmer from India, is hopeful for the future, despite the loss of his recent harvest. He has already started planting some eggplants. He says that when the eggplant is ready to harvest in about a month, he will try to sell the vegetables in his village if the trader from Mumbai doesnt come back.

Hopefully by then, things will get better, he says. I dont know what lies ahead, but we are farmers and there will always be demand for food.

With reporting by Abhishyant Kidangoor / Hong Kong.
NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 pandemic couldn't stop over 1,300 students at 49 colleges and universities from competing in the RNMKRS global virtual sales competition. While companies are fretting about the future, these dedicated students went to their mobile phones to interact with artificially intelligent animated customer bots to compete for visibility with enterprise employers like Dell Technologies and HubSpot.

Students use the voice recognition function on their phones to sell to artificially intelligent animated customer bots in the RNMKRS Virtual Sales Competition. Over 1300 students from 49 colleges and universities nationwide competed in the RNMKRS.ORG Virtual Sales Competition for visibility with enterprise employers like Dell Technologies and HubSpot.

Live sales competitions rely on transporting students around the country. The travel, cost and logistics of these events are a limiting factor for many schools, and COVID restrictions made these events impossible to execute this year.

Students use the voice technology on their phones to have fully contextual conversations with the customer bot as they try to win his trust and educate him on their product line of laptop computers. The customer bot listens, adapts and responds as the students go through the sales call.

The first virtual, mobile selling skills competition was developed by the RNMKRS Faculty Alliance of leading educators, Dell Technologies training executives and developers from 3 countries.

"Sales acumen requires practice and application, knowledge isn't enough," says Stefanie Boyer, Associate Professor of Marketing at Bryant University, 2017 AMA Sales Educator of the Year and RNMKRS Co-Founder ("Rainmakers"), "and as we face new economic realities and distance learning requirements, there is a need for more free technology-based training for students."

Participating schools: Arizona State University, Bowling Green State University, Bryant University, California Polytechnic University, Central Michigan University, Eastern Kentucky University Ferris State University, Georgia State University, Georgia Southern University, Indiana State University, James Madison University, Johnson & Wales University, Louisiana State University, Manchester University, Marquette University, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Middle Tennessee University, Morehouse College, Northern Illinois University, Plymouth State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, Ryerson University, Southern New Hampshire University, Texas A&M, The Citadel, The College of New Jersey, The College of Saint Rose, The University of Tampa, The University of Tennessee, Union County College, University of Arkansas, University of Hawaii, University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of North Alabama, University of North Georgia, University of Rhode Island, University of Toledo, University of Wisconsin LaCrosse, West Virginia University.

The fall competition is November 17 & 18, 2020. Interested faculty, students and companies should contact Stefanie Boyer at [email protected] or 401-232-6475.

SOURCE rnmkrs.org
An adorable bear named Takoda appears in a new video posted on social media enjoying a bath at the Oregon Zoo.

Takoda, 10, and weighing 400 pounds is seen splashing in the water, twirling around in circles and playing with a wooden block in the footage posted by the zoo on YouTube earlier this week.

The bear is in a tub filled with 300 gallons of 'cold water,' says the zoo, set up outdoors for Tokada and three other 'furry denizens' of an area known as Black Bear Ridge.

The footage has been viewed more than 49,000 times after it went live on Tuesday.

An adorable bear named Takoda appears in a new video (pictured) posted on social media enjoying a bath at the Oregon Zoo

Takoda, 10, and weighing 400 pounds is seen splashing in the water

A 300-gallon tub is set up outdoors at the zoo for Tokada and three other 'furry denizens' of an area known as Black Bear Ridge. One of the other bears (left) also appears in the footage

The other bear appears to be waiting its turn in the tub as Tokada sits back and relaxes

Tokada is seen turning in the water and in no rush to get out

Tokada in the footage begins to swirl around the tub having what appears to be a fun time

Tokada pauses for a moment in the footage to inspect his paw

The other bear is seen walking off while Tokada continues having good times in the water

Tokada extends a leg while continuing to enjoy the tub of cool water

A close look at the footage reveals a large white 'V' on Tokada's chest that helps him stand out

'The warm weather is starting to come on, and Takoda loves splashing around in his tub,' said Amy Cutting, who oversees the zoo's Great Northwest area.

'He's quite a goofy bear. He was just cooling down and having some fun on a nice spring day.'

The zoo says that anyone want to see Takoda in person will have to wait since the zoo remains closed because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Tokada's name translated from Sioux means 'friend to all,' according to his bio page on the zoo's website,

The bear came to the zoo in November 2010 after he had been orphaned in Montana, his bio says. 'He was found hungry and dehydrated, weighing less than 3 pounds,' says the zoo.

Wildlife officials rescued the young cub and nursed him back to health. But because Tokada 'had close interactions with humans,' it was deemed too dangerous to release him to the wild.

The footage includes this hysterical closeup of Tokada enjoying the tub

Tokada offeres a close up to the camera while seated in the tub

The zoo did not describe what kinds of interactions Tokada had with humans.

American Black Bears are known for wandering into human communities in search of food.

They are the most common bears in the world and are native to North America. The animals average less than 5-feet in length.

A close look at the footage reveals a large white 'V' on Tokada's chest that helps him stand out from other bears at the zoo.

The bear came to the zoo in November 2010 after he had been orphaned in Montana, his bio says. 'He was found hungry and dehydrated, weighing less than 3 pounds,' says the zoo. Tokada's image is pictured from his bio page on the zoo's website

Wildlife officials rescued the young cub and nursed him back to health. But because Tokada 'had close interactions with humans,' it was deemed too dangerous to release him to the wild

One is seen in the footage appearing to be waiting for its turn splashing around in the tub.

The Oregon Zoo Foundation, a private nonprofit fundraising arm of the zoo, is seeking donations to provide a $1 million infusion to support operations during the closure.

To contribute to the fund, go to oregonzoo.org/donate.
Embattled UFC champion Jon Jones this week donated $25,000 to The Food Depot of Northern New Mexico  a donation the food bank says can help provide about 100,000 meals for people in need.

The food bank announced the Albuquerque residents donation through a social media post on Thursday afternoon.

Northern New Mexico is incredibly grateful to Jon Jones for his generosity, said The Food Depots Director of Development Jill Dixon in a written statement. Today, Jon made a donation that will provide 100,000 meals to people in need during these uncertain times. Thank you for showing how much you care for your community, Jon!

The Food Depot, which serves nine counties in Northern New Mexico and is based in Santa Fe, has distributed food to about 40,000 people since mid-March when the COVID-19 pandemic started leading to unforeseen economic hardships for so many. According to The FoodDepot.org, $1 provides four meals for those in need.

Were in unprecedented times right now, but its important that we continue to stand together and help each other however we can, Jones said in a statement from the food bank. The Food Depot has done some amazing work for New Mexico. Im honored to support and hope we can ease the burdens of families in our community.

Sports leagues and organizations such as the UFC have been included in the businesses shut down or put on heavy restrictions in the past two months preventing them from operating at all or as normal. Starting Saturday, the UFC will hold three events in an eight-day span in Jacksonville, Florida, without fans in attendance. Jones is not fighting in any of the three events.

As has been well documented both locally and nationally, Jones, 32, has had a turbulent ride as a UFC champion with multiple run-ins with the law. The UFC stripped him of his belt in 2015 after being charged with a felony in a hit-and-run case here in Albuquerque, one of several legal incidents in the Duke City.

The most recent legal case for Jones involved him pleading guilty on March 31 to his second drunk driving offense. A week prior to his plea, Jones was arrested in Downtown Albuquerque at 1 a.m. and charged with driving while intoxicated, negligent use of a firearm and open container. His plea agreement allowed him to avoid jail time, get house arrest and probation and the other charges were dropped.

While a controversial figure in the state and MMA world due to his numerous bouts of trouble out of the cage, Jones has made New Mexico his home for a decade and has raised his children in Albuquerque and has tried getting more involved in the community in recent years.
MBABANE  Police officers had to be called after Mangwaneni residents scrambled to register for governments food assistance programme and in the process, almost injured each other.



The confusion was allegedly caused by lack of communication among local community authorities and the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).



The rush to register was so serious that it got to a point where the residents pushed and shoved each other to have their names registered first. As a result, they did not observe any social distancing and police officers had to come in to restore order. One officer was heard shouting at a group of people who had assembled by the gate in a quest to be registered.



Mangwaneni Constituency Councillor (Bucopho) Muzi Kunene said they had received a directive to come with people who were most affected by the pandemic in terms of hunger. Kunene highlighted that they were not properly informed on how exactly they should carry out the exercise. He mentioned that when they informed the beneficiaries, they in turn called their relatives and as a result, this caused the commotion.



They did not even detail what tools the community caregivers should prepare. Initially they said they would communicate with the chairpersons of the committees but we were later called and told to come with the beneficiaries, the constituency councillor said. He further explained that they had registered over 100 people but they were turned back and told to return today.



Confusion



Meanwhile, one resident who was interviewed expressed her frustration on the confusion and the questions posed during the registration process.



How can you ask a person why they want food? I mean, we are hungry and that is the reason we are here, the resident said. She further mentioned that the reason they needed the assistance was because government issued an order for them to stay home and they heeded to the call.

The resident, who is a hairdresser, said she was staying at home and currently not making any money and as a result she could not afford to buy food to feed herself and her family. When reached for comment, NDMA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Russell Dlamini said he had not received all the information yet and would investigate the matter.

He highlighted that normally, the NDMA officers met with constituency councillors and explained the entire process. Thereafter, he stated that they then met with the intended beneficiaries to sensitise them about the registration process and other issues. He articulated that in certain instances, the intended beneficiaries did not need to be physically present to be registered but only had to be known by local authorities. However, during the verification process, Dlamini pointed out that the registered individuals were supposed to be physically present.



It is unfortunate that any delay in the registration process means a delay in the whole process for the cash transfers. So there is no magic that is going to be done and people have to work hand-in-hand with NDMA as it can do nothing without the people, Dlamini said.



The CEO declared that he would call the officers to verify what really went on. He added that there was not a single person or institution, including government, that could know every person in detail without the local community. For this reason, he said that was why local community structures were being used to identify those who qualified to be registered for the food aid.
New Delhi, May 8 : Central Minister of Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda has advised the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand to focus on health facilities in the state, saying though the Centre stands by the state, it needs to remove "several deficiencies" in various services. Munda said the state government should, in consultation with the Centre, devise a strategy to protect people from coronavirus pandemic.

Politics should not be allowed to come in the way of resolving problems involving the spread of Covid-19, he said.

In an exclusive interview with IANS, Munda said as a Central minister, he is ready to extend all possible help to the state government. Having been Chief Minister of the state thrice, Munda said the state lacks in healthcare facilities - neither there are adequate quarantine centres in the state nor have the poor been supplied with ration in a coordinated manner.

Chief minister Hemant Soren has maintained that Jharkhand depends as much as 90 per cent on Central assistance. On this, Munda said the Centre is fully helping the state; MGNREGA workers' wages and working hours have been raised. A special train has been arranged to ferry migrants from the state. If required, all MPs from the state would meet the Home Minister.

"I urge the Soren government that in this crisis situation, we should stay away from politics and cooperate in protecting Jharkhand's interests. The state government should upgrade its administrative machinery and make efforts to increase the work efficiency. We should strengthen and further improve disaster management along with health infrastructure," said Munda.

How far has the Soren government been successful in meeting the corona challenge? Munda responded by saying that so far three persons have died of Covid-19 in the state even as the Centre is trying to assist the state government in removing various bottlenecks in making available food and medicines to the people.

"But the state government alone will have to step in to remove some problems such as closure of OPDs in hospitals, inadequate testing kits and the severe shortage of medical facilities in hospitals. Quarantine centers built or arranged are not adequate in the state. The state government must strengthen arrangements for the migrants returning to the state. The government should also seriously look at how to fix mismanagement at various levels. The Chief Minister should himself monitor such steps," said Munda.

The Central Minister also listed various efforts that he has made to combat coronavirus. "During lockdown, I met representatives of various sections of people, social workers and entrepreneurs in order to understand their problems. I have been able to help around 5,000 needy people from outside Jharkhand".

Munda said entrepreneurs are facing a crisis following closure of factories. "Despite this the state government is charging them for electricity. There has been a positive response from the Chief Minister and Chief Secretary. I have taken up with the Centre the need to increase testing for Covid-19 in the state. I have spoken to the Chief Minister about closure of OPDs in some government hospitals as well as problems involving food grain availability," Munda said.

"I appeal to the state government to take logical steps towards resolving these problems. As a Central Minister, I am always ready to extend prompt help to the people of Jharkhand," Munda said.
Four Seasons Roofing Maryland Four Seasons Roofing announces major discounts on roof repair projects in Maryland due to lower costs for roofing materials due to coronavirus outbreak.

Four Seasons Roofing, the roofing contractor from Maryland, is announcing that they will be discounting services including roof replacements for the next two months. This is in large part due to the lowering of prices for roof materials including shingles, gutters, siding, windows and other materials needed for the project. Many manufacturers have drastically lowered their prices due to the coronavirus pandemic and the contractor has decided to offer the discount to customers interested in having their roof replaced.

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The contractor also offers affordable financing options on several types of projects and can assist property owners for both residential and commercial buildings in finding affordable options for major repair or replacement work. While the industry has slowed due to the coronavirus outbreak, it still remains busy and consumers who are still working are taking advantage of the reduced costs in materials and labor throughout the industry.

Now is the time to remodel or repair something on your property. Ive spoken with several business owners in the Baltimore, Maryland area who have requested quotes because their buildings are shut down but they know that they can get the property repaired now at a cheaper cost and faster because there will not be any interference from tenants and customers. Those who are able to afford having this type of work done on their property are certainly looking into it because they know the conditions are perfect for them to get started and get it completed faster.

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With this PSA, HMC encourages everyone to salute military moms this Mother's Day and recognize their dedication to our country. HMC has a deep commitment to military families and is honored to serve these families every day. With more than 50 percent of HMC employees being veterans or having some tie to the military community, HMC values the opportunity to recognize military moms for their strength, stability, resilience, and sacrifice.

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Im sure that there have been no shortages of instances of leaders of cities throughout the world with large Jewish populations lashing out at their local Jewish community. Many of these were part and parcel of warnings, if not triggers, for violent pogroms. Nevertheless, its shocking to see Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, the city with the largest number of Jews, do so.

de Blasios recent tweet, calling out the Jewish community because of a large funeral gathering in largely ultra-Orthodox Williamsburg, is a repugnant anti-Semitic act that must be called out and never accepted.

For a mayor who views himself as progressive, by intoning such a threat in broad strokes, hes gone down the path that would make regressive anti-Semites proud. Is de Blasio an anti-Semite? I dont know. But his behavior is, without a doubt.

Surely, if he were to have replaced Jewish with any other religious or ethnic group in his tweet, the storm that he would have created would have ended his tenure.

New York City is home to about a million Jews, a diverse community of all backgrounds religiously and politically. Did a million Jews violate his social distancing standards? Half of them? Twenty-five percent? Even 10 percent? Is there any way in which such a threat on a community living in fear of assault in their communities, on the N.Y. subway or public streets should be called out like this in its entirety? Will Jewish New Yorkers now feel extra threats personally, and at Jewish institutions, for which the mayor has done a poor job providing protection?

There must have been a million other ways that Mayor de Blasio, as a purported leader, could have addressed this. Did he have any right to take to twitter and castigate the entire Jewish community? Rather than doing so, should he have visited Williamsburg and held urgent meetings with Jewish leaders there, or anywhere else, in which he felt people were violating policies of social distancing and safety? If he was too busy, he could have just made several phone calls. He could have plastered Jewish communities with notices to avoid large gatherings, even in Yiddish.

When de Blasio made his intemperate tweet, did he know that there was coordination between the community in Williamsburg and the NYC police to enable the funeral procession and keep it within safety and social distancing limitations? Should that have factored into his making such a brash public statement, blaming any element of the Jewish community much less all of it? Were the police at fault, albeit in a good way to accommodate the mourning surrounding the death of a prominent rabbi? Were the police barriers placed in an inefficient way? Should this have been a learning experience rather than a lightning rod for de Blasios vitriol?

If de Blasio felt the entire Jewish community was at fault, he could have made many more calls, sent our emails, or hosted a Zoom call, inviting all Jewish leaders to be part of the solution rather than being the object of his invective. Instead, the mayor employed a vulgar way to blame all New Yorks Jews. Of course, like the coronavirus, the anti-Semitism that he unleashed does not stay local in New York City, but expands at epidemic rates to other Jewish communities in the New York area and beyond. Its as if hes opened up jars of the anti-Semitism virus and infected millions.

Its one thing when Jews argue, debate, and even point fingers internally at other members of the Jewish community. Thats especially the case now, when some perceive that others are engaged in a chilul hashem, a desecration of Gods name. Thats valid. The mayor could have employed the help of other Jewish communal leaders. Rather, the mayor elevated himself to czar, unleashing an anti-Semitic threat.

Its another thing for a gentile mayor of a city in which there has been a marked uptick in anti-Semitism to do so. As a leader, de Blasio failed while earning the respect of anti-Semites worldwide.

Forget yelling fire in a crowded theater, de Blasio lit the match and poured gallons of flammable material on the flames, and then went to sleep. When he woke up he said he had no regrets, and apologized IF anyone was offended. Mr. Mayor, thats not leadership. Thats the lame way of taking the low road to appear to be sincere but really not have the humility to acknowledge you did something horrifically wrong. Of course you did nothing wrong. Some of your best friends are Jews, right?

Thank God the czars, Nazis, and anti-Semitic priests didnt have Twitter accounts. Maybe the mayor shouldnt either.

Its astounding that the mayors tweet still stands for all to see. Astounding and repugnant. Thats not leadership, thats cowardice. Not that he can put the genie back in the bottle. Hes unleashed another cause for anti-Semites worldwide to blame the Jews. Should he have consulted someone for dipping his toes in the deep end by tagging on to the infamous blood libel against Jews for infecting people with disease?

The mayor had so much to say about the funeral in Williamsburg that he needed three tweets back to back. Heres a thought Mr. Mayor, rather than wasting characters on blaming the Jewish community (20), next time just blame the Jews. (8)

U.S.-born and educated Jonathan Feldstein immigrated to Israel in 2004. Throughout his life and career, he has fellowshipped with Christian supporters of Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He writes a regular column for Standing With Israel at charismanews.com and other prominent web sites. He can be reached at firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.
Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Block the Release of Mueller Grand Jury Materials

The Trump administration on Thursday made a request to the Supreme Court to block the release of grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation to the House of Representatives.

The Justice Department filed an application for a temporary stay of a lower court order that grants the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee access to grand jury information redacted from Muellers 448-page report, including transcripts or exhibits referenced in the redactions.

In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 to uphold a district courts decision ordering the DOJ to turn over grand jury material referenced in or underlying Muellers report. The House was seeking the documents as part of its ongoing investigations into President Donald Trump in an attempt to find impeachable offenses against him.

Although the Senate acquitted Trump in his impeachment trial in February, House lawyers had previously said that the lawmakers will continue their impeachment probe against the president regardless of the outcome in the Senate.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in his brief to the top court that the administration will be filing an appeal of the circuit courts decision and asks the justices to shield the documents from the House until after theyve had time to consider the petition.

If the Supreme Court does not take any action, the Trump administration will have to turn over the grand jury material to the House on May 11.

Francisco argued (pdf) that this would irrevocably lift their secrecy and possibly frustrate the governments ability to seek further review.

The administration also asked the Supreme Court for an administrative stay on the order while the court considers this application.

The main question in the present case is whether an impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding. Grand jury materials are usually guarded with great secrecy and are only disclosed under exceptional circumstances. One of the exceptions that allow for disclosure is when the documents are being sought in connection to a judicial proceeding.

The circuit court had accepted that the impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding, while Francisco argued in his brief that it is not.

The ordinary meaning of judicial proceeding is a proceeding before a courtnot an impeachment trial before elected legislators, he wrote. The court of appeals interpretation defies that ordinary meaning, and creates needless contradictions with the other instances of judicial proceeding in Rule 6(e)(3) itself.

He added that there is a reasonable probability the Supreme Court will grant a review of the lower courts decision in the case because the court of appeals interpretation defies the ordinary meaning of the term judicial proceeding, creates tension with this Courts precedents, and rewrites or sets aside other aspects of the Rule in an attempt to avoid substantial constitutional concerns.

Francisco also argued that the circuit courts decision in March was particularly misguided given that the material was sought for a House impeachment inquiry, which had already ended since the House had already impeached the president and the Senate had already acquitted him.

Although the court correctly observed that the Committee may recommend new articles of impeachment, it did not explain how respondent had met its burden to show a particularized need for the requested materials in connection with any potential second impeachment, he wrote.

This case is one of many House Democrat court battles seeking material and information from the president and his administration.

The top court is scheduled to hear on May 12 oral arguments regarding several high-profile disputes over the release of the presidents financial records.
A 400-bed hospital in northwest Delhi's Burari area will start functioning as a COVID-19 care centre in the next few days, Health minister Satyendar Jain said on Friday.

Asked about AIIMS Delhi Director Dr Randeep Guleria's prediction that India's COVID-19 cases are likely to peak in June-July, Jain said, "All these predictions are made by doctors and scientists".

"Earlier also prediction were made, but the cases are lesser than what was predicted. If they say that COVID-19 cases will reach their peak in June, it might happen. Patterns of other countries are also similar," Jain told reporters.

The number of coronavirus cases in Delhi on Thursday climbed to 5,980, with 448 fresh cases, the largest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases in the city. The death toll in Delhi now stands at 66.

The city government's health minister had recently visited the upcoming facility in Burari.

The hospital in Burari area will start functioning as a COVID-19 care centre in the next 2-3 days, he said.

Asked about patients belonging to theTablighi Jamaat, who have recovered, he said, they are being released on orders.

Among them, those who are foreigners and whose visa may have expired, their travel will be handled by the Ministry of External Affairs, he added.

The Delhi government has ordered all test reports to be given within 24 hours, failing which the labs cannot conduct tests. If due to any reason, there is a delay, action will be taken against them after 48 hours. This has happened as some labs were taking 10-15 days for testing samples, Jain said.

Till May 7, the total number of patients who have recovered in Delhi stood at 1,931. Among those undergoing treatment, 87 people are in ICU and 13 are on ventilators, Jain said.

The minister also said construction work, which has been allowed in Delhi, will take time to start again. For construction workers, the employers should make arrangements for their stay at their respective sites, he said.

In response to another question on cases of healthcare workers testing positive, he said there is no question of hiding any data by the Delhi government because if someone tests positive, it should not be hidden.

"Once the reports come, the hospitals have to inform the government. Across the world, we are witnessing that the frontline workers are more vulnerable to this infection, but in Delhi, the situation is better," he said.

Jain also said the government has launched an "e-token service for purchase of liquor" from May 7. There are some issues with the website which is being worked out, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Alan Kurdi and the Aita Mari are being held in Sicily, with their owners complaining of harassment.

Two boats whose crews have been saving the lives of migrants at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean have been impounded in Italy.

The German-flagged Alan Kurdi, which in April picked up 150 migrants off the Libyan coast and brought them to Italy, was impounded on Tuesday, and the Spanish-flagged Aita Mari, which had brought 34 people to the country, are being held in the port of Palermo, on the island of Sicily.

Both boats arrived at the island on Monday, having completed a two-week quarantine period offshore.

Their owners have called the impounding a bid to block their humanitarian mission, but the coastguard cited technical and operational irregularities as the reason for detaining the ships.

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The coastguard said in a statement that work would be needed on both boats before they could return to the sea, adding that the respective flag-countries would have to intervene because they were responsible for compliance with ship safety.

No further details were immediately available.

Sea-Eye, the German group which operates the Alan Kurdi, dubbed the move grotesque, saying the boat had just returned from a five-week refit.

Unser Schiff #ALANKURDI wurde in Palermo festgesetzt. Grund sollen technische Mangel sein, obwohl das Schiff im Fruhjahr vollstandig uberholt wurde. Italienische Behorden bringen die zivile Seenotrettung stuckweise zum Erliegen.#freeALANKURDIhttps://t.co/pHn3DT9jnG  sea-eye (@seaeyeorg) May 7, 2020

Detaining our ship is pure harassment to grind civil sea rescue efforts to a halt bit-by-bit, Julian Pahlke, the groups spokesperson, said in a statement on their website.

The Alan Kurdi has just left the shipyard and has been completely overhauled. This blockades only goal is to actively stop us from rescuing at sea. Instead of protecting human rights, those who do it are held up at every corner.

Crews of other Mediterranean rescue boats offered solidarity.

200409222037636

We do not see the same fury of the authorities over the violations of the obligation to rescue at sea, on the delays that cause tragedies and deaths, on keeping dozens of castaways  women, men and children  offshore without allowing their landing for several days, tweeted the charity Mediterranea: Saving Humans, which operates the Mare Jonio humanitarian vessel.

All our solidarity and strength are therefore with Alan Kurdi and Aita Mari, to their commanders and their crews, confident that they will be ready to go back to the sea soon, fulfilling all legitimate requirements, as we [also] prepare to do with our Mare Jonio.

Both Italy and nearby Malta have closed their ports to migrant boats, saying they could not help them because of the coronavirus crisis. Almost 30,000 people have died in Italy of the COVID-19 disease, while five people have died in Malta.

Despite the closures, migrants have continued to arrive, with some 4,069 people reaching Italy so far this year, compared with 842 in the same period in 2019, the Interior Ministry says.

Malta announced on Thursday it had chartered a second tourist boat to hold newly rescued migrants offshore after the armed forces saved 120 people from a dinghy overnight.





An initial boat was chartered last month to hold 57 migrants outside Maltas territorial waters until the European Union found a way to rehouse them. A deal has not yet been reached.

Italy shut its ports to humanitarian rescue vessels last year, in a move spearheaded by then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, of the far-right populist League party.

Those restrictions were lifted following the collapse of that coalition government, and numbers of new arrivals have again risen in 2020.

But ports closed once more as the coronavirus pandemic spread. Charities accuse Italian authorities of interfering with their operations, increasing the risk to human life. Italy says NGO boats make the problem worse by tempting people to make the perilous voyage.

The rise in arrivals comes at a time when Italy is considering giving work permits to irregular migrants to help farmers harvest their crops.

Clearly, if youre talking about amnesties, regularisations and permits, the message that we give to the other side of the Mediterranean is: Go, go, go, sooner or later they will sort you out, Salvini said on Thursday.
WASHINGTON  Vice President Mike Pence was hoping to use a trip to Iowa on Friday to promote efforts to reopen the economy and demonstrate that life is returning to normal across the country amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Those plans started to unravel before he even left Washington.

A member of Pences staff, press secretary Katie Miller, tested positive for coronavirus just as the vice president was about to depart, delaying his plane for an hour.

On Saturday, three key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were reported to be self-quarantining after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

Friday's revelation came just one day after the White House disclosed that a military valet to President Donald Trump also tested positive for the virus. Later on Friday, a person familiar with the matter said 11 Secret Service employees currently have the virus.

On the ground in Iowa, the vice presidents appearances did little to reinforce a return to normalcy. Attendees at a roundtable discussion on securing the nations food supply awaited Pences arrival by sitting in chairs spaced far apart in a nod to social distancing guidelines that aim to slow the spread of the disease. A conversation between Pence and religious leaders about reopening houses of worship unfolded in a nearly empty church.

"By God's grace, the faith of the American people... we'll get through this, sooner rather than later, Pence said. We'll get America working again. We'll get America worshipping again."

Reopening America: Top White House officials buried CDC report on reopening the country

Vice President Mike Pence listens to a question from Temple B'nai Jeshurun Rabbi David Kaufman, left, during a discussion with local faith leaders to encourage them to resume in-person church services in a responsible fashion in response to the coronavirus pandemic on Friday.

The White House's efforts to project a sense of normalcy in order to persuade Americans to move past coronavirus have often been complicated by the virus itself. The administration has held several carefully orchestrated events in recent days to promote such an image, including a series of Oval Office meetings between Trump and governors, nurses and business leaders. But often, such outings end up underscoring the virus' grip on American life.

Story continues

One way Trump and Pence have tried to present a post-COVID-19 America: resuming travel outside of Washington.

Trump went to Phoenix on Tuesday  his most extensive trip since the start of the pandemic  where he toured a Honeywell aerospace facility that makes respirator masks. But Trump made headlines for not wearing a face mask during the tour, despite a requirement that masks be worn on the site. Trump later told reporters he wore a mask briefly.

On Friday, while Pence was in Iowa, Trump laid a wreath at the World War II Memorial in Washington and chatted with eight war veterans commemorating the end of the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. Trump stood several feet away but did not wear a mask, raising questions about the safety of the veterans who ranged in age from 96 to 100.

The size of stimulus: 4 coronavirus stimulus packages. $2.4 trillion in funding. See what that means to the national debt.

Later, Trump hosted congressional Republicans at the White House for a meeting in which they discussed the economy and the administration's response to the pandemic. During the meeting, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, chose to defend the gathering's absence of face masks and social distancing. He suggested that nobody in the room had coronavirus unless its someone in the media.

Despite the business-as-usual attitude, the White House had to put in place additional protective measures after the revelations that Miller and Trump's valet tested positive for the disease.

Audience members practice social distancing as they listen to Vice President Mike Pence speak during a roundtable with agriculture and food supply leaders about steps being taken to ensure the food supply remains secure in response to the coronavirus pandemic on Friday in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Trump said White House aides will be tested for the virus daily instead of weekly. He said the valet was in the room with him on Tuesday, the day he began exhibiting symptoms, but that he did not recall any direct contact with him.

Regardless, Trump said he has been tested twice in recent days and that both tests came back negative.

Pence's Iowa trip had all the makings of a routine vice presidential getaway until Miller tested positive.

A senior administration official traveling with Pence said a staffer tested positive Friday morning after testing negative the day before. The ill aide was not scheduled to fly with Pence but had been in contact with six people who were scheduled to make the trip. Those staffers were removed from the plane before departure and later tested for the virus. All of the tests were negative, the official said.

Checks to dead people: Coronavirus stimulus checks sent to dead people should be mailed back to IRS, Treasury says

Multiple media reports identified the staffer who tested positive for coronavirus as Miller, Pence's press secretary and the wife of Stephen Miller, a Trump senior adviser known for his hard-line stance on immigration. NBC News reported that Katie Miller confirmed she received the positive diagnosis.

At the White House, Trump also identified the ill staffer as "Katie" during his roundtable discussion with congressional Republicans. Two administration officials later confirmed he was referring to Katie Miller.

"I'm doing well and look forward to getting back to work for the American people," Miller tweeted Friday evening.

Within the Secret Service, the virus appears to have spread. On top of the 11 employees currently with the virus, another 23 are recovering and 60 are in quarantine, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.

The person declined to breakdown the number of infections between civilian staffers and agents, and did not specify where the employees are assigned. The Secret Service has 7,600 employees, 3,000 of which are agents.

President Donald Trump's White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller, left, and Katie Waldman, now Miller, arrive for a state dinner at the White House in September 2010. Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, has the coronavirus, the White House said Friday, making her the second person who works at the White House complex known to test positive for the virus this week.

Still, despite the virus rearing its head nearly daily, Trump has been insistent on returning to normal, telling reporters after his Honeywell trip that to a certain extent he sees Americans as "warriors" as officials move to reopen the economy.

"Will some people be affected? Yes," he said. "Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon."

Pompeo back to traveling: Pompeo to resume travel with a tightly controlled visit to Israel, as pandemic continues to grip the world

Trump and Pence aren't the only administration officials eager to return to normal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week, his first trip in about seven weeks as the coronavirus pandemic grounded the nation's top diplomat along with the rest of the world. The trip will be a quick, controlled visit, with Pompeo's interactions limited to individuals who have been tested for the virus or screened for symptoms, a top State Department physician said in a briefing with reporters on Friday.

In another sign that normalcy has yet to return even to the White House, Friday marked the first day that all reporters attending a White House briefing wore face masks, even while asking questions.

A day earlier, Trump noted during an Oval Office encounter with reporters that "a lot of the reporters arent wearing masks." The White House staff did not ask the reporters to wear the masks Friday.

Contributing: John Fritze, David Jackson, Deirdre Shesgreen.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Mike Pence aide tests positive for COVID-19
BOISE  A lawsuit seeking to ban using bait for hunting black bears in national forests in Idaho and Wyoming can continue, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled Thursday in favor of three environmental groups who contend the practice has led to hunters killing federally protected grizzly bears.

The 1995 policy approved by the U.S Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allows no inadvertent killing of grizzly bears.

The policy later survived a court challenge that was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The environmental groups argue in the lawsuit filed in 2019 that in the years since the policy took effect, black bear hunters using bait have killed at least 10 grizzly bears.

The U.S. governments policy targeted in the lawsuit allows states to decide if hunters can use bait for black bears in grizzly habitat. Idaho and Wyoming allow the practice.

WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch say the federal agencies are violating the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws, and that they need to go through a process to reexamine whether black bear baiting should be allowed.

States should not allow baiting that can attract grizzlies and lead to their deaths, said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center who is representing the environmental groups.

Grizzlies have been shot near bait, and more may die, unless the Forest Service properly acts.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which defends federal agencies in lawsuits, didnt respond to an inquiry.

Hunters who use bait put out food and then hide and wait for a bear to come within shooting range.

Idaho and Wyoming have restrictions on where bait can be used to hunt black bears. Idaho prohibits hunting black bears using bait in areas inhabited by grizzlies. Wyoming prohibits the practice in grizzly bear recovery areas.

The conservation groups say bait is allowed in areas important to grizzly bears, such as between the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho, and between the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem in northwestern Montana and the Bitterroot ecosystem.

The federal agencies didnt contest that grizzly bears had been killed by black bear hunters. Instead, Dale ruled on procedural issues the agencies cited having to do with environmental laws.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it lacked the legal authority to re-initiate consultation with the U.S. Forest Service under the Endangered Species Act, contending only the Forest Service had that authority.

However, Dale said that argument was without merit, citing previous court precedent.

Dale did side with the Forest Service in rejecting another argument by the environmental groups that called for the Forest Service to supplement its previous analysis of bear-baiting.

Dale said the D.C. Circuit had previously ruled that the Forest Service had complied with the necessary environmental laws in deciding to allow bear-baiting, and that there was no ongoing federal action that needed supplementing.

Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The former chancellor says it is time to "run the economy hot" - GIAN EHRENZELLER/EPA-EFE/REX/GIAN EHRENZELLER/EPA-EFE/REX

Sajid Javid has urged the Government to run the economy hot and get Britain back to work as far and as quick as possible to recover from the impact of coronavirus.

The former chancellor said that Boris Johnson had "rightly put public health first", but argued it was now time to focus efforts on the economic recovery.

His intervention follows warnings from the Bank of England that the pandemic could lead the economy to shrink by 14 per cent this year, with the UK facing its deepest recession for centuries.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Javid said: "We're going to have to co-exist with this virus for many months, if not potentially years.

But we've got to find a way forward and that does mean you're relaxing, as much as you can.

"Running the economy hot you could say, in a way that you are trying to take into account, not just the sort of necessity to control the virus, but also the wider impact on society."

The Prime Minister is due to set out a roadmap for exiting lockdown on Sunday evening, however Downing Street insisted on Friday that Mr Johnson would proceed with "maximum caution".

Mr Javid, who held a Cabinet post until his resignation in February, suggested that one way to help boost the economy would be to let younger generations return to work.

He said: "It might be the case that in the future we can find a way that we focus our protection on those that are most vulnerable, those that have underlying illnesses but give more freedom to, let's say, younger people, so they can get on with their lives and at the same time help the rest of us by rebuilding our economy which benefits everyone.

"We're learning all the time but we shouldn't rule out an option that focuses on protecting the most vulnerable but gives more freedom to others."

Yesterday the Bank of England predicted a V-shaped economic recovery would be possible, with Governor Andrew Bailey suggesting a bounce back would be steep with only limited scarring.

Story continues

However, Mr Javid warned that such a recovery would be challenging.

He said the Bank of England had made a whole set of assumptions around relaxing the lockdown and ending it completely in three months.

Mr Javid admitted: "I do think it's just like the virus itself, let's hope for the best but let's plan for the worst, and that means you're taking whatever action you think is necessary and possible right now to make sure we do get the fastest recovery possible."
NEW YORK - Sandy Jensens customer-service job at a Sams Club in Fullerton, California, normally involves checking member ID cards at the door and answering questions. But the coronavirus has turned her into a kind of store sheriff.

Now she must confront shoppers who arent wearing masks and enforce social distancing measures such as limits on the number of people allowed inside. The efforts sometimes provoke testy customers.

They are behaving worse now, Jensen said. Everybody is on edge. I have hostile members in my face.

Her frustration is shared by store workers across the country, who are suddenly being asked to enforce the rules that govern shopping during the pandemic, a tension-filled role for which most of them have received little or no training. The burden is sure to become greater as more businesses in nearly a dozen states start to reopen.

Even if a security guard is posted at the store, employees complain they are often left to stand up to defiant shoppers.

I think that people are pushing back because their freedoms are being controlled, said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million members including grocery workers. Members dont feel comfortable trying to corral the customer. Management will take the customer side.

Store tensions recently resulted in violence in at least two states. A Michigan security officer was fatally shot last week after telling a customer to wear a mask at a Family Dollar store. Two McDonalds employees in Oklahoma City were shot Wednesday by a customer who was angry that the restaurants dining area was closed, police said.

Also in Oklahoma, one city abandoned its mask rule after store clerks were threatened. And at a southern California grocery store called Vons, a man showed up in what looked like a Ku Klux Klan hood. He ignored requests from workers to remove it until he got to the register, according to the supermarket.

Masks are required in some states. Some major retailers including Costco Wholesale Club have made masks mandatory regardless of government policies. But even at stores that post signs about mask recommendations, workers often have to approach unmasked visitors.

Walmart, the nations largest retailer and largest private employer, said it works with law enforcement in communities where face coverings are required.

Jeff Reid, who works at the meat counter at a Giant store in Silver Spring, Maryland, which mandates masks, said the greeter at his store is the one confronting shoppers, not the security guard posted outside.

We are going on the front lines on a daily basis. If its against the law without your mask, why are you having cashiers and teenagers trying to enforce this when this is the law? asked Zeid, who often has to reprimand customers to keep 6 feet apart.

The pandemic duties are the latest example of workers being asked to police retail space. Last year, retailers including CVS, Walgreens and Walmart asked customers to refrain from openly carrying guns in stores even where state law allows it. Stores did not outright prohibit guns because they did not want workers to have to enforce a ban. But how workers should respond to weapon-carrying customers has remained fuzzy. Many retailers left it up to the discretion of store managers and provided some guidance and training to workers.

Jason Brewer, a spokesman at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said its not a retail employees role to enforce a local law or an executive order on face coverings or any other protocol. He said law enforcement should get involved and that shoppers can do their part.

The industry is acutely focused on safety protocols as they reopen. But consumers need to keep this top of mind, Brewer said.

At a Costco in Midlothian, Virginia, Wendy Alonzo said markings on the floor indicating proper social distancing were good reminders. She said she gets frustrated when other customers seem oblivious that they are blocking an aisle, forcing her to squeeze by.

And then they kind of side-eye like you are too close, but its like youre blocking the way, and Im not going to wait here all day for you to make your decision whether you want eggs or milk or cheese, Alonzo said Wednesday.

Target spokesman Joshua Thomas said the chain has not experienced any major issues with shoppers not complying with social-distance rules. He attributes part of that to Target following local ordinances and not making nationwide mandates. If customers fail to adhere to protocols, stores may add more signs or play more frequent reminders on the public address system. Target can also reduce the number of customers let into the store.

The safety of the team members is our top priority, Thomas said.

Many other businesses are trying to defuse tensions between workers and customers.

Fresh Market, a Greensboro, North Carolina-based gourmet food chain with more than 150 stores, was one of the first grocers to request that shoppers wear masks. But a spokeswoman said it has not denied entrance to customers without face coverings.

We do not want to place our team members in a confrontational situation that could result in unintended consequences during an already trying time for many, company spokeswoman Meghan Flynn said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Workers can pose problems too.

Scott Nash, CEO of MOMs Organic Market, which operates 19 stores in the Mid-Atlantic region, said hes had to deal with some employees feeling overly empowered and hostile toward customers.

He acknowledges that training for his 1,500 employees has been on the fly and that he has not had time to roll out a training module. But he tells workers to use their common sense.

Dont be too lax and dont be controlling or publicly shaming, Nash said.

___

Associated Press Writer Henry Kurz in Midlothian, Virginia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Anne DInnocenzio on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler unveiled his proposal Thursday for a $5.52 billion city budget for the upcoming fiscal year expected to cover the majority of a projected $75 million general fund budget gap caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The proposed budget is nearly 5.5% lower  or around $316 million less  than the current budget and includes aid to families who may have not been eligible for stimulus and unemployment benefits through the CARES Act, funding for 21 new parks sites scheduled to open this year and already announced employee job cuts as well as wage freezes and furloughs for around 1,700 non-union staff.

During a news conference Thursday, Wheeler said city officials and representatives of union employees were still negotiating comparable pay freezes and furloughs and that he aimed for an agreement to be reached by the time city council is scheduled to approve the new budget May 20. A public hearing regarding the mayors proposed budget is slated for May 12.

The new budget would take effect July 1.

[Read the mayors proposed budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year]

According to Wheeler and city budget director Jessica Kinard, the projected $75 million loss in general fund revenue was made up by reallocating $28.5 million that  before the pandemic in February -- the city expected to have in excess general fund money, $17.1 million in drawing down reserve funds and $13.8 million in funds that werent spent during the current fiscal year and was expected to carry over.

Thus far, city officials project a $45 million decrease in business license taxes and $20 million less in transient lodging taxes. Kinard said Thursday that the city wont have a full picture of the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic until later this year due to tax payment deadlines being delayed until July.

Wheeler and Kinard said the remaining $29 million will be made up partly through $16.4 million from wage freezes and furloughs and another $9.3 million in cuts city bureaus will make as part of the fall supplemental budget process.

Wheeler warned layoffs would be used to help address the $9.3 million budget gap if the city and union representatives couldnt reach an agreement sooner than later.

Negotiations have been going on since at least mid-April and were described by Wheeler as going well.

Portlands government employs around 7,800 people and has already cut 950 jobs, most of them seasonal parks positions, amid the financial fallout of COVID-19. Non-represented employees have to take 10 days of unpaid leave by Oct. 7.

Wheeler has also given up his salary for the rest of the year, which the city estimates will save around $95,000. The mayors salary was $143,665 in 2019, city records show.

Wheeler and Kinard said none of the $114 million the city received as part of the CARES Act can be used to make up the budget shortfall.

Kinard said the city is soliciting input from the council, county officials, city bureau leaders, community organizations and others in order to ensure the money is allocated in a way that is going to do the most good for the people who need it.

We know $114 million sounds like a lot of money, but when youre talking about serving the population of Portland and all the needs that we have in our community, we want to be sure to be really thoughtful and impactful with the resource, she said.

Officer Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, said the union isn't ready to accept the mayor's call for its members to concede to wage freezes or their cost-of-living adjustments. He said it would be premature for Wheeler to include those concessions into his proposed budget.

Turner said neither the mayor nor other city officials have had any serious conversations with him or union leaders about those concessions in the next budget year.

"We cannot blindly agree to this before we have a serious conversation about what are the alternatives,'' Turner said.

Public safety services, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, need to have the full support of the city, he said. The police union president suggested the city should consider making cuts to other non-essential services, but he didn't identify what those might be.

On Thursday, Wheeler said his proposed budget addressed the citys fiscal challenges, equity and inclusion, and the needs of the citys underserved populations and climate change goals.

Among the notable entries in the mayors proposed budget:

-$7.5 million to fund streetlights along 12 miles of poorly lit areas around the city over the next three or four years.

-$4.5 million in existing grant funds to provide up to six months of rent assistance for 800 households in the Housing Bureau budget.

-$3.9 million from the CARES Act funds to help provide $2,500 in rent for 1,300 households through the Housing Bureau and another $1.3 million in federal aid funds to go to small businesses and employment support through Prosper Portland.

-Eliminating $1.8 million that has been carried over for several years for a police body camera program. The move would also erase four vacant positions planned to be dedicated to the program.

-$1.6 million for curb ramps on sidewalks around the city to comply with the American with Disabilities Act.

-A total of $807,000 from cannabis tax revenue to help develop more cannabis businesses in communities of color, community grants and business networking opportunities.

-Around $755,000 to hire about half a dozen staff to administer the Portland Clean Energy Fund. The money would be from tax revenues in the programs community benefits fund.

-$480,000 to fund three full-time staff members to keep the Columbia Pool in North Portland open until 2021.

-$250,000 for the Oregon Workers Relief Fund, $200,000 to help with legal representation for low-income refugees involved in deportation proceedings and $5,000 to an assistance fund maintained by Street Roots, which provides stipends to vendors who take supplies to homeless camps.

Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has welcomed medicinal innovations around the world including repurposing drugs, traditional medicines and the development of new therapies for the treatment of COVID-19.



The WHO, in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Friday, said it recognised traditional, complementary and alternative medicines, which had many benefits especially in Africa as the Continent had a long history of traditional medicine and practitioners playing an important role in providing care to population.



It, however, warned that the use of products to treat COVID-19, which had not been robustly investigated, could put people in danger, giving a false sense of security and distracting them from observing the safety protocols, cardinal to the disease prevention.



The statement said medicinal plants such as Artemisia were being considered as possible treatments for COVID-19 and should be tested for efficacy and adverse side effects.



Africans deserve to use medicines tested to the same standards as people in the rest of the world. Even if therapies are derived from traditional practise and natural, establishing their efficacy and safety through rigorous clinical trials is critical, it said.



The statement said African governments, through their ministers of health, adopted a resolution urging member states to produce evidence on the safety, efficacy and quality of traditional medicine at the 50th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in 2000.



It said countries also agreed to undertake relevant research and required national medicines regulatory agencies to approve medicines in line with international standards, which include the product following a strict research protocol and undergoing tests and clinical trials.



These studies normally involve hundreds of people under the monitoring of the national regulatory authorities and may take quite a few months in an expedited process.



The WHO is, therefore, working with research institutions to select traditional medicine products, which can be investigated for clinical efficacy and safety for COVID-19 treatment.



In addition, the WHO will continue to support countries as they explore the role of traditional health practitioners in the prevention, control, and early detection of the virus as well as case referral to health facilities, it said.



The statement said over the past two decades, WHO had been working with countries to ensure safe and effective traditional medicine development in Africa by providing financial resources and technical support.



It had also supported clinical trials, leading 14 countries to issue marketing authorisation for 89 traditional medicine products, which had met international and national requirements for registration, of those, 43 had been included in national essential medicines lists, it said.



These products are now part of the arsenal to treat patients with a wide range of diseases including malaria, opportunistic infections related to HIV, diabetes, sickle cell disease and hypertension.



Almost all countries in the WHO African Region have national traditional medicine policies, following support from the Organisation.



The statement said as efforts were underway to find treatment for COVID-19, caution must be taken against misinformation, especially on social media, about the effectiveness of certain remedies.



It said many plants and substances were being proposed without the minimum requirements and evidence of quality, safety and efficacy.



The WHO, however, welcomed every opportunity to collaborate with countries and researchers to develop new therapies and encouraged such collaboration for the development of effective and safe therapies for Africa and the world, the statement 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.

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With help from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai Police is setting up two Covid-19 care centres specially dedicated to police personnel. This is aimed at reducing the pressure on civic-run Covid-treatment centres.

A 300-bed Covid care centre is being set up in police housing quarters in Santacruz and another Covid care centre, with a capacity of 250 beds, will be set up at Marol. This was confirmed by Naval Bajaj, joint commissioner of police (administration) and nodal officer designated by the state for the healthcare of Mumbai Police. The Covid-care centres in Santacruz and Marol are for asymptomatic carriers and those with mild cases of Covid-19. Family members of police personnel would also be eligible to stay at these centres.

Deputy commissioner of police (operations) and spokesperson for Mumbai Police Pranay Ashoka said on Friday that 309 police personnel are infected with Covid-19, which is 59 more than the number that commissioner of police Param Bir Singh had announced on Thursday. Across Maharashtra, between March 22 and May 8, 618 (547 constables, 71 officers) police personnel have tested positive. Five constables have succumbed to the disease.

Cops test positive

On Friday, eight constables and four officers from Nirmal Nagar police station in Khar (East) tested positive for Covid-19 and nine others were been quarantined. A constable, assigned to the joint commissioner of police (economic offences wing), also tested positive and was admitted to Seven Hills Hospital.

Lockdown violations

On Thursday, 52 first information reports (FIRs) were registered in the city against 105 people for lockdown violations and 73 were arrested. Twenty FIRs are from the central Mumbai and 18 in the western region. Seventeen cases were for gathering in public and 17 for not wearing masks. Fourteen cases of illegal use of vehicles were registered. Bandra police also booked seven autorickshaw drivers and two taxi drivers.

Four cases against operating shops selling non-essential services were filed on Thursday. On May 6, two wine shop owners in Vile Parle and Juhu were booked for operating their shops in violation of the order issued by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to shut down shops selling liquor.

Between March 22 and May 8, Maharashtra Police has registered 98,774 FIRs against over 1 lakh people for lockdown violations across the state and 19,082 have been arrested. In the same period, 54,148 vehicles have been seized and fines amounting to Rs 3.66 crore have been collected.

10,000 stranded people get permits; 1 lakh on waiting list

Mumbai Police has given permits to 10,000 people  mostly migrant labourers, tourists, pilgrims and students  allowing them to return to their home states. Another 1 lakh people have been given permits and are on the waiting list till trains and buses are arranged by the state government.

Gutkha worth Rs 53.48 lakh seized

On Friday, Mumbai Police arrested three men for illegally transporting gutkha and tobacco products  which are not listed under essential products  in Govandi. The arrested accused are Gaus Zahur Khan, 38; Shaizad Kutchi, 31; and SN Khan, 27. All three are from Shivaji Nagar, Govandi. The total value of the seized material and tempo is Rs 53.48 lakh.

Newborn girl dumped in nullah, parents booked

Kurar police filed a case against the unknown parents of a baby girl whose body was found in a nullah in Shivaji Nagar, Malad (East) on Friday morning. The police were alerted by a citizen who tweeted about the body to Mumbai Police. A case has been filed under section 318 (concealment of birth by secret disposal of dead body) of the Indian Penal Code.

Dairy owner booked for flouting lockdown rules

Bhoiwada police booked a dairy owner for violating lockdown rules by not maintaining social distancing among his customers. On Thursday morning, the police saw a crowd outside the dairy in Dadar (East) and booked owner Manish Tiwari under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

(With inputs from Jayprakash S Naidu, Manish K Pathak, Faisal Tandel and Suraj Ojha)
Delhi High Court on Friday issued notices to Centre and Delhi government on a plea seeking to provide laptops, smartphones with high-speed internet connection to students belonging to economically weaker sections (EWS) to attend online classes.

A bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Sanjeev Narula also asked the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to file its response on the plea filed by NGO Justice For All through advocates Khagesh B Jha and Shikha Sharma Bagga.

The court observed that the schools and the government must ensure that no child could not be deprived of online education for the lack of teaching equipment.

It said that schools may procure the equipment for the EWS and can ask for reimbursement, if any, later from Central governemnt.

The matter has been listed for further hearing in the court on June 10.

The petition said that over 50,000 students belonging to the economically weaker sections (EWS) are not able to afford laptops, phones and other electronic gadgets and hence are deprived from attending online classes being conducted by private schools.
Binita Jaiswal By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: While people are getting accustomed to carrying on life around a pandemic situation, the humble mask is all set to evolve as the latest fashion accessory. The mask has become an everyday wear, and is slowly becoming a glamorous addition to outfits.

Its importance can be gauged from the fact that garments manufacturers and exporters in Tirupur are flooded with enquiries and orders from overseas brands about manufacturing colour-coded masks along with garments. However, the exporters are in a fix about encashing the business opportunity as India has banned exports of masks to other countries.

We are really concerned as different brands are interested in buying bulk t-shirts only with masks in matching colours. But, as mask exports are banned, we dont know whether we can accept the orders or not. We have apprised the Union Ministry of Textiles about the problem and sought clarity as to what kind of masks has been banned exactly, said Raja Shanmugam, president of Tirupur Exporters Association.

Shanmugam added that senior officials in the textiles ministry have assured to look into the issue after having a necessary discussion with the commerce ministry and Directorate General of Foreign Trade.

Brands are adamant on procuring t-shirts and garments along with matching masks because it would not be viable for them to procure garments from us and masks from some other vendors. The confusion over mask exports can lead to losses as the orders can go to some other country, said A Sivan, an exporter from Tirupur.

Notably, Tirupur in Tamil Nadu is one of the biggest textile hubs in India. Global brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Diesel and FILA are major exporters of Tirupurs cotton and knitwear garments.

Tirupur has resumed manufacturing activities with a minimum of 25 per cent of the workforce in their units from May 6.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:07:12|Editor: huaxia

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A Chinese military medical expert demonstrates how to take off protective gloves at a hospital in Yangon, Myanmar, May 7, 2020. Medical experts from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Thursday provided necessary training to Myanmar's military medical staff who will be assigned to work at a COVID-19 treatment center soon. (Xinhua/U Aung)
Over 1000 starving fishermen vacate Lake Albert in Uganda

May 08,2020 | Source: The Independent

More than 1000 fishermen have left various landing sites on the shores of Lake Albert in Hoima, Kikuube and Buliisa districts in Uganda citing starvation because of the suspension of fishing activities. In March this year, Hoima and Kikuube district security committees suspended fishing activities and boat operations on Lake Albert to prevent the spread of coronavirus.



Security officials explained that some Ugandan fishermen cross up to the Democratic Republic of Congo-DRC where they mix freely with fishermen there and cross back to Uganda which exposes them to coronavirus infection. Although fishermen protested the suspension of their activities, security insisted that the directive stands until the situation normalises.



The suspension has impacted negatively on the livelihood of the fishermen since fishing is their main stay activity. This has prompted several fishermen to vacate the lake saying life has become difficult since they cant even afford a meal a day.



The most affected are Kaiso, Kiryamboga, Kijangi, Rwentale and Fofo landing site in Buseruka sub county in Hoima district. The others are Kyehoro, Ssenjojo and Buguma landing sites in Kyangwali and Kabwoya sub counties in Kikuube district and Butiaba, Bugoigo, Somsio and Walukuba landing site in Buliisa district among others.



Fathum Ngooyi, who has been operating at Kaiso landing site in Hoima district says he cannot afford staying without food yet he has five children and two wives to look after.



70-year-old Gilbert Opoka has been fishing at Kaiso landing site since 1985. He however,says he has been forced to vacate the landing site simply because he has nothing to eat adding that many families are on the verge of starvation unless government allows them to resume fishing.



Robert Gingyera, a fisherman at Mbegu landing site in Kabaale sub county says some families have started battering their clothes in exchange for food.



Kenneth Busobozi, a fisherman at Kyehoro landing site in Kikuube district says he has resorted to cultivation. He says majority of fishermen live hand to mouth which means they are unable to provide for their families because of the current suspension.



Jackson Pirwoth, a fisherman at Butiaba landing site faults government for abandoning them yet the lake is the only source of livelihood to thousands of people.



Vicente Alpha Opio, the Kabwoya sub county LC5 Councilor in Kikuube district wonders why government has turned a deaf ear yet hundreds of people at various landing sites on the shores of Lake Albert are starving.



Samuel Kisembo, the Hoima Resident District Commissioner says they cannot allow fishing activities to continue at the moment saying they are still assessing the COVID-19 situation.



Lake Albert employs approximately 56,000 fishermen who harvest more than 100,000 tons of fish per year. Overall, fishing supports the livelihood of more than 1.6 million people in Uganda.

 The Independent

Theme(s): Others.
A day after a video surfaced showing how bodies of Covid-19 victims at Lokmanya Tilak General Hospital, also known as Sion hospital, were left in a ward for an extended period alongside patients, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has ordered an inquiry into the matter. A committee for the same has been asked to submit its report within 24 hours.

On Wednesday night, MLA Nitish Rane posted the video which claimed that patients at Sion hospital were sharing the ward with dead bodies.

The incident has again highlighted the casual way in which municipal hospitals handle bodies of Covid-19 patients, despite directions for them to be shifted from the ward within 30 minutes of being declared dead.

The video shows Covid-19 patients undergoing treatment in a ward with dead bodies wrapped in black plastic covers lying near them. This is in violation of the rules of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) which state that deceased patients should be wrapped in airtight body bags to avoid possible transmission of the Sars-CoV-2 virus.

I have never seen such a horrendous situation [in Mumbai] where patients are made to share beds beside bodies. This causes severe psychological trauma among patients, said BJP leader Kirit Somaiya, who has filed a complaint with the ICMR.

The hospital said that often patients relatives do not come to claim bodies. Sometimes, it takes longer to wrap the body and send it to the morgue.

Being a non-Covid hospital, we have to attend to both Covid and non-Covid patients. This is a severe workload on us as we are already running at 60% staff strength. It is not always possible to shift a body within 30 minutes. Also, often the family members request us to wait for them before wrapping the body, said a senior official from the hospital.

Sion hospital dean Pramod Ingale said relatives of those who died of Covid-19 were also reluctant to take the bodies. We have removed the bodies and will investigate the matter. We have got instructions that the families of the deceased need to claim the bodies within 30 minutes, he said.

The BMC has also formed a team to investigate the matter and submit a report within 24 hours.

According to a letter issued to the hospital on May 7, the team has been instructed to find the person who shot the video and probe the reason behind the delay in shifting the bodies to the morgue.
Vizag gas leak: The central government has deployed a team from the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) unit of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) Pune, along with an expert team of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, to manage the crisis on the ground and take measures to solve the short term and long term medical impact of the gas leak at Visakhapatnam.

The government confirmed that the incident occured because of styrene gas leakage from the LG Polymers factory on Thursday at 3 am in RR Venkatapuram village, Gopalapatnam Mandal in Visakhapatnam District. The leak affected the surrounding villages namely Narava, B.C Colony, Bapuji Nagar, Kampalapalem and Krishna Nagar. The tragedy has so far killed 11 people and led to the hospitlisation of hundreds of people.

Also read: Vizag gas leak a serious lesson on plant maintenance during coronavirus lockdown

The state police is also probing reasons for the gas leak and is investigating whether LG Polymers flouted the CBRN safety guidelines issued by the NDMA. The plant was restarting after being closed for a while due to the nationwide coronavirus lockdown. The Indian Chemical Council, a grouping of Indian chemical companies, had warned a couple of weeks ago that certain issues could crop up from a sudden shutdown and restarting of chemical plants.

The decision to send the expert teams was taken during a high-level meeting in Delhi on Thursday. The teams will ensure measures for the safety of the affected people and secure the site affected by the disaster. Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the meeting was attended by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Ministers of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai and G Kishan Reddy, besides other senior officials, said a government statement. Various experts were also consulted to ascertain short term and long term damage control measures.

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Govt asks factories set to reopen to strictly follow safety norms

The statement said styrene is a colourless, flammable liquid which is used to prepare polystyrene plastics, rubber and fibre-glass and is used in pipes, insulation, automobile parts etc. Its exposure is through ingestion, inhalation or contact (skin). Styrene gas, which is toxic in nature also causes respiratory problems and other medical conditions.

Common symptoms of styrene exposure include irritation to eyes, nose and skin, gastrointestinal and respiratory effects and neurological disorders depending on the exposure. Its long term exposure may cause central nervous system and kidney related problems, depression, headache etc. The department of health and human services USA lists styrene as reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogen.

Also read: Vizag gas leak: Finding cause of leakage, extent of damage, says LG Chem

To ascertain the level of styrene in contaminated air, samples of air have to be analysed in detail using a special styrene detection device. It is unlikely to remain longer in the environment as when released into the soil or water styrene is expected to readily biodegrade and evaporate quickly. While released into the air, styrene will readily degrade by reaction with photo-chemically produced hydroxyl radicals and is expected to have a life of less than one day, said the government.

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Human rights commission sends notice to Andhra govt, Centre
Ministers risk creating ghost schools across England if they fail to persuade parents it is safe for children to return after lockdown, head teachers have warned.

A plan for the phased reopening of schools is expected to be announced by Boris Johnson when he unveils his lockdown exit strategy on Sunday.

But there are growing concerns that classrooms could be left empty even after the government tells students they can return.

Some teachers believe coronaphobic parents could simply refuse to send their children back to school until they are convinced it is totally safe to do so.

For many that could mean waiting until a coronavirus vaccine has been developed and rolled out.

There are fears 'coronaphobic' parents could refuse to let their children go back to school until there is a vaccine for the disease

Boris Johnson, pictured in Downing Street today, is expected to set out a phased plan to reopen schools when he addresses the nation on Sunday evening

Schools are in the process of trying to prepare to reopen by taking steps to ensure social distancing can be adhered to.

Classrooms are being redesigned so that children can stay two metres away from each other, one way systems are being put in place in corridors and deep cleans are being ordered.

Many schools are still open so they can look after the children of key workers with pupil numbers currently estimated at about two per cent of normal levels.

It is thought the governments plan will see the phased return of schools from June.

But teachers believe work will have to be done by ministers to show parents it is safe for their children to go back in order to avoid a wave of holdouts.

Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, who runs Anderton Park primary school in Birmingham, told The Times that many families in the area were grieving for relatives and have seen very poorly family members struggle to breathe for weeks.

Most have said they will not send the children back in June or maybe even until there's a vaccine, she said.

Elaborate plans for extended opening could be meaningless if parents choose health over a few hours in school.

There are also concerns over staffing levels when schools do return because it is unclear how many teachers and support staff will stay at home because of their own underlying health conditions.

A recent survey conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers found more than a quarter do not believe it will be possible to maintain social distancing in primary schools.

A spokesman for the Department for Education would not be drawn on the governments plan for reopening schools.

The spokesman said: Schools will remain closed, except for children of critical workers and vulnerable children, until the scientific advice indicates it is the right time to reopen.

Education is a devolved issue which means each of the four Home Nations will take its own decision on schools reopening.

An exclusive poll for MailOnline published yesterday showed almost two thirds of the population are worried about the effects of lifting draconian curbs too early.

It revealed 62 per cent are more worried about lockdown ending too early, while 38 per cent said their main concern is the havoc restrictions are wreaking on the economy now.

Around seven in 10 believe bus and train drivers, teachers, and medical staff should have the right to refuse to go back to work, even if the government says it is safe.
: An Air India



repatriation flight from Riyadh landed at the Karipur airport here on Friday night, carrying153 passengers,including 84 pregnant women, 22 children and four infants.

The flight, the third to Kerala,touched down at around 8 p.m and was part of the Vande Bharat Mission which started on Thursday to bring home Indian nationals stranded due to COVID-19 lockdown in various countries.

Two flights had landed at Kochi and Kozhikode on Thursday from Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively.

Another flight took off from Bahrain with 177 passengers and 5 infants and is expected to reach Kochi by 11.30 p.m tonight.

According to airport sources, the flight from Riyadh is carrying five persons having some health issues and they would soon be shifted toManjeri and Kozhikode medical college hospitals.

Ten passengers from neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu also travelled in the flight, the sources said.

The passengers were subjected to thermal test at the aerobridge itself before allowing them to undergo customs and immigration checks, sources said.

Official sources said all the passengers would be subjected to COVID-19 rapid test at the airport before transferring them to their respective destinations by special taxis and KSRTC buses.

As per the norms, all the pregnant women and children would be transported to their homes and others would be shifted to coronavirus care centres in their home districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Buying a 400,000 piece of machinery demands a lot of consideration about the investment payback required and Mark Troy is well qualified to do the sums involved.

As well as being an agricultural contractor, Mark is also an accountant by profession so he had his sums well done before he purchased the latest addition to his fleet  the Claas Jaguar 990.

At 925hp it is the most powerful forager offering from Claas to date and Mark, who is based in Brinny near Inishannon, Co Cork, is the first contractor in Ireland to buy the Claas powerhouse.

I bought the Claas 990 from Mc Carthys dealership in Carrigtwohill, he told the Farming Independent.

Expand Close NEWS 4/5/2020 Pictured at Killumney Co Cork at the crontrols of his new CLAAS Jaguar 990 the only harvester of its type in Ireland is Mark Troy of Troy Agri Contractors. Fresh after collecting it from McCarthy Agri Sales the new harvester was put on its maiden run on Bank holiday Monday. Picture Denis Boyle / Facebook

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Whatsapp NEWS 4/5/2020 Pictured at Killumney Co Cork at the crontrols of his new CLAAS Jaguar 990 the only harvester of its type in Ireland is Mark Troy of Troy Agri Contractors. Fresh after collecting it from McCarthy Agri Sales the new harvester was put on its maiden run on Bank holiday Monday. Picture Denis Boyle

I ordered it before Christmas and it was delivered last week. I upgraded it from the 980 version, which was their previous biggest I bought in 2018. I upgrade my machinery every couple of years for warranty and for servicing.

We swapped over to Claas in 2002 and havent looked back since. Theyre a good quality machine and so there is no need to change. If they were giving trouble or there was poor output then we would consider a change but so far we cant complain.

Mark works as a financial controller for a car dealership in Cork, and he balances the day job with the demands of the silage season.

I work as an accountant for most of the year. I am out of the office from when the silage season starts in the middle of May for a few weeks, then Im back in for a few weeks until the second cut starts toward the end of June, he says.

I have four or five lads in the yard working in the spring who do the day to day jobs like spreading fertiliser or reseeding.

As well as the Claas 990, the Troy fleet also includes a Krone Big M mower, one Fendt Tractor, five Massey Fergusons, one JCB loader two slurry tankers and umbilical cord system, a fertiliser spreader and two seed planters.

I like to upgrade things every few years for several reasons. Because the silage season is so short, things need to be as efficient as possible so we can cut as much as possible. Also when I am trading in machinery, contractors wont want to buy anything with too much mileage on it.

One of the biggest changes Mark has noticed in contracting in recent years is the spiralling costs of machinery.

Expand Close NEWS 3/5/2020 Pictured at Brinny Co Cork with his new CLAAS Jaguar 990 the only harvester of its type in Ireland is Mark Troy of Troy Agri Contractors in the cockpit. Fresh after collecting it from McCarthy Agri Sales the new harvester With its unique overall concept, throughput of up to 380 t/h, outstanding operator assistance systems and a wide range of corncracker rollers including patented SHREDLAGE technology, it will help you safely bring in your harvest with up to 925 hp. Picture Denis Boyle / Facebook

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Whatsapp NEWS 3/5/2020 Pictured at Brinny Co Cork with his new CLAAS Jaguar 990 the only harvester of its type in Ireland is Mark Troy of Troy Agri Contractors in the cockpit. Fresh after collecting it from McCarthy Agri Sales the new harvester With its unique overall concept, throughput of up to 380 t/h, outstanding operator assistance systems and a wide range of corncracker rollers including patented SHREDLAGE technology, it will help you safely bring in your harvest with up to 925 hp. Picture Denis Boyle

The cost of machinery has gone through the roof. Tractors have gotten very technologically advanced and have seen massive increases in efficiency even though there is no need for the increase in many cases especially in Ireland where field sizes arent as big as they are in places like the US and Australia. Its not justified by the returns were getting.

While retaining staff has been a problem for most contractors, it hasnt been an issue for Mark.

We have a good bit of work going on throughout the year such as spreading slurry to keep lads around.

You have to treat them well and pay them as well. I have four or five lads in the spring and around nine during busy times around the first cut of silage. It is getting more difficult to keep staff though and it definitely will be more of an issue in the future.

Between maize and silage, Mark cuts around 4,000 acres a year for farmers in his area, most of whom are long term clients. He believes that developing a relationship with farmers is the cornerstone of any contracting business. Most of our clients have been with us for over 40 years when my father began contracting. We work in a partnership with them, they need us and we need them.

Unlike many other businesses, silage contractors wont be majorly affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

Cautious

We tend to socially isolate anyway, says Mark, but this year well be extra cautious. Everybody will have to stick to their tractors and we wont be taking any passengers onboard.

Given the costs and long hours of agricultural contracting, many would question the wisdom of why Mark is still involved in the business when he has a well-paid job as an accountant to fall back upon.

The answer is simple: he says it is in his blood. It doesnt make sense from an accountants point of view, especially with the amount of money I have tied up in the business. If I was to replace my whole fleet in the morning it would cost over 2.5m. But I grew up with, its something I enjoy doing and I would find it very hard to walk away from it.




New York state remains under a stay-at-home order with non-essential businesses closed until at least May 15 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But other states, including nearby parts of Pennsylvania, have begun reopening.

Pennsylvania officially lifted a lockdown on 24 counties, many of which border New York state, on Friday. Those counties  Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Montour, Northumberland, Potter, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga, Union, Venango and Warren  are now in the yellow phase of reopening.

According to PennLive.com, those counties are now allowing gatherings of up to 25 people, and allowing some previously closed businesses, including child care centers, pet groomers and in-person retail stores, to reopen. Restaurants and bars must continue to only offer takeout or delivery, and places like schools, gyms, salons, casinos and theaters remain closed. Telework is still encouraged wherever possible, and people are still required to practice social distancing and wear masks when unable to stay six feet apart.

Some places that are reopening include The Shops at Colony in Erie, Pennsylvania, featuring several clothing stores, and a handful of stores at the Millcreek Mall Complex, the states second-largest shopping mall.

As we enter the yellow phase this Friday, May 8th, please remember us and bear with us, as we adjust and prepare for the new normal. Check with individual businesses for their state of OPEN. Wear a mask, maintain social distances, stay safe. We are all in this together, The Shops at Colonys Facebook page said.

Other places, like the Clarion Antique Mall in Clarion, Pennslyvania, have said theyll remain temporarily closed and continue to monitor the situation. Owner Carol Harris said her husband, Ron, was treated with radiation last year for cancer, and all four employees are over 60 years old and considered at-risk for COVID-19.

With the reopening of businesses in PA and other states, we will be monitoring what happens through May and make a decision AFTER June 1st, Harris wrote on Facebook.

All 24 counties that are reopening are in northern and northwestern Pennsylvania; many border New York state. Erie, for example, is located less than an hours drive from New York towns like Chautauqua and Jamestown.

So does that mean residents in Western New York, Central New York and the Southern Tier can take a road trip to go shopping? Not exactly.

New York state residents are urged to stay at home with few exceptions, such as people in essential jobs or for trips to the grocery store, pharmacy and restaurants (for takeout and drive-thru only). The CDC also recommends people in all U.S. states avoid non-essential travel and follow health precautions, such as social distancing, wearing face coverings in public, and washing hands often.

Travel increases your chances of getting and spreading COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been coordinating with neighboring states, including Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, in a coalition to buy personal protective equipment, ventilators and whatever we need to buy. Hes urged other states to avoid reopening if coronavirus cases, including hospitalizations and deaths, are not declining.

As of Thursday, Pennsylvania has more than 52,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, sixth most in the U.S., and more than 3,400 deaths. New virus cases in Pennsylvania have declined from a peak of 1,663 on April 11 to 1,022 on May 7.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to announce more parts of the state moving to yellow phases soon. Residents in red phase counties, which include big cities like Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, are still urged to only leave home for exercise, medical needs, food or to businesses designated as life-sustaining.

New York has more than 327,000 cases confirmed and nearly 21,000 deaths. The state has seen daily hospitalizations decline from over 3,000 in early April to just 607 on Thursday; daily deaths have gone down from over 700 in mid-April to less than 300 this past week.

syracuse.com | The Post-Standard has reached out to Gov. Cuomos office for comment on Pennsylvanias reopening plan.

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If Yash Chopra heroines made romances go hand in hand with chiffon sarees, Rishi Kapoor gave romance a whole new meaning for the men  those sweaters and wearing that impish smile had everyone charmed. Rishi Kapoor was Indias first chocolate hero, and later in his life the actor gave some of his careers best performances as the menacing Rauf Lala from Agneepath and the chirpy and iPad addict grandfather from Kapoor & Sons. The actors demise, is surely a big irreplaceable loss for the industry.

Today, Rishi Kapoors son-in-law, Bharat Sahni penned an emotional note on social media to express his grief for the superstar. Rishi was a doting father and loved his granddaughter Samara Sahni to bits. But due to the lockdown, Riddhima could not make it back to Mumbai to attend her fathers funeral yesterday. Bharat Sahni, her husband shared a post where Rishi Kapoor is seen with Ridhima and Samara in happier times. His post reads, Will never forget the love you gave me. You taught me so much in the little time I had with you. Simply broken today. Lost for words. Love you and will miss you a lot. R.I.P. Papa.

Riddhima Sahni too had shared lovely pictures on her Instagram profile and had expressed her grief. Sadly she couldnt make it for her dads funeral yesterday as she resides in Delhi and with the lockdown imposed, there was no option for her to get a flight or arrange for a chartered flight. Alia Bhatt, was seen facetiming Ridhima during the last rites, so that she could witness her fathers last journey virtually.
Tesla is reportedly planning to restart production Friday at its plant in Fremont, California, after the state's governor authorized manufacturing to resume following a shutdown due to the coronavirus.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told workers in an email Thursday that "I will be on the line personally helping wherever I can," according to CNBC. "However, if you feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so. These are difficult times, so thanks very much for working hard to make Tesla successful!

In recent weeks, Musk has repeatedly criticized coronavirus lockdowns as violating basic tenets of American freedom.

It was not immediately clear whether Tesla would follow through on the resumption of production after Bay Area health officers reiterated in a statement that their orders restricting non-essential manufacturing operations remain in place.

Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Friday morning.

The Fremont plant makes the company's electric vehicles, including its most popular nameplate, the Model 3 sedan. It has been mostly shut down since late March.

Can these 13 retailers survive crisis?: Permanent store closings, bankruptcies coming amid coronavirus chaos

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Tesla HR boss Valerie Capers Workman told workers in an email that the Fremont factory would resume "limited" operations with about 30% of its typical workforce, according to CNBC.

The company's battery plant in Reno, Nevada, has already resumed limited production.

In this June 22, 2012 file photo, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk holds up a bottle of wine given as a gift from one of their first customers at Tesla's plant in Fremont, Calif.

On Thursday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the state's auto plants can resume production on Monday.

Ford Motor, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plan to restart most of their factories beginning May 18.

Contributing: Detroit Free Press reporter Jamie LaReau

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tesla plant to restart production after coronavirus shutdown
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany delivers remarks during a news conference inside the James S. Brady Briefing Room in Washington, US, May 6, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]

The highly contagious novel coronavirus has set new standards for personal space, and the etiquette of social distancing has reinforced the notion that hell is other people. Some US politicians seem intent on applying that existential viewpoint at the national level, as they clearly believe that hell is other countries. At least, to be more precise, they are trying to peddle the idea that hell is China.

One would think that with the virus killing thousands of people a day in the United States and infecting about ten times as many, without showing any signs that it is being brought under control, the US government would be focusing its attention and concentrating its efforts on the pandemic and be doing its utmost to rein in the infection and mortality rates. Instead, rather than acting to correct their earlier mistakes, they are doubling down on their misreading of the situation by ramping up their China-bashing.

Since what they are doing is poles apart from what needs to be done, the US people must swallow the bitter truth that their suffering so far is likely only a prelude of worse to come unless there is a change of approach.

An important reason why these politicians seem intent on fabricating an alternate reality in which China is the pathogen that needs to be fought is because they are well aware that they scorned the window of opportunity and shirked the tough decisions that could have prevented some of the deaths, distress and hardship in the country.

That the US administration is encouraging people to be "warriors" and go back to work, indicates that the federal government might be thinking of abandoning the conviction that it can contain the contagion in the way it was trying to do.

But getting people back to work must be done prudently and should be accompanied by effective control measures, particularly sufficient testing and treatment ability, to ensure that a herd immunity approach does not make transmission a viral stroll in the park.

That not a single aircraft carrier strike group of the US Navy has been spared from infection should be a wake-up call to the decision-makers of the country that they are fighting a smokeless war with the wrong enemy. The US' reimagined gunboat diplomacy will not help it defeat this alien invader.

Stopping its blame game, and engaging with China, the most likely partner able to help the US get control of the pandemic, would be the most practical and effective way for the US administration to protect its people and economy from further unnecessary grief and torment.

Having invested a lot of time and effort over the years fabricating enemies for others to see to mobilize them to its cause, the US is now confronting a real enemy, one that can't even be seen. Now is the time when it should rally with others to what is truly a common cause.
Mr. Marano worked until his 93rd birthday and died one week before his 95th birthday. Read more

People Weve Lost Luka A. Marano Sr.

94 years old

Lived in Chestnut Hill

An innovator, he made a success of his family-owned pasta company More Memorials

Business leaders called Luke A. Marano Sr. an icon in the pasta business, but it took his innovative mind, entrepreneurial spirit, and roll-up-your-sleeves mentality to make the family-owned Philadelphia Macaroni Co. a successful worldwide entity.

My father would work the line when he was little, said daughter Lucy Sandifer. There was nothing he wouldnt do, like run the forklift. He had courage. He had enthusiasm. No one could get him down. If someone said something disparaging to him, my father never forgot, but he just focused on where he was going.

Mr. Marano, who worked until his 93rd birthday, died on Tuesday, April 21, one week before his 95th birthday, at Foulkeways in Gwynedd of complications from the coronavirus. A father of seven children, he lived most of his life in Chestnut Hill and spent his later years in Blue Bell.

Philadelphia Macaroni was founded in 1914 by Mr. Maranos grandfather and father. In 1960, with the firm struggling financially, Mr. Marano purchased it. His daughter said he worried at times that he wouldnt make enough money to repay the loan he needed, but he pulled it through, and his knack for innovation would create opportunities with global food companies.

The company produced pastas for branded and private-label clients, including Campbells and Lipton, and manufactured Ramen noodles.

He got that entrepreneurial spirit from his mother, who was a contractor, Sandifer said.

He believed in doing your best and being your best at all times. daughter Lucy Sandifer

Philadelphia Macaroni later expanded and now has plants in Warminster, Harrisburg, and Spokane, Wash. Another facility, Minot Milling in Grand Forks, N.D., built by Mr. Marano when he was 73, mills durum and hard red spring wheat. Just this month, the company bought A. Zeregas Sons of New York.

Sandifer said her father was strict, but only because he wanted better for us than he had.

We werent bad as kids, but we were bad enough, she said. He would never tell the child who was naughty that he was annoyed, but he would say maybe to another child, Why did he do it? or Why did she do it?

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Marano is survived by daughters Stephanie, Lisa, and Mia; sons Luke Jr. and Mark; a brother; and his fiancee, Claire Dickson. He was preceded in death by his wife, Yolanda, and daughter Suzanne.

 Joe Juliano
The Welsh government will today unveil its plans for adjusting the countrys coronavirus lockdown measures.

First minister Mark Drakeford is expected to outline what changes will be made, and when, after the Welsh cabinet met on Thursday to review the current restrictions, which have been in force since 23 March.

The announcement, to be made at 12.30pm, comes two days ahead of Boris Johnsons expected update on Englands coronavirus guidelines.

As devolved governments  with the power to shape their own public health policy  Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can legally end lockdown on their terms.

However, Plaid Cymru has called for a UK-wide approach as the four countries consider their exit strategies for the weeks ahead.

I emphasised to Boris Johnson that if his commitment to the four nations of the UK is to mean anything, the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments must agree to any changes to the current approach, said MP Liz Saville Roberts, the Westminster leader of Plaid Cymru.

The current lack of clarity is leading to huge anxiety and potential issues of people believing changes are being made ahead of this bank holiday weekend when they are not.

She warned Mr Johnson to resist the urge to move too quickly and put the health of the public first.

The PM spoke to the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Thursday afternoon to discuss the UK lockdown.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said the call reflected the British governments commitment to working in consultation with the devolved administrations.

During the call, the prime minister emphasised that this is a critical moment in the fight against coronavirus and that the government will not throw away the efforts and sacrifices of the British people, she said.

He was clear that we will not risk a second peak that could overwhelm the NHS, and we will act with maximum caution in order to save lives.

However, it was acknowledged that different parts of the UK could move at slightly different speeds, with decisions made based on the science for each nation.

Both the Scottish and UK governments formally extended their lockdowns on Thursday, though

Nicola Sturgeon warned that it could be catastrophic were Westminster to drop its stay-at-home message next week  as has been suggested in the media.

Some UK newspapers have also claimed that exercise rules in England could be relaxed and social bubbles expanded, which would allow people to meet with members of one other household, after Mr Johnson said that some measures may start to be lifted from Monday.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab dismissed the reports, saying they were not a reliable guide to the policy being formulated by the government.

The Welsh government also warned against confusing and mixed speculation.

It is crucially important that the people of Wales are informed clearly and accurately about what, if any, changes are made to the current stay-at-home restrictions, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Some of the reporting in todays newspapers is confusing and risks sending mixed messages to people across the UK.

Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Show all 30 1 /30 Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff react outside Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff inside Camberwell bus depot in London, during a minute's silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus NHS staff at the Mater hospital in Belfast, during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Shoppers observe a minute's silence in Tescos in Shoreham Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Firefighters outside Godstone fire station PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Salford Royal Hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Salford Royal Hospital PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Hospital workers take part in a protest calling on the British government to provide PPE across Britain for all workers in care, the NHS and other vital public services after a nationwide minute's silence at University College Hospital in London AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A school children's poster hanging outside Glenfield Hospital during a minute's silence Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A man holds a placard that reads "People's health before profit" outside St Thomas hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff members applaud outside the Royal Derby Hospital, following a minute's silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, Prime minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, stand inside 10 Downing Street, London, to observe a minutes silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus University College Hospital, London Hospital workers hold placards with the names of their colleagues who have died from coronavirus as they take part in a protest calling on the British government to provide PPE AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff at Waterloo Station in London, stand to observe a minute's silence, to pay tribute to NHS and key workers who have died with coronavirus AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Medical staff at the Louisa Jordan hospital stand during a UK wide minutes silence to commemorate the key workers who have died with coronavirus in Glasgow Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus London An NHS worker observes a minute's silence at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London AFP via Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Belfast, Northern Ireland NHS staff observe a minutes silence at Mater Infirmorum Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Plymouth NHS workers hold a minute's silence outside the main entrance of Derriford Hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus NHS Frimley Park Hospital staff at the A&E department observe a minute's silence Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Mater Infirmorum Hospital People applaud after a minutes silence in honour of key workers Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Waterloo Station, London AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Wreaths laid outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A group of trade unionists and supporters standing outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stands outside St Andrew's House in Edinburgh to observe a minute's silence in tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus London Police officers observe a minutes silence at Guy's Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A woman standing outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Royal Derby Hospital PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Leicester, NHS workers during a minute's silence outside Glenfield Hospital Getty

While the Welsh government could deviate in its exit strategy from England, it has made clear its desire to take decisions alongside all four UK nations.

Earlier this week, Mr Drakeford warned that the crisis in Wales was certainly not over despite encouraging signs.

He told the Senedd, the National Assembly for Wales, that the countrys transmission rate  the R number  remained close to the level that could put us back in danger.

Speaking in Thursdays press conference, Andrew Goodall, chief executive of NHS Wales, said there had been fewer than 200 new confirmed cases of coronavirus each day over the past 10 days.

There are 677 people in hospital in Wales with confirmed Covid-19 and a further 343 suspected cases.

Of those previously admitted to hospital, around 2,800 people have recovered and been discharged.

But it is important that we remember all those who sadly lost their lives and our thoughts are with their families and friends, Dr Goodall said.

The human cost of this crisis is both profound and unmeasurable.
Dividend paying stocks like Guangnan (Holdings) Limited (HKG:1203) tend to be popular with investors, and for good reason - some research suggests a significant amount of all stock market returns come from reinvested dividends. 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.

In this case, Guangnan (Holdings) likely looks attractive to investors, given its 5.6% dividend yield and a payment history of over ten years. It would not be a surprise to discover that many investors buy it for the dividends. Some simple analysis can reduce the risk of holding Guangnan (Holdings) for its dividend, and we'll focus on the most important aspects below.

Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis

SEHK:1203 Historical Dividend Yield May 7th 2020

Payout ratios

Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. Looking at the data, we can see that 67% of Guangnan (Holdings)'s profits were paid out as dividends in the last 12 months. This is a healthy payout ratio, and while it does limit the amount of earnings that can be reinvested in the business, there is also some room to lift the payout ratio over time.

We also measure dividends paid against a company's levered free cash flow, to see if enough cash was generated to cover the dividend. Guangnan (Holdings)'s cash payout ratio last year was 23%. Cash flows are typically lumpy, but this looks like an appropriately conservative payout. It's positive to see that Guangnan (Holdings)'s dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut.

Story continues

With a strong net cash balance, Guangnan (Holdings) investors may not have much to worry about in the near term from a dividend perspective.

Consider getting our latest analysis on Guangnan (Holdings)'s financial position here.

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. Guangnan (Holdings) has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. This dividend has been unstable, which we define as having been cut one or more times over this time. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was HK$0.03 in 2010, compared to HK$0.04 last year. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 2.9% a year over that time. The dividends haven't grown at precisely 2.9% every year, but this is a useful way to average out the historical rate of growth.

Modest growth in the dividend is good to see, but we think this is offset by historical cuts to the payments. It is hard to live on a dividend income if the company's earnings are not consistent.

Dividend Growth Potential

With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to see if earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Why take the risk of a dividend getting cut, unless there's a good chance of bigger dividends in future? Over the past five years, it looks as though Guangnan (Holdings)'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

To summarise, shareholders should always check that Guangnan (Holdings)'s dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. Guangnan (Holdings)'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 Guangnan (Holdings)'s dividend has been cut at least once in the past, which is disappointing. Ultimately, Guangnan (Holdings) comes up short on our dividend analysis. It's not that we think it is a bad company - just that there are likely more appealing dividend prospects out there on this analysis.

It's important to note that companies having a consistent dividend policy will generate greater investor confidence than those having an erratic one. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. For example, we've identified 4 warning signs for Guangnan (Holdings) (1 is significant!) that you should be aware of before investing.

We have also put together a list of global stocks with a market capitalisation above $1bn and yielding more 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.
Bringing Up Bates may highlight the warm relationship enjoyed by Kelly Jo and Gil Bates and their 19 children, but some family followers think the Bates kids have formed cliques. Several family followers note that some of the Bates children appear to maintain close relationships with only some of their siblings, or, at the very least, thats the way it looks on social media.

Carlin, Erin and Tori Bates seem to be the friendliest with each other

Carlin, Erin, and Tori Bates all appear to maintain a loving relationship. They are the siblings that seem to go out of their way to foster adult friendships with one another. Erin and Carlin, in particular, seem to rely on each other. When Carlin found herself in the hospital shortly after the birth of her daughter, Erin was the sibling she called to come to help her. She and Erin also work together on the family business.

Fans also point out that Gil and Kelly Jo appear to group Carlin, Erin, and Tori together when speaking about their children. One Reddit fan notes that Gil once suggested Josie Bates was far different from the three sisters, in terms of personality. Family followers surmise that Josie and Alyssa share similar personality traits. Alyssa has been outspoken about not enjoying large crowds of people. Family followers believe Josie is the same, and because of her personality, she failed to fit in with Carlin, Erin, and Tori. It, however, is hard to say just how close Alysssa and Josie are. Their relationship is not as heavily featured on the familys show, Bringing Up Bates.

Fans notice that Alyssa and Erin seem cold toward one another

While several of the Bates sisters appear to enjoy a close relationship, there are a few family connections that dont look particularly strong. Fans have noticed that Alyssa and Erin, who are just four years apart in age, dont appear to be particularly connected, and geography may not be the reason why.

Fans strongly believe that Alyssa may harbor some resentment towards Erin. A Reddit user points out that Alyssa, along with her older sister, Michael, were often tasked with childcare and cooking, while Erin was given more freedom to practice her music. If Erin was given a bit of a free pass when it came to family responsibilities, it would make sense that some resentment could form. Although the sisters have never outwardly stated that they have an issue with one another, they dont appear to be particularly friendly.

Alyssa and Erin also dont seem to have a ton in common, at least when it comes to how they operate as adults. Erin, who married Chad Paine in 2013, appears to be sticking closely to the strict belief system she was raised in, although she recently denounced the IBLP. Alyssa, on the other hand, seems to skew more progressive, at least in her fashion choices and family planning. Alyssa married John Webster in 2014 and promptly moved to Florida.

Do the Bates kids form cliques?

Whenever a large group congregates, smaller subgroups will form. Thats generally not how it works in most families, but, then again, most familys are not comprised of 19 siblings. With so many people growing up together, it would make sense that some of the kids would get along better than others. Different personalities play off each other in different ways. As the Bates kids age up and move on with their lives, it would make sense that they would foster closer relationships with siblings they have more in common with, while allowing others to fall to the wayside.

Of the Bates kids that are still living at home, it would appear as though Trace and Lawson Bates are particularly close. Trace is featured heavily on Lawsons Instagram page, suggesting the two are together often. The same dynamic can be observed inside the Duggar family. For example, Joseph and John David Duggar have always seemed close because of their shared interests, while Josiah Duggar often appeared to be left on his own. Jessa and Jinger have maintained a deep connection despite geographical distance, while Jill Duggar appears to connect with her cousin more than her siblings.
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 18:02 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d6318 1 Business pandemic-bonds,finance-ministry,Sri-Mulyani-Indrawati,COVID-19,state-budget,government-bond,bank-indonesia Free

The Finance Ministry has decided to cancel its plan to issue pandemic bonds, which were initially prepared as a part of the countrys efforts to fund the COVID-19 response.

The Finance Ministrys financing and risk management director general, Luky Alfirman, said on Friday that the government would now rather issue debt papers through regular auctions, adding that it could rely on Bank Indonesia (BI) as a last resort to absorb the offered bonds if the market response was cool.

Regulation in Lieu of Law No. 1/2020 allows the central bank to purchase government bonds directly from auctions. Previously, BI could only buy the bonds through the secondary market.

We will not issue specific bonds, including the pandemic bonds or others, Luky told reporters in a media briefing. BI has been allowed to buy bonds through the primary market as a last resort, so we will issue bonds with a regular series instead.

Read also: Explainer: Indonesia to finance coronavirus battle mostly through debt

The government planned in early April to raise Rp 450 trillion (US$30.05 billion) in pandemic bonds on top of issuing Rp 549.6 trillion worth of sovereign debt papers, according to Presidential Regulation No. 54/2020 on the state budget revision. BI was likely to dominate the bonds' purchases.

However, in a new strategy unveiled on Friday, it would instead issue Rp 856.8 trillion worth of government bonds from the second quarter through to the end of year to finance the widening budget deficit, which is expected to reach 5 percent of GDP this year. The Finance Ministry raised Rp 221.4 trillion worth of bonds in the first quarter of this year.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the government would raise the funds through regular auctions in the domestic market, private placements and foreign-exchange-denominated bonds and retail bonds issuances.

We need to upsize the bonds issuance to finance the deficit, Sri Mulyani told the House of Representatives Commission XI overseeing financial affairs on Wednesday. We will prioritize credibility and transparency to maintain a good track record in order to capitalize on the market when the opportunity arises.

Read also: Government debt issuance to triple to $62b as Indonesia fights COVID-19

The government is hoping to raise Rp 132 trillion from the global bonds, Rp 60 trillion from retail bonds and the remainder from weekly auctions of government debt papers and sharia bonds.

The government needed to raise at least Rp 35 trillion to Rp 45 trillion every two weeks to meet the financing needs, Luky said.

The government recently unveiled Rp 436.1 trillion worth of stimulus packages to boost healthcare spending, social spending and tax incentives amid the pandemic.
Radhakishan Damani is the only billionaire to see his wealth grow by around 20% during the lockdown.

Sachin P Mampatta and Viveat Susan Pinto on the rise and rise of DMart's reclusive billionaire.

IMAGE: People wait their turn outside a DMart supermarket in Kandivali, north west Mumbai. Photograph: ANI

A little-known story about Radhakishan S Damani, ace investor, retail magnate and India's second richest man (according to Forbes), is of his transition from early entrepreneurship to the stock market.

Educated in Mumbai, where his father worked on Dalal Street, he dropped out of college after studying commerce for a year.

A ball bearings business then engaged his attention; he didn't want to be involved in the stock market at the time.

An uncle, whom he looked up to, is said to have convinced him to make the transition after his father's death.

He asked Damani to name the most successful person in the ball bearings business.

Then he asked him how much that person might be worth.

And then asked how it compared with the biggest names on Dalal Street.

Damani got the message: If he truly wanted to create wealth, he needed to get out of the small pond, even if he was its biggest fish.

In the financial year 2016-2017, around the time of its initial public offer (IPO), Damani's Avenue Supermarts, which owns the hypermarket chain DMart, had a revenue of Rs 11,926 crore.

During the same period, the Indian bearings market was estimated at Rs 9,500 crore, according to rating agency Icra.

In his mid-sixties, Damani today has a net worth of over $15 billion, or over Rs 1 trillion.

IMAGE: Radhakishan S Damani, ace investor and retail magnate. Photograph: Kind courtesy DMart/Facebook.com

The journey began with him starting to trade in the stock market and learning how to spot good business opportunities.

One of his big successes was HDFC Bank.

The bet was based on a simple premise: The private sector in banking was going to eat the public sector for lunch.

He is said to have held a large position even before the bank hit a market capitalisation of Rs 1,000 crore.

The company is now worth over Rs 5 trillion even after COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the stock market.

Many investors have a team of analysts tracking various sectors.

Damani is said to largely rely on his own acumen.

He was a legend in the years that he was active in the stock market.

People saw him as a rare combination of a quick and nimble trader who could also make long-term investments.

There are many theories about why he decided to shift his focus away from the stock market.

Some say he realised that his success as a speculator was "not a scalable model".

He may have come out ahead, but his next generation might not be so lucky.

So he decided that he needed a better way to create wealth and leave a legacy.

"His information network gave him a fair idea of what exactly was happening in the market and who was doing what. Online trading and HFT (high frequency trading), I think, killed the ground-level information flows," says Deena Mehta, former president of the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"This could have prompted him to diversify," adds Mehta, now group managing director at the Asit C Mehta group of companies.

Photograph: Ashish Narsale/ Rediff.com IMAGE: DMart Ready, an online channel of DMart, where consumers can pick up their products after booking them online through the DMart mobile app.

Multiple conversations reveal another possible reason.

He was due to start an insurance venture with a foreign firm which he helped bring to India.

However, there was regulatory discomfort over him as partner.

Some of it may be due to his now legendary battle with Harshad Mehta, whose bullish bets with money sourced from the banking system resulted in a multiple-agency probe and a Parliamentary committee investigation into wrongdoing in the stock market.

Damani's approach, in contrast, was bearish, though this wasn't the case to begin with.

In the 1990s, as India began opening its economy, he was also betting on the rise of companies like Associated Cement Companies -- just like Harshad Mehta.

He exited ACC with a tidy profit when the price reached Rs 3,000 per share, says a person known to him.

It then more than tripled to touch around Rs 10,000 even as Damani began and continued to short what he saw as an overpriced stock.

Losses mounted for Damani as ACC and other stocks continued to climb.

But eventually they cracked and Damani came out on top.

This success might, however, have come at a price.

Some suggest that one possible reason the joint venture failed to take off was because of the reluctance of those in power to let a person seen as a speculator enter a business as sensitive as insurance.

To be sure, there does seem evidence of some scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Board of India around the time Damani made his transition to entrepreneurship through retail.

'Sebi's investigations have brought out the indulgence of this group in concerted selling of shares at the stock exchanges leading to fall in the share prices and consequently the index and interfering with fair and smooth functioning of the market,' stated a December 2002 Parliamentary report of the Joint Committee on Stock Market Scam and Matters Relating Thereto, which looked into the Ketan Parekh scam.

'Enquiry proceedings have reportedly been initiated by Sebi against Shri R S Damani and the associated entities of the group ie Damani Shares & Stock Brokers Pvt Ltd, Maheshwari Equity Brokers Pvt Ltd and Avenue Shares and Stock Brokers Pvt Ltd,' the Parliamentary report added.

While there is some evidence of real estate investments too, Damani is said to have been especially enamoured of the retail business after reading about Walmart.

Once he decided to focus on retail, he jumped into it with gusto, but tried to follow certain principles.

He made sure that vendors were paid in a week or so, compared to the three months that was the norm.

He also took responsibility of consignments once accepted.

Vendors did not have to deal with goods being rejected after delivery.

This seems consistent with what others have said about his need to be "more than fair" as a means of motivating people.

His decision to own rather than rent for DMart has helped him keep rentals under control and tied in with the desire to create something of enduring value rather than a short-term play.

He wanted the DMart stores to be permanent neighbourhood landmarks, says a close associate.

He is said to love playing the merchant, sometimes going with his team to China to personally choose what he thought his customers at DMart would like to buy.

Unlike other rich businessmen, he didn't necessarily delegate everything, often working as hard as, or harder than, many juniors in his team.

On one occasion he even shared a room with his purchasing manager and some from his team at a budget hotel in China -- after the IPO had publicly declared him a billionaire.

The idea: To inculcate the importance of cost saving among his workers.

Now known as the country's most efficient and profitable retailer, DMart has taken a few hard knocks during the ongoing lockdown.

Half its stores have shut and customer visits have plunged sharply.

Home deliveries and 24/7 initiatives are only partially offsetting sales, as the company admitted in a recent business update to the stock exchanges.

Yet, Damani is the only billionaire to see his wealth reportedly grow by around 20 per cent amid the disruption.

Photograph: Ashish Narsale/ Rediff.com IMAGE: DMart Ready now serves essentials like rice, flour, oil, soap etc other than serving online booked orders.

Damani's retail journey began in the late 1990s when he picked up an Apna Bazaar franchise, a cooperative department store, in Navi Mumbai.

Retail industry sources say that in many respects the DMart model is a sophisticated version of Apna Bazaar, with value retail at its core.

Typically, Apna Bazaar would offer food, general merchandise, apparel and footwear at a reasonable price under one roof.

DMart, which opened its first store in 2002 in Mumbai's Powai and now has a presence in 214 locations in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, has retained that flavour, providing everything that a middle-income home would need.

For this, DMart's backend team negotiates hard with manufacturers for discounts and ensures that only the fastest-selling items are on the shelves.

It also meticulously utilises space within stores and ensures that checkouts are quick at cash counters.

As a result, DMart's sales per square foot have been among the highest in the industry.

"It is a very tight ship that they run," says an executive from a prominent biscuit company.

"For instance, I get paid the day I supply my stock to the DMart stores.

This gives us suppliers the confidence to continue doing business with them, even if they push us to offer sharp discounts.

Sales volumes matter at the end of the day."

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/ Rediff.com IMAGE: The reclusive Radhakishan S Damani.

Multiple retailers and manufacturers say Damani has been responsible for putting this well-oiled system in place, which focuses on select stock-keeping units, quick inventory turns and equally quick payment to suppliers and vendors.

"This is the DNA Damani introduced -- taking forward what he started at Apna Bazaar, where he would keep a close watch on the inventory that would keep moving on shop shelves," says a retail industry leader.

While there are stories of him growing up in a single room, his residences have since changed drastically.

An apartment in Mumbai's upscale Altamount Road, which was listed as his address on his IPO filings, has a view from the 30th floor.

Famously reclusive, Damani did not respond to an interview request for this article.

Damani doesn't like to wear his wealth on his sleeve or carry its weight on his shoulders.

"He's working very hard (to remain the same person)," says someone who has known him for around three decades.

He remembers the early days when Damani and his friends, including big bull Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, would wander around dropping in on various people in the business after market hours, picking up useful information.

A multi-billionaire who is often described as India's Warren Buffett, Jhunjhunwala considers Damani his investment guru.

Many of Damani's best investments are said to have been the outcome of great insight rather than the minutiae found in financial statements.

He likes businesses that he feels will always be in demand: Cement (his family owns a significant stake in India Cements); personal care (he has a stake in Gillette India); food (Nestle; India); cigarettes (VST Industries).

Those who know him agree that his success as a retailer has its roots in the way he built his success as an investor.

Stock market veteran and dealmaker Vallabh Bhanshali of Enam Holdings remembers how Damani would stand at the corner of Dalal Street, talking to everyone.

It didn't matter if the person was a large player or someone who owned just a hundred shares.

He would talk to them in exactly the same manner, openly and honestly.

"He would never try to mislead anybody," Bhanshali says.

Many contacted for this article preferred not to talk about him at all, including some senior fund managers.

Many others who spoke, but requested not to be named, emphasised his humility and generosity.

There are reports of him having distributed hundreds of crores worth of equity among friends and family.

Hypothetically, how would such a person react to someone who looks to take advantage of such generosity?

A person who has watched him at close quarters says something that brings to mind a quote from The Talented Mr Ripley: "It's like the sun shines on you, and it's glorious.

And then he forgets you and it's very, very cold."

"He won't deal with you a second time."
Two persons, including a two-year-old girl, tested positive for novel coronavirus in Himachal Pradesh's Chamba district on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 49, officials said.

Chamba Deputy Commissioner Vivek Bhatia told PTI that the daughter of a driver, who had tested COVID-19 positive on Wednesday, tested positive on Friday.

The DC said she will be admitted to Tanda's Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC) in Kangra for treatment.

The driver from Khad Jota panchayat in Salooni subdivision, had recent travel history to Baddi in Solan district. Samples of all his contacts except that of his daughter tested negative, the DC added.

Earlier in the day, a 42-year-old man tested positive for the coronavirus in Hamirpur district, an official said.

The man from Bijhari town in Bijhri tehsil had returned to Hamirpur from Delhi on April 29, Deputy Commissioner Hairkesh Meena said.

Hamirpur had become coronavirus-free on April 29 after the last two patients in the district tested negative for the infection.

Himachal Pradesh has now eight active cases with three in Chamba, one each in Hamirpur, Mandi, Shimla, Sirmaur and Kangra districts, according to officials.

While 34 people have recovered from the infection, three have died. Four people were shifted to other states for treatment.

The fatalities include a 70-year-old Delhi resident who stayed at a guest house of a factory in Baddi in Solan and died at PGIMER, Chandigarh on April 2.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
HONG KONG, May 8, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - Bixin Global, one of China's largest cryptocurrency custody and mining operators, has launched a proprietary Fund of Funds amounting to 6600 BTC, or approximately USD 66 million. This announcement comes alongside the anticipated BTC Halving, as different stakeholders make various preparations for its arrival. The 6600 BTC fund seeks to empower global crypto quant funds by providing additional resources for liquidity providers and market making activities.Bixin's Fund of Funds is BTC dominated with the main goal of increasing BTC holdings by investing in global quant funds. The strategies that the quant funds can utilize will be based on arbitrage, CTA and trend analysis. Bixin Global also welcomes exploring mutually beneficial partnerships with other firms on mining management, cloud mining and mining fund sectors.Bixin Global has an unwavering commitment to Bitcoin and provides robust financial services for the cryptocurrency industry such as OTC lending, exchange and escrow services. Bixin Global has had a major impact in growing the BTC industry to what it is today as they were early investors of leading cryptocurrency companies such as Whatsminers. Bixin Global was founded by veteran mining expert, Wu Gang, who began mining BTC during its infancy at the beginning of 2009.Bixin Mining currently operates bitcoin mining facilities of about 300 megawatt-hour, roughly 3,000 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power that accounts for 2.5% of the Bitcoin network's total. This has been achieved under the leadership of Liu Fei. A seasoned veteran in the world of digital currency, Liu Fei cut his teeth at Huobi in 2016 where he served as Senior Operational Officer. During this time, he was in charge of building systematic approaches for market creation and liquidity management, and became connected with experienced miners. The company itself is a big operation with many moving parts that operates like a close-knit family business, and with its team of experienced professionals including former Director of Global Business Development at Huobi and Venture Partner at Amber Group, Mustafa Yilham, Bixin Global is poised to make a significant impact in the crypto landscape.As one of the largest mining operators and cryptocurrency custody solutions in China boasting an extensive user base, Bixin Global is committed to actively growing the cryptocurrency industry by reinvesting back into quant funds globally. Spearheaded by Bixin Finance COO and Bixin Mining CEO, Liu Fei, he has led the company towards growth through the blending of different strategies and asset classes to deliver a more consistent return while minimizing risk during volatile times, with the end goal of accruing more Bitcoin. The fund has been primarily operated in house without outside investment and does not have plans for fundraising to date. Bixin Global also is steadily growing to become one of the largest prop cryptocurrency trading desks in Asia.For further information on the 6600 BTC fund of Bixin Global and its development, please contact mustafa@bixin.com.ABOUT Bixin GlobalBixin Global Co. Ltd. is one of the most influential blockchain companies in Asia. With its business covering both upstream, cryptocurrency mining, and downstream, bitcoin wallet, in the blockchain industry, the company has steadily diversified its service offerings as well as overall market capabilities over the past six years.Bixin Global services are operated through Bixin.com, Bixin Capital, Bishin Cloud, Bixin CryptoLending, Bixin Financial Services, Bixin Investment, BixinIM, Bixin Mining and Bixin Software. For more information, please visit the official website at https://bixin.im.Media ContactMustafa YilhamHead of Business Developmentmustafa@bixin.comSource: Bixin GlobalCopyright 2020 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Ranchi, May 8 : The Jharkhand government on Friday banned 11 brands of Pan Masala for one year.

A state government notification issued by health secretary Nitin Kulkarni said "41 samples of pan masalas of different brands including Rajni Gandha, Raj Niwas, Dilruba and others were collected from different districts for test and analysis during 2019-20. All samples were found containing magnesium carbonate as ingredient. It is found that as per scientific research consumption of pan masala for years leads to acute hyper magnesia and sometimes leads to cardiac arrest. Magnesium carbonate is violation of Food Safety and Standards acts".

The sale, hoarding, and stocks are banned for a period of one year. The products include Pan Bahar, Shikhar, Pan Parag and others.

"Jharkhand government has taken a courageous step to ban Pan Masala. As per GATS 2 survey 38.9 per cent people of Jharkhand use tobacco products which is higher than national average. The ban will bring down the tobacco users in the state," said Deepak Mishra, a government official.
With the current Covid-19 crisis forcing everyone to be locked inside homes, it has halted almost every industry from aviation to hospitality and education. The degree of impact caused by the virus is enormous given that most of the worlds economies are facing recession with the fear of depression coming the way, leading to economic chaos and imbalance. One of the promising solutions to continue with most businesses and industries activities and pursue cash flows is the implementation of digital tools and platforms.

Education is one of those sectors hardly hit by the virus as schools are closed and learning is somehow disturbed. More than 1.2 billion children are out of the classrooms. With the uncertainty around the current situation, many institutions are practicing e-learning, which is simply a method of learning using online video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and different social media platforms. Companies like BYJUS are seeing a significant jump in the number of students using their products. Even before the crisis, the investment in education technology reached $19 billion approximately in 2019 and is poised to reach $350 billion by 2025, highlighting the rising market for online education.

The lockdown that started on March 24, now extended until May 18, has caused schools, colleges, and universities to remain closed and students are out of classrooms. A few schools have started online education to continue with their academic calendar, but the adaptability remains questionable. So, how does the future of e-learning hold for Nepal?

In Nepal, e-learning is still in its infancy with different sorts of challenges still there, posing threats to effective learning. Some schools and colleges have even started with online education in partnership with the parents and educational boards. But the question remains: whether the methods will be effective. Before issuing any order or instruction to pursue e-learning, there are a few questions that the government, concerned authorities, and organisations need to address:

How many students and teachers do actually have access to electricity and internet services?

How many people have knowledge and literacy required to operate the digital platforms?

Are there adequate training and capacity building programmes launched for teachers and students?

Is there any proper evaluation and assessment of the people facilitated with sound electricity and internet services and those who are not?

Before the adoption of e-learning, infrastructural development is the most critical step in the context of Nepal. There should be a clear mapping of students and teachers accessibility to those services. The government must focus on building capabilities including stable internet services, electricity, and access to devices including smartphones and laptops to different users. A survey by an internet service provider recently reveals that just 17% of its total users have access to fixed broadband and most people rely on mobile data, which makes online education extremely expensive and inaccessible in the current context. Partnering with the best technology partners inside and outside the country for infrastructural development appears to be one of the major elements in the roadmap to digital education.

Academic institutions need to study, analyse, and plan thoroughly to introduce online education models. Strict rules, and guidelines and proper training should be prepared and coordinated to monitor, standardise, and streamline the utilisation of online learning platforms.

But, for want of all these, it seems the traditional chalk-duster learning method will continue to remain important and dominate the Nepali education market for the next many years. The possibility of e-learning looks a long road ahead in the context of Nepal and the full-phase adaptation of technology for education will take at least another decade, that too only if the government continuously supports the investment and development of infrastructures required.

Lamichhane is a graduate from Kathmandu University School of Management, currently working as a research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 21:02:29|Editor: huaxia

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KUWAIT CITY, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait on Friday reported 641 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths, bringing the total infections in the country to 7,208 and the death toll to 47, the health ministry said in a statement.

The new cases included three Kuwaiti citizens who returned from Britain, the statement said.

Currently, 4,695 patients are receiving treatment, including 91 in ICU, according to the statement.

In addition, the ministry announced the recovery of 85 patients from the coronavirus, raising the total number of recoveries in the country to 2,466.

The Kuwaiti government has imposed a nationwide curfew to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

On March 13, Kuwait suspended all commercial flights. The government also closed stores, malls and barbershops in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Enditem
Businesses located hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest coronavirus case are pleading with the state government to end lockdown restrictions sooner in a tiered approach that allows virus-free towns and regions to resume normal life.

Victorian government data shows only a handful of active COVID-19 cases have been detected outside of Melbourne's metropolitan area.

Claire and Damian Kelly, owners of Meredith's Royal Hotel, say the town has unduly suffered under coronavirus restrictions. Credit:Eddie Jim

Regional businesses, many already reeling from a disrupted summer and Easter period, say they are being disproportionately affected by Victoria's tight restrictions.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed Australias three-step re-opening road map on Friday.

Stage one includes allowing retail stores, restaurants and cafes to open with up to 10 customers, and for travel within states. However, pubs and licensed venues, cinemas, museums, galleries and gaming venues would have to wait until stage two, expected in June.

With states to implement the road map at their behest, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said he would announce Victorias changes on Monday.

Read more here.
Seven deaths and 117 fresh positive Covid-19 (coronavirus) cases caused due to Sars-Cov-2 virus were reported in Pune city on Thursday.

The death count in the city is now 125 and there are 2,146 active positive cases in the city, according to officials.

Meanwhile, 84 Covid-19 patients recovered and were discharged from city hospitals, said officials.

All the deaths which were reported on Thursday were of people above 60 years of age and admitted at different hospitals across the city. The oldest one was a 75-year-old male from Yerawada who was admitted at Kashibai Navale Hospital on May 1. He had pneumonia and died on Thursday at 10.20am.

Three patients from KEM hospital included a 65-year-old male and 66-year-old female both from Bhawani peth area. The male had pneumonia, while the female patient had an acute renal failure due to which she died.

Other three deceased patients included a 72-year-old male from Sassoon Hospital and a 60-year-old male from Sahyadri Hospital, Deccan, both from Ganj peth area. The third patient was admitted at Noble Hospital (pls check) and was from Lullanagar.

Deepak Mhaisekar, Pune divisional commissioner said, Till date, a total of 680 positive patients have been cured and sent back home in Pune district. We are providing all necessary help to hospitals for the treatment of patients.
As of May 8 morning, 233 out of the 288 patients in Vietnam have recovered. (Photo: VNA)

The announcement from the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control came the day after 17 passengers returning to Vietnam on a flight from overseas tested positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

The total number of people in Vietnam who have been infected remains at 288 with zero fatalities.

All of the new patients reported on May 7 evening are Vietnamese nationals returning from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on a Vietnam Airlines flight. They include a new born baby.

All 17 are being treated and in stable conditions at the General Hospital in southern Bac Lieu province.

There were 297 people on board the flight which landed at the Can Tho International Airport on May 3.

All the passengers along with cabin crew were immediately taken in quarantine after landing.

As of May 8 morning, 233 out of a total of 288 patients in Vietnam have recovered.

The remainders have been treated at health establishments nationwide, of whom 14 tested negative for the virus once and seven tested negative twice or more.
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Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 17:50 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d58c2 1 Business AIIB,loan,Indonesia,COVID-19,response Free

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a China-backed multilateral development bank, is poised to allocate a total of US$1 billion in loans to help Indonesia in its COVID-19 response, according to the bank vice president.

The first disbursement of the loan will amount to $250 million, as part of the cofinancing program with the World Bank and Islamic Development Bank to provide a total of $750 million in loans.

The AIIB is also planning to offer another $750 million in loans for Indonesia to fund its economic relief and social safety net programs, as part of the cofinancing program with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is committed to providing $1.5 billion for the country.

Indonesia, which saw confirmed cases of COVID-19 surge to over 13,000 on Friday, requested the loan to finance its efforts to strengthen hospital readiness, pandemic preparedness and testing capacity.

I hope that after COVID-19 is over, the economy will bounce back in most emerging countries, AIIB vice president DJ Pandian told The Jakarta Post in a phone interview.

The AIIB expects the Indonesian economy to grow by less than 1 percent this year before recovering in 2021, compared with its initial projection of 6 percent annual growth for Southeast Asias largest economy.

The Indonesian government has allocated Rp 405 trillion ($27 billion) for its COVID-19 relief, of which the majority is intended as economic stimulus measures, and the rest for social safety net and health care.

We expect next year it [the economy] will bounce back because of the proactive steps taken by the government of Indonesia to intervene to help the vulnerable groups and to inject liquidity into the market, said Pandian.

The government is looking to borrow a total of $7 billion from multilateral organizations including the ADB, AIIB, World Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency, said Finance Ministry Financing and Risk Management Director General Luky Alfirman.

We are currently working out the details and we hope that we can get it by May or June, Luky told reporters in a media briefing on Friday. We will use the funds for budget financing.

Adrian Wail Akhlas contributed to this story
In order to have a decentralised database, you need to have security. In order to have security, you need to have incentives.

Vitalik Buterin

During the colonial era, various estimates were made about the Nigerian Population status. It was not untill 1952-1953 that an attempt was made to sort, classify and present a Nationally accepted figure. This attempt yielded a total population figure of 31.6 million, within the current boundary of the country.

Although, this account had various alleged deficiencies like, apprehension that this census was too tax related, political tension in the Eastern region at the time was considered a minus, logistical difficulties in reaching certain parts of the country. Subsequent efforts were made in 1962, but this was not successful due to various controversies like over counting. In 1963 attempt totalled at 55.6 million, by 1991 the Nigerian Population Commission started arrangement for a census but results were announced in March 1992. In 2006 another census conducted announced 140 million. And till date various bodies have been proposing different figures as to the actual number of people living in the country. The state of NIGERIA'S lack of accurate date is alarming, in a technologically driven world like ours, data collection has been made way more easier. Plans for recent census have been stalled because of funding problems, alleged malpractice and undue influence.

International bodies have been left to spoon feed us with data. It seems to be an African problem has many statistical agencies in Africa are underfunded, marred by the cumbersomness and cost of data acquisition, deflected political will, and lack of transparency. Some, are of the opinion that data will uncover a lot of hidden truths, like increase or decrease in sharing formula, since revenue allocation has a lot to do with data in Nigeria, and may not be in the best interest of selfish politicians who seem to form the majority in the Nigerian state.

DUPLICITY OF INFORMATION

Nigeria is faced with a lot of interagency friction, most government agencies rendering the same services do not synergize to compile data in its truest forms. People keep registering the same information in different places, while there's no coalition of this efforts. With the persistent security and economic problems facing the Country, there have never been a better time to present credible data. I propose a Central National residency database, should be created to to solving identity challenge, with a perfectly define border line, corruption index, poverty and leadership records. Population experts should be consulted on how best to solve our complex and dynamic database issues.

An integration of the already existing data, like Birth Certificate, Certificate of Origin, FSLC, WAEC, NECO, Network service providers, Various professional bodies, Various Unions, Pension commission, INEC, Banks etc. If this bodies gather to collate, sort and sieve data, coordinate by a National Statistical Agency, we will for once be presented by a new accepted data, without sentiments or political undertones.

Ubong Usoro writes for www.thenigerianvoice.com

He lives in Uyo.

[email protected]


By IANS

CHENNAI: Union Minister for Health and Family Affairs Harsh Vardhan on Friday held a Covid-19 review meeting with Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar via videoconference.

Vardhan said such meetings were held with health ministers of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and also West Bengal as part of his strategy to have quality discussion with them on combating coronavirus.

He said West Bengal was represented by senior officials from the Health Department while in other states their Health Ministers were present for the virtual meeting.

ALSO READ: 580 test positive in Tamil Nadu

Vardhan gave a macro view of the national Covid-19 situation to Vijayabaskar and Health Secretary Beela Rajesh, stating there were total 56,342 corona cases in the country, of which 1,886 patients had died.

He said the fatality rate is roughly 3.3 per cent.

A total of 16,540 Covid-19 patients were cured and discharged from hospitals across the country.

As many as 821 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals were set up in India, with over 1.50 lakh beds in intensive care units (ICU) and isolation wards.

Vardhan also said there are 1,898 Covid-19 health centres with about 1.19 lakh beds and 7,608 quarantine centres across the country.

Vardhan said a total of 14.40 lakh persons have been tested for coronavirus infection. The coronavirus test labs in the country were 453 (332 government and 121 private).

According to him, at an average about 95,000 samples are tested per day across the nation.

The Union Minister said that Vijayabaskar and Rajesh would appreciate the fact as they themselves are qualified doctors.

Pointing out to Tamil Nadu's Covid-19 numbers, Vardhan said the state has 5,409 cases spread over 37 districts.

He expressed his happiness that Tamil Nadu has 52 labs for testing samples from susptected patients.

Vardhan said the state has 29,395 Covid-19 beds and 2,209 ICU beds.
Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity company, observed the growth of the lifespan of phishing attacks in the second half of 2019.

This trend, revealed by Group-IBs Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GIB), resulted in the tremendous increase in the number of phishing websites blockages over the given period  it rose by over 230 percent year-on-year. In 2019 in general, web phishers slightly changed their preferences: email service providers gave way to cloud storages in the Top 3 of phishers targets, which comes as no surprise given the fact that they keep record of literally every aspect of personal and sometimes corporate lives, holding gigabytes of sensitive data. Online services and financial organizations fill the other two spots in the top and seem to stay among the most frequent victims for long.

Diligent phishers

In H2 2019, as part of its work to detect and prevents threats distributing online, Group-IBs Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GIB) blocked a total of 8, 506 phishing web resources, while in H2 2018, the figure stood at 2,567.This sharp upsurge in the number of blockages stems from the growing duration of phishing attacks: cybercriminals used to stop their fraudulent campaign as soon as their web pages were blocked, quickly mobilizing efforts for attacks on other brands. Today, they no longer dwell on it and continue replacing removed pages with new ones. One more trend that derives from that is the rising number of resources accumulated for a single attack.

Target reshuffle

Figure 1 The distribution of web-phishing among target categories

According to the figures for the past year, the Top-3 of web phishers targets were online services (namely client software, online streaming services, e-commerce, delivery services and etc.) (29,3%), cloud storages (25,4%), and financial organizations (17,6%). It should be noted that some of the tech companies provide a wide range of Internet-related services and some of them, like cloud storages and email services, form separate categories. CERT-GIBs findings indicate that phishing attack perpetrators have revised their so-called target pool. Thus, the number of phishing attacks on cloud storages nearly doubled last year, while Internet providers have seen the three-fold increase in the number of phishing scams targeting them. Both access to users cloud storages and accounts with internet service provider enables the attackers to get much sensitive information like personal and payment data.This was accompanied by a lower interest to email service providers  the share of attacks on them decreased from 19,9 percent to 5,9 percent  and cryptocurrency projects, which became less attractive to cybercriminals as hype surrounding them started fading away.

Balance of power

Figure 2 The map of major web phishing-hosting countries

The pedestal of web phishing-hosting countries, according to CERT-GIBs, had its leader changed last year: the United States (27%), which was an irremovable leader in terms of hosting phishing for the past several years, yielded to Russia (34%), taking the second position, while Panama, well behind its two predecessors, remained third (8%) just as the year earlier.Other countries hosting the majority of phishing pages in 2019 were Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, Malaysia, and France.

Malware delivery: whats on the menu?

H2 2019 has proved the tendency of past several years: mail remains the main method of delivering ransomware, spyware, backdoors and other malware, being used by cyber crooks in 94 percent of cases. In the majority of cases  98 percent  malicious items were delivered as attachments, while only 2 percent of phishing emails contained links, by clicking which a user could download malware. To compare, according to CERT-GIB, in H1 2019, 23 percent of phishing emails had a link in them, which might mean that malicious attachments proved to have a greater ROI for scammers.To bypass corporate security systems in H2 2019, cybercriminals continued to archive their malicious attachments. About 70% of all malicious objects, detected by CERT-GIB, were delivered in archive files, mainly in .rar (29%) and .zip (16%) formats. Threat actors included the passwords for accessing the archives contents in the subject of the email, the name of the archive, or in their subsequent correspondence with the victim.

Figure 3 Top-10 threats hiding in phishing emails in H2 2019 and extension of attached malicious files



In the second half of 2019, ransomware remained the most frequent stuffing of phishing emails, accounting for 47 percent of the total number of malicious attachments. Banking Trojans, as Group-IB forecasted in its Hi-Tech Crime Trends Report 2019/2020, continued losing its popularity and represented only 9 percent of malicious attachments. They, in turn, let spyware and backdoors move ahead and become the second most popular malware with a 35-percent share. The reason behind it might be the expanding functionality of backdoors, which also enables them to steal financial data and replace instruments designed for harvesting banking data only, like banking Trojans. Top-10 tools used in attacks tracked by CERT-GIB in the second half of 2019 were ransomware Troldesh (55%), which Group-IB has been tracking for several years already; backdoors Pony (11%), Formbook (5%), Nanocore (4%) and Netwire (1%); banking Trojans RTM (6%) and Emotet (5%); and spyware AgentTesla (3%), Hawkeye (2%), and Azorult (1%). AgentTesla, Netwire, and Azorult for the first time appeared among attackers preferred instruments.

In the second half of 2019, we saw the prolongation of phishing attacks  attackers changed approach toward the conduct of their campaigns, choosing quantity over quality, comments CERT-GIB deputy head Yaroslav Kargalev. Cloud storages and online services are due to remain among phishers main targets due to the large amount of personal information that is stored in them, cybercriminals are likely to use the access to them to first download data from cloud storages and then blackmail their victims to increase the chances of receiving a ransom.

About CERT-GIB CERT-GIB, opened in 2011, became the first certified private emergency response services in Eastern Europe and currently is one of the largest ones in the region. CERT-GIB is a round-the-clock first technical emergency aid tasked with helping to contain the threat and bring trusted incident responders, forensic analysts, and investigation experts on the scene, if needed, to eliminate costly delays. As part of CERT-GIB, a Security Operation Center (SOC) has been set up, with its employees monitoring cybersecurity incidents in international companies using various cybersecurity systems and solutions, including the system for the detection of targeted attacks at an early stage, Threat Detection System, and the system that monitors, analyzes and predicts cyberthreats  Threat Intelligence. The experts of CERT-GIB ensure the round-the-clock support for incident response and can send a mobile unit to the incident site to control the relevant procedures and gather digital evidence. CERT-GIB is also authorized to block malware distribution websites, as well as phishing and fraudulent websites in over 2,500 domain zones.CERT-GIB is an accredited member of the Trusted Introducer (Association of European Security and Incident Response Teams) and a member of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC-CERT).

About Group-IB Group-IB is a Singapore-based provider of solutions aimed at detection and prevention of cyberattacks, online fraud, IP protection and high-profile cyber investigations. Group-IBs Threat Intelligence system has been named one of the best in class by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. Group-IBs technological leadership is built on the companys 17 years of hands-on experience in cybercrime investigations around the world and 60 000 hours of cyber security incident response accumulated in one of biggest forensic laboratory and a round-the-clock center providing a rapid response to cyber incidentsCERT-GIB. Group-IB is a partner of INTERPOL, Europol, and has been recommended by the OSCE as a cybersecurity solutions provider.Group-IBs experience, threat hunting & intelligence have been fused into an ecosystem of highly sophisticated software and hardware solutions designed to monitor, identify, and prevent cyber threats.Our mission is to protect clients in cyberspace using innovative products and services.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Group-IB has set up the StayCyberSafe portal with recommendations for organizing comfortable and cybersafe remote work and webinars about modern cyberthreats and the ways to confront them.

Please vote Security Affairs for European Cybersecurity Blogger Awards  VOTE FOR YOUR WINNERS

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs  phishing attacks, hacking)

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COVID-19 update: The total number of positive cases of coronavirus in India has reached 56,342 with the toll at 1886. India has registered a total of 3,390 new cases for the second day with 103 deaths in the last 24 hours as per the data shared by the Health Ministry. India has reported a total of 37,916 active cases with 16,539 people cured of the virus. Maharashtra has confirmed a total of 12,00 fresh cases for the second consecutive day with 43 deaths in the last few hours taking the tally at 17,974 with 694 deaths.

Further, Mumbai has recorded a total of 10,000 cases. Gujarat is the second state that has recorded a total of 7,012 cases by registering 388 new cases and 29 deaths in the last few hours. Further Tamil Nadu has also recorded more than 500 new cases taking the total tally to 5,409. According to global tally, a total 3.8 million cases are recorded worldwide with 269,000 deaths. United Nations has alone recorded 1.2 million cases with more than 75,000 deaths.

Recently, over 14 migrant labourers were crushed to death by a cargo train in Aurangabad, Mumbai. Reports reveal that the workers were returning from Chhattisgarh and were following the tracks to return to their hometown. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also reacted to the train accident and said that he has discussed details with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and he will personally monitor the situation. Moreover, a separate inquiry will also be conducted.

Also Read: Vande Bharat Mission: 167 stranded Indians to be evacuated from Bangladesh today

Total number of #COVID19 positive cases in India rises to 56342 including 37916 active cases, 16539 cured/discharged, 1886 deaths and 1 migrated: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare pic.twitter.com/gg3b6aNJMi  ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

In a press briefing, AIIMS Dr. Randeep Gulleria said that there are chances that COVID-19 cases peak between June and July. He added that the number of cases will increase due to more testing in the nation. He added that the government should continue to impose aggressive steps to continue the lockdown, especially in red zones.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Care Capital Corp. (CSE: HLTH, FRANKFURT: L6V1) (the Company or Global Care) a global investment company which engages in early stage investment opportunities in private and public companies, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company, ViraxClear, through its operating entity, Shanghai Biotechnology Devices Ltd. (SBD) has on May 5th, 2020, finalized supply contracts with Shenzhen Qianhai Huolilang Technology Co., Ltd. (Qianhai) for the supply of KN95 Masks (the Masks) manufactured by Promask Electronic Medical Device (Guangzhou) Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Promask) globally.

Agreement Between SBD and Qianhai

Pursuant to the SBD contract with Qianhai, SBD has agreed to purchase Masks manufactured by Promask. SBD has a non-exclusive right to distribute and sell Masks into any market it wishes, in its discretion, subject to providing written notice to Qianhai. SBD intends to primarily distribute the Masks in Europe and North America. Under the terms of this arrangement, SBD provides production orders to Qianhai, from time to time as it identifies sales opportunities and Qianhai allocates Promask KN95 Masks to support these orders under agreed purchase orders. SBD does not currently have purchase orders in hand with relation to this agreement. If the quantity of a purchase order from SBD is greater than 100,000 Masks and less than 10,000,000 Masks, SBD must give Qianhai at least seven days notice. The duration of the agreement between SBD and Qianhai is two years.

Promask KN95 Masks

The Promask KN95 Masks are CE marked, allowing for sales to the European market and are available for sale to the United States.

James Foster, ViraxClear CEO, states, This Contract provides ViraxClear with a substantial and ongoing supply of masks from a reliable source to fulfil demand in markets experiencing a shortage of PPE. This allows for the rollout of our PPE distribution platform beyond that of our main Hong Kong warehouse in order to expedite deliveries to customers in North America and Europe.

Story continues

CE Marking

CE marking is a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area ("EEA"). The CE marking is also found on products sold outside the EEA that have been manufactured to EEA standards. This makes the CE marking recognizable worldwide even to people who are not familiar with the European Economic Area (the 27 member states of the EU, the 4 members of European Free Trade Association (EFTA), plus Turkey and United Kingdom). CE marking also supports fair competition by holding all companies accountable to the same rules.

ViraxClear Sales Platform

ViraxClear has stocked its Hong Kong warehouse with an initial 10,000 IgM-IgG Combined Antibody COVID-19 Test Kits, which it has been selling to customers in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Pursuant to recent PPE supply contracts, customers will be able to order KN95 Masks, as well as the ViraxClear Test Kits.

Appointment of Doctor Tomasz George

ViraxClear has appointed Doctor Tomasz George as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr Tomasz George has a BSc from University College London and a PhD from Kings College London. He has 12 years of experience in developing digital healthcare systems focusing on diagnostics, physiological assessments, biochemistry and laboratory analysis. Tomasz has held the position of Chief Scientific Officer for London based Soza Health and Singapore based Verita Healthcare Group and has worked in scientific research at Liverpool St Johns University.

Qianhai is an arms length parties to the Company, ViraxClear and SBD.

The Company has conducted due diligence on the KN95 masks manufactured by Promask. ViraxClear provided the Company with the CE marking for the masks manufactured by Promask and James Foster, CEO of ViraxClear has inspected the masks physically in Shanghai.

The Company is not making any express or implied claims that it has the ability to treat the COVID-19 virus at this time.

The Company has also entered into agreements with the following arms-length parties: Aktien Check AG, effective May 7th, 2020, to provide digital marketing services on behalf of the Company for a term of one month and Danayi Capital Corp. effective May 7th, 2020, to provide digital marketing services on behalf of the Company for a term of one month. The agreement with Aktien Check AG provides for a one-time payment of EUR 50,000. The agreement with Danayi Capital Corp. provides for a one-time payment of US$ 50,000.

About ViraxClear

ViraxClear focuses on commercializing novel products that address significant healthcare needs with a specific target on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The companys main focus is marketing its ViraxClear Rapid IgM-IgG Combined Antibody Test. The ViraxClear Rapid IgM-IgG Combined Antibody Test for COVID-19 is a lateral flow immunoassay used to qualitatively detect both early and late marker IgG/IgM antibodies.

About Global Care

Global Care Capital is a global investment company which specializes in providing early stage financing to private and public companies. The Company engages in new, early stage investment opportunities in previously underdeveloped assets and obtaining positions in early stage investment opportunities that adequately reflect the risk profile.

GLOBAL CARE CAPITAL CORP.:

Company Contact:

Alex Somjen, President & CEO

asomjen@globalcarecapital.com

Neither the CSE nor its regulation services provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
The procurement of wheat and rice (second crop) during the ongoing Rabi season has picked up pace despite severe logistical constraints posed due to the countrywide lockdown. Against the target of 400 Lakh Metric Tonnes (LMT) of wheat, procurement for central pool has touched 216 LMT upto 06.05.20. It is particularly heartening since procurement in major wheat procuring states like Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh had started only after 15th April. Similarly paddy procurement is also going on smoothly with 44.9 LMT paddy procured so far by the government agencies.

Punjab is leading the wheat procurement with 104.28 LMT procurement followed by Haryana with 50.56 LMT and Madhya Pradesh with 48.64 LMT. Due to unseasonal rains, some of the wheat stocks in these states were affected. Government of India has already come to the rescue of farmers by relaxing specifications for procurement which has greatly aided the procurement and saved farmers from any distress. Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have also contributed to the Central Pool procurement and are picking up momentum.

Regarding paddy, maximum procurement has happened in Telangana where there has been a quantum jump in the production due to commissioning of large irrigation projects. Out of the total paddy procurement of about 45 LMT, contribution of Telangana alone is 30 LMT followed by Andhra Pradesh with about 10 LMT. This healthy pace of procurement amidst wide ranging challenges posed by the lockdown is the outcome of extensive team work between Government of India and respective State governments.

Lifting of food grains by state governments under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY) under which 5 Kg food grain is being distributed free of cost for 3 months to about 80 crore beneficiaries across the country has crossed 70 LMT, which is about 58% of the total allocation for 3 months. Every state has completed lifting of stocks against April 2020 quota and 5 Union Territories have completed lifting of entire 3 month's quota. Government of India is ensuring that availability of food grains is not a cause of concern for anyone in the country by providing sufficient food grains to every State/UT.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Oregon Health Authority now says at least 800 contact tracers will be needed statewide to investigate and contain coronavirus infections as counties begin the slow process toward reopening, with some perhaps unlikely to be ready until after June 1.

Thats according to the agencys draft plan outlining staffing needs released Thursday and shared with various county officials.

The number of tracers has been in flux in recent weeks and still falls short of the roughly 1,300 workers that experts say may be needed, based on Oregons population.

But the latest target marks an increase from the 631 that state health officials disclosed in documents released by Gov. Kate Browns office last week. (The graphic below shows how many more tracers would need to be hired -- more than 400 -- to reach the 631 goal, according to those documents.)

State officials have said reopening Oregon counties will be contingent on each having enough contact tracers, among other things. Tracers will be tasked with the time-consuming but time-tested public health detective work necessary to help limit the spread of coronavirus by finding people who might have been exposed to those with infections and monitoring them.

The earlier estimates show large counties such as Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Marion would each need dozens more tracers. The health authority has not yet revised its county-level figures although the higher statewide total suggests gaps may have grown for some locales.

The latest draft plan for contact tracing says Oregon needs at least 15 of the trained workers per 100,000 residents and will likely train 800 or more" of them statewide.

Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, said Thursday that about 250 people are currently performing tracing, up from the 70 to 80 who typically do the work.

By adding 600 more on top of that  a figure first reported last month by The Oregonian/OregonLive  Allen said said counties should have enough tracing firepower to reopen.

Between all those sources of contact tracers, yes, were confident that that number of people will allow us to meet the threshold, he said.

Some rural counties are hoping to open as soon as May 15. But the earlier numbers about tracing needs, coupled with the new draft plan, appear to throw cold water on the prospects that large counties will be ready before June.

Multnomah County, for example, was projected to need 105 more tracers based on the earlier state figures. And Marion County, which has the highest rate of infections in Oregon, needed more than three dozen.

The states draft plan suggests that regional hiring plans wont be completed until May 15. Counties could look to hire new workers beginning May 18, with training to begin June 1, according to the draft plan.

Its unclear how firm that timeline is or whether various counties could be able to staff-up before then. But if the timetable holds true it suggests some parts of the state would not be ready to reopen until next month.

The draft plan assumes at least some of the needed positions would be filled by counties issuing contracts to nonprofit community groups that have established relationships with underserved communities. State data show Hispanics have been disproportionately infected by the virus in Oregon.

Contracts with community organizations could be signed by May 18, according to the draft plan, although its not clear if counties have already began soliciting bids or if they would amend existing contracts to add tracing responsibilities.

All of this work must be conducted in a culturally responsive manner to avoid further trauma to and oppression of communities most impacted by current and historical racism and oppression; and to develop or maintain trust of communities to ensure the well-being of all people and communities in the state of Oregon, the states draft plan reads.

The Oregon Health Authority will redeploy 100 of its workers toward contact tracing in the effort to add 600 statewide, offering surge capacity as needed. Counties will devise their own plans, based on needs identified by the state, to fill the remaining 500.

Redeploying 100 state workers toward the effort could cost between $3.5 million and $6.6 million over six months, depending on whether the employees are devoted to coronavirus full time, according to estimates.

Tracers will interview people with infections to determine if they might have exposed others through close contact of 15 minutes.

Tracers would then notify the people who were exposed and advise them to stay quarantined at home for 14 days from exposure. Such individuals would be monitored for symptoms and would be tested if they developed a cough, trouble breathing or shortness of breath or two other symptoms, such as sore throat, headache, fever or muscle pains.

People who test positive would be asked to isolate at home to prevent exposing family members. Each new infection would trigger a new round of contact tracing.

State officials expressed confidence in their initial efforts to contain coronavirus before Oregons first infection was discovered Feb. 28. But the number of new cases rose steadily, each requiring laborious contact tracing, and county public health officials quickly became overwhelmed.

It remains to be seen if officials will be able to keep up in the weeks ahead. The total number of Oregonians infected through Thursday stood at nearly 3,000 out of 70,000 tested, with identified infections this week hovering around 70 a day despite unprecedented business shutdowns and prohibitions on large gatherings implemented by Brown in March.

So far, Oregon has been relatively fortunate compared to other states, recording one of the lowest infection rates nationally. Health officials have acknowledged cases may rise as more people leave their homes under relaxed restrictions, however.

Allen said that once efforts are underway, more contact tracers could be added pretty quickly beyond the 800 now in the overall blueprint.

Were also not wedded to thats absolutely the maximum number, he said, and that it might not need to go up.

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Kathmandu, May 8 : The Nepal Parliament has collected swab samples of lawmakers and its employees as a precautionary measure against COVID-19 ahead of a budget session scheduled to begin on Friday.

"Swabs of 441 lawmakers and staff including security personnel were taken on Thursday," Pushpa Raj Rijal, a senior doctor assigned at Parliament told Xinhua news agency.

"Among them, 179 lawmakers belonged to the House of Representatives, 37 are the lawmakers of the National Assembly and the rest are parliamentary staff including security personnel." Federal Parliament comprises both the House of Representatives and the National Assembly, the lower and upper houses respectively.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Nepal has increased to 101 after two new cases were confirmed on Thursday in south western Kapilvastu district, a senior official of th Ministry of Health and Population said.

Lately, Nepal has been witnessing a surge in the novel Coronavirus cases, with community transmission of virus expanding.

On Wednesday, the Himalayan country also witnessed first three cases of re-infection with the virus.

Nepal has been under a nationwide lockdown since March 24 to prevent the spread of the virus, including suspending land and air travels, closing borders for cross border movement of people, shutting down businesses and industries, except related to essential goods and services.

On Wednesday, the government extended the lockdown till May 18.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
(Natural News) Nicolas Chapuis, the European Unions envoy to China, expressed regret Thursday that Chinese state-backed media censored an op-ed co-authored by him and 26 other ambassadors. The apology came as critics branded the E.U.s consent to the change as the latest example of the bloc bowing to pressure from Beijing.

The version of the op-ed that ran on Tuesday by China Daily had removed references to the global coronavirus pandemic having its origins in China. The ambassadors submitted the piece to mark the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the E.U. and China

It is of course regrettable to see that the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited, Chapuis told reporters Thursday. However, he refused to comment on why the article had been censored.

E.U. self-censorship called out

The incident highlights growing tensions within the E.U. over what has been perceived by some countries as self-censorship in order to preserve relations with Beijing. Last month, a decision to amend an E.U. report on Chinas alleged disinformation activities after heavy diplomatic pressure from Beijing sparked a row among E.U. officials.

According to Janka Oertel, Asia program director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, the altering of the China Daily piece was gravely out of sync with the political realities  with or without the censored bits.

I understand the urge of not letting relations deteriorate further, and the wish to enlist the Chinese leadership for delivering on climate change and multilateralism, she stated. But nothing Beijing does at the moment signals that they would actually be willing to do so.

The European Commission, the E.U.s executive, stated that its embassy to Beijing made its concerns about the requested edit and the vetting of the article by the Chinese foreign ministry clear. The E.U. delegation decided nevertheless to proceed with [the] publication of the op-ed with considerable reluctance, as it is considered important o communicate on very key messages in E.U. policy, stated the Commission on its daily news briefing in Brussels.

The Commission also said that, even with the changes, the article made clear the blocs concerns on human rights in China, as well as its views on climate change policies and the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Several E.U. member states, including France, Germany and Italy, publicized links to the uncensored version of the op-ed. Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius even tweeted a link to the unchanged article.

https://twitter.com/LinkeviciusL/status/1258366620025729024

Beijing fighting disinformation accusations

The dispute highlights Beijings efforts to fight back against accusations that it mishandled the pandemic during its early phases. Its widely believed that the pandemic started in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. (Related: Desperate to rewrite coronavirus narrative, Beijing goes on a warpath against whistleblowers and science)

At least three separate formal diplomatic complaints have been made by Beijing, including one to Chapuis, over the leaked E.U. internal disinformation report that accused China of implementing a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the coronavirus.

An edited version of the report that was toned-down was published a few days later. However, the E.U. denied that it bowed to pressure from Beijing.

China has also clashed with the U.S. in recent weeks over control of the global narrative on the pandemic. Beijing has even gone as far as to promote the theory that the virus was planted in Wuhan by the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, Beijing bristled at a call made last week by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison for an independent inquiry. Morrison said that such an inquiry was entirely reasonable.

This week, the E.U. followed Washingtons lead, saying that it would support an independent review into the origin and spread of the coronavirus when the World Health Assembly convenes later this month.

However, Beijing said that it would now allow such a review until final victory was declared over the outbreak.

Sources include:

Reuters.com

FT.com 1

FT.com 2

TheGuardian.com
Seahorse and pipefish study by CCNY opens window to marine genetic diversity May 08, 2020

The direction of ocean currents can determine the direction of gene flow in rafting species, but this depends on species traits that allow for rafting propensity. This is according to a City College of New York study focusing on seahorse and pipefish species. And it could explain how high genetic diversity can contribute to extinction in small populations.

Published in the British-based journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B," the paper by City College scientists led by Michael Hickerson and Laura Bertola is entitled: "Asymmetrical gene flow in five co-distributed syngnathids explained by ocean currents and rafting propensity."

It reveals that ocean circulation driving macro-algal rafting is believed to serve as an important mode of dispersal for many marine organisms. This leads to predictions on population-level genetic connectivity and the directionality of effective dispersal.

The CCNY Division of Sciences researchers used genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data to investigate whether gene flow directionality in two seahorses (Hippocampus) and three pipefishes (Syngnathus) follows the predominant ocean circulation patterns in the Gulf of Mexico and northwestern Atlantic. They also explored whether gene flow magnitudes are predicted by traits related to active dispersal ability and habitat preference.

"We inferred demographic histories of these co-distributed syngnathid species, and coalescent model-based estimates indicate that gene flow directionality is in agreement with ocean circulation data that predicts eastward and northward macro-algal transport," said Hickerson. "However, the magnitude to which ocean currents influence this pattern appears strongly dependent on the species-specific traits related to rafting propensity and habitat preferences."

The study, he said, highlights how the combination of population genomic inference together with ocean circulation data can help explain patterns of population structure and diversity in marine ecosystems.

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This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Karachi, May 8 : Five properties of slain Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, which were purchased by him in Karachi by using fake identities, have been seized by a Pakistan anti-terrorism court for auction, it was reported on Friday.

Karachi, May 8 (IANS) Five properties of slain Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, which were purchased by him in Karachi by using fake identities, have been seized by a Pakistan anti-terrorism court for auction, it was reported on Friday.

Mullah Mansour, who was killed in a drone strike along the Pakistan-Iran border on May 21, 2016, had purchased the five properties, including plots and houses, estimated to be worth over 32 million PKR, reports Dawn news.

This revelation came in a report submitted by the Federal Investigation Agency to the ATC-II in July last year regarding an investigation into a case related to alleged fundraising by the slain Afghan Taliban leader and his accomplices through the purchase of properties on the back of forged identities, sources told Dawn news on Thursday.

Since January, the court had been directing the investigation officer (IO) to complete the process of attachment of Mullah Mansour's properties and proclamation of his two alleged absconding accomplices - Akhtar Mohammad and Amaar.

The three have been named in alleged terror financing and money laundering case filed in July 2019 The court has already called for reports from the commissioners of Peshawar and Quetta regarding the process of proclamation of Mullah Mansour's alleged absconding accomplices and attachment of their properties.
Former Abia State governor, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, whose conviction was nullified by the Supreme Court on Friday, has said that he cant wait to rejoin his colleagues in the Senate after spending the last five months in prison.

KanyiDaily recalls that Justice Mohammed Idris of a Federal High Court in Lagos had on December 5, 2019, sentenced Orji Kalu to 12 years imprisonment for N7.2 billion fraud and money laundering.

However, in a unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour on Friday, the apex court nullified the entire trial on the grounds that the constitution does not permit a judge elevated to a higher court to return to a lower court to conclude a part-heard case.

Reacting to his victory at the supreme court, the former governor said his five months stay in prison had taught him invaluable lessons about the countrys justice system.

Senator Kalu said the judgment affirmed his right to fair hearing and equal protection of the law, adding that he is looking forward to rejoining his colleagues in the Senate as soon as possible. He said:

Today, the Supreme Court of Nigeria gave a judgment in my favor, quashing the conviction which the lower court had entered against me. By todays judgment, the Apex court of our dear country affirmed my right to fair hearing and equal protection of the law. The past five months have been quite a profound period for me. As challenging as that period has been, it has provided me an opportunity to learn invaluable lessons about our country, our peoples, our justice system and the true meaning of love. I mean love for family, love for our country and love for humanity. Throughout the dark era of military rule in Nigeria, the Supreme Court neither wavered nor flinched in its commitment to justice and fairness. And despite some moments of distraction and mass hysteria, the Nigerian Supreme Court has remained the veritable compass to the highest ideals of justice attainable in this country. This long tradition of the court was exemplified in todays judgment. I was humbled by the courts boldness and sense of justice as shown in my case. Overall, my experience tested and reaffirmed my belief and confidence in our country, Nigeria. My case is a true Nigerian story with a bold MADE-IN-NIGERIA stamp on it. It is a story of initial injustice that was caught and ultimately corrected. It is a story of restoration. It is a story of how a wrong was righted and how justice and truth prevailed in the end. It is a story of the power of hope. My case should teach us all that even though we may not get things right at the first attempt, with patience and dedication, we shall get them right eventually. That is the lesson of my case and that is the lesson of our country  that with dedication and patience, we shall place Nigeria in its rightful place eventually.

The senator declared he would commit to securing justice for millions of Nigerians who have suffered unfairly. He said:

I have come to know that the course of justice will not be complete if it stopped at my case. It must continue until it touches the lives of millions of Nigerians who face injustice anywhere in this world. I shall be dedicating my time henceforth to ensuring there will be justice for all Nigerians whether they are in Sokoto or Akwa Ibom or in Lagos or Maiduguri or in Jos or Enugu, or wherever they may be. Justice for one man or for a few people will no longer be enough in this country. A system whereby over 70% of all prison inmates population is made up of people awaiting trial cannot be allowed to continue. Situations where innocent people are falsely charged with murder just to get them out of the way do not dignify our country and cannot continue. Justice must now mean justice for all. That is my pledge to Nigerians.

KanyiDaily had also reported that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) seized properties belonging to Senator Orji Uzor Kalu as directed by Justice Muhammed Idris of the Federal High Court in Lagos.
Indias capital markets regulator rebutted claims that tighter rules pushed Franklin Templeton into freezing six debt funds last month, and said the asset manager should focus on returning the $4.1 billion to investors.

The Securities and Exchange Board of Indias comments come after Franklins global Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Johnson on a post-earnings conference call said Indias new rules on investment in unlisted debt orphaned a third of their funds as these bonds could no longer be traded.

The new regulations were enforced after the collapse of a major infrastructure financier in September 2018, SEBI said in a statement Thursday. The rules were created by a committee that included representation from Franklin, according to the statement.

Despite the regulations being clear, some mutual fund schemes seem to have chosen to have high concentrations of high risk, unlisted, opaque, bespoke, structured debt securities with low credit ratings and seem to have chosen not to rebalance their portfolios even during the almost 12 months available to them so far, SEBI said.

In the current scenario, Franklin Templeton should focus on returning the money of investors as soon as possible, it added.

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Joe Biden's accuser, Tara Reade, hired a lawyer who donated more than $55,000 to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Douglas Wigdor, a prominent attorney in several sexual assault and harassment cases, told the Associated Press that he is not currently being paid to represent Reade.

'We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel,' the firm, Wigdor LLP in New York City, said in a statement, denying any political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trump's presumptive Democratic opponent.

Reade went public with allegations in March that Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago when she was a staffer in his U.S. Senate office, where he represented Delaware for 36 years.

She has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her  and also claimed no major news networks have invited her to do a sit-down interview.

Tara Reade has found two lawyers to represent her after claiming she had trouble finding people who would take her on as a client when she went public with an accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993

Douglas Wigdor, a prominent attorney in several sexual misconduct cases, is representing Read, free of charge, currently. He also donated $55,000 to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and thousands more to state and local Democratic politicians

Wigdor also publicly supported Brett Kavanaugh's accuser Christine Blasey Ford (pictured) when she alleged he sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, when they were both teenagers

Joe Biden has denied the allegation, claiming it never happened and insisting there is now evidence that Reade said anything at the time of the alleged incident

Wigdor suggested Reade's earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of 'politics.'

'I think highly of a lot of these people,' he said of those who wouldn't take the case. 'These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.'

Wigdor, 51, is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual misconduct, including representing six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct.

He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill O'Reilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused.

Noteably, In 2018, Wigdor spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault spanning back to the 1980s.

Wigdor, although a Democratic contributor, has also been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records.

He gave tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

So far, he has not donated to either Trump or Biden's 2020 campaign.

Wigdor indicates that he will help Reade deal with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur.

He said he has not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

It took Biden more than a month to respond to the accusation from Reade, and only did so after immense political and public pressure. He denied the allegations.

Reade said on Thursday that she wanted Biden to be 'held accountable' and called on him to drop out of the presidential race.

Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly, who was among the Fox News employees who accused the network's late CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment

Pressed by a Florida television station Thursday about Reade's comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

'The truth is what matters,' he told Bay News 9. 'In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.'

Over the weekend, another attorney, William Moran, who works at a firm in Columbia, Maryland, told the Associated Press he was working with Reade.

Moran contacted AP on behalf of Reade to complain about and seek changes in a story detailing what Reade says she remembers writing in a Senate complaint about Biden.

Reade told AP she did not allege sexual assault in the complaint and did not explicitly use the words 'sexual harassment,' though that is the behavior she believes she was describing.

'I do not turn away clients who I believe and who have credible causes of action. I never will,' Moran said.

When questions emerged over his involvement with Reade, especially in regards to his work with a Russian news agency, Moran touted his credentials on Twitter, but also said him reaching out to AP was the extent of his representation.

'I'm a lawyer who has worked high-profile cases. On 5/2/20, Tara Reade asked for help on an AP headline blasted by NYT's as 'incredibly misleading.' That's the entirety of my representation,' Moran tweeted Friday.

'Stop using my name to smear a survivor. I'm not the story,' he demanded. 'I have no further comment.'

Wigdor said Reade told him she was connected to Moran through Katie Halper, the journalist who first interviewed Reade about her sexual assault allegation against Biden and released the interview on her podcast in March.

It's unclear how Reade connected with Wigdor, who said he believed she found the firm through 'word of mouth and our reputation.'

Reade first spoke out about her alleged interactions with Biden in 2019, telling journalists he had touched her inappropriately while she worked on his Senate staff. She came forward in 2020, around the time Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, with new allegations of assault.

William Moran (pictured), who formerly worked as an editor for a Russian news agency, told the Associated Press he was working with Reade when he contacted them to clarify comments on how she felt about the incident

He clarified in a tweet Friday that his only representation was in talking to AP on her behalf. 'Stop using my name to smear a survivor,' he demanded. 'I am not the story'

Reade contacted Moran to reach out to AP seeking changes in a story detailing what she says she remembers writing in a Senate complaint about Biden. Here she's pictured April 4, 2019 during an interview with The Associated Press in Nevada City, California

She says she didn't initially disclose the assault allegations because she was scared of backlash and was still coming to terms with what had happened to her.

Reade's representation, Moran, previously wrote and edited for Sputnik, a news agency founded and supported by the Russian state-owned media company Rossiya Segodnya.

A January 2017 report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign said Sputnik was part of 'Russia's state-run propaganda machine,' which 'contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.'

Reade herself has faced questions about her past writing praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reade on Thursday expressed concern to Kelly about having been 'called a Russian agent' and said she had received a death threat from someone who 'thought I was being a traitor to America.'

There is no evidence to suggest Reade or Moran worked at the behest of Russia with respect to the Biden allegation.

Moran said in a text message to AP on Thursday that he found the focus on his past work 'disgraceful.' He said Reade requested that he reach out to the AP 'on a limited matter.'
This image showing the entire disk of Jupiter in infrared light was compiled from a mosaic of nine separate pointings observed by the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLabon 29 May 2019. From a "lucky imaging" set of 38 exposures taken at each pointing, the research team selected the sharpest 10%, combining them to image one ninth of Jupiter's disk. Stacks of exposures at the nine pointings were then combined to make one clear, global view of the planet. Even though it only takes a few seconds for Gemini to create each image in a lucky imaging set, completing all 38 exposures in a set can take minutes -- long enough for features to rotate noticeably across the disk. In order to compare and combine the images, they are first mapped to their actual latitude and longitude on Jupiter, using the limb, or edge of the disk, as a reference. Once the mosaics are compiled into a full disk, the final images are some of the highest-resolution infrared views of Jupiter ever taken from the ground. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team Acknowledgments: Mahdi Zamani

Researchers using a technique known as "lucky imaging" with the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. These images are part of a multi-year joint observing program with the Hubble Space Telescope in support of NASA's Juno mission. The Gemini images, when combined with the Hubble and Juno observations, reveal that lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid. The new observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.

Three years of imaging observations using the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, have probed deep into Jupiter's cloud tops. The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet.

"The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule," said Michael Wong of UC Berkeley. "We used a very powerful technique called lucky imaging," adds Wong. With lucky imaging, a large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used. The result in this case is some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. According to Wong, "These images rival the view from space."

Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere. This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover.

The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Geminiand Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones. The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight not unlike the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth.

These images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot were made using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope and the international Gemini Observatory on 1 April 2018. By combining observations captured at almost the same time from the two different observatories, astronomers were able to determine that dark features on the Great Red Spot are holes in the clouds rather than masses of dark material. Upper left (wide view) and lower left (detail): The Hubble image of sunlight (visible wavelengths) reflecting off clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere shows dark features within the Great Red Spot. Upper right: A thermal infrared image of the same area from Gemini shows heat energy emitted as infrared light. Cool overlying clouds appear as dark regions, but clearings in the clouds allow bright infrared emission to escape from warmer layers below. Lower middle: An ultraviolet image from Hubble shows sunlight scattered back from the haze over the Great Red Spot. The Great Red Spot appears red in visible light because the haze absorbs blue wavelengths. The Hubble data show that the haze continues to absorb even at shorter ultraviolet wavelengths. Lower right: A multiwavelength composite of Hubble and Gemini data shows visible light in blue and thermal infrared in red. The combined observations show that areas that are bright in infrared are clearings or places where there is less cloud cover blocking heat from the interior. The Hubble and Gemini observations were made to provide a wide-view context for Juno's 12th pass (Perijove 12). Credit: NASA, ESA, and M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team

Mapping giant lightning storms

On each of its close passes over Jupiter's clouds, Juno detected radio signals created by powerful lightning flashes called sferics (short for atmospherics) and whistlers (so-called because of the whistle-like tone they cause on radio receivers). Whenever possible, Gemini and Hubble focused on Jupiter and obtained high-resolution, wide-area maps of the giant planet.

Juno's instruments could determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of clusters of sferic and whistler signals. With Gemini and Hubble images at multiple wavelengths, researchers now can probe the cloud structure at these locations. By combining these three pieces of information the research team found that the lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid.

"Scientists track lightning because it is a marker of convection, the turbulent mixing process that transports Jupiter's internal heat up to the visible cloud tops," explained Wong. The largest concentration of lightning seen by Juno came from a swirling storm called a "filamentary cyclone." Imaging from Gemini and Hubble shows details in the cyclone, revealing it to be a twisted collection of tall convective clouds with deep gaps offering glimpses to the water clouds far below.

"Ongoing studies of lightning sources will help us understand how convection on Jupiter is different from or similar to convection in the Earth's atmosphere," Wong commented.

The international Gemini Observatory recently teamed up with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Juno probe to take a look inside Jupiter's storms, and see what drives them. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, ESA/Hubble, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI, M. Kornmesser, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team, M. Zamani.Music: Stan Dart - The Tower Of Darkness (stan-dart.com).

Glowing features in the Great Red Spot

While scanning the gas giant for gaps in cloud cover, Gemini spotted a telltale glow in the Great Red Spot, indicating a clear view down to deep, warmer atmospheric layers.

"Similar features have been seen in the Great Red Spot before," said team member Glenn Orton of JPL, "but visible-light observation couldn't distinguish between darker cloud material, and thinner cloud cover over Jupiter's warm interior, so their nature remained a mystery."

Now with the data from Gemini, this mystery is solved. Where visible light images from Hubble show a dark semicircle in the Great Red Spot, images taken by Gemini using infrared light reveal a bright arc lighting up the region. This infrared glow, from Jupiter's internal heat, would have been blocked by thicker clouds, but can pass through Jupiter's hazy atmosphere unobscured. By seeing these features as bright infrared hotspots, Gemini confirms that they are gaps in the clouds. Even though earlier observations have seen dark features in the Great Red Spot, the rapidly swirling winds within it hid the true nature of these spots until the simultaneous Hubble and Gemini observations were conducted.

This illustration of lightning, convective towers (thunderheads), deep water clouds, and clearings in Jupiters atmosphere is based on data collected by the Juno spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the international Gemini Observatory. Juno detects radio signals generated by lightning discharges. Because radio waves can pass through all of Jupiters cloud layers, Juno is able to detect lightning in deep clouds as well as lightning on the day side of the planet. Hubble detects sunlight that has reflected off clouds in Jupiters atmosphere. Different wavelengths penetrate to different depths in the clouds, giving researchers the ability to determine the relative heights of cloud tops. Gemini maps the thickness of cool clouds that block thermal infrared light from warmer atmospheric layers below the clouds. Thick clouds appear dark in the infrared maps, while clearings appear bright. The combination of observations can be used to map the cloud structure in three dimensions and infer details of atmospheric circulation. Thick, towering clouds form where moist air rises (upwelling and active convection). Clearings form where drier air sinks (downwelling). The clouds shown rise five times higher than similar convective towers in Earths relatively shallow atmosphere. The region illustrated covers a horizontal span one third greater than that of the continental United States. Credit: NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), and A. James and M.W. Carruthers (STScI)

"NIRI at Gemini North is the most effective way for the US and the international Gemini partnership investigators to get detailed maps of Jupiter at this wavelength," explained Wong. Gemini achieved a 500-kilometer (300-mile) resolution on Jupiter. "At this resolution, the telescope could resolve the two headlights of a car in Miami, seen from New York City," said Andrew Stephens, the Gemini astronomer who led the observations.

"These coordinated observations prove once again that ground-breaking astronomy is made possible by combining the capabilities of the Gemini telescopes with complimentary ground- and space-based facilities," said Martin Still, an astronomy program director at the National Science Foundation, which is Gemini's US funding agency. "The international Gemini Partnership provides open access to a powerful combination of large telescopes' collecting area, flexible scheduling, and a broad selection of interchangeable instruments."

Explore further Striking Gemini images point Juno spacecraft toward discovery

More information: Michael H. Wong et al, High-resolution UV/Optical/IR Imaging of Jupiter in 20162019, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (2020). Michael H. Wong et al, High-resolution UV/Optical/IR Imaging of Jupiter in 20162019,(2020). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab775f
Outbreak at pork plant leads to more than 1,600 cases and 20 deaths as Trump orders meatpackers to restart production.

ReQuia Campbell is a hairstylist and mother of five with family members who got sick with COVID-19 while working at a massive pork slaughterhouse in Waterloo, Iowa.

After her father came home sick from work at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in early April, Campbell became alarmed.

Management at the plant  in the Midwest region of the United States  was not acting on workers concerns about spreading the coronavirus in close-quarter conditions at the plant, labour advocates said.

I was devastated because he has 14 grandkids that hes around. We were panicking like, Are our kids going to get sick? What is going on?' Campbell, 31, said.

Campbell and her friends launched a social media campaign and organised a protest urging the shutdown of the plant. After weeks of rising community pressure, the Tyson plant suspended operations on April 22. More than 1,000 of its nearly 3,000 workers tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and the infection has spread to the wider community and caused 20 deaths, according to local authorities.

Now, in a major test of President Donald Trumps push to reopen the US economy, the Tyson plant in Waterloo is reopening even as COVID-19 case numbers continue to rise locally and nationwide. Workers and their families are fearful.

A lot of people are on edge, Campbell told Al Jazeera.

Trump used a wartime law on April 28 to direct meatpacking plants nationwide to continue operating during the pandemic to avert food shortages. More than 170 meat and poultry processing plants nationwide have reported COVID-19 outbreaks, according to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

Before the coronavirus forced its shutdown, the Tyson plant in Waterloo slaughtered 19,500 hogs a day, producing 3.9 percent of the US pork supply. Farmers were forced to destroy their animals when the plant stopped running.

US President Donald Trump meeting with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC [Tom Brenner/Reuters] [Reuters]

On Wednesday, Iowas Republican Governor Kim Reynolds joined the president at the White House to tout Iowas progress in reopening meatpacking plants. Employees must get tested for the coronavirus before returning to work and are required to wear face masks and stay six feet apart, she noted.

We are providing them the confidence of a safe environment, but at the same time were making sure that food supply chain is moving and that the country is being fed, Reynolds told reporters at the White House.

But local officials see a bigger problem. With the virus spreading in communities, the state is not providing adequate testing and is not fully counting data on new cases, they say. Further, without monitoring and enforcement, reopening of the meatpacking plants is seen as an experiment in social distancing.

It is irresponsible to downplay what is happening, said Ras Smith, who represents Waterloo in the Iowa state legislature.

We are seeing outbreaks all over the state, Smith told Al Jazeera.

The Tyson pork processing plant, temporarily closed due to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Waterloo, Iowa [Brenna Norman/Reuters] [Reuters]

Major meatpacking plants in the Iowa cities of Columbus Junction, Tama, Estherville, Perry and West Liberty were forced to close last month because of the coronavirus. A pet food plant in Independence also has had cases, according to workers.

Governor Reynolds is out of touch with the people of Iowa, Smith said.

Straddling a tributary of the Mississippi River flowing through the agricultural heart of the Midwest, Waterloo is a diverse city of 68,000 people. Nearly everyone in town knows someone who works at the local meatpacking plant. Most of the workers are people of colour or immigrants. Many are undocumented.

I was enraged. I was incensed, said Tony Thompson, the sheriff of Black Hawk County after he visited the Tyson plant in early April.

Seeing conditions at the plant, I knew they had just blown a hole out of the front-line of defence in our community, Thompson told Al Jazeera.

Thompson was one of 20 local officials who signed a letter to Tyson in mid-April asking the plant to shut down.

Now, most of the 1,600 confirmed cases in the Waterloo area can be traced to the plant, said the sheriff. And while Tyson has done an impressive job fitting the plant with dividers to separate employees on the processing line, that in no way alleviates the damage already done, he said.

Tyson invited workers to tour the newly outfitted plant on Wednesday and distributed a video illustrating the new social-distancing measures and health-monitoring procedures.

We have been speaking with a lot of different workers, said Nilvia Reyes Rodriguez, a community organiser with the League of United Latin American Citizens Local 370 in Waterloo.

With the reopening happening, there are concerns as to whether truly all of the measures can be implemented, Rodriguez told Al Jazeera.

The way the production is currently run, they just feel that it is going to be hard to implement safety measures, she said.

Working conditions in the US meatpacking industry are difficult and dangerous. The killing floor where animals are executed before being processed is a brutal scene. Processing lines involve rapid, repetitive cutting motions that can lead to injuries. All of it takes place in a cold, refrigerated atmosphere.

The work pays low wages and is more often done by immigrants and minorities. As a result, workers rights to safe working conditions are not well protected, and their latitude to speak up without being threatened is compromised, labour advocates said.





In Waterloo  where many of the meatpacking workers are Congolese immigrants and Burmese refugees  some feel their lives are being put at risk to keep up the national pork supply.

A lot of people think that is still a tad bit too soon in light of what we think we know. The cases are still going up. We havent even flatlined yet, said Abraham Funchess, director of the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights, which has opened an inquiry into whats happening at the Tyson plant.

They are very reluctant about wanting to go back in because they realise they are risking their lives, Funchess said.

Trump is betting his re-election prospects in November on how the contest between the virus and reopening the economy in places like Iowa works out. In states like Iowa, control of the US Senate is in play.

Republican Joni Ernst, who has been quiet about the meatpacking issues in Iowa, is among several US senators who face difficult re-elections.

Despite the upbeat messages from Trump and Governor Reynolds, local officials said the state of Iowa is not putting in place the testing and monitoring measures needed to stop the pandemic.

Jonathan Grieder is a member of the Waterloo City Council and a high school teacher. He knows former students whose parents have died from COVID-19.

It is very clear that essential workers  who are often paid very little, who are often from communities at risk, economically, politically and socially  are so essential but we are so willing to exploit them because it is bothersome for the rest of us with privilege to deal with this issue, Grieder told Al Jazeera.

This has been an abject failure, he said.
The state of Michigan will allow candidates running for certain elected positions in 2020 to turn in 50 percent fewer petition signatures after previously arguing that doing so would create cluttered ballots.

Eligible candidates are those running for U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, Wayne County Community College Trustee, judicial candidates who arent the incumbent, and any city office where the city charter does not allow the option to file with a fee during the 2020 election cycle.

Those candidates will be allowed to turn in their petitions and signatures electronically before 5 p.m. Friday, May 8. Each will be required to submit 50 percent fewer signatures than a normal year due to strains resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultimately, state officials chose to stick with the ruling of a U.S. district judge, despite an appeals court ruling that it was up to the state.

As the district court declined to amend its order, and with the revised filing deadline today, May 8, the best course of action to reduce further uncertainty in advance of the rapidly approaching August elections is to maintain the procedures that have been in place for the last two and a half weeks," said Jake Rollow, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, in a prepared statement.

This years procedural changes only apply to candidates who filed a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission or established a candidate committee under the Michigan Campaign Finance Act by March 10.

They do not pertain to offices that have the option of paying a filing fee in place of signatures. They do not apply to county or township offices, or to the offices of state representatives.

For offices that dont qualify for the procedural changes, the filing deadline remains April 21.

Michigans procedural change will only affect 2020 candidacies and is being implemented consistent with an April 20 federal district court order, and a May 5 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals order.

The issue stems from a lawsuit filed by Republican U.S. House candidate Eric Esshaki against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Director of Elections Jonathan Brater. Other candidates mentioned in the lawsuit included Oakland County 47th District Court Judge candidate Matt Savish and Wayne County Third Circuit Judge candidate Deana Beard.

Related: Federal court to livestream ballot access case against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

In the lawsuit, Esshaki claimed the governors March 23 stay-home order meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 impaired a candidates ability to run for office since they couldnt feasibly collect the necessary petition signatures to run for office.

Candidates for U.S. Congress must collect at least 1,000 signatures from registered voters. Judicial candidates across the state have to collect 40 to 6,200 signatures, depending on the race.

U.S. District Judge Terrance Berg agreed that the circumstances created unconstitutional barriers to the ballot and called for exceptions to the requirements. That included extending the April 21 filing deadline to May 8, allowing potential candidates to collect signatures digitally, and reducing the signature requirements by 50 percent.

State officials agreed to the deadline extension and the electronic signature acceptance, but pushed back on the reduction of petition signatures. Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast argued that granting the reduction could cause ballots to become cluttered with candidates who normally would not be able to gather enough local support to run for office.

Judge Berg stuck to his initial ruling. However, Appellate court judges said, while Michigan must adjust its requirements for candidacy in order to account for unusual circumstances created by the coronavirus pandemic, a federal district judge does not have the right to determine what those concessions should be.

Michigan could adopt the same three-part adjustment that the district court ordered ... because the point is not that the adjustments were right or wrong (or too much or too little), but that the federal court cannot impose such specific manner-of-election requirements on a state without breaching the express delegation of authority in the Constitution, the Court of Appeals ruled.

In the end, the state agreed to the three-part adjustment ahead of the new petition deadline.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

More from MLive:

U.S. unemployment rate hits 14.7% amid coronavirus, topping recession levels

5 things to know about Michigan Gov. Whitmers extended stay-at-home order

Michigan is in Phase 3 of 6 in coronavirus response and recovery, governor says
The University of Alabama in Huntsville set a school record in research funding in 2019, bringing in $109.7 million in research and development expenditures, the school announced Thursday.

The data, according to UAH, came from the National Science Foundation's Higher Education Research and Development survey.

Five UAH research programs rank in the top 20 nationally, according to the National Science Foundation:

5th in aerospace engineering

8th in economics

11th in computer and information sciences

12th in atmospheric sciences

12th in astronomy and astrophysics

The school also said its federal research expenditures have increased by 24 percent over two years. UAH had active contracts and research partnerships with more than 90 commercial companies during 2019. The universitys five-year contract and grant research total is $489 million.

This achievement indicates the degree of trust our collaborators place in UAH research endeavors, Dr. Robert Lindquist, vice president for research and economic development, said in the announcement. UAH has a long history of science and engineering research and working together with our federal government and private sector partners to find creative solutions for some of the nations most challenging technological issues.

UAH is on pace to top more than 10,000 in enrollment in the fall for the first time in school history.

Related: UAH made Alabama more attractive nationally, von Braun said

The school was transformed into a research center at the urging of Wernher von Braun, the rocket scientist behind the successes in the early days NASA that culminated with the Apollo moon program.

Those research ties with NASA are still ongoing and UAH has expanded its portfolio in its close working relationship with nearby Redstone Arsenal. That includes collaboration with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command on technical issues of hypersonic flight.
Commercial banks may no longer be able to buy convertible corporate bonds for restructuring debt to keep bad debt in check.

In the near past, some banks have been buying up convertible bonds from businesses in order to restructure their debt. This carries many risks if the businesses continue to run into difficulties and are unable to repay both principal and interest, leading to the issuance of more bonds to restructure debt, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) said in a statement Thursday.

As such, the SBV has published for gathering feedback a draft regulation that will not allow banks to purchase corporate bonds issued for the purpose of restructuring their debt, or bonds issued with one of its purposes being the restructuring of debt.

In addition, the draft proposes that banks should be banned from purchasing corporate bonds if their internal bad debt ratio exceeds 3 percent, unless the bond issue is part of a debt restructuring scheme approved by competent authorities.

Banks will also not be allowed to purchase bonds from enterprises that had bad debt issues in the past 12 months, whether they are buying it from the issuing enterprise or from another investor. This would prevent banks with high bad debt ratios from worsening the quality of credit further, the SBV said.

Lastly, banks will not be able to acquire corporate bonds issued for the purpose of raising capital to buy shares in other business. According to the SBV, this practice has been observed in recent times, making it difficult for lending institutions to control or monitor what borrowers do with their capital.

The draft regulation comes shortly after banks first quarter financial reports were published last month, with many saying that bad, doubtful and overdue debt had surged because of the coronavirus epidemic.

Some banks had to set aside double the amount of reserves they had done last year as provision for credit risks, causing first quarter profits to plummet.

Last year, the banking sectors internal bad debt ratio, which excludes debts sold to state-owned debt collecting agency VAMC, was 1.89 percent, in line with the SBVs target of 2 percent, but the SBV predicts that bad debts would rise across the whole banking sector by the end of this year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The SBV's latest report said Covid-19 is expected to affect the quality of VND2 quadrillion ($85.2 billion) worth of debt issued by Vietnamese banks, accounting for 23 percent of the banking systems outstanding debt.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict needs an early political settlement, European Union Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar told Trend.

He pointed out that despite the current difficult context related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union continues to closely follow developments around the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, be it the situation on the ground or recent public remarks about the current phase of negotiations led by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

In this vein, I had telephone conversations with both the Azerbaijani and the Armenian Foreign Ministers last week. These were exchanges on recent developments in the region, including on the impact of the coronavirus, which is a common challenge for the world and demands common efforts to overcome it. As you know, High Representative Josep Borrell on behalf of the European Union made a strong statement in support of the appeal by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for an immediate global ceasefire in light of the global coronavirus pandemic," added Klaar.

In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement context, he reiterated the European Unions call on strictly observing the ceasefire, devoting energy and resources to fighting the pandemic and remaining meaningfully engaged in the peace process led by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs,

He noted that the European Union fully supports the efforts of the Co-Chairs, who ensure the continuity of the conflict settlement process, as well as their approach and proposals toward peace and security in the region.

The joint meeting between the Foreign Ministers and the Co-Chairs that was held via videoconference on 21 April  and resulted in a joint statement  is a welcome positive development, added Klaar.

He pointed out that the status quo is unsustainable.

The conflict needs an early political settlement. We expect the sides to take measures to reduce tensions further and engage substantively on core issues and next steps in line with the joint statement made on 30 January 2020 after intense three-day discussions in Geneva facilitated by the Co-Chairs. The European Union looks forward to the resumption of face-to-face meetings and implementation of previously agreed humanitarian measures as soon as the situation allows it. We stand ready to support steps to help prepare the populations for peace, Klaar concluded.

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 the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Shelley Davies waits for her delivery at Plants and Friends./Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate

LATEST May 8, 4:00 p.m. Bay Area counties announced new COVID-19 cases and deaths in the Bay Area Friday. These numbers will be updated as they are released:

Alameda announced three new deaths and 107 new cases to increase its death toll to 70 and its case total to 1,961.

San Francisco reported one additional death and 47 new cases, bringing the death toll to 33 and the case total to 1,853.

San Mateo announced 22 new cases to increase the case total to 1,397. The death toll remains 56.

Santa Clara announced one new death and 11 new cases. The total number of cases is 2,290 and the death toll is 128.

Contra Costa reported 15 new cases, increasing its total to 1,014. The death toll remains 29.

Sonoma reported six new cases, increasing the county total to 292. The death toll remains three.

Napa reported no new cases or deaths. The total number of cases is 78, and the death toll is two.

May 8, 2:30 p.m. UC Hastings responded Friday to San Francisco officials' new plan to address sidewalk crowding and a lack of cleanliness in the Tenderloin amidst the coronavirus pandemic, calling it "entirely inadequate."

The plan is just more talk," UC Hastings Law Chancellor and Dean David Faigman said in a statement Friday. "We need action, not talk. We need the tents and the drug dealers removed and the unhoused moved to safe and temporary housing, such as large tents or other shelter, until a permanent solution is accomplished.

UC Hastings was among a number of parties that collectively filed suit against the city this week in an attempt to get officials to finally address rampant drug dealing, crime, and increasing homeless encampments in the neighborhood. San Francisco officials quickly released a plan in response, called the Tenderloin Neighborhood Safety Assessment and Plan for COVID-19, which outlines objectives to clean up the neighborhood.

May 8, 1:10 p.m. Due to fears over the continued spread of the novel coronavirus, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday the entire state will be asked to vote by mail in November. The governor signed an executive order that will ensure every registered voter in the state is sent an absentee ballot prior to election day, and those who choose to vote in person will have to comply with strict physical distancing measures at polling sites.

California is the first state in the country to enact a widespread vote-by-mail plan for November, a time top health experts fear a resurgence of the virus.

Read more from SFGATE Digital Reporter Eric Ting.

May 8, 12:10 p.m. Three children who tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies in Los Angeles are showing symptoms doctors are calling pediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome (PIMS). Physical symptoms include a "high, persistent fever; swollen hands and feet; red, cracked lips; a red tongue; and red eyes," according to the L.A. Times. The symptoms are similar to a mysterious previously defined illness called Kawasaki disease.

New York State has made similar findings, and doctors are now seeking to better understand the connection between the two diseases. More from the L.A. Times here.

May 8, 11:45 a.m. A newly popular way to celebrate birthdays and other special occasions while shelter-in-place orders are in effect has been halted in Santa Clara County, officials announced Thursday. Officials are reiterating that the practice, which involves a person's friends and family members decorating their cars and driving by in a caravan honking, is still explicitly prohibited in the South Bay county because it prompts people to leave their homes for non-essential reasons.

But the county's plan to ramp up enforcement against the practice has detractors  namely, San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia, KGO reports.

"I don't know how any police chief in this county can look at their community in the face and say while people are being released out of jail with zero bail, serious criminals, that now we are going to stop people from holding signs, driving around and wishing individuals happy birthday's or happy graduations," he said.

May 8, 11:30 a.m. Oakland is adding five more miles of city roads to its Slow Streets program beginning Friday. The plan means officials will close these roads  demarcated by signs and orange cones  so residents can use them to walk, run or bike outdoors while the shelter-in-place order is in effect.

The newly closed streets include:

 E 23rd St / 26th Ave / 25th Ave / E 29th St / Sheffield Ave (Fruitvale Ave to MacArthur Blvd)

 Shafter Ave / 48th St / Webster St (Forest St to W MacArthur Blvd)

 Tiffin Rd / Potomac St / Laguna Ave / Carmel St / Coolidge Ave / Morgan Ave / Maple Ave / Wisconsin St / Patterson Ave / Bayo St / Steele St (Lyman Rd to Buell St)

May 8, 10:15 a.m. As the state of the economy worsens, Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey have come together to propose legislation that would give $2,000 a month to some Americans who are struggling to make ends meet during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act would send $2,000 a month to people who make below $120,000 throughout the coronavirus crisis and for three months after it. Married couples who file together would get $4,000, and parents would receive $2,000 per child for up to three children per month.

May 8, 9:30 a.m. Facebook will allow most of its employees to continue working remotely for the rest of the year, the company confirmed Thursday.

The massive Menlo Park social media company, which has tens of thousands of workers globally, is planning to open most of its offices July 6, but will only ask certain employees in specific job functions to come into work.

Facebook was one of the first companies to ask employees to work remotely when the coronavirus outbreak began.

May 8, 9:00 a.m. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf says she will close Lake Merritt if people don't follow social-distancing guidelines.

"We always can consider measures like shutting down, measures like giving people tickets," she said Friday during her regular one-on-one interview with KTVU. "But I believe that in this moment, people need to go outside. We have to tend to peoples mental health as well as the contagion of this virus."

May 8, 8:15 a.m. San Francisco Director of Transportation Jeffery Tumlin shared on Twitter Friday morning that businesses owners preparing to reopen with curbside pickup should alert the SF Municipal Transportation Association if they need a loading zone.

Tumlin posted a link to a request form for loading zones.

Some businesses in San Francisco may resume operations at a limited capacity as early as May 18, city Mayor London Breed announced Thursday.

We have been hard at work to find ways to reopen more businesses and activities safely and responsibly, she said in a statement. Giving businesses the option to reopen and provide storefront pickup will provide some relief for everyone in our city  allowing some people to get back to work, while still protecting public health."

May 8, 7:30 a.m. Solano, Sonoma and Napa counties are preparing to reopen retail with curbside pickup as early as Friday while six other Bay Area countiesAlameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara wait to modify their shelter-in-place orders.

In the three North Bay counties, a wide array of businesses  from record stores to clothing shops  will be slowly reopening under specific state safety guidelines to reduce contact between workers and customers. Customers will not be allowed to enter stores but they can pick up goods they've ordered online outside.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered a detailed plan Thursday for reopening retail, but said counties don't need to comply with the state order and can keep their stricter guidelines in place. Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties issued a statement Thursday saying they will be reopening on a timeline different from the state and decisions on when to make modifications will be made on a local level. In these counties, the shutdown of non-essential, non-outdoor businesses remains in effect.

Some businesses in San Francisco may resume operations at a limited capacity as early as May 18, city Mayor London Breed announced Thursday.

We have been hard at work to find ways to reopen more businesses and activities safely and responsibly, she said in a statement. Giving businesses the option to reopen and provide storefront pickup will provide some relief for everyone in our city  allowing some people to get back to work, while still protecting public health."

Read more about California Gov. Gavin Newsom's plan for reopening retail in California here and more about San Francisco Mayor Lond Breed's plan here.

Cumulative cases in the greater Bay Area (due to limited testing these numbers reflect only a small portion of likely cases):

ALAMEDA COUNTY: 1,961 confirmed cases, 70 deaths

For more information on Alameda County cases, visit the public health department website.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY: 1,014 confirmed cases, 29 deaths

For more information on Contra Costa County cases, visit the public health department website.

LAKE COUNTY: 8 confirmed cases

For information on Lake County and coronavirus, visit the public health department website.

MARIN COUNTY: 255 confirmed cases, 14 deaths

Fore more information on Marin County cases, visit the public health department website.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

MONTEREY COUNTY: 247 confirmed cases, 6 deaths

For more information on Monterey County cases, visit the public health department website.

NAPA COUNTY: 78 cases, 2 deaths

For more information on Napa County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN BENITO COUNTY: 54 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

For more information on San Benito County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY: 1,853 confirmed cases, 33 deaths

For more information on San Francisco County cases, visit the public health department website.

SAN MATEO COUNTY: 1,397 confirmed cases, 56 deaths

For more information on San Mateo County cases, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CLARA COUNTY: 2,290 confirmed cases, 128 deaths

Fore more information on Santa Clara County cases, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY: 139 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

For more information on Santa Cruz County cases, visit the public health department website.

SOLANO COUNTY: 342 confirmed cases, 7 deaths

For more information on Solano County cases, visit the public health department website.

SONOMA COUNTY: 292 confirmed cases, 3 deaths

For more information on Sonoma County cases, visit the public health department website.



CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Newsom says California virus spread started in a nail salon

SF confirms it's giving drugs to homeless in hotels in 'limited quantities'

San Francisco officials outline 5 goals before reopening businesses

WHEN WILL THE BAY AREA REOPEN?

6 Bay Area counties say retail not opening Friday

SF Mayor: Some businesses can 'resume operations,' offer storefront pickup starting May 18

Newsom details 4 stages to reopen California businesses
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday accused senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of being out of touch with reality and out of sync with those state governments which had Congress at the helm amid the enormous health crisis brought about by the Covid-19 disease.

We dont know which world Rahul Gandhi is living in. The fight against the coronavirus pandemic best exemplifies Team India spirit fostered by PM Narendra Modi. Views and experiences of state governments have largely contributed to the framing and revision of the Central governments guidelines, BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao said, reacting to the Congress leaders claim that India would lose the battle against Covid-19 if the fight was restricted to the Prime Ministers Office.

In a sharp criticism to the Congress leaders comments where he said that the Prime Minister needed to devolve power and there would be a calamity if the BJP-led union government tried to centralise the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the BJP said that Gandhi was out of sync with even those states where the Congress was in power.

ALSO READ | Dispel fear among people about Covid-19: Rahul Gandhi to PM Modi

Rahul Gandhi is out of touch with reality and out of sync with his own party ruled state governments, the BJP spokesperson said.

Earlier on Friday, Rahul Gandhi had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove the fear among people about the coronavirus disease and also attempt to decentralise by making the states partners in decision-making.

The former Congress president held an hour-long news briefing via a video conference, his second such in about a month.

The senior Congress leader had earlier addressed the media on April 16, when he had emphasised that the lockdown was not a solution to defeat Covid-19 but just a pause button to curb the spread of the infection.

He had also demanded a proper exit strategy from the nationwide lockdown which the Prime Minister, he had said, needed to inform the people of the country.
At the end of March, the historian Jan Grabowski was set to have a busy few weeks. First came the release of what he describes as the most important of his 17 books, which features his research into the Polish policemen responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. A week later, a hearing was set to take place in Warsaw in a lawsuit he filed against a nationalist organization aligned with Polands ruling Law and Justice Party, over its claim that he falsifies the history of Poland by doing that work.

That hearing has been postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic, but the issues it raises are not going away anytime soon. I have no doubts of course my detractors will strike sometime soon because thats what they do. Its a question of time, he tells TIME by phone while in lockdown in Warsaw. Whenever I write about something that speaks to the fact that segments of Polish society during the war were complicit with the Holocaust, I become an enemy of the people.

Europes physical battles of World War II ended 75 years ago with German surrender on May 7, 1945. But that doesnt mean the fighting is over: A wave of right-wing nationalist leaders, who have come to power in Europe in recent years, are waging a war of words over the past. While outright Holocaust denial remains an issue, says scholar Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, these days theres more rewriting the history, taking inconvenient details and reshaping them.

So, as historians like Grabowski, 58, try to tell the story of what happened all those decades ago, theyre facing resistance from officials who have their own reasons for wanting to tell the story a certain wayand, they say, the outcome could affect the lessons the world takes from World War II for generations to come.

Story continues

On May 9, Russia will celebrate Victory Day, the countrys most important national holiday. As might be expected for a festival that marks the surrender of Nazi forces to the Soviet Union, official commemorations are mostly centered on the Soviet triumph in ending a war that killed over 8 million Soviet soldiers. In a few months will fall another significant World War II anniversaryone that fewer in Russia are keen to embrace. On Aug. 23, it will be 81 years since Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalins Soviet Union inked the nonaggression treaty commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which helped usher in World War II.

The Foreign Minister of Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Soviet Leader Iosif (Joseph) Stalin and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (foreground L-R) pose for a photo at the singing ceremony of the German-Soviet Treaty of Nonaggression, Aug. 23, 1939, in Moscow | TASS via Getty Images

A week after the pact was signed, Hitler invaded western Poland. The Soviet Union followed two weeks later by invading eastern Poland. At least 3 million Jewish and 1.9 million non-Jewish Poles were killed during the Nazi reign of terror that followed; it is also estimated that, under wartime Soviet occupation, half a million Polish citizens died. And although the pact promised ten years of non-aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a blitzkrieg attack on the USSR, calling for the capture of Moscow within four months. The subsequent fighting ultimately led to the deaths of an estimated 26 million people across the Soviet Union. After the wars end in 1945, the annexed region of Poland became part of the USSR until it gained independence in 1989.



By that point, the war had ushered in a new world order. The United States had emerged as the foremost economic superpower, and the United Nations was founded. Empires vanished, as European colonies in Asia, Africa and the Middle East fought for and won their independence. Europe was devastated. And the mythos of the war had already begun to take shape. The American narrative often simply left out the role of the nations Cold War enemies in the USSR, and the Soviet Union was involved in its own myth-making project. There, authorities denied the existence of a secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact protocol that made plans to divide territory in areas like Poland between Germany and the USSR. Russian officials have since said the Soviet incursion into Poland wasnt an invasion but an act of self-defense because Poland had blocked the formation of a coalition against Hitlers Germany before the war. Propaganda in films and literature glorified the war role. Censorship prevented a discussion about the trauma, so that the population would forget about the tragedy and move on, says Irina Scherbakova, a Russian historian and founding member of the human-rights organization Memorial.

These stories of World War IIstories of victory or victimhoodbecame the backbone for the new regimes that rose in its wake. In Eastern Europe, the legitimacy of the communist regimes that came to power after the Second World War was constructed around this narrative of only [the] Soviet Union can guarantee our safety from [the] German threat. says Jan T. Gross, an expert on post-war Soviet and East European politics and the Holocaust and professor emeritus at Princeton University. But underneath, there is a great disquiet.

In the 1960s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev made May 9 a national holiday and introduced grand military parades. In 1995, Boris Yeltsin, the first leader of post-Soviet Russia, made those military parades an annual tradition. The Victory Day parade has only expanded under Vladimir Putin, who has been Russias de facto leader since 2000. In recent years, it has typically featured thousands of military personnel marching alongside dozens of tanks and armored vehicles among hundreds of thousands of spectators.

A gala concert was held in Red Square to mark the 70th anniversary victory, May 9, 2015 in Moscow. | Handout/Host photo agency / RIA Novosti / Getty Images

This year, with 12 million Muscovites confined to their home in a lockdown against the coronavirus, Putin, after much resistance, decided to postpone the parade that was to commemorate Victory Days Diamond Jubilee. Moscows Red Square, the familiar brick expanse in Russias capital city, will be ghostly quiet on May 9 for the first time in over 25 years. But even without the parade, the power of the memory of victory is clear.

For proof, look to Putin himself. As he has made moves to extend his political power, he has likewise attempted to more assertively impose his version of the narrative of World War II. The government has weaponized the war through rhetoric, legislation, revising textbooks and cultural events as a means of shoring up public support for a regime that promotes a vision of Russia as a reborn global power, says Scherbakova.

Over the past few years, Putin has also cast the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocolthe very existence of which was denied by most of his forebearsas a move the Soviet Union was forced into by Western leaders alleged collusion with Hitler at the time of the 1938 Munich agreement, under which Britain and France allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in what was then Czechoslovakia. When the Soviet Union realised that it was left to face Hitlers Germany on its own, it acted to try to avoid a direct confrontation, and this resulted in signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Putin said during a 2015 press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Last August, Russia put the original pact and its secret protocol on display at the State Archives in Moscow, alongside the 1938 agreement.

Taking particular aim at Russia, the European Parliament issued a resolution last September on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe, specifically urging Russia to come to terms with its tragic past. Calling the resolution sheer nonsense, Putin and his officials in December took to blaming Poland for the start of World War II. Speaking for an hour on the subject of the war during a Dec. 20 summit, he claimed that in 1938 Poland assumed the role of instigator and that Poland and Germany acted together. Putin brought up the subject of Polish responsibility no less than five times in a single week that month. In an unusual outburst at a meeting with the Defense Ministry on Dec. 24, he proclaimed that the Polish ambassador to Nazi Germany in the 1930s was scum and an anti-Semitic pig. That same day, the speaker of Russias parliament publicly called for Poland to apologize for starting the war. The Polish government, in response, accused Putin of reviving propaganda from the time of Stalinist totalitarianism.

Pawe Jabonski, Polands deputy foreign affairs minister, believes Russia focused on Poland because it is a vocal proponent of the sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Russia is using historical memory, he argues, to try to create an image of blamelessness.

In that, Russia would not be alone. A monument erected in Budapest in 2014 under the nationalistic Fidesz party came under fire for depicting Hungary as the archangel Gabriel being attacked by Germany; critics say it whitewashes the fact that the wartime government was complicit in the murder of a large part of the countrys Jewish population. Lithuanias Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, located in the capital Vilnius, was in 2018 re-named from the Museum of Genocide Victims and focuses almost entirely on the murder of the Lithuanian non-Jewish population, while perpetrators of the Holocaust are lauded as victims in their countries struggle against Soviet occupation. The museum has been widely criticized in a country where Germans murdered about 90% of the Jewish populationone of the highest rates in Europe. The Holocaust disappears as the unique event it empirically was, says Dovid Katz, an American Yiddish historian based in Vilnius.

But Poland, Putins target, has also taken particularly forceful steps to introduce its own version of history. Historians say Polands ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has pursued a nationalistic revision of history since it came into office in 2015. The government wants to emphasize that Poles suffered under German occupation and most importantly they were not perpetrators or collaborators, says Svenja Bethke, a history lecturer at the U.K.s University of Leicester. Spokespeople for PiS and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki did not respond to requests for comment for this article.



In February 2018, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a bill into law making it illegal to accuse the Polish state or people of involvement or responsibility for crimes committed by Nazis during the war, citing the need protect Polands and the Polish peoples good nameeven though historians agree that, in a society that fostered widespread anti-Semitism, relatively few non-Jewish Poles tried to protect their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. The law, commonly known as the Holocaust Law, meant that phrases like Polish death camp were banned from use by the media, as that wording may suggest a camp established and run by Poland.

Far-right protesters march in support of the law introducing a penalty for using the term 'Polish death or concentration camps' near the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Feb. 5, 2018 | NurPhoto via Getty ImagesMaciej Luczniewski/NurPhoto

Following international condemnation, the parliament amended the law in June 2018, replacing the original criminal penalty with a civil one. Since then, Poland has concentrated on a public relations strategy for getting its interpretation of history out there, such as through op-eds and statements by the Prime Minister. In November 2019, Netflix added text to its recent documentary The Devil Next Door that clarified that death camps in Poland were run by Nazi Germany after Morawiecki wrote a letter to Netflixs CEO. Better than punishing somebody for using the wrong language is to explain write about it, make movies about it and show people real facts, not punish them, Wojciech Surmacz, President of the state-run Polish Press Agency, tells TIME of the approach. Just show them the truth.

In the years after the invasion of Poland, Jan Grabowskis father had an experience that was all too familiar for Polands Jewish population. His neighbor, knowing the family was Jewish, went to the Gestapo to turn them in. But then something unusual happened: the officer who came to grill Grabowskis grandfather realized they had both served in the same unit in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. On the basis of that connection, he vowed not to tell his superiors about them.

By thus surviving the war, Grabowskis father became one of only 1% of Polish Jews to outlive the German occupation. And so, for the historian, getting to the truth about that timethe real truthis personal. Over the last 20 years, he has researched the countless times Poles informed Germans about local Jewish people, many instances of which are documented in German court records in Warsaw. Several members of my family were murdered during the war, he says. One of my grandfathers brothers was murdered one year after the war by Poles, who simply did not like very much to see a Jew returning to Poland.

Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski in his office in Ottawa in 2017. | Courtesy of Jan Grabowski

But, despite the personal nature of his work, Grabowski has stopped giving workshops for Polish teachers on the history of World War II and the Holocaust because, he says, teachers were afraid to attend sessions that might slander the good name of Poland or to be associated with someone targeted by nationalists. In addition to the lawsuit Grabowski filed against the Polish League Against Defamation, which is aligned with PiS, he is also embroiled in a suit filed by the same group on behalf of a woman who objects to a book that Grabowski co-edited, which describes her deceased uncle robbing a Jewish girl and allegedly helping Germans find Jews who were in hiding. The group accused him of being a carrier of lies in a June 2017 letter sent to the University of Ottawa, where he is a professor. More than 180 Holocaust scholars in the U.S. and worldwide issued a statement of support for Grabowski, denouncing the accusations as baseless and an attack on academic freedom and integrity.

Grabowskis work is part of a field that has flourished since the collapse of communism. For example, the 2000 book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross, documented the slaughter of about 1,600 Jews by their Polish neighbors in 1941 in the village of Jedwabne, outside Warsaw. But, now that the fight over this history has ramped up, some experts worry that the field may start to shrink.

Jabonski, Polands deputy foreign affairs minister, tells TIME that academics are free and that if there are any attempts at rewriting history its done by those who try to portray the grey area as representing the whole story. But Dariusz Stola, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, says he fears Polands 2018 law has triggered an atmosphere of intimidation that discourages scholars, especially those of the younger generation from tackling difficult subjects related to crimes committed on 20th century Polish soil.

If future historians are discouraged from such study, the consequences could be grave, and not just within academia.

Memory is shaped by current events. The story of World War II, like any world-shaping event, is told by people in the present looking back to try to make sense of what they are going through now. The United States is certainly not immune from this phenomenon, as post-war attitudes obscured discussion of the countrys own WWII injustices, ranging from racial segregation in the armed forces to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. History is about the past, but you write it in the present, says Rob Citino, Senior Historian at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Memory is about the past, but youre living in the present, and the way you remember things is very much altered by what youre going through at the time. History is a technical field. Memoryeverybody has one.

A British sergeant is lifted up as Moscow women celebrate VE Day on May 8, 1945. | Getty Images

Likewise, memories of the past inform present-day policymaking. World War II provides what is perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon: From the Vietnam War in the 60s to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Western leaders have invoked Munich to warn of the danger of appeasing dictators. And in Russia, memories of World War II have been implicitly used in an attempt to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Putin compared the Ukrainian militarys offensive in Donbas to the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II, and Russian officials compared the return of Crimea to Russia and victory in World War II as moments of which citizens could be proud.

There is some evidence that efforts to tweak those memories are working. Within Russia, the publics pride for the past appears to be reflected in the largely supportive response to Putins decision to annex Crimea. Just 3% are embarrassed by their countrys Soviet history and the 2014 capture of Crimea, according to a 2016 survey by Independent polling agency the Levada Center. Meanwhile, Stalinwhose labor camps, executions, forced famines and policy of collectivization led to the death of 20 million citizenshasnt been so popular in years. Levada found that, in 2003, 35% of respondents said they thought Stalin played a rather positive role Russias history; in 2019, the figure rose to 52%. Support for the Nazi-Soviet pact has also risen in the past decade. The center also found in a 2017 survey that 31% of respondents somewhat approved of the Nazi-Soviet pact, up from 26% in 2005. Central and Eastern Europe, however, remember the pact as something that doomed half of Europe to decades of misery.

So, if leaders in any one nation succeed in convincing the public to rely on a vision of the past based on nationalism, not historical research, they will have done much more than rewrite textbooks. As they fill their arsenals with friendly analogies, they remove the possibility of learning from what really happened.

Yet not everyone is prepared to accept a state-led account of the pastand if victorious historical narratives have aimed to unite the population in Russia, they have largely failed. The current model of national historical experience splits people up instead of bringing them together, Andrei Kolesnikov, Chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, has written.

In fact, Olga Malinova, a politics professor at Moscows Higher School of Economics, says a new trend of historical debate in Russia is emerging. People in social networks are having serious debates about how Victory Day should be commemorated, whether it should be commemorated at all, she says.

And there and elsewhere, despite everything, scholarship continues to be produced. Nobody gives a damn about the risks, says Princetons Gross. Over the last 20 years, there have been piles of books in Polish where these matters are very well-documented. Last fall, Polish prosecutors dropped a roughly four-year-old case over the fact that Gross wrote that the Poles killed more Jews than they did Germans in a 2015 op-ed. And a review of Jan Grabowskis latest book, On Duty: The Role of Polish Police in the Holocaust in a prominent local newspaper praised it for reminding readers how much there is still to learn about the extermination of Europes Jewish population. They and their colleagues plan to keep doing the work, so that others can learnperhaps prompting more of the type of conversations that make a top-down rewriting of history so difficult. Seventy-five years later, there is still much work to be done in learning about that past.

When you do the history of the Holocaust, its a commitment, Grabowski says. I have an obligation to the dead.
The husband of one of the victims of Nova Scotias mass shooting is seeking to certify a class action lawsuit against the shooters estate.

Nicholas Beaton, whose wife, Kristen Beaton, was one of the 22 people killed by Gabriel Wortman on the weekend of April 18-19, is proposing a class action suit that would include all of Wortmans victims, their direct family members and the victims estates. It would not include Wortmans former girlfriend.

Robert H. Pineo, a partner at Patterson Law, filed a notice of claim Thursday on behalf of Beaton with the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. The respondent is listed as Pat Doe on behalf of the estate of Gabriel Wortman.

Kristen Beaton, who was pregnant at the time of her death, was on her way to work as a personal support nurse when she was pulled over by the shooter, who was posing as a police officer.

I know this lawsuit wont bring back any of those senselessly murdered; however, there must be accountability for this tragedy, Nicholas Beaton is quoted as saying in a press release issued by his lawyer Thursday evening.

The statement of claim says Beaton is willing to represent all class members in the case, giving legal instruction and participating in all steps of the discovery process.

Since the tragedy, Beaton has become an advocate on behalf of his wife for VON Canada nurses, and for all health-care workers seeking greater access to personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 crisis.

The proposed class action, which must be certified by a Nova Scotia court before it can proceed, seeks to have all of Wortmans assets divided among the victims and victims families proportionally, based on individual submissions by class members. Wortmans former girlfriend, who was the first person to be assaulted on the evening of April 18, is excluded from the proposed class.

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Appeal in Babri demolition case to be taken after studying judgment says CBI counsel

Babri demolition verdict: All you need to know about the key figures

Babri demolition case: Deliver verdict by August 31, SC tells CBI court

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 08: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the special CBI court in Lucknow to deliver its judgment in the Babri Masjid demolition case by August 31 this year.

On July 19 last year the top court had asked the special judge to deliver the verdict within nine months, which was to end this April.

The extension of the deadline comes after the CBI judge wrote to the Supreme Court seeking more time citing the nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The bench on Friday said that despite nine months having expired from the aforesaid date (July 19), "we still find, on a perusal of the letter dated May 6, 2020, written by Shri Yadav, Special Judge that even the evidence is not yet completed".

It said, "We may indicate that video conferencing facilities are available and should be used by Shri Yadav in order to complete all evidence as well as applications that may be filed in that behalf. It is up to Shri Yadav to control the proceedings in accordance with law so that inordinate delay that is beyond the time frame that we now give is no longer breached".

The top court had on July 19 last year also extended the tenure of the special judge at Lucknow till the completion of the trial and the delivery of verdict in the case.

Besides Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharti, the accused against whom conspiracy charge was invoked in the case by the Supreme Court on April 19, 2017, include former Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh, BJP MP Vinay Katiar and Sadhvi Ritambara.

Three other high-profile accused Giriraj Kishore, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal and Vishnu Hari Dalmia died during trial and the proceedings against them have been abated.

Kalyan Singh, during whose tenure as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh the disputed structure was razed, was put on trial in September last year after his tenure as Governor came to an end.

The top said last July that recording of evidence in the politically sensitive case should be completed within six months and the judgement in the case should be ready and delivered maximum within a period of nine months.

Exercising its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the top court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pass appropriate orders in consultation with the Allahabad High Court within four weeks to extend the tenure of the special judge, who was set to retire on September 30 last year.

The special judge had written a letter on May 25, last year to the apex court, seeking extension of two-year deadline for completion of the case and informed the court that he was set to superannuate on September 30, 2019.

On April 19, 2017, the top court had ordered day-to-day trial in the high profile case and directed the special judge to conclude it in two years' time.

While dubbing demolition of the disputed structure as a "crime" which shook the "secular fabric of the Constitution", it had allowed the CBI''s plea on restoration of criminal conspiracy charge against the VVIP accused.

The court had come down heavily on the CBI for the delay of over 25 years in the trial.

Issuing a slew of directions, it had said, "The proceedings (against Advani and others) in the court of the Special Judicial Magistrate at Raebareli will stand transferred to the Court of Additional Sessions Judge (Ayodhya Matters) at Lucknow."

"The court of sessions will frame additional charges under Section 120-B (conspiracy) and the other provisions of the penal code mentioned in the joint charge sheet filed by the CBI against Champat Rai Bansal, Satish Pradhan, Dharam Das, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Mahamadleshwar Jagdish Muni, Ram Bilas Vadanti, Vaikunth Lal Sharma and Satish Chandra Nagar," the apex court had said.

The court had termed the Allahabad High Court''s February 12, 2001 verdict dropping conspiracy charge against Advani and others as "erroneous".

Before the 2017 verdict of the apex court, there were two sets of cases relating to the demolition of the disputed structure on December 6, 1992 going on at Lucknow and Raebareli.

The trial of first case involving unnamed ''Karsevaks'' was going on in a Lucknow court, while the second set of cases relating to the eight VVIPs were going on in a Raebareli court.
On International Red Cross Day (May 8), Irish Red Cross Chairperson Pat Carey has thanked Irish Red Cross volunteers for their hard work during the Covid-19 crisis.

On this, International Red Cross Day, Id like to personally thank the Irish Red Cross volunteers who have gone above and beyond the call of duty during the global pandemic.

Our members have shown, once again, that their dedication to their communities is unrivalled. Locally and nationally, Irish Red Cross members have been supporting people who have been affected by the Covid-19 crisis. In these times it is especially important that we take a minute to recognise the hard work that goes on behind the scenes by volunteers all over the country."

Irish Red Cross volunteers across Ireland have been instrumental in supporting communities during the Coronavirus crisis. Their work has given a lifeline to cocooning people and isolated, vulnerable people who would otherwise be unable to access groceries and vital medicines. Volunteers have also distributed goods and food generously donated to the organisation by companies.

Using their ambulances and support vehicles, members have transported patients for chemotherapy, dialysis etc. and evacuated residents from care homes where they were at risk of contracting Covid-19. IRC volunteers have also safely moved people from Direct Provision centres into isolation units, at the request of the Department for Justice.

Irish prisons are still without a confirmed case of Coronavirus thanks to the extraordinary efforts of in-prison IRC volunteers who have been working closely with prison authorities, distributing information about the virus and ensuring that proper infection prevention procedures are in place. The prisoners and prison officers have worked together to ensure that the prisons remain virus-free.
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Published May 8, 2020

When the COVID-19 health crisis sent students and educators home in March, K-12 educators skilled at teaching face-to-face in traditional classroom settings suddenly found themselves faced with the challenges of a transition to virtual, or online teaching.

For many teachers, it was a daunting transition. How would they connect with students? How would they keep them motivated? How would this affect their grades? What is Zoom?

Two University of Louisiana Monroe faculty members in the School of Education in the College of Arts, Education, and Sciences, Dr. Heather Kennedy and Dr. Amy Weems, were asked to develop a program to assist Northeast Louisiana educators from kindergarten through 12th grade to manage and maximize their online classrooms.

Kennedy, Ed.D., Field Experience and Residency Coordinator, and Weems, Ed.D., Assistant Professor and Coordinator for Secondary Education, already have relationships with area elementary, middle, and high schools. Kennedy and Weems work with district leadersto place ULM education students in residency classrooms (student teaching), coordinate practicums, and foster the interest of high school juniors and seniors planning to become teachers through the Educators Rising Program.

Together, they were poised to help teachers find effective ways to continue to educate students who were logging in from home.

When K-12 schools in Louisiana closed due to COVID-19, Dr. Amy Weems and I were approached with the opportunity to help support K-12 teachers in delivering content online to their students. We immediately contacted our partner districts and educator friends to spread the word. We were greatly pleased by the positive response we received, Kennedy said.

We were contacted by Leslie Durham, the Governor's Designee to the Delta Regional Authority, with a request to help teachers transition from face-to-face to online learning, said Weems. We had to re-imagine what good teaching can look like when its not face-to-face. The educators who have stepped up to the plate during these online support conversations have been so supportive of one another.

The result is Online Educators Support. Using weekly webinars with educators throughout NELA, Kennedy and Weems presented how-to instructions, plans, and goals for each week.

We started with the basics and showed educators how to, in real-time, connect with their students even if it was just to see their faces and say hello. I think connecting with students in the early stages of the stay at home order was the most important part for educators, Kennedy said.

With Kennedys background in elementary education, she focused on those teachers, while Weems centered on middle and high school. They addressed specific needs as they developed, customizing plans to fit the grade level and the subject.

The program evolved from helping educators connect virtually on different platforms, to creating virtual classrooms and setting expectations so that learning could continue, Kennedy explained.

We created modules for transitioning traditional assignments to online platforms, discussed how to reach students who may not be able to attend virtual classes and how to manage the online work while providing high-quality feedback to students, said Kennedy.

Kennedy and Weems were available to work one-on-one with educators by appointment through virtual office hours.

The response from more than 150 educators has been rewarding for the pair.

It was so encouraging each week to see teachers come back and want to know more. Teachers and administrators from all over north Louisiana attended and put their new learning into action, Kennedy said.

The school year ends soon, but the uncertainty of the fall looms: will schools reopen in the fall for the 2020-21 academic year?

The response from educators led Kennedy and Weems to realize this was probably just the beginning for Online Educators Support.

My favorite part each week was talking with teachers about how they connected with their students and used some of the virtual tools they learned about in the webinars. The teachers would light up talking about their students, that made this work so rewarding and encouraging, Kennedy said.

I think this was a pilot (program) for how the university can support programs for the future. Everyone benefits from community partnerships, and the Online Educators Support can serve as a model going forward, said Weems.
Auburn, IN (46706)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. Morning high of 42F with temps falling to near 25. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 14F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph.
With as many as 390 more people testing coronavirus positive since previous night, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Gujarat reached 7,403 on Friday, a health official said.

During the same period, 24 patients succumbed to the infection, taking the death toll due to the pandemic in the state to 449, said Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi.

Out of the total 390 new cases that were detected during the day, 269 were from Ahmedabad. Other major centres include Vadodara (25), Surat (25) and Arvalli (20).

Of the total 24 patients, who succumbed to the infection in the 24 hours, as many as 22 died in different hospitals of Ahmedabad, while one each died in Bhavnagar and Surat.

Till now, 449 people have died due to coronavirus in Gujarat.

As many as 163 patients recovered in the past 24 hours and given discharge from different hospitals, taking the total number of such patients to 1,872.

Of the total 1,05,387 tests conduct so far in Gujarat, results of 7,403 have come positive, while 97,984 have tested negative.

"As requested by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, the Centre has decided to send AIIMS director Rajdeep Guleria and Dr Manish Sureja to Gujarat on Saturday, to help the state in reducing the mortality rate," said Ravi.

"Both these experts will reach here by a special flight from Delhi. They will visit Ahmedabad civil hospital and SVP Hospital to take stock of the situation. These experts will interact with our doctors and share their feedback with us before leaving," she added.

According to Ravi, Gujarat does not figure in the list of top five states that have registered the highest increase in positive cases between April 30 and May 6.

She added that the state's COVID-19 cases growth rate was 50.7 per cent and the case doubling rate now stands at 12 days.

Of the 449 persons who died so far due to the infection, as many as 343 have succumbed in Ahmedabad alone.

Similarly, of the total 7,403 cases registered in Gujarat till now, as many as 5,260 cases were reported in Ahmedabad alone, followed by 824 cases in Surat and 465 in Vadodara.

Gujarat's COVID-19 figures are as follows: Positive cases 7,403, new cases 390, deaths 449, discharged 1,872 active cases 5,082 and people tested so far 1,05,387.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo: The Canadian Press

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. will be free to pull up stakes from Montreal  the seat of its operations for more than a century  come 2024, along the lines of a "Plan B" it submitted to federal prosecutors in 2018.

Shareholders voted Thursday to maintain a bylaw provision that allows the engineering firm to move to another province. The company is tethered to Montreal for the next four years through the strings attached to a $1.5-billion loan from Quebec's pension fund manager that allowed SNC to acquire British competitor WS Atkins in 2017.

When that loan is repaid, the terms expire, unmooring the company.

Underscoring SNC's open horizon was the rejection by shareholders of a proposal from Montreal-based investor rights group MEDAC at the company's annual general meeting Thursday.

MEDAC asked the board to commit to preserving SNC's head office in Quebec after senior management "informed the federal government that it was seriously considering moving the head office from Montreal to the U.K. if they did not agree to settle, out of court, the corruption charges filed against the company," the group said.

The board recommended shareholders vote against the proposal, highlighting its commitment to Canada's second-largest city through 2024. "(W)e are deeply committed to remain a Montreal-based global Canadian company with our head office in Quebec," SNC states in its proxy circular.

Last December, SNC-Lavalin settled criminal charges related to business dealings in Libya, with its construction division pleading guilty to a single count of fraud that helped tie off a long-standing scandal that tarnished its reputation and ensnared the highest office of the Canadian government.

SNC had warned Ottawa in September 2018 about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn't get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press last year.

The PowerPoint presentation documents describe a "Plan B" outlining how SNC might have to move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,700 before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.

"We don't understand why the company's commitment to maintain its headquarters in Montreal is part of an agreement with a major investor," MEDAC said at the online AGM, referring to the Caisse de depot et placement. "Would SNC have wanted to leave otherwise? This seems totally inconceivable to us."

"We have indicated on numerous occasions that we are focused on implementing our new strategic direction, and thereby building a world-class engineering services company headquartered in Montreal," SNC said in an email to The Canadian Press.
The mayor of Chattanooga and the entire Chattanooga City Council should be embarrassed about the recent appointment and subsequent unanimous vote to hire Ms. Farmer as the new city treasurer. They shouldnt fault her or be embarrassed that she comes with some baggage, but that they were all too darn lazy to do the most basic of due diligence on researching this potential hire.

I want to suggest that the leaders of the city of Chattanooga invest some of their time in visiting this amazing new website called Google. You may have heard about this during a recent Zoom meeting, but it can reveal a lot about a person. Go to the Google website if you can find it. Then type in K-A-T-E F-A-R-M-E-R. This obscure website might even automatically give you a suggestion that includes the KATE FARMER WYOMING. Pick that in search bar. Now take 10 seconds to read articles from Wyoming based newspapers that dont charge money to subscribe to their citys newspaper articles. No private investigators or $100,000 search firm fees needed here to find out all you need to know about Ms. Farmers issues out west.

Another thing that you can find on this same Google website is information about Ms. Farmers former hometown and employer. Type in the word G-U-E-R-N-S-E-Y. Dont worry about the spelling, Google is smarter than you. It will amaze city of Chattanooga leaders to find that Guernsey, Wyoming is a beautiful old cowboy town, but also the fact that this town has a population of less than 2,000 citizens. Hardly a qualifier for handling the money of a town as big as Red Bank much less a city as large as Chattanooga.

My point is obvious here. The Chattanooga City Council has no one else to blame but themselves for this debacle which will cost the city at least $80,000 in salary. Who could blame Ms. Farmer for taking the deal if it was that easy to land the job  no questions asked? Maybe theres another connection that we dont know about yet, but for now it just sounds like sloppy governing and ill-informed decision making.

Robert Maner

* * *

Not in defense of anyone, but those stories Mr. Maner mentions found during an Internet search are relatively new - and basically local Chattanooga ones, after the fact themselves. Even the lawsuit filed by the former Guernsey, Wyoming police chief appears to be less than a month old, although the investigation itself appears longer, but investigations of this nature are not often made public during the early investigation stages unless they're leaked to the media by some inside source. Nothing would have come up during a simple search on the matter. Therefore, the scope of the issue would have likely fallen under the radar anyway.





When Chattanooga was looking for a new police chief I was able to pull up some pretty disturbing and shady history-stuff during a simple search on some of the names being considered during a simple search. All I did was key in a few of the names, one at a time, and use a few key words.





I mean, the stories and problems nearly jumped right off the screen at you. It couldn't be ignored or covered up by the applicants.That's because the information sometimes dated back years. But all this Guernsey stuff is quite new and only one or two recent stories appear in the local Guernsey news.





Granted when we elect people it shouldn't be based on simply wanting someone who looks like us or to make some kind history. Neither should it have anything to do with who we went to school with this or that person nor lived in the same community with all our lives, or worship together, attending the same college as they did nor belonged to the same sorority or fraternity as they do. It should be based on their knowledge, expertise and how to address matters and access needed information or how to go the right sources or get the help if needed from someone more knowledgeable if they don't know the answer.





None of those above things have an impact or influence on how I vote. Unfortunately, far too many do vote along those lines. That is, who we personally know. Who we went to school with. Who we worship with if we worship. Who we attended college with, and who were sorority/fraternity sisters or brothers. That's the bulk of the problem no matter which sides you're cheering for.





Brenda Washington






Image: nls.ac.in

On May 6, Facebook announced a 20-member independent oversight board that can overrule the social media giants decisions on content moderation, a contentious issue for long. Only one Indian, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, is part of what is being called as Facebooks Supreme Court. The vice-chancellor of Bengaluru-based National Law School of India University told Moneycontrols Pratik Bhakta in an interview over the phone that the decisions of the oversight board are binding on the Menlo Park-headquartered technology giant. The creation of the oversight board, he said, is a great lesson in private regulations and will balance free speech with individual dignity, arguably the biggest challenge of the social-media age. The social media network is looking to enlarge the domain of freedom of speech but also wants to preserve dignity and equality, according to Krishnaswamy. Edited excerpts:

Q: How did this assignment come about? What are the kind of discussions you had before agreeing to be a part of the board?

In the US, it started way back in 2018 and then an independent trust was created and four co-chairs appointed. These four co-chairs ran the entire process independent of Facebook. I dont know how they decided on the members but no one applied. They did their own ways of searching and sifting through people and I am sure they spoke to many of us before announcing it. At my level, I have been engaged with the board for about three months.

Q: How will the board function? Do you have to set aside specific hours for it?

This is a very part-time association. The decision-making process will be panel-based. When you are made part of a panel, then you will participate. There are 20 members and we are not going to sit together but mostly it will be few hours a week or something like that.

Once the panel takes a decision, it will be confirmed by the entire board. These will not be individual decisions.

Q: Will you be taking cases related to India or South Asia?

I will not be taking cases about India only or any specific geographies. We will all be sitting on decisions from across the world. Technically, I am not representing India. At any point in time, the panel can call other experts for help. These can be linguistic experts, cultural experts, whoever they think is useful to that case.

Q) Will Facebook be involved in helping conduct meetings, etc?

We are an independent oversight board, Facebook is not involved. My appointment was also handled by the board. To the extent of managing content on Facebook and Instagram, we will coordinate with them to get those files but they will not be part of the decision-making process.

What is important here is that I dont report to anybody at Facebook and I dont engage with anybody there. Resources have been placed in an independent and an irrevocable trust.

Q) How do you balance freedom of expression and defamatory statements on social media? We have seen multiple cases where political leaders have got people arrested for cartoons or even jokes.

Firstly, jurisdictional laws and rules will continue to apply. The way Facebook is working with local judicial authorities that will continue. We will not get involved there.

Also, on one point we are clear that we want to enlarge and expand the domain of freedom of speech but at the same time, we also want to preserve the dignity of the individual, equality on the platform and we do not want use of abusive language and denigration of people on the internet.

So, there are two ends of the spectrum: dignity and freedom of speech. Since we will be taking up complicated cases, we have to carefully calibrate how these interests add up. That is going to be the tough part of the job. We cannot articulate this in advance. We have to do this on a case-by-case basis.

Q) How do you look at political advertisements on Facebook? Do you think they should also go through a fact-check filter?

This issue around political interference in Facebook is an old problem and in fact valid for all the internet platforms. Facebook has faced problems of this nature in the past and in some cases, they have not been able to respond in a way the entire community could be happy. That is exactly why the board has been constituted.

But is there any magic wand? No. But at least we can say this is much better than what existed before. Previously, some decisions were taken opaquely and unilaterally by the company. Now there is a process through which you can challenge and raise that grievance and you will get a fair, well-articulated and well-argued conclusion to the question. Explaining ourselves in this way makes us accountable and makes Facebook accountable.

Q) Do you see your decisions clashing with the internal decisions of Facebook?

There is no guarantee that the boards decisions will be in line with those of Facebook. If you say that is a clash, then yes there is a good potential for a clash and the answer to that clash is the mandate of the board is such that our decision overrides their internal decisions.

As oversight board members and as a group, we are not even experts in business but that is not even our job. Our mandate is to give decisions on content moderation and on the content policy. What effects it has on business that other people will bother about.

Q) Do you see such an initiative becoming relevant for broader private regulations in India and the world?

Can this become a cross-platform initiative? I think if we succeed, it will clearly show the path. It is an innovative effort and the first of its kind. Now it depends on how we do our job and how the community, platforms and even government, for that matter, relate to our job. The way the body is being formed, I think it already is a great lesson in private regulations and even in state regulations. These are lessons that can go well beyond Facebook

Q) How will cases be coming in? Will there be ground rules for appealing to the board?

Potentially, there are three channels of cases coming in. The first channel can be Facebook and Instagram themselves. If they are unsure about a particular case, they can refer it to us. Second, users may also complain if they are not happy with what Facebook has done. Third, the board takes up some cases itself.

Right now, the third option is not clearly set up. The first and second options have already been put out by Facebook. Now who can approach, how they can approach and what types of cases will be taken up, these will be contained in a discreet public document. That document is not ready yet. It will happen in the near future.

The body has just been formed and given the current scenario no one has met anybody but it is remarkable that we have come this far, now the actual work starts.

Q) The recent Bois Locker Room chatroom on Instagram has triggered outrage and concerns over the abuse of social media. While police have taken action, what are the ethical dilemmas here and what is the best way to handle such a situation?

Just to make it clear, we will express our opinions on specific cases and not on generic matters. The decisions will be clearly reasoned, articulated into several languages and made public. These will be binding on Facebook.

It might come (down) to the interpretation of a specific content moderation policy or a specific challenging case. With respect to the current issue around Bois Locker Room, Instagram has already responded, so has the government and the process is underway. So, I do not think this is that big an issue from interpretation perspective. Now with regards to social issues, as individuals, we will continue to learn and respond to such incidents in better ways but that will not be the job of the board.

Q) Facebook has a content moderation policy. Will the board making changes to it?

When we start, we will continue to work with the policy that Facebook has. Also, we have publicly stated that we are committed to international human rights. These two are our normative commitments. Policies change in two major ways. First, they change by interpretation and second, they evolve.

We will publish an annual report about the kinds of cases we have taken up and Facebooks level of compliance. This will be a public report. Now in that way policy will also evolve.

For instance, if we observe the application of certain tenets of the policy is not happening in the right way consistently over a few cases, then the policy will change. It is not part of our direct responsibility to rewrite their policy but over a period of time, there will be some effects on the policy as well.

Q) Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about AI (artificial intelligence) and its role in moderating content on Facebook. Where does the board stand on it?

There are already two layers with respect to content moderation. The first layer is the AI layer, where technology is used to moderate content. Second, is the human-moderation layer. I think Facebook already has a strong human-moderation setup. We are the third layer where things will come when either party is not satisfied but whatever we decide is binding on both the previous layers of moderation.
South Australia has recorded its first coronavirus case in a fortnight after a man tested positive six weeks after travelling home from the UK.

The man, aged in his 70s, arrived in South Australia on March 20 and started showing symptoms such as a loss of smell and taste a few days later.

He quarantined immediately after the flight but was diagnosed with the virus after getting tested on May 5.

The state's Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the man had only been in close contact with five people who are now self isolating and show no symptoms.

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South Australia has recorded its first coronavirus case in two weeks after a man in his 70s tested positive six weeks after arriving from the UK (pictured: nurses testing people for COVID-19 at hospital in Barossa Valley, SA)

'It's just a very timely reminder to keep doing the things you've been doing,' Dr Spurrier said.

'We do in fact have a new case today in South Australia. That might make you feel quite disappointed but I'd like to explain some of the circumstances.

'He landed in Adelaide on the 20th of March which does seem quite a long time ago, but he was not infectious on the flight.

'He quarantined immediately and developed very mild symptoms on the 24th of March.'

Dr Spurrier said the health department believed the man had become infected overseas.

The state's Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said it's believed the man contracted the disease while overseas

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

She said it was 'difficult' to determine how the man was still an active case despite travelling six weeks ago.

'What we do think is probably people are infectious for about eight days from the beginning of having symptoms,' she said.

The elderly man is now the state's second active case of COVID-19.

Dr Spurrier warned there could still be an outbreak in South Australia.

'I want people to know we are likely to see more cases in South Australia,' she said.

South Australia is hoping to relax some coronavirus restrictions within the coming week.

Premier Steven Marshall said a return to sport, travel within the state and extending the amount of guests at funerals were at the top of the list.
Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has said Ghana is ready to make an assessment on Covid-Organics- the purported COVID-19 cure from Madagascar.



He said when that herbal product is made available the GHS would collaborate with the Food and Drugs Authority to ascertain its potency and advise the public accordingly.



Dr Kuma-Aboagye said this at a media briefing on Thursday in Accra on the latest Coronavirus management situation in the country.



He was responding to a question posed by a journalist as to whether Ghana is considering the use of the Covid-Organics as part of its treatment measures.



Covid-Organics, is the herbal remedy produced from artemisia, a plant with proven efficacy against malaria, and other indigenous herbs as stated by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research in Madagarscar.



The plant was first imported into the island nation in the 1970s from China to treat malaria.



It is now marketed in bottles as a herbal tea, while the President of Madagascar, Mr Andry Rajoelina has said clinical trials were under way in the country to produce a form that could be injected into the body.



As COVID-19 spreads across Africa and leaders put their countries in lockdown, President Rajoelina last month launched the herbal remedy that he claimed could prevent and cure the disease.



The announcement caught medical experts, who have scrambled to find a cure for the disease that has killed more than 252,000 and infected at least 3.6 million people globally, by surprise.



Meanwhile, the African Union said, it is in discussion with Madagascar with a view to obtain technical data regarding the safety and efficiency of the herbal remedy.



In an attempt to reassure people and brush aside safety concerns, Mr Rajoelina took a dose of Covid-Organics at the launch event and said it was safe to be given to children.



The World Health Organization (WHO) have also advised people against using untested remedies for COVID-19.



"Africans deserve to use medicines tested to the same standards as people in the rest of the world," WHO, the United Nations health agency, said in a statement on Monday.



"Even if therapies are derived from traditional practice are natural, establishing their efficacy and safety through rigorous clinical trials is critical," the statement said.



The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also warned people against using unproven remedies.



"There is no scientific evidence that any of these alternative remedies can prevent or cure the illness caused by COVID-19. In fact, some of them may not be safe to consume," the CDC said.

Source: GNA









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Seoul, May 8 : North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a congratulatory message to Chinese President Xi Jinping for successfully containing the novel coronavirus, Pyongyang's state media reported on Friday.

In a "verbal message", Kim said that Xi "is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic and strategically and tactically controlling the overall situation while leading the Chinese party and people", Efe news quoted Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying in a report.

Kim also wished te President "good health" and expressed conviction that "the Chinese party and people would cement the successes made so far and steadily expand them and thus win a final victory under the wise guidance of Xi Jinping", KCNA added, without specifying when the message was delivered to Beijing.

Kim has on several occasions praised the efforts of the Chinese government in controlling the pandemic, the real extent of which is unknown in North Korea since Pyongyang completely sealed its borders at the end of January in the face of the spread of the disease in the neighbouring country.

Kim's latest words of praise for Xi came after he reappeared in a state media report on May 2 following a 21-day absence from the public eye.

During this period, the leader missed several important regime events, including the commemoration of the birth of the country's founder and Kim's grandfather Kim Il-sung, on the main national holiday on April 15.

Given the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic and the traditional secretiveness of the North Korean government, Kim's disappearance had been accompanied by anonymously sourced reports in foreign media suggesting that he was gravely ill after undergoing cardiac surgery, or even dead.

The speculation was also fueled by the state media reporting that during his last public event, Kim named his sister as a member of the powerful Workers' Party of Korea political bureau, a move interpreted by some commentators as a succession plan.

However, South Korean intelligence agencies refuted the speculations and later the North Korean leader's reappearance ruled out the possibility that he could have undergone any medical procedure of this kind.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service said that even a simple cardiovascular procedure would have required four or five weeks of recovery, whereas Kim was absent for three weeks.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The Tomball Economic Development Corp. signed Whitmeyers Distilling Co. as a tenant in its newly purchased South Live Oak Industrial Park in downtown Tomball. Whitmeyers leased 16,496 square feet at 204 S. Live Oak St. in March to bottle and distribute liquid hand sanitizer to assist during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company, which distills whiskey, vodka and gin, is also in discussions with the TEDC to relocate its distillery operations to Tomball. The plans, which include a 10,000-square-foot barrel house and events venue, are pending further negotiations and a conditional-use permit from the city.

The company, which created about 130 jobs from the new operations, is ramping up its sanitizer capacity to 1 million gallons-per-month by June.

The parties had previously spoken about a location at the facility, but the timing was not right, according to the TDEC . The deal came together once TEDC purchased the building and Whitmeyers had a simultaneous need to expand.

Northern Tool + Equipment signed a 22,016-square-foot lease for a build-to-suit project in Park Air 59, a mixed-use development with retail, medical office and industrial space at the northeast corner of U.S. 59 and Will Clayton Parkway n Humble. Archway Properties, the landlord and developer, selected LaGrone Services as the general contractor for the project, which will open in early 2021 as the hardware retailers eighth location in the Houston area. Austin Alvis of NewQuest Properties and Preston Cunningham of Cunningham Ventures represented the landlord. Jason Baker and Traci Holman of Baker Katz represented the tenant. The store will be built on 1.7 acres next to the recently opened Floor & Decor.

Northern Tool continues a theme of national credit retail tenants at the northern end of our property, Ben Allen, partner in Houston-based Archway Properties, said in an announcement. The hardware sectors performance during these times is enabling us to move forward despite the market conditions created by COVID-19.

Humble Independent School District purchased 27 acres at the northeast corner of Old Humble Road and Bender Road in Humble as the site of a new elementary school. The land was purchased from Sam Field Estate and others on April 21. Mark Wimberly of Houston Commercial Development represented the buyer. Jerry Turboff of Prime Capital Corp. was the cooperating broker.

Camp Bow Wow Pearland, a dog day care and boarding facility, will open a 10,000-square-foot facility at 2849 Old Chocolate Bayou Road on May 14. Alfonso Zaza and Veronica Greggio operate the location, which offers 79 cabins with cots, teacup suites, four indoor and outdoor play spaces with dog pools and play equipment. The climate controlled camp has a 24-hour monitoring system.

Jones Hummel Holdings  Firestone Auto acquired 1.4 acres at 2051 W. Main St., League City, from Virgata One LLC. Jon Jamison and Brett Strake of NewQuest Properties represented the buyer.

Daw and Ray expanded to 2,038 square feet at Capital One Plaza, 5718 Westheimer. Lispah Hogan of Newmark Knight Frank represented the tenant. CBRE represented the landlord.

R&B Industrial Supply renewed a lease for 4,960 square feet of office space at Three Riverway. William McCarthy of Finial Group represented the tenant. Kristen Rabel, Marilyn Guion, Parker Duffie with CBRE represented the landlord, Dar 3 Riverway LP.

Katy ABA Center of Texas has expanded by 962 square feet at 6701 Highway Blvd.in Katy. Dani Allison of Resolut RE represented the sublessor.

Farmer Bros Co. renewed its lease of 24,000 square feet at West by Northwest Industrial Park, 6300 West by Northwest Blvd. Jeremy Lumbreras and Boone Smith of Stream Realty Partners represented the landlord, Link Industrial Properties.

Marinor & Associates renewed a lease for 5,485 square feet at 2727 Allen Parkway. Hugh Herman of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. Kristen Rabel and Elliott Hirshfeld of CBRE represented the landlord.

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"At Packard Children's Hospital, there is actually very little that we do that can truly be considered 'elective,'" said Dennis Lund, MD , chief medical officer at Stanford Children's Health. "We had to carefully evaluate scheduled procedures to determine whether they could be safely delayed for 30-plus days, since that was the definition of 'elective' included in the mandate."

The steps to scale back services resulted in a reduction of patient census (inpatient occupancy) inside the hospital as well as cancellations of approximately 65 percent of clinical visits across the more than 65 Stanford Children's Health clinics.

By the numbers: Examples of essential care in the past 6-7 weeks at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford 603 babies born 46 heart surgeries 7 stem cell transplants 6 organ transplants

Ready for the surge

Packard Children's Hospital played an important role in preparing for a potential surge of COVID-19 patients, according to Yvonne Maldonado, MD, chief of pediatric infectious diseases. "We were prepared to provide care for pediatric patients from regional hospitals and for adult patients from Stanford Health Care."

Furthermore, specially designated "landing zones" were established to accommodate patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, to minimize the risk of spread to other patients, their families, and health care workers. All of these precautionary measures contributed to the decline in capacity and reduction of services.

"Now we're on the other side of the surge preparation, and we are focused on restoring operations back to normal, in the safest way possible," said Maldonado, who is also professor of pediatrics, infectious diseases, and epidemiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

"We are tremendously proud of our staff and providers, who are ensuring that throughout this crisis, our patients and families continue to receive the highest-quality care," said Paul King, president and CEO of Stanford Children's Health. "Now, as we focus on resuming the patient care that had been put on hold, I am especially grateful for our teams' commitment to ensuring a smooth transition to serving our full patient population once again."

Safely resuming procedures

Stanford Children's Health leaders identified three essential criteria necessary to safely resume services in the hospital and clinics. First, the availability of sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) remains at the forefront of the defense against spreading the virus, according to Maldonado. "We continue to follow government health agency PPE use recommendations to safeguard our patients, families, health care workers and staff."

Second is the capability to broadly test patients and health care providers; Stanford Children's Health has made COVID-19 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and antibody (serology) testing available to all providers, staff, and patients, consistent with procedures implemented across all of Stanford Medicine.

Routine PCR testing is currently being performed for all hospitalized patients; patients who are receiving certain procedures or diagnostic tests that need general anesthesia; symptomatic outpatients; and patients who may have significant exposure to COVID-19. Providers may also order antibody testing for any patient seen at Stanford Children's Health.

Based on their experiences, clinicians plan to study how to optimally use serologic testing to inform future recommendations for prevention and care.

"We are in a fortunate position to have access to the Stanford Medicine-developed test that was among the first FDA-approved COVID-19 tests in the nation," said King. "It allowed us to scale up testing quickly for our patients and health care workers, thus creating a safer environment to provide care."

"For health care workers and patients alike, testing will continue to be central in reducing community spread," said Maldonado. To date, nearly 12,000 employees across Stanford Medicine, including Stanford Children's Health, have been tested, and of that total, 99.7 percent of tests have been negative. "The data demonstrates that the measures we've taken to slow the spread, including appropriate supply and use of PPE, health care worker screenings, and masking, have been effective."

The third criteria is to uphold physical distancing whenever possible, which is being successfully supported through the increased use of telehealth. "During the pandemic, we've made tremendous progress in familiarizing many families with the virtual visit process, many of whom had not tried it before," said Natalie Pageler, MD, who serves as the chief medical information officer at Stanford Children's Health and also works in the pediatric intensive care unit. "While we know that telehealth isn't necessarily appropriate for every appointment, it can reduce the need for families to go to the doctor for in-person visits. "Children and families will continue to benefit from the convenience of this form of health care even after the crisis." Telehealth has also been used inside the hospital for inpatients; some physicians can provide their consultations without needing to be physically present in the patient's room through the use of video monitors.

Telehealth by the numbers Visits per day on average before March 16: 20 Average visits per day as of May 1: 750 Total telehealth visits, March 16May 1: 21,065

A protected place for care

"We've seen through this crisis that there are families who are frightened to come to the hospital, even for emergent care, or to go to their pediatrician for routine care, like immunizations," said Lund. "From very early on we implemented protocols to ensure that we are a safe place to come for those who need to be here."

And moving forward will be no exception. COVID-19 health screenings will continue at the entrances of the hospital and its clinics, and masks will continue to be required for everyone. Existing visitor restrictions will also remain in place to protect our patients and staff.

In Stanford Children's Health's primary care offices, "healthy" patient visits are being separated from "sick" patient visits. "If your child is sick and they need to see their doctor, we are here," said Pamela Kum, MD, a Stanford Children's Health pediatrician with Bayside Medical Group in Livermore, and the Livermore Pleasanton San Ramon Pediatrics Group. "We also want to make sure that patients keep up with their immunization schedules. This provides them with important protection from other dangerous viruses and bacteria. We are taking extra precautions when seeing all patients, to ensure the safety of patients, their families and our medical staff."

According to King, safety has been the organization's guiding principle throughout the crisis. "Our health care workers, patients and families have all had to make drastic and swift changes to adapt. But everyone has risen to meet the challenge, and together we're moving forward."

About Stanford Children's Health

Stanford Children's Health, with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford at its center, is the Bay Area's largest health care system exclusively dedicated to children and expectant mothers. Our network of care includes more than 65 locations across Northern California and 100 locations in the U.S. Western region. As part of Stanford Medicine, a leading academic health system that also includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford University School of Medicine, we are cultivating the next generation of medical professionals and are at the forefront of scientific research to improve children's health outcomes around the world. We are a nonprofit organization committed to supporting the community through meaningful outreach programs and services and providing necessary medical care to families, regardless of their ability to pay. Discover more at stanfordchildrens.org.

Media contact:

Samantha Beal

[email protected]

(650) 498-7056

SOURCE Stanford Childrens Health
Gabe Polsky's Red Army was one of the best sports documentaries I've seen, and in this more dryly cerebral film, he talks to sporting legends like Pele, Jerry Rice and Wayne Gretzky about what separated them from the pack. There's hand-eye and natural athleticism and all that, but what's different about the great, it seems, is their pure love of their sport and desire to understand it at a profound level. As a kid, Gretzky, arguably the best ice hockey player there's ever been, used to sit watching games with a drawing of the rink, using a pen to trace the puck's path without looking. Why? He was learning how to be great. PW

The world needs characters, and they don't come more cussed or distinctive than Diana Kennedy. Born in Essex in 1923, Diana Southwood emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, sold Wedgewood, got married and moved to Mexico. After her husband, the journalist Paul Kennedy died, Diana fell in love with Mexican cuisine, and began touring every corner of the country in a battered pick-up, gathering up recipes and tips. As we discover in Elizabeth Carroll's thoroughly winning documentary, Diana is still going strong at 97, taking no crap off anyone, honking slow drivers and telling it like it is. Her enthusiasm is compelling. PW

I imagine even some card-carrying Republicans would shed a furtive tear of joy if they woke to find that the Trump incumbency had been a protracted nightmare and Barack Obama was still in the White House. Under the Trump administration, America has stepped up its internal race war, seriously weakened its historic links with the EU, the UN, NATO and the WHO, courted crass plutocrats from Vladimir Putin to Jair Bolsonaro and become an international laughing stock - all for the sake of an economic boom that began under Obama and has just definitively ended.

But spare a thought for Donald, who in his corner has a wife who resembles a shop mannequin and a daughter and son-in-law whose political incompetence is exceeded only by their wild ambition. Obama, on the other hand, had Michelle - a lawyer, writer and philanthropist who was every inch her husband's intellectual equal and would be a huge asset to him throughout his two terms, sustaining popularity levels akin to his own.

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Michelle Obama conducted herself with impeccable dignity during her husband's tenure, and let's not forget she had a lot to put up with: during the 2008 presidential election campaign she was portrayed by the right wing press as a shrewish extremist, and throughout her husband's tenure lived through a sustained barrage of bigotry, lies and hatred.

We caught glimpses of the real Michelle from time to time, like the moment she shared a joke with George W Bush Jr at the inauguration ceremony, but mostly she was obliged to sustain her smiling mask.

In this Netflix documentary, she emerges from her husband's shadow as we follow her around America and (briefly) the UK during the stadium-filling book tour that accompanied the publication of her memoir, Becoming. This film comes with a caveat: the Obamas have a production deal with Netflix, and Becoming was made through their own company, Higher Ground, so those expecting a warts-and-all portrait will go away disappointed.

That said, however, I'm not sure how many warts they'd find anyway, because Michelle's passion for education, justice and equal opportunity seem utterly genuine, and she looks happiest not on a stage or in front of a TV interviewer, but when talking to young people who are making the best of it in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, not unlike the one she emerged from herself.

I would have liked a bit more biographical background in Becoming, which seems to assume that you're a paid-up fan and have already devoured Michelle's memoir. She does, though, return to Chicago's south side to briefly discuss her upbringing and the influence of her father, who saw she was bright and encouraged her to aim high. She recalls meeting her future husband at a Chicago law firm and remembers seeing for the first time his remarkable oratorical powers when he spoke at a community event. The revelation that raising kids in the White House was tough is hardly earth-shattering, but her description of leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the final time is interesting: she sobbed on the plane, she admits, partly out of sadness, mainly from relief.

Michelle Obama can seem so perfect in every way that glimpses of human foibles are attractive. She has not forgiven the high-school teacher who insisted she wasn't smart enough to go to Princeton. She went to Princeton. And Michelle is still bitter about how she and her husband were treated by the press, even sometimes the liberal press.

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"When they go low, we go high," is perhaps Michelle's most famous mantra, but doing so can't have been easy, and in her book she talked about how ill-prepared America was for its first black president.

Now though, she is free of all that and though well able for the razzmatazz that surrounds her book tour (crowded arenas, Q&As with Oprah), Michelle seems most at ease sitting around talking to young people.

The looks on the faces of the young African-American women she meets at community events speak volumes about the difference she is making, and has made. "I'm doing what you're doing," she tells them, "I'm figuring out what I want to do." And when asked about how she adjusted to life after the presidency, she says that "so little of what I am happened in those eight years, so much more of who I am happened before".

Airbrushed though this documentary is, it reminds you of a time when the White House was occupied by people who actually believed in something. Trump stands for everything that is worst about America - isolationism, racism, exceptionalism, arrogance, greed. Maybe, just maybe, the Obamas stood for a lot of what is best.
T he Queens memories of her VE Day celebrations have been shared by Buckingham Palace to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.

The monarch recorded an interview for the BBC Radio 4 programme The Way We Were for the 40th anniversary on May 8, 1985.

In archive audio which appeared on the royal familys social media channels, the Queen can be heard recalling how, as a 19-year-old, she joined thousands of other revellers after slipping into the crowds outside Buckingham Palace unnoticed with her 14-year-old sister Princess Margaret.

We cheered the king and queen on the balcony and then walked miles through the streets, the Queen said.

Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War / PA

I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief.

It was an unprecedented and spontaneous breach of royal protocol when the princesses hurried out of the palace after dinner to join the crowds, accompanied by a group of Guards officers, who were friends of the princesses.

My sister and I realised we couldnt see what the crowds were enjoying. My mother had put her tiara on for the occasion, so we asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves. I remember we were terrified of being recognised, the monarch said.

Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures 1 /66 Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures VE Day, 1945 Crowds celebrate in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Joyce Digney (nee Brookes) and Cynthia Covello (nee Lowe) who were famously photographed celebrating VE Day with two sailors in a fountains at Trafalgar Square, PA Evening Standard VE Day front page Evening Standard VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill joins the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace Rex Features VE Day, 1945 An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A victory street party near Clapham Common Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table in Brockely Getty Images VE Day, 1945 An American soldier in London reads the news of the German surrender at the end of World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A van load of beer passes through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds swarm in Trafalgar Square to rejoice Rex Features A group of London girls wave flags in front of the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) giving the 'V for Victory' salute as his car passes through crowds during a VE Day parade in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London PA VE Day, 1945 Men fixing the loudspeakers in Trafalgar Square before the King's VE Day speech Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Passing the crowds outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. A father takes his child on a tour of London's West End in unorthodox style Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Jubilant crowds at Piccadilly Circus celebrating victory in Europe Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers hitching a ride on a lorry in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations at Downing Street, London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill leaves 10 Downing Street by the back entrance to avoid the large crowds awaiting his appearance Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers blowing party trumpets in Piccadilly Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Crowds in Piccadilly Circus climb lampposts and Eros Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 Sir Winston Churchill leaves the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Crowds cheering Churchill as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, and made an official announcement that the war in Europe was over Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) crosses Parliament Square in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 A victory tea party at Amber Road, Finsbury Park in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Mansion House PA Prime Minister Winston Churchill watching a march celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day PA Sir Winston Churchill (centre in centre blacony) addresses a huge crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Health, Whitehall, London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmers Green, North London waves a newspaper containing the news of Germany's surrender in World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Some of the huge crowds who were in Whitehall, London, to hear Churchill's speech on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Evening News vans in Carmelite Street decorated to celebrate VE Day Associated Newspapers Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Cromwell tanks of the British Army, in a victory procession pass through Admiralty Arch Getty Images Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War PA Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs PA The Flying Scotsman locomotive leaves Paddington Station in 1965 at the head of a special train to commemorate the 20th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA St Paul's Cathedral floodlit during victory celebrations in London at the end of the war in Europe Getty Images

She revealed how they cheated to make sure their parents appeared on the balcony to their shouts of We want the King.

We were successful in seeing my parents on the balcony, having cheated slightly because we sent a message into the house to say we were waiting outside, the Queen said.

I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.

Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe / PA

Under the cover of darkness, the royal teenagers went unrecognised in the crowds.

They sang in jubilation, did the hokey cokey and the Lambeth Walk, and also danced the conga through the Ritz hotel in nearby Piccadilly.

An 18-year-old Princess Elizabeth had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and registered as No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor and took a driving and vehicle maintenance course at Aldershot, qualifying as a driver.

She was in uniform on the day and told how she pulled her cap well down over my eyes to stop herself being recognised.

But she added she was reprimanded by a fellow officer.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill is joined by the royal family - including Princess Elizabeth / AP

A Grenadier officer amongst our party of about 16 people said he refused to be seen in the company of another officer improperly dressed, so I had to put my cap on normally, she said.

The Queen told how one of her party  a cousin  believed to be John Elphinstone  had just returned from years as a prisoner of war.

I remember the amazement of my cousin just back from four-and-a-half years in a prisoner of war camp, walking freely with his family in the friendly throng, she said.

As part of the official celebrations in 1945, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made eight appearances on the palace balcony in 10 hours  on one occasion accompanied by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Huge crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace to cheer the royal family as they come out on the balcony / AP

Elizabeth and Margaret themselves appeared six times with their parents throughout the day and evening.

The Queen said: I remember the thrill and relief after the previous days waiting for the prime ministers announcement of the end of the war in Europe.

My parents went out on the balcony in response to the huge crowds outside. I think we went on the balcony nearly every hour, six times.
Anyone who has experienced the unbearable closeness of voting in the House of Representatives knows its a health hazard, even under normal conditions. As soon as bells buzz across the Capitol, 435 House members, on a good day, (plus delegates) race to the floor. The fastest option  the members only elevators  each comfortably holds eight people. Ten, if you squeeze. During a vote, members pack in close enough to sense what their colleagues ate for lunch. These are extroverted pols who cant help but take advantage of a confined space to tell jokes and laugh loudly.

When the elevators reach G-3, in the basement of the House Office Buildings, an open-air trolley whisks members to the Capitol building. Each car comfortably accommodates four  during a vote, its usually six, sometimes more. It makes the New York City subway system seem civilized.

Then members crowd into yet another elevator that lifts them to the House chamber, where they scramble into narrow rows and aisles, sometimes stepping over each others legs to squeeze in. Small groups of friends and allies huddle in the aisles and corner seats.

This setup is built for the most sociable people on earth  not for the purposes of social isolation. Trying to follow distancing precautions in this environment is nearly impossible. This was apparent on April 23, when Congress approved a $484 billion coronavirus relief bill. With the help of the attending physician, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, representatives were called in nine groups of about 50 to 60 at a time. Organized in alphabetical order, first came representatives from Abraham to Cheney. Voting usually takes 15 minutes  but it took over an hour to reach representatives Representatives Small to Zeldin. And there was another group  those who had missed the vote  left to go.
Officials from Egypts antiquities ministry recently announced that [four] ram-headed sphinxes had been taken from the Karnak temple in Luxor to the capitals busy traffic roundabout, where they have joined a pink granite obelisk. Egyptologists say that the sculptures will be damaged by Cairos air pollution, while government critics say its a move to erase Tahrir Squares recent history as a protest site.  The Guardian
Mr. Amfo-Sefah, who is popularly called Nana Boakye, especially took offense that said aspects of the Minority Leader's claim said that the government mostly provided such patients with vitamin C and abandoned them to their fate.

That definitely is cheap. Anybody who has followed the Covid-19 trend in Ghana knows that the government has been providing some of the best care for not only patients, but even foreigners who were put in mandatory quarantine.

Were we not in this country, when even Nigerians and other nationals on quarantine at 5 Star hotels, shot videos of rich food and luxury accommodation that have been provided to them and lamented that even their own home countries cannot provide even a fraction of the same level of care? So how are we supposed to believe Haruna Iddrissu when he says President Akufo-Addo only provides vitamin C patients and abandons them? Nana Boakye asked.

According to him, the Minority Leader's claim is the result of desperation in the face of the fact that President Akufo-Addo had become more popular because of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Haruna Iddrissu on Thursday addressed a press conference in Parliament, where he claimed that the spike in Ghana's Covid-19 cases was due to President Akufo-Addo's poor handling of the pandemic.

According to him, Ghana's caseload which quickly spiked to 3,091 with 18 deaths was the fault of the President because he acted slowly in locking down the country, rushed to lift the partial lockdown over Greater Kumasi and Greater Accra, and has also been providing very shoddy care for sick people.

Fielding questions after his press conference, Mr Haruna Iddrissu claimed the Akufo-Addo Government in some cases was providing only vitamin C to patients and then abandoning them to their fate.

If this were the case, why is our recovery numbers over 300? Those over 300 patients who have recovered, was it only vitamin C that helped them to recover? And what of those who were put on ventilators, are ventilators also vitamin C?

Nana Boakye urged the public to ignore the Minority Leader and give maximum support to President Akufo-Addo to guide the country out of the Covid-19 crisis.

He rejected claims that President Akufo-Addo was to blame for the spike in cases, saying evidence around the world shows clearly that no country was prepared for the pandemic and everybody has been trying to bring the disease under control.

From the United States to Germany to South Africa, everybody is struggling and nobody is blaming their President for being the cause of the spike, only in Ghana, Nana Boakye said.

---GNA
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  From India to Argentina, untold millions who were already struggling to get by on the economic margins have had their lives made even harder by pandemic lockdowns, layoffs and the loss of a chance to earn from a hard days work.

More than four out of five people in the global labor force of 3.3 billion have been hit by full or partial workplace closures, according to the International Labor Organization, which says 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.

Concern is growing that mixed messages about the seriousness of the pandemic from Mexicos president and lax enforcement of social distancing are manifesting in what could be a frightening preview as infections begin to peak in Mexico City and its suburbs. Some 20 million people live in close quarters in the Mexican capital, jamming subways and buses, shopping in crowded markets and clustering around street food stalls.

Live coronavirus tracker

Coronavirus news in the U.S.

Senators propose $2k monthly payments (The Hill)

Tensions and backlash as US coronavirus reopenings bring changes (CNN)

Job losses hit these states the hardest (Yahoo)

As #Plandemic goes viral, those targeted by discredited scientists crusade warn of dangerous claims (NBC News)

Malaria drug touted by Trump for coronavirus fails another test (Reuters)

Cash-strapped cities push for relief (CBS News)

Coronavirus news around the globe

A flower vendor wearing a face mask amid the spread of coronavirus walks outside the closed Jamaica flower market in Mexico City, Thursday, May 7, 2020. While some flower vendors with shops still open outside the market, the large wholesale flower market temporarily closed for one week on Thursday ahead of Mothers Day, an effort by the city to keep the usual holiday crowds away. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)AP

Angry tweets and mocking videos: China attempts to shape coronavirus narrative online (NBC News)

Spain reports uptick in daily deaths; Australia plans reopening in 3 stages (CNBC)

Chinese drugmaker in talks to test coronavirus vaccine globally (Bloomberg)

UK rapper dies after contracting virus (BBC)

Latest local coronavirus news

Read complete prior coronavirus coverage.
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The Nigerian passenger who delivered a baby boy aboard an Emirates Airline (UAE) en route Lagos, Mrs Kafayat Omoshalewa Amusan yesterday narrated her ordeal, saying she delivered her baby before flight attendants could get to her.

In an exclusive telephone interview from her hospital bed in Dubai, Kafayat, a 32-year indigene of Ibeju Lekki in Lagos had desired to come home to have her third baby in Nigeria on or before May 30, but for flight cancellations.

Narrating her Labour experience aboard the Emirates Airline flight evacuating 256 Nigerians from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the banking and finance graduate who left Nigeria seven years ago.



I cant really describe my experience as real labour, but a forced one that can be attributed to a series of stress that I went through a few days before I embarked on the voyage.

My actual due date was May 30 and my husband and I had agreed for me to come home to deliver. I had resigned my appointment two months earlier and had actually bought a ticket preparatory to return to Nigeria before the lockdown with the grounding of flights worldwide.

Continuing, Kafayat said they were praying for a chance, when stumbled on a Facebook posting apparently by Nigerian authorities asking willing Nigerians to register for possible evacuation to Nigeria and I jumped to it. In fact, I was one of the first persons to book for the flight because I want to have my baby in Nigeria..

But surprisingly, I delivered by myself inside the plane even before the flight attendant could get to me. It was a miraculous act that is beyond my imagination, she narrated.

Asked to explain co-passengers reaction, she narrated that she was in the business class with two other passengers beside me who were so scared and surprised and didnt know what to do.

Actually, my husband and I decided that I come back to Nigeria to have this baby.

So, I have to resign from my place of work and it was during the process of my documentation that the issue of Covid-19 started and all airlines were stopped from an operation. Immediately I saw the advert that Nigeria embassy will repatriate on Facebook, I quickly filled the form and I was listed among those that will be repatriated.

We were initially scheduled to leave Dubai on April 26, but unfortunately the flight was cancelled until another opportunity came on Wednesday and I prayed and wished that I get to Lagos before the delivery.

But when the mild pain started, I thought it was just stomach pain. Honestly, I prayed silently for God to let get to Lagos since the journey was just seven hours, Kafayat continued.

Asked how she feels that shes back to Dubai, the mother of three said: To be sincere I am not happy. I resigned two months ago and started the process of coming back to Nigeria and the Covid-19 issue started, and again I am back in Dubai instead of being in Nigeria with my children.

When asked about the new baby, she said they are both in excellent condition. We are pretty fine to the glory of Almighty God. No complication, though we are still in the hospital with the baby still in the nursery section.

I am so grateful to God and all Nigeria government representatives here in Dubai, especially Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa who called to congratulate me early this morning (Thursday)

Kafayat has been in UAE for seven years where she has worked in the Alshaya Company as an administrator.

The mother of three has only one advice for Nigerians wishing to come to the Arab nation, saying: Anyone planning to come to Dubai must make proper arrangement before taking the decision because the Gulf countries are not the same as European countries or America.

The 32-year old Nigerian who is yet to see her new baby because hes in the nursery session appealed to the Nigeria government representatives to come to her aid.

I am in need of help from the Nigerian community in Dubai. They should please come to my aid. I have to process my babys documents and other things. I really need their support now, she pleaded.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
A new study by researchers at Oregon State University indicates the spread of coronavirus in Corvallis is not rampant even as key details remain a mystery.

University officials on Thursday said preliminary findings suggest two people per 1,000 residents in the college town may have been infected with novel coronavirus during the weekend of April 25.

But the university refused to say how many of the 455 people tested during the first weekends collection actually tested positive.

The studys estimated rate of prevalence is based on those undisclosed test results and modeling. Its unclear how many positives from the study were found, if any, but the number of infections identified across all of Benton County increased by four in the days following April 25.

Ben Dalziel, an assistant professor for the College of Science who is leading the project, defended the decision not to release a specific tally. Dalziel insisted the estimated rate of prevalence is whats important.

The universitys estimate is certainly lower than what has been experienced in parts of the U.S, he said. But Dalziel said it should be not used as evidence to reopen parts of Oregon too quickly.

It would be wrong to think, Oh, two in 1,000, lets reopen, he said. Thats just not the way folks should be thinking.

The study is the first of its kind in Oregon and offers the only real insight to date into how widespread the virus could be among people who otherwise have not been tested. University officials said the early findings indicate the need for more testing, which should help identify if people without symptoms are infected.

Its difficult to extrapolate the study estimates from Corvallis to the rest of Oregon.

Widespread testing in Benton County  including the study results and people who sought testing from doctors  so far has found only 2% of people tested are infected with coronavirus, according to state figures. Thats half the statewide average of just over 4%.

Launched officially April 25, the university project sends trained field staff to randomly selected households in Corvallis each weekend for four weeks to see if residents are willing to be tested for coronavirus. Individuals who agree use a swab to collect a sample from their own nostril.

Simple math suggests that one person out of 455 tested positive that first weekend but Dalziel declined to disclose the number. Asked if that means it was possible no one tested positive, he reiterated that the total number of positive tests would not be released for now.

Dalziel said its clear the prevalence of coronavirus in Benton County is not zero because residents have tested positive, according to numbers reported by the Oregon Health Authority. Dalziel said positive tests found during the study  whatever those are  need to incorporate modeling to determine an overall estimated prevalence rate.

Dalziel said part of the decision to not disclose the total number of positives from the study is to protect individual privacy. He declined to say how many positive results would be needed before the university would release a tally. But he noted the Oregon Health Authority is not releasing specific tallies for ZIP codes with less than 10 infections.

Were always reevaluating, and we want to be as transparent as we can be, he said.

More estimates from Corvallis will be released next week. Oregon State officials collected about 900 samples last weekend. Those findings will be included in the next weekly snapshot.

The states figures show positive test results climbing in Benton County from 32 to 44 since May 2, according to state figures. But its unknown how many, if any, of those new infections were found as part of the university study as opposed to someone seeking testing from a doctor.

Going forward, the study will no longer aim to collect samples from 960 people per week. Instead, officials set a goal to collect weekly samples from eight to 12 households in 30 neighborhoods. That, Dalziel said, could yield tests from about 600 people a week.

University officials are also considering delaying the final week of collections in Corvallis from May 16 to May 23.

This story has been updated to clarify that the total number of infections found in the days following April 25, across all of Benton County, increased by four.

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt

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Text in which the author defends ideas and reaches conclusions based on his / her interpretation of facts and data

These profound times have personally impacted all of us in very different ways. They have revealed the extraordinary good that exists in humanity while exposing dangerous flaws inherent in our government and society.

The lessons learned from our missteps during this crisis should inform the actions we must now take  decisions that will shape the future of our world as we move forward. One hopes that the precious lives we have lost and the hard-earned business successes that have been obliterated will not be totally in vain.

People all over the world are criticizing their governments response to the threat of COVID-19, and though some condemnation is groundless, much of it is justified. As an American, I can say with a heavy heart that my country failed the world in this effort by not being adequately prepared for the pandemic and by recklessly refusing to take the lead on a coordinated global response.

America leads, former President Barack Obama once said in a news interview. We are the indispensable nation. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they dont call Beijing. They dont call Moscow. They call us.

U.S. presidents, regardless of party, have always led the global response to international crises. America has unparalleled capability and resources, and while working across party lines and in collaboration with other world leaders, we have historically always coordinated international response effortsEbola, HIV/AIDS, H1N1, the Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and the Paris Climate Accord are just a few examples.

It has never been more clear that global cooperation and goodwill are essential in order for our world to survive

However, now that our government is helmed by a man who proclaims America First, many Americans have seemingly forsaken our nations remarkable spirit of humanitarianism and are blatantly ignoring our legacy of goodwill and global leadership. Battered by months of misleading and false statements by the US president and government leaders in Washington, D.C.  which exacerbated insufficient preparation and a delayed and incompetent medical response  we are truly adrift in a crisis and seeking medical supplies and support from other countries. In years past, we would be serving as the caregivers.

Nonetheless, even in the absence of an impactful federally coordinated program by the current US president, several courageous mayors and governors across America have taken charge of local relief efforts with significant success. In addition, a number of private institutions, businesses, and citizens are selflessly contributing in inspiring ways. This is the American spirit of coming together. This is what has always made America great.

In Spain, as in most nations around the world, we have seen similar heroic actions  scientific and medical institutions are all working internationally to help inform their own government-led national responses, and citizens are adhering to extremely challenging regulations and taking actions to protect themselves and their neighbors.

Even Spaniards have suffered dire consequences as a result of our presidents erratic policies. Spanish olive oil, cheese and wine producers have been targeted with harsh tariffs earmarked by our president to inflict extreme financial damage in retaliation for alleged malfeasance in the aerospace industry, a matter completely unrelated to these essential consumer exports.

As we grieve our losses and pray for the millions of people around the world who are suffering catastrophic health issues and the disastrous economic effects from this dreadful virus  many that were preventable  we must strive to establish a new world order that best serves and protects our planet. In order to heal our society, we must mindfully discern the positive lessons in this tragic situation. For instance, we are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. As we recently celebrated Earth Day we witnessed an unexpected blessing that is already emerging from the pandemic: the environment has begun to heal itself.

Even Spaniards have suffered dire consequences as a result of our presidents erratic policies

Just look outside your window  it didnt take a United Nations resolution to significantly reduce air emissions. Our clean air is the result of the stringent social distancing recommended by scientists and medical experts to protect us from COVID-19. And Mother Nature responded brilliantly.

In counterpoint to ardent climate-crisis deniers, this is an immediate validation that the measures outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce emissions would quickly help ameliorate the damage done to our environment.

However, competent leadership and a firm reliance on science is required to take the necessary actions to save our planet for future generations to come. Science and research are not fake news.

In addition, since working remotely has now been proven both viable and effective, perhaps the Paris Climate Agreement could be amended to include the bold, even radical step of asking member states to agree to stop nonessential travel on an intermittent basis and to support the concept of remote work from home on a global synchronized schedule, say one week per quarter. If we continue to offer our planet a much-needed rest, our recent environmental gains will not be forsaken, but can be sustained and multiply.

We must work to restore trust in our leadership and join together to solve our world problems. Electing former Vice-President Joe Biden to the White House in November is the fundamental first step Americans should take to heal the soul and spirit of our nation, with the concomitant goal of immediately refocusing our nations global agenda.

Now is the time for the world to take action. It has never been more clear that global cooperation and goodwill are essential in order for our world to survive.

James Costos is a former US Ambassador to Spain and Andorra (20132017)

#AlwaysForwardTogether
The international Red Cross community has very humanitarian goals and is currently one of the chief forces battling the COVID-19 pandemic on the frontlines.

World Red Cross Day is observed on 8 May every year to acknowledge the principles and work of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. This movement aims to provide aid and assistance to everyone in need, without any discrimination. The international Red Cross community has very humanitarian goals and is currently one of the chief forces battling the COVID-19 pandemic on the frontlines.

Why blood donations are necessary right now

Of all its key goals, voluntary blood donation drives make up for a major part of the humanitarian work the Red Cross does in all the countries where it operates. As the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) also points out, voluntary blood donations from healthy individuals is very important during this pandemic because patients who depend on regular or sudden blood transfusions due to thalassemia, accidents, anaemia, haemophilia, cancer, kidney disease, etc. are at a greater risk of not getting the blood they require.

This is partially due to the lockdown in place in most parts of India, which limits the movement of individuals to a large extent, and due to the fear that the blood donation process might not be safe. However, the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) and MoHFW have ensured that this fear is unjustified. The MoHFW has issued a set of guidelines for blood donation, and the IRCS is not only complying with these but also trying to facilitate it further during the pandemic.

Precautions taken for blood donation

The IRCS has revealed in a brochure that its taking all precautions to ensure safety of staff, blood donors as well as patients by using thermal scanners, regularly cleaning couches, gloves, masks, etc. with disinfectants and maintaining adequate distance by practising social distancing. The IRCS has the following criteria for blood donors apart from their regular screenings:

Temperature scanning is done through thermal scanners.

All donors are asked to wear masks, head caps, gloves and shoe covers.

All doctors and nurses wear personal protective equipment (PPE) and take protective measures.

Blood donation couches are disinfected after every use with 1% sodium hypochlorite solution and new couch sheets are then spread.

A complete medical history of the donors is taken on the phone to ensure they meet all the health and fitness criteria.

This apart, since the Indian government has declared that blood services are essential services, the IRCS is continuing to hold blood donation camps by sending mobile blood collection units to various localities across Delhi - that too while maintaining infection control and social distancing measures. Two couches at a time instead of four are being used, with a three-metre gap maintained between both couches. Only three people are being allowed into the camp at a time, and the blood donations vans are being disinfected regularly.

Every possible precautionary measure is being taken to ensure the safety of all donors. If you are a healthy individual who is also COVID-19 free, why not donate some blood this World Red Cross Day to help a patient in need?

For more information, read our article on Blood transfusion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.
Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could rise 61 points at the opening bell.

Indian stocks are expected to trade volatile in the near term, tracking domestic news regarding the spread of infections. Rising cases of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, and government stimulus package will be closely watched. Globally, investors await monthly nonfarm payrolls and unemployment report which will be released later today.

The government is reportedly working on a comprehensive financial package not only for MSMEs but for all sectors of the economy. Government of India, Prime Minister's Office and the Department of Economic Affairs are already working on a package, which includes not only the MSME but also the entire industry, reports indicated.

Back home, domestic shares ended with modest losses on Thursday, 7 May 2020. A rapid increase in new cases of coronavirus in India in the last few days spoiled investors sentiment. The barometer S&P BSE Sensex lost 242.37 points or 0.76% at 31,443.38. The Nifty 50 index fell 71.85 points or 0.78% at 9,199.05.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth Rs 19,056.49 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were also net buyers to the tune of Rs 3,818.41 crore in the Indian equity market on 7 May, provisional data showed. The spike is due to stake sale in Hindustan Unilever through block deals by Horlicks and GlaxoSmithKline.

Overseas, Asian stocks were trading higher tracking overnight gains in US stocks.

The Reserve Bank of Australia on Friday released its statement on monetary policy, where it highlighted that global GDP is expected to fall sharply in the first half of 2020.

In US, Wall Street's indexes climbed on Thursday following a clutch of upbeat earnings reports led by PayPal as investors looked past more weak jobs data caused by the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

Digital payment processor PayPal Holdings fell short of first-quarter expectations due to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic in March but saw improvement since April, with 1 May recording the highest volume transaction in a day in its history. Revenues are expected to grow 15% in constant currency and adjusted EPS 15% in Q2 of CY 2020. It also projects 15 million to 20 million net new active accounts in the quarter.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Marcelo Rochabrun and Anthony Esposito

SAO PAULO/MEXICO CITY, May 8 (Reuters) - Auto production in Mexico and Brazil, Latin America's top producers, plunged by an unprecedented 99% in April as a result of the coronavirus crisis, with the two countries building a total of just 5,569 units.

In normal times, Mexico and Brazil produce over half a million cars a month combined. The industry represents scores of jobs and several percentage points of their respective country's GDPs.

"The situation is difficult and dramatic," Luiz Carlos Moraes, president of Brazil's automakers association, told reporters.

The statements on production, made on Friday by Mexico's Inegi statistics association and Brazil's Anfavea automakers association, are the first available window into the sheer extent of the crisis for automakers in Latin America.

The crisis is putting jobs in peril and raising questions about the sustainability of the industry's international supply chains, much of which goes back to China. The poor results may also be used by auto executives to obtain government aid.

Mexico and Brazil are key bases for global automakers, including General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Fiat Chrysler.

Shipments from Mexico, which is more dependent on exports to the United States, fell by 90% compared with March to just 27,889 units, Mexico's Inegi said.

Brazil is more focused on its domestic market but is a significant exporter to Argentina. Exports fell by 77%, Anfavea said, to 7,200 units.

Sales overall plummeted by two-thirds in Brazil to 55,700 units. Mexico did not disclose sales numbers.

In Brazil, the coronavirus pandemic is deepening a years-long crisis from which the industry was already struggling to recover.

Brazil has the capacity to produce more than 400,000 cars per month, due to expensive bets made just before the country underwent its worst economic crisis on record in 2016.

The coronavirus crisis may well exceed the damages caused then, from which the auto industry never fully recovered.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun in Sao Paulo and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Val Kilmer fell out of love playing Batman (Image by Warner Bros)

Val Kilmer has opened up about his decision to quit as Batman after just one movie.

The 60-year-old actor, who starred as Bruce Wayne in 1995s Batman Forever before dropping out, recently took part in an extensive interview with the New York Times that touched on various parts of his career.

As one of the few actors to have portrayed the Caped Crusader on the silver screen, the conversation was always going to turn to his departure as Batman. But no-one could have predicted the reason why Kilmer decided to leave.

Read More: Val Kilmer says prayer treated throat cancer, not tracheotomy which has 'caused my suffering'

It turns out that Kilmer simply stopped enjoying playing Bruce Wayne and Batman, something that he only realised after billionaire businessman Warren Buffet visited the set of Batman Forever alongside his grandkids.

In order to make their visit special, Kilmer decided to keep the entire Batsuit on. But once they arrived, Buffets grandchildren had absolutely no interest in talking to Kilmer, and instead they only wanted to put on the mask, play with the props, and get in the Batmobile.

It was at this point that Kilmer realised that anyone could be under that mask. Thats why its so easy to have five or six Batmans, Kilmer explained to the New York Times. Its not about Batman. There is no Batman.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 18: Actor Val Kilmer (C) attends the 2019 annual Thespians Go Hollywood Gala at Avalon Hollywood on November 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Kilmer also admitted that a scheduling conflict with 1997s The Saint contributed to his decision not to star in Batman & Robin, and he was eventually replaced by George Clooney in the heavily maligned comic-book adaptation.

Robert Pattinson will be the next man to play the character in The Batman, which is now scheduled to hit cinemas on October 1, 2021.
TOPSHOT - A vehicle passes an anti-Brexit pro-Irish unity billboard seen from the Dublin road in Newry, Northern Ireland, on October 1, 2019 on the border between Newry in Northern Ireland and Dundalk in the Irish Republic. - Britain will give the EU new proposals for a Brexit deal "shortly", Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on October 1, but rejected reports it would see customs posts along the Irish border. (Photo by PAUL FAITH / AFP) (Photo by PAUL FAITH/AFP via Getty Images)

The coronavirus pandemic has made an already difficult timeline for a British-European Union trade deal "virtually impossible", Ireland's foreign minister said, cautioning that he did wish to raise expectations of London seeking more time.

"Given the complexity of what we're trying to deal with here and the added complications, and there are many, as a result Covid-19, it surely makes sense for us to seek a bit more time," Simon Coveney told an online conference on Friday.

"I think anybody looking at this from the outside could only conclude it makes sense to look for more time but I wouldn't be raising expectations to the British government agreeing to seek more time ... Covid-19 has made what is already a very, very difficult timeline to get agreement virtually impossible."
Mr Nikade Anderson, the Press Secretary of the local government area, made this known in a statement.

File photo

Napoleon Alale, the 84-year-old father of Sagbama Local Government Area Chairman in Bayelsa has been kidnapped by unknown gunmen.

Mr Nikade Anderson, the Press Secretary of the local government area, made this known in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Yenoga.

Anderson said that the octogenarian was abducted from his country home in Agbere community by the yet- to-be identified gunmen at about 12 midnight on Thursday.

Available reports say the gunmen invaded the community in the early hours of Friday, shooting sporadically to scare off residents, and in the process shot and injured a vigilante on duty.

NAN learnt that the injured vigilante now in critical condition, has been taken to a hospital.

The abductors were said to have escaped with Alale in a boat through the Nun River to an unknown destination.

The gunmen have yet to make contact with the family members of the octogenarian.

When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, Mr Asinmi Butswat, confirmed the kidnap.
LA GRANDE  Union County Sheriff Boyd Rasmussen defended himself Thursday against an Oregon Department of Justice accusation he pocketed more than $7,000 for police services in violation of state law.

There was no ill intent, Rasmussen said. It was a simple transition with the city of Elgin. Did I knowingly go out there and violate the law? Hell no.

The justice department also reported Rasmussen was beyond the reach of criminal charges because the statute of limitations had expired.

The justice departments Criminal Justice Division began investigating Rasmussen in 2019 for allegations he engaged in misconduct while in office from 2011-16, according to the eight-page report Kurt W. Miller, senior assistant attorney general, sent to Union County District Attorney Kelsie McDaniel. The Observer obtained an unredacted version of the report via a public records request.

McDaniel said she received the report Tuesday, and the justice department subsequently provided her digital copies of the entirety of its investigation. She said her office will review the mass of documents but it would be premature to comment without knowing the ins and outs of what actually happened with the investigation. She also stressed the review is not for the purposes of prosecution.

The justice departments report states the investigation stemmed from complaints it received in 2019, and, After a preliminary review of the information, we determined it was appropriate to open a formal investigation of the matter.

Special agents dug into six allegations:

The use of on-duty employees to perform personal services.

Improper use of a snowmobile grant fund.

Inappropriate management of a reserve deputy fund.

Using information from an inappropriate source to purchase a house.

Using a county vehicle for travel while receiving reimbursement from the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training.

Retaining pay from the city of Elgin for police services without authorization from the board of commissioners.

The exhaustive review into the number and nature of the allegations took a significant amount of time, according to the report, and involved agents interviewing more than 30 people, including Rasmussen, former sheriffs office employees and volunteers, the county board of commissioners and Elgin city officials. Agents also obtained records from the sheriffs office, the county board, banks and more.

Ultimately, the report states, the investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the sheriff committed a criminal act with the respect to conduct that occurred within the statute of limitations.

Rasmussen in a statement Wednesday announced, Disgruntled employees leveled false accusations against me that were turned over to Oregons Department of Justice who conducted a thorough investigation of their complaints. On April 28, 2020, the DOJ cleared me.

For some of the allegations, that assessment holds.

The justice department explained Rasmussen did not use information from a sheriffs lien to buy a house in foreclosure. Rather, Rasmussen stated he learned of the foreclosure from a relative, and the investigation did not find the transaction involved fraud or misuse of process or information.

Rasmussen had the authority to terminate the sheriffs reserve program, according to the report, and move the programs funds into the departments general budget.

Rasmussen said that stemmed from internal accusations of theft from the fund but a staff review of the account found no wrongdoing. The justice departments report also stated a thorough analysis did not reveal sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any person committed theft.

However, the investigation found five withdrawals totaling $817.28 that lacked information about who took the money or for what purpose.

Rather than continue to put up with theft accusations concerning the account, Rasmussen explained, he dissolved the reserve program and shifted the $15,000 from its account to the search and rescue unit, which was constructing a new building.

The report also stated witnesses claimed Rasmussen had sheriffs office employees work on the clock in 2016 to build a wall and help with a roofing project at his home. Rasmussen denied on-duty staff performed personal services for him on the county dime, according to the report, and Rasmussen held that same stance Thursday. The justice department concluded there was a lack of independent corroborating evidence to accuse the sheriff of attempting or committing official misconduct or theft.

Rasmussen also requested almost $25,000 from 2011-16 from the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training for travel reimbursement while he worked part time for the agency. He may have used a county vehicle for traveling to the department in Salem and sought personal reimbursement or may have used his own vehicle, fueled it with a county fuel card and still sought reimbursement. The evidence was again insufficient to show official misconduct, according to the report, and insufficient to disprove the argument the Sheriff was simply negligent in his recordkeeping related to DPSST reimbursement.

The deal with Elgin received the lengthiest examination in the report.

Elgin disbanded its police department in October 2011, and Rasmussen said on Thursday he entered into an agreement for the sheriffs office to provide law enforcement services there. He said he worked some nights and weekends to cover the town.

Justice department agents analyzed county records showing the sheriffs office billed Elgin for 785.75 hours of patrol activities for nine people from Oct. 14, 2011, to Feb. 3, 2012, for a total of $19,643.75. In that 16-week span, Rasmussen billed 282.75 hours himself and received $7,068.75 from the sheriffs reserve program account for the work. Rasmussens work made up more than a third of the total billing.

He took the pay when patrolling Elgin was a service the sheriff performed in the course of his duties as a county officer in Union County, according to the report, and there is not evidence he remitted any payment for Elgin patrols to the county.

Rasmussen paid himself from the reserve account without approval from the county board and in violation of state law, the report states, but the statute of limitations prohibits initiation of any criminal charges related to those acts as they occurred more than six years ago.

Rasmussen said as sheriff he makes executive decisions all the time, and entering a deal with Elgin was no different.

It wasnt this big thing, he said, adding he was not aware at the time he needed the approval of the county board.

Rasmussen is seeking a fifth term as sheriff and faces three challengers in the election.

Sheriffs deputy and school resource officer Cody Bowen of La Grande said he wants people to know there was an investigation but he would not comment further.

Bill Miller of Elgin worked for the sheriffs office for 13 years  all under Rasmussen  before resigning in 2018 and taking a parole and probation officer job with Union County Community Corrections. Miller said he was staying out of the discussion about the investigation.

Not my circus, not my monkey, he said.

And Shane Rollins of Cove said Rasmussen has a duty to address the people of the county about the investigation. The sheriff is a professional position, he said, and the person in that role needs to be a professional.

Rasmussen said the report does him no favors in his reelection bid, but he stood by his work as sheriff. He said when he came into the office he instituted higher standards and professional policing, and he aims to continue that work. Yet, if he wins, he may face another challenge.

The Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, the agency Rasmussen sought travel reimbursement from, oversees police training and certification in Oregon and investigates law enforcement for ethics violations. Serious enough offenses can lead to officers losing their certifications and thus their ability to work in Oregon in law enforcement.

Rasmussen said he was confident he would prevail in any ethics complaint.
Technavio has been monitoring the cold-pressed juices market in Europe and it is poised to grow by USD 48.36 million during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 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/20200508005386/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe 2020-2024 (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. B.fresh Foods LLP, Detox Delight GmbH Co. KG, Hoogesteger, PepsiCo Inc., Plenish Cleanse Ltd., REJUCE, Robinson Beverages LLC, Starbucks Corp., The Hain Celestial Group Inc., and The Juice Warrior. are some of the major market participants. The high nutritional value of cold-pressed juice 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.

High nutritional value of cold-pressed juice has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe 2020-2024: Segmentation

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe is segmented as below:

Product Conventional Organic



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=IRTNTR43553

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our cold-pressed juices market in Europe report covers the following areas:

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe Size

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe Trends

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe Industry Analysis

This study identifies new product launches as one of the prime reasons driving the cold-pressed juices market growth in Europe during the next few years.

Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the cold-pressed juices market in Europe, including some of the vendors such as B.fresh Foods LLP, Detox Delight GmbH Co. KG, Hoogesteger, PepsiCo Inc., Plenish Cleanse Ltd., REJUCE, Robinson Beverages LLC, Starbucks Corp., The Hain Celestial Group Inc., and The Juice Warrior. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the cold-pressed juices market in Europe are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Cold-pressed Juices Market in Europe 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist cold-pressed juices market growth in Europe during the next five years

Estimation of the cold-pressed juices market size and its contribution to the parent market in Europe

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the cold-pressed juices market in Europe

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of cold-pressed juices market vendors in Europe

Table Of Contents:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by Product

Market segments

Comparison by Product

Conventional Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Organic Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by Product

Customer Landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

UK Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Germany Market size and forecast 2019-2024

France Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Rest of Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by geography

Volume driver Demand led growth

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

B.fresh Foods LLP

Detox Delight GmbH Co. KG

Hoogesteger

PepsiCo Inc.

Plenish Cleanse Ltd.

REJUCE

Robinson Beverages LLC

Starbucks Corp.

The Hain Celestial Group Inc.

The Juice Warrior

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

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.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Although unaware of any actual or attempted misuse, HEPACO, LLC ("HEPACO") is providing notice of a data privacy event impacting the security of information relating to certain current and former employees and clients.

What Happened? On August 20, 2019, HEPACO became aware of suspicious activity relating to certain employee email accounts. HEPACO immediately launched an investigation, with the aid of forensic experts, to determine the nature and scope of the activity. The investigation determined that an unauthorized actor accessed certain employee email accounts between August 8, 2019 and October 24, 2019. HEPACO undertook a lengthy and labor-intensive process to identify the personal information contained in the affected email accounts, and then reviewed its internal records to locate the appropriate mailing addresses for the impacted individuals. HEPACO is providing notice to the individuals whose information was present in the affected email accounts at the time of the incident and may have been viewed by the unauthorized actor.

What Information Was Affected? The accessed email account contained information relating to certain current and former HEPACO employees and clients. The type of information affected varies per individual, and includes one or more of the following types of information: name, date of birth, Social Security number, financial account number, medical or health information related to employment, driver's license number, credit or debit card number, electronic signature, and username or email address and password. For a very small number of individuals, a passport number may have been affected.

Although they cannot confirm that any individual's personal information was actually accessed, or viewed without permission, HEPACO is providing this notice out of an abundance of caution. HEPACO does not have any evidence of actual or attempted misuse of any individual's information as a result of this incident.

How will individuals know if they are affected by this incident? HEPACO is mailing notice letters to the individuals for whom they have valid mailing addresses whose protected information was contained within the affected email accounts and may have been accessed or acquired by an unauthorized actor. If an individual did not receive a letter but would like to know if they are affected, they may call the hotline listed below.

What Are We Doing? HEPACO takes the security of personal information in its care very seriously. HEPACO has security measures in place to protect the information in its possession and they continue to assess and update its security measures and training to employees to safeguard the privacy and security of information in its care. This incident has been reported to certain state regulators, and Attorneys General. They are also offering the impacted individuals access to complimentary credit monitoring services as an added precaution. Because HEPACO has insufficient contact information for some of the individuals whose information may be contained in the impacted email accounts, they are providing notice to those potentially impacted individuals by way of a notification published to certain state media outlets.

Whom should individuals contact for more information? If individuals have questions or would like additional information, they may call HEPACO's dedicated assistance line at (877) 873-7523 (toll free), Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time.

What can individuals do to protect their information? While HEPACO is unaware of any actual or attempted misuse of any information involved in this incident, they encourage those potentially impacted by the event to take steps to better protect against identity theft and fraud if they feel it is appropriate to do so.

Monitor Your Accounts . To protect against the possibility of identity theft or other financial loss, HEPACO encourages you to remain vigilant, to review your financial and other account statements, and to monitor your credit reports for suspicious activity.

Credit Reports. Under U.S. law, you are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. You may also contact the three major credit bureaus directly to request a free copy of your credit report.

Security Freeze. You have the right to place a "security freeze" on your credit report, which will prohibit a consumer reporting agency from releasing information in your credit report without your express authorization. The security freeze is designed to prevent credit, loans, and services from being approved in your name without your consent. However, you should be aware that using a security freeze to take control over who gets access to the personal and financial information in your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prohibit the timely approval of any subsequent request or application you make regarding a new loan, credit, mortgage, or any other account involving the extension of credit. Pursuant to federal law, you cannot be charged to place or lift a security freeze on your credit report. Should you wish to place a security freeze, please contact the major consumer reporting agencies listed below:

Experian PO Box 9554 Allen, TX 75013 1-888-397-3742 www.experian.com/freeze/center.html TransUnion P.O. Box 2000 Chester, PA 19016 1-888-909-8872 www.transunion.com/credit-freeze Equifax PO Box 105788 Atlanta, GA 30348 1-800-685-1111 www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services

If you request a security freeze with the above consumer reporting agencies, you may need to provide the following information:

Your full name (including middle initial as well as Jr., Sr., II, III, etc); Social Security Number; Date of birth; If you have moved in the past five (5) years, provide the addresses where you have lived over the prior five years; Proof of current address such as a current utility bill or telephone bill; and A legible photocopy of a government issued identification card (state driver's license or ID card, military information, etc.)

To remove the security freeze, you must send a written request to each of the three credit bureaus by mail and include proper identification (name, address, and social security number) and the PIN number or password provided to you when you placed the security freeze. The credit bureaus have three (3) business days after receiving your request to remove the security freeze.

As an alternative to a security freeze, you have the right to place an initial or extended "fraud alert" on your file at no cost. An initial fraud alert is a 1-year alert that is placed on a consumer's credit file. Upon seeing a fraud alert display on a consumer's credit file, a business is required to take steps to verify the consumer's identity before extending new credit. If you are a victim of identity theft, you are entitled to an extended fraud alert, which is a fraud alert lasting seven years. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, please contact any one of the agencies listed below:

Experian P.O. Box 2002 Allen, TX 75013 1-888-397-3742 www.experian.com/fraud/center.html TransUnion P.O. Box 2000 Chester, PA 19016 1-800-680-7289 www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resource/place-fraud-alert Equifax P.O. Box 105069 Atlanta, GA 30348 1-888-766-0008 www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services

Additional Information. You can further educate yourself regarding identity theft, and the steps you can take to protect yourself, by contacting your state Attorney General or the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission also encourages those who discover that their information has been misused to file a complaint with them. The Federal Trade Commission can be reached at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580; www.ftc.gov/idtheft ; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY: 1-866-653-4261. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should be reported to law enforcement, your Attorney General, and the FTC. You can also further educate yourself about placing a fraud alert or security freeze on your credit file by contacting the FTC or your state's Attorney General. This notice was not delayed by a law enforcement investigation. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted by mail at 200 St. Paul Place, Baltimore, MD, 21202; toll-free at 1-888-743-0023; by phone at (410) 576-6300; consumer hotline (410) 528-8662; and online at www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov. For New Mexico residents, you have rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, such as the right to be told if information in your credit file has been used against you, the right to know what is in your credit file, the right to ask for your credit score, and the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information. Further, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the consumer reporting agencies must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information; consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated negative information; access to your file is limited; you must give your consent for credit reports to be provided to employers; you may limit "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance you get based on information in your credit report; and you may seek damages from violator. You may have additional rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act not summarized here. Identity theft victims and active duty military personnel have specific additional rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We encourage you to review your rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act by visiting www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201504_cfpb_summary_your-rights-under-fcra.pdf, or by writing Consumer Response Center, Room 130-A, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. For New York Residents: The New York Attorney General provides resources regarding identity theft protection and security breach response at www.ag.ny.gov/internet/privacy-and-identity-theft. The New York Attorney General can be contacted by phone at 1-800-771-7755; toll-free at 1-800-788-9898; and online at www.ag.ny.gov. For North Carolina Residents: The North Carolina Attorney General can be contacted by mail at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; toll-free at 1-877-566-7226; by phone at 1-919-716-6400, and online at www.ncdoj.gov. For Rhode Island Residents: The Rhode Island Attorney General can be reached at: 150 South Main Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02903, www.riag.ri.gov, 1-401-247-4400. Under Rhode Island law, you have the right to obtain any police report filed in regard to this incident. There are an unknown number of Rhode Island residents impacted by this incident.

SOURCE HEPACO, LLC

Related Links

https://hepaco.com


RTHK: Georgia police arrest two over killing of black man

Police have arrested two white men for the shooting death of an unarmed black jogger in Georgia whose killing was captured in a video that went viral, sparking a massive public outcry.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23 as he ran on a sunny day in a residential neighbourhood in the town of Brunswick.

But the case gained national notoriety this week with the release of a 28-second cell phone video that captured the shooting.

"Gregory & Travis McMichael have been arrested for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery," the Georgia Bureau of Investigation tweeted.

The two men were charged with murder and aggravated assault, according to a statement posted to the bureau's website.

In the footage, Arbery is seen running down a residential street and approaching a white pickup truck stopped in the right lane with a man standing in the back.

As Arbery tries to get around the vehicle, he is confronted by a second man holding a shotgun. An altercation between the two ensues and the firing of three shots can be heard.

The two white men were identified by police as Travis McMichael, 34, and his father Gregory McMichael, 64, who both live in Brunswick.

According to the police report, Gregory McMichael told officers he thought Arbery was a suspect in a series of area burglaries and that he had seen the young black man on the street.

McMichael said he went inside and got his .357 Magnum while his son grabbed a shotgun. When they finally caught up with Arbery and Travis McMichael got out of the truck with the shotgun, Arbery began to "violently attack" him, the father said, according to the police report.

The father said he saw his son shoot Arbery and Arbery fall to the ground.

After the video footage went viral, a Georgia district attorney said Tuesday that a grand jury would be formed to see if there were grounds to charge the father and son.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday evening he had not yet seen the video but that Arbery's death was "a very sad thing."

Around the country, political figures, celebrities and people on social media expressed fury.

"The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood. My heart goes out to his family, who deserve justice and deserve it now," Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden tweeted Wednesday night.

Some drew parallels between this case and the shooting death of another unarmed young black man, Trayvon Martin, by a neighbourhood guard in Florida in 2012. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates: Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said that the state government had no plan to deploy the army in Mumbai, which is one of the worst-hit cities by coronavirus.

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"Besides, all the customers are being asked to put down their names, address and mobile number in the register kept at the liquor shops," he said.

"The indelible ink is being applied to the index finger of buyers coming to purchase liquor, in Hoshangabad district. It's being done to trace people in near future if needed," Tiwari told ANI.

Madhya Pradesh's Hoshangabad district Excise officer Abhishek Tiwari on Friday said that the district is keeping a record of all customers who are purchasing alcohol by applying indelible ink to their fingers.

They were resting on the railway tracks at the time of the accident and meant to catch a train from Aurangabad to their village.

The tragic incident occurred when the migrant workers were asleep on the rails between Badnapur and Karmad.

At least 14 migrant labourers in Maharashtra, who were headed home to Chhattisgarh, were killed by a goods train at Gadhe jalgaon area of Aurangabad on Friday morning.

The flight to bring back stranded Indian students from Bangladesh will leave at 11 am on Friday. All the 167 passengers are medical students from Srinagar studying in Dhaka.

First batch of Indian nationals arrived at the Ferry Terminal in Male to go through necessary checks and procedures as they prepare for evacuation by INS Jalashwa later on Friday under Operation Samudra Setu.

IndiGo airline decided to announce a pay cut for senior employees up to 17 percent amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the aviation industry hard. The reduction in pay will be applied for the months of May, June and July, according to The Economic Times.

He further said that special arrangements will be in place for patients already admitted.

"A PG student at Guwahti Medical College has tested COVID positive last night. Consequently we have to screen everyone who came in contact with him and sanitize the entire GMCH premises," said Sarma.

The Assam government has ordered sanitisation of the entire premise of Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) on Friday after an PG student tested COVID-19 positive. The hospital has been shut for new patients for next few days, said Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Mokshada Patil, SP Aurangabad, on Friday said 16 people were killed in Aurangabad due to the train accident. She said efforts were ongoing to gather more information about the incident and provide counselling to four others who witnessed the incident.

The injured in the train accident on the Aurangabad-Jalna railway line have been taken to Aurangabad Civil Hospital. Railways have ordered an inquiry into the matter.

He is in touch with Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray for arrangements related to treatment of the injured migrants, officials in Madhya Pradesh said.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan conveyed his condolences and spoke with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, seeking help for the families of the workers who died in the accident. Chouhan also announced Rs 5 lakh compensation for their families.

Responding to the Aurangabad-Jalna railway accident that happened on Friday morning at 5.30 am, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal offered his condolences to the victims and said that the coronavirus and lockdown proved to be harshest to the poor.

"I am shocked at the news of migrant labourers being crushed to death by a goods train. We should be ashamed at the treatment meted out to the builders of our nation. My condolences to the families of those killed and I pray for the early recovery of the injured," tweeted Rahul.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi condoled the deaths of migrant labourers who were mowed down by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad on Friday morning.

She is not a superpowered camelid. Winter was simply the lucky llama chosen by researchers in Belgium, where she lives, to participate in a series of virus studies involving both SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome). Finding that her antibodies staved off those infections, the scientists posited that those same antibodies could also neutralize the new virus that causes COVID-19. They were right and published their results Tuesday in the journal Cell.

Winter is a four-year-old chocolate-coloured llama with spindly legs, ever-so-slightly askew ears and envy-inducing eyelashes. Some scientists hope she might be an important figure in the fight against the coronavirus.

IndiGo is likely to implement a pay cut of up to 37 percent of senior employees for the months of May, June and July, The Economic Times reported. For pilots, the salary reduction could be up to 32 percent, the report added.

"The faceless migrant workers are reduced to mere statistics, both in their lives and death. Make no mistake, but for few exceptions, Govts both at Centre and States have been brazen in leaving them at their fate and the mercy of the greed of the society," said Kishor.

Political strategist Prashant Kishor on Friday took a jibe at both Central and State governments following the mishap in Aurangabad in which 16 migrant labourers were killed after a goods train ran over them on Aurangabad-Jalna railway tracks.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to address the media on Friday on COVID-19 situation and the prevailing economic crisis in light of the lockdown imposed across the nation.

"Lockdown not an on and off switch, it is a transition which requires cooperation between Centre, states and people," said Rahul.

During his video press conference, Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that a "visible" clash was evident between economic supply chain and 'red, orange and green zones'.

Congress' Rahul Gandhi stressed on the need to enforce transparency on Central government's actions in response to COVID-19. "We need to understand when they open the coronavirus lockdown what will be the criteria for its opening," said Rahul.

Coronavirus not a deadly disease for everyone, only 1% of the society is susceptible to contract the viral infection, said Rahul Gandhi during the video press conference on COVID-19 situation on Friday.

"We have to protect job creators, build a wall for them to protect jobs, wages," Rahul Gandhi said it was pivotal to provide them financial support.

Rahul Gandhi said it was crucial to restart the economic activities to save the nation from worsening impacts of coronavirus lockdown. "We need to start our domestic economy soon, the more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," said Rahul.

"We need to decentralise fight against COVID-19; there will be calamity if we continue to centralise decision-making," said Rahul.

During his video press conference, Congress' Rahul Gandhi reiterated the need for decentralisation in decision-making in the fight against the novel coronavirus. He further of warned of a "calamity" if centralised decision-making authority continues to mete out the impact of pandemic.

This is a slower rate of increase compared to the previous 48 hours, when the reported case count rose by 16 percent to 49,391.

The number of reported coronavirus cases in India increased by 14 percent over the past two days to 56,342, according to the latest data released by Health Ministry on Friday.

According to the COVID-19 nodal officer, the state has recorded 41 deaths till now. While the recovery rate stood at 45 percent after 842 patients were discharged.

With 54 more individuals testing positive for the novel coronavirus in Andhra Pradesh in past 24 hours, the total number of confirmed cases in the state climbed to 1,887 on Friday.

According to reports, she was detected COVID-19 positive after her body was tested for the infection. Some of her family members are also said to be have contracted the disease.

A 16-year-old girl from Bongaigaon in Assam has reportedly died of the coronavirus pandemic, on Thursday. As per reports, the girl succumbed to the viral infection in Dr B Barooah Cancer Institute Colony, Guwahati.

"We will not pass any order but states should consider home delivery or indirect sale of liquor to maintain social distancing," a three-judge bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and BR Gavai said, while hearing the case via video-conferencing to follow distancing norms.

The Supreme Court on Friday advised states to consider "indirect sale, home delivery" of liquor to ensure crowds are minimised at alcohol shops across the country. Disposing off a PIL on the subject, the apex court, however, stressed on the necessity to adhere to social dostancing norms.

Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions have contributed 90 percent of Maharashtra's cases so far. The extended lockdown is scheduled to end on 17 May.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, while addressing an all-party leaders' meeting via video conference on Thursday, hinted that the coronavirus lockdown may be extended till the end of May in the state's red zones.

"45 new positive cases have been reported from last evening to this noon. Till date 750 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed. This includes 30 deaths and 371 discharges," the health department said.

Forty five new COVID-19 positive cases, including that of a five month old girl, were confirmed in Karnataka, taking the total number of infections in the state to 750.

"Seeing people coming home is the best feeling for Delhi Airport. Here's a glimpse of the first Evacuation flight AI381 to Delhi that landed a short while ago from Changi Airport," tweeted Delhi Airport.

Air India's first flight that took off from Singapore carrying stranded Indian nationals onboard landed at the Delhi Airport on Friday afternoon.

The COVID-19 situation in Assam has deteriorated since Thursday after four more people, who took a bus journey from Ajmer in Rajasthan to Silchar in Assam, have tested positive for the viral infection, said health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during press meet at NHM office, Guwahati, on Friday.

He further said that the person travelled in a bus with 45 passengers. "All the other passengers from Cachar will undergo institutional quarantine. Many areas in Cachar district have been declared as containment zones. We are a little worried about the COVID scene in Cachar," he said.

Himanta Biswa Sarma said that a Dhekiajuli resident, tested positive for COVID-19 in Cachar district on Wednesday night after he had reached Assam from Ajmer in Rajasthan.

Many staff members, including the superintendent of the college, are in quarantine now,

"Since he is a hostel resident, boys hostels 1 and 5 are declared containment zones," said Himanta Biswa Sarma during press meet on Friday.

A PG student at the Gauhati Medical College, who was on screening duty, has tested positive for COVID-19. Based out of Karnataka, the student currently was put up in the college hostel.

"All Grade-3 and Grade-4 staff of the medical college who were in contact with the doctor have been tested for COVID-19. A total of 1,500 people are tested in this connection," said Sarma during the briefing on Friday.

After a PG student at the Gauhati Medical College tested COVID-19 positive, health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that no new patients will be admitted to the hospital for the next three days.

The Maharashtra government has decided to promote all the students of first year and second year, studying in various universities in the state, without any exam. However, it has decided to promote third year students on the basis of examination. The exam will be held in July.

"If we can send samples to them we can have the results in 2-3 days but, otherwise locally it will take 5-6 days," said Sarma.

We are in talks with laboratories in Kolkata and Delhi to expedite the testing of COVID-19 samples, said Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday.

Drug Controller General of India has given approval for clinical trials of Favipiravir which is used in influenza in Japan, China and other countries. The drug can be potentially useful against COVID-19 and a phytopharmaceutical which is an extract of a plant, CSIR Director General Shekhar Mande told news agency ANI.

As many as 100 people lost their lives to the deadly virus.

After 64 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Rajasthan, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state climbed to 3,491 on Friday. Of the total, there are 1,475 active cases, said Rajasthan Health Department.

The second special train with 1,301 migrant labourers left Mohali Railway Station at 10 am on Friday for Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh, the Mohali District Public Relations Office said.

As many as 1,853 patients have recovered from the virus in the state. While, Jaipur has seen a recovery of 677 patients, taking the recovery rate to 60 percent.

Of the total 3,386 COVID-19 cases in Rajasthan, the maximum was reported in Jaipur with 1,137 patients being infected. More than half of the total COVID-19 deaths in the state, Jaipur registered 53.

MHA joint secretary PS Srivastava on Friday said that the Railways has run 222 Shramik Special Trains for the movement of stranded people, and more than 2.5 lakh people have made use of this facility so far.

"We have written to 11 states. Our limitation is that only five trains can run per day. Trains will depart everyday," he added.

The Karnataka nodal officer for the exercise of sending stranded people back to their native states on Friday said that the BS Yediyurappa government has received consent from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Jharkhand so far.

R Ashok, Karnataka revenue minister and in-charge of the transportation of stranded migrant workers said. "We have already booked 16 trains and are ready to send the migrant workers. But consent is awaited from other state governments. Bihar has given one train permission every day. There is no fault of Karnataka."

"They will be placed on 250 identified stations and will be used for treatment of mild and very mild cases while ensuring that different coaches are designated for suspected and confirmed cases," he added.

Union health ministry joint secretary Lav Aggarwal said that the Railways has converted 5,231 coaches as COVID-19 care centres.

A revised list of red, orange and green zones will be circulated to state governments soon after the analysis of data, said Lav Agrawal, Health ministr joint secretary on Friday.

"If we will follow required do's and don'ts, we may not achieve the a peak in the number of COVID-19 cases in India. There is always a possibility to witness a spike in cases if we do not take the required precautions and follow processes," said Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary of Health Ministry.

"Today, when we are talking of relaxations and return of migrant workers, we have to understand that we also have to learn to live with the virus. The preventive guidelines against the virus need to be implemented as behavioral changes," said Lav Agrawal, Health Ministry joint secretary.

A man has been tested positive for coronavirus in the Bhadrak district of Odisha, taking the total number of cases to 246 in the state, the health department said.

The APMC market in Surat will remain closed from 9 May to 14 May after more than 25 vegetable traders have tested positive for coronavirus, the Surat Municipal Commissioner, Gujarat said.

The Karnataka health department said that 48 new coronavirus cases were reported in the state on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 753.

"The second week may focus on those stranded in Russia, CIS, Ukraine, Thailand, Spain and Germany. It will also see feeder flights," News18 reported.

Reports said that the second phase of the Centre's repatriation exercise  dubbed Mission Vande Bharat  will start from 15 May.

The Tamil Nadu health department said that the number of coronavirus cases has reached 6,009 in the state on Friday, including 1,605 recovered/discharged and 40 deaths. Number of active cases stands at 4,361.

More such flights are also being readied by the authorities to facilitate other Indians as part of the Operation Vande Bharat - A homecoming, Indias massive repatriation operation to bring home its citizens stranded abroad.

The evacuation flight carrying the students from here will land in Srinagar directly.

The first batch of 168 Indian students, stranded in Bangladesh due to the coronavirus-linked global travel restrictions, left for home on Friday on board a special Air India flight, officials said.

Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray on Friday said that the Maharashtra government defer university final year exams if the coronavirus situation in state continues.

"There has been a rumour for the past 2-3 days that army will be deployed in Mumbai.There is no need for army deployment here.Whatever I've done till today I've done by informing citizens. You all should be disciplined&that will be enough. No need to call army here," he said.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said that the state government had no plan to deploy the army in Mumbai, which is one of the worst-hit cities by coronavirus.

Of these, Indore has reported 1,727 COVID-19 cases so far.

The Madhya Pradesh government said that 89 new cases of coronavirus were reported on Friday, taking the total tally of cases to 3,341. So far, the COVID-19 toll is at 200 in the state.

"IRCTC is monitoring round the clock food supplies in these trains. Extra food packets are being given in these trains so that there is no shortage of food," the statement said.

The Indian Railways on Friday said that so far, 251 Shramik Special Trains all over the country. On Thursday, 61 trains had departed from different parts of the country. Out of the 53 trains planned for Friday, so far 43 trains have left.

The number of coronavirus cases rose to 19,063 in Maharashtra on Friday, with 1,089 more people testing positive. 37 people lost their lives due to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking COVID-19 toll to 731. Number of recovered/discharged patients stands at 3,470, the Maharashtra health department said.

The Delhi government on Friday directed all the district magistrates to strictly enforce lockdown measures and the national directives for COVID-19 management for public and workplaces.

INS Jalashwa has set sail from Male, Maldives bringing back 698 Indian nationals. According to the Indian Navy, there are 19 pregnant women among the 698 Indian nationals being brought back from the Maldives. This includes 595 males and 103 females on board the ship.

Mumbai reported 748 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the city to 11,967, the MCGM said.

Reports said that Delhi reported 338 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total tally to beyond 6,000. Delhi's total coronavirus count stands at 6,318. Meanwhile two COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the toll to 68.

30 new positive cases (Kashmir division) were reported on Friday in Jammu and Kashmir, taking the total number of cases to 823 in the union territory, the administration said.

The Delhi government on Friday directed all the district magistrates to strictly enforce lockdown measures and the national directives for COVID-19 management for public and workplaces.

INS Jalashwa has set sail from Male, Maldives bringing back 698 Indian nationals. According to the Indian Navy, there are 19 pregnant women among the 698 Indian nationals being brought back from the Maldives. This includes 595 males and 103 females on board the ship.

All educational/training institutions in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir to remain closed till 31st May 2020: Government of Jammu and Kashmir

"More than 31,000 people who have tested positive for coronavirus, die in Britain, show new health ministry figures. The number of fatalities in hospitals, care homes and the wider community rise by 626 on the previous day to reach 31,241. A six-week old baby with an underlying health condition is among the new deaths recorded in England, according to the state-run National Health Service (NHS)," AFP reported.

Have asked all CAPFs to adopt innovative ways to contain the further spread of Corona virus among its ranks and ensure proper and timely health checks. Also instructed them to establish a dedicated hospital to treat the COVID-19 affected CAPF personnel. pic.twitter.com/uCO6vb4GJM

"Have asked all CAPFs to adopt innovative ways to contain the further spread of Corona virus among its ranks and ensure proper and timely health checks. Also instructed them to establish a dedicated hospital to treat the COVID-19 affected CAPF personnel," Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted on Friday.

"The total number of infections recorded in the country has now reached at least 1,257,023, with at least 75,662 related deaths, according to JHU," the report said.

CNN on Friday quoted the John Hopkins University tally as saying that 28,420 new coronavirus cases and 2,231 deaths were recorded in the United States on Thursday.

The World Health Organization on Friday said that the novel coronavirus could kill as many as 190,000 people in Africa during the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail.

Coronavirus Outbreak LATEST Updates: Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said that the state government had no plan to deploy the army in Mumbai, which is one of the worst-hit cities by coronavirus.

"There has been a rumour for the past 2-3 days that army will be deployed in Mumbai.There is no need for army deployment here.Whatever I've done till today I've done by informing citizens. You all should be disciplined&that will be enough. No need to call army here," he said.

Iqbal Singh Chahal on Friday was appointed as the new Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), former BMC chief Pravin Pardeshi transferred to the Urban Development department as Additional Chief Secretary.

The Tamil Nadu health department said that the number of coronavirus cases has reached 6,009 in the state on Friday, including 1,605 recovered/discharged and 40 deaths. Number of active cases stands at 4,361.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that one person, who returned from Chennai, has tested positive for coronavirus in Ernakulam on Friday, taking the total number of active cases to 16 in the state.

A total of 19,810 people are in home quarantine and 347 others are admitted to different hospitals in the state, he added.

After 64 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Rajasthan, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state climbed to 3,491 on Friday. Of the total, there are 1,475 active cases, said Rajasthan Health Department.

As many as 100 people lost their lives to the deadly virus.

The Maharashtra government has decided to promote all the students of first year and second year, studying in various universities in the state, without any exam. However, it has decided to promote third year students on the basis of examination. The exam will be held in July.

A PG student at the Gauhati Medical College, who was on screening duty, has tested positive for COVID-19. Based out of Karnataka, the student was put up in the college hostel.

"Since he is a hostel resident, boys hostels 1 and 5 are declared containment zones," said Himanta Biswa Sarma during press meet on Friday.

Many staff members, including the superintendent of the college, are in quarantine now,

The COVID-19 situation in Assam has deteriorated since Thursday after four more people, who took a bus journey from Ajmer in Rajasthan to Silchar in Assam, have tested positive for the viral infection, said health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during press meet at NHM office, Guwahati, on Friday.

Forty five new COVID-19 positive cases, including that of a five month old girl, were confirmed in Karnataka, taking the total number of infections in the state to 750.

"45 new positive cases have been reported from last evening to this noon. Till date 750 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed. This includes 30 deaths and 371 discharges," the health department said.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, while addressing an all-party leaders' meeting via video conference on Thursday, hinted that the coronavirus lockdown may be extended till the end of May in the state's red zones.

Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions have contributed 90 percent of Maharashtra's cases so far. The extended lockdown is scheduled to end on 17 May.

The Supreme Court on Friday advised states to consider "indirect sale, home delivery" of liquor to ensure crowds are minimised at alcohol shops across the country. Disposing off a PIL on the subject, the apex court, however, stressed on the necessity to adhere to social dostancing norms.

"We will not pass any order but states should consider home delivery or indirect sale of liquor to maintain social distancing," a three-judge bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and BR Gavai said, while hearing the case via video-conferencing to follow distancing norms.

A 16-year-old girl from Bongaigaon in Assam has reportedly died of the coronavirus pandemic, on Thursday. As per reports, the girl succumbed to the viral infection in Dr B Barooah Cancer Institute Colony, Guwahati.

According to reports, she was detected COVID-19 positive after her body was tested for the infection. Some of her family members are also said to be have contracted the disease.

The number of reported coronavirus cases in India increased by 14 percent over the past two days to 56,342, according to the latest data released by Health Ministry on Friday.

This is a slower rate of increase compared to the previous 48 hours, when the reported case count rose by 16 percent to 49,391.

During his video press conference, Congress' Rahul Gandhi reiterated the need for decentralisation in decision-making in the fight against the novel coronavirus. He further of warned of a "calamity" if centralised decision-making authority continues to mete out the impact of pandemic.

"We need to decentralise fight against COVID-19; there will be calamity if we continue to centralise decision-making," said Rahul.

Rahul Gandhi said it was crucial to restart the economic activities to save the nation from worsening impacts of coronavirus lockdown. "We need to start our domestic economy soon, the more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," said Rahul.

"We have to protect job creators, build a wall for them to protect jobs, wages," Rahul Gandhi said it was pivotal to provide them financial support.

During his video press conference, Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that a "visible" clash was evident between economic supply chain and 'red, orange and green zones'.

"Lockdown not an on and off switch, it is a transition which requires cooperation between Centre, states and people," said Rahul.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses the media on Friday on COVID-19 situation and the prevailing economic crisis in light of the lockdown imposed across the nation.

IndiGo is likely to implement a pay cut of up to 37 percent of senior employees for the months of May, June and July, The Economic Times reported. For pilots, the salary reduction could be up to 32 percent, the report added.

Lower level employees will exempted from the salary cut.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan conveyed his condolences and spoke with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, seeking help for the families of the workers who died in the accident. Chouhan also announced Rs 5 lakh compensation for their families.

He is in touch with Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray for arrangements related to treatment of the injured migrants, officials in Madhya Pradesh said.

Mokshada Patil, SP Aurangabad, on Friday said 16 people were killed in Aurangabad due to the train accident. She said efforts were ongoing to gather more information about the incident and provide counselling to four others who witnessed the incident.

The Assam government has ordered sanitisation of the entire premise of Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) on Friday after an PG student tested COVID-19 positive. The hospital has been shut for new patients for next few days, said Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

"A PG student at Guwahti Medical College has tested COVID positive last night. Consequently we have to screen everyone who came in contact with him and sanitize the entire GMCH premises," said Sarma.

He further said that special arrangements will be in place for patients already admitted.

With 26 more people testing positive for the novel coronavirus in Odisha, the total number of confirmed cases in the state climbed to 245 on Friday.

According to media reports, Kendrapara reported five positive cases and Bhadrak detected two cases while, rest of the 19 cases were registered in Ganjam district.

At least 14 migrant labourers in Maharashtra, who were headed home to Chhattisgarh, were killed by a goods train at Gadhe jalgaon area of Aurangabad on Friday morning.

The tragic incident occurred when the migrant workers were asleep on the rails between Badnapur and Karmad.

They were resting on the railway tracks at the time of the accident and meant to catch a train from Aurangabad to their village.

The toll from COVID-19 disease in India rose to 1,783 while the number of novel coronavirus cases climbed to 52,952 on Thursday, registering an increase of 89 deaths and 3,561 cases in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry said.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by states and UTs till 6.45 pm put the total number of confirmed cases at 53,950.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 35,902 while 15,266 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

In what comes as worrying news, as many as 77 inmates and 26 officials of Arthur Road jail in Mumbai have contracted coronavirus. According to India Today, tests were conducted on all inmates and staffers a day after a 45-year-old prisoner facing narcotics-related charges tested positive.

Meanwhile, speaking at a virtual global Buddha Purnima event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India is making every effort to save the life of every citizen from coronavirus, but it is also taking its global obligations during the pandemic very seriously.

He also said that India's growth will always be aiding global growth.

State-wise cases

The highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 16,758 followed by Gujarat at 6,625, Delhi at 5,532, Tamil Nadu at 4,829, Rajasthan at 3,317, Madhya Pradesh at 3,138 and Uttar Pradesh at 2,998.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,777 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,516 in Punjab. It has risen to 1,456 in West Bengal, 1,107 in Telangana, 775 in Jammu and Kashmir, 693 in Karnataka, 594 in Haryana and 542 in Bihar.

Kerala has reported 503 coronavirus cases so far, while Odisha has 185 cases. A total of 127 people have been infected with the virus in Jharkhand and 120 in Chandigarh.

Uttarakhand has reported 61 cases, Chhattisgarh has 59 cases, Assam and Himachal Pradesh have 45 each, while Tripura has 43 and Ladakh has registered 41 cases so far.

As many as 33 COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Meghalaya has registered 12 cases, Puducherry has nine, while Goa has seven COVID-19 cases.

Manipur has two cases. Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Dadar and Nagar Haveli have reported a case each.

A total of 89 deaths deaths have been reported since Wednesday, of which 34 people died in Maharashtra, 28 in Gujarat, nine in Madhya Pradesh, four each in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, three in Rajasthan, two each from Punjab and Tamil Nadu and one each from Delhi, Haryana and Orissa.

Of the 1,783 fatalities in the country, Maharashtra tops the tally with 651 deaths, Gujarat comes second with 396 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 185, West Bengal at 144, Rajasthan at 92, Delhi at 65, Uttar Pradesh at 60 and Andhra Pradesh at 36.

The death toll due to COVID-19 climbed to 35 in Tamil Nadu while Telangana and Karnataka have reported 29 fatalities each due to the disease. Punjab has registered 27 COVID-19 deaths, Jammu and Kashmir eight and Haryana seven. Kerala and Bihar have reported four deaths each.

Jharkhand has recorded three COVID-19 fatalities. Odisha and Himachal Pradesh have reported two deaths each.

Meghalaya, Chandigarh, Assam and Uttarakhand have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.

77 inmates of Mumbai jail test positive

As many as 77 inmates and 26 staff members of Arthur Road prison were found to have contracted coronavirus after coming in contact with a cook who had caught the infection.

"The prisoners will be quarantined with the help of the Mumbai civic body," Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said.

Deshmukh also said that to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus in jails, the state government had decided to release on parole some 5,000 prisoners who have been sentenced to less than seven years' imprisonment.

Hindustan Times quoted an unnamed senior police official claiming that the state-run JJ Hospital authorities have already collected swab samples of 150 people from the prison and more samples are being collected.

The possibility of COVID-19 having entered the prison through BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) cleaning staff, sanitisation workers, or through essential services that used to come to the jail cannot be ruled out, the officer told the newspaper requesting anonymity.

Repatriation of Indians stranded abroad begins

The first of the two flights from the UAE carrying 177 Indian nationals left for Kerala on Thursday, as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad amidst the international travel lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic.

A total of 354 Indian nationals, including 11 pregnant women and a pair of twins, will return home on Thursday in the two flights from the UAE to Kerala as part of the repatriation exercise named 'Vande Bharat Mission'.

The Air India Express flight IX452 took off from Abu Dhabi to Kochi, which will be followed by a Dubai-Kozhikode flight of the same airline.

Passengers started arriving at Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports as early as 9.30 am on Thursday. Some of the passengers were carrying the Indian flags.

"All of them have cleared the tests, Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul was quoted as saying by the Gulf News.

Harsh Vardhan holds meeting with state home ministers

On Thursday, Union Health minister Harsh Vardhan held a meeting with the health ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, and senior officials from both Centre and state governments to review the situation, actions being taken and preparedness for management of COVID-19.

He noted that in comparison to other countries, India is in a better condition as the fatality rate is 3.3 percent and recovery rate is 28.83 percent.

The minister also said that among the active cases, 4.8 percent patients are in ICU, 1.1 percent on ventilators and 3.3 percent on oxygen support.

The testing capacity has increased in the country and it is 95,000 tests per day. Cumulatively, 13,57,442 tests have been done so far for COVID-19.

There are 180 districts with no new cases in less than 7 days, 180 districts with no new cases in 7-13 days, 164 districts which have not had reported any new cases in 14-20 days and 136 districts with no new cases since the last 21-28 days.

In view of the increase in the number of migrant labourers expected to reach their native states in the days to come, the Union health minister noted that a robust strategy and mechanism need to be drawn up for their testing, and quarantine and treatment of the positive cases.

Japan approves Gilead Sciences' Remdesivir as COVID-19 drug

Japan has approved Gilead Sciences Incs Rmdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19, the country's health ministry said on Thursday, making it the countrys first officially authorised drug for the coronavirus disease.

Japan reached the decision just three days after the US drugmaker filed for fast-track approval for the treatment.

Remdesivir will be give to patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms, a Japanese health ministry official said at a press briefing. With no other approved treatments for COVID-19, interest in the drug is growing around the world.

With inputs from agencies
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Linkedin Glenn Chapman (Agence France-Presse) San Francisco, United States  Fri, May 8, 2020 08:31 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6a32ea 2 Business Uber,ride-sharing,ride-hailing-service,loss,coronavirus,virus-corona,COVID-19,economic-impact,pandemic Free

Uber said Thursday its losses widened to $2.9 billion in the first quarter as the ridesharing giant felt the impact of the global pandemic lockdowns while pointing to signs of a tentative recovery.

The San Francisco-based company said ride bookings were up eight percent over the first three months of the year despite the lockdowns that began in the final weeks of the quarter.

It saw 53 percent revenue growth in its Eats restaurant take-away delivery service, as more people ate in to avoid the coronavirus.

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the data from April suggests a massive impact from the COVID-19 outbreak but also some indications of a rebound in some markets.

"I won't sugarcoat it -- COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on Rides with business down globally around 80 percent in April... but there's some green shoots driving restrained optimism," he told analysts.

Khosrowshahi said Uber was seeing a "fourth consecutive week of growth" with bookings up 12 percent last week.

The net loss in the quarter was nearly triple the level of a year earlier and included some $2.1 billion in write-downs of the value of some of its assets -- which companies are required to count as losses under accounting rules.

Gross bookings were up eight percent from a year ago to $15.7 billion, with revenues to the company rising 14 percent to $3.5 billion.

Weathering the crisis

Uber has said it has ample cash on hand to ride out the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced billions of people to remain at home.

"Our ample liquidity provides us with substantial flexibility to navigate the current crisis, but we are being proactive and taking actions to emerge stronger and more focused as a company," said chief financial officer Nelson Chai.

Uber has taken steps including the layoff of some 14 percent of its workforce.

It said earlier Thursday it was leading a $170 million investment in Lime as part of a plan to merge its Jump electric bike and scooter operations into the rival service.

The tie-up will free Uber to concentrate on its core rideshare and delivery services while Lime -- which operates in some two dozen countries -- will manage scooters and bikes including the Uber Jump fleet.

Uber and other "sharing economy" services are expected to feel a massive impact from the coronavirus outbreak which has dampened economic activity and made travelers more cautious.

Rival rideshare platform Lyft this week reported a loss of $398 million, narrower than a year ago, as revenues increased to $956 million.

The two firms listed shares last year with an eye toward long-term profitability, goals which have become more elusive in the current environment.

"On the other side of this dark valley, the Uber business model will likely look a lot different for the next few years [at least] and the company must rationalize costs and a smaller operation to focus on attaining profitability in this 'new normal' backdrop," said Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities in a research note.

"On the ride sharing front, Uber and Lyft face Herculean-like challenges looking ahead as the new reality will likely change the business models of these companies [and competitors] for the foreseeable future."
The Syrian Democratic Forces have arrested a man they say worked with the Islamic State and provided them with financial assistance reports Smart News

On Thursday, the Anti-Terror Units of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) arrested a financial official of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the province of Raqqa, northeastern Syria.

The Kurdish Autonomous Administrations Asayish Forces issued a statement saying that their special forces known as Anti-Terror Units arrested a financial official for ISIS, called Ahmad Muhammad al-Ali.

The statement added that the Anti-Terror Units seized different currencies such as US dollars, Turkish Lira, and Syrian pounds from Ali, in addition to three mobile phones used to contact ISIS groups.

The YPG security services continue to arrest people in the areas it controls in eastern and northeastern Syria, for compulsory recruitment in Self-Defense duty. The YPG also arrests people on charges of affiliation and cooperation with the ISIS, involvement in security actions, or other charges such as violating laws or trading weapons and drugs.

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.
A well respected scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who was on the verge of making "very significant findings" in the fight against the coronavirus was murdered over the weekend inside his home.Dr. Bing Liu, 37, who is from China,the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Police say the attack happened when Liu was home by himself and that the two men knew each other, but they did not indicate how, and they did not disclose any details on a possible motive for the incident. Law enforcement officials indicated that an investigation is ongoing.the university said in a statement.Liu, who had authored more than 30 research papers, was reportedly shot in the head, neck, and torso.The Daily Mail reported The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that neighbors reporters spoke to said that Liu and his wife were quiet people who kept to themselves.the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette added.Liu's work comes as the world has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which originated late last year in Wuhan, China.A Johns Hopkins University & Medicine coronavirus tracker showed that, as of Wednesday morning, there were more than 3.67 million confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide and that there were over 257,000 reported coronavirus deaths.The real numbers from the pandemic are likely far higher as it is widely accepted that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country.A recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report obtained by The Associated Press stated that U.S. officials believe that China intentionally lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country because it gave them the time that they needed to hoard medical supplies from around the worldwide.
On the 75th anniversary of VE Day, a Holocaust survivor explains why he would never accept compensation.

Michael Katz was born in 1928. He grew up in Warsaw, Poland, before moving to the then-Polish city of Lemberg, which is now known as Lviv and is part of Ukraine, with his parents, Edward and Rita, in January 1940.

He recalls how his life changed in 1941, when the Nazis occupied Lemberg.

The first thing was that all Jews over the age of 12 were made to wear a Star of David on a white armband.

Then, in 1942, Jews were rounded up. Katzs mother was taken to the Belzec extermination camp.

His father, who had moved to Lodz, was first forced to live in the Lodz ghetto, then the Warsaw ghetto. From there, he was sent to either the Majdanek or Treblinka extermination camp.

Katz was chosen to work in Janowska, a camp just outside Lemberg which began as a labour camp but later became an extermination camp.

By the end of the war, approximately 80 percent of the Jewish residents of Lemberg had been killed by the Nazis.

Katz, however, managed to escape by crawling under the barbed wire fence of Janowska and hiding in a cemetery before obtaining a fake ID with the help of non-Jewish friends. He made his way to Warsaw, where he participated in the Warsaw uprising in the summer of 1944.

In 1946, he reached the United States, where he went to university and eventually became a paediatrician.

Michael Katzs story is told in Philippe Sands new book, The Ratline.

On the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the day the Second World War ended in Europe, he spoke to Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera: How did you survive the Holocaust?

Michael Katz: I dont believe in luck. I believe in rational behaviour. I think the ability to make instantaneous judgements is key to being able to survive because people who hesitate, lose time. You dont even go through the process of thinking, its such a subliminal activity.

In my profession, medicine, there are situations when the patient is in extreme danger and you have to make a quick decision which might mean the life or death of the patient.

Al Jazeera: What was your greatest fear during the war?

Katz: I made judgements about what would be less likely to get me into trouble and I happened to be right very often. I would be lying if I say I was not afraid of anything. I was desperately afraid in many situations.

I remember climbing up on the barricades in Warsaw and I was shot at. It was the first time I had ever been directly under fire and I was absolutely scared and yet I went on and did it. This was when I was in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising.

When I escaped from Janowska camp I had no time to even make calculations. But taking the risk of escaping was better than the alternative.

Al Jazeera: What was your role in the Warsaw Uprising?

Katz: I was a runner, meaning that I carried messages through the city, evading gunfire.

I was based in one place  on Plac Zbawiciela (a square in central Warsaw)  which was my position during the entire two months of the uprising.

But I also manned the barricade when I had no messages to carry and while doing this, I operated an automatic rifle.

Al Jazeera: Did you ever learn what happened to your parents?

Katz: More or less. I learned that my father had been moved to the Warsaw ghetto after the Lodz ghetto closed. At a date that is not certain, he was transported to either Majdanek or Treblinka, and killed there.

My mother and her parents were caught in the Aktion in Lemberg, on August 13, at about 9 am. I was able to see the documents in the Belzec camp, when I visited it about 10 years ago as a guest of the curator of the museum at Belzec. This was arranged with the help of the late Sir Martin Gilbert, a British historian, who became my friend.

The transport was divided into two groups and the first half was killed that evening by carbon monoxide in sealed trucks. The other half was killed the next morning.

Al Jazeera: How did you overcome the trauma you experienced and the loss of your parents?

Katz: One reason for my happiness is sitting on my right  my wife, Robin. Her presence in my life made an enormous difference. I got married when I was 58 and we have a 29-year-old son. And I was very busy and when you are busy it helps.

Michael Katz as a child [Courtesy of the Katz family]

Al Jazeera: Do you think that the world has learned from the second world war?

Katz: Your experiences leave a mark on you, no matter what. Napoleon said that history teaches us that history teaches us nothing. To this idea I am absolutely committed if I watch what is happening and I see the error of some things that could have been prevented and theyre not. The worst decisions are the emotional decisions.

Al Jazeera: What was the significance of VE Day for you in 1945?

Katz: I think it was very significant; think of the photos of the then open concentration camps. The feeling of relief was incredible!

However, this is slightly imprecise, because for me that happened with the disappearance of the Germans several months earlier.

Al Jazeera: What is the best way to fight dangerous forms of nationalism?

Katz: I am a member of the committee of human rights of the National Academies of Medicine. There are issues we should be considering because COVID-19 causes some strong negative reactions [like a rise in nationalism]. But if Donald Trump would read Mein Kampf he would see that he is following the pattern.

Al Jazeera: Do you think sufficient reparations have been paid to survivors of the Holocaust?

Katz: The German government offered money to people like me, but I refused to accept that. There was no way they could make it good again, which is what the German term for reparations, wiedergutmachung, means.

What they committed was irreparable and there was no way I would accept that. I would be ashamed to accept that. If it was compensation for material loss, that is different and I might accept that. But not for pain, for what was done to me. The value of my feelings in unassessable.

Michael reached the US in 1946 and went on to become a doctor [Courtesy of the Katz family]

The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
LEXINGTON  The COVID-19 pandemic has robbed the class of 2020 a number of benchmarks normally associated with the end of their public schooling, honors night, prom and graduation to name a few.

On Sunday, May 10, the Lexington community can help these seniors celebrate what would have been their graduation date.

A Senior Cruise is planned to take place from 2-4 p.m.

Lexington seniors can meet in front of the Lexington Public Library on 9th and Washington at 1:30 p.m. in their own vehicles. Attendees are asked to remain in their vehicles and only ride with people in their household.

Parents are invited to decorate cars and to observe the cruise from their front lawns and homes.

The community can tune into 93.1 FM The River while they make a tribute to Lexington seniors.

This is a private event, the Lexington Public School is not sponsoring this event, as the district is still under a directed health measure until May 31.
PETM climate warming 56 million years ago strongly tied to igneous activity

Posted on 8 May 2020 by howardlee

Part 1  The Rabbit Hole

This 3-part post is expanded from an article I originally wrote for Quanta Magazine and features quotes from interviews that appeared in that piece.

Back in 1991, James Kennett of UC Santa Barbara and Lowell Stott of UCLA reported a: rapid global warming and oceanographic changes that caused one of the largest deep-sea benthic extinctions of the past 90 million years. This warming event 56 million years ago became known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM. Over the intervening years a considerable body of research has shown that the planet warmed by about 5C (9F), oceans acidified, sea levels rose, and land suffered an increase in downpours, while hot seas and dead zones stressed ocean life. Land animals underwent a high rate of extinction and replacement by dwarf species, and tiny shell-making creatures on the sea bed (benthic foraminifera) went extinct.

Its the closest natural analog to modern climate change in the last 66 million years, but what caused it?

There have been four main ideas: methane emissions after the planet crossed a climate tipping point; volcanic activity; a comet impact; or burning peat. Evidence for the volcanic trigger has been growing over recent years, and now a new study ties the underground part of volcanic activity to the PETM in a quantified way, from mantle motion to climate warming, calculated independently from - yet matching - the sedimentary record of the carbon cycle and temperature changes. The new study, by a team from the University of Birmingham, UK, has helped to convince more scientists that volcanic activity probably triggered the warming, and this knowledge helps constrain its lessons for our own climate change today.

This post is in 3 parts  in part 1, I review competing explanations for the cause of the PETM, in part 2 I report on the results of the new study, and in part 3 I report the reactions of other scientists, and what the new results tell us about our warming in the years to come.

The Arctic looked like this 56 million years ago  modern Baldcypress Swamp in Louisiana. Photo by Jan Kronsell CC BY-SA 3.0

Causes and consequences

The trigger for the PETM has been debated since its discovery. The main ideas have been: methane emissions after crossing a climate tipping point; volcanic activity; a comet impact; or burning peat.

Methane tipping point:

The leading idea for what caused the PETM has long been a rapid release of methane from a reservoir of methane ice known as methane clathrates or methane hydrates. Scientists worried that, if that was the case, a similar thing could happen today, where seabed methane clathrates could be destabilized by human-driven warming, greatly magnifying our own climate change.

But even Gerald Dickens, the original proponent of the clathrate hypothesis in 1995, published a paper in 2011 titled: Down the Rabbit Hole where he stated that it lacks proof. The main leg that hypothesis had to stand on was the carbon isotope signature in sediments around the world. This showed a strong increase in the isotope carbon-12 relative to carbon-13, indicating a big release of organic, rather than volcanic, carbon. Methane from clathrates is organic and very rich in carbon-12, so less is needed to explain the shift in the isotopes than if the carbon was volcanic, which has much less carbon-12. Yet thats also a problem for clathrates  they are so rich in carbon-12 that if the PETM was triggered by a purely clathrate source, the volume you need to reproduce the isotope shift in sediments is insufficient to generate the warming. There must be additional carbon from a non-clathrate source mixed in.

Methane hydrates (clathrates) on fire - USGS

"there are no any two records which share the consistent pattern"

One problem with the clathrate hypothesis is that it, in turn, needs an external trigger to destabilize the clathrates. The idea was that Earths climate warmed just before the PETM, enough to destabilize seabed methane clathrates and unleash the really strong warming as a positive feedback. A crucial observation in favor of this is that the signal for warming precedes the shift in carbon isotopes in some mid- and high-latitude sedimentary records, suggesting that the organic carbon signal was in response to, not the initial driver of, the warming. But this has been hard to pin down definitively because of the short timescales involved compared to the slow accumulation of sediments, and the fact that there are no any two records which share the consistent pattern of the [isotope shift], as Chen et al put it in their 2014 paper. More recently it has been shown that, particularly for lake deposits like the ones studied by Chen et al, the temperature signal in some biochemical indicators of ancient temperature can be confused by how waterlogged they are.

Chen et al proposed that volcanic eruptions may have provided the initial carbon to destabilize clathrates, whereas the leading idea has long been that Earths orbit around the Sun was in an unusually warm configuration that caused Earth to cross a climate tipping point that liberated seabed methane from clathrates into the atmosphere.

The reason scientists thought that orbits must be involved is because the PETM is the most prominent of a number of warm periods (dubbed hyperthermals) spread across 3 million years of the Eocene, several of which are in sync with wobbles in Earths orbit (Milankovitch Cycles).

the PETM is quite different from those other hyperthermals

But chaos swamps calculations of orbits older than about 50 million years, and many sedimentary records have gaps, so its possible to calculate either an orbital configuration that supports an orbital push to begin the PETM, or one that is out of phase. Others have argued that the PETM is quite different from those other hyperthermals and so requires a different explanation: it was twice as big, and much more abrupt, and they argue that those subsequent hyperthermals are just the normal orbital climate drumbeat found in sediments throughout geological time, without the need for clathrate release to explain them.

Another problem for the clathrate hypothesis is that it needs a large reservoir of clathrates to be there in the first place. We know they exist in todays seabed but the Paleocene ocean was much warmer than todays, so the reservoir was probably as good as empty. A third problem is that even if there was a release of seabed methane, about half would never make it to the atmosphere (so double the reservoir is needed to explain the warming) and it would also have been too slow.

Last year it looked, briefly, like barium could be the smoking gun of seabed methane release. Joost Frieling of Utrecht University, with colleagues, observed that barium was deposited in sediments during the PETM at triple the normal rate. Since water in sediments around methane clathrates contains an abundance of dissolved barium, this uptick in barium could be a sign of seabed methane release. Unfortunately, as Luke Bridgestock of Oxford University and colleagues observed in a paper published around the same time, barium doesnt last in the ocean long enough to explain the protracted barium burial, and theres no evidence for an increase in barium sulfate saturation in ocean water over that time interval. The increased barium burial, Bridgestock et al argue, is instead due to increased biological activity after the initial phase of the PETM, and not seabed methane at its onset.

Permafrost is another reservoir of carbon-12 that could have been released by warming from orbital wobbles, much like clathrates. But here again there probably wasnt much permafrost in the Paleocene because fossils show that the Arctic supported alligators, giant tortoises, palms and swamp-cypresses, while Antarctica was mostly ice-free and forested. Antarctic glaciation seems to have begun some 20 million years after the PETM and even mountains close to the South Pole were tree-covered well into the Miocene.

Comet impact:

an instant release of carbon such as from a comet impact doesnt match the protracted sedimentary record

In 2013 Morgan Schaller of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and James Wright of Rutgers University in New Jersey proposed that a comet impact may have driven the PETM but, as responses to their paper showed, an instant release of carbon such as from a comet impact doesnt match the protracted sedimentary record of carbon release and warming. There are indeed traces of an asteroid or comet impact in some PETM sediments dated to about the right time, tentatively linked to the Marquez Crater in Texas, which reportedly overlies a petroleum reservoir. But the crater is only 12.7 km wide and would be too small to contain anything close to enough carbon. Geochemical tracers such as mercury are sustained or pulsed in a manner not consistent with a singular, instantaneous comet impact, but consistent with volcanic activity. Schaller recently proposed that an impact may have served as an initial trigger, with volcanic activity doing the main body of work. This echoes a recent theory linking the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact to eruptions in the Deccan Traps, but the comet idea doesnt have much traction with most PETM scientists Ive spoken to over recent years.

Comet Ison November 2013 - NASA

Peat fires:

In 2003 Andrew Kurtz of Boston University and colleagues suggested that burning peat might be the source of the organic carbon, rather than methane clathrates or permafrost. But the absence of charred peat from that time argues against a widespread peat conflagration as a trigger for the PETM, and Arctic wildfires seem to have increased later in the PETM, rather than at its onset.

A smoldering peat fire on Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia, 2011 - Chris Lowie/USFWS

Volcanic Activity:

A volcanic trigger for the PETM was first proposed in 1993 and unlike the other theories theres a substantial body of physical evidence to support it.

The vast assemblage of igneous rocks in Greenland, the British Isles, and under the North Atlantic seabed, are collectively known as the North Atlantic Igneous Province or NAIP. Its initial phase around 60 million years ago created the spectacular columned basalt landscapes of Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, and Scotlands Fingals Cave that inspired Mendelssohns composition.

Present-day extent of the North Atlantic Igneous Province based on Hansen et al 2009 and Horni et al 2017. Red - igneous rocks including flood basalts, sills, dikes and central volcanic complexes.

In addition to the rocks, there are geochemical traces of volcanic mercury and osmium in sediments that formed at the time, and buried igneous rocks of that age are mapped in many seismic scans and encountered in many oil exploration boreholes in the North Atlantic region.

The NAIP is an example of a Large Igneous Province or LIP. LIPs are behind most of the large climate warming events since the dawn of animals, and behind most mass extinctions, so a link between the NAIP and the PETM would fit that oft-repeated pattern.

But coincidence isnt causation, so the question remains: how exactly do you go from volcanic activity to climate warming? And how do you explain the apparently contradictory evidence pointing to a large release of organic  not volcanic  carbon?

To be continued in part 2

Citations

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Methane clathrates or permafrost

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Zeebe, R. E., & Lourens, L. J. (2019). Solar System chaos and the PaleoceneEocene boundary age constrained by geology and astronomy. Science, 365(6456), 926-929.

Zachos, J. C., McCarren, H., Murphy, B., Rohl, U., & Westerhold, T. (2010). Tempo and scale of late Paleocene and early Eocene carbon isotope cycles: Implications for the origin of hyperthermals. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 299(1-2), 242-249.

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Comet impact

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Schaller, M. F., & Fung, M. K. (2018). The extraterrestrial impact evidence at the PalaeoceneEocene boundary and sequence of environmental change on the continental shelf. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 376(2130), 20170081.

Richards, M. A., Alvarez, W., Self, S., Karlstrom, L., Renne, P. R., Manga, M., ... & Gibson, S. A. (2015). Triggering of the largest Deccan eruptions by the Chicxulub impact. GSA Bulletin, 127(11-12), 1507-1520.

Burning peat

Kurtz, A. C., Kump, L. R., Arthur, M. A., Zachos, J. C., & Paytan, A. (2003). Early Cenozoic decoupling of the global carbon and sulfur cycles. Paleoceanography, 18(4).

Collinson, M. E., Steart, D. C., Scott, A. C., Glasspool, I. J., & Hooker, J. J. (2007). Episodic fire, runoff and deposition at the PalaeoceneEocene boundary. Journal of the Geological Society, 164(1), 87-97.

Denis, E. H., Pedentchouk, N., Schouten, S., Pagani, M., & Freeman, K. H. (2017). Fire and ecosystem change in the Arctic across the PaleoceneEocene Thermal Maximum. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 467, 149-156.

Volcanic activity

Eldholm, O, & Thomas, E. (1993). Environmental impact of vocanic margin formation. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 117, 319-329.

Storey, M., Duncan, R. A., & Swisher, C. C. (2007). Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum and the opening of the northeast Atlantic. Science, 316(5824), 587-589.

Mahajan, R. S., Ickert, R. B., & Mark, D. (2019, December). Building an Accurate and Precise Chronological Framework for the British Palaeogene Igneous Province. In AGU Fall Meeting 2019. AGU.

Horni, J. A., Hopper, J. R., Blischke, A., Geisler, W. H., Stewart, M., McDermott, K., ... & Arting, U. (2017). Regional distribution of volcanism within the North Atlantic Igneous Province. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 447(1), 105-125.

Hansen, J., Jerram, D. A., McCaffrey, K., & Passey, S. R. (2009). The onset of the North Atlantic Igneous Province in a rifting perspective. Geological Magazine, 146(3), 309-325.

Jones, M. T., Percival, L. M., Stokke, E. W., Frieling, J., Mather, T. A., Riber, L., ... & Svensen, H. H. (2019). Mercury anomalies across the PalaeoceneEocene thermal maximum. Climate of the Past, 15(1).

Dickson, A. J., Cohen, A. S., Coe, A. L., Davies, M., Shcherbinina, E. A., & Gavrilov, Y. O. (2015). Evidence for weathering and volcanism during the PETM from Arctic Ocean and Peri-Tethys osmium isotope records. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 438, 300-307.

Bond, D. P., & Grasby, S. E. (2017). On the causes of mass extinctions. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 478, 3-29.
Nearly 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, which reflected a continued drop from the peak in April but was still a record, taking up the total of job losses caused by the Covid-19 epidemic in the United States to 33.5 million, according to new data released Thursday.

Before March, when the epidemic which President Donald Trump has said has been the worst attack in US history, worse than the 1942 Pearl Harbor attack and the September 11 terrorist attacks got under way, the number of claims for unemployment benefits had been historically 700,000 a week, going back several decades.

Though 3.2 million marked continued reduction following 3.8 million the week before and way below the peak of 6.9 million applications filed in late March. The cumulative figure for the past month due Friday are expected to be far grimmer, wiping out job gains of several decades.

Layoffs started mid-March as the country began to be shut down state by state to enforce social-distancing and other mitigation efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic. Restaurants, theatres, shopping mall, saloon closed, manufacturing slowed and travel and hospitality industry were crippled.

The epidemics devastating impact on the economy is telling on families. New research released Wednesday by the Hamilton Project showed unprecedented levels of food insecurity in the United States. One in five children are not getting enough to eat, was one of the grim findings of the study.

At least 42 states have opened up or eased restriction to varying degrees in recent days. But the Wall Street Journal said citing economists that it will be months before US employers begin hiring consistently again and years before the millions of jobs lost thus far will be fully replaced.

President Trump, who has cheered on the reopening, expressed growing frustration with the havoc wreaked by the epidemic, and called it the worst attack in US history.

This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center, the president told reporters, referring to two pivotal events n US history. The Pearl Harbor attack in 1942 drew the United States into the Second World War and the 9/11 attacks triggered the longest in US history, in Afghanistan.  more people had died in either instance, than the toll from Covid-19 thus far.

US toll shot up by 2,367 deaths in the last 24 hours, marking a return to more than 2,000 after days of dipping numbers, to 73,435; and by 24,254 new infections to 1.22 million infections. While the daily toll had ebbed in recent days, the number of infections has hovered around and above 20,000.
The Australian Federal Police is investigating whether criminals gained access to a tax agent's database to steal about $120,000 from up to 150 super accounts, forcing the government to temporarily suspend its early access scheme.

The program allowing people facing hardship due to coronavirus to withdraw up to $20,000 of their retirement savings has been paused until Monday while the AFP, Tax Office, Austrac and the Financial Crimes Taskforce look into the theft, which came to light last week.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has accused the government of ignoring warnings about their superannuation early access scheme. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"There has been one tax agent that has been the subject of a hacking or cyber-attack and personal details of clients that are part of that business, they have been exploited," Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News on Friday.

The alleged cyber attack did not compromise the ATO or superannuation funds, the ATO confirmed during Senate hearings this week.
T oday, Friday May 8, marks 75 years since Victory in Europe Day, a.k.a VE Day.

On May 8, 1945 at 3pm, the day after Germany surrendered, Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that the war in Europe had come to an end.

Street parties and celebrations throughout the UK followed and people dressed in red, white and blue gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace as King George VI, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret greeted well wishers from the balcony (the sisters later sneaked out to celebrate with the public ).

Despite the widespread celebrations, VE Day did not mark the end of the war as many soldiers were sent to fight against Japan who had not yet surrendered.

WWII didnt officially end until August 15, 1945, known as VJ Day, after two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Seven and a half decades later, mens retailer Chums has colourised old war photos, allowing them to be seen in a new light.

The images come after the retailer asked members of the public to send in their wartime photos and a selection of these have been subsequently colourised.

One of the images was submitted by Chums managing director Josh Rubin of his grandfather Eric Rubin in June 1944, who was getting ready to be parachuted into enemy territory in France just before D-Day.

Josh says: My grandpa was a true gent, a very humble and modest man who always had time for his family. One of my fondest memories growing up would be spending time with him, listening to all his stories about the war and what he did for the British Army. I was fascinated with his stories and I would often try to imagine what it would be like growing up living the life he lived.

Seeing this image change to colour brought back all these fond memories I had with him. However this time it allowed my imagination to picture his experiences on a whole new level.

Scroll down for more before and after colourised images...

Sgnt Douglas Phillips

Edward Longrove

Ken West

William Mascall

Click through the gallery above to see a selection of colourised images from WWII.
Keeping spirits up in a time of uncertainty is what motivated the New Mexico Brewers Guild to create Net Sesh Fest 2020.

The idea sprouted from weekly virtual happy hours the guild has been hosting on Zoom.

Were trying to do just solidarity things to keep everybodys spirits up as much as we can, said Leah Black, executive director of the New Mexico Brewers Guild. I know its, like, a lot of people are putting on a brave face, but really theyre like crying through the pain. Its heavy times. This is just a way to get people together and have some fun and remind them that breweries are still existing.

The virtual beer festival will be held online from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, May 9.

Its going to be love from all over the state, and just to see our brewers smiling faces and all of the fans faces, too, because were going to be all in the same virtual room online, Black said of the event. And then, hopefully, theyll make the mad dash to go out and get their local craft beer. What were requesting is, it is obviously BYOB to our virtual event, but we are requesting that they dont show up unless its with a New Mexico craft beer.

Out-of-state residents who love New Mexico beers but are unable to get their hands on one are still welcome to participate.

Maybe they grew up in New Mexico or theyre really fond of New Mexico beers but they cant be here to purchase them, Black said. These people have been very generous, and so theyre going to be able to check in from out of state and donate some money. We had someone from South Carolina donate. They sent a little note, which was really cool. They said that they havent been able to find a beer that they love as much as New Mexico beer. And Im sure they have great breweries there, but I know when you get used to a certain style or you get loyal to one, its hard to compare.

The event will feature brewery tours, food pairing suggestions and a behind-the-scenes look at things taking place at various New Mexico breweries.

Red River (Brewing Co.), theyre going to give us a tour of their brewery up there, and theyve got some new stuff, Black said.  Theyre going to show us their whole brewery and restaurant. Its huge. Its gorgeous. So theyre going to show us that and make us feel like were in Red River.

Because large gatherings are not currently possible, the hope is to create a sense of online camaraderie among New Mexico breweries and their customers.

I know everybodys got their lives and theyre doing their own thing, but a lot of these breweries are still brewing, Black said.  The brewing community is so big, so passionate, and really strong here, so we just wanted to get everybody together, and not just the brewing community, but the fans of the beer.

Net Sesh Fest 2020 tickets range from $6 to $25. All ticketholders get the same access to the event, and proceeds benefit the New Mexico Brewers Guild.

We pay for lobbyists, Black said. We have a lot of stuff coming up. We hope, our fingers are crossed, that in this upcoming special session that the governor is going to hold that we might be able to amend or make some temporary amendments for things that will help our industry. We dont know. Of course, no one knows until we get there. So were paying for lobbyists, and were paying for promotion for all of our breweries, but thats where the money is going to with the New Mexico Brewers Guild.

NET SESH FEST 2020

WHEN: 4-6 p.m. Saturday, May 9

WHERE: Online, details will be provided to ticketholders

HOW MUCH: $6-$25. For tickets and information, visit facebook.com/newmexicobrewersguild
Acting Police Commissioner McDonald Jacob has been given notice by leader of The First Wave Movement, Umar Abdullah, that there will be two more peaceful marches this month.

It comes on the heels of Abdullah being charged on Monday for leading a march around the Queens Park Savannah without permission from the acting police commissioner.
SUTHERLAND, Iowa -- The remains of a Marine who was born in Sutherland and killed in World War II have been identified.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on Tuesday announced that Marine Corps Reserve Pfc. Robert D. Jenks, 20, was accounted for on Feb. 4.

A member of Company D, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force, Jenks was killed on either Nov. 22 or 23, 1943, during the third or fourth day of battle on Betio, a small island in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, now part of the nation known as Kiribati, in the Pacific Ocean.

Jenks was born Dec. 15, 1922, in Sutherland to Arthur and Margaret Jenks. The family moved to Huron, South Dakota, at some point when Jenks was a child.

According to the South Dakota WWII Memorial website, Jenks worked for farmers, the Northwestern Railroad and at Daum's City Auditorium in Huron before joining the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on his 20th birthday. He was sent overseas on April 6, 1943, and served in a mortar platoon.

Betio was the first battle action in which Jenks served.

Jenks' body was believed to be buried in an area named Cemetery 33 on Betio, according to the DPAA, but his remains and those of others killed in the battle could not be located after the war. In 2009, History Flight, a nonprofit organization, located Cemetery 33. In 2019, a burial trench was discovered near the cemetery, and the remains of Jenks and others were recovered.

Jenks was one of approximately 1,000 American Marines and sailors killed at Betio, according to the DPAA. More than 2,000 were wounded during the battle, which annihilated a Japanese force of 4,500 that had occupied the island.

Though costly in American lives, the victory at Betio provided the U.S. Pacific fleet a base from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands in an island-hopping campaign that continually drew nearer to Japan as the war progressed and ultimately ended with the U.S. victory.

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Predictions about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the worlds economy arrive almost daily. How can we make sense of them in the midst of this economic storm? After all, research shows that economic forecasts made during events such as SARS are often wildly inaccurate.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

Predictions about the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the worlds economy arrive almost daily. How can we make sense of them in the midst of this economic storm? After all, research shows that economic forecasts made during events such as SARS are often wildly inaccurate.

To calibrate current forecasts  such as the International Monetary Funds prediction of a 6.2 per cent decline in Gross Domestic Product for Canada  Ive looked at the history of similar worldwide economic shocks, studied macroeconomics models and reviewed nearly 75 studies to better understand what might happen in a post-pandemic world.

The economic effects of 1918-20 flu

The influenza outbreak of 1918-20 killed at least 40 million people, or approximately two per cent of the worlds population. In Canada alone, at least 50,000 deaths were attributed to the flu, approaching the number of Canadian deaths in the First World War. Solid data about GDP did not exist for that era, so economic historians have to recreate economic measurements based on the data that was collected.

The most thorough study focuses on how the influenza pandemic 100 years ago affected Sweden. The Swedish study took advantage of the fact that the country kept very detailed data on causes of death, as well as having a history of accurate economic record-keeping dating back to the 1800s.

Sweden was a neutral country in the First World War, so unlike other Western nations, the war had limited impact on the countrys economy. The fatality rate from the flu in Sweden was comparable to most Western nations and its economy was similar to other developed countries.

The study of Swedens flu experience a century ago suggests there could be permanent negative long-term economic effects from the current pandemic. There was a decline in income from capital sources such as interest, dividends and rents of five per cent that lasted at least until 1929. This was a permanent decline not recovered once the flu pandemic passed.

Swedish poor never recovered

There was also an increase in absolute poverty for those Swedes at the bottom of the economic pyramid: enrolment in government-run "poorhouses" in higher flu-incidence regions jumped 11 per cent and did not decline over the next decade. There was some good news: while employment income was reduced during the crisis, it quickly rebounded to predicted normal levels.

A recent study attempts to measure the effects of the influenza on 1918-21 GDP. Harvard economist Robert Barro and his colleagues painstakingly put together a set of economic data that attempts to recreate what GDP in 42 countries would have been.

They have found that the flu was responsible for an additional six per cent decline in global GDP. The study concludes that the effects were reversed by 1921. This estimate of the flus historical GDP effects is strikingly similar to the IMFs current prediction of six per cent reduction in GDP for Western economies as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Modelling economic effects of a pandemic

Beyond economic history, we can look at macroeconomic models of the global, regional or national economies that run scenarios about pandemic economic shocks.

One scenario by British economists and health science academics is particularly apt in light of COVID-19. Their scenario models virus incidence and fatality rates close to the current best estimates and includes strong and early social distancing measures such as school closures and work-from-home arrangements that we see today in many countries fighting the pandemic.

Their model estimates a 21 per cent decline in U.K. GDP in the first full quarter of the pandemic, with a 4.45 per cent decline in GDP for first year. The model also suggests the time frame to economic recovery is about two years. The current IMF projection for the U.K. is a 6.5 per cent decline in annual GDP.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 is a major shock to the global economy. Across all the studies I reviewed, the conclusion of a significant decline in GDP in the order of 4.5 to six per cent with full recovery within two years seems to be well justified.

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The economic history of the influenza pandemic 100 years ago suggests early easing of social distancing measures and the inability to develop an effective vaccine contributed to second and third flu waves. These waves might have greater effects on the modern service-based economy of Western nations than they did on the more agrarian economy of 100 years ago.

Economic history serves as a potential warning that the economy could get much worse if these measures are ignored.

Its important to remember that GDP is a marker of a nations overall economic health. On an individual level, the effects may be more far-reaching and painful. There are financial and professional losses that may never be recovered.

The 1918-20 flu offers an important history lesson for the worlds current economic outlook: there may be significant declines in the returns to capital in the next decade, as well as relative increases in poverty for the neediest in our society.

Steven E. Salterio is the Stephen JR Smith Chair of accounting and auditing and a professor of business at Queen's University, Ontario.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Clearview AI is reportedly set to cancel client accounts that are not associated with law enforcement or other government entities, as scrutiny grows over abuses of the facial recognition AI app.

The controversial face-tracking technology firm is associated with right-wing extremists and known for scraping more than 3 billion photos from social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.

Facing a number of lawsuits, the New York startup said it "is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency," report Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins, and Logan McDonald at Buzzfeed News:

Responding to one of those lawsuits, Clearview claimed in legal documents filed in an Illinois federal court on Wednesday that it was taking those voluntary actions and would "avoid transacting with non-governmental customers anywhere." That specific suit, which argues Clearview violated an Illinois statute regarding the use of biometric data for commercial purposes, is seeking a temporary injunction that would prevent the company from using the information of current and past Illinois residents for its facial recognition software. Clearview's shift away from private businesses comes after months of mounting legal threats and scrutiny from lawmakers, activist groups, and news organizations. In February, a BuzzFeed News investigation found the company had provided its facial recognition tool to more than 2,200 police departments, government agencies, and companies across 27 countries. Despite public assurances from Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That that its software was meant for law enforcement, internal documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News showed numerous private companies had used the service including Macy's, Walmart, Bank of America, and Target. "Clearview is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency," the company said in a filing, which argued that a federal judge should not grant the injunction because it was taking voluntary steps to comply with the state law. "Clearview is also cancelling all accounts belonging to any entity based in Illinois."

More at Buzzfeed News:

Clearview AI Has Promised To Cancel All Relationships With Private Companies

Following several lawsuits and our reporting on its undisclosed corporate relationships, facial recognition company Clearview AI says it is ending all accounts and ties with non-law enforcement entities https://t.co/jGuhx5CVrn  Ryan Mac  (@RMac18) May 7, 2020

The move comes after Clearview was sued under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The company is also cancelling all contracts with police in Illinois + preventing any state residents from running searcheshttps://t.co/CZSRIIFJdi  Caroline Haskins (@carolineha_) May 7, 2020

The creator of the most dangerous facial recognition tool yet devised promises to ONLY sell it to violent racist gangs whose entire purpose is to destroy the lives of as many people as possible. I'm sure you feel safer now.https://t.co/9zCcslvWqC  Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) May 8, 2020
Federal bank regulators are suing the audit firm Ernst & Young LLP in the $1 billion failure of First NBC Bank in 2017, alleging that the global accounting firm missed clear red flags related to several soured loans and failed to raise the alarm to the bank's board of directors.

The lawsuit, which seeks at least $125 million in damages from the audit firm and its insurance company, is the latest in a string of legal actions and criminal convictions that have followed the bank's collapse three years ago in what still ranks as the largest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.

In its filing in federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana at the end of last month, the FDIC alleges that "EY failed to detect repeated fraudulent conduct by First NBC's president and chief executive, Ashton Ryan," and therefore failed in its statutory oversight duties as an auditor.

The FDIC focuses on several transactions involving Ryan and bank clients in 2014 and 2015 that the regulators said should have been flagged as suspicious during audits. Because they didn't investigate or point out failures in internal controls, Ernst & Young allegedly allowed Ryan to funnel millions of dollars to poorly-performing loans in order to make it appear that they would be repaid, the FDIC said.

"EY not only failed to detect fraudulent conduct by Ryan, but even when EY identified outright lies by Ryan, EY failed to further investigate them," the FDIC said in the lawsuit. "Because EY failed to do its job, Ryan's misconduct continued."

Ernst & Young spokesman Brendan Mullin said the firm did nothing wrong in its dealings with First NBC.

"EY strongly disputes these claims and will vigorously defend our firm and our professionals," Mullin said in an e-mail. "EY remains confident that the services we performed as independent auditors of FNBC complied with all applicable professional standards."

Ryan, who had himself been an auditor for twenty years for Arthur Andersen in New Orleans before becoming a banker and founding First NBC in 2006, has been implicated in several lawsuits and criminal cases as a co-conspirator but has not yet been indicted. Last year, First NBC creditors sued Ernst & Young and Mark Bell, the firm's lead First NBC auditor, along with Ryan and other executives for breach of fiduciary duty, among other allegations. That case was stayed last August pending the result of ongoing criminal investigations.

The criminal convictions to date include guilty pleas for bank fraud by one former senior bank official, Gregory St. Angelo, and from two former clients, Jeffrey Dunlap and Kenneth Charity, both property developers who admitted to borrowing millions of dollars from the bank through fraudulent means.

The FDIC also last September filed an enforcement notice accusing Robert Brad Calloway, a former loan officer and chief credit officer at First NBC Bank, of submitting false or misleading documentation in order to make a series of loans to a borrower who has since been identified as Diamondhead, Mississippi-based businessman Gary R. Gibbs.

Those loans totaled $123 million at the time of the New Orleans bank's collapse, making him the largest of the debtors named in cases brought by the feds so far.

Neither Calloway nor Gibbs have been charged with any criminal offense; lawyers for both maintain they did nothing wrong.

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Ryan's attorney didn't respond to requests for comment but has previously said his client denies any wrongdoing.

The FDIC's lawsuit against EY also details another case of alleged "negligent auditing of fraudulent lending" that hasn't previously been detailed in legal filings related to the bank's collapse.

The lawsuit alleges that Ryan oversaw, and EY negligently missed, fraudulent lending of more than $50 million of oil-and-gas-related lending to "RL." Sources familiar with the case said RL is Roger Linder, who owned the now-defunct Covington-based Linder Oil Company.

The pattern of lending to Linder is familiar from previous cases brought by the feds, in that the FDIC alleges that Ryan kept lending to Linder to cover up the fact that the oil company was unable to make payments on previous loans while also over-valuing the collateral, in this case offshore wells that were worthless.

Linder Oil filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2017, after which it was voluntarily liquidated.

Most of the cases that have come to light involved alleged deliberate concealment of the true value of land and properties, or the value of various tax credits that were available to rehabilitate property in and around New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Those include French Quarter buildings that had been lent money to fund renovations that never happened. Also, in the case of Kenneth Charity, he left the Lake Terrace Shopping Center, at Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Paris Avenue in Gentilly, to rot and used the millions borrowed to renovate for personal expenditure on cars, boats and travel.

The FDIC took over First NBC after it collapsed and sold its good assets, which included performing loans, to the bank now known as Hancock Whitney. It sold about $1.8 billion of non-performing loans to a wide range of investors who specialize in collecting bad debts.

Linder Oil Company's debt, for example, was subsequently acquired by The Cadle Company II, a financial services outfit from Ohio, which continues to pursue Roger Linder and another former Linder oil executive, Miles Biggs, in Louisiana courts for payment.

Though regulators have been more aggressive in pursuit of the large audit firms in the wake of the financial crisis, a criminal prosecution or a lawsuit alleging wrongdoing is still a rare event.

A study last year by the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog, found that the agency that oversees audit firms  the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board  had brought only 18 enforcement cases against the "Big Four" audit firms, which includes E&Y, in its 16 years of existence. That was despite finding more than 800 instances of seriously flawed audits.
Salman Khan is giving back in a big way during the coronavirus crisis, from giving financial aid to 25,000 workers of the film industry hit by the lockdown to sponsoring ration for the families of daily wage workers. He has now launched a food truck, with the words Being Haangryy written on it, to ensure that the lesser-privileged are not faced with starvation.

In a tweet, Shiv Sena leader Rahul Kanal thanked Salman for doing his bit for the underprivileged. Sharing a video of the food truck, he wrote, Thank you @Beingsalmankhan bhai for being there and silently doing something which is needed,service to mankind is service to the almighty!!!Jai Ho!!! I shall surely try and do my bit following the lockdown norms and request our Fanclub family to practice the same #BeingHaangryy. Salmans reps are yet to answer Hindustan Times request for a comment on the new initiative.

Thank you @Beingsalmankhan bhai for being there and silently doing something which is needed,service to mankind is service to the almighty!!!Jai Ho!!! I shall surely try and do my bit following the lockdown norms and request our Fanclub family to practice the same #BeingHaangryy pic.twitter.com/nOeQncO9Er  Rahul.N.Kanal (@Iamrahulkanal) May 6, 2020

Recently, Salman posted a video on Instagram, in which he was seen loading sacks of ration onto bullock carts, lorries and mini trucks. He was being helped by Jacqueline Fernandez, Iulia Vantur, Waluscha De Sousa and others, who are currently stationed at his farmhouse in Panvel.

Thanks for the contribution... thank you all @jacquelinef143 @vanturiulia @rahulnarainkanal @imkamaalkhan @niketan_m @waluschaa @abhiraj88, his caption read.

Also read | Sonakshi Sinha on Ramayana gaffe: Disheartening that people still troll me over one honest mistake

Meanwhile, Salman has also been creating awareness about the coronavirus pandemic on his social media accounts. He lent his voice to a new song titled Pyaar Karona, which has lyrics such as, Pyaar Karona, aitihaat rakhona, khayal rakhona, madad karona (Love, exercise caution, take care and help others). He also wrote the lyrics for the song, along with Hussain Dalal, while Sajid-Wajid composed it.

Salman also recreated his iconic scene where he kisses a glass wall from Maine Pyaar Kiya, but with a funny twist, to make a point about the precautionary measures to take during the coronavirus pandemic. Showing how the scene would look like if it were shot in the current circumstances, he does not kiss the lipstick mark left on the glass, but instead sprays it with sanitiser and wipes it away.

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In less than 24 hours of the Vizag gas leak, which left 11 dead, a blast occurred in a Neyveli Lignite Corporation, also known as NLC India, unit in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. V Anbuselvan, collector of Cuddalore district said a boiler blast occurred at the thermal 2 of the plant at 5 pm on Thursday. The blast led to a fire in which eight people were injured.

Two injured were regular employees and six contract employees. All of them were taken to Kauvery Hospital in Trichy for treatment. Three of them are critical. The unit was operational during the lockdown but running at a lower capacity because of less demand.

NCL is a 'Navratna' company involved in fossil fuel mining sector.

Earlier on Thursday, the gas leak in the LG Polymers plant on the outskirts of Vizag had brought plant maintenance issues into sharp focus. Andhra Pradesh state government officials looked at way to contain the problem, including procuring "polymerisation inhibitors" from Vapi in Gujarat to stop emission of the gas. It is being debated that the valve in the unit burst open due to auto-polymerisation, a chemical reaction that happens when styrene liquid is stored for a long time.

A special committee set up by the state government is investigating the matter. The committee consisted of special chief secretary of Environment and Forests, Pollution Control Board secretary, district collector and the city commissioner of police.

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Human rights commission sends notice to Andhra govt, Centre

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Govt asks factories set to reopen to strictly follow safety norms
P iers Morgan has blasted the Government for allegedly banning ministers from appearing on Good Morning Britain.

The ITV star furiously hit out at the Government for a pathetic and cowardly response, accusing officials of shameful incompetence.

It follows a spate of interviews on the morning news show which have seen ministers clash with the outspoken host over the Governments response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The alleged ban comes on Morgans return to presenting duties on Thursday morning after he tested negative for Covid-19 following a health scare.

He tweeted after the show: The UK Govt has banned any ministers from appearing on @GMB after a series of them made complete fools of themselves in the face of basic & important questions.

This is a pathetic & cowardly response to THEIR shameful incompetence. cc @BorisJohnson. @10DowningStreet.

The Standard has approached Downing Street for comment.

Morgans grillings of ministers sparked more than 3,000 viewer complaints to Ofcom, the regulator, in the space of five days at the end of April.

Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain / ITV

In one of two showdowns with Helen Whately he was accused of bullying after ranting at the care minister for laughing during an interview over the rising care home deaths.

There were an added 600 complaints from an interview on April 16 with Matt Hancock, where Morgan claimed the Health Secretary was grating while Hancock accused the host of interrupting him.

A further seven interviews saw a total of over 200 complaints, including one where he tore into Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden and claimed the Government was "actively sending people out to get infected".

However, Ofcom cleared Morgan, explaining that viewers would expect him to challenge senior politicians and hold them to account, and that Morgan is well known for his combative interviewing style.

His guests were given adequate opportunity to put their points across and counter the presenter's criticisms," the statement continued.

"In Ofcom's view, in line with freedom of expression, it is clearly in the public interest that broadcasters are able to hold those making political decisions to account, particularly during a major national crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic.
L.A County Public Officials Create Five-stage Recovery Roadmap to Relax Safer at Home Order

Thursday, May 7, Los Angeles Officials provided news surrounding the recovery stages, L.A. is conceiving a new normal post pandemic. The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors partnered with the city mayor, to create a phased plan for approved local businesses to open such as florists, car dealers, and stores that sell toys, books, clothing, sporting goods, and music stores. They will be only operating by curbside pickup. There will be more businesses opening over the course of this month, however if numbers begin to reflect a negative turn, L.A. Public officials will draw back from opening business and community spaces.

There has been progress within the fight of COVID-19, but when all businesses will be fully operational is inconclusive. The priority during the recovery is to minimize risk of spreading the virus. The work industry on a national scale has been heavily impacted, there has been over 3.2 million unemployment claims filed last week. There is also a higher chance of African American and LatinX communities to lose their job than other ethnicities. The L.A. County is working with health experts, business and labor partners to construct a sound decision behind economic recovery. The criteria are outlined by the state governor, public officials have that in consideration to move from one stage to the next.

Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County Director of Public Health shared the latest updates on the COVID-19 Virus. Ferrer shared Thursday, May 7. there were 51 additional deaths, 42 of these individuals were between the ages of 65 and over, 32 of them with underlining health conditions. 6 people who died were between the ages of 41-65, 3 of them had preexisting health concerns. One victim was under the age of 41 with preexisting health conditions. This brings the total COVID-19 related deaths in the L.A. County to 1,418.

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Ferrer disclosed as of May 7, there were 815 new COVID-19 reports. In summary, there is a total amount of 29,427 coronavirus cases in the Los Angeles region. 791 incidents were reported in the city of Long Beach and 501 cases in the city of Pasadena. Among the unsheltered community, the positive case count has reached 215, with 119 victims sheltered and properly isolated.

For the 1,309 fatal cases where race and ethnicity were identified; 12% were African American, 18% were Asian, 38% were LatinX, 28% were white, and 1% were native Hawaiian or pacific islander, and 1% identified as another ethnicity. As a result of the disproportionate death rates, Ferrer mentioned that the county is working on an action plan to combat the discrepancy, the plan is posted on the Los Angeles County website and looking to be updated on Friday.

As the plan to recovery continues, the county has released a five-stage recovery roadmap for a gradual approach to relaxing specific directives of the Stay at Home Order. This will initiate additional businesses to open in certain sectors. Stage two begins Friday, May 8. Physical distancing guidelines will still be enforced. Next week, there is anticipation for additional retailers, manufacturers, and recreational facilities to be operational. The next few stages may include higher risk businesses, such as movie theaters, schools, colleges, and universities. Until stage five is reached, health orders and directives will continue guiding the countys decisions. The goal is to maintain minimal spread of coronavirus.
The Judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights have organised a virtual sitting to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of the Continental Court.



The African Continental Court took the advantage to discuss and adopt measures to ensure safety of staff and business continuity of the Court.



The African Court noted with appreciation that the President, Justice Sylvain Ore, was invited to and did represent the Court at the funeral of late Justice Ramadhani.



On the working conditions of staff at the Registry, the African Court commended the Registry COVID-19 Task Force for the measures put in place to ensure staff safety and business continuity.



It urged the Registrar to remain vigilant and not hesitate to take further measures if necessary.



On the organisation of its 57th Ordinary Session, the African Court resolved to hold the session virtually from June 1 to 26 and instructed the Registrar to take all necessary measures to ensure a smooth session.



The African Court considered the draft agenda of the session and decided to formally adopt when the session begun.



The Court expressed regret on the decision of Benin and Cote dIvoire to withdraw their Article 34(6) Declarations, which recognized the jurisdiction of the Court to receive cases directly from individuals and NGOs with observer status before the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and reiterated its commitment to independence, objectivity and loyalty in the discharge of its mandate.



It expressed solidarity with the governments and people of Africa during these difficult moments and said even in the midst of a pandemic, justice and respect for human rights must never be compromised.



The African Court is composed of eleven judges, nationals of Member States of the African Union elected in their individual capacity. It meets four times a year in Ordinary Sessions and may hold Extra-Ordinary Sessions.



The Virtual meeting was preceded with the observance of a minute silence in honour of some distinguished personalities who passed away this year.



They are late Justice Augustino Ramadhani, a former President of the Court, who passed on April 28, in Dar es Salaam, and Dr Augustine Mahiga, Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs of Tanzania, who died on May 1, in Dodoma.

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.

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A newly released document indicates that Obama pushed the FBI to go after Michael Flynn. It's not yet clear, though, if this was part of a larger plot on Obama's part to destroy Trump's presidency or was merely part of Obama's vendetta against Flynn himself. It appears, too, that while Biden probably wasn't part of masterminding the plot, he was in on it from the beginning.

Obama and Flynn had a history, for the latter had once served as Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In April 2014, the Obama administration forced Flynn to retire. By February 2017, Adam Kredo reported that the break had come about because Flynn opposed Obama's disastrous Iran deal.

In August 2016, the FBI opened its investigation into General Flynn to determine whether Flynn "may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security." The FBI had four pathetic points of justification for this extraordinarily serious charge against a man who had spent his life serving America:

Specifically, CR [Flynn] has been cited as an advisor to the Trump team on foreign policy issues February 2016; he has ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by open source information; and he traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source information. Additionally, CR has an active TS/SCI clearance.

When Trump won the election, Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn. Trump ignored that warning and, instead, appointed Flynn as his incoming director of the National Security Agency. It was in this capacity that, on December 29, 2016, Flynn had a phone call with thenRussian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

According to the Department of Justice's motion to dismiss the Flynn prosecution, the FBI's transcript of that call revealed the following:

Mr. Flynn's request that Russia avoid 'escalating' tensions in response to U.S. sanctions in an effort to mollify geopolitical tensions was consistent with him advocating for, not against, the interests of the United States.

That is, the transcript revealed on its face that the phone call did not show Flynn engaging in treasonous behavior.

By January 4, the FBI had prepared its "Closing Communication," detailing its decision to end the investigation into Flynn because it had no derogatory information that justified continuing to investigate him. The FBI leadership, however, worked with Peter Strzok to keep the investigation open, using the Kislyak call as an excuse  even though everyone involved knew from the transcript that the Kislyak call was as innocent as the rest of Flynn's behavior.

And that gets us to Barack Obama's role in all this. On January 5, 2017, a crowd that included Obama, Comey (FBI), Biden, Brennan (CIA), Clapper (DNI), Sally Yates (the acting attorney general), and Susan Rice (NSA) gathered in the Oval Office. The main topic was Russian election interference.

After the meeting, with Biden and Rice still present, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind as well. According to Yates's just released statement, Obama announced that he had "'learned of the information about Flynn, and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions." Obama was "seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information."

While Obama did not give an explicit order about Flynn, one can almost hear him saying, "Hint, hint, hint." Then, perhaps in the interests of plausible deniability, Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter ..."

Given that Obama knew about the Flynn/Kislyak call, it's reasonable to believe he knew about the call's contents. And if he knew about the contents, he also knew that Flynn had not said anything inappropriate or illegal.

Yates, who testified about this meeting, was vaguely aware that Obama and Comey were making plans to prosecute Flynn:

At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can't recall if he specified there was an "investigation."

One week after the meeting, an illegal leak of classified information resulted in the Washington Post reporting on the call between Flynn and Kislyak. Two weeks after the meeting, on the day that Trump was inaugurated, Rice wrote her bizarre "memo to self" about the January 5 meeting in which she stated that Obama had insisted that the investigation should be done "by the book." The recently released documents show that the book was The Deep State's Guide to Destroying Your Political Enemies.

Four days later, Comey violated all standard protocol to sneak into the White House and have his agents blindside Flynn with the interview that led to his prosecution.

Whether all of the above events are connected is not yet clear. What we can see, though, is a straight line from Obama firing Flynn over the Iran deal to Obama unsuccessfully trying to keep Flynn out of the Trump government to Obama sending strong signals to his henchman that the Flynn-Kislyak call could be used to destroy Flynn to Obama's Deep State agents in fact using that call to destroy Flynn.

The old saying that "a fish rots from the head" is old for a good reason: human nature and experience tell us that when an institution is corrupt, that corruption begins at the top and seeps downward. Even as rank-and-file agents were still doing their jobs, upper-level management not only was breaking the law, but seemed to be getting the go-ahead from Obama himself to do that.

And as we head into the 2020 election, we can't ignore the fact that Biden was present for all of this...
Kerala has flattened the COVID-19 curve, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said as only a lone case was reported on Friday and just 16 people remained under treatment for the infection in the state.

Vijayan also cautioned that the state needed to be careful to avoid another wave of the deadly virus, but asserted it was ready to fight it in such an event.

The state reported a solitary positive case, taking the total to 503 while ten more people recovered on Friday, further bringing down the active cases to 16, the chief minister told reporters here.

"Now, two months later (after second wave of infections hit the state in March), the curve has been flattened. As we have completed 100 days since the country's first COVID case was detected from Kerala, we have a record of better recovery rate in the whole world," Vijayan said.

"It's day 100 of our #COVID19 fight. India's first case was reported here on Jan 30. Kerala has shown great courage & resolve. Fought 2 waves of COVID; and is ready if there's another one. Years from now, we should be able to look back & take pride in how we responded to this,"the Chief Minister tweeted.

The fresh case of Friday was a person with kidney ailment who came to Ernakulam from Chennai.

"All the ten recoveries are from Kannur. The total tally of the cases in the state is 503, while 20,157 are under observation, including 347 in various hospitals," he said.

The country's first COVID-19 case was reported on January 30 when a medical student from Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, tested positive in Thrissur.

The second wave of the virus had hit the state during March when a three-member family returned from Italy.

With the start of repatriation of the stranded Non Resident Keralites (NRKs), mainly from Gulf nations, Vijayan said, "there is need to ensure that a third wave does not happen in the state and all efforts are being taken to ensure this."



"We need to be careful to avoid a third wave. In case there is one, we are ready to fight it," he added.

Though the positive cases have reduced, there cannot be any room for any complacency, he said.

Kerala has been earning accolades from many quarters for the manner in which it dealt with the pandemic and restricting deaths due to the virus to just three so far while containingits spread.

The state has made elaborate arrangements to screen the returning expatriates and put them under quarantine.

"As we completed 100 days in successfully fighting the pandemic, we are also welcoming our expats brothers. We have arranged all facilities to receive them. Our society has behaved in an exemplary manner in following the instructions of the health department and we want to continue that to contain the spread," Vijayan said.

The Civil Aviation Secretary had appreciated the state's arrangements to receive the expats,he said.

Two flights from AbuDhabi and Dubai had arrived in the state onThursday with 340-odd people, including 49 pregnant women and infants, from the UAE.

A flight from Riyadh is expected on Friday with 139 people, including 10 people from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

At least,86,679Keralites stranded in other states have registered with the Norka web portal to return to the state.

"Of this,37,810 (43.71 per cent) have registered from Red Zone districts. Over 45,800 passes have been issued of which 19,476 are from red zone districts," Vijayan said adding that those who are coming from other states, must have the necessary permission from that state and also register with the Norka website in order to enter Kerala.

On migrant workers, he said tillThursday, 24,088 guest workers fromBihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal have left Kerala for their respective states in 21 trains.

The chief Minister also informed that the state government has decided to appoint 3,770 temporary health workers in the health department including 704 doctors, 100 specialists, 1,196 nursing staff among others.

Vijayan also expressed solidarity with a worldwide movement on open source COVID projects.

"Many corporate companies are trying to develop cure, medicine and equipment for the COVID-19 pandemic and they will market it for huge price after gaining the patent rights. An alternate is being formed as part of an open source COVID projects to fight against it. Kerala expresses solidarity with such a movement," the chief minister said.

Meanwhile, 23-year-oldyouth, who reached Palakkad from Poondi in Coimbatore and was put under observation for coronavirus, died early on Friday morning.

His samples are negative for the virus.

As of now, there are five positive cases in Kannur, four in Wayanad, three in Kollam and one each in Idukki, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Kasaragod.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Many sane people run a mile if someone my age says, When I was four . But when I was four I saw, from the veranda of our place in Wauchope, NSW, a number of railway detectives going along a stopped train and pulling out from under the carriages travelling men, the unemployed who commonly rode the rattlers between towns, a dangerous and uncomfortable journey in the undercarriage of railway trucks.

A group of men on the hunt for work during the Great Depression. Credit:National Library of Australia

These travelling men, who had to get a certain distance before they could access the Depression handout in a new town, were helped by train drivers, union men, like my maternal grandfather, who had a number of places near North Coast towns where they paused to allow men to get on and off the rattlers without killing themselves. In our family, we knew rail drivers were very aware that every train they drove had a hidden component of desperate men.

So I was watching with my parents the tail end of the Depression. My parents sympathies were unequivocally with the travelling men, and thus my sympathies were also And even I knew that their families, if they had them, were in informal camps up and down the railway line where the wives, if they were lucky, could get a payment of 7 shillings and sixpence, 75 cents a week, for needlework.

The Depression was a succession of anxieties and stresses that bloomed into despair. Unemployment rates in most states would exceed 30 per cent and the damage to the national psyche was prodigious.
The National Green Tribunal on Friday asked LG Polymers Private Limited to pay Rs 50 crroe interim compensation, which has to be deposited with the district magistrate of Vishakhapatnam at the earliest. The amount was arrived at on the basis of prima facie evidence of the extent of damage to life, public health and environment according to NGTs order which was published immediately after an emergency hearing by video conferencing.

The NGT bench headed by chairperson Adarsh Kumar Goel took suo moto cognizance of the Styrene gas leak, which happened on Thursday and killed 12 people.

NGT also constituted a fact finding committee comprising Justice B. Seshasayana Reddy, Former Judge, Andhra Pradesh High Court; Prof Ch V Rama Chandra Murthy, former vice chancellor, Andhra University, Vizag; Professor Pulipati King, Head of Chemical Engineering Department, Andhra University, Vizag; Member Secretary, CPCB (Online, if travel is restricted due to Covid-19); and Director, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (Online, if travel is restricted due to Covid-19) and Head, NEERI, Vizag.

The committee was asked to get information on the sequence of events leading to the gas leak, causes of failure and persons and authorities responsible therefore, extent of damage to life, human and non-human; impact on public health and the environment  including on water, soil, air; steps to be taken for compensation of victims and restitution of the damaged property and environment; and the cost involved and remedial measures to prevent recurrence. CPCB was asked to bear the costs of logistics and functioning of the committee.

NGT also issued notices to Andhra Pradesh State Pollution Control Board, District Magistrate, Vishakhapatnam, Central Pollution Control Board , Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and LG Polymers India Pvt., Limited. Responses will have to be filed before the next date of the hearing on May 18.

Styrene gas is a hazardous chemical as defined under Rule 2(e) read with Entry 583 of Schedule I to the Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules, 1989. The Rules require on-site and off-site Emergency Plans to ensure prevention of damage. There appears to be failure to comply with the said Rules and other statutory provisions. Leakage of hazardous gas at such a scale adversely affecting public health and environment, clearly attracts the principle of Strict Liability against the enterprise engaged in hazardous or inherently dangerous industry. Such an entity is liable to restore the damage caused under the Environment Law, apart from other statutory liability, the bench said in its order.

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A member of the Spanish army works at the command center during Operation Balmis at the Retamares military base in Pozuelo de Alarcon, outskirts Madrid, Spain, Friday, April 24, 2020. The Opration Balmis coordinates the Spanish army missions during the coronavirus crisis. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Spain's army expects there to be two more outbreaks of the new coronavirus, according to an internal report seen by The Associated Press.

The army report predicts "two more waves of the epidemic" and that Spain will take "between a year and a year-and-a-half to return to normality."

The document was published by Spanish newspaper ABC on Friday and later confirmed as authentic by the AP.

"There will be a second wave of COVID-19" in the autumn or winter the army report said, adding that it will be less serious than the initial outbreak due to higher immunity in the population and better preparations.

It said that a "possible third wave would be greatly weakened" next year if there is a vaccine available.

The report was produced by the army as its own forecast of the pandemic, which it can share with civilian authorities. Spain's government has its own experts who make the final decisions on health policy, taking into account the opinion of other institutions and outside experts.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has warned that he considers it highly probable that the virus will make comebacks until a vaccine is developed.

Health officials in Spain are carrying out a epidemiological survey to determine the extent of the contagion, including the several thousand people who have been mildly ill with cough and high fever but never been tested in a hospital. There are also believed to be thousands more who were infected but never showed symptoms. On Friday, the health ministry said that medical workers had taken blood samples from over 46,000 people over the first week of the survey. It plans to test 60,000-90,000 overall.

Members of the UME (Emergency Army Unit) wearing protective suits to protect from coronavirus prepare to disinfect at the 12 Octubre hospital in Madrid, Spain, Spain, Thursday April 30, 2020 as the lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus continues. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

In this March 30, 2020, file photo, Spanish Army soldiers mount a tent to be used by hospital patients during the coronavirus outbreak in Madrid, Spain. Uncertainty in planning for the pandemic has left the globe dotted with dozens of barely used or unused temporary field hospitals. Spain built at least 16 field hospitals, ranging from a few beds under tents to one with more than 5,000 beds at Madrid's big convention center. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

Over 26,000 Spaniards are known to have died from the COVID-19 virus. Spain has gotten control over the outbreak which has infected a confirmed 260,177 people in the country and is now easing restrictions to activate its battered economy.

Spain's army has played a major role in combating the virus under the nation's state of emergency established in mid-March. Thousands of soldiers and military medics have deployed to set up field hospitals, disinfect nursing homes and transport hubs, and transport patients between hospitals and corpses to morgues.

When considering steps to prepare for the coming months, the army report said "it would be extremely important" to develop a contact tracing method using mobile phone applications. Spain so far has not done that and is relying on a local network of public health clinics to monitor future cases.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Peter Weber got engaged to Hannah Ann Sluss on his season of The Bachelor. But the couple split before After the Final Rose. By the end of the two-part finale, Weber was sitting next to Madison Prewett with the intention of trying to make a relationship work.

When Chris Harrison flew to Alabama to tell Prewett that Weber had ended his engagement with Sluss, he told her that she was the reason. So Prewett flew to Los Angeles to see if there was still a connection between her and Weber.

Madison Prewett and Peter Weber | John Fleenor via Getty Images

Madison Prewett and Peter Weber werent together after The Bachelor finale

In an interview with Kaitlyn Bristowe on her podcast, Off The Vine, Prewett said the finale didnt go the way shed expected.

Those next 48 hours [after the finale] were tough for sure. I walked off that stage completely blindsided and hurt Everyones been like, That was the shortest relationship in the history of The Bachelor,' she said.

But Prewett wants to remind Bachelor Nation that she and Weber were never in a relationship.

What I would say to that is: We came into that evening not together and we left that evening not together. We said in that moment, I love you and I want to see if this can work, but we never said were in a relationship People didnt realize that, she said.

Why Madison Prewett and Peter Weber chose not to pursue a relationship

Prewett says she wasnt made to feel comfortable in her potential relationship with Weber. So they went their separate ways.

We took a couple days, it was a lot of long conversations, a lot of tears, a lot of smiles, a lot of every kind of emotion, a lot of back and forth. But we finally got to a place where we realized with everything thats happened, this isnt necessarily the best foundation to be starting a relationship, she said. You want to start a relationship with trust, you want to start a relationship where you feel safe and you feel comfortable and you feel just welcomed by that person, by the people they care about around them and I didnt feel that way.

At the end of the day, Prewett and Weber agreed that they werent compatible. Prewett says they never thought they were.

I dont think Peter and I were ever saying, No, were completely compatible. This makes perfect sense. This is great. We totally understood that we had at that point lived two totally different lives and that we had different perspectives on things, but we knew what we felt for each other, she said.

Madison and I, we had a lot of conversations and at the end of the day, at the end of that second day, we were just proving my mom right, Weber told the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast on April 7 of him and Prewett deciding not to pursue a relationship. And Ive always heard that. Mom knows best. And theres a reason that sayings out there and I think they do.

Read more: The Bachelorette: Kaitlyn Bristowe on Being Grateful for and Wanting to Throat Chop Jason Tartick While Isolating Together
Newly declassified transcripts released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee reveal that top Obama administration officials had no concrete evidence that the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election.

The transcripts come from 57 witnesses who were interviewed by the committee during the Trump Russia probe. Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were among those who gave their testimony.

In her interview with the House Intelligence Committee, conducted on September 8, 2017, Rice admitted there 'wasn't anything smoking' that showed the Trump campaign had helped with Russia's election meddling.

'I don't recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect... prior to my departure,' she stated.

Newly declassified transcripts released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee reveal that top Obama administration officials had no concrete evidence that the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election. Susan Power (left) and Loretta Lynch (right) were unable to point to specific examples of collusion, coordination or conspiracy

Trump has described accusations that his campaign may have colluded with Russia in the 2016 Election as a 'hoax' and a 'witch hunt'

Meanwhile, former AG Loretta Lynch similarly stated that she 'could not say' whether evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy existed when she gave her interview on October 20, 2017.

Other officials who worked in the Obama Administration were also asked about whether or not there was any concrete evidence they had seen.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated: 'I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.

'That's not to say that there weren't concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. ... But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.'

Samantha Power, who was appointed by Obama to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations,told the House Intelligence Committee: ''I am not in possession of anythingI am not in possession and didn't read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community

Samantha Power, who was appointed by Obama to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations, was also among the 57 interviewees probed by the House Intelligence Committee.

'I am not in possession of anythingI am not in possession and didn't read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community,' Power stated, according to the newly released transcripts.

Also interviewed were people critical of the probe, and who worked closely with Trump on the 2016 campaign trail.

Donald Trump Jr., Hope Hicks, and Steve Bannon were among them.

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the transcripts of interviews with key Trump world figures during the Russia probe, with chair Rep. Adam Schiff complaining about a declassification delay

The release of the transcripts come after a tussle on whether or not they should have been declassified.

The House panel voted in 2018 to release the documents, but it wasn't until this week that acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell told the committee they were ready for release following a lengthy interagency classification review.

During the intervening period, the impeachment of President Trump and his trial has come and gone, the Mueller report has been released, and Trump has waged a long campaign against FBI agents and other key figures in investigations.

Panel chair Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who is a regular target of Trump's, complained in a release about the delay in the review, as his panel put out the information for all to see.

'These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests,' Schiff vented, despite the fact former Obama officials were unable to provide concrete evidence about collusion.

Donald Trump Jr. appeared before the committee
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON (Reuters) - Global hedge funds posted their biggest monthly gain in more than a decade in April when stocks rocketed higher with the help of government rescue packages designed to fuel growth stalled by the coronavirus outbreak, according to new data on Thursday. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index climbed 4.8% last month, marking its best showing since May 2009 when it gained 5.15% at the tail end of the financial crisis, research firm Hedge Fund Research said.

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) - Global hedge funds posted their biggest monthly gain in more than a decade in April when stocks rocketed higher with the help of government rescue packages designed to fuel growth stalled by the coronavirus outbreak, according to new data on Thursday.

The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index climbed 4.8% last month, marking its best showing since May 2009 when it gained 5.15% at the tail end of the financial crisis, research firm Hedge Fund Research said.

Managers that focus on stocks, bet on corporate events, and engage in activism by pushing management to perform better delivered the industry's biggest gains in a month that saw the Standard & Poor's 500 index gain 12.81%, HFR data shows.

Still, April's returns were not enough to erase three months of losses, including an 8.42% drop in March, and the average hedge fund remains in the red for the year with an average loss of 6.6%, the data shows. The S&P 500 index is off 9.28% in the first fourth months of 2020.

The difference between winners and losers was large last month, HFR said. It noted that the top decile of managers who submit their data to the firm gained 19.7% while the bottom decile fell 4.1%, representing a dispersion of 23.8 percentage points.

Big market swings, including the drop in oil prices, helped hedge funds in April, HFR President Ken Heinz said in a statement.

An uncertain outlook for the months ahead, as unemployment soars and certain sectors return to business after weeks of lockdown, could create "dynamic opportunities for managers to generate outperformance through the remainder of the year," Heinz added.

Hedge funds often promise to protect capital from sharp market swings, but investors still get cold feet. They pulled $33 billion out of the hedge fund market as performance sagged in the first three months of the year, marking the biggest quarterly outflows in more than a decade, the HFR data shows.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Life was indeed good while I was growing up in Ibadan with my siblings. We were practically raised rubrically as we potently made use of the Yoruba herbal medicine as a major element of immunity, prevention and treatment against the popular 'white man's alternative medicine'. We harnessed this herbal medicine as our only means of panacea to all sorts of health sicknessess. Also apparently, we never felt any conspicuous medical effect as we gladly used this herbal medicine for treatment of various genial to rational, irrational and even complicated diseases that our rich neighbours tend to spending millions of naira at the General hospital. Our parents were conversant with affordable herb plants like Ewuro (bitter leaves), Paw paw leaves, Mango bark, Scent leaf(efinrin), etc. Legibly, mother would gladly marsh up garlic, ginger, onions, scent leaf, lemon grass, unripe pawpaw, lime, African pepper and few others to treat us whenever we were down with malaria, typhoid and some other relative fevers. She will gladly prescribe herbal medicine from her endowed brain, it application and the unmeasured use. Though it was always a combination of self-medication, non-expert consultation. Seemingly, it was also readily an amazing thing and source of fulfilment that we were never denied the benefits of getting healed anytime our health situation warrants treatments.

The World Health Organization (WHO) described herbal medicine as a finished labelled medicinal products that contain a active ingredient aerial or underground parts of plants or other plant materials which include in addition to herbs, fresh juices, gums, fixed oils, essential oils, resins, and dry powders of herbs, leaves, bark, roots, rhizomes or other plant parts which may be entire, fragmented or powdered, or combinations thereof whether in the crude state or as plant preparations. Obviously, the use of medicinal plants for health related issues and treatment is the oldest and the most assorted of all remedial, restorative and medicinal systems even as it medical dispositions and rehabilitation are based on a holistic view and symptoms of the sick case. It's putative that herbs had been used by all cultures throughout history, from the corners of China to India, the Jews in Israel, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Africa as a whole. It grew to become an immanent and consequential scheme of the development of today's contemporary society by some of community members. Our primitive but quick-witted forefathers were the brain behind the variant progression and evolution in herb plants, revealing the imperatives out of the assortments of plants which were readily available in our various backyards. One cannot seem to place how these people largely derive all of these tectonic curatives out of the plant herbs maybe an examen or disquisition from botany could bail us out yet one ostensive and perhaps surprising element is how effective the herbs has been over the years of consummate existence.

Today, the use of herbal remedies has grown wide beyond the shores of Africa and also been widely embraced in many developed countries with complementary and maybe with alternative medicines now becoming epicenter in the some part of Europe, North America and South America. Some reliable studies from frontline researchers and researches from (WHO) affirmed that some of these developed countries, the most important among many other reasons for seeking herbal therapy is the belief that it will promote healthier living. Herbal medicines are therefore often viewed as a balanced and moderate approach to healing and individuals who use them as home remedies and over-the-counter drugs spend huge amount of money (in excess of billions of dollars) on herbal products. While some of their counterpart in some African countries mostly used herb plants as a sole means of preventions and cure. Little did we know why the use of herbal medicinal products and supplements has increased tremendously over the past three decades with not less than 80% of people worldwide relying on them for some part of primary healthcare without fear of effect, 90% of the African population use herbal remedies for their primary healthcare, 70% of the India population depend on traditional medicine to help meet their health care needs. 40% of people in China use the traditional herbal products of all health care delivered and more than 90% of general hospitals in China have units for traditional medicine.

Consequently, one might need to ask the question of why the world is gradually accepting and consistently using the of herbal remedies against the active presence of the alternative medicine. Many surveys and mouth to mouth interviews have been carried out on this field of doubts. Some studies claimed that effectiveness of the plant medicines are receptive and swift in response to their health challenges. While some are of the opinion that the herbal products are superior to manufactured products and also dissatisfaction with the results from orthodox pharmaceuticals and the belief that herbal medicines might be effective in the treatment of certain diseases where conventional therapies and medicines have proven to be ineffective or inadequate. In other reasons, some users of the herbal plants, also opined to the high cost and side effects of most modern drugs which can be very very overwhelming to materialize.

Regardless of these reasons of use, it's crystal clear that some of our herbs have been attested to by the health practitioners and apt researchers. Examples of such medicinal plants used and have demonstrated some plausible pharmacological results and therapeutic answers in Africa and other parts of the world includes; Aloe vera, which is conventionally used for healing of burns, wounds and some relative uses. Pawpaw, which is used as insecticide used for wound dressing, Peppermint oil is used in Nigerian ethnomedicine as remedy against irritable bowel syndrome. Bitter leaves decoction is used for stomach pains, also used for skin infections, infact the use of bitter leaves are dynamic in use. Some others includes, African pepper, alligator pepper and lot more used for various medicinal use.

Accordingly, the incessant bills and costs, unavailability of primary health care, centers, and other traditional reasons might have evidently prompted and promoted the use of traditional therapies over the modern contemplating treatments. However, their might be arguments by the modern medical practitioners and researchers that some of the herbal applications are used without diagnosis of the patients, without regulations of the drugs of when it will run expire, irrelevant contaminations, pharmacological toxicity of the product or how to make use of the herbs in it accurate measurements. Seemingly, Herbal medicines is growing fast, and better packaged that it can be purchased even from the various pharmaceutical stores or from chemist. It's becoming relevant as countries around europe and Asia are beginning to consider it use faster than the alternative.

The Nigerian society should also embrace this development, even as we currently battle the global pandemic of COVID-19 and beyond it. Countries like China, Ethiopia and Madagascar are leading the frontline of it usage albeit the herbs might still needs some medical verification and monitoring against the unforsee complications by the users. The Nigerian government must be ready to influx more herbal products into the Nigerian market, by collaborating with the established regulatory bodies such as Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) and the National Agency For Food And Drug Administration And Control (NAFDAC). This collaboration will go a long way in promoting the herbal products, promoting a home grown Nigeria products, and also boosting the economy of the country while supporting the health system traditionally.

Ogungbile Emmanuel Oludotun writes from University of Ibadan
Symbolic item from the Seder plate during Passover dinner last year at the KleinLife Center in Elkins Park. BASTIAAN SLABBERS / For the Inquirer Read more

In response to urgency stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia has removed all restrictions from $6.3 million in program grants, allowing recipients to use the money freely as they see fit.

Normally, the grants may be used only for specific purposes.

Because of these unprecedented times, and to be true partners to these agencies whom weve worked with for many years, theyll have the flexibility to use the funds where they have the greatest need, said Rena Kopelman, Jewish Federations vice chair of planning and resourcing.

The $6.3 million  the federation has also released an additional $2.3 million for organizations in Israel  is separate from the groups COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, which provides support for organizations hard-hit by the pandemic. A federation spokesperson said that more than $1.3 million has been raised for the COVID-19 response fund so far, with just over half already distributed to more than a dozen organizations in Philadelphia and in Israel.

Kopelman said that the now-unrestricted grants were initially made for three years in 2017, and have been extended for two additional years.

While we certainly value the programs weve been funding for the past four years, we recognize they may not be the most critical, they may not be viable right now, or they may not be able to run as initially intended," she said.

Among the organizations who are freed from funding restrictions is KleinLife, the community center in Northeast Philadelphia. KleinLife was set to receive $632,000 from the Jewish Federation to support its adult-life program, which helps elderly people live independently. Instead, the money will go to provide meals for the hungry throughout the Northeast, federation officials said.

KleinLife usually provides more than 1,500 meals every week, mostly prepared by volunteers in community kitchens. But due to social distancing, KleinLife has closed its kitchens and relied solely on catered meals. At the same time, demand has skyrocketed. The week of April 20, KleinLife delivered 3,992 meals to families, more than a doubling of the usual number, federation officials said.

KleinLife intends to use the entire grant to ensure that anyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, who wants a meal can receive one.

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

The Jewish Relief Agency planned to use its $95,000 federation grant to help alleviate the everyday burden of poverty for nearly 4,000 Jewish clients in Philadelphia. The JRA has provided monthly deliveries of free food and essential household items.

The unrestricted funding will be used directly to support JRAs response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the use of warehouse personnel to pack delivery boxes  in lieu of the normal large volunteer effort. JRA estimates that since the beginning of the pandemic, food costs have risen 30%, making the need for more funds even more critical.

Grant funds will also help JRA cover operational expenses, including utilities, security, and maintenance.

Local organizations receiving federation funds include Abramson Center for Jewish Life, Bnai Brith Youth Organization, Challah for Hunger, Cheder Chabad of Philadelphia, Hillel at Drexel, Federation Housing, Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, Foundation for Jewish Day Schools, Golden Slipper Center for Seniors, Gratz College, Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, HIAS Pennsylvania, and InterfaithFamily;

Also: Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, JEVS Human Services, Jewish Family and Childrens Service, Jewish Farm School, Jewish Learning Venture, Jewish Relief Agency, Judith Creed Horizons for Achieving Independence, KleinLife, Kohelet Yeshiva High School, Kosloff Torah Academy, Makom Community, Moishe House, Moving Traditions, OROT, Penn Hillel, Penn State Hillel, Perelman Jewish Day School, Politz Hebrew Academy, and Hillel at Temple;

In addition, The Chevra, The Friendship Circle, Torah Academy, and Tribe 12.
Nikolay Shchurikov, the 1st Deputy Director of Odessa Port Plant

I will try to describe objectively and specifically. What is positive about the chemical industry today?

Odessa Port Plant is operating successfully, in the conditions of ongoing litigation by creditors. The resumption of production in 2019 is an unconditional merit of Zelenskys team, and more specifically, of Andrei Bogdan. This was vital, since a non-working plant lost qualified workers, which would take years to train. Over 250 days of work under an agreement with Agro Gas Trading the plant processed 445.4 million cubic meters of gas, which made it possible to produce 550 thousand tons of urea and 50 thousand tons of ammonia. Severodonetsk plant "Azot" is operating. In the 1st quarter of 2020, the company increased the production of nitrogen fertilizers by 729%, the production of ammonium nitrate increased 6.3 times, urea-ammonia mixture - 2.1 times, aqueous ammonia - 5.8 times. The plant produced 32.03 thousand tons of urea. This is good news. The entire Ukrainian chemical industry in the first quarter of this year produced 170 thousand tons more mineral fertilizers than in the same period in 2019. And in April, Ukrainian enterprises are expected to increase production. Production is currently in normal mode, except that the product prices are minimal. A start has been made to open the land market, which is expected to double the consumption of mineral fertilizers (relative to today) in the next five years (compared to today). This is definitely a chance for the development of the chemical industry.

But there are problems that require a systemic solution.

Uncontrolled importation: the growth of imported mineral fertilizers, including from the Russian Federation, remains the main problem of the Ukrainian chemical industry. A number of domestic companies import Russian fertilizers into Ukraine through other countries in order to avoid customs payments. And this is in addition to the fact that the industry is generally dependent on raw material prices. Today there is very little space for fertilizers made in Ukraine - the share of some imported fertilizers has exceeded 70 percent. But the authorities stubbornly do not see the scale of the problem. The government does not go further than discussions on this issue. We only hear declarations about the importance of the chemical industry for Ukraine, which provides 8-9% of GDP. There are no real actions and steps yet.

Great expectations and strong disappointment: the privatization of the chemical industry, including Odessa Port Plant, has again been postponed. The formal reason is the COVID-19 pandemic. But in fact, the State Property Fund does not take action to prepare the process. But the process is impossible without debt restructuring.

In addition, the old and illegal schemes of officials arranging for bribes or on the principle of friend-or-foe professionally unsuitable, but trusted people for industrial enterprises, are flourishing. For example, the urgent change of management at Odessa Port Plant on the eve of the tender for the selection of a new counterparty to work with the plant. And then the further cancellation of the tender and the development of its new conditions that would suit needed company.

Yes, Zelensky and his team made no campaign promises to the chemical industry. Therefore, it is not clear what to expect and when the turn of the authorities comes to the domestic chemical industry.
[May 08, 2020] Anaplan Announces Date for First Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call

Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) will report results for its fiscal first quarter ended April 30, 2020 before the market opens on Tuesday, May 26, 2020. The results will be included in a press release with accompanying financial information that will be released before market open and posted on the Anaplan Investor Center website. Anaplan's executive management team will hold a conference call and webcast beginning at 5:30 a.m. PT / 8:30 a.m. ET to share financial results and business highlights. Event: Anaplan First Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 (Q1 FY21) Earnings Conference Call

When: Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Time: 5:30 a.m. PT / 8:30 a.m. ET

Live Call: (877) 82-8690 Domestic, (647) 689-4061 International with conference ID 1099937





Replay: (800) 585-8367 or (416) 621-4642 with passcode 1099937

Live Webcast: https://investors.anaplan.com or with replay available for 12 months About Anaplan

Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE: PLAN) is pioneering the category of Connected Planning. Our platform, powered by our proprietary Hyperblock technology, purpose-built for Connected Planning, enables dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent planning. Large global enterprises use our solution to connect people, data, and plans to enable real-time planning and decision-making in rapidly changing business environments to give our customers a competitive advantage. Based in San Francisco, we have over 20 offices globally, 175 partners, and more than 1,400 customers worldwide. To learn more, visit www.anaplan.com. Investors and others should note that the Company routinely uses the Investor Center section of its corporate website to announce material information to investors and the marketplace. While not all of the information that the Company posts on its corporate website is of a material nature, some information could be deemed to be material. Accordingly, the Company encourages investors, the media, and others interested in the Company to review the information that it shares on www.anaplan.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005267/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
WASHINGTON  The installment of one of President Trumps financial backers and a longtime Republican donor as the postmaster general is raising concerns among Democrats and ethics watchdogs that the Postal Service will be politicized at a time when states are mobilizing their vote-by-mail efforts ahead of the 2020 election.

The Postal Services board of governors on Wednesday night selected Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman and veteran of the logistics industry, to lead the struggling agency, which faces insolvency and has frequently drawn the ire of Mr. Trump. The president has been pushing the post office to increase prices on companies that use it to deliver packages, such as Amazon, and has threatened to withhold funding if sweeping changes are not enacted.

Those changes have failed to get off the ground, but with Mr. DeJoy at the helm there are growing concerns that the nations mail carrier could be weaponized.

Mr. Trump declared last month that the Postal Service is a joke and assailed it for taking steep losses on packages it ships for big e-commerce companies at low rates. He suggested that the service increase the price it charges companies by four or five times the current rates.
As grocery stores limit purchases of fresh meat amid the spread of the coronavirus, more shoppers are turning to local cattle farmers for their beef.

But theyll have to be patient  that demand is causing longer-than-normal waits.

Since we started selling beef, this has outpaced anything weve seen before, said Matt Hardecke, owner of Clover Meadows Beef in Wildwood.

The farm is sold out of sides of beef through late September.

The uptick comes as meat processing plants shut or slow down, processors warn of shortages, grocery stores limit meat purchases and Americans seek to stock up.

Several U.S. production plants have been temporarily shuttered in recent weeks after hundreds of workers were sickened by the virus. The fast food chain Wendys has pulled some burgers off its menus. Costco has limited fresh beef, pork and poultry purchases. And even local markets, like Schnucks and Dierbergs, have cut back: Schnucks is limiting fresh-beef packages to two per shopping trip; Dierbergs is placing limits on fresh chicken, pork and beef.

Our overall goal is to make sure we have product available for our customers, so we are watching the supply situation daily and remain focused on keeping our shelves stocked with good-valued items, Dierbergs said in a statement.

Beef and pork processing capacity is down 40% from last year, according to Jayson Lusk, head of the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Some meatpacking plants are coming back online after President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring them to stay open. But until theyre back at full capacity, consumers likely will see some shortages and higher prices for beef and pork, Lusk said. Poultry production also has been affected, but to a lesser degree.

We dont have a beef shortage. We have a processing and transportation shortage, and thats where the bottleneck is, said Bill McLaren, owner of Crooked Creek Beef, which has three farms in Franklin County.

He said demand for beef from his farms is up three- or four-fold, and hes taking orders for delivery for the end of July  weeks ahead of schedule.

People are a lot more interested in buying local and knowing where their food comes from. I hate that the virus did it, but I love that its happening, McLaren said.

Hardecke, of Clover Meadows Beef, said families like being able to buy meat in a large quantity and not have to go to the store as frequently  something many are doing especially now, as stores ask for just one person per household to shop.

A quarter of a cow, which typically lasts a family of five about six months, costs $775 with delivery included. It includes 50 pounds of hamburger, 25 pounds of steaks, 25 pounds of roast and other cuts.

Our clients are families that consume a lot of protein. When they go to the store and can only buy a day or two of supply, thats when they look at options like us, Hardecke said.

Tracy Herman, a customer for more than five years, said she had to order her familys quarter-cow earlier than usual for delivery by August, when she typically needs it.

She said the decision to buy in bulk initially was spurred by getting grass-fed beef at a good price, but she has been sold on having plenty of meat in her freezer and not having to pay attention to sales at grocery stores.

Wear your mask and limit your meat: new rules for Costco as shortages loom Starting today, it will require all shoppers to wear masks or face coverings to reduce the chances of transmission of the virus.

Area butchers are seeing the demand, too. Chris Bolyard, owner of Bolyards Meat and Provisions in Maplewood, gets his beef from a cattle farm in Troy, Missouri, and does all his butchering in the shop.

Bolyard said ground beef is his most popular item and that he can sell as much as he has on hand.

Peoples buying habits have changed, Bolyard said. People used to come in, say on a Wednesday, and get steak for dinner. Now were only open a couple days a week and theyll buy for a week or two at a time.

The store is now closed to walk-in customers, but Bolyards is taking online orders, with curbside pickups on certain days.

Resolving national processing delays wont come quickly. Todd Hays, a pork farmer in Monroe City in northeastern Missouri, said finding a place to slaughter his pigs is weighing heavily on his mind.

His biggest customer is Smithfield Foods, but he said that in two weeks, he could be begging a processor to take his pigs.

Even small lockers near him are overbooked, he said, with waits until mid-June or July to get a pig butchered and until September for beef.

Theres plenty of cattle and plenty of pigs, he said. But theres not enough beef and pork.

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Drive-thrus, pre-orders and deliveries: local farmers markets, farmers, adapt to coronavirus As the peak of farmers market season takes off, organizers are changing how they do business  something restaurants and farmers who sell to them have been doing too

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Ahmaud Arbery would have celebrated his 26th birthday on Friday.

Instead, people across the country are running to honor the former high school football player after he was chased down and fatally shot on Feb. 23 by Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, in Brunswick, Georgia.

An attorney speaking for Arbery's family said he was out jogging when he was killed and was a victim of "racial violence." Arbery is black and the McMichaels are white.

The McMichaels have claimed they thought he was a burglar, according to a Glynn County police report. The father and son were arrested on Thursday and face charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.

On Friday, fellow runners and black run clubs hit the pavement to run 2.23 miles  to mark the day Arbery was killed. One of the clubs that participated was WeRun313 in Detroit, Michigan.

#IrunwithMaudmorning run with my brother @LaDarionAmmons as we honor the life of #AhmaudAubrey. The color of our skin should not be a death sentence. You are me and I am you! pic.twitter.com/qrCxbtUTke  Rep. Jeramey Anderson (@jerameyanderson) May 8, 2020

When I first saw that video of Maud being gunned down I really didnt want to talk about it," the club's co-founder Joe Robinson told NBC affiliate WDIV-TV in Detroit, adding that he and Arbery shared some similarities.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, WeRun313 said "as a run club, we stand in solidarity and support of Ahmaud" and urged others to show their support by running solo. Black Men Run, which focuses on promoting a healthy lifestyle for black men, also joined in.

Story continues

"We are saddened by this tragedy and stand in solidarity," the group wrote on Facebook. "This Friday, May 8th we Run With Maud. #irunwithmaud."

Maria Woods-Stanfield, a member of Black Girls Run, another club that joined in Friday's run, told the Detroit Free Press that she hoped the challenge would put an end to "the killings and assault of black men and women."

"We are often and unfairly viewed as threats  as if our brown skin is a weapon," she said.

Rep. Jeramey Anderson, D-Miss., tweeted a photo of his morning run that he took with his brother. "The color of our skin should not be a death sentence," Anderson, who is black, wrote. "You are me and I am you!"

Ahmaud Arbery with his mother Wanda Cooper. (Courtesy Family)

Malcolm Jenkins, a safety for the NFL's New Orleans Saints, dedicated his morning run to Arbery.

"Happy birthday to Ahmaud Arbery. Rest in peace, king. I'm doing my jog for you," Jenkins said in a video posted on Twitter. "Even though they arrested those two men, we got to make sure they don't forget his face and that he gets his justice in court."

Many other people posted photos and videos of their run using the social media hashtag "#runwithmaud."

According to the police report, Gregory McMichael first spotted Arbery on foot "hauling ass" down a street in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. He said he thought Arbery was a burglar who had been targeting the neighborhood.

Gregory McMichael grabbed a .357 Magnum and his son armed himself with a shotgun before they jumped into their pickup truck to chase Arbery. The McMichaels claimed they armed themselves because they believed Arbery might have a gun, the police report said.

The report did not specify whether Arbery was armed, but Lee Merritt, an attorney for the family, said the victim did not have a weapon. When the McMichaels caught up to Arbery, Travis shot and killed him following a confrontation, authorities said.

In a video of the shooting, Arbery is seen running down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. He runs around the vehicle, and a shot is fired. The video then shows Arbery and another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired.

NBC News does not know what occurred before the events shown in the video.

George Barnhill, one of the prosecutors who first handled the case but later recused himself, defended the actions of the McMichaels and their neighbor. In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department obtained by NBC News, Barnhill wrote that the men had "solid first hand probable cause" to chase Arbery, a "burglary suspect," and stop him.

Barnhill also said that after he watched the video of the incident, "given the fact Arbery initiated the fight" and grabbed the shotgun, he believed Travis McMichael "was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself" under Georgia law.

Vic Reynolds, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference on Friday that the video was a "very important piece of evidence" and the man who shot the video, the McMichael's neighbor William Bryan, is also under investigation.

"We're going to go wherever the evidence takes us," Reynolds said. "Let's say, hypothetically, if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three weeks there's probable cause for an arrest, then we'll do it. If we don't believe there is, then we won't."

The GBI began an inquiry into the shooting earlier this week upon the request of District Attorney Thomas Durden, who is the third prosecutor to take the case after two others recused themselves because of potential conflicts of interest.
The resolution called for cessation of hostilities in conflict zones so governments could focus on tackling COVID-19.

The United States prevented a vote in the UN Security Council on a resolution calling to end worldwide hostilities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Kuwait decides to implement a total lockdown starting on Sunday to curb the spread of coronavirus as the number of cases climbs in the Gulf country.

The US unemployment rate for April skyrocketed to 14.7 per cent as the coronavirus and lockdowns battered the economy.

WHO warns coronavirus could kill 83,000-190,000 people in Africa in the first year and infect between 29 million and 44 million during that period if it is not contained.

More than 270,000 worldwide have died from the disease with cases up to 3.8 million and nearly 1.3 million recovered. Cases in the US have reached 1.25 million with 75,500 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.

Here are the latest updates:

Friday, May 8

23:15 GMT  Union opposes reopening US meat plants as more workers die

The largest union representing US meatpacking workers said on Friday it opposed the reopening of plants as the Trump administration had failed to guarantee workers safety.

At least 30 meatpacking workers have died of the novel coronavirus and more than 10,000 have contracted it, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents more than 250,000 meatpacking and food processing workers, said in a statement.

The pandemic caused at least 30 meatpacking plants to temporarily close over the past two months, resulting in a 40 percent drop in pork production capacity and a 25 percent drop in beef production capacity, the union said.

20:55 GMT  Apple unveils plans to reopen some US stores

Apple said it will gradually reopen its retail shops in the US next week, taking pandemic precautions such as making sure everyone in them wears masks.

The iPhone maker planned to start with some stores in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho and South Carolina.

Weve missed our customers and look forward to offering our support, Apple said in a statement to AFP news agency.

20:50 GMT  White Houses Birx to take key role in coronavirus drug distribution

US coronavirus task force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx will have a leading role in how the first drug to demonstrate a benefit in treating COVID-19 patients will be distributed to hospitals, the White House said.

Birx, who has been a fixture in televised task force media briefings, will be one of the chief consultants on how Gilead Sciences Incs remdesivir will be supplied, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters.

The US federal government began distributing the drug this week [File: Carlos Barria/Reuters]

20:30 GMT  VP Pence says lack of religious services has been burden

Vice President Mike Pence spoke to a group of faith leaders in Iowa about the importance of resuming religious services, saying the cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the coronavirus have been a burden for congregants.

Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit to the Des Moines area. He was set to speak later in the day with agricultural and food company executives.

Its been a source of heartache for people across the country, Pence told about a dozen people at the Church of the Way Presbyterian church in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale.

A new poll by The University of Chicago Divinity School and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 9 percent of Americans think in-person religious services should be permitted without restrictions [File: Elsa/GettyAFP]

20:08 GMT  New Russia virus cases top 10,000 for sixth day

Russia registered more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases for the sixth day in a row, after emerging as a new hotspot of the pandemic.

A government tally showed 10,669 new cases over the last 24 hours, fewer than Thursdays record of 11,231 bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859.

The country also recorded 98 new deaths from the virus, for a total of 1,723, and while some officials are considering softening the current lockdown, the WHO warned Russia is going through a delayed epidemic.

Russia now ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the total number of cases, according to an AFP tally, behind countries where the epidemic hit considerably earlier: Britain, Italy and Spain [File: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu]

19:50 GMT  US pulls permission for Chinese masks found defective

Federal health officials have revoked U.S. authorization for masks made by more than 60 Chinese manufacturers after they failed to meet standards needed to protect health care workers.

The Food and Drug Administration had allowed the imports based on testing data from the companies. Normally, the masks are tested and certified by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before they can be sold in the US.

The tight-fitting masks are essential for protecting health care workers treating patients with COVID-19. Faced with critical shortages at U.S. hospitals, the U.S. has accepted donations of masks, gloves and other protective equipment from China and other countries.

[The FDA and CDC reported Thursday that new U.S. testing showed dozens of the Chinese masks failed to meet that 95 percent level [File: Kevin Winter/AFP]

19:30 GMT  Opinion: Sanctions make Irans pandemic crisis more deadly

The role US sanctions have played, and continue to play, in the devastation caused by the coronavirus in Iran led to renewed discussions on the effectiveness, legality and legitimacy of sanctions not only in Iran and the US, but also across the world.

Read more here.

People protest in Washington DC against the role that US sanctions plays on Iran and the exacerbation of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) worldwide [Carlos Barria/Reuters]

19:10 GMT  EU governments allowed to take stakes in virus-hit firms

The European Commission adopted rules allowing EU governments to help virus-hit companies by acquiring stakes in the firms, which will be subjected to a ban on dividends, share buybacks, bonuses and acquisitions.

An EU executive also said EU countries could grant subordinated loans on favourable terms to companies affected by COVID-19.





18:50 GMT  Tanzania gets Madagascars anti-coronavirus drink disputed by WHO

Tanzania says it has received its first shipment of Madagascars self-proclaimed, plant-based cure for coronavirus, despite warnings from the World Health Organization that its efficacy is unproven.

The announcement on Friday came days after Madagascar said it would begin selling the herbal concoction  known as Covid-Organics  and that several African countries had already put in orders.

Read more here.

18:30 GMT  Opinion: The problem with predicting COVID-19 apocalypse in Africa

In an April 10 interview with CNN, American philanthropist Melinda Gates expressed her belief that the coronavirus pandemic will have the worst impact in the developing world. She said she foresees bodies lying around in the street of African countries.

A day later, it was announced that the United States, where Gates is from, had surpassed Italy in terms of the number of dead from COVID-19.

It is quite surprising to see that although there have been shocking reports of hospitals overwhelmed with patients and dead bodies left to decompose in homes and in the streets of the US and in other Western countries, the billionaire philanthropist and others like her still choose to talk about dead bodies in Africa.

Read more here.

18:10 GMT  France records 243 new virus deaths

France reported another 243 coronavirus deaths, raising its total toll to 26,230, while the number of patients in intensive care continued to fall.

While the country has been one of the hardest hit in Europe, it has seen the daily death rate steadily drop and is due to start emerging from a strict lockdown on Monday.

France reported 93 fewer patients suffering from the coronavirus in intensive care, dropping the total to 2,868. The figure rose above 7,000 at the peak of the countrys epidemic in April.





17:50 GMT  Belgian llama holds key to possible treatment

Scientists the world over are scrambling to perfect an anti-viral treatment for the novel coronavirus, and following what might seem to be some unusual trails.

Belgiums top researchers insist that their efforts to isolate an anti-body grown in a llama  the Andean beast of burden  is based on a solid lead.

Professor Xavier Saelens of the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) in Ghent told AFP news agency, that if it works it would not be the first time the camel-like beast has helped out.

17:28 GMT  US prevents Security Council vote on pandemic resolution: diplomats

The United States prevented a vote in the UN Security Council on a resolution on the coronavirus pandemic, apparently because it made implicit mention of the World Health Organization, diplomats said.

The text, under negotiation since March, called for a worldwide cessation of hostilities in conflict zones so governments can address the pandemic.

The United States blocked a procedure that would have led to a vote on the resolution, the diplomats said.

17:10 GMT  New York child dies from rare disease linked to COVID-19

A five-year-old boy in New York state has died from a rare inflammatory disease believed to be caused by the new coronavirus, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

There have been 73 reported cases in NY (state) of children getting severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.

On Thursday, a 5-year-old boy passed away from these complications, believed to be caused by COVID-19, Cuomo wrote on Twitter.

There have been 73 reported cases in NY of children getting severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome. On Thursday, a 5-year-old boy passed away from these complications, believed to be caused by COVID-19. DOH is investigating.  Archive: Governor Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 8, 2020

16:35 GMT  EU backs keeping external borders shut until mid-June over virus

The European Union (EU) executive backed keeping curbs on travel to the continent in place for another 30 days until mid-June as part of extraordinary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus, despite harming trade and tourism.

The bloc decided in mid-March to close its external borders for any non-essential travel in a largely failed bid to prevent the 27 member states from closing frontiers inside Europes control-free travel zone.

The EUs Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said this week Europe would have to go back to the future of open borders once the pandemic is under control.





16:15 GMT  Biggest threat to Brazil pandemic response? President Bolsonaro, says The Lancet

The biggest threat to Brazils ability to successfully combat the spread of the coronavirus and tackle the unfolding public health crisis is the countrys president, Jair Bolsonaro, according to British medical journal The Lancet.

In an editorial, the Lancet said Bolsonaros disregard for and flouting of lockdown measures is sowing confusion across Brazil, which is now recording record numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and is fast emerging as one of the worlds coronavirus hot spots.

16:10 GMT  Italy tops 30,000 deaths, new cases edge down

Italy became the third country in the world to record 30,000 deaths from the coronavirus, reporting 243 new fatalities compared with a daily tally of 274 the day before.

The countrys total death toll from COVID-19 since its outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 30,201, the Civil Protection Agency said. Only the United States and Britain have seen more deaths from the virus.

The daily number of new infections fell slightly to 1,327 from 1,401 on Thursday, taking the total of confirmed cases since the epidemic began to 217,185, the third highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain [Remo Casilli/Reuters]

15:50 GMT  US Vice Presidents staff member tests positive for coronavirus

A member US Vice President Mike Pences staff has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which caused Pences flight to Iowa to be delayed and some fellow passengers on Air Force Two to disembark, according to a White House official.

Pences flight was delayed more than an hour, and according to press pool reports passengers who were Pence staff members, appeared to disembark prior to departure.

15:25 GMT  Yemen reports nine new cases, two more deaths

Yemen reported nine new coronavirus cases in Aden, the interim headquarters of the government, including one death, and said a second person infected in the southern province of Lahaj had died.

This takes the total count in areas under control of the internationally recognised government to 34 infections with seven deaths.





15:05 GMT  German chapter of Fridays for Future holds first post-corona protest

A small group from the Fridays for Future movement calling for action on climate change held a protest in front of the Hamburg City Hall on Friday, while observing strict social distancing rules.

Around 25 youthful demonstrators unfurled a banner with the words Our future in your hands in the first such protest in Germany since a partial lockdown was imposed in mid-March.

The protest had been agreed with the relevant authorities and was held with strict hygienic precautions.

14:44 GMT  Markets closed to control Mexicos exuberant Mothers Day

Few countries celebrate Mothers Day with as much gusto as Mexico, creating fears the celebrations could threaten lockdown measures and spread the new coronavirus.

Wary of Mexicans deep desire to bring mothers flowers and cakes this Sunday, some officials have ordered the closing of public markets, and pastry and flower shops, while others are proposing a virtual Mothers Day or even postponing celebrations for a month.

There should be no celebration of Mothers Day because we would probably bring mum the gift of the coronavirus, which could kill her, said Dr Manuel De la O Cavazos, the health secretary of northern Nuevo Leon state.

14:20 GMT  Kuwait to impose 20-day total curfew from May 10

Kuwait will enact a total curfew from 4pm (1300 GMT) on Sunday through to May 30 to help to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the Information Ministry said on Twitter on Friday.

Further details of the curfew will be announced soon, it said.

Kuwait on April 20 expanded a nationwide curfew to 16 hours a day, from 4pm to 8am, and extended a suspension of work in the public sector, including government ministries, until May 31.

13:59 GMT  Trump offers Biden rapid COVID-19 test to resume travel

President Donald Trump said that he is willing to provide Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic opponent, with a rapid COVID-19 testing system so Biden can return to the campaign trail.

In a telephone interview with the Fox and Friends programme, Trump said he would be willing to provide the former vice president with the same coronavirus tests he uses.

Yes, 100 percent. Id love to see him get out of the basement so he can speak, Trump said, needling Biden for holding virtual campaign events and media interviews from a studio in his home.

13:40 GMT  Japan lowers bar to coronavirus testing, drops temperature guideline

The Japanese Health Ministry said it now wants people experiencing difficulty breathing or those with a fever to seek advice on whether they may have been infected with the new coronavirus, easing public access to testing.

Government guidelines had previously specified that those who had had a fever of 37.5 Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit) or more for four consecutive days should seek advice at local public health centres, which are tasked with conducting screening ahead of administering tests for the virus. The ministry has now dropped its temperature-related criteria.

13:18 GMT  Friday prayers resume as mosques reopen in Lebanon

Lebanons mosques welcomed worshippers for Friday prayers, as authorities eased restrictions imposed in March to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Dozens of worshippers preformed the weekly prayers at Beiruts iconic Al-Amin Mosque. The masked worshippers sat, contrary to traditions, at considerable distance from one another and were obliged to bring their own prayer mats.

This year, Muslims find themselves cut off from much of what makes Ramadan special as authorities fight the pandemic. Many countries have closed mosques and banned Taraweeh to prevent crowds.

COVID-19 has infected 859 people and killed 26 in Lebanon [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]

Hello, This is Usaid Siddiqui in Doha taking over from my colleague Saba Aziz.

13:00 GMT  Qatar reports more than 1,300 new cases

Qatars health ministry reported 1,311 new confirmed coronavirus cases, as total infections in the country surpassed the 20,000 mark.

Most of the new cases were in expatriate workers who had come in contact with those previously infected, the ministry said.

     

Latest update on Coronavirus in Qatar#__ #YourSafetyIsMySafety pic.twitter.com/79ORC2IHac     (@MOPHQatar) May 8, 2020

12:30 GMT  Pandemic destroys 20.5 million US jobs in April

The US unemployment rate hit 14.7 percent in April, the highest in the post-war era, as 20.5 million jobs vanished in the worst monthly loss on record.

The figures are a stark evidence of the damage the coronavirus pandemic has done to a now-shattered economy.

People who lost their jobs as coronavirus lockdown measures swept the United States wait in line to file for unemployment benefits [Nick Oxford/Reuters]

The unprecedented collapse drove the unemployment rate well beyond the peak hit in late 2009 during the global financial crisis  from 4.4 percent in March.

The plunge in nonfarm payroll employment was the largest ever recorded since 1939, while the jobless rate was the highest and the biggest increase since 1948, the Labor Department report said.

Read more here.

12:00 GMT  EU to give 10 million masks to healthcare workers

The European Commission will start dispatching a stock of 10 million masks to healthcare workers across the 27-country bloc and in the United Kingdom.

The commission said a first batch of 1.5 million masks will be shipped to 17 member states and UK over the next few days.

The stock, purchased through a European Union fund set up to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, will be distributed in weekly instalments over the next six weeks.

11:45 GMT  South Africa to grant parole to 19,000 inmates

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said some low-risk prisoners would be granted parole to help curb the spread of the coronavirus in correctional facilities.

Around 19,000 people would be freed by the move, taken in response to a UN call on all countries to reduce prison populations so that social distancing and self-isolation conditions could be observed, Ramaphosa said.

In South Africa, as in many other countries, correctional facilities have witnessed outbreaks of coronavirus infections among inmates and personnel, Ramaphosas statement said.





11:30 GMT  Italys Milan a ticking virus bomb, virologist warns

Italys economic capital Milan is a virus time bomb at risk of erupting with residents now free to move around after two months under a pandemic lockdown, a virologist has warned.

The city in the northern Lombardy region is the epicentre of Italys outbreak, one of the worst in Europe in terms of deaths and infections.

We have a very high number of infected people returning to circulation, Massimo Galli, the head of the infectious diseases department at the Sacco hospital in Milan, said in an interview with the Repubblica newspaper, referring to the easing of lockdown measures on May 4.

People wearing protective masks protest against the economic consequences of the lockdown at the Duomo square, as Italy begins a staged end to a nationwide lockdown, in Milan [Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters]

11:15 GMT  UN agency for Palestinians launches emergency appeal

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) launched an emergency coronavirus appeal, saying Palestinians across the Middle East were suffering a devastating socioeconomic impact.

The agency appealed for $93.4m for the next three months to provide food and cash assistance to the vulnerable.

While the number of Palestinian refugees infected with COVID-19 has so far been relatively low, they often work in informal sectors and are facing devastating economic repercussions from the crisis, UNRWA said.

11:00 GMT  South Koreas football league kicks off with no crowd

Players of Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors FC and Suwon Samsung Bluewings play during the opening game of South Koreas K-League football match at the Jeonju World Cup Stadium in Jeonju [Kim Orel/Newsis via AP]

South Koreas football league season kicked off with reigning champions Jeonbuk Motors hosting Suwon Bluewings in an empty World Cup Stadium in Jeonju.

The start of the season was delayed by several weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak. The 12-team campaign has been shortened from 38 to 27 match days, and no fans will be allowed at least in the early stages.

The K-League is the biggest football league to play at the moment, before Germanys Bundesliga restarts on May 16.

10:45 GMT  China market had role in outbreak, but more research needed: WHO

A wholesale market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan played a role in the outbreak of the novel coronavirus last year, as the source or possibly as an amplifying setting, the World Health Organization said, calling for more research.

Chinese authorities shut down the market in January as part of efforts to halt the spread of the virus and ordered a temporary ban on trade and consumption of wildlife.

The market played a role in the event, thats clear. But what role we dont know, whether it was the source or amplifying setting or just a coincidence that some cases were detected in and around that market, said Peter Ben Embarek, WHO food safety and animal diseases expert.

Visitors wear protective masks as they tour the Forbidden City, which recently reopened to limited visitors, in Beijing, China [Kevin Frayer/Getty Images]

10:40 GMT  Spains virus death tolls rises by 229

Spains daily death toll from the coronavirus rose to 229, up from 213 on the previous day, the health ministry reported.

Overall deaths rose to 26,299 from 26,070 on Thursday and the number of diagnosed cases rose to 222,857 up from 221,447 the day before, the ministry said.

10:20 GMT  Irelands adjusted unemployment rate hits record high

Irelands unemployment rate rose to 28.2 percent at the end of April including those receiving emergency coronavirus jobless benefit, the highest on record and up from just 4.8 percent before the crisis two months ago, the states statistics office said.

The new COVID-19 adjusted unemployment rate increased from 15.5 percent in March after the number of people claiming the higher emergency payment more than doubled to 602,107, on top of the 216,900 on regular jobless benefits.

Excluding the emergency coronavirus payment, the unemployment rate stood at 5.4 percent.

10:00 GMT  UN: Civilian killings mounting in Syria amid pandemic

The UN human rights chief has accused the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group and other factions in Syria of taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to step up violence on civilians, describing the situation as a ticking time bomb.

We are receiving more reports every day of targeted killings and bombings from one end of the country to the other, with many such attacks taking place in populated areas, Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.

Various parties to the conflict in Syria, including ISIL, appear to view the global focus on the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to regroup and inflict violence on the population, she added.





09:50 GMT  Facebook to allow employees to work remotely until year end

Facebook Inc said it would allow its workers who are able to work remotely to do so until the end of the year as the coronavirus pandemic forces governments to extend stay-at-home orders to curb the spread of the disease.

The social media giant also expects most offices to stay closed until July 6, according to a company spokesperson.

Facebook said most offices will remain closed until July 6 [File: Elise Amendola/AP]

09:45 GMT  Germany doubts US claims of China virus lab leak: Report

A German intelligence report casts doubts on US allegations that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, Der Spiegel magazine reported.

An internal memo prepared for Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer classifies the American claims as a calculated attempt to distract from Washingtons own failings, Der Spiegel reported.

US President Donald Trump is attempting to distract from his own mistakes and direct Americans anger at China, Spiegel cited from the document.

09:05 GMT  China supports WHO review of global pandemic response

China said it supports the establishment of a panel led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to review the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, after facing global pressure to allow an international investigation.

The review should be conducted in an open, transparent and inclusive manner at an appropriate time after the pandemic is over, under the leadership of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing.

09:00 GMT  World leaders scrutinised over face masks

US President Donald Trump has not donned one. French President Emmanuel Macron boasted a small French flag on his. Slovakias president made a fashion statement by sporting a fuchsia-coloured one to match her outfit.

As the world starts emerging from coronavirus lockdowns, political leaders are being closely scrutinised over their choice to wear a mask  or not  as many people question seemingly mixed messages about the value of face coverings as infection barriers.

Frances President Emmanuel Macron wears a protective face mask with a blue-white-red coloured ribbon as he gestures while speaking with schoolchildren at an elementary school in Poissy [Ian Langsdon/Reuters]

The decision to wear or forgo a mask in public is based on what message the leader wants to convey, behavioural scientist Jacqueline Gollan of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, told AFP news agency.

They are more likely to wear a mask if the leader believes in promoting public health. They may forgo the mask if the leader believes that they should convey that the risk of transmission is low and things are normalised, she said.

08:45 GMT  Former Greek health minister dies of virus

Former Greek health minister, cardiologist and university professor Dimitris Kremastinos has died of the new coronavirus, Greek officials. He was 78.

Kremastinos, a widely respected doctor who became a household name in Greece as the personal physician of late Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou in the mid-1990s, was admitted to Athenss public Evangelismos hospital on March 26 and was being treated in the intensive care unit.

News of his death was made public by Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias.

08:30 GMT  South Korea tracks new outbreak in nightclubs

South Korean health authorities are investigating a small but growing cluster of coronavirus cases linked to a handful of Seoul nightclubs, at a time when the country is moving to less restrictive social distancing measures.

At least 15 cases have been identified with connections to clubs in Itaewon, a neighbourhood popular with Koreans and foreigners in the capital, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Friday.

These venues have all the dangerous conditions that we were the most concerned about, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said, referring to crowding and ventilation issues.

A list of precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease is seen at an entrance of a club in Seoul [Yonhap via Reuters]

08:00 GMT  Qatars coronavirus rate not high, but realistic

It has been nearly two months since Qatar implemented a series of measures to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

The country has, to date, reported 18,890 cases and 12 deaths.

In our latest episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, Qatars minister of public health, Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, discusses the countrys plans to combat the coronavirus.





07:50 GMT  Japan, US agree to cooperate in COVID-19 fight

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump have agreed to cooperate closely in developing COVID-19 vaccines and drugs, and in their efforts to boost their economies.

The two leaders held telephone talks as they seek to reopen businesses in their respective countries.

It was extremely meaningful to be able to reassure Japan-US cooperation via telephone talks between the two leaders just as the international society is expected to unite and tackle the (pandemic), Japans Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

07:30 GMT  Russia reports over 10,000 cases again

The number of new coronavirus cases in Russia rose by 10,699 over the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide tally to 187,859, the coronavirus crisis response centre said.

It was the sixth consecutive day that cases had risen by more than 10,000, but down on Thursdays record daily rise of 11,231.

It also reported 98 new deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total death toll in Russia to 1,723.

07:10 GMT  Afghan health minister tests positive for COVID-19

Afghanistans Health Minister Ferozuddin Feroz has contracted the COVID-19 disease, as the war-ravaged country sees a surge in cases of the virus, officials confirmed.

Waheedullah Mayar, spokesman for the health ministry, told Anadolu news agency the minister had experienced symptoms of the coronavirus for the past few days. He got a positive test result on Thursday.

The health ministers health is stable and he is under isolation at his residence, he added.

06:50 GMT  Malaysian businesses hit hard by lockdown

Malaysian business has been hammered by a lockdown imposed in mid-March to try contain the new coronavirus pandemic, according to a government survey.

Some 42.5 percent of the 4,094 companies surveyed by the Department of Statistics said they will need at least six months to recover from the restrictions, which until Monday required people to stay at home unless buying essentials or commuting to work.

Malaysias retail sales fell 5.7 percent to a seven-year low in March, the department reported separately, with unemployment climbing 17 percent year-on-year to reach 3.9 percent.





06:20 GMT  Hong Kong gyms, bars and cinemas reopen

Hong Kong started easing major social distancing measures with bars, gyms, beauty parlours and cinemas reopening their doors after the financial hub largely halted local transmissions of the deadly coronavirus.

Queues formed outside gyms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city for employees to check temperatures as people celebrated the return of some normalcy to the city.

06:00 GMT  WWII commemorations downsized in Europe

Large-scale parades to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe have been downsized.

The anniversary of Nazi Germanys 1945 unconditional surrender after a war that cost 50 million lives is a holiday in Berlin this year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier are due to lay wreaths at the countrys main memorial.

A contractor puts fresh flags on the Cenotaph war memorial on Whitehall in central London [Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP]

Ceremonies across France have been drastically scaled down, although President Emmanuel Macron will still be attending an event on the Champs-Elysees.

In the United Kingdom, street parades by veterans have been cancelled.

05:40 GMT  UN chief: Coronavirus has sparked tsunami of hate

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an all-out effort to end the tsunami of hate and xenophobia sparked by the novel coronavirus pandemic, without naming specific countries.

Anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, Guterres said in a statement. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.

According to Guterres, migrants and refugees have been vilified as a source of the virus  and then denied access to medical treatment.

#COVID19 does not care who we are, where we live, or what we believe. Yet the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering. Thats why Im appealing for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally. pic.twitter.com/ojh957xhQq  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 8, 2020

Hello, this is Saba Aziz in Doha, taking over the live updates from my colleague Ted Regencia.

05:01 GMT  Thailand reports eight new coronavirus cases

Thailand on Friday reported eight new coronavirus cases but no deaths, bringing the total to 3,000 cases and 55 deaths since the outbreak started in January.

Of the new cases, three are from the southern province of Yala where authorities are aggressively testing the population due to high infection rates. Five other new cases are migrants who have been detained at an immigration detention centre in southern Songkhla province.

Slowing numbers of new cases have prompted Thailand to cautiously allow some businesses this week to reopen after weeks of semi-lockdown.

People practicing social distancing sit and eat a meal at a market in Bangkok after restrictions were eased this week [Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP]

03:23 GMT  Former Japanese diplomat dies from coronavirus

Former Japanese diplomat Yukio Okamoto, a one-time adviser to prime ministers and expert on ties with the United States, died late last month after contracting the novel coronavirus, his consultancy confirmed on Friday, according to Reuters news agency.

After retiring from the foreign ministry in 1991, Okamoto, 74, served as an adviser to then-prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto on thorny issues related to Okinawa, home to the bulk of US troops in Japan.

He also advised then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi from 2001-2004 and was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Center for International Studies.

This is a shock. And from the coronavirus! said Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on social media.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has extended the countrys state of emergency until the end of May [Eugene Hoshiko/AP]

02:58 GMT  Many states disregarding Trumps guideline on reopening

Many governors across the US are disregarding or creatively interpreting White House guidelines for safely easing restrictions and letting businesses reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, an Associated Press analysis found.

The AP determined that 17 states did not meet a key benchmark set by the White House for loosening up  a 14-day downward trajectory in new cases or positive test rates. And yet many of those have begun to reopen or are about to do so, including Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah.

Asked Thursday about states reopening without meeting the benchmarks, President Donald Trump said: The governors have great power as to that, given by us. We want them to do that. We rely on them. We trust them. And hopefully they are making the right decisions.

02:18 GMT  Pandemic sets Japan on course for deep recession

Japans household spending plunged in March and service-sector activity shrank at a record pace in April, reinforcing expectations that the coronavirus pandemic is tipping the worlds third-largest economy into deep recession, Reuters news agency reported.

The weak readings make it a near certainty the economy suffered a second straight quarter of contraction in January-March, the technical definition of a recession, and was on track for a deeper decline in the current quarter as the health crisis kept shoppers home and businesses closed.

01:40 GMT  Argentinas Fernandez rises in polls over handling of COVID-19 crisis

Argentine President Alberto Fernandez has received a 68.5 percent approval rating in April over his handling of the countrys response to the spread of COVID-19, buttressing his political clout as he faces off against creditors with a major debt revamp.

Argentina is in a nationwide lockdown, which has been extended until at least May 10, helping slow the spread of new confirmed COVID-19 cases, which total just over 5,000 with 270 deaths. That is far less than in nearby Chile, Peru or Brazil.

A man disinfects a street in the Villa 31 neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina on Wednesday [Natacha Pisarenko/AP]

01:08 GMT  Eyes an important entry point of coronavirus infection  Hong Kong study

The eyes could be an important route for the coronavirus infection to enter the human body, according to researchers from Hong Kong.

The South China Morning post also quoted University of Hong Kong scientists as saying that the virus is 100 times more infectious through the eyes and airways than SARS.

00:40 GMT  Australia prepares to ease coronavirus restrictions in four-week stages

Australia will ease social distancing restrictions in four-week increments, two sources told Reuters, as the countrys national cabinet meets on Friday to decide which curbs to remove first amid dwindling numbers of coronavirus cases.

With fewer than 20 new infections each day, Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday began talks with state and territory leaders to decide which restrictions will be eased.

The easing will carried out in four-week increment to ensure measures do not lead to a resurgence in infections, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters.

00:01 GMT  In clash with riot police, Hondurans block burial of coronavirus victim

Residents of an impoverished part of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, have clashed with riot police after blocking the burial of a person suspected of having died from the novel coronavirus, according to a Reuters news agency witness.

Riot police fired tear gas when the residents armed with rocks burned tires and blocked a road leading to the Amor Enterno Cemetery with stones and construction material in the La Era neighbourhood, the witness said.

The Central American country has so far reported 1,461 coronavirus cases, many of them in the capital, and 99 deaths. Residents said their neighbourhood lacked adequate sanitation for such burials.

____________________________________________________________________

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Ted Regencia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

For key developments from yesterday, May 7, go here.
The Federal Court has given Victoria the green light to trap and cull brumbies in the high country, where scientists say they are trampling the habitat of critically endangered species in the wake of the summer bushfires.

The landmark ruling has implications for both Victoria and NSW, where the effect of the catastrophic bushfires on unique alpine ecosystems has placed pressure on state governments to tackle the soaring numbers of feral horses.

The Australian Brumby Alliance took Parks Victoria to court last year to prevent it trapping, removing or "otherwise interfering" with brumbies from the Bogong High Plains and Alpine National Park, arguing feral horses were part of the cultural heritage of the Australian alps, and their removal should be referred to the federal Environment Minister.

But in a judgment delivered on Friday morning, Justice Michael O'Bryan ruled he was not satisfied that prohibiting the removal of brumbies was appropriate, and their removal would not have a significant impact on the national heritage values of the Australian alps. He also ordered the association to pay Parks Victoria's legal costs.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister



Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday condoled the death of 14 migrant workers from the state in a train accident in Maharashtra and announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

At least 14 migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, who were sleeping on rail tracks, were mowed down by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra in the early hours of Friday.

Two other labourers were injured in the accident.

"I have spoken to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and demanded a probe into the accident besides aid to their families," Chouhan said and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased labourers.

A team of officials will be dispatched to Aurangabad to take care of the injured migrants and make necessary arrangements for their treatment, he said.

"I am also in touch with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to get updates about the treatment and other arrangement being made for them," he said.

The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh. They slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion, an official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
FLINT, MI -- The Michigan Department of Transportation will begin $1.3 million in upgrades to several local streets surrounding elementary schools in the city of Flint Monday, May 18.

Work includes hot-mix asphalt paving of a non-motorized path, sidewalk and ramp improvements and lighting and sign upgrades surrounding Brownell and Holmes STEM Academy, Doyle Ryder Elementary, Eagles Nest Academy, Eisenhower Elementary, Freeman Elementary, Neithercut Elementary and Pierce Elementary, according to an MDOT news release.

The work is part of the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, which aims to improve safety and encourage physical activity for students walking and biking to school. SRTS is funded by the Federal Highway Administration.

Work will require intermittent single-lane closures on Saginaw Street, Dukette Boulevard, Ogema Avenue, Crestbrook Lane, Vernon Drive, Pershing Street, Becker Street, Cumings Avenue, Canterbury Lane, Pierson Road, Cloverlawn Drive, Basil Lane, West Home Avenue, Oxley Drive and Bellcreek Drive.

All work is weather dependent.

Read more on MLive:

Flint schools attorney recommends the board rescind often superfluous policy guide

3 Flint schools principals contracts not renewed by board, citing performance

Flint students dress up like favorite historic figures to celebrate Black History Month

Flint schools objects to special education funding formula

Meeting postponed as Flint school board seeks more options to reduce deficit

North side residents speak out as Flint schools consider consolidation options

The cavalry isnt coming and Flint schools must make tough decisions, district leader says
The Government is open to a legal challenge on the basis of the unfairness of its Covid-19 welfare payments and will likely have to raise the standard weekly unemployment payment when it starts reducing the pandemic payments in the coming months, a leading adviser to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, or Ictu, has said.

The number of people who have lost their jobs or forced to tap some type of Covid-19 payment has raced to 1.24 million and the Government has talked about tapering, which means reducing, the payments and to cut the 1.5bn minimum monthly cost of the two main payments, as parts of the economy start up again in the coming months.
Slate is making its essential coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump expressed support for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells proposal to include immunity from liability for companies that reopen in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in future coronavirus response legislation. I think you have to have something having to do with liability for COVID, Trump told reporters. Because you cant have a restaurant  and somebody leaves, and they say, Oh, Im going to sue them, because they caught the plague. And now, whether he was guilty or not, the legal fees will drive him out of business. You cant do that.

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Unsurprisingly, Trumps understanding and description of current liability law is facile and wrong. While businesses should be worried about liability issues around their decisions to open to some degree, the risk is nothing like what the president describes.

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First, theres already COVID-19-related immunity for those who provide countermeasures for combating the disease. The protection covers even routine errors that would otherwise be clear cases for liabilitysuch as a claim against a doctor for administering the wrong dosage of an anti-viral drug. Businesses worried about liability to employees and customers might be reluctant to reopen without the promise of similar protection, but current liability law is not going to pose burdensome difficulties on businesses that take reasonable action to keep their customers safe; such relief is not necessary.

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As a general matter, those who hold businesses or other spaces open to the publicranging from small coffee shops, to big-box retailers, to operators of large stadiums, to educational institutions and places of worshiphave a duty to those on the premises to exercise reasonable care for their safety. While this responsibility often translates into liability for mundane errors such as slippery floors or other dangerous conditions on the premises, in the current climate the duty would also apply to the proprietor of, say, a bowling alley to make sure that the balls are cleaned before each new customer picks them up. But once we get beyond easy examples, the issue of whats reasonable quickly gets sticky.

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State and local directives can provide a strong indication of reasonableness both for businesses and courts, but they wont answer every tough question. (Were there a properly functioning federal government, guidance would come from the CDC. But thats not the world we are in.) One thorny problem is what to do when state and local concerns dont sync up. Consider, Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp allowed certain businesses to reopen recently, even in the face of a rising number of cases in certain cities. Atlantas mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, contradicted the state mandate, urging her citys residents to Stay Home. Nothing has changed. These mixed signals produced confused responses, with some businesses opening and following social distancing guidelines and others remaining shuttered. Those Georgia businesses that choose to open might find themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits by those who contract COVID-19; theyll use the contrary statements of local officials about the dangers of reopening to bolster their arguments.

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Even when there are clear and consistent guidelines and rules, though, the liability question will be difficult to answer. Following the guidelines will provide evidence of reasonableness but wont necessarily get business owners off the hook. Just as obeying the speed limit doesnt immunize drivers from liability for driving at an inappropriate speed for certain weather conditions, so too might a business be found responsible for even an authorized reopening. What if the area is seeing a dramatic resurgence in cases? Then the business might not be off the hook even if following the directive, because perhaps other, more cautious business owners in the area didnt reopen (again, the Georgia example).

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A business that might be considered to have properly reopened can still find itself liable to customers for failure at the level of implementation of whatever safety protocols are required. What happens if the business cantor doesntfollow social distancing rules, which are almost impossible to fully implement anyway? Or if the business doesnt require masks, or allows customers to wear them improperly? And what if a reasonable business would do more, such as taking the temperature of each customer as they enter the business? (Even though thats not being widely done in the United States right now, its an easy precaution to takeand can at least bring down the rate of transmission.)

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Its much less likely that employers will be liable to their employees for compelling them to return to work because of the workers compensation systemwhich was explicitly designed as a tort-replacement system for the workplace. Employees are generally restricted to seeking the remedies provided under that system for job-related injuries.

But will an employee even be able to prove that they contracted COVID-19 on the job? That might be an easy showing to make for those in meatpacking plants, where the virus is rampant, but could otherwise be difficult. Given the prevalence of the virus in many communities, the employer can push back against the allegation that the illness-causing exposure happened on the job.

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Indeed, that same problem of demonstrating causation can be expected to plague many of the claims that infected customers, or survivors, might try to bring against their local nail salon, restaurant, or hatchet-throwing site. Showing that clusters of people who visited a particular business subsequently were sickened by COVID-19 will be helpful to plaintiffs in those cases, but more isolated instances will pose a serious hurdle. The litigant will try to prove that the establishment didnt act reasonablythe worse the failure to take reasonable precautions, the stronger their caseand that their transmission cant be traced to any other sources. Many of these cases will be uphill climbs.

One set of potential defendants that likely need not worry are local and state governments and the officials in charge of them. Immunity will in most cases protect them from liability, unless perhaps they are found to be reckless, or worse, under their state laws. So a subway rider who contracts COVID-19 during their morning commute is likely without remedy if the city fails to properly sanitize the cars.

In the end, liability is not likely to present a huge problem for businessesas long as they make some reasonable effort to keep their places as safe as possible under these very difficult circumstances. Its certainly not necessary to hold up desperately needed aid over this issue.
A whistleblower in a HSE nursing home where 24 patients have died from Covid-19 has alleged strong enough efforts were not made to prevent fatalities.

The staff member, who works in St Mary's nursing home in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, has claimed concerns about the welfare of residents were not listened to.

She said she first highlighted concerns with senior management in early March.

In relation to personal protective equipment (PPE), she alleges there was "stringent rationing", and staff became infected.

She claims that on one occasion, she was told not to wear a mask with coughing patients, and advised to simply stand back.

A 35-page dossier containing serious allegations was sent to Health Minister Simon Harris and the CEO of the HSE, Paul Reid, on Wednesday.

Opposition politicians have called for the allegations to be investigated as a matter of urgency.

Sinn Fein health spokesperson Louise O'Reilly said: "There needs to be a very quick investigation into this because if there are lessons to be learned we have to learn them quickly and use this to inform the management of the virus in nursing homes."

In an interview with the Irish Independent, the staff member said she made the protected disclosure so that the relatives of those who had died would "know the truth about what happened in St Mary's.

"I'm doing this for the residents," she said.

The home is run by the Health Service Executive, has 150 beds and a separate 48-bed step-down hospital.

St Mary's is one of the worst-hit nursing homes in the country with 24 confirmed coronavirus deaths.

The whistleblower has alleged there was a failure to identify, isolate and test residents in a timely and appropriate manner during the outbreak.

She also claims that there was a failure to isolate symptomatic patients and that suspect cases were transferred on to clean wards.

The HSE said that while unable to comment on the particulars of the protected disclosure, testing at St Mary's was arranged in line with National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) guidelines.

The whistleblower also claims that, on one occasion, staff were left without any PPE and waited for four hours for it to arrive.

She said that she made persistent calls for visitor restrictions in early March and that a decision to permit "non-essential" visits from March 10 to 17 was "horrific".

"I was working on St Patrick's Day and, to be honest, I was tearing my hair out," she said.

NPHET did not recommend a full restriction on visitors before then, a decision that has been the subject of much criticism.

The staff member sent an email to management expressing her disappointment.

"I said I just felt more could and should have been done to protect our most vulnerable and close our doors," she said.

"I thought more could have been done to reassure residents' families and staff that all measures were being taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

"I asked was a lockdown on the cards. If we had a flu bug, the wards were closed immediately. That's basic, standard precautions.

"For whatever reason, that didn't happen with this pandemic.

"There was still a free movement of staff and residents between wards and buildings."

After guidelines were issued regarding social distancing, she claims residents were still being allowed to "carry on as normal".

The whistleblower, who contracted Covid-19 herself, said she witnessed "symptomatic patients, who have not yet been tested, being moved to different wards".

She added: "I sent an email raising concerns about patient transfers being made between affected and unaffected wards and between shared bedrooms prior to swabbing or test results.

"This was happening from around March 25."

She also claimed "we had a patient who came from another hospital, with a cough, into a four-bed room".

She added: "I raised concerns on multiple occasions.

"The whole thing has been very stressful, but I am relieved that the protected disclosure has been made and all matters can now be investigated."

In a statement, the HSE said: "We understand a protected disclosure was delivered to the CEO of the HSE and minister for health yesterday, 6 May 2020."

The statement went on to say that the HSE could not comment on the protected disclosure.

The HSE added: "This is an incredibly difficult time for everyone working in St Mary's Hospital, and we acknowledge that each member of our team is continuing to work with kindness and care, in the most difficult of circumstances, and continuing to prioritise the care of residents."
President Donald Trump reacted to news of the Department of Justice dropping charges against Michael Flynn by calling Flynn a hero and the FBI scum  labels MSNBCs Joe Scarborough said marked a low point in American political culture.

Dont inject the bleach. Dont stick the lights inside your body. Dont lie to the FBI. Yet in some sick, twisted way this morning, Willie, we play clips of the United States calling the FBI, quote, scum,' the Morning Joe host said.

The former GOP congressman went on, Let me say that again: The President of the United States, calling the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation scum for simply doing their job and accusing them of, quote, treason for simply doing their job. Talk about a low point in American political culture.

Also Read: 'Morning Joe' Mocks Trump for Saying He Had 'A Lot of Things Going On' Before Pandemic (Video)

Scarborough reacted not only to the Presidents new comments on Flynn  whom Trump called an innocent man  but his previous ones as well. A graphic showed a 2017 tweet from Trump that outlined his thinking around the time he fired Flynn: I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

Flynn, the former national security adviser in the early days of the Trump White House, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to charges that he lied to the FBI regarding two conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year.

Donald Trump lives by one set of rules and you have to live by another set of rules, scoffed Scarborough.

Read original story Joe Scarborough: Trump Calling FBI Scum is Low Point in US Politics (Video) At TheWrap
Jayanthi Pawar By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: In a shocking incident, the 47-year-old general manager and pharmacist of a Chennai-based herbal products firm died on Thursday minutes after consuming a drug he developed as a cure for COVID-19.

The deceased, Sivanesan, was the general manager of Sujatha Bio-Tech which is well known for products like Nivaran 90, Velvette shampoo and Memory Plus.

The firm has a factory in Uttarakhand where Sivanesan was working for more than 20 years and later moved to Chennai and worked for the same firm which is situated at Boopathy Nagar, Kodambakkam, said a police officer.

As the incident happened at the residence of Dr Raj Kumar, the owner of the firm, police are investigating if the doctor was also involved in preparing the drug along with the pharmacist.

Sivanesan was staying with his family in his native Perundurai in Erode district. A month ago during the lockdown, he sought permission and came to Chennai and stayed with Dr Raj Kumar at his house in Teynampet. The duo were keen on finding a cure for COVID and began preparing a drug. The firm only deals with natural and ayurveda products. This was the first time Sivanesan was trying a new formula with chemicals used in general medicine. Having worked in the field for over 27 years, he was confident in finding a cure. A few staff were assigned to work from Dr Raj Kumars house. We would reach the house in the morning and by evening we would leave, said a staffer who works in the firm.

On Thursday, Sivanesan first gave the drug which is a solution containing sodium nitrate to Dr Raj Kumar to test. As the doctor consumed only a small portion of the drug, he first fell unconscious and within ten minutes he was fine and conscious. Hoping that everything was fine, Sivanesan also consumed the solution and fell unconscious. We immediately rushed him to the hospital which is situated only 100 metres away. The doctors referred us to another private hospital. However, Sivanesan died on the way to the hospital, added the staffer.

The doctors declared him as brought dead. The Teynampet police registered a case and further investigations are on. "Only after the post mortem, we will know the exact cause of death and what he consumed," said the police officer.

Sivanesan is survived by his wife and two children.

WATCH: How Chennai's Koyambedu market emerged as a COVID-19 hotspot
The true number of people who have died during the coronavirus pandemic in America could be double the official figure, an adviser to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has warned, as evidence emerges that large numbers of seriously ill people have failed to seek medical attention for life-threatening conditions because of the contagion.

The current total of Covid-19 deaths in the US stands at 75,000, with more than 1.2 million infections, according to tracking carried out by organisations such as Johns Hopkins University. That figure itself is likely an undercount, given the delay and difficulty in obtaining data.

But health experts say such counts do not show the full devastation of the virus because they do not include deaths from conditions such as heart failure, strokes or cancer of people who failed to get treatment, either because they were too scared to go to hospital, or else their appointment was cancelled as health departments were obliged to halt non-urgent procedures.

While Donald Trump has yet to comment directly on such deaths, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany alluded to them this week when speaking to reporters. Urging Americans who were ill to visit their doctor, she added: Ive been disturbed to read many quotes from doctors, [and] stories of people who are staying home with chest pain and dont go to the hospital when they could be on the verge of having a heart attack; who are missing on important appointments like mammograms, screenings like colonoscopies.

Hospitals across the country have warned they are seeing fewer patients than they normally do in the emergency room, or else attending clinics, the impact of officials warning people to remain at home.

Mark Hayward, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who advises the CDC on its mortality statistics, said it was very difficult to assess what he termed the full mortality burden of the disease.

One reason was for the time-lag in cases being reported, and how information about the disease included in coroners reports was not always complete. Factors such as a person dying because they were too afraid to go hospital would likely not be included.

I think the undercount is enormous. The overall burden of mortality from Covid, which covers all the causes that you talked about, could be enormously higher, he said.

He suggested that figure could be double the current death toll of 75,000. The true number of deaths that were looking at is probably at least one per cent of the current cases, he said. Which is about 1.2 million people. Right now we have about 75,000 deaths. I think probably were going to have closer to double that.

Cassie Sauer, CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA), said its members were reporting abnormally low volumes of patients seeking routine medical care, while those that are arriving have been more severely ill.

People are waiting to seek medical attention  and endangering themselves as a result, she said in a statement. Life is on pause right now, but your health care needs are not, Do not delay needed care  you could get worse.

The clearest evidence yet that people with serious conditions are staying away from hospitals has emerged in the world of cardiology. Last month, ProPublica reported several cities, including Boston and Detroit, had seen a spike in cases of people dying at home from heart attacks. In New York there had been a ninefold increase of people dying at home in this manner.

New figures, taken from nine hospitals located across the country, has suggested an almost 40 per cent drop in reported heart attacks. Dr Santiago Garcia, who reported the findings in the Journals of the American College of Cardiology, said he did not believe fewer people were suffering heart problems. Rather, those people were staying away from hospitals, and some were dying or else suffering damage to their heart.

The message that came out to public initially was Dont go to the hospitals  thats where the Covid patients go, Dr Garcia told The Independent, speaking from the Minneapolis Heart Institute.

So people are having a hard time reaching out to their physicians. The reasons are not clearly understood. But what it is clear is that patients are not coming to the hospital for cardiovascular emergencies.

People suffering from cancer have also been missing out. In Minneapolis, Alliana Health, which operates 13 hospitals and more than 90 clinics throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin, was obliged to postpone 4,000 surgeries last month, some of them for cancer patients.

Yet, the problem is national. A survey by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network discovered half of all cancer patients who had recently undergone treatment found the virus had impacted their care. Of those, 25 per cent reported a delay.

The health effects of this pandemic stretch well beyond those diagnosed and suffering from Covid-19, and are having an acute and adverse impact on cancer patients, many of whom cant afford treatment delays, said the networks president, Lisa Lacasse.

The scale of the problem reaches beyond these diseases, and beyond actual deaths. Dr Garcia of the Minneapolis Heart Institute said one of his colleagues reported a patient losing their eyesight after failing to get to their macular degeneration test, which checks the health of the retina.

This is not just about mortality, but morbidity, he said. Its about quality of life.

As some states in the US prepare to lift restrictions to try and kickstart the economy, there appears to be a growing awareness that the figure of 75,000 deaths does not tell the full story.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, which has been the hardest hit, said this week at one of his daily briefings: I think this is all going to change ... I think its going to be worse when the final numbers are tallied.

 Coronavirus in numbers

Theo Vos, professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington  the modelling system frequently mentioned by the White House  has been studying excess deaths from Wuhan, China. He has done this by comparing data sets taken before and after the coronavirus struck late last year, trigging the pandemic.

Mr Vos said the data suggested Wuhan had also seen an increase in the number of heart attacks following the Covid attack. Asked if the team believed it was because people were stating away from hospitals, he said: We can only speculate. But given that it is particularly for things that can cause immediate death, and that with appropriate care you can reduce that risk  like heart attacks and stroke  that is a plausible explanation, we think.

Mr Vos was cautious about comparing what had happened in Wuhan to the US, but said it was likely the nation would record a noticeable increase in deaths other than Covid at least for some, some time period.

Esther Choo, an emergency physician and associate professor at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, said she too had detected fewer patients visiting but that it was difficult to quantify. A hospital cannot count what doesnt come in, she said.

Its an impossible number to get in some ways, she said, referring to a total death toll. Well have an estimate, at some point retrospectively, because well look at death rates from previous times, well subtract out clearly Covid-related deaths.

She added: Some things will be very hard to trace. If you present late for your cancer biopsy, and so youre diagnosed two or three or four months later than you otherwise would have. And that impacts your survivability in a way that plays out over many years. Well never capture that probably. I mean, how do you capture something thats subtle like that?
Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Thursday issued the standard operating procedure (SOP) to deploy 10,000 state transport buses to ferry stranded people to their home districts in the state, while amending an earlier order and doing away with the need to attach a medical certificate to the registration form to facilitate their return journey.

State transport minister Anil Parab held talks with chief minister Uddhav Thackeray during a strategy meeting held on Thursday to discuss the measures that need to be taken to aggressively contain the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak in the state.

Weve made arrangements for 10,000 state-run buses to ferry these stranded people in a group of 22-24 people. Weve asked divisional officers to set up a control room to keep the stranded people informed about the bus service, Parab said.

On Thursday, Maharashtra recorded the second-highest spike in Covid-19 positive cases on a single day, as it reported 1,216 new cases. The maximum number of Covid-19 related deaths on a single day in the state was also reported on Thursday at 43, taking the overall toll to 694.

Maharashtra has recorded over 1,000 cases in the last two days, raising concerns over the spread of the pandemic.

In Mumbai, the epicentre of the outbreak in the state, 680 new Covid-19 positive cases were detected on Thursday, as the total count rose to 11,394.

State health minister Rajesh Tope said that the government has directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities to start aggressive institutional quarantine to curb the spread of Covid-19 cases, which has also been suggested by a visiting Central team.

He, however, admitted that social distancing norms cannot always be ensured for residents, who live cheek-by-jowl in cramped tenements such as in the congested Dharavi slums, where institutional quarantine may work as the best precautionary measure.

CM Thackeray has hinted at extending the ongoing lockdown restrictions till May 31.

On Thursday, the state government amended an earlier order and issued a clarification that there is no need to attach a medical certificate to the registration form to facilitate the journey for stranded people back to their respective districts.

The decision was taken after serpentine queues were seen outside private practitioners chambers and following allegations that some doctors were overcharging the stranded for the medical certificate.

The BMC authorities have reserved 3,343 rooms in 88 city hotels to quarantine the 1,900 stranded Indian nationals, who started flying into the city from Thursday evening by special flights from abroad.

The incoming Indian nationals are being allowed to move into the hotels for a compulsory 14-day quarantine after they undergo screening by a team of BMC doctors.

The state health department has conducted 2,02,105 tests at various public and private facilities across Maharashtra. So far, 1,83,880 people have tested negative.

Presently, Maharashtra has 1,087 active containment zones. Around 12,021 survey teams, comprising doctors and paramedical staff, have screened over 51.76 lakh people in the state for SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, the health department officials said.
New Delhi, May 8 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that decision to categorise zones on the basis of the COVID-19 situation should be left to the states and districts and should not be made in a centralised manner .

While addressing his second press conference during the lockdown period, he said that the best people to decide on the issue were the states themselves as they know the supply chains better. "Today the situation is not normal. There is not going to be a general solution in this. If we decentralise and take this fight to the district level, a solution can be found. If we keep this fight till the PMO, then there is a possibility of losing." "I request the government that they view state governments and the district magistrates as partners and that they do not centralise the decision making.

"The Prime Minister has his own style, but in my view, in such a situation a strong Prime Minister along with a lot of strong Chief Ministers and a lot of strong collectors are needed. I want us to tackle the disease at the local level itself.

"I want a strong Indian leader to stand in front of this disease - be it a collector or a farmer. The zones are being decided at the national level while the CMs say that it should be decided at the State level," said Rahul.

While asserting that this is not the time to crticise the government, he said that people should think of the country first and not think in partisan terms like one is belonging to the RSS, BJP or the Congress.

Everyone has a responsibility. Everyone should forget which party they belong to, the only thing to be remembered is that we are all Indians and together we have to end the fear & the economy has to be brought back on track "We have been in lockdown for 45 days now and we are beginning to run into a little bit of a problem," said Rahul, adding that the MSME should be given support.

"We simply cannot continue without providing support to the people who are suffering as a result of this lockdown," he added.

He said that the government should take the idea of NYAY and start putting money directly into the hands of 50 per cent of India's poor households. It's not going to cost too much. Rs 65,000 crores is what it is going to cost."
The NHS will have answers about the effectiveness of promising coronavirus drugs in June, health bosses say.

Stephen Powis, NHS Englands national medical director, claimed the first results of clinical trials into the medicines were expected in five to seven weeks.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson looks set to announce he will keep Britain under strict lockdown until June during his address to the nation on Sunday.

Scientists have warned of an inevitable second wave if the UK's draconian measures are eased without an effective treatment or vaccine in place.

In a letter sent to GPs, public health directors and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), Mr Powis encouraged clinicians to continue to recruit COVID-19 patients to speed up the trials.

A Harvard review of studies of hydroxychloroquine that generated excitement over the drug's potential for treating coronavirus found issues with each of the 10 trials - and its authors warn malaria treatment could suppress the immune system's ability to fight infection (file)

More than 9,000 virus sufferers are taking part in the Recovery trials, testing five drugs earmarked as potential therapies on patients in NHS hospitals around the country.

Among the medicines being trialled is the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine and HIV drug lopinavir-ritonavir.

Mr Powis said if recruitment for the trial remains high this will allow us to move successful drugs into routine care.

Lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed under the brand names Kaletra and Aluvia, is an anti-HIV medicine

The letter, seen by the Health Service Journal, said: As new admissions fall due to the success of social/physical distancing measures it will become even more important that a high proportion of patients with COVID-19 are enrolled on to trials if we are to improve future treatment

If we can keep recruitment for Recovery high, above 1,000 patients per week, we could have answers on some treatments in five to seven weeks. This will allow us to move successful drugs into routine care.

The Recovery trials are also investigating the effectiveness of low-dose dexamethasone, a type of steroid which reduces inflammation, the antibiotic azithromycin and anti-inflammatory injection tocilizumab.

It comes after a British pharmaceutical manufacturer said it will start making the experimental coronavirus drug hydroxychloroquine in the UK amid fears supplies will run out during the pandemic.

Accord Healthcare announced it was importing 50 tonnes of raw chemical materials to its factory in Durham.

The London-based firm said the first order of ingredients will be able to produce 60million tablets, which it claims is enough for 2million patients.

But bosses plan to ramp up production to an average of 50million pills per month by October 2020.

The move comes as India, the world's biggest manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine, struggles to cope with the surge in demand for the drug heralded as a potential virus cure.

Doctors are still trialling which dose of the medication is best for COVID-19 sufferers  or if it is even beneficial at all.

The drug, touted as a 'game-changer' by US President Donald Trump, is being studied in three major UK trials on patients with mild, severe and life-threatening illness.

Laboratory studies indicated the antiviral could clear coronavirus and prevent it from multiplying in human cells.

But preliminary results from clinical trials in the US found the drug has thus far failed to improve survival odds.

The decision to produce the drug in the UK comes as factories in India and China  which supply more than 70 per cent of the world's generic medications  struggle to cope with demand.

Supply chains have also been destabilised after economies around the world shut down to deal with the pandemic.

British pharmacists and hospitals have complained of being short of other drugs, including sedatives used for patients on ventilators

James Burt, executive vice president of Accord Healthcare, said that if trials around the use of hydroxychloroquine prove successful, 'there is likely to be a significant worldwide shortfall in the API'.

Warwick Smith, director general of the British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA), told The Pharmaceutical Journal that the Association 'welcome the increased capacity and certainty this specific deal will deliver'.

'Currently, around a quarter of all generic prescription medicines dispensed in the UK are manufactured here.

'While most manufacturers will have significant supplies of API in stock  often six months or more  much of this is sourced from Europe, or further afield in China or India.

'The current crisis has underlined the benefits, from a medicines resilience perspective, of more robust supply chains and more ingredients readily available.'
Retailers, manufacturers, pet grooming, florists, offices and some parks can reopen in Solano County starting Friday, Solano County health officials announced Thursday night.

Health officials amended the countys shelter-at-home order to widen the scope of permitted businesses and activities. The county also issued a roadmap to reopening that explains what the next months could look like.

The county said low-risk activities and businesses can reopen in in phases similar to Gov. Gavin Newsoms plan, which allows retailers to open for curbside pickup on Friday, but goes further in scope in its initial step.

We were careful to adhere to the States Phase 2 considerations, said Dr. Bela Matyas, public health officer. However, the Governors announcement today limiting reopening to only some of the States Phase 2 businesses means that a somewhat wider scope of activities will resume in Solano.

Low-risk businesses must develop and post a social distancing protocol to alert staff and customers how to mitigate spread of the coronavirus. They must implement strong sanitation protocols, put up barriers or guards where necessary and reduce contact between people.

The new shelter-at-home order still prohibits public or private gatherings of any number of people  except for among household members or at businesses deemed essential that practice social distancing and public health protocols.

The county Board of Supervisors on May 12 will discuss a strategy for reopening medium-risk activities and businesses, such as dine-in restaurants, bars and hair and nail salons. The county will develop criteria these places must meet before they can open.

The last category to reopen are high-risk activities like amusement parks, festivals and playgrounds, which will remain closed for the time being, officials said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The county said it is important for high-risk people who are elderly or have chronic illnesses to continue to self-isolate at home, avoid crowds and public transit, and practice good hygiene and cleaning.

Six other Bay Area counties have stricter shelter-in-place orders in place through May, and will not allow more businesses to open Friday.

Anna Bauman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: anna.bauman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @abauman2
Photo

Chandigarh: In a major breakthrough, the Punjab Police has arrested most wanted gangster Baljinder Singh @ Billa, having alleged links with the now reportedly deceased Pakistan-based KLF chief Harmeet Singh Happy, as well as Germany-based Bagga of KZF.

Punjab Police

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Another notorious gangster Sukhjinder and five other members of the Billa gang, have also been arrested, alongwith a large consignment of highly sophisticated weapons smuggled in from Pakistan, as well as drug money, reportedly smuggled from across border at different times through several modes, including drones.

According to DGP Punjab Dinkar Gupta, the arrests were made in a joint operation by the OCCU team from Chandigarh, Counter Intelligence Jalandhar Unit and Kapurthala Police yesterday, who identified the arrested as Baljinder Singh @ Billa Mandiala (r/o Mandiala, Gurdaspur), Sukhjinder Singh (r/o village Kamoke Beas, Amritsar), besides Kapurthala-based Mohit Sharma, Lovepreet Singh, Mangal Singh and Maninderjeet Singh @ Happy, in addition to Lovepreet Singh @ Lovely (r/o Amarkot, Valtoha Tarn Taran).

Baljinder Singh Billa Mandiala was wanted in more than 18 criminal cases including, murder, attempt to murder and smuggling of weapons/drugs etc.

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All the arrested accused have been kept separately as they are being tested for COVID-19 by a special team of doctors.

Punjab DGP Dinkar GuptaPolice teams have recovered highly sophisticated weapons, smuggled in from Pakistan, from these accused. The recoveries include two 30 bore Drum Machine Guns, three Pistols (Marked SIG Sauer made in Germany), two Glock Pistols (made in Austria), two 30 bore Pistols, one 32 bore Pistol, one .315 bore Rifle, 341 live Cartridges and two drum magazines, 14 Pistol magazines alongwith drug-money of three lacs eight hundred eighteen rupees and one hundred Australian dollars, said Gupta.

Terming it as one of the biggest caches of highly sophisticated weapons from a criminal gang, Gupta said the Sig Suaer Pistols are in fact being used by members of US Secret Service, which protects the highest elected leaders of the United States, especially the President of the United States.

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The DGP said that preliminary investigations carried out so far, most of the weapons recovered from Billa Mandiala are learnt also came across the Indo-Pak border in different consignments. Police is also investigating the role of militants in the supply chain of illegal weapons.

Further, the spokesperson disclosed that Toyota Fortuner, Etios Lava and Alto cars were also seized from the criminals, along with some fake documents.

ArrestThe police has also learnt that a part of consignment, consisting of AK-74 rifles, which was pushed into the Mamdot area of Ferozepur sector from across the border on September 24, 2019 by STF Punjab, was also meant for the Billa Mandiala criminal gang.

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Giving details of the arrests, the DGP said Gurmeet Chohan, AIG OCCU, had received reliable inputs that the most wanted gangster Billa Mandiala, alongwith his associates, was taking shelter in Kapurthala area, with a large consignment of illegal arms, which were to be used in the commission of different types of terror and criminal acts.

DSP OCCU Bikram Brar was immediately tasked on the mission, with the support of AIG Counter Intelligence Jalandhar, Harkamalpreet Singh Khakh and SSP Kapurthala Satinder Singh.

Police teams laid siege around the Dadwindi and Mothanwala area of Sultanpur Lodhi Police station and made the arrests. A case has been registered against all the six under Sections 384,465,467,468,471,473, 489 IPC, 13, 18 UAPA, 25 Arms Act at Police Station Sultanpur Lodhi Kapurthala.

During preliminary investigations, Baljinder Singh Billa Mandiala has revealed that he was in contact with various Pakistan-based weapons and drugs smugglers, including Mirza and Ahmdeen, and had already received many consignments of weapons and drugs from them, mostely in the Ferozepur area.

Mirza was allegedly working as courier on Indo-Pak border for operatives of Khalistan Libration Force based in Pakistan and India in the recent past, and had successfully pushed many weapon consignments into the Indian territory.

Billa Mandiala also revealed that he was in close contact with gangster Gurpreet Singh Sekhon, who is currently lodged in Patiala Jail, and is suspected to be in touch with Germany and Pakistan based militant outfits. Gurpreet Sekhon is a A category gangster who had earlier been in touch with KLF chief Harminder Singh Mintu, who died a few years ago.
Raghuram Rajan, former RBI governor and now a professor of finance at Chicago Booth School, in a note on LinkedIn, lucidly explains what monetisation of deficit is all about.

A lot of experts have been asking the Reserve Bank of India to print notes and directly give them to the government to meet its fiscal deficit. They advise so because banks have been risk-averse to buying bonds since they fear the prices may fall and they will have to provide for mark-to-market risk. On the other hand, other experts worry that the RBI should never go back to the bad habit of the 80s and 90s when the central bank funded the government directly. They worry this will make for a spendthrift government, high inflation, possible rating downgrades, a flight of foreign investment and a run on the rupee.

Raghuram Rajan, former RBI governor and now a professor of finance at Chicago Booth School, in a note on LinkedIn, lucidly explains what monetisation of deficit is all about. He concludes, "The so called monetization is neither a game changer in stressed times nor a catastrophe. It helps a little at the margin, but does not solve the governments fiscal problems nor does it lead to runaway inflation. If used in the wrong way, it could however be problematic.

But more useful than his verdict, is his explainer. He divides periods into normal and abnormal times. In normal times, say the government wants Rs 1 lakh crore. It would raise money by selling bonds to banks. It will then use the money to pay say salaries or government contractors. This money will once again come back to the banking system. So no mischief.

In abnormal times, because banks are risk averse and demand high yields to buy government bonds, RBI buys say Rs 1 lakh crore of bonds directly from the govt. The money will be spent by the government as salaries or payments to companies. These come back as deposits to banks. But because banks are risk averse, this money will remain as deposits, which the banks may lend to RBI at 3.75% in the reverse repo. Because RBI is paying 3.75% every day in reverse repo, its dividend to the government will fall. But the excess government expense wont necessarily be a catastrophe.

But if times were normal, this money put by the government in the salary accounts of employees or companies would be used up by banks to lending more and thus also expanding the deposits their customers hold with them. All this new lending would be expansionary and fuel inflation. This is why the RBI is reluctant to accommodate the government in normal times, explains Rajan.

So what are the implications of direct government financing of RBI? We reproduce in full Rajans points:

1) Direct RBI financing is sometimes loosely termed money printing and thought to be free. This is misleading. As we have seen, the government finances itself from the RBI, and the RBI finances itself from the banks at the reverse repo rate of 3.75%.

2) Instead of the banks holding government bonds paying 6% or so, they hold claims against the RBI paying 3.75%. Of course, the claim they hold is shorter term and possibly more liquid. Most important, it is not subject to interest rate risk.

3) In abnormal times, the government gains by placing the paper quickly with the RBI, and the banks have no choice but to hold the excess reserves at a below-market rate. The only way out for an individual bank would be to make more loans or buy more government bonds. This it may be reluctant to do because of the additional risks involved. Collectively, however, banks have no choice but to accept the reserves the RBI creates. This is why the financing is forced.

4) Such direct financing is not inflationary per se, so long as banks are reluctant to lend further to business or consumers. However, as normal times return, the central bank will have to pay a higher rate on excess reserves, or sell its government bond holdings and extinguish excess reserves, else it will risk excessive credit expansion and inflation. This process of extinguishing excess reserves is manageable (though see the caveat below).

5) The government does not get a free lunch. Not only is the RBI paying 3.75% for the money it on lends to the government (which will reduce the annual dividend the RBI pays the government commensurately), the banks get 3.75% instead of the 6% they could get by buying the government bonds directly. Since the government owns 70 percent of the banking sector, its dividends from public sector banks also fall commensurately. Essentially, the small amount of government saving in its financing comes from the costs borne by the private banks. Their lower profitability will affect their capital and their lending over time.

6) Even though the way government spending is financed (either directly by banks or directly by the RBI) should not alter its inflationary consequences, the larger government spending will directly ignite demand. In abnormal times when demand is depressed and the environment is disinflationary, this should not be a central worry.

7) Similarly, the fact that the RBI will absorb government bonds seamlessly does not alter the fiscal math. If the fiscal deficit and the growth in government debt is deemed unsustainable, investors and rating agencies will take fright. This is where we need to put in place measures that ensure we will go back to fiscal health over the medium term  such as the debt target and the fiscal council suggested by the NK Singh Committee. Modern Monetary Theorists are wrong to think that central bank financing of the government can be ignored. The consolidated liabilities of the government and the central bank have to be seen as sustainable, else confidence in both money and government debt will collapse.

8) Some observers will have an important question. If the main difference in outcomes between direct RBI financing of the government and private financing of the government is the presence of substantial excess reserves, are we not already there? Is the RBI not already absorbing lakhs of crores through reverse repos? The answer is yes, we are.

Finally Rajan answers what he calls some obvious questions, which we reproduce below:

Why is the central bank hesitant to finance the government directly? Why does it insist on the fig leaf of the bonds being issued to the market and then the central bank buying through Open Market Operations (as the RBI has been doing in the last few years)?

Direct central bank financing in normal times can be inflationary (as can be excess OMOs). Moreover, direct financing of the government obscures market signals for a while when the government spends beyond its means. It is important the government gets market feedback. The RBI/government accord allows the RBI to say no to the government, even if it rarely does so. It is best to retain the fig leaf.

Is there no limit to RBI financing?

Not so long as the banks are willing to passively reinvest excess reserves. However, the more the government issues to the RBI, the more debt the government will have to service, and the less creditworthy the debt. If the governments debt falls in value, RBIs balance sheet will get eroded. Once again, what is manageable in small quantities becomes problematic in excess.

Why cant the RBI pay the government a large dividend instead?

If the RBIs accountants agreed (they dont), the RBI could increase the governments deposit account at the RBI by 1 LC and say it was a dividend. While this would reduce the governments notional fiscal deficit (it would now not issue bonds to the RBI) everything else would be the same. Ultimately, banks would have excess reserves, which would have to be taken in by the RBI at the reverse repo window.

Should monetisation be a constraint on government spending today?

No, the government should be concerned about protecting the health of the economy and should spend what is needed. Obviously, it should try and cut back unneeded spending, and prioritise. It should also worry about getting the fiscal deficit and its debt back in shape over the medium term, and the more it spends now, the harder that will be. However, its inability to finance itself or fears of monetization should not be a constraint. Monetization will neither be a game-changer nor a catastrophe, if done in a measured way. In fact, India is already doing it! However, the caveat  it should be measured -- is key.
Donbas conflict Open source

Since the beginning of the day in the Donbas, Russian militants fired at the positions of the Ukrainian military five times and used weapons of prohibited calibers. The HQ of the JFO reported that on May 8.

In Donetsk region, militants fired at positions near Shyrokyne. They used 82 mm mortars and automatic easel grenade launchers; near Avdyivka, they fired hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms.

In Luhansk region, militants fired at positions near Orikhove and Krymske, using 120 mm mortars and easel anti-tank grenade launchers.

As a result of enemy shelling, three Ukrainian soldiers were injured.

As we reported before, as of now, it is too early to talk about the opening of the entry-exit checkpoints in Donbas, as the deadlines are tied to the lockdown in Ukraine. This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to Luhansk region.

According to him, today it is too early to talk about the opening of checkpoints on the demarcation line.
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New Delhi: Indigo CEO Ronojoy Dutta has written a letter to employees saying there is no choice but to implement pay cuts from May. We want to implement a limited, phased holiday without pay program for May, June and July.

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He further said that the work would have to be implemented without pay, without leave.

He further said that pay without leave would be 1.5 to 5 days depending on the group of employees. A-level employees, who are the most important part of our work, will not be affected.

Earlier in April, the company withdrew its pay cut announcement in March after the government appealed to companies not to cut their salaries during the lockdown.

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PhotoThe airline is facing a severe cash crunch due to the corona virus. Both domestic and international flights have been suspended since the lockdown began in March.

With the exception of Indigo, all its counterparts such as SpiceJet and GoAir have cut salaries or sent large numbers of their employees on unpaid leave.

Photo GoAir employees did not receive their April salaries. The airlines said that the second month of lockdown is underway. Hope you are all safe and sound and understand the situation well. The lockdown in the country has been extended till May 17 due to corona infection.

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As per government directives, GoAir has banned bookings for all flights and tickets till May 31. Therefore, flights are not expected to start before June 1.
Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trump's 2016 Republican campaign.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Associated Press he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trump's presumptive Democratic opponent in the November election.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, the firm said in a statement.

Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. She's accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff. He has denied her allegation.

On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be held accountable and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox and NBC journalist Megyn Kelly.

Pressed by a Florida television station about Reade's comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

The truth is what matters, he told Bay 9. In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.

Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct.

He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill O'Reilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused. In 2018, he spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Wigdor has been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He has not donated to either Trump's or Biden's 2020 campaign.

Wigdor said he plans to help Reade in her dealings with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur. He said the two have not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule that out.

Wigdor suggested Reade's earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of politics. I think highly of a lot of these people, he said.

These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade. Over the weekend, another attorney, William Moran, told the AP he was working with Reade.

Moran, who works at a law firm in Columbia, Maryland, previously wrote and edited for Sputnik, a news agency founded and supported by the Russian state-owned media company Rossiya Segodnya.

A January 2017 report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign said Sputnik was part of Russia's state-run propaganda machine, which contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences. Reade herself has faced questions about her past writing praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Reade on Thursday expressed concern to Kelly about having been called a Russian agent and said she had received a death threat from someone who thought I was being a traitor to America. There is no evidence to suggest Reade or Moran worked at the behest of Russia with respect to the Biden allegation.

Moran contacted the AP on behalf of Reade to complain about and seek changes in a story detailing what Reade says she remembers writing in a Senate complaint about Biden.

Reade told the AP she did not allege sexual assault in the complaint and did not explicitly use the words sexual harassment, though that is the behavior she believes she was describing.

Moran told the AP in a text message Thursday that he found the focus on his past work disgraceful. He said Reade requested that he reach out to the AP on a limited matter. I do not turn away clients who I believe and who have credible causes of action. I never will, he said.

Wigdor said Reade told him she was connected to Moran through Katie Halper, a podcaster who first interviewed Reade about her sexual assault allegation against Biden in March. It's unclear how Reade connected with Wigdor, who said he believed she found the firm through word of mouth and our reputation.

Reade first spoke out about her alleged interactions with Biden in 2019, telling journalists he had touched her inappropriately while she worked on his Senate staff.

She came forward in 2020, around the time Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, with new allegations of assault. She says she didn't initially disclose the assault allegations because she was scared of backlash and was still coming to terms with what had happened to her.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All parties involved in hostilities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions should make the protection of civilians an absolute priority, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner has said, noting a sharp increase in the number of civilian casualties in early May.

"To a greater extent, my appeal is addressed to the command of the Joint Forces Operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since all new civilian casualties recorded by the Mission in May, occurred in territory controlled by the self-proclaimed 'republics'. In absence of a sustainable ceasefire, it is also essential that parties do not place their military positions, weapons and personnel in residential areas," she said in a press release of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine posted on Friday.

In the first six days of May alone, the mission recorded eleven new civilian casualties (one killed and six injured as a result of shelling and small arms and light weapons fire, one injured in a mine incident, and one killed and two injured as a result of handling of an explosive remnant of war). They include incidents in Zolote (Luhansk region) on 2 May, and in Oleksandrivka (Donetsk region) on 4 May, when four girls (one born in 2010 and three born in 2013) were injured as a result of shelling and light weapons fire.

"On May 7, we received reports of eight new civilian casualties caused by light weapons fire in Holubivske (Luhansk region) and Sakhanka (Donetsk region), both controlled by the self-proclaimed 'republics'. Reportedly, a girl and a boy born in 2006 were among the victims. Our Mission is working to corroborate these reports. If they are confirmed, the number of civilian casualties during the first week of May will have reached nineteen. This will be the highest weekly figure of civilian casualties for the last two years," Bogner said.

If these eight new casualties are confirmed, the total number of civilian casualties this year will have reached 65 (nine killed and 56 injured), which is more than a third higher than the number of civilian casualties during the same period of 2019 (ten killed and 38 injured), the mission said.

"This will be reversing the positive trend we had seen up until now of a reduction in civilian casualties," she said.

Bogner also expressed particular concern about the fact that there are many children among those injured. If two child injuries in Sakhanka are confirmed, that would bring the total number of civilian casualties among children from January 1 to May 7, 2020 to ten (all in territory controlled by the self-proclaimed 'republics'): six girls and three boys injured by shelling and light weapons fire, and one boy injured as a result of the handling of an explosive remnant of war.

"It will be important for the next meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group to pay due attention to the current situation. Civilians are not a target, and the responsibility to uphold this principle rests not only with the military, but also with politicians," she said.
Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

With no money to pay for college in post-World War II Scotland, 16-year-old June Almeida took an entry-level job in the histology department of a Glasgow hospital, where she learned to examine tissue under a microscope for signs of disease. It was a fortuitous move, for her and for science.

In 1966, nearly two decades later, she used a powerful electron microscope to capture an image of a mysterious pathogen  the first coronavirus known to cause human disease.

Almeida had just been recruited to St. Thomas Hospital in London, where she received a virus known as B814 from British scientists who were studying the common cold. The scientists, led by David Tyrrell, knew there was something different about the virus. Though volunteers infected with B814 didnt get the sore throats typical of most head colds, they experienced unusual feelings of malaise. And the virus was neutralized by fat solvents, which meant that unlike the average cold virus, B814 had a lipid coating.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba and Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani have agreed that Qatar will consider a number of investment projects to be implemented in Ukraine.

The two ministers discussed this issue during a phone conversation on Thursday evening, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministrys press service.

In accordance with the agreements reached by the leaders of Ukraine and Qatar during a phone conversation the day before, Dmytro Kuleba assured of his readiness for cooperation in the fields of investment, trade, economy, energy and food security. The interlocutors agreed that Qatar will consider a number of investment projects that can be implemented in Ukraine, the report reads.

According to the Foreign Ministry, the issue concerns investments in Ukrainian infrastructure: bridges, roads, railways, airports and so on.

Also, despite the role of Ukraine as a guarantor of world food security, the foreign ministers discussed the exports of Ukrainian agricultural products to Qatar. Kuleba assured the Qatari colleague that Ukraine can meet the needs of Qatar in agricultural products.

The interlocutors also agreed to make joint efforts to overcome the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

As reported, the State of Qatar is a promising partner of Ukraine in the Gulf region. Total foreign trade in 2019 increased by almost $20 million and amounted to $90 million.

On May 6, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky had a phone conversation with Emir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, during which the conditions for attracting Qatari investments were discussed.

ish
The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed anti-China sentiments in the US and Europe

Since the media reported an unfamiliar pneumonia spreading in China earlier this year, with this giving way to the current worldwide coronavirus pandemic, a wave of sinophobia has been unleashed in Western countries, with US President Donald Trump even threatening to sanction Beijing if it could be proven that China was behind the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump has gone so far as to halt US funding for the World Health Organisation (WHO), accusing it of siding with China. The move has been an important blow to the UN body at a critical time.

Since February this year, many social-media platforms have been registering complaints by Chinese nationals and people of Southeast Asian origin living in Europe and the US saying that they have been discriminated against. Some media headlines have contained the words yellow peril or Chinese virus in reference to Covid-19, making many Asians furious.

Sinophobia waned for a few weeks when the epicentre of the pandemic shifted from Wuhan in China to Lombardy in northern Italy, making Europe its new centre in mid-March.

However, accusations then resurfaced against China, claiming that it had not done enough to curb the spread of the coronavirus. China was not transparent about the number of infected cases, some writers in the Western media said. Trump claimed that China might have spread the virus intentionally, though he still seems to be mulling over this hypothesis.

Trump has stated that his administration is investigating whether coronavirus could have been leaked intentionally or accidently from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The director of the Institute, together with the Chinese authorities, have strongly denied the accusations.

On 30 April, Trump said he had seen evidence that showed that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab, accusing Chinese officials of covering up the virus early on and saying that they could have stopped the disease from spreading.

The WHO has consistently denied reports that the virus could have originated in a lab.

However, when the pandemic was just beginning earlier this year, Trump was not pointing an accusing finger at China. He even commended Beijing for doing a good job in the fight against the virus.

Last week, the European Union said there had been evidence of secret Chinese operations on social media in connection with the coronavirus, a claim immediately denied by China.

The EU said a number of governments, including those of China and Russia, had been responsible for publishing wrong information about Covid-19, Reuters reported.

Similar accusations against Beijing were voiced by French President Emmanuel Macron in mid-April, and it seems that the majority of Western capitals believe China hid the truth about the coronavirus and that it allowed travel by people to and from Wuhan even though it had known about the virus since December.

The West has accused China of banning domestic travel on 23 January to and from Hubei Province, where the coronavirus originated, to prevent the spread of the disease within its territory, while still allowing international flights.

The Western media has reported that Chinas civil aviation authority encouraged its nationals on 4 February to resume travelling to countries that had not banned flights to or from China. But after the first week of February, one country after another suspended flights to and from China, severely impacting Chinese trade.

During that time and for two weeks afterwards, Beijing partially contributed to the spread of the virus on a global level, according to Western accusations.

Many countries have also accused China of suppressing those who tried to warn against the coronavirus during its first weeks, such as ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who died in early February from infection with the coronavirus.

They say that China did not communicate soon enough with the international community to inform it about the dangers of Covid-19 and that the Chinese authorities rejected a visit by a WHO delegation to Wuhan until the number of infections had reached 40,000 cases.

Many observers believe that the accusations exchanged between the US and China have nothing to do with the pandemic, however. A tug-of-war between the two countries was initiated once Trump stepped into the White House in 2016 and has been part of the trade war with China, which Trump has accused of stealing American jobs.

Trump earlier imposed tariffs on many US imports from China in a bid to restrict Chinese trade. Many US consumers buy cheap Chinese products that are manufactured according to US standards.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that the Western world now depends heavily on Chinese products and that there is no alternative to them.

Such a focus of global production in one large industrial centre, namely China, would have been impossible had there been other producers, and the result has been that Beijing has gained exceptional commercial influence over the past 20 years as the worlds pre-eminent exporter.

Some now say that the US should shift some of its investments to neighbouring Mexico, which is ailing under the influence of drug gangs and internal conflicts.

Many observers believe that pumping US investments into Mexico would reduce Mexican immigration into the US from a country that has a population of 115 million.

Directing US investments to Mexico, a member of the G20 group and a leading oil exporter outside OPEC, would be a political and strategic move tied to US national security and could bring multiple benefits.

Many in the West still discriminate against the Chinese in a way that goes back to the colonial era.

The Chinese themselves have also been discriminating against Africans living in China, something that drove Moussa Faki, chair of the African Union Commission (AUC), to summon the Chinese envoy to the African Union to explain discrimination against African nationals in China.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

Coronavirus found in semen of infected young men: Chinese study

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, May 08: A small study suggests that the coronavirus may be found in the semen of infected young men.

Chinese researchers tested semen samples from 38 men who had tested positive for COVID-19. They found the virus' genetic material in specimens from six patients (15.8 per cent), of which two were patients in recovery.

Out of the group of recovering coronavirus patients, one in six was discovered to have traces of COVID-19 in their semen, even after no longer being symptomatic.

The study took place at Shangqiu Municipal Hospital, the only designated centre for the treatment of COVID-19 in Shangqiu, Henan province.
"They don't want any communication with the outside world," one crew member told Business Insider.

File Photo/Reuters

Crew members on the Norwegian Epic were told that leaking information about ship operations "might lead to dismissal from the ship or even prosecution by shoreside authorities."

The warning comes as about 2,500 crew members remain stuck on the ship because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Many of these crew members are no longer receiving pay as they await the chance to return home.

Norwegian Cruise Line did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

On a cruise ship? Send tips to acain@businessinsider.com.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Crew stuck on the Norwegian Epic have been warned against leaking information from the ship, according to leaked audio Business Insider obtained from a crew member on board.

In an "important announcement" broadcast shipwide on Wednesday, a member of the Epic's leadership team told crew that "the communication of written, verbal, photographic, video, or computer material regarding company, guest, employees' activities, operations, or business without permission of the company is prohibited."

The member of the ship's leadership team said "such offenses might lead to dismissal from the ship or even prosecution by shoreside authorities." The person who made the announcement added that the policy was both "effective immediately" and had "always been in place" for "the protection of our crew." He also said that anyone taking pictures should always "ask permission" of their fellow crew beforehand.

The announcement came weeks into what has been a monthslong ordeal for many cruise-line crew members around the world. Because they cannot disembark over coronavirus fears around the world, thousands of cruise-line crew members have remained stuck on vessels for months. Many have had their pay slashed or their contracts terminated altogether.

At first, some crew members took to social platforms like Tik Tok to create more lighthearted content about their situations. But now Norwegian appears to be attempting to plug the flow of information from and between its vessels. When two crew members died on board the Norwegian Gem in April, news spread through informal employee whisper networks, rather than official cruise-line channels.

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Norwegian Cruise Line did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. A different crew member on the Epic told Business Insider the company "started to give warnings to anyone who posts anything on social media."

"They don't want any communication with the outside world," the crew member said.

On the Norwegian Jade, a ship moored in Dubai's Port Rashid, a member of the crew said that a similar announcement had gone out. However, they said that it was "nothing more than a polite warning to stop posting stuff" and a request to avoid "posting anything you shouldn't" about the ship's operations.

"The captain mentioned in his announcement yesterday that when we signed a contract, we signed up for the social-media policy," the crew member said.

A crew member on board the Epic, which is off the coast of Miami, told Business Insider that employees on the ship were still permitted to have their phones in public areas, but photos and videos have been discouraged. The crew member said they have also been asked to stop bringing portable speakers and projectors to the crew bar area "to eliminate large groups congregating around tables."

In the Wednesday announcement regarding Norwegian's policy on dealing with leaks, the member of Epic's ship leadership team signed off with a film quote of the day for crew members: "May the odds be ever in your favor."

Send tips to acain@businessinsider.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider
How do you handle seating in small restaurant implementing social distancing guidelines?

To address this issue, the city of Cincinnati will close parts of 25 streets in Over-the-Rhine and Downtown Cincinnati so restaurants can expand outdoor seating, a move that will help restaurants without patio space keep tables farther apart for social distancing  and open as early as possible.

The announcement came one day after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced restaurants can open outdoor space next Friday. Indoor seating isn't allowed until May 21, and only then with certain precautions. Parties must be seated 6 feet apart or there has to be a physical barrier, for example.

Restaurants and bars have been closed by state order since March 21 in order to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. It's put people out of work and shuttered restaurants who opted not to morph into carryouts.

"Restaurants are critical to the vibrancy in our urban core," Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said. "Shutting down streets and lanes to expand dining so people can come back downtown and get delicious meals will be great."

Tampa, Florida, announced a similar plan May 5. And cities in San Mateo County in California temporarily restricted traffic beginning late last month in areas so people could safely get together.

In Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, many of the restaurants are in small older buildings. The neighborhood, along with Cincinnati's Downtown, had been enjoying national attending for its vibrant restaurant scene until the pandemic hit.

The plan came together quickly with Cranley reaching out to The Banks restaurants and Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) in Over-the-Rhine about what was needed.

"I knew this would be a desire in light of how small some of the restaurants are," Cranley said Friday. When he called to offer help, he learned they were already planning to ask.

Restaurants are critical to the vibrancy in our urban core. Shutting down streets & lanes to expand dining so people can come back downtown and get delicious meals will be great. About 25 locations from the Banks to Findlay Market will have healthy & safe ways to serve customers pic.twitter.com/gCFbVlvcFB  John Cranley (@JohnCranley) May 8, 2020

The plan will quickly be expanded to neighborhood bars and restaurants, Cranley said.

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Among the closures: 15th Street between Vine and Race Streets, which will help both Sacred Beast and Pepp and Dolores.

Julia Petiprin, one of the owners of Homemaker's Bar in Over-the-Rhine said the plan will be a great help to her small space, which doesn't have outdoor seating.

"To have this opportunity will really help up serve the community," she said. "Outdoor seating will be a way for us to bring the cocktail experience  to the community."

Sampler art from Homemake's Bar

The Banks Freedom Way will close, which will be helpful, said Jean-Francois Flechet, who owns Taste of Belgium, which has a location there.

"We lost Opening Day and the Flying Pig and a lot of events that bring people to The Banks," he said.

Cranley said he is looking forward to dining out next Friday with his family and a few friends, joking that the "boss,", his wife, would get to pick the place. And, he added, he hopes to sign an order that the weather should be sunny and warm.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reopening restaurants could mean closing streets for outdoor seating
While the U.S. border remains closed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, extra fees to buy provincial park passes or fishing and hunting licences online will be heading stateside.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the U.S. border remains closed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, extra fees to buy provincial park passes or fishing and hunting licences online will be heading stateside.

Doug Petersen says he always buys an annual provincial park pass and fishing licence at a store, but this year he decided to take advantage of the province's new online system to get them.

That's when Peterson discovered he would have to pay an administration fee of $4.50 apiece  a total of $9  and then when he got the receipt, he found the fees went to a Dallas, Texas-based reservation company.

"I sign up on a Manitoba government website and I get a receipt from an American company? Where is my information going? I can't believe the government would do this."

The province announced the additional online service and fees earlier this year but, as the temperatures rise, fishing season starts this weekend, and the May long weekend on the horizon, many Manitobans are just learning about charges now.

Conservation and Climate Minister Sarah Guillemard said in a press release in March that while Manitobans can still buy the passes and licenses in person at certain retail outlets, including Cabela's and gas stations and convenience stores near or in provincial parks, the website option allows a 24/7 purchase option.

ANDREW RYAN / FREE PRESS FILES The American company is able to charge a $4.50 administrative fee for buying park passes and licences online.

"Moving to an online system from a paper-based one will enable our government to improve the services we deliver, while decreasing our carbon footprint," Guillemard said in a statement at the time.

The additional charge also means that if you go online a $5 provincial park day pass will cost you a total of $9.50, almost double the cost.

But Petersen said not only does the online option cost more, it also takes away sales from the small businesses who have been selling the passes and licenses for years.

"Last year I went into a store in Betula Lake and I bought a park pass and a fishing license," he said. "I also bought some snacks. I probably spent between $50 to $100 there, which probably made their day."

Phil Spring is co-owner of one of those stores, the Fas Gas on Highway 8 near Riverton on the way to Hecla-Grindstone Provincial Park.

"What they're doing is totally out of whack," Spring said.

"A person just left mad because he doesn't have a computer. I told them they could go see a CO (Conservation Officer) who could do it if they have time, but they don't always have time. And with COVID-19, you don't want people in their offices," he said.

JOE BRYKSA / FREE PRESS FILES The fishing season begins on Saturday in the south, and on May 16 in the rest of the province.

Spring said what irked him personally was while the American company is able to charge a $4.50 administrative fee, the province pays retailers like him only $1 per sale. As well, he said the online option wasn't brought in because of COVID-19  retailers were told it was coming last November.

"And seniors are supposed to get free fishing licences  I guess it won't be free anymore (if they go online)  they'll have to pay $4.50."

Eric Reder, of the Wilderness Committee, said other changes made by the province include having people register two licence plates for each park pass purchased.

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"Gone are the days of remembering to switch the park pass to your other vehicle," Reder said. "It means borrowing, renting or using a car-share to access a provincial park will also be more difficult with this new system producing yet another barrier for Manitobans."

Car-sharing company Peg City Car Co-op is addressing the issue by purchasing passes for its vehicles, so that members using the service can access parks.

A provincial government spokesman said Manitoba was one of the last provinces to implement an online option to buy fishing and hunting licenses.

"Park entry permits were included in this first phase of online licenses and permits, as park visitors sometimes have difficulty finding an outlet from whom to purchase a permit, especially if they are visiting a park with limited services or nearby vendors," the spokesman said. "Now they can purchase a permit and print it at home before they leave for the park."

The spokesman said RA Outdoors Ltd., operating as Aspira, based in Dallas, Texas, was the service provider chosen through a tendering process. He said the $4.50 fee pays for services provided by Aspira including hosting and maintaining the site 24/7 and operating a toll-free information number.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Valatie

Roy and Marissa Jacobsen had hoped that by now their 36-foot Tiffin motorhome would be set up for the summer at Deer Run campground in Schaghticoke. That was our plan, said Marissa, explaining that they had recently driven up from their winter spot near Naples, Fla.

Instead, the bus-size vehicle, which is the couples permanent home, is parked in Marissas brothers yard here. Adding insult to injury, they are worried about moving the vehicle, which appears stuck in the mud that grew thicker and thicker with the recent spring rains.

The Jacobsens are among an unknown number of retired snowbirds who spend winters in Florida and summers in New York but cant get into their usual spots due to COVID-19- related closures.

While Deer Run and other Rensselaer County campgrounds remained closed, however, facilities in other counties are open and accepting their summer snowbirds.

We are indeed open, said Richard OBrien, whose company owns Saratoga RV Park in Gansevoort.

Like other RV campgrounds, they are open on a limited basis, with amenities like their pools, game rooms and indoor buildings closed or curtailed. But people are anxious to get to campgrounds especially as the weather improves, he said.

People are seeking to get outside their homes welcoming spring and soon-to-be summer, said OBrien.

The situation was the same at Woodland Hills campground in Austerlitz, Columbia County, which on Friday was letting in the first of their summer-long residents, said owner Nancy Hreschak.

Campers and RV resort operators alike are all dealing with what has become a crazy quilt system in which some counties and even towns are letting their campgrounds open and others are not. Thats despite an earlier order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo declaring campgrounds to be essential businesses, at least for people who are long-term seasonal residents rather than transients who may be camping for a weekend or a few days.

It is very piecemeal, said Christine Taylor, an attorney at Albanys Towne, Ryan & Partners who advises the states campground association.

In some locations, where towns have ordinances regulating campgrounds, they may or may not be open -- it can even depend on whether municipal offices have been open during the pandemic.

Others have looked to county health departments for needed approvals on a case-by-case basis. Thus in Orange and Ulster counties some are open while others are not.

Some towns were slow in getting people permits because town halls had limited capacity, said Taylor.

Mostly, though, the discrepancy is among counties.

Deer Runs sister campground, for example, is open near Cooperstown, in Otsego County.

Thats little comfort for stranded campers like the Jacobsens.

Roy Jacobsen has an extension cord to his in-laws home and theyve been using their kitchen and bathroom since the house doesnt have RV hookups. The in-laws dont seem to mind but Jacobsen joked that I dont think his neighbors are thrilled with a 36-foot-long lawn ornament, in the yard.

There is a more serious side to the stranding. The Jacobsens along with other families have already paid the approximately $4,000 to keep their RVs at Deer Run all summer. But the company that operates the facility, Adventure Bound Camping Resorts, hadn't yet made it clear as to whether there would be refunds or credits or extensions allowing people to stay later in the season. The company didnt return a call for comment.

Some of the usual summer residents at Deer Run live year round in the Capital Region but spend summers at the campground, where their kids get a sense of adventure and where they meet old friends who come back year after year.

One summer camper described it a a way of life."

Particularly frustrating is the lack of clear answers they seem to get when they call state or county government.

Rose Doyle, of Guilderland, has tried to get through to the governors office with no success.

And Rensselaer County officials tell them they need the go-ahead from the state Empire State Development, the agency in charge of business promotion. ESD has various regions which are supposed to help delineate when the state may start to reopen businesses, when and if the COVID-19 pandemic eases.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

But a query to ESD said that the state Department of Environmental Conservation or Health Department was overseeing campgrounds.

A call and email to ESDs local Troy office wasnt returned.

They are just throwing the ball from one person to another, said Doyle.

Rensselaer County appears to be taking a tough stance when it comes to openings, or at least as they pertain to people coming from out of the area.

Earlier in the pandemic County Executive Steve McLaughlin said he worried about travelers from downstate who might spread the virus and overwhelm local health facilities (the vast majority of New Yorks COVID-19 cases are in the greater metropolitan area which is now viewed as a national source of the pandemic). Officials in other upstate counties have voiced similar fears.

But they that they've been told by local ESD officials the campgrounds shouldn't be opened yet.

"Rensselaer County is not looking to be overly involved in campgrounds with everything else going on, and we are simply trying to follow instructions from the state," said county Operations Director Richard Crist. "It seems unfair and unnecessarily confusing that there are different sets of rules about opening campgrounds, and one rule should be applied so we can all follow it."

Even campgrounds that serve seasonal residents in Rensselaer County have shut down.

Ron Van Fleet who owns Alps Family Campground in Averill Park had some long-term residents earlier but now hes had to turn away technicians who will soon be installing conveyor belts at the new Amazon warehouse being built in Schodack. These specialized workers travel from job to job and many live in RVs. That is their home pretty much, said Van Fleet.

Meanwhile, the substantial system of state-operated campgrounds, which serve tenters and RV drivers, remains closed, with the earliest possible opening date now set for June 1.

Normally, many of those facilities would be open by now but the pandemic-postponement has meant that people wont be able to use the state facilities during the upcoming Memorial Day weekend. Some cabins may be open on a case-by-case basis, though.

For now, people like the Doyles and Jacobsens are in a holding pattern. The local families are staying home and the Jacobsens as of Friday were biding their time in Valatie, hoping the grass will dry out so they can easily pull out when their campground opens.

They sold their home after Roy retired from the State Police. Now Marissa wonders why they are even returning to the Empire State, given mobility the RV affords them.

Its a nightmare, she said. Why we wanted to come back to New York is beyond me.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
Generational Group Reaches Significant M&A Milestone with 900 Closed Transactions

Generational Group, comprised of Generational Equity, a leading mergers and acquisitions advisor for privately held businesses, and its affiliate company, Generational Capital Markets (member FINRA/SIPC), is pleased to announce that in April the firm closed its 900th transaction. This accomplishment is indicative of Generational's continued growth in leadership among middle market investment banks.

Ryan Binkley, President and CEO of the firm, stated "I am so proud of our team and their hard work over the years to reach this tremendous level of success. Our primary goal is to serve our clients by helping them both define and discover the life they want for themselves and their loved ones. It is a real honor and privilege to work with entrepreneurs to help them reach their financial and personal dreams."

Generational Group was founded to help business owners and their families achieve their financial goals, creating a legacy for generations. The Company and its associates are committed to helping privately held business owners achieve a meaningful and purposeful next phase of their lives.

According to Brenen Hofstadter, Chief M&A Officer with Generational, "Closing our 900th transaction is a significant achievement in the M&A industry. What is really most rewarding for us is that each of these transactions represents a business owner and the financial legacy for their families, making this achievement even more significant."

Generational Group is one of the leading middle market investment banks in North America, having won multiple industry awards including Investment Banking Firm of the Year in 2018, 2017 and 2016, Valuation Firm of the Year in 2015 and 2014, as well as M&A Consulting Firm of the Year in 2013 and 2011.







Terry Johnson, Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer for the firm, added, "Our success as a firm is a result of each associate focusing on our Core Values and a relentless pursuit of achieving our client's goals. I congratulate our entire deal making team of professionals on this tremendous accomplishment."

Generational has solidified its leadership position by providing world class client service and unmatched deal making capabilities. According to Refinitiv/Thomson Reuters, in 2019 the Company was once again ranked as the number one middle market investment bank for valuations up to $25 million and number two up to $100 million. The firm was also ranked number nine in deals valued up to $500 million, a significant achievement for a middle market investment bank.

About Generational Group

Generational Equity, Generational Capital Markets (member FINRA/SIPC), Generational Wealth Advisors, and DealForce are part of the Generational Group, which is headquartered in Dallas and is one of the leading middle market investment banks in North America.

With over 250 professionals located throughout North America, the companies help business owners release the wealth of their business by providing merger, acquisition, and wealth management services. Their five-step approach features exit planning education, business valuation, value enhancement strategies, M&A transactional services, and wealth management.

For more information, visit https://www.genequityco.com/ or the Generational Equity press room.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005022/en/
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump in recent weeks has sought to block or downplay information about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic as he urges a return to normalcy and the rekindling of an economy that has been devastated by public health restrictions aimed at mitigating the outbreak.

His administration has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines, and, briefly, pushed to disband a task force created to combat and communicate about the public health crisis.

Several Republican governors are following Trump's lead as an effort takes shape to control the narrative about a pandemic that has continued to rage throughout a quickly reopening country. With polls showing most consumers still afraid to venture out of their homes, the Trump administration has intensified its efforts to soothe some of those fears through a messaging campaign that relies on tightly controlling information about a virus that has proven stubbornly difficult to contain.

"If the message were to go out with complete objectivity, it would be disastrous for Trump," said Max Skidmore, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the author of a book on presidential responses to pandemics. "So he is doing his best to prevent experts from speaking out or using their expertise, and he's simply trying to divert attention."

Trump's information-control tactics are being replicated in states across the country, where governors are lifting stay-at-home orders against the advice of public health officials.

In Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, is pushing businesses to reopen, the state health department abruptly halted the work of a team of experts who predicted the outbreak's peak was still about two weeks away. The department reversed the decision amid an outcry after it became public.

Governors in Georgia, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere have been praised by Trump as they ignored recommendations from doctors and health officials in their states to begin phased reopenings. States such as Florida have limited or redacted public information about their coronavirus deaths.

Administration officials say the moves reflect a shift, driven by Trump, away from focusing on the health challenges caused by pandemic and toward restarting economic activity and pulling the country out of recession. The evolution is being driven in part by the political calendar, with just six months before voters decide the president's fate.

While Trump reversed course Wednesday and declared that the White House coronavirus task force would continue indefinitely, its public facing role has already been curtailed.

One senior administration official said the public health experts are scaring people, and their dire warnings have often been at odds with the president's call to "open up our country."

Meetings by the task force, which had been occurring on a daily basis, have reduced in their frequency, said the official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The task force's daily press briefings, which previously featured key health experts alongside Trump, have been reduced and reconfigured to showcase the newly appointed White House press secretary while other events are staged to highlight the president conferring with business owners.

The administration also has not released guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have been in the works for weeks and offered advice on how to reopen certain businesses and facilities.

In a sharply worded statement Thursday, the White House blasted the guidelines.

"Issuing overly specific instructions - that CDC leadership never cleared - for how various types of businesses open up would be overly prescriptive and broad for the various circumstances States are experiencing throughout the country," the unnamed task force official said in a statement released by the White House press office following an Associated Press report that the guidelines had been shelved. "Guidance in rural Tennessee shouldn't be the same guidance for urban New York City."

The CDC, which has seen its public role significantly downsized since the early days of the crisis, continues to play a more limited part in the coronavirus response than it has in previous viral outbreaks, according to experts and administration officials. That has unnerved some lawmakers and public health experts.

"Irony around CDC not issuing it's reopen guidance, whatever the reason, is a lot of business literally can't reopen without it because CDC is a de facto regulator in a public health crisis," Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote Thursday on Twitter. "CDC must publish its umbrella document to publish more detailed industry specific guidance."

The limits of Trump's ability to shape the public's understanding of his coronavirus response could be tested next week, as major congressional hearings featuring career government health officials are set to take place. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of Trump's task force, is one of several officials scheduled to testify before a Senate committee on May 12.

Fauci has regularly contradicted Trump's sunny descriptions of the crisis and described the administration's early testing efforts as "a failing."

While the White House blocked Fauci from testifying before the Democratic-controlled House, its blanket policy of limiting congressional testimony has not stopped the oversight process. A senior government scientist who filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the Department of Health and Human Services made critical mistakes in the weeks before the outbreak became a pandemic is expected to testify before a House committee next week.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in his complaint that his early efforts to take proactive measures against the virus "encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including Secretary [Alex] Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event."

Trump has tried to dismiss Bright - who was demoted from his position after his warnings - as a "disgruntled" employee.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany attacked House Democrats for trying to stage a "publicity stunt" with their requests for hearings, including with Fauci. Trump called the House "a bunch of Trump haters" as he defended his decision to block testimony before the congressional body.

But the White House's effort to tightly control which officials are allowed to testify before Congress has been criticized by Democrats and some Republicans.

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the top Republican on a House panel that requested Fauci's appearance, said Wednesday that it would have been "useful to this country" to hear from the high-profile member of the president's coronavirus task force.

Democrats have been more forceful in their criticism.

"President Trump should learn that by muzzling science and the truth, it will only prolong this health and economic crisis," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Monday. "The president's failure to accept the truth, and then his desire to hide it, is one of the chief reasons we are lagging behind so many other countries in beating this scourge."

Trump's shift toward message-control comes as he has been frustrated with scientific experts, data and models that have failed to support his desire for a quick solution to the crisis.

"These models have been so wrong from day one, both on the low side and the upside," Trump said Tuesday in an interview with ABC News. "They've been so wrong, they've been so out of whack. And they keep making new models, new models and they're wrong."

The administration released multiple statements this week disavowing a draft report that projected as many as 3,000 daily coronavirus deaths beginning on June 1. The report, which carried a CDC logo and featured in a FEMA briefing, had not been vetted by the White House, McEnany said.

On Tuesday, a day after the White House attacked the report, the United States recorded more than 2,400 coronavirus deaths.

An alternative "cubic" model, produced by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was widely panned by economists and health experts after it appeared to show coronavirus deaths plunging toward zero by May 15. There has been no such plunge, and outside of New York, cases continue to rise nationally. There have been more than 1.2 million cases and 74,000 deaths recorded in the United States, the largest totals in the world.

Some public health experts worry that the number of new cases may remain stuck at a level of about 20,000 to 30,000 a day. That would be an indication that while social distancing didn't fail, "it didn't work as well as we expected," Gottlieb said in an interview.

By now, he said, he expected to see the number of cases and deaths declining - not hitting a plateau - given extensive social distancing and the shutdown of much of the economy.

The steadily high number of coronavirus cases and the growing death count have stood in sharp contrast to Trump's cheerful language about reopening the economy. The president has encouraged several states to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders even though they have failed to meet benchmarks from the White House's own guidelines. Those guidelines encourage states to wait to see a decline in cases over a two-week period before relaxing social distancing measures.

The president has blamed widespread testing for the high number of positive cases and continues to dismiss governors' and public health experts' persistent calls for more testing before relaxing social distancing restrictions.

"In a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad," Trump told reporters Wednesday. On Thursday he told reporters testing was "overrated."

Skidmore, whose 2016 book "Presidents, Pandemics and Politics" describes presidential leadership during health crises as critical, said Trump's push to turn the battle against the coronavirus into a form of information warfare will ultimately fail.

"It will work for some people, but he can't get over the fact that many, many people are dying - and they're dying on his watch," Skidmore said. "Too many people are dying, and that's the fact that he can't cover up however much he tries."

- - -

The Washington Post's Isaac Stanley-Becker, Rebecca Weiner, Josh Dawsey, William Wan and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
Terming the death of migrants in a



train accident as "painful", Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Friday urged labourers to have patience and not undertake risky journeys to their home states.

At least 16 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks while returning to Madhya Pradesh were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra in the early hours of Friday.

Only four migrant workers survived in the accident, which took place at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad, police said.

"The incident is painful. It is disturbing to see how desperate migrant workers in Maharashtra are to return to their home states," Pawar said in a statement.

Pawar, who is also the state's Finance Minister, said the Maharashtra government was working on war footing to send migrant workers to their native states and this was being done with cooperation from the Centre and other state governments.

"Workers should wait till their turn comes and arrangements are made (to ensure their return). They should not risk their lives travelling in an unsafe manner," he said.

Everyone will be able to return home in phases and there was no need to hurry, Pawar said.

The state government had arranged for food, water, accommodation and medical facilities of 6.5 lakh migrant workers, the Deputy Chief Minister said.

Accidents like this, at a time when the state government was doing its best to take care of migrant labourers, was unfortunate and painful, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




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RACINE  I just make good burgers man. Its enough to pay the bank, Kurt Fogle says to a customer while standing on State Streets sidewalk near Downtown on a sunny Thursday morning.

Fogle, a 2000 graduate of Park High School, is now the owner of the Milk Can Hamburgers & Frozen Custard, a food truck that has not been without its share of struggles even before it started serving roadside burgers in Milwaukee last fall.

Milk Can was supposed to be a brick-and-mortar vendor at a new Milwaukee food hall, 3rd Street Market Hall, planned for 275 W. Wisconsin Ave. as part of a wider transformation project known as The Avenue. But those plans have been continually pushed back over the past year. And now, due to coronavirus, they are effectively on hold.

So, Fogle put his burger-making talents on the road by opening the food truck, which has been serving since October. Its usually parked at 644 N. Plankinton Ave., just west of the Milwaukee River and across the street from The Riverside Theater.

But on Thursday, it came to Fogles hometown.

Fogle and Angela Downs, who co-owns the Pakistani street food restaurant Chit Chaat at 550 State St. with her husband, have been friends since they went to Park High School together.

Downs saw the fast success and attention Milk Can has gotten in just its first few months of business, so she invited her former classmate to park in front of Chit Chaat for a day.

I saw his business blowing up on social media. So I thought, Lets do a collaboration, Downs said while her husband, Junaid Shafique, worked inside the food truck with Milk Cans normal staff.

Business-owner helping business-owner Junaid Shafique, co-owner of Chit Chaat, helps out inside the Milk Can food truck Thursday afternoon.

The Wisconsin classics even received a Pakistani treatment, with a lamburger with pickled cabbage, cilantro and mint being offered alongside the typical American burgers.

Among Milk Cans early online rave reviews was one from Lori Fredrich, a senior writer with OnMilwaukee.com. She told readers You gotta go check out Milk Can because The cheeseburger was exquisitely messy (youll need napkins) with a beautifully toasted bun, a tasty beef patty, plenty of condiments, great pickles, tasty onions and just the right amount of cheese. The fries are crisp and coated with a seasoning blend that makes them downright addictive. If youve ever had tortilla chips seasoned with that citrusy-salty-and-slightly-sweet spice blend that you cant stop eating ... these are just like that.

More than two dozen hungry customers crowded in front of Chit Chaat on the State Street sidewalk during the lunch hour Thursday afternoon. Looking at it, you might forget theres a pandemic going on, except for a lot of the customers are wearing masks and were standing a few feet apart from one another while they waited for their food.

Waiting for burgers More than two dozen hungry customers crowded in front of Chit Chaat restaurant on the State Street sidewalk during the lunch hour Thursday aft

Like restaurants being open for takeout, food trucks are allowed to be open amid Safer at Home: they dont have any common seating areas to close off anyway.

Tracy Baumstark, one of Thursdays State Street customers, said she came down on Thursday after hearing online that Milk Can had really good food.

Although an abundance of people working from home and canceled events have forced food truck business nationwide into a downward spiral, Fogle has been optimistic.

I think the stay at home order has made it (a food truck) more of an entertainment option, Fogle said. Its familiar enough that you trust it. Its slightly different enough that makes it interesting.

That level of uniqueness is what Fogle is relying on to stay alive while the entire food service industry suffers. Months down the road, when Wisconsin returns to normal and 3rd Street Market Hall is finally able to open, Fogle will reassess Milk Cans food truck business.

For now, itll be serving on wheels.

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Iowans are seeing their livelihood just destroyed, so we have to manage all of that. You cant just look in isolation  you have to balance all of that when youre making decisions, the governor said.

I believe in Iowans, I trust Iowans to do the right thing. There are going to be a few outliers, thats with anything, she said. Together were going to move through this, and were going to start to open our economy, were going to get Iowans back to work and were going to get to the other side of this.

Reynolds attributed much of the recent spike in Iowas confirmed cases to more aggressive testing and surveillance efforts while noting the positive cases are starting to decline  even in Eastern Iowa counties  telling reporters that theyve kind of hit the peak and now theyre starting to trend down.

As (Iowa National Guard Adjutant General Benjamin) Corell says, Were fishing where the fish are, Reynolds said, so its no wonder our daily case counts have grown over the last few weeks.

Overall, the governor said 60,569 Iowans have been tested  about one out of every 52  with 50,458 having negative results and 3,522 who tested positive having recovered.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been accused of discrediting employees who have challenged the findings of their report writes Al-Masdar.

New documents leaked from the global chemical watchdog show that two inspectors blowing the whistle about the 2018 Douma incident in Syria were right, and the director seeking to discredit them was wrong.

Two inspectors with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have challenged the organizations final report on the April 2018 incident, which they say was altered to dismiss their findings and validate after the fact the US, UK and French missile strikes against the government in Damascus.

OPCW Director General Fernando Arias responded earlier this year by describing them as rogue inspectors who werent even members of the mission. Documents obtained by investigative journalist Aaron Mate at Greyzone, however, show that Arias statements were false or misleading.

Arias claimed that South African inspector Ian Henderson was not a member of the fact-finding mission (FFM) dispatched to Douma, and that he had played a minor supporting role.

However, the documents from April 2018 obtained by the Grayzone show that OPCW directors were happy to have Henderson lead the visits to the most important locations in Douma: the hospital and the sites of alleged chlorine cylinder impact, for instance.

Another document, described as a sensitive security-planning memorandum known as CONOPS, lists Henderson as part of the FFM under the section Mission Personnel.

Last, but not least, the F038 memorandum to the Syrian government lists Henderson as part of the team conducting the technical secretariat visits, notifying Damascus of his role. Henderson has previously explained publicly that he was on a mission in Nepal, and was assigned to Douma immediately upon his return.

Moreover, another OPCW document shows that Henderson took over the OPCW Damascus command post on May 3, 2018,  two days after he returned from Douma.

This goes directly against Arias version of events, according to which Henderson was already in Damascus, happened to play a minor role in the Douma mission, and then went rogue to sabotage the organization for reasons unknown.

Henderson and another whistleblower inspector  who remains anonymous  have said for months that they had not gone rogue, but were sidelined by OPCW because they produced evidence suggesting the Douma incident had been staged by the Jaish al-Islam militants who controlled the area at the time.

The final OPCW report, they contend, was doctored to retroactively justify the US, UK and French missile strikes and enable them to blame Damascus.

The OPCW responded to their revelations by painting them as disgruntled employees who breached confidentiality and lacked expertise and access to all the evidence. Their own documents now clearly show those statements to be false.

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.
[May 08, 2020] BTB Announces COVID-19 Precautionary Measures for its Upcoming Annual Unitholders' Meeting

MONTREAL, May 8, 2020 /CNW Telbec/ - BTB Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX: BTB.UN) ("BTB" or the "REIT") announced today that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the governmental decree limiting gatherings, its annual meeting of unitholders ("the Meeting") to will be held via webinar. Due to this, it is important that all unitholders submit their votes via proxy. FURTHER DETAILS We have been closely monitoring the impact of COVID-19 and are aware of the different travel restrictions and social distancing measures that have been put in place. Therefore, in order to accommodate all our investors and interested parties who usually attend our event, in order to provide a safe meeting, we have converted our in-person meeting to a virtual webinar. The Board of Trustees as well as Management will be on-site as it is requested by our Contact of Trust, but an audio and presentation link will be made available to all (please see below for further details). The presentation and Meeting will be held in English; however, the presentation will be translated to French in the days following the Meeting and will be made available on BTB's website. Contrary to our quarterly calls where only analysts are free to ask questions, the lines will be opened at the end of the presentation to all attending parties for a question and answer period. For guests tuning-in via the web platform, an on-line question forum will be opened during the question period. Should you wish to submit questions prior to the Annual Meeting, please do so by sending your questions via email directly to Ms. Stephanie Leonard ([email protected]) by June 5th, at the latest. Please note that all votes must be sent in by proxy as on-line voting will not be available. AGENDA 11 a.m.: Opening of the meeting by Mr. Jocelyn Proteau, Chairman and Trustee. 11:15 a.m..: Michel Leonard, President & CEO, to discuss the performance and results of the REIT for the year ended December 31st, 2019 and Benoit Cyr, CFO to discuss the financial results for the same period. 12 p.m.: Michel Leonard and Benoit Cyr to provide an update on Q1 2020 and the impacts of COVID-19. 12:15 p.m.: Adjournment of the meeting by Mr. Jocelyn Proteau and final remarks. 12:30 p.m.: Question and answer period. The question and answer period will be open for approximately an hour following the adjournment of the Meeting. 1:15 p.m.: All lines to be disconnected. Please note that this is an approximate agenda and time slots may be elongated or shortened. INSTRUCTIONS FOR ATTENDING THE TELECONFERENCE







DATE: Monday, June 8th, 2020



TIME : 11 am, EST



DIAL : Toronto & Local: 1-416-764-8688

North America (toll free) : 1-888-390-0546



AUDIO &

PRESENTATION LINK:

https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1312529&tp_key=0d28c107ff

The webcast link may also be found on BTB's website at www.btbreit.com, investor relations, annual meeting presentations. PLAYBACK : From June 8th, 2020 at 1 pm, to 11:59 pm on June 15th, 2020 by dialing:





1-416-764-8688 (local) or 1-888-390-0546 (toll free) and by dialing the following reference number : 148114 # Conference call operators will coordinate the question and answer period and will instruct participants regarding the procedures during the call. ABOUT BTB BTB is a real estate investment trust listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. BTB is an important owner of properties in eastern Canada. As at May 8th, 2020, BTB owns 65 retail, office and industrial properties for a total leasable area of approximately 5.4 million square feet and an approximate total asset value of approximately of $900M. BTB'S OBJECTIVES Generate stable monthly cash distributions that are reliable and fiscally beneficial to unitholders; Grow the Trust's assets through internal growth and accretive acquisitions in order to increase distributable income and therefore refund distributions; Optimize the value of its assets through the dynamic management of its properties in order to maximize the long-term value of its properties and therefore, its units. BTB offers a distribution reinvestment plan to unitholders whereby the participants may elect to have their monthly cash distribution reinvested in additional units of BTB at a price based on the weighted average price for BTB's Units on the Toronto Stock Exchange for the five trading days immediately preceding the distribution date, discounted by 3%. For more detailed information, visit BTB's website at www.btbreit.com. SOURCE BTB Real Estate Investment Trust

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NEW HAVEN  U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told 3rd District residents that the country needs to increase testing for COVID-19 by five times the current rate.

Murphy said once the economy starts to open up we need to be able to identify hotspots.

Murphy joined U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3. in a telephone town hall to answer questions and explain what further assistance Congress plans to approve to meet the twin crises facing the world: an economic depression and a pandemic that has claimed 73,297 lives in the U.S. and 270,000 worldwide.

In Connecticut, a total of 116,174 people have been tested for the virus since the pandemic was identified. The state has 31,784 positive cases, with 2,797 succumbing to the respiratory illness.

Dr. Albert Ko, co-chairman of Gov. Ned Lamonts task force on reopening the economy, this week said once the state can conduct 42,000 tests a week later in May, it should extend testing to asymptomatic residents, as well as those showing signs of illness.

This is a moment we hope we never have to live through again, Murphy said of the pandemic and the shortages of equipment to deal with it.

The senator talked about his bill, that has 44 co-signers, that would put the federal government temporarily in charge of the supply chain for testing.

He said the current situation is kind of like Lord of the Flies out there. Every state and every hospital is trying to gobble up as many testing machines as they can and it is just not efficient. Oversight of the supply chain is included in the next economic package.

Murphy said the Trump administration has the legal ability to take control of the supply chain but it has not, throwing the issue to Congress which has had to fill the vacuum that has been created by a lack of leadership.

The second big thing on his agenda is making sure the school districts have enough resources so if they do reopen in the fall we can catch students up. The senator is particularly worried about children with special needs.

After visiting nurses in a COVID-19 only nursing home last week, Murphy said our healthcare providers are just unbelievable heroes.

We have to find a way to support them, he said and that could be the Heroes Fund, a little extra payment to hospital workers, cafeteria workers, folks who have to show up every day during this crisis and have put themselves and their families at risk.

DeLauro, one of the senior most members of the Appropriations Committee, is the chairwoman of the subcommittee that writes the budget for the health care agencies and the public schools.

Connecticut has a little bit extra advantage by having Rosa in the negotiating room right now, Murphy said.

Reflecting on children being out of school and learning at home, the congresswoman said there never has been more appreciation for teachers nationwide as there is now.

The long-serving representative said the goal is to get Connecticut to the dawn of recovery.

DeLauro said there is uniform understanding in the Congress as to what the need is, she said of the bipartisan funding that has been approved for businesses, hospitals and the unemployed.

She said the second bill passed has $25 billion for testing and improving diagnostics.

The third bill, DeLauro said, will look at some things that were left on the table, such as paid sick days, paid family leave, expanded child tax credits, a national plan to coordinate food distribution and an expansion of the food stamp program.

She said the big focus also will be on helping state and local governments that have been hit hard with dropping revenues as residents continue to lose their jobs and increasing expenses due to the pandemic that are likely to lead to layoffs in government and the schools.

The congresswoman said she recently had a very sobering conversation with a Federal Emergency Management Agency official who told her the United States produces less than 10 percent of personnel protective equipment needed by healthcare workers and first responders. Of that small amount, 20 percent goes to FEMA and the rest to the private market, which is what caused the scramble between hospitals and states.

There is no economic recovery unless we can beat the virus, DeLauro said.

She wants to see funds for dislocated workers and for vocational schools in the next financial package to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.

The first questioner wanted to know why his wife, who is a nurse in a nursing home, has to take vacation days or her sick leave if she is diagnosed with COVID-19. The congresswoman said she will continue to fight for paid sick leave, family leave and medical leave. She said House and Senate member have these benefits.

Everybody in the country should have that opportunity, she said.

Murphy said they have asked for a $25,000 payment for every person who has been on the frontlines.

Now that is a lot of money and it is a lot of people, but we think that it shouldnt just be on the employee to have to use their own sick time or their own personal time to deal with a diagnosis that they got because they were asked to put themselves in harms way, he said.

You have to find a way for that extra compensation, he said.

Another speaker asked about the Postal Service and if it were true that there would not be enough money to make payroll in September.

Murphy said it was unbelievable that we are actively spending hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue businesses appropriately ... but the one business that the federal government is in charge of, the Postal Service, is willing to let die.

The senator said if the Postal Service were to go away, the private sector would not fill all their routes, referring to rural sections of the state, and if they did , it would be at a premium price.

It is imperative to save the post office. It would be a disaster if we let them disappear. The agenda here is pretty simple, Folks want the Postal Service to disappear because there is a bunch of for-profit vultures who are ready to come in and gobble it up and turn the the Postal Service into a giant profit-making machine and we will all pay for that, Murphy said.

DeLauro agreed and said they will continue to put funds in the House bill to make that fight once again.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577.
The inside of an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, on December 2.

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Tim Bray announced on Monday that he quit his job as a vice president at Amazon because of the company's firing of employees who raised concerns about safety in warehouses amid the spread of COVID-19.

One of his former colleagues, Brad Porter, a vice president and engineer at Amazon, responded to Bray's criticism, calling it "deeply offensive to the core."

Porter rebutted some of Bray's criticism but did not address Amazon's firing of employees who raised concerns  the main reason for Bray's departure  saying "you can't entirely eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After former Amazon Vice President Tim Bray announced on Monday that he quit his job over the company's firing of employees who raised concerns about conditions in the company's warehouses, one of Bray's former colleagues publicly responded to the criticism, calling Bray's comments "deeply offensive to the core."

Bray, a longtime engineer at Amazon, said in a blog post that he "quit in dismay" over the "chickens---" firing of employees who had spoken out about the company's handling of the coronavirus pandemic in its warehouses. Bray said, "Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential."

Brad Porter, a vice president and engineer at the company, said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday that Bray "is simply wrong" and "nothing could be farther from the truth."

Porter disputed Bray's comments that Amazon has been slow to respond, writing in his post on Tuesday, "I believe a strong case can be made that Amazon has responded more nimbly to this crisis than any other company in the world."

He said the company was "like an ant farm that can adapt extremely quickly" and touted the company's social-distancing processes, adding that Amazon is "developing mobile ultraviolet sanitation."

Story continues

But Bray's departure from the company revolves mostly around its firing of employees who raised concerns, which Porter addressed by saying "you can't entirely eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share."

The employees said Amazon had not taken proper safety precautions. Some workers who had organized or participated in walkouts were fired, though Amazon said they were dismissed over policy violations. At least one Amazon warehouse employee has died because of the coronavirus.

Amazon previously told Business Insider that the company has taken various steps to protect workers at its facilities, such as more frequent cleanings and altered training processes.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said last month that the firing of an employee at a Staten Island facility could have violated labor laws, and she has called on labor watchdogs to open an investigation.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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Good Morning America

The reality is far worse than even parents may realize, according to Danielle Christian, a high school guidance counselor in Paris, Texas. "If youre not currently working in the world of education, theres no way that you can understand what is going on in schools right now," Christian wrote in now-viral Facebook post. Christian, also the mom of a second-grade student, told "Good Morning America" she has worked in education for 13 years and has never seen anything like what teachers, administrators and students are going through now amid the pandemic -- from facing school closures over the past two years to learning loss, experiencing mental health struggles and needing absences due to quarantine and illness.
Although parts of Texas are beginning to open businesses, allowing some residents to resume working, the food demand during the COVID-19 pandemic has remained high. The Houston Food Bank is partnering with Klein ISD with the goal of serving 4,000 households weekly in the area for the foreseeable future.

Beginning May 8, Klein Collins High School will be a Neighborhood Super Site for drive-thru food distribution for the Houston Food Bank from 4-8 p.m. every Friday according to a press release from the food bank.

MORE FROM CHEVALL PRYCE: Houston area entrepreneur brings live music to windows of assisted living residents

Nicole Landing with the Houston Food Bank said the goal of the distribution is to serve 4,000 households a week. Each vehicle will receive up to 80 pounds of meat, dairy, bread and non-perishable items. Volunteers will distribute the food by putting it in the trunk of each recipients car, as the distribution will be handled with a contactless, drive-thru model in the parking lot of Klein Collins High School.

We saw a need to serve in that community based on some mapping that weve been using and so Klein ISD, really the superintendent and the chief of police there, have been very agreeable to open up their property for us to use, Landing said. Right now, we are committed to serving Fridays at that location for the foreseeable future. Should something change well make sure to get information out but now were committed Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m. as long as we can.

Klein ISD Police Department will aid with the distribution, as well as the National Guard. Landing said the Houston Food Bank is opening the event to the community surrounding Klein ISD, encouraging volunteers to aid in the distribution.

'LIFE OR DEATH IMPACT': Katy man who recovered from COVID-19 now donating plasma to patients

Shifts are posted to the Houston Food Bank website this time and thats unique for that service location, she said.

Houston Food Bank is currently searching for more locations in the northwest Houston area to distribute food without causing traffic to become more difficult than usual.

Our challenge is, as the state opens, finding locations that dont disrupt business owners in the area, but also meet the needs of the community, Landing said. Our hope is that more of our traditional partners, pantries and meal sites, will continue to open up over the next several weeks but most of the partners that we work with have an elderly population and safety is our greatest concern.

MORNING REPORT: Get the top stories on HoustonChronicle.com sent directly to your inbox

The Houston Food Bank has also been hosting a Mega Food Distribution event every Wednesday with the help of Cy-Hope volunteers. The Mega Food Distribution, which was previously held in the Cypress area, is relocating the event to the Eco Park n Ride at Bush Intercontinental Airport, 2800 N Terminal Road, Houston, for May 13 from 2 p.m. until food is no longer available, according to Landing and Lynda Zelenka, Cy-Hope executive director.

For more information on Houston Food Bank and how to donate or volunteer, visit www.houstonfoodbank.org/ .

chevall.pryce@chron.com
From the apple, cherry, and pear orchards in Washington to the vineyards and strawberry fields in Californias Central Valley, to the Midwest Corn Belt, the tobacco farms in North Carolina and the Florida citrus groves, the three million farmworkers who produce the lions share of the nations food, the majority of whom are undocumented migrants, exist on the edge of society.

It is of no surprise these agricultural laborers have been officially declared essential workers, however the COVID-19 pandemic is yet another great burden thrown onto the shoulders of the most vulnerable and poorest workers in the United States.

Employed by agricultural and dairy farms they perform backbreaking labor in hazardous conditions for poverty wagesan average of just $12.59 per houror make their wage by the barbaric piece rate system that discourages even the most basic health precautions such as regular handwashing, assuming such stations even exist.

Migrant workers harvest corn on Uesugi Farms in Gilroy, CA (U.S. Department of Agriculture)

Farmworkers lack access to basic medical care and suffer from significantly higher rates of diabetes, hypertension and health conditions such as heart disease and environmental cancers due to long exposure to pesticides. Hundreds die annually from sun and heat exposure, the leading cause of death in the industry.

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States are subject daily to extreme heat and often lack access to clean drinking water. There are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the US who forgo education to work alongside their parents in the fields helping them to boost their piece rate.

While real numbers do not exist, the advocacy group Farmworker Justice estimates that 70 percent or more of the workforce are undocumented and just ten percent fall under the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program. An agricultural worker with no documentation earns an average of 15 percent less than his H-2A or documented counterpart.

Large farms rely on new immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and South East Asia to work for extremely low wages. They live in cramped, unsanitary and inhuman conditions, including sleeping on bare bunks, or moldy mattresses on floors. Their quarters have poor ventilation, leaky roofs, hazardous wiring, ill maintained plumbing and showers, infestations of rodents, flies, mosquitoes and inadequate facilities for washing. They live in isolated areas far away from health clinics, grocery stores, and public transportation, and are often forced to pay exorbitant rates for rent.

The average life expectancy of a farm worker is a mere forty-nine years, equivalent to the average life expectancy in the US in the year 1900. For the year 2017, the fatality rate due to work related injury was 20.4 deaths per 100,000 farmworkers.

Farm work is an industry of abject poverty and debt, racism and sexual harassment, long hours of stoop labor in the fields, abuse from bosses, and the denial of basic labor and human rights protections.

In such cruel conditions, it is impossible to imagine that any genuine care could be provided to prevent the spread of the coronavirus from a ruling state that has carved out such an inhuman existence for this underclass of laborers and is doing little to protect the working class as whole as it pushed to reopen the US economy.

Earlier this month, California governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to provide an additional 80-hours of sick pay for farmworkers, stating I want you to know youre not disposable, you are essential, and youre valued...And I want from the bottom of my heart to extend my deep admiration and appreciation to you.

Newsoms words could not ring hollower as there have been no emergency rules put in place to protect agricultural workers from potential outbreaks of COVID-19 in labor camps this harvest season.

Crowded truck beds and buses carry them to the fields. While some farmworkers are able to spread out in fields, social distancing is difficult or impossible to maintain with farm equipment for planting or harvesting that requires large groups to labor in close proximity. The advocacy group Farmworker Justice estimates that one-third of farmworkers live in houses and apartments where multiple families share the same household.

The Trump administrations recent plan to spend $19 billion to address the impacts of COVID-19 on agriculture will do nothing to help farmworkers. Analysis of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that in the 100 counties with the most farmworkers, more than $590 million in recent trade bailout payments were sent, with no requirement that any of those funds be used to improve the conditions of farmworkers.

Thousands of cases and deaths from COVID-19 are reported in counties with large populations of farmworkers, according to EWG. Yet, farmworkers still face a gross lack of personal protection equipment from their employers such as masks and gloves let alone any real measures for supporting housing and transportation options that will reduce the spread of the virus.

Oneida, New York has become a hotspot of the virus in recent days. Oneida County officials say that 64 of the new positive cases in the county are related to workers at Green Hills Farm. In total, of the 300 employees at the farm, 139 have tested positive for COVID-19.

Monterey County in Salinas, California, a major lettuce producer, is referred to as the Salad Bowl of the World. The county had 185 confirmed cases as of April 28, many of which were connected to the local farms. An employee at Tanimura & Antle, one of the largest lettuce companies, reported testing COVID-19 positive on April 22.

On top of the immediate threat to workers lives exacerbated by their poor health and living conditions, the White House is working to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms. This cruel attack on farmworkers is being touted as a measure to help struggling farmers in the US amid disruptions in the agricultural supply chain compounded by the outbreak.

In Florida, tractors are driving through bean and cabbage fields, plowing ripe vegetables back into the soil as Idaho farmers are burying millions of pounds of onions in ditches. Farmers in Wisconsin and Ohio are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits.

Lowering the minimum wage laws for workers with migrant visas will cut wages by about $2-$5 dollars an hour. In North Carolina, for example, this change would result in an hourly wage of $4 an hour for farmworkers.

The loss of income affects not only these workers and their immediate families but also their family members who receive billions of dollars in remittances every year. Some 1.6 million households in Mexico depend on remittances from migrants in the United States as their most important source of income. The World Bank reported that migrant workers around the world sent some $689 billion in global remittances in 2018.

Washington is touting the effort to slash farmworker pay as wage relief to US farm owners but the real aim is drive down wages for the entire working class, and where better to start than among the undocumented. Prior to the pandemic thousands of farms across the country were struggling to keep from going bankrupt, with a growing number of small family farms going out of business every month. The US Department of Agriculture had stated in February, prior to the onset of the pandemic, that it expected farm debt to rise to a record $425 billion by the end of 2020.

The US State Department has also announced that it will begin processing more H-2A temporary guest worker visas to ensure US farmers have foreign workers in time for spring planting. These guest workers hold a limited, nonimmigrant, temporary work visa and in order to remain in the US they must keep their jobs and employers satisfied to return the following season.

Guest workers are also legally prevented from ever demanding a pay increase. H-2A program allows employers to reject any job applicant who demands a wage rate higher than the rate approved by the government also known as the adverse effect wage rates which are based on a USDA survey of what agricultural workers are paid in each state. This rate is $11.71 per hour in Florida, $12.67 in North Carolina and $14.77 in California. A citizen or legal resident who demands a higher wage rate can be rejected or fired as unavailable for the job and replaced by a guest worker.

Every aspect of the industry and punishing visa laws are constructed to keep wages as low as possible and hold the threat of deportation over the heads of both the documented and undocumented.

United Farm Workers (UFW) President Teresa Romero stated her support for the sick leave temporarily mandated by Newsom, stating that Farm worker families and the families of farmers work, play, shop and worship together.

Protecting these small, tight knit communities is vital to the protection of our food supply, Romero declared. However, the UFW takes zero responsibility for the inhumane conditions farmworkers must endure and in its sixty years of existence has been complicit in allowing the abject squalor of farmworkers to endure unchanged.

The Trump administration is now using the very desperate situation faced by farmers as a battering ram to slash wages and working conditions even further. Trumps executive order utilizing the Defense Production Act forcing meat processing plants with outbreaks of COVID-19 to remain open is also by design aimed at compelling a workforce which is at least 30 percent immigrant to labor under inhuman conditions.

Farming, dairy and meat processing plants which have large numbers of immigrant and undocumented workforces have been at the center of the largest mass immigration raids by Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE) in recent years.

Immigrants continue to be at the forefront of the attacks on democratic rights in the United States. US citizens married to undocumented immigrants have punitively been denied stimulus checks that they would otherwise be entitled to under the CARES package to support themselves and their children. Forcing the meatpacking industry back to work amid major outbreaks while doing nothing to prevent the spread of the disease among agricultural industries are only glimpses of what is in store for the working class more generally.
Age-defying Sofia Vergara has baffled her fans by sharing a throwback snap from the 90s.

The Modern Family actress, 47, posted a sizzling picture of herself modelling a skimpy black bikini on Thursday, revealing it was taken over 20 years ago in Miami.

The star's followers were stunned by the image, lavishing her with praise and even claiming she looks much younger now.

What a woman! Age-defying Sofia Vergara baffled her fans by sharing a throwback snap from the 90s on Thursday

Sofia looked incredible in the old picture, showing off her toned figure as she modelled a black two-piece.

Her hair was styled in loose, honey coloured waves and she sported a full face of make-up, including strong brows and white eyeshadow.

The star's fans were amazed at the comparison, with one sharing, 'Ha! Ha! You looked older then. Was it the white highlighter on the upper eyelid? I think you look so much younger now.'

From then... to now: The star's followers were stunned by the image, lavishing her with praise and even claiming she looks much younger now

Amazed: The star's fans were amazed at the comparison, with one sharing, 'I think you look so much younger now'

Another posted: 'Don't be mad at me but I think you look more gorgeous now...'

Others were delighted with the snap, telling her she was 'always beautiful'.

Sofia recently shared a striking throwback snap with her lookalike niece, Claudia, 27.

The pair were indistinguishable as they posed with their backs to the camera in tiny black bikinis.

Twinning: Sofia recently shared a striking throwback snap with her lookalike niece, Claudia, 27

Lookalikes: The Colombian-American beauties both joked at their striking similarity, with Sofia quipping, 'Old model from '72 and new model from '92 #alwaystwinning'

The Colombian-American beautieslooked out over a balcony at Sofia's Beverly Hills home, where she has been isolating with husband Joe Manganiello.

Sofia captioned the snap: 'Old model from '72 and new model from '92 #alwaystwinning'.

Claudia also shared the shot, as she joked: 'Same same, but different. Which is which?'

Seeing double: Sofia is very close with her family (L-R) Sofia's son Manolo, 27, niece Claudia and her husband Joe Manganiello, 43

Sofia, who recently finished a long run on ABC's hit comedy series Modern Family, also posed in a patterned string bikini during lockdown.

Joe and Sofia have been practicing social distancing since California's coronavirus lockdown began at her elegant Beverly Hills mansion, which she purchased in 2014 for $10.6 million.

The couple got engaged on Christmas Day of that year, and the pair were married in November 2015 in Palm Beach, Florida.
I was very aware of writing about planetary questions but also of being more personal. I dissolved the boundaries that usually exist between myself and my writing, says Bradley via Zoom from his home in Sydneys inner west. Death hovered over the three years it took to write the novel  first with the loss of his father, then his British agent, and his friend and fellow novelist, Georgia Blain, all in a short period of time. It has given me a sense of urgency, he says. I wrote this one fast, tackling the big questions while being smack in the middle of midlife, having kids  but Im better at dropping my guard now. Good work comes from putting yourself at risk. It was, however, unnerving and unsettling to have the sense that real events were constantly outpacing what I could imagine and that the kind of catastrophe Im exploring was already unfolding around me as I wrote. I wanted to capture the sense that our society is being haunted by its imminent collapse. Ghost Species uses current galloping rates of extinction as a springboard for an audacious idea: what if a billionaire character  a composite of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk  funded a radical scientific program to repopulate the planet with species that had long disappeared and then took the idea one dangerous, and morally dubious step further, into the human realm, by creating a modern-day Neanderthal?

Writing the character of Davis, the casual but charismatic billionaire with little regard for ethics, allows Bradley to highlight another aspect of our current predicament. His plan is messianic and self-serving," he says. "Weve created these plutocrats and failed to constrain their grotesque accumulation of wealth. "Every one of these mega-rich individuals represents a policy failure. We describe these people as brilliant, but thats not the case, its that the regulatory environment is hopeless. But we keep seeing these industrialists as saviours. "We are now realising that disruptive technologies that are part of the gig economy result in insecure, badly paid work and wealth that shifts up the chain. Davis secret laboratory facility is deep in the Tasmanian wilderness. The location was a no-brainer. Its where people think of when they think of fleeing, like New Zealand, and it has powerful existing associations with extinction that I wanted to conjure up, plus I wanted to draw on its symbolism of colonial heedlessness, he says, referring to the fate of the Tasmanian tiger.

It spoils nothing of the books plot to reveal that early on, Davis has succeeded in bringing them back, thereby enticing two talented geneticists, Jay and Kate, to join his top-secret venture. De-extinction, which scientists have been experimenting with for some time, might offer hope to some that we can replace what we have destroyed, but Bradley says it focuses our attention in the wrong way by imagining that we can bring things back. Species are not just biological but social and cultural. Its not just about DNA, its about a way of being. 'We should use the other side of this to make the world fairer.' "Our hubris means that we mistake our technical capacity for a solution. This brings us to Eve, the Neanderthal creature at the heart of Ghost Species.

She is us and not us, says Bradley. We know they lived in communities and yet they were other. Humans can live in enormous societies but we know that if we put 300 chimps together on a plane, they would kill each other. "So I wanted to convey the fact that she shares some of our characteristics, but remains fundamentally different. We might be baffling to her in our behaviour  the way we lie and cheat. I am asking a lot of questions that it is frightening to ask and that makes me feel protective of Eve. The novels plot centres on Eve and Kate, who steals her from Davis facility, giving the novel an on-the-run, fugitive momentum and tension that would make it good material for a film adaptation. Bradley, who lives with novelist and playwright Mardi McConnochie, laughs at the idea. I have worked on screen stuff, and it helps with pace, but that never occurred to me. Its more about language, about creating a mood and feel, using rhythm, emotion and ideas. Bradley is unapologetic in describing the book as unconsoling".

"We are on track for disaster. There are things we could do to save the world from its destiny, but where on that spectrum will we fall? There are layers and layers of denial. Despair is not an option but things are going to get worse before they get better. He feels this keenly as the father of two daughters, aged 10 and 14, whom he describes as concerned". "I am frightened for them but need to believe the world can be better, despite the bleak rational assessment. Its overwhelming to imagine our own negation, even for me, he concedes, as someone who has been reading commentators such as George Monbiot, Robert McFarlane and Naomi Klein for long enough to know that there needs to be a global resetting of priorities. Loading He is not surprised by the human capacity of exceptionalism, the tendency to believe that the rules apply to everyone else. I didnt feel rage when I saw the people who congregated a few weeks ago on Bondi Beach  it didnt surprise me. What matters is that the cost of keeping the disease under control isnt borne unequally and that we make sure vulnerable and poorer people dont suffer.
Paris, France, May 7 2020  Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces one of the world's largest digital workplace deployments. Digital Experience Management has been rolled out together with Siemens IT to 300,000 employees in 111 countries, who are benefiting from major improvements in their digital workplace transformation, utilizing data and enhancing their experience. The companies have worked together as close strategic partners handling project and service delivery. As a result of this now enhanced endpoint eco-system, Siemens employees' satisfaction and measured productivity with their working environment continues to rise.

Improving digital user journeys with automation based on pattern recognition

This new workplace solution applies a data-driven approach for measuring, delivering and improving user journeys and the daily experience of users through the information on employee engagement, based on collected data and actual feedback. Problem patterns and weaknesses in the daily work-routines are automatically identified and proactive countermeasures with self-healing mechanisms triggered.

A key driver of these changes has been the partnership between Atos and Nexthink, the world leader in digital user experience management software, which brings its expertise in real-time analytics and automation. In partnership with Siemens, the three companies are now taking automation to a new level driving the digital transformation.

Employees are the key to success

The Incubator (business developer) for this new solution, business psychologist Wendelin Zopfl at Siemens' Digitalization Enablement Center, points out, People are the key asset in our company, empowering them in an enhanced digital environment is key to the success of Siemens. The focus is to deliver best in class quality and new digital experiences to the workforce, not just technology wise, but also supporting the personal evolvement and needs of our employees.

Story continues

The new Siemens CIO, Hanna Hennig and Markus Holzheimer, Head of Global IT Infrastructure, consider that the mission is on track: "Atos has not simply offered us a toolset perfectly in line with our activities around becoming a data-driven enterprise. Optimizing the use of technology in a sustainable and efficient way, combined with transforming the employee experience is an essential building block for a digital company, where most cannot yet fathom which potentials lay ahead in adopting this digital way forward.

Through the Nexthink partnership and our investment in establishing world class expertise in data-driven, automated and proactive end user support, we are able to bring a step change to employee experiences for Siemens and other customers. adds Jo Debecker, Executive Vice President and Head of Infrastructure & Data Management at Atos.

Pedro Bados, CEO and co-founder of Nexthink, sees further potential: The partnership with Atos, one of the most innovative consulting companies in end-user computing, validates Nexthink technology as the most powerful platform to improve digital workplaces for millions of local and remote workers around the world. We see all leading organizations, like Siemens and Atos, are now prioritizing the experience of employees as part of their digital transformation plans.

Atos - a Leader in Managed Workplace Services

Atos is recognized as a global leader in Managed Workplace Services and has a team of 15,000 Workplace experts worldwide. In March 2020, it was positioned as a Leader by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant for Managed Workplace Services for both Europe and North America.

***

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation and in Managed Workplace Services with 110,000 employees, including 15,000 workplace experts, in 73 countries and annual revenue of  12 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions, where workplace solutions are positioned as a Leader by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant for Managed Workplace Services for both Europe and North America earlier in 2020.

In the UK & Ireland Atos delivers business technology solutions for some of the countrys largest public and private sector organisations The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos|Syntel, and Unify. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Press contact: Laura Fau | laura.fau@atos.net | +33 6 73 64 04 18 | @laurajanefau



About Nexthink

Nexthink is the global leader in digital employee experience management. The companys products allow enterprises to create highly productive digital workplaces for their employees by delivering optimal end-user experiences. Through a unique combination of real-time analytics, automation and employee feedback across all endpoints, Nexthink helps IT teams meet the needs of the modern digital workplace. www.nexthink.com

Press contact: press@nexthink.com



Attachment
W ith the Bank Holiday falling on May 8 this year to celebrate VE day, many supermarkets are operating slightly different operating hours.

When you bear in mind ongoing coronavirus lockdown measures and social distancing rules, you might want to plan ahead to make sure you have everything your household needs before the long weekend.

Heres what you need to now

What is VE Day?

May 8 marks the 75th anniversary of the Victory in Europe Day, when Germany officially surrendered to the Allies after World War 2 in 1945.

What are Asdas opening and closing hours for May 8?

The supermarket has reduced its opening hours temporarily from 8am to 10pm from Monday to Saturday to make sure staff have time to restock shelves and clean each branch before doors open to customers.

On the May 8 Bank Holiday, Asda will close at 8pm. Find your nearest Asda through its store locator.

How to shop in-store

Where possible one adult should shop for their entire household alone with one trolley to help observe social distancing measures.

Expect spaced out queues outside Asda supermarkets - luckily Fridays weather looks good for London with highs of 25 degrees.

Do key workers and the elderly have special shopping hours?

Asda has asked the public to help them support NHS staff, Care Home Workers and Carers by not shopping before 9am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The company will be prioritising key workers for a browsing hour from 8am - 9am, so that they can shop for the essentials they need ahead of the general public.

Key workers and carers may need to show I.D for priority shopping.
Ontario is trying to water down guidelines that give health-care workers in long-term care homes access to N95 masks, the union representing them said Friday, while the health minister said the province is grappling with a limited supply of the gear.

The province asked the Canadian Union of Public Employees to begin discussions about removing that access from the provincial rules because it believed the masks werent necessary in every setting in the facilities, the union said.

Ontario is also seeking to control use of the masks, which Health Minister Christine Elliott acknowledged Friday are in short supply.

The N95 masks block aerosolized virus particles and offer better protection than surgical masks currently in use, said Candace Rennick, the unions secretary-treasurer and a former personal support worker.

We woke up (Thursday) morning to one of our members who has just died of COVID on the front line, and you want to talk to us about watering down what we consider already weak protections for the front line, Rennick said. Its a bit offensive.

More than 1,700 workers in the provinces long-term care homes have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least four have died from the illness, according to provincial data.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, Torontos medical officer of health, said Friday a personal support worker in that city died on Wednesday from COVID-19.

CUPE, which represents 35,000 long-term care workers, said the latest fatality was a personal support worker in Orleans, Ont., who died from the virus earlier this week.

Rennick said the government needs to rethink its personal protective gear strategy in the homes because of the rising rate of infection among residents and staff. The province should secure more N95 masks and make them widely available to all staff in the facilities, she said.

If the surgical masks are so great and everybodys wearing them, then why do we have this wildfire spread? she said.

The union also said the N95 masks are not widely available to workers despite the current provincial rule.

Theyre being told No, no, you dont really need that, said Rennick. People say they have masks at their facility, but theyre somewhere in the facility under lock and key. They are not readily available.

Elliott said the government is talking with long-term care home operators about ensuring workers are given N95 masks. If workers want the gear they should be getting it, she said.

But Elliott also said the province is talking with the unions about the use of N95s because of the limited supply.

We had conversations with them yesterday, Elliott said. They certainly understand that there are limits to the number of N95 masks were able to procure right now because there is a global interest in acquiring them.

Elliott said the government has also talked to the unions about the potential to reuse N95 masks if they can be properly disinfected.

We are forwarding (the unions) concerns to the chief medical officer of health for his consideration, but we absolutely want our front-line care workers to have the protection that they need, she said.

In spite of Elliotts comments, moments later Premier Doug Ford said its unacceptable that long-term care workers are not getting the personal protective equipment (PPE) they require.

Weve sent out numerous letters, and its so frustrating hearing that the front-line people are having problems getting the PPE, Ford said. What I recommend  just call. Call my office. Call anyone. Well have it over there.

Liberal House Leader John Fraser said Fords comments dont reflect the reality experienced by many front-line workers and its clear the province has a serious supply shortage of N95 masks. He called on the province to clearly communicate the supply situation.

Its not good enough to say call my office and Ill get you the N95s, Fraser said. Its not that simple. Its not the experience on the ground.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the government needs to provide proper protection to workers and residents in long-term care facilities.

This has been an ongoing problem here in Ontario and that responsibility lies with (Premier Doug) Ford, she said.

Ontario reported 477 new cases of COVID-19 Friday, and 63 more deaths.

That brings the total number of cases to 19,598, an increase of 2.5 per cent over the previous day. Any decrease in growth rates appears to have stalled, with numbers jumping between 2.1 and 3.0 per cent this week. The total includes 1,540 deaths and 13,990 resolved cases.

The chief medical officer of health is looking for a consistent, two- to four-week decrease in the number of new cases before advising the province to move to its first stage of reopening the economy.

Elliott said that the numbers are more or less what provincial officials expected, that a gradual reduction in new cases would come with some spikes.

The government said it would provide more details soon on what the stages of reopening will entail.

Ford also mused Friday about easing restrictions for amateur golfers and tennis players, saying he was being lobbied hard by friends who golf, and noting that people can physically distance while playing those sports.

The premier faced some criticism Friday for visiting his cottage on Easter Sunday  days after urging Ontarians to stay home.

Ford said he drove up in his pickup truck by himself early in the morning just to check on the property.

On Sunday morning of Easter my team told me I got the morning off and it was the first time I got off in, I dont know, two months and it was weighing on me because a couple of years ago we had burst pipes, made a terrible mess, thousands of dollars of damage, he said.

The trip came days after Ford said at a news conference that he wouldnt be travelling to his cottage that weekend.
Hydro One's strong foundation and stable financials enable company to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 while continuing to energize life for Ontarians

TORONTO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Hydro One Limited (Hydro One or the Company) today announced its financial and operating results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020.

First Quarter Highlights

First quarter earnings per share (EPS) was $0.38 and adjusted EPS was $0.38 , compared to $0.29 and $0.52 , respectively, for the same period in 2019.

and adjusted EPS was , compared to and , respectively, for the same period in 2019. Hydro One implemented several safety measures and operational changes to ensure employee and customer safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hydro One took steps to assist customers affected by COVID-19 including: creating a Pandemic Relief Fund, extending its Winter Relief program, suspending late fees for all customers, and returning approximately $5 million in security deposits to eligible business customers.

in security deposits to eligible business customers. A significant driver of the year-over-year decrease in adjusted quarterly EPS was the retroactive 2018 rate increase recorded in 2019 following the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) decision on the distribution rate application.

The Company received a regulatory decision regarding its 2020-2022 transmission rate application from the OEB.

The Company received the approval of the OEB to proceed with the Orillia Power Distribution Corporation and Peterborough Distribution Inc. acquisitions.

Demonstrating its financial stability and flexibility, Hydro One Inc. successfully issued $1.1 billion of long-term debt at competitive rates.

of long-term debt at competitive rates. Ongoing productivity savings of approximately $45 million represent a 29.9% increase year-over-year compared to the first quarter of 2019.

represent a 29.9% increase year-over-year compared to the first quarter of 2019. Improved reliability in the transmission segment with an approximate 31% reduction in System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) in comparison to the first quarter of 2019.

Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation Inc. launched the Ivy Charging Network, a new partnership that will create Ontario's largest and most connected electric vehicle fast-charger network.

largest and most connected electric vehicle fast-charger network. Quarterly dividend declared at $0.2536 per share, payable June 30, 2020 .

"Ontarians are counting on us now more than ever as we collectively fight the COVID-19 pandemic. As an essential service, we recognize the critical role we have in energizing life for families, businesses and communities," said Mark Poweska, President and CEO, Hydro One. "Building on our strong foundation, stable financials and focus on operational excellence, we will continue to meet the needs of our customers and communities now and into the future."

Selected Consolidated Financial and Operating Highlights





Three months ended March 31 (amounts throughout in millions of Canadian dollars, except as otherwise noted) 2020 2019 Revenues $ 1,850 $ 1,759 Purchased power 1,007 807 Revenues, net of purchased power1 843 952 Net income (loss) attributable to common shareholders 225 171 Costs related to acquisition of Avista, after tax  140 Adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders1 225 311 Basic EPS $0.38 $0.29 Diluted EPS $0.38 $0.29 Basic Adjusted EPS1 $0.38 $0.52 Diluted Adjusted EPS1 $0.38 $0.52 Net cash from operating activities 548 118 Capital investments 372 311 Assets placed in-service 225 145 Transmission: Average monthly Ontario 60-minute peak demand (MW) 19,247 20,763 Distribution: Electricity distributed to Hydro One customers (GWh) 7,484 7,738 1 Non-GAAP Measures - Hydro One uses financial measures that do not have a standardized meaning under the United States generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP) and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. Hydro One calculated the non-GAAP measures by adjusting certain US GAAP measures for specific items that impact comparability but which the Company does not consider part of normal, ongoing operations. Refer to the Non-GAAP Measures section of the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for further discussion of these items.

Key Financial Highlights

2020 First Quarter Highlights

The Company reported net income attributable to common shareholders of $225 million during the quarter, compared to $171 million in the same period of 2019. This resulted in EPS of $0.38 compared to EPS of $0.29 in the prior year, while adjusted EPS was $0.38 for the quarter compared to $0.52 in 2019.

Revenues, net of purchased power, for the first quarter were lower than last year, primarily due to the 2018 catch-up revenues recognized in the first quarter of 2019 following the OEB decision on Hydro One's distribution rate application and lower transmission revenues primarily due to lower average monthly Ontario 60-minute peak demand driven by less favourable weather.

Lower operation, maintenance and administration (OM&A) costs resulted primarily from the 2019 incurrence of the termination fee related to the proposed acquisition of Avista Corporation (Merger), as well as lower asset write-offs and lower corporate support costs, which were partially offset by higher vegetation management expenditures.

Financing charges were lower year over year as a result of Merger-related financing charges incurred in the prior year, partially offset by an increase in interest expense on long-term debt as a result of increased debt levels largely driven by the debt issuances completed in the second quarter of 2019 and first quarter of 2020.

Income tax expense for the first quarter of 2020 was higher than the prior year, primarily due to an income tax recovery in the prior year associated with Merger-related costs and incremental tax deductions associated with the deferred tax asset sharing recognized in 2019. This was partially offset by lower income before taxes, adjusted for costs related to the Merger, and higher net tax deductions primarily related to accelerated tax depreciation.

Hydro One continues to invest in the reliability and performance of Ontario's electricity transmission and distribution systems, address aging power system infrastructure, facilitate connectivity to new load customers and generation sources, and improve service to customers. The Company made capital investments of $372 million during the first quarter of 2020, and placed $225 million of new assets in-service.

COVID-19

As a result of the spread of the novel strain of the coronavirus disease, widely known as COVID-19, Hydro One invoked its business continuity plan towards the end of the quarter and also elected to scale back certain components of the Company's operating and capital programs. During this period, the Company has been guided by the following two priorities: to protect Hydro One's employees and to maintain the safe and reliable supply of electricity to Hydro One's customers.

Furthermore, as part of its commitment to customers, Hydro One implemented a number of measures including (i) launching a Pandemic Relief Fund to assist customers affected, (ii) offering financial assistance and increased payment flexibility to customers, and (iii) extending its Winter Relief program. Hydro One has also temporarily suspended late fees for all customers, returned $5 million in security deposits to over 4,000 eligible business customers and implemented fixed commodity prices for regulated price plan customers paying Time-of-Use prices, as mandated and funded by the Province of Ontario.

As a result of these measures, Hydro One incurred approximately $5 million of OM&A costs directly attributable to measures taken to help flatten the curve. The impact of COVID-19 on the Company's operations for the balance of 2020 will be dependent on a number of factors, including the duration of the pandemic and severity of measures implemented to combat this virus.

Selected Operating Highlights

On April 23, 2020, subsequent to the quarter end, Hydro One received a decision from the OEB on its 2020-2022 Transmission Rate Application. With this decision, both distribution and transmission are under an incentive rate making framework until the end of 2022.

On April 30, 2020, subsequent to the quarter end, the OEB approved the applications for the acquisitions of Ontario-based utilities Orillia Power Distribution Corporation from the City of Orillia, and the business and distribution assets of Peterborough Distribution Inc., from the City of Peterborough.

In February, Hydro One's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hydro One Inc., raised $1.1 billion of Medium Term Notes consisting of $400 million aggregate principal amount of 1.76% Medium Term Notes, Series 45, due 2025, $400 million aggregate principal amount of 2.16% Medium Term Notes, Series 46, due 2030, and $300 million aggregate principal amount of 2.71% Medium Term Notes, Series 47, due 2050. Hydro One Inc. expects to use the net proceeds of this offering to repay maturing long-term and short-term debt and for general corporate purposes.

Continued productivity savings of $45 million in the first quarter of 2020 represent a 29.9% increase year- over-year. Productivity improvements are a result of ongoing work being undertaken in the areas of supply chain optimization, corporate costs reduction, and fleet optimization.

Improved reliability in the transmission segment with an approximate 31% reduction in SAIDI in comparison to the first quarter of 2019. The decrease was due to less interruptions as well as faster restoration time.

Common Share Dividends

Following the conclusion of the first quarter, on May 7, 2020, the Company declared a quarterly cash dividend to common shareholders of $0.2536 per share to be paid on June 30, 2020 to shareholders of record on June 10, 2020.

Supplemental Segment Information



Three months ended March 31 (millions of dollars) 2020 2019 Revenues



Transmission 400 428 Distribution 1,439 1,321 Other 11 10 Total revenues 1,850 1,759 Revenues, net of purchased power



Transmission 400 428 Distribution 432 514 Other 11 10 Total revenues, net of purchased power 843 952 Operation, maintenance and administration costs



Transmission 102 99 Distribution 148 146 Other 15 171 Total operation, maintenance and administration costs 265 416 Income (loss) before financing charges and taxes



Transmission 186 216 Distribution 186 270 Other (6) (162) Total income before financing charges and taxes 366 324 Capital investments



Transmission 236 206 Distribution 135 103 Other 1 2 Total capital investments 372 311 Assets placed in-service



Transmission 129 54 Distribution 95 88 Other 1 3 Total assets placed in-service 225 145

This press release should be read in conjunction with the Company's first quarter 2020 unaudited consolidated financial statements and MD&A. These financial statements and MD&A together with additional information about Hydro One, including the audited consolidated financial statements and MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2019 can be accessed at www.HydroOne.com/Investors and www.sedar.com.

Quarterly Investment Community Teleconference

The Company's first quarter 2020 results teleconference with the investment community will be held on May 8, 2020 at 8 a.m. ET, a webcast of which will be available at www.HydroOne.com/Investors. Members of the financial community wishing to ask questions during the call should dial 1-866-221-1674 prior to the scheduled start time and request access to Hydro One's first quarter 2020 results call, conference ID 1579538 (international callers may dial 1-270-215-9604). Media and other interested parties are welcome to participate on a listen-only basis. A webcast of the teleconference will be available at the same link following the call. Additionally, investors should note that from time to time Hydro One management presents at brokerage sponsored investor conferences. Most often, but not always, these conferences are webcast by the hosting brokerage firm, and when they are webcast, links are made available on Hydro One's website at www.HydroOne.com/Investors and are posted generally at least two days before the conference.

Hydro One Limited (TSX: H)

Hydro One Limited, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, is Ontario's largest electricity transmission and distribution provider with approximately 1.4 million valued customers, approximately $27.1 billion in assets as at December 31, 2019, and annual revenues in 2019 of approximately $6.5 billion.

Our team of approximately 8,800 skilled and dedicated employees proudly build and maintain a safe and reliable electricity system which is essential to supporting strong and successful communities. In 2019, Hydro One invested approximately $1.7 billion in its transmission and distribution networks and supported the economy through buying approximately $1.5 billion of goods and services.

We are committed to the communities where we live and work through community investment, sustainability and diversity initiatives. We are designated as a Sustainable Electricity Company by the Canadian Electricity Association.

Hydro One Limited's common shares are listed on the TSX and certain of Hydro One Inc.'s medium term notes are listed on the NYSE. Additional information can be accessed at www.hydroone.com ; www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov.

For More Information

For more information about everything Hydro One, please visit www.hydroone.com where you can find additional information including links to securities filings, historical financial reports, and information about the Company's governance practices, corporate social responsibility, customer solutions, and further information about its business.

Forward-Looking Statements and Information

This press release may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such information includes, but is not limited to, statements related to: the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's business, operations and service; the Company's priorities in its response to COVID-19; the Company's transmission and distribution rate applications, including resulting decisions, rates and expected impacts and timing; productivity improvements; Ivy Charging Network; operational excellence; reliability and performance; ongoing and planned investments, projects and initiatives; connections; meeting customer needs and customer service; expectations regarding the Company's financing activities; and dividends. Words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "attempt," "may," "plan," "will", "can", "believe," "seek," "estimate," and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward- looking information. These statements are not guarantees of future performance or actions and involve assumptions and risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking information. Some of the factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from the results expressed, implied or forecasted by such forward-looking information, including some of the assumptions used in making such statements, are discussed more fully in Hydro One's filings with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Hydro One does not intend, and it disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking information, except as required by law.

SOURCE Hydro One Inc.

Related Links

http://www.hydroone.com


Highlights In a letter addressed to Jeff Bezos, nine democratic senators have sought more clarity on Amazons termination policies.

This comes in the backdrop of warehouse workers who got fired for publicly criticising Amazons policies.

The senators in the letter expressed that Amazons public statements regarding violations of internal policies are vague.

Nine Democratic senators have sought reply from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in light of the recent firings of critics from the company, CNBC reported. The company fired four employees who publicly criticised the labour practices of the company.

In a letter addressed to the world's richest man, the nine senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin asked for more clarity on Amazon's policies "regarding grounds for employee discipline and termination."

The letter was first posted by NYT. The employees who were sacked, reportedly, called for greater safety protection for warehouse workers.

The letter posted by the senators' states, "To understand how the termination of employees that raised concerns about health and safety conditions did not constitute retaliation for whistleblowing, we are requesting information about Amazon's policies regarding grounds for employee discipline and termination."

One of the fired employees was Chris Smalls, a warehouse worker who organised a strike at its Staten Island, New York facility. According to Amazon, Smalls was fired because he violated social distancing rules and not for organising the strike, CNBC noted.

Amazon also fired a Minnesota employee, Bashir Mohammad who spoke about the treatment of employees who continued coming to work amidst the pandemic. According to Amazon though, it was a progressive disciplinary action for inappropriate language, behavior, and violating social distancing guidelines.

The other two employees Amazon fired were Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, who has criticized Amazon's climate stance in the past and its treatment of warehouse workers during the pandemic. Amazon said it fired Costa and Cunningham for "repeatedly violating internal policies."

The senators in the letter expressed that Amazon's vague public statements regarding violations of internal policies didn't adequately explain the workers' firing.

They further asked Bezos to answer if external communications constitute a disciplinary action for Amazon employees.

The letter also sought clarity on whether Amazon's discipline and termination policies are the same for warehouse workers, tech workers, and executives.

The letter asked if Amazon keeps a record of which workers participate in walkouts, strikes, or other organizing activities, among other things.

The senators have given Bezos until May 20 for a reply.

Recently, a 50-year-old warehouse employee in Northeast Illinois died of coronavirus. The case marks the fourth known case in the US.
With the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic that has forced social distancing measures to contain it, one of the big questions this time of year is when and under what conditions graduation will occur.

Families of Huffman ISD students now have their answers (with the caveat that the situation is highly fluid and some details are subject to change).

WORKING FROM HOME: Teacher. Chef. Handyman. Worker. Moms are doing it all

On May 1, Hargrve High School principal Adam Skinner announced on Huffman ISDs Facebook page that the graduation ceremony will take place on Saturday, June 27 at Ford Park Arena in Beaumont.

As the likelihood of holding graduation on the planned date of May 30 became less and less likely, Huffman ISD had contacted Ford Park Arena to book another date later in the summer.

Despite orders days later from Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Education Agency announcing that outdoor graduations could go on with certain restrictions in place, the district still felt that keeping the June 27 date and Ford Park Arena location was the best thing to do for the graduating seniors and their families.

In Huffman we have a strong sense of community, and the community really supports our senior class, said Skinner. With the restrictions that are in place, we would have to severely limit the number of people that could come, and we feel like our seniors deserve to have a community there to support them.

Abbott and TEAs order states that, starting June 1, Texas school districts can hold graduations without social distancing restrictions, so Skinner said that the plan right now is to have a normal, traditional graduation ceremony with no limits on the number of guests that can attend. He did note that those conditions are subject to further guidelines from Abbott, Harris County and Jefferson County (which contains Beaumont).

Huffman ISD has been holding its graduation ceremony in Ford Park Arena for the past couple years.

Skinner said that having an indoor venue that is air-conditioned makes the ceremony more pleasant and makes it more likely that elderly relatives and relatives with medical conditions are able to attend.

He added that everyone can see the stage well regardless of where they are seated.

OTHER GRADUATION PLANS: Cy-Fair ISD reschedules in-person graduations to June following Abbotts executive order

After moving the date of the graduation ceremony back once, Skinner stated that the date will not be further postponed.

Our seniors are going to graduate on June 27, whether that be at Ford Park in a traditional ceremony, whether that be at Ford Park in a modified ceremony, or with some other format thats been approved by governing officials and TEA, he said.

Skinner is finishing his first year as the principal of Hargrave High School. He had previously been the principal of Huffman Middle School. The graduating seniors were eighth graders during his first year as HMS principal, so he has gotten to know this class especially well, adding to his excitement about handing them there diplomas.

I feel bad for the senior class, he acknowledged. Theyre a great group of kids. They have represented our community and our school very well, and we owe it to them to try to give them the best we possibly can given the scenarios that are dealt to us.

elliott.lapin@chron.com
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The global market for coated flat glass should grow from $28.8 billion in 2018 to reach $38.2 billion by 2023 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% for the period of 2018-2023.

Report Scope



The scope of this report is broad. The market for coated flat glass is analyzed based on different types of coating technologies and applications. The market is broken down by major types of coated flat glass, by technology, by, application and by region. The market for coated flat glass is also estimated by regional market and technology. Revenue forecasts from 2018 to 2023 are given for each major type of coated flat glass technology, application and regional market.;

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/11576



The report also includes a discussion of the major players across each regional market for coated flat glass. It explains the major market drivers of the global coated flat glass industry, the current trends within the industry and major applications, the challenges and the regional dynamics of the global coated flat glass market. The report concludes with a special focus on vendor landscape, which covers the detailed profiles of major vendors in the coated flat glass industry, globally, and the regional market shares of major players.



Report Includes:



- 63 data tables

- An overview of the global market for coated flat glass, which is used in special applications, primarily in buildings and automobiles, and is designed to create energy efficiency, increase durability, provide protection from breakage, reduce glare, and repel water and dirt

- Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2017, 2018, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2023

- Coverage of coating technologies, such as chemical vapor deposition, magnetron sputtering, as well as other processes, such as plasma vapor deposition and wet processes

- Discussion of major product types and applications, regulatory and market trends, technologies, and regional demand

- Coverage of the niche markets of photovoltaic (PV) glass for solar panels, reflective and antireflective glass, and self-cleaning glass

- A look at the vendor landscape

Company profiles of major players in the market, including Asahi Glass Co. Ltd., Eastman, Lord Corp., PPG Industries and Saint-Gobain

Summary

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/11576



Coating is applied to the glass to enhance its appearance and impart advanced properties such as scratch resistance, corrosion resistance, self-cleaning, solar protection and special transmission/reflection/absorption properties. In addition, coated flat glass reduces energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from buildings and automobiles by reflecting the heat energy from entering into buildings and vehicle cabins through windows.



Although the market for coated flat glass is threatened by high raw material prices, the market continues to grow with rising demand from North America, Europe and developing countries. Global economic recovery and increasing construction activities across the globe, rising personal income, increasing vehicle sales and increasing demand for solar glass are driving the coated flat glass market. The coated flat glass market finds its main applications in residential buildings, commercial buildings, automotive, solar and other applications. Among all the applications, commercial and residential buildings account for more than REDACTED share of the global coated flat glass market in 2017. This

share is expected to remain flat through 2023.



Coated flat glass is widely used to contrive a natural environment inside buildings. As an important component in buildings, it is used for decoration and interior aesthetics along with its other practical features. Coated flat glass provides safety, security, privacy and minimizes noise.

More Info of Impact Covid19@ link: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/11576
Attorney General William Barr on Thursday defended the Justice Department's decision to drop the Michael Flynn case, claiming this "sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country."

In December 2017, Flynn, President Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Earlier this year, Flynn's new attorneys asked to have his guilty plea withdrawn, claiming he was pressured into it by the FBI. On Thursday, federal prosecutors filed a motion saying they had determined the FBI's interview of Flynn was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation."

During an interview with CBS News' Catherine Herridge, Barr said the Justice Department had been investigating Flynn's accusation of misconduct by the government, and after finding additional material, he agreed the case should be dismissed. It was "an easy decision" to file the motion, Barr said, and claimed he was not influenced by Trump's numerous tweets about Flynn and never discussed the matter with him.

Herridge asked about Flynn admitting in court that his "false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact" on the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On the question of materiality, Barr responded, "we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on." There was "nothing wrong" with Flynn's contacts with Kislyak, he said, calling one conversation "laudable."

Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 during the George H.W. Bush administration, and he told Herridge he felt he needed to step back into the role because the country was feeling as if "there were two standards of justice in this country." The Flynn case, he continued, "sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country. And that's the way it will be. It doesn't matter what political party you're in, or, you know, whether you're rich or poor. We will follow the same standard for everybody."

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A group of civil societies in Nigeria has urged the House of Representatives to hold both virtual and physical public hearing on the controversial infectious diseases bill.

While the coalition, consisting 65 CSOs, commended the House for bowing to pressure to subject the bill to a public hearing, it said the hearing would only matter if all key stakeholders are given an opening to add to the discourse.

This, in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES, it said requires a review of the format for the public hearing and all other forms of citizen engagement to enrich the bill.

Since its introduction, the infectious diseases bill, which is sponsored by House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and two others, has been faced a fierce push back from the public and even some members of the green chamber.

The provisions of the bill empower the director-general of the NCDC and the minister of health to wield some discretionary powers which some have described as draconian and unfit for a democratic dispensation.

Coupled with the swift scaling of second reading of the bill, some observers have kicked. This, therefore, made the call for a public hearing louder as an ex-senator even sued the National Assembly.

Mr Gbajabiamila, in his address during Tuesdays plenary, buckled to pressure, hinting that the House would hold public hearing on the bill. He also debunked the allegation that the bill has a sinister motive, saying his intent was genuine.

But with the physical distancing directive by health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic still in place, he said If a socially distant public hearing becomes workable, we will certainly explore that option.

To this end, the civil society organisations have urged the House to amend its standing rules to allow for virtual public hearings on secured videoconferencing platforms which should be between 2 or 3 days. It also said a physical public hearing could be properly managed.

The statement by the groups also urged the House to consult wide while also being transparent with the handling of the bill and ensuring inclusiveness in it legislative process.

The House of Representatives should as a matter of urgency partner with civil society groups and the media to enlighten Nigerians on the provisions of the bill, the coalitions statement read.

Considering the sensitivity of the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill, we cannot afford a rushed or haphazard process, it said. It is important that the National Assembly prioritise and invest in building public trust and confidence to limit the spread of disinformation or misinformation on the bill.

The organizations include: Yiaga Africa, Girl Child Africa, Center for Liberty, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Say No Campaign, Amnesty International, EiE Nigeria, Human and Environmental, Development Agenda, International Press Centre, IPC, Lagos, Nigeria, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), Community Life Project (CLP), ActionAid Nigeria, CLEEN Foundation, Womens Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA).

Others are: Nigerian Women Trust Fund, Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), Rule of Law and Accountability (RULAAC), Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HERFON), Education as a Vaccine (EVA), Alliances for Africa, Lex Community NG, Global Rights, Concerned Nigerians, TechHer NG, SilverchipFox, Dorothy Njemanze Foundation (DNF), Adopt A Goal, Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution and others.
Iran Says Two Terrorist Cells Destroyed, Three Guard Members Killed In Operation

Radio Farda May 07, 2020

An Iranian news agency with close ties to the Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday reported that the Intelligence Ministry has "tracked down and destroyed two terrorist cells".

According to Tasnim News Agency the two cells were affiliated with "separatist groups that had entered the country from the neighboring eqlim [the Iraqi Kurdistan] to carry out harassment and terrorist activities".

The Revolutionary Guard and the Intelligence Ministry often use Tasnim News Agency for making unofficial statements. The agency usually quotes "informed sources" in the Revolutionary Guard or the Intelligence Ministry to support its claims.

The Tasnim report alleged that some of those who were detained had participated in "killing of innocent people and extortion from manufacturers and merchants in the west of the country". It also alleged that "the child of a supporter of the Islamic Republic was innocently killed by one of the terrorist teams in a murderous operation".

A photo that accompanies the Tasnim report shows arms and ammunition allegedly "discovered from anti-revolutionary small groups in Piranshahr, West Azarbaijan Province" with a sign showing the date as May 6.

In a separate development Mashreq News, a website which has similar affiliations as Tasnim on Wednesday published the photos of three revolutionary guards, including a colonel killed in "confrontation with anti-revolutionaries in Divandarreh", a city in Iran's Kurdestan Province.

Tasnim News Agency on the same day reported that Colonel Shakiba Salimi, one of the three Guards, had been buried in his birth village after a funeral in Qorveh, another city in Kurdistan Province.

Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) on May 7 reported that the Iranian Intelligence Ministry had arrested at least 15 citizens in Kurdestan and West Azarbaijan provinces "on alleged charges of cooperation with one of the Kurdish opposition parties".

"Based on the investigation of the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, none of the detainees had come to Iran from the Kurdistan Regional Government as claimed by the Intelligence Ministry and are ordinary citizens of Baneh and Piranshahr," the KHRN maintained.

The KHRN report which named the detainees in the two cities also said that they were currently held by the Intelligence Ministry in Urumiyeh (Urmia) and Sanandaj. According to the report the detainees have not been allowed to contact their families.

The families of the detainees are concerned that the Intelligence Ministry may be using them in made-up scenarios involving torture to extract forced confessions, the report said.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-says-two-terrorist- cells-destroyed-three-guard-members- killed-in-operation-/30598730.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.

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They were immortalized in a 2014 movie, The Monuments Men, directed by George Clooney and starring him and Matt Damon. The movie was based on the 2009 book of the same title by Mr. Edsel and Bret Witter. Mr. Edsel is now writing a book on the Monuments Women.

During the war, a small, special force of American and British art historians, museum directors, curators and others started out steering Allied bombers away from cultural targets in Europe and overseeing temporary repairs when damage occurred. Their numbers grew, and after the war they tracked down more than four million objects stolen by Nazi Germany and returned them to the countries from which they came.

In the Pacific theater, their mission was chiefly to assess the damage to cultural treasures, prevent looting and return stolen objects. In the course of their work they came across many works of art that no one from the West had ever seen. This required a tremendous amount of inventorying and record keeping.

That was where Ms. Huthwaite came in.

When the war was over, a family friend, Langdon Warner  said to be a model for Indiana Jones  became an adviser to the Monuments Men in the Pacific. He encouraged Ms. Huthwaite, who had been sent to Japan after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, to apply for a job. As an American who spoke both English and Japanese, and who was vouched for by Mr. Warner, she was hired as a clerk-typist and became a valuable asset.

She prepared field reports and correspondence. She also worked directly for Lt. Commander George L. Stout, who helped create the Monuments Men.
Scientists across the United States are fast-tracking the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Still, President Trump wants them to pull ahead of the deadly virus through "Operation Warp Speed," according to a recent report.

In the war against coronavirus, as the U.S. hits more than 1.29 million confirmed COVID-19 cases with more than 76,000 deaths, time is the second biggest enemy.

In a White House press briefing during the meeting with the coronavirus task force on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained the government effort to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

"The president said that the timelines that the drug companies were laying out were unacceptable that we needed to move faster," Azar told the press.

Azar added President Donald Trump wants medical experts working on the vaccine to produce 100 million doses by the fall and 300 million doses by January.

"There are no guarantees, this is drug development," he said. Although the secretary admitted the call to fast-track, the vaccine in seven months was ambitious.

On Sunday, President Trump forecasted that a coronavirus vaccine could be ready by the end of the year. Top U.S. scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci also affirmed that setting the timeline to get the vaccine done by early January is just attainable.

According to Azar, the drug company's normal vaccine process requires spacing out vaccine development between four different phases before proceeding to manufacture for commercial purposes.

"That's what leads to these extremely long timelines for drug and vaccine development," Azar said. "The president said that's not acceptable, we have the money, the resources, the brainpower to take all across the Us government and the private sector to compress all those timelines."

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Once a successful candidate is found, the group would be told immediately to jumpstart vaccine manufacturing.

"If any country can develop a vaccine, we will deploy all available resources, use all, use all available technology and do so here in the United States to bring manufacturing scale to that," he said.

Additionally, Vice President Mike Pence also said the federal government would fund mass manufacturing of promising vaccine candidates, even when the trial process is still ongoing.

"We're going to tell them to go ahead and start manufacturing now, and we're going to pay for that even if we get to the end, and there are 50 million doses that actually don't work," Vice President Pence said.

Pence added that once vaccine development trials reach phase three, the CDC could issue a waiver that allows putting it to use.

Meanwhile, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said preliminary approval for the COVID-19 vaccine would go through a lengthy and complicated process.

"I do want to emphasize one thing, we want to remove any unnecessary delays, but we will use data and science, which is a promise to the American people to fulfill our obligation regarding safety and ecovacy regarding a vaccine."

COVID-19 vaccine development efforts in the U.S. are spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health in partnership with the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV). It also involves biopharmaceutical companies, the federal government, the Gates Foundation, as well as the European Medicine Association.
Sixteen migrant labourers were crushed to death early on Friday by a goods train in Maharashtra after they fell asleep on the tracks. The home-bound exhausted lot of workers were run over between Jalna and Aurangabad.

The incident happened around 5.30 am when the migrants, who were on their way back to their homes fell asleep on the railway tracks.

Many political leaders have expressed shock and sadness over the incident.

The incident in Aurangabad has dealt such a violent stroke to the heart that it cannot be expressed in words. My heart is full of sorrow. I have spoke to railways minister Pyush Goyal an demanded a probe into the incident, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Twitter. According to railways ministry, most of the labourers belonged to Umariya and Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh.

                    !      ...



    @PiyushGoyal                  Shivraj Singh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) May 8, 2020

The Rail accident in Maharashtras Aurangabad district is extremely tragic and unfortunate. My condolences to those who have lost their loved ones in this accident.I pray for the speedy recovery of the injured, tweeted Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

The Rail accident in Maharashtras Aurangabad district is extremely tragic and unfortunate. My condolences to those who have lost their loved ones in this accident.I pray for the speedy recovery of the injured.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) May 8, 2020

I heard the news about 15 labourers from Madhya Pradesh crushed to death. Its sad that these labourers are dying from roads to railway tracks. Governments have to think where the fault lies, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal too expressed grief over the death of migrant workers. Taking to Twitter, he prayed for peace of the departed souls.

Relief work is going on, and orders for inquiries have been given. I pray to God for the peace of departed souls, he said.

BJP chief JP Nadda said he has asked workers of his party to join rescue operation.

I am pained beyond words to learn about the tragic train accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. I have asked our karyakartas to join the rescue operation and provide full support to the administration along with adherence to all health protocols, Nadda tweeted.

I am pained beyond words to learn about the tragic train accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. I have asked our karyakartas to join the rescue operation and provide full support to the administration along with adherence to all health protocols.  Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) May 8, 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also expressed anguish and spoke to Goyal. He also said that all possible assistance required is being provided.

The mishap occurred early today in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.
Texas consumers are less confident than they were at the beginning of the year, according to a report from a market research company.

Consumer confidence in Texas declined 27 percent to 87.8 on May 1 from 120 in January according to the Index of Consumer Sentiment, created by Morning Consult, a global data intelligence company. Despite the drop of 32 points since the beginning of the year, Texas still ranks higher than the national average of 84.33, the company said.
Migrant workers being forced two stay put in the states they work in or being forced to restart work can lead to a situation of unrest, a group of academicians and civil society members have cautioned.

In statement issued on Friday, the group urged states and the central government to make arrangements for the safe travel of the migrant workers and said, The understandable angry outbursts of millions of migrant labourers stranded in these economic centres have created volcanic situations that can create a serious law and order problem in the country.

On Friday morning, at least 16 people were killed when they were run over by a train in Maharashtra as Aurangabad. According to railway officials, the workers were walking towards their home state of Madhya Pradesh after losing their jobs during the lockdown imposed to check the coronavirus pandemic.

In the absence of public transport that has already been stalled in keeping with the lockdown conditions, workers across states are being forced to walk.

The signatories - Rajesh Tandon of PRIA Delhi, Amitabh Kundu of RIS, Dr Jagadananda of CYSD, Bhubaneshwar; Yogesh Kumar of Samarthan, Bhopal and Dr Sheela Patel of SPARC, Mumbai - have urged the central government and the states to treat the issue of migrant workers as a national emergency.

Fear, uncertainty, distress and inhumane treatment by local officials and police have resulted in a situation where widespread unrest and violence may occur anytime. The only option is for the central government to ask railways to ferry them home in hundreds of trains from all main economic centres, and to manage this process in an orderly manner, without harassment and stampede, the statement issued by the groups reads.

The group said it has been receiving reports from Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi and several other urban centres where the lockdown has made migrant labour anxious to return home. Our estimate based on the past census and NSS data and ground level information is that nearly 6 to 8 million of them are still stranded and a desperate to go home. Many of them are hungry and without shelter, the statement said.

Referring to reports of states forcing workers to stay back, such as in Karnataka (though the state later rolled back the decision), the group said workers cannot be subject to inhuman conditions.

We hear reports the time in business community have advise state governments to keep them within the states for restarting the economy post lock down. While giving definite offer of jobs in social security is welcome, they can be no logic to detain them against their wishes, the statement said.
Conchshells were blown and flower



petals showered on 36 coronavirus survivors who left for home from a hospital here, having defeated the deadly disease.

The 'corona battle winners' sang aloud 'Aloker ei jharna dharay' (In the fountain of light) in unison to mark the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, before stepping out of hospital premises in Fuleshwar area of the district.

Howrah Superintendent of Police Soumya Roy, TMC legislators Idris Ali, Pulak Roy and hospital superintendent Subhasis Mitra were present on the occasion to cheer for them.

Several health care professionals were also seen taking time out to sing with them.

As the ambulances carrying the survivors left the hospital, local women lined up on both sides of the road and blew conchshells and showered flowers on them.

Mitra said people should "hold on to the belief that novel coronavirus can be defeated by medical science".

"We will have to put up an united fight against the disease," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Heavy rains across the region have also destroyed homes, crops and some infrastructure.

Flooding as a result of recent heavy rains has killed almost 200 people across Kenya, the government says.

The water has also washed away 8,000 acres of crops and some vital infrastructure.

Neighbouring Uganda, where Lake Victoria has reached unprecedented levels, has also felt the impact of heavy rains, which are expected to continue for weeks.

East African countries have also been hit by a locust invasion and Covid-19.

The authorities in Kenya have told people in some of the affected areas to move away from "potential danger".

In western Uganda, rivers have burst their banks, causing people to flee for safety to the town of Kasese, the Daily Monitor newspaper reports.

In recent weeks, the rising levels of Lake Victoria have forced shoreline communities to abandon their homes and caused erosion along the River Nile, which is fed by the lake.

Last month, a huge floating island of loose vegetation triggered a nationwide blackout in Uganda after clogging a turbine in a hydroelectric power station.

At the end of last year, rain-triggered disasters, including flash floods and landslides, killed at least 250 people and affected some three million people across East Africa. BBC
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 14:07:24|Editor: huaxia

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SHIJIAZHUANG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A key Chinese medicine against COVID-19 has been approved for sale in Singapore, according to the drug producer Yiling Pharmaceutical.

The pharmaceutical firm based in Shijiazhuang, capital of northern China's Hebei province, said Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has been officially listed as Chinese Proprietary Medicine by Singapore's Healthy Sciences Authority, which means the Chinese medicine has been granted market access to Singapore.

Clinical observation in designated COVID-19 hospitals in China has showed that traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) including the Lianhua Qingwen Capsule are effective in the treatment of over 90 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said TCM treatment has significantly lowered the proportion of patients whose conditions turn from mild to severe.

In vitro experiment has proved that Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has a weak inhibitory effect on the virus but has good repair effects on cell damages and inflammation caused by the novel coronavirus, renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan has said.

The use of the medicine has been detailed in China's Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia.

Wu Xiangjun, general manager of Yiling Pharmaceutical, said Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has gained market approvals by drug administrations in eight countries including Brazil, Romania, Thailand, Ecuador and Singapore.

The company has donated a total of 3.5 million yuan (about 500,000 U.S. dollars) worth of Lianhua Qingwen to Iraq, Italy and other countries to aid their efforts in fighting the pandemic, said Wu.

He said the company's production lines of the medicine are working at full speed to catch up with orders from home and abroad. Enditem
By Trend





Turkmenistan takes effective measures against the spread of COVID-10, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Central Asia, head of the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia Natalia Gherman told SNG FM online radio, Trend reports.

The activities of the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia was discussed during a recent telephone conversation between President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres.

I am deeply grateful to the president of Turkmenistan and the Secretary-General of UN for the attention they have paid to the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia during a telephone conversation held on April 22 of this year. In this conversation, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov emphasized that Turkmenistan as a country hosting the UNRCCA headquarters, will continue to actively support the mission and its regional projects and programmes in Central Asia.

We continue to work in priority areas, such as supporting regional initiatives aimed at close cooperation in Central Asia; combating violent extremism and terrorism; addressing cross-border water use issues; and enhancing the role of youth and women in preventive diplomacy. These strategic priorities have not lost their significance today, when all the attention of the world community is focused on fighting the pandemic, but on the contrary have become more important in the current context.

Strategic priorities of the Regional Center are discussed at the annual meetings of deputy foreign ministers of Central Asian countries. Given the increasing interaction between the Central Asian countries and Afghanistan, in recent years, these meetings have been held with the participation of the deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan in the 5+1 format. The next meeting in this format under the auspices of the UNCCA is planned to be held at the end of this year.

If we talk about specific examples of our current activities in Turkmenistan  this is expert assistance in developing an action Plan for the implementation of the national strategy of Turkmenistan for preventing violent extremism and countering terrorism from 2020 through 2024, which was implemented by the Regional center and the UN counter-terrorism office, she added.
PARIS  There were no poignant handshakes with veterans. Military parades were canceled. Wreaths were laid, but with appropriate social distancing.

European nations commemorated the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II on the continent in novel ways on Friday, with ceremonies and public events now paused. Citizens were encouraged to honor the day  a national holiday in some places  at home. And while closeness may have marked previous commemorations, distance, masks and hand sanitizers played a part in the celebrations this year.

Seventy-five years ago in Berlin, German military officials signed the instrument of surrender, ending nearly six years of conflict in Europe that saw hundreds of millions face occupation, forced displacement and persecution. Estimates vary, but at least 70 million people died globally in the war, which continued in Asia for a few more months, an overwhelming majority of them civilians. Among them were the six million Jews and millions of others killed systematically by the Nazi regime, many of them in concentration camps across Europe.

On May 8, 1945, tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Britain, France and other victorious European countries. For others, in Poland, the Baltic States and countries of Eastern Europe, the date marked the beginning of another period of domination, this time by the Soviet Union.
BRESLAU, ONT.Pork processor Conestoga Meats has confirmed 44 employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

In a statement to The Record Friday morning, the company said the number of cases includes employees self-isolating as well as workers who have recovered and returned to work.

Its a significant jump from the seven confirmed cases the company first reported more than two weeks ago.

Waterloo Regions acting medical officer of health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang confirmed the 44 cases during a public briefing Friday, adding we are very comfortable with the fact that they have reopened.

The 44 cases at Conestoga Meats represents about five per cent of the regions 897 total confirmed cases.

The plant was closed last week to give the producer time to implement more protective measures for its empoyees who number around 1,000.

The Ministry of Labour has investigated three complaints related to COVID-19 at the plant in recent months.

On March 24, the ministry received one complaint related to a lack of personal protective equipment. Two more complaints were received on April 22, including physical distancing inside the plant.

All three complaints were investigated via telephone and no orders or requirements were issued by the ministry.

Meat-processing at the plant resumed last Monday.

During the week of closure, activities were centred on enhancing processes, procedures and facilities to provide maximum safety during the pandemic, as our first priority is keeping our employees safe while they are in the workplace, the companys statement said.

All positive cases are reviewed by Region of Waterloo Public Health with Conestoga providing detailed case and contact-tracing information.

The plant is a farmer-owned co-operative with more than 150 paid members. It processes about 37,000 pigs every week and is one of two federally licensed pig abattoirs in the province.

The company said it has introduced a number of protective measures for employees. Eye, nose and mouth coverings have been provided for every position inside the plant. More than 150 dividers have been installed on the plant floor, and additional break-room areas have been provided to help support physical distancing. Plexiglas table dividers have been installed in all lunch rooms. Additional oversight has been put in place to ensure control procedures and personal protective equipment is being used properly, as has thermal imaging equipment to assist in temperature screening.

Communications regarding changes have been provided to the employee group in eight different languages, the company said. Employees who are ill are contacted frequently by company staff.

Last week, The Record reported Conestoga Meats struggled to secure personal protective equipment at the onset of the global pandemic.

Face masks and hand sanitizer were difficult to source as the materials were being diverted to front-line health workers, and face shields were altered by drilling holes at the top to prevent them from fogging up.

Conestoga Meats says it implemented a $2-per-hour premium on March 23, and bumped it to $4 when processing resumed on Monday.

This extra premium is recognition of the important work that our team is doing feeding the people of Ontario and keeping the Ontario farm and livestock sector in operation, the company said.

Pork producers across Ontario have been side-swiped by plant shutdowns at facilities such as Conestoga Meats.

Several large processors in Quebec have had to suspend operations due to COVID-19 outbreaks, along with several beef processors in Alberta, and, most recently, a Maple Lodge Farms meat plant in Brampton had to do this.

Food scientists and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency say there have been no reported cases of food or food packaging being associated with the transmission of COVID-19.

With files from Johanna Weidner
Manitoba Thoroughbred racetrack Assiniboia Downs has been given the green light to begin hosting pari-mutuel racing on May 25 without fans in attendance.

Multiple reports indicate that, in roughly two weeks' time, the Winnipeg track will begin hosting cards of live racing three nights per week.

The Province of Manitoba gave its approval for the races on Wednesday, May 6, according to Assiniboia Downs CEO Darren Dunn.

"We're aware of the protocols [elsewhere] and we were prepared to mirror those," Dunn was quoted as saying. He went on to state, "We were going to be able to do just that and the government obviously agrees."

The track won't be open to the public, but wagering on the product will be taking place remotely.

Without fans present, people are going to be able to watch and wager on their mobile device, their tablets, their home computer, Dunn was quoted as saying. Were going to broadcast this signal all over the world.

(With files from the CBC and CTV News)
Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has signalled the bank could pounce on assets that come up for sale in the pandemic crisis, after slashing dividends and warning of a highly uncertain outlook.

As the banking group on Friday delivered an 8 per cent slide in profit to $2.7 billion, it also highlighted a strong balance sheet and $20 billion in "dry powder" for investment by its infrastructure-focused managed funds.

Macquarie chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake was awarded $18.1 million for the year, her first full 12 months as CEO. Credit:Ryan Stuart

Markets cheered the result, with Macquarie shares gaining 5.7 per cent to $105.19 amid predictions the bank would emerge from the crisis in relatively good shape, despite taking a short-term hit.

The company known as the "Millionaires' Factory" on Friday also released its remuneration report for the financial year, which showed Ms Wikramanayake was awarded $18.1 million for the year, her first full 12 months as CEO, up from $17 million last year. She was not the highest paid senior executive at Macquarie, with head of Macquarie Asset Management Martin Stanley awarded $18.9 million for the year after a surge in profit in his division.
International media have continued to speak highly of the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and measures taken by the Government to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A teleconference between the Government and the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Illustrative image

The BBC News quoted David Hutt, a journalist specialising in Southeast Asian politics, as saying that the CPV has taken action in a responsible manner and given priority to saving people's lives during the crisis caused by the pandemic.

By being transparent and proactive in communicating with the public, the CPV and the Government have been able to gain and maintain public confidence, Hutt noted.

Through drastic and prompt measures, as well as support for labourers hurt by the pandemic in an effort to leave no one behind, Vietnamese people have confidence in the Governments response to COVID-19 and believe that they are under protection. Therefore, the crisis also bears witness to the unity of the entire nation, he added.

The journalist added that if Vietnam is able to maintain the current testing rate and results in battling COVID-19, the country may post a faster recovery than other Southeast Asian economies.

The US-based The Diplomat underlined the factor that enables the Vietnamese governments success is the mobilization of nationalism. The government has framed the virus as a common foreign enemy and called on the unity of the population to defeat it, echoing the enduring history of a nation always threatened by foreign invaders.

Meanwhile, an article of the Nikkei Asian Review in Japan noted that Vietnamese leaders are winning global praise for containing cases and reopening business at lightning speed.

The speed with which the country claims to have flattened the infection curve exudes skill and nimbleness, the writer remarked, adding that zero official deaths in a nation of 96 million is quite a feat.

The article also gave recommendations for Vietnam to turn achievements in fighting COVID-19 into economic growth, saying it has room to support growth internally and there is fiscal space to finance big, job-generating infrastructure project./.VNA
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Linkedin Josa Lukman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 14:52 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6c2d55 1 Entertainment meiske-taurisia,Aruna-and-Her-Palate,aruna-dan-lidahnya,Indonesian-films,cinema,Ali-dan-Ratu-Ratu-Queens,Goethe-Institute Free

As we enter our third month of the pandemic, what does it mean for Indonesian cinema?

It has been nearly two months since the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Indonesia, and much of the country has been under strict restrictions on movement.

Even as the government has said the curve is flattening in Jakarta, people are still being encouraged to stay home and the Idul Fitri mudik (exodus) has been banned.

The holiday season is usually a time for theatrical releases, but with cinemas shut down across the country, much of the population is at home either glued to their TV screens or streaming their favorite movies.

Last month, numerous new releases by major studios were postponed indefinitely when cinema giants Cinema XXI and CGV shuttered their doors to comply with the governments advice, and ongoing productions ground to a halt to follow physical distancing guidelines.

In an Instagram Live session initiated by German cultural center Goethe-Institut, Palari Films producer Meiske Taurisia acknowledged that viewer habits had changed massively, noting that streaming had become a substitute for watching movies in theaters.

Meiske Taurisia (Palari Films/-)

For me, that makes me rather anxious because my work revolves around making films. When everyone turns to streaming, will they go out to the movies again as cinemas start to open? she wondered.

Meiske also wondered was what physical distancing measures would be put in place when cinemas reopened.

Prior to the closures, cinemas required a one-seat gap between viewers, reducing capacity by 50 percent, and also reduced the number of screenings each day.

Cinemas closed around mid-to-late March. If we were to estimate that three new titles are released on average each week  assuming the pandemic lasts eight to 10 weeks, that would mean around 30 movie releases have had to be postponed indefinitely.

While a surplus of movie titles would benefit cinema owners, Meiske said it gave her pause for thought.

As for Palari Films, the production houses current project is the family flick Ali & Ratu-Ratu Queens (Ali & The Queens of Queens). Starring Iqbaal Ramadhan in the lead role as 17-year-old Ali, the film follows his journey to New York to look for his estranged mother after his fathers passing.

While the Lucky Kuswandi-directed film is set to premiere this year, Meiske said their plans had been thrown into disarray by the pandemic, with an end-of-the-year release being the most likely course of action.

There are many things we do for a new release, one of the major ones being registering the title with the cinemas. We also do promotional activities, which have also stopped, Meiske said.

Even though promotional activities dont seem like much, all the vendors we work with have also been affected. People need cash on hand, and if we cant pay them because of the delays, thats also a problem for them.

At this point, Meiske said those in the industry felt there was nothing they could do and that they would just have to wait in uncertainty. Continuing projects, she said, was rather hard, although films could still be edited remotely, as is the case with Ali & Ratu-Ratu Queens.

Were currently thinking about what we can do at Palari once the situation returns to normal, or rather the new normal. We have upcoming projects like Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas (Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash), which will enter production, but we have to think about new projects and new stories.

Currently, the staff at Palari Films are working from home, and using their time to come up with new stories, a process Meiske said had often been delayed and sidelined before.

During the filming of the movie, she said the smallest number of people she worked with on set was five to seven. If physical distancing rules still limited groups to five people, it would make things hard.

A shoot with five people would mean that the space is rather small, and that would in turn make keeping your distance hard to do. Production is the hardest step to complete with physical distancing measures in place; it can be done but it would be super hard, she said, adding that she had discussed the issue with several European filmmakers.

As the movie industry also involves behind-the-scenes workers, many have been left out of the job.

According to Meiske, several initiatives have cropped up to help those affected, although they are community-driven rather than state-run. The freelance nature of the job, she continued, made it hard to receive help from state institutions.

Going forward, Meiske noted that over-the-top (OTT) services were a viable method of release, as Palaris 2018 flick Aruna & Lidahnya (Aruna and Her Palate) was made available on GoJeks GoPlay service, while Posesif (Possessive) was released on iFlix.

'Aruna dan Lidahnya' (2018) (Palari Films/-)

Its really a perfect business model in times like these, as everyone has gone online. The question is, is anyone bold enough to do an online premier? she said.

Several Western releases have skipped theaters completely and headed straight to streaming, including Disney's Artemis Fowl and romantic comedy The Lovebirds.

However, the problem is that when we cut a deal with OTT services, there are variables that come into play like exclusivity. We have to look at whether a service has the reach, as the number of players in the field has meant [a customers choice of service] is a matter of personal preference.

The idea of a premiere, she said, was to have the biggest outreach. While she was interested in testing the waters, Meiske did say it would most likely be in the form of a non-exclusive simultaneous premiere across various platforms.
Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault on Thursday for the February 23 death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, which was captured on an alleged cellphone video.

Why it matters: The release of video that appeared to show Arbery's death sparked a national outcry.

The state of play: Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot while reportedly out for his daily jog, according to his mother. The McMichaels pursued Arbery, after telling police they suspected he had committed a burglary.
Tobler said his hospital functions as a nonprofit for all intents and purposes, but it does not have the 501c3 designation. It was unclear if that would disqualify it.

We felt as though we were being excluded because of this technicality, he said.

Days later, equipped with new guidance from the Treasury Department, Tobler learned his hospital would likely qualify.

He said the PPP funds would help the hospital make up for lost revenue and may help with some of the projects and services that were delayed in the past. He said hed like to replace outdated cardiac rehab software and hire a full-time virtual health coordinator, for telehealth services.

This is actually something thats not just a little transfusion to a bleeding patient  this may actually help patients and hospitals, Tobler said.

Smith, of the AHA, said just under 1,000 hospitals in the U.S. may qualify for PPP at this point. There are more than 6,100 hospitals in the country.
Oceansides new City Treasurer Rafe Edward Trickey Jr. is a man of many talents and more than a few jobs, according to his online resume and social media sites.

Oceanside race for treasurer between Nadine Scott and Gary Ernst, who died in September.

Trickey  who is married to Oceanside Assistant City Attorney Barbara Hamilton  was unanimously appointed by the Oceanside City Council last week to fill the treasurers post, left vacant when former City Treasurer Gary Ernst died in September and was nonetheless re-elected six weeks later.

I am honored and humbled, Trickey said Thursday about his new gig in city government. Im looking forward to serving in this fiduciary capacity.

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Rafe Edward Trickey Jr. (courtesy photo )

Since 2009, Trickey has held a series of administrative posts at colleges stretching from California to Oklahoma to South Dakota to the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, says his profile on LinkedIn.com. He speaks five languages  Cherokee, Spanish, Marshallese, Mandarin Chinese and his native English  according his resume posted on Chroniclevitae.com.

His application for the treasurer post says hes the semi-retired principal of the Greater Pacific Planning and Effectiveness Group, a consulting organization he started in 1988. Since 2010 hes also been president emeritus and a board member of the Foundation for College Access Services, another small consulting business he founded that helps the underprivileged pursue their higher education goals.

Trickey, 59, said the one thing thats been a constant over his career is that he has helped run educational institutions. Hes worked for more than a dozen  mostly in one- or two-year stints  since 1988, according to his resume.

Hes extremely experienced and very knowledgeable, said Councilman Jerry Kern. He came across as level-headed and understanding what we do.

Ernst had been treasurer since 2010 and had been ill in recent months when he was found dead of natural causes last summer in the midst of his re-election bid. His name remained on the November ballot because the printing deadline had already passed.

Trickey said Ernst was a fine man. (His death) was a big shock to all of us.

Kern led a campaign to re-elect him anyway, arguing that the only other candidate  local attorney and activist Nadine Scott  wasnt qualified for the post. Ultimately, Ernst received 52 percent of the vote compared to Scotts 48 percent. That gave the City Council the option of holding a special election or appointing a new treasurer to serve until the next general election.

An investigation has since been launched to determine whether Ernst was a legal resident of Oceanside, as required for the office. His body was found in a Carlsbad home that appears to have been his primary residence. The outcome of that probe wont affect Trickeys appointment, said City Clerk Zack Beck.

Scott, who was among the applicants interviewed by the council for the job last week, said Thursday she was the only qualified candidate in the election and deserved to get the position. She called the appointment a complete and utter miscarriage of justice.

Kern said he understands that Scott might feel bad about losing the election, but that there were better candidates and the city did the right thing by making the appointment.

There were people who probably would have filed, but they didnt want to run against Gary, Kern said.

Trickey is expected to be sworn in at the councils meeting Wednesday and will serve a two-year term. He said he wont seek election after that.

He and Hamilton have been married 30 years and have three children. Theyve lived in Oceanside for about 12 years.

The treasurer position is considered part-time, and pays about $24,000 annually. Ernst was appointed to a two-year term in 2010, and then elected to a four-year term in 2012.

The previous city treasurer, Rosemary Jones, died in office in 2009 at age 88 after serving many years.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:40:14|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese procuratorial organs conducted 2,234 inspections on the work of 665 prisons by the end of 2019, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Friday.

The inspections found 17,514 pieces of misconduct concerning the prisons' punishment and regulatory enforcement, the SPP said, noting that 14,721 pieces of the misconducts have been rectified.

The use of itinerant procurators for such inspections is an institutional innovation of the SPP's work, which helps strengthen legal supervision, said Hou Yahui, an official with the SPP.

The SPP said it also stepped up crackdown against bullying in prisons. Enditem
A second season of Stans crime drama The Gloaming is in development after the Tasmanian Government invested in a scripting stage.

A virtual writers room has received funding under the Tasmanian Governments $985 million Social and Economic Support Package. Stan will also match the funding as the virtual writers room begins developing a possible new season.

John Molloy and I are excited to be collaborating once more with Stan and Screen Tasmania and venturing back into the beguiling world of The Gloaming creator Vicki Madden said.

Nick Forward, Chief Content Officer at Stan added, Were pleased to be working with Screen Tasmania and the creative mind of Vicki Madden as we begin to explore the world of a potential second season of The Gloaming. Viewers and critics gravitated towards the first season of this phenomenal Stan Original Series, one which showcased picturesque Tasmania as a central character, and also highlighted the incredibly talented Australian cast and crew.

Season one of The Gloaming spent $7.5 million on Tasmanian cast, crew and services and starred Emma Booth and Ewen Leslie.
BEIJING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Amid the further containment of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), China is powering ahead in returning to work and resuming business and production. The following are the latest facts and figures:

-- China's exports of goods rebounded in April, with exports rising 8.2 percent year on year to 1.41 trillion yuan (about 198.8 billion U.S. dollars), the General Administration of Customs said Thursday.

Imports fell 10.2 percent to 1.09 trillion yuan last month, resulting in a trade surplus of 318.15 billion yuan.

Foreign trade of goods inched down 0.7 percent year on year in April to 2.5 trillion yuan, narrowing from a drop of 6.4-percent in Q1.

-- Over 90 percent of the respondents in a recent survey said they have resumed their work as the novel coronavirus epidemic subsides in China, according to a survey by China Youth Daily.

Over 58 percent of the people having resumed work said their employers have fully restored ordinary work, according to the survey.

Over 34 percent said their employers practice rotating working hours, and around 45 percent said they have been asked to either work from home or adopt flexible working time.

-- Central China's Hubei Province launched 464 new projects with an average investment of more than 100 million yuan in April, according to local authorities.

The province, once hardest hit by COVID-19, has launched a total of 979 projects from late January to end of April, covering transportation infrastructure, environmental protection and other fields.

More than 93 percent of workers in the projects that were launched before the festival have resumed work across Hubei, and the percentage in Wuhan, the capital of the province, was 74.4 percent, the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission said.

-- Chinese online payment clearinghouse NetsUnion Clearing Corporation reported surging daily transactions during the just-concluded Labor Day holiday.

During the five-day holiday, daily transactions processed by the platform rose 54.59 percent year on year to exceed 1.35 billion, according to the company.
New Delhi, May 8 : As the Arvind Kejriwal government released Rs 18.75 crore as the grant-in-aid for salary payments to employees of 12 Delhi University colleges, the Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) said the grant released was "inadequate".

The government has released the grant-in-aid on Thursday to which the teachers' body reacted on Friday.

While the DUTA has been demanding funds for its salaries and medical bills, retirement benefits and other development expenses; the Delhi government released the money only for the payment of salaries.

In a statement, the DUTA on Friday said it will continue to pursue the matter.

"Meanwhile, grants should be put to use as quickly as the colleges receive them and salaries should be disbursed," it said.

Members of the Academic Council and the DUTA wrote to Chief Minister Kejriwal earlier this month over the non-issuance of funds to 12 Delhi government-funded colleges since March.

"Thousands of teaching and non-teaching employees and their families of 12 Delhi government-funded colleges are hit with the double whammy - COVID-19 pandemic and the non-payment of salary from March. Despite our repeated requests and a day-long hunger strike over the issue of non-release of required funds by Delhi government, there is no positive development regarding this," said the letter.

It said that this delay has not only affected the salary payments, but medical bills, retirement benefits and other development expenses are also pending.
Savvy business owners have already begun to prepare for the new normal, taking advantage of the opportunity to arm themselves with new tools for the future. Thats not to say recovery will be easy for everyone, or even that everyone will recover. In April, Main Street America reported that 7.5 million small businesses could close permanently within five months. Nearly half of those businesses could close permanently in just two months, especially if they don't receive financial assistance.

Businesses can't expect to jump back into the drivers seat and pick up where they left off. Future success demands present growth, and in a future filled with smarter technologies, artificial intelligence stands out as the most vital investment for businesses of all sizes.

Why Businesses Need AI Right Now

Tight budgets currently prevent many founders from pursuing their vision. For many, scraping by from one day to the next counts as a win. This state of affairs can't continue for long, though. Something has to give. Businesses that attempt to hold tight instead of pressing forward will find their grip slipping as a new and tougher market lets them fall.

Rather than take a conservative wait-and-see approach, entrepreneurs should do what they do best in these situations: innovate, explore and challenge the status quo. Tools like artificial intelligence empower even the smallest businesses to scale their capabilities beyond what they could accomplish on their own, enabling them to get more out of limited resources.

What better way to survive and thrive than to implement solutions that yield better returns on smaller investments?

Related: 6 AI Business Tools for Entrepreneurs on a Budget

Finding and vetting AI partners

During times of stress and complexity, entrepreneurs dont have to go it alone. Artificial intelligence tools provided by competent and helpful partners can help businesses do more with their limited budgets and push through any challenge. Finding the right partner isnt always easy, but with a little preparation and some digging, every company can identify and implement an AI solution to make life a little easier.

Check out these helpful tips to find the right AI partner:

1. Prioritize the art of prioritization

AI tools remain decades away from human-level intelligence. Most business owners can perform all the same tasks an AI tool can perform. The difference is that competent AI can help companies prioritize and streamline workflows, saving humans time as the tools take care of the details.

Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Use AI to Boost Their Business

CureMetrix, an AI business that operates in the medical industry, cautions radiology professionals against the dangers of burnout. With so many important decisions to make, people can quickly succumb to analysis paralysis if left unchecked. When evaluating potential AI partners, look for someone who can help the business and its workers prioritize and manage workloads.

2. Understand the difference between machine learning and artificial intelligence

When vetting partners, look into which tool will be most beneficial for you. As a branch of AI, machine learning involves teaching systems to learn from data sets and make independent decisions based on that information. Artificial intelligence includes a host of functions, machine learning included, so business owners should weigh their needs against any offer from a potential partner.

Not sure what type of solution to go for? Business AI provider D-Labs put together this helpful guide on how to evaluate AI solutions for specific business needs.

3. Invest in tools that connect directly to revenue

Businesses can use AI for all sorts of cool things. Right now, though, most companies cant afford to splurge on luxuries. Microsoft highlights a few different uses of AI and clarifies exactly how different implementations impact the businesses using them.

For example, a business with interactive customer-service AI could answer basic questions and provide simple services without the need for human intervention. Chatbots are a popular version of this type of AI. Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions empower companies to track and manage communications to maximize time spent on the most promising leads.

Microsoft also mentions the benefits of cybersecurity AI, which may not translate directly to revenue but can save business owners thousands of dollars in avoided mischief. With hacker activity up, cybersecurity investments may be prudent for companies that can afford them.

Related: 3 Ways You Can Use Artificial Intelligence to Grow Your Business Right Now

Why wait until the pandemic passes to start looking into smarter tools? By adding the right technologies and partners now, business owners can get ahead of the curve, equipped with the ability to earn more money with fewer resources. No one knows how long the downturn in the economy will last, so the sooner businesses invest in themselves, the more impactful the returns will be.

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Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
North Korea lashed out at South Korea over recent military drills, while leader Kim Jong Un sent a personal message to Chinas Xi Jinping to congratulate him on that countrys success in controlling the coronavirus, state media reported on Friday.

A North Korean military representative said on Friday that recent South Korean military drills were a grave provocation that demanded a reaction, according to a statement carried by Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The recent drill served as an opportunity which awakened us once again to the obvious fact that the enemies remain enemies all the time, the statement said.

North Korea cited a military exercise by the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) Air Combat Command on Wednesday, and said the drills violated inter-Korean agreements aimed at reducing military tensions.

Everything is now going back to the starting point before the north-south summit meeting in 2018, the statement said.

On Sunday, South Korea said North Korean troops fired multiple shots toward a South Korean guard post at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which separates the two countries.

South Korean troops responded by firing warning shots, but no casualties were reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said the shots fired by North Korea were likely accidental.

In a separate dispatch, KCNA said Kim sent a verbal message to the Chinese president about the coronavirus, KCNA said.

Kim Jong Un in his message extended his warm greetings to Xi Jinping and congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic, said KCNA.

Kim wished Xi good health and the KCNA report said the relations between Pyongyang and Beijing were firmly consolidated.

North Korea has said it has no cases of the coronavirus, but previously reinforced border checks and anti-epidemic measures.
President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday said he was saddened beyond words over the deaths of 16 migrant workers crushed by a goods train in Aurangabad in Maharashtra.

The workers were walking along the tracks on their way to their homes in Madhya Praddesh. Overcome with exhaustion, slept on the tracks.

Saddened beyond words to learn about the loss of lives in the railway track accident near Aurangabad in Maharashtra. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families. Wishing speedy recovery to the injured, the president said on Twitter.

Four people survived the accident, which took place at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Australians deserve an early mark for the work that they've done," the Prime Minister told the press last week. " We cant keep Australia under the doona. We need to be able to move ahead."

As messages go, I found the language refreshing, a break from family values and strategic partnerships. Even when Scott Morrison likened the COVIDSafe app to the smearing on of sunscreen, I didnt begrudge the analogy. Give me talk of zinc cream over regulatory reform any day.

Scott Morrison grants the nation an "early mark" on Friday May 1. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Yet many citizens baulked at the PMs words. As a lingo sleuth, I went hunting for why, only to find a surprising tripwire. While doonas may swap with duvets, quilts and eiderdowns, depending on your postcode, theres little scope for ambiguity. A bedspread is a bedspread wherever you lay your head.

Unlike early mark, however. What the hells that, came the chorus, south of the Murray. Did it relate to doona-staining? A low water-mark? A personal ranking, a-la an ATAR? Mention mark in a Victorians earshot and theyll picture a clean grab of the Sherrin. The confusion was as rampant as it was regional.
New daily cases of coronavirus are at their lowest level in weeks - offering some degree of optimism that Ireland is on course to begin easing its lockdown.

Just 137 people were diagnosed with the virus yesterday, while the number of patients in intensive care dropped to 76. It had reached 140 at one point.

And fewer than two cases are being admitted to hospital daily, down from four to six last week, according to Professor Philip Nolan of Maynooth University, who is advising the Government on trends.

He also revealed the R number - which indicates how many people a person with the virus is likely to infect - had fallen to 0.5 to 0.6, down from the 5 or 6 in late February or early March. By mid-March, it was around 1.6.

"There has been great success up to now and we need to find ways to keep the spread of the virus at a very low level for many weeks to come," he said.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said he was "increasingly hopeful we can start exiting lockdown on a phased basis from May 18".

He added: "We are seeing a range of trends that give us reason for optimism."

He added there was a continued pattern of improvement that gave "reason for encouragement", but he wants to see more improvement before coming to a formal assessment at the end of next week.

"These weeks are just as important as the first weeks of the response," he added.

"Our behaviours are crucial to maintaining our progress".

He was speaking as the deaths of a further 29 people from the virus were confirmed, bringing the toll to 1,403. The spread of the virus in community residential centres, including nursing homes, is also slowing. So far there have been 5,485 cases in these centres, with an increase of 115 yesterday compared to Wednesday.

Some 4,309 of these have been in nursing homes, a rise of 41 in the space of a day.

Asked whether he and his officials would meet with vintners who are anxious to fast forward the opening of pubs ahead of the roadmap timetable, Dr Holohan said his role was to give public health advice.

It is a matter for various sectors to apply that to their own sectors which they knew best, he added.

He said they should "take ownership" of the health advice and shape their own plans.

Questioned on whether the Leaving Cert should proceed in July, now that the trends in the spread of the virus were more favourable, he said it was important that social distancing and the amount of time spent in close contact were observed.

He said it was a matter for the Department of Education to decide because its officials know more about the "operation of exams" than his team.

Hospitals will have to continue to have surge capacity to ensure they are ready for any rise in the spread of the virus in the coming months.

Liam Woods of the HSE said there was evidence that more people were attending A&E and there were fewer beds free.

There are 1,300 beds available now, but the number is falling. Hospitals are also seeing a rise in delayed discharges - patients who are medically fit but need a step down place in a nursing home - and their numbers have risen to 325.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday that many cancer patients are now losing out on the chance of seeing if they could respond to new treatment due to the slowdown in the number of new drug trials since the coronavirus crisis hit.

Beaumont Hospital oncologist Dr Bryan Kennedy said the number had significantly slowed and a planned trial to assess a treatment for pancreatic cancer was among those that had had to be put on hold.

These trials, overseen by Cancer Trials Ireland, can offer a potential option to patients who are no longer responding to conventional treatment.

"The major reason is that the Health Products Regulatory Authority in ethics committees are prioritising approving Covid-19-related trials at the moment," he said.

"Non-Covid trials are not being given the same priority."

He said that to start new trials required a lot of visits to hospital from the sponsor to educate staff and hold sessions.

This could not happen at the moment due to lockdown, transport and the staff working from home.

The HSE has appealed to people with any potential symptoms of cancer to seek medical help. The average number of patients with suspected cancer clinics has dropped to fewer than half of the total pre-Covid.
The COVID-19 pandemic poses a huge threat to over 170,000 people in Sahrawi refugee camps in western Algeria, as local authorities and organizations were vastly unprepared for such circumstances caused by the disease due to severely limited financial resources, the Oxfam international relief group said on Friday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2020) The COVID-19 pandemic poses a huge threat to over 170,000 people in Sahrawi refugee camps in western Algeria, as local authorities and organizations were vastly unprepared for such circumstances caused by the disease due to severely limited financial resources, the Oxfam international relief group said on Friday.

The UK non-profit charitable organization said in a report that nine coronavirus cases have already been confirmed in the western Algerian province of Tindouf, where the Sahrawi refugee camps' bloc is based. The province borders the territory of Western Sahara, over which Morocco and Mauritania have had disputes for decades.

"The new confirmed cases are very close to the camps, which means the risk of an outbreak is now imminent and would be disastrous for the refugee population - one that has already suffered four decades of conflict," Oxfam Country Director in Algeria Haissam Minkara said.

According to the report, the refugee camps are now experiencing a dramatic shortage of medical supplies, lung ventilators and some basic things, such as beds, for COVID-19 patients, and local doctors do not even have enough protective equipment for themselves.

The report said that most of the restrictions caused by COVID-19 have extremely complicated life for people in these camps, stressing that the ability for refugees to buy food or any essential hygiene items is severely limited.

Oxfam has called on the international community to provide $14 million in financial support to help respond to the crisis as soon as possible, saying that the organization is mobilizing all of its resources, but it will not be enough to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Morocco has been involved in a conflict with the Polisario Front movement over control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was transferred under control of Morocco and Mauritania in 1975. In 1976, Polisario Front declared that it had established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. This partially recognized state claims Western Sahara but controls only a small part of it.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Microbial communities in the intestinealso known as the gut microbiomeare vital for human digestion, metabolism and resistance to colonization by pathogens. The gut microbiome composition in infants and toddlers changes extensively in the first three years of life. But where do those microbes come from in the first place?

Scientists have long been able to analyze the gut microbiome at the level of the 500 to 1,000 different bacterial species that mainly have a beneficial influence; only more recently have they been able to identify individual strains within a single species using powerful genomic tools and supercomputers that analyze massive amounts of genetic data.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now have used their microbiome "fingerprint" method to report that an individualized mosaic of microbial strains is transmitted to the infant gut microbiome from a mother giving birth through vaginal delivery. They detailed this transmission by analyzing existing metagenomic databases of fecal samples from mother-infant pairs, as well as analyzing mouse dam and pup transmission in a germ-free, or gnotobiotic, mouse model at UAB, where the dams were inoculated with human fecal microbes.

"The results of our analysis demonstrate that multiple strains of maternal microbessome that are not abundant in the maternal fecal communitycan be transmitted during birth to establish a diverse infant gut microbial community," said Casey Morrow, Ph.D., professor emeritus in UAB's Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology. "Our analysis provides new insights into the origin of microbial strains in the complex infant microbial community."

The study used a strain-tracking bioinformatics tool previously developed at UAB, called Window-based Single-nucleotide-variant Similarity, or WSS. Hyunmin Koo, Ph.D., UAB Department of Genetics and Genomics Core, led the informatics analysis. The gnotobiotic mouse model studies were led by Braden McFarland, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology.

Morrow and colleagues have used this microbe fingerprint tool in several previous strain-tracking studies. In 2017, they found that fecal donor microbesused to treat patients with recurrent Clostridium difficile infectionsremained in recipients for months or years after fecal transplants. In 2018, they showed that changes in the upper gastrointestinal tract through obesity surgery led to the emergence of new strains of microbes. In 2019, they analyzed the stability of new strains in individuals after antibiotic treatments, and earlier this year, they found that adult twins, ages 36 to 80 years old, shared a certain strain or strains between each pair for periods of years, and even decades, after they began living apart from each other.

In the current study, several individual-specific patterns of microbial strain-sharing were found between mothers and infants. Three mother-infant pairs showed only related strains, while a dozen other infants of mother-infant pairs contained a mosaic of maternal-related and unrelated microbes. It could be that the unrelated strains came from the mother, but they had not been the dominant strain of that species in the mother, and so had not been detected.

Indeed, in a second study using a dataset from nine women taken at different times in their pregnancies showed that strain variations in individual species occurred in seven of the women.

To further define the source of the unrelated strains, a mouse model was used to look at transmission from dam to pup in the absence of environmental microbes. Five different females were given transplants of different human fecal matter to create five unique humanized-microbiome mice, which were bred with gnotobiotic males. The researchers then analyzed the strains found in the human donors, the mouse dams and their mouse pups. They found four different patterns: 1) The pup's strain of a particular species was related to the dam's strain; 2) The pup's strain was related to both the dam's strain and the human donor's strain; 3) The pup's strain was related to the human donor's strain, but not to the dam's strain; and, importantly, 4) No related strains for a particular species were found between the pup, the dam and the human donor. Since these animals were bred and raised in germ-free conditions, the unrelated strains in the pups came from minor, undetected strains in the dams.

"The results of our studies support a reconsideration of the contribution of different maternal microbes to the infant enteric microbial community," Morrow said. "The constellation of microbial strains that we detected in the infants inherited from the mother was different in each mother-infant pair. Given the recognized role of the microbiome in metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, the results of our study could help to further explain the susceptibility of the infant to metabolic disease found in the mother."

Explore further Persistence of gut microbial strains in twins, living apart after cohabitating for decades

More information: Hyunmin Koo et al, An individualized mosaic of maternal microbial strains is transmitted to the infant gut microbial community, Royal Society Open Science (2020). Journal information: Royal Society Open Science Hyunmin Koo et al, An individualized mosaic of maternal microbial strains is transmitted to the infant gut microbial community,(2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.192200
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The Steelers quarterback is headed to the Hall of Fame. But he was unloved outside Pittsburgh for understandable reasons Ben Roethlisberger almost certainly played his final game in the NFL on Sunday. Photograph: Ed Zurga/AP Ben Roethlisberger is lucky that football legacies are not decided by finales. If Sunday night was indeed Big Bens last ever NFL game, as he has strongly hinted, it wasnt exactly a mic drop. In the 42-21 beatdown by the Chiefs, Roethlisberger struggled with rollouts, and l
Washington, May 8 : The US Department of Justice is moving to drop the criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn was among the former aides to President Donald Trump convicted during the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference, the BBC reported on Thursday.

He had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia's ambassador to the US.

Flynn had been seeking to withdraw his guilty plea.

The justice department's decision also follows criticism of the case by President Trump and his supporters.

Flynn, a retired Army three-star lieutenant general, left the White House in February 2017, just weeks after Mr Trump was sworn in.

In response to the announcement, Flynn tweeted a video of his grandson reciting the US Pledge of Allegiance with the caption: "and JUSTICE for ALL".

On Thursday, Trump said he was "very happy for General Flynn".
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The union representing federal park police applauded the National Park Service on Thursday for sending cleaning crews back to New York City field stations.

Kenneth Spencer, chairman of the U.S. Park Police Fraternal Order of Police, previously raised concerns about officer safety at parks like Great Kills Park -- part of the Gateway National Recreation Area -- that remained open despite the states coronavirus outbreak.

On Thursday, Spencer said his organization was pleased with Gateway Superintendent Jennifer Nersesian after steps were taken to restore the cleaning and sanitation services.

Our officers are committed to serving and protecting the public who visit the national parks and its essential that police work stations are safe and sanitary, he said.

In early April, the park police union requested the citys national parks be closed over concerns about officer safety and a lack of social distancing among people visiting the parks.

National Park Service Spokesman John Warren confirmed that stations had been cleaned Thursday, but declined to comment further.

Responsibility for cleaning the stations had fallen to officers, which Spencer said meant officers needed to take time out of their patrols to clean it themselves.

Previously, Warren said Gateway and USPP are following CDC guidelines in an effort to keep officers and the general public safe.

At Gateway National Recreation Area, park and US Park Police (USPP) leadership have been in regular and frequent communication to discuss modifications to operations to address changing site conditions and safety strategies, he wrote in an email. "USPP officers are often the eyes and ears of the park, letting leadership know whether visitors at various sites are following CDC and local health departments social distancing guidance. "
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday issued a new policy that will reshape the way schools and universities respond to complaints of sexual misconduct, bolstering the rights of the accused and narrowing the scope of cases colleges are required to investigate.

We released a final rule that recognizes we can continue to combat sexual misconduct without abandoning our core values of fairness, presumption of innocence and due process, DeVos said in a call with reporters.

In announcing the new policy, which carries the weight of law, DeVos condemned the Obama administration for adopting a failed approach that turned campus disciplinary panels into kangaroo courts.

DeVos changes narrow the definition of sexual harassment and require colleges to investigate claims only if theyre reported to certain officials. Schools can be held accountable for mishandling complaints only if they acted with deliberate indifference. Students will be allowed to question one another through representatives during live hearings.

The regulation largely mirrors a proposal DeVos issued in November 2018 but tempers some measures that drew some of the heaviest criticism.

The earlier proposal, for example, suggested that colleges would not be required to handle complaints arising beyond campus borders, but the final rule clarifies that their duties extend to fraternity and sorority houses, along with other scenarios in which the college exercises substantial control over the accused student and the context where the alleged misconduct occurred.

DeVos also clarified for the first time that dating violence, stalking and domestic violence also must be addressed under Title IX, and she added new language ordering schools to provide special support for victims regardless of whether they file a formal complaint.

Title IX is the 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex in education. The law and DeVos regulation apply to the nations colleges and universities, along with elementary and secondary schools.

Devos said the new rule takes historic steps to strengthen Title IX protections for all students and to ensure all students can pursue an education free from sex discrimination.

The changes take effect Aug. 14. The Education Department finalized them after reviewing more than 120,000 public comments submitted in response to DeVos proposal.

The final policy was quickly condemned by opponents who say it weakens protections for victims and will discourage many from reporting misconduct. The National Womens Law Center promised to take legal action.

We refuse to go back to the days when rape and harassment in schools were ignored and swept under the rug, said Fatima Goss Graves, the groups president and CEO. We wont let DeVos succeed in requiring schools to be complicit in harassment, turning Title IX from a law that protects all students into a law that protects abusers and harassers.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House education committee, said the policy creates new barriers to justice for victims.

While the departments stated intent was to secure due process for those accused of sexual misconduct, the actual effect of its rule will be to erode protections for students, weaken accountability for schools and make it more difficult for survivors seeking redress, he said.

The overhaul drew praise from Republicans and from groups that represent the accused. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senates education committee, said it respects and supports victims and preserves due process rights for both the victim and the accused.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties group, called it an important victory.

Students shouldnt have to relinquish their basic rights when they step foot on a college campus, but at almost every top college in this country, thats exactly what happens, said Samantha Harris, the groups senior fellow.

Among the most hotly contested changes is DeVos rule allowing students to question one another at live hearings. Advocates for victims say its a cruel policy that forces victims to relive the trauma of sexual violence.

DeVos added new limits around the hearings in her final rule, saying students must never be allowed to question one another directly, and she said only questions that campus officials deem relevant can be asked.

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, an association of more than 200 public universities, said it still has significant concerns about cross examinations, saying the requirement will likely discourage reporting.

Some will worry about an anguish-inducing process that includes requiring them to face direct questioning by respondents aggressive counsel in a live hearing courtroom-like setting, said Peter McPherson, the groups president.

While cross examinations will be required at the college level, the final rule makes it optional for primary and secondary schools.

Under the new rules, the definition of sexual harassment is narrowed to include unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to a schools education programs or activity.

The Obama administration, by contrast, used a broader definition that included any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, including sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal, nonverbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.

Colleges now will be required to dismiss complaints that fall short of the updated definition, although any allegation of rape or sexual assault will be deemed to have met the definition.

Opponents also take issue with a measure in the final policy allowing schools to choose a higher standard of proof when deciding cases of sexual misconduct.

The Obama administration encouraged schools to use a preponderance of the evidence standard, meaning that the allegation is more likely than not true. But the new rules allow schools to use a clear and convincing standard, meaning the claim is highly probable.

Democrats and some education groups had asked DeVos to postpone the final rule until after the coronavirus pandemic, saying schools were too busy responding to the crisis to implement complex federal rules.

The American Council on Education, an association of college presidents, urged DeVos on Wednesday to delay the policy until summer 2021, saying the timing reflected appallingly poor judgment.

This is irrational, unrealistic and completely at odds with the Trump administrations oft-repeated statement to tread lightly when imposing complex new regulations, the group said in a statement.

DeVos said schools had been given fair warning.

Civil rights really cant wait, and students cases continue to be decided now, she said. Weve been working on this for more than two years, so its not a surprise to institutions that its been coming.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Abuse Molestation Education Training Development Universities Politics
The Ministry of Energy has inaugurated the Petroleum Hub Implementation Committee to coordinate all activities regarding the operation of Ghanas Petroleum Hub Development Corporation (PHDC).



The Committee will serve as a focal point of all activities to ensure the realisation of the Petroleum Hub dream.



The Members are Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, Deputy Minister of Energy in charge of Petroleum, Mr Joseph Cudjoe, Deputy Minister in charge of Finance and Infrastructure, Mr Adu Boahen, Deputy Minister of Finance, and Mr Jacob Amuah, Director of National Petroleum Authority.



The others are Mrs Anita Lokko, Director in charge of Legal, Ministry of Energy, Dr Eric Yeboah, Technical Advisor to the Senior Minister, Mr Ali Nuhu Abeka, Acting Director in charge of Petroleum Downstream, Nana Kofi Oppong Damoah, Head of Communications and Public Affairs, Ministry of Energy, and Mr Joseph Yankson, Legal Advisor, Ministry of Energy.



The rest are Mr Charles Owusu, Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Mr Obed Kraine Boachie, the Head, Petroleum Downstream Marketing and Distribution Unit of Ministry of Energy, and Mrs Nancy Ayiku Botchwey, the Administrative Officer at the Ministry of Energy.



The Committee was inaugurated by Mr Lawrence Apaalse, the Chief Director of the Ministry of Energy, on behalf of the Minister, Mr John Peter Amewu.



Mr Apaalse explained that it had been the goal of the Ministry, under the leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to make Ghana a regional hub of refined petroleum products and petrochemicals, hence the development of a master plan toward the realisation of that vision in 2018.



The Corporation will have the capacity and mandate to engage with prospective stakeholders and developers concerned with the Hub, he noted.



Mr Apaalse said per the institutional arrangements proposed in the Master Plan, a PHDC was to be established by statute to coordinate all activities during the implementation and operation of the Hub.



He said the phase one required a dedicated team in place to properly coordinate activities, promote the project, engage prospective investors, review reports, plans and proposals, and ensure that implementation was done per the master plan cost-effectively to provide value for money.



Dr Amin Adam, on his part, noted that the role of the Committee was crucial as it was expected to carefully carry out the activities of the PHDC until the Corporation was fully operational.

Source: GNA









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Teachers unions have warned that opening schools in the UK without fully rolling out a test, trace and isolate policy could risk increased transmission levels of coronavirus.

Suggestions of a potential reopening of schools in June prompted teachers union to issue the warning in an open letter that throws into doubt ministers plans to reopen schools across the UK.

There should no increase in pupil numbers until the full rollout of the governments test, trace and isolate policy with testing targets consistently met over a number of weeks and case numbers falling consistently, the letter, from the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said.

A wider reopening before such a regime is in place would be completely unviable and would risk increased transmission levels, and ultimately deaths.

The idea that schools should reopen at the beginning of June comes as Boris Johnson prepares to announce the easing of lockdown restrictions on Sunday, although the environment secretary George Eustice on Friday warned there would not be a dramatic change overnight.

Among the suggestions for easing lockdown restrictions that have been in place since March was the idea that primary schools could reopen.

They have been closed to the majority of children  excluding those of key workers, and vulnerable children  since the lockdown began.

But in a letter to the secretary of state for education, Gavin Williamson, the TUC warned against such a move without first ensuring the safety of staff and students.

TUC general secretary Frances OGrady said: Parents and staff need full confidence that schools will be safe before any pupils return.

The government must work closely with unions to agree a plan that meets the tests we have set out. Those discussions must include unions representing all school workers, not just teachers.

The best way to do this is through a national taskforce for safe schools, with government, unions and education stakeholders. Schools must also get extra funds from government to pay for essential safety measures like PPE and additional cleaning.

However, a government official told The Guardian that they had never set a date for the potential reopening of primary schools, while objections from teachers unions appear to be taken seriously.

Previously, Mr Williamson said there was no timeline for schools reopening, telling a press conference in April: Of course, I want nothing more than to see schools back, get them back to normal, make sure the children are sat around, learning, and experiencing the joy of being at school.

But I cant give you a date, he added, explaining the five tests for easing lockdown needed to be met first.

These include ensuring the NHS will not be overwhelmed, a decrease in the death rate and slowing of infection, and adequate PPE being available.
Three persons, including a two-year-old girl, tested positive for novel coronavirus in Himachal Pradesh on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 50, officials said.

A person from Kangra district has tested positive at Tanda's Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC), Kangra Superintendent of Police Vimukt Ranjan said.

The patient's details were not immediately available.

Chamba Deputy Commissioner Vivek Bhatia told PTI that the daughter of a driver, who had tested COVID-19 positive on Wednesday, tested positive on Friday.

The DC said she will be admitted to RPGMC in Kangra for treatment.

The driver from Khad Jota panchayat in Salooni subdivision, had a recent travel history to Baddi in Solan district. Samples of all his contacts except that of his daughter tested negative, the DC added.

Earlier in the day, a 42-year-old man tested positive for the coronavirus in Hamirpur district, an official said.

The man from Bijhari town in Bijhri tehsil had returned to Hamirpur from Delhi on April 29, Deputy Commissioner Hairkesh Meena said.

Hamirpur had become coronavirus-free on April 29 after the last two patients in the district tested negative for the infection.

Himachal Pradesh has now nine active cases with three in Chamba, two in Kangra, one each in Hamirpur, Mandi, Shimla and Sirmaur districts, according to officials.

While 34 people have recovered from the infection, three have died. Four people were shifted to other states for treatment.

The fatalities include a 70-year-old Delhi resident who stayed at a guest house of a factory in Baddi in Solan and died at PGIMER, Chandigarh on April 2.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
World War II soldiers, sailors and airmen "would recognize and admire" the spirit shown by the British public during the current coronavirus lockdown, Queen Elizabeth II said on the 75th anniversary of the war ending in Europe.

In her third address to the nation since the outbreak began, the monarch noted that yet again, people are working hard to protect one another, during the subdued Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) celebrations.

"Today may seem hard as we cannot mark this special anniversary," she acknowledged in a televised speech on Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).

"When I look at our country today and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation that those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognize and admire," she said.

Her message was released at 9 p.m. GMT (4 p.m. ET) -- the same time at which her father, King George VI, had in 1945 marked the end of World War II with a radio speech.

The commemoration began hours earlier with Royal Air Force jets flying over London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

A two-minute silence was also led by Prince Charles, the queen's son and heir, and segments of the victory speech by Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill were also broadcast during the day.

Street parties initially planned to mark the day were canceled to maintain social distancing. Instead, people were encouraged to sing the WWII-era song Well Meet Again from their front doors and windows in a nationwide singalong. The song offered hope to many on the front lines during the war.

The royal family has a tradition of stepping in during times of crisis and keeping spirits up.

Image: The 75th Anniversary of VE Day (Andrew Couldridge / Reuters)

The queen delivered her first broadcast as a teenager in 1940 aimed at comforting children who had been evacuated from their homes during the war.

She later enlisted in the war effort, serving as a mechanic for the women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, and stood along with her father and other members of the royal family at the balcony of Buckingham Palace when huge crowds gathered to mark the war's end in Europe.

Story continues

Fighting with Japan would continue in the Pacific theater until Aug. 14, 1945, when an armistice was declared.

Last month, the queen delivered a rare televised address in response to the pandemic. She told the millions of people on lockdown in Britain and throughout the Commonwealth that better days will return."

She had also invoked Well Meet Again by saying: We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.

It was only the fifth time during her 68-year reign that the queen made a special broadcast, with the last one being in 2012 for her diamond jubilee. She also addressed the nation in 2002 after the death of the queen mother, ahead of Princess Diana's funeral in 1997, and during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Normally she delivers televised messages to the nation only on Christmas Day.

Image: Princess Charlotte (Duchess of Cambridge / via Reuters)

Other royals have also stepped up during the coronavirus lockdown.

The Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William's wife, has held video calls with health workers and new parents at Kingston Hospital just south of London, who have been impacted by the virus.

The former Kate Middleton also launched a photography project designed to capture "the spirit, the hopes, the fears and the feelings" of the country amid the crisis, while giving some insight on how she and William are managing homeschooling for their children.

Her daughterPrincess Charlotte, 5, has also risen to the challenge, delivering food packages to elderly residents who are isolating at home because of the pandemic.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, have also been delivering food parcels.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Sikkim's tourism industry, which has already been hit hard by the COVID-19-induced lockdown is likely to see massive job losses, if the govt goes ahead with its plan to shut all tourism operations for another five months

Even as COVID-19 pandemic ravages across the globe, the government of Sikkim is planning to shutdown its tourism sector till October 2020. The states tourism industry, which has already been hit hard by the lockdown is likely to see massive job losses, if it's forced to close shop for another five months.

Interestingly, the Himalayan state despite being a tourist hotspot has not recorded a single positive case of COVID-19. The state government believes that it has been successful in preventing the menace so far by imposing strict restrictions on tourism. The dispensation is willing to continue with the same strategy for the next five months to ensure the safety of its citizens.

While narrating the plan to Firstpost, Jacob Khaileng, the political secretary of chief minister said, We always knew that the only way to deal with this situation was preventing visitors from different countries entering the state. We prevented foreign tourists from visiting Sikkim long before the other states did it. We now know that the battle against the virus is likely to grow longer. To protect our citizens from this battle, we are applying the same strategy by restricting tourism-related activities to win the battle against the virus," he said.

Sikkim barred the entry of foreign tourists on 5 March and that of domestic tourists on 17 March, days ahead of a nationwide ban on foreign visitors was imposed by the Centre.

Sikkim has two entry points to the state, equipped with check points where the credentials of visitors are checked. This system, which always was in force, helped the state machinery in implementing the ban.

Though the move to restrict tourism for a span of five more months is received well by many, it also has caused worries among thousands of Sikkimese who are solely dependent on tourism for livelihood.

Krishna Bhandari, a 21-year-old cab driver in Gangtok, who is the sole bread earner in his family is quite worried about repaying the car loan he took to earn a living.

I bought the vehicle on instalment two years back to earn a living. I used to pay the monthly instalments while meeting both ends of my family by carrying tourists from one spot to the other. If I cannot earn my livelihood for the next five months, I will not be able to pay the monthly instalments of the car loan. This may finally leave me jobless, he said.

There are many like Bhandari who fear that an extension of ban on tourism in the state may leave them jobless.

It is not only the Sikkimese people who are going to suffer because of these restrictions, but also the non-Sikkimese who run tourism businesses in partnership with the locals. Many hotels in Sikkim are leased out to non-Sikkimese businessman who will bear massive losses if the tourism sector remains stagnant for the next five months, said Dipak Barman, a non-Sikkimese businessman based out of Siliguri in West Bengal.

But there are also voices who though admit that another shutdown will make things extremely difficult for the tourism industry, they favour the move to keep the citizens safe.

I think the government does not have many choices in dealing with the ongoing crisis. Even if the government throws doors open for tourists, not many of them are going to arrive. So, it is better to address the issue of the safety of the people first, said Norgay Lachungpa, a hotelier in Sikkim.

But he also says that the government can take steps to minimise the suffering by introducing rebates in taxes and interest on loans.

The government could provide tax breaks, remissions on interest on loans and licence and permit fees, he said.

However, mere rebates and remissions may not be sufficient to minimise the suffering of those employed in the tourism industry.

As per a study, the gross value addition contributed by the tourism sector to the states gross domestic product was 7.89% in the financial year 2013-14 and the number of persons directly employed in the industry was 43,870, which was 7.19 percent of the states total population. The impact of an extended lockdown would leave a deeper wound in the tourism sector.

Khaileng says that when facing a global crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, everyone has to make sacrifices, but the government is contemplating to deal with the situation in a considerate manner.

Neither can we let anyone die of coronavirus, nor can we let anyone die out of hunger. Certainly, we are contemplating on the issue seriously, more so about how to help the people in need. The demands for tax breaks and remissions in instalment are also being discussed, though nothing is yet finalised, added Khaileng.
Angelica Whiting said Sagepoint initially told the family that her mother had pneumonia and did not test her for the coronavirus. Then the family was told Sagepoint had tested her and the results were negative. But at the hospital, doctors said she tested positive. Covid-19 is listed as a contributing factor to her death, along with gastrointestinal bleeding, Angelica Whiting said.
A group of New York state legislators has seen enough.

Four lawmakers  state Sens. Joe Griffo and Jim Seward, along with Assembly members Marianne Buttenschon and Mark Walczyk  are calling for a joint legislative committee investigation and an audit by the state comptroller to examine the Department of Labor's management of the unemployment claims process.

The state unemployment system has been overwhelmed as the economic collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic takes its toll. Even though the department has hired more workers  the call center is up to 3,000 employees  it's difficult for people to connect with a customer service representative over the phone. Early in the outbreak, there were glitches with the application that led to delays. The state partnered with Google Cloud to make improvements to the application.

Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon said Wednesday that the state has paid more than $5.8 billion in unemployment benefits to 1.5 million New Yorkers. But she acknowledged that at least 470,000 New Yorkers haven't received their benefits. She said it because they didn't certify their weekly benefits after the claims were processed.

The Department of Labor is now sending emails and letters to applicants notifying them of the certification process. There's also a new method for submitting backdated certifications that was announced by Reardon on Wednesday.

"We will continue to think outside of the box and find creative solutions to the most common roadblocks to benefits New Yorkers face, and we will not rest until everyone has been served," Reardon said.

But complaints about the unemployment system aren't subsiding. Over a two-day period, The Citizen received several emails and phone calls from people who said they filed weeks ago but haven't received any benefits. Many of those who either emailed or spoke to the newspaper are worried that they won't be able to pay rent, bills or afford groceries.

A recent development caused more concern. State officials announced that personal information, including Social Security numbers, belonging to some applicants may have been accidentally included in letters to other unemployed New Yorkers. The state Department of Labor notified the claimants of the breach and is providing free credit monitoring for one year.

Seward thinks the revelation is among the "serious violations" committed by the department.

"Many people have been waiting weeks, even months, for essential unemployment benefits to feed their families and maintain some semblance of a normal life," Seward said. "I join with my fellow senators and assembly members calling for immediate help for those in need, and long-term solutions to repair what is clearly a broken system."

If the audit is initiated by the comptroller and the joint legislative committee forms to investigate the unemployment claims process, the legislators believe the findings must be made public. They think it would help in not only looking back at what went wrong, but to prepare for future crises that may create more demand for the unemployment system.

The lawmakers relayed the frustration expressed by many of their constituents. Buttenschon said her office has received messages from hundreds of residents in her district that they are "on the verge of giving up hope" because of the unemployment system's failures.

"The investigation by the comptroller's office is essential to ensure accountability as well as to eliminate those bottlenecks in the system that are preventing people from having their claims approved and their benefits started," she said.

Politics reporter Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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A tracking device installed on a mobile phone of the country director of the International Monitory Fund (IMF) has led to the arrest of an armed robber who allegedly attacked and robbed an expatriate couple.

The suspect has been identified as Mohammed Buzu, 29.

At a news conference, the Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), COP Ken Yeboah, said the suspect was arrested in a hotel.

Narrating how the victim was attacked, he said on January 18, 2020, around 3am, Dr. Oral Williams and his wife, Mrs. Claudia Allen William, both of whom were asleep heard an unusual noise in their bathroom.

When Dr. Oral went to the direction of the noise, he met a man who was unmasked and armed with a sharp machete and pliers. The man attacked him and demanded money.

When Dr. Oral told him he had no money, the robber became furious and slashed the left hand before robbing the couple of one Iphone X, a Samsung J7 mobile phone, a Blu Vivo 5 smart phone, an iPhone earpod, one kate spade black leather bag containing their USA, St. Kitts and Ghana drivers licences, sunglasses, a cash of GH200 $200 USD and other complimentary cards, he said.

According to the CID boss, on February 15, 2020, police intelligence led to the arrest of Mohammed Buzu at his hideout in a hotel around Nkrumah Circle, Accra.

He said when a search was conducted in his room, they found documents of the victim and when the suspect was interrogated he admitted to the crime and led police to arrest Kenneth Antwi, the sole receiver of the stolen goods.

Kenneth Antwi was also arrested with the assistance of the suspect, the police have said, adding Buzu also admitted robbing expatriates, especially the diplomatic corps at their residence.

COP Yeboah revealed that Buzu had been on police wanted list as part of the 12 armed robbers, including WO Samuel Agbadokur (rtd), Staff Sgt. Emmanuel Tetteh and some fetish priests who robbed a gold company at Wassa Akropong in October 2018.

He said the suspect escaped with the gold and the cash to the republic of Benin and returned recently.

After the attack, COP Yeboah said the couple relocated to South Africa to continue with their work.

---Daily Guide
<! >

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

Commissioner for Health in Lagos, Prof. Akin Abayomi said the state may record between 90,000 and 120,000 cases of Coronavirus by July or August when it reaches the peak.

Abayomi, spoke Friday at a news conference in Alausa, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, where he gave an update on Coronavirus in the State.

He said the state is yet to reach the virus peak, which will likely be around July and August.

Abayomi stated that Lagos has ramped testings to reach large number of people in a bid to flatten the curve.

He attributed the increase in cases being recorded to the decentralisation of sample collection to the 20 Local Governments.

According to him, if government had not been proactive, the Lagos would have by now recorded 6,000 cases rather than the 1,491 cases it has now.

Abayomi disclosed that Alimosho, Oshodi and Isolo have begun to record more COVID-19 cases.

He, however, noted that 97 percent of positive cases at its isolation centres were mild and moderate cases.

Only three percent were severe cases.

The commissioner said COVID-19 mortality rate has been mainly among males.

He said males with pre-existing ailments such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension and others are prone to die.

He said the 10 positive staff of the State House, Marina, have been taken to isolation centres.

He said 80 people at the State House, Marina, including the governor and his family were tested.

It was only 10 people who were found to be positive, he said.
The Delhi government on Friday said criminal proceedings was likely to be initiated against 567 foreign members of Tablighi Jamaat who were staying at various quarantine centres across the city, while it also started the process of releasing Indian members of the Jamaat.

More than 3,000 Tablighi Jamaat members, who were evacuated from the Nizamuddin Markaz in mid-March, have been under institutional quarantine, after finishing their mandatory 28-day quarantine.

On Friday, while 2,446 Indian Tablighi Jamaat members were allowed to start preparing to leave for their homes, trouble started brewing for their foreign counterparts, who too have been in the citys quarantine centres.

Foreign members of the religious outfit will be handed over to the police for criminal proceedings as per law. There are 567 of them and all of them will face criminal charges since there were passport as well as visa violations. So, we are not going to release them yet, said a senior Delhi government official.

A second official in the Delhi government said that out of over 2,400 Tablighi Jamaat members who will be released, 191 are from Delhi.

The chief secretary today (on Friday) issued directions to the additional chief secretary (home) to ensure that the Tablighis of Delhi are released forthwith. Those from other states are being allowed to return via privately arranged transport as per standard operating procedure laid down by the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA), the official said .

For those who are unable to arrange transport on their own, the Delhi government will provide them with DTC buses, with all necessary precautions, for their inter-state movement.

Today, there was no movement with regard to their release from the quarantine centres. The Indian Tablighis were apprised that they can leave once they have arranged for their own transport. They will have to give the vehicle number and the route to the district administration, who will issue travel passes after scrutiny, the official said.

Indians from the Tablighi Jamaat are being released on orders. But foreigners related to Jamaat will be handled by the Union ministry of external affairs. This is because their visas have also expired and the matters is beyond the jurisdiction of the Delhi government, Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said .

Jain added that necessary orders have been issued for the release of Indian Jamaatis.

A March gathering of Tablighi Jamaat in Nizamuddin in Delhi has been blamed by health authorities for the spread of Covid cases across the country. As of Friday, Delhi had witnessed 6,318 cases of Covid-19. Of these, at least 1,080 are linked to the markaz.

On May 3, Delhis health department had written to the MHA seeking directions for the release of the Tablighi Jamaat members citing mounting pressures.

Since a month has already passed after the completion of Markaz evacuation, the persons shifted from these masjids to various hospitals and quarantine facilities are restless to go back to their respective states/countries. As on today, all the 3,013 persons have not only tested negative but also completed more than 28 days of stay in hospitals/quarantine facilities. Administration is having a tough time convincing these persons for their extended stay, more so during the holy month of Ramzan, Delhi secretary (health and family welfare) Padmini Singla had written to the additional secretary (UT), MHA.

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LANSING, MI -- Attorney General Dana Nessel said Friday a ban on guns at the Capitol could be enacted by the Michigan State Capitol Commission, which is slated to discuss firearms next week.

In a letter sent to the Michigan State Capitol Commission, Nessel said the commission would be within its rights to ban guns on the Capitol grounds for the protection of those both inside and outside of the building. She also issued a statement on her decision in a press release issued by her office.

With exceptions to those tasked with protecting our Capitol, the only way to assure that a violent episode does not occur is to act in concert with the many other state legislatures around the nation that have banned firearms in their capital facilities," Nessel said.

"The employees at our Capitol and members of the public who visit are entitled to all the same protections as one would have at a courthouse and many other public venues. Public safety demands no less, and a lawmakers desire to speak freely without fear of violence requires action be taken.

The commission is comprised of six members: the Secretary of the Senate, the Clerk of the House, two members appointed by the governor and two members jointly appointed by the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House. The commission is tasked with managing the Capitol grounds and building, which includes approving what is and isnt approved on the property.

A notice on the commissions website says a meeting scheduled for 11 a.m. on Monday, May 11 will take place with the first agenda item being discussion of firearms in the Capitol and on Capitol Square.

Because the commission is not a local unit of government, it has the authority to ban weapons at the Capitol, according to Nessel who cited a pair of rulings by the state Supreme Court. Nessel also says the same guidance was provided to House Speaker Lee Chatfield by her predecessor, former Attorney General Bill Schuette.

Commission vice chair John Truscott said that despite Nessels letter, hes still under the impression the decision ultimately will have to be made by the legislature. While some letters from Nessel can carry the weight of law, he said, in this case Truscott isnt so sure. He said the commissions lawyer has advised the group that it does not actually have the jurisdiction to ban guns and could be challenged in court.

Were getting contrary information to what the attorney general gave us in terms of the body and what is our authority," Truscott said.

State Democrats called on the commission to ban guns on the grounds shortly after Nessels announcement. House Democrats sent a letter to the commission reasoning that several other states have banned or restricted guns on the grounds of their capitols and that given the current climate, Michigan should do the same.

Prohibiting firearms within the Michigan State Capitol does not infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms, said State Rep. and Democratic Caucus Chair Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, in a press release. We must safeguard Michiganders constitutionally protected rights to speak, assemble and petition the government and protect legislators, staff and the general public from armed intimidation.

Sens. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia; Sylvia Santana, D-Detroit; Erika Geiss, D-Taylor; and Marshall Bullock, D-Detroit issued a joint statement as well calling for the ban.

The Capitol is the building of the people, and it should be a place where everyone feels safe and secure, no matter whether they are children coming for an educational opportunity or adults exercising their First Amendment rights. The recent intimidation tactics used by protesters have been deeply disturbing, with their actions simply having gone too far. While we believe in and support Second Amendment rights, we also need to ensure the safety of those working in, and visiting, our Capitol Building," reads a portion of the statement.

Pressure has been mounting to consider a ban following a protest last week that ended up inside the Capitol while lawmakers were in session. Protesters demanded to be let into the chambers while several of them were armed with guns. The tense encounter ended without any serious problems, but many lawmakers have spoken out since to express their concern over how the protest played out.

Sen. Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, publicly scolded some of the protestors.

My statement on so-called protestors who used intimidation and the threat of physical harm to stir up fear and feed rancor. I condemn their behavior and tactics. They do not represent the Senate Republicans. At best, those so-called protestors are a bunch of jackasses. pic.twitter.com/641jOzXRDi  Sen. Mike Shirkey (@SenMikeShirkey) May 1, 2020

This story has been updated to include comments from John Truscott, the vice chair of the Michigan State Capitol Commission.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

READ MORE

Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus

Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

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At least three people, including a civilian, were killed after rocket attacks by forces loyal to Libyan renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar hit the capital Tripoli and a nearby area, the government said early on Friday.

Rockets struck Tripoli port, Mitiga International Airport and a coastal road, said Mustafa al-Mujie, spokesman for the governments military campaign to combat Haftars assault on Tripoli, dubbed Operation Volcano of Rage.

Amin al-Hashemi, a spokesman for the health ministry of Libyas UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), said two security staff and one civilian were killed and four others were injured in the attacks.

In a statement, Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Taher Siala said the attacks did not comply with international laws as they struck the coastal road near the residences of the Turkish and Italian ambassadors.

These attacks are unacceptable and denote contempt for international law and human life, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

 Happening now: #Tripoli main port shelled while IOM staff were awaiting the disembarkation of some 25 migrants intercepted at sea. Our staff were forced to evacuate the location. We are concerned about the migrants who remain on the coast guard vessel.  Safa Msehli (@msehlisafa) May 7, 2020

Meanwhile, six members of an armed group loyal to Haftar surrendered to the GNA on Friday at al-Watiya airbase, according to Operation Volcano of Rages media centre.

Al-Watiya, located southwest of Tripoli, is regarded as a key airbase in the country and is second only to Mitiga international airport.

It was captured in August 2014 by Haftar, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) in eastern Libya, who used it as his headquarters for western operations.

Residential neighbourhoods targeted

On Wednesday, at least five civilians were killed and dozens wounded when Haftars armed forces shelled Tripoli twice.

Haftars artillery on Wednesday hit two Tripoli neighbourhoods, Tajoura and Abu Salim, according to al-Hashemi who added that children and paramedics were among the 46 civilians wounded in the shelling.

This the first time since the beginning of 2020 that residential neighborhoods are that intensively targeted, he said.

Last April, Haftar launched a push to capture the city. The fighting, which has killed hundreds of civilians and displaced tens of thousands, has mostly stalemated in recent months.

Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was later killed.

Since 2015, the country has been split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by armed groups supported by an array of foreign powers.

Haftars offensive is supported by France and Russia, as well as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other key Arab countries.

The government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey, which deployed troops and fighters to help defend the capital in January, as well as by Italy and Qatar.
Ukraine will continue to promote the idea of creating a memorial to the Ukrainian victims of Nazism in Berlin, Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk has said in an interview with Ukrinform.

"As for our initiative on a memorial to Ukrainian victims, I will say at once that we are at the very beginning of the road. I hope that in coming days official appeals will be sent to the Bundestag, which is actually responsible for such issues, from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the general public," the ambassador said.

He noted that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was actively supporting this idea and had already discussed it with his German counterpart Heiko Maas.

Melnyk said it was difficult to predict what the final decision of the German parliament will be, given the incredible sensitivity of the subject of historical responsibility. For example, Poland, which has also been badly affected by Nazi Germany, has been seeking the construction of a monument to Polish victims of Nazism in Berlin for quite a long time, and the issue has not yet been resolved. However, Melnyk said, the number of Bundestag deputies who support the idea is constantly growing, which gives hope that Ukraine's initiative will soon find understanding.

The ambassador stressed that Ukraine "has no intention to compete with other nations affected by the brown plague," as this would be the height of cynicism. However, ordinary Germans, not just historians, should know that it was on the territory of Ukraine that Nazis committed unprecedented crimes against civilians, that five out of eight million Ukrainians killed were civilians, and that at least 2.4 million Ukrainians were forcibly deported to Germany.

In addition, the recognition of historical responsibility before Ukraine also concerns today's politics, he said.

"I think if the monument to eight million Ukrainians who died in World War II had stood in the center of the German capital for five years, the discussions around Nord Stream 2 and other similar projects that are sensitive to us would have been held in a completely different manner," Melnyk said.

On May 8, Ukraine's Embassy in Germany will hold for the sixth time a ceremony honoring World War II victims in the Tiergarten Park in the center of Berlin.

op
The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra is set to become easier and smoother for pilgrims than ever before, with the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) completing a key road in Uttarakhand that will cut travel time drastically as people will no longer have to undertake a grueling trek to reach the sacred place, the defence ministry said on Friday.

Hundreds of pilgrims travel to the 6,638-metre Mount Kailash, located near Mansarovar Lake in the Tibet Autonomous Region, every year with the belief that circumambulating the holy mountain brings good fortune.

The BRO has built a road from Dharchula to Lipulekh (the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar) --- a stretch of 80 km --- at an altitude ranging from 6000 feet to 17,060 feet, creating the shortest route for the Yatra, the ministry said in a statement.

Now, people can drive up to Lipulekh in vehicles. They will no longer have to trek for five to six days, said a senior government official. The new road is an extension of the Pithoragarh-Tawaghat-Ghatiabagarh road.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh said the new road link will allow pilgrims to complete the Yatra in just one week compared to two to three weeks it took earlier. He inaugurated the road through video conferencing.

While combating Covid-19 pandemic, the BRO in Uttarakhand has connected Kailash Mansarovar route to Lipulekh pass at a ht of 17,060 ft; thus providing connectivity to border villages and security forces, the minister said on Twitter.

The arduous trek through treacherous high-altitude terrain can now be avoided. At present, the travel to Kailash-Mansarovar takes around two to three weeks through Sikkim or Nepal routes. The Lipulekh route had a trek of 90 km and the elderly yartris faced lot of difficulties, the statement said.

The routes through Sikkim and Nepal require the pilgrims to travel 20% of their journey on Indian roads and 80% on Chinese roads. With the opening of new road, this ratio has been reversed. Now pilgrims will traverse 84% land journey on Indian roads and only 16% in China, the defence ministry said.

Singh said with the crucial road link had fulfilled the decades-old dreams and aspirations of local people and pilgrims.

BRO chief Lieutenant General Harpal Singh said the construction of the road was a challenging task due to a raft of factors such as constant snow fall, high altitude and extremely low temperatures --- factors that restricted the annual working season to five months.

One of the biggest challenges for the BRO is to arrange a large labour force to carry out construction of key roads and tunnels in far-flung areas as Covid-19 sweeps through the country, as reported by Hindustan Times on April 28.

The BROs peak working season extends from May to November. Migrant workers are a key part of the BROs workforce involved in building strategic roads, along the countrys northern border with China, scattered across Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

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Myanmar Military Column, Artillery Firings Displace Rakhine Villagers

2020-05-07 -- Large numbers of civilians have been forced to flee their homes in rural Rakhine state after a Myanmar military column deployed in three villages fired artillery into a forested area where it believed rebel Arakan Army camps were, residents said Thursday.

Local residents from three villages in northern Rakhine's Minbya township said that Myanmar Army soldiers were deployed in schools, a monastery, and a community hall in the area.

"A government military column placed big guns in front of the elementary school in Min village and started firing in the direction of the eastern mountains until about 9 p.m.," said a local resident who declined to be named for safety reasons.

"Also this morning, they fired about 20 times," the villager said. "They are staying in the school, a monastery and in houses around the school."

Another resident, who also requested anonymity for the same reason, said after government soldiers deployed in three villages, they warned villagers not to support or communicate with the AA. The rebel force was declared a terrorist group and banned in March.

"At first, the government military was stationed on the hill, firing all day," the person said. "A huge mortar shell fell on the village, [and] the villagers had to flee. After that, no one dared to remain in the village. Today there's no one left."

RFA was unable to verify how many villagers had fled the army.

Local activist Arn Tha Gyi told RFA that the villagers are more afraid of columns of Myanmar soldiers than of the clashes themselves.

"Whenever they enter a village, everyone in the village [knows] they are in for trouble," he told RFA. "They threaten villagers, loot and create problems, so that we Rakhine people are more afraid of army columns than of battles."

Myanmar military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun disputed the villagers' accounts, saying soldiers did not set up heavy weapons in the villages.

"First of all, it is not true," he said. "Artillery is not the kind of weapon that needs to be carried around and fired. It can be fired from anywhere."

Zaw Min Tun added that it was impossible for government troops to take positions in ethnic Rakhine villages because they contain many AA sympathizers who could easily ambush them.

He denied reports that the military was digging trenches around homes and schools in villages and suggested that AA soldiers were employing this as a battle tactic so they could attack Myanmar forces from civilian positions

Zaw Min Tun also said that there had been no fighting in Minbya township in recent days.

AA spokesman Khine Thukha was not available for comment.

Shelters need in Chin state

The Myanmar military and AA have engaged in intense hostilities in northern Rakhine sate and Paletwa township in adjacent Chin state for the past 16 months, as the Arakan force seeks greater autonomy for ethnic Rakhine people in the region.

The fighting has killed dozens of civilians and displaced more than 160,000 others, according to a tally by the Rakhine Ethnics Congress, a local relief group.

Nearly 10,000 displaced villagers in Chin's remote Paletwa township are in urgent need of shelter before the start of the annual monsoon season later this month, with local officials pledging to build modest bamboo structures for them.

The internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been living temporarily in community halls and in the homes of relatives.

"We have been living in a high school for a month," said Hsin Koe, an IDP from Paletwa's Nanchaungwa village. "There are more than 100 people in this school, so it's not convenient to live there. It's a four-hour walk from Paletwa to our village, and right now is not a good time to return home."

The nonprofit organization the Relief and Rehabilitation Committee for Chin IDPs (RRCCI) has been collecting donations to build shelters for IDPs before monsoon season, which runs from late May through October.

A 10-by-12-foot room will cost about 200,000 kyats (U.S. $140) to build, said Mine Nang Wai from RRCCI.

"They will be in trouble during the rainy season," he said." They can now stay in the schools because of COVID-19, but if it wasn't for that, then they couldn't stay."

"The Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement has agreed to help them as a policy," he said. "The committee is going to talk with the Chin state government and work on it. If we only rely on government, it would be a burden for the government. That's why we are doing as much as we can [to help]."

On May 4, the RRCCI has met with members of Union government, Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye, and Chin State government spokesman Soe Htet, who also serves as the state's minister of municipal affairs, to discuss the IDP situation in Paletwa.

"We are going to received 12 million kyats [U.S. $8,400] from the National Disaster Management Committee for these IDPs," Soe Htet said, adding that the funds will be used to build 48 tents in the towns of Paletwa and Samee and in Meza village.

Each tent will measure 100-by-30 feet and will house 960 families, he added.

About 4,000 IDPs are in Paletwa, 3,000 in Samee, more than 2,000 in Meza village, according to officials. Another 200 displaced persons have already moved to Yangon.

Additional funds for shelters will be needed because there are 1,600 households in Paletwa township, Soe Htet said.

Lawmakers in Rakhine's Rathedaung township collected donations to build shelters for IDPs there before torrential rains begin, but the state government barred local humanitarian relief groups NGOs from erecting the structures, saying they did not first obtain building permission from state officials.

The more than 800 displaced civilians currently in Rathedaung town have sought shelter in Buddhist monastery compounds and in the homes of friends and relatives.

The IDPS must rely on humanitarian assistance from civil society organizations amid a dearth of relief supplies from the state government.

Reported by RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Maung Maung Nyo and Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Copyright  1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content May not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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She is the epitome of glamour, known for her effortless style and age-defying looks.

And Joan Collins looked sensational as she quaffed champagne on her Union Jack bedecked balcony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday.

The former Dynasty actress, 86, exuded glamour as she posed on her spacious balcony, which she and husband Percy Gibson, 55, had decorated with Union Jack Bunting.

Celebrate: Joan Collins looked sensational as she quaffed champagne on her Union Jack bedecked balcony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday

Patriotic: The former Dynasty actress, 86, exuded glamour as she posed on her spacious balcony, which she and husband Percy Gibson, 55, had decorated with Union Jack Bunting

The icon looked sensational in a white caped-sleeve gown with a chic cut-out across the decolletage, which displayed her trim figure.

The star paired these with white peeptoe heels and a red ribbon.

Her brunette tresses were even worn in a genuine 1945 style while a rich palette of make-up lit up her stunning features.

Joan looked patriotic as she sipped on a glass of champagne and flashed the peace sign to celebrate the moment in history before making an emotional speech.

She said: 'Let's raise a glass and make a toast to our great heroes and heroines of World War Two.'

Cheers! The icon looked sensational in a white caped-sleeve gown paired with a 1945-style hairdo as she toasted the momentous day

Wow: The champagne erupted in a tower of foam as Percy got the celebrations underway

Toasting: Joan smiled as Percy poured her a refreshing drink on VE Day

Peace: Joan flashed the peace sign while Percy smiled from the balcony

Her husband Percy looked equally as delighted to be honouring the anniversary as he made a dapper suited arrival to the balcony.

Earlier in the day Joan showed off her laidback style in a chic straw hat and headscarf as she decorated the balcony.

The star sported oversize shades and a white and blue patterned dress as she got to work with Percy.

Sensational: As ever Joan was the epitome of glamour as she toasted the 75th Anniversary of the historic victory

Sensational: Percy sent champagne spraying all over the balcony after popping the cork in the sunshine

Speech: Joan looked glamorous as she made a speech and a toast

Bubbly: Joan nearly spilled some champagne on her gold bracelets as she and a dapper Percy celebrated

Strike a pose: The beauty wore white gloves and shades to complete her glamorous look

Friday commemorates the official surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces on May 8 1945, following the Second World War.

The poignant commemorations were led by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, who each laid a wreath at a memorial near Balmoral.

The Red Arrows also carried out a spectacular flypast over the Capital while RAF Typhoons flew over Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast as the Air Force pays its respects.

The Queen will address the country from Windsor Castle at 9pm this evening and afterwards, Britons will be invited to join in with a singalong to Vera Lynn's wartime classic, We'll Meet Again.

Siren: Earlier in the day Joan showed off her laidback style in a chic straw hat and headscarf as she decorated the balcony

Looking good: The star sported oversize shades and a white and blue patterned dress as she got to work with Percy

Patriotic: The happy couple looked focused as they decorated their balcony

Casual cool: Percy looked handsome as he lifted up some bunting

Radiant: Joan looked uber stylish as she took in the scenic views from her balcony

In a heartfelt message to the nation this morning, Boris Johnson said 'our gratitude will be eternal' to the 'soldiers, sailors and airmen fought the Nazis with courage, ingenuity and stubborn endurance.'

The Prime Minister has written to veterans to assure them that despite the ongoing lockdown, they and their efforts to defeat a 'ruthless enemy' would not be forgotten.

'We cannot pay our tribute with the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past; your loved ones may be unable to visit in person,' he said in the letter.

'But please allow us, your proud compatriots, to be the first to offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered.'
Rennes (France):

At least 13 people have died and six been injured in a fire early today at a bar in Rouen, northern France, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. An inquiry is underway to establish the cause of the fire, Cazeneuve said in a statement.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Asserting that migrant workers reeling from the impact of the coronavirus lockdown need immediate support from the government, former Congress president on Friday demanded that the Centre put money in peoples hands to help them tide over the crisis.

Migrants need support and money now. Today. MSMEs need help immediately, not tomorrow, or job losses will become tsunami, Gandhi said at a press conference called after 16 migrants walking home to Madhya Pradesh were crushed to death in Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

He said the government can take the idea of NYAY, the minimum income scheme promised by Congress before 2019 polls, and start giving Rs 7,000 per person to 50 per cent poor.

The Centre, he said, needs to have a strategy for our migrants and prepare post-lockdown guidelines soon.

The central thing the government needs to do is be transparent about their actions. What are the boxes they want checked off before they start opening things. The government should tell people these are the criteria important for opening, he added.

Gandhi said the government cannot continue the lockdowns without providing support to people who are suffering.

Opening up is a transition, and government needs to have a strategy to open. I told PM it is not an off and on switch, and it requires coordination on all levels, he added.

Gandhi had earlier in the day expressed shock over the death of migrant workers who were run over by a train in Aurangabad on Friday and said that India should feel ashamed about the treatment being given to the countrys nation-builders.

I am shocked at the news of our migrant brothers being killed by a goods train. We should feel ashamed about the treatment being given to our nation-builders. My condolences to the families of those killed and I pray for the quick recovery of the injured, Gandhi said in a tweet.

      -                                             Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 8, 2020

At least 16 migrant workers were run over by a train in Aurangabad city of Maharashtra on Friday morning while they were trying to return to their rural homes in Madhya Pradesh.

They had been walking along the rail tracks and slept there due to exhaustion, an official said. They were mowed down by a goods train that was running between Jalna and Aurangabad at 5.15 am.

At least one person has also been injured in the accident and has been taken to the civil hospital.

The labourers, officials said, all worked at an iron factory in Jalna and were headed back to Madhya Pradesh amid the coronavirus lockdown.

Last week, the Congress leader had also slammed the Railways Ministry for charging the fare of tickets from the stranded migrant workers.

"On the one hand, the Railways is charging ticket fares from the labourers stranded in different states, while on the other hand, the Ministry of Railways is giving Rs 151 crore to the PM Care Fund. Just solve this mystery," he wrote on Twitter.
Kerala has flattened the



COVID-19 curve, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said as only a solitary case was reported on Friday and just 16 people remained under treatment for the infection in the state.

He also said the state needed to be careful to avoid another wave of the deadly virus but asserted it was ready to fight it in such an event.

The state reported a solitary positive case, taking the total to 503 while ten more people recovered on Friday, further bringing down the active cases to 16, he told reporters here.

"Now, two months later (after second wave of infections hit the state in March), the curve has been flattened. As we have completed 100 days since the country's first COVID case was detected from Kerala, we havea record of better recovery rate in the whole world," Vijayan said.

The fresh case was a person with kidney ailment who came to Ernakulam from Chennai, the chief minister said.

"All the ten recoveries are from Kannur. The total tally of the cases in the state is 503, while 20,157 are under observation, including 347 in various hospitals," he said.

The country's first COVID-19case was reported on January 30 when a medical student from Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, tested positive in Thrissur, he said.

The second wave of the virus had hit the state during March when a three-member family returned from Italy.

With the start of repatriation of the stranded Non Resident Keralites (NRKs), mainly from Gulf nations, "there is need to ensure that athird wave does not happen in the state and all efforts are being taken to ensure this," he said.

"We need to be careful to avoid a third wave. In case there is one, we are ready to fight it," Vijayan said.

Though the positive cases have reduced, there cannot be any room for any complacency, he added.

Kerala has been earning accolades from many quarters for the manner in which it dealt with the pandemic and restricting deaths due to the virus to just three so far while containing its spread.

It has made elaborate arrangements to screen the returning expatriates and put them under quarantine.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There's no denying that the global Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world on its head, even more so for those who were already struggling with tight wallets. Here's how their lives have been affected and how marketers and retailers can better connect with 'nillionaires' post-Covid-19 to better meet their needs with streamlined communications, product and purpose...

One nation  two worlds: Meet SAs nillionaires

Heres what we can do to help 'nillionaires' navigate these dark times

While words like mass-market, bottom of the pyramid and lower LSM are usually well-intended, they do have unintended consequences so its time to reframe and acknowledge that first and foremost, consumers in any market are still people at heart who deserve to be treated with respect, albeit with fundamentally different motivations.So, defined as South Africans who live with little or no money, nillionaires are the new class of shopper, facing more troubling times than usual. While the phrase may be new, the shopper is not, as the Establishment Survey shows they comprise 70% of SAs population. Our findings show that 69% of them are below the age of 34 years, 55% are female and all are surviving on a household income of R5,000 a month, max.Its, therefore, important to leverage insights into this market for business growth as Covid-19 has become the greatest equaliser  its a futile exercise to try compare its impact to anything weve faced before because while were not in the same boat, were all trying to make our way through the same Covid-19 storm.Even if this is not your core target market, we need to make an effort to do things the right way, for the sake of humanity. Because the rapid spread of the coronavirus across the world has not only shown how fragile we are but also brought to the surface the invisible lines that divide us. While there are just over 8,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in South Africa at the time of writing, there were just 161 reported deaths, making ours one of the lowest Covid-19 death rates in the world.That said, theres no denying the impact Covid-19 has had on the economy.For example, we recently celebrated Freedom Day under lockdown. But Freedom Day 2020 was vastly different from Freedom Day 1994. Freedom Day in 1994 was a day of jubilance and optimism while Freedom Day 2020, in contrast, saw no hugs or celebrations as we self-isolated in our homes against an enemy we cant even see. But, this time around, queues for the basics to feed families, instead of to cast a vote for freedom.Notably, when the rest of the world went online, the nillionaires went to go stand in line, with no other option to provide for their households.Our 15-minute mobile surveys with Connected Nillionaires and Spotlight video interviews with the Kantar Panel database shared blow-by-blow accounts of what life has been like for them in this time of uncertainty and contradictions, as a story of people with little or no money in lockdown.Nillionaires are not a monolithic group, with each households structure and every individual at a different station in life. The only thing common amongst them is that they have little or no money. Yet, they are the lifeline of the South African economy, making up the bulk of the labour force across key industries and essential for both production and consumption. They also happen to be the most vulnerable segment of the population, as many live with compromised immune systems, making Covid-19 an even deadlier threat to this segment of the population.A glimpse into their lives shows its not that they dont want to abide by the social distancing protocols and prevailing laws of our current situation - their living circumstances simply make it hard to do so:Heres what life is really like for them under lockdown: Most are stuck at home, feeling uncertain, anxious and depressed, both about their families and their financial future as theres been a radical decline in income. With less money in hand than before, theyve had to make trade-ups on staples and personal care products; trade-downs on meat, snacks and soft drinks; and trade-offs on luxury items that are no longer a priority or have become unaffordable. So, they pass the time on free entertainment and social media platforms, as well as on basic chores and cooking what they can. Because for the first time for most, they dont need to leave home at 4am and only return at 9pm from work.But how is your brand relevant in their new normal? How are you offering hope?Now more than ever before, nillionaires negotiate the three currencies that drive shopper behaviour:Hence long queues at shops and stores and increased prices are a frustration. Business and brands need to do what they can to grease these currencies to stay relevant now and, in their lives, tomorrow.Covid-19 and the lockdown have not eroded the desire for people with little money to spoil themselves, nor have they put an end to their standing plans  theyve simply been paused. While none of us knows just how quickly well reach the new normal, many are dreaming about it. Our sample revealed nillionaires are planning on treating themselves and their families with hot wings and pizza and will be buying nappies and winter clothes for their children and grandchildren as well as visiting the local hardware store post-lockdown.The below three top-line strategies as we enter this new normal are not necessarily new, they just need a rethink:How you communicate and help people through these tough times, especially when theyre struggling with safety and product supply is crucial. Lifebuoy excelled in this regard with their hygiene message of washing your hands regularly with any soap available, acting as a hero for the category overall. Engen also branded 35 spaza shops across the country with Covid-19 safety messages, which leverages brand equity to encourage appropriate behaviour changes for the benefit of society.You also need to ensure shoppers can find your product in the places theyre buying, as their priorities have shifted to a renewed respect for having the essentials. This means both looking at new routes to market and managing your price pack architecture closely, as the top concern for all consumers under Covid-19 is having enough money to buy food for the family. I&J took this to heart and introduced a new pack of fish fingers at an attainable price point for cash-strapped shoppers, tapping into top trust factors of affordability and quality assurance.The most-pulled levers in retail are those of pricing and promotions, so be smart about how to deliver better value for money. Now may be the time to trial price-marked packs and to give consumers the confidence that theyre paying the right price for the product.As cash-strapped shoppers have largely cut back on purchasing luxuries and impulse-buy treats, why not throw a ray of sunshine into an otherwise cloudy day by adding a free bag of chips or a chocolate bar when staple items are purchased, to sweeten the deal?Doing what you can to maintain brand trust and familiarity will help consumers navigate into the new normal.Kantar SA CEO Ivan Moroke concludes: People are people, as marketers we need to beware of being blinded by labels. Were not talking about a single market as many have tightened wallets right now. Across different categories, what is your brand relevance at this time?Value is never boring, as people always need something to put a smile on their face  especially when facing uncertainty in all other aspects of life.
The wearing of face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus has become a health imperative for most, and a political statement for some, but Donald Trump seems adamant not to wear one  reportedly because he thinks he would look ridiculous.

Mr Trump has been mask averse for weeks. Within minutes of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announcing its updated mask recommendations, he said, I dont think that Im going to be doing it.

The Associated Press reports that Mr Trump has told advisors he believes wearing one would send the wrong message, according to one administration and two campaign officials not authorised to publicly discuss private conversations.

The president reportedly feels it would look like he is preoccupied with health instead of focused on reopening the nations economy  which his aides believe is the key to his reelection chances.

Mr Trump, who is known to be especially concerned about his appearance on television, has also told confidants that he fears he would look ridiculous in a mask and the image would appear in negative ads.

This week Trump was barefaced when he spoke to masked journalists, workers and Secret Service agents at an Arizona factory that manufactures masks.

He later said he briefly wore a mask backstage but took it off because facility personnel told him he didnt need it.

Traditionally, the president, or any other head of state or elected official, would set an example through their actions, but Trump has even left those around him unsure how to proceed.

White House aides say the president hasnt told them not to wear them, but few do. Some Republican allies have asked Trumps campaign how it would be viewed by the White House if they were spotted wearing a mask.

Its a vanity thing, I guess, with him, House speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Trump on MSNBC. Youd think, as the president of the United States, you would have the confidence to honour the guidance hes giving the country.

House minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Thursday that he himself wears a mask when near others but said of Trump: The president has his doctor around him all the time and makes sure what he does is correct.

Meanwhile, first lady Melania Trump has tweeted and filmed a video explaining the importance of wearing a mask; vice president Mike Pence admitted he was wrong not to wear one during a visit to the Mayo Clinic; and the presidents reelection campaign has ordered red Trump-branded masks for supporters and is considering giving them away at events or in return for donations.

The mixed messages coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania have worried some health officials as stay-at-home orders are relaxed in many states and more and more people begin to return to public spaces.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
A husband who returned to New Zealand to see his dying wife one last time is being denied the chance to say goodbye as he is forced into quarantine.

Bernie Ryan flew back to the country on Sunday from his job as a mining contractor in Brisbane after hearing his wife Christine - who has terminal lung cancer - had only hours to live.

Mr Ryan is trapped in quarantine in Auckland and forced to self-isolate in a hotel for 14 days.

He told RNZ that he was refused an exemption to see his wife and say goodbye.

'In the interim, her organs have started to fail and she's on a morphine drip. My three children, distraught children, are with her, obviously wanting me to be around. I have family support there with her but ultimately it's not the father, is it?' Mr Ryan said.

His wife was diagnosed with lung cancer 18 months ago, and was making progress when Mr Ryan flew to Australia for work.

Bernie Ryan (pictured with wife Christine Taylor) is being denied the chance to say goodbye to his dying wife because of COVID-19 restrictions

Bernie Ryan flew back to New Zealand on Sunday from his job as a mining contractor in Brisbane after hearing his wife's cancer had aggressively returned and she had only hours to live (pictured: passengers outside the Auckland international airport)

But her condition deteriorated and he jumped on the earliest flight from Brisbane back to Auckland to try and get to her hospital bed in their home city Christchurch.

On arrival he was placed into mandatory isolation and immediately appealed for an exemption from the Ministry of Health.

Despite no symptoms of COVID-19 and a letter of support from the GP he said his request was knocked back.

His first attempt to see her was rejected after two days of waiting for a response.

He lodged another appeal, and was brought to tears after receiving another rejection several days later, this time via a phone call from the Ministry of Health.

Mr Ryan is begging health authorities to ignore the bureaucratic red tape and show some humanity.

'Well, I'm a proud Kiwi, we're the best country in the world, just [show] some compassion... instead of these generic emails I've been getting, what about just some compassion? And not every case is the same is basically is what I'm saying,' he said.

'It's breaking my heart really.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the New Zealand Ministry of Health for comment.
Kevin Hart has had his $60 million sex tape lawsuit dismissed.

Montia Sabbag, 28, filed documents last year accusing the 40-year-old comedian of secretly recording her whilst they had consensual sex in a room at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas in 2017.

However the lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction so a federal California judge threw it out on May Day, according to Page Six.

New developments: Kevin Hart has had the $60 million federal sex tape lawsuit against him by Montia Sabbag dismissed

In her papers, Sabbag accused Kevin, his former pal Jonathan 'JT' Jackson, and the hotel of emotional distress, violations of privacy and negligence, and claimed she should be compensated a whopping $60 million.

Sabbag will be allowed to file her paperwork again in the proper jurisdiction though, as the judge in the case did not dismiss the case with prejudice.

She is free to file suit again in local civil courts in California as she, Hart and Jackson all live in that state.

In 2018, Jackson was arrested with attempted extortion and extortion by threatening letter after being accused of trying to leak the tape, but has denied ever extorting Hart.

There's the rub: Sabbag will be allowed to file her paperwork again in the proper jurisdiction though, as the judge in the case did not dismiss the case with prejudice

After news of the tape became public, Kevin took to social media to issue an apology to his wife Eniko Parrish, 35, who was pregnant when the infidelity occurred.

Kevin has three children - Heaven, 15, and Hendrix, 12, whom he has with his ex-wife Torrei Hart, and two-year-old Kenzo whom he has with Eniko.

He said: 'I'm at a place in my life where I feel like I have a target on my back and because of that, I should make smart decisions. And recently, I didn't.'

Kevin acknowledged: 'You know, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to sit up here and say that I am or claim to be in any way shape or form.'

Details: In her papers, Sabbag accused Kevin, his former pal Jonathan 'JT' Jackson, and the hotel of emotional distress, violations of privacy and negligence

The superstar confessed: 'I made a bad error in judgment and I put myself in a bad environment where only bad things can happen and they did.

'And in doing that, I know that I'm going to hurt the people closest to me, who've I talked to and apologized to, that would be my wife and my kids.

'And I just, you know, it's a s***ty moment. It's a s***ty moment when you know you're wrong and there's no excuses for your wrong behavior. At the end of the day man, I just simply have got to do better.'

He noted defiantly in his Instagram apology: 'But I'm also not going to allow a person to have financial gain off of my mistakes and in this particular situation that was what was attempted. I said I'd rather fess up to my mistakes.'

Side by side: Hart is pictured with his wife Eniko Parrish, who was pregnant with their son Kenzo when the infidelity with Sabbag occurred

Sabbag had always denied being involved in the extortion plot and previously spoke about the satisfaction it gave her that Jackson was arrested.

She told TMZ: 'I was so relieved, this whole process has been crazy and my name has been dragged through the mud. I just feel really happy and fortunate that this has all come to light.'

Sabbag said: 'I know who I am as a person so I really don't let anything like that bother me but it definitely has taken a toll mentally but it's all over now so I'm good.'
Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP), the apex decision making body of the 13 recognised monastic orders of the country has decided to write to the prime minister, home minister and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to allow reopening of temples in the state. The decision was taken after Kashi Vidvat Parishad urged chief minister Yogi Adityanath to reopen the state temples for devotees.

If the center can decide to open liquor shops, whats wrong in the opening of temples if we follow the concept of social distancing? At least it will allow devotees to offer prayers to almighty to help the nation overcome the present crisis, said president of ABAP, Mahant Narendra Giri.

In the presence of chief patron of Juna Akhara, Mahant Hari Giri, ABAP president said that on behalf of parishad chief they would soon send letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, union home minister Amit Shah and chief minister Yogi Adityanath in this regard. Juna Akhara is the largest of the 13 akharas of the country with PAN India presence.

Giri said that it has been almost two months since the temples have been closed due to the corona crisis. The temple management is finding it hard to pay the salaries of the priests and other staff members who look after the temple, as the temples are closed for almost two months now, said Giri.

He said that if temples are allowed to open, the management, saints and even devotees would ensure that all safety protocols, including sanitisation and social distancing, are followed.
(TNS)  When schools and businesses started to shut down, Leslie Neelys first thought was what would happen to children with developmental disabilities who depend on behavioral therapy.The educational psychology professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio said government-mandated social distancing requirements, necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, had also temporarily prevented some clients at the Autism Treatment Center in San Antonio from getting needed care.We had to consider the ethics of not continuing these services, said Neely, who started a new program that trains the nonprofit centers behavioral therapists to conduct sessions with clients virtually.These therapists help children with autism or other disabilities learn how to do the basics  take their daily medication and brush their teeth, for example  through a method of therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA.Neely received a $50,000 grant for the project from the COVID-19 Response Fund , a $5.4 million fund managed by the San Antonio Area Foundation and the United Way of San Antonio & Bexar County.Over an eight-week period, 70 children will receive behavior therapy using videoconferencing technology, and 23 therapists will remain employed while receiving hands-on training in telehealth.The long-term goal of this project, she said, is to establish telehealth as an effective alternative to in-person services, even after the threat of COVID-19 has passed.In the midst of the crisis, many health care providers are seeing patients online to minimize person-to-person. The looming question for the industry is to what extent telemedicine has taken root since mid-March.Apart from the convenience of conferring through laptops and smartphones, the answer will depend on: how well patients health outcomes from online sessions match up with the results of face-to-face appointments; how secure the digital platforms are in handling patients sensitive health information; and how willing insurers will be to pay for telemedicine at the same rates they do for in-person visits.For the first time, telemedicine is widespread in San Antonio.Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, a psychiatric hospital near Stone Oak, announced a new service allowing patients to participate remotely in their intensive outpatient programs. University Health System recently updated its new mobile app to give patients free access to a virtual triage and to schedule telehealth visits.Texas Medical Association recently conducted a poll of physician members asking whether they had started to use telemedicine during the pandemic: 74 percent answered yes.Its time, said Neely, who has researched telemedicine in her field since 2015. Its been emerging for years.Within weeks, patients with chronic or acute health conditions were given easier access to their doctors via Zoom or FaceTime, without the risk of exposure to coronavirus at a doctors office or hospital.What took so long? For clinic owners, its an investment of time and money. It requires buying computer hardware and software, training employees, Internet bandwidth and contracting with a company that offers a platform that can protect patient privacy and reduce liability from data breaches.Health care businesses transition to telemedicine is coming during a public health emergency when these providers are already hurt financially by lower patient volumes.But moving more of the business online could also mean reduced rent payments as providers seek to lease a clinic space with less square footage. Some doctors report being able to see more patients a day via telemedicine  and many patients could get used to getting medical care without loading up the kids in the car or missing work.This telemedicine expansion is very much an urgent pilot study, said Dr. Zeke Silva, a diagnostic and interventional radiologist for South Texas Radiology Group in San Antonio. I think were going to look back at this point in time as objectively and responsibly as we can to see what worked and what didnt work.Silva runs the radiology departments at two Methodist Healthcare System hospitals and was a lead author of a white paper in 2012 on teleradiology.On Wednesday, the doctor spoke to American Medical Association members via webinar about coding for telemedicine during COVID-19, which is how providers get payment for services from multiple insurance companies.He said the increased use of telehealth was triggered by the current public health emergency because of a waiver of section 1135 of the Social Security Act relaxed rules about paying for online medical visits.The waiver allowed doctors to bill federally-funded health insurance Medicaid, Medicare and the Childrens Health Insurance Program for virtual services starting on March 18 at the same rate as face-to-face visits.Chad Mulvany, a policy director for Washington D.C.-based Healthcare Financial Management Association, said its likely that there will be an aggressive push for Congress to make these legislative changes permanent.When the national health emergency ends and the government rolls back the telehealth expansion, he said he fully expects to see a coalition of providers, health plans, patient advocates, consumer groups and public health workers band together to make telehealth just health care.Congress has already appropriated $200 million through the CARES Act to fund efforts to expand telehealth.Major health insurance companies tend to follow what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does. UnitedHealthcare has since announced plans to reimburse its members claims for telehealth services, at least through June 18.Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas temporarily lifted cost-sharing, which includes copays, deductibles and coinsurance for remote care from in-network providers during the emergency.As the COVID-19 pandemic continues there has been a considerable increase in the utilization of telemedicine technology, said Laura Tolley, spokeswoman for BCBSTX.The average weekly telemedicine claims volume has increased from about 23,860 claims per week in early February to more than 160,000 claims per week in April.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 21:02:02

NOXXON Announces Capital Increase of  5.5 Million by Private Placement to Further Develop Its Business

NOXXON Pharma N.V.

Aram Mangasarian, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer

Tel. +49 (0) 30 726247 0

amangasarian@noxxon.com

Trophic Communications

Gretchen Schweitzer or Joanne Tudorica

Tel. +49 (0) 89 2388 7730 or +49 (0) 176 2103 7191

schweitzer@trophic.eu

NewCap

Arthur Rouille

Tel. +33 (0) 1 44 71 00 15

arouille@newcap.fr

Regulatory News:

NOXXON Pharma N.V. (Euronext Growth Paris: ALNOX) a biotechnology company focused on improving cancer treatments by targeting the tumor microenvironment (TME), announced today the successful completion of its capital increase by issuing new ordinary shares with exclusion of pre-emptive subscription rights, via a private placement to European investors through an accelerated bookbuilding process, for approximately  5.5 million.

"We would like to thank the new shareholders who participated in this financing to support NOXXON's strategy. This capital increase strengthens our financial visibility to well over a year under the current business plan. It also gives us the flexibility to plan for the future and to consider new projects creating value with NOXXON compounds in addition to the ongoing NOX-A12 Phase 1/2 trial in combination with radiotherapy as a first-line treatment for brain cancer patients. Obtaining data from the NOX-A12 brain cancer trial remains one of NOXXON's top clinical goals," said Aram Mangasarian, CEO of NOXXON.

Dave van Mastwijk, Partner at Nyenburgh Investment Partners (NYIP), as the major investor of the private placement commented NOXXON is a perfect fit in our portfolio, which is focused on highly promising biotech companies in Europe. We believe that NOXXONs unique technology holds promise in a multitude of applications. This investment allows us to help finance and expand NOXXON for the coming years, in which we expect to see significant value creation and appreciation. We look forward to becoming a major shareholder in NOXXON.

The Supervisory Board decided on May 08, 2020 to proceed with a capital increase excluding of shareholders' pre-emptive rights, in accordance with the delegation granted to it by the sixth resolution of the extraordinary general meeting of Shareholders of January 02, 2019. All the subscriptions were received and the final completion of the capital increase was acknowledged by the Board of Directors at its meeting held on May 08, 2020.

The total amount of the capital increase amounts to  5,500,000 and corresponds to the issue of 10,784,314 new shares at a subscription price of  0.51 per new share, i.e. a dilution rate of 29.5% of the capital after operation on a non-diluted basis. The subscription price of  0.51 per new share represents a discount of 31.1% on the average closing price of the shares over the seven trading days from April 29, 2020 to May 08, 2020.

Settlement of the transaction will take place on May 12, 2020. The new shares will carry current dividend rights and will be admitted to trading on the Euronext Growth Paris market, on the same trading line as the existing shares, under ISIN code NL0012044762, as of May 13, 2020.

The company's issued share capital, which is currently composed of 25,737,422 shares, will therefore be composed of 36,521,736 shares after the transaction. As an indication, the participation of a shareholder holding 1% of the company's issued share capital prior to the capital increase (calculated on the basis of the number of shares of the company's issued share capital as of May 06, 2020), would be, after the issuance of the 10,784,314 new shares, 0.70% of the capital. The issued share capital prior to this financing was  257,374.22 and will therefore become  365,217.36.

In connection with the private placement, the company entered into a lock-up period of 30 calendar days following the settlement of the new shares.

The capital increase was advised by INVEST CORPORATE FINANCE and managed by INVEST SECURITIES acting as Lead Manager and Bookrunner.

Detailed information about NOXXON, including information about its business, results and corresponding risk factors, was presented in the Annual Report 2019 and in the related press release dated April 22, 2020. The companys press releases as well as other regulated information can be found on the company's website (www.noxxon.com).

About NOXXON

NOXXONs oncology-focused pipeline acts on the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the cancer immunity cycle by breaking the tumor protection barrier and blocking tumor repair. By neutralizing chemokines in the tumor microenvironment, NOXXONs approach works in combination with other forms of treatment to weaken tumor defenses against the immune system and enable greater therapeutic impact. Building on extensive clinical experience and safety data, the lead program NOX-A12 has delivered top-line data from a Keytruda combination trial in metastatic colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients and further studies are being planned in these indications. In September 2019 the company initiated an additional trial with NOX-A12 in brain cancer in combination with radiotherapy. The combination of NOX-A12 and radiotherapy has been granted orphan drug status in the US and EU for the treatment of certain brain cancers. The companys second clinical-stage asset NOX-E36 is a Phase 2 TME asset targeting the innate immune system. NOXXON plans to test NOXE36 in patients with solid tumors both as a monotherapy and in combination. Further information can be found at: www.noxxon.com

Keytruda is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp

https://www.linkedin.com/company/noxxon-pharma-ag

https://twitter.com/noxxon_pharma

Disclaimer

Certain statements in this communication contain formulations or terms referring to the future or future developments, as well as negations of such formulations or terms, or similar terminology. These are described as forward-looking statements. In addition, all information in this communication regarding planned or future results of business segments, financial indicators, developments of the financial situation or other financial or statistical data contains such forward-looking statements. The company cautions prospective investors not to rely on such forward-looking statements as certain prognoses of actual future events and developments. The company is neither responsible nor liable for updating such information, which only represents the state of affairs on the day of publication.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005
When the COVID-19 crisis began, much of the media attention focused on the effects of the infection on the respiratory system and the critical need for ventilators to treat patients in respiratory distress.

But clinicians on the frontlines treating critically ill patients soon learned that COVID-19, or the bodys response to it, could also injure other organ systems. The virus may primarily attack the lungs, but an unexpected complication  kidney failure  became another major obstacle for doctors in the ICU. It also created a new and perhaps overlooked medical supply crisis  an acute shortage of dialysis resources.

Dr. Susana Bejar, an internal medicine specialist at Columbia Universitys Irving Medical Center, one of the hospitals in the New York area hit hard by the virus, spoke to Yahoo News and described how the number of patients who experienced renal problems took many providers by surprise.

We were expecting that people would have respiratory failure and need the ventilators, so we very intensively moved to get a lot more of them, but what we werent expecting is the amount of severe kidney failure, she said.

It is not yet known whether the kidneys are a direct target of the virus, if the issues are secondary to other processes such as blood clots forming in the small blood vessels of the kidneys, or some combination of both. Researchers have found evidence that the virus may have an affinity for certain structures on both lung and kidney cells called ACE-2 receptors.

Dr. Alan Kliger, a nephrologist at Yale University School of Medicine and co-chairman of the COVID-19 response team for the American Society of Nephrology, told Yahoo News that the number of patients with kidney failure due to the virus is unprecedented.

Ive been a kidney doctor since 1975, so Ive been in this business for a long time. Ive never seen anything like this.  We knew early on that there was a problem with the kidneys from the infection, but the real surprise was when the pandemic hit in the United States, we found that between 20 and 40 percent of patients who were in intensive care units with this infection  their kidneys failed.

Story continues

Patients in kidney failure require dialysis, in which a machine does the job of the kidneys in filtering and cleaning a patients blood of waste products.

Dialysis treatments are common in people who suffer from chronic kidney disease (CKD), which according to the National Kidney Foundation affects an estimated 37 million U.S adults. Those whose kidneys become damaged over time can experience kidney failure, for which dialysis or a transplant would then be needed to stay alive.

Approximately 500,000 CKD patients in the U.S. receive dialysis treatments, either at home or in centers. Kliger said this group of patients is at higher risk for developing serious complications from COVID-19, but people with no preexisting kidney issues have also been affected. Weve learned that acute kidney failure is a major complication for people who otherwise had been healthy but are hospitalized, he said.

The type of kidney affliction seen in COVID-19 patients is called acute kidney injury (AKI). Unlike chronic kidney disease, which happens over time, AKI is a sudden loss of kidney function resulting from damage to the cells of the kidneys filtering system. Many times, kidney function can recover after AKI, but it can also result in permanent dysfunction. Doctors dont yet have enough information to know if there are long-lasting effects from kidney failure secondary to COVID-19.

People are needing dialysis, and not just any dialysis, but a special kind of dialysis that can only be done in intensive care units  because patients are too unstable to tolerate the fluid shifts of regular dialysis, said Columbias Bejar.

When she spoke to Yahoo News two weeks ago, cases in the New York area were peaking. Her hospitals dialysis resources were stretched to the breaking point.

Right now nephrologists are experimenting with different ways to have patients using the same dialysis machines, Bejar said. We are running out of dialysis medications, the dialysis nurses, and these are the machines that are keeping patients alive."

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 21: A portable kidney dialysis machine is moved by a hospital staff member on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) floor at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on April 21, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The Department of Veteran Affairs announced it was assisting New York City by admitting civilians suffering from COVID-19 in its Manhattan and Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn hospital facilities. New York City remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Most dialysis protocols for patients with chronic renal disease consist of three- to four-hour sessions a few times a week in an outpatient setting. But the preferred treatment for ICU patients with unstable blood pressure is different. It consists of a slow and gentle dialysis called renal replacement therapy (CRRT) that is usually administered over 24 hours, allowing the patients blood pressure to remain stable.

Many major hospital groups in New York City and areas that experienced a surge in the demand for ventilators similarly struggled to meet with the demand for CRRT machines.

You cant separate the two because most patients that require dialysis are also on ventilators, Yales Kliger said.

Dr. Steven Fishbane, chief of nephrology for Northwell Health, a system of 23 hospitals in New York, also told Yahoo News that patients on ventilators almost always need dialysis as well. Its interesting because weve really just learned this recently, that its a pretty sharp cutoff.

Many of the hospitals in surge areas with high ICU volume have experienced a shortage of dialysis supplies, particularly the fluid needed to run the CRRT dialysis machines.

Doctors have had to improvise and come up with new ways to provide treatment for patients whose lives depend on it. Some have turned to peritoneal dialysis, which uses the membranes of the peritoneum, the lining of the abdominal cavity, as a filter, rather than running blood through an external machine. But it is not ideal for ICU patients. Others have implemented machine-sharing protocols for patients whose conditions permit it.

Fishbane says Northwell Health hospitals were fortunate enough to prepare in advance and have had enough supplies. In February, as we saw what was happening in China, we modeled out what it looked like in terms of a best-case, medium-case and worst-case scenario, and we did a lot of purchasing of dialysis equipment and CRRT equipment.

Outpatient dialysis facilities have also reported challenges, including separating COVID-19 positive and negative patients and protecting their own workers.

ICUs are also affected by a shortage of nurses and dialysis technicians to run the CRRT machines. The bigger issue for us was nursing for the intensive care units. Nurses were now taking care of four patients per nurse. That's really spreading them and causing tremendous, tremendous stress on the nurses running CRRT treatments, Fishbane said.

Government agencies and private industry are stepping up efforts to keep hospitals supplied. Fresenius, the nations leading provider of kidney care products and services, recently announced the formation of a National Intensive Renal Care Reserve to provide additional dialysis machines. The company has created a pool of 150 pieces of equipment that can be immediately deployed to the areas most in need. A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesperson told Yahoo News that the Department of Health and Human Services is working with states and localities to help address shortages: FEMA regional staff and the HHS Strategic National Stockpile recently provided assistance to New York state through the deployment of 50 portable dialysis machines that will help expand dialysis surge capacity in New York City and surrounding areas.

Although hospitalizations in surge areas like New York have decreased recently, there are still many critically ill patients in the ICUs needing dialysis. According to projections from the University of Washingtons Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle (IHME), peak demand for hospital resources occurred at the national level last Friday. But this varies by state, and some are expected to peak later on, which could mean those places could possibly face similar challenges.

We are more prepared than we were two weeks ago, but honestly, were continuing to learn the lessons, Kliger said, and try to share those messages so that other places, when faced with the same issues, will be perhaps better prepared.
A scuffle broke out between rival Hong Kong lawmakers in their legislature on Friday, with huddles of politicians scrambling wildly to occupy the physical chair of the chairperson.

The small brawl is believed to have broken out as both pro-establishment and pan-democrat lawmakers feud over who should take control over various key legislative council committees  including the House Committee currently chaired by pro-Beijing lawmaker, Starry Lee.

Lee, chairperson of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, was the first to reach the contested chairperson's seat and is seen sitting in it, surrounded by security. Scuffles broke out as others tried to make their way to the seat.

"If you are questioning my authority you can inquire through the legal advisor however you cannot stop the proceedings," she is heard telling lawmakers on a live-stream webcast from the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, known as LegCo.

Image: Lam Cheuk-ting (Kin Cheung / AP)

Democrat lawmakers responded by shouting, "Starry Lee, step down!" and holding placards reading "ultra vires," a Latin term for acting "beyond ones powers."

The parliamentary meeting was suspended as security appeared and so members could be treated by medics. It is not clear what types of injuries had been sustained.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997 with a guarantee of its much-cherished freedoms, such as an independent judiciary, not enjoyed on the mainland. Beijing rejects criticism that it is seeking to erode those freedoms.

Hong Kong was shaken by clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters, which made global headlines last year. Brawls also broke out in the legislature last May over a proposed extradition law, which sparked the widespread protests and was later scrapped.

The arrest of prominent activists last month, including veteran politicians, a publishing tycoon and senior barristers, thrust the protest movement back into the spotlight and drew condemnation from Washington and international rights groups.

Story continues

In the midst of tackling the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong's Department of Health announced no new local confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Friday. Although there is no strict lockdown in place, authorities are urging people to maintain social distancing measures and minimize the risk of infection in their daily lives.

Social distancing amid the pandemic has largely put a brake on protests since January, but demonstrations are gaining ground once again and look likely to resume later this year.

Reuters contributed to this report.
PENSACOLA, Fla.  Firefighters in the Florida Panhandle battled wildfires through the night that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes, authorities said.

A more than 575-acre fire in Walton County prompted about 500 people to evacuate. Authorities there said multiple structures were lost in the fire, which was 65% contained Thursday morning.

Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson said during a late-night news conference that those who were asked to leave their home but had no place to go were sent to South Walton High School.

Another wildfire broke out Monday afternoon in neighboring Santa Rosa County as high winds and low humidity caused the blaze to expand 10 times in size, the Florida Forest Service said in a statement. The fire started as a prescribed burn but quickly grew out of control, according to The Tampa Bay Times.

The Forest Service said multiple structures have been lost in the 2,000-acre fire in the Santa Rosa County and authorities are recommending residents south of Interstate 10 to evacuate. The agency did not make clear how many people have been evacuated from the area. So far, about 20% of the fire has been contained, authorities said.

The evacuation order will remain in effect until noon Thursday and then will be reevaluated at that time, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said in a statement.

This is an extremely dangerous and fast-moving wildfire situation that is evolving rapidly, so everyone in the affected area should follow directions from state and local officials, said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.

Almost all of Florida has had less-than-usual rainfall this year. National Weather Service meteorologist Jack Cullen told The Times the dryness helped fuel the fires Wednesday. Cullen, who is based in Mobile, Alabama, said the wind is the real culprit.

What made this (fire) today was the wind, to go along with the dry conditions and low humidity, Cullen said of the fire near Pensacola.

There have been no reports of injuries or deaths.

About the photograph: In this image made from video taken May 6, 2020 by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, fire and smoke rise from trees alongside a road in Santa Rosa County, Florida. Wildfires raging in the Florida Panhandle have forced nearly 500 people to evacuate from their homes, authorities said. (Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW DELHI: A MiG-29 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed near Nawanshahr in Punjab on Friday morning. The MiG-29 pilot ejected after the plane developed a technical snag and failed to respond. The pilot is safe. The pilot has been identified as Wing Commander MK Pandey.

The jet, which had taken off from Adampur Air Force Station near Jalandhar, was on a training mission.

An IAF fighter jet crashed into the fields here, news agency PTI quoted Nawanshahr Deputy Commissioner Vinay Bublani as saying. The crash took place around 10.30 am.

An IAF spokesperson confirmed that the MiG-29 aircraft was on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar.

"The aircraft had developed a technical snag and the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft," he said.

The official said the pilot has been rescued by a helicopter and a Court of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident.

It may be recalled that the IAF has lost several MiG 21 trainers and MiG 29 fighter jets in crashes due to technical snag in recent years.
Chinese internet giant Tencent has reportedly been surveilling content posted by foreign users on its wildly popular messaging service WeChat in order to help it refine censorship on its platform at home.

WeChat has over 1 billion users globally. It is the most popular messaging app in China and ingrained in daily life, allowing people to do everything from making payments to hailing taxis.

Surveillance and censorship of social media and messaging platforms in China is commonplace. Companies that run such services often remove or block content that is likely to offend Beijing.

But Citizen Lab, a research center that is part of the University of Toronto, said in a report published Thursday, that "documents and images shared among non-China-registered accounts are subject to content surveillance and are used to build up the database WeChat uses to censor China-registered accounts."

Tencent told CNBC it had received the report and takes it "seriously", adding that "user privacy and data security are core values" at the company.

"With regard to the suggestion that we engage in content surveillance of international users, we can confirm that all content shared among international users of WeChat is private. As a publicly listed global company we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in each country in which we operate," a spokesperson for the company said.

The revelations come as the U.S. becomes increasingly worried about the flow of data from apps and services owned by Chinese companies. Last year, Washington launched a national security review into social media app TikTok's 2017 acquisition of Musica.ly. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.
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ON ALMOST ANY measure, Donald Trump ranks himself among the most successful presidents in history. In one area-making appointments to America's federal court system-he may actually be right. In a little over three years, Mr Trump has nominated and won Senate confirmation for 192 federal judges, including 137 district-court judges, 51 appellate judges and two Supreme Court justices. No president since at least Ronald Reagan has racked up judicial appointments so quickly (the closest was Bill Clinton with 189 at this point in his presidency: see chart). By the end of the year, on current trends, a quarter of federal judges will be Mr Trump's appointees. They may prove his most enduring legacy.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized on Tuesday with an infection that she reportedly sustained as the result of a gallbladder condition.the Supreme Court said in a statement.The statement continued by stating that Ginsburg would remain in the hospital for "a day or two" and that further updatesGinsburg, 87, has suffered from numerous health problems in recent years, including four bouts with cancer.In 1999, Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer and had to undergo surgery. In 2009, Ginsburg underwent surgery for early-stage pancreatic cancer. In 2018, Ginsburg underwent surgery to remove two cancerous nodules from her left lung. In 2019, underwent three weeks of radiation treatment to treat a localized cancerous tumor on her pancreas.Fox News reported Fox News added.President Donald Trump has got to fill two Supreme Court seats with conservative justices during his first term in office and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has previously stated that he will fill any vacancy on the court during the 2020 election year.If Trump gets the opportunity to fill a third vacancy of the Supreme Court during his first term in office it will likely shape the nation's judicial system for decades to come.The Economist reported
The apex body of government



employees in Mizoram on Friday urged Chief Secretary Lalnunmawia Chuaungo to review the decision to deduct salaries by five to 10 per cent, contending that many were in favour of the move.

Chuaungo, on his part, said the government would not force anyone to take a pay cut.

Several employees, during a recent meeting with Chuaungo, had agreed to forego a part of their salaries for eight months to aid the state in its fight against COVID-19.

Some others, however, have claimed that the decision was detrimental to their interests.

Federation of Mizoram Government Employees and Workers (FMGEW), the umbrella body of the government staff members, said a petition has been submitted to Chuaungo, urging him to reconsider the move.

Many employees were not taken into confidence before the announcement was made, K Sawmvela, the senior vice- president of the federation, told PTI.

FMGEW, with over 100 affiliated organisations under it, represents all government employees in the state.

Around 75 associations have agreed to forego part of their salaries -- 10 per cent of basic pay for groups A, B and C employees, and five per cent for Group D employees - from May to December.

Reacting to the development, the chief secretary on Thursday said the employees had voluntarily agreed to donate to the state exchequer to fight the pandemic.

"The government would not force the employees to donate, and the consent of every employee would be taken before implementing the decision to deduct salaries," he said.

On Thursday, the legislators of three major parties in the state - the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF), Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- had held a meeting, under the leadership of assembly speaker Lalrinliana Sailo, and agreed to take a 30 per cent cut on their basic pay for eight months, starting from May.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will make a brief visit to Israel on Wednesday, ignoring his own coronavirus travel advisory at a time when Israel is laying the groundwork to unilaterally annex large parts of the West Bank.

The State Department on Friday confirmed Pompeo's travel plan, which had been widely reported earlier this week in the Israeli news media. It will be Pompeo's second trip abroad since the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic on March 11.

Pompeo will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz, who are expected to form a coalition government, to discuss joint efforts to fight the covid-19 pandemic and regional security issues related to Iran, according to a statement Friday from State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus.

The meetings also are expected to focus on Israel's annexation plans. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told an Israeli interviewer last week that the Trump administration is prepared to recognize the country's application of sovereignty over the West Bank "within weeks."

Pompeo announced last year that the United States had determined that Israel's West Bank settlements do not violate international law.

David Schenker, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, declined to say how much time would be spent discussing Israel's annexation plans or the work of a joint U.S.-Israeli "mapping committee" sketching out borders.

Pompeo is unlikely to talk to Palestinian officials, who severed contacts with Trump administration after the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

"The Palestinian leadership has not spoken with U.S. officials in quite a long time," Schenker said. "We'll look forward to the day the Palestinian leadership talks to the U.S. government again."

Under the White House peace plan unveiled in January, the United States would recognize as Israel about 30% of the West Bank, on the condition that Israel accept a four-year freeze of settlement building in areas set aside for a future Palestinian state and commit to negotiating with the Palestinians. On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett announced the approval of a plan to build 7,000 housing units in the town of Efrat, which could triple the town's population.

It was unclear why Pompeo decided to visit Israel now, since the State Department has elevated the entire world to a Level 4 "Do Not Travel" warning but is hoping to lift at least some locales in the near future. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises travelers arriving from overseas to self-quarantine for 14 days after returning. Israel has more than 16,000 confirmed cases of covid-19, though most who have been ill have recovered. It also imposes a quarantine on arriving travelers.

Pompeo is unlikely to be quarantined on either end.

William Walters, the State Department's deputy chief medical officer for operations, described the trip as "highly choreographed" to mitigate the threat of infection for Pompeo and his traveling party. Pompeo already is monitored daily for potential virus infection, and all who accompany him will be tested a day or two before they get on the aircraft, Walters said.

Pompeo's official physician, who will be on the plane, will test everyone before embarking. Masks will be used, and no one whose condition is unknown will be permitted within a "bubble" of at least six feet, Walters said.

Similar precautions were taken when the secretary visited Afghanistan on March 23 to jump-start peace talks between the government in Kabul and the Taliban.

Pompeo has been eager to get himself, and his diplomatic corps, back in the field since broadly invoking telework and pared-down services during the pandemic. State Department officials last week said they are rolling out an initiative called "Diplomacy Strong" in which employees will stop working from home and return to their desks, depending on local conditions and the trendline for the coronavirus.

"We're hoping to get back out and be on the ground to do the things the State Department needs to do - that we need to physically be located in those places for," he told reporters this week. "We're hoping we can get that started up before too long. It'll start off smaller, but we're hoping to get back at it."
GRINDSTONE  The historic Grindstone General Store will open for business again this season and just in time for Mothers Day.

Starting Friday afternoon, ice cream lovers are welcomed to enjoy their favorite flavors. The store will offer a drive-thru only service on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1 to 8 p.m.

To keep our customers and staff safe we have instituted a drive-thru system, owner Brian Fransen said. We have built a drive-thru system that is completely touch-free, with no interaction.

Fransen expressed concern over the anticipated loss of business but was not about to let his devoted customers down.

There is not going to be any tourism in Michigan, he said. Campgrounds and state parks won't even open until June. I dont even think we are going to do 40% from last year  everyone is accustomed to getting fresh ice cream.

Therefore, things will just have to look a little different. Fransen noted that while the Michigan Department of Agriculture has not officially offered guidance on cone restrictions, he has been closely monitoring other states.

Everything will be scooped cups in seal-tight lids. The cups will go into a carrier, which will be passed off to the customer. He will still allow customers to order cones on the side.

We cant scoop it and give it to the customer, he said.

Fransen also expects to limit the number of flavors and options offered, in order to keep ice cream servings fresh and just as large as before.

Most ice cream parlors  turn their cabinets up to 15 degrees so the ice cream is soft, Fransen said. Ours is zero to 5 degrees because our scoops are (bigger) and we stack them five high. You cant stack or scoop soft ice cream here. We keep the temperature in the walk-in freezers at 40 below.

Grindstone ice cream enthusiasts look forward to the sweet experience they have waited all winter for.

In the summer I love taking my family to the Grindstone General Store for big ice cream cones, followed by a peaceful walk on the break wall in Port Austin, Community Wesleyan Church Pastor Ean Green said.

The stores best-selling flavors, like Reeses Peanut Butter and banana Oreo cookie will be on-hand. Dairy-free options will be available as well.

The store is located at 3206 Copeland Road, Port Austin, MI 48467 and its phone number is 989-738-6410.
Inside a glittering Miami high-rise, representatives of the Venezuelan opposition sat in a room adorned with samurai swords and listened to a pitch. They had been appointed by opposition leader Juan Guaido to explore all options in their US-backed quest to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. On that afternoon on the shores of Biscayne Bay last September, a former US Army Green Beret presented them with an answer.

Jordan Goudreau, a Special Forces veteran who ran a strategic security firm on the Florida Space Coast, laid out a plan that could double as a screenplay for an episode of Jack Ryan. Goudreau claimed to have 800 men ready to penetrate Venezuela and extract Maduro and his henchmen, according to J J Rendon, the Venezuelan political strategist tapped by Guaido to lead the secretive committee.

Guaido was saying all options were on the table, and under the table, Rendon said. We were fulfilling that purpose.

By October, the plan had advanced to the point of a signed agreement, contingent on funding and other conditions. Rendon calls it a trial balloon, a test of what Goudreau could do that was never officially greenlit. But the language of the agreement left no ambiguity on the objective: An operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro ... remove the current Regime and install the recognised Venezuelan President Juan Guaido.

But soon after the signing, Rendon said, Goudreau began acting erratically. He failed to produce evidence of the financial backing he claimed to have lined up to fund the operation, Rendon said, and demanded immediate payment of a $1.5m (1.2m) retainer. There was no evidence of 800 men. Rendon transferred him $50,000 (40,400) for expenses to buy more time, but the relationship between the two men quickly went south.

Washington is fully aware of your direct participation in the project and I dont want them to lose faith, Goudreau warned in a 10 October text message to Rendon.

There was an explosive argument in Rendons Miami condominium in early November, Rendon said. He and other opposition officials considered the operation dead.

First, Venezuelan officials said they had thwarted a predawn invasion aimed at killing Maduro. Then Goudreau appeared in a video with a former Venezuelan military officer in battle fatigues. The men proclaimed the start of an operation to liberate Venezuela. Goudreau said his operatives had entered Venezuela, but by then, the mission  apparently infiltrated by Maduros agents  had already sustained a devastating blow. Eight men have been killed and 13 others captured, two of them Goudreaus fellow former Green Berets.

This report, based on interviews with more than 20 people familiar with the events, provides previously undisclosed details on the oppositions discussions on what participants secretly dubbed Plan C: An armed incursion to locate and capture Maduro.

Donald Trump and other US officials have denied knowledge of the ill-fated operation. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday there was no United States government direct involvement.

Goudreau says he unsuccessfully sought US backing through an aide in the office of Vice President Mike Pence. He declined to name the aide. A spokeswoman for Pence said Wednesday there was zero contact between anyone in the vice presidents office and Goudreau.

There was no coordination, nothing to do with this, spokeswoman Katie Miller said.

Rendon said his committee kept details of its work to a small group, and never shared them with US officials because the plan was only being studied.

Goudreau insists some form of the operation is ongoing and that Venezuelas mainstream opposition betrayed him by reneging on their deal. He said he opted to move forward with what he says he was hired to do. He said it had nothing to do with money; he was doing the right thing.

This isnt a wartime action, this is a policing action, Goudreau said. The world recognises one guy [Guaido] as president, so they hired me to arrest to the other person who has usurped power, Nicolas Maduro.

Goudreau, a Canadian-born American citizen, first walked through the looking glass of the anti-Maduro world last February, when he worked security at a Venezuelan aid concert on the Colombian border organised by British billionaire Richard Branson.

He served 15 years in the Army as an infantry mortarman and later as a Special Forces medical sergeant. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan twice each between 2006 and 2014, Army officials said.

He had an intensity to him that was a little bit different, said Joe Kent, a retired Green Beret who attended a leaders course with him in 2007. He seemed like he was training for something.

In 2012, the Department of Defence launched a criminal investigation into Goudreau for alleged theft and fraud in connection with $62,000 (50,099) in housing allowances he collected for his wife, court records show. Goudreau said the matter was resolved without any charges.

Venezuelan officials said they had thwarted a predawn invasion aimed at killing Maduro (Getty)

He founded SilverCorp USA in 2018. The firm advertises a variety of services, including assisting victims of kidnapping and extortion. According to a biography on the companys website, Godreau planned and led international security teams for the President of the United States as well as the Secretary of Defense.

By last summer, Venezuelas faltering opposition was looking for options. Guaido had tried to lead a military uprising against Maduro on April 30, but the carefully constructed plot utterly collapsed as conspirators close to the autocrat either backed out or had been double agents the whole time. That left Guaido, the National Assembly president who is recognised by the United States and more than 50 other nations as Venezuelas rightful leader, fighting to regain momentum for his opposition movement.

One little known element of that fight was the creation last August of a new Strategic Committee. Its full membership remains secret, but its most public face is Juan Jose Rendon.

The 56-year old political strategist was perfectly suited to the task. Chased out of Venezuela by the ruling socialists in 2013 and threatened with torture should he return, he was no friend of Maduro. From his base in the intrigue-heavy world of Venezuelan exiles in Miami, he became an internationally sought political consultant.

His committees mission was to investigate scenarios for achieving regime change. Members researched pedestrian options, such as ratcheting up international pressure against the government.

But they also studied the possibility of effectively kidnapping Maduro and his close associates.

The effort involved speaking to more than a dozen attorneys about the legalities of such a mission, Rendon said. They looked at the universal enemy argument  once used to prosecute pirates  that formed the basis of some Nazi renditions after World War II. They compiled a dossier on the failed Bay of Pigs attempt to liberate Cuba from the government of Fidel Castro.

Questions of legality dogged the prospects of such an operation in Venezuela. But committee members ultimately decided articles of the Venezuelan constitution, coupled with the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, might offer the legal cover they needed to potentially move forward.

By the time Goudreau arrived in Rendons living room on 7 September, Rendon said, the committee had already met with a handful of potential partners. But they wanted as much as $500m (404m) for the job.

Goudreau, in contrast, pitched a self-financed plan with a retainer upfront and a more modest payout  $212.9m (172m)  after the mission was accomplished. The money was to come from future exports of Venezuelan oil under a Guaido government.

But they had an ace in the hole that might not cost Venezuelan taxpayers a dime.

The opposition had identified private warehouses in Venezuela filled with the allegedly ill-gotten gains of Maduros inner circle. Photographs shared via text message between Rendon and Goudreau and provided to The Washington Post show massive bails of carefully wrapped US dollars stacked on a wooden floor. Goudreau would have been entitled to 14 per cent of the recovered funds.

Graffiti artist, Beto Urdaneta, draws a picture on a wall of President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro (Getty)

The plan involved far more than the primary targets of seizing and extracting Maduro and his men. A general services agreement indicated Silvercorp would advise ex-Venezuelan soldiers in exile for the operation. Goudreau had 45 days for force preparation, equipment procurement and mission readiness. Teams would enter Venezuela clandestinely and form cells that would move deeper into the nation to secure key oil facilities and strategic buildings. They would engage government security forces, and also the motorcycle-riding, pro-Maduro thugs known as colectivos and Colombian guerrilla groups operating on Venezuelan soil.

An agreement was signed in Washington on 16 October. Goudreau secretly recorded a brief video call that day with Guaido, which he provided to the Post.

We are doing the right thing for our country, Guaido is heard to say, and later he says: Im about to sign.

Guaido declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, he has denied any existing contract with Goudreau, and said his interim government has no connection to the apparently ongoing operation against Maduro.

For a time, Rendon and others thought Goudreau might produce results. But they grew wary after he began demanding payment of the $1.5m (1.2m) retainer. Rendon describes the payment as a mere gesture, not to be collected up front, to help Goudreau raise $50m (40.3m) in private funds.

Goudreau counters that the agreement  supplied in part to The Post by Goudreau, with a more complete version provided by Rendon  bound the opposition to his services and initial fee. A seven-page document provided by Goudreau carries Guaidos signature, along with those of Rendon and fellow opposition official Sergio Vergata.

Look, J.J. Rendon pushed for the $50m for the operation, an operation to flip the country, Goudreau said. Nobody here is a Boy Scout. They thought they were going to seize power.

Rendon, however, insists the document Goudreau produced was never signed by Guaido, and provided previous and subsequent agreements to The Post that did not bear Guaidos name. Rendon said Guaido knew only the rough outlines of an exploratory plan, but grew suspicious of Goudreau based on the reports of the committee.

We were all having red flags, and the president was not comfortable with this, he said.

Some have feared Maduro will use Goudreaus operation to take an action he has so far resisted: Arrest Guaido. On Wednesday, he called for an investigation into Guaidos alleged involvement.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognised by many members of the international community as the country's rightful interim ruler, arrives at the session of the National Assembly in the Alfredo Sadel square in the east of the city

Days before the incursion into Venezuela, Goudreaus attorneys delivered a letter to Rendon demanding payment of $1.45m (1.17m). Opposition officials began to fear Goudreau might take last years discussions public.

When Rendon woke up Sunday to news of the operation, he said, he was stunned.

I thought, are these guys are crazy? he said. They were blackmailing us [for the money]. I thought, wow, are you really going to take it this deep?

After providing security at the 2019 border concern, Goudreau came into contact with Cliver Alcala. The former Venezuelan major general had been close to the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, but defected under his predecessor, Maduro. Alcala was living in Colombia, organizing former Venezuelan soldiers in a plan to oust Maduro.

The meeting took place in a hotel in Bogota. There, several people familiar with events say, Goudreau learned the details of Alcalas plan. At one point, people familiar with the events say, the plan was to rush the seize the oil capital of Maracaibo, then push east toward Caracas.

Some senior opposition officials had dismissed the plan as a fantasy. When Goudreau got involved, the plan became an operation to extract Maduro, his wife, and other government officials including close Maduro ally Diosdado Cabello. But that plan appeared to be compromised.

In March, US authorities indicted Maduro and other former and current senior Venezuelan figures on narcoterrorism charges. Defendants included Alcala, who was brought to the United States. Then Maduros government went public with charges it had been lobbing for months  that a plot against him was brewing on Colombian soil.

Maduro has claimed his agents knew every detail of Sundays incursion, and were lying in wait.

We knew everything, he said. What they ate, what they didnt eat. What they drank. Who financed them.

US officials were aware, and concerned, about the hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers who had defected and were living precariously in Colombia. US and Colombian officials shared concern that if they were destitute, they could be drawn into illicit activity. Discussions were held about how and whether to feed those men, or organise them to aid the Venezuelan refugee community.

But they viewed the idea that they could be organised into a fighting force as completely insane.

The Colombians were against it and we were against it, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. No one should be doing this kind of military organising.

Maduro said Wednesday that four additional terrorists had been arrested. He showed a video of questioning of a man identified as Luke Denman, one of two former Green Berets who had served with Jordan and was now captured.

Denman, who appeared dishevelled but calm and unharmed, spoke in response to questions from an unseen interrogator. He confirmed that the goal of the mission had been to capture Maduro, and he had expected between $50,000 (40,300) to $100,000 (80,700) for training in Colombia.

He said training and organisation of the operation had taken place near the Colombian town of Riohacha, near the Venezuelan border. Only two Americans were in the training camp, he said, including himself.

Weapons and uniforms, he said, had been provided by Jordan, through Silvercorp.

They were picked up at the airport and driven by a woman called Ana. He described a man in a wheelchair who showed up at one of two safe houses in Riohacha, who appeared to have some influence. He arrives in a nice SUV, had on a nice shirt, he had gold jewellery on.

I was helping Venezuelans take back control of their country, he said.

The Washington Post
The world's main stock markets brushed off on Wednesday data showing the extent of the economic damage wrought by measures to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. Top among that data: more than 20.2 million US private sector jobs were destroyed in April according to payrolls firm ADP. Nevertheless, US stocks pushed higher at the open, but the Dow had dipped into the red by the close of European trading. The ADP figures are seen as an indicator of the all-important government non-farm jobs report due out Friday, which economists expect to show 28 million jobs lost in the month due to the widespread business shutdowns to contain the virus. "The stock market isn't trading from a standpoint of 'what have you done for me lately'. It's trading from a standpoint of 'what will you do for me later', and in its mind, what comes later is going to look a lot better than what has come lately," said market analyst Patrick J. O'Hare at Briefing.com. "That's why it continues to hold its ground in the face of ugly economic data and downbeat earnings news," he added. Chris Beauchamp at online trading firm IG said investors already know the jobs numbers are going to be bad and are instead focusing on the questions of how long it will stay this way and what the recovery will look like. "These are much tougher to answer, but the gains in equities over the past six weeks have been built on the idea that massive stimulus efforts will dull the edge of this crisis and promote a faster recovery," he said in a note to clients. European stock markets nursed modest losses while Asian indices mostly rose, and oil prices slid. In other downbeat economic news, the European Commission predicted the eurozone economy would contract by a staggering 7.7 percent in 2020. Calling it a "recession of historic proportions", the EU's executive said the 19-member single currency zone would then rebound by 6.3 percent in 2021, in an uncertain recovery that would be felt unevenly across the continent. It came after official data showed German manufacturers' new orders plunged by a record 15.6 percent in March. A draft agreement revealed that Germany, Europe's biggest economy, will take new steps towards normalisation in May, including reopening shops and schools after weeks of shutdown imposed to control the spread of COVID-19. "Risk sentiment continues to be buoyed on news of more countries/states rolling back containment measures, followed by reports of more companies re-opening operations," said Tapas Strickland of National Australia Bank. "That is giving hope that rollback will allow economic activity to resume and that we may be passed the trough in economic activity." British PM Boris Johnson said he could begin to ease a nationwide coronavirus lockdown next week, while Belgium is to open shops on Monday. But fears of a second virus wave as the lockdown eases have been keeping traders on their toes. - Key figures around 1600 GMT - London - FTSE 100: UP less than 0.1 percent at 5,853.76 points (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 1.2 percent at 10,606.20 (close) Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 1.1 percent at 4,433.38 (close) Milan - FTSE MIB: DOWN 1.3 percent at 17,159.31 (close) Madrid - IBEX 35: DOWN 1.0 percent at 6,680.80 (close) EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 1.2 percent at 2,842.09 New York - Dow: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 23,865.06 Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 1.1 percent at 24,137.48 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.6 percent at 2,878.14 (close) Tokyo - Nikkei 225: Closed for a holiday Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 6.9 percent at $28.84 per barrel West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 5.8 percent at $23.14 per barrel Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0802 from $1.0834 at 2045 GMT Dollar/yen: DOWN at 106.07 yen from 106.53 yen Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2351 from $1.2435 Euro/pound: UP at 87.47 pence from 87.11 pence burs-rl/bp German manufacturers' saw their new orders fall a record 15.6 percent in March Friday sees the much-anticipated release of US jobs data for April, with consensus forecasts that unemployment has surged to an incredible 16.2 percent
Kym Marsh has reunited with her soldier boyfriend Scott Ratcliff after spending seven months apart due to military service.

The former Coronation Street star, 43, shared a smitten snap with her Army Major beau, 31, on Thursday as the pair toasted Scott's return with a glass of champagne on their first 'date night'.

Kym captioned the snap: 'Finally having a date night with my man! 7 months apart but its amazing to see how our relationship has grown despite the distance.

Together again: Kym Marsh has reunited with her soldier boyfriend Scott Ratcliff after spending seven months apart due to military service

In these difficult times make time for each other. Grab the dinner or a drink together. Love each other. Appreciate each other. Lets all do these things and we will all emerge stronger.

In the photo Kym looked glamorous in a star print dress with her raven and blonde locks styled in tousled waves.

Scott put on a dapper display in a three-piece navy suit as he embraced his love.

Sentiment: Kym shared a sweet caption as she celebrated being reunited with Scott

But that didn't stop trolls from attacking Kym's appearance and their age gap, but Scott wasn't afraid to take over his love's account to defend her.

One mean person wrote: 'Please do something with your hair. It's so dated.'

Scott playfully replied: 'Hey Lou. I'm (Scott) sorry my hair offends you. I have to blend a military cut with modern styles. I think people like peaky blinders right now, so I tried to emulate that.

Missed: The pair's reunion was a sweet moment after Scott's return from his Afghanistan tour was delayed due to coronavirus

'I feel like I've achieved smart and modern. I'm sorry I've upset you so much. I hate to add to the stress you must be experiencing in these difficult times. I can be selfish sometimes.

'But hey, isn't my Mrs seriously sexy? Her hair is amazing. Try to emulate it. X.'

A second troll wrote: 'Is that your son?'

Scott replied: 'Hey mucker. How's it going? Scott here. How's life for you right now? I know you're not shacked up with Kym Marsh but I hope you're not suffering too badly.

'Just because you're an a**e doesn't mean you should suffer.'

What a man: Scott jumped in when a troll poked fun of Kym's hair, writing she's 'seriously sexy'

Good one, Scott: He also had something to say when someone mocked their slight age gap

The pair's reunion was a sweet moment after Scott's return from his Afghanistan tour was delayed due to coronavirus. He made a short return to the UK in January.

Speaking earlier this week about their reunion, she said:'It's been a long tour, it's been seven months. We had a small get together for his R&R in the middle of it all.

'This is his second tour of Afghanistan. It's great to get him home, I just want to get him home. I tried to find out what he wanted to eat when he gets back but he's said he's on everything [laughs].'

'I can only imagine how the wives and children of the other soldiers are dealing with it, I consider myself lucky. Scott was delayed due to [coronavirus].

Outspoken: Scott also had something to say when someone asked why they weren't isolating separately as he said he had been isolating while in the army and had a negative COVID test

Hitting back: Kym also stepped in to say that Scott was more than justified in coming home to her and that they had taken the necessary precautions

'I have really missed him. It's hard as you look for your support and your partner is that, you just want a cuddle.'

Another person asked Kym: 'Not isolating separarely then?'

Scott replied: 'Absolutely not. Are you? (Scott) quarantined on a camp for 7 weeks before returning to the UK, then went through COVID screening before coming home. I'm clean. Where does your hatred and sadness come from?'

Another wrote: 'There are old people living alone that can manage to stick to it.'

Kym replied: 'No sorry, you're wrong. He has been away with the army! So what do all the soldiers do when they have been away from their families? Stay away?

'Don't be ridiculous. They all go home. Scott is with us and will be staying with us. After isolating and on lockdown in Afghan and being tested before coming back.

'The army have been given their orders and rules that apply to them. Please don't begrudge soldiers that have been in deployment for over a year the chance to go home, or be bitter about fact that they can. That is all.'

Kym and Scott have been dating since July 2018, three months after she split from personal trainer Matt Baker.

Absence: Scott made a brief return to the UK back in January and enjoyed a date with Kym

Back in December 2018, Kym revealed she and Scott were facing six months apart as the soldier was due to return to Afghanistan for duty in the Parachute Regiment.

Despite the long-distance looming, the star was resolute in her belief that their relationship will survive the strain.

The pair found love after being introduced by mutual friend Antony Cotton.

Kym had split from Matt three months before sparking up a romance with Scott, after a two year romance.

Kym was first in a relationship with builder David Cunliffe before her rise to fame in 2001's Popstars, and the couple had a son David and daughter Emilie, 23, during a five-year relationship.

After breaking onto the pop scene as a member of Hear'Say Kym married EastEnders star Jack Ryder, 36, in 2002, but they divorced in 2009 after she admitted having an affair with Hollyoaks star Jamie Lomas, 43.

Kym went onto marry Jamie in 2012, and the couple have a daughter Polly. The couple's first child Archie, passed away shortly after his premature birth in 2009.

Just over a year after tying the knot, Kym filed for divorce from Jamie in 2013 citing 'unreasonable behaviour'.

She is also a grandmother, with daughter Emilie welcoming baby son Teddy in May last year.
Senator Ted Cruz showed his support for the Dallas salon owner who was detained for two days for repeatedly defying stay-at-home orders by going to her shop to get a hair cut.

The Republican senator boasted about getting his hair cut at Salon A la Mode as he vocalized his staunch support of owner Shelley Luther and others wanting to make a living during the pandemic.

'Shelley Luther was wrongly imprisoned when she refused to apologize for trying to make a living,' Cruz said in Friday tweet.

Senator Ted Cruz boasted about getting his hair cut at Salon A la Mode on Friday. Pictured with Shelly Luther (left), the salon owner, and a hair stylist cutting his hair (right)

'Shelley Luther was wrongly imprisoned when she refused to apologize for trying to make a living,' Cruz said in Friday tweet

'Today, I went to get my hair cut at Shelleys salon to show my support for her, her small business, and all business owners trying to safely help Texans get back to work.'

Cruz received his first hair cut in months at the salon but not by Luther. The salon owner stood to the side, but not within six feet of the senator and his stylist.

Cruz flew from Houston to Dallas to make the trip. It had been his first hair cut in three months.

'I got on a plane and I flew up from Houston. I needed a haircut anyway. And I figured that there wasnt a better place I could pick on the face of the planet to get a haircut this morning than right here,' he told reporters, the Dallas Morning News reported.

'When she spoke up she wasnt just speaking up for herself, she wasnt just speaking up for her family. She wasnt even just speaking up for the women and men who work in her small business, she was speaking up for 29 million Texans across our state.'

Cruz received his first hair cut in months at the salon but not by Luther

Local reports state Cruz ignored questions about what would constitute as the appropriate punishment for those who violate public safety measures during the pandemic

Cruz ignored questions about what would constitute as the appropriate punishment for those who violate public safety measures during the pandemic.

He also ignored questions about how measures could be effective in fighting the virus if people could determine they were voluntary.

Luther shared that Cruz had reached out to her family while she was behind bars.

'Its a nice gesture. His family actually called my boyfriend and prayed for him for 20 minutes while I was in jail,' she said to CBS. 'To me thats not political thats just really nice people reaching out and making sure that our family is okay.'

Shelley Luther spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night, hours after she walked free from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after the Texas Supreme Court ordered her release.

Cruz flew from Houston to Dallas to make the trip. It had been his first hair cut in three months

Luther (pictured) said Cruz called her family to pray with them while she was behind bars

Luther holds some balloons someone brought her outside at her hair salon

The owner of Salon A La Mode was sentenced to seven days in jail on Tuesday for refusing to shut down her business in accordance with the state's stay-at-home orders.

District Judge Eric Moye, who handed down the sentence, had given Luther the option of avoiding jail if she apologized for what he described as her 'selfish' behavior, paid a fine and kept her doors closed until salon restrictions were lifted.

But Luther didn't agree to those terms, and on Thursday she told Hannity she stands by that decision.

'That was the last thing I was going to do, honestly,' she said. 'I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to apologize.'

Scroll down for video

Shelley Luther, the Dallas salon owner who was jailed for refusing to close her business during the coronavirus pandemic, described her two-day stint in lock-up as 'not pleasant' in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night

The interview came hours after Luther walked free from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after the Texas Supreme Court ordered her release

Luther said the two days she spent in jail were 'not pleasant' - in part because she was lonely in her cell.

'The worst thing was that I didn't get to call anybody when I got there, the whole first night,' she said.

'And that's kind of scary, because I have a daughter that just turned 17 at home, and if my boyfriend wasn't there to tell, you know, to talk to her or anything, I would not have come home and she would not have known where I was.'

Luther, the owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced to seven days in jail on Tuesday for refusing to shut down her business in accordance with the state's stay-at-home orders. She is pictured in her mugshot

Luther complied with the shutdown orders when they were first handed down on March 22, but after weeks of seeing them extended again and again, she grew frustrated.

'The Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, kept pushing back the date of when we would open weeks out in advance, before we would hear any new comings of what was going on with masks or whatever,' she said.

'When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said: "I have to open, my stylists are calling me, they're not making their mortgage. I'm two months behind on my mortgage."

'My stylists were telling me that they wanted [to go] underground and go to people's houses,' she continued. 'I just said: "You know, that's not a good idea because we can't control the environment there. We don't know if it's been disinfected or anything like that," and I just decided I would open.'

On April 24 Luther reopened her salon in defiance of the stay-at-home order. She insisted that the salon instituted strict sanitation and social distancing measures at the time.

She said the stylists tried use gloves at first, but found that they couldn't work with them on.

'But,' she said, 'we made sure that I had no clients waiting inside the salon at all. I had chairs six feet apart outside of the salon, and when the stylist was ready and wearing a mask - we didn't let any clients come in without a mask -- they instantly sanitized their hands, the hairstylist sanitized their hands. They came in, they did the cut and that person left.'

Luther pictured being issued a citation by Dallas City officials on April 24

She received multiple citations for opening her business against the state orders - including a cease and desist letter from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins on April 24.

The following day at an Open Texas rally to reopen businesses in Frisco, Texas, she was seen ripping the letter into pieces before a cheering crowd.

She then received a court-issued temporary restraining order on April 28 mandating she close her business.

Luther continued to defy the court orders and shared a Facebook Live video last week saying she intended to remain fully open and that it was her right to.

'I'm still here, I'm standing for your rights and Salon A La Mode is open for business,' she said.

Luther argued that her business needs to be open because her hairstylists need to work to provide for their families.

She also said her salon is a safe and clean environment that doesn't pose a threat in spreading COVID-19.

Judge Moye found Luther in criminal and civil contempt of court and offered her the opportunity to avoid jail if she apologized for 'being selfish'.

She refused to admit that she did anything wrong, telling the judge: 'I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I am selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they'd rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids being fed, then please go ahead with your decision. But I'm not going to shut the salon.'

'The defiance of the court's order was open, flagrant and intentional,' Moye wrote in his decision.

'The defendants, although having been given an opportunity to do so, have expressed no contrition, remorse or regret for their contemptuous action.'

Luther is seen speaking at the Open Texas rally in Frisco on April 25. During the rally she ripped up the citation the state issued her for opening her salon

Luther's case has become a symbol for the divide ravaging America as protesters defy stay-at-home orders to march on capitol buildings demanding an end to lockdowns, which they say quashes their liberty and irreparably damages businesses, jobs and the economy.

Shelley Luther vs Texas's stay-at-home order April 24 - Shelley Luther defies Texas stay-at-home order and reopens Salon A La Mode. She is given a cease and desist letter from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. April 25 - Luther attends an Open Texas protest in Frisco and is seen ripping the judge's letter into pieces before a cheering crowd. April 25 - Luther receives a court-issued temporary restraining order mandating she close her business. May 5 - Luther appears in court where she is sentenced to seven days behind bars for repeatedly defying stay-at-home restrictions and court orders to shutter her business. May 6 - Senior state officials including Gov. Abbott call for her release and protesters gather outside the Dallas Municipal Court building Wednesday. May 7 - Gov. Abbott amends his executive order removing confinement as a punishment for non-compliance. Texas Supreme Court then orders Luther's release. Luther walks free from prison to crowds of supporters. Advertisement

The move to put her behind bars sparked an outcry from conservative state officials and anti-lockdown protesters who demanded that she be freed.

It took the Supreme Court wading into the matter for that to happen.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott amended his executive order Thursday morning, removing the possibility for citizens to be imprisoned for violating stay-at-home orders.

His amendment applied to sentencing backdated to April 2.

There have been at least 36,000 cases of coronavirus in Texas and 985 deaths.

The governor had slammed State District Judge Eric Moye's decision to imprison Luther and joined calls for her to be released.

'Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,' he said in a statement Thursday morning.

'That is why I am modifying my executive orders to ensure confinement is not a punishment for violating an order.'

Abbott named the salon owner in the announcement saying his order 'supersedes local orders and if correctly applied should free Shelley Luther.'

Luther walked out of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center to a hero's welcome from crowds of supporters who had gathered demanding her release. Several were seen without masks.

Crowds cheered 'Shelley's free!' and clapped as she stepped out of the jail, with many waving banners and holding balloons.

The emotional salon owner choked back tears as she thanked the crowds and said she was 'overwhelmed' by their support.

Luther walks out of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center on Thursday above

Luther teared up as she was given a hero's welcome when she emerged from jail on Thursday

The emotional salon owner hugged supporters gathered outside the jail where she has been serving her sentence in isolation and protective custody for the last two days
OTTAWA COUNTY, MI  As Ottawa County continues to ramp up COVID-19 testing, health officials recently have seen a surge in cases but are mostly encouraged by lower rates of hospitalization among cases countywide.

This week alone, health officials confirmed 92 new cases of the coronavirus, making up one-fourth of all cases reported in Ottawa County since the first positive test was identified March 15.

There have been 353 confirmed cases of the virus in Ottawa County as of Friday, May 8, the county health department reported. There have been 17 deaths due to COVID-19.

Ottawa County has averaged 14 new cases and 0.85 new deaths each day over the past week. The week before, the county averaged 12 new cases per day and 0.42 new deaths per day.

Despite rising case numbers, Ottawa County Senior Epidemiologist Derel Glashower said he is encouraged by lower overall hospitalization rates in the countys coronavirus cases.

About 9 percent of all current coronavirus cases have resulted in hospitalization countywide, according to data posted Thursday. Thats around half the countys reported hospitalization rates in past weeks.

MLive reported April 21 that 15 percent of coronavirus cases required hospitalization in Ottawa County. The week before, that number was reported as 23 percent.

Hospitalization numbers are a really important metric because one of the goals of all of the prevention mechanisms were to make sure that our acute care facilities and hospitals werent overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, Glashower told MLive Friday. To see these low numbers is really encouraging.

Ottawa County saw an outbreak of COVID-19 in an assisted living facility last month. Six residents at Sheldon Meadows Assisted Living, of Hudsonville, died with COVID-19 and two staff members tested positive for the virus, according to a news release issued April 20 by the county health department.

Decreasing hospitalization numbers could show that preventative efforts in Ottawa County to curb the spread of COVID-19  particularly in more vulnerable populations  are working.

The whole county has been coming together to work really hard to protect vulnerable populations, Glashower said. Theres lots of prevention efforts going on in higher risk groups, like long-term care facilities, that may be protecting those higher risk folks that are more likely to be hospitalized from infection.

Its my hope that the efforts were taking are helping to influence the hospitalization rates by bringing them down.

The decreasing rate of hospitalizations could also be due to increased testing countywide, the epidemiologist said.

Earlier in the coronavirus outbreak, many of the Ottawa County residents being tested for COVID-19 were those who were already in the hospital with symptoms, which would have inflated hospitalization numbers, Glashower said.

The epidemiologist also warned that hospitalization numbers may creep up again in the coming days and weeks, due to the lag between testing and hospitalization. With the swell in cases over the past week, some of those people may end up being hospitalized as their symptoms develop.

One of the features of COVID-19 is your illness could get worse later, he said. Sometimes people start to deteriorate in the second week. So they may get sicker and then become hospitalized, which would cause those numbers to increase. We might be seeing a lag in future hospitalizations.

Another data point health officials are keeping an eye on is the positivity rate, or the number of tests conducted that come back positive. Glashower said positivity rates are key metrics for many respiratory illnesses.

Its a good metric to give you an idea of the prevalence in the community, he said.

Ottawa County reported Friday that 8 percent of 4,402 tests were positive. The rate has remained fairly stable the past three weeks, compared to prior weeks when it jumped between 6 percent and 11 percent.

For a safe re-opening of the economy, Glashower said officials are generally watching for a downward and stable trend.

The county health department has been collaborating with area businesses over the past week to discuss the safe re-opening of Ottawa Countys economy. Glashower spoke at a West Coast Chamber of Commerce meeting last week to discuss how businesses will work together with the health department as they re-open.

We want to make sure we give people clear expectations about what to expect if they get a case, Glashower said.

Prevention is so important, but the reality is COVID-19 is a contagious illness and as social distancing measures are rolled back, there will be more opportunity for interaction which may increase transmission. We want people to be prepared for anything.

See data of Ottawa Countys daily new COVID-19 cases and deaths below:

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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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

More on MLive:

Kent County coronavirus numbers may rise in short term, epidemiologist says

As Muskegon County coronavirus cases continue to rise, health officials offer expanded testing

Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan
This event has been postponed.

The Thunderbirds precision aerial demonstration team will perform over San Antonio and Austin on Tuesday as part of a nationwide series of tributes to frontline COVID-19 responders and essential workers.

The San Antonio flyover will start at 1:20 p.m. and run around a half hour. The flyover in Austin will start at 2:30 p.m. and last 25 minutes. A route map of the flight will be released Monday.

Residents will be able to see the formation of six F-16C/D Fighting Falcons from homes and businesses. They should refrain from traveling to landmarks to gather in large groups to view the flyover. The Thunderbirds welcome viewers to tag the flyover on social media with the hashtag #AmericaStrong and #Thunderbirds. Those along the flight path can expect a few moments of jet engine noise.

We are honored to extend our gratitude to Texans in San Antonio and Austin who have been working hard to keep their communities safe, Lt. Col. John Caldwell, Thunderbirds commander and leader, said in a prepared statement. We want Texans to look up to see the display of American resolve and know that the American spirit will prevail beyond this difficult time in our nation.

On Monday in Corpus Christi, Laredo and Lubbock, the Texas Air National Guards 149th Fighter Wing will fly over hospitals and medical support facilities as part of Operation American Resolve, intended to lift morale in cities across the country.

One team of four F-16s will fly over Lubbock between 9:40 to 9:50 a.m., while another four-ship formation will fly over Laredo between 1:10 to 1:20 p.m., then continue to Corpus Christi, arriving between 1:40 and 1:50 p.m.

As guardsmen, who live and work in many of these local areas, we value the dedication of those who tirelessly serve our communities to help make what we do to defend the nation possible, said Col. Raul Rosario, 149th Fighter Wing commander. This flyover is just one way to recognize those serving in locations who may not get the opportunity to watch the demo team flyovers planned for some of the bigger cities.

The Air Forces primary military contributions have been involved sending doctors into city hospitals and airlifting medical supplies, but the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels, their Navy counterparts, have made formation flights over U.S. cities to honor health care professionals, first responders, military, and other essential personnel.

The Blue Angels flew over Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and New Orleans earlier this week as part of that salute.

The Thunderbirds will return to San Antonio for the Nov. 14-15 Air & Space Show & Open House.at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

More for you Thunderbirds flyover event happening Wednesday

This is simply an effort to say thanks to the COVID heroes, said Brig. Ed. Thomas, who until last week headed Air Force public affairs.

Sig Christenson covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Sig, become a subscriber. sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe
Over 1,100 requests for help were made to a community call service in Dublin since the start of the lockdown.

The Dublin City Council (DCC) service has been delivering food, medication, fuel and pre-prepared meals and assisting with transport and other social isolation problems.

Most of the calls related to deliveries and the majority of requests came from Clontarf, Raheny, Donaghmede, Sandymount, Ballsbridge and Pembroke.

Coilin OReilly, Director of Services for the North City at DCC says people pulled together quickly to provide support and it has been hugely successful.

"It's worked out really well for us because we would have area offices across the city which link in with all sorts of community groups and voluntary groups.

"So it's worked pretty well for us from that point of view that we know who all the local players are and we were able to pull them together quite quickly to assist.

"We have around 350 volunteers from 40 different groups all across the city putting their shoulders to the wheel."

The Dublin City Council Covid-19 community call service can be contacted on 01 2228555.
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Turning out mostly cloudy and not as cold. There might be a rain or snow shower late..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with some rain and snow showers. Any rain will be early in the night.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 16:13:42|Editor: huaxia

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KUNMING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Police have caught four suspects and seized 32.78 kg of drugs after busting a drug trafficking case in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

After receiving a tipoff, police in Zhenxiong County in the border province sent a task force to investigate the case on April 21. The police nabbed four suspects in the border area and seized drugs including heroin and methamphetamine weighing a total of 32.78 kg.

The four suspects have been put in criminal detention. Further investigation is underway.

Yunnan is a major front in China's battle against drug crime, as it borders the Golden Triangle known for its rampant drug production and trafficking. Enditem
Bhagwan Chowdhry and Prasanna Tantri By

The health and economic crisis we are currently in is giving us insights into what is and isnt working well in India, and how we should prepare for a better tomorrow. Yes, we have been able to reach Indias marginalised population better using our public distribution system and direct benefits transfers through the digital infrastructure we built over the last decade. But at the same time, the plight of the migrant worker and the huge economic setback of the urban and rural daily worker is also becoming painfully transparent.

As we come out of the crisis, we will need to make some big changes. More than 80% of Indias labour works in the informal sector. This percentage needs to come down drastically. This would require removing the incentive to stay in the informal sector and creating powerful incentives to move workers to the formal sector.

The informal sector provides many advantages for businesses. Pay is flexible, businesses have complete flexibility in hiring and firing workers, and in reorganising the production processes swiftly to suit changing business conditions. The regulatory cost and burden of hiring workers is also low. For example, no provident fund (PF) contributions are made, nor are other benefits provided. After all, this would increase the cost of hiring each worker, which neither the business owners nor the workersby accepting lower wages in exchange for these mandatory benefitsare willing to bear. Currently, the employer is required to contribute 12% of the workers salary and the employee also deducts and contributes another 12% from their salary towards PF.

What if the government were to bear this cost instead? For example, the government can offer to contribute the entire 24% of workers salaries, up to a maximum limit of say Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per month. The Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY) made a step in this direction in a limited way by offering to contribute 12% of the employer's portion for three years (with some conditions). Since the PF contribution is a future liability, there will be no immediate budgetary impact for the government and as the economy grows, so would the tax revenues collected by the government that would allow it to fulfil these obligations in the future. The government can also contribute a small amount per month towards health, accident, disability and life insurance provided through mandatory group insurance plans. That India has a large population in the workforce that is young would make this plan feasible.

This would greatly alter the incentives to provide jobs in the formal economy, away from the informal sector, if labour laws for hiring and firing were also relaxedsomething that economists have been advocating for decades. The spillover effects of the transition to a formal workforce are immense.

First, it has become increasingly transparent that it is jobs in the formal sector that provide better economic security to workers. China managed to increase the per capita income of its workforce multi-fold after the 1980s, not by microfinance or entrepreneurship in small informal sectors, but by creating hundreds of millions of jobs in the formal economy.

Second, workers in the formal sector acquire marketable skills due to their jobs and importantly, create a record of it that is credible, verifiable and portable. They can carry this with them to other jobseven if they get fired at one business. Workers in the informal sector, on the other hand, struggle to update their skills and have no verifiable credentials that are useful beyond their small limited circle, impeding their mobility and security. Some innovative solutions in the gig economy are trying to address this market failure by creating a verifiable, digital skill passport that will also go a long way towards creating more jobs in the formal economy.

Third, because the worker is more protected with jobs in the formal economy, due to better health, disability and life insurance and with a cushion of savings in his or her PF account against which he or she can be allowed to borrow in emergencies, the labour laws can be relaxed to make hiring and firing easier and simpler. Firms could be provided further incentives, for example a lower tax ratewhich would be partially offset by income taxes paid by employeesif they create and add jobs as measured by their total PF contributions.

The government has introduced a scheme providing a lower tax rate only to new manufacturing firms. We recommend that tax incentives be broadened to all firms if they add to employment as verified by increased PF contributions linked to Aadhaar. Similarly, relaxation of labour laws could be initially tied to job creation in the formal sector. This will allow the firms to grow to an economically efficient scale and size rather than stay as pygmies as the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian said in his 2019 Economic Survey. We now have plenty of international evidence that suggests that engines of economic growth roar only after the small innovative firms grow large, creating prosperity for the rich and the poor alike. Wealth creation and protection of the poor go hand in hand.

Bhagwan Chowdhry and Prasanna Tantri

The authors teach Economics and Finance at the Indian School of Business (ISB)

(Email IDs: bhagwan@isb.edu, prasanna_tantri@isb.edu)
The Agreement on Social Security between Canada and the Netherlands came into force on October 1, 1990. A supplementary agreement came into force on October 1, 1990. A revised agreement came into force on April 1, 2004.

Available benefits

If you contributed to both the Canada Pension Plan and the Dutch pension program, or if you lived in Canada and The Netherlands, this agreement may help you qualify for:

Canadian old age and disability benefits

Dutch old age and disability benefits

If you are the widow, widower or child of a person who contributed to the pension programs of the two countries, this agreement may help you qualify for:

Canadian survivor benefits

Dutch survivor benefits

You may qualify for a Canadian or a Dutch benefit, or both. However, under the Agreement, the benefit paid by each country will be based solely on your creditable periods under that countrys pension program. In other words, Canada will pay a benefit amount reflecting the portion of your periods that are creditable under Canada's pension program, and the Netherlands will pay a benefit amount reflecting the portion of your creditable periods under the Netherlands's pension program.
Eva Longoria enjoyed a mommy-and-me pool day with her son Santiago on Friday.

The actress, 45, and her one-year-old wore matching orange and pink bathing suits for their day in the spring sunshine.

'Starting the weekend early!' Eva captioned the snaps. 'The bathing suits are from @kokotribe Finally a matching set for mama and baby boy!'

Splish splash! Eva Longoria enjoyed a mommy-and-me pool day with her son Santiago on Friday

In the snaps, Eva gazed adoringly at her son as he reached for a ball at the edge of the pool deck.

The actress looked as happy as a clam as she rested against the edge of the pool, with her perky backside on display.

In another photo, Eva carefully held her son as he stood at the shallow end of the pool.

Eva shares her son with her husband of four years, Mexican businessman Jose Baston.

Aww! Longoria helped her son stand on his own at the shallow end of the pool

As she raises her son during the current times, she is grateful he is still too young to understand the pandemic.

'I'm lucky cause my son is so little, he's not in school yet and he's not quite a baby so he's just in the sweet spot of "has no idea what's going on" and just loves that Mom and Dad are home all day long,' she told People.

Even amid the uncertainty, Eva is determined to give her son structure.

'I am like tiger mom': Even amid the uncertainty, Eva is determined to give her son structure

'I am like tiger mom,' she said. 'I have like his whole day planned, like we're going to paint in the morning for an hour and then we're going to do flashcards and we're going to do the alphabet. Then he'll find a box and play with that for five hours, and I'm like, okay, all my planning goes out the door.'

Eva has been doing her part to lift spirits during the pandemic.

The actress recently appeared sent an encouraging members to Methodist Hospital COVID-19 members over video chat, according to Ksat.com.

Hospital workers were even able to get a selfie with the actress.

'It didn't take a global pandemic for us to know you are essential each and every day,' Eva told workers. 'You are exceptional human beings. I'm so lucky that you're giving "us" five minutes of your time.'
A doctor looks at protein samples at Novavax labs in Rockville, Maryland, on March 20, 2020, one of the labs developing a vaccine for COVID-19. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Polls Say Millions of Americans Will Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine

As the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine continues, polls show that when scientists do finally deliver, millions of Americans will refuse to take it.

President Donald Trump told Fox News recently that he was confident that around the end of the year, a vaccine would be available for COVID-19, the disease caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force, gave a similar estimate for the availability of such a vaccine, when on April 30 he announced one would be ready by January 2021.

But even when a COVID-19 vaccine is ready, around 14 percent of Americans say they wont get one, according to a poll by Morning Consult.

The survey, conducted May 1-3 on a sample of 2,200 U.S. adults, also shows that 64 percent of Americans said they would get the vaccine, while 22 percent said they didnt have an opinion on the subject or were undecided.

Further, according to Morning Consult, the age group most likely to say no to a vaccine are people between 35 and 44. Only 53 percent of Americans in this age group said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available, while 18 percent said they would not.

According to Kristin Lunz Trujillo and Matt Motta, coauthors of a pre-print study into vaccine attitudes, some estimates show that between 50-70 percent of Americans would need to develop immunity to COVID-19, either naturally, or by way of a vaccine, in order to stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Meanwhile, drugmaker Moderna has obtained clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to run a larger trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The state of the phase two trial is imminent, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

The biotechnology company said the trial will include 600 participants and that it hopes to start a phase three study as early as this summer.

There are no vaccines or proven treatments for the CCP virus or COVID-19.

The virus primarily causes severe illness in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.

A significant number of people who become infected never show symptoms while others experience mild or moderate symptoms.

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, chills, as well as aches and pains.
Gregory McMichael, left, and Travis McMichael, his son, have been charged with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Glynn County Detention Center via AP

Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested Thursday in connection with the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was out running in Brunswick, Georgia, when the pair of white men grabbed two firearms and chased him.

Arbery died of his gunshot wounds, the police said, but weeks passed without any arrests and prompted an outcry.

"The probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly," Vic Reynolds, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference on Friday.

The pair have been charged with felony murder and aggravated assault.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said they found enough probable cause to arrest two white men in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, within 36 hours of being handed the case.

"The probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly," the agency's director, Vic Reynolds, said at a news conference on Friday.

Arbery was out running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia, around 1 p.m. on February 23 when he was pursued by Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, the police said.

They were armed, and Arbery was killed by the younger McMichael, GBI investigators said.

The agency announced on Thursday that both McMichaels faced charges of felony murder and aggravated assault. They were taken into custody around 7:45 p.m. and booked into the Glynn County Jail, Reynolds said.

"There's sufficient probable cause to charge the McMichaels with felony murder and aggravated assault," Reynolds said. "I can tell you that if we didn't believe it, we wouldn't have arrested them. If we believe it, then we're going to put the bracelets on them, and that's exactly what we did yesterday evening."

The case is being investigated by District Attorney Tom Durden, a prosecutor in a neighboring county, who plans to present the case to a grand jury. In the two months since Arbery died, two district attorneys have recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest, Reuters reported.

Story continues

The GBI has obtained more evidence than the local police

Durden, who took over the case on April 13, said on Friday that there were "new developments" every day.

Reynolds said Durden contacted him on Tuesday night and asked him to look into the shooting. GBI agents "hit the ground running" on Wednesday, Reynolds said, acknowledging that it would've been ideal if the agency had been roped in initially. Reynolds said the GBI could get involved in a case only if it is requested to do so.

Now, he said, "all that matters is what the facts tell us."

Ahmaud Arbery.

I RUN WITH MAUD/Facebook

Reynolds said that while the police in Glynn County had gotten the investigation "to a good point," the GBI pursued additional leads, recanvassed the neighborhood, and interviewed more people  some for the first time.

Asked whether other arrests were pending, Reynolds said the investigation was "active" and "ongoing."

He said that if the facts led the agents "to make another arrest in this case, then they will do that."

"If the facts do not, then they won't," he added.

George Barnhill, one of the district attorneys who declined to prosecute the case, said in a letter to the police department that a witness named William Bryan filmed the video of Arbery's killing. Reynolds on Friday called the footage "a very important piece of evidence."

The bureau is "investigating everybody involved in the case, including the individual who shot the video," as well as how it was leaked, he said.

'Every stone will be turned over'

The McMichaels told the police that they spotted Arbery as he jogged by and mistook him for a suspect in a series of breaks-ins, a police report said. So they grabbed a shotgun and a .357 Magnum and followed him.

The Brunswick News reported that only one burglary was reported in the area between January 1 and the day Arbery died. The sole item stolen was a gun from Travis McMichael's unlocked pickup truck.

Footage shows the McMichaels trying to block Arbery in while he tries to avoid them. Finally, they catch up to Arbery, stop the truck, and get out to confront him. An altercation ensued, shots ring out, and Arbery falls to the ground. He was unarmed.

"You look on that video, and it's like it was a hunting party," Ben Crump, one of the attorneys representing Arbery's father, Marcus Arbery Sr., told Insider.

A cross with flowers and an A at the entrance to the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Georgia where Arbery was shot and killed on February 23.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

The case has caused protests and uproar, with politicians, athletes, and celebrities decrying Arbery's death and calling for justice.

Friday would've been Arbery's 26th birthday, and people around the United States are running 2.23 miles  marking the day he died  to commemorate his life.

"When we believe if this was any other citizen, especially a citizen of color, they would have been arrested because you have an unarmed man in a jogging attack," Crump said. "He doesn't have any burglary outfit or burglary tools or anything like that. I mean, he's jogging, and this guy kills them, and they just take his word for it."

Arbery's father characterized the shooting as a "hate crime."

"My young son wasn't doing nothing  minding his own business, running and working out. And that's a crime?" he told First Coast News.

Reynolds pointed out that Georgia doesn't have a hate-crime statute.

But "every stone will be turned over," he said. "I promise you."

This article has been updated.

Read the original article on Insider
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Shutterstock (10626573b) United States President Donald J. Trump with US Vice President Mike Pence arrives at a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing, Washington DC, USA  27 Apr 2020

Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for coronavirus on Friday morning. Miller frequently travels and attends meetings with the vice president, putting them in regular close contact. Pence was scheduled for a trip to Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, which was delayed as a result of Millers positive test. Though Miller would not be joining the vice president on the trip, other members of his staff who had been in contact with Miller were deplaned to get tested before their travel, according to an administration official.

Miller is also married to senior White House advisor Stephen Miller, a speechwriter for President Donald Trump who works closely with him. Stephen Miller attends regular meetings with the presidents daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. As Katie Millers positive diagnosis now increases the possibility that the entire West Wing has been exposed to COVID-19, it remains in the hands of the White House to mitigate the situation.

Nobody else was exhibiting any symptoms or having any feeling of sickness, but we asked them to go get tested and go home out of abundance of caution, the White House official said. They added that Miller reportedly was not showing any symptoms on Thursday, at which point she tested negative for the virus. The White House recently started testing staffers everyday after a personal valet to the president tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.

Trump confirmed that Miller tested positive for COVID-19 during a Friday afternoon meeting with Republican members of Congress, who were present without face masks. Shes a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive. He added that he had not been in recent contact with Miller.

The president also used the opportunity to question whether testing is an effective tool to track the development of the virus in individuals. This is why the whole concept of tests arent necessarily great. The tests are perfect but something can happen between a test where its good and something happens, he said.

Story continues

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during Fridays news briefing that the administration has put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe. Such actions included contact tracing, regularly cleaning the building, and social distancing.

Despite the fact that now two people close to the president have tested positive in the last two days, McEnany insisted the White House continues to operate safely, as it develops plans to reopen the country.

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The nationwide tally of COVID-19 cases neared 55,000 on Thursday with several urban centres including Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Chennai reporting rising numbers of people having tested positive for the deadly virus infection, while the count of those who have recovered also crossed 15,000.

More than 5,000 new cases have been detected across the country since Wednesday morning, figures announced by different states and union territories showed. The nationwide death toll also rose to 1,783, while fatalities were also reported from paramilitary forces.

A 55-year-old CISF head constable posted at the Mumbai international airport has succumbed to the novel coronavirus, while two BSF personnel have also died, officials said. The BSF also reported 41 new cases of infection, taking its tally of confirmed cases to 193.

A significant number of health workers and security personnel, who are among the 'frontline warriors' in the COVID-19 fight, have tested positive for the deadly virus in the recent days.

In Maharashtra alone, at least 531 police personnel, including 51 officers and 480 constables, have tested positive and are being treated at various hospitals in the state, an official said. Of this, 39 have recovered so far, while five policemen have died.

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 state also saw 50 more people testing positive in Mumbai's Dharavi slums, taking the tally of cases in that area to 783.

In Gujarat, the statewide tally crossed 7,000 with 388 more testing positive since Wednesday night, 275 of them in Ahmedabad district. The state also reported 29 more deaths since Wednesday night, including 23 from from hospitals in Ahmedabad and four in Surat.

Madhya Pradesh saw its tally of confirmed cases rising to 3,252 after 114 more tested positive, including 47 in the state capital Bhopal.

While Maharashtra and Gujarat continue to top the nationwide tally, Tamil Nadu has now crossed the 5,000 mark with 580 new cases reported during the day. The death toll of the southern state has reached 37, with two more women succumbing to COVID-19 during the day.

A large number of new cases in the state are linked to Chennai's Koyambedu market, which is considered one of the largest vegetable markets in Asia. The state now has 3,822 active cases, while its overall tally has reached 5,409.

Jammu and Kashmir also reported 18 fresh cases, nine of them from three tertiary care hospitals in Srinagar, taking the total positive cases in the union territory to 793. Jammu has reported 68 cases so far and 725 are in the Kashmir valley.

In West Bengal, the death toll rose to 79 after seven more fatalities, while 92 positive cases were detected in the last 24 hours, the state's health bulletin said. The state has reported 1,548 cases so far, out of which 1,101 are active cases.

New cases were reported from Odisha also.

Kerala, however, did not report a single new case for the second consecutive day. The state had not seen any case earlier on May 1, 3 and 4 also.

Andhra Pradesh reported 56 new cases, taking its tally to 1,833. In Uttar Pradesh, 61 fresh cases got detected, taking its total to 3,059.

Chhattisgarh also did not report any new case and announced discharge of two more COVID-19 patients, taking the total number of recoveries to 38. This has also brought down the total number of active cases to 21 now, officials said.

In its morning update, the Union Health Ministry said the COVID-19 death toll in the country has risen to 1,783 while the number of cases has climbed to 52,952, registering an increase of 89 deaths and 3,561 cases since Wednesday morning,

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 35,902 while 15,266 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by states and UTs till 9.30 pm put the total number of confirmed cases at 54,610 and the count of recoveries at 15,571.

Speaking at a virtual global Buddha Purnima event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India is making every effort to save the life of every citizen from coronavirus, but it is also taking its global obligations during the pandemic very seriously.

He also said that India's growth will always be aiding global growth.

With the pandemic and the ongoing lockdown hitting the economy badly, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh urged the prime minister to spell out the way forward for the country's economic revival and an exit strategy from the third phase of the lockdown.

A nationwide lockdown has been in place since March 25, which was first imposed for 21 days but got extended first for another 14 days till May 3 and then for further 14 days in the third phase, with considerable relaxations, till May 17.

Punjab, in the meantime, saw its death toll rising to 28 and the total number of cases climbing to 1,644 after 118 more people tested positive.

In Rajasthan, the state's health minister Raghu Sharma said about 52 percent COVID-19 patients have recovered, giving the state the best recovery rate in the country.

He said that 3,400 people have so far tested positive for the disease in the state, of whom 1740 have recovered. As many as 1,284 people have been discharged from hospitals and sent to their homes, he said.

Sharma expressed hope that the plasma therapy for treatment of coronavirus infection would further reduce mortality rate in the state.

Rajasthan recorded two more coronavirus deaths on Thursday, while 38 more people tested positive for the virus, an official said. The death toll in the state has now climbed to 95, while Jaipur alone has reported 52 deaths.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here
ATLANTA, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a leading national fast-casual concept known for its better-for-you-smoothies and food with a tropical twist, announced today its One Million Smoothie Giveaway for guests nationwide.

Coming off the heels of donating over 200,000 smoothies in April to the frontline heroes in the COVID-19 pandemic, Tropical Smoothie Cafe's new goal is to spread even more sunshine by giving away 1 million free smoothies to guests across the country.

"We were humbled by the incredible response to the 200,000 smoothies our franchisees donated to frontline heroes nationwide," said Charles Watson, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, LLC CEO. "The smiles we saw and stories we heard inspired us to think bigger and explore how we could do even more to support the communities we serve. Our guests have always told us our smoothies provide a refreshing, momentary escape and we figured everyone could use a little escape right now. So, we decided to extend our smoothie giveaway to everyone in America by offering 1,000,000 free smoothies."

In support of National Nurses Appreciation Month in May, Tropical Smoothie Cafe also pledged to donate $100,000 to the American Nurses Foundation's COVID-19 Response Fund upon reaching its goal of giving away 1,000,000 smoothies.

"The support Tropical Smoothie Cafe already gave to nurses and other healthcare professionals is tremendous. We appreciate them doing even more by giving away 1 million smoothies and making a generous donation to the American Nurses Foundation Coronavirus Response Fund for Nurses," said Kate Judge, executive director, American Nurses Foundation. "Their donation will help the Foundation support critical areas where frontline nurses need immediate and ongoing support like mental wellness, direct financial assistance and national advocacy."

In support of Tropical Smoothie Cafe's ongoing efforts to promote social distancing, guests can only participate by visiting www.FreeSmoothies.com, where they can sign up to receive a single-use promo code, redeemable online only, for one free smoothie. Once the online order is placed, smoothies can be picked up at the designated Tropical Smoothie Cafe location. Free smoothies cannot be requested directly at the cafe for the safety of our guests and crews. All offers are subject to applicable terms and conditions.

About Tropical Smoothie Cafe

Tropical Smoothie Cafe is a national fast-casual cafe concept inspiring a healthier lifestyle with more than 850 locations nationwide. Serving better-for-you smoothies, wraps, sandwiches, and flatbreads, Tropical Smoothie Cafe also offers upgraded app technology and enhanced mobile ordering capabilities to further elevate the digital and dine-in cafe experience and emphasize the brand's focus on convenience. The rapidly growing franchise has received numerous accolades including rankings in QSR's Best Franchise Deals, Entrepreneur's Franchise 500 and Forbes' Best Franchises, as well as Franchise Times' Top 200+. In 2019, the brand was recognized amongst Fast Casual's Top 100 Movers and Shakers, Nation's Restaurant News' Top 200 and Top 10 Fastest Growing Chains, Franchise Times Fast and Serious, Restaurant Business America's Favorite Chains, as well as being chosen as NRAEF's Restaurant Neighbor Award Winner.

SOURCE Tropical Smoothie Cafe

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http://www.FreeSmoothies.com


Thousands of Montanans have applied for COVID-19 relief funds from the states first CARES Act distribution, Gov. Steve Bullock told reporters in a conference call Friday.

Montana received $1.25 billion from the CARES Act, which Congress recently passed for COVID-19 relief. On Tuesday, Bullock announced that the first $123 million of those funds would be distributed as emergency grants. That amount includes:

$50 million for grants to Montana-owned businesses with 50 employees or less, to be used as working capital to replace COVID-19-related losses. The maximum amount a business can receive is $50 million.

$50 million in rent, mortgage, deposit and hazard insurance assistance for individuals who have lost income due to COVID-19 and meet certain criteria.

$10 million in grants for Montana-based nonprofits to help with COVID-19-related challenges.

$5 million for county and tribal health departments.

$5 million in Montana Innovation Grants for Montana companies to produce supplies like hand sanitizer needed in the COVID-19 fight.

$2 million in assistance to food pantries and food banks

$400,000 to support social interaction for senior citizens.

$650,000 to meet the communication needs of Montanans with disabilities.

$500,000 for the Montana Food and Agriculture Adaptability program, which provides grants to food and agriculture businesses.

Fifteen minutes after the application portal for the nine new grant programs opened yesterday, there were more than 2,000 people trying to start applications, Bullock said. As of Friday morning, he said that 5,500 businesses had applied for the business stabilization grant, with 150 applications approved. The food and agriculture and innovation grants had respectively gotten about 270 and 465 applications.

Bullock said more than 400 Montanans had submitted applications for housing assistance, 600 nonprofits had applied for social services programs, and 41 local health officers had applied for grants.

The agencies operating these grant programs have enlisted additional staff to review applications and get the funds out as quickly as possible, Bullock said, adding that the state will announce additional funding in coming weeks.

Also during Fridays press call, the governor voiced confidence about the states progress in testing. As of early afternoon Friday, Montana had completed nearly 21,000 tests. Bullock has set a goal of 60,000 tests per month, and testing all nursing home residents. He said Friday that the state was working out logistics with those facilities. He also said he expects to receive a shipment of supplies this weekend that will keep the state's testing efforts on track, although he was not specific about the shipment quantity.

Bullock did not indicate when the state would allow additional business reopenings beyond those already enacted. And with the summer tourism season fast approaching, he pointed out that travelers arriving in Montana from out of state are required to self-quarantine for 14 days.

We hope that folks will actually abide by it.I've heard some local health officials raising concerns with some folks from out of state. On Thursday, it was announced that an out-of-state visitor had tested positive in Lake County, although that individual was believed to have had minimal contact with the community.

Asked if he would consider taking additional steps to enforce the quarantine, Bullock said that he had no extraordinary measures to announce, certainly at this time.

Also on Friday, Kalispell Regional Healthcare announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be building an Alternate Care Facility at its hospital for non-COVID patients so that the hospital can accommodate more COVID patients in the event of a second wave of infections.
Mai  der Monat zu Ehren der Veterinarpflegekrafte! 11. Mai 2020

Der Mai ist Vet Nurse Awareness Month, der Monat, in dem auf die Arbeit der tiermedizinischen Pflegekrafte aufmerksam gemacht wird. Die Tierarztteams von Animals Asia im Barenrettungszentrum China (CBRC) und im BarenrettungszentrumVietnam (VBRC) mochten sich bei all unseren freiwilligen Tierarzthelferinnen und helfern bedanken, die uns ihre Zeit, ihre Fahigkeiten und ihr Engagement geschenkt haben, um uns uber die Jahre zu helfen.

Veterinarmedizinische Pflegekrafte behandeln nicht nur Katzen und Hunde, wir lieben alle Tiere, und eine besondere Gruppe hat sich auf Wildtiere spezialisiert. Im CBRC und VBRC unterstutzten uns unsere fantastischen freiwilligen Helferinnen und Helfer dabei, Hunderte von Gesundheitsuntersuchungen fur gerettete Asiatische Schwarzbaren (bekannt als Mondbaren), Tibetische Braunbaren und Malaiische Sonnenbaren durchzufuhren. Die Pflegekrafte assistierten bei der Haltung und Versorgung der Tiere, verabreichten Tausende von lebensrettenden Medikationen und zeigten ihre erstaunlichen Fahigkeiten bei der Behandlung von Kleintieren und dem Tierschutz in Asien.

Unsere Baren wurden vor der brutalen Galleindustrie gerettet und benotigen jede Menge Liebe und Fursorge. Weil engagierte, mitfuhlende tierarztliche Pflegekrafte ihre Freundlichkeit in Aktion umsetzen, leben diese wunderschonen Geschopfe jetzt ein besseres Leben.

Ohne Euch hatten wir das nicht erreicht! Vielen Dank an jede einzelne Pflegekraft, die uns unterstutzt hat oder bei sich zu Hause mithilft, auf wilde Tiere aufmerksam zu machen!
08.05.2020 LISTEN

A former Deputy Minister for Trade, Murtala Mohammed under the erstwhile Mahama administration says the rolling out of the UNIPASS system at the countrys ports is disastrous.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Murtala opined that UNIPASS is not in any way serving the purpose for which it was introduced hence, the government must not hesitate to abrogate the contract in order to resolve the unrest at the countrys ports.

Let me say that the arrangement government has with UNIPASS whether a contract or stakeholder  and the chaos that we are witnessing at the various ports and destinations  it is very clear that this particular contractual arrangement is a disaster. If this government has some credibility, I think that they should back off because it simply doesnt make sense to anybody, he told Umaru Amadu Sanda on Eyewitness News.

The UNIPASS/ICUMS platform is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window: a departure from the previous system where valuation and classification and risk management and payment were handled by different entities.

CUPIA Korea, which is assisting the Customs Division to implement the UNIPASS system , has described it as an enhanced single window system for trade facilitation.

UNIPASS which is expected to address key challenges at the ports also replaces the existing service providers, the Ghana Community Network Services (GCNet), which has operated for nearly 17 years, and West Blue Consulting.

While the piloting of the system was done at the Takoradi port, UNIPASS was rolled out at the Tema port last week but was subsequently suspended following complaints from freight forwarders.

Murtala Mohammed on Eyewitness News could not fathom why the government is going ahead to engage UNIPASS despite the gains made by GCNet and West Blue arguing that the government may be doing that for its parochial interest.

GCNet and West Blue are doing a tremendous job so why will you even think of bringing in a private entity? It means all the successes we have chalked over the years will be thrown away. The Ministry of Trade and the government should tell us what their interest is. The only interest I think is material gains. I have seen a memo in which the Minister of Finance is talking about what they have done. It is a subject for investigations. Lets go and check if UNIPASS has the credibility to do what the government is asking them to do.

Murtala further urged the government to abrogate the UNIPASS contract.

You dont need anybody to tell you that this UNIPASS arrangement is a disaster because of the failures we are witnessing at the port, he added.

On Thursday, some freight forwarders in Takoradi picketed at the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority offices in Takoradi to demand the suspension of UNIPASS which they say has been problematic for their operations.

According to them, although they raised several issues with the UNIPASS throughout the training and piloting of the system a month ago in Takoradi, the problems were not addressed leading to its suspension after it was extended to Tema.

A freight forwarder who is also an importer, Henderson McCarthy, called on the government to restore GCNet to Takoradi just as it has been done in Tema until the UNIPASS challenges are fixed. Groups kick against UNIPASS

Policy think-tank, IMANI Africa, last month, petitioned government to temporarily suspend the operations of UNI-PASS and allow GCNET and West Blue to operate for the remainder of the year to rake in revenue in excess of GHS10 billion for the country, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade activities.

Also, the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders questioned the efficacy of system hours to the official outdooring of the system at the country's ports.

The Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders has also predicted revenue losses if the concerns raised by stakeholders on the inefficiencies of the UNIPASS system are not addressed.

---citinewsroom
A Cambodian man suffering from mental illness who died in detention in Battambang province last month was tortured and murdered by prison guards, his aunt said Friday, as a local rights group demanded a probe into his death.

On April 19, 38-year-old Orn Tith stole a car and damaged it after driving it onto private property. When his family was unable to pay for the damages, police arrested him and sent him to the Battambang Provincial Correction Center.

On April 30, prison authorities transported Orn Tithwho has been medically certified as having a mental health conditionto the Battambang Provincial Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Prison officials ruled his death a suicide.

Orn Tiths aunt, Yorn Kim, told RFAs Khmer Service Friday that her nephews hands, legs, back, and waist were covered in bruises when his family went to retrieve his body, saying it appeared as if he had been beaten with a baton or thick cable while handcuffed and shackled.

She said she believes he was tortured to death and demanded that the provincial court bring his murderers to justice, adding that she filed a complaint with court authorities on Thursday.

I can assure you that this is a torture case, because there is no way my nephew committed suicide, she said.

He is mentally ill. He could not kill himself. I could believe if he died by drowning or hanging, but what weapons did he use to kill himself?

Yorn Kim called her nephews case an example of how Cambodias justice system is very biased against the poor, who dont have any power.

Ministry of Justice spokesman Chin Malin could not be reached for comment Friday, but earlier told RFA that Orn Tith died of self-inflicted wounds, not torture or acts of violence.

If the family members are not satisfied with the explanation, they can file a complaint according to the lawif they have evidence to prove their argument, he said at the time.

On Friday, Yin Mengly, Battambang provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc, called for a thorough investigation of Orn Tiths case, adding that he never should have been arrested and jailed in the first place because of his mental health condition.

There are suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and [Orn Tith] did not simply die from an illness, he said.

Yin Mengly said that if it is proven that Orn Tith died as a result of torture, the court is obligated to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Call to expedite case

Yorn Kims claims come shortly after the wife of a man who died from torture while detained for joining a land-rights protest called on the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court to speed up its investigation into his case and provide her with compensation for his death.

Tuy Sros, a resident of the Ou Chrov district of Banteay Meanchey province, died in police custody on Jan. 1 after being held from Dec. 28 to Dec. 31 following the protest, in which four other villagers were also detained.

His wife, Kim Lak, told RFA that a group of military officers came to her house on April 18 to convince her to drop the court case in exchange for compensation, but said she refused.

They came and wanted to settle the case, she said. I dont know much about them, but they said they wanted to compromise and asked how much they would have to pay.

Kim Lak said she is afraid that she will be no longer be able to earn enough money to take care of herself and her 14-year-old daughter.

Its very hard nowI dont have money to pay back our debts, she said. I havent been able to find a job since I lost my husband.

It was too late

Another villager who was detained with Tuy Sros and survived the torture named Nouv Noeun said he had filed a complaint to request compensation but has yet to be summoned by the court to give testimony.

It has been a few months already and the case went cold, he said.

Nouv Noeun said he was also approached by a group of people on April 18 who asked him to name a price to resolve his case outside of the courts, but he refused.

It was too late, he said, adding that he would have considered doing so when he needed treatment for his injuries, but by mid-April had already suffered greatly.

I want a solution that complies with the law, he said.

Banteay Meanchey provincial governor Um Reatrey could not be reached for comment about the torture cases at the time of publishing.

Soeung Senkarona, spokesman for Adhoc, told RFA that criminal offenses cannot be resolved outside the court system, although the victims can accept compensation.

The cases should not be delayed, lest the family members lose their trust in the judicial system, he said.

They are understandably worried that the court will never resolve their issues.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
(Newser)  A masked man forced a Utah couple from their beds early on April 18, demanded money, and left after taking cash and two cellphones. Then he realized he had forgotten his car keys. That's when, police say, suspect Albert Enoch Johnson re-entered Tony and Katherine Butterfield's West Jordan home and murdered the couple, the Deseret News reports. Police say Tony Butterfield stabbed Johnson as he tried to get back into the house, and Johnson shot him. Then, per a police report, "Katherine began screaming and Johnson thought he saw a neighbor nearby, so Johnson shot Katherine." The couple's three children, ages 4, 2, and 6 months, were not hurt.

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Johnson, 31, is charged with two counts of aggravated murder, a capital offense, and eight other felony charges. Police say Johnson had removed his mask by the time he got back to the house, the Salt Lake Tribune reports; Tony Butterfield then recognized him, called him by name, and asked him, "Why?" as he re-entered. But police have not said how Johnson knew the Butterfields, only that he was concerned about money and believed the Butterfields had money. Johnson's wife, who is charged with trying to help him cover up the alleged crime, told police her husband had tried to work for the couple, who owned a landscaping business and lived nearby, in the past. Johnson was arrested in California on April 22 and extradited to Utah. (Read more murder stories.)
Historian Sebastiaan Vonk, second right, and American Ambassador Peter Hoekstra, third from right, lay a wreath at the graves of eight members of the crew of an American B17 bomber shot down over the Netherlands on July 30, 1943, in the tiny rural village of Opijnen, Netherlands, on May 4, 2020. (Peter Dejong/AP Photo)

Volunteers Put Faces to Names of Americans in WWII Cemetery

OPIJNEN, NetherlandsStaff Sgt. Maurice Gosney was just a name carved on a white cross until a young Dutch historian went in search of the fallen American soldiers face.

Killed in an ambush near the German village of Sulzfeld on April 11, 1945, Gosney is one of more than 10,000 American servicemen and women buried or memorialized at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the southern Netherlands town of Margraten.

A Dutch-based band of volunteers is now on a mission to put faces to all those names. Its a way of bringing history alive and of expressing their enduring gratitude to the Allied forces that liberated the Netherlands from five years of brutal Nazi occupation.

Historian Sebastiaan Vonks Faces of Margraten project, founded six years ago, already has uncovered photos of some 7,500 of the war dead. They were due to be displayed next to graves in Margraten this week as Europe commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in the continent.

Historian Sebastiaan Vonk poses with a picture of the crew at the graves of eight members of the crew of an American B17 bomber shot down over the Netherlands on July 30, 1943, in the tiny rural village of Opijnen, Netherlands, on May 4, 2020. (Peter Dejong/AP Photo)

But CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus restrictions forced the closure of Margraten and cancellation of the event. Much to the disappointment of Gosneys niece, Kristin Wright.

Wright, from St. Louis, Missouri, had already booked tickets to bring her 85-year-old mother to visit Gosneys grave this week. She had to cancel the trip, but she is already looking ahead.

Now we say, well, its a great goal for next year. Well be there next year, she said in a Skype interview.

Wrights mother was just 10 when Gosney was killed by a snipers bullet, but she still has fond memories of her brother from before he went away to fight in Europe.

He would always joke with her and pretend like he was hanging her up on the clothesline to dry. So thats like a real big memory, Wright said. He called her squirt. And in the letters that he wrote home, he would mention hows squirt doing in school? things like that.

Historian Sebastiaan Vonk, upper right image on screen, has a picture of Staff Sgt. Maurice Gosney, (R), on his desk as he talks to his niece Kristin Wright, from St. Louis, Mo., during a Skype talk in Hardinxveld-Giessendam, Netherlands, on May 4, 2020. (Peter Dejong/AP Photo)

Wright learned about Vonks project two years ago when she visited Margraten. Since then, she has sent photos to Vonk and in return shes gotten a sense of her familys history coming alive.

Just a few days ago, her sister brought her parents around and they sat in Wrights back yard reading a book by a former member of Gosneys army unit that described the ambush and his death.

It was a really, really emotional thing, she said.

Vonks work is not the only expression of Dutch gratitude to the Allied soldiers. All of the graves at Margraten have been adopted by locals who regularly visit and bring flowers to the fallen Americans, buried in foreign soil thousands of miles from their families.

Vonk, 27, adopted one of the graves when he was just 13 and his fascination for the war and in particular the role of American soldiers grew from there.

He still visits the grave he adopted, of Lawrence Shea, an American infantry corporal from Brooklyn killed a little over a month before WWII ended in Europe.

World War II veteran Corporal technician Harry Hudec of Cleveland, Ohio, salutes as the last post is played as he attends the 60-year commemoration service ahead of Memorial Day at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, southern Netherlands, on May 30, 2004. (Peter Dejong/File Photo/AP Photo)

I think everyone will have a different thought in that moment when they stand in front of a grave, Vonk said. For me, its really a moment of reflection.

A rare moment these days, as the hunt for photos has proved very time-consuming.

Volunteers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States trawl through newspaper archives, libraries, and genealogical sites, and contact families to track down photos. One servicemans picture was found recently because he was featured in a newspaper story about drivers caught in a speed trap.

Vonk and the other volunteers still have some way to go to track down pictures of all the Americans at Margraten. In total, 8,301 are buried there and another 1,722 have their names inscribed on the Walls of the Missing.

The project has earned admiration from the U.S. ambassador in the Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra. On May 4, Hoekstra asked Vonk to join him in laying a wreath at the graves in the tiny rural village of Opijnen of eight crewmen from an American B17 bomber shot down over the Netherlands on July 30, 1943.

What Sebastiaan does by putting a face with every grave, its also that every face, every individual, will never be forgotten, Hoekstra said. Its just awesome to see the thinking, the creativity, and the initiative that he and his organization have taken.

Wrights family is a case in point. She said they rarely talked about Gosneys death until their visit to Margraten and involvement with Vonks project.

It just made it all so present, she said. And it created (an) unbelievable opportunity in my mind for our family to then kind of open up the box and start talking about this, and finding out more, and making connections.

By Mike Corder

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
Staff photo by Eric Swist

The Texas Department of Public Safety is changing the way it gives driver's licenses to those with learner's permits now that offices have closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

If a person has a learner's license or a license restricted to driving with a licensed operator, they can submit specific documentation to DPS to have the restriction removed.
A man who was already wanted on multiple offenses picked up new felony charges late Wednesday that include kicking a Stafford County deputy in the knee during a failed attempt to avoid going to jail, authorities said.

Deputies went to Foxwood Village about 11:17 p.m. in search of 21-year-old Silvano Avelar Castro, Sheriffs spokeswoman Amanda Vicinanzo said. Avelar Castro was wanted on multiple charges, including failing to appear in court and a prior charge of assaulting a law-enforcement officer. He had been wanted since missing court on Nov. 14, court records show.

Deputies looked into a residence on Susan Street and saw Avelar Castro inside, Vicinanzo said. He ran out the back door but was immediately apprehended by waiting deputy R.M. Connelly.

As the suspect was being led to a sheriffs cruiser, Vicinanzo said he forcefully kicked Connelly in the knee and broke away. He ran from the area but was quickly chased down by two other deputies, she said.

Connelly was injured by the kick, Vicinanzo said, and was later treated at a local hospital and released. The suspect was placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail under no bond.
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Jaipur, May 8 : In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the district administration in Dholpur has banned posting all kinds of unverified news on all social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram, till further orders.

Those posting news from unverified sources have been given a clear warning that if charges are proved against them, they could be punished with fine or imprisonment of up to one year under Section 54 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, Section 1 and 2 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1957 and Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code, said an order released recently.

District Collector Rakesh Jaiswal said that a lot of fake news were doing the rounds on different social media platforms in Dholpur district in the last few days.

Many news bulletins and interviews were being circulated on social media, without taking permission from either the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, nor the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The administration, therefore, decided to slap a ban on running all such news on social media, said the order.

The order referred to a Supreme Court judgment dated March 31, 2020 in the Alakh Alok Srivastava vs Union of India case. In that judgement in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the top court had said, "If fake and incorrect reporting is done by any print, electronic or social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter etc., it can run panic in the society and its consequences can be fatal."
TORONTO - Advocates for temporary foreign workers in Ontario's agriculture sector say the provincial government should do more to protect them during the pandemic, which has seen COVID-19 outbreaks at several farms.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO - Advocates for temporary foreign workers in Ontario's agriculture sector say the provincial government should do more to protect them during the pandemic, which has seen COVID-19 outbreaks at several farms.

Chris Ramsaroop with the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Workers wrote Premier Doug Ford and the province's pandemic command table asking them to increase farm inspections, including of migrant workers' cramped living quarters, and bolster cleaning practices.

He said the recent outbreaks highlight how vulnerable migrant workers, many of whom come from Mexico, the Caribbean and Guatemala, are during the pandemic.

"We've been raising issues around housing and working conditions for a very long time now," he said. "The government has abdicated its responsibility for protecting the interests of vulnerable workers."

Approximately 20,000 migrant workers come to the Ontario each year to work on farms and in greenhouses.

Cases of COVID-19 infections have been reported at four separate farms in Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex.

A total of 51 workers  both local and foreign  tested positive to the novel coronavirus at Greenhill Produce, in Kent Bridge, Ont., last month. None are in hospital and the local health unit says two have recovered from the illness.

Ramsaroop said the cramped "bunkhouses"  barrack-style housing which sees multiple workers sharing bedrooms, kitchen space and washrooms  contribute to the problem.

His group is also calling on all employers to use local hotels, student residences or other similar spaces to help workers practice physical distancing.

"Throughout this growing season, we have to look at facilities where workers have individual spaces," he said. "Spaces where they can protect themselves from the pandemic."

Greenhill Produce did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but last week it issued a statement saying that it was complying with all local health unit orders to protect workers while on the job and in their living quarters.

"In terms of bunkhouse conditions, we are proud to provide some of the best quality living quarters for our workers, meeting and greatly exceeding federal government regulations," a farm spokesman said in a statement.

The Chatham-Kent Health Unit said the municipality has increased its supports for temporary foreign workers across the community.

"We have been working with Greenhill Produce since day one to ensure that the proper public health measures are in place," spokeswoman Caress Lee Carpenter said in a statement. "Public health officials have inspected and approved all bunkhouses as per our routine process."

Ford's office did not immediately provide comment, but a spokeswoman province's Labour Ministry said it had inspected Greenhill Produce and its investigation has completed.

Janet Deline said on April 21 the province also began proactive inspections of farms that employ temporary foreign workers, focusing on a number of pandemic safety measures.

Those measures include ensuring ill workers are not coming to work, that physical distancing between people is being respected, and use of PPE is ongoing.

"We continue to investigate all Occupational Health and Safety concerns including those related to COVID-19 in a timely manner," she said in a statement.

In Windsor-Essex, the local health unit said Thursday that 16 workers from three farms in that municipality have tested positive for COVID-19.

In March, four workers tested positive for the virus at Highline Mushrooms in Kingsville, Ont., and the farm's CEO said his staff worked quickly to quarantine the infected workers and protect the others at the facility.

They were provided with personal protective equipment, physical barriers were installed, and more shifts were created so fewer workers were at the facility at a time.

That farm already used over 40 homes to house workers in the community prior to the pandemic, and not bunkhouses, so they could limit contact, he said.

"We've also ensured that nobody would lose any wages if they were sick and having to quarantine or just being off work for medical reasons to disincentivize people from coming to work if they weren't feeling well," he said.

But Hamer said the transition to the increased safety measures has been costly and he thinks all levels of government should help the farmers.

"The government has been very good about identifying that there is a risk to the food supply chain, and there's a big risk at agricultural companies," he said. "But there's been very little that they've done about it. So the entirety of the response has largely fallen on the companies to implement themselves."

Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the medical officer of health with the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, said the agency has a designated department to work with the sector to protect the region's temporary foreign workers, which he said was considered a "high risk" population.

The public health agency inspects the 179 farms and at least 780 seasonal housing units locally each year.

The communal living arrangements are a concern and while some farms have been able to address that by sending workers to hotels or other spaces, it's not been an option for everyone, Ahmed said.

Post-pandemic discussions will need to be had to review accommodations for temporary foreign workers, he said.

"We're talking about anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people and finding alternate accommodations, during the middle of this pandemic may not be an easy task," he said.

Gabriel Allahdua, a former migrant worker turned advocate, said it's important that governments keep close watch on the farms during the pandemic because workers are often afraid to speak up and lose their job.

Their crowded housing conditions are a danger to the workers, he added.

"That is a recipe for COVID to spread like wildfire," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2020.
New Delhi, May 8 : The National Green Tribunal on Friday sought response from the Centre, South Korean company LG Polymers, Central Pollution Control Board after 11 people died in the Vishakhapatnam gas leak tragedy.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar issued notices after taking cognizance of the incident in which hundreds more were admitted to the hospital, with several critical.

Apart from this, a petition has also been filed seeking constitution of a high-level committee to investigate the incident that took place at 2.30 a.m. on Thursday and reminded one of the decades old Bhopal tragedy.

The toxic Styrene gas leaked from a chemical plant on the outskirts of Visakhpatnam district in Andra Pradesh. It affected surrounding five villages -- Narava, B.C Colony, Bapuji Nagar, Kampalapalem and Krishna Nagar.

Styrene gas, which is toxic in nature, causes irritation to the skin, eyes and causes respiratory problems and other medical conditions.
No substantive answers were given to the justifications presented, Armenian ex-president Robert Kocharyan's attorney Hayk Alumyan said on Friday following a trial.

The grounds for these petitions, he said, were more than sufficient to satisfy the petitions.

"We did not receive a worthy response from the other side," said his another attorney Hovhannes Khudoyan.

Kocharyan's attorneys submitted motions to replace the arrest of Robert Kocharyan under the personal guarantee of the former PMs of Armenia and Karabakh, as well as declaring the bail admissible in relation to the ex-president.

After hearing all the participants in the trial, the court went to the deliberation room to make a decision. The rule will be made public on May 13.
New Delhi, May 8 : 'Vande Bharat Mission', the endeavour to bring home Indians stuck abroad amid the coronavirus lockdown, was chalked out under the supervision of the PMO. The mission was set rolling on Thursday as two special aircraft brought back Indians from United Arab Emirates on the first day.

Ever since the lockdown was imposed in different countries in view of the coronavirus pandemic, Indians stuck abroad had been urging officials of the Indian embassies, high commissions and even their native states to make arrangements for their evacuation.

These Indians were facing issues like expiring visas, completion of work for which they had flown abroad, closure of hostels in which Indian students were studying, or even health and family problems.

Once the Indian missions abroad sounded Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, he had a meeting with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who in turn brought the matter to the notice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A senior officer in the PMO said the Prime Minister gave the green light around a week ago to devise a strategy to bring back Indians stuck abroad.

Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Shringla then sought all the necessary details from various embassies and missions on Indians who wished to come back due to urgent matters.

Following the directive, a meeting took place between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, Jaishankar, and Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. This was followed by a meeting of PM's Principal Secretary and other senior PMO officers, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, the Cabinet Secretary and Secretaries of the Ministries concerned.

Sources said that Jaishankar then directed the Indian missions abroad to register Indians who wished to return for urgent matters and those who were capable of paying their travel expenses. However, it was also decided that in case someone was not able to pay the air fare, arrangements would be made for the same.

It was emphasised that passengers would have to pay for the services while the authorities were to ensure these. Indian missions were asked to make arrangements to ferry stuck Indians from different towns/cities to the airports from where the evacuation flights were to take off for India. These missions were also directed to make food arrangements for the evacuees.

Directives were also sent out that plans for evacuation would be made on priority for those areas where the number of stuck Indians was more.

The sources said that the External Affairs Minister and the Foreign Secretary then contacted their respective counterparts in the countries from where the Indians were to be evacuated and revealed the evacuation plan, seeking their cooperation for its smooth operation.

The Health Ministry came up with a screening protocol for the evacuees, wherein the crew of the aircraft were also asked to undergo screening for coronavirus to be permitted to fly.

Also, screening of Indian evacuees was made compulsory. It was made clear that they would be able to return only if they tested negative. Although suggestions were made to ask them to undergo tests for coronavirus, but the plan was shelved in view of the time and other constraints. They were to be screened only, apart from giving an undertaking to agree for 14-day quarantine once they returned to India and downloading of Aarogya Setu app.

Sources said that it was decided to press Indian Navy vessels to evacuate stuck Indians from the Maldives and Gulf countries. Since over 3 lakh Indian expatriates from the Gulf region were willing to return, ferrying them by aircraft was a big ask.

On the other hand, a naval vessel could easily accommodate 2,000 to 2,500 evacuees. It is pertinent to mention here that Indians settled in the Gulf are used to sea travel while Indian Navy too keeps patrolling the region.

On April 30, a meeting was held at the residence of Rajnath Singh, which was also attended by NSA Ajit Doval, Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and the chiefs of the three armed forces.

A strategy was devised to use naval vessels for the evacuations, with focus on safety aspect in view of the coronavirus outbreaks on a US naval ship. A standard operating procedure for both naval crew and the passengers was chalked out.

A plan was devised on the probable use of 8 to 10 ships, though it was decided to initially send three vessels.

On the other hand, Jaishankar provided Puri with details of Indians to be evacuated by air. The Civil Aviation Minister then made arrangements of passenger planes for evacuation.

Fares were fixed at a moderate level, with a flat rate applicable to passengers holed up in different countries. The aircraft crew was trained in health protocols and directed to ensure seating of passengers as per the norms of social distancing etc.

It was decided to send wide-bodied aircraft and seat lesser number of passengers to ensure adequate distancing among the evacuees on aircraft.

The Home Ministry directed different state governments to make arrangements in government facilities or even hotels to quarantine passengers once they landed at different airports. The expenses for the quarantine was to be borne either by the evacuees or the state concerned. The states were also asked to make arrangements for ferrying evacuees from the airports to the quarantine centres.

The sources said that the Foreign Secretary briefed all the states about the travel plans and also provided them details of passengers who were to arrive in their native states so that they could plan accordingly.

Around 4 lakh people from Kerala live abroad. The state wanted that its expatriates returning to Kerala should be tested for coronavirus before they were allowed to board home-bound planes, but it was not possible. India had done so while evacuating Indians from Iran earlier on, but the number of evacuees in this case was small.

Now that the first phase of the 'Vande Bharat Mission' is on, its next phase will depend on the success of the present efforts and the situation of coronavirus infections in the country in the coming days.
The proposed Ordinance of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government to exempt firms from almost all labour laws seeks to dismantle the industrial dispute mechanism, even as it keeps safety-related norms and minimum wage provisions intact.

A copy of the draft Ordinance titled The Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020, which has been sent for the approval of the governor, was reviewed by Business Standard on Friday. The Ordinance has been sent for ratification to the governor, following which it will be sent to the President (through the Centre), ...
A Goan Catholic friend who graduated from JNUs English department had a recurring quip about her Bengali classmates. I cannot understand a group of people who can break into song at the slightest provocation." The prompts could be anything: a hot plate of food, the first drop of rain, a fluttering leaf. They are always talking to each other in Bengali. And they all know the same songs!"

Indeed, the Bengalis, they know the same songs. Its a shared register of largely Tagore songs, with a sprinkling of some adhunik (contemporary) songs and some by Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh. You would be hard-pressed to find any bhadralok home without a copy of Gitabitan, a compilation of roughly 2,300 Tagore songs, organized by theme.

My Goan friend is not an exception. The rest of India has had enough of Bengali cultural chauvinism. It is possibly the only linguistic group that has a word for the other"the world is divided into bangali and abangali. Even within ourselves, theres ghoti and bangal to denote those who hail from West and East Bengal, both derisive depending on who is talking. Then theres the ingenious term probashi for the Bengalis who left Bengal. The list of casually offensive terms for those from Bihar, Odisha and even Sylhet is, lets say, rather offensive.

So now it is the current fashion to be scornful of the Bengali devotion to Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Rayincidentally, both born in the first week of May.

Devotion is the right word. The homes of relatives I would visit during summer vacations in Kolkata would have framed portraits of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo on the walls. They would also have Tagore. My maternal grandmother, who was called Gita, would always tell people she was named after the book of poetry, not the book of god.

On a recent trip to Portugal, I was impressed by the grand statues of Luis de Camoes, considered Portugals greatest poet, in public squares in Lisbon. In 2011, state chief minister Mamata Banerjee did install speakers playing Tagore songs at Kolkata's traffic lights. But the Bengali devotion to Tagore is private as much as it is publicIt is on bedroom walls and in bathroom songs, on wedding invitations and in funereal notes. It is an intimate and lived devotion, modified to suit your age, gender and station. In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European, and remains the only Indian, to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature for Gitanjali. While Rabindra sangeet is most known, Tagore also invented a dance style called Rabindra nritya. Abritti, or dramatic recitation, is another way to engage with his poetry. Through his body of work, he continues to give people ample fodder to deify him.

Born on the 7th of May, Tagore celebrated his birthday on the 25th day of Baisakh, the first month in the Bengali calendar (a complicated lunisolar system that Amartya Sen has written about in The Argumentative Indian). It is a practice that continues even today. For Bengalis, the corresponding date for celebrations in the Western calendar flits every year, just like it does for holy festivalsI have realized only now that Bengalis literally celebrate the poet like a god. There are those who wont take his name, calling him Gurudeb, Biswakabi, Kobi guru and Kobi thakur instead. The last has some allegiance to his family name, but also translates to poet-god.

This year, as we celebrate Tagores 159th birth anniversary, my parents Bengali association in suburban Mumbai is unable to put together a full-blown cultural programme dedicated to his poetry, music and dance (there are always food stalls with fish fry and mutton rolls, of course), as it usually does. But even as the association has diverted Durga Puja funds to covid-19 relief for front-line workers, the lockdown hasnt dampened the spirit of piety towards Tagore. The Powai Bengali Welfare Association is taking its Tagore obeisance to YouTube, with digital contributions, this year.

In a country of a million idols and templesincluding those for movie stars; a country where taxpayer money is spent on giant statues to politiciansthere is something to be said about a culture that bows to a poet. Tagore was a philosopher and a polymath, a nationalist and a political ideologue, an artist and an educationist, but above all, he was a poet. And in celebrating him, we celebrate the spirit of poetry.

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Afghanistan says has freed 900 militants since US-Taliban deal

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 6:04 PM

The Afghan government says it has released more than 900 Taliban prisoners since the militant group signed a deal with the United States.

"So far 933 Taliban detainees have been released from Afghan jails," Javed Faisal, spokesman for Afghanistan's National Security Council, told media outlets on Thursday.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militant group, in return, have released 132 government prisoners.

Under the deal signed on February 28, the Taliban agreed to halt attacks in return for Washington's phased withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and a prisoner exchange with the government in Kabul.

The insurgents promised not to strike forces from the US-led coalition but made no such pledges toward Afghan troops.

The Afghan government, which was excluded from the talks and thus was not a signatory to the accord, is required to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. It has however reduced the number to 1,500 before its talks with the Taliban start. The militants are obliged to free 1,000 pro-government captives in return.

The prisoner swap has been meant to be a prelude to peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The two sides have been negotiating for months to finalize the prisoner swap to pave the way for intra-Afghan peace talks, but the negotiations have not been smooth.

The agreement was supposed to lay the groundwork for a peace process in the war-ravaged country but the Taliban militant group has already rejected a government offer of a ceasefire for the duration of Ramadan to help focus on efforts to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Afghan officials have instead reported a surge in violence across the country, further stalling efforts to launch talks between the Taliban and the government.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy to Afghanistan who negotiated the US-Taliban deal, sees the prisoner exchange as an "important step" toward reducing violence.

In a bid to garner support for the deal and pressure the Taliban to end attacks, Khalilzad is this week travelling to Qatar, India and Pakistan.

Washington is compelled under the deal to pull out troops from Afghanistan by July next year, provided that the militants start talks with Kabul and adhere to other security guarantees.

The Taliban, however, have never stopped their attacks, citing foreign military presence as one of the main reasons behind its continued militancy.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 shortly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. While the invasion ended the Taliban's rule in the country, it has failed to eliminate the militant group.

American forces have since remained bogged down in Afghanistan through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Donald Trump.

Amid the continued occupation, the Daesh terrorist group has emerged in the Asian country more recently.

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.

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.

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COVID-19 cases increased by 44 Thursday to 1,805 in Bexar County, and one new death was reported as the area slowly emerges from the tight grip of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Hispanic woman in her 60s whose death was announced Thursday brought the countys death toll to 54.

In a change from the last few days, only two of the new positive test results reported Thursday came from Bexar County Jail, where there is an aggressive program to test all inmates and personnel in efforts to stem an outbreak of the deadly disease, which has claimed the lives of a detention deputy and an inmate.

In the daily city-county briefing, Mayor Ron Nirenberg noted several optimistic indicators, including the number of people who have recovered from the disease: 867, up from 834 Wednesday.

He also called the rate of positive test results a good sign. With about 31,000 people in Bexar County tested, the positivity rate is 6.3 percent, Nirenberg said.

Two weeks ago, the positivity rate was about 7 percent, Metro Health Director Dawn Emerick said.

Its inching down, and thats a good sign, said Emerick, who added that the rate should continue to trend downward as Bexar County gets closer to reaching its goal of a testing capacity of 3,000 per day by the end of June.

Thursday also marked the first day of testing at two temporary walk-up locations that dont require an appointment or symptoms to get tested. Officials offered a mixed reaction to the long wait times that marred the rollout at Las Palmas Library and Woodlawn Lake Park.

The goal was to administer 150 tests at each site from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. As of 4 p.m., 128 tests had been administered at Las Palmas and 146 at Woodlawn, Emerick said.

I dont think we anticipated there would be so much interest, Emerick said. We have been testing for a long time. ... What we have heard over the last several weeks was that demand was down, so we really were happy to see the response, surprised to see the response, and well be better tomorrow.

There were 63 people with COVID-19 in Bexar County hospitals Thursday. Of those, 38 were in intensive care and 21 were on ventilators to help them breathe. That left 78 percent of ventilators available citywide.

Concern on voting

During the briefing, County Judge Nelson Wolff reiterated his belief that the state needs to expand mail-in voting so the July 14 runoff elections can be conducted safety, considering that there still are concerns about the virus.

The average age of our (election) judges is 72 years old, and thats a very vulnerable group, Wolff said. Then there are people coming to the polls (with health conditions), and thats a danger to them, so we are hoping the state would come to their senses and support this. If not, we may take some action.

The briefing also included a plea that people in danger of becoming victims of domestic violence during this time of increased stress caused by the virus restrictions reach out for help. Nirenberg stressed that people who sense they may be on the verge of committing assault also should seek help.

If you are someone that feels like you are on the edge and feel like youre going to take it out on someone you love, we also want you to call, he said. You are not alone.

For help in either situation, call Family Violence Prevention Services 24-7 hotline at 210-733-8810.

Employee positive

Earlier Thursday, Target reported that one of its employees at a South Side store has tested positive for the virus.

The employee, who works at the store at 2810 S.W. Military Drive, has been quarantined.

Were paying this team member while theyre on leave, and our thoughts are with them during this challenging time, the company said in a statement.

The stores employees have been notified, and the store was deep cleaned, according to the statement.

Area reports

In Comal County, four new cases of COVID-19 were reported Thursday, pushing the total to 65.

Three are from Canyon Lake, including two from the same household, and the fourth is from New Braunfels. All are self-isolating at home.

The countys death toll of six has remained steady for more than three weeks. As of Thursday, 917 tests have been conducted in Comal County. Of the 65 positive cases, only 15 are still active and only one person is in the hospital.

Tom Orsborn covers sports news in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Tom, become a subscriber. torsborn@express-news.net | Twitter: @tom_orsborn
Gogglebox has paid tribute to its late star June Bernicoff after her death aged 82.

The Channel 4 show moved viewers to tears on Friday by dedicating its latest episode to the retired teacher just hours after her death was announced.

Tributes from many of the show's stars, including Scarlett Moffatt, flooded social media, after June's family confirmed in a statement she passed away on Tuesday following a short illness.

Moving: Gogglebox paid tribute to its star June Bernicoff on Friday, after her death aged 82

At the end of its latest show, Gogglebox paid tribute to June with the message: 'In loving memory June Bernicoff. 1937-2020.'

The show's official Twitter account also shared a classic clip of June during her time on the show, hoovering her husband Leon's jumper after he dropped biscuit crumbs everywhere.

Many viewers were moved to tears by the tribute with one writing: 'Crying at this all over again. RIP June.'

Sad: The Channel 4 show dedicated its latest episode to the retired teacher just hours after her death was announced

Another added: 'Spending my Friday night crying my eyes out at the thought of Leon and June being reunited in heaven.'

'awwww this made me cry I didn't know June passed away. You're sleeping with Leon now June may you both rest in peace,' a third added.

Another wrote: 'Was just thinking of June this morning how I missed her on the show. Such sad news.'

Emotional: Many viewers were moved to tears by the tribute and shared their own emotional reaction to the news on social media

Following June's death many Gogglebox stars took to social media to pay tribute, including former star Scarlett Moffatt.

The star- who appeared on the show from 2014 to 2016 - shared a snap of June and her husband Leon to Instagram Stories, writing: 'You will be missed by all. Reunited with your true love. Sending love to your family and all that knew you and loved you.'

Stephen Webb also posted: 'Rest in peace our June , reunited with Leon! Forever in our hearts.'

She'll be missed: Following June's death many Gogglebox stars took to social media to pay tribute, including former star Scarlett Moffatt (pictured right on the show in 2014)

Sad: Scarlett shared a moving tribute to June on Instagram Stories, writing: 'You will be missed by all. Reunited with your true love'

Peter and Sophie Sandiford tweeted the same message, writing: 'A lovely, supportive, beautiful lady both inside and out. A devastating loss, but she's finally reunited with her Leon.

'Rest in peace June, the stars will shine brighter tonight.'

Friends Abbie and Georgia wrote: 'We're so devastated to hear the news that such a wonderful woman June has sadly passed away. Our love and thoughts go out to her family at this awful time for them <3 being reunited with your beloved leon.'

Evie Woerdenweber penned: 'Absolutely devastated at the news of @LeonAndJune June passed away this week. Our #Gogglebox family is now missing two amazing people. I'm sure Leon was waiting for you with open arms. Rest well you amazing woman.'

Bassit Siddiqui also wrote: 'Rest in peace June. It was an honour to be on Gogglebox with June and Leon for all those years.

'June always took the time to message kind words to me and the boys which shows how lovely a person she was. All my love, thoughts and prayers to the entire family.'

Sandi Bogle wrote: 'So sad the beautiful June Bernicoff has sadly passed away she starred with her husband Leon in Gogglebox. Sending my condolences to her family and friends May she REST IN PEACE.'

Sandra Martin tweeted: 'MY DEEPEST CONDOLENCES TO FAMILY.'

The Tapper Family also tweeted: 'We are so incredibly sad to hear of June's passing. It was such a privilege to be part of the Gogglebox family with such a kind soul.

'Sending all of our love to June's family and all who knew and loved her. Rest in peace June, now reunited with your soulmate Leon.'

Moving: Many of Gogglebox's current and recent stars also paid tribute to June on Twitter

Reverend Kate Bottley wrote: 'June and Leon were the first to welcome us to the Gbox family when we stated and kept in touch once we went to pastures new, often messaging me if she saw me on Songs Of Praise.

'A wonderful couple and kind woman. May her memory be a blessing.

The Malone family tweeted: 'Heartfelt condolences to June's family and friends. Reunited with her beloved Leon xx RIP xx You will be sadly missed.'

Jenny and Lee wrote: 'Such sad news that June has passed away so so sad such a lovely lady, re-united with Leon. Sending our condolences to family and friends RIP much love Jenny and Lee.'

RIP: On Friday a statement from Channel 4 confirmed that June passed away on Tuesday following a short illness (pictured in September 2018)

On Friday a statement from Channel 4 confirmed that June passed away on Tuesday following a short illness.

The statement from Channel 4 and production company Studio Lambert, on behalf of June's family, said: 'We are deeply saddened to announce that Gogglebox's much-loved June Bernicoff passed away at the age of 82 on May 5 at home with her family by her side after a short illness.

'As the first couple to be cast for Gogglebox back in 2013, June and her husband Leon were a huge part of the programme's success.

'Their warmth, wit and contrasting personalities endeared them to the nation during the course of the first 10 series.

'Following Leon's passing in December 2017, June wrote her first book, Leon And June: Our Story, which was a deeply moving and entertaining chronicle of their 60-year love affair.'

Sad news: The retired teacher passed away on Tuesday with her family at her side, a statement confirmed on Friday (pictured on Gogglebox with her late husband Leon)

The statement continued: 'A remarkably independent, principled woman with a vivacious sense of humour and a huge passion for life, June will be dearly missed by the entire Gogglebox family, cast and crew.

'Despite her departure from the show in 2017, she remained a passionate supporter of the programme, watching it every week, and she was in regular contact with the production team.

'Our thoughts are with June's family - Helen and Ian, Julie and Marc, and her beloved grandchildren Frances, Sam and Faye.

'The family would like to ask for privacy at this sad time, but would like to thank the hospice staff that supported them and cared for June so wonderfully and with such compassion in her final weeks.'

They added: 'June's death was not related to COVID-19.'

Beloved: June was one of Gogglebox's original cast members alongside her husband Leon, but quit the show in 2018 following his death in December 2017 (pictured in 2016)

Gogglebox executive producer Tania Alexander also paid tribute to June, tweeting: 'Absolutely heartbroken to tell you that our beloved June Bernicoff passed away on Tuesday following a short illness - it was not related to Covid-19.

'June & Leon were the#Gogglebox originals & a huge part of the show's success. I adored them both. Big kiss June darling.'

June was one of the original cast members on Gogglebox when the show began back in 2013, featuring members of the public filming their reaction to the week's TV.

She won an army of fans for her no-nonsense approach to television and her heartwarming love for husband Leon.

June departed the show after her husband Leon passed away in December 2017, and went onto publish a book about their 60-year relationship.

Hard: In April last year, June admitted she found it 'difficult' to watch television without Leon following his death (pictured in 2013)

June met Leon at teacher training college in 1955, but kept their relationship a secret for five years, as she knew Leon's Jewish family would not approve due to her Catholic faith.

They married in 1960 and moved into the same Liverpool home that they appeared in during their Gogglebox stint, and had four children and three grandchildren.

In April last year, June admitted she found it 'difficult' to watch television without Leon following his death.

'I don't watch much TV these days, if I'm honest. I find it difficult,' she told The Mirror.

'I've been reading a lot more, or listening to the radio, but I just feel restless whenever I sit down to watch it. I find myself getting up to make a lot of cups of tea and I can't settle.'

Moving: In September 2018 June appeared on This Morning where she admitted that seeing Gogglebox's tribute to him was the first time she 'really cried' following his death

June added that although Leon is gone, the home they shared doesn't feel empty as her husband was such a big presence and she can still sense his hilarious remarks.

She added: 'People talk about how difficult it is coming into an empty house.

'But it's funny, I never really feel the house is empty somehow. Leon was such a large figure I can hear him saying things like, ''Why have you got this nonsense on?'' when I'm listening to Classic FM.'

In September 2018 June appeared on This Morning where she admitted that seeing Gogglebox's tribute to him was the first time she 'really cried' following his death.

The television favourite recalled watching the show without Leon for the first time and seeing the tribute to him flash up on the screen, before turning to speak to him and realising he wasn't there.

Lost without you: June met Leon at teacher training college in 1955, and they married in 1960. They went onto have four children and three grandchildren

June said that instead of speaking out loud to him, as she would have done previously, she mouthed the words 'Leon, they've dedicated the show to you' towards his empty chair', reported The Mirror.

She said: 'I looked over to his chair and when I saw it, that was the first time I really, really cried after he died.'

The programme aired two months after Leon had died, and before the show June was still coming to terms with her loss.

Open: June also admitted in her new book, Leon and June: Live Love and Laughter, that watching his Gogglebox tribute show was 'difficult'

June also admitted in her new book, Leon and June: Live Love and Laughter, that watching his tribute show was 'difficult', and the gesture from the producers caused an emotional release that marked the start of her grieving process.

Ahead of the show June sat in the chair she has always sat in, and poured a glass of wine, as she always used to do with Leon.

She said that people kept expecting her to burst into tears in the supermarket, but to June her grief was very private.

However sat there on her own watching the show, June remembers looking around and thinking that the camera crew that had filmed her and Leon's life for the past five years wouldn't be there again.
A school closed due to the pandemic is seen in Montreal on April 27, 2020. Quebec will be the first province to reopen schools after the lockdown. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Turning Schools Into Prisons Doesnt Make Sense

Commentary

Quebec will be the first province to reopen schools as part of easing pandemic lockdown restrictions. Elementary students outside Montreal are going back on May 11, while students in Montreal area schools will return on May 25.

Of course, schools arent exactly going back to normal in Quebec. Class sizes will be capped at 15 students, desks will be scattered six feet apart, recesses will be tightly regulated, students will have no access to play structures, and there will be no group work or hands-on learning. Students will have no gym access and no art or music classes. All bathroom use will be carefully monitored by teachers.

In addition, no assignments will be graded so nothing that happens over the next two months is going to count on report cards. To summarize, there will be strict controls on the movement of students, tightly regulated recreational activities, and meaningless academic work for students who return to school.

Lets be honest. Under these conditions, Quebec students arent going back to school, they are going to prison.

If you want to make school a truly unpleasant experience for students, implementing these harsh distancing requirements is the perfect way. Anyone who didnt hate school before is going to hate it now. Forcing kids to sit in the same physically distanced desks all day long, restricting their bathroom breaks, and tightly controlling their movements on the playground, in the halls, and on school buses is not only unreasonable, its downright cruel.

One thing is certain. There wont be much learning in this type of school environment. Students learn best in the context of strong student-teacher relationships, healthy interaction with their classmates, meaningful and interesting curriculum content, timely assessment of their work, and structured, but not rigid, classroom schedules. This will not happen in Quebec between now and the end of June.

In all probability, Quebecs experiment with reopening schools earlier than other provinces will fail, but not because of COVID-19. The best scientific evidence we have suggests that children are at much less risk from this virus than adults and are less likely to spread it to other people as well. With an effective vaccine many monthsand quite possibly yearsaway, departments of education must start planning for the reality that this virus may be around for a very long time.

Quebecs experiment will fail because its reopening plan perpetuates the fiction that physical distancing in schools can look just like physical distancing in grocery stores or hair salons. It does not, and it cannot. Schools are not grocery stores, and studentsno matter their agesare not adults.

While current physical distancing rules make grocery shopping considerably less pleasant than before this pandemic hit, the rules dont make it impossible. However, if the government told you that you could go to only one store, required you to buy the same items as everyone else, prevented you from touching anything in the store, and removed all tasty food from the shelves, that would be a better comparison to what Quebec students are going to experience in the coming weeks.

Given that the current school year will be completed in a few weeks, provinces must turn their focus to September. Unfortunately, some provinces are looking at strict physical distancing rules for the fall, like what Quebec is doing now. For example, Albertas education minister Adrianna LaGrange recently said that her department is considering having students attend on staggered days and mandating physical distancing within hallways and classrooms. This is not the right approach.

If schools are going to reopen, then they need to reopen as educational institutions and not as prisons. This means that students must be able to attend regular classes for the entire day and for five days a week. It also means that kids will undoubtedly come into contact with each other because that is what kids dothey push, they shove, they talk, and they rough-house with each other. Plus, when students go out for recess, they need unstructured play time, rather than being forced to walk around in a pre-arranged pattern keeping two metres apart or whatever other absurd notion administrators come up with to try and control them.

In short, school needs to be school again. Teachers must be able to teach and students must be able to learn in classrooms and with each other. This isnt possible in Quebec schools right now. Rather than follow the Quebec model, it would be better for schools in other provinces to remain closed until September and then reopen as if it was a normal school year.

This doesnt mean that schools shouldnt take precautions in the fall. Schools can cancel extra-curricular activities and suspend large gatherings such as assemblies, concerts, and sporting events. It makes sense to restrict public access to school buildings during the school day and to require teachers and students to stay home when they are sick. These common sense regulations are far more feasible than staggering school days, spacing out desks, tightly monitoring recesses, and limiting bathroom breaks.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, learning is still as important as ever. The last thing we need is to turn learning into a miserable experience for teachers and students. Schools are not prisons, nor should they be. Lets get back to teaching and learning at the beginning of September.

Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and author of A Sage on the Stage: Common Sense Reflections on Teaching and Learning.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Luvu Brands, Inc. (OTCQB:LUVU) will release results for the third quarter and nine months ended March 31, 2020, and discuss April sales results on Friday May 15, 2020.

Management will host a conference call at 11:00 a.m. EDT (10:00 a.m. CDT; 8:00 a.m. PDT) on May 15, 2020. To listen to the call, please dial 1-866-524-3160 (international 1-412-317-6760) and ask to be joined into the Luvu Brands, Inc. call. The replay of the call will remain available on the Company's investor relations website, www.luvubrands.com, for approximately 60 days.

About Luvu Brands

Luvu Brands, Inc. designs, manufactures and markets a portfolio of consumer lifestyle brands through the Company's websites, online mass / drug merchants and specialty retail stores worldwide. Brands include: Liberator, a brand category of iconic products for enhancing sensuality and intimacy; Avana, medical products and top-of-bed comfort products including personal protection masks, isolation gowns, relaxation products and inclined bed therapy products; and Jaxx, a diverse range of casual fashion daybeds, sofas and beanbags made from virgin and re-purposed polyurethane foam. Many of our products are offered flat-packed and vacuum compressed to save on shipping and reduce our carbon footprint. The Company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in a 140,000 square foot vertically-integrated manufacturing facility that employs over 180 people. Creating innovative consumer brands are core to the Company's operating principles. The Company's brand sites include: www.liberator.com, www.jaxxliving.com, www.avanacomfort.com plus other global e-commerce sites. For more information about Luvu Brands, please visit www.luvubrands.com.

Company Contact:

Luvu Brands, Inc.

Ronald Scott

Chief Financial Officer

770-246-6426

ron@LuvuBrands.com

SOURCE: Luvu Brands, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589088/Luvu-Brands-to-Announce-Third-Quarter-Fiscal-2020-Financial-Results
Nobody could have anticipated (so much of) the jail population being released, and many of them on EM, he said. I don't think thats something anybody could have planned for logistically or financially. We now just have another example where the government was caught flat-footed in trying to deal with an aggressive pandemic.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he would send an army if he wanted to topple his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking on Fox and Friends, a live talk show on Fox Television, Mr Trump reiterated his denial of U.S. involvement in an alleged recent coup attempt on Maduro.

We have nothing to do with it. If I wanted to go into Venezuela, I would not make a secret about it.

I would go in, I would go in and they would do nothing about it, they would roll over.

I would not send a small little group, it would be called an army, he said.

In a live broadcast on Monday, Mr Maduro alleged that a group of mercenaries invaded Venezuela by sea on Sunday in an attempt to overthrow him.

Mr Maduro, who has often accused the U.S. of trying to topple him, said the aim of the invaders was to smuggle him to the U.S.

He said two American citizens alleged to be part of the mercenaries had been arrested.

The socialist strongman displayed what he alleged to be the passports of the two Americans identified as Airan Berry and Luke Denman.

He said the duo, who work for a Florida-based security company, were playing Rambo, they were playing hero.

On Wednesday, Venezuelas state TV aired a video of Mr Denman apparently confessing to plotting to overthrow Mr Maduro and bring him to the U.S.

The 34-year-old former U.S. Special Forces member said he was helping Venezuelans to reclaim their country.

Mr Denman said he was hired to train Venezuelans in Colombia before returning to Caracas and taking control of an airport for Maduro to be flown out of the country.

Mr Trump described the invaders as a rogue group, adding that the mercenaries launched a shambolic attack.

READ ALSO:

I dont know too much about it. This was a rogue group that went in there, a lot of Venezuelans, I think people from other countries also.

I saw their pictures on a beach. It was not led by General George Washington, obviously, this was not a good attack.

I think they were caught before they ever hit land, but I know nothing about it, I say that the government has nothing to do with it at all, he said.

Mr Trump said he would find out what happened, but insisted the U.S. would not handle it that way if it was involved in the mission.

The Trump administration has imposed heavy sanctions on the Venezuelan government over alleged human rights violations.

(NAN)
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The Gambler First Nation community is not seeing eye to eye on how they should handle their Brandon urban reserve.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Work is seen being done at the site of the future Gambler First Nation Business Park along 18th Street North in Brandon on Thursday. (Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)

The Gambler First Nation community is not seeing eye to eye on how they should handle their Brandon urban reserve.

Februarys land designation referendum for the property at 18th Street North and Clare Avenue is under review by Indigenous Services Canada. The referendum was to designate the land for lease to a third party for commercial purposes.

The review is taking place because of a March 9 request of band member Darlene Labelle Gerula. The Brandon Sun acquired Gerulas appeal documents, and confirmed they are in the hands of the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada.

Gerula, who voted no to the designation, alleges in her appeal documents that breaches to the Indian Referendum Regulations and other actions led to the tight final vote of 72-70 results in favour of the designation.

Gerula said she does want the land developed.

"We want to see the gas bar. We want to continue our relationship with Brandon. We just didnt want to do it under the document that Dave (Chief David LeDoux) drew up," she said.

According to documents, LeDoux, his daughter and band councillor Kellie LeDoux and councillor Louis Tanner are directors of the company Gambler Management Ltd., which took out a $1.8-million loan for the two properties that together cost $1.48 million, as well as Gambler Brandon Venture Limited Partnership. There are other similar business structures.

Gerula alleges that any questions about directorship of the business structures were shut down at information sessions.

"The documents that Dave drew up gave all the power to him and his daughter, and none of the money flowed back to the members. Its the corruption in the documents they drew up that were opposing," she said.

Gerula is concerned that there is no financial accountability to the membership, as the three directors will report to themselves as chief and council.

Gerula is also concerned that the lands will be subleased for nominal fees and for a great length of time  up to 99 years according to the documents  to other First Nations or individuals, which will reap the economic rewards of businesses they open there, and that Gambler members will not have those same opportunities or benefit economically.

Lake St. Martin First Nation, for example, indicated to The Brandon Sun previously that it has big plans on an urban reserve in Brandon, without going into details. In March, Indigenous Services Canada stated Lake St. Martin First Nation had not approached the federal government to initiate the additions to reserve process to develop an urban reserve within Brandon.

As for the alleged breaches to the regulations, those include: some members were denied a vote, the voters list contained the names of deceased people and non-members, a ballot box was improperly transported, a person the Government of Canada hired for security at the Gambler polling station was not a certified security guard, like at the Russell polling station, but had a criminal record and intimidated on-reserve voters, and that some mail-in ballots were inappropriately counted.

There are more allegations in Gerulas nine pages of appeal documents.

Gerula and her husband Greg Wakin, who both have business backgrounds, say they were involved in developing the Brandon land project. The couple said LeDoux and his wife Rose LeDoux asked for help to form businesses and generate some revenue for Gambler. The couple found the properties and developed the relationship with the City of Brandon, they say.

"We looked at opening a gas bar first, and maybe a strip mall and opening a few little businesses with that," Gerula said.

"And then this thing with the referendum happened."

Gerula and Wakin are also concerned that the federal government, which ran the referendum, included a letter from Chief LeDoux in the referendum package for band members.

"How does a letter from the chief come to be included in there, in that package that came from their offices (federal government)," asked Wakin.

"Its supposed to be an unbiased referendum. You shouldnt be swayed either way to vote yes or no."

In her appeal documents, Gerula also alleges that LeDoux told band members theyd all get $1 million.

She also states that a federal employee, formerly the bands financial services officer, told members "that if the membership didnt vote yes it would be 10-13 years before the Government of Canada looked at this designation again for referendum and that the land would not be developed."

According to a March 3 email from Sherri Carriere, a land management officer for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, to Gerula, Gambler cannot enter into any leases or receive any government funds until the minister signs off on the land designation.

While the review is taking place Gambler can proceed with land improvements, such as bulldozing and clearing, but work on site seems to show excavating, surveying and work with sewer lines.

The Brandon Sun called Gambler First Nation and requested an interview with LeDoux and was told to email questions. While the questions were not answered, the First Nation did make a statement.

In response to The Brandon Sun's many questions, Gambler's "Chief and Council" stated: "The matters being alleged are untrue and unsubstantiated."

"Our nation is dealing with a number of complex socio-economic issues.  This is the first real opportunity our nation has had in terms of economic development and it will take a successful outcome to change peoples minds and have them understand that positive progress is possible for our nation," they state.

"While we fully support our members freedom of expression, we are dealing with a small disgruntled group of members that are trying to undermine our democratic system at the expense of our other members well-being. It is unfortunate that our community is not more united in moving our nation forward, but we do hope this will change over time through positive progress and getting away from how things used to be done."

The City of Brandon stated in an email the matter is between Gambler First Nation and the federal government.

 mletourneau@brandonsun.com

 Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism.
ALBEMARLE, N.C., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced earlier this week that it will award Monarch an additional two-year, $3.9 million grant to continue expanding vital services for people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders through the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) model in Stanly County.

Funding for this grant is provided through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and will continue through April 2022.

Monarch's CCBHC Clinic is located at 350 Pee Dee Avenue in Albemarle, NC.

Over the next two years, Monarch estimates it will serve more than 2,000 adults and children with serious mental illness, emotional disturbance, long-term chronic addiction, mild or moderate mental illness and substance use disorders, as well as physical health conditions. CCBHC services will be provided at Monarch's behavioral health outpatient office at 350 Pee Dee Ave. in Albemarle.

The CCBHC model is part of the National Excellence in Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Expansion Act. This legislation expands the number of CCBHCs to increase access to community mental health and substance use treatment services while improving Medicaid reimbursement. CCBHC key goals include mental health and addiction treatment access; opioid crisis service expansion; primary care health screenings; expanded behavioral health support for veterans; and collaboration among community care partners.

"Monarch is honored to receive this grant to continue our work as a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic. The CCBHC model provides a framework for comprehensive behavioral health care that directly impacts the lives of those with mental illness and substance use disorders," said Monarch President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Peggy Terhune.

"We know that in the wake of COVID-19, the mental health needs of our communities will only increase. These services are critical, and this grant will ensure we can respond with comprehensive behavioral health care for people who need it most," Terhune noted.

In September 2018, Monarch was the only North Carolina recipient of a SAMHSA grant to support the development of CCBHC services in Stanly County. As a result of that funding, Monarch launched a Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) program for outpatient, office-based opioid treatment. Over the last 18 months, Monarch also significantly expanded care management and nursing services in its Stanly County clinic to better provide whole-person care and enhance coordination between Monarch and other service providers.

As a result of this new award, Monarch's plans for continued expansion of services include:

Support for patients immediately following mental health-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits.

Occupational therapy services to enhance treatment outcomes.

A community-based peer recovery center.

Additional services to treat co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.

Screening for HIV and Hepatitis A, B and C.

Increased community education and outreach on mental health and substance use disorders.

"We are grateful to our federal partners for this funding, and to North Carolina legislators who continue to advocate for the CCBHC model of care at the state and federal level," Terhune concluded.

Established in 1958, Monarch provides support statewide in North Carolina to thousands of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental illness and substance use disorders. The organization is nationally accredited by The Joint Commission. To learn more about Monarch, please call (866) 272-7826 or visit www.MonarchNC.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Laurie Weaver, Vice President, Marketing & Philanthropy, (704) 986-1536, [email protected]

Related Images

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Monarch's CCBHC Clinic in Albemarle

Monarch's CCBHC Clinic is located at 350 Pee Dee Avenue in Albemarle, NC.

SOURCE Monarch

Related Links

http://www.MonarchNC.org


08.05.2020 LISTEN

In a rare television broadcast Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, described the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as Germany's biggest challenge since the Second World War. It has indeed proved to be a crisis of global proportion with material implications for the economies and livelihoods of all.

Governments across the globe have locked down cities, towns, villages, and townships to curb the spread of the virus. Massive fiscal stimuli have been enacted to cushion the economic and humanitarian impact of the pandemic. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have set aside a large quantum of emergency financial support for countries to tap into.

African countries have implemented strong containment measures to avoid further spread of COVID-19. For countries in West Africa, lessons learned from the potential health and economic impacts from the Ebola outbreak has resulted in swift responses from governments.

With the world changing at such a rapid pace, companies and investors have asked whether the African continent, which held such promise prior to the crisis, will be able to deal with the financial devastation.

In answering this question, there are a few angles that one can venture into, some of which are specific to an African context, including:

. technological advances buoyed by the pandemic. impact on the African diaspora and sustainability of remittances

. implication for Africas demographic dividend

. effects on Africas debt issues

. Africas infrastructure needs

In this instalment, we will explore the first topic in a bit more detail and provide a top-of-mind perspective on the rest.

Digital transformation

Data from the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations responsible for matters in the information and communication technology sector, indicates that in just under two decades more individuals have access to and are increasingly using the internet. Notably, developing countries have seen the number of individuals using the internet increase 17-fold to 47 per 100 inhabitants (from 3 per 100 inhabitants). This increase was mirrored by a rise in mobile-cellular telephones and active mobile-broadband subscriptions with fixed-line offerings taken-up at a slower pace. Consumer appetites have shifted towards mobile technology.

As authorities adopt measures to contain COVID-19, including quarantine, suspension of international passenger flights and forbidding of all public gatherings - including closing places of worship, universities, restaurants and gymsthe demand for mobile-based internet has skyrocketed. Most companies have responded to this crisis by enforcing work-at-home programmes which are dependent on reliable mobile connectivity. Given that periods of lockdown are likely to be extended throughout the African continent, the need for mobile connectivity would prove the same for learning institutions such as schools, universities and colleges.

Next generation of wireless technology

For African countries, this situation presents an opportunity to expedite opening tracts of spectrum to enable next generation (NextGen) technology such as 5G to flourish. As can be seen in Figure 1, Africa has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of mobile network infrastructure. Good progress has been made in the past five years where a significant number of African countries have created 3G mobile network connectivity with coverage increasing to 79 per 100 inhabitants (from 51.3 per 100 in 2015). While this is encouraging to see, much more work is needed to catch up with the rest of the world, which has transitioned to faster NextGen wireless networks.

Figure 1: Africas prospects to catch up on mobile network infrastructure

High-speed, reliable and robust network infrastructure is required to underpin the digital economy. Ongoing investment into 3G and 4G networks in sub-Saharan Africa should be expedited with the aim of enabling 5G technologies. 5G is advantageous as it promises spectacularly faster download and upload speeds with websites likely to open in microseconds and videos downloaded in seconds as opposed to minutes.

5G will enable many other technologies such as Internet of Things. It has the potential to open the much-needed new industries on the continent that come with the promise of the fourth industrial revolutionvirtual classrooms, remote medical surgery, agricultural drones, self-driving tractors and cars, to mention but a few.

It is encouraging that the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, in an effort to stimulate the economy during the period of COVID-19 lockdown and recent downgrades of South Africas debt into non-investment grade, will release emergency high-demand spectrum for companies to apply, and expedite the awarding of licences for a permanent arrangement.

Holistic perspective on Africas prospects

The one question that lingers is whether COVID-19 will alter Africas prospects for faster economic growth and prosperity? The table below provides a broad perspective on key issues.

Will the impact of COVID-19 change the possibility: Reason 1. For Africa to leapfrog the release of spectrum and related use of 5G? YES Regulators might be encouraged to expedite the commercial use of 5G technology to enhance faster mobile connectivity. 2. For African diaspora to halt sending remittances? NO Those in diaspora tend to be highly skilled professionals in critical sectors. 3. For Africa to forgo monetising its demographic dividend? NO It is upon leaders to construct economic policies that unleashes mass employment opportunities. 4. For Africa to deal with its debt issues? MAYBE Lenders might in fact construct different debt relief programmes. Adverse credit rating downgrades and currency depreciation due to COVID-19 market dislocation will negatively impact. 5. For Africa to retreat from its focus on infrastructure generation? NO This is an absolute necessity for Africa to deal with its existential dilemma.

Bottom line

As the 2008 global financial crisis ensued, Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff of the former President of the United States, Barack Obama said: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What is meant by that is you take opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. COVID-19 provides an opportunity for Africa to leapfrog into the high-speed internet age.

Countries such as Gabon, Lesotho, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa are leading the way in fast tracking the adoption of 5G networks for commercial use, an outcome which should be encouraged throughout the rest of the continent. Communication regulators should liberalise the process of awarding licences to mobile carriers in order to make it easier to launch NextGen wireless technologies.
A nursing home in Louth where 23 residents have died in recent weeks has released a statement expressing sympathy to the families of the 23 residents who have died in recent weeks.

The statement reads:

Dealgan House Nursing Home offers our sincere sympathies to the families and friends of those who have died due to Covid 19. Those 23 residents who tragically died since April 1st many of which were Covid Related, were people whom we got to know and love while caring for them, some over many years. All of us are heartbroken at their death and their familys loss.

While not forgetting those who have passed away, our emphasis now is on extinguishing the outbreak which we believe is under control with no new Covid 19 cases in our Nursing Home for more than 14 days. We will also be focused on providing great care to our residents and trying to normalise life for them to the extent that Public Health measures allow.

Dealgan House received substantial external support comprising both personnel and equipment, to bring the Covid 19 outbreak under control. The assistance we received was supportive and greatly appreciated and will wind down gradually as our own staff return to work.

Eoin Farrelly, Managing Director of Dealgan House Nursing Home
Technavio has been monitoring the liquid hand soap market and it is poised to grow by USD 2.39 billion during 2020-2024. 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/20200508005351/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Liquid Hand Soap Market 2020-2024 (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 decelerate during the forecast period. Colgate-Palmolive Co., GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., GOJO Industries Inc., ITC Ltd., Medline Industries Inc., New Avon Co., Premier English Manufacturing Ltd., Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, and Unilever Group. are some of the major market participants. The increasing cases of pandemic diseases 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.

Increasing cases of pandemic diseases has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Liquid Hand Soap Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Liquid Hand Soap Market is segmented as below:

Distribution Channel Offline Online

Geography APAC North America Europe South America MEA



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Liquid Hand Soap Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our liquid hand soap market report covers the following areas:

Liquid Hand Soap Market Size

Liquid Hand Soap Market Trends

Liquid Hand Soap Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies new product launches as one of the prime reasons driving the liquid hand soap market growth during the next few years.

Liquid Hand Soap Market 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the liquid hand soap market, including some of the vendors such as Colgate-Palmolive Co., GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., GOJO Industries Inc., ITC Ltd., Medline Industries Inc., New Avon Co., Premier English Manufacturing Ltd., Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, and Unilever Group. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the liquid hand soap market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Liquid Hand Soap Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist liquid hand soap market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the liquid hand soap market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the liquid hand soap market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of liquid hand soap market vendors

Table Of Contents:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by Distribution channel

Market segments

Comparison by Distribution channel

Offline Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Online Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by Distribution channel

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC Market size and forecast 2019-2024

North America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024

South America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

MEA Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Colgate-Palmolive Co.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc

Godrej Consumer Products Ltd.

GOJO Industries Inc.

ITC Ltd.

Medline Industries Inc.

New Avon Co.

Premier English Manufacturing Ltd.

Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc

Unilever Group

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

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.

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The markets may have been hoping for a period of calm ahead of the summer. Alas, it seems as though this may have been wishful thinking.

With U.S President Trump and the administration needing to take some blame for the 1.2m COVID-19 cases and 72,285 deaths, the markets will need to prepare for a Republican salvage operation.

Bernie Sanderss withdrawal from the Democratic primaries couldnt have come at a worse time for Trump.

Democratic Party in-house fighting would have at least given Trump and the Republicans something to target. With Biden now the front runner and Trumps opponent, the tactics have certainly changed, for now at least.

The U.S economy is in meltdown and will have its worst contraction since the Great Depression.

For a U.S President who had a campaign slogan of Make America Great Again, it has certainly not panned out as planned.

The U.S  China Trade War

Of greatest concern is that the U.S trade war with China has not been enough to prize the global supply chain from Chinas grip.

Trump and the administration now need another stab at diluting Chinas position on the global supply chain. It has taken almost 260,000 COVID-19 deaths and a global economic shutdown

After more than a year of punitive tariffs, the U.S is back to square one. China is not able to stick to the phase 1 trade agreement and no one will blame them for it. In fact, China may just decide that it will not stick to the agreement

If the U.S administration doesnt move fast, one of Trumps campaign pledges will have left the President red-faced.

Then there is the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump announced boldly that he would withdraw from.

If the last week is anything to go by, the U.S administration is now claiming that it never withdrew Failure number 2.

We can then look at the U.S stock markets, healthcare, and the outlook for U.S farmers and shale producers.

Story continues

Neither is positive and both are unlikely to be seeing anytime but despair for the remainder of the year.

In fact, another red-faced moment for the U.S president was an unprecedented fall of WTI Futures into negative territory.

What to Expect

Its hard to imagine what tricks the U.S administration has up its sleeve. A number do spring to mind, however.

A U.S  UK trade agreement would demonstrate that the administration is able to form alliances with the right partners. The UK economy may not be the largest, but it would be an easy win for the administration.

Trump could then force the EU into submission by using the UK as a pawn in the U.S  EU trade war. Lets face it, the EU is in no position to battle the U.S in a trade war, let alone stomach punitive tariffs.

As for Iran, some sort of military action will be needed to justify the administrations change in position on the nuclear agreement.

If the UN Security Council agrees to an arms embargo it would likely be a green light for a U.S led attack. A big concern, however, would be Russia and Chinas stance on such a move.

Will they sit back at a time when the chances of Trumps 2nd term look questionable?

As the summer approaches, we can expect the noise to build. In fact, it already has and China is not going to sit back. This time around there is too much at stake and, at a minimum, the goal must be to nudge Trump out of the Oval Office.

At the time of writing, the EUR was down by 0.27% to $1.08076. Dire economic data has left the EUR on the back foot once more.

One does wonder, however, whether Trumps immediate gamble to open the U.S economy at all costs will backfire. A sudden surge in new cases and, more importantly, COVID-19 related deaths, would sure undo all of the efforts made by the FED and Capitol Hill until now.

As geopolitical risk resurfaces, at a minimum, Trump will need to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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Its not necessary that children follow their parents profession. Sardar Surjit Singh is a village farmer, and so is his only son. But his eldest child, a daughter, is a school principal. And his youngest, a daughter again, is a Chartered Accountant.

And she lives in Gurugram.

But I have also done my share of farming in our small family khet (farming land), says Navneet Kaur Virk. Ive fed the buffaloes, Ive rooted out the weedy wild grass with the khurpi (trowel)...

Ms Virks last name happens to be the name of her village in Jalandhar, Punjab. This evening, she is speaking from the isolation of her flat in Gurugrams Sector 93. Its a house Ms Virk bought with her own savings  she moved into it in November last year. She has been in the city for a whole decade, but until then she would be living in PG accommodations where hosts were nice enough, but tended to count the number of rotis one would be having for dinner.

You might think that for a 42-year-old career woman, enjoying an independent life in a two-bedroom flat in a modern metropolitan area is nothing out of the ordinary.

Ms Virk doesnt see it that way. These days, as the pandemic-ridden world is reeling under a prolonged lockdown, she finds time to look back on the journey that took her from village to city.

She is the only member of her family to live in a metropolis. She is also the only one in her entire network of relatives to be single. I took charge of my life from a very early age, and by now I have done many things by myself that I hadnt thought I could do, she says, breaking into a momentary laughter.

The ladys background gives a perspective to the distance she has travelled. Her mother, she says, cannot read or write. Her father studied till 7th standard. Her brother is a college drop out. It was my studious behen (sister), Davinder, who kept me focused on the studies despite the household chores we were obliged to do everyday.

The three siblings would help their parents in the fields daily after returning from school. It was expected of every child in the village, she informs.

Ms Virks school was 4 km away in the town of Phagwara. She would go walking, though in her early days her brother would take her on his bicycle. Years later, she was gifted her own bicycle by a cousin visiting from Birmingham, in the UK. Almost all her relativesshe points outwere distinguished by having at least one family member working in Canada or England. Hers was an exception.

We were so poor... the little bit of crop we would grow in our land was barely enough for our own needs.... only a tiny portion was left aside for sale in the mandi (wholesale market).

Following in her sisters footsteps, Ms Virk stayed on course with her studies, eventually entering the college, where she graduated in commerce. She picked chartered accountancy after a casual discussion on the subject one day with a couple of friends.

Being a CA student isnt easy, Ms Virk explains. It is notorious as a field where students tend to fail rather than pass. For the next few years, she would commute daily to Phagwara town for her articleship training with a practising chartered accountant, a mandatory requirement for the certification course.

Ideally, if a student clears all the exams in one go, it takes about four-and-a-half years to become a CA. Ms Virk accomplished it in seven years. The intervening setbacks rankled her family. First, they were under social pressure to get me married. Then, it was puzzling to them that it should take me so long to get the certificate. They couldnt understand why was she wasting her time staying awake at the desk all night long.

On January 17, 2007, the day she cleared the exams and finally became a CA, her brother gifted her 1000 to party with friends.

That year proved to be a double milestone in Ms Virks biography. She left her village for Bengaluru after landing a job in the corporate world. One of the first things she was asked in the new office was to submit her passport for a work visit to Canada.

The Canada trip fell through, but Ms Virks company later sent her to California for eight weeks. By now, travelling abroad is no longer novel to her. She flies to UK almost every year for meetings with clients, she says.

The lady shifted to the Delhi region in 2010, and is currently a senior manager in a multinational company.

As far as my materialistic dreams are concerned, I feel contented, she declares. Haunted by the limited means of living while growing up, she was propelled by an urgent urge to become financially free. Now I have the ability to buy things I desire without thinking much about the cost.

And then theres the freedom of anonymity that a big city offers to its residents, including single women. It doesnt feel a bother to get out of the house... nobody here cares where I might be going, or if I am the one driving the car, or if I am with somebody else... this all is freedom.

At one point during the phone chat, Ms Virk steps out onto the terrace and shows the sun setting behind a row of tall buildings through the screen that connects her to this reporter.

Like most mothers, Mummy also believes that a kudi (girl) is settled only after she gets married.... but I feel that nobody ever gets settled in life. Following a pause, she confesses that one of the reasons I purchased this flat was to make Mummy feel secure about the fact that I have a place of my own and that I can take care of my life.

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One of the most difficult adjustments for the Rev. Claire Bohman during the pandemic has been not being able to be in the rooms of patients dealing with the virus. Sometimes the work of chaplaincy can be about a gesture as small as a caring touch on a patients shoulder, she says.

As a chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital, part of Bohmans job is to minister to sick or ailing patients. For some that involves prayer and spiritual care, and for others its about just being in the room to listen, both of which she now does remotely. But, Bohman admits, it can be difficult to be a compassionate presence when youre not able to be physically present.

Im so grateful for the technology of cell phones and iPads, but theres something lost not being there for them to cry on, says Bohman, who is also the executive director of the hospitals Sojourn Chaplaincy services. Part of the pain of the pandemic is fearing touch. Ive had to learn how to do my job without physical contact.

Like everyone in a hospitals ecosystem, chaplains are adjusting to work during a public health crisis  with new rules on personal protective equipment and using technology to prevent physical contact. And like many doctors, nurses and other health care workers, chaplains are finding their skills are in as much demand as ever, providing spiritual and emotional care to patients and their families. As hospital staffs are under unprecedented stress during the pandemic, chaplains are also finding their workloads increased by caring for workers on the front lines.

The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation has acknowledged that added need. At S.F. General, the foundation has provided increased funding for additional interfaith chaplain staffing through June with the rise in patients and concerns from staff. In March when the San Francisco Department of Public Health issued the order to legally limit access to hospitals and medical facilities to essential health care workers, chaplains were among the essential staff.

Theres been nothing like this to compare it to where the faith community and hospital chaplains all suddenly have had to pivot how they were seeing to the needs of the sick or elderly, says Michael Pappas, the executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. You have a situation where families cant go to the hospital  thats a huge issue. You have people at end of life there on their own.

Pappas says that restrictions on non-chaplain spiritual workers visiting patients in hospitals has also increased the workload of chaplains. The Rev. Maggi Henderson from San Franciscos Old First Presbyterian Church is one of the many ministers who have also had to adapt how she stays in contact with the sick and elderly in her congregation due to social distance precautions.

One of my questions very early on with the virus was, How do I do my ministry when I cant be with people and go to the places Im needed? she says.

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

She now relies primarily on phone calls for outreach.

Tele-chaplaincy is a different form of communication, says Jamie Kimmel, a chaplain who works on the floor where coronavirus patients are being treated at UCSF.

Kimmel is not allowed in the room with coronavirus patients and has also been relying on phone calls to do his work. One of the ways he accesses patients needs is by reading body language, which isnt something he can do on the phone. To compensate, Theres more asking questions to find out where they are at, Kimmel says. In the work we do fostering connection and being present with people I see that there is a continuity to the presence I try to bring to people. That hasnt changed.

But, he says, Staying 6 feet away from people isnt what I usually do in my work.

One of the major changes for chaplains during the pandemic has been an increase in tending to the needs of hospital staff dealing with the stress of combatting this virus.

Among the concerns brought up by staff are fears about personal safety, stress surrounding shortages of PPE and worries their jobs may put other people in their lives at risk of exposure.

At S.F. General, Bohman is offering the staff opportunities like daily huddles teaching different centering practices. In April, Soujourn also launched their Spiritual Care Warm Line phone service where S.F. General Hospital staff and San Francisco Department of Public Health employees can call volunteer chaplains for support during the evenings. It can be if they want something spiritual like a blessing or just someone to unload with before they go home after a shift, Bohman says. Theres a lot of health worker distress throughout the country, we want to make sure they have the support they need to do this work.

Our caregivers, nurses, doctors are seeing patients in dire situations more than usual now, says Rabbi Jeremy Sher, a chaplain at UCSF. Particularly in the emergency department theres greater stress because thats where COVID patients are coming in. Our health care workers are coming (to work) knowing theyre taking a personal risk, and thats hard for everyone.

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.

Recently while doing rounds at UCSF, Sher was asked to bless the hands of any staff who wanted it. He was surprised by the emotions in the responses, which he says showed me the extent to which we as chaplains can provide a healing presence.

Bohman says its not just personal mortality many are grappling with but also the possibility that loved ones could become victims of the virus. This whole pandemic is an invitation to reflect upon our mortality. Life is a precious gift  none of us know how long we have. Remembering that can help us live out life in a way that feels most in alignment.

Amanda Coggin, a chaplain at UCSF who also teaches a class on addressing death and dying with the Zen Caregiving project (formerly the Zen Hospice Project), says that in her work as a chaplain and teacher shes found people are looking for lessons in the suffering of the pandemic.

Were now all facing it (death) and we all have to be engaged with it, Coggin says. But, one of the upsides from the reflection Coggin has seen is, Its taken this hyper-independent part of our culture and shown that were all in this together. One of the things that has resulted from that is people are asking what brings hope, how they can support each other, how do we get through this together.

Chaplains are also asking questions about their own mortality on the front lines.

I have the concern everyone else does, Kimmel says. But Im very careful. For any of us who work at the hospital right now its good to take extra precautions.

One of Bohmans personal coping mechanisms has been to look back at Sojourns history. The organization was created during another crisis: the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

I feel a thread of connection with that epidemic, Bohman says. Theres a lot thats different about this pandemic and AIDS, but also a lot thats similar.

Many of the lessons from that era, Bohman says, inform the work chaplains do now. This challenge of not being physically present, it changes the work and around the country chaplains are trying to figure out how to be present while not being present.

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TonyBravoSF
The Ministry of Railways on Friday ordered a comprehensive probe into the Aurangabad accident in which 16 migrants workers who were sleeping on the tracks were mowed down by a freight train in the early hours.

Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, the Ministry of Railways tweeted, "Ram Kripal, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Central circle will hold an independent inquiry in today's labourers runover incident in Parbhani-Manmad section of Nanded Railway division of South Central Railway."

Shri Ram Kripal, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Central circle will hold an independent inquiry in todays labourers runover incident in Parbhani-Manmad section of Nanded Railway division of South Central Railway.  Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) May 8, 2020

The railways has not yet announced any ex gratia in the Aurangabad accident.

The migrant labourers were killed when the train ran over them between Jalna and Aurangabad, informed Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) of South Central Railway (SCR). A few others were seriously injured and two escaped unhurt, all of the workers are from Madhya Pradesh. The injured have been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital.

The mishap occurred in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district. As per Railways officials, the migrant labourers, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, were sleeping on the railway track when the accident took place. In a statement released by the Railways, the persons run over are natives of Umarya and Shahdol of Madhya Pradesh and worked at SRG Company in Jalna, Maharashtra.

Maharashtra Chief Minister's Office (CMO) on Friday (May 8) announced an ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of those who were killed in the Aurangabad train accident. "Rupees five lakhs each has been announced as ex gratia to families of the deceased in the Karmad (Aurangabad) train accident," said Maharashtra CMO.

BJP leader Ram Kadam expressed condolences on the tragedy, saying "The Aurangabad accident is tragic. The Maharashtra government has not made any arrangements for food for migrant labourers and hence people are forced to walk for miles."

What is being probed is the role of patrolmen who are tasked with keeping trespassers away from tracks and also alert the nearest station about any incident, reported news agency PTI.
Life without Tom Brady will begin against the Dolphins.

The Patriots 2020 schedule was released on Thursday night, and theyll open by hosting AFC East rival Miami at home. Theres no need to worry about Floridian humidity thats felled them in past Septembers.

They boast the toughest strength of schedule in the league, though  their opponents had a .537 winning percentage in 2019  and have to travel to Kansas City and Seattle, two of the loudest buildings in the league.

New England caught a bit of a break with their Los Angeles road trips coming back-to-back. With a game at the Chargers followed by a Thursday Night Football date with the Rams, theyre bound to stay out in California and only fly coast-to-coast once in December.

Still, its a gauntlet. Heres a look at all 16 games:

Sep. 13 vs. Miami, 1:00

Sep. 20 at Seattle, 8:20

Sep. 27 vs. Las Vegas, 1:00

Oct. 4 at Kansas City, 4:25

Oct. 11 vs. Denver, 1:00

Oct. 25 vs. San Francisco, 4:25

Nov. 1 at Buffalo, 1:00

Nov. 9 at New York Jets, 8:15

Nov. 15 vs. Baltimore, 8:20

Nov. 22 at Houston, 1:00

Nov. 29 vs. Arizona, 1:00

Dec. 6 at Los Angeles Chargers, 4:25

Dec. 10 at Los Angeles Rams, 8:20

Dec. 20 at Miami, 1:00

Dec. 28 vs. Buffalo, 8:15

Jan. 3 vs. New York Jets, 1:00
In 2003, during the George W. Bush administration, the columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the phrase Bush Derangement Syndrome to refer to some of the presidents more unhinged critics. It was funny, and given Krauthammers background  he was a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry  it had the ring of truth.

Now, the nation is in the fourth year of Trump Derangement Syndrome. And there are plenty of indications that the condition, already acute, has been made worse by the coronavirus crisis. Just Google Trump and blood on his hands.

But among some in the media and politics, Trump derangement is more than a syndrome. It is a business  show business. It is a way to expand ones audience and gain influence. Thats not to say it is insincere  many in the media and politics really do detest the president  but there is a flamboyance to it that keeps the audience entertained.

For example, there seems to be a new vogue of media figures directly addressing the president. The most recent came Sunday night, when CNNs Don Lemon marveled at the leadership and compassion of former President Barack Obama and then spoke to President Trump, seemingly one-to-one.

By the way, what is it about President Obama that really gets under your skin? Lemon asked Trump. Is it because hes smarter than you? Better educated? Made it on his own, didnt need daddys help? Wife is more accomplished, better looking? I dont know  what is it? What is it about him? That hes a black man thats accomplished, became president? That he punked you on the whole birth certificate thing? What is it about him? Just wondering.

It was trolling, pure and simple, but it generated publicity. It was picked up all around the internet  Don Lemon hits Trump where it hurts! And it kept the audience amused.

Others try to up the ante to keep the customers satisfied. In February, an MSNBC contributor got some notice by publishing a column in The Atlantic, a big anti-Trump clearinghouse, entitled, What Would Happen if Trump Refused to Leave Office? (Answer: He would be forcibly removed from the White House.)

A former New York Times correspondent, David Cay Johnston, recently predicted a Trump re-election would bring a wave of extra-judicial executions. Weve got to get this man out of office, or its the end of our democracy, Johnston said on Joe Madisons radio program. And down that road lie firing squads. Thats what dictators do. For a bit more drama, Johnston added, I would expect to get shot in the first round.

On the politics side, trolling the president can raise the profile of even the most marginal group. The latest example comes from the Lincoln Project, a team of anti-Trump operatives who have supported Republicans in the past and are now backing Democrat Joe Biden for president.

On Monday, the group released an ad depicting the United States as a broken, bankrupt, diseased dystopia because of Trumps performance during the coronavirus crisis. They called it Mourning in America, a grim play on Ronald Reagans famous 1984 campaign ad, Morning in America.

The ad was inaccurate, misleading and unfair, but political ads are often inaccurate, misleading and unfair. The projects founders immediately sent out a fundraising appeal touting an ad so good its trending on Twitter ... can you pitch in $100, $50 or $25 right now?

Then something even better happened: Trump himself responded. In a series of midnight tweets, the president denounced the Lincoln people as, A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first-timer, 4 years ago ... Setting aside whether members of the group still think of themselves as Republicans, in name only or not, Trumps description was basically accurate.

And they were delighted. Trump gave one of them, George Conway, husband of top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, a new nickname  Moonface. Conway immediately added Moonface to his Twitter bio. A Lincoln Project co-founder, former New Hampshire Republican chair Jennifer Horn, happily added a bit more trolling, tweeting the ad with the advice: He would probably hate if you retweeted it. A Lincoln Project adviser, GOP strategist Reed Galen, whom Trump mistakenly called Reed Galvin, actually changed his Twitter name to The Real Reed Galvin.

Being denounced by the president touches all the pleasure centers of the Trump troll.

More important, it can be good for business. Watching it all, another anti-Trump Republican, Liz Mair, who is not part of the Lincoln Project, noted, When Trump tweeted about me in 2016, it caused an immediate jump in my followers, ensured me more TV and print space and, frankly, got more small-dollar donors interested in donating to what I was doing.

So some of what you read and hear that sounds like Trump Derangement Syndrome is actually something different. Trump trolling can lead to what Mair experienced  more visibility, more influence and more money. And in the media and politics business, thats good for the bottom line.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.
The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to explore granting "further priority" to some doctors and nurses, who are stranded in Saudi Arabia amid COVID-19 pandemic and are in advanced stage of pregnancy, for bringing them back to India.

The remark by a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan came after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed that as per the standard operating procedure (SOP), priority is already given to the pregnant women during evacuation from abroad.

The bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and B R Gavai, was hearing through video-conferencing a plea seeking a direction to the Centre to make arrangements to bring back 18 medical professionals who are pregnant and are stranded in Saudi Arabia in "vulnerable conditions".

Senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for the petitioners, told the bench that pregnancy of these medical professionals is at an advance stage and they need a further priority in the priority already given to pregnant women.

"The government shall explore the question of further priority as per the specific cases of the petitioners and shall take appropriate steps accordingly," the bench said in its order and disposed of the petition.

The bench also noted in its order that the Centre has already taken a decision to bring back Indians who are stranded overseas due to lockdown and travel restrictions amid COVID-19 pandemic.

The plea, filed through advocate Jose Abraham, had also sought a direction to the Indian Embassy at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to take appropriate measures and ensure that these pregnant medical professionals, including one doctor, have access to proper medical facilities till they are repatriated to India.

The petition has said repatriation of these medical professionals was needed as soon as possible as they would not be able to travel once they are in their 36th week of gestation.

The plea had said the petitioners had planned to return to India on various dates in the month of March and April for their delivery but their tickets got cancelled due to closure of airports in India for flights from abroad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Nargiz Ismayilova - Trend:

The bodies of two oilmen who went missing during the accident on December 4, 2015 in the deep-water base No. 10 at the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli field, were recovered at Caspian Sea, Ibrahim Ahmadov, Deputy Head of the Public Relations and Event Management Department of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR, told Trend.

Ahmadov added during monitoring of pipelines the bodies of two people were found at a depth of 190 meters in the lower part of the Caspian Sea.

The bodies belong to Abdulaziz Abdulazizov and Eyyub Aliyev. The identity cards of the dead persons, as well as the responses of their families, confirmed their identities. Inspection work on the pipeline was completely stopped, and the bodies were taken up from the depth with appropriate equipment and forwarded to the Main Police Directorate for Water Transport. We once again express our condolences to the families and friends of all the victims of the Gunashli tragedy, he noted.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @IsmailovaNargis
Premier Mark McGowan has ordered an investigation into a reported attempt by a sophisticated Chinese military-linked hacking outfit to access data in his department.

According to a report in the New York Times, the Naikon group compromised a network in Indonesia's embassy in Canberra before launching an attack on a staffer in Mr McGowan's office working on health policy.

The office of Premier Mark McGowan has been targeted by hackers linked to the Chinese military, according to reports appearing overnight in the US. Credit:Trevor Collens

The January 3 intrusion attempt was made by the hackers, reportedly sponsored by China's People's Liberation Army, via an email with malicious code embedded into an innocuous appearing attachment, according to Israeli information security firm Check Point Software Technologies.

But the hackers sent the email to the wrong address, causing it to bounce back to the sender's server and raising suspicions.
HALIFAX - As Rick Cameron rests and rehabilitates his body from its war with COVID-19, he has a story to read through to fill in the gaps of his journey.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HALIFAX - As Rick Cameron rests and rehabilitates his body from its war with COVID-19, he has a story to read through to fill in the gaps of his journey.

It is the detailed documenting of his struggle to survive as he lay deeply sedated in a Truro, N.S., hospital, kept alive by a ventilator.

Kelly Marshall, left, and her father Rick Cameron pose for a selfie at a waterfall in Nova Scotia in an undated handout photo. As Rick Cameron rests and rehabilitates his body from its war with COVID-19, he has a story to read through to fill in the gaps of his journey. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Kelly Marshall, *MANDATORY CREDIT*

The online blog compiled by his daughter includes moments of despair, of joy, of songs sung through smartphones to a semi-conscious man, and of a family's love for a "Papa bear" lying in a state of weakness.

Most days during Cameron's seven weeks in hospital, Kelly Marshall and her family would post in "Rick Cameron: His road to recovery," as thousands of followers would celebrate or weep along with her.

Initially, this was a tale about a raw struggle for a 69-year-old man who'd rarely had more than a common cold during his life before the pandemic.

The illness of the retired tire factory employee started with flu-like symptoms in February after a return from a Florida vacation. Within a week of falling ill, the father of two was gasping for air and was rushed to hospital. On March 20, a tube was inserted into his lungs and a ventilator sustained his body.

He was among the first Nova Scotians to enter critical care with COVID-19.

"When somebody's sick you, want to be there and hold them and hug them  and its the one thing you can't do with this," Marshall told The Canadian Press in a story in March.

Two weeks later, the blog described how Cameron's kidneys and liver showed signs of inflammation.

The medical team decided to move him onto his side to promote the flow of oxygen, and Marshall documented the fears at the family home in Stellarton, where she and her husband Brian live with her parents.

"We were worried that he would go into cardiac arrest when the initial flip was to occur April 4. Scary. Very scary," she wrote.

Hundreds of comments of encouragement flowed in. Nurses would daily put a smartphone near their patient, and Cameron's wife Faye would sing to him through it: old, emotional rock 'n' roll songs.

The family wrote to him as though he were awake. They spoke of restless grandchildren fighting over Easter eggs, teased him about being unusually quiet and wrote down a steady record of his fluctuating vital signs.

Then, the news turned joyful, as he fought back to breathing on his own. On April 11, Marshall wrote: "Get ready for it. He opened his eyes! He opened his eyes!!"

As Cameron blinked on the video call, she and her mother screamed through the smartphone, "We love you," and he seemed to close his eyelids in reply.

"I don't even have words to express everything I feel! Papa bear has never let me down a day in my life and was not about to start now," Marshall wrote.

Then, just days later, the doctors said COVID-19 was still present. "This was a slight kick in the stomach," wrote Marshall.

The blog provided details of medical decisions, in particular the need to cut a small hole in Cameron's throat in a tracheotomy procedure.

Cameron was at risk for subglottic stenosis, the medical term for "a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords and just above where they could place a tracheotomy," Marshall wrote. The condition often causes scarring for patients who have been intubated for long periods of time, she noted.

The 39-year-old documented how her father gradually came off the ventilator and the "intensive care delirium" in the four days after the tracheotomy.

He couldn't talk and was still running a fever, but "his mind is clear," she wrote on April 19, and his face told the story. "He just loves to hear Mom's voice. It's so sweet the little smile he gives her."

Yet, hours later, the roller-coaster continued, as Cameron's heart rate shot up to the 150s and Marshall and her mother sat silent and sombre at home, awaiting a return to normal. "This type of recovery is going to be a slow process. There are so many factors involved. There is weeks of rehabilitation in the near future," Marshall wrote.

But joy has returned. Cameron is speaking now, his first word was a raspy "Hi."

On April 26, he tested negative for COVID-19. This week he was moved to a private room at a hospital in New Glasgow to continue his rehabilitation.

Marshall hopes to finally hold him, soon.

She said her father is still too weak to speak at length, but her intention in telling his story is to educate the public about the dangers of COVID-19 and to urge compliance with the instructions of public health officials.

Many worries remain, such as the risk of blood clotting and secondary infections. There are months of rehabilitation ahead, and a careful re-introduction of regular food and exercise.

"He has a long, long road to go," Marshall said in an interview.

But in the meantime, he's been given a link to the blog, and he's been shown a few sections of it.

It is a record Marshall is confident her father will soon start to go through in detail, filling in the gaps of weeks in his life  as his strength returns.

"He likes to know. He likes to know what happened," she says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2020.
These are the schools that have canceled classes for Jan. 18

Some school districts across the county are virtual today. Others will make up the snow day.
Vehicular movement remained slow at the DND Flyway and the Kalindi Kunj Road connecting Noida and Delhi on Friday as several people wanting to cross over to Delhi are flocking to the interstate borders to attend their offices. Some of these people live in Delhi and work in Noida, while others live in Noida and work in Delhi. However, the Noida traffic police are strictly enforcing lockdown norms and allowing only people with passes through.

Shambhu Kumar, a resident of Okhla Tank in Delhi, was stopped at the DND Flyway. I work for a private cable firm and I travel around Delhi and Noida for work. I received a call to fix a cable connection in Sector 12-22. I reached the Delhi-Noida border but the police personnel are not allowing me to enter Noida, he said.

Rajesh S, deputy commissioner of police, Noida (traffic) said that the Gautam Budh Nagar district administration has not relaxed the restrictions for interstate commuting. The administration has recently issued detailed guidelines on the relaxation of some services. The factories and companies have been given passes to ferry employees on their buses. Employers are also expected to engage only those workers who live in Noida and Greater Noida, he said.

The Noida Entrepreneurs Association (NEA) said that the district administrations of Noida, Delhi and Ghaziabad need to make a coordinated effort and ease the commuting of employees and employers at interstate borders.

A number of the workforce and employers live in Ghaziabad and Delhi and work in Noida. There is no clarity on how they are to commute. In addition to this, factories will face problems in terms of supplies for production. It is not necessary that all of Noidas production will be consumed in Noida. We need relaxation in norms to supply goods across the NCR and other parts of the country. We will also face problems in getting raw materials from different cities, Sudhir Shrivastava, vice present, NEA, said.

The NEA has over 1,800 members who are involved in manufacturing products in the electric, electronic, mechanical, cable as well as other fields. Shrivastava said that the factories and companies have started reopening and sanitising their premises, and are expecting most employees back from Monday.

The district administration has so far permitted 210 buses of these private companies and factories to ferry employees. People engaged in essential services, including medical practitioners, media persons, etc. are allowed entry after producing passes issued to them.
The Supreme Court on Friday nullified the conviction of former Abia State governor, Orji Uzor Kalu.

Senator Kalu was convicted of N7.65billion fraud perpetuated when he was Abia State governor between 1999 and 2007.

Also Read: Orji Uzor Kalu To Receive Full Salaries, Allowances In Prison: Senate

He was convicted alongside his firm, Slok Nigeria Limited and his former Abia State director of finance, Ude Udeogu.

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However, the apex court in its judgment declared that the judgement of the court of appeal delivered is set aside

The court ruled that Justice Mohammed Idris that convicted Kalu having already being elevated to the appeal court lacked the power to sentence Kalu.

The apex court, therefore, ordered the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to reassign the case for trial.
Taiwan on Friday donated one million face masks to India to help protect frontline medical personnel engaged in the fight against Covid-19, reflecting the medical cooperation between the two sides.

The masks, brought to India by a special flight on May 4, were handed over by ambassador Chung-Kwang Tien of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in New Delhi to Neel Kamal Singh, deputy secretary general of the Indian Red Cross Society, at a ceremony on Friday.

Tien said the Coronavirus respects no national borders or races, and assistance should not be limited by nations.

Taiwan has shown to the world that due to pre-emptive preparations, the right policy implemented by the government, the trust established by the people towards the government and the lesson learned after the 2003 SARS [outbreak], Taiwan has been recognised and praised greatly by international communities and countriesin terms of fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

Taiwan would like to share its experiences and PPE materials such as masks with all countries in need, he added.

Taiwan government launched its first large-scale humanitarian assistance initiative in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in April and has so far donated 25.5 million face masks and other medical supplies to the US, European Union states, and 18 countries across the Indo-Pacific.

Tien also complimented the Indian governments efforts to curtail the spread of Covid-19. Highlighting India as an important and valued partner of Taiwan, Tien expressed confidence that the country will prevail over challenges and restore economic growth.
Even as Tamil Nadu reported 580 fresh cases of people who tested positive for Covid-19, taking the cumulative tally in the state to 5,409, the state saw liquor sales worth Rs 150 crore  according to preliminary estimates - on the first day of reopening of TASMAC (Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation the monopoly seller of liquor in the state) outlets.

The Tamil Nadu government had permitted the re-opening of TASMAC outlets across the state except in Greater Chennai area. TASMAC has a total of 5,300 outlets and employs more than 25,000 people. Choas prevailed at retail outlets in several districts including Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu.

Police had to resort to mild lathi-charge in some of the districts as desperate tipplers gave social distancing norms a go-by. Police had a tough time controlling crowds wanting to buy liquor as all TASMAC outlets have been closed in the state since March 24. Preliminary estimates of the state government indicated that Rs 150 crore worth of liquor was sold in Tamil Nadu.

The governments move to open the TASMAC outlets had attracted criticism from opposition parties including DMKs M K Stalin, Congress party and others. However, the state government struggling for revenue had decided to go ahead with the sales. In 2018-19, TASMAC alone generated revenues of Rs 31,157.83 crore.

Meanwhile two more deaths were also reported because of Covid-19 on Thursday taking the cumulative tally to 37.

Out of the 580 new cases registered on Thursday, government officials admitted that 316 of them were from Chennai with bulk of them being attributed to the Koyambedu market cluster. As of Thursday, there are 3,822 active Covid-19 cases in the state.
CENTENNIAL, Colo., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With efforts to help essential businesses that have remained open and those that are gearing up to re-open, ProTech Biohazard Remediation has a solution to help business get back on track safely.

Chief Technologist, Rocco Zehnle commented, "Our service can help businesses provide assurance to its employees, customers and the general public that they are doing everything possible to keep their people and the public safe."

ProTech in the Media ProTech in Action

It also helps those same businesses meet or exceed the goals of the Governor's and various Counties Public Health "Safer at Work" orders and may even help lower insurance and other operating costs.

With the uncertainty of this new Covid-19 era, nearly every employer in every industry is recognizes urgent need to implement a facility hygiene plan and decontaminate the work environment.

They know they must make the workspace a safer place for their employees and customers. "They share our moral and ethical responsibility to ensure the health and safety of their employees, customers, clients, and the community," says Zehnle.

John Franzman of Tamarack Properties used ProTech recently to treat his entire 12,000 sq. ft. Office building. "It's not that I was concerned that the building was contaminated," says Franzman, "It was more about peace of mind and reassurance that the environment was safe for my employees and customers entering the building."

Committed to helping re-open the Colorado economy, ProTech has also launched their exclusive Open Colorado Today initiative. A series of programs offered exclusively to help business owners get back open for business today. The program offers small businesses:

Rapid Response and Proactive Service

Flexible Payment Options

Deferred Payment Plans

Small Business Assistance

These innovative programs are designed to work in partnership with business owners to help ease the burden of reopening the State's economy. The priority for all companies is to get back to work as quickly as possible and with the appropriate health and conditions for their employees safety and "We want to partner with business owners to re-open safely and restore confidence and trust in our Colorado businesses", says Sam Burden, Remediation Hygienist.

Offering services from facility hygiene and maintenance, facility and equipment decontamination to HVAC cleaning and sanitation, Zehnle says, "We will prepare businesses to meet public safety and regulatory concerns. Unless you are a big refinery or manufacturing plant, most of these businesses have never really had to worry about these types of issues. But Covid-19 changed all that."

Services are delivered by qualified and trained hygienists, using proven methods to kill disease causing pathogens including Covid-19 and a Safe to Occupy Certificate will also be given to businesses once the services are complete.

The Open Colorado Today initiatives from ProTech exemplifies how small business can work together to address the risks specific to all places where people live, work and congregate from churches to restaurants, offices, hotels, shops and all public facilities. We take seriously the need for all to be Safer-At-Work.

ProTech Biohazard Remediation is the leading provider of facility hygiene services in Colorado. We provide comprehensive decontamination and remediation solutions to mitigate the risks and exposure to biohazard contaminants such as Covid-19.

For more details, contact Rocco Zehnle, Chief Technologist at 720.230.0736 or visit www.ProTechRemedy.com.

Media Contacts:

Rocco Zehnle

720-230-0736

[email protected]

Dennis Zehnle

720-230-0736

[email protected]

Visit www.ProTechRemedy.com

SOURCE ProTech Biohazard Remediation

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Story Highlights Percentage who are "thriving" continues to decline, reaching previous low

Current life satisfaction continues to erode as anticipated life edges up

Significant daily stress and worry remain near record highs

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of U.S. adults who evaluate their lives well enough to be considered "thriving" has dropped to 46.4%, matching the low point measured in November 2008 during the Great Recession. Today's thriving rate has worsened about three percentage points since the first half of March and nearly 10 points since the spring of 2019.

Gallup classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering" according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Those who rate their current life a seven or higher and their anticipated life in five years an eight or higher are classified as thriving.

The most recent results, captured April 23-26, 2020, are based on 4,357 completed surveys with respondents randomly selected from the Gallup Panel, a scientifically populated, non-opt-in panel of about 80,000 adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Other results dating to Sept. 30-Oct.14, 2019 were also from the Gallup Panel, while all previous estimates are based on samples from the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. Comparisons of national estimates that occurred at close to the same time in 2019 showed highly similar results between the two surveys demonstrating their comparability.

In 2008, the first full year of the Great Recession, the thriving percentage fell from 52.0% in January to its low of 46.4% ten months later, a 5.6 percentage point decline. The current decline -- occurring over about the same amount of time -- is nearly double this amount, erasing 11 years of steady (albeit uneven) improvement in how Americans evaluate their lives.

Current Life Satisfaction Continues to Erode

Between last fall and March 21-April 5, the percentages of respondents rating their current life a "7" or higher dropped by 9.5 points to 58.2% with a decline that was similar across age groups. Ratings of anticipated lives in the future, in contrast, improved slightly. New results have extended these patterns, widening the gap still further between how Americans rate the current lives compared with how they think their lives will be in five years.

Current Life Satisfaction and Anticipated Life Satisfaction, Trended Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now? Sep. 30 to Oct. 14, 2019 Mar. 21 to Apr. 5, 2020 Apr. 20-26 , 2020 Change % % % (pct. pts.) Current life satisfaction (7-10) 67.7 58.2 56.9 -10.8 Anticipated life satisfaction (8-10) 65.5 68.0 68.9 +3.4 Gallup Panel

Significant Daily Stress, Worry Sustain Historic Increases

The percentage of people experiencing significant stress and worry the day before -- typically very stable rates -- experienced unprecedented increases in the first half of March with stress rising 14 percentage points to 60% and worry rising 20 points to 58%. In practical terms, about 51 million more adults were suffering significant worry in late March/early April than were experiencing the same emotion back in August/September. These results have since improved slightly since, and then leveled off in four subsequent measurements, but remain much higher than pre-COVID levels. The sustained levels of emotional anxiety are likely continuing to play a role in the ongoing erosion of current life satisfaction that, in turn, has caused the thriving percentage to suffer such a significant decline.

Unlike the changes in general life ratings, which have disproportionately impacted younger adults, increases in daily worry and stress are similar across all age groups.

Implications

U.S. adults' life evaluations have now matched historic lows last measured in the heart of the Great Recession. The near 10-point decline in the percentage of U.S. adults who are thriving -- representing close to 25 million people -- approximates the number who have filed for unemployment benefits before the end of April as a result of economic collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Changes of this magnitude in life ratings are rare and typically signify major events. In 2010, at the onset of the Arab Uprising, Tunisians reported a 10-point decline in thriving over a two-year span before the end of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's rule. Three years later, the percentage of Egyptians who were "suffering" shot up 11 points in the runup to President Mohamed Morsi's ouster. Gallup also reported a 10-point decline in the percentage thriving in Ukraine before the 2013 Euromaidan revolution and a 15-point drop in the percentage thriving in the U.K. prior to the 2016 Brexit vote.

The decline in the percentage of U.S. adults who are thriving is entirely explained by declines in their evaluations of current lives, with small improvements measured in anticipated wellbeing in the next five years (perhaps in part a result of the plunge in current life ratings). However, as the coronavirus pandemic stretches on and models regarding COVID-19 worsen, optimism for the future may also begin to erode. If this occurs, a second wave in the decline of the percentage who are thriving in the U.S. could ensue.

The difference between how the COVID-19 pandemic influences what we experience on any given day compared with how we assess our lives more broadly also continues to be on display. The unprecedented increases in daily worry and stress last month have now narrowly mitigated, perhaps a reflection of some relief in anxiety as the new normal of social isolation policies settles in. But the still sharply elevated levels of experiencing stress and worry each day likely continue to erode general satisfaction with current lives still further. The current magnitude of the change in daily experiences is much larger than what Gallup observed in 2008, when daily worry and stress increased by five and three points, respectively, during the Great Recession. Nearly two years passed before these negative emotions returned to early 2008 levels.

Learn more about how the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index works.

Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.
(Alliance News) - Witan Pacific Investment Trust PLC said Thursday it underperformed against its benchmark for its recently ended financial year, as the more cyclical and consumer-based stocks within its portfolio stood as key detractors from returns.

For the year to the end of January, the investment trust reported a net asset value total return of 5.2%, compared to its benchmark, the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Free Index, which returned 8.2%.

As at January 31, Witan Pacific's net asset value per share was 363.49 pence, a 3.1% increase from 352.54p the same date the year before.

The trust's share price at the end of January was 333.00p, reflecting an 8.4% discount to net asset value.

Shares in Witan Pacific Investment Trust closed 0.9% lower at 317.00 pence on Thursday in London.

Witan Pacific said this marks the fourth consecutive year that the trust has underperformed against its benchmark. The trust said it is even considering available options for shareholders.

Witan Pacific noted that of its four managers, three underperformed, due to retail, resources and automobiles posing as the main detractors from returns as was their exposure to Chinese consumers.

Only Aberdeen outperformed its benchmark, while Matthews, Robeco and Dalton lagged behind.

There was also the US-China trade negotiations which was a key influence on Asian equity sentiment, and also took away from performances.

"The board continues to monitor performance closely and is considering the available options in the best interests of shareholders and the company, should the performance target not be met. In that event, any proposal that the board might put to shareholders would include the opportunity to realise cash should shareholders so wish. The board will update shareholders at the appropriate time, expected to be no later than the end of the first week of February 2021," said Chair Susan Platts-Martin.

Witan Pacific declared a total dividend of 7.15 pence per share, up 2.1% from 7.00p the year before.

"It is difficult to predict how long it will take for businesses to return to their normal modus operandi. The pandemic began in China which now appears to have contained it and has started to reopen its factories. Long-term growth forecasts for mainland China remain strong. Some sectors such as travel, will be much more hurt than others, and some companies will be casualties of the imposed tough operating conditions. From an investment perspective, an active approach to selecting stocks rather than tracking indices should prove particularly valuable in this investment climate although it may take time for these investment decisions to bear fruit," Platts-Martin added.

By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
BARCELONA, Spain - Spanish police arrested a Moroccan man on Friday suspected of planning a terror attack in the name of the Islamic State group during Spains coronavirus crisis.

Spains Civil Guard said that the arrest carried out in Barcelona was aided by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Moroccos state security forces.

The Civil Guard said that they had been watching the suspect for four years but that his process of radicalization had been accelerated during Spains lockdown that started in mid-March to control its COVID-19 outbreak.

Investigators suspected the man had been motivated by calls made by IS for followers to carry out attacks in their countries of residence. Police said the suspect had made public declarations of his allegiance to IS and hatred for Western countries on social media.

Investigators feared he was planning an attack, perhaps using a knife or with a vehicle, in Barcelona after observing him breaking virus confinement rules to move around the city, possibly searching for a target.
Mumbai, May 8 : Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday ruled out deployment of army to control crowds in Mumbai, but hinted at lockdown extension as the "virus chain" has not yet been broken.

In an address to the state late this evening, Thackeray dismissed all speculation raging since two days that Mumbai would be handed over to the Indian Army.

"There's no need to bring in the army in Mumbai. Our police are very capable and doing a great job, but they also need rest. We have sought additional manpower from the Centre and later the police will be given relief in phases," said Thackeray.

Admitting that the 'virus chain' has not yet been broken, he pointed out that Maharashtra continues to have the highest number of cases and deaths in the country which is a matter of serious concern.

"Soon, our stranded people from different parts of India and other countries in the world will also start arriving herea They will need to be tested. But that will not be at the cost of Mumbaikars where 100,000 tests are being carried out," assured Thackeray.

Touching upon the lockdown extension, he said: "You - the people - will decide whether the lockdown needs to be extended. There are still too many people outside, in Mumbai and other places also, physical distancing is not maintained and other precautions are ignored. But if you will maintain discipline, the virus can be conquered." In this endeavour, Thackeray appealed to all medicos including homoeopaths and ayurvedics to register themselves with the state government and help out with treating Covid-19 patients at some of the huge quarantine centres in the city made functional in the city.

The CM also referred to the all-party video-conferencing he had with leaders of all political parties in the state on Thursday.

"They came up with many suggestions. We have already started implementing many of thema The meeting proved that the state is united in this hour of crisis," Thackeray said.

The CM's address came shortly after the government shunted out Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai Praveen Pardeshi and replaced him with senior IAS officer Iqbal Singh Chahal, besides making other high-level bureaucratic changes in BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation.
BIOGRAPHY

Jacinda Ardern: A New Kind of Leader

Madeleine Chapman

Nero, $34.99

"Can we swap for her?" It's a question Australians often pose when they watch Jacinda Ardern on the world stage, her sincerity and competence contrasting with the boorish ineptitude of so many antipodean politicians. In this new biography, Kiwi journalist Madeleine Chapman both reinforces and challenges perceptions of Ardern as fundamentally different from her contemporaries.

Jacinda Ardern's two worlds collided in 2004 and she chose the NZ Labour party. Credit:Hagen Hopkins

Born in the tiny North Island forestry town of Murupara, Ardern grew up in nearby Morrinsville, a dairy farming community that, Chapman notes, "proudly claims to have the most cows per hectare in the world". Ardern showed her political bent early, joining the Human Rights Action Group and forming Students Against Driving Drunk in high school. In her final year, her peers voted her Most Likely to Become Prime Minister.

Yet, says Chapman, while the young Ardern staffed the Friday night shift at a fish and chip shop ("the most Kiwi of jobs imaginable"), she never once worked as an adult outside of politics. In that sense, her early life  a succession of staffing and advisory roles in the Labour Party  resembles most modern career politicians.
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Many people in the U.S.including doctors, nurses, bus drivers, and grocery clerkshave not stopped working throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But among the millions of others who have been furloughed or teleworking for a month or more, some are now being asked to return to work.

Thats especially true in states such as Georgia and Texas, which have allowed a wide array of businesses to reopen, from movie theaters to salons to some offices.

Multiple federal agenciesincluding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)have issued guidance on how employers can make their workplaces safer for employees. But at the moment, these guidelines are just suggestions.

You can't enforce them . . . because its completely voluntary, says Jonathan Karmel, J.D., a union labor lawyer and the author of "Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace."



Some state and local officials have stepped into this vacuum. In New York, for example, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that turns recommendations from the CDC guidelines, such as developing a regular cleaning and disinfection plan and maintaining social distancing, into enforceable standards.



In the absence of unified rules, the legal minimum for what you can expect if you return to work depends on your state and jurisdiction.

That said, even in areas where there arent COVID-specific regulations in place, employees should feel empowered to ask either the owner of the company or someone in its human resources department, What steps do you have in place to protect us as the workers? says Tina Tan, M.D., a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, and a board member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They have all the right in the world to ask that question.

Story continues

George Slover, senior policy counsel at Consumer Reports, agrees. Returning workers need to be absolutely confident that their employer is doing everything it reasonably can to protect them, he says. People should know that their health and safety is a top priority.

Here are five issues to discuss with your employer if youve been asked to return to work.

Will Social Distancing Be Practiced?

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted through close person-to-person contact and respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. That's why social distancing is one of the best measures to limit its spread, says Karen Hoffmann, R.N., the immediate past president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

Whenever possible, employers should ensure that workers can maintain a 6-foot distance from one another, which could mean physically moving furniture or desks to separate workstations, operating at a reduced capacity, or staggering shifts to decrease the number of people who are in the workplace at one time.



While federal guidelines call for social distancing, many state and local officials have gone further, instituting enforceable recommendations. Some of these rules are designed primarily to protect customers, but may reduce the risk of exposure for workers as well. In Rhode Island, for example, grocers must limit the number of customers in the store to 20 percent of their stated fire capacity.

What Other Precautions Will Be in Place?

There is some evidence that in certain situations, a 6-foot distance on its own may not be enough to prevent transmission indoors, Tan says, including if an infected person is breathing heavily, coughing, or sneezing.

The airflow created by fans, air conditioning, and heating units can also carry the virus farther. Physical barriers, such as plastic dividers, are therefore a good supplement to social distancing for protecting employees from coming into contact with the coronavirus. Whats more, they provide a second line of protection that goes beyond simply relying on individual compliance.

In addition to spreading through respiratory droplets, its believed that COVID-19 can be transmitted through contaminated surfaces. Therefore, its important that companies also regularly disinfect communal areas and surfaces. CDC guidance recommends that surfaces frequently touched by multiple people, such as door handles, desks, phones, light switches, and faucets, should be cleaned and disinfected at least daily.



Ideally, employers should have someone assigned to wipe down frequently touched surfaces with some type of antiseptic wipe, Tan says. She advises that cleanings occur in the morning, before everyone comes in, again in the mid-afternoon, and then again before people leave.

Will Protective Equipment Be Provided?

In workplacesespecially hair salons, restaurants, movie theaters, or other businesses where employees regularly interact with customers at close rangepersonal protective equipment (PPE) is crucial for limiting the spread of the disease.

Everyone should be wearing a mask at all times, Hoffmann says. This includes clients and customers as well as staff. Cloth masks and other nonclinical face coverings primarily contain your own droplets so you are not exposing the person next to you, Hoffmann says, which is why universal masking in these situations is important. Since some people are refusing to wear masks, ask your employer what it will do if a coworker or customer does not wear one.



Hand sanitizer and antiseptic wipes can also help, particularly for workers who are coming into regular contact with communal surfaces or serving customers.



At the federal level, employers arent legally required to provide PPE, although a number of statesincluding New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Michiganas well as some local jurisdictions, have taken this step. Some states that require this are helping companies buy PPE for their workers, but others are notespecially if there is a limited amount of PPE available, Tan says.

She advises that workers reach out to HR or, if it's a small business, the owner, to inquire whether such supplies will be provided. If not, express your concerns, Tan suggests.



If your employer is not providing PPE, plan on bringing in your own mask, hand sanitizer, and antiseptic supplies, if possible. And remember to regularly wash your hands.

What Happens If an Employee Has COVID-19 or Shows Symptoms?

Some companies may choose to screen employees before they enter the building, a process that might include screening questionssuch as asking about symptoms like chills and feveror physically taking workers temperatures. Those who are presenting symptoms should be told to stay home, or sent home if they show up at the office, Tan says. Even when implemented carefully, however, this process is not foolproof: Research has shown that people who dont have symptoms can still spread the virus to others.



Some professional organizations have issued industry-specific recommendations. Ahead of Georgias reopening, for example, the Georgia State Board of Cosmetologists and Barbers released guidelines for salons, advising that owners implement temperature checks and screening questions along with social distancing measures.



If workers fall ill, the CDC recommends they stay home until at least three days have passed since recovery and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared. For workers who have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19, the agency advises they remain at home and practice social distancing for 14 days.

Can I Continue Teleworking?

If you've been able to work remotely and would like to continue doing so, its worth bringing it up with your employer.

If you have a pre-existing condition, such as lung disease, impaired immunity, or many other health issues that increase the risk of severe COVID-19, you should be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), says Peter Blanck, Ph.D., J.D., a lawyer and professor at Syracuse University.

The ADA definition of a disorder is broad, encompassing any physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. This includes conditions such as asthma, depression, and anxiety that, along with other disabilities, are assessed on an individual basistaking current circumstances into account. Pregnancy is covered by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, while older workers are protected by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. All three laws are enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.



To deny a teleworking request, your employer would have to show that its essential for you come into the office to do your job. These things are case-by-case determinations, Blanck says.

He recommends starting the conversation by alerting your employer to your specific disability, letting them know that its covered by the ADA, and outlining accommodations, such as working remotely, that would allow you to continue to perform essential functions. The employer has to come back and say, no you cant, or yes its reasonable for you to do that, Blanck says. You may reach a compromise, such as coming into the office two days a week and working at home the others.



If they cant accommodate your request, they have to look for alternatives, Karmel says. Ultimately, its an interactive process between the employee, the employer, and sometimes, a medical provider.



If you dont have a condition that is covered by the ADA and are asked to come into work, your employer should have established a safety plan for protecting you from infection. Failing to do so could open them up to personal injury claims, experts say.



You have a . . . right to expect that the employment setting is not going to put you in harm's way, Blanck says. There are a lot of things employers are going to have to do to protect their workers and protect themselves from being negligent.

These are reasonable expectations, says David Friedman, vice president of advocacy at Consumer Reports. We're in the middle of a global pandemic, and everyone should be taking precautions to keep people safe, he says. Companies that carelessly fail to do so should be held accountable for the harm that causes. Otherwise, this will only get worse for everyone.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright  2020, Consumer Reports, Inc.
May 11 in Russia ends a period of severe restrictions and non-working days. The vice-rector of the Academy of Labor and Social Relations Alexander Safonov spoke about the socio-economic results of this period, which began on March 30, to the Vestnik Kavkaza.

- According to your assessment, in what state is the Russian economy and the labor market "going to work" on May 12 - to the extent that it is allowed?

- The labor market suffered a serious shock, and this applies to all sectors without exception. This is due, inter alia, to the breakdown of traditional chains between suppliers to both the external and domestic markets. The economy and the labor market experienced shocks due to the fact that as a result of the forced disability of a significant number of the population, people's current incomes sharply fell.

The latest study, commissioned by the Central Bank, suggests that if in April people somehow lived on their savings, then by May there are less and less of them. In April and May, a decrease was recorded in consumption, including food industry products. People are switching to a savings model of consumption. This is the second shock that the economy is experiencing.

In this context, registered unemployment began to increase sharply. For a month with a small number of unemployed increased by 700 thousand. According to the Minister of Labor, the total number of unemployed jumped by half a million people. These people lost any income. Now they can only rely on a benefit of 12 123 rubles and three thousand for each minor child. God knows what means, but since people cling to them, it means that for half a million people, this is a critical figure.

There is an accumulation of non-payments for housing and communal services. Already there is information that non-payments from enterprises and the population have grown by almost a trillion. The amount is also very serious. Up to 60% of borrowers cannot pay off debts. The labor market and economy will feel all these consequences a little later, when isolation is over, and the situation will stretch for a rather long period of time.

Based on this, it is clear that the labor market will not just stagnate, but will begin to decline sharply. Two scenarios are possible here: optimistic and pessimistic. In an optimistic scenario, we will see an increase in open unemployment of about 1.5 million people to 5.5 million in the economy as a whole. Under a pessimistic scenario, unemployment will reach 7 million people.

It is unlikely that it will be possible to massively replace foreign workers with Russian workers, since all companies will begin to save on wages. And in this case, migrants are preferable for employers due to the fact that they are less inclined to demand full compliance with labor laws. Of course, there will be a redistribution, but 100% of migrants cannot be replaced by Russian workers. This is impossible in principle - we have never seen this in the entire history of economic crises affecting the labor market.

The second phenomenon that we will see in the labor market is the massive optimization of wage costs. But the budget sector remains an island of stability. At least, it is unlikely that revenue will sink down to 30% of the payroll. It will be possible to speak, rather, about 5-10%.

- That is, the budget sectors will come out of the crisis with the least losses?

- Of course. Plus industries that are associated with the production of masks, medical equipment, as well as organizations that have been busy all this time with the construction of additional facilities for epidemiological centers.

But the rest of the economy is squandering. There are two ratings. The estimate that Western economists give our economy is up to a 5% drop in GDP this year. Chairman of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin gave a forecast of up to 8% drop in GDP. Well probably be somewhere in between. Both the economy and the labor market are drawn into a fairly long period of recession and crisis. God forbid, if we stabilize the development of the economy by the end of the year. It will be possible to gradually reach the rates of recovery growth closer to 2021.

However, the labor market is in a more difficult situation. His first problem is open unemployment, the second is a decrease in wages. Moreover, if the restoration of employment will move at a faster pace, then the restoration of the wage fund will stretch for at least the next year. At best, we will reach the values of the beginning of 2020 only in 2022.

- How do you assess the measures that have been applied by the state to support business and employment?

- These measures are currently insufficient in terms of maintaining the consumer demand of the country and the population. At the last meeting of the president, it was clear that he was unhappy that the number of small businesses that had asked for help and received this help was estimated at only a few tens of thousands. This is actually about hundreds of thousands of small enterprises that have suffered and will experience this pressure until the final removal of quarantine measures. Let's hope that after all the technical points have been worked out, we will see acceleration.

- What other support could the state provide to entrepreneurs?

- In order not to create additional crises in the economy, it would be desirable for the emphasis to be placed on the prevention of non-payment by the supply chain in those sectors that are still working. For example, housing and communal services. It is clear that there will now be delays in payments for electricity, heat, water and everything else. It is clear that housing and communal services structures themselves are customers in relation to metallurgists - this is the supply of pipes, components, fittings and more. These are orders for the industry, which manufactures electrical equipment, pumps, thermal electrical substations. Housing and utilities should be prepared for the next season, so that the industry could work in the same mode, it would be advisable for the state to take over the repayment of payments to the insolvent part of the population. I think we need to help people who have lost their jobs.

In addition, it is necessary to increase support for low-income families. Yesterday it was said that there will be additional support for people with incomes below the subsistence level in the form of payments to children of three to five thousand. But this is clearly not enough - you need to operate with completely different numbers. If we are talking, for example, about a family of four  mom, dad, two children  then the amount of income they should receive from the state should be equal to four living wages (two living wages for children and two living wages for adults). Therefore, social support measures should be reviewed and implemented once again.

At the same time, it is necessary to move from providing loans to a business that has suffered from the restrictions associated with the pandemic, to providing free subsidies for wages. This is a more correct approach. Without understanding the economic perspective, businessmen are not ready to take any loans, and this leads to wage arrears and income debts.

- What lessons did Russia - authorities, business, people - learn from this global force majeure?

- For the population, a savings model will become a priority for at least the next two years. People will try to spend less on current consumption. This is very bad. Because in this case we will reproduce the economic model of development in Japan, when deflation is faced with a model of economy on consumption. This provokes stagnation.

I would advise the government to return the system of social insurance for unemployment so that people in such conditions could receive adequate unemployment benefits, and not for six months, as is now prescribed by law, and not one and a half thousand (minimum unemployment benefit), but adequate money. To do this, return the insurance system.

If we do not begin to develop our own production, creating conditions for the development of the economy within the country in order to prevent the breakdown in economic relations that inevitably arises as a result of force majeure, then we will continue to be the most vulnerable economy. In this case, we will not be able to solve the problem of increasing incomes of the population, to differentiate the economy and get off the oil needle, overcoming dependence on the world market. Therefore, we need to more fully realize the experience that was in the USSR, and which China is actively implementing now. This is an orientation, first of all, to your consumer demand, to your population. Thus, we could systematically solve all the remaining problems related to demography, health care, and education.
The Delhi University (DU) has formed a working group to supervise examination related matters, including reviewing the preparedness of the institution in conducting the exams of 2019-20 session

The Delhi University (DU) has formed a working group to supervise examination related matters, including reviewing the preparedness of the institution in conducting the exams of 2019-20 session.

The group may also rope in any expert, if required, with prior approval of competent authority.

However, professors have opposed the constitution of the 15 members working group, reported The New Indian Express. They have also written to the DU administration, expressing their opposition.

The professors want the guidelines issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to be implemented. They are demanding that vice-chancellor Yogesh K Tyagi immediately conduct Academic Council (AC) meeting and place guidelines of the UGC as agenda item.

The UGC last month recommended that universities may hold semester exams in July either in the online mode or offline, depending upon the feasibility and the COVID-19 situation. The commission also suggested that exam duration should be reduced from three hours to two hours.

Click here for Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates

It also proposed that intermediate semester students may be evaluated on the basis of internal assessment. Issuing the guidelines and academic calendar for varsities, the UGC said exams for final semester students should be conducted in July.
The distribution of a promising drug by the federal government to hospitals with COVID-19 patients has raised hackles among medical professionals after UCSF and many other medical centers with critical patients werent given a single dose.

The experimental drug, remdesivir, reduced coronavirus symptoms in clinical trials and was approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under what is called an emergency use authorization, but only two of the 25 medical centers that got the drug were in California.

Pharmacists at UCSF were shocked when they learned this week that they would not be getting any of the 1.5 million doses in the initial distribution. It was a particularly hard blow because UCSF was one of five sites in the country where clinical trials of the drug were conducted.

UCSF is part of the UC system, which includes six medical centers throughout California. It is also in close proximity to remdesivirs manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, headquartered in Foster City.

Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said a lack of information about the decision-making process has caused widespread fear that the Trump administration is deciding who gets what based on politics, not medical need.

We are worried because we saw there were delays in the distribution of other things, like testing, masks and swabs, Chin-Hong said. Im hoping this is just the beginning and that we will eventually get some, but Im worried about speed as well because, in an epidemic waiting means lives lost.

The UCSF medical staff isnt alone in its concern. Hospitals and physicians around the country have criticized the government for a lack of transparency about which hospitals are getting supplies, the method that is being used to choose them and even which federal agency or official is making those decisions.

Gilead CEO Daniel ODay said Sunday that the company would donate treatment courses for as many as 200,000 patients, or 1.5 million vials. The company is ramping up production, so more is likely to be available in the future.

Gilead officials said the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are in charge of distributing the drug to hospitals in areas most affected by the pandemic.

Given the severity of illness of patients appropriate for remdesivir treatment and the limited availability of drug supply, hospitals with intensive care units and other hospitals that the government deems most in need will receive priority in the distribution of remdesivir, Chris Ridley, the Gilead spokesman, said in an email.

FEMA officials referred inquiries to Health and Human Services, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The government hired AmerisourceBergen, of Chesterbrook, Pa., to deliver the supplies. Spokesman Gabe Weissman said in an email that the distributor is working closely with Gilead and federal officials to provide the drug to hospitals across the nation, but he declined to provide specifics about how the drug is being distributed or whether any California hospitals would receive it.

The U.S. government has not released a list of which hospitals will be getting supplies, but Conan MacDougall, a clinical pharmacy professor at UCSF, compiled a list after making inquiries at other hospitals and created a map of centers approved and denied.

Most of the available supply of remdesivir appears to be going to COVID-19 hot spots on the East Coast, with one large hospital in Nashville receiving a supply.

The map shows two approvals at medical centers in California, one in the city of San Mateo and one in Los Angeles, but it does not specify which hospitals.

Still, Chin-Hong and his colleagues said there is no logical reason to bypass UCSF and the affiliated health system, which, besides the San Francisco medical center, includes health centers at UC Davis, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Irvine and UC Riverside. It is the fourth-largest health delivery system in California.

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.

Just because we are not in a surge mode like the East Coast doesnt mean we do not have critical patients who are in need, said Katherine Yang, a professor in the department of clinical pharmacy. UCSF also serves an incredibly diverse population, many who are at higher risk for COVID disease. The way to improve patient outcome is to remove barriers, increase access and provide faster access. This is what we need.

Chin-Hong said things went much more smoothly and efficiently in 2009 during the H1N1 flu outbreak. At that time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created a website and facilitated distribution of the drug peramivir whenever it was needed.

Many hospitals can still get remdesivir through the Gilead Expanded Access Program, but that program has strict criteria and requires the patient to be seriously ill. The problem is that antivirals like remdesivir work better earlier in the disease. The emergency authorization allows doctors to administer the drug during the early stages.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association wrote a letter this week urging the federal government to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of remdesivir and to make that information publicly available.

Originally conceived as a treatment for Ebola, remdesivir is an antiviral drug that interferes with the way viruses replicate. It shortened the time it took patients to recover in two COVID-19 trials, including an international study of more than 1,000 hospitalized patients sponsored by the U.S. government.

The federally sponsored trial found in early results that patients who received remdesivir recovered 31% faster than patients who received a placebo.

Separately, a Gilead clinical trial of nearly 400 patients with severe symptoms found that patients who received the drug earlier fared better than those who got it later.

Peter Fimrite and J.D. Morris are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com, jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite, @thejdmorris
As states across the US process the massive economic shock from the COVID-19 pandemic, Democratic and Republican state politicians are preparing unprecedented budget cuts to all the vital social programs upon which the working class depends. In this restructuring of class relations, a chief target in the crosshairs of the ruling class is K-12 public education, which they intend to dismantle and privatize to the greatest extent possible.

Already, the impact of the pandemic has thoroughly undermined state budgets. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) think tank estimates that state budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year will reach roughly 10 percent, and surpass 25 percent for fiscal year 2021, based on projections that are constantly in flux due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. The decline in state budget funding is a direct product of the growth of mass unemployment and the shutdown of businesses due to necessary social distancing measures, as states rely primarily on income and sales tax to fund social programs.

A tiny minority of the trillions of dollars contained in the federal bailout packages passed so far has been earmarked for social services, including merely $30.75 billion for K-12 and higher education out of the initial $2.5 trillion CARES Act, or 1.23 percent. While Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi posture as fighting to ameliorate the crisis facing the states with the next bailout package, it remains to be seen what, if any, relief is actually provided for state budgets and public education.

An empty classroom

As with the 2008 financial collapse and ensuing bailout of Wall Street, the working class is once again being told there is no money to provide for its needs. Rather, workers are told to sacrifice their own lives to ensure the profits of the corporations and the financial elite as part of a reckless back-to-work campaign being spearheaded by the Trump administration.

As a result of the budget shortfalls, numerous states have announced sweeping cuts to education spending, a foretaste of what is to come as the pandemic once again spirals out of control in the coming weeks and months.

The most drastic cuts announced so far came yesterday, when Californias Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state faces a $54.3 billion deficit through fiscal year 2021, nearly 37 percent of the states total general fund budget. The state projects an $18 billion decrease in minimum funding guaranteed for K-12 schools and community colleges. As Politico notes, The state survived the Great Recession by cutting nearly every program and adopting accounting tricks such as delaying state worker pay by a day. This time, far more drastic measures will be undertaken.

In Ohio, Republican Governor Mike DeWine announced Tuesday that he is cutting $775 million from the state budget in the coming two months, before the end of this fiscal year. This will include $355 million from K-12 schools, $110 million from higher education, $210 million from Medicaid spending, and up to $100 million from all state government agencies except for the Department of Corrections, which oversees state prisons.

At the start of the month, finance officials in Georgia sent a letter to all state agencies instructing them to make plans to cut 14 percent from their budgets for the coming fiscal year, which would amount to $1.4 billion in cuts to K-12 public education spending.

In North Dakota, Republic Governor Doug Burgum announced May 1 that he intends to cut K-12 education funding by 15 percent during the upcoming fiscal year.

Last month, state agencies across Oregon were instructed to prepare to implement cuts of 8.5 percent to their budgets. In Hawaii, Democratic Governor David Ige proposed cutting the salaries of all state workers, including public school teachers, by 20 percent. Denver Public Schools officials announced that they could lose from $19 million to $61 million in state funding next year, as the state expects to lose roughly $3 billion in overall funding.

In April, New York Citys Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans for $2 billion in budget cuts, of which some $827 million will be cut from the Department of Education (DOE). New York Governor Andrew Cuomo threatened that, barring federal assistance, he would impose up to 50 percent cuts to education spending statewide, which would amount to an incredible $17.85 billion.

As soon as states began to shut down in mid-March, politicians saw the opportunity to slash education spending. In March, the Kentucky State Senate passed a budget bill that that withheld $1.3 billion from teacher pension funding, while demanding cuts to retirement benefits for newly hired teachers. In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee scrapped a $250 million proposal to provide mental health services in schools, along with a planned pay raise for teachers. Similar plans to increase education funding were shelved in Maryland and Wisconsin in March, while teacher pay raises were scaled back in Florida and Georgia.

In addition to the savage budget cuts, the pandemic has highlighted the growing instability of retired teachers pension funds, which since the 1980s have been increasingly tied to hedge funds, private equity firms and the machinations of Wall Street more broadly. Throughout this period, teachers pensions have become woefully underfunded, as states and school districts withheld payments or borrowed from retirement funds, and a growing number of elderly teachers retired without any corresponding increase in education funding.

Since 2001, unfunded liabilities for teacher pensions across the US have ballooned from $21 billion to $642 billion today. Due to the insufficient growth in overall education spending, these liabilities have been used by states to erode funding for teacher salaries, classroom resources and other educational expenses.

As the pandemic took hold in the US and the stock market plunged, public pension funds lost close to $1 trillion in value. While this figure has rebounded with the stock market, another downward plummet will again saddle states with huge liabilities that will be used to justify further cuts to education spending.

Chad Aldeman, a senior associate partner for Bellwether Education Partners, told Education Week that states are planning to make significant adjustments to public pension plans, stating, Given all the pressure that's going on, a bunch of states, including Kentucky, have already been talking about this. There will be similar discussions in other places when they're handed that bill."

The state budget crisis is also severely impacting higher education, with a recent poll of college administrators showing that over half anticipate cutting staff positions in the coming months. Already, hundreds of staff have been laid off and thousands furloughed at public colleges and universities across the US since mid-March.

The University of California at Berkeley has said that it expects to lose $200 million in funding, while colleges and universities across the US are bracing for similar drastic cuts. As noted by the Washington Post, During the Great Recession, state higher education funding was cut by 19 percent, a number that rose to 28 percent when factoring in enrollment growth. These figures will be dwarfed by the coming wave of cuts.

As public higher education budgets are slashed, there will be ever-growing demands by administrators to raise tuition costs to make up for lost revenues, thus greatly expanding the astronomical levels of student loan debt. This process also unfolded following the 2008 crash, with student loan debt rising from $660 billion in September 2008 to $1.6 trillion today.

The pandemic has starkly exposed the class relations that exist in the US and internationally. While over 1,250,000 people have become infected and over 75,000 have died in the US, the countrys billionaires amassed $406 billion from March 18 to April 29, as a result of the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street through the CARES Act.

Not a single politician has raised the notion that the rich should be made to pay for either the immediate costs of fighting the pandemic, or the long-term economic devastation that is forecast to come. Instead, the massive economic dislocation is being used by the Trump administration and state governments to justify an unsafe return to work, under conditions in which the daily increase in cases and deaths are on the rise, and local health care systems are at or near capacity across much of the US.

The back-to-work drive has been wholeheartedly endorsed by the pro-corporate unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) under Randi Weingarten, who rakes in over half a million dollars a year. Through their Plan to Safely Reopen Americas Schools and Communities, the AFT pledges to assist in reopening school buildings so that parents, who work outside the home, can go to work, acknowledging that this is the key to the reopening of the broader economy.

The AFT has no concern for the safety or interests of educators and students, but rather ensuring that workers are forced back to work to satisfy the voracious appetite of Wall Street. This plan will cost the lives of teachers, parents and students, and must be rejected.

Since the statewide wildcat strike launched by West Virginia teachers in 2018, more than 700,000 educators have engaged in a series of strikes across the US, demanding wage increases and the expansion of public education spending. The chief obstacle facing teachers in each of these struggles, and in the present, is the unions. To protect teachers and students and prepare a struggle against the impending onslaught of budget cuts, all educators must form independent, rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood. The resistance of educators must be developed into a fight to unite every section of the working class in a struggle for socialism and a radical redistribution of societys wealth.
In the gig economy, workers accept temporary and one-off jobs on an ad-hoc basis via the Internet. This style of working is catching on in the West, and is slowly gaining traction in Japan.

A Global Phenomenon

The gig economy is a nebulous term that experts have adopted to describe an emerging worldwide trend in digitally-driven freelance work. In 2018, the human resource journal Staffing Industry Analysts estimated the size of the American gig economy, broadly defined as any type of work of a fixed duration by directly- or indirectly-hired temporary employees, at $1.3 trillion. Organizations like the Oxford Internet Institute and professional services giant Pricewaterhouse Coopers have also heralded the burgeoning presence of the gig economy, although the onset of the coronavirus pandemic has thrown previously released predictions of growth in the sector into doubt.

According to Staffing Industry Analysts, there were 53 million gig workers in the United States in 2018, making up 35% of the total workforce. This figure includes 7.9 million workers who find jobs through online labor marketsthe so-called human cloud1.3 million statement of work (SoW) consultants, and 27 million independent contractors.

An Important Human Resource

A prominent aspect of the gig economy is that advances in technology have made it borderless. While the United States accounts for 40% of staff sourcing that is part of the human cloud, some 70% of this work is performed in Asia.

Many Western corporations manage their human resources according to the concept of total talent management, meaning that firms build customized talent portfolios consisting of an optimum complement of talent selected from all the available options on the labor market. Such portfolios include regular employees, external human resources (freelancers, gig workers, consultants, and those already employed by other companies), and non-personnel resources such as artificial intelligence. In other words, the HR market is becoming global in scope as employers transcend traditional corporate frameworks and source talent from labor markets around the world. In English-speaking countries in particular, employers are increasingly turning to developing countries and Eastern Europe nations for IT staff and hiring workers in different time zones.

In the West, businesses of all sizes make active use of external specialists. Provided they have the required skills, gig workers are able to work flexibly and with a high degree of freedom, anytime, and anywhere. Demand is highest for sales, software, and creative specialists, and the spatial flexibility of gig workers makes them a valuable resource for addressing regional labor shortages.

The Crucial Role of Job Brokers

Many people associate the gig economy with drivers and delivery services such as Uber and Lyft, but it is actually more widely ranging, encompassing domestic services such as cooking and cleaning as well as highly skilled services like programming, app development, and website design.

The growth of the gig economy in the West is believed to be partly the result of the increase in the number of brokers that provide jobs via online platforms. To optimize supply, these brokers use high-tech tools and dedicated websites and apps to match gig workers to demand from corporations and individual consumers. All gig workers need to do is sign up with an online platform, provide information on what jobs they can do, and specify their availability. In addition to connecting clients with workers according to the service required, brokers support other steps in the processes, including performing background checks, providing information on past experience, facilitating communication, and offering payment options. Brokers provide gig workers with a better work environment by acting as guarantors, liaising with clients, invoicing, and collecting accounts receivable.

Trade with Individuals a Hurdle in Japan

In Japan, by contrast, business-to-business relationships are the norm. According to Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation), most corporations trade chiefly with other companies and tend to limit dealings with individuals to a few specialized tasks, such as graphic design and software development. While some corporations might want to commission more work to specialized staff, they lack the expertise in personnel development required to find the right people.

The need to properly match workers to tasks presents an enormous obstacle to companies tapping into the gig market in Japan. However, there are other reasons that corporations are hesitant to work with individuals, including the difficulty in assessing work quality and problems in placing high-value orders with individuals due to challenges in handling breaches of contract and claiming compensation for damages.

From the workers perspective, job offers typically come from former employers or former training institutions. While still responsible for a small share of the overall gig economy, brokers, sharing economy services, and talent agencies make up an increasing share of new business.

Bans on Moonlighting Relaxed

While ride-sharing services make up a large chunk of the gig economy in the West, Japans Road Transportation Act has hampered companies like Uber and Lyft by requiring that drivers get their taxi license before they can carry passengers. These restrictions on a potentially lucrative sector has slowed the overall growth of the Japans gig economy and meant that the traditional work habits of freelancers have not changed significantly. However, there are two areas in which the gig economy may grow.

The first involves the lifting of the prohibition on working multiple jobs. Now that the Japanese government has begun encouraging employees to take second jobs, an increasing number of businesses are removing moonlighting prohibitions from their work rules. Some corporations are allowing employees to work a second job if certain conditions are met, such as the job is undertaken for training purposes, is in a different industry, and does not affect the employees duties at their main job. Some companies also stipulate that the employee must be in his or her main job for a specified minimum time. A glance at corporations that removed prohibitions on working multiple jobs since 2016 reveals a range of leading companies, including Asahi Breweries, Kagome, Konica, SoftBank, Yahoo, and Rohto Pharmaceutical.

The second area is gigs performed by senior citizens. On February 4, the cabinet of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo approved an amendment of the Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons that opened the way for workers to remain on the job until the age of 70. In addition to lifting the retirement age and encouraging the practice of reemploying older workers on a casual basis, the amendment also allows freelancers and entrepreneurs to be compensated as contractors. Once passed into law, the amendment will come into force in April 2021.

In an age when people can expect to live until 100, there is surely more that can be done to utilize freelancers and gig workers of all ages who can choose when and where they want to work as their health allows, rather than being bound by inflexible work regimens that are regulated by work rules.

It is now possible that Japan will see an increase in part-time gig workers, be they working second jobs or on contract. It remains to be seen how these two emerging labor markets will evolve, but good personnel matching, development of roles, and a high level of support will certainly play a key role.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: A taxi in Nagoya offered by ride-hailing service Uber Technologies.  Jiji.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 18:13:23|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) daily basket price stood at 22.91 U.S. dollars a barrel on Thursday, compared with 22.40 dollars on Wednesday, according to OPEC Secretariat calculations released on Friday.

Also known as the OPEC reference basket of crude oil (ORB), the OPEC basket is a weighted average of oil prices from different OPEC members around the world, and is used as an important benchmark for crude oil prices.

It currently averages the oil prices of 13 countries, namely Algeria, Angola, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Enditem
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Monday was supposed to have been a good news day for Joe Biden: The venerable New York congresswoman Nita Lowey convened hundreds of women on a phone call to launch a new group, Jewish Women for Joe.

The timing, though, was not auspicious. The same day, Business Insider published the first on-the-record corroboration of a sexual assault claim leveled in March by Tara Reade, an aide to Biden in 1992-93.

That landed like a bombshell for the feminists and others who hope to oust President Donald Trump in November.

"This is the most persuasive corroborating evidence that has come out so far," Michelle Goldberg, a liberal opinion columnist for The New York Times, said on Twitter. "What a nightmare."

Two weeks ago, Goldberg concluded a column about Reade by saying that she had "doubt about Biden and doubt about the charges against him."

Jewish feminists, including those who for years have been active in exposing sexual impropriety in the Jewish organizational context, were bowled over by the revelation, too. In one private Facebook chat launched to discuss a forthcoming book on Jewish thinking that includes writings by confessed predators, the Biden allegations superseded everything on Monday.

Avigayil Halpern, a rabbinical student in New York, posed the question on Twitter: "I'm hoping that the newly launched @JewishWomen4Joe will react swiftly to these increasingly compelling allegations of sexual assault."

Julie Schonfeld, the Conservative rabbi who was one of the founders of the grassroots Jewish Women for Joe, said she was waiting out the latest Biden allegations to see if they had legs.

"We definitely feel that women must be taken seriously and listened to," Schonfeld, formerly CEO of her movement's Rabbinical Assembly umbrella group, said in an interview. But she added that allegations "have to be investigated," and "at the moment the means of investigation happens to be through the media."

"We are following the credible media investigation and the analyses of people who are investigative journalists. [Reade's] story as we currently understand it has a lot of problems," she said.

Schonfeld mentioned a column by Ruth Marcus, a Jewish Washington Post opinion writer who wrote a book about the sexual assault allegations in 2018 against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

"My gut says that what Reade alleges did not happen," Marcus wrote two weeks ago. "My head instructs that it is within the realm of possibility, and fairness requires acknowledging that."

Marcus listed inconsistencies in Reade's story as she has told it over the years and, at the time her article was published, the lack of corroborating evidence. On Wednesday evening, Marcus considered the new evidence and said Biden "needs to answer the legitimate questions about the allegations."

In the Business Insider story posted Monday, Lynda LaCasse, a neighbor of Reade's in the mid-1990s, recalled her describing the assault at the time with the same details Reade first described in March. Prior to LaCasse speaking out, other associates of Reade had less specific recollections of Reade describing an incident or spoke anonymously.

Biden's campaign continues to categorically deny Reade's claim, adding that "women have a right to be heard-and heard respectfully," but also that the allegations "should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press."

Halpern, 23, said in an interview that she would vote for Biden to oust Trump "if that's what it takes," but she wanted a more honest accounting from Biden and his supporters.

"The problem for the Biden campaign is not that women are uplifting these increasingly well-sourced allegations, the problem is that Biden may have committed sexual assault," she said. "There is a difference between being willing to support Biden in a general election against Trump, and even to campaign for him-which I am willing to do if necessary-and writing glowing articles about his character and supporting him specifically from the position of being a Jewish woman and feminist."

Lowey, the New York Democrat who is retiring this year and 30 years ago helped lead the charge against the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment, did not return a request for comment.

Biden as a senator and then as vice president to Barack Obama was closely identified with some of the key feminist gains of Lowey's generation, helping to author the Violence Against Women Act and advance equal pay initiatives. For Schonfeld, that makes backing him a no-brainer.

"We are looking at every issue that is a threat to women's health, well-being, equality, economic equality, everything that will keep women safe and alive-Joe Biden is a leader on that," she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Biden's record with women is not unblemished. Feminists still criticize his handling of the 1991 Thomas hearings, which he chaired, saying that he did not protect Anita Hill, Thomas' accuser. Last year he apologized after multiple women, including, Reade, accused him of unwanted touching.

"As someone who has enthusiastically volunteered for both Obama and Clinton, I'm not yet at a point where I feel comfortable actively campaigning for Biden," said Michaela Brown, 25, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Boston. "If it appears that the Biden campaign begins to take steps towards appropriately, honestly addressing his alleged history of sexual violence and harassment, I will reconsider."

Evangelical Christians back Trump because they see him as a vehicle that advances their moral priorities, including restrictions on abortion and loosening strictures on church activism in public life. He does not need to be a model of morality himself, they argue.

Rabbi Avi Strausberg, who has conducted sessions for Jewish officials in Washington on moral behavior in a political setting, said that distinction might not apply in Jewish theology.

Should one seek moral leadership from a pure figure, or should one be able to learn from an impure figure while employing one's own sense of morality to distinguish the good from the bad? Talmudic figures grapple with both paths, she said.

Strausberg, who teaches at Hadar, a New York-based institution for Jewish study, said that in the modern context, the type of person in question is key: One could seek truth from a scientist who has transgressed, but probably not from a rabbi.

That question becomes more confounding with a politician.

"It's a tough question, they are governing but also serving as moral leaders," she said without commenting directly on the Biden allegations.

Some feminists are wary of the allegations because they seem to have been instrumentalized by Trump defenders to neutralize the allegations against the president.

"The one thing I have little doubt about is the bad faith of those using this strange, sad story to hector feminists into pretending to a certainty they have no reason to feel," Goldberg said in her New York Times column.

Katie Halper, the Jewish podcaster who first aired Reade's allegations, said keeping Reade at arm's length as a means of electing Biden is "shameful."

"Tara wants Biden to step down, understandably, as do others who see him as a disastrous candidate," Halper, who backed Biden's rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries, wrote last week in the Guardian. "Others wish Tara had been listened to before Biden was the last man standing, but now see no alternative. Both positions are understandable and neither should be shamed. But what is shameful is ignoring or belittling Tara because it's politically inconvenient to grapple with her story.

"We are in an excruciating situation with no easy solutions."
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If you haven't paid attention to the hullabaloo in the news about the asian giant hornet, consider your ignorance as bliss.

No really. Please, carry on. Why not revisit Daisy, 2017's world's cutest kitten instead? What, the coronavirus isn't terrifying enough for you?

Well then, consider yourself warned.

To recap, this wicked bugs nickname is the Murder Hornet, and with good reason. Native to East Asia, these fearsome hornets with 5-6 centimetre wingspans that enable them to fly up to 40 kilometres per hour, may have first come to North America by way of Canada, when a group of beekeepers and wildlife scientists found and destroyed a nest of them in Nanaimo. B.C. last year. Despite their freakishly-long wings, most scientists believe they didn't make it here of their own accord and more likely found themselves trapped in shipping containers in Asia, destined to Canada and the U.S.

An astounding five-times bigger than your regular honeybee, the ornery hornets can kill up to 40 of them at a time, by way of their long, powerful mandibles that sprout from their mouths to slice and dice their prey. Further, this One Hornet To Rule Them All also employs a 6mm-long stinger to inject a lethal dose of venom into its victims, even in the case of humans, if stung multiple times.

With all that, it's unlikely you'll have to fend off one of these flying monsters in Canada this summer, more akin to Hollywood than Haliburton. In fact, you should probably spend time protecting yourself against these five native pests of a less menacing calibre, yet likely more of a threat to your health as the weather warms.

Ticks

Unlike the Asian Giant Hornet, Canada's most deadly insects tend to fly under the radar, as is the case with ticks. Ticks are tiny, but that's the problem. Often found in wooded areas and very hard to spot due to their tiny size and dark colouration, a few species of ticks carry Lyme disease, including the deer tick. When an infected species such as the deer tick attaches to your skin, it can unleash deadly bacteria into your bloodstream that causes Lyme disease. Untreated Lyme Disease can cause symptoms, such as chronic joint inflammation, heart rhythm irregularities and cognitive defects.

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More on how to protect yourself from Lyme Disease.

The Northern Black Widow Spider

Even though they like to linger near humans beneath fenceposts and backyards, getting bitten by one of these creepy crawlers this summer is unlikely. That said the black widow spider seems more akin to some deadly arachnoid found deep within the amazon. Commonly found in southern parts of western Canada and Ontario (yet increasingly, further north due to climate change), this spider, with distinct red markings on its back, can unleash a venom 15 times more potent than a rattlesnake.

The Hobo Spider

Even creepier than the Northern Black Widow Spider, although less deadly. The hobo spider can be found skulking in a Canadian basement near you. This charming arachnoid is fond of lying in wait for its prey, within cracks in walls and piles of wood. Although the hobo spider's venom is unlikely to be fatal for humans, it may lead to necrosis of the skin. Hooray!

More on the Hobo Spider.

Rats

And lest we the forget rat. Unquestionably the O.G. pest when it comes to transmitting virulent communicable diseases (with honourable mention to the rat's historical assistant, the flea). The rat's greatest hits include the bubonic plague, hantavirus and over 30 other horrible afflictions. Ever the cunning opportunists, rats have migrated to Canada's urban residential neighbourhoods in greater numbers to dine on our garbage now that restaurants and bars have closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Bed Bugs

'Ewww!' is the first utterance from any sane person's mind at the thought of snuggling up with these tiny creepy crawlies all night long.

Yet, with more homeless and low-income Canadians huddled together inside increasingly crowded motels and shelters across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, bed bug (a.k.a. Cimex lectularius) populations are growing in Canadian cities, and while bed bugs themselves aren't particularly dangerous (although they do leave red, itchy and occasionally painful bite marks on human skin) , even the thought of sleeping among these unwanted bed buddies should send a chill up most any sane person's spine.
A few days ago the president decided to send converted former Ituri militia leaders to Ituri as peace messengers. Congolese people in the east will remember that it was one of Tshisekedis presidential campaign promises. But since he came to power in early 2019, violence has surged in the east of the country. In a January 10 report, the United Nations reported serious crimes being committed there.

Peace is priceless. Its a difficult decision, but it had to be made to end this cycle of killings. This is how Jean-Marc Mazio, head of the stabilisation and reconstruction programme for eastern DRC (STAREC-Ituri)  an initiative of the Congolese government  justifies the agreement reached at the end of February with the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Force (FRPI). Through this compromise, which some decry as adding to the impunity of armed groups, Kinshasa hopes to finally restore its authority in this troubled region.

For their part, members of the FRPI and their allies are beginning to receive the dividends of this deal. Germain Katanga, former leader of that militia which recruited mainly from the Lendu community, was released from prison on 16 March under this agreement. His release followed the release the day before of another former militia leader, Thomas Lubanga from the rival Hema community. The two former enemies had both been tried and convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On 21 April, three other former Ituri militia leaders were released from Ndolo military prison in Kinshasa, where they had been held for more than 10 years. Pitchou Pierre Celestin Mbodina Iribi, Floribert Ndjabu Ngabu and Mateso Nyinga alias Kung Fu, were all members of the Front des nationalistes et integrationnistes (FNI), a militia close to the FRPI.

Recommended reading DRC: Lubanga and Katanga freed for peace in Ituri

Tshisekedi asked us to promote peace

The Congolese president, who had visited Ituri in July 2019, went further by receiving, on 27 April in Kinshasa, representations of Hema and Lendu communities, led respectively by Thomas Lubanga and Floribert Nzabu Ngabu. What did the head of state and former militia leaders have to say to each other? The president has a great concern to see peace reign in the country and especially in Ituri province. That is why he invited us so that we can help the Congolese state to restore peace. He asked us to raise awareness on the ground, to go and mobilize people so that the province can regain peace, Ndjabu Ngabu told Justice Info. This native of Ituri, who says he is ready to start this official mission as soon as the official conditions are met, is aware of the immensity of the task.

Its a difficult mission. It takes a lot of tact and strategy to put the pieces back together. It takes a lot of effort. It also requires the collaboration of those on the ground, he acknowledges, hoping to rely on traditional chiefs in particular.

The ongoing violence in Ituri is mainly attributed to a group known as Codeco, whose members are mainly from the Lendu community. Without seeking to absolve this militia, Pierre Celestin Mbodina Iribi nevertheless affirms that the Lendu community is not to be confused with the Codeco which is, according to him, a nebulous group, about which little is known, a group of people with no political programme or known organisation.

At least a 20-year conflict

Our strategy will be refined in Bunia with the institutions, the people, the communities, he continues, hoping to count on the participation of everyone, including the victims. Everything should revolve around the victims. We believe that our first priority is the victims. We will meet the victims, we will talk with them. We will bring them a message of compassion so that they will accept, in their pain, to make their contribution to peace. It will be difficult, but if we remain in our resentment and pain, the pain will continue in Ituri. Everyone will have to take part in this mission. We will reach out to everyone.

Olivier Lieke, head of the chiefdom of Walendu-Bindi, the customary entity of these ex-militiamen, welcomes the governments approach. The liberation of these ex-rebels is an asset for the pacification and development of the region. It is encouraging to see the Congolese government free them. For our brothers, its a good sign, said the chief interviewed by Justice Info. The detention of these former leaders of armed groups active in Walendu-Bindi was hampering the peace process in the region. Every time they were called upon to lay down their arms, they were afraid to do so, after seeing their leaders Germain Katanga and Cobra Matata arrested after their surrender. These detentions hindered the disarmament and demobilization of FRPI combatants. As a result, for more than 20 years there was no development, Lieke says.

In the Hema community, perceptions differ. What is happening in Ituri is not an inter-ethnic war. Its a rebellion by Lendu subjects against the Congolese state, says Professor Pilo Kamaragi, a sociology teacher at Bunias Higher Institute of Education and vice-president of the Ente cultural association. To ask whether Thomas Lubanga will be able to engage his community in the search for peace is to pretend that it is at war. No, it is not. You should know that his community is not fighting in Ituri. It is Lendu militiamen who are attacking. Rather, we must ask ourselves: who has been arming them to attack the Congolese state from 2017 to date? Today, there are 68 IDP sites. This is a large-scale humanitarian crisis. We have to stop it.

Tshisekedi wants a lull, not peace

Chober Agenonga, a professor at the University of Kisangani and an expert in security and military sociology, welcomes this agreement but calls on the president to seek out the real instigators of the current violence. Felix Tshisekedi must ask himself whether these former rebels really remain popular in their communities? Are we not going to witness a leadership war? Are they able to deter those behind the killings? And who is behind those killers? Who supports them? Because they are well-equipped and well-armed. Will they be able to convince the people who are backing the ones who continue to kill?

He thinks the government must address the causes of the conflict in Ituri. Felix Tshisekedis strategy is to address the consequences, not the causes. He wants a lull, not peace. He must understand that peace is multidimensional. And in the case of Ituri, we must seek peace in all its dimensions, by addressing the causes of the conflict. This region has faced communal violence since 1911. And since our country gained independence (1960), Ituri has experienced a cycle of violence every decade. If the violence has returned, it is because none of the regimes have attacked the roots.

Recommended reading Will Tshisekedi act against impunity for serious crimes in Congo?

A serious problem with justice

Among the causes of the persistent violence in Ituri, Professor Agenonga cites impunity. In Ituris conflicts, there has always been a serious problem with justice. Only the leaders have been prosecuted or convicted in the name of command responsibility. Unfortunately, the rank and file militiamen who have killed and executed civilians have enjoyed impunity. He speaks of demographic pressure in a region where the population density is 300 inhabitants per km2, resulting in recurrent conflicts between herders and farmers for control of the land. Finally, he points to poor supervision of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes for ex-combatants, which results in the return to the bush of young unemployed people.

If Felix Tshisekedis government does not address these causes of conflict in Ituri, the former rebel leaders will not do anything lasting, he concludes. This is also the opinion of traditional chief Lieke. The government must think about rebuilding the schools, hospitals and roads destroyed during the war and provide support for the unemployed youth, he says. The Congolese state must impose peace, stresses Professor Kamaragi. Today, we appreciate seeing the army in action. The state must hunt down these well-equipped militiamen and try to understand where they get their weapons. These are dangerous groups. They must be eradicated.
Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed more than 11,000 people in Brazil, the largest death toll in Latin America. More than 200 million are quarantined. As schools closed and nannies were sent home, the countrys elite  with the luxury of disposable income  looked for ways to keep their children entertained. Trampoline rentals start at $70 per month, out of reach for most Brazilians who get by on less than $300 a month. But for the countrys upper class, who have the money and, typically, the space, its a bargain.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is seen during a news conference in Santiago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund has approved requests for emergency pandemic aid from 50 of its 189 members for a total of about $18 billion and is continuing to work quickly through the remaining more than 50 requests, an IMF spokesman said on Thursday.

The IMF's executive board was working through requests at record speed and would consider a request from Egypt for both emergency financing and a stand-by lending arrangement on May 11, spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in an online briefing.

"It's an IMF moving at an unprecedented speed in an unprecedented way to meet this unprecedented challenge which we're all facing," he said, noting the Fund had also temporarily suspended payments on IMF debts for 25 of the poorest countries.

Rice did not name all the countries that have emergency requests pending. But replying to questions, he said the Fund's staff was considering requests from Sri Lanka, South Africa and Zambia. He did not provide the amounts they had requested.

The aid granted under the IMF's rapid financing initiatives comes without the usual conditionality, but the Fund is working to ensure transparency and prevent corruption by asking all recipient governments to commit to enhanced reporting of crisis-related spending and undertake audits, Rice said.

He said the funds were also subject to the IMF's safeguards assessment policy, under which a central bank's framework of governance reporting and controls must be deemed sufficient to manage resources, including IMF disbursements.

Rice said the Fund was also in discussions with Zimbabwe, which has cleared its arrears with the Fund but is not currently eligible for IMF assistance since it has arrears with other financial institutions and bilateral creditors, Rice said.

"Beyond the issue of arrears, consideration of any future request would require Zimbabwe to be ready to implement strong macro policies, and structural reforms," he said. "We do recognize the dire circumstances facing the people of Zimbabwe, and we're providing technical assistance right now."

Story continues

An IMF team will begin discussions next week with Lebanon, another country that has run into debt sustainability issues, on the details of its economic reform plans, Rice said.

He said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva viewed Lebanon's plan as an important step forward to address its economic challenges and identify key areas for reforms to restore external and public debt sustainability.

Rice said the IMF was also in talks with Argentina and Ukraine.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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Late-night TV hosts may be doing their shows from home to slow the coronavirus spread, but that doesnt mean theyve stopped making fun of Portland. This week, we saw Late Night host Seth Meyers having a laugh about a Portland drive-thru strip club. And Wednesday night, Daily Show host Trevor Noah took comic aim at the Portland Naked Bike Ride, and a change in plans for 2020.

On his program, which Comedy Central is now calling The Daily Social Distancing Show, Noah announced that there was some news from Portland, Oregon, the place youd love to visit if only your oxen would stop dying (a reference to the old Oregon Trail video game).

With guidelines forbidding large gatherings, the 2020 World Naked Bike Ride in Portland has been canceled, as The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. As the story says, Officially a global event that takes place in cities around the world, Portlands naked bike ride is one of the biggest and best known.

The mass event scheduled for June 27 in Portland wont happen in the usual way. But organizers are encouraging everyone to simply go out and ride naked on their own, as Noah said, adding, Is that gonna work? 'Cause if theres 10,000 naked bike riders, thats an event. But if theres one naked dude on a 10-speed? You just nasty.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive story says, public nudity is illegal in Portland, but the World Naked Bike RIdes official status as a protest has allowed it go on. From our story: "The Portland Police Bureau said in the past it has allowed people to participate in the World Naked Bike Ride as long as they stay on the route with the rest of the riders. Without an official gathering this year, nude cyclists might not receive that same protection.

'If PPB receives phone calls for service regarding public indecency we will investigate and issue citations if deemed necessary,' bureau spokeswoman Nola Watts said."

More of our coverage:

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.




By Lee Gyu-lee







Rapper Kim Ki-seok, better known by his stage name Young Cream, is being investigated on suspicion of taking illicit drugs.







Seocho Police Station said Thursday that Kim, 30, was questioned on April 29 over drug use after testing positive for marijuana.







Police said they carried out the test on him after receiving a report that he was displaying "strange behavior" that evening in southern Seoul.







Kim allegedly followed a woman on the street while talking gibberish. Then he barged into a real estate agency and said he would "buy a building."







He reportedly admitted that he smoked marijuana out of curiosity. Police are looking into how he obtained it.







Kim is a former member of hip hop group M.I.B. The band of four men made its debut in 2011 with the album "Most Incredible Busters" and disbanded six years later.







The rapper has since performed solo, releasing several songs, including the latest "Stomp" in 2018.


Conakry, May 8 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 9th May, 2020 ) :Guinea accused Human Rights Watch of bias in favour of the political opposition on Friday, following the NGO's criticism of alleged government abuses committed during the coronavirus crisis.

The New York-based group said in April that authorities had "harassed, intimidated, and arbitrarily arrested opposition members and supporters in recent weeks", and described "an atmosphere of insecurity" under anti-virus measures.

Guinea has shut the borders, restricted travel and imposed a strict night-time curfew in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.

The West African nation of some 13 million has recorded 2,009 cases to date, with 11 fatalities.

Human Rights Watch pointed to recent instances in which security forces had acted with alleged impunity during the night-time curfew.

Guinea's security ministry on Friday rejected the allegations and said the arrests had been justified.

While admitting to "possible excesses" from security forces, it said violence during a constitutional referendum on March 22 had been triggered by opposition activists.

Guinea's politics have been tense for months, with a dispute over the constitution sometimes flaring up into violent protests in which dozens of people have been killed.

President Alpha Conde enacted the new constitution last month following a referendum in March whose credibility was questioned by France, the European Union and the United States.

Critics argue that the motive behind changing the constitution is to allow Conde, 82, to reset presidential term limits and run for a third spell in office later this year.

But on Friday, Guinea's security ministry accused Human Rights Watch of ignoring opposition violence and of having "a tendency to systematically denounce the government alone".

Rights campaigners have accused Conde of authoritarian drift and complaints about the impunity of the security forces in the country are routine.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

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Pac Man, Loteria, coding: Googles most popular Doodle games will cure your boredom during coronavirus lockdown

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The lockdown may have taken a toll on peoples daily lives but trust some smart ones to find unique and creative ways to tackle basic issues. Read more

Watch: Covid peak likely to hit between May-Aug; India to lead post-pandemic baby boom
A romance author recently tried to mess with Meghan Markle by criticizing her maternal skill. Now, she comes clean and apologizes for her rude words.

On Wednesday, "Something Borrowed" author Emily Giffin took to social media to lambast the Duchess of Sussex for their recently released video marking baby Archie Harrison's first birthday.

In the video posted on Save With Stories Instagram account, the 38-year-old former "Suits" actress read a story about "Duck! Rabbit!" with baby Archie while Prince Harry worked behind the camera to film the mother-and-son bonding moment.

Aside from celebrating Archie's first birthday, the short video was also aimed to raise funds for the charitable organization's effort to support food banks and mobile meal trunks that feed the hungry.

In the now-deleted Instagram post, Giffin lambasted Meghan's attitude on the video and called the Duchess "unmaternal" and "phony."

The 48-year-old writer also posted her text-message conversation with a friend, who seemed to be fond of discussing Meghan's "uncomfortable" behavior in the video.

Emily's friend suggested that Meghan was seeking too much attention when the video should be all about Archie, who was celebrating his birthday.

"That video screamed look at me! I need attention as the doting mother. She seemed slightly annoyed Archie wasn't fully cooperating to her standards," the friend wrote, to which Emily replied: "She seemed so unmaternal. It was uncomfortable. She's such a phony."

Emily captioned the said post questioning why the Duchess didn't just film the video and let Prince Harry read for Archie. The author also asked why Meghan filmed the poor boy without pants when she was supposed to be protecting her privacy.

When Emily's bold statement went viral on social media and she started receiving backlash from other internet users, the author switched her profile to private to avoid further humiliation.

Man oh man does Something Borrowed author Emily Giffin hate Meghan Markle pic.twitter.com/bjnoDNTY9p  Kaitlin Menza (@heykmenz) May 6, 2020

Emily's Apology

Later that day, the author of some best-selling novels posted a new Instagram entry apologizing for her rude words. She also denied that her comments were rooted in racism.

Emily explained that she enjoys following celebrities and is particularly interested in the British monarchy. In fact, she even wrote an essay about Meghan and Harry's royal wedding in 2018.

She said she was happy when a biracial American woman married into the royal family, but over the past months, her admiration towards the Sussexes changed.

"But I can say from the bottom of my heart that my criticism of Meghan has never had anything to do with race," Emily wrote.

In the end, the author apologized for how her message was received, which was not her intention.

"I can see how some of my posts may have felt mean-spirited and could be construed as having racial undertones," Emily said. "It was not my intent, but I understand that intent and impact are two very different things. And I am truly sorry for that negative impact."

Emily sent her apology alongside a screenshot of her previous Instagram posts showing some love for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their time with the royal family.
Chinese FM slams Pompeo for making up 'pack of lies'

Global Times

Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/7 17:53:41

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday slammed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for making up a "pack of lies," urging US politicians who indulged in blame games to focus more on saving American lives.

"If Pompeo has evidence, then show it! If not, are you busy making up this 'evidence?'" Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at Thursday's media briefing in response to a series of remarks from Pompeo on the origin of the novel coronavirus.

Pompeo on Wednesday said the US is not certain about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, after claiming over the weekend that there was "enormous evidence" the virus originated in the Wuhan lab.

Pete Daszak, president of US-based EcoHealth Alliance, has been working with the Wuhan lab for 15 years. In an interview in April, he said the theory that the virus found its way out of the Wuhan lab was "pure baloney."

The Wuhan P4 laboratory is a joint government cooperation project between China and France, which is run in strict accordance with international standards from design to management, and construction. The first group of laboratory personnel received training in the US and France, and the lab is tested annually by third party institutions, Hua said.

"How much truth is hidden by the US? Who is putting American lives at risk? Isn't the loss of more than 60,000 American lives enough to awaken the conscience of US politicians? Can they really give up moral decency for their political gains? This war is not only between humans and virus, but also between truth and lies," Hua said.

She urged US politicians who have become caught up in buck-passing games to focus on how to contain the pandemic and save more American lives.

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Clear all their dues and salaries

The migrants are suffering tremendously due to the Covid-19 lockdown. In order to help them, everyone, especially the industrialists and administrations, have to ensure that all their dues and salaries, even for days not worked, are cleared. Any medical or financial help needed by them should be provided. They should also be tested for Covid-19 free of cost and leave for treatment should be with pay.

Saikrit Gulati

Let large-hearted Punjabis show others the way

All administrations at various levels in different states and union territories should draw up a comprehensive master plan of paying bonuses to all daily wage/migrant workers to secure their future. Funds for their welfare should be spent from the Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) especially created for controlling Covid-19 in India. Farmers and industrialists should come forward voluntarily to contribute to the fund. This would be real acknowledgment of the services provided by these daily wage/migrant workers to the farming or industrial sectors. In this respect, people of the state of Punjab, famed for their proverbial magnanimity, must come forward with a large-hearted initiative to show the way to the industrialists and the administrations. This would be a valuable lesson in national unity, humaneness, and social camaraderie.

DR SS Bhatti, Chandigarh

Make poor aware of welfare schemes

The government should ensure that industries offer full wages to labourers to enable them to provide food and shelter to their families. The poor should be made aware of the benefits they can enjoy under various welfare schemes. To sum up, no migrant should go to bed hungry without a roof over his or her head in a welfare state.

Usha Verma, Chandigarh

Major stimulus package needed

Steps by farmers, industrialists, local administration to secure the future of migrants and daily wage workers will yield little without a major stimulus package by the government to protect their interests and that of their employers. Prioritising halting of the exodus and workers return and rehabilitation can salvage the situation.

Lalit Bharadwaj, Panchkula

Mandatory savings a must

The migrant story has been one of the biggest learnings of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are the people who build our cities, huge structures, keep our economy growing. Their lot has been the worst. The onus is now on the governments to ensure not just a minimum wage of more than Rs 20,000 for them, but also make sure the people hiring them guarantee the education of their children and provide them accommodation with adequate cooling, ventilation and hygiene. Most of them should be given financial advice and asked to put their savings in a bank mandatorily. Educating each worker to not have more children will also ensure population control. After one project finishes the contractor hiring them will also have to guarantee them work in other projects.

Tejeshwar

Provide them with work and food

The government should make every effort to ensure the workers stay put where they are and ensure their employers provide them work and food. Full salaries should also be paid to them during the entire duration of the lockdown. Industrialists, farmers and contractors, who hire them for work, should look after them like their own family members for these people have supported them when they needed them. Giving them advance payment, or a loan or gift to go back home or survive in this lean period can also help.

Sumesh Kumar Badhwar, Mohali

Supports for migrants vital

The first priority of the government should be to instil confidence in the migrants and daily wage workers by effectively supporting and feeding them till the return of normalcy, and persuade them to stay wherever they are. Focus must be on restarting construction and transportation activities, giving a fillip to industrial growth, and other miscellaneous services to ensure they get jobs.

SC Luthra, Chandigarh

Complete exodus will lead to catastrophe

A complete exodus of migrants will lead to catastrophe that will have a rippling effect on the entire economy of the nation. Their movement out of towns and cities spells total failure of the Central government in taking care of their needs. An exercise to make an estimate of their needs before the lockdown would have worked out. It can be done now.

DP Gautam

Welfare of workers crucial

The governments orders that migrants have to be housed within industrial premises if they are called in to work should be followed strictly with regular checks by authorities. Sanitised, cool rooms, clean toilets, bedding, hygienic food, every possible comfort for the workers should be ensured by the industrialists. The moneyed have no problems splurging on expensive cars and homes, so feeding the people who labour for them, making sure they are comfortable, should not be a problem. In fact, the industrialists should be proud to help improve the lifestyles of these people. They should also set aside certain percentages from their profits for their welfare.

Richa Khullar, Chandigarh

Guarantee workers right to a dignified life

The migrants and daily wage workers have to be treated with trust and compassion and for that the government must embrace the new politics of responsibility, guaranteeing their safe and healthy survival and an economically secure future. They have remained at the socio-economic margins of our society, silently supporting urban economies and languishing in invisibility. This crisis has made them visible so the time is ripe for the state to exercise its true responsibility of guaranteeing their right to a dignified life. To devise policies and provide services for seasonal migrant workers, the state needs to have a realistic statistical account of their number and an understanding of the nature of their mobility. The challenges are still complex and have to be fully addressed. They have to be provided work security, income and health facilities as well as clean and comfortable shelter. Pension policies also have to be created for them. Unless we view migrant workers as a dynamic part of a changing India, we will not be able to solve the problem of urbanisation.

Vijay Malia, Chandigarh

Social security, good income should be prioritised

The trauma that the migrants and daily wage labourers are going through is tragic. They have been left in the lurch and not given any priority. I dont think it will be an easy task to get them back to work outside their home states in the near future. The nightmarish experiences during lockdown, including abrupt loss of livelihood, will haunt them for a very long time. The first priority of their employers and administration should be to win over their confidence. Guaranteed social security, good income and boarding and lodging arrangements will perhaps persuade them to come back.

Paramjeet Singh, Zirakpur

Ensuring their safe return can help too

Migrant labour is the lifeline of all industrial and agriculture activity, but due to Covid-19 everything is under lockdown, which has created problems for the labour force and left them without any financial means. People who hire them and Central and state governments should ensure they are provided all necessities. If they want to go home then their train and bus tickets should be paid for to ensure they return safely. Enough incentives should be given to them after the lockdown is over and the Covid-19 spread is controlled to ensure they will be able to secure their future and will find it worth their while to return to the cities.

Avinash Goyal
Apocalypse definition: one of the Jewish and Christian writings of 200 BC to AD 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.

Thats a secular description of Revelation, but how do Christians define the apocalypse? In the Greek, apokalupsis means uncovering (unveiling) or revelation. So, the book of Revelation could be called Apocalypse.

Beginning of the End?

Chapters 1-3 of Revelation describes the details of the setting as [John] received [...] an apocalyptic vision from an angel. In the next section, chapters 4-20, John depicts what he sees in his vision about the spiritual realm.

He describes Jesus Christ as the Slain Lamb who is the only one able to open the book with seven seals, thereby bringing judgment upon the populace of the Earth. The rest of Revelation describes the New Heaven and the New Earth. In it is the holy city of the New Jerusalem.

Many Christians and many unbelievers see the apocalypse as the end, rather than the process of ending. They tend to think of the apocalypse as global cataclysm  world war, global disaster, pandemic: the time when Satan reveals his true self to those who were deceived by the smooth-talking Antichrist. But the apocalypse does more than forecast earthly destruction.

Specifics of the Apocalypse

The power holding back the Antichrist will be taken away (2 Thessalonians 2:7). The Antichrist signs a covenant for seven years with the nation of Israel. This is the event that inaugurates the Tribulation period. From Daniel, we learn that he will confirm a covenant with many for one week which is actually seven years; one year for every day.

In the middle of that period of time, on the wing of abominations will come one who destroys, until the decreed end is poured out on the one who destroys (Daniel 9:27). Seven years will begin with three and a half years of relative peace under a single ruler, perhaps one who will bring stability out of a global crisis and will be worshiped by all except those with the indwelling Holy Spirit who discern his true nature.

Next, the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God. The Antichrist will be unveiled by the appearance of the true Christ. The dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, we will be with the Lord forever (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

Christians, living at this time, will join with those who died in Christ. For those still on earth, there will be seven trumpet blasts, signaling torments such as five months of locust who sting like scorpions. Men beg to die but cant.

The next trumpet unleashes an army of two hundred million horsemen who kill a third of mankind. We learn that the rest of mankind not killed by these plagues did not repent. An earthquake destroys a tenth of Jerusalem killing seven thousand people. The remnant are terrified and give glory to the God of heaven.

This is followed by the bowl judgments, which will be hideous and swift leaving behind an unrepentant population, which suffers a final great earthquake where islands vanish and mountains disappear. Hailstones weighing one hundred pounds each fall from heaven, but men still blasphemed God.

Finally, heaven opens and King Jesus, accompanied by His armies of angels [...] strikes the nations with the sword from His mouth during a brief battle. Gods judgment will be brutal, devastating, terrifying.

What Will Happen to Christians During the Apocalypse?

Some controversy remains as to whether Christians will experience three and a half years of torment (tribulation) or be called home before that starts. Dr. J. Rodman Williams leads us to 1 Thessalonians 3:2-3 for more information.

Timothy was sent to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. According to Dr. Williams, Paul is warning the church at Thessalonica to expect to suffer before Christ returns.

Revelation itself and eschatological literature indicate that the Antichrist will force everyone to receive his mark in order to obtain basic necessities such as medical care and food. Those who refuse the mark will be beheaded (Revelation 20:4). Even if Christians arent beheaded, they will be tortured or murdered somehow.

In His goodness, God will call His children home, but they will have to face a period of persecution. There is much uncertainty as to whether God will give unbelievers more time to repent and be saved before the bitter end. But, the emphasis in the Bible is [...] on believing in Jesus now which implies urgency. That urgency suggests there will be no second chances. Time will run out. Everyone who refuses to give allegiance to Christ will go to Hell with Satan for eternity.

Meanwhile, God will restore the earth into a broad plain with Jerusalem as its center. There is no sea, but a clear river flows from the temple where Jesus will rule and reign for 1,000 years to fulfill Gods covenant with Abraham and his descendants. For the faithful in Christ, however, pain and suffering will end forever.

Interpretations of the Apocalypse

Although Christ is clearly the central figure of Revelation, the apocalypse was foretold in the Old Testament, hundreds, and even thousands of years before Johns writing. God planned the end from the beginning. The text [of Revelation] presupposes familiarity with Old Testament language and concepts, especially those taken from the books of Daniel and Ezekiel.

The final book of the Bible is taken literally by some, figuratively by many. Authorship is debated  did John write the entire book? And if so, which John? Is this the Apostle John? Does the book speak of a real apocalypse or a symbolic one? The end of sin for individual Christians and in the world, or a dramatic event spanning several years?

Will everyone be judged at this time? Perhaps all people will go to Heaven because Satan will be defeated. Maybe the apocalypse has already taken place and Revelation is about Christians being persecuted in Rome.

Gospel-believing theologians generally believe that the Apostle John wrote the Bibles final book as a legitimate prophecy from God, but that much of the language is symbolic. They believe that the apocalypse has yet to take place and will involve cataclysmic events worldwide in which people will be judged.

There will not be universal salvation but only believers will be taken up with Christ. Christians will suffer, but the Holy Spirit will equip them to withstand torture and yet proclaim the name of Jesus. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).

Implications for the Christian

These events are coming, but we dont know when. We hope that our spirits will discern the rise of this Antichrist so we can rebuke and reject him. We live in an age where lies are easily and quickly disseminated over the internet and social media; we must put on the Full Armor of God and pray for discernment.

In the meantime, one pastor likens unbelievers to zombies. If the normal constraints of society are pulled away, how will human beings act? he asks. They will be horribly selfish and monstrous to each other because, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, they are dead in trespasses and sins.

People who dont know Jesus are empty and constantly hungry, dead inside. They move around and [they] eat but they are not alive. We must behave as though the apocalypse is starting tomorrow and spread the good news with some urgency.

The apocalypse is a grim certainty, but we can also find peace, embrace hope, and take courage from the fact that Jesus is going to finish what he started as Jared Wilson puts it. He reminds us: Some day, Jesus the Redeemer will return to redeem everything. [...] This life will be redeemed, this earth will be redeemed, these very bodies will be redeemed, and so our hopes and dreams and fears and failings will all be redeemed as well.

Revelation of Hope

Whatever trials we have faced, are facing today, or will face in the future, we can trust that the God who loves you will sustain you as you seek to live redemptively with and toward others, that He is crafting beauty out of your darkness, that he's telling a great story in your life, an epic one that places you in a vital role in the story of the body of Christ. Your heart, soul, mind, and strength yearn for their redemption. Amen.

iStock/Getty Images Plus/vicnt

Candice Lucey is a freelance writer from British Columbia, Canada, where she lives with her family. Find out more about her here.
Spains two hardest-hit cities may keep restrictions in place as the rest of the country emerges from lockdown.

Madrid and Barcelona, Spains two largest cities, could remain under virtual lockdown as the rest of the country eases its way towards some semblance of normal life.

The two cities were the hardest hit by coronavirus in Spain, which itself has been one of the worlds hardest-hit countries.

Months into the crisis, officials around the globe are keen to get economies up and running again, and Spanish socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is no exception. With the nations state of emergency extended on Wednesday night for a further two weeks, Sanchez has the power to control citizens movements as Spain emerges from two months of lockdown.

The Health Ministry gave Spains coronavirus death toll for the past 24 hours as 213 on Thursday, down from 244 the previous day and far below peaks of nearly 1,000 per day in early April.





Sanchezs plan to lift lockdown restrictions has four stages, in which restrictions are progressively eased, with each region applying to enter the next phase if it meets certain conditions, such as hospital capacity requirements.

The first phase would allow for groups of up to 10 people to meet in homes or outdoors, and street cafes to reopen. Religious celebrations can also be observed, as long as places of worship practise social distancing and limit themselves to 30 percent of their previous capacities.

Catalonias regional government on Wednesday said Barcelona and Girona would not be included in the first phase, which starts on Monday, saying there was a moderate to high risk of a new wave of infections.

But Madrid  the city which is at the centre of Spains outbreak, and which is still registering high numbers of new cases  has applied to the national health ministry to begin opening its doors on Monday.

It was a move that led to the resignation on Thursday of the citys top public-health official, Yolanda Fuentes, who opposed lifting restrictions, newswire Europa reported, citing sources close to the regional health authority.





We meet the health requirements; we cant keep waiting, Ignacio Aguado, vice president of the region of Madrid, told Spanish television. We have to get used to living with COVID-19.

Madrid cafe owner Sergio Munguira said he planned to reopen at midday on Monday, unless they tell us differently, with staff wearing gloves and masks and diners using QR codes to call up the menu on smartphones.

The rest of Spains regions are expected to make a smooth transition to the first phase of lifting lockdown.

The government aims to have the country back to normal by the end of June, with sufficient hospital capacity to combat potential outbreaks.

Small businesses such as hairdressers started to open this week  albeit with restrictions  while Spaniards are now allowed out of their houses for exercise.

On Thursday, Zara owner Inditex started to reopen some of its smaller shops to be visited by appointment as part of a gradual reopening of its retail network.
Highlights Xiaomi has launched the Mi Box 4K in India.

It can stream 4K HDR10 content on Netflix, Prime Video.

Xiaomi's Mi Box 4K costs Rs 3,499 in India.

Xiaomi has introduced its first standalone streaming device in India called the Mi Box 4K. It is an Android 9 Pie-powered streaming box that connects to any TV, both conventional and smart, via an HDMI cable to offer a plethora of apps and their content. Since Android 9 Pie is at the core of the Mi Box 4K, you will be able to download and access apps such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, ZEE5, Voot, and more. It supports content up to 4K via streaming apps and local sources such as a thumb drive.

The Xiaomi Mi Box 4K costs Rs 3,499 in India and it directly takes on the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, which is priced at Rs 5,999. It will be available to buy starting at 12 pm on May 10 via mi.com and Flipkart. However, since the lockdown is underway with some relaxations only in some areas, the delivery of the streaming device will be confined to only orange and green zones in India. The Mi Home and Mi Studio stores will also sell the Mi Box 4K wherever offline sale is permitted. Xiaomi has said the Mi Box 4K will also be available via partner offline outlets soon.

Out of the box, the Mi Box 4K runs on Android 9 Pie, which should be enough to support the latest features of various streaming apps. Xiaomi has not said if this device is upgradeable to Android 10 or Android 11, as and when it is rolled out. The Mi Box 4K supports up to 4K 60fps content on YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, in addition to the content played using local sources such as an external hard drive. It comes with dual-band Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet source for streaming content. There is HDR10 also supported for mainly the content available on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. However, the Mi Box 4K lacks support for Dolby Vision, which is available for most original titles on Netflix.

Xiaomi has stripped the Mi Box 4K of its PatchWall UI and has gone with the standard stock Android TV interface. This essentially means that people expecting suggestions in a manner similar to that of PatchWall UI will be disappointed. The stock interface for Android TV is pretty niche and familiar to people who mostly do not need suggestions. That being said, the Mi Box 4K will not support satellite channels. But you get a USB port, Chromecast Ultra built-in, and audio output via SPDIF and 3.5mm jack. The Mi Box 4K also supports Dolby Audio and DTS 2.0+ for audio output. It can be paired with Bluetooth-enabled audio devices, such as headphones and soundbars, for a surround effect.

The Mi Box 4K is powered by a 2.0GHz quad-core Amlogic processor paired with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Of course, you can use external storage to install apps in case of full internal storage. There is also a Mali 450 GPU under the hood.
This raises a deeper question: What does it really mean to be free?

Before our office shut down and we all dispersed, one of the last editorial board meetings we held in person was with the prime minister of Finland, Sanna Marin. At 34, shes the youngest female prime minister in the world.

She spoke about Finlands challenges in coping with climate change, immigration and a movement of people to cities that is hollowing out rural communities. Again and again, as she talked about sustaining political consensus to confront these challenges, she returned to the importance of the sense of security Finns feel because of their strong social safety net, including free health care and university.

It gives people freedom when you have a very strong welfare state, she told us.

That formulation stands the American politics of freedom on its head. Franklin Roosevelt may have envisioned freedom from want, but in recent decades freedom here has come to mean freedom from taxes, freedom from regulation, freedom from having to wear a mask in public. The American left has largely conceded the rhetoric and even the idea of freedom to the right.

Told that some Americans look at Finland and fear socialism, the prime minister smiled. As neighbors of the Soviet Union, Finns had seen a socialist experiment up close and wanted no part of it. We are an open-market society, she said proudly.

Our columnist Nicholas Kristof, in a deeply reported exploration of the Nordic model, had the brilliant idea to look at what its like to work for McDonalds in Denmark. The answer is that, even though Denmark has no minimum wage, you make about $22 an hour and get six weeks of paid vacation a year, life insurance, a years paid maternity leave and a pension plan. All that plus the Danish guarantees of medical insurance and paid sick leave.
In late April, the OSCE SMM saw Russian occupation forces planting anti-personnel mines near a disengagement site in Petrivske, Donbas.

In its weekly report for April 20-26 (and these reports are not published on the OSCE website), the SMM reported that it had observed "demining works" on a field east of the road between Petrivske and Styla in the occupied Donetsk region. However, the facts cited in the report indicate that it was the mining of the territory with anti-personnel mines," Deputy Permanent Representative of Ukraine to International Organizations in Vienna Ihor Lossovskyi said in an exclusive comment to an Ukrinform correspondent.

According to the diplomat, during the online meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation on Wednesday, May 6, the Ukrainian delegation drew the attention of the participating states to the fact that the SMM had recorded the process of mining of the territory by the Russian occupation forces.

"The Mission's report stated that they saw, among other things, a transparent bag containing about 20 anti-personnel mines (PMN-2) on the field. OSCE SMM monitors indicated that they could not determine whether this was evidence of demining or, on the contrary, of planting landmines. During the meeting, we explained that there is no doubt: it was mining of the territory by the Russian armed forces," Lossovskyi said.

According to him, PMN-2 anti-personnel mines have an antirecovery device which means that the bag could not contain anti-personnel mines of that type allegedly neutralized in the field where demining works were allegedly carried out. At the same time, such landmines are rather safe before activation and can be safely transported even in a bag.

"PMN-2 anti-personnel mines are quite safe to activate and can be transported and carried relatively safely even in bags. However, according to Russian combat instructions, they are prohibited from being disposed of or moved after they have been placed on the ground in a combat position. They can be destroyed only by the charge of an explosive planted near a mine or by the repeated passage of tanks with mine-clearing attachment on a minefield," the Deputy Permanent Representative of Ukraine to International Organizations in Vienna explained.

The diplomat noted that PMN-2 anti-personnel mines are still in service with the Russian armed forces although their use is prohibited under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of 3 December 1997 (Ottawa Treaty).

Lossovskyi recalled that Ukraine signed the Convention in 1999 and ratified it in 2005. As part of the obligations, Ukraine destroyed all PMN-2 anti-personnel mines, which it had inherited after the collapse of the USSR, under international supervision by 2011. In turn, the Russian Federation refused to sign the Ottawa Treaty and continues to use PMN-2 and other anti-personnel mines during armed hostilities.

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We hired outside contractors, they built an entirely new system.  That system has a much higher capability than the existing systems that IDES has for unemployment, and so I believe that it will be able to handle the unemployment claims that come in under the PUA system, Pritzker said during his daily news briefing.
New Delhi, May 8 : The abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, profoundly influenced the Kashmir Valley's course and decades of insurgency perpetrated by the Pakistani state and non-state actors. The various political sides within the violence-hit state running a sinister agenda, based on the fabricated narrative, were in for a rude awakening. None of them had expected the government to take such a bold step to execute long pending demand of assimilating J&K with the rest of the country.

Leading the perplexed parties was Pakistan, which has unleashed a proxy war since independence through its hold in Kashmir. That country has now seen its returns dwindling in recent times due to massive offensives launched by the Indian security forces. Various 'tanzeems' with hidden agenda are now getting exposed. Along with that, reduced terror funding coupled with international pressure have affected terror factories in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Pakistan and the top brass of its notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, have needed a fresh crop of terrorists to continue the proxy war with deniability. The agenda is clear: the new wave of insurgency and a surge in violence could hit international headlines even before the link is established with Pakistani state actors. And this search for deniability has given birth to a new terror outfit with same old Pakistani institutions at the helm of affairs.

Birth of TRF Post Article 370 abrogation, Pakistan launched a social media offensive with its Army spokesperson taking the lead. But, what became more interesting was the birth of a new terror front on social media. Called 'The Resistance Front' (TRF), it has tried and applied every theory in the textbooks of 'Marketing 101' and 'How to increase online presence'. Various reports have come out on its links across the Line of Control; many have corroborated that the TRF was supported by the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Often claims have been made that the TRF even appears to be a proxy of LeT.

"A freshly-minted terror group, The Resistance Front, is funded and backed by Pakistan," a top counter-terror official in Kashmir said. The group is part of several efforts, often repeated in the past two decades, to give terrorism in Kashmir an indigenous face and give the Pakistan deep state, blamed for supporting terror, an alibi, the official said. Since its appearance on social media platforms, it has resorted to claiming high traction acts and owned up the terrorists active in the Valley.

From claiming the grenade-throwing at Srinagar's Hari Singh High Street on October 12, to the next one within a fortnight that killed one civilian, TRF has been holding every thread to associate itself with small and big terror incident. It is also known that their social media accounts, according to the internet protocol address, are being operated from Islamabad and, that too, mostly from an iPhone. The connivance and support of Pakistan is clearly visible since Kashmir is still under lockdown and the internet has been intermittently snapped to contain propaganda. It is not a new tactic -- the moment a group surfaces, it starts a series of tall claims to set up and validate itself as the top rung among others.

"What has differentiated them is the sheer planning and precision of execution. From nicely printed English announcements on a letter-head with serial numbering to professionally made videos of audio messages are all tools used for enhancing their image as an organised and 'better tanzeem' than others," said a top officer of anti-terror unit based in Kashmir.

The officer further pointed that it is an old marketing technique to establish one's credibility in a new theatre. It is being applied with almost more than required fervour and speed.

Getting exposed But TRF's credibility is hit by the realities on ground. The cadres and networks are getting exposed each day with caches of arms getting seized and inexperienced boys being misled into their 'tanzeems' getting arrested. In north Kashmir's border district of Kupwara, on March 23, six men claiming to be a part of the TRF were arrested. The quick interrogation guided the police to recover 8 AK rifles, 10 pistols, 89 hand grenades, 20-odd detonator fuses and ammunition. These facts simply point to the reduced support their attempt to revive terror in the Valley is getting from the locals. People are tired of violence and are not interested in harbouring them anymore. The so-called over- ground supporters are providing exact google map locations to the police.

"Every claim they make is swiftly followed by an online barrage of tweets and telegrams," the officer said. Like in a recent incident when a terrorist drew out an AK-47 rifle concealed under his robe to shoot three CRPF jawans, the TRF rushed to claim accountability, and described the killings as revenge for the deaths of their cadre in recent incidents.

False claims Their desperation on ground to prove their relevance in today's Kashmir is clearly visible from their "hurried efforts to claim every small opportunity to stay in news", a senior Indian Army officer said. Recently they have been belting out neatly made audio tapes on every agenda under the sun from slandering other 'tanzeems' to giving threats to claiming their self-righteousness. The frequency and urgency of these tapes speaks for itself. These are simply signs of the pressure and desperation this brand new social media terror sensation is trying to prove. They have recently even gone as far as claiming the terrorists that were killed in the Kulgam encounter with fanfare of neatly written tweets and posts with expressive posters. But it was a false claim. In reality the terrorists didn't even belong to TRF.

"In today's online universe, we are seeing TRF as an example of how a twitter handle gains fame by making tall claims and then it is anxious to make people and the so-called followers believe those claims as reality," said a senior officer with country's intelligence agency. The officer explained that these are nothing but feeble attempts of Pakistan to try a new tactic in Kashmir after every few years. However, this time the stark desperation and urgency is unashamedly visible as they know that time for them is running out.

Complete disarray The recent killing of the poster boy of Hizbul Mujahideen, Riyaz Naikoo, in a clean surgical operation by the security forces in Kashmir has again brought many facts to the fore. The last phone call of the terrorists from the encounter site and even the false claims by TRF in Handwara clearly point to the inter-tanzeem rivalry, which is now escalating each day. This has now reached a stage where complicity of TRF in the elimination of Naikoo has also been established first hand. The major 'tanzeems' in the Valley are all left without any credible leadership, and their control over their cadres and operations in Kashmir is all but lost.

The haphazard attacks, snitching on each other and desperate attempts to lay claim to one another's operations clearly depict an environment of complete disarray and lack of either unity of cause or coordination. The major escalation in the summer of 2020 which had been threatened since August 5, 2019 has also manifested itself in random incidences of firing and grenade lobbing. There is a clear terror leadership deficit which has now begun to show, in not only their actions but their ability to carry out attacks on ground.

If nothing else, the summers have bought with them a big change in the attitude of the locals wherein the inputs about the whereabouts of these terrorists are flowing freely. This is one of the major enablers for the security forces to carry out precise operations with a frequency and tenacity not seen in a long time. The poster boys are gone and there is no credible ones to replace them.

The people don't want these new faces, as they have grown tired of the same old rhetoric being peddled by every new 'tanzeem' leader. Pakistan's long-term plan is now looking like a distant mirage.

With the 'tanzeems' left leaderless and bickering among themselves, internal financial woes and other stigmas have started haunting them in the international fora. No one wants to believe Pakistan's sob story on harbouring terrorists and actively supporting them. As a known terror state, Pakistan has lost whatever little sympathy it had among developed nations. The recent events also show that people from both sides of the border are now tired of the constant motormouthing by the Pakistani hierarchy. This is slowly beginning to look like, that the transition in Kashmir is finally around the corner, not only optimistically but pragmatically.

The loosening of the Pakistani terror grip on gullible Kashmiri youth will surely usher in a new era in the Valley that has been bloodied for decades by Pakistan. India's effort to build a new Kashmir with active participation of locals will definitely make the Pakistani narratives a thing of the past.
On opposite sides of the country, brothers Danh Hai and Danh Thanh Tai have been defending Vietnams borders to push back COVID-19.

Tai and another guard patrol the Vietnam  China border in Binh Lieu District, Quang Ninh Province.  Photo thanhnien.vn

In early March, Staff Sergeant Danh Thanh Tai, a final-year student at the Border Defence Force Academy, and 59 comrades were sent to support Quang Ninh Province's Border Guard Command to prevent the pandemic from spreading.

Arriving in Quang Ninh Province, Tai was sent to Hoanh Mo Border Guard Station in the village of Cam Hac, Binh Lieu District.

Checkpoint 1322 where Tai was stationed is actually a tent set up beside a metal fence on the border with Vietnam and China in a dense forest some distance from the nearest residential area.

During his first days at the station, Tai spent most of his time learning about the local culture and living conditions.

On sunny days, when smugglers are trying to cross the border, they have to be on guard round-the-clock.

The biggest challenge is communicating with people from the Dao and Tay ethnic groups as well as learning about their cultures, Tai told Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

We are always eager to learn from more experienced officers, he added.

In mid-April, it was still cold in Binh Lieu District, something Tai, who was born and raised in the Mekong Delta, was not used to.

On crisp nights, Tai and his friend  Vo Phuoc Trung, another final-year student at the Border Defence Force Academy  lit fires and studied together for their graduation examination in June.

We want to keep learning but we know we will only be allowed to go back to school once the disease is contained, said Tai.

Hai teaches the Vietnamese language to local Khmer children in Tan Chau District, Tay Ninh Province.  Photo thanhnien.vn

In mid-March, Sub-lieutenant Danh Hai  Tais brother, who is a student at the Border Guard Secondary School 2 in the southern province of Ba Ria  Vung Tau, was assigned to Tan Chau Districts Tan Ha Border Guard Station under Tay Ninh Province's Border Guard Command.

Young, fierce and observant, Danh Hai was sent to Checkpoint 1 next to boundary marker 99 between Vietnam and Cambodia to guard the border and prevent illegal crossings.

Anti-smuggling forces had transformed a small bedsit where they used to rest into a quarantine checkpoint, said Colonel Trieu Ngoc Am from the Tan Ha Border Guard Station.

The terrain is flat, making it easy for people to illegally cross the border if we are not on alert, said Am.

I sleep in a hammock outside the bedsit to make room for the other officers, Hai said, adding the temperature could reach 40 degrees Celsius during the day but dropped drastically at night.

People use these conditions to try and sneak through so we always have to stay alert, he said.

Lieutenant Colonel Phung Van Minh, deputy head of the station, said Hai had observed and arrested tobacco smugglers entering Vietnam from Cambodia in late April.

The mission required great skill, especially in an unfamiliar area, said Minh.

Despite their packed schedules, Hai and Tai spend a couple of minutes each day speaking to each other by phone.

No matter how hard it is, we always have to try our best, Hai told his younger brother. We have received support from many people, so protecting the countrys border is the best way to say thanks for their assistance, he added.

Mekong sons

Hai graduated from the Border Defence Force Academy in 2017 and was appointed to Phu My District's Border Guard Station, ten kilometres from his hometown in Giang Thanh District, Kien Giang Province.

During his leave, Hai works on the family's fields, helping his parents to clear their debts.

My parents are illiterate. Our only childhood aspiration was to become soldiers. Now we have all grown up, it is time to take care of them, said Hai.

He plans to invite his parents to Tais graduation ceremony this August in Hanoi.

I have saved money for the trip. It will be their first plane journey and their first time in Hanoi. However, due to the pandemic, the two of us have been sent to the frontline, so it may not be possible, he said.

It might seem like a struggle, but I believe we can all overcome this troubling time, Hai added. VNS

Border soldiers struggle with Covid-19 fighting task Border soldiers in the central province of Quang Nam are living in difficult conditions while doing Covid-19 prevention work.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 17:08:41|Editor: huaxia

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TIANJIN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The China Tianjin Bulk Freight Index (TBI), an indicator of northern China's international bulk freight rates, stood at 532.48 points on Friday, down 0.08 percent compared with the previous working day.

The statistical samples of TBI cover eight international bulk shipping routes arriving at the ports of Tianjin, Qingdao and Caofeidian. They come from coal, iron ore, nickel ore and grain exporters, such as Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

As a sub-index of the Tianjin Shipping Index, TBI is published on working days and was first published in September 2010. It is issued by the Tianjin International Trade and Shipping Service Center in northern China's Tianjin Municipality. Enditem
WASHINGTON  The Strategic National Stockpile has shipped 28 million tablets of a malaria drug that President Donald Trump touted as a potential treatment for COVID-19 to states since April 1. States received millions more from donations or taxpayer-funded purchases.

But after doubts arose about whether the drug, hydroxychloroquine sulfate, is safe and effective for the coronavirus-based disease, states are donating supplies to patients who need them for other reasons, seeking refunds or weighing what to do with them.

As Trump encourages some states to lift shelter-at-home orders, states report that hydroxychloroquine, a linchpin of Trumps response to the COVID-19 pandemic, wont be used to prevent any resulting surge of illnesses and deaths because the drug may not work and has dangerous side effects.

Meanwhile, a whistleblower complaint that was filed Tuesday by former Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority Director Rick Bright raises other safety concerns about the stockpiles hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine tablets.

Bright and other officials were concerned about the quality and potential toxicity of chloroquine supplies produced and shipped in from facilities in India and Pakistan that were not approved by the FDA, and were therefore not approved to be used in the U.S. marketplace, the complaint to the Office of Special Counsel alleges.

States like Texas report that the drug no longer plays a role in their emergency response plans. In one week stretching from late March into early April, dozens of Texas hospitals across the state requested 467 bottles of hydroxychloroquine from the states emergency supply.

By the week of April 20, as new evidence emerged about the drugs sometimes deadly side effects, requests fell to a trickle. Ten bottles were requested between April 20 and April 24, data supplied by the Texas Department of State Health Services show. Over the last two weeks, following a Food and Drug Administration warning, no bottles were requested.

About 9,200 bottles of hydroxychloroquine, or 920,000 pills, remain sitting in the Texas stockpile.

North Carolina, which acquired 1.5 million tablets from donations and the national stockpile, also saw a drop-off in requests, according to the states Department of Health and Human Services.

Questions remain about how many states and hospitals obtained hydroxychloroquine and how they plan to use it. A spokesperson for the national stockpile would not specify which states and hospitals requested supplies, and said stockpile officials are not aware of which hospitals and long-term care facilities received it.

Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which donated supplies directly to several states in early April, did not respond to a request for comment.

The hydroxychloroquine boom may have burned up valuable time and resources.

Michael Carome, director of the health research group at Public Citizen, said the use of hydroxychloroquine before FDA approval for COVID-19 may have diverted people from participating in clinical trials to study it and other nascent therapies. It may have also led to deaths.

Some patients who were given the drug were probably harmed and some may have died, he said.

Trump began championing the drug as a game changer with very, very encouraging early results on March 19. The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine sulfate and a related drug, chloroquine phosphate, on March 28, based on anecdotal evidence rather than clinical data.

A small pilot study supporting its efficacy in mild cases, which was touted on Fox News, was determined to not meet the expected standard of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, whose medical journal published it.

More evidence emerged throughout April that hydroxychloroquine may not be the effective treatment the president claimed.

A study of COVID-19 patients at Veterans Affairs facilities treated with hydroxychloroquine alone or in combination with another drug, azithromycin, found no evidence that the drug prevented COVID-19 respiratory problems. The study found patients taking hydroxychloroquine alone actually had a higher mortality rate than patients who did not.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, has not yet been vetted by experts through peer review or published in a journal.

By April 24, the FDA issued its warning that hydroxychloroquine should not be prescribed off-label, and should only be used in a hospital or a clinical trial because of heart rhythm risks.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America recommends the drug only be used for COVID-19 in a clinical trial.

Some of the 28 million tablets shipped by the national stockpile will be used to fuel these clinical trials.

In hard-hit New York, the Mount Sinai Health System recommends that its physicians not use the drug to treat patients with COVID-19 because of the potential for harm, including the arrhythmias and the blood disorder methemoglobinemia.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, worked with the Trump administration in March to get hydroxychloroquine. The New York Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment.

The Philadelphia Department of Health specified that though some hospitals independently acquired hydroxychloroquine, the city had not acquired the drug and would not direct its use for COVID-19.

Georgia GOP Rep. Doug Collins said on April 7 a donation of hydroxychloroquine from drugmaker Amneal could potentially save thousands of lives across our state. Collins thanked the Georgia Department of Public Health for helping secure the donation.

The Georgia Department of Public Health referred questions to the governors office, which did not respond.

Interest in the drug as a COVID-19 therapy led to shortages for patients with the autoimmune conditions hydroxychloroquine was approved by the FDA to treat. State boards of pharmacy and patient advocates have sounded the alarm about these shortages.

Some of the supply from the national stockpile will be directed to the lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who faced problems because the drug was in short supply, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said.

Public health departments in Oregon and Connecticut report they may use their donated supplies in part to alleviate the artificial shortages. Oregon has not decided exactly how it will use its hydroxychloroquine, said Jake Sunderland, spokesman for the states COVID-19 emergency response team.

The research about the use of hydroxychloroquine is in the preliminary stages. There are potentially severe cardiac side effects to taking hydroxychloroquine and the data are insufficient to recommend it generally, and it has not been approved by the FDA for use in treatment of COVID-19, Sunderland said in a statement.

However, the limited supply of this drug has impacted patient access to the medication for those who need it for FDA indicated and approved uses, for example lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. This supply could assist those who are having trouble accessing the medication for these types of uses.

In Connecticut, a donated supply of hydroxychloroquine was shipped to hospitals according to bed capacity. But hospitals are not required to use it for COVID-19.

The ultimate decision about whether or not to use it lies with the individual doctors based on their patient need, said state spokesperson Lora Rae Anderson.

States investments While many states obtained hydroxychloroquine through donations, some purchased it. Utah GOP Gov. Gary Herbet received a refund last week for the $800,000 his office paid to a pharmacy called Meds in Motion for a supply of hydroxychloroquine.

A left-leaning good government group seeking more information about the purchase filed a price-gouging complaint, but the Utah Department of Commerce closed the case without conducting an investigation. The agency said it only has jurisdiction over retail purchases, not public purchases.

The state of Oklahoma sent $2 million to a company called FFF Enterprises for the drug. The state stepped in as a back stop of hydroxychloroquine supplies for Oklahomas medical community, Shelley Zumwalt, chief innovation officer at the State Department of Health, said in a statement.

As soon as the FDA approved Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 more than five weeks ago, medical professionals across Oklahoma asked for support to ensure the State had adequate access to this critical drug, Zumwalt said.

The states attorney general has called for an audit of the departments COVID-19 pandemic purchases.

Emily Kopp of CQ-Roll Call wrote this story.

2020 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved

Visit CQ Roll Call at www.rollcall.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
When the incumbent government of President Ibrahim Solih took office in Maldives in November 2018, many in India believed this signalled a new chapter in bilateral ties. Some of this was based on the extremely positive rhetoric towards India. President Solih has reportedly said, India is the closest friend of the Maldives. Foreign Minister Abdullah Shahid reflected the same sentiment when he said, Relations with India are rock solid.

These statements were in stark contrast with the approach of the previous government led by president Abdulla Yameen, who asked India to take back the two navy and coast guard helicopters, gifted by India a couple of years ago. It also refused to extend the visas of Indian military personnel attending on them, it is easy to see where the optimism for future closeness was coming from.

In addition, head of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and former president, Mohamed Nasheed indicated that Maldives would likely withdraw from the FTA with China (which again the previous government had rushed through and was a matter of concern for India). He further criticised Chinas modus operandi when it came to seeking closer ties with the archipelago-nation. It then appeared that Maldives, which had tilted towards China under the Yameen administration, was now seemingly tilting back towards India.

The MDP leaderships tilt towards India was noticeable even earlier during Nasheeds regime. Nasheeds government which took office in 2008 was the first multi-democratic dispensation after 30 long years of president Maumoon Abdul Gayooms one-party, one-person rule. Nasheed is at present the Speaker of the Maldivian Parliament, known as the Peoples Majlis.

The pro-India rhetoric emanating out of the Solih government has been further accompanied by striking optics. Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the only foreign dignitary to be invited to President Solihs inauguration. Following this, many official visits have taken place between the two countries at the highest levels of government, including visits by President Solih, Speaker Nasheed and Foreign Minister Shahid. Several areas of co-operation have been identified and detailed discussions have taken place on issues as varied as maritime security, development funding, civil aviation and healthcare. The most dramatic of symbolisms has been the inter-linking of the coastal surveillance radar chain with the Indian navy (which had been stalled), vitally with the view of increasing maritime domain awareness.

Despite what appears to be a 180 degree turn in bilateral relations, it seems prudent for India to separate rhetoric from reality and ask itself how much does a countrys foreign policy change with a change in government?

Sri Lankan parallel

Looking comparatively at Sri Lanka and its various governments electoral promises of re-negotiating projects and agreement with China, it becomes clear that India should not read too much into what politicians say when they are in power and/or when they are criticising the administration in power while themselves being in opposition. Formulating a policy stance is one thing, ensuring a policy outcome is entirely different.

When former Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe came into office in January 2015, they did so with a mandate to investigate previous Rakjapaksa regimes deals with China. Once in office, they went through with the much-criticised debt-for-equity swap on the Hambantota port which resulted in the transfer of Hambantota on a 99-year lease to China.

This move was in turn attacked by the incumbent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his election manifesto which stated, Hambantota port is a national asset and was defined as a strategic asset by us previously, and the intention was never to sell or lease the port for 99 years. We will make it a priority to revisit the already signed agreement with the Chinese government.

However, in December last year, merely one month after coming into power, President Gotabhaya said he would not re-negotiate the lease agreement. He explained that it was purely a commercial deal and he did not want to convey a message to investors that commercial agreements would change every time a new government was elected to power.

Coming back to Maldives, President Solihs team when they assumed office criticised the previous government for the loss of billions of rufiyaa (local currency) through embezzlement and corruption. They promised a forensic audit of deals made by the Yameen administration, many of these with Chinese state firms. Post-poll and throughout the past year, the messages coming out of the administration have been rather mixed. While Nasheed has continued to vociferously criticise China, Foreign Minister Shahid has been more cautious only stating that they intend to re-negotiate agreements made by Yameen, while never mentioning about repealing it pre or post poll.

Tactical or strategic?

If change in foreign policy is seen as essentially being of two kinds, tactical or strategic, we need to ask, has a change in government in Maldives merely brought about a change in tactics i.e. methods, or has there been a shift in strategy i.e. long-term goals?

And if we look closely at this question, not just in Maldives but also in Sri Lanka, or indeed any other neighbourhood nation, it could be argued that the change in their approach to India and China has merely been tactical and not a long-term strategic shift, or a dramatic resetting of relations. This seems to be the case with Maldives, unlike as was being optimistically welcomed.

It is plain speaking, realist balancing and not tilting that appears to be underway. If India is learning to approach Sri Lanka under Rajapaksa with cautious optimism, it will do well to adopt a similar approach in Maldives. This is important for several reasons.

Balancing not tilting

First, as Indias previous National Security Advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon argues, We should get used to the idea that all our smaller neighbours, if they see India-China rivalry, will find it useful to deal with us in order to get things from the Chinese and deal with the Chinese in order to get things from us. Nasheed often makes statements such as We will be happy to maintain cultural ties with China. But we cant afford to have defence cooperation. Shahid on the other hand has been clear that, China is also going to be one of the largest economies in the world. We cant say that we will not have any relations with China because we have to appreciate what countries do for the people. This should be seen more as a balancing tactic rather than a strategic tilt.

Secondly, though Nasheed, has often criticised Chinese activities in Maldives as land grabbing by China, this does not imply that he will not cut a deal with China in the future when the time/opportunity is deemed right. Another of Indias former National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan notes that under President Yameen anti-India tendencies steadily increased and there was a pronounced tilt in favour of China. However, he also reflects, After the MDP, headed by former President Mohamed Nasheed, came to power, for the first time anti-Indian forces within Maldives could muster some support. It was also Mr. Nasheeds initial overtures to China that set the stage for Maldivian-China relations.

Ideas, agents and structure

A countrys foreign policy is undoubtedly dynamic and therefore will change and shift over time. However, it is not shaped solely by governments in power spouting wishful rhetoric but by a complex inter-play of ideas, agents (state and non-state) and structures (domestic and international). In the order to understand the evolving foreign policy of Maldives, which is also an evolving democracy, India must pay attention to all these factors. India can definitely welcome the return of a government that wants to engage, yet it needs to go beyond the India First rhetoric which has been repeated by various governments over the years. India must pay close attention to the structural constraints affecting Maldives both at the domestic and international levels.

The structure of the international system and balance of power tend to limit the foreign policy choices of smaller states. Normally, this would mean we are likely to see more continuity in the way Maldives engages with India and China, despite the change in government. But we are now living in a present and post-pandemic world where coronavirus is at the helm of world affairs. We all know that this is just not a public health crisis, but one that will affect every choice a government makes in future. Therefore, as the major powers reflect on their policy priorities, new choices will open for both India and Maldives.

Domestic structural constraints on the other hand refer to the socio-economic, political and institutional setting within which foreign policy is framed. These constraints are numerous and affect foreign policy choices at varying levels. In Maldives these constraints range from the challenges to the judicial system, limited opportunities for job creation and youth unemployment, physical vulnerability due the challenges of geography and the rise in sea-levels, and also dealing with security threats from non-state actors. The structure of its economy and restricted options for economic diversification also shape foreign policy choices. COVID-19 adds yet another layer of complexity. Given that its tourism sector accounts for 28% of its GDP and 60% of its foreign exchange earnings, the impact of the spread of COVID-19 in China, Europe and India has been devastating with Maldives becoming the worst hit in Asia in terms of lost tourism. India must pay close attention to all these emerging challenges. Dramatic changes await the foreign policy choices of the archipelago nation as well as of the world beyond it.

This article first appeared in ORF.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Police detained and educated three people over the last week for criticizing the implementation of new, and heftier fines for traffic and safety violations on social media.

The National Police has implemented new traffic and safety violation fines starting May 1, in another attempt to reduce traffic violations and road deaths.

In 2019, Cambodia reported nearly 2,000 road deaths, the highest ever recorded, with Interior Minister Sar Kheng expressing dismay at the rising death toll.

The heavy fines have resulted in people flocking to relevant government offices to register for documents they need, such as driving licenses and technical approvals for their cars. It has also caused multiple verbal spats between motorists and traffic police officers.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Police in the last week detained three people for allegedly criticizing the new fines, and made them apologize in publicly-posted videos and sign agreements before releasing them.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Headquarters will take legal actions against any individual who posts fake news, especially posting news looking down on, cursing and insulting laws and the police, read a post on the National Police website.

The National Police website reported the temporary detention of Yvon Hem Phalla on May 6 for using inappropriate words, such as evil and the Khmer pejorative aah, in his online criticism of the new fines.

His Facebook post had a picture of his motorcycle and him standing nearby complaining about being unable to ride the vehicle because he didnt have a driving license. Motorists riding motorcycles with engines above 125cc need a driving license in Cambodia.

In a video posted to the National Police website, the man apologized for his comments, saying he had looked down on the police and insulted them.

The meaning of the post makes people confused, especially affecting the dignity of police and law officials, he said in the video. I admit my mistake and apologize for this.

Two other people, Kuok Sreyna and Ros Dara, were detained similarly for re-posting old videos or photos of them being stopped by the traffic police. They were also asked to apologize in videos on the National Police website and sign agreements to refrain from such activities.

Phnom Penh Municipal Police Chief Sar Theth could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Am Sam Ath, deputy director for human rights monitoring at Licadho, said it was preferable to implement the new fines in a step-by-step manner because a lot of the angry reactions online were a result of people being unaware of the new regulations.

He said making the three people issue public apologies was problematic and impinged on their rights.

From a human rights perspective, it can affect the freedoms and rights of those people. If they dont commit a crime, why not just educate them? Why post these videos? he said.

The recent detentions follow a slew of arrests by the government for alleged online fake news posts and linked to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Human Rights Watch in April reported at least 30 arbitrary arrests on charges of spreading fake news and other charges, including the arrest of 12 people linked to the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party.
After the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has included regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad as part of its Jammu and Kashmir meteorological sub-division, director of J&K IMD Sonum Lotus said, Since they are our people, we should look after their concerns.

Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad are territories currently under Pakistani occupation.

In February 1994, the Parliament passed a unanimous resolution, which stated: the state of Jammu and Kashmir has been, is and shall be an integral part of India and any attempts to separate it from the rest of the country will be resisted by all necessary means; and that Pakistan must vacate the areas of the Indian state of J&K, which they have occupied through aggression; and resolves that all attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of India will be met resolutely.

Sonum said that media should disseminate information of IMD weather forecasts for the people in Pak occupied Kashmir and they, for now, can log on to IMDs website https://mausam.imd.gov.in/ for daily weather forecasts.

He, however, said that there was nothing new and surprising in weather forecasts for the Pak occupied Kashmir.

There is nothing new. Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh entirety belong to India and we are doing it for our people including those from Gilgit- Baltistan, and Muzaffarabad following the reorganisation of the state of J&K, he added.

While the people of Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad will get updates on the IMD website to keep them abreast with weather forecasts, we may also ensure that their representatives get the weather forecast on their mails in the near future. This is the beginning. Lets see how the government wants to go further, he said.

The official said that the basic purpose of including these areas in its Jammu and Kashmir meteorological sub-division is because people in these regions are our people and it is our responsibility to look after their concerns.

Lotus said that following the reorganisation of the J&K into two union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, it was decided to include these areas under the Ladakh region.

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MONTREAL, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Velan Inc. (TSX: VLN) today announced that, on Wednesday, May 20th, 2020, it will release its 4th Quarter and annual results for the year ended February 29, 2020.



The company will hold an analyst call on Thursday, May 21st, 2020, at 11:00 A.M. (Eastern Daylight Time) to discuss the results. The call may be accessed by dialing 1-800-954-0597 and quoting the reservation number 21962200. There will be PostView available for 7 days following this conference call. The numbers are as follow: 1-416-626-4100 or 1-800-558-5253. Enter Reservation number 21962200 then follow the system prompts.

For further information, please contact John D. Ball, CFO, at 514-707-2542.

For further information, please contact:

Yves Leduc, President & CEO

OR

John D. Ball, Chief Financial Officer

Tel.: (514) 748-7743

Fax: (514) 748-8635

Web: www.velan.com
Megan Fox was picked from obscurity and seemed to be destined for a life on the Hollywood A-list after appearing in two blockbuster Transformers films. But comments in which she compared director Michael Bay to Adolf Hitler got her fired from the franchise.

Bay told GQ in 2011 that the decision to fire Fox wasnt his, but Transformers executive producer Steven Spielbergs. He said, You know the Hitler thing. Steven (Spielberg) said, fire her right now.

The controversy erupted in 2009, when Fox told Wonderland magazine that Bay was a nightmare to work with. Hes like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation, Fox said. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So hes a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and hes not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because hes so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And its endearing to watch him.

Also read: The real reason Marvel fired Edward Norton from Avengers, replaced him with Mark Ruffalo as Hulk

Bay, on his part, said that hed moved on from the incident and wasnt hurt. I wasnt hurt, because I know thats just Megan. Megan loves to get a response, Bay told GQ. And she does it in kind of the wrong way. Im sorry, Megan. Im sorry I made you work twelve hours. Im sorry that Im making you show up on time. Movies are not always warm and fuzzy. Bay would later cast Fox in the rebooted version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which he produced.

Megan Fox in a still from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Foxs representatives always maintained that she wasnt fired, but that she chose not to return for more Transformers movies. Fox was replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the third Transformers movie. It was her decision not to return. She wishes the franchise the best, her rep had told People magazine.

Foxs co-star in the Transformers franchise, Shia LaBeouf, defended Bay. She started s*** talking our captain. Which you cant do, he told GQ. In an interview to the Los Angeles Times, he said, Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women.

He continued, Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. Its summer. Its Michaels style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. Were on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. Theres no time for [LaBeouf assumes a gentle voice] I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.

Also read: The real reason why Andrew Garfield was fired as Spider-Man, replaced by Tom Holland

Bay, in an interview to the Wall Street Journal, implied that Fox was being ungrateful about the opportunity shed been given. She says some very ridiculous things because shes 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do... Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in Transformers, he said. I like to think that Ive had some luck in building actors careers with my films.

The Transformers franchise has been rebooted twice. Bay went on to direct five films in the series, before handing over the reins to Travis Knight for the prequel film Bumblebee.

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A garda armed support unit car with two officers on board was rammed at a checkpoint and a schoolgirl was later struck on the hand by the same car as it sped from the scene, it was alleged yesterday.

Detective Sergeant Niall OConnell made this allegation at Cork Circuit Criminal Court as gardai objected to bail being granted to 28-year-old Andrew Cash.

Mr Cash had made unsuccessful bail applications at Cork District Court and at the High Court in Dublin and yesterday he made a third application for bail through barrister Paula McCarthy, who claimed there had been some change of circumstances which allowed the renewed application for bail.

Det Sgt OConnell said gardai believed that Andrew Cash was a flight risk.

Det Sgt OConnell yesterday outlined the alleged facts of the case that related to a garda checkpoint on May 11, 2018, at Carhoo, Old Mallow Road, Cork.

The detective said it was alleged that at 3.30pm that day the defendant allegedly drove a black Saab towards the checkpoint but then reversed and collided with a stationary car in which the driver was sitting.

It is alleged he then drove his car at an armed support unit. Two gardai were seated in their marked patrol car and he caused 20,000 worth of damage to that car, he said.

It was further alleged that when the car was driven at speed from the scene he later collided with a 15-year-old school girl crossing the road, his car allegedly striking her hand.

Ms McCarthy submitted, The earliest he could get a trial would be November and possibly next year. And because of restrictions due to Coronavirus he is subject to 23-hour lockdown. He has already been in custody since February 26 on these charges and this can also be taken into consideration. Also he has a young family in Portlaoise and his mother is willing to put up 20,000 bail money.

Judge Helen Boyle refused bail and said that the seriousness of the charges was something which she also had to consider and she noted the allegations of reversing into one civilian car, ramming a garda vehicle and colliding with a young pedestrian.

I my view the charges are serious charges, I take into consideration the strength of evidence against him and I must conclude he is a flight risk, Judge Boyle said.

Andrew Cash was remanded in custody for the case to be mentioned again on June 16. It is anticipated that the case will then be further adjourned to a trial date, possibly in November.

Andrew Cash of Portlaoise, Co Offaly, faces two counts of endangerment  where he created a risk of death or serious injury at Carhoo, Old Mallow Road, Cork, and a third count at College Road in Carrignavar, all related to May 11 2018. He is also accused of two counts of causing criminal damage to two cars.
Pastor Jamal Bryant to give free coronavirus tests at Mothers Day event Sunday

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Just over a month after offering coronavirus tests to minorities for $150 each at an event he was forced to cancel, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Jamal Bryant is now offering the tests for free to anyone who needs it if they show up at his church on Mothers Day.

You dont have to be a member of our church, you dont have to be a member of a church, all you have to do is be a part of humanity, Bryant said in a Facebook Live announcement Tuesday night. I want you to pick your mother up on Sunday, bring your dad, bring your aunt, bring whoever it is that you care about to New Birth on Sunday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.

In early April, Bryant announced that he had canceled a two-day drive-thru event that would have seen up to 1,000 people get tested for the coronavirus for a fee of $150 at his church in Lithonia, Georgia.

He said he was approached by a Florida lab that wanted to partner with his church to provide the coronavirus test kits and had reached an agreement with RoweDocs and Oakhurst health clinics to provide the tests. The process to obtain a test at New Birth would have involved a pre-screening to be performed by RoweDocs for a fee of $25 followed by an additional cost of $125 each for the coronavirus test.

Bryant, who said he had canceled the April event to remain compliant with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemps shelter-at-home order, had also come under heavy criticism online for charging for the tests. Coronavirus tests are mostly free as current legislation forces health insurers and employers to cover the costs to healthcare providers for screening without any out-of-pocket charges. There might still be costs, however, if a test is returned negative, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Starting on April 24, Kemp made the nations biggest push to reopen in the country when he gave the greenlight to barbershops, gyms, salons, and massage therapists to reopen. Restaurants and movie theaters followed on April 27 while the states stay-at-home order expired on April 30. Kemp urged at-risk residents to stay at home until at least mid-June.

The Georgia Department of Public Health confirmed 30,602 cases of coronavirus in the state at 12:25 p.m. Wednesday, up by 710 from Tuesday at 7:25 p.m. Some 11 additional deaths were also reported overnight, pushing coronavirus fatalities in the state to 1,306.

While lamenting Kemps move to reopen businesses and pointing to Georgias infection numbers, Bryant warned those who plan on getting tested at his church to prepare to be patient in potentially long lines. All tests will be drive-thru and is expected to last between four to five minutes.

Im excited because Atlantans, particularly black Atlantans, are woefully underserviced. As well as I am grateful to partner  both of our partners MAJL [Diagnostic] Laboratories and RoweDocs, both of those companies are owned and operated by black women, he said.
YEREVAN.  The trial of the second president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, and some other former senior officials is resuming Friday after an almost two-month break.

The ex-President, as well as former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, former Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan, and former CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov stand trial for overthrowing the constitutional order along the lines of the criminal case into the events of March 1, 2008 in Yerevan.

The trial was adjourned since mid-March due to the constant absence of presiding Judge Anna Danibekyan.
A refugee who fled war-torn Africa to start a new life in Australia will be deported after being found guilty of more than 40 crimes.

Guot Makeur Guot, 29 was fighting to overturn his visa cancellation on the basis his life would be in danger if he was forced back to Sudan during a hearing with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on Thursday.

The tribunal has thrown out the appeal over fears the Sudanese refugee is at high risk of committing more sex crimes.

Guot was found guilty of more than 40 crimes since he landed on Australian soil 14 years ago - from robbery and public drunkenness to sex with a minor and groping two schoolgirls at a bus stop.

Guot was convicted of his first sex crime in 2015, when he was found guilty for having unlawful sex with a 14-year-old girl in South Australia (stock image)

The crimes spanned from Tasmania to South Australia and Victoria, and continued even after he was told he risked deportation for re-offending.

The 29-year-old musician moved to Tasmania with his mother and four siblings after fleeing the South Sudan conflict in 2006 where his soldier father was killed.

After completing school at Hobart and working for a community centre he floated from state to state visiting family members and struggling to defeat a growing addiction to alcohol, according to the tribunal review.

Guot was convicted of his first sex crime in 2015, when he was found guilty for having unlawful sex with a 14-year-old girl in South Australia.

His next sex crime was committed in June 2017, when he groped two teenage girls at a bus stop in Melbourne.

Court documents reveal he grabbed one of the girls on the breast and buttocks before locking his arms around her and pushing her against the bus stop so she couldn't escape.

During his court appearance over the sexual assault charge Mr Makeur Guot said he said that he had not meant to scare or harm the girls, and if he had touched them in an inappropriate way, it could have been because of the alcohol.

A year later, he groped a woman on a Melbourne tram.

Guot said he had been asking the woman for directions, and didn't remember touching her.

I may have been sleepy or drunk. I dont know if I grabbed her or not. If I touched her, it was by accident.

His visa was cancelled in 2019 for failing to pass the character test, but he attempted to overturn the decision through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

He argued his safety was at risk if he returned to Sudan and his entire family now lives in Australia.

After consideration of Guot's circumstances and difficult upbringing the tribunal dismissed the appeal on the grounds of his serious criminal history, and concerns around reoffending.

Senior tribunal member Donald Morris acknowledged while Guot had struggled with alcohol problems and periods of homelessness he had failed to turn his behaviour around.

'It is saddening that, having made an initially good start on settling in Australia with his family, completing his schooling and starting to develop his musical abilities, the Applicant seems to have abandoned that progress and instead embarked on a path hallmarked by crime and, unfortunately, sometimes sexually based crime,' he said.

Mr Morris said it was 'starkly depressing' Guot continued offending after his 2015 conviction and described the groping incidents as 'completely unacceptable conduct'.

'The Tribunal takes particular account of the Courts finding that Mr Makeur Guot is at a high risk of committing further sexually based offences. I also conclude he is at a real risk of committing other offences.'
Authorities in Assam are on alert after people without any contact or recent travel history outside the state tested positive for coronavirus in the past few days. On Thursday, the state recorded eight new cases and three more were registered on Friday, taking the state tally to 56.

Seven of the 11 new cases in the last two days were detected in Silchar among returnees from Ajmer, but a couple among the other four found positive in Guwahati had no contact or travel history.

From these cases, we can clearly assume there is spread of coronavirus infection in Guwahati. That is why I request the public to immediately call 104 or get in touch with our healthcare personnel if they have symptoms of dry cough, fever, respiratory issues and diarrhoea, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.

The two Guwahati cases to have triggered an alarm include a 16-year-old girl who was detected to be Covid-19 positive after her death on Thursday and a 55-year-old woman. The other two cases include a doctor enrolled in MD course at Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH) who was involved in the screening of Covid-19 patients at the hospital and the fourth person had returned from West Bengal on May 6.

We are sorry that since her disease couldnt be detected earlier, the 16-year-old passed away. It is also unfortunate that the PG student who was involved in screening Covid-19 patients in GMCH was found positive, Sarma said.

Authorities have closed GMCH, the biggest hospital in Assam, for new patients till May 10 in order to sanitize the premises. A total of 386 persons including two GMCH professors, doctors, students, nurses and attendants have been placed in quarantine and their swabs taken for tests.

The two hostels at GMCH for the PG students have been declared containment zones. Likewise, the employees colony of B. Barooah Cancer Institute (BBCI) where the 16-year-old girl was staying with her grandmother has also been turned into a containment zone.

We have decided to test all the 700 patients at the GMCH and all other doctors, nurses, hospital attendants etc for Covid-19. Talks are on with private labs in Delhi to get the tests done expeditiously, Sarma said.

In view of the latest developments, the state government has decided to put all persons returning to Assam in quarantine facilities at 5 different locations and test them for the virus.

Till Thursday a total of 1032 persons had returned to Assam by road from other states using private vehicles or hired transport.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
The reproductive rate for Covid-19 in the Republic is now lower than Northern Ireland's.

Health Minister Simon Harris told the Dail yesterday the reproductive rate is now around 0.5, according to estimates carried out.

And Professor Philip Nolan, who leads a team modelling Covid-19 trends in the Republic, said all the main methods to measure the reproduction number - the number of people an infected person infects - put it between 0.5 and 0.6.

Yesterday, Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster said Northern Ireland's reproductive rate (R0) is currently 0.8 which she added is too high a figure to relax the lockdown.

The lower rate in the Republic is now considered stable, while admissions to hospitals and ICUs have halved since last week.

Mr Harris said: "The R0 was previously in a range of 0.5-0.8 - it is now between 0.3-0.5 in some estimates and the overall rate is now considered stable at around 0.5.

"Last week, hospital admissions were at around 40 per day, whereas this week it is around 20 per day.

"Last week, ICU admissions were at about four to six per day - modelling now shows it is at two per day this week."

John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said latest estimates of the UK's R0 are that it is currently between 0.75 and 1.0.

A couple of weeks ago he said he would have put the R0 at 0.6 or 0.7, maybe up to 0.8, but because of infection rates in care homes and hospitals, the overall estimate now stands at up to 1.0.

He said he believed around 20,000 new cases a day were still occurring in the UK, which would make contact tracing currently "impossible".

He also told the Commons Science and Technology Committee that the extent of the spread of Covid-19 in care homes and hospitals was currently an unknown number.
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Linkedin Joris Fioriti and Ashraf Khan (Agence France-Presse) Islamabad/Karachi, Pakistan  Fri, May 8, 2020 14:04 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6bce81 2 World booze,alcohol,alcohol-consumption,Pakistan,coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-lockdown,Ramadan-2020,ramadan Free

Drinking alcohol in Pakistan can be a complicated affair at the best of times, but for 25-year-old student Iram, the coronavirus pandemic has made getting a beer all but impossible.

Every spring, as the weather starts to heat up, she usually enjoys a cool brew or two.

However, this year the lockdown has compounded the annual booze shortage that comes during the holy month of Ramadan, making the task of finding a drink an even greater challenge.

"There is no more beer!" lamented Iram, an Islamabad resident who asked AFP to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals in this conservative country where drinking is illegal for Muslims, even though many people enjoy a tipple.

"I checked with four bootleggers. Three had run out and the last one was offering 24 cans for 15,000 rupees ($95)."

The sum is equivalent to the monthly wage for many people, and Iram initially baulked at the price. When she changed her mind a couple of days later, the beer was gone.

Similar scenes are playing out across Pakistan. In Lahore, the second-largest city after Karachi, things are "dry, dry, dry," said Daud.

"The hotels are closed, so there's no place to get local booze," said the lawyer, who also asked AFP not to use his real name.

In Pakistan, home to about 215 million people -- 97 percent of whom are Muslim -- only a minority is thought to drink, but this includes the elites who can afford to buy imported alcohol.

"For Muslims in Pakistan, drinking alcohol is prohibited and talking about it is taboo," Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif once wrote in a column in the New York Times.

"Drinking and denying it is the oldest cocktail in the country."

Ramadan closures

The stigma is particularly intense during Ramadan, when Pakistan's few liquor stores are closed.

The largest legal supplier of alcohol is the Murree Brewery, in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, a legacy of the British Raj that produces a range of beers and spirits catering to Pakistan's "non-Muslims" and foreign residents.

"Normally, we still manage to get what we are looking for. But this year, it has become very complicated," said Hassan, a thirty-something banker living in Islamabad.

Ramadan this year came just as Pakistan was locked down in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has killed at least 585 people across the country with numbers rising daily.

Because of the pandemic, air travel into Pakistan has stopped, and with it the flow of passengers bringing in duty-free booze.

For the last month and a half, the Murree Brewery, like many other manufacturers, was forced to halt production. Instead of producing drinks, Murree is now using alcohol to make hand sanitizer.

Isphanyar Bhandara, Murree's chief executive, said Pakistan's alcohol shortage means drinkers are being forced to source home-made alternatives that are frequently unsafe.

"The only people who are thriving are the ones who already have imported alcohol in their stores and are selling them at jacked-up prices," Bhandara said.

"The other beneficiaries are the murderous people who are making home-made alcohol with low quality which is making poor people die."

In April, at least 29 people died after drinking bootleg liquor, according to an AFP tally.

Pakistan will begin easing its nationwide lockdown over the weekend, but the move is not expected to have much impact on alcohol supplies, with liquor sales remaining off-limits for Ramadan.

Booze history

Imported whisky of only average quality nowadays fetches about $100 a bottle, compared to about $60 this time last year, according to several smugglers and buyers.

Booze has a deep history in the country, from the country's revered founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was said to enjoy spirits to military dictator Pervez Musharraf's love of whisky.

Alcohol was legal for all Pakistanis to purchase until 1977, when then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned its sale in an attempt to fend off right-wing Islamist parties.

A senior police official said underground sales persist, with bottles smuggled into Pakistan through sparsely populated areas on the south coast.

"Busting Pakistan's liquor market is quite a task as the elite of the country makes the essential consumers," the official said.

Faced with so many obstacles and a month of sobriety, Daud, the lawyer in Lahore, said in the absence of booze he is smoking more hashish, which is produced in large quantities in northwest Pakistan.

"My dealer still delivers to my house," Daud said. "It's just a lot easier."
Head of policy think tank, Danquah Institute, Richard Ahiagbah has disclosed that the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme under the Ministry of Agriculture deserves more credit than it is given.



According to him, the program is doing so well and providing numerous job opportunities for citizens.



In an interview on Happy98.9FMs Epa Hoa Daben with Doctor Cann, the politician revealed that, The Ministry of Agriculture does not engage the press to see their success stories but they have made some great strides under the PFJ programme."



Citing a thriving example, he revealed that under the programme, the Ministry has set up a poultry farm with about 5,000 birds (layers) at Adawso in the Eastern Region purposefully for egg production.



On his authority the poultry farm has created jobs for a lot of women in the Adawso catchment area.



The women are now engaged in the egg distribution business with the facility producing around 50,000 eggs per week for sale. But the only problem is that trumpeting these achievements is not being done by the Ministry.



Richard noted that some of these initiatives need to be supported more by Ghanaians to help reduce unemployment rates in the country, and urged the Ministry to keep the media informed on their progress.



The Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme is a Government of Ghana (GoG) designed and implemented programme aiming to promote growth in food production and security, create jobs across the country and produce the raw material to feed the agro-processing industries.



The Government of Ghana is committed to growing the employment figures by enabling farmers to prosper.



The PFJ focuses on delivering improved seeds, fertilizers and extension services to smallholder farmers across the country at a 50 percent subsidy absorbed by the Government.

Source: happyghana.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday the coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing 'a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering' and appealed for 'an all-out effort to end hate speech globally.'

Guterres said 'anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.'

The UN chief said migrants and refugees 'have been vilified as a source of the virus - and then denied access to medical treatment.'

Antonio Guterres, chief of the UN, has urged world leaders to 'immunize our societies against the virus of hate' which he believes is worsening amid coronavirus

#COVID19 does not care who we are, where we live, or what we believe.



Yet the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering.



Thats why Im appealing for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally. pic.twitter.com/ojh957xhQq  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 8, 2020

'With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable,' he said. 'And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.'

Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people, on educational institutions to focus on 'digital literacy' at a time when 'extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.'

He called on the media, especially social media, to 'remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content,' on civil society to strengthen their outreach to vulnerable people, and on religious figures to serve as 'models of mutual respect.'

'And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,' Guterres said.

The secretary-general stressed that COVID-19 'does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction.'

Guterres warned that minorities including Muslim migrants and Jewish people are being scapegoated over coronavirus with hate incidents increasing (file image, a woman and her child at a migrant camp in Greece)

His global appeal to address and counter COVID-19-related hate speech follows his April 23 message calling the coronarivus pandemic 'a human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis.'

Guterres said then that the pandemic has seen 'disproportionate effects on certain communities, the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups, and the risks of heavy-handed security responses undermining the health response.'

With 'rising ethno-nationalism, populism, authoritarianism and a push back against human rights in some countries, the crisis can provide a pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic,' he warned.

In February, Guterres issued a call to action to countries, businesses and people to help renew and revive human rights across the globe, laying out a seven-point plan amid concerns about climate change, conflict and repression.
As society ramps up, vulnerable older or at-risk folks with health conditions should be wearing surgical masks, rather than bandannas that can slip, he said. They should still abide by precautions to not touch their nose or mouth and may choose to mostly stay home. Avoiding crowds is essential, while going back to restaurants should be a slower process for them, he said.
BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Identity access management startup Daltrey announced today that it has partnered with leading biometrics provider Innovatrics to create a pioneering biometric solution that enables frictionless authentication across all access scenarios.

The Daltrey platform allows users to create a unified biometric credential that gives them seamless access to all physical locations and digital applications. By offering biometrics as a service, the collaboration provides business leaders with a means to solve their most pressing security, safety, and compliance challenges in a simple, cost-effective way.

Innovatrics is the leader in biometrics, with an award-winning algorithm that provides first-class speed and accuracy, says Daltrey co-founder and managing director Blair Crawford. The company consistently ranks among the best in the world in biometric benchmark evaluations, so they were the obvious partner for Daltrey.

Daltrey will be the first solution to embed Innovatrics new passive liveness technology into any digital access scenario, explains Daniel Ferak, head of product management at Innovatrics. Passive liveness check is the ideal solution for a non-intrusive, reliable, and seamless user experience when verifying identity online.

Use cases of the biometric identity access offering include:

A robust identity establishment process that creates a verified biometric credential.

Customizable biometric components, including face, iris, and fingerprints, that allow for adaptive authentication, customized to suit the risk level of all access scenarios.

Secure face recognition authentication combined with a fast, frictionless user experience across all physical and digital applications. This includes walking through doors and safety gates, as well as logging into devices and applications, including remote BYOD access.

Passive liveness detection in mobile devices, for enhanced security and speed.

An intelligent middleware platform that integrates with existing access management providers, offering biometrics as a service.

Story continues

There is a growing need for more secure, seamless and convenient authentication spanning both physical and digital access scenarios, explains Crawford. This partnership allows for an innovative identity defined approach to organizational security, helping governments and corporate enterprises create more secure, productive workplaces.

About Innovatrics

Innovatrics is a Slovak-based provider of multi-modal biometric solutions, and its algorithms rank consistently among the fastest and most accurate in fingerprint and face recognition. Its solutions are used in more than 70 countries all over the world.

Jake Wengroff

for Innovatrics

+1.917.952.6816

j@jxb1.com


Ricardo 'Rick' Barbaro, 33, is wanted by Victoria Police over the apparent slaying of his girlfriend Ellie Price

A fugitive suspected of murdering his girlfriend could be the third of his eight siblings to relish in what the Italians call 'the evil life'.

Ricardo 'Rick' Barbaro, 33, is wanted by Victoria Police over the death of Ellie Price, 26, at her south Melbourne townhouse.

Miss Price's battered body was found by loved ones on Monday and investigators have confirmed it may have been laying there for more than a week.

Barbaro comes from a notorious Australian clan where some family members have well-documented links to the powerful Italian mafia organisation from Calabria, known as the 'Ndrangheta.

The sprawling Barbaro family - which lives in Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast - also has a tragic modern history.

Ricardo's older brother, Pasquale Timothy Barbaro, 35, and younger sibling Rossario, 28, died less than a year apart in 2016 and 2017.

Both were tattooed from head-to-toe, described themselves as 'Lost Angels' and were branded with the Italian word malavita - code for 'the evil life' or 'bad life'.

Ellie Price was found dead at her south Melbourne townhouse on Monday. Police say she may have been dead for a week

Both Pasquale Timothy Barbaro, 35 (left) and his brother Rossario Barbaro, 28 (right) had matching tattoos with the motto 'malavita' (around Pasquale's neck and the small of Rossario's waist)

Living 'the bad life'

Former New South Wales assistant police commissioner Clive Small wrote a history of the Calabrian mafia in Australia with that same name: Evil Life.

'It was for years, certainly, a very strong sort of message or symbol of them,' Mr Small told Daily Mail Australia.

Of all the eight Barbaro siblings born to three women by patriarch Giuseppe 'Joe' Barbaro, it was Pasquale was submerged himself in the underworld lifestyle.

Pasquale was long associated with the drug trade in Sydney, consorting with Hells Angels and Brothers 4 Life bikies and serving time behind bars.

Prior to his death, 'Pas' would flaunt the fortunes of his apparently ill-gotten gains about town, decked out in silk Versace shirts and diamond jewelry.

THE CALABRIAN MAFIA: OLDEST CRIME GROUP IN AUSTRALIA The Calabrian mafia is described as the 'longest continuously operating crime syndicate in Australian history'. It has a long association with the farming town of Griffith, in the south west of New South Wales. The mafia extended its tentacles to Australia in the 1920s with a group of Italian migrants. Expert Clive Small said in his book that families were controlled by mafia dons from Calabria, a region located in the far south of Italy's southern 'boot'. The families brought with them standover tactics, bombings and shootings and were controlled by mafia dons back in the old country. Mr Small details in his book how the Calabrians expanded into the country's drug trade by the 1960s and dominated Australia's cannabis trade. Members of the Barbaro family, back in those days, 'came early in the piece' and were 'main players' in the drug trade, Mr Small said. The Calabrians so dominated Australia's cannabis trade that, at one point, 14 closely related Griffith families controlled 80 per cent of it. The modern mafia has attracted little publicity from modern day law enforcement for the past 20 years. Advertisement

He was said to have virtually taken up residence at the Dollhouse strip club in Kings Cross.

An anonymous party animal vividly described attending a party at his palatial mansion to Vice magazine.

'He had posters of classic Hollywood mafia characters and kept obsessively showing me his Instagram page,' 'Robbie' said.

'He kept comparing what we were doing with (Instagram playboy) Dan Bilzerian's posts, and he was sending private messages to Ariana Grande saying he was going to take her out when she was in Melbourne.

'He was getting a lap dance, surrounded by burly dudes, but he wasn't present, he didn't care, he wasn't satisfied.'

Barbaro narrowly survived an assassination attempt in late 2015, bullets whizzing past his head in a Leichhardt laneway.

But about a year later he was gunned down on a Sydney street. The bad life had caught up with him for good.

The curse of 'Pasquale'

Pasquale's bloodied body was left on the pavement in Earlwood, in the city's inner west, for the world to see.

Former associates, including the model Hossein 'Yakiboy' Balapour, freely describe Pasquale Barbaro as a 'dog' and believe he was a police informant.

Revenge porn images of his girlfriend, Chantel Baptista, surfaced online following Pasquale's death. Pasquale was said to be planning to attend her house later on the night that he died.

About six months after Pasquale was killed, his brother Rossario took his own life. Described as 'Pasquale's shadow', the younger brother was said to have spiralled into a deep depression after the hit on his brother.

Rossario Barbaro (left) took his own life less than six months after his brother Pasquale's

Revenge porn images of Pasquale's girlfriend, Chantel, surfaced online immediately following his death

Another relative named Pasquale Barbaro was jailed for life for attempting to import 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy tablets concealed in cans of tinned tomatoes from Italy

The traditional family name of 'Pasquale' appears to be cursed. Pasquale Timothy's grandfather Pasquale 'Peter' Barbaro, 58 - once the boss of the mafia's Canberra batch - was shot dead in 1990.

WHO'S WHO IN THE BARBARO BROTHERS Pasquale Timothy Barbaro: One of Giuseppe Joe Barbaro's eight children to three wives, was shot dead in November 2016 Rossario Dom Barbaro: Brother of Pasquale, took his own life in June 2017, 'depressed' over his brother's death Richard 'Rick' Barbaro: A manhunt is underway with police seeking to speak to Barbaro over the death of Ellie Hunt Advertisement

A third Pasquale better known as 'Little Pat' was shot and killed during the Melbourne gangland turf war in 2003. He was a close associate of crime figure Jason Moran.

A fourth relative of the same name - also a one-time mafia boss - is serving a life sentence for Australia's biggest ever ecstasy importation. That Pasquale tried to import 4.4 tonnes of the illicit drug into Australia in the most Italian of containers, tomato tins.

Now, all to aware of a family history written in blood, it is Ricardo Barbaro testing whether the 'bad life' will catch up to him for good.

Police announced a breakthrough on Friday morning after discovering Miss Price's car in Diggers Rest, on the outskirts on Melbourne. But officers are yet to catch up with Mr Barbaro.
Some 15,000 Indian nationals stranded in 12 countries expected to be repatriated on planes and naval ships.

The first wave of a massive exercise to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Indians stuck abroad began on Thursday, with two flights departing from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

India banned all incoming international flights in late March as it imposed one of the worlds strictest virus lockdowns, leaving vast numbers of workers and students stranded.

Some 15,000 nationals will be repatriated from 12 countries on planes and naval ships, in a mammoth exercise, which saw the civil aviation ministrys website crash on Wednesday as panicked citizens rushed to register.

Two warships have steamed to the Maldives and another to the UAE  home to a 3.3-million-strong Indian community which makes up some 30 percent of the Gulf states population.

The consulate in Dubai said it had received almost 200,000 applications, appealing on Twitter for patience and cooperation as India undertakes the massive task of repatriation.

Indian citizens waiting at the Dubai airport to board the Air India flight scheduled to depart at 5pm. 350 people are flying out from Dubai & Abu Dhabi to Kochi & Kozhikode. 200000 Indians have registered to be repatriated from the UAE#RepatriationFlightsToIndia

: @cgidubai pic.twitter.com/r2gONFhrlb  Sameer Hashmi (@sameerhashmi) May 7, 2020

Indian citizens with coveted tickets, arriving at Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports, were greeted by medics in masks, gloves and plastic aprons who took blood samples for antibody tests.

The results came out in 10 minutes. Mine has been negative. Im super relieved, a 40-year-old passenger at Abu Dhabi airport told the AFP news agency.

Ive lost my job in the company I was working with. Im feeling a bit weird going home  while Im happy that I am going home there is also a sense of uncertainty.

The oil-rich Gulf is reliant on the cheap labour of millions of foreigners, mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Many live in squalid camps far from the regions showy skyscrapers and malls.

But the novel coronavirus and its devastating economic impact have left many workers sick and others unemployed, unpaid and at the mercy of sometimes unscrupulous employers.





We have one or two flights planned every day now for the next five or six days, Consul General Vipul told AFP at Dubai airport.

He said most of those on board were workers who had lost their jobs, together with pregnant women, the elderly and some stranded tourists.

Some people will be left out, its inevitable in this kind of situation  not everyone can be accommodated immediately, he said.

Delays and frustration

The two flights from the UAE  both destined for the southern Indian state of Kerala  will transport just 354 people.

A flight planned for Thursday from Qatar has been postponed until the weekend.

According to Indian media reports, delays have been triggered by the need to test the aircrew for coronavirus.

A naval vessel is expected to arrive at Dubais Port Rashid.

The Indian High Commission in the Maldives posted images on Twitter of one of its warships entering Male harbour in advance of Fridays planned evacuation of some 1,000 people.

Other flights will leave Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as London in the United Kingdom and San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Washington, DC in the United States.

But frustrations have mounted over the slow pace of the exercise, as well as the fact that evacuees will have to pay for their passage home and spend two weeks in quarantine on arrival.

There are so many people who have lost their jobs here  theyre literally going hungry, Yasin, a 50-year-old restaurant manager who is now out of a job, told AFP as he checked in for his flight.

And now the government has asked for people to pay for the tickets. I sincerely want to request the government to waive that, he said.

They should protect their people. People do not have money to survive here, paying for flights is not possible at all.

Those who havent managed to get a ticket home have voiced their frustrations in a torrent of posts on social media, while some turned up to try their luck.

Ajith, a 43-year-old IT engineer whose mother passed away two days ago, waited anxiously at Dubai airport, checking with the official who held the all-important waiting list for the first flight out.

My mother was old and had medical issues  there is no one in India to take care of things, so I made an emergency request to the consulate, he told AFP, before finally managing to secure a seat on the flight.
Money print frenzy aimed at covering gov't spending has always led to disaster  NBU governor

19:20, 08.05.20 1174

Smolii strongly opposes the idea of "turning on a printing press," noting that the vaccine must not be worse than the disease.
An experimental Chinese spacecraft has returned to Earth after a mysterious malfunction.

The craft is part of a mission to increase Beijings presence in space  its own version of the International Space Station is part of the plans.

The craft was launched from a new heavy-lift carrier rocket, the Long March 5B, from Hainan island on Tuesday.

It then orbited around Earth before dropping into the atmosphere and landing back in China as planned, according to state media.

But its mission had been hit by a mysterious malfunction with a flexible and inflatable cargo return capsule that was being tested as part of the launch, and which China gave no further information on. The China Manned Space Agency has said only that it operated abnormally during reentry on Wednesday and data is being analysed.

Recommended Chinese spacecraft sends first ever pictures taken on far side of moon

The spacecrafts mission did not include any crew, but reportedly was a test of a capsule that could one day carry Chinese astronauts into space. It is said to be an improvement on the Shenzhou capsule based on the former Soviet Unions Soyuz model and can carry six astronauts instead of three.

The spacecraft was flying stably in a highly elliptical orbit, with the power supply, measurements and control links normal, the official China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation had said earlier, following reports of the issues, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

China is working on a permanent orbiting station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely because of US objections.

Beijing previously launched an experimental space station and plans four crewed and four cargo missions to finish a permanent space station within about two years.

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust standing at three-light-years tall, bursting with jets of gas from fledgling stars buried within, was captured by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010 Nasa/ESA/STScI Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures The first ever selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa's Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012 Nasa/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Death of a star: This image from Nasa's Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on 1 January 2019 by a camera on Nasa's New Horizons spaceraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth Getty Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, and released on 10 April 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth Getty Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Pluto, as pictured by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015 Nasa/APL/SwRI Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks running downhill on the surface Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary flowing water. It has since been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand Nasa/JPL/University of Arizona Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station in October 2015 Nasa/Scott Kelly

Chinas burgeoning space programme achieved a milestone by landing a spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon last year and plans to send a lander and rover to Mars.

The programme has developed rapidly, especially since its first crewed mission in 2003, and has sought cooperation with space agencies in Europe and elsewhere.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
Trump Renews US Sanctions Against Syria Over Ongoing Conflict

Sputnik News

18:29 GMT 07.05.2020

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - President Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress on Thursday announcing that he is renewing US sanctions against Syria due to the ongoing conflict in the country.

"I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect the national emergency declared with respect to this threat and to maintain in force the sanctions to address this national emergency", Trump said in the letter to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Trump called on the Syrian government to end the war in the country and condemned Russia and Iran for supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad. The US president also called on the Syrian government to enact a nationwide ceasefire and to negotiate a political solution to the conflict.

The US troops, jointly with the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, are keeping control over a part of northeastern Syria. The American military is concentrated around oil and gas fields in the provinces of Al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor. The US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been carrying out airstrikes and other operations against terrorists in Syria since September 2014.

The Syrian government sees the US presence on its soil as a violation of national sovereignty and an attempt to seize its natural resources.

A Sputnik

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Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah Ranger had just been shot dead, the third high-school-aged boy killed by gun violence this year. Within two days, yet another young man would be gunned down, Torontos 15th gun death in 2020.

As a group of bereaved mothers and community advocates working to end gun violence gathered for a virtual meeting earlier this month, the urgency of their objective was apparent  and for some, too close to home.

When stuff like this happens my immediate thought  especially when its the younger ones that are 15 and 16  goes to the mothers, said Evelyn Fox, the mother of 26-year-old Kiesingar Gunn, who was killed in 2016 by what police believe was a stray bullet.

When theres shootings that are like my sons, it just brings you right back in the moment.

In recent years, politicians at all levels of government have announced plans and funding to combat growing gun violence within the Greater Toronto Area, although some efforts have not proven successful. But this year, as money and attention have been diverted to the fight against COVID-19, violence-prevention experts, youth workers and advocates worry the issue has fallen off the radar.

The attention that this would usually get  its not happening, Louis March, founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement, said in response to a question from the Star during the meeting, in which people took turns speaking by video over a Zoom chat.

The concern is especially acute as the city approaches the summer months, when gun violence has typically increased. And because the shootings are still happening throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, even as other types of major crime have dropped.

As of May 12, the number of shootings is up 13 per cent compared to last year, and 15 people have been fatally shot, the highest year-to-date number since 2016 and up from 14 by the same date in 2019.

And although the federal government moved this month to ban assault-style firearms, critics including Ontario Premier Doug Ford say that does little to combat the majority of urban gun crime. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada confirms the first allotment of the $250 million to fight gun crime promised during the 2019 election has not yet been distributed.

Im not sure how many lives we have to lose to make a change to gun violence, Sureya Ibrahim, co-founder of Mothers for Peace and a community leader in Regent Park, said during the meeting.

Young people are dying.

Why are shootings still happening during the pandemic?

Criminologists say the impact of COVID-19 on crime trends will not be fully apparent until longer-term data are available. But preliminary Toronto statistics show that while some crime categories have dropped amid the pandemic  including some robberies, assaults and auto theft  shootings have not.

Sixty-one people have been shot in the city this year, according to Toronto police statistics published Tuesday, and police have recorded 142 incidents of a gun being fired. This is up compared to last year  which saw 126 shootings, year-to-date  and is about in line with the averages over the last five years.

March, when social-distancing efforts began, saw the most shootings in a month this year; incidents of gun violence dropped slightly in April.

These are very unusual times and it wouldnt be surprising if, because of the pandemic, there might be significant changes to crime patterns, said University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley, adding that crime fluctuates for a variety of reasons.

One major factor impacting gun violence may be changes to the illegal economy amid COVID-19. With violence often linked to the illegal drug and firearms trade, Wortley said the closure of Canadas border with the United States may have heightened the stakes.

Has it shrunk the illegal economy and, therefore, is there more competition for the limited resources? And in this case, are there more ruthless participants in that economy? he asked.

Roderick Brereton, a community advocate and youth worker, said the answer to both is an adamant yes.

For the crime-involved youth he works with from Brampton to Oshawa, a decrease in the availability of drugs means theres little access to money  and debts are being collected.

Its very, very precarious at this point in time in the streets, Brereton said.

Despite the closure of the U.S. border to all non-essential travel, criminals are still attempting to smuggle guns. According to data provided to the Star by the Canadian Border Services Agency, the total number of firearms seized in February, March and April of this year dropped from the same months last year  to 99 from 129  but border agents nonetheless still confiscated 23 guns in March and 18 in April.

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders said it is too early to tell how the closure of the U.S. border has impacted the flow of guns into the city. Last year, Toronto police traced 80 per cent of handguns used in crimes back to the U.S., he said in a written response to the Stars questions.

We do know that access to illegal firearms is still occurring, Saunders said.

What is happening to combat gun violence during the pandemic, and as summer approaches?

Considering its population and diversity, Toronto has done remarkably well by world standards when it comes to gun violence  but that doesnt mean that we shouldnt strive to become even safer, Wortley said.

Until long-term problems are addressed, including poor education and employment prospects for the citys disadvantaged populations, we are going to have these incidents occurring, if not increasing, over the next decade.

The concern among many community advocates and crime-prevention experts is that the social conditions that lead to violence  including poverty, inadequate housing and education, and a lack of community supports  will be exacerbated by COVID-19. Some already worry about the consequences of the closure of hubs and drop-in centres for youth.

A rise in poverty and inequality and a reduction of services for adults and youth increase the likelihood of violence, we need long-term progressive policies to address these issues, said Jasmine Ramze Rezaee, manager of advocacy with the YWCA Toronto, which offers services to help families bereaved by gun violence and recently authored a report on the gendered aspects of gun violence.

For women who have lost a loved one, the persistent lack of government investment in community supports and silence on gun violence right now is really disheartening.

In an interview, Mayor John Tory said that while he appreciates those people who keep us on our toes, concerns about gun violence not being a priority are not well-founded.

Among the citys efforts to address the root causes of crime are new grants that will see $2 million in funding go toward community agencies for youth violence prevention projects.

While gun violence hasnt been in the news as much because of the pandemic, it certainly has been a keen focus of attention on my part and that of the police chief, Tory said.

In his written responses to the Star, Saunders said that during COVID-19, Toronto polices commitment to tackling gun violence has not changed. The forces centralized shooting response team is continuing to respond to all firearm and shooting incidents and conduct thorough investigations, he said.

As for plans over the summer, the objective remains to be where the community needs us, to be visible and to be disruptive to street gangs.

At a meeting about gun violence in January, GTA mayors and police chiefs called for smarter investments in programming for families and at-risk youth, with Tory specifically saying federal funding to do so was needed now.

Asked about the status of new federal funding, intended to be split into $50 million a year for five years, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada said earlier this month the government remains committed to the funding, but the specific allocation details and mechanism of this new funding is currently under development. She could not estimate when the funding will be available.

The mayors also called for changes to allow Canadas border agency to collaborate more efficiently with local police. A spokesperson for the CBSA said it has renewed its engagement with partners e.g.: Greater Toronto Area, the RCMP, and international partners, to deter and interdict the illegal importation of firearms.

This is one of the agencys top priorities, the spokesperson said.

Asked about the federal governments move to ban assault-style weapons during a press briefing Saturday, Premier Doug Ford said the money would be better used towards stopping guns at the border.

The only way to truly to tackle gun violence is to crack down on the illegal guns being smuggled in daily at our borders, Ford said.

Crime-prevention experts disagree; there are many other ways to tackle violence. These include well-known and research-backed approaches to address the root causes of crime, said Irvin Waller, a professor emeritus in criminology at the University of Ottawa and author of Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime.

Waller advocates for a public health approach with the aim to intervene before crime takes place, one that would see partnerships between social services and health practitioners. He stresses the importance of a dedicated crime-reduction unit that would diagnose the reasons for gun violence and propose actions to be taken.

A public health approach is taking place right now, amid COVID-19: What they are doing is looking at epidemiology and risk factors, and then developing science to cope with it, he said.

The big difference between COVID-19 and gun violence, however, is that we know what to do, he said. Theres no waiting on a cure or a vaccine.

We know what would work on this stuff, Waller said.

With files from Tess Kalinowski

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing for the Star. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

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Medics work in a laboratory to check samples taken for new coronavirus testing at the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, April 10, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

The Health Ministry confirmed no new Covid-19 infections Friday morning, keeping the nation's infection tally at 288.

This marks day 22 that Vietnam has gone without community transmission of the disease.

Vietnams Covid-19 count went up to 288 Thursday evening after 17 Vietnamese from the UAE tested positive.

The latest patients are among 297 Vietnamese repatriated from the UAE on Vietnam Airlines flight VN0088 last Sunday. The flight landed at the Can Tho Airport in the Mekong Delta and all passengers were quarantined at a university dorm in nearby Bac Lieu Province.

The new patients are being treated at the Bac Lieu General Hospital, raising Vietnam's active cases to 55, 14 of whom have tested negative once and seven twice.

Officials have said that although the condition inside Vietnam is stable, authorities need to tighten control on all arrivals from abroad.

In April and early May, Vietnam has repatriated 1,700 citizens from Canada, Japan, France, Thailand and the UAE. Another 300 Vietnamese are expected to return from Canada, Malaysia and the U.S. by Monday.

Vietnam has more than 16,500 people in quarantine, those that have returned from abroad and those who have come in contact with the returnees. Of these, 162 are quarantined at hospitals, 6,600 are staying at centralized camps and the rest at home or other accommodation facilities.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected 212 countries and territories, and its reported death toll has risen above 270,300.
New Delhi: An Air India flight with 235 Indian nationals from Singapore arrived at the Delhi International Airport on Friday (May 8, 2020) under the Vande Bharat Mission. It is the first of the many flights that will be arriving from the island nation with Indian nationals onboard.

The Delhi Airport Twitter handle posted a heart warming message while welcoming the citizens back to India. The tweet read: "Seeing people coming home is the best feeling for #DelhiAirport. Heres a glimpse of the first Evacuation flight AI381 to #Delhi that landed a short while ago from Changi Airport."

Residents of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi are among the people who have returned from Singapore. Everyone will be put under a 14-day mandatory quarantine.

Earlier today, a flight from Dhaka with 167 passengers onboard, all medical students from Kashmir landed in Srinagar.

Yesterday, two flights from Abu Dhabi and Dubai landed in Kochi and Kozhikode with 181 and 182 passengers on board, respectively.

Vande Bharat Mission is touted as India's biggest ever repatriation exercise in history to bring back its nationals stranded abroad due to the international travel lockdown over the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
It might seem harsh that employees at Conestoga College are being forced to use up all their paid vacation days for the year by the beginning of August.

But its merely the first drop of rain in the thunderstorm thats coming.

Weve got to get ready for a new world, said college president John Tibbits.

Tibbits says the COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest external threat to college operations since Conestoga began, 53 years ago.

Although its hard to predict exactly what the next few years will look like, the college is looking at a $50-million to $70-million loss in revenue this fiscal year. Its annual operating budget is about $400 million.

All college campuses closed in mid-March in response to the pandemic. The spring term is happening online, beginning May 19.

The fall term is a question mark. But there will be disruption.

Among institutes of higher education, Conestoga is particularly vulnerable. There are two main reasons. First, it relies heavily on a hands-on learning environment. That environment must undergo a profound change if the college can open in September.

Second, more than half its students are from outside Canada. The college had nearly 11,000 enrolled this year, more than University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University combined. But that made it difficult for the college when travel is restricted.

Already there are 1,000 fewer foreign students starting spring term than the college expected, creating a tuition shortfall of $10 million.

Here are just some of the changes Conestoga anticipates as it approaches the 2020-21 school year:

To control the spread of the virus, masks will be worn by everyone and technology will be used to ensure there is no crowding in the buildings. That means additional cost.

Instead of having 24 students in a lab at one time, procedures will change to allow, say, eight students in at a time so that physical distancing can be maintained. That means three shifts in one lab (morning, afternoon and evening), with deep cleaning between shifts. Both the cleaner and the lab instructor will need to work more hours and be paid more.

To make room for these smaller groups of students, continuing education classes will be suspended.

Millions of dollars will be spent to adjust the curriculum and train instructors and staff for remote learning. Virtual reality, embedded video and simulated environments will take the place of classroom equipment and experiences.

Some training programs, including for personal support workers and health-care workers, will expand.

To ease the financial crunch, renovations will have to wait at the Reuter Drive building in Cambridge, which the college had bought in order to house its trades training programs. Thats $45 to $50 million in expenses that can be put off till later. But not forever.

Fewer Canadian first-year students are expected to start in the fall, leading to another loss of revenue. Because high schools have experienced major disruption too, and because of widespread unemployment, Tibbits thinks many Grade 12 students will prefer to repeat their final year in high school for free, rather than pay to come to college.

Hundreds of college staff positions are expected to disappear. Some people have already been laid off and others likely will be. Some were expecting to be hired to teach, and wont be offered contracts. Others have been given incentives to retire.

After the massive government stimulus spending comes the massive deficits, and then the austerity. Tibbits said Alberta and Manitoba already have made significant cuts in their funding of post-secondary education. He is bracing for the same in Ontario.

There is a long road ahead. Many experts are predicting second and third waves of outbreaks, with two or three years before the virus is finally under control.

The uncertainty is the hardest part.

Tibbits says its not like an earthquake that happens just once, and then you clean up and move on.

Its aftershock after aftershock, he said.

Back to the forced vacation: The union says it may be damaging to employees mental health if they go 11 months without paid time off. The college, which wants to free itself of the liability, says employees will have opportunities to take unpaid vacation after the summer if they need a break.

On the ground, thats deeply unfortunate for employees. From 30,000 feet above, its almost invisible.
A trucking company that saw a cluster of Brandon employees contract COVID-19 was applauded Thursday for taking action that helped contain the spread of the virus.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Paul's Hauling on Richmond Avenue East in Brandon. (The Brandon Sun)

A trucking company that saw a cluster of Brandon employees contract COVID-19 was applauded Thursday for taking action that helped contain the spread of the virus.

Pauls Hauling Ltd.s Brandon maintenance shop, which has been identified as the workplace where the outbreak occurred, took pre-emptive measures by placing workers in smaller groups and limiting contact between them and other workers, Manitobas chief public health officer, Dr. Brent Roussin, said during Thursdays health briefing.

The number of cases remained at seven on Thursday, "but with further public health investigation, its felt that that number could have been higher but for some of the precautions that that workplace took," said Roussin, who once again did not name the company, which The Brandon Sun independently verified.

All of the cases identified relate to a single group  five employees and two others who were in contact with the infected employees.

"Its a real note to the actions taken by this business, the actions that can be taken by any business to reduce the impacts of this virus," Roussin said.

He noted 14 people who did not display any symptoms were also tested  the first time Manitoba health officials have tested an entire group of asymptomatic people.

All 14 came back negative.

"Asymptomatic testing, you have to be careful with it," Roussin said. "We dont want to do it widespread, but in certain circumstances ... where youre in close contact with an outbreak it can be utilized, and we did in fact utilize it in this situation."

Roussin said the case investigation and contact tracing were done quickly, and even if some people who were tested turn out to be positive for the virus, they have already been self-isolating and the number of contacts should be small.

"Certainly, you might see more cases, but its unlikely to see a lot of contacts generated from those cases because people self-isolated so quickly."

In addition to Brandon, Pauls Hauling has terminals in Winnipeg, Esterhazy, Sask., and Thunder Bay, Ont.

Transporting fuel and petroleum products constitutes a large portion of its business, with transportation lines running across Western Canada as well as into the United States.

When asked about public health orders regarding quarantines and interprovincial travel that exclude the transportation of goods and services, Roussin said, "Were always looking at our interventions over time, and we know that those orders are in place because of the risk of importing the virus ... into the province.

"Were aware of issues, but this particular cluster doesnt change our thoughts on that," Roussin said.

He reminded truck drivers they do need to limit interactions in areas that have increased cases of COVID-19 and to self-monitor for symptoms after they return home.

"So there are precautions in place, but its a balance," Roussin said. "We have to maintain our supply chains to be able to function."

Meanwhile, Shared Health chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa sent a shout-out to Valleyview Care Centre in Brandon, where staff  including executive director Connie Krahn  spent 12 hours last week cutting and styling hair for shut-in residents.

"Connies not a hairstylist," Siragusa pointed out, "but she is a Good Samaritan, and its a wonderful act of kindness for the residents, who havent been able to get out and have a haircut for a couple of months."

Valleyview is part of private provider Reveras chain of care homes.

Manitoba health officials reported no new cases of COVID-19 Thursday.

One case that had been considered probable has been ruled as negative, so the total number of lab-confirmed positive and probable positive cases in Manitoba is 283.

There have been 21 confirmed cases so far in Prairie Mountain Health.

Meanwhile, Manitoba has 33 active cases, while 243 individuals have recovered from the virus.

 brobertson@brandonsun.com
- Selected as a Poster of Distinction for presentation during Digestive Disease Week 2020

- Proved its efficacy with outstanding inhibition of gastric acid secretion and safety

- Proactively targeting the anti-acid secretion agent market valued $37 billion

SEOUL, South Korea, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Daewoong Pharmaceutical (Daewoong) unveiled for the first time the phase 3 clinical data of Fexuprazan, a novel gastroesophageal reflux disease agent at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2020. The abstract of Fexuprazan has been rated in the top 10% posters of all American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) abstracts selected for poster presentation and selected as a Poster of Distinction for presentation during Digestive Disease Week.

Fexuprazan is a novel potassium-competitive acid blocker (P-CAB) developed by Daewoong, which reversibly blocks the proton pump that secretes gastric acids located in the cannalicular membrane. It is a next-generation of proton pump inhibitors (PPI), which are widely used for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). A phase 3 clinical trial of Fexuprazan was conducted in Korea in patients with erosive esophagitis, and additional clinical trials are ongoing for other acid-related diseases.

The phase 3 clinical trial in patients with erosive esophagitis was conducted in 25 hospitals in Korea. Fexuprazan showed 99% of mucosal healing rate at week 8 and was well tolerated in the patients. Fexuprazan also showed improved symptom relief. Particularly, in the patients with moderate to severe symptoms, Fexuprazan exhibited significantly faster and better heartburn relief compared to Esomeprazole and this heartburn relief was shown to be maintained during nighttime. Furthermore, atypical symptom such as cough was also improved with the treatment of Fexuprazan.

Coordinating investigator Oh Young Lee M.D., Ph.D. at the Division of Gastroenterology of Hanyang University Hospital said, "Through this promising results in the erosive esophagitis patients, Fexuprazan has proven to become a best alternative for the treatment of GERD and to fulfill the medical unmet needs of the current therapies by providing with the fast and effective relief from heartburn as well as endoscopic healing."

Sengho Jeon, CEO of Daewoong, said, "We are committed to developing a novel and improved therapeutic options, and are very excited that Fexuprazan will be a valuable addition to the current treatment for acid-related diseases. We expect accelerated development of Fexuprazan through partnerships and will soon have a unique opportunity to commercialize Fexuprazan in the global markets such as US and China.

In January, Daewoong signed an agreement with Moksha8, a leading pharmaceutical company in Latin America. As Daewoong began the successful entry into the global market, Fexuprazan is expected to position as a next global blockbuster drug in the anti-acid secretion agent market valued $37 billion.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1165701/Fexuprazan_Phase_3_results.jpg
The countrys pharma plants have continued to run through the nationwide lockdown, and now a few cases of employees testing positive for the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) have started flowing in. While most hubs continue to operate despite these challenges, state regulators are on their toes to ensure that production is not hit and protocols are followed.

In Himachals Baddi, for example, some first information reports (FIRs), too, have been registered in cases where deviation to the advised protocol has been observed. With around 50 plants in Baddi, Himachal came under ...
Hundreds of scam sites attempting to seize on worries about coronavirus have been taken offline by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre.

The organisation, which is part of GCHQ, says it has taken 307 fake sites after they were reported by the public.

The sites attempted to capitalise on fear around the virus, offering dangerous products that claimed to protect against catching it.

Offers of fake testing kits, face masks and even vaccines were among the scams seeking to exploit the pandemic, notified to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service, which launched in April.

"This really is a phenomenal response from the British public," said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the NCSC.

"I would like to thank them for embracing our reporting service as well as the many organisations which have promoted it.

"While cyber criminals continue to prey on people's fears, the number of scams we have removed in such a short timeframe shows what a vital role the public can play in fighting back.

"I would urge people to remain vigilant and to forward suspect emails to us. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."

Reports received by the service quadrupled after backing by MoneySavingExpert's Martin Lewis, leading to more than 10,000 additional reports in just one day.

"There's been an explosion of scam adverts in the UK," Mr Lewis said.

"We've been fighting them on all fronts, I've even sued, but the toughest nut to crack is scam emails, because emails come from everywhere.

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

"That's why the NCSC's new report-and-remove function is so vital... at last, we can forward scams to reportphishing.gov.uk and know that someone will take action.

"Yet we need what I call 'social policing' too - everyone that can spot a scam must take up arms and report it to protect those who can't.

"It's why I've shouted it from the roof tops on my show, MSE and social media, and we've seen the rate of reports quadruple, which is proof people are ready to do their bit."

Other bogus websites were also taken down, with some made to look like official Gov.uk and TV licencing sites, which attempt to trick people into handing over sensitive billing information.

Additional reporting by Press Association
While the Wisconsin Supreme Court and governors across the 50 states ponder the right way to reopen, hospitals and medical facilities are planning an incremental return to normalcy on a regional basis.

During a video conference with members of the media Thursday morning, members of Advocate Aurora Healths leadership team briefed journalists on its plan to reopen.

The short answer is that nothing will be the same for a while. And the ways physicians, nurses and physicians assistants see patients may never be the same again. That might even be a good thing, according to Advocate Auroras leadership.

The complexities of this crisis and the problems it poses cannot be overstated, Gary Stuck, Advocate Auroras chief medical officer, said.

For now, Advocate Aurora is slowly reopening its normal services depending on regional conditions. Places where the coronavirus outbreak is worse  like in Racine, Kenosha, Brown and Milwaukee counties  will see medical offerings return to normal at a slower pace. Another factor will be access to the necessary personal protective equipment; if medical professionals cant be safe seeing patients, then visits cant happen.

But where the outbreak has not been so severe, more elective and noncritical visits will be allowed by Advocate Aurora.

When asked on what date operations will fully return to normal, Chief Nursing Officer Mary Beth Kingston, Ph.D., replied We dont have a full timeline. That will vary by site. That echoed what Gov. Tony Evers and other state health leaders have been saying for weeks: that life wont return to normal like a switch, but rather it will take time to turn back the dial on restrictions.

We cant turn this on all at once, Stuck said.

A handful of more rural Advocate Aurora facilities in Wisconsin are already reopened for elective procedures. And almost all radiology operations are back up to full speed. Next week, the same things will start happening in Illinois for Advocate Aurora facilities.

Ascension Health appears to be following a similar model. A couple Ascension hospitals are already resuming elective surgeries and non-urgent procedures in Florida, since Florida has been one of the first states to start rolling back its statewide restrictions.

Many are choosing not to visit their doctors or go to the emergency room  because theyre concerned about exposure to coronavirus, Kingston said.

Thats not what medical providers want to happen. They want to continue seeing patients

It is safe to come back, added Kelly Jo Golson, Advocate Auroras chief marketing officer. We still want patients who need care to still come in to receive care, even if most visits wont be like youre used to when you go to the doctors office.

In what is called a virtual waiting room, most patients who arrive early for their appointments will wait in their cars before its time to come in.

Other added precautions include:

Coronavirus testing for all patients entering surgery;

Masks for all patients, providers and other people in hospitals;

Social distancing protocols, including staggered appointments and newly designed waiting areas to minimize contact; and

Enhanced cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting of surfaces and rooms.

If anyone is experiencing a health problem or has a concern, even if it appears to be completely unrelated to coronavirus, medical professionals are still advising they call their medical provider to set up an appointment.

Virtual visits will continue to be used, added Golson. She said that theres a good chance virtual care visits will remain popular for months, and perhaps permanently, but still said that There are times patients need to be seen, hands-on, eyes-on care.

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Preparations began on INS Jalashwa on Friday to receive the Indian nationals who will be evacuated from the Maldives under operation 'Samudra Setu'. The passengers are expected to board the ship shortly. INS Jalashwa on Thursday entered Male port for the first phase to repatriate Indians from the Maldives.

The 16,900-tonne INS Jalashwa, the countrys second-largest warship after aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, apart from its crew can carry around 8,00 to 1,000 people.

READ | Navy readying INA Jalashwa & 2 other warships to evacuate Indians stranded in Gulf nations

Watch INS Jalashwa preparations here

#WATCH Preparations begin on INS Jalashwa to receive Indian nationals who will be evacuated from Maldives under operation. Passengers to board the ship shortly. #SamudraSetu. pic.twitter.com/BmQqmol05E  ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

#WATCH Preparations begin on INS Jalashwa to receive Indian nationals who will be evacuated from Maldives under operation #SamudraSetu. pic.twitter.com/7Z7omOZDhP  ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

READ | INS Jalashwa enters Maldives' Male port to evacuate Indians stranded amid to Covid; WATCH

INS Jalashwa draws close to Male Port to evacuate Indians from Maldives.

#WATCH INS Jalashwa that will evacuate Indian nationals from Maldives under operation #SamudraSetu draws close to Male Port. pic.twitter.com/P9l2qPo0Td  ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

'Operation Samudra Setu'

Indian Navy in an official statement on Tuesday said that three Naval warships have sailed out to bring back Indian citizens from Maldives and United Arab Emirates (UAE) who are stranded due to Coronavirus pandemic. These warships include INS Jalashwa, INS Magar and INS Shardul and these will return to Kochi.

INS Jalashwa deployed off Mumbai coast, along with INS Magar, diverted for the Maldives on Monday night, the Spokesman said. While INS Shardul diverted to Dubai to evacuate the expatriates, he added. INS Magar and INS Shardul are Southern Naval Command ships, while INS Jalashwa is from Eastern Naval Command.

READ | Tipplers line up outside TASMAC shops in Tamil Nadu with never-seen-before discipline

READ | No more than two 750ml bottles, once a week: HC revises Tamil Nadu liquor sale guidelines

(With inputs from agency)
A senior officer on Friday impressed upon district police chiefs to keep a close watch over the activities of surrendered, released terrorists and over ground workers (OGWs) while focussing on anti-militancy operations especially in the areas of Jammu region connected with Kashmir valley.

Inspector General of Police (IGP), Jammu zone, Mukesh Singh, gave these directives during a high-level meeting that he chaired with range deputy inspectors generals (DIGs) and district SSPs of Jammu through video conference to take stock of measures taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 and other important issues of Jammu zone, a police spokesman said.

In view of the recent killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naikoo during an encounter in Pulwama district, a detailed briefing was given to the district SSPs especially of Doda, Kishtwar, Ramban, Rajouri and Poonch districts to maintain close vigil over the activities of surrendered, released terrorists, OGWs and returnees from Pakistan, the spokesman said.

The police personnel were also briefed on keeping focus on anti-militancy operations, especially in the areas connected with Kashmir valley, for ensuring that "anti-national elements" do not sneak into Jammu region and indulge in any sabotage, he said.

The district SSPs discussed various issues regarding the civil administration, including lodging migrant labourers near the industries at Samba and Bari Brahmana to make sure that industrial activity does not suffer, issue of migrant workers yearning to head back to their native places and the fact that a large number from outside have already reached Jammu, the spokesman further said.

Also, the issue of a large number of communal posts on social media from all communities having potential to disturb peace was also raised, the spokesman added.

The IGP asked officers to provide adequate help to the civil administration so that persons coming from Kashmir valley and outside the Union territory are screened and quarantined.

During the meeting, a detailed briefing was given by the DIGs and SSPs of Jammu zone with regard to measures being taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus in their respective districts.

They also briefed the IGP Jammu zone about measures being taken by police at various quarantine and isolation centres established by the civil administration as well as police department and facilities being provided to the quarantined people.

Singh commended the role of police officers and jawans for working round the clock in assisting the civil administration especially with the Health department in fighting COVID-19 during the ongoing lockdown.

Besides, a detailed analysis of arrangements for movement of stranded labourers and students as well as essential commodities from other states to the UT was also discussed, he said.

The district SSPs were advised to liaise with district magistrates concerned to ensure smooth movement of people from nomadic communities (Gujjars and Bakarwals) from Jammu region to Kashmir valley and also to ensure permission is obtained from the tehsildar and Sheep Husbandry department before proceeding to Kashmir valley as per past practice, the spokesman added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai, May 8 : Top leaders from Maharashtra expressed grief over the deaths of 16 migrants who were run over by a goods train as they slept on the railway tracks near Aurangabad on Friday.

"The news of the unfortunate death of innocent workers sleeping on the railway tracks in Aurangabad after being run over by a good train is heart wrenching. Convey my deepest condolences and sympathies to the next of kin of the deceased," said Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.

Expressing deep anguish over the tragedy, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced a compensation of Rs 5,00,000 to kin of each victim and said the state will bear medical expenses for those injured in the mishap.

"We are in constant touch with the Centre to make arrangements for running as many trains as possible for the migrants to return to their homes. I appeal to them not to give up hopes," Thackeray urged.

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar termed the incident a aheart wrenching' and said all necessary steps must be taken for the safe travel of the migrants to their hometowns.

"The Central government must work closely in unison with the state governments to ensure that these migrants reach their homes safely," Pawar urged.

State Congress President and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat termed the early morning incident as aceunfortunate and extremely sad".

"The crisis that these workers are going through is heart wrenching. I appeal to my stranded brothers that they should stop where they are. The Maharashtra government is trying everything to send them back," Thorat said.

Pointing out that the issue of stranded migrants is getting serious by the day, the minister said though the State Congress is prepared to foot the travel expenses of those workers wanting to return to Gujarat, that government is not accepting them.

"The Gujarat govt has not allowed 1,200 Gujarati migrants stranded in Mumbai to go to their village Samkhiyali in Kutchh. Besides, Odisha, West Bengal and Karnataka govts are also not accepting their own citizens stranded in Maharashtra,"rued Thorat.

"What is this madness! First you starve them with an unplanned lockdown, then you cutain their movement like slaves at the behest of the builder lobby and now you mow them downa, said Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Preeti Sharma-Menon sharply.

Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis and Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule expressed deep shock over the incident today.

AIMIM MP Imtiaz Jaleel said "If the government does not want more blood on its hand, then they should urgently arrange for more trains and buses for these workers to reach home".

"They migrant workers were walking from Jalna to Aurangabad, hoping to catch the train for Madhya Pradesh which was scheduled to leave from Aurangabad today. They were killed while they were resting," Jaleel said.

Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said: "This is such a shame, imagine the migrants wanting to go home and their state governments turning them back. All these states should introspect their own role in adding to the misery of migrantsa Stunned and feeling helpless by this tragedy."
Amelia Khan suffered brain damage because she was mistakenly administered nitrous oxide

A subcontractor who accidentally installed the wrong pipelines at a hospital - resulting in newborn babies being given nitrous oxide instead of oxygen - has walked free from court with a fine.

Christopher Turner was on Friday ordered by Sydney's Downing Centre District Court to pay $100,000 over the fatal gas bungle at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital almost four years ago.

Baby John Ghanem died in July 2016 after he was ventilated with nitrous oxide - commonly known as laughing gas - from a gas port labelled 'oxygen' in the hospital's operating theatre eight.

A month earlier, Amelia Khan suffered brain damage because she was likewise mistakenly administered nitrous oxide from the same gas outlet when she required resuscitation upon delivery.

The court was told Amelia was likely to have life-long quadriplegic cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities, was unlikely to develop speech and would be reliant on others for all aspects of her care.

'The extent of the harm caused is almost too awful to contemplate,' Judge David Russell said in handing down his verdict.

'I cannot think of a more tragic case. John Ghanem lost his life and his parents will live with their grief forever.

Amelia Khanare is pictured with her parents. She suffered brain damage after she was fed nitrous oxide instead of oxygen soon after her birth in Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital

Christopher Turner was on Friday ordered by Sydney's Downing Centre District Court to pay $100,000 over the fatal gas bungle at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital almost four years ago

'Amelia Khan has been condemned to a terrible existence. Her parents will have to provide care and assistance to Amelia and deal with their own grief.'

Sonya and Youssef Ghanem released a statement through family lawyer Stephen Mainstone.

'No penalty handed down by a court will ever bring back their son who they lost in not only tragic but completely avoidable circumstances,' the statement said.

In 2016, Ms Ghanem spoke through tears about the moment she learnt her newborn baby was dead.

'Just looking at him, shaking, ''my son, wake up'', I would tell him ''wake up, what did they do to you?'' she told Nine News at the time.

Turner pleaded guilty to failing in his duty under the Work Health and Safety Act and was facing a maximum fine of $150,000.

Judge Russell said both families had cause to consider the $100,000 punishment lenient, but noted there was no scope under the Act to impose a prison sentence.

Turner's penalty was discounted for his cooperation with authorities and expressing remorse in a written statement.

The court found Turner failed in several of his duties when he failed to carry out cross connection and oxygen concentration tests.

The bungle arose when he was subcontracted to carry out work to install piped medical oxygen at the hospital in July 2015.

Turner signed several certificates which indicated he carried out safety checks, even though he had not.

He also failed his requirement to perform the tests in the presence of a hospital staff member.

John Ghanem's family (pictured) were left devastated over the tragic death of their newborn baby in 2016

Judge Russell found Turner told the hospital's assistant engineer Paul Brightwell that he didn't have to be present for the testing, and convinced him to sign the testing certification.

Amelia Khan's parents, Benish and Danial, said they were 'extremely disappointed to learn that errors made by other people' contributed to their daughter's condition.

SafeWork NSW in 2018 launched cases against Mr Brightwell, but dropped the charges for legal reasons.

The family wants the regulator to re-open its investigation into Mr Brightwell and others.

'We strongly believe that everyone responsible needs to be held to account for their involvement and we are determined to make sure that justice is done,' they said in a statement.

Last week, BOC Limited, the company contracted to complete the work, was found not guilty of breaching its health and safety duty because Turner had lied to them.

SafeWork NSW last year dropped charges against the hospital because of its good health and safety record.
Toronto-Dominion Bank says it expects to take a provision for credit losses related to its U.S. retail banking business of roughly $1.1 billion (US$800 million) in its second quarter due to the pandemic.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A TD Canada Trust branch is shown in the financial district in Toronto on Tuesday, August 22, 2017. Toronto-Dominion Bank says it expects to take a provision for credit losses related to its U.S. retail banking business of roughly $1.1 billion (US$800 million) in its second quarter due to the pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Toronto-Dominion Bank says it expects to take a provision for credit losses related to its U.S. retail banking business of roughly $1.1 billion (US$800 million) in its second quarter due to the pandemic.

The charge related to funds set aside to cover potentially bad loans comes as the steps taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 has devastated the economy and thrown millions of people out of work.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The bank says it is also expected that the corporate segment will record about $600 million (US$400 million) in provisions for credit losses for the quarter ended April 30.

However, it says the losses in the corporate segment consists primarily of the retailer partners' share of provisions for credit losses for the bank's U.S. strategic card portfolio.

TD says the retailer partners' share of revenues and provisions for credit losses recorded in the corporate segment are fully offset through corporate non-interest expenses and will result in no impact to the bank earnings in the second quarter.

TD Bank is expected to report its full second-quarter results on May 28.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2020.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TD)
The processing of early access to superannuation claims have been temporarily stopped by the ATO after up to 150 Australians lost $120,000 to identity theft fraudsters.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said on Friday that superannuation details of clients were being used in 'a fraudulent way' after a tax agent was hacked.

Mr Dutton said the Australian Federal Police, the ATO, financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC and other government agencies were investigating the identity theft.

Australians had withdrawn almost $1billion in total from their superannuation funds as of Thursday.

Home Affair Minister Peter Dutton (pictured) said on Friday that superannuation details of up to 150 clients were being used in 'a fraudulent way' after a tax agent was hacked

'There has been one tax agent that has been the subject of a hacking or cyber attack and personal details of clients that are part of that business, they have been exploited,' Mr Dutton told Sky News.

'There's been no cyber intrusion within the the superannuation funds or the ATO.

'The AFP have really ramped up their engagement to make sure we can come down very heavily on those who would seek to rip off the funds of other taxpayers.'

The Home Affairs Minister said government agencies had 'jumped pretty quickly to deal with this threat'.

Application page for Australians to gain early access to their superannuation

'There has been one tax agent that has been the subject of a hacking or cyber attack and personal details of clients that are part of that business, they have been exploited,' Mr Dutton told Sky News. Pictured: file image of a hacker

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar initially announced early super handouts would be frozen while the alleged frauds were investigated earlier on Friday.

'Today the ATO will pause requests for early superannuation being sent to super funds,' Mr Sukkar said on Sky News.

'Theyll resume on Monday, because we want the ATO today, out of an abundance of caution, to make sure that theres nothing more we can do to help people protecting their data, to ensure that people are not the victims of identity theft.'

In the meantime, Australians can still lodge their early access to super applications - but the processing of applications has been paused until Monday.

More than 1.2 million Australians had applied to withdraw almost $10 billion from their super funds to get them through the COVID-19 pandemic as of Thursday.

Of the $10billion requested, almost $1billion has already been withdrawn - including the $120,000 stolen.

One applicant reportedly had their details stolen and lost $10,000 from their superannuation account.

Of the $10 billion requested, almost $1 billion has already been withdrawn - including the $120,000 stolen (stock image)

'A small number of people appear to have had personal details unlawfully used in a bid to defraud the program,' the ATO said in a statement on Wednesday.

'This has been stopped and the impacted individuals are being contacted.

'The matter is currently under investigation by the AFP and for operational reasons we are unable to comment further at this stage.'

Under new rules to help people through the coronavirus crisis, Australians can take $20,000 out of their retirement funds tax-free.

Eligible applicants can take $10,000 of their super between 20 April and 30 June 2020 and a further $10,000 in the 2020-21 financial year.

The average amount of each withdrawal is around $8,000, totalling $7.9billion, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.
Centers for tourism in Mexico had been witnessing a decrease in visitors. Violence has been observed in some parts of the country, even before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic had made it even worst for the situation of tourism in the country.



Riviera Maya

Riviera Maya is also a significant area for drug trafficking in the United States. It was recently reported that the area witnessed a battle between drug traffickers and the government on January 27. Lots of deaths and injuries had been seen in the area during that devastating day, all for the illegal drug trade.



A Collection of News About Violence and Death in Mexico's Tourism Spots

Recently, various cases of violence were reported in Mexico.

An example is news about the death of Quintana Roo's state police commander in September 2019. The Jalisco Cartel New Generation was reported to have caused his death, says a recent article.

The coordinator of the local Labor Party, Luis Alfredo Flores Manzanilla, lost his life in January in Tulum, a popular tourist area in Mexico.

A former Democratic Revolution deputy, Roman Guzman Gonzalez, died in February in his ranch near Bacalar.

Furthermore, political assassinations were reported in the country. The mayor of Mahahual, Obed Duron Gomez, was shot. His shooter remains unknown, but his case's investigators are looking at the death threats he has been receiving from crime groups who were intimidating him to end the quarantine period.



Crimes In the Country

In January, a plane was asked by military fighter planes to land in Quintana Roo. It was reported that the plane carried cocaine worth $12 million. It was revealed that the plane originated from Argentina.

For the first eight months of 2019, it was reported by the Defense Ministry of Mexico that there were more than 100 flights related to the incident in Quintana Roo.



Mexico Evalua

Mexico Evalua had expressed that the increasing violence cases in the country are a challenge for the entire nation. It was able to make conclusions based on the data involving the country's crime and tourist information. The group was able to release a report in April 2019. They stated in the report that there are four regions in the country where violence and tourism are both observed. These regions are Riviera Maya, Central Mexico, US-Mexican northwest border, and the south-central Pacific coast.



Check these out:



Effects on Tourism

Due to the increasing volumes of violence in tourism areas in Mexico, many are experiencing a significant drop in visitors.

The coronavirus pandemic had made things worse by affecting the arrival of new visitors in many of Mexico's tourist attractions and destinations. In some places across the country, locals had been trying their best to block visitors and prevent them from entering their land. Locals fear that visitors may be bringing the coronavirus with them.
This day offers a history lesson, not just in home classrooms, but within every American household.

Three-quarters of a century ago on May 8, Victory in Europe Day was celebrated for the first time. Celebrated is the key word, as the Nazis signed an agreement to surrender unconditionally May 7.

One of our editorials in the aftermath underscored that the war is only half won.

Even the casual historian could not have forecast that the world would again face a threat of such scope.

Yet here we are. All of us. Sharing feelings of vulnerability while gripped in the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of President Donald Trumps critics winced at his declaration of himself as a wartime president, characterizing it as a campaign ploy. But we are indeed at war, even if the enemy is invisible.

The virus is as surreal as the concept of a madmans fantasies of global domination.

When Adolf Hitlers armies surrendered a week after his death, he was characterized by the Associated Press on many of these pages as a sinister Barnum of war, evoking the name of circus impresario P.T. Barnum. Barnum, The Greatest Showman, was born in Bethel, launched a Danbury newspaper and become synonymous with Bridgeport, where he once served as mayor.

Heightened emotions of the day steered such rhetoric in newspapers. The same news story deems Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini a sorry lackey and judges Hitlers propaganda as razzle-dazzle.

There were far more sobering observations in the editorial.

In every instance there was consecration to the unfinished war that lies ahead, both the immediate work of completing the second phase of the war, and the international work of setting up a system so that peace may be assured as on a permanent footing.

Military and world leaders, soldiers and the everyman knew the war was not over yet. That would not come until Japan surrendered more than three months later.

This war against COVID-19 is more opaque. There can be no date to mark its end. We must remain as steadfast as our predecessors in 1945, and will surely be left with unshakable vestiges of wariness.

The United States could not act alone 75 years ago, nor can we now.

The heroes of those days are mostly gone now, but our need to salute them must remain undying. There will be no public gatherings to honor the sacrifices of the more than 400,000 members of military who died during World War II.

They earned moments of dignified silence, even if limited to the privacy of households.

Its an appropriate time to also ponder todays heroes. They are not overseas, but around each corner, in supermarket aisles, fire and police stations, in every hospital and ambulance.

Celebrate them together on this day. Display the flag. Talk to someone who witnessed the wars end. Reflect on sacrifices.

And remember this history lesson: We must be cautious of false endings.






Local county health officials say Tesla Inc "must not reopen" its vehicle factory in the San Francisco Bay area, as local lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus remain in effect.

The comments on Friday came after Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, told employees Thursday that limited production would restart Friday afternoon at the factory in Fremont, Tesla's only U.S. vehicle factory.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday afternoon said that manufacturers in the state would be allowed to reopen. But Alameda County, where the factory is located, is scheduled to remain shut until the end of May.

A spokeswoman for the Alameda County Public Health Department in a statement referred to the county's coronavirus lockdown order that only permits essential businesses to reopen.

"Tesla has been informed that they do not meet those criteria and must not reopen," the spokeswoman said.

Earlier on Friday, Erica Pan, a health officer for the county, said the department has had many discussions with the company and recommended that Tesla wait at least another week to monitor infection rates and discuss safe ways to resume production.

Pan, speaking during a virtual townhall with the mayor of the city of Alameda, called Tesla a "very hot topic."

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vehicle manufacturing operations are not allowed to operate regularly, according to the Alameda County order.

Musk has been bluntly criticizing the lockdown and stay-at-home orders, calling them a "serious risk" to U.S. business and tagging them "unconstitutional," saying they would not hold up before the U.S. Supreme Court if challenged.

Tesla, in an internal mail seen by Reuters, had said that starting Friday, limited operation would resume at the Fremont factory with 30% of normal headcount per shift.

"Our Gigafactories in Nevada and New York have also begun limited operations as approved by their respective states," the mail said.

Story continues

However, Musk said employees who feel uncomfortable coming back to work were not obligated to do so.

Tesla had sparred with officials in California in March Tesla over whether it had to halt production at the Fremont factory under lockdown orders that allowed only essential businesses to continue to operate. It ended the stand-off in mid-March and said it would suspend production.

The lockdown order was imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has infected over 3.8 million people globally.
As many as 15,000 pubs could be forced to permanently close if they are forced to wait until September to emerge from lockdown, an industry chief has said in the latest warning from the hospitality sector on the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

Pubs, restaurants, and bars are expected to be among the last to be allowed to return to operation as the government eases lockdown measures - with the first steps towards a return to normalcy expected to be announced by the prime minister in an address on Sunday.

However Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, has warned than unless public houses are supported by the government thousands could be forced to shutter.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: India will expand from next week its mega mission to evacuate stranded Indians from abroad by including countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Germany, Spain and Thailand, official sources said on Friday.

They said stranded Indians in central Asia as well as in various European countries will be brought back home under the second phase of the 'Vande Bharat Mission' beginning May 15.

IN PICS | PPEs, masks, social distancing: How Kochi welcomed first batch of Vande Bharat expats

A total 64 flights carrying approximately 15,000 returnees from 12 countries are expected to land at 14 airports across India from May 7 to 15 as part of phase one of the mission, they said.

Sources said Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa set sail on Friday afternoon from Male to Kochi with approximately 700 returnees on board.
The chorus for transparency and investigation into the outbreak of the coronavirus disease is growing louder in the run up to the truncated session of the World Health Assembly 10 days later.

The disease, which originated in China late last year, has killed more than a quarter of a million people across the world in a little over four months. China has been blamed by many countries for not giving the world a heads up about the disease that could have minimised its spread. Questions have also been asked of the World Health Organisation that has been accused of being overly deferential to China.

The loudest criticism of China and WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has come from the United States President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Last month, the US suspended funding to the WHO to drive home the point.

But the United States isnt the only one upset about China and WHOs role.

Over the last week and more, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also lent the groupings backing to calls for an investigation into the origin of Covid outbreak.

Also Read: China must come clean on Covid-19| Opinion

This week, the European Union declared that it would move a resolution at the World Health Assembly for a timely review of the international response to the coronavirus pandemic including the World Health Organisations performance.

Diplomats in Washington and Geneva suggest that the resolution, which was being drafted in consultation with a large number of countries, presented a huge test for China in the run up to the global health bodys annual meeting.

Beijing has been under fire over its early handling of the virus, which has pushed the global economy toward recession as it spreads around the world. Cases have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since they were first identified in China in December 2019.

British defence secretary Ben Wallace too questioned the role of China in the Covid-19 outbreak, asserting that China needs to be open and transparent about what it learnt, its shortcomings also successes.

Ben Wallaces remarks are seen in context of British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raabs statement in April that underscored the need to ask hard questions about how the coronavirus came about and how it could have been stopped.

Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren made it clear last month that her government wanted the origin of the virus probed besides an investigation into the WHOs role in the pandemic.

It is in this context, diplomats in Washington said, that China appeared to have started approaching governments in countries for support in face of public criticism. This strategy was outed in Germany where Chinese diplomats approached German government officials to request them to make positive public statements on Chinas handling of the disease. Officials in Berlin had declined the request.

Beijing has had to battle accusations that it had attempted to cover up the outbreak of the disease and told the world about the disease much too late. For instance, questions are being asked why Chinese authorities stopped flights from Wuhan to the rest of the country after the Covid-19 outbreak but allowed international flights. Or why it clamped down on research by Chinese scientists into the origins of the virus.

Authorities had reprimanded doctors including Li Wenliang, who later passed away, for sharing warnings about the coronavirus infection risk in WeChat groups in late December.

Criticism about this approach to censor information reignited on Friday after a line that referred to the coronavirus disease being detected in China and spreading to the world was removed from an article written for a Chinese daily by 27 European ambassadors to commemorate the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the EU and China.

But there have been several instances of Chinese diplomats posted around the world launching attacks on the media for what they describe as efforts to politicise the Covid-19 outbreak.

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Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has reacted to the Presidency admitting that President Muhammadu Buharis ...

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has reacted to the Presidency admitting that President Muhammadu Buharis speeches were recorded.





Kanu commended Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina for admitting that the presidents broadcasts were not live.





In a tweet, the IPOB leader wrote:@NGRPresident thanks for finally having the courage to publicly admit that your presidential broadcasts were FAKED and NOT live. Soon you will also publicly admit that #HoleInBuhariNeck #JubrilAlSudani is the one impersonating the late #Buhari.





Following the outbreak of COVID-19, Buhari had severally addressed Nigerians in a nationwide broadcast.

Kanu, however, had claimed that Buharis addresses were fake as they are not live but recorded.





The claim had drawn the anger of Nigerians who had insisted that Buhari should address Nigerians via live address.





Succumbing to the pressure, Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina admitted that the presidents broadcast with regards to COVID-19 lockdown extension was recorded and not live.





Adesina had said: Finally, it comes to the media office, and I signed on it which I also did yesterday before the broadcast was recorded. I signed on the final copy before the broadcast was recorded.





So some hours before the recording was played back, I saw something circulating on social media, I knew that was not the copy that I signed off on.
Sixty-three more persons, including 47 who returned from Takht Hazur Sahib in Maharashtras Nanded recently, tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday, taking the states tally of those infected by the disease to 1,766.

Eighteen fresh cases, with 10 of them having Nanded link, were detected in SBS Nagar. The district now has a total of 103 positive cases. The pilgrims, including three women, are aged between 29 and 54. The rest are migrants in the age group of 19 and 40.

In Jalandhar, 7 persons, including three Ganna Chak village women residents who returned from Nanded, tested positive on Friday, with the district so far witnessing 155 cases, including 5 deaths.

One of those infected is a 4-year-old boy of Basti Guzzan in Jalandhar city, who is a close contact of 48-year-old Sehdev, who died due to Covid-19.

12 cases in Amritsar, four in Tarn Taran

Twelve more people, who returned from Nanded, were tested positive in Amritsar on Friday. One of the patients is admitted in Patiala. The number of total patients in Amritsar is 286 of which 267 are Nanded-returnees, civil surgeon Dr Jugal Kishore said.

Also, four more Nanded-returnees were tested positive in Tarn Taran, taking the districts total to 161.

In Gurdaspur, 8 cases with Nanded link were detected. The district now has 117 cases, including 107 Hazur Sahib-returnees, so far.

In Kapurthala districts Phagwara sub-division, five pilgrims, including a teenager and a 66-year-old woman, tested positive for Covid-19. Others are three men aged 50, 66 and 67. All of them were in quarantine.

So far, the district has recorded a total of 23 cases, including two deaths.

2 found infected in Sangrur

Two fresh cases were reported in Sangrur. The districts count now is 97.

Civil surgeon Dr Raj Kumar said the patients are a 56-year-old woman, who returned from Nanded while the other, a 25-year-old, was a contact of a Covid-19 victim.

2 cases in Bathinda, one in Mansa

Two persons, including a Rajasthan-returned labourer and a 70-year-old woman from Udham Singh Nagar, tested positive in Bathinda district while an 18-year-old youth was found infected in Mansa district.

In Bathinda now there are a total 41 Covid-19 patients while Mansa has 15 active cases of five have got cured. The infected woman was shifted to the isolation ward of a hospital. The administration has sealed two streets of her locality.

Civil surgeon Dr Amrik Singh said samples of 18 of her contacts were collected.

The 18-year-old Mansa boy came back to his native village Burj Rathi from Gurugram in Haryana. He is second resident of the village to be found positive for the disease.

Patiala crosses 100-mark

Patiala district on Friday crossed the mark of 100-positive cases with two fresh cases of coronavirus. A 50-year-old Hazur Sahib-returnee, who earlier tested negative, has now contracted infection after he showed symptoms of virus at a quarantine centre. Also, a 22-year-old woman, a contact of an earlier infected woman from Rajpuras Gulab nagar area, also tested positive.

Of a total of 101 cases in the district, 47 have been reported from Rajpura town.

Also, the reports of two Hazur Sahib-returnees were found positive in

Pathankot. Deputy commissioner GS Khaira said 21 prilgrims reached the district from Nanded Sahib and all were quarantined at the Chintpurni Medical College.

Besides, a 28- year- old man from Machhiwara locality of Ludhiana was tested positive.

(Inputs from Jalandhar, Bathinda, Ludhiana, Patiala and Sangrur)
COVID-19 is making me crazy. You too? Dont go out of your home. If you do, dont go without a mask. And gloves. Dont stand within six feet of other people. And, most crazy-making, in the worst economic slowdown since the 1930s dont go to work.

With many businesses closed, a lot of people have no work to go to. As self-quarantining and business closures continue, many of our neighbors must choose between groceries and rent, or between groceries and the utilities they need to cook what they bought. Or both.

Congress needs to increase help to our neighbors and the economy. One bill that can do that is now before the Congress: The SNAP Carry Act, sponsored by sof California and our own Sen. Chris Murphy.

SNAP (formerly food stamps) is our most effective anti-hunger program, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty every year. SNAP has a lesser-known companion program, the SNAP Restaurant Meal Program (RMP), which allows homeless, elderly, or disabled individuals, who may not have the ability to store or cook food, to pay for prepared meals using their SNAP benefits at participating restaurants, delis, or stores. To qualify, a restaurant must offer some lower-cost menu choices.

The SNAP Carry Act would lift statutory limitations on RMP eligibility to include all SNAP participants residing in an area where a Presidential Declaration of Disaster or a Public Health crisis has been declared. This means that nutritious food would be available to families who are unable to afford it or unable to cook it.

Restaurants, which have suffered huge losses, would also benefit with additional customers, allowing many of these small businesses to survive. The restaurants would be able to retain or rehire cooks and wait-staff, who would then get paid and would spend on their needs, creating ripples through the economy. Economists estimate that every additional $1.00 spent on SNAP benefits generates $1.70 of economic growth.

In addition, Congress must include a SNAP benefits increase in the next federal COVID-19 relief package. Specifically, one increasing the maximum benefit available to all households by 15 percent and increasing the minimum benefit from $16 dollars to $30. This increase is needed to offset the significant loss in income and soaring unemployment resulting from COVID-19-related closures and disruptions.

Your voice is needed to help our friends, our neighbors, and our country to get back on their feet. Please call Senator Murphys office to tell him you support his bill and that you also want to see SNAP increased in the next COVID package. Next, call Sen. Richard Blumenthals office and urge him to support these initiatives too. Then call your representatives office, whether Jim Himes, Rosa DeLauro, or Jahana Hayes, and tell them to support Rep. Panettas companion bill in the House and to support the SNAP increase. Finally, call friends and relatives, here in Connecticut and around the country, asking them to call their members of Congress as well.

William Baker of Stamford is a volunteer advocate for RESULTS, a worldwide organization working to end poverty.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Northern Ireland does not plan to soften restrictions designed to curb the spread of COVID-19 at this time due to the high infection rate, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said on Thursday.

"We have no headroom for change at this moment in time," O'Neill told a press briefing, saying that the reproduction rate, or R0, of the disease in the British province was 0.8-0.9 compared to around 0.5 in both England and Ireland.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trumps first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBIs Trump-Russia investigation.

The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn himself admitted as much, pleading guilty before later asking to withdraw the plea, and he became a key cooperator for Mueller as the special counsel investigated ties between Russia and Trumps 2016 political campaign.

Thursdays action was swiftly embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the outrageous case and last week pronounced Flynn exonerated." It could also newly energize Trump supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as a cause.

But it will also add to Democratic complaints that Attorney General Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months has sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

Shortly before the filing was submitted, Brandon Van Grack, a Mueller team member and veteran prosecutor on the case, withdrew from the prosecution, a possible sign of disagreement with the decision.

After the Flynn announcement, Trump declared that his former aide had been an innocent man all along. He accused Obama administration officials of targeting Flynn and said, I hope that a big price is going to be paid. At one point he went further, saying of the effort investigating Flynn: It's treason. It's treason.

In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said that after reviewing newly disclosed information and other materials, it agreed with Flynns lawyers that his interview with the FBI should never have taken place because he had not had inappropriate contacts with Russians. The interview, the department said, was conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, formally recommended dropping it to Barr last week, the course of action vehemently and publicly recommended by Trump, who appointed Barr to head the Justice Department.

Barr has increasingly challenged the federal Trump-Russia investigation, saying in a television interview last month that it was started without any basis. In February, he overruled a decision by prosecutors in the case of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and adviser, in favor of a more lenient recommended sentence.

Jensen said in a statement: Through the course of my review of General Flynns case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.

The departments action comes amid an internal review into the handling of the case and an aggressive effort by Flynns lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution. The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was improperly trapped into lying when agents interviewed him at the White House days after Trumps inauguration. Though none of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Trump last week pronounced him exonerated."

Thursday's filing was the latest dramatic development in a years-old case full of twists and turns. In recent months, Flynn's attorneys have leveled a series of allegations about the FBIs actions and asked to withdraw his guilty plea. A judge has rejected most of the claims and not ruled on others, including the bid to revoke the plea.

Earlier this year, Barr appointed Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis to investigate the handling of Flynns case.

As part of that process, the Justice Department gave Flynns attorneys a series of emails and notes, including one handwritten note from a senior FBI official that mapped out internal deliberations about the purpose of the Flynn interview: Whats our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired? the official wrote.

Other documents show the FBI had been prepared weeks before its interview of Flynn to drop its investigation into whether he was acting at the direction of Russia. Later that month, though, as the White House insisted that Flynn had never discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, FBI officials grew more concerned by Flynns conversations with the diplomat and decided to keep the investigation open so they could question him about that. Two agents visited him at the White House on Jan. 24., 2017.

But Thursday's filing says the FBI had no basis to continue investigating Flynn after failing to find that he had done anything wrong. It says there was nothing on his Russia calls to indicate an inappropriate relationship between Mr. Flynn and a foreign power," and that none of the statements he made to the FBI had any relevance to the underlying investigation into whether the Trump campaign and Russia were illegally coordinating.

It also cites internal uncertainty within the FBI over whether Flynn had lied, noting that the agents who interviewed him reported that he had a very sure demeanor" and that-then FBI Director James Comey had said it was a close" call.

Flynn pleaded guilty that December, among the first of the presidents aides to admit guilt in Muellers investigation. He acknowledged that he lied about his conversations with Kislyak, in which he encouraged Russia not to retaliate against the U.S. for sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference.

He provided such extensive cooperation that prosecutors said he was entitled to a sentence of probation instead of prison.

However, his sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn, facing a stern rebuke from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, asked to be able to continue cooperating and earn credit toward a more lenient sentence.

Flynns views about the case were already on display when his then-attorneys pointedly noted in their sentencing memo that the FBI had not warned him that it was against the law to lie when they interviewed him.

He later hired new attorneys, including conservative commentator Sidney Powell, who have taken a far more confrontational stance to the government. The lawyers accused prosecutors of withholding documents and evidence they said was favorable to the case and have repeatedly noted that one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn was fired for having sent derogatory text messages about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been living in an ultra-luxury Beverly Hills hideout that belongs to Hollywood tycoon Tyler Perry, DailyMailTV can exclusively reveal.

The couple have never been seen in public with Perry  best known for his cross-dressing portrayal of feisty Madea in his series of hit films  but are believed to have met him through their mutual close friend Oprah Winfrey.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their one-year-old son Archie have called the $18 million mansion home since moving to LA at the end of March, sources said.

They had been staying at a waterfront home in Vancouver Island since announcing they were stepping down from their royal duties in January, but made a beeline for California after Canada announced it would be restricting its borders due to COVID-19.



The couple have been spotted only a handful of times since their move to LA, first volunteering for a local charity dropping off food to locals who are at a high risk of catching coronavirus, as well as taking their beloved dogs out for a walk.

Fifty-year-old Perrys eight-bedroom, 12-bathroom Tuscan-style villa sits on 22 acres on the top of a hill in the ultra-exclusive Beverly Ridge Estates guard-gated community, offering sweeping views of the city from the backyard.

It is not known whether Harry, 35, and Meghan, 38, are renting Tylers property or staying there as guests, but there is no record of the mansion having been sold.

Both the Sussexes and Perry, who is worth $600 million, consider the legendary talk show host and businesswoman their Hollywood mentor.

Oprah is even godson to Perrys five-year-old son Aman, and was seen at the house Meghan and Harry are now staying at for the little boys christening party back in 2015.

The Duke and Duchess are currently working on a documentary series with Oprah, while Perry has partnered with Oprahs OWN television channel in the past.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
 Flash

Staff from St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe, U.S. state of Louisiana, received free meals on Wednesday and Thursday donated by the Chinese Consulate General in Houston.

The donation, worth more than 11,000 U.S. dollars, was made by the consulate general through the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in the city.

In a letter to the people in Monroe, Chinese Council General in Houston Cai Wei said that while continuing the fight against the virus at home, China has offered help and conducted cooperation with the international community to the best of our ability, adding that "all countries' interests are closely entwined in a shared future."

"While there are lots of 'headwinds' in the China-U.S. relationship currently, China has never doubted for a moment that friendship between peoples of our two great nations will ever be changed," read the letter.

The meals were bought by the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum from a local restaurant using the donation from the consulate general.

"They wanted to reach out the hand of friendship and wanted to be able to help medical workers at St. Francis," Nell Calloway, granddaughter of General Claire Lee Chennault and CEO of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum, told local TV KNOE 8.

General Claire Lee Chennault headed the wartime Flying Tigers pilots to fight Japanese invaders in China during World War II.
We have witnessed a 20 percent recovery from the recent bottom of 7500 which puts on an even slope and for markets to go down further it would require a lot of bad data, Taher Badshah - CIO (Equities) - Invesco MF said in an exclusive The Market Podcast with Moneycontrol.

The market is still down by about 25 percent from the top which reflects the consensus downgrade of earnings from +20% to -5%. For markets to again go back to the recent bottom of 7500 would require a significant amount of bad data, he said.

He further highlighted key pointers which would act as a support in case markets drifts south.

a) The trajectory of the virus globally which has got better even though are pockets of concerns such as the US and India, but they are last in the curve  so I would like to think that we would take some more time to level off. But, many of the other hotspots in the world are leveled out.

b) There is support from the government of various countries as well as central banks. At one level policies introduced by the central bankers would act as a floor to the market, and have taken away initial round of volatility and fear psychosis.

c) Some level of clarity would come in the next 6 months about medical treatment, and hopefully a vaccine.

If that were to happen, markets would need severely bad data to retest 7500 levels on the Nifty. But, at the same time, we have seen good improvement in the market  a significant upside looks difficult.

The upside looks capped because that would require normalcy to return to the economy. I would attach a low probability for markets going back to 7500, and at the time I would say that we would take some time for markets to touch the recent peak. We are stuck in the middle at this stage, explains Badshah.

(Tune in to the podcast for more)

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
WASHINGTON  With Texas under increasing scrutiny for jailing a hair salon owner in Dallas, Gov. Greg Abbott used a meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House and a national television interview to announce hes eliminating the threat of incarceration from his COVID-19 executive orders.

We should not be taking these people and put them behind bars, Abbott said with Trump sitting by his side in the Oval Office. In the state of Texas, nobody can be put behind bars because they are not following an executive order.

That declaration came at the height of a whirlwind trip for the Republican governor, who also blasted officials in Dallas and Houston on national TV on Wednesday night for overzealous enforcement.

Related: Port Arthur mayor worries as coronavirus testing winds down

The no-jail rule was an abrupt about-face for Abbott, who included up to 180 days in jail for anyone in Texas violating his orders to stay home except for essential business, as well as other orders aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus.

Those orders gave Dallas judge Eric Moye the authority to send hair salon owner Shelley Luther to jail earlier this week for continuing to operate her business.

Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox

Trump asked Abbott about the case during their meeting.

Shes free today, Abbott responded.

Good, Trump said. I was watching the salon owner and she looked so great, so professional, so good. And she was talking about her children. She has to feed her children.

Abbott made his new executive order retroactive to make sure anyone jailed for violating previous orders  including Luther and two women in Laredo who were jailed in April  would be released.

Blasting big-city officials

Before meeting with Trump, Abbott used an appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity on Wednesday night to accuse local officials in Dallas and Houston of being too heavy-handed with coronavirus restrictions.

In Houston, they were issuing fines and potential jail time for anybody who refused to wear a mask, Abbott told Hannity. Wearing a mask is the best practice, however, no one should forfeit their liberty and be sent to jail for not wearing a mask.

Thats not entirely true. When Harris County put its mask rule in place for all residents it included a $1,000 fine but did not include any jail time such as those in Austin and other Texas cities, where violators faced up to 180 days in jail. Abbott last week issued an executive order that barred cities and counties from fining or jailing people for violating mask requirements.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has said she never intended to fine people. She said putting the fine in the order was meant to send a message that it is not optional to wear a face covering. She has said she did not know of anyone who had been issued a fine.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Thursday he disagrees with Abbott removing jail time as a possible punishment for violating COVID-19 restrictions.

Once you take the enforcement mechanism out of your order, you really don't have an order anymore, Turner said. You can't enforce something you can't enforce.

Related: Jobless rate spikes to 14.7%, highest since Great Depression

But it wasnt just Houston taking shots from Abbott, who is a former judge and Texas Attorney General.

In Dallas County, the Dallas County District Attorney announced a policy that hes not going to prosecute any thief who steals things valued at less than $750, Abbott told Hannity. At the same time, authorities in Dallas are talking about releasing inmates from prison or jail because of the possibility of contracting COVID-19.

Abbott, however, was referencing a move Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot made more than a year ago. In early 2019, Creuzot said he was not going to prosecute thefts of personal items under $750 that are stolen out of necessity  such as food or baby formula in the name of criminal justice reform and reduce overcrowding in jails. However, Creuzot said he would still prosecute other thefts of items under $750 in value.

Criminalizing poverty is counter-productive for our communitys health and safety. For that reason, this office will not prosecute theft of personal items less than $750 unless the evidence shows that the alleged theft was for economic gain, the criminal justice reform plan issued by Creuzots office stated.

While Abbott was taking issue with Houston and Dallas on television, those cities won some praise from White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx. During the White House briefing with Abbott and Trump, Birx praised both Houston and Dallas for really containing and mitigating the epidemic.

Trump heaped praise on Abbott for how hes managed the crisis and the steps he is taking to reopen parts of the Texas economy. Last week Abbott allowed restaurants, retail stores, movie theaters, libraries, museums and malls to open at 25 percent capacity. This week, he is allowing gyms, hair salons and barbershops to reopen as long as they adhere to strict guidelines to limit the spread of the virus.

The relationship with Texas has been phenomenal, Trump told reporters with Abbott by his side.

Trump: Were all warriors.

Abbotts meeting with Trump came as national news outlets reported that a member of the military serving as one of Trumps valets tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing Trump to be tested again before sitting down with the governor.

Trump tested negative and announced all White House staff will be tested daily going forward, upping the once-a-week schedule that had been in effect.

Its a little bit strange, but its one of those things, Trump told Abbott.

You can be with somebody and everything's fine and then something happens to that person and they test positive, Trump said. Were all warriors together. I am, you are. We all are.

Thursday, Texas hit the grim milestone of 1,000 deaths; 36,309 people in the state have tested positive for the disease, according to a Hearst Newspapers data analysis. While the daily death count is higher in May so far compared to April, Texas has had far fewer deaths than other large states such as California, New York and Florida.

We have one of the the lowest death rates in the United States of America, Abbott said.

Abbott assured Trump that Texas is allowing parts of the economy to open up, but safely. He has said hes been in constant contact with Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, to make sure his plans met with their approval before he rolled them out.

Abbott said the state has strike teams ready to go anywhere there is a spike in cases like is happening now in the Texas Panhandle, where meatpacking plants are reportedly responsible for a surge in coronavirus cases.
Bureaucratic indecision and tribal litigation delayed emergency coronavirus funding to tribal governments by nearly six weeks, likely exacerbating the spread of the virus in Indian Country and laying bare inequities on tribal lands that have existed for generations.

In late March, Congress approved and President Donald Trump signed the $2 trillion CARES Act that includes $8 billion for tribal governments to use for such things as offsetting costs of protective equipment, paying for law enforcement at roadblocks and the deep cleaning of facilities. The U.S. Department of Treasury announced this week it is distributing $4.8 billion of that while the remaining funding is tied up in court. The money is being distributed to the 573 federally recognized tribes, including 22 in New Mexico, based on population estimates.

The Navajo Nation Council is working on a spending plan for the money as the disease continues to ravage the reservation and the states northwest corner. The Navajo Nation spans New Mexico, Arizona and Utah and has the third-highest rate of coronavirus cases in the United States, behind New York and New Jersey. As of Wednesday night there were 2,654 coronavirus cases on the reservation, with 85 COVID-19 deaths.

Its unacceptable it took nearly six weeks after the CARES Act was signed into law to distribute any of the money  the handwriting has been on the wall for weeks. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez penned an op-ed to the Journal published April 1 warning this is a fatal health care disaster in the making.

Since then, the COVID-19 death toll on the Navajo reservation has mounted, resulting in curfews; stay-in-place orders; roadblocks outside Gallup; furloughs of Navajo Nation employees; closing of parks, schools, businesses and gaming facilities; creation of emergency hospitals; and Navajo Nation-produced TV commercials encouraging tribal members to stay home.

The initial delay in distributing funding was due to an impasse between The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Indian Health Service about how the money should be used by tribal governments. The $8 billion later became tied up in court when the Navajo Nation and several other tribes sued the Treasury, arguing regional and village entities owned and operated by Alaska Natives on a for-profit basis do not fit the CARES Act definition of a tribal government.

While the Treasury is starting to disburse $4.8 million, the remaining $3.2 billion is being held back until the litigation determines the eligibility of the 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations.

The pandemic has shown tribes in New Mexico have dire needs that must be addressed. Its shameful it took a deadly virus to throw light on the fact 30% of homes on the Navajo Nation lack running water. (FYI that makes it hard to wash your hands.) Many Navajo Nation tribal members have to regularly drive to water stations in Gallup to fill water containers. The Bureau of Reclamations Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project  four decades in the making  should be connected ASAP so it serves the homes and businesses on the Navajo and Jicarilla Apache nations as well as Gallup. In this day and age, everyone deserves to have clean, running water.

And the pandemic has also spotlighted the desperate need for the long-overdue replacement for the Gallup Indian Medical Center as officials stand up field hospitals, send some cases to a local high school gym and fly COVID-19 patients to hospitals in Albuquerque.

The pandemic has laid bare the tough reality our fellow Americans and New Mexicans live with in Indian Country. How sad it took a pandemic to make the nation aware. Sadder still if our leaders dont act to change it.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
- The repatriates arrived in the country on Thursday, May 7, aboard a Kenya Airways flight

- The citizens had been stranded in India since Monday, March 23, after Indian premier Narendra Modi announced a lockdown which was then extended to Sunday, May 17

- Netizens had earlier called on the government to take action after reports emerged Kenyans were being mistreated and racially abused, especially in China

The 232 Kenyans who were stranded in India amid the coronavirus pandemic have expressed joy after landing at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

The repatriates arrived in the country on Thursday, May 7, aboard Kenya Airways flight (KQ 205).

READ ALSO: Coronavirus: 14 more people test positive

The 232 Kenyans arrived on Thursday, May 7, aboard a KQ plane. Photo: Kenya Airways.

Source: Depositphotos

READ ALSO: Joshua Waiganjo free after court clears him of police impersonation charges

The returnees were received by Foreign Affairs Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) Ababu Namwamba.

"Received at JKIA 232 Kenyans from six Indian cities aboard flight KQ205 bringing home many patients stranded by airspace lockdown. This is the fourth we have facilitated, including Egypt, UK and Pakistan. Today we would receive those from Abu Dhabi, tomorrow China. Wellbeing of every Kenyan matters," Namwamba tweeted.

The citizens had been stranded in India since Monday, March 23, after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced a lockdown which was then extended to Sunday, May 17.

One of the passengers who boarded the plane said nothing beats the feeling of being at home.

Foreign Affairs CAS Ababu Namwamba. Photo: Ababu Namwamba.

Source: Twitter

READ ALSO: Jamaa aruka nje ya dirisha la lojing'i akihofia kukamatwa na polisi wa kafyu

We are just elated, even if we sleep outside but within the borders of Kenya, Simon Chege said.

The Kenyans had traveled to India to seek treatment before the pandemic spread rapidly forcing countries to cancel international flights.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, April 14, Foreign Affairs PS Kamau Macharia said more than 200 Kenyans stuck there.

A file photo of Foreign Affairs PS Kamau Macharia. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Source: Facebook

Out of the number, 64 were patients were admitted at various hospitals while 96 were accompanying family members.

"Some of them have run out of money, some of them have sadly lost their patients," he said at the time.

Netizens had earlier called on the government to take action after reports emerged Kenyans were being mistreated and racially abused especially in China.

There would be light at the end of the tunnel finally when they would board a plane back home on Saturday, May 9.

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

Eastleigh residents' plea to Uhuru | Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Representative Edcel Lagman. (Source: UNTV)

ALBAY Representative Edcel Lagman on Friday, May 8, slammed House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano over the latters statement blaming the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) for the ABS-CBN shutdown.

He said Cayetano himself is to blame.

Cayetano himself made the mess by blindly kowtowing to President Rodrigo Dutertes repeated personal opposition to the renewal which unduly stalled the approval of the extension, Lagman said.

He said it is utterly pretentious for Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano to say that the passage of the franchise renewal will now be prioritized in order to fix the mess which others made.

Cayetano had insisted that the bills seeking to grant ABS-CBN a legislative franchise be tackled in May.

Lagman said Cayetano was fixated on President Rodrigo Dutertes personal opposition to the ABS-CBN franchise renewal.

Moreover, Cayetano cited his own personal grievances against ABS-CBN to justify his temporizing on the consideration of the 12 pending bills for renewal -- Cayetano must not wash his hands and absolve himself of blame at the expense of others, he added.

Malacanang has said that Duterte, having accepted the apology of ABS-CBN president Carlo Katigbak, is completely neutral on the issue.

ABS-CBN ceased its broadcast operations on May 5, on the same day that the NTC issued a cease and desist order.

The network on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to stop the NTC order.

Lagman said it will take time before the Supreme Court can revoke the order from the NTC.

A swift congressional action extending ABS-CBNs franchise for another 25 years will render moot and academic the networks petition before the Supreme Court to revoke the cease and desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission on May 5, he said.

Cayetano, in a statement Friday, blamed the NTC and Solicitor General Jose Calida for the ABS-CBN shutdown.

Calida had blamed Congress for failing to act on measures seeking to grant the ABS-CBN franchise since 2016. (Jove T. Moya/SunStar Philippines)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 04:14:43|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus said that the U.S. government's anti-China rhetoric reminded him of the McCarthy era.

"The administration's rhetoric is so strong against China. It's over the top. We're entering a kind of an era which is similar to Joe McCarthy back when he was red-baiting the State Department, attacking communism," Baucus said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

"A little bit like Hitler in the 30s. A lot of people knew what was going on was wrong. They knew it was wrong, but they didn't stand up and say anything about it. They felt intimidated," he said.

"And now in the United States, if anybody says anything reasonable about China, he or she feels intimidated, afraid his head is going to be chopped off. And back in the 30s in Germany is very similar. People who were responsible in the U.S. and especially responsible in Germany couldn't speak up," the former U.S. ambassador continued.

"I worry that some of that's happening now, and it's very dangerous. And I think it's in part because the Republican administration, Donald Trump, realizes that the economy is not doing well, probably because of the coronavirus and therefore they have to pivot, they have to blame somebody and they're blaming China. And it is very difficult to get back on track after the election, whoever's elected," he added.

When asked about if his comparison between the current atmosphere in Washington and that in Germany in 1930s was "provocative", Baucus clarified that "I think we're moving in that direction, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but there are a lot very responsible people in America who know that this China-bashing is irresponsible, and we're going to pay a price the more it continues."

Baucus served as U.S. Ambassador to China under the Obama administration from 2014 to 2017. Before that he was a Senator from Montana for nearly 36 years.

As COVID-19 deaths continue to increase in the United States, some individuals in the Trump administration have tried desperately to deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China.

In an opinion piece published Wednesday by The Washington Post, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai called on some U.S. politicians to end the blame-China game and focus on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic that killed over 74,000 Americans as of Thursday afternoon.

"It is time to end the blame game. It is time to focus on the disease and rebuild trust between our two countries. As President Abraham Lincoln called for 'the better angels' in his inauguration speech, I hope that the wisdom of preceding generations will guide us to choose the right side of history and work for our shared future together," Cui said. Enditem
RESTON, Va., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), a FORTUNE 500 science and technology company, will attend the Goldman Sachs Industrials and Materials Conference 2020 webcast.

James C. Reagan, Leidos Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will participate in a question and answer "fireside chat" on Thursday, May 14, 2020 at 8:50 a.m. ET.

A live audio webcast of the event will be available on the Leidos Investor Relations website at http://ir.leidos.com, where related materials will be posted prior to the presentation. A replay of the webcast will be available following the presentation at the same link listed above for 30 days afterward.

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 information technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 37,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $11.09 billion for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2019. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.

SOURCE Leidos

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The Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (CET) 2020 will be held between July 1-15 for undergraduate level and July 23-30 for the postgraduate level will be held.

Announcing this decision over a social media video, Uday Samant, minister of higher and technical education, the government of Maharashtra also said as far as the state university examinations are concerned, only the final year students will be tested.

"There will not be any examinations for the first year and second-year students. We are following guidelines of the University Grants Commission. Only the final year examination will be held," he added.

Samant said for the final year students, the examinations will be held between July 1 and 30. However, he added a final decision will be taken after June 20, 2020, once the COVID-19 situation is assessed.

When it comes to promoting students of the first and second year, UGC formula of 50-50 will be followed. Here, 50 percent will be based on the performance in the internals and projects of the current semester while the 50 percent will be based on the previous semester.

For students who have Allowed-To-Keep-Term (ATKT) in the previous semester in certain subjects, they will also be promoted. However, these students will have to clear these papers within 120 days of the start of the new term.

For attendance related issues, Samant explained that the 45 days of lockdown will be considered as present in the classroom for students. If students are still not able to meet the minimum attendance requirement, Samant said the concerned institutes must be sympathetic towards them and see if exceptions can be given for this year so that the concerned students don't lose out on their academic year.

As far as the practical examinations for the final exams are concerned, Samant said oral examination using video tools will be used.

Detailed guidelines on how to follow social distancing and final schedule for MHT-CET 2020 will be announced in eight days, explained Samant in a Facebook live video.

Maharashtra is among the worst-hit states as far as COVID-19 is concerned.
Even 75 years on, there was still something electrifying, something thoroughly reassuring about those words: 'This is London. His Majesty King George VI.'

And then, from the King Emperor saluting his war-weary people on their great day of redemption, our screens switched to his dutiful daughter doing the very same at the very same hour. As the announcer could have added, but did not: 'This is Windsor'

Coronavirus may have done its best to scupper this great anniversary. Yet it was our 94-year-old monarch who, once again, lifted the spirits of her anxious, locked-down nation last night with another momentous 'special' broadcast.

She had chosen to wear the 18th birthday gift from her beloved Papa just weeks before VE Day itself  a pair of Boucheron aquamarine and diamond clip brooches. Before her sat her Auxiliary Territorial Service cap

Reminding us of the central message of VE Day itself, the Queen declared: 'Never give up, never despair.'

And, frankly, after a day like yesterday  culminating in last night's national singalong and a speech like this  how could we?

As with last month's pandemic speech, she was speaking once more from the White Drawing Room in the semi-state apartments of Windsor Castle. Once again, BBC Events had sent a full (and fully disinfected) production unit to capture the moment.

Her props were sparse and well-chosen. There was a photograph of the family  'We four,' as the King would say  on the Palace balcony with Winston Churchill and the portrait of George VI in his Admiral of the Fleet uniform.

Even 75 years on, there was still something electrifying, something thoroughly reassuring about those words: 'This is London. His Majesty King George VI.'

Her jewellery told a story, too: She had chosen to wear the 18th birthday present which her beloved Papa had given her just a year before VE Day, a pair of Boucheron aquamarine and diamond clip brooches.

Before her sat her Auxiliary Territorial Service cap. It was not just a nod to happy days as a proud Second Subaltern at the No 1 Mechanical Training Centre in Camberley (rising soon afterwards to the rank of Junior Commander).

It was a reminder that we have the only head of state in the world today who served in the Second World War (and probably the only one who can still remove the carburettor from a Bedford truck).

There was no world leader who could speak with greater authority yesterday. 'The war had been a total war; it had affected everyone, and no one was immune from its impact,' she reminded us, stressing that all the wartime generation 'had a part to play'.

Faith in the cause carried Britain through, although there could be no celebrations for those still fighting against Japan.

The Queen was very careful to include those serving in the Far East, though she could hardly forget them as she prepares to enter her third month of self-isolation with that proud holder of the Burma Star, Prince Philip, 99 next month.

As well as honouring those who never came home, the Queen, as ever, was keen to strike a forward-looking note, culminating in last night's throat-gulper.

There was a photograph of the family  'We four,' as the King would say  on the Palace balcony with Winston Churchill and the portrait of George VI in his Admiral of the Fleet uniform

Her parting message echoed her coronavirus call-to-arms, with a message aimed squarely at the young: 'I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire.'

But for the virus, we would not have heard the Queen at all yesterday. Her plan had been to lead the nation in prayer at a service at Westminster Abbey. There would then have been what was loosely called a 'parade' of veterans down the Mall with the Prince of Wales taking the salute.

Since the whole country has now been confined to barracks, a very different plan was called for. But the Palace had been the focal point of national jubilation 75 years ago. Even if it was deserted yesterday, the Queen was determined to relive what she has called 'one of the most memorable nights of my life'.

So, yesterday, the Palace released her personal reflections, recorded for radio at the time of the 40th anniversary.

You can almost hear the sparkle in her eyes as she is transported back to the happy bedlam around the Palace that day.

'I think we went on the balcony nearly every hour, six times,' she says.

'And then when the excitement of the flood lights being switched on got through to us, my sister and I realised we couldn't see what the crowds were enjoying. My mother had put her tiara on ... so we asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves. I remember we were terrified of being recognised.'

One day, the Queen will be out on that balcony again. One day, she and her people really will meet again. When that day finally comes, it will be just like May 8, 1945, all over again. The Queen is pictured in her ATS uniform

And she explains why that ATS cap still brings back so many happy memories: 'I pulled my uniform cap well down over my eyes.

'A Grenadier officer amongst our party of about 16 people said he refused to be seen in the company of another officer improperly dressed, so I had to put my cap on normally. We cheered the King and Queen on the balcony and then walked miles through the streets,' she adds.

Finally, the two princesses returned home where crowds were still screaming to see their sovereign.

'We stood outside and shouted, 'We want the King!' '

Much as Britain might have liked to, there could be no chants of 'We want the Queen!' last night. We could only open our windows and belt out those wartime words which both she and Dame Vera Lynn had implored us to sing: 'We'll Meet Again.'

One day, the Queen will be out on that balcony again. One day, she and her people really will meet again. When that day finally comes, it will be just like May 8, 1945, all over again.
Help India!

By Syed Khizar Ahmed

There is an excellent initiative in the news concerning the Muslims of India that over 200 prominent Muslims of India have come together to create a national think tank and an apex coordination body to put forward the voice of progressive and modern Muslims and to collectively express their constructive views to the media and the nation. The collective is called Indian Muslims for Progress and reforms (IMPAR). The whole aim is to initiate internal reforms, adopting modern outlook, community service as well as building favourable social and political environment and to enable access to educational and economic opportunities.

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Non-involvement of religious representative

However, a major drawback is the sidelining of religious leaders from the steering committee. Some of these members of the committee (as been mentioned in the website: http://impar.in/) are former Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, Rahman Khan; former Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi, former Union Minister, Tariq Anwar; Roshan Baig; Chairman of Islamic Culture Centre, Sirajuddin Qureshi; Brigadier Saeed Ahmed; Special Police Commissioner A A Khan; former CRPF ADG Aftab Khan; former bureaucrat Anis Ansari; Educationist P A Inamdar; S W Akhtar; M M Ansari and others among UGC members and former central government officials. Among media persons are well-known journalists Saeed Naqvi, Qamar Wahid Naqvi, Qamar Agha, Shahid Siddiqui, Yusuf Ansari, Seema Mustafa, Saba Naqvi, Sheeba Aslam Fahmi and others. The chairman of the think tank is the Indian Chamber of Food and Agricultures Dr M J Khan. The fascinating part is that the group consists of Muslims from every field of the Indian ecosystem from Politics, Media, Business, Education, Art, and administration/bureaucracy except the religious realm. The disbarring of the religious representative needs to be called out.

There is no representative from the faith, the binding factor of the IMPAR, or part of the existing religious group in the newly-formed IMPAR, which I found problematic in some manner. The earlier versions of Muslim organizations other than political ones are only involving religious scholars which made us more prone to tackling political juggling and confiscate the bitter taste of political motives. The loss and subliminal atrocities of the past are irreplaceable. Confiding leadership only to religious bodies does not work out for the Indian Muslims. Every political party darts the religious leaders in their own motives for asserting community representation with nothing in return. This is exactly the need of the hour to reorganize Muslims from every field of life to lift Muslims in a well-informed manner. The contemporary issues for Muslims have been changed and it needs a more wide and holistic approach to development. My concern is the negligence of the religious representatives of the committee, which makes it blemish and ill-motivated. The counter-narrative will eventually arise from the religious side within the Muslim society to avoid taking it seriously and thus, failing to maximize its reach. Religion is part and parcel of many of us and one cant simply remove it from representation as well. Thus, the representation from the religious leaders in the organization is essential making the organization multidisciplinary in true sense.

Impact of Non-involvement

To my understanding, there will be two major impacts:

First, two major divisions will grow in line with religious identity and political identity. The idea should be submerging socio-political & religious identity into one and then start the course of action, not dividing it into a larger internal gap of liberal and conservative. Both are part of identity. The inclusion of religious scholars makes it more versatile and provides more wide use cases to work for more collaborative development. The contemporary issue is allowing us to change but not on the compromise of religious identity.

Secondly, we face incomplete representation. Tawheed and driven to core Islamic belief makes Muslims more united and easy to work upon. Weighing only political & social stimulus and excluding the religious one will eventually make a weak course of action at ground level. The stimulus will not reach the grass-root level: the madrassas, masjids, or religious congregations. A huge Muslim poor population who cant afford education from schools enrolled in Madrassas or both enrolled to govt school and madrassas. It wouldnt better help IMPAR to connect with poor, less literate individuals and work on their upliftment. By excluding them, there will be a gap between the top and bottom levels and execution. It is by no means to malign the initiative but to produce more collaborative thinking to develop a better course of action that will eventually reflect in Muslims.

Hopefully, theyre under the process of planning and should consider the engagement of the religious leaders as well. If I look into the other side of the organization it seems(which I assume) like a deliberate exclusion of religious notable people to make it acceptable in contemporary nature and fixing the image but here, image fix just becomes a media hideout, not the much needed all-round upliftment. The urge to bring sane voices from religious representatives is much needed in mainstream discourse. Also, A huge Muslim population listens to the religious leaders only and is been accepted in comparison to any other activists or group.

(Syed Khizar Ahmed is a Senior Software Engineer by profession. He tweets @syaahkaar and can be mailed at [email protected])
Amid rising Covid cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the Bengaluru city civic body BBMP has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help and educate people. Image Source: IANS News

Amid rising Covid cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the Bengaluru city civic body BBMP has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help and educate people. Image Source: IANS News

Amid rising Covid cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the Bengaluru city civic body BBMP has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help and educate people. Image Source: IANS News

Amid rising Covid cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the Bengaluru city civic body BBMP has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help and educate people. Image Source: IANS News

Amid rising Covid cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the Bengaluru city civic body BBMP has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help and educate people. Image Source: IANS News

Bengaluru, May 9 : Amid rising COVID-19 cases with comorbidities such as Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), the city civic body has launched an initiative called Pranavayu to help people, an official said on Friday.

"Pranavayu is an initiative where Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) doctors at fever clinics will monitor patients using a pulse oximeter. This helps them track patients as they progress from ILI to SARI," said Commissioner B. H. Anil Kumar.

Kumar said the move is especially helpful to people with comorbidities and will also empower and educate citizens of self-monitoring on the development of SARI.

He said measuring the oxygen saturation in blood and heart rate, with an oximeter helps in detecting respiratory diseases early.

"Enables doctors to know when such patients need clinical intervention. This helps free up beds and ventilators," said Kumar highlighting the strained medical infrastructure of the city following COVID pandemic.

A drop in oxygen saturation below 90 per cent is a clear sign for an individual to seek medical attention at a hospital for critical care while a reading above 95 per cent is normal.

"Cause of concern in COVID infection is not simple upper respiratory tract infection which resolves on its own in a majority of cases (nearly 80-85 per cent) but the progress of the disease to SARI," said the civic body.

In SARI cases, a patient's lung functionality is impaired to the extent that he needs external support to sustain respiration.

People with comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, cancer, organ transplant cases, pregnant women and old people are more susceptible to develop SARI after contracting COVID.

In Karnataka, several COVID cases have comorbidities such as ILI and SARI.
WASHINGTON  Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trumps 2016 Republican campaign.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Associated Press he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trumps presumptive Democratic opponent in the November election.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, the firm said in a statement.

Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. Shes accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff. He has denied her allegation.

On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be held accountable and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.

Pressed by a Florida television station about Reades comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

The truth is what matters, he told Bay News 9. In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.

Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct. He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill OReilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused. In 2018, he spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Wigdor has been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He has not donated to either Trumps or Bidens 2020 campaign.

Wigdor said he plans to help Reade in her dealings with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur. He said the two have not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule that out.

Wigdor suggested Reades earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of politics.

I think highly of a lot of these people, he said. These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.

Over the weekend, another attorney, William Moran, told the AP he was working with Reade.

Moran, who works at a law firm in Columbia, Maryland, previously wrote and edited for Sputnik, a news agency founded and supported by the Russian state-owned media company Rossiya Segodnya. A January 2017 report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russias interference in the 2016 campaign said Sputnik was part of Russias state-run propaganda machine, which contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.

Reade herself has faced questions about her past writing praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reade on Thursday expressed concern to Kelly about having been called a Russian agent and said she had received a death threat from someone who thought I was being a traitor to America.

There is no evidence to suggest Reade or Moran worked at the behest of Russia with respect to the Biden allegation.

Moran contacted the AP on behalf of Reade to complain about and seek changes in a story detailing what Reade says she remembers writing in a Senate complaint about Biden. Reade told the AP she did not allege sexual assault in the complaint and did not explicitly use the words sexual harassment, though that is the behavior she believes she was describing.

Moran told the AP in a text message Thursday that he found the focus on his past work disgraceful. He said Reade requested that he reach out to the AP on a limited matter.

I do not turn away clients who I believe and who have credible causes of action. I never will, he said.

Wigdor said Reade told him she was connected to Moran through Katie Halper, a podcaster who first interviewed Reade about her sexual assault allegation against Biden in March. Its unclear how Reade connected with Wigdor, who said he believed she found the firm through word of mouth and our reputation.

Reade first spoke out about her alleged interactions with Biden in 2019, telling journalists he had touched her inappropriately while she worked on his Senate staff. She came forward in 2020, around the time Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, with new allegations of assault.

She says she didnt initially disclose the assault allegations because she was scared of backlash and was still coming to terms with what had happened to her.

___

AP Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace and writer Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.
Idris Elba has been seen in London for the first time since recovering from his battle with coronavirus.

The 47-year-old, along with his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba, 30, tested positive for a 'very mild' strain of the coronavirus in March but has now fully recovered.

Idris was spotted enjoying a walk near his home on Saturday, after he and wife Sabrina returned from self-isolating in New Mexico last month, where Elba was filming when he became ill.

Back on home turf: Idris Elba was seen for first time since recovering from coronavirus as he strolled through London on Saturday after returning home from New Mexico

Putting on a casual display for the outing, the Luther star looked relaxed as he strolled through his neighbourhood as part of his daily exercise during lockdown.

Idris wore a simple black logo T-shirt that fit loosely on his torso, and which he paired with faded denim jeans.

He completed the look by stepping out in stylish green sneakers, while he covered his salt-and-pepper locks with a black beanie.

Idris and Sabrina became some of the first celebrities to reveal they'd tested positive for the coronavirus in March. Five days earlier, Tom Hanks revealed he and his wife Rita Wilson were suffering from it.

Illness: The 47-year-old, along with his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba, 29, tested positive for a 'very mild' strain of the coronavirus in March but has now fully recovered

Comfy: Putting on a casual display for the outing, the Luther star looked relaxed as he strolled through his neighbourhood as part of his daily exercise during lockdown

Finishing touches: Idris completed the look by stepping out in stylish green sneakers, while he covered his salt-and-pepper locks with a black beanie

At the time, Idris appeared to confirm he had contracted the virus from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's wife Sophie, 44, after the two met shortly before they both tested positive for COVID-19.

The actor revealed he was exposed to the deadly disease on 4 March, the same day he posed with Sophie at the We Day UK charity event, in Wembley.

Following Idris' diagnosis, it was revealed his' wife Sabrina had also tested positive after choosing to remain with her husband in self isolation when he was diagnosed.

Defending their decision to isolate together following The Wire star's diagnosis, she told Oprah Winfrey 'I wanted to be with him' and claimed she felt 'the instinct of a wife' to take care of him.

Recovered: Idris and wife Sabrina returned from self-isolating in New Mexico last month, where Elba was filming when he became ill

Early diagnosis: Idris and Sabrina became some of the first celebrities to reveal they'd tested positive for the coronavirus in March

The actor and the SomaliCanadian beauty began dating in 2017, before getting engaged during a 2018 screening of Yardie, which marked his directorial debut.

As UN Goodwill Ambassadors, the couple have joined up with the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to support rural farmers trying to cope with the COVID-19 outbreak.

It is a call for an additional $200mn from donor governments in addition to the $40mn in seed funding provided by IFAD.

Sabrina said: 'People forget that 80% of the poor population live in these rural areas. What we are really worried about at the moment, and why we are launching this fund is that those people are being forgotten.'
Criminal activities such as



smuggling of contrabands, infiltration and dacoity along Tripura's 856-km international border with Bangladesh have sharply reduced since the implementation of the nationwide lockdown in March, officials said on Friday.

He said smuggling of psychotropic substances has come down to "almost nil" due to the curbs in place as transportation of contrabands from other states have come to a grinding halt.

"We have observed that border crimes have sharply reduced after the lockdown was announced by the Centre. Smuggling of contrabands like 'yaba' tablets or fensidyl cough syrup was rampant across... Sonamura area of Sipahijala district and Belonia area in South Tripura district, but it is almost nil now," an official of BSF Tripura Frontier here told PTI.

The official said other crimes like smuggling of cattles and infiltration have also gone down since the state government deployed personnel of the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) as the second line of defence after the BSF.

"Bangladesh is also now very alert, so that no one can enter inside their territory. They have deployed army along the border," the official said.

The Tripura government has also alerted the village heads in the bordering areas.

A total of 24 Border Security Force (BSF) personnel tested positive for COVID-19 in Tripura on Thursday, taking the number of novel coronavirus cases in the state to 88, Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb had said.

"We are maintaining social distance on duty and regularly sanitising the border out posts (BOPs)," the BSF official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UPTOWN, MANHATTAN  For Washington Heights resident Peter Doherty, daily dog walks during the coronavirus pandemic have come with another new normal  sidewalks littered in shattered glass from smashed-in car windows.

Doherty, who lives near West 156th Street and Broadway, is one of at least two residents who has noticed what turns out to be a near-double increase of car break-ins near the Harlem-Washington Heights border.

Every few days, as many as six parked cars near his route around Trinity Church Cemetery have had their passenger side windows smashed, Doherty said, a trend that seems to have become more frequent during the coronavirus stay-at-home order.

"Ive seen it on and off for the last four or five weeks," Doherty told Patch. "[Before] it might have been once in a while, but definitely since COVID has been around it's been more frequent for sure."



(To keep up with coronavirus news in Washington Heights and Inwood, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Glass litters the sidewalk on Riverside Drive. (Submitted by reader).



Specifically on Riverside Drive, police tell Patch that there have been 16 car break-in burglaries so far this year between West 133rd and 155th streets, compared to just nine in the same period in 2019.

Thirteen of the 16 break-ins fall under petit larceny, meaning the thieves didn't steal anything worth $1,000 or more. Three were grand larceny charges, police said.

And although Doherty says he's seen the same shattered glass left on the street for days at a time, police say local officers are aware of the problem.

"The Commanding Officer of the 30th Precinct is aware of the condition and is working to address it," Det. Sophia Mason, an NYPD spokesperson, told Patch. "Both patrol and plain clothes units are being deployed to areas of concern and during hours when the crime is being committed."



And it appears thieves aren't just breaking into windows, but stealing cars, too.

Story continues

In West Harlem's 30th Precinct, there have been 17 car thefts so far this year compared to just five in the same time period last year. Car thefts have also spiked in Washington Heights' 33rd Precinct, doubling from eight to 16, according to NYPD data.

Riverside Drive. (Submitted by reader).



Doherty, who said he's also noticed smashed windows on Broadway, West 155th and 153rd, said the increase in break-ins has made him more nervous walking around the neighborhood.

"Walking the dog I might have to go out late at night or early in the morning, I might be afraid of me getting caught up in that," he said.

The spike is part of an increase in certain crimes that some have credited to the shelter-in-place order during the coronavirus, which has shutdown the city's businesses and made for relatively desolate streets.



While some crime rates have gone down in Northern Manhattan so far this year, burglaries, robberies and car theft, meaning when the car isn't just broken into, but stolen, have all increased.

The biggest jump has been in car thefts. There were 148 thefts so far this year in all of Northern Manhattan compared to just 68 stolen cars in the same period last year, according to police data.

Overall crime rates for Northern Manhattan are up 4 percent this year.

Coronavirus In NYC: Latest Happenings And Guidance



Email PatchNYC@patch.com to reach a Patch reporter or fill out this anonymous form to share your coronavirus stories. All messages are confidential.





This article originally appeared on the Washington Heights-Inwood Patch
NEWARK, N.J.  The family of a woman who was paralyzed when she was struck by a falling telephone pole as she waited for a bus is to receive $125 million to settle a lawsuit against Verizon.

Maria Meister was waiting for a bus in Union City while commuting to her job as a lawyer in New York in 2017 when the rotted pole snapped, crushing her head and body. She suffered multiple spinal injuries and a severe brain injury and is paralyzed from the chest down, according to the lawsuit.

The suit alleged the pole was 43 years old and had been scheduled to be replaced in 1999 when PSE&G removed its equipment from the pole and directed Verizon to do the same and remove the pole. The suit also claimed Verizon hadnt inspected the pole since 1989.

The settlement order was signed Monday by a state judge in Essex County. In addition to the judgment against Verizon, it orders utility PSEG, which jointly owned the pole, to pay $250,000.

Because of their egregious actions, coupled with the catastrophic injuries to Maria, Verizon came to the table and the case settled, said attorney David Mazie, who represented Meister.

In an email, Verizon spokesman Rich Young wrote, While no amount of compensation can make up for what was lost, we hope the resolution of this case helps bring some measure of comfort, and provides care for Maria and her family, now and in the future.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Advertisement

Satellite images have revealed fleets of empty cruise liners clustering together at sea because they are unable to drop anchor at ports.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, few industries have been hit hard harder than the cruise industry.

The ships are viewed as floating petri dishes and, while passengers are no longer on them, several crew members still are.

Now, with no incoming bookings and unable to dock, many have taken to huddling together in the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the South China Sea to get out of the way of major shipping lanes.

Satellite images have revealed empty cruise ships huddling together to get out of the way of major shipping lanes. Pictured: Cruise ships off the coast of the Bahamas, May 2

Three groups of cruise ships, with 15 in total, are clustered together off Coco Cay and Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas

Because there are not enough traditional berths to accommodate cruise ships, many have been forced out to sea.

Two ports, Coco Cay and Great Stirrup Cay, in the Bahamas where Royal Caribbean ship and Norwegian cruise liners, are storing vessels.

According to The Drive, the ships are in three groups - 15 in total - that are about 30 miles apart from each other.

They have names such as Harmony of the Seas, Celebrity Edge and Azamara Pursuit.

There are also at least 12 cruise ships, such as the MV Ruby Princess, that are sitting just off the coast of the Philippines.

The Philippines Coast Guard says the cruise liners have to wait for clearance from the Bureau of Quarantine before they dock in Manila.

There are currently no passengers aboard the cruise liners, but many crew members are still onboard.

As of May 5, CNN says there are more than 57,000 crew members aboard 74 cruise ships in and around US ports, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

About a dozen cruise liners, such as the Ruby Princess, have been sitting off the coast of the Philippines (pictured)

Hundreds are more are stuck around the world and, because the ships can't dock, they are unable to get home.

Alex Adkins, a senior stage technician on Freedom of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship, says he has been at sea since mid-March when last guests disembarked

'Since then, we've had no guests and we've just been floating off the coast of Barbados,' Adkins, an American, told CNN.

Employees said they don't understand why they aren't free to leave ships if they've cleared 14-day quarantines.

'I'm hoping we don't get forgotten about, to be honest,' MaShawn Morton, an employee for Princess Cruises, told CNN.

'It seems like nobody cares what's happening to us out here.'

Carnival Cruise Line says it plans to resume some operations in August, but Norwegian Cruise Line says there is 'substantial doubt' about its future.

'We believe the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on our operations and global bookings have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on our financial results and liquidity, and such negative impact may continue well beyond the containment of such an outbreak,' the company's filing on Tuesday.

This is not the first time cruise ships have been pictured cloistered together.

Last week, cruise liners and cargo ships were forced to drop anchor off the Isle of Wight, in England, to avoid busy shipping lanes.

A spokesman for the UK's Department for Transport confirmed that certain ships have been given higher priority due to the crisis and cruise liners are currently low priority as they are not carrying any passengers.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Friday that he is willing to provide Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic opponent, with a rapid COVID-19 testing system so Biden can return to the campaign trail.

Trump, who this week made his first trip out of Washington in more than a month, relies on a federal supply of coronavirus tests so that he can maintain a more traditional schedule, while Biden has been isolating at home for nearly two months.

In a telephone interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said he would be willing to provide the former vice president with the same coronavirus tests he uses.

Yes, 100%. Id love to see him get out of the basement so he can speak," Trump said, needling Biden for holding virtual campaign events and media interviews from a studio in his home.

He added, that if Biden's team asked for them, We would have it to them today."

Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and anyone they come into close contact with are now being tested daily for COVID-19 after one of the president's valets tested positive for the virus this week. The availability of the tests has allowed Trump and Pence to resume a travel schedule and to host business leaders, medical professionals and lawmakers for meetings.

The stockpile of the rapid testing machines, which provide individual results in 5 to 15 minutes is largely controlled by the federal government. Trump on Tuesday personally delivered boxes of test kits to the Navajo Nation, flying them on Air Force One on his trip to Phoenix.

Responding to concerns raised last week by Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the U. S. Congress, that his office did not have the capacity to test all lawmakers returning to Washington, Trump directed that Congress be provided with three of the testing machines.

But in a rare joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Mitch McConnell rejected Trump's offer, directing the test kits to first responders and others on the front lines of fighting the spread of the virus.

There was no immediate response to Trumps offer from the Biden campaign.
Tesla told employees it would restart its factory in Fremont, Calif., on Friday. But the electric car companys plans do not comply with a local government order that has not cleared large manufacturers to resume operations.

The company informed employees of the plan in companywide emails sent late Thursday and early Friday. The emails were sent after Gov. Gavin Newsom said manufacturing companies could restart operations even as other businesses were to stay closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The governor also said that local governments could impose tougher restrictions than those in force statewide.

A coalition of health officials from six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Berkeley have chosen to maintain to stricter limits in their most recent order, issued on Monday.

That order allowed construction, landscaping, agricultural and other outdoor businesses to resume operations, but restaurants, bars, or other indoor businesses that do not permit physical distancing or have high-touch equipment must remain closed.
CHONGQING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A mayor in Italy has written an acknowledgment letter to a district government in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality for helping with the fight against COVID-19.

In the letter, Gian Vittorio Campus, the mayor of Sassari, expressed gratitude and appreciation to Chongqing's Ba'nan District for its friendship and donations in the fight against the epidemic.

Sassari, located in the north of Sardinia, counts "several hundreds of affected people and some tens of deaths," the mayor wrote.

"In this condition, your very kind action of friendship and the donation of materials to fight against the novel coronavirus disease, the 1,000 suits of medical disposable protective clothing and 5,280 KN95 masks, (are) really welcome and all of us warmly thank you," read the letter.

"Your donation will help our population to go through these days and to look forward to future, better, days," the letter continued. "The present very difficult times will be overcome, and we will be very glad to contribute to strengthen the relations between Chongqing Ba'nan District and Sassari."

The Ba'nan District government donated KN95 masks and protective suits to Sassari in April to aid its fight against the epidemic.
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Nearly six weeks have passed since Arie Even, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, died of the coronavirus.

It happened at the end of Shabbat dinner on a Friday night in March at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Even drew headlines as Israel's first COVID-19 fatality. As of Thursday, the coronavirus death count in the country had risen to 222. There have been almost 16,000 confirmed cases.

For Rachel Gemara, 33, the memory of Even has not lost its charge. It's stark and raw, and may stay that way for a long time to come.

She was the veteran nurse on call that night monitoring Even's breathing when he had a heart arrhythmia in Keter Alef, the hospital's first popup unit created for corona patients. The monitor sounded a long solemn beep, and the doctors raced to don their gear and care for him.

Gemara watched Even gasp and wheeze his last breaths on the screen as his grip on life slackened. She felt the tears stream from her eyes. Two patients in the isolated coronavirus ward raced to Even's bedside, placed their hands on his eyes and recited the Shema, the Jewish declaration of faith. Even had passed away.

Gemara understood that she and the other nurse on call would have the inauspicious responsibility of being the first ones in Israel to wrap the body of someone who died of the virus over fears of contagion. Because the resilient pathogen remains in a decedent and could be expelled in bodily fluid when the body is moved, this involved implementing a protective protocol drafted by the Israeli Ministry of Health just eight days earlier.

Gemara reached for the special kit, which included two bags and four pages of instructions.

Preparing a body for Jewish burial is habitually the domain of the chevra kadisha, Hebrew for "holy society." The ritual act of purification is known as tahara, which is carried out by individuals trained to care for the body in an age-old process of traditional cleansing. Men care for men; women care for women. It is said that the body is treated as a vessel for holiness.

The specific rituals for care of the dead are generally relegated to the private domain. The body is washed thrice in a constant stream of warm water or ritually immersed in a body of water before it is dressed in "tachrichim," a traditional Jewish burial shroud of simple white intended to be a cocoon of sheets. Silence fills the room, save the recitation of psalms and prayers. The deceased is addressed by name.

Gemara had spent 10 years in an oncology ward where most of the patients are at the severe stage 4 and approximately 30 percent are terminal. She had invested emotionally in making their end-of-life meaningful and caring for them when they passed on.

By nature, Gemara gravitated to the demanding. Right out of nursing school, she had advocated to work in oncology. That same drive prompted her to volunteer for the not-yet-formulated unit for coronavirus patients in late February, as a text circulated in the hospital calling for staff members to sign up.

Gemara's knack for compassionate care meant that she instinctively knew what to do when a patient passed away. She also had considerable experience with patients postmortem.

"How many times had I wrapped a body? 100 times? 200 times?" she said.

But wrapping a body in a special bag and cleaning it to avert endangering those with whom it would come into contact until burial? That was a first.

Even more piercing was the knowledge that she'd be the last one to identify and care for him. That, too, was uncharted territory.

On that Friday in March, Gemara slipped out of the hospital into the parking lot and stepped into a white hazmat suit, then zipped it up. She pulled her long hair into a ponytail, put on an N95 mask, two sets of blue sanitized gloves, face shield and hood, and slipped booties over pink Nikes. Cuffs secured. It took 10 minutes to don the protective gear. Then she buzzed into the unit.

As she started to care for Even's body, her eyes stung with tears. He reminded Gemara of her grandparents, Saba Dov, 96, and Savta Miriam, 90. Like Even, they were Holocaust survivors from Hungary and spoke with the same accent.

"He was familiar," she remembered recently, her voice shaking with emotion.

Even had escaped the Nazis by hiding with his mother and brother in a countryside basement, helped by the renowned Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Even had survived multiple heart attacks and surgeries, even fled a cholera epidemic in Spain. He had four grandchildren and 18 grandchildren. A great-grandchild was born. He had lost his wife of 50 years, Yona, in 2012.

When Even had teetered in to the hospital on his weathered brown cane five days earlier, his skin pale and hair matted, he was short of breath, chest rising. His eyes took in the room grimly.

On Monday, Even had asked Gemara to help him call his family members to say goodbye. By Friday night, he was rapidly deteriorating.

That evening was Gemara's seventh day in the unit, her fifth shift there. On the corona-compressed calendar, time seemed to stretch and contract.

Gemara is a Modern Orthodox Jew, the daughter of a rabbi. Born in Israel, she was raised in Toronto before moving to Jerusalem in 2006.

Judaism provided an anchor, a way of life. She felt viscerally pained over the fact that Even would not experience the proper end-of-life Jewish rituals.

"In addition to the COVID-induced isolation of dying without family, this man who survived the Nazis was going to be cheated out of this," she reflected.

Then Gemara understood that she could be his makeshift chevra kadisha. She could confer respect to the dead. While she wrapped the body as prescribed by the Health Ministry, she imbued it with the same holiness and intent of tahara. Modified, atypical holiness. But holiness nonetheless.

When she was done, she replicated a custom of the burial society: appealing to the body for forgiveness if any distress was caused in the preparation. Inaudibly and with reverence, she whispered:

"Arie, I'm sorry for how we were required to handle your body. We did our best to preserve your dignity and respect you in the current circumstances... It was a tremendous honor to care for you in your final days. You've touched my heart, the staff, and the patients that surrounded you. I know your life will inspire the rest of 'Am Yisrael' [the Jewish people] as well. Go to your resting place in peace. Look out for us from above."

The following evening, Even was buried by members of the chevra kadisha wearing biohazard suits, with only his youngest child able to attend. Jewish end-of-life rituals had to be secondary to safeguarding the living.

As the pandemic continues, so does grappling with end-of-life customs and practices. Tahara was suspended, then permitted.

The coronavirus has blurred other kinds of lines: Patients care for other patients in a closed-off ward while medical staff observes from afar. Doctors and nurses are suited head to toe, their faces trapped on the inside while smiling glossy photos of their faces are plastered on the outside-something to reveal about the health professional inside.

Over the past six weeks, Keter Alef sprouted to six units, including one in the ICU. In that time, Gemara clocked 275 hours in 12-hour shifts. She celebrated her 33rd birthday and a Passover Seder. Much of her life has been all coronavirus, all the time. No breathers with friends, no time to jog, no respites to condition her hair. She found restful sleep to be a distant country.

When she did nod off, her dreams were dark and unreachable. Many times the responsibility felt heavy, unyielding.

Fortunately the rate of incoming patients has slowed. With cautious optimism, Shaare Zedek closed Keter Hey on April 23 and Keter Bet on April 26. Keter Alef shuttered on April 30. Things were starting to open up.

But the ache of losing Even lingered.

Then it was bookended by hope.

On the evening of April 23, a tall man with glasses knocked his glove-covered hand on the nurse's station. Gemara's face beamed. It was her patient, admitted three weeks prior with severe respiratory distress, too weak to get out of bed.

The 51-year-old with no prior medical conditions had stopped breathing on her watch. As she revisited that night, her voice caught.

"At 2 a.m. I was inside the unit, in full protective gear, the rest of the staff far away in the headquarters," Gemara recalled. "He asked me to help him out of bed, and as I slowly helped him sit down, he suddenly slumped his head, his eyes rolled back and he completely lost consciousness.

Shaare Zedek staffers feature photos of themselves on their protective suits.

"I was alone and terrified. His life was in my hands, and every second counted. I leaped to grab a 100-percent oxygen facemask from the crash cart and connected him immediately to the maximum amount of oxygen. Thank heavens he regained consciousness. The sheer terror and uncertainty of those few moments shook me to my core."

As she looked at him, Gemara remembered wheeling him carefully to the ICU Keter Unit, eyeing him closely during the transfer. How she'd squeezed his hand, saying "Stay strong, keep fighting, I'll pray for you and I'll see you again soon." How she'd walked back to her unit in tears, wondering if she would, in fact, see him again soon.

And now he had come to say goodbye.

"Hey there," he said, release papers in hand, looking straight into Gemara's eyes. "I just wanted to thank you. You saved my life, plain and simple."
In accordance with Executive Order 2020-69 issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library, Civic Arena and Midland Community Television (MCTV) will remain closed to the public through Thursday, May 28.

All room rentals at the library, located at 1710 W. St. Andrews Road, will be cancelled during this time period and all physical library programs and activities will be cancelled through May 28. All due dates on borrowed materials have been extended until June 15, but patrons can return items by using the librarys return book slot on the outside of the building. Residents may retain oversized borrowed items until the library reopens.
Russian companies still pursue authoritarian leadership styles, and employees often avoid articulating their concerns and complaints to management. Together with chronic stress and work-family imbalance, this can often result in emotional burnout. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from North Dakota State University and HSE University.

Venting to Co-Workers and Friends

Russians have still not learned how to express their dissent with corporate policy to their top managers and supervisors. It is more common to discuss the annoying things with co-workers, vent to family members or friends, rather than express concerns openly to management. As a result, people experience burnout and simply don't have the inner strength to continue working.

A joint study by American and Russian researchers revealed the positive correlation between Russian's latent dissent at work and emotional burnout.

Social psychologist Christina Maslach, known for her research on emotional burnout, puts burnout symptoms into three categories:

emotional and physical exhaustion; a sense of reduced professional accomplishment and cynical attitude to work; feelings of alienation from the organization and co-workers.

Other signs of burnout include absenteeism and intentions to quit.

The study was conducted in Perm, Russia. It involved 237 participants, 117 males and 120 females aged from 18 to 57, who work full-time in various sectors. The responders completed questionnaires with demographic questions and several scales measuring the level of dissent with respect to their employers' policies and emotional burnout, as well as corporate support for work-family balance.

Surviving Between Family and Work

Russian employees often experience chronic stress, the study authors say. According to the available data, it can impact up to 70% of workforce.

There are global reasons for this. Russia's accession to international markets in the 1990s and the 2000s required firms to improve their competitiveness and performance indicators, which has led to increased stress at work both for managers and rank-and-file employees. Another stress factor is authoritarian leadership style, which is popular in Russian companies and does not allow employees much freedom to express their opinions or dissent in regards to organizational policies, the researchers note.

Russian managers have attributed their heightened work stress (Gorelova E, 2013) to the following reasons:

unpredictable business environment in the country; diffculties in building trust with people; lack of comprehensive, unifying business rules; constant changes in legislation.

Rank-and-file employees in Russia also have contended that working life is becoming much more stressful owing to the increasing demand for skills and working time, as well as the intensified competition on the job market. Furthermore, women in Russia often face additional stress because both political and religious discourses in Russia dictate that child-rearing is essentially a female project.

As a consequence, many working Russians experience a work-family imbalance. While companies often formally stand for family values and develop programmes to support this balance, they are not always implemented in practice. The study's authors note that managers may send out mixed messages that employees are not 'really' encouraged to utilize work-family benefits, even when such programmes exist.

This results in a vicious circle, when a deficit of support from management, together with work overload, leads to emotional burnout. This, in turn, can significantly worsen one's work-life imbalance.

Furthermore, the research has demonstrated that those who get real support from managers have fewer chances of burnout. 'With both formal organizational support and informal managerial support, employees may feel more comfortable and less guilty putting family responsibilities before work,' the researchers say.

Talking Openly about Problems

One of the researchers' key conclusions is that encouraging the expression of dissent is a viable way to empower employees and this, thereby, can reduce their stress level. The more explicitly an employee expresses their 'upward dissent', the less chances for burnout they have. Moreover, it has been confirmed that feedback has a positive effect. It turns out to be statistically more important with respect to the factors of correlation with burnout levels, says Tatyana Permyakovahttps://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/202193, one of the study authors.

Latent dissent, as the research indicates, is expressed by employees through their burnout.

Containing dissent is already one of the signs of burnout.

Employees just don't have any strength to fight. They may feel alienated from the company and lack motivation to do anything.

'In an ideal workplace, employees can complain about tiny, but frustrating events before they develop into severe stressors. In this sense, a democratic organizational climate that welcomes dissent is key in combating employee burnout in the workplace,' the researchers conclude.

###
While countries around the world have imposed variations of lockdowns to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, Sweden has taken a controversial approach allowing most of the country to remain open.

The Scandinavian nation has encouraged social distancing but managed to avoid shutting down businesses or imposing a strict stay at home message, apparently taking the herd immunity approach.

Herd immunity is a situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease to make its spread from person to person unlikely, but according to ANU Medical School infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon  its not ideal for Australia.

Sweden (left) has approached the coronavirus pandemic in a much more relaxed way than countries like Australia (right). Source: AAP/Getty

Sweden only has a population of about 10 million people and theyve had close to 3,000 deaths, where Australia has only had about 96 deaths, so theyve got a much higher death rate  its something like 50 times higher the death rate that weve had, he told Yahoo News Australia during a Facebook Live Q&A.

Professor Collignon said although Australias economy may have suffered due to coronavirus restrictions, enforcing strict guidelines has saved lives.

So far what Australia has done  yes, weve probably put more people out of work than Sweden has  but weve also stopped an awful lot of deaths, he said.

I dont think we have to follow the New Zealand approach either of locking everybody down for five or six weeks but equally, Im not sure the Swedish approach is the right approach either.

Professor Collignon said it was better for Australia to err on the side of caution while we learn more about the virus that has killed more than 267,000 people globally, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Were still at the stage where there is a lot that we dont know about this virus, so until we know more I think its better to be a bit more cautious.

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.
Anti-vaxxers and Victorians fed up with the coronavirus lockdown are planning to break the rules and protest in Melbourne's CBD on Mother's Day.

The protesters will gather on Sunday to demand the government lifts 'absurd' lockdown rules and reopen the nation immediately.

Police Minister Lisa Neville has pleaded with the organisers of the two protests to cancel their plans to take over the city on Sunday.

'I am just making a plea here to protest organisers... to cancel those protests,' she said on Friday.

'We have come so far and to blatantly breach these restrictions like that put Victoria Police in a difficult position, put our community in a difficult position and tie up police resources that we don't need tied up.

The protesters will demand the government lifts 'absurd' lockdown rules and reopen the nation immediately, and have been encouraged to print these signs for the occasion

'If you are thinking about going to those protests, don't. If you do, Victoria Police will be there.'

One of the protests is against the social distancing measures and the other relates to vaccination and 5G network conspiracy theories.

Ridiculous theories linking coronavirus to the rollout of the new 5G network have swept the globe during the health crisis, despite experts' desperate efforts to debunk the claims.

Australian professor of medicine, and public health advocate John Dwyer described conspiracy claims that 5G causes the deadly virus as 'dangerous nonsense'.

He also refuted claims 5G technology is harmful to our health.

'At this time in the fight against the epidemic, this is dangerous nonsense. Even to have a few people think differently that social distancing isn't for them is a silly idea and is putting all of us at risk,' he said.

A pamphlet for the event urged people in 'any state, any country' to 'peacefully stand on the steps of your government building and demand answers.'

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said about 100 people indicated their intention to attend one of the protests.

But one woman who will attend said that figure is wrong - and that at least 1,000 had registered their interest before the event's Facebook page was shut down on Friday afternoon.

A pamphlet for the event urged people in 'any state, any country' to 'peacefully stand on the steps of your government building and demand answers'

Anti-vaxxers will be present at the protest and will argue the government's lockdown rules are not lawful. Pictured: A separate protest on vaccinations

'Do not be deterred by this continued fear mongering and false reporting,' one protester posted online.

The woman said the primary reason for the 'peaceful protest' is to 'stand up for our lawful rights... and to hold our government accountable for the unlawful directives they have tried to force upon us.'

The lockdown rules have been 'sold off as lawful, in our interests and to protect us from a ''deadly'' coronavirus ''pandemic'',' she added.

COVID-19 has killed in excess of 270,000 people globally, and infected 3.9 million. In Australia, there are 6,900 known cases, including 97 deaths.

In relation to the Police Minister's warning about significant police presence, protesters welcomed them.

'Of course Victoria Police will be present. We call on them to stand alongside us,' one said.

Gatherings of more than two people are allowed under new national guidelines - but Victoria will not be following them straight away

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 woman said any fines distributed on the day will 'not be lawful' and that guests should not consent to being told that the gathering is not essential.

'This peaceful gathering IS an essential gathering,' she said. 'Do not consent to being told it is not.'

'The Australian public is now aware and not afraid to stand up and hold the Daniel Andrews and Scott Morrison governments accountable.

'We will stand against this misinformation about an app, mandatory vaccinations, the 5G installation and and all related coronavirus deceit, and call on the government to lift the absurd shutdown and to re-open our state and country now.'

Commissioner Ashton urged protesters to have patience as lockdown restrictions could be lifted after the state of emergency ends on Monday.

'We get on top of this and we can start to enjoy more freedoms again,' he said on Friday.

'We are potentially not far off seeing some easing... so just be patient with us a bit longer.'

Under the current restrictions, Victorians are only allowed to leave home for essential reasons and can be fined $1,652 if caught breaking the law, under some of the most restrictive conditions in the nation.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday announced a three-step plan to relax restrictions - but warned more outbreaks will happen as the rules are eased.

The current national baseline rules will be relaxed in three stages, with less risky activities such as sport and dining out starting before more dangerous ones such as clubbing and going to the cinema

National baseline rules will be relaxed in three stages, with less risky activities such as outdoor sport and dining out starting before more dangerous ones such as going to the gym and the cinema.

The first step will allow gatherings of ten people outside and visits of five people to another household. The second step allows gatherings of 20 and the third stage allows 100 people to come together.

But the new 'roadmap' - which will be reviewed every three weeks - will only guide state and territory leaders, who will then decide when to implement each stage in their own jurisdictions.

The second stage will allow gatherings of up to 20 people. Gyms, cinemas, and beauty therapies can restart as well as community sport and some inter-state travel.

Working from home will still be encouraged where possible under steps one and two.

Step three involves opening up most of the economy with gatherings of up to 100 people and pubs and clubs back open.

'Pubs and clubs with some restrictions will be open. And also possibly gaming venues,' Mr Morrison said.

The new 'roadmap' - which will be reviewed every three weeks - will only guide state and territory leaders, who will then decide when to implement each stage in their own jurisdictions
MA XJUEJING/CHINA DAILY

By DUAN JIELONG

China and Hungary show that the pandemic and its effects can be overcome with solidarity and collaboration

In the smokeless war against the novel coronavirus, all countries have a stake in a community with a shared future for mankind. As comprehensive strategic partners, China and Hungary have provided each other with assistance, worked closely together to tide over the difficulties and written a new chapter of friendly cooperation.

At the beginning of the outbreak in China, the Hungarian government was one of the first to provide assistance to China, donating medical supplies such as surgical masks and protective suits. The Hungarian government and people from all walks of life also employed a variety of ways to send messages of encouragement to China in its fight against the virus. When Europe became the epicenter of the outbreak, the situation in Hungary became more and more severe. But the Hungarian government was one of the European countries to take early corresponding measures. It took strict control at home, declared a state of emergency, strictly guarded its borders with the outside world and suspended personnel exchanges, which effectively slowed down the spread of the virus within the country. Currently, there are about 3,100 confirmed cases in Hungary, making it the fourth-safest country in Europe.

The Chinese government and people are sympathetic to the difficulties and pressures faced by Hungary in its fight against the virus. The Chinese side invited health officials and experts from Hungary to attend the China-Central and East Europe videoconference of experts on pandemic prevention and control of COVID-19. At the same time, China has tried its best to meet Hungary's demand for materials to fight against the pandemic.

Some local authorities in China, Chinese-funded enterprises and overseas Chinese organizations in Hungary have also played an active role in making generous donations and contributions. So far, dozens of charter flights carrying pandemic prevention supplies have arrived in Hungary from China.

Hungary has expressed its appreciation for China's help. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban went to the airport to welcome the first batch of goods and materials arriving from China, and wrote a letter to Chinese-funded enterprises in person, saying that "I am truly grateful that the Chinese and Hungarian people have stood together in these difficult times". Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote a thank-you message on his personal Facebook account. The Hungarian people commented that the Hungarian government's policy of opening to the East is wise and they felt lucky to have maintained good relations with China.

Mutual trust and cooperation are the cornerstone of China-Hungary relations. In this special period to prevent and control the spread of the virus, it is crucial to enhance mutual trust and cooperation. Yet some people with ulterior motives in the United States and other Western countries have used the pandemic to smear China, and a few Hungarian media outlets have followed suit.

Our embassy has clarified China's actual situation and the measures taken by the Chinese government and presented the transparency and responsibility of the Chinese government, actively shared the stories of the Chinese government and people fighting the pandemic united as one. These efforts have gained understanding and praise. We have also strengthened mutual trust and dispelled doubts through interviews with Hungarian media, making clear that any words and deeds contrary to the facts are intended to tarnish China's image.

At present, thanks to a series of effective measures taken by the Hungarian government, remarkable achievements have been made in controlling the spread of the virus in Hungary. However, the pandemic situation in the neighboring countries is generally severe, and the external pressure on prevention is huge. The Chinese government and the Chinese embassy in Hungary will continue to maintain close communication with Hungary and provide support within our capacity to support and help Hungary overcome the difficulties at the earliest date.

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus around the world has made us realize, as never before, that countries are closely linked, and that it is important and urgent to accelerate the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. In the face of this grave and common challenge, no member of the international community can afford to be left without a final victory.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, China has always attached importance to and actively carried out international cooperation. It has been working closely with the World Health Organization and the countries concerned, and donated $50 million to the WHO. It provided immediate information on the outbreak, quickly identified the genetic sequence of the virus and shared it with other countries, enabling them to detect the virus and combat the outbreak as soon as possible.

China has also taken the initiative to carry out anti-pandemic cooperation with a number of countries and regions. "China's assistance" and "made in China" are injecting a steady stream of impetus into the global pandemic prevention and control efforts, and contributing Chinese strength to the global defense against the pandemic.

Hungarian poet Sandor Pedofi said: "Friendship unseen in the day lights up the night like fireflies." The cooperation between China and Hungary in fighting the pandemic has fully proved that the international community needs confidence rather than panic, unity rather than division, and cooperation rather than buck-passing to overcome the pandemic. I firmly believe that with the joint efforts of both sides, the friendship and comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries will be further deepened and mutual trust and cooperation will reach a new height after the pandemic.

The author is the Chinese ambassador to Hungary. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Military Online.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A top pediatrician at Staten Island University Hospital has some facts and advice for parents alarmed about the health risks to their children posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

International reports suggest that there could be a connection between COVID-19, toxic shock syndrome, Kawasaki disease, multi-system inflammatory syndrome and other serious complications in children. At least 15 children in New York City have experienced some of these symptoms, according to the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Some of the patients tested negative for COVID-19.

We have seen that the COVID infection doesnt completely spare any particular age group and it can lead to some serious illness in kids," said Dr. Pamela Feuer, director of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze and Princes Bay.

At least six children between the ages of birth and 17 in New York City have died of complications from the coronavirus, according to city Health Department statistics, and each of them had a preexisting health condition.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday that here have been 73 reported cases of children in New York State becoming severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and apparent toxic shock syndrome. On Thursday, a 5-year-old boy died from these complications thought to be caused by COVID-19.

.We have not had any deaths of children in Staten Island University Hospital" due to COVID-19, Feuer said. We have treated a number of patients and many of them have been discharged."

Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton declined to reveal whether any children with COVID-19 died in its facility.

Our policy is not to provide comment on cause of death for any of our patients, especially minors, for the privacy of our patients and their families, said a statement from the hospital.

Children who do become ill during this pandemic will receive care at SIUH based on the most up-to-date information from around the world, according to Feuer.

We are learning something new every single day and have a heightened awareness of every new type of symptom we see," Feuer said. The international pediatric care community is communicating to share information and to make sure that we keep on top of the new things were seeing.

Children also are not suffering alone. A parent stays in the room with the child so its a real team effort to not just take care of the patient but the family as well for pediatric COVID, Feuer said.

Feuer cautioned that symptoms such as inflammatory syndrome, Kawasaki disease and toxic shock could occur in children who initially were asymptomatic for coronavirus and those complications could start up to several weeks past the initial infection for COVID-19.

Feuer said that parents should contact their pediatricians if their children have any of the following symptoms:

Trouble breathing;

fever for several days;

inability to eat or drink;

altered mental state such as not recognizing familiar people or responding normally;

out-of-character behavior after receiving medication for fever;

presence of a rash and/or an increased rash with fever.

bloodshot eyes or redness in the pink parts of the eye and very red lips;

rashes that could appear on the face, the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet or cover most of the body.

Most susceptible to COVID-19 are children with serious preexisting conditions. Some of those maladies include seizure disorders, chronic lung diseases, cystic fibrosis, immune deficiencies or immune-suppression regimens, congenital heart disease, neuromuscular diseases and Sickle Cell anemia.

The older teen and young adult population, especially those with any sort of risk factors, are presenting more similarly to the adults with a COVID pneumonia requiring anywhere from oxygen to more critical illness of respiratory failure requiring a ventilator, Feuer said.

Any sort of chronic inflammation in the lungs" can predispose children to serious symptoms from COVID-19 and in some cases that includes asthma, but Feuer said its more likely in children with chronic lung disease such as due to severe prematurity.

Doctors are not sure whether vaping illness predisposes to worsened COVID symptoms, she said.
LISLE, Ill., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- SunCoke Energy, Inc. (NYSE: SXC) today reported results for the first quarter 2020 and provided updates on the Company COVID-19 response.

"These are unprecedented times as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of our society. SunCoke has taken effective measures to safeguard the health and safety of our workforce," said Mike Rippey, President and Chief Executive Officer of SunCoke Energy, Inc. "As the pandemic unfolded, our internal COVID-19 task force took proactive steps implementing policies and procedures to protect our workforce and contractors which are consistent with guidelines laid out by the CDC, OSHA and local health and governmental authorities."

Rippey continued, "While COVID-19 had limited impact on SunCoke in the first quarter, we recognize the challenging economic environment that exists today. Our customers have dramatically reduced blast furnace output resulting in lower demand for coke. We are currently exploring contract restructuring alternatives with our customers to address short-term market challenges. We value the strong relationships we have with our customers and look to flexibly work with them to navigate through the crisis. While our operations are performing well as evident from our first quarter results, we have made the decision to withdraw our 2020 guidance to reflect the potential for near-term supply relief for our customers. Going forward, we will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving situation and stand ready to take any necessary and appropriate action as the need arises."

FIRST QUARTER CONSOLIDATED RESULTS



Three Months Ended March 31, (Dollars in millions) 2020

2019

Decrease Revenues $ 382.7



$ 391.3



$ (8.6)

Net income attributable to SXC $ 4.9



$ 9.8



$ (4.9)

Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 62.1



$ 67.3



$ (5.2)





(1) See definition of Adjusted EBITDA and reconciliation elsewhere in this release.

Revenues and Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter 2020 decreased $8.6 million and $5.2 million, respectively, compared to the prior year period, primarily reflecting lower volumes in the Logistics segment. These decreases were partly offset by higher results in our Domestic Coke segment, driven by the improved performance at our Indiana Harbor cokemaking facility.

Net income attributable to SXC decreased $4.9 million from the prior year period, driven by the operating results discussed above. Net income attributable to SXC also reflects higher income tax expense, net driven by the revaluation of certain deferred tax assets due to lower apportioned state tax rates. This increase in expense was mostly offset by a $2.9 million gain recognized in connection with the repurchase of $12.0 million of our 7.5 percent senior notes due 2025 and lower depreciation expense as compared to the same prior year period.

FIRST QUARTER SEGMENT RESULTS

Domestic Coke

Domestic Coke consists of cokemaking facilities and heat recovery operations at our Jewell, Indiana Harbor, Haverhill, Granite City and Middletown plants.



Three Months Ended March 31, (Dollars in millions, except per ton amounts) 2020

2019

Increase Revenues $ 365.2



$ 359.3



$ 5.9

Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 63.4



$ 58.5



$ 4.9

Sales volumes (thousands of tons) 1,064



1,004



60

Adjusted EBITDA per ton(2) $ 59.59



$ 58.27



$ 1.32







(1) See definition of Adjusted EBITDA and reconciliation elsewhere in this release. (2) Reflects Domestic Coke Adjusted EBITDA divided by Domestic Coke sales volumes.

Revenues increased $5.9 million primarily due to higher volumes, which increased revenues $21.9 million, driven by the performance of the rebuilt ovens at our Indiana Harbor facility. This increase was mostly offset by the pass through of lower coal costs.

Adjusted EBITDA increased $4.9 million due to an increase in sales volumes described above, which increased Adjusted EBITDA $6.3 million. This increase was partially offset by lower coal cost recovery at our Jewell cokemaking facility during the current period.

Logistics

Logistics consists of the handling and mixing services of coal and other aggregates at our Convent Marine Terminal ("CMT"), Lake Terminal, Kanawha River Terminals ("KRT") and Dismal River Terminal ("DRT").



Three Months Ended March 31, (Dollars in millions, except per ton amounts) 2020

2019

Increase (Decrease) Revenues $ 9.0



$ 22.3



$ (13.3)

Intersegment sales $ 6.6



$ 6.5



$ 0.1

Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 3.3



$ 12.7



$ (9.4)

Tons handled (thousands of tons) 4,214



5,784



(1,570)







(1) See definition of Adjusted EBITDA and reconciliation elsewhere in this release.

Revenues and Adjusted EBITDA decreased by $13.3 million and $9.4 million, respectively, driven by lower throughput volumes as well as lower prices, primarily at the CMT facility. Lower demand and lower prices continued to impact coal export volumes in the first quarter.

Brazil Coke

Brazil Coke consists of a cokemaking facility in Vitoria, Brazil, which we operate for an affiliate of ArcelorMittal.

Revenues and Adjusted EBITDA were $8.5 million and $4.1 million, respectively, during the first quarter 2020, which was slightly lower than revenues and Adjusted EBITDA of $9.7 million and $4.5 million, respectively, during the first quarter 2019, driven by lower sales volumes.

Corporate and Other

Corporate and other expenses, which includes activity from our legacy coal mining business, was $8.7 million during the first quarter 2020, reasonably consistent with expenses of $8.4 million during first quarter 2019.

RELATED COMMUNICATIONS

We will host our quarterly earnings call at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time (9:30 a.m. Central Time) today. The conference call will be webcast live and archived for replay in the Investors section of www.suncoke.com. Investors may participate in this call by dialing 1-833-502-0489 in the U.S. or 1-778-560-2555 if outside the U.S., confirmation code 7773766.

SUNCOKE ENERGY, INC.

SunCoke Energy, Inc. (NYSE: SXC) supplies high-quality coke to the integrated steel industry under long-term, take-or-pay contracts that pass through commodity and certain operating costs to customers. We utilize an innovative heat-recovery cokemaking technology that captures excess heat for steam or electrical power generation. Our cokemaking facilities are located in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and Brazil. We have more than 55 years of cokemaking experience serving the integrated steel industry. In addition, we provide export and domestic material handling services to coke, coal, steel, power and other bulk and liquids customers. Our logistics terminals have the collective capacity to mix and transload more than 40 million tons of material each year and are strategically located to reach Gulf Coast, East Coast, Great Lakes and international ports. To learn more about SunCoke Energy, Inc., visit our website at www.suncoke.com.

DEFINITIONS

Adjusted EBITDA represents earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"), adjusted for any impairments, gain on extinguishment of debt, changes to our contingent consideration liability related to our acquisition of CMT, and/or transaction costs incurred as part of the Simplification Transaction. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not represent and should not be considered alternatives to net income or operating income under accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S. ("GAAP") and may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures in other businesses. Management believes Adjusted EBITDA is an important measure in assessing operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to investors because it highlights trends in our business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on GAAP measures and because it eliminates items that have less bearing on our operating performance. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are not measures calculated in accordance with GAAP, and they should not be considered a substitute for net income or any other measure of financial performance presented in accordance with GAAP.

represents earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"), adjusted for any impairments, gain on extinguishment of debt, changes to our contingent consideration liability related to our acquisition of CMT, and/or transaction costs incurred as part of the Simplification Transaction. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not represent and should not be considered alternatives to net income or operating income under accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S. ("GAAP") and may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures in other businesses. Management believes Adjusted EBITDA is an important measure in assessing operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to investors because it highlights trends in our business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on GAAP measures and because it eliminates items that have less bearing on our operating performance. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are not measures calculated in accordance with GAAP, and they should not be considered a substitute for net income or any other measure of financial performance presented in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA attributable to SXC represents Adjusted EBITDA less Adjusted EBITDA attributable to noncontrolling interests.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release and related conference call contains "forward-looking statements" (as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). Such forward-looking statements include statements that are not strictly historical facts, and include, among other things, statements regarding: our expectations of financial results, condition and outlook; anticipated effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and responses thereto, including the pandemic's impact on general economic and market conditions, as well as on our business, our customers, our results of operations and financial condition; anticipated actions to be taken by management to sustain SunCoke during the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic and related business actions; and anticipated actions by governments to contain the spread of COVID-19 or mitigate the severity thereof.

Forward-looking statements often may be identified by the use of such words as "believe," "expect," "plan," "project," "intend," "anticipate," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "may," "will," "should," or the negative of these terms, or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and involve significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties (many of which are beyond the control of SunCoke) that could cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to domestic and international economic, political, business, operational, competitive, regulatory and/or market factors affecting SunCoke, as well as uncertainties related to: pending or future litigation, legislation or regulatory actions; liability for remedial actions or assessments under existing or future environmental regulations; gains and losses related to acquisition, disposition or impairment of assets; recapitalizations; access to, and costs of, capital; the effects of changes in accounting rules applicable to SunCoke; and changes in tax, environmental and other laws and regulations applicable to SunCoke's businesses.

Currently, such risks and uncertainties also include: SunCoke's ability to manage its business during and after the COVID-19 pandemic; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SunCoke's results of operations, revenues, earnings and cash flows; SunCoke's ability to reduce costs and capital spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; SunCoke's balance sheet and liquidity throughout and following the COVID-19 pandemic; SunCoke's prospects for financial performance and achievement of strategic objectives following the COVID-19 pandemic; capital allocation strategy following the COVID-19-related outbreak; and the general impact on our industry and on the U.S. and global economy resulting from COVID-19, including actions by domestic and foreign governments and others to contain the spread, or mitigate the severity, thereof.

Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, but are based upon the current knowledge, beliefs and expectations of SunCoke management, and upon assumptions by SunCoke concerning future conditions, any or all of which ultimately may prove to be inaccurate. The reader should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. SunCoke does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation, to update or alter its forward-looking statements (or associated cautionary language), whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise after the date of this press release except as required by applicable law.

In accordance with the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, SunCoke has included in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission cautionary language identifying important factors (but not necessarily all the important factors) that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statement made by SunCoke. For information concerning these factors, see SunCoke's Securities and Exchange Commission filings such as its annual and quarterly reports and current reports on Form 8-K, copies of which are available free of charge on SunCoke's website at www.suncoke.com. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by such cautionary statements. Unpredictable or unknown factors not discussed in this release also could have material adverse effects on forward- looking statements.

SunCoke Energy, Inc. Consolidated Statements of Income (Unaudited)





(Dollars and shares in millions, except per share amounts) Revenues







Sales and other operating revenue

$ 382.7



$ 391.3

Costs and operating expenses







Cost of products sold and operating expenses

304.4



307.4

Selling, general and administrative expenses

16.2



16.7

Depreciation and amortization expense

34.1



37.2

Total costs and operating expenses

354.7



361.3

Operating income

28.0



30.0

Interest expense, net

14.6



14.8

Gain on extinguishment of debt

(2.9)





Income before income tax expense

16.3



15.2

Income tax expense

10.4



3.0

Net income

5.9



12.2

Less: Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests

1.0



2.4

Net income attributable to SunCoke Energy, Inc.

$ 4.9



$ 9.8

Earnings attributable to SunCoke Energy, Inc. per common share:







Basic

$ 0.06



$ 0.15

Diluted

$ 0.06



$ 0.15

Weighted average number of common shares outstanding:







Basic

83.7



64.9

Diluted

83.9



65.3



SunCoke Energy, Inc. Consolidated Balance Sheets





March 31,

2020

December 31, 2019



(Unaudited)







(Dollars in millions, except

par value amounts) Assets







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 235.8



$ 97.1

Receivables, net

55.4



59.5

Inventories

150.1



147.0

Income tax receivable

3.8



2.2

Other current assets

7.0



2.5

Total current assets

452.1



308.3

Properties, plants and equipment (net of accumulated depreciation of $936.8 million and $903.7 million at March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, respectively)

1,370.0



1,390.2

Goodwill and other intangible assets, net

37.4



38.1

Deferred charges and other assets

16.4



17.2

Total assets

$ 1,875.9



$ 1,753.8

Liabilities and Equity







Accounts payable

$ 110.0



$ 142.4

Accrued liabilities

41.9



47.3

Current portion of financing obligation

3.0



2.9

Interest payable

14.1



2.2

Total current liabilities

169.0



194.8

Long-term debt and financing obligation

924.8



780.0

Accrual for black lung benefits

51.2



50.5

Retirement benefit liabilities

24.0



24.5

Deferred income taxes

158.7



147.6

Asset retirement obligations

14.6



14.4

Other deferred credits and liabilities

21.6



23.6

Total liabilities

1,363.9



1,235.4

Equity







Preferred stock, $0.01 par value. Authorized 50,000,000 shares; no issued shares at both March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019







Common stock, $0.01 par value. Authorized 300,000,000 shares; issued 98,165,658 and 98,047,389 shares at March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, respectively

1.0



1.0

Treasury stock, 15,404,482 and 13,783,182 shares at March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019, respectively

(184.0)



(177.0)

Additional paid-in capital

712.9



712.1

Accumulated other comprehensive loss

(15.5)



(14.4)

Retained deficit

(30.2)



(30.1)

Total SunCoke Energy, Inc. stockholders' equity

484.2



491.6

Noncontrolling interest

27.8



26.8

Total equity

512.0



518.4

Total liabilities and equity

$ 1,875.9



$ 1,753.8



SunCoke Energy, Inc. Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited)





Three Months Ended March 31,



2020

2019













(Dollars in millions) Cash Flows from Operating Activities:







Net income

$ 5.9



$ 12.2

Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:







Depreciation and amortization expense

34.1



37.2

Deferred income tax expense (benefit)

11.1



(0.4)

Payments in excess of expense for postretirement plan benefits

(0.5)



(0.6)

Share-based compensation expense

1.1



0.9

Gain on extinguishment of debt

(2.9)





Changes in working capital pertaining to operating activities:







Receivables

4.1



(10.9)

Inventories

(3.1)



(40.3)

Accounts payable

(22.8)



29.9

Accrued liabilities

(5.3)



0.1

Interest payable

11.9



13.2

Income taxes

(1.6)



1.9

Other

(5.2)



(7.9)

Net cash provided by operating activities

26.8



35.3

Cash Flows from Investing Activities:







Capital expenditures

(22.8)



(20.9)

Net cash used in investing activities

(22.8)



(20.9)

Cash Flows from Financing Activities:







Repayment of long-term debt

(8.9)



(0.3)

Proceeds from revolving credit facility

247.2



60.7

Repayment of revolving credit facility

(90.5)



(65.7)

Repayment of financing obligation

(0.7)



(0.7)

Shares repurchased

(7.0)





Dividends paid

(5.0)





Cash distribution to noncontrolling interests





(7.1)

Other financing activities

(0.4)



(3.1)

Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities

134.7



(16.2)

Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents

138.7



(1.8)

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period

97.1



145.7

Cash and cash equivalents at end of period

$ 235.8



$ 143.9

Supplemental Disclosure of Cash Flow Information







Interest paid, net of capitalized interest of zero and $1.2 million, respectively

$ 1.6



$ 0.9

Income taxes paid

$ 0.9



$ 1.0



SunCoke Energy, Inc. Segment Financial and Operating Data

The following tables set forth financial and operating data for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019:





Three Months Ended March 31,



2020

2019













(Dollars in millions, except per ton amounts) Sales and other operating revenues:







Domestic Coke

$ 365.2



$ 359.3

Brazil Coke

8.5



9.7

Logistics

9.0



22.3

Logistics intersegment sales

6.6



6.5

Elimination of intersegment sales

(6.6)



(6.5)

Total sales and other operating revenues

$ 382.7



$ 391.3

Adjusted EBITDA(1):







Domestic Coke

$ 63.4



$ 58.5

Brazil Coke

4.1



4.5

Logistics

3.3



12.7

Corporate and Other(2)

(8.7)



(8.4)

Total Adjusted EBITDA

$ 62.1



$ 67.3

Coke Operating Data:







Domestic Coke capacity utilization

101 %

96 % Domestic Coke production volumes (thousands of tons)

1,069



1,006

Domestic Coke sales volumes (thousands of tons)

1,064



1,004

Domestic Coke Adjusted EBITDA per ton(3)

$ 59.59



$ 58.27

Brazilian Coke productionoperated facility (thousands of tons)

410



419

Logistics Operating Data:







Tons handled (thousands of tons)

4,214



5,784







(1) See definition of Adjusted EBITDA and reconciliation to GAAP elsewhere in this release. (2) Corporate and Other includes the activity from our legacy coal mining business, which contributed Adjusted EBITDA losses of $2.1 million and $1.8 million during the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. (3) Reflects Domestic Coke Adjusted EBITDA divided by Domestic Coke sales volumes.

SunCoke Energy, Inc. Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Information Net Income to Adjusted EBITDA





Three Months Ended March 31,



2020

2019



(Dollars in millions) Net income attributable to SunCoke Energy, Inc.

$ 4.9



$ 9.8

Add: Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests

1.0



2.4

Net income

$ 5.9



$ 12.2

Add:







Depreciation and amortization expense

34.1



37.2

Interest expense, net

14.6



14.8

Gain on extinguishment of debt

(2.9)





Income tax expense

10.4



3.0

Contingent consideration adjustments(1)





(0.4)

Simplification Transaction costs(2)





0.5

Adjusted EBITDA

62.1



67.3

Subtract: Adjusted EBITDA attributable to noncontrolling interest(3)

2.0



18.9

Adjusted EBITDA attributable to SunCoke Energy, Inc.

$ 60.1



$ 48.4







(1) In connection with the CMT acquisition, the Company entered into a contingent consideration arrangement that required the Company to make future payments to the seller based on future volume over a specified threshold, price and contract renewals. Contingent consideration adjustments in the first quarter of 2019 were primarily the result of modifications to the volume forecast. This liability was written to zero during the third quarter of 2019. (2) Costs expensed by the Partnership associated with SunCoke's acquisition of all outstanding Partnership common units not already owned by SunCoke on June 28, 2019 ("Simplification Transaction"). (3) Reflects noncontrolling interest in Indiana Harbor and the portion of the Partnership owned by public unitholders prior to the Simplification Transaction.

SOURCE SunCoke Energy, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.suncoke.com


U.S. President Donald Trump told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Thursday that the U.S. was ready to provide assistance to any country amid the coronavirus pandemic, including Russia, White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said.



"Today, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to commemorate and reflect upon the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. President Trump and President Putin discussed progress on defeating the coronavirus pandemic," he pointed out.

"President Trump reiterated that the United States is working hard to care for Americans at home and is also ready to provide assistance to any country in need, including Russia. President Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race. The two leaders also covered other bilateral and global issues," Deere added.



The Kremlin press service, in turn, said in a statement that when discussing the coronavirus situation, Putin and Trump "welcomed bilateral cooperation" and "agreed to boost coordination in this area." "In particular, the U.S. has suggested sending a shipment of medical equipment to Russia," TASS cited the Kremlin press service as saying



To date, a total of 177,160 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 23,803 patients having recovered from the virus. Russias latest data indicates 1,625 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.



According to the Johns Hopkins University, the United States coronavirus cases have exceeded 1,230,000 the death toll has topped 73,500.
New Delhi, May 8 : To mitigate the economic fallout of COVID-19, airline major IndiGo on Friday instituted a compulsory "no-pay" leave for its employees.

This exercise excludes 40 per cent of the entry level employees, who will not be affected by this move.

These leaves without pay range from 1.5 to 5 days, depending on employment grades.

Accordingly, senior-most employees will have to take the maximum days of compulsory no-pay leave. The compulsory leave without pay has been instituted for three months star ting from May onwards.

At present, the airline sector is reeling under massive pressure of fixed cost and extremely low revenues due to the prohibition of commercial air travel.

The lockdown, which has been instituted for curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, has hit the country's economy hard.
General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has described former President John Dramani Mahama as a good citizen for the decision to report the Bono Regional Chairman of the ruling NPP, Kwame Baffoe Abronye to the Police.



The Ex-President reported the NPP activist to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service for alleging that the former had hatched plans to terminate the lives of some leading members of the ruling party.



Mr Mahama lodged the complaint on Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at the police headquarters through his lawyers, LithurBrew Company.



Confirming the development on Wednesday, the spokesperson for Mr Mahama, Joyce Bawah Mogtari, said Abronye DC had brought the name of the former President to ignominy with his wild allegations.



She said he (Abronye DC) has consistently made false allegations against the former President on various media channels, including the Net2 Television, and that she had personally advised Mr Mahama to take actions against the many others who have made such wild allegations to stop such irresponsible behaviours.



Commenting on the action of the former President against Abronye DC, the NDC Chief Scribe stated on Okay FMs 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show that he is in full agreement with the legal team of the Ex President as it is the responsibility of every good citizen to report people who go contrary to the laws of the land to the police for redress.



We have laws in this country and so if you think that someones behaviour is not in line with the laws of the land and you want the law to work, we have a place to seek redress and so I agree with the lawyers of the former President to report Abronye DC to the CID, he stated.



In the letter copied to him by the office of the former President, General Mosquito as he is popularly called said, to him, Mr Mahama acted responsibly.



"In this country, every individual has the responsibility to report every crime to the police and if you dont report and then later something happens, you will be considered as a bad citizen. Therefore, if you see anybody going against the criminal code, it is your responsibility to inform the police about it.



I totally agree with the lawyers of the former President that they have informed the Police CID about it. But we look forward that the police as we know that they are there for the entire nation and it is also their responsibility to ensure that the criminal laws in the country work effectively, the police will put the law to work, he implored the CID.



Listen to him in the video below





Source: Daniel Adu Darko/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
HALIFAXAs Rick Cameron rests and rehabilitates his body from its war with COVID-19, he has a story to read through to fill in the gaps of his journey.

It is the detailed documenting of his struggle to survive as he lay deeply sedated in a Truro, N.S., hospital, kept alive by a ventilator.

The online blog compiled by his daughter includes moments of despair, of joy, of songs sung through smartphones to a semi-conscious man, and of a familys love for a Papa bear lying in a state of weakness.

Most days during Camerons seven weeks in hospital, Kelly Marshall and her family would post in Rick Cameron: His road to recovery, as thousands of followers would celebrate or weep along with her.

Initially, this was a tale about a raw struggle for a 69-year-old man whod rarely had more than a common cold during his life before the pandemic.

The illness of the retired tire factory employee started with flu-like symptoms in February after a return from a Florida vacation. Within a week of falling ill, the father of two was gasping for air and was rushed to hospital. On March 20, a tube was inserted into his lungs and a ventilator sustained his body.

He was among the first Nova Scotians to enter critical care with COVID-19.

When somebodys sick you want to be there and hold them and hug them  and its the one thing you cant do with this, Marshall told The Canadian Press in a story in March.

Two weeks later, the blog described how Camerons kidneys and liver showed signs of inflammation.

The medical team decided to move him onto his side to promote the flow of oxygen, and Marshall documented the fears at the family home in Stellarton, where she and her husband Brian live with her parents.

We were worried that he would go into cardiac arrest when the initial flip was to occur April 4. Scary. Very scary, she wrote.

Hundreds of comments of encouragement flowed in. Nurses would daily put a smartphone near their patient, and Camerons wife Faye would sing to him through it: old, emotional rock n roll songs.

The family wrote to him as though he were awake. They spoke of restless grandchildren fighting over Easter eggs, teased him about being unusually quiet and wrote down a steady record of his fluctuating vital signs.

Then, the news turned joyful, as he fought back to breathing on his own. On April 11, Marshall wrote: Get ready for it. He opened his eyes! He opened his eyes!!

As Cameron blinked on the video call, she and her mother screamed through the smartphone, We love you, and he seemed to close his eyelids in reply.

I dont even have words to express everything I feel! Papa bear has never let me down a day in my life and was not about to start now, Marshall wrote.

Then, just days later, the doctors said COVID-19 was still present. This was a slight kick in the stomach, wrote Marshall.

The blog provided details of medical decisions, in particular the need to cut a small hole in Camerons throat in a tracheotomy procedure.

Cameron was at risk for subglottic stenosis, the medical term for a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords and just above where they could place a tracheotomy, Marshall wrote. The condition often causes scarring for patients who have been intubated for long periods of time, she noted.

The 39-year-old documented how her father gradually came off the ventilator and the intensive care delirium in the four days after the tracheotomy.

He couldnt talk and was still running a fever, but his mind is clear, she wrote on April 19, and his face told the story. He just loves to hear Moms voice. Its so sweet the little smile he gives her.

Yet, hours later, the roller-coaster continued, as Camerons heart rate shot up to the 150s and Marshall and her mother sat silent and sombre at home, awaiting a return to normal. This type of recovery is going to be a slow process. There are so many factors involved. There is weeks of rehabilitation in the near future, Marshall wrote.

But joy has returned. Cameron is speaking now, his first word was a raspy Hi.

On April 26, he tested negative for COVID-19. This week he was moved to a private room at a hospital in New Glasgow to continue his rehabilitation.

Marshall hopes to finally hold him, soon.

She said her father is still too weak to speak at length, but her intention in telling his story is to educate the public about the dangers of COVID-19 and to urge compliance with the instructions of public health officials.

Many worries remain, such as the risk of blood clotting and secondary infections. There are months of rehabilitation ahead, and a careful reintroduction of regular food and exercise.

He has a long, long road to go, Marshall said in an interview.

But in the meantime, hes been given a link to the blog, and hes been shown a few sections of it.

It is a record Marshall is confident her father will soon start to go through in detail, filling in the gaps of weeks in his life  as his strength returns.

He likes to know. He likes to know what happened, she says.

Read more about:
The Oakland Zoo, closed to people, is open to giraffes.

Kijiji the giraffe, who is a year old and 11 feet tall, arrived the other day at the Oakland Zoo after a two-day truck journey from a zoo in Kansas City. Giraffe matchmakers hope she will get together in about three years with Oakland Zoo giraffe Mabusu.

Kijiji came across the country in a 13-foot trailer, which cleared some freeway overpasses on the journey by a mere 2 feet. She has already moved from a holding area into the main giraffe exhibit and, along with the zoos 750 other animals, is eagerly awaiting the return of that variety of primate known as zoo visitors.

Zoo Manager Ann Marie Bisagno said Kijiji was in good spirits upon her arrival in Oakland, although it was not immediately clear how a giraffes spirits are measured.

Kijiji brings another distinction to Oakland. She is the only animal in captivity whose name is spelled with five consecutive dotted letters.

Albanys nightly gathering: Every night, Mr. Pickles knows exactly when its time to go outside and dance.

He has some kind of clock inside, said his owner, Amy St. George. I dont know how he does it.

Mr. Pickles is a gray poodle and he enjoys the nightly block party on the 1000 block of Peralta Avenue in Albany as much as any of the humans. As the hour nears, he starts pawing at the front door with no prompting.

Its been going on for weeks. Precisely at 7:50 p.m., everyone steps out their front door, neighbor Cynthia Mah switches on her boom box and the dancing starts. Its a different theme every night  there was a Hawaiian night, with aloha shirts, and a Star Wars night, with Darth Vader costumes, and on May 5 there was Cinco de Mayo night, with do-it-yourself margaritas on a small table.

And at 8 p.m., everyone howls. Mr. Pickles is joined by Smokey the mutt and three pugs.

We got the howling from what theyre doing in Mill Valley, St. George said. It seemed like a good idea.

Then at 8:10 p.m., everyone goes back inside.

This is our new reality, for now, said St. George. Were trying to make the most of this. Its something to look forward to on Peralta Avenue.

Now Playing: Mr. Pickles the poodle dances like nobody's watching at the nightly block party on Peralta Avenue in Albany. Video: Courtesy Amy St. George

Do-it-yourself dance party: If you dont live on Peralta Avenue in Albany, heres another dancing option for you.

The pandemic will be easier to take if everybody stands in the doorway at noon on Sunday and jumps up and down.

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.

So says veteran Berkeley dance teacher Ruth Botchan, who is organizing a do-it-yourself dance extravaganza because staying indoors for two months hasnt been good for anybody.

People are really getting out of shape, she said. Its important to move. Its not important how you move.

Botchan calls it Dancing in Our Doorways. She tried it last month and people around the world posted images of themselves (www.facebook.com/events/657511348369611/). There were dancers in New York, Iran and Australia and points in between. Botchan isnt sure exactly how many points.

She got the idea from watching all the sheltering Italians singing from their balconies. But that sort of public display, she said, isnt really required for her dance party.

Unlike singing, nobody can hear you when you dance, she said. And if you do it inside, they wont see you, either. You dont need to be a dancer. If youre dancing for yourself, by yourself, forget the camera. Just dance. Maybe you wont feel so godawful.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
COLONIE  Leon Dukes recalled feeling what he described as a heat pass through his body when the gorgeous woman he later married walked past him at Bethel Baptist Church in Troy.

He said during a recent conversation that he later found out she was equally as smitten with him.

She was feeling for me before she met me and I was feeling for her before I met her, added Dukes, a lifelong member of Bethel, who is a deacon there. She was a diva.

The couple was married for 25 years until Linda Dukes died early Sunday morning of complications from the coronavirus at a rehabilitation center in Schenectady. She turned 71 on April 15.

A native of Kansas City, Mo., Dukes was a single mother, who her husband said had gotten into trouble with the law before relocating to upstate New York.

She was a very dynamic, strong, compassionate woman and she had a love for helping women who were struggling because prior to coming to this area she was a single woman and she struggled, he said.

She became an active member of Bethel serving as a usher, started a ministry called Freedom Bound Ministries for women getting out of jail, and eventually began preaching at two churches in Albany.

Dukes worked as an administrative assistant for State Farm Insurance for 25 years and more recently had retired from a similar position with the state Education Department, according to her death notice.

Outside of work and church, Dukes kept busy with hobbies that ranged from hat-making to interior decorating and loved taking shopping trips to New York City, said her husband.

She and her daughter made a business out of sewing and made hats, including church hats and fascinators, a woman's light, decorative headpiece consisting of feathers, flowers, beads that is attached to a comb or hair clip.

Leon Dukes, 78, chairman of Bethel's deacon board, said he suspects his wife may have contracted the virus while preaching on March 8 at a church in Albany.

Shortly after that, he said the couple received a call from the Albany County Health Department alerting them that two people at the church had tested positive for COVID-19. The Dukes were placed under quarantine.

Linda Dukes went to St. Peter's Hospital with what she thought was an asthma attack.

A few days later she ended up back in the hospital after experiencing a fever and "feeling pain in her bones," said Leon Dukes, of Latham.

"The next day, she had problems breathing at night, they put her on a ventilator, and she was on it for 15-plus days," he said. "The beautiful thing about this was the faith community came out, and people were praying, and I asked them specifically to pray for the healing of her lungs, her heart, her arteries, and to have that virus removed for her."

Their prayers were answered.

Dukes was taken off the ventilator on Easter Sunday April 12 or Resurrection Sunday as many Christians call it, which marks the day Jesus rose from the dead.

On Monday, Linda Dukes called her husband, who had their 9-year-old grandson, Malachi in Arizona, speak with her.

"He started singing to her, and he was singing songs that she sang to him as a baby," said Dukes.

He said when his wife started getting better, she told him she dreamed Malachi had sung to her.

Dukes told her that it wasn't a dream and had really happened.

Yet another prayer would be answered when Leon Dukes' wife unexpectedly called him from the hospital another time and greeted him with, "sweetie."

"Man, I lost it, I started running and shouting and praising the Lord," he said. "I was telling her love her, and I miss her, and I'm sorry I'm not there to be able to hold your hands and touch you."

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

She asked him where she was and he tried to explain to her that a virus had attacked her body and he urged her to be cooperative with the nurses and doctors so she could get better. He shared the good news with the family.

She eventually got off the ventilator, started to slowly breathe on her own, and was transferred to Sunnyview Rehabilitation Center in Schenectady.

On May 2, the lovebirds were talking, when Linda Dukes told her husband she was feeling a searing pain in her stomach.

She was given an X-ray, the results of which the doctor was supposed to give her the next day.

Linda Dukes, her husband said, died overnight in her sleep. Leon Dukes got the sad news from the staff at Sunnyview around 6 a.m. Sunday, May 3.

The family was blindsided.

"All expectations, especially for me, was she was coming home," he said. "I was looking to find a cleaning service to clean the house, sanitize it, so she would feel comfortable."

Pastor Byron Williams Sr., who has served as pastor at Bethel, since February of last year, said one of the things that he'll remember about Linda Dukes, who served as interim minister before he took over, for is the "beautiful smile" she was seemed to wear.

"She was a very good minister, she was a person of character and devotion, and she worked very hard in any area that she was asked to work in," Williams said.

Leon Dukes, a Vietnam veteran, reflected back on some of his terrible war time memories, said he's never seen anything like this killer virus.

"We have more death in America now than the whole Vietnam War, which was seven, eight years," he said.

He also recognized the extraordinary efforts and courage and said he's praying for the medical staff in hospitals all across the nation.

"Even though they're not being shot at, they have to be careful of an enemy they can't see, and an enemy they don't know," he said. "It's a surprise attack and it don't matter who you are, where you are, or what you are, and they are courageous enough to be in harm's way to tend to the people who are afflicted with this."

When it's safe to do so in the future, Dukes said they plan in the future to hold a celebration in honor of Linda Dukes, who was cremated.
(Newser)  The sister of one of the fugitives accused of killing a security guard at a Family Dollar in Michigan last week has become the fourth family member to be charged in the case. Brya Bishop has been charged with tampering with evidence, lying to police investigating a violent crime, and being an accessory after the fact to a felon, CNN reports. Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton says the 24-year-old is accused of interfering with efforts to arrest her brother, 23-year-old Ramonyea Bishop, and stepfather Larry Teague, 44. "We think she helped them escape," Leyton says. Her mother, 45-year-old Sharmel Teague, is already in custody.

story continues below

Prosecutors say that after security guard Calvin Munerlyn told Bishop she needed a face mask to enter the Flint store, he argued with her mother. Prosecutors say that after Sharmel Teague was also refused service, she contacted her husband and son. Larry Teague yelled at Munerlyn for disrespecting his wife and Ramonyea Bishop shot the father of nine in the head, prosecutors say. The two men are still at large. "Brya Bishop's attempts to shield family members will not be tolerated and we will likewise hold anyone else involved in offering shelter and assistance to Larry Teague or Ramonyea Bishop accountable under the law," Leyton said in a statement. (Read more Michigan stories.)
A train killed 16 migrant workers who had fallen asleep on the track on Friday while they were heading back to their home village after losing their jobs in a coronavirus lockdown, police said. Tens of thousands of people have been walking home from big cities after being laid off because of the lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus since late March.

The driver tried to stop the freight train when he saw the workers on the tracks near Aurangabad town in Maharashtra, the railway ministry said, adding it had ordered an inquiry. Sixteen people were killed and ...
An Air India flight with around 200 Indians from Sharjah will arrive in Lucknow on Saturday, an official said.

The Indian government on Monday had announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

The government also said that Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

An Air India flight is likely to arrive in Lucknow from Sharjah between 8.00 pm and 8.30 pm on Saturday. The tentative number of passengers arriving in Lucknow is 200, AK Sharma, the director of Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport, told PTI on Friday.

India imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country, grounding all international flights since mid-March.

Under the repatriation plan, the government will be facilitating the return of Indian nationals stranded abroad on compelling grounds in a phased manner.
Hyderabad, May 8 : A Covid-19 positive woman delivered a baby at a hospital in Hyderabad, Telangana Health Minister E. Rajender said on Friday.

This is the first case in Telangana in which a woman tested positive for coronavirus has delivered a child.

The minister told reporters that the doctors at Gandhi Hospital performed the delivery through a cesarean section. Stating that both the woman and baby boy were healthy, the minister termed this as a major achievement by the doctors. He said the newborn would be tested for Covid-19 on Saturday.

Rajender also announced that a 75-year-old man who had tested positive for Covid-19 and was in critical condition had recovered and was discharged from Gandhi Hospital on Friday. Similarly another Covid-19 positive patient who was on dialysis has also recovered and was discharged.

The two were among 34 patients discharged from the hospital on Friday. With this the number of people discharged so far rose to 727.

"Now only 376 patients are undergoing treatment at Gandhi Hospital," the minister said.

He said 10 new cases were reported on Friday, taking the state's tally to 1,132. No deaths were reported and the death toll remained unchanged at 29.

The minister said a request was made to Centre to include 14 districts, currently in orange zone, into green zone as no new case was reported from these districts for the last 21 days. If accepted, this will take the total number of districts in the green zone to 27.

The state has also urged the Centre to upgrade Suryapet, Nizamabad and Warangal Urban districts from red zone to orange zone.

Rajender said this would leave only Hyderabad and adjoining districts of Ranga Reddy and Medchal in the red zone. He said Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao directed health, municipal and other departments to focus on Hyderabad and surrounding urban areas to contain the spread of Covid-19.

He hoped that once 14 more districts included the green zone and three upgraded to orange zone, 80 percent of Telangana would see restoration of all normal activities except mass transport.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Even in this time of uncertainty, Democracy continues to thrive in Michigan.

On Tuesday, local elections were held in 33 Michigan counties, and voter turnout broke every record for May elections. At 25%, turnout was more than double the average for a local election, underscoring that even in the midst of a pandemic, Michigan citizens want to vote and weigh in on the critical issues facing their communities and our society.

Tuesdays election also demonstrated that we have the tools and people we need to carry out elections that are safe, accurate and secure. Among them are our citizens constitutional right to vote by mail, and our hard working clerks and local election officials.

Indeed, as I visited nearly empty voting locations throughout the day, mask-wearing election workers and I joked that it certainly didnt feel like record breaking turnout. Thats because of the more than 180,000 people who cast ballots, election night data showed 99% of them did so by mail or at a drop-box. In-person voting was available but rare on election day. While larger jurisdictions saw higher numbers, on average, just one voter visited each voting location every hour.

This shift to holding the elections primarily by mail was decided less than two months ago, yet clerks and local election officials carried them out with tremendous poise and grace. I have said it before, but democracy is a team sport, and election workers are the most valuable players.

As part of the democracy team, my administration and our state Bureau of Elections will continue to work tirelessly with our local clerks to support their work and deliver accessible, fair and secure elections to our voters. In the weeks ahead we will evaluate all the data and lessons learned from this week to make the best preparations we can for the statewide elections in August and November.

While we develop our plans, the other players on our team do not need to wait, as there are ways they can already work now towards this goal of smooth and safe elections through the year. Here a just a few:

 All registered Michigan voters right now can add themselves to the permanent absent-voter list (the vote-by-mail list). This will ensure they are mailed applications to vote by mail ahead of the August and November elections. Its easy to do by visiting Michigan.gov/Vote; searching their registration by entering their name, birthday and zip code; and then clicking the green button to join the permanent list. Additionally, if they want to join the ranks of election workers, they can volunteer at Michigan.gov/DemocracyMVP.

 The state legislature can pass laws to build upon the success of these elections and to support election workers. Specifically, they could enable election workers to begin processing absentee ballots prior to election day, as is done in 18 other states. Additionally, they could give voters the same flexibility they have when they file their taxes by allowing all votes to be counted that are postmarked by election day.

 The federal government can provide funding to cover the additional costs of operating our elections during the pandemic. So far weve received $11.2 million, but we estimate our costs for the August and November elections could be as high as $40 million. Additionally, the federal government must support the United State Postal Service, as their service is critical for voting by mail.

Tuesday was an inspiring day. Our first  and hopefully only  election held during the COVID-19 pandemic went forward on schedule and was accessible and secure.

With so many citizens choosing to vote by mail, no voter had to choose between their health and their vote. Those who did vote in person were greeted by heroic election workers providing clean and safe spaces.

Democracy prevailed, and will continue to do so in our state

Jocelyn Benson is Michigans 43rd Secretary of State and the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.
SILVER SPRING, Md. - Video released Friday from a Maryland police officers body camera captures him warning the man to drop a knife and get down on the ground before he fatally shot the man as he charged at the officer.

Montgomery County Police Sgt. David Cohen fired the first of at least five shots about one minute after he exited his patrol vehicle and confronted Finan H. Berhe, 30, in a residential parking lot on Thursday afternoon.

Put the knife down! Cohen screamed as Berhe ran toward him and then stopped, momentarily backing away from the officer, who was pointing a gun at him.

Get on the ground! I dont want to shoot you! Cohen shouted just before Berhe started running at the officer again.

As the officer opened fire, Berhe collapsed and dropped an object he was holding.

Man down! a man shouted after the shooting stopped.

Police said investigators recovered a knife that Berhe was brandishing when Cohen shot him. Berhe died at a hospital, police said. No officers were injured.

Department spokesman Rick Goodale said the officer is a white man. Berhe was black, according to online court records.

Cohen was the first officer to respond to a call about a man who threw a rock at a neighbours window and yelled for them to call police, according to police Chief Marcus Jones and a police department news release.

The officer performed first aid on the man before he was taken to the hospital, according to Jones.

The chief said there also is eyewitness video of the incident, but that wasnt immediately released.

Cohen, a 17-year veteran of the department, has been placed on paid administrative leave, a standard procedure after a police shooting.

Police detectives findings will be submitted to the Howard County states attorneys office.

That office also is reviewing evidence in another recent deadly shooting by Montgomery County police.

The police department has said an officer shot and killed 21-year-old Duncan Socrates Lemp at his home on March 12. The department has said Lemp was armed with a rifle and ignored commands to show his hands, but a lawyer for his family said an eyewitness said Lemp was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house in Potomac, Maryland.

While the department released the bodycam video from Berhes shooting a day after the incident, it hasnt released any body camera footage from Lemps shooting nearly two months later. Family attorney Rene Sandler said the department hasnt acknowledged whether any bodycam video of Lemps shooting exists.
After nearly two months closed, Winnipeg Hudsons Bay stores will be the first locations in the country to reopen on Monday.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After nearly two months closed, Winnipeg Hudsons Bay stores will be the first locations in the country to reopen on Monday.

A spokeswoman for the Hudsons Bay Company said more locations in Canada will open in the coming weeks as other provincial reopening strategies take effect. Saskatchewan Bay stores are set to begin operating on May 19.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Hudsons Bay store on Portage Avenue will be open for business on Monday.

Customers at stores in downtown Winnipeg, St. Vital Centre and CF Polo Park will notice some changes to their shopping experience.

"(We) have implemented a number of added measures to ensure we deliver a healthy, easy, and comfortable shopping experience," said Hudsons Bay president Iain Nairn in a media release published Thursday.

Like other retailers, the Bay has beefed up cleaning practices and placed directional and physical distancing markers on store floors. The department store has also suspended makeup applications and product testing at beauty counters and fitting rooms will be closed for the time being.

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Clothing can be returned for a refund within 30-days or 90-days if purchased with a Hudsons Bay credit card.

Winnipeg locations will be operating with reduced hours from 12 to 5 p.m. daily and will open an hour early on Tuesdays to accommodate seniors, frontline workers and those with disabilities.

While the Hudsons Bay Company has retained all of its full-time store staff during the closure by accessing the federal governments wage subsidy program, part-time staff were "granted a leave of absence," according to the spokeswoman. Its not clear if Winnipeg part-timers will be returning to work next week when stores reopen.

Curbside pickup for items purchased online will be available locally beginning May 18 and the Bay has extended it return policy by 30 days from the date of reopening for purchases made after Jan. 17.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney
[May 08, 2020] Fourth Wave Energy Announces Agreement to Acquire Colorado Property with Approved Plans for a Green Community with fully Developed Sale Value of Over $120 Million

SAN JOSE, California, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Fourth Wave Energy, Inc., (OTCQB: PIRE) a San Jose based climate solutions technology company has announced it has entered into an agreement whereby it has the option to acquire 19 acres of residential land from GEOS Neighborhood (www.discovergeos.com), an Arvada Colorado based net zero carbon community developer. If the Option is exercised, Fourth Wave will continue to work with GEOS to develop the property. The founder of GEOS is Norbert Klebl, a German trained engineer, award winning green housing pioneer and builder of net zero carbon homes. Mr. Klebl has become a FWE shareholder and will join the advisory board. Mr. Klebl has become a leading face of the zero carbon movement in residential building. In addition to his engineering background he received his MBA from Columbia and was a partner with McKinsey & Company specializing in alternative energy. Fourth Wave plans for the construction of net zero carbon energy independent homes and multi-unit condo rental units at the Arvada project with a combined sales price of over $120 million. The project has built and sold the first 25 homes and has proved net ero utility bills.



The GEOS community has won numerous green/zero carbon housing awards and is recognized as an environmentally advanced sustainable home community. The GEOS community will serve as the prototype for future developments for FWE. FWE plans to develop similar communities of advanced net zero carbon homes patterned after the GEOS development in Dallas, Texas and San Jose, California. FWE is a startup clean tech company formed to take a leading role in the fast growing 'green revolution' of the transition from carbon based energy to solar and other clean power sources. FWE plans to be active in green community development, renewable energy research and development of net zero carbon commercial developments.

"We believe the way existing buildings are being powered with carbon based energy is obsolete. We are developing the systems that will lead the de-carbonization movement," stated Joseph Isaacs, CEO of FWE. The FWE advisory team includes leading Silicon Valley and Colorado based solar and alternative energy engineers, executives and financial professionals with extensive Wall Street and capital markets experience. The new home market for net zero carbon homes is estimated at over $40 billion annually. The exercise of the Option is subject to a number of conditions, including the negotiation of a definitive purchase agreement for the property. www.fourthwaveenergy.com Contact:

www.pierrecorp.com

+818-855-8199

email [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fourth-wave-energy-announces-agreement-to-acquire-colorado-property-with-approved-plans-for-a-green-community-with-fully-developed-sale-value-of-over-120-million-301055567.html SOURCE Fourth Wave Energy, Inc.

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Queensland scientists are beginning a clinical trial to see whether a drug used to treat arthritis could help critically ill COVID-19 patients.

Tocilizumab is an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other similar conditions.

Many COVID-19 patients, such as this one in Italy, experience severe inflammation of the lungs in the second week of symptoms. Credit:AP

Researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute are investigating whether it could be used to help treat COVID-19 patients who have deteriorated to the point where they have to be ventilated in the ICU.

The trial is being led by QIMR Berghofer Associate Professor Bridget Barber, who is also an infectious diseases physician at the Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital.
In an exclusive interview with Colorado Politics on Friday, Buck said that he hasn't had any involvement with the matter "on purpose, because one of my staffers was involved," adding that he encouraged Sander to reach out to the state party's executive director for any help.
State-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd has told market regulator Sebi that it did not consider DoT's notice seeking Rs 1.83 lakh crore in past dues as material event warranting disclosure to stock exchanges as the amount in the provisional assessment was considered not payable.

Replying to a notice by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) over non-disclosure of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) assessment orders/demand notices, GAIL on May 6 said the demand was not legally tenable.

"The amount assessed in provisional assessment orders are not payable, being unrelated matter to the terms and conditions of the IP-II licence obtained by the company and hence are also legally not tenable," the company in a regulatory filing disclosing the communication with Sebi.

GAIL said it had refuted the provisional assessment orders of DoT and sought its withdrawal.

"Accordingly, the event(s) of receipt of provisional orders was not considered material to be disclosed," it said.

The DoT sent a notice to GAIL soon after the February 14 hearing in the Supreme Court on dues owned by telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

The Supreme Court's original ruling in October last year led the DoT to demand Rs 1.47 lakh crore in unpaid dues on licence fees and spectrum usage charges from telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

Its demand related to a 14-year-old dispute regarding the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR), which the Supreme Court agreed should include all kinds of income generated by the telcos.

Alongside, the DoT also raised a demand of over Rs 3 lakh crore from non-telecom PSUs such as GAIL, Oil India and PowerGrid for telecom licences these firms had primarily acquired for internal communication purposes.

For GAIL, the DoT assessed an outstanding of Rs 1,83,076 crore towards annual licence fee in respect of IP-II Licence. This included interests and penalty.

GAIL management, the filing said, was of the view that the "assessment orders/ demand notices received from DoT are not found material as per the GAIL Policy for determination of materiality and disclosure and therefore same does not require disclosure to the stock exchanges within 24 hours from the receipt."



Sebi had on May 5 issued a "caution letter" to GAIL for non-disclosure of material events/information.

The regulator said listing regulations require companies to disclose material information as soon as reasonably possible.

"This caution letter is being issued after considering the company's explanation on the matter. The company is advised to place this letter before its board of directors and disclose the same to the stock exchanges. You are also advised to disclose the reason of non-disclosure of the assessment orders/demand notices within the stipulated timeframe," it wrote.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Paramedics burst through the emergency department doors.

Patient in respiratory distress. Suspected COVID-19 infection. Nurses and doctors take over. Patient needs intubation to breathe, an invasive procedure known to spread an infectious disease through droplets expelled, sometimes violently, from the mouth and nose.

In most emergency departments built after SARS the patient would be rushed into a large negative pressure room in the critical care section just inside the ambulance bay door. Any virus expelled while the patient was treated would be kept in by the rooms negative pressure system. Then it would be removed by a special ventilation system.

But not in the Markham Stouffville Hospital, one of the GTA hospitals that has seen high numbers of COVID-19 cases. Somehow, in the hospitals $400 million design and construction of a new emergency department and other wings, completed in 2014, no negative pressure (also called airborne isolation) treatment rooms were built in the critical care section. The hospital does have four smaller negative pressure rooms in an area of its emergency department designed to treat less ill patients but they are not adjacent to the ambulance bay.

Why this happened, the hospital will not say. Staff have raised concerns to the Toronto Star.

Management of the hospital would not agree to be interviewed. However, as part of a back-and-forth email correspondence between the Star and the hospital over the past two weeks, the hospital said there was a change during the design phase that left the hospital without negative pressure treatment rooms in the Red Zone  the emergency departments critical care section.

While it is accurate to say there have been, over the years, post-construction discussions about a desire for additional negative pressure rooms in the red zone of our Emergency Department  because those rooms are larger and more room is always helpful for any medical procedure  it is inaccurate to say that staff and patients are at risk, said Dr. Andrew Arcand, Markham Stouffville Hospitals chief of emergency medicine, in an emailed statement.

Proper wearing of personal protection equipment (PPE) is what keeps staff and patients safe, Arcand said.

Its important to note that it is not (a) negative pressure room that protects health care workers or patients from COVID-19 during an aerosol generating procedure like an intubation: it is the appropriate use of PPE, said Arcand. Let me emphasize again that the number of negative pressure rooms and their location in the Emergency Department do not constitute a risk to patient or staff safety, said Arcand.

Other hospitals built post-SARS  a contagious virus that hit Ontario and its hospitals hard in the early 2000s and revealed shortcomings in the health-care system  chose to spend dollars on negative pressure rooms in critical care areas of their new emergency departments. Medical experts the world over agree on the importance of negative pressure environments, with their sealed doors and special air flow system that keeps a contagion contained and then removes it.

Resuscitating a patient or putting a breathing tube down the throat (intubation) are known as aerosol-generating procedures, which can easily spread a virus.

The Star surveyed other hospitals with emergency departments built post-SARS, which reported they included negative pressure rooms in their critical care sections.

Sunnybrook hospital has two resuscitation rooms that are negative pressure in the critical care section of their emergency department, said spokesperson Craig Duhamel. There are seven other negative pressure rooms in other parts of the emergency department. Construction began in 2009 on the $62 million project.

Humber River Hospital completed its hospital in 2015, and the $1.6 billion complex has five negative pressure treatment rooms in its emergency department  two in the critical care or acute area and three in the next level of treatment (sub-acute).

Spokesperson Joe Gorman said Humber spent a great deal of time making sure they got the design right, making sure each of these rooms functioned independently of the next room. An alarm system sounds if for some reason the pressure differential drops below what is required.

The new Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital opened in late 2015 ($2.7 billion new build). Its emergency department has three negative pressure rooms, one of them in the critical care area adjacent to the ambulance bay entrance, said Trish Carlton, a spokesperson for Halton Healthcare.

The Milton District Hospital, also part of Halton Healthcare, received a major expansion in 2017 ($512 million) that included a new emergency department. Like Oakville Trafalgar, it has three negative pressure rooms, one immediately inside the ambulance bay arrival area.

The Markham Stouffville Hospital serves Markham, Stouffville and Uxbridge. The redevelopment of the hospital by Infrastructure Ontario doubled the size of the original hospital.

The lack of negative pressure treatment rooms in the critical care area of Markham Stouffville Hospital has been concerning to nurses and doctors who work there. Staff the Star spoke to about this issue would only do so as long as their identity was protected, as they feared retribution from the hospital. Markham Stouffville was the subject of a Deloitte LLP investigation on behalf of the hospital board in 2016, which revealed numerous shortcomings in how the $400 million hospital construction project was managed, including lack of internal controls over procurement of supplies.

Included in the new sections of the Markham Stouffville Hospital is an emergency department three times the size of the previous department, which has been converted to another use. The hospitals website states that 360 patients have screened positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic.

In its correspondence with the Star on the negative pressure issue, the hospital did not answer specific questions as to why it planned to have negative pressure rooms in the critical care section at the start of the project and then dropped that. Originally, the hospital planned for eight negative pressure treatment rooms, but ended up with four, all in smaller rooms in the emergency department where less critical patients are taken.

Rebecca Mackenzie, a hospital spokesperson, said Markham Stouffville exceeds building construction guidelines in Canada for negative pressure rooms. A minimum of one negative pressure room is required in the emergency department, the spokesperson said. Mackenzie said the hospital does have 36 other airborne isolation rooms across the hospital in other areas. (Other hospitals the Star surveyed also have multiple negative pressure rooms in other wings.)

However, Mackenzie did say the hospital is aware that staff are concerned over this issue and that there was a failure to provide a complete answer to staff concerns.

It is clear that (the hospital) could have communicated more effectively to ensure all staff and physicians in the hospital were aware that a change occurred between the planning stage of the new Emergency Department and the final construction, Mackenzie said in one of several statements to the Star.

As we learn lessons from our management of COVID-19 patients and receive feedback from our front line providers we will examine, among other things, whether there is a need for additional airborne isolation rooms.
A federal judges ruling confirmed for Toby Leary what he felt for weeks: the Baker administration had no right to leave liquor stores and other retailers open while shutting down firearm sellers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Were just happy to be able to open, said Leary, co-owner of Cape Gun Works, one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit. Im sad it really took suing the government to get there for something that seemed so obvious to us.

Leary plans to greet customers at noon Saturday with his blue and white mask and hand sanitizer station by the entrance. Cape Gun Works is among dozens, maybe hundreds, of gun sellers stocking their shelves, putting out hand sanitizer and making other preparations after successfully challenging the ban of gun sales during the state of emergency.

Some stores, such as the Gunrunner in Middleborough, continued sales through curbside pickup despite the ban on non-essential businesses. Owner John Costa said the Second Amendment was on his side, and he planned to continue curbside pickup.

Others waited for the resolution of a class-action lawsuit challenging the states decision to deem firearm dealers non-essential and keep them closed.

U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlocks ruling Thursday concludes the state failed to justify why gun sellers should remain closed when their businesses are protected by the Second Amendment. It also set restrictions for gun sellers that deviate from the rules imposed on essential businesses in Massachusetts. The stores can allow up to 12 people at once  too little in the eyes of major retailers and too high for the mom-and-pop shops with front-of-counter areas barely larger than a supply closet.

The Massachusetts Attorney Generals Office is reviewing the lawsuit, a spokesperson said Friday.

When asked about the order during Fridays briefing, Gov. Charlie Baker said he wasnt aware Woodlocks order had been published.

Were just going to comply with whatever he says, Baker said.

Under the ruling, these retailers may operate by appointment only, between 9 a.m. and. 9 p.m. They may only have four appointments an hour, much to the chagrin of store owners.

Leary estimates Cape Gun Works had between 100 and 200 sales a day before the state of emergency. The ruling would allow him to make up to 48 sales a day.

Theres no way well recoup what was lost, he said. Its just mathematically not possible.

Leary and his employees spent the last few weeks rearranging his store, so he didnt have to furlough or lay anyone off. The cashiers are already 10 feet apart, but he said the store has hand sanitizer and a sink near the entrance.

Mike Skidmore, who owns Troy City Tactical in Fall River, and was a plaintiff, said hes not excited about the restrictions but is glad to be allowed to reopen.

It could have been like this all along, but now we worry about moving forward," Skidmore told MassLive. "I cant look in the past. Im not happy with it, but I cant look in the past. Were going to look forward, and were going to keep serving our customers, one step at a time.

Skidmore said he is laying down blue tape six feet apart and has rolling barriers to help people keep their distance from each other.

The Baker administration outraged both gun control advocates and gun owners last month when gun sellers and shooting ranges were quietly added to the list of essential businesses but then removed hours later.

Before the list was updated, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey called attention to the states addition of gun sellers: Gun shops and shooting ranges are NOT essential businesses during a public health emergency. We cannot undermine the safety of our police officers, first responders and domestic violence victims, she tweeted.

Rina Schneur of the Massachusetts chapter of Moms Demand Action, a group that pushes for tighter gun control laws, told MassLive last month she was disturbed by the states initial decision to allow gun retailers and shooting ranges stay open.

They may make some of the gun lobby richer, but it certainly will not make us safer, and it will make us less safe," Schneur said at the time.

Several gun stores continued selling guns after the state took them off the essential businesses list, including the Gun Parlor in Worcester. When asked about the business at a briefing in Worcester, Baker said he was surprised to learn that any gun sellers were still operating.

They were open last week? They shouldnt have been open last week," Baker, a Republican, told reporters last month during a news conference at the DCU Center in Worcester. "The only folks on the firearms side that have been essential in Massachusetts since we introduced the essential order are manufacturers.

WORCESTER, MA: April 1, 2020: Massachusetts Govenro Charlie Baker, left, and Lt. Governor Karyn Polito, hold a press conference at a medical field hospital erected by the National Guard at the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts for the expected influx of patients due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Staff photo by Nicolaus Czarnecki/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)BH

Leary, who saw the initial rules, said in early April that he thought he could stay open because Cape Gun Works is also a manufacturer and distributor that has contracts with law enforcement and federal agencies. He later learned he could not.

Days later, Leary joined a coalition of gun store owners and customers in suing the Baker administration over its restrictions. The judge ultimately sided with the retailers and gun owners, saying the state failed to justify why the stores couldnt reopen with restrictions as essential businesses have.

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League in Massachusetts, said the ruling isnt perfect but it marks a victory for Second Amendment rights.

I think in this whole thing what we have absolutely seen, if we didnt know it already, was the absolute discrimination from the Baker administration, and from Maura Healey of lawful gun owners, Wallace said, referencing Healeys tweet. Thats just unforgivable.

Charlie could have done the right thing, but chose not to, Wallace said, referring to the governor. Thats just flat-out wrong. I think the judge recognized that.

Others openly defied the Baker administrations restrictions. Costa, who runs the Gunrunner, plans to continue curbside pickup despite the judges stipulations, but he was happy the judge sided with gun retailers. He received a cease-and-desist order last month from the Middleborough Board of Health, but he said he hasnt seen much enforcement.

I said from the beginning I wasnt going to close, he said. They knew my rights, too. They kinda stayed away.

He added: Im happy to hear that we finally found somebody with some common sense, not these insane, lowlife people who think they can rule this state and then later on think they can rule the country. Because thats not going to work."

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Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Friday expressed confidence that Mumbai will see a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases in the next 15 to 20 days.

IMAGE: A doctor takes a swab sample of a child in Mumbai. Photograph: ANI Photo

Speaking to PTI, Tope said joint secretary of the Union Health Ministry Lav Agarwal was in the city on Thursday to discuss the situation in Mumbai.

"All ward officers were present at the meeting, which was also attended by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. We discussed corrective measures that were being taken," the minister said.

Agarwal suggested that containment zones be properly demarcated and contact tracing, testing and treatment of positive patients should be done in these areas, Tope said.

Early detection will bring down the mortality rate, the minister said, adding that the government plans to increase institutional quarantine facilities.

"The Centre wants us to increase disease surveillance in the congested areas to stop the spread of the virus," he said.

With the steps taken by the government, the pandemic will be contained in the next 15 to 20 days in Mumbai, the minister assured.

The state government plans to rope in workforce from other departments if the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation falls short of manpower, the minister said, clarifying that there was no shortage of funds.

Of the 17,974 COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra, 11,394 were reported from Mumbai alone and the city had recorded 437 deaths from the toll of 694 in the state.
If you're a fan of Pete Davidson's comedy and the eccentric comedian in general, the upcoming "The King of Staten Island" might just be the perfect film for you to watch this summer!

The NBCUniversal recently dropped the trailer for this upcoming comedy film that is composed of the familiar "Knocked Up" director going back to revisit familiar territory as a brand new slacker with big dreams who needs to face reality.

The comedy film is written by both Apatow and Davidson along with the "Saturday Night Live" alum Dave Sirus. This film is said to be premiered on June 12 on PVOD on SXSW before public theatrical release.

The film's synopsis

The film starts off with Scott played by Davidson who has been the result of arrested development ever since his previous firefighter dad passed away when he was seven.

Scott then enters his mid-20s with only little achievements while chasing his dream to become a well-known tattoo artist. The character also has an ambitious little sister that heads off to college while Scott still lives with his mother played by Morisa Tomei who works as an exhausted ER nurse.

All the character does in the film is get intoxicated and hang out with his friends Oscar, Igor, and Richie, while also secretly hooking up with a certain childhood friend named Kelsey.

Everything changes when his mother starts dating a certain loudmouth firefighter that goes by the name of Ray played by Bill Burr setting off a chain of events pushing Scott to deal with reality.

The film also includes stars like Steve Buscemi as Scott's dad and Pamela Adlon as Ray's ex-wife. The film was produced by Apatow through his Apatow Productions company, alongside Barry Mandel.

Pete Davidson, Michael Bederman, and Judah Miller are the film's executive producers.

Read Also: Why Aren't Faces Symmetrical? TikTok Video Shows How Brad Pitt, Kim Kardashian, Denzel Washington Look With a Perfectly Mirrored Face

Pete Davidson's new direction

The comedian has recently expressed his desire to work on certain material outside of the popular "Saturday Night Live" which he expressed has become difficult in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God last February.

Davidson had already dropped his previous "Alive From New York" which is considered his first Netflix special. The show dropped earlier this year and has already been cast in The Rookie and The Suicide Squad.

The comedian also said that he was shooting a few additional projects over the summer in his interview with the radio personality Charlamagne Tha God.

Pete Davidson also notes that "The King of Staton Island" will only be the start of his fresh appearances that are non-"Saturday Night Live."

The comedic value of these films has not yet been given out by critics but with an interesting cast, it seems like fans are in for a treat.

Will Pete Davidson be successful in his new non-"Saturday Night Live" path? Watch the film to find out.

Read Also: Nicolas Cage as Joe Exotic: Here are 5 Other Choice Actors for the Role of Netflix's Tiger King
Faced with the influx of jobless migrants returning home and the fear that the government and NGOs may stop assistance once the pandemic subsides and the lockdown ends, villagers in Bahraich have devised their own survival strategy. They have formed grain banks (which run without any government intervention) to help sustain the needy on a rainy day.

Dwarika Prasad, 45, of Kailashnagar village in Bahraich district has donated 20 kg wheat out of the total harvest of over one quintal from his one bigha landholding to the village grain bank.

He and several other villagers of more than five dozen villages of the district have been contributing regularly to the grain bank (anaj bank) set up in each village to help the poor and needy, specially post the Covid lockdown, as villagers think assistance may not come their way then.

When the government imposed the lockdown, a number of migrant workers returned to their villages, feeling they would at least get two meals a day.

We saw our people coming back with a sense of insecurity and fear, whether or not they would be able to go back and start life again. They were happy that they were with their family now, said Geeta Prasad of Kailash Nagar, also a member of the anaj bank of his village.

He said the question of their livelihood prodded him and several others to thrash out a solution that could provide relief in the grey days. The government is taking care of the basic need of food right now but once the lockdown is over, the government will stop the assistance. What will the poor families do then? A month later the monsoon will arrive and no one will be able to harvest crops or get any work anywhere easily. Post the lockdown, the situation may become grimmer, said Prasad, adding, We had to think about the future.

Villager donating grains for the bank. (HT Photo)

An NGO Dehat, which is active in Bahraich, came up with the idea of anaj bank. When we came to know about their worries, we suggested running it like a bank. Food will be given to a needy person and he will be asked to donate the grain back during winter crop harvesting, said coordinator of Dehat Jitendra Chaturvedi. He said committees had been formed in 61 villages of the district and around 106 quintals of wheat had been deposited in the bank.

Pawan Yadav of Chalwa village said, Initially villagers did not buy this idea but gradually they understood the concept. We are reaching out to farmers who can afford to donate 10 kg of wheat from their farm. Every village has a committee and every donation is accounted for.

During rainy days, we have planned to give the grain from our bank to the needy, with an optional rider that he or she would return the same amount of paddy in the winter. We wont force them to return it but this is an effort to keep this bank alive. Village committee will take a final call on the waiver, said Karan Kumar Upadhyay of Jamaniya village of Bahraich.

Phulwa, a 59-year-old woman of Lohara village said, My son worked in Delhi as a daily wager but now he is back with his family. The woman who has a small landholding of almost a bigha, said, The monsoon will arrive next month and floods will hit the village. Our landholding is small and that too without any produce. So the anaj bank is a great help to me and several other families like us.

The land will remain unused, especially in villages which are usually hit by floods in the rainy season. They will sow paddy and harvest it in December and January, said Devesh Awasthi, a local youth activist.

He said, All the NGOs and government agencies are providing all kinds of help these days but it wont last long.

Many people do not have land; some have empty land due to other reasons.

What will they do after the government stops assisting and social organizations also stop their activities?

Village head of Kailash Nagar Ramesh Kumar said, Villagers are excited about the grain bank and those in need have high hopes. Actually this is a transparent model. Those who donate grain can actually see where the grain has been used. There is no interference of the government. This is an effort of the villagers for the villagers.

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The European Commission on Thursday began sending aid to the Central African Republic using its humanitarian air service in an effort to help the country prepare to respond to the new coronavirus outbreak in the country.

The European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) plane is flying from Lyon to Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic.

The "Air Bridge" has been used before to transport aid to the Central African Republic, as a part of efforts to stabilize the country, which has suffered unrest over the years.
Ralycia Andrews caught the Garifuna Language and Culture bug from an early age.

While SVG grapples with the debilitating effects of the Covid-19 virus on its education system, one Vincentian scholar is surely putting the island on the global academic arena.





Ralycia Andrews, a Barrouallie resident, has out written scores of writers from Latin America and the Caribbean to capture second place in the 2020 Michigan State Universitys Global Youth Advancement Network (GYAN), Global Voices Essay Competition.





Andrews essay, Empowering the Indigenous Communities: Walamiseru-Our Sad Experience, was described by the organizers as "intriguing, well written and an excellent description of your passion and activism to spread awareness of the Garinagu culture.





"When I came across the advertisement for the competition online, my interest immediately sparked, and so I earnestly contacted representatives of various Garifuna communities across the region to gather information, beamed the enthusiastic Andrews.





Andrews love for the Garifuna culture began at age eleven with her participation in the YuGaCuRe( Yurumei Garifuna Cultural Revival) summer programme.





She later became a facilitator for the annual National Public Librarys CLAP for Fun Summer Programme, as a Garifuna Language and Culture teacher.





Andrews is a past Relief Teacher of the Central Leeward Secondary School and is presently pursuing a BSc in Biology at UWI, Cave Hill as a recipient of the 2019 Sir Arthur Lewis Award for Indigenous Peoples.





Andrews essay will be shared online and published in printed works.





No stranger to literary success, Andrews has also penned a poem, Women or Woe-men, which has been selected for publication in the POUI Cave Hill Journal for Creative Writing.





Andrews expressed immense gratitude to her mother Miss Rachael Caesar for her exceptional guidance and support, particularly in her literary endeavours.





She also expressed gratitude to everyone who was influential in any way in her successes.





"This achievement is not a personal gain, but a reflection of my love for my country and its culture, Andrews stated.




At least 14 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra on Friday morning, police said.

Two other labourers were injured in the tragic mishap which took place at 5.15 am under the Karmad Police station jurisdiction, an official said.

The workers, who were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna in central Maharashtra along rail tracks, were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station told PTI.

They were sleeping on rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from Jalna, he said.

"The labourers, working in a steel factory in Jalna, left for their home state on foot last night. They came till Karmad and slept on tracks as they were tired," police officer Santosh Khetmalas said.

Fourteen workers lost their lives in the mishap, while two others were injured, he said, adding three labourers who were also part of the group survived as they were sleeping some distance away from rail tracks.

Further details are awaited, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
-- Chinese archaeologists announced significant achievements at the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province, providing key proof of the origin of the over 5,000-year-long Chinese civilization.

-- With an area of 1.17 million square meters, the Shuanghuaishu site, dating back to around 5,300 years, is located on the south bank of the Yellow River in the township of Heluo, Gongyi City, and was proposed to be named "Heluo kingdom."

-- A large number of relics of the Yangshao Culture dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been discovered at the site.

ZHENGZHOU, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists announced Thursday significant achievements at the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province, providing key proof of the origin of the over 5,000-year-long Chinese civilization.

With an area of 1.17 million square meters, the Shuanghuaishu site is located on the south bank of the Yellow River in the township of Heluo, Gongyi City.

The ancient city relic dating back to around 5,300 years ago was proposed by Chinese archaeologists to be named "Heluo kingdom" after its location in the center of the Heluo area, where the Yellow River (known as He in ancient China) and the Luohe River meet.

"The Shuanghuaishu site is the highest-standard cluster with the nature of a capital city discovered so far in the Yellow River basin in the middle and late stage of Yangshao Culture, the early stage of the formation of Chinese civilization," said Li Boqian, a professor at Peking University, at a press conference on major archaeological discoveries at Shuanghuaishu site held Thursday in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital.

Aerial photo taken on Aug. 27, 2019 shows the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua/Li An)

A large number of relics of the Yangshao Culture dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been discovered at the site, said Gu Wanfa, director of the Zhengzhou Municipal Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, at the press conference.

"The important archaeological findings provide key proof of the origin of Chinese civilization, and also prove the representativeness and influence of the Heluo area in the golden stage of the origin of Chinese civilization around 5,300 years ago," said Wang Wei, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Since 2013, the Zhengzhou Municipal Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have conducted continuous archaeological excavations on the site.

According to archaeologists, the Shuanghuaishu site was about 1,500 meters long from east to west and 780 meters wide from north to south. It was surrounded by three ring trenches with each found to have external access, forming a strict defense system.

Aerial photo taken on Aug. 27, 2019 shows the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua/Li An)

The central residential area with four rows of houses was found in the northern part of the inner ring moat. Meanwhile, three public cemeteries with more than 1,700 tombs, three sacrificial remains, an astronomical relic, a pottery workshop area, a water storage area, a road system, and other facilities were also discovered at the city ruins.

"The Shuanghuaishu site was a well-selected and scientifically planned settlement site," said Wang.

"Based on the geographical location and scale, it's also the only large-scale city settlement discovered so far in the Yellow River basin from the middle and late stage of Yangshao Culture," Wang added.

Archaeologists believe that the Heluo kingdom was the source of many typical characteristics of Chinese civilization.

Silk originated in China and later became one of the country's major trade items. "The mulberry-growing and silkworm-raising culture was an important component of Chinese civilization," said Li.

Among the unearthed relics at Shuanghuaishu, a boar tusk carving of a silkworm, 6.4 cm long, nearly 1 cm wide and 0.1 cm thick, was believed to be China's earliest carving depicting silkworms.

Undated photo shows a boar tusk carving of a silkworm unearthed at the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua)

Experts say that the carving depicts a spinning silkworm which is quite similar to modern silkworms in appearance. "The spinning shape of the carving suggests that ancient Chinese people were familiar with the habits of silkworms," said Gu.

Along with silk fabrics unearthed at the surrounding Wanggou site and Qingtai site, archaeologists said they are solid evidence to prove that the ancient Chinese in the Yellow River basin began raising silkworms and silk production around 5,300 years ago.

"Except Shuanghuaishu and its surrounding settlement sites, there were no definite discoveries from around 5,300 years ago related to the silk textile industry in other parts of the country," said Li. "In that sense, they are the earliest representatives in the development history of Chinese mulberry cultivation and silkworm-rearing culture."

Meanwhile, at the astronomical relic at Shuanghuaishu, nine pottery pots were arranged in the pattern of the nine stars of the Big Dipper, which shows that the ancestors of Heluo had relatively mature astronomical knowledge.

Photo taken on April 28, 2020 shows one of nine pottery pots arranged in the pattern of the nine stars of the Big Dipper, at an astronomical relic at the Shuanghuaishu site in central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua/Li An)

"The relic also indicates the worship of the celestial body may have formed a grand sacrificial ceremony for observing the solar terms and praying for a good harvest," said Gu.

Experts also believe the astronomical relic and the surrounding sacrificial remains constitute a whole, which is consistent with the records of winter solstice sacrifices in ancient Chinese documents. "It is of great significance to the study of early Chinese astronomy and the origin of Chinese civilization," added Gu.
Endangered pangolins have been discovered for sale on Facebook, according to a new investigation.

A report by Tech Transparency Project identified a handful of public pages, created in the past few months, offering pangolins and their body parts for sale. One post also offered rhino horns.

Pangolins are the worlds most-trafficked animal and all eight pangolin species are protected by national and international laws. Two species of pangolin are listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Natures Red List of Threatened Species.

The small mammal, known as scaly ant-eaters, have gained international attention in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Some scientists suggested the animal may have been the intermediate host for the virus which likely originated in bats, however those findings are conflicted. Pangolins are known carriers of other strains of the coronavirus.

Pangolins were advertised for sale on Facebook, according to a new investigation (Facebook)

The Facebook posts were found with simple words searches in English and Vietnamese. One page,Pangolin scales for sale in Vietnam was created January 31, 2020; Rhino horns and pangolin scales for sale in china appeared on March 17 and a day later, a page simply called Pangolin.

On the Pangolin scales for sale in Vietnam page, interested parties were instructed to contact the seller by email or WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging service.

The rhino horns and pangolin scales page was listed as a petting zoo while another, attempting to sell oils made from pangolins, was under "Animal Rescue Service".

The pages in English are believed to have been removed by Facebook after they were contacted by a reporter from Buzzfeed News.

One ad for pangolin scales posted on a users profile in Vietnam, viewed by The Independent, is still active today. The post, via Google Translate from the original Vietnamese, read: Pangolin scales. Very good for pregnant women and new mothers. The post has been public since June 2019 and has dozens of comments.

It is unclear if there are more pages in different languages as researchers only searched in English and Vietnamese. Some 27 countries and territories were identified as sources, transits, or destinations for pangolin trafficking, in a report by the Wildlife Justice Commission this year.

The Tech Transparency Project is the research arm of the nonpartisan Campaign for Accountability watchdog. In a statement to The Independent, the group's executive director, Daniel E Stevens, said: Poachers and their dealers should not be able to openly sell illegally trafficked pangolins on Facebook and its platforms. Facebook claims that it prohibits the sale of endangered or threatened animals on its platforms, but pangolins are easily available for anyone who searches for the animal. This is yet another example of Facebook failing to enforce its own rules across its platform.

Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' Show all 8 1 /8 Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' A pangolin in Indonesia When they feel threatened, pangolins curl up into a defensive ball. Their scales are made from keratin (the same material as rhino horns and human nails) AFP/Getty Images Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' Rescued baby pangolin When in this position the pangolin is too big for a lion or hyena to get its mouth arnd get a grip - and the scales are too tough to penetrate Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' The ground pangolin The name pangoling comes from the Malayan dialect word for 'pengguling' meaning 'something that rolls up Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' A hand-reared baby pangolin Pangolins are also nocturnal and are only active for between four and eight hours each night, hunting for ant nests and termite mounds REX/Maria Diekmann Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' A baby pangolin clinging to its mother Pangolin have no teeth but their claws are hard enough to dig through concrete. They also have a long, pencil-thin tongue that can probe into a nest for 16 inches REUTERS Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' The Malaysian pangolin Pangolins are either ground-dwelling (and spend most of their time in burrows) or arboreal (and hang out in nests in trees AFP/Getty Images Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' A long-tailed pangolin Unfortunately, the pangolin's defensive curl is no help with human predators, who simply pick up the animal without any fuss REX Pangolins: 8 things you didn't know about these 'scaly anteaters' A rescued pangolin Of the eight pangolin species, three are in danger - the ground, Chinese, and Sunda pangolins REUTERS

More than a million pangolins, which are indigenous to Asia and Africa, were trafficked in the past decade.

Pangolins are hunted for bushmeat but increasingly their scales have become prized for traditional medicine and accessories, decimating the population.

According to Facebooks Community Standards, buying and selling endangered species are banned along with posts that speak positively of the poaching of endangered species and their parts. In the networks commerce policies, the buying and selling of animals is banned including animals skins and body parts.

A Facebook company spokesperson told The Independent: We prohibit the trading of endangered wildlife or their parts. Its illegal, its wrong, and we have teams devoted to stopping activity like this.

Facebook uses a combination of technology, reports from NGO partners and users to find content that violates its policies. When it removes a page or event, the contact details are also scrubbed.

The tech giant has been a member of the WWFs Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking since 2018, which aims for an 80% reduction in trade across tech platforms by this year.

The trade in endangered species has been discovered on Facebook before. A 2019 report by wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic, was conducted into the online illegal trade of hornbill species of birds on the social network in Thailand.

Nine species of hornbills are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

The report found that in a six-month period, 236 Facebook posts offered a minimum of 546 hornbill parts and products.

A report by German news outlet Deutsche Welle last year also found endangered reptiles were being sold on Facebook.

The policing of wildlife crimes has in the past relied on tip-offs and catching traffickers in the act. However, criminal networks are adapting and shifting into the digital realm, The Independent reported last week.

Traditional methods of wildlife trafficking are now much more difficult. Partly because the world is in lockdown and partly because that lockdown makes it easier for law enforcement and others to spot the illegal trafficking, Steve Elliot, managing director of Global Data Analytics firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions and a former detective inspector with the Hong Kong police, said.

Theres a real opportunity for markets to become more effective at spotting illicit wildlife trade because an increasing proportion of the selling and distribution is going to take place online.






Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday said the state's factories can reopen next Monday, May 11, removing one of the last major obstacles to North American automakers bringing thousands of laid-off employees back to work amid the coronavirus pandemic.

While reopening the manufacturing sector, Whitmer also extended her state's stay-at-home order by about two weeks to May 28, citing a desire to avoid a second wave of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Were not out of the woods yet, but this is an important step forward," Whitmer said in a statement. "As we continue to phase in sectors of our economy, I will keep working around the clock to ensure our businesses adopt best practices to protect workers."

This week, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said they were targeting resuming vehicle production in North America on May 18, but suppliers would need time to prepare ahead for that date.

Ford has not said what date it is targeting.

The governor previously extended the state's coronavirus stay-at-home order through May 15, but had lifted restrictions for some businesses. Neighboring Ohio had allowed manufacturing to resume this past Monday, putting pressure on Whitmer to follow suit.

Michigan's shutdown had stymied efforts by the Detroit Three and rival automakers to restart vehicle assembly anywhere in the United States, because so many critical parts suppliers are based in the state.

Automakers and their suppliers already have begun gearing up for a possible resumption of work at their U.S. plants, but needed the official go-ahead from Whitmer.

Industry officials had been pressing Whitmer to allow suppliers to reopen starting May 11 so the automakers could resume operations on their target date. They also wanted the green light so they can press Mexico to open its auto sector as suppliers there are also critical for the industry restart.

The automakers' plans were tacitly approved on Tuesday by the United Auto Workers union, which represents the Detroit automakers' hourly U.S. plant workers. The union had previously said early May was "too soon and too risky" to restart manufacturing.

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Under Whitmer's new order, factories must adopt measures to protect workers, including daily entry screening, no-touch temperature screening as soon as possible and use of protective gear like face masks. Automakers have already rolled out such policies.

Whitmer, a Democrat, has come under pressure from some Michigan residents and Republican lawmakers to ease her lockdown of the state to prevent the spread of COVID-19. She has emphasized a phased approach to reopening the state, addressing regions and businesses that are less affected or better protected.

Whitmer has been mentioned as a potential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and has been a target of criticism from Republican President Donald Trump.

Michigan, which Trump narrowly won in 2016, is considered a crucial swing state in the November presidential election and the state's COVID-19 infections rank among the highest in the country. As of Wednesday, Michigan had more than 45,000 COVID-19 cases and 4,250 deaths, but state officials have said the rate of infection has slowed.

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Queen Elizabeth dedicated her whole life to protect the monarchy, so much so that she almost died during World War II.

Queen Elizabeth went through a lot as King George VI's Queen Consort ever since the tragic King, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne. The transition was too abrupt, but they still managed to win the public's trust again -- most notably during World War II.

The royal family remained in the U.K. that time and refused to leave since the King promised to "never leave" the monarchy and country

Throughout the Blitz -- the nighttime bombing raids against London and other British cities by Nazi Germany -- the Queen Mother and the whole family stood firm and stayed in Buckingham Palace.

In 2009, the Buckingham palace publicized the private letter the Queen Mother wrote to her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, when she was still alive. Previously, the Queen Mother famously stated that she was glad that the Buckingham Palace was bombed because "she could now look the East End in the eye."

However, far from her previous statements, the whole communication revealed that Queen Elizabeth had a terrifying day after she and King George VI almost died when the Luftwaffe bombed their residence.

As Queen Elizabeth wrote in her testimony, it seems like the bombs dropped on the part of the palace where the royal couple was preparing. She went on and recalled how they arrived at the residence about a quarter to 11 that morning when they noticed that the red warning was on.

"At that moment, we heard the unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane," the Queen Mother recalled in her testimony. "We said 'ah a German,' and before anything else could be said, there was the noise of aircraft driving at great speed, and then the scream of a bomb."

The Queen Mother also took note that it happened so quickly they were only able to make eye contact before they ducked upon seeing a high column of smoke. They were also quick to think to run away from the windows, which could have potentially slashed or pierced them.

When the situation calmed down, the Queen Mother immediately checked if the staff were alright. However, she found out that three men who were working below the chapel were hit.

What Happened After The Near-Death Experience?

Although the Blitz bombing almost took their lives, Queen Elizabeth and King George VI still pushed through their tour of East and West Ham in the afternoon of the said day.

However, before they left, they witnessed how it became a dead city due to its little empty streets.

"All the houses evacuated, and yet through the broken windows, one saw all the poor little possessions, photographs, beds, just as they were left," the Queen Mother added. She furthered that at the end of the street, there was a school that was also significantly hit.

It collapsed on the top of over 500 who were still waiting to be evacuated.

She then compared seeing the situation to something worse than being bombed herself.

Queen Elizabeth and King George VI remained the pillars of the monarchy after World War II. After the King died in 1952, she continued to be the Queen Mother whom the whole nation loved.

To recall, during VE Day 1995, the crowd chanted that they wanted to see "The Queen Mum" and cheered when they finally saw her standing at the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Nguyen Trung Nam, founder and senior partner of legal consultancy firm EPLegal

The ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 with a frozen economy and lockdown orders in many countries have forced businesses large and small into unprecedented problems. As Global Research put it, the response to the pandemic is creating the largest human experiment in world history.

Due to the unprecedented restrictions on direct human contact, any remaining business communication and transactions have now turned towards online and other indirect means, with the booming use of the online assisting technology such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Dropbox. Even very old and conservative business people are now trying to master their IT capabilities and get themselves familiar with online communication technologies in order to adapt with social distancing.

For the people in general, we are not on a scale as terrible as a global war. However, for businesses, it truly is disastrous if the pandemic and government restrictions continue to prevail on a long-term basis.

What does this mean for businesses? From a risk management perspective, this would be a critical time for any company to revisit overall business strategies, which should be switched to survival mode. Many enterprises will face challenges in the next few months to a year and will struggle to stay in business if they cannot comply with contractual commitments or income streams dry up.

Barriers in Vietnam

Like in many other economic crises, the near future of the worlds economy and Vietnam will witness a large number of commercial disputes and bankruptcies. These will be even more complicated than any previous crisis, because right now most businesses are not even able to meet and discuss their disputes.

Disputes cannot be brought to court because the court system is also frozen. The alternative means, including arbitration and mediation, have been utilised to the maximum extent but they also face obstacles from both legal and practical perspectives.

There are some key challenges for businesses in entering into new contracts, performing their contracts, or enforcing their contractual rights under Vietnamese laws.

Firstly, as a result of the lockdown and market disruption, many businesses will be unable to perform their contractual obligations. Their situation may fall under the legal categories of force majeure (unforeseeable events which are beyond control of the contract party) or hardship as stipulated in the Civil Code 2015, which may help the party in breach opt out of contractual obligations or renegotiate contractual terms.

There are, however, several situations where this will not be helpful in practice. The first situation is where the breaching party is incurring the loss  force majeure will not help them recover such loss because that is the risk they have to assume.

The second situation is cross-party force majeure claims. For instance, a main contractor is in breach of the main contract due to a breach by his supplier (the subcontractor). Where the subcontractor claims that his breach was caused by a force majeure event, that does not automatically mean that the main contractor faces a force majeure event. He must still prove that the situation he faces is beyond his control though he has carried out all possible measures to remove the impediment.

For those who seeks to renegotiate their contracts due to a market disruption (such as plummeting oil prices), they should remind themselves that even if the situation meets the conditions enabling them to claim a hardship situation, their rights are limited to renegotiation while waiting for the court to order amending or terminating the contract. Importantly, during such renegotiation or court proceedings, the party facing the hardship still has to perform the contract.

Secondly, from a procedural perspective, many businesses will find hard times in courts these days, simply because most courts are not in proper operation during the lockdown period. To make the situation worse, any document transfers, notarisation, and legalisation for the purpose of court proceedings will also be delayed for an indefinite time.

It may be a matter of months or even a year to get courts and supporting agency activities back to normal. The alternative is alternative dispute resolution, including mediation and arbitration, with the key advantage of flexibility and availability of technology for online dispute resolution.

These tools however are also facing some other challenges. For example, under Rule 25 of the Vietnam International Arbitration Centre, the Arbitral Tribunal may only conduct the hearings by means of teleconference or video-conference if the parties have so agreed. This causes a problem in practice because if a party (most likely the respondent) is not co-operative, the parties will have to wait until the physical hearing could be conducted after the lockdown imposed on the parties participating in the hearings has been lifted.

Another problem frequently mentioned is that the cybersecurity (and thus the confidentiality) of the online dispute resolution systems are highly questionable, while hackers are increasing their activities in every area of the online realm.

Thirdly, those businesses entering into new contracts are facing the fact that they are very uncertain of the future capability to perform their contracts. In many cases it would be better for them just to wait until the pandemic is over, but nobody knows when that may be. It is notable that for these new contracts, the claims for force majeure or hardship events are very less likely successful. As everyone is now aware of the pandemic and its possible effect on the businesses ability to perform their contractual obligations, it cannot be stated that the event is unforeseeable.

Treading water

Another arising problem for the new cross-border contract entries is that hard-copy contract documents may be delayed in exchanges due to the lockdown in many cities.

On the other hand, electronic signatures are not certainly recognised by Vietnamese laws unless made by digital means (encrypted and opened with tokens). This digital signature service is currently provided by a handful of service providers licensed by the Vietnamese government (such as Viettel or VNPT). Not many enterprises are used to this digital signature means and they will still have to stick with the traditional hard-copy execution of contracts and other documents.

Finally but most seriously, the rising disputes arising out from the economic hibernation and later recession will push more businesses into bankruptcy in a domino line. Given the delayed proceedings in courts, these bankruptcy cases will take months and years to finish, and the creditors in each case will get big hits. This is echoed with a critical flaw in the commercial arbitration law, which provides that if a party goes bankrupt the arbitration proceedings will terminate.

Vietnam is not famous for reaching a surplus of cash flow and there is not much the government could assist the businesses from a macro-economic perspective, apart from its efforts to stop the pandemic. The businesses therefore are expected to help themselves to survive in this uncertain future, by directing their strategies toward a more contractionary style, or even a temporary hibernation with minimised costs until the whole economy activities are back to normal.

For those who are seeking to enforce their contracts, it is critical for them to move fast in three courses of action. First, they should try to secure their financial position by negotiating with the counter-parties to obtain some security or crystalised payments in the short term.

Second, where their counter-parties claim force majeure or hardship to avoid performing the contractual obligations, it is important to request them to continuously use (and prove) their best efforts to cure the impediment and mitigate loss, and in the case of hardship, to request them to continue to perform the contract.

Lastly, where the counter-parties face bankruptcy, it is important to find as many ways as possible to lock the available assets of the debtor before the bankruptcy proceedings commence.
By Ayya Lmahamad

President Ilham Aliyev has said that Azerbaijan and Russia are effectively cooperating in international transport projects and are set to increase the cargo flow between the two countries.

Aliyev made the remarks in an interview with Interstate Mir TV channel on May 6.

We have very effective cooperation in transport sphere. We are jointly implementing an important international transport project "North-South". Almost all infrastructure projects related to this corridor have been implemented both on Russian and Azerbaijani territory. We are now working on issues related to transport and logistics directions to increase the cargo flow and thus create more favorable conditions for the countries that are our neighbors and strengthen the transit potential, Aliyev noted.

Aliyev underlined that in economic terms, the mutual trade turnover has been growing in recent years, which also indicates the intensification of economic cooperation. Hundreds of companies with the Russian capital operate in Azerbaijan in various sectors of the economy, he said.

Russian-Azerbaijani relations are characterized by both sides as strategic partnership relations. If we look at the broad agenda of our relations, we will see almost all spheres of life. We have very intense political interaction, a lot of meetings at the level of heads of state that are held regularly, the president said.

He also stressed that Azerbaijan and Russia are currently working on implementation of seven road maps for the development of bilateral cooperation.

In a bilateral format, we work on realization of seven road maps which are very concrete projects covering important spheres. In each direction there is the accurate plan and time periods, as well as instructions of the presidents for the realization of road maps. All this will bring our countries and peoples closer and strengthen the level of cooperation, growth of trade turnover, mutual investments. This will lead to an improvement in the welfare of our peoples, the president stressed.

Moreover, Aliyev noted there are many bilateral projects in the energy sector.

I should note the unification of the energy systems of Russia and Azerbaijan. In case of accidents in Azerbaijan or Russia we immediately help each other and show solidarity, he said.

At the same time, he expressed regret that due to the coronavirus pandemic there would be a big drop in tourist flow from Russia to Azerbaijan in 2020 and vice versa.

The growth of the tourist flow constantly showed good figures. But taking into account the pandemic, the borders of our countries are closed by mutual consent, so perhaps the tourist flow and the sphere of tourism will be one of the last spheres that will leave the quarantine regime, the president concluded.

___

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India will expand its massive repatriation programme for citizens stranded abroad due to the Covid-19 crisis to Russia, Central Asian states and European countries such as Germany and Spain next week, people familiar with developments said on Friday.

The Vande Bharat Mission, as the repatriation programme has been dubbed, has focused on neighbouring countries such as the Maldives and Bangladesh and West Asian states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which have millions of expatriates, in the first phase during May 7-14.

For the second week of the mission from May 15, we will expand the scope of repatriation to other places not covered so far, particularly Russia, Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and European states such as Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain, one of the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.

There will also be flights to Ukraine and Thailand, and the focus will be on countries with large numbers of Indian students, who accounted for more than a third of the nearly 68,000 requests for repatriation received by the external affairs ministry in New Delhi from people stranded abroad.

During the first week of Vande Bharat Mission from May 7, a total of 64 flights from 12 countries are expected to land at 14 airports across India with some 15,000 people. The first two flights from the UAE arrived in Kerala on Thursday.

During the second week of the repatriation programme, there will be greater use of feeder flights both outside the country and within India, the people said. For instance, feeder flights could bring Indians stranded in Latin American countries to a point in the US for a return flight to India.

The main issue is the commercial viability of the operations to ensure what Air India does is self-sustaining. The flights are being operated at cost and this is not a profit-making venture, the person cited above said, explaining why the government opted to charge for ferrying stranded nationals back to India.

Noting that the government hadnt charged for previous evacuation flights, the person added, In the past, evacuations were from conflict zones and in emergency situations. Now, we are talking about a repatriation of people who want to return to India.

They have the means to return. They are studying and working abroad, they will finance their own return to India at minimum cost.

The people said the cost of tickets from West Asian states, for instance, were reasonable when compared to the rates of airlines from other countries that are currently operating. The government is also trying to increase the viability of Air Indias operations by allowing people on outbound flights provided they long-term visas or residency permits and the destination countries are willing to receive them, the people said.

The external affairs ministrys online platform, on which requests received by Indian missions from citizens wanting to return are regularly uploaded, has so far recorded a total of 67,833 requests. About 34% requests or about 22,500 were from students, 30% or nearly 16,000 from migrant workers, 9,250 from short-term visa holders whose visas had expired, more than 5,500 from people with medical emergencies or seeking treatment for terminal illnesses, more than 4,000 from stranded tourists, more than 3,000 from pregnant women and the elderly and more than 1,100 from people who wanted to return due to a death in the family.

These repatriation requests were from Kerala, which topped the list with more than 25,200; Tamil Nadu, with some 6,600; Maharashtra, with about 4,300; Uttar Pradesh, with more than 3,715; Rajasthan, with more than 3,300; and Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi, all with more than 2,000 requests each.

On Thursday, an Air India flight from Abu Dhabi to Kochi brought back 181 people while another Air India flight from Dubai to Kozhikode returned with 182 passengers. On Friday, an Air India flight from Singapore to Delhi returned with 234 passengers while another flight from Dhaka to Srinagar brought back 168 passengers.

There will be a total of 27 flights from West Asia during the first week of Vande Bharat, including 11 from the UAE, five each from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and two each from Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.

During the same period, there will be seven flights from Bangladesh to bring back nationals to Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. There will be another 14 flights from Southeast Asia, including five each from Singapore and the Philippines and four from Malaysia.

There will also be seven flights in the first week from four airports in the US  New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, and seven more flights from London.

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The coronavirus pandemic has wiped out San Antonios tourism industry, leaving hotels empty, attractions closed, conventions canceled and thousands of people out of work  and its anybodys guess when travelers will start coming back.

Dozens of new hotels, which would add more than 4,000 rooms in San Antonio, were either under construction or in the planning stage before the pandemic.

The only safe bet now is that the hotels that were already going up in early March, before the coronavirus began spreading across San Antonio, will be completed in the near future. Their developers are putting the final touches on the projects and hoping to open late this year.

The projects that havent broken ground are clouded by uncertainty. Experts expect a slowdown as some developers rethink or postpone plans, or instead opt to scrap their construction plans and buy hotels unable to stay afloat.

The Arts Residences at the Thompson San Antonio Hotel, a luxury high-rise on Lexington near the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts that will include residences and hotel rooms, is one of the safe bets for a near-term opening. Construction started in 2018, and crews continue to hammer away.

About 85 percent of the residences have been sold, and a grand opening for the hotel has been pushed back to this fall, said Julie Kleine, sales and marketing director at DC Partners, a Houston firm developing the tower.

As with all business activity, there were some initial adjustments to adhere to new safe work regulations concerning COVID-19 that were implemented, but overall we were able to stay on track with construction, Kleine said.

The Canopy by Hilton at East Commerce and North St. Marys is also on track. The hotel is expected to open in mid-October, though postponement is still a possibility. Developer Chris Hill said hes monitoring the situation.

We are reassessing the state of affairs on a weekly basis. Its a very fluid situation  its unprecedented, said Hill, who owns Esquire Tavern, next door to the Canopy. Theres simply no visibility for what the future occupancies may be.

Construction of another downtown hotel is expected to start in July and wrap up in 2022, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

Plans call for tearing down the rectory at St. Marys Catholic Church on North St. Marys and erecting Hotel Sul Fiume, or Hotel on the River in Italian. New offices for the church would be built inside the hotel.

The citys Historic and Design Review Commission initially green-lighted the project last June, but it still needs final approval from the panel.

Were moving along cautiously, developer Tony Byron said. Were fortunate that our project is two years out. We will be watching the situation very closely.

There are more than 45 hotel projects in the planning stage or under construction in the San Antonio metropolitan area, according to STR, a data firm that tracks the hospitality industry.

As of May 1, it did not appear that any of those developments had been deferred or abandoned, spokesperson Nick Minerd said.

The trend we expect nationally is for projects to remain under construction for a longer period, he said. Were no longer in the greatest demand cycle of a lifetime, so there wont be the same rush to complete projects in order to tap into that market.

Delays are possible due to limitations around building materials as well as social distancing guidance, Minerd added. In general, during the last downturn, projects already under construction were completed, while many projects that were in the planning phases were shelved.

It would be difficult to put the breaks on developments that are nearly complete, said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president at Source Strategies, a San Antonio-based hotel consulting firm.

Scheduled openings probably will be delayed, and when hotels do open their doors, there may be fewer available rooms. For projects in the early stages, developers may be facing more questions from lenders and re-examining initial assumptions about how business will fare.

Some hotels wont survive the pandemic, Vaughn said, and there may be discount hotels that a savvy developer could buy.

Many visitors to San Antonio are from other parts of Texas, which could be a boon for the city.

I wouldnt be surprised if you see people more comfortable traveling by car in the immediate future, more than airline travel, Vaughn said.

On a recent earnings call for Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., which owns the largest regional bank in San Antonio, Frost Chairman and CEO Phil Green said hotels are among eight sectors at higher risk in the economic fallout from the pandemic.

A construction crew approaches The Arts Residences at the Thompson San Antonio Hotel on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. Construction on the project began in 2018. A construction crew approaches The Arts Residences at the Thompson San Antonio Hotel on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. Construction on the project began in 2018. Photo: Billy Calzada / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Billy Calzada / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close How will the pandemic affect hotel projects in San Antonio? 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Frost has roughly $239 million in outstanding loans for 28 hotel developments, with eight under construction. Though its unclear when the properties will open, Green said he doesnt expect significant losses in the portfolio.

The owners are experienced and have a lot of equity in the projects, the hotels are in good locations and many are associated with operators such as Hilton or Marriott, Green said.

For local hotelier Ed McClure, theres been a small benefit to the pandemic: Having so few guests is allowing him to accelerate renovations at Hotel Indigo and the El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel downtown.

Work on the Indigo is expected to wrap up in May, with a restaurant finished in June, and El Tropicano is scheduled to open by the second quarter next year. Receiving a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program has helped with bringing employees back.

In a very bizarre way, this is a plus for us, McClure said.

He expects that travelers will start coming back soon, eager to get out of the house.

I think there will be a real pent-up demand to get out, he said.

But the outbreak will likely slow plans and deals for new hotels, as developers and banks wait to see what happens, McClure added.

But thats not the case for Dream Hotel Group.

In January, it announced plans to open a hotel along the River Walk, though it has not disclosed the names of the developers behind the project or where exactly it will be located.

The pandemic has not affected plans for the project, since it is two or three years away from opening, spokesperson Katie Fontana said.

It may actually have a positive impact on construction costs, with potential savings due to overcapacity left from other construction sites being put on hold, Fontana said.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
Reliance Jio has come up with new top-up plans to support extra data usage at up to 75 per cent lower rates and also made annual recharge plans 33 per cent cheaper compared to rivals by enhancing data usage limit at 4G speed to 2 GB per day.

The company has brought three new "work-from-home" top-up plans that are available at the denominations of Rs 151 (30 GB), Rs 201 (40 GB) and Rs 251 (50 GB), which supplement usage once the daily limit is exhausted, as per the company's website.

With these plans, average data cost comes to about Rs 5 per GB.

Under the existing top-ups, which will continue, data on Jio network costs in the range of Rs 8.5 to Rs 21 per GB.

Reliance Jio has revised the price for its annual plan to Rs 2,399 and enhance the daily data limit in the new plan to 2 GB.

So, despite increase in value of the 365 days validity, the annual plan is 33 per cent cheaper than rivals due to extra data offered by it.

Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea offer similar annual plans for Rs 2,398 and Rs 2,399 respectively, with daily data limit of 1.5 GB at 4G speed.

The new plans from Jio comes at a time when companies have been pushing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and government to legally raise data prices by up to 5-10 times to address financial stress that some companies are facing.

Mobile subscribers get access to 4G data at a price as low as Rs 3.5 per GB but if the floor price is fixed as demanded by telecom operators, the mobile internet prices will rise 5-10 times from the current level.

Vodafone Idea has proposed that the minimum price of data should be fixed at Rs 35 per GB and Bharti Airtel has recommended a minimum price of Rs 30 per GB for low data users. Reliance Jio wants data prices to be hiked gradually to Rs 20 per GB.

In latest developments, Reliance Jio's parent firm Jio Platforms has raised Rs 60,596.37 crore in less than three weeks by selling a stake of around 13 per cent to Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
B oris Johnson has asked Vladimir Putin if Russia would help play a more integrated role in global efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

During a phone call with Mr Putin to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the PM suggested Russia take part in a global vaccine summit next month being hosted by the UK.

While Mr Johnson told the long-standing leader there remain "obstacles" in developing stronger bilateral relations between the two nations, he opened the door to working "together" to find an inoculation against Covid-19.

Relations between the UK and Russia have been under strain since the deployment of a military-grade nerve agent on an ex-Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury in 2018.

Boris Johnson thanks war veterans on 75th anniversary of VE Day

The MI6 informant and his daughter survived the Novichok attack but local woman Dawn Sturgess later died, with the incident leading to the expulsion of 23 suspected Russian spies.

UK and US security services warned hackers, who the Telegraph reported were understood to be state-backed by Russia and China, were targeting the NHS to steal coronavirus secrets.

Boris Johnson outside Downing Street on VE Day / Getty Images

Mr Johnson, during his call with Mr Putin, reflected on the nations' Second World War links but said more needs to be done if closer ties are to be re-established.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The Prime Minister spoke to President Putin today to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The Prime Minister spoke to President Putin today to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day" / Getty Images

"They paid tribute to the collaboration between British and Russian forces during the Second World War, including through the Arctic convoys, and to the heroism and sacrifice of all those who lost their lives.

"They also discussed the bilateral relationship between our countries.

"The Prime Minister was clear we should maintain dialogue but that obstacles to further progress remained."

VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures 1 /118 VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures Veteran Lou Myers, 93 looks up at the Cenotaph before taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Duchess of Cornwall lays flowers after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall observe the two-minute silence at Balmoral War Memorial Getty Images Local residents celebrate outside their homes in Altrincham Getty Images A window in Altrincham marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day Getty Images Boris Johnson observes the two-minute silence at Downing Street Getty Images Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames during a flypast in central London PA Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Britain's Prince of Wales and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall walk to take part in a two minute silence AP A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA A woman wears a Union flag apron as she takes part in celebrations Getty Images Jan Sleightholm, 61 from Redcar poses for a photograph as she wears a self-made poppy design dress during celebrations Getty Images A veteran makes his way to the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images A lady lays a wreath at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images Members of the public take part in the two-minute silence at the Carshalton Ponds War Memorial in Wallington Getty Images David Fryer, Chairman Royal British Legion Thorner and Scarcroft Branch in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial via REUTERS The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London via REUTERS Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA Graham and Sue Gillson stand in the street outside their home in Hampshire as they take part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Residents in West Yorkshire observe the two-minute silence PA Second World War veteran Bernard Morgan, 96, poses as he takes part in the two-minute silence Getty Images People observe the two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images The Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a parade with their first world war guns and observe the two-minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence PA Sergeant David Beveridge prepares to fire a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA Railway staff at Waverley Station in Edinburgh observe two-minute silence Getty Images Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA People observe a two-minute silence in St James Park, London REUTERS A police officer observes two minutes of silence on the Mall AP Officers and soldiers of Household Division observe social distancing as they take part in a 2 minute silence and wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade AFP via Getty Images An ambulance worker at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA Members of the public applaud at the Cenotaph after taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Veteran Lou Myers, 93 bows his head at the Cenotaph as he takes part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA People observe two minutes of silence as they stand in Whitehall AP Members of the public in Windsor take part in two minutes of silence to honour the service Getty Images People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA A Royal British Legion standard bearer lowers his standard in respect during a two minute silence in Redcar, North Yorkshire PA People applaud as a WWII veteran walks past after two minutes of silence was observed in Whitehall AP Members of the public applaude after two minutes of silence Getty Images Senior officers and soldiers of the Household Division salute before a two minute silence to mark VE Day at Horse Guards in London REUTERS The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast in central London PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast to mark VE Day PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horse Guards PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over London AP Traffic on the Mall as people wait for the Red Arrows AP The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace PA The Red Arrows fly over Westminster AFP via Getty Images Cyclists watch as Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AP The Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Red Arrows fly over London AP The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS A man watches the Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS The Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, waiting for the Red Arrows to pass over London AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace in London during a flypast in central London PA A policeman stands in front of 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary AFP via Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach PA A tribute in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Royal Navy of sailors, soldiers and Royal Marines aboard support ship RFA Argus patrolling the Caribbean spell out 75 on the flight deck to mark the 75th anniversar PA A couple on a Vespa scooter carry a Union flag as they drive past the Cenotaph AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson prepares to light a candle at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior AP Pageantmaster of VE Day 75 Bruno Peek and his dog Wilson, as he decorates his house in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk PA Two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly over the cliffs of Dover Getty Images The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Pipe major Andy Reid of The Scots Guards plays his pipes on the cliffs of Dover, Kent, as two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly overhead PA Children at Breadsall Primary School in Derby during a VE Day lunch party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Boris Johnson speaking on VE Day in a video message @BorisJohnson / Twitter The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA A display by the Ministry of Defence and the British Legion on the Lights in Piccadilly Circus in central London to thank Second World War Veterans PA The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party PA A policeman walks past 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day AFP via Getty Images PA PA

She added: "The leaders spoke about the coronavirus pandemic and agreed on the importance of continuing to work together and with other countries to defeat the disease.

"The Prime Minister invited President Putin to take part in the global vaccine summit that the UK will host virtually in June to strengthen healthcare systems and tackle coronavirus in some of the world's poorest countries."

Boris Johnson promises 200,000 daily Covid-19 tests by the end of May

During the daily briefing with reporters, the Prime Minister's official spokesman was asked if Mr Johnson raised the issue of cyber-hacking of the NHS with Mr Putin.

The Number 10 spokesman said: "The primary purpose of it is to mark VE Day.

"The Prime Minister and President Putin met in January and the PM set out very clearly then what the UK's position was on the relationship we have with Russia and what needs to happen before it can be normalised."

Mr Johnson is due to speak to a number of other world leaders on Friday to remember the events of 1945, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki in the evening.

The Conservative Party leader has already spoken to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to discuss the coronavirus response.
Fate has played a trick to the sacked Kano state Commissioner for Works and Infrastructural Development, Engr. Muazu Magaji who mocked the death of former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abba Kyari.

Abba, who controlled maximum power and respect, while serving President Buhari tested positive to COVID-19, after his return from Gemany, where he went for official assignment.

He later died in Lagos after intensive care, which he could no survive.

247ureprots.con reports that Magaji took to his Facebook to express his joy over the passing on of late Kyari.

On Thursday, Magaji, through his Facebook channels, announced his COVID-19 status, appealing for prayers from his friends, well wishes and Nigerians.

He confirmed that he has been moved to one of the Isolation Centres in Kano, for medical attention.

247ureports.com recalls that Governor Abdullahi Ganduje had on April 18th sacked Muazu Magaji for making indecent comments over the death of late Abba Kyari.

The state Commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba who announced the sack of Magaji noted that he was relieved of his duty due to,unguarded utterances against the person of the late Chief of Staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari.

Garba said, as a public servant, the commissioner ought to have respect the profanity of the office by refraining from any act capable of rendering the office to disrepute.l

The action of a public servant, personal or otherwise reflects back on the government and therefore, the Ganduje administration would not tolerate people in official capacities engaging in a personal vendetta or otherwise.

Magaji had admitted his sins and apologized, pledging his continued loyalty to Ganduje.
By Olivia Rose

COUNTRIES with lower numbers of Covid-19 cases should ease lockdown restrictions "strategically.





This suggestion was made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) during a virtual press briefing earlier this month.





The Turks and Caicos Islands Government announced its plan for a phased reopening of the territory and removed some restrictive measures last week.





The lockdown, which was imposed on March 26, was partially lifted on Monday (May 4).





The easing of the rules was announced by Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson during her joint address to the nation with Governor Nigel Dakin on April 30.





She explained that beaches, certain stores and businesses would be allowed to open with restrictions but schools, island-to-island and international travel would remain closed.





Physical distancing protocols need to be followed, she continued, people must wear a mask or face covering and there should be strictly no public gathering of over four people.





A night time curfew remains in place from 8pm to 5am until May 25 and the territory will continue to be on full lockdown every Sunday.





The premier told residents over 65 to remain isolated and urged those with underlying health conditions to do the same.





Since first being recorded late last year in Wuhan, China, Covid-19 has spread like wildfire across the globe.





Many countries have been under some form of lockdown to slow the spread of the deadly disease since it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on March 11.





And while many are eager to see all restrictions lifted especially as numbers stabilise in some countries, the WHO has urged countries to remain patient and vigilant.





Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, spoke at a Covid-19 conference on April 13.





She said lockdowns must be lifted "strategically and not all at once, to prevent further setbacks.





"Not lifting all at once is very critical so that we can get people back to work, get these economies going back again as quickly as possible.





"It may be a little bit longer that you have to remain at home.





Van Kerkhove explained that with a controlled, strategic approach, governments can divert resources where they are needed.





During the press conference, the WHOs director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Covid-19 pandemic will decelerate much more slowly than it accelerated.





He outlined specific criteria to guide countries as they consider lifting restrictions. The strategic advice was later published on the WHOs website.





According to the director general, before relaxing restrictions countries should ensure the transmission is controlled along with the following measures.





"Health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate and treat every Covid-19 case and trace every contact.





"Outbreak risks are minimised in special settings like health facilities and nursing homes.





"Preventive measures are in place in workplaces, schools and other places where its essential for people to go.





"Importation risks can be managed.





"Communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to adjust to the new norm.





Michael J Ryan, chief executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, cautioned countries about becoming complacent even when cases decrease and some semblance of normalcy is restored.





"Countries seeing their numbers stabilise should not believe the worst is over. Now is the time for vigilance.





In a situation report on May 1, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) said the risk of further importation of cases to the region remains "very high.





"Up to 33 countries in the Caribbean region have reported the importation of at least one confirmed case of Covid-19.





"The risk of further cases in the Caribbean region remains very high since the previous report on April 27, 2020.





"No new countries reported their first confirmed case of Covid-19 within the Caribbean region.





"Additional cases, however, were confirmed in 15 countries within the Caribbean, bringing the regions total confirmed cases to 11,115 in 33 countries/territories.





"The aim for all countries now is to stop transmission, prevent the spread of the virus and save lives, the report read.





According to international reports, coronavirus lockdowns were lifted across Europe despite global Covid-19 cases edging close to four million.





Italy, once the epicentre of the virus in Europe, has significantly eased lockdown measures and allowed businesses to reopen and people to return to work nearly after two months of strict social distancing orders.





Coronavirus is continuing its spread across the world, with more than three and a half million confirmed cases in 187 countries according to the Johns Hopkins University and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC).





More than 260,000 people have lost their lives to the deadly disease globally.




Egypt's press syndicate has said there are two new coronavirus cases among journalists, coming just a week after the first journalist death from the virus in the country.



In a statement on Thursday, the Journalists Syndicates health care and social committee said the two cases were a trainee reporter in the Red Sea and a member of the syndicate.



They are both in a stable condition, the committee said, adding that the first case was of a journalist who directly contacted the committees head on 30 April to report symptoms including high fever and pain, and who was transferred to an Imbaba isolation hospital.



The trainee is currently at an isolation hospital in the Red Sea, where he is receiving medical care.



The committee also said it has received reports that five relatives of journalists registered with the syndicate had contracted the virus since the beginning of the committees operation on 24 March.



All five cases have subsequently recovered, according to the committee.



Egyptian journalist Mahmoud Riad died in hospital last week, becoming the country's first journalist to die from the coronavirus.



A statement by Egypt's press syndicate at the time said that Riad, who worked at Al-Khamis newspaper, had been transferred to Agouza quarantine hospital and died two weeks later.



Egypt reported a daily record of 393 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the total tally up to 7,981.

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Anuradha Shukla By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is in negotiations with daughters of former Yes Bank promoter Rana Kapoor to turn approvers against their father, as he had bought many properties and shell companies in their names without their knowledge.

In many cases, the daughters were not aware of the dealing initially. Rana Kapoor took several decisions on their behalf. We are negotiating with them, if they would turn approvers, a senior ED official told TNIE.

The ED filed its first charge sheet against Rana Kapoor and his family in Mumbai court on May 6. The charge sheet named his wife Bindu; three daughters Rakhee, Roshini and Radha; and three firms allegedly controlled by the family, namely Morgan Credits, RAB Enterprises (India) and Doit Urban Ventures.

The charge sheet has accused Kapoor of taking kickbacks of more than Rs 5,500 crore for approving loans, anomalies in distributing bank loans to corporate entities by misusing his official position, creating shell companies for laundering money, defaults and creating tainted assets.

The agency has also claimed that Kapoor, who was the managing director and chairman of Yes Bank, was instrumental in sanctioning loans worth Rs 30,000 crore during his tenure, of which Rs 20,000 crore has turned into Non-Performing Assets (NPA).

According to sources, the statements of key management persons of Yes Bank over the alleged irregularities form part of the charge sheet. ED sources hinted that in the coming months, there will be more action in the case.

According to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the agency has to file a prosecution complaint within 90 days of arresting a person; else, (there are) risks (to) seizure and attachment of assets and properties of the accused. We will initiate attaching of properties sooner, the official added.

So far ED has identified one luxury hotel in New York, another hotel and two luxury properties in London, a private yacht, six Delhi bungalows and six properties in Mumbai.
Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon, center, new floor leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, speaks during the party's Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, Friday, a day after he was elected as floor leader. Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has elected its new floor leader, Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon, who is tasked with heading the "super-large" ruling party for the incoming 21st National Assembly after its sweeping victory in the April 15 general election.



The three-term lawmaker beat two other floor leader candidates in a vote of party members at the National Assembly, Thursday.



Among the tasks before Kim is how he will demonstrate his leadership to lead the super-size ruling party, which will take up nearly 60 percent of the 300-seat Assembly, while the nation is dealing with the post-pandemic economic crisis.



As the government is planning to submit the third supplementary budget bill in early June after the 21st Assembly kicks off on May 30, attention is on how the DPK can draw cooperation from opposition parties to pass the bill.



"I've got a lot on my shoulders after being elected as the ruling party floor leader in a time of economic crisis on the tails of the coronavirus outbreak," Kim said during a press conference at the National Assembly after the vote. "The third supplementary budget is a necessary step for the Assembly to help the nation take preemptive and bold actions against economic difficulties."



He also pledged to push ahead with a revision of the National Assembly Act to achieve the goal of a "hard-working National Assembly."



The 20th Assembly which ends May 29 has been labeled as the worst by political analysts, as rival parties remained locked in verbal and even physical clashes and failed to pass bills during its four-year term.



A judiciary reform bill to establish a special investigative body to look into corruption by high-ranking officials and their family members was among the contentious bills, which had brought physical clashes and gave the Assembly the moniker of an "animal-like" legislative body.



Kim seeks revision to oblige the Assembly to hold sessions all year round and have lawmakers with knowledge and expertise in specific fields assigned to relevant committees rather than based on their interests.



Passing other reform bills is also an important and hard task, to complete and carry out many reform measures sought by the Moon Jae-in government, such as reform of authorities including the prosecution and the spy agency. As the Moon administration has two years left, reform bills, if not dealt with opportunely, could be discarded along with the launch of the next administration.



In the meantime, the DPK and its satellite party Civil Together decided to merge through a vote of DPK members, Friday, in which 84.1 percent said they support the merger.



The DPK and Civil Together collectively secured 180 seats in the general election, but two lawmakers-elect returned to other minor parties they belonged to before joining the ruling bloc for the election, and another was expelled over suspected property tax evasion, so now the ruling bloc has 177 seats.


The federal governments effort to support Kogi State in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic has failed, the Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, said on Friday.

Mr Ehanire, while speaking at the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing, said the team sent to the state returned to Abuja without accomplishing its mission.

He said new efforts will be made to engage Kogi authorities for a resolution of differences.

We tried to send a team of the Ministry of Health and the NCDC into Kogi yesterday but there were some differences there to processes, he said. This will mean that we need to re-engage the state governor again and work with him and his team to create the conditions to which the Ministry of Health and the NCDC can complete their job.

Kogi is one of the two states yet to confirm any case of the virus since the country recorded its index case in February. The other state is Cross River. Both states are believed to be discouraging tests for people with symptoms of COVID-19.

On Thursday, a delegation comprising officials of NCDC and the Department of Hospital Services of the Federal Ministry of Health had to flee the state for fear of being quarantined by the Kogi State Government.

The delegation, which set out on the mission to ascertain the claim by the state to be COVID-19 free and to boost its testing capacity, was reportedly not received with open arms.

The Kogi State Government earlier alleged that there is a plot by unnamed persons to ensure Kogi records cases of the virus

The North-central state, surrounded by states with confirmed cases of the virus, is engrossed in battle of wits with federal officials over its claim of having no case of the virus.

The state government, in an earlier statement, said it will not manufacture cases to satisfy the expectations of the unnamed health officials.

The doctors association in the state expressed concern over the refusal to test suspected cases of the virus.

As of Thursday night, Nigeria has recorded 3526 cases of the virus in 34 states and the FCT. Of these, 601 have recovered and discharged and 107 deaths recorded.

Agreement

Mr Ehanire said an agreement was reached with the state governor before sending in the delegations.

The agreement we had with them after discussions with the Governors (Kogi and Cross River) is that we should send a delegation to the states just to validate the facts, he said. Of course, we need that for our national records and to be able to report to the world what the situation is in our country because by now the whole world knows that we do not have any record from these two states.

He noted that the delegation will be sent to Cross River next week for the same purpose.

Aggrieved official

Meanwhile, the Director-General of the NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, said the assistance rendered to the state was not appreciated.

You can only offer help where the help is wanted. Yesterday we offered that help but it wasnt in a place where the help could be accepted.

Unfortunately, that is what happened last night. The reality is that we have had a great relationship with Kogi.

We have supported Kogi State in every possible way. It is one of the first states that has an Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) supported by the NCDC.

I think in the long term, the purpose of our existence is to support the states. They have the primary responsibility of the health security in their state, he said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  The Supreme Court dismissed on Friday a petition seeking the release of President Rodrigo Duterte's health records.

Highly-placed court sources told CNN Philippines 13 justices voted against the petition while only two magistrates dissented: Associate Justices Marvic Leonen and Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.

In a 42-page petition filed in April, lawyer Dino de Leon said that "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."

Malacanang expressed confidence the bid will fail. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque stressed that the Constitution requires the President to report the state of his health to the public only "in case of serious illness."

Aside from the President being immune from suit, the Supreme Court does not have the power to try facts and decide on whether or not he has a serious illness, Roque said.

Duterte himself admitted to having several medical conditions, such as daily migraines, nausea, pain due to a spinal injury, Buerger's disease or a disorder affecting blood vessels, and Barrett's esophagus or a complication which causes heartburn or acid indigestion.

In October 2018, Duterte said that he had undergone a biopsy, wherein he tested negative for cancer.
The coronavirus numbers are devastating, with over 1.2 million cases and over 72,000 deaths in the United States, and hundreds of thousands of additional cases around the world. Beyond these numbers, our communities  from El Paso to Houston to Miami  have had to adapt to the new normal: social distancing, stay-at-home orders, a skyrocketing unemployment rate, small businesses shuttering and a collapsing economy.

Each of us has family members, friends and constituents who have been affected by this crisis. This virus simply does not care about a persons age, race, immigration status or how much money they earn.

The pandemic has exposed the life-and-death inequities faced by Latinos that have worsened the impacts on nuestra gente. Among many others, these inequities include disparities in income, a broken immigration system, and a lack of access to health care. These inequities are even worse among Latinas, who only earn 54 cents for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man makes and are likely to work in Americas growing low-income economy.

According to a report by Mijente and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, of the 26 million Latino workers in the U.S. workforce, over 24 percent of them work in low-wage jobs. But this 24 percent comprises a critical portion of our collective workforce.

These Latinos are the essential workers risking their lives on the front lines of this pandemic to keep our country running. They are farmworkers, grocery store clerks, truck drivers, postal workers, longshoremen, sanitation workers and childcare providers. They are feeding America, cleaning our hospitals, keeping our ports open and fueling our economy, and many more are keeping us safe and saving lives as first responders and health care professionals.

And while they are relied upon to keep our nation functioning during this pandemic, Latinos are suffering. A staggering 49 percent of Latinos say someone in their household has suffered a pay cut or lost a job due to COVID-19, compared to 33 percent of U.S. adults. Nearly 50 percent of Latinos report being terrified that they wont be able to put food on the table or keep a roof over their heads. These are the stories of many of our constituents in Texas and South Florida.

But the Trump administration and a vast majority of Republicans in Congress have turned their backs on so many Latinos across America. They refuse to help our communities in order to appease President Trumps agenda.

They welcome the more than $15 billion that mixed-status families pay in taxes every year, yet deny many of them economic relief exactly when families are suffering the most. They continue to assault the future of Dreamers, even as thousands are on the front lines saving lives and treating patients as health care workers. And they turned a blind eye when Latino small businesses struggled to access SBA relief funds, despite Latinos opening more small businesses in America than any other demographic.

There is a reason so many in our communities feel invisible and forgotten. Despite our best efforts and the advocacy of so many elected officials and community organizations, Republicans refused to give economic relief to many Latinos desperately in need under the CARES Act or the recently passed Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act.

In the face of this obstruction, we will not stop fighting to ensure that all people get the economic relief they need during these difficult times. As we continue to work on additional relief packages in Congress, we challenge Senate and House Republicans to remember President Lincolns words and to be inspired by the better angels of our nature by:

Accelerating the nationwide deployment of rapid testing, ventilator, and protective equipment to hard-hit communities in many Latino and African American neighborhoods;

1. Giving protective equipment and expedient medical care to detained immigrant mothers and children, as well as ICE and CBP staff;

2. Expanding access to health care instead of trying to dismantle it in the courts;

3. Extending economic relief to all individuals with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers;

4. Ensuring Latino small businesses have access to the relief funds needed to save their enterprise and keep workers on payroll;

5. Streamlining processes for applying for unemployment that will quickly help Latinos that have disproportionately lost their jobs;

6. Providing clinics, hospitals, and health care systems with the equipment needed to treat sick patients and give mental health care to patients and health care workers that have experienced trauma during this crisis;

7. Allocating funds to help underserved and underfunded school systems bridge the digital divide as students learn from home;

8. Funding multilingual, culturally inclusive educational efforts on public TV and radio to ensure that Latinos can access information they need to understand the pandemic and the steps they need to take to protect themselves and their families; and

9. Providing hazard pay for health care workers and essential workers on the front lines of this crisis.

As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to work for the people and pass legislation to improve the lives of hardworking families. We are living through an unprecedented moment in history that will define the future of our nation. Will we be a government of compassion for all its people? Or will we force Latinos and other minorities to live in the shadows of this pandemic as our neighborhoods are ravaged, people lose their livelihoods and many others die?

We are fighting to make sure that Latinos and the most vulnerable among us are not forgotten. They deserve better. We intend to give them just that.

Garcia is the representative for Texass 29th congressional district. Escobar is the representative for Texass 16th congressional district in El Paso. Mucarsel-Powell is the representative for Floridas 26th congressional district in Miami-Dade County. The three Congresswoman refer to themselves as las Tres Comadres del Congreso.
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has greeted China for its success in controlling the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, state media reported on Friday. The North Korean leader, however, lashed out at South Korea over its military drills, calling them ''grave provocation''.

According to the state media, Kim Jong-Un sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping to congratulate him on that country`s success in controlling the coronavirus.

Kim sent a verbal message to the Chinese President about the coronavirus, Korean Central News Agency said.

"Kim Jong Un in his message extended his warm greetings to Xi Jinping and congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic," said KCNA.

Kim wished Xi good health and the KCNA report said the relationship between Pyongyang and Beijing was "firmly consolidated.

A North Korean military representative said on Friday that recent South Korean military drills were a grave provocation that demanded a reaction, according to a statement carried by KCNA.

"The recent drill served as an opportunity which awakened us once again to the obvious fact that the enemies remain enemies all the time," the statement said.

North Korea cited a military exercise by the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) Air Combat Command on Wednesday and said the drills violated inter-Korean agreements aimed at reducing military tensions.

"Everything is now going back to the starting point before the north-south summit meeting in 2018," the statement said.

On Sunday, South Korea said North Korean troops fired multiple shots toward a South Korean guard post at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which separates the two countries.

South Korean troops responded by firing warning shots, but no casualties were reported. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said the shots fired by North Korea were likely "accidental".

North Korea has said it has no cases of the coronavirus but previously reinforced border checks and anti-epidemic measures.
YEREVAN.  Zhoghovurd newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: According to Zhoghovurd dailys information, heated debates have been going on within the authorities in recent days over the [Armenian] Genocide Museum-Institute.

The thing is that by a written instruction of the RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the land plot on the balance sheet of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute was decided to be transferred to the Yerevan Municipality.

According to our sources, the management of the museum-institute wants the municipality to cultivate the land near its territory, which is about 100 hectares, as it has been uncultivated for years, but the municipality, in its turn, has stated that it is not on its balance sheet.

According to our information, Mayor Hayk Marutyan has internally demanded that the land be included under their oversight so that they can cultivate it.

Our sources also report that the situation has become so heated that the issue has reached the chief of staff of the government, Eduard Aghajanyan. And the young chief of staff met with the parties and tried to smooth the issue. But, according to our information, the parties could not reach a common ground.

Zhoghovurd daily spoke with Harutyun Marutyan, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, who said: "I know there are discussions, and that's normal."

We also talked to Eduard Aghajanyan, Chief of Staff of the Government. "We have decided that a strategy for the development of the park should be developed, in connection with which we have given relevant instructions," he said.
A comment made by Kashmir Inspector General of Police Vijay Kumar on the CRPF's role in counter-terrorism operations has stirred a controversy among the forces deployed in the valley, officials said on Friday.

They said IGP Kumar, during a meeting of joint forces at the district police lines in Baramulla on April 29 chaired by DGP Dilbag Singh, reportedly commented that the paramilitary force is a showpiece and the actual operations are conducted by the Army, its elite unit Rashtriya Rifles (RR) with the help of intelligence generated by the state police.

Kumar, a 1997-batch Indian Police Service officer, is stated to have said that the work of CRPF in Kashmir operations has not been good and he knows it better as he himself had served in the paramilitary force on deputation earlier.

Officials said senior CRPF officers present in the meeting did not take the comments kindly and they later confronted Kumar about his "unpleasant" utterances against their force.

Senior state police officials said the issue has created controversy after a section of security forces commanders said the comment was aimed to create a rift among sister forces working against militancy and terrorism in Kashmir Valley.

As the issue refused to die down and senior CRPF commanders sought high-level intervention, the Kashmir zone of the J-K Police issued a tweet on Friday specifically praising the role of the country's largest paramilitary force.

"#DGP J&K Shri Dilbagh Singh complimented role of #BSF, #CRPF, @SSB, #ITBP & #CISF deployed on the various assignment in J&K. Specially #CRPF has played a significant role both in maintaining #L&O (law and order) and #CI (counter insurgency) grids," it said.

Kumar has served in the CRPF as its Deputy IG (New Delhi range) and as the IG in anti-Naxal operations grid of Chhattisgarh and in the operations directorate at the headquarters in Delhi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Following the US FDA's IND clearance, South Korea's MFDS cleared the IND application of BBT-176, submitted in December 2019

BBT-176 will be the company's first drug candidate to launch clinical studies in South Korea

In the second half of this year, the company is expected to initiate a Dose Escalation Study in patients with advanced NSCLC

SEONGNAM, South Korea, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Bridge Biotherapeutics Inc.(KOSDAQ: 288330), a clinical stage biotech company headquartered in Seongnam, Republic of Korea, announced that the Investigational New Drug (IND) application of BBT-176 submitted to South Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) was officially cleared on May 7th.

BBT-176, a novel epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) is designed to inhibit the signaling pathway of EGFR with C797S mutations, which arise as Tagrisso (osimertinib) resistant mutations following Tagrisso treatment in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The mutation results in a cysteine to serine change in the 797 position of the kinase domain sequence of the EGFR. During pre-clinical studies, BBT-176 exhibited strong anti-tumor efficacy in C797S triple mutations. Additionally, BBT-176 displayed markedly enhanced efficacy when combined with anti-EGFR antibodies.

On IND clearance in South Korea, Bridge Biotherapeutics plans to initiate a dose escalation study as the first part of the phase I/II study in Korea to find the maximum tolerable dose (MTD), the recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D) and to observe safety, tolerability and the anti-tumor efficacy of BBT-176 in a group of patients with advanced NSCLC. After completing the dose escalation study, a dose expansion study will be initiated in both the U.S. and South Korea. During this study, the company will assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy along with the RP2D of the drug candidate.

Under the study protocol, approximately 90 patients are expected to be included in the Phase I/II study of BBT-176. The company will also observe detailed anti-tumor efficacy in the combination therapy of BBT-176 with anti-EGFR antibodies.

"We are greatly encouraged by the IND clearance of BBT-176 in South Korea," and "Bridge will continue to focus on bringing new treatment options for patients in need of a novel NSCLC therapy," said James Lee, CEO of Bridge Biotherapeutics.

BBT-176 was discovered by the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), a Korean government research institute. The global exclusive rights for further development was licensed to Bridge Biotherapeutics in December 2018. Since the US FDA cleared the IND application of BBT-176 in January 2020, Bridge Biotherapeutics has been in continuous discussions with global and local pharmaceuticals and biotech companies regarding potential business alliance opportunities.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about one-fifth of all cancer deaths. It is divided into NSCLC and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and NSCLC accounts for approximately 85% of all lung cancers. Overall, across the 8 major countries including the U.S., 5 EU countries, China and Japan, the total NSCLC population as of 2015 is assumed 2 million and the incidence of NSCLC is expected to increase at an annual growth rate of 3.1% from 2015 to 2025.[i]

[i] Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) - Global Drug Forecast and Market Analysis to 2025, GlobalData

For More Information

About Bridge Biotherapeutics

Bridge Biotherapeutics Inc., based in South Korea, US and China is a clinical stage biotech company founded in 2015. Bridge Biotherapeutics is engaged in the discovery and development of novel therapeutics, focusing on therapeutic areas with high-unmet needs, such as ulcerative colitis, fibrotic diseases, and cancers. BBT-401, the first-in-class Pellino-1 inhibitor for treatment of ulcerative colitis, is currently in Phase II in the US, and BBT-877, an autotaxin inhibitor to treat various fibrosing interstitial lung diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), was licensed to Boehringer-Ingelheim for further development in July 2019 with potential license value more than 1.1 billion euro. BBT-176, a potent targeted cancer therapy for nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is also in development. Bridge Biotherapeutics is a resident company of JLABS @ Shanghai.

SOURCE Bridge Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Coronavirus restrictions will dominate a crucial meeting of federal and state leaders as Australia maps the road out of the pandemic.

National cabinet is meeting this morning to discuss three vital stages that will be rolled out over the next three months involving the assessment of restrictions each four weeks.

Coronavirus live blog: Latest news and updates

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will chair the meeting, but states get the final say on what measures might be eased as the country awaits news on what the coming months will entail.

Community sport, social gatherings and changes to the retail industry are expected to be the first items on the table to have their restrictions adjusted in Fridays meeting.

Scott Morrison has expressed his eagerness to get Australian businesses back on track. Source: Getty Images

Health Minister Greg Hunt said state governments would make decisions about relaxing restrictions based on case numbers and their unique circumstances.

What we hope comes out of national cabinet, and what I expect, is a clear road map out, with clear stages, he said.

Victoria has so far retained the most hardline approach, while NSW has signalled it will also move cautiously, with several active cases in both states.

Queensland is allowing groups of five to visit other houses from Sunday for Mother's Day, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk framing it as a reward for achieving good infection results.

The NT, WA and SA are among the least restrictive jurisdictions, while Tasmania and the ACT are yet to wind rules back significantly.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned the road back to normality would be long, telling Nine there are tough months to come, stressing it was important restrictions were eased slowly.

The country is awaiting an announcement that will determine what restrictions will soon be lifted. Source: Getty Images

There have been 97 deaths from coronavirus in Australia, while more than 6000 of the 6897 people infected have recovered.

An outbreak at a Melbourne abattoir has been linked to 70 cases but no deaths, while a cluster at a Sydney nursing home has claimed 16 lives.

When will international borders open?

Infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon believes unrestricted overseas travel is still a long way off for Australians, telling Yahoo News Australia significant changes might not be made until late 2021.

Story continues

I think international travel is going to be a fair way down the distance, he said in a Facebook Live Q&A.

Prof Collignon, from the The Australian National University Medical School, said limited international travel may be possible by October this year, but unrestricted was unlikely until October 2021.

This virus is everywhere around the world, so basically the problem we've got is if you go overseas and come back to Australia, for quite a while you're going to have to go into quarantine for a couple of weeks, he said.

There is a lot we still dont know before we can safely have people going on cruises and going overseas and coming back and reintroducing the virus.

Prof Collignon suggested the transition back to normal international travel would be a slow one involving many restrictions.

I think international travel other than really critical business reasons or family reasons is not going to be happening in a big way any time soon, he said.

And its going to be with restrictions for those who really do need it for family reasons et cetera.

Is Swedens approach appropriate for Australia?

Prof Collignon advised the herd immunity style approach being taken by Sweden, whereby most of the country has remained open, was not suitable for Australia.

He cited how about 3000 of the Scandinavian countrys 10 million people had died, which was no match for Australia where just 97 people had been killed by the virus.

So theyve got a much higher death rate  its something like 50 times higher the death rate that weve had, he told Yahoo News Australia.

He added that while Australias economy had suffered a major blow due to strict lockdowns, it was those restrictions that had saved lives.

What Australia has done  yes, weve probably put more people out of work than Sweden has  but weve also stopped an awful lot of deaths, he said.

I dont think we have to follow the New Zealand approach either of locking everybody down for five or six weeks but equally, Im not sure the Swedish approach is the right approach either.

With AAP

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.
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Scotland's care home coronavirus outbreak has killed almost 1,000 people in the past three weeks and is showing no signs of slowing down.

In a worrying shift in the country's crisis, the death toll behind nursing home doors has outstripped the number of fatalities in hospitals for the past fortnight. Official data shows 310 people died with COVID-19 in care homes between April 27 and May 3, while a further 642 residents died in the fortnight before.

Elsewhere in the country, however, the death toll appears to be starting to fall and the overall week-by-week count has now fallen for the first time. Cases are also on the downward slope.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today announced that 1,811 infected Scots have died because of the coronavirus. But the true figure is thought to be more than double that, according to projections based on separate data released by National Records of Scotland.

NRS data showed, by May 3, the true number of deaths was 77 per cent higher than the government's official tally. While Ms Sturgeon on that day announced a total of 1,571, backdated data from the NRS shows that 2,795 people had already died.

Applying the same percentage rise to today's death toll suggests 3,205 people have already died, almost half of them uncounted.

Scotland is also thought to be behind England in the phases of its outbreak and Ms Sturgeon has laid into Prime Minister Boris Johnson over plans to start gradually lifting lockdown restrictions from next week.

In her daily briefing this afternoon the Scottish National Party leader said she is told the virus's reproduction rate - the R - is higher in Scotland than it is in England, putting it between 0.7 and 1, while it is said to be between 0.5 and 0.9 UK-wide.

The number of people diagnosed with the coronavirus in Scotland today rose about 13,000, meaning it accounts for around 6.5 per cent of the UK's total

Ms Sturgeon said she would not be bound to every decision made by Mr Johnson and that the UK's four countries may have to leave lockdown at different speeds.

She yesterday confirmed rules in Scotland will stay in their current state for next three weeks at least but people would be allowed out to exercise more than once.

A conversation with Mr Johnson this week had been one of 'helpful recognition', Ms Sturgeon said.

She added: 'The four UK nations may well move at different speeds if our data about the spread of the virus says that that is necessary to suppress it.'

But she added that planning and messaging would continue to be co-ordinated.

HOW DO COVID-19 DEATHS IN SCOTLAND SPREAD OVER AGE GROUPS? Of a total of 2,795 coronavirus-related fatalities analysed in National Records of Scotland's latest report, 52 per cent occurred in men and 48 per cent among women. This is how they broke down by age: 0-14 years old: 0

15-44 years old: 19 deaths (1%)

45-64 years old: 244 deaths (9%)

65-74 years old: 435 deaths (16%)

75-84 years old: 952 deaths (34%)

85+ years old: 1,145 deaths (41%) Advertisement

In her afternoon briefing in Edinburgh today she said: 'The only change that we're considering in the immediate term is the guidance on outdoor exercise, as I mentioned yesterday and I will give you a further update on that over the weekend.

'My main message is about the importance of staying at home. I know it will be tempting to think that this weekend, after so many weeks of lockdown, we can allow ourselves, perhaps one little slip.

'You might even think given recent unhelpful news headlines that things have already eased up, and that there's somehow less at stake.

'I want to emphasise to you as strongly as I possibly can today that that is absolutely not the case. The risk remains too high for us to ease up now.'

Statistics show that Scotland's coronavirus outbreak has slowed down and the number of daily deaths is now in decline.

Figures compiled by the National Records of Scotland show 523 COVID-19 fatalities occurred between April 27 and May 3 - the most recent figures.

It meant the seven-day spell (Week 18) saw the fewest coronavirus deaths since the outbreak began to spiral out of control in Scotland.

Glasgow, the biggest city in Scotland, has borne the brunt of the country's COVID-19 outbreak and accounts for around a quarter of cases and the largest proportion of deaths

HOW IS CORONAVIRUS SPREAD ACROSS BRITISH NATIONS? Confirmed cases of COVID-19: England: 131,932 Scotland: 12,924 Wales: 10,851 Northern Ireland: 3,984 Unrecorded: 44,024 Deaths caused by COVID-19: England: 27,432 Scotland: 1,703 Wales: 1,062 Northern Ireland: 418 Source: coronavirus.data.gov.uk Advertisement

But the care homes crisis has yet to ease, with the number of elderly Scots in homes dying having barely changed in the past three weeks.

The NRS data shows 310 deaths occurred in care homes during Week 18, compared to 339 and 303 in the two previous weeks. And around 42 per cent of care homes had suspected COVID-19 cases as of May 5.

In contrast, the number of COVID-19 fatalities in hospitals has almost halved within a month - dropping from 357 in Week 15 to 194 last week.

Separate data from the Scottish government shows the number of infected patients in hospital has barely changed since the start of April.

Glasgow, the biggest urban area in Scotland, has borne the brunt of the country's coronavirus.

There have been 910 COVID-19 deaths in the Greater Glasgow & Clyde area, compared to 469 in Lothian, the second worst-hit region.

There have been a further 385 in Lanarkshire, the National Records show, and 199 in Tayside and 192 in Ayrshire and Arran. The islands have been best protected, with just seven cases in Shetland, two on Orkney and none in the Western Isles.

Charts show the breakdown of how many people have tested positive for coronavirus in Scotland out of all of the people who have been swabbed for the deadly infection

RIFTS EMERGE IN UK GUIDANCE AS WALES SET TO RELAX RULES BUT STURGEON INSISTS PEOPLE STAY HOME Wales today dropped limits on outdoor exercise and announced libraries can open from Monday - with Boris Johnson expected to follow suit within days. First Minister Mark Drakeford pre-empted the 'exit strategy' from Westminster as he declared that only 'small and modest' easings are possible to avoid coronavirus flaring up again. But there are growing signs of divisions in the UK's united front, with the Welsh government insisting it has not decided schools can reopen in June - something that has been hinted at in England. Mr Johnson is also set to go further by dropping the 'stay at home' slogan that many believe has been too successful in bringing the economy grinding to a halt. Guidance will also be overhauled to try to get more people back to work, with cleaners and tradespeople among those enabled to return with 'social distancing' protections in force. Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon stopped short of announcing any loosening at her briefing in Edinburgh this afternoon, saying the 'only thing' they are looking at is permitting more outdoor exercise. She also took aim at Mr Johnson over ditching the 'stay at home' mantra, saying that was her 'main message' and she would be keeping it 'for the immediate future'. 'You must stay at home. Please stay at home,' she said. Advertisement

Glasgow has also seen almost a quarter of all of the country's 13,000 cases that have been officially diagnosed since March.

Almost 13,000 cases of COVID-19 have now been confirmed across the entirety of Scotland, up from 2,000 at the start of April.

Almost a quarter of confirmed cases have been in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, while only six cases have been diagnosed on the Western Isles.

Lothian (2,241), Lanarkshire (1,576) and Tayside (1,465) have all also recorded at least 1,000 cases of the coronavirus.

But Scotland has been caught up in Downing Street's testing shambles, which has meant the true size of the outbreak anywhere in the UK remains a mystery.

Almost nobody outside of a hospital was able to get tested for the coronavirus in March and most of April, meaning hundreds of thousands or millions of cases are believed to have gone undetected.

However, antigen testing - which looks for current infection - has ramped up in the past few weeks as the outbreak begins to tail off.

For five days in a row the Government has failed to hit its 100,000-tests-per-day target, but 86,583 tests were done yesterday, compared to 14,000 a month earlier.

The number of people being diagnosed has remained relatively stable across Britain because the rise in testing capacity is coinciding with falling numbers of infections, meaning the positive test number is being pushed both up and down.

There are fears that relaxing lockdown measures could lead to a second peak of infections when it pushes up the R rate of spread.

Ms Sturgeon has pushed back against claims that lockdown will be lifted soon, saying the outbreak in Scotland is 'slightly stronger' than it is in England.

The First Minister this week released a 27-page plan for how the loosening might happen north of the border, days before the PM is expected to unveil his 'road map' on Sunday.

She said her preference was for the UK to coordinate action but stressed her 'overarching responsibility' was to do what was right for Scotland.

The politician flatly ruled out easing the draconian curbs this week.

But she has admitted she will consider relaxing exercise restrictions but won't reveal any changes until Sunday.

Unlike NHS England, Scottish officials do not routinely publish data of deaths by the date the actual death happened.

Ms Sturgeon announces Public Health Scotland's daily death registration count at each day's afternoon briefing, which includes all the fatalities the government has been notified about the past 24 hours which involved a positive test.

And National Records Scotland collects backdated statistics about people who died without having tested positive, as well as more detailed records of those who have died in care homes or anywhere other than a hospital.

The latter data is more reliable but is backdated and only released once per week, on a Wednesday.

It puts the total death toll significantly higher (77 per cent) than the government tally.

Nicola Sturgeon unveils 27-page plan for re-opening Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon this week jumped the gun on Westminster and unveiled Scotland's provisional 'exit strategy' from the coronavirus lockdown.

The First Minister released a 27-page plan for how the loosening might happen north of the border, days before the PM is expected to unveil his 'road map' on Sunday.

She said her preference was for the UK to coordinate action but stressed her 'overarching responsibility' was to do what was right for Scotland.

The politician flatly ruled out easing the draconian curbs this week, saying the outbreak might be 'slightly' stronger than in England.

The document sets out a five restrictions that may be first to ease 'when the time is right', including changes to the stay at home message, changes to advice about visiting other households, resuming care and support for those most affected by the restrictions, changes affecting businesses, and options for schools reopening.

It also outlines a four-part 'routemap' of measures which the Scottish Parliament hopes will speed up the time it takes to lift the lockdown.

These fall under the following categories: test, trace, isolate and support, planning for moving safely to the new normal, potential for geographical variation, and next steps.

What restrictions could be eased first?

Changes to advice about staying at home

One of the hardest changes Britons have had to deal with has been to simply stay at home.

As the summer creeps up and the weather turns warmer, people have been desperate to escape the entrapment of the house.

And in Scotland this will be one of the first Covid restrictions to be lifted when the time is right, with the 27-page document looking to increase the opportunity for outdoor activity.

The article echoes scientists' advice that being outside poses less risk of transmission of the deadly virus than congregating indoors.

The First Minister (pictured today) released a 27-page plan for how the loosening might happen north of the border, days before the PM is expected to unveil his 'road map' on Sunday

Police give advice on lockdown to people enjoying the sunshine in Edinburgh this month

Weekly ratios for new cases and new deaths in Scotland are ratios of weekly sums, plotted on a log 10 scale (pictured above) on graphs provided by Health Protection Scotland

It says: 'We are considering if and how we could make changes to allow people to leave their home more often and/or for longer.'

For those who work outdoors there may also be a glimmer of hope as the Scottish Parliament is looking to see if there is evidence to allow the restrictions currently in place on them to be lifted.

It will come as a big boost for many Scotsmen but the move does have a number of caveats.

People would have to remain in their local area and continue to only socialise with those they live with.

Social distancing rules will still be in force regarding other households, with the further advice being to 'maintain good hygiene at all times'.

Changes to advice about visiting other households

Another hard ask for all Britons over the past month and a half has been to stop seeing their friends and family who do not live with them.

But discussions are being had over whether the much-touted 'bubble' method could be brought in when restrictions are relaxed.

This idea will allow small groups of people to convene - the number has not been decided - from different households, but not interact with any other groups.

The plan says: 'It is possible that this option would be introduced first for outdoor meetings, ahead of any change to permit indoor meetings of the bubble.'

One of the things the Scottish Parliament is watching closely is the R rate of transmission between people before it will let them interact again. Pictured: Time taken for increases in R to overwhelm NHS capacity for different numbers of infectious people (assumes capacity of Covid Beds of 4,250 in Scotland

So despite it being a boost for people wanting to relax in the park with their friends in the sun, it means the prospect of chilling in a pub is still a way away.

Another problem with this idea, as the document mentions, is if one member of the group catches or shows symptoms of Covid-19, they will have to self-isolate for a week and the rest of the group have to be locked away for a fortnight.

Those who are at highest risk from the virus - namely the elderly and people with underlying health conditions - will not be party to the relaxing of this restriction.

The Scottish Parliament admits: 'We recognise that this will become increasingly challenging as advice changes for other people.

'We are committed to an honest conversation with our citizens who are shielding and with their families about the support they need, the evidence about the risks they face, and maintaining a quality of life while shielding.'

Resuming care and support for the vulnerable

As hospitals transformed normal wards into Covid-worthy intensive care units, there was a terrifying fear there would not be scope to protect those with other illnesses.

Huge swathes of NHS and community support services ground to a halt as medics focused all their attention on the raging pandemic.

Yet in Scotland top brass are looking at how and when they can bring these resources back to life, 'provided this can be done safely and without unacceptable risk'.

As hospitals started to transform normal wards into Covid-worthy intensive care units, there was a terrifying thought that there would not be scope to protect those with other illnesses (pictured, day-of-the-week ratios for hospital occupancy and ICU occupancy)

The centre of attention is on restarting NHS Scotland elective procedures and screening services, which will come as a relief to many whose operations had to be dashed after coronavirus struck.

There will also be the phased re-introduction of a wider range of social care support such as therapeutic group activities, when the time is right to ease the lockdown.

The document says politicians are looking at how these can be brought back in a fair and ethical manner, adding that certain groups will be the main focus.

Those living with cancer or the elderly and disabled people and their carers - who have seen services diminish or stop during the outbreak - will be priority.

Getting businesses back up and running

Businesses of all sizes have been battered by the coronavirus lockdown, with a staggering 27million workers estimated to have been furloughed by companies across the UK.

The future for these people should remain positive as they are expected to rejoin their firms when the country grinds back into gear.

But for many, the outlook is much bleaker as swathes of workplaces have been forced to close due to the restrictions in place, with employees being laid off in their thousands.

The document says before any decision is taken on changing the lockdown for businesses, how people operate in their workplaces will first be considered to weigh up the impact on public health.

But in a nod to employers, the document notes: 'We will engage and work with business and trades unions to support the reopening of certain workplaces as soon as possible, but only when it is safe to do so.

'This will be on the basis of a solid framework of guidance that supports safe working and is consistent with our Fair Work approach.'

Workers that may be first to be back in business include those in construction, manufacturing and retail because for these industries a work from home system has been much harder.

With more people heading into work, a secondary issue for bosses and politicians is the transport system and how to ensure social distancing remains.

The 27-page plan says that this will be looked at, but does not go into any further detail.

In a blow for some, the document adds it is clear restrictions will still be heaped on some business activity 'for some time', and the work from home model is likely to remain part of the 'new normal'.

Options for allowing pupils to return to school

Having the children running around the house every day has been a blessing for many parents during the lockdown, but for some it has been a nightmare.

For mothers and fathers in Scotland who fall into the latter category, their prayers are yet to be answered.

The document released by Ms Sturgeon notes that when it is safe to do so there will be a phased return to school for students.

It does not give a date, but speaking today she said she should was not sure June would be 'safe' - instead hinting after the Scottish summer holidays in August is more likely.

But it will be less than ideal for many children as they will not be reopened fully for 'the foreseeable future', meaning friends from different year groups may be kept apart.

The document released by Ms Sturgeon notes that when it is safe to do so there will be a phased return to school for students

And in a further blow the article says Parliament is 'not yet certain they can re-open at all in the near future', putting the education of thousands of youngsters in peril.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney has been chairing the newly-established Education Recovery Group to work alongside the government, local authorities, teacher unions and parent representatives.

They are looking at how a phased approach to re-opening schools will look, as well as answering what and how it will work.

But the document specifically says it is not looking at when this will occur, due to this being decided by ministers based on scientific evidence.

There are two main options the Scottish Parliament is considering to get pupils back in the classroom.

The first sees them create a chronological list of priority groups who would return to school in an agreed order. This is a nod to vulnerable pupils and those who are in transition between schools.

The second is coming up with a new way for schools to operate to keep social distancing flowing among youngsters who tend to interact closely.

To help this, many children will have a mix of a classroom education every few days or weeks, topped up by lessons at home supported by online material.

'Routemap':

Test, trace, isolate and support

Testing has been one of the main arguments surrounding the epidemic in the UK, with the government claiming last week well over 100,000 people were being tested for the bug each day.

But a storm brewed as it emerged politicians had been counting tests when they were sent out as well as the ones that were completed.

The Scottish government pledges in the document to ramp up testing capacity in the future.

Testing will team up with contact tracing and continued isolation of people with Covid to stamp out the virus north of the border.

Testing will team up with contact tracing and continued isolation of people with Covid to stamp out the virus north of the border. Pictured: A graphic from the document showing Scotland's approach

Tracing is widely regarded in the UK as the way out of the current predicament, allowing people to see when they have been near someone with coronavirus symptoms so they can self-isolate.

The NHS track-and-trace app is being tested on the Isle of Wight from Tuesday morning onwards.

But the article from Scotland notes testing and tracing do not suppress the virus itself.

It says: 'Test, trace, isolate and support can only work with the support and co-operation of people across Scotland, who may be asked to give samples for tests, share information about their recent contacts so that those at risk of infection can be traced and tested, and to isolate for long enough, potentially several times, to ensure that they have not contracted the virus.'

On the sharing of information there has been a huge row in England concerning people's privacy and the fact the government are looking to compile the data in a centralised system - as opposed to decentralised ones put forward by Apple and Google.

The document adds: 'Test, trace, isolate and support will be coupled with community surveillance to enable effective suppression of outbreaks.'

Planning for moving safely to the 'new normal'

The Scottish Parliament document admits that the changes mentioned above will take careful planning before they can be implemented.

It says that businesses, public services and the third sector need time before they can re-open.

This is so workplaces can be adapted to suit social distancing, supply chains can be re-established after weeks at a halt, and finances can be sorted so changes are safely brought in.

There will be a system designed so the government can watch how the changes to restrictions are going.

Unsurprisingly the document confesses if the changes mean the virus transmission rate increases, then the full lockdown can be reenforced.

Potential for geographical variation

One idea suggested for Britain would be to stage the lifting of lockdown restrictions across different parts of the country.

This would depend on the transmission rate, what with areas such as London and the Midlands being hit harder by the virus than others.

In Scotland they are keeping an open mind to this if the scientific evidence supports it as the best move for the country.

One idea suggested for Britain would be to stage the lifting of lockdown restrictions across different parts of the country. It is also being looked at in Scotland. Pictured: The Prime Minister today

The article says: 'For example, future evidence may indicate that there are certain geographies where a differential approach, or different timings in the same broad approach, would be appropriate.

'Assessment of the right way forward would factor in broader considerations, including the scope for any geographical (or sectoral) variation to impact on the clarity of communication and broader operational considerations, for example in relation to localised testing measures and travel restrictions in the event of a geographically varied approach.'

It adds policymakers would listen to the views of people, businesses and organisations affected by any changes.

Next steps

The next stage of the crisis for the Scots will see them outline the options for change, as shown above, in more detail.

It notes that these will be looked at in consideration of the risk of infection, how they could be communicated best, changes to the law to suit the lifting of some restrictions and how each can be brought in effectively.

The document ends by saying further information on these plans will be made available ahead of the next review date on may 28.
An investigation into the suicides of 22 girls in Manitoba over the past six years is calling attention to the toll of childhood trauma and the lack of intensive treatment options in the province to help young people cope.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An investigation into the suicides of 22 girls in Manitoba over the past six years is calling attention to the toll of childhood trauma and the lack of intensive treatment options in the province to help young people cope.

Its time for the provincial government to take stock of the mental health and addictions services and do something about the gaps, particularly for those who live in rural areas, Manitoba children and youth advocate Daphne Penrose said Thursday, upon the release of her offices latest report.

It looked into the deaths of girls aged 11 to 17, who killed themselves between 2013 to 2018, after they came into contact with the provincial child-welfare system.

The investigation found all of the girls had traumatic childhoods  marked for some by witnessing or experiencing physical or sexual abuse  but only three of them got specific help for such trauma before they died.

The majority of the girls were Indigenous. Most of them (91 per cent) had parents or caregivers who abused drugs or alcohol, and 82 per cent experienced unstable housing.

Most also had previous suicide attempts and had been hospitalized for mental health concerns or "suspicious injuries," according to the report. It stated 27 per cent of the girls who took their own lives had been sexually exploited  but noted the actual number could be higher because caregivers and service providers may not have recognized all the signs.

Seven recommendations are included in the 102-page report, released to coincide with National Child & Youth Mental Health Day.

They focus on urging the provincial government to analyze and expand its youth mental health and addictions treatment to all areas across Manitoba, drawing on the stories of 16 girls who lived in rural areas and had even more difficulty getting needed treatment.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for teens in Manitoba, and has particularly affected girls, but the advocates office says it is also studying suicide and violence among young males.

The report repeats previous recommendations it says the province hasnt acted on, made by the advocates office and the authors of the 2018 Virgo report commissioned by the government: including calling for Manitoba to train all government service providers to learn how to spot childhood trauma.

"Not all service providers understand trauma in children and the impacts of trauma on children, and what that behaviour looks like.

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"And so thats why Im recommending again that training happen for service providers, and not just CFS, but education providers, mental health providers social service providers," Penrose said Thursday.

The province hasnt committed to implementing the recommendations.

In a government statement issued in response to a Free Press inquiry to Manitobas ministers of health, justice, education and families, a spokesperson said the advocates recommendations will be considered by all government departments.

The report also called out "persistent underfunding" of Manitobas youth mental health system, despite the need for intensive treatment, and described the provinces reliance on Child and Family Services workers who arent trained in mental health or addictions, particularly in areas where specialized services dont exist.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Hamilton police seized about $400,000 in cocaine and more than $150,000 in cash from an east end address Thursday.

In the early morning hours of May 7, the vice and drug unit executed a warrant at the residence. A couple who live there were arrested and charged.

Hamilton police declined to specify where the address is located.

Daniel Reeve, 29, and Caroline Cote, 23, are charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking and possession of proceeds of crime over $5,000.
Toby Antony By

Express News Service

KOCHI: The CBI has taken over the probe related to misappropriation of charitable fund sent from the Netherlands to two Christian organisations in the state. The case which was probed by the state Crime Branch (CB) was handed over to the CBI as a violation of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) FCR Act came to light and it was found that the organisations received crores of rupees from abroad over the past four- and-a-half decades.

As per the CBI FIR, Joseph Pallikunnel, leader of Good Samaritan Projects India and Catholic Reformation Literature Society, was arraigned as accused in the case. Both the organisations were also listed as accused. The complainant is Vincent Panikulangara, of Aluva. The case was registered under IPC Sections 406, 420 and Section 37 of the FCR Act.

In the FIR, the CBI stated that the accused, being the board member of the charitable organisation based in Cheriathura in Thiruvananthapura, cheated a Netherlands-based Christian agency, Stichting Woord en Daad (W and D). The funds for charity works were deposited to Foreign Currency Non-Resident Account of a private bank from 1974 to 2009. The fund was allegedly used for personal needs.

Plots of land were purchased in Kottayam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and various parts of Tamil Nadu but were disposed of without the consent of W and D. Another allegation is that `1.07 crore was sent for constructing houses for tsunami victims but the fund was not properly utilised. Similarly, `1.03 crore transferred for starting a school for specially-abled children in 2005 was also not properly utilised.

The case was originally registered in 2012 at Valiyathura police station. The case was later transferred to the CB. Even a petition was given by W and D to the CB regarding the of funds. As per the CB, the NGOs started charity organisations like schools and hospitals but were later closed and some were turned into resorts. Since the case is related to violation of FCR, which also requires probe abroad, the CBI was entrusted to conduct further investigation, a CBI official said. CBI Special Crime Branch re-registered the case. The FIR was filed before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Thiruvananthapuram last week.
Chennai, May 8 : The Madras High Court on Friday ordered closure of liquor shops in Tamil Nadu while permitting online sales till May 17 when the general lockdown comes to an end.

The liquor shops in the state were opened on Thursday after a gap of over 45 days and the total sales was around Rs 170 crore.

However, the conditions laid by the state government and the High Court while deciding to allow opening of the liquor shops were not followed.

For instance, the state government's order to maintain six feet social distance between two persons in a queue was not followed.

As a result, several petitions - including that of Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam -were filed in the court, pointing out the violations.

Reacting to the court order, Kamal Haasan said it is not a victory for himself but a victory to be celebrated by Tamil Nadu. "It is a victory for the voice of Tamil mothers." Liquor retail in Tamil Nadu is a state monopoly run by the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation, popularly known as Tasmac.

There are over 5,300 Tasmac liquor outlets in the state contributing about Rs 30,000 crore of tax revenue to the state exchequer.

The revenue from the liquor sales was bottled up during the lockdown period.

The Tamil Nadu government said the decision to open liquor shops in the state was taken in order to control the movement of people in the border areas with Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as liquor shops have been opened there.

Major opposition parties in the state had strongly criticised the government's decision to open the liquor outlets.
Spanish Civil Guard agents arrest a Moroccan citizen in Barcelona, Spain over a suspected Islamic State terror plot - Shutterstock

Spanish police arrested a Moroccan man in Barcelona with suspected links to Islamic State who they believed was planning a militant attack, police said on Friday.

The man, described as deeply radicalised, was arrested after a joint investigation with security forces in Morocco and the United States, police said.

"The suspect intended to carry out a terrorist act, the details of which are unknown," police said in a statement.

The arrested man's links to Islamic State date back at least four years, police said, though he had not displayed any outward signs of radicalisation until recently.

A group of militant Islamists used a van to hit pedestrians in Barcelona's La Rambla boulevard in August 2017 and carried out a follow-up attack in another Catalan municipality, killing 16 people in total.

The Morrocan man was arrested in an apartment in central Barcelona close to La Rambla, police said.

Officers wearing full-body suits and goggles checked several laptops inside the apartment, a police video showed. The arrested man was later escorted out of the building by masked policemen as armed officers surrounded the area.

After Spain imposed a coronavirus lockdown on March 14, the man's interest in the jihadist movement increased, police said, and he made public pledges of allegiance to Islamic State while declaring his hatred of the West on social media.

Police said he was likely to have been responding to calls from Islamic State for followers in the West to carry out attacks in the countries where they live.

Investigators feared he was planning an attack, perhaps using a knife or with a vehicle, in Barcelona after observing him breaking virus confinement rules to move around the city, possibly searching for a target.

The arrest came as beaches in Barcelona began to re-open after months of lockdown.

Spain's Civil Guard said that the arrest carried out in Barcelona was aided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Morocco's state security forces.

In April, security forces in the southern city of Almeria captured arrested a British rapper who was on the run after fighting for the jihadist movement in Iraq and Syria.
Unprecedented numbers of youth have turned to online mental health support services during the CCP virus pandemic, according to new data from ReachOut, Australias leading online youth mental health service.

The data revealed that visits to ReachOuts services increased by 50 percent compared to the same period in 2019. This equates to 120,000 extra people, 93,000 of which sought support related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

It also showed that young people are experiencing higher levels of distress. Visits to ReachOuts Urgent Help page increased by 14 percent, with a spike during the April school holiday period.

Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry told Sky News on May 7 that every recession is followed by rising risks of suicide. He said that Australias youth are the most vulnerable to mental illness during COVID-19. Due to closed schools and universities, they face uncertainty in the future of their schooling and employment.

Australian young people have the highest prevalence of mental illness than any other age group. Data from the 2014 Mission Australia Youth Survey (pdf) showed that around one in five young people (15-19 years old) was likely to have a serious mental illness.

There is an increase in insecurity in a population which already bear the main burden of mental health, McGorry said.

While some cases are clinical, he said that the really powerful forces are actually economic and social.

Mental health service Beyond Blue also has a free Coronavirus Mental Wellbeing Support Line (1800 512 348) available 24/7, with trained counsellors, as well as an online platform with forums and tailored mental health resources to support the community.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa has obtained a provisional court order barring the Zimbabwean government from disbursing over Z$7 million to an opposition party led by Thokozani Khupe fighting over the control of the MDC once led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai.

In the provisional order, High Court judge Justice Munangati Manongwa said the respondents - Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube and Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda  have 10 days to respond to this ruling.

In the interim order, Justice Manongwa said, The 1st and 2nd respondents be and are hereby interdicted, stopped and barred from disbursing the sum of $7,492.500 due to the applicant in terms of the Political Parties (Finance) Act Chapter 2:11 in the sum of $7,492,500.

The MDC-T recently recalled from parliament four MDC Alliance lawmakers saying the party was following a Supreme Court ruling, which declared Nelson Chamisa an illegitimate leader of the MDC. In turn, Chamisas party also said the chief architects of the recall, Douglas Mwonzora and Morgen Komichi, had expelled themselves from the opposition.

Chamisas party argues that its lawmakers were elected under the banner of the MDC Alliance, a group of opposition parties that contested the 2018 general elections. Chamisas MDC formation also says it wont be part of the Supreme Courts ruling to revert to old structures and hold an extraordinary congress to replace the late Tsvangirai.

In a tweet, the party said, The MDC Alliance does not recognize the attempt to hold an extra-ordinary congress organized by Zanu PF in the name of our party. We condemn Zanu PF's efforts to impose its proxies as our leadership. Our 2019 Congress was validly held and the resolutions made stand.

Zanu PF has dismissed suggestions that it influenced the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling.

The opposition party has also suspended its participation in the House of Assembly and Senate.

The Supreme Court in March this year ruled that Chamisa is not the legitimate leader of the MDC. The High Court last May declared Chamisa an illegitimate leader of the MDC and ordered the party to choose a new president after a month.

The MDC filed an appeal against the order saying Chamisa was the rightful leader of the party following the death of Morgan Tsvangirai.

Chamisas rise to the helm of the party led to serious internal rifts between members of the party, resulting in Khupe leading a faction known as the MDC-T and Chamisa reverting to the old MDC formation. Chamisa brought in several MDC parties back to the main party, forming what they named the MDC Alliance.

An MDC extraordinary congress reaffirmed Chamisas leadership of the party but Khupe fought all the way to the Supreme Court where she wanted current structures of the MDC to be dismantled.

In the 2019 High Court ruling, Judge Edith Mushore declared Chamisas leadership of the MDC unconstitutional and therefore null and void.

The MDC claimed at that time that the ruling was part of a big plot by President Emmerson Mnangagwas governing ruling Zanu PF party to destabilize it.

Chamisa contested the disputed 2018 presidential election won by Mnangagwa. He still maintains that he won the poll though the matter was taken to the Electoral Court. which declared Mnangagwa the winner of the election.
With restaurants, bars, and tap rooms closed for the foreseeable future, it is likely beer products will age beyond the desired consumption date and will need to be destroyed. Because brewers need to understand products cannot simply be dumped down the drain, several Tennessee-based companies including Keg Hounds, Blefa Kegs, and A Head For Profits have put together a checklist and resource guide of how to go about this process in an environmentally responsible manner.

Here are some guidelines:

 Regulations for beer disposal are site and county specific. Always check with local authorities before disposing of beer in the wastewater system.

 Federal guidelines prohibit dumping any liquid with a pH lower than 5.

 Local regulations may require a higher pH. For example, in Knoxville, TN the lowest allowable pH is 5.5.

 According to recent lab results of decanted kegs from Blefa Kegs, who services hundreds of thousands of damaged kegs per year, the average pH of the beers they dispose of (all styles), is 7.3, and the average BOD is 71,300 mg/L.

 Lab results from other craft breweries suggest beer from many craft brewers has a pH of 4.5.

 In some cases, brewers must provide documentation that disposed liquid was treated.

Additionally, compliance contacts for large Tennessee markets are:

 Nashville/Davidson County- Andrew Welch, (615) 862-4590, joseph.welch@nashville.gov

 Knoxville/Knox County- Leslie Glover, (865) 594-8285, leslie.glover@kub.org

 Memphis/Shelby County- Tasha King-Davis, (901) 636-4340, tasha.king@memphistn.gov

 Chattanooga/Hamilton County- Rick Tate, (423) 643-7464, rtate@chattanooga,gov

 Brewers in more rural areas should reach out to the utility company listed on their local sewer bill

Other Resources:

 Brewers wishing to have product destroyed for them, contact Justin Willenbrink at Blefa Kegs, (615) 267-1385, justin.willenbrink@blefa.com.

 Establishments needing taproom lines cleaned, contact Jeff Walton at A Head For Profits, (615) 828-6330, jeff@aheadforprofits.com.

 Brewers needing to track destroyed beer for tax and compliance purposes, or use this slow-down in sales to find out how many kegs they have, contact Mark Carpenter at Keg Hounds, (615) 485-1722, mark@keghounds.com. These services will be provided free of charge for a limited time.
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Anti-infectives consists of the drugs that are responsible for killing or inhibiting the growth of a micro-organism inside the body. Anti-infectives consists of antibacterials, antivirals, antifungals and others. Anti-infectives work by interfering with the biomolecular functioning of the microbes like cell wall formation, protein synthesis, replication and many more. The market for anti-infectives enormously increased in the recent decades by the rise in various pharmaceutical companies and growing number of infections worldwide. Without effective anti-infectives, success of chemotherapy and major surgery would be compromised.

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Anti-infectives market is an ever-going market and the pharmaceutical sector is having more profit margin than any other sector globally. The increase in the number of hospitals, primary care clinics are also contributing towards increase demand of anti-infectives. Nowadays, antimicrobial resistance is one of the major threat to the industry as according to WHO last year, 480,000 people develops multi-drug resistance against tuberculosis drugs each year. Similarly, Staphylococcus aureus also develops methicillin resistance in many parts of the world. This is the biggest concern of the anti-infectives market at this time.

Anti-Infectives Market: Drivers & Restraints

Increase in demand by the rise in the number of patients and surge of microbes around the globe is major driver of the industry. Funding and assistance provided by governmental and non-governmental organizations like WHO are fuelling the market. New research activities in the direction and discovery of novel therapeutics with improved effectivity would be the cutting edge for global players. Growing reimbursement scenario in almost every country is also growing the market. Decrease in the trend of new antibiotics approvals is one of the restraint in the industry. Resistance gained my microorganisms in recent past is one of the main restraint which curbs the present market of anti-infectives to grow. Hence, improving the safety and efficacy of the drugs will keep the market growing. Great competition in the market due to the vast expansion of this sector is posing a restriction for new growth opportunities on the other hand, business strategies, new collaborations in this sector would provide the upper hand for the growth.

Anti-Infectives Market: Segmentation

By Types:

Antibacterial

Antiviral

Antifungal

By Range:

Broad Spectrum

Narrow Spectrum

Request PMR insights on measuring the impact of COVID-19 coronavirus across industries

By Distribution Channels:

Hospital Pharmacies

Retail Pharmacies

Mail Order Pharmacies

By Geography

North America

Europe

Latin America

Asia-Pacific

Middle East and Africa

Since the discovery of anti-infectives from the antibacterial Penicillin, there is a huge market for anti-infectives nowadays. In this highly competitive world, revenue of pharmaceutical companies depends on the brand value and the marketing strategies followed to attract the customers. Broad spectrum antibiotics such as quinolones and cephalosporins are major consumed anti-infectives worldwide generating higher revenue for the industry. The future market of anti-infectives would be driven by the novel therapeutics which will work against the current antibiotic resistant bacteria. In this regard, Pharmaceutical giants including GlaxoSmithKline and Merck are teaming up with other healthcare companies to accelerate the development of drugs for superbug infections that are resistant to existing antibiotic treatments.

A geographic condition regarding the anti-infectives market, it has been segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East & Africa. Accordinng to scientific data from Princeton University, rising trend in consumption of anti-infectives has increased in BRICS nation. The consumption of antibiotics in the last years has greatly enlarged in Asian countries like India and China, some parts of Africa. Australia and New Zealand also showing rising trends in this market. High income countries still consume more antibiotics per capita such as North America followed by Europe. Due to the shifting trends of anti-infective consumption towards developing countries, investments in these countries would reap a good revenue in future.

Major companies involved in the production and novel R&D activities for the development of anti-infectives involve Astra Zeneca plc, Johnson &Johnson, Glaxo SmithKline plc, Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, Wockhardt ltd, Roche, Sanofi, Merck and many others.

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The report covers exhaustive analysis on:

Anti-Infectives Market Segments.

Anti-Infectives Market Dynamics.

Historical Actual Market Size, 2015  2016.

Anti-Infectives Market Size & Forecast 2017 to 2025.

Anti-Infectives Market Current Trends/Issues/Challenges

Competition & Companies involved

Anti-Infectives Market Drivers and Restraints

Regional analysis includes:

North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

Report Highlights:
Over the years, Google Lens has become much better at using their AI to recognise text and images from a smartphone camera and provide contextual information. Today they released a new update that brings three new features; the ability to quickly copy text to a computer, text translation and pronunciation, and the ability to quickly look up concepts.

The first feature in this update is pretty impressive and handy. Using Google Lens, a user can copy text from handwritten notes straight onto a computer. To do this, once a user clicks a photo of their notes, they can select the text they wish to copy and Lens will provide the option to copy it after recognising the text. The copied text can be pasted onto any Chrome browser in which the user is signed into.

The second feature is helpful for all those who are trying to learn a new language during the pandemic lockdown. If the user points Lens at a text in a language other than English, it will automatically translate the text and offer to pronounce any selected text so that the user may learn how to say it. This feature is supported for 100+ languages including Spanish, Chinese, etc.

The third feature in this update is a minor one but helpful nonetheless. If a user finds a word or phrase that they dont understand, clicking a photo of it with Google Lens will bring up quick in-line Google Search results, where the user can get more information on the topic.

All of these features will be available for Android users and iOS user from today, except Listen which will come to iOS later. Google Lens is available on the Play Store for Android and in the iOS Google App on the App Store.

Source
- The ABS-CBN shutdown rocked the Filipino nation, with many people crying foul over what happened to the Philippines top broadcasting company

- Even the United States government has expressed its concern over the controversy

- US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said that the media should be independent and free from pressure from the government

- Ortagus added that an independent media is linked to a strong democratic society

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

The controversial shutdown of ABS-CBN rocked the Filipino nation, with many people crying foul over what happened to the Philippines top broadcasting company.

KAMI learned that even the United States government has expressed its concern over the controversy.

According to US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus, the media should be independent and free from pressure from the government.

She added that an independent media is linked to a strong democratic society.

"We are concerned by the situation regarding ABS-CBN

"An independent media plays a critical role in facilitating the open exchange of information and ideas which is vital to free, prosperous and secure democratic societies.

"This is true for the United States, the Philippines, as well as countries around the world," she said.

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, many celebrities and politicians have spoken out about the ABS-CBN shutdown.

The shutdown occurred after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) ordered ABS-CBN to cease and desist from broadcasting on television and radio, just a day after its 25-year operating franchise expired.

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!

In this new episode, we explain to you the symptoms of COVID-19 that everyone should be aware of amid the pandemic. Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Why We Opened a Christian University in Iraq Amid ISIS' Genocide

For 25 years, Stephen Rasche was a "bare knuckles" international lawyer. But in 2010, he offered his services to the Chaldean Catholic Church of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and has increasingly dedicated his life to the preservation of this ancient community.

Under the leadership of Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda, in 2015 Rasche helped found the Catholic University of Erbil, where he serves as vice chancellor. Also the director of its Institute for Ancient and Threatened Christianity, Rasche lived this title as ISIS ravaged Iraq's Christian homelands in the Nineveh Plains and many believers fled to Erbil.

After testifying on their behalf before the United Nations and the US Congress, Rasche allows them to represent themselves in his recent book, The Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East. The book has won a diverse range of endorsements, from leaders such as Matthew Hassan Kukah, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Nigeria; Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in the world; and Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute.

The US State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom reports that less than 250,000 Christians are living in Iraq, most in Kurdistan or on the Nineveh Plains. Two-thirds belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church.

CT interviewed Rasche about the logic of establishing a university during a genocide, how its Catholic identity functions in a Muslim society, and his enduring optimism for Christianity in Iraq.

What led you personally to invest your life in this endeavor?

In 2010, Bishop Warda had just been made archbishop, and I went to pay him a visit of respect, asking if there was anything I could do to help. "Yes, in fact," he said. "You Americans have made a big mess here, and you could stay and help me. I have 3,000 displaced families here from the south, they need help, and no one is helping us with them. We don't have jobs for them, and there's a whole range of things I would like to do."

I assisted on and off on a pro-bono basis for the next four years, but by 2014 the situation looked really desperate. ISIS was maybe 30 miles away from Erbil. But in a visit just after Christmas, I sat down with the bishop and the priests who told me, "We are going to stay. Will you be with us here, and help us?"

Honestly, I was skeptical. But after some deep thinking, I tried to determine the right thing to do and if there was a calling in this for me.

Tell us more about that calling.

Being an international transactions lawyer involved a fair amount of bare knuckles litigation. And not a lot of it, quite frankly, was fulfilling in the sense of believing that you were providing a meaningful service to the world or to your fellow brothers and sisters.

An open-heart surgery slowed me down for a couple of months, which allowed me to really ponder what I'd been doing and where I was going, particularly with my faith. How much did I really have? My discernment centered around the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. Do I really believe this? And if I really do, then what can I do to show it?

I can honestly say that those years on the ground in Iraq, especially 2015--2018 when everything was really difficult, eclipse all the other working years in my life in terms of a sense of worth, purpose, and well-being.

What does it mean practically to have a Catholic university in a Muslim-majority nation?

At a fundamental level, it's about presence. It's to say, "Look, we are a Catholic university, and in the middle of all of this, we are here." Our view is very much long term. We see the importance in planting the seed. At the end of the day, the primary purpose of the university is to serve as an anchor institution for the remaining Christian population, so that they can demonstrate their value to the entire community.

But also, in the US and around the world, there is a discussion about the importance of religious freedom. Well, our Catholic university in Iraq was founded during the genocide. This gives us a unique moral standing and frame of reference that's not academic. It's not theoretical. It's real. We can speak out and be real leaders on this.

Is there any role desired, or possible, in terms of witness and gospel?

Over the last 1,400 years in Iraq and most of the Middle East, proselytizing has been forbidden. What the Christians have done is practice what they call evangelization by example--opening hospitals, founding universities--so that the way you live your Christian life demonstrates your service towards others, regardless of who they are.

There was an unwritten understanding that the Christians would not overtly proselytize and share the gospel, but be indirect and not offend sharia law. But after ISIS and the lack of any real response from the Muslim world, Archbishop Warda says that this agreement is now finished. That as we go forward, we will no longer be shy. We are going to proclaim the gospel, proclaim the teachings of Christ, and whoever comes to us will come.

Interesting.

He basically said, "Look, what else can happen to us? They've tried to kill us, destroy us, wipe us out with genocide. And if it means that we're approaching our end, we're not going to go quietly--not anymore."

Christians in Iraq are at a historical inflection point. Their presence here can be extinguished quickly in many ways--primarily if there were to be, God forbid, war or proxy war between the US and Iran. It would take place right where the Christians are living. It would make things completely untenable for them.

But I fully expect that if they make it through this current period, Christians will find ways to assert themselves in ways that they haven't before. In the past, they tried to walk quietly, keep their heads down, and not cause any trouble. I think those days are over.

Your book features the testimony of local Christians about their situation in Iraq and the Middle East. Many might blame Western policies. Others might pinpoint Islam. But how do Christians identify their own failures? How do they evaluate their own contribution to their dwindling numbers?

In many respects, they blame a continuing division and discord that has left them far more vulnerable than if they were unified and supportive of each other. In some cases, it has also hindered the well-intended support coming from the West. It occurs between different groups within the apostolic churches; between the apostolic churches and the evangelical churches; and even within the evangelical community, where competing groups want to assist the apostolic Christians in different ways.

This division and discord are a failing that goes against the core teachings of Christ. While certainly not unique to the East, it is a failing which has had particularly tragic consequences for Middle Eastern Christians in the face of their many pressures over the last decades.

And these pressures have forced the Christians remaining in Iraq to come to terms with the depth of their faith and what it really means to them. It's one thing when it's the drip-drip-drip of 1,400 years of persecution. It's another thing when you have a full-blown genocide that comes to wipe you out and take everything away. It has happened every 70 years or so, but this is the first time in their living memory, and it really shook them.

There are still Christians in Egypt. There are Christians in Lebanon. But when you look at Iraq, it's hard to find hope given the current geopolitical and religious realities. Yet in the middle of disaster, nobody builds a university.

That's right.

So what hope do you have? Projecting into the future, expecting God to strengthen and grow his church in Iraq, what will it look like?

That Christians present such an example of service that the people of Iraq will not be able to deny not only their worth as people but also their worth in how they live their lives.

If they understand that, then that's all we get to ask for--anywhere. There may not be many Christians in Iraq. But as an old priest said once to me, "Well, remember Christ only had 12, and everyone wanted to kill them, too."
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Linkedin Made Anthony Iswara (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 11:00 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6ac3e9 1 National #zoo,#AnimalWelfare,zoo,animals,#animal,COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,#COVID19,animal-welfare Free

In a worst-case scenario, it may be necessary to kill zoo animals to feed other animals to resolve a hunger crisis at zoos stemming from a lack of revenue from visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has doomed thousands of animals in Indonesia, zoos and veterinarians have said.

Indonesian Zoo Association (PKBSI) head Rahmat Shah said earlier this week that zoos under his association had yet to slaughter any animals to feed its carnivores as of Tuesday. But he said the zoos would consider doing so in the next few months as a last resort if they were unable to survive the financial drought caused by COVID-19 and fail to receive help, noting that they would only sacrifice old and non-endangered animals.

He urged the government to pay more attention to zoos amid such difficulties, with the association receiving no clear response from authorities despite having sent official letters to them two weeks ago.

We do not know when the coronavirus [outbreak] will end, whether it will be in a week or three months. But if this does not end in three months, we will be in big trouble, he said. It is already an SOS [situation].

The association had raised Rp 500 million (US$33,028) as of Tuesday out of a targeted Rp 2 billion to help feed zoo animals. Several organizations have also stepped in to send vegetables and grass while some zoos have utilized their own feedlots and grown their own plants, Rahmat said.

Such efforts aim to prevent thousands of animals in Indonesia from starving as zoos have seen a steep revenue decline since the start of the outbreak. A PKBS survey conducted this month shows that 92 percent of the associations members in Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok and Kalimatan  55 zoos  had enough food to feed their animals until mid-May.

Read also: Indonesian zoos launch Food for Animals fundraiser as pandemic devours revenue

Indonesia has the sixth-highest number of threatened species globally with 1,654 species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. The zoos within the association house nearly 70,000 animals from 4,912 species endemic to Indonesia and those from other parts of the world.

This is very alarming [...] We dont want to see animals starve, Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) cofounder Femke den Haas said on Tuesday.

This is the time for us to fix everything, she added, urging the government to be more proactive in improving, if not introducing, zoo contingency plans to prevent slaughters from even being an option.

Veterinarians Association of Indonesian Wildlife, Aquatic, and Exotic Animals (Asliqewan) board member Ridzki MF Binol said such slaughter would fall under population management standards and could be carried out as long as it adhered to animal welfare principles.

To qualify for slaughter, the animal has to be an overpopulated species, healthy and at its unproductive age. He advised trapping and slaughtering them in a way that causes the least stress and discouraged euthanizing animals through chemical injections, which could pose health risks to the carnivores that eat them.

But sacrificing herbivores to feed the carnivores [] should be a last resort. We recommend the Environment and Forestry Ministry to have and immediately implement a mitigation plan during this emergency COVID-19 pandemic situation, Ridzki said.

Global institutions have yet to form a consensus on similar cases but they previously provided guidelines on euthanasia. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), for instance, wrote in a 2005 paper that euthanasia can be another method of population control for some populations, but not all and should be considered only when all other possibilities have been reviewed.

Read also: COVID-19 wont stop Indonesia from conserving endangered wildlife treasures

In Indonesia, there are no rules regulating the slaughter of zoo animals to feed other animals during crises, the Environment and Forestry Ministrys Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation Directorate General, Wiratno, said on Tuesday.

Even if they find any legal basis [to justify the slaughter], [zoos] should get permission from me first, he said.

But he said zoos should avoid such measures and urged them to communicate with the ministry for help before deciding whether to sacrifice animals. He said the ministry had a bailout fund from the state budget that was large enough to buy food and medication for zoo animals.

The ministry is waiting for responses to its letters sent out to several other ministries regarding tax relaxations for zoos. It is also waiting for a response to its letter to the Transportation Ministry on easing the transportation of animal food between cities amid large-scale social restrictions.

So there is no need to worry, Wiratno said.

Outside Indonesia, the Berlin Zoo in Berlin, Germany, plans to feed some of its animals to other animals in a worst-case scenario, as reported by German newspaper Die Welt and newswire DPA.

Editors note: This article has been updated to correct the name of Asliqewan in the 10th paragraph and the statement made by Ridzki MF Binol in the 12th paragraph.
Over 3.94 million people worldwide have tested positive for COVID-19 and 271,029 people have passed away.

Over 3.94 million people worldwide have tested positive for COVID-19 and 271,029 people have passed away. About 1.35 million people in the world have already recovered from the disease.

Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO animal disease expert reportedly said today that SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, belongs to a group of viruses that is found in bats. The virus may have jumped to humans from an animal. However, we still dont know which animal humans got it from. Also, not all of the first patients in Wuhan had contact with the wet market.

Australia to ease restrictions from Monday and open in three phases till July

In the wake of declining cases, Australian PM Scott Morrison announced on Friday that the country is set to ease restrictions slowly to bring the social life and economy back to normal.

Some states including Queensland are going to lift some restrictions starting Monday. However, areas with cluster cases would still take some time to start getting out of the lockdown.

Cafes and takeaway restaurants will open first, followed by gyms and cinema halls in phase 2 and offices in phase 3.

Australia has a total of 15,774 cases and 614 people have succumbed to the disease in the country so far.

Russia saw a rise of 10,000 cases again, Germany saw the biggest rise in a week

On Friday, Russia saw 10,699 new cases and 98 new deaths. With 10,000 plus cases six days in a row, the total number of cases in the country is now above 187,000. As of May 8, 1,723 people have died of the disease in Russia.

Germany saw the highest rise in cases on Friday when 1,268 people tested positive for the disease in one day bringing the total number of cases in the country to 169,430. The country has been seeing more and more new cases since May 4.

Spain opens beaches, Indonesia considering easing of restrictions, Shanghai Disneyland to open May 11

On Friday, beaches in Barcelona opened between 6-10 am to allow people to walk/jog and swim. The government of Spain is reportedly to make a decision now on opening restaurants, bars and religious places in some areas. The worst-hit areas - Madrid and Catalonia - will likely still have to stay under lockdown for a while longer.

Indonesia is now considering easing of restrictions in the country starting June to restart its economy and completely come out of the lockdown by July/August. The social distancing measures would reportedly be lifted in a five-step strategy.

Shanghai is set to open its Disneyland on May 11 and as per media reports, the tickets for the day got sold out within minutes. Disney had closed the Shanghai park in late January after the number of cases rose in China. That people are ready to spend money after four months of lockdown is being considered a positive sign for the economy.

Japan approved remdesivir

After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave emergency use approval to the Gilead drug remdesivir, Japan also gave exceptional approval to the drug for the treatment of severe cases of COVID-19 in the country on Thursday.

The approval has been granted on the basis of the phase 3 trials conducted by the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences and studies done by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in the US.

Apart from Japan, no other country has approved remdesivir so far. It is still being considered an investigational drug by the FDA.

For more information, read our article on All you wanted to know about remdesivir.

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.
by Sumon Corraya

Contagion cases are rising in the country. Doctors and nurses have left hospitals to avoid getting sick. Tithy Margaret Costas faith has helped her heal the sick. People are struggling to keep social distancing. Garment factories are reopening.

Dhaka (AsiaNews)  Tithy Margaret Costa, a Catholic nurse at the Kurmitola General Hospital in Dhaka, is at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus. Hers is a risky task.

The public hospital in the capital can accommodate up to 500 COVID-19 patients. Some of the most seriously ill patients die every day, while the flow of new patients is constant. Six of Costas fellow nurses, a doctor and a cleaner have also been infected.

Bangladesh has reported so far 11,719 cases with 186 deaths. More than 1,400 have recovered, including 30 Christians. However, the figures do not reflect the reality, given that the health authorities have done little testing.

Costa sees her job as a mission, although it is hard for her to see people die every day from the coronavirus.

"Many, including doctors and nurses, have left the hospital to avoid getting sick; I will never do that. This is the time to show my talent and courage by helping defenceless people.

The 28-year-old nurse from Dhaka puts her health on the line despite having a child. Her husband never tried to dissuade her from working with coronavirus patients. Every time he comes home, he helps her disinfect herself to limit the danger of contagion in the family.

COVID-19 patients expect love, patience and compassion from us, Costa said. Faith helps me heal them in the best possible way. One patient, an older Muslim man, once he was healed, called on Allah to bless her.

Still, Costa is worried about the future. The government imposed measures of social confinement and economic lockdown until 16 May, but the population is struggling to keep social distancing.

High population density and widespread poverty favour the spread of the disease. Contagion cases are on the rise.

Meanwhile, garment factories reopened last Monday. The garment industry represents 80 per cent of Bangladeshs export earnings, employing a large part of the countrys workforce.
In yet another story of essential workers being treated poorly, CNN reports that Miami-Dade County bus driver Miakeya Rolle was spat on when she told a passenger she should be wearing a mask.

According to the report, Rolle told a homeless woman she should be using a protective mask, and the woman responded by spitting on her and fleeing the bus. The incident reportedly took place on April 19.

It falls in line with a shooting at a McDonalds and the shooting death of a Family Dollar Store security guard after coronavirus-safety related disputes.

Rolle told CNN she cleaned herself with Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer, and, when home, undressed outside and threw her uniform in the garbage.

But, she said, she hasnt been able to get a good nights rest since and hasnt returned to work.

Thats how I feed my family. But as of right now, I cant do it, she told CNN. Ive never had anything like that happen to me. Im about to lose my mind.

According to the report, Rolles story highlights new stresses and challenges the nations mass transit drivers face during the pandemic.

I wake up every morning and if I dont have a report of a fatality its like a good morning, John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, told CNN Business. Thats how crazy this is.
A woman walks past a dance club at Itaewon in Seoul, Wednesday. A person infected with COVID-19 visited clubs and bars in the area over the weekend, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Yonhap



Thirteen more cases of the novel coronavirus were confirmed Friday, associated with a patient who visited clubs and bars in Seoul's popular multicultural neighborhood of Itaewon over the weekend.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said that 14 of the patient's contacts, including three foreign nationals and one Army officer, have so far tested positive for COVID-19.

The 29-year-old patient, whom health authorities consider a case of community transmission, visited five clubs and bars in Itaewon from Friday night to the early hours of Saturday last week.

Twelve of the 13 new cases were those who had visited the Itaewon clubs, with the number feared to rise, considering that at least 1,510 people were estimated to have visited the five nightlife establishments, including King Club, Trunk Club and Club Queen.

"It is highly likely that there are more cases down the road," Vice Health Minister Kim Ganglip said during a briefing.

In a separate press briefing, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said 11 of the 13 patients were Seoul residents. The other two were based in nearby Gyeonggi Province, he said.

Park said the latest virus screening results showed that 97 people have tested negative, while tests for six others are under way.

City officials said they plan to track down visitors at the clubs through CCTV footage and credit card transactions, citing possible errors in the entry logs.

The development has put the authorities, as well as the public, back on high alert for a possibly bigger outbreak amid lax social distancing measures introduced earlier this week.

The government convened an emergency meeting with mayors and governors, where they are expected to review administrative orders for clubs and other establishments.

"May 2 was when the social distancing campaign was in effect and an administrative order on quarantine measures was valid for nightlife establishments in operation," said Kim. "We will see if additional measures, such as administrative orders, are necessary."

The KCDC urged visitors to those clubs to self-isolate to limit the possible spread of the virus and to report to the authorities if they show COVID-19 symptoms.

It also asked people to stay at home if they were at King Club from midnight to 3:30 a.m., Trunk Club from 1-1:40 a.m. and Club Queen from 3:30-3:50 a.m.

The patient went to Itaewon at about 11 p.m. Friday with a friend, who later tested positive, and spent time at five clubs and bars till about 3:50 a.m. the following day.

He tested positive and was admitted to a hospital in Suwon, south of Seoul, on Wednesday morning.

The 13 new cases also include a 31-year-old co-worker of the patient who was confirmed earlier on Friday to have the virus. The two work in the same IT company based in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. The man, a Yongin resident, has been admitted to a hospital in Anseong in the same province.

The city of Yongin said it identified 58 contacts of the man in its jurisdiction, including 44 co-workers. The man's company has been shut down to stem the spread of the virus. (Yonhap)
Hoshiarpur: An Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircraft crashed near Rurki Kalan village in Punjab's Nawanshehar district area of Hoshiarpur on May 8, 2020. Image Source: IANS News

Hoshiarpur: An Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircraft crashed near Rurki Kalan village in Punjab's Nawanshehar district area of Hoshiarpur on May 8, 2020. Image Source: IANS News

Hoshiarpur: An Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircraft crashed near Rurki Kalan village in Punjab's Nawanshehar district area of Hoshiarpur on May 8, 2020. Image Source: IANS News

Hoshiarpur: An Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircraft crashed near Rurki Kalan village in Punjab's Nawanshehar district area of Hoshiarpur on May 8, 2020. Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 8 : An Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircraft crashed near the Rurki Kalan village in Punjab's Nawanshahr district on Friday.

"On May 8, at 10:45 a.m., one Mig-29 aircraft airborne on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar met with an accident," the IAF said in a statement.

The aircraft had developed a technical snag and the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft. The pilot has been rescued by a helicopter.

"A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident," the the statement said.

The incident was not an abrasion.

On Thursday, an IAF chopper had to make a force landing in a field, 10 nautical miles away from Sikkim's Mukutang after it encountered technical issues. The Mi-17 helicopter of the Air Force was on a routine air maintenance sortie from Chaten to Mukutang in Sikkim.

"The helicopter got airborne at 6:45 a.m. and enroute, the helicopter force landed 10 NM short of the designated helipad due to bad weather," a senior IAF officer had said.

"Four aircrew of the IAF and two personnel of the Indian Army are reported to be safe. One person has sustained injury," the IAF had said in a statement.

On April 30, an IAF aircraft experienced a tyre deflation just before take-off at Delhi's Palam airbase. The Dornier aircraft was planned to undertake a routine flight from the Palam Air Base.

"During the take-off roll, the aircraft experienced a tyre deflation. The captain of the aircraft took prompt and correct actions of aborting the take off," the IAF had said.

Earlier on April 17, an IAF apache helicopter made an emergency landing on a field in Punjab's Hoshiarpur. The helicopter took off from the Pathankot base but due to some technical glitch, it landed on the fields in Budhwar village.

The force said the captain of the aircraft took correct and prompt actions to recover the helicopter.

In the same week, an IAF helicopter made an emergency landing on an expressway in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat while it was on its way to supply Covid-19 test samples from Leh to Chandigarh.

The IAF Cheetah chopper made an emergency landing on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway in Baghpat district. .

The IAF aircraft have been pressed into service in the fight against the spread of novel coronavirus across India.
A new initiative, Art in Arabic (Fann Bel Arabi), has been launched on Facebook by an Egyptian couple residing in Canada, Yafa Goawily and Kaiser Moussa

Videos of 15-20 minutes in Arabic are posted on the Facebook page, featuring an Egyptian artist telling the story of their career and the field he or she works in.



Based on the brief released on the page, Art in Arabic encourages communication through art and artistic activities, community development and cultural encounters. The initiative aims to bring together Arab and Canadian people through the arts.



Numerous Egyptian artists have been already presented by the Art in Arabic project, namely: theatre maker Hassan El Gereitly; composer and conductor Hisham Gabr; writer, playwright and shadow puppet theater specialist Naguib Goawily; and founder of El-Tanboura folk troupe El-Rayes Zakaria.



"We have just kicked off hoping that the initiative can develop to a bigger project," Goawily explains to Ahram Online, adding that Art in Arabic is executed in cooperation with her husband and work partner, filmmaker Kaiser Moussa.



Born and raised in Egypt, Goawily has been involved in the local artistic scene since her childhood, when as a young girl she got involved in Al Warsha, one of the first independent Egyptian theatre troupes, founded by Hassan El Gereitly in the 1980s.



In fact, in her choice of artists, Goawily started by reaching out to those who were linked to Al Warsha over the years. She will also feature other artists from a large network of creative cooperation she has developed.



Together with her husband, Goawily left Egypt over ten years ago, first heading to the UAE and then settling in Canada over a year ago. Having substantial experience in working in arts with children, she founded Yafa Arts & Crafts Facebook page which is a platform addressing children and inviting them to numerous creative activities.



"The coronavirus and general lockdown many activities have been suspended. This has redirected my thoughts a bit. Together with Kaizer, we thought of using our time to create videos that would shed light on Egyptian and other Arab artists and their stories," she reveals to Ahram Online.



Broadcasting from her home in Canada, the videos have an international reach, at this stage targeting mainly Arab-speaking viewers. "We consider putting English translation or English content, but maybe a bit later."



The initiative is still developing, with many ideas yet to be realised by Goawily and Moussa.



"I am very happy that we have already received good feedback and that artists began coming together. In such difficult times, it is difficult to keep connected. I hope that together we can create something valuable and bring interesting stories to our viewers," she explains, adding that while she currently operates on Facebook, she is considering expanding the project to other internet-based platforms.



Find the videos on the Art in Arabic Facebook page.

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

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New Delhi, May 8 : The Finance Ministry on Friday announced relief to those who have been facing difficulty with the status of their residency in India under the provisions of the Income Tax Act, due to lockdown and suspension of international flights.

Owing to outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19), several NRIs and foreign visitors have been forced to prolong their stay in India. This has changed the status of their residency having implications on their taxability in India.

The Finance Ministry has now decided not to include extended stay of foreign visitors and NRIs in India due to lockdown in determining their residential status.

Considering various representations received from people who had to prolong their stay in India due to lockdown and suspension of international flights, expressing concerns that they will be required to file tax returns as Indian residents, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday allowed discounting of prolonged stay period in India for the purpose of determining residency status, a government statement said.

The Finance Ministry further stated that as the lockdown continues during the financial year 2020-21 and it is not yet clear as to when international flight operations would resume, a circular excluding the period of stay of these individuals up to the date of normalisation of international flight operations, for determination of the residential status for the financial year 2020-21 shall be issued after the flights are resumed.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) issued a necessary circular to this effect. The circular makes it clear that any period of stay in India post March 22 to March 31 will not be included for calculation of number of days required to determine residency status for tax purpose. Also, visitors who had to be quarantined for a period even before March 22 will also get relief.

Even if an individual has departed on an evacuation flight on or before March 31, 2020, his period of stay in India from March 22 to his date of departure shall not be taken into account.

It may be noted that there are number of individuals who had come on a visit to India during the previous year 2019-20 for a particular duration and intended to leave India before the end of the previous financial year for maintaining their status as non-resident or not ordinary resident in India.

The status of an individual whether he is resident in India or a non-resident or not ordinarily resident, is dependent, inter-alia, on the period for which the person is in India during a year.
(TNS)  The Iowa Supreme Court approved a pilot program in the 4th Judicial District  Audubon, Cass, Fremont, Harrison, Mills, Montgomery, Pottawattamie, Page and Shelby counties  to develop procedures for the use of electronic search warrants.Electronic search warrants will reduce the time required to obtain warrants, reduce travel time by law enforcement and make more effective use of judges time, according to the order. Paper warrants require law enforcement to fill out application forms and then leave the scene of the potential search and drive to find a judge, either at a courthouse during business hours or their home after hours. If the judge grants the warrant, then the officer has to drive back to the scene to execute it.The electronic warrants can be submitted to a judge from a squad car computer, which is more efficient for law enforcement and the judges.The pilot program will be evaluated by the court annually and will continue until further notice.Fourth Judicial District Chief Judge Jeff Larson, who was on the advisory committee to develop recommendations for the new process, talked about the project, which will start in the next few weeks.Page County Chief Deputy Charles McCalla, 6th Judicial Associate District Judge Nicholas Scott, Linn County Sheriff Capt. Greg McGivern and Marion police Lt. Scott Elam also provided their thoughts about electronic search warrants.Q: Iowa courts started going paperless in 2010, so why did it take so long to get a pilot program for electronic search warrants?A: Larson: It had been discussed at various levels since (the electronic document management system) started. We should take advantage of the electronic process because it will save us money. Most law enforcement agencies are now used to filing electronic citations from their patrol cars and offices. There may have been some pushback a few years ago because some counties or offices didnt have computer scanners and needed technology. Now, the rural offices have that technology.Q: As a task force member working on this program, what were the hurdles?A: Larson: It was just working through the procedural issues to make sure there would be a safeguard throughout the process. When a search warrant is needed, law enforcement has to fill out the search warrant package, including the application with all the pertinent information, and submit it to a magistrate judge, associate or district judge in their judicial district. Then the officer or deputy can just call the judge to alert him/her to the warrant and the judge can ask for any additional information needed. The judge then administers the oath of office over the phone and signs off or denies the warrant. Law enforcement doesnt have to leave the crime scene and can print off the warrant from their squad car computer.The process of going to electronic warrants started in 2017, when the lawmakers amended the law to allow those to be submitted electronically, and then in 2018, the state court administrators office set up an advisory committee to develop recommendations.Q: What has been the process to get a search warrant?A: Larson: Law enforcement would have to leave the scene, fill out paperwork and then, many times, travel miles to go to the courthouse to have the judge sign it or if its after hours, go to a judges home. The officer may not be in the same county as the courthouse where the judge works or where the judge lives. (It) can take a lot of time. The process is way overdue.Q: Page County Sheriffs Chief Deputy Charles McCalla, what do you see as the biggest advantage for filing them electronically?A: McCalla: The smaller counties have limited manpower, and some of the judges, like in Mills County, may be 60 to 70 miles away if a search warrant is needed after hours. Just traveling across the county can take time, depending where you are. At a minimum, we probably have to drive 30 minutes and up to an hour to get to a judge. This will save us time, money for travel and provide safety because we can stay at the scene to ensure the evidence hasnt been tampered with.Q: Is there a recent incident where an electronic search warrant may have helped?A: McCalla: A few weeks ago, there was a theft report for a stolen chain saw and deputies went to the home and saw guns all over the house and they knew the guy who lived there had been convicted. They didnt want to tip him off, so they just left the scene and went to get a search warrant. Luckily, the evidence was still there when they came back. They found about 90 guns.Q: How do you feel about being the guinea pigs for the process?A: McCalla: Happy to be. As law enforcement, were natural fixers. We find solutions. And this is an idea time to use the process during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep everyone safe. We wont have to have any face-to-face contact with the judges.Q: Is Linn County excited about the program, once its tested and used across the state?A: Scott: I think many of us in the criminal justice system are eagerly awaiting the results of the pilot. They have the potential to make the system more efficient. It is in the interest of the police and the suspect, who is often detained pending a warrant, to get the search warrant application reviewed by a judge as soon as possible. A potential benefit is that officers could also use those more often, which protects citizens from unlawful search and seizures if a judge first reviews the evidence.A: McGivern: I believe the implementation will be a much faster and efficient process for deputies. Like any new process, there may need to be some revisions that will have to be worked out, but I look forward to it.A: Elam: Weve done it this way for a long time, and it can be a bit of a haul for us, depending whos on call (among the judges)  after hours. Its nice to see theres a pilot. The concern would be if something goes wrong in the process. If the Internet is down or something else. Now, we have to go from Marion to the Linn County Courthouse. Then we go to the county attorneys office to get a prosecutor to review the warrant and then find a judge (in courthouse during business hours). That takes some time. If you can type out the application from your car right at the scene, it would help with details on the warrant  describing the structure or property needing be searched. I just hope they work out all the bugs first.
Burma Skirmish Breaks Out Between Myanmar Military and Karen Rebels Over COVID-19 Checkpoints

Karen National Liberation Army members providing security near Karen National Union headquarters in 2019. / The Irrawaddy

Yangon  The Karen National Union (KNU) has reported an exchange of gunfire with the Tatmadaw (Myanmars military) in Papun Township of Hpapun District in Karen State on Wednesday.

According to the KNUs 5th Brigade spokesman Major Saw Kler Doh, the skirmish happened after the military attempted to remove two KNU COVID-19 inspection posts.

They [the Tatmadaw] set fire to a hut used to conduct COVID-19 temperature screening and demolished the other. This resulted in a standoff with our 102nd Battalion, which was followed by shooting, he told The Irrawaddy.

The skirmish took place between the Light Infantry Battalions 405 and 440, based in Dawei, Tanintharyi Region, and the 5th Brigade of Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). There were no reported injuries.

Military tensions remain high in the area and the KNU temporarily moved its two COVID-19 inspection posts.

Tatmadaw spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun confirmed the fighting but said it did not take place at the KNU inspection posts.

Skirmishes took place quite far from the inspection posts. I learned that it took place to the northeast of Wah Tho Kho village [in Papun Township]. Our troops on patrol engaged with the KNUs 5th Brigade. The skirmish only lasted about five minutes. They opened fire on us and then retreated, he said.

There was a similar recent incident in Kha Yaing Tee, an area near Wah Tho Kho in Hpapun District, according to Brig-Gen Zaw Min Tun. The case will be addressed through negotiations at the Union- and state-level joint ceasefire monitoring committees (JMCs), he said.

Myanmar Institute for Peace and Securitys executive director, Dr. Min Zaw Oo, said the skirmish was due to the lack of clearly demarcated boundaries between the two sides.

Disputes over territory arose as [COVID-19 inspection gates were set up] without prior consultation between the two sides. The case in Thaton was also a dispute over territory, he said, about April 30 when the Tatmadaw asked the KNUs 1st Brigade to move its inspection post in Thaton District, Mon State.

Territorial skirmishes, however, do not have a serious impact on the peace process, said Dr. Min Zaw Oo.

According to ethnic affairs analyst U Maung Maung Soe, the fighting indicates that the governments coordinating committee to work with ethnic armed organizations to contain the spread of COVID-19 in territories controlled by the groups has not been effective and there is no cooperation on the ground.

It is difficult to say if they are only cooperating at the higher levels and not on the ground, he said.

Myanmars military and the KNUs 5th Brigade had also engaged in sporadic fighting over the Tatmadaws attempt to construct a road in Papun, he said. The issues cannot be resolved until the JMC meets, he added.

The JMC has not been able to meet since the end of 2018. If the peace process is to be implemented according to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement [NCA], only when the JMC is activated under the NCA will territorial demarcation and a ceasefire be achieved, he said.

Only territorial agreements will stop clashes, he said.

The KNU, as an NCA signatory, is working with the government in fighting COVID-19 as part of the governments coordinating committee formed in late April to control coronavirus in territories controlled by groups.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko

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Telangana witnessed a reverse migration of labourers from Bihar to Hyderabad on Friday, as thousands of migrant workers belonging to various states who are stranded in Telangana have been mounting pressure on the state government to send them back to their native places.

A special Shramik Express brought a group of 225 labourers from Khagaria district in Bihar to Hyderabad on Friday afternoon. These workers are expected to return to work in rice mills across the state.

State civil supplies minister Gangula Kamalakar, Civil Supplies Corporation chairman M Srinivas Reddy, Rytu Bandhu chairman P Rajeshwar Reddy and state nodal officer Sandeep Kumar Sultania received them at Lingampally station and offered them flowers and biscuit packets.

Normally, these workers go to their native villages when the agricultural operations in the state are in full swing and return to Telangana to work in rice mills only after the harvesting season. This time, too, these workers had left for their native places much before the lockdown was enforced but were held up in their states.

Cyberabad police commissioner VC Sajjanar said the migrant workers would work in rice mills in Miryalaguda, Nalgonda, Karimnagar, Jagitial, Peddapalli, Sultanabad, Siddipet, Mancherial and several other places in Telangana. They were sent to their respective destinations in buses arranged by the state road transport corporation.

Masks were provided and physical distance was maintained in the trains and buses.

On the other hand, thousands of migrant labourers from different parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have been demanding that the Telangana government make arrangements for their return to their native places.

Though Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced that 40 special trains would be engaged everyday to ferry migrant workers to their respective states for one week, it could not keep its commitment as the other state governments had not given approval to accept these workers.

Telangana chief secretary Somesh Kumar said so far, the state government could engage only 13 trains in three days. As per the standard operating protocol of the railways, no trains can be operated to other states to transport workers, unless these states allow them.

We have written letters to these state governments to allow trains carrying workers from their respective states. Once we get the clearance, we shall ferry the workers, he said.

Out of 2.61 lakh migrant workers who had registered their names with the police stations in their respective areas, only around 25,000 workers had been sent to their native places. Out of them, nearly 2.49 lakh workers are present within Greater Hyderabad limits.

I have been going to Gachibowli police station to know about the fate of the special train for the last one week. But the police are sending me back. How long should I wait? asked Ram Vilas, a construction labourer from Katihar district in Bihar.

For the last two days, hundreds of migrant workers have been thronging the police stations making similar enquiries. They are not allowing us to go to our native places even on foot, nor are they making any alternative travel arrangements, lamented Sunil Kumar from Gorakhpur.

The Cyberabad police commissioner said it would take some time for the government to transport so many migrant labourers in view of limited number of trains and lack of consent from their respective state governments.

He pointed out that labour-intensive activities like construction, industries have been started in Telangana. As all the states are dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, all the people going there will be put under quarantine after medical examination. So, it is better for them to stay back and take part in the work to earn money, Sajjannar said.
Ontario has discriminated against refugee drivers by requiring them to get government documents from the country they fled authenticated, in order to fast-track their licencing, a tribunal has ruled.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision means refugees in the province are immediately exempt from the one-year waiting period for the G2 exit test, as long as they can produce a valid licence from their country of origin.

Refugees will be on an equal footing with anybody else when they come to Ontario with regards to obtaining a full drivers licence in a timely manner, said Hassan Ahmad, lawyer for complainant Shyesh Al-Turki, a refugee from Syria.

A discriminatory aspect of the (licencing) process will no longer be present going forward.

Al-Turki, a native of Aleppo, was sponsored to come to Canada with his family in November 2016. Two months later, he got his G1 licence. Although he obtained his G2 licence in March 2017, he was told he must wait one year before being eligible to take his full G driving test. He filed a human rights complaint that year.

Under Ontarios Graduated Licensing System, driving limitations are placed on different classes of licence-holders. A full G licence is the basic requirement for commercial driving.

Drivers with foreign driving experience from a reciprocating jurisdiction can bypass the 12-month waiting period if they can produce a licence from their country of origin that is not expired for more than one year and identifies the driver, licence, date of issue and licence class. These include other Canadian provinces and territories, the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland and Taiwan.

However, regardless of personal circumstances, the tribunal said individuals from non-reciprocating countries, such as Syria, must wait a year without a written authentication from their home country to testify to the persons driving experience and record.

Al-Turki said he got his drivers licence in Syria in 2010 and never had an accident or traffic infraction and his licence, valid till 2018, was never suspended or revoked.

He could not go back to Syria. If he did, it would be dangerous. Given the ongoing civil war, he could be killed. He was also fearful for his familys well-being if he were to contact the Syrian authorities, said tribunal adjudicator Josee Bouchard in her 46-page decision, released late Thursday.

The policy perpetuates arbitrary disadvantage, in so far as the ability to satisfy its requirements is based on the conditions in the country an individual is from, not on the capacity or merits of the individual. This is the very essence of arbitrariness.

The tribunal heard that the province had previously made exemptions for refugees resettled in Canada from war-torn Kosovo in 1999. The group was able to fast-track their full licence by providing personal affidavits to prove driving experience without needing authenticated documents.

In other provinces, such as Alberta, British Columbia and P.E.I., a newcomer with foreign driving experience must apply with their valid drivers licence and a personal letter listing the experience. In Quebec and Northwest Territories, the tribunal heard, all the officials asked for was a valid drivers licence.

Al-Turki said he tried to find employment as a driver, but could not, because he did not have the required full G licence. He and his family were forced to remain on social assistance while paying higher car insurance premiums, notwithstanding the fact that he was an experienced driver with a clean driving record.

I thank the fairness of the tribunal. This is a good step for any newcomer to Canada, said Ahmad, who qualified for his full licence in April 2018 and is ready to take the test for the Class D truck drivers licence.

The tribunal ordered United Nations-sanctioned refugees be exempted from the one-year waiting period for the full G licence test if they can produce a drivers licence from their country of origin that has been valid for at least two in the last three years.

The Ministry of Transportation has six months to amend its current policy but can appeal the decision.
Berlin, May 8 : Germany's parliament has passed a law banning "gay conversion therapy" for young people nationwide, it was reported on Friday.

The legislation, passed on Thursday evening, is intended to stop groups offering the service - which claims to be able to change a person's sexual orientation - to under-18s, the BBC reported.

Those breaking the new law can face up to a year in prison, or a 30,000 euros ($32,535) fine.

Under the law, minors will not be allowed to take part in medical interventions aimed at changing or suppressing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Parents and legal guardians can also be punished for making their children take part through deception, coercion or threats.

Health Minister Jens Spahn said a robust law was needed to protect it from court challenges, adding that most people who attended treatment were young people forced to do so by others.

"They should feel strengthened when the state, when society, when Parliament makes it clear: we do not want that in this country," the BBC quoted Spahn, who is gay himself, as saying on Thursday.

Spahn, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats party, first announced plans to ban the practice last June, and a bill was drafted in November.

Around 1,000 people are subjected to conversion therapy in Germany every year, according to the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, a Berlin-based human rights organisation.

The practice, which can include hypnosis and electric shocks, is outlawed in Switzerland and areas of Australia, Canada and the US.
Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns has received almost half a million dollars in a settlement with News Corp.

Johns received $170,000 in addition to having his legal costs of up to $300,000 covered by the media company, which also published an extraordinary apology to the musician last Sunday.

Daniel Johns, former frontman of Silverchair, received an apology from The Sunday Telegraph. Credit:Jordan Munns

Johns, who declined to comment further this week, sued News Corp over an article published in The Sunday Telegraph in August last year that claimed he had been at a Sydney brothel. Johns described the story as "simply untrue" and "hurtful, humiliating, and damaging to me and my family".

He strenuously denied ever being at or having any knowledge of the Chippendale brothel trading as The Kastle, which also incorporates a bondage and discipline venue, the various services of which were catalogued in great detail via the newspaper under the headline "King Of The Kastle: Rocker Daniel Johns swaggers out of a notorious bondage dungeon after a two-week bender".
Thirty more Border Security Force personnel, including two posted at its headquarters in Delhi, have tested positive for COVID-19, taking the overall infections in the force to 223, officials said on Friday.

The border guarding force has the maximum confirmed cases of the disease among the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), also known as paramilitary forces.

The CAPFs have over 500 active COVID-19 cases at present.

"Thirty new cases of COVID-19 (six from Delhi and 24 from Tripura) have been reported from different establishments. All of them are under the best available medical care at AIIMS-Jhajjar and G B Pant Hospital, Agartala," BSF spokesperson Shubhendu Bhardwaj said in a statement.

Out of the six fresh cases from Delhi, two were posted at the BSF's headquarters in the national capital and four were posted at other units in the city.

One more floor in the eight-storeyed headquarters of the force in CGO complex on the Lodhi Road has been shut, the officials said.

Two other floors were sealed earlier after a personal staff of an additional director general (ADG) rank officer and a head constable posted in the personnel affairs wing tested positive for coronavirus, they said.

An assistant sub inspector rank officer, also working at the head office, had succumbed to the disease recently.

The officials expressed concern over the increasing number of COVID-19 cases at the forces' headquarters, which is functioning on a reduced strength.

The total number of cases in the BSF now stands at 223. Two jawans have recovered, while two have died.

Among the infected cases, over 80 per cent of the BSF troops of a company deployed in Jamia and Chandni Mahal areas of the national capital have tested positive for the dreaded virus till now.

Out of the 94 personnel in that company, more than 75 have contracted the infection, a senior official said.

The other major cases are from a single BSF unit based in Tripura.

"All instructions and directions of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare are being strictly followed. Frequencies of sanitisation efforts of workplaces/barracks have been increased," the spokesperson said.

"In addition to existing apparatus of sanitisation, water cannons are being used for quick disinfection of buildings and establishments, and BSF personnel are being repeatedly sensitized to firmly adhere to preventive measures," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
AUSTIN, Texas - A man was struck and killed by a commercial jet landing on a runaway at an Austin, Texas, airport, authorities said.

The pilot of Southwest Airlines Flight 1392, a Boeing 737 arriving from Dallas, reported seeing a person on Runway 17R at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport shortly after the jet touched down at 8:12 p.m. Thursday, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA said the driver of an airport operations vehicle later found the body on the runway.

Airport spokesman Bryce Dubee said the man was not authorized to be on the runway at the time, but officials have not released his identity or said whether he was an airport employee.

The airport is working with the Austin Police Department on the investigation, Dubee said.

The airport opened in 1999. The facility has had a handful of security breaches, but this was the first runway incursion by an unauthorized person, Dubee said. In April 2018, a man fleeing from police ditched his car and hopped the fence around the airport perimeter before he was caught.
The Managing Editor of the New Crusading Guide newspaper has blamed former President John Mahama's research team for his recent comment on Ghana's press freedom ranking.



President John Dramani Mahama during a speech on World Press Freedom Day on May, 3 said, Ghana ranked first in Africa during his tenure.



He said, According to Reporters Without Borders, during my Presidency, Ghana became the country with the highest levels of press freedom in Africa. At the time, we were ranked number one out of 54 countries in Africa. We placed 23rd on the global ranking among 180 countries. Three and half years later, we have slumped seven places on the global ranking and lost the number one spot in Africa to Namibia and Cape Verde. We have unfortunately lost this priceless status that made all of us very proud".



Reacting to this on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Kweku Baako said the former President's comment has already been fact-checked and confirmed as a statement that 'holds no water'.



"He is human and so I blame the research team for not being diligent enough; I dont think we should hold that too much against him (Mahama). In his (Mahama) time a lot happened (attack on press freedom) and same is happening today," he added.



Listen to Kweku Baako's submission in the video below







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There are calls for an "urgent" investigation to establish the circumstances that led to 23 deaths in a nursing home in Dundalk.

Dealgan House Nursing Home was brought under the control of the HSE last month to help fight the outbreak.

Labour TD Ged Nash has called on the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) to carry out an investigation into what happened at the home.

An urgent, immediate investigation must take place into the tragic deaths of 23 residents in Dealgan House, Dundalk.



Grieving families need answers and they must be engaged with by HIQA in order to frame the terms of reference of an investigation. https://t.co/KrT6sAvlgW  Ged Nash TD (@geraldnash) May 8, 2020

A total of 761 nursing home deaths have been linked to Covid-19 in Ireland since the outbreak began, accounting for 54.2% of the overall death toll.

23 residents have died from Covid-19 since April 1 in Co Louth nursing home

A Co Louth nursing home says an outbreak of Covid-19 is under control after 23 of its residents died.

The deaths took place in Dealgan House Nursing Home in Dundalk since April 1.

The home was brought under the control of a HSE hospital group last month to help it fight the outbreak.

Dealgan House Nursing Home in Dundalk says the death toll is slightly lower than reported by a TD.

Sinn Fein's Ruairi O Murchu said in the Dail yesterday that 26 residents of Dealgan House Nursing Home had died while in a statement, the owners say there have been 23 deaths related to Covid-19 since April 1.

It is believed the deaths are among the highest number at a single care facility.

A total of 761 nursing home deaths have been linked to Covid-19 in Ireland since the outbreak began, accounting for 54.2% of the overall death toll.

Dealgan House Nursing Home extended sympathies to the families of all the residents who have died.

It also said it is winding down the external support its received as its own staff begins to return to work.
Plus, there's evidence that migrant workers moving back home are carrying the virus with them

Guwahati: Relatively less troubled by Covid-19 than some of the other states in India, Assams composure was broken Friday by two developments.

First, a medical student tested positive for the coronavirus at the states biggest hospital in Guwahati, requiring it to be shut down in haste and subject patients and medics to testing and quarantine.

Second, tests done on 42 migrant workers who took a bus from Ajmer to Silchar revealed that seven of them were coronavirus positive. This opened up the possibility that the state may have imported the virus along with the returning workers.

Fighting down panic after the medical students positive test, the superintendent of the state-run Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) ordered nearly 700 patients and 386 health workers put into quarantine.

The post-graduate student used to screen patients for COVID-19 symptoms at the hospital. Assams health minister told reporters that extensive contact tracing has begun, and samples of all doctors and health workers will be taken for testing.

There is alarm over the places the student used to frequent on campus, such as the room he shared with another student, the hostel dining room and the dorms he used to visit.

Incidence of coronavirus infection has been moderate in Assam so far, and the state is not fully equipped to get some 700 patients plus their attendants tested at once. The minister said the help is being sought of testing laboratories outside the state, perhaps in New Delhi and Kolkata.

The GMCH case took the number of coronavirus cases in Assam to 56. Eleven persons tested positive in the past 24 hours, four in Guwahati and seven in Silchar.

The Silchar positives are worrying the authorities. These seven cases were detected on a bus that brought in 42 migrant workers illegally from Ajmer to Silchar. One of the positive cases is of a child.

Following this detection, the administration has declared at least four villages visited by these passengers as containment zones.

Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the passengers have been put in quarantine. He disclosed that the viral load of one of the passengers was found very high.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Deputy National Communications Officer, Kweku Boahen, has stressed that a survey he has firmly conducted shows that COVID-19 which the country is strongly battling within every angle of its economy will have been with us today had President Akufo-Addo not travelled to Norway during the early days of it's spread.



"Ghana will not have had any case of COVID-19 had President Akufo-Addo not travelled to Norway" he categorically stated.



According to him, sometimes as the largest opposition party in the country, they need to be listened to since they also conduct important investigations for the growth of the country.



"We warned citizens against foreign travels during the early days of COVID-19 in some foreign countries but the president neglected us and went to Norway, therefore the hardship we find surrounding us today" he added.



However, in a detailed pronouncement on UTV's 'Adekye Nsroma' political discussion programme, the NDC guru pointed out that President Akufo-Addo on his monetary laid out policies in fighting COVID-19 are ways of misusing state funds, to fill his family financial account.



"All the President is interested in is positioning members of his family to be in charge of state funds to help build up their family account, especially the Finance Minister and the Chief Justice (RTD) Sophia Akufo who after pension has been elected back into government to be in charge of the COVID-19 funds. Can't the President get any other trusted active person to be in charge of this fund?" he asked.





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Gov. Brian Kemp warned on Tuesday that a growing coronavirus outbreak is stressing resources in northeast Georgia.

Kemp has moved aggressively to allow businesses to reopen even though infections are on the rise in some areas of the state. He made his remarks about northeast Georgia while touring a temporary medical pod in the southwestern city of Albany, one of the states earliest and worst hot spots for COVID-19.

The state Department of Public health reports that nearly 30,000 Georgians have had coronavirus infections confirmed by a test. About 1,300 in the state of 10.6 million people have died.

Gainesville, a city about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta that is synonymous with Georgias large poultry industry, is quickly becoming one of the states most affected areas.

Per-capita infection rates in Gainesvilles Hall County and in nearby Habersham County are now in the top 10% of counties statewide, a list that otherwise remains mostly dominated by counties in south and southwest Georgia.

Theyre being stressed pretty hard up there at the moment, Kemp said Tuesday while touring a temporary medical pod in southwest Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Republican governor said contract medical workers have been sent to the Gainesville area to help fight the outbreak. A temporary medical pod is planned there as well.

Dave Palmer, spokesman for a 13-county public health district based in Gainesville, said the district has been sending out messages in Spanish as well as English, hoping to reach the large Spanish-speaking population concentrated in Hall County. Palmer said the district has also been holding weekly conference calls with poultry processors, encouraging them to communicate with employees about signs of illness and how to prevent infection.

Georgia became a lightning rod for criticism in the national debate over reopening when Kemp moved to allow businesses such as tattoo parlors, bowling alleys and hair and nail salons to reopen with restrictions in late April. Restaurants and movie theaters have since been able to welcome customers back in on a limited basis, and a statewide shelter-at-home order has expired.

Kemp has repeatedly defended the push by saying it was backed by experts and data, including steadily growing numbers of tests being reported to the state.

Our goal is to use every single test weve got every single day and  try to break the system, Kemp told The Associated Press last week.

Although there have been one-day totals that were higher, the total number of tests reported each day in Georgia has averaged between 7,000 and 8,000 a day in the past week. Thats nearly double what the state was averaging when Kemp started his push to expand testing. The state has reached Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomeys stated goal of getting to 200,000 total tests.

But efforts to expand testing are showing strain, with mobile testing sites paused this week because of problems with information flow and reporting results to those tested.

Dr. Philip Coule, chief medical officer of Augusta University Health, said on Tuesday that full mobile testing was unlikely to resume until Thursday. He said about 2,000 test results  about two days worth  are backlogged.

Were committed to maximizing testing for Georgians and were committed to making sure Georgians are getting their results in a timely manner, Coule said.

The pause follows complaints about delays in people getting results. The state cobbled together additional lab capacity at universities that dont usually perform medical testing for individual patients, and Coule said information flow has been a problem. He said test site workers are also being retrained to collect full information to allow matching of tests with individual identities. The call center at Augusta University sometimes has difficulty notifying people who may not answer their phone, Coule also said.

Toy Jackson, a flight attendant, told WSB-TV on Friday that she had been tested at a mobile site in Atlanta on April 24 and had gone a week without hearing back.

And they guaranteed 72-hour results, Jackson said.

There are other obstacles besides information flow. Coule said Augustas labs could run another 1,000 tests a day on existing machines, but cant obtain the chemicals needed.

In another facet of Georgias effort, the National Guard continues to disinfect long-term care facilities.

Pat Mobley, executive director of the Provident Village assisted living and memory care home, proudly displayed a large envelope with results from last weeks 100% negative COVID-19 tests. But Mobley, a veteran of the MERS virus outbreak in New Jersey, said she just couldnt decline their help.

As the team of young soldiers moved through the 5-year-old facility, their thick suits made an eerie crunching sound in quiet hallways. For an hour, they sprayed tables in a now unused dining room, and disinfected the activity rooms and hallway railings.

___

AP photographer John Bazemore contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics COVID-19 Georgia
Joel Smiler doesn't want to miss his 50th wedding anniversary trip to Maui this September. But he's not sure if it's still a good idea.

For Smiler, a retired veterinarian, Maui checks a lot of boxes for safety. Hawaii is a domestic destination, and it has reliable air connections and relatively few coronavirus cases. But when Smiler talks about "safe," he's not talking just about health. He also wants to recover his money if there's another covid-19 outbreak.

"My biggest loss would be the condo if we cancel," he says. "I would lose half of my payment."

Smiler is not alone. As Americans cautiously look to their next vacation, they're concerned about health - not just physical health but also financial health. They want something safe. Here's how travel industry sectors look when it comes to safety:

- Airlines: Air carriers are taking a variety of steps to protect passengers' health, such as blocking middle seats to and testing for covid-19. American Airlines and Delta Air Lines are among the major airlines blocking middle seats. Frontier Airlines announced last week that it will guarantee an empty middle seat next to you for $39.

Emirates was one of the first airlines to conduct blood tests on passengers. Other carriers have announced plans to clean the cabins more thoroughly. Qatar Airways, for example, said it would install advanced air-filtration systems, adopt protocols for washing onboard linen and blankets, and sanitize its service utensils and cutlery at higher temperatures.

But passengers are unhappy with the way airlines have handled their money. When carriers canceled flights, they pushed passengers to accept vouchers instead of the legally required full refunds. No one knows what future refund policies will look like, but travelers are certain they will favor the airlines.

"While airlines were lenient and understanding with flights affected by the first waves of infection, travel booked during stay-at-home and quarantine orders may have different rules and regulations," says Matthew Bradley, the regional security director for the Americas at International SOS.

- Cruise lines: It's too early to tell how safe cruises will - or won't - be. Some cruise lines have taken steps to reassure prospective customers that they run a clean ship. Carnival, for example, announced new ship cleaning standards, which include more frequent sanitizing of surfaces, thorough cleaning of staterooms and nightly deep cleaning with specialized equipment.

"When cruising resumes, I expect them to be much safer than they were just a few months ago," says Tanner Callais, founder of the cruise website Cruzely.com.

Health experts warn that diseases can spread rapidly on cruise ships, and they recommend avoiding them if you are in a high-risk group.

"Even if there are doctors onboard, they may not be able to provide adequate care should someone become severely ill, and they may not be able to get that person to necessary care in a timely manner," says Chris Worsham, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

- Hotels: Hotel chains have been introducing additional measures to sanitize their properties. For example, Marriott recently announced programs designed to keep its hotels virus-free, including the use of electrostatic sprayers (which disperse very fine, electrically charged particles that aggressively adhere to surfaces) with hospital-grade disinfectants.

But during the early days of the covid-19 outbreak, hotels were reluctant to let guests off the hook for nonrefundable stays. Some resorts also refused to refund money, forcing customers to accept vouchers instead. As the current outbreak progresses, be on the lookout for cancellation terms that protect hotels from another wave of pandemic-related cancellations.

Of course, the definition of "safe" differs from one person to the next. For some travelers, a July vacation involving a discount cruise and nonrefundable airfare may seem safe enough; others won't leave their homes until there's a covid-19 vaccine.

After some contemplation, Smiler, the retired veterinarian, has decided to go to Maui anyway. But he's taking one more precaution. "I'm going to protect my trip with cancel-for-any-reason travel insurance," he says. "This will at least cover some of my possible losses."

The one thing many of us seem to have plenty of is time. Molly Fergus, general manager of the travel site TripSavvy, recommends taking advantage of it, but not necessarily to plan short-term travel.

"Take this time to plan those long-lead bucket-list vacations that require detailed planning," she says. "That way you're not rushing into another trip during uncertain times, but still have something to look forward to."

- - -

Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United.
The European Union has blacklisted four African countries over money-laundering concerns as it says their financial transactions require further scrutiny.



Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius and Zimbabwe were part of 12 countries placed on the EUs blacklist.



The other countries blacklisted are Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Cambodia, Mongolia and Myanmar.



But the blacklisting will have to be approved by the European parliament in order for it to come into force in October this year.



Blacklisted countries were assessed based on systemic impact on the integrity of the EU financial system.



They were also assessed after going through a review by the International Monetary Fund as international offshore financial centers and economic relevance and strong economic ties with the EU.



What affected countries have to do



These blacklisted countries would have to show more commitment towards tackling the problem to get off the list.



The EU said in a statement that given the Coronavirus crisis, the date of application of todays Regulation listing third countries  and therefore applying new protective measures  only applies as of 1 October 2020.



This is to ensure that all stakeholders have time to prepare appropriately. The delisting of countries, however, is not affected by this and will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal.



In a statement the EU said Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Guyana, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Sri Lanka and Tunisia have been taken off the blacklist after addressing the problem in their respective countries.



The EU commissions executive vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis also said in a statement that We need to put an end to dirty money infiltrating our financial system. Today we are further bolstering our defences to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, with a comprehensive and far-reaching Action Plan.



Dombrovskis adds that There should be no weak links in our rules and their implementation. We are committed to delivering on all these actions  swiftly and consistently  over the next 12 months. We are also strengthening the EUs global role in terms of shaping international standards on fighting money laundering and terrorism financing.



Signal of blacklisting



Last year the European Commission cited six African countries, namely Ghana, Botswana, Libya, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Libya for encouraging money laundering and terrorism financing.



The blacklisting according to the European Commission was to protect the EU financial system and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing risks.



But Ghana for example said in a statement last year that the European Commissions blacklist of Ghana does not reflect the current of Ghanas anti-money laundering regime describing the move as unfortunate.



Ghana maintained at the time that it was not given the opportunity to respond or implement corrective measures, which is the norm.

Source: africafeeds.com









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The surge of fresh cases on Friday indicates that Karnataka's containment strategy has not fully worked. (DC photo: Satish B)

Bengaluru: After two months of dodging the bullet, Karnataka took the hit from Covid-19 on Friday, recording 45 fresh cases in one day. And that is just the afternoon number. More cases are likely to be recorded in the evening bulletin.

For weeks, the state had been counting its blessings hoping that the contagion has given it a miss. Fridays spurt of fresh cases shows that it was all a case of whistling past the graveyard. The spook is still around.

Todays 45 positives, including a five-month baby, take the total number of infections in the state to 750, far less than northern neighbour Maharashtra, which is the leader, or even eastern neighbour Telangana, which has 1172.

Unlike in those two states, its not the state capital, Bengaluru, thats the epicentre; the surge is spread over several districts. From the noon sit report of the health department, the new cases include 14 from Davangere, 12 from Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada, 11 from Belagavi, 7 from Bengaluru Urban, and 1 from Ballari.

Until today, the highest daily incidence had been 38, mainly on account of two clusters: the Jubilant Generics one at Nanjanagud; and the Tablighi Jamaat spread. Both clusters were contained.

A look at the sequential growth of the virus in Karnataka suggests that the contagion has shifted a gear on Friday.

* March 9  first case

* March 24  41

* March 31  101

* April 10  207

* April 16  315

* April 20  408

* April 25  500

* May 2  601

* May 7  705

* May 8  750

The point of concern in the new cases is that the virus has staged a comeback in places where it was thought to have been overcome.

The 14 new cases from Davanagere underscore the fact that the district had been certified orange until a week ago, and had not seen a single positive for more than a month. Now Davanagere is red hot.

Bhatkal too is giving the officials a sinking feeling. It was the scene of an early rash of cases, but the situation was successfully brought under control. However, one person visiting Mangaluru turned the almost-green zone back to red zone.

In the capital Bengaluru, the setback is giving second thoughts to the BBMP, which had been wanting to petition the central government to declare its corona-free wards as 'green zones'. They are now wary of it. Of the 7 fresh corona positive cases found in Bengaluru, they are unable to pin down the source of infection of three.

The seven cases are from Shivajinagar (which was sealed early this week after a housekeeper tested positive) and from the containment zone of Padarayanapura, which was among the first to be declared a containment zone and sealed off on April 10.

After fresh cases were reported from Shivajinagar, shops in Commercial Street which had opened for business were asked to shut immediately.

Among the infected is a 34-year-old pregnant woman resident of Padarayanapura who visited the BBMP Maternity Hospital near Sirsi Circle, Chamrajpet. Following her diagnosis, other patients in the hospital have been shifted and the medical staff who attended to her have been told to self-quarantine. The hospital has been sealed and is being sanitised.

The pregnant woman, who is expecting to deliver soon, has been shifted to the Covid 19 facility at Victoria Hospital.
The University of Oregon campus stands empty after all finals become online due to the spread of the coronavirus. (Maddie Knight/Emerald)
Hong Kong: Police involved in offences arrested

Police today said it is highly concerned about recent criminal offences involving police officers and that a number of these officers have been arrested.

Among them, officers in connection with serious offences have been or will be interdicted.

The force said it is furious and disappointed about the officers who are suspected of having breached the law and that the incidents have impaired public confidence in Police.

Police attach the utmost importance to the discipline and integrity of officers.

All officers, irrespective of their ranks, must abide by the law at all times.

Police management has zero tolerance towards any acts that breach the law or discipline by police officers, it added.

The force also said it attaches great importance to the integrity of its officers.

The Complaints & Internal Investigations Branch formulated the Integrated Integrity Management Framework to promote integrity and honesty among officers as well as to regulate their discipline and conduct.

To avoid similar incidents, Police said its management is reviewing the forces internal management strategy.

Police reiterated that no bad element in the force can be tolerated.

If an officer is suspected of having breached the law or committed a breach of discipline, Police will conduct an investigation according to the established mechanism and take appropriate actions.

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Investigative journalist Giancarlo Fiorella was watching when the Associated Press reported a plot to overthrow Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela. What Fiorella could not believe was that, after the planned coup was revealed, Jordan Goudreau, a former green beret and sometime security guard to President Trump, decided to go through with it anyway. Equating himself to Alexander the Great, Goudreau sent his men across hundreds of miles of open sea, towards certain failure.

On this weeks Kicker, Fiorella, an investigator and trainer with Bellingcat, speaks with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, about what he has learned about Goudreau, Mike Pompeos statement that the US government had no direct involvement in the mission, and the dilemma faced by Venezuelan media as it considers the tragic legacy of Goudreaus hubris.

SHOW NOTES:

The Invasion of Venezuela, Brought To You By Silvercorp USA, Giancarlo Fiorella, Bellingcat

Venezuelas News Abyss, Paula Ramon, CJR

On the ground in the Venezuelan standoff, Andrew McCormick, CJR

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Amanda Darrach is a contributor to CJR and a visiting scholar at the University of St Andrews School of International Relations. Follow her on Twitter @thedarrach.
VANCOUVER, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - B2Gold Corp. (TSX: BTO, NYSE AMERICAN: BTG, NSX: B2G) ("B2Gold" or the "Company") announces that it has identified 10 positive COVID-19 cases at the Fekola mine site, 9 of which are currently asymptomatic, through the Company's ongoing proactive COVID-19 testing and response plan. Fekola has implemented testing programs at the mine site, the exploration camp and in Bamako which are designed to identify asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 and protect Fekola's employees, both site and Bamako-based, local community populations, and the general Malian population. These results do not have a material impact on operations and the mine continues to operate and maintain both quarterly and annual production budget guidance.

B2Gold places the safety and well-being of its workforce as the highest priority and continues to encourage input from all its stakeholders as the situation continues to evolve. The Company continues to monitor public and employee sentiment to ensure that stakeholders are in alignment with the continued operations at the mine.

The Fekola project, located in Southwest Mali, announced the first positive COVID-19 case on April, 16 2020 (an employee at the Fekola exploration camp approximately 5 km from the Fekola project) despite operating a significantly reduced access basis since March 24, 2020, allowing only minimal movement of personnel between Bamako and the Fekola site. Additionally, starting April 19, 2020, the site was further locked down and employees from local villages in the Fekola area were brought to live in temporary accommodations on site to create an "island setting" with minimal interaction with local communities. All employees entering the Fekola project are now required to quarantine for a minimum of twelve days prior to entering the general site population. Despite these measures, one new positive COVID-19 case was identified on May 2, 2020. In accordance with standard protocol, contact tracing was completed and all persons known to have interacted with the person testing positive were immediately isolated and, based on their proximity to the positive case, were tested regardless of whether or not symptoms were present. Based on this proactive testing, an additional 9 employees have now tested positive for COVID-19, with all such persons currently being asymptomatic. All persons testing positive have been removed from site and protective measures have been reinforced, working closely with site personnel, local communities, unions and the Government of Mali.

The Company's procedures continue to evolve in conjunction with World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control guidelines as more becomes known about the virus and the Company is regularly monitoring the situation and following local and national health authority requirements and recommendations. A critical care specialist has been consulting to the Company to assist with developing guidelines as well as local and global implementation policies. B2Gold is currently reviewing options, with support from the Malian government, for conducting comprehensive on-site testing of all employees for the COVID-19 virus with the goal of testing each employee prior to entering or exiting the Fekola project.

B2Gold continues to engage with local stakeholders to prevent the COVID-19 virus from entering the communities around our operations. Education programs are continuing to be put into place to protect local communities by promoting hygienic practices and limit social interactions, in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus.

The Fekola mine continues to operate without impediments to mining or milling and expects to meet or exceed its production estimates for the second quarter of 2020 and annual 2020 guidance. Additionally, all supply lines remain open and the site continues to receive supplies critical to operating at full capacity. The expansion of the Fekola mill continues and is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2020. The mining fleet expansion continues to perform well with the first 6040 excavator now operational and loading the first eight 789 trucks, which were delivered to site ahead of schedule. The second planned delivery of equipment has now been received on site and is currently undergoing assembly and commissioning. Expansion of the tailings storage facility remains on schedule and will provide capacity for tailings disposal in 2023.

About B2Gold Corp.

B2Gold is a low-cost international senior gold producer headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Founded in 2007, today, B2Gold has operating gold mines in Mali, Namibia and the Philippines and numerous exploration and development projects in various countries including Mali and Colombia. In 2020, B2Gold forecasts consolidated gold production of between 1,000,000 and 1,055,000 ounces.

On Behalf of B2GOLD CORP.

"Clive T. Johnson"

President & Chief Executive Officer

For more information on B2Gold, please visit the Company website at www.b2gold.com or contact:

Ian MacLean Katie Bromley

Vice President, Investor Relations Manager, Investor Relations & Public Relations

+1 604-681-8371 +1 604-681-8371

[email protected] [email protected]

The Toronto Stock Exchange and NYSE American LLC neither approve nor disapprove the information contained in this news release.

This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including: projections; outlook; guidance; forecasts; estimates; and other statements regarding future or estimated financial and operational performance, gold production and sales, and budgets on a consolidated and mine by mine basis; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on B2Gold's operations, including any restrictions or suspensions with respect to our operations and the effect of any such restrictions or suspensions on our financial and operational results; the ability of the Company to successfully maintain our operations if they are temporarily suspended, and to restart or ramp-up these operations efficiently and economically, the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's workforce, suppliers and other essential resources and what effect those impacts, if they occur, would have on our business, our planned capital and exploration expenditures; statements regarding activities or achievements of B2Gold including, without limitation: consolidated gold production of between 1,000,000 and 1,055,000 ounces in 2020. All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made.

Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond B2Gold's control, including risks associated with or related to: the duration and extent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effectiveness of preventative measures and contingency plans put in place by the Company to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including, but not limited to, social distancing, a non-essential travel ban, business continuity plans, and efforts to mitigate supply chain disruptions; the volatility of metal prices and B2Gold's common shares; changes in tax laws; the dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; not achieving production, cost or other estimates; actual production, development plans and costs differing materially from the estimates in B2Gold's feasibility and other studies; the ability to obtain and maintain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for mining activities; environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; climate change and climate change regulations; the ability to replace mineral reserves and identify acquisition opportunities; the unknown liabilities of companies acquired by B2Gold; the ability to successfully integrate new acquisitions; fluctuations in exchange rates; the availability of financing; financing and debt activities, including potential restrictions imposed on B2Gold's operations as a result thereof and the ability to generate sufficient cash flows; operations in foreign and developing countries and the compliance with foreign laws, including those associated with operations in Colombia and including risks related to changes in foreign laws and changing policies related to mining and local ownership requirements or resource nationalization generally; remote operations and the availability of adequate infrastructure; fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for mining operations; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory, political and country risks, including local instability or acts of terrorism and the effects thereof; the reliance upon contractors, third parties and joint venture partners; challenges to title or surface rights; the dependence on key personnel and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; adverse climate and weather conditions; litigation risk; competition with other mining companies; community support for B2Gold's operations, including risks related to strikes and the halting of such operations from time to time; conflicts with small scale miners; failures of information systems or information security threats; the outcome of the ongoing tax assessment by the Colombian Tax Office (DIAN) in respect of the Gramalote property; the ability to maintain adequate internal controls over financial reporting as required by law, including Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; compliance with anti-corruption laws, and sanctions or other similar measures; social media and B2Gold's reputation; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in B2Gold's most recent Annual Information Form, B2Gold's current Form 40-F Annual Report and B2Gold's other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which may be viewed at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively (the "Websites"). The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect B2Gold's forward-looking statements.

B2Gold's forward-looking statements are based on the applicable assumptions and factors management considers reasonable as of the date hereof, based on the information available to management at such time. These assumptions and factors include, but are not limited to, assumptions and factors relating to B2Gold's ability to carry on current and future operations, including: the duration and effects of COVID-19 on our operations and workforce; development and exploration activities; the timing, extent, duration and economic viability of such operations, including any mineral resources or reserves identified thereby; the accuracy and reliability of estimates, projections, forecasts, studies and assessments; B2Gold's ability to meet or achieve estimates, projections and forecasts; the availability and cost of inputs; the price and market for outputs, including gold; the timely receipt of necessary approvals or permits; the ability to meet current and future obligations; the ability to obtain timely financing on reasonable terms when required; the current and future social, economic and political conditions; and other assumptions and factors generally associated with the mining industry. B2Gold's forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management and reflect their current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof. B2Gold does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits or liabilities B2Gold will derive therefrom. For the reasons set forth above, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE B2Gold Corp.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way journalists are working, with many now operating in quarantine from home and increasingly relying on collaborative, cloud-based technology to report on the biggest story of our time.

According to Chartbeat, live blogs made up 39% of the top 100 articles list across 700 publishers in 70 countries--the best performing editorial format during the month of April. In the past, newsrooms have typically relied upon live blogs to cover stories that require frequent updates, such as elections, terror attacks and sporting events. But these metrics show that live blogging should be an essential tool for any news operation.

With live blogs currently generating some of the highest traffic for newsrooms, many media organisations are discovering that blogging tools are the most efficient way to provide live coverage on a story of this nature. Sourcefabric, Europe's largest developer of open-source tools for journalists, has a live blogging solution called Live Blog that is widely used around the world. In this post we'll look at how news organisations are using Sourcefabric's Live Blog for such coverage. Live Blog is a flexible live coverage platform designed especially for news professionals. It's built for editors and writers working together remotely on posts that are constantly updated in real time as breaking news happens. In short, it is ideal for quickly creating and publishing short-form content while easily embedding posts from all the social media platforms into the mix.

Live Blog: A cloud-based live blogging tool designed for remote journalism

Live Blog is ideally suited for the new work-from-home reality, with geographically dispersed editors and writers able to work seamlessly together to provide the critical, timely coverage their readers expect. Flexibility is key. Live Blog is an agile, open-source live blogging platform that can handle the full range of multimedia content as well as posts from all social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc). Furthermore, it features straightforward collaborative workflows and an easy-to-setup mobile app (the Live Blog Reporter), making it especially easy for editors and writers to collaborate and report from any location in the world.

Let's look at some of Live Blog's biggest users, mostly major European news organisations, and a few examples of how they are deploying this live blogging tool to cover the coronavirus crisis.

- Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), the German news agency, has syndicated all of its Live Blog coverage of the pandemic to customers and clients. Live Blog has solid syndication features, which dpa is taking advantage of with a wide selection of targeted live blogs that provide constant updates on how the virus is playing out at home and abroad.

- Austria Presse Agentur (APA), the Austrian press agency, is also using Live Blog's sophisticated syndication tools to keep client publishers up-to-date with the latest news. For instance, one client newspaper, Wiener Zeitung, is prominently featuring APA's live blogs which showcase the numbers behind the story along with expert opinion.

- Starting on March 11, reporters at German news site Zeit Online began publishing short coronavirus-focused stories to a dedicated Live Blog. A week later, their coronavirus live coverage had collected more than 15,500 comments from appreciative readers.

- A few other examples of coronavirus-themed Live Blogs: Norwegian online newspaper ABC Nyheter, and German news sites Tagesspiegel and PNP.

Technology tailored to the needs of journalists

Sourcefabric has produced a short guide of tips, tricks and best practices for professional journalists looking to use Live Blog, or any other live blogging platform, to cover crises and other breaking news stories. You can download it for free, here.
Photo: NFA

Canada's National Firearms Association announced they will support Ottawa-based lawyer Solomon Friedman, as he files an action in the Federal Court to challenge the recent Liberal government "assault-rifle" ban.



The ban prohibits over 1,500 models of firearms, including modern sporting firearms and those capable of firing projectiles with over 10,000 joules of energy at the muzzle, or with a bore size of over 20mm.



The NFA will both be joining this case as an intervenor, and actively supporting Mr. Friedmans efforts," says Sheldon Clare, NFA President from Prince George.



"Solomon Friedman is an excellent lawyer and acknowledged expert in firearms law. He literally wrote the book on the subject."



Solomon has argued firearms cases at many levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Trudeau government brought in the ban without debate in Parliament with an Order in Council, which will play a large part of the challenge against the ban.



Clare believes the fight against this Liberal ban will be successful.



"We have examined the history and intended use of OiCs, and conducted extensive research on the claims made in an attempt by the government to rationalize their incredibly rash firearms ban.



They understand another gun rights organization expressed intent to launch a Charter of Rights challenge and say their efforts will not be a duplication of that initiative.



"We are taking a different approach which, in our estimation, has a greater chance of being ultimately successful and beneficial to the firearms owner community," adds Clare.
Credit: Washington University in St. Louis

High levels of social distancing would lower the COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death rates over the next six months across all counties in Missouri, finds a new study from Washington University in St. Louis.

Although death rates will be lower than in urban areas due to lower population density, rural areas will see significant numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. In all regions, projections are impacted by the local levels of social distancing, the study's authors wrote in a recently released paper.

"Our analysis illustrates that greater levels of social distancing will lead to lower rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death over the next six months throughout Missouri," said Abigail Barker, research assistant professor at the Brown School and faculty lead for data and methods at the university's Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health (CHEP). She is lead author of the CHEP policy brief "High Levels of Social Distancing Lower the Projected Impact of COVID-19 in Missouri."

"For example, with low social distancing, St. Louis County, with a population of 998,684 people, is projected to have 901,386 infections over the next six months, a 90.2% infection rate," Barker wrote. "However, that number is reduced dramatically to 8,481 infections with high social distancing, or a 0.8% infection rate."

The model that Barker and her colleagues built predicts that the overall rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death will be lower for rural areas than for urban areas over the next six months.

"However, we expect to see higher rates of hospitalization and death in rural areas among those infected, based on the age distribution and health of rural Missouri residents," she said.

"Regardless of population size, all counties will see significant drops in the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths when social distancing is high," Barker wrote. "Net changes in numbers will be larger for urban areas due to higher population counts, but rural areas may see higher relative decreases. Further, unlike urban areas, rural areas' projections suggest cases could drop to zero with robust social distancing measures, due to the lower baseline spread of disease in the setting of lower population density."

While the findings support social distancing to limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 in the state, higher levels of social distancing may lead to economic and social costs and it is unclear the amount of time a high level of social distancing will be needed to protect the health of Missourians.

"Areas with greater proportions of older individuals and people with chronic conditions face greater risks due to COVID-19and benefit more from social distancingthan other areas," Barker said. "High levels of social distancing will lower the projected number of infections and hospitalizations, preventing hospitals from exceeding their maximum capacity, which would affect their ability to care for patients."

In particular, she said, this could help reduce the burden in rural areas, which have fewer hospital beds and other resources, and would therefore be disproportionately burdened by an uncontrolled COVID-19 caseload.

The brief is accompanied by an interactive data visualization that is updated weekly with the latest data.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak
Few miniseries have a pedigree as striking as Netflixs eight-episode The Eddy, which begins streaming Friday.

Based on a set of jazz songs from music producer/songwriter Glen Ballard (Alanis Morrisette, Michael Jackson), its executive produced by Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) who directs the first two episodes while all the episodes are written or co-written by Jack Thorne (Skins, His Dark Materials). Eric Gautier, the cinematographer known for his work with the lauded French director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep), assisted Chazelle in the swooping, hand-held, cinema verite feel of his two episodes.

The cast  including Andre Holland (Moonlight, The Knick), Joanna Kulig (the Oscar-nominated Polish film Cold War), Amandla Sternberg (The Hate U Give), Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), Alexis Manenti (the Oscar-nominated French film Les Miserables) and Leila Bekhti (Beirut)  is exceptional as is the soundtrack by Ballard and Randy Kerber.

Those first two episodes are mesmerizing, from the first moments when young barback Sim (Adil Dehbi) opens the doors to a swinging Parisian jazz club called The Eddy, followed by a tracking shot that pulls us into this world of often beautifully difficult music and the equally difficult people who make it. More than La La Land, which talked about a love for jazz, The Eddy at its best feels like jazz, harking back to Chazelles first film, the swooning Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.

Lou Faulon

But its not just whats going on inside that club thats intriguing but the wider portrait of contemporary, urban France, from the legacy of the many African-American artists (James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Dexter Gordon and more) who found a freedom in Paris missing at home to the Middle Eastern and African immigrants whove landed more recently.

Unfortunately, the remaining six episodes  directed by Houda Benyamina, Alan Poul and Laila Marrakchi  arent quite as stylish and the plot wanders away from the music as the focus, getting entangled in a rather prosaic murder mystery. Still, theres enough here, especially in Hollands gripping performance as a man whose life is veering out of control and in his characters knotty relationship with his teenage daughter, to make it engrossing even when it threatens to become a police procedural.

Holland is Elliott Udo, a celebrated African-American jazz pianist who has moved to Paris and opened The Eddy with his friend Farid (Rahim). He has left behind an unhappy marriage and an even unhappier daughter, Julie (Sternberg), who comes to live with him in Paris, half-hoping to finally build some type of bond.

The club is struggling financially and Elliott is hinging his hopes on getting a record deal for his house band fronted by the mercurial, Polish-born Maja (pronounced Maya and played by Kulig), with whom he has had a fling or three. (Music geek alert: the pianist in the group is Kerber who has played with Whitney Houston, Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen and many other notables in real life.)

Lou Falon

But things get especially discordant when Farid, who took care of the books while Elliott concentrated on the clubs creative side, is murdered outside the club and the police are convinced it was a hit. They even think that Elliott might have done it.

Each episode, except for the last, focuses on one particular character  Elliott, Maja, Julie, Sim, Farids widow  even though all the stories intersect through Elliotts increasingly troubled life. (In that sense, its reminiscent of the Australian miniseries The Slap from a few years back).

Yet, despite its drawbacks, The Eddy is a heartfelt salute to a form of music that often sits forgotten, well outside the mainstream of whats popular today. If nothing else, go and listen to the wonderful soundtrack (also released May 8), and hope for a second season  if there is one  where music doesnt play back-up to murder.

cary.darling@chron.com
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 6)  The Archdiocese of Manila has made a list of safety precautions it will take once the government allows religious activities, such as masses in churches, to resume.

Here are the protocols released Thursday by Bishop Broderick Pabillo, apostolic administrator of Manila:

Half-hour gap, weekday and Saturday masses

Pabillo said churches must allot at least a half-hour gap between masses to disinfect the worship place.

The prelate also asked the faithful to attend the weekday masses to reduce the number of people who come to church all at once.

The presence of difficulty, and in some cases impossibility, of fulfilling the Sunday obligation renders the obligation suspended during these extraordinary circumstances, Pabillo said.

The bishop said if there are enough priests, they could celebrate mass outside of Church like in gymnasiums.

Pabillo advised the children and the elderly to stay at home and join in the online Masses.

He called on the ministries to recruit volunteer collectors, lay ministers, and ushers to lessen possibilities of infections among the elderly.

No offertory, choir, hand-holding

During holy masses, some mass rituals will temporarily be prohibited.

For one, faithful will not walk to the altar with gifts such as bread and wine.

In the meantime, offerings can be placed in a basket or box at the back part of the church and a person or two will bring these to the altar.

Money collection boxes will also not be passed around. Instead, collection will be done through bags attached to sticks.

Meanwhile, Pabillo said that there will be no choirs temporarily. The church will request for song leader and an instrumentalist so church-goers could be guided.

He also offered one more option: There can be less singing in the Mass.

Pabillo added that hand-holding during the Our Father is disallowed. People cannot offer handshakes during the giving of peace. Instead of shaking hands with one another, mass-goers could bow as a sign of peace.

Communion is only recommended if a congregration is small enough, he said, without giving an exact number.

Other social distancing measures

All churches should hold masses in accordance with health guidelines.

People attending mass must wear face masks.

There will also be mandatory body temperature checks for people entering the parish or church.

A thermal body scan will be a standard equipment in all parishes, Pabillo said.

Pabillo said there are indicated spaces in the church and once those are filled, people can no longer be allowed to enter the Church.

He added they can stay outside but must maintain distance from one another.

Other religious rites

In holding a baptism, only the parents and one set of godparents will be allowed per child for the baptism. If there are many to be baptized, the children to be baptized can be organized by smaller batches.

Pabillo also wants parishes to hold this liturgical rite on weekdays to avoid decongestion on Sundays.

The Holy oils should be applied using cotton on the one who will be baptized. The cotton with holy oils should then be burned after the celebration.

For funerals, only the immediate family is allowed to attend. Meanwhile, only one set of sponsors and the immediate family of the bride and groom are allowed to witness nuptials this year.

The Manila archdiocese, which is comprised of churches in the cities of Manila, Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, and Pasay (except Villamor Air Base and Newport City), said the guidelines may be temporary since the country is under an extraordinary situation.

On April 30, the government said it was allowing church and other religious activities to resume in areas with low-to moderate risk of COVID-19 spread and are under general community quarantine or GCQ. A day later, it reversed the decision, following complaints from local officials.

GCQ is implemented in all parts of the country except in the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, Central Luzon (excluding Aurora), Pangasinan, Benguet, Iloilo, Cebu, Bacolod City, Davao City, Albay and Zamboanga City which are under stricter enhanced community quarantine. This will last until May 15, unless extended or modified by the government.
One modestly hopeful development for the United States comes in Iraq, where Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, an America-friendly former chief of intelligence, has formed a new government. U.S. commanders will hold a strategic dialogue with Kadhimi in June, and they expect some U.S. troops will remain in Iraq training its military. The number will be less than the current 5,000 but still in the thousands, U.S. officials believe.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen



Patnaik and Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Pratap Sarangi on Friday expressed grief over the death of 16 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtra, and conveyed their condolences to the families of the deceased.

Taking to Twitter, the CM said he was "deeply anguished" over the loss of lives in the incident.

"My condolences to the bereaved families," the chief minister tweeted.

Union Petroleum and Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan wished speedy recovery to the injured.

"Pained at the loss of lives due to a rail accident at Aurangabad, Maharashtra. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families. Pray for quick recovery of the injured," the minister tweeted.

Union Minister of State for MSME, Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries Pratap Sarangi prayed for the well- being of the bereaved families.

"Saddened beyond words about the loss of lives in the rail accident near Aurangabad in Maharashtra. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families. Praying lord Jagannath for the speedy recovery to the injured," he posted on his Twitter handle.

Among others, BJP national vice-president and former MP, Baijayant Panda said a high-level inquiry has been ordered into the incident.

"Deeply pained to learn of the train accident in #Aurangabad Maharashtra early today. The union govt is closely monitoring the incident & a high level inquiry has been ordered. Prayers for the speedy recovery of the inured & condolences to the bereaved families," Panda wrote on Twitter.

Sixteen migrant workers sleeping on the rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district on Friday morning.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has decided that he will be tested daily for the coronavirus after one of his valets tested positive for the deadly disease.

A military aide of Trump, whom the White House officials described as a personal valet, tested positive for coronavirus.

The valet, a member of the military, would have had very close contact with Trump, and assisted him with his food, clothes and other personal needs, CBS reported.

Trump, however, denied having close contact with the sick valet.

"I've had very little personal contact with this gentleman," Trump told reporters on Thursday in the Oval Office. "I know who he is, good person, but I've had very little contact."



(Vice President) Mike (Pence) has had very little contact with him. But Mike was tested and I was tested. We were both tested," Trump said.

Responding to questions, Trump said he, the vice president and other staff of the White House would be tested for coronavirus every day.

"I just had a test. In fact, I had one yesterday and one today, and it is negative. Mike just had a test and it is negative," he said on a day when the US passed yet another grim milestone of having 75,000 deaths due to the coronavirus.

"But they do the tests and it just shows you that the fallacy -- it is what I have been saying -- testing is not a perfect art. No matter what you do, testing is not a perfect art. So we test once a week. Now we are going to go testing once a day. But even when you test once a day, somebody could -- something happens where they catch something," the president said.

Trump repeated that Americans were "warriors" in their efforts to overcome the pandemic that has ravaged the US economy.

"We're all warriors together," he said. "I am, you are, we all are."



According to Johns Hopkins University, the US reported over 76,000 deaths and has above 1,256,000 cases of coronavirus infections, making the country the worst hit by the pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Andhra Pradesh government on Friday constituted a five-member high-powered committee to probe Thursdays leakage of Styrene vapour gas from LG Polymers India Ltd in Visakhapatnam that claimed 12 lives.

The committee will be headed by special chief secretary (environment, forests, science and technology) Neerab Kumar Prasad and comprise special chief secretary (industries and commerce) Karikal Valaven, Visakhapatnam collector V Vinay Chand, commissioner of police R K Meena and AP Pollution Control Board member secretary Vivek Yadav.

The high-powered committee will inquire into the causes of the leakage, including possible lapses in the plants adherence to safety protocols; it will study the long-term effects of the gas leakage on the surrounding villages, if any and recommend action to be taken against the company if negligence is found.

The committee will also suggest measures to be taken by industry units, including safety audits, to prevent such mishaps in future and will also make observations and suggestions for all similar industrial plants, which will be included in their report to be submitted within a month.

Meanwhile, state industries minister Mekapati Gautam Reddy, who visited the LG Polymers chemical plant at Visakhapatnam and held meetings with the officials, said experts were making concerted efforts to neutralize Styrene gas at LG Polymers plant. He said it might take another 48 hours.

With regards to the gas leak, he said it occurred during maintenance in preparation to restart production halted during the lockdown.

At a review meeting in the morning, chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy directed the officials to identify hazardous factories in and around Visakhapatnam located in densely populated areas. He asked for a comprehensive roadmap to make Visakhapatnam a risk-free city by shifting hazardous industries to places far away from habitations.

Also Read: Andhra Pradesh gas leak: NGT slaps interim penalty of 50 cr on LG Polymers India

The chief minister instructed the officials to immediately release ex-gratia of 1 crore to each of the families of the deceased, 10 lakh to each patient on ventilator, 1 lakh each to other patients and 25,000 to those who underwent treatment.

Health minister Alla Nani said the government was immersed in the relief and rehabilitation process including evacuation and rehabilitation on a war-footing of 1,500 villagers in the vicinity of LG Polymers plant soon after the news of the leakage was received.

He said 554 victims were shifted to hospitals and 128 admitted persons have completely recovered. 305 patients, including 52 infants, are being treated at the King George Hospital. There are 121 others, who are being treated at private hospitals and are out of danger. As of now, nobody was on ventilator support. The government would provide complete medical support to all of them, he added.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
The maddening experience of shopping for electricity has spawned a group of concierge websites that say they find the lowest-price plans and move their customers when better deals appear.

But some retail electric providers are refusing to do business with the sites, and regulators have decided thats OK  at least for now, despite concerns over fairness and competition.

The states Public Utility Commission approved new rules for electricity brokers last week, including a provision that lets energy retailers refuse to sell electricity plans to customers of the deal-finding sites.

The commission agreed with trade groups representing the biggest electricity sellers in Texas that a fundamental principle of competitive markets is that buyers and sellers come together willingly, according to the order. But PUC Chairman DeAnn Walker said during a commission meeting last week that the more she thought about it, the more concerned she became that power retailers were trying to shut out the concierge sites.

It just doesnt feel right to me, Walker said. But she, along with the other two commissioners, opted to wait to see how the market shakes out before intervening.

POWER TO CONFUSE: Will the real Power to Choose stand up?

The Legislature last year approved a measure recommended by the PUC requiring electricity brokers to register with the commission and comply with consumer protection rules.

Concierge services act on behalf of consumers to buy power, typically charging a flat monthly or per kilowatt-hour fee to manage electricity purchases. Their computer programs cut through the confusing multitier plans, bill credits and debits, and free nights and weekend arrangements offered by retail electricity sellers, potentially saving shoppers hundreds of dollars a year.

But concierge services also are finding the low-margin plans offered on the state run-Power to Choose shopping website that some retailers offer to attract new customers in the competitive market. Retail providers offer the low-price options hoping that customers will stick with them when the plan expires  or that theyll forget the plan expired and continue to pay a higher default rate.

Concierge service provider EZ Electricity has run into problems signing up customers on some plans offered on Power to Choose. Retail sellers identify EZs IP address and wont let it complete the sign-ups, said President Mike Brasovan, who wouldnt identify retailers who refuse to sell power.

Brasovan sees the practice as discriminatory.

Everyone should be eligible for the publicly available deals, he told the PUC.

For retail electric providers, its a legal issue: They dont want to be accused of enrolling customers into plans without permission and shouldnt be required to accept a brokers claim that it has legal authority to enroll clients in power plans.

Forcing sales violates a free-market principal that buyers and sellers come together willingly, according to Alliance for Retail Markets, a group that represents the biggest sellers of electricity in Texas including NRG Energy, TXU Energy, Direct Energy and Calpine.

The Texas Energy Association for Marketers, a group of retail electricity providers that didnt disclose its members in commission records, argued that retail electric sellers should be able to require that brokers get power-of-attorney agreements for each customer. The brokers say thats a complicated and unnecessary obligation that insurance and real estate brokers arent required to meet.

Neither trade group returned calls for comment.

In the end, the commission said it will not tell retail electric providers how to determine if brokers have legal authority to act for their clients. The commission also will not require retail electricity providers to accept enrollments from electricity concierge companies, according to the order.

Concierge electricity brokers say it hasnt been easy to go toe to toe against retail electric providers whose profit margins depend on consumers who dont pay much attention to their electricity bills. The new service  when done well  gives households access to sophisticated electricity buyers who understand competitive power markets, said Jesson Bradshaw, CEO of concierge service Energy Ogre.

Its not like buying shoes, he said.

Still, retail electric providers through their trade groups tried to use the opportunity of setting new broker registration rules to slow the growth of companies that help consumers find the cheapest power plans, he said. The fight illustrates whats at stake for retail electric providers.

Theres no question on profit pressure, Bradshaw said.

lynn.sixel@chron.com

twitter.com/lmsixel
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Rain and snow showers this morning. Then remaining overcast for the afternoon. Some mixed winter precipitation possible late. Morning high of 41F with temps falling to near 20. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. Low 13F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph.
With Sidewalk Labs out of the picture at Quayside, civic leaders say theres still an opportunity to build something ambitious on the site, including truly affordable housing, unfettered public access to the waterfront and anything other than the status quo condos already in the city.

Googles sister firm announced Thursday it was no longer interested in developing the 12 acres of mostly publicly owned land on the eastern waterfront into a high-tech neighbourhood of the future, but one expert says that an opportunity remains to create a large neighbourhood of affordable housing on the property.

Sidewalk Labs had proposed up to 40 per cent of the units on the site would be affordable housing.

But David Hulchanski, a professor of housing and community development at the University of Toronto, said thats setting the bar too low.

Sidewalk Labs didnt intend to make money on lower and moderate income housing. Lets cut the BS, he said.

He said a model akin to the nearby St. Lawrence neighbourhood is what should now unfold at Quayside.

The area could become truly affordable  50 per cent social or public housing, 25 per cent purpose-built market rental housing and 25 per cent condominiums, said .

There are all kinds of ways to fund that model  direct capital grants or long-term subsidies to the buildings from the federal and provincial governments. And lets have our best designers figuring out the most of this type of housing we can put on the site.

Hulchanski added that the waterfront, near Yonge Street and west of Bay Street already has a lot of condos, with the exception of the co-ops and public housing near Bathurst Quay.

The St. Lawrence neighbourhood, built in the 1970s with the federal governments non-profit and co-op housing programs has 46 per cent condominium apartments, four per cent ownership townhouses, 25 per cent non-profit co-ops and non-profit rentals, and 25 per cent municipal non-profit rental.

The citizens group #BlockSidewalk, which opposed the Sidewalk Labs project, also supports the idea of creating a St. Lawrence-type neighbourhood at Quayside.

The need to use public resources to solve our housing crisis is becoming more pronounced by the day, particularly in light or the current pandemic. said #BlockSidewalk member Thorben Wieditz on Friday. We have models for mixed income communities in Toronto that we know work. We have celebrated the St. Lawrence neighbourhood as one of those models for decades, but abandoned it immediately after it was realized.

Others say elements of the Sidewalk Labs project such as climate sustainability as well as pedestrian and bike-focused communities with access to Torontos waterfront, shouldnt be abandoned.

I think there were a lot of things (Sidewalk) were doing right, but it got overshadowed in the privacy and data debate, said Cherise Burda, executive director of the Ryerson City Building Institute.

Rather than status quo buildings Burda likes the idea of wood frame construction  Sidewalk Labs wanted to build an entire neighbourhood of wood buildings at Quayside  and innovations such as sensors that would know when to water rooftop farms on top of buildings.

Mayor John Tory on Friday echoed concerns about doing something unique at Quayside.

Were going to start over and do something exciting in terms of  innovation, housing, transportation.

Nothing ordinary is going to happen down there and thats the process we need to begin again, Tory told CBC Radio.

Similarly, the head of Waterfront Torontos design review panel hopes authorities reflect on lessons learned from the Sidewalk Labs chapter, before restarting Quayside development plans.

We have to understand the Canadianness of how things evolved (with Sidewalk Labs) where so many players got involved and the publics voice was really important, said Paul Bedford, a former chief planner of Toronto.

Ken Greenberg, a prominent urban designer who advised Sidewalk Labs, said he hopes a clean slate doesnt mean losing the valuable work that was done.

Mobility, micro climates, the nature of public space, live-work developments, housing affordability, incorporating social services into neighbourhoods, mass timber construction  I would hope all that learning doesnt get lost, he said.

Quayside precipitated a very important discussion about technologies in city, about privacy, getting governments to have more robust protocols, which are more important than ever now (during the pandemic) when everything has gone digital, Greenberg said.

David Rider is the Star's City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider

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Barr Says Mueller Was Responsible for Looking at Russian Disinformation in Steele Dossier

Attorney General William Barr said Special Counsel Robert Mueller was responsible for looking at whether former British intelligence officer Christopher Steeles dossier had been compromised with disinformation from Russia.

Barr made the comments during an interview with CBSs Catherine Herridge where they discussed a range of topics including the Justice Departments decision to dismiss the charges against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, COVID-19 measures, and Russian disinformation in the Steele dossier.

During the interview, Herridge asked Barr to comment on how the FBI continued to use information from the Steele dossier even though the agency was given multiple warnings that the document was likely the product of Russian disinformation.

Barr said he thinks the revelation is one of the most troubling aspects of this whole thing.

I said it in testimony on the Hill, I cant remember if it was my confirmation, that I said I was very concerned about the possibility that that dossier and Steeles activities were used as a vector for the Russians to inject disinformation into the political campaign, Barr said.

I think that is something that Robert Mueller was responsible for looking at under his charter, which is the potential of Russian influence. But I think it was ignored and there was mounting indications that this could very well have been happening and no one really stopped to look at it.

A number of footnotes from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitzs December report were declassified at the request of Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last month. The footnotes revealed that the FBI was advised that a portion of the Steele dossier was likely the product of a Russian disinformation campaign meant to harm U.S. foreign relations.

Mueller was appointed in 2017 to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election after President Donald Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey. A newly declassified scope memo issued by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein revealed that the FBI was still investigating allegations against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in May 2017. That investigation relied on the Steele dossier.

Information from the Steele dossier was central to the FBIs decision to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil Page. The dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm, claimed collusion between the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Muellers investigation ultimately concluded that they were unable to establish such collusion.

Based on publicly available documents, there is little indication that Mueller had looked into whether the dossier was free from Russian disinformation.

Some of the declassified footnotes released last month said that the FBI had received information indicating the potential for Russia disinformation influencing Steeles election reporting.

In addition to the information in Steeles Delta file documenting Steeles frequent contacts with representatives of Russia oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from [redacted] indicating the potential for Russia disinformation influencing Steeles election reporting, one of the footnotes states, referring to FBIs codename for the investigation of the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, another footnote shows that the FBI learned that one of Steeles sources was linked to the Russian Intelligence Service, and was rumored to be a former Russian intelligence officer.

Horowitzs December report found 17 significant errors or omissions in the original Page FISA applications as well as subsequent applications. Many of those errors were related to the FBIs reliance on the Steele dossier and information within it to obtain the warrants against Page.

During the interview, Herridge asked Barr what he thought motivated the investigators.

Well, I think one of the things you have to guard against, both as a prosecutor and I think as an investigator, is that if you get too wedded to a particular outcome and youre pursuing a particular agenda, you close your eyes to anything that sort of doesnt fit with your preconception. And I think thats probably the phenomenon were looking at here, Barr responded.

The Steele dossier, which fueled two years of wild speculation in the media about alleged ties between Trump, his associates, and Russia, contains unverified claims that served as the foundation of the TrumpRussia narrative, which was subject to the Mueller investigation. His report did not confirm, nor provide, any evidence for the 103 key allegations contained in the Steele dossier.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
To the Times:

The COVID-19 global pandemic has thrust educators from all over the Commonwealth onto the public stage as theyve become the central focus of the public, media and politicians. Unfortunately, they are often portrayed in an unflattering and inaccurate manner. Ive heard comments such as, Teachers are getting paid and they are not working, Are teachers giving their pay back because they did not work for weeks? and It sure must be nice to be a teacher- they did not suffer any hardship at all. I am not sure if these comments are related to jealousy, sour grapes or some politician who wants 20 seconds of media attention.

I was in education for 38 years and worked 31 of those years as an administrator. I have seen very dedicated and hard-working teachers who routinely arrive to work early, stay late and use a full day over the weekend planning the week ahead. Beyond their teaching, these professionals also assume duties as surrogate mothers, fathers, referees and bank loan officers for student lunches. And dont believe for a second theres anything as a full summer off. Teachers invest that downtime in more study and preparation and then return to their rooms by August getting ready for the first day of school.

Dont believe anythings changed for teachers during this public health crisis. Take it from me. I have heard and seen teachers really step up to the plate to make a positive difference for the students they serve. I can report to you that I know of teachers who are driving to each students house to visit and express how much they miss them. I know of teachers who call students often to either help with homework, wish them happy birthday or just say they cannot wait to see them and to give them a big hug. There are teachers who drive to neighborhoods and have students gather so they can read them a story, with appropriate social distancing rules in place, naturally. Many teachers have told me they would rather be back in school teaching because it is very difficult to meet the needs of all of their students via technology.

I know of administrators who have driven more than 500 miles to visit each teacher during this week of teacher appreciation. I also learned of superintendents who drove to each seniors house to wish them the best as they depart for post-high school jobs or education.

What the public and legislators dont understand is teachers wear many hats. They nurture kids, hug kids, listen to kids when things are not going well for them at home. They attend students little league games and yes, they teach as well. Dedicated teachers classrooms are like family to them. They will do anything to make a difference.

So, the next time you complain, take a step back and realize the profession is populated with very caring, dedicated people who want to make a difference. It saddens me for you to think otherwise. To those who serve in the classroom, thanks for going above and beyond every day, including instructional days like the ones youre experiencing now, in front of a computer screen. You are vital. You are needed. You are my heros.

Dr. Edward Albert, Lebanon, PA
Ghanaian Doctors & Dentists Association-UK (GDDA-UK) has donated Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) to some selected hospital both on Accra and the Northern Region as part of efforts to support COVID-19 Outbreak Response in Ghana.



The PPEs, worth GHS 52,500 were distributed to Lekma Hospital Greater Accra, Yendi Municipal Hospital, Northern Region, and some sanitizer to Ledzokuku Constituency in Accra.



Dr. Wiliam Kedjanyi, President of GDDA-UK on behalf of his members made to the donation to the hospitals.



Receiving the items, Medical Director of Lekma Hospital thanked GDDA-UK for their kind gesture.



The items for Ledzokuku Constituency were also received by the Member of Parliament for the area, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye - he was again handed over the PPEs for the Yendi Municipal hospital.







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.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 22:00:48|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- China's support for the United Nations (UN) is concrete as it has fully paid its membership and peacekeeping assessments this year, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Friday.

Catherine Pollard, Under-Secretary-General of the UN for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance, recently briefed the General Assembly on the financial situation of the UN. According to her report, 43 member states, including China, have paid their 2020 annual and peacekeeping assessments in full. Meanwhile, the UN is faced with difficulties including insufficient liquidity and arrears of some member states.

As the second-largest contributor to the UN regular budget and a responsible country, China has always earnestly fulfilled its financial obligations to the UN, Hua said at a press briefing.

"China's full payment of its membership dues demonstrates its support for the UN with concrete actions," she stressed.

The timely and full payment of assessments is a legal obligation that all UN member states should fulfill, and major countries should particularly play an exemplary role in addressing financial difficulties of the UN, she said.

As the international community is confronted with many global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, safeguarding multilateralism and the international system with the UN at the core is in the interest of all parties, the spokesperson said, adding that China will continue to support the work of the UN and promote world peace and development with other countries. Enditem
Tesla Inc. plans to reopen its sole U.S. car plant as soon as Friday, possibly setting up another battle with local health authorities in California.

The company aims to restart the factory Friday afternoon, chief executive officer Elon Musk told staff Thursday in an email seen by Bloomberg News. Musk cited California Gov. Gavin Newsoms announcement earlier that he will let manufacturers in parts of the state resume operations starting Friday.

What Musk didnt mention in his memo is that Newsom also had said local authorities could remain more restrictive than the state. San Francisco Bay area counties including Alameda, where Teslas plant is located, said they were leaving in place health orders that extend through the end of May.

Tesla representatives didnt respond to requests for comment. Valerie Capers Workman, the carmakers head of North American human resources, told employees in a separate email that Teslas Fremont plant will start operations with 30 per cent of normal headcount per shift. Its unclear whether that level of staffing will be enough to allow the company to produce cars again.

Production restart may not be until June, Dan Levy, a Credit Suisse analyst, cautioned in a note to clients. Tesla shares rose as much as 4.9 per cent as of 10:30 a.m. Friday in New York. The stock has surged more than 90 per cent this year.

Musk, 48, has sharply criticized shutdown orders, calling them fascist and likening them to forcible imprisonment. Tesla resisted pressure from Alameda and Fremont officials to idle the plant in March, claiming it was an essential business. The countys health officer disagreed and said the factory posed a risk to public health.

Earlier: Teslas drive to stay open irked city that saw health risk

Another reason its unclear whether Tesla will be able to produce vehicles  even if Alameda allows the company to reopen in Fremont  is that its suppliers in other states arent able to operate yet. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a separate announcement Thursday giving manufacturers the green light to reopen beginning May 11. That clears the way for parts suppliers to support General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NVs plans to restart their North American plants on May 18.

Were not out of the woods yet, but this is an important step forward, Whitmer said in a statement. This is good news for our state, our businesses, and our working families.

Total shutdown

Musk cheered Newsons announcement in a reply to one of the governors Twitter posts on Thursday. But Alameda County said in a statement that its current health order takes precedence over Newsoms guidance.

We will continue to work with our community and business leaders to accomplish careful, measured progress that allows us to maintain our gains as we move forward to further reopening and better times ahead, Alameda said in a joint statement issued by San Francisco Bay area counties and cities.

Tesla isnt producing any vehicles worldwide after having suspended production at its only other car factory, located on the outskirts of Shanghai, this week. Several workers who were supposed to return to work on Wednesday after Chinas five-day Labour Day break were told that their holiday would be extended and they will return as soon as May 9, people familiar with the matter have said.

Newsoms deference

In a press conference Thursday, Newsom said the state isnt telling local governments that feel its too soon to reopen to modify their orders.

For example, the Bay Area, Northern California, they have guidelines where they are a little more strict than these guidelines, he said. If they choose not to come into compliance with the state guidelines, they have that right.

Michigan is providing clear guidance for auto companies, component makers and factory workers after weeks of uncertainty about the timing. Most auto output ground to a halt in mid-March to slow the spread of the coronavirus and brace for a slump in car demand from home-bound consumers.

Losing just two weeks of production cost GM $600 million U.S. in cash in the first quarter, and carmakers have been borrowing money to tide them over during a shutdown likely to hurt second-quarter earnings even more.

Unions response

The United Auto Workers, whose members man the assembly lines at Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler, as well as some Tesla supplier workers, has resisted earlier efforts to reopen plants. But the unions president, Rory Gamble, signalled earlier this week the UAW would defer to the carmakers after participating in meetings with them on safeguarding safety.

We all knew this day would come at some point, Gamble said in a statement. While the companies have the sole contractual right to determine the opening of plants, our UAW focus and role is and will continue to be, on health and safety protocols in which we have the contractual right to protect our members.

Under Whitmers new executive order, manufacturers must implement a series of measures designed to protect workers from COVID-19. These requirements include a daily screening protocol when workers enter plants, including a questionnaire and temperature checks as soon as no-touch thermometers can be obtained.

They must also create dedicated entry points at every facility and suspend visits by all personnel deemed nonessential such as factory tour guests. Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler already have those protocols in place.

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Watch: Special flight with 177 stranded Indians from UAE lands in Kochi

Flight carrying stranded Indians in Abu Dhabi landed at Cochin International Airport. The repatriation flight of Air India Express brought back 177 Indian nationals. The first batch of stranded Indians included four infants. Thorough screenings were done at both Dubai and Kochi airport in view of Covid. Medical kits were also handed over to passengers. Indian government decided to repatriate its citizens in two special flights from UAE. This marks the start of repatriation process to bring stranded Indians home. MEA has prepared a chart to evacuate over 14,000 Indian nationals by 64 flights. These Indian nationals are stranded in 13 foreign countries. ...read more
College students in China create graduation photos to make up for regret caused by COVID-19 pandemic

Chinese college students have recently used image editing applications to design various graduation photos as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has made it impossible for them to pose for a graduation photo together.

Graduation photos made by students with image editing software. (Photo/Youth.cn)

Three students from a class of College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University in Changsha, capital of central Chinas Hunan province, recently created a set of special graduation photos for their class, Youth.cn reported Wednesday.

The designers said these photos are their way to commemorate their college life during the past four years.

Using photos of graduates faces and hand-drawn baccalaureate gowns, the three students, Ning Jiajun, He Jialei, and Ge Ziye, created group photos of the class posing for group photos in front of the school gate, library and other landmark buildings of Central South University.

(Photo/Youth.cn)

Dai Zexu, a student from a class of City College of Science and Technology, Chongqing University in southwest Chinas Chongqing municipality, also used photos of the faces of his classmates to create various graduation photos for his class, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

Even though Shanxi University of Finance and Economics Huashang College in Taiyuan, capital of north Chinas Shanxi province hasnt opened yet, Yang Weidong, a senior student of the university, has already created graduation photos for his class.

(Photo/Youth.cn)

Theres a slim chance that we will get together again, even when the pandemic ends, Yang said, explaining that some students will have already started working while some will be pursuing further study.

He decided to create a cloud-version of graduation photos for his class to try to make up for the regrets, said Yang, who has even had orders placed to make graduation photos for other classes at his university after his work attracted wide attention.

These photoshopped graduation photos touched many Internet users, some saying they want to laugh but feel sad at the same time.

(Photo/Youth.cn)

Classes, interviews, dissertation defense, and even goodbyes among college students in China must be conducted online, making the graduation season of the year 2020 much different from the previous ones.

Graduate students in Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, capital of east Chinas Zhejiang province were asked to go through formalities for leaving school between April 26 and 30 after returning to school in batches since April 26.

Such surprisingly short school terms made graduates feel regretful and reluctant to part from their schools and each other.

(Photo/Youth.cn)

(Photo/Youth.cn)
Since the coronavirus arrived in New Jersey, the northern region of the state has been hit harder than other regions. But the numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been slowly declining during the past few weeks.

Officials say the number of patients in hospitals across the state being treated for confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections dropped to the lowest level since they began publicly tracking hospitalizations in early April. The states 71 hospitals had 4,996 coronavirus patients as of 10 p.m. on Wednesday, marking weeks of steady declines and 40% drop since the peak in hospitalizations on April 14 at 8,270.

The charts below show the latest town-by-town numbers of overall COVID-19 cases and fatalities reported by health officials in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris, Passaic, Sussex and Warren counties. Most of the data was provided by county and municipal health agencies, and some was provided by the New Jersey Department of Health.

Some health agencies are not publicly releasing data on deaths in each town, while others are.

The charts were made using the most recently available data as of Thursday night, May 7. Essex Countys numbers were updated Friday morning, May 8.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Ryan Patti may be reached at rpatti@njadvancemedia.com. Mike Kinney may be reached at mkinney@njadvancemedia.com.
President Donald Trump cast doubt on the future of his "phase one" trade deal with China, one of the biggest accomplishments of his first term, saying Friday that he's struggling with Beijing in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic.

"Look, I'm having a very hard time with China," Trump said in an interview on Fox & Friends. "I made a great trade deal months before this whole thing happened. And it was kicking in, you know, a month ago and starting to kick in and starting to produce and then this happens and it sort of overrides so much."

Trump's remarks contrasted with statements from Chinese and U.S. officials earlier in the day that followed a phone call among the country's top trade negotiators, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They pledged to create favorable conditions for implementation of the bilateral trade deal and cooperate on the economy and public health, according to a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

But Trump has mused about somehow punishing China for the coronavirus outbreak, which has so far killed at least 75,000 Americans. He's been asked this week whether he might impose tariffs on China because of the virus, which he has suggested is the result of research the country was conducting in a lab in Wuhan, China.

"Nobody else ever made a trade deal with China, because they couldn't do it, because China wouldn't do it, because China had a one-way street to rip off the United States. We were losing $500 billion a year, five hundred," Trump said Friday. "And so I'm very torn, I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth."

A statement from Lighthizer's office following the phone call was more positive.

"Both sides agreed that good progress is being made on creating the governmental infrastructures necessary to make the agreement a success," USTR said. "In spite of the current global health emergency, both countries fully expect to meet their obligations under the agreement in a timely manner," the statement added.

Relations have deteriorated between the countries because of the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese officials have denied U.S. allegations that the pandemic is the result of work conducted at the Wuhan lab, and China's foreign ministry has accused some U.S. officials of trying "to shift their own responsibility for their poor handling of the epidemic to others."

The phone call was the first time Liu and Lighthizer have officially spoken about the agreement since it was signed in January, which was just before the coronavirus pandemic hit the world's two biggest economies and upended global supply chains. The deal called for Liu and Lighthizer to talk every six months.

Speaking on Bloomberg Television, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said that while the U.S.-China trade relationship is on track, Trump is "very keen" to bring more business back to the U.S. through incentives for companies.

"Too much emphasis on supply chains overseas is not safe, not reliable, not good business practice," he said in an interview with Jonathan Ferro.

S&P 500 futures hit their session highs after reports that China and the U.S. had a phone call on trade. Japan saw gains of about 1.5%, the largest moves, while shares also rose in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Sydney. The yuan nudged higher.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he'd be able to report in the next week or two if he's happy with how the trade deal is progressing.

Chinese purchases of U.S. exports so far have been behind the pace needed to reach the target of the first year's $76.7 billion increase, as imports of U.S. goods declined by 5.9% in the first four months of 2020 from a year ago due to the coronavirus outbreak. Given that imports in 2019 were smaller than 2017, the pressure to catch up is mounting.

The uncertainty and weaker economy caused by the coronavirus outbreak could impact China's ability to meet those targets, including through lower domestic demand, clogged logistics and supply chains, and reduced U.S. capacity to supply goods and services.

Some purchases are being made, with China buying six cargoes of soybeans Thursday and more than 600,000 tons of corn recently.

China has made progress in other sections of the the trade deal, lifting restrictions on a variety of U.S. agricultural imports including beef and poultry, scrapping foreign ownership limits in the financial sector and publishing a guideline on intellectual property protection.
Prayagraj, May 8 : In a rare gesture, the Allahabad High Court has converted a letter into a PIL and has directed the state government counsel to respond to the matter on May 11.

The letter, addressed to the Chief Justice, raised the issue of the death of Virendra Singh of Prayagraj, who was corona positive and allegedly died due to laxity in treatment.

The court bench, comprising Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Siddhartha Varma, on Thursday, passed the order in a letter petition filed by Gaurav Kumar Gaur, an advocate of high court.

The letter was registered by high court registry and titled: 'Inhuman condition at quarantine centres and for providing better treatment to corona positives.

The court also took cognizance of a video clip which is in circulation, showcasing the pathetic conditions at the quarantine centres. The court asked the chief standing counsel of the state government to apprise it on the next date of hearing.

On May 5, advocate Gaurav Kumar Gaur had sent an email to Chief Justice that the wife of Virendra Singh had telephonically informed him that the quarantine centre where her husband and other family members were lodged, does not have hygienic conditions and no adequate treatment was being provided to Singh who later succumbed to coronavirus.

According to Singh's widow, more than the corona, her husband was a victim of apathy of doctors.
In December 2019 and May 2020, Lurie Childrens notified some of our patients about two nurse assistants who had accessed certain patients medical records without an identified patient need. We have no reason to suspect any misuse of patient information associated with this incident. Lurie Childrens addressed this issue in accordance with our disciplinary policies, and the employees no longer work for the Hospital, Pesch said in an emailed statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 21:01:38|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Police of Vietnam's northern Lang Son province have busted a drug trafficking ring, seizing 16 cakes of heroin, Vietnam News Agency reported Friday.

The authorities caught red-handed two men aged 44 and 35 transporting the drug in Lang Son's Chi Lang District on Thursday. Further investigating the case, the police arrested a 38-year-old woman and a 36-year-old man, who hired the former to transport the drug.

All the four are from northern Son La province.

According to the Vietnamese law, those convicted of smuggling over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine are punishable by death. Making or trading 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal drugs also faces death penalty. Enditem
If there ends up being a movie made about the coronavirus pandemic, tough-talking Godfather actor Robert De Niro wants to portray New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In an appearance on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' De Niro, 76, expressed his reverence for Cuomo and offered to take on the role in a hypothetical film about the current global health crisis.

'I guess I'll play Cuomo,' De Niro suggested. 'He's doing what a President should do.'

Actor Robert De Niro says he wants to play Andrew Cuomo in a coronavirus because of the governor's handling of the crisis. The tough-talking Godfather actor is pictured during an appearance on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'

In an appearance on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' De Niro expressed his reverence for Cuomo and offered to take on the role in a hypothetical film about the COVID-19 outbreak. Colbert (left) and De Niro are pictured during the broadcast interview

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pictured during a coronavirus briefing this week

Later in the segment, De Niro referred to President Donald Trump as 'the idiot' and said he will support the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden for the upcoming 2020 election.

'We, of course, could have survived this much better if the idiot had done the right thing, listened and heeded all the warnings,' De Niro said. 'There were many, many warnings, and we are all paying for it now. It would have been bad in some ways, but never like this.'

De Niro went on to say that he could see Cuomo running for president, saying that he could see a President Cuomo in the future as his handling of the crisis has surpassed what Trump has done in office to combat the deadly virus.

So far, there have been 1,305,828 confirmed cases in the US of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for 77,493 deaths.

De Niro, a New Yorker known for playing Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather Part 2' and for other major films, including 'Raging Bull' and 'Taxi Driver', has vehemently criticized Trump for his presidential actions.

He also has proceeded to attack Republicans as 'enablers,' comparing the administration to a Shakespearean tragedy.

Robert De Niro says that he could see New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo running for president, saying that he could see a 'President Cuomo' in the future as his handling of the crisis has surpassed what President Donald Trump has done in office to combat the deadly virus

'It's crazy, I have no words for it any more and what's scarier about it all is that the Republicans and his enablers around him are not doing anything,' he said. 'They are around a crazy person and they don't do anything. They are not standing up to him.

He added, 'No one has the b---s to stand up to this guy. They all have a platform, they're just not doing anything. What could be worth it for them, to sacrifice their souls to make this deal with the devil to work with this guy?'

In a recent interview with Variety, De Niro slammed the current administration, saying that Trump had the opportunity to stop the crisis, but didn't.

'The whole thing is unimaginable,' De Niro said.

'This administration made everybody suffer so needlessly,' the actor added. 'What the president has done is beyond infuriating.'

He went on to add that Trump 'could have stopped this and he didn't, and he doesn't show any empathy for people.'

'Every day, he demonstrates his ineptitude and idiocy. I can't wait until Election Day' De Niro told Variety.

In a recent interview with Variety, De Niro slammed the current administration, saying that Trump had the opportunity to stop the crisis, but didn't. The actor is pictured onstage at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, California, in February

De Niro made similar criticisms during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper last month.

When asked to compare the feeling in New York to that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks he said, 'It feels the same.'

'Except this islike something we see in a movie. It happened so fast,' De Niro added.
Cayuga County car dealers have been given the green light to resume in-person sales.

After getting the OK from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Cayuga County Legislature Chair Aileen McNabb-Coleman on Thursday said that people may now visit automobile dealerships by appointment, under a set of conditions aimed at preserving social distancing being practiced during the coronavirus pandemic.

With an updated order by the state regarding lifting the in-person restriction, and in consultation with the the Cayuga County Health Department, McNabb-Coleman said in a news release that automobile dealership showings and sales, by appointment, are now permissible in the county. All interactions with the public are subject to current social distancing guidelines.

Local car dealers are encouraging management to enforce the measures of the New Car Dealer Associations On-Site Safety Protocols, McNabb-Coleman said, including all guidance within the surface cleaning protocols, employee safety measures, facility management and customer contact.

In addition, the county is asking auto dealers to follow the guidance outlined by the Cayuga County Health Department to open showrooms to appointments:

 Consider removing break room chairs to reduce the likelihood of taking a break in close proximity of others

 Be cognizant of employees calling in sick, ask if they want to share their health symptoms, if they seem COVID-19 related, and encourage them to seek health care, including calling the health department.

 Remain aware of who is working when, with whom, and the times as the health department would need this information if contact tracing were required.

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The good news for most residents of Malaga province this week was that the Junta de Andalucia regional government was asking Madrid to allow most of the area to move into the looser restrictions of Phase One. This included the Costa del Sol.

However, in its feedback to central government, the Junta believed the public health district that covers the city of Malaga and neighbouring Rincon de la Victoria needed to keep some extra restrictions imposed on it. In these two municipalities, the ban on meetings with friends would remain, including funeral wakes, seminars and outdoor events.

It wasn't certain at time of press if the government would agree to this split in Malaga province ahead of Monday's change of phase. Ministers have said they prefer to work with changes across whole provinces rather than public health districts, which members of the public don't normally recognise as easily.

The Junta is recommending all eight provinces it covers move fully to Phase One, apart from the Malaga city/Rincon area and areas in and around Granada city.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When international student Dasha Semisynova received the email from St. Johns University notifying her to move out of her dorm at the Grymes Hill campus in mid-March in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, she grabbed essential items like her money, laptop, chargers, passport, and just a few changes of clothes.

The St. Johns junior moved in with her partner, who has an apartment in Rossville, and was expecting to return to her dorm just two weeks later. But as the coronavirus outbreak grew and Gov. Andrew Cuomo put New York on PAUSE, Semisynova realized she may be in trouble.

An international student from Moscow, Semisynova said she must remain on Staten Island until further notice -- continuing to study and complete assignments for her online classes. With Russia also under lockdown due to the coronavirus, she said she doesnt know when shell be able to go home.

As of right now, I cant go back because the flights are canceled -- so basically Im literally stuck here, she said. The lockdown keeps postponing, and I dont know how long Im going to be here or even allowed to go back [to Russia] any time soon."

According to St. Johns, there are 1,210 international students enrolled at both the Queens and Staten Island campuses this school year.

Brian Browne, university spokesperson, said most international students returned to their home country or found alternative living arrangements in the United States with family or friends when students were told to vacate campus due to the coronavirus.

He added that some international students are being housed in a university-owned building adjacent to the Queens campus.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

And its unknown when students at St. Johns University will be able to return to the dorms to retrieve their personal items.

When Wagner College in Grymes Hill closed its dorms, the college set up a system to allow students to pick a time when they will pack up and move out of their room. The College of Staten Island (CSI) in Willowbrook vacated its Dolphin Cove residence halls when the state was exploring the possibility of setting up the college as a temporary field hospital -- moving all residents who couldnt return home to a single residential facility at City University of New York (CUNY) Queens College.

The timing for students retrieving personal belongings that remain on campus is contingent upon public health guidelines and the gradual easing of the New York State PAUSE order from Gov. Cuomo," said Browne. "St. Johns remains focused on providing students with a safe environment that follows the directives of local and state health officials. May 15th is the next benchmark date for determining what businesses and services may resume operations and under what conditions. We will inform students when public health guidelines allow for the retrieval of their belongings.

The New York State on PAUSE executive order is set to expire on May 15 -- as the state plans to reopen in phases by region.

But Semisynova said she is struggling financially now -- trying to help her partner with rent and groceries.

She explained that when she first moved out of her dorm room, she made sure to take all the cash she had. She is living off of that money, as well as money in her bank account -- which includes refunds and financial assistance sent by St. Johns.

She said she has received $400 from a partial refund of her meal plan, and $250 from financial assistance given to students in need from funds donated by college alumni. She added that the university also gave her a partial refund for her housing, rather than a credit toward next semester.

They give $250 which is like -- Im grateful for, but its not enough, she explained.

Due to strict lockdown procedures in Russia, Semisynova said her mother isnt able to transfer or send her money. So Semisynova and her partner are trying to find ways to save -- only buying essential food items.

Semisynova also said she reached out to St. Johns to see if she is eligible for financial assistance through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, & Economical Security (CARES) Act -- which provides funding to higher education institutions to provide emergency financial aid grants to students struggling during the pandemic.

According to Rep. Max Rose, St. Johns University is receiving more than $12 million under the CARES Act, with over $6 million allocated for students.

However, apparently Semisynova doesnt qualify for funding through the relief package. According the U.S. Department of Education, students who are U.S. citizens and are eligible to file or have filed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid form can apply for the CARES Act grants.

That means international students, as well as undocumented and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students arent eligible.

Students must also be enrolled in ground-based education to be eligible for the emergency financial aid -- which means students enrolled in online-only courses for the entirety of the semester arent eligible. Those who had in-person classes before colleges were forced to move courses online are eligible.

To be considered for a CARES Act grant, students must have been directly impacted by COVID-19 and have a valid 2019-20 FAFSA on file, meet all basic federal aid eligibility requirements and be enrolled in ground-based education (on-campus courses not online), said Browne.

Students at St. Johns who meet those guidelines and are eligible to apply for CARES Act grants received direct communication from the college to instruct them of the application process and program requirements, according to Browne.

"In the weeks since the COVID-19 crisis began, St. Johns University has worked with students at all of our domestic and international campus sites to respond to emergency concerns and to help address unexpected circumstances, hardships, and unmet needs, said Browne.

He added that St. Johns is using institutional resources and a donation-supported Emergency Aid Fund to provide a variety of support services, including, but not limited to, financial help, emergency housing, food insecurity and counseling services to assist the unique needs of the diverse campus community.

"The university is in regular communication with our students to provide assistance with the challenges they are facing, said Browne.

45 Photos of the pandemic in NYC: Our lives changed forever

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  As the threat of coronavirus disease persists, the Archdiocese of Manila is about to break a wedding tradition  there will be no bridesmaids for the meantime.

Wala na munang mga abay, the archdiocese said.

It also announced that only one set of sponsors and the immediate family of the bride and groom are allowed to witness nuptials this year once the government allows religious activities to resume. It's not clear when such gatherings will be allowed again in the predominantly Roman Catholic country.

But the archdiocese, which is comprised of churches in the cities of Manila, Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, and Pasay (except Villamor Air Base and Newport City), said the guidelines may be temporary since the country is under an extraordinary situation.

Some weddings in the Philippines have been postponed or cancelled, with officials prohibiting large gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

On April 30, the government said it was allowing church and other religious activities to resume in areas with low-to moderate risk of COVID-19 spread and are under general community quarantine or GCQ. A day later, it reversed the decision following complaints from local officials.

GCQ is implemented in all parts of the country except in the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, Central Luzon (excluding Aurora), Pangasinan, Benguet, Iloilo, Cebu, Bacolod City, Davao City, Albay and Zamboanga City which are under stricter enhanced community quarantine. This will last until May 15, unless extended or modified by the government.
Myriam Borzee/iStockBy WILLIAM MANSELL and ELLA TORRES, ABC News

(NEW YORK) -- A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 270,000 people worldwide.



Over 3.84 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with 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. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.



Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 1.2 million diagnosed cases and at least 75,781 deaths.



Here's how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:

5:15 p.m.: 87 veterans have died at Massachusetts nursing home



The Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services has announced that 87 veteran residents from the Holyoke Soldiers' Home have now died, equivalent to more than one-third of the facility's population when the virus first struck the home in March. Seventy-three of the deceased residents have tested positive for COVID-19, while 13 have tested negative and one cause of death remains unknown.



There have been 78 other veteran residents who have also tested positive, and 106 veterans remain onsite at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home. Thirty-one other residents have been moved to offsite facilities.



The Holyoke Soldiers' Home employs approximately 348 staff members, 83 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19.



On April 10, federal prosecutors in Boston launched an investigation into whether the facility violated the civil rights of its residents by failing to provide them proper care during the pandemic.

4:00 p.m.: New Jersey reports 1st child death



A 4-year-old boy in New Jersey with underlying conditions has died of COVID-19, marking the state's first death of a child due to the virus, according to Gov. Phil Murphy.



"Weve lost another blessed life.  In this case its unfathomable that its a 4-year-old," Murphy said at his daily briefing.



The boy's death was among the 162 fatalities in the last 24 hours, the governor said. There have been 8,952 deaths in the state in total.



Murphy said that the rates of infection were slowing across the state, however, there were still 1,985 new cases, putting the total number of confirmed cases at 13,5454.



He also announced that he was signing an executive order to create a restart and recovery advisory council.

3:46 p.m.: Apple to reopen some stores beginning next week

Apple will reopen some of its stores in the United States beginning next week, the company said in a statement to ABC News.



Stores in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho and South Carolina will be the first to welcome back customers, the company said.



Apple added that it is taking precautions with the reopening, including temperature checks, social distancing and face coverings.



The social distancing protocols mean that there will be a limited number of people in the stores, so delays may occur for walk-in customers.



"As local guidance varies around the US there may be slight modifications to our procedures. As always, our thoughts are with everyone affected by COVID-19 and those working around the clock to treat, study and contain its spread," according to Apple.



3:10 p.m.: Member of Pence's staff tests positive



Katie Miller, the press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, is the staff member who tested positive for COVID-19, President Donald Trump said at a briefing.



She's a wonderful young woman, Katie, Trump told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jon Karl when he asked if the president had any information on the sick staffer, whose identity until now had been kept anonymous. It's -- I believe the press person. Right? Its a press person. So, she tested positive, out of the blue.



Multiple sources confirmed to ABC News that Miller is the staffer who tested positive. Miller is married to another White House aide, the presidents senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller.



Trump said that she hasn't come into contact with me," but that she "spends some time with the vice president.



White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed earlier that a member of Pence's staff tested positive, but she did not reveal the person's name.



This marks the second positive case reported in the White House in two days. CNN on Thursday reported one of President Donald Trump's personal valets had tested positive.



"We have put in place the guidelines that are experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing, all of the recommended guidelines, these businesses that have essential workers. We are now putting them in place here in the White House. As America reopen safely, the white house is continuing to operate safely," McEnany said.



Pence was in Iowa on Friday.



3:01 p.m.: Childhood vaccines are massively down



Childhood vaccines are down during the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



In April alone, there were about 3.2 million fewer doses ordered of non-flu vaccines compared to the same time last year, according to the CDC. For measles vaccinations, the agency reported there were about 400,000 fewer doses ordered.



"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of the importance of vaccination. The identified declines in routine pediatric vaccine ordering and doses administered might indicate that U.S. children and their communities face increased risks for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases," the CDC said in its report.



The CDC said it was "critical" to remind parents of the "vital need to protect their children against serious vaccine-preventable diseases, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues."



When social distancing measures are lifted, it is possible children who are not vaccinated will be more vulnerable to preventable diseases, according to the CDC.



2:46 p.m.: Large-scale events canceled in Boston through Labor Day



Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced that all events which bring crowds together, including parades and festivals, will not take place before Labor Day.



"This is a hard public health decision, but it's the right one. I encourage people to rethink their events, and thank them for their work to inspire us, and help our communities get through this difficult time," Walsh said.



Some events that were already planned, including the Mother's Day Walk for Peace and a live performance from the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Fourth of July, will be held virtually. Walsh also noted that no events should be planned through Labor Day that would involve more than 10 people.



2:18 p.m.: Alabama to ease restrictions on Monday



Bars and restaurants in Alabama will be allowed to open on Monday, so long as they have limited table seating and can maintain social distancing among patrons, according to Gov. Kay Ivey.



It was one of a handful of restrictions being eased that Ivey announced at a briefing.



Non-work gatherings will be allowed and there will no longer be a 10-person limit, Ivey said. She noted, however, that people in separate households should still maintain a distance of six feet apart.



Fitness centers, barber shops, hair salons, nail salons and tattoo services can also open with proper social distancing and sanitation measures in effect. Beaches will open with no limit on gatherings, but social distancing should still remain.



Nightclubs, theaters and bowling alleys are still closed.



12:41 p.m.: New cases coming mainly from minority communities, Cuomo says



The majority of new infections in New York are coming from minority communities, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.



Of the 21 communities with the most new cases, 20 of them have a greater-than-average black and Hispanic population, according to the governor.



He noted that the high-rate of infection among minorities is not biological but related to demographics.



Cuomo also broke down the fatalities by race, with Hispanic people in New York City making up 34% of the deaths and black people accounting for 28%. Hispanic people make up 29% of the population in the city and blacks make up 22%.



Deaths have consistently stayed in the 200s in recent days, with 216 people dying in the last 24 hours.



The governor also broke down the virus's spread from Europe to the East Coast. From December to March, around 3 million Europeans traveled through New York airports, he said.



Although many landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport-, they then traveled elsewhere throughout the United States, according to the governor.



He said the state is also seeing evidence that children infected with COVID-19 can develop Kawasaki disease, which causes inflammation in the walls of some blood vessels. Cuomo noted it was rare, but said health officials were looking into the matter as there have now been 73 reported cases in New York.



On Thursday, a 5-year-old child died in New York City from COVID-related complications and the state is investigating other deaths.



The governor did offer good news, saying he believes for the first time the state "is ahead" of the virus.



"We turned that curve," Cuomo said.

11:46 a.m.: FDA authorizes first diagnostic test using at-home collection of saliva



The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first diagnostic test that uses saliva collected at home.



The agency announced Friday it issued an emergency use authorization to Rutgers Clinical Genomics Laboratory, which developed a way to test saliva samples that were collected by patients at home.



Patients will collect their own samples and send to the Rutgers laboratory in a sealed package for testing.



The FDA described it as a "designated self-collection kit."



"This provides an additional option for the easy, safe and convenient collection of samples required for testing without traveling to a doctor's office, hospital or testing site," FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D., said in a statement.



That test is currently the only authorized COVID-19 diagnostic test that uses saliva samples to test for SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19.



The FDA said it was important to note that "this is not a general authorization for at-home collection of patient samples using other collection methods, saliva collection devices, or tests, or for tests fully conducted at home."



11:16 a.m.: Federal report details 'immediate jeopardy' situation at NJ nursing home



A New Jersey nursing home where 17 bodies were discovered in a makeshift morgue was not in substantial compliance with infection control regulations, according to Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services inspection reports.



The reports, which were obtained by ABC News, were completed after federal inspectors surveyed the Andover Subacute And Rehabilitation II facility. Inspectors identified an "immediate jeopardy situation" from April 6 to April 21.



The facility was not following infection control safety practices and guidance, the report said.



Staff did not isolate COVID-19 patients, failed to administer medicine and, in one case, did not administer CPR, the report said.



Inspectors said the facility "must establish and maintain an infection prevention and control program designed to provide a safe, sanitary and comfortable environment and to help prevent the development and transmission of communicable diseases and infections.



The report also said the facility accrued $220,235 in civil money penalties.



A spokesperson for the nursing home was not immediately available to respond to ABC News' request for comment.

10:22 a.m.: Test and trace program in NYC outlined



New York City will be able to test 20,000 people per day by the end of May through the new testing and tracing program, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.



Right now, the city has been testing about 14,000 people per day. De Blasio hopes the number will reach 50,000 in the next few months.



The program, called the Test and Trace Corps, is being formed to hamper the spread of the disease as New York City enters "low-level transmission."



"This is how we move forward," de Blasio said.



By early June, there will be 2,500 public health foot soldiers in the program to investigate and monitor cases, as well as trace contacts, according to the mayor, who added that nearly 7,000 people have applied to work in the program.



For those who do test positive and cannot properly isolate, they will be put in one of the 1,200 hotel rooms that de Blasio said would open by June 1.



The program will be run by Dr. Ted Long, who currently serves as vice president of ambulatory care at New York City Health + Hospitals.



De Blasio also said that as the city continues to battle the disease, social distancing will be increased in parks through police intervention.



At Hudson River Park Piers 45 and 46 in Manhattan, the mayor said police will be at the site to limit the capacity of how many people are allowed in. He did not specify how many people would be allowed to enter the park or how police would monitor who enters.



At Domino Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he said there will be an increase in NYPD officers.



The heightened presence and social distancing comes after the mayor and police were criticized for the overwhelming arrests of black people related to social distancing.

8:39 a.m.: Unemployment rate skyrockets to 14.7%



The unemployment rate in the United States drastically increased to 14.7% last month, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.



The U.S. economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April. The report is one of the first snapshots to show the extent of the economic devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.



8:24 a.m.: 'Red flags' in more rural communities, says former homeland security adviser



As some states across America have begun to reopen, experts are checking for red flags. In some cases, they have seen them.



Tom Bossert, a former homeland security adviser for the Trump administration and an ABC News contributor, said Friday on ABC News' Good Morning America that more rural communities that have reopened are now experiencing daily increases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.



He said if those trends continue and the virus is not contained, those states "could end up with really devastating results in the next 72 days."



Bossert did not identify any specific states on the upward trend.



He said the focus for reopening should partly be on meat processing plants and nursing homes, both of which have faced rampant spread.



Bossert did offer some good news, saying that the numbers in the U.S. are relatively low when you combine New York totals with other states. New York currently has the highest number of infections in the country

7:27 a.m.: NYC mayor responds to overwhelming arrests of black people for social distancing violations



New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said police are issuing summonses and making arrests to save lives.



His comments were in direct response to a story from The New York Times, which reported that black people accounted for the majority of those arrested on charges of violating social distancing rules. The data was data provided to the NYT by the New York City Police Department and the Brooklyn district attorney's office.



Between March 17 through May 4, 40 people were arrested in Brooklyn for social distancing violations, according to the NYT, citing the district attorney's office. Of those 40 arrested, 35 were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.



Data of citywide arrests, released by police, showed a similar trend: black people made up 68% of at least 120 arrests from March 16 to May 5, while Hispanic people made up 24%.



De Blasio said in a tweet that "the disparity in the numbers does NOT reflect our values."



"We HAVE TO do better and we WILL," the mayor wrote.



Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, also responded to the news in a statement to ABC News.



Gonzalez said the "disturbing images of arrests for social distancing throughout our city serve to erode the progress that has been made in enhancing police accountability and strengthening trust in our criminal justice system."



He said his office is reviewing allegations of excessive force regarding arrests that took place in Brooklyn and will investigate to determine whether disciplinary recommendations or criminal charges are warranted.



While Gonzalez said that all New Yorkers should follow the social distancing rules, which is to stay 6 feet apart from others, he also said that enforcing those rules should consist of "distributing masks, gloves, sanitizers and other measures to prevent the spread of the virus." 

"Any arrest under these circumstances should always be the last resort. Simply stated, we cannot police ourselves out of this pandemic," Gonzalez said. "Instead, we need to give people the knowledge and ability to keep safe.

6:17 a.m.: Drug maker says coronavirus vaccine trial could begin in weeks



A drug maker has been given the green light by the Food and Drug Administration to move to phase 2 of its coronavirus vaccine trial.



Moderna's chief medical officer Dr. Tal Zaks told ABC News that the next phase would begin dosing very shortly, which he said means in a matter of weeks. This puts the company on track to launch Phase 3 this summer.



I only have two competitors, the virus and the clock, Zaks said, speaking with ABC News remotely from his home in Massachusetts.



Moderna is leading one of at least three U.S. vaccine trials on humans.



We need to bring forward, every potential vaccine that has the opportunity to help because time is of the essence, Zaks said.



The company has not released results from its pre-clinical or phase 1 trials. Zaks says its still premature to disclose that information, but said their experience to date is what gives him confidence theyre on the right path.



Zaks said they envision being able to produce up to a billion doses a year. But he cautions, it's not going to be a black and white moment that says okay now everybody can take it. He expects government agencies to step up and help us make sure that it is first available to those who need it.

4:43 a.m.: TSA to require employees to wear 'facial protection' at screening checkpoints



After more than two months into the coronavirus pandemic, the Transportation Security Administration announced all employees must wear "facial protection" at screening checkpoints.



The agency said the practice "will be implemented over the coming days."



TSA is making this change to protect our employees and travelers as social distancing cannot always be maintained in the screening process, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement Thursday.



In mid-March, the union representing TSA officers requested the agency provide surgical masks to employees and allow officers to wear N95 respirators. It took two weeks for the agency to do both. Currently, TSA is providing employees with N95s, eye protection and installing plexiglass at the travel document checker in some airports.



Multiple airports have already mandated that all employees and passengers must wear face coverings.



This comes as the number of air travelers continues to tick up and after all major U.S. airlines announced they would require both passengers and crew to wear face coverings.



TSA has had 534 federal employees test positive for COVID-19. As of Thursday morning, 285 of those employees have recovered, and six have died after contracting the virus.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
TORONTO, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As various levels of government across Canada begin to gradually ease restrictions, many businesses have a short leash. Per the Globe and Mails coverage of these findings ( https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-we-dont-need-evidence-of-jobs-already-lost-but-information-on-how/ ), the survey helps to answer the most fundamental economic question arising from this crisis: Will your business survive this shutdown?



1 in 5 companies cannot survive past 3 months, while another 25% say they cant make it past six months of continued restrictions

The latest survey from the Modus Business Monitor of over 950 Canadian managers and executives (April 20 to 30) reveals many to be in dire circumstances.

Just one-third of Canadian companies can survive more than a year under current restrictions





Almost half (46%) have either closed shop already or cannot make it past six months

It is important to note that this question was asked after a series of in-depth questions about all the federal governments assistance programs. In other words, government assistance is baked into these projections.



About the Modus Business Monitor

The Modus Business Monitor is Canadas only B2B omnibus service. For reliable and accurate results without the cost of a custom business survey, the Monitor offers our clients the flexibility they need. Results from the Monitor are based on a scientific sample of Canadian business leaders rather than the common and unrepresentative business surveys circulating today that rely on members of lobby groups or crowdsourcing from the likes of the Twitterati.

About Modus Research

Established in 2012, Modus Research is a full-service research agency that provides clients with actionable feedback from Canadian enterprises based on scientifically representative samples. We offer our clients exclusive access to the Modus Business Panel  the gold standard of B2B research in Canada.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7efd14cb-6bc8-4295-9243-7676317b0b36.
US-Backed Forces Crack Down on Resurgent Islamic State

By Jeff Seldin May 07, 2020

U.S.-led coalition special operation forces hit back against an Islamic State cell in Syria, capturing a midlevel leader linked to a rise in attacks by the terror group in the Deir el-Zour countryside.

Coalition officials on Thursday hailed the mission's success but shared few details about Wednesday's raid, which included members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The raid was at least the second in the Deir el-Zour area in the past week. An SDF-led operation on May 1 resulted in the arrest of an IS cell in Hajin that had been targeting U.S.-backed forces in the eastern countryside of Deir el-Zour.

It also came as SDF commanders continue to raise concerns about what they see as a sizable increase in IS operations over the past month.

A source close to the SDF told VOA that many of the attacks have involved improvised explosive devices (IEDs), but that attacks involving IS fighters have been increasingly lethal.

'Significantly diminished'

Coalition officials admit there is reason for concern, but caution against interpreting the surge in activity as a sign the terror group is close to regaining its former strength, either in Syria or in Iraq.

"There is an increase in Daesh activity this time of year, but that activity is significantly diminished compared to this time in 2019," according to Lieutenant Colonel Savannah Halleaux, with the coalition's Special Operations Joint Task Force, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

"Despite what Daesh remnants are advertising, their attacks in Iraq are far less than in previous years," Halleaux said. "They are attempting to keep themselves relevant through disinformation on social media, regular media, and amplifying their messages for recruitment."

Coalition officials also point out that IS efforts to assert itself are not going unanswered.

"The recent flurry of ISIS activity has been met by a blizzard," coalition spokesman Colonel Myles Caggins said, referring to a series of operations carried out by Iraqi security forces in recent weeks, sometimes with the help of coalition air power.

Other key officials have also pushed back against the spreading narrative of a resurgent and more capable IS due in part to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We do not believe that ISIS has been able to exploit seriously the COVID crisis to advance in the northeast [of Syria]," said Ambassador James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria, using another acronym for the terror group.

Hot spot

"The area around Deir el-Zour is, as we say these days, a hot spot. We're watching that closely, but we are confident that we have it under control," he added.

Still, even officials like Jeffrey harbor serious concerns about IS's staying power.

Despite the collapse of the group's self-declared caliphate last March, intelligence estimates indicate IS still commands at least 14,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq.

Intelligence officials also note that there has been little disruption to IS activity in Iraq and Syria since a U.S. operation led to the death of former IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019.

Instead, they say, the group's new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, has helped make sure IS has continued with its slow but steady resurgence in both Iraq and Syria.

"They're following the same playbook as they did previously. Nothing new or innovative about what they are doing," said Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"It is true that some attacks are also more qualitative than the recent past, but still don't have the sophistication as previously overall," he said. "Definitely something to continue to track and watch to see if it gets worse, but now it's still a bit early to say they are where they had been, say, from 2014 to 2016."

More worrisome are indications IS has been able to surge more successfully in areas beyond the coalition's reach, including Syria's Badiya Desert, which has largely been abandoned by forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as they focus their efforts elsewhere.

"That is of great concern to us," Jeffrey said. "We have seen ISIS gaining ground there, attacking even towns, and at least briefly holding territory."

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This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.

___

Author: Omer Aijazi, Postdoctoral research fellow, Religion and Anthropology, University of Toronto

The United Nations has called for an immediate global ceasefire to "put armed conflict in lockdown" and focus on protecting the most vulnerable from the spread of COVID-19. Yet tragically, there are cases around the world where violations have occurred.

Ongoing developments in Kashmir include a crackdown on Kashmiri journalists, rising policing powers and enhanced curfew measures. These actions suggest that the Indian government may be exploiting the pandemic to accelerate its settler-colonial ambitions in the disputed territory.

For the past six years, I have worked as a researcher along the Line of Control (LoC)  the de-facto border that divides Kashmir into India and Pakistan. I am also on the board of directors for the advocacy organization, Canadians for Peace and Justice in Kashmir.

Thousands of Kashmiris live within a 10-kilometre radius of the LoC, which is so heavily militarized that it is visible from space.

Kashmiris are vulnerable to both the contagion and the violence of the ongoing conflict.

War during a pandemic

In April, the Indian army set up artillery weapons deep in Kashmiri villages, as far as 60 kilometres from bunkered areas, to launch long-distance fire on Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

This encroachment is creating widespread panic and anxiety. Locals are protesting the shifting of heavy artillery guns into their communities, fearing retaliatory fire from the Pakistani army.

It is an intentional strategy to station soldiers and artillery among communities to make it difficult for the Pakistani army to retaliate. The blurring of civilian and military targets amounts to a war crime.

The Indian army has used civilian populations as a human shield before. In 2017, footage emerged of a Kashmiri man tied to a military vehicle patrolling a Kashmiri town.

As Indian and Pakistani forces continue to exchange fire, widespread loss of civilian life and property is being reported on both sides of the LoC.

During the exchange of cross-border fire, families are forced to take shelter in community bunkers. These are small enclosed spaces that make social distancing practices impossible to follow.

Furthermore, people trying to escape their villages during bombardment are prevented from leaving by the police as they enforce COVID-19 lockdown measures.

Asia's Berlin Wall

The LoC, also known as Asia's Berlin Wall, does not constitute a legally recognized international boundary. It was put in place in 1949 as a temporary measure until the status of Kashmir is resolved.

In her book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior, Cabeiri deBergh Robinson, associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of Washington, explains that in earlier years, the LoC was permeable and fluid. It was only after the Simla Agreement in 1972, that it came to mimic the impermeability of a border.

'100 little sleeps'

From 1990-2003, during the peak of the Kashmiri insurgency, the LoC was a site of intense conflict between Indian and Pakistani militaries.

Armies fired long-range artillery and mortar shells at each other, killing and harming civilians, property and livestock in the process.

Even though a shaky ceasefire was reached in 2003, skirmishes flare up unannounced.

During my research in the Neelum valley in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a villager described living near the LoC: "We are never at ease. The firing can start at any time. It's like having 100 little sleeps every night."

The number of civilians killed on each side of the LoC is challenging to document, given a lack of government transparency.

The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) is responsible for monitoring the ceasefire. India stands accused of blocking UNMOGIP's access to the LoC.

This year alone, India has committed 882 ceasefire violations.

Pre-existing inequality

Pandemics do not occur in a vacuum but exacerbate pre-existing inequalities.

Kashmir is ill-prepared to handle the pandemic. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, there is one soldier for every nine people but only one ventilator for every 71,000 people, and one doctor for every 3,900 people.

Health facilities along the LoC are severely deficient, reflecting India and Pakistan's neglect of the sub-region.

Given the current suspension of high-speed 4G internet, Kashmiris are prevented from accessing necessary public health information needed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Internet and telecommunication services are restricted on both sides of the LoC.

Kashmir's annexation

Amid the pandemic, on Mar. 31, India introduced a new domicile law. This is one of the many legislative changes set by India following the unilateral abrogation of Article 370 in August last year.

The domicile law paves the way for demographic flooding in Kashmir, which will allow non-Kashmiris to obtain property, compete for government jobs and impact the outcomes of a referendum on Kashmir's future should it be held.

Demographic flooding as a colonial strategy has been used by Israel along the West Bank as well as China in the Xinjiang autonomous region.

A Kashmir yet to come

The pandemic has inspired thinking on the complete restructuring of our world. It has shed light on the centrality of care workers and those at the forefront of our food systems.

It is forcing us to imagine "a world we do not yet know and cannot describe" as scholar Vafa Ghazavi recently wrote.

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.

A just world won't emerge as if by magic. We will need to fight for it.

The LoC does not signal the closure of Kashmir's forms and futures. It is a site of potentiality, for a Kashmir yet to come.

This Kashmir would not be held back by the paucity of our imagination or the lack of available language. It would be a Kashmir where Kashmiris can freely choose learning, laughter and living.

___

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article:

https://theconversation.com/india-uses-coronavirus-pandemic-to-exploit-human-rights-in-kashmir-137682
Several Republican governors are following Trumps lead as an effort takes shape to control the narrative about a pandemic that has continued to rage throughout a quickly reopening country. With polls showing most consumers still afraid to venture out of their homes, the Trump administration has intensified its efforts to soothe some of those fears through a messaging campaign that relies on tightly controlling information about a virus that has proven stubbornly difficult to contain.
Business in the new normal: A waitress at a drive-in dult, a small Bavarian market fest, serves food as the German economy attempts to restart. photo: Reuters/Andreas Gebert

As the Taoiseach plots out a course for the re-opening of the economy in a phased, stepwise approach - and as eyes keep a watch on developments from Germany and Denmark - business continuity plans across a range of sectors will come into sharp focus.

For business there is no blueprint for the unique issues faced. They stand to re-instate temporarily shelved production lines and products, unused services, empty offices or outlets and retained but unusable staff.

Despite this, many of Ireland's businesses are preparing as best they can with 60pc confirming they have continuity plans in place according to research from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).

Many businesses will remain closed for a long period within the phased approach and some will never reopen. But those that still have a chance of reopening need to be stepping up plans now.

This research reaffirms that planning for and implementation of an appropriate level of liquidity will be crucial in defining the success of businesses' recovery in post- pandemic Ireland.

Planning is needed for the cash the business requires, when it requires it and where it will come from. All of this must be underpinned by forensic analysis - managing expected receipts and payments inclusive of any estimation error.

The strategy for commercial revenue will vary significantly depending on the sector, size and product or service that the business provides. However, there are many aspects of financial planning in these unprecedented circumstances that all businesses will need to consider.

If they haven't already, businesses must assess their eligibility for the Government's support of between 2,500 and 5,000 to assist with the cost of preparing for restart. They should also avail of Government assistance in accessing grants and unsecured loans. The challenge is, of course, the timing.

The planning and paperwork needs to be started now as there will be administrative and red tape impediments beyond the control of companies.

A business could be open within a couple of weeks, but may take longer to get access to the cash that the reopening will require.

ACCA have asked the Government to ensure that the various state agencies provide assistance and simplify the application process, while ensuring there is no exposure to fraud.

Depending on the nature of the cash cycle in the business, some businesses could need as much as three times their first month's sales in up-front working capital and once again this process takes time and planning must be in place.

Cash flow within the business can be supported by seeking an extension from creditors or negotiating reductions in outstanding debts.

This works both ways, however, and debtors can also seek an extension on credit. During the last recession, several businesses sought a reduction in their debts claiming inability to pay when in fact they were well able to do so.

A business should never accept a debt settlement arrangement with a customer without undertaking their own due diligence. It should ask for up-to-date financial statements and only negotiate with an insolvency practitioner acting on the debtor's behalf.

Each of the numerous business restart assistance schemes has its own terms and conditions and application process. Rates rebates will need to be requested and credit support applications may need to be submitted. Credit-guaranteed bank funding must be applied for and other state agencies will have to be contacted for their supports. All of these applications will need to be accompanied by financial statements or management accounts and business plans and projections.

VAT and PAYE owed will have been warehoused for 12 months and Revenue will need to be contacted to negotiate a schedule of repayments. Post-pandemic staffing requirements may reduce so there may be redundancy to finance.

A business can't just open their doors and start again, they have to plan that restart. They must make sure they have enough cash to pay the wages at the end of the week, enough to pay suppliers at the end of the month and something left over to live on themselves.

A crisis is a good time to take a holistic look at a business. Businesses should review their Products and services, adjust prices product lines, delivery channels but across all of this, if the business does not have strong financial planning and liquidity it is destined to fail.

Our research tells us that many of Ireland's businesses have good planning in place. This will not only support their long-term viability but the resurgence of the Irish economy in the months and years ahead.

Aidan Clifford is Technical Director of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
Infiniti Research is the world's leading independent provider of strategic market intelligence solutions. Our market intelligence services are designed to connect your organization's goals with global opportunities. Today's competitive business environment demands in-depth, accurate, and reliable business information to ensure that companies gain a strong foothold in domestic or foreign markets. Our global industry specialist teams ensure the international consistency of our research, enabling powerful access to the real story behind market changes. Request a free brochure for more insights into our solutions portfolio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005415/en/

Business Challenge:

The client is a packaged food manufacturer based out of the United Kingdom. Changing consumer preferences and rising need for higher standards and traceability increased challenges for the client in meeting their customers' demands. Also, owing to the increasing number of regulations, the client faced difficulties in remaining compliant and delivering safe, affordable, and healthy food to consumers. Besides, the client faced challenges in scaling up production based on market demand. Consequently, the company witnessed a huge decline in profits and started losing ground to its competitors. The client, therefore, wanted to stay current with the industry, competitive, and macroeconomic trends. They chose to partner with Infiniti Research to leverage their expertise in offering market intelligence solution.

During the COVID-19 crisis, it is critical for companies in the packaged food market to take calculative and well-executed measures to ensure business continuity in the long run. Request a free proposal to know how industry experts at Infiniti Research can help you plan and create comprehensive action plans to navigate the crisis. Request a FREE proposal here.

Our Approach

In the initial phase of the engagement, the experts gained insights into the packaged food industry, developed a baseline understanding of the entire value chain and specified products, and focused on obtaining insights from industry experts. In the second phase of the engagement, the experts identified the various manufacturing technologies being implemented by the client's key competitors and the main technology providers providing these solutions. Besides, comprehensive profiles of each technology provider were prepared. In the third phase, the experts at Infiniti Research conducted extensive primary research by conducting numerous interviews with key participants within the supply side of the value chain. Analysts also conducted extensive secondary research through a complete review of secondary sources of information such as inputs from industry experts and trade journals, annual reports, and in-house research reports.

Business Outcome:

With Infiniti's market intelligence solution, the packaged food industry client was able to meet customers' demands in a short span of time. Also, the client was able to work more closely with customers to understand their individual needs and goals. Besides, the packaged food industry client was able to keep pace with competitors and stay compliant with a large number of regulations.

By understanding regulatory requirements and changes, they were able to adjust their strategies and product development initiatives to meet regulations as well as take measure to revamp supply chain processes. This helped them remain compliant and deliver safe, affordable and healthy packaged foods to consumers. In addition to this, the packaged food industry client was able to identify potential market opportunities and act accordingly.

Within one year of leveraging our market intelligence engagement, the client was able to understand the market potential for new products and identify new markets for existing products and scale-up production requirements by managing supply chain complexities. Subsequently, the packaged food industry client witnessed an increase in sales by 33% and was able to save 25% on operating costs.

For an in-depth market analysis on how COVID-19 will impact the packaged food market and data-driven insights to plan your next moves, request more info here.

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/20200508005415/en/

Contacts:

Infiniti Research

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

US: +1 844 778 0600

UK: +44 203 893 3400

https://www.infinitiresearch.com/contact-us
Three former Armenian prime ministers petitioned a Yerevan court to release former President Robert Kocharian from custody when his trial resumed after a two-month pause on Friday.

The trial of Kocharian and three other former officials prosecuted on coup charges denied by them was suspended in March after the presiding judge, Anna Danibekian, unexpectedly took sick leave. Danibekian officially returned to work on April 17 but did not rush to restart court hearings.

Former Prime Ministers Vazgen Manukian, Khosrov Harutiunian and Karen Karapetian attended the latest hearing to guarantee in writing that Kocharian will demonstrate proper behavior and not go into hiding or obstruct justice if set free. A former Karabakh prime minister, Anushavan Danielian, also signed such a statement and handed it to Danibekian.

Manukian had served as Armenias first post-Communist prime minister from 1990-1991. He was succeeded by Harutiunian in 1992. For his part, Karapetian held the post from 2016-2018, during former President Serzh Sarkisians rule. None of the three men agreed to talk to reporters after leaving the courtroom.

Meanwhile, Kocharians lawyers submitted two separate petitions demanding his release on health grounds or on bail. They said late last month that he risks being infected with coronavirus in a Yerevan prison.

The ex-president, who ruled Armenia from 2008-2018, was hospitalized a few days later. Nevertheless, he attended the latest court session.

Kocharian likewise claimed to be at risk of contracting the virus when he spoke in the courtroom. Now Im alone in my prison cell  but there is obviously contact with [prison] personnel, he told the judge. Its impossible to avoid it. Given the prison conditions its impossible to maintain a safe physical distance.

The trial prosecutors continued to oppose Kocharians release. One of them, Petros Petrosian, said that the ex-president could flee prosecution or obstruct justice.

Danibekian said she will rule on the petitions on May 13. The judge had repeatedly refused to free Kocharian pending the outcome of the trial since taking over the high-profile case last August.

The three other defendants -- Kocharians former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and retired army Generals Seyran Ohanian and Yuri Khachaturov -- have not been held in detention. The charges leveled against them and Kocharian mostly stem from the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan.

The 65-year-old ex-president also stands accused of bribe-taking. He rejects all accusations as politically motivated.
The Times Union has lifted the paywall on this developing coverage to provide critical information to our community. To support our journalists work, consider a digital subscription.

Total COVID-19 cases:

 330,407 in New York state, including 26,243 deaths. 56,378 recovered. 1,121,543 total tested.

 1,283,908 in U.S., including 77,178 deaths. 198,993 recovered. 8,408,788 total tested.

 3,937,813 worldwide, including 274,655 deaths. 1,319,447 recovered.

Note: The figures include presumed COVID-19 deaths. The number of positive confirmed cases is cumulative and includes people who have recovered as well as those who died.

Additional resources:

 Where to get tested for COVID-19.

 If you were in charge, tell us how you would reopen New York.

 Here are the latest cancellations and postponements.

 For a detailed map, check out the Times Unions New York Coronavirus Tracker

 To get regular updates on our coverage, sign up for our coronavirus newsletter.

 Share stories about people helping others in our Facebook Group.

Friday's latest updates:

4:42 p.m. Saratoga County reports virus outbreak at Cook Adult Home in Halfmoon

The county Department of Public Health Services said it learned Friday that 10 residents of the Cook Adult Home, an assisted living facility in Halfmoon, have tested positive for COVID-19.

One of the residents is in the hospital, another is in a rehabilitation center, and the remaining eight are in isolation at their residences.

The county said it's working closely with the administration at Cook Adult Home to mitigate any further spread at the facility.

___

4:15 p.m. Memorial Day ceremony canceled

American Legion Mohawk Post 1450 (Halfmoon) Commander John Lepine said the legion's Memorial Day ceremony has been canceled this year due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19.

Although the Post's ceremony will not be held this year, "it is hoped that we will all take the time on Memorial Day to reflect upon and honor those men and women who have lost their lives in service to our country," the Legion said in a statement.

___

3 p.m. Columbia County nursing home sees huge spike in virus cases

The number of residents at The Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing at Barnwell facility in Valatie who've tested positive for the novel coronavirus shot up by 80 in just one week to 117 as of Friday, newly released county data show.

According to public health director Jack Mabb, the home has also had 28 staff test positive for the virus. Three residents have died, including one reported Friday.

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2:32 p.m. Warren County loses another nursing home resident to virus

County officials reported Friday that a 24th resident of the county has died after becoming infected with the novel coronavirus.

The victim was a resident of a nursing home in the southern part of the county, they said.

Of the countys 24 deaths to date, 22 have been residents of a nursing home or assisted living facility.

The Glens Falls Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Queensbury and the Pines at Glens Falls Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation are currently battling outbreaks of the virus. According to state Department of Health data released on Friday, 14 residents of the Glens Falls Center and four residents of the Pines have died in the facilities after becoming infected with the virus.

Nursing home residents across the state and nation have become particularly vulnerable to the virus.

___

2:17 p.m. Schenectady County reports 4 more confirmed cases of virus

The county reported Friday that 547 residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus to date, up five from the day before. Of those, 420 have recovered and 28 have died.

Fifteen people were hospitalized with the virus in the county on Friday.

___

1:14 p.m.: Under new criteria, more essential workers can be tested for the coronavirus

Albany County officials announced Friday that the state-run COVID-19 test site at the University at Albany will be expanding its criteria for who can get tested.

The new testing criteria allows anyone who is considered an essential worker to get tested, including health care workers, first responders, grocery store employees, automotive shop employees, and so on. The move greatly increases the number of people eligible for testing in the county.

County Executive Dan McCoy also announced two more deaths from the novel coronavirus  a man in his 80s and a man in his 90s. Read more

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11:38 a.m.: Saratoga County reports 17 new cases of virus

The county reported Friday that 17 more residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total reported to the county since the pandemic began to 387.

Seven residents are currently hospitalized with the virus. No new deaths were reported. The county's known death toll from the virus stands at 14.

The county has been updating a new data dashboard with additional data, including the number of residents tested to date, cases by age and municipality, the number of quarantines, and deaths by age.

___

8:33 a.m.: Troy faces layoffs as revenues fall

Double-digit cuts in state aid and sales tax income will hit the citys 2020 budget in June, leading to layoffs if federal aid does come in to stave off revenue declines caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Patrick Madden told the City Council Thursday night.

We should be good through the end of May the way things are going right now. But again shortly after that were going to have to be making some painful choices in terms of services, Madden said.

The city has 31 open positions it wont fill and has directed 10 percent cuts in department spending. But its state aid is expected to drop 13 percent and its April sales tax revenues are projected to fall by 25 percent. The city has budgeted state aid revenues of $12.3 million and sales tax income of $16.5 million in its $74.7 million budget for 2020. Those numbers arent expected to hold. Read more

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6:33 a.m.: Phone woes close Jumpin' Jack's Drive-In

Jumpin' Jack's Drive-In, the popular Scotia eatery that just opened this week using social distancing rules, said Thursday afternoon it will be closing until further notice because of problems with its phone system.

An advisory on its website and Facebook page said it will keep customers updated with a reopening date and time and with thanks "for your patience." Read more

___

6:25 a.m. Capital Region hospitals get state OK to resume elective procedures

At least four Capital Region hospitals got the green-light this week to resume elective outpatient surgeries and procedures, roughly two months after the state ordered the procedures to stop amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Albany Medical Center, Glens Falls Hospital, Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson and St. Mary's Healthcare in Amsterdam confirmed Thursday that the state Department of Health has approved their requests seeking a waiver from a recent set of state guidelines that had made them ineligible to resume the procedures. Read more

___

Thursday: Known cases, recoveries and deaths by county of residence

Albany County: 1,277 (+25) cases, 28 hospitalized, 7 in ICU, 753 recovered, 56 (+3) deaths

Columbia County: 317 (+12) cases, 8 hospitalized, 4 in ICU, 117 recovered, 17 (+1) deaths

Fulton County: 101 (+4) cases, 7 (+3) deaths

Greene County: 215 (+15) cases, 92 active, 123 resolved, 3 hospitalized, 13 (+2) deaths

Montgomery County: 57 (+1) cases, 48 recovered, 1 under medical care, 1 death

Rensselaer County: 385 (+10) cases, 222 recovered, 12 hospitalized, 2 in ICU, 23 deaths

Saratoga County: 370 (+2) cases, 8 hospitalized, 393 recoveries (presumed and confirmed cases as of April 29), 14 deaths

Schenectady County: 543 (+6) cases, 19 hospitalized in the count (regardless of patient's county of residence), 406 recoveries, 28 deaths

Schoharie County: 42 cases, 8 hospitalized, 39 recovered, 1 death

Warren County: 185 (+0) cases, 3 hospitalized, 116 recovered (presumed and confirmed cases), 23 deaths

Washington County:; 174 (+8) cases, 72 active, 92 recovered, 10 deaths

___

Thursday: New York state-run campgrounds are closed until at least June 1

Camping season at state operated facilities has been pushed back till at least June 1 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That means thousands of people who had been planning a camping trip for the Memorial Day weekend won't be destined for a state campground. Its a further blow to the tourism industry in a number of upstate regions ranging from the Adirondacks and Catskills to western New York.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, in response to a query on Thursday, added that people who have already made paid reservations can get full refunds. Read more.

___

Thursday: Schenectady County to open testing site Friday at Rotterdam Walmart

The new drive-thru coronavirus testing site will be located in the parking lot of the retail store at 1320 Altamont Ave.

Weather permitting, the site will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Testing will be for adults who meet the Center for Disease Control and state and local guidelines on who should be tested, including first responders, health care providers and others with symptoms as well as those in high risk groups without symptoms, according to the news release.

There will be no testing inside the store, only outside.

The site is a partnership between the county, Walmart and Quest Diagnostics. Read more.

___

Thursday: Fulton County loses three more residents to coronavirus

According to the state's COVID-19 tracker, seven residents of Fulton County have now died from the virus, up from four reported on Wednesday.

As of Thursday, 101 residents had tested positive for the virus, up from 97 a day earlier.

Unlike most counties in the region, Fulton County has not been publishing its own coronavirus data.

___

Thursday: Warren County reports no new coronavirus cases, fatalities

After 16 straight days of rising cases, Warren County said it was happy to report Thursday that no new cases or fatalities had been confirmed. That comes as testing at the Warren County County Municipal Center continues to run at high capacity, it said.

To date, the county has lost 23 residents to the novel coronavirus. Almost all of them (21) have been tied to a nursing home or assisted living facility.

The county has had a total of 185 confirmed cases of the virus since the outbreak began. Of those, 92 involve residents of nursing homes, 11 involve assisted living facilities and 82 occurred in the community.

Three residents remained hospitalized for COVID-19 on Thursday  all in critical condition.

The county also documented an additional recovery Thursday. In all, 116 residents have recovered from the virus so far, including 26 who were presumed to have it but not tested.

___

Read more updates from Thursday
Pakistan has said that water discharge in Chenab river has come down significantly, a claim that has been termed by India as "baseless narrative".

In a letter to Indian Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Saxena sent on Wednesday, his Pakistani counterpart Syed Mohammed Meher Ali Shah stated that the discharge at Marala Headworks on Chenab, which flows into Pakistan from the Indian side, has unexpectedly reduced to 18,700 cusecs from 31,853 cusecs.

He also asked Saxena to look into the situation and apprise him.

The Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters termed the claim as "another baseless narrative" by Pakistan and said the matter has been examined.

"The discharges at Akhnoor and Sidhra which are the last gauge and discharge sites on Chenab and Tawi rivers respectively in India have been found consistent and show no significant variation during the stated period," Saxena told PTI on Friday.

He added the same response has been conveyed to Pakistan advising it to get the matter examined instead.

The Permanent Indus Commission, formed under the Indus Waters Treaty was signed between India and Pakistan in 1960. Indus commissioners of both the countries act as representatives of the respective governments for the treaty matters.

The treaty provides for both the commissioners to meet at least once every year, alternately in India and Pakistan.

It specifies that the waters of three eastern rivers namely Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, have been allocated exclusively to India.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, India's share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 per cent. India uses 93-94 per cent of water.

The western rivers, namely Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, are allocated to Pakistan with India given some rights like agriculture, navigation, domestic use and also the unrestricted rights to develop hydroelectric power projects within the specified parameters of design and operations.

In March, the annual meeting between Indus Commissioners was postponed after New Delhi proposed deferment of consultations due to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown.

The Indus Commissioners are supposed to hold meeting by March 31 every year, according to the Indus Waters Treaty.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Guardian

The Steelers quarterback is headed to the Hall of Fame. But he was unloved outside Pittsburgh for understandable reasons Ben Roethlisberger almost certainly played his final game in the NFL on Sunday. Photograph: Ed Zurga/AP Ben Roethlisberger is lucky that football legacies are not decided by finales. If Sunday night was indeed Big Bens last ever NFL game, as he has strongly hinted, it wasnt exactly a mic drop. In the 42-21 beatdown by the Chiefs, Roethlisberger struggled with rollouts, and l
New Delhi: The process of returning home of Indians trapped abroad under the Vande Bharat Mission is going on. The batch of 234 Indians from Singapore arrived at Delhi Airport today. After this, all the people are being screened. The government says that all the people returned from abroad will be kept in Quarantine for 14 days.

On the return of 234 Indians from Singapore, Foreign Minister S.K. Jaishankar said that Air India's AI381 aircraft from Singapore has just arrived at Delhi Airport. All Indians returning from abroad are welcome. I thank the Government of Delhi and all the departments for their support and assistance. On the second day of the Vande Bharat Mission, that is today 5 Air India planes are returning home with Indian citizens. Singapore-Delhi flight has reached Delhi in this. Apart from this, Dhaka-Srinagar flight will arrive at 1.45 pm. 165 students will be present in it. A batch of 145 Indians will land in Kozhikode from Riyadh at 8.30 pm.

A batch of 177 passengers will reach Kochi from Bahrain at 11.30 tonight. Like yesterday, Indians will be brought back home from Dubai today. Tonight at 8.10 Am, Air India flight from Dubai will reach Chennai, which will carry 177 Indians. Tomorrow, Indians will be brought home from many countries including America, the United Kingdom.

CM Yogi agitated on questions of Leader of Opposition, says this

Will workers get salary in Uttar Pradesh?

National Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurates Link road to Kailash Mansarovar
Kurdish-led and international coalition forces raided Islamic State (IS) positions yesterday in eastern Syria  a site of recent IS activity.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) carried out an operation in Deir ez-Zor on Wednesday night. They were supported by Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, the official name of the US-led international coalition against IS in Syria and Iraq. The raid led to the arrest of an IS fighter, the coalition spokesman Col. Myles Caggins said on Twitter today.

The coalition supports the multiethnic SDF, which is led by the Kurdish group the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), but also includes Arab and Syriac Christian divisions. The SDF said the arrested IS fighter was being questioned. The operation took place in a rural area in the east of Deir ez-Zor province, the SDF said on Twitter.

Deir Ezzor 24, a local media outlet covering the province, said the raid by the SDF and the coalition took place late Wednesday evening in the village of Azzir. The coalition used helicopters and soldiers stormed a house; two IS members blew themselves up to avoid arrest and an Iraqi IS fighter was arrested, the outlet reported, citing an unnamed correspondent.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said that a Syrian man was arrested and that the SDF ordered people in the village to stay inside during the raid. The observatory said it could not determine whether he was an IS member.

IS lost its last official territory in Syria in March 2019 when the SDF captured Baghouz in Deir ez-Zor. IS lost its last territory in Iraq in late 2017. It continues to carry out small-scale shootings and bombings in both countries, though.

Recently, IS has increased its activity as the region grapples with the coronavirus. In Iraq, which borders Deir ez-Zor borders, IS launched a series of dayslong assaults on Iraqi security forces this week, including attacks relatively close to Baghdad. In April, as Iraq was under lockdown, IS started attacking security forces directly, in contrast with its previous attacks on small villages.

In Syria, Deir ez-Zor province is one of the centers of IS recent activity. The group has increased attacks, executions and bombings in the desert in the east of the province. A military source close to the Syrian government told Al-Monitor last month that the group has heavy weaponry and explosives there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported today that IS gunmen opened fire on an SDF military vehicle in Baghouz, killing two SDF soldiers. The observatory also reported today that IS attacked government forces military vehicles in the southern part of Deir ez-Zor province, killing 11.

Deir ez-Zor has also experienced recent unrest with demonstrations against the SDF. Some in the mostly Arab area feel the Kurdish-led SDF neglects services and steals fuel in the energy-rich area. One journalist told Al-Monitor in March that many residents are frustrated with the regular raids and arrests there.
A convicted wife-killer released after more than 20 years in jail met a woman at a nudist beach, shared wine, had a 'kiss and cuddle' and left notes at her Sydney home, a judge has been told.

Thomas Andrew Keir's actions were of concern despite him not having breached his interim supervision orders, said Claire Palmer, barrister for the State of NSW.

'He has been incarcerated for many years and it is not ordinary circumstances,' she told Justice Richard Button on Thursday.

A convicted wife-killer released after more than 20 years in jail met a woman at a nudist beach, shared wine, had a 'kiss and cuddle' and left notes at her Sydney home, a judge has been told at the NSW Supreme Court

The State has made a NSW Supreme Court application for Keir to be subject to a two-year extended supervision order.

While many of its proposed conditions are accepted, Keir's lawyer Lisa-Claire Hutchinson opposed orders for him to wear electronic monitoring equipment and provide a weekly plan of his movements.

The judge has already granted an interim supervision order, which expires on May 19.

Keir was jailed for 22 years with a non-parole period of 16 years after being found guilty of the 1988 Sydney murder of his first wife, Jean.

He was found guilty of the crime at three trials, but his first two convictions were overturned on appeal and his sentence was backdated to start in February 1998.

In 1993, Keir was acquitted of the 1991 murder of his second wife Rosalina Canonisado, after the jury accepted his defence that she was strangled while he was out shopping.

When granting the interim order, Justice Button said Keir committed the most serious crime known to law and thereafter took extended steps to cover it up.

But he has never expressed remorse and flatly refused to accept responsibility for Jean Keir's murder.

'He will staunchly deny it to himself and the world until he dies,' the judge said.

'That position calls into question the attitudes of the defendant about himself and other persons, which in turn calls into question whether he continues to possess attitudes that could lead to the commission of serious offences.'

Although Keir's non-parole period expired in 2014, he was not released until October 2019 to a halfway house and in January began living by himself and returned to work as a upholsterer.

Keir gave evidence to court about his contact with 'Linda' whom he met at the nude beach, saying that the 'important thing' he referred to in his notes left at her place related to his murder conviction.

He told his supervising officer about Linda and asked if she was allowed to come to his place for dinner.

Justice Button commented that on one view the conduct was 'troubling' given Keir was convicted of murdering his wife, covering it up and never admitting it.

Within weeks of his release he had been in the private home of a woman he had just met and thereafter went around to her house at least twice leaving notes speaking of her as 'a very special friend'.

In itself it could be said to be nothing, but the 'context is undoubtedly important', he said.

Ms Hutchinson conceded the notes could be characterised as her client having an outdated and inappropriate view of courtship, but electronic monitoring would do nothing to correct such an attitude.

The judge reserved his decision.
Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja got married on May 8, 2018, two years back. They made us believe that perfect fairytale marriages are possible. Their wedding was out there on social media for everyone to appreciate, as several videos and pictures went viral. The beautiful couple broke the internet on their special day.







Today as they mark their second wedding anniversary, the actress took to social media and penned a lovely love-note for her husband Anand Ahuja. The actress is completely head over heels in love with him. In the note she says that he still gets her heart racing. She finds him cool, sexy and loves how this perfect vegan boy can do complicated yoga poses. Sonams post for Anand Ahuja is all things love. The picture has her planting a soft kiss on his cheek, while he goes completely candid with the PDA. While the age of love letters gone extinct, Sonam surely keeps her romance so old-world. Thanks to social media, its out there for us to read and feel the love.











Sonam and Anand met four years back. The actress didnt hide her relationship and was often spotted with the Delhi lad on dinner dates. The Neerja actress soon tied the knot with soulmate Anand and even shifted her base to the capital. She also flies down to London where Anand runs his business. Heres wishing the sweetest couple in town, a very happy journey ahead.
Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday blamed that state governments are "not doing enough" in free distribution of pulses to households under the public distribution system to provide poor some relief during the COVID-19 crisis.

Nearly a month's supply of pulses has already been dispatched to several states and union territories, but they have managed to distribute only 53,617 tonnes to ration card holders under the public distribution system (PDS), he said and urged them to speed up the process in the interest of poor people.

It may be noted that the government has decided to distribute free 1 kg pulses to each PDS householder for three months till June under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Anna Yojana (PMGAY) to ensure nutrition security of the poor during the lockdown period.

"Distribution of pulses is the responsibility of the state governments. It has not been easy for us to get the raw pulses milled and transported to states/union territories (UTs) in these difficult times. States should also put extra efforts to ensure at least whatever pulses have been sent to them is distributed via PDS," Paswan told reporters.

The monthly allocation of pulses is 1.95 lakh tonnes under the PMGAY. Of this, 1.81 lakh tonnes of pulses have already reached to states/union territories so far, out of which only 53,617 tonnes have been distributed to beneficiaries, he said.

"There is enough pulses stock with the government. We are milling and providing it to states. Cannot states take the responsibility of distribution of pulses for three months at least? They cannot expect us to take care of distribution in states," Paswan said.

For instance, about 6,610 tonnes of pulses have been transported to Bihar which plans to distribute under PDS from May 9. The entire monthly requirement of 1,750 tonnes of pulses have been givento Delhi, while half of the quota of 15,419 tonnes have been given to Chhattisgarh, he added.

"I have personally spoken to chief ministers and explained to them. We want states to distribute whatever has been sent so far. We have sped up the process, but states should also take some interest. They are not doing enough," Paswan said.

Consumer Affairs Secretary Leena Nandan said buffer stocks of pulses, maintained by cooperative Nafed, are lying in different states, while mills are concentrated in some states. Getting pulses for milling and then supplying to consuming centres is a complex and dynamic process.

Admitting an initial delay in milling, Cooperative Nafed Managing Director Sanjeev Kumar Chadha said, however, things fell in place after the government eased lockdown rules and mills started operation.

"Milling process got streamlined after April 8 and we started dispatching pulses to states. About 2.63 lakh tonnes of pulses have been dispatched so far. The dispatching of pulses for May month distribution will begin soon," he said.

There were a few complaints from states on the quality of pulses, but that has been resolved, he added.

Currently, the government has about 14.48 lakh tonnes of pulses in its buffer, of which tur dal is about 5.50 lakh tonnes, urad 2.60 lakh tonnes, chana 2.72 lakh tonnes, moong 1.20 lakh tonnes and masur 0.84 lakh tonnes.

Nafed has been asked to continue maintaining a pulses buffer on behalf of the government. It has been mandated to procure 20 lakh tonnes of pulses at MSP this year. Already, it has purchased 3.5 lakh tonnes so far at minimum support price.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China's biggest overseas property sales company expects Australia will become an even more attractive market for investors as coronavirus restrictions are eased.

Juwai IQI chairman Georg Chmiel made the prediction as the National Australia Bank flagged double-digit falls in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane apartment prices by next year.

With Australia's property market facing a new downturn because of COVID-19, he said Prime Minister Scott Morrison's success in containing an outbreak was a strong selling point for real estate.

'Australia was already appealing as a safe country where your investments are protected,' he said.

'Now, the country seems to have managed the pandemic well.

'That makes it even more appealing to foreign buyers.'

During the past decade, China has been Australia's biggest source of foreign real estate investment, even if there was a recent slump.

Juwai IQI, China's biggest overseas property sales company expects Australia will become an even more attractive market for investors as coronavirus restrictions are eased. Chairman Georg Chmiel said investors liked apartments near universities. Pictured is a Top Ryde development in Sydney's north near Macquarie University

Juwai's praise for Australia also contradicts a threat from China's ambassador to Australia.

Last month, Cheng Jingye threatened Chinese consumers would boycott Australian goods and services, over Mr Morrison's call for an independent inquiry into the causes of COVID-19.

Mr Chmiel suggested Australia's relatively low coronavirus death rate and case numbers, compared with the United States and the UK, would in fact encourage the Chinese to send their children to Australia to study - further boosting property.

'Marketers in China are already using Australia's good performance to persuade parents of children who have been studying in the US and the UK to look at Australia instead,' he said.

Melbourne is regarded as the most popular city in Australia for Asian buyers, followed by Sydney and Brisbane, with Australia regarded as a stable place to invest money.

Mr Chmiel said Chinese buyers particularly liked places close to schools and universities that weren't particularly expensive by Australian capital city standards.

Juwai has suggested Australia's relatively low coronavirus death rate and case numbers, compared with the United States and the UK, would in fact encourage the Chinese to send their children to Australia to study - further boosting property. Pictured is a young woman having her temperature taken outside Apple's Bondi Junction store in Sydney's east

'In general, Chinese buyers like the ease that comes with newly constructed units or houses,' he 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

'They prefer homes near good schools and universities and convenient to services, transit and shopping.

'At least three-quarters of Chinese buyers are looking for property valued less than $1million, and the median enquiry price comes in quite low, at around $610,000.'

In the year to June 30, 2019, new real estate investment in Australia from mainland China fell by almost 50 per cent, dropping by $6.1billion to a seven-year low, as the Chinese Communist Party government restricted outflows of capital, Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board revealed on Thursday.

FIRB's annual report showed the value of Chinese investment approvals across all sectors fell from $23.7 billion in 2017/18 to $13.1 billion in 2018/19.

Juwai dismissed the FIRB data as old, adding enquiries from Chinese buyers had doubled in April, compared with earlier months in 2020, and were 50 per cent higher compared with late 2019.

'The tide may have turned because Chinese buyers seem to be coming back since the second half of last year,' Mr Chmiel said.

Georg Chmiel, who chairs Juwai IQI, said Australia was regarded as a safe place to invest. Pictured is a man looking at screens at the Australia Securities Exchange in Sydney

Juwai said Chinese investors liked homes near good schools and universities and close to transport for less than $1million. Pictured is the University of New South Wales's Kensington campus in Sydney's south-east

In the decade to 2019, Chinese interests invested $113.2billion, more than double the United States's $53.4billion, giving it a 19 per cent share.

The reversing in May of open home inspection bans, introduced on March 24, was also expected to bring Chinese investors back into the property market.

'Now, the Australian market is beginning to open up slowly,' Mr Chmiel said.

'That's a positive development that will make marketing and closing sales progressively easier.'

Mr Chmiel said Australian bank restrictions on lending to Chinese investors would be overcome, as they instead sought financing from non-bank lenders.

Juwai's praise for Australia also contradicts a threat from China's ambassador to Australia. Last month, Cheng Jingye threatened Chinese consumers would boycott Australian goods and services, over Mr Morrison's call for an independent inquiry into the causes of COVID-19

Australia's state stamp duties were also considered to be much cheaper than the equivalent property transfer taxes in Canada and Singapore.

How COVID-19 has affected house prices Melbourne: DOWN 0.4 per cent to $818,806 Sydney: UP 0.3 per cent to $1,026,418 Brisbane: UP 0.3 per cent to $558,372 Adelaide: UP 0.4 per cent to $476,249 Perth: UP 0.3 per cent to $465,521 Hobart: DOWN 0.2 per cent to $512,688 Darwin: UP 1.1 per cent to $473,984 Canberra: UP 0.1 per cent to $702,861 Source: CoreLogic Home Value Index for April based on median house price changes Advertisement

'The eight per cent stamp duty doesn't look so large when compared to the 20 per cent taxes in places like Singapore and Vancouver,' he said.

Australia's property market is facing a downturn, after a year of strong gains in Sydney and Melbourne that reversed a two-year slump.

NAB predicted capital city property prices would fall by 10 to 15 per cent during the next 12 to 18 months, as unemployment hit levels unseen since the 1930s Great Depression.

Sydney's median unit price was expected to plummet by 8.8 per cent in 2020 followed by another four per cent next year.

That would see mid-point prices for an apartment dive by 12.8 per cent, or $99,576, to $678,364, going by CoreLogic data.

Melbourne was expected to take even more of a hit, with its median apartment prices tipped to plummet this year by 10 per cent, and by four per next year.

A 14 per cent dive by 2021 would see a typical apartment lose $82,349, compared with April 2020 median prices, to hit $505,855.
Toronto police Const. Heather McWilliam was a promising officer who excelled while investigating drug cases, major crimes and homicides. When she was hired by the service in 2005, McWilliam believed she was heading into a great job, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario heard Thursday.

Instead, she became the victim of a pattern of harassment and humiliation by supervising officers inside north Etobicokes 23 Division, her lawyer Kate Hughes told the tribunal in closing arguments held by teleconference Thursday due to COVID-19 closures.

When she raised the alarm about her treatment  allegedly including daily sexual comments directed at her and other women, such as inquiries about underwear and pubic hair  she was shunned and denied career opportunities, Hughes said.

McWilliam, who alleges Toronto police failed to adequately address or investigate her complaints, had no motivation to lie because she had nothing to gain from crossing the thin blue line of police loyalty; her once-promising career has been destroyed, Hughes said.

She did it because she wants change, Hughes said. She doesnt want other women to go through what she went through at the Toronto Police Service.

The closing arguments come six years after McWilliam, 37, filed her complaint alleging harassment spanning 2008 until 2014. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, McWilliam has been off work since 2014.

None of the claims have been proven at the tribunal.

Amandi Esonwanne, a lawyer for the Toronto Police Services Board, and Sgt. Angelo Costa, one of McWilliams superiors who is named in the claim, said McWilliam was not a credible witness, that she failed to prove that the board violated her rights under Ontario Human Rights Code, and the tribunal should dismiss her allegations.

Addressing adjudicator Jo-Ann Pickel, Esonwanne said her decision will be influential and asked her to carefully review the evidence.

We urge you to look at the facts, Esonwanne said.

We respectfully submit that when you look at the totality of the evidence in this proceeding, (McWilliam) was the least credible of all the witnesses, Esonwanne said in written closing submissions.

We submit that her evidence should not be accepted if it was not corroborated by other evidence.

McWilliams complaint alleges Costa, a supervising officer who allegedly often spoke about sexual acts at work, forcibly kissed her while they were off duty at a bar.

He pushed his lips onto my lips and he tried to drive his tongue into my mouth ... I tried as hard as I could to forcefully push him off me, McWilliam testified, according to a summary of her evidence in her written closing arguments.

On the stand, Costa denied kissing McWilliam, saying he gave her a partial hug. The incident was investigated by Toronto police professional standards and Ontarios Special Investigation Unit and no charges were laid.

It is Costas position that (McWilliam) has failed to establish any of her allegations against him; in particular, the allegation that he kissed her at a bar, in front of witnesses, is unsupported by probative evidence of any kind, read Esonwannes written submissions.

During the case, the tribunal heard from an expert called by McWilliam who described policing as having an ingrained code of secrecy  anyone who rocks the boat, challenges police culture, is seen as the other, Hughes said Thursday.

Complaining about sexual harassment and discrimination is difficult for any woman, but raising it in this context and culture ... is a clear transgression of the unwritten code, Hughes wrote in her submission, alongside co-counsel Nadia Lambek and Tyler Boggs.

Esonwanne said some of the issues raised by McWilliam fell outside the tribunals jurisdiction.

He also took issue with claims about a systemic culture of harassment within the police service, saying the case centres only on whether McWilliam was sexually harassed.

The tribunal was supposed to hear from Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner, a close friend of Ontario premier Doug Ford. Taverner, unit commander at the division where McWilliam worked, is not named in her complaint, but she alleges that he dissuaded her from speaking out about sexual harassment.

After he suffered a concussion that prevented him from testifying last July, the tribunal opted to close the case without Taverners testimony. Esonwanne asked Pickel to consider instead the document outlining what Taverner was expected to say on the stand; the board requested that the tribunal declare Taverner innocent of the specific allegations against him, Esonwanne wrote.

According to Esonwannes written submission, Taverner says he made a comment to McWilliam about not being careless with words in relation to an ongoing wiretap investigation  not in connection any sexual harassment complaint. Esonwanne says Taverner also offered to deal with a complaint from McWilliam at the divisional level and, after she rejected that, he asked her to file a written report as required by procedure.

Based on the totality of evidence before the tribunal, he acted with concern and compassion towards (McWilliam), Esonwanne wrote.

McWilliam is asking for damages, lost wages and public interest remedies. Among the remedies sought is mandatory annual training by an independent expert in policing culture and human rights.

Esonwanne said many of the proposed public interest remedies have already been implemented by the board. Citing evidence given by Toronto police deputy chief Shawna Coxon, Esonwanne said its clear steps have been taken to ensure that officers know about their rights and responsibilities ... including sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

McWilliam argued Coxons evidence supported her request for further training.

There is no evidence in the record to suggest that any marked improvement has taken place, read McWilliams closing arguments.

Pickel is expected to issue her decision within a month.
South Sudan's fragile government and the peace agreement that formed it are in jeopardy after the country's president and vice president disagreed on how to share out regional states between them.

South Sudan ended five years of civil war in 2018, but conflict between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar -- who led the opposing sides in the war -- have been major obstacles to completing the peace process.

The two disagree over who will run South Sudan's states and how to integrate different fighting forces. On Thursday, Kiir's office announced that leadership of six of the 10 states would go to Kiir's side, three would go to Machar's side and one would go to an alliance aligned with neither Kiir nor Machar.

"The allocation of the states ... is that of the president and not a decision taken by consensus," Machar said in a statement on Friday. "It does not take into consideration the relative prominence each party has in each of the respective states or counties."

Calls to Kiir's spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, for comment went unanswered.

Alan Boswell, a senior analyst with Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, said the disagreement between Kiir and Machar endangered the gains made so far toward a lasting peace.

"South Sudans new unity government is facing its biggest crisis yet, as negotiations broke down on how to share power in state and local governments across the country, he said in a statement.

"Despite the attention of South Sudans international partners on the COVID-19 pandemic, quick action from regional leaders will be key so that this latest power squabbling doesnt escalate."

South Sudan's civil war, often fought along ethnic lines, claimed an estimated 400,000 lives, triggered a famine and created Africa's biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

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They never succeeded the way I did as campaign manager, she said, and they never got their candidate where my candidate got. She said Trump wanted to expose, I think, a number of people in that group who act like theyre so dignified and holier-than-thou than everyone, but nobody ever says that their track record is.
The Donald Trump administration stepped up its criticism of Russias role in Libyas civil war on Thursday.

Libya has become the next venue for Russias malign efforts to exploit regional conflicts for its own narrow political and economic gain, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Christopher Robinson told reporters. Russia continues its military support for the Libyan National Army of Gen. [Khalifa Hifter]. Russia has provided material and logistical support to the Wagner Group, a US-sanctioned entity led by [President Vladimir Putin] crony Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also sanctioned by the United States.

Robinson also took aim at Russias ongoing support for President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Why it matters: The State Department opted to host a press briefing lambasting Russias role in the region one day after the United Nations confirmed that Moscow has recruited anywhere between 800 and 1,200 mercenaries to support Hifters ongoing offensive against the internationally recognized government in Tripoli. That includes mercenaries from the Wagner Group as well as Syrian fighters loyal to Damascus who have been deployed to Libya to fight alongside Hifters forces.

There is a very troubling other element here, and that is  the Libyan National Armys  or Khalifa [Hifters]  establishment of so-called diplomatic relations with the Assad regime, which is very much part of the piece of the question of Syrian mercenaries, at least on his side of the equation, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Henry Wooster.

Turkey has also deployed Syrian rebel fighters alongside its own forces to bolster Tripoli against Hifters offensive.

Whats next: Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to sanction Hifter under a 2017 Russia sanctions law because of the support he receives from the Wagner Group. However, the State Department has yet to show any indication that it will do so.

Know more: Bryant Harris has the full story on the Democratic push to sanction Hifter.
Orji Kalu, the former governor of Abia State, has released the following statement after his release from prison on Friday.

Mr Kalu, who was jailed in December 2019 for allegedly stealing public funds, was released after the Supreme Court voided his conviction and ordered a retrial of the case.

Read his statement:

Today, the Supreme Court of Nigeria gave a judgement in my favor, quashing the conviction which the lower court had entered against me. By todays judgment, the Apex court of our dear country affirmed my right to fair hearing and equal protection of the law.

The past five months have been quite a profound period for me. As challenging as that period has been, it has provided me an opportunity to learn invaluable lessons about our country, our peoples, our justice system and the true meaning of love. I mean love for family, love for our country and love for humanity.

I want to use this moment to thank my family, my colleagues, my friends, my supporters, the people of Abia State, and all Nigerians for their unflinching and unwavering confidence and trust in me through the very testing period. We all know today that their prayers have not been in vain. I also use this opportunity to express my gratitude to the Nigerian Correctional Service for the unalloyed professionalism and sincere humanity extended to me by its staff while I was in their custody.

I must accord a special mention to the Justices of our Supreme Court for their unwavering commitment to rule of law. We all stand reminded of the consistent and strategic relevance of the Nigerian Supreme Court in holding this country together, even in moments of great peril. As far back as in the 1971 case of LAKANMI V. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE FEDERATION, (the Ademola Adetokunbo-led Court) the Nigerian Supreme Court has severally rescued this country from the precipice. Also throughout the dark era of military rule in Nigeria, the Supreme Court neither wavered nor flinched in its commitment to justice and fairness. And despite some moments of distraction and mass hysteria, the Nigerian Supreme Court has remained the veritable compass to the highest ideals of justice attainable in this country. This long tradition of the court was exemplified in todays judgment. I was humbled by the courts boldness and sense of justice as shown in my case.

Overall, my experience tested and reaffirmed my belief and confidence in our country, Nigeria. My case is a true Nigerian story with a bold MADE-IN-NIGERIA stamp on it. It is a story of initial injustice that was caught and ultimately corrected. It is a story of restoration. It is a story of how a wrong was righted and how justice and truth prevailed in the end. It is a story of the power of hope. My case should teach us all that even though we may not get things right at the first attempt, with patience and dedication, we shall get them right eventually. That is the lesson of my case and that is the lesson of our country  that with dedication and patience, we shall place Nigeria in its rightful place eventually.

Before I end, I would like to let it be known that the events of the past five months gave me an added perspective on matters of justice and injustice in Nigeria. I have come to know that the course of justice will not be complete if it stopped at my case. It must continue until it touches the lives of millions of Nigerians who face injustice anywhere in this world. I shall be dedicating my time henceforth to ensuring there will be justice for all Nigerians whether they are in Sokoto or Akwa Ibom or in Lagos or Maiduguri or in Jos or Enugu, or wherever they may be. Justice for one man or for a few people will no longer be enough in this country. A system whereby over 70% of all prison inmates population is made up of people awaiting trial cannot be allowed to continue. Situations where innocent people are falsely charged with murder just to get them out of the way does not dignify our country and cannot continue. Justice must now mean justice for all. That is my pledge to Nigerians.

I look forward to rejoining my colleagues in the Senate as soon as possible.

Thank you and God bless all of you.

Signed by:

SENATOR (DR) ORJI UZOR KALU

(Given on the occasion of the Supreme Court judgment quashing the judgment of a lower court entered against him on December 5, 2019)
Interactio remote interpretation connects world leaders to support Gali in the fight against Coronavirus

May 7, 2020  Interactio, a remote interpretation platform, has partnered with the European Commission to connect political leaders and philanthropists at the international pledging conference \Coronavirus Global Response.\ In the midst of the global crisis, Interactio assisted the European initiative in the joint effort to raise 7.5 billion EUR in donations to Gali, the vaccine alliance fighting the COVID-19.

As strict quarantine regulations divided the states geographically, the common cause to find timely and affordable treatment brought the five continents together in a multilingual hybrid meeting. To ensure the precision and quality of simultaneous interpretation, Interactio connected onsite interpreters from European Commission premises with the world leaders joining the event remotely.

Through the integration of the audio and video stream in partnership with Televic Conference equipment, the message was successfully shared in English, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese languages in real time.

The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, and leaders of more than 40 other nations from Europe, Australia, Asia, North, and South America united against Coronavirus digitally on the Interactio remote participation panel.

During the remote conference, Melinda Gates shared an important message for humanity, followed by a generous donation of 100 million American dollars from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

\COVID-19 has reminded us that viruses don\-\-t obey borders or custom laws. They don\-\-t care what nationality you are,\ said Gates.

\Interactio became the platform of choice for this event. The Heads of State and Government as well as other major donors and research institutions connected to the smooth, user-friendly and performant platform and pledged substantial amounts for the common fight against the pandemic. This successful high-level event was a milestone for everybody involved, and we would like to sincerely thank Interactio for their tireless preparation work, dedication, availability and unrelenting support throughout the event. We are very much looking forward to further cooperation.\ states Frederic Pirotte, Head of the Technical Compliance Team, DG Interpretation, European Commission.

Overall, a total of 7.4 billion EUR was fundraised during the pledging conference, leaving high hopes for the speedy development of the treatment. As the world unites in a humanitarian effort to protect the disadvantaged in an unexpected outbreak of the Coronavirus disease, Interactio remains loyal to its ongoing mission of transmitting powerful ideas despite the geographical barriers.

About Interactio

Interactio (https://interactio.io) is a Lithuanian-based remote interpretation platform which provides remote participation for multilingual online and onsite meetings. Connected on an interactive panel via desktop or mobile device, attendees can exchange ideas in a live-chat, cast votes, and show essential information through a screen sharing function.

For further media queries, please contact:

Simona Andrijauskaite

+441644717778

s@interactio.io
More than 4 million stimulus payments from Uncle Sam slid into Michigan mailboxes or pinged into bank accounts over the last month, the IRS says.

Michigan residents cumulatively received the eight most stimulus dollars in the nation. The checks, in amounts of $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 to couples, with an additional $500 per child, totaled nearly $7 billion, an average of $1,726 per payment.

Nationally, 130 million people received payments worth in excess of $200 billion over the first month of the stimulus program.

More than 150 million payments will be sent out, and millions of people who do not typically file a tax return are eligible to receive these payments, the IRS and U.S. Treasury said in a joint statement Friday, May 8. Payments are automatic for people who filed a tax return in 2018 or 2019, receive Social Security retirement, survivor or disability benefits (SSDI), Railroad Retirement benefits, as well as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Veterans Affairs beneficiaries who didnt file a tax return in the last two years.

Top 10 recipients by state:

1. California, $22.5 billion, $1,656 average payment

2. Texas, $18.8 billion, $1,752 average payment

3. Florida, $15.2 billion, $1,655 average payment

4. New York, $12.5 billion, $1,618 average payment

5. Pennsylvania, $8.8 billion, $1,691 average payment

6. Ohio, $8.3 billion, $1,693 average payment

7. Illinois, $8.2 billion, $1,686 average payment

8. Michigan, $7 billion, $1,726 average payment

9. North Carolina, $6.9 billion, $1,714 average payment

10. Georgia, $6.9 billion, $1,705 average payment

Its not clear how many of those payments were sent to dead people. The Treasury Department this week asked Americans who received a payment on behalf of a dead person to return it by following these directions on the IRS website.

The stimulus payments became available as part of a $2.2 trillion rescue package approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.

Payments were not available to individuals with an adjusted annual income above $99,000 or couples with a combined annual income over $198,000.

The stimulus package was approved as a way to help Americans struggling economically through the coronavirus outbreak.

As of Friday, May 8, Michigan had 46,326 confirmed coronavirus cases and 4,393 deaths.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

More from MLive:

Legislature v. Whitmer case in virtual court next week

Coronavirus continues to disrupt mail service in parts of Michigan

Senate bill aims to protect health care workers from lawsuits during coronavirus crisis

Whitmer looks to cut unemployment red tape, issues new coronavirus crisis order

Eight weeks after Michigans first coronavirus cases, an animated map tracks its spread through the state
New Delhi:

A man named Abdulla Hadi Abdul Rehman Al Enezi was on Saturday arrested in Kuwait for suspected links with ISIS, terror funding and recruitment for the group. Earlier this week, six suspected militants with links to ISIS were also arrested by Indonesia Police while allegedly plotting a rocket attack on Singapore.

The six had been plotting with a member of ISIS in Syria to attack Singapore, a major commercial, banking and travel hub that is home to many Western expatriates, Indonesian police spokesman Agus Rianto told reporters.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Former President John Dramani Mahama is going after Kwame Baffoe, aka Abronye DC, after the New Patriotic Party (NPP) man had allegedly said on a pro-NPP television programme that he (Mahama) killed the then sitting President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

He has caused his lawyers to write to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to invite Abronye, who is the Bono Regional Chairman of the NPP, for questioning on some allegation he made. The ex-President did not include the allegation concerning the death of Prof. Mills as an issue the police should investigate, yet he complained about it.

Rather, he wants the police to question Abronye on why he alleged that he (Mahama) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are plotting to kill some NPP personalities, including Abronye.

Unhinged Mind

He said in the letter of May 4 to the CID Director General that the allegation regarding the death of Prof. Mills was 'irreverent' and described Abronye, whom he had accused of peddling it, as 'unhinged mind'.

Regarding the rather irreverent and despicable allegation that he (Mahama) killed the late President John Evans Atta Mills, he (Mahama) would not dignify it with any answer, except to say that the allegation could only come from an unhinged mind, the letter signed by his lawyer, Tony Lithur of Lithur Brew and Company, said.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the late ex-President Prof. Mills became a taboo topic when the Mahama-led NDC was in power.

Formal Complaint

According to the letter, the former President is lodging a criminal complaint against Abronye for Publication of false news  Section 208 of Act 29.

I have been instructed on behalf of His Excellency, John Dramani Mahama, the former President of Ghana and the current flag bearer of the NDC, to formally lodge on his behalf, criminal complaints against a certain Kwame Baffoe alias 'Abronye DC', a Ghanaian citizen and a prominent member of the NPP. I understand he is the Chairman for the Bono Region branch of the NPP.

The letter said, My instructions are that in a recording of a TV programme on Net2 TV at Madina, Accra, which has been circulating on various social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, Abronye DC made certain false claims, alleging a plot masterminded by the NDC and John Dramani Mahama to assassinate some NPP personalities, including he, Abronye, himself.

The letter further said that on the programme, Abronye DC announced to the general public that some NPP personalities would be assassinated by the NDC hirelings, who would be wearing NPP T-shirts, and that these hirelings would be doing the bidding of former President John Mahama.

Mr. Mahama's lawyer further said that on the same programme, Abronye DC stated that President John Mahama killed President John Evans Atta Mills, and enclosed as part of the compliant, a copy of the video recording of the said programme.

False Allegation

John Dramani Mahama has firmly instructed me to say that the allegations are, of course, false, and for the avoidance of doubt, would like to state that neither the NDC nor he has planned to hire, hired or cause to be hired or instructed any person or persons to murder or assassinate anybody.

In the letter, Mr. Mahama complained that this is not the first time the same person, Abronye DC, has used similar platforms to denigrate and make scurrilous, outrageous and scandalous allegations against the NDC and former President Mahama and many other personalities within the NDC, which is the largest opposition party in Ghana, adding to date nobody has called the said Abronye DC to order.

Disturbing Peace

Abronye DC is a prominent member of the ruling NPP and while his false, outrageous and inflammatory accusations are clearly politically motivated, they are also likely to expose my client and members of the NDC to attacks from Abronye DCs political party's sympathizers, Mr. Mahama's lawyer said in the letter.

He said, By reason, also of his profile, he has by his false allegations pitted the two largest political parties in the country against each other in the context of spurious allegations of violent crime. This has real potential of disturbing the public peace.

My final instructions are, therefore, to kindly request you to use your good office to cause investigations to be conducted into Abronye DC's false allegations and their publication, the lawyer requested, drawing the attention of the CID to Section 208 of the Criminal Offences Act 1960 (Act 29).

---Daily Guide
The Coronavirus pandemic has majorly affected most of the professions as the majority of countries around the globe are under complete lockdown, leading to the showbiz industry coming to a standstill too. Usually, during this time of the year, various eminent designers worldwide showcase their summer collections by organizing extravagant shows at fashion weeks.

However, owing to the rapid spread of COVID-19, everyone is cooped up in their homes. Recently, Lithuanias capital Vilnius held a special kind of fashion week suited to this Coronavirus crisis as they organized a 'Mask Fashion Week'.

Also Read | Lithuania To Turn Its Capital City Into Vast Open-air Cafe To Maintain Social Distancing

New times call for new measures and new outlets for creativity and expression! #Vilnius invites you to its open-air Mask Fashion Week. 

Heres the entire route: https://t.co/tkRvwF1jsB#MaskWeek #MaskFashionWeek pic.twitter.com/DuWge06WAe  Go Vilnius (@GoVilnius) May 6, 2020

Also Read | MET Gala YouTube Session 2020 Brings Together Greatest Fashionistas In The Industry

Lithuania's capital embraced a 'Mask Fashion Week' amid the Coronavirus pandemic

Recently, artists in Lithuania, Europe invited the residents of the capital city, Vilnius to a 'Mask Fashion Week' on Tuesday, i.e. May 5, 2020, to encourage them to have fun wearing the now-mandatory face masks. Leading the initiative, designer Julia Janus stated she hoped that the initiative would encourage creativity as well as compliance among the masses with orders to wear masks as a preventive measure. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, Janus told the reporters that it was officially the first-ever Mask Fashion Week across the world.

A sum of twenty-one billboards dotted around the city featured posters of various artists sporting a uniquely styled face mask. Each of the billboards was captioned, "Creativity Cannot be Masked". While some masks were intended to make everyone laugh, others aimed at impressing them with their elegant designs, embroideries, pearls, laces and tailored finishes.

Also Read | Quarantine Fashion: This New #shoppingbagchallenge Takes Internet By Storm

Have you ever heard of... a Mask Fashion Week? Creativity cannot be masked: when Government of  #Lithuania made wearing protective masks mandatory in public, for local designers this rule became a source of inspiration to experiment&have fun. https://t.co/2TQq46UD0P  Inga Tolockiene (@IngaTolockiene) May 5, 2020

Lithuania has begun to gradually ease the lockdown restrictions imposed earlier by reopening open-air cafes, restaurants, shops and libraries across the country. The Mayor of Vilnius, Remigijus Simasius, also offered cafes to use public spaces for free and stated that he wants the capital to become a giant outdoor cafe.

However, cinema houses will remain shut as of now. Therefore hundreds of movie buffs flock into Lithuanias main international airport to a unique drive-in cinema which has been created in the shadow of planes grounded because of the on-going Coronavirus crisis.

Also Read | Blanket Challenge Is The Latest 'quarantine Fashion', Netizens Join The Trend
Note: While most shelters have closed their doors to the public for the coming weeks many are still meeting prospective adopters through appointments. Please visit the shelters website or call to get information on adoption or fostering an animal at this time.

Each week, MassLive showcases pets available for adoption at shelters at rescue organizations across Massachusetts. With the participation of the shelters listed below, many animals should be able to find a permanent home. Pets are adopted daily so please contact the shelter directly if you are interested in an animal.

Massachusetts Shelters:

Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society

Address: 163 Montague Road, Leverett Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Telephone: (413) 548-9898

Address: 171 Union St., Springfield Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Telephone: (413) 781-4000

Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center Address: 627 Cottage St., Springfield Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, noon-4 p.m.; Thursday, noon-7 p.m. Telephone: (413) 781-1484

Westfield Homeless Cat Project Address: 1124 East Mountain Road, Westfield Hours: Adoption clinics, Thursday, 5-7 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Westfield Regional Animal Shelter Address: 178 Apremont Way, Westfield Hours: Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Telephone: (413) 564-3129

Franklin County Sheriffs Office Regional Dog Shelter and Adoption CenterAddress: 10 Sandy Lane, Turners Falls Hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Friday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Telephone: (413) 676-9182

Polverari/Southwick Animal Control Facility Address: 11 Depot St., Southwick Hours: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Telephone: (413) 569-5348, ext. 649

Berkshire Humane Society Address: 214 Barker Road, Pittsfield Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Telephone: (413) 447-7878

Animal Rescue League of Boston Address: 10 Chandler Street, Boston, MA 02116 Telephone: (617) 426-9170 Fax: (617) 426-3028

DAKIN HUMANE SOCIETY

There are still pets available for adoption in the Springfield Adoption Center only (Leverett is temporarily closed). People are asked to visit the Dakin webpage first to see what pets we have available, then call us if they are interested in one in particular to set an appointment. The staff will return the call within 48 hours to set an appointment for prospective adopters to come in and see the animal. That will help make the adoption process go more smoothly and prevent unproductive time spent by the lean on-site staff.

Smokey - Animals available for adoption by appointment only at Dakin Humane Society.

Smokey  In foster care

Breed: Lop Eared

Age: 6 Year

Gender: Female

Laura- Animals are available for adoption by appointment only.

Laura  In foster care - to be adopted with Jessie

Breed: Budgie/Budgerigar

Age: 10 Months

Gender: Female

Jessie - Animals are available for adoption at Dakin by appointment only.

Jessie  to be adopted with Laura

Breed: Budgie/Budgerigar

Age: 10 Months

Gender: Male

Gucci - Animals available for adoption by appointment only at Dakin Humane Society.

Gucci  Has special training needs

Breed: Poodle, Miniature

Age: 1 Year

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Charles - Animals are available at Dakin Humane Society by appointment only.

Charles

Breed: Flemish Giant

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Dill - Animals are available for adoption at Dakin by appointment only.

Dill  to be adopted with Fennel

Breed: Rat

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Dill & Fennel

Fennel  to be adopted with Dill

Breed: Rat

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Ozzy - Animals are available for adoption at Dakin Humane Society by appointment only.

Ozzy  to be adopted with Bruce

Breed: Ferret

Age: 2 Year

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Bruce - Animals available for adoption at Dakin Humane Society by appointment only.

Bruce  to be adopted with Ozzy

Breed: Ferret

Age: 2 Year

Gender: Male

Location: Springfield

Pierre - Animals available for adoption by appointment only at Dakin Humane Society.

Pierre

Breed: Flemish Giant

Age: 1 Year

Gender: Female

Location: Springfield

MSPCA ANIMAL CARE AND ADOPTION CENTERS

Animals are still available for adoption  you just need to make an appointment! Finding homes for our current population of shelter animals will be vital for our ability to provide temporary housing and increased surrender intake as a result of the outbreak.

Animals in need of immediate surrender will continue to be accepted by appointment . If the need to surrender your pet is not urgent, we ask that you wait to bring in your animal. This will allow us to ensure room for emergency cases and keep traffic low. Rest assured we are here to help if needed. Please visit our website at . If the need to surrender your pet is not urgent, we ask that you wait to bring in your animal. This will allow us to ensure room for emergency cases and keep traffic low. Rest assured we are here to help if needed. Please visit our website at mspca.org/surrender for more information.

Adoption centers will make disaster preparedness supplies available to the public on an as-needed basis in the event of emergency. Supplies include dog crates, water bowls and pet food is available. Please call the MSPCA adoption centers if you are in need of supplies.

Nikki - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at MSPCA.

Nikki - Domestic Shorthair, male, 2 years old, at Cape Cod.

Thunder- Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at MSPCA.

Thunder - Domestic shorthair, male, 6 years, at Nevins Farm.

Lightning - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at MSPCA.

Lightning - Domestic shorthair, male, 6 years old at Nevins Farm.

Simba - Animals are available for adoption at the MSPCA by appointment only.

Simba - Domestic shorhair, male, 5 years old, at Nevins Farm.

Alfalfa - Animals are available for adoption at MSPCA by appointment only.

Alfalfa - Lionhead, male, 3 months old at Nevins Farm.

Pepper - Animals are available at MSPCA by appointment only.

Pepper - Holland Lop, female, 2 years old by Nevins Farm.

Pip - Animals are available at MSPCA by appointment only.

Pip - Lionhead, female, 5 years old at Nevins Farm.

Oreo - Animals available for adoption at MSPCA by adoption only.

Oreo - Guinea Pig, male, 4 years old in Boston.

WORCESTER ANIMAL RESCUE LEAGUE

Animals can be adopted by appointment only. Call (508) 853-0030 or visit www.worcesterarl.org for more details.

Lincoln - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Worcester Animal Rescue League.

Lincoln - Male/Neutered, Terrier, American Pit Bull/Mix, 5 years.

Iris - Animals available by appointment only at Worcester Animal Rescue League.

Iris - Female/Spayed, Mixed Breed, Medium (up to 44 lbs fully grown)/Mix, 3 years, 4 months.

Trunks - Animals are available at WARL by appointment only.

Trunks - Male/Neutered, Shiba Inu/Mix, 10 months.

Dax- Animals are available at WARL by appointment only.

Dax - Male/Neutered, Mixed Breed, Medium (up to 44 lbs fully grown)/Mix, 1 year, 3 months.

Callie - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only.

Callie- Female/Spayed, Domestic Shorthair/Mix, 4 years, 9 months.

Mocha - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Worcester Animal Rescue League.

Mocha - Female/Spayed, Domestic Shorthair/Mix, 13 years.

BERKSHIRE HUMANE SOCIETY

Shelters will be closed to the public. The main shelter at 214 Barker Road in Pittsfield will still be staffed at r our staff and volunteers and the animals in our care and to support national, state and local recommendations, we are scaling back our op

Adoptions and Surrenders will be by appointment only. You can still surrender a pet or come to see a pet you'd like to adopt at the main shelter, but you'll have to make an appointment to do so. Please call 413-447-7878 to set up a time. Adoptions will not be available through Purradise. If you do come to Pittsfield for an adoption or surrender, please know that BHS has taken extra precautions to keep you safe from the virus.

Cat Boarding will be available at main shelter. Although Purradise will be closed for feline boarding, BHS can board your cat at the main shelter. Please call 413-447-7878 extension 124.

Pet Food Bank and SafePet programs are still available. If you are a food bank recipient, please call 413-447-7878 to set up an appointment. The BHS If you are a food bank recipient, please call 413-447-7878 to set up an appointment. The BHS SafePet program is available for owners of pets through our Participating Partners.

Medical care to shelter animals, including spay and neuter surgeries will continue. BHS will keep the shelter animals healthy and adoptable by continuing to work with local veterinarians.

Low-cost spay and neuter surgeries for cats will still be available to the public . Please call 413-447-7878 extension 124.

Family Dog School is closed

Education Programs are on hold: All meetings of Humane Heroes and Defenders are cancelled until further notice as are tours and community programs.

Boo - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Berkshire Humane Society.

Boo - Terrier/Mix, 2 years, Female.

Missy - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only.

Missy - Female/Spayed, 6 years 10 months.

Pollie - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Berkshire Humane Society.

Pollie - Domestic Shorthair/Mix, 11 months, Female .

Versace- Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Berkshire Humane Society.

Versace - Guinea Pig/Guinea Pig, Male.

Armani - Animals are available for adoption by appointment only at Berkshire Humane Society.

Armani - Guinea Pig/Guinea Pig, Male.
Professor Akin Abayomi, the Commissioner for Health in Lagos state, has debunked reports claiming he has tested positive for the novel Coronavirus.

Recall that on Thursday May 7, he announced via his Twitter handle that 10 associates of the Lagos State House in Marina had tested positive for the virus. Some reports claimed he was one of the 10.

However in a disclaimer posted on his Twitter handle on Friday morning, Professor Abayomi described the reports as fake news.

I hereby implore the general public to disregard the fake and misleading news circulating in the media to the effect that I have tested positive to #COVID19 infection.

It is evident that the fake news is calculated at causing panic and unnecessary anxiety amongst the populace.

I therefore urge the public to disregard any news on #COVID19 that does not emanate from @followslasg official communication channels and other verifiable sources.he tweeted

The post Lagos Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi says he did not test positive for COVID-19 appeared first on .

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South Africa: Measures in place for public servants to return to work

With 511 public servants in South Africa having tested positive for COVID-19, departments have been urged to implement health and safety measures that ensure the containment and management of the virus in the public service.

Of the 511 total cases, two  a doctor and a nurse  have died from the virus, Public Service and Administration Minister Senzo Mchunu revealed on Friday.

Expressing concern at the numbers, the Minister said the pandemic would test to the maximum the States capability to efficiently provide services. Mchunu made the remarks while addressing reporters on the departments Level 4 adjusted measures response to COVID-19.

We are hard at work doing an overall interrogation of the current capabilities of the State in a number of areas to assess, adjust and adapt our operations for the future to deliver optimal services during this pandemic, said the Minister.

At Level 4, said Mchunu, government needs to plan for the normalisation of the public service.

Level 4 allows for the easing of some of the restrictions put in place during the national lockdown, thereby gradually unlocking certain economic activities to resume without compromising progress made in the containment of the COVID-19, he said.

During this transition between the levels, the focus of the public service is to continuously ensure the provision of services. These are services required for the effective functioning of the government and to ensure necessary support for all sectors that will become incrementally active during the various levels.

For government to facilitate the unlocking of economy, there will be a need for more public servants to return to the workplace to provide services that will be required by those sectors that are part of the Level 4 phase, he said.

These would be over and above other basic services that were part of the critical and essential services during the lockdown period.

The department has issued several circulars detailing the necessary measures which national and provincial departments must implement to ensure the containment and management of the COVID-19 in the public service.

The circulars have been developed in accordance to the relevant laws.

These circulars provide guidance on occupational health and safety measures required within the workplace to contain the spread of the virus, said the Minister.

Provisions, among others, require departments to set up internal COVID-19 Steering Committees for implementation plans. The committees will also address issues around the different levels of alertness, demonstrate how departments will ensure service delivery with sufficient capacity, for government services to return to normality, while ensuring necessary precautionary health and safety measures.

Directors Generals and Heads of Departments are required to ensure that employees with co-morbidities or underlying illnesses remain at home or/and work remotely until the pandemic has passed.

If, for whatever reason, such employees are required to attend the workplace, it is incumbent on relevant DGs and HoDs to take the necessary measures to ensure their employees wellbeing at the workplace.

The Minister emphasised that extra care be exercised by public servants who are performing duties during the lockdown.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RADNOR, Pa., May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP reminds Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NCLH) (Norwegian) investors that a securities fraud class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on behalf of those who purchased or otherwise acquired Norwegian publicly traded securities between February 20, 2020 and March 12, 2020, inclusive (the Class Period).



FINAL DEADLINE REMINDER : Norwegian investors may, no later than May 11, 2020 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class. For additional information or to learn how to participate in this litigation please click https://www.ktmc.com/norwegian-cruise-line-holdings-securities-class-action?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=norwegian%20cruise .

According to the complaint, Norwegian is a global cruise company which operates the Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, and Regent Seven Seas Cruises brands. On August 1, 2017, Norwegian updated its Code of Ethical Business Conduct, which is posted on its website. The Code of Ethical Business Conduct, available throughout the Class Period, discussed health and safety standards, stating in relevant part that its environmental, health and safety programs are designed to ensure the preservation of the environment, and safety and security of [Norwegian]s guests, team members and vendors. In December of 2019, a novel coronavirus strain, COVID-19, was detected in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China. Since then, the virus has spread to numerous countries. The spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the cruise industry, with reports of canceled trips and half-empty ships.

The Class Period commences on February 20, 2020, when Norwegian filed a Form 8-K with the SEC. Attached to the Form 8-K was a press release reporting on Norwegians financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2019. In that press release, the defendants discussed positive outlooks for Norwegian in spite of the COVID-19.

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On March 11, 2020, the Miami New Times reported in an article Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Mislead Potential Customers About Coronavirus that leaked emails from a Norwegian employee showed that Norwegian directed its sales staff to lie to customers regarding COVID-19. Further, the Miami New Times article revealed the financial impact the COVID-19 outbreak was causing on Norwegian and its employees. Following this news, Norwegians share price fell $5.47 per share, or approximately 26.7%, to close at $15.03 per share on March 11, 2020.

The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, the defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Norwegian was employing sales tactics of providing customers with unproven and/or blatantly false statements about COVID-19 to entice customers to purchase cruises, thus endangering the lives of both their customers and crew members; and (2) as a result, the defendants statements regarding Norwegians business and operations were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.

Investors who wish to discuss their legal rights or interests with respect to this securities fraud class action lawsuit are encouraged to contact Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check (James Maro, Jr., Esq. or Adrienne Bell, Esq.) at (844) 877-9500 (toll free) or (610) 667  7706, or via e-mail at info@ktmc.com .

Norwegian investors may, no later than May 11, 2020 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. In order to be appointed as a lead plaintiff, the Court must determine that the class members claim is typical of the claims of other class members, and that the class member will adequately represent the class. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff.

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country involving securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duties and other violations of state and federal law. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check is a driving force behind corporate governance reform, and has recovered billions of dollars on behalf of institutional and individual investors from the United States and around the world. The firm represents investors, consumers and whistleblowers (private citizens who report fraudulent practices against the government and share in the recovery of government dollars). The complaint in this action was not filed by Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check. For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, please visit www.ktmc.com .

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A comment made by Kashmir inspector general of police Vijay Kumar on the CRPFs role in counter-terrorism operations has stirred a controversy among the forces deployed in the valley, officials said on Friday.

They said IGP Kumar, during a meeting of joint forces at the district police lines in Baramulla on April 29 chaired by DGP Dilbag Singh, reportedly commented that the paramilitary force is a showpiece and the actual operations are conducted by the Army, its elite unit Rashtriya Rifles (RR) with the help of intelligence generated by the state police.

Kumar, a 1997-batch Indian Police Service officer, is stated to have said that the work of CRPF in Kashmir operations has not been good and he knows it better as he himself had served in the paramilitary force on deputation earlier.

Officials said senior CRPF officers present in the meeting did not take the comments kindly and they later confronted Kumar about his unpleasant utterances against their force.

Senior state police officials said the issue has created controversy after a section of security forces commanders said the comment was aimed to create a rift among sister forces working against militancy and terrorism in Kashmir Valley.

As the issue refused to die down and senior CRPF commanders sought high-level intervention, the Kashmir zone of the J&K Police issued a tweet on Friday specifically praising the role of the countrys largest paramilitary force.

#DGP J&K Shri Dilbagh Singh complimented role of #BSF, #CRPF, @SSB, #ITBP & #CISF deployed on the various assignment in J&K. Specially #CRPF has played a significant role both in maintaining #L&O (law and order) and #CI (counter insurgency) grids, it said.
In Kenya, because of the coronavirus pandemic, justice has to be done digitally. In mid-March, with the arrival of the first Covid-19 cases in the country, Supreme Court president David Maraga ordered hearings to be held over the Internet. Since then, 7,000 judgements have been handed down online. And while a few weeks ago the magistrate had asked for the courts to be reopened, the judge has taken a more cautious stance. For David Maraga, the arrival of Covid-19 has not only had harmful effects. It helps us to catch up with the use of new technologies, said the president of the Supreme Court, receiving a batch of 38 computers donated by the European Union.

The magistrate confirmed in passing that, except in exceptional cases, online hearings would be maintained. He thus confirms his reversal. Indeed, in mid-April, David Maraga wanted to relaunch judicial activities. But a week later, he had changed his mind, asking judges to continue to hold their sessions by videoconference and to transmit their judgments by email.

However, the use of digital is not without controversy. On Wednesday, the LSK lawyers association criticized the quality of the judgments. According to its president Nelson Havi, judges cannot get their files back. These documents are stored in inaccessible courts because they have not yet been disinfected. As a result, verdicts are handed down using incomplete documents. The content and value of the case law is questionable, he says.

In any case, Judge Maraga promised to continue the modernization of the sector as quickly as possible. Indeed, 2200 new cases have been registered since mid-March, almost half of them related to Covid19. The service must therefore continue to avoid congestion.

This initiative could be followed by other African countries in the coming days.
Its probably a desire for most kids to achieve something in life that will make their parents proud and when that moment comes its nothing less than extraordinary. Just like this image involving Deputy SP Rattana Ngaseppam of Imphal, Manipur and her father.

The image which instantly reflects the pride in both the daughter and the fathers eyes has now amazed hundreds of tweeple, including actors Raveena Tandon and Athiya Shetty. And that is why it is now being shared by many.

Rattana Ngaseppam, Deputy SP from Imphal, Manipur. Her proud dad checking out the stars on her uniform. And #Rattana proudly watching the stars in her fathers eyes, wrote a Twitter user and shared the image. He also tagged Manipur Police and another Twitter user Mohul Ghosh on the post.

Rattana Ngaseppam, Deputy SP from Imphal, Manipur



Her proud dad checking out the stars on her uniform. And #Rattana proudly watching the stars in her father's eyes. [Source: @_mohul]



Cc: @manipur_police pic.twitter.com/8WOgGIFOPB  Amit Panchal (@AmitHPanchal) May 7, 2020

From calling it a beautiful picture to commenting on the pride of the father, people dropped all sorts of comments on Twitter.

Proud daughter of a proud father, expressed a Twitter user. Lady making her father proud, tweeted another. This is the real face of women empowerment, its beautiful, commented a third. So much of emotion reflected in one image, wrote a fourth.

What do you think of the image?

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The government said this week that 3.4 million workers in Spain had been furloughed under the ERTE temporary layoff scheme. As the winding down of lockdown measures gets under way, ministers, unions and representatives of companies are negotiating against the clock over the conditions firms can ease staff back into work.

Bosses are concerned about a number of unresolved issues. They say the phased reactiviation of the economy means all their staff cannot go back to work at once, especially in key sectors on the Costa, such as hotels and restaurants, even if a state of alarm ends sooner.

There are fears that up to 30 per cent of those furloughed will not get taken on again this year. Firms have also been told that if they make any staff redundant later in the year after being on an ERTE due to forced circumstances (fuerza mayor), they will have to pay back all the social security quotas the government has being paying on their behalf.

"We need a secure legal base to restart activity in a gradual and flexible way," said Javier Gonzalez de Lara, president of the Andalucia business association.

The urgent need for clear rules was highlighted this week when it emerged that hotels in the Canaries, and not other areas, may be allowed to extend their ERTEs for 'fuerza mayor' beyond the end of the state of alarm.

Unions say that some companies have been preparing to move staff off forced furloughing to more flexible ERTEs negotiated with staff.

No news for autonomos

What similar, adjusted measures might be available for autonomos (self-employed) as well, if the state of alarm ends during a phased lockdown, wasn't clear this week.

Over a quarter of people who were working in Malaga province in February are now idle, due to unemployment, ERTEs, or other furloughing measures.

The government insisted this week that it was doing all it could to get the payouts for unemployment or inactivity to those affected after complaints about how long it has been taking.

From this week, domestic staff and people who were on temporary contracts due to expire when the state of alarm was declared on 13 March will be included in the government's financial relief measures. These two groups were initially left out of the plans and the government has reacted to criticism.
(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc.s ambitious dream to create a city of the future on Torontos waterfront is over. Millions of dollars and years of lobbying werent enough, and the tech giants urban planning unit, Sidewalk Labs, officially shuttered the project on Thursday.The stated reason was the coronavirus pandemics effect on real estate prices. Without the ability to profitably sell office space and homes in the development, the project wasnt viable, Sidewalk Labs Chief Executive Officer Dan Doctoroff said in a blog post.But even before the virus swept over the world, Sidewalks Toronto ambitions had been scaled back significantly. Years of opposition from privacy activists and urbanists, as well as pushback from prominent members of Canadas tech industry had relegated Alphabet to a 12-acre plot of land that would essentially only have room for a handful of residential and commercial buildings.

Sidewalk Labs failure signals how much attitudes toward big technology companies and their influence over our lives has shifted in recent years. If a company like Alphabet, with its talent and resources, cant pull off such a project, its not clear anyone can.

I would like to think this is the defeat of the privately owned city, said Greg Lindsay of NewCities, an urban policy think tank, and a visiting scholar at NYUs transportation policy school.

Privacy and control over ones digital data is a more mainstream concern than it was just two or three years ago. Ideas that initially seemed futuristic and exciting to many are now being questioned, with politicians around the world more likely to gain support for attacking companies like Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. than they would by embracing them.

Sidewalk Labs Toronto project was announced in 2017, after Canadian officials put out a request for private companies to help develop a large swath of the citys formerly industrial waterfront that had sat mostly dormant for years. In one of the hottest real estate markets in the world, the project was potentially lucrative.

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The plan was ambitious, complete with heated sidewalks, underground garbage disposal and tall timber buildings. Sensors would monitor the area, feeding data to AI-enabled computers that would manage stormwater systems and direct traffic. One proposal included a light rail line that would connect the area to the rest of the citys transit network. Sidewalk invested more than $50 million in the project, including opening a 30-person office on site. The company said it will keep an office in Toronto will stay open and re-assign staff to other projects.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed Alphabet with open arms, hosting a high-profile interview with then-chairman Eric Schmidt at a conference meant to showcase the countrys tech sector. Trudeau, two years into his tenure, had made tax credits for big U.S. tech firms bringing jobs to Canada a tenet of his economic policy.

That didnt sit right with some local business leaders, including the former co-CEO of BlackBerry, Jim Balsillie, and John Ruffolo, one of the countrys best-known venture capitalists. They argued homegrown startups would be squashed by U.S. giants under Trudeaus policies. Sidewalk Labs became an easy target, and the two wrote columns and lobbied politicians to stop the project.

At the same time, long-standing questions about data privacy and the role of private companies in city development became more relevant as Torontonians faced the prospect of an American corporation monitoring and collecting information about part of their city. Local activists, tech researchers and urbanists joined together to demand more transparency from Sidewalk Labs.They really didnt have answers when people wanted them, said Alex Ryan, senior vice president at MaRS, an organization that promotes tech and startups in Toronto. So in the place of answers were conspiracies and concerns on privacy, the business model, and the scale of the project.

Complicating matters, the organization overseeing the project was made up of representatives from the local, provincial and federal governments. Everyone wanted a say, and the project went through an endless series of proposals, meetings and consultations.

Sidewalk Labs, staffed by former New York City administrators, was accused of being tone deaf to the Canadian political context. Local indigenous leaders said their concerns had been ignored. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association sued the company, accusing it of proposing tech that would infringe on Canadians privacy rights.

Sidewalks retreat from Toronto coincides with broader changes at its parent company. Sundar Pichai took over the CEO role from founder Larry Page in December. With Covid-19 devastating the global economy, Alphabet has cut back on spending, slowing down hiring and focusing its resources on fewer projects.

Doctoroff hinted that Sidewalk could turn its attention to coronavirus-related projects. The current health emergency makes us feel even more strongly about the importance of re-imagining cities for the future, he said. Doctoroff is a former CEO of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and a deputy mayor of New York City under Michael Bloomberg.

Alphabets final goals for the Toronto project never seemed clear throughout its life.

Their business model continually shifted, and they never presented a final plan, Lindsay said. It appears that they never settled on one.

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GREENWICH  After a successful first run, Family Centers Inc. will run a second pop-up free testing site for the coronavirus on Friday.

A mobile testing unit will set up at the nonprofit agencys health clinic at Wilbur Peck Court. The tests are aimed at low-income residents who might not have access to testing.

Free tests will be conducted from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 8 at the clinic, which is located at 111 Wilbur Peck Court.

They will administer the rapid test, with positive results for the coronavirus found within three minutes and negative results within 15 minutes.

The tests are available to anyone with symptoms of the virus or anyone who has been exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus.

Appointments must be made in advance by calling 203-717-1760 before arriving at the clinic.

Testing went well at the initial pop-up testing site last week said Dennis Torres, vice president of health care programs at Family Centers. The testing is done through the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut in its partnership with the state Department of Public Health.

It was very much a success, Torres said on Thursday. We were able to test 76 people, including 50 with the rapid tests, and we found six positive cases. Those kinds of diagnoses are going to help contain this virus.

The clinic should be helpful to people who do not have health insurance or who are concerned about paying their deductible, he said. They hope to do 50 or 60 more tests on Friday, he said.

More testing days are possible, if needed, Torres said.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the symptoms of coronavirus include a cough and shortness of breath, along with at least two of the following: fever, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, a sore throat or a new loss of taste or smell.

Symptoms may appear between two and 14 days after a person is first exposed to the virus. Older adults and people who have severe underlying medical conditions such as heart or lung disease and diabetes appear to be at higher risk of developing serious complications, the CDC said.

Greenwich Hospital has been testing for the coronavirus at a site in its employee parking lot since March. As of Wednesday, the hospital reported that 5,344 people have been tested and 1,734 of those tests have come back positive. That number includes people from all over the region and not just from Greenwich.

The town Department of Health reported that as of Wednesday, 706 residents had tested positive for coronavirus. According to the state, as of Tuesday, 40 Greenwich residents have died after being diagnosed with the coronavirus.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
At least six security personnel, including an Army major, were killed on Friday when a roadside bomb struck a patrol vehicle in a remote area in southwestern Pakistan, close to the border with Iran.

The Army said in a statement that a vehicle of paramilitary Frontier Corps was targeted through a remote-controlled improvised explosive device (IED) in Kech district's Buleda area, about 14 km from the Iran border.

A major and five soldier embraced shahadat while one soldier was injured, according to army.

No one took responsibility but Baloch militants often target the security forces in the province.

It is the first major attack on the forces in Balochistan since the outbreak of COVID-19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two Imams in Kano have been found guilty by a mobile court for holding congregational prayers during the lockdown, and were ordered to sweep a district heads residence for a week.

The spokesperson, Kano State Ministry of Justice, Baba Jibo-Ibrahim, in a statement, said the incident occurred at Minjibir Local Government Area of the state.

Mr Jibo-Ibrahim said the clerics were found guilty and the court ruled that they should sweep the residence of the district head of Minjibir for one week, as well as pay N10,000 fine.

During the period of the community service embarked upon by the imams, local officials were stationed at the district heads residence to supervise the sweeping to ensure compliance, the spokesperson added.

Also, the official added further that the mobile courts, in three days, from May 3-5, convicted 717 lockdown defaulters across the state including those intercepted by the states governor, Abdullahi Ganduje.

Mr Ganduje himself intercepted six vehicles at Kwanan Dangora violating the lockdown order, each of the vehicles was fined N150,000 each by the lockdown mobile court, among others, the spokesperson said.

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Also, the mobile court convicted a woman for a week at correctional centre with punishment of sweeping the prison yard throughout her stay for exchange words and disrespectful to security personnel enforcing lockdown order

Another defaulter who tore the uniform of a police sergeant on duty claiming to be a superior officer was later found to be a fake policeman. He was handed over to police headquarters in Kano for further investigation, the spokesperson said.

Kano State has 482 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
POSCO's Seoul office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul / Courtesy of POSCO



By Nam Hyun-woo



POSCO's plan to set up an affiliate in charge of the steelmaking group's logistics is triggering a strong backlash, as shipping and logistics companies claim the conglomerate's foray will disrupt the market order and jeopardize the domestic logistics industry which is comprised of smaller firms.



POSCO held a board meeting on Friday and approved the plan. The unit is expected to be established in July at the earliest possible date.



According to POSCO, the decision is part of its plans to raise efficiency in managing logistics by integrating logistics functions scattered around its units. Through this, the group believes it can save more costs and streamline its business.



While the plan does make sense from POSCO's standpoint given the worsening market situation, it is expected to receive stronger backlash from shipping and logistics companies. POSCO has long been attempting to set up a logistics firm. Back in 1990, POSCO acquired Geoyang Shipping, but sold it just five years later to Hanjin Shipping. It also had botched attempts to purchase Korea Express (now CJ Logistics) and Daewoo Logistics.



The Federation of Korea Marine Industries  a business lobby representing the best interests of those in the marine, shipping and logistics industries  sent letters to Cheong Wa Dae, the National Assembly, relevant ministries and POSCO demanding the steelmaker drop the plan. The federation is comprised of 55 maritime industry associations in Korea.



In the letter, the federation said POSCO's plan "is a destructive idea to feather its own nest at the sacrifice of third-party logistics firms."



The federation's rationale narrowed into two main points. First, the federation anticipated POSCO's establishment of a logistics subsidiary will result in the steel giant's possible entry into the shipping business, which will trigger other large consignors such as Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and Korea Gas Corp. to try shipping businesses too.



A number of South Korean conglomerates have already been running their own logistics affiliates. Hyundai Motor Group has Hyundai Glovis, while Samsung Electronics runs Samsung Electronics Logitech and LG operates Pantos, letting them entirely manage their own group logistics.



"As we have seen in the case of Hyundai Glovis, conglomerates' logistics units start as logistics management firms, but then morph into a shipping company," an official at the federation told The Korea Times. "Given POSCO stands as one of the largest consignors in Korea, its entry into the shipping business will bring a serious shrinkage of the market."



Hyundai Glovis was established in 2001 as a logistics unit of Hyundai Motor Group. Its sales stood at 1.54 trillion won in 2005 but quickly grew more than 10-fold to 18.27 trillion won last year. In doing so, the company expanded its fleet to now command more than 80 pure car and truck carriers.



In comparison, the combined sales of 135 shipping firms in Korea backpedaled to 29.54 trillion won in 2018, down from 44.05 trillion won in 2010.



The federation said a growing number of global steel and raw material companies are consigning their freight to third-party shipping firms instead of creating their own units. Those firms including Brazil's iron ore firm Vale, Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. and China's Baowu Steel Group.



Shippers and logistics firms said POSCO's plan seeking to have vertically integrated businesses from production to logistics is in contrast with the government's policy of protecting the shipping industry, citing President Moon Jae-in's pledge last month that Korea will not abandon its policy goal of reviving the shipping industry.



Another point logistics firms made is the potential drop in freight charges. By having an additional intermediary in contracts between POSCO and third-party shipping firms, there will be commissions charged by the logistics unit, thus the fares shippers will bid for POSCO contracts are bound to decline, industry officials said.



"Since the purpose of the logistics unit is aimed at saving costs, there will be no chance of POSCO increasing the amount it intends to pay for logistics," an industry official said. "This means the logistics unit and shippers will have to share the amount. Since the logistics unit has to make its own profit, it will take a more conservative stance in accepting fares bid by shippers, and shippers have no option but to bid a lower price to win the contract. By doing this, the whole of POSCO Group can save costs."



POSCO is one of the largest consignors in Korea, importing 80 million tons of raw materials and exporting 16 million tons of steel products every year. Despite the size, logistics costs accounted for 2.4 percent of the company's total sales costs in 2017, while that of other Korean manufacturing conglomerates averaged 6.6 percent, according to Statistics Korea.



"If POSCO sets up the logistics unit, it will end up collecting transport fares only without contributing to the country's logistics competence," the federation said. "This will cause catastrophic damage to the third-party logistics industry."



Regarding such worries, POSCO said their arguments are "groundless speculation."



"The plan is aimed at integrating logistics functions across the group, and there is no relation with POSCO's entry into the shipping or transportation businesses," POSCO said in a statement. "This is to upgrade the logistics system of POSCO Group and there will be no changes in contract or transaction structures with existing shipping, logistics and loading firms."



Reportedly, POSCO signs contracts that have terms guaranteeing a certain level of profit for shipping firms. However, industry officials raise questions as to whether this strategy will continue after the unit is established, given the protracted oversupply in bulk carrier shipping services.






A cargo airplane took off from Vilnius airport on Thursday, while just a few hundred meters away people watched a movie from their cars at a makeshift drive-in cinema on the airport tarmac.

Occupants of some 160 vehicles were under strict instruction to keep their windows shut to prevent any spread of the novel coronavirus - but were delighted at a chance to watch Oscar-winning South Korean film Parasite on the cinema's opening night.

Some 3.8 million people flew through Vilnius airport last year, but all scheduled passenger flights ceased a month ago, as Lithuania went into lockdown to fight the virus.

Restaurants, concert halls and cinemas remain closed and Lithuanians are encouraged to stay at home. If they do go out they must wear a mask and cannot be in a group larger than two, if mixing with non-family members.

The government, however, this week allowed open-air cafes to reopen and some events, such as the drive-in cinema, to go ahead as the infection rate slowed.

"Screening films at the airport was always my dream, but we've only got the opportunity now. The tarmac is too busy during normal operations", said Algirdas Ramaska, who organised the cinema which runs for four weeks.

"The response was amazing, we are sold out for the next couple of days. People are very tired after staying at home for so long and they want to get out".

The annual international film festival in Vilnius, due to take place in March, was cancelled due to the lockdown, and Ramaska says he hopes to keep the festival team employed by showing movies purchased for the event.

"It's really an amazing experience, watching a movie here - I have never been inside the airport in my car, only in a plane", Egle Ribaciauskaite, 34, said.

At the screening, people were told to stay in their cars at all times and to drive outside of the airport if a toilet break was needed.

Part of the airport had to be re-designated for the event, as any driving on the airport tarmac usually requires a special driver's license, said Dainius Ciuplys, head of the airport.

Routes for moving aircraft have been redrawn at the cramped airport, to avoid jet blasts within the drive-in cinema area, and spare radiofrequency is used to beam the film's sound into the vehicles.
We are now at the bottom of the peak, says Dr Deepak Agrawal, professor of neurosciences at New Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). What he means is that the Covid-19 pandemic in India hasnt reached a stage in which the number of cases multiplies exponentially. And India, he said, shouldnt reach a crisis point like the US did, when the fight against Covid-19 was hindered by a critical shortage of ventilators that meant doctors had to decide who among a myriad patients needed to be put on one.

Agrawal is the co-inventor, along with robotics engineer Divakar Vaish, of the worlds smallest full intensive care unit portable ventilator. It runs on an Android platform and is already in use at ICUs in AIIMS, the countrys most reputed public hospital.

The device, with 600 installations, is proving handy in the fight against Covid-19. To be sure, the share of Covid-19 patients needing a ventilator right now remains small in India, Agrawal said.

Behind the scenes, Indias fight against the coronavirus is a high-tech battle, thanks to the countrys vanguard software services industry. Federal authorities are reaping its fullest potential in fighting a pandemic that has infected 56,342 people so far.

Technology developers are working at breakneck speed for solutions, making officials at the state-run policy think-tank, Niti Aayog, picky.

The story starts with low-cost ventilators and goes all the way to artificial intelligence (AI) applications and drone-monitored social distancing, a review by the interministerial empowered group no. 6 (EG 6) shows. EG 6, one of the several federal panels formed to contain the spread of Covid-19, is headed by Niti Aayogs CEO Amitabh Kant and responsible for leveraging technologies against Covid-19.

A dystopian scenario

For arriving employees at Fastrek, a courier company in Hyderabad, the first point of reporting isnt the supervisor, but an automated thermal scanner. Its a dystopic scene. Masked employees stand face-to-face before a robot that records temperatures. Such screening is essential to catching the coronavirus infection early.

Similarly, Gurugram-based Staqu Technologies has installed AI-enabled thermal imaging cameras for screening essential services workers in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Staqu Technologiess built-in thermal device can measure body temperature from a distance of up to 10 metres and prints workers entry passes.

Asimov Roboticss Karmi-bot is trialling medicine dispensing duties at isolation wards in hospitals. It can even conduct video calls with caregivers. These are just a few of the innovators who are taking the fight to the pandemic, said Kant.

In Indias Covid-19 fightback, big-data analysts sit silently at the back end. Data and technology are the biggest warriors in the fight against Covid-19. And one of the things they can do is recommend the extent of lockdown on a hyperlocal level in a granular manner. Such a level of complex decision making is impossible to make without the use of data, says Ashwin Srivastava, the CEO of Sapio, an AI solutions firm.

The authorities have carved up the countrys districts into hotspots, non-hotspots, red, orange and green zones, depending on their vulnerability and Covid-19 case counts.

Sapio Umbrellas lockdown platform, which uses big data technology, claims to provide an optimum plan for lockdowns, down to the village level that can be extrapolated to larger areas.

Privacy concerns

The governments Aarogya Setu, a contact tracing app, reached 80 million downloads in just over 13 days, making it the worlds fastest downloaded app, according to Kant.

Smartphone tools have become popular globally for tracking people for Covid-19. As surveillance goes viral in India, like elsewhere, it has set off demand for privacy preserving solutions.

Everything is presented as though it is an inevitable trade-off, said Prasanna S, a lawyer who has voiced concern over privacy violations in the fight against Covid. If the government asks us to part of with our privacy, then there needs to be rigour and hard empirical basis. For instance, there should be evidence to say that a specific application is going to be safe and has a 50% chance of flattening the curve, he said.

In the absence of a vaccine, Gupta says, the right technology is critical to fight the worst pandemic in a century. Federal officials are gung-ho about the support they have received from technology developers, who see future business potential.

If the results are so encouraging in the health sector, then with adequate support and a robust regulatory framework, this can be replicated across most sectors, helping India become self-sufficient and the nerve centre for growth and capability, says Kant.
Chinas centrally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have contributed significantly to the countrys battle against poverty by diversifying poverty alleviation models through the development of industries, education, and green development.

By March, 219, or around 90 percent of the 246 counties designated for poverty alleviation by the central SOEs had either been lifted out of poverty or were undergoing checks, and over 90 percent of the central SOEs were rated as great or good in the assessment of poverty alleviation work last year, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council.

China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) has invested 25 million yuan in poverty alleviation through education over the past 10 plus years, launching a program to help poor ethnic minority students in Lingyun county, south Chinas Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. In 2017, 650 students received assistance from the program, which was later adopted in other parts of the country, including Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in southwest Chinas Sichuan province.

China Railway Group Limited donated 87 million yuan to build three kindergartens at poverty-relief relocation sites in Huize county in southwest Chinas Yunnan province. Construction started in November 2019, and the project will allow 2,500 preschool children to receive an education near their homes. The fund will also be used to build, renovate, or expand 43 regular senior high schools in the province, which will improve their conditions, and contribute to progress in the provinces poverty alleviation efforts through education.

Central SOEs have also placed an emphasis on vocational training to help impoverished people master a skill that enables them to find a job and shake off poverty. Poly Group has introduced a new targeted poverty alleviation model through training and employment, providing a training program for impoverished populations and covering almost all their training fees and offering them internships and employment. So far, the company has launched three batches of such training programs for 193 impoverished people from six counties designated for poverty alleviation in Chinas four provincial regions.

In terms of poverty alleviation through developing local industries, ChemChina has rolled out various measures to boost the cultivation of Chinese wolfberries in Gulang county, northwest Chinas Ningxia Hui autonomous region. Thanks to these efforts, which include establishing processing workshops, providing irrigation facilities from Israel, and expanding sales channels, over 10,000 people near the county have found long-term jobs, increasing their annual income by more than 5,000 yuan.

In addition, many central SOEs have also developed clean and renewable energy in poor areas to help boost poverty alleviation through sustainable development.

Using its industrial and technology advantages, Dongfang Electric Corporation invested 18 million yuan to bring the photovoltaic power generation industry to Liangshans Zhaojue, a county rich in solar energy resources. Once completed, 5,097 impoverished households from 71 villages in the countys 23 towns will benefit from the project.

The State Power Investment Corporation Limited has also introduced a targeted poverty alleviation model through green power generation. It has invested 8.8 billion yuan in the cause, benefiting over 310,000 impoverished people, and directly helping 126,900 poor people get rid of poverty.

The central SOEs will continue to help impoverished areas and contribute more to the countrys goal of winning the fight against poverty, said Hao Peng, chief of SASAC, in a recent video conference.
Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But while the successes are well known, investors should not ignore the very many unprofitable companies that simply burn through all their cash and collapse.

So should Nevada Sunrise Gold (CVE:NEV) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.

Check out our latest analysis for Nevada Sunrise Gold

When Might Nevada Sunrise Gold Run Out Of Money?

A cash runway is defined as the length of time it would take a company to run out of money if it kept spending at its current rate of cash burn. As at December 2019, Nevada Sunrise Gold had cash of CA$55k and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$766k over the trailing twelve months. That means it had a cash runway of under two months as of December 2019. To be frank we are alarmed by how short that cash runway is! You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

TSXV:NEV Historical Debt April 29th 2020

How Is Nevada Sunrise Gold's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Because Nevada Sunrise Gold isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage business. Nonetheless, we can still examine its cash burn trajectory as part of our assessment of its cash burn situation. Given the length of the cash runway, we'd interpret the 52% reduction in cash burn, in twelve months, as prudent if not necessary for capital preservation. Nevada Sunrise Gold makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.

Can Nevada Sunrise Gold Raise More Cash Easily?

Story continues

There's no doubt Nevada Sunrise Gold's rapidly reducing cash burn brings comfort, but even if it's only hypothetical, it's always worth asking how easily it could raise more money to fund further growth. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to drive growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.

Nevada Sunrise Gold has a market capitalisation of CA$1.6m and burnt through CA$766k last year, which is 48% of the company's market value. That's high expenditure relative to the value of the entire company, so if it does have to issue shares to fund more growth, that could end up really hurting shareholders returns (through significant dilution).

So, Should We Worry About Nevada Sunrise Gold's Cash Burn?

As you can probably tell by now, we're rather concerned about Nevada Sunrise Gold's cash burn. Take, for example, its cash runway, which suggests the company may have difficulty funding itself, in the future. On the other hand at least it could boast rather strong cash burn reduction, which no doubt gives shareholders some comfort. After considering the data discussed in this article, we don't have a lot of confidence that its cash burn rate is prudent, as it seems like it might need more cash soon. On another note, Nevada Sunrise Gold has 6 warning signs (and 3 which are significant) we think you should know about.

If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.

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.
In a recent interview, Planned Parenthood's acting CEO said, the "silver lining" of the COVID-19 crisis is that her abortion chain has employed the "telehealth technology to offer drug-induced, at-home abortions."

Essentially, Alexis McGill Johnson explained to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, that a lot of states have tried, including elective abortions, on top of the other procedures. These procedures should be provisionally prohibited as the preservation of scarce medical equipment for health workers who treat COVID-19 patients is said to be unacceptable.

In addition, Johnson also said, the pandemic's "silver-lining" has been Planned Parenthood's new tele-abortion service's launch wherein a woman who seeks abortion has a remote meeting with a provider of abortion.

Also, during the web-based meeting with the abortion provider, women may acquire a prescription for "abortion-inducing drugs," they can take at home.

Johnson explained, the new "tele-abortion" service of Planned Parenthood "is actually a silver-lining" in this COVID-19 crisis, they and the other health care organizations have been able to certainly lean into "telehealth infrastructure to offer such a service."

What the Pro-Life Advocates Say

Early this week, the pro-life leaders sent Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA Commissioner, a letter, advising him to make a move to block the unlawful online selling of abortion-inducing drugs produced from abroad and shipped to the United States.

A press release indicated that leaders noticed that under the REMS, the medicine could not be lawfully sold both online and in pharmacies because of the risks of more severe complications.

Nevertheless, websites like Rablon and AidAccess are reportedly regularly selling and distributing the said drugs.

Indiana-based OB/Gyn, Dr. Christina Francis, said, this is a medicine that undoubtedly has dangers linked with it. Dr. Francis is also the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists or AAPLOG chairman of the board.

Additionally, according to Francis, the drug's immediate complications could be "hemorrhage." She explained, the instantaneous probability of infection form this drug, as well as the likelihood of failure where pregnancy does not completely pass from the medication, and then, resulting in the need for a developing operation for that woman due to either ongoing threat of infection or bleeding.

The New Tele-Abortion Service Is In-Demand

Despite the call of pro-life advocates to prohibit the selling of the abortion-induced drugs, an official of the Planned Parenthood in New York State hyped that the new tele-abortion service is very much in-demand. and that a mother started her drug-induced abortion while at home "with her kids running and playing around behind her."

Moreover, Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, Dr. Meera Shah, explained to Associated Press that they offered a drug for abortion to an EMT while seated on her ambulance.

Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist, explained in his videos about procedures for abortion that the said drug is blocking the progesterone's action, which the body of the mother is producing for the pregnancy's nourishment.

Levatino added, when the progesterone gets clogged, the lining of the uterus of the mother weakens, and the nourishment and blood get disconnected from the baby that's developing who then dies inside the womb of the mother.

Mainly, Cytotec, the drug misoprostol, is the one causing the bleeding and contraction to expel the baby from the uterus of the mother.

Meanwhile, according to a report from the Catholic News Agency, "Gynuity Health Products," a company based in New York that has been sponsoring the tele-abortion technology.

In addition, the report also indicated that the capability of getting the drug for abortion from various health providers through the mail is particularly critical in this pandemic.

Check these out:
On Tuesday, during a visit to a face-mask factory in Phoenix, President Trump told reporters that he was planning to wind down his coronavirus task force. Weve flattened the curve and countless American lives have been saved, he said. Our country is now in the next stage of the battlea very safe, phased, and gradual reopening. In many quarters, including the mainstream media, his comment was met with concern, since COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, remains widespread. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that the task force will continue indefinitely. Headlines described that as a reversal, but Trump still plans to refocus the task forces work around reopening the economy. Trump may not be disbanding the task force, but he appears to be sidelining it; as the Washington Posts Toluse Olorunnipa wrote yesterday, the group is meeting less often, and its public-facing role has been curtailed.

Its not just the task force: in recent days, Trump has sought to play down the pandemic and his administrations botched response to it. On Wednesday, he mused that by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad, because more testing leads to a higher number of confirmed cases. The same day, he invited medical professionals to the Oval Office for a photo op; one of them, Sophia Thomas, the president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, said that the supply of personal protective equipment remains sporadic. Trump contradicted her. Ive heard the opposite, he said, folding his arms across his chest. Yesterday, Trump met with Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, and praised him for moving to reopen his states economy, even though the Trump administrations own guidelines suggest that Abbott is moving too fast. Also yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the White House nixed reopening guidelines prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A statement released by the White House called the drafted CDC plans overly specific. Guidance in rural Tennessee shouldnt be the same guidance for urban New York City, it read.

ICYMI: Pushed out of Egypt for COVID-19 reporting

As Olorunnipa reports, the aim of the White House, along with Trump-allied Republican governors, is to control information about the virus in order to spin a new, optimistic narrative. Troublesome statistics have been brushed off or suppressed. Inconveniently candid messengerssuch as Dr. Anthony Faucihave been blocked from sharing their views, including with Democratic-led Congressional committees. If the message were to go out with complete objectivity, it would be disastrous for Trump, Max Skidmore, a political scientist who has written a book on presidential responses to pandemics, told Olorunnipa. Instead, Trump is simply trying to divert attention.

So far, Trumps attempts to divert the medias attention have not been especially successfulthe reality-based press continues to scrutinize the perverse logic of the reopening push. This week, weve seen some sharp coverage. HuffPosts Arthur Delaney compared the politicians who are prioritizing the economy over public health to Lord Business, the villain of The Lego Movie. For McSweeneys, Carlos Greaves drew a different cinematic comparison (Sure, the velociraptors are still on the loose, but thats no reason not to reopen Jurassic Park). The editorial board of the New York Times cast Trumps sidelining of the task force as his mission accomplished moment, a reference to George W. Bushs premature triumphalism in Iraq. In a blog post that was shared widely, including on MSNBC, Jay Rosen, a media academic at New York University, wrote that Trumps plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible.

Rosen argues that the no-plan plan relies on the manufacture of chaos. The press, he says, wont be able to expose the plot because it will all happen in stark daylight. The facts will be known, and simultaneously they will be inconceivable. As I wrote last year, with reference to coverage of Trumps impeachment, the press sometimes struggles to adequately communicate horrors that are happening in plain sighta reflection, perhaps, of a belief that the most damning facts are those for which we have to dig.

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This time, the press has mostly stayed focused on the health crisis, in spite of Trumps attempts to steer us off course. But well also have to resist the urge to reach narrative resolution. This story is about a threat thats still largely unknown; the virus wont go away just because politicians decide its time to reopen the economy. As lockdown measures ease upin America and across the worldwe shouldnt assume they wont need to return. Whatever Trump might say, were not in the next stage of the battle.

Below, more on the coronavirus:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: 2020 AP Stylebook changes: person-first language, and the great pled debate

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.
Meatpacking plants across the US are reporting that their numbers of positive coronavirus cases are soaring.

In Iowa, 1,031 workers at a Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo tested positive for the virus, more than double the official number reported on Thursday - and on the same day that plant reopened after a two-week shutdown.

According to Black Hawk County public officials, the workers had been tested over the closure period, reported the Des Moines Register.

It comes as the governor of Nebraska revealed that more than 1,000 workers in his state have been infected.

About 1,031 workers at a Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Waterloo, Iowa (pictured), have tested positive for coronavirus, more than double the 444 reported the day before

It comes after the Waterloo plant reopened from a two-week shutdown. Many processing plants and slaughterhouses across the US have been forced to close in recent weeks due to outbreaks among workers (above)

Nebraska's governor Pete Ricketts (pictured, May 1) recently revealed at a press conference that 1,000 meatpacking workers in his state

Iowa's governor, Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said on Wednesday that 444 workers at the Waterloo plant were infected and that a total of 1,653 across four plants had tested positive.

But the new number of infected workers brings that total up to 2,240.

Joshua Pikora, Black Hawk County's disease surveillance and investigation manager, told the Register that Reynolds' numbers were of employees who tested positive at Tyson plants.

They don't include workers who were tested at hospitals, doctors' offices and other healthcare facilities.

He did not reveal if any of Black Hawk County's 21 deaths were Tyson employees.

It comes on the heels of Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts announcing on Thursday that more than 1,000 food processing workers in Nebraska caught the virus.

Governor Pete Ricketts said Thursday more than 1,000 meatpacking workers in Nebraska have tested positive for COVID-19, reported NET News.

'With regard to food processing, we have 1,005 people in those food processing facilities that have tested positive,' he told reporters at a news conference/

'So about a sixth, roughly, of the overall cases are testing from those food processing plants,' Ricketts said, referring to the state total of about 6,700.

According to Nebraska Health and Human Services spokesperson Leah Bucco-White, three of the state's deaths are meatpacking workers.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about 5,000 workers in 115 meat and poultry workers have contracted the virus.

That's about one percent of all meatpacking workers in the US. About 20 have deid so far.

Cases among meat plant workers make up one-sixth of Nebraska's total cases. Pictured: A woman who tested positive for coronavirus is brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, March 6

According to Nebraska Health and Human Services spokesperson Leah Bucco-White, three of the state's deaths are meatpacking workers. Pictured: A sign limiting customers to four items of fresh meat at a Hy-Vee supermarket in Omaha, Nebraska, May 6

At least 730 employees at a Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, have tested positive for COVID-19. That is 58 percent of their workforce

At least 18 plants shut down and beef and pork production capacity fell by 40 percent in April, economist Will Sawyer told Bloomberg.

He predicts that Americans may see 30 percent less meat in grocery stores by Memorial Day, but at 20 percent higher prices.

However, Health and Human Services Alex Azar downplayed concerns about outbreaks in plants.

He told members of a Congress on a phone call on April 29 that he believed workers were bringing the virus in - not catching it while on the job.

Azar said the 'home and social' aspects of workers' lives played the greatest role in accelerating outbreaks of coronavirus among meat-packing employees [rwerite]

Earlier this week, the Iowa Department of Public Health approved the release of testing results of workplaces with confirmed outbreaks, meaning at least 10 percent of employees are confirmed infected.

At the Tyson plant in Perry, 730 employees tested positive for COVID-19. That is 58 percent of their workforce.

The Tyson plant in Columbus Junction had 221 positive tests, 26 percent of its workforce, and Tyson's Waterloo facility had 17 percent of its employees test positive.

Iowa Premium Beef in Tama saw 221 positive tests, or 39 percent of its workforce.

It was not immediately clear how many of the positive test cases were ill or symptomatic.

Tyson did not immediately respond to a request from DailyMail.com about whether it had plans to close the plants.

One economist perdicts American will see 30 percent less meat in grocery stores by Memorial Day, but at 20 percent higher prices.

In an executive order last month, President Donald Trump gave the federal government sole oversight over whether to close or reopen meat factories impacted by the pandemic, in an effort to assure the food supply chain continues to function.

'Tyson is committed to implementing all possible measures to protect our team members,' said Hector Gonzalez, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Tyson Foods, said in a statement at the time.

Meat shortages impact Wendy's, Kroger and Costco Wendy's restaurant has taken burgers off the menu in some locations and grocery stores Costco and Kroger have announced limited stocks of beef as Americans start to feel the impact of the pandemic-triggered meat shortage. It's a shocking decision for Wendy's, which established itself as the first fast-food chain to offer fresh 'never frozen' beef, and it's an eerie foreshadowing for what's to come at restaurants across the country. Beef shortages were reported at Wendy's locations in California, South Carolina and Kentucky on Monday. In Chicago Wendy's 'Baconator' bacon cheeseburger was still available for order. 'As you've likely heard, beef suppliers across North America are currently facing production challenges,' a Wendy's statement. Advertisement

To date, Iowa has reported more than 10,000 positive test results and 207 deaths from coronavirus.

It comes after 890 of the 2,200 workers at the Tyson plant in Logansport, Indiana - about 40 percent of employees - tested positive for coronavirus in less than a week.

The pork processing plant was idled for 14 days to curb the spread of the virus and was due to partially reopen this week.

Similar spread is happening in other communities where the economy centers around raising hogs and cattle and processing their meat, including the hot spots of Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota.

The virus threatens the communities' most vulnerable populations, including low-income workers and their extended families.

'They're afraid of catching the virus. Theyre afraid of spreading it to family members. Some of them are afraid of dying,' said the Rev Jim Callahan, of the Church of St Mary of Worthington, a city of 13,000 that has attracted immigrants from across the globe to work at the JBS pork processing plant.

'One guy said to me, 'I risked my life coming here. I never thought something that I can't see could take me out.''

In Grand Island, an outbreak linked to a JBS beef plant that is the city's largest employer spread rapidly across the rural central Nebraska region, killing more than three dozen people. Many of the dead were elderly residents of long-term care facilities who had relatives or friends employed at the plant.

In Waterloo, local officials blame Tyson for endangering not only its workers and their relatives but everyone else who leaves home to work or get groceries.

They are furious with the state and federal governments for failing to intervene - and for pushing hard to reopen the plant days after public pressure helped shut it down.

'We were failed by people who put profit margins and greed before people, predominantly brown people, predominantly immigrants, predominantly people who live in lower socioeconomic quarters,' said Jonathan Grieder, a high school social studies teacher who serves on Waterloo's city council. '

This is going to be with us for so long. There are going to be very deep scars in our community.'

Grieder cried as he recounted how one of his former students, 19, lost her father to the coronavirus and has been left to raise two younger siblings. Their mother died of cancer last September.
File image

The United Nations called on governments, companies and billionaires on Thursday to contribute to a USD 6.7 billion fund for immediate needs in fighting the coronavirus pandemic in vulnerable countries, warning that a failure to help could lead to a "hunger pandemic", famine, riots and more conflict.

UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said "COVID-19 has now affected every country and almost every person on the planet". He said the UN's initial USD 2 billion appeal unveiled on March 25 was being increased because there is already evidence of incomes plummeting and jobs disappearing, food supplies falling and prices soaring, and children missing vaccinations and meals.

He added that the peak of the pandemic is not expected to hit the world's poorest countries for three to six months.

Lowcock said in a video-briefing launching the new appeal that the poorest countries face "a double whammy" -- the health impact of COVID-19 and "the impact of the global recession and the domestic measures taken to contain the virus".

"We must be prepared for a rise in conflict, hunger, poverty and disease as economies contract, export earnings, remittances and tourism disappear, and health systems are put under strain," he warned. "Lockdowns and economic recession may mean a hunger pandemic ahead for millions."

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 executive director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, said there are two keys to averting the possibility of 26.5 crore people being on the brink of famine by the end of the year: providing money and keeping supply chains running smoothly.

The UN appeals to wealthy nations for funding all the time, he said, but the pandemic is "a one-time phenomena, a catastrophe we are hitting", so it is not unreasonable to ask the wealthiest people and the wealthiest companies to give.

"I do not mean just a few millions. I am talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, billions," Beasley said.

He also urged action to address the "breakdown of supply chains globally". Nations must ensure "that we do not have export-import bans, restrictions at borders, shutdown of ports, shutdown of distribution points", he said, saying that some countries have already imposed export bans that are having ripple effects on food supplies.

As an example, Beasley said if young people in urban areas in Africa lose their jobs as a result of the economic impact of the pandemic, they do not have bank accounts to fall back on. "And if they do not have food, you are going to have protests, riots, unrest and destabilisation. It is going to cost the world a hundredfold more to react after the fact," he warned.

He said that if the world does not respond with sufficient funding, it will be catastrophic.

"We are facing famine of biblical proportions," he said. "We can avert famine if we act and we act now."

The UN's initial USD 2 billion appeal has so far raised USD 1 billion, including a lot from Europe -- Germany, Britain, the European Commission -- with contributions also from Japan, Persian Gulf countries, Canada and others, Lowcock said.

The updated appeal adds nine vulnerable countries to the 54 nations covered in the initial appeal -- Benin, Djibouti, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zimbabwe.

Lowcock said more countries are being monitored for possible addition to the list.

The USD 6.7 billion will fund the UN's humanitarian response plan to help the world's most vulnerable people deal with the pandemic now and in the coming months. Lowcock said the amount will be updated before the end of June because the pandemic has created "a very fast-moving situation", and will likely be revised upward again to meet needs in 2020.

Lowcock also urged international financial institutions and governments to help fragile countries deal with the pandemic and reiterated that USD 90 billion could provide income support, food and a health response to COVID-19 for 700 million of the world's most vulnerable people.

That's just one per cent of the USD 8 trillion stimulus package that the world's 20 richest countries put in place to save the global economy, he said.

Lowcock has said probably two-thirds of the USD 90 billion could come from international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and one-third from a one-time 20 per cent increase in government development assistance.

"Wealthy countries will need to make significant one-off increases in their foreign aid commitments," he said on Thursday. "And international financial institutions will need to change lending agreements with vulnerable countries."

UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said in the briefing that there has not been a major outbreak of COVID-19 in refugee camps, but warned that they have an "extraordinary vulnerability" that needs prevention efforts.

Dr Mike Ryan, who heads the World Health Organization's emergencies operation, said that people in such camps cannot maintain physical distance and they have "underlying vulnerabilities" with no access to personal hygiene, safe water, sanitation, food and welfare.

"That is the tinder in which this epidemic may explode," he said.
Los Angeles, April 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

To commemorate the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a coalition of Armenian community organizations in Southern California launched a nationwide fundraiser in support of Feeding America to provide 1.5 million meals to Americans in need, in honor of Near East Relief and the innocent victims of genocide.

The "1.5 Million Meals for 1.5 Million Lives" humanitarian appeal was launched on Friday April 17th, and by Monday April 20th the fundraising target had been met. The fundraiser, still ongoing, has now raised enough to provide over 2.5 million meals.

April 24th, 2020 marks the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, where under the guise of war the Ottoman Turkish Empire undertook the systematic eradication of 1.5 million Armenians as well as an additional 1.5 million Greeks, Assyrians, and other indigenous Christian minorities.

The government of Turkey denies this crime to this day, and routinely coerces foreign governments into enforcing genocide denial as the last stage of this crime, using this tragedy as a diplomatic bargaining chip.

Late last year, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed historic bipartisan resolutions recognizing the Armenian Genocide and acknowledging the contributions of Near East Relief and the American public to the survival of the Armenian people.

Near East Relief (NER) was the first major international humanitarian relief operation in the world, funded by the American People and led by humanitarians, religious leaders, healthcare workers and first-responders.

NER pooled resources to save 132,000 Armenian orphans and over one million refugees, and established over 400 refugee processing centers, hospitals, vocational schools, and orphanages thereby ensuring the survival of the Armenian people.

The Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region launched its America, We Thank You: An Armenian Tribute to the Near East Relief on the centennary of the Armenian Genocide to honor the work of the NER and its supporters across the country who ensured the survival of the Armenian nation.

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On April 24th, 2020 the Armenian-American community will commemorate the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide where the Ottoman Turkish Empire under the guise of World War I undertook the deliberate and systematic eradication of 1.5 million Armenians as well as an additional 1.5 million Assyrians, Greeks, and other indigenous Christian minorities.



In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, in place of the annual March for Justice demonstration that has historically brought tens of thousands of Armenians to the streets of Los Angeles in calling on Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Genocide Committee (AGC), UACLA and UYA have launched an humanitarian fundraiser in support of Feeding America to honor Near East Relief and provide 1.5 million meals to Americans in need.



Near East Relief was the United States first Congressionally sanctioned non-governmental organization - and the first major international humanitarian relief operation of its kind in the world - that mobilized all facets of the American citizenry to respond to the systematic destruction of the Armenian people half a world away.



The American people and the Armenian nation are inextricably bound thanks to the courage and generosity of the American public in assisting the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, remarked Saro Kerkonian, Chair of the Armenian Genocide Committee. Just as the U.S. came to the aid of the Armenian people in their time of need, it is our collective responsibility to assist the American public through these challenging times by organizing this campaign to provide 1.5 million meals in honor of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide.



Through the efforts of doctors, humanitarian workers, missionaries, religious institutions and other first-responders in conjunction with State and Federal governments, Near East Relief was able to pool resources and raise over a hundred million dollars to save 132,000 Armenian orphans and over one million refugees, by establishing over 400 refugee processing centers, hospitals, vocational schools and orphanages to ensure the survival of the Armenian people.



To honor this outpouring of generosity by the American people between 1915 and 1930, and to highlight the role of Near East Relief in ensuring the survival of the Armenian people, the ANCA-WR launched its America We Thank You: An Armenian Tribute to Near East Relief initiative on the centenary of the Armenian genocide. The campaign documented the work of Near East Relief throughout Asia Minor, as well as the contributions of Americans across the country; raising awareness of relief efforts at a state-by-state level.



It is thanks to the eyewitness accounts of first-responders and humanitarian workers who saw the genocide unfold that the memory of its victims and survivors lives on in the United States today, said Armen Sahakyan, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region. Their testimony has been integral to the cause for justice and recognition of the Armenian Genocide, with the latest milestone being last years historic, near-unanimous adoption of official recognition resolutions by the two chambers of U.S. Congress.



Late last year, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate passed historic resolutions with overwhelming bipartisan support recognizing the Armenian Genocide: House Resolution 296 was passed 405 votes to 11 with 3 voting present in October 2019, followed by Senate Resolution 150 which was passed with unanimous consent in December. These resolutions marked the first official recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States, ending decades of genocide denial at the behest of Turkey.



The Congressional resolutions also recognized the historic response of Near East Relief, citing how Near East Relief was formed at the encouragement of President Woodrow Wilson, chartered by an Act of Congress, and raised over $116,000,000 ($2.5 billion in todays money) for relief operations.



Both the House and Senate resolutions firmly rejected Turkeys ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide, and encouraged public education about the Armenian Genocide and the role of the United States in the humanitarian response. To those ends, the Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region Education Committee has worked tirelessly to implement Genocide Education curricula in public schools, working with local ANCA-WR chapters to address the needs of Armenian-American teachers, parents and students at school sites by monitoring and proposing activities and programs.



Through our America We Thank You campaign, the ANCA-WR has been able to build awareness of this proud chapter of our shared history, introducing Near East Relief into public education, and honoring its work through State and Federal congressional resolutions, Sahakyan remarked. This fundraising campaign is a natural extension of our America We Thank You initiative, as we now come together to assist the American people during these challenging times.



Feeding America is a United Statesbased nonprofit organization and one of the largest food relief operations in the country. It maintains a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Feeding America estimates that as many as 1 in 8 people struggle with hunger in the U.S.



The community fundraising target of 1.5 million meals was met on April 20th, 2020 just three days after the campaign launched. The campaign is now on track to provide well over 2.5 million meals to Americans in need. The Armenian-American community of Southern California will continue taking donations at 1915neveragain.org.



The Armenian National Committee of America  Western Region is the largest and most influential nonpartisan Armenian American grassroots advocacy organization in the Western United States. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the Western United States and affiliated organizations around the country, the ANCA-WR advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues in pursuit of the Armenian Cause.
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington on May 4, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Grants Request to Temporarily Block Release of Mueller Grand Jury Documents

The Supreme Court on Friday has granted the Trump administrations request to temporarily block the release of grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation to the House of Representatives.

The order (pdf), which was signed by Chief Justice John Roberts, shields the documents from being handed over to the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee temporarily while the court considers a Trump administration application for a longer delay. The court gave the House committee until 3 p.m. on May 18 to file a response to that application.

The application, which was filed on Thursday, asks for a temporary stay of a lower courts order that grants the House committee access to grand jury information redacted from Muellers 448-page report, including transcripts or exhibits referenced in the redactions. That order is set to take effect on May 11.

The administration also asked the Supreme Court for an administrative stay on the order while the court considers this application.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in his brief to the top court on Thursday that the administration will be filing an appeal of the circuit courts decision and asks the justices to temporarily block the release of the documents from the House until after theyve had time to consider that petition.

Francisco argued (pdf) that letting the order to take effect on May 11 would irrevocably lift their secrecy and possibly frustrate the governments ability to seek further review.

The main question in the present case is whether an impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding. Grand jury materials are usually guarded with great secrecy and are only disclosed under exceptional circumstances. One of the exceptions that allow for disclosure is when the documents are being sought in connection to a judicial proceeding.

The circuit court had accepted that the impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding, while Francisco argued in his brief that it is not.

The ordinary meaning of judicial proceeding is a proceeding before a courtnot an impeachment trial before elected legislators, he wrote. The court of appeals interpretation defies that ordinary meaning, and creates needless contradictions with the other instances of judicial proceeding in Rule 6(e)(3) itself.

He added that there is a reasonable probability the Supreme Court will grant a review of the lower courts decision in the case because the court of appeals interpretation defies the ordinary meaning of the term judicial proceeding, creates tension with this Courts precedents, and rewrites or sets aside other aspects of the Rule in an attempt to avoid substantial constitutional concerns.

Francisco also argued that the circuit courts decision in March was particularly misguided given that the material was sought for a House impeachment inquiry, which had already ended since the House had already impeached the president and the Senate had already acquitted him.

Although the court correctly observed that the Committee may recommend new articles of impeachment, it did not explain how respondent had met its burden to show a particularized need for the requested materials in connection with any potential second impeachment, he wrote.

This case is one of many House Democrat court battles seeking material and information from the president and his administration.

The top court is scheduled to hear on May 12 oral arguments regarding several high-profile disputes over the release of the presidents financial records.
One of New York's most wanted fugitives was charged with double murder yesterday, police have revealed.

Harry Behlin, 46, was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, on April 17, after allegedly shooting Kevin Dillard, 21, in the neck, and Arnelle Branch, 17, in the chest.

The murder suspect has been accused of shooting the victims behind Parkside Houses in the Bronx, New York, after an argument on August 11.

Both victims were rushed to Jacobi Hospital, where they were both pronounced dead.

Harry Behlin (pictured), 46, was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, on April 17, after allegedly shooting Kevin Dillard, 21, in the neck, and Arnelle Branch, 17, in the chest

Police caught up with Behlin eight months later after he fled 567 miles and crossed state lines to Ohio's capital Columbus.

On April 23 he was brought back to New York and charged with the murder.

The 5ft 1inch former fugitive was described as one of New York's most wanted at the time of his disappearance.

Mr Branch (left) and Mr Dillard (right) were rushed to Jacobi Hospital, where they were both pronounced dead

Behlin has served four state prison terms since 1992, including a 10-year sentence for attempted murder.

He has previously been convicted of the attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance.

He will face arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court.
Washington, May 8 : Nine US Senators including former presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris (D-CA) have written a letter to Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, seeking information about the ecommerce giants policies for discipline and termination regarding workers who raise health and safety concerns.

The letter focused on four former Amazon workers who were fired shortly after they publicly raised concerns about warehouse conditions during the pandemic in March and April. These were Chris Smalls and Bashir Mohamed and tech employees Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham.

"In order to understand how the termination of employees that raised concerns about health and safety conditions did not constitute retaliation for whistleblowing, we are requesting information about Amazon's policies regarding grounds for employee discipline and termination," read the letter.

Smalls worked for Amazon for five years at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, where at least one employee has tested positive for COVID-19.

Smalls had been "trying to persuade senior warehouse officials to close the building and sterilize it, but to no avail" due to the coronavirus exposure at his job site.

When management did not respond, Smalls helped organized a walkout, calling on Amazon to close the facility so it could be deep cleaned.

The letter said that Amazon fired Smalls after the walkout - an then designed a public relations strategy which, according to a leaked memo, called for "strongly laying out the case for why the organizer's conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety'.

The Senators said in the letter that although Amazon closed some warehouses for 48 hours for deep cleaning after employees test positive for coronavirus, but these safety responses have not been sufficient.

"To date, more than 100 Amazon warehouses have reportedly had positive coronavirus cases, according to internal tracking by United for Respect. At least three Amazon warehouse employees have died from COVID-19, including a worker in the facility where Smalls was fighting for safety protections," the letter argued.

Amazon tech and warehouse workers held "sick out" day protests over the week of April 20 to protest safety conditions in warehouses and fulfillment centers - more than 300 warehouse workers representing dozens of warehouses pledged to call out of work.

On May 4, an Amazon Vice President announced he had resigned "in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.

Amazon said in a statement that the workers were not fired for "talking publicly about working conditions or safety, but rather, for violating - often repeatedly - policies, such as intimidation, physical distancing and more." However, the nine Senators said that given the clear public history of these four workers' advocacy on behalf of health and safety conditions for workers in Amazon warehouses preceding their terminations, and Amazon's vague public statements regarding violations of "internal policies," they are seeking additional information to understand exactly what those internal policies are, posing nine questions to the ecommerce giant.

Amazon said it was looking "forward to explaining in more detail in our response to the Senators' letter."
Unauthorized crossings along the U.S. southern border dropped by 50 percent in April, according to federal enforcement statistics released Thursday, as the Trump administration continued to use emergency public health authority to bypass normal immigration proceedings and summarily expel migrants.

Border authorities detained 16,789 migrants last month, the latest data show, down from 34,064 in March, the month when U.S. Customs and Border Protection began carrying out "expulsions" under a 1940s-era provision of U.S. law, Title 42.

CBP made 14,416 expulsions in April along the U.S. southern border, with U.S. agents quickly detaining, processing and returning migrants to Mexico in a matter of hours. As a result, the agency has been able to minimize the number of detainees held in U.S. border stations. Such detentions have dropped from more than 3,000 per day to about 100, CBP officials said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to deflect criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic by highlighting his administration's unprecedented immigration and border restrictions, including policies announced last month that tightened green card eligibility.

Mark Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, insisted once more during a call with reporters that the expulsions at the border should be regarded as public health measures, not a form of immigration policy.

"What has not be realized, in the public forum, is the public health risk associated with illegal immigration," Morgan said, citing the cramped quarters and poor sanitary conditions to which many migrants are exposed while en route to the U.S. border. "The president's proactive and aggressive containment and mitigation network of common-sense policies and initiatives with respect to covid-19 has been both historic and effective to slow the spread of the disease."

Morgan said the emergency measures likely will remain in place even as the White House encourages states and businesses to reopen, arguing that the virus is still spreading in Mexico and Central America.

"The threat we face from outside our borders, from this global infectious disease, highlights the need now more than ever before for border security," he said.

Though Trump administration officials have tried to emphasize the external threat of the virus, the United States continues to have the worst outbreak in the world, with more than 1.2 million confirmed cases and more than 75,000 deaths. The U.S. cases are approximately 33 percent of the worldwide total, and the deaths are more than 28 percent of all virus-related fatalities across the globe. The United Kingdom has the second-highest death total, with just fewer than 31,000 deaths, and Italy is third, with just fewer than 30,000.

Among the countries that are the largest source of migrants to the U.S. southern border, Mexico has reported 27,634 cases and 2,704 deaths; Honduras has reported 1,461 cases and 99 deaths; Guatemala has reported 798 cases and 21 deaths; and El Salvador has reported 695 cases and 15 deaths.

Mexican authorities have agreed to accept expelled foreign nationals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as well as their own citizens, and the four countries account for approximately 95 percent of all illegal crossings, according to CBP figures cited by Morgan.

Single male adults from Mexico accounted for 68 percent of border detentions, Morgan said. About 25 percent of those expelled under the emergency measures are rearrested.

CBP encountered its first coronavirus-infected border crosser on April 23, an Indian national detained in California's El Centro sector, according to Morgan. The individual was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation, he said. Border agents were able to minimize exposure to staff and other migrants because they have so much spare capacity in the holding cells of border stations as a result of the expulsion measures, Morgan said.

"Fewer CBP employees are unnecessarily exposed to this deadly virus," he said. "Fewer American citizens. Fewer U.S. health-care workers, and fewer migrants themselves."

The CBP enforcement statistics for April were the second-lowest monthly tally since Trump took office, amounting to a 70 percent reduction from April 2019, when border authorities detained 109,415 amid a record-breaking influx of Central American families and children seeking asylum.

The Trump administration embarked on a broad crackdown along the border last summer that had already curbed access to the U.S. immigration system for asylum seekers, but the emergency health orders have gone a step further. The suspension of anti-trafficking laws has also allowed CBP to expel underage migrants, who are turned over to authorities in Mexico and Central America.

Morgan also said that his agency is accelerating construction of the president's border wall, with 179 linear miles now complete and crews on track to finish 450 miles by the end of 2020.
The Obama-era FBI "existed to manufacture" a crime against his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a day after the Trump administration's Justice Department dropped all charges against the retired Army general.

"Did the FBI confront Flynn to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday, paraphrasing internal FBI communications that were made public recently.

"If the FBI can target a three-star general," she said, "they can target you."

The Justice Department on Thursday dropped charges on Thursday, including one that Mr Flynn lied to federal investigators.

Mr Trump fired him in February 2017, saying he did so because his first national security adviser lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his contacts with Russians and his private business dealings.

The president raged against the Flynn matter during a morning call-in interview with Fox News, during which he accused former President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 presidential nominee, of being complicit in a conspiracy to cook up a crime and put Mr Flynn behind bars while also ending his candidacy in 2016 or weakening his presidency.

"Sleepy Joe was involved in this, also," he said of the former vice president who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. "Other people around president Obama were deeply involved, also," Mr Trump said, also implicated former President Barack Obama in what he agreed with a Fox host is the "greatest political scandal of all time."
CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) just released its quarterly report and things are looking bullish. It was overall a positive result, with revenues beating expectations by 5.0% to hit US$971m. CF Industries Holdings also reported a statutory profit of US$0.31, which was an impressive 23% above what the analysts had forecast. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.

View our latest analysis for CF Industries Holdings

NYSE:CF Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Following the recent earnings report, the consensus from 18 analysts covering CF Industries Holdings is for revenues of US$4.21b in 2020, implying a discernible 7.6% decline in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are forecast to plummet 21% to US$1.70 in the same period. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$4.19b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.53 in 2020. There was no real change to the revenue estimates, but the analysts do seem more bullish on earnings, given the nice increase in earnings per share expectations following these results.

The consensus price target was unchanged at US$36.76, implying that the improved earnings outlook is not expected to have a long term impact on value creation for shareholders. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. The most optimistic CF Industries Holdings analyst has a price target of US$52.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$24.00. Note the wide gap in analyst price targets? This implies to us that there is a fairly broad range of possible scenarios for the underlying business.

Story continues

Looking at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can make sense of these forecasts is to see how they measure up against both past performance and industry growth estimates. These estimates imply that sales are expected to slow, with a forecast revenue decline of 7.6%, a significant reduction from annual growth of 1.6% over the last five years. Compare this with our data, which suggests that other companies in the same industry are, in aggregate, expected to see their revenue grow 4.0% next year. It's pretty clear that CF Industries Holdings' revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway for us is the consensus earnings per share upgrade, which suggests a clear improvement in sentiment around CF Industries Holdings' earnings potential next year. Fortunately, the analysts also reconfirmed their revenue estimates, suggesting sales are tracking in line with expectations - although our data does suggest that CF Industries Holdings' revenues are expected to perform worse than the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at US$36.76, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

Following on from that line of thought, we think that the long-term prospects of the business are much more relevant than next year's earnings. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for CF Industries Holdings going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here..

That said, it's still necessary to consider the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 3 warning signs with CF Industries Holdings (at least 1 which is concerning) , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

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.
[May 08, 2020] Connectyx Welcomes Dr. Michael Grace and Dr. Ronald Bordens to the Company's Scientific Advisory Board

Boca Raton, FL, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Connectyx Technologies Holdings Group, Inc. (OTC: CTYX) (Connectyx or the Company), a global biomedical company that focuses on the orphan drug space announced today that Michael Grace, Ph.D. and Ronald Bordens, Ph.D. will be the first two members of the Companys Scientific Advisory Board.

"We are excited to report the formation of our new Scientific Advisory Board and we are grateful to Dr. Grace and Dr. Bordens for their commitment to the Companys mission of aspiring to grow into an organization that fulfills the unmet needs of patients with rare diseases," Paul M. Michaels, Interim CEO and Director said. Connectyx plans to build the Scientific Advisory Board to a five-member team with deep experience in a broad range of therapeutic areas. The Scientific Advisory Board will guide the Company on subjects including strategy, government, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property. Michael Grace, Ph.D. Michael Grace has 30 years of executive and technical experience in both research and development of protein therapeutics and peptides within the biotechnology industry at Schering-Plough, Bristol Myers Squibb, NPS Pharma and Advaxis Inc. He has contributed to or personally led the development to commercial approval of 9 drugs by FDA and EMA including PEG-IntronTM, OrenciaTM, NulojixTM, YervoyTM, GattexTM and NatparaTM. His experience encompasses all aspects of drug development from discovery, process development, analytical development, quality control and regulatory. He is well-published within his field of expertise and has presented world-wide on several aspects of protein analytics, characterization, and process and product development. Ronald Bordens, Ph.D.



Ronald Bordens is an accomplished executive scientist with over 40 years of successful experience in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for companies focused on research and development. He possesses a unique skill set including but not limited to people leadership, scientific expertise, and quality assurance and control. His pharmaceutical industry experience includes drug discovery, drug development and research technology with a focus on bioanalytical research, biomarkers, and leadership development from his 26-year career at Schering-Plough Research. More details on Dr. Grace and Dr. Bordens will be available on the new Connectyx website which will be launched in the coming weeks.

About Connectyx Technologies Holdings Group, Inc. http://connectyx.com/ Connectyx Technologies Holdings Group, Inc. is a global biomedical company that seeks to develop, in-license, sub-license and bring to market products in both the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device space. The Company focuses on products that are targeted at FDA-defined "Orphan Diseases" with patient populations under 200,000 in the United States. At Connectyx, we envision a world where all patients have a therapeutic option. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. CTYX has great potential but is not yet generating revenues. Although forward-looking statements in this release reflect the good faith judgment of management, forward-looking statements are inherently subjected to known, unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those discussed in these forward-looking statements, including but not limited to our ability to maintain our website and associated computer systems, our ability to generate sufficient market acceptance for our products and services, our ability to generate sufficient operating cash flow, and general economic conditions. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made by us in our reports filed with OTC Markets from time to time which attempt to advise interested parties of the risks and factors that may affect our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary materially from those expected or projected. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release. Contact:

Connectyx Technologies Holdings Group, Inc

[email protected]

Paul Michaels

561-418-7725

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A veteran of the U.S. Air Force who served in the Middle East during the Cold War died April 24 from complications of COVID-19, according to his obituary.

Carl Robert Bentley, 78, who lived in Bloomfield and Windsor, earned a degree in geology from Michigan Technological University and attended the Russian language program at Indiana University for the Air Force.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson announced the allocation of $380 million in supplemental administrative fee funding to all Public Housing Authorities (PHA), including Moving to Work (MTW) PHAs.

More than $42 million will be made available to New York PHAs. The two months of additional funding may be used for traditional administrative fees as well as for new costs related to protecting assisted families and employees throughout this coronavirus pandemic. The funding, made available by the CARES Act legislation President Trump signed into law on March 27, 2020, will be awarded to PHAs across the Nation.

We must do everything in our power to protect all American families from this invisible enemy, including our vulnerable in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, Carson said.

These new flexibilities and additional funds will properly equip Public Housing Authorities across the country with the resources they need to combat this virus, Carson noted.

This Administration has gone above and beyond to ensure public housing residents are healthy and safe during the COVID-19 Pandemic, recognizing that low-income tenants have limited options to quarantine themselves and cant afford many unexpected expenses, Lynne Patton, Regional Administrator for New York and New Jersey remarked.

Our region is ground zero for COVID-19 in the nation, and housing authorities can use this funding quickly to serve their residents, Patton added.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCV) includes the Mainstream Program, which provides tenant-based vouchers that serve households that include a non-elderly person with a disability and serves over 2.4 million families.

The new eligible coronavirus-related activities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Procuring cleaning supplies and/or services to maintain safe and sanitary HCV units, including common areas of PHA-owned Project Based Voucher (PBV) projects.

Relocation of participating families to health units or other designated units for testing, hospitalization, or quarantine, or transportation to these locations to limit the exposure that could be caused by using mass transportation.

Additional costs to supportive services vendors incurred due to coronavirus.

Costs to retain or increase owner participation in the HCV Program, such as incentive or retention costs (e.g. the PHA offers owner an incentive payment to participate in recognition of added difficulties of making units available for HCV families to rent while stay-at-home orders or social distancing practices are in effect).

Costs for providing childcare for the children of PHA staff that would not have otherwise been incurred (e.g. children are at home due to school closings, PHA staff are working outside of regular work schedules, etc).

After President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act into law, HUD acted immediately to allocate its first wave of funding, over $3 billion to assist communities and non-profits, help protect the homeless and Americans with compromised immune systems, and assist Tribal communities in their COVID-19 response efforts. Last week, HUD announced an additional $685 million for PHAs to prepare for, prevent, and respond to a coronavirus outbreak for the public housing program.

HUD is committed to assisting PHAs during this time so that assisted families can stay safe and healthy, Hunter Kurtz, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing said.

Providing these additional funds to PHAs will give them more tools to address local needs and respond to the Coronavirus pandemic as effectively as possible, Kurtz added.

Regional housing authorities receiving funds are listed below:
This is the shocking moment police Taser a father at a petrol station in front of his screaming child.

Disturbing footage shows two officers bringing Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara, 34, to the ground as his son watches in Stretford, Greater Manchester.

The young boy is dragged away by one of the policemen towards the end of the clash at 11pm on Wednesday.

A witness, who recorded the incident on her phone, blasted what she called 'unnecessary force' against the father.

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said he was 'concerned' by the video and police have referred themselves to the Independent Office For Police Conduct.

The clip starts as two policemen try to restrain Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara as his child wails in the background in Manchester

One of the officers orders him 'release your hands' as the father clings on to his child in Stretford at 11pm on Wednesday

The clip starts as two policemen try to restrain Mombeyarara as his child wails in the background.

One of the officers orders him 'release your hands' as the father clings on to his child.

The woman filming says 'oh my god he's got a child' as the camera zooms in to reveal the youngster in his arms.

The policemen continue to clash with Mombeyarara, who swings his arms up out of their grasp.

There is a bang as the Taser is released and Mombeyarara slams down on the ground (pictured)

One of the officers tells him: 'You're the one that's causing the problem.' They continue to argue until one officer tells the other to 'Taser him'.

There is a bang as the Taser is released and the man falls to the ground.

His son lets out a loud scream, shouting 'Daddy' as his father smashes face first into the ground.

The child becomes even more distressed and the woman filming can be heard saying 'oh my god'.

The man lies on the floor as one of the officers says 'put your hands behind your back, get your hands behind your back'.

As the clip ends, the youngster is carried off by one of the officers as he continues shouting at Mombeyarara.

Witness Dionne Allman, 19, shared the footage she captured on Facebook, branding the police's actions 'disgusting and appalling'.

She claimed: 'After this video was taken I continued to film and the police officer continued to Taser the man several consecutive times whilst his son was still witnessing this all happen.

'I don't know what the man did or was accused of, but the level of force used on him with the inappropriate procedures was incredibly difficult to watch.

'At times like this, institutes like the police need to be people that we can rely on for protection in every sense of the word and I personally think that the last thing they did was protect this child's mental well being.'

His son lets out a loud scream, shouting 'Daddy' as his father smashes face first into the concrete. He was later arrested and charged

A GMP spokesman said: 'A man has been charged following an incident which saw a taser being deployed by a GMP officer.

'Shortly before 11pm on Wednesday, May 6, police officers observed a vehicle being driven unsafely at high speed on Chester Road, in Stretford.'

They said the car was stopped and Mombeyarara, from Old Trafford, was arrested and charged with two counts of resisting a constable in the execution of their duty.

He was also charged with one count of driving at excess speed, one count of not having vehicle insurance, one count of being unfit to drive through drink, one count of failing without reasonable excuse to co-operate with a preliminary test, one count of failing to stop when required to do so and one count of unnecessary travel.

He has been remanded in custody and will appear before Manchester Magistrates' Court today.

Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham posted a statement after the incident on his Twitter page, saying he was 'concerned' by the video

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins confirmed that the matter has been referred to the IOPC for review

The spokesman added: 'During the arrest a taser was deployed by a Greater Manchester Police Officer.

'The matter has been reviewed by the GMP Professional Standards Branch and we have voluntarily referred this matter to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, to ensure transparency and independence in terms of reviewing the circumstances of the arrest.'

Superintendent Mark Kenny said: 'We are aware of public concern regarding this arrest and I want to reassure the public that this matter is being reviewed and treated seriously. In addition we have voluntarily referred this matter to the IOPC.'

Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham posted a statement after the incident on his Twitter page, saying he was 'concerned'.

He wrote: 'On Friday morning a video was brought to my attention of a police incident at a petrol station in Greater Manchester involving two police officers, a man, a child and the use of a taser.

'From what I have been told, it would appear that the officers were right to apprehend the individual who was putting his child and others at risk by his actions.

'He has subsequently been charged. But it is not at all clear that the level of force used in this instance, particularly in front of a child, was proportionate or justified and that is why I have asked for an urgent independent review to be carried out.'

Manchester Gorton MP Afzal Khan posted: @Very alarming to see @gmpolice using such undue force and in front of a small child. I hope this will be looked into as a matter of urgency.'
Police officer who was coughed on and threatened with coronavirus says experience left him anxious for familys health

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 8th, 2020

A North Wales police officer who was deliberately coughed on and threatened with COVID-19 has told how the experience left him anxious for the health of his family.

Experienced PC Rob Jones, whose assailant was jailed after deliberately weaponising the virus, called the incident petrifying and revealed his colleagues are fearful of daily spitting and coughing attacks which might infect them with the virus.

The officer, who has 16 years service with the force and is based in Colwyn Bay as part of a response team, spoke out after a man was sentenced to 26 weeks at Mold Crown Court and convicted of assaulting him.

North Wales Police Federation Rep Rob said the shocking experience was one every colleague feared in the current climate.

He said: We did everything by the textbook, but it still did not prevent this individual from coughing deliberately in my face.

He was being detained in the back of a vehicle when he repeatedly started shouting: Im going to spit in your face. We intended to use a spit guard to protect us, but when we opened the door to take him into custody, he went straight for me.

It all happened so quickly, and he deliberately coughed within a few inches of my face. I could even feel the warm air from his mouth, and it was horrifying.

Following the attack, the officers first thoughts turned immediately to his close family.

He said: I have vulnerable individuals around me at home, but Ill only qualify for COVID-19 testing if I display symptoms. Its a constant worry, and one which is in the mind of every single police officer in the nation as the number of similar attacks increases.

North Wales Police Federation General Secretary Mark Jones welcomed the jail sentence but warned the incident was representative of a growing trend.

He said: Weve seen more and more of these attacks where people are deliberately weaponising COVID-19 through spitting and coughing on colleagues.

In Robs case, he now has to live with a potentially silent killer and worry about the potential consequences of this despicable attack on himself, fellow officers, and of course his family.

This kind of cowardly assault is particularly terrifying. On a daily basis, it is becoming more of a threat to every frontline officer as they patrol the streets to help the NHS and fight this virus.

That is why we must have lengthy jail sentences for this type of awful attack. We need the courts to step up to the mark and support colleagues who are doing their level best to protect the public.

The National Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales also urged magistrates and the judiciary to be consistent with sentencing.

PFEW National Chair Mr Apter said: Nothing is worse than being spat at or coughed in the face by an individual who says they want to infect you and your family with the most contagious of viruses.

What is adding insult to injury is the different approaches in how it is sometimes dealt with by courts. Some are being sent to prison, which is where they absolutely deserve to be, whilst others are let off with nothing more than a slap on wrist. This sends completely the wrong message.
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed an interim order of the Orissa high court which ordered that all migrant workers returning to the state test negative for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) before being allowed to board special trains, and added that the exercise be governed by guidelines put in place by the central government.

The guidelines put in place by the Centre for the movement of migrants provide ample protection, the Supreme Court bench headed by justice Ashok Bhushan observed, after the Union government approached the apex court saying that the HC order effectively put in place precautions over and above the protocols set by the Union government.

We stay the interim order dated 07.05.2020. We further clarify that the stranded migrants shall be dealt with as per the order/guidelines of the Government of India dated 29.04.2020, the Supreme Court ordered.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta told the bench, also comprising justices SK Kaul and BR Gavai, that all stranded migrants boarding the special trains were being screened and only those found asymptomatic were allowed to proceed. Assisted by advocate Kanu Agrawal, he further said that the migrants were being allowed only on the condition that they will be quarantined for the requisite time period in their home states.

On April 29, the central government issued a circular permitting stranded migrant workers, students and pilgrims to travel to their homes states. The government shared a list of necessary precautions to be taken during the exercise. On May 1, the government issued an order permitting the travel of such migrants by special trains.

The Centre contended that the order passed by the high court effectively mandated additional safeguards over those prescribed by the Union government and that the move cant be allowed without hearing the central government. The bench accepted this argument.

We are of the view that the order of the Government of India dated 29.04.2020 provides ample protection. It appears that before the High Court the order of the Government of India dated 29.04.2020 and the guidelines were neither brought into the notice nor were under challenge (before the high court), the top court said.
Dance produced in Shanghai to cheer overseas people

By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-05-08 10:10

When the Chinese were strenuously fighting against the novel coronavirus epidemic in mid-February, a video shot by Japans Matsuyama Ballet Troupe featured the Chinese national anthem and their encouragement to Wuhan and China greatly touched the Chinese peoples hearts.

This is the reason why the Shanghai Dance Theatre has attempted to repay the overseas people who are now overwhelmed by the disease outbreak.

Since the Shanghai Peoples Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries proposed to create some art works to encourage foreign people in the pandemic battle, theaters affiliated to SMGLive, a performance talent training and dance production company in Shanghai, began making their productions. Finally, two works have been chosen to release to the world, with one being the dance One World Filled with Love by the Shanghai Dance Theatre.

Based on a namesake song, the dance adds some sign languages. All of the 50 odd dancers from the troupe have taken part in the performance.

Zhu Jiejing is one of the main performers and danced in the opening act in which she lies on her arms and with the spotlight on her slowly opensher eyes to dance, finally taking off her mask. This scene signals that people are preparing for when the pandemic ends.

(Zhu Jiejing in the dance)

To make both artists and general public understand what the dance means and the emotion it expresses, the producer especially adopted simple sign languages such as touching face and hugging. In terms of the outfit, T-shirts with the image of a Crested Ibis(whose near extinction had prompted the troupe to createa namesake ballet) was chosen instead of professional dancing costumes.

(the Crested Ibis ballet)

In the video, clips from the Crested Ibis ballet have also been added. As a program which has performed in Japan and America many times and resonated especially among the Japanese due to its nature protection theme, Crested Ibis is not only a representative work of the troupe, but also a symbol that it conducts international cultural exchanges to promote civilian communication.

Ma Chencheng, president of SMGLive and also director of the dance One World Filled with Love believes that editing scenes from the Crested Ibis into the dance video not only recalls peoples consciousness to protect the environment amid the current pandemic outbreak, but also emphasizes the concept of a community of a shared future for mankind. Both the ballet and the dance are conveying the same universal emotion and value.

Speaking of the ballets success in Japan and America, Wang Jiajun, one of the main dancers felt quite proud. In 2018, the ballet crew went to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to have its American premiere. In a signing event, the crew were deeply moved by the enthusiasm of the American audiences, which contained many overseas Chinese too.

(Wang Jiajun in the dance One World Filled with Love)

Although I didn't quite understand what they were saying, I could feel their strong affection to our performance. It can be said that art had broken the gap between people." Recalling the scene, Wang Jiajun was full of excitement, "they shook my hands and wanted me to sign my name. At that time, I was so delighted. I felt that we young Chinese dancers/artistswere accepted and loved by the locals. This was not just exchanges between dancers and audiences, but between their two countries. The ballet Crested Ibis acted like a bridge to connect the people of our two countries together, and made their hearts very close."

Producing the dance One World Filled with Love for foreign people is also a kind of civilian communication. It will transfer the Chinese peoples love and encouragement to the world by showing the positive attitude of the young Chinese when facing up to the pandemic.

In Zhu Jiejings view what they are doing is small but it will converge into a huge force. We believe that humanity can overcome all difficulties with wisdom, power, art, and love,said Zhu.
Kerala on Friday completed 100 days since the first coronavirus case was reported on Jan 30 and chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the Covid 19 curve in the state had flattened marked by high recovery and low mortality rate.

Just one single positive case was reported today in the state taking the tally to 503, while ten cured patients were discharged from hospitals. Now, only 16 positive cases remain under medical management and they will also be discharged soon, the CM said. He added that since the pandemic was severe in certain parts of the country, the time was not ripe to lower the guard.



Also Read: Plea in Kerala HC to open churches with 25% occupancy amid lockdown

The first case was reported in January and in March many cases came up all of a sudden. We managed them well. We dont want a third bout. So we have to maintain vigil in the coming days. There is no room for any complacency now, he said. Among the states 14 districts, 10 are now Covid-free.

According to experts, the state has a robust primary health sector, strengthened by successive governments, and universal literacy among women has helped in getting the message across quickly. The decentralised government structure has also made it easy for the grassroots health workers to identify, isolate and treat patients, though testing rates are low in the state.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

Migrants movement and return of expatriates from foreign countries pose a challenge to the task of keeping the curve under check. 363 people arrived in the state from the middle-east on Thursday and at least five of those were shifted to isolation wards. Similarly, those returning to the state from red zones-- at least 45,000 residents stranded in other parts of the country have returned in the last three days and many more are expected in the coming days.

A 23-year-old youth, who was in quarantine after returning from Tamil Nadu, died in a hospital in Sholayur in Palakkad district in the early hours of Friday. His relatives said he was suffering from high fever and stomach ailments.



The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

The youth identified as Karthick along with his four relatives had crossed over to Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu through a forest route to attend a relatives funeral. They were quarantined after the matter came to light. Karthicks swab was taken for testing two days ago but the result is yet to come.

Many experts have reminded that the time has not come for the state to lower its guard.

As long as we have fragile borders with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, chances of new cases sneaking into Kerala pose a threat. Districts like Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad, Idukki and Kasaragod are vulnerable and utmost surveillance is the key to containment, said Dr A Fathahudheen, professor and head of the department of pulmonology and critical care at the Government Medical College Hospital in Kochi, who has treated many Covid patients.
Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber put the call out to fans - asking for video submissions to use in their new music video for 'Stuck With U'.

Turns out Carole Baskin from Netflix's 'Tiger King' made a submission of her own with her husband Howard.

Justin used it to tease the official video:
Its become a local phenomenon: Central New Yorkers craving a taste of the New York State Fair during the coronavirus pandemic pile into their cars on weekends and wait in long lines for drive-thru bags of the fried dough from Villa Pizze Fritte.

The pop-up sales events are growing this week with the addition of two new State Fair vendors, the Big Kahuna food stand (for sausage sandwiches and gyros) and the Ashley Lynn Winery (for wine slushies).

Also growing is the list of local charities and non-profits that will benefit from the events. For each day of sales, the Zazzara family, owners of Villa Pizze Fritte, have designated a local charity to get a share of the proceeds.

Its such a win-win for people to be able to participate in something fun and then give back at the same time," said Kate Houck, executive director of Davids Refuge, an organization that provides respite and support to parents of children with special needs or life-threatening conditions. It was the featured charity last Saturday.

When you look at how popular its been, its just an incredible way to raise awareness of who we are and what we do, said Houck, who said Davids Refuge has recently launched some new programs to aid people affected by the coronavirus. Thats a huge number of people who may not have been aware of us before.

The first designated charity for the Pizze Fritte sales didnt even know about it until after the fact. The CNY Diaper Bank was the featured nonprofit on April 24, when the event was launched at the corner of Erie Boulevard East and Bridge Street in DeWitt. The resulting traffic jam caused the Zazzaras to relocate to the Orange parking lot across from the fairgrounds beginning last weekend.

It was so amazing that they recognized us and help draw attention to the need for diapers in this area, said Michela Hugo, founder and president of the group that provides diapers to families in need.

The organization received $1,000 from the Pizze Fritte sales, enough for 7,000 diapers, Hugo said.

Like Houck at Davids Refuge, Hugo said the increased public awareness is as important as the money.

Weve heard from a lot of new donors in the past few weeks, Hugo said. I dont know how many may have heard about us just through the Pizze Fritte.

Other local charities that have benefited from the Pizze Fritte sales include Francis House, which provides a home and support to those with terminal illness, and the Patrick Wiese Foundation, which provides scholarships and support to cancer patients.

Three new charities will be added to the list for the coming weekend, said Grazi Zazzara Jr., who has been coordinating the pop-up events. He did not provide the names of those charities as of Thursday afternoon.

Zazzara has not disclosed the amount the sales have raised for charity, saying he preferred that the agencies share that information at their discretion. Its their decision to share details, not mine on their behalf, he wrote in a text.

This weekends event, dubbed the State Fair Food Fest, takes place in the Orange lot near the Fairgrounds from noon to 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Villa Pizze Fritte is leasing about 45,000 square feet of space on the Orange lot from the Fair, according to Fair spokesman Dave Bullard. The cost is about $675.

Ashley Lynn Winery has obtained a liquor license to sell the wine slushies, which will be delivered frozen in sealed pouches. Selling alcohol in sealed containers has been allowed at bars, restaurants, wineries, breweries and similar businesses since dining and tasting rooms were closed by state order on March 16.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

As CNY coronavirus lockdown loosens, 98% of us could still get sick

Where are Onondaga Co. health officials worried about coronavirus spread? The complete list

Onondaga County sets daily records for tests, coronavirus infections; 41st death

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.
While Peter Weber is still being talked about thanks to his outrageous Bachelor season, there are plenty of Bachelors who have a much better reputation. And one of them is Ben Higgins. Higgins thought he met the love of his life on his season as the lead, but we know that didnt work out. Even so, he met his current fiancee, Jessica Clarke, without the help of the series  and the two seem happier than ever.

Higgins recently went on Nick Vialls The Viall Files podcast to talk about his relationship and life during the coronavirus (COVID-19). And while he still has quite a following thanks to reality TV, hes also an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, his restaurants and coffee shops arent doing well at the moment. Heres what he said.

Ben Higgins co-founded Generous Coffee Company

Higgins isnt just interested in being known as a reality TV star. He wanted to use his platform for the greater good, and he launched Generous Coffee Company to help fund operational expenses of nonprofits that are doing work to help the world. Higgins calls the business for purpose instead of for profit. The business is run out of Denver, Colorado, and has been operational since 2018.

It is the most amazing thing to witness when lives are changed through the funding of Generous, whether it is people having the opportunity for education, access to health care, clean water, jobs, newly built and safe infrastructure, or equality in the household, Higgins explained to Daily Coffee News.

Higgins didnt create this company alone, though. There are actually three founders as well as a director of communications and over 50 volunteers. Our biggest difficulty has been finding ways to involve these volunteers  people who are interested, passionate, and inspired in spreading the mission and vision of Generous, Higgins added.

He got involved with restaurants in 2018

Not only is Higgins involved with coffee, but he also co-owns restaurants. The Denver Post reported back in 2018 that Higgins co-owned AshKara, an eatery known for showcasing Middle Eastern cuisine. Higgins even called his involvement with the place a childhood dream, as he was inspired by a restaurant in Leesburg, Indiana, that brought back memories.

The owner, Stacy, he always had a bottle of wine, a cigar, and his books, he had his financials right in front of you, Higgins explained to Delish while talking about AshKaras opening. From that point forward I said, I want to be that guy. I want to be in a place that people want to come to. I want to be in a place where Im not pulled in a thousand other locations, where people come to congregate and meet.

Higgins told Nick Viall that his businesses arent doing well due to coronavirus

Ben Higgins attends the Build Series to discuss The Bachelor Live On Stage Tour | Jim Spellman/Getty Images

Higgins talked to Viall on The Viall Files about his businesses, and he mentioned that he knows if everything goes down due to coronavirus, he knows hell be OK in the end. But he still has a lot to lose.

Heres the bad part about my life right now is over the last three years, Ive invested and bought three restaurants and two coffee shops, Higgins said. Those things are doing really bad right now.

But hes not all doom and gloom about the situation. The benefit of life for me is realizing that if I lose everything Im still OK, like meaning that my identity does not lie in what I have, Higgins added. The sad part of that is Ive tried to work hard and often so that I could do those things so that later on in life I could have the freedom and the time to invest in my family and friends. That part is sad. I dont know what this looks like in six months for me when it comes to those investments.

Higgins mentioned small business loans have helped, and hes remaining positive itll all work out in the end. Were hoping the restaurants and coffee shops can pull through during this difficult time.

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch (R-ID) (L) and ranking member Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) talk during a hearing on Capitol Hill December 03, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

US Shows Bipartisan Support to Australian Ally in Response to Chinese Embassy Threats

In a show of bipartisan support, members of the United States Congress sent a letter on May 7 reaffirming its alliance with Australia and condemning the recent threats made by the Canberra-based Chinese Ambassador.

Members from both chambers and across the political divide wrote of the countrys mateship and reaffirmed the strong support for the U.S.Australia alliance.

Addressed to Australian Ambassador Arthur Sinodinos, the letter said it is only natural that Australia seeks an objective and independent review into the origins of the virus, with the members of congress saying they could not agree more.

The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote on Twitter on May 7:

The US stands w/ our Australian friends & allies in the face of #CCP threats. Ive joined Senate & House members in supporting #Australia after PRC Amb. Cheng suggested economic retaliation after it called for an investigation into the origins of #COVID19.

The US stands w/ our Australian friends & allies in the face of #CCP threats. Ive joined Senate & House members in supporting #Australia after PRC Amb. Cheng suggested economic retaliation after it called for an investigation into the origins of #COVID19. https://t.co/qcIqCA4kqe  U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (@SenateForeign) May 7, 2020

The letter was signed by 27 members from both the House of Representatives and Senate and included senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

They cited comments from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong.

In calling for an investigation Morrison said, Wed like the world to be safer when it comes to viruses  I would hope that any other nation, be it China or anyone else, would share that objective.

The letter said the response from Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye in an interview with the Australian Financial Review on April 26, was deeply disturbing and that they unequivocally opposed this behavior.

When Cheng was questioned on calling for an investigation, he responded by claiming: Its not in your interests. It wont bring you respect and its detrimental to global efforts.

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye speaks to the media during a press conference at the Ambassadors residence in Canberra, Australia, on Dec. 19, 2019. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

When pressed on whether China would stop buying Australian iron ore, coal, or gas, he said there would be no boycott, but the Chinese public was frustrated, dismayed, and disappointed with Australia.

Maybe the ordinary people will think why they should not drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef?

The letter from the U.S. members of Congress said these comments insinuated Australia may face economic retaliation.

This incident is part of a broader and concerning pattern from the Chinese government, wrote the lawmakers. As we continue to confront this deadly disease and its consequences, we will be faced with many tough decisions, including those that may arise from the Chinese governments continued lack of cooperation and transparency.

One decision that is not difficult is to always stand with our Australian mates. No matter the external pressure or coercion, we will always have Australias back, just as Australia has always had ours.

Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) wrote on Twitter on May 7:

Not for the first time, the CCP has issued thinly-disguised threats against our ally Australia. Earlier today, I wrote to Amb @A_Sinodinos alongside my colleagues @RepJoeCourtney, @SenatorRisch and @SenatorMenendez to make clear the US always supports our mates.

Not for the first time, the CCP has issued thinly-disguised threats against our ally Australia. Earlier today, I wrote to Amb @A_Sinodinos alongside my colleagues @RepJoeCourtney, @SenatorRisch and @SenatorMenendez to make clear the US always supports our mates. pic.twitter.com/Y27OyRjQ03  Rep. Mike Gallagher (@RepGallagher) May 7, 2020

Signatories of the letter are:

Senator Jim Risch (R-ID)

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ)

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI)

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT)

Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO)

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Senator Chris Coons (R-DE)

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)

Senator David Perdue (R-GA)

Senator Todd Young (R-IN)

Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI)

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY)

Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA)

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)

Rep. Ed Case (D-HI)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)

Rep. William Timmons (R-SC)

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA)

Rep. Ron Wright (R-KS)

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA)

Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX)

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-CA)

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH)
TORONTO (Reuters) - Alphabets (GOOGL.O) Sidewalk Labs has pulled out of its Toronto smart city project due to economic uncertainty, the subsidiarys chief executive officer said on Thursday.

Sidewalk Labs had developed a proposal for a futuristic, data-driven city development in the heart of Torontos business district, and was working with a government-mandated agency who planned to vote whether to approve the final proposal in June.

As unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre (5-hectare) project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed, Sidewalks CEO Dan Doctoroff said in a letter released on Thursday.

Waterfront Toronto, the agency created by the federal, provincial and municipal governments to oversee waterfront developments in Toronto including the project, was informed on Wednesday, Doctoroff said.

Sidewalk Labs first won permission to develop a proposal for the Quayside project in October 2017, and submitted their master plan in June 2019 to Waterfront.

While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, Waterfront Toronto offers thanks and appreciation to Sidewalk Labs for its vision, Waterfront Chair Stephen Diamond said in a statement.
Actor Florence Pugh says the most terrifying aspect of starring in the upcoming superhero film "Black Widow" was doing the Russian accent.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe's stand-alone film, the Oscar-nominated actor plays Yelena Belova, a sister-figure to Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff/ the titular Black Widow who was trained in the Red Room.

"I was scared because my Russian accent was going to be out there and I didn't know what it sounded like.

"I'm also playing a character who no-one's seen before but they've read about her. I didn't know whether people were going to hate me!" Pugh told ELLE UK for its June issue.

The 24-year-old actor also said the idea of joining the MCU itself was quite "daunting".

"When you think of Marvel, it's big and daunting. Especially being a relatively small actor to look at it and go, 'Oh! I'm going to be a part of this', that's a big decision," she said.

"Black Widow", which was scheduled to hit the theatres on May 1, will now release on November 6 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Directed by Cate Shortland, the film also stars David Harbour and Rachel Weisz.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The family of a newborn left with lifelong brain injuries during a hospital gas bungle has called on authorities to reopen their investigation after the subcontractor responsible was fined $100,000.

Christopher Turner was on Friday convicted in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court over the fatal mix-up at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, which killed one newborn and left another with brain damage.

Baby John Ghanem died in July 2016 after he was ventilated with nitrous oxide - commonly known as laughing gas - from a gas port labelled "oxygen" in the hospital's operating theatre eight.

A month earlier, Amelia Khan suffered brain damage because she was likewise mistakenly administered nitrous oxide from the same gas outlet when she required resuscitation upon delivery.
Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call

, 10:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q1 2020 Evergy, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Lori Wright. Thank you. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Lori A. Wright -- Vice President of Corporate Planning, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Evergy's First Quarter Call. Thank you for joining us this morning. Today's discussion will include forward-looking information. Slide two and the disclosure in our SEC filings contain a list of some of the factors that could cause future results to differ materially from our expectations and include additional information on non-GAAP financial measures. We issued our first quarter earnings release last night. The release is available along with today's webcast slides and supplemental financial information for the quarter on the main page of our website at evergyinc.com.

On the call today, we have Terry Bassham, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tony Somma, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Other members of management are with us and will be available during the question-and-answer portion of the call. As summarized on slide three, Terry will give an overview of the quarter and provide a business update, including a discussion of COVID-19. Terry Tony will update you on the details of our latest financial results and 2020 drivers.

With that, I'll hand the call to Terry.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Lori. Good morning, everybody. Before I get started, I want to extend my deepest sympathies to those that have been directly impacted by the pandemic. I'd also like to extend my sincere appreciation to those professionals and critical functions who continue to work, especially first responders and frontline medical professionals who have been the real heroes through all of this. As I'm sure it's been for everyone, the last couple of months have been unique and challenging. I'm proud to work in the industry as a whole, and I'm proud of Evergy, specifically, what we've done to meet the needs of our customers, employees and shareholders. We remain laser-focused on doing our job to deliver safe and uninterrupted power, especially during a time when we all are relying on electricity more than ever to power our increasingly virtual lives. I want to thank our entire team for their continued focus on safety, customer service and execution during these trying times. This effort has been a reflection of Evergy's "people first" culture.

Now turning to results. As you can imagine, we have a lot to cover this morning, so I'll cover the emerging issues and our response to those and turn it over to Tony. Tony to get into the details of our financial results, where despite the warmer-than-normal winter weather, we delivered GAAP earnings per share of $0.31 and non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share of $0.41. Also note, the Board displayed confidence and the flexibility and stability of our current plan by declaring a dividend in line with previous quarter. Now on slide five, I'll update you on the latest on our COVID-19 response plans. Being in the Midwest has been an advantage as we face this global pandemic. Not only does our service territory include rural areas that naturally provide for easier social distancing, but from a time perspective, we were a couple of weeks later than many other parts of the nation, which allowed us to take proactive measures toward the health and safety of our employees, customers and communities. Before confirmed cases started to arise in Kansas and Missouri, we implemented our pandemic response plan, as outlined in our crisis management plan, which resulted in our employees able to work from home, doing so and those in critical operational functions, taking preventative measures to ensure the continued delivery of safe and reliable power.

This included practicing social distancing protocols among fellow employees as well as with customers and in the community. And we began implementing remote staging locations to reduce overall contact. Over 1,500 employees were trained to administer temperature testing, and we are administering over 7,000 temperature recordings per week. With over 2,000 employees working from home and with schools and businesses closed, including most child care providers, we expanded our paid time-off policies to increase flexibility to accommodate employees as they deal with these unprecedented times. Our resolute focus on employee safety has strengthened by technology and innovation. Our team developed a mapping tool to actively monitor COVID-19 risk exposure to our people. By tracking these conditions geographically as they worsened, we were able to pinpoint developing hotspots. This up-to-date analysis allowed us to take tactical decisions regarding when and where to elevate pandemic response plans. With these proactive measures and our employees' vigilance, we've been able to thus far minimize the impact to our organization and its operations. We've had only one confirmed case of COVID-19, and I'm pleased to say that employee has made a full recovery and is back at work.

We knew our employees weren't alone dealing with the uncertainty, so we made commitments to our customers to ease the burden caused by this pandemic. We were one of the first to implement the suspension of disconnections, and as conditions further deteriorated, we extended the original time line through June 1. Additionally, we're waiving late fees and adding new payment options for customers to help individuals and businesses manage the impacts of these hard-hitting times. I'm proud of our team's planning, innovation and focus that has significantly limited the impact to our business and the communities and customers we serve. Moving on to slide six. I'll expand on the operational impact we've seen. There is no doubt that this pandemic has impacted our business, but we believe that we remain well positioned. Our flexible capital plan is focused on critical projects that should increase reliability and drive down future operating costs. The majority of these projects are smaller in nature and diversified across our service territories. As a result, our plan has less risk when compared to a plan that includes large projects that not only have regulatory risk, but also carry increased supply chain and human capital risk. We currently don't see a need to reduce our capital program over the five year forecast period.

We have, however, deferred certain projects due to our commitment to practicing social distancing. These projects have been postponed until later in the year or some have been pushed into 2021. This is a shift in timing and not a reduction in our five year infrastructure investment plan. Another benefit of our plan is that it does not require the issuance of additional capital or equity while eliminates market risk. Throughout March and April, we've closely monitored our supply chain for availability of labor and materials. Fortunately, we were well positioned with a diverse supplier mix and intentional redundancies in our major supplier categories. As a result, we haven't encountered significant issues and currently don't anticipate availability issues with our supply chain. We conducted regular communication with our Tier one and Tier two critical suppliers and participate in industrywide collaboration efforts to stay ahead of potential issues. While we did see some short-term impacts on PPE, mask and sanitation products, we didn't see any significant delays or major inventory issues, and we were also able to leverage several local suppliers who rose to the occasion to fill the gaps. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have remained in close contact with our large commercial and industrial customers in order to form a more complete picture of how this is likely to impact demand. As stay-at-home and business restrictions were put in place, we definitely saw commercial and industrial load decline as businesses throughout our service territory began to reduce production, furlough and layout workers, and send employees home to work remotely and even shut down.

Tony will give you some additional details in a bit, but fortunately, as we saw commercial and industrial sales decline, residential load had a healthy uptick. As a result, increases in higher-margin residential sales served to offset much of the lower margins from commercial and industrial sales. However, since the sales impacts occurred late in the quarter, it was not a significant driver for margin overall, and we did not see a material impact in the quarter. In April, we continued to see commercial and industrial load decline, while residential demand continue to grow. As we evaluate retail sales from April, we see a more complete picture of the full month impact that COVID-19 has had on our sales. Although it's too early to say with certainty that April reflects the greatest impact to demand we will see during the pandemic, we are optimistic that the region's easing of business restrictions in May, combined with the continued increase in residential demand, will support improved retail sales as we head into the summer months. Although we realized that it may take a while to ramp up, it's encouraging to hear some of our large customers talk about their implementation plans and even when they include a gradual restart of operations.

We are studying a range of possible outcomes, and we have plans to develop to remain well positioned in each scenario, supported by strong liquidity and several levers to pull on the O&M side, which would reduce the financial impact of a sales decline. Our flexibility and resiliency have allowed us to remain focused on all of our strategic priorities. Now to slide seven. On the regulatory front, we haven't had to navigate any significant disruptions and don't envision this becoming an issue since we have no major dockets open and none of the near-term horizon with our next rate cases slated for 2022 and 2023. This has given us the opportunity to speak with the regulators in a time of reprieve from rate increases or any other large request. The Kansas Corporation Commission put a stay on new dockets and shut down operations in mid-March, but then returned in early April and have been working remotely since. Missouri Public Service Commission has been working remotely since March 24 and never officially halted operations. We were able to stay in constant contact with both commissions to update them on our latest pandemic response efforts and to discuss our concerns. As you can imagine, conversations were primarily focused on our customers' needs. In addition to our suspension of disconnects and waiving fees for our customers, we've also been discussing new options to allow businesses to pay back bills over a longer period and for residential customers to move to payment plans to avoid large growth in monthly payments over their norm.

As we explained our efforts to track pandemic expenses and potential loss revenue, conversations with our commissions expanded into discussions around alternatives for recovery of these impacts as well as ways to manage the impact of the expected increases and bad debt expenses. Yesterday, we filed for an accounting authority order in both Kansas and Missouri that will allow us to track certain expenses and lost revenue as well as any offset cost offsets for future consideration at our next rate cases. The Kansas Commission staff also filed yesterday its report and recommendation, recommending that all utilities be required to offer minimum customer protections of a 12-month payment plan for all delinquent account balances that arose as a result of the disconnect stay and a waiver of our late fees during the period of delinquency and repayment, coupled with a recommendation that utilities be allowed to defer cost of bad debt expense and fee waiver as a result of the new customer protections. If adopted by the KCC, we see this as a true benefit to both customers and the company. The staff also stated any additional customer programs or deferral request should be addressed in a utility-specific AAO request. Switching to a legislative update. In Kansas, the legislature recessed in mid-March, which is two weeks earlier than normal, and are likely to come back in May to finish the budget.

There are a couple of items that address utilities, including a bill we are strongly in favor of that allows us to offer special economic rates to grow business and jobs in Kansas, similar to what exists in Missouri. At this point, we don't know what the agenda will be or what, if anything, will get done yet this year. In Missouri, the legislature reached its annual spring break in March. They came back last week and there was only a couple of weeks left in session. Constitutionally, they must pass a budget by Friday. We don't believe much, if anything though, that impacts us will be considered this year. We are not actively pursuing legislation in Missouri this year. Finally, let me give you a quick update on our Board committee process before I turn things over to Tony. As many of you probably saw, our Strategic Review & Operation Committee's recommendation to the Board has been delayed by a couple of months. We're still meeting, albeit virtually, and remain focused on our two-pronged mission: evaluating enhancements to our long-term stand-alone operating plan and exploring potential opportunities for strategic alternatives. While nothing has changed from the committee's perspective, the dynamics in the market warranted the delay in our time line. The committee now plans to deliver its findings to the Board by July 30, and then the Board plans to provide an update in August. Again, the market turmoil doesn't change the focus of our committee, but it did alter our original calendar as we wanted to give some time for things to stabilize as we work through our processes.

And with that, I will turn the call over to Tony to cover first quarter results.

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Terry, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with results on slide 10 of the presentation. We reported first quarter 2020 GAAP earnings of $0.31 per share compared to $0.39 per share in the first quarter of 2019. The decrease in EPS is primarily due to warmer winter weather and lower COLI benefits, partially offset by lower operation and maintenance expense. We turned in a solid quarter, notwithstanding extremely warm winter weather that obviously hurt sales, and no COLI income compared to over $6 million in the same period last year. Adjusted non-GAAP earnings were $0.41 per share compared to $0.44 per share in the same period a year ago. As shown in the chart on slide 10, adjusted EPS was driven lower primarily by unfavorable weather and lower other income and was partially offset by lower O&M and fewer shares outstanding. Importantly, our efforts toward cost management yielded a $37 million decline in O&M, 13% lower than the first quarter last year.

This reduction is highlighted by a decrease in T&D expenses due to cost reduction initiatives and the impacts from the January 2019 winter storm, overall reduced headcount and associated benefit expense, and lower plant expense from fewer outages at our generating units. As far as merger savings go, we continue to execute well. We exceeded our 2019 targets, remained ahead of schedule through the first quarter this year, and expect to beat the 2020 mark established by the original merger targets. When we first began discussing the accretion of Evergy, there are nearly 6,400 positions among our legacy companies and Wolf Creek, our shared nuclear facility. Today, we're down to about 5,400. We've created a more efficient company without sacrificing operating capabilities, and all of this has been accomplished while staying true to our commitment of no involuntary layoffs as a result of the merger. Instead, we've capitalized on headcount reduction through normal attrition and voluntary separation programs. Turning to sales.

We saw a decline in sales throughout the quarter, primarily from a change in year-over-year weather. Residential sales were down 10%, commercial declined 5% and industrial sales fell 0.6%, respectively. Compared to last year, heating degree days were 19% lower and we estimate the impact to earnings was $0.12, compared to normal heating degree days were 9% lower. We estimate earnings were unfavorably impacted by about $0.06. On slide 11, I'll give you some details on the sales impact from COVID-19. As we move through March and witnessed the closing of businesses, we started to see the impacts. As expected on a weather-normalized basis, commercial and industrial sales started to decline. As the shelter-at-home provisions kept folks in their homes, we saw a corresponding pickup in residential sales. As Terry mentioned earlier, from an earnings perspective, the higher margins in residential sales provided an offset, at least partially, to lower margin commercial and industrial sales. Given the timing of pandemic response actions in our jurisdictions, the resulting impacts became more apparent throughout the month of March. As we monitored sales through April, we saw further declining trends in commercial and industrial loads.

Residential sales remained elevated but didn't keep pace with the degradation on the commercial and industrial side. Compared to last year, our estimated weather-normalized total retail sales were about 8% lower. Turning to the change in sales mix across customer classes. Residential sales were up roughly 5%, while commercial and industrial sales declined 13% and 15%, respectively. Again, the higher residential sales will provide some offset. We expect trends at these levels to weigh on retail margin. If we adjust for two large oil refinery customers that had planned reduced usage outside of COVID-19 impacts, our April industrial sales decline would be around 10% compared to last year. As you can see in the graph on the slide, as those customers started ramping up, we saw the corresponding pickup in sales toward the end of April. Additionally, it's important to note that two industrial sectors that are prevalent in our territory are experiencing unusual events simultaneous to COVID-19. The airline industry is dealing with the 737 MAX issue and oil production refineries with the oil crisis.

Both issues could still weigh on demand in future months irrespective of the recovery from COVID-19. Now we look to offset margin declines by balancing the preservation of long-term value creation and adjustments to O&M. Some of the levers we will pull include a hiring pause, reduced travel spend, reduced discretionary maintenance spending and potentially an additional voluntary early retirement program. While we have a ways to go in terms of opening up our economy, we may be turning a corner as many businesses in our territory, including a number of large manufacturing facilities, that plans to reopen later this month after multi-week shutdowns. Moving on to slide 10. Let me touch on our latest financing activities and liquidity. On April 2, Evergy Kansas Central issued $500 million of 30-year first mortgage bonds at 3.45%. Proceeds will be used to redeem $250 million of the 5.1% bonds that were set to mature in July, and the remainder proceeds were used to reduce short-term debt. Also in April, we requested authority from the Missouri Public Service Commission to issue up to $400 million at Evergy Metro to pay down short-term debt and further bolster our liquidity position. I'm happy to report the commission approved our request yesterday, and we expect to complete a transaction by midyear. We ended April with a total liquidity of $1.9 billion with $1.6 billion of that as capacity available on our master credit facility and over $300 million of cash on hand.

We are confident in our liquidity position across the range of these scenarios that we've contemplated. Now wrapping up on slide 13. As a reminder, we haven't issued 2020 EPS guidance, and we don't have plans to issue guidance during the pendency of the committee's work, but I can give you an update on some of the drivers for the year that have changed. Obviously, given the sales trends that we're seeing thus far, we now expect a weather-normalized sales decline this year. With ongoing uncertainty, it's too early to estimate the full year impact. With our cost reduction execution in the first quarter and the expected incremental reductions that we're targeting for the remainder of the year, we are now targeting a 6% to 9% reduction in adjusted O&M in 2020 compared to 2019 versus our previous target of 5% to 8% reduction. We remain optimistic as we're starting to see the nation and our service territories begin to open back up. We realize it's going to take some time for the economy and sales to bounce back. We're confident in our position and plan as we all unite together to put this behind us. We will continue to do our part and are staying focused on doing the right things for employees, customers, communities and shareholders.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Terry.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

All right. I appreciate everybody joining.

Now we'll take questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Paul Patterson. Your line is open.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Good morning.

Operator

Paul, Your line is open.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Can you hear me? Hello.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

We can now.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Sorry about that. Okay. So I was just wondering, could you give us a little bit of a flavor for when I noticed that you guys said that the capex has been changed, though there's been some deferral with respect to projects into the second half of 2020 and then 2021. But when I look at the annual capex numbers, it doesn't seem like anything has materially changed year-from-year. So should I assume that just it isn't that material in the course of 2020 versus 2021?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. We were trying to stress that we're being flexible in our projects over the size and type as we can. And given continued social distancing, we might move some projects back and around. But I wouldn't say we have definitive plans around moving year-to-year that are material.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Okay. And then in terms of just how we see capex and sort of where let me ask, if we do see deep recession, and I know it's hard to tell being the unprecedented nature of what we're seeing right now, but if there was a deep or significant recession, how should we think about the long-term capex numbers that you have? How flexible are you on those, I guess, if you follow me?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, we're flexible in the sense that the same description of the projects, their size and their type, would give us that kind of flexibility. So we don't have a large single project that we might start and have to finish. Having said that, we also don't currently see any need for deferral, given our liquidity position and our plans for both execution on those projects and our balance sheet as a whole.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

So there isn't a lot of economic sensitivity, I guess, to the capex is how we should think about it even if we were to see a significant fall off in economic activity? Is that safe to say?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, again, I hate to make a generalization around something that's so unprecedented at this time. But again, I would stress the flexibility we have around each of the projects so that we have the ability to move things around, and that from what we can see to date, we don't see a need to make any changes to either near-term or long-term plans.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Okay. Fair enough. And then on the just in terms of arrears or in terms of bill payment, could you give us a little bit more flavor as to if you're seeing any significant change, either in residential or commercial or what have you, in terms of people being late with their bills or paying on time, that kind of thing?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, we've certainly seen the effect in bills that you would see, which is a little early to see a big uptick in what would have been disconnections or collections around bills as it's really a month old. That's why we're working so hard both with our own project, our own communications and with our commissions around opportunities to work with customers to avoid those bills from building up. So part of that Kansas recommendation from the staff that we talked about provided a recommendation that customers would be allowed to spread any delinquencies over a 12-month period. That was one of the things we were talking about, and then obviously suggested also that utilities to be able to recover those costs. So it's a little early in that process, but we haven't seen any real spikes in either the accounts or arrear just yet, but it's still a little early, that's for sure.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Okay. And then just finally, on the strategic review, you mentioned the July 30 date and what have you. And you also mentioned that, of course, the markets have been a little bit of turmoil in them. Just any sense as to if that's changed any if that's changed your perspective at all or emphasis or just sort of give more of a flavor maybe if you have one in terms of how that might have altered or not the strategic review, and what options you guys are might be exploring more or less as a result of it?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I don't think it's changed our perspective at all on either the chore of committee or the focus of the committee. Obviously, given what was happening in the market, it made sense to everybody that we should delay, if you will, the market strategic market activity. We continue to meet. We continue to work on the stand-alone plan analysis, which is obviously internal to us, and make progress there. So we're working. We're meeting. Focus stays the same. Just simply the market piece of that, obviously, we thought would benefit with addition of some additional time. That's really the only change at all, nothing from a focus perspective.

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Okay, great. Much appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith. Your line is open.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Good morning. Team good morning. Nearly, we do. I can. Hey, Terry excellent quite well.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Hope you all are doing well. I wanted to follow-up on the O&M reductions. I'm just trying to square that against the underlying sales trends here. And thank you for the detail, I appreciate it. Can you talk a little bit to the netting here of the updates? So you gave some sensitivities earlier. You gave some thoughts on the sales trends in April. What when you think about an EPS shift, and I know you don't have guidance out there for 2020, but how much of a reduction are we talking about in sales expectations relative to what seems like a modest reduction from 5% to 8% to 6% to 9% reduction on the O&M? So tell me if I'm missing something there, one versus the other. And then the follow-up to that would be, how do you think about 2021 and onwards? And I know it's very early, but I'm thinking more on the cost side, the sustainability of those reductions.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So let me take maybe the middle one first. The 6% to 9% decrease is really, I would say, a product of our work, lest a real offset related to maybe COVID, they fit together, obviously. So I wouldn't suggest to you the 6% to 9% is a limit there. But certainly, that's an uptick, and that's due to our work that we've already been working on in the last year and certainly recently. That's less directly connected, I guess, to what we're seeing from sales because, to your first question, it's really hard, again, as we're sad to say, April would necessarily be what we'd expect going forward. And so I think what we're seeing though is that even though we saw a downtick in April, as most folks would expect, we're happy to see that we it is manageable. And at least in the near term, we think we're able to offset a lot of that impact. Obviously, if those impacts lasted all year long, it get more difficult as the year went on. From a 2021 perspective, yes, don't really have any way to gauge what effect it might have on 2021 other than to say, again, we don't see any capital projects that need to be adjusted. And I would tell you that the 6% to 9% is reflective of OEM cuts that we believe are sustainable.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Maybe if I can ask for a little bit of a clarification. When you think about the ability to tap further in some of these cost reductions, what would it take for you to move forward on that? I mean, clearly, April has been probably the most acutely impacted here, and we'll see what the trend is in May and onwards. But how do you think about the need to tap into more to 6% to 9%. And I don't know if we're dancing around the subject of guidance here a little bit, but how do you think about tapping more into that over the course of the year and what the depth of that is?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I don't have a range for you, but I would say, obviously, if it continued to be an acute sales issue then you can consider start doing things that are not sustainable. You do things to be responsive to that event. We'd always watch to be sure we weren't doing anything that was damaging the long-term shareholder value. But you could do some things that you wouldn't expect to do on an ongoing basis. We have some room there, I guess, to say. But again, the 6% to 9% are things that we're planning to work on that are sustainable and in our plan. Other than that, obviously, from an ongoing analysis perspective, we're working on other things that could be included too, but we're not through with that work as we move forward over the course of the next couple of months.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

And remind us quickly, your stay-out subject is strictly to Kansas, right? There is some latitude to the extent necessary to shift at least planning in Missouri, right?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

There is. We could move a case up if we really needed to, but our plan continues to be to leave it in place for 2022.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Excellent. Okay, I'll leave it there. Thank you all very much. Best of luck.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Take care.

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Yes, sir.

Operator

And your next call comes from Steve Fleishman. Your line is open.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Hi, good morning.

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Hey guys, Just on the effective tax rate, the comment there on the continuing to monitor pandemic impacts. Can you discuss how that impacts your tax rate?

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Steve, this is Tony. So I think the guidance drivers that we issued initially were 12% to 14% effective tax rate. That's something that we'll be monitoring going forward. Obviously, if our taxable income goes down, that rate could change over time.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. It's just simply that. Okay.

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. And then I know someone had already asked about kind of color on the review, strategic review. Just do you anticipate that there would be need for any further delay? Or you think at this point that this is kind of the time this is the likely time line?

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I don't want to get out ahead of the committee, but I don't think so. I mean I think 60 days, I think, gave us an opportunity to continue on the stand-alone plan work and give us some time for things to settle out. But I wouldn't anticipate at this point, additional delay.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Okay. Okay, thank you very much.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well thanks, Steve.

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Yeah.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Durgesh Chopra. Your line is open.

Durgesh Chopra -- Evercore ISI Institutional Equities -- Analyst

Hey, good morning guys. Thank you for taking my question. I just one question for me. Can you perhaps give us any color on your FFO-to-debt or other credit metrics? Were you tracking versus targets? And then with the new O&M reductions and then perhaps what you're seeing in the top line, some drag on sales, where do you expect to end the year versus your targets?

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

This is Tony. So on our FFO-to-debt targets, at the utilities, in general, we're targeting 18% or above; at the holding company, 15% or above. I believe Moody's just came out with some reports earlier and kind of affirmed our ratings. As far as targets toward the end of the year, that kind of depends on the duration of the sales decline and also kind of to the extent that the O&M offsets.

Durgesh Chopra -- Evercore ISI Institutional Equities -- Analyst

Okay, thanks guys. That's it from me. Thank you.

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Welcome.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And there are no further questions at this time.

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

All right. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everybody, for calling in. Everybody, be safe. Have a good weekend. Thanks.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks].

Duration: 37 minutes

Call participants:

Lori A. Wright -- Vice President of Corporate Planning, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Terry Bassham -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Tony Somma -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Paul Patterson -- Glenrock Associates -- Analyst

Julien Dumoulin -- Smith -- Analyst

Steve Fleishman -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Durgesh Chopra -- Evercore ISI Institutional Equities -- Analyst

More EVRG analysis

All earnings call transcripts
SEATTLE, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- E8, an angel investor community committed to cleantech in support of both profit and ecological sustainability, unveiled today Decarbon8-US , a philanthropic impact investing fund that will allow anyone to support the growing number of startups that are developing the technologies and business models needed to address climate change.

The decarbonization pathways targeted for Decarbon8-US investments are linked to established climate change goals. Image source: E8

The damage wrought by the COVID-19 outbreak has only underscored the need to build a more resilient future, and many are calling for the global response to the pandemic to include more robust investment in climate action. However, investment in cleantech has lagged behind other sectors despite the growing interest in addressing the climate change challenge, and participation in startup funding opportunities is too often limited to those that qualify as accredited investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Decarbon8-US is designed to harness the passion of millions of people who want to directly support cleantech development, from individuals to philanthropic foundations, as well as accredited investors. Anyone can make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to Decarbon8-US that will be invested in fully-vetted, revenue-ready startups, which contributors can then follow and monitor. Decarbon8-US is currently accepting contributions at https://www.e8angels.com/decarbon8-us-fund .

Returns generated by Decarbon8-US will be reinvested back into the fund to further amplify advanced technology development. Larger contributors can also share their returns in the form of recoverable grants, and the Fund will also leverage co-investment from angel investors and others.



"The Decarbon8-US fund presents a new option for consumers, philanthropic donors and investors who are driven to take action on climate change," said Charles Curtis, Co-Chair of E8. "This is how we can democratize cleantech investing and give everyone with a passion for action a chance to have a hand in building a cleaner, more prosperous future."

The new fund, managed by E8 advisors, will make equity and debt investments in cleantech startups that can address specific decarbonization pathways that have already been identified in regional and global climate policies. Like many maturing companies in E8's existing portfolio , companies selected by Decarbon8-US will be early stage startups with proven products and services that are ready to scale.

One such company in E8's portfolio, Nori, has started a blockchain marketplace offering individuals and businesses an easy way to purchase carbon removals. Another is LevelTen, an efficient, cost-effective two-sided market for renewable energy producers and commercial customers.

The fund is set to open its first request for proposals (RFP) from cleantech startups on May 12. The first wave of investments will target high potential companies working in decarbonization in general, with following RFP themes focusing on electrifying transportation, the built environment, agriculture, carbon removal and more.

"Even as the COVID-19 crisis response takes shape, we cannot afford to slow down on the crisis of climate change," said Ramez Naam, E8 member, cleantech investor and futurist. "This is just the time to accelerate our efforts, and the Decarbon8-US fund from E8 has the potential to bring new leverage to clean technology investment."

In addition to E8, the Decarbon8-US fund's operation is supported by a diverse coalition of climate leaders and advisors, including University of Washington's Clean Energy Institute, Washington State University, CleanTech Alliance, Craft3, Climate Solutions, Realize Impact, North Coast, VertueLab, Dharma 350 Fund and the Stolte Family Foundation.

"We all hope that the COVID-19 crisis can be resolved relatively quickly, but the only way out of the climate crisis is a multi-decade sprint of technology innovation and change," said E8 Member KD Hallman. "No single actor will save us--we all have to be part of the solution. Let's get started."

About E8

E8 is an international, Seattle-based community whose mission is to accelerate the transition to a prosperous and cleaner world by investing in and fostering emerging cleantech enterprises. Our flexible, investor-centric platform supports different types of investors and asset classes, including direct angel for-profit investing, pooled investing in expertly managed VC funds such as the E8 Fund, donor advised fund impact investments, and a philanthropic fund for accelerating decarbonization and climate mitigation. E8's community and offerings are driven by a belief in the power of innovative enterprises and technologies to scale both positive returns and impact. ( www.E8angels.com )

Media Contact

Mike Rea, E8 ([email protected]; (m) 425.409.9531)

SOURCE E8
Libya: Malta withdraws from EU Operation Irini - media Veto on spending for migrant disembarkations

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MAY 8 - Malta is withdrawing from the EU's Operation Irini, which enforces the UN arms embargo to Libya, and told the Special Athena Committee it will "veto decisions on Operation Irini that concern spending procedures for disembarkation of migrants", reported the news site Malta Today. The news has been confirmed by diplomatic sources; however, the European Commission hasn't yet received an official letter from the Maltese government.(ANSAmed).




The ISPCA recently rescued an abandoned Shetland pony in Co. Offaly with hooves so horrifically overgrown, that he could hardly walk or move, due to the extreme pain he was suffering.

On responding to a call made to the National Animal Cruelty Helpline from a concerned member of the public, frontline Inspector Deirdre Scally investigated the call and said: when I discovered the pony and saw the level of neglect he had endured, it was one of the most distressing and worst cases I have ever seen.

The pony, now named Apache, was immediately transported to the National Animal Centre in Longford for urgent farrier treatment. From that moment, Apaches life was to change forever.

Investigations are continuing to locate the owner of the pony as he was not microchipped, which is a legal requirement.

Apache struggled to even walk, he was in such severe pain with every step he took. It was totally heart-wrenching to see him suffering so much. I had to act immediately to get the pony the help he desperately needed, said Deirdre.

Deirdre added: Apache is now doing really well in ISPCA care however, he has a long slow road ahead of him requiring ongoing and extensive farrier treatment. He will need to remain in our care for some time before we can begin to prepare him for a new loving home. Apache is enjoying a deep-bedded stable as his hooves are still tender, and some daylight hours on soft grass. He is improving daily and is expected to make a full recovery, thanks to the expert care he is receiving from our equine team.

It would have taken a very a long time for Apaches hooves to grow to this horrific state and this case highlights the importance of regular hoof care, a crucial component of responsible pet ownership, added Deirdre.

Common hoof problems can be avoided by picking out hooves regularly, cleaning the frog and scraping off any remaining mud from the soles along with regular farrier care. Regular trimming by a qualified farrier is recommended every six to eight weeks which, would also identify and correct any hoof problems, and prevent serious issues like those encountered by Inspector Scally.

The ISPCA is currently caring for 73 equines at our centres and our frontline Inspectors have already seized over 51 equines so far this year, 35 in the past nine weeks alone during the COVID-19 crisis.

It can cost thousands of euros to care for a single equine like Apache. The ISPCA relies on public donations to continue our vital work rescuing, rehabilitating and responsibly rehoming hundreds of vulnerable animals that desperately need our help.

You can donate online at www.ispca.ie/donate. Every kind donation helps #EndCruelty.
NEW YORK, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP (www.kaplanfox.com) is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Wells Fargo & Company (Wells Fargo or the Company) (NYSE: WFC).



On Sunday April 5, 2020, Wells Fargo announced it had received strong interest in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a program under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. and was targeting to distribute a total of $10 billion to small business customers under the requirements of the PPP. On April 6, 2020, Wells Fargos shares increased by $2.40 per share, over 9%, to close at $28.63 per share.

On April 8, 2020, the Federal Reserve announced that it would allow Wells Fargo to exceed the asset cap that it had imposed on Wells Fargo in 2018 after revelations that the Company had opened millions of accounts in customers names without their permission. The change would allow Wells Fargo to make additional small business loans as part of the PPP. On April 8, Wells Fargo also issued a press release stating that beginning immediately, in response to the actions by the Federal Reserve, it will expand its participation in the Paycheck Protection Program and offer loans to a broader set of its small business and nonprofit customers subject to the terms of the program. On April 8, 2020, Wells Fargos shares increased by $1.51 per share, over 5%, to close at $30.28 per share.

On April 20, 2020, based on the filing of at least two lawsuits against Wells Fargo, reports emerged that Wells Fargo may have unfairly allocated government-backed loans under the PPP. Following this news, Wells Fargos shares fell more than 5% over two trading days to close at $26.84 per share on April 21, 2020.

Then, on May 5, 2020, Wells Fargo disclosed in an SEC filing that it has . . . received formal and informal inquiries from federal and state governmental agencies regarding its offering of PPP loans. Following this news, Wells Fargos shares fell by more than 6% over two trading days to close at $25.61 per share on May 6, 2020.

If you purchased Wells Fargo common stock or other Wells Fargo securities and would like to discuss our investigation, please contact us by emailing pmayer@kaplanfox.com or by calling (646) 315-9003.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Ilkin Seyfaddini  Trend:

A military aircraft of the Uzbek Ministry of Defense will deliver humanitarian cargo to Tajikistan today, Trend reports on May 8 citing the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Tajikistan.

"By order of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the military transport plane from Tashkent to Dushanbe will deliver ventilators, medicines, medical gowns, gloves and respirators," the message said.

The same plane will bring eight Uzbek virologists, epidemiologists and anesthetists with experience in fighting coronavirus, to Dushanbe.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev discussed the epidemiological situation in the region and the world over a phone talk on May 5. The sides also informed each other about the situation in the two countries in connection with the spread of coronavirus.

According to the Ministry of Health of Tajikistan, 82 new cases of infection with coronavirus have been registered in the country over the past 24 hours.

Thus, total number of people infected with coronavirus in Tajikistan is 461 people, 12 died.

Uzbekistan had previously provided humanitarian assistance to China, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Russia and Azerbaijan.

The total number of people infected with coronavirus in Uzbekistan is 2,314. Coronavirus infection cured 1,656 people completely, 10 died.

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
Local nonprofits and businesses alike have found a unique way to benefit both local restaurants and families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Fremont Rotary Club and Fremont Area United Way partnered together to purchase $5,000 worth of gift cards to be distributed to families in need.

The funds came together thanks to a $2,500 emergency district grant from District 5650 and Rotary International that was matched by the local Fremont Rotary chapter.

Rotary club President Ronda Niehaus said members visited 20 different Fremont restaurants and purchased 10 $25 gift cards from each location. Those gift cards were then distributed to families who had previously expressed need for assistance with rent and utility payments through the Fremont Area United Way.

[Executive Director Christy Fiala] had a vast amount of knowledge about what people are needing, Neihaus said. She knew several small businesses, specifically restaurants, were struggling. When Christi said they had a lot of families applying for special needs, we thought it would be a win/win.

Niehaus said the rotary club typically focuses on youth in the area, but that scope was expanded to give back to families across the area.

When we got the notice that this was something that we could do, the club got together and decided it was something we should do, she said.

Fiala said the the restaurants visited ranged from traditional sit-down to fast food.

We really did a diverse sampling of restaurants in the community, she said.

She added that this is just another example of the Fremont community coming together during the pandemic.

Were trying to make sure that families who are struggling know that the community cares about them, Fiala said. You see that with entities doing free drive-thru or gift cards. Fremont says over and over if you are struggling we care and are there for you. This is another example of that.

Fiala said both families and business owners alike have expressed their gratitude for the help.

The families are very, very thankful for the gift cards, she said. Theyre very humbled and appreciative of the generosity during such a challenging time.

Wholestone Farms also announced its own effort to give back to employees and help local businesses during the pandemic. The company distributed $27,000 in gift certificates purchased from local Fremont restaurants to employees.

We wanted to make an impact not only with our employees to show gratitude for all the hard work they have done over the past several weeks but also help support the small businesses in the Fremont Community. CEO Scott Webb said in a press release.

Nichole Owsley, external affairs and member relations manager for Wholestone Farms, said it was important for the company to look at ways to help area restaurants during the pandemic.

A few weeks ago when restaurants began to be affected, we began to creatively think of ways that we could help them out, she said. With Cinco de Mayo coming around the corner, we were able to come up with some favorite local restaurants for our employees and give them a $20 gift card to help out.

In total, the company distributed 1,350 $20 gift cards to employees. Restaurants included Gringos Cantina, Wooden Windmill, Chuys Mexican Restaurant, Anitas, La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant and Senior Tequila Mexican Restaurant.

Owsley said restaurant owners were excited to receive the business.

They were so grateful, she said. The staff at Senior Tequila expressed how much this will help their business and they were so grateful. Paying it forward was really awesome to see within our local community.

Gringos Cantina owner Terry Nosal said the purchases were helpful during uncertain times caused by the pandemic.

We appreciate businesses like WholeStone in our community, he said in the press release. This purchase helps small business like us keep going in these difficult times. We will be donating a portion of this money back to our community through various nonprofits that we typically would support but havent been able to due to this pandemic.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 01:32:57|Editor: huaxia

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LONDON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Black adults are more than four times as likely to die from a COVID-19 related death than white people in Britain, according to a provisional analysis by the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) released Thursday.

When taking age into account, black males are 4.2 times more likely to die from deaths that are COVID-19 related and black females 4.3 times more likely than their white counterparts in the country, said the ONS.

The latest figures were published by the ONS one day after Britain became the first country in Europe to pass 30,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths. A total of 30,615 people have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for the virus, according to the latest official figures released Thursday.

VULNERABLE MINORITY

Data published by the ONS found that ethnic minority groups were more vulnerable to COVID-19. Researchers said the difference in virus mortality is partly due to socio-economic disadvantages and other circumstances.

Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy responded to the figures by calling for an urgent investigation into the disproportionate number of deaths.

"It is urgent the causes of this disproportionality are investigated," he tweeted. "Action must be taken to protect black men and women -- as well as people from all backgrounds -- from the virus."

The ONS report shows people of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and mixed ethnicity had statistically significant raised risk of death compared with the white population amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The figures, which were adjusted for age, suggest that people from all ethnic minority groups -- except women with Chinese ethnicity -- are at greater risk of dying from the disease than white groups.

The ONS analysts also found that men of Bangladeshi/Pakistani ethnicity were 3.6 times more likely to die with the virus than white men, with the equivalent figure for Bangladeshi/Pakistani females set at 3.4.

Men of Indian ethnicity were found to be 2.4 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white men, while the figure for women of Indian ethnicity is slightly higher, at 2.7.

For people of Chinese ethnicity, the team found an increased risk among men but not women: men were 1.9 times more likely to die from COVID-19, while the figure for women was 1.2.

The ONS used data on death registrations up to April 17, combined with 2011 Census records, to model the impact of the virus on different ethnic groups. It also looked at COVID-19 deaths between March 2 and April 10 in England.

COMPLEX ISSUE

Commenting on the findings, Tim Elwell-Sutton, assistant director of strategic partnerships at the Health Foundation, said, "This is a complex issue and the exact reasons why black and minority ethnic groups are being disproportionately impacted by the virus are still unknown but existing social inequalities and structural discrimination in British society are likely to be playing a significant role," the London-based Evening Standard newspaper reported.

"Today's data shows some of the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage, as well as region and health status, but even after taking these things into account, black and minority ethnic groups are still at higher risk," he was quoted as saying.

"Some black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to have existing health conditions compared to the white population and may therefore be more likely to experience worse symptoms if they become infected with the virus," he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care also commented on the data. "We're aware that this virus has sadly appeared to have a disproportionate effect on people from BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) backgrounds," the spokesperson said.

"It is critical we find out which groups are most at risk so we can take the right steps to protect them and minimise their risk," said the spokesperson.

UNEXPLAINED REASONS

As ethnicity is not recorded on death certificates, the ONS used the data linked to the 2011 Census which included self-reported ethnicity.

The ONS said that the report has suggested that the difference between death risks among various ethnic groups is partly due to socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but some of the reasons remain unexplained.

According to the ONS, once further factors were taken into account, including socio-demographic and self-reported health and disability factors, the differences between black and white people narrowed but were still stark.

The risk of a COVID-19-related death for black men and women was then 1.9 times more likely than the white population. Men in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic group were 1.8 times more likely to have a COVID-19-related death than white males, with the figure being 1.6 times for women.

The ONS acknowledged that because its analysis of population characteristics was linked to the 2011 Census, it may not accurately reflect the current circumstances in 2020. The differences in the risk of dying with the virus could be driven by factors not included in its model, it said.

Meanwhile, some ethnic groups may be over-represented in public-facing occupations and could be more likely to be infected by the disease, it said. For example, individuals in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic group are more likely to work as transport operatives than those in any other ethnic group, it added.

The ONS said it plans to conduct further work to identify occupations that are particularly at risk. Enditem
A well-known market intelligence company, Infiniti Research, has worked with 100+ companies in the healthcare manufacturing industry across the globe. Our expertise in the field of market research enables us to offer tailored solutions that empower healthcare industry leaders to gauge how prepared and well-positioned they are for the future. Request a free brochure to learn more about our solutions portfolio.

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"Several challenges must be overcome to make electronic health records more integrated, including endless customization, vendor market share protection, health system market share protection, and technological factors," says a market research expert at Infiniti Research.

The proliferation of diagnostics and screening tests in the United States has generated massive amounts of patient data. To effectively store and manage these mounting volumes of data, the US health systems have invested over $20 billion in electronic health records (EHR systems) over the past decade. Based on the data from our healthcare market intelligence, over 85% of healthcare providers and physicians in the United States had access to EHR systems by the end of 2017. Although electronic medical records are poised to revolutionize patient care by putting patient information at the doctor's fingertips, not all physicians are content with its implementation. Physicians often find themselves caught up in data entry with limited time for patient interactions. Moreover, electronic health records are currently far from being the panacea of patient safety and operational efficiency that they were expected to be. However, as electronic health records system matures, we can expect the future of electronic health records to live up to their potential in the long run.

Is your business prepared to meet the demand-supply upheavals due to COVID-19? Request a FREE proposal for comprehensive market insights and agile strategies to overcome market disruptions due to the ongoing crisis.

In this article, we outline the key challenges that EHR systems must overcome:

Siloed systems: Prior to the implementation of electronic health records in the US, healthcare providers and patients were unable to effectively follow patient in time and space. Furthermore, such siloed systems added on to the hospital expenditure and wastage of physician time, restricting the provision for a better quality of care. EHR systems have the potential to mobilize hospital's resources and enhance the overall patient outcome. But a major challenge of EHR systems is that various vendors had separately developed systems with different data formatting, making it difficult to share patient records between hospitals, physicians and external testing labs. This also makes it challenging to use data collected by patient monitoring devices. The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) draft standard is trying to develop a standard for storing and transmitting data across healthcare organizations. And this is now being widely accepted by vendors of electronic health records systems. The recent regulations proposed by the IS government health insurance plan might soon make FHIR mandatory for electronic health records.

Reducing physician's data entry work: Natural language processing is a great way to reduce the time spent on data entry work for physicians and facilitates them to allot more time to patients. However, this comes with its own set of challenges. Firstly, the clarity of the output will largely depend on the physician's way with words. This could hamper the reliability of the report. Secondly, with such technology, patient privacy is at stake. Although countries like the US and UK have strong medical data privacy regulations, especially in the case of data transmission, we still come across data breach instances. Such breaches can lead to healthcare fraud especially in the case of medical insurance.

Ensuring business continuity a challenge due to COVID-19? Request more info to learn how Infiniti is helping companies around the globe assess the business impact of the coronavirus outbreak and plan for business revival post-COVID-19.

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Friday 8 May marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day, otherwise known as Victory in Europe Day.

VE Day commemorates the surrender of Nazi Germany to the allied forces in the Second World War, signalling an end to six years of hardship and battle.

As part of todays celebrations, the Red Arrows will be performing a ceremonial flypast over London.

The Red Arrows are officially known as the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team.

What time is the Red Arrows flypast taking place for VE Day?

The Red Arrows flypast reportedly departed from their base at RAF Scampton at 9.37am.

The flypast then travelled down the east coast of England before heading to London.

When in the capital, the Red Arrows are due to fly over Westminster at 10.10am, before returning to base at 10.33am.

The Care For Veterans website states that a Spitfire flypast is due to pass over Worthing's Care Home for Veterans at 1.20pm.

The RAF Typhoons are also due to appear over Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

How can I watch?

If you miss the flypast when it is actually taking place, you will be able to catch up with the coverage later on in the day.

The Red Arrows flypast will be broadcast on the BBC at 3pm as part of its VE Day coverage.

VE Day celebrations: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday April 29, 2020. The future Queen, then just 19, and her sister Princess Margaret, 14, joined thousands of revellers as they gathered in front of the royal residence on May 8 1945 PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London, marking the end of the war in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Mansion House, with the Lord Mayor of London on the balcony, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Sir Winston Churchill leaving the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, now 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures A parish priest waves a newspaper with news of Germany's unconditional surrender to elated pupils of a Roman Catholic parochial school in Chicago. Corbis via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures A group of six young women wearing party hats prepare to celebrate Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) to mark the end of European conflict in World War II, in Trafalgar Square, London, 8th May 1945. Popperfoto via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Jubilant Londoners dancing in Piccadilly Circus on VE Day, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day In London - pub. 19th May 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany, 7th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A van load of beer passing through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day. The statue of Eros, protected during the war by advertising hoardings, can be seen in the background. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A victory street party near Clapham Common, London to celebrate Victory in Europe. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of London girls waving flags in front of the staue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations in Downing Street, London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London's Piccadilly, at the end of World War II, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day in London - pub. 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE day, held to commemorate the official end of World War II in Europe, is celebrated by crowds at Trafalgar Square in London, 8th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table, given by residents at Kentwell Close, Brockley in south London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) , driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations in London, 8th May 1945. Getty VE Day celebrations: In pictures An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall. Getty Images

The Queen is due to deliver a special televised address to mark the 75th anniversary of victory in Europe.

The royals speech will be broadcast on BBC One at 9pm, the same time her father, King George VI, delivered a radio address announcing Nazi Germanys surrender in 1945.
Southwest Airlines Plane Hits, Kills Person on Runway in Texas: Officials

A Southwest Airlines jet struck and killed a person when it landed in Austin, Texas, on Thursday evening, according to airport officials.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told news outlets that Southwest Airlines Flight 1392 reported seeing a person on the runway before the Boeing 737 touched down at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport after 8 p.m. local time.

Austin-Travis Emergency Medical Services responded to the incident and pronounced the victim deceased at the scene, the Austin airport said in a statement on Twitter, adding that it is aware of an individual that was struck and killed on runway 17R by a landing aircraft earlier this evening.

AUS is aware of an individual that was struck and killed on runway 17R by a landing aircraft earlier this evening. The incident is currently under investigation and we will provide more information as it becomes available.  Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (@AUStinAirport) May 8, 2020

Austin-Travis County emergency services said an adult was declared dead at the scene, according to the agencys Twitter account.

Airport spokesman Bryce Dubee said officials do not believe the man was authorized to be on the runway at the time, according to Fox News. The driver of an airport vehicle found the body on the runway.

The Austin Police Department told KEYE-TV the person killed was not dressed as an airport worker and didnt have the proper identification. An investigation is currently ongoing.

The airport said that there was a crime scene investigation, which was later cleared on Friday morning. The runway will reopen soon, according to the airport.
Some weeks ago, in pre-Covid-19 life, I was a guest speaker on an RTE television show. Afterwards, on the train home, I scrolled through my phone. A message popped up in my Instagram from an account I don't follow.

I'm not going to give the name here, because I don't want any further attention from this account. But it was all about documenting women wearing high heels and tights.

"I liked your dress and tights on the TV today," the message said. I scrolled through the images on the accompanying account. Reams of pictures of women wearing tights and stockings. Some posed. Others which looked like they might have been taken by the women themselves. Some looked like the person in the picture had been caught unawares.

There was a meme, an image of Halloween's horrifying Michael Myers brandishing a chainsaw, with the tagline: "On those days when they don't wear stockings."

Expand Close Journalist Liadan Hynes received unwanted comments on Instagram on what she was wearing when she appeared on a television show / Facebook

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Whatsapp Journalist Liadan Hynes received unwanted comments on Instagram on what she was wearing when she appeared on a television show

It was a minor thing. A minuscule example of the countless micro-aggressions and unwanted attentions women experience daily as they go about their lives. But I felt instantly uneasy. I was heading home alone to an empty house, and while I knew, rationally, there was absolutely no way this person knew where I was, my sense of security felt undermined by this creepy little missive that had landed in my phone.

In her new book, Recollections of My Nonexistence, American writer Rebecca Solnit examines the tension that exists for women between being seen, and being safe. "I was trying to disappear and to appear, trying to be safe and to be someone, and those agendas were at often odds with each other," she says of her younger self, setting out on her journey to become a writer.

Solnit is the author of the famous 2008 essay Men Explain Things to Me, which gave rise to the term 'mansplaining', and one review described this latest book, the author's memoir, as "the story of men's attempts to silence women".

It's territory Solnit is long familiar with. For women, as Solnit outlines in a way many (most?) women will recognise, there is an inherent tension between being seen - meaning taking part as our authentic selves - and being safe. Between expressing ourselves, and avoiding unwanted attention, feedback, or worse. The two do not always co-exist peacefully, and too often we choose one, knowing we must then forgo the other.

To "find a way to survive amidst an ethos that relishes your erasures and failures is work that many and perhaps most young women have to do," Solnit writes. Young or old, it is work that many women will recognise.

Solnit was meant to come to Ireland last month for the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival, one of the many events cancelled because of Covid-19. In an interview to publicise her appearance, she further elaborated on the thesis of her book; the idea that trauma, and the subsequent state of constant hyper-vigilance, or fight-or-flight that it engenders, is something most women experience just from their day-to-day existence. "I think it's life during wartime," she said. "I think you have a portion of your mind that's constantly on alert for what could go wrong and what's safe to do."

Expand Close Broadcaster and DJ Tara Stewart had abuse shouted at her on the street by two men / Facebook

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Whatsapp Broadcaster and DJ Tara Stewart had abuse shouted at her on the street by two men

Broadcaster and DJ Tara Stewart was on her way to a meeting in Dublin city centre earlier this year when she was shouted at by some men passing by. "Two lads walked by and they were like, 'What boat did you come off?'" she recalls now.

"I had actually just come from the VIP Style Awards launch event, so it was morning, but I was wearing a bindi [a bright dot applied to the centre of the forehead], and had make-up on. I just kind of stopped in my tracks and turned around, and looked at them. They looked back and laughed a couple of times. They didn't give a shite. I was so shocked that I didn't say anything. And usually I would say something." At the time, Tara tweeted about the incident, saying that she considered taking off the bindi - "so I don't draw attention to myself".

"I was like, 'Oh maybe I'll just take this off'." Tara, whose mother is Malaysian Indian, tells me now. "I already do struggle with wearing it. I get self-conscious. I feel I don't look Indian 'enough' to wear it. But it's my favourite thing to wear."

'I felt so silenced'

She describes a mental process most women will recognise after an encounter of this kind: The questioning of oneself for not having handled it better. The making oneself in some way responsible: 'Did I invite it in, or did I not handle it well when it came?' Then the consideration of whether one should make oneself less visible.

This is not to suggest that men do not face threats - Solnit herself talks about the kind of threat men who do not fit a certain mould of masculinity often face. But there is something particular, one could say almost universal, about the kind of chiding, aggressive abuse that women face.

"You think you should be standing up for yourself, and [to them] for everyone else's sake. I do wish I had taught them a lesson, but at the same time, I could feel the energy off the guys, that they were angry, and I don't think I would have felt safe in that moment," Tara adds.

Expand Close TV presenter Muireann O'Connell says men frequently reply to her on Twitter in a way that is passive-aggressive, patronising or corrective / Facebook

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Whatsapp TV presenter Muireann O'Connell says men frequently reply to her on Twitter in a way that is passive-aggressive, patronising or corrective

Broadcaster and author Louise McSharry describes how as a teenager, she loved school. "I had a really fucked-up situation for the most part, but I loved school. And I excelled at it. When I was in fifth or sixth year, I was in English class one day, which was my favourite part, and I put my hand up to speak. And one of the guys in my class shouted: 'Nobody cares what you have to say, Louise'."

"I just felt so silenced. I already had started to quieten myself, and tried to say less, because I knew it didn't make me popular. And definitely from there I tried to do more of that. Still, to this day, I would have a consciousness about how much I'm speaking, or how much I'm contributing to a conversation, because I have a fear of dominating."

She describes trying to balance that almost inbuilt sense of self-editing with who she actually is as an adult in her late 30s - "someone who is trying to use my voice for good where possible. And where I do have a certain amount of power in terms of my platform" - as really tricky.

As Solnit describes it, a sense of safety and the act of being visible do not always comfortably co-exist for women. It's a sentiment Louise says she can relate to. "It's a struggle. It would be easy to not put your hand up or stick your neck out. And you would feel safer. But at the end of the day, that's not who I actually am. So trying to find that balance is difficult. And it stems from that moment in school, and loads of other moments where I was told I was bossy, or too loud, or whatever."

As well as what we say, it's often about how we look. Louise describes receiving commentary on her physicality. "All around my weight. It hasn't happened in a long while, but I definitely live with that fear; I still feel kind of on edge. I guess you're kind of waiting for it, all the time. Not as much as I used to, because I'm in a much more powerful state of being. I feel stronger in myself. So if something happened, I feel like I would be able to respond in a way that I would be satisfied with. So therefore, it's not as scary as it used to be. And I suppose other people's opinions don't hold as much importance or value as they used to. But I definitely still have moments. It depends where I am in my own feelings about things."

She identifies a line of thinking that will resonate with a lot of women - the 'asking for it' argument. The idea that if a person puts themselves above the parapet, they are fair game for... whatever.

"I don't buy into the whole 'if you put yourself out there, you deserve what you get'. I don't believe that for a second," Louise says. "But you do make yourself somewhat vulnerable if you put yourself out there. For me, if I'm not feeling great anyway, I try to be a little bit more in control of what's coming my way. That is definitely kind of retreating a bit."

Solnit describes it as a fight not "just to survive bodily, though that could be intense enough, but to survive as a person possessed of rights, including the right to participation and dignity and a voice. More than survive, then: to live".

TV presenter Muireann O'Connell experiences constant feedback from men on her Twitter feed, men who reply frequently in a manner that is typically either condescending, passive-aggressive, or corrective.

"When it comes to making my voice known, I've lived in a sphere for a very long time where I couldn't necessarily do that. That would have been because of various jobs that I was working in, where it would have been frowned upon for me to be who I am," Muireann reflects. "There would have been an element of editing me, or saying I couldn't do certain things in there, and that would have been fine, I totally get that; you can be seen as a representative of a company."

More than that though, she was also self-editing, because of what she describes as the "basic fear" about putting things out there on social media.

"You are a woman who decides, 'Oh, I saw this', or 'I've got a point of view on this, I'm going to put this out there'. Because that was what social media was about. It was meant to be about sharing thoughts and feelings and all that kind of stuff, and now it feels like sometimes it's gone to a very dark place."

Despite being known among friends for being quite an opinionated person, in her social-media interactions, Muireann restricted what she put out for years. "I didn't feel comfortable, for a lot of years, in being who I was.

"I was pre-empting the absolute shitshow. I knew exactly what would happen if I decided to engage with that world. And that's such a shame. Eventually you get to a stage in your 30s where you don't care any more, and you're more certain in yourself and who you are, and you realise that there are other people who are like you. And you're like, 'Well, if I do this, maybe they'll get a chance to do it as well'."

What Muireann is describing isn't someone just arguing a different point of view, or the cut-and-thrust of Twitter. It's someone arguing with a woman's take on her own lived experience, or right to have an opinion. It's not just disagreeing with them, it's invalidating what they say.

"We need people to say, 'This is my experience'," Muireann says. "But what happens is, you say, 'This is my experience,' but then someone comes back to you and says, 'No, that's not right. That's not true. That's not your experience'. And it's weird. That happens to me all the time."

There's also the control aspect. Muireann gets a lot of chiding admonishments on Twitter. "I swear to god, the amount of times you get, 'Language, young lady. You wouldn't talk to your mother like this'. I'm like: 'You don't know how I talk to my mother'."

"I think that there's a policing, an attitude of 'Get back in your lane, why are you doing this?' There seems to be no understanding of [the fact that] we're all people with thoughts and feelings; let's not differentiate ourselves by our sexual organs."

One recent encounter on Twitter proved particularly bruising. "Normally I would just brush it off after a few hours, but recently something happened, and the next day, I could feel it affecting my work, affecting how I was speaking to people. I was really down. Really down. I said something and I was basically told to 'Go home, you silly girl'. The same guy [then posted] under basically the same comment made by a male journalist, said, 'Oh, great point'. When people say social media affects your mental health - bloody hell, it really can. But then you're like, 'Why am I letting anonymous strangers do this to me?'"

The option to simply disengage, to block or mute, doesn't always seem the right one, either. "I just don't want to be rude," Muireann says, smiling almost abashedly. "And I sometimes think of the recriminations, even though it's an online world. This is catastrophising, and I get that, but sometimes in your head you're like, 'What if it does go over into real life?' Where you could push one person's button in a wrong way, and their indignation and offence at you could spin into real life?"

Muireann says that she has got better at compartmentalising. "You realise that there are people in the world that hate you, even thought they mightn't even know you. You just have to accept that. Once you do, it becomes so much easier."

All the women I spoke to described getting better at managing this, due in part to a hardiness earned from being inured to the thing.

Did the experience of racism on the street affect Tara's peace of mind in the days that followed? "Not really, because I've been through worse. I am always a little bit on, but that's just because of other things I've been through in my younger life. I was sexually assaulted twice when I was a teenager. That's why this kind of stuff, it doesn't make me more wary day to day, because I'm always a bit like that anyway. But I'm so used to it now, do you know what I mean?"

It's not a good thing, she points out, but past experiences have made her more able to deal with present ones.

'It's like, yeah, I'm angry...'

"I hate this idea that people think that if you put yourself out there in the media, that people have free reign to do whatever the fuck they want about you, because they don't," says Tara, who recently confronted an online critic. He ended up apologising profusely, but this kind of thing all adds to the already overburdened load women carry. Now we have to police and educate our own aggressors?

When Tara posted her original tweet about the incident, one of the women who responded was producer Kate Brennan-Harding. "I get it, albeit from an entirely different perspective," her tweet read. "I used to worry about being too dykey, too lesbian, too visible as a human."

"The tropes you get thrown at you are: 'angry dykes, angry lesbian feminists'. Which silences us," Kate says when I talk to her. "It's like, yeah, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, because we don't get to say how the world occurs for us. And we just have to shut up, and accept when someone wants to pass a remark on who we are."

Kate is now in her late 30s. "I came out in the late 1990s. Back then, it was more taboo. I don't mind being a bit of a rebel, and I don't mind standing out, but there's a fine line."

At the time, beginning the process of finding her own identity, she realised she liked to look boyish. "This also represented my sexuality. I cut my hair quite short. I used to get 'bull dyke, fat dyke'; told, 'Oh, you need a man'; all this kind of stuff yelled at me in the streets.

"When I look back at pictures of myself then, I was so young, really pretty and so vulnerable and scared. I was trying to walk this walk where you are automatically different and othered. I'm equating this with being an Irish thing, but maybe it's around the world; we plamas the person who is being aggressive or shouting insults at us. We laugh it off and have to develop a thick skin. So I would die inside every time that happened, but I wouldn't reply. I would put the head down and I'd walk away. Because I couldn't reply. For fear of someone hitting me, or worse happening."

After the marriage referendum, Kate recalls feeling so much safer walking the streets of Dublin. "Two or three years afterwards, I was walking down the street going to the club Mother, and these boys were following me, two or three of them, about 18. They were really close, and one of them yelled at me, 'You fat dyke, you lezzer'. And I think it must have been 20 years of not saying it. I turned around, stood still and just yelled: 'No. Absolutely no, you do not get to do this to me any more. I am a dyke, and you do not get to have power over me any more. I have had this for years, you do not get to do this'." People appeared from various parts of the street and stood behind Kate. Her attacker quickly shut up. "But the thing is, I shouldn't have to have 20 years of pent-up silence," she says.

In the last year, Kate says that the feeling of being unsafe is creeping back in. More aggressive comments are starting to come her way.

"The threat of violence takes up residence in your mind. The fear and tension inhabit your body," Solnit wrote of herself as a woman in her very late teens, early 20s. The weight of it, she says, crushed her, "when I was trying to make a life, have a voice, find a place in the world".

A recent article in The Atlantic, The Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism, outlined the gender gap in how pandemics are experienced by men and women. The 'second shift' is now taking place without childcare, and the mental load, the emotional labour, carried by women - already full to the brim - is crushing, despite fathers chipping in.

At a time like this, Twitter is more reactive than ever; people are on edge. Never has a sense of safety been more threatened, but more necessary.

Pre-order Liadan Hynes's first book 'How to Fall Apart' now from Easons, see easons.com/how-to-fall-apart-liadan-hynes-9781529381214
VANCOUVER, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - KORE Mining Ltd. (TSXV: KORE |OTCQB: KOREF) ("KORE" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement of $3,000,000 consisting of 6,666,666 shares at a price of $0.45 per share (the "Private Placement"), subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Mr. Eric Sprott, through 2176423 Ontario Ltd., a corporation beneficially controlled by him, and Macquarie Bank Ltd. ("Macquarie") are subscribing for the entirety of the Private Placement.

Scott Trebilcock, President and CEO stated, "On behalf of the Board and the Management of KORE, I am delighted to welcome this follow-on strategic investment from two of our major shareholders. The continued support by these two leading mining investors is a strong endorsement for KORE's portfolio of advanced gold assets."

Mr. Trebilcock continued, "KORE remains committed to pursuing value through exploration and development. The Company is immediately commencing follow-up work on high priority Mesquite East exploration targets while continuing to drill at FG Gold and keeping Imperial on-track to move into permitting in mid-2020."

Mr. Eric Sprott commented, "Backed by ounces in the ground and a strong PEA on the Imperial project, KORE's value proposition remains strong. I am pleased to continue supporting the Company."

Net proceeds of the Private Placement are expected to advance KORE's 100% owned gold portfolio including Imperial (California) and Long Valley (California) as well as for general corporate and working capital purposes.

Mr. Sprott and Macquarie will subscribe for 4,444,444 shares and 2,222,222 shares in the Private Placement, respectively. Upon completion of the financing Mr. Sprott will hold 15.3% and Macquarie will hold 8.5% of the Company's issued share capital on a non-diluted basis. There are no warrants associated with the Private Placement.

All securities to be issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four month hold period from the closing date under applicable securities laws in Canada and among other things, receipt by KORE of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the TSX Venture Exchange.

About KORE

KORE is 100% owner of a portfolio of advanced gold exploration and development assets in California and British Columbia. KORE is supported by strategic investors Eric Sprott and Macquarie who, together with the management and Board own 66% of the basic shares outstanding. Further information on KORE and its assets can be found on the Company's website at www.koremining.com and at www.sedar.com, or by contacting us as [email protected] or by telephone at (888) 407-5450.

On behalf of KORE Mining Ltd

"Scott Trebilcock"

Chief Executive Officer

(888) 407-5450

The securities to be issued under the Offering have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of KORE's securities in the United States.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Adjacent Properties and Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the future operations of the Company and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the future plans and objectives of the Company are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business. Management believes that these assumptions are reasonable. Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. For further information on the Company's Imperial Project, please see the Company's NI 43-101 Technical Report dated December 30, 2019, entitled "Technical Report for the Imperial Gold Project, California, USA" filed on the Company's website and also available under the Company's issuer profile on www.sedar.com.

Such factors include, among others: risks related to exploration and development activities at the Company's projects, and factors relating to whether or not mineralization extraction will be commercially viable; risks related to mining operations and the hazards and risks normally encountered in the exploration, development and production of minerals, uncertainties regarding estimating mineral resources, which estimates may require revision (either up or down) based on actual production experience; risks relating to fluctuating metals prices and the ability to operate the Company's projects at a profit in the event of declining metals prices and the need to reassess feasibility of a particular project that estimated resources will be recovered or that they will be recovered at the rates estimated; risks related to title to the Company's properties, the ability of the Company to access necessary resources, access to suitable infrastructure, such as roads, energy and water supplies in the vicinity of the Company's properties; and risks related to the stage of the Company's development, risks regarding the ability of the Company and its management to manage growth; and potential conflicts of interest.

In addition to the above summary, additional risks and uncertainties are described in the "Risks" section of the Company's management discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2019 prepared as of April 27, 2020 available under the Company's issuer profile on www.sedar.com.

Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

There is no certainty that all or any part of the mineral resource will be converted into mineral reserve. It is uncertain if further exploration will allow improving the classification of the Indicated or Inferred mineral resource. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.

SOURCE Kore Mining

Related Links

http://www.koremining.com


Its hard to find anyone who doesnt love the shopping experience offered at Trader Joes.

Since the first store opened in 1967 in Pasadena, California, Trader Joes has been known for offering the best quality products for the best, everyday prices, proclaims its website, and its employees have been known for their bright, tropical-patterned shirts and for generally being nice, helpful, and well informed.

The unique shopping experience offered by Trader Joes means the etiquette for customers at TJs can also be a bit different from that of a typical supermarket, says a report by Insider.

According to Insider, when it checked in with former and current Trader Joes employees, heres what it learned was particularly annoying to store employees - and, the 10 things a shopper should never do in the store.

1: Dont ask two different employees to look for the same item.

When Insider spoke with a former Trader Joes employee, he said, Customers often asked me to look in the back of the store for something, and it really bothered me when Id come back out to find that they had asked a different employee to check in the back as well.

Its often more useful to ask when an employee expects an item to be restocked, than to send multiple staff members on a hunt for the same out-of-stock item, reports Insider.

Don't pass up a sample of Trader Joe's coffee, but be sure to dispose of the sample cup in the provided trash cans. (Grant Butler, The Oregonian/OregonLive) LC- Grant Butler, The Oregonian/OregonLiveLC- Grant Butler, The Oregonian/

2: Theres no reason to leave sample cups or trash around the store.

Insider reports that a former Trader Joes employee said the staff hated when sample cups and food wrappers were left scattered around the store.

There are plenty of garbage cans around the store, so its annoying to find trash left on shelves or in carts, they told Insider. "This is especially true if the trash was sample cups.

Insider suggests customers show their appreciation for the free samples by depositing used cups, utensils, and napkins in provided trash receptacles.

3: It can be rude to ignore employees when they greet you.

As touted on its website, the employees at Trader Joes are known for their friendliness, and being polite in return is always the best option, says Insider.

When Insider spoke with a current Trader Joes employee, she said it was considered rude to ignore staff members or cut them off during conversation.

When I greet a customer and ask how they are, its frustrating when they either dont acknowledge I said anything or they cut me off and just ask a question about where to find an item in the store, the employee told Insider. This happens almost daily.

4: Its frustrating for employees when you put products back on the wrong shelves.

Leaving products where they dont belong creates more work for Trader Joes employees, who are responsible for making sure all items are shelved correctly, says Insider.

Its so much easier for employees if you bring items that you dont want up to the cashiers, a former employee told Insider. If everyone just brought unwanted items to the register, we could avoid hours spent dealing with misplaced items.

So, when in doubt, pass the item to a staff member rather than abandoning it on a random shelf - especially frozen items that can be ruined if left out, says Insider.

Trader Joe's in State College. December 20, 2017. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com HARHAR

5: Try not to leave carts at the register.

Trader Joes shopping carts may be smaller than those at other supermarkets, but if left unattended they can still obstruct traffic flow through the store, says Insider.

Some people just leave their cart at the register and walk away after checking out, a former employee told Insider. The carts are located right outside, so please take it back instead of leaving it in the way of everybody else.

For those who dont want to deal with a cart and are picking up only a few items, Insider suggests using a shopping basket instead.

6: Dont try to abuse the Trader Joes return policy.

Insider reports that at Trader Joes you can bring almost any item back to the store for a full refund, with or without a receipt - thats a generous return policy. In addition to nonedible products that didnt meet your expectations, the policy includes food items - even those youve opened and eaten, says Insider. However, the store expects customers to not ask for refunds, on products they have successfully used or enjoyed.

Trader Joes is known for its excellent return policy that you can use even without a receipt, so it was always annoying when people abused it, a former employee told Insider. For example, I had multiple people return plants that theyd obviously killed and then tried to blame the store for it.

7: If you want to sample a specific food, wait for a staff member  dont open the package yourself.

According to Insider, Trader Joes often allows customers to try before they buy - something many shoppers may not be aware of.

Insider states there are guidelines: Customers can have an employee open just about any item for a sample before purchase, but that doesnt mean youre allowed to start opening packages on your own. An employee must be present if a customer is sampling an item from the shelves.

Employees said shoppers werent allowed to sample certain items, such as frozen vegetables or baking mixes, reports Insider.

Each of Trader Joe's "crew members" is friendly and knowledgeable about store products and trained to do just about everything at the store. (Photo, Mark Buqnaski | MLive.com)

8: Theres no need to critique an employees bagging technique, especially since they are trained to do it a certain way.

A current employee told Insider that its frustrating when customers criticize the way their groceries are being bagged.

Staff are actually trained in the best way to bag the stores groceries, so its annoying when a customer comes in and says that were doing it wrong or critiques our method, she told Insider.

To ask an employee to put certain items in the same bag or leave an item out of one is fine, but Insider suggests customers who are extremely particular about how their groceries are handled should simply bag their items themselves.

9: While at the register, you should avoid being on your phone.

Your phone call can wait. According to Insider, when in the checkout line, its disrespectful to staff members as well as other waiting shoppers to talk on the phone at the register.

A current employee told Insider, It really annoys staff when a customer is on the phone in the checkout line and then gets upset when we interrupt them to tell them the total or ask a question. Even worse, some people ask us to wait until theyre off the phone.

When the checkout aisles get busy at Trader Joe's, a maritime bell rings out, telling crew members it's all hands on deck. (LC- Grant Butler, The Oregonian/OregonLive)LC- Grant Butler, The Oregonian/

10: Stop ringing the bells at the checkout lanes.

Yes, Trader Joes may have a nautical theme, but those large bells near each cashier arent just fun decorations, theyre used by staff members to communicate or ask for assistance, says Insider.

Insider shares what those ringing bells mean: Ringing the bell once instructs staff to open another register, and two rings means someone at the register has additional questions that need to be answered. Three bells summons a manager.

So, you can see why employees dont appreciate when customers or their children ring the bells for fun.

What can we learn from this?

Whether at Trader Joes, or any grocery store, these employee suggestions for proper shopping etiquette are guidelines all of us should keep in mind, especially at this time of increased anxiety while grocery shopping amid the coronavirus pandemic. Grocery store employees deserve our respect and appreciation, so lets do our part.

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Support: Benjamin Netanyahu has been given 72 signatures that ultimately pave the way for him to form a government

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally received the support of a majority of lawmakers to lead a new government yesterday, paving the way for a controversial power-sharing deal with rival-turned-partner Benny Gantz.

The Likud and Blue and White parties issued a statement saying they had given the country's figurehead president the signatures of 72 parliament members recommending Mr Netanyahu as prime minister.

Once approved by President Reuven Rivlin, Mr Netanyahu will have two weeks to form a government.

Israel's parliament, the Knesset, had passed legislation earlier in the day approving a new coalition government framework for Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gantz to share the premiership and end a year-long political deadlock.

The legislation, which passed easily in a 72-36 vote, comes a day after Israel's supreme court ruled that it would not intervene in the new arrangement or prevent Mr Netanyahu from leading the government despite a corruption indictment against him.

The decision essentially ended the country's prolonged political stalemate and prevented Israel from being plunged into a fourth consecutive election in just over a year.

After battling to three inconclusive elections over the past year, and with polls predicting a continued stalemate, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gantz, a former military chief, announced last month they would be joining forces.

Critics and good-government groups argued the law should bar an official charged with serious crimes from continuing as prime minister.

They also objected to the newly created position of 'alternate prime minister'.

After two days of deliberations this week, the court ruled there were no legal grounds to prevent the government from taking office.
India's bike taxi app, Rapido, has introduced a new on-demand delivery service where customers can request pick and drop of food, groceries, and medicines from one customer to another. The person to person (P2P) on-demand delivery service is for family and friends who are not able to step out of their homes for essentials or have run out of certain essential items, in times of need. To start with, the service is available in Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad. The newly launched service will also aim to boost the utilisation and revenue of the captains (riders) on road, amid lockdown.

The base price of the new service will be Rs 35 for 2 kilometres and Rs 15 per kilometre after that. Users will be able to track their orders through an Order Tracking URL which will be shared with them through SMS. This service can be availed post updating the Rapido app. A user needs to login to the account and book the service. Once booked, the amount and captain details appear on the homepage, post which the rider arrives at the pick-up location.

Rapido has more than 15 lakh registered captains present in close to 100 cities. The company has a unique profile of captains who work part-time or at their choice of hours. "That is the major innovation that we have done in terms of providing employment to underemployed and unemployed people. We do not own or co-own any fleet, the vehicles are owned by captains/drivers. However, during these testing times of Covid-19, for facilitating last mile deliveries of essential orders to customers, we are present across 30 cities with a fleet of about 75K captains at work. With the launch of Rapido Box, we will leverage our already existing fleet of Captains to ensure quick and prompt deliveries. We're also planning to launch this pan India in close to 100 cities where Rapido is operational in future," says Aravind Sanka, Co-Founder, Rapido.

Given the current situation in the country, safety and precautions need to be adhered by the drives as well. For this, "The captains are asked to maintain personal hygiene and sanitise the hands and bike seat before going to deliver essentials. We are also educating our captains on how they can minimise the exposure to the virus by following precautionary measures and good hygiene practices via notifications, emails and our social media channels. They are instructed to use masks, hand gloves and sanitisers before and after the delivery, to maintain hygiene and contribute to the safety of the customers and themselves."

With the idea of doing everything to ensure no family sleeps hungry and to support this cause, Rapido has launched a crowd fundraising campaign, #PeopleForCaptains. With this fundraiser, Rapido aims to raise Rs 2.5 crore. It has already raised close to Rs 35 lakh through the outreach and initiated distribution of the collected funds to around 4,000 families as of now. "We empathise with their situation and to further shield them from financial burdens in case of hospitalisation, we have made a provision of insurance for all our captains. In case any of our Captains are tested positive, we will provide them with a sum of Rs 50,000 for their treatment and Rs 1,000 every day for the period they are quarantined," Sanka said.

Rapido has accelerated its existing Rapido-Delivery services to provide for the delivery of essential goods during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown. The company has been operating delivery services for B2B clients namely Zomato, Swiggy, Delhivery.com, Myntra, Eat.Fit to name a few for close to two years now. Rapido has partnered with major online companies like Big Bazaar, Big Basket and Spencer's for delivery of essential goods and is additionally supporting the Delhi Government in delivering essential items like milk and food packets, under the DCPC Node, in underprivileged areas across the city. The company has also partnered with Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike's (BBMP) COVID-19 Home Delivery Helpline as a delivery service partner in a move to resolve supply-chain challenges amidst lockdown.

Also read: Coronavirus impact: How Metro Cash & Carry is helping meet demand in red zones

Also read: Zomato aims to deliver alcohol amid coronavirus lockdown
Nurses in New Jersey prisons are working in horrific conditions that pose an imminent hazard" to their health amid the coronavirus pandemic, a union said this week in a workplace complaint against Rutgers University Correctional Health Care, the group that provides medical care in the states adult and juvenile systems.

The union, Health Professionals and Allied Employees, claims Rutgers was partially responsible for the death of Susan Cicala, who worked at Northern State Prison.

Although management has claimed to take measures to protect employees from COVID-19, those measures have been poorly implemented or lacking," according to the complaint filed Monday with the state health department. We believe these workplace exposure factors significantly impacted the conditions which caused RN Susan Cicalos death."

The union raised concerns with Rutgers and the corrections department for weeks with little response, according to union president Debbie White.

The goal is to change the work environment, White said.

The complaint was filed with New Jerseys Public Employees Occupational Safety and Health office, which is similar to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as OSHA.

If the state opens an investigation, any violations found by inspectors can lead to fines. The health department is already investigating the nurses death, according to an agency representative.

At least 579 employees in adult prisons and 35 staff in the juvenile system have tested positive for COVID-19, according to public data.

Rutgers spokesman Zach Hosseini declined to comment on the complaint, but wrote in an email that we have followed state and federal guidelines from the Department of Health and the CDC to ensure the health and safety of our staff and their patients.

University Correctional Health Care has been on the frontlines in difficult and challenging environments caring for inmates, who are a vulnerable population," he wrote. We are proud of our work providing essential care for those inmates and of how we meet the mission for the state of New Jersey.

Corrections spokeswoman Liz Velez wrote in an email that they cannot comment on a pending complaint. Lisa Coryell, a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Justice Commission, also declined comment.

The complaint echoes similar concerns officers and inmates have raised for weeks within a prison system that has the highest coronavirus death rate in the nation.

Prison nurses caring directly for COVID-19 patients were only given a single N95 mask for weeks, according to the complaint, forcing staff to wear filthy, contaminated N95s for exceptionally long periods." Officials wouldnt answer questions about how to use the masks, failed to offer training, didnt provide a safe place to store them and handed out expired masks, the union said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control allows N95s to be reused if they are carefully cleaned and stored, and state law requires public employers to pay for effective protective gear.

A nurse who raised concerns about masks during a fit test, when employees try on masks, was sent home as punishment and forced to use paid-time-off hours while away, the complaint said, which created a chilling effect to other employees who saw ... the consequences of not lying to the employer."

The complaint also said sanitation supplies were chronically insufficient, goggles were scarce and employees treating coronavirus patients were mixed with staff who werent.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

Three nurses at adult prisons told NJ Advance Media they had trouble getting protective gear and were discouraged from asking for more.

Each spoke on condition of anonymity, because all staff were told in March that as Rutgers employees, we are not to be speaking to the media without prior approval," according to an email obtained by NJ Advance Media.

Its traumatizing, to say the least, said one nurse at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.

COVID-19 patients had overflowed from the Trenton prisons infirmary into a mental health unit, the nurse said, where she wasnt sure staff were prepared to deal with respiratory problems. Inmate cleaning crews didnt effectively clean beds between patients, she said, and face shields often arrived broken in the box.

One doctor had to manually hold the shield to his head because the Velcro strap broke, she said, and the prison once stopped fitting staff for masks because the nurse in charge of training tested positive.

Another nurse at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Woodbridge who contracted the virus said she received pushback from a superior when she asked for more gowns.

At Newarks Northern State Prison, a nurse said she was ordered to give medication to inmates who had the coronavirus, even though she didnt have an N95 mask.

A fourth nurse, from the juvenile systems Johnstone Campus in Bordentown, said a supervisor couldnt find her a mask that fit and so blocked her from working completely.

Rutgers spokesman Zach Hosseini did not directly respond to any of the allegations made by nurses during interviews.

Rutgers University Correctional Health Care is overseen by Julie White, who sent the email telling staff not to speak with reporters without approval.

She did not respond to an email asking if any of the nurses interviewed faced possible discipline. Hosseini wrote that Rutgers asks "that questions from the media are referred to our media relations representatives because they are simply in the best position to provide quick, accurate and thorough information to the public.

Gov. Phil Murphy previously said mass testing for inmates and officers should begin at the end of this week, but none of the nurses in the adult system had seen the process begin by Thursday.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN.
Numerator Launches Canadian Consumer Panel

US-based MR data and tech firm Numerator has launched an omnichannel consumer insights panel for Canada, focusing on consumer shopping and brand behaviour across fifteen retail channels - including online - for individual panelists.



Formed through the merger of Market Track and its subsidiary InfoScout, and headquartered in Chicago, Numerator connects purchase data from its OmniPanel service with path data, to deliver a view of the consumer shopping and purchase experience. The new Canadian OmniPanel has been developed to give brands and manufacturers access to previously unreported insights, notably as behaviour switches from traditional forms of buying at drug and grocery stores to non-traditional channels including eCommerce.



This launch follows the previous release of Numerator's gamified consumer app Receipt Hog in Canada, and the panel has subsequently grown to more than 30,000 active panelists. App users simply snap photos of receipts and then Numerator's technology transcribes and categorizes receipt details, with monetary incentives.



CEO Eric Belcher (pictured) comments: 'Canadian brands and retailers have been operating without omnichannel consumer behaviours that underpin billions in Canadian CPG sales. Data that explains how consumers are switching from traditional buying to non-traditional, particularly eCommerce, with insight into what's likely to happen next, has never been available before and the market has been clamouring for us to launch'.



Web site: www.numerator.com .




Missing restaurants while social distancing? You're not alone. One restaurant in the Netherlands, though, has found a solution.

Mediamatic ETEN, a restaurant in Amsterdam, is offering a four-course vegetarian menu for diners -- served to guests while they sit in their own personal quarantine greenhouses.

IMAGE: The special greenhouses could be the future of dining out during the coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: Eva Plevier/Reuters

The beautiful glass structures are right on the canalside, lit only by candlelight.

The restaurant hopes that the greenhouses will allow customers to eat safely and securely while abiding with social distancing rules amid the pandemic.

It is currently testing them out, and plans to open them with a fully plant-based menu when granted permission.

IMAGE: A group of friend have dinner in a so-called quarantine greenhouses in Amsterdam as the country fights against the spread of the COVID-19. Photograph: Eva Plevier/Reuters

Right now, the trial service is only being offered to family and friends of staff, and all upcoming reservations are sold out, according to the restaurant's website.

The restaurant will only allow people dining together who live in the same house.

IMAGE: It is currently testing them out, and will open when allowed with a fully plant-based menu. Photograph: Eva Plevier/Reuters

"Corona now forces us to rethink how we can do hospitality," the centre's director Willem Velthoven was quoted as telling a section of the media.

"We used to have already these little greenhouses here for art projects. We thought 'ok let's try what happens if we sit in these small places, does it feel good and can we serve in a safe way' and it goes quite well actually."

IMAGE: This could be the future of socially-distanced dining, until a vaccine against the coronavirus becomes widely available. Photograph: Eva Plevier/Reuters

Waiters wear gloves and face shields to alleviate any risk of infections.

They also use long boards to bring dishes into the greenhouses to diners.

IMAGE: A restaurant tests servers providing drinks and food to models pretending to be clients in a safe "quarantine greenhouses" in which guests can dine in Amsterdam. Photograph: Eva Plevier/Reuters

The restaurant is perfect for people who may want to go out once eating establishments reopen but don't feel comfortable going back immediately to crowded restaurants.
T his Friday, the union flag will fly outside the head office of Westminster City Council in central London to mark VE day. Below, the normally cacophonous streets remain quiet. But it is more important than ever that this year, people look up, see that flag and are once again reminded of the incredible contribution and sacrifice of our armed forces.

The parallel has already been drawn between the global battle against an invisible enemy and the world war whose European victory we mark on May 8th. That day was marked by street parties for the children all over Britain, and many older Express readers will remember one in their street.

And what more powerful symbol linking those two epic struggles than 100-year-old Captain - now Colonel - Tom Moore, with his quiet courage and determination.

That perhaps over-used slogan Keep Calm and Carry On sums him up.

Like two mighty tributaries, VE day and Covid-19 will merge this Friday. Once again, the armed forces are playing a remarkable role in our lives  running mobile testing units, delivering PPE and setting up the network of Nightingale hospitals.

With no fuss or complaint they just get on with their job to support and protect this nation.

A street party at Tadema House, Penfold Street

My own commitment to our servicemen and women comes from a personal place.

My husband Andrew Robathan was a career soldier, serving 18 years in the Armed Forces, of which five were spent in the SAS. He re-joined the army in 1991 during the Gulf War and oversaw the internment of PoWs in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Andrew later served in Government for almost five years as a Defence and then Northern Ireland Minister.

And now our 23-year-old son, Kit, has also joined the army and is due to pass out from Sandhurst this December.

While, of course, as his mother Im terrified at the fact that he could be called on to put his life in danger wherever needed, I am incredibly proud that he wishes to serve his country in this way as his father did before him.

Andrew Robathan

As a civic leader, I owe it to all our servicemen and women to ensure Government  local or central  is loud and visible in its support (something I commend the Daily Express for doing).

This Friday, I urge all local authority leaders to mark VE day.

The army is now in the front line against the onslaught of Covid-19. Our armed forces vanquished one totalitarian enemy in 1945; they will play a decisive role in victory this time.
New Delhi, May 9 : The Centre on Friday assured the Supreme Court that it will take action on incidents of racial discrimination meted out to people hailing from northeast region of the country, as they are often mistaken for those from China, where the coronavirus outbreak was reported.

Alana Golmei, an activist, had moved the top court citing allegedly racially-motivated attacks on the people of the northeast. The petitioner cited various incidents -- spitting on the people, eviction from their rented accommodation, termination of jobs, isolation in the hospital and having to face racial slurs in various parts of the country. Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves represented Golmei.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and B.R. Gavai, taking up the matter through video conferencing, disposed it off after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing Centre, said that appropriate measure will be taken by the government.

"Several materials brought on the record indicating that certain harassment has been meted out to the people belonging to the Northeast and they are facing several difficulties due to the fact that the people in general mistook them having some affinity with Chinese from where this coronavirus has emanated," observed the top court.

It observed that the Solicitor General submitted that there is already a helpline for people from northeast, to which counsel for the petitioners submitted that the said helpline is not responding.

"Be that as it may, the learned Solicitor General has submitted that the material which has pointed out in the writ petition shall be attended to and appropriate measures be taken by the Government to dispel the apprehensions of the petitioners as raised in the writ petition on an urgent basis. Taking note of above statement of learned Solicitor General, the petition is disposed of," said the court The plea said: "When the lockdown was imposed on account of Covid-19, beatings of, spitting on, and a whole spectrum of acts of discrimination and violence on people of the Northeast took place. Across the country the public identified the people of the NE with China and automatically presumed that they were carriers of the virus and subjected them to merciless harassment."
Almost two years after city officials issued more than 700 fire code violation and over 170 building code violations for the East Texas Dream Center on First Street in Conroe, the 84-year-old building is on the market for the asking price of $1.75 million.

While the building has been plagued with electrical, structural and other issues, city officials hope someone will breathe in life into the former Montgomery County Hospital building.

MORE FROM CATHERINE DOMINGUEZ: Montgomery County lawmaker thumbs nose at governor and gets a haircut

Conroe Mayor Toby Powell, who was born in the hospital, said he would like to see the building that encompasses an entire city block be used to generate new economic growth in downtown.

The developer should be one prepared to restore the property to a safe and suitable condition or to remove the structure and build something new and exciting, he said. I would like to see a development that could improve the quality of life for the entire neighborhood. A trade school, medical offices, shopping, or retail would not only bring jobs and services, but would also bring a since of pride.

Councilman Jody Czajkoski, who called the site a nice piece of real estate, said he would like to see the building become a site to help the homeless population, especially those with special needs.

I have always looked at that building as doing an SRO model, Czajkoski said of the single room occupancy concept. You could create one bedroom dorm rooms.

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An SRO is a form of housing that is typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. That, Czajkoski said, would give people a place to go and get services they need.

However, Powell feels that site is not ideal for a homeless community.

The Conroe City Council gave the homeless initiative five acres to allow for a homeless facility away from the downtown area. I have talked with many business owners and I do not feel Dugan or downtown are good locations for a homeless facility.

Safety concerns

City officials do agree the building needs work to bring it to code so it is safe.

Built in 1938, the site became a focus of the city of Conroe in May 2018 when the Conroe Fire Department responded to a fire call. Firefighters were able to contain the smoke and fire to the electrical panels and wiring. However, while in the building fire officials began to notice many violations. That, Conroe Fire Marshal Steve Cottar said, triggered a call to the city code enforcement department.

Cottar said the building has numerous safety concerns from asbestos, lead-based paint, electrical and structural problems and many rooms with padlocks on the outside and padlocks on exit doors. Cottar showed several photos to the council including one of the elevator shafts exposed and full of water.

We have documented over 700 fire code violations, Cottar told council members during a June 2018 regular meeting. I think these pictures speak for themselves.

City Attorney Marc Winberry said at that time, until the repairs on the building are made, it should remain unoccupied.

Director of Community Development Nancy Mikeska said owners Shawn and Shannon Nelson did do some work on the building following the fire and building code violations but as of today, the building still has no water or electricity to it.

The city is aware that the property located at 301 First Street, formerly known as the Dream Center, is on the market, Mikeska said. Currently the building is closed. The large 58,700 sq. ft. structure, which was our county hospital many years ago, is in need of some repairs.

The Nelsons purchased the building in 2013. While the city initially only granted the couple occupancy to just a few rooms on the first floor, the Nelsons moved forward with opening the facility as a nonprofit organization aimed at helping struggling individuals and families with immediate and long terms needs.

While the Nelsons no longer operate out of the building, the East Texas Dream Center is still in operation and is located in East Montgomery County.

The Nelsons could not be reached for comment.

cdominguez@hcnonlone.com
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced Australians will be allowed to have five visitors at home and 10 people will be allowed to gather in businesses and public places under stage one of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions being lifted.

Restaurants and cafes meeting these requirements will also be able to reopen, as will libraries, community centres, playgrounds and exercise boot camps. Travel within states for non-essential reasons will also be allowed.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison presents the "three-step framework for a COVID safe Australia". Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The Prime Minister revealed the details of a new roadmap to reopening Australia post-coronavirus, presenting a three-step route, which he said states and territories will progress through at their own pace.

In the first stage of loosening social distancing measures Mr Morrison also said funerals will be allowed 30 mourners if held outdoors and 20 mourners indoors, so long as each gathering records the contact details of those involved.
Two flights carrying a total of 335 people from the Gulf countries landed in Keralas two airports on Friday night, as Indias Vande Bharat Mission to bring home its nationals stranded due to Covid-19 lockdown in various countries entered second day.

While an Air India repatriation flight from Riyadh carrying 153 passengers, including 84 pregnant women, 22 children and four infants landed at the Kozhikode airport 8 pm on Friday night, another Air India Express flight from Bahrain with 177 passengers, including 5 infants, reached Kochi airport at 11.32 pm.

Two flights had landed at Kochi and Kozhikode on Thursday from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, respectively.

According to Kozhikode airport sources, the flight from Riyadh carried five people having some health issues and they would be shifted to Manjeri and Kozhikode medical college hospitals.

Ten passengers from neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu also travelled in the flight from Riyadh, the sources said.

The passengers were subjected to thermal test at the aerobridge itself before allowing them to undergo customs and immigration checks, Kozhikode airport sources said.

Official sources said all the passengers would be subjected to Covid-19 rapid test at the airport before transferring them to their respective destinations by special taxis and KSRTC buses.

As per the norms, all the pregnant women and children would be transported to their homes and others would be shifted to coronavirus care centres in their home districts.
As many as 600 labourers and students of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) were evacuated from Chandigarh on Friday. Around 25 buses sent by the J&K administration had on Thursday night arrived in the city to evacuate hundreds of students and labourers stranded in the city amid the nationwide lockdown.

One of the students Mohammad Saleem, 21, who hails from Baramulla district in J&K and studies biotechnology at DAV College on Sector 10 here, said he was not able to inform his parents about the evacuation due to suspension of internet and mobile services in the valley on Wednesday.

These services were suspended after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naiko was killed by security forces in South Kashmirs Pulwama district on Wednesday.

Mohammad Saleem further said, My parents dont know that I am coming back from Chandigarh because I was not able to communicate with them since the day the communication was suspended.

A Panjab University student, Junaid Maqbool, who belongs to Kashmirs Budgam district, said, It will take more time to reach Srinagar than usual due to screening process going on at many places. My family was worried about my evacuation and now they dont even know that I am returning.

Though I have yet not been able to share the news of evacuation with my family, I have asked a known, who is already on his way to Kashmir, to tell my parents about it, said Junaid Maqbool.

Manager at JK house in Chandigarh, Dr Inderjot Singh, who is also the liaison officer for students in the region, said, We have evacuated around 600 labourers and students from Sector 29, Sector 26 grain market, Manimajra and Sector 17 in Chandigarh.

All the persons sent from here will be taken care of by their respective local administrations, he said.

However, later in the night mobile phone services were restored in valley.
Yet they have very few protections. In California, the state that produces the most food in the nation, nearly 14 percent of Latinos dont have health insurance, as is the case for 28 percent of Hispanics and Latinos in the Bronx and 71 percent in Miami. Health insurance is virtually nonexistent among undocumented immigrants in the country.

This is particularly dangerous for a community with an active presence of chronic, and often silent, health conditions like diabetes and hypertension. According to a study from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, 71 percent of Hispanic women and Latinas and 80 percent of Hispanic and Latino men are likely to have at least one cardiovascular disease. And nearly four in 10 Hispanics and Latinos with diabetes were unaware they had it.

The coronavirus pandemic has created a perfect storm for Latino communities. In addition to being more vulnerable to the coronavirus  due to the prevalence of pre-existing medical conditions and relative lack of health insurance  Latinos in the millions now find themselves without jobs or financial resources. Roughly one in three Latino families  35 percent  have experienced a job loss in the household, according to a Latino Decisions-SOMOS survey.

Recovering from this double crisis wont be easy  particularly if Latinos dont receive help from the federal government. The omission of the countrys approximately 10.5 million undocumented immigrants from the nations coronavirus aid program was an unbelievable cruelty. Many of these immigrants have children born in the United States. Immigrant farmworkers, who risk their lives every day, are considered essential laborers. Yet they are barred from receiving government aid because they dont have legal documents.

Fortunately, California, which sometimes acts as an anti-Trump haven for migrants, last month announced that approximately 150,000 undocumented immigrants in the state would receive aid totaling $125 million. Each adult is entitled to $500, with a $1,000 maximum per family. Theyre our brothers and sisters. Theyre the people who are helping mom and dad, Gov. Gavin Newsom told me. Ten percent of our work force is undocumented. Half of our children in California were born to immigrant parents. Its a matter of great pride for us. They are essential. They are extremely important.

This program helps the most vulnerable immigrants of all. But the truth is were going to need a lot more than good intentions to solve a structural problem that has put the Latino community in extreme danger, medically and economically, amid the pandemic. Aid programs like Californias can have an immediate and positive effect on the Latino community. Sadly, I dont see similar efforts elsewhere in the country.

The next years wont be easy. The virus has reversed the progress made in combating unemployment and poverty among Latinos. Families like Mr. Moraless have lost almost everything.
In the last 24 hours, with 3,390 new cases confirmed, the total number of COVID-19 cases in India has risen to 56,342.

In the last 24 hours, with 3,390 new cases confirmed, the total number of COVID-19 cases in India has risen to 56,342, the Union Health Ministry revealed during its latest press briefing. A total of 16,540 patients have recovered until now, and Joint Secretary Lav Agrawal revealed that the recovery rate has increased to 29.36%. The pandemic has claimed the lives of 1,886 patients in India so far.

Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi continue to be the worst-hit states in the country. Agrawal revealed that 216 districts of the country have reported no positive COVID-19 cases, while no new cases have been detected in 42 districts over the last 28 days. He also mentioned that a revised list of red, orange and green zones will be distributed to the states and the public soon.

Indian evacuees from Abu Dhabi, Dhaka, Singapore arrive

As per the Indian governments massive Vande Bharat Mission, the evacuation of Indian nationals stranded in 13 other countries has begun in full force. The first Air India repatriation flight brought 181 Indians from Abu Dhabi to Cochin. Indian students living in Bangladesh arrived in Srinagar on an AI flight from Dhaka, while AIs first flight to take off from Singapore with more than 250 Indian citizens has arrived in Delhi as well. Five other AI repatriation flights are expected to arrive today. The Indian Navys INS Jalashwa has reached the Maldives and will depart with Indian citizens today.

SC says states should start online sale and home delivery of liquor

The Supreme Court has recommended that all states should consider indirect sale of alcohol along with home delivery to minimise crowding at liquor stores. The suggestion came in the wake of the flagrant flouting of safety and hygiene norms at standalone liquor stores which have been gradually opened across most states of the country. Some state governments, like that of Chhattisgarh, have already partially begun home delivery of alcohol. Indian food delivery company Zomato and the International Spirits and Wines Association of India are also lobbying to start home delivery of alcohol in the nation.

Low-cost PPEs created by Indian Navy approved for use

The Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), which is a laboratory and testing agency of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has given the personal protective equipment (PPE) created by the Indian Navy its approval. The navys PPE has now been certified for mass production and use in clinical COVID-19 situations. This low-cost PPE are expected to make up for the shortage the entire nation is currently experiencing.

For more information, read our article on Personal protection equipment for different areas of the hospital.

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.
Wallmanga.com scored 42 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 13 Jan 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the wallmanga homepage on Twitter + the total number of wallmanga followers (if wallmanga has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the wallmanga homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the wallmanga homepage on Delicious. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the wallmanga homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if wallmanga has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the wallmanga homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Wallmanga.com - Animes / Bandes Dessinees / Cosplay / Idoles / Manga DESCRIPTION Des milliers d'images et wallpapers de BD, Manga, Animes, Cosplay et Idols KEYWORDS Naruto, Fairy Tail, Dragonball, AIr Gear, Death Note, ecchi, Hello Kitty, K-On, Amagami, Ao no Exorcist, Bible Black, Bleach, One Piece, Btooom, Freezing, manga, animes, wallpapers, bd, Gantz, Goldorak, Highschool of the Dead, Kampfer, Little Busters, Neg OTHER KEYWORDS wallmanga, animes, bandes, cosplay,



The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Strict CHARSET AND LANGUAGE French ISO-8859-15French DETECTED LANGUAGE French French SERVER Apache OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux

Operative System running on the server. Character set and language of the site. Type of server and offered services. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) The language of wallmanga.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for wallmanga.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. The total number of people who like website 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. 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.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Beginning on March 24 of this year, Larry Kudlow, the White House Economic Advisor, began to roll out the most deviously designed bailout of Wall Street in the history of America. After the Federal Reserves secret $29 trillion bailout of Wall Street from 2007 to 2010, and the exposure of that by a government audit and in-depth report by the Levy Economics Institute in 2011, Kudlow was going to have to come up with a brilliant strategy to sell another multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout to the American people.

The scheme was brilliant (in an evil genius sort of way) and audacious in employing an Orwellian form of reverse-speak. The plan to bail out Wall Street would be sold to the American people as a rescue of Main Street. It was critical, however, that all of the officials speaking to the media repeat the words Main Street over and over.

It was decided that Larry Kudlow would first announce the plan at the White House press briefing on March 24 followed by an unprecedented appearance of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on the Today show on March 26.

This is how Kudlow explained the program that was going to be tucked into the stimulus legislation known as the CARES Act at the White House press briefing on March 24:

Kudlow: This package will be the single largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States. Phase Two delivered the sick leave for individuals, hourly workers, families and so forth. Phase Three  a significant package for small businesses, loan guarantees will be included. Were gonna take out expenses and lost revenuesAnd, finally, I want to mention the Treasurys Exchange Stabilization Fund. That will be replenished. Its important because that Fund opens the door for Federal Reserve firepower to deal in a broad-based way throughout the economy for distressed industries, for small businesses, for financial turbulence. Youve already seen the Fed take action. They intend to take more action. And in order to get this we have to replenish the Treasurys emergency fund. Its very, very important. Not everybody understands that

So, the total package here comes to roughly $6 trillion: $2 trillion direct assistance, roughly $4 trillion in Federal Reserve lending power. Again, it will be the largest Main Street financial package in the history of the United States. Liquidity and cash for families, small business, individuals, unemployed, to keep this thing going. Were heading for a rough period but its only gonna be weeks we think. Weeks, months. Its not gonna be years, thats for sure.

In fact, when the dust settled, the bailout of Wall Street was structured to run 4 to 5 years while the extra $600 a week added to unemployment claims for workers was going to last four months.

To further prepare the public in case mainstream media caught on to what was really going on and pushed back, Fed Chairman Powell made an unprecedented appearance on the Today show on March 26 and explained the plan like this:

Powell: In certain circumstances like the present, we do have the ability to essentially use our emergency lending authorities and the only limit on that will be how much backstop we get from the Treasury Department. Were required to get full security for our loans so that we dont lose money. So the Treasury puts up money as we estimate what the losses might beEffectively $1 of loss absorption of backstop from Treasury is enough to support $10 of loans.

The Fed was created in 1913 under the Federal Reserve Act. There is nothing, whatsoever, in the 107-year history of the Fed that states or even suggests that it can lever up taxpayer money by 10 to 1 to bail out Wall Street and stick the taxpayer with the losses. This was an outrageous plan hatched out of thin air by Kudlow, Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin with zero regard for the legality of the plan.
File photo shows Governor Tom Wolf. Wolf thanked the workers who care for thousands of intellectually disabled Pennsylvanians in group homes, but advocates say what they need is financial support. Read more

The Wolf administration this week posted a video showing the governor thanking the workers who care for thousands of intellectually disabled Pennsylvanians in group homes for their vital contribution to keeping some of the states most vulnerable residents safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What he hasnt done is follow New Jerseys lead in providing hazard pay for direct-care workers  who typically make about $13 an hour  during the public health emergency or extra financial support for the agencies that employ the care providers. In New Jersey, similar workers pay was temporarily raised by $3 an hour.

The sector is running out of time financially, according to the head of the trade group for Pennsylvania agencies, which typically operate on extremely thin profit margins and have been slammed with extraordinary COVID-19 costs.

A survey last month of 69 Pennsylvania providers of services for intellectually disabled individuals and those with autism found that they had lost, on average, a quarter of their revenue from services such as day programs and transportation that have been cut back due to COVID-19. They had enough cash on hand to keep paying their bills for less than three days without new cash coming in.

That is unsustainable in any world, let alone a world of Medicaid providers who are almost 100% state and federally funded, Mark Davis, president and chief executive of the Pennsylvania Advocacy and Resources for Autism and Intellectual Disability, said Friday. Without help, our community system is really in danger.

 READ MORE: Philly archdiocese expects to pay $126 million in priest sex-abuse reparations

The agencies that participated in the survey have $1.85 billion in revenue from intellectual disability services and employ 31,671 direct support professionals. Pennsylvania has about 14,000 individuals in group homes. Officials could not say on Friday how many of them had contracted COVID-19.

We realize the financial strain that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed upon providers that support individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism, said a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which oversees Medicaid services. Officials are trying to develop plans that will stabilize the provider community and ensure they are able to serve participants now and once the pandemic is over.

Pennsylvanias allotment of CARES Act  the $2.2 trillion federal stimulus package  funding was $3.9 billion to state needs. Intellectual disability agencies have many competitors for slices of that money, including hospitals and nursing homes, which have received far more attention during the crisis.

New Jerseys temporary wage increase  $24 million in all, with $10.6 million from the state and $13.4 in matching federal money  started May 1 and runs through July 31, the states Division of Developmental Disabilities announced on April 29. About 8,000 adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities live in group homes in New Jersey. As of Monday, 526 intellectually disabled individuals living in community settings had tested positive for COVID-19. The state has about 20,000 direct service professionals.

 READ MORE: For this nursing assistant, fighting coronavirus means caring for those asking God to take them home

Any funding is incredibly helpful as the costs associated with paying higher wages and the cost associated with purchasing PPE are significant particularly for the smaller to mid-sized agencies, said Valerie Sellers, chief executive of the New Jersey Association of Community Providers, which represents 58 agencies.

The reality is that all providers of IDD services are experiencing the financial impact of the pandemic, and we are fortunate that regulators have responded.
No long tea-room chats or use of the communal crockery. Vast distances between desks will be the new normal when offices throw open the doors to staff for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus.

All the money spent in the past decade on creating the "office of the future" will be wasted as workers are made to keep their distance, instead of being encouraged to physically collaborate .

Artist's impressions of AMP's new Quay Quarter Tower at Circular Quay in Sydney.

There will even be a new job created  the COVID captain  to ensure companies adhere to the national safety guidelines of keeping 1.5 metres apart.

Landlords are now working overtime with office managers and property experts to ensure all social distancing requirements will be met by the time workers are able to return from hibernation at home.
1st SFAB begins advising mission to Africa with vehicle maintenance training in Senegal

By Matthew FontaineMay 7, 2020

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Logistics Advisor Team 1610, 6th Battalion, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, delivered a three-week long Vehicle Maintenance and Recovery Course in Dakar, Senegal from March 2-21, to train the Senegalese Armed Forces how to keep their military moving.

"We are excited that the Security Force Assistance Brigade has begun its work in Senegal. Their strategy of conducting engagements through persistent presence in-country improves outcomes, as it allows them to gain a better understanding of the needs and capabilities of the partner force," said U.S. Army Col. Gwyn Carver, Defense Attache, U.S. Embassy in Senegal. "This will pay dividends for the Senegalese military, and just as importantly I know that taking on the challenge of working with a partner nation force as capable as Senegal's will provide the SFAB with an invaluable experience for future deployments."

The Senegal Armed Forces support United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. Being able to recover a vehicle that breaks down or gets stuck is critically important to their missions.

The U.S. Army advisors from Fort Benning provided advanced training on maintaining and recovering their armored personnel carriers, the M36 Puma. The Senegalese soldiers learned how to teach these techniques to their own teams so they can sustain this capability without American help.

"Improving the logistics capabilities of our partners in the Senegalese Armed Forces to extend their operational reach is an essential task for USARAF," said Col. Layton Dunbar, the U.S. Army Africa G4. "The U.S. Army's 1st SFAB Logistics Advisors did a tremendous job training our Senegalese partners and enhancing their Armed Force's readiness through this security cooperation event."

This was the 1st SFAB's first advising mission after being allocated to U.S. Africa Command and the first-ever employment of the new security force assistance brigades in Africa.

The SFAB concept is the Army's answer to the growing need to carry out security force assistance with partners and allies while also building and maintaining readiness for Unified Land Operations.

By completing missions in Africa, 1st SFAB enabled a brigade combat team to focus on its core mission of developing and maintaining readiness for a near-peer threat.

Prior to this allocation to Africa, the first, second and third SFABs previously deployed to U.S. Central Command and partnered with Afghan or Iraqi security forces.

"Our mission is about way more than just training maintenance and logistics. It's really about building long-lasting partnerships and enhancing their skills in order to increase their capability and survivability during operations," said Maj. Michael Pachucki, Logistics Advisor Company Commander, 1st SFAB.

Pachucki's specially selected and trained team of volunteers provided classroom instruction and hands-on training for preventative maintenance checks, vehicle recovery planning, winch operations, and standard operating procedures. They worked alongside their Senegalese partners and were impressed by their passion and skill.

"Every day the Senegalese were excited for training and utilized the hands-on practical exercises as an opportunity to showcase their previous experience with their newly learned skills. My team and I were truly impressed with their professionalism, experience, knowledge, and eagerness to continually learn," Pachucki said.

The Senegalese soldiers told Pachucki they appreciated the training and requested more training on handling hazardous materials and how to efficiently distribute supplies and spare parts.

The coronavirus pandemic interrupted 1st SFAB's operations in Africa. The unit is working with U.S. Army Africa and the U.S. Department of State to prepare for future security force assistance missions once conditions allow the advisors to return.

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UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday launched a global appeal to address and counter "the virus of hate" -- hate speech related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"COVID-19 does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction. We need every ounce of solidarity to tackle it together. Yet the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering," said Guterres in a video message.

Anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred. Migrants and refugees have been vilified as a source of the virus -- and then denied access to medical treatment, he said.

With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable. And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs, he said.

"We must act now to strengthen the immunity of our societies against the virus of hate. That's why I'm appealing today for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally," noted the UN chief.

Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all members of their societies and build and reinforce social cohesion. He called on educational institutions to focus on digital literacy at a time when billions of young people are online -- and when extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.

He called on the media, especially social media companies, to do much more to flag and, in line with international human rights law, remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content. He also called on civil society to strengthen outreach to vulnerable people, as well as religious actors to serve as models of mutual respect.

"And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness," said Guterres. "Let's defeat hate speech -- and COVID-19 -- together."
The creation of the 20-member oversight board by social media giant Facebook arguably tackles some of the the biggest challenges of the social media space today, namely with regards to content moderation, free speech and individual dignity. The members will ensure that free speech is balanced and individual dignity preserved, said Sudhir Krishnaswamy, the vice-chancellor of the National Law School of India University and also the only Indian member of the new Oversight Board.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced the creation of the 20-member Oversight Board, which many have already termed it as the Menlo Park-headquartered technology giants Supreme Court. The Board is also equipped with a special power, wherein, it can rescind decisions by the company on whether certain content should be allowed on both Facebook and Instagram. In an interview with Moneycontrol.com, Krishnaswamy pointed out that members of the oversight board will work on a part-time basis and the decision-making process will be panel-based as well.

It is part time only

This is a very part-time association. The decision-making process will be panel-based. When you are made part of a panel, then you will participate. There are 20 members and we are not going to sit together but mostly it will be a few hours a week or something like that. Once the panel takes a decision, it will be confirmed by the entire board. These will not be individual decisions, Krishnaswamy said.

Not Representing India

But the 44-year-old also pointed out that he wont be representing cases related to India or any specific geographies per se but across the world. Technically, I am not representing India. At any point in time, the panel can call other experts for help. These can be linguistic experts, cultural experts, whoever they think is useful to that case.

Clearing the air that Facebook wont be involved in helping the board conducting meetings, Krishnaswamy asserted that the board will take such decisions independently but might coordinate with the company in certain matters.

No Facebook involvement in decision making

We are an independent oversight board, Facebook is not involved. My appointment was also handled by the board. To the extent of managing content on Facebook and Instagram, we will coordinate with them to get those files but they will not be part of the decision-making process," he said. "What is important here is that I dont report to anybody at Facebook and I dont engage with anybody there. Resources have been placed in an independent and an irrevocable trust," he added.

Asked on how the newly-formed oversight board will balance the freedom of expression and defamatory statement on Facebook, Krishnaswamy said that the 20-member board will not get involved in Facebooks way of working with local judicial authorities which will continue as well.

"Firstly, jurisdictional laws and rules will continue to apply. The way Facebook is working with local judicial authorities that will continue. We will not get involved there," he said. At the same time, Krishnaswamy said, the board's primary aim is to preserve the dignity of the individual and equality on Facebook while curbing the use of hate speech and abusive language on the platform.

Political advertising remains a concern

As far as political advertisements on Facebook is concerned, which are often peppered with controversial contents and fake news, with experts clamouring the company to introduce a stringent fact-check filter, Krishnaswamy added that is precisely the reason why the oversight board has been constituted. "This issue around political interference in Facebook is an old problem and in fact valid for all the internet platforms. Facebook has faced problems of this nature in the past and in some cases, they have not been able to respond in a way the entire community could be happy. That is exactly why the board has been constituted," he said.

"But is there any magic wand? No. But at least we can say this is much better than what existed before. Previously, some decisions were taken opaquely and unilaterally by the company. Now there is a process through which you can challenge and raise that grievance and you will get a fair, well-articulated and well-argued conclusion to the question," he pointed out.

Diversity and its challenges

Commenting on Facebook's content moderation policy, Krishnaswamy said that the board will continue working with the company's existing policy. He also obliquely referred to the fact that given the scale and diversity of a fast-growing internet userbase in India, it will be difficult for the board to implement a change.

According to a recent report, by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), India has over 504 million active internet users. The report also revealed that in rural India, the number of actively accessing the internet increased by 30 million since last March.

"When we start, we will continue to work with the policy that Facebook has. Also, we have publicly stated that we are committed to international human rights. These two are our normative commitments. Policies change in two major ways. First, they change by interpretation and second, they evolve," he said. "We will publish an annual report about the kinds of cases we have taken up and Facebooks level of compliance. This will be a public report. Now in that way policy will also evolve."

Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also made it clear that Facebooks problems in tackling misinformation, fake news have got so big that only artificial intelligence has a chance at solving them over their human moderators.

Commenting on that, Krishnaswamy said, "There are already two layers with respect to content moderation. The first layer is the AI layer, where technology is used to moderate content. Second, is the human-moderation layer. I think Facebook already has a strong human-moderation setup." "We are the third layer where things will come when either party is not satisfied but whatever we decide is binding on both the previous layers of moderation," he added.
Two flights carrying a total of 335 people from the Gulf countries landed in Kerala's two airports on Friday night, as India's Vande Bharat Mission to bring home its nationals stranded due to COVID-19 lockdown in various countries entered second day.

While an Air India repatriation flight from Riyadh carrying 153 passengers, including 84 pregnant women, 22 children and four infants landed at the Kozhikode airport 8 pm on Friday night, another Air India Express flight from Bahrain with 177 passengers, including 5 infants, reached Kochi airport at 11.32 pm.

Two flights had landed at Kochi and Kozhikode on Thursday from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, respectively.

According to Kozhikode airport sources, the flight from Riyadh carried five people having some health issues and they would be shifted to Manjeri and Kozhikode medical college hospitals.

Ten passengers from neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu also travelled in the flight from Riyadh, the sources said.

The passengers were subjected to thermal test at the aerobridge itself before allowing them to undergo customs and immigration checks, Kozhikode airport sources said.

Official sources said all the passengers would be subjected to COVID-19 rapid test at the airport before transferring them to their respective destinations by special taxis and KSRTC buses.

As per the norms, all the pregnant women and children would be transported to their homes and others would be shifted to coronavirus care centres in their home districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday during a meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. (Doug Mills / Pool Photo)

With unemployment at its worst rate since the Great Depression, and deaths from COVID-19 still rising in most of the country, President Trump argued Friday that Americans should not hold him responsible for the calamity on his watch.

Less than six months before election day, Trump's new campaign message  don't blame him  is a risky bet that voters will credit his efforts to fight the pandemic and revive the moribund economy, and not hold him accountable for the administration's much-criticized response and the 75,000 U.S. deaths so far, the most of any country.

In an lengthy interview on "Fox & Friends," Trump appeared to dismiss the stunning spike in jobless claims  20.5 million in April alone, putting the unemployment rate at 14.7%, the highest since 1933  as beyond his control.

"It's fully expected, there's no surprise, everybody knows that, Trump said. Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that. But what I can do is, I'll bring it back.

The message, which Democrats quickly rejected, echoed Trumps not-my-fault claim after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 12 that the government's lack of widespread testing for the coronavirus was "a failing."

"I don't take responsibility at all," Trump said the next day, although he had downplayed the danger of the virus for weeks.

No president likes taking blame when things go bad, but its unusual by any historic standard for a "wartime president," as Trump has called himself, to adamantly declare his own lack of influence or culpability.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected after his predecessor was turned out of office for decisions that exacerbated the Great Depression, pledged to turn the calamity into an opportunity. "We are going to make a country in which no one is left out," he vowed. The sign on Harry Truman's desk during the early Cold War became his legacy: The buck stops here.

Story continues

"Usually Americans like it when you take blame, because you are the most powerful person in the world," said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University presidential historian. "The presidents that we really look up to in retrospect are ones who knew how to do things decisively, but took consequences for their actions."

Most presidents acknowledge a degree of humility if not fallibility and ask fellow Americans  and God  for help in achieving their policy goals. Trump took a dramatically different tack at the Republican National Convention in 2016, declaring of America's problems, "I alone can fix it."

That proved an empty boast, at least for the coronavirus crisis. Trump has variously blamed former President Obama, China, the World Health Organization, Democrats, governors and the media.

In recent weeks, he has increasingly has sought to move on, dismissing alarming new statistics and models, refusing House requests for testimony from Fauci and others, and praising armed protesters who gathered at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing to demand easing of lockdown restrictions.

His administration blocked release this week of detailed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on safety precautions businesses and public facilities should take as they open their doors, further worrying public health officials about the administrations efforts to silence scientists and experts.

But the coronavirus has proven stronger and nimbler than the president's rhetoric.

On Friday, Trump acknowledged that a second White House staffer had tested positive. The first was a member of the military assigned as one of Trump's personal valets. The second was Katie Miller, press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence and wife of Stephen Miller, one of Trump's closest advisors.

The disclosure renewed questions about the refusal by Trump, Pence and many of their aides to wear face masks while in public. It also highlighted the threat to other Americans, whom Trump has repeatedly urged to return to work despite far less access to testing and medical care than those at the White House.

Already, coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths are moving from large liberal population centers in New York and California to conservative and battleground states, including Arizona, where Trump delivered a campaign-like speech at a mask factory on Tuesday.

Trump has vacillated between claiming he saved millions of lives by cutting off travel from China in January, to suggesting he would reopen the country by Easter, and more recently to urging states to reopen even if they don't meet the broad guidelines that he announced at the White House on April 17.

Although the politics of the pandemic remain as much a mystery as the virus, Trump argues that it's no time to change the country's leadership during the crisis. On Friday, he repeated a campaign attack line, all but accusing Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee, of being in league with China.

"If the wrong person sits in this seat," Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers at the White House, China would overtake America's economy in "a few years or less."

Democrats are betting that Trump, who claimed credit for stock market gains and a 50-year low in unemployment, won't be able to obfuscate his way out of an economic and health catastrophe.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is escalating his criticism of how President Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis and the economic fallout. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press)

"That kind of behavior prior to the pandemic would be written off by a lot of people as Trump being Trump," said Nick Gourevitch, a pollster who works with Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC. "When they see it now in the middle of a crisis, they have a negative reaction to it."

Another super PAC, the pro-Biden Unite the Country, launched a digital ad Friday highlighting Bidens working-class roots and his role in rebuilding the economy after the deep recession that began in 2007 after a collapse in housing prices.

"Trump loves to crow about the great economy he built," Biden said in a speech Friday from his home in Wilmington, Del. "When the crisis hit, it became clear who the economy was built to serve. Not the workers, not the middle class, not families."

Trumps team is convinced he can dodge blame at the ballot box for the current economic turmoil, and persuade voters he is best equipped to lead a rebound.

Hes done it once and he can do it again, Kayleigh McEnany, the new White House press secretary, told reporters Friday.

Internal Trump campaign polling shows that Trump is losing ground in swing states, according to a person involved in the reelection campaign who requested anonymity to discuss strategy and data.

But the internal polling also shows voters are willing to cut Trump some slack as a result of the pandemic and say his greatest advantage over Biden is on the question of who is better at bringing back jobs.

Hes taking a hit for his overall response, the person said. But on the economy, voters seem to get it. We were just hit by a meteor in March.

If Trump wins in November, he perhaps can take solace from the position Atty. Gen. William Barr expressed Thursday when he was asked on CBS News how history would view his decision to drop criminal charges against Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor, even though Flynn had pleaded guilty.

"Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who's writing the history," Barr said.
The Defence Ministry signed a contract with Tata Power SED on Friday for modernisation of infrastructure at 37 airfields of the Indian Air Force, Coast Guard and the Navy at a cost of around Rs 1,200 crore.

This is the phase two of the Modernisation of Airfield Infrastructure (MAFI) programme, the ministry said, adding that airfields of the Indian Air Force were upgraded in the first phase.

"The airfields modernised under MAFI phase-1 have been of immense benefit to both military and civil users," it noted.

About the phase two of the project, the ministry noted, "The upgradation of navigational aids and infrastructure under this project would enhance the operational capability by facilitating air operations of military and civil aircrafts even in poor visibility and adverse weather conditions while enhancing aerospace safety."



The ministry said the second phase is a turnkey of the project that includes installation and commissioning of modern airfield equipment like Cat-II Instrument Landing System (ILS) and Cat II Air Field Lightning System (AFLS), etc.

"The modern equipment around the airfield will also be directly connected to Air Traffic Control (ATC), thereby providing excellent control of the airfield systems to the air traffic controllers," the ministry said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
YEREVAN.  The passions did not subside for a long time after the big fight that took place Friday morning in the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia.

After NA Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan announced a recess until 2:30pm, the MPs did not leave the sessions hall and continued the fight.

Mirzoyan, desperately trying to calm the situation down, shouted. "Are there any security personnel in this building?"

After that, he tried to calm down chairman of the opposition Bright Armenia party and head of the Bright Armenia faction in parliament, during which time the deputies of Bright Armenia and of the majority My Step factions continued to shove one another.

My Step MP Sasun Mikaelyan, who had started this whole thing by attacking Marukyan, left the hall, did not answer the journalists' questions, and headed to Yerablur Military Pantheon in Yerevan.

The Bright Armenia faction is currently holding a meeting, whereas the deputies of My Step have gathered in Ararat Mirzoyan's office.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is also in the legislature. By the way, Pashinyan was in the sessions hall when Sasun Mikaelyan attacked Edmon Marukyan.

Fight breaks out in Armenia parliament (PHOTOS)
Some large corporations have shifted to making products that can be useful in the fight against Covid-19. Vingroup has promised to make ventilators, and garment companies are making face masks from antibacterial fabric.

On March 30, the leaders of Vingroup convened an extraordinary meeting.

They requested all the research institutes of the group, including ones for automobile design, mobile devices, smart home appliances, telecommunication equipment design, smart battery design, the VinFast automobile factory and VinSmart electronics factories, to stop all their routine plans to search for solutions to manufacture breathing machines and body temperature meters.





Vingroup signed a contract with the US company Medtronic for the right to use its design for a NIPPV (Noninvasive Positive Pressure Ventilation) ventilator. It has also set to work on a NIPPV ventilator based on a design shared by MIT university in the US.



According to Nguyen Viet Quang, CEO of Vingroup, body temperature meters have been manufactured on a trial basis and will cost VND16 million, or tens of times lower than those now available in the market. The NIPPV ventilator cost VND22 million, while it is VND160 million for Invasive Positive Pressure Ventilation (IPPV).

According to Nguyen Viet Quang, CEO of Vingroup, body temperature meters have been manufactured on a trial basis and will cost VND16 million, or tens of times lower than those now available in the market. The NIPPV ventilator cost VND22 million, while it is VND160 million for Invasive Positive Pressure Ventilation (IPPV).

Vingroup plans to donate 5,000 NIPPV machines to thMinistry of Health which will serve the fight against Covid-19.

With the capacity of VinFast and VinSmart factories, Vingroup can manufacture 45,000 NIPPV and IPPV machines each month, and can do outsourcing for

manufacturers around the world.



A number of garment companies shifted to making face masks from antibacterial fabric.



Everpia, specializing in making bedding, now uses materials to make face masks. Dong Xuan Knitting Co, which makes antibacterial fabric for export to Japan, uses fabric to make face masks for domestic consumption. It also provides fabric to other garment companies.



Nha Be Garment has also organized the production of antibacterial face masks with the initial capacity of 5,000 products a day and VND10,000 products a day in the future.



As of mid-March, Vinatexs subsidiaries had produced 10 million antibacterial face masks for the market. In addition, about 300 tons of antibacterial fabric, enough to make 16 million face masks, have been provided.



While many enterprises saw their production come to a stop, Asanzo, a TV and electric household appliance manufacturer, decided to set up an air-conditioner production line.



Its six air-conditioner models, all of which are smart and energy saving, are sold for

at VND5 million, a price which is very competitive with imports.

Mai Lan

Vingroup completes design of two ventilator models for COVID-19 treatment Vingroup has announced it has completed the design and is preparing to introduce to the market two invasive ventilator models which adhere strictly to international standards.
End Times scholar answers: Is COVID-19 part of biblical prophecy?

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A biblical scholar said the new coronavirus outbreak is a precursor to End Times prophecies, warning that the pandemic is a very serious foreshadowing of whats to come.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Mark Hitchcock, author of over 30 books related to biblical End Times prophecies, said Scripture is clear that there will be plagues in the End Times. He cited Luke 2:11, Revelation 6:8, and the prophecy of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, where the fourth rider kills one-fourth of the Earth's population with pestilence and the wild beasts of the earth.

In fact, Scripture tells us these plagues will kill 25% of the people in the world. Its literally going to be biblical proportions, the Dallas Theological Seminary professor said.

While he doesnt believe COVID-19 is one of the plagues mentioned in the Bible  those, he said, are going to happen during the tribulation in the future  he does view the pandemic as a vivid preview of whats coming.

Its a wake-up call for people to come to Christ in light of what's coming in the future, which is going to be far worse, he said. Its a very serious foreshadowing of whats to come.

I think it reveals the globalism of today. One person in China got this sometime in the fall and now it's in some 190 countries. Its also a picture of how small our world is today and how things are set up for the world ruler, the Antichrist, who is coming. I see just a lot of foreshadows and previews in the coronavirus, but I don't see this as a fulfillment of a specific prophecy.

Still, Hitchcock, who also serves as the pastor of Faith Bible Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, said he believes the End Times are drawing nearer due to the fulfillment of several key events.

So many things are happening in our world today: Israel is back in their land, the Middle East is constantly in turmoil, globalism is occurring  all of these things are signposts and point to what the Bible predicts about the soon coming of Christ, he said. We dont know when Hes coming; it could be today, it could be five years from now.

But I do think it should create within us a sense of urgency to be right with God and to tell others the Good News so that they, too, can be right with God.

Hitchcocks latest book Corona Crisis: Plagues, Pandemics, and the Coming Apocalypseaddresses how the coronavirus outbreak is related to End Times biblical prophecies about plagues, pestilences and pandemics.

The pandemic, the pastor told CP, has, like never before, unmasked for us just how fragile and fleeting life really is.

People are saying, Things now are so uncertain. Well, the idea of certainty and control that we think we have is really an illusion, he said. We think things are certain; we think we have some degree of control. But in times like these, the mask is pulled away, revealing to us that things aren't ever certain, and we really don't have control.

While the thought of the End Times can seem scary for some, Hitchcock stressed that God didn't give us Bible prophecy to scare us but to prepare us. He didn't tell us about these things to make us anxious, but to make us aware.

The Bible is very specific about what will happen before the End Times, he added, and its the job of the Christian to be aware of these things.

To me, the fact that things are unfolding the way the Bible said they're going to unfold gives me great confidence that God is in control and He's in Heaven, and things are working out according to His plan, he said. It's comforting that God told us what's going happen and it's happening. This is how we can know He is in control in the midst of all of these things.

The role of Christians amid the COVID-19 crisis, the Showdown with Iranauthor said, is to love those around them by following government guidelines regarding the pandemic and be on the lookout for those who need extra support and encouragement.

But more importantly, he said, its a time to proclaim the Gospel.

I think there's an openness right now. Its the perfect time for the Church to be getting the Gospel out in unique ways. Churches need to be leveraging what's happening for the sake of the Gospel.

In times of chaos, its important to remember that Heaven has an occupied throne, Hitchcock said.

We need to look up and gain that perspective when things are happening down here on the Earth. Christ is going to come back someday, and He's going to make this world new," he added. "Were going to live in the Messianic Kingdom. Eternity is before us.

Yes, its going to get worse before it gets better, but the hope we have is that God is going to bring things to culmination. Our job in the meantime is to be faithful to Him in the mundane, in the routine of life, just to live lives that are pleasing to God. I think thats Gods calling upon us in these times in which we live.


(Photo : Pixabay) Are You Up For The Challenge? Microsoft Will Reward $100,000 To Hackers Who Can Breach Linux OS; Here Are The Things You Need To Know (Photo : Pixabay) Are You Up For The Challenge? Microsoft Will Reward $100,000 To Hackers Who Can Breach Linux OS; Here Are The Things You Need To Know

Microsoft is offering a bounty of $100,000 to anyone who can hack its custom Linux OS. According to a report from The Verge, a compact and custom version of Linux was built by the software giant last year for its Azure Sphere OS which is developed for its Internet of Things (IoT) platform. Azure Sphere OS is specifically designed to run on specialized chips.

According to Microsoft's website, the Azure Sphere, a secure and high-level application platform with built-in security features for internet-connected devices and communication, is a combination of secure, connected, crossover microcontroller unit (MCU), a cloud-based security service that provides continuous renewable security, and a custom high-level Linux-based operating system (OS).





The main goal of the Azure Sphere is to allow price-sensitive, microcontroller-powered devices reliably and safely connect to the internet, by providing high-value security at a low cost. Linux OS is purposedly developed for the Azure Sphere platform to ensure apps and basic services run isolated in a sandbox for security purposes.

Are you up for the challenge? Microsoft will reward $100,000 to hackers who can breach Linux OS; Here are the things you need to know

According to The Verge, Microsoft will test the security of Azure Sphere OS by letting hackers breach the Pluton security system or Secure World sandbox, and reward anyone who can successfully hack it with $100,000.

The bug bounty program will run from June 1 until August 31, which is a part of the three-month research program.

"We will award up to $100,000 bounty for specific scenarios in the Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge during the program period," explained Sylvie Liu, a security program manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center.

Azure Sphere OS will be the main focus of the challenge and not the underlying cloud portion which is already eligible for Azure bounty program rewards. Microsoft will be looking for a team of security researchers who can apply to be part of the challenge who have the ability and skills to break the security of Linux OS; physical attacks are out of scope.

The challenge is still relatively new since it was just announced by Azure Sphere at last year's Build developer conference. Azure Sphere will be deployed to businesses such as Starbucks to secure the store equipment used to feedback data points on the coffee temperature, types of beans, and water quality for every shot of espresso.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, described the cloud business of the company as the biggest hardware business earlier this year, and sees IoT devices as a key area for Microsoft. Nadella is currently gathering billions of IoT devices that can be used over the following decades.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Indias massive repatriation operation to bring back stranded Indians in the wake of coronavirus crisis began on Thursday. On the first day, Nnational carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express operated flights to UAE and Singapore from Cochin, Kozhikode and New Delhi.

The first flight of the mission, carrying 181 people from Abu Dhabi, landed in Kochi around 10 pm on Thursday. The second flight with 182 passengers from Dubai landed in Kozhikode roughly 20 minutes later.

As the passengers disembarked from the flight, many were seen wiping tears.

These were the first of 64 flights that the two airlines will operate from May 7-13 to bring back 14,800 stranded Indians from 12 countries.

Another Air India flight from Bangladesh is coming to India on Friday. A student, who is coming back to India form Bangladesh, thanked the Indian embassy. I highly appreciate the efforts that they have made. I was given alk the help, the student is heard saying in a video posted on Twitter by the Indian embassy in Bangladesh moments before he board the flight.

Today, we are preparing to send home our students stranded in Bangladesh. The 1st Air India flight from Dhaka will take them home to Srinagar on 8/5/20. There are more flights being readied as well, the embassy tweeted on Friday morning.

First Batch of Indian Students have arrived at airport for boarding #AirIndia flight home to India. They are being assisted in completing the formalities by @ihcdhaka



Operation #VandeBharat@HardeepSPuri @listenshahid @diprjk @airindiain pic.twitter.com/zgLa85ZoI6  India in Bangladesh (@ihcdhaka) May 8, 2020

Besides the one-way ferry service, Air India has also invited passengers, who qualify under the governments new international travel norms, to apply for passage from India to various destinations. The airline will send its aircraft to conduct evacuation flights.

According to government norms, the evacuated citizens will be sent to institutional quarantine facilities set up by various state governments.

Pregnant women, people needing immediate treatment, those returning to attend ceremonies connected to death of a close relative, aged people needing continuous assistance and children under 10 years will be permitted to go to their houses, where they will be under strict home quarantine (self-isolation) for 14 days, officials said.

India has been under lockdown since March 25 to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

All domestic and international commercial passenger flights have been suspended during the three phase lockdown which began on March 25 and will continue till May 17.
ROME - At least five people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack launched late Thursday evening by forces of Libyan general Khalifa Haftar in Tripoli, in the area around the residence of the Italian ambassador to Libya, Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi, according to international media citing a government source.



The Libyan health ministry's media consultant, Amin al-Hachimi, said at least three people were killed in the attack and another four were wounded, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu.



"The strike by Haftar's militia in the area of Zawiyat al-Dahmani has thus far caused three deaths and four wounded," Hachimi said.



He highlighted that among the victims were two security officers belonging to the Libyan interior ministry, another security official was seriously wounded, as was a volunteer with the Libyan Red Crescent.



The Italian foreign ministry called the "indiscriminate" attacks "totally unacceptable".



"They denote contempt for the norms of international law and for human life," it said.

Missiles hit 50m from Italian diplomatic residence

Ashraf Shah, a senior member of the government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, told ANSA in a statement that in the attack by Libyan general Khalifa Haftar's forces on Tripoli on Thursday night, "a Grad missile fell about 50 metres from the Italian (diplomatic) residence, causing the death of two passersby".

"Another Grad fell in front of the Turkish embassy, two other rockets on the port, and one between the foreign ministry and the Supreme Court," said Shah, a former political advisor to the presidency of the High Council of State.

According to media, residents cited by the website Al Wasat said "two rockets hit last night in the area of Zawiyat al-Dahmani, the location of radio offices, the foreign ministry, the Al Mahary hotel, the Turkish embassy and the residence of the Italian ambassador".

A local source added, "four of the different rockets launched by the Libyan National Army led by General Haftar hit the Supreme Court building, next to the Turkish Embassy in Tripoli".

Mustafa al-Majai, media centre spokesman for the Tripoli government's "Operation Volcano of Rage", told Anadolu news agency that other rockets hit the area around Mitiga international airport and the port, without any victims.

On Twitter, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya tweeted, "Tonight, IOM staff who were at Tripoli main port awaiting the disembarkation of roughly 25 migrants, had to evacuate the location as it came under shelling. The migrants remain on the coast guard vessel".
Amazon on Friday defended its decision to challenge the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar JEDI cloud computing award after Microsoft said the company was trying to "force a do-over to rescue its failed bid."

The JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, deal is worth up to $10 billion and has become one of the most tangled contracts for the Department of Defense.

Microsoft was awarded the cloud computing contract on Oct. 25. In November, Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud computing unit, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims protesting the JEDI decision. The company argues that President Donald Trump's bias against Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, influenced the Pentagon to give the contract to Microsoft.

In a blog post published Friday, Amazon called the Pentagon's JEDI award process "fatally flawed" and lobbed several attacks at Microsoft, saying it's trying to "bully its way to an unjust victory."

"Microsoft is doing an awful lot of posturing," wrote Drew Herdener, vice president of worldwide communications at Amazon. "We understand why. Nobody knowledgeable and objective believes they have the better offering. And, this has been further underscored by their spotty operational performance during the Covid-19 crisis (and in 2020 YTD)."

Last month, the Pentagon's inspector general released a report saying that the award did not appear to be influenced by the White House.

However, the inspector general noted in the 313-page report that it had limited cooperation from White House officials throughout its review and, as a result, it could not complete its assessment of allegations of ethical misconduct.

In a statement to CNBC, Department of Defense spokesman U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Carver, said the Pentagon "continues to execute the procedures outlined in the Motion for Voluntary Remand granted last month with the intent of delivering this critically-needed capability to our warfighters as quickly as possible."

Earlier this week, AWS filed another bid protest with the Department of Defense seeking clarification of the Pentagon's amended storage requirements. Since the specifications weren't clearly defined, Amazon had "no option but to appeal to the agency to clarify it."

Microsoft said it didn't know the full scope of Amazon's appeal, but that the Pentagon's recent amendments "do not allow Amazon to undo its earlier business decision to bid high, which resulted in their loss."

This story was updated to include a statement from the Pentagon.
BEIJING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi lauded the prioritization of developing China-Slovakia relations by the new Slovak government in a phone conversation with Slovak Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Ivan Korcok Wednesday.

Wang said China and Slovakia are far apart and have different national conditions, but the two peoples enjoy long-standing friendship that is worth treasuring and promoting.

He said China wishes that the new Slovak government will lead its people to embark on a successful road that suits the Slovak national condition.

Wang also stressed that China, on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, is willing to deepen cooperation with the Slovak side on a range of sectors and carry out exchanges on governance experience.

He said China would like to enhance coordination and cooperation with Slovakia on international issues, stressing that China always preserves the international system with the United Nations as its core, safeguards the international order with international law as its foundation, upholds multilateralism and opposes unilateralism.

Wang said the COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard on global economy, and all countries are facing the important task of resuming work and production so as to restore economic development.

Along with Slovakia, China is willing to carry joint prevention and control work actively, resume normal economic and trade exchanges in an orderly way on the premise of strictly preventing the epidemic from rebounding, preserve multilateral trade mechanism, and promote the construction of an open world economy.

Wang pointed out that China first reported the epidemic outbreak to the World Health Organization which reflected China's responsible attitude, but the earliest report does not mean the virus originated from China.

Tracing the origin of the virus should be put in the hands of experts, whose research shall be carried out globally without disturbance from political factors, Wang said, adding that any political manipulation on this scientific matter is futile.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Chinese has provided urgent medical supplies and assistance to over 150 countries and international organizations, Wang said.

This kind of help has no political strings attached and zero geopolitical considerations, and it is a manifestation of China's humanitarian and responsible attitude as a major country and its active implementation of the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, he said.

Justice and truth speak for themselves; facts will eventually defeat lies, he stressed.

The mankind has developed and grown itself in the course of continuously overcoming all sorts of viruses, Wang said, adding that it will also eventually prevail over the novel coronavirus and take this opportunity to strengthen global public health system and elevate public health governance capabilities.

The Slovak foreign minister said China and Slovakia have traditional friendship and possess huge cooperation potential. The new Slovak government will always pursue the one-China policy and make the development of a friendly relationship with China and the deepening of bilateral cooperation a priority of its foreign policy.

Korcok said as a member of the European Union, Slovakia unswervingly supports multilateralism, views China as an important cooperative partner on the international stage, and is prepared to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China on global matters.

He thanked China for the timely help it rendered to the country in its anti-virus fight and looked forward to enhancing communication and coordination with China so the two countries can jointly face the impact done to both economies by the pandemic.

Korcok also agreed with Wang that tracing the origin of the virus is a scientific matter which should be resorted by experts.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 14:12:29|Editor: huaxia

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JAKARTA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The foreign exchange reserves (forex) of the Indonesian central bank edged up significantly in April after the issuance of global bonds, strengthening the lender to protect rupiah during the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The central bank's forex reserves jumped to 127.9 billion U.S. dollars in April from 121.0 billion U.S. dollars in March, spokesman for the central bank, Bank Indonesia, Onny Widjanarko, said on Friday.

"The hike in the forex reserves was primarily supported by the issuance of the government's global bonds," he remarked.

The spokesman pointed out that the forex reserves are sufficient to support 7.8 months of imports, or 7.5 months of imports and payment of the government short-term debts.

The figure was higher than the international threshold of three-month imports, according to the central bank's reports.

"The forex reserves are capable of supporting external resilience and maintaining the stability of the macro-economy and financial system," the spokesman said in a statement.

Bank Indonesia has pledged to maintain the rupiah stability during the global economic fallout due to the COVID-19 pandemic, support a pickup in business activities, and prioritize its key rate tool on the measure for the rupiah stability.

One of the global bonds issued by the government was Asia's first longest-maturation global bond which was issued last month during which the government raised 4.3 billion U.S. dollars.

Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the cash raised will be partly used to help boost the foreign exchange reserves of Bank Indonesia which has been aggressively conducting intervention in the financial market during the global economic fallout due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March, Bank Indonesia spent 9.4 billion U.S. dollars of its reserves to conduct intervention in the financial market. Enditem
The Clashs hit song Should I Stay Or Should I Go feels eerily appropriate for holidaymakers right now.

But with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advising against all non-essential overseas travel, things do not look promising.

So is the idea of a trip in July, August or the autumn just wishful thinking? Here are the travel possibilities

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is currently advising against all non-essential overseas travel

Q. Is a summer holiday out of the question, then?

A. As matters stand, yes. The lockdown means we cannot move about, either here in Britain or abroad.

Q. So thats that: no holiday for us this year?

A. Quite possibly, but then again, if Boris Johnsons address to the nation tomorrow spells out a timetable for the lifting of restrictions, summer holidays of some sort could be given the green light.

Q. Is it true that some airlines have begun offering flights again?

A. Yes. Wizz Air became the first airline in Europe to resume flights, starting with Luton to Sofia in Bulgaria a week ago. There are also now services between Luton and Budapest, Lisbon, Bratislava and Belgrade. Further flights will begin from June 16 to Faro in Portugal, and to Greece from July.

Q. How can airlines do this with travel restrictions in place?

A. There is nothing stopping carriers from providing services. Airlines say flights are for essential trips and cargo.

Q. What if I want to fly and it is non-essential travel?

A. If you were to do this you would  currently  be breaking lockdown rules by going to the airport.

Q. So why is Wizz Air selling tickets to tourist destinations?

A. The airline is gambling on the lockdown being lifted.

Many countries have closed borders to tourists and introduced quarantines

YOUR COUNTRY BY COUNTRY GUIDE When considering travelling abroad, check the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices travel advice at gov.uk. Its guidance is the bottom line  but heres a snapshot of whats happening overseas: FRANCE: Not open to holidaymakers. Bars and restaurants are likely to remain closed until the end of May, but most shops will be allowed to open from Monday. SPAIN: Tourists cannot visit. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants a new normality, with some restaurants open by the end of June and schools open by September. Its unlikely that international restrictions will be lifted before then, although hotel groups on Mallorca this week said they were happy to accept tourists this summer. ITALY: Requires a 14-day quarantine. No sign of a green light for international travel. GREECE: Requires a 14-day quarantine. Parks and archaeological sites are opening on May 18, and the strict stay at home policy switched to stay safe this week. Could be an early country to relax international visitor rules, perhaps as soon as July. TURKEY: Only open to citizens. Curfews in place. Brits unlikely to be given the green light until August at the earliest. CROATIA: Requires a 14-day quarantine with hefty fines for offenders. Croatian PM Andrej Plenkovic is considering lifting the travel ban for countries that prove they have the virus under control. Not good news for Britain. AMERICA: Severe restrictions; impossible to enter if you have been in the UK in the past 14 days. Its not known if the U.S. will loosen international travel restrictions this year. Advertisement

Q. Are other airlines offering flights now?

A. Yes. Heathrow flights earlier this week included Aegean Airlines to Frankfurt, Alitalia to Rome, British Airways to Cork and Finnair to Helsinki.

Q. If the lockdown is lifted and we can travel to airports, can we fly again?

A. In theory: yes, if you have a ticket. Airlines are not turning passengers away unless they do not have specific entry documents.

Q. So I could take a summer holiday after all?

A. There are a couple of catches. The first is that, if you travel against FCO advice, your travel insurance is invalidated. So you will be travelling without cover, which is highly risky during a pandemic.

Q. What is the other catch that you mention?

A. The entry restrictions of the country you are visiting. Most have closed borders to tourists now and introduced quarantines.

If you travel against FCO advice, your travel insurance is invalidated. You will be travelling without cover, which is highly risky during a pandemic

Q. Can you give an example of a country with a quarantine?

A. Canada has a rule that stipulates you must have strict proof that a place of isolation/quarantine has been arranged. If not, you could be sent to a detention centre. If you break quarantine, you may be fined up to 433,000.

Q. If I quarantined in self-catering accommodation in such a country, would that be allowed?

A. This could be extremely risky as the countrys officials may take a dim view of overseas visitors playing the system.

Q. If I am going to a country that currently does not have a quarantine, will I be OK?

A. Again, this is taking a chance. Rules abroad could alter abruptly. And there is a possibility that Britain may yet apply a quarantine for returning holidaymakers.

Q. Surely if you are British you will not be quarantined?

A. Not necessarily. A quarantine on all returning passengers could be introduced at any time. This week the Home Affairs Committee discussed this very matter. It is feasible that Boris Johnson could announce a quarantine for Britons returning from abroad tomorrow.

Trailfinders, a leading travel firm, says customers have begun booking trips for October and November

Q. I have heard that temperature checks at airports could become standard  is this true?

A. Heathrow is to trial facial-recognition cameras with heat-seeking technology to identify those with coronavirus symptoms within the next fortnight.

If they are found to have a fever, passengers could go into quarantine or be prevented from boarding.

John Holland-Kaye, Heathrows boss, believes that an international standard of such health checks needs to be introduced, along with rules regarding on-board hygiene and a requirement for passengers and cabin crew to wear masks. Crew would also need gloves.

Q. Will I have to buy my own mask if I fly in the future?

A. Probably. Wizz Air, Air France and KLM have said masks are now mandatory. Wizz Air is providing free masks initially.

Q. I do not want to travel without proper insurance  when is it most likely I could go abroad safely with full cover?

A. This depends on when the FCO relaxes its travel advice. When non-essential travel is given the thumbs up, insurance policies will be valid once again. But check with your insurer about Covid-19.

Q. When is the FCO likely to allow travel?

A. No one knows  events will determine this. It could be later in the year. It is not expected that overseas travel will be given the go-ahead in the Prime Ministers statement tomorrow.

Heathrow is to trial facial-recognition cameras with heat-seeking technology to identify those with coronavirus symptoms

Q. Any hints on when it might get the go-ahead?

A. Trailfinders, a leading travel firm, says customers have begun booking trips for October and November, with most opting for the latter and hardly anyone making any earlier plans. So late autumn/early winter seems possible, if you follow the money being spent.

Q. What about going by Eurotunnel or ferry to France?

A. Currently the French are not allowing non-essential trips, so you cannot pop over in your car for a holiday. But French beaches will be allowed to reopen next week, which is a good sign.

Q. What if I have bought a trip already and Im due to leave in the summer?

A. If you have booked a package holiday and it is cancelled, you are due a refund within 14 days under the Package Travel Regulations.

If you have booked a flight, you are due a refund within seven days under EU law. Be aware that some tour operators are merely offering Refund Credit Notes, and some airlines only vouchers.

Both say that these exceptional circumstances allow this.

Q. So, what is my best bet for going on a summer trip?

A. A staycation is the best bet, if the lockdown is eased. For a trip abroad, you should wait it out until the FCO advice changes.
(Photo : www.pxhere.com)

It has just been announced that Samsung is planning to launch its version of a Samsung Pay debit card this summer in partnership with SoFi.

Read More: Facebook Allows Its Employees to Work from Home Until the End of 2020; Offices Will Not Reopen Before July 6





Samsung is seriously going for it

Tech giant Samsung is planning to launch its version of Samsung Pay debit card later this summer, which was announced in a company blog today by Sang Ahn, vice president and general manager of Samsung Pay in North America.

Samsung is going to launch the card, backed by a cash management account, through a partnership with personal finance company SoFi, Ahn said.

Ahn also said that Samsung is developing a "mobile-first money management platform." The blog doesn't go into much detail about what other features the money management platform, as well as the upcoming debit card, may have. However, he did mention that Samsung will be sharing more of the details "in the coming weeks."

Read More: Valorant's Anti Cheat Software Makes Your PC Overheat, And Gamers Are Complaining, Here's Why

Samsung is going to compete against Apple and Google

Samsung is now gearing up to join Apple in offering its customers a branded payment card, which can be another method of payment. Apple's Apple Card, which is a credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs, was launched in August 2019.

The Apple Card is a titanium card and as well as a digital card that you can use to pay via Apple Pay on your iPhone and Apple Watch. You can also track your spending, as well on your Apple Card, inside iOS's Wallet app.

It's safe to assume that the Korea-based company might also go that same route for their soon-to-be-launched debit card. Google is reportedly also working on its own branded payment card to keep up with both Apple and Samsung. Google will be following Samsung's footsteps in making its debit card, and will also offer spending-tracking tools for the card that's still in development.

Read More: 5G Conspiracy Theorists Have Burned Down Almost 80 Mobile Towers in The U.K.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Understanding the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people who use drugs in Scotland is the focus of a new University of Stirling study.

The project - funded under the Scottish Government's Rapid Research in COVID-19 programme - will assess the longer-term health impacts of the social response to the pandemic on people who use drugs (PWUD).

The research will consider whether a reduction in the availability of illicit drugs has changed purchasing habits - resulting in an increased risk for some - and look at how others may have reduced or ceased drug use to avoid social contact.

Led by Professor Catriona Matheson, of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the research team will look at the impact of the virus on three distinct elements of drug use and services in Scotland: distribution and social use patterns of illicit drugs; the availability of harm reduction services; and the provision of addiction treatment services and the impact on people in recovery.

The study will also consider whether changes to drug service provision, introduced due to COVID-19, exposes PWUD to harm through a heightened risk of overdose or relapse.

Professor Matheson, Chair of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, said: "Feedback received by the Drug Deaths Taskforce suggests a number of issues are beginning to emerge for people who use drugs - because of the virus and the measures being used to combat it. This is the only research of its type and its findings will be provided to policymakers, service providers, and organisations representing people who use drugs to help shape their responses to these challenges.

"Being able to understand how people's drug purchasing and using behaviours are affected by social distancing will be vitally important to informing pragmatic risk reduction messages for this group."

Professor Matheson's team will work with voluntary sector organisations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Lanarkshire to conduct qualitative research interviews, via telephone or online, with PWUD.

The research team - featuring a number of experienced drugs researchers - includes: Dr Tessa Parkes, Josh Dumbrell and Joe Schofield, all from the University of Stirling, and Dr Angus Bancroft, of the University of Edinburgh.

A second study, led by Dr Parkes, will look at how a Managed Alcohol Programme could help reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection for people experiencing alcohol dependency and homelessness.

The University of Stirling is leading 10 major projects investigating the impact of COVID-19 pandemic after receiving almost 500,000 in Scottish Government funding.

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The Grand Ole Opry is closed but the show must go on. Nashvilles historic music venue will be the site of a special concert on May 9, with country superstars and Opry members Trace Adkins and Dustin Lynch performing live from the stage to benefit coronavirus charities. Meanwhile, fellow Opry member Blake Shelton will play remotely from his Oklahoma ranch, joined by partner Gwen Stefani in her Opry debut.

The performance is part of the Opry Livestream series, hosted by Bobby Bones and presented jointly by the Opry and the Circle network. To celebrate Mothers Day weekend, country hitmaker Sara Evans will kick things off early at 7 p.m ET/4 p.m. PT with a special Circle Sessions set.

Bookmark this page and watch the full show above.

This is the latest in a series of free Saturday performances that not only aims to entertain home-bound fans but also help those in need. The Opry and Circle have partnered with MusicCares #Unbroken campain to raise money for artists and music professionals affected by the crisis. Viewers can text UNBROKEN to 41444 to donate during the show.

Between sets, Bones will also let viewers know how to contribute to Verizons Pay It Forward Live initiative benefiting small business impacted by the pandemic. The exclusive concert series kicked off March 26 with Dave Matthews, and has continued in recent weeks with Alicia Keys, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, country superstar Luke Bryan, Grammy-winning siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas, and pop star Janelle Monae.

Over the course of Pay It Forward Live, viewers are encouraged to do what they can to support local businesses in their own communities by shopping online, buying a gift card to be used when businesses reopen or ordering a meal. Verizon will donate $10, up to $2.5 million, to support small businesses for each use of the hashtag #PayItForwardLive. More information can be found at Verizon.com/PayItForwardLive.

Verizon is the parent company of Yahoo.
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Xiaomi has launched the Mi 10, its flagship 5G smartphone alongside the Mi Box and Mi True Wireless Earbuds 2 in India.

Xiaomi has launched the Mi 10, its flagship 5G smartphone alongside the Mi Box and Mi True Wireless Earbuds 2 in India. The company hasnt been successful in grabbing a piece of the premium smartphone segment yet, a slab thats been hugely dominated by OnePlus and the like. So, after the Mi Mix 2 in 2017, Xiaomi is having another go at the premium flagship segment with the Mi 10 which is their most advanced phone till date, going up against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S20 series and OnePlus 8 series, to name a few.

The Mi 10 was earlier scheduled to launch on March 31 but due to the Coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent nation-wide lockdown, the launch was deferred to a later date. Now that the Indian government has eased the restrictions in Green and Orange zones, the company is coming out with the Mi 10 and other accessories along with the Mi Box. Lets take a brief look at the specifications, prices and availability of the Xiaomi Mi 10( 44999 at amazon) in India.

Xiaomi Mi 10 price and availability

Xiaomi Mi 10 is being offered in two storage variants with 8GB RAM-- 128GB and 256GB. The base variant is priced at Rs 49,999 while the 256GB model will be up for grabs at Rs 54,999 and goes on pre-orders starting May 8 on Amazon India and Mi India Store.

HDFC bank cardholders are also eligible for Rs 3,000 cashback on purchase of Mi 10 and people who pre-order the phone will also get the Mi wireless charger for free.

Do note, however, that the government hasnt allowed non-essential delivery by e-commerce companies in Red zones.

The Mi 10 comes in two colours-- Twilight Grey and Coral Green.

Xiaomi Mi 10 specifications and features

Xiaomi Mi 10 comes with a premium finish that is complemented by an aluminium chassis. The phone measures 9 millimetres at its thickest point and weighs 208 grams. It features a 6.67-inch Full HD+ (2340 x 1080 pixels) resolution display that uses a Super AMOLED panel topped with Gorilla Glass 5. The screen supports 90Hz high refresh rate that ensures a smooth experience and is certified for HDR10+ playback. It has a punch-hole cutout in the top-left corner for the selfie camera that gives the display a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The display is also home to an optical fingerprint reader.

The Mi 10 is powered by top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset with 5G support and an octa-core CPU that is paired with Adreno 650 GPU, 8GB RAM and upto 256GB UFS 3.0 storage options to choose from. It runs on the latest version of MIUI 11 which is based on Android 10.

Mi 10 has a versatile quad-camera setup that consists of a primary 108MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture, a 13MP ultra-wide camera with 123-degree field-of-view, a 2MP macro lens and a 2MP depth sensor. The rear camera setup is capable of recording videos in 8K UHD at 30fps and 4K UHD at up to 60fps with OIS, EIS and shoot steady modes. Theres a 20MP front-facing camera housed within the punch-hole notch cutout with features like AI Beautify, studio lighting and more.

Xiaomis flagship phone supports 5G networks, though India currently has none. It also comes with Wi-Fi 6 modem with a maximum throughput rate of 9.6Gb per second and MultiLink support that joins Wi-Fi and 4G/5G networks to ensure fast and stable internet connectivity. It is fitted with dual linear speakers and the phone also supports Hi-Res audio playback.

The Mi 10 is fitted with a 4,780mAh battery that supports 30W fast charging, both wired and wireless. It also supports 5W reverse wireless charging out-of-the-box. Xiaomi has also announced a wireless charger as an accessory for the Mi 10 which is sold separately for Rs 2,500.
I was 9 in 2003, when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak occurred in Taiwan. There was a palpable sense of social order on the brink of collapse. Even though nearly every adult in my family worked as a doctor  with access to reliable information and updates from the front lines of medical treatment  we were not immune from the confusion and anxiety that ran rampant through our island nation.

But this time, my family back home in Taiwan is experiencing something very different. Taiwan hasnt seen any local transmission in weeks. It has seen only a handful of community transmission cases for the entire outbreak thus far. To boot, it hasnt implemented any shelter-in-place orders.

Three of my cousins  all college students in the U.S.  moved back to Taiwan a few weeks ago, as COVID-19 raged here. Immediately after landing, their temperatures were checked and their luggage sterilized. Their travel destinations (hotels, home addresses, etc.) were documented, as were their cell phones. This would serve as their electronic tag. Should their cell signal leave a certain perimeter (determined by their provided address) before their quarantine period was fulfilled, the police and the local health commission office would be notified.

When SARS first appeared in Taiwan, the disease spread rapidly because cases initially werent caught quickly enough. To salvage the situation, the government decided to consider anyone with a fever as a SARS patient until proven otherwise. This model is now the basis for the way COVID-19 is managed. Anyone with a fever and cough is assessed as a suspected COVID-19 case. Every single laboratory-confirmed case, even if asymptomatic, is treated in an isolated hospital room. This is quite different from whats often done in the U.S.: those experiencing mild symptoms are instructed to stay at home. Unsurprisingly, this has led to subsequent infections in families.

Another important distinction between the two countries is the prevalence of contact tracing. Contact tracing is very robust in Taiwan, aided by a central network that links an individuals cell phone location to a national health insurance database. A confirmed case can lead to dozens of people being quarantined. For instance, when a hotel concierge was confirmed to have COVID-19 in early March, the 130-odd guests and staff with whom she had come in contact were all tracked down and quarantined.

In my role as a research coordinator at Stanford Medicines Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention, I recently asked Dr. Yeh Ching-Chuan, former Minister of Health of Taiwan, how the U.S. compares in its daily COVID-19 briefings.

The experts  the epidemiologists, virologists, infectious-disease specialists  rather than the politicians, should be the ones taking the lead briefing the people on what we know about the virus, possible treatments and public health interventions, he said. In Taiwan, the only politician present during the daily televised CECC briefings is the vice president. But thats only because he also happens to be a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist.

We might not have adequate testing kits yet. But as is the case in Taiwan, we can use proxies such as fever, cough and other clinical criteria, such as a loss of smell or taste, as bases for monitoring possible cases. All it takes is scrupulous observation  and meticulous use of data analytics to track clusters of people with fever symptoms.

All of this might sound expensive. But, inarguably, shelter in place in the U.S. has proven devastatingly costly, both for individuals and for the national economy. The pressure to reopen has convinced some states to do so already  without significant mitigation measures for potential outbreaks in place.

We keep asking doctors, epidemiologists, public health officials and politicians what we can do, instead of what we ought to do. Right now, this country is operating on a mind-set of scarcity  of resources, testing, doctors, and national will.

But what in our toolkit do we have in abundance?

If my clinical work has taught me anything, its that the United States has an unlimited stockpile of humanity, fellowship, resolve and the capacity to learn from experience. We can either continue to lurch from crisis to crisis or we can apply the best practices weve learned from past pandemics to not only weather and overcome the COVID-19 cataclysm, but also make it the last such event to take us completely by surprise and decimate our ability to defeat it.

Henry Bair is a third-year medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine and a research coordinator at Stanford Medicines Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention. He is also a member of a new COVID-19 task force assembled by former Gov. Jerry Brown. The task force is analyzing disease-transmission models to create recommendations for reopening various regions of the country.
By Sankalp Phartiyal

NEW DELHI, May 8 (Reuters) - A court asked the Indian government on Friday to respond to a challenge against its order for compulsory use of a contact tracing app by public and private sector employees returning to work amid the world's biggest coronavirus lockdown.

India launched the Aarogya Setu, or "Health Bridge", app last month. Downloaded to the phones of 94 million Indians, it makes use of Bluetooth and GPS to alert users who may have encountered people who later test positive for the virus.

But mandatory use of the app forces a user to "give away data to a system which he may or may not approve of, thereby attacking his right of informational autonomy," a member of the opposition Congress party said in a petition to the high court in the southern state of Kerala.

"Such coercive and forcible extraction of personal information from an individual is unheard of in a democratic and republic setup and it is attribute of a dictatorial system," said the petition, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters.

The court has fixed a hearing on May 12.

India's technology ministry did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters to seek comment.

The app was initially available only on smartphones running on Google's Android and Apple's iPhones, leaving out nearly 400 million people who use only basic feature phones.

Officials at the tech ministry and a lawyer who framed the app's privacy policy have said it needs to be on at least 200 million phones to be effective among a population of 1.3 billion.

Now, seeking to widen its use, New Delhi plans to launch within days a version for mobile carrier Reliance Jio's $9 internet-enabled phones, Reuters has reported.

The app can help authorities identify virus hotspots and better target health efforts, the tech ministry said in late April, adding that information would be used "only for administering necessary medical interventions".

Story continues

New Delhi has said the app will not infringe privacy as data is collected anonymously.

As India scales back in low-risk zones the shutdown that began on March 25, it has vowed to hold company heads responsible for ensuring that all returning workers use the app.

Digital rights activists have criticised the order as a violation of the principle of consent. Critics, including a French hacker, have raised privacy concerns and want the app's source code made public, but the government says it is safe.

App use should be mandatory only in containment zones, Delhi-based think tank the Dialogue told the government, calling for independent data auditing to preserve checks and balances.

Many nations are using similar apps but some, such as Australia and Colombia, are turning to technology from Apple and Alphabet's Google amid citizens' privacy concerns and glitchy state-backed systems.

India has reported 37,916 virus infections and 1,886 deaths.

(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.)

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 04:16:55|Editor: huaxia

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HAVANA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has expressed gratitude for the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee's donation of medical supplies amid the Caribbean nation's efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This is another manifestation of solidarity from China. We thank our friendly Asian nation for their support," Diaz-Canel said on Twitter.

Some 60,000 surgical face masks and 6,000 N95 face masks were handed over to Angel Arzuaga, deputy head of International Relations for the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, by Chinese Ambassador to Cuba Chen Xi during a ceremony at the warehouse of Cuban medical supplies distributing company ENSUME on the outskirts of Havana earlier this week.

Chen said at the ceremony that more donations from China will continue to arrive on the island throughout the week, adding that solidarity can help address the COVID-19 crisis.

Relations between the two parties and the two countries have been further strengthened in the process of jointly combating the pandemic, he said.

Arzuaga said China has not only safeguarded the frontline in fighting against the virus, but also shared scientific data on the outbreak with the world. He said this year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relationship between the two countries and the bilateral relationship is excellent.

Since Cuba confirmed its first three COVID-19 cases on March 11, the Chinese government, companies and social groups have been helping the Caribbean country with medical supplies.

As of Friday, Cuba has reported 1,715 COVID-19 cases with 70 deaths. Enditem
A senior Labour MP has said a tweet by one of the party's youth associations has "rightly been deleted" after it paid tribute to IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands on the anniversary of his death.

Tuesday marked 39 years since the Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP died after a 66-day fast in the Maze Prison.

On Tuesday evening London Young Labour tweeted a picture of the Falls Road mural dedicated to the IRA man.

They wrote: "On this day in 1981, socialist and republican Bobby Sands died as a PoW, following a hunger strike during which he became an elected MP.

"We remember him and continue to fight for an end to imperialism and for a free and united Ireland."

The tweet received over 2,000 replies, both supporting and condemning the tribute.

The party's new leader Sir Keir Starmer was urged by DUP MP Ian Paisley to take disciplinary action, while Sammy Heenan, whose father was shot dead by the IRA in 1985, said he was "shocked" when he saw it.

In a statement to the Belfast Telegraph, shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Louise Haigh stated that the tweet was "provocative and inappropriate".

"It does not reflect the Labour Party's long-standing and deep commitment to cross-community cooperation and the principles of the Good Friday Agreement," she added.

"Our role must be to remain as a trusted partner between all communities in Northern Ireland and help all sides work together to not only address the legacy of the Troubles, but create a prosperous future for all the people of Northern Ireland.

"That is Labour's legacy and one we remain completely committed to."

Welcoming the decision to delete the tweet, Mr Paisley said he appreciated that Mr Starmer and Ms Haigh "immediately acted".

"I think it's very positive and shows a ruthless determination to stamp these sort of inappropriate comments out," he said. "I welcome the fact that it's been taken down from Twitter and I'm sure there'll be other internal disciplinary actions that we'll hear of later.

"I would certainly call on them to make sure that those responsible are disciplined internally."

In 1976 Sands was sentenced for possessing a firearm after he was involved in a gun battle with police following the IRA bombing of a furniture shop in Dunmurry.

Mr Paisley said that "those things aren't forgotten".

"When people try to say he's a hero, when we look at what he did, it wasn't heroism, it was cowardice," he added.
Each year, Delta College celebrates its best and brightest students at the Graduate Student Awards Ceremony. These outstanding graduates represent the future of the Great Lakes Bay Region and beyond.

Although the ceremony was canceled this year, that doesnt diminish the achievements of these talented award recipients and our joy in celebrating them, said Dr. Reva Curry, vice president of Instruction and Learning Services. These special individuals proved their academic abilities in the classroom, demonstrated strong leadership skills and generously gave their time to their community.
Euclids Shore Cultural Centre will soon be getting a makeover.

The school was recently awarded a History Fund grant in the amount of $20,000 from the Columbus-based Ohio History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society.

According to officials, the gift will assist with the Shore Cultural Centre Window Restoration Project, which was informed by a pilot program in 2018 that successfully repaired five windows. It extends that work to 16 windows and will advance long-term efforts to repair the former high schools 384 windows.

Shore was the only organization out of the eight 2020 grantees to receive the maximum award amount of $20,000, representing 23 percent of the Ohio History Connections $85,900 in awards. This current grant cycle attracted 41 submissions with requests totaling over $568,000.

Since 2013, the Ohio History Fund has awarded 81 grants in 41 counties totaling $780,000. Over this same time period, 388 grant proposals from 66 counties were received, with requests totaling $4.7 million.

Specifically, the grant will enable Shore to restore two sets of five 4-foot-by-8-foot double-hung, wood sash windows and five 4-foot-by-5-foot double-hung wood sash windows, in addition to a single four-over-four fixed sash window located above the original buildings front entrance.

An anonymous gift of $10,000 has also been received to assist with this portion of the buildings window restoration work, Shore administrators said.

The board will soon be making an additional window restoration announcement and launching a public appeal campaign to tackle the buildings remaining window restoration and replacement needs.

The Ohio History Connection grant awards were announced as the grant program is funded through voluntary tax check-offs on personal state income tax forms. Grants from the Ohio History Fund are made possible from voluntary donations of state income tax refunds, sales of Ohio History mastodon license plates, and other donations.

Laura Kidder, executive director of Shore, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, noted this year was the second time the school has applied for the History Fund grant.

Last year, we missed getting it by very little, like four points, Kidder said. They rate the need of all the applicants to how much funds they have. Being on a mission and being determined pays off. We work hard to make a difference in the community and are so honored that the review board chose Shore for this award.

Due to the number of worthy projects which were not funded this year, as well as our intention to pursue additional support in the future, we respectfully ask that the community considers both donating to the Ohio History Fund through state income tax refunds and by purchasing an Ohio mastodon license plate.
Tbilisi reminds to Kyiv that Saakashvili, who was convicted in absentia in Georgia, needs to be extradited to home country

Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said he is not sure that the country's ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili can be of any use to Ukraine in the "obscure, technical position" he occupies in Kyiv.

"Of course, we would have a totally different reaction if Saakashvili was just a citizen of Ukraine, not a person on the wanted list and convicted in Georgia. We have asked the Ukrainian authorities for Saakashvili's extradition. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities in today's commentaries missed that circumstance," Zalkaliani said on Imedi television on Friday.

In international law "justice is part of state sovereignty, and strategic partnership envisages respect for each other's sovereignty," he said.

As reported, in the evening of May 7, Saakashvili was appointed head of the Executive Committee for Reforms, which is part of the National Reforms Council under the President of Ukraine.

On May 8, Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani announced that Tbilisi was recalling its ambassador in Kyiv for consultations regarding the appointment of Saakashvili.

"This is an accepted practice in diplomatic relations, which indicates the emergence of certain problems in bilateral relations, therefore, consultation with the ambassador is necessary to determine future steps," Zalkaliani said.

At the same time, the minister noted that, despite this decision of the Ukrainian side, "Georgia is not considering breaking up diplomatic relations or revising its strategic partnership."
WATERLOO  Theres more to the story than skyrocketing beer sales during COVID-19.

Most Ontario breweries have two main revenue streams to bring in a profit: retail sales and restaurant and bar sales.

Only one of them has increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. The other has been on a race to the bottom.

In March and April, we started to see media reports that beer sales were skyrocketing, said Luke Chapman, interim president of Beer Canada. Thats not quite the reality.

Ontario beer sales in retail stores have not been able to fill the void left by restaurant and bar closures, according to data released by Beer Canada.

In total, Ontario saw a 4.3 per cent uptick in beer sales through the LCBO, The Beer Store and grocery stores in March. But with a 53 per cent decline in restaurant and bar sales, the industry saw a total decline of 5.3 per cent for beer sales in March compared to 2019.

Total volume sold dropped from 573,606 hL in 2019 to 543,387 hL in 2020.

And thats the month when everyone was apparently stockpiling, said Chapman. Yes, there may have been a slight uptick in retail sales, but it was not nearly enough to offset the huge decline that brewers saw in [bar and restaurant] sales.

Nationally, total beer sales are down 3.2 per cent in March compared to 2019.

Beer Canada, a national association that represents more than 90 per cent of the beer brewed in Canada, predicts the numbers have dropped even further in April.

A statement sent from the LCBO said its total sales  and the number of sales per transaction  grew most significantly between March 12 and 24.

However, the statement said sales have since returned to normal volumes.

And with restaurants and bars continuing to remain closed in the province, Chapman said rough water lays ahead for the industry.

Some breweries have implemented a direct-to-consumer delivery option, pivoting their business model on the fly to stay afloat. A few instances have proven to be successful, said Chapman, but the new direction includes several new expenses around packaging, distribution and drivers.

As a result, some are recording selling similar amounts of beer as they did prior to this crisis, said Chapman. But their expenses have also jumped, and as a result, they are no longer making any money and are just there to keep their staff employed.

March, April and May is generally the time when brewers ramp up production to meet the demands of summer.

Instead, breweries are slowing down production, moving to bare bones staff sizes, and are focusing more on the delivery aspect of the business.

Waterloo Brewing is one of the outliers in the industry, diversifying its portfolio so that restaurant and bar sales make up about two per cent of their yearly profits.

President and chief executive officer George Croft said its management team started having early discussions about possible COVID-19 impacts when the first reports were coming out of China. One of their major risk points was the provinces returnable bottles system.

Acting quickly, he said they were able to secure more bottles so that the brewery could withstand a period of time when it wasnt getting bottles from the industry. Many others werent as fortunate and have been forced to limit production.

Inside the brewery, Croft instituted swift protocols to ensure production could continue without sacrificing worker safety. The tap house and retail store were closed before provincial regulations mandated it, and the brewery moved to a home delivery model, implemented screening, hired 24-hour security and have even implemented shift segregation to limit employee interaction by 75 per cent.

We have four distinctive shifts with a one-hour break between shifts where nobody interacts, he said. And we have outside cleaning crews that come in and clean during that time.

He said they feel lucky and blessed they havent had an incident  and that feeling stretches to the business side as well.

I do think we could lose close to a third of the breweries in the country, and its a shame, he said. Like most industries, there are a lot of people where this is their livelihood, and it is disappointing.

A recent Canadian Craft Brewers Association survey of 317 Canadian craft brewers found that close to half were reporting revenue under 50 per cent of what it was in March 2019.

Chapman agreed its a realistic number that as many as a third might not be able to survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

The longer this goes on, and the more weeks that pass with tap rooms being empty, festivals being shut down, restaurants and bars being closed and social gathering being prohibited  the more its going to hurt the beer industry in Canada, he said.

Steve Innocente, owner of Waterloos Innocente Brewing Company, said they lost close to 75 per cent of sales with the closure of restaurants, bars and their tap room.

To be honest, I didnt think we were going to survive, he said. So I thought that if Im going to go down, Im going to go out doing something for the community.

Thats when he started producing hand sanitizer for front-line staff, thinking he would be shut down by the end of the month.

It kind of went viral and it may have saved the business, he said, with sales climbing back up by the end of the month.

In total, they were only down 16 per cent by the end of March, moving back to the realm of sustainability.

Now, theyre transitioning to larger scale canning and delivery services, clawing their way back life, and awaiting the moment they can reopen the taproom and start re-servicing bars and restaurants.

I just cant wait for my regular people to come back and have a conversation about something other than this virus, he said.

It sounds corny to say this, but I just miss seeing everyone and having a chat. Thats what Im looking forward to.
Ontarios police watchdog has cleared two Brantford police officers in the shooting of a 48-year-old man in a parking lot in the city last summer.

The man, who survived the shooting, was suffering from some type of mental health crisis at the time and approached the officers with two knives that he refused to drop, said the Special Investigations Unit.

I accept that both (officers) genuinely and reasonably believed that shooting the complainant was necessary to protect (one of the officers) from loss of life or grievous bodily harm, concluded SIU director Joseph Martino.

The man called police on the morning of July 31, 2019, and claimed to have seen a suspicious vehicle parked in his driveway. He was feeling unwell and was waiting in his vehicle parked at the Polish Hall, on Pearl Street in Brantford.

At the hall the mans behaviour was peculiar, bizarre, and erratic, the SIU concluded.

He emerged from his vehicle with a knife and then pulled out a second knife. The officers repeatedly yelled for him to drop the knife, but he didnt, the SIU said. One of the officers attempted twice to stop the man with a conductive energy weapon (CEW) and also tried to hold the man down with his foot, but the man struck at the officers food with a knife and got up.

When the man continued to approach, both officers fired their guns, the SIU said. After being shot, the man held a knife to his own throat but was subdued by officers.

The SIU is an arms length agency that investigates incidents involving police in Ontario where someone is seriously hurt, killed or there is an allegation of sexual assault.

In this case investigators relied on interviews with officers, witnesses, CCTV footage that captured the incident and 911 recordings. The 48-year-old man was also interviewed, but had very limited memory of what happened.

As there is no basis to form reasonable grounds to believe that a criminal offence has been committed by either police officer, no charges will issue and this file is closed, Martino concluded.

Nicole OReilly is a Hamilton-based reporter covering crime and justice for The Spectator. Reach her via email: noreilly@thespec.com

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Stranded Nigerian citizens who were evacuated by the federal government from the United Kingdom (UK) have arrived in Lagos. The N...

Stranded Nigerian citizens who were evacuated by the federal government from the United Kingdom (UK) have arrived in Lagos.





The Nigerians were stranded in the UK because of the COVID-19 pandemic.





About 300 returnees were said to have arrived at the airport in Lagos on a British Airways flight on Friday.





Speaking on the development, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCO), said the returnees will be isolated for 14 days.

The first evacuation from the Uk has landed in Lagos, she said.





The passengers will be proceeding to Abuja where they will be on 14-day compulsory isolation.





On Wednesday, about 256 Nigerians evacuated from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos.





All the returnees were said to have tested negative for COVID-19 before boarding an aircraft from Dubai.





In April, the federal government initiated plans to bring back Nigerians who were stranded abroad amid the COVID-19 pandemic.




Jammu:

Expressing concern over spillover of unrest to certain parts of Jammu region, Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said the Union Home ministry will deploy additional forces to contain the situation.



This is a matter of concern. There is unrest in the Valley for the last four weeks with the last 2-3 days we saw disturbance happening in this part of the state, including Kishtwar, which has remain sensitive all along, Union Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh said.



We have brought it to the notice of Home Minister and he has assured us that they are looking into it and are sending extra forces, he said.



He said there was a sense of normalcy in the region today and the district administration has geared itself with the support of community leaders who were also coming forward.



What is important is to realise that I would not subscribe to the view that this is indigenous, maybe there is a foreign mischief happening in the Valley and they are now trying to disturb the atmosphere in the Jammu region as well, Singh said.



He said additional forces will be deployed as per the requirement of the region. Praising Rajnath on his recent visit to Pakistan, he said,It was gratifying that once the Home Minister came back and made a statement in the Parliament, it was unanimously welcomed and the entire House across the party lines was in agreement with the manner the Home Minister handled the situation in Islamabad.



The Home Minister has said in Islamabad precisely what he has been reiterating in New Delhi and this reflects the clarity and consistency on part of the Modi government as far as our approach towards terrorism and handling Pakistan are concerned, he said.



He further said that Pakistan is gradually getting isolated and the entire world community is coming to Indias point of view.



Singh said that non state actions, originated from Pakistani soil were their responsibility.He said that while Pakistan has created a myth of human rights violations in India, the neighbouring country stands exposed of its human rights records in the areas under its control.



The world today is worried about the human rights violations happening in parts of Indian sub-continent which are legitimately or illegitimately under the control of Pakistan for examplethe Gilgit Baltistan, which is under the control of Pakistan, PoK which is also under its illegal occupation, the minister said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Oxides of different metals often serve as photocatalysts in various systems such as air purification, reactions of water decomposition and even in the production of self-cleaning surfaces for glass and mirrors. The physical-chemical properties of such materials can be improved by adding nanoparticles, which turn an ordinary oxide into a nanomaterial with new capabilities. To successfully perform this, however, it is necessary to understand the processes going on as a nanocomposite is being formed, and to be able to control them. ITMO University researchers together with their colleagues from France and the USA have demonstrated how a femtosecond laser can be used to tune the structure and nanocomposite properties for titanium dioxide films filled with gold nanoparticles. The paper was published in ACS the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

Some time ago, scientists and engineers created a number of special materials capable of accelerating chemical processes when exposed to light. This discovery has a great implications for industry - such materials can be used in a wide variety of devices, from air purifiers to fuel cells. One of such promising materials is titanium dioxide, which can be infused with gold nanoparticles to improve its photocatalytic properties. Research in this field is conducted by ITMO University researchers.

In fact, fabrication of such composite materials remains challenging. Thin films of titanium dioxide and gold nanoparticles can be created separately, but the way of combination of these two components is yet to be established. There are certain difficulties with placing nanoparticles inside the oxide films, and it's even more difficult to control their size and distribution. An international group of researchers, including those from ITMO University, has suggested using laser radiation to achieve this goal. "If we subject these materials to laser radiation, both the gold particles and the titanium dioxide matrices around them change their properties," explains Maksim Sergeev, a research associate at ITMO.

The researchers from ITMO University and the Hubert Curien Laboratory have carried out an experiment, where thin films of poriferous titanium dioxide were impregnated with gold ions rapidly forming particles on the scale of a few nanometers. Then, the material was subjected to laser radiation. It turned out that with the properly chosen femtosecond laser irradiation, it is possible to effectively control the growth of nanoparticles without damaging the material. For instance, if the laser is moving at a very low speed, cavities may form around the newly grown nanoparticles in the titanium dioxide film.

"Together with researchers from the University of Arizona we developed a model to explain this effect that helped us to determine the temperature field in the material when it was subjected to laser radiation.. The model considered resonant absorption on metal particles, local field enhancement, photoinduced generation of unbound electrons, and photoemission. The material turned out to heat more when it contained both smaller and larger particles, though its temperature was still not high enough to melt or destroy the material for the correctly chosen laser parameters," elaborates Tatiana Itina, Research Director at the Hubert Curien Laboratory of the French National Center for Scientific Research.

As a result of both experiments and simulations, the researchers can now better understand the mechanisms behind nanocomposite film formation and have more possibilities to control their properties. Using lasers for these purposes will simplify the production of such "gold-plated" titanium dioxide films, which will make it easier to implement them in the industry. Right now, however, the technology is far from being ready and additional studies are underway.

###
Chamisas lawyer Advocate Thabani Mpofu said: That judgment will not be worth the paper it is written on not because the authority of the court is being disdained, but because the court speaks to an impossibility. It speaks to the past as though it spoke to the present. The proverbial horse has bolted. The company no longer has anyone to promote even with all the will in the world.
Representative Michael McCaul, who has harshly criticized China in his position as the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disclosed that his family owns stock in a Chinese tech company he described as a threat to national security.

An April 20 periodic transaction report showed that McCaul disclosed a February purchase of between $50,000 and $100,000 in shares of the Chinese firm Tencent Holdings, Politico reported.

In November, several months before the shares were purchased, the Texas congressman said that Tencent Holdings is among the Chinese companies that threaten Americas economic and national security.

The tech conglomerate is heavily involved in the social credit system, a dystopian system China has implemented to score its citizens behavior, McCaul said at the time, as well as an integral part of the Chinese Communist Partys industrial policies and one of four national champions for artificial intelligence.

McCauls lawyer, Elliot Berke, said that the shares are not owned personally by McCaul but by his wife, and the decision to invest in Tencent was made by a third party.

Congressman McCaul did not purchase any shares in Chinas Tencent Holdings or any other Chinese company, the attorney said. Congressman McCauls wife has assets she solely owns and a third party manager made the purchase without her direction.

Rachel Walker, a spokeswoman for McCaul, emphasized that the revelation of the Tencent shares highlights that many Americans unwittingly invest their money in Chinese owned companies.

Federal employees are often unaware they own such investments because the federal governments thrift savings plan program creates portfolios that include Tencent and other Chinese companies, Walker said. McCaul has argued that such retirement investment plans should not invest American dollars in such shady Chinese companies, often without the knowledge of the investor.

Congressman McCaul has been a fierce critic of the brutal behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and will continue to fight to hold them accountable as the Chair of the China Task Force, Walker said. This should be a wake-up call to us all that the CCPs involvement in the U.S. economy is far more reaching than many Americans realize and that we need to change the way we do business with China, including our investments.

Story continues

Tencent owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat, which has more than one billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activities of users both inside and outside of China. Tencent is also associated with Chinese tech firm Huawei, which U.S. officials said can secretly access American cellular phone networks, giving it access to sensitive information.

McCaul has taken a leading role in criticizing Chinas handling of the coronavirus pandemic as well, accusing Beijing of launching perhaps the worst cover-up in human history.

He was tapped on Thursday by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as chairman of the China Task Force, the aim of which is to develop legislative solutions to address the Chinese Communist Partys malign global agenda.

The task force will develop new and enduring policy solutions that, among others, enhance our economic strength and create jobs, protect our national security, rethink our supply chains and grow our competitive edge in technology, McCaul said in a statement on his appointment.

More from National Review
WATERLOO REGION  Ontario has cleared its backlog of COVID-19 tests, ramped up the number of tests being done and expanded its priority list of people to be tested, but experts say that isnt enough to safely reopen the economy.

Todd Coleman, an epidemiologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, said the gateway to understanding the scope of a disease like COVID-19 is to test as widely as possible.

You want to get at the most realistic number of people who have the disease, he said.

That is not happening in Ontario because only specific groups of people are being tested, and only if they have symptoms. The priority group includes health-care workers, long-term care workers and residents, people with immunocompromised conditions, and a few others.

Coleman said this method of only testing people with telltale symptoms and only those in vulnerable groups is problematic. That is because global research shows most people with the virus have mild symptoms, that people can shed the virus before exhibiting symptoms, and a large number of people can carry the disease and show no symptoms at all.

So what we're only getting at is a small profile of people who have the most severe cases, which means that there are other people who could potentially have it and who could be passing it on.

People with mild symptoms may never get in touch with public health officials or a health-care provider, and if they do, they are not told to get tested but are instead directed to self-isolate and monitor their symptoms.

Let's say you're boarding a plane and you've got the priority boarding versus the nonpriority, that's sort of what seems to be happening. They're sort of shuffling people into different lines, Coleman said.

The concern with only testing severe cases is that many cases will be missed in the community. If the government lifts emergency orders and reopens the economy, there could be a potential of a second or third wave of the virus sweeping through the province.

And it just takes one case to become two more cases so on, so on all over again. And then we're right back where we started, Coleman said.

Catching up

Ontario experienced a lag in testing in the early weeks of the pandemic, citing a lack of testing kits and laboratory space at the time. The backlog of tests piled on as weeks went by. Turnaround times for test results could take up to one week.

In early April, Premier Doug Ford promised to hit a daily target of 14,000 tests conducted each day by April 29. Last week the province surpassed its target and ramped up testing by boosting laboratory capacity to do the work. Since April 14, the number of tests in Ontario have grown by 19 per cent per day.

Ontario has caught up to its testing targets, and Craig Janes, director of the School of Public Health and Health Systems at University of Waterloo, said that is a step in the right direction. But now the province needs to plan to expand testing to other groups of people.

I think that we want to be in a position where anybody who wants to get a test can get it. Particularly anybody who's been in contact with a case or suspects they may have had a mild case. All those people should be tested. Right now we are not doing that, Janes said.

Mass testing is not necessarily the answer

Countries like Germany and South Korea have taken big steps to tackle the spread of COVID-19 with widespread community testing and stringent public health measures, but Janes said as much as these countries are good models for what we should do, it is not easy for Canada to emulate.

Its always going to be tough. We simply dont have the capacity to test everybody, that would be impossible, he said.

Testing every single person requires a lot of money, trained professionals and resources, he added.

That is why Janes thinks the best way out of lockdown is a phased approach. The priority group for testing needs to continue to be expanded, and quickly. That needs to be paired with thorough contact tracing.

Right now public health units are not testing the contacts of a positive COVID-19 case unless they belong to a group on the provinces priority list for testing. Janes and Coleman both said that needs to change.

Coleman said catching the disease in its earliest manifestation is the best way to stop it from spreading and from creating small clusters of people who may be asymptomatic carriers or have mild symptoms.

This can be accomplished through expanded testing of people who exhibit milder symptoms as well as people within their circle of contacts who may or may not have symptoms, he explained.

Hindsight is 20/20

In retrospect, it is always easy to point out how things should have been done. Janes said we can already look back to the provinces early steps and find flaws in the timing of public health measures and in the way testing was first rolled out.

To test or not to test? Janes said this will be an ongoing debate for many months to come, but one thing he can say with certainty: testing should have been expanded earlier.

Testing all long-term care residents and workers, not only those with symptoms, much earlier in the pandemic could have prevented some of the outbreaks in these facilities across the province, he said.

Testing could have been expanded a lot earlier, Coleman said.

The province had the capacity to test at much higher rates early on, he said, adding that many university laboratories across the province have the equipment needed to do testing and they should have been called upon as early as March.

The idea is you cant really control something when you dont have a realistic sense of who does and who doesnt have the infection, he said.

Its a serious thing because otherwise were just trickling along without a full picture of what this whole puzzle looks like.

With files from Jeff Outhit
Canada and Australia have pursued completely different immigration plans in recent yearsa trend which has continued during the coronavirus crisis.

Canada increases immigration; Australias visa intake declines Canada and Australia have pursued completely different immigration plans in recent yearsa trend which has continued during the coronavirus crisis.

Canada increases immigration; Australias visa intake declines Canada and Australia have pursued completely different immigration plans in recent yearsa trend which has continued during the coronavirus crisis.

Canada increases immigration; Australias visa intake declines Canada and Australia have pursued completely different immigration plans in recent yearsa trend which has continued during the coronavirus crisis. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Immigration is critical to the economic health of both Canada and Australia. In recent decades, the two countries have become increasingly reliant on new permanent residents and temporary visa holders such as international students and foreign workers to support their population, labour force, and economic growth.

International students are a useful proxy to help us understand the economic benefits of immigration in both countries. International students contribute some $22 billion annually to the Canadian economy, supporting 170,000 jobs in the process. They contribute $39 billion to Australias economy each year and support 240,000 jobs.

Some 22 per cent of Canadas 38 million people are immigrants while 30 per cent of Australias 25.5 million people are immigrants.

This tells us that the 8 million immigrants in each country have an even largerand more positiveimpact on the economy and job creation.

Nevertheless, Canada and Australia have pursued completely different immigration plans in recent yearsa trend which has continued during the coronavirus crisis.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

Immigration plans going in opposite directions

Canada has been steadily increasing its immigration levels since the late 1980s, and in recent years, has been raising them more aggressively to support its economy. Australia also began to increase its levels in the late 1990s but it has shifted course over the last few years.

Just days before it was hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, Canada announced it would be targeting the arrival of 340,000 permanent residents in 2020 (which on a per capita basis, is 0.9 per cent of its population) and even higher levels in 2021 and 2022. Canada was previously averaging around 260,000 permanent resident arrivals per year until 2016 when it decided it would be aiming for at least 300,000 annual arrivals.

Canada is targeting 58 per cent of its immigrants to arrive under the economic class, 27 per cent under the family class, and 15 per cent for refugee and other humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, Australia announced last year that it was reducing its annual permanent resident target by 30,000 to 160,000 immigrants annually until 2023 (0.6 per cent of its population). Prior to the announced cut, Australia had frozen its target at around 190,000 immigrants for eight straight years.

Under Australias current plan, 70 per cent of immigrants will arrive under the economic class and 30 per cent under the family class.

Canada inviting even more immigration candidates during COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has understandably affected both countrys immigration systems, however Canada is still trying to come as close as possible to achieving the economic class targets outlined in its immigration levels plan.

In April, Canada issued 11,700 invitations to apply for permanent residence under its federal Express Entry application management system, compared with 7,800 the previous month, and 8,000 in February. In addition, Canadas provinces continue to provide permanent resident pathways for immigration candidates during this period.

On the other hand, the pandemic has resulted in a significant decline in Australias economic class invitations.

Last month, Australia issued 100 invitations under its SkillSelect expression of interest system, compared with 2,050 in March, and 1,500 in February.

Why both countries need immigrants

Both Canada and Australia welcome immigrants due to their aging populations and low birth rates.

The median age in Canada is 41 while it is 38 in Australia.

Canadas birth rate is 1.5 while it is 1.7 in Australia. In both cases, the birth rate is below what is needed to simply replace the population (2.1 babies per woman).

In 2018-19, Canadas population grew by 1.4 per cent (531,000 people), with 82 per cent of the population growth due to permanent and temporary resident arrivals, and 18 per cent from natural increase (births minus deaths).

In 2018-19, Australias population grew by 1.5 per cent (371,000 people), with 62.5 per cent of the population growth coming through permanent and temporary residents, and 37.5 per cent from natural increase.

Immigration has proven vital to both countrys abilities to support labour force growth, which is among the two ways to grow the economy. The other way is to use your workers more productively.

In addition, immigrants help to alleviate the fiscal pressures both countries face due to their aging populations since the economic activity generated by immigrants helps to support the government revenues that are necessary to fund vital social services such as health care, which is only becoming more expensive to deliver due to rapid population aging.

How will Canada and Australia respond post-coronavirus?

Some political leaders in Australia are already calling for even more cuts to the countrys immigration levels due to the COVID-19 crisis. For instance, Senator Kristina Keneally recently argued in the Sydney Morning Herald that maintaining the same levels of immigration would hurt Australian workers.

There has been little political discussion to date in Canada on the countrys immigration policies post-pandemic, however Canadas immigration minister recently suggested that the federal government remains committed to welcoming immigrants to help Canadas economic recovery.

Given how fluid the coronavirus crisis is, no one can predict the future of Canada and Australias immigration policies. However, Canadas decision to invite more Express Entry immigration candidates last month is telling of its desire to maintain high levels of immigration to support its economy.

In addition, there are four factors that have enabled Canada to sustain high levels of immigration, even following difficult economic periods including after the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

The four factors of Canadas history, geography, policies, and politics could see Canada stick closely to its 2020-2022 Immigration Levels Plan once the pandemic is behind us.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

Kareem El-Assal is the Director of Policy & Digital Strategy at CanadaVisa.

 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved
The Rock has brightened the retirement of one lucky teacher.

Carol Propst received a personalized message from Dwayne Johnson after one of her colleagues at her Bristol, Virginia high school petitioned the action star via Twitter for 70 straight days.

'Wow, Carol. Congratulations! Im so happy, Im so proud of you,' said the Fast Five star, who Carol admitted is her 'celebrity crush'.

A good friend: Carol Propst received a personalized message from Dwayne Johnson after one of her colleagues at her Bristol, Virginia high school petitioned the action star

Dwayne continued, 'Thank you and thank all of your fellow teachers for your wisdom, for your love, for your care, for your discipline  which I needed a lot, if you were my teacher.'

'I've always enjoyed The Rocks jaunty eyebrow arch,' the educator of 39 years told HuffPost.

But she 'she didnt really zero in on him as my celebrity crush until I was involuntarily drafted to chaperone some students who were attending a showing of Fast Five at a local movie theater,' Carol told the outlet.

Aww: 'Wow, Carol. Congratulations! Im so happy, Im so proud of you,' said the Fast Five star, who Carol admitted is her 'celebrity crush'

Wisdom: Dwayne continued, 'Thank you and thank all of your fellow teachers for your wisdom, for your love, for your care, for your discipline  which I needed a lot, if you were my teacher'

Fan: 'His personal shout-out not only to me but to all teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week was better than anything I could have imagined,' said Carol

'His personal shout-out not only to me but to all teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week was better than anything I could have imagined,' said Carol.

So her colleague Noah Ashbrook began bombarding the star of The Scorpion King with tweets, asking for a message to his new fan - and it paid off.

'@TheRock reached out to us to surprise @ProbstMiss. THANK YOU to Dwayne Johnson.'
IRAN: Magnitude 5.1 quake Tehran province kills 2, injures 33

05/08/20

Source: Tehran Times

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale shook Tehran province early on Friday, killing two and injuring 33. The earthquake occurred at 00:48 a.m. at a depth of 7 kilometers near the city of Damavand, 56km northeast of Tehran. The tremor was also felt in the surrounding provinces of Qom, Alborz, Mazandaran, and Zanjan.



Tehran residents staying outside their homes fearing aftershocks

(see more photos by ISNA)



Esmaeil Najjar, head of the Crisis Management Organization, said a 60-year-old man in Damavand lost his life due to a brain injury.

Mansour Darajati, Tehran province's Crisis Management Department director-general, told Mehr that a 21-year-old woman has also died following a cardiac arrest.

Moreover, 33 people were injured, of whom four have been hospitalized, IRNA reported.

Some residents in Damavand, Gilavand, Boom-e Hen, Rood-e Hen, Pardis, the metropolis of Tehran, and some other nearby cities spent the night outdoors, fearing stronger aftershocks.

Iran sits on top of major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity. In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake in southeastern Iran decimated the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people.

The metropolis of Tehran also sits on two major fault lines.

Mehdi Zare, a renowned seismologist, says the frequent jolts across Iran are the result of "accumulated seismic energy" in the form of natural consecutive seismic events.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  The number of coronavirus infections in the country rose by 120 on Friday, the slowest increase recorded in almost two weeks.

The Philippines now has 10,463 COVID-19 cases, the Department of Health said in its 4 p.m. bulletin. On Thursday, the DOH recorded 339 new infections  the highest in a month.

The number of people who have recovered from the viral illness has reached 1,734. The DOH announced 116 additional survivors  the highest number ever reported by the department in its daily updates.

Officials said COVID-19 treatment takes around 13 days to more than a month, depending on the severity of symptoms.

Majority of the country's active cases have mild symptoms.

Meanwhile, 11 more patients succumbed to COVID-19, raising the death toll to 696.

The DOH has explained its reports, including the number of new cases, are not the real-time data since all information have to be validated before reporting.

The country's 23 coronavirus testing labororaties can now process up to 12,000 samples per day. The government targets to increase it to 30,000 by the end of May amid calls for mass testing.

Despite the rise in the country's tally of confirmed cases, there has been an improvement in the doubling time  or the number of days it takes for cases to double. From only one to two days, the doubling time is now at four to five days, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire earlier said.

The entire country is now under general community quarantine while Metro Manila and several provinces are under stricter measures to prevent further spread of the virus.

Worldwide, COVID-19 has infected more than 3.8 million worldwide and killed 269,000 since the outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Over 1.2 million have recovered, according to the Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 global tracker.
Jammu: Riyaz Naikoo - a top Hizbul Mujahideen commander, on the run for eight years, was killed in an encounter with security forces in his home village in Kashmir's Pulwama district on May 6. Naikoo, who was carrying a bounty of Rs 12 lakh on his head, was active in the Valley for last 8 years.

According to intelligence bureau, he was the only Hizbul commander who was in touch with terror outfit chief Salahuddin in Pakistan. The agency added the security forces in the Valley were closely monitoring Naikoo's movement and destroyed his dozen hideouts in the last few months. Going by the police record, Naikoo, apart from being active in terror-related activities, was also involved in the kidnapping and murder of several Jammu and Kashmir police personnel.

How the Operation Naikoo unfolded:

The Operation Naikoo wasn't easy for Jammu and Kashmir Police, CRPF and Indian Army who neutralised the Hizbul Operational Commander in a joint encounter. The teams had put in use both human as well as technical intelligence to track the dreaded terrorist for several months before shooting him down.

A special team of Jammu and Kashmir Police under the guidance of Deputy Inspector General south Kashmir Range Atul Goyal was formed. Goyal had spent several years of his career in NIA before returning to the JKP cadre. The team quietly worked on the operation for several months. Speaking about it, Inspector General Vijay Kumar said, "For six months, we collected intelligence info on Naikoo. The forces busted dozens of his hideouts in the Valley. We had teams that worked day and night and slept barely for 2-3 hours a day."

A small team of security forces was first sent to Beighpora village in Awantipora which was joined by an additional force of CRPF.

"On the first day, we could not find anything in the Beighpora village; however, we continued to cordon off the area along with the search operation. The next day, terrorists who were holed up in the village, opened fire on the forces, leading to retaliation from forces," the police said.

The security forces succeeded in tracing out Naikoo in the area. At least six bases of the Hizb-ul Mujahideen commander was busted after which the security forces nabbed him at the seventh. The Jammu and Kashmir police, however, dismissed media reports that stated that police found Naikoo was found hiding inside a tunnel during the operation.

According to IG Vijay Kumar, Naikoo used to release videos which were aimed to incite youth. "He had a special power to influence the youth and engage them in terror activities," he said.

In the last four months, security forces have carried out at least 27 counter-terrorism operations, killing 64 terrorists so far. This includes Jaish-e-Mohammad's Qari Yasir, Burhan Koka of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind and Riyaz Naikoo in the latest.

Revealing the numbers, the police said they have arrested 25 active terrorists and 125 overground workers and their close aides in recent times. The forces said the killing of Lashkar commander Haider in Handwara last week was a major success. They said that Haider was the backbone of Lashkar-e-Toiba in north Kashmir.
WASHINGTON  On April 19, Medicare Administrator Seema Verma took the podium at the White House's daily coronavirus briefing to announce that the Trump administration would begin tracking outbreaks and deaths at long-term care facilities nationwide  and publish the numbers for everyone to see.

The effort would begin within days, federal officials promised.

More than two weeks and 13,000 long-term care deaths later, the federal government still has not tallied the number of nursing homes that have had outbreaks nationwide or the number of residents who have died. And the data is still weeks away from being made public, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, the federal agency that oversees nursing homes.

The delay in data collection is one of a number of bottlenecks in the effort to slow the virus' deadly spread in nursing homes across the U.S., hampering officials' ability to target hot spots and send additional resources where they are needed, according to public health experts. The administration has also been slow to send supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE, to long-term care facilities, and it delayed a requirement that nursing homes report coronavirus outbreaks to family members. A requirement that families be notified of outbreaks was approved on April 19 but didn't go into effect until Friday.

Image: Lori Spencer and Judie Shape (Ted S. Warren / AP file)

"We think there is huge under-identification of the virus in nursing homes, so until they start reporting and comprehensive testing, it's not going to work," said Charlene Harrington, a professor emerita of nursing at the University of California San Francisco. "I think the problem is CMS and the governors have not put the nursing homes at the top of the list  and I can't think of any group that is more vulnerable."

A spokesperson for CMS defended the agency's data collection efforts in a statement to NBC News.

"As nursing homes report this data to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], we will be taking swift action and publicly posting this information so all Americans have access to accurate and timely information on COVID-19 in nursing homes. This reporting requirement is the first action of its kind in the agency's history," the statement read. "The agency remains committed to greater transparency, and will never stop working to give patients, residents, and families the clearest and most accurate information possible."

Story continues

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

The nursing home industry says knowing the scope of the problem and which facilities should get priority is crucial. The need for greater access to testing and protective equipment has become even more urgent as more states are beginning to ease restrictions and reopen, effectively leaving older Americans "to fend for themselves as the virus threatens to wipe out an entire generation," LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit long-term care facilities, said in a statement.

Related: Coronavirus cases are increasing so rapidly that one New York nursing home CEO is advising families to take their loved ones home if possible.

David Grabowski, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, said: "There's no way to actually get ahead of this if we don't have any data  it tells us where we have a problem. We know nothing about these facilities in terms of their personal protective equipment or in terms of their staffing or their infection control capability."

The CDC launched a tool this week for nursing homes to report the number of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, supplies of personal protective equipment and hand hygiene materials, staffing levels and access to testing, according to CMS.

But the new federal reporting requirements aren't scheduled to go into effect until Friday, and CMS said the data about individual facilities willn't be publicly posted until the end of May, according to a memo sent to state officials Wednesday.

The states, not the federal government

From the early weeks of the pandemic, the Trump administration has stressed the need for states, not the federal government, to take the lead, while key federal agencies have taken a back seat. The decentralized approach has long been the case for nursing home oversight: While the federal government has legal oversight over nursing homes, which receive taxpayer dollars through Medicare and Medicaid, federal officials rely on states to conduct routine surveys and collect data on facilities.

As the pandemic rampaged through nursing homes, the need for comprehensive, national tracking of cases became clear, and there were discussions at the CDC about whether to collect the data as early as the first week of April.

But federal agencies spent weeks trying to decide who should take the lead, said Tricia Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"This was not something in their wheelhouse  they couldn't just turn on the lights and fix the problem," Neuman said. "There was this delay in determining whose job it was to fix" it.

Alice Bonner, who was director of CMS' nursing home division during the administration of President Barack Obama, acknowledged the lingering questions about the slow response.

"All I can say is we have heard those questions  everyone  they are all wondering the same thing," said Bonner, who suggested that the delays may stem, in part, from the different ways states collect data.

Image: Coronavirus countermeasures (Elaine Thompson / AP file)

Under the new requirements, long-term care facilities must begin reporting coronavirus cases and other data to the federal government by May 17 or face monetary penalties. However, they will initially have a two-week grace period to comply, according to CMS.

Nursing homes around the country are already required to report coronavirus cases to local and state health authorities.

As nursing home infections and deaths have risen, Democrats in Congress have become increasingly critical of the Trump administration's limited efforts to aid long-term care facilities, describing a sluggish response that is putting some of the country's most vulnerable residents in jeopardy.

"This administration's response to the COVID-19 crisis in America's nursing homes has been wholly inadequate," Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., said in a joint statement. "We have been calling for more than a month for infection and death data to be made available."

Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak

Some Republicans have also conceded that officials' effort to contain the virus' spread in the country's nursing homes has fallen short.

"All along I've said the approach should've been more targeted and selective at places most vulnerable," Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., said Wednesday on MSNBC. "Whether you marshal those efforts through the federal government or the nursing home entities themselves or the state governments, we should've done a much better job at protecting those most vulnerable."

The lack of comprehensive federal data has obscured the true toll the virus is taking on nursing homes and their residents, given the huge discrepancies in state-level tracking efforts.

As of this week, more than 19,000 coronavirus deaths have been associated with long-term care facilities, according to data from 42 states collected by NBC News. That represents at least a quarter of all known coronavirus deaths, but it is likely to be a significant undercount, given the gaps in state-provided data. Seven states haven't responded to NBC News' requests for data on facility outbreaks, and nine haven't responded with death data. Some states don't report nursing homes with small numbers of cases.

Image: Life Care Center of Kirkland (Ted S. Warren / AP)

The World Health Organization estimates that up to half of all coronavirus deaths in Europe have happened in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. That is already the case in Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado and a handful of other states, according to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In Florida, news organizations had to sue to get access to information specific to nursing homes. In New York, because of a new reporting system, the state attributed an additional 1,700 nursing home COVID-19 deaths to its tally this week. In Michigan, where the virus has rampaged through 486 nursing homes, the state has yet to release any data on deaths. Missouri told NBC News that it isn't tracking those deaths at all.

Nursing home administrators have also made urgent pleas for personal protective gear and universal, regular testing, which Maryland, West Virginia and two other states have made mandatory. "Our leaders did not plan, did not listen, and did not prioritize the lives of older Americans," said Kate Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge.

The federal government has yet to step in to fill the critical gap, and many states have been unable to meet the needs on their own, according to advocates and industry groups.

"I would have a daily call with every nursing home operating in the country to identify those needs," said Andy Slavitt, who led CMS during the Obama administration. "The first time we hear about a nursing home shouldn't be when 50 people have died."

The White House announced April 30 that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would ship a seven-day supply of critical gloves and masks to nursing homes nationwide. But as of this week, FEMA says, just 5 percent of the shipments are out the door. The second seven-day shipment won't arrive until July.

An administrator who runs a nursing home with 700 residents in upstate New York told NBC News on Thursday that he was grateful for the large shipment of equipment he just got from FEMA  but he has no coronavirus cases in his facility.

The federal government needs to deliver on its promises for greater help, said Walter Ramos, president and CEO of Rogerson Communities, a Boston nonprofit that runs long-term care facilities.

"Reporting has to come with results," Ramos said. "I do need that reporting to mean something to the people we are reporting to  I need the rapid testing. I need the PPE."

A White House event

According to a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, at least 19 percent of Americans are worried about "a family member in a nursing home or long-term care facility."

The Trump administration held a hastily arranged event for "senior citizens" at the White House on April 30. The president unveiled a commission on nursing home quality, but as of his announcement no members had been selected or announced. The contract to run the commission was awarded the same day its creation was announced.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged of questionable deaths from nursing homes. In some cases, outbreaks are alleged to have been hidden from families until it was too late.

On April 19, the federal government announced new requirements for all nursing homes to inform residents and their families about infections and outbreaks inside facilities. Current federal guidelines require nursing homes to inform only the relatives of individual patients who become infected, not all families.

Related: Louis Schwartz was a VP at Skyline Healthcare, a now-defunct nursing home chain plagued by allegations of neglect and previously investigated by NBC News.

Many families across the country are still in the dark: The family notification requirements aren't scheduled to go into effect until Friday, after weeks of pressure from resident advocates, legislators and state attorneys general.

"Unfortunately, not all nursing homes are communicating in real time the realities confronting some of our most vulnerable populations," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said. "After issuing promising guidance to tackle this very issue, CMS has gone quiet, failing to issue any measures or rules to ensure its guidance has teeth."

Grabowski said the federal government should have stepped up months earlier, as the risks were clear from the very start: The first coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. began at a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, with a case confirmed on Feb. 28.

"We let Kirkland happen, and we wasted that lesson," Grabowski said. "We continue to let nursing home outbreaks happen all across this country, and this problem has just grown and grown."
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As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted countless communities, disrupted many ways of life, and evidently slowed down the economy, Grab furthered its commitment of supporting the Filipino communities by doing what it does best - innovating for the greater good. Such innovations may have been daunting for many as the public health situation remains fluid, and the government has been doing its level best to flatten the curve.

With the suspension of public transportation in Metro Manila and other key cities across the country, Grab had to suspend a significant portion of its business - its GrabCar services. However, the desire to meaningfully contribute towards protecting and supporting the communities who have been greatly impacted by the pandemic has never been greater for Grab.

Owing to its deep understanding of the Filipino community, Grab responded to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic with the spirit of camaraderie through GrabBayanihan; and immediately used its technology and resources to (1) actively protect those who are vulnerable and serving on the frontlines, and (2) support those who are staying at home to flatten the curve.

Actively protecting those who are vulnerable and serving on the frontlines

Since the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine, Grab has worked in tandem with its local government partners to support health care workers and front liners by providing free-of-charge mobility solutions in the form of GrabWheels - Grabs e-scooter service. Close to 100 units of GrabWheels have been deployed across twelve (12) key cities (Manila, Quezon City, Marikina, San Juan, Pasig, Muntinlupa, Navotas, Pasay, Cainta, Iloilo, Bacolod, and Davao) across the country, with more than 150 units of GrabWheels awaiting deployment to other LGUs and hospitals.

To assist local government units in distributing food and medical supplies within their cities, Grab has also developed specialized car delivery fleets that were deployed to the city governments of Quezon City, Caloocan, Muntinlupa, Pasig, and Pasay. Since its deployment, this specialized delivery fleet has been supporting the local government units for free.

Grab has also used its platform to rally its users and communities by developing several donation streams and mechanics using either GrabRewards points or GrabPay. Grab was successful in harnessing the power of its platform and raised almost PHP 9M, which was used to purchase and donate almost 3,300 PPEs and 36,000 meals for the benefit of those serving on the frontlines, and more than 1,500 food bags for those who are vulnerable and greatly impacted by the pandemic.

Supporting those who are staying at home helping flatten the curve

As many Filipinos adjust their daily routines by staying at home, Grab has introduced significant innovations that aim to provide access to daily essentials and create a sense of normalcy to the lives of many impacted by the pandemic.

With the introduction of Grabs contactless delivery policy, Grab was able to safely deliver meals, medicine, and other necessities to those staying at home and coping with the enhanced community quarantine measures. Within weeks, Grab was able to introduce a new service - GrabExpress Pabili to help buy daily necessities such as medicine and other essentials for those unable to leave their homes most especially the PWDs and Senior Citizens. Grab was also able to serve more households and communities as it continues to expand its GrabExpress services to Iloilo, Davao, Pampanga, and Bacolod.

Grab has also made cashless payments more convenient and secure for those staying at home as it expands to more cashless services. Through Grabs tech innovation, users can now pay their bills, send money to their loved ones, or pay for food and parcel deliveries straight from the Grab app on their mobile phones.

In a time where queuing for groceries might be challenging to many, Grab made it more convenient for Filipinos to shop for daily essentials on-demand with the introduction of its GrabMart service. Now, users can simply shop for their groceries without leaving the safety of their homes.

To help provide timely and relevant public service announcements to the residents of Manila and Pasig, Grab has dedicated around PhP 2M-worth of advertising space on the Grab app to serve as an information conduit to these city governments.

As we all cope to the disruption brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Grab has always been focused on contributing to the solution and we have chosen the path of innovation to help our kababayans - those who are serving on the frontlines, those who were left vulnerable, and those who were staying at home doing their part to flatten the curve. If there is one thing that we have learned from this crisis, it is that our humanity and care for one another has never been stronger, and that is evident in the overwhelming support that we have exchanged for one another, says Brian Cu, Grab Philippines President. As we chart our paths to the new normal, let us remember that the spirit of bayanihan endures in all of us and that it is our duty to keep it alive in the generations to come, adds Cu.
Special Forces Deficient British Army Launches Major Recruitment Drive

Sputnik News

13:24 GMT 07.05.2020

Despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis, he British Army's website makes clear the armed forces are still accepting applications - indeed is currently advertising for a number of "army jobs", including officers, mechanics and trainee intelligence analysts.

British Army commanders have launched a major recruitment drive for special forces soldiers and ex-veterans, as mysterious as it is high-priority.

To qualify, you must already be a soldier in the army, and aged between 18 - 28. Officers will earn an initial salary of 27,200, which can rise to 32,800 upon completion of a year's training, which includes free medical and dental health cover.

Veterans up to the age of 57 are also being urged to apply to rejoin, even if they were thrown out on disciplinary grounds or medically discharged.

The Mirror reports this lax attitude to recruitment stems from collapsing numbers in special forces - while the UK Ministry of Defence doesn't publicly disclose the number of special forces troops retained by the Army, it's known the target of 82,000 regular soldiers is in itself short by over 5,000.

"Special forces numbers have decreased. Even though regular forces aren't engaged in operations at anywhere near the tempo of a few years ago, the tempo is still high in special forces. The time it takes to get a special forces soldier trained means they need to process even more recruits right now," a nameless source told the outlet.

Messages posted by individual regular Army regiments show how veterans are being urged to consider rejoining.

The news comes as controversial Scottish Nationalist Party defence spokesperson Stewart McDonald has outlined plans to create a civilian army to be deployed at times of national crisis.

Under the proposals, school leavers, graduates, retirees and those taking career breaks would be offered incentives to sign up. School leavers could be offered a year's training in responding to food shortages, storms, cyberattacks and other alleged perils.

After training volunteers would join a reserve and be available to be deployed at short notice.

A Sputnik

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The Spring ISD Board of Trustees held a meeting April 30 discussing their priorities moving forward as they plan the budget for the next school year, including pay equity and their specialty middle schools.

Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Chief Financial Officer Ann Westbrooks said current revenue projections for the 2020-2021 school year were only based on current laws and the information they have available now.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Link Elementary School principal who died in car accident is remembered by Spring ISD colleagues

With average daily attendance and a growth in property values, Westbrooks said they calculated a total project tax revenue of about $312.8 million for the next school year, with total expenditures adding up to about $310.6 million, leaving a $2.2 million surplus.

During the meeting, Westbrooks discussed with board members whether they wanted to keep certain priorities in placesuch as pay equity for their staff and the implementation of three new specialty programs at their middle schools.

The school board was presented with the results of a pay study by the Texas Association of School Boards before the pandemic began, Westbrooks showed, which compared the district with 15 surrounding school districts to show how their pay compared. The current starting pay for Spring ISD teachers is $54,000 annually.

When you compare Spring to all of the other surrounding districts, we rank last, Westbrooks said. We have the lowest starting teacher salary, and so we know that teacher compensation is one very important tool when were recruiting highly qualified teachers and were attempting to retain those teachers in the district.

The average annual salary for surrounding districts is $55,739, she said, and the gap between Spring ISD and other districts gets wider as the teachers years of experience go up. The option the board was presented to consider from the salary study suggested a 3.5% raise in equity adjustments that would have taken the district up to an annual starting salary of about $57,000.

Another option was a 2.5% raise, but the option would still lead to the district passing a deficit budget for the first time in several years. This would include raises for clerical care professionals, who Westbrooks said were paid at 70% of the market rate at Spring ISD. Though Westbrooks said the district has had many years of surplus, resulting in a surplus of funds being added to their fund balance.

With that in mind, Westbrooks posed the question to board members of whether pay equity should remain a strategic priority for the budget next school year.

Board Member Justine Durant agreed with the recommendation to keep pay equity a priority.

They say you get what you pay for, and we want to keep the best qualified teachers, and in order to do that with our care professionals we need to make sure were competitive with their pay, Durant said.

MORE ABOUT SPRING ISD: Spring ISD opens pre-K, kindergarten registration online for 2020-21 school year

Board Member Deborah Jensen seconded Durants position.

I think it is extremely important that we achieve equity of pay with other districts, Jensen said.

Board President Rhonda Newhouse said she agreed with both of them, despite knowing the district would be continuing in uncertain times during this pandemic.

Its gonna be very important to us that we keep our staff healthy, and we keep them at a salary that is competitive with the rest of the districts so that we dont lose anyone and we continue to train them in this new technology and they will want to continue to work with us, Newhouse said.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Spring ISD also chose to put a hold on three new specialty programs they were planning to implement in the fall.

We understand the challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, and we dont want to distract them from the work that is being done to make sure all of our students successfully complete the 2019-20 school year, Spring ISD Superintendent Rodney Watson said. We are going to keep planning for these specialty programs but with an extended timeline so that were directing all of our immediate resources to Empowered Learning At-Home and preparing for the 2020-21 school year, which may require adjustments in school operations to ensure continued social distancing.

This will affect the planned International School at Salyers Middle School, the polytechnic program at Claughton Middle School and the prekindergarten through eighth-grade School for International Studies at Bammel Middle School, a Spring ISD news release stated, which are now planned to launch in the 2021-22 school year.

One new specialty program, the Bailey School of Performing and Visual Arts at Bailey Middle School, will still launch in the fall along with several new courses to support arts integration at the campus, the release detailed.

We are excited about moving forward with these new programs and all the new opportunities they will bring our students, Watson said. The new schedule will just give us more time to create the best programs possible for our community.

paul.wedding@hcnonline.com
A central health department team



arrived in Pune city of Maharashtra on Friday to assess the coronavirus situation in the district, where the number of COVID-19 cases has crossed the 2,400-mark so far.

Additional deputy director-general Dr Sudhir Gupta of the central general health department is leading the team, a statement issued by the district administration said.

The team held a meeting with Pune divisional commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar, it said.

"During the meeting, the central team took a review of the COVID-19 containment measures in Pune and called for giving thrust to contact tracing, health survey in containment zones and quarantine measures," the statement said.

The team will talk to officials from the state and district health department and civic commissioners from Pune and neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad, it added.

The coronavirus positive cases in Pune district reached 2,461 on Thursday, while the death toll due to the infection so far is 134, officials had said.

The number of such patients in Pune city till Thursday night was 2,155, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As countries across the world prepare to start lifting the lockdown, organizations are gearing up to commence operations and have made it their topmost priority to ensure a safe environment for their employees/consumers, especially at highly crowded areas such as the office Cafeteria and IT Park food courts. In its endeavor to help the organizations in these testing times, SmartQ, one of the leading B2B food-tech platforms, today announced the launch of Smart Pass - a first of its kind global initiative to decongest Cafeteria during peak hours.

SmartQs Smart Pass is a slot-based booking and allocation system, focusing on the safety and convenience of the user while providing the authority and flexibility of booking time slots based on their schedule. They can book the desired slot and also pre-order the food. The technology allows the user to view the seats booked and seats available for each slot on a real-time basis. The Smart Pass app facilitates the distribution of the crowd in the cafe uniformly across the meal breaks, thus flattening the curve and ensuring physical distancing gets automatically enabled. The number of slots, duration of each slot, and the number of employees allowed in each slot can all be easily set up by a self-service control dashboard for clients.

In short, the Smart Pass technology is aimed at decongesting the peak time cafeteria crowd, enabling contactless and cashless pre-ordering of food, and eliminating queues at the Cafeteria.

To ensure that the technology can be quickly implemented for corporates and avoid the long processes of app security and technology clearance, SmartQs tech team has created a unique implementation where there is no personal information that gets collected.

Commenting on this development, Keshav Meda, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, SmartQ, said, For the Smart Pass product, we have already received interest from seven countries across the world including New Zealand, USA, Germany and a few other European Countries. We have got a nod from a few corporates in Germany where we will be going live in the next couple of weeks. For the clients from Germany, we are also customizing the app to enable the functionality in German Language, and likewise for other non-english speaking countries. Such an accomplishment at a global scale is a testimony to the highest standards of security, compliance, and robustness of our application. We are grateful to have some of the best minds as a part of our technology team to build such global products in record time.

Krishna Wage, Co-founder and CEO, SmartQ, said, This is another significant landmark for SmartQ as it reinstates our position as a leader in the global B2B Food-Tech Space. To streamline operations post the lockdown, it is vital for the organizations to ensure effective management of their office Cafeterias by mitigating any transmission risk related to Covid-19. Leading Indian multinationals including Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Compass Group, Airtel, Siemens, Boeing, Razorpay, and many others will leverage the Smart Pass product along with our contactless, queue-less & cash-less food ordering products. SmartQ will enable the Smart Pass technology in the Cafeterias of many of the Indian companies from June onwards.

One of the customers of SmartQ, Praveen Padmashree, Head Employee Services (HR) & Facilities, Bharti Airtel Limited, said, The Smart Pass technology will be very helpful to manage crowding in our cafeterias across India. The food ordering functionality will be an added advantage as the contactless food ordering technology will be the way workplaces will operate in the future."

SmartQ also sees future opportunities for this technology in areas like Malls, Airports, IT Park food courts, and even large retail chains. Managing queues and crowding in the offline world will be vital for every business to provide a safe environment for its consumers and boost their confidence to shop at their outlets. SmartQ believes that Smart Pass is the right solution for this problem.

Within a short span of time, SmartQ has been able to build a large customer base and has been serving some of the largest and top-tier Corporates. The company has captured a substantial market share while providing deeper customization, choices in product offerings, and innovative technology solutions to its customers. Being the best technology platform for the B2B Food Service Industry, SmartQ is on track to become a global leader in the digitized cafeteria and food court industry.

SmartQ clocks 1,70,000+ daily transactions, SmartQ has grown to 150+ client sites in India and globally.
Mumbai Police has expressed their gratitude towards actor Hrithik Roshan after he contributed hand sanitisers for the police personnel. Taking to microblogging site Twitter, the department has shared a picture in which one can see a person handing over a box full of sanitisers to a female police officer.

The tweet read, "Thank you @iHrithik for this thoughtful gesture of delivering hand sanitisers for Mumbai Police personnel on duty. We are grateful for your contribution towards safeguarding the health and safety of our frontline warriors. #MumbaiPoliceFoundation"

Thank you @iHrithik for this thoughtful gesture of delivering hand sanitisers for Mumbai Police personnel on duty.We are grateful for your contribution towards safeguarding the health and safety of our frontline warriors.#MumbaiPoliceFoundation pic.twitter.com/OkFhDHrX3O Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) May 7, 2020

Retweeting the post, the Koi Mil Gaya actor wrote, "My gratitude to our police forces, who have taken our safety in their hands. Stay safe. My love & respect to all in the line of duty."

My gratitude to our police forces, who have taken our safety in their hands. Stay safe. My love & respect to all in the line of duty  https://t.co/aaE75HAjG0 Hrithik Roshan (@iHrithik) May 8, 2020

Meanwhile, the actor is currently quarantined with ex-wife Sussane Khan and sons Hridaan and Hrehaan in his apartment in Mumbai. He keeps sharing pictures of his routine during the lockdown and also ensures that he is creating awareness about the ongoing crisis.

Recently, Hrithik shared an adorable video of his dog, Zane. In the video, one can see him sleeping on the floor with his feet up on the wall. The Super 30 actor captioned the post as, "Sit on wall and sleep on floor. Adding variety to his style. #zanechronicles"
Wednesday: Scarface (1983) ITV4, 10p.m.

Based on Howard Hawks' 1932 noir thriller and with a screenplay by Oliver Stone, Brian De Palma's violent, gripping Scarface chronicles the rise and fall of Tony Montana (Al Pacino on iconic form), a lieutenant for powerful South Florida drug lord Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) in the early 1980s.

Tony harbours desires for Frank's sultry mistress, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), but is also strangely protective of his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). So much so, Tony would rather sacrifice his friendship with Manolo (Steven Bauer) than allow romance to blossom between them.

As Tony rises up the Florida food chain and slowly succumbs to the product he peddles, his downfall is assured.

Thursday

The Hunger Games (2012) 5 Star, 9p.m.

In a post-apocalyptic future, North America lies in ruins. In its place stands the autocratic nation of Panem, comprising the wealthy Capitol and 12 surrounding, poorer districts controlled by President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

Every year, one boy and one girl are selected by lottery from each district to take part in The Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death.

Katniss Everdeen (the steely Jennifer Lawrence) replaces her younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) as the female representative from District 12, competing alongside baker's son Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson).

Their alcohol-sodden mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) prepares the youngsters for competition against the other teenagers in a brutal and bloody test of strength and endurance in this gripping drama.

Friday

Kinky Boots (2005) BBC1, 11.10p.m.

The comedy from the creators of Calendar Girls is a life-affirming modern day fairy-tale about two very different men who discover that you can only succeed in life by putting your best foot forward... preferably in a stiletto.

Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton) takes control of his family's traditional shoe factory in Northampton following the death of his father, only to discover that business is far from booming.

However, a chance encounter with cabaret performer Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) suggests a whole new untapped market - fabulous footwear for drag queens. But can Charlie convince the workforce that this is the way to save their jobs?

Saturday

Darkest Hour (2017) BBC1, 7.30p.m.

On May 9, 1940, Clement Attlee (David Schofield), leader of the opposition Labour Party, demands Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) stands down as prime minister. King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) subsequently invites Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) to form a government at a critical juncture in the fight against Hitler.

Foreign secretary Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) spearheads senior figures within the Conservative ranks, who expect Churchill to agree to talks with the Germans - but they are gravely mistaken.

Darkest Hour is a handsomely crafted character study, which elegantly dramatises the 27 tumultuous days that led to Churchill's impassioned cry for the British to fight on the beaches.

Concealed behind layers of make-up and latex, Oscar-winner Oldman conjures a mesmerising embodiment of the statesman.

Sunday

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) BBC1, 10.30p.m.

The 1968 Steve McQueen movie is given a makeover, with Pierce Brosnan taking the title role. A bored billionaire (the heart bleeds, all that money and nothing to do), Thomas Crown decides - just for a laugh - to steal a valuable Monet piece from the New York Museum.

However, Catherine Banning's (Rene Russo) insurance company underwrite the painting, and the feisty woman is determined to retrieve it from the crook. You can guess the rest - bad boy billionaire meets sexy wannabe detective, and romance blossoms, but both have their own motives.

The chemistry between the pair makes for a thrilling and absorbing plot, doing the original movie justice without losing any of its intrigue or gutsiness. Although it is refreshing to see the female sex symbol being portrayed by a mature woman and not a twenty-something.
A pharmacist gives Jennifer Haller the first shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for the CCP virus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle on March 16, 2020. The vaccine was developed by Moderna. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Moderna Gets Clearance to Start Phase 2 Trial on CCP Virus Vaccine

Drugmaker Moderna has obtained clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to run a larger trial of its CCP virus vaccine candidate.

The state of the phase two trial is imminent, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. The trial will include 600 participants.

The biotechnology company hopes start a phase three study as early as this summer.

Developed in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, Modernas vaccine uses a messenger RNA and contains none of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus from China, instead carrying a sequence of the virus.

The mRNA, or genetic molecules, are supposed to trigger an immune response by having the bodys cells express a virus protein.

Vials used by pharmacists to prepare syringes used on the first day of a first-stage safety study clinical trial of the potential vaccine for the CCP virus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle on March 16, 2020. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

The phase one trial shifted to higher dosing and older age groups last month after starting on Marcy 16 at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. According to the trial listing, which appears out of date, researchers were still recruiting for phase one.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is helping speed up development of the candidate. BARDA in April awarded Moderna up to $483 million to support later clinical trials and scaling up manufacturing. Moderna has in the past received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Moderna, based in Massachusetts, said it was hiring up to 150 new employees this year to support the project. It also partnered with Lonza, a Swiss drugmaker, to boost production of the experimental vaccine, with a goal of making up to 1 billion doses.

Manufacturing could start as early as July and approval could come as early as next year.

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)

There are no vaccines or proven treatments for the CCP virus or the disease it causes, COVID-19.

The virus primarily causes severe illness in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions such as obesity, heart disease, or cancer.

A significant portion of people who become infected never show symptoms while others experience mild or moderate symptoms and recover at home through rest and symptom treatment.

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, chills, and aches and pains.
STAMFORD  Undercover police on Wednesday night busted a secret massage parlor allegedly trading sexual favors for money and operating out of a commercial Bedford Street address, police said.

Two women from Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn, New York were slapped with prostitution charges.

Capt. Richard Conklin said neighbors complaints led to the raid of the establishment.

Conklin said officers in the Narcotics and Organized Crime squad began watching the address at 1258 Bedford Street and saw men come and go. Some women entered as well, he said

At about 6 p.m. Wednesday, an undercover officer entered the address to ask for a massage, police said. He was allowed in by Natalvia Gissa, 54, of West End Avenue, Brooklyn, police said.

He was then shown to a massage room and given the massage, by 29-year-old Mariia Radomirova, of 12th Street, Brooklyn, according to police. Once the massage was completed, Conkln said Radomirova offered to perform a sexual favor on the officer for additional money, police said.

At that point the officer gave a prearranged signal to waiting officers who raided the address, seizing $800 in cash as well as numerous tools of the trade, such as condoms, lubricating gels and lotions, police said.

The interesting thing about this was there was no social media footprint for the business and it was unmarked, Conklin said. Intelligence about this operation we gained from the community, from local people. ... Had it not been for the community complaints, we probably wouldnt have known about this location.

Gissa was charged with promoting prostitution and Radomirova was charged with prostitution, police said. The two were released after signing a promise to appear in court. Their arraignment on the charges is scheduled for July 6.

jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com
Tunisia said it inspected a Turkish plane headed for Libya with medical aid that landed at an airport near the border.

The aircraft was authorised to land at Djerba airport in the country's south, the Tunisian presidency said in statements issued Thursday and Friday.

Tunisia had requested its authorities be in charge of checking the cargo and handing it over at the Ras Jedir border post with Libya.

The presidency did not specify the day of the operation.

According to local media, Turkish authorities had failed to inform Tunisia of their plans to deliver the aid.

Turkey supports Libya's UN-recognised Government of National Accord in its battle against forces of eastern-based Libyan National Armys (LNA) Commander Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

World leaders at a Berlin meeting in January committed to ending foreign meddling in Libya and to upholding a 2011 weapons embargo.

But the United Nations has warned that both sides have continued to receive arms and fighters.

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House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Thursday that Tara Reades sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden are not clear-cut though she does think that something happened.

There have been investigative journalists that have corroborated certain aspects of her account - that is undeniable - [and] have raised questions about other aspects of her account, Ocasio-Cortez told National Public Radio on Thursday.

It certainly seems as though something has happened. I'm not sure... Frankly, this is a messy moment, and I think we need to acknowledge that - that it is not clear-cut.

Reade, a former staffer for Biden when he was a United States senator from Delaware, alleges that in 1993 he sexually assaulted her.

Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, has denied the allegations.

Supporters of Reade say that Democrats are hypocrites for not supporting her as they did Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who came forward to allege that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her in high school more than three decades ago.

House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that the allegations made by Tara Reade (right), who accuses then-Senator Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, are not 'clear-cut' though she does say something 'happened'

Former Vice President Joe Biden (seen above on March 10 in Philadelphia) has denied Reade's allegations

Kavanaugh was eventually confirmed to the Supreme Court thanks to a Republican majority in the Senate, though Democrats were demanding that his nomination be withdrawn due to Fords allegations.

Supporters of Biden say Reade has changed her story and that initially she claimed she was fired from Bidens staff due to harassment from other aides.

There have been investigative journalists that have corroborated certain aspects of her account - that is undeniable - [and] have raised questions about other aspects of her account, Ocasio-Cortez told NPR.

It certainly seems as though something has happened.

I'm not sure... Frankly, this is a messy moment, and I think we need to acknowledge that - that it is not clear-cut.

When asked if Reades allegations will impact on whether she will support Biden in the general election this fall, Ocasio-Cortez said: I think that there is an impact here for survivors and I think it's very important to speak about what this moment means for survivors across the country.

She added: I think a lot are watching how our leadership and our culture and our media respond to this, and I don't think the response overall has been sufficient.

It's very difficult because this is in a hyper-politicized zone, right?

Instead of focusing on her account, instead of focusing on her story as a survivor, people are fast-forwarding to the political implications  Do you want Trump to win, will you be voting for Joe Biden? - and that denies justice in this situation.

When asked what she would consider due process for Reade, the congresswoman cited the aims that the survivor is asking for.

While a lot of folks, again, are trying to jump to the political implications, she has never explicitly said don't support Joe Biden, Ocasio-Cortez told NPR.

She hasn't explicitly said anything in terms of a political remedy that she wants.

If anything, it simply sounds like she wants to be heard.

Ocasio-Cortez was also asked how she could explain the discrepancy of pledging to vote for Biden while at the same time declining to endorse him.

She responded that she and Biden have not come to a place where we developed a vision together.

Tara Reade said in a new interview with journalist Megyn Kelly that she hoped Joe Biden would drop out of the presidential race because he shouldn't be 'running on character'

Megyn Kelly (right) teased an interview with Joe Biden's sexual assault accuser Tara Reade (left) on Thursday, which included these images of the two women

Reade sat down with Megyn Kelly for her first major on-camera interview and said she wished Biden would drop out of the presidential race.

'I want to say you and I were there, Joe Biden, please step forward and be held accountable, you should not be running on character for president of the United States,' Reade told Kelly, who had asked what her message was for Biden.

Kelly followed up by asking Reade if she wanted Biden to withdraw from the presidential contest.

'I wish he would,' Reade answered.

'But he won't, but I wish he would, that's how I feel emotionally,' Reade said.

She previously wrote on social media that Americans should support Bernie Sanders, Biden's former Democratic primary rival.

She then told Kelly that an apology now wouldn't be sufficient.

'I think it's a little late,' Reade said.

Reade also told Kelly that she would testify under oath and be cross examined, but she'd only take a polygraph test if the former vice president took one first.

'I'm not a criminal,' Reade said.

'Joe Biden should take the polygraph. What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence? Does that mean we're presumed guilty? And we all have to take polygraphs.'

'So I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, but I am not a criminal,' Reade added.

Megyn Kelly, who currently works for herself and has been producing her own content and posting it on YouTube, said the interview was a 'riveting exchange,' though didn't give details on when she would be releasing footage

Joe Biden denied Reade's accusations in his own sit-down interview, last Friday with 'Morning Joe'

Kelly, formerly of Fox News Channel and NBC News, had announced earlier Thursday on Twitter that she had nabbed the first major sit-down with Reade, who previously complained about the big networks not giving her TV time.

'Her story & some tough Q's in a riveting exchange,' Kelly wrote. 'A ton of news coming ... ,' she said and included a photo of both she and Reade.

Since leaving NBC News in January 2019, Kelly has worked for herself, posting interviews to her YouTube channel, and then promoting them on social media platforms.

The first clip of the interview, which Kelly posted on Twitter late Thursday afternoon, began with Reade telling the former Fox anchor about harassment she's endured at the hands of so-called Biden 'surrogates.'

'It's been stunning, actually, how the - some of his surrogates, with the blue checks, that are his surrogates, have been saying really horrible things about me and to me on social media,' Reade said.

'He hasn't himself, but, there's a measure of hypocrisy with the campaign saying it's safe,' she continued.

'It's not been safe,' Reade said. 'All my social media has been hacked. All my personal information has been dragged through. Every person that maybe has, you know, a gripe against me, an ex-boyfriend or an ex-landlord, whatever it is, has been able to have a platform rather than me.'

Late last month, Reade told The New York Times' media critic Ben Smith that no major networks had offered to put her on TV.

'They're just doing stories. No anchors, no nothing like that,' she said.

At the time, Smith reported, Reade was in talks with Fox News Channel about doing an on-camera interview, with 'Fox News Sunday' with Chris Wallace looking to be the venue.

Fox News Channel told The Atlantic that the interview reported by The Times was 'never confirmed.'

Reade told The Times that she backed out due to getting death threats.

She brought the death threats up again Thursday in her sit-down with Kelly.

'I got a death threat from that because they thought I was being a traitor to America,' Reade said, pointing to some postings that branded her a Russian agent.

'And his campaign is taking this position that they want all women to be able to speak safely, I have not experienced that,' she added.

Reade previously did an on-camera interview with Hill.TV, but when discussing media coverage with The Times, she was referencing major network television, saying she had hoped for a sit-down with someone like Gayle King, the host of 'CBS This Morning.'

Reade has accused Biden of sticking his hand down her skirt and digitally penatrating her in a Congressional hallway when she worked for him as an aide in 1993.

The allegations evolved from what Reade had told reporters in 2019 when a number of women came out and said Biden had touched them inappropriately, though not in a sexual way.

Reade had previously claimed that Biden liked her legs and wanted her to waittress at a Capitol Hill cocktail party while she was on staff. Reade also complained that he was touchy-feely, putting his hands on her shoulders, neck and hair.

'This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power,' she had told Vox reporter Laura McGann, who wrote about Reade's changing story in an essay Thursday.

Reade first told her sex assault story to journalist Katie Halper for her 'Katie Halper Show' podcast on March 25.

'None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we cant prove,' McGann wrote.

While a neighbor of Reade's recalls the ex-Senate staffer talking about an incident with Biden in the mid-90s, according to reporting from Business Insider, so far no official documentation has been produced. Reade has also said that the sex assault charges weren't included in any Senate complaint she said she made.

Biden denied the allegations on-camera last Friday on 'Morning Joe,' which was his first television appearance pushing back on Reade's story.

'Im saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,' Biden said.

Kelly was among the women at Fox News Channel who accused the late Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.

Since leaving NBC News, Kelly's video report on how real life Fox News employees responded to the movie 'Bombshell,' a film where she's portrayed by Charlize Theron, was her most widely viewed piece of content, receiving 1.5 million hits on YouTube.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order saying that in the state of Texas, no one can be put behind bars because they're not following an executive order.



This was announced by the governor himself while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office after a meeting with President Donald Trump.



The Republican Governor met with the President Thursday to discuss Texas' response to the coronavirus pandemic as the state moves forward with restarting its economy.



The number of coronavirus-related deaths in Texas is nearing 1000, and infected cases crossed 36,000.



Abbott's latest executive order was prompted by the imprisonment of Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was sentenced to a week in jail for violating a court order to close her business for not complying with lockdown guidelines.



Luther was released Thursday on the strength of the executive order.



'We should not be taking these people and put them behind bars. That is wrong, and that is why I issued another executive order today saying that in the state of Texas, no one can be put behind bars because they're not following an executive order. It's common sense,' Abbott said.



Barbershops and salons in the state are reopening Friday with restrictions. Movie theaters and restaurants are allowed to operate in 25 percent capacity.



According to Abbott, there are only three categories causing any type of outbreak: meatpacking plants, jails, and senior (citizen) centers.



If it weren't for those three categories, the people in Texas testing positive would be very minimal,' Abbott said.



The governor formed new 'surge response teams' in the state to focus on these three areas.



'These surge forces will go out to regions where there are flair-ups, and it's like putting out a fire,' he added.



In the wake of the latest report that 33 million jobs have been lost in the last seven weeks, Trump was asked if more jobs will be lost in May.



'The number will start coming down at an appropriate time', was his reply. 'I'm viewing the third quarter as being a very important quarter because that'll be a transition,' Trump told reporters.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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So, should I go to the beach?

Theres nothing inherently risky about the beach, said Benjamin. But, again, if you can, avoid crowds, he said. Have as few people around you as possible.

Maintain that 6-foot distance, even in the water.

If you are standing close and interacting, there is a chance they could be sick and they may not know it and you could catch it, Plescia said. The whole 6-foot distance is a good thing to remember going forward.

Still, one thing about the beach or anywhere outside is that there is a lot of good air movement, which is very different than standing in a crowded subway car, he said.

Even so, recent images of packed beaches and parks raise questions about whether people are able or willing to continue heeding distancing directives.

But if were all wearing masks, do we really need to stay 6 feet apart?

Yes, for two reasons. First, while masks can reduce the amount of droplets expelled from the mouth and nose, they arent perfect.
Intrusive strip searches conducted on teenagers at two music festivals were unlawful, the NSW police watchdog has found.

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) handed down its findings this week on the strip searches of a 16-year-old girl at a Byron Bay festival in 2018 and three boys, aged between 15 and 17, at a Sydney event last year.

The girl was told to undress and squat after a sniffer dog sat next to her at Splendour in the Grass.

The teenager told the inquiry when she realised she was about to be strip searched she 'could not stop crying' and was 'completely humiliated', ABC News reported.

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) held a three-day inquiry this week into the strip searches of several teenagers at NSW music festivals. Pictures are police on patrol at Splendour in the Grass in 2019

In one of the other cases, a 15-year-old boy was strip-searched after a sniffer dog lingered near him at the Lost City Music festival, in Homebush, on February 23, 2019.

The inquiry heard an officer directed the boy to: 'Hold your dick and lift your balls up and show me your gooch.'

It also heard another teenager was strip searched by an officer who made contact with his testicles while not wearing gloves.

The LECC found the searches to be unlawful in all four cases because officers made no attempt to contact a parent, guardian or support person, which is required by law for persons aged under 18.

It also found it was not necessary for the girl to be completely naked, to be asked to remove her panty liner and squat, or to have her vagina inspected.

The organisers of Splendour in the Grass were found to have not provided sufficient space for privacy during strip searches.

They were also found to have not given enough information to parents and caregivers about their right to be present during a strip search of a minor.

Officers at both music festivals were found to have insufficient knowledge of the rules for strip searching under the Law Enforcement Powers and Responsibilities Act (LEPRA), while those at the Lost City festival were found to be lacking experience and training.

None of the eight officers involved in the strip searches at the Sydney festival had received any training in how to conduct them since leaving the police academy.

Only one of the 11 officers at the festival who gave evidence had ever conducted a strip search on a child before the event.

No findings of misconduct were given against any of the officers at both festivals.

The girl had been attending Byron Bay's Splendour in the Grass festival in 2018 (pictured) when she was ordered to completely undress

Legal experts said the recommendations based on the findings were 'gravely inadequate'.

Samantha Lee from Redfern Legal Centre said rules on strip searching minors need to be changed.

'Why on earth are children allowed to be strip searched in the first place? It needs to change,' she said.

The three-day investigation into the incidents was first announced in September 2019 after teenagers complained they had been unfairly targeted.

Under New South Wales law, it is illegal for police to search body cavities or touch the body during a strip search - this can only be done by a medic.

Results of a University of NSW study released in August 2019 found the number of strip searches conducted by NSW Police had increased in recent years.

It showed figures had jumped from 277 in December 2005 to November 2006 to 5438 between 2017 to 2018.
Dwight Mosley is a career educator who has taught in the public school systems of New York City, Chicago, Hartford, Minneapolis, and others, has served as head of General Management programs in the Chicago City College system, and was an adjunct professor of accounting and strategic planning at New York University. Mr. Mosley is the current Executive Editor of The Nu Nubian Writer Guild. He has published his new book Towards the De-Miseducation of the African-American: a detail-rich exploration of a myriad of historical and present-day forces affecting the Black life in America.

Mosley writes, De-Miseducation is the culmination of eight years of research that sought to focus on objectivity while balancing breadth and conciseness. Its focus is on black America as a people and as a part of greater America. It begins with the Black Golden Age (just after the start of WWII) and explores the civil rights movement from several optics, the black militancy era, the decline of the black family, cocaine America, crack and incarceration nation with reference made to the CIA and the DEA, the schism between the black male and female, the Tuskegee Airmen, the ladies of NASA and Hidden Figures, the destruction of the black family, the great exodus of blacks out of the ghetto, the plight of fatherless boys and much, much more.

"The work ends with proposals and prognostications for the future of blacks in America. There is a very strong analysis of the 1960s, especially 1968Americas most volatile year ever. Those having come of age in the 60s will have many a remembrance; those who were socially active in the 60s will have never-to-be-forgotten memories.

Published by Page Publishing, Dwight Mosleys engrossing book is an illuminating discussion of the African American experience over the last eighty years.

Readers who wish to experience this insightful work can purchase Towards the De-Miseducation of the African-American 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.
Until such a time that Nigeria is serious about prosecuting all looters, nobody should be in prison. You cannot be jailing Christians from the Middle Belt and South in the name of fighting corruption while Fulani arch looters are jostling for who will be the next Chief of Staff and in effect de-facto president. Such injustice is what we are against not your fight against corruption.
The first two films in this beloved franchise came out way back in 2004 and 2007, but it looks like new life will soon be breathed into the series once more.

National Treasure producer Jerry Bruckheimer spoke to Collider on Thursday, and revealed that the Nicolas Cage-starring franchise has not one, but two new projects in development.

While a third feature film had previously been announced, Bruckheimer, 76, revealed that a television series is currently being developed for the Disney+ platform.

More to come: National Treasure producer Jerry Bruckheimer has revealed that the Nicolas Cage-starring franchise has not one, but two new projects in development; Cage seen here with Diane Kruger in 2007's National Treasure: Book Of Secrets

'Were certainly working on one [National Treasure] for streaming and were working on one for the big screen,' Bruckheimer told the website.

'Hopefully, theyll both come together and well bring you another National Treasure, but theyre both very active,' he continued.

The big difference, however, is that the series for streaming will not feature franchise star Nicolas Cage.

'The one for Disney Plus is a much younger cast,' the Hollywood super-producer specified. 'Its the same concept but a young cast.'

The big difference: One of the projects is a series for streaming that will not feature franchise star Nicolas Cage

Big shot: 'The [project] for Disney Plus is a much younger cast,' Bruckheimer said; seen here last October

Whether that means the show would serve as a prequel series exploring the origins of Cage's central character, Benjamin Franklin Gates and company, is yet to be confirmed.

The first two movies, National Treasure in 2004 and 2007's National Treasure: Book Of Secrets, featured Cage's Gates as an intrepid explorer, cryptologist, treasure hunter and American history buff who sought to uncover the secrets and treasures hidden in the country's oldest and most mysterious corners.

Both films also starred Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel, with Helen Mirren joining for the sequel.

The first two movies, National Treasure in 2004 and 2007's National Treasure: Book Of Secrets, featured Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel, with Helen Mirren joining for the sequel

And while National Treasure 3 already has an IMDb page, no big names are attached yet and its status is currently listed as treatment/outline.

'The film version is being written right now,' Bruckheimer said in the interview. 'The television version is in process. We have a pilot script done and an outline of the future episodes.'

But, he maintained that the third feature film 'for theatrical [release] would be the same cast.'

If that is true, Jerry and company will have to wait for Mr. Cage to finish his most recently announced commitment  his role as Joe Exotic in a scripted series based on the hit docuseries Tiger King.

In development: While National Treasure 3 already has an IMDb page, no big names are attached yet and its status is currently listed as treatment/outline
May 8, 2020 marks the 28th anniversary of the unique operation, by the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) defense army and Armenian volunteer detachments, for the liberation of Karabakhs strategic town of Shushi, from Azerbaijani armed forces.

The liberation of Shushi was a crucial phase in the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Sushi had turned into an Azerbaijani military base during this war that was unleashed by Azerbaijan.

The aforesaid operation commenced on the night of May 8, 1992 and, as a result, the adversary fled from Shushi in the early morning hours of May 9.

In late 1991, Azerbaijani armed forces had started shelling Stepanakert, the capital city of Artsakh, from high-elevation Shushi and surrounding areas. The situation deteriorated sharply in February 1992, when they began also using multiple rocket launchers (BM-21 Grad). As a result of the shelling, 111 civilians were killed, 332 others were wounded, and about 370 houses and buildings were destroyed. By April, the existence of Stepanakert itself was under a threat.

So in early May, Armenian commanders made the only possible decision: to liberate Shushi from Azerbaijani armed forces by means of a military operation.

The operation was launched on May 8, 1992 at around 2am. It was led by Arkadi Ter-Tadevosyan, commander of the Artsakh self-defense forces. The frontline stretched for 45 kilometers, and the operation was carried out in several directions.

Owing to the high morale of the Artsakh Defense Army and Armenian volunteer detachments and combined with skillful command, the operation was completed in solely about 26 hourson May 9, at around 4am.

The Armenian side had 57 losses during this military operation, whereas the Azerbaijani army suffered between 250 and 300 casualties.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Higg Co, the San Francisco-based technology company founded in 2019 to unify and scale sustainability measurement, announced today it has appointed former Nike Executive, Del Hudson, as the company's new VP of Marketing & Communications.

Higg Co develops and hosts sustainability measurement tools, allowing companies to integrate measurable data directly into internal systems, improving end-to-end decision-making. Its goal is to unify sustainability measurement practices within consumer goods industries.

The technology company was spun out of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) last year, with additional Series A funding from impact investment firms Titan Grove Holdings, Buckhill Capital and Sanjeev Bahl of Saiburg B.V. Supporting the apparel, footwear and textile industries to scale digitalization of sustainability data across global supply chains is Higg Co's current priority.

Hudson, who has spent 20 years in communications and sustainability leadership roles in the US, UK and New Zealand will oversee brand marketing, communications and stakeholder relations for the company. Since launching a year ago, Higg Co has expanded product offerings to include brand assessments, upgraded the Higg Index user experience, enabled completion of more than 10,000 factory assessments in 80+ countries and now employs more than 50 people.

At Nike, Hudson held various leadership roles in Global Communications then Sustainable Business Innovation, where she was responsible for external partnerships, brand integration, sustainability reporting and ESG disclosure. Under her leadership, Nike was a founding contributor to the New Textiles Economy initiative and was named Multinational category winner of The Circulars business awards at the 2017 World Economic Forum. After Nike, Hudson headed the North American office for UK-based circular economy think-tank, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Higg Co CEO, Jason Kibbey, says, "Del's experience building purpose-led brands and supporting industries in transition will be incredibly valuable for the next phase of our growth. I first collaborated with Del around seven years ago and her understanding of both the sustainability journey and emerging opportunities within our clients' industries is a real asset. We couldn't be more thrilled to have her join Higg Co."

Hudson says the COVID-19 crisis presents a pivotal moment to accelerate sustainability. "Businesses and governments need meaningful data now, more than ever, to inform decisions and rebuild global supply chains," says Hudson. "Trust and product provenance are increasingly important and companies are seeing that digitalization of supply chain data can accelerate sustainability, circularity and transparency, just as it has accelerated all other dimensions of commerce," she adds. "I'm energized by Higg Co's opportunity to help business respond responsibly as we emerge from this crisis."

Higg Co board member, investor and Titan Grove Chairman, Jeff Tannenbaum, says "Del's global experience in sustainability and brand communications, with companies like Nike and AstraZeneca, and her knowledge of risk management and ESG disclosure add an exciting dimension to Higg Co's executive team. The Board welcomes her expertise and insight."

Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, Hudson received her Bachelor's degree in Media Studies & Communication from Massey University. She recently began studying towards a Master of Science in Nutrition. Hudson lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

About Higg Co.

Higg Co is a technology company formed to deliver, implement and support unified sustainability measurement tools for consumer goods industries, beginning with the Higg Index. The Higg Index is a suite of tools, originally developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), that enables brands, retailers and facilities of all sizes  at every stage in their sustainability journey  to accurately measure and score a company or product's sustainability performance. The Higg Index delivers a holistic overview, enabling businesses to make meaningful improvements that protect the environment, well-being of factory workers and communities. For more information visit www.higg.com

Last week, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group and the SAC, Higg Co launched Weaving a Better Future" Rebuilding a More Sustainable Fashion Industry After COVID-19, an industry report observing that retailers and brands that are more deeply integrating sustainability efforts within their business rather than retreating, are poised to come out of the current pandemic crisis in a position of strength.

CONTACT:

[email protected] or +1 707-241-3042

SOURCE Higg Co

Related Links

http://higg.com/


Because of document releases earlier this week, there was some familiar material in the Department of Justice's revelations about FBI misconduct in its Government's Motion to Dismiss the Criminal Information against the Defendant Michael T. Flynn. (You can read the brief here.) What came as a complete surprise, though, was to learn from the brief about Comey's role in persecuting (as well as prosecuting) General Flynn, seemingly with an eye to destroying Flynn and Trump.

The general outlines of the brief are simple: the Department of Justice says the FBI failed to make a case that General Flynn's alleged falsehoods were material. The legal standard for prosecuting someone for lying to the FBI is that the lie must be material.

In this case, because the FBI had a transcript of Flynn's December 2016 phone conversation with thenRussian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and because Flynn made it clear that he knew that the FBI was familiar with the conversation, nothing he said was material. When Mueller decided to prosecute Flynn, everyone also knew that Trump and his team hadn't collaborated with Russia and that Flynn was acting in America's interest (and within his role as incoming national security adviser) when he spoke with Kislyak.

The above is "old" news. What was new in the brief came from other declassified material, primarily from interviews with Sally Yates, who was the acting head of the Department of Justice at the time these events were taking place.

This new material shows that Comey ignored all advice to discuss with the incoming Trump administration any concerns the FBI had about Flynn. Instead, Comey deliberately bent or broke the rules to blindside Flynn in order to induce him to lie so that he could then be prosecuted.

Here's the narrative from the Motion to Dismiss regarding Comey's appalling and probably illegal conduct. For narrative fluidity, I've deleted the citations to the record:

Around this time, FBI Director James Comey advised DOJ leadership of its investigation into Mr. Flynn, and senior officials at both the FBI and DOJ had concerns that the incumbent White House officials' descriptions of Mr. Flynn's calls with Kislyak were not accurate. FBI Director Comey took the position that the FBI would not notify the incoming Trump administration of the Flynn-Kislyak communications. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and other senior DOJ officials took the contrary view and believed that the incoming administration should be notified. Deputy Attorney General Yates and another senior DOJ official became "frustrated" when Director Comey's justifications for withholding the information from the Trump administration repeatedly "morphed," vacillating from the potential compromise of a "counterintelligence" investigation to the protection of a purported "criminal" investigation. compare Ex. 5 at 5 ("[W]e had an open counterintelligence investigation on Mr. Flynn"), with Ex. 4 at 4 ("Comey had said something to the effect of there being an 'ongoing criminal investigation'"). The Deputy Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency all agreed that the FBI should notify the incoming Trump administration of what had actually been said on the calls. FBI Director Comey continued to refuse to brief the White House in a subsequent conversation with CIA Director John Brennan. On January 23, 2017, then Acting Attorney General Yates met with senior DOJ officials, and they again discussed the need to press the FBI to notify the White House. Matters came to a head on January 24, 2017. That morning, Yates contacted Director Comey to demand that the FBI notify the White House of the communications. Director Comey did not initially return her call. When Director Comey called her back later that day, he advised her that the FBI agents were already on their way to the White House to interview Mr. Flynn. Acting Attorney General Yates was "flabbergasted" and "dumbfounded," and other senior DOJ officials "hit the roof" upon hearing of this development, given that "an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with DOJ." In fact, in the preceding days, senior officials at the FBI had been engaged in discussions about how to approach Mr. Flynn and whom to notify. On January 21, 2017, Mr. Strzok proposed to Bill Priestap, the FBI's counterintelligence chief, that Mr. Flynn should be given a "defensive briefing" about an investigation under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella or alternatively an "interview under light 'defensive briefing' pretext." Mr. Strzok also noted that DOJ might "direct[] us" to inform "VPOTUS or anyone else," speculating that this could lead to the "WH specifically direct[ing] us not to" speak with Mr. Flynn. On January 22, 2017, a FBI attorney emailed Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that "if we usually tell the WH, then I think we should do what we normally do," though the official also noted that they could be "told not to [] debrief or interview Razor." In advance of the interview, Director Comey determined that they would go interview Mr. Flynn the following day without notifying either DOJ or the White House. In a December 2018 interview with MSNBC and NBC News analyst Nicolle Wallace, he stated this course of action was "something we, I probably wouldn't have done or gotten away with in a [] more organized administration." Messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page on January 23, 2017, indicated that "Bill" had conducted "several conversations with Andy [McCabe]" because "he wanted to know why we had to go aggressively doing these things, openly." On the morning of January 24, 2017, follow-up messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page indicated that "Bill  brought [it] up  again, this time in front of D[irector Comey]" and that Deputy Director McCabe was "frustrated" and "cut him off." In any event, that morning, Deputy Director McCabe called Mr. Flynn to arrange the interview. He explained that recent media statements about his contacts with Kislyak merited a "sit down" and expressed the FBI's desire to accomplish the interview "quickly, quietly and discretely as possible." Deputy Director McCabe further advised that if Mr. Flynn wished to have anyone else at the meeting, including the White House Counsel, the FBI would have to elevate the issue to DOJ. Mr. Flynn, himself a former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stated that he readily expected that the FBI already knew the contents of his conversations with the ambassador, stating: "you listen to everything they say." Mr. Flynn then agreed to meet with the interviewing agents in his office less than two hours later.

There is no way one can read the above statement of facts and still conclude that Comey was acting in the best interest of justice, law, or America. At a guess, Comey was trying to atone for his greatest sin, which was to interfere with the 2016 election. On July 5, 2016, he went before America and recited in detail Hillary's many national security violations, only to conclude that Hillary should not be prosecuted because her conduct did not meet the legal standards for a criminal act. Comey was wrong at three levels: he spoke publicly about an ongoing investigation, he arrogated to himself the attorney general's decision about whether to prosecute a crime, and he misstated the legal standard for violating national security laws.

By making his statement, Comey gave fuel to those who opposed Hillary, because they could point to her criminal conduct, and he gave succor to those who supported Hillary because they could look to the decision not to prosecute. Comey's bizarre behavior might therefore have been a net neutral, but on October 28, 2016, immediately before the election, he sent out a letter stating that law enforcement had found Hillary's emails on Anthony Weiner's computer as part of the investigation into Weiner's text messages to a 15-year-old girl. Weiner was then married to Huma Abedin, Hillary's aide and close friend.

Within a couple of days  too little time within which to review all the emails  Comey sent out the "all clear" for Hillary. By that time, though, the Democrat narrative was set: Comey lost the election for Hillary.

With his vicious, unprincipled, and illegal behavior surrounding the Russia collusion hoax and, specifically, the Flynn investigation, perhaps Comey was trying to make things right with the Democrats. Maybe he destroyed Hillary's chance at the White House, but he was damned well going to destroy Trump's presidency, too.

With news of the motion to dismiss Flynn's case, Comey posted another of his self-righteous tweets, something he always does when he's feeling the heat:

The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.  James Comey (@Comey) May 7, 2020

I will look forward to a 3 A.M. FBI raid on Comey's house and the pleasant spectacle of him attired in a men's extra-long orange prison jumpsuit.
Doordarshan and All India Radio



will now broadcast classroom lessons to students in Meghalaya in view of the COVID-19 lockdown, officials said on Friday.

The move is likely to benefit at least 2.5 lakh students, especially in rural areas, whose access to mobile network is limited, they said.

The virtual learning through DD and AIR will include Meghalaya Board of School (MBoSE) curriculum based lessons for primary, middle and high school level students.

Minister Lahkmen Rymbui tweeted, "EDN.Dept Meghalaya signed MoU for digitally Transmit lessons to Students through DDK & AIR daily during closure period. Lessons designed by Edn.Dept as per MBOSE Curriculum. Also broadcasted in Airtel ch.399 and local cable. Students may also tune in AIR TURA, SHILLONG,JOWAI."



A senior official said, the move will help students as they could not attend schools in view of the coronavirus- induced lockdown.

Though some private parties have tried to reach out to students during the lockdown period, the reach is limited in view of "not-so-good" internet reach, he said.

The department is hopeful that roping in DD and AIR will address the problem.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PRESS RELEASE

8 May 2020

Groupe ADP announces the signing of a Share Purchase Agreement by TAV Airports for the acquisition of Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan

The consortium formed by TAV Airports (of which Groupe ADP owns 46.12% of the capital) and VPE Capital has signed on May 7, 2020 a Share Purchase Agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Almaty Airport and the associated jet fuel and catering businesses for an Enterprise Value of $415 million.

TAV Airports share in the consortium will not be less than 75% and the share transfers will take place upon closing, which should occur during the upcoming months, after the completion of all legal prerequisites and procedures. The asset will be fully consolidated into TAV Airports' accounts.

The airport of Almaty, Kazakhstan's economic capital, is the biggest airport in Central Asia: it welcomed approximately 6.4 million passengers in 2019, around half of which were from international routes. Kazakhstan, the biggest landlocked country in the world with 2.7 million square km, is the driver of economic growth in the region, and stands for 60% of Central Asia's GDP.

Investor Relations: Audrey Arnoux, Head of Investor Relations +33 6 61 27 07 39 - invest@adp.fr

Press contact: Lola Bourget, Head of Medias and Reputation Department +33 1 74 25 23 23

Groupe ADP develops and manages airports, including Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris-Orly and Paris-Le Bourget. In 2019, the group handled through its brand Paris Aeroport more than 108 million passengers and 2.2 million metric tons of freight and mail at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly, and more than 110 million passengers in airports abroad. Boasting an exceptional geographic location and a major catchment area, the Group is pursuing its strategy of adapting and modernizing its terminal facilities and upgrading quality of services; the group also intends to develop its retail and real estate businesses. In 2019, group revenue stood at 4,700 million and net income at 588 million.

Registered office: 1, rue de France, 93 290 Tremblay-en-France. Aeroports de Paris is a public limited company (Societe Anonyme) with share capital of 296,881,806. Registered in the Bobigny Trade and Company Register under no. 552 016 628.

Story continues

groupeadp.fr

Attachment
by Shafique Khokhar

They want an act of parliament, in accordance with a 2014 Supreme Court decision, rather than a government committee. For Peter Jakob, the cabinet is guilty of contempt the court and has violated its constitutional and international obligations. For experts, without a legislative basis, a commission is useless.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  Human rights activists and lawyers are opposed to the creation of a national minorities commission directly reporting to the federal government. The cabinets decision goes against its previous commitment to set up an independent body.

In June 2014, the Supreme Court, in a historic ruling, ordered the government to create an independent body to protect minority rights.

On 19 February 2019, federal authorities made a submission to the Court announcing that it would set up a commission through an act of parliament. Instead, it did the opposite.

According to Peter Jacob, chairman of the Peoples Commission on Minority Rights, by choosing to create an ad hoc committee within the Religious Affairs Ministry, the government is guilty of contempt of court.

The decision is also a violation of certain international conventions, in addition to a breach of the governments ethical and moral obligation to protect the rights of minorities, as enshrined in the Constitution.

On Wednesday, with the support of representatives of other civil society groups, Jakob said that he would challenge the cabinets decision before the Supreme Court.

For Hina Jillani, lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur, and Khawar Mumtaz, former head of the National Commission on the Status of Women, a minorities commission will only be effective if it is created just like other national commissions, through an act of parliament.

For them, the body set up by the government is useless, as it lacks legal force and independence.

Historian and political scientist Yaqoob Bangash notes that ad hoc government committees on minorities have been set up in the past three decades but have not met more than once a year at most, and made no legally binding decisions.

According to various sources, Ahmadi, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Shias are the most discriminated minorities in Pakistan, a country of 212 million inhabitants, mostly ethnic Punjabi and Sunni Muslim.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said the newspapers that won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Russian investigation should return the highest award in journalism.

"They are not journalists. They are thieves. All of those journalists that we see with the Pulitzer Prize should be forced to give those prizes back because they were all wrong. You saw it today, more documents came out saying there was absolutely no collusion with Russia," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

He said this after the Department of Justice said it was dropping its prosecution of his former National Security Advisor Gen. (retd) Michael Flynn.

"Pulitzer prizes should all be returned because you know what, they were given out falsely. It was fake news, they are all fake Those Pulitzer prizes should be given back immediately and the Pulitzer committee, or whoever gives the prizes, they are a disgrace unless they give those prizes back because they got Pulitzer prizes for what turned out to be false stories," Trump said.

"Pulitzer prizes should be given to the ones who got it right and I could give you a long list of those names too, and you know who I am talking about," he added.

Trump said Flynn was an innocent man.

"He is a great gentleman, he was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they have done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid, a big price should be paid. There has never been anything like this in the history of our country," he said.

"What they did, what the Obama administration did is unprecedented. It has never happened, never happened. A thing like this has never happened before in the history of our country and I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they are dishonest, crooked people. They are scum and I say it a lot, they are scum, they are human scum. This should never have happened in this country," the president said.

He alleged that they went after a duly elected president.

"They went after him by going after fine people and those fine people said no, I am not going to lie, I cannot lie. He is not the only one, there are many of them and they all said I cannot lie. They could have said something like make up a lie, Trump loves somebody or something or some country and they said you would not have any problem. That is what they were trying to do and it is a disgrace," the president said.

"The Obama administration's Justice Department was a disgrace and they got caught, they got caught. Very dishonest people but much more than dishonest, it is treason, it is treason," he said.

Noting that he is very happy for Flynn, Trump said is a great warrior.

"Now, in my book, he is an even greater warrior. What happened to him should never happen again and what happened to this presidency to go through all of that and still do more than any president has ever done in the first three years is pretty amazing," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Natural News) Project AirGig is an AT&T-led initiative that promises to deliver fast internet service by using existing power lines. According to Hank Kafka, vice president for access architecture and standards at AT&T, while Project AirGig is still under development, the company is working with vendors and technology partners to make the initiative a complementary technology to 5G.

Aside from 5G, AirGig will also be designed to support a range of wireless transport technologies, including LTE. Currently, AirGig uses a radio distributed antenna system (RDAS) to reconstruct signals for both multigigabit mobile and fixed deployment. In addition, mmWave surface wave launchers will allow the device to operate using inductive power devices, which can work without an electrical connection.

Once AirGig is installed on a power line, the high-speed signal it produces will travel along or near the wire and provide broadband connection.

In a statement, AT&T said that it hopes AirGig will eradicate the need to build new towers and goes on to say: Using AirGig patented technology, we would install devices to provide high-speed broadband which can be clamped on by trained electrical workers in just a few minutes.

To date, AT&T has over 500 patents and applications for AirGig.

Technology makes 5G inescapable

Project AirGig also brings a number of caveats with it. According to the nonprofit group Childrens Health Defense (CHD), the technology, if it is allowed to roll out, could saturate the environment with close-proximity, high-intensity radiation. In a statement, the group warned that more people will experience the immediate health impacts of wireless radiation.

AirGig will saturate our environmentevery inch of itwith close-proximity, high-intensity radiation. The few relatively safer areas that still exist will quickly disappear, the group said.

Multiple studies have found that exposure to microwave radiation from wireless networks and devices can lead to negative health outcomes, ranging from lack of sleep to altered DNA expression. In fact, some people suffer from electromagnetic sensitivity (ES), where they can feel wireless devices and transmitters. Those with ES exhibit biochemical reactions once exposed to microwave signals, and some even show symptoms such as memory problems, skin rashes, nosebleeds and fatigue, among others.

In his study, Ronald Kostoff, a research affiliate at Georgia Tech, wrote that most of these studies were done in laboratory settings, indicating that real-world impacts could be worse.

What has been reported is the tip of the iceberg of the full spectrum of potential adverse effects from wireless radiation, he wrote in his paper. (Related: Brussels halts 5G deployment indefinitely: 5G project, says authorities, not compatible with radiation safety standards.)

For many researchers, the advent of 5G, which uses higher frequencies and requires far more towers, is a cause for concern as initial studies revealed its potentially damaging effects on both plants and animals. Many scientists have already warned that the Federal Communications Commissions current guidelines fail to include long-term outcomes from exposure.

Despite the findings, the federal regulator is unmoved, saying that it finds no appropriate basis to amend its existing guidance for microwave radiation exposure. In response to the pronouncement, CHD and other concerned groups have filed a lawsuit against the agency. In the lawsuit, the groups claimed that the FCCs decision is capricious, arbitrary, non-evidence-based and an abuse of discretion.

It had to keep it open if it wanted to proliferate wireless technology and 5G, said Dafna Tachover, lead attorney for CHD. But if they had to review the evidence they would find they couldnt proliferate this technology.

5Galert.com has more stories on the dangers of 5G on health and the environment.

Sources include:

FierceWireless.com

About.ATT.com

ChildrensHealthDefense.org

TheEpochTimes.com

FCC.gov
In so doing, these Weird Christians are breaking with the rest of their generation.

Todays millennials and Gen Zers, after all, are growing up in a world in which a secular culture is the default. Nearly every major branch of American Christianity is in demographic decline.

Just 43 percent of American adults call themselves Protestants, down from 51 percent 13 years ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The percentage of American Catholics also dropped four points, to 20 percent. According to the last expansive study, in 2014, a third of millennials now identify as religiously unaffiliated, as do about a quarter of American adults over all, up from 16 percent in 2007. Almost one in five Americans was raised in a religion only to leave it to join the ranks of the Nones.

Even among Americans who say that they belong to a religious tradition, relatively few regularly practice their faith. Less than 40 percent of self-professed Catholics, and a third of mainline Protestants, attended services weekly (back in the pre-virus days when doing so was possible). Only 22 percent of American weddings are held in houses of worship, down from 41 percent in 2009.

Even Americans who do believe in a higher power are less likely than ever to adhere to dogma. The traditional elements of shared religious life  community, ritual, a sense of purpose  have increasingly come unbundled from one another, in the words of the Harvard Divinity School scholars Casper ter Kuile, Angela Thurston and Sue Phillips. A religiously unaffiliated American might get a sense of communal identity from CrossFit, say, or meditate or read tarot cards to get in touch with a sense of the transcendent.

For better and for worse, Christianity is no longer the American default. Flexible Christmas and Easter Christians, and those for whom religion is a primarily social or communal affair, now have a panoply of less-demanding options. The totalizing demands of a faith like Christianity  from its radical rejection of earthly power and success to its condemnation of premarital sex  are becoming appealing only to those who want something totally demanding in the first place.

Weird Christianity is equal parts traditionalism and, well, punk: Christianity as transgressive alternative to contemporary secular capitalist culture. Like punk, Weird Christianity has its own, clearly defined aesthetic. Many Weird Christians across the denominational and political spectrum express fondness for older, more liturgically elaborate practices  like the Episcopal Rite I, a form of worship that draws on Elizabethan-era language, say, or the Latin Mass, or the wearing of veils to church.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday reviewed the impact of the coronavirus on Pakistan's already fragile economy, as the death toll in the country due the pandemic neared 600 with over 26,000 infections.

Khan on Thursday said that Pakistan would begin easing its nationwide lockdown in a phase-wise manner by allowing various businesses to open up from Saturday, citing the economic crisis due to the shutdown.

The prime minister on Friday chaired a meeting to review the economic situation and future outlook of the economy in the wake of COVID-19 situation, according to a statement by his office.

A detailed presentation was made by the Finance Ministry about the overall situation and the performance of various macroeconomic indicators during the past nine months of the current financial year.

Khan was also apprised of the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

Appreciating the performance of various economic indicators during past nine months of the current financial year, the prime minister appreciated the efforts of the Finance Ministry to ensure financial discipline and provision of relief during COVID-19 situation, according to the statement.

He emphasised that greater attention should be paid to supporting small and medium sector enterprises and the agriculture sector enabling them to create greater job opportunities for the people.

He said that all efforts should be made to provide maximum possible relief to the people.

The meeting reviewed the progress and impact of the economic stimulus package, amounting to Rs. 1.25 trillion (25,0000 crore), to provide relief to the poor and vulnerable segments of society and to support various sectors of the economy that have adversely been hit by COVID-19 pandemic.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) through a series of tweet said that till April 30, various banks sanctioned more than Rs 23 billion to 209 companies which will protect the jobs of around 220,000 employees.

The Ministry of National Health Service reported five more deaths on Friday, taking the country's toll to 599.

Punjab reported 10,033 cases, Sindh 9,691, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 3,956, Balochistan 1,725, Islamabad 558, Gilgit-Baltistan 394 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 78 patients.

More than 2,57,000 tests have been conducted so far, including 11,993 in the last 24 hours.

Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah told the media in Karachi that his province will start easing lockdown from Monday.

Sindh government was the first to announce lockdown in March but the province is still battling the spread of the virus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
THE countrys agricultural exports have entered three new international markets, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and local community quarantines.

In the past two months, maiden shipments of avocados arrived in China, cacao in Belgium and coconut milk in Russia.

Philippine avocados officially entered China through a 7.7-ton shipment from the fruit company Dole Philippines. The avocados were shipped from Davao and arrived in the Dole China processing plant in Shanghai on March 31, 2020. The avocados will be first sold by Alibaba Groups supermarket chain Hema Xiansheng and will be available in more stores in the future.

On the other hand, Auro Chocolate brought Philippine cacao beans to the European market through a shipment to Antwerp, Belgium on April 16. The shipment, which brought 20,000 kilograms of Mindanao-sourced premium cacao beans, was composed of five different cacao varieties, including the Paquibato Origin, a winner of the Cocoa Excellence Award in 2019.

Moreover, Philippine brand Coco Daily organic coconut milk arrived at the port of St. Petersburg in the first week of April. Russian importer PanAsia Impex Ltd. said that the one-liter packages of Coco Daily that arrived in the 40-foot shipping container will be available to the mainstream consumers during the spring in Russia, which typically runs from March to May.

Now is the time for Philippine agricultural products to thrive, said Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) director Senen Perlada.

He said that DTI-EMB will strengthen its coordination with the Department of Agriculture and DTI-Foreign Trade Service Corps to match supply with demand. In turn, DTI-EMB will capacitate existing and aspiring exporters for them to be able to comply with international standards.

Covid-19 may lead to market access issues and non-tariff measures. It may be more difficult to comply with stricter regulations, certifications, external and domestic regulations. The DTI-EMB commits to assist exporters, especially micro, small and medium enterprises to comply with these requirements and introduce their products to the world, said Perlada. (PR)
DISPUR: The Security forces on Friday arrested seven insurgents in Assams Kokrajhar and busted a major recruitment module there.

After receiving a tip-off about the presence of the insurgents in Chakrasila Reserve Forest in Kokrajhar, a joint operation was launched by a unit of Red Horns Division of the Indian Army and Assam Police on Friday.

The highly coordinated and successful operation resulted in the busting of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) recruitment module.

During the operation, security forces also apprehended seven insurgents who were caught while attending a meeting inside the forest area.

Assam has been reeling under insurgency for decades now. After the surrender of NDFB leaders and the signing of the historic Bodo Accord, the KLO has been continuously striving to gain prominence in the areas of Lower Assam.

Recently, KLO had been undertaking large scale recruitment in the region.

"On receipt of confirmed input about the KLO Recruitment Module, a joint operation was launched. This module was operational since March this year and run by Lankeshwar Koch, a Myanmar trained Self Styled Area Commander of Lower Assam," the Army said in a statement.

A huge quantity of arms and ammunition has also been seized from their possession.

The arrest has dealt a severe blow to the ulterior motives of KLO and will help in lowering the morale of the insurgent organization.
An entire floor of the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar was cleared and disinfected after an employee posted there tested positive for COVID-19 two days ago, officials said on Friday.

The employee, a resident of the Safapora area in Ganderbal district, was found COVID-positive on Wednesday, prompting the authorities to clear the floor where he was working, they said.

A disinfection drive was carried out in the secretariat building, which houses offices of the top brass of administration and bureaucracy of Jammu and Kashmir.

Deputy Commissioner, Srinagar, Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary dismissed reports in some sections of the media about the Civil Secretariat being closed.

"I have just returned from there. We had one positive case from there. The particular floor was cleared and disinfected following due protocols," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
People relax at the Cheonggye Stream as daily life is slowly returning to normal amid a lifting of restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in Seoul, Thursday, May 7, 2020. AP



South Korea reported 12 more cases of the new coronavirus Friday, most of which came from overseas, bringing the nation's total infections to 10,822 amid relaxed social distancing.

Eleven of the newly added cases are imported ones, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

The tally also marked new daily cases of more than 10 for the first time in five days.

Imported cases continued to outpace domestic infections, as South Koreans residing overseas have been returning home amid the global pandemic.

The country has detected 1,118 imported cases so far, with more than 90 percent of the patients being South Korean nationals.

Starting Wednesday, South Korea gave the go-ahead to the normalization of public facilities and other business establishments under the condition that they follow basic sanitation measures.

Preparations to reopen schools next week are also under way. High school seniors will return to school Wednesday, while students in all other grades will go back by June 1.

The nation's death toll remained unchanged at 256, the KCDC said.

The overall fatality rate reached 2.37 percent. The rate for patients aged 80 and above stood at 25 percent, the KCDC said.

In total, 9,484 people in South Korea have recovered from the virus, up 65 from a day earlier, which means nearly 88 percent of the patients here have been cured.

South Korea has been carrying out tests on 654,863 people since Jan. 3, including 5,475 from a day earlier.

Health authorities, however, emphasize that the downward trend of new infections does not indicate that the country has fully eradicated the pandemic.

South Korea remains concerned over possible cluster infections from the holiday that ran from April 30 through Tuesday, as many South Koreans made short trips across the nation.

The incubation period of the COVID-19 virus is roughly two weeks.

A virus patient was also confirmed to have visited five clubs in Seoul's popular multicultural neighborhood of Itaewon a day earlier, raising concerns over possible community transmission.

With a second wave of the pandemic anticipated to hit the country hard again later this year, health authorities say people will need to continue wearing protective masks and following guidelines. (Yonhap)
Syracuse, N.Y.  A month after being hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19, 39-year-old Travis Duffy was released from the hospital today amidst cheers and whoops of joy.

Such a happy ending  just unbelievable that its finally here," said Jessica Duffy, his sister. We couldnt visit him so so long and now to see him walk out when he wasnt expected to survive is so great.

I gave him a huge hug  felt so surreal, she said, who, like her brother, wore a mask when they hugged.

Travis, who lives in Canastota and works on a farm, was greeted by family, friends and other supporters at Upstate Community Hospital, where hed been undergoing rehabilitation after being transferred from Upstate University Hospital earlier this week.

Over the weeks in the hospital, his family and friends were worried at times he would not survive his battle with the virus. Travis has asthma, which complicated his ability to fight the disease.

For a time, he was placed on a ventilator. He also developed pneumonia. At times, hospital staff flipped him on his belly to help him breathe.

In the hospital, Travis was treated with convalescent plasma from a donor who had recovered from the virus. The infusions, given to the sickest patients, are part of a national emergency treatment program.

After leaving the hospital, Travis dad drove him to see his 8-year-old daughter, Aubrey, and meet his son, Connor, who was born early Monday morning.

When he arrived home, he was greeted by his mother, his siblings, friends, other family and his girlfriend, Kilee Coye. She also tested positive for the virus, but has recovered.

"Its so amazing to have him home,'' Coye said. He feels good  he is very tired and glad to be home, thats for sure.

8 CNY farmer, 39, released from hospital after coronavirus battle

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

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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 email edoran@syracuse.com
RIVERHEAD, NY  A new eatery is opening its doors in Riverhead Friday with a celebration featuring free platters of food and fun, all with an eye on social distancing.

Shah's Halal Food is located at 1767 Old Country Rd. in the Dick's Sporting Goods shopping plaza. The grand opening will feature giveaways of masks, shirts, bottles of Shah's white sauce and free platters of food (one per customer) from noon to 2 p.m.

Owner Khalid Mashriqi said the family business began in 2005. His father Ibrahim, his brother-in-law Shafiq and a fourth partner, Rahim, began with a pushcart in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Mashriqi said his father is an immigrant from Afghanistan who came to America and began working in restaurants.

"He struggled and had amazing hardships," he said.

His father, a natural storyteller, ultimately found success.

"He saved up and bought the restaurant he was working in," Mashriqi said.

The family business has grown in popularity. The simple menu at an affordable price point includes chicken, lamb and vegetarian options such as falafel on rice or pita topped with a trademark homemade sauce, all featuring the rich flavors of Afghanistan, Mashriqi said.

(Courtesy Khalid Mashriqi)

"Everything comes from the original, authentic Afghan flavors and family recipes," he said.



From the beginning, even when the business was just focused on food carts, crowds loved the flavors and low price points, Mashriqi said.

Four years ago, his family expanded the brand. The first brick-and-mortar locations opened in at the Queens College campus and later, in Hicksville.

"We sat down at the table and came up with a very simple menu and discussed how to make it a little more complex, based on our experience with food," Mashriqi said. "We came up with a menu that is simple but appealing, knowing we had to keep the cost of the food down."

Today, the business has grown to 12 locations on Long Island, with Huntington Village also opening and locations coming soon in Commack, Hauppauge, Holbrook and Patchogue.

Story continues

As for Friday's grand opening, Mashriqi said the event will be carefully orchestrated to embrace coronavirus constraints and social distancing. Masks are required.

"We decided, 'Let's try to make the most of this; we're in a bad situation  how can we make people happy and still practice safety precautions?'" he said.

The business has expanded to Boston, with carts in California and a spot ready to open in Toronto, Mashriqi said.

His family also believes in giving back: In the last month, the business had donated around 40,000 boxes of food to people in need through New York food pantries, he said.

Looking ahead, Mashriqi said: "I'm driving this thing and the vision is to go nationwide and international." The company even has plans for about 20 sprinter trucks in the United Kingdom.

"We're trying to grow as much as we can  to introduce halal food and our fast, casual concept to mainstream America," he said. "That's what I think we are accomplishing  to go into communities such as Riverhead, where people are trying halal food and getting educated about the religious aspect of it, the cleanliness of the food."



As the business grows, Mashriqi said, "I feel honored, humbled and overwhelmed."



Shah's Halal Food is located at 1767 Old Country Rd. in Riverhead and will be open Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. For information. call 631-284-3109. Order online through fast bite on the restaurant's website here or through Uber Eats, DoorDash or Grubhub.

This article originally appeared on the Riverhead Patch
T here will be no 'dramatic overnight change' to the coronavirus lockdown, George Eustice has said.

Speaking at the Covid-19 Downing Street press conference on Friday, the Environment Secretary said that the UK is not out of the woods yet.

He added that Britain will live with the virus for some time to come as Wales announced some changes to its own social distancing measures.

It comes as Boris Johnson prepares to reveal the Government's "roadmap" to bring the UK out of the lockdown.

Mr Eustice said: We will have to wait for what the Prime Minister has to say on Sunday but I think what I can say is this  hes going to set out effectively a roadmap of how we can evolve the current restrictions.

We have this complete lockdown at the moment to something where certain activities may become possible in the short term, in the near term and other things might take much longer.

We have to be realistic that there isnt going to be any dramatic overnight change, we will be very very cautious as we loosen the restrictions we have, as the data that were outlining on a daily basis shows we are not out of the woods.

UK Government urge public to continue observing lockdown restrictions

There are still major challenges, we will be living with this virus for some time to come and its therefore important to avoid that second peak that could overwhelm our NHS.

He added that all devolved administrations attended Cobra meetings and while each may take slightly different approaches they are working together to try to have a broadly similar UK approach.

Mr Eustice also addressed speculation about the future of the lockdown.

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

He said: Im conscious that there is a great deal of speculation about what the Prime Minister might say on Sunday when he outlines a roadmap for the future and how we will evolve the current restrictions.

The Prime Minister will outline any changes to the guidance on Sunday.

But in the meantime, in spite of the sunny bank holiday, it is vitally important that we continue to abide by the current restrictions.

Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives.

On other topics, Environment Secretary George Eustice said that more than one million food parcels had so far been delivered to the clinically vulnerable in society.

He told the daily Downing Street briefing: In addition all of those in the shielded cohort have been added to a list giving them priority access to supermarket delivery slots.

So far around 400,000 people have been offered priority delivery slots by supermarkets and around one million orders have been placed.

He added that 79,000 shopping runs had been carried out by volunteers using the NHS Good Samaritan app.
Nagpur:

Under its new DGP, Maharashtra Police is working on a two-pronged strategy of improving intelligence gathering about terror groups and connecting better with citizens.



The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) is also being equipped with modern gadgets and a strategy is being firmed up to effectively counter propaganda from outfits like ISIS, said Satish Mathur, who took over as DGP a week ago.



As a first step, police personnel will visit each and every household in their jurisdiction to connect with people to get real-time intelligence inputs from society about anti-social and terror activities, he told reporters last night.



At another level, ATS will be equipped with modern gadgets to counter any emergency situation, he said.



On his maiden visit as DGP to Nagpur, Mathur said a strategy is being readied to counter propaganda of ISIS and will be implemented soon.



In an effort to improve policing and re-establish their connect with people, the DGP said, every personnel will inquire from citizens about their grievances and leave his/ her phone number with them. This baby step will have a huge positive impact on society.



This will not only improve the image of police but also strengthen intelligence gathering network.

On tackling Naxal threat, the 1981-batch IPS officer said police have gained upper hand in their fight against Maoists, who are active in a few districts of Vidarbha. Covert and overt operations will be launched to further weaken them.



Two types of operations would be launched against Naxalssecret and open. Armed Out-Posts (AOPs) are being increased in Gadchiroli district to enlarge police presence there.

Also, financial aid is being provided to the families of policemen martyred during Naxal operations, said Mathur.



New safety equipment are being procured to protect policemen operating in the Naxal-hit areas, said the DGP, who will have a 22-month tenure.



Mathur said his other priorities include increasing transparency in policing, improving service delivery and providing better working condition to police staff.



Transparency would be increased in the department. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will soon address the top police brass, said Mathur.

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CLEVELAND, OH / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Mace Security International, Inc. (OTCQX:MACE or "the Company"), a globally recognized leader in personal safety products, recently donated a batch of pepper spray dispensers to ACCESS Shelter of Akron, OH to be handed out to its residents who are often traveling alone on public transportation. Gary Medved, CEO & President of Mace Security International, states "while we believe everyone should have access to non-lethal personal safety products, we are especially sensitive to those who are in immediate need and could use the added protection our products offer. Providing these units to those in need, speaks to our overall mission of keeping our communities safe." Sanjay Singh, Executive Chairman of Mace Security International commented "I was very impressed by the work that is being done by the team at ACCESS when I took a tour of their facility a few years ago. We are happy to assist the residents and team members of ACCESS by providing them peace of mind." Jackie Hemsworth, Executive Director of ACCESS, added "ACCESS is so pleased to receive this generous donation of personal protection items for our residents. A great majority of our residents both walk and ride the bus alone to their destinations. The Mace products, along with education on personal safety, will help to empower and keep those we serve safe." About ACCESS Shelter:ACCESS is an emergency shelter for women and children in Akron, OH. Opened in 1984, the organization has served more than 20,000 individuals currently experiencing homelessness. ACCESS Shelter encourages the development of self-esteem and the attainment of self-sufficiency through its commitment of providing a holistic, safe and supportive environment, and through its programs of housing, advocacy and empowerment. For more information, visit www.access-shelter.org About Mace Security International, Inc.:Mace Security International, Inc. (MACE) is a globally recognized leader in personal safety and security. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the company has spent more than 40 years designing and manufacturing consumer and tactical products for personal defense and security under its world-renowned Mace Brand - the original trusted brand of defense spray products. The company also offers aerosol defense sprays and tactical products for law enforcement and security professionals worldwide through its Mace Take Down brand, KUROS!  Brand personal safety products, Vigilant Brand alarms, and Tornado  Brand pepper spray and stun guns. MACE distributes and supports Mace Brand products through mass market retailers, wholesale distributors, independent dealers, Amazon.com Mace.com , and other channels. For more information, visit www.mace.com Press Contact:Gary E. MedvedPresident/Chief Executive Officergmedved@ mace.com (440) 424-5322SOURCE: Mace Security International, Inc.
A personal support worker has died after a preventable workplace exposure to COVID-19, says a union representing front-line workers at a long-term care facility in Toronto.

Leonard Rodriquez, 61, is the fifth personal support worker to die in Ontario.

Rodriquez had been working at Access Independent Living Services when he was sent home on April 6 due to possible exposure to the virus, according to Unifor.

His symptoms worsened while he was self-isolating at home and he later tested positive for the virus.

Access Independent Living Services provides services for people with physical support needs so that they can live independently in the community, and has three locations in Toronto. Rodriquez had been employed at the 2468 Eglinton Ave. W., near Keele Street.

In a news release, Unifor called the death preventable and says more needs to be done to protect front-line workers.

From the onslaught of the pandemic we have been demanding personal protective equipment from employers and governments. This tragedy could have been avoided if he only had access to proper personal protective equipment. Our COVID heroes deserve better, said Unifor national president Jerry Dias.

Unifor also says five other staff members as well as three residents have tested positive at Access Apartments.

Unifor, Canadas largest union in the private sector represents 80 members at Access Independent Living Services. Rodriquez is the first confirmed death of a Unifor member related to this pandemic.

Rodriquez is the fourth personal support worker in the GTA to die from COVID-19.

The others are: Sharon Roberts, 59, who worked at Downsview Long Term Care in North York; Arlene Reid, 51, with the Victorian Order of Nurses in Peel Region and who also worked at a nursing home; and Christine Mandegarian, 54, who worked at Altamont Care nursing home in Scarborough.

A PSW employed at a long-term care home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans also died this week.

Sienna Senior Living, which operates Madonna Care Community, confirmed a male workers death from the virus Thursday afternoon but provided few other details.

He was a loved and respected team member and will be missed by his colleagues and the residents he cared for, the company statement said.

Ontario says 30 residents have died from COVID-19 at Madonna Care, with 47 residents and 31 staff members testing positive for the virus.

With files from The Canadian Press
New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) As the first batch of international evacuees landed in India amid tight medical supervision, Le Meridien is one of the many hotels where some of them will be kept quarantined from Friday onwards. The hotel, which has been shut Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) As the first batch of international evacuees landed in India amid tight medical supervision, Le Meridien is one of the many hotels where some of them will be kept quarantined from Friday onwards. The hotel, which has been shut Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) As the first batch of international evacuees landed in India amid tight medical supervision, Le Meridien is one of the many hotels where some of them will be kept quarantined from Friday onwards. The hotel, which has been shut Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 8 : As the first batch of international evacuees landed in India amid tight medical supervision, Le Meridien is one of the many hotels where some of them will be kept quarantined from Friday onwards. The hotel, which has been shut ever since the nationwide lockdown began, partially opened for this purpose with rooms being readied by people wearing PPE units.

The reception had a display saying, " Namaste! There's nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Welcome Home." Rajiv Anand, the food and beverages manager of the five star hotel where some of the evacuees will be kept quarantined against payment, told IANS that a special menu is being curated for them. "When you come from abroad the first thing you look at is your homely food. Besides that we also have international cuisine including Italian pasta and Thai curry that the chef has worked out," he said.

Anand added that as part of the hospitality sector, they will endeavour to make the evacuees and other corona warriors stay "comfortable". He informed IANS that special floors are being dedicated to these select evacuees. "We have a special dedicated housekeeping team, we have a special dedicated F&B service team," he added.

They will serve the quarantined batch who have been brought back to India through a special flight as part of a massive international effort to bring stranded Indians abroad back home. Anand said special equipment including PPEs are being provided to the teams who will be taking care of the quarantined batch at Le Meridien.

"They are coming back after a lot of hardships. When you are abroad, you always remember home. Now since the government of India has taken the initiative to bring them back, we feel honoured and proud that we can contribute." On being asked about the financial strain in the hospitality sector, Anand insisted, " We will sail through." He said there have been past instances of pandemics or riots where the sector was equally hit hard but came out bravely, which he was certain will happen this time around as well.

National carrier Air India's first standalone evacuation flight under the Vande Bharat Mission landed at the national capital's IGI Airport from Singapore on Friday morning at around 11.50 a.m. with 234 passengers. A chunk of these passengers will be staying at Le Meridien and in other hotels across the national capital where they will be quarantined.
AHF calls on the World Health Assembly to dismiss WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus over mismanagement of the COVID-19 response and to recruit former President Barack Obama to lead the WHO through the global pandemic effort for a period of one year

After refusing to resign over mishandling the COVID-19 response, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) calls on the World Health Assembly (WHA) to dismiss Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from his position as World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General at its upcoming 73rd WHA starting May 17 and to seek the appointment of former United States President Barack Obama as interim head of the WHO to lead it through the COVID-19 response for a period of one year.

"We urge the World Health Assembly to dismiss Dr. Tedros and to do all it can to bring in President Obama to help see us through this crisis," said AHF President Michael Weinstein. "Now that we know it's very likely COVID-19 cases date back to at least November, and certainly December, it was unexcusable to wait four months to declare a pandemic. WHO is supposed to be our best early warning system, at which they failed horribly under Dr. Tedros' lead. That, coupled with him not displaying sufficient independence from external political pressures, is more than enough to warrant his removal. There are simply too many lives at stake to wait to make this change."

Tedros has stumbled in several critical areas of the COVID-19 response, most notably by praising China for transparency following an attempted cover-up, delaying the Public Health Emergency of International Concern and pandemic declarations, and relying on questionable data from China for critical decisions regarding COVID-19.

"President Obama has proven abilities in international diplomacy and strengthening cooperation among people from all walks of life along with credibility at the highest levels of global governance needed to help shepherd the WHO and the global pandemic response through these unprecedented times." added Weinstein. "If there ever was a moment for a leader of President Obama's character, stature and unifying prowess to take charge-it is now."

For more information, please contact Ged Kenslea at gedk@aidshealth.org or (323) 791-5526

About AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.4 million people in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006233/en/

Contacts:

U.S. MEDIA CONTACTS:

Ged Kenslea, Senior Director, Communications, AHF

+1 323 308 1833 work +1.323.791.5526 mobile

gedk@aidshealth.org

Denys Nazarov, Director of Global Policy Communications, AHF

+1.202.503.4743

dn@aidshealth.org
MBABANE  The country has recorded 30 new cases of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus.

This figure was revealed by the Minister of Health, Lizzie Nkosi, during a press conference held at the Cabinet offices yesterday evening.



Nkosi revealed that the Ministry of Health had 141 tests and 111 came out negative. She said this brought a total of positive tests to 153 since the first confirmed case in the kingdom.

Nkosi highlighted that there were 14 males and 16 females. Among the patients, the minister stated that there were two children aged two and four.



Family



This shows that when people are going home, they infect the other family members, Nkosi said.

The minister revealed that a majority of the patients ages ranged between 20 and 48. She said there were only a few of those who were above 50 years. Nkosi stated that as of yesterday the number of patients admitted to the Lubombo Referral Hospital were 50.



She went on to say those who were under homecare were 57 and those who had recovered and were discharged were two, which brought the total number of recoveries to 14. She said there were currently two deaths. The minister highlighted that the ministry was still making arrangements on how to take the 30 into treatment. Nkosi said although the numbers were escalating, and it looked difficult, it was because the ministry had embarked on rapid testing and it was only natural to see the numbers going up in this period.



However, it is important that we stick to the precautionary measures for us to protect ourselves and one another, Nkosi said.

She elaborated that this included being cautious for one to properly cover his or herself when coughing or sneezing. The minister also it was imperative to also ensure that one did not touch their face.



Distancing



She emphasised the importance of social distancing and wearing of masks in public as this prevented the spread of the virus. The minister urged emaSwati to stay at home at all times unless there was a compelling reason to go to public areas.

She mentioned that she had been informed that there were people who picked disposable masks from rubbish bins and washed them for later use. She discouraged this act.



It is so dangerous. First of all the mask has been worn by someone who may have COVID- 19 or any other viruses. Also, the masks are already coming from a rubbish dump where you have a lot of bacteria around, the minister warned.



She further discouraged the nation from sharing masks even when they were found by police officers without them as it was more dangerous than not wearing it at all. Nkosi said the ministry was anticipating more results because of the rapid tests. She stated that at some point the numbers will decrease. The minister highlighted that the cases will only come down if citizens took the responsibility to protect themselves and others.



Patients



When questioned if the ministry was ready to accommodate the new patients, Nkosi mentioned that the Lubombo Referral Hospital was in the process of adding more beds. She pointed out that the facility had patients who had symptoms and those who were asymptomatic.



Nkosi highlighted that they were not kept in the same rooms.

The minister stated that the ministry had already started preparing the Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre and had put beds in the pavilions. Nkosi said it was in the ministrys plans to admit patients with mild and asymptomatic symptoms at the exhibition. She added that when the symptoms started showing, the patients would then be transferred to the Lubombo Referral Hospital.

She said four pavilions were being used where 104 patients will be occupied. Nkosi said they were trying to organise showers and toilets to be used by the patients who would be admitted at the centre.



The minister stated that the ministry was also looking to use one of the hospitals in Manzini which had an incomplete infrastructure for beds.
CARNIVAL Cruise Line is hoping to set sail for the Caribbean this August, marking the first of its trips since suspending operations in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.





The company voluntarily suspended the global operations of its 18-ship fleet for two months in March, until May, but recently extended that policy until the end of the summer season, according to a press release.





The return to service will take a "phased-in approach, the company said, focusing on eight ships from three homeports in Texas and Florida.





Carnival also said any resumption of cruise operations "is fully dependent on cooperation with federal, state, local and international government officials.





The ports of Miami and Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Galveston, Texas, were selected because they are accessible by car for the majority of the guests, the company statement read.





The eight ships named by the company have itineraries showing stops in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Mexico, among other places.





The Turks and Caicos Islands seaports will remain closed until June 30, but there is no definitive time set for its reopening.





This, the Government says, will be determined by the directive given by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC).





"There is no assurance of a return on August 1, but the eight ships remain in the schedule as we continue to work with government officials on a potential return to service, Carnivals statement read.





Carnival Cruise Line ships will not be cruising from Alaska, Hawaii and Australia before August 31.





The US State Department began warning against cruise travel on March 8, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention CDC issued a no-sail order on March 14, which was extended and set to expire on July 24.





The order prompted several countries to reject cruise ships suspected of carrying infected passengers and crew members, stranding some ships at sea for weeks.





Many cruise ships had outbreaks at sea, with some passengers and crew members dying on board or after disembarking from international trips.





"Cruise ships often involve the movement of a number of people in closed and semi-closed settings, the CDCs order said.





"Like other close-contact environments, cruise ships facilitate the transmission of Covid-19.





According to the CDC, the order will remain in effect until either the secretary of Health and Human Services declares that Covid-19 no longer constitutes a public health emergency, the CDC rescinds or modifies the order based on specific public health or other considerations or when 100 days have passed from April 15 - when the order was published in the Federal Register.




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 seems the smart money knows that debt - which is usually involved in bankruptcies - is a very important factor, when you assess how risky a company is. As with many other companies Venture Life Group plc (LON:VLG) makes use of debt. But is this debt a concern to shareholders?

When Is Debt A Problem?

Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. However, a more usual (but still expensive) situation is where a company must dilute shareholders at a cheap share price simply to get debt under control. Of course, debt can be an important tool in businesses, particularly capital heavy businesses. When we examine debt levels, we first consider both cash and debt levels, together.

View our latest analysis for Venture Life Group

What Is Venture Life Group's Net Debt?

As you can see below, at the end of December 2019, Venture Life Group had UK4.37m of debt, up from UK3.84m a year ago. Click the image for more detail. But it also has UK10.7m in cash to offset that, meaning it has UK6.34m net cash.

AIM:VLG Historical Debt May 8th 2020

How Strong Is Venture Life Group's Balance Sheet?

Zooming in on the latest balance sheet data, we can see that Venture Life Group had liabilities of UK8.14m due within 12 months and liabilities of UK6.07m due beyond that. On the other hand, it had cash of UK10.7m and UK6.26m worth of receivables due within a year. So it actually has UK2.76m more liquid assets than total liabilities.

This short term liquidity is a sign that Venture Life Group could probably pay off its debt with ease, as its balance sheet is far from stretched. Simply put, the fact that Venture Life Group has more cash than debt is arguably a good indication that it can manage its debt safely.

Story continues

Also positive, Venture Life Group grew its EBIT by 22% 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 Venture Life Group 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.

Finally, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. Venture Life 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. Over the last three years, Venture Life Group reported free cash flow worth 2.1% 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

While it is always sensible to investigate a company's debt, in this case Venture Life Group has UK6.34m in net cash and a decent-looking balance sheet. And it impressed us with its EBIT growth of 22% over the last year. So we don't have any problem with Venture Life Group's use of debt. 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. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Venture Life Group you should be aware of, and 1 of them can't be ignored.

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.
This Position Paper, developed on behalf of the GHC, explores evidence that following everyday hygiene measures in homes and community settings (including workplaces, universities, schools, nurseries, on public transport and during shopping and leisure activities) can play a vital role in containing and delaying the threat from infectious microorganisms. Multiple studies demonstrate that harmful bacteria and viruses can be transferred from an infected individual to other people via hands and frequently touched surfaces and can survive in enough numbers to cause an infection.

Regular handwashing and surface disinfection are key hygiene measures that can help reduce the levels of microorganisms on hands and frequently touched surfaces. Adopting a hygienic approach in our homes and everyday lives offers a way to maximise protection against infection, at the times and places where there is the greatest risk of transmission.

According to the lead author, Jean-Yves Maillard, Professor of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, at Cardiff University; "In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and evidence presented in this Paper, it is more urgent than ever for us all to recognise the role of community hygiene to minimise the spread of infections. This also helps to reduce the consumption of antibiotics and helps the fight against antimicrobial resistance."

At this time of increased concern, the Global Hygiene Council is calling for health agencies and healthcare professionals to recognise the importance of advising the public of the importance of hygiene in their home and community settings to minimise the spread of infections.

The Global Hygiene Council is supported by RB, global leaders in health and hygiene products.

References:

Curtis V, Cairncross S. Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review. Lancet Infect Dis. May 2003 ; 3 (5): 275-81 Staniford LJ, Schmidtke KA. A systematic review of hand-hygiene and environmental-disinfection interventions in settings with children. BMC Public Health 20, 195 (2020). Available at: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8301-0 International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene. Containing the burden of infectious diseases is everyone's responsibility. October 2018 . Available from: https://www.ifh-homehygiene.org/sites/default/files/publications/IFH%20White%20Paper-10-18.pdf Accessed April 6, 2020 .



Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1163611/Global_Hygiene_Council.jpg

SOURCE The Global Hygiene Council
Officials of Bauchi State government are on the trail of two COVID-19 patients who escaped the isolation center to unknown locations some days ago, government sources have said.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that an unnamed 25-year-old man, who was admitted at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital isolation after he tested positive to the COVID-19 virus suddenly disappeared.

In the same vein, a 12-year-old Almaniri child, who tested positive to the new coronavirus after he was repatriated from Kano, also found his way out of the camp where he and over 400 others were placed in isolation.

This development was confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES by Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Rilwan Mohammed.

Mr Mohammed, however, clarified that while the almajiris teenager has been traced and returned to the centre, officials including security personnel are still on the trail of the other escapee.

Yes, there were cases of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 who ran away from the isolation centres where they were being treated and managed.

One is a 12-year-old almajiri that was brought back to Bauchi from Kano State and he tested positive,  he said.

Adding that the boy ran away from the Isolation Center and went back to Dass town (in Dass Local Government Area) where he is originally from.

We were informed about it and we, in turn, told the Emir of Dass about it and his location was confirmed immediately. So, one of our Directors led a team who used an ambulance and went and brought him back. He ran three days ago (Tuesday) and we brought him back that same day.

The PHCDA Executive Director confirmed that intelligence gathered by security officials confirmed that the 25 years old COVID-19 patient ran to a village in Darazo local government.

The other patient ran to Konkiyel village. He also ran away from the Isolation Center. He was positive and was on treatment at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital here in Bauchi.

He is 25 years old and he ran away and went back to Darazo. We have not yet gotten him and we gave the Police and the SSS Personal Protective Gears, they know where he is and they will go and bring him back.

Since March 24, when the Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, became the index case, the state has recorded 102 confirmed cases out of which six, including the governor, have been discharged.
Reliance Jio seems to be on a roll. After bagging US giants Facebook and Silver Lake to invest Rs 43,574 crore and Rs 5656 crore respectively, Vista Equity Partners -- another firm from the US has decided to make an investment in the disruptive Indian telecom company.

Reuters

As per reports, this would give Vista Equity Partners a 2.32 percent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, valuing Indias top telecom operator at $65 billion (Rs 11,367 crores) (equity valuation)  the same valuation implied by the Silver Lake investment and a 12.5% premium over Facebooks deal.



While announcing this investment, Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, said in a statement, I am delighted to welcome Vista, one of the world's marquee tech investors globally as a valued partner. Like our other partners, Vista also shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. They believe in the transformative power of technology to be the key to an even better future for everyone.

He also revealed that Reliance Jio has managed to generate 60,596.37 crore from leading technology investors in less than three weeks.

Reuters

It will help the energy-to-telecoms giant, controlled by billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani, meet its target to eliminate $21.4 billion of net debt by the end of the year.

Due to COVID-19, it hasnt been having a great time. It revealed that Its net profit in the quarter that ended on March 31 fell by 39 percent, hit by a sharp fall in oil prices and lower fuel demand.

This investment spree is also in tandem with last years commitment to investors when he said he aimed to cut Reliances net debt of about $21 billion to zero by early 2021.
The industry association for commercial trucking in the province wants drivers with or without symptoms tested for COVID-19.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The industry association for commercial trucking in the province wants drivers with or without symptoms tested for COVID-19.

"Our essential-service workers are at higher risk and so we need quicker and ready access to those tests," Manitoba Trucking Association executive director Terry Shaw told the Free Press Thursday.

Measures in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19 between employees and communities linked by the trucking sector are effective, Shaw insists, after a cluster of cases were tied to a depot in Brandon.

"I think there is a bit of a misconception around the fact that there were some cases identified to a certain industry, that somehow its a problem," he said.

"There is no silver bullet for trucking, or any industry."

Seven cases have been linked to the terminal and maintenance shop in Brandon owned by Winnipeg-based Pauls Hauling. Five employees and two close contacts have tested positive for the coronavirus, the province confirmed after announcing the cluster earlier in the week.

Truck drivers are essential-service workers who are at higher risk and need quicker access to tests, says Manitoba Trucking Association executive director Terry Shaw. (Justin Samanski-Langille / Winnipeg Free Press files)

Epidemiologists believe its a localized, connected group of cases. Manitoba chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said an investigation has, so far, determined the cases in the Prairie Mountain Health Region do not pose a significant risk to the public.

No new cases were reported Thursday.

Roussin said contact tracing was made easier by proactive staffing decisions made by the company.

A company email sent to employees of Pauls Hauling and leaked to the Brandon Sun said impacted employees were working in the maintenance division of the terminal.

"The workplace investigation was made quite simple because of the companys decisions to cohort employees," Roussin said. "So that the actual investigation within the company is quite simple, because theres a limited number of contacts because of their good work."

On Wednesday, Sobeys Inc. confirmed an employee at its Safeway gas bar in Brandon had tested positive for COVID-19. The employee last worked on April 30. A spokesman for Shared Health would not say if that case was connected to the Pauls Hauling cluster, citing privacy concerns.

Manitoba has 450 commercial trucking businesses, some of which operate interprovincially and across the border in the United States, Shaw said.

A cluster of seven cases was traced to Paul's Hauling in Brandon. (The Brandon Sun files)

The association has provided guidelines to its members on how to safely conduct business, but theres no getting around the inherent risk, he said.

"The trucking industry has policies and practices in place that are designed to reduce the spread, and if an incident occurs or is suspected to occur, we have policies to address that," he said.

"That is something we saw successfully implemented in Manitoba which has helped limit spread."

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When travelling to communities where the virus is prevalent, Shaw said drivers continue to practise the basics of social distancing and frequent sanitizing while complying with any additional restrictions put in place by the jurisdiction, including wearing non-medical face masks.

Truck operators are not subject, however, to self-isolation orders when they return to the province, and Shaw said hes not aware of any Manitoba companies encouraging drivers to voluntarily isolate themselves after an out-of-province trip until theyre called back into work.

Self-isolation exemptions for truck drivers returning from out of province will continue, Roussin said.

"This particular cluster doesnt change our thoughts on that," he said. "Certainly these drivers need to be aware of limited interactions in places that have increased cases and theyre being vigilant to self-monitor for symptoms upon their return.

"And so there are precautions in place, but its a balance. We have to maintain our supply chains to be able to function."

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
Canadas government has reached an agreement with leaderships in its provinces and territories to increase the wages being paid to essential workers who have remained on-duty while the Covid-19 pandemic raged in the country. The countrys Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the Federal Government will contribute up to CA $ 3 billion for the hike with more expected from the provinces and territories.

During his daily media briefing, Trudeau said that if you are risking your health to keep this country moving and youre still making minimum wage, you deserve a raise.

While many sectors of economic activity have closed in the country during the coronavirus crisis, others have been critical in ensuring essential services were still being provided. Principal among these are the front line healthcare workers.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said, Canadas front line workers are dealing directly with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by taking care of Canadians in our hospitals and nursing homes. They deserve our support. This measure will help workers critical to the current Covid-19 response get the compensation they need.

Workers in many other spheres may also benefit, though the sectors will be identified by local governments. Among these are those working at grocery stores, delivery persons, truckers, and some construction workers.

In a release, the PMO said such workers deserved a much-needed wage boost because while most Canadians were asked to stay at home during the crisis, millions of Canadians are being called on to go to work every day.

While the scheme was originally expected to be targeted at those making less than CA$ 2500 per month, that figure has been relaxed and provinces and territories will decide on who will qualify for it.

Trudeau said these governments had either confirmed, or were in the process of confirming these wage top-up plans for essential workers. He said, Workers are risking their health to provide us with essential care and services, and we need to make sure that they are paid properly for the work they do every day.
After fighting to get the government's case against him thrown out, former Trump aide Michael Flynn got his wish Thursday when U.S. prosecutors asked for the dismissal themselves. Now all he needs is for the judge to agree.

That isn't guaranteed.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has a number of options. He could accept the government's request to end its prosecution of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officers during the Russia investigation and then sought to withdraw his plea. In fact, that's the likeliest outcome, according to legal scholars and former prosecutors who aren't involved in the case.

"Judges only very rarely reject a prosecution request to drop the charges," said Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School.

But that doesn't mean Sullivan will sign off on the about-face with the perfunctory stroke of a pen.

"At the very least, the judge may do some inquiring about what's really going on here" to see if "there's anything potentially unsavory about this," Weisberg said.

And he could do a good deal more: Hold a full-blown hearing on the Justice Department's decision to seek a dismissal. Appoint a lawyer as a "friend of the court" to help argue legal issues. Even, in an extraordinary act, refuse the dismissal request.

Sullivan is "not the type to accept what the government tells him so quickly," said Joel Cohen, a lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who interviewed the judge for a book.

"I think he's going to hold a hearing," said Cohen, a defense attorney in New York for 35 years. The purpose would be "to see if there's any political influence or bad faith in the government looking to dismiss the case," Cohen said. "He could ask what was the attorney general's role in the matter and what was the president's involvement."

In moving to dismiss, the U.S. said an internal review found that Flynn's false statements to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation weren't "material" to the probe into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election. "The government cannot explain, much less prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, how false statements are 'material' to an investigation that ... seems to have been undertaken only to elicit those very false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn," U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea said in a brief.

Sullivan may have a different view.

"There is still some judicial scrutiny, and it's in the judge's independent discretion whether to dismiss the case," said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor. "The judge could say there's not a basis to grant the motion."

The Supreme Court has held that a trial judge can't deny the government's request to dismiss its own prosecution as long as the decision isn't "tainted with impropriety" or motivated by considerations contrary to the public interest, according to Sandick. In its brief, the government said federal rules give prosecutors wide discretion to decide whether to dismiss pending charges.

"This is a demanding standard, but there is an argument that the president's many public statements 'taint with impropriety' the decision to seek dismissal, rendering the decision contrary to manifest public interest," Sandick said.

Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, scoffed at the government's conclusion that Flynn's lies weren't material.

It doesn't pass "the laugh test," said Rocah, who is running as a Democrat for district attorney in Westchester County, New York. "Materiality is broadly defined, and lying about talking to the Russian government when the investigation was about coordination between the Russian government and the campaign or administration is material."

If Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, declines to dismiss the case, the U.S. would almost certainly appeal. In the meantime, the judge could continue to decide any pending defense motions. If he ruled against Flynn, who twice admitted his guilt in court, the judge would proceed to sentencing, according to Sandick. Trump may also short-circuit it all and pardon Flynn.

But first Sullivan may want to plumb the government's reasoning in dropping the charges and see how closely it hews to Flynn's claims of "egregious government misconduct," including deep-state machinations by biased FBI officials, said Robert Sanders, a retired U.S. Navy judge and an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven. The judge may want to probe whether prosecutors really reversed themselves over materiality.

"Is that agreement or disagreement consistent or inconsistent with the government's stated rationale for its own motion?" Sanders said. "If the judge feels he is being played with by the parties, particularly the government, a bigger pushback is likely."

The Justice Department points to new evidence it says shows that federal agents set Flynn up to lie. On Thursday, Trump called him a "great warrior."

Stanford's Weisberg said the FBI's actions weren't unusual.

"That this was really rough behavior by the FBI is perfectly plausible," but "that applies to zillions of cases" in which agents play hardball in a way that's "not illegally coercive," he said. "Sure, you can complain about this kind of action by the FBI. But to suddenly single out Flynn as the most sympathetic victim of this sort of thing is ridiculous."

The next move is Sullivan's, and in the end he may decide he's heard enough.

"The judge can still say: Based on the information I already have from the guilty plea and anything else that's already in the record, I'll just decide the sentence," Weisberg said.
London: The husband of a prisoner in Irans notorious Evin jail has claimed that Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian academic who is also detained there, has attempted suicide several times.

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert.

In a post on Facebook, Reza Khandan wrote: News received from Evin prison says that Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian citizen, who is staying in the security ward of Evin prison, has so far attempted to kill herself three times.

The long stay in the security detention centre and the conditions of solitary confinement have become so unbearable that she has had several suicide attempts.

Khandan is the husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer who was sentenced to 38 years in Evin prison and 148 lashes last year on various security charges, which she strongly denies.
The Supreme Court on Friday nullified the conviction of a former Abia State governor, Orji Uzor-Kalu, who had been jailed for corruption.

The court also quashed the conviction of Ude Udeogu, who was the director of finance and accounts at the Abia State Government House during Mr Kalus tenure.

Justice Mohammed Idris had on December 5, 2019 sentenced the former governor to 12 years in prison for allegedly stealing public funds while in office. Mr Udeogu was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

A third defendant, Mr Kalus company, Slok Nigeria Limited, was ordered to be wound up and its assets forfeited to the Nigerian government.

They were convicted for defrauding the Government of Abia State when Mr Kalu was governor.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had brought the criminal charge against the duo for conspiring and diverting N7.65 billion from the coffers of the state.

Dissatisfied with the judgement of the Federal High Court, Mr Kalu and Mr Udeogu filed an appeal to challenge their sentencing at the apex court.

Delivering judgement on Friday, a seven-member panel of the apex court in a unanimous decision set aside the judgement of Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court in Lagos which convicted and sentenced Messrs Kalu and Udeogu.

The apex courts judgement delivered by Justice Ejembi Eko, declared the conviction of the appellants as null and void on the ground that Mr Idris was already a Justice of the Court of Appeal as at the time he delivered the judgment sentencing the appellants.

Justice Eko further held that a Justice of the Court of Appeal cannot operate as a judge of the Federal High Court.

The apex court further ordered the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to reassign the case for trial.
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Linkedin Eisya A. Eloksari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 12:21 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6b2508 1 Business Airy,start-up,hospitality-industry,Hotel,shut-down,COVID-19 Free

Homegrown hotel aggregator start-up Airy will cease operations by the end of May as the COVID-19 pandemic hits the hospitality business.

The company said in an email to its property partners that it would cease its agreement with them as the company had stopped operational activities.

Read also: Hygiene, social distancing new priorities in post-pandemic tourism

We have done our best to overcome the impact of this disaster. However, given the significant technical decline and reduction in human resources, we have decided to stop our operations permanently, read the email as reported by kompas.com on Thursday.

The email continues by stating that after May 31, the company would no longer provide services to its partners. The decision came after the start-up laid off around 70 percent of its staff last month.

The hospitality and travel sector have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, forcing more than 700 hotels in the country to close down as social distancing calls and travel bans continue globally to contain the coronavirus spread. The disease has infected more than 12,700 people in Indonesia, with the death toll reaching 900 as of Thursday afternoon, according to official data.

Airy public relations manager Vinda Mudita told The Jakarta Post that she was unable to give detailed information about the layoffs and business shutdown.

Read also: Budget cuts, furloughs inevitable for start-ups to survive pandemic: Investors

The start-ups CEO, Louis Alfonso Kodatie, previously said the company had tried to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. He expressed optimism that the travel industry would recover.

Established in 2015, Airy has 2,000 properties with more than 30,000 rooms. It will be the first hospitality start-up to permanently cease operations in the country, as similar companies continue to furlough and lay off workers, as well as impose pay cuts to cope with the outbreak impacts.

Budget hotel booking platform RedDoorz is working on a zero-revenue assumption until next year and has laid off around 10 percent of its workforce. Meanwhile, OYO has furloughed its employees as it saw a 50 to 60 percent drop in revenue and occupancy.
Philadelphia pastor Kevin Croppers heart sank last month when he saw a message asking for food among the prayer requests emailed to his church.

It was a request for something tangible, and we didnt have it, Cropper said.

His congregation, Ark of Safety Christian Church, had canceled its weekly food distribution since it ran out of donations when it stopped gathering in March. It makes you feel bad because isnt that what our mission is? We want to be able to help in this type of crisis, but we need the resources to do it.

Thats the problem with being a small, inner-city black church during a pandemic. Black adults are more than twice as likely as whites or Hispanic Americans to know someone who has been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19. Their communities are afraid, grieving, and suffering from the virus themselves; and they are far less likely to have the staff, budgets, or space to help as much as they feel called.

We are in the city. We dont have acres, we stay close to each other, and its very easy to spread the virus, said Kato Hart Jr., pastor of Hold the Light Ministries, a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) congregation in Detroit.

American counties with a higher-than-average proportion of black residents now account for half of coronavirus cases and 60 percent of deaths. Even in a church of 50, word keeps spreading of which members have lost relatives to the virus: aunties, uncles, grandparents. Hart has lost fellow brothers in ministry, citing a letter from denominational leadership saying 30 COGIC bishops have fallen to COVID-19including a dozen in Michigan alone.

Were in a fight, and we need help. These megachurches, they can kind of make it, but we at these smaller churches  once the tithes and offerings cease, we have a rough time, said Hart, who takes no salary and pulls from his personal account to keep the ministry going. But we dont mind because God made a way where there was no way.

Recently, Cropper and Hart were among more than 100 pastors whose prayers were answered through the Churches Helping Churches Challenge (CHC), which distributes $3,000 grants to congregations in low-income urban areas. Ark of Safety can now resume its food pantry and cover the utility bills at its building, located at the corner of a line of row houses in West Philadelphia. Hold the Light can keep up on its lease and respond to more of the families reaching out for financial assistance.

Launched by the And Campaign and partners in response to the coronavirus, Churches Helping Churches has rallied over $445,000 so far, with grants going to 126 churchesincluding dozens of black churches.

Our churches are primarily located in dense urban areas, which are many of the epicenters of this virus, said Vincent Mathews Jr., a bishop and international missions president for COGIC, the largest African American Pentecostal denomination, and a board member for Churches Helping Churches.

While about 6 percent of Americans belong to historically black Protestant churches, the share is double to triple that in cities like Philadelphia; Detroit; Memphis; Washington, DC; and Atlanta, according to the Pew Research Center. Most black Protestants have an annual household income under $30,000.

Weve always had to exercise a certain kind of economic discipline to get things done without comparable resources, said David Emmanuel Goatley, who directs the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School.

All kinds of churches are feeling the crunch these days. According to LifeWay Research, 40 percent of pastors saw giving drop significantly due to the pandemic. But smaller churches lack the financial cushion to withstand the downfall, particularly in communities where nearly all members have suffered job losses or pay cuts.

When you talk about churches on the front lines  most often youre talking about a picture of the small black churches that are struggling to keep doing the Lords work with very, very limited resources, said Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

In an interview with CT last month, Scott said he heard about drops in tithes and offerings during regular calls with religious leaders across the state as well as from black church leaders nationwide. He was among the congressional leaders who worked to add provisions for churches and ministries in the federal stimulus plan, including church employees being eligible for unemployment benefits and some measures incentivizing charitable giving.

Just under a quarter of pastors applied for and received Payroll Protection Program grants, according to a LifeWay survey, but there are already some indications that black churches struggled to get the funding.

Smaller congregations were least likely to apply. Most dont have an accountantpaid or volunteerto quickly compile the paperwork for the application. The president of the NAACP, which includes representatives from nine major African American denominations, told NPR that many of the black churches that did apply complained about issues with their banks.

The Churches Helping Churches initiative was designed to bypass or supplement federal assistance by getting money to congregations fast (typically five to seven days after they are selected). The church should be the first to help their brothers and sisters in need, organizers wrote. Whatever assistance a society may provide, the Body of Christ should be the first to help.

Even with all the changes due to the new coronavirusFacebook Live prayer nights and CashApp collectionsinner-city pastors say struggle and sacrifice have been part of their ministry all along. For Cropper at Ark of Safety, its just another situation where Christians are called to be our brothers keeper, to do what they can, and to wait on the Lord for provision and restoration.

Were a small church 24/7, 365 days a year. We go through this struggle all the time, he said. Its not like were new in this. Weve been in West Philly all our ministry. This is where God has placed us so they would know that theres a light that shines, and its the light of the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Despite bearing the disproportionate impact of the outbreak, black believers have demonstrated particular spiritual endurance. In a Pew survey released last week, members of historically black churches were more likely than any other religious tradition to say their faith has been strengthened through the outbreak. More than half (56%) say their faith has become stronger, compared to 35 percent of all Christians and 24 percent of adults overall.

Goatley of Duke Divinity, who wrote the book Were You There?: Godforsakenness in Slave Religion, said the coronavirus pandemic brings up familiar theological commitments in African American church traditions, including an affirmation that whatever comes our way, God is with us and a desire to work for justice on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Historically black churches, when we have been at our best, have networked people to work across sectors and be outward focused, he said. We have more of a shared commitment responsibility for communities and well-being. Going forward, we are being called to work in that kind of life-giving way.



Former entrepreneurs and now church planters Devin and Samantha Westbrook lead Redemption Church in Memphis. As much as theyre grieved by the needs of their community, the Westbrooks are excited for the opportunity to reach out. Nonmembers have been calling and emailing with needs, including a family who lost all their possessions in a fire. The congregation has coordinated helping with groceries, bills, and rent for several families.

In the meantime, the church has grown from gathering 75 people in an elementary school auditorium to drawing well over 1,000 viewers to its weekly livestream. With fewer than 10 people to comply with social distancing restrictions, the team meets at the school to record worship on Sunday mornings.

The Churches Helping Churches grant allowed the Redemption to restore pay to single dads on its staff, men who help produce the services and conduct youth outreach. The church had made 50 percent salary cuts across the board due to the virus.

The Westbrooks know their neighbors in Memphis are wrestling with heavy questionsWhere will my next meal come from? Where will my next check come from? What do I do about my relative who passed? What is the city going to do? Where is God in this?so they are eager to reach more people with gospel hope.

There is a sense of confidence that comes from knowing that God is going to sustain us even though we dont see where the help is going to come from, said Devin Westbrook. Our help isnt from the resources but comes from the source.

Churches Helping Churches is expected to get another boost in funds next week through an online benefit concert featuring Lecrae, Lauren Daigle, Kirk Franklin, TobyMac, and For King and Country.

The program has drawn high-profile support, along with gifts from 500 donors, by evoking the New Testament call to give to anyone who had need (Acts 2:45) and that if one part [of the body] suffers, every part suffers with it (1 Cor. 12:26).

Iglesia Centro Cristiano de Minneapolis, a Spanish-speaking congregation among the grant recipients, saw tithes drop by 70 percent as their members lost business in construction, cleaning, and restaurants. The $3,000 allows them to help a single mom in their congregation make her rent, as well as to continue to tithing to support other ministries.

Hispanic Americans have been more concerned than other racial groups that they will get the virus and that they will unknowingly spread it to others, Pew reported. With typical programs shut downfor now, no in-person small groups, no backyard Bible clubs, no mission trips to Mexicopastor Joel Ramirez, his wife Jeanne, and their three sons deliver boxes of food and sing worship songs on church members sidewalks. Their favorite right now: Si Tuvieras Fe Como Un Grano De Mostaza, or If You Have Faith Like a Grain of Mustard.

Mathews, the COGIC leader, expects the current partnerships forming among Christiansbig congregations and small, across ethnicities and traditionswill have a lasting impact on the church going forward.



It is a mobilization of the body of Christ helping one another, said Mathews. This is a time when the body of Christ is shining and denominational barriers are being demolished.

As it draws prayers and funds to inner-city churches, the initiative also shines a light on the faithful, sacrificial work these congregations have been doing all along.

Theres a song in our tradition called, May the Work Ive Done Speak for Me, Goatley said. But we live in an information age. People assume if you dont read it in a major news publication, if you dont see it online, if you dont see it in a social media thread, nothing is happening.

Mathews said shortly after he discussed the Churches Helping Churches initiative with And Campaign founder Justin Giboney on Facebook, he heard from a COGIC church pastor who serves in an impoverished neighborhood in the Detroit area.

Was his church interested in applying for a grant? No, the pastor said.

The church sent $3,000. We have needs, the pastor told him, but we feel like we can help someone else.
MIDDLETOWN  Democratic lawmakers traversed the state Friday, making their way from Danbury to Windsor to thank health care workers as well as stress the urgent need for PPEs to keep workers safe during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Six area legislators stopped at Middlesex Health Care, a nursing and rehabilitation center on Randolph Road, as part of the morning portion of the tour. The long-term unit cares for the elderly, disabled, those with dementia and other health issues.

Among those in attendance were state Rep. Quentin Phipps and Sen. Matt Lesser, both D-Middletown; Sen. Mary Daugherty Abrams, D-Meriden; Sen. Julie Kushner and state Rep. Ken Gucker, both D-Danbury; and state Sen. Will Haskell, D-New Canaan.

After conducting similar rallies across the state, the plan was to converge at the Kimberly Hall North nursing home in Windsor by the end of the day.

Phipps told those gathered they are doing heroic acts daily to protect the states most vulnerable populations: not just during the pandemic, but you have done the work long before this. It has gone unappreciated. Hopefully, moving forward, we will never forget you.

Abrams is chairwoman of the Public Health Committee and a member of the Aging Committee.

We wanted to come and look you in the eye and say thank you for all youre doing. We have been advocating for you every day. We know you have challenges, including keeping you safe along with your families, she said. The work youre doing is so important.

Members of the delegation will send a letter to Gov. Ned Lamont expressing their concerns. Abrams, Lesser and others are worried about anticipated openings across the state May 20.

The governor also announced this week that hes eyeing June 20for possibly further lessening restrictions.

I think we should be really, really careful. Weve never done anything like this before, Lesser said, noting conditions in other portions of the state, such as Fairfield County, are improving, but not in Middletown. The number of COVID-19 patients at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, which serves the region, are pretty flat.

Its not coming down. My hope is we dont move too quickly. I hope the governor really pays attention. Weve got to have the ability to test contact tracing, in place first. Lesser said.

The citys coronavirus cases continue to climb, although, like other municipalities, hospitalizations are on the decline. Its not coming down, he said.

He would be more reassured if PPEs were widely available and widespread COVID-19 testing was underway  everything you need to be safe. These are difficult times. Im thinking about you every day, Lesser said.

Nurse Filecia Milewski asked about the ability for faster testing. Lesser said in places such as New Haven, people are able to take a 15-minute test for the coronavirus. On Thursday, Lamont allowed pharmacists to dispense tests, replacing the need for patients to obtain a doctors notes.

Lesser told those gathered to visit CVSs website to sign up.

She also wondered about antibody testing. Lesser said hes not satisfied with the reliability of those tests and isnt certain antibodies in the blood of those whove recovered from the coronavirus will protect them. We dont know, but we think so.

Tasha Young, a nurse on the long-term care COVID unit, said shes worried Connecticut isnt fully prepared to open later this month.

If they open too fast or without taking enough precautions, theyre continuously putting us at risk, she said. The more people that get sick, the more people who have to come here.

Abrams praised the noble efforts of health care workers.You are there with them, taking care of them through illness and ever death.

Lamont has the sole authority to open some businesses, camps and other facilities. The way were going to get the economy back is by taking on the virus and making sure people are safe. That has got to be the priority, Lesser said.

Kushner was among those who recently met with union leaders and members of the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199. She and the others listened to stories about the horrible situation that involves workers risking their lives.

Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, made a particularly passionate plea, Kusher said.

She said that, as a black woman, she felt she could not sit by any longer. Seeing the way this is disproportionately affecting the black and brown communities and seeing low-wage workers themselves and seeing fatalities in nursing homes is unacceptable, Kusher told those gathered.

With the Capitol building still closed, legislators are unable to pass laws, she added. But what we can do is bring our voices to you and to those who cannot speak up.

We know we have to do better. We have to solve the problem and make sure everybody is having the best care. Not just the people youre taking care of, we have to take care of you, Kushner said .

We know that so often the headlines are bad news and tragic stories, Haskell said, noting that the state began reporting discharges Friday. We know there are some happy endings.

For information on coronavirus in Connecticut, visit portal.ct.gov/coronavirus.
This would be really painful news and would open up an entire different chapter because I cant tell you how many people I spoke to who took peace and solace in the fact that children were not getting infected, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 05:12:15|Editor: huaxia

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WARSAW, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Poland has marked the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II with a handful of modest ceremonies organized at a local scale due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Poles fought at all fronts of World War II, Polish President Andrzej Duda said after a wreath-laying ceremony in Warsaw, adding that "We are not forgetting about the sacrifice of those who fought on the fronts of World War II, all Poles who died during World War II, who were killed and suffered during World War Two."

Except for the unveiling of an art installation in Warsaw, events have mostly been limited to small-scale local ceremonies across the country.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Friday laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 05:31:29|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's spokesperson, Katie Miller, tested positive for the coronavirus, President Donald Trump confirmed Friday.

Calling the person in question a "press person," Trump said during a meeting with congressional Republicans that "Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive."

"She hasn't come into contact with me," Trump said, referring to Miller, wife of his senior adviser and speechwriter, Stephen Miller. "She's spent some time with the vice president."

The president said Pence knew about Miller's infection and "has done what he has to do."

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during Friday's briefing that a member of Pence's staff had been infected with the virus, without identifying who exactly the person was.

The diagnosis of Miller, 25, delayed Pence's flight in the morning to Des Moines, Iowa, as six staffers disembarked the plane due to close contact with her, according to U.S. media reports. Two journalists were also summoned to the White House for a rapid test.

A senior administration official reportedly informed the media on Air Force Two, before Miller's identity was revealed, that "the vice president and the president have not had contact with this person recently."

Miller's positive test came just one day after she tested negative. Trump and Pence also tested negative for the virus Thursday, following the confirmation that a personal valet to Trump tested positive.

Miller's infection with the coronavirus raised fresh concerns about possible transmission of the contagion among senior administration officials. Trump, however, said he was not worried, adding that "strong precautions" had been taken in the White House.

Miller is the second staffer in Pence's office to test positive for the virus after an aide's positive test in March.

McEnany said at the press briefing Friday that measures are in effect to keep the virus from spreading among staff.

"We have put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing - all of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers we are now putting in place here in the White House," she said.

Trump told reporters Thursday that he would be tested for the coronavirus daily. Enditem
T ara Reade, the woman who has accused US Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden of assault, will be legally represented by a donor for President Donald Trump.

Douglas Wigdor, who donated to President Trump's 2016 election campaign, says that he will be working for Ms Reade for free and denied that there was any political motivation behind the move.

Mr Biden, who will almost certainly oppose Mr Trump in the election this November, categorically denies the assault, which Ms Reade, his former Senate employee, said took place in 1993.

Mr Wigdor's firm said: "We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel."

President Donald Trump / AP

Ms Reade, who has said that she has struggled to find a lawyer to represent her, said in an interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly on Thursday that she wanted Mr Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

But Mr Biden, the Vice-President under Barack Obama, denied the allegations again, telling Bay News 9: "The truth is these claims are flat-out false.

Mr Wigdor has worked on several cases related to sexual harassment and assault, including several accusers of Harvey Weinstein, now serving a prison term for sexual offences.

He also spoke out in favour of Christine Blasey Ford, who came forward in 2018 with historic sexual assault accusation against Brett Kavanaugh, the nominee for the US Supreme Court.

Christine Blasey Ford / REUTERS

Mr Wigdor donated around $55,000 (44,000) to Mr Trump's 2016 election campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.

And he said that Ms Reade's struggles to find legal representation might be the result of politics, with Democrat-supporting lawyers perhaps reluctant to damage Mr Biden's campaign.

I think highly of a lot of these people, he said. These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.

Ms Reade first accused Mr Biden of touching her inappropriately in 2019.

She later came forward with more serious assault allegations in 2020, around the time that Mr Biden became the presumptive Democrat nominee.

She said she didn't speak out earlier because she was afraid of the criticism that she might get, and was still coming to terms with the alleged incident.
A luxury only afforded by multi-millionaires is being utilised by the worlds mega rich who have been desperate to flee their home countries for nations that have better managed the coronavirus pandemic.

The wealthy can secure themselves citizenship by investing between $150,000 and $12 million in the national treasury, local property or businesses of their desired new nation, according to Robb Report.

Demand for the passports for sale service has increased 42 per cent in the first three months of 2020, and enquiries have jumped 25 per cent as pandemic passports become hot property among the rich.

Australia is one of the countries most popular and considered attractive for its health system and early management of the outbreak, as well as Antigua, St Kitts and Nevis, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Austria.

Investment in overseas business and property can secure wealthy people citizenship in their desired country. Source: Getty Images

Switzerland, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and Montenegro also feature on the list of countries millionaires are seeking refuge in as cases of COVID-19 continue to climb in places like the UK and US.

Australia and Austria are considered particularly good options due to their top tier national health services and quick reaction to the spread of the coronavirus.

One Italian multi-millionaire told the publication their decision to seek overseas citizenship was motivated by international border lockdowns and the governments management of the outbreak.

We want to know there is a safe place, with good medical services, that the whole family can go to at short notice if we need to. Only citizenship can guarantee that, he told the publication.

Borders across the globe are closed to everyone except citizens entering their home country, but are open to people with a pandemic passport.

Money poured into these countries through this investment migration not only allows safe passage for the rich, but can provide much-needed stimulus to economies badly beaten by the virus.

Story continues

Wealthy people and their families are jetting off to nations they consider safer than their home country. Source: Getty Images

It depends on tourism and now there is none and there wont be for some time. It needs fresh sources of funds. Citizenship by investment is one, Dr Christian Kalin, chairman of citizenship broker Henley & Partners, told the publication.

Investment migration has shifted from being about living the life you want in terms of holidays and business travel, to a more holistic vision that includes healthcare and safety, he said.

How does it work in Australia?

Mary Crook, professor of public law and director at the Sydney Centre for International Law, told Yahoo News Australia she was aware of this kind of investment migration occurring in Australia.

She said prior to the pandemic she had been asked to advise on how to make citizenship laws more flexible, saying countries like Vanuatu were selling citizenships for around $100,000.

Dr Sangeetha Pillai, a constitutional lawyer and expert on Australian citizenship law at UNSW, said the process was rather complex and in most cases took between three months and four years.

Generally a person must reside in Australia for four years before applying for citizenship, but exceptions could be made in the case of three instances, Dr Pillai told Yahoo News Australia.

This would apply if the person is seeking to engage in a specified activity that is of benefit to Australia, they need to be an Australian citizen to carry out the activity, and if there is insufficient time for the person to meet the normal residency requirements and still complete the activity.

The Minister can waive this in writing in some circumstances, Dr Pillai said.

Where such a waiver applies, the person will need to have resided in Australia for at least 90 days before applying for citizenship, and they must provide a written undertaking to reside in Australia for at least two years after obtaining citizenship.

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.
Fifty-one inmates have tested positive for the new coronavirus at four Oregon prisons, with the largest outbreak at a 238-bed minimum-security prison along the coast, state officials confirmed Thursday.

Shutter Creek Correctional Institution in North Bend has 25 confirmed cases. Meanwhile, another outbreak, this one at the states only maximum-security prison, the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, continues to grow. Corrections officials reported eight new cases Thursday, bringing the total to 18 in a population of nearly 2,000.

Santiam Correctional Institution, also in Salem, has seven cases among its 408 inmates. One case has been reported at Two Rivers in Umatilla, which houses about 1,540 inmates.

Meanwhile, just 249 inmates overall have been tested  about 1.6 percent of the statewide prison population of 14,318.

The low testing rate has prompted prisoner advocates and union leaders to demand that the state ramp up testing at prisons with COVID-19 infections.

Tim Woolery, the lead corrections representative at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, said the union wants broader testing of employees and inmates, including those who have not been in close contact with a confirmed case.

A total of 21 prison system employees have tested positive, according to the Department of Corrections.

We have encouraged and recommended and, in fact, demanded that expanded testing, he said.

He pointed to the latest Oregon Health Authority testing guidelines, which include testing asymptomatic people in group living situations, such as prisons.

He faulted corrections officials for not doing a better job of contact tracing of employees or inmates. Without it, he said, it is impossible to know how widespread the virus is behind bars.

I would rather see everybody tested  staff and inmates  particularly where its as prevalent as Shutter Creek, he said.

In a conference call this week with prison advocates and community groups, Corrections chief Colette Peters said the agency cannot legally mandate testing for employees.

Bobbin Singh, executive director of the criminal justice reform organization, Oregon Justice Resource Center, also urged increased testing, particularly among quarantined inmates.

Its clear and well understood that carriers of COVID can be asymptomatic, said Singh.

One study published last month by the journal Nature Medicine determined that 44% of COVID-19 patients it analyzed in Guangzhou, China, had been infected by others who werent showing symptoms. That study also found people were most contagious about 17 hours before they felt any symptoms.

A study by Oxford University researchers published in the journal Science in March concluded that 50% of those infected caught the virus from presymptomatic or asymptomatic people -- noting that was similar to study findings out of Tianjin, China, where it was 48%, and Singapore, where it was 62%.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, medical director for communicable diseases and immunizations at the Oregon Health Authoritys Public Health Division, said whether to test asymptomatic prisoners is sort of a judgment call by corrections medical staff.

We dont have strict criteria around it, but the more spread we think there is, the more likely we would want to test asymptomatic people, he said.

He said he would not make a blanket recommendation for large-scale testing at prisons where the virus is present.

I would want to look at each situation, he said.

In the past two weeks, as the states testing capabilities have expanded, medical staff at Santiam, Shutter Creek and the Oregon State Penitentiary began offering tests to any inmate who wants one, said Dr. Daniel Dewsnup, an infectious disease specialist with the agency.

But many arent interested, he said.

We are finding out that there is a natural tendency to just curl up in your bunk and ride it out, he said.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Inmates worry that a positive test will mean a transfer to Coffee Creek Correctional Institution, where all but one inmate with the disease has been moved for treatment, a disruption to their routine or possible loss of privileges, Dewsnup said.

We have the capacity to test whoever we need to test, he said. But we are offering tests to people who dont want them.

He said corrections officials have begun talking with Oregon Department of Justice officials about the feasibility of involuntary testing.

Regardless, he said, more testing alone wont stop the pandemic. He said steps like moving vulnerable people out of prisons where the disease is present and imposing quarantines are key to limiting the spread of the virus behind bars.

As of Thursday, 65 inmates at a half-dozen prisons are in medical isolation with symptoms of the illness and hundreds more are quarantined because they had close contact with a confirmed case, said Corrections Department spokeswoman Jennifer Black.

She said quarantine lasts 14 days. If prisoners develop symptoms, they are the moved to medical isolation.

All inmates at Shutter Creek are quarantined. The confirmed cases are linked to the same housing unit; inmates at the prison live in dorm settings, making the virus even harder to contain.

At the Oregon State Penitentiary, the estimated 583 inmates on D block, a general population unit, also are quarantined. All of the positive cases at the prison are linked to the cell block.

In both prisons, quarantines mean staggered meal shifts, more attention to cleaning the chow halls and encouraging social distancing.

Corrections officials have been under pressure to do more to protect prisoners and staff from the threat of coronavirus. Last month, several inmates filed a class action lawsuit against Gov. Kate Brown and corrections officials, demanding better medical care, cleaning supplies and testing. They also sought measures to allow inmates to observe social distancing guidelines.

The Department of Corrections has all but acknowledged that it is impossible to follow social distancing guidance in its prisons.

In a report prepared last month for Gov. Kate Brown, corrections officials said they would need to release about 5,800 inmates  about 40 percent of the population  to enable prisons to adhere to the public health advice.

-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Three people face theft charges for allegedly stealing $10,000 worth of alcohol from a Stew Leonards in Paramus, authorities said Friday.

A rash of brazen daytime thefts occurred from April 9 to 20th at the store in the 700 block of Paramus Park, according to police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg.

In total, over 136 bottles valued at over $10,000 was stolen by the same set of individuals, Ehrenberg said in an email.

A Paramus police detective was able to identify a getaway vehicle, which led to the arrests of three people when they returned to the store, Ehrenberg said.

Richard Craig Caldwell, 54, Yolanda Emery, 60, and Tonya Hanner, 53, all of New York, were charged with theft.

The suspects have also been linked to numerous other liquor thefts in the tri-state area, Ehrenberg said.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com.
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Voices from around the nation have joined together in song to mark 75 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Dame Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again rang out across Britain tonight as it marked Victory in Europe Day with a national singalong.

NHS staff, pharmacists, transport workers, serving veterans and workers from across Britain's industries all sang to the country following the Queen's speech at 9pm.

They were joined by thousands of Britons on their doorsteps and in their homes.

Neighbours in Staffordshire took to the street in red, white and blue to sing We'll Meet Again to mark VE Day 75

Nurses on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic spread a safe distance apart as they joined in the nationwide singalong

Rail workers joined in the nationwide effort to mark VE Day 75 on Friday night

Firefighters in Croydon sang from their station donned in full kit to pay their respects on Friday

Workers from across Britain all took part in a nationwide rendition of the wartime anthem

While the moving tribute played on TV's, neighbours joined one another to sing in the street, while others filmed themselves singing along at home.

An evening of VE Day-themed viewing on the BBC led up to an address by the Queen at 9pm, the exact time her father spoke to the nation 75 years ago.

Actors, musical directors and choreographers came come together to perform an incredible socially distanced VE Day tribute from their doorways.

While the coronavirus pandemic may have put a stop to VE Day 75's larger events, Brits have been out decorating their houses to mark the special anniversary of the German surrender.

Earlier this week the Royal British Legion encouraged the public to take part in tonight's singalong by getting celebrities to record their own renditions.

Antony Cotton, Dame Joan Collins, Bill Bailey, Simon Williams, Alison Steadman, Ross Kemp and Elaine Paige all lent their voices to the cause.

Katherine Jenkins sang the wartime anthem to an empty Royal Albert Hall alongside a video of the Forces' Sweetheart earlier in the week.

Voices rang out from fast food restaurant kitchens and all manner of other work places during the broadcast

St John Ambulance paramedics were singing along as Britain joined together at song just after 9pm

Neighbours joined one another, from a safe distance, on the streets of Bromley to sing along

Children spread Dame Vera Lynn's message from their school playground - We'll Meet Again

This family in Maidstone, Kent played along to the nation singing We'll Meet Again in their garden

Royal Mail workers, who have been out delivering post throughout the pandemic, lent their voices to the chorus

Workers from across Britain appeared during the broadcast, including these two singing pharmacists

Two pearly kings gave east London a voice by singing along to the Forces' Sweetheart's iconic track

Annie Allot sings along in Kirklees Council's video to mark VE Day 75 on Bank Holiday Friday

We'll Meet Again is considered one of the most poignant and inspiring songs of the Second World War, Dame Vera Lynn would sing it to soldiers as she travelled during the war.

The song title featured at the end of the Queen's address to the nation during the early weeks of the coronavirus lockdown.

In an historic address, Her Majesty assured Britons: 'Better days will return; we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.'

Military musicians played God Save The Queen outside Buckingham Palace before Her Majesty's speech

While the parades and large scale celebrations planned for VE Day 75 had to be stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic, neighbours across the country, including in Saltburn have joined together in song to mark the anniversary

Mother and son Susan and Patrick from Lincolnshire joined in with the singalong on Friday

In Saltburn, neighbours set up chairs in the street to celebrate VE Day 75 and sing along with Britain

Neighbours in Staffordshire were out celebrating in the street on Friday evening

Faces from all walks of life featured in BBC One's choir to sing We'll Meet Again to the country
CHICAGO  The largest union representing U.S. meatpacking workers said on Friday it opposed the reopening of plants as President Donald Trumps administration had failed to guarantee workers safety.

At least 30 meatpacking workers have died of the novel coronavirus and more than 10,000 have contracted it, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents more than 250,000 meatpacking and food processing workers, said in a statement.

The pandemic caused at least 30 meatpacking plants to temporarily close over the past two months, resulting in a 40% drop in pork production capacity and a 25% drop in beef production capacity, the union said.

Earlier on Friday, the U.S. Agriculture Department said 14 plants that had closed due to outbreaks of the virus were in the process of reopening this week. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue applauded the safe reopening of critical infrastructure meatpacking facilities across the United States.
AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - Dutch industrial production declined at a faster pace in March, figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics showed on Friday. Industrial production decreased 2.5 percent year-on-year in March, following a 1.3 percent fall in February. A similar pace of fall was last reported in June 2019. Among the eight largest categories, the machine industry production grew the most in March. Production of the machine industry grew 15.7 percent in March, while transportation declined 22.4 percent. On a seasonally and working-day adjusted basis, industrial production fell 1.0 percent in March. Producer confidence declined to its lowest level since data began in 1985, due to global action taken to combat the spread of the coronavirus. 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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Mikheil Saakashvili chairman of the Executive Committee on Reforms.

The head of state signed a decree to that effect, No. 169/2020 "Issues of the National Reform Council and the Executive Committee on Reforms," on May 7, the presidential press service reported.

"I sincerely congratulate Mikheil Nikolozovich on a new responsible challenge. I believe that he will be able to give an impetus to the National Reform Council and help make important changes in the life of the country," Zelensky said.

Under the same decree, the president appointed Oleksandr Olshansky deputy chairman of the Executive Committee on Reforms.

The press service also added that the document amends presidential decrees on a unified state policy of reforms in Ukraine, ensuring the activities of the National Reform Council and the Executive Committee on Reforms and the provisions on the National Reform Council.

The decree comes into force from the date of its publication.

On April 22, Servant of the People MP Oleksandr Kachura said that Saakashvili was being considered as a candidate for deputy prime minister for reform.

Saakashvili said that President Volodymyr Zelensky had invited him to become deputy prime minister for reform and that he had already talked to the prime minister about it.

However, it emerged later that Saakashvili was being considered as a candidate for a post at the National Reform Council.

The National Reform Council was established in August 2014 as a special advisory body to the president of Ukraine on strategic planning, coordination of positions on the introduction of a unified state policy of reforms in Ukraine and their implementation. The personal composition of the National Reform Council is approved by the president.

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New Delhi, May 8 : The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has announced that its turnover for 2019-20 reached Rs 88,887 crore, "which no FMCG company can match", powered by the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This is the biggest success story of KVIC ever scripted, it said.

"The last five years under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has seen the widest acceptance of "brand Khadi" in India", it added.

"The total Khadi and village industries turnover in the year 2019-20, has reached whopping Rs 88,887 crore, which no FMCG company can match", KVIC said.

While the production of Khadi, the most eco-friendly product of sustainable development, has more than doubled in the last five years, since 2015-16; the sale of khadi has gone up by nearly three times during the same period.

Similarly, the village industry (VI) sector has also seen a phenomenal growth in the Modi era with production and sale going up by nearly 100 % in the last five years.

Looking at the performance in the last one year, the turnover of Khadi registered a growth of 31% from Rs 3,215.13 crore in 2018-19, to Rs 4,211.26 crore in 2019-20. The turnover of Village Industries products reached to Rs 84,675.39 crore in 2019-20, registering a growth of over 19% from the previous year, i.e. 2018-19, which was at Rs 71,077 crores.

Khadi's unprecedented growth during the Modi era can also be gauged by the fact that Khadi production since 2015-16, has grown at the average of 19.45% per annum which was merely 6.25% during the previous government from 2004 to 2014.

Similarly, Khadi's sales grew exponentially during the Modi government at the annual rate of 27.6% which remained as low as 6.65% from 2004-2014.

KVIC Chairman, Vinai Kumar Saxena attributed Khadi's phenomenal growth to the sustained efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, creative marketing ideas of Minister for MSME, Nitin Gadkari and the active support from various ministries.

"As a result of government's sustained efforts to revive the Khadi industry and the Prime Minister's repeated appeals from various platforms including his radio address "Mann ki Baat", to adopt Khadi as a necessity of daily life, the KVIC has been continuously going up the growth trajectory," Saxena said.

KVIC's performance in the year 2019-20, assumes greater significance. As compared to the previous year, i.e. 2018-19, it registered an increase of 31% in the sale of Khadi and over 19% rise in the sale of village industry products despite facing odds like nationwide lockdown in wake of Covid-19 and pan-India anti-CAA/NRC protests in February-March 2020.

Saxena said : "He was expecting higher results; however, due to these agitations and lockdown, several Khadi exhibitions, planned in the months of February and March were cancelled and the year-end clearance sale could not happen".

While the Village Industries (VI) products worth Rs 33,425 crore were produced in 2015-16; production went up by 96 % to Rs 65,393.40 crore in 2019-20. It also recorded an increase in sale of products by nearly 110% from Rs 40,385 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 84,675.39 crore in 2019-20.

Besides the Khadi apparels, a wide range of village industry products like cosmetics, soaps & shampoos, Ayurvedic medicines, honey, oils, tea, pickles, papads, hand sanitizers, confectionery, food items and leather items too has attracted a large number of consumers across the country and abroad. This resulted in increasing the production and sale of village industry products by nearly two times in five years.

Notably, KVIC has also made sustained strides to garner support from various state governments, PSUs like Air India, IOC, ONGC, REC and others, colleges, universities, Indian Railways and Ministry of Health among others. Further, in the village industry sector, KVIC boasts of over 150 products with in-house capacity of excellence in fields like bee-keeping, pottery and bakery, KVIC said.
State-owned broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio from Friday began broadcasting reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in their prime-time bulletins.

The segment of the bulletins on DD and AIR included the update on cities of Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in PoK.

With summer temperatures rising, comprehensive coverage in by Doordarshan and All India Radio as the national public broadcasters from across the entire territory of India has assumed focus, an Information and Broadcasting ministry statement said.

While DD News carries weather reports in its news bulletins every day in the morning and evening, All India Radio News carries all important weather updates throughout the day in its main bulletins, the statement said.

"These weather reports cover every small detail from every nook and corner of the country while highlighting extreme weather conditions across the country, temperatures of various places from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Gilgit to Guwahati, Baltistan to Port Blair," it said without specifically stating that the PoK cities have been added in the weather updates.

The state broadcasters have started the practice, but private news channels may follow suit, a ministry source said.

The move comes after the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Regional Meteorological Centre started including cities under PoK in its forecasts, a departure from its earlier format.

The IMD has started including Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad, which are parts of PoK, under the Jammu and Kashmir meteorological sub-division since May 5, Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the Regional Meteorological Department that gives forecast for the northwest meteorological division of the IMD, had said.

IMD Director General M Mohapatra had said they have been mentioning areas under PoK under its daily weather bulletin ever since the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir in the two union territories in August last year.

However, officials said it's now being mentioned explicitly under the Jammu and Kashmir subdivision.

These cities of PoK have now found a place in the overall forecast of the northwest division.

The northwest division consists of nine sub-divisions -- Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi-Chandigarh-Haryana, Punjab, east Uttar Pradesh, west Uttar Pradesh, east Rajasthan and west Rajasthan.

The development assumes significance as New Delhi has asserted that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to India.

The inclusion of Muzaffarabad and Gilgit-Baltistan in the forecast comes amid Pakistan's Supreme Court allowing elections in Gilgit-Baltistan. India had strongly reacted to the development.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
We're excited to work with Listos California to provide information that will save lives in a partnership that is aligned with the spirit of public media. This collaboration with California PBS stations will provide much-needed public safety facts, said PBS SoCal President and CEO Andrew Russell.

Listos California, a statewide emergency preparedness campaign anchored in the Governors Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), today announced the launch of a partnership with PBS stations across California to launch an on-air and online campaign focused on preparing Californians for emergencies. This first-of-its-kind media partnership, called Building Resiliency with Emergency Preparedness, is designed to reach vulnerable populations and encourage them to take free and easy steps to prepare for wildfire and other disasters as they stay home and practice physical distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The partnership  launching today during Wildfire Preparedness Week as declared by Governor Gavin Newsom  will consist of public service announcements appearing throughout the entire state across seven markets, including regional PBS stations PBS SoCal and KCET (Los Angeles), KPBS (San Diego), KVCR (San Bernardino), KQED (San Francisco Bay Area), Valley PBS (Fresno), KVIE (Sacramento) and KIXE (Redding).

Paid-media spots start airing Monday May 11 and will continue for 10 weeks with nearly 1,500 unique television and digital spots across all PBS stations and digital platforms in California.



Listos California Anthem (30 Seconds) - Simple Steps to Prepare for Wildfire, Earthquake & Flood

Listos California Anthem (90 Seconds) - Simple Steps to Prepare for Wildfire, Earthquake & Flood

In addition, Los Angeles PBS Flagship stations PBS SoCal and KCET will produce two television programs (30-minute and one-hour programs) to air statewide later in the year that will provide simple, free and easy steps to prepare all Californians, especially vulnerable populations, and will help advance public medias commitment to public safety and to keeping the public well-informed. The programs will be made available for broadcast on all of the PBS stations in California and will feature the five steps to prepare for disaster from Listos Californias Disaster Ready Guide which are to:

1. Get official alerts to know what to do.

2. Make a plan to protect your people by creating an emergency contact list and an evacuation plan.

3. Pack a go-bag with things you need.

4. Build a stay box to stay safe at home for when you cant leave.

5. Help friends and neighbors get ready.

PBS is a trusted lifeline for so many Californians, and we are excited that this new collaboration with PBS stations across the state will help bring critical, lifesaving guidance to millions of viewers, said Listos California Co-Chairs Karen Baker and Justin Knighten.

Californians trust PBS to deliver accurate, high-quality information, whether they tune in through their televisions or onlineand this campaign will provide exactly that, continued Baker and Knighten. PBS viewers value educating themselves and their families, and we look forward to bringing them information designed to keep the most vulnerable members in our communities prepared for future wildfire and other disasters.

PBS has played an essential role in informing the American public for generations, and this has never been more important than it is today, commented PBS SoCal President and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Russell. We are excited to work with Listos California to provide information that will help save lives in a partnership that is aligned with the spirit of public media. This collaboration with local PBS stations across our state will provide much-needed public safety facts in an innovative way.

Additional Quotes:

Listos California is providing a crucial service to our state, and we are proud to be a part of this campaign. It is important to stay homeand follow the official guidance from our government officials. In this time of crisis, we are proud to offer free resources and programming to keep viewers engaged and learning. - David Lowe, President and General Manager, KVIE

KPBS has earned the trust of our community for 60 years. We do not take this responsibility lightly. This campaign in partnership with Listos California will provide much-needed information about this crisis our residents want and need, and how to be prepared for future emergencies. - Tom Karlo, General Manager, KPBS

With free and accessible broadcast services and online resources, public television is in a unique position to expand the reach of Listos California and ensure the emergency preparedness and safety of Californians. - Michael Isip, President and Chief Executive Officer, KQED

ABOUT LISTOS CALIFORNIA

The Listos California Emergency Preparedness Campaign is an effort based on an investment of public funds by Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers, to ready our most vulnerable populations for disasters like wildfires, earthquakes and floods, and now public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, before disasters strike. The campaign is anchored at the Governors Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES). For up-to-date official information about the Coronavirus, visit COVID19.CA.GOV. For more information on other emergency preparedness steps, visit ListosCalifornia.org.

ABOUT PBS SOCAL AND KCET

PBS SoCal and KCET are both part of the donor-supported community institution, the Public Media Group of Southern California, which was formed by the merger of PBS SoCal and KCETLink Media Group. PBS SoCal is the flagship PBS station for 19 million diverse people across California. PBS SoCal delivers content and experiences that inspire, inform and entertain  over the air, online, in the community and in the classroom. We offer the full slate of beloved PBS programs including MASTERPIECE, NOVA, PBS NewsHour, Frontline, Independent Lens, a broad library of documentary films including works from Ken Burns; and educational PBS KIDS programs including Daniel Tigers Neighborhood and Curious George. Our programs are accessible for free through four broadcast channels, and available for streaming at pbssocal.org, on the PBS mobile apps, and via connected TV services Android TV, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

KCET is on-air, online and in the community, and plays a vital role in the cultural and educational enrichment of Southern and Central California. KCET offers a wide range of award-winning local programming as well as the finest public television programs from around the world. Throughout its 54-year history, KCET has won hundreds of major awards for its local and regional news and public affairs programming, its national drama and documentary productions, its quality educational family and children's programs, its outreach and community services and its website, kcet.org. For additional information about KCET productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org. Select original programming from KCET is also available for streaming on Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon and Roku platforms. For more information please visit kcet.org/apps.
2 1 of 2 Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Show More Show Less



The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded $97.3 million to 179 California health centers to expand coronavirus testing in low-income communities, the federal agency said Thursday.

The grants are part of $583 million the federal government is distributing to 1,385 health centers that receive funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a unit of HHS that seeks to improve health care access for uninsured and vulnerable Americans. The money comes from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which provides funding for small businesses hurt by the pandemic and economic support for health care providers and testing efforts.
With Courtly Choice taking his talent to the breeding shed after a brilliant career on the track, trainer Blake MacIntosh has a gaping hole to fill in his roster of stars. While his army of two-year-olds continues to learn the ropes, two of his older performers are primed for much anticipated returns to stakes events.

One of those bright lights is Groovy Joe -- a colt that caught the eye of MacIntosh last summer during a trip stateside.

He was at the Goshen Sale, and the mare [Chotat Milk] has not produced anything, said MacIntosh when asked about his early recollections of Groovy Joe. But I loved the mare; the mare was such a nice mare. I saw him and Ive had good luck buying out of the Goshen Sale, I bought Clear Idea and Rootin Tootin and a couple of others that have done very well for me.

Roll With Joes werent real high on peoples list [that] year, and Ive had good luck with Roll With Joes, too, he added when talking about Groovy Joes sire. I liked the colt and bought him. Paying $17,000 for that sale that year was a pretty good price because they were pretty cheap at that sale that year.

That $17,000 U.S. turned out to be money well spent when you consider the colt banked just over $230,000 -- an average in excess of $23,000 per start during an incredibly successful rookie campaign.

Hes a nice horse, its tough to judge and Im a little biased only because he always tries so hard, said MacIntosh when asked about the ultra-consistent performer. He never missed the top two all year, and the only time he raced on the Grand Circuit he won the race. Hes just a nice horse and he gives you everything hes got.

Hes matured a lot, MacIntosh added when asked about changes hes noticed in the pacer from last year to this season. I think thats a big reason why Im so high on him. Last year he was a little small and a little frail, but this year hes filled out a lot to a nice size. Hes the same size as Courtly [Choice] now. Hes just got a little go to him and a little fight. I like him, hes just a really nice horse who just does everything right.

MacIntosh and the Hutt Racing Stable have showed a great deal of faith in the star of the New York Sire Stakes program by making him eligible to more than just NYSS events in the upcoming season.

We staked him to the Somebeachsomewhere, the North America Cup, the Hempt, the Messenger and everything out in Indiana for the end of the year, claimed MacIntosh. Its scary though because I dont know whats going to happen to New York because Governor Cuomo isnt going to open things up soon. Im scared of the NYSS and what the year is going to be like for them, so Im sort of glad weve got Groovy Joe paid into some of the other races.

When you get a horse that raced 10 or 11 times and never missed the top two and then was in the final [NYSS] and had the eight-hole in Buffalo and still finished second, thats pretty good, stated MacIntosh. Hes not going to get much respect because nobody knows who he is and he never raced in the big dances, but I like him and I thought he was worth a shot of putting in the Cup. We hope that everything goes right.

One thing that hasnt gone right for MacIntosh is the scheduled return to the racetrack with the seven-time winner. That return has been postponed due to the ripple effect of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the entire industry.

As of right now what happened was when all the tracks got shut down we trained 2:20 on Tuesdays and 2:15 on Fridays for a month, stated MacIntosh when asked about his plan of attack for getting his youngsters primed and ready for stakes season. And last week we put them in racebikes and went a mile in 2:04 with them, and as of Friday well go in 2:00 with them over the farm because theyre going to have to go in 1:51 right off the hop.

While theres no certainty when it comes to racing action returning to tracks, MacIntosh is hoping -- like many in the industry -- that the wait wont be a long one.

Its looking like a June 15th start up for everything, its what were hoping for, admitted MacIntosh. So were going to plan like its June 15 so well start training them harder now. Well have to train them over the farm in 1:55 which is a big mile. That will be like a 1:53 mile over Mohawk at least. Well try to have them ready to qualify on June 1st and go from there. Thats our plan now. That gives us a month to drop five or six seconds on them. Well drop to 2:00 on Friday, and then well go 1:58, 1:57, 1:56, 1:55 the following week and then have them ready to qualify. Thats what our plan will be.

Another plan that got derailed was the one that involved one of top three-year-olds from the 2019 campaign, Fast N First. The four-year-old put some serious money on his card last season, but he hit a snag while preparing for his 2020 campaign.

He was down in New York and he was training great and he had a little slight tear in the XYZ, so we took him out of the all the four-year-old events, admitted MacIntosh. Now hes back training and hes training great and hes back 100 percent. We were going to miss everything early like the Confederation Cup, and I didnt know if wed be back in time for Quebec [Prix DEte] and the Graduate. With an XYZ [tear] I didnt want to throw him in right off the bat onto the Meadowlands. I was just going to protect him for the year and race him at Yonkers. That was the plan.

Now hes not in the Confederation Cup which is the race I want to win and one that he would have a very good shot at because of the half-mile track, admitted MacIntosh. Now its (likely) going to be in September and I wonder if theyre going to just have it as an Open.

Fast N First has shown the ability to bounce back, and MacIntosh is hoping he wont hit any bumps along the way.

Hes come back great now, and were really pleased with him and the way everything healed, said MacIntosh. Weve PRPd it a couple of times and shockwaved it and its healed up now and hes looking great. Hes actually due to train the end of this week for the first time. Hed been in 1:57 over the farm at Mark Fords and Jess [Dowse] called me and said he wasnt jogging great. I just happened to be down there the next day and I jogged him and said he sort of jogs like that but lets get him scanned. There was just like a five percent or 10 percent tear in the XYZ, but after PRPing it and shocking it hes good now.

The 2019 season in the Ontario Sires Stakes program was a challenging one based on the star power that kicked around in the provincial program all season. With that in mind, MacIntosh was patient with his youngster.

I protected him all year, Im not going to lie, continued MacIntosh. Hes more of a half-mile horse, because he doesnt wear a boot and he can get around any size track. With the [OSS] Golds not being on the small tracks anymore, its just better to protect those horses. I protected him and it worked out for us in the end by making just over $300,000.

Staying on the half-mile track is something on MacIntoshs mind once again in 2020, and as a result a trip to the Maritimes could be in order for the graduate of the OSS program.

Maybe if they race the Gold Cup & Saucer this year maybe well take him out there, said MacIntosh. It would be something different and hes not paid into anything else. I know he can get around a half and thats a good half so thats an option, too. Its tentatively slated for him to go to the Gold Cup & Saucer in August if there is one.

While that event is something to look forward to later this summer, now is the time to focus on finishing off an army of rookies.

Were going full steam ahead as if were going to qualify on June 15th, but its very tough to plot out your stakes season, added MacIntosh. The New York breds are the ones Im really worried about. I think I counted the other day around 20 two- and three-year-olds that are New York breds and thats a lot of money thats tied up. With the Ontario sired horses we just ploughed right ahead with them. I think well be OK in Ontario. Mr. Lawson [WEGs CEO Jim Lawson] said the other day it looks like six weeks, so hopefully we can get that timeline and hopefully Premier Ford is willing to do that for us.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump needled his Democratic rival Joe Biden on Friday for limiting his campaign appearances to virtual events from the basement of his home in Delaware.

Id love to see him get out of the basement so he can speak, Trump said in a telephone interview with Fox News.

Trump is eager to resume normal campaigning, which has come to a halt amid the coronavirus pandemic. His rallies are a hallmark of his Republican campaign and help energize his base and provide his team with crucial data that will be used to turn out supporters in the fall. Biden, meanwhile, is known for connecting more effectively with people in smaller settings and has struggled with large rallies, something Trump would like to highlight.

Trump made his first trip out of Washington in more than a month this week. He relies on a federal supply of coronavirus tests to maintain a traditional schedule and said hed be willing to provide Biden with that test as well if that helped resume normal campaign activities.

Trump offered to supply Biden with a rapid COVID-19 testing system. If Bidens team asked for the tests, Trump said, We would have it to them today.

Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence and anyone they come into close contact with are now being tested daily for COVID-19 after one of the presidents valets tested positive for the virus this week. On Friday, Trump revealed that Pences press secretary, Katie Miller, who is married to senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, had also tested positive for the coronavirus. The availability of the tests has allowed Trump and Pence to resume a travel schedule and to host business leaders, medical professionals and lawmakers for meetings.

The stockpile of the rapid testing machines, which provide individual results in five to 15 minutes, is largely controlled by the federal government. Trump on Tuesday personally delivered boxes of test kits to the Navajo Nation, flying them on Air Force One to Phoenix.

Responding to concerns raised last week by Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress, that his office did not have the capacity to test all lawmakers returning to Washington, Trump directed that Congress be provided with three of the testing machines.

But in a rare joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected Trumps offer, directing the test kits to first responders and others on the front lines fighting the spread of the virus.

Bidens campaign did not respond Friday to inquiries about what the former vice-presidents testing protocol has been or whether hed accept any testing help from the White House. Biden has said he wears a mask around others in his home, including Secret Service agents.
The United States has accused Russia of worsening the situation in war-torn Libya and funneling Syrian mercenaries to support Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar in his battle to capture the capital, Tripoli.

The comments from top State Department officials on May 7 came a day after a UN report confirmed between 800 and 1,200 military contractors from Russias Vagner Group are actively fighting alongside Haftars self-styled Libyan National Army that controls eastern Libya.

The report from a UN panel monitoring Libya sanctions said the Russian private security firm, which is believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has "acted as an effective force multiplier" for Haftars command as they fight the internationally recognized Government of National Accord based in the west of the North African country.

Russian support to Haftar "has led to a significant escalation of the conflict and a worsening of the humanitarian situation in Libya," said Chris Robinson, a State Department official who focuses on Russia.

The Vagner Group is often misleadingly referred to as a Russian private security company, but in fact it's an instrument of the Russian government which the Kremlin uses as a low-cost and low-risk instrument to advance its goals," Robinson told reporters.

Libya has been torn by civil war since a NATO-backed popular uprising ousted and killed the North African countrys longtime dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

The report said forces affiliated with the Government of National Accord had captured arms "typical of the weaponry observed being used by [Vagner] operatives elsewhere in eastern Ukraine and Syria. It also said Vagner forces use equipment typical of the Russian military.

Robinson told reporters that the "very heavy and advanced weapons" the Vagner Group wields in Libya indicates it is not a private company.

Moscow has denied the Russian state is responsible for any deployments.

Libyas conflict has drawn in multiple regional actors, with Russia, France, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates backing Haftars command.

Turkey, which deployed troops, drones, and Syrian rebel mercenaries to Libya in January, supports the government in Tripoli alongside Qatar and Italy.

Recruiting Syrians

The UN panel said that a Russian company has been recruiting Syrians to fight in Libya since at least the beginning of 2020.

Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, told reporters the United States believes Russia is working with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer militia fighters and equipment to Libya.

"We know that, certainly the Russians are working with Assad to transfer militia fighters, possibly [a] third country, possibly Syrian, to Libya, as well as equipment," he said.

Henry Wooster, a State Department official in charge of North Africa, urged Russia to wield its influence to get Haftars eastern government and the UN-recognized government in the west of the country to return to talks.

Previous rounds of peace talks in France, Italy, Russia, and Germany have failed to yield a breakthrough to end the fighting.

Western diplomats have blamed Haftars intransigence coupled with his belief that he can control all of oil-rich Libya through a military solution for the failure of talks. But Russia, too, has been unable or unwilling to fully leverage its relationship with the warlord to push for a cease-fire.

Asked if Haftar's foreign supporters could persuade him to halt his offensive on Tripoli given recent battlefield setbacks, Wooster said: "I dont think that in the near-term offing, at least in the foreseeable future, theres any likely prospect whatsoever that that would happen.

"For as long as there is an objective they can meet through Haftar as an instrument, we dont see them backing down," Wooster said.

The United States has urged all sides of the conflict to de-escalate, but its position is complicated by the mixed signals it has sent.

In April 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump praised Haftar after a phone call. Haftar is also backed by Jordan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, close U.S. regional partners who view the strongman as a blunt force to counter Islamist militias and political groups aligned with the Tripoli government.

But Wooster said that the United States does not support Haftar and opposes his offensive on Tripoli, adding that it is a distraction from fighting extremist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda that have taken advantage of the chaos.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters




OFX Daily Market News





Posted by OFX



USD  United States Dollar

The U.S. employment report for April was negative, as anticipated, and employers cut 20.5 million jobs in the month. The non-farm payrolls number came in better than expected at -20.5 million jobs, versus the expected number of -22 million. However, the pandemic has forced businesses to close and has kept Americans at home. At the same time, the employment rate came in at 14.7 percent, the highest since just after the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The U.S. dollar index has fallen 0.22 percent and reached a one-week low. There are expectations that the Fed will continue to do whatever it takes, while U.S. Treasury 2-year and 5-year yields fell to record lows as the futures market continued to price in more negative rates in 2021.

Regarding the U.S.-China spat, White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said, China continues to tell us that they have every intention, of meeting the requirements and implementations of the deal. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had a very constructive meeting yesterday, Kudlow said.

Key Movers

The Australian and New Zealand dollars rose for a second day as sentiment has improved due to a fresh commitment by the U.S. and China to implement the phase one trade deal. The RBA said in its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, In Australia, output is expected to contract significantly over the first half of 2020, mostly in the June quarter  While the exact size of the contraction is still uncertain, a decline in GDP of around 10 percent from peak to trough is expected.

The Swiss National Bank, which has amassed vast holdings of foreign currency due to interventions to weaken the Swiss Franc, had $94 billion invested in U.S. stocks at the end of March, according to its regulatory filing.

Expected Ranges

USD/CAD: 1.3850  1.3950 

EUR/USD: 1.0826  1.0896 

GBP/USD: 1.2266  1.2455 

Story continues

AUD/USD: 0.6495  0.6570 

NZD/USD: 0.6133  0.6176 





Posted by OFX

The post The U.S. dollar continued to underperform following the release of employment numbers. appeared first on .
Oishani Mojumder By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The opening of the much-anticipated and applauded 1500-bed Covid Centre in Gachibowli, which has been named Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences, has been kept in abeyance. Sources say that the protocols have been changed and TIMS will not take in Covid-19 patients unless Gandhi Hospital is at full capacity.

The hospital was marketed as Indias first Covid-designated treatment centre, yet it has not admitted or treated a single Covid patient till now. Officials claim that the infrastructure and the staff is ready, however basic infrastructure such as the sewage treatment plant in the hospital is yet to be completed. Speaking to Express, a doctor from TIMS, said, The protocols have been changed for the hospital.

We will be taking in patients only and if Gandhi Hospitals capacity is full and they do not have any further space. Currently, most of the patients are being treated there, and we arent even seeing a surge of cases so Gandhi Hospital can still take in the majority of the patients. The hospital was previously supposed to cater to patients by the end of April.

However, TIMS is fully equipped with both staff and medical infrastructure to tackle patients whenever they come in. We have 50 staff nurses, 30 doctors, four pharmacists and four lab technicians. In addition to this, civil works for the permanent facility has been started, along with the recruitment of permanent staff, he added.

The hospitals main sewage treatment plant (STP) is yet to be completed as the infrastructure of the sewage facility will be completed along with the adjacent University of Hyderabads engineering department. Professor Vinod Pavarala, told Express, The university Engineering Department have been in touch with engineers from TS Health and HMWS&SB departments. They will initiate action to install a STP of 300kld capacity for the Covid-19 hospital within a couple of weeks. The HMWS&SB staff will collect samples of sewage water from UoH for testing frequently.
LOS ANGELES, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumer Watchdog released "Know Your Rights When Your Family is in the Hospital" tips that every consumer should know sharing the recent changes giving patients new visitation rights for California hospitals.

"Expectant mothers about to give birth need to know that they can now have a partner or support person with them in the hospital. Moms no longer have to give birth alone," said Michele Monserratt-Ramos, patient advocate with Consumer Watchdog.

As the state begins to adjust 'Stay at Home' orders that barred nearly all family members from visiting loved ones in the hospital, the California Department of Public Health has issued revised guidelines that allow some patients to have a support person or advocate by their side. It is important that California consumers and patients know their rights while managing the stress of coordinating the health care of a family member in a hospital or nursing home, said Consumer Watchdog.

"We are experiencing trying times and there is nothing more stressful than having a child or an elderly parent in the hospital," said Monserratt-Ramos. "With Mother's Day approaching, we want to ensure that our new mothers are not experiencing childbirth alone and that our mothers hospitalized are not denied a visitor on Mother's Day."

The tips identify four are for patients in 4 categories  childbirth, pediatrics, end of life, and those with cognitive or developmental impairments  with new rights to have someone with them in the hospital. The tips are intended to help Californians navigate the changing and confusing visitation guidelines during the COVID-19 crisis (information listed below):

The "Know Your Rights When Your Family is in the Hospital" tips include visitation guidelines for:

Labor and Delivery:

One support person can be present with the patient. You don't have to face childbirth alone

Pediatrics:

If you have a child in the hospital or may require medical attention in an emergency room, one adult is allowed to be by their side

If a child requires a prolonged hospitalization, you can choose two adults as support people for your child with only one adult at a time staying with the child

Patients at End of Life:

One visitor will be allowed to stay with the patient. Your loved one will no longer be forced to die alone

Patients with Physical, Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities and Patients with Cognitive Impairments

One person will be allowed to stay with the patient when medically necessary

When a patient requires a prolonged hospitalization, the patient or family/patient representative may choose two support people with only one visitor at a time

"California consumers and patients have never faced having to undergo hospitalization and medical treatment alone," said Monserratt-Ramos. "It is critical that Californians understand that they do have their rights restored, in some cases, to have an advocate, a support person, or a family member at their side to help them coordinate their care."

With California Governor Newsom recently allowing hospitals to resume elective procedures, it is a critical time for Californians to know the rights they have regained in advocating, supporting, and visiting their family members while in the hospital.

The California Department of Public Health's All Facility Letter expanding Californians' right to have support in the hospital can be found here:

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHCQ/LCP/Pages/AFL-20-38.aspx

The consumer tips in detail:

Pediatrics

In order to provide support for pediatric patients, California hospitals have been ordered to allow parents and family members to appoint two support people with one support person or advocate to stay with the child while hospitalized. Children are unable to make medical decisions. Alleviating the confusion for the child and the concern of the family will greatly improve the delivery of patient care.

Labor and Delivery:

As maternal mortality has increased dramatically since 1987, it was critical to allow a support person to be present to support and assist expectant mothers in labor and delivery. In a busy COVID-19 environment, mothers need an advocate or support person by their side to ensure they are receiving the care they need.

Patients at End of Life:

One of the greatest concerns of family members is that their loved one was left to die alone. California families will now be allowed to stay with their family member and given the opportunity to say goodbye.

Patients with Physical, Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities and Patients with Cognitive Impairments:

California patients with physical, intellectual or cognitive impairments are unable to make medical decisions on their own. Patients with cognitive impairments can decline significantly without their support person or caregiver to assist them in receiving care and understanding and accepting the hospital environment. Medical care for patients with these impairments will improve with a support person now allowed to stay with the patient when it is deemed medically necessary.

Patients in Nursing Homes:

There is confusion within California nursing homes whether they are required to follow California's new visitation guidelines. Not all nursing homes are allowing a patient to have a visitor. Family members should request to see their loved one citing California's new visitation guidelines. If you are not allowed access to your family member's nursing home, then you can request to speak with your loved one by video chat or phone call. Our parents and grandparents need that interaction, and the nursing care staff will also see that the patient has family that is engaging in their care.

General Guidelines:

Support people may be screened prior to entering medical facilities

Support people must comply with any health facility instructions regarding the use of personal protective equipment (PPE)

Support people must stay in the patient's room and be asymptomatic for COVID-19 and not be a suspected or recently confirmed case

The California Department of Public Health encourages facilities, including but not limited to skilled nursing facilities, to create ways for residents and patients to have frequent video and phone call visits

Consumers may contact Consumer Watchdog by filing a complaint on Consumer Watchdog's website: http://consumerwatchdog.nationbuilder.com/submitcomplaint

Consumer Watchdog is a non-partisan and non-profit public interest organization. For more information, visit us on the web at: www.ConsumerWatchdog.org

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog

Related Links

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org


Last Friday (May 1), Indianas governor released a five-stage phase-in for Indiana businesses to reopen using differing dates through July 4.

The Indiana Horse Racing Commission and racetrack management have been working in conjunction with the governors office to confirm where horse racing falls within the reopening plan; and the timeline below outlines those stages. Please be aware that all information relayed below is subject to change at any time as new information becomes available.

In addition, Indiana racetracks have a reopening plan that includes additional protocols and procedures that all participants will be asked to abide by to ensure everyones health and safety as these stages are rolled out. Both racetracks will be posting those protocols on their website.

Stage 2:

May 11  Essential travel restrictions are lifted (local non-essential travel allowed). Horses currently located in Indiana will be allowed to begin moving onto the backside of both racetracks. This applies only to those trainers with horses currently located in-state. Please contact Harrahs Hoosier Park or Indiana Grands racing office to schedule your arrival date.

Stage 3:

May 24  No travel restrictions; horses originating from out-of-state are allowed. Horses currently located outside of Indiana will be allowed to begin moving onto the backside of both racetracks. This applies to those trainers with horses originating from out of state. Please contact Harrahs Hoosier Park or Indiana Grands racing office to schedule your arrival date.

Stage 4:

June 14  Pari-mutuel racing allowed to commence  spectator free.

Stage 5:

July 4  Pari-mutuel racing and county and state-fair racing anticipated to begin (with spectators) should there be no change in the Back on Track Indiana road map.

Governor Holcombs Back on Track Indiana road map includes four guiding principles the state of Indiana will utilize to determine if the stages outlined continue to move forward. Participants should be aware that if these principles are not met, the stages may be paused, or we may need to return to an earlier stage. Details regarding the principles can be found at www.backontrack.in.gov.

Our industry leaders, from racetrack management, horsemen associations and IHRC staff have been working diligently to advocate for our racing industry to get us to this point. We appreciate everyones cooperation and understanding as we move forward and navigate through this reopening process, stated Deena Pitman, Indiana Horse Racing Commission Executive Director.

(IHRC)
Huron Digital Pathology announced today that it has been granted a US patent for barcoding digital images. The invention forms the basis for Hurons image search platform. Related to the patent, the company also announced the recent publication of a paper in Nature Digital Medicine describing a major validation of its image search technology.

United States patent #10,628,736, Systems and Methods For Barcode Annotations For Digital Images describes a content-based image retrieval system and method to generate barcodes from an input digital image. The invention allows whole slide images to be represented as a bunch of compact barcodes. Once barcoded, large archives of whole slide images can be quickly and easily compared to each other, opening up new ways for pathologists to connect to the expertise of their colleagues and the rich diagnostic data contained in the worlds pathology reports.

In March, Nature Digital Medicine published a paper, Pan-Cancer Diagnostic Consensus Through Searching Archival Histopathology Images Using Artificial Intelligence. The paper reports the results of a recent validation on 33,000 whole slides from 11,000 patients, 25 organs and 32 cancer subtypes from The Cancer Genome Atlas program (TCGA) by National Cancer Institute public dataset. The key finding of this validation study was that computational consensus appears to be possible for rendering diagnoses if a sufficiently large number of searchable cases are available for each cancer subtype. The paper was written by researchers, engineers and pathologists from Huron, Kimia Lab, Vector Institute and clinical partners.
Adam Parker has covered many beats and topics for The Post and Courier, including race and history, religion, and the arts. He is the author of "Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.," published by Hub City Press.
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The first kits arrived in Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Nauru and supplies will reach a further nine Pacific island countries in the next two weeks, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement.

The equipment was procured and delivered with support from Australia, Payne added.

Many Pacific Island countries have not had in-country capacity to test for the novel coronavirus which emerged from China late last year, and have had to send specimens overseas, including to Australia.

The kits will allow the WHO to work with Pacific health departments to achieve faster and more effective testing, with results expected in less than an hour, the Australian government said.

The whole Pacific Island region has relatively few cases of COVID-19. People have been urged to stay home with some countries imposing fines of thousands of dollars and imprisonment for breaching the tough restrictions.
Senate Fails to Override Trump Veto Of Iran War Powers Resolution

Radio Farda May 07, 2020

One day after President Donald Trump vetoed a bi-partisan resolution aimed at curbing his war-making powers, the Senate failed to override the veto.

The chamber needed two-thirds to overturn the veto, but only 44 senators voted in favor and 49 opposed the move.

The original resolution was passed to stop Trump from initiating any conflict with Iran, but the president vetoed it on May 6, calling the effort and "insulting" and an attempt to divide the Republicans ahead of the fall presidential elections.

That resolution said the president cannot commit U.S. forces to hostilities against Iran or any part of its government or military without explicit authorization from Congress.

The measure stemmed from fears among both Trump's Republicans and Democrats that Trump was at risk of stumbling into war with the Islamic Republic after the targeted killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimni in Baghdad on January 3. The administration argued that the shadowy general posed an imminent threat, but some democrats were not convinced.

After Trump administration briefed lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a vote on the resolution, calling the killing of Soleimani "provocative and disproportionate."

The resolution's chief sponsor, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, said the war powers measure was not about Trump or even the presidency, but instead was an important reassertion of congressional power to declare war.

"It's not insulting. It's our job,'' he said ahead of Thursday's vote. The measure was introduced "to stop an unnecessary war,'' Kaine said.

Trump's move is the second time he has vetoed congressional restrictions on his military initiatives.

Last year he blocked a resolution to end US support for Saudi Arabia's offensive in Yemen.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/senate-fails- to-override-trump-veto-of-iran-war- powers-resolution/30599807.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.

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The relationship between Apple and Qualcomm has become much more natural following the settlement of all legal disputes between the two companies. This was revealed by Qualcomms CEO Steve Mollenkopf in an interview with Bloomberg.

Apple and Qualcomm were engaged in an intense legal battle after an FTC complaint said that Qualcomm forced Apple to use its modem inside iPhones. This led Apple to sue Qualcomm for $1 billion which then snowballed into a multi-billion dollar lawsuit between the two companies. Apple also stopped using all Qualcomm products and modem inside its devices and switched to Intel modem for iPhones.

However, with Intel engineers falling behind on their promised 5G modem development timeline, Apple ultimately decided to settle matters with Qualcomm by allegedly paying $4.7 billion and signing a six-year licensing agreement and a multiyear chipset supply agreement.

During the course of their legal battle, things got really rough between the two companies and they called out each other multiple times. However, now that things have settled, Qualcomms CEO Mollenkopf says that the relationship between the two companies is much more natural now. The discussion is now more about products and how they could be launched as fast as possible.

The CEO also details in the interview as to how the COVID-19 pandemic in China affected sales as they dropped dramatically in February. Surprisingly though, they also rebounded pretty quickly and in about five weeks, they were back to nearly the same level as a year ago.

Apple is going to use Qualcomms 5G modem inside its iPhone 12 lineup due to launch later this year. Despite things being a lot more natural between the two companies, Apple is still working on its in-house modem which is rumored to make an appearance inside one of its products in 2022.

[Via Bloomberg
On May 7, the official Weibo account of China's Jilin municipal Information Office issued a notice on the handling of the incident that a disabled military retiree was refused half-price ticket and insulted when taking out his Disabled Serviceman Certificate.

By Yang Chenxiu

BEIJING, May 8 -- On May 4, a video uploaded by a netizen in northeast China's Jilin city shows that a disabled military retiree was refused half-price ticket and insulted when taking out his Disabled Serviceman Certificate. The conductor involved was recorded saying to the veteran, "If you can't afford to live, go to hell." On May 7, the official Weibo account of China's Jilin municipal Information Office issued a notice on the handling of this incident, requiring to implement the following punishment:

First, the two companies involved, who disregarded preferential policy for veteran, will be subject to administrative punishment in accordance with the Regulations on Pensions and Preferential Treatment for Service Member.

Second, the conductor involved shall be educated and punished while being temporarily suspended from duty according to relative regulations.

Third, the companies shall make face-to-face apology for forgiveness.

According to Article 36 of the Regulations on Pensions and Preferential Treatment for Service Member, the active service members, as well as the disabled members who serve in the military or have been discharged from the active service, enjoy priority in purchasing tickets of domestic trains, ships, long-distance buses and civil aircraft with relevant credentials or disabled certificates. The disabled service members enjoy the privilege of half-off discount.

Besides, China's Ministry of Veterans Affairs, together with 20 other ministries and departments, had also issued the "Guidance on Improving the Preferential Treatments for Service member, Veteran and Other Personnel of Preferential Treatment" at the beginning of this year. The measures regulate that "service members and disabled members who serve in the military or have been discharged from the active service shall use city buses, trams, and rail transportation free of charge."

In recent years, with the gradual improvement of such preferential policies, detailed rules have been adopted across China and the priority treatment according to the law has also become public consensus. From August 1, 2006, Wuhan city took the lead in implementing free bus rides for all active service members. From May 16 this year, they can also take free subway in Zhengzhou city. And in many cities such as Nanjing and Changsha, "free use of urban public transport such as city subways, buses, and ferries by active service member" has become the norm.

However, manifest disregard of the law, preferential policies and measures continues to exist. The exposure of this incident has not only caused public attention and criticism, but also triggered deeper thinking all over the China.

Relevant data show that there are more than 57 million veterans in China who have devoted their best years to the country. Even after their retirement from the military, they still deserve to be respected by the whole society.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- With the worst of the pandemic yet to come, Latin Americans authorities are scrambling, and not just for hospital beds and coffins. Along with Covid-19, a fever of wonkery has broken out over how to reverse the collective economic contraction and to carry on once the health emergency has passed.

After seven straight years of underwhelming growth, the health crisiss knock-on effects will set back regional gross domestic product by at least 5% this year, a collapse rivaling the Great Depression. Joblessness will jump by around 35% to 37.7 million, with another 16 million Latin Americans likely to fall into extreme poverty. In Central America alone, GDP will fall by 6% and clip some $3.9 billion from the 48% of households that rely on the shadow economy, according to Manuel Orozco, of the Inter-American Dialogue. And in societies where nearly six out of 10 workers in Latin America live from gig to gig, welfare is more often than not a prayer.

Such dire prospects have mobilized governments to roll out assistance to the most vulnerable households and credit to businesses in lockdown. Many analysts want to go further, tear up the regions clubby social pact and so convert Latin America into the epicenter of a social protection revolution.

Its high time, some argue, for the rich to ante up, through measures such as Argentinas proposed homeland tax on great fortunes. Others would bring back the command economy, pump up the welfare state and bury once and for all the neoliberal model.

The social policy weapon of choice is bolder still: universal basic income. The idea is fetching and simple: Instead of clunky and often profligate trickle-down assistance from bloated welfare bureaucracies, the argument goes, governments should cut a check for everyone. The rich, middle class and poor families would be eligible for this guaranteed minimum wage, no conditions, no exclusions and no red tape.

Versions of UBI have kicked around for decades  and perhaps centuries. Lately, they have gained critical mass: A World Bank study counted 126 books on UBI, 91 of them published since 2010. Aficionados span the political spectrum. Milton Friedman, the doyen of free market economics, was an early convert. He called it a negative income tax. To many on the left, its 21st century welfare. Pope Francis is on board. At least 22 pilot experiments are running worldwide.

Story continues

The pandemic has thrust UBI to the top of the regional agenda. The cascading health and economic crises have landed the Americas at a civilizing crossroads, Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, said on April 21. To build a civilizing future, Barcena said, nations must provide a universal basic income that lifts everyone above the poverty line. The States fiscal scheme must be changed, lets put public resources into shoring up income, she said.

Impassioned as these appeals sound, basic income is no silver bullet. Yes, giving money to everyone eliminates the costly, time-sucking task of identifying and vetting families for poverty relief. All the better for the last in line whose benefits would no longer would depend on the discretion of state gatekeepers  a double win for transparency and social justice. Or so it would seem.

Yet by sending cash to everyone, including those who dont need it, universal income gets the equity agenda backward. Sure, the well-heeled would have to give back their stocking stuffer at tax time. Whether that largesse actually makes its way through the regions leaky and lopsided tax systems back to government coffers is another matter. Latin American countries do not have progressive taxation, said Chatham House associate fellow Victor Bulmer-Thomas, a scholar of Latin American economic history. The danger is that the poor end up paying disproportionately for the universal basic income transfers.

Champions of universal income recognize the challenge and argue that implementing UBI would require foundational reforms on taxation, pensions and traditional targeted poverty relief. Thats a daunting to-do list for any nation, never mind those emerging markets where encastled constituencies defend a regressive status quo. Such obstacles may at least partly explain why, despite years of debate, guaranteed basic income is still mostly an idea. Strictly speaking, there is very little evidence on the effects of UBI in developing countries, noted the otherwise hopeful authors of the recent World Bank study. None of these has been experimentally evaluated.

Whats more, Latin America already has a proven system of getting cash to those who need it most. At least 110 million Latin American families draw monthly benefits as long as they meet basic conditions, such as keeping their kids in school and vaccinated. That means one in five of the 552 million people receiving cash transfers globally lives in Latin America.

Conditional cash transfers leapfrog traditional welfare by whisking benefits directly to qualifying recipients, often through personalized magnetic cash cards. Eligible families are listed on a national household register, which is frequently updated. In Chile, Colombia and Brazil, these registries keep tabs on around 60% of families nationwide, said Armando Barrientos, a Chilean economist specializing in welfare and social assistance policy at the University of Manchester, England. Brazils pioneering Bolsa Familia cash transfer program even fights tuberculosis by speeding benefits to registered patients and keeping them committed to the rigorous multidrug therapies. These systems are rules based, not discretionary, which discourages corruption. Theres ongoing improvement in implementation, Barrientos said.Cash transfers are not flawless. Millions of workers are self employed or toil in the informal economy (58% in Brazil, 60% in Mexico, 66% in Ecuador) and so go officially unnoticed.

In Ecuador and Brazil, these invisible poor face epic queues, red tape or worse to withdraw the emergency funds they are due in the pandemic-induced economic shutdowns. Yet the exclusions are an argument for improving welfare targeting, not scrapping it.

Consider Brazil, where the deep 2015-2016 recession hit those at the bottom hardest. While average national income fell 2% from 2014 to 2018, the poorest 5% of households saw earnings plunge 39%, according to economist Marcelo Neri, who studies social policy at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. The logical solution? Close the poverty gap by topping up payouts to the more than 13 million families enrolled in the traditional Bolsa Familia cash transfer program. Brazil, laudably, did that and then extended benefits to millions more who had fallen through the welfare cracks and are now at risk in the fallout from the health crisis.

So what if government instead decided to drop the eligibility requirements altogether and spread the largesse to all 211 million Brazilians, struggling or not? Neri crunched the numbers: Handing out a universal basic income would cost Brazil 22 times more than if it targeted only on those below the poverty line. Its like throwing money from a helicopter, he said.

The result, he said, would be wasted public revenue when Brazils public debt is ballooning and the tax burden is already an enterprise-choking 35% of GDP. Thats particularly worrying in a country where temporary expenses have a way of becoming permanent, Neri said. We need to pinpoint aid and get benefits directly to those who need them most.

No one is suggesting that existing safety nets are enough. Latin America is still the worlds most unequal region. To reverse that blighted legacy, the region should indeed look beyond the pandemic and embolden its social pact. More than ventilating government cash, however, Latin America needs to fix its lopsided social edifice. A good start would be to shrink its unproductive informal sector. Half the regions workforce have no fixed job, 65% no bank account and credit is almost unheard of. The most precise measure of fairness in society is financial access, said Orozco. An inability to formalize your savings prevents you from creating wealth. You cant do this with cash in a mattress.

The pandemic and the economic misery it has wrought havent reinvented the regions civilizing agenda. But instead of striving for utopia, Latin Americas leaders need to support and improve the social policy tools that work.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mac Margolis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Latin and South America. He was a reporter for Newsweek and is the author of The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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CHICAGO  Peter Ellertsen and his wife are used to getting political phone calls, usually with automated voices shilling for a candidate or asking for money. What is not normal is the call they received a few weeks ago: A real person from a congressional campaign who didnt want to talk about politics.

The young man on the phone from Illinois Democrat Betsy Londrigans campaign said he was checking how Ellertsen, 77, and his wife were doing in light of COVID-19. He shared a hotline number in case the couple needed anything. And then they said good-bye.

Not a political pitch or anything like that, said Ellertsen, a retired college journalism instructor from Springfield who plans to support Londrigan in a closely watched rematch with GOP Rep. Rodney Davis this fall. It was a very nice  It seemed to me like the right note at this time.

The coronavirus pandemic put conventional campaigning on hold just as campaigns were ramping up, forcing candidates to scrap plans, rewrite budgets and find new ways to connect with voters and show they are the right person to lead in a crisis no one anticipated.

For some candidates, that means check-in calls to voters, food drives, distributing masks and other charitable acts have replaced the candidate coffees and campaign town halls. And, not coincidentally, the activities can provide picture perfect moments for use on social media, putting candidates in the public eye at a time when its particularly tough to get attention on traditional media outlets.

Traditional politics has faded, said Democrat Carolyn Long, who held over 45 town halls during her 2018 race against Washington Rep. Jaime Herrara Beutler and hoped to hit a similar number as they face off again this year. The town halls have moved to Facebook, and Long has started volunteering to pack boxes at a local food bank.

Eva Pusateri, a Republican campaign consultant who does bipartisan political training, is encouraging candidates to do service work, and to make sure people know about it.

Publicly they should just be acting like the leader they intend or want to be, she said. Now is not the time to be blatantly political.

Republican Jeanne Ives, whos trying to flip a longtime GOP-held suburban Chicago congressional seat that Democrats picked up in 2018, held a food drive last month, collecting so much food our offices were stuffed with it. The campaign posted photos of the haul on Facebook and other social media.

I hope the takeaway is that we care about our neighbors and recognize a lot of people lost their jobs and are in need, said Ives.

For Kathaleen Wall, a Republican running for an open congressional seat in Texas, handing out masks to first responders and businesses was a way of promoting her message that the country should safely get the economy moving again.

Ive made it clear to people in Texas that Im going to look out for them, she said.

Long said her campaign has been working to prove you dont have to be in Congress to show leadership. But the political benefits dont end with portraying a particular image.

Posting about her campaigns volunteer activities on social media has helped attract a new group of volunteers  people who might not be inclined to join up for campaign phone banking or knocking on doors, Long said. The check-in calls also are helping her learn more about whats on voters minds. Sometimes voters share information that may be helpful for the campaign to know months from now, when Election Day is closer.

We are obviously taking notes, Long said.

Rep. Andy Kim, a first-term Democrat from New Jersey who is one of the partys most vulnerable incumbents, canceled a campaign launch he had planned at his old elementary school in March. He said his campaigns new approach isnt so different from his early days as a community organizer. Hes still trying to build relationships with voters through check-in calls and events on Zoom, like a jam session during which Kim dusted off his cello for the first time in eight years.

Kim said in his district, which is home to many retirement communities along the Jersey Shore, a lot of constituents are stuck at home and crave a human connection.

Ive always really believed all politics is personal. So while this is a new tactic, its not a new value, he said. This gets at the moment were in right now.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:39:59|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Indiscriminate shelling on Thursday killed two policemen and one civilian in the center of the Libyan capital Tripoli, an Interior Ministry official said.

"More than eight shells randomly hit near the Turkish and Italian embassies in central Tripoli, killing two policemen and one civilian," according to an unnamed official in Libya's Interior Ministry.

"The shelling damaged the area near the embassies and a number of vehicles passing by," the official told Xinhua.

The UN-backed government's forces accused the rival east-based army of the shelling, to which the army has not responded yet.

The conflict between the east-based army and the UN-backed government continues for more than a year over control of Tripoli, despite repeated international calls for cease-fire.

The fighting has killed and injured thousands of people and forced more than 150,000 to flee their homes. Enditem
Earlier this week, Facebook finally announced the first 20 members of the company's long awaited independent oversight board. The body, which was initially discussed in light of the myriad scandals regarding handling of data that Facebook faced, is expected to hold an independent and autonomous power to decide upon ethical content moderation, and in ways, may set new precedent for how responsibility of content is handled in intermediary social media bodies such as Facebook's many platforms. Of the first 20 members in this board, is Sudhir Krishnaswamy, vice-chancellor of National Law School of India University in Bengaluru  and also, the only Indian to be on the board so far. With this distinction, here are the key highlights of Krishnaswamy's professional career, of which the post on Facebook's independent content oversight board is the latest addition.

Professional credentials

Krishnaswamy is a stalwart figure in independent legal practice in India. Alongside being the youngest-ever vice-chancellor of the NLSIU, he is also the co-founder and managing trustee of the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR). The latter is a noted legal organisation that is a strong advocate for fundamental rights of marginalised communities, among other areas of activity and interest. CLPR has played a key role in advancing the fundamental rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community in India.

According to the CLPR website biography, Krishnaswamy's primary areas of interest are "constitutional law, legal education, legal theory, intellectual property law and administrative law". Apart from playing these primary roles, Krishnaswamy is also a professor of law and politics at the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. Until September 2019, he was also the founding partner of Ashira Law, a boutique law firm in Bengaluru. As visiting faculty, Krishnaswamy also holds the distinction of being the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar visiting professor of Indian Constitutional Law at Columbia Law School in New York City, USA.

In his previous capacities, Krishnaswamy was a part of the Prime Ministers Committee on Infrastructure, and also the Kasturirangan Committee on the governance of Bangalore. He was also a teaching fellow in law at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, as well as a professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata. Krishnaswamy was the director of the Bengaluru-based School of Policy and Governance.

Birth and education

Krishnaswamy was born in 1975, in Bengaluru. Growing up, he graduated with a BA, LLB degree in law from the NLSIU, Bengaluru. Following this, he gained distinction as a Rhodes Scholar, and read as a Bachelor of Civil Law and Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of Oxford.
(Photo : Image Courtesy of BlackMajikMan90/Twitter)

HBO Max us planning to compete with Netflix's growing catalog of popular anime movies and series by getting Crunchyroll as their partner.

Read More: Valorant's Anti Cheat Software Makes Your PC Overheat, And Gamers Are Complaining, Here's Why





WarnerMedia's plan to compete against Netflix

With Netflix becoming a significant player in the anime streaming market, AT&T-owned WarnerMedia has partnered with the anime streaming service Crunchyroll to help win people over to HBO Max.

HBO Max subscribers will now be able to stream more than 17 different anime series which are currently available on Crunchyroll. The anime roster is arguably the cream of the crop when it comes to classic and new genres which include Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Re: ZERO - Starting Life in Another World Director's Cut, and Keep Your Hands off Eizouken.

There are, of course, more titles available, but those are just at the top of the list. Crunchyroll will be able to add more anime programs every three months, according to WarnerMedia. They'll be adding popular series like Hunter x Hunter and Death Note later this year in HBO Max.

HBO Max does not own exclusive rights to stream some of the anime, including Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which is also streamed on Netflix. The anime series will both run on HBO Max and Crunchyroll at the same time. This way, subscribers will have more access to anime.

CEO of WarnerMedia, Jason Kilar, understood the importance of anime to cast a wider net as part of their streaming strategy. Also, anime was reportedly one of the top-performing genres at Hulu when Kilar was still their CEO, according to The Information.

Other anime titles available to stream on HBO Max are Rurouni Kenshin, KONOSUBA -God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!, Bungo Stray Dogs, Berserk, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Kill la Kill, Your Lie in April, Erased, Kiznaiver, Schwarzes Marken, 91 Days, The Testament of Sister New Devil, and Rokka -Braves of the Six Flowers.

Read More: Watch The Viral Coffin Dance With "Coronavirus" Patient Gets Heavily Criticized





Obvious win-win for both streaming services

If HBO Max is successful in bringing in more audiences through the help of Crunchyroll, they could potentially sign up for the anime streaming service as well. Crunchyroll has over 2 million paying customers, which will grow with the help of HBO Max's popularity.

Although the titles are just small compared to the 1,000-plus titles on Crunchyroll, the main purpose, according to Crunchyroll's general manager Joanne Waage is to "introduce anime to a wider audience who appreciates compelling stories told through this dynamic medium."

Netflix not bowing down anytime soon

Both Netflix and Amazon have already spent millions in investing and developing new original anime series for top titles. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said back in 2015 that anime would be a core area they would invest in.

In 2017, Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos informed investors that they had "more than 30 original anime projects in various states of production these days." For sure, the number has since increased.

Read More: 5G Conspiracy Theorists Have Burned Down Almost 80 Mobile Towers in The U.K.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Amid the many pandemic-related layoffs in recent weeks, some businesses exist that are still on the hunt for new workers in New Mexico.

Those employers range from tech to food industries. Some are looking to fill staffing holes left by the spread of the virus, while others are fulfilling expansion plans set forth at the start of the year.

The list of companies is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather a snapshot of employers looking to bring new employees in under difficult circumstances.

Twisters

Twisters hasnt furloughed or laid off employees during the pandemic. But Saagar Grover, the chains business director and chief financial officer, said several employees left the company due to concerns about their own health or the health of their families, leaving the company with open positions to fill. The company is now looking to hire between 30 and 40 new employees ranging from cashiers to store managers.

Were taking the opportunity to really strengthen our team, he said.

Grover added that Twisters will also be looking to add a new director of safety, responsible for overseeing the companys post-virus response.

More information is available at mytwisters.com/careers.

Fidelity Investments

Fidelity Investments intends to hire more than 60 new people in New Mexico, part of a larger hiring spree across the country, according to company spokeswoman Janelle OHaugherty.

The company is looking to hire two to four permanent financial consultants along with more than 60 customer service representatives, who will transition from temporary to permanent roles after six months, OHaugherty wrote in an email. The company will be providing nine weeks of paid training for the customer service roles.

For the customer service positions, the company is seeking applicants who may have experience in service or hospitality industries where the person has been in people-facing roles or has recently graduated college, OHaugherty wrote. Consultants are required to have securities licenses.

The company did not disclose a salary range. For more information, visit www.ftsjobs.com/ to learn more about the customer service positions, and www.jobs.fidelity.com for details about the consulting positions.

SMS

SMS Data Products Group, a federal contractor at Kirtland Air Force Base with around 150 employees, is looking to add 12 new employees in Albuquerque. Jobs range from help desk technicians to application developers.

Melanie Shipley, vice president of human resources for SMS, said the company prefers to promote from within, and the openings were largely back-filling positions that have opened in the last several weeks. The company is looking to fill the positions as soon as possible. For a full list of openings, visit www.sms.com.

Applied Technology

Applied Technology Associates, a technology company headquartered in Albuquerque, is currently looking to fill eight roles. Tiffany Sevieri, marketing coordinator for ATA, wrote in an email the positions range from internships that pay between $15 and $22 per hour, to engineers who can make up to $200,000 per year. The company is looking to fill most positions as soon as possible.

A full list of positions is available at www.atacorp.com.

State government

While the state has largely scaled back its hiring, the New Mexico Corrections Department is hosting a live recruitment webinar Monday, where applicants can learn about open positions. Anyone interested can register online here.
President Donald Trump speaks as he departs the White House in Washington en route to Arizona on May 5, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump Describes Ahmaud Arbery Killing as a Very Disturbing Situation

President Donald Trump called a video that purports to show the shooting death of a Georgia man very disturbing.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia, on Feb. 23 when former police officer Gregory McMichael and his son chased him home.

I saw the tape and its very, very disturbing, the tape, Trump told Fox News on Friday. I got to see it, its very disturbing.

I will say that looks like a really good young guy, the president said of Arbery. Its a very disturbing situation to me and my heart goes out to the parents and the family and the friends, but yet we have to take it, law enforcement is going to look at it.

In the incident a struggle for a gun ensued, according to video footage that was released this week, which sparked outrage on social media. Arbery was fatally shot on a residential street after running unarmed through a neighborhood, and some reports said that he was jogging.

The footage was captured by an unnamed witness. It showed the father confront Arbery before his son opened fire.

Justice getting done is the thing that solves that problem, Trump said, adding he trusted Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and state law enforcement to handle the investigation.

A cross with flowers and a letter A sits at the entrance to the Satilla Shores neighborhood where Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Brunswick, Ga., on May 7, 2020. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Trump noted that there could be more details that have not been revealed in the case.

You know, it could be something that we didnt see on tape, he added. There could be a lot of, if you saw things went off tape, and then back on tape, but it was troubling.

I mean, to anybody that watched it, certainly it was a disturbing or troubling video no question about that, Trump said. But they have very good law enforcement in the state of Georgia and Im sure they are going to come up with exactly what happened. Its a sad thing. Very sad thing. I hate to see that.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) said late Thursday that Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested and would be taken to the Glynn County Jail on murder and aggravated assault charges.

Their arrests came about two days after the video that appears to show the deadly confrontation was posted online, drawing significant backlash on Twitter.

Wanda Cooper, Arberys mother, told CNN on May 3 that police told her that her son was involved in a burglary. They said there was a confrontation between her son and the homeowner over a gun.

According to that law, you actually have to be observing the crime or be in the immediate knowledge of the crime, family attorney Lee Merritt said. The only thing they have ever said is  that Ahmaud stopped by a house that was under construction and he looked through the window. We dont know if that happened or not, but even if that did happen that is not a felony that would invoke the citizens arrest statute that would make this allowable.
The rush to enable employees to work from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in more than 1.5 million new Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) servers being exposed to the internet. The number of attacks targeting open RDP ports in the US more than tripled in March and April.

Not many companies have a big stock of unused managed laptops for employees to take home on short notice, especially those who used to do their jobs from workstations with custom legacy software that only runs on certain versions of Windows. With IT teams also having to work from home, the need to manage on-premises servers remotely is also a common problem companies have to find a solution for.

As a technology that was built into Windows to enable the remote of computers, RDP can be an easy fix to such problems, but can also become a major weakness for organizations if deployed insecurely.

RDP a serious problem made worse

The RDP protocol is a frequent target for credential stuffing and other brute-force password guessing attacks that rely on lists of common usernames and password combinations or on credentials stolen from other sources. Some cybercriminals even specialize in selling hacked RDP credentials as a commodity on the underground market to other hackers who use them to deploy ransomware and cryptominers or to engage in more sophisticated attacks that can lead to the theft of sensitive data and more extensive network compromises.

"McAfee ATR has noticed an increase in both the number of attacks against RDP ports and in the volume of RDP credentials sold on underground markets," researchers from security firm McAfee said in a new report.

The company notes that the number of RDP ports exposed to the internet has grown from around 3 million in January to more than 4.5 million in March. More than a third of them are in the US and another third are in China. More than half of the machines with exposed RDP ports are running some version of Windows Server, but around a fifth run Windows 7, which is no longer supported and does not receive security updates. That's a concern because in addition to often being configured with weak passwords, RDP has also seen its share of vulnerabilities and exploits over the years.

Around half of all RDP credentials sold on the underground market are for machines in China, followed by Brazil, Hong Kong, India and the US. The number of credentials for US-based RDP hosts is fairly low, at 4% of the total, but McAfee believes this is likely because the hackers who sell them don't publish their entire lists and hold the more valuable credentials and hosts for themselves or more private and select sales.

A surge in RDP attacks

According to another recent report from VPN service provider Atlas VPN, starting with March 10, the number of RDP attacks have spiked significantly in the US, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Russia and China. This seems to correlate with the beginning of the population movement restrictions and lockdowns enforced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"In the US, the attacks peaked on April 7, 2020, with a total number of 1,417,827 attacks," the company said in its report. "Comparing the period of February 9 through March 9, 2020, to March 10 through April 10, 2020, the RDP attacks in the US jumped by 330%."

Between March 10 and April 15, the company recorded 148 million RDP attacks around the world. More than 32 million of them were detected in the US, or almost 900,000 attacks per day on average.

"These attacks systematically attempt numerous username and password combinations until the correct one is found," the company said. "A successful attack gives the cybercriminal remote access to the target computer or server in the corporate network."

Protecting RDP

First, exposing RDP directly to the internet is bad security practice, even with good credential hygiene, digital certificates and two-factor authentication. Slow patching can always lead to servers being compromised through an RDP vulnerability. RDP should always be accessible only through a secure VPN connection to the corporate network or through a zero-trust remote access gateway.

McAfee recommends the following best practices:
New Delhi, May 8 : Beauty brand Colorbar has launched #ColorbarGivesBack initiative to provide free meals to the daily wage workers, in collaboration with Delhi Police. For every purchase made on its website, the brand will be donating 25 per cent of the total bill for the cause.

Talking about the initiative, Samir Modi, Founder and Managing Director, Colorbar said: "Let's put ourselves in the shoes of those who are struggling for the fundamental basics, and the pressures they are feeling, in terms of providing for their families. During this time of crisis we have to think about the values that are making this world go round, about what makes us human - compassion and empathy, collective support and resilience, and hope for a better tomorrow." He added: "Let us not forget that daily wage workers are at - in some cases, quite literally - the foundation of the many infrastructures that keep life running smoothly for us. At Colorbar, we don't want them to face a daily reality, wherein their own foundations have been shaken to the core." People can also choose to sponsor a specific number of meals or simply contribute an amount by directly donating to the cause through their website. Every donation of Rs 325 allows for a food relief package consisting of rice, pulses, salt, oil and sugar which can feed a family of five people for four days.

(Puja Gupta can be contacted at puja.g@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
After living apart for more than two years, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, are now residing under the same roof as they quarantine at Windsor Castle. But royal fans have wondered why the couple was transported there instead of staying at Buckingham Palace or the Sandringham estate.

Read on to find out the reason behind that and why the monarch and Philip will return to separate residences again once restrictions and lockdown are lifted.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip | Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Queens statement after being quarantined with Philip at Windsor

On March 19, the queen announced that she and Philip moved to Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The royal family matriarch was driven to the castle, which is about 20 miles from Buckingham Palace, while the royal family patriarch traveled by helicopter from Sandringham in Norfolk just over 100 miles away.

As Philip and I arrive at Windsor today, we know that many individuals and families across the United Kingdom, and around the world, are entering a period of great concern and uncertainty, the queens statement read. We are all being advised to change our normal routines and regular patterns of life for the greater good of the communities we live in and, in particular, to protect the most vulnerable within them.

The monarch and the Duke of Edinburgh are both their 90s and therefore are considered among the most vulnerable who could become severely ill if they were to contract the virus.

Why they are not staying at Buckingham Palace or Sandringham

Windsor Castle | Harvey Meston/Archive Photos/Getty Images

A royal source told The Mirror that the queen was taken to Windsor because Buckingham Palace is in the middle of London and also has a bigger staff than other estates so is deemed a much more dangerous location.

The queens palace has approximately 500 staffers while Windsor only has around 100. However, during the quarantine period, it is believed that the staff was trimmed significantly and there are only around a dozen employees working while the prince and Queen Elizabeth are there.

Another reason the queen left London for Windsor is that she was due to travel there anyway in late March ahead of Easter. In past years she and her family would attend services at St. Georges Chapel and celebrate the holiday at the castle.

Prince Philip had been scheduled to leave his Wood Farm Cottage residence at Sandringham as well for that reason.

He had always planned to be with [his wife] and was moved to Windsor a week earlier to match the queens revised schedule, ITVs royal editor Chris Ship tweeted.

The queen and Prince Philip will return to their separate residences

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip | Danny E. Martindale/Getty Images

While the queen and the duke are living together now, this will not be their permanent situation and at some point they will return to their separate residences.

Since his retirement in 2017, Philip retreated to Wood Farm Cottage for a quieter life as he no longer carries out royal duties.

Queen Elizabeth, however, will go back to Buckingham Palace as that is the official home base of the monarch.

Read more: Rodents and Asbestos Are a Few Reasons Some Royals Dislike Buckingham Palace
(HealthDay)From 2001 to 2016, the incidence of testicular germ cell tumors increased across all racial/ethnic groups but remained highest among non-Hispanic whites (NHWs), according to a study published online May 8 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Armen A. Ghazarian, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Katherine A. McGlynn, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Bethesda, Maryland, examined data from 51 U.S. cancer registries to examine the racial/ethnic-specific incidence rates of TGCTs per 100,000 man-years. Annual percent changes (APCs) were estimated from 2001 to 2016.

The researchers found that 126,575 TGCTs were recorded during 2001 to 2016. NHWs had the highest TGCT incidence (6.63 per 100,000), followed by Hispanics, American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs), Asian/Pacific Islanders (A/PIs), and non-Hispanic blacks (NHBs; 4.20, 3.27, 1.72, and 1.27, respectively). Among all men, there were significant increases in TGCT incidence, with the greatest increase among A/PIs (APC: 2.47), followed by Hispanics, AI/ANs, NHBs, and NHWs (APCs: 2.10, 1.71, 1.28, and 0.41, respectively). For all men except NHBs, there were significant differences in rates by region, with the highest rates for Hispanics, AI/ANs, and A/PIs in the West (5.38, 4.47, and 2.37 per 100,000, respectively) and among NHWs and NHBs in the Northeast (7.60 and 1.51 per 100,000, respectively).

"Rising rates of TGCT among men of non-European ancestry suggests that both etiologic research and public health efforts among these populations are warranted," the authors write.

Explore further Report outlines cancer risk among Hispanics/Latinos in the US

Copyright  2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Sree Chandana M By

Express News Service

VISAKHAPATNAM: King George Hospital echoed with the cries of the LG Polymers gas leak victims and their family members from the wee hours of Thursday.

Tens of ambulances were doing the rounds from around 5 am, after officials received information from the locals. As the gas leak intensified, people ran out of their houses when they started feeling dizzy and losing visibility.

By the time officials and medical staff reached RR Venkatapuram, many people had fallen unconscious. Meanwhile, the residents of the area informed their relatives, who came to rescue of the victims.

Rajyalakshmi, who helped identify the victims, told TNIE many people didnt know there was a leakage.

My sister-in-law called me as she was unsure of what was happening and said her eyes were burning and there was smoke. We rushed there, woke up her neighbours, and realised there was a gas leakage. By then, some ambulances and fire trucks had arrived, so we just took everyone we could find and put them in ambulances and rescue vans, she recounted.

People were separated from their families, and after regaining consciousness in the hospital, they grew worried and started looking for their relatives. But most of them were admitted in different hospitals, such as KGH, Apollo and KIMS, among others.

My brother and his family live beside LG Polymers. We could only find him and his wife at KGH, not their children. My sister-in-law kept asking for them, said Krishna Bhaskar.

After making multiple calls to various hospitals and doctors, Bhaskar located the children at the Gopalpatnam Government Hospital. Many victims and their relatives had similar struggles and received little help from officials and medical staff.

After reaching the hospital, the victims were given oxygen and told to rest. Some were put on ventilators and given medication. Patients who had regained consciousness and were feeling better were told to get some fresh air. More tests will be conducted on them, and they will be under observation for 24 hours.

While still worried and grieving, relatives, victims and others were ordered by the police to leave the wards after Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy announced that he would visit the hospital.

The public could not go to Rajendra Prasad ward and Bhavnagar ward for more than two hours due to a police drill for the CMs visit.

Though disturbed, they were glad that the Chief Minister was visiting.

Its a relief that the CM is serious about such accidents and is taking immediate measures to help. Now that officials are involved, we will find a better way to deal with such accidents and our family will be safe, Teja, a victims relative said.

Doctors, equipment and treatment

As many as 316 victims were admitted to KGH, private hospitals, and community centres. While KGH took aid from the Navy for equipment to treat victims, private hospitals were reluctant to give information about their equipment.

With some doctors busy with Covid-19 duties, about 200 PG residents under the supervision of a few senior doctors, treated the victims of the gas leak, said Andhra Medical College principal Dr Sudhakar.

As of now, we are using the Multifeed Oxygen Manifolds (MOM) through which about six people can be given oxygen at a time. The situation is under control for now, with the help from the Navy, which provided MOM, and the existing equipment in the hospital. However, we will need more ventilators if the effect of the styrene lingers, he explained.

Given the fear of the spread of COVID-19, GVMC officials ensured the premises of all the wards with the victims were disinfected.

While the victims and family members were grieving over the incident, the transgender community and volunteers served water and food to them.

Some took the initiative to constantly remind people about social distancing in the hospital premises.


By Jesse C. Nelson





Seeing articles about a vaccine for COVID-19 coupled with comments by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation makes me hopeful that countries worldwide will conduct research independent from Bill's foundation.



Specifically I hope that funding from the foundation does not bind their efforts to this foundation, because there is a misunderstanding when it comes to how genuinely philanthropic it is. Make no mistake about it, this "nonprofit" foundation generates profits for its three trustees: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett.



The foundation is currently a $50 billion dollar "charitable" enterprise. Thus labeled, the foundation has been enabled to give nearly $2 billion in tax-deductible charitable donations to private mega-companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, IBM, and NBC Universal Media.



Private medical companies work on drugs and vaccines for a profit. As for giving to giant media corporations, one wonders if the almost always positive and glowing coverage of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a direct correlation with such donations to these companies.



In 2014, the foundation made a $19 million donation to an affiliate of Mastercard. The stated reason was to "increase usage of digital financial products by poor adults" in Kenya. This donation becomes even more questionable in light of the fact that the foundation has large financial investments in Mastercard through Warren Buffet's investment company, Berkshire Hathaway. As one of the foundation's trustees, Warren pledged $30 billion of his own money to the foundation. This looks somewhat like a rather large tax loophole scheme, showing how a "charitable" foundation can certainly be profit driven.



When one looks at the pharmaceutical companies to which the foundation has made tax-deductible charitable donations, in which they simultaneously own stocks and bonds, companies like Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Sanofi, Takeda, and Teva are on that list.



The foundation was asked about its donations to for-profit companies, as well as monitoring the use of the money. The reply was, "many grants are implemented through a mixture of non-profit and for-profit partners, making it difficult to evaluate exact spending." As for the U.S. government monitoring the foundation, it simply does not happen.



All of this is not meant to condemn the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is merely meant to demonstrate that through a roundabout scheme of investing in companies to whom the foundation gives tax-deductible donations in the tens of millions of dollars does generate profits for the foundation's trustees.



Likewise, we should not be so eager to trust a foundation whose main trustee spokesman has repeatedly stated that things will not get back to normal until a vaccine is developed... presumably one that everyone will be mandated to take, the purchase and administration of which will directly profit Bill, Melinda, and Warren's foundation.



My suggestion for countries worldwide is simple. Tread carefully around solutions offered directly or indirectly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and develop your own solutions without ties to this foundation.





The author (razoripress@yahoo.com), currently teaching at Dongseo University, is also a freelance writer and avid traveler, who has visited 104 countries to date.
The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday said that it has been issuing weather bulletin for regions in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir -- Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad -- asserting that they are parts of India.

This assumes significance as the country has always stood firm on its position that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to India.



IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said, "IMD has been issuing weather bulletin for the entire Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh area. We are mentioning Gilgit-Baltistan, Muzaffarabad in the bulletin as they are the parts of India."

For a long time, IMD has been issuing severe weather forecasts for Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal etc. "We were mentioning this information in our national bulletin. For the past two days, we have started mentioning this information in our regional bulletin," he said.
Tara Reade is interviewed by Megyn Kelly.

@megynkelly/Twitter

Tara Reade, the former Joe Biden staffer who alleged he sexually assaulted her over two decades ago, said in an interview that she would submit to a polygraph test if the former vice president takes one as well.

In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Reade challenged the premise for her taking a polygraph test about her allegation and said, "I'm not a criminal."

"Joe Biden should take the polygraph," Reade said. "What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence?"

"This never happened, and when she first made the claim, we made it clear that it never happened, and it's as simple as that," Biden said earlier in May.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tara Reade, the former Joe Biden staffer who alleged he sexually assaulted her over two decades ago, said in an interview that she would submit to a polygraph test if the former vice president takes one as well.

In an interview with longtime journalist Megyn Kelly, Reade challenged the premise of her taking a polygraph test about her allegation and said, "I'm not a criminal."

"Joe Biden should take the polygraph," Reade said. "What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence?"

"Does that mean we're presumed guilty, and we all have to take polygraphs," Reade asked. "So I'll take one if Joe Biden takes one. But I'm not a criminal."

Reade added she would "absolutely" testify under oath and be cross-examined by investigators.

Biden has denied all allegations and asked the secretary of the senate to look up records of any complaint filed against him, which the office declined to do.

"I believe in the survivors who that come forward like Christine Blasey Ford and the other ones," Reade said, referring to the professor who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct during high school in 1982. "I stand with them. I think there needs to be a conversation rather than a hashtag."

Story continues

Reade said that Biden had "a chance for more platforms than I have" to shed light on the incident and that Biden ought to be held accountable and drop out from the 2020 US presidential election.

Reade, 56, accused Biden, 77, of sexually assaulting her in a Senate corridor in 1993. Biden, who was a US senator from Delaware, is accused of putting his hands under her skirt without consent. She filed a police complaint last month despite the low chance of an investigation due to the statute of limitations because of "safety reasons" from online harassment, she said in a previous Insider report.

"I also wanted to make it clear that I would be willing to go under oath or cooperate with any law enforcement regarding it, because it did happen," she said to investigative journalist Rich McHugh. "Even if it was 26 years ago."

Biden has flatly denied the allegation and urged for an investigation.

"This never happened, and when she first made the claim, we made it clear that it never happened, and it's as simple as that," Biden said earlier in May.

Watch the interview clip here:

Read the original article on Business Insider
Iraqi territory won't be used as launching ground against others: Al-Kadhimi

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 8:12 AM

Iraq's new Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi says his country would never allow outsiders to use the Arab country's territory for any act of aggression against others.

Kadhimi made the remarks while addressing a parliamentary session on Wednesday, when lawmakers approved his government and ended months of political deadlock.

Kadhimi promised to organize early and healthy elections and form a transitional government that takes the country out of the crisis and toward stability.

Prior to the vote, he said, national sovereignty must be exercised in accordance with the constitution in all aspects of the country.

He underlined the necessity to bring all armed groups and militias under control of the prime minster as the commander in chief of the armed forces, and prevent Iraq from being a battleground between regional and international forces.

He also stressed the unity of the country and voiced his readiness to work with all political parties to overcome the crisis, calling his government "a solution government, not crisis government."

Kadhimi emphasized the sensitivity of the moment when Iraq is facing great economic, security and health challenges and said he would work to resolve the issues.

Solving the ongoing disputes between the Baghdad government and the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government was also among the issues he raised in his speech.

"It is a difficult stage. The challenges that Iraq faces are great ... but they are not greater than our ability to address them," he said.

"This government came in response to a social, economic and political crisis to be a solution government, not a crisis government," he added.

Pointing to protesters' demands, he promised to fulfill them and protect freedom of expression and the right to protest.

In their Wednesday session, the Iraqi lawmakers approved Kadhimi's government, ending months of deadlock and a political crisis that hit the country's stability and economy.

The MPs gave votes of confidence to Kadhimi's picks for the ministries of interior, defense, finance, and electricity, among others.

However, several ministerial candidates failed to get the lawmakers' approval, meaning Kadhimi will begin his term without a full government.

The parliamentarians rejected the incoming premier's picks for justice, agriculture and trade ministries.

They also postponed voting on the oil and foreign ministries as political parties failed to agree on candidates.

On April 9, Iraqi President Barham Saleh officially tasked Kadhimi with forming a government after the 53-year-old director of the country's National Intelligence Service received the endorsement of the majority of the top political figures.

In a tweet on Thursday, Salih congratulated Kadhimi on the formation of his new government and reiterated support for the prime minister in carrying out his "great missions."

"We went through a difficult stage in the history of the country," he tweeted.

The Iraqi president said Kadhimi's cabinet needs to be completed immediately to help deal with the country's health, security and economic challenges.

He further underlined the necessity for carrying out legal reforms and holding healthy elections.

Kadhimi will replace caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who stepped down last November following demonstrations against corruption, staggering youth unemployment and poor public services, which erupted in the capital Baghdad and then quickly spread to other cities.

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During coronavirus, getting access to medical advice without the contagion risk of getting to and sitting in an MDs office ought to be a big boon. So whats the beef?

Perhaps I was spoiled by the sensible implementation I saw in Australia nearly 20 years ago, when the insurance-hamstrung approaches in the US dont measure up. I was paying non-insured rates, which were still cheaper than in the US, which in Sydney were A$75 for a first visit to a GP, ~A$150 to A$200 for a specialist (dentists, which were not covered by the Australian insurance schemes, were more pricey). Everyone seemed to have an electronic records system that was more straightforward and doctor-friendly than US versions. But more important for this discussion, after the initial exam, doctors didnt need to have office visits to get paid. My recollection was that it was A$25 for a phone consult and A$15 to get a new prescription issued. And I dont recall there being a charge for an MD-initiated follow up.

This mode of operating fit well with the prevailing treatment bias, which was not to do much unless it looked to be warranted. The Australian MDs I met and heard about are not big on heroism. Their default seemed to be to suggest to wait and monitor the symptoms and see if they got worse. That made them markedly less fast to prescribe than American doctors.

It frustrated me, when I got back to the US, that I couldnt call most doctors between exams and say, Im having these symptoms. Do you think I need to come in? The one exception was my orthopedist around the corner. I was pretty sure I had broken my little toe by stubbing it badly. I called him the first thing in the morning to get on his schedule, telling his assistant why I wanted an appointment sooner rather than later. He called back on his first break and said, I dont want you coming in over something like this. Tape your little toe to the next toe.

Before getting to various anecdotes, one reason to have reservations about it is that it is inherently inferior to an in-office visit, as was explicit in the pricing in Australia. The doctor cannot listen to your lungs and heart, stick a light in your ear, see your skin color accurately, poke your belly if it needs poking, or examine body parts that are not behaving normally. And if the doctor provides a treatment, it would seem probable that at least for some patients, the placebo effect would be reduced.

Now since the telemedicine is cheaper for the MD (less appointment time due to less examination, no need to use a treatment room), it should be priced lower. But that isnt necessarily the case. From MobiHealthNews:

Another reason telemedicine might not save money is because of the increasing popularity of telemedicine parity laws, which require that payers reimburse for a telemedicine visit at the same rate as an in-person visit. [Dr. Ateev] Mehrotra [an associate professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School] said those laws are a big mistake from a savings perspective. Telemedicine parity laws, at least the form that say Hey you should reimburse this telemedicine visit at the same rate as an in-person visit, make it very difficult for telemedicine to save money, he said. When people talk about teledermatology, for example, they say an in-person dermatology visit costs $180 and a teledermatology visit costs $90, thats a 50 percent savings. And thats true, that will accumulate, but if you have telemedicine parity laws you make it impossible to save money in that manner.

Ten states provided for true parity and California had just joined that list. Coronavirus appears to have greatly boosted that practice, no doubt to preserve doctor incomes. From mHealthIntelligence on April 1:

CMS is adding more than 80 new telehealth services to the list of services covered by Medicare during the Coronavirus pandemic  and reiterating that all connected health services are now reimbursed at the same rate as in-person services. Tuesdays announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is a strong stand by CMS, as payment parity has long been considered a linchpin to nationwide telehealth adoption. Several states have passed emergency declarations recently that mandate payment parity in Medicaid programs and for private payers, the latter of which have long argued that they should be able to negotiate their own reimbursement rates with providers. Providers can bill for telehealth visits at the same rate as in-person visits, the order states. Telehealth visits include emergency department visits, initial nursing facility and discharge visits, home visits, and therapy services, which must be provided by a clinician that is allowed to provide telehealth. New as well as established patients now may stay at home and have a telehealth visit with their provider.

But this is unlikely to be treated as a coronavirus emergency measure and phased out if we ever return to anything like the old normal.

However, with coronavirus, I find doctors to be pushing telemedicine, which unlike my experience in Oz, means a video conference. And a lot of it seems to be a bad second best that will produce poor outcomes. For instance, I had wanted to see a physiatrist (aka physical management and rehabilitation) specialist in NYC in January, but his office was impossibly difficult.1 Now that coronavirus has apparently slammed his practice, they have been calling me regularly about setting up an initial consult for telemedicine. Huh? The doctor cant do anything important without examining me live, like test my joint mobility, look at my alignment and my gait, and poke around for inflammation. Similarly, an trainer/physical therapist has been pushing me to set up a video session. Again, I cant fathom how that works, since he cant observe me well, particularly if I were to attempt any new exercises. He cant see my form in three dimensions.

My regular MD offered to do telemedicine for a more routine matter, but with my aversion to photos and videos of me out in the wild (save for the necessity of promoting the site), I didnt understand why the video part was necessary. The informational part could all be handled on the phone. Her assistant said it had to be videoed to be HIPAA compliant. That seems odd to me. My mothers doctor is similarly pushing for her to do a video appointment, with one of us to download an app to smartphones neither of us have. The acute care service through which we hire private-duty nurses says Medicare does not require video and allows for phone appointments with MDs, so I wonder where my regular doctor got her concerns. Perhaps it is a New York State issue, or a restriction imposed by some of her insurers.

On a much bigger picture level, it is troubling but typical to see telemedicine implemented now reactively, and not proactively. Why dont hospitals have hot lines for overnight triage for those who dont have MDs or the subset of MDs that dont have after hours emergency lines? Finding a way to charge, say $50 or $100 for a quick reading (which could be credited to an ER bill if the patient was told to come in) could help reduce use and costs. And another theoretical advantage is to use telemedicine in rural areas where doctors are scarce. Yet instead of pushing deployment there, its heaviest use pre-coronacrisis in urban areas.

In other words, a practice that ought to be a boon looks set to become a vehicle for crapification. And the US medical system is pretty crappy to begin with.

_____

1 No joke, it took two months, including multiple calls with my insurer who also volunteered to read the MDs contract with them, to get past the MDs billing office view that it was illegal for the doctor to have me pay his charges in full, personally, at the time of service. When I called Cigna the first time about it, the rep and her supervisor were, not surprisingly, utterly gobsmacked that any MD would think that. I came away wondering if the office was engaged in billing fraud.
The coronavirus crisis is continuing to impact the lives of people all over the world. Britons have been encouraged to keep observing lockdown restrictions as the virus has infected a total of 206,715 people, with 30,615 deaths in the UK.

Here is your daily briefing of coronavirus news you may have missed overnight.

The governments chief statistician has said the critical R rate measuring the spread of coronavirus infections is rising.

Professor Ian Diamond said during the Downing Street press conference the uptick is being driven by the epidemic in care homes and said it was a real challenge.

The warning came as foreign secretary Dominic Raab said any relaxation of the coronavirus lockdown would be modest, small and incremental.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce plans for the lockdown to be eased on Sunday.

A reproduction rate of anything above 1 means each infected person is passing it on to more than one other person on average. Experts agree the rate must stay well below 1 to prevent a second peak of infections.

Prof Diamond said he would begin publishing data twice a week from next Thursday, showing what proportion of the population is estimated to have Covid-19.

The prime minister has urged the public to carry on fighting the coronavirus pandemic with the spirit of the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived as the country marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

Boris Johnson wrote to veterans thanking them for their valour, fortitude and quiet yet invincible courage during the Second World War in Europe.

He said Britain must display the same spirit of national endeavour shown by those who fought the Nazis 75 years ago while the country is engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus.

The truth is that no other generation of Britons can rival your achievement, Mr Johnson wrote in his tribute.

How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities Show all 6 1 /6 How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities Milan, Italy REUTERS How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities North Jakarta, Indonesia REUTERS How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities Jakarta, Indonesia REUTERS How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities Venice, Italy REUTERS How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities New Delhi, India REUTERS How coronavirus lockdowns changed the world's most polluted cities Islamabad, Pakistan REUTERS

Those of us born after 1945 are acutely conscious of the debt we owe. Without your trial and sacrifice, many of us would not be here at all; if we were, we would surely not be free.

Two minutes of silence will be observed throughout the UK at 11am on Friday as it honours the sacrifices of the Second World War generation.

As many as 15,000 pubs could be forced to shut down for good if the coronavirus lockdown continues until September, an industry chief has said in the latest warning from the hospitality sector.

The government is expected to announce how the country will take its first steps towards a return to normalcy on Sunday, but pubs, restaurants and bars are expected to be among the last to be allowed to operate again.

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said pubs need the support of the government or thousands would be forced to shutter.

I am very, very worried about the sector, she said. If you are looking [to reopen pubs] at the end of the summer, it is looking very stark indeed.

We could be losing 40 per cent of our business if they do not open by the end of September.

She added that in the future after lockdown, pub staff could offer table service to ensure a limit to the number of people in establishments, while workers could also be required to monitor toilets to ensure people are abiding by social-distancing rules.

Ms McClarkin said: There are going to be much fewer people inside our pubs and that is part of the reality going forward.

US president Donald Trump is adamant he will not wear a face mask because he thinks he would look ridiculous, according to a report.

The Associated Press reported that Mr Trump told advisors he believed wearing a facial covering would send the wrong message, according to one administration and two campaign officials whose identities are hidden.

He reportedly feels it would appear as though he is preoccupied with health instead of focusing on reopening Americas economy, which aides believe is the key to his re-election chances.

Earlier this week, the president made headlines when he visited an Arizona factory that manufactures masks without wearing one.

He later said he wore a mask briefly backstage but took it off because facility personnel told him he didnt need it. He spoke to journalists, workers and Secret Service agents, all of whom donned the facial coverings.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC: Its a vanity thing, I guess, with [Trump]. Youd think, as the president of the United States, you would have the confidence to honour the guidance hes giving the country.

Amazon warehouse workers in California have claimed the company refuses to comply with the states law guaranteeing paid sick leave for food workers as the coronavirus crisis continues, acorrding to reports.

Governor Gavin Newsom extended the policy to allow two weeks of paid leave for food workers, including workers at warehouses where food is stored. It applies to at least 500 workers in the US.

Recommended Amazon worker dies of coronavirus in New York

But Amazon told its workers that the executive order does not cover its warehouses, reported The Guardian.

Workers in Inland Empire in southern California, where infections have emerged in six Amazon warehouses, told the newspaper that the policy has forced many workers to choose between putting themselves at risk of infection or losing work.

Amazon also recently ended its unlimited paid time off policy, which allowed workers to leave work to care for a sick family member or for childcare without losing their job.

A series of strikes among retail and warehouse workers have been ongoing over the last few weeks against the companys controversial policies.

Workers are demanding stronger workplace protections, hazard pay and guaranteed paid leave.
In Kane and Kendall counties, 25 of 27 facilities that are subject to federal inspection have been cited at least once since 2017 for failing to follow infection control rules. That includes failing to wash hands and change gloves often enough after caring for incontinent residents, improper disinfecting of blood glucose monitors between uses and, in some cases, failure to properly use protective gear in the rooms of residents who were isolated due to medical conditions.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 20:47:55|Editor: huaxia

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JUBA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan's main opposition group on Friday rejected a decision to allocate states to former warring parties by President Salva Kiir as a means to resolve disagreement over power-sharing in the 10 states and three newly created administrative areas.

Riek Machar, leader of Sudan People's Liberation Movement and Army in Opposition (SPLA/M-IO) who is also the first vice president, said the decision to divide the states among the parties to the September 2018 peace deal is not inclusive.

"The allocation of the states as came in the statement is that of the president and not a decision taken by consensus," Machar said in a statement issued in Juba. "It doesn't put into consideration the relative prominence of each party has in each of the respective state or county."

He was referring to Kiir's statement issued on Thursday that the decision on the allocation of states was made at a meeting attended by all his deputies, including Machar.

The presidency agreed to allocate Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Lakes, Warrap, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, and Unity states to the incumbent government, while Jonglei, Western Bahr el-Ghazal, and Western Equatorial states were allocated to the main opposition group, the SPLM-IO.

Upper Nile State has been allocated to the South Sudan Opposition Alliance.

Machar called on Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, a body tasked with overseeing the implementation of the revitalized peace agreement, to immediately intervene and resolve the matter.

The disagreement over allocation of states to peace parties has been delaying the full establishment of a coalition government. Enditem
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at his official residence in Tokyo, Japan, in this July 2017 file photo. / Reuters-Yonhap



'Why Japan' shows liberal thinker's worldview



By Kang Hyun-kyung



Ha Jong-moon's "Why Does Japan Want to Conquer Korea?" gives an insight into the direction of President Moon Jae-in's foreign policy and goals for diplomatic footing in East Asia to those who remain clueless about the liberal government's motives.



It's an informative piece for those who want to understand Moon's position when he is handling key foreign policy issues related to South Korea's relations with the United States, China and Japan and inter-Korean diplomacy.



Despite this merit, the book reveals its limitations with its overly simplistic analysis of complex East Asian affairs and a polarizing worldview that pits Korea against Japan in all areas despite their common ground on the security front which necessitates their cooperation.



The author tries to rally support for what he believes is good for Korea's future to ensure its survival as a sovereign state at a time when East Asia is locked in a fierce diplomatic power game after China replaced Japan as the world's second largest economy in 2011.



Ha put forth a permanent neutral state as a vision for Korea.



According to him, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe aims to alter Japan's pacifist Constitution to allow the country to beef up its military in order to invade other countries and until then he is hoping that South Korea can be under the influence of the United States.



Specifically, Ha, a professor of Japan Studies at Hanshin University in Seoul, said Abe and Japanese rightists hope that the U.S. troops can stay in South Korea until Japan is ready to move forward to fulfill its diplomatic goals _ expansion_ after removing institutional obstacles.



He said the current geopolitical circumstances Korea is faced with are similar to what happened 150 years ago when imperial states locked horns in deadly power games to broaden their territories by invading and conquering other countries.



The Joseon Kingdom was a small, weak state and its leaders were not capable enough to use the world order in its favor. The country eventually fell victim to the imperial states' expansionist ambitions, forcing Koreans to become Japan's second-class citizens.



"In the late 19th Century, Japan went to war with China without revealing its ambition to invade Korea afterwards. Today, in the 21st Century, Japan has pushed for a South Korea-Japan-U.S. tripartite alliance, making a case for its necessity to counter the rise of China," Ha said in the book. "Why in the past did Japan force Joseon to open its door to the world against its will? Why did they interfere in other country's affairs to turn the tide for the sake of its own good?"

He defies skeptics who claim South Korea has no other option but to seek a neutral stance, insisting that it has to push to ensure its survival as a sovereign state.



Contrary to his observation, many experts agree that it was the United States, not Japan, which encouraged its two East Asian allies to cooperate on the security front in East Asia to counter the security threat from North Korea and China.





"Why Does Japan Want to Conquer Korea" by Ha Jong-moon
Bangladeshi authorities prepare to tow a wooden boat carrying 279 Rohingya to Bhashan Char, a controversial flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, May 7, 2020.

After insisting for weeks that it would not help Rohingya refugees stranded at sea, Bangladesh authorities relented Thursday and towed a boat packed with people to a flood-prone island, saying all refugees found at sea would be taken to the controversial site from now on.

Authorities believe the wooden boat, which was carrying 279 men, women and children, was one of at least two cramped trawlers reportedly adrift at sea after not being allowed to land in Malaysia or Bangladesh. A naval boat spotted the fishing trawler adrift in Bangladeshs territorial waters, officials said.

We rescued some 279 Rohingya at around 1 a.m. Thursday about 17 kilometers (10.6 miles) south of Saint Martins island. They were in a crowded trawler made in Myanmar, Afzalul Haque, the director of Bangladesh Navys intelligence unit, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

The trawler, now nearing Chattogram, is heading for Bhashan Char, Haque said, referring to a low-lying island in the Bay of Bengal where a small group of Rohingya was taken on May 3.

On Wednesday, Bangladeshs foreign minister told BenarNews that the Muslim-majority country would no longer accept Rohingya refugees despite pleas from international agencies concerned about hundreds of refugees stranded on at least two boats.

Dr. Enamur Rahman, the state minister for disaster management, told BenarNews on Thursday the government had decided that refugees found adrift in the sea will be sheltered at the Bhashan Char.

No new Rohingya will be allowed in Coxs Bazar, he said, referring to the southeastern district where close to 1 million Rohingya are sheltering after fleeing cycles of violence in Myanmars Rakhine state.

Bangladesh had developed housing and other infrastructure to accommodate thousands of refugees on Bhashan Char, saying it would ease chronic overcrowding in its main camps.

But rights groups had questioned the viability of the location, saying it was vulnerable to cyclones, and aid officials said it would be costly to provide services there. Bangladesh appeared to have indefinitely postponed the plan.

Officials more recently said refugees would no longer be sent to the massive camps in the Coxs Bazar amid fears of the coronavirus pandemic spreading there.

We have already sheltered 29 Rohingya at Bhashan Char. These people were floating in the sea for days, said Rahman, referring to the refugees who arrived in Coxs Bazar aboard a dinghy on Saturday.

Bangladesh, which has deployed the army to enforce social-distancing measures, has recorded 12,425 coronavirus infections and 199 deaths. But, so far, no Rohingya has tested positive in the refugee camps in Bangladesh, according to health authorities.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told BenarNews that Dhaka had no information about boats adrift within the nations territory. On Sunday, he said that the two had dropped anchor in Myanmars territorial waters.

We wont take any more Rohingyas, he said. Let other countries take them.

In the biggest cross-border exodus in recent years, some 740,000 Rohingya escaped from Myanmars Rakhine state beginning in August 2017 after Naypyidaws military launched a brutal crackdown in response to deadly attacks by insurgents on government security posts.

After the huge influx of refugees in Coxs Bazar, the government developed Bhashan Char, building apartment-type concrete homes on the island about 59 km (37 miles) from the countrys coast.

But no Rohingya agreed to go the island. On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Bangladesh should not quarantine refugees at Bhashan Char until they coordinate with the U.N. and other agencies to ensure that proper medical and food assistance are provided.

Three U.N. agencies  the UNHCR, the International Organization of Migration and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime  warned on Wednesday that the refusal of countries in the region to let boats land could lead to deaths at sea similar to what took place five years ago.

Deterring movements of people by endangering life is not only ineffective; it violates basic human rights, the law of the sea and the principles of customary international law by which all States are equally bound, the agencies said in a joint statement.

In May 2015, hundreds of people died at sea, and thousands of Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi migrants came ashore in Indonesia and Malaysia after Thailand closed its borders to smuggling boats.

On Thursday, Momen, the foreign minister, appeared to have softened his stance on not accepting any more refugees.

I still say that we will not accept a single Rohingya. But some of them have been allowed to settle at Bhashan Char on humanitarian grounds, he said. They had been floating in the sea for days. After all, they are human beings. We do not want to be so inhuman.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Photo: Courtesy of Publisher

Call me a fascist, but I love statements that start with, There are two types of people  Someone once told me, There are two types of people: those who run out of toilet paper and those who never do. (These days: not much of a choice.) Another person hit me with, There are two types of people: people who lose things and people who break things. Heres a third that Ive personally observed to be true: There is one kind of person who, when she is in a sad mood, will listen to sad music as a way of ratifying her emotion, while others will listen to happy music for its counteractive qualities.

There are books here for both types of sad people. If you want verification of your gloom  assuming, and I do, that youre gloomy  consider A Childrens Bible. If you want escapism, consider all the rest. I am here to serve.

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard

Fiction, 1983

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard $16 now 19% off $13 Photo: Molly Young The local library is closed, of course, but its got a no-contact book sale going on that works like this: Theres a shelf of books that vary extravagantly in quality and condition. You approach the shelf, browse, select your books, pick a few more because who knows how long youll be indoors, and shove your total (25 cents per title) into the book-return slot. This isnt a COVID-19specific innovation; the system has been in place for at least a decade. Perhaps your local library runs a similar operation. At any rate, I zeroed in on this Elmore Leonard book but didnt have money with me, so I decided to walk home, fetch a coin, and return. On my way, it started raining. Long story short, I didnt return to the library for three daysuntil the guilt over owing a quarter overwhelmed my reluctance to get rained on. Happily, the book was well worth 72 hours of trivial turmoil. Its a louche Miami tale of a fallen movie star whose life begins to imitate the plots of her noir films  complete with scams, goons, seduction, treachery, and sunglasses. If you want to submerse yourself in a masterful mystery with atmosphere for days, Leonard is your doctor and LaBrava your medicine. RIYL: David Mamet movies, suntan oil, suspecting foul play, hoaxes, a well-timed saxophone solo in a pop song, motel blankets (the flammable kind) $13 at Amazon Buy $16 at Indiebound Buy

A Childrens Bible by Lydia Millet

Fiction, May 12

A Childrens Bible by Lydia Millet $26 now 35% off $17 Photo: Molly Young If either of the words in this books title turn you off, as they did me (I mean, only mildly), simply flip to the author photo of Millet. She is depicted mid-sentence, as though yelling Hey! at the reader. Who could resist? Now that youre in, youll be glad to know we have a prime example of that rare and precious thing: a funny dystopia. A group of wealthy parents rent a robber barons mansion for the summer. They spend their time drinking and idling and contributing to societys decline while their collective children roam in feral splendor. The kids hate the adults with an untrammeled and creatively expressed vengeance. When a hurricane hits, they escape their summer enclosure. This is not a normal hurricane but one endowed with fearsome powers by climate change. Cell service goes down, roads wash out, shops are looted, markets crash, gas stations run dry, diseases proliferate, violence erupts. The price of tampons skyrockets to $40 per box. It doesnt precisely echo our moment, but there are recognizable events and possibilities. Sometimes it feels good to have your anxieties reflected back at you in an artful format. Now is one of those times. RIYL: A Visit from the Goon Squad, Lydia Davis, using novels as a template for living, cautious optimism, The Martian (Matt Damon movie) $17 at Amazon Buy $26 at Green Apple Books Buy

The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford

Fiction, 1971

The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford $16 Photo: Molly Young You cant judge a book by its blurbs, but lets nonetheless take a look at these two printed on the back cover of The Burnt Orange Heresy: You will enjoy it [even if] you have never bought anything more original than a van Gogh print. New York Times Nabokov would smile and approve. Nashville Tennessean How could any novel possibly be the hypotenuse of those two statements? The first is calling me a philistine and the other is guaranteeing a beyond-the-grave stamp of approval from Nabokov. I had no choice but to complete the triangulation by reading it. It marks the firstand I hope lasttime Ive been negged into starting a book. The narrator is a sociopathic art critic who hunts down an elusive painter in deep Florida and does unspeakable things. I suppose the idea of a sociopathic art critic is pretty Nabokovian. And the Times reviewer was correct in claiming even a person uninterested in art could get excited about this book. Heres a sample sentence: In the black swamp beyond the house a lonesome bull alligator roared erotically. If thats not enough to ignite your appetite, I dont know what would. RIYL: Thomas McGuane, the Gene Hackman film Night Moves, invading peoples privacy, Roald Dahl $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Indiebound Buy

WHY DONT YOU 

Give yourself the CREEPS, with some help from Shirley Jackson?

Experience catharsis the old-fashioned way, with Shakespeare? Macbeth did it for me. Something I discovered while rereading it is that HAUTBOYS doesnt mean what you hope it means.

Frolic amongst the CHINTZ FURNISHINGS and knotty mind of Iris Murdoch beginning with UNDER THE NET?

Try a novel that replicates the feeling GOING TO BED AT 8 P.M. because you can no longer bear the burden of consciousness  simultaneously dark and relaxing?

Dip into a suspenseful tale about the SEEDY UNDERBELLY of Tokyo?

Read the 1980s surf thriller that Point Break, the KLASSIC KEANU movie, was inspired by?

SUGGESTED PAIRING

Like Tiger King? Ill see your Joe Exotic and raise you an even stranger and more sinister character in Ian McEwans Nutshell.

Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission.

*A version of this article appears in the April 27, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
A German intelligence report casts doubt on the US claims that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab, noting that the charges are an attempt to divert attention from the USs inability to curb the disease, Der Spiegel reported

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that there is 'enormous' evidence that COVID-19 was made at the Chinese lab.

"Spiegel said Germanys BND spy agency had asked members of the U.S.-led Five Eyes intelligence alliance for evidence to support the accusation. None of the alliances members, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, wanted to support Pompeos claim, it said," Reuters said.

An intelligence report prepared for Germanys defense secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, argues the US allegations were a deliberate attempt to divert public attention from President Donald Trumps 'failures.'
The U.S. is making moves to blunt the long-range missile advantage that China depends on to stop the U.S. arsenal from making quick work of the PLA in air, land, and sea.

This move announces the sleeping might of the U.S. forces that have been silent. The main objective is bridging the gap to keep U.S. ships from worrying about long-distance engagement from the PLA.

But it is still acknowledged that the US has the best edge in tech, that is still eminent compared to the Chinese whose technology is not as home-grown.

Why China got a slight upper hand on the United States

China had made moves in the past because the U.S. was hampered by Cold War-era arms control treaty, the Trump administration will develop missile systems that will be long-ranged and deployed in the Asia-Pacific region.

This will give the Marines attack superiority with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The White House is asking for a budget to make advanced weapons for American forces. Soon to come is the newest new long-range anti-ship missiles to be equipped.

Reuters got a statement from China, saying that Beijing is not happy about American military efforts against Chinese bullying in the South China Sea.

U.S. effort is now in full gear to counter China's only advantage which is range war, by developing more long-range assets that will reduce China's current advantage. This has been warned in previously according to senior U.S. commanders and strategic advisers to the Pentagon that should be whittled down.

Tactical adjustments were done like the Marines in a joint attack with the U.S. Navy to destroy enemy ships with missile weaponry. Marines will push the attack as ship killers too.

Fencing in the PLA and pushing it back to Chinese waters.

Also read: United States Accuses China of Using the COVID-19 Outbreak for Illegal Expansionism

The battle plan will be placing anti-ship assets at key spots in the Western Pacific and the first island chain, commanders said. These places are the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas to fence in the PLA and disable Chinese naval forces.

In several hearings, this was explained to Congress in budget hearings. General David Berger, the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, said that "small units of Marines armed with precision missiles could assist the U.S. Navy to gain control of the seas, particularly in the Western Pacific." He mentioned that the Tomahawk missile will be the tools to give that advantage.

Tomahawk missiles were successful in the Gulf War in 1991 and have been used by U.S. warships in recent conflicts. The cruise missile is aimed at making it operational through 2023, according to top Pentagon commanders in the hearing.

Small numbers of land-based cruise missiles will not change the balance of power but show Beijing that the USS is ready to go full throttle to counter them. A combination of more US missiles, including its allies will make the PLA think twice. But, the PLA is now in the sights of new, long-range anti-ship missiles that can be mounted on US Navy and Air Force strike craft this better than the PLA's own.

Ross Babbage said,"By 2024 or 2025 there is a serious risk for the PLA that their military developments will be obsolete."

Chinese military spokesman, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, got edgy when last October he said that Beijing will not ignore the deployment of land-based, long-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

China's foreign ministry accuses the U.S. or interfering with their forceful projections, which China disapproves of.

Related article: US Warships Challenge People's Liberation Army in South China Sea as Tensions Escalate

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[May 07, 2020] Deluxe Reports First Quarter 2020 Results Deluxe Corporation (NYSE: DLX) today reported operating results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2020. Revenue was $486.4 million, slightly lower than the prior year. GAAP diluted loss per share was ($1.45), including asset impairment charges of $90.3 million and restructuring, integration and other costs of $19.7 million which were consistent with our previous expectations about our investments in the Company's transformation. The impairment charges were in the Promotional Solutions and Cloud Solutions segments and were driven primarily by the impact of COVID-19. Adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) was $1.08.



1st Quarter 1st Quarter 2020 2019 % Change Revenue $486.4 million $499.1 million (2.5%) Net (Loss) Income ($60.1) million $41.2 million (245.9%) Adjusted EBITDA $83.3 million $113.7 million (26.7%) Diluted EPS - GAAP ($1.45) $0.93 (255.9%) Adjusted Diluted EPS $1.08 $1.54 (29.9%) "We delivered solid performance in the first quarter despite the sudden and unprecedented impact of COVID-19. During the first two months of the year, the Company was delivering sales-driven revenue growth for the first time in nearly a decade. In the quarter, the Payments segment led with an 18% increase over the previous year. Total Company revenue began to soften in March with a significant decline in our Promotional and Cloud Solutions segments. Revenue continued to decline across all segments during April as COVID-19 drove more small businesses to close, at least temporarily. Despite COVID-19, we continued to make progress on our historic transformation and many of our investments are beginning to deliver positive returns. Throughout this crisis, we are doing everything we can to protect the health and well-being of our employees and their families, while delivering for our customers" said Barry McCarthy, President and CEO of Deluxe. McCarthy added, "Deluxe has ample liquidity and a strong financial foundation, which we believe will enable us to successfully navigate through this period of uncertainty, just as we have throughout our proud 105-year history. We have an exceptional team with deep experience in their respective areas who are protecting the company today, while advancing our One Deluxe strategy for tomorrow. The team has taken prudent actions to maintain cash and liquidity, including stress testing, scenario planning and aligning our expense structure with revenue trends. These actions will allow us to retain financial flexibility in the near-term and provide fuel for our rebound post COVID-19. While the road to recovery will take some time, our aspirations for the future of Deluxe remain unchanged and we remain confident our One Deluxe strategy will generate enhanced long-term shareholder returns." First Quarter 2020 Highlights Revenue was slightly lower than last year. Strong performance in the Payments segment drove an increase of 18% over the same period last year. This strong growth was offset by weakness in the Promotional Solutions, Cloud Solutions and Checks segments. Through the first two months of 2020, revenue performance was toward the high-end of internal projections and we were on track to deliver sales-driven revenue growth for the first time in a nearly a decade. Beginning in March, the COVID-19 pandemic began to negatively affect revenue. Small business closures have reduced demand for printed and promotional products and certain business services provided by the Cloud Solutions segment. In addition, some of our customers suspended their data-driven marketing campaigns.

Revenue for the Payments segment benefited from previous deals and new client wins, and this segment remains operational as a business essential to U.S. payment processing, growing 18% versus the previous year.

Net income decreased $101.3 million, driven by goodwill impairment charges of $90.3 million resulting primarily from the COVID-19 impact, a combination of revenue mix changes resulting from the challenging business environment and additional costs from previously disclosed investments in the Company's historic transformation.

Adjusted EBITDA decreased $30.4 million from the prior year, primarily due to the impact of COVID-19, revenue mix changes and previously disclosed investments in the Company's business transformation.

Cash provided by operating activities was $18.6 million, a decrease of $26.8 million from 2019, driven primarily by the same factors that impacted Adjusted EBITDA.

During the first quarter, the Company recorded asset impairment charges of $63.3 million related to Promotional Solutions assets and $22.0 million related to Cloud Solutions assets, driven by the estimated future impact of COVID-19. We also recorded asset impairment charges of $5.0 million for other intangible assets, unrelated to COVID-19.

At the end of the first quarter, the Company had $1.14 billion of total debt outstanding under its revolving credit facility, compared to $883.5 million at the beginning of 2020. The Company made an additional draw in late March in response to the uncertainty in the financial markets and expects to maintain the current level of debt for the near-term. Liquidity remains very strong with cash and cash equivalents of $310.1 million at the end of the quarter. Outlook

Due to the significant uncertainties surrounding the current business environment, the Company previously announced that it was suspending its 2020 outlook, and it is not providing second quarter or full year financial guidance at this time. Management Observations: Revenue began to soften in March, and total Company revenue in April declined 28%, although we have seen some stabilization exiting April entering May.

The Payments segment is expected to see year-over-year revenue growth, driven by new client wins and strong demand for its services, as more customers look to implement digital payment and receivables management solutions.

Cloud Solutions is experiencing revenue declines in data-driven marketing, but management believes the business will recover slightly as the year progresses. The decline of web hosting revenue will largely depend on the resilience of small businesses. Promotional Solutions is seeing the largest revenue impact of all segments and will be significantly impacted by the resilience of small businesses in the current economy.

Checks is expected to decline in line with the economy in the near-term due to delayed business and consumer spending throughout the year. Management currently expects the Company to remain cash flow positive and continues to take actions to manage expenses in line with revenue trends via salary reductions, project delays, furloughs and other actions.

Management has suspended share repurchases for the second quarter of 2020. Earnings Call Information

A live conference call will be held today at 4:45 p.m. ET (3:45 p.m. CT) to review the financial results. Listeners can access the call by dialing (615) 247-0252 (access code 5357065). A presentation also will be available via a webcast on the investor relations website. Alternatively, an audio replay of the call will be available on the investor relations website or by calling (404) 537-3406 (access code 5357065). About Deluxe Corporation

Deluxe is a Trusted Business Technology company that champions business so communities thrive. Our solutions help businesses pay and get paid, accelerate growth and operate more efficiently. For more than 100 years, we've been helping businesses succeed at all stages of their lifecycle, from start-up to maturity. Our unparalleled global scale supporting approximately 4.5 million small businesses, over 4,000 financial institutions and hundreds of the world's largest consumer brands uniquely positions Deluxe to be our customers' most trusted business partner. To learn how we can help your business, visit us at www.deluxe.com, www.facebook.com/deluxecorp, www.linkedin.com/company/deluxe, or www.twitter.com/deluxecorp. Forward-Looking Statements

Statements made in this release concerning Deluxe, "the Company's" or management's intentions, expectations, outlook or predictions about future results or events are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements reflect management's current intentions or beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to vary from stated expectations, which variations could be material and adverse. Factors that could produce such a variation include, but are not limited to, the following: the impact that further deterioration or prolonged softness in the economy may have on demand for the Company's products and services; the Company's ability to execute its transformational strategy and to realize the intended benefits; the inherent unreliability of earnings, revenue and cash flow predictions due to numerous factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control; declining demand for the Company's checks, check-related products and services and business forms; risks that the Company's strategies intended to drive sustained revenue and earnings growth, despite the continuing decline in checks and forms, are delayed or unsuccessful; intense competition; continued consolidation of financial institutions and/or additional bank failures, thereby reducing the number of potential customers and referral sources and increasing downward pressure on the Company's revenue and gross profit; the risk that pending and future acquisitions will not be consummated within the expected time periods or at all; risks that the Company's acquisitions do not produce the anticipated results or synergies; risks that the Company's cost reduction initiatives will be delayed or unsuccessful; performance shortfalls by one or more of the Company's major suppliers, licensors or service providers; unanticipated delays, costs and expenses in the development and marketing of products and services, including web services and financial technology and treasury management solutions; the failure of such products and services to deliver the expected revenues and other financial targets; risks related to security breaches, computer malware or other cyber-attacks; risks of interruptions to the Company's website operations or information technology systems; risks of unfavorable outcomes and the costs to defend litigation and other disputes; and the impact of governmental laws and regulations. The Company's forward-looking statements speak only as of the time made, and management assumes no obligation to publicly update any such statements. Additional information concerning these and other factors that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from the Company's current expectations are contained in the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. DELUXE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF (LOSS) INCOME (in millions, except per share amounts) (Unaudited) Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Product revenue $330.7 $350.6 Service revenue 155.7 148.5 Total revenue 486.4 499.1 Cost of products (121.5 ) (131.3 ) Cost of services (80.5 ) (68.4 ) Total cost of revenue (202.0 ) (199.7 ) Gross profit 284.4 299.4 Selling, general and administrative expense (237.2 ) (230.1 ) Restructuring and integration expense (17.7 ) (5.5 ) Asset impairment charges (90.3 ) - Operating (loss) income (60.8 ) 63.8 Interest expense (7.0 ) (9.3 ) Other income 4.5 1.7 (Loss) income before income taxes (63.3 ) 56.2 Income tax benefit (provision) 3.2 (15.0 ) Net (loss) income ($60.1 ) $41.2 Weighted average dilutive shares outstanding 42.1 44.1 Diluted (loss) earnings per share ($1.45 ) $0.93 Adjusted diluted earnings per share 1.08 1.54 Capital expenditures 6.4 14.6 Depreciation and amortization expense 28.4 32.4 EBITDA (27.9 ) 97.9 Adjusted EBITDA 83.3 113.7 DELUXE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED BALANCE SHEETS (dollars and shares in millions) (Unaudited) March 31, December 31, March 31, 2020 2019 2019 Cash and cash equivalents $310.1 $73.6 $61.5 Other current assets 376.1 398.6 369.6 Property, plant & equipment-net 94.3 96.5 89.9 Operating lease assets 43.9 44.4 48.5 Intangibles-net 240.0 276.1 339.7 Goodwill 736.7 804.5 1,160.8 Other non-current assets 243.4 249.6 252.4 Total assets $2,044.5 $1,943.3 $2,322.4 Total current liabilities $358.7 $407.9 $356.4 Long-term debt 1,140.0 883.5 946.0 Non-current operating lease liabilities 32.7 33.6 36.1 Deferred income taxes 4.9 14.9 49.6 Other non-current liabilities 34.2 32.5 36.7 Shareholders' equity 474.0 570.9 897.6 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $2,044.5 $1,943.3 $2,322.4 Shares outstanding 41.7 42.1 43.6 Number of employees 6,739 6,352 6,546 DELUXE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (in millions) (Unaudited) Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Cash provided (used) by: Operating activities: Net (loss) income ($60.1 ) $41.2 Depreciation and amortization of intangibles 28.4 32.4 Asset impairment charges 90.3 - Prepaid product discount payments (7.3 ) (9.2 ) Other (32.7 ) (19.0 ) Total operating activities 18.6 45.4 Investing activities: Purchases of capital assets (6.4 ) (14.6 ) Other 0.4 (0.2 ) Total investing activities (6.0 ) (14.8 ) Financing activities: Net change in debt 256.5 36.0 Dividends (12.7 ) (13.1 ) Share repurchases (14.0 ) (50.0 ) Shares issued under employee plans 1.7 1.5 Net change in customer funds obligations (19.4 ) (9.9 ) Other (1.0 ) (3.9 ) Total financing activities 211.1 (39.4 ) Effect of exchange rate change on cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents (12.7 ) 2.0 Net change in cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents 211.0 (6.8 ) Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents, beginning of period 174.8 145.3 Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents, end of period $385.8 $138.5 Free cash flow $12.2 $30.8 DELUXE CORPORATION SEGMENT INFORMATION (In millions) (Unaudited) Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Revenue: Payments $77.0 $65.2 Cloud Solutions 76.0 78.3 Promotional Solutions 142.8 155.8 Checks 190.6 199.8 Total $486.4 $499.1 Adjusted EBITDA: Payments $18.0 $16.9 Cloud Solutions 14.9 17.1 Promotional Solutions 11.2 23.6 Checks 90.7 102.2 Corporate (51.5 ) (46.1 ) Total $83.3 $113.7 Adjusted EBITDA Margin: Payments 23.4 % 25.9 % Cloud Solutions 19.6 % 21.8 % Promotional Solutions 7.8 % 15.1 % Checks 47.6 % 51.2 % Total 17.1 % 22.8 % Effective January 1, 2020, the Company reorganized its operations into four reportable business segments, based on its product and service offerings. In addition, management began utilizing Adjusted EBITDA to determine the allocation of Company resources and to assess segment operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA is the measure of segment performance that will be presented in the Company's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification 280. Corporate consists of those costs that are not directly attributable to a business segment, primarily marketing, accounting, information technology, facilities, executive management, and legal, tax and treasury costs that support the corporate function. Corporate also includes other income. Prior period information has been revised to reflect these changes. A reconciliation of net (loss) income to total Adjusted EBITDA can be found later in this release. DELUXE CORPORATION

RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP MEASURES

(in millions)

(Unaudited) EBITDA AND ADJUSTED EBITDA Management discloses EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA because it believes they are useful in evaluating our operating performance, as the calculation eliminates the effect of interest expense, income taxes, the accounting effects of capital investments (i.e., depreciation and amortization) and in the case of Adjusted EBITDA, certain items, as presented below, that may vary for companies for reasons unrelated to overall operating performance. In addition, management utilizes Adjusted EBITDA to assess the operating results and performance of the business, to perform analytical comparisons and to identify strategies to improve performance. Management also believes that an increasing EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA depict an increase in the value of the company. Management does not consider EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA to be measures of cash flow, as they do not consider certain cash requirements such as interest, income taxes, debt service payments or capital investments. Management does not consider EBITDA or Adjusted EBITDA to be substitutes for operating income or net income. Instead, management believes that EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are useful performance measures that should be considered in addition to GAAP performance measures. Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Net (loss) income ($60.1 ) $41.2 Interest expense 7.0 9.3 Income tax (benefit) provision (3.2 ) 15.0 Depreciation and amortization expense 28.4 32.4 EBITDA (27.9 ) 97.9 Asset impairment charges 90.3 - Restructuring, integration and other costs 19.7 6.3 CEO transition costs (0.2 ) 5.5 Share-based compensation expense 3.6 3.3 Acquisition transaction costs - 0.2 Certain legal-related expense (2.2 ) 0.4 Loss on sales of businesses and customer lists - 0.1 Adjusted EBITDA $83.3 $113.7 DELUXE CORPORATION

RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP MEASURES (continued)

(in millions)

(Unaudited) ADJUSTED DILUTED EPS By excluding the impact of non-cash items or items that may not be indicative of ongoing operations, management believes that Adjusted Diluted EPS provides useful comparable information to assist in analyzing the Company's current and future operating performance. As such, Adjusted Diluted EPS is one of the key financial performance metrics used to assess the operating results and performance of the business and to identify strategies to improve performance. It is reasonable to expect that one or more of the excluded items will occur in future periods, but the amounts recognized may vary significantly. Management does not consider Adjusted Diluted EPS to be a substitute for GAAP performance measures but believes that it is a useful performance measure that should be considered in addition to GAAP performance measures. Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Net (loss) income ($60.1 ) $41.2 Asset impairment charges 90.3 - Acquisition amortization 14.8 19.0 Restructuring, integration and other costs 19.7 6.3 CEO transition costs (0.2 ) 5.5 Share-based compensation expense 3.6 3.3 Acquisition transaction costs - 0.2 Certain legal-related expense (2.2 ) 0.4 Loss on sales of businesses and customer lists - 0.1 Adjustments, pre-tax 126.0 34.8 Income tax provision impact of pre-tax adjustments(1) (19.2 ) (7.9 ) Adjustments, net of tax 106.8 26.9 Adjusted net income 46.7 68.1 Income allocated to participating securities (0.1 ) (0.1 ) Re-measurement of share-based awards classified as liabilities (0.8 ) - Adjusted income available to common shareholders $45.8 $68.0 GAAP Diluted Loss per Share ($1.45 ) $0.93 Adjustments, net of tax 2.53 0.61 Adjusted Diluted EPS(2) $1.08 $1.54 (1) The tax effect of the pretax adjustments considers the tax treatment and related tax rate(s) that apply to each adjustment in the applicable tax jurisdiction(s). Generally, this results in a tax impact that approximates the U.S. effective tax rate for each adjustment. However, the tax impact of certain adjustments, such as asset impairment charges, share-based compensation expense and CEO transition costs, depends on whether the amounts are deductible in the respective tax jurisdictions and the applicable effective tax rate(s) in those jurisdictions. (2) The total of weighted-average shares and potential common shares outstanding used in the calculation of adjusted diluted EPS for the first quarter of 2020 was 155 thousand shares higher than that used in the GAAP diluted loss per share calculation. Because of the net loss in the first quarter of 2020, the GAAP calculation excluded a higher number of share-based compensation awards because their effect would have been antidilutive. DELUXE CORPORATION

RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP MEASURES (continued)

(in millions)

(Unaudited) FREE CASH FLOW Management believes that free cash flow is an important indicator of cash available for debt service and for shareholders, after making capital investments to maintain or expand the Company's asset base. Free cash flow is limited and not all of the Company's free cash flow is available for discretionary spending, as the Company may have mandatory debt payments and other cash requirements that must be deducted from its cash available for future use. Free cash flow is not a substitute for GAAP liquidity measures. Instead, management believes that this measurement provides an additional metric to compare cash generated by operations on a consistent basis and to provide insight into the cash flow available to fund items such as share repurchases, dividends, mandatory and discretionary debt reduction and acquisitions or other strategic investments. Quarter Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Net cash provided by operating activities $18.6 $45.4 Purchases of capital assets (6.4 ) (14.6 ) Free cash flow $12.2 $30.8 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507005908/en/

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The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) launched an emergency coronavirus appeal Friday, saying Palestinians across the Middle East were suffering a devastating socio-economic impact.

The agency appealed for $93.4 million for the next three months to provide food and cash assistance to the vulnerable.

While the number of Palestinian refugees infected with COVID-19 has so far been relatively low, they often work in informal sectors and are facing devastating economic repercussions from the crisis, UNRWA said.

In the Gaza Strip, where the majority of the two million population are refugees, unemployment could jump from 50 to 70 percent due to the crisis, said Matthias Schmale, UNRWA's head in the Palestinian territory.

UNRWA provides support for millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, but primarily in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.

This includes schooling and medical services, with the organisation often operating as a de facto state in refugee camps.

Without the funds schools for millions of children may not be able to reopen, UNRWA officials said.

The United States, traditionally the largest individual donor to the organisation with around $300 million annually, cut all funding to the body in 2018 as relations with the Palestinian government broke down.

UNRWA is not affiliated with the government and accused Trump of politicising humanitarian aid.

Elizabeth Campbell, the agency's Washington director, told an online press conference they were launching the appeal "amidst the biggest financial crisis in our history".

In March, 59 US Congress members wrote to Trump's administration urging him to reinstate the funding in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 12:28:04|Editor: huaxia

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SYDNEY, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Border Force (ABF) revealed on Friday it had seized thousands of doses of the anti-malarial medicine hydroxychloroquine after it was touted as a potential cure for the COVID-19.

On Friday, the ABF warned Australians not to import and ingest the prescription-only drug, having intercepted dozens of illegal consignments since February, totalling over 6,000 tablets.

"Whether its individuals wanting to self-prescribe, or criminals aiming to sell the drug on the black market, our officers have the technology, skills and innovative processes to detect and disrupt their illegal importations," ABF Acting Commander Susan Drennan said.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump described hydroxychloroquine as a potential "game-changer" in the fight against the COVID-19, creating a global surge of interest in the medicine.

However, much of the excitement has since waned as inconclusive clinical results and potential health risks associated with the drug became apparent.

According to Australian government regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA), hydroxychloroquine can cause serious health issues including cardiac arrest, irreversible eye damage and severe depletion of blood sugar, potentially leading to coma.

In a medical editorial published on Friday, Associate Professor Darren Roberts from St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney warned that the use of unproven remedies for the COVID-19 posed a significant risk to public health.

"Some studies publicised in the media have been rushed to be promoted before thorough review by other scientists," he explained.

"A medicine may be found to be unsafe if not used properly, as in a recent Brazilian study using the medicine chloroquine. The study was stopped early because of heart problems and even death with high doses. There may be similar concerns about the medicine hydroxychloroquine."

"People should talk to a health professional for the best advice for the COVID-19 based on the latest evidence," he said. Enditem
May 8 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- Moderna Inc announced on Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration had cleared its application to proceed to a clinical trial of an experimental vaccine for the coronavirus involving about 600 people. https://nyti.ms/35H8H9T

- Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy on Thursday and became the first major department store group to file for protection during the coronavirus pandemic. https://nyti.ms/3djfyZQ

- Democratic senators on Thursday questioned whether Amazon retaliated against whistle-blowers when it fired four employees who raised concerns about the spread of coronavirus in the company's warehouses. https://nyti.ms/2WwHoek

- After an extraordinary public campaign by U.S. President Trump and his allies, the Justice Department dropped its criminal case on Thursday against Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser. https://nyti.ms/2SPc4GK (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)
Eight World War II veterans the youngest of them age 96 will join President Donald Trump at a wreath-laying ceremony Friday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. Their hopes to mark the day in Moscow were dashed because of the coronovirus pandemic.

White House officials described the veterans as choosing nation over self" by joining Trump at the World War II Memorial ceremony. These heroes are living testaments to the American spirit of perseverance and victory, especially in the midst of dark days," said White House spokesman Judd Deere.

The veterans joining Trump include Gregory Melikian, 97, of Phoenix, who sent the coded message to the world that the Germans had unconditionally surrendered.

Participants in the D-Day invasion that turned the tide in the war include Steven Melnikoff, 100, of Cockeysville, Md., Guy Whidden, 97, of Braddock Heights, Md., Harold Angle, 97, of Chambersburg, Pa.; and Frank Devita, 96, of Bridgewater, New Jersey.

Other veterans joining Trump are Donald Halverson, 97, of Minnesota, who fought in some of the war's fiercest fighting in Italy, John Coates, 96, of Maryland, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and Jack Myers, 97, of Hagerstown, Md., was part of a unit that liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

Timothy Davis, director of the Greatest Generations Foundation, which helps veterans return to the countries where they fought, said the U.S. soldiers were originally slated to travel to Moscow for a commemoration event. He said that with international travel out of the question during the pandemic, the veterans talked to him about trying to commemorate the day in Washington.

Of course, we presented to them the risk we are facing," Davis said. They said it doesn't matter Tim" and asked him to press ahead, saying they viewed the commemoration as a blessing to all who fought, died and served in World War II.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An ICU nurse says stay-at-home protesters thought she was an actor dressing up in costume when she joined a silent counter-protest last month.

Lauren Leander, 27, was among a handful of medical professionals who turned out to a counter-protest at the 'Patriot's Day Rally' in Phoenix on April 20, when nearly a thousand people marched on the state Capitol Building.

Protesters 'were not peaceful' and stood within a foot of Ms Leander, coughing at her and accusing the small group of being actors 'dressed up in costume', she told The View yesterday.

Zahid Seed, Ms Leander's colleague and friend, warned the demonstrators - some of whom carried assault rifles - that Ms Leander's face would be the last they see 'when they are admitted to the ICU'.

He said: 'When they inevitably contract Covid-19 and transmit it to their loved ones, Lauren will be one of the first faces they will see when they are admitted to the ICU.

'She may also be one of the last faces that they ever see.'

ICU nurse Lauren Leander shares her experience protesting silently at a rally to reopen Arizona Theyre the sickest patients Ive ever cared for in my life. ICU nurse Lauren Leander shares her experience protesting silently at a rally to reopen Arizona  and tells us her message to the protestors: Nurses are scared to watch their states open up. abcn.ws/2CcjBVI Posted by The View on Thursday, May 7, 2020

Lauren Leander (pictured right), 27, was among a handful of medical professionals who turned out to a counter-protest at the 'Patriot's Day Rally' in Phoenix on April 20. She described protesters walking a foot in front of her (pictured)

On the day of the protest group ignored the 'heated' demonstrators and stood silently in their scrubs and face masks, Ms Leander said.

She added: 'There were people coughing the "fake virus" on us. One of the big themes [was] they thought we were paid actors, that we were planted there by a hospital or by the government and we were told not to speak and just stand there in costume.'

Ms Leander, who works at the Banner University Medical Center's Covid-19 unit, revealed she spent her day off at the event.

She wanted to raise awareness for her colleagues who 'haven't seen their families in months' as they continue to self-isolate.

Ms Leander added: 'A lot of healthcare workers' lives are on hold.'

At one point a protester tried to bait the group away by pretending someone was unwell and needed help. There were also 'large, strong men fully masked carrying assault rifles', she said.

The stay-at-home protesters, who want lockdown measures to be lifted, have been supported by a number of politicians, including former Arizona state Senator Dr. Kelli Ward.

In a tweet posted the day after the rally, Dr. Ward questioned the motivations of the nurses who turned out to counter-protest, describing them as 'actors playing parts'.

Protesters 'were not peaceful' and stood within a foot of Ms Leander, coughing at her and accusing the small group (pictured) of being actors 'dressed up in costume' as they silently wore their scrubs and face masks

Ms Leander revealed she spent her day off from the Phoenix's Banner University Medical Center Covid-19 unit at the protest (pictured)

The sentiment frustrated Leander, who stated: 'I wish she could be in my shoes for a day, I'd have her put on a pair of scrubs and walk with me'.

However, Leander has been hailed a hero by many in her profession for bravely standing up to represent healthcare workers on the frontline of the pandemic.

Among them was a message from Ms Leander's colleague Mr Zahid.

'Today she stood up for healthcare workers as protesters descended upon the State Capitol. She stood in silence as people called her a "fake nurse" & "paid actor" amongst other horrendous things,' he said.

'Ironically, she has spent many days in the Covid ICU caring for our sickest patients. She stood for those who are on life support and have no voice of their own. She stood for the 42,604 Americans who have died so far.

Leander has been hailed a hero by many in her profession for bravely standing up to represent healthcare workers on the frontline of the pandemic. Pictured, with a puppy

Despite the intensity of the protest, Leander (pictured) previously told told KNXV she feels no ill-will to those who stood against her

Despite the intensity of the protest, Leander previously told told KNXV she feels no ill-will to those who stood against her.

'I just hope people see that nurses are not the enemy and we'll take care of them one way or the other,' she stated.

'I don't care if you believe in this virus or not or truly what your opinion is of it, if these people show up in my ICU we will take care of them one way or another.'

Leander was photographed wearing a medical mask and scrubs as she and her colleagues were heckled by the protesters, who brandished placards

Arizona has been hit hard by the virus, with 9,707 confirmed cases and 426 deaths so far.

Many of the anti-lockdown protesters who clashed with Leander and her colleagues are fans of President Trump. Many donned Make America Great Again hats and several waved signs in support of the Commander-in-chief.

But Leander says she had no political motivations when showing up to the rally.

'This isn't about politics, choosing sides, this virus does not discriminate at all,' she said.

'It's taking lives from one end of the spectrum to another. I know it's wishful thinking but I just would love if we just had that common ground with fighting this virus.'

'This virus doesn't discriminate': Leander says she had no political motivations when showing up to the rally

Furious protesters claimed the lockdown orders were causing more damage than the spread of the virus

Leander instead says her intention when turning up to the protest was to make sure that an alternative perspective was represented.

'Our main message was that we wanted healthcare workers' voices to be heard louder than misinformation and fear,' she stated.

'There will be a calm and controlled manner to reopen our economy and our state... you don't open the flood gates and release everyone at once.'

A Protester attending a rally at the Capitol to 're-open' Arizona against the governor's stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus argues with a caregiver

Protesters carry automatic assault rifles as they march towards Arizona's state Captiol on Wednesday

Protesters rally at the Capitol to 're-open' Arizona against the governor's stay-at-home order

It comes after a team of university experts working on a predictive Covid-19 model were rehired by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

The team had been disbanded after saying the state shouldn't reopen until late May.

The COVID-19 Modeling Group had been working to predict the spread of coronavirus and advising state leaders on the impacts of reopening the state when the project was abruptly shut down by the ADHS on Monday.

The group, consisting of 23 experts from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, had authored at least two reports for ADHS and determined late May was the earliest the state should start reopening.

Their dismissal came hours after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced businesses in the state would be reopening and stay-at-home orders would be lifted within days - contrary to their recommendations.

However, following mounting pressure from Democratic lawmakers, and local and national media attention, the ADHS issued a stunning reversal on Thursday saying it will now maintain an 'ongoing relationship' with the experts.

The Arizona Department of Health Services disbanded its own team of researchers working on a predictive COVID-19 model that said the state shouldnt reopen until late May (pictured ADHS Director Dr. Cara Christ and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey)

The move came just hours after Gov. Doug Ducey announced stay at home orders in Arizona would be lifted within days

Chris Minnick, a state Health Department spokesman, said in a written statement that the department communicated with The COVID-19 Modeling Group on Thursday.

'Were pleased to announce an ongoing partnership to continue providing models,' Minnick said, adding that the department was 'very pleased' with the model the university team delivered.

'Understanding the demands on their time, we let them know that we were putting the modeling project on pause until we could bring them back to assist with modeling COVID-19 resource requirements during the influenza season,' Minnick said, as reported by AZCentral.

'Since then, the Universities and team members have expressed a willingness to continue doing this work. We are grateful for their dedication and we look forward to an ongoing partnership.'

The drastic about turn comes after ADHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey sent a letter to the group on Monday, shortly after Ducey announced plans to lift state lockdown orders.

A copy of Bailey's letter obtained by ABC15, read: We've been asked by Department leadership to "pause" all current work on projections modeling.'

Bailey added that he wanted to inform the team as quickly as he could to prevent them from exerting further time of effort needlessly.

The email said ADHS would also pull back the special data sets which have been shared with the researchers, but no explanation was given for the discontinuation of their work.

In his announcement Monday, Gov. Ducey cited a downward trajectory on the key metrics tracking the spread of coronavirus as justification for allowing businesses to reopen

Professor Joe Gerald, a member of the modeling team, told ABC he disagreed with Duceys perspective. This is not going away soon; its something that we're going to need to be continued to be worried about because our risk of catching this virus still remains relatively high

In a statement to the network, ADHS later explained the state partly based the decision on their recent adoption of a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has not been released to the public.

In his announcement Monday, Gov. Ducey cited a downward trajectory on the key metrics tracking the spread of coronavirus as justification for allowing businesses to reopen.

But Professor Joe Gerald, a member of the modeling team, told ABC he disagreed with Duceys perspective.

This is not going away soon; its something that we're going to need to be continued to be worried about because our risk of catching this virus still remains relatively high.

The universities model had found that waiting until the end of May to ease lockdown restrictions was the only scenario that didnt cause a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases and subsequent deaths.

In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.

The slowest curve, based on if the state reopened when advised, is the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve, Lant said, adding that its because the transmission rates would be lowest at that time.

I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down, Lant continued.

In his letter, Bailey said the group could be needed again in later summer or early fall as flu season returns. He thanked the group for its very high quality results.

A spokesperson for Gov. Ducey told AZ Central the state was using multiple models earlier on, which often had widely divergent projections which changed constantly.

We now have two months of on-the-ground data, the spokesperson said. Weve been able to see which models are accuratewhich match the actual facts and are most usefuland which are not.

The spokesperson said ADHS Dr. Cara Christ made the decision to pause the group after reviewing all the data.

The modeling we are utilizing going forward is developed by FEMA and CDC and ensures our hospitals have capacity for any situation, he told AZ Central.

That is the case currently, but we arent taking any chances. All our decisions are guided by data as well as the recommendations of the CDC and public health officials. This will continue to be the case.

On Tuesday, Dr. Christ assured the group that they hadnt been disbanded indefinitely, saying: We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit.

We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are. But we did tell them to please stay engaged, because we may need to bring them back in the fall to look at modeling during flu season.

Christ said it would be pretty easy to just pick up the phone and ask them to come back and help us out, if needed.

On Tuesday, Dr. Christ assured the group that they hadnt been disbanded indefinitely. We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit, Christ said

Rep. Ruben Gallego also waded into the debate, insisting when it comes to COVID-19 knowledge is power

In a letter, Gallego asked the modeling group to ignore Gov. Ducey's 'politically motivated order to stop coronavirus modeling work & demand continued access to data. Public health experts need that info to make informed decisions & save lives,'

Democratic State Rep. Kelli Butler of Phoenix called the decision incredibly troubling on Twitter.

Rep. Ruben Gallego also waded into the debate, insisting when it comes to COVID-19 knowledge is power.

Im asking @asu & @uarizona to ignore Gov. Duceys politically-motivated order to stop coronavirus modeling work & demand continued access to data. Public health experts need that info to make informed decisions & save lives, he said in a tweet, with a signed letter pictured beneath.

In a blog post on the Arizona Public Health Association's website, the organization's director, Will Humble, called the move astonishing.

He said the model was very solid work being done by top talent in the field that is very useful for decision-making purposes.

Last nights action to disband the Arizona COVID-19 Modeling Working Group begs the question whether the Modeling Working Group was producing results that were inconsistent with other messaging and decisions being made by the executive branch? he wrote.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  Two personnel of the Philippine Navy's BRP Ramon Alcaraz suffered second degree burns after the vessel caught fire while sailing back home from a COVID-19 mission in India.

The Naval Public Affairs Office said the fire broke out Thursday night, just hours after the vessel left Cochin Port for Manila.

The blaze was put out 10 minutes after it started at the main engine room, the Navy said in a statement on Friday. It resulted in the injury of two sailors and damages to minor equipment.

"The victims are to be airlifted to a naval hospital in Cochin, India for extensive medical attention," the Navy said.

"Onboard engineers are now assessing the damage to the ships main propulsion system to determine whether they can proceed with their voyage or return to India to conduct necessary repairs," the Navy also said.

BRP Ramon Alcaraz, along with BRP Davao del Sur, is part of the Naval Task Force 82's mission to transport 200,000 units of personal protective equipment to help the Philippines' fight against the coronavirus disease. The mission also involved the evacuation of 18 Filipino tourists who were stranded in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ships are expected to arrive in the country in the last week of May. It is not clear if the incident would cause delay to BRP Ramon Alcaraz' arrival in Manila.
A Chinese hacking group has been conducting ongoing espionage operations on foreign governments across Asia, according to security firm Check Point. Called Naikon, it has reportedly attacked governments in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Brunei, targeting foreign affairs, science and technology ministries. The aim is to gather geo-political intelligence, Check Point wrote in a news release.

The primary attack vector is our old friend, phishing. First, Naikon creates an official-looking email with information of interest to potential targets, obtained via public or stolen information. Should the hapless victim open the email attachment, its spiked with a sophisticated piece of backdoor malware called Aria-body. That gives the attacker access to the targets networks and from there, they attempt to access other parts of the infrastructure to gain wider access and launch new attacks.

Naikons primary method of attack is to infiltrate a government body, then use that bodys contacts, documents and data to launch attacks on others, exploiting the trust and diplomatic relations between departments and governments to increase the chances of its attack succeeding, said Check Point.

Naikon is a known hacker group, but apparently dropped out of view around 2015. However, Check Point found that despite avoiding detection, the group has been very active during the last five years, especially in 2019-20. During that time, the group developed new tools including Aria-body.

To evade detection, they were using exploits attributed to lots of APT [advanced persistent threat] groups, and uniquely using their victims servers as command and control centers, wrote Check Point. Weve published this research as a warning and resource for any government entity to better spot Naikons or other hacker groups activities.
The VE Day commemorations were capped off with a national sing-along of Dame Vera Lynns wartime anthem Well Meet Again.

Across the country, people flung open their doors and windows or made their socially-distanced way into the street to take part in the closing act of the 75th anniversary celebrations.

The cast on the BBCs montage included nurses, construction workers, tube drivers, a man in a kilt, shop workers wearing masks, vets, farmers, postal deliver workers, restaurant staff, Beefeaters and schoolchildren.

Meanwhile Sky News filmed live from two streets in Wimbledon in south London and Wanborough in Wiltshire.

All together now...

VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Show all 34 1 /34 VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a fly past over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE Day) in Britain MOD/Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations WWII veteran Bernard Morgan, aged 96, poses as he takes part in the VE day two minute silence outside his home and alongside neighbours on the street in Crewe Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a flypast over London MOD/AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Graham looks on as his wife Sue Gillson untangles a flag on their roof on their home in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Members of the public take part in a 2 minute silence at the cenotaph in Liverpool AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a fly past over London MOD/Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A veteran and army personnel at The Cenotaph in Westminster after a two minute silence on the 75th Anniversary of VE Day in London Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Officers and soldiers of Household Division take part in a 2 minute silence at Horse Guards Parade, St James's Park in central London AFP via Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Ralph Harvey, 89, sits on a mobility scooter as he joins in his street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations VE Day bunting seen outside a house on the 75th Anniversary of Victory Day in Greenwich, London EPA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Prince of Wales pauses after laying a wreath at the Balmoral War Memorial, in Scotland Clarence House/AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Residents in Thorner, West Yorkshire, during a day of events to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Veteran flag bearers gather at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations British RAF veteran George Sutherland, 98, right, gives the thumbs up to people who came out to cheer him on during his VE Day charity walk to raise funds for Talbot House in Poperinge, Belgium. Sutherland walked from the Lijssenthoek war cemetery to Talbot house to raise money for the club which is currently closed due to coronavirus lockdown regulations. The club, founded in 1915 was a place for British soldiers to rest during both the First and Second World Wars AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The Royal Air Force Red Arrows flying past the Runnymede Memorial in Egham, Surrey MoD/PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A Bugler plays the Last Post as the Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a socially distanced parade of 20 soldiers with their first world war Guns to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day with a 2 minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations REUTERS VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, to mark the start of the two-minute silence PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations British RAF veteran George Sutherland, 98, holds up a photo of himself as a World War II aircraft mechanic AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A wreath-laying service to coincide with the nationwide 2 minute silence, held in Westminster Hall, House of Parliament in central London UK Parliament/AFP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Prime Minister Boris Johnson observes a two-minute silence in Downing Street The Sun/PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence alongside (left to right) British Army Corporal Fiona Williamson-Jones, Royal Navy Lieutenant Donovan Davy, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture Fiona Hyslop, Chief Constable Iain Livingstone QPM, British Army Warrant Officer Class 1 Edinburgh Garrison Sergeant-Major Scott McFadden and RAF Flying Officer Luke Hilton outside St Andrew's House in Edinburgh PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A man takes a picture of the Commando Memorial on the 75th Anniversary of VE Day in Lochaber, Scotland Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Railway staff at Waverley Station mark the 75th anniversary of VE day with a two-minute silence in Edinburgh Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Members of ambulance services watch as officers and soldiers of Household Division take part in a 2 minute silence and watch the wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade, St James's Park AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Weaths placed at the foot of St Saviour's War Memorial in Borough High Street Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations People ride on a scooter in front of Guards Memorial in St James's Park Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A wreath at Waverley Station Getty

Well meet again, dont know where, dont know when

But I know well meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through, just like you always do

Till the blue skies chase those dark clouds far away

And I will just say hello, To the folks that you know

Tell them you wont be long

Theyll be happy to know that, as I saw you go

You were singing this song

Well meet again, dont know where, dont know when

But I know well meet again some sunny day
Western and Central Massachusetts will receive $5.1 million in federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for public housing authorities.

The increased funding will be made available through two grant programs, which Congress funded through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The CARES Act authorized emergency supplemental grants through both the HUD Operating Fund to maintain the operation of public housing, and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, which funds the Housing Choice Voucher program. Neither grant has to be paid back.

Western and central Massachusetts residents will benefit greatly from these funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that will go toward Massachusetts public housing authorities, said Neal, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. I have said time and time again that during this pandemic, we cannot forget about our most vulnerable communities. These monies will go a long way to ensuring the safety and security of those who live in these areas.

Neals 1st congressional district received $1.5 million, including $618,056 for Springfield; while the 2nd congressional district, represented by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., received $3.6 million, including $2.7 million earmarked for Worcester.

The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying social and economic injustices in our community, and Im glad that this federal funding will go towards vulnerable members of our community who need help, said McGovern, who chairs the House Rules Committee. Im proud Democrats transformed Mitch McConnells Fortune 500 bailout bill into something that puts workers and families first, but people are still struggling and they rightfully expect and demand that Congress will be there for them. I will keep fighting for more funding, emergency rental and mortgage assistance, and a nationwide stop on foreclosures until this crisis is over.

First Congressional District recipients receiving a total of $1,524,948 in grants include:

Adams  $ 16,984

Chicopee  $ 113,282

Holyoke  $ 350,678

North Adams  $ 81,106

Pittsfield  $ 123,114

Southbridge  $ 28,488

Springfield  $ 618,056

Stockbridge  $ 9,274

Warren  $ 14,248

West Springfield  $ 55,000

Westfield  $ 97,718

Williamstown  $ 17,000

Second Congressional District recipients receiving a total of $3,604,458 in federal grants included:
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. By way of example, Intelligent Ultrasound Group (LON:MED) has seen its share price rise 160% over the last year, delighting many shareholders. But while the successes are well known, investors should not ignore the very many unprofitable companies that simply burn through all their cash and collapse.

In light of its strong share price run, we think now is a good time to investigate how risky Intelligent Ultrasound Group's cash burn is. For the purpose of this article, we'll define cash burn as the amount of cash the company is spending each year to fund its growth (also called its negative free cash flow). Let's start with an examination of the business's cash, relative to its cash burn.

See our latest analysis for Intelligent Ultrasound Group

Does Intelligent Ultrasound Group Have A Long Cash Runway?

You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. When Intelligent Ultrasound Group last reported its balance sheet in December 2019, it had zero debt and cash worth UK7.3m. Importantly, its cash burn was UK4.1m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 21 months from December 2019. That's not too bad, but it's fair to say the end of the cash runway is in sight, unless cash burn reduces drastically. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

AIM:MED Historical Debt May 8th 2020

How Well Is Intelligent Ultrasound Group Growing?

Some investors might find it troubling that Intelligent Ultrasound Group is actually increasing its cash burn, which is up 19% in the last year. The revenue growth of 11% gives a ray of hope, at the very least. In light of the data above, we're fairly sanguine about the business growth trajectory. Of course, we've only taken a quick look at the stock's growth metrics, here. This graph of historic earnings and revenue shows how Intelligent Ultrasound Group is building its business over time.

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How Easily Can Intelligent Ultrasound Group Raise Cash?

While Intelligent Ultrasound Group seems to be in a fairly good position, it's still worth considering how easily it could raise more cash, even just to fuel faster growth. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash to fund growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.

Since it has a market capitalisation of UK27m, Intelligent Ultrasound Group's UK4.1m in cash burn equates to about 15% of its market value. Given that situation, it's fair to say the company wouldn't have much trouble raising more cash for growth, but shareholders would be somewhat diluted.

So, Should We Worry About Intelligent Ultrasound Group's Cash Burn?

On this analysis of Intelligent Ultrasound Group's cash burn, we think its cash runway was reassuring, while its increasing cash burn has us a bit worried. While we're the kind of investors who are always a bit concerned about the risks involved with cash burning companies, the metrics we have discussed in this article leave us relatively comfortable about Intelligent Ultrasound Group's situation. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 5 warning signs for Intelligent Ultrasound Group (2 are a bit concerning!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.

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.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin tasked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming a new government.



Rivlin formally informed Netanyahu in a letter that he has two weeks to put together a new coalition government.



"We are in the midst of an unprecedented period, during which the country has undergone three consecutive rounds of elections in the last year and has, in addition, faced the coronavirus along with the rest of the world," Rivlin said.



Rivlin's move came after Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's former rival-turned ally, that 72 lawmakers of the 120-member parliament endorsed Netanyahu. The endorsement means Netanyahu has the majority needed to form a government, Xinhua reported.



Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party and Gantz's centrist Blue and White party signed a power-sharing deal under which Netanyahu will continue to serve as prime minister for at least 18 months, followed by Gantz.



Earlier Thursday, the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, approved a package of the bills required by the controversial power-sharing deal between Netanyahu and Gantz.
New Delhi: Delhi Minorities Commission chairman Zafarul Islam Khan on Friday moved the Delhi High Court seeking anticipatory bail in a sedition case lodged against him. According to his advocate Vrinda Grover, his plea was mentioned for an urgent hearing and it has been allowed to be listed on May 12.

A sedition case was filed against Khan after he published a post on April 28 having alleged seditious and hateful comments through his official page on social media.

Based on a complaint, the Delhi Police Special Cell on May 2 lodged an FIR against Khan under Sections 124A and 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for the alleged offences of sedition and promoting feelings of hatred between different groups on the grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence and language.

Khan sought anticipatory bail on the ground that he is a public servant and a senior citizen aged 72 years, who suffers from heart disease and hypertension and is highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection which can have fatal consequences for a person of his age and health condition.

In these circumstances, there is an urgent need to grant him protection from arrest and coercive action in a frivolous and untenable case, in order to safeguard his liberty as the failure to do so will have irreversible consequences on his right to life, the petition filed through advocates Vrinda Grover, Ratna Appnender and Soutik Banerjee said.

The plea also sought a direction to the police that in the event of his arrest, he be immediately released on bail and that no coercive measures be taken against him. It also sought a direction that Khan's laptop and mobile be not seized.

The plea claimed that no offence has been committed by Khan and the FIR has been registered with a mala fide intention to harass and intimidate him.

It said the FIR against him was "misconceived, being made on a misrepresentation of facts and an erroneous, untenable reading of the law.

Khan claimed in the plea that his social media post was falsely reported, distorted and sensationalised out of context by certain sections of the media to embarrass him and to tarnish the stellar work that he has been doing as Chairman of the commission.
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty

The humanitarian banking channel set up by the Trump administration to get medicine and other supplies into Irana politically calculated show of compassion amid otherwise draconian U.S. sanctionshas not in fact processed any potentially life-saving transactions, the Swiss government confirmed to The Daily Beast.

Trumps Maximum Pressure Is Helping COVID-19 Ravage Iran

Announced in late January and declared operational a month later, the channel, known as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), was supposed to ensure that humanitarian goods continue to reach the Iranian people without diversion by the regime, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Feb. 27.

But its not happeningat a time when, according to Johns Hopkins University, the novel coronavirus has infected an estimated 103,000 Iranians and killed at least 6,486.

No transactions have yet been carried out. Unfortunately, this whole process has been slower than expected because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Fabian Maienfisch, a spokesman for Switzerlands State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), which oversees the channel.

The moribund state of the channel contrasts with the fanfare with which the Trump administration announced it. To show that the Maximum Pressure sanctions campaign is not consigning Iranians to their fate during the pandemic, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on March 17, We have an open humanitarian channel to facilitate legitimate transactions even while ensuring our maximum pressure campaign denies terrorists money.

Knowledgeable observers say the way the channel is structured places substantial burdens in the way of companies looking to sell Iran humanitarian supplies.

Set up through the Swiss bank BCP, compliance requirements for making use of the channel are elevated by design, to provide the U.S. with an assurance that the money wont be diverted into any Iranian military or other effort. The Treasury Department boasted in February of the enhanced due diligence participating financial institutions will need to perform.

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The reporting requirements are overkill. If it takes three months for a company to get the paperwork in order to even use the channel, its disingenuous for the administration to suggest it has done everything it can to ease humanitarian trade during a pandemic emergency, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj of Bourse & Bazaar, which tracks the Iranian economy.

Batmanghelidj and co-author Sahil Shah were the first to spot that the SHTA has not processed any transactions since a January pilot effort.

In an indication of the bureaucracy involved in the SHTA, Maienfisch told The Daily Beast, Swiss export and trade companies that are interested in participating are currently collecting the necessary information and documents to be submitted to SECO.

Queried by The Daily Beast, the Treasury Department declined comment beyond pointing to its Feb. 27 announcement that the SHTA channel is operational.

Its unfortunate that the Iranian government turned down our offer of humanitarian assistance for COVID-19. Our priority has been to stand with the Iranian peopleand this offer is still on the table, a State Department spokesperson said. The United States and Switzerland remain committed to the success of the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement and we expect transactions to continue shortly. Iranian President Rouhani has also confirmed that U.S. sanctions have not impeded Irans response to COVID-19.

At least one concern critics of maximum pressure had about the humanitarian-trade channel appears not to have manifested. It had been unclear from the SHTAs establishment if Iran could transfer its foreign currency reserves held in other banks into BCP for the purchase of medical goods and food. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi claimed in March that we asked [the U.S.] to allow our other financial resources in various countries [to] enter this channel in order to provide medicines and medical equipment, but they [U.S.] did not allow it.

Maienfisch clarified that Iran can put money its got outside BCP into the Swiss bank. We are currently working on transfers to put additional funds into the SHTA with support from the U.S. side. There is nothing to clarify, as the need to regularly replenish the funds at BCP is understood and accepted by all parties involved, he said.

Coronavirus hit Iran hard, as its ruling eliteslike Americasinitially downplayed the severity of COVID-19 as little more than a common sickness.

Observers suspect the real number of Irans COVID-19 deaths is far higher than the Iranian government acknowledges. In my experience, [the outbreak] was four to five times what was announced, an anonymous doctor in Tehran told France24 on Wednesday, but TV outlets insisted the numbers were low, so people werent taking it very seriously. In late April, Iran began reopening its economy.

Maximum Pressure does not formally bar food, medicine or related goods from entering Iran. But Batmanghelidj said Iran continued to face weaknesses in its medical supply chain, something the SHTA was meant to alleviate.

Launching the Swiss channel was an admission by the Trump administration that the Maximum Pressure sanctions do in fact restrict humanitarian trade, thereby harming ordinary Iranians, he said. Failing to ensure the channel could actually operate while Iran confronted a global pandemic makes clear that some people in the administration just dont care about the harm they are causing.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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1970: T.P Walsh speaking as the plaque was being unveiled to commemorate the eight hundred anniversary of the landing of the Normans at Baginbun

The 850th anniversary of the arrival of Norman forces in Baginbun occurred on May 1 when a simple ceremony was held at the rock-bound promontory.

A battle re-enactment was planned, along with other festivities to mark one of the bloodiest and most dramatic battles south Wexford has ever seen but due to the Covid-19 lockdown this has been postponed to an as yet unnamed date. Instead a rosary and a benediction was said by Fr Michael Doyle.

The late historian Tom Walsh from Duncannon wrote extensively about the important place Baginbun - located about two miles south of Fethard, in the old Barony of Shelburne - has in Irish history.

The very name Baginbun remains a puzzle to this day. It has not the appearance of being either Irish or Scandinavian or English. Some of the old writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries spell the name in two words, "Bagg and Bunn," and say that it was derived from the names of the two ships that transported the English to our shores.

It has been agreed by most eminent historians that the Norman Invasion of Ireland in 1169, 1170 and 1171 was one of the most important events in the whole history of Ireland. It has even been put on a par with the coming of Christianity because of its long-term effects and because its repercussions were far reaching.

Things were never the same again after the coming of those mail-clad invaders to Bannow and Baginbun.

The first invaders did not come as a vanguard for total conquest for England, but as adventurers looking for a new home beyond the reach of the King of England. Many of them who came were out of favour with Henry II and the Welsh did not want them because they had taken their lands. They had little to lose in leaving Wales and they had much to gain in Ireland as Dermot McMurrough made certain to let them know, so they came.

Walsh outlined how two things militated against their complete success in conquering the whole country: one was the anxiety and jealousy of King Henry and his successors lest a rival Norman state would be set up in Ireland and the other was the way the Irish were able to survive defeat after defeat and then be able to absorb the Normans when they became more Irish than the Irish themselves.

'The tribal structure of the Irish at the time made the numerous tribes incapable of unified resistance to an invader and strangely enough, it was that failing that saved the Irish from total defeat. There was no big national army to defeat, so the whole country had to be attacked and there was no capital city that, if captured, would bring about the downfall of the native government,' Walsh wrote.

The Norman Invasion was particularly well documented and chronicled, mainly by Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald the Welshman. The inhabitants of South Wexford at the time of the Norman Invasion were more or less a mixed lot. There were the old Pictish or Celtic tribes who preceded the Celts to Ireland, having fled from France via Britain. They landed on the Wexford coast and were descendants of the Britons from Wales, who had come from Wales to the Barony of Forth and had been driven out of there by Crimthaun into what is now the Barony of Shelburne.

At this time, the whole South Wexford area from New Ross to Fethard-on-Sea was one vast forest in which lived wild boar, deer and wolf.

In fact Ireland at the time was almost completely forested, providing shelter and hiding places for the native tribes, especially later on during their attacks on the invaders. The towns were those founded by the Norse while the natives themselves lived in rural settlements. The dwellings in many cases were of timber, but the houses of kings were of stone, like Dermot's house at Ferns.

The first batch of Normans landed at Bannow Bay on May 1, 1169. It consisted of about 600 men led by Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice de Prendergast. They were joined by Dermot McMurrough and his followers and together they marched on Wexford and the town surrendered, and a short time after Maurice Fitzgerald landed at Wexford with 150 men.

The landing place has been variously ascribed to Baginbun, Cromwell's Rock, Dunhill, Dromdowney, Nuke, etc. But there has been the persistent tradition that the location was Baginbun. There was already a Celtic Dun on the headland at Baginbun, the remains of which are still to be seen and Giraldus says that when Raymond Le Gros was attacked from Waterford, the Waterford army had to cross the Suir to get to it, and that it must have been in Dermot's territory, which some of the other locations were not - the estuary still being called the Suir.

'All things considered then, the location was probably our Baginbun, and was quite deliberately chosen by Raymond Le Gros as the landing place. It was in Dermot's territory. It was just across the bay from Bannow, and was probably surveyed by the first invaders. It was in a very advantageous position from which to command a sea-entry into Waterford Harbour. It was easily defended once a rampart had been thrown up on the land side. It had a small but suitable beach where ships could be drawn up and a sheltered cove where they could be anchored. It had a fresh water supply from a never-failing spring near the beach on the northern side of the point.'

Here then, about May 1, 1170, Raymond and his small army landed, and set about preparing the place for defence. He knew that Strongbow was to follow, but did not know exactly when. In the meantime, he had to wait and secure his bridgehead. Giraldus again tells us that he was shortly joined afterwards by Hervey de Marisco, with three knights and perhaps a small body of men, but all told the little army at Baginbun still numbered no more than a hundred.

Raymond and his men now started the erection of the double embankment, with a deep trench between forty feet wide at the top which spans the entire width of the 200 yards wide headland. It was built of stone and clay, and except for an overgrowth of furze and an odd gap here and there, is much the same today as it was in 1170.

It runs straight across the headland from Baginbun Bay to Carnivan bay on the other side, and must have presented a formidable obstacle to any attackers, particularly when confronted with Raymond's archers who were behind it. When the ramparts were completed, the Normans rounded up as many cows and bullocks as they could around the area and drove them within the stockade. These cattle, collected initially to provide food and milk probably, were to play a very different part in Raymond's plan before long.

The place where Raymond and his men met the advance guard of the Norse-Irish army is still called Battlestown, about two miles beyond Fethard in the direction of Ballyhack. Seeing that they were outnumbered, Raymond ordered his followers back to the defences in Baginbun. They were so hotly pursued by the Irish that some of them got inside the barricade with the Normans before the rampart could be closed. The situation was now obviously critical and Raymond, realising the straits his men were in, according to Giraldus, showed his qualities as a leader and a soldier. He faced about boldly and cut down with his own sword on the very threshold of the rampart the foremost of the enemy who were forcing an entry. Then the gap was closed.

The main force of the army was now pushing its way up the narrow peninsula towards the rampart, the vast army in so small a space marching almost shoulder to shoulder and spanning the peninsula Raymond waited till they had arrived where he wanted them, and then opened the gap in the rampart and his men goaded the herd of cattle out into the middle of the tightly packed army causing confusion and disarray with the result that at least a thousand of them were pushed over the cliffs into the sea and drowned. Those who could, turned and fled hotly pursued by Raymond and his men so that about 500 of them were slaughtered by sword or arrow and a large number of prisoners captured and taken inside the stockade. Raymond did not suffer the loss of even one man.

About half of the original force made its way back to Waterford.

Giraldus ascribes the victory at Baginbun to the bravery of Raymond, and another Norman named William Ferraud. He says that Ferraud exhibited undoubted courage. His body was weak, but his spirit resolute. He was diseased with leprosy, which threatened his life, and he hoped to forestall the effects of the disease by a premature, though glorious death.

As it happened, Ferraud did not succeed in meeting a glorious death that day and he lived to achieve a slight fame in another way. He later founded the Leper Church of St Magdalen outside Wexford town (now known as Maudlintown) and is probably buried in the leper cemetery which was then attached to the church, and the leper hospital beside it.

In the "Song of Dermot and the Earl", we are told of the fierce prowess of a lady who was probably a camp follower of the men in Baginbun and who had followed her lover from Wales. She seemingly lost her lover in the battle, and to avenge his loss, she seized a battle-axe and unaided hacked the heads, arms and legs off seventy of the principal men of Waterford and then threw the lot bodily into the sea. Her name was Alice of Abervenny. She too had Hervey's approval for her vile act. Giraldus did not like Hervey, preferring his cousin Raymond, and he says of Hervey that "he was loaded with weighty and lasting disgrace and infamy, nor could be found one whom his carnage of the citizens did not disgust".

When the initial invasion was more advanced and things had settled down, many of the leading Normans were given huge grants of land in Wexford and to them we owe many of the landmarks that dot the landscape of South Wexford today.
MIAMI - Carolina Vasquez lost track of days and nights, unable to see the sunlight while stuck for two weeks in a windowless cruise ship cabin as a fever took hold of her body.

On the worst night of her encounter with COVID-19, the Chilean woman, a line cook on the Greg Mortimer ship, summoned the strength to take a cold shower fearing the worst: losing consciousness while isolated from others.

Vasquez, 36, and tens of thousands of other crew members have been trapped for weeks aboard dozens of cruise ships around the world  long after governments and cruise lines negotiated their passengers disembarkation. Some have gotten ill and died; others have survived but are no longer getting paid.

Both national and local governments have stopped crews from disembarking in order to prevent new cases of COVID-19 in their territories. Some of the ships, including 20 in U.S. waters, have seen infections and deaths among the crew. But most ships have had no confirmed cases.

I never thought this would turn into a tragic and terrifying horror story, Vasquez told The Associated Press in an interview through a cellphone app from the Greg Mortimer, an Antarctic cruise ship floating off Uruguay. Thirty-six crew members have fallen ill on the ship.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that about 80,000 crew members remained on board ships off the U.S. coast after most passengers had disembarked. The Coast Guard said Friday that there were still 70,000 crew members in 102 ships either anchored near or at U.S. ports or underway in U.S. waters.

The total number of crew members stranded worldwide was not immediately available. But thousands more are trapped on ships outside the U.S., including in Uruguay and the Manila Bay, where 16 cruise ships are waiting to test about 5,000 crew members before they will be allowed to disembark.

As coronavirus cases and deaths have risen worldwide, the CDC and health officials in other countries have expanded the list of conditions that must be met before crews may disembark.

Cruise companies must take each crew member straight home via charter plane or private car without using rental vehicles or taxis. Complicating that mission, the CDC requires company executives to agree to criminal penalties if crew members fail to obey health authorities orders to steer clear of public transportation and restaurants on their way home.

The criminal penalties gave us (and our lawyers) pause, Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley wrote in a letter to crew members earlier this week, but he added that company executives ultimately agreed to sign.

Melinda Mann, 25, a youth program manager for Holland America, spent more than 50 days without stepping on dry land before finally disembarking from the Koningsdam ship Friday in Los Angeles. Before she was transferred to the Koningsdam, she tried to walk off another ship with other U.S. crew members last week but the ships security guards stopped them.

For 21 hours a day, Mann remained isolated in a 150-square-foot (14-square- meter) cruise cabin that is smaller than her bedroom in her Midland, Georgia, home. She read 30 books and was only able to leave her room three times a day to walk around the ship. Her contract ended April 18, so she was not paid for weeks.

Keeping me in close captivity for so long is absolutely ridiculous, Mann said in a telephone interview.

Earlier this week in Nassau, Bahamas, crew members from Canada aboard the Emerald Princess were told to prepare to be flown home in a charter plane. But the Bahamian government did not allow the ship to dock in the end.

Leah Prasads husband is among the stranded crew members. Prasad said she has spent hours tracking down government agencies to help her husband, a Maitre DHotel for Carnival.

He is getting discouraged. He is stuck in a cabin, Prasad said. It is not good for his mental health.

Angela Savard, a spokeswoman for Canadas foreign affairs, said the government was continuing to explore options to bring Canadians home.

For those aboard the Greg Mortimer in Montevideo, desperation is setting in, crew members told the AP.

The Antarctic cruise set sail from Argentina on March 15, after a pandemic had already been declared. The ships physician, Dr. Mauricio Usme, said that when the first passenger fell ill, on March 22, he was pressured by the captain, the cruise operator and owners to modify the health conditions that had to be met for the ship to be admitted into ports.

Dr. Usme refused. The boat anchored in the port of Montevideo on March 27. More than half of its passengers and crew tested positive for COVID-19. Finally, on April 10, 127 passengers, including some who were infected, were allowed to disembark and fly home to Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada and Europe. Crew members were told to stay on board.

The doctor was hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Montevideo, along with a Filipino crew member, who later died.

People are exhausted and mentally drained, said Dr. Usme, now recovered and back on the Greg Mortimer. Its a complex situation. You feel very vulnerable and at imminent risk of death.

CMI, the Miami-based company that manages the boat, said it has been unable to get the necessary permissions to let crew members of 22 nationalities go home, but said they were all still under contract receiving pay.

Marvin Paz Medina, a Honduran man who works as the ships storekeeper, sent a video to the AP of his tiny cabin of about 70 square feet (6.5 square meters), where he has been confined for more than 35 days. Its hard being locked up all day, staring at the same four walls, he said.

Paz Medina says his children keep asking him when hes coming home, but he doesnt have an answer.

We are trapped, feeling this anxiety that at any moment we can get seriously ill, said Paz Medina. We do not want this anymore. We want to go home.

_____

Garat reported from Montevideo, Uruguay. Associated Press writers Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit, and Rob Gillies in Toronto, contributed to this report.
Yaradua wake up! Nigeria is boiling again. This time around it is Covid-19 that is tranquilizing the citizenry and the elites are dying like fowls.

Yardadua the last time we spoke was in 2015, after I briefed you on how your kinsman Buhari defeated your brother jonathan in the presidential polls. That last time I updated you on how the Boko Haram which you destroyed in Maidugeri in 2009, suddenly became so strong that they bombed the United Nations building in Abuja, bombed the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters in Area 11, bombed the ever busy EMAB plaza Wuse 11, bombed the multipurpose Nyanya Park and killing thousands of people in the process. They even bombed the Catholic Church in Suleja on Christma Day, killing over seventy persons.

Yaradua I also briefed you in the Part 3 of our discussion that the same Boko Haram you got their leader, Mohammed Yusuf, arrested in Borno, and destroyed their base, reorganized and became so powerful again that they took over all the indigenous Chhristian dominated terriories and local governments in Borno State including Gwoza, Damboa, Gamboru, Ngala, Mubi , Biu and even Chibok. I told you that the Jihadists kidnapped over 250 school girls from a christian dominated secondary school in Chibok and have used Jihad of the penis to send most of them to death.

Yaradua ! wake up because the last time we spoke I told you that your brother Jonathan was ousted out of office by the combined efforts of Buhari, Atiku , Obasanjo, Barrack Obama and David Cameron . Yaradua, I must confess , I did not support the re-election of your brother, Jonathan contrary to your advice.

Yaradua wake up because the Nigeria you tried to unite has been so much polarized along ethnic lines that implosion can take place anytime. The electoral processes you promised to make better, is not yet uhuru, even though it is far better than the Do or Die  Electoral process of your godfather, Obasanjo.

Yaradua wake up because the oil blocks your predecessors fraudulently awarded to friends and well wishers without due process, which you decided to revoke, was given back to these corrupt owners by your brother, Jonathan , and your kinsman Buhari has not been courageous enough to fight the cabal holding the industry hostage and retrieve our national wealth.

Yaradua wake up because the corruption fight you launched in 2007 by accusing your godfather Obasanjo of wasting down the drain N1.7 trillion naira on power without any result, was jettisoned by your brother Jonathan,and a free buzz of national cake ensued. Your kinsman Buhari who promised to wipe off corruption have failed to live up to promise, because the corrupt cabals are staring at him daily in Aso Rock.

Yaradua wake up because though you sacked Service Chiefs in the military during your era, your kinsman, Buhari, had refused to sack his tired and long overdue service chiefs despite the groundswell of public opinion against them.

Yaradua wake up because your Fulani herders kinsmen who respected themselves during your tenure, have overreached their boundaries , roaming about with AK-47S , raping, maiming and killing, all in an attempt to secure farmland, and your kinsman, Buhari , is too weak to stop them.

Yaradua wake up because while you had appreciable peace with your deputy and brother Jonathan, your Buhari kinsmans deputy, Osinbajo, has been maligned, abused, stigmatized and traumatized by agents of the opposition working for cabals within the Villa.

Yaradua wake up because the attempt to poison and kill your kinsman Buhari, failed because they rushed him to a hospital in London, and the British establishment gave him the best medical care. Had you been rushed to London or Germany, as we advised, maybe those that infiltrated the Royal Hospital in Saudi Arabia, wouldnt have succeeded.

Yaradua wake up because the Enugu Airport you declared of International status, was not fully upgraded in landing equipment, and is currently under lock and key and everlasting renovation.

Yaradua wake up because the cement monopoly you took away from Dangote, and handed Ibeto back his share of the business, have returned to the statusquo.

Yaradua wake up because your kinsman Buhari we supported in 2007 against your candidacy, and supported again in 2015 against your brother Jonathan, has been declared dead by the leader of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu

Yar'adua wake up because these people claim that one Jubril from Sudan is in charge in Aso Rock even though we know that the postulation is the height of speculative orgasm.

Yar'adua wake up because the rule of law mantra you introduced has suffered some few setbacks. Even the leader of the Shiite Movement, Sheikh El-Zakzaky is still in detention with his wife and being fed with food worth N1 million naira every year.

Yaradua wake up because the Covid-19 palliative, yes! Covid-19 is the name of that sickness killing elites like chicken. The Covid-19 palliatives have been turned by three powerful women in your Kinsman, Buharis cabinet into a multi billion dollar national cake competition, and your kinsmans wife, Aisha, Senate President, Lawan and Speaker, Gbajamiala, have been shut out from the banquet table and those women are not looking at their grumbling faces.

Yaradua wake up! Why did you die so soon!

I will always remember you, because I know that you sincerely kick started changes in Nigeria but didnt live long enough to implement it. You refused to be manipulated by Obasanjo or Babangida while in office. You were a socialist to the core!

However, God knows the best and why yo left so soon!

Rest in piece Yaradua! The best President of Nigeria so far.

(Obinna Akukwe , Columnist wrote via [email protected] , facebook.com/obinnaakukwe, @ObinnaAkukwe)
Official figures from the Spanish Health Ministry released on Friday showed that there were 229 coronavirus-related fatalities in the last 24 hours, a slight rise from the 213 recorded on Thursday.

Despite the rise, the figures are in line with previous days, said Fernando Simon, the director of the Health Ministrys Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies, at the governments daily news conference on Friday.

The number of daily coronavirus fatalities in Spain was 244 on Wednesday, 185 on Tuesday and 164 on Monday and Sunday. The total death toll since the beginning of the pandemic now stands at 26,299.

The latest figures showed not only a rise in daily fatalities, but also in the number of hospital and intensive care (ICU) admissions. In the past 24 hours, 85 coronavirus patients were admitted into the ICU, the highest number in nine days. Most of these admissions (58) were reported in the northeastern region of Catalonia. No other region recorded more than 10 ICU patients. With regard to hospital admissions, the number rose to 762, which is in keeping with figures reported over the last week. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 131,148 coronavirus patients have recovered from the disease and been discharged from hospital.

The spike in new cases was also significant. In the past 24 hours, there were 1,095 new coronavirus infections, as measured by the more reliable PCR testing, bringing the total to 222,857. This is a noticeable increase from previous days, when between 700 and 800 new cases were reported.

Simon indicated on Friday that most coronavirus cases were reported in two regions  Madrid and Catalonia. The rest of the territory has a 0.38% rise in contagions, which equates to a drop of 25%, he said.

The health official explained that the data would soon start to reflect whether the relaxation of confinement measures has impacted the curve of the coronavirus outbreak. Although it is still too soon to come to any conclusions, the figures over the next few days should reveal to what extent the deescalation plan has led to a spike in new cases.

Next phase of deescalation plan

The government will announce Friday afternoon which regions in Spain have been granted approval to move to Phase 1 of the deescalation plan to relax coronavirus confinement measures.

All regions except Catalonia and Castilla y Leon have requested to move to this stage, which allows social gatherings of up to 10 people and sidewalk cafes to open at 50%. These two regions have requested introducing Phase 1 in some of its territory, excluding the larger population centers.

The Madrid regional government sent its petition to move to Phase 1, despite the objections from the regions director general of Public Health, Yolanda Fuentes, who resigned on Thursday night in protest. According to sources from the central government, Madrid is unlikely to be allowed to ease the current restrictions, given the high number of cases recorded in the region.

The request triggered political reaction on Friday. People are shocked to see that some individuals are aiming for political gain by playing with something as serious as saving lives, said Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, leader of the leftist Unidas Podemos, the junior partner in a coalition led by Pedro Sanchez of the Socialist Party (PSOE).

Coronavirus crisis hits rental market in Catalonia

The rental market in Catalonia has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, according to figures from the Catalan regional government. These figures indicate that during the month of March  the state of alarm was declared on March 14  rental agreements fell by 25% both in Barcelona and in the rest of Catalonia. In April, that number dropped by 75% (from 9,914 to 2,978 in the region and from 3,119 to 914 in Barcelona).

Apartments for rent in Barcelona. Joan Sanchez

The data refers to agreements of previously settled rental contracts or contracts that are automatically renewed. The market has come to a standstill under the coronavirus lockdown, given that apartment viewings are not possible, and wont be allowed until Phase 1 of the governments deescalation plan. Whats more, while the state of alarm is in place, tenants are allowed to request to extend their leases. The sector has warned that rental prices are likely to fall in response to the economic fallout of the crisis, which has led to mass job losses and furloughs.

Canary Islands develops system to predict new cases

The health service in Spains Canary Islands has developed a system based on telephone calls to predict new coronavirus cases up to five days in advance. We saw there was an interesting correlation between the number of calls [to the health service] and the cases we diagnosed days later, so we asked Las Palmas University to do a study to corroborate it, said Antonio Olivera, the head of the Canary Island Health Service (SCS).

A Cabinet meeting of the regional government of the Canary Islands. Ramon de la Rocha (Europa Press)

In some ways its obvious, because lots of people make calls when they start to notice symptoms. But, as far as we know, no one had measured this or thought of using it as a management tool.

Beatriz Gonzalez Lopez-Valcarcel, an economics professor and one of the governments coronavirus experts, was the specialist who oversaw the study. She discovered that for every 100 new calls for information, 2.4 [coronavirus] diagnoses could be expected within five days.

The study was based on Level 2 calls, where a patient, after identifying themselves and explaining their case, is transferred to a nursing professional. According to Lopez-Valcarcel, the correlation between the number of calls to SCS and later diagnoses is very high, 80.1% in the island of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and 82.7% in Las Palmas.

The Spanish Health Ministry has asked the SCS for more information about the initiative.

Extension of temporary layoff plans

Spains Labor Ministry and social organizations reached an agreement Thursday night to extend the temporary layoff scheme, known as ERTE, and a large number of its benefits until June 30. The agreement however is not binding, and must be ratified by Spains UGT and CCOO unions, as well as the business associations Cepyme and CEOE. Around 3.4 million people in Spain have had their jobs temporarily or partially suspended through ERTEs.

With reporting by Clara Blanchar, Oriol Guell and Manuel V. Gomez.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017. Fred Dufour | AFP | Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic will fuel the already-bad rivalry between the U.S. and China, and could even tilt the balance of global power in Beijing's favor, analysts say. Tensions have already flared on a few fronts since the pandemic started. Washington and Beijing are sniping at one another about the true extent and origin of the coronavirus outbreak. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs again. The two countries have even squabbled about the South China Sea issue. The pandemic will "increase US-China strategic rivalry," says global political risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. "The coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly fuelling an increase in geopolitical tensions between the US and China," Hugo Brennan, principal Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft wrote in a Wednesday note, predicting that the virus will remain a key source of friction for the next 12 months. "In times of crisis, global rivalries tend to intensify rather than abate. The coronavirus crisis has led to a further deterioration in the already chronically bad relations between China and the US," The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) added in a note on Wednesday. "The coronavirus epidemic is not the cause of the difficulties in US-China relations, however; it is merely exacerbating trends that have existed for years as both countries compete for economic dominance."

The pandemic is therefore likely to accelerate the rebalancing of global economic power from the West to the East in coming years. The Economist Intelligence Unit

Both economic giants have been embroiled in a trade war for the past couple of years which has spilled over into disputes on intellectual property rights, and evolved into larger issues such as technology dominance. In January, both countries reached a phase one deal before the virus hit. But the future of that deal is now in question  last week, Trump said it was now "secondary" to the pandemic and threatened new tariffs on Beijing in retaliation for its virus response. Trump is likely to build his presidential campaign around a "Blame China" rallying call, Brennan said, and if he gets re-elected, it would lead to another four years of "fractious relations" with Beijing.

Beijing will use crisis as opportunity to extend global influence

Crucially though, despite the anti-China rhetoric, analysts say that the pandemic would likely speed up the shift in global power from the West to the East. China has been blamed by not just the U.S., but also the U.K. and Australia for its initial response to the outbreak, which was criticized as slow and non-transparent. But that won't stop the Asian giant from extending itself globally. China could even use the crisis as an opportunity to raise its profile and expand its influence, particularly over countries hard-hit by the pandemic by providing much needed support, analysts say. Beijing has already embarked on so-called mask diplomacy, sending medical supplies to affected countries.

In particular, China could further cement its presence in parts of Africa, eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, said the EIU. Kaho Yu, senior Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, pointed to three factors: Beijing's "aggressive global propaganda campaign promoting China's role in suppressing the virus," a looming global recession that will sap the appetite of many leaders to blame their biggest trade partner for how it handled the outbreak; and the pandemic "underscoring the absence of American leadership on the global stage." Cases in the U.S. have shot up, making it the worst-hit country, while Chinese government data showed the outbreak has subsided to a few cases a day in the mainland.
Forever Alone Hot Pot

Since its inception last December, FA Hot Pot has gone viral among singles in Saigon. Its idea has been a hit across the city, combining eating out with dating or just simply making new friends. It appears the restaurant has impressed many people with the aim to help singletons couple up with someone who may become the love of their life on blind dates.

To get the chance for one of these dinners, just fill in your details in the online form and you will put on a hot date with the one who meets your requirements. When organising these blind dates, FA Hot Pot aims to put two people together that are likely a fit for each other. As a matchmaker, the owner of the restaurant will thoroughly pick out couples who have strong resemblances. My greatest wish is that these couples get soon together. Whatever the outcome may be, I hope that they get on well hereafter and see each other for another time, so I feel happy for them, said Vu Xuan Thai.

The way two singletons meet each other is quite extraordinary. After agreeing on a suitable time, both participants will show up and head for their private seat in the dating area. The dining tables there are specifically designed with removable boards which separate two distinctive sides. When both singles get ready, they can press a button above the dining table to move the board. At the very moment when the board is lowered, they can face each other, enjoy delicious food as well as begin the date. In the flip of a switch, it seems to narrow the gap between two people.

I see that youngers in Saigon get too many irons in the fire. My colleagues are a good example in this case. They have lot of work and always spend time in the office, ensuring that they are busy enough to make their living, so they find it hard to be in a relationship with someone. Their situation makes them accept the state of being alone, Thai added.

The name of the restaurant also comes from the story of his colleagues. FA Hot Pot stands for Forever Alone Hot Pot, meaning the restaurant is for singles who have not had been in a relationship yet. Following its name, the owner hopes singles will find the partner for the rest of their lives.

The restaurant is suitable for people who are longing for a lasting relationship. If you are the one who cannot bear being alone for a long time, FA Hot Pot is a good opportunity for you.

Up to now, the restaurant had a lot of success in matchmaking couples capable of sticking together. The number of people joining on dates up amounts to up to 400 singles per week, keeping the restaurant bustling with the activity.

If both singles are into each other, they may become friends or even build up a more romantic relationship.

Along with attracting people for its trending style, the restaurant also impresses youngsters with its Asian-inspired food. Besides the dating area, which takes up most of the terrific space in the restaurant, dining areas for family and friends are spacious and elegant as well. If you merely desire to enjoy your meal with friends or dine with your family, the restaurant will also be a pretty good choice. Its waiters are very welcoming and friendly and will guarantee your satisfaction.
PHOENIX, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Phoenix Indian Center is collecting donations of much-needed supplies  from diapers and bottled water to medical masks and cleansers  to deliver to the Navajo Nation. There is a semi-truck ready to make the delivery to Navajo communities most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we need the public's help to fill it. The Navajo Nation is the third-highest coronavirus-affected area in the United States, with 2,654 reported cases and 85 deaths.

"The Navajo Nation is in crisis, and they need our help," said Patricia Hibbeler, CEO of the Phoenix Indian Center. "The suffering in Indian Country is just heartbreaking, and we urge anyone who can to please donate. Providing much-needed supplies will make a big difference in the lives of the Navajo people, some of whom are family members of our staff at the Center."

The Navajo Nation is the largest tribal reservation in the United States, spanning Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and has seen an extremely high rate of COVID-19. To help, the Phoenix Indian Center, the first non-profit urban Indian Center in the nation, is accepting donations to send to the Navajo Nation in a semi-truck supplied courtesy of Phoenix Truck Driving Institute.

Acceptable donations include general items like baby essentials, toiletries, bottled water, and non-perishable food items, PPE items like masks or head and shoe covers, and other medical supplies like non-latex gloves and disinfectant sprays or wipes. A list of most-needed things is on the Phoenix Indian Center website .

Those wishing to contribute can drop off their donations at the Phoenix Indian Center, 4520 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85012, on one of the following dates and times:

Friday, May 8 : 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ; 2 to 4 p.m.

: ; 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 9 : 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

: Monday, May 11 : 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ; 2 to 4 p.m.

: ; Tuesday, May 12 : 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ; 2 to 4 p.m.

: ; Wednesday, May 13 : 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ; 2 to 4 p.m.

: ; 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, May 14 : 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Anyone unable to donate during one of these set times can call the Phoenix Indian Center to set up an appointment for drop off, or give online at www.phxindcenter.org . All items and monetary donations will go directly toward helping the Navajo Nation.

About Phoenix Indian Center

Founded in 1947, the Phoenix Indian Center is the oldest American Indian non-profit organization in the United States. Each Year, the Center directly serves more than 7,000 individuals, and more than 20,000 through related outreach, by providing services in the areas of job readiness, cultural enrichment, youth services, and prevention programs. Learn more at www.phxindcenter.org .

SOURCE Phoenix Indian Center

Related Links

https://www.phxindcenter.org


The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 1,323 new coronavirus cases Friday, raising the statewide total to 54,238.

Across Pennsylvania, 3,616 people have died due to COVID-19, including 200 newly reported cases Friday. The health department said the newly reported deaths have occurred over the past several weeks. All of those who have died were adults.

More than two-thirds of Pennsylvanias coronavirus deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes. More than 10,000 residents of those facilities have been infected.

The data comes as Gov. Tom Wolf has eased restrictions in 24 counties in northern Pennsylvania. Later today, Wolf is expected to announce 13 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, including the Pittsburgh region, will be the next to partially reopen.

The health department released new data Friday; the numbers reflect cases and deaths reported as of midnight. There are 216,321 people who have tested negative.

The number of new cases is the highest in a week and its the second day in a row there have been more than 1,000 new cases. The report reflects results from more than 7,700 new tests, compared to about 6,400 tests on the previous day.

On Thursday night, Wolf extended the stay-at-home order for most of Pennsylvania until June 4.

The governor announced a three-phase plan in reopening Pennsylvania: red, yellow and green. For counties in the yellow phase, more businesses can reopen, albeit with some restrictions.

With yellow counties, some businesses can resume in-person operations but are encouraged to allow employees to work remotely. Restaurants and bars remain limited to takeout and delivery services. Theaters, gyms, casinos, barber shops and nail salons would remain closed in those counties.

These counties moved into the yellow phase early Friday morning: Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Montour, Northumberland, Potter, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga, Union, Venango, and Warren.

Looking at cases

Wolf has said the curve of new cases has flattened in Pennsylvania. The number of new cases reported Friday is well below the one-day peak of 1,989 new cases reported on April 9. Even the Philadelphia area, which has been hit hardest by the virus, has passed the peak, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine has said.

Philadelphia leads the state with 14,384 coronavirus cases and 833 deaths, according to the state health department figures. In neighboring Montgomery County, 5,037 people have contracted the virus and 515 have died.

In central Pennsylvania, Lancaster County leads the region with 2,122 coronavirus cases and 165 deaths, according to the health department.

Heres a look at the cases in the other midstate counties: Lebanon (797 cases and 16 deaths); Dauphin (764 cases and 37 deaths); York (753 cases and 13 deaths); Franklin (452 cases and 11 deaths); Cumberland (414 cases and 31 deaths); Adams (154 cases and 5 deaths); and Perry (34 cases and 1 death).

Across Pennsylvania, 2,458 people have died of the coronavirus in long-term care facilities, including nursing homes and personal care homes, according to the health department.

The health department said 10,919 residents of those facilities have contracted COVID-19, along with 1,542 employees.

Cases have been found in 522 distinct facilities in 44 counties.

Reopening businesses

The Democratic continues to clash with Republican lawmakers over the question of reopening more businesses.

GOP lawmakers, who control the General Assembly, contend more small businesses can be allowed to reopen without endangering public health. Theyre also hearing from constituents anxious to go to work. More than 1.7 million Pennsylvania residents have filed unemployment claims since mid-March.

Wolf and Democratic lawmakers contend a broad reopening of businesses could risk lives. The governor and fellow Democrats have also argued it could do more damage to the economy if more spikes of the virus lead prompt additional shutdowns of the economy.

Gov. Tom Wolf's red, yellow and green phases reopening Pennsylvania after coronavirus-related shutdowns in 2020. (Graphic via the governor's office.)

More from PennLive

Which businesses can reopen in Pa.'s yellow coronavirus phase, and which cant?

Even for a nurse who has dealt with infectious diseases, COVID-19 is scary; National Nurses Week

No foreclosures or evictions in Pa. until at least July 10: Gov. Tom Wolf

Although the N.J. beaches are starting to reopen, Pa. health secretary recommends you dont go

Social distancing has removed the one thing we need when we grieve: people | Nancy Eshelman
LOS ANGELES  California restaurants have drafted a plan to allow the industry to reopen for sit-down dining with an array of safeguards while avoiding possible requirements imposed in other states that customers have their temperature taken or the number of tables be dramatically limited.

The recommendations, obtained by The Associated Press, are to be submitted to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday. They envision a changed world within dining rooms, as an industry built on face-to-face contact and crowded tables looks for ways to safely conduct business and avoid the spread of coronavirus.

Tables would be limited to no more than 10 people. Buffets, salad bars and shared bread baskets would be out. Salt and pepper shakers could be replaced by bottles of hand sanitizer. And meals could arrive from food servers sheathed in face masks.

Restaurant dining rooms were shuttered in California in March as part of broad orders to deter the spread of the virus, though takeout and delivery remained. The move devastated the industry and sent droves into unemployment lines in a state with an internationally known food culture.

Newsom said Thursday that the state intended to release guidelines for restaurants to reopen on Tuesday. He predicted that restaurants in certain counties could begin opening their dining rooms in a week or so, providing the counties meet a set of benchmarks that show the spread of the virus is in check.

In Los Angeles, San Francisco and other congested urban areas that have been hot-spots for infections, businesses are likely to remain shuttered longer.

The recommendations drafted by the California Restaurant Association, in partnership with the California Conference of Local Health Officers and the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health, will give Newsom a potential framework for reopening dining rooms as he begins to ease lockdown orders this week for retail shops, bookstores, florists and sporting goods businesses.

The association wants Newsom to set only broad guidelines in four areas  employee health, social distancing, public education and improved sanitation and disinfection.

Cities and counties would be left to determine the rules within each category, because what makes sense in San Diego might not in Eureka or Bakersfield.

For example, the recommendations urge local governments to consider such measures as requiring temperature checks for restaurant employees, requiring mandatory hand-washing schedules for workers and face coverings for employees who interact with the public.

In the area of social distancing, local jurisdictions will need to establish specific measures for keeping tables apart or setting up barriers between them, and limiting tables to no more than 10 people. An earlier proposal to limit tables to family and household members was later dropped.

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. The vast majority of people recover.

In Florida this week, restaurants in all but three South Florida counties were allowed to reopen their inside dining rooms at 25% capacity. The California restaurants are seeking to avoid an across-the-board percentage limit on how many people could be inside, instead allowing local officials to account for differences in restaurant designs and layouts.

The risk is different in every county, association CEO Jot Condie said.

For restaurants, the return to business would mean a dramatic shift from what customers have taken for granted.

Condie predicted that diners would not only accept the changes, but I think they are going to come to expect it.

In some reopened eateries around the country, restaurants are checking customers temperatures, a possible indicator of infection. The California restaurants are recommending local governments consider requiring temperature checks  but only for employees.

Nothing would prevent a county from requiring customer temperature checks, but Condie said policing guests was ultimately left off the recommendations. Part of the concern for restaurants centered on liability: Customers who believe they were wrongly turned away could file a lawsuit.

The recommendations could result in changes that run from common sense to socially awkward.

In a tightly spaced restaurant, diners could end up looking at each other through plastic walls separating tables. Cleaning crews could be on routine patrols, swiping doorknobs and counter tops with sanitizer.

Owners might wince at the changes, and the added costs could be substantial, but they understand the importance of this, Condie said.

Editors Note: Because of the health implications of the COVID-19 virus, this article is being made available free to all online readers. If youd like to join us in supporting the mission of local journalism, please visit napavalleyregister.com/members/join/.
This past weekend was not a high point for our community.

I wanted to write about progress on a Black agenda for Black Indianapolis this week but cant. I have to write about what happened this past weekend.

At a time when we are three times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 and twice as likely to die from it  Black folks gathered in large numbers throughout the city.

White folks were doing it too, but they arent dying like we are dying.

Plus  Im talking to us right now.

Some want to blame this just on young folks, but some of our elders and old enough to know betters were out and about too. Not to mention, our young people had to leave a house where likely their loved one could be now at risk.

You dont have to have symptoms to be contagious. And that so many of us went out, gathered and then went home to loved ones is sad, infuriating and heartbreaking.

How many people will be infected with a disease we have no cure for because folks wanted to hang out?

Sitting in cars is one thing.

What happened at the gatherings across the city, which included fights, a police chase and one gathering may be linked to the shooting death of a teenage girl  it was not a high moment.

I get it.

I understand on a certain level the need to just get out. Area high school seniors lost a good part of their last year in high school.

College students, who enjoyed beautiful freedom away from home, are now home now in what likely feels like an oppressive neverending curfew.

Humans are social creatures so not seeking connection is abnormal. But these are different times.

Im not paying anyones bills but my 7-yearold son, Alexander Wolleys. But the facts are this is the most dangerous time for a pandemic.

As we slowly begin the process of reopening our community, a relaxation of social distancing measures, including wearing masks and keep at least 6 feet away from others must not devolve into a loss of complete discipline.

The deadly virus is still ravaging the city and last count 34% of the 363 COVID-19 deaths have been Black people. The Marion County Health Department knows of just under 1,200 positive cases of Black people.

Thats just those of us who got tested. We only now have testing available for the general public.

Churches will be wrestling with the same dilemma of social distancing soon too.

While a lot of churches pride themselves on hospitality that involves hugs and talking to your neighboring sitting by you on the pewchurch leaders must adapt to a new normal as well.

We need church leaders to consider public health as they make the difficult decision to either remain closed or open.

We have got to figure out how to keep ourselves alive and healthy during this pandemic. It will require personal responsibility.

We have to be responsible for ourselves and the potential impact that we might have on others. We dont have a choice.

Failure to do so might result in a costly sickness or potentially even death.

What is worse, is that someones irresponsible behavior removes options for people who are being responsible.

Participating in gatherings that do not maintain a level of social distancing is reckless and irresponsible.

The Black community has to take responsibility for itself.

What I am hearing

A heart-warming effort by neighbors in the near north area involves a card program to senior citizens and others who feel lonely.

The effort is a partnership between Flanner House, Marian University Writing Center and the Near Northwest Faith Partners.

Neighbors are writing cards that are included in food deliveries to near northwest area residents. The cards carry positive messages such as Stay Strong, We are thinking about you, or Try to smile. But one message, Im Lonely too reminds of the stark reality of loneliness many people are experiencing at this time.

If you want to support this effort anybody can drop a hand-written card from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Bradley Center, 877 Udell St.

Finally, yours truly hopped on a call for the media with the Small Business Administration regional leadership. We learned that while Indiana has received less paycheck protection program (PPP) dollars than other Midwestern states, we stack up favorable when population is taken into consideration.

In the first round, there were 35,990 loans approved by the SBA in Indiana totaling approximately $7.5 billion in paycheck protection funding. In round two, 31,757 loans had been approved totaling just over $2 billion.

A federal FOIA request seeking a list of Black Indiana businesses that had received funding did not produce the requested information. However, I and several others raised this issue in a media call with regional SBA leadership. They acknowledged efforts to try to engage the Black community but were not able to produce numbers documenting their efforts. Apparently, they are tracking the data but did not have it to share at this time.
This is a common diplomatic practice that shows there are certain problems in bilateral relations, - Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani

Georgia has recalled its ambassador in Kyiv for consultations. Such move is due to the recent appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian leader who is, from now on, the head of the Executive Committee of Reforms that works by the President of Ukraine. David Zalkaliani, the Georgian Foreign Minister said so as quoted by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

"This is a common practice in diplomatic relations, which points out that there are certain problems in bilateral relations, so a consultation with the ambassador is necesary to determine next steps", the official stated.

At that, the Minister added that in spite of the decision of the Ukrainian side, Georgia does not consider a break of diplomatic ties or revision of strategic partnership.

Previously, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky assigned Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of Head of Executive Committee of Reforms. This is mentioned in the decree released on the website of the head of the state.

"I sincerely congratulate Mikheil Nikolozovich (Saakashvili, - 112 Intrernational) on a new responsible challenge. I believe he can give an impetus to the National Reforms Council and wil be instrumental in bringing important changes in the country's life", the President commented on the official's appointment.

The mentioned presidential decree also puts Oleksandr Olshansky second in charge in the Executive Committee of Reforms of Ukraine, that is, Saakashvili's deputy.
The Delhi High Court Friday asked authorities to consider the representation of a man seeking removal of the Chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, Zafarul-Islam Khan, for his allegedly "inflammatory and threatening statements" against the Hindu community.

Justice Anu Malhotra took note of the submissions and disposed of the petition, lawyers appearing the matter, said.

The petition by Delhi resident Manoranjan Kumar claimed that the commission's chairman on April 28 posted statements on his Facebook account wherein he allegedly referred to the Hindu community as 'Hindutva bigots'.

The plea had also sought lodging of an FIR against Khan for his alleged inflammatory statements.

Delhi government standing counsel Rahul Mehra and advocates Richa Kapoor and Chaitanya Gosain told the court that FIR has already been lodged by the Delhi Police in the matter.

The counsel said the court has directed the authorities to consider the representation of the petitioner.

The plea, filed through advocate Siddharth Acharya, has also alleged that the Khan in his statements also threatened the Hindu community with dire consequences and has sought his removal from the post of chairman of the commission.

"...he (Khan) deliberately misused his position as the Chairperson of the Commission and his continuance in office is detrimental to the interests of minorities and the public interest," the petition has contended.

It has also alleged that the statements were made by Khan with an intention to cause communal tensions.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amazon Apple Google Facebook

REUTERS/File Photos

Tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have announced plans  with varying degrees of specificity  outlining how employees might return to their offices this year.

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have set dates that their offices will tentatively reopen this summer, but will still allow most employees to keep working from home through the fall.

Twitter has taken the boldest work from home stance, telling employees they can keep working remotely permanently.

Tech giants returning to work are relying on safety measures like thermal cameras, mandatory face masks, and hand sanitizer to reduce the chance of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As states prepare to lift COVID-19 stay-at-home orders across the US, some of tech's biggest players have started to solidify their timelines for reopening their offices.

In the past month, companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have started to tell employees when they can expect to return to work in the coming year.

Twitter was the first major tech company to make a bold decision about the future of remote work  in the first week of May, the company went so far as to tell employees that they can keep working from home permanently if they want to. A slew of smaller tech companies have followed that lead, including Spotify, Shopify, and Box.

Meanwhile, Google and Facebook will both return to offices in the coming year, but are planning to limit office capacity to less than 30% in the months after they reopen. Most employees at those companies will be allowed to continue working from home at least through the end of 2020.

Some tech companies are even reconsidering their attachment to Silicon Valley amid the paradigm shift towards more remote work. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told Axios that as social distancing has "become a way of life," he's considering shutting down the company's Silicon Valley headquarters in favor of somewhere like Colorado. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mulled similar possibilities.

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Companies returning to offices will face unprecedented challenges to stave off potential COVID-19 outbreaks among employees. Some, like Amazon, are turning to high-tech solutions like thermal cameras that screen workers for fever. Experts say offices may have to implement sneeze guards, one-way corridors, and staggered hours to reduce the density of employees.

Here's how tech giants are planning to return to offices in the coming year.

Facebook says it will reopen offices in July, but told employees that they can continue to work from home for the rest of 2020.

Mark Zuckerberg

Getty Images/AMY OSBORNE / Contributor

Facebook will begin to reopen offices on July 6, but most employees will still to be allowed to work remotely for the rest of the year, the company told workers.

It will limit offices to 25% capacity in the months after it reopens and mandate temperature checks at the office, according to Bloomberg. It will also require that workers wear masks in the office when not social distancing.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in April that Facebook employees will be encouraged to keep working from home to reduce density as other companies that don't have that option return to business as usual.

"We know that most people can't work from home as easily as many of our employees can. We also know that when society does eventually start re-opening, it will have to open slowly in staggered waves to make sure that the people who are returning to work can do so safely and that we minimize the possibility of future outbreaks," Zuckerberg said.

Google told employees that they should plan to work from home for the rest of the year, but a select few will return to offices in June.

Sundar Pichai

Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told workers during an all-hands meeting this week that most employees can expect to keep working remotely for the rest of 2020.

However, some key employees will be able to go back to the office as early as June, Pichai said. Google said in April that it was planning a "staggered" approach to return to the office.

Pichai clarified in a May interview with The Verge that the company will start by welcoming 10% to 20% of workers back to the office, with the goal of reaching 20% to 30% capacity by the end of the year. Under that model, Pichai hopes that most workers could come into the office once a week.

Twitter employees were told they can keep working remotely indefinitely.

jack dorsey

Amal KS/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly told employees that they'll be allowed to work from home indefinitely, even after COVID-19 shutdowns are lifted.

Dorsey also reportedly said that Twitter's offices won't be reopened until September at the earliest. Twitter first told employees to start working from home in March. The offer doesn't extend to employees whose jobs mandate that they return to the office, like those tasked with server maintenance.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, Dorsey voiced plans to encourage a "distributed workforce" with more remote employees living outside San Francisco, where the company is headquartered.

Amazon said employees who can work from home will be allowed to keep doing so until at least October 2.

Amazon headquarters

Rocky Grimes/Shutterstock

Amid COVID-19 shutdowns, most attention on Amazon has focused on the company's warehouse workers, which have seen a spike in demand as Americans turn to the company's delivery as an essential service. Amazon hired 175,000 new warehouse workers last month and had more than 798,000 workers worldwide as of December.

While warehouses have remained open, Amazon's white-collar employees have been working from home since March. They'll be able to continue to do so until at least October, Amazon announced last week.

The company hasn't set a specific date that its offices will reopen, but told Reuters that it will implement "physical distancing, deep cleaning, temperature checks, and the availability of face coverings and hand sanitizer."

Microsoft also told employees they'll have the option to keep working from home through October.

Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Stephen Brashear

Microsoft's offices have been closed since March in accordance with government mandated stay-at-home orders.

This week, the company notified employees that even as those orders are lifted, they will have the option to work from home, a company spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.

Stay-at-home orders in Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered, are set to expire May 31 at the earliest. Microsoft didn't clarify whether employees will be allowed to return to the office as soon as the restrictions lift.

Apple, meanwhile, has reportedly asked employees to start returning to the office as early as late May or early June, bucking the remote-work trend set by other tech giants. Apple has also started reopening stores in the US.

FILE PHOTO: The Apple Inc. logo is seen hanging at the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in New York

Reuters

Apple hasn't publicly clarified plans for its corporate and tech employees to return to offices in the US, but the company reportedly expects staff to start returning as early as May. The company's more rigid approach to getting employees in the office as soon as possible is a departure from its peers in Silicon Valley.

An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the company's plans to return to offices.

Apple also temporarily closed all of its stores outside of China in March, but it started reopening stores in the US, Australia, Austria, and South Korea in May.

The company is taking precautionary measures in reopened stores like distributing hand sanitizer, taking shoppers' temperatures with contact-free thermometers, and requiring that patrons wear masks.

Read the original article on Business Insider


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Samuel Wazizi alias Halla Ya Matter Samuel Wazizi

Presiding Fako High Court Judge Justice Mbonge Wilson Ebong Ngole has thrown out a request that would have forced the authorities to show proof of journalist Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe alias Wazizis existence nine months after he was arrested in Buea.

Legal Counsel Nkea A. Emmanuel, following the May 7, 2020 court ruling, says they believe that the conduct of the trial judge has raised serious doubts on his impartiality in this matter.

In a press statement, Barrister Nkea said: Today, 07 May 2020, the High Court of Fako Division Buea, per Mr. Justice Mbonge Wilson Ebong Ngole (President) issued a Ruling in the above matter following an application for the following provisional reliefs:

An Order for a copy of the Ruling of the Court in this matter to be served on the Applicant herein (the provisional order directing the respondents to produce Wazizi in Court);

An Order permitting the Center for Human Rights of the American Bar Association to observe the proceedings in this matter;

An Order of Accelerated Hearing in Suit No HCF/HB/004/19 between the parties herein.

In substance, Nkea says the request for these provisional reliefs was dismissed on the grounds that, being a Criminal Suit, the presence of the Legal Department (Prosecutors Office) was mandatory, and that only the rules of criminal procedure are applicable.

The Legal Counsel notes as follows:

(1) That the Habeas Corpus procedure even though provided for under the Criminal Procedure Code of Cameroon is not a Criminal Case per se. It is a miscellaneous application for which the relevant Rules of Civil Procedure may be applicable in situations where the Criminal Procedure Code is silent.

(2) The Court could not therefore rightly conclude that the request for provisional reliefs is a Criminal Case, or that only the rules of criminal procedure are applicable.

(3) That even though the Legal Department was not officially served with a copy of the request for provisional reliefs, Deputy State Counsel Emmanuel Kilo was physically present in Court.

(4) Though Deputy State Counsel Emmanuel Kilo came a little late to Court, he effectively followed the proceedings and even sought to make an observation, and notwithstanding his statutory rights to do so, he was abruptly stopped and refused further audience by the trial Judge.

(5) The Court could not therefore rightly conclude that the Legal Department was not aware of the request for provisional reliefs.

(6) That, a copy of the provisional order requesting that Journalist Wazizi be produced in court has not been served on the applicant  the principal party in this proceedings.

(7) Whilst a copy of the provisional order requesting that Journalist Wazizi be produced in court has been served on the Legal Department, the Legal Department has refused, ignored or neglected to serve this order on the respondents.

(8) The refusal to serve the applicant/counsel with a copy of the order has prevented the applicant from serving the respondents with the orders of the court.

(9) We believe that, the whole attitude of the trial judge is in furtherance of a determined effort to frustrate the determination of this matter on the merits.

(10) We believe that, the conduct of the trial judge has raised serious doubts on his impartiality in this matter.

In view of the foregoing, Legal Counsel Nkea says they shall be filing the requisite process to request the trial judge to stand down from the case on grounds of bias.

Cameroon-Info.Net understands that Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe popularly known as Samuel Wazizi, journalist with Buea based Chillen Music and Television (CMTV) in Cameroon, was arrested on August 2, 2019 and was initially held at the Muea police station. He was accused of having links with separatist fighters, a charge he has strongly denied. He was later moved from his detention cell to an unknown place where he has been incarcerated incommunicado. His whereabouts is unknown to his lawyers including family members, friends and colleagues.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, has since called for the unconditional release of journalist Samuel Wazizi.

Authorities must stop trying to force journalists like Samuel Wazizi to toe the government line about the separatist conflict in Cameroon by harassing and intimidating them through illegal detentions and flagrant violations of the rule of law, said Angela Quintal, CPJ Africa program coordinator.

The fact that Wazizi is being detained by the military, which has no jurisdiction to investigate terrorism-related charges, also raises serious questions about due process and the journalists safety. He must be released immediately with no condition.
Through creativity and ingenuity, PSPs are helping to bring joy to our medical heroes, patients and the public during COVID-19

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HP Inc. together with its global network of print service providers (PSPs) continue to innovate printing applications to help medical teams, businesses and the public adapt in the ongoing effort to combat COVID-19.

We are living through a time that is very unique to our human experience. The COVID-19 pandemic creates a new paradigm in how we relate to each other and today, so many people need help. Each day I am humbled and inspired by these shining examples of humanity and hope as the global print community is coming together for our global communities health and well-being, said Haim Levit, global head, Worldwide Industrial Indigo and PWI Commercial at HP.

Printing personalize protective gear for patient and medical worker well-being

As it is difficult to see faces behind medical personal protective equipment, many patients, especially the elderly, find it a frightening alien experience. Two medical students in Israel launched the More than Masks movement on Facebook calling for photos on the medical COVID-19 suits and gear. The page attracted the attention of HP Indigo team employees who helped launch the project by supporting the printing of the first 70,000 photo stickers.

To date, 200,000 photo stickers have been printed by HP and print partners, and donated to an estimated 2000 medical personnel at 16 hospitals in Israel. The doctors were very excited that they feel more comfortable getting closer to patients with the ability to introduce themselves and the patients were also very moved, said Nisim Asayag, founder of the project along with fellow student Anat Skliar. In addition, the photo stickers help the medical staff identify each other for better teamwork. The 5.8 x 8.3-inch size photo stickers feature a smiling face with their name and function. The medical teams stick them directly on their protective gowns and then dispose of them at the end of the shift. Free templates for downloading can be found here.

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A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9498339e-a78b-4af4-8eea-f39781c4da81

Sending a real print hug to frontline workers at hard-hit hospitals

Postable, a US web-to-print greeting card company, is offering an online service to create and mail thank you cards to frontline workers. They are donating 100% of the profits from these cards to the Frontline Responders Fund to help get critical supplies to frontline hospital workers combating COVID-19. You can send a card, printed on HP Indigo digital presses at Mercury Printing in Memphis, by visiting their website, picking a design, selecting a hospital from a list of hard hit areas and typing a message of love and encouragement to the brave medical workers saving lives. Postable prints, addresses and mails the cards to the hospitals on a daily basis.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/53959adf-0200-4a7b-b885-885c14aad96d

Helping restaurants stay afloat with sealed delivery boxes

Around the world, restaurants have closed their doors to dine-in patrons, leaving delivery or curb-side takeout as the only option to survive through these difficult times. CompanyBox, a Charlotte, NC based converter printing on the HP PageWide C500 Press with water-based ink compatible for food applications, developed a takeout box and bakery box with a single use seal, which keeps the food securely inside until the recipient removes the adhesive tear strip.

Restaurants have had to close their doors to dine-in patrons. Other small businesses that are part of the restaurant supply chain are also suffering, businesses like farms, bakeries, breweries and wineries. We decided to respond. We hope this added peace of mind drives more takeout orders and helps all those involved, said Louie DeJesus, CEO of CompanyBox. CompanyBox has started a program to donate the first 100 boxes free to any local Charlotte restaurants, and plans to produce 100,000 boxes in total.

Mobilizing fabric design community to produce and donate face masks

Spoonflower, based in the US and Germany, is a digital printing company and design community that utilizes HP Stitch technology to print custom fabrics for fashion and decor applications. The Spoonflower team has established the Spoonflower Mask Response Project to mobilize its in-house sewing team to design patterns for knit gaiter and double-layer cotton styles, and its community of designers to design, produce and donate masks to healthcare workers on the front lines. Watch tutorials from the Spoonflower team on how to sew a mask.

Due to high interest, more than 5,800 yards of fabric has been produced for mask makers to sew an estimated 70,000 masks for healthcare workers on the front lines. We are energized and motivated by how quickly our creatives and entrepreneurs have mobilized and leveraged their talents for the greater good, supplementing the PPE shortage with non-medical grade fabric masks, said Michael Jones, CEO, Spoonflower.

Producing hand sanitizer to help hospitals with shortages

The HP Graphic Arts Experience Center in Barcelona launched the printing of labels for INEOS of France to donate millions of bottles of hand sanitizers to hospitals across France, UK, Germany and the USA suffering from shortages and lack of supplies. HPs support for the production of the first 150,000 labels helped the delivery of millions of bottles to hospitals across France just ten days after the plan was announced. See how it all happened in this video.

Bringing sustenance to frontline workers

Baker Labels of the UK is donating three million labels printed on the HP Indigo 6900 Digital Press for the Salute the National Health Service (NHS) campaign, aimed to provide a million meals to NHS staff over the next three months. The nutritious boost meal packs are for vital frontline NHS staff working either in hospitals or those sick and confined to isolation at home. They hope to be doing around 10,000 meals a day in the coming weeks and expand across the country to targeted locations.

We are in a position to be able to manufacture the number of labels required and to be flexible on quantities, variations and demand. With the added support from our material suppliers at Avery Dennison, who have agreed to donate 15000 square metres of material, Im proud to be part of the team of suppliers collaborating to get this done, said Steve Baker, managing director, Baker Labels. Read more about Baker and the NHS campaign.

About HP Inc.

HP Inc. creates technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Through our product and service portfolio of personal systems, printers, and 3D printing solutions, we engineer experiences that amaze. More information about HP Inc. is available at http://www.hp.com.

Vanessa Forbes, HP

vanessa.forbes@hp.com



www.hp.com/go/newsroom Nina Gilbert, HP

nina@hp.com







Copyright 2020 HP Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
(Newser)  A man was struck and killed by a commercial jet landing on a runway at an airport in Austin, Texas, authorities said. The pilot of Southwest Airlines Flight 1392, a Boeing 737 arriving from Dallas, reported seeing a person on Runway 17R at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The sighting occurred shortly after the jet touched down at 8:12pm Thursday, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration, the AP reports. Southwest officials say the pilot maneuvered in an attempt to avoid the man, per CBS News, which has pictures of the damaged plane. The FAA said the driver of an airport operations vehicle later found the man on the runway.

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He was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders. No one on board was hurt. An airport spokesman said officials don't believe the man was supposed to be on the runway at the time; Austin police say he wasn't wearing any type of airport uniform. But theyre working to confirm that, as well as his identity, and determine the events leading up to his death. The airport said in posts on Twitter that it's working with the Austin Police Department on the investigation and that maintenance crews worked early Friday preparing to reopen the runway.

(Read more Southwest Airlines stories.)
Indore:

In a veiled attack on Pakistan, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat today said the neighbouring country hates India so much that it was ready to let itself down in order to harm India.

"There is so much hatred: 'our (Pakistan's) own condition is quite bad, but we (Pakistan) would let ourselves down to spite the neighbour (India).' This is how our neighbour is behaving," Bhagwat said while speaking at a book-launch here. "Whenever we extend the hand of friendship, it (Pakistan) makes such circumstances that we can not offer friendship again," he said.

He also said that both developed and developing countries were getting caught in the crossfire as the tussle to become superpower was on in the world. "Global thinkers are wondering if the race to become superpower continues like this then whether the world would survive. The world is looking at India with hope for answers. If we are able to answer these questions then we can become the number one country," Bhagwat said.

Hindi translation of Vijay Deshmukh-written biography of King Shivaji, "Shakkarte Shivrai", was launched on this occasion. Bhagwat said during Shivaji's times words such as "communalism" and "secularism" were non-existent, yet he, as a ruler, treated everybody equally. He also said the challenges to defend religion today were more or less the same as during Shivaji's times. Bhagwat however hastened to add that by religion he did not mean any particular community.

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TOKYO, May 8, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501) has announced that Hitachi has provided its advanced proton therapy system to Clinica Universidad de Navarra (Madrid, Spain) and the treatment started on April 17, 2020. Clinica Universidad de Navarra is the first hospital which Hitachi has delivered the whole proton therapy system in Europe.The proton therapy system installed at Clinica Universidad de Navarra is equipped with state-of-the-art technology including spot scanning technology that sends a therapeutic proton beam precisely conforming to the shape of the target tumor. And it has a 360degree rotating gantry treatment room with cone beam CT(1) and Real-time image Gated Proton Therapy (RGPT)(2) capability. Furthermore, this system has the option to add an additional gantry treatment room in the future. It becomes a part of the Cancer Center of Universidad de Navarra which treats more than 8,600 new cancer patients a year and the Clinica's first intrahospital facility.Clinica Universidad de Navarra, based in Navarra and Madrid, Spain, is a world-class private hospital focusing on medical research, education and clinical care. As an only Spanish private hospital awarded as one of top 50 world hospitals in U.S. Newsweek magazine rankings in 2020(3), Clinica Universidad de Navarra has doctors and more than 2,800 clinical professionals dedicated to ensure personalized high-quality patient care.Hitachi has been proactively promoting particle therapy system business worldwide, supplying world-class facilities with its highly reliable and proven particle therapy systems, which have treated more than 60,000 patients. Hitachi provides system and services, including single room solution in realizing installation in urban limited areas and hybrid system combined with capability of generating both proton and heavy-ion in one accelerator, to meet all customer needs.Hitachi will continue to accelerate the globalization of its particle therapy system business and contribute to cancer treatment around the world and the improvement of social values.(1) Cone beam CT provides three-dimensional anatomical images of patients, at isocenter immediately prior to being treated. Information on the location of bone is obtained from traditional orthogonal x-rays and the motion of tumors is captured by RGPT. These are then combined with the ability to identify healthy tissue surrounding a tumor, particularly the location and shape of soft tissue via Cone beam CT.(2) RGPT allows real-time beam irradiation to the tumor while compensating for movement associated with respiration. It is the technology collaboratively developed between Hokkaido University and Hitachi, supported by Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST) of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.(3) U.S. Newsweek magazine releases the World Best Hospitals rankings every year.Overview of Particle TherapyParticle Therapy is an advanced type of cancer radiotherapy. Protons extracted from hydrogen atoms, or carbon ions are accelerated up to 70% of the speed of light. This energy is concentrated directly on the tumor while minimizing radiation dose to surrounding healthy tissue. Particle therapy improves the quality of life for cancer patients since the patient experiences no pain during treatment and the procedure has very few side effects compared to that of traditional radiotherapy. In most cases, patients can continue with their normal daily activities while undergoing treatment.About Hitachi, Ltd.Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is focusing on Social Innovation Business combining its operational technology, information technology and products. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal 2018 (ended March 31, 2019) totaled 9,480.6 billion yen ($85.4 billion), and the company has approximately 296,000 employees worldwide. Hitachi delivers digital solutions utilizing Lumada in five sectors including Mobility, Smart Life, Industry, Energy and IT, to increase our customer's social, environmental and economic value. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at https://www.hitachi.com.Source: Hitachi, Ltd.Copyright 2020 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The ticking clock on public coronavirus testing in Southeast Texas didnt boost turnout on Friday. The number of calls to a screening hotline and the number of people tested dropped to near their lowest points.

That means this week, which also saw record-high numbers of calls and people tested, had the most variance compared to almost any other.

Barely 100 people called the hotline set up by the six-county coalition formed to fight coronavirus locally, down from nearly 300 on Monday.

Only 70 people were tested at the local publicly run sites, the fewest recorded in a day since they opened.

Related: Port Arthur mayor worries as coronavirus testing winds down

The six county judges who formed the coalition on Wednesday said they hoped to see the percentage of Southeast Texans tested for the virus rise to 2% by the time the testing sites close and jurisdiction transfers back to local health departments and the private sector.

But that would require testing nearly 4,000 people, or an 80% increase, before the May 15 closure date.

More Information Helpful numbers (409) 550-2536: Hotline for residents of Jasper, Jefferson, Hardin, Newton, Orange and Tyler counties who want to be tested for coronavirus. 211, option 6: For general coronavirus inquiries. At a glance What: Hamshire-Fannett testing When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday Where: St. Mary's Catholic Church, 9894 Gilbert Road What: Jasper County testing When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday Where: Jasper County Sub-Courthouse, 33625 Highway 96 S., Buna What: Hardin County testing When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday Where: Hardin County Old Courthouse Annex, 440 Monroe, Kountze Details: A test must be scheduled in advance by calling the number above. Only 100 appointments will be scheduled for each location. Proof is residency is required. See More Collapse

Positive cases of COVID-19, the confirmation of which have at least a 48-hour lag from when an individual is tested to when the results come back, continued their steady rise on Friday.

All eight new cases were from Jefferson County. That put the Southeast Texas total above 600.

Top hits: Get Beaumont Enterprise stories sent directly to your inbox

The city of Beaumont confirmed seven new cases, three of which were confirmed in people younger than 30, while the eighth case came from a female Groves resident between the ages of 50 and 55.

Next week will be the last for testing at a site in Silsbee and at the Jack Brooks Regional Airport, both of which are run by the six-county coalition. The group also will put on one-day testing clinics in Hamshire-Fannett, Buna and Kountze before totally closing operations.

After that, the hotline used to set up appointments with these testing sites still will be open, but individuals will be forwarded to the health department for their jurisdiction. Each of these departments are forming plans to continue testing or connecting individuals with opportunities to be tested to be ready by May 15.

kaitlin.bain@beaumontenterprise.com

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Government officials claim Christians suffer no discrimination or violence, but the latter face marginalisation and arrests. Proselytising is banned.

Vientiane (AsiaNews/RFA)  Religious freedom for Protestants in Laos is a mixed bag with a law that officially protects religious freedom but with restrictions and arrests in certain situations.

In Luang Prabang, a province in northern Laos, local sources note that religious rights are limited and government officials have branded Christianity an "American import".

When Christians are confronted by certain problems over land, water use, wrongdoings, village leaders refuse to intervene, saying Christians have no rights.

Reached by RFA, officials responsible for religious affairs say Laotian Christians are protected by law. Villagers can believe in any religion they want. Cousins, brothers, and sisters may live in the same village but follow different religions, an official in Luang Prabang said.

We give the same rights to everyone to believe in any religion they want, and if they have any problems, we solve this for them, said an official with the Lao Front for National Reconstruction in Vientiane.

In our district, he added, there are seven small churches, and an official from the province comes down once each month to talk to them and give them advice.

Another official in Houa Panh province said that there is no violence against Christians. However, They cant try to persuade other people to believe in their religion, he added.

This is the crux of the matter as it underscores the ambiguities surrounding proselytising, mission and proclamation.

On 15 March, pastor Sithon Thipavong was arrested for "religious activities" in Kalum Vangkhea, a village in Savannakhet province. He was given six months in prison, but no official explanation for his sentence.

Laos has a population of just over seven million. Christians are around 2 per cent, evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics.
The Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, AYCF, on Friday advised President Muhammadu Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi A...

The Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, AYCF, on Friday advised President Muhammadu Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina to resign from his position.





AYCF President-General, Yerima Shettima explained that Adesina was not doing well as a presidential spokesman, hence the need for him to resign.





Shettima spoke while reacting to calls for Adesinas resignation over the whereabouts of Buhari and his Vice, Yemi Osinbajo.





Speaking with Dailypost, the AYCF President-General said Adesina has found himself in a situation where he continues to  turn black to white.





According to Shettima: On the issue of Buhari and Osinbajos whereabouts, it is sad that a country such as Nigeria with a population of over 200 million does not have leaders in place.





It is sad that leaders of this country do not see themselves making sacrifices in the interest of the entire country. They have all become so large and this is unfortunate.





However, it is sad that Femi is not doing well at all as a presidential spokesman. This is a man I have so much respect for and knew him to be a very good and intelligent journalist, but all of a sudden, he started messing up and I think that was when he joined APC.





If I were him, I would have resigned long before now because there are certain things that are not real around him, and he has found himself in a situation where he has to make black to become white, so he has a lot of challenges.





I have always respected him because hes a gentle man. I know him personally, but its unfortunate that he has turned out to be something else.





The beauty it is that no matter how he goes about it, he should have asked of the whereabouts of people like Reuben Abati, and Adeniyi. His own case is even worse.





As gentle as he is and I know, Adesina should have resigned because he has found himself in an unfortunate situation.




PHOENIX  Sen. Martha McSally wont commit to backing additional financial support for state and local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying taxpayers should not bail them out for years of mismanagement.

During a recent virtual town hall hosted by the mayor of Surprise, McSally, R-Ariz., reiterated her call for increased flexibility in how funds can be used, but made clear she sees big, blue-state cities as trying to fleece red states.

Im just going to be frank with you guys, OK, she said in an hourlong videotaped event. This is not the time for states and cities  unlike Arizona, unlike Surprise  who have mismanaged their budgets over the course of many decades, for them to use this as an opportunity to see you, as a taxpayer in Arizona, as a cash cow for them in whatever city you want to talk about, whether its Chicago or New York or whatever."

McSally said some officials want to use the pandemic as their opportunity "to bail out states and cities that have nothing to do with coronavirus" but are financially struggling because failed budgeting and debt.

Sen. Martha McSally is a Republican representing Arizona.

"This is not the time for us in Arizona and you in Surprise to be paying for mismanagement in Chicago," McSally said. "Thats what, actually, the left is advocating for right now. What were advocating for is we provide specific relief.

McSally previously had declined to respond to recent suggestions from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that states be permitted to declare bankruptcy rather than receive more aid from Washington.

Her remarks, first reported by the AZ Mirror, were not intended to be made public, said a spokeswoman for her office.

In a written statement Thursday afternoon to The Arizona Republic, McSally said she was working hard to make sure cities, towns and cities have the money and support they need during the pandemic.

She said Gov. Doug Duceys team told her office they were working to get previously passed relief money to communities next week.

Story continues

At the federal level, I'm fighting for maximum flexibility of resources so essential services like first-responders are also supported, McSally added. "This is a top priority of mine, and I'll continue to be in close communication with our mayors and local elected officials as we work to get them support during this crisis.

States, including Arizona, and cities are reeling from the pandemic, with plunging revenues amid the public lockdown while services, from public safety to sanitation, continue.

Unlike the federal government, nearly all state governments cannot by law run deficits, a budget reality that can trigger mass layoffs in a downturn. During the Great Recession, that meant widespread cutbacks for teachers, police and other public employees.

McSallys views suggest she is again in alignment with McConnell, whose allies were a key source of financial support during her 2018 Senate campaign and are expected to be again this year.

The $2 trillion CARES Act that passed earlier this year allocated about $150 billion to municipalities. But only cities with populations of more than 500,000 received the money directly. Those with smaller populations  including many in Arizona  must wait for state officials to funnel the money through its coffers.

Patrick Ptak, a spokesman for Ducey, did not return a call from The Republic inquiring about the timeline of releasing $2 billion of CARES Act dollars.

Before the video surfaced, McSally had asked the Treasury Department to update guidance on what it considers eligible expenses on the money already allocated to local governments through the CARES Act.

The guidance has unjustly narrowed local governments ability to fully access the funding, she wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

She referenced the letter in the virtual event.

If theres a way to provide more freedom for the funding thats already been allocated, thats point 1, she said. Ive been engaging on that with treasury and with GOP leadership. I had a call yesterday that McConnell was on that I made really clear that we need more flexibility that was already out there.

McConnell came under fire for his bankruptcy suggestion and has since said he was open to considering new funding for local governments  among other things  as congressional leaders and the White House enter discussions on the next major phase of government assistance.

U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema speaks during an event hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry on May 17, 2019, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., said in an April 23 statement that partisan politics shouldnt jeopardize the financial health of local governments.

Declaring bankruptcy would mean cuts to firefighters, police, health services, and job and business opportunities, she wrote.

Sinema was echoing the sentiments of four mayors from Fountain Hills, Tolleson, Tempe and Superior. They asked McSally in an April 29 letter to ensure the next bill passed by the Senate includes critical funding for state and local governments like ours.

Mark Kelly, McSallys Democratic opponent in the 2020 race for the Senate seat, has talked with more than a dozen mayors to keep a tab on their needs during the pandemic, his campaign said.

Congress cannot let Arizona cities and towns go bankrupt in their fight against COVID-19  that would only hurt Arizonans and our economy, Kelly said in a statement. This next relief package must include direct relief for Arizonas local governments to avoid deep cuts to essential services.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Coronavirus: McSally says bill shouldn't bail out mismanaged cities
Notwithstanding a coronavirus lockdown, SC and ST legislators from all parties in in Bihar protested on Friday against the recent Supreme Court order asking the Centre to revise the list of reserved categories to provide quotas so that benefits trickle down to the needy.

The mask-wearing legislators, from the ruling as well as the opposition parties, demanded that the reservation meant for them be included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, so that it cannot be challenged in the courts.

The all-party meeting was organized in the assembly premises and chaired by Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) president and former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and Bihar Industries Minister Shyam Rajak. It was attended by 22 out of the 41 SC and ST legislators in the assembly.

Others present during the meeting included Rajesh Kumar (Congress), Shiv Chandra Ram, Rajendra Ram (RJD), Satyadeo Ram (CPI-ML), Lalan Paswan (JDU) besides Ramprit Paswan and Niranjan Ram (BJP). They claimed those who could not attend the meeting due to personal reasons hold similar views.

Rajak said social distancing norms were followed during the meeting.

The Supreme Courts on April 23 asked the central government to revise the lists for providing quota. It said reservations are provided due to discrimination and disadvantages suffered by backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for sharing the State power.

The court agreed with the submissions that it can be done without disturbing the percentage of reservation so that benefits trickle down to the needy and are not usurped by those classes who have come up after obtaining the benefits for the last 70 years or after their inclusion in the list.

The legislators said they would meet the President of India and the Prime Minister in support of their demand of including reservation for SCs and STs in the Ninth Schedule.

Rajak said the apex court judgment virtually advocated for implementing the provision of creamy layer in the reservation meant for SCs and STs which is certainly a "cause of concern for all of us and that's why we sat to deliberate the matter".

"We have written a letter to President, Prime Minister and Bihar Chief Minister, drawing their attention towards the recent Supreme Court judgements which are against the rights and protection of SC and ST that have been conferred upon them by the Constitution.

"We have demanded that the provision for reservation for SCs and STs be kept in the 9th Schedule, Rajak said.

As per the provisions of the 9th Schedule, the central and state laws kept in this list cannot be challenged in courts.

"Our battle for putting pressure on the government to keep reservation in the 9th Schedule will be expedited once the lockdown is over," said Rajesh Kumar, the Congress chief whip in the assembly.

The legislators also resolved to demand reservation for SCs and STs in the high courts and the Supreme Court, Kumar said.

It has been decided to seek time to meet the President, Prime Minister and Bihar CM for submitting a memorandum in this regard, JD(U) MLA Lalan Paswan said.

He added that another similar meeting of all SC and ST legislators will be held again on May 18 in the assembly premises.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gov. Tom Wolf announced the expansion of the phase yellow easing of some COVID-19 restrictions on Friday, with 13 additional counties to be added next week on top of the 24 that went from red to yellow status Friday.

Cumberland County is not among them, with the 13 new counties being in the western part of the state, including Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh.

Phase yellow allows certain activities to resume, including retail and child care, although the state still asks business to operate remotely where possible. Hair salons and other businesses that require physical contact will remain closed under phase yellow, and restaurants and bars will continue to be restricted to take-out only.

While easing restrictions in the Pittsburgh metro area may seem abrupt, Allegheny Countys density of cases is relatively low  less than Cumberland Countys, in fact.

Allegheny has 1,455 known COVID-19 cases in a population of over 1.2 million, or about 120 cases per 100,000 residents; Cumberland has 414 confirmed cases in a population of just a quarter-million, or about 164 cases per 100,000 residents.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 11 new cases in Cumberland County on Friday, bringing the two week total of new cases to 174 or 68.67 cases per 100,000 people in the county.

Wolf and PA Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine have referenced a metric of fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period as a re-opening guideline. But this is not the sole determining factor in easing restrictions.

People have latched onto that as the only factor in determining if counties go from red to yellow. It is not, Levine said Friday.

Spikes in reported cases and deaths are also influenced by Pennsylvanias laggy reporting system, particularly in the Philadelphia area  dumps of results from hospitals and labs make short-term comparisons difficult.

We did get another dump from LabCorp, Levine said, which contributed to Fridays higher statewide case count.

CASES

Cumberland County reported 11 new cases and no new deaths due to COVID-19 in Friday's report from the state Department of Health.

Of those 11 new cases, six came from five long-term care facilities within the county  3 employees and 3 residents. Cumberland County now has 414 total positive cases (17 percent of total test results) with 31 deaths. Of those, 240 of the positives (58 percent) and 29 of the deaths (94 percent) come from long-term care facilities.

SCI Camp Hill in Lower Allen Township as of Thursday evening is reporting 5 positive cases within the prison  4 employees, and 1 inmate  with 39 negatives test results for inmates.

In the southcentral region, Dauphin County reported 29 new cases Friday and 4 new deaths, while Franklin County reported 27 new cases.

The DOH Friday confirmed 1,323 additional positive cases of COVID-19 in the state, bringing the statewide total to 54,238. As a result of the department's continued work to reconcile data from various sources, the state reported an increase of 200 new deaths Friday, bringing the statewide total to 3,616 deaths in Pennsylvania. The DOH said some those deaths have occurred over the past several weeks.

"Reconciling data" was the reason why the department added 310 deaths to its total of 3,416 in Thursday's report.

County numbers in the southcentral region (through May 8):

Adams County (pop. 103,009): 4 new cases; 154 total cases; 1,785 negatives; 5 deaths

Bedford County (pop. 47,888): 1 new cases; 28 total cases; 303 negatives; 1 death

Blair County (pop. 121,829): 0 new cases; 28 total cases; 1,314 negatives; 0 deaths

Cumberland County (pop. 253,370): 11 new cases; 414 total cases; 1,989 negatives; 31 deaths

Dauphin County (pop. 278,299): 29 new cases; 764 total cases; 4,550 negatives; 37 deaths

Franklin County (pop. 155,027): 27 new cases; 452 total cases; 3,475 negatives; 11 deaths

Fulton County (pop. 14,530): 0 new cases; 7 total cases; 121 negatives; 1 deaths

Huntingdon County (pop. 45,144): 8 new cases; 117 total cases; 409 negatives; 0 deaths

Juniata County (pop. 24,763): 1 new cases; 93 total cases; 196 negatives; 1 death

Lebanon County (pop. 141,793): 12 new cases; 797 total cases; 3,055 negatives; 16 deaths

Mifflin County (pop. 46,138): 2 new cases; 50 total cases; 807 negatives; 0 deaths

Perry County (pop. 46,272): 0 new cases; 34 total cases; 342 negatives; 1 death

York County (pop. 449,058): 13 new cases; 753 total cases; 8,286 negatives and 13 deaths

Case counts by region to date (through May 8):

Northcentral  16 new positives; 825 total positives; 9,586 negatives; 1 inconclusive

Northeast  114 new positives; 10,927 total positives; 32,405 negatives; 9 inconclusive

Northwest  6 new positives; 303 total positives; 7,525 negatives; 0 inconclusive

Southcentral  108 new positives; 3,596 positives; 26,632 negatives; 2 inconclusive

Southeast  1,002 new positives; 34,810 total positives; 101,009 negatives; 426 inconclusive

Southwest  N/A new positives; 2,843 total positives; 39,164 negatives; 4 inconclusive

Long-term care facilities in the Midstate (through May 8):

Cumberland County: 5 facilities, 190 residents, 50 staff, 29 deaths

Adams County: 1 facility, 21 residents, 4 staff, 4 deaths

Dauphin County: 3 facilities, 157 residents, 35 staff, 24 deaths

Franklin County: 6 facilities, 59 residents, 8 staff, 4 deaths

Lancaster County: 28 facilities, 499 residents, 133 staff, 141 deaths

Lebanon County: 5 facilities, 62 residents, 12 staff, 10 deaths

York County: 4 facilities, 9 residents, 2 staff, 1 death

Email Zack at zhoopes@cumberlink.com.

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What better way to sell a lavish, multi-million pound stateside property than by taking to social media to show it off in front of the masses?

That was the approach of Lord Sugar, who logged onto Twitter on Friday afternoon to announce some big news - the sale of brand new luxury mansion built by one of his companies.

Giving a glimpse into how the other half live, Lord Sugar shared a selection of photographs of the stunning property, which resides in 'the best prestigious spot' in Boca Raton, Florida.

The Apprentice star made the most of his 5.3million online followers by looking to secure a swift sale, after confirming the jaw-dropping development was available for $13m (10.5m).

Lord Sugar took to Twitter to promote a stunning, freshly built Florida mansion in hope of getting a big money sale

The open-plan design of the property maximises space and sees one room flow effortlessly into another

A consistent theme can be running through the property, with light wood panelling and subtle tones of cream and ash

Lord Sugar took to social media looking to accelerate the sale, showing off the plush property to his 5.3m Twitter followers

Located at 327 Alexander Palm Road, the mansion sits on an oversized waterfront lot in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club - Boca Raton's premier waterfront community.

The brand new home was built by Hanna Homes and completed in 2020, naturally having zero previous owners.

It features six bedrooms, seven full and two half bathrooms, and is 9,562 sf under air.

One of Lord Sugar's companies had created the lavish home and were looking to get its first owner on the market

Described as a 'boater's paradise', it sits on 90' of waterfront with direct Intracoastal and Ocean access

Described as a 'boater's paradise', it sits on 90' of waterfront with direct Intracoastal and Ocean access. The prospective buyers will be asked to pay documentary stamp taxes on the deed and title insurance.

Four car-parking spaces are afforded, while inside the property the open-plan design maximises room volume across all floors.

A consistent theme can be running through the property, with light wood panelling and subtle tones of cream and ash.

The master bathroom, just off the master bedroom in the property, boasts a separate shower, a separate and two master baths.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has led to a spike in healthcare costs in the country. Medical bills are going through the roof for patients while hospitals blame it on additional costs incurred to check infection. Amidst all this, the insurance premiums for group health covers may also go to 10-15 percent in the next six to seven months with rising claims.

There are group insurance policyholders incurring higher charges for COVID-19 treatment. But even for regular procedures, individuals are choosing high-end hospitals increasing the claim amount. This is adding to total costs, said the head of underwriting at a mid-size private insurer.

Group health covers are taken by corporates for their employees. The premium is dependent on the number of employees, profession and location of the facility. It can range between Rs 1,500 to 5,000. The policies are renewed on an annual basis.

Moneycontrol had reported earlier that from January 2020 there would be a premium increase in group health covers by 15 percent.

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

Why is an increase proposed again?

From March 2020 onwards, the number of COVID-19 cases in India has been on the rise touching 56,342 reported positive cases on May 7. With every hospitalisation, the costs in the hospital go up with the need for additional personal protective equipment, gloves, face shields and masks.

These costs are spilling over to the non-COVID-19 patients as well. So even individuals admitted for a regular surgery are being charged COVID-19 charges. This is because regular outpatient departments in hospitals are shut, elective surgery postponed and hospitals say this is the only way to recover costs.

This has directly impacted the insurance companies who are partly bearing the higher costs incurred by insured patients in the hospital.

Also Read: Live updates from COVID-19 in India

COVID-19 spread across the world has led to a hike in health claims globally. Reinsurers who are bearing the brunt of higher claims by insurers are planning to hike rates. This will be passed on to customers, said the chief executive of a health insurer.

In India, about 1,200 claims are reported to be received so far for health insurance related to COVID-19 amounting to approximately Rs 25 crore.

Considering the risks involved in the business, almost all general policies are reinsured by insurance companies. In other words, they buy a cover for themselves in case the insurers themselves are hit with a large claim.

But isnt there a rise in the insurance pool in group health?

Insurance works on a concept of pooling. The premiums paid goes into a pool and the claim gets paid out of this common pool. The idea here is that the pool should have a mix of young, old, sick and healthy to ensure that there arent too many claims. Higher the number of people in the pool more is the ability of an insurer to pay the claims.

Group health insurance is a product that is among the most popular among Indian corporates. This is used as an attraction tool to hire candidates and often covers the employee and his/her spouse, children and parents. There has been a 20-25 percent rise every year in the number of corporates opting for medical cover for the staff.

However, the COVID-19 situation has sent insurance companies into a tizzy. There have been reports of employees opting for expensive hospitals and consultations for regular ailments.

The symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, shortness of breath, dry cough and runny nose. Individuals who would otherwise not visit a hospital for any of these symptoms are now choosing to do in fear of the virus outbreak. This has also pushed costs up, said the head of claims at a state-owned general insurer.

Insurance executives also said the co-pay element will see a further increase. Co-pay means the policyholder would have to bear a cost of the claim; which could between 10-50 percent.

Further, coverage for additional persons including spouse, child or parents could be chargeable. For most organisations, group health coverage includes family members free of cost.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Bloomberg Opinion will be running a series of features by our columnists that consider the long-term consequences of the crisis. This column is part of a package on the impact that the spread of Covid-19 will have on immigration. For more, see Pankaj Mishra on how the coronavirus may change global attitudes toward immigration, and the Bloomberg Editorial Board on the post-pandemic changes needed to fix U.S. immigration policy.

A peculiar fact about the coronavirus catastrophe so far is that the worlds poorest have largely been spared the worst. Of the 10 countries with the most deaths to date, nearly all are among the wealthiest. But if the virus has overwhelmed places with modern hospitals and world-class medical infrastructure  as anyone whos been in New York or Milan recently can attest  it could do still more catastrophic damage in places where the health-care system is fragile to start with. Perhaps nowhere is the risk greater than in the worlds refugee camps.

Some 2.6 million refugees live in more than 100 such camps worldwide. Although thats just a small fraction of the refugee population, which totals some 26 million, people in camps face outsized risks during a pandemic. Like cruise ships, which have been notorious coronavirus hotbeds, refugee camps are generally overcrowded. (In many of them, the population density far outstrips that of Manhattan in New York City.) Unlike cruise ships, they often lack basic sanitary infrastructure  several hundred people, for instance, might rely on just one water source. Meanwhile, the shortages of personal protective equipment (the now infamous PPE) that have bedeviled the rich world are far worse in camps, and advanced care is scarce to nonexistent, according to the advocacy group Refugees International. Some countries have dealt with coronavirus by putting camps under lockdown, making medical care even further out of reach.

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Thats the bad news. The good news is that few of the worlds camps are yet dealing with contagion on the scale of the Diamond Princess (where 17% onboard became infected), or Ohios Marion Correctional Institution (where, horribly, more than 80% of inmates are sick). The world has time to prepare. And it must  for humanitarian reasons, but also because of self-interest. Coronavirus outbreaks in camps would sow instability and turmoil in host countries, disrupt the process of refugee resettlement and set economic development back by decades. They could also spread the virus to larger national populations. As Singapore has shown, even the most advanced health-care systems can buckle if they let noncitizens fall through the cracks.

Fortunately, the world can take action during this crisis  by helping refugees keep their distance, stay healthy before the virus strikes and stay informed.

Traditional social distancing may be impossible in camps, as workers and refugees alike have noted, but some solutions are still at hand. Most drastically, states could evacuate their overcrowded refugee facilities, as Doctors Without Borders and others have urged Greece to do. While thats unlikely to happen on a broad scale, Greece has begun transferring unaccompanied children to Germany and Luxembourg  part of a larger E.U. initiative  and has pledged to relocate some 2,400 of the most vulnerable refugees.

Unfortunately, most camps are in places that lack the resources of the European Union, or even Greece (which is far from a model host country). Where states are unable or unwilling to act, the rest of the world must. Rich countries that lack the political will to accept new refugees could, at the very least, boost funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is building quarantine and isolation units in camps. The UN and NGOs are also taking the lead in relieving congestion  doing things like delivering soap door to door via donkey, as is happening in camps in eastern Sudan.

People who dont have their food, water and basic sanitary needs met are also vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses, including Covid-19. So meeting those basic needs is a crucial preventative measure. The UNHCR, to its credit, has prioritized improving water and hygiene infrastructure in camps, as have many NGOs. Unfortunately, due to a coronavirus-related funding shortfall, the World Food Program has reportedly cut food rations for refugees in Uganda by 30%. Rations are hardly luxurious to start with, so harsh cuts could lead to malnutrition  leaving refugees with weakened immune systems at the worst possible time.

Countries struggling with their own Covid-19 crises will be tempted to cut funding to agencies and NGOs that provide basic services to refugees. Thats a terrible idea. The global economy may not be flush right now, but investing in nutrition and sanitation would prevent even costlier global catastrophes in the future. And closing their hospitals to refugees would likewise be misguided: Shutting out non-citizens can have disastrous consequences for public health. If wealthy countries care about their own self-interest, they should be inclusive as well as break with their woeful tradition of skimping on aid during recessions. Because as we all know, the coronavirus respects no borders.

One other critical thing the world can do is improve communications and connectivity in refugee camps. Bangladesh offers a case study in what not to do. Home to the worlds largest complex of refugee camps, Bangladesh hosts some 900,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Since last autumn, it has banned the internet in camps and restricted mobile-phone access to refugees. As a result, misinformation about what residents call the moronavirus, or dying virus in Rohingya, is rampant. Aid workers say they cant spread important health information; human rights campaigners say the restrictions put lives at risk.

In the case of Bangladesh, global pressure campaigns could be successful. The way to make progress is to have senior international and foreign government officials engage with Bangladeshi leaders and try to make the case that these kinds of restrictions dont serve the interests of the government of Bangladesh, says Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International. Rumors increase the likelihood of panic  with potentially terrible consequences. Behind-the-scenes pressure and public expressions of concern could push Bangladesh to reconsider.

In other countries, NGOs are taking creative approaches to improving communications, by scaling up existing online platforms to reach more refugees, or sending text messages with health information in local languages. True, not all camps are in places with strong communications infrastructure. In those cases, and in others, health information campaigns may take on more traditional forms  for example, in Mexico, hand-painted signs.

Protecting the worlds most vulnerable people from a pandemic costs money. Sadly, the world hasnt been fast to give. The United Nations has appealed for an additional $2 billion to deal with Covid-related humanitarian needs, and has received less than half of that  including a meager $95 million from the United States. (Germany, with one-quarter the population, has contributed some $50 million more.) Schwartz notes that Congress has allocated some $900 million for humanitarian aid as part of its coronavirus relief packages  which comes to just .03% of the roughly $3 trillion total.

In March, the UN and the International Organization for Migration suspended refugee resettlement worldwide. That decision may reflect both an abundance of medical caution and an acknowledgment of political realities in resettlement countries. But locking the exits on some of the worlds most desperate people and then leaving them more vulnerable to a pandemic they did nothing to create is not just an act of callous indifference. It is also a potential strategic blunder: Some of the worlds biggest refugee camps are in states grappling with terrorist threats (Kenya, Jordan and Pakistan) or the aftershocks of civil wars and atrocities (South Sudan and Bangladesh). They shouldnt be weakened any further by having to cope with a virus whose spread would be even more difficult to stop in such tight and desperate quarters. We know how to deal with these issues, but the critical missing piece is adequate resourcing, says Schwartz. If only out of self-interest, thats a gap that the rich world can afford to fill.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Tracy Walsh is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. She was an editor at the Dish and Euromoney Institutional Investor.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
East Sea Dragon King Slot Releases from NetEnt

Published May 8, 2020 by Mike P

East Sea Dragon King is the latest NetEnt slot to release with Expanding Wilds and Re-spins as part of the Cluster Pays series.

NetEnts East Sea Dragon King slot is another fresh title released as part of the Swedish software providers Cluster Pays series. Many of the same features and functionality are present in East Sea Dragon King, such as Cluster Pays and Expanding Wilds  all against a sea-bound Asian theme.

Core Gameplay

In East Sea Dragon King, users can play on a mobile-compatible interface built with five reels and three rows for 15 symbols to appear with every spin. Before each turn, players can assign their preferred wager by adjusting the coin value from 0.01 up to 2.00 and the wagering level from one up to 10.

When play begins, the aim is to land matching symbols within clusters of five or more symbols, according to the paytable. Symbols can be defined as forming a cluster when appearing beside or above in adjacent positions. A high payout multiplier of 5,000x is available for clustering 15 red box symbols together.

Expanding Wilds and Re-spins

NetEnt has designed the East Sea Dragon King as a sea-dwelling man with blue skin, purple antlers, and bushy white eyebrows and facial hair. This undersea monarch is used as the wild symbol and is capable of substituting for any missing symbols in the entire game.

The East Sea Dragon King also has the potential to become an Expanding Wild when one or more symbols have landed. The king automatically expands to fill the entire reel and will also provide the player with a complimentary re-spin. In the event of matching five wilds in a cluster, this can trigger a maximum payout worth 10,000x.

In terms of functionality, all winnings are provided once the wilds have expanded and before any re-spins occur. All wilds will expand and remain in place until all re-spins have been resolved. There is no limit on re-spins and its possible for players to keep triggering them with Expanding Wilds.
Australian officials are disappointed that their desire to investigate the COVID-19 origin is undermined by the White House, which is trying to link the outbreak to a Wuhan lab, Reuters reported referring to sources.

Sources said Washingtons attack on China enabled Beijing to claim that Australias request for an independent investigation is part of the US agenda.

Canberra fell into a diplomatic trap between Washington, its main security ally, and already strained relations with Beijing, its main trading partner.

One government source said officials were working hard to cast the review as open-minded and global and that the American approach of lets get China wasnt helping.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, responding to criticisms of whether the investigation into trade with China would hurt, tried to note Australia's independence.

Were not doing this as some sort of lapdog of the United States, he said. Youll see there are some marked differences between some of the things that the Australian Government has said and some of the commentary coming out of the United States and thats because we take our own analysis, our own evidence, our own advice and we will take this issue through to the World Health Assembly.

The Chinese MFA said that calls for an investigation are political manipulation and said Australia should give up its ideological prejudices.

Last weekend, Sydneys Daily Telegraph reported a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments showed China had deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the COVID-19 outbreak. The article was published after US President Donald Trump said he saw evidence that the cause of the COVID-19 was a leak from the Wuhan lab.

Government and intelligence officials said the document referred to in this article had public reports and newspaper articles and was not based on intelligence sources.

Its a research paper. I can tell you, we arent paying much attention to it, an intelligence source said.

An official familiar with the 15-page document cited in the article told Reuters that it seems to be designed to support the US position and is not part of intelligence work.

According to the source, no proposals from Australian agencies were made to the document.
Max Boot, for my money the most pathetic of the NeverTrumpers, tries to argue that populist governments are doing worse than techocratic ones in the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus. Boots column isnt a study, its a collection of anecdotes that dont even support his argument.

Boot calls the U.S. Exhibit A in support of his thesis. There are two problems with Exhibit A. First, the U.S. isnt doing that badly at this juncture in the fight against the virus, compared to non-populist governments of major democracies. Second, the U.S. response hasnt been populist.

As things stand now, deaths per capita in the U.S. from this virus are lower than in all large European democracies except Germany. We have 233 deaths per one million people. Spain has 562, Italy 495, the UK 451, and France 398.

Boot ignores these nations, some of whose governments are anything but populist. He cites Canada with 177 deaths per million. But Canada isnt comparable to the U.S. in terms of population density and level of contact with the Chinese.

Canada doesnt have a New York City. Factor out New York City and surrounding areas (which, by the way, are not run by populists), and the U.S. numbers dont suffer by comparison to Canadas. But even without factoring out New York, our numbers, so far, align more closely with Canadas than with technocratic Frances.

In any event, the U.S. response to the Wuhan coronavirus has not been populist. Trump locked down America at about the same stage in our outbreak that most large European democracies did in theirs. (The UK is an exception. It locked down later.) In doing so, Trump relied on the advice of doctors and scientists, ignoring conservatives who argued against the lockdown, both for economic and epidemiologic reasons.

A populist response would have looked like that adopted by Gov. Noem in South Dakota. She and a few other governors did not order a lockdown. Instead, she made social distancing recommendations and left it to the people yeah, them  to decide how to act.

The result? South Dakota has only 36 deaths per one million people, among the lowest in the nation.

This doesnt prove that South Dakotas approach is better in purely health terms than the approach in states with higher deaths per capita. Other factors likely play a bigger role than government policy in determining the impact of the virus in a given state or country.

But that reality only highlights the frivolous nature of Boots article. He doesnt consider other factors.

Which governments, other than ours, are the most hated by anti-populists like Boot? The governments of Poland and Hungary. Boot acknowledges, as he must, that Poland and Hungary have fared quite well, comparatively, in this pandemic. Deaths per one million in Poland are a mere 20. In Hungary, they are 41.

These statistics would have caused an intellectually honest pundit to submit a different column to his fellow Trump haters at the Post. In Boots case, they caused him to focus on Belarus. But Belarus reports only 121 deaths from the coronavirus  13 per one million people.

It does report a high number of infections. However, on a per capita basis, it reports fewer than Portugal, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and not that many more than Israel.

Boots final Exhibit is Brazil. There, says Boot, there are more confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere in Latin America and, indeed, the developing world.

But Boot neglects to note that Brazils population dwarfs that of nearly all developing nations. On a per capita basis, Brazils reported numbers  642 cases and 44 deaths per one million  arent that bad. They compare favorably to Perus, Ecuadors, and Panamas.

Boot suggests that Brazil isnt reporting honestly. That might be. It might also be the case with any Latin American or developing nation, as well as some developed ones.

But Boot cant build a case based on what might be. Based on what we know, Boot has no case.

How did Max Boot go from respected columnist at the Wall Street Journal to Eugene Robinsons rival for worst columnist at the Washington Post? Hatred of Donald Trump is the obvious answer, but one that doesnt quite seem to explain the full descent.
After five days and at least 1,200 miles, a 13-year-old Bucks County boy accused of driving off in his parents van has been found safe near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Pennsylvania State Police on Friday reported that Kadin Kent Willauer, of Milford Township, was located by state police in the Pelican State.

Willauer was reported missing this week after allegedly running away from home with his parents minivan at 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Police said he swapped a stolen license plate onto the 2016 Chrysler Town & Country while stopping for gas in Upper Saucon Township.

It was initially thought that Willauer remained in the area, but the van was spotted later that day heading south on I-95 in Fairfax County, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C.

Police later said the van had not triggered EZPass, nor was there credit card use. The boy did not have a cellphone but did have some cash, police said.

Earlier this week, state police spokesman Trooper Nathan Branosky told lehighvalleylive.com that there were no family issues that led to the runaway. He chalked it up to typical adolescent behavior.

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Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.
Iraq's new prime minister Mustafa Kadhemi is a pragmatic operator and former spy chief whose ties to Washington and Tehran could help steer Baghdad through a laundry list of crises. He formally took the reins early Thursday after Iraq's parliament granted his cabinet a vote of confidence, capping weeks of horse-trading over ministerial positions. Kadhemi, who headed Iraq's National Intelligence Service (INIS), was nominated on April 9 by President Barham Saleh in a ceremony attended by a who's-who of the political elite, indicating broad support for the enigmatic figure. Born in Baghdad in 1967, Kadhemi studied law in Iraq but then left for Europe to escape repressive ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, working as an opposition journalist. After the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam, Kadhemi returned to help launch the Iraqi Media Network, archived crimes of the former regime at the Iraqi Memory Foundation and worked as a human rights advocate. But he made an unusual career jump in 2016, when then-PM Haider al-Abadi handpicked him to head the INIS at the height of the war against the Islamic State jihadist group. It was there, sources close to Kadhemi say, that he formed his uniquely close links with top players of key nations including in Washington, London and closer to home. "He's got a pragmatic mindset, relationships with all the key players on the Iraqi scene and good ties with the Americans -- and he was recently able to put his ties to the Iranians back on track," a political source and friend told AFP. The former journalist has a particularly close friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. In footage from a visit to Riyadh after his appointment, the Saudi royal could be seen warmly embracing Kadhemi. But the clean-shaven man, his closely trimmed hair tinged by white around his ears, has otherwise mostly remained in the shadows. - 'Unprecedented' consensus - Kadhemi was first floated as premier in 2018 but political blocs instead opted for Adel Abdel Mahdi -- the caretaker PM who resigned in December after months of protests, and whom Kadhemi would replace. The intel chief's name began circulating again a few months ago as Barham Saleh's preferred candidate, but a political adviser close to the talks told AFP he had hesitated to take the risk. "He did not want to agree unless it was going to be a sure thing," the adviser said, having seen two candidates -- lawmaker Adnan Zurfi and ex-minister Mohammad Allawi -- fail before him. Allawi could not pull together a cabinet by his 30-day deadline while Zurfi dropped his bid on Thursday under pressure from Shiite parties close to Iran, who saw the lawmaker as worryingly close to Washington. In January, those same factions had accused Kadhemi of being involved in the US drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad. Since then, Kadhemi had worked through the caretaker PM's influential chief of staff Mohammad al-Hashemi to repair ties to Iran and its allies in Iraq, the adviser and a diplomat based in Baghdad told AFP. With pro-Tehran factions on board, the adviser said, Kadhemi scored "an unprecedented Shiite-wide consensus". - 'Superb negotiator' - That set Kadhemi up with better chances than the two prior candidates, but he still faces a host of challenges. Iraq's economy is faltering due to crashing oil prices and it is struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 100 people across the country. Islamic State group remnants have apparently stepped up attacks, and swathes of the country that saw fierce fighting between Iraqi troops and the jihadists are still in ruins. Tensions between arch rivals Tehran and Washington are simmering, and the US appears ready to take a harder line against Baghdad, seeing it as too friendly with Iran. It recently extended a short sanctions waiver that will allow Iraq to import crucial gas from Iran until May 26 to keep its power stations on. A figure like Kadhemi could have the right connections to steer Iraq through these crises, observers say. "Kadhemi is a superb negotiator and an incredibly astute player," said Toby Dodge, head of the London School for Economics' Middle East Centre. But, he cautioned, "Iraq is on borrowed time -- the stakes have gone up much higher." Born in Baghdad in 1967, Kadhemi studied law in Iraq but then left for Europe to escape repressive ex-dictator Saddam Hussein
James Edelstein has been replaying over and over again in his mind an incident that led to terroristic threats and other charges against him.

"I have been talking to myself like I was the judge since this thing happened, and I'm sleepless and very disappointed in myself," he told lehighvalleylive.com. "And I haven't faced the court yet."

Edelstein is a 75-year-old musician from the Newtown area of Lower Makefield Township in Bucks County. On April 28 at the Redners Markets location hes been shopping at for three decades, on Lincoln Highway in the Levittown area, Edelstein allegedly removed the face mask hed been wearing, coughed on a cashier and told her he had COVID-19.

He was charged via court summons on Monday with terroristic threats, simple assault and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors, in addition to summary harassment. The Bucks County District Attorney's Office announced the charges in a news release Friday.

I am proud of the way 99% of our citizens have handled themselves during this pandemic," District Attorney Matthew Weintraub says in the release. "The vast majority of us have adapted our behavior, followed the rules and treated each other with respect.

But whenever anyone seeks to weaponize this virus in order to terrorize another person just trying to do their job, we will prosecute him. We will protect our people serving us on the front lines by showing zero tolerance for criminal behavior like this.

Edelstein doesnt have COVID-19, he and his wife, Marlene, said. The pandemic coronavirus illness has shut down wide swaths of the economy in Pennsylvania and beyond in an effort to halt its spread. Statewide, there have been 54,238 confirmed cases since the first were found March 6, and at least 3,616 of those infected have died.

Edelstein says he has faced enough health problems that he fears he would face serious complications if he were to be infected, and is particularly concerned about contracting it if he ends up being sentenced to jail.

"I'm going to be in this house until they invent a vaccine," he said he's figured. "And yet I did what I did."

Authorities allege Edelstein was standing about 3 feet from the cashier when he removed his face mask and "coughed loudly" in her direction, according to the release. He allegedly told the woman he'd just tested positive for COVID-19 and, "Hope I do not spread my germs," before leaving.

Edelstein admits to having behaved poorly, for which hes remorseful, but he denies saying he had the coronavirus illness. What he claims to have said is, Excuse the germs, after removing his mask off and clearing his throat.

Immediately before the coughing incident, he had been waiting on a bench near the victims cash register, demanding to speak to a manager after complaining that another employee did not place Edelsteins bags in his cart, according to the prosecutors office.

Edelstein told a Middletown Township police officer he wanted to cause a scene to express his anger, authorities allege, and that: These kids had an education about an unhappy customer. I am happy I caused a disturbance and disrupted the flow of things.

Edelstein also admits he wanted the same level of service hed become accustomed to at the store. Then when I went off, who wants to go by someone who is ranting? he said.

I just went off, he told lehighvalleylive.com. It was just like when the plug -- youve got put the finger in the dike, and I just couldnt shut my mouth when I started.

Edelstein said he wants to apologize to the cashier, and is resigned to having to find a different store the next time he has to get groceries.

A tenor saxophone player, Edelstein hasn't worked since a gig March 3 at a nursing home. Whenever the economy does begin rebound, he expects musicians will be the last to return to work.

In isolation with Marlene, who is retired from a 40-year teaching career in Philadelphia, Edelstein has been practicing and recording on his computer.

But I havent been able to play right ever since this incident because thats all I think about, he said.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.
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Humans  or at least our ancestors, Homo erectus  apparently began cooking with fire around 1.8 million years ago.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Humans  or at least our ancestors, Homo erectus  apparently began cooking with fire around 1.8 million years ago.

Perhaps this theory from a Harvard anthropologist  posed in a 2013 edition of Scientific American  suggests theres some genetic remnant in us, Homo sapiens, that gets our blood simmering when we hear a steak sizzle on a fiery grill, watch peppers and veggie kebabs char over white-hot charcoal or smell savoury ribs that have been cooking slowly in an offset smoker.

Supplied Brad Biehn keeps his offset smokers at his cabin in Lac du Bonnet.

Or maybe its just that there are few activities more enjoyable than bringing friends and families together on a long Manitoba summer evening for a backyard party with barbecued food as the main attraction.

For grilling enthusiast Tony Shay, theres something special about cooking outdoors, whether its the accomplishment of a well cooked dinner or to satisfy his inner caveman.

"Im not much of a cook in the house; my wife is an exceptional chef," says Shay, 55, a Charleswood salesman whos waiting out the COVID-19 pandemic at home. "When I get to the barbecue, Im very confident."

Supplied Brad Biehn has his stepson, a welder, build him an offset smoker for the cabin.

Shay began grilling steaks as a pre-teen with his brother in his parents backyard. Four decades of innovation have revolutionized the pastime, he says.

"My parents had two hibachis that were coal-fired and were big enough to put one steak on each," Shay remembers of the small grills that were mainstays in Canadian homes in the 1970s. "Then my dad got a Broil Mate. It was like we joined the modern world."

These days, Shay has "a monster Weber grill thats huge" that can cook six steaks at a time. It comes with 21st-century bells and whistles that expand the grilling experience far beyond steaks and burgers.

Grilled veggies like peppers and asparagus work well, he says, and hell even whip up pancakes for breakfast, using a cast-iron frying pan and the grill as a stovetop.

In the summer, Shay will grill almost every night, but like many Winnipeg barbecue aficionados, hell light up the grill regularly in the winter, too.

"Its fun to do even then, as long as I dont have a hard north wind, because itll actually put the barbecue out," he says.

Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press Tony Shay says his wife is the chef in their household, but hes the grill master.

Like most grillers, Shay is comfortable with a set of tongs in one hand and a beer or a glass of wine in the other, but he says its as important to watch your booze intake as it is to watch the grill.

"Never drink too much when you barbecue," he advises with a laugh. "Youre bound to either undercook or overcook your steak. Save the drinking for later."

One reason why some prefer barbecuing to regular cooking is its simplicity, says Jason Wortzman, director of product development for Exceldor, the Canadian poultry co-operative behind the Grannys brand thats a Manitoba mainstay.

"Its not as precise as something in the kitchen," says Wortzman, who barbecues up to five times a week in the summer. "Cooking outdoors is for those who dont want to heat up the house in summer."

Barbecue is big business in Winnipeg, if you havent noticed when strolling through a a big-box hardware store or one of Luxe Barbeque Companys two city outlets.

"There are so many tools available, like ones for small vegetables and seafood, things you thought would fall through the grate," he says.

Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press Hamburgers are flame-grilled on Tony Shays barbecue.

Many of those tools, even items as simple as a thermometer or a timer, make lives easier for barbecuers and food tastier for diners. Theyve helped Shay so well he knows almost to the second when a steak is ready, whether its medium-rare or well done.

Time is something completely different for avid barbecuer Brad Biehn, 65, a retired IT director for the Louis Riel School Division.

He is the president of the Red River Barbecue & Grill Society, which promotes southern-style barbecue and grilling and holds competitions and events during the year. When Biehn spends his summer at a cottage near Lac du Bonnet, he follows the "low-and-slow" method with his large offset smoker, which uses open flame, indirect heat, wood smoke, lower cooking temperatures and hours of patience to barbecue chicken, pork shoulder, ribs and beef roasts such as brisket to savoury tenderness.

He caught the barbecue bug  barbecue is an activity, but barbecueing and grilling are two different cooking processes, one slow, one quick, he says  on a business trip to South Carolina years ago.

"They invited me to a barbecue, and I thought they were going to throw some steaks on," Biehn recalls. "I saw this offset smoker and they served ribs and chicken. I tried it and, oh my God, I thought I heard the angels singing."

Offset smokers are big and heavy, so having a kit shipped from the U.S. was too expensive. So Biehn enlisted his stepson, Tim Aitken, a welder, to build one. The finished product worked so well, Aitken started his own company, Bulldog BBQs, in Lac du Bonnet.

Biehn even tried the competitive barbecue circuit  the Kansas City Barbeque Society has about 20,000 members and held around 500 events around North America last year  and found participating and judging a great way to meet folks with the same interest.

"Ive tried some awesome barbecue; it puts mine to shame," he says.

An offset smokers size  not to mention the smoke it produces  lends itself to cottages and other rural settings rather than cities. Theres certainly no room for one at Biehns Waterfront Drive condo, so instead he combines a propane grill on his balcony with a small smoker filled with smouldering wood chips to achieve a similar taste. Hes says the result isnt quite as good as his big smoker, but itll do fine while he follows guidelines and stays at home rather than visiting his cottage during the pandemic.

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Barbecuing provides a similar satisfaction to grilling, Biehn says.

"When I was in IT, its a high-stress job. I always find cooking so relaxing," he says. "My best memories of my parents were those backyard barbecues we had. Thats why I share it with my stepson, his wife and my grandson. Whenever we have company over, I always barbecue."

Biehns passion for cooking outdoors doesnt stop there, though. He also has an Uuni portable pizza oven, which, unlike his smoker, cooks a Neapolitan-style pie in 90 seconds, thanks to cooking temperatures that reach 400 C (750 F).

"It takes five minutes to get up to that 750 degrees," he says. "We hold pizza parties and everyone puts what they want on their own pizza and its cooked right away."

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall
A message from KEITH DVORCHIK, CEO of Jewish Federation...

"As the wind blew and the rain fell recently, I found it symbolic of the changes we have been dealing with over the past 6 weeks. Storms roll in, creating chaos, and then leave, allowing us to regroup and move forward. During these uncertain times, it has been amazing to see our synagogues and agencies join together to provide for the needs of our community. It's been exciting to see the interest level in programming increase and more people participating in Jewish life.

Recently, we began our Great Expectations: Peer Pregnancy Discussion Group. If you are expecting or recently had a child, this is a great way to connect with others who are pregnant or recently had children and build a support group. And if your child isn't getting PJ Library or PJ Our Way books each month, make sure to subscribe now. Remember they are a gift to you and your children from the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando.

P.S. -- You probably noticed that I'm looking pretty scruffy in my Fed Friday photo this week. I am refraining from shaving until the evening of May 12, the Federation's Community Virtual Bonfire and Picnic for Lag B'Omer. You'll want to make sure you sign on for what promises to be a very fun and very unique celebration, hosted by the Federation's Yael Weinstein. (And yes, I will be shaving live on camera)."

Incidently, Keith with the unshaven face is still super-handsome. (I can say that cause I'm over 80! OOPS!! I meant to say over 50!)

Community Spotlight: Bolivia...

I read this in the World Jewish Congress digest and found it super-interesting so I pass it along:

"Bolivia has one of the smallest Jewish communities in Latin America, with approximately 400 members, most of whom live in La Paz.

The Jewish presence in Bolivia dates back to the period of Spanish conquest and colonization that started in the early 16th century, when it became one of the primary destinations for Spanish Jews who had formally converted to Christianity and became known as Marranos.

With their eventual economic successes. They became picked-on by locals and still persecuted by the Inquisition. As a result, most fled to Santa Cruz, at the time a remote settlement and much safer.

In 1905, a small number of Russian Jews settled in Bolivia, followed by some Argentinian Jews.

The rise of Nazism in Germany led to a significant growth of Jews in Bolivia, including 12,000 German Jewish immigrants. Eventually, many moved on to Argentina, the United States, Chile and Uruguay. Bolivia served as a transit route for them and kept them safe!

What future?...

With pandemics like this coronavirus and a rise in anti-Semitism in the world, what will the future be like for us? (Actually, I don't have to worry because I'm over 50! OH SHUT UP!)

The WJC and the Jewish community of Slovakia expressed deep concern that 22 gravestones in a Jewish cemetery have been damaged by unknown vandals just a week after 60 gravestones were damaged in a similar manner in another Jewish cemetery in Slovakia. So far, until these incidents, anti-Semitism was rare in Slovakia. The Jews living there have been fortunately spared but lately it has become sadly clear that a climate of hatred is spiraling across Europe.

Jewish Pavilion Grief Group...

The Jewish Pavilion Grief Group, a six-week program, was postponed due to the pandemic. It was to take place at Oakmonte Village in Lake Mary.

For new details, contact NANCY LUDIN at 407-678-9363 0r email her at nancyludin@jewishpavilion.org

Not at all surprised!...

Since writing this column (for more than 40 years. I started when I was 10), I have come to realize that most of the talented songwriters of our beloved great American songs were Jewish.

The other day, while listening to a TV program, I heard the song "How About You." That song was always special to me because of the lyrics, "I like New York in June, how about you? I like a Gershwin tune, how about you." (I was born in New York in June and Gershwin is special to me and my family.)

This particular song, and many other beloved songs of the 30s and 40s were written by Burton Levy, a New York Jew. (You probably know him as Burton Lane.) Incidentally, he discovered Judy Garland when she was only 13 years old!!

(Gee she started around the same time I did!)

Shout-Out...

This is just a thought of mine:

This past Passover, reading from the Haggadah of our miraculous Exodus from Egypt, why wasn't Moses ever mentioned? He was the most important part of the story as he led our people out of Egypt and into the promised land of Israel.

Moses, who with great courage led his people from slavery to freedom.

Burton Lane

(I did receive a Haggadah supplement recently from The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous making sure that Moses was mentioned!)

One for the road...

Moshe was talking to his psychiatrist. "I had a weird dream recently," he says. "I saw my mother but then I noticed she had your face. I found this so worrying that I immediately awoke and couldn't get back to sleep. I just stayed there thinking about it until 7 a.m. I got up, made myself a slice of toast and some coffee and came straight here. Can you please help me explain the meaning of my dream?"

The psychiatrist kept silent for some time, then said, "One slice of toast and coffee? Do you call that a breakfast?"

(Oy vay! Sounds like a Jewish mom to me!)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Pyongyang General Hospital, on the occasion of the 75th founding anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea, in Pyongyang, North Korea in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 17, 2020.

North Korean residents are being forced to chip in with food aid for construction workers building a new hospital in Pyongyang, creating resentment among provincial residents who are not permitted to freely travel to the capital, sources in the country told RFA.

Neighborhood watch units in each district of the province are holding meetings to discuss providing food to Pyongyang, a resident of North Hamgyong province, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFAs Korean Service.

Regular events scheduled in March and April were all canceled [due to the coronavirus], but the neighborhood watch unit meetings go on as scheduled to solicit food aid for the construction workers in Pyongyang, the source said.

Every neighborhood watch unit held such meetings on April 22, and the source attended one of them. The meeting emphasized participation in the food aid campaign to complete the Pyongyang General Hospital as one of the nations top priorities, the source said.

As far as I know, these meetings to help out with Pyongyangs food situation have been held in every neighborhood watch unit nationwide, the source said.

According to the source, many of the provincial residents, who are themselves struggling to make ends meet due to COVID-19, resent that they are being asked to give to Pyongyang, a city where only the wealthy or well connected are granted permission to live.

Some residents expressed their antipathy to the food aid request, asking why they must provide food for the Pyongyang General Hospital as it wont even be usable by residents in the provinces, the source said.

In response, the neighborhood watch unit leaders argue that supporting the construction of the hospital is a top priority for the nation and has been ordered by the party amid a food situation that is bad all over the country, said the source.

The watch leaders even went as far to say that the provincial people had it better than the privileged city-dwellers.

They said that we have many ways to make money through our own businesses and side jobs, but Pyongyangers are tied to a very strict organizational lifestyle, so they have no means to get food or extra money, the source said.

In the end, the main point of the neighborhood watch meeting was that local residents should step up and feed Pyongyang because the situation in Pyongyang is difficult, the source said.

Similar meetings were held in the North Hamgyongs largest city Chongjin, according to another resident who also requested anonymity.

[The meetings] are to force residents of the provinces, cities and counties all across the country to provide food aid for the construction workers at Pyongyang General Hospital, the second source told RFA on April 28.

The Supreme Peoples Assembly is making each household give five kilograms (11 pounds) of rice or the equivalent in cash, the second source said, adding, The food situation is bad all over the place because of the coronavirus crisis, but I cannot understand how the people here in the provinces are supposed to feed Pyongyang.

According to the second source, many of the residents were actually relieved when the coronavirus hit, because it meant they could get out of being mobilized for civic projects as happens every April.

Just when we were relieved that there were no orders [to mobilize us] due to the coronavirus crisis, our moods soured when we were suddenly ordered to provide food for this construction site in Pyongyang.

It is quite common in North Korea for all levels of government to tap the public to fund, contribute supplies like food or provide free labor for government projects.

In March, RFA reported that the government ordered schools across the country sanitized because of the onset of the coronavirus, but made the parents foot the bill.

Another RFA report in December described residents living near the Samjiyon tourist zone being forced to make the town look beautiful and collect money for uniforms so they could present themselves as an orderly crowd before Kim Jong Un at a ribbon cutting ceremony commemorating the completion of part of the zone.

Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday indicated that he will not return as the party chief anytime sooner even as his active involvement in organisational matters and series of conversations with experts on the Covid-19 crisis has fuelled speculation about it.

...please read my [resignation] letter that I wrote one year ago on that issue, he said in response to a question about his active involvement being perceived as a sign of his return as the Congress president.

Gandhi resigned as the party chief last year following the partys drubbing in the 2019 national polls. He tweeted a four-page farewell note listing the reasons why he resigned as the Congress chief on July 3 last year.

In the letter, Gandhi took a dig at his party colleagues for the electoral drubbing and spoke about the lack of support to him, saying he had stood completely alone in the fight against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS).

I personally fought the Prime Minister, the RSS, and the institutions they have captured with all my being. I fought because I love India. And I fought to defend the ideals India was built upon. At times, I stood completely alone and am extremely proud of it, he wrote.

Gandhi has held interactions with Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee and former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan over the Covid-19 crisis.

Asked about these conversations, he said, I normally interact with a lot of people. These are interesting conversations. I thought let me give the people of India a glimpse of what the experts think about the present situation. This is the basic idea of such conversations. Whatever I get to learn and understand from these conversations, I wanted to pass it on to other people. Otherwise, there is no specific strategy behind it.

Gandhi was included in former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh-led 11-member Congress Consultative Committee on the Covid-19 pandemic on April 18.

Asked about his suggestion to Congress chief ministers on taxing diesel, petrol, and alcohol, Gandhi said he will leave these decisions to them. I do not like advising chief ministers through press conferences. The rule I would say they should follow is to be compassionate, understand that India is going through a very difficult time, that there are people, who are struggling more than others, and be gentle and compassionate and loving towards everybody.
By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 26 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

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 regions

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
TELEMMGLPICT000230116712.jpeg

Britain has become a magnet for asylum-seekers fueling record numbers crossing the Channel, says a new study that reveals the number being returned has halved in four years.

The research by Migration Watch UK says the knowledge that migrants are unlikely to be sent back to another EU country or removed even if their asylum application fails is driving the surge in boats making the perilous crossing.

More than 3,200 migrants have successfully made the crossing since 2018 with the number more than doubling in the first two months of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019.

"The biggest incentive for those attempting dangerous Channel crossings is the knowledge that being picked up by a British Border Force vessel or managing to set foot on British soil provides a very good chance of a permanent stay in the UK," said the report.

Only 155 migrants who arrived on small boats between January 2019 and early April 2020 were returned to France despite about 2,500 detected arrivals. That represents six per cent of the total.

The collapse in removals of those with no right to be here, including failed asylum seekers, is part of a worsening paralysis of enforcement which is spurring more trips, said Migration Watch.

The report comes only a day after Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, urged the French to back a new crackdown to enable the UK to return Channel migrants to France even if they are caught in British waters.

The Home Secretary who held talks on Wednesday with her French counterpart Christophe Castaner, the French interior minister, is also seeking to renegotiate an international agreement that would enable Britain to return more asylum-seekers who land in the UK.

The agreement, known as the Dublin regulations, makes the first country to receive an asylum seeker responsible for processing the claim, which in theory means others can return the migrant to them.

Story continues

Migration Watch said the figures showed the number of illegal migrants removed from Britain under the Dublin agreement to other EU countries has halved in four years from 510 in 2015 to 263 in 2019.

The number of migrants who came into the UK under Dublin Regulation was also nearly six times the number sent back to other countries in 2018, according to the study.

Migration Watch also pointed to a sharp decline in the number of failed asylum seekers being removed the UK, from just over 12,000 in 2004 to 2,000 in 2018. Of those, fewer than 40 per cent were known to have left.

"The Home Office response has been beset by a range of problems, not least of which is the knowledge that those claiming asylum in the UK are unlikely to be removed, even if their asylum claim is rejected, said the report.

The Government should use the opportunity presented by Brexit to either renegotiate, if not withdraw, from the EUs Dublin Regulation while significantly increasing the number of other removals. Ultimately, it would also be in French interests to prevent such departures.

Migration Watch said the perception that reaching the UK offered a permanent home needed to be neutralised by an agreement between the UK and French governments that anyone intercepted wherever in the Channel or on reaching UK shores will be returned immediately to France where any application for asylum could be made.

The UK could undertake to contribute while applicants await a decision. In the event of asylum being refused, the UK could also contribute to the cost of repatriation.
There are no signs North Korean leader Kim Jong-un received heart surgery when he disappeared from state media for three weeks, but he reduced public activity due to coronavirus concerns, South Korean lawmakers briefed by its spy agency said.

Mr Kim attended the completion of a fertiliser plant, North Korea's official media said on Saturday, the first report of his appearing in public since April 11.

His absence fuelled a flurry of speculation about his health and whereabouts, with a South Korean news outlet reporting Mr Kim was recovering from a cardiovascular procedure while CNN said US officials were monitoring intelligence he was "in grave danger" after surgery.

Members of South Korea's parliamentary intelligence committee said after a meeting with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) that the reports were "groundless".

"The NIS assesses that at least he did not get any heart-related procedure or surgery," committee member Kim Byung-kee told reporters. "He was normally performing his duties when he was out of the public eye.

"At least there's no heart-related health problem."

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But the lawmaker said Mr Kim has only made 17 public appearances so far this year, compared with an average of 50 from previous years, which the NIS ascribed to a possible coronavirus outbreak in North Korea.

"Kim Jong-un had focused on consolidating internal affairs such as military forces and party-state meetings, and coronavirus concerns have further limited his public activity," Kim Byung-kee said.

"Though North Korea maintains it has zero cases, it cannot be ruled out that there is an outbreak there given they had active people-to-people exchanges with China before closing the border in late January."

North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases. South Korea's Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees North Korea affairs, has said Mr Kim's public disappearance was not particularly unusual because the country had been taking stringent steps to head off an outbreak.

The lawmaker said Mr Kim had ordered measures to prevent the disease, stabilise prices and strengthen military discipline, as border shutdowns and market closures prompted rises in food prices and panic-buying in the capital Pyongyang.

Mr Kim's visit to the fertiliser factory appeared to be aimed at expressing his resolve to ease food shortages and build a self-reliant economy.
If all goes to plan, the national government will be preparing this weekend for most of Spain to move to the next stage of its lockdown easing plan.

The move from Phase Zero, which has been in force since 4 May, to the start of Phase One, will be next Monday 11 May. However the change is complicated by each of the country's devolved regional governments being asked to present their own ideas and variants on the government's plan.

In addition, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez struggled this week to get support to extend the state of alarm official decree, which has been in force since 15 March, for a further two weeks until 24 May.

On Wednesday, MPs in Congreso approved the move but with the main opposition PP party abstaining for the first time and promising to vote against any new extension next time. The PP and some other parties are nervous that the government may use the shield of the state of alarm to push though other measures by stealth. Ministers maintain that the state of alarm is simply the most effective way available to restrict the movement of people.

Moving to Phase One

The government is expected to announce today (Friday, 8 May) or on Saturday which areas of the country will move to Phase One.

Up to Wednesday this week, the Ministry of Health received reports from the 19 devolved regional governments, who are also responsible for delivering healthcare in their areas. Officials were studying the ideas ahead of an announcement on Phase One.

Among the proposals of the diverse regions, Castilla y Leon and Catalonia are most reticent about moving to the weaker restriction of Phase One. Castilla y Leon wants to allow rural areas to move forward but city areas to stay at Phase Zero. Catalonia wants to scale down lockdown by public health district, not province, and keep most of its region in Phase Zero for now. The Madrid region has finally agreed to ask central government to move to Phase One.
By Express News Service

AURANGABAD: Maharashtra government on Friday announced the Rs 5 lakh financial aid to the 16 deceased migrant workers families who got killed in the train accident at Karmad-Satana near Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

The goods train ran over the 19 migrant workers, killing 16 while rest were seriously injured.

These migrants were resting at train track after walking a day from Jalna to Aurangabad.

The distance between the Jalna to Aurangabad is around 150 kilometres.

They wanted to go Bhuswal to catch the train or any mode of transport and go back to Chattisgarh, the native state.

When these migrants were in their deep sleep after walking the entire day in the scorching heat, the goods train rammed over them by killing them at around 4.00 am Friday.

Migrants thought that no trains are running so they slept on the train track. Most of the migrants had no information of other roads and transport is not also available. Therefore they are walking alongside the train tracks to go to their destinations. These migrants were working in a steel factory in Jalna MIDC, said an official.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray released the statement and said that Aurangabad incident is very unfortunate.

The migrants should not lose hopes and leave their shelter homes. We are talking with the central government to start the train to ferry the migrants at their native places. We are hopeful that the central government will work on fast by starting as many as train to avoid inconvenience to migrants workers, Thackeray said.

He also announced the five lakh as financial help to the deceased families and bore their medical and other expenses.

The railway has already started the special train for migrants and so far over one lakh migrant had gone back to their native. We are talking with central government to arrange the transport to migrants, the chief minister said.

Thackeray also said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places.

Maharashtra Congress president Balasaheb Thorat said that they are ready to foot the travel bill of the migrants but the central and the respective state government including Gujarat, Karnataka etc are not helping them.

They are not taking their state people. If the centre did not extend help immediately then the poor migrants will suffer more, Thorat said.

After learning about the tragedy, Thackeray spoke to Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta and railway officials to get details about what happened.

These labourers were employed in a steel manufacturing plant in Jalna, a neighbouring district of Aurangabad in central Maharashtra.

Special Shramik Trains are being operated from different parts of the state to ferry stranded migrant workers to their native places.

Thackeray appealed to migrant workers not to put their lives at risk and stay at shelter camps till travel arrangements are made for them.

"The state government is in constant touch with the Railway ministry . A train will start from Mumbai, too, soon. I appeal to workers not to put their lives at risk."

(With PTI Inputs)
- Since the outbreak of coronavirus, a number of countries have raised complaints about fake test kits allegedly sent from China

- The latest to raise a concern was Spain, and now the UK also says it would demand a refund over faulty testing kits it ordered from the Asian country

- Besides the UK and Spain, there were reports of fake kits in India, Turkey, Ireland, Slovakia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Netherlands

Days after Tanzanian president John Magufuli raised an alarm over the authenticity of coronavirus testing kits in his country, it has emerged the United Kingdom (UK) have also questioned the same.

The UK reportedly bought two million kits from China and paid KSh 2 billion, but the equipment were found to be insufficiently accurate by a laboratory at Oxford University while another 1.5 million bought at a similar price from other sources were unused.

READ ALSO: Coronavirus: WHO predicts 44M infections, 190k deaths in Africa in one year

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said the kits would prove to be a game changer. Photo: Boris Johnson.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: General Samson Mwathethe officially hands over command to new Chief of Defence Forces Robert Kibochi

According to a report by New York Times on Thursday, May 7, the gamble of buying unproven kits from China proved to be an embarrassment for the UK which was hoping to test 100,000 samples a day but were testing less than 20,000.

British officials who ordered the kits would try to recover the money back from China, and this was revealed by a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care said.

An info-graphic showing the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths by country. Photo: Worldometers.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Nilimpa DP Ruto mikakati ya kampeini, Mutahi Ngunyi asema

"They might perhaps have slightly jumped the gun. There is a huge pressure on politicians to come out and say things that are positive," Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London and a member of the UK's new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group," said.

The UK had hoped to lift lockdowns after mass testing using the kits, but it seems the idea would have to be postponed.

You cant lift the lockdown as long as you are not testing massively. As long as the government is not testing in the community, we are going to be on lockdown," Nicolas Locker, a professor of virology at the University of Surrey said.

As of Friday, May 8, morning, the UK had confirmed over 206,000 COVID-19 infections with over 30,000 deaths surpassing Italy, which was the epicentre of the virus in Europe.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, China in December 2019, the pandemic has spread to 212 countries and at least eight countries reported faulty testing kits.

Besides the UK, there were reports of fake kits in India, Turkey, Ireland, Slovakia, Spain, Kenya and the Netherlands.

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

Eastleigh residents' plea to Uhuru | Tuko TV

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We see them all the time, the same lost souls in the same San Francisco neighborhoods caught in the same sad cycles of homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness.

Ian Carrier was a particularly distinctive fixture of the Tenderloin. He used a wheelchair after getting hit by a car. He sported black facial tattoos. He had puffy hands and abscesses on his skin, telltale signs of drug use.

Thats what passersby would see. What they didnt know was he had family who adored their witty, compassionate son and brother and tried for decades to help him get better. That he had longtime, loyal friends who gave him pastrami sandwiches, pink Snowball snack cakes, copies of Thrasher magazine and constant support. That he had a team of doctors and city outreach workers on his side.

And yet none of it was enough  not in a city that refuses to disband its open-air drug market, the one that pulls people like Carrier back again and again and makes it nearly impossible to recover.

Despite all the love and friendship and care, Carrier died in his wheelchair on a Tenderloin sidewalk on April 28. He was just 36.

Mary Howe got a text that night from another friend of Carriers reading, simply, Ians gone. The executive director of the Homeless Youth Alliance had been close friends with Carrier since meeting him many years ago in the Haight.

Hed been diagnosed with depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as a teenager and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, his family said. He left home at 18 to travel the country with friends, eventually settling in the Haight and sleeping in Golden Gate Park. His drug addiction grew worse, and he used heroin and crack cocaine regularly.

He suffered from many medical ailments, including numerous skin infections and a bout with diphtheria in 2018. After that hospitalization, he got a space in a single-room-occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin, but he hated it there and spent a lot of time outside.

Howe was his touchstone and advocate, and they met religiously every Wednesday morning. After she received that horrifying text, she raced to Eddy and Hyde streets to identify her friend for the medical examiner. She sat sobbing in Carriers wheelchair as he was zipped into a body bag. She called his family and broke their hearts.

Carrier had been in and out of UCSF for months, his kidneys failing and doctors unable to figure out why. His family wondered whether he had COVID-19, and he was even included in a New York Times article about people questioning whether theyd contracted the dreaded virus without knowing it. A test eventually came back negative, his sister said, and his cause of death hasnt been determined.

His family and friends hoped this time would be different. Hed been sober in the hospital and talked of wanting to make changes.

Howe wanted him released to a vacant hotel room to shelter in place during the pandemic, but said she was told no room was available. His family had pressed for him to recover at Laguna Honda Hospital, the citys largest nursing home, but that didnt happen either.

Instead, he wound up right back where he always did  the Tenderloin. The place he couldnt shake. And the place City Hall has refused to clean up for the sake of people like Carrier.

Carriers family and Howe say he was discharged April 27 without their knowledge and dropped at the crowded tent encampment alongside the Asian Art Museum.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Kristen Bole, a spokeswoman for UCSF, said she couldnt comment on Carriers case because of privacy protections. She said discharge protocol includes providing clothing, food, medications and transportation in alignment with the patients wishes.

Apparently a sticking point for qualifying for a vacant hotel room was whether Carrier had his own room and bathroom where he could shelter in place. He had his own sink, but not his own toilet and shower, according to friends who saw his room.

But the bigger issue is the Tenderloin itself and the concentration of SRO hotels, services and drug dealers packed in tight.

Thomas Wolf, a onetime homeless drug addict who is now housed and sober, said the key for him was finally getting out of the Tenderloin and into a recovery program miles away in the Mission. He knew Carrier and said leaving him back in the same place as always was definitely a death sentence.

In recovery, we learn you need to change your playground, said Wolf, a member of the citys Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force. If you take an addict and take him away from the environment in which he was using drugs, there might be a better chance of success.

Carriers sister, April Slone, said shes furious he was once again discharged back to the Tenderloin. Their family had remained close and tried many times to ease Carrier into recovery, but it never stuck. Slone lives in France and visited her brother for two days in October. It was two days of bonding, eating doughnuts and hamburgers  and seeing her brothers neighborhood up close.

That fing city allows drug dealers to peddle their poison in the open air with cops standing there watching, she said. They clearly have absolutely no control over it. ... Its an open mental hospital where you can buy whatever you want just off the street.

Shes not wrong. Thats the way its been in the Tenderloin for years, and its only gotten worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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 Wednesday, a visit to Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street showed young dealers brazenly hawking their wares as a pathetic line of men stretching down the block sat slumped over on the sidewalk, clearly high out of their minds. No masks, no social distancing, no sheltering in place, no hygiene, nothing.

A man who appeared high partied and danced on a utility box. A woman who also appeared high wandered into traffic and refused to budge, inches away from cars.

Just another morning in the Tenderloin.

Meanwhile, the citys plan for a safe injection site has stalled. Its plan for a meth sobering center has stalled. Its Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force is on hold after two meetings because of the virus. The pandemic and shutdown have paused a lot in San Francisco, but it cant continue to send the Tenderloin deeper into despair.

The city was rightly sued Monday by residents and business owners in the neighborhood, seeking to force it to clear sidewalks of packed encampments, find housing for homeless people and stop brazen drug dealing. Mayor London Breed quickly premiered a plan to do just that  weeks or decades late, depending on how you slice it  and lets hope improvements finally arrive.

Police Chief Bill Scott said Wednesday his officers would step up arrests of dealers, including those whove been seen by police taking bags of drugs into tent camps to prey on vulnerable people.

Weve arrested these people. Weve confiscated their money, weve confiscated their drugs, and we will continue to do that with a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm, Scott said.

Of course, hell need the backup of the district attorneys office and Superior Court judges to make any real punishment stick, which hasnt happened in the past. Stay-away orders from the entire Tenderloin and South of Market area  or even San Francisco itself  would make sense seeing as how many dealers come from the East Bay to ply their deadly wares.

Whatever changes hopefully arrive will come too late for Carrier, a fact his sister still cant quite believe. Slone said she knew she might someday get that dreaded call, but she wasnt ready for it.

It was like getting hit by a truck, she said through tears.

Slone said her brother will be cremated. Howe will keep his ashes until they can gather in San Francisco for a celebration of her brothers life.

He was kind and he was nice and he was a survivor, Slone said. We loved him. We tried so hard.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf
The eighty-year-old father of Sagbama Local Government Council Chairman, Pa Napoleon Alale, has been kidnapped in his home at Agbere Community, Bayelsa State by unknown gunmen.

A statement released by the Press Secretary to the SALGA Chairman, Dr Nikade Anderson, on Friday, revealed that the octogenarian was whisked away from his country home residence about 12 midnight, Friday.

READ ALSO  Timi Dakolo Appointed As SA To Bayelsa State Govt On Entertainment

According to available reports, the unknown gunmen invaded the community in the early hours of Friday, shooting sporadically to scare off residents, while one vigilante member on guard duty was shot by the assailants.

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The kidnappers of Pa Napoleon Alale reportedly escaped in a boat through the Nun River to an unknown destination, and are yet to make contact with the family members of the SALGA Chairman.
Manoj Viswanathan By

Express News Service

KOCHI: Athira, an electronics and communication engineer at an IT equipment firm in the UAE, could barely hold back her emotions as her husband Nithin Chandran escorted her to the Dubai International Airport. Into the 31st week of pregnancy, she had been a bundle of nerves for the past few days as all her attempts to fly back to Kerala for delivery had proved futile. The Centres decision to launch the evacuation mission came as a relief to the couple who had even moved the Supreme Court seeking a favourable order.

We were tensed as the delivery date was fast approaching and there were no relatives here to take care of her. As I work with a construction company and have to mingle with a lot of people, chances of contracting Covid is high. And with pregnant women in the high risk group, I was anxious about her health. We are thankful to the Centre and state governments for facilitating the evacuation, said Nithin, a mechanical engineer. Athira reached the airport wearing a protective gown, face mask and gloves and her eyes gleamed as the efforts to get back home was bearing fruit.

Im quite glad that my parents will be around during the advanced stage of pregnancy. They have arranged the first floor of our house for my home quarantine. We are thankful to the government for facilitating the return journey. There are hundreds of pregnant women and people suffering from various ailments who are desperate to return home. I hope all of them will be able to fly back home, said Athira, hailing from Mappayur in Perambra, Kozhikode. Athira boarded an Air India flight from Dubai to Kozhikode on Thursday evening for her return to Kerala.

It is Incas, a cultural organisation of the Congress, which had helped Nithin and Athira approach the Supreme Court seeking repatriation. There are several hundred Malayalis stuck in the UAE due to the suspension of international flights following the lockdown. We know many people who are suffering from health issues which prompted us to approach court, said Nithin. Nithin has been working in Dubai for the past six years. Athira shifted to Dubai two years ago following her marriage.
JUNO BEACH, Fla., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) today announced that its 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders now will be held on Thursday, May 21, 2020, at 8:00 a.m., Central time, at the company affiliated facilities located at 20455 State Highway 249, Suite 200, Houston, Texas.

The meeting location change is due to the unavailability of the previously noticed meeting location.

NextEra Energy noted that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing will be observed at all times during the meeting and seating capacity will be limited to comply with social distancing guidelines promulgated by relevant public health authorities. Attendees will be screened for symptoms and required to wear a protective face covering.

Regardless of whether a shareholder expects to attend the annual meeting, the company encourages submission of proxy or voting instructions promptly so that shares can be voted.

The company will also provide a live webcast of the meeting. Participants will be able to access the webcast on the company's website at www.NextEraEnergy.com/investors. A replay of the NextEra Energy annual meeting webcast will be available for 90 days by accessing the same link.

Further information is available in the company's Notice of 2020 Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement filed on April 3, 2020, which is available by clicking on SEC Filings from the company's website at the same link.

NextEra Energy, Inc.

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) is a leading clean energy company headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida. NextEra Energy owns two electric companies in Florida: Florida Power & Light Company, which serves more than five million customer accounts in Florida and is one of the largest rate-regulated electric utilities in the United States; and Gulf Power Company, which serves more than 470,000 customers in eight counties throughout northwest Florida. NextEra Energy also owns a competitive energy business, NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, which, together with its affiliated entities, is the world's largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun and a world leader in battery storage. Through its subsidiaries, NextEra Energy generates clean, emissions-free electricity from eight commercial nuclear power units in Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin. A Fortune 200 company and included in the S&P 100 index, NextEra Energy has been recognized often by third parties for its efforts in sustainability, corporate responsibility, ethics and compliance, and diversity. NextEra Energy is ranked No. 1 in the electric and gas utilities industry on Fortune's 2020 list of "World's Most Admired Companies" and ranked among the top 25 on Fortune's 2018 list of companies that "Change the World." For more information about NextEra Energy companies, visit these websites: www.NextEraEnergy.com, www.FPL.com, www.GulfPower.com, www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.

SOURCE NextEra Energy, Inc.

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U.S. secretary of state urges WHO chief to invite Taiwan to WHA

ROC Central News Agency

05/07/2020 01:22 PM

Washington, May 6 (CNA) United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called on the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) to invite Taiwan to this year's World Health Assembly (WHA), saying it is within a WHO director-general's power to do so.

In a press briefing, Pompeo reiterated Washington's support for Taipei's participation as an observer in this year's WHA, the decision-making body of the WHO, which will be held online from May 18-19 due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

"Today I want to call upon all nations, including those in Europe, to support Taiwan's participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly and in other relevant United Nations venues," he said.

He also urged WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan to the WHA, "as he has the power to do, and as his predecessors have done on multiple occasions."

Pompeo was referring to the fact that Tedros' predecessor, Margaret Chan (), had sent invitations to Taiwan to observe the WHA from 2009 to 2016.

Asked to comment if he will consider sending an invitation to Taiwan during a WHO press event held in Geneva that day, Tedros did not answer the question, referring it instead to WHO Legal Counsel Derek Walton.

Walton reiterated the WHO's stance that the WHO secretariat has no authority to make such a decision unilaterally as it is to be made by all 194 member states.

"The involvement, if any, of observers from 'Taiwan, China' in that assembly is a question for the 194 member governments, it's their decision," he noted.

He also said that a number of member states have already raised proposals to discuss the matter at this year's WHA.

He continued that whether or not Taiwan is invited to the assembly this year, there are "well-established arrangements" for health experts from "Taiwan, China" to work with the WHO on technical health matters.

Taiwan participated in the WHA meetings from 2009 to 2016 as on observer under the name "Chinese Taipei" amid warmer cross-Taiwan Strait relations under the then-Kuomintang (KMT) administration, which prioritized reducing cross-strait tension and building friendly ties with Beijing.

Since 2017, however, China has persuaded the WHO not to invite Taiwan, in line with its hardline stance on cross-strait ties after President Tsai Ing-wen () of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took office in May 2016.

Explaining its decision for not sending invitations to Taiwan since 2017, the WHO said in 2019 that "previous invitations to the WHA have been issued on the basis of a 'cross-strait understanding,'" and that the "absence of such an understanding" in recent years has resulted in the fact that no more such invitations have been issued.

According to the WHO Constitution, although the specialized agency under the U.N. does not recognize observer status, the rules of WHA procedure give the WHO director-general the right to invite observers to the annual WHA meeting, provided that they are "States that have made application for membership, territories on whose behalf application for associate membership has been made, and States which have signed but not accepted the Constitution."

In response to Pompeo's remarks, Taiwan's foreign ministry on Thursday expressed gratitude, saying that it will continue to work closely with the U.S. and other like-minded countries in sharing Taiwan's success in containing the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

The ministry also issued a protest over Walton's remarks that called the nation "Taiwan, China," saying the designation belittled the nation's sovereignty.

(By Stacy Hsu, Tang Pei-chun and Joseph Yeh)

Enditem/J

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India expects to be elected to the United Nations Security Councils (UNSC) non-permanent membership next month for a two-year term beginning in January 2021. By then, the world will, hopefully, have figured out a way to deal with the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), using new and recycled treatments or, better still, a vaccine. In these uncertain times, India will have to decide whether or not to squander its eighth stint on the UNSCs non-permanent bench as an end in itself as it has before, or use it to further its claim to permanent membership of the worlds most exclusive club of nations, and make it a real possibility.

A need for reforming the UNSC has been felt for decades. But founded in 1945, it saw its first change in 1965 with the addition of four non-permanent members. The next most consequential step came 43 years later in 2008 with the setting up of the Intergovernmental Negotiations to put together text, UN speak for a document of proposals for negotiations, with five key issues to be considered for reforms. These include, among other things, the size of the expanded UNSC, sharing of veto power and categories of membership. Its been all talk since, and there is nothing even remotely conducive on the horizon.

India cannot force the process; no one country can. But a case can be made for it to make UNSC reforms a top priority for its UN mission. Even while handling Pakistan  the clear and present danger next door  championing climate change, social justice and poverty alleviation, further entrenching ownership of yoga and contributing to peacekeeping, India can and should prioritise the pursuit of permanent membership. It should go beyond the annual expression of exasperation at the slow pace of progress  Sisyphean, as former Indian Permanent Representative to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin, described it  and meetings with fellow travellers of the G-4, Japan, Germany and Brazil. It should use the platform to flag and bolster Indias claim to a promotion through demonstrably proactive leadership on most pressing issues.

Among these should be the reform of the World Health Organization (WHO), which has become a major issue in the light of a growing list of missteps in its response to the coronavirus pandemic. The WHO pointedly ignored early warnings and alerts from Taiwan, for one, and then helped China obfuscate on its responsibility in the spread of the virus and suppress its numbers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already called for WHO reforms, joining United States President Donald Trump who has temporarily suspended US funding of the world body. And with a growing international consensus on reforming the multilateral body that still enjoys considerable equity in the developing world, this should not be a complicated purchase for India. Especially as it comes with a bonus buy one, get one prospect: Fix WHO, get a crack at the UNSC.

The views expressed are personal

yashwant.raj@hindustantimes.com
By Chris Scicluna and Robin Emmott

VALETTA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Malta told its European Union partners on Friday it would no longer take part in a new Mediterranean mission to stop more arms reach warring factions in Libya, just four days after the naval and air operation began patrols.

A Maltese government spokesman and two EU diplomats told Reuters the decision was in protest at what Valetta said was an EU failure to help deal with migrants arriving from Libya, where the conflict has escalated sharply since April.

Malta is not a European military power, but the decision is a blow to a mission which began on May 4 after months of difficult diplomacy over which EU countries, if any, should take in any migrants rescued at sea.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has warned that the bloc risked becoming irrelevant if it could not act, potentially leaving Libya's fate to Turkey and Russia, rather than influencing events in its own neighbourhood.

Although the EU cannot patrol the Egypt-Libya land border, through which artillery is still being delivered to Libya, the EU is concerned the Libyan conflict could worsen instability almost a decade after Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011.

An EU spokesman declined to comment directly on Malta's decision, saying the mission "is a concrete example of how the EU wants to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the conflict on Libya," noting that its mandate is to enforce the United Nations arms embargo.

Complicating matters, Malta has told Brussels it will veto decisions on the operation, known as Irini, that involving spending for disembarkation of migrants, port diversions, and the use of drones, the government official and diplomats said. That is likely to drain the mission of funds.

Operation Irini counts vessels from France, Greece and Italy, one Maltese naval boarding team and three patrol aircrafts from Germany, Luxembourg and Poland. The European Satellite Centre is providing satellite imagery support.

Story continues

The breakdown in cooperation, just after France began patrolling a naval vessel and Luxembourg flew aircraft over the eastern Mediterranean smuggling routes, deepens an increasingly bitter dispute with Malta.

Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo complained on Thursday that Italy and Malta were being left alone to deal with thousands of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean.

The island has closed its harbours and chartered two tourism boats to hold migrants just outside territorial waters. It has also criticised EU governments for not taking in those migrants after they have arrived in Maltese and Italian ports.

With hundreds of thousands making the perilous crossing from North Africa each year and thousands dying at sea, EU ships are required under international law to rescue those in trouble.

However, with EU borders closed by the coronavirus pandemic, governments are reluctant to take in migrants, although Luxembourg has taken minors relocated from Greece.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels, editing by Larry King)
As about 200 homeless people passed through the daily meal line at Catholic Worker House, Dr. Chris Plauche ran through a list of questions with each individual.

As each one paused before the retired doctor, whos also director of the nonprofit, she clipped a pulse oximeter to his or her finger to detect heart rate and blood oxygen saturation and asked how the person was feeling.

Do you have a cough? she asked, looking up from the pulse reading with piercing blue eyes. Any trouble breathing? Then she took the persons temperature.

Plauche has been screening the homeless who visit the house at 626 Nolan St. for the last six weeks. Shes referred seven people to be tested for the fatal virus. Each result came back negative.

In fact, out of the more than 1,800 positive novel coronavirus cases in all of Bexar County, not one of them has been a homeless person, officials said.

On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases

These people are resilient, Plauche said. Homeless people have to be resilient to survive. And they may be resilient to pathogens, but if they are sick we want to catch it early.

More for you Contact tracing for coronavirus will be crucial as S.A. reopens

Then again, not many homeless people have been tested for the virus.

Metro Health has made universal COVID-19 testing available in congregate settings where a positive case occurs. That means, for example, if one person at a homeless shelter tests positive, everyone staying there would be tested.

But that hasnt happened yet.

In our new scaled-up strategy, all congregate settings  jails, homeless shelters, nursing homes, assisted living facilities  will get universal screening and universal testing, said Dawn Emerick, the director of Metro Health at a recent San Antonio City Council meeting. That is a new recommendation that just came out from the CDC and we are incorporating that into our plan moving forward.

Universal testing has occurred at Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where the virus claimed the lives of 18 residents. And its underway at the Bexar County Jail, where one detention deputy and one inmate who tested positive for COVID-19 died this week.

On ExpressNews.com: Bexar County could be over the peak of coronavirus infections

Kenneth Wilson, the president and CEO of Haven for Hope, applauded the fact that there have been zero confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in the homeless community.

In the past two months, 22 people at Haven for Hope have been tested, Wilson said. All were negative.

Its unclear exactly how many homeless people across the city have been tested for the coronavirus, but Plauche isnt surprised there havent been any homeless people testing positive so far.

Homeless people living on the street face a lot of sickness and I think over time build a sort of resistance, she said

Are you struggling to pay rent, facing an eviction or needing help with your bills? Visit Sacrd.org to search an online directory of charities and social service agencies that can offer help.

Plauche added that people living on the street may also have less exposure to the virus as they typically are not going into crowded stores or working at indoor job sites where they would be in closer contact with others and in enclosed spaces.

Metro Health officials pointed out it also could be due to homeless service providers proactive approach and timely response to the pandemic.

In late March, Haven for Hope stopped accepting new clients because it had reached capacity. So did all the other overnight shelters in the San Antonio area.

The shelter, the largest in the city, has room for 1,000 people to sleep in dorm rooms. Up to 700 more can sleep in the outdoor courtyard, if the sleeping mats are lined up next to each other.

In April, Haven for Hope moved an estimated 300 people into a downtown Holiday Inn that the city rented for homeless people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19: those 65 or older and/or who have underlying health issues. The city also has other housing available for those who test positive and dont need to be in the hospital but dont have a place to self-isolate.

Now Playing: Mayor Nirenberg answers the question: "What keeps you up at night?" Video: mySA

On ExpressNews.com: At-risk homeless get 3-star treatment at empty hotel, helping decrease spread of deadly virus

Wilson said Haven for Hope takes clients temperatures each day  a high temperature is one of the most common symptoms of the virus  and refers anyone with symptoms for testing.

Officials said the city has also begun screenings at the four locations it has designated as homeless hubs: SAMMinistries, Christian Assistance Ministries, Harvest Church and Corazon Ministries.

Food, clothing, showers and hygiene kits are available at these hubs daily. Additionally, homeless people who go there receive information about other services available.

Dawn White-Fosdick, the executive director of Christian Assistance Ministry, leads the homeless resource hub on McCullough at Avenue E.

Typically the hub serves around 100 homeless people a day, but now serves more than 200 people a day and thats just for food.

The faith-based entity also provides clothes and hygiene kits to around 100 people a day and up to 80 will use the mobile shower unit.

While CAM usually has dozens of volunteers  most of whom are retirees now its down to few or none, depending on the day.

White-Fosdick said the nonprofit is relying primarily on its staff of 18. Not only does this prove to be challenging because theres more work for fewer people to do, but also because many tasks have become labor-intensive, such as the requirement for additional sanitizing and packaging items for individual use that previously were left in common areas.

In the early days of the pandemic, city officials saw a marked increase in calls asking about homeless services so a hotline was set up. Homeless Connections, which helps match homeless people with services they need, can be reached by calling 210-207-1799 or by sending an email to HomelessOutreach@sanantonio.gov
ALBANY  The state court system will make an exception to allow new filings under the Child Victims Act in the next few weeks, even as other non-essential filings remain frozen during the pandemic, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration said Thursday.

We will not deny those litigants the ability to file, the spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said in an email.

The exception, first reported by the New York Law Journal, comes amid growing calls from survivors and advocates to extend the acts one-year look-back period that is set to expire in August. The window has resulted in more than 1,700 lawsuits filed by individuals who had previously been time-barred from lodging claims against their alleged sexual abusers. But court filings were paused in March as the coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down the state court system.

It is unclear whether alleged survivors will be able to make up for lost filing time during the pandemic; Chalfen said any extension of the window would require executive or legislative action. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order in March suspending statutes of limitations during the state of emergency, but there is uncertainty among lawyers and legal experts as to whether that moratorium also applies to the Child Victims Acts one-year window.

Jeff Herman, an attorney with a Manhattan-based firm who has handled several Child Victims Act cases, said he has dozens and dozens of complaints ready to go once the courts allow filings again. While he believes the governors tolling order applies to the act, unless theres crystal clear, documented evidence of that, via another order, I wouldnt wait to file. I would file before the deadline  I wouldnt take that risk.

He added that the current public health crisis has exacerbated many personal challenges and stresses that survivors already deal with on a regular basis, making it imperative that officials extend the look-back period.

They dont have the luxury of dealing with these issues that have been haunting them their whole lives because theyre dealing with this current stuff, Herman said.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan, who sponsored the bill creating the act, said it is absurd to believe that survivors will be able to move forward with cases while they are also worried about health, finances and housing. He said the promised window has been effectively cut in half and has urged the governors office to issue an order explicitly extending the window at least for the time lost during the public health emergency.

Hoylman and Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, D-Manhattan, are sponsoring a bill that would extend the period for another year.

Its not just like you can snap your fingers and think that survivors are going to be able to file claims in the middle of a pandemic, Hoylman said. This is a difficult process to file a claim under the Child Victims Act in the best of circumstances.

The confusion surrounding the statute of limitations, Rosenthal added, will create more needless litigation to clog the courts as lawyers on both sides of the issue debate whether Cuomos order applies to the Child Victims Act.

This whole issue is mired in uncertainty, and the only way that I will feel peaceful about what the survivors can anticipate going forward is if we extend the window by another year, she said.

Cuomo spokesman Jason Conwall said were reviewing the best course of action.

Bridie Farrell, the founder of the nonprofit America Loves Kids, said the decision indicates that the courts recognize that the time is slipping through the hourglass for survivors of child sexual abuse. She had held an online forum on Wednesday discussing the impact of the public health emergency on abuse cases.

To be honest, it gives me goosebumps, because people realize that it is a big deal, she said.
Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

The mainland will never leave any room for the independence of Taiwan, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesmanfor the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said on Friday, after some politicians from the island said "Taiwan independence" will be tolerated.

Some politicians on the island reportedly said that for the sake of national rejuvenation, the mainland will not recover Taiwan and will tolerate Taiwan's independence or de-facto independence.

The island authority also said recently that the mainland should put aside its "unilateral political premise, abandon intimidation and repression".

In response, Ma, the spokesman said, "We will create a broad space for peaceful reunification, but we will never leave any room for various forms of secessionist activities of Taiwan independence. National reunification and rejuvenation are historical trends that no force can stop."

Ma said that adhering to the 1992 Consensus, which embodies the one-China principle, is the unshakable political foundation for the development of cross-Straits relations.

The mainland will continue to conduct dialogue and communication with all parties, organizations and individuals in Taiwan on cross-Straits relations and the future of the nation on the basis of adhering to the consensus and opposing Taiwan independence, he said.

Ma said that the mainland opposes Taiwan independence for the purpose of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits, protecting the common interests of compatriots on both sides and safeguarding the prospect of peaceful reunification.

"We have the firm will, full confidence and sufficient capability to thwart any separatist attempt for Taiwan independence in any form," he added.
A COVID-19 patient receives dialysis treatment in Victorville. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

They're the cases that stand out, because they don't seem to fit the coronavirus pattern: A 32-year-old nurse died of COVID-19 after spending several days on a ventilator at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. A 25-year-old pharmacy technician who had seemed to be in good health had succumbed to COVID-19 in a Riverside County home.

It's enough to make you wonder: Is the coronavirus more dangerous to younger people than scientists initially thought?

When the outbreak took off in Wuhan, China, there was a distinct trend: The older the patient, the greater the risk of death. And as the virus spread around the world, that trend seemed to hold up. A study published in the medical journal Lancet that analyzed more than 70,000 cases from January and February found that the fatality rate for COVID-19 patients in their 30s was 0.15%, compared with 13.4% for those 80 and older.

But in the U.S., doctors on the front lines have noted strange and often alarming conditions in younger victims, including patients in their 30s and 40s dying of strokes after experiencing only mild COVID-19 symptoms. Children and teens have ended up in hospital intensive care units with symptoms of a rare inflammatory syndrome called Kawasaki disease that could be related to COVID-19, according to a bulletin released by the New York City Health Department this week.

For now, cases like these remain disparate pieces of a much larger puzzle. As scientists dig deeper, they hope to learn more about the role of age as a COVID-19 risk factor and why the disease is so dangerous to the elderly.

But in the meantime, they're seeing that younger victims are still more the exception than the rule, even in the U.S. Here's a closer look at what they know so far, and what theyre still trying to find out.

Age is a factor in deaths, but not in infections

Scientists generally agree that when it comes to age, the coronavirus doesn't appear to discriminate, though pinning down the infection rate will require far more widespread testing than has been done so far.

Story continues

Anyone at any age can become infected, said Dr. Timothy Brewer, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at UCLA. "But we are seeing very different outcomes in what happens after people are infected."

As the pandemic has grown, the risk of ending up in the hospital or dying has remained markedly higher for those in older age groups  a trend thats become even clearer over time.

Soon after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began monitoring the coronavirus' activity in the U.S., it found that for the week ending March 21, the COVID-19 hospitalization rate for those 65 and older was 10.4 per 100,000 people, compared with 1.9 hospitalizations per 100,000 people ages 18 to 49. By May 2, both figures had risen considerably  to 162.2 hospitalizations per 100,000 senior citizens and 26.2 per 100,000 younger adults  but the large gap remained.

COVID-19 hospitalization rates are lower in California, but they follow the same trend. The most recent figures from the CDCs COVID-NET surveillance network indicate that 56.9 out of every 100,000 Californians 65 and up had been hospitalized for COVID-19, compared with 10.9 out of every 100,000 Californians ages 18 to 49.

In many infectious disease outbreaks, such as seasonal influenza, the very young and the very old face the greatest risk of serious illness and death. Researchers are still puzzled as to why COVID-19's pattern is so one-sided, with infected children typically having only mild symptoms of the disease.

One potential explanation is that the immune systems of children are too immature to trigger the massive inflammatory response that can lead to septic shock, organ failure and other complications in some COVID-19 patients, experts say.

Another hypothesis is that there are so many other types of mild coronaviruses circulating among children that they have some kind of partial immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the one that causes COVID-19.

But Brewer said that so far, there's no solid evidence that thats the case. If it were, he said, the virus wouldn't be spreading about as easily among children as it has in older adults.

This virus is basically spreading like a virus that has a susceptible population. Brewer said. For the age difference, yes, I think theres some other explanation.

Once found, he added, it may give us important insights into whats going on with this virus.

The course of a country's outbreak depends on the age of its population

The progression of the outbreak and the toll it takes has varied from country to country, said Jennifer Beam Dowd, a demographer and social epidemiologist at Oxford University. That's due to a wide variety of factors, from the intensity of testing to the timing of lockdown orders and the way the disease first entered a country.

One key factor is the age structure of the population  how many people are old, how many are young and how many fill the categories in between.

Take Italy, a country of just over 60 million people that has suffered close to 30,000 deaths so far (compared to just over 4,600 deaths in China, home to 1.4 billion people).

The odds may have been stacked against Italy because its population skews older: An estimated 23% of its citizens are 65 or older, according to United Nations world population data. In China, by contrast, just 12% of citizens are seniors (and in the U.S., it's almost 17%). With COVID-19, assuming that all ages get infected at a similar rate, an older population is likely to mean more deaths, and that seems to have held up in Italy, where more than 95% of deaths were in patients 60 and up, according to data from Italy's COVID-19 surveillance group.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dowd and her colleagues used models to explore how countries with similarly sized populations but different age structures would fare in a coronavirus outbreak. Assuming a constant infection rate and using the age-specific death rates seen in Italy, they predicted that Brazil, where 2% of the population is at least 80, would have three times as many deaths as Nigeria, where only 0.2% of the population is over 80. (Brazil has about 210 million residents, only slightly more than Nigeria's 196 million.)

The interactions between people in different age groups may also play a role in who lives and who dies, Dowd said. For example, in Italy, older adults are more likely to live with their adult children than in other countries  and even if they dont, they often live close enough to share meals on a regular basis, Dowd's Italian colleagues told her.

There appear to be fewer such points of intergenerational contact in Germany, and the death toll there has been significantly lower: around 7,400 fatalities so far out of more than 169,000 cases. (This despite the fact that Germany's population is about one-third larger than Italy's.)

"We do think that could be one of the important differences, Dowd said.

In many countries, the coronavirus seems to have circulated undetected among younger people before making the jump to older people and causing enough serious illnesses and deaths to gain notice. Thats a problem, because it may be giving the virus a chance to quietly solidify its beachhead. But if an outbreak can be identified while it's still contained in that younger, less vulnerable population, a separation between generations could serve as a protective buffer.

Strong social ties between generations are a very healthy phenomenon in normal circumstances, Dowd said. But in pandemics, it could be that it puts that [older] population at risk.

Age considerations may inform the way authorities mitigate disease transmission not just across international borders but also between local areas with very different social and population structures, she said.

When it comes to rolling out more widespread, systemic testing, it might be that we really want to target people in living situations that are most at risk, she said.

What does 'age' really mean?

On a very basic level, age is essentially a decline in the bodys ability to regenerate, Brewer said.

"We can no longer repair ourselves and our cells at a rate that we can when were younger," he said. "Not only does that affect things like our bones and our hearts, it affects our immune system as well.

It could be that older peoples bodies are simply less capable of handling the virus. But that declining function often comes with a host of common chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension, and these could put a COVID-19 patient at greater risk of serious illness or death, regardless of their age, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco.

Its hard to disentangle the two, she said. You dont know whether its the heart disease  or it's being old.

For instance, people under 60 make up a larger share of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. than they do in Europe, Bibbins-Domingo pointed out, and "it may be that we have more people who have heart disease at younger ages than they do in these other places."

Separating these factors is an important step in tackling the disease, scientists said. Thats because many of those chronic health conditions are more prevalent in minority and underprivileged communities.

In fact, if a regions hospitalized COVID-19 patients skew slightly younger than expected, it might be a sign to look for these health disparities, Dowd said.

That probably is an interesting part of the story here, she said.

A Times analysis found that younger black and Latino Californians are dying of COVID-19 at higher rates than their white and Asian peers. That pattern is repeating itself across state boundaries, public health data shows.

We often talk about it as accelerated aging, Dowd said. Deeply disadvantaged people in their 40s might have the same biological profile as more privileged people in their 60s, for example, so thats kind of an interesting lens with which to think about this.

In that way, COVID-19 is bringing the country's racial and socioeconomic health disparities into sharp focus, scientists said.

So does the coronavirus's particular toll on older patients muddy these issues  or help clarify them?

The answer is both, Brewer said.

What more detailed age data might reveal

A big unknown is which age groups are spreading the virus the most, said Dr. Theo Vos, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington. Figuring that out could help health officials decide when certain institutions, such as schools and colleges, can safely reopen.

Finding the answer will require more aggressive contact tracing (to identify patterns in disease transmission) and far more widespread antibody testing (to identify people who were infected without realizing it). It's likely that many younger people who had the disease have gone uncounted because their symptoms were mild, Vos said. Tracing and testing would address that.

In the U.S. and many other countries, scientists will also need more refined age data on COVID-19 patients, Dowd said. Sometimes age brackets are narrow (65 to 74) and sometimes they span several decades (18 to 49). Differences between younger adults and those in midlife are hard to see when they're all lumped together. Smaller age brackets would also make it easier to combine data from different jurisdictions, whose current brackets often aren't a perfect match.

Luckily, scientists are already collaborating to assemble age and other demographic information on COVID-19 patients from many different countries.




Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  Two World Health Organization experts have arrived in Cebu to aid medical frontliners amid the surge in COVID-19 infections in the province, local health authorities said.

Department of Health-Central Visayas (DOH-7) Regional Director Jaime Bernadas said the medical professionals came on May 7 "to assist in response activities." They will also check on the local operations center, and help in data analyses and technical inputs, he added.

Earlier, the Health regional director said the sub-national laboratory at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) is experiencing "handicaps due to the delays in the accreditation of [their] second laboratory."

Bernadas said the second facility, with a testing capacity of 400 to 500 a day, was "supposed to be functional by now." He attributed their diminished testing capacity to the delays  just as more specimens are coming in from other provinces in the region.

He added that the VSMMC will be able to conduct about 1,000 tests per day as soon as the second laboratory starts operation.

"When all is in place, we will catch up with the delays in due time," the DOH-7 chief assured.

On May 7, Police Station 6 in Barangay Sawang-Calero in Cebu City underwent quarantine, after one of its officers and two detainees tested positive for COVID-19.

In Cebu City, two areas have been placed under total lockdown due to the spike in cases of the viral illness. These are Sitio Alaska in Barangay Mambaling, and Sitio Zapatera in Barangay Luz.

Meanwhile, local jails have so far reported more than 300 COVID-19 infections.

Cebu City Mayor Edgar Labella earlier told CNN Philippines that they are expecting the infected tally to climb further in the coming days, as they start conducting rapid antibody tests in the cities of Cebu, Lapu-Lapu, and Mandaue.

The entire province of Cebu now ranks second to Metro Manila among areas with the most number of cases of the dreaded disease nationwide. It has recorded a total of 1,581 infections, based on data from May 7.

In the Philippines, there are 10,343 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 1,618 recoveries and 685 deaths.

CNN Philippines' Stringer Dale Israel contributed to this report.
It may be possible  remotely  as Cardinal George Pell claims, that he did not know about the crimes of paedophile Gerald Ridsdale until much later than the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse thinks he did. But if so, it must have required the most herculean effort, the most Nelsonian blind eye, to avoid something so well known that priests in Ballarat and Melbourne were gossiping about it.

Cardinal George Pell defended his record in a TV interview following his recent acquittal. Credit:Sky News

But Nelson turning his blind eye to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 was a matter of national heroism. Pells blind eye served only himself, and at a huge cost to victims, their families, and the professionals who tried to intervene.

For the young and ambitious Pell, a priest in Ballarat clearly destined for high office, knew one thing: whistle-blowers dont go on to glorious careers in the institutions they hold to account. Embarrass the church, and you can forget about a cardinals red hat and a vital Vatican role.

This royal commission finding has now defined Pells legacy, and it is a sad one of shame and failure. There is scarcely a higher verdict possible on earth than that of a royal commission, though Pell, of course, believes in a higher one to come. The finding that such a senior prelate lied  for that is the effect of the language, if not the language itself  is a terrible indictment, especially for a prince of the church, a custodian of the Catholic faith and morals.
[May 08, 2020] MPHASE SEES INCREASING DEMAND FOR LEARNING AND TRAINING SERVICES; PROVIDES UPDATE ON POSITIVE BUSINESS TRENDS

Gaithersburg, MD, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mPhase Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: XDSL) (mPhase or the Company) is providing the following update to investors in order to highlight the continued growth trajectory for the Company. mPhase is pleased to report that it is currently experiencing no negative effects in any of its business units during this time of global disruption. The Company continues to back its projections to achieve a $30 million annual revenue run rate during 2020.

The Learning Track division has seen minimal impact from negative trends in the international business environment. This division continues to be a source of growth, with a recent uptick in requests from potential new clients. Learning and testing in mission critical occupations is an irreplaceable part of doing business for many industries and has created a growing base of profitable recurring revenue for mPhase. As a result, management is maintaining its revenue projections for fiscal year 2020 (year end June 30th). The Travel Buddhi division continues to be on track for the launch of the next phase of the platform. This launch is scheduled for Q1 (summer 2020) and is not included in current revenue projections. This adaptable platform is useful to travelers for any kind of journey, so the full launch could coincide with the return of trip planning in many geographies. The Company is also pleased to confirm that its battery technology discussions with U.S. Government scientists are continuing. As a reminder, the mPhase always-ready Smart Nano Battery underwent successful tests at government facilities, but was halted due to budget cts during the prior presidential administration. Due to the tremendous cost savings and reliability advantages of this technology, key scientists involved in those initial tests are seeking to restart the testing process for further evaluation. This is a very important piece of legacy technology from the mPhase patent portfolio.



We have a steady recurring revenue stream in the critical training space that will put us at a $30 million revenue run rate and make us profitable in future quarters, explained mPhase CEO Anshu Bhatnagar. Every company is living with many unknowns right now, so we are lucky to have a strong core business to support us. As a result, our development efforts for new internal and M&A derived revenue streams have been largely uninterrupted. We believe that we will be well positioned and ahead of the curve when global business returns to normal. About mPhase Technologies

mPhase is a technology driven, innovative development company that creates and commercializes products and applications that impact everyday people. The Company is assembling industry-leading teams specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, software, consumer engagement, and other advanced technologies. Additional information can be found at the mPhase website, www.mphasetech.com . Please follow us on twitter: @mPhase_Tech for the latest updates. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are identified by the use of the words could, believe, anticipate, intend, estimate, expect, may, continue, predict, potential, project and similar expressions that are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that our plans, objectives, expectations and intentions reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that these plans, objectives, expectations or intentions will be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience and present expectations or projections. Actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and the trading price for our common stock may fluctuate significantly. Forward-looking statements also are affected by the risk factors described in the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Contacts: Investor Contact:

[email protected]etech.com

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LAPD

Two members of the Los Angeles Police Department who fatally shot a man during a foot pursuit in Historic South Central last week were identified by the department Thursday as officers Luke Coyle and Kevin Ruiz.

Daniel Hernandez, who authorities say pulled out a handgun during the April 30 chase, was pronounced dead at the scene. The shooting remains under investigation by the LAPD's special Force Investigation Division, which reviews all deadly encounters involving city police.

Police said Coyle and Ruiz, who are assigned to patrol in the Newton Division, were driving a marked police car in the 2200 block of Wall Street about 9:40 p.m. when they saw a vehicle back up, collide with another vehicle and drive away.

As the officers followed the vehicle, Hernandez and two others got out in a nearby alley and ran, police said. After Hernandez "produced a handgun," he was shot, police said.

The other men who got out of the vehicle, identified as Jose Hernandez and Anthony Villegas, were later arrested. Hernandez was treated for a bite from a police dog, police said.

The officers' actions will be reviewed by Chief Michel Moore, the civilian Police Commission, the department's inspector general and the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.
A day after the arrests of father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the head of a state law-enforcement agency said a neighbor who recorded a video of the fatal shooting is also being investigated.

Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday, was shot to death on Feb. 23 in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida, after being chased by Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis, 34, in their pickup truck.

Arbery's family says he was out jogging, while the McMichaels have claimed they thought he was a burglar.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the McMichaels were arrested on Thursday on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.

The agency's director, Vic Reynolds, said at a news conference Friday that a neighbor of the McMichaels, William Bryan, who took a video of the shooting is also being investigated but that any further arrests will depend on results of the probe.

"We're going to go wherever the evidence takes us," Reynolds said. "Let's say, hypothetically, if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three weeks there's probable cause for an arrest, then we'll do it. If we don't believe there is, then we won't."

He added that the video is a "very important piece of evidence."

Ahmaud Arbery with his mother Wanda Cooper. (Courtesy Family)

Asked about the possibility that the McMichaels could be prosecuted for a hate crime, Reynolds noted that Georgia is one of few states without a hate-crime law. South Carolina, Arkansas and Wyoming also have no such laws, according to a U.S. Justice Department website.

Arbery is black, and the McMichaels are white. It's not immediately clear if the McMichaels have obtained attorneys.

In the video of the shooting released by Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery's family, the young man is seen running down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. Arbery runs around the vehicle, and a shot is fired. The video then shows Arbery and another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired.

Story continues

NBC News does not know what occurred before the events shown in the video.

According to a Glynn County police report, Gregory McMichael armed himself with a .357 Magnum and his son grabbed a shotgun after Gregory saw Arbery "hauling ass" down the street. The older McMichael told police that he thought Arbery was a burglar who had been recently targeting the neighborhood.

The two McMichaels jumped into their pickup truck and, along with a neighbor, chased after Arbery.

When the men caught up to Arbery, there was a fatal confrontation. The GBI said in a press release that Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery.

Image: Gregory Johns McMichael, Travis James McMichael (Glynn County Detention Center via AP)

The police report did not specifically say whether Arbery was armed, but Merritt has said the victim did not have a weapon.

George Barnhill, one of the prosecutors who first handled the case, defended the actions of the McMichaels and their neighbor Bryan. In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department, Barnhill said that the McMichaels and Bryan had "solid first hand probable cause" to chase Arbery, a "burglary suspect," and stop him.

"It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived," he wrote.

Barnhill also noted that he watched the video of the shooting and said Travis McMichael "was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself" under state law because Arbery had initiated the fight and grabbed the shotgun.

The case was eventually handed over to District Attorney Thomas Durden in Liberty County after Barnhill and another prosecutor recused themselves because of potential conflicts of interest. Gregory McMichael is a retired investigator for the local prosecutor in Brunswick.

After taking the case, Durden asked that the GBI begin an inquiry Tuesday, and the bureau's Kingsland office started an investigation Wednesday.
A sailor stands on the flight deck during operations aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the North Atlantic on Sept. 18, 2018. (2nd Class Anthony Flynn/Released/DoD)

Looming Pandemic Debt Could Accelerate Tough Choices on Military Strategy

The financial uncertainty unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, already weighing on many U.S. households, is beginning to haunt the Pentagon.

The defense industrial base is in reasonable shape amid the pandemic, according to military leaders, in part because of government assistance. However, the more than $2 trillion rescue package that eased the short-term financial worries of the public may leave military strategists with a long-term budget headache.

The fiscal situation caused by additional deficit spending because of the COVID-19 situation will certainly pose future budgetary pressures on the department of defense, Timothy Walton, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times. The Department of Defense, historically, has been viewed as a relatively easy target to raid for discretionary spending cuts. It doesnt mean its the most strategically sound approach, but it is a concern moving forward.

Defense spending is currently on a flatline budget of around $740 billion after a three-year ramp-up under the Trump administration, which is fueling a modernization and readiness push to counter Russia and China.

Out With the Old

Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week acknowledged for the first time that the deficit from the pandemic stimulus package could affect that push.

I am concerned of course that the massive infusion of dollars into the economy by Congress and the executive branch, nearly $3 trillion, may throw us off that course, if you will, because we all recognize the United States has an enormous debt and we have to deal with that too, Esper said during an event at the Brookings Institute on May 4.

So there is a concern there that may lead to smaller defense budgets in the future at the critical time we need to continue making this adjustment, where we look at China, then Russia, as our long-term strategic competitors.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington on March 2, 2020. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Esper has been stripping out legacy systems that dont fit the priorities of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which marked a clear pivot from counter-insurgency to face great power competition with Russia, and increasingly with China. The Pentagon has also been toying with more radical and controversial strategic ideas, such as reducing aircraft carrier numbers, mosaic warfare, and relying on more numerous unmanned systems.

Talking to reporters on May 5, Esper indicated that he would prefer to push forward with modernization at the potential risk of pulling out legacy programs faster than envisaged.

Frankly, my inclination is not to risk any in the modernization programs; its to go back and pull out more of the legacy programs, Esper said. We need to move away from legacy [programs], and we need to invest those dollars into the future. We have a lot of legacy programs out there right now. I could pick dozens out from all branches of the services. So that is where I would start, he said.

What that would mean is probably accepting some near-term risk, but I think that is something [that has to happen], given the trajectory that we see China is on, and we know where Russia may be going in the coming years.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

But Frederico Bartels, a senior defense budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, says that forecasts of a lowered budget are in danger of being almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You dont see anyone in Congress right now talking about reducing defense spending, Bartels told The Epoch Times. You see [Chair of the House Armed Services Committee] Adam Smith talking about how there shouldnt be any increases, but even he himself is not talking about any decreases.

Smith (D-Wash.) suggested the entire federal budget will need to be reexamined.

The economics of this get much more complicated than they were before this, and its logical to assume that we are going to have to reevaluate our entire budget, both revenue and expenditures, Smith said on a teleconference, The Hill reported. Beyond that, it would be pure speculation as to whats gonna happen.

Like other analysts, Bartels notes that any impact is unlikely to be felt for the next two years or solong after the November election.

A lot of this hinges on what are the budgetary themes that come up in the election, how are candidates talking about it.

Bartels says that there were already a lot of unknowns for the fiscal year 2022 budget because thats when a 2011 cap on discretionary spending expires.

You are going to have already very different budgetary dynamics in Congress. You throw the pandemic on top of that, there is no way for you to know that necessarily there will be a constituency to drive down the defense budget, or even a constituency to drive up entitlements.

Bell Helicopters V-280 Valor is shown in this artists image, part of the armys Vertical Lift programone of six priority areas identified in the Army Modernization Strategy. (Bell Helicopter)

But other analysts say there is a historic pattern.

What has historically happened is, when Congress and fiscal conservatives come out and get serious about reducing the debt and reducing spending, defense is almost always part of what they come up with for a solution, Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a webinar.

Harrison believes that the current budget already falls short of what is needed to carry out the goals of the national defense strategy.

Walton says that if the budget does drop, the national defense strategy might need an overhaul.

The national defense strategy explicitly assumes budgetary levels consistent with more or less whats been funded throughout the first years of the Trump administration, he says. If budgets drop below those levels in the future, I think it would either require a reexamination and a creation of a new national defense strategy.

That could mean changes to plans for force composition, or changing strategic priorities.

I think its going to push some major strategic choices to be made, he says.

Cutting readiness in certain theaters of the world is one option. Weve been talking about that for 15 years, Walton says. Were still not there.

Austerity Breeds Innovation?

Military spending (and cuts) can be seen in three categories: readiness (the number of troops and equipment ready to fight), capability (modernization, research and development, and training), and capacity.

Walton thinks that if the administration follows its prior form, cuts would likely come in capacity, reducing the rate at which new things are bought.

That will limit the fruits of current modernization plans. For example, he says, the Army has invested heavily in a long-range hypersonic missile that should be ready in three years time.

An artistic rendition of DARPAs Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2). China is also researching hypersonic weapons. (DARPA)

But theyll be very expensive, both to stand up the units and to buy those actual missiles for them. If we are in a situation where there are reduced budgets, theyll likely need to cut infantry to buy missiles.

The Army has run an efficiency process they called night court for the past couple of years.

Theyve come to the point where theyve already made all the tough cuts, says Walton. Theyve cut lots of things. If the budget drops further, he says, the next choice will likely be between its key modernization programs and cuts to brigade teams.

Some analysts contend that fiscal austerity breeds innovation, he says. The example that is often given, he says, are the military innovations spawned during the austerity of the interwar years, including the invention of the aircraft carrier.

I dont buy into that necessarily. I think it sometimes forces choicesbut less money tends to mean less money to be able to do things.
Credit: Maria_Galybina/Shutterstock

Amid the worst public health crisis in a generation, an economic disaster is brewing. Experts predict the fallout from COVID-19 could cause a historic downturn. Meanwhile, a recent study indicated that more than 3 billion people can expect to live in places with "near unliveable" temperatures by 2070. In order to create long lasting prosperity, the post-pandemic recovery will also need to tackle the climate crisis.

It will take government investment to accelerate a green transformation of the economy, so that energy, heating and transport systems can reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible. So how could some of that money be raised?

A recent example from France shows exactly how not to do it. A fuel tax hike by Emmanuel Macron's governmentintended to nudge people to use less petrol, diesel and heating oilsparked widespread protests throughout 2018 and 2019. The gilets jaunes (or "yellow vests") movement tapped into discontent about the rising cost of living, but also a deep resentment that the public were having to shoulder the cost of decarbonisation.

If ordinary people, who have been hit hard by the pandemicand have relatively small carbon footprints  are expected to cough up to fund a green economic stimulus, the programme is unlikely to be popular. But 75 years on from the UK's last great recovery effort, it's worth remembering how Britain pulled together in the past.

Why should the richest contribute more?

The UK's millionaires and billionaires hold more responsibility for climate change as a result of their lifestyles and investments. One study estimated that the average greenhouse gas emissions per person of the richest 1% in the UK is equivalent to around 147 tonnes of CO, compared to an average of four tonnes for someone in the poorest 10%. One of the reasons that the rich have larger carbon footprints is because they fly further and more often than the average person.

The richest 1% also invest their wealth in companies whose operations are highly polluting. I created a database where I calculated the greenhouse gas emissions connected to the shares held by senior executives and directors at major oil, gas and mining companies. Since I pioneered this methodology, Bloomberg Green's work has helped identify the world's ten richest billionaires whose fortunes help fuel climate change. Warren Buffetthe world's fourth richest manowns Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate that holds shares in several airlines and energy utilities. According to Bloomberg Green's analysis, Buffett's conglomerate "was directly and indirectly responsible for 189 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018." That's the same as burning 21 billion gallons of gasoline, or fully charging 24 trillion smartphones.

The UK has a history of making the richest contribute more at a time of national crisis. To fund the war effort and post-war reconstruction after 1945, the UK government raised taxes on income, inheritance and luxury goods, like motor cars. In many ways, carbon inequality was even more pronounced in the early part of the 20th century, as only the richest could afford cars.

The gilets jaunes protests were sparked by a carbon tax that hit poorer consumers hardest. Credit: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock

The top marginal income tax rate went up from 75% in 1938 to 98% in 1941, and it stayed at this level until 1952, only dropping below 89% in 1978. The top inheritance tax rate went up from 50% in 1938 to 65% during the war, and it increased to 80% between 1949 and 1968. With that, Britain built a welfare state and the NHS.

In 2020, income tax on those earning over 150,000 is 45%, while inheritance tax is set at 40%. Since millions of working people have been pushed into unemployment and debt by the pandemic, they should be the first to get help.

A bailout for workers

The global collapse in demand for oil has cost thousands of people their jobs in the North Sea oil and gas sector. Around 270,000 people depend on this industrythat's a lot of people facing an uncertain future. But their skills could be redeployed for better purposes.

Starting in the 1970s, the UK government enabled the extraction of oil and gas in the North Sea through massive incentives and investment, and it continues to incentivize extraction through tax breaks. The same could be done for offshore wind energy, which is already well established.

The transferable skills that most workers in the North Sea oil and gas supply chains already have can be used to make the UK a global powerhouse for offshore wind energy. For those with specialist skills, retraining could be provided.

Raising income and inheritance taxes on the richest who have most responsibility for climate change could raise revenue to secure the livelihoods of oil and gas workers, and their grandchildren, by addressing climate change. Just as those with the broadest shoulders were asked to make their contribution to the war effort, so should the wealthiest help communities get back on their feet today.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the pandemic is a national crisis on a par with the Second World War. In 2020, people are celebrating the anniversary of VE day during another hour of need. Just as it did 75 years ago, the government should ask those with more resourcesand the largest carbon footprintsto contribute more to the country's green reconstruction.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
MINNEAPOLIS - A fugitive wanted for killing a real estate agent in Minneapolis in a murder-for-hire plot has been arrested in Illinois, police said.

Berry Davis and another alleged co-conspirator, Cedric Berry, have been indicted on first-degree murder charges for their alleged roles in Monique Baughs kidnapping and killing on New Years Eve.

Baugh was lured to a phoney home showing in Maple Grove, a Minneapolis suburb, kidnapped and found shot to death in a Minneapolis alley, according to prosecutors.

Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said Thursday that Davis was arrested in Illinois by another agency, but the circumstances of the arrest werent immediately known, the Star Tribune reported. Online records for the Cook County Jail in Chicago show Davis was booked May 1 and is being held without bond.

At least eight people were involved in varying degrees in the plot revolving around a dispute over a record deal between Baughs boyfriend and a fellow rapper, investigators said.

Police believe that Baughs boyfriend, Jon Mitchell-Momoh, was the intended victim of the alleged plot. He was shot and wounded at the couples home while their two young children were nearby. The children were not hurt.

The suspected gunman is in federal custody on an unrelated charge, according to authorities. So far no official charges have been filed against him in the Baugh case.

Mitchell-Momoh told detectives he believed that he was targeted either because he had been flaunting a lot of money on his social media accounts or that people suspected him of co-operating with police, according to court filings.

Investigators learned that Mitchell-Momoh had a dispute with a former friend over a record deal and that man may have ordered the hit on Mitchell-Momohs life, according to a warrant.
ATLANTA  The director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Friday it will continue investigating the death of Ahmaud Arbery, including the man who filmed the incident in a video.

Director Vic Reynolds said that video, which has spread widely on social media, was a key piece of evidence in the case in which two white men are seen chasing Arbery down on a residential street in southern Georgia.

He said it took 36 hours from the time the bureau began assisting in the probe to arrest the father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who are accused of shooting Arbery, who was black. There were "some things that needed to be done" in the investigation that had been led by Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tom Durden since April 14, he said.

"We are going to go wherever the evidence takes us," Reynolds said Friday during a news conference. "In a perfect world, we would have preferred to have been asked to become involved in February, of course."

An attorney for Arbery's family has called for William "Roddie" Bryan, the man who filmed the incident, to be arrested. Reynolds said investigators are looking into that.

Ahmaud Arbery shooting: Why it took more than 2 months for murder charges and arrests

The GBI announced Wednesday it would begin aiding the investigation at Durden's request. By Thursday evening, the McMichaels were in custody of the Glynn County Police and charged with murder and aggravated assault.

Arbery was killed in February about 2 miles from his home in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory McMichael told police they saw him running and believed he was a burglary suspect, so he and his son armed themselves, got in a truck and followed him. They told police Arbery attacked them after one of them got out of the truck with a shotgun.

Arbery's family and their attorneys say Arbery was out for a jog when he was killed. They believe he was the victim of racial profiling and have called the killing a lynching.

Story continues

"Once again, a black man was lynched in Georgia. It was an unfortunate incident because we see this too often," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a press conference Friday. "That is a sad statement in where we are in this nation."

Here's the latest news on the killing of Ahmaud Arbery:

Rally, dedication run honor Arbery

Ahmaud Arbery was killed Feb. 23 outside Brunswick, Ga., in Glynn County.

Friday morning, a crowd gathered outside the Glynn County Courthouse in southern Georgia to honor Arbery.

Meanwhile, Arbery's family, friends and supporters are holding a dedication distance run Friday for what would have been Arbery's 26th birthday.

"Our community here in Brunswick, GA, lost an avid runner on 2/23/2020, while out on a run Ahmaud Arberys life was taken away from us, by a group of men who falsely suspected him of wrong doing," the Facebook group "I Run With Maud" said the event description. "Please show your support as a runner, jogger, or walker and dedicate a 2.23 mile workout to Ahmaud Arbery."

A live-stream event featuring Arbery's mother, father, the family's lawyers and the Rev. Al Sharpton was planned for Friday evening.

'ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!': LeBron James on Ahmaud Arbery video

What happened to Ahmaud Arbery?

Arbery's family says he was jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood on Feb. 23. Arbery lived with his mother about 2 miles from where he was killed.

According to an incident report filed by Glynn County police, Arbery was shot after Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, 34-year-old son Travis, saw him running in their neighborhood and armed themselves with guns before getting in a truck to pursue him.

Gregory McMichael later told police that he and his son thought the man matched someone caught on a security camera committing a recent break-in in the neighborhood, according to the police report.

The Glynn County Police Department said Thursday that it had no reports involving burglaries or home break-ins in the Satilla Shores neighborhood between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23. However, local media reported that one burglary, an automobile burglary, was reported to police in the Satilla Shores neighborhood during that time period.

Meanwhile, William "Roddie" Bryan, who lives a few houses down from Travis, recorded the video, according to a memo obtained by USA TODAY written by the district attorney who previously led the investigation into Arbery's death.

The memo said Bryan joined the father and son in "hot pursuit" of Arbery.

'Killed in cold blood': Biden, Abrams call for action in shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery

Gregory McMichael said Travis got out of the truck with a shotgun and that Arbery "began to violently attack" him and "the two men then started fighting over the shotgun," the police report said. Gregory McMichael said his son fired two shots, according to the report.

The police report says Gregory McMichael turned Arbery onto his back to see if he was armed  but the report doesnt say whether he had a weapon or not.

McMichael did not tell police how or when Bryan became involved in the incident or why he recorded it on video. Bryan is listed on the police report as a witness.

What does the video show? Who released it?

Video of the incident has been widely shared on social media this week.

The video, which appears to be shot from a moving vehicle behind the runner, shows a black man jogging on the left side of a two-lane road in broad daylight. A white truck is parked in the road ahead of him; a man stands in the pickup bed and another is standing beside the open driver's side door.

The runner crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck. Shouting and a gunshot can be heard, and the video shows the runner grappling with a man in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle. A second shot can be heard and the runner can be seen punching the man. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. The runner staggers a few feet and falls face down.

Alan Tucker, a criminal defense lawyer in Brunswick, put out a statement Thursday saying that he released the video to promote "absolute transparency."

Tucker said that while his firm had not been retained to represent anyone in the case, it may be. Tucker said he obtained the video from the person who recorded it on their cell phone.

Keith Smith speaks to a crowd as they march through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Ga. on May 5, 2020. They were demanding answers regarding the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Who are Greg and Travis McMichael? Who is William 'Roddie' Bryan?

Gregory McMichael had recently retired as an investigator in the Brunswick district attorney's office, according to the memo. He had also worked as an officer in the Glynn County Police Department.

A phone number listed for Gregory McMichael was disconnected Wednesday. The McMichaels did not respond to emails requesting comment. It was not immediately known whether either of the McMichaels had an attorney who could comment on the charges.

William "Roddie" Bryan lives a few houses down from Travis and recorded the video, according to the district attorney's memo.

This photo combo of images taken Thursday, May 7, 2020, and provided by the Glynn County Detention Center, in Georgia, show Gregory McMichael, left, and his son Travis McMichael. The two have been charged with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, whom they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood.

Who is investigating?

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is assisting prosecutor Tom Durden in the investigation.

Atlanta FBI spokesman Kevin Rowson said Friday that it has been assisting in the Arbery investigation. "We have been in contact with local and state authorities," Rowson said. "The FBI is always prepared to investigate whenever information comes to light of a potential federal violation." It was not immediately clear what assistance the FBI was providing or when it began.

The NAACP has called on the resignation of Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who had recused herself from the case because McMichael was a retired investigator from her office, as well as an investigation into every case that Johnson worked on, the Rev. James Woodall, president of the Georgia NAACP, said Friday.

The NAACP has also called for the resignation of Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill, who wrote the internal memo saying that the McMichaels were justified in their actions.

"We have lost too many lives within this last decade where racial violence has been televised. And enough is enough," NAACP youth leader Amari Fennoy said in the press conference. "We are done dying."

USA TODAY's Kevin Johnson contributed reporting.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ahmaud Arbery video: William Bryan under investigation; #IRunWithMaud
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced the cut-off yield on the new 10-year government security paper at 5.79%, the lowest since February 2009. This is reflective of the central banks aggressive rate cutting and liquidity injection operations. In post-issue trading, the bond closed at 5.72% at a price of 100.55.

While the G-sec auction was notified for 10,000 crore, the RBI has exercised the greenshoe option of 2,000 crore. This is an indication of strong demand for government securities despite the extra supply, according to bond dealers. The new cut-off yield for the 6.45% 2029 bond, which was the earlier benchmark, has forced a readjustment in prices of all existing government bonds, resulting in some capital gains for bond holders. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

It is the RBIs rate cut action that has brought the yield down. There is still enough room for the yields to come down. We are expecting yields to come down by 50 bps, said Mahendra Jajoo, chief investment officer, fixed income, Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India).

RBI has cut rates by as much as 210 basis points in 16 months. It has also undertaken several measures to manage liquidity and yields at the longer end.

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APELDOORN, Netherlands, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The validation and overall specificity of the Biozek rapid test has 98% for IgG and 96%, for IgM, which is a bench mark for antibody rapid tests. Additional research is currently being conducted in various University hospitals, including the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Globally reliable data was not yet available relevant to antibody levels in mild infections and how the antibodies neutralize the virus. Inzek has therefore taken initiative and supported the additional study, of which the initial test results are positive. The study and the final results will be published soon.

As an expert in rapid testing, Inzek has intended to contribute to the fight against Covid-19 and has always encouraged research and testing. Inzek denies the criticism & allegations in the "Trouw" newspaper article which in the opinion of Inzek is based on incomplete factfinding. This article has been used as a reference point for newspapers worldwide.

Inzek and its partner's B Tribe Trading, Mach-E & Clindia / Bipharma would like to highlight that Marien de Jonge PhD, Radboud UMC, did not receive, view or use the Biozek test in person. Additionally Marien de Jonge stated to Inzek that no substantive research was conducted and that he didn't collect any data before expressing his suggestive opinion to the Investico platform; that has resulted in the article in the "Trouw" on Tuesday, May 5. The Dutch biotechnology company Inzek have been wrongly accused in the article. The factfinding by them was incomplete. More importantly they should have followed Inzek's reference to the current research being conducted by Amsterdam University Medical Center.

We would also like to highlight the two studies mentioned in the article are not about the Biozek test. It is a different test but is conveniently labeled as identical. There is no evidence to support this conclusion.

The BIOZEK rapid test has been certified by various authorities, led by the CE certification. Inquiries about the aforementioned registration, procedure conducted and the permission of the Medical Devices were not researched and not mentioned in the article.

Inzek and its partners have engaged counsel and are pursuing legal action.

www.inzek.nl [http://www.inzek.nl/]

CONTACT: For more information, please contact Nathalie Smeeman, mobilenumber: +31-6-51290026, E-mail address: nathalie@interactive-m.com

Web site: http://www.inzek.nl//
BADAKHSHAN, Afghanistan -- Afghan girls and women who have relationships with men outside marriage are often the target of brutal punishments -- including public floggings, prison, and even death.

One teenage girl who is believed to have broken that social norm paid the ultimate price this week when her brother killed her after she ran away from home with her boyfriend.

The shocking incident was just the latest case in Afghanistan of so-called "honor" killings: the murder of women for allegedly dishonoring the family, such as eloping with men or committing adultery.

'Stabbed To Death'

Police said Nazela, an 18-year-old woman, was strangled with electric wire and then stabbed to death in the Baharak district of the northeastern province of Badakhshan on May 1.

Noor Agha Naderi, the district governor of Baharak, told RFE/RL that the victim had rejected a marriage proposal to another man that had been arranged by her family.

Naderi said she ran away from home and took refuge at the district police headquarters with her boyfriend. But just two days later, her brother picked her up from the station and assured police that nothing would happen to her.

Within an hour, she was dead.

Unfortunately, when she arrived home, her brother stabbed her to death, said Naderi. The brother fled to a Taliban-controlled area.

Authorities believe the victims brother escaped to Jurm district, which is controlled by the Islamic militant group, making it difficult for law enforcement to apprehend him.

The Taliban controls and contests parts of Badakhshan, a remote, mountainous province bordering Tajikistan, China, and Pakistan.

Naderi said the police officials who released the victim, knowing that she was in danger, have been suspended and are under investigation.

Arefa Nawid, the head of the provincial office of Afghanistans Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), blamed police for mishandling the case.

She said police should not have released the woman and instead should have transferred her to a womens shelter.

This happened because of [the police], Nawid told RFE/RL.

The victims boyfriend has been placed under police protection.

'Moral' Crimes

So-called moral offenses, including adultery or even running away from home, are not considered crimes under the Afghan Criminal Code. But hundreds of women and girls have nevertheless been imprisoned after being convicted of "immorality" by courts dominated by religious conservatives.

In some rural areas, where Taliban militants exert considerable influence, residents often view government bodies as corrupt or unreliable and turn to Taliban courts to settle disputes.

The Taliban courts employ strict interpretations of Shari'a law, which prescribes death, or in other cases public flogging, for men or women found guilty of having a physical relationship outside marriage.

The woman's own family is often behind the punishments, in some cases shunning the woman or handing her over to authorities for prosecution. In the worst cases, the womans own relatives can carry out the killings.

Spate Of Killings

Nazelas story is all too common in Afghanistan, where violence against women is widespread.

Despite women making significant inroads since the end of Taliban rule in 2001, domestic abuse remains routine and forced or arranged marriages are the norm.

In recent years, there has been a spate of chilling public punishments of Afghan women accused of moral crimes.

In 2019, the AIHRC recorded nearly 4,700 cases of violence against women in Afghanistan, an 8 percent increase compared to the previous year.

The AIHRC recorded the murders of 238 Afghan women in 2019, with 96 labeled as honor killings. This was a slight decrease compared to 2018. Often the murders are not reported and perpetrators go unpunished.

In May 2019, female journalist Mena Mangal was killed in the capital, Kabul, just days after getting a divorce from her abusive husband.

In 2017, an 18-year-old woman in the eastern province of Nuristan who had been forced by her family to marry a man against her wishes ran away with her boyfriend.

An armed mob stormed a police station where the couple had sought refuge and killed them.

In October 2015, 19-year-old Rokhsana was stoned to death by Taliban militants in the central province of Ghor after being accused of having premarital sex.

In November 2015, a 26-year-old Afghan woman died of her injuries after being publicly lashed, also in Ghor. She had been accused of running away from home.

And in August 2016, also in Ghor Province, a young man and woman found guilty of having sex outside marriage were publicly lashed.

Adultery has also resulted in several cases of women being stoned to death in areas controlled by the Taliban in recent years.
Former Justice Minister Cho Kuk receives questions from journalists as he arrives at Seoul Central District Court, Friday./ Yonhap



By Kim Se-jeong



Cho Kuk, former justice minister and presidential aide to President Moon Jae-in, vowed Friday to fight tirelessly against distortions made by the prosecution as the first hearing against him took place.



Arriving at the Seoul Central District Court on Friday morning for the first court hearing against him, Cho said, "I will counter the prosecution's distortions and exaggerations one by one. It will take time but I will fight tirelessly."



He is facing multiple charges, including fabricating academic credentials for his daughter who wished to enroll in a medical school, as well as abusing his power as the president's secretary to end the presidential office's probe into former Busan Vice Mayor Yoo Jae-soon facing bribery allegations in 2017.



Due to these allegations, he was pressured to resign as justice minister in October last year less than a month after he took the office.



On Friday, the court heard the case of suspending the investigation into Yoo, who was arrested last year for taking bribes of 49.5 million won during his time at the Financial Services Commission. Two other former presidential secretaries  Baek Won-woo and Park Hyung-cheol who were indicted in that case  were also in court to testify.



"It's not that Cho stopped the ongoing investigation but it was near the end anyway. Cho was briefed on Yoo's corruption but the situation was that there was nothing more the investigation team could do," Cho's lawyer claimed, adding that Cho and his investigation team had no right, unlike the police and prosecutors, to bring about sanctions against Yoo. "We can't understand how this can mount to abuse of power."



All along, Cho has been claiming he had done nothing illegal and that the charges were mere opinions of prosecutors.



His wife Chung Kyung-sim is also facing charges of fabricating academic credentials and seeking financial gains illegally.



The former presidential aide spearheaded the effort to reform the national prosecutors' office, which was one of President Moon's pledges as a presidential candidate.



President Moon continued his support for Cho, despite the rising allegations against him, until the point when he appointed Cho as justice minister.



However, the President had to let Cho go as it was hurting Moon's public support. In his resignation statement Cho said, "I shouldn't be a burden for the President and his administration."



The reform on the prosecutors' office was completed as the National Assembly passed the bill into legislation late last year.



The scandal concerning Cho divided the country again deeply between those who supported Moon's drive for the prosecution overhaul and those who condemned Moon of being corrupt like his predecessor Park Geun-hye who had been impeached.






Elementary school teacher Luciana Lira feeds one month old Neysel at her home on May 1, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut.

John Moore/Getty Images

Luciana Lira, a bilingual /ESL teacher in Stamford, Connecticut, became a temporary guardian for the baby brother of one of her 7-year-old students at the beginning of April.

The boy's mother, Zully, had called her on April 1 telling her she was experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.

Zully, who was eight months pregnant at the time, later tested positive for the virus, and was told she'd need an emergency C-section.

Her husband and son later tested positive for COVID-19, but the newborn tested negative.

Lira has been taking care of the baby for a month, and plans on continuing to do so until the family tests negative for COVID-19.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

An elementary school teacher in Connecticut is caring for her 7-year-old student's infant brother while the boy's family recovers from COVID-19.

Luciana Lira, a bilingual /ESL teacher at Hart Magnet Elementary in Stamford, Connecticut, became a temporary guardian for the baby at the beginning of April, according to NBC News.

Lira was contacted by her student Junior's mother, Zully, on April 1. Zully, a Guatemalan asylum seeker who asked media organizations not to reveal her last name, was eight months pregnant at the time. She had called Lira to tell her she had COVID-19 symptoms, and asked her to call her husband.

Upon going to the hospital, Zully tested positive for COVID-19 and was told she would need an emergency C-section.

Lira only knew Zully and her husband, Marvin, through parent-teacher conferences, but jumped to help in any way she could.

"I did not think twice about it. ... When that mom called me asking for help, it did not even come across my mind not to say 'yes,'" she told NBC News.

COVID-19 patient and Guatemalan asylum seeker Zully is comforted by her husband Marvin, also Covid-positive after she arrived home by ambulance from Stamford Hospital on April 25, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut.

John Moore/Getty Images

The baby, named Neysel, was born five weeks early on April 2. Days later, Marvin and Junior also tested positive for COVID-19, ABC New York reported.

Lira stayed by the family's side and worked as a translator between them and the doctors. When the baby was ready to go home, she offered to take care of him while the family recovered.

Story continues

The family agreed, and now Lira has been caring for the baby at home for more than a month, alongside her husband and son. She is in regular contact with Zully, Marvin, and the child's grandmother in Guatemala.

Lira told CNN that she's in contact with the family "a thousand times a day," and they can't wait to have Neysel home.

"The family is amazing. I mean, amazing. They love their baby, they can't wait to be reunited," she said.

Zully was in critical condition at Stamford Hospital for several weeks, and is now recovering at home. She and her husband have yet to test negative for COVID-19, and Lira plans on caring for Neysel until they do.

Lira also set up a GoFundMe fundraiser to help the family, and so far it has raised more than $26,000.

"We care about our students we care about their families and everybody needs to know we're here for them and just want to help," Lira told ABC New York.

Read the original article on Insider
Chandigarh, May 8 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday thanked area people for helping the pilot of an Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jet that crashed in Hoshiarpur earlier in the day.

The pilot had ejected to safety before the aircraft crashed to the ground.

"I am relieved to know that the IAF pilot ejected to safety in Hoshiarpur before his MIG-29 crashed today," the Chief Minister tweeted. He also shared a video clip on Twitter.

"Thank the local people for immediately rushing to the aid of the pilot. Proud of you all!" An IAF statement said that the Mig-29 aircraft on a training mission from an air force base near Jalandhar had met with an accident at 10.45 am. The aircraft developed a technical snag but the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft.

"A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident," the statement said.
The Mumbai city civil and sessions court on Friday granted bail to 10 Indonesian nationals, who were arrested for deliberately withholding information about their participation at the Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaats international congregation held at Nizamuddin in Delhi between March 13 and March 15 amid the looming spectre of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak.

Earlier on Monday, the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court had denied bail to the 10 Indonesian nationals, who were arrested in early April.

They moved the sessions court after they were denied bail by the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court.

Coronavirus outbreak: Full coverage

Lawyer Ishrat Khan, who appeared on behalf of the 10 Indonesian nationals, pleaded that charges of attempt to murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder levelled against his clients dont hold good. The court was also furnished with the medical reports that showed all 10 of them had tested negative for Covid-19.

Public prosecutor Ramesh Shiroya objected to the plea on the ground that the accused did not abide by the authorities order to voluntarily disclose their participation in the Jamaat meet.

The prosecution also argued that they were aware of the viral outbreak in their country, as some of their compatriots were infected by SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease, by the time they had arrived in India.

The court, however, accepted the defence lawyer argument and granted bail to the 10 Indonesian nationals.

Altogether, 12 Indonesian nationals, six men and six women, had taken part in the Nizamuddin meet in March, and then came to Mumbai. They were staying at an apartment in Bandra, as per the complaint registered with Bandra police station on April 1.

Of the 12 Indonesian nationals, two had tested Covid-19 positive and their quarantine period was to end on Friday.

Khan moved for their pre-arrest bail on Friday and the court has granted them an interim relief before the next hearing on Monday.
Supplies donated by Wanxiang Group are seen at the United Center in downtown Chicago, the United States, May 7, 2020. Wangxiang Group, a Chinese automotive components manufacturer, on Thursday donated 250,000 face masks and 30,000 face shields to the central U.S. city of Chicago to assist its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The City of Chicago hosted a brief ceremony at the downtown United Center to receive the donated anti-coronavirus supplies. (Photo by Joel Lerner/Xinhua)

CHICAGO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese company on Thursday donated 250,000 face masks and 30,000 face shields to the central U.S. city of Chicago to assist its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City of Chicago hosted a brief ceremony at the downtown United Center to receive the donated anti-coronavirus supplies.

Attending the ceremony were Deputy Mayor Samir Mayekar and Ni Pin, president of the donor company Wanxiang America Corporation, a Chicago-based U.S. branch of the Wangxiang Group, a Chinese automotive components manufacturer.

"We face big challenges today," Mayekar told Xinhua. "Our great corporate partners step up saying we will help you at the time you most need, so they got hundreds of thousands of PPEs (personal protective equipment) ... it's something the City will never forget."

In her thank-you letter addressed to Ni and his company days ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the donation not only "supports the countless Chicagoans working day and night to fight this disease, but you are helping to lay the foundation for our strong recovery,"

"We are truly all in this together," she added.

Learning that face masks and shields are in great need of Chicago, "we decided to give all PPEs from China," Ni told Xinhua. "We have a lot of investment in Chicago, so this is for ourselves."

Wanxiang Group is donating 1.1 million face masks and 50,000 face shields to 12 U.S. states, including Illinois. Enditem
Greenwashing - The Truth Behind Eco-Friendly Fashion by Dana Andersen . Published Fri 08 May 2020 15:06

The term greenwashing came around in the 80s, coined by an environmentalist named Jay Westerveld, to describe companies that portray themselves, or their products, as being eco friendly or sustainable, when they are not. In the fashion industry, this comes in many different forms.



Vegan leather sounds like a good option, both for those that care about animals, and those that care about the environment. In fact, many vegan leathers are made with the use of oils, which are damaging to the environment. Large amounts of leather used in shoes, wallets, or belts, come from the skins of slaughtered animals, meaning that the animal was going to die regardless, and making the real leather option the more sustainable of the two.



Bamboo clothing is often touted as being eco friendly, and has become a popular choice for many online influencers who care about the environment. Although its true that bamboo is a fast growing fibre, sometimes pesticides are used during the growing process, and chemicals are often used while turning it into a fabric, meaning its actually a large pollutant, despite being from an organic source.



Even if the fabrics used, and the production process behind them, are environmentally friendly, the conditions of the workers making the clothes is often overlooked, or even obscured. One factory that was voted the best for garment workers in Bangladesh in 2009, and was a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, had a Guardian investigation expose claims of a female employee being assaulted, on the orders of management.



As more consumers become aware of the environmental issues caused by the fashion industry, the fashion industry has to scramble to keep up with what their customers want. Unfortunately, they only care about their customers thinking they have received what they wanted. If someone is looking for sustainable, eco friendly clothes, that will not have a negative effect on the environment, or the people that made it, and theyre told thats what theyre buying, the companies are making money while leaving the consumer having unknowingly contributed to the exact thing they were trying to avoid.



With an increasing number of high street brands choosing to release ranges claiming to be sustainable, and environmentally friendly, its important to look into brands before purchasing from them. If a brand is not disclosing all information regarding what their materials are made from, how theyre made, and who they are made by, what are they hiding?
Companies that are shifting facilities from China because of the Covid-19 outbreak should be offered base in north Bengal districts, feel industry and commerce bodies from the region.

The local business groups say that the state as well as the Centre should see a golden opportunity in the trouble China is facing. North Bengal shares borders with the Indian states of Sikkim and Assam as well as Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. The last two countries and Sikkim share borders with China.

Rajendra Kumar Baid, general secretary, Cooch Behar District Chamber of Commerce and Industries has already written to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, requesting her to utilize the opportunity.

Many companies are moving out of China as they have dont feel safe anymore. India is being seen as the next destination by some companies from Europe, USA and Japan, said Baid.

We can invite a few companies to Cooch Behar district where around 2000 acres of government land is lying unutilized alongside the Torsha River, said Baid. This is what I wrote to the chief minister, he added.

North Bengal is connected to the rest of India by rail, road and air routes. The Asian Highways Network connects north Bengal to Myanmar and other countries, said Baid.

Sanjit Saha, chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), North Bengal chapter, said, India is now being seen as a beacon of hope by potential investors and North Bengal fits the bill. Availability of cheap land and labour makes the region an attractive destination. The CII will write to the state and the Centre. This is the time to highlight the advantages of this region before potential investors.

Niranjan Mittal, director of Siliguri-based PCM Group of Companies that has investments in many countries, said, Though it is early to say that all companies will move their investments from China to India, the crisis at least presents an opportunity worth exploring.

We need to ensure ease in doing business through a single window system. With the Centre trying to change its policies for eastern states, north Bengal can gain, said Mittal.

Surajit Paul, secretary, North Bengali Industries Association said, With more than 7000 micro, small and medium industries, north Bengal has the geographical advantage of reaching out to markets in many neighbouring countries.

North Bengal development department minister Rabindranath Ghosh said, We will provide land to the companies that invest in north Bengal. The region has a land bank and offers pleasant climatic condition. Also, there are some natural advantages for food and fruit processing and agri-based industries.

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(Kitco News) - Endeavour Silver Corp. (NYSE: EXK; TSX: EDR) posted a net loss in the first quarter, with revenue declining due to a suspension of operations at the El Cubo mine and an accumulation of metal that went into inventory rather than immediate sales, the company said Friday.

Revenue fell 22% from the same period a year ago to $21.9 million as a result of 18% lower silver-equivalent production, partly offset by higher gold prices.

During the quarter, the company sold 665,500 silver ounces and 7,454 gold ounces at realized prices of $15.33 and $1,633 per ounce, compared to sales of 1,069,385 silver ounces and 9,559 gold ounces at prices of $15.50 and $1,315 in the same period of 2019. But while sales were lower, officials said the company increased its finished goods inventory to 279,320 silver ounces and 1,452 gold ounces as of March 31, compared to 95,028 silver ounces and 587 gold ounces held as of Dec. 31.

Endeavour Silver listed a net loss $15.9 million (11 cents per share), compared to a $13.3 million loss (10 cents) in the year-ago period.

Almost half of our net loss was due to the 25% devaluation of the Mexican peso, which devalued our receivables and caused a deferred income-tax expense, said Bradford Cooke, chief executive officer. Other extraordinary items included elevated care-and-maintenance costs at El Cubo, which will decline going forward, and high mine depletion due to short reserve lives.

The company produced 857,659 silver ounces and 8,476 gold ounces, in line with guidance prior to government-mandated suspension of mining operations, the company said. This amounted to 1.54 million silver-equivalent ounces, compared to 1.88 million a year earlier.

Cooke said the companys operational performance improved significantly compared to both the prior quarter and first quarter of 2019.

Notably, consolidated cash cost declined 37% year-on-year, reflecting the success of our operational turnaround and transition to higher-grade ore bodies at Guanacevi, Cooke said. All-in sustaining cost fell 5%, reflecting the elevated sustaining capex we invested to achieve a similar turn-around at Bolanitos over the next three months.

The CEO said the company is looking forward to putting out mines back into operation later this month, as the Mexican government has said that suspended businesses located in municipalities with low or no COVID-19 cases can start up again May 18. Each of Endeavours mines is located in such municipalities, Cooke said.

The company operates three silver-gold mines in Mexico: the Guanacevi mine in the Durango state, the Bolanitos mine in the Guanajuato state and the El Compas mine in the Zacatecas state.
Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital has devoted an entire floor of its acute bed tower to caring for suspected COVID-19 patients. It places them in intensive care while still being tested and has formed teams of infectious disease and pulmonary specialists to treat the confirmed cases.

The majority of admitted COVID-positive patients did not ultimately require an ICU level of care. However, our clinical team felt this was the safest primary admission location, said Christopher R. Sandles, medical center director and CEO of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. We put them there in anticipation that their symptoms might worsen.

It happens that way for some. The hospital has seen five deaths due to the disease caused by the coronavirus and has handled 56 cases of it as of this week, officials said. Eight confirmed COVID-19 patients are currently in the hospital, six of them in intensive care.

At least four of those who died had underlying conditions ranging from diabetes to lung disease, as have most of the hospitals COVID patients.

Josie Norris /Staff Photographer

The VA said it had recorded 812 deaths at its facilities across the nation as of Thursday, with 2,919 active cases and another 6,665 classified as convalescent. The VA doesnt use the term recovered, which has lost its unambiguous meaning in the coronavirus era.

Veterans relocated from ICU to the COVID care med surge ward at Audie Murphy might be walking and doing well, but are not considered to have recovered, nor are patients whove been discharged, for that matter, said Dr. Evan Renz, associate chief of staff.

VA facilities in Texas had seen 255 COVID-19 cases through Thursday morning, with 105 of them currently active, 16 known deaths and 135 convalescent. Patients ranged in age from 21 to 93.

Twenty-nine patients have spent time in the ICU battling the disease in VA hospitals in Houston, Dallas, Amarillo, Temple and San Antonio, including 11 who are there now, VA spokeswoman Jessica Jacobsen said. VA facilities in Big Spring, El Paso and Texas Valley-Coastal Bend Health Care System have treated coronavirus patients, but do not have intensive care units, she said.

Houstons VA hospital has seen six deaths, while Dallas has had four and and Temple, one. No one is known to have died of COVID-19 in the Texas Valley system or at VA hospitals in Amarillo, Big Spring and El Paso.

The South Texas Veterans Health Care System has about 4,300 staff who provided care for around 100,000 enrolled veterans last year. Besides Audie Murphy, the system has 14 clinics in the region and a medical center at the former VA hospital in Kerrville.

Fourteen of the systems employees have tested positive for the coronavirus as of May 5, which Sandles, the CEO, called very few positives that have been very easy to connect to patient care. Most of them have recovered and returned to work, he said.

In San Antonio, COVID inpatients are staying in the hospital longer than is typical, and one complication is that some of them live in nursing homes, which have proved to be hot spots for coronavirus, said Dr. Julianne Flynn, Audie Murphys chief of staff. The average age of those who died was 79.

The first positive coronavirus case at the hospital was diagnosed March 23. Flynn said the hospital has since created nine COVID teams in all, one of which examines research each day, reading all the literature to make sure that were up to date on things and then educating all the rest of the teams.

On ExpressNews.com: Tracking coronavirus recruits, Air Force slowed outbreak at San Antonio training hub

Some convalescent patients have checked out of the hospital but are cared for by the COVID team even after returning home. Some patients in the Hospital in the Home program are symptomatic COVID-positive patients who arent sick enough to be in the hospital in the first place Theyre given a pulse oximeter, blood pressure cup and thermometer. They receive three virtual telehealth visits a day so doctors can observe and react to any changes in their condition.

The question is nuanced when you say whos recovered, said Flynn, who completed an internal medicine and psychiatry residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2001. I can tell you (that) of the Hospital in the Home patients that have been taken care of, 12 of them recovered to the point that they didnt need to be followed any more.

So far, no COVID-19 patient at Audie Murphy has relapsed, a problem that has arisen occasionally elsewhere, and none have suffered heart attacks or strokes, a condition linked to blood clots that are believed to have been triggered by the virus.

The most common preexisting conditions include diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an inflammatory lung illness in which air flow is obstructed and patients have trouble breathing.

Josie Norris /Staff Photographer

Asked if Audie Murphys COVID teams had found treatments that were effective in combating the virus, Sandles and Flynn agreed that the number of patients there was too small to draw conclusions.

They said the hospital wasnt involved in a VA study of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that some had found promising against COVID-19 and that had been hailed by President Donald Trump as a possible breakthrough. The limited study of 368 VA patients nationawide showed mortality rates significantly higher for those given the drug alone or in combination with an antibiotic, than if they were not given it at all.

On ExpressNews.com: In age of coronavirus, Air Force recruiters in San Antonio and nationwide go digital

Jacobsen, the VA spokeswoman, said the VA has used hydroxychloroquine for years to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, among other ailments. She noted that the VA only allows the drug to be used after ensuring veterans and caretakers know of potential risks associated with it.

Renz, a retired Army colonel who once commanded Brooke Army Medical Center and led the Army burn flight team as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged, pointed to exceptional collaborative efforts among medical professionals as an important element in the VAs treatment of COVID-19 patients.

I think the crisis sparked a need to get the best answers as quickly as possible and share information immediately, because of the unknowns involved. Professionals are going to seek the best possible answer as quickly as they can, he said.

And so everyone reached out to their partners across the street and down the street and said, What has been working? What is most effective? And its just been overwhelming how much positive conversation has been taking place.

Sandles cautioned that the statistics on coronavirus victims tracked by Audie Murphy are a moving target.

These numbers are changing not just for us but obviously for the country, he said. I can assure you tomorrow, the day after that and definitely a month from now, things are going to change.

Sig Christenson covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Sig, become a subscriber. sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe
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Russia continues to improve its submarine rescue capability, which was largely unavailable in August 2000 when the five year old pride of the Northern Fleet, the 14,000 ton nuclear submarine Kursk sank. Some of the Kursk crew who survived the initial disaster died inside the sub as their air ran out because Russia had no equipment available to detect and rescue them. The most recent addition to Russian submarine rescue capabilities is fourteen more Malrin-350 unmanned submersibles used for finding sunken ships or anything else of interest on the seafloor. Russia received the first of these in 2016, to replace the British made Tiger submersibles. By the end 2020 Russia will have 57 of them. The 50 kg (110 pound) Malrin-350 is one meter square-shaped and has six propulsion units enabling it to quickly and precisely maneuver. It is connected to the surface by a thin fiber-optic cable enabling data from its high-resolution camera and sonar to be viewed by its operators on the surface. Malrin-350 can go down as far as 350 meters (1,100 feet). Malrin-350 can leave acoustic markers near items it has found.

Russia also developed a larger MSS-3000 submersible that can go down to 3,000 meters (9,600 feet) to examine wreckage of lost ships or aircraft and document what is down there and recover some of it. MSS-3000 carries a 150 kg payload which can include tools to cut into wreckage and recover items like black box flight recorders. MSS-3000 will soon enter service along with new types of submarine rescue ships. This effort brings Russia into the lead when it comes to underwater search, rescue and recovery. Twenty years ago Russia was in last place in this category but the loss of the Kursk changed all that. Not just the loss of the sub but the fact that 23 sailors survived and could have been rescued if Russia had the equipment then that it has now.

In 2000 there was no instant fix for the submarine rescue problem but Russia managed to organize a long-term and well managed effort to build the sub rescue capability. Some of the new equipment had actually been ordered long ago but was never considered important enough to have any priority. By 2013, after decades of delays, Russia finally put ten new rescue ships into service. This rescue fleet included a specially designed seagoing tug and small rescue craft for the Baltic and Black seas. The larger craft are stationed in the north and on the Pacific coast. These two bases are home ports for all Russian nuclear subs.

Chief among these rescue ships is the 5,000 ton Igor Belousov, which is equipped with a Western submarine rescue system. Completion of the Belousov was delayed several years because of money shortages and a failed effort to develop a Russian made submarine rescue system. The Belousov has a helicopter pad, a decompression chamber that fits 60 people, and two ARS-600 mini-subs. Each of these seats 2 and are used to check out subs in trouble. There are also unmanned Panther Plus (goes down to 1,000 meters/3,100 feet) and Tiger (150 meters/460 feet) unmanned submersibles. The actual rescue is handled by a Divex system from a British firm. This can handle rescues down to 450 meters (1,400 feet), has a crew of 3, and can bring up 12 people at a time.

Russia chose the British rescue sub because Western firms pioneered the development of this equipment and were the foremost manufacturers. Western firms also established international standards in this area. Back in 2008, NATO successfully completed tests of the NATO Submarine Rescue Vehicle (SRV). This $95 million SRV1 is a deep water rescue device that can be airlifted to anywhere in the world on short notice, fit on the deck of at least 140 identified ships, and mate with the escape hatches on most of the worlds submarines. The SRV1 has a crew of three and can carry up to 15 men at a time to the surface. It can go down once every four hours. This allows time to deal with decompression, battery recharging, and maintenance before each trip down.

The SRV1 system is shipped in eleven waterproof cargo containers that can be flown by military or civilian cargo aircraft. Including flight time, set up time on the ship, and movement time to the site of the distressed submarine, the NATO SRV should be able to get where it is needed and have the SRV in the water within 72 hours. The SRV itself is 10 meters (31 feet) long, weighs 27 tons, and can go as deep as 1,000 meters (3,000 feet), which is the maximum depth for most submarines.

Britain, Norway, and France cooperated to design and build SRV1. The Americans built a similar system, providing two rescue systems to deal with any of the several hundred subs in service. The NATO SRV is based in Clyde, Scotland and is managed by the UK Ministry of Defense. After 2000 Russia established links with NATO that included sharing undersea rescue capabilities. This was first used in 2005 when an unmanned British minisub was flown Pacific coast in the Russian northeast. Within six hours of landing to work the minisub had cut free a small Russian rescue sub. This allowed the trapped sub and its crew of six to come to the surface. The Russian sub had gotten snagged in abandoned fishing nets three days earlier. The United States also flew out two minisubs, but the British got there first and were aided by some American transport troops who had already arrived. The Russians thanked the British and other nations who had rushed assistance to the remote area. Russia also decided to buy two of the minisubs that Britain used. These minisubs are used for all sorts of underwater work and cost about a million dollars each. Quickly calling in foreign assistance was a major change in Russian Navy practice. The navy was under tremendous pressure to ask for foreign assistance after they did not do so in 2000 when the Kursk went down.

The 2005 rescue was a direct result of the 2003 agreement between Russia and NATO to instantly cooperate if anyone's submarines went down and quick rescue attempts were needed. This agreement was a direct result of what happened when the Russian Kursk three years earlier. Back then NATO nations immediately offered rescue ships but the Russians dithered and the Kursk sailors who survived the initial disaster died. The agreement meant more regular transfer of information on who has what submarine rescue capabilities as well as rescue exercises between NATO navies and Russia. Over half the submarines in European navies belong to Russia, including most of the nuclear subs.
MASERU (Reuters) - The king of Lesotho, Letsie III, has assented to legislation that prevents Prime Minister Thomas Thabane from dissolving parliament and calling an election in the event of a vote of no confidence against him, the attorney general said on Thursday. Thabane, 80, has been under pressure to resign over a murder case in which he and his wife are suspected of killing his previous wife

MASERU (Reuters) - The king of Lesotho, Letsie III, has assented to legislation that prevents Prime Minister Thomas Thabane from dissolving parliament and calling an election in the event of a vote of no confidence against him, the attorney general said on Thursday.

Thabane, 80, has been under pressure to resign over a murder case in which he and his wife are suspected of killing his previous wife. They both deny the charges.

"The ninth amendment (to the constitution) is now a law given that His Majesty has assented to it. It's already effective, just awaiting printing," Attorney General Haae Phoofolo told Reuters.

The law means that in the event of a vote of no confidence against Thabane passing, he would have no choice but to leave office.

Thabane has previously said he will leave at the end of July, but his opponents say that is not soon enough.

In a statement on Thursday, Thabane reiterated that he had voluntarily decided to vacate office due to his age as he was no longer "energetic".

"I have always been consistent that it is my wish to retire from office by 31st of July, or earlier date of the 12th June 2020, if all necessary conditions of my retirement are put in place," he said.

Thabane said the amendment was a significant step leading up to his retirement.

"Government and the political party that I lead, will coordinate the process of my retirement in a mature manner and with a view to ensuring the continued stability of Lesotho," he said.

"It is my hope that all the preparations will be finalised as soon as possible and ahead of the deadline that I have set for myself."

Thabane's lawyers have previously argued that being prime minister should give him immunity from prosecution, but it is unclear whether or not that was part of negotiations for his departure from office.

Lesotho, which is completely surrounded by South Africa, has experienced several coups since gaining independence from Britain in 1966.

(Reporting by Marafaele Mohloboli; Writing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Women wearing masks for protection against the coronavirus, walk in the Mall of Dubai on April 28, 2020, after the shopping center was reopened as part of moves in the Gulf emirate to ease lockdown restrictions imposed last month. Karim Sahib | AFP | Getty Images

The coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East is likely to remain under control despite the easing of restrictions in recent weeks, as long as social distancing continues to be enforced, experts told CNBC. "If isolation of foreign workers works well and if the population respects social distancing and safe measures, I do not think that lifting restrictions will lead to an increase in cases," said Cedomir Nestorvic, a professor of geopolitics and Islamic business at ESSEC Business School. Migrant workers in the region have been hit hard by the pandemic. Countries across the Gulf have loosened movement controls and reopened businesses, a decision that appears to be motivated by both the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the desire to restart economic activity. That's in spite of coronavirus cases continuing to climb.

Still, observers remain optimistic. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told CNBC's Hadley Gamble that there's a "rather good consciousness about the dilemmas in place" in the Middle East, and he has been "positively surprised" by how African governments are managing the fluidity of the circumstances.

Lifting lockdowns

Egypt on April 23 announced it would ease restrictions for the fasting month despite cases reaching what was, at the time, the country's highest daily increase. Iran, which has the 10th highest number of infections globally, earlier began to allow intercity trips and shopping in malls, and this week reopened mosques in some "low risk" cities, according to Reuters reports. In the United Arab Emirates, Dubai lifted a strict 24-hour lockdown, permitting shopping centers and restaurants to operate at a 30% capacity. Shops that did not comply with precautionary measures were issued warnings or forced to shut, Gulf News reported last week. A national curfew has also been shortened by two hours. Other countries have made similar moves, though various measures are still in place. While these adjustments allow devotees to pray and break fast outside their homes, Amira Roess of George Mason University also pointed to struggling businesses. "The economic impact of this pandemic cannot be understated and this is partially why you are starting to see some countries lifting restrictions sooner than maybe recommended," said Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology.

A security guard checks temperature of man arriving at a shopping mall in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on May 4, 2020, as malls reopen after authorities began a partial lifting of the lockdown. Fayez Nureldine | AFP | Getty Images

Data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University has not shown visible spikes in infections following the changes in social distancing guidelines. Osman Dar, a project director at Chatham House's Global Health Programme, said the Middle East's approach seems "reasonable on balance," given the slower pace of spread in the region and centralized data systems that can enable efficient contact tracing. "Broadly speaking, there has been a measured and considered approach in the GCC region to lifting restrictions," he said. While there are risks, these can be mitigated by public health campaigns, he added.

Ramadan in the time of coronavirus

Experts also weighed in on how the holy month could have an impact on the fight against the coronavirus. "Ramadan is a traditional month of gathering, would it be at home, in the mosques or for Ramadan banquets in hotels, restaurants  The advice is to avoid all that and practice Ramadan just in the household," said ESSEC Business School's Nestorvic. "The great majority will accept but there would always be some resistance to change," he said, adding that there could be a small increase in infections for those who gather for prayers or to break fast in the evening. On the other hand, Chatham House's Dar said Ramadan is a time for giving, and the easing of restrictions in places of worship could help support the marginalized in society. "The distribution of food parcels for migrant laborers and charitable collections to pay for medical bills of those that can't afford treatments is often facilitated and managed through mosques collections for example," he said.

Risks for countries in conflict

Dar said conflicts in the region pose the "greatest risk for the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19." "In Syria and Yemen, a sustained cessation in hostilities will be the single most important intervention to help ... the outbreak," he said. While "fragile ceasefires" appear to be holding for now, he added that a "redoubled global effort" would be needed to maintain these. Both countries have a relatively low number of cases, but that's likely due to very few tests being carried out. He also said the "single biggest risk" to Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in tackling Covid-19 is the annexation of the West Bank, which would "imperil control efforts" for residents.
Samsung Pay is moving away from a digital-only existence as Samsung has announced today that it will be releasing a Samsung Pay debit card.

Samsung will be working SoFi as a partner to release the card, but it wont be replacing the digital version of the service. The two will instead likely work in tandem, and there will probably be perks for users who have both.

That being said, Samsung hasnt really shared much about the debit card in terms of what it offers and where itll be available. Presumably, itll be set up wherever Samsung Pay is offered to consumers through Galaxy phones.

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Although Samsung hasnt made any official availability announcements, the details about the debit card come from Samsung US. SoFi is also an American company. So chances are high that the US will either be one of the available regions or the pilot region.

The Samsung Pay debit card will be launching this Summer

All thats known about the new Samsung Pay debit card is that it will be available sometime this Summer.

Theres no actual date. It wouldnt surprising though to see Samsung Pay users receive additional information on this in the coming weeks and months. They are after all the most likely candidates for setting up the debit card.

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Being that they already have Samsung Pay accounts and use it at least some of the time. The debit will be backed by a cash management account.

Visions of better money management

As mobile payments have become more and more adopted over the past few years, Samsung has been at the forefront in a lot of ways.

You might wonder then why the company wants to bring things back to a physical debit card. The goal is better money management. Not for itself, of course, but for the consumer. Its large user base of current Samsung Pay members.

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The idea is that the debit card backed by a cash management account can assist users in better managing their money and finances. And in the end work towards achieving their financial goals. Both in the near future and well beyond.

Of course theres also some level of competitiveness intertwined in all of this. Apple already offers a debit card for Apple Pay. A rumor also popped up in April that Google was working on its own debit card for Google Pay.

Samsung says it will share more details on this vision very soon. Since the debit card is expected to release this Summer, expect to see Samsung elaborate more on its plan for this whole endeavor within the next month or two.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Akin Abayomi, said on Friday that many people who tested positive for coronavirus were running away from being taken to isolation centres for treatment.

Mr Abayomi said this was one of the reasons the state still has unoccupied beds at the isolation centres despite recording more cases than its bed-capacity.

He spoke at the state secretariat on Friday when responding to the question on the discrepancy between the occupancy of the isolation centres and the number of active cases in the state.

There is also a situation that we experience, when we test people, sometimes they find it difficult to find them. The ambulances will go into community, people will flee their homes, and they make it difficult for us to find them.

Speaking on the stress health workers undergo, Mr Abayomi said some positive patients sometimes shut their doors or they leave their environment to avoid being admitted. He added that the patients do not answer their phones as well.

The commissioner said this is because people are afraid to come to the isolation centres and the ministry has no time to start hunting people round the community.

If you have tested positive, we expect you to cooperate with us and make yourself available so that you can be admitted and accessed.

Our isolation facilities are really comfortable, it is not like the Ebola days, we have made a lot of improvements.

Members of the executive and senior people in government have been admitted into those facilities. If I test positive, I will go to one of those facilities, Mr Abayomi said.

The commissioner said Lagos residents have nothing to be afraid of as the staff are very professional.

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He said the state still has about 307 unoccupied beds out of the 569 total bed spaces available in the state because most patients are yet to be admitted, while most are on the run after testing positive for coronavirus.

Mr Abayomi said the state has 569 bed-capacity and 45 per cent overall occupancy, while 307 bed spaces are available. As of Friday, Lagos has 1,037 active cases of coronavirus.

We have just opened Gbagada Hospital and we are yet to admit most of the patients we want to admit into Gbagada. As soon as we fill Gbadaga up, our occupancy will increase to over 70 or 80 percent.

Below is a breakdown of the isolation centres and bed-capacity in Lagos State as of Friday;

 Gbagada Hospital- 118

 Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH)  60

 Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba -115

 Onikan Stadium Centre  100

 Landmark Centre- 70

 Lekki Centre- 45

 Agidingbi Centre  34

 First Cardiology Hospital  5 (Critical case).
ATLANTA, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Peach State Health announced today a collaboration with Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, to increase access to real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) COVID-19 testing in critical areas of need Georgia. Through this collaboration, Peach State Health Plan will facilitate the distribution of approximately 1,000 Quest COVID-19 test kits each week to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), including The Family Health Centers of Georgia, headquartered in Atlanta and Curtis V. Cooper Primary Health Care, headquartered in Savannah. The FQHCs will conduct testing as part of a broader initiative to test persons who are symptomatic and asymptomatic in our underserved communities.

"We are proud to join forces with Peach State Health Plan and Quest Diagnostics to enhance COVID-19 testing capacity," said Governor Brian Kemp. "COVID-19 testing allows healthcare providers and state officials to quickly identify cases, target hotspots with more resources, protect our communities, and provide timely information to the public. We encourage Georgians who are symptomatic and critical infrastructure workers to schedule a virtual screening and get tested at one of 50 sites across the state. Together, we will keep our families safe and emerge stronger than ever."

This collaboration leverages Peach State Health Plan's extensive network of critical safety net providers to ensure that testing capacity is routed to where it is needed most. As part of the collaboration, Peach State Health Plan will provide oversight and training to ensure test kits are received and processed efficiently. Distribution of kits began May 6 and Quest Diagnostics will conduct the COVID-19 testing through its network of laboratories across the United States.

"Collaborations like these allow us to leverage our capabilities to do our part in making sure our communities, including those who need it most, have access to the health care services they need," said Pam Shipley, Interim CEO, Peach State Health Plan.

"Our relationship with Peach State Health Plan and Quest will bring life-saving COVID-19 testing into our communities. Testing is critical for treating our patients and preventing future outbreaks," said Dr. Michael W Brooks, CEO, The Family Health Centers of Georgia and Mr. Albert B Grandy, Jr, CPA, CEO Curtis V Cooper Primary Health Care. " We are pleased with Peach State Health Plan and Quest's ongoing commitment to Federally Qualified Health Centers and underserved populations."

Peach State Health Plan members are encouraged to contact the Family Health Centers of Georgia at 1-800-935-6721 and Curtis V. Cooper Primary Care at 912-527-1000 for additional information about testing. Members can also find more information about COVID-19 and how Peach State Health Plan can support them at www.pshp.com.

About Peach State Health Plan

Peach State Health Plan is a Care Management Organization that serves the needs of Georgians through a range of health insurance solutions. Peach State Health Plan serves the Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids population in partnership with Georgia Families. The organization also focuses on under-insured and uninsured individuals through its federal insurance marketplace plan, Ambetter, and its Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan. Peach State Health Plan is a wholly owned subsidiary of Centene Corporation, a leading multi-line healthcare enterprise. For more information visit www.pshp.com.

About Quest Diagnostics

Quest Diagnostics empowers people to take action to improve health outcomes. Derived from the world's largest database of clinical lab results, our diagnostic insights reveal new avenues to identify and treat disease, inspire healthy behaviors and improve health care management. Quest annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our 47,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives. www.QuestDiagnostics.com.

About COVID-19 Testing by Quest Diagnostics

Quest Diagnostics is at the forefront of response to the COVID-19 pandemic, working to broaden access to laboratory insights to help us all lead healthier lives. We provide both molecular diagnostic and antibody serology tests to aiding the diagnosis of COVID-19 and immune response. Our COVID-19 test services are based on tests that have received or are expected to receive FDA emergency use authorization and which also meet our high standards for quality. We provide data on COVID-19 testing to various federal and state public health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and participate in studies with government and private institutions, aiding COVID-19 public health response and research.

Through our team of dedicated phlebotomists, couriers, air fleet team, and laboratory professionals, Quest Diagnostics won't stop until quality testing is broadly available to patients and communities across the United States.

For more information about the latest developments with our COVID-19 testing, visit: newsroom.questdiagnostics.com/COVIDTestingUpdates

SOURCE Peach State Health Plan

Related Links

https://www.pshpgeorgia.com


German exports fell by 11.8% in March, their steepest drop since current records began in 1990, as the coronavirus crisis reduced demand for goods from Europe's biggest economy, the Federal Statistics Office said on Friday.

Seasonally adjusted imports fell by 5.1% and the trade surplus narrowed to 12.8 billion euros ($13.88 billion) from a downwardly revised 21.4 billion euros in February, the office said.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected exports to fall by 5% and imports by 4%. The trade surplus was expected to come in at 18.9 billion euros.

The German government expects the economy, which depends on exports, to shrink by a post-World War Two record of 6.3% despite a massive rescue package of 750 billion euros to cushion the impact of the pandemic.

Economists expect any recovery to be slow and the pace to largely depend on how fast Germany's European neighbours and other trade partners like China and the United States emerge from the crisis.

"The interdependence of the global economy will be disastrous for the export sector during the coronavirus crisis," Alexander Krueger of Bankhaus Lampe wrote in a note, adding that the worst was still to come.

Friday's trade figures were the latest data to offer a gloomy outlook for Germany, which had been in its 11th straight year of growth before the outbreak.

Both industrial orders and output posted record drops in March, data published earlier this week showed.

Germany's export-oriented manufacturers had been struggling with weak demand set off by trade frictions that preceded the coronavirus crisis, leaving the economy to rely on consumption and state spending for growth.

But lockdown and social distancing measures introduced in mid-March have curtailed household spending expectations even as Germany starts to gradually reopen its economy.

A survey by the GfK institute on Friday showed that a third of Germans plan to spend less and 33% believe their financial situation will worsen in the next 12 months.

That bodes ill for the prospects of a consumption-driven recovery.

"The new 'normal' will be marked by a difficult economic situation and tight consumer budgets," said Petra Sueptitz of GfK. "Retailers and manufacturers must adjust to this."

A separate survey by the DIHK Chambers of Commerce found that 60% of Germany's companies are suffering from reduced demand and 80% expect revenues to fall this year.

The DIHK's Volker Treier said that one silver lining of the crisis could be a detente in the trade conflict between China and the United States, which would benefit German companies present in both countries.

"We are sliding into a global economic crisis," said Treier. "We expect German exports to fall by at least 15% this year."

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A Shramik Special train,



with 1,100 migrants from Delhi, arrived at Chattarpur station in Bundelkhand district of Madhya Pradesh on Friday, an official.

The COVID-19 lockdown rendered several migrants jobless, prompting a mass exodus of labour force from major cities of the country. The Railways has been operating special trains for migrants who wish to return to their home states.

"A Shramik Special train, carrying nearly 1,100 labourers, arrived here from Delhi," additional superintendent of police Samir Sourabh said.

Apart from 247 Chattarpur natives, labourers from 26 other districts of Madhya Pradesh also travelled in the train, he said.

Passengers were screened at 10 medical counters that were set up in the station premises, the official said, adding that the authorities will provide food and water to workers for their onward journey in 34 buses.

Arrangements were also made for sanitising the station before and after the arrival of special trains, he said.

Meanwhile, a migrant labourer from Kurrah village said, "I worked as a mason in Delhi for the last 10 years. But after the lockdown, there was no work. But all problems will end some day and I will return to Delhi once the lockdown ends."



Assuring that things were not as bad as they seemed, Chamman, who also worked as a mason, said, "After the lockdown was announced, we were housed at a facility in Delhi's Anand Vihar area, where all arrangements were made for us. We didn't even have to pay for our journey home.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 8, 2020  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Qualcomm Inc. QCOM, Arista Networks, Inc. ANET, Nokia Corp. NOK, Altice USA, Inc. ATUS and Knowles Corp. KN.

Here are highlights from Thursdays Analyst Blog:

Telecom Stock Roundup: Q1 Earnings Edition

Over the past five trading days, telecom stocks gradually trended down as uncertainty crept in with the United States and China blaming each other for the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. As the industry aims to rebuild with various states slowly reopening their economies by easing certain restrictions, the diplomatic tensions fueled doubt and indecision about how early normalcy would be restored.

The relatively healthy quarterly earnings performance by the industry participants was also marred by the feud as the world lacked consensus and people seemed to have a divided opinion regarding the origin of the deadly virus. A report from Counterpoint Research, which revealed that smartphone sales in the United States declined 21% year over year in the first quarter of 2020, driven by store closures and stay-at-home orders owing to the virus outbreak, further acted as a dampener.

Per one of the notable developments during the past week, the U.S. Department of Commerce is reportedly close to framing new guidelines that would allow domestic firms to work in unison with China-based telecommunications equipment manufacturer, Huawei, in setting the industry standards for 5G network. The U-turn in the telecom policy, since placing Huawei in the Entity List in May last year, was largely driven by the incapability of U.S. engineers to raise their voices in global standards setting meetings, where protocols and technical specifications are developed. This, in turn, helped Huawei to gain a stronger voice on the global platform and negated U.S. competitiveness. The Trump administration is now aiming to undo this and offer the U.S. firms a level playing field.

Story continues

Meanwhile, the United States had signed a joint declaration with the Czech Republic to boost bilateral cooperation on next-generation 5G networks. It also aims to promote stringent measures in order to evaluate whether suppliers were subject to undue foreign influence, have transparent ownership and honor intellectual property rights. Such steps seem to be the need of the hour to weed off various sector malaises and encourage the use of open interfaced, standards-based, interoperable 5G networks.

Regarding company-specific news, quarterly earnings primarily took the center stage over the past five trading days.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, Qualcomm Inc. reported second-quarter fiscal 2020 results, with healthy year-over-year top-line growth, primarily driven by the ramp-up in 5G-enabled chips. In addition, both top and bottom-line figures beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate, backed by the strength of the business model and the ability to respond pro-actively to the evolving market scenario.

Quarterly non-GAAP net income came in at $1,015 million or 88 cents per share compared with $932 million or 77 cents in the year-ago quarter. The bottom line was at the midpoint of managements guidance and beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 9 cents. On a GAAP basis, total revenues in the fiscal second quarter were $5,216 million compared with $4,982 million in the prior-year quarter. The figure surpassed the consensus mark of $5,094 million and was near the midpoint of the company-guided range, driven by 5G strength, high-performing core chipsets and new RF front-end content.



2. Arista Networks, Inc. reported mixed first-quarter 2020 results, wherein both top and bottom lines surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. However, it reported lower revenues year over year due to muted demand in the cloud business, led by the adverse impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Quarterly non-GAAP net income came in at $161.7 million or $2.02 per share compared with $187.7 million or $2.31 in the year-ago quarter. The bottom line beat the consensus mark by 23 cents. Quarterly total revenues decreased 12.2% year over year to $523 million and were near the lower end of the companys guidance of $522-$532 million, due to operational challenges triggered by irregular raw-material supply and manufacturing constraints, driven by the virus outbreak. The top line, however, surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $513 million.

3. Nokia Corp. reported decent first-quarter 2020 results, with the bottom line improving year over year and meeting the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Quarterly non-IFRS profit came in at 33 million ($36.4 million) or 0.01 (1 cent) per share against a loss of 116 million or loss of 0.02 in the prior-year quarter. The bottom line matched the Zacks Consensus Estimate. First-quarter non-IFRS net sales were 4,914 million ($5,419.5 million) compared with 5,057 million in the prior-year quarter. The top line lagged the consensus mark of $5,776 million.

4. Altice USA, Inc. reported unimpressive first-quarter 2020 results, with the bottom and top lines missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Net loss for the March quarter was $0.9 million, narrower than a loss of $25 million in the prior-year quarter. The improvement can be attributed to higher operating income, lower interest expenses, gains on derivative contracts as well as the absence of loss on extinguishment of debt and write-off of deferred financing costs. The bottom line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 11 cents. First-quarter total revenues increased 2.2% year over year to $2,450.3 million, driven by record Broadband revenue growth of 14.2%. However, the top line lagged the consensus mark of $2,464 million.

5. Knowles Corp. reported lackluster first-quarter 2020 results, with earnings and revenues declining year over year. Soft Audio sales and higher operating expenses coupled with lower capacity utilization in China stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic marred its performance.

Quarterly non-GAAP net earnings were $3.2 million or 3 cents per share compared with $11.8 million or 13 cents in the prior-year quarter. The bottom line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny. Quarterly revenues declined 9.3% to $163.1 million, in line with the companys updated accounting guidance. The year-over-year decline was mainly caused by lackluster audio sales, partially offset by robust sales of Precision Device solutions. However, the top line met the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

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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/performancefor information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 22:29:38|Editor: huaxia

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TIRANA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- About 50 percent of bars and restaurants in Albania face the risk of closing at the end of this year due to the difficulties they are facing amid the coronavirus crisis, Enri Jahaj, a member of the directing board of the Association of Bars and Restaurants in Albania said on Friday.

The Albanian government has announced that bars and restaurants will be allowed to start operating from May 18 only in their outdoor areas under strict protocols.

On Thursday, health authorities approved the hygienic-sanitary protocol that bars and restaurants must follow to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during their economic activities.

In an interview with Euronews Albania, Jahaj said that the majority of bars and restaurants will find it challenging to cope with the requirements imposed such as card payments and strict hygiene measures.

"Thirty to 40 percent of bars and restaurants may not be opened at all because they operate in closed environments, while we do not yet have a date for the opening of indoor environments," Jahaj said.

Some of the new regulations set by health authorities include temperature checks for customers, hand sanitizers placed at the entrance of the coffee bars and restaurants, recommendations for using card payments and distances between tables and chairs.

According to Jahaj, the last two months have been extremely difficult for bars and restaurants as in addition to staff members; they had to pay taxes, rents, or suppliers while their businesses were closed.

Jahaj declared that the association has called for the support of the central and local governments.

Some of their requests for the local governments include the postponement of taxes until the end of the year and the removal of the tax for occupying public spaces, while for the central government they have asked for a cut of the value-added tax to six percent, the postponement of taxes such as the profit tax until the end of December, as well as the opportunity for grants to cover investments, rents and suppliers.

In addition to the economic demands, the association has also asked authorities to expand the current schedule allowed for businesses across the country to operate from 5 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. local time since this schedule does not favor their activities.

Eight new coronavirus cases were registered over the last 24 hours in Albania, raising the total number of cases to 850, with 620 recoveries and 31 fatalities, health authorities reported on Friday. Enditem
The Turkish governments plan for a May-June transition to a new normal in the COVID-19 pandemic has come under fire for prioritizing the reopening of shopping malls amid concerns over a contagion flare-up and doubts over the economic viability of the move.

Ankara claims to have the pandemic under control, but while myriad small businesses remain closed, its decision for shopping malls to reopen May 11 is widely seen as a response to pressure from debt-ridden mall owners, most of whom are close to the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and have seen their businesses thrive under its rule. Most of those giant facilities were built using foreign exchange loans and their owners are now said to be struggling to repay the money as the pandemic keeps exacerbating Turkeys currency woes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week spoke of relaxation in provinces where cases are on the decline, but risky facilities such as shopping malls will reopen in big urban centers, including Istanbul, which is the epicenter of the pandemic in Turkey with about 60% of the cases in the country.

The Council of Shopping Centers, which claims to represent most of the nearly 450 shopping malls in Turkey, has confirmed the malls will reopen May 11 and that shop tenants will be required to pay rents from June 1 onward. Tellingly, it was Treasury and Finance Berat Albayrak who sought an even earlier reopening, on May 4, according to council chair Huseyin Altas.

The COVID-19 crisis caught the Turkish economy in an already fragile state, reeling from a severe currency shock in 2018. According to central bank data, credit card spending in the six weeks since March 11, when Turkey confirmed its first COVID-19 case, was down 25% from the six weeks prior to the outbreak, with more than 50% of that spending going to food and health and cleaning products. The sharp downtick in consumer spending  a telling sign of how Turkeys economic woes have deepened  must have alarmed Albayrak. This may have driven his eagerness to reopen shopping malls, which account for nearly a fourth of annual consumer spending, without even consulting the scientific board of the Health Ministry.

The priority accorded to shopping malls has to do not only with reviving consumption but also with keeping the mall owners afloat. Shopping malls have become a hallmark of the AKPs 17-year rule, mushrooming across Turkey as part of a construction boom encouraged by the government. Today, they number 125 in Istanbul alone and 436 across the country. Most of the malls were erected by companies with well-known connections to the AKP in yesteryears when external loans were relatively cheap and easy to obtain. The mall investors borrowed blithely in hard currency, but the Turkish liras fast depreciation from 2016 onward left them with hefty foreign-exchange losses. Their relationship with shop tenants became strained as well, for rental contracts were also denominated in hard currency. The currency crisis in 2018 forced the conversion of the contracts into Turkish liras, while the troubles of shopping malls grew amid a shrinking market that left them with significant occupancy problems. On top of all that came the COVID-19 crisis.

The increase in online sales has become an additional threat to shopping malls, now driven further by the pandemic. Even before the virus reached Turkey, Altas was complaining of unfair competition from online sellers, who, he said, were able to offer much lower prices because they were free of rent burdens and could evade taxes. We demand urgent regulation for electronic commerce, he said in February, warning that unless regulations were put in place, the trend would hit conventional retailers and their employment and, by implication, the prospects of shopping malls.

Yet shop tenants remain concerned that even if the malls reopen, their sale volumes could hardly rebound to pre-pandemic levels and are likely to fall short of even covering rents. Rental contracts with mall owners remain a source of grievance and disagreements appear bound to grow under the added impact of expanding online commerce during the pandemic. Mall owners argue the rebound of demand will be quick, but shop tenants expect a low footfall for at least three months.

The United Brands Association, which represents 500 leading Turkish brands, has urged a revision in rent payments based on sales turnover. In a newspaper interview last week, association chair Sinan Oncel said, Some enterprises have not earned a single penny for a long time.  Weve already missed a season, failing to sell the products we had manufactured and paid for. Now its time to pay for new products. Well be selling at cost throughout the summer. And people will not be coming to shopping malls as before. The footfall will be low. Thats why we request that rent payments be calculated on the basis of turnover. The loss of foreign tourists alone will cause a 40% decrease in turnover. This is not sustainable.

Economic concerns aside, the risk of inflaming the contagion is even more crucial. Although the plan to reopen the malls involves social distancing measures and a continued closure of eateries and movie theaters, fears over contagion risks remain rife.

Health experts and ventilation engineers highlight the risk of contaminated air in shopping malls. According to Yunus Yener, head of the Mechanical Engineers Chamber, safe air conditioning in the malls, including a 24-hour inflow of fresh air, requires a series of extra precautions and technical overhauls. Such measures cannot be left to the professional and conscientious responsibility of mall operators alone, Yener says, stressing the need for a tight control by the authorities.
Photo: Contributed

Canadas largest oil sands company, Suncor Energy Inc., is donating technology it developed for treating wastewater for the development of COVID-19 antibody tests.

The technology is being given to Western University scientists, who hope to harness the technology to produce antibodies from microalgae.

Serology tests  i.e. testing for antibodies  will be an important tool for managing both the economy and the disease, since these tests can determine who has immunity to the virus.

Suncor had developed technology that uses micoalgae to produce proteins that can be used to break down bacteria in wastewater.

Mitacs, which pairs industry with scientists, had put out a call to industry to help in the fight against COVID-19, and Suncor quickly realized it had something scientists could use in the fight against the virus.

When sequencing RNA or DNA, be it human, bacteria or virus, all the procedures are very similar, said Martin Flatley, a senior project manager from Suncors Sarnia refinery.

Weve been using software and hardware to sequence bacteria found in our process water as well as the genes that produce proteins to assist in breaking down contaminants. Were hopeful that we could use the same process for use in a test kit.

Other serology tests currently being developed use yeast, or insect or mammal cells to produce the proteins needed for serology tests, which is more expensive and harder to scale than using microalgae.

We are using a microalgae that shows a lot of promise for not only producing the protein needed, but producing it with the correct modifications to mimic how it's made in humans, said Daniel Giguere, PhD candidate at Western Universitys Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

They already know how to do the engineering required, said John Hepburn, CEO and Scientific Director of Mitacs. And so for them it was a relatively simple change. It was a spring-forward scientific and engineering challenge for them to use the same technology, the algae technology, to generate the compound they needed for these test kits.

Suncor will provide both the technology and the research facilities needed for the Western University scientists to develop the serology test kits. Suncor and Mitacs will provide funding to two Western University PhD candidates working on the project.
Medical face masks may lower the risk of contacting the novel coronavirus, but they apparently also make it easy for people to pull a fast one on authorities by faking their identities.

This past weekend, 28-year-old Quintin Henderson was set to be released from the Cook County jail for a narcotics charge, but he instead decided to give his personal information to another inmate, 21-year-old Jahquez Scott, in exchange for a promise of $1,000. As all inmates were required to wear face masks to prevent infection with the SarsCov-2 virus, jail staff say it was easy for Scott to use Hendersons full name and personal information as his very own get out of jail free card.

Photo: Jahquez Scott (left) and Quintin Henderson (right)

Scott, 21, wearing a mask, then used Hendersons full name and personal information to pose as Henderson and left custody on Hendersons I-bond, the Cook County sheriffs office said in a statement. Jail staff learned there was a discrepancy when they did not have Hendersons paperwork when he provided his information for discharge. An internal investigation is being conducted, and a search is underway for Scott.

Jahquez Scott, who has a record for aggravated battery to a police officer, possession of a controlled substance, and criminal trespass, had a $50,000 bond for an unlawful use of a weapon charge and was ordered to electronic monitoring IF he made bond. For now, hes roaming the streets a free man thanks in no small part to the Covid-19 pandemic.



As for Henderson, instead of leaving jail, he has been of assisting another inmate by allowing Scott to use his identity, and a bond for him has been set at $25,000. According to the sheriffs office, he was ordered held without bond on charges of violating his bail bond on his original narcotics case. So that $1,000 promise is not likely to materialize anytime soon.

The Cook County Sheriffs office was ordered by a federal judge to provide face masks for all inmates during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mangalore: A large number of migrant workers, mostly from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, stranded in Karnataka due to coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown, staged a protest at the Central Railway Station here in Mangalore on Friday.

They had come to the station after learning that the Karnataka government would be operating special trains to their home states. The workers stayed put at the station and refused to disperse, despite appeals by police, who rushed to the spot.

The migrants said that they were stuck in the city without jobs, money and adequate food and that they were even willing to walk to their home states if the special trains were not operated immediately.

On Thursday, the Karnataka government decided to deploy special trains from May 8 to send back the workers to their homes and sought approval of nine states for the process. They were informed that Karnataka intended to run two trains a day to these states till May 15 for ferrying the thousands of migrant workers, stranded in the city and other districts due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

The migrant workers demanded the state government to take immediate measures and send them back to their homes in their native states.

Maintaining social distancing and covering their faces with masks, the workers were seen holding placards which read: "We want to go home Jharkhand, We want justice and we want to go home."

They appealed to the state government to arrange trains and buses to ferry them to their native places and threatened to walk home if denied transport.

Several protests have erupted in different parts of the country, such as West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Kerala, as stranded labourers took to the roads demanding to be sent back home.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had on May 1 issued an order to extend the ongoing lockdown by two more weeks from May 4 with some relaxations.

However, the Centre allowed states to run special trains for bringing back migrant workers stranded in different parts of the country due to the lockdown back to their home.
There are simply not enough personnel to conduct tests at scale and often, communities are unwilling to come forward for testing due to stigma. This is where Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) can play a crucial role.

As governments prepare to open up economic activity across India, they need to determine the areas where lockdowns can be relaxed and where they need to be extended. This depends on a single metric: the extent of the spread of the COVID outbreak. There is only one way to measure it: through community testing.

Government facilities will have to prepare to increase capacity to conduct a lot more tests and conduct them frequently to monitor the situation in the aftermath of lifting the lockdown. Given limited resources, governments will also have to prioritise which locations are to be tested.

Follow LIVE updates on the coronavirus outbreak here

From what we have seen of this outbreak so far, we know that the spread is uneven and many of the hotspots have emerged in the big metros. While contact tracing may be used in areas where there are few infected cases, areas with larger outbreaks will require more community testing to monitor prevalence.

Effective implementation of community testing requires random sampling of households, personnel, cooperation from residents, and adequate logistical support for conducting tests. While random sampling can be done easily with the help of voter lists and electoral rolls, governments may face hurdles in these other areas.

There are simply not enough personnel to conduct tests at scale and often, communities are unwilling to come forward for testing due to stigma. This is where Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) can play a crucial role.

RWAs are legal entities comprising members who are residents of housing societies in localities. These are registered under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 and are entrusted with responsibilities such as managing general affairs, maintenance of their localities, and ensuring healthy living.

Many of the tier-1 and tier-2 cities have active RWAs, some of which have been used to assist in the COVID-19 epidemic. There is at least one case of a district magistrate who created a WhatsApp group with RWA members to assist with overseeing implementation of quarantine.

In the early days of the infection spread, RWAs were also involved in documenting travel histories of their members and alerting authorities. In areas declared as containment zones, RWAs have monitored families under quarantine, and enforced strict lockdown and movement of persons in and out of localities. There may be more such instances that have not been reported but there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that RWAs are playing an important role in fighting the crisis.

Besides monitoring, RWAs have mobilised for other types of assistance such as organising essential retail supplies for members. Retail and online grocery companies are channeling bulk deliveries of combined orders through RWAs.

RWAs have even attempted to cater to residents outside their localities. In Delhi, for instance, a dairy store located inside a housing society was made accessible to those waiting at the society gate. This involvement in a range of activities has happened without any external directive informing any of these actions.

At times, their involvement has bordered on vigilantism as rules are made on the fly, without basis in science or respecting norms of privacy, and government orders are implemented in a ham-handed fashion. This tendency needs to be curtailed through regular and clear communication from local authorities with RWAs about their duties, responsibilites, and remit.

On the whole, given their ability to mobilise voluntarily, RWAs can be an invaluable resource in deploying community testing in cities, where the outbreak has been most severe. Specifically, they can help organise logistical support for random testing and ensure cooperation from members as they have community sanction, a legal mandate and have so far shown willingness to contribute.

A possible drawback, however, could be allegations of bias in selecting households for testing. This can be easily addressed either by assigning the process of random sampling to others and handing over the lists of members to the RWAs directly or by holding a randomised lottery of flat numbers to select for getting tested.

To further standardise the process of testing, RWAs will need to be given a standard operating procedure with an emphasis on ensuring no discrimination against those who may be sampled or test positive. In the early stages of the crisis, a few RWAs made public contact details of 722 residents in south Delhi who had travel histories, violating standards of maintaining privacy. Such cases should be kept in mind while devising protocols.

Another potential problem could be lack of knowledge around testing itself. The government can map the RWAs with respective local hospitals who can then oversee the basic distribution of PPE kits, setting up of testing centres etc. RWAs can then coordinate with the testers to help provide necessary support.

While individual families may not have any incentive to volunteer to test if selected, given the fear of isolation or stigma, RWAs have an incentive to find positive cases to be able to better protect the rest of the members. Given their ties to the communities, they can speak to members and families for ensuring cooperation.

If there are instances of positive cases, RWAs can help monitor that self-isolation and quarantine is being followed, as they have been doing thus far. They have the de facto authority to make decisions that may not appeal to individuals, but are accepted by the community as a whole.

Therefore, empowering RWAs to help with testing can be a crucial step in monitoring the conditions for determining when to lift restrictions on mobility.

Vaidehi Tandel is junior Fellow and Prakhar Misra is senior associate at IDFC Institute
Grayson's worst fear for his asthma patients is that they neglect or change their regimens for controlling the disease. At the start of the pandemic in the U.S., the CDC cautioned that COVID-19 patients shouldn't be treated with corticosteroids. Data suggest that steroids may increase the need for ventilation, the length of illness and the chance of dying from COVID-19.

But the caution didn't apply to people already on steroids for underlying conditions, including asthma. Many asthma patients, who rely on steroid inhalers to keep exacerbations at bay, glossed over that part of the warning. Grayson noticed people on some asthma-related websites discussing stopping these controller medications.

That's a bad idea, Grayson stresses. We're in the middle of the spring allergy season, he says. If you have an asthma exacerbation because of tree pollen or grass pollen, you have to go to the emergency room. Then you're exposed to people that have coronavirus, which could have been avoided if you had just continued to take your asthma medicine at home.

Best Ways to Control Asthma and Avoid COVID-19

Controlling your asthma and following COVID-19 guidelines are the best ways to avoid getting sick from either problem. Do everything that they tell healthy people to do, Grayson advises. Practice physical distancing. Wear a mask in public. Limit the number of times you have to go out. And don't go on trips and travel until things calm down."

For the asthma, continue taking your controller medicine and keep your asthma-reliever drug (typically albuterol) on hand in case you have an attack. Filling out an asthma action plan with your physician can help you stay on top of it; these documents lay out how you should treat symptoms and with what medications, depending on their severity.
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.
MANITOBA members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are excitedly looking forward to the dedication of their new temple in November.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MANITOBA members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are excitedly looking forward to the dedication of their new temple in November.

"We have anxiously been awaiting this day since the construction of the (Winnipeg) temple was first announced in 2011," said Josh Gruninger, president of the Manitoba district of the church.

"Now that we have a date (Nov. 8), it seems so much more real."

The date for the dedication was announced last week by the international headquarters; elder Gerrit W. Gong, one of the churchs top officials, will preside.

Prior to the dedication, the church will host open houses of the Winnipeg temple from Oct. 22-31 for the wider community.

The opening of the temple is good news for the provinces 4,500 church members, Gruninger said: it means they wont have to travel to Regina, currently the site of the closest temple, for ceremonial rites such as weddings and baptisms for the dead.

At the same time, it will provide a "sacred space apart from the world" where members can grow in their faith and deepen their spiritual commitments, he added.

Although non-members are not permitted inside the temple after it is dedicated, they are welcome to visit the site, located on Kenaston Boulevard, near Bridgwater Forest, and enjoy its park-like setting, he noted.

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While looking forward to the dedication, local church officials are keeping tabs on the possible implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Its on the top of our minds," said Christine Baronins, who directs public affairs for the church in Manitoba.

She added the issue has not slowed construction, noting workers have been observing strict pandemic protocols.

While she hopes the novel coronavirus wont cause the opening to be delayed, officials will "adjust accordingly" if it happens.

"Well just have to adapt," she said, acknowledging such a move would be disappointing for church members who are "super excited" to see it open.

faith@freepress.mb.ca
Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation into the writer and publisher Ragip Zarakolu after he was accused of covert support for the coup due to an article, the Diken news website reported.

The investigation was opened after a criminal lawsuit was filed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish officials were outraged by his article, published by the news sites Evrensel and Arti Gercek.

Fahrettin Altun, the presidents director of public relations, accused the author of threats of a coup d'etat because Erdogans photo was published next to one of the former PM, Adnan Menderes, who was killed after the 1960 coup.

Erdogans lawyers filed a criminal complaint alleging that Zarakolu compared him to Menderes and was trying to harm public order, creating fear and disagreement. They also accused Zarakolu of striving for a coup.

Zarakolu categorically rejected the allegations. He said his article protects against coups.

The writer is also a human rights defender and defender of freedom of speech, who has been harassed several times by the Turkish authorities.
Etilaat Roz (Translated by RAWA), May 7, 2020

By Wajid Rouhani

The sound of crying from a poor hut in the Tanke Maulawi area of Herat has not been silenced for several days. They lost their only breadwinner in an accident. Iranian border guards allegedly threw Afghan refugees into a river after torturing them. Abdul Baari was 19-years-old and gathered his courage to smuggle himself into Iran to find work. Little did he know that he was not to return and his trip would bring back his dead body for his loved ones and a world of grief for his mother.







Abdul Baari was 19-years-old. His family claims that Iranian border guards beat him and his friends severely and then forced them to jump into the Harirud river. (Photos: Etilaat Roz) Abdul Baari was 19-years-old. His family claims that Iranian border guards beat him and his friends severely and then forced them to jump into the Harirud river. (Photos: Etilaat Roz)

Abdul Baari was the eldest child and only breadwinner of his family. His relatives told Etilaat Roz that his mother experienced a huge shock because of the incident.

Abdul Baaris mother, Bibi Hora, has been in tears since the news of her sons death and is burning with grief and heartbreak. My child had gone to Iran to work and the Iranians killed him," said Bibi Hora, who is now unable to speak normally. They beat Abdul Baari a lot. I wish he hadn't gone to Iran. They are ruthless.

The outbreak of the coronavirus in Herat is bad and the negative effects of the quarantine and poverty are two of the main reasons for Abdul Baaris trip to Iran. Abdul Baaris family says that before corona and the lock down in Herat, Abdul Baari had a cart in which he sold salt puffs. But from the day the corona restrictions had stopped his cart, Abdul Baari was forced to travel to Iran to support his family.

Bibi Gul, Abdul Baaris aunt, told Etilaat Roz that there was no bread in their house for several days and nights so her nephew and four of his friends decided to go to work in Iran, Abdul Baris friends called us on Saturday and said there was an issue. My brother went and brought Abdul Baaris body.

According to her, the Iranian border guards had severely beat her nephew as parts of his body were bruised and his body was bleeding until he was buried.

Abdul Baaris relatives are urging the Afghan government to seriously investigate the incident and ensure justice. A few days have passed since Abdul Baari was drowned in the Harirod river and his family, who is in dire need, has not received any assistance yet.

Accounts given by survivors who were with Abdul Baari

Abdul Baaris fellow travelers have a sad account of the journey. They say that after entering Iran from the Zulfiqar crater in Herat province, Iranian border guards arrested them and after severe beatings, transferred them to the border strip and forced them to throw themselves into the Harirod river.

Hamidullah, a companion of Abdul Baari and one of the witnesses to the incident, told Etilaat Roz that Iranian border guards threatened to shoot at them, forcing them to throw themselves into the river, Iranian border guards asked me why I had come to Iran. I told them because of hunger. They said they would show us hunger. They brought us to the river and fired a few shots so that we would be scared and throw ourselves into the water. We tried so hard not to be forced to throw ourselves into the water but they refused. Only seven or eight of us came out of the water alive.

Karzai, another eyewitness to the incident, told Etilaat Roz that Iranian border guards were happy with their struggle and laughed, Iranian border guards were not Muslims. If they had been Muslims, they would not have committed this crime. We were drowning and they were laughing at us.

Eyewitnesses claim that more than 50 Afghan citizens were smuggled into Iran. Twenty-three people went missing or were killed Friday after being thrown into the Harirod river. The bodies of five people drowned were taken to Herat District Hospital on Saturday.

The mistreatment of Afghans who cross the border illegally by Iranian border guards is nothing new. Torture, ill-treatment and even direct shooting by Iranian border guards have already been reported by Afghan migrants.

Civil activists protest

Civil activists in Herat accused Iranian border guards of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. On Tuesday, a number of civil society activists and Herat residents staged a protest in front of the local administration building in response to allegations that Afghan refugees had been drowned in the Harirod river.

Iranian border guards and Iranian forces have repeatedly committed crimes against Afghan refugees and Iranian border guards must be prevented from firing and killing Afghan refugees, civil activist Sayed Ashraf Sadaat told Etilaat Roz.

The protesters called on the Afghan government not to remain silent in the face of Irans actions and for Iran to pay compensation to the families of the victims.

Sayed Abdul Wahid Qatali, the governor of Herat, said a team was investigating how the countrys citizens drowned in the Harirod river, Afghanistan will respond to this incident.

Reactions: Unforgivable Crime

Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar reacted strongly in a tweet, calling it an unforgivable crime, The atrocious torture and martyrdom of our oppressed people on the Afghan-Iranian border have left our nation in grieving. We share this grief. I assure our compatriots that we will pursue this unforgivable crime with all the diplomatic means of the country until we achieve justice and fairness.

The Iranian government has denied reports that Afghan citizens were tortured and drowned by Iranian border guards along the Harirod river. The Iranian Border Guard Department said that after reviewing the released videos it was concluded that the incident did not take place on the Afghan-Iranian border.

Afghanistan and Iran have formed a joint delegation to investigate the incident. The Foreign Ministry said the investigation into allegations of torture and drowning of Afghan citizens by Iranian border guards was ongoing and that progress had been made.

The incident has received a lot of reactions. Reacting to the incident, the Taliban said it was cruelty and that Iran should treat Afghan refugees in the right way and in accordance with neighborhood principles. The Taliban said in a statement on Sunday that Iran should deal with Afghan refugees with compassion, Islamic brotherhood and neighborly principles.

Alice Wells, the US Deputy Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, called the torture and drowning of Afghan citizens by Iranian border guards horrific and called for an investigation. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has called the torture and drowning of a clear violation of human rights principles and values and called for a comprehensive investigation.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 14:10:57|Editor: huaxia

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SYDNEY, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Several Pacific nations will receive test kits which detect the COVID-19 much more rapidly thanks to a humanitarian push led by Australia.

Australia's Foreign ministry announced on Friday that Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and Nauru had already received shipments of the tests which provide reliable results in under an hour, with a further nine Pacific nations to receive the test kits over the next fortnight.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Minister for International Development and the Pacific Alex Hawke said in a joint statement that the deliveries will greatly assist on the ground work being done by the Pacific Community (SPC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

"Many Pacific Island countries have not had in-country capacity to test for COVID-19, and have had to send specimens overseas, including to Australia, for results," the statement said.

The procurement and delivery of the testing equipment is a collaborative effort between Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the SPC and the WHO.

Equipment including testing machines and nasal swab tests will be delivered by air through Australia's Pacific Corridor, in support of the Pacific Islands Forum's Pacific Humanitarian Pathway.

A number of countries have stepped up assistance to the Pacific recently to help countries cope with potential virus outbreaks, which so far have been limited compared with much of the world.

Support has included direct funding, PPEs, medical and hygiene supplies, and assistance with quarantine management, laboratories, pandemic communication, isolation facilities, and emergency response services. Enditem
Israel's top court allows scandal-tainted Netanyahu to form new administration

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 10:35 AM

Israel's top court has ruled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can legally form a new coalition administration while facing criminal indictments, a decision that appears certain to secure his grip on power.

In a ruling late Wednesday, Israel's supreme court refused to bar Netanyahu, who faces corruption charges, from forming a cabinet, clearing the last major obstacle to his claiming a record fifth term as Israel's premier.

The 11-judge panel dismissed a call by eight petitioners, a mix of advocacy groups and opposition figures, to block Netanyahu due to his legal troubles.

The court also assessed the legality of a controversial coalition deal Netanyahu agreed with his chief political rival, Benny Gantz, last month.

In a separate petition, the same opposition parties and activist groups argued that last month's coalition deal between Netanyahu and Gantz violated basic Israeli law.

Judges expressed strong opposition to both Netanyahu's continued rule and the coalition deal but said it would not get in the way of either.

"We did not find any legal reason to prevent MK (Member of Knesset) Netanyahu from forming a government," the court said.

"The legal conclusion we reached does not diminish the severity of the pending charges against MK Netanyahu for violations of moral integrity and the difficulty derived from the tenure of a prime minister accused of criminal activity," it added.

Critics argue that an outcome in favor of Netanyahu, who has fought for the past year to keep his seat in high office, would undermine public trust in the regime.

Following the decision, Netanyahu's Likud Party and former military chief Gantz's Blue and White alliance "concluded" the establishment of the administration and said the swearing-in ceremony would be on May 13.

Earlier on April 20, Netanyahu and Gantz, a former military chief, agreed on the formation of an "emergency" coalition administration, averting what would have been a fourth consecutive election in the occupied territories in just over a year.

The coalition agreement envisions Netanyahu remaining in power for the first 18 months, after which Gantz would assume the role of prime minister for the next 18 months.

One of the primary challenges facing the new coalition cabinet is the economic hardships that have worsened with the spread of the coronavirus epidemic, resulting in skyrocketing unemployment.

Israelis took to the streets for the third consecutive weekend on Saturday to fiercely oppose the power-sharing deal mainly because it allows Netanyahu to stay in power all the while he prepares to go on trial for corruption charges.

The protesters carried signs that read "We're sick of corruption" and "emergency government, corruption government." At the mention of members of Gantz's Blue and White party, the crowd booed and shouted, "Shame!"

Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister to be indicted while in office. According to Israeli law, he can remain as the prime minister until a final conviction is reached.

He has been pressed for seven counts of three criminal charges including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He denies the charges and presents himself as a victim of political witch hunt.

His trial is due to start on May 24. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison on bribery charges and a maximum three-year term for fraud and breach of trust.

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Clockwise from front left, Zerita Jones, Zenae Lawrence, Ziad Shalabi, Farid Zadi, Brittany Ko, Kamilah Zadi and Susan Ji Young Park, at Revolutionario taqueria, which Park and Zadi have turned into a food bank. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

You'd be forgiven for mistaking Revolutionario, the North African taqueria in Exposition Park, for a survivalist's bunker rather than a working restaurant.

The taqueria, which chef Farid Zadi and his wife, Susan Ji Young Park, opened in 2015, now resembles a hoarder's home.

Shelves in the dining room are stocked with Spam, canned mackerel, dried soybeans, lentils, fortune cookies, Lawry's seasoning salt, packets of jam, black-eyed peas, panko, soy sauce, fish sauce, oolong tea and cup ramen. A squat bag of 500 pairs of socks sourced from Korea sits beside another shelf where Keebler cookies and Sriracha mingle.

Well before the pandemic hit Los Angeles, the couple decided to drastically curtail the restaurant's hours to focus on delivering food and other needed supplies, first to skid row, then to unhoused Korean seniors. Since then, what was a de facto food bank has become a full-time one.

"I could see for myself that business was tanking in Chinatown at the end of December," said Park. "In January, it got worse and worse and I thought: If January is like this?

In February, Park started a nonprofit, Asian Americans for Housing , and partnered with other nonprofits and organizations in Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Thai Town, Chinatown and the Vietnamese community in Orange County to expand their reach to other Asian American communities. "Older and poorer Asian Americans tend to be vastly ignored because of the language," said Park, who speaks Korean and some Spanish.

Park connected with Zerita Jones, a community organizer in South L.A., to deliver food and supplies to black seniors. Soon, Red Boat gave them bottles of fish sauce, Nongshim dropped off pallets of instant ramen and Japanese food specialist the Mutual Trading Co. loaded an SUV with frozen food.

Food supplies sit ready for distribution as part of the food bank run by Revolutionario's Susan Ji Young Park and Farid Zadi. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Park and Zadi have roped their family  they live upstairs above the taqueria  into the effort. The couples 21-year-old daughter, Kamilah, son Elias, 17, and Kamilah's boyfriend, Ziad Shalabi, pitch in. Jones conscripted daughter Zenae Lawrence to help too.

Story continues

Jones started distributing hot meals from Revolutionario first to the seniors in her own complex, Chesapeake Apartments. "Sometimes well reach out, giving out bags with notes inside. Hey, hope youre OK, with a note and a phone number. I'm not a stranger; that helps."

On a recent weekday, Park sat at the restaurant's communal dining table, her laptop dwarfed by the sacks of various rices  she sources "culturally conscious" food for each community she serves.

"If they have rice, kimchi and soybean paste, tofu and cabbage, that's food security," Park said of Korean seniors.

Zadi, a French-Algerian chef who for years was an instructor at Pasadena's Cordon Bleu, cooks hot meals for the food bank with help from Susan, Kamilah and Brittany Ko, Revolutionario's operations manager. On weekends, he makes a partial Revolutionario menu  including soup harira, merguez kefta and halal fried chicken  for contactless pick-up.

Park raises funds by partnering with other organizations, big and small, and by asking people to donate (Revolutionario has not yet received a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program).

"Our mission is to fill in gaps and cracks," Park said, by supplying not only meals and food but also clothing, personal care products, even cash.

A bag put together for Korean seniors during the coronavirus pandemic, with seaweed, Spam, ramen, noodle soup, canned mackerel, paper napkins and toilet paper. Other bags include black-eyed peas, rice, canned tuna, Lawry's seasoning mix and fortune cookies. (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

"I understand supply chain and wholesale distribution," said Park, whose parents, first-generation Korean immigrants, ran a wholesale business. "Need a COVID-19 T-shirt? I can hook you up," she said.

Jones was seated across a mountain of toilet paper from Park, her mask pulled up on her head like a yarmulke. "I ask local people, especially the women. They remember, Jones said of how the community comes together to identify seniors in need.

Jones and her team are now distributing to almost 500 seniors in Crenshaw and nearby neighborhoods. (Jones and Park share more than their outreach program: They recently discovered that they attended the same Encino junior high, where Jones was among the first group of African Americans bused into the Valley neighborhood.)

What parts of the dining room walls that aren't obscured by supplies are graffitied with well wishes in English, Spanish and Mandarin, and taped with paper bills like a neighborhood bar. An Algerian flag hangs from the ceiling.

"There's enough food for our family of four here to eat for two years, said Park. What were we going to do? Isolate? Hoard?" She smiled.

"We don't have a choice; the whole system has been reset."




OTTAWA - Governments that want to use smartphones to trace the movements of Canadians during the COVID-19 crisis should handle personal information with care, privacy watchdogs from across the country warned Thursday in a united call for caution.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien speaks during a news conference in Ottawa, Tuesday, December 10, 2019. Federal, provincial and territorial privacy commissioners are warning of potential risks associated with government COVID-19 apps used to trace the movements of Canadians. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Governments that want to use smartphones to trace the movements of Canadians during the COVID-19 crisis should handle personal information with care, privacy watchdogs from across the country warned Thursday in a united call for caution.

Privacy commissioners have been warning of potential risks associated with government COVID-19 apps since provinces started musing about the idea a few weeks ago.

The apps work by keeping a record of when one phone gets close to another, and then alerting users if they've come into contact with someone who has a confirmed or presumed case.

Alberta introduced its ABTraceTogether app last week, and New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador are looking at developing their own.

"The choices that our governments make today about how to achieve both public health protection and respect for our fundamental Canadian values, including the right to privacy, will shape the future of our country," the federal, provincial and territorial privacy commissioners wrote in a joint statement Thursday.

Federal privacy czar Daniel Therrien said the health crisis calls for some flexibility when it comes to the application of privacy laws, but there is a way to use technology to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus without sacrificing fundamental rights to privacy.

"Everything hinges on design, and appropriate design depends on respect for certain key privacy principles," Therrien said in a statement Thursday.

Therrien and the other commissioners said that while app developers need to respect Canada's privacy laws, those laws aren't always effective in the digital world.

They released a set of guidelines for provinces, urging them to be transparent and accountable about how their apps work and what is being done with users' personal information.

The commissioners stressed participation should be voluntary and users should provide clear consent to whatever they're signing up for.

The apps should also be secure to safeguard personal data, which should be destroyed once the crisis is over, they said.

Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said her team is keeping an eye on the apps in development across the country to see if one could be adopted at the national level, but privacy will be the main concern.

"I think if there are certain tools that are better than others, that's the kind of knowledge that you want to share," Tam said at a briefing Wednesday. "Not just whether the application works, but all of the policies that go with it, like privacy, which I think is the most paramount of some of the policy discussions."

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta is already reviewing the app deployed in Alberta, and will be issuing recommendations to the provincial government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2020.
The Supreme Court has directed to Ghana Independence Broadcasters Association (GIBA), the National Communications Authority (NCA), and the Attorney Generals (AG's) Department to file their memorandum of issues within 12 days in a case in which GIBA is suing over access to free-to-air TV broadcast.

The order comes after the court granted a plea by the AG's Department for time to file their statement of case.

The seven-member panel, presided over by the Chief Justice, Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, gave the AG's Department two days to file their statement of case due to the nature of the case, and all the parties were subsequently directed to file their memorandum of agreed issues on or before May 18, 2020 before the case was adjourned sine die (indefinitely).

Main Suit

GIBA sued the NCA and the AG's Department over what it claims to be a breach of the right to free press following the introduction of conditional access to free-to-air TV broadcast by the regulator.

GIBA said this breaches the tenets of press freedom as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.

The association also contended that Conditional Access System (CAS) introduced as a mandatory requirement by the NCA by which media content of free-to-air broadcasters are blocked by the government unless certain criteria have been met, constitutes an unnecessary restraint on the establishment and operation of private media as enshrined in Article 162(3) of the 1992 Constitution.

It is, therefore, seeking a declaration that the blockage of media content of free-to-air broadcasters through the use of the CAS introduced by the NCA is unconstitutional as same constitutes an unreasonable and unnecessary abridgement of the freedom of the media contained in Article 21(a) and 162 (1) of the 1992 Constitution.

Another relief also seeks a declaration that the blockage of media content of free-to-air broadcasters through the use of the CAS introduced by the NCA contravenes the spirit and letter of Article 21(f) of the 1992 Constitution since same constitutes an unnecessary abridgement of the right to information guaranteed under the Constitution.

GIBA is also seeking an order directed at the NCA to remove from the Minimum Requirements for Reception of Digital Terrestrial and Satellite Television Services, any system in the nature of Conditional Access that encrypts or blocks the content of free-to-air television channels from being received.

---Daily Guide
ST. LOUIS  Farm Credit Illinois on Friday announced a $100,000 gift to be shared by the four Feeding Illinois food banks serving the southern 60 counties of Illinois today. $10,000 of the total gift supports the St. Louis Area Foodbank as it faces unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rural communities we serve are experiencing significant hardships says Eric Mosbey, FCI Board chair. This gift supports the important work of the Feeding Illinois food bank network as a growing number of families depend on their services for food security.
Top Republican senators urged US President Donald Trump on Thursday to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and certain categories of new guest worker visas, including H-1B, for at least a year or until unemployment figures return to normal levels.

The unemployment figures in the US have reached an all-time high due to the coronavirus pandemic. The letter has been signed by Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley and Josh Hawley.

"As you know, more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment coverage just since mid-March, and approximately one-fifth of the American workforce is currently out of work. This is a stunning difference compared with the historically-low nationwide unemployment rate of just 3.5 per cent in February this year," they said in their letter to the president.

The letter, dated May 7, specifically calls for suspension of all non-immigrant guest worker visas for the next 60 days, followed by a continued suspension of certain categories of new non-immigrant guest worker visas for a year or until the national unemployment figures return to normal levels.

"To protect unemployed Americans in the early stages of economic recovery, we urge you to suspend all non-immigrant guest worker visas for the next 60 days," the senators said.

Exceptions to this suspension should be rare, limited to time-sensitive industries such as agriculture and issued only on a case-by-case basis, when the employers can demonstrate that they have been unable to find Americans to take the jobs, the senators wrote.

After 60 days, the senators urged Trump to continue to suspend new non-immigrant guest workers for a year or until the national unemployment figures return to normal levels, whichever comes first.

"That suspension should, at a minimum, include H-2B visas (non-agricultural seasonal workers), H-1B visas (specialty occupation workers) and the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program (extension of foreign student visas after graduation). We also urge you to suspend the EB-5 immigrant visa program, effective immediately," the lawmakers wrote.

The H-1B work visa for foreign technology professionals is highly popular among Indians and a large number of Indians also opt for the EB-5 investors visa.

The senators argued that there is no reason why unemployed Americans and recent college graduates should have to compete in such a limited job market against an influx of additional H-1B workers, most of whom work in business, technology or STEM fields.

"Temporarily suspending the issuance of new H-1B visas would also protect the hundreds of thousands of H-1B workers and their families already working in the United States -- workers who could otherwise be subject to deportation if they are laid off for more than 60 days," they said.

"Of course, appropriate exceptions could also be crafted to the H-1B program suspension to allow for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who wish to come to the United States to assist in combating the coronavirus pandemic," the senators wrote.

Additionally, the United States ought to suspend its Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, which allows foreign students in the country to extend their stay after graduation for one to three years to get "experience in the field" by taking jobs here, they wrote.

In 2019, more than 223,000 former foreign students had their OPT applications approved or extended. While the merits of such a programme are subject to debate, there is certainly no reason to allow foreign students to stay for three additional years just to take jobs that would otherwise go to unemployed Americans as the country's economy recovers, the lawmakers said.

The senators also urged Trump to remove the EB-5 visa from the exemptions in his Presidential Proclamation issued on April 22, at least until real reforms are adopted.

The EB-5 programme has long been plagued by scandal and fraud, and criticised as effectively functioning as a pay-for-citizenship scheme in many cases. There is no reason that the programme should receive preferential treatment as opposed to other green card programmes for employment-based immigrants, the lawmakers said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The right move on jobless benefits





I believe the N.C. legislature was correct in refusing to increase unemployment benefits at this time. Many unemployment recipients are making more money by not working. For example, an employee earning $20 per hour will make $800 per week while working, but receive $950 in state/federal unemployment benefits. Whats his incentive to return to work?

The basic premise of unemployment is to subsidize lost wages, not to fully replace wages. The N.C. legislature should revisit this issue in early July, shortly before the $600 weekly federal unemployment supplement is set to expire.

Kenny Colbert, Cornelius

Kenny Colbert

GOP policies hurt the poor in NC

North Carolina GOP leaders unapologetically gutted unemployment compensation, making it the stingiest plan in the country. Now, we have a pandemic which has put more than a million people out of work. Many were likely living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no savings to fall back on.

In addition, N.C. Republican leaders have rejected Medicaid expansion. Because of this many of citizens are left with no health coverage - in the midst of this pandemic.

There have been repeated calls for the Republican-led legislature to rethink these policies, to no avail. How do these people sleep at night knowing their policies are costing peoples lives?

We are all in this together. You have a choice on how you will respond. Will you share hope or punish those less fortunate?

Lucy Grasty, Charlotte

Lucy Grasty

Protesters won, but at what price?

Regarding Gov. Cooper allows for start of lifting coronavirus orders, (May 6):

You can stop protesting now. Youve won. North Carolina is joining state after state in reopening, and as a result nationwide coronavirus deaths are expected to double. Is it worth it? Only time will tell.

Steve Benkosky, Boone

Trump should lead the reopening

The president and national government should have a larger role in reopening the country. A strong, unified response by the federal government is important not only to public health but accountability. In times of national crisis, the American people look to the president for direction and strong response. This pandemic is a national security threat and most states reopening are ignoring White House guidelines. Its time for the president to step in.

Story continues

Gabriel Russ, Lincolnton

Barr brings bias to nonpartisan post





When President Donald Trump is rebuked by the judicial system for trying to institute a policy that violates federal law or when one his cronies is convicted, it cant be that they are at fault so blame is placed on an Obama judge or the deep state or the FBI.

But Paul Manafort was convicted by a jury and some of those Obama judges were appointed by Republicans. Michael Flynn plead guilty twice under oath and was fired by Trump for lying to Mike Pence.

If anyone is guilty of appointing political hacks who bring bias into what should be a nonpartisan position, its Trump himself. Attorney General William Barr is exhibit A.

Arnie Grieves, Charlotte

Only certain racism seems to outrage

Ray Brayboy

I wish someone could help me reconcile something. There seems to be ongoing outrage against a Mecklenburg County principal regarding his usage of a racially insensitive comment made in a public setting several months ago. While the remarks were both distasteful and clearly inappropriate, the principal subsequently apologized for this error in judgment.

I wonder if Dan Snyder, majority owner of the Washington Redskins, would ever take it upon himself to apologize to the larger American Indian community for the racist name he has blatantly used to demean our people for so many decades? More importantly, where is the public outrage here?

Ray Brayboy, Myrtle Beach

Lets keep enjoying bluer skies

So its really true: the air is clearer, the skies bluer. One aspect of resuming normal life will surely not be welcome - or healthful - and that is traffic pollution. In addition, our regular, year-round use of small combustible engines such as mowers and blowers seems to increase yearly. According to University of Delaware professor Douglas Tallamy in his book Bringing Nature Home, running a mower for one hour is equivalent to driving 650 miles. Think on these things and ponder them in your lungs.

Leslie C. Tompkins, Charlotte
Was there ever a swamp thing more celebrated in the press for her "integrity" than former Obama administration defense official Evelyn Farkas? The former Hillary Clinton adviser, now running for retiring Rep. Nita Lowey's congressional seat from Chappaqua, New York, home of the Clintons, was one of the very first to declare, on MSNBC and elsewhere, that she knew all about Donald Trump's collusion with the Russians.

Now that the director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, has released the transcripts of her congressional testimony in 2017, we get this, as reported by The Federalist:

Former Obama administration defense official Evelyn Farkas testified under oath that she lied during an MSNBC interview when she claimed to have evidence of alleged collusion, a newly declassified congressional transcript of her testimony shows. Farkas testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 26, 2017, as part of the committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Lawmakers keyed in on an appearance Farkas made on MSNBC on March 2, 2017, in which she urged intelligence community bureaucrats to disseminate within the government and potentially even leak to media any incriminating information they had about Trump or his aides. "I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama administration] people who left[that] it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy," Farkas said.

This was why she encouraged so many Intelligence Community leaks. Andrew McCarthy wrote this about her activities back in April 2017:

The most telling remark that former Obama deputy defense secretary Evelyn Farkas made in her now-infamous MSNBC interview was the throw-away line at the end: "That's why you have all the leaking." Put this in context: Farkas had left the Obama administration in 2015, subsequently joining the presidential campaign of, yes, Hillary Clinton  Trump's opponent. She told MSNBC that she had been encouraging her former Obama-administration colleagues and members of Congress to seek "as much information as you can" from the intelligence community. "That's why you have the leaking." To summarize: At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly  and seemingly apropos of nothing  changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information. As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.

Yet she got celebrated time and again in the press, which was the recipient of the leaks she encouraged.

But maybe the biggest outrage of this whole thing is that she claimed she knew for sure that Trump was in bed with the Russians, even though she left her post in 2015. However, when Congress put her under oath about such claims, she admitted she had lied. Here's her testimony in response to questions from then-rep. Trey Gowdy in 2017:

"Why don't we go back to that sentence that I just asked you about. It says 'the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their staff dealing with Russians," Gowdy said. "Well, how would you know what the U.S. government knew at that point? You didn't work for it, did you?" "I didn't," said Farkas, a former mid-level Russia analyst who left the federal government in 2015. "Then how did you know?" Gowdy responded. "I didn't know anything," Farkas said. "Did you have information connecting the Trump campaign to the hack of the DNC?" Gowdy asked. "No," Farkas admitted. "So when you say, 'We knew,' the reality is you knew nothing," Gowdy asked later during the deposition. "Correct," Farkas responded. Gowdy didn't stop there. "So when you say 'knew,' what you really meant was felt?" he asked. "Correct," Farkas answered. "You didn't know anything?" Gowdy continued. "That's correct," Farkas responded.

Being smart enough to stay away from a potential perjury charge, it's safe to say she told Congress the truth. But to the public, it was a different story. She lied through her teeth in her media appearances, to whip up suspicion about President Trump, and not one word of it was true.

Here's the disgusting part: she's a former Hillary Clinton adviser. She lives in Chappaqua, same as the Clinton pair does. The Russian collusion myth came about entirely fictionally, the result of an embittered Hillary Clinton sending out her flying monkeys to spread the first lies that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from her. Farkas's lies had to have had some connection to her old patron, who's undoubtedly helping her run for Congress, given the number of Clinton operatives who have endorsed her. Farkas, if she wins, will be representing Chappaqua and the rest of that 17th Congressional District, and probably the Clinton political interests, the little cat's paw of the still embittered crone who lost to Trump in 2016.

Yet it was her lies that helped get all of the phony collusion investigations rolling, every one of which failed. She was fine lying to the public, yet she was self-protective enough not to lie to Congress, meaning she'll lie to the little guy every time. The public, to her, is there for the manipulating, truth not required. Does this sound like someone who ought to be in Congress?

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of official and Pixabay public domain sources.
The protests against the government-mandated business closures that have taken place across the country came to Philadelphia on Friday, as several dozen people drove their cars repeatedly around City Hall, creating a chorus of honking and snarling traffic.

The caravan started in South Philadelphia and was led north on Broad Street by a pickup truck with a flag promoting President Donald Trumps reelection in the bed. Other cars had American flags poking out the windows and signs reading Reopen PA now! and Working Lives Matter.

The point of the rally, organizers said, was to get city officials to lay out a timeline for reopening businesses, houses of worship, and other establishments forced to close to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. At least 3,600 Pennsylvanians have died of complications related to COVID-19.

The group, titled ReOpen Philadelphia, planned the action for Friday, the day 24 counties in northern and western Pennsylvania are moving to the first phase of reopening. Richard Collins, a small-business adviser who lives in Center City, said he joined the protest on behalf of the nail salons and restaurants he works with.

Thirty percent to 40% will never reopen again. I mean, this is crazy, Collins said from his car.

 READ MORE: Philly small businesses are ready to reopen. But when will the city give the go-ahead?

The vehicles were greeted at City Hall by counter-protesters, some of whom attempted to halt the traffic. About five people with the organization Refuse Facism, which regularly organizes anti-Trump rallies, used their cars to block traffic and held a Trump Pence Out Now banner.

Some cars hopped curbs to get around them; other protesters left their vehicles and tried to push them out of the way. Two pedestrians threw hamburger buns and a sausage link into the mass of honking cars, while another man tried to grab the banner. The brief confrontation ended when police intervened.

Organizers encouraged the participants in the rally to remain in their cars, and they generally did so, save for a handful who carried signs and flags around City Hall. Daniel J. Maher and Curt Kaufmann stood with a Trump 2020 flag and said they support reopening the city as soon as possible. They were not wearing masks.

We think this is all hyped up," said Maher, 73, a retired SEPTA worker.

If we are going to win the war, we are going to suffer some casualties," said Kaufmann, 69, who also is retired. We need to go back to work.

And between the protesters and counterprotesters were Philadelphians walking in the light rain near Broad Street, mostly masked and taking in the commotion.

Derek Hawkins, a cardiovascular perfusionist, was walking home from work in his scrubs when he passed the protesters honking their horns on South Broad Street. Hawkins, who said there are multiple COVID-19 patients in his unit, called the protest absurd.

As it is right now, we hardly have any beds for patients, and if [the city] were to reopen right now, all hell would break loose, said Hawkins, 27. The last thing we need right now is a stronger second wave.

Mike Hess, a 36-year-old computer programmer, watched the caravan pass City Hall and said, This is lunacy. Hes unemployed, but said he doesnt think Philadelphia is ready to reopen: You cant go to CVS and buy hand sanitizer."

 READ MORE: Heres whos behind reopen rallies planned for Friday at Philadelphia City Hall

Rallies and protests, some in cars and some outside them, have taken place at government buildings across the country. Two protests have been held in Harrisburg, including one in late April that drew hundreds of participants. Several Republican lawmakers spoke at the event and called on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, to ease restrictions.

Wolf said Friday that he understands the frustrations of business owners who rallied in Philadelphia, but believes its misdirected.

The frustration has to be directed at the real enemy here," he said. Its the virus. Its not the regulation.

 READ MORE: Heres how low Phillys case count has to be for the state to consider reopening Southeastern Pa.

Mayor Jim Kenney has said the city is working with state and regional leaders to determine how places in the city can safely reopen. He said data on the spread of the virus, not economic concerns, will dictate when the stay-at-home order will be lifted.

We are not going to sacrifice peoples lives," Kenney said in a virtual news conference Wednesday.

Kenney and much of his administration were not in City Hall as the cars circled the building. The mayor on Friday delivered remarks at a funeral service for Sgt. James OConnor IV, a Philadelphia police officer fatally shot in March while on duty.

Staff writers Julia Terruso, Allison Steele, Erin McCarthy, and Oona Goodin-Smith contributed to this article.
Kolkata, May 8 : Superstar actor Shah Rukh Khan co-owned Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) announced on Friday that it was contributing to help Trinbagonians during this COVID-19 crisis by distributing food hampers across the region.

TKR teamed up with HADCO Ltd, who have put the hampers together and provided them at cost to TKR, a statement from the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) franchise said.

"@tkriders collaborated with HADCO Ltd. to 'Do the Knight thing' & distribute as many as 1k food hampers to the needy who are struggling because of the lockdown in Trinidad & Tobago. Proud of u my boys!" Shah Rukh said in a tweet on his handle.

In addition, they have added some items at no cost, and will deliver all the hampers to TKR for further distribution.

With the participation of the TKR players and support staff, they will be personally distributing the hampers to various areas within the country.

Speaking about it, the Director of TKR, Venky Mysore said: "We all know the challenge this health crisis has posed. The entire TKR family wants to contribute and play a small role in easing the pain felt by the people of Trinidad & Tobago. Our players and support staff have been fantastic, as has HADCO. When we discussed this idea, they all spontaneously offered to get involved with the initiative.

"Our players will personally deliver the hampers and hopefully this will put a smile on the faces of the people and ease the pain a little bit. This is a start and we will surely evaluate the needs on an ongoing basis and do whatever we can to contribute." The TKR Players attending will be local icons Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Bravo, Lendl Simmons and Sunil Narine.
Innovation in the technology industry has never reached its peak over centuries.

And whiles some Countries have made advanced progress with digitization of their economies, Ghana for one is still making plans to transit from the manual ways of doing things to going full digital.

With the current technology systems in Ghana and most part of Africa inherent with offline services, Quest system has come in the picture with 24-hour live transactions and business operations.

Quest Systems Limited, a technology innovation development, deployment and consulting company with its head office at Oyarifa, Accra has brought to the Ghanaian scene a full power packed IT expertise that seeks to take the whole country digital by the year 2025.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of Quest systems, Mr Ernest Ofori Yirenkyi, Quest system does IT Consultancy Services, develops applications and softwares, and financial technology solutions. The implementation of Quest Financial technology solutions for instance is able to provide a reliable and secured platform (using private blockchain technology) for District Assemblies and it citizens, NGOs, and Private Firms to transact businesses without making physical contact. The use of physical cash is also eliminated gradually since Quest uses NFC cards which wallet can be loaded with electronic money for buying, selling, and payment for services, taxes, birth certificates, death certificates, among others.

The Business Development Manager of Quest Systems, added that, the company offers it client access to live transactions monitoring from a mobile phone or computer. He added that with drones, Quest help keep check on current issues happening live at the market centers and report to the appropriate security authorities for immediate intervention.
Rivers state governor, Nyesom Wike says a senior police officer in the state is frustrating the efforts of the state government to achieve the total lockdown of the state to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Speaking during an interview with newsmen, Wike revealed that the senior police officer is a deputy commissioner of police in the state.

With the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria, pressure has begun to mount on President Muhammadu Buhari to lock down the country in order to avert disaster.

As at the time of filing this report, Nigeria has 3,145 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, with 103 deaths recorded.

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Sadiya Umar-Farouq, the minister for humanitarian affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has insisted that the federal government in conjunction with States would go ahead with the feeding of school children in their respective homes since schools have been shut down.She made this known on Wednesday while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday.

Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, NIDCOM has announced that all the 256 Dubai returnees have landed safely in Lagos State.The evacuated Nigerians, who returned from the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, also tested negative for coronavirus before boarding their flight.

Yahaya Bello, governor of Kogi, on Thursday asked a delegation of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the ministry of health to go on 14-day isolation or leave the state immediately.

The federal government had sent a delegation to Kogi to assist the state which has not recorded any COVID-19 case to boost its testing capacity.

Popular social media commentator, Reno Omokri has opined that Nigeria in the hands of a Nyesom Wike would have been much more better than Nigeria in the hands of an inept creature like president Muhammadu Buhari.

Speaking via his official Twitter handle, he further described Wike as a man whose passion, energy and personality are so refreshing.

The Peoples Democratic Party( PDP)has vehemently rejected the N108 ex-depot fuel price and insisted on N70 pump price.

This was made known via a statement on the official Twitter handle of the opposition Party.

The United States Embassy in Nigeria has said that a further $319m  N121bn  of late General Sani Abacha loot was in France and the United Kingdom.

The embassy in a statement said that there is $167m in stolen assets in France while there is a separate $152m in the UK which is being challenged in court.
Chairman of the Bonsu Cocoa Village cooperative, Opanin J.B. Twumasi, has on behalf of his farmer group expressed profound appreciation to the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) and the government for their initiatives and sensitisation on the need for the formation of farmer cooperatives.



Speaking to the media after a brief farm inspection tour and interaction with the Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Hon. Joseph Boahen Aidoo and his delegation, Opanin Twumasi admitted that the creation of cooperatives has forged a strong sense of unity among the farmers and energised them to improve on their farming activities.



He said, when the government came into power, it assured us that it will help us, cocoa farmers. In view of that, it instructed us to form cooperatives, which will help us in diverse ways. So, we brought ourselves together to form a cooperative here and the truth is that it has fostered a strong sense of unity; energising us to do our work.



He added that due to the education and encouragement from our district extension officer to assist each other, particularly, during pod breaking, pod harvesting and pruning, we have come to better appreciate the need to be together. It has generated a lot of excitement within the group. So, this laudable initiative which the government through COCOBOD instituted has been helpful to us a lot in diverse ways.



The visit by the COCOBOD Boss and a delegation of some Directors and Managers of COCOBOD is part of a three-day ongoing working tour of the Central and Eastern Regions to inspect several cocoa farms and assess the progress of the mass pruning exercise.



Opanin J.B. Twumasi, who is also a popular opinion leader for the cluster of farmer cooperatives in his community, acknowledged that COCOBOD has stayed true to its promise to farmers. We now have machines to remove mistletoe from the trees and to easily weed our farms, he noted. This has made cocoa farming very enjoyable because the machines have helped ease the labour and financial costs of cocoa farming.



He said, the dual-purpose motorized slashers and pruners which his cooperative took delivery of, has reduced the need to engage paid labour to undertake farm activities, as such, the cost of managing the farms have reduced significantly making cocoa farming more profitable for the farmers.



He confirmed that this years liquid fertiliser was also brought directly to his cooperative, and the leadership managed them to make sure that each member received what was due and each farmer was assisted by colleague members of the cooperative to properly apply their allocated portions on their farms.



I want to assure the government that we have accepted the initiative. We know that it has good plans for us. As such, I want to commend the government and COCOBOD as well, especially, the extension officers who educated us and supported our efforts.



He advised the youth to venture into the cocoa farming business because the initiatives introduced by the current management of COCOBOD, such as pruning and hand pollination, as well as, the provision of the dual purpose motorised slashers and pruners, is increasing the yields of farmers while reducing the running cost of cocoa farms. This boost in yield and fall in running cost translate into increased profit for farmers.



He thanked the Chief Executive for his guidance and leadership in transforming cocoa farming in Ghana and for forging unity among the farmers.

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.

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Attorney General Bill Barr explained that the FBI did not conduct a bonafide counterintelligence investigation in the case that led former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to plead guilty to federal investigators in 2017.

Barr, speaking in an exclusive interview with CBS News after the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn on Thursday, said that his review of the case found Bureau investigators laid a perjury trap for Flynn in a January 2017 White House interview.

They didnt warn him, the way that would usually be required by the Department, they bypassed the Justice Department, they bypassed the protocols at the White House, and so forth, Barr stated. These were things that persuaded me that there was not a legitimate counterintelligence investigation.

Former FBI director James Comey admitted in a December 2018 interview that he sent the agents to interview Flynn, adding that it was something I probably wouldnt have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.

In its Thursday court filing, the Justice Department explained that it was not persuaded that Flynns interview, which led to his guilty plea for lying to FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, had proper predication and was materially relevant.

Comey tweeted his disappointment, following the decision, saying the DOJ has lost its way.

The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.  James Comey (@Comey) May 7, 2020

Barr pointed to recently-released information that showed the FBI moved to close its surveillance of Flynn after finding no derogatory information about the retired generals contacts with Russians, only for Strzok to keep the case open, leading to the eventual interview.

They were closing the investigation, in December [2016], they started that process and on January 4, they were closing it. When they heard about the phone call, which the FBI had the transcripts to  there was no question as to what was discussed, the FBI knew exactly what was discussed  and General Flynn, being the former director of the DIA, said to them, you listen to everything, you know what was said, Barr explained.

Story continues

So theres no mystery about the call, but they initially tried some theories of how could open another investigation, which didnt fly, and then they found out that they had not technically closed the earlier investigation, and they kept it open for the expressed purpose of trying to catch  lay a perjury trap  for General Flynn, he added.

A different filing released last week showed handwritten notes from an FBI official that questioned if the goal of Flynns White House interview was to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.

Barr also did not comment on whether those that sought to entrap Flynn would face criminal charges, pointing to U.S. Attorney John Durhams probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and saying his team was in the middle of looking at the whole pattern of conduct.

Im going to wait until all the evidence is [in], and I get their recommendations as to what they found and how serious it is. But, if we were to find wrongdoing, in the sense of any criminal act, obviously we would follow through on that, Barr said. But again, just because something may even stink to high heaven, and appear to everyone to be bad, we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced that there is a violation of a criminal statute and that we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The same standard applies to everybody.

More from National Review
Ten Indonesian nationals, arrested



for not disclosing that they had attended the Tablighi Jamat gathering in Delhi which turned out to be a coronavirus hotspot, were granted bail by a court here on Friday.

The applicants, which included six women, are all members of the Islamic organisation Tablighi Jamat and had attended its meet at Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi in March.

The group arrived in Mumbai later, but allegedly did not inform the authorities about their participation in the event and thus avoided quarantine.

The city police subsequently tracked them down. They were quarantined and arrested after their isolation period was over.

The applicants moved sessions court after failing to get bail from a court in suburban Bandra.

The holy month of Ramazan was underway and there were no proper facilities in jail for pre-dawn meal and post- fasting Iftar meal, their bail applications said.

Moreover, the government misused the police machinery by arresting them under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 307 (attempt to murder) without any evidence, the plea said.

All ten of them had tested negative for coronavirus and there was no need to arrest them, it said.

Accepting the plea, the court granted them bail.

According to the police, while the accused arrived in Mumbai on March 7, they began to live in an apartment in Bandra area only on March 29, implying that they had been roaming around for 22 days.

They were part of a 12-member group, and as two of them tested positive for coronavirus, others were put in 20-day isolation and arrested on April 22.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
While New Yorks COVID-19 outbreak continues to wreak havoc, the states medical community is hard at work looking for possible treatments and cures to combat the virus.

Given these unprecedented circumstances, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been approving experimental treatments and clinical trials far sooner than it ordinarily would. Now, scientists and doctors across the country are working toward creating new antiviral treatments, immunotherapies and vaccines. And so far, theyve seen some promising results from a few of the remedies theyve been testing.

New Yorks medical community, which includes world-renowned hospitals, doctors and medical schools, is working particularly hard to find more effective treatments, since its at the epicenter of the U.S.s coronavirus crisis. Here are the COVID-19 treatments that New Yorks medical community is working on to fight off the deadly virus:

Vaccines

On Tuesday, pharmaceutical company Pfizer began its vaccine trials on humans at New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The company is working with the biotech company BioNTech, which is located in Germany, to execute these trials. A series of vaccine trials were also completed in Germany last week, as a part of the study. The trials taking place in New York will recruit 90 people who have not contracted the disease to assess the vaccines safety, patients ability to withstand side effects and whether the vaccine can stimulate a patients immune system.

There are currently 100 different potential vaccines in the works across the globe, but this is one of seven vaccines that has begun conducting human trials. Pfizer is also working to ensure that, once it has a vaccine available, it will be able to quickly manufacture and distribute millions of vaccines.

Many experts have said that its unlikely that a vaccine will be available in the near future, predicting that it could take over a year, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said its possible to have a vaccine by January. However, medical experts still probably wouldnt be able to tell if a vaccine is able to inoculate its recipients from the virus before April or May of next year at the soonest.

Blood thinners

On Wednesday, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City revealed that it has been giving some of its COVID-19 patients anticoagulants, often referred to as blood thinners, which helped improve their conditions. Now, the hospital has begun experimenting with a variety of anticoagulants to see which is best able to help its sickest patients.

The hospital decided to try giving its patients blood thinners after realizing that blood clots were a consistent issue among coronavirus patients. Mount Sinai hasnt yet come to any major conclusions about using blood thinners as a treatment, but the hospital found that 29% of its patients given anticoagulants while on ventilators died, while 63% of patients on ventilators who did not receive the thinners while on ventilators died.

Heartburn medication

Last week, it was reported that New Yorks Northwell Health hospitals have begun using famotidine, a medication typically used to treat heartburn, in clinical trials on COVID-19 patients. The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health got the idea to try this new treatment from Chinese doctors who found that patients taking the drug fared better than others.

Only 187 patients enrolled to be a part of the study so far, but Northwell is hoping to have 1,200 enrolled. Northwells clinical trials are still in their early stages and its medical research team is unsure of how effective the treatment will be.

Convalescent plasma therapy

On Tuesday, it was reported that a Long Island man who had been on a ventilator for a month, stricken with the coronavirus, had officially recovered thanks to convalescent plasma treatments.

Convalescent plasma is a serum derived from the blood of patients who have recovered from COVID-19. It is injected into sick patients to help their immune system better fight off the disease. The technique has been used since the 1890s and has helped curtail outbreaks of the measles, mumps and influenza. Most recently, plasma treatments were used to contain the H1N influenza outbreak in 2013.

Now, city and state officials are calling upon New Yorkers who have already recovered from the coronavirus to donate their blood so hospitals can continue to provide the sickest patients with plasma. The state is also encouraging individuals to take antibody tests to determine if they had the virus but did not take a COVID-19 test, to see if they might be a candidate for plasma donations.

Doctors at New York Citys Rockefeller University are also working on creating a new version of the traditional plasma treatment that involves selecting the strongest antibodies from blood samples and then cloning them to create a more potent serum. Theyre hoping to make the new treatment available by the end of the summer.

Remdesivir

Last week, the FDA approved remdesivir, an antiviral medication used to treat Hepatitis and other respiratory infections, as a treatment for extremely sick coronavirus patients after federal trials showed the drug helped some patients recover faster than others. Severalhospitals in the state were a part of the federal trial that began in early April and was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

People are doing a lot better, Dr. Barry Zingman, clinical director of infectious diseases at Montefiore Hospital who led the hospitals remdesivir study, told NY1 in mid-April. The mortality rate in our study among patients who have come into this study have come down dramatically over the course of the last month. That has to do with both people coming in earlier, theres heightened awareness, whether or not they might have COVID-19, as well our supportive therapies for people have gotten so much better. I think that many people are getting the remdesivir and that may be helping as well.

Hydroxychloroquine

On Thursday, several New York City hospitals announced that they would no longer be using Hydroxychloroquine, a medication typically used to treat malaria, after it proved to be ineffective treating patients with COVID-19.

The medication first made it into the news on March 20, after President Donald Trump listed it as a possible treatment for COVID-19. However, Fauci was quick to point out that there was only anecdotal evidence suggesting that the drug could be a potential treatment for the virus.
The Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) last month announced that a new industrial agreement covering Metro Trains workers in Melbourne had been approved by 51 percent of union members, just ahead of the 49 percent who voted no.

The ratified agreement will tear up important workplace conditions for Metro Trains workers, especially train drivers. Many outraged rail workers have quit the RTBU in protest over the bureaucracys imposition of far reaching concessions on behalf of Metro Trains, which operates Melbournes privatised train network and is majority owned by the Hong Kong-based giant MTR Corporation.

Metro executive Raymond OFlaherty gloated over the ratified agreement. He noted that the nominal wage rise of 14 percent over 4 years had been balanced by improvements in the way we work to deliver the network needed for a growing Melbourne. In other words, productivity concessions at workers expense.

RTBU giveaways include loosening restrictions on train drivers repeatedly driving back and forth along single rail lines. Previous restrictions aimed at minimising rail worker fatigue and enhancing alertness. Now drivers will be asked to repeat the same line three times in a single shift, thereby jeopardising public safety.

Another concession allows Metro Trains management the flexibility to order drivers to start their shifts at different stations. This will substantially increase drivers commute times, impact on family arrangements, such as school drop-offs, as well as increasing their personal transport expenditures.

One train driver spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the implications of the new agreement. The main concession I oppose is the number of runs on one line, he said. It got put down years ago, before I started, that we could do a maximum of one run on a line, except for our home line where we could do two runs, because it stops driver complacency. Now its gone up to three runs on the same line, which, aside from the major risk that is introduced, just removes any job satisfaction. Well have drivers at Sandringham doing three Sandringhams [lines], all day every day, or three Frankstons. Under the EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement], I could be doing this four days in a row.

The driver added: Metro can now fit extra work in, increasing productivity. For drivers the agreement means more work, and longer commute times. You could potentially have a driver in Newport [a western Melbourne suburb] having to sign on in Craigieburn [an outer northern suburb], for instance, which is an extra 25 kilometres as the crow flies, but considering the roads and peak hour traffic, it might mean an extra half hour or more of travel time. In this EBA theyve accepted a couple of starting locations, but now that this been agreed to, theres no way we can in good faith prevent them from extending that in future EBAs.

The RTBU narrowly rammed through the regressive agreement by pitting train drivers against other Metro Trains workers, including station staff, ticket inspectors and administration staff. This divide and rule strategy involved union officials being welcomed by management into stations and depotstrain drivers told the WSWS that usual site access restrictions appear to have been waivedto give lengthy presentations arguing for a yes vote. Train drivers opposing the deal were portrayed as being greedy and selfish.

A significant aspect of the unions campaign against the workers was its exploitation of the coronavirus crisis. The bureaucracy declared that given the global economy and the Australian economy face a crisis, Metro Trains had offered a very good outcome in very uncertain times.

A train driver told the WSWS: The lows that the [RTBU] state branch have sunk to are amazing. They dont care about the coronavirus.

Public transport workers internationally have been among the most vulnerable layers of the working class in countries and regions where COVID-19 is most prevalent (see: Transit agencies and governments continue to expose workers and riders to coronavirus pandemic internationally).

Asked about safety provisions put in place for Metro Trains workers, the train driver laughed derisively. Weve only now finally been given wipes to wash down the dash, sanitiser, and gloves, he explained. That is basically the extent of it. The issue has been raised that the air-conditioning units should be fitted with HEPA filters, because the air from the saloon goes straight into the cabin. As soon as someone sprays some perfume in the saloon we get a face full of it. And yet theyre saying, no, the advice theyve received is that the air-conditioning units remove moisture from the air and so therefore it should should, they wont say outright that it doesremove the virus.

Both the threat posed by COVID-19 and the industrial agreement sell-out pose the need for train drivers to organise independently of the trade unions. This has now emerged as a life and death necessity.

Action committees should be formed in every station and depot, with the widest democratic discussion developed on the measures required to firstly protect the health and safety of all train workers, and to develop a struggle against the workplace concessions enforced by the RTBU on behalf of corporate management.

The widest unity needs to be established with other sections of workers confronting similar threats to their safety and their working conditions, in the first instance with tram workers, who were similarly sold out by the RTBU in a recent industrial agreement. This is necessarily a political struggle, requiring action in defiance of the antidemocratic Fair Work industrial regime that is enforced by the unions and the state Labor government, and a fight for the abolition of private ownership of Melbournes train and tram networks, making them instead publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities, operated in the interest of social need not corporate profit.
(Photo : REUTERS/Dado Ruvic) A 3D printed Facebook logo is placed between small toy people figures in front of a keyboard in this illustration taken April 12, 2020.

Facebook employees may continue working at home until the end of 2020, while the company will not reopen most offices before July 6.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be making a formal announcement on Thursday, May 7. As first reported in CNBC, the company considered various factors in the decision.

ALSO READ: SARS-CoV-2 Now Has Duplication; COVID-19 Chinese Researcher Shot Dead in His Home

ALSO READ: COVID-19 UPDATE: Italian Researchers Claim That They Have the Vaccine that Can Kill the Coronavirus

These include information from public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Johns Hopkins as well as government advice. This is even when California begins to relax some social distancing rules. Facebook's headquarters is located in Menlo Park within the Silicon Valley in California.

Since March, Facebook employees have been working from home, and the company said it would continue to pay hourly employees who cannot work because of reduced staffing, closed offices, or when if they are sick. Along with Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter all pledged to pay hourly workers their regular rate.

Last month, Zuckerberg canceled physical events with more than 50 people through June 2021, including the Oculus Connect VR conference. It was scheduled this fall, but it will now be an online-only event. "Overall, we don't expect to have everyone back in our offices for some time," Zuckerberg said since some jobs cannot be done remotely.

Facebook's decision to allow remote work for most employees until the end of 2020 may be a call for other tech companies to follow suit. The social media giant was one of the first tech firms to ask employees to work remotely to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

How Facebook handles the pandemic

Aside from allowing employees to work from home, Facebook also provided $1,000 bonuses on all of its employees to support them. This is to support them while they work remotely during the coronavirus lockdown, the company told CNBC. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an internal note to employees.

Facebook has nearly 45,000 full-time workers, based on the January financial filing. It also hires thousands of contract workers, although it is unclear if they will also receive a bonus.

Similarly, the company has restricted employees from traveling to China, Italy, and South Korea, as reported by The Verge.

"If someone has an international trip planned for business reasons, they should use their discretion to decide whether to travel," Facebook said in an email. In contrast, no restrictions on domestic travel have been advised.

In a company Q&A, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recommended that Bay Area employees should work from home since the company also stopped buses that run from San Francisco to its headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Facebook also has temporarily banned social visitors to its offices. This is the same in Facebook headquarters as the county recommended limiting in-person contact. Other tech companies based in the area also made their respective efforts to reduce the spread of the virus.

As of today, there are a total of 3,825,028 cases of the coronavirus, with the death of 267,996, according to Johns Hopkins University. In the U.S. alone, there are 1,250,805 cases with over 75,000 deaths.

Read also: COVID-19 Update: No Evidence Virus Changed Significantly Amid Reports of More Contagious Mutations; Study Claims It's Beneficial to Have Recovered Patients Go

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has commended the efforts of Ukrainian diplomacy to resolve the conflict in Donbas and promised to further exert pressure on the Russian Federation to force it to implement the Minsk agreements.

This is stated in an official statement of the U.S. Department of State, released after a phone conversation between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo held on May 6.

"The Secretary commended Ukraines conflict diplomacy in the face of Russias intransigence and continued aggressive behavior. The Secretary reiterated resolute U.S. support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity and emphasized that the United States will continue to impose costs on Russia, including through sanctions, until Russia implements the Minsk agreements and ends its occupation of Crimea," the statement says.

Secretary Pompeo and Foreign Minister Kuleba discussed Ukraines efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the Russia-instigated conflict in Ukraines Donbas region and the results of the April 30 Normandy Format virtual Foreign Ministerial.

In addition, Secretary Pompeo condemned Russias and its proxies efforts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation and further restricting the movement of OSCE monitors and humanitarian organizations in eastern Ukraine.

Pompeo and Kuleba stressed the continued importance of COVID-19 mitigation, and the Secretary urged further progress on rule of law and economic reforms.

ish
On May 11, 1960, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was nabbed by a team of Israeli spies after years on the run in Argentina, ending a long manhunt.

Ten days later, drugged and dressed as a crew member of Israeli flag carrier El Al, he was smuggled to Israel by Mossad agents and put on trial.

The architect of the Nazis Final Solution, under which six million European Jews were exterminated during World War II, Eichmann was tried and hanged in 1962, aged 56.

Here is an account, based on AFP coverage from the time and since, of the top secret operation, details of which filtered out over the years.

 War criminal arrested by Israelis 

The security services found one of the great Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann, prime minister David Ben Gurion announced on May 23, adding that he was under arrest in Israel and would face trial, in a masterstroke hailed by the Israeli press.

Eichmanns name and his role as architect of the Nazis killing machine had surfaced during the Nuremberg war crimes trials which took place from 1945-1946.

He had been charged with organising and coordinating the deportation of Jews to death camps in Eastern Europe.

The former chief of Section IV B.4 of the Gestapo, responsible for the so-called Jewish question, had vanished after the Third Reich collapsed in May 1945.

Before fleeing he had destroyed documentary evidence of his activities and photos that could identify him.

 The Argentinian lead 

A manhunt was launched in 1945, led by prominent figures in the Jewish community, including famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who himself had escaped a concentration camp.

The breakthrough came in 1957 when the prosecutor of the German state of Hesse, Fritz Bauer, tipped off the Israeli secret service that Eichmann was in hiding in Argentina, under the false name of Ricardo Klement.

It took Mossad more than two years to locate him, living in a home without running water and electricity in the neighbourhood of San Fernando on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

During a March 1960 mission Mossad agents, using photos, formally established that Ricardo Klement was the former lieutenant-colonel Eichmann.

Mossad spy Tzvi Aharoni, who shadowed him and sat behind him on a bus said: The temptation to lean forward and strangle him was almost irresistible.

But I knew he had to be put on trial and not be assassinated for those he had killed, he told AFP.

 A thriller unfolds 

With Ben Gurions green light, the abduction was planned meticulously under the leadership of the Israeli secret service chief Isser Harel.

The mission was given to Mossad operative Rafi Eitan, who later recalled: When I was given this mission, I knew that if we succeeded, we would enter Israels history and the history of humanity.

The abduction was set for May 11. A foreman at a Mercedes-Benz factory, Eichmann returned every evening to his home on Garibaldi Street, taking the same bus at the same time.

Shortly after 8:05 pm he was nabbed as he got off the bus. He put up some resistance, and called for help before being dragged into a car and hidden under a blanket.

Eichmann shouted in German to his abductors: I have already accepted my fate.

He was taken to a safe house rented for the mission, where he was chained to a bed and blindfolded.

In an interview with AFP, Eitan later said: I blindfolded him and checked his scars. When I was sure it was him, I shook my colleagues hand and told him: Weve accomplished our mission.

On May 20, the Mossad squad took him on a false Israeli passport on a special plane used by the Israeli delegation which had come to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Argentinas independence.

 The banality of evil 

On April 11, 1961 the captured Eichmann, facing 15 charges, appeared for the first time in public in a glass booth in a Jerusalem court, which would question some 111 witnesses.

Wearing a black suit, a dark tie over a white shirt and large horn-rimmed glasses, the accused, ashen, clean shaven and tight-lipped, entered at 9:00 am in the glass box reserved for him, AFP wrote.

Writer Haim Gouri said: The trial gave the survivors of the genocide, for the first time, the possibility of being heard.

Some 450 foreign journalists, 100 observers and diplomats attended the different hearings.

Among them was author and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel and American Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who published in 1963 a major book on the subject, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Eichmann was sentenced to death on December 15 after being convicted on all counts, including crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

On May 29, 1962, his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court.

He was hanged on May 31 at midnight and his ashes were scattered at sea.
A woman faked she had throat cancer and leukemia to a small community that donated more than $14,000 to help her recovery.

Cheryl Elizabeth Pryor, 40, lived in Nhulunbuy around 645km east of Darwin before travelling to Sydney in January where she claimed she spent time in hospital after she was stabbed in the leg.

During her stay in Sydney, she told a friend she had been diagnosed with cancer who then set up a GoFundMe page on the Nhulunbuy community's Facebook.

Pryor had even posed as a doctor she claimed had been administering her chemotherapy to police after they began investigating.

A 40-year-old woman scammed a community into thinking she had cancer and posed as a doctor's receptionist to police (file image)

A total of $14,387.31 was raised during the scam before locals grew suspicious and in March police were called in to investigate.

The 40-year-old told police she was being treated by Westmead Private Hospital professor Jonathan Carter, The NT News reported.

But the hospital had no records of her ever attending.

Pryor then rang police, posing as Professor Carter's assistant before the call was traced back to her phone.

Appearing at the Supreme Court, Pryor pleaded guilty to fraud, forgery and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Crown prosecutor Naomi Loudon said Pryor had attended a hospital after being stabbed in the leg with a fork - but was unable to remember where.

'She claimed to have experienced a sore throat which caused her to believe she may have cancer but accepted she was never diagnosed with any disease,' Ms Loudon said.

'She admitted accepting payments from the charity fund but claimed she could not recall what she had represented about any reason for entitlement to such funds.'

Pryor's friend who organise the GoFundMe said she was in disbelief.

'I continually ask myself how she could take advantage of my giving nature in such a sick and twisted way. I was so sad and felt sick to the core for weeks.'

Pryor will appear in court again for sentencing on May 29.
Oneida, N.Y.  Every day, more than 300 workers walked in and out of the sprawling Green Empire Farm greenhouse on the edge of the city of Oneida.

Even when the whole world mostly shut down, the 32-acre farm under glass kept going. There were millions of strawberries to pick after growing ripe under miles of glass. And there were half a million tomato plants to tend.

The company, Mastronardi Produce of Canada, took measures to protect those workers from the coronavirus, officials from Madison County and the company said.

But it didnt matter. At the end of each workday, 186 workers left the giant farm in vans and on buses, to return to hotels where they lived four to a room and slept two to a bed.

The workers living conditions, chosen for them by the labor company that hired them and brought them to Oneida, were perfect for the coronavirus to dig in and take hold.

And it did.

The indoor farming complex is now the site of the biggest coronavirus cluster in Upstate New York, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomos office. The only cluster outside of New York City that was bigger was in New Rochelle.

By Thursday, 169 of the 340 workers had tested positive.

They were living in close quarters, together, so it was ripe for spread, said Eric Faisst, Madison County public health director. The conditions were perfect.

The farmworkers living in the hotels are migrant workers who speak little English, county officials said.

Faisst said many of the workers are scared. They came here to the U.S. to work and send money to their families. Some are from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, others are from Haiti. Now they are stuck: They cant work, and they cant go home.

The county had to get 12 interpreters to help with tracing the sick and exposed workers travels through the area.

The outbreak was so shocking that it caught Cuomos attention. He mentioned it in his nationally viewed news briefing Wednesday. He compared the cluster to outbreaks in meatpacking plants across the nation.

Its when you run a facility with a large number of workers in a dense environment, the governor said.

But county officials say its not the workplace, but where the workers live that have been making them worry since the pandemic started.

Until last April 29, it seemed like everything was under control. Thats when Faisst got the first bad news: The night before, Oneida Health, the hospital nearest the greenhouse, saw two workers.

Both were sick with COVID-19. Both lived in those hotels, four to a room. Workers live in the Super 8 and the Days Inn in Madison County and the La Quinta Hotel in Verona in Oneida County.

When Faisst heard of about the two positive tests among the workers, he knew he was facing a potential cluster that showed the virus ability to jump from person to person at an exponential rate. All the farmworkers, migrant and local, had to be tested.

The county called in the state for help. Two days later, an army of state and county workers set up rows inside the greenhouse.

The farmworkers filed in, speaking to each other in Spanish and French. One by one, nurses swabbed their noses and took down their contact information, aided by interpreters. Then the workers boarded the buses and vans back to the hotels to wait.

By Monday, the results came back. All but 47 of the contract workers had the virus.

The county and state tested the second wave of workers, mostly local help, on Tuesday in the same way. That turned up 31 more positives.

Part of the Flavor Army

All of the workers at the farm do the same jobs and make roughly the same pay on paper, employees said. But they live in two different worlds and work for two different employers.

The workforce drawn from Central New York makes a little less than $13 an hour. They pick, plant, sort and pack. They work for Green Empire Farm, which is owned by Mastronardi Produce, a 70-year-old company in Kingsville, Ontario, that was started by an Italian immigrant who decided to grow hothouse tomatoes. The company has at least six hothouse farms in North America.

Most of the produce is sold under the Sunset brand. The new amphitheater in the companys hometown bears its name: Sunset Stadium.

The company prides itself on how it treats its workers, a company spokeswoman said, and is devastated about the outbreak at the new farm in Oneida.

Mastronardi calls its workers the Flavor Army.

But more than half the workers in Oneida, those in the buses and the hotels, are migrant farmworkers employed by an Indiana company called MAC Contracting. A Mastronardi spokeswoman said MAC supplies workers to many of the companys greenhouses.

Faisst said the contract workers did not bring the virus into the community. The countys first coronavirus case was at the greenhouse, but it was a local worker.

A worker who has been at the greenhouse since it opened said the migrant workers were hired to take local jobs that went unfilled. Both sets of workers are supposed to make the same amount: a little less than $13 an hour. The contract workers are paid by MAC, who takes money out of their checks for the hotel rooms.

Since the outbreak, the county has been pushing MAC to put fewer workers in the rooms and to pay them when theyre not working, said John Becker, chairman of the Madison County Board of Supervisors.

Youre going to comply, or well take further measures, Becker said the county told MAC.

He said he was aghast when he found out how many workers were living in a room, together, while public health officials were trying to space people six feet apart.

Becker said he was concerned the workers would not be paid when they were quarantined, which made him worry they would keep working while they were sick.

The county, he said, pushed Mastronardi to pay them while sick. Becker said the county is delivering food to all of the workers in the hotels in Madison County while they are quarantined to keep them inside. It is costing the county $3,000 a day.

Becker said the outbreak is peeling back the curtain on how factory farms work.

We cant fill the jobs with American labor, so these folks come up. They send money home. These conditions are throughout the country, said Becker, who ran his familys dairy farm for decades.

We followed social distancing

Becker said its unclear whether the workers have the documents to work in the U.S.

Thats one of those questions I dont want to ask, he said. Thats MACs deal.

Farm labor contractors, like MAC, traditionally handle the certifying that the workers papers are legal for the companies that hire them. They also handle transportation and housing.

The Oneida greenhouse had always planned to bring in some labor. There is a bunkhouse on the grounds, but its not finished.

The greenhouse just opened in August. It took five years of work to get the farm to come to Madison County, Becker said. The county was jockeying with others to get the huge operation. In the end, Madison County had the most land and the sweetest deal: a 20-year tax break worth millions.

Company documents show that the project will be built in four phases on 600 acres of land. Each phase is a 32-acre greenhouse. The total cost is more than $100 million. Its unclear how much of the project has been completed.

Cris Schultz, a MAC employee in Indiana, disputed the countys account in an interview Thursday with syracuse.com. She said the workers never stayed more than three to a room. She said the workers pay for some of the housing out of their paychecks, but she would not say how much.

She disputed that the workers living arrangements made them ill.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, Schultz said. We followed social distancing.

She declined to say how MAC helped the workers follow social distancing when they were on the buses or at the hotels. County officials said that, after prodding, MAC spaced the workers out on the buses and vans and began wiping down the vehicles several times a day.

Schultz would not say how many workers were sick with symptoms from the virus. At one point in she said enough were sick; then she said none were ill. County officials said two of the workers had been hospitalized. They have since been released and are recovering back at the hotels they were living in.

I am worried about them, their health, Schultz said. Then she hung up.

They came here to work

Oneida feels more like a village than a city. The population is 11,000. People mostly know each other, and now they know the workers who have been picking and planting under the glass at the edge of the city.

The outbreak has put a spotlight on the laborers in a way that makes county and city officials worry.

They came here to work and send money back to their country, said Oneida Mayor Helen Acker. They want to work; they dont want to be sick.

Now they are being watched, not just by public health officials, but by people who are angry they are here. Madison County publicly identified nine local businesses, including a laundromat and the Walmart, as places the farmworkers frequented.

Faisst said he feels the virus is under control. The workers have been tested and quarantined. He is not worried about them spreading the virus.

Theyre scared as hell and then on top of that, youre starting to see this mob mentality. Theyre victims of this virus  they acquired this here, Faisst said. My concern is for their safety.

None of the county officials thought the greenhouse would be closed.

All of migrant workers have been isolated in their hotels since the mass testing last Saturday.

The infected workers will be released in roughly two weeks.

Workers who have recovered and workers who tested negative will be back at work sooner.

Next week they will be picking the millions of tomatoes under acres of glass at the edge of the city.

Do you work for Green Empire Farm in Oneida or know about the handling of its workforce? Reporter Marnie Eisenstadt would like to talk to you. Contact her anytime: email | twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246

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Madison LInsalata, the reigning Miss Staten Island, is shouting good news about a Virtual Talent Show Fundraiser to support the Childrens Miracle Network, a non-for-profit organization that raises funds for childrens hospitals, medical research, and community awareness of childrens health issues.

For those who arent aware, for more than a decade, Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals have teamed up with the Miss America Organization to raise awareness and funds for children around the country suffering from life-threatening diseases.

Madison tells us each year during the month of May, Costco shoppers can be seen writing their names on paper balloons of yellow and red to hang on the walls at checkout counters  after they make a donation to the Childrens Miracle Network, that is. This time around, the walls may be empty.

However, she adds, May is still the month for miracles.

So Madison brainstormed the idea of a Virtual Talent Show Fundraiser where talents of all shapes and varieties  and involving people of all ages  are welcome to participate by paying a $10 submission fee and sending in a video clip showcasing their skills. The fundraiser thats already underway, ends on Thursday, May 29 at 8 p.m.

Madison L'Insalata, the reigning Miss Staten Island, holds up the Miracle Maker Award, she received at the Miss New York competition in 2019, for raising the most funds for the Children's Miracle Network. (Courtesy/Madison L'Insalata)Staten Island Advance

Fifty percent of the profits raised will be earmarked for the Childrens Miracle Network and the other 50 percent cash prize will go to the winner.

Eight judges, five of them Staten Island natives, will determine four of the top five finalists based on a grading rubric. The fifth finalist will be determined by an online poll.

The judges from Staten Island include: Vincent Medugno, Charlianne Meli, Daniella Larosa, Alissa Jackman, and Alex DeSantis, each qualified in their individual artistic disciplines.

The rules and other judges names can be found here: https://www.playhouse36.com/rules-and-sign-up

The five finalists, who will be announced on May 30, will have one week to submit another longer video of their talent. The clips will be shown on June 7, where judges will make an appearance and the winner will be announced.

Say Madison: I want to spread awareness about the organization and raise money for a good cause at the same time and give people something fun to do with their talents during this time.

In fact, Madison, whos been at the forefront raising funds for the Childrens Miracle Network, for several years, received the Miracle Maker Award at the Miss New York competition in 2019 for raising the most funds for the organization.

For further information, including rules and conditions, go to playhouse36.com.
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Video apparently showing Vice President Pence delivering empty boxes of personal protective equipment to a Virginia nursing home on Thursday that later went viral was edited by "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to remove important context.

The state of play: The video from Kimmel's monologue on Thursday night was tweeted by Democratic pollster Matt McDermott, but it does not show the full context of Pence's appearance. Kimmel later apologized on Twitter.

The video Kimmel aired has a C-SPAN marker, but lacks any clear indication that it has been edited.

In the Kimmel video, Pence first drops boxes in front of the nursing home. He then returns to a van, where Kimmel implies that the vice president is caught on a hot mic asking if he can carry empty boxes "just for the camera" that are loaded into the back. The clip ends after someone else tells him that he "absolutely" can.

The full video shows that, after Pence makes his "just for the camera" joke, others laugh as he closes doors to the van and no additional boxes are moved.

What they're saying: Kimmel tweeted "it would appear that [Pence] was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt. The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth."

Jon Thompson, a campaign spokesman for Pence, tweeted that Kimmel's video was "absolute garbage." He added that Pence was "clearly joking about empty boxes & if Kimmel showed the full clip from C-SPAN, not the one he selectively edited, you see and hear it."

Why it matters: The Trump administration has been quick to seize on viral media mistakes as proof of "fake news"  and McDermott's tweet of the Kimmel video received more than 47,000 retweets and 106,000 likes in less than three hours.

President Trump demanded an apology from Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel in 2017 after he tweeted a misleading photo of the crowd size at a Florida rally that went viral.

In the early days of the Trump administration, TIME pool reporter Zeke Miller mistakenly tweeted that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the newly decorated Oval Office, prompting him to apologize to the White House.

Worth noting: The Trump administration is known for its own distortions of the truth, and the Washington Post has counted more than 18,000 false or misleading claims from the president himself throughout his tenure.

Trump presented a doctored version of an official National Hurricane Center map of Hurricane Dorian's path to bolster his claim that Alabama was at risk last year.

Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an allegedly doctored video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta interacting with a female staffer while trying to grab a microphone in 2018.

Go deeper: Pence wears face mask during GM visit after Mayo Clinic backlash
KAMPALA  Airtel Uganda, has partnered with Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA), to enable educational institutions in the country to implement remote learning initiatives.

Through the partnership, Avaya will offer educational institutions in Uganda full-feature access to its flagship collaboration app, Avaya Spaces, on a complimentary basis, through Airtel Uganda.

Avaya Spaces is a cloud meeting and team collaboration solution that goes beyond integrating chat, voice, video, online meetings and content sharing  and delivers obvious use cases for virtual learning.

We fully support the range of measures being taken by the government to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, we understand the challenges that these measures bring to the delivery of services in general, and the delivery of education specifically. Our partnership with Avaya supports this key sector by enabling educational institutions to maintain the safety of students as their top priority while ensuring minimum disruption to their education, said [Airtel Uganda Managing Director, V.G Somasekhar.

We have invested in rolling out the countrys most advanced telecommunications network as an enabler of business continuity. Today, this investment will support the continued delivery of education and ensure that young minds can continue developing, even when studying at home, he added.

Recognized for its ease and speed of implementation, Avaya Spaces works on all Android and iOS smart devices and can also be securely accessed on personal computers and laptops via Chrome or Firefox browsers. It enables teachers and administrative staff to reliably communicate with parents, students and each other to minimize learning disruption amid the school closure.

Using the app, students will be able to participate in virtual classrooms from any location, with the ability to download study materials and send assignments to teachers electronically.

Parents too will benefit from the new offering as the app allows them to hold virtual meetings with professors, share inquiries and observations, and establish dedicated digital forums where they can engage with each other as well as with teachers, administrators, or staff in the educational institution.

Since January, Avaya has seen an increase of more than 700% in video collaboration traffic on the Avaya Spaces platform. Several hundred universities, schools and other organizations worldwide have engaged Avaya to gain the connectivity and collaboration capabilities Avaya Spaces provides as they address the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.

As the COVID-19 crisis has developed, we have reacted quickly and decisively in providing collaboration technology on a complimentary basis to help those most affected. We are proud to be able to do the same in Uganda in partnership with Airtel Uganda, which is has shown its commitment to social obligations. Together, we aim to help Ugandan teachers and students save the school year, said Fadi Hani, Vice President  Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Avaya.

Airtel Uganda also recently announced reaching a milestone of 2,000 network masts across the country. With the availability of this countrywide 4G LTE connectivity, students and teachers can access the app seamlessly.

Related
Coronavirus Outbreak Updates: The samples of an assistant sub inspector attached to Vinoba Bhave Nagar police station in Mumbai who died on Friday have tested positive for novel coronavirus.

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The officers have been directed to submit a detailed report within four weeks. "It should also include details of the steps taken by the state and the district authorities to provide food, shelter and other basic amenities to the poor people, especially migrant labourers, who are facing extreme difficulties from every angle during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown," it said.

The NHRC has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports about mowing down of 16 migrant workers by the goods train in the early hours of Friday, it said in a statement.

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday issued notices to the Maharashtra Chief Secretary and the District Magistrate of Aurangabad over 16 migrant workers being mowed down by a goods train. The incident happened between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Nanded Division.

Though the WHO will release a version on app stores globally, any government will be able to take the apps underlying technology, add features and release its own version on app stores, Mariano said in a phone interview.

The app will ask people about their symptoms and offer guidance on whether they may have Covid-19, the potentially lethal illness caused by the coronavirus, said Bernardo Mariano, chief information officer for the WHO. Other information, such as how to get tested, will be personalized according to the users country.

The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to launch an app this month to enable people in under-resourced countries to assess whether they may have the novel coronavirus, and is considering a Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature too, an official told Reuters on Friday.

Karnataka has been among the few states that has wanted to restart economic activities and have the revenue come in for the state.

The alcohol can be bought only as takeaways from 9 am to 7 pm from Saturday till 17 May.

The Karnataka government has permitted the sale of liquor in standalone clubs, boarding hotels and bars, where the existing stock of alcohol can be sold at MRP, reported News18.

Even after the imposition of 70 percent corona-fee on alcohol in the National Capital by the Arvind Kejriwal-led government, customers did not deter from buying.

The chaos has prompted the Delhi government to launch an e-token system for customers. They can now log into - www.qtoken.in to select an outlet and book a time slot to buy liquor. Only 50 tokens will be issued per hour to keep the rush in check.

In a bid to maintain social distancing rules and prevent chaos, the Delhi government has launched an e-token portal for liquor sale, News18 reported.

With 3,320 more people testing positive in the past 24 hours across the nation, the total number of confirmed cases climbed to 59,662 on Saturday. Of the total, there were 39,834 active cases.

As many 17,847 COVID-19 patients have been discharged, taking the rate to 30 percent.

The COVID-19 toll in India rose to 1,981 after 95 more succumbed to the viral infection in the past 24 hours, according to the latest data released by the health ministry on Saturday.

Rajasthan registered a total of 3,636 COVID-19 positive cases after 57 more individuals tested positive for the infectious disease on Saturday. According to the state health department, the toll remained at 103 with no new deaths recorded in the past 24 hours.

So far, the toll in Rajasthan stood at 103.

Of the total 3,531 COVID-19 cases in Rajasthan, Jaipur reported the maximum with 1,160 patients being infected. The city has recorded more than half of the total number of deaths in the state with 53 people losing their lives to the viral disease.

For severe cases, patients will be discharged after they test negative by RT-PCR.

For moderate cases, patients will be discharged only after resolution of clinical symptoms and ability to maintain oxygen saturation above 95 percent for three consecutive days without support.

According to the health ministry's latest notice on discharge policy for COVID-19 patients, for mild and pre-symptomatic cases, patients can be discharged after after 10 days of symptom onset and no fever for three days.

He further pointed out that the Centre has facilitated the return of more than 200,000 migrant labourers to reach home and that workers from West Bengal are also eager to go back.

"West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. This is injustice with West Bengal migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them," Shah said in his letter to Mamata.

With the issue of migrant labourers being the latest flashpoint between Centre and West Bengal government, Home Minister Amit Shah took a potshot at chief minister Mamata Banerjee for not getting "expected support" help migrant workers reach home.

The video went viral after BJP MLA Nitesh Rane on 6 May uploaded it on social media. Rane identified the location as the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion.

In a disturbing video that was reportedly recorded inside a civic hospital in Mumbai, patients undergoing treatment for coronavirus can be seen lying in beds, hardly few feet away from beds that have corpses on them.

The Maharashtra Education Department said that no fee hike in schools can be imposed for academic year 2020-21. "Parents should not be forced to pay the remaining fee of academic year 2019-20 and the fee for 2020-21 in one go, they must be given monthly/quarterly payment options," said the state Education Department.

The press conference will be hosted by Sudip Bandyopadhyay, AITC Parliamentary Party Leader in the Lok Sabha, Derek OBrien, AITC Parliamentary Party Leader in Rajya Sabha and Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Member of Parliament.They will take questions from you after their statements.

The All India Trinamool Congress will conduct a press meet via video conference on Saturday at 1 pm. The meeting can be expected to be on the COVID-19 situation in West Bengal.

Among the passengers was a Madurai-based woman whose husband died in Dubai. The body was also brought in the aircraft and she headed to the southern temple town on road with her spouse's body, News18 reported.

Under Centre's Vande Bharat Mission, close to 359 Indian nationals arrived from Dubai in two Air India flights early on Saturday.

India's current doubling rate of COVID-19 cases improved to 11 days as against 9.9 days in the last week, while the mortality rate has been recorded at 3.3 percent, said Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday.

"Our fatality rate in the country continues to be around 3.3% and the recovery rate has climbed up to 29.9%, these are very good indicators," he said.

After a total of 17,847 COVID-19 patients were discharged across the nation, the recovery rate climbed to 29.9 percent, said Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday.

Newly-appointed Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief Iqbal Chahal will visit the control room at the civic body's headquarters, follwed by Nair Hospital today to take account of the situation in the city worst affected by coronavirus, News18 reported. He will also visit Dharavi, which has reported a high number of cases since the beginning of the outbreak.

"Epidemiologists say it is wrong to compare regions at different points of the virus cycle because each of these regions in countries and states are all in different period of cycle," said Derek.

Responding to the allegations against the West Bengal government over mismanagement of identifying COVID-19 hot spots and containing them, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien on Saturday said that the data comparing COVID-19 growth rate of different states is "misleading".

"A letter by the Home Minister first reached Delhi before it reached the West Bengal Govt. You sent doctors to Gujarat but a IMCT to Bengal, why are you messing around?" said the TMC leader.

In response to Amit Shah's letter to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that migrants were not permitted to enter the state on trains, TMC's Derek O'brien was quoted by News18 as saying, "Home Minister of India has finally woken up from a deep sleep. We were wondering if you have helped any migrants."

He further alleged that the Centre was responsible for the rail mishap in Maharashtra's Aurangabad.

"The Home Minister is writing so many letters to Bengal but nothing was done in Karnataka when the CM stopped the movement of migrant labourers. Later he had to revoke the decision. The Uttar Pradesh government has waived off all labour laws but, no letters were written to them," said O'Brien.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien on Saturday accused Amit Shah of being biased with the BJP-ruled states with regard to stopping the movement of migrant labourers.

West Bengal is running 711 camps for the migrants in state, we are taking good care of them, said TMC leader Derek O'Brien, reacting sharply to the allegations made by the Centre over the failure of the West Bengal government to implement standard operating procedures in bringing back stranded migrants.

Thirteen more personnel in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) have tested positive for the nove coronavirus on Saturday, thereby taking the confirmed cases to 48 among the security force officials, according to ANI.

Officials believe the state's low coronavirus numbers is a factor for the workers seeking return. Till Friday, Haryana had 647 positive cases,

According to the report, around 79.29 percent of migrant labourers have applied to come to Gurgaon, Faridabad, Panipat, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Yamunanagar and Rewari. Little over 50,000 of them want to come to Gurgaon district.

As the Centre has started running special trains to send stranded migrant workers back to their states, close to 1.09 lakh migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have applied on a Haryana government web portal to come to the state, Indian Express reported.

"The state government has trained 1,72,499 health officials to deal with the novel coronavirus outbreak," Chief Secretary AK Tripathy said while launching the 'COVID-19 workforce portal' in Bhubaneswar on Friday.

The Odisha government has trained 1.72 lakh healthcare officials to fight COVID-19 pandemic in the state, where a spike in the number of positive cases was recently witnessed following the return of Odia migrant workers from other parts of the country, a senior official said.

After four more individuals test positive for the novel coronavirus in Uttarakhand, the total number of confirmed cases in the state climbed to 67 on Saturday, news agency ANI reported.

The Indian Railways reaction came minutes after the TMC said they have already planned to run eight trains to ferry migrants from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Telangana. The railway said they did not even have the proposal yet for the train, which the TMC claimed has been scheduled from Hyderabad to Malda on Saturday at 3 pm.

In a slugfest over the transportation of stranded migrants to West Bengal, railway officials on Saturday said there were no proposal on record so far with the national transporter to run any more 'Shramik Special' trains to the state.

An Air India flight carrying at least 129 Indian nationals from Dhaka in Bangladesh has landed at Delhi Airport on Saturday.

However, the Delhi Police said that the report "is not only factually incorrect but seems to be based on wholly unverified sources and purely conjectural imagination."

The report, quoting sources, claimed that an initial probe suggested that the clip appeared to have been curated from multiple files, and hence its veracity needed to be confirmed by the forensic lab.

In the clip in question, Saad could be heard telling Jamaat attendees to ignore government directives and social distancing norms.

The Delhi Police on Saturday rubbished a media report suggesting that a purported audio clip of Markaz Nizamuddin head Maulana Saad Kandhalvi may have been doctored.

25 new cases, one death due to the viral infection were reported in Mumbai's Dharavi today, ANI quotes the BMC as saying.A total of 833 positive cases and 27 deaths have been reported from the largest slum in the world.

Number of coronavirus positive cases in Punjab climbed to 1,762 as 31 more people tested positive on Saturday. The total number of active cases stands at 1574 while 31 persons have died due to the disease, according to the Punjab Health Department

Tamil Nadu recorded 526 fresh cases in the last 24 hours and Chennai recorded 279 cases with four deaths, reports News18. The total number of coronavirus has infections in the state has reached 6,535. Four deaths were also reported today, taking the toll in the state to 44. Acoording to the report, as many as 1,867 cases are linked to the Koyembedu market cluster.

Aarogya Setu app alerted the government about more than 650 hotspots across the country and over 300 emerging hotspots, said NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

23 deaths and 394 new cases were reported in Gujarat in the past 24 hours, reported the Times of India. The total number of cases in the in the state reached 7,797 including 472 deaths. 2,091 persons have been cured and discharged till date.

A total of 280 new COVID-19 cases were reported from hotspot Ahmedabad along with 20 more deaths on Saturday, taking the total case count to 5,540 in the district and fatalities to 363, PTI quotes a health department official as saying. Principal Secretary (Health) Jayanti Ravi said that the number of the discharged patients from various hospitals in Ahmedabad after recovery mounted by 106 to 1,107 in the last 24 hours.

West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay on Saturday termed as misleading and incorrect a Railway ministry tweet which claimed that the West Bengal govt had approved eight special Shramik trains from various states after Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday alleged that the state was not allowing such trains. "All 8 trains were approved, communicated to states concerned on Friday," PTI quotes him as saying.

ALERT ! 17 persons found #COVID19 POSITIVE in Tripura today from 86th-Bn #BSF , Ambassa. No Civilian found POSITIVE among them. Total #COVID19 active cases in Tripura now stands: 132  Transferred out: 02 Recovered: 02 Updated at : 10:00 pm, 9th May. #TripuraCovid19Count

Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Saturday said that 17 more personnel from the Border Security Force's 86th Battalion have tested positive in Ambassa. Tripura now has 132 active cases and none of them are among civilians.

The #PmCares fund has received huge contributions from PSUs & major public utilities like the Railways. Its important that PM ensures the fund is audited & that the record of money received and spent is available to the public.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday demanded audit of PM CARES Fund and said the account of money received and spent be made public. The Centre had set up the Prime Minister''s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund on 28 March, with the primary objective to deal with any kind of emergency situation like the one currently posed by the COVID-19 outbreak and provide relief to those affected. The Congress has questioned the government over setting up of a separate PM CARES Fund by the prime minister for fighting coronavirus, demanding that the same be merged with the PM National Relief Fund.

An Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police (ASI) thrashed a doctor of a primary health centre for allegedly refusing to conduct medical examination of four accused of a rape case who were without face masks and also tied with a single rope against the social distancing norms in Bihar's Darbhanga district on Saturday, reports PTI. The incident took place in the Jalle Primary Health Centre this morning. Doctors and other staff of the Jaale PHC went on strike to protest against the incident.

I have tested NEGATIVE for COVID-19 Will rejoin the #FightAgainstCOVID19 ASAP Thank you everyone for your wishes and prayers #AmdavadFightsCorona

Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra on Saturday took to Twitter to announce that he had tested negative for the coronavirus. Nehra was placed under quarantine on 5 May after he came into contact with a COVID-19 patient and CEO of Gujarat Maritime Board Mukesh Kumar had taken over the charge.

coronavirus, PTI quotes officials as saying. He died in the early hours of Friday after being admitted in a civic hospital on Wednesday with COVID-19-likesymptoms, an official said. "He was also a diabetic. His samples returned positive on Friday evening. This is the fourth COVID-19 death in Mumbai police. Some 350 personnel in the metropolis' force have tested positive for the virus so far," he added.

The samples of an assistant sub inspector attached to Vinoba Bhave Nagar police station in Mumbai who died on Friday have tested positive for novel

Pune district reported 160 new coronavirus cases since Friday night, taking the tally of cases to 2,732, PTI quotes health officials as saying. The death toll reached 148 with five COVID-19 patients succumbing to the infection, an official said.

Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at US drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc in recent weeks, according to publicly-available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy a treatment for the COVID-19 virus. In one case, a fake email login page designed to steal passwords was sent in April to a top Gilead executive involved in legal and corporate affairs, according to an archived version on a website used to scan for malicious web addresses. News agency Reuters said it was not able to determine whether the attack was successful.

West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay on Saturday termed as misleading and incorrect a Railway ministry tweet which claimed that the West Bengal govt had approved eight special Shramik trains from various states after Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday alleged that the state was not allowing such trains. "All 8 trains were approved, communicated to states concerned on Friday," PTI quotes him as saying.

Three migrant workers who were on their way to Utttar Pradesh from Maharashtra, mostly walking, died in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, officials said. The trio were among thousands of migrant workers who have set out on foot for their home states from Maharashtra in the last few weeks amid lockdown on account for coronavirus.While autopsy reports were yet to be available, doctors said the possible cause of deaths was fatigue and

Coronavirus Outbreak Updates: The samples of an assistant sub inspector attached to Vinoba Bhave Nagar police station in Mumbai who died on Friday have tested positive for novel coronavirus.

Confirmed cases in Rajasthan climbed to 3,708, including 106 fatalities as the state registered 129 fresh infections and three deaths on Satuday, said the state health department.

The Union health ministry has decided to deploy Central teams to 10 states that have a high case load and are recording a high spurt of cases, in addition to the twenty teams deployed to districts with a high number of cases.

1,165 new cases, 48 deaths were reported in Maharashtra. The total number of positive cases in the state rises to 20,228, while the toll reaches 779, according to the evening bulletin issued by the state health department.

In a series of tweets, the ministry of railways said that the West Bengal government today approved eight special trains to bring back migrant labourers stranded in various states, however, no trains have been approved from Maharashtra, it said.

The country's largest paramilitary force CRPF reported 62 fresh coronavirus infections on Saturday from a single Delhi-based unit, officials said. The total number of active cases in the 3.25 lakh-strong force now stands at 231, they said. Two personnel have recovered from coronavirus while one succumbed to the infection.

23 deaths and 394 new cases were reported in Gujarat in the past 24 hours, according to reports. The total number of cases in the in the state reached 7,797 including 472 deaths.

Tamil Nadu recorded 526 fresh cases in the last 24 hours and Chennai recorded 279 cases with four deaths, reports News18. The total number of coronavirus has infections in the state has reached 6,535.

The testing capacity for COVID-19 has been scaled up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of 15,25,631 tests have been conducted so far across 332 government and 121 private laboratories, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.

The number of confirmed cases in Delhi climbed to 6,542 as 224 new infections were reported between 4 pm on Friday to midnight. According to data released by the Chief Minister's Office, no new deaths were recorded and the toll stands at 68

Karnataka on Saturday registered 41 fresh infections, pushing the total in the state to 794, including 30 deaths and 386 recoveries, according to the 5 pm bulletin issued by the state health department.

Two persons who were brought back to Kerala on an evacuation flight on 7 May have tested positive, taking the number of active cases in the state to 17, said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

The Tamil Nadu govt announced major relaxations in lockdown guidelines in non-containment zones from Monday. Essential shops can function from 6am to 7pm while standalone and neigbourhood shops to open from 10 am to 6 pm and from 10.30 am to 6 pm in Chennai.

"Number of active cases of COVID-19 stands at 1800 in Uttar Pradesh and 1399 patients have recovered. Our average recovery rate stands at around 43 percent as against national average of 30 percent," ANI quotes Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad as saying.

In a slugfest over the transportation of stranded migrants to West Bengal, railway officials on Saturday said there were no proposal on record so far with the national transporter to run any more 'Shramik Special' trains to the state.

The Indian Railways reaction came minutes after the TMC said they have already planned to run eight trains to ferry migrants from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Telangana. The railway said they did not even have the proposal yet for the train, which the TMC claimed has been scheduled from Hyderabad to Malda on Saturday at 3 pm

As the Centre has started running special trains to send stranded migrant workers back to their states, close to 1.09 lakh migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have applied on a Haryana government web portal to come to the state, Indian Express reported.

According to the report, around 79.29 percent of migrant labourers have applied to come to Gurgaon, Faridabad, Panipat, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Yamunanagar and Rewari. Little over 50,000 of them want to come to Gurgaon district.

Officials believe the state's low coronavirus numbers is a factor for the workers seeking return. Till Friday, Haryana had 647 positive cases,

West Bengal is running 711 camps for the migrants in state, we are taking good care of them, said TMC leader Derek O'Brien, reacting sharply to the allegations made by the Centre over the failure of the West Bengal government to implement standard operating procedures in bringing back stranded migrants.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien on Saturday accused Amit Shah of being biased with the BJP-ruled states with regard to stopping the movement of migrant labourers.

"The Home Minister is writing so many letters to Bengal but nothing was done in Karnataka when the CM stopped the movement of migrant labourers. Later he had to revoke the decision. The Uttar Pradesh government has waived off all labour laws but, no letters were written to them," said O'Brien.

He further alleged that the Centre was responsible for the rail mishap in Maharashtra's Aurangabad.

In response to Amit Shah's letter to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that migrants were not permitted to enter the state on trains, TMC's Derek O'brien was quoted by News18 as saying, "Home Minister of India has finally woken up from a deep sleep. We were wondering if you have helped any migrants."

A letter by the Home Minister first reached Delhi before it reached the West Bengal Govt. You sent doctors to Gujarat but a IMCT to Bengal, why are you messing around?

India's current doubling rate of COVID-19 cases improved to 11 days as against 9.9 days in the last week, while the mortality rate has been recorded at 3.3 percent, said Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday.

The Maharashtra Education Department said that no fee hike in schools can be imposed for academic year 2020-21. "Parents should not be forced to pay the remaining fee of academic year 2019-20 and the fee for 2020-21 in one go, they must be given monthly/quarterly payment options," said the state Education Department.

With the issue of migrant labourers being the latest flashpoint between Centre and West Bengal government, Home Minister Amit Shah took a potshot at chief minister Mamata Banerjee for not getting "expected support" help migrant workers reach home.

"West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. This is injustice with West Bengal migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them," Shah said in his letter to Mamata.

He further pointed out that the Centre has facilitated the return of more than 200,000 migrant labourers to reach home and that workers from West Bengal are also eager to go back.

According to the health ministry's latest notice on discharge policy for COVID-19 patients, for mild and pre-symptomatic cases, patients can be discharged after after 10 days of symptom onset and no fever for three days.

For moderate cases, patients will be discharged only after resolution of clinical symptoms and ability to maintain oxygen saturation above 95 percent for three consecutive days without support.

For severe cases, patients will be discharged after they test negative by RT-PCR.

Rajasthan registered a total of 3,636 COVID-19 positive cases after 57 more individuals tested positive for the infectious disease on Saturday. According to the state health department, the toll remained at 103 with no new deaths recorded in the past 24 hours.

With 3,320 more people testing positive in the past 24 hours across the nation, the total number of confirmed cases climbed to 59,662 on Saturday. Of the total, there were 39,834 active cases.

The Karnataka government has permitted the sale of liquor in standalone clubs, boarding hotels and bars, where the existing stock of alcohol can be sold at MRP, reported News18.

The alcohol can be bought only as takeaways from 9 am to 7 pm from Saturday till 17 May.

Karnataka has been among the few states that has wanted to restart economic activities and have the revenue come in for the state.

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday issued notices to the Maharashtra Chief Secretary and the District Magistrate of Aurangabad over 16 migrant workers being mowed down by a goods train. The incident happened between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Nanded Division.

The NHRC has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports about mowing down of 16 migrant workers by the goods train in the early hours of Friday, it said in a statement.

The officers have been directed to submit a detailed report within four weeks. "It should also include details of the steps taken by the state and the district authorities to provide food, shelter and other basic amenities to the poor people, especially migrant labourers, who are facing extreme difficulties from every angle during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown," it said.

The nationwide tally of COVID-19 cases reached 56,342 on Friday with more people testing positive for the deadly virus infection in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan among other states.

India registered an increase of 103 fatalities and 3,390 infections in the last 24 hours, on Friday while the number of those having recovered from the infection crossedg the 16,000 mark and the toll neared 1,900.

Meanwhile, the situation in Maharashtra's Mumbai and Pune remained worrisome with both cities reporting 748 and 111 cases, respectively. The massive spike in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region was reported along with the news that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation chief was replaced by the Maharashtra government on Friday.

BMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi will swap offices with Iqbal S Chahal, currently additional chief secretary (urban development).

Delhi, Chennai and Ahmedabad emerged as other major hotspots in the country, with the National Capital reporting 338 new cases, while the other two cities registered 399 and 269 cases, respectively.

Spike in cases continue despite extended lockdown

A large number of new cases were reported during the day from various cities in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, while Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha also reported rise in their tallies.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 37,916. While 16,539 people have recovered, one patient has migrated, it said. "Thus, around 29.35 percent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

The total cases include 111 foreign nationals.

The total of 103 deaths reported since Thursday morning include 43 in Maharashtra; 29 in Gujarat; eight in Madhya Pradesh; seven in West Bengal; five in Rajasthan; two each in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh; and one each in Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.

Of the 1,886 fatalities, Maharashtra tops the tally with 694 patients dying of COVID-19, Gujarat comes second with 425 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 193, West Bengal at 151, Rajasthan at 97, Delhi at 66, Uttar Pradesh at 62 and Andhra Pradesh at 38.

The death toll reached 37 in Tamil Nadu, 30 in Karnataka while Telangana has reported 29 fatalities. Punjab has registered 28 COVID-19 deaths, Jammu and Kashmir nine, Haryana seven, Bihar five and Kerala four.

Jharkhand has recorded three COVID-19 fatalities. Odisha and Himachal Pradesh have reported two deaths each.

Meghalaya, Chandigarh, Assam and Uttarakhand have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.

According to the health ministry data updated in the morning, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 17,974 followed by Gujarat at 7,012, Delhi at 5,980, Tamil Nadu at 5,409, Rajasthan at 3,427, Madhya Pradesh at 3,252 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,071.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 1,847 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,644 in Punjab.

The tally has risen to 1,548 in West Bengal, 1,123 in Telangana, 793 in Jammu and Kashmir, 705 in Karnataka, 625 in Haryana and 550 in Bihar.

Kerala has reported 503 coronavirus cases so far, while Odisha has 219. A total of 135 people have been infected with the virus in Chandigarh and 132 in Jharkhand.

Tripura has reported 65 cases, Uttarakhand has 61, Chhattisgarh has 59, Assam has 54, Himachal Pradesh has 46 and Ladakh has 42.

Thirty-three COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Meghalaya has registered 12 cases, Puducherry has nine, while Goa has seven. Manipur has two cases. Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Dadar and Nagar Haveli have reported one case each.

"Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)," the ministry said on its website.

State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation, it said.

MHA says 'learn to live with virus'

During a press briefing on the COVID-19 situation, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said, "As we talk of relaxations to the lockdown and of migrant workers returning back to their respective homes, there is a big challenge in front of us that we also have to learn to live with the virus."

"And when we are talking about learning to live with the virus then it is very important that the guidelines that are there on saving oneself from the virus are adopted in the community as a behavioural change," he added.

It is a big challenge and the government needs the community support for it, Agarwal added.

The ministry also reeled off various datasets, including those showing a rising number of infection-free districts and an increasing recovery rate, to suggest the success of the government's strategy in the COVID-19 fight, even as it sought "a behavioural change" and everyone's support in this massive challenge.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, however, admitted there has been no success yet in breaking the virus chain, and said his government may seek deployment of central forces, if needed, to allow police personnel to take rest in phases. The state tops the nationwide tally for confirmed cases as well as deaths.

Ugly side of migrant crisis

Sixteen migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks while returning to Madhya Pradesh were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra. The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape police attention.

Those killed and the four other migrant workers who survived were all male, officials said. A viral video clip from the scene of the tragedy shows the bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

Aurangabad SP Mokshada Patil told PTI that three of the four survivors had tried in vain to wake up their colleagues who had slept on the track after an overnight walk from Jalna, around 40 kilometres from the accident spot. The workers were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna along rail tracks, while returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station said.

Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments announced financial aid of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased.

Separately in Karnataka, hundreds of migrant workers gathered on Mangaluru station in protest. They told the local police that they were stuck in the city without jobs, money and adequate food and that they were even willing to walk to their home states if the special trains were not operated immediately.

Meanwhile, a plea has been filed in the Supreme Court on Friday seeking a direction to the Centre to ask all district magistrates in the country to identify stranded migrant workers and provide shelter and food to them before ensuring their free transportation to native places in view of the Aurangabad tragedy.

Economic costs of lockdown causes worry

With the pandemic and the ongoing lockdown hitting the economy badly, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh urged the prime minister to spell out the way forward for the country's economic revival and an exit strategy from the third phase of the lockdown.

A nationwide lockdown has been in place since 25 March, which was first imposed for 21 days but got extended first for another 14 days till 3 May and then for further 14 days in the third phase, with considerable relaxations, till 17 May.

The economic cost of the COVID-19 fight and the ongoing nationwide lockdown also appeared rising manifold with Moody's Investors Service projecting India's economic growth at zero percent for the current fiscal. It also said that a high government debt, weak social and physical infrastructure, and a fragile financial sector face further pressures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to experts, industrial and other business establishments may also face a huge labour shortage once they resume operations after the lockdown, which has been in place since 25 March and is scheduled to continue till 17 May. Lakhs of migrant workers have either left for their native places or are in the process of doing so, including by trains and buses arranged by state governments.

There are also worries that the virus spread may grow further in newer areas following these movements, while a large number of Indians stranded abroad have also begun returning home in special flights.

Since its outbreak in China last December, more than 38.6 lakh people have been found to be infected with this virus, while over 2.7 lakh people have lost their lives. Nearly 13 lakh people have recovered so far, including about 2 lakh in the US.

Separately, a panel of experts, formed to suggest ways to revive Maharashtra's economy, hit by the COVID-19 crisis and the resultant lockdown, submitted its report to the government during the day.

Several states have been taking steps to shore up their resources, including by levying higher taxes on fuel and liquor.

After Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and several others, Himachal Pradesh government has now decided to impose a 'corona cess' on liquor sales, while Puducherry chief minister V Narayanasamy also said the territorial administration was mulling imposition of special COVID-19 tax on liquor to wriggle out of the current fiscal crisis.

The Madras High Court, however, ordered closure of liquor shops in Tamil Nadu a day after they were reopened, but allowed sale of liquor through online and door delivery till the end of the lockdown.

The Supreme Court too asked states to consider non-direct contact or online sales and home delivery of liquor during the lockdown period to prevent the spread of coronavirus on account of crowding at the shops.

Liquor shops were allowed to be opened in the third phase of the lockdown, which began on 4 May, subject to compliance to social distancing and other guidelines issued by the government.

With inputs from PTI
Qatar mulling over investment projects in Ukraine  FM Kuleba

12:20, 08.05.20 841

The sides also discussed exports of Ukrainian farm produce to Qatar.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says 29 million to 44 million Africans may get infected with COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, according to a study.

The WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, disclosed this in a statement posted on its website.

The UN health agency also said the study revealed that 83,000 to 190,000 people in Africa could die of COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic.

The research, which is based on prediction modelling, looks at 47 countries in the WHO African Region with a total population of one billion.

The new estimates are based on modifying the risk of transmission and disease severity by variables specific to each country in order to adjust for the unique nature of the region.

The model predicts the observed slower rate of transmission, lower age of people with severe disease and lower mortality rates compared to what is seen in most affected countries in the rest of the world.

This is largely driven by social and environmental factors slowing the transmission, and a younger population that has benefitted from the control of communicable diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis to reduce possible vulnerabilities, it said.

The lower rate of transmission, however, suggested a more prolonged outbreak over a few years, according to the study.

It also revealed that smaller African countries alongside Algeria, South Africa and Cameroon were at a high risk if containment measures were not prioritised.

Containment measures, which include contact tracing, isolation, improved personal hygiene practices and physical distancing aim to slow down the transmission of the virus so its effects happen at a rate manageable by the health system.

Physical distancing is not about the confinement of people but rather avoiding unnecessary contacts as people live, work and socialise as a means to interrupt transmission, it said.

READ ALSO:

The statement quoted Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, as saying, While COVID-19 likely wont spread as exponentially in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder in transmission hotspots.

COVID-19 can become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region. We need to test, trace, isolate and treat, it further stated.

It further said that the predicted number of cases that would require hospitalisation would overwhelm the available medical capacity in much of Africa.

There will be an estimated 3.6 million5.5 million COVID-19 hospitalisations, of which 82,000  167, 000 will be severe cases requiring oxygen, and 52, 000 107, 000 will be critical cases requiring breathing support.

Such a huge number of patients in hospitals will severely strain the health capacities of countries, it stated.

It said a survey of health services in the African region undertaken in March 2020 based on self-reports by 47 countries to WHO, revealed that there were on average, nine intensive care unit beds per one million people.

These will be woefully inadequate. Additionally, the physical access to these services to the general population is very low, suggesting many people will not even have the chance to get to the needed care.

Diseases that can be managed can easily become more complicated as a result.

The study recommends that countries across Africa need to expand the capacity, particularly of primary hospitals and ensure that basic emergency care is included in primary health systems, it said.

The statement further quoted Moeti as saying, The importance of promoting effective containment measures is ever more crucial, as sustained and widespread transmission of the virus can severely overwhelm our health systems.

Curbing a large scale outbreak is far costlier than the ongoing preventive measures governments are undertaking to contain the spread of the virus, it said.

All countries in the WHO African Region were using these results through the WHO country offices to inform their containment actions.

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The detailed methods and results were currently in press at the British Medical Journal-Global Health after extensive peer review and validation.

(NAN)
Clarence Peters

08.05.2020 LISTEN

Clarence Peters, a popular Nigerian music video director who was detained by the Lagos State Police Command over the death of a video vixen, has been granted bail.

The music producer was on Sunday arrested and detained by the police after the video vixen (Kodak) reportedly died of electrocution while charging her phone in his apartment at Omole Estate, Lagos State.

According to the police, everyone present at the music director's house when the unfortunate incident happened was also invited for questioning.

However, the Lagos State Police Spokesman, Bala Elkana, while confirming the development, told DAILY POST that Clarence and others who were detained over the death of the video vixen were released on Wednesday pending the outcome of the investigation.

They were granted bail while the investigation is ongoing. Members of the public will be updated on the outcome of the investigation as soon as it is concluded, he added.
The president visited the "Ukraine to Liberators" memorial complex in the village of Milove in Luhansk region.

As Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on May 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived on a working trip to Luhansk region, where he visited the village of Milove near the border with Russia, to commemorate those killed in World War II.

The president visited the "Ukraine to Liberators" memorial complex in Milove. He laid flowers at the Eternal Flame, as well as set candle lamps near the monument there  a statue of a soldier who has taken off his hat to pay tribute to his native land and a woman freed from Nazi captivity who leans on his chest, as reported by the president's press service.

Read alsoKyiv mayor announces cancellation of mass events on Victory Day

The basement of the monument contains a museum. It is part of the memorial complex in the village's center. Next to the monument, there is a mass grave. Hundreds of known and unknown soldiers who had died during the liberation of Milove were buried there. Some 1,066 names of fallen heroes are engraved on 27 memorial plaques at the mass grave.

Moreover, the village of Pivnivka is not far from that place. It became the first populated locality where the expulsion of Nazi invaders from Ukrainian land began in December 1942.

UNIAN memo. The Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation has been marked in Ukraine since 2015.

This holiday was established by a presidential decree "to commemorate the feat of the Ukrainian people, their outstanding contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition in World War II and show respect to all fighters against Nazism."
In a letter they both signed on Wednesday, Mzembi and the former Higher Education deputy minister said the Peoples Party was formed to facilitate a democratic change in Zimbabwe but internal contributions have stood in its way and thus the decision to quit.
ISIS attacks return in Iraq; Andrew White warns jihadis 'seem more empowered' than before

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As Muslims celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and as governments try to combat the spread of COVID-19, there has been a resurgence of deadly attacks by the Islamic State in Iraq over two years after the groups territorial defeat.

According to reports, militants aligned with the jihadi group have launched a series of attacks in the last week as they are trying to take advantage of gaps in security protection in Iraq.

Attacks in Iraqs Diyala and Salahuddin provinces have resulted in the killings of security personnel and have also damaged sources of electricity.

"Amongst all the Corona Virus news there has been no mention of the massive crisis in Iraq," Andrew White, an Anglican vicar who spent years serving in Baghdad, warned followers on Facebook. "Many people have been killed by gun fire and morters. The sad fact is ISIS has returned in force."

"Some politician friends say it is like ISIS returning on steroids," White added. "They seem more empowerd now than ever before. We need serious prayer that order will be restoredi. Things are truly desperate."

The attacks are creating fear that the militant group is resurging as governments are devoting their resources to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to The Military Times.

Since its territorial defeat in late 2017, the Islamic State had lost the ability to carry out large-scale military operations. The group has also gone into hiding with reports that militants are quartered now in caves located in northern Iraq.

Its a real threat, Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq, told the news outlet. They are mobilizing and killing us in the north and they will start hitting Baghdad soon.

According to Talabani, the Islamic State is taking advantage of a gap between Kurdish forces and the Iraqi military in Iraq.

Salahuddin council member Subhan Jiyad told Al-Monitor that the first of several Islamic State attacks in a 24-hour period began just before devout Muslim security personnel was set to enjoy a pre-dawn meal last Saturday, May 2.

Another source who was not named told the Arab media site that Sunni locals from the Albu Issa tribe were among those killed.

According to Al-Monitor, the first attack occurred in the town of Mukashifa, a Sunni-majority town that lies on a road that links Baghdad with Tikrit. The city is northwest of the town of Samarra, which not only contains a pilgrimage site for Muslims but is also the hometown of deceased Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Six members of the local Popular Mobilization Units were killed in the attack on a checkpoint, Jiyad explained. Then, when reinforcements were sent in, three more were killed by an improvised explosive device set by IS.

Middle East Eye reports that the attack near Samarra began in the early hours of the morning when six youth security fighters, who were preparing their pre-dawn meal, were burned and killed by Islamic State militants.

After setting explosive devices that killed three more, Islamic State fighters attacked a police station around 9 p.m. that night in the Zaghaniya village of Diyala, about 35 miles north of Baghdad.

Iraqs Security Media Cell disclosed that at least four police officers were killed in the attack and 10 others were injured.

The media cell on Sunday said that the Islamic State attacked PMU forces located just south of the city of Tikirt, about 96 miles from Baghdad.

Although some fear that the attacks could be an indication that the group is trying to regain a foothold in Iraq, one military officer who spoke with Middle East Eye said that the two operations were not high profile and did not mean that IS has regained its ability to carry out major operations.

The officer blamed neglect and relaxation by security forces for allowing such attacks to occur.

The same mistake always recurs, the senior military officer was quoted as saying. Calm breeds relaxation, speed creates confusion and the two lead to disaster.

Clashes between the PMF, an Iraq-sponsored coalition of about 40 militias, and Islamic State fighters continued through Monday in Salahuddin as well as other parts of Iraq, according to Newsweek.

The series of Islamic State attacks come after the U.S. has drawn down its troop presence in both Syria and Iraq. It also comes as Turkeys military activities against Kurdish rebels in Syria are hampering the U.S.-led international coalitions counter-Islamic State efforts, according to Military Times.

In Syria, the Islamic State is also said to be responsible for the killing of six soldiers who were killed when their vehicle struck a landmine in the Homs province, as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights last Thursday.

On April 9, Islamic State fighters reportedly attacked government-held positions near the town of Sukhna in the Homs province. According to Military Times, 32 troops and 26 Islamic State fighters were killed during two days of fighting in the town.

United Kingdom military intelligence had reported that a group of Islamic State extremists was hiding out in a series of caves northeast of the Bayji, an Iraqi city about 130 miles north of Baghdad.

In a press release Wednesday, the Royal Air Force announced that two of its Typhoon FGR4 planes joined U.S. aircraft in attacking the caves in northeast Iraq on April 28.

The Typhoons dropped precision-guided Paveway IV bombs and about [10 Islamic State] militants were killed in the joint UK-US strike, the Royal Air Force said. The raid was carried out following intelligence that had identified the location of the Daesh cell, which was operating in the Hamrin mountains, northeast of the Iraqi town of Bayji. The RAF jets targeted six caves, while US strikes were carried out on four other caves.
The Indian government began one of the biggest repatriation operation - the Vande Bharat mission - on Thursday to bring back Indian citizens stranded across the globe. The operation which is spread over seven days is expected to operate a total of 64 flights and naval ships as well to 11 countries and bring back around 14,800 people. Stranded citizens will be tested before boarding the flight and only asymptomatic individuals will be allowed. The Ministry of Home Affairs has also issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the evacuation and has said that it will prioritise the distressed in foreign countries.

READ | Coronavirus Live Updates: India's Cases Rise To 56,342; Recovery Rate Increases To 29.36%

Here are further details about the Vande Bharat Mission :

A total number of 64 flights carrying approximately 15,000 returnees from 12 countries are expected to land at 14 airports across India during Week 1 from May 7-15, 2020.



As of now, 4 flights have already landed in India. On May 7, 2020 - Air India flight IX-452 from Abu Dhabi to Kochi with 181 passengers and Air India flight IX-344 from Dubai to Kozhikode with 182 passengers. All passengers from UAE underwent rapid anti-body tests before departure. On May 8, 2020  AI 381 with 234 passengers from Singapore to Delhi and AI 1242 with 168 passengers from Dhaka to Srinagar.



A total number of 27 flights shall take off from the Gulf region during Week 1 - UAE-11 (including the 2 that have already landed), Saudi Arabia-5, Kuwait-5, Bahrain-2, Qatar-2 and Oman-2.



From the neighbourhood, 7 flights shall take off during Week 1 from Bangladesh (including the one that has already landed) carrying passengers bound for Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

READ | MHA Issues SOP For Evacuation Of Indian Nationals Stranded Abroad, Priority To Distressed



Similarly, 14 flights shall take off during Week 1 from South-East Asia, 5 each from Singapore (including the one that has already landed) and the Philippines and 4 from Malaysia.



7 flights shall take off during Week 1 from 4 airports in US - New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco. Another 7 flights shall take off from London in the UK.



These flights are expected to land at 14 airports across India during Week 1 - Delhi (10 flights), Hyderabad (9), Kochi (9), Kozhikode (4), Trivandrum (1), Kannur (1), Chennai (9), Trichy (1), Ahmadabad (5), Mumbai (4), Srinagar (3). Bengaluru (4), Lucknow (1) and Amritsar (1).



INS Jalashwa has set sail today, May 08, at 1630 IST from Male to Kochi with approximately 700 returnees on board. ETA at Kochi is forenoon May 10, depending upon sea conditions. INS Magar, is expected to set sail from Male with 200 returnees on May 10 to reach Kochi on May 12. Depending upon requirements, both ships will make another journey from Male to Tuticorin subsequently.

READ | India's Covid Evacuation Plan Accessed: 7 Days, 11 Countries, 64 Flights, 14,800 People

MEA has developed a dynamic online platform on which requests received by Indian Missions from Indian nationals wishing to return are regularly being uploaded.



As of now, a total number of 67,833 requests for repatriation have been registered. These include, in descending order, requests from students (34% of the total - 22,470), migrant workers (30% of the total - 15,815), short-term visa holders faced with the expiry of visas (9,250), those faced with a medical emergency or seeking treatment for terminal illness (5,531), tourists stranded abroad (4,147), pregnant women and the elderly (3,041) and those required to return due to death of a family member (1,112).



 State-wise break-up of repatriation requests, in descending order, is as follows: Kerala (25,246), Tamil Nadu (6,617), Maharashtra (4,341), Uttar Pradesh (3,715), Rajasthan (3,320), Telangana (2,796), Karnataka (2,786), Andhra Pradesh (2,445), Gujarat (2,330) and Delhi (2,232).

READ | 'Don't Fly Empty Planes,' Stranded NRIs Urge Govt As India Gears-up For Global Evacuation
Nigerian startup Helium Health sits in a good position during a difficult period, according to its co-founder.

The Lagos based healthtech venture is in the black, has batted away acquisition offers, and just raised a $10 million Series A round, CEO Adegoke Olubusi told TechCrunch.

The startup offers a product suit that digitizes data, formalizes monetization and enables telemedicine for health care systems in Nigeria, Liberia, and Ghana.

Helium plans to use the latest funding round to hire and expand to North and East Africa, including Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Morocco, Olubusi confirmed on a call.

He co-founded the startup in 2016  with Dimeji Sofowora and Tito Ovia  to bring better delivery of medical services in Nigeria and broader Africa.

"It's really about tackling three core problems that we see in the healthcare sector in Africa: inefficiency, fragmentation and a lack of data," said Olubusi.

When he and co-founders Sofowora and Oviato set out doing research for Helium, they noted a data desert on medical info across the continent's healthcare infrastructure.

"We figured out very quickly that that is a long term problem to solve. And the best way to get the data and access to it is to give simple technology to the providers and let them use it to make their lives more efficient."

Helium Health has since developed several core product areas for healthcare entities with application for providers, payment, patients, and partners.

It offers tech solutions and developer resources for administration, medical records and financial management. Helium Health has digital payment and credit products for hospitals and insurance providers.

As part of the latest financing, the startup is launching several new products  such as the MyHelium Patient app to facilitate appointments and information sharing between healthcare providers and citizens.

Images Credits: Helium Health

Helium also accelerated deployment of a telemedicine platform in response to the coronavirus hitting Nigeria and the lockdowns that ensued.

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"In the last three weeks since we launched we've had roughly 360 hospitals sign up, and they've had thousands of [online] visits already," Olubusi said.

Helium Health generates revenues by charging percentages and fees on its products, services and accompanying transactions. Current clients include several hospitals in the West Africa region, such as Paelon Memorial in Lagos.

Helium Health's model got the attention of the startup's $10 million Series A backers and Silicon Valley accelerator Y-Combinator  which accepted the startup into its spring 2017 batch.

Global Ventures and Africa Healthcare Masterfund co-led the investment with participation that included Tencent and additional Y-Combinator support.

Global Ventures General Partner Noor Sweid confirmed the Dubai based fund's co-lead of the $10 million round and that the firm will take a Helium Health board seat.

The path of the startup's CEO  Adegoke Olubusi  to becoming a tech founder passed through the U.S. and traditional corporate roles. He went to Maryland in 2014 to complete an advanced degree in engineering at Johns Hopkins University, then did a stint at Goldman Sachs before landing positions in big tech with eBay and PayPal.

Olubusi found work with big corporates less than stimulating and gravitated to forming his own company and returning to Nigeria.

"When I was at eBay and Goldman I was really bored and I wanted to do something more challenging," he said. "We thought, 'why don't we pick a problem that is a long-term problem in Africa,'" Olubusi explained.

Helium Health founders (L to R) Dimeji Sofowora, Tito Ovia, and Adegoke Olubusi: Image Credits: Helium Health

The founder believes the products Helium Health creates can improve the poor health care stats in countries such as Nigeria  which stands as Africa's largest economy and most populous nation.

Nigeria also ranked 142nd out of 195 countries on health performance indicators in The Lancet's 2018 Healthcare Access and Quality Index.

On the dismal stats, "We need more properly run hospitals, and we need more profitable hospitals, health systems and health care providers," said Olubusi.

Better monetization and organization of hospitals could lure more doctors back to African countries, he believes.

"Half my family are doctors but none of them practice in Nigeria. Everyone's practicing all over the place, but Nigeria," Olubusi said.

The founder also sees a more digitized and data driven health care sector as something that can draw more entrepreneurs to African healthtech. Compared to dominant sectors, such as fintech, health related startups in Africa gain a small percentage of the continent's annual VC haul  only 9.3% by Partech's 2019 stats.

"There are people who want to invest in the market but they can't...and founders can't really tackle a healthcare problem because they don't know what's going on," he said.

As for his venture, Olubusi expects growth even given the precarious economic outlook COVID-19 is creating for countries, such as Nigeria  which is expected to enter recession this year.

The coronavirus and lockdowns are shining a light on the country's healthcare inadequacies (according to Helium Health's CEO) that people can't ignore, including the elite.

"This is the first time they can't get on their jet and leave so they have to go to the hospitals we have. The system was neglected for the last few decades because people had that [previous] option," said Olubusi.

"I'm hoping this coronavirus crisis will be a period that forces everyone to rethink what we're doing [on healthcare]."

That could lead to more business for Helium Health.

The startup doesn't release financial information but has positive net income. "We do generate revenues in millions of dollars and are profitable," Olubusi said.

Helium Health has received acquisition offers, but declined them, according to its CEO. Olubusi and team intend to grow the venture to the point where it can list on a global exchange.

"We know this is the kind of business we can take public, without having to sell," he said.
Weapon up-gradation initiatives undertaken by the world Leading and developing countries. Rising expenses in military via private and government sector will create more opportunity into Automatic Weapons Market. dispatching autonomous weapons to hunt and kill without further human involvement, with remotely operated and expendable drones, tanks and similar battlefield machinery replacing the human element, automatic weapons Industry is growing in this region in order to upgrade military capabilities, These technologies are being pursued most vigorously by the nuclear-armed nations and factors to impact more on the growth of Automatic Weapons Market.

Based on the Product, Automatic Rifle segment is expected to hold the largest share in the market during the forecast period due it fires continually until the trigger is released, to support the defense organizations for timely delivery of essential materials, provides better power efficiency, more effective while shooting, requires less energy and effort while firing to target during war time or training. Emerging nations such as Brazil, India, and China are placing military up-gradation on top of their priority list, Cross border terrorism and security threats also fueling more demand of better riffle and increasing support to military personnel will boost demand in market. In End User, Land segment is also expected to lead the market growth.

The report provides details list of drivers and restraints of the market, which are influencing the market growth.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/4021

Major driving factors of the automatic weapons are a salient point of departure in a technology-fueled arms race that puts everyone in danger specialized missions such as surgical strikes, which has warranted increased surveillance, Positive product outlook owing to integrated system architecture and leading-edge technology offering superior performance and reliability will drive the industry demand, advances in machine autonomy derive primarily from research efforts in three disciplines: artificial intelligence (AI), robotics.

Rise in interdependencies linked to commercial trade, partnerships, and treaty obligations have increased. Traditional arms producers are certainly involved in the development of autonomous technologies but the amount of resources that these companies (can) allocate to R&D is far less than that mobilized by large commercial entities in the civilian sector. Government policy and huge investment cost will act as a restraint to the market.

In terms of region, Asia Pacific is expected to hold the largest share in the market during the forecast period owing to increased security expenses, the expansion of economies and the rise in population in Asia also demanding more. Asian governments are increasing their defense spending at quite a higher rate, they are mainly doing this commensurately with their economic growth, which has been famously rapid for most of the current century. 2017, five of the ten biggest arms importers were in the region: India, China, Indonesia, Australia and Pakistan. Vietnam, South Korea, and Taiwan were among the top 15 largest arms importers. Recently  The Indian defense ministry as planned to float a tender to purchase six regiments of homemade Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers for $2 billion. North America is the leading arms exporter in the world which increased its exports by 30 percent compared with 2009a15.

The report includes a detailed study of Porteras Five Forces model to analyze the different factors affecting the growth of the market. Moreover, the study also covers a market attractiveness analysis, PESTLE analysis, Value Chain Analysis, and SWOT analysis.

Make an Inquiry before Buying: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/checkout/4021/Single

Scope of the Report for Automatic Weapons Market

Global Automatic Weapons Market, by Product

Automatic Rifle

Machine Gun

Automatic launchers

Automatic Cannon

Gatling Gun

Global Automatic Weapons Market, by End User

Land

Airborne

Naval

Handheld & Stationary

Global Automatic Weapons Market, by Caliber

Small

Medium

Large

Global Automatic Weapons Market, by Region

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

South America

Key Players Operating in Automatic Weapons Market

Genco ATC

One Network Enterprises

ManTech International

Claxton Logistics

Minrav Holdings Ltd.

AECOM

KBR

Fluor Corporation

ANHAM

Klinge Corporation

DynCorp International

Lockheed Martin

ASELSAN A.S.

Honeywell

ANHAM

FedEx Supply Chain

American International Contractors

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/4021
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The presidents son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner, suggested having Trumps future national security adviser use secure communications at the Russian embassy to communicate with Russian generals, according to newly released transcripts from the House Intelligence Committee.

The suggestion, made during a December 2016 meeting with Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, was ultimately nixed by the Russian ambassador, according to Kushner.

Kushners proposed back-channel with the Kremlin has been widely reported, but this is the first detailed, on-the-record account by him of the incident. The Washington Post reported in May 2017 that Kislyak relayed the proposal to his superiors in Moscow at the time.

Kushner framed the proposal as an innocuous way to develop closer cooperation with Russia in Syria, saying the Russian ambassador had lamented to him shortly after Trumps 2016 electoral win that the Russians believed Americas strategy in Syria was a little bit misguided.

During a meeting with Flynn and Kislyak, Kushner said, the ambassador suggested thatthatthat therethat they would like to give us, you know, their military's perspective on it, asked if there was a secure way to do so.

Knowing there was no secure line in the transition office in New York, he said, I said, look, can we use your communication?  He said, no, we shouldn't do that.

Then we moved on and decided that if there was not a way that they were comfortable relaying to us that information, then we'd wait until after we wereafter inauguration and do it through the normal course, Kushner said.

He had information he wanted to give us. They couldn't find a way to get that information. I suggested an idea, which we all then concluded was not a good idea. There's nothing wrong with giving an idea that is wrong, because, you know, if you do something that's wrong, then that's something that you have to look at, he said.

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Kushner claimed there was nothing nefarious about his proposal. He was merely being a business guy, he told investigators. I wasn't proposing it one way or the other. I was  we were  you know, what you do in meetings when you're trying to solve a problem is you brainstorm situations, so people throw out different ideas.

Asked who the Trump team wanted to prevent from hearing the communications, he shrugged off a suggestion that it could have been the U.S. administration.

It could have been to keep it from the Chinese. It could have been to keep it from anyone else who listens to the calls, he said. Kushner added he had no evidence to support such a supposition.

He denied that the proposal was intended to allow nefarious hidden conversations and claimed hed only suggested using a Russian facility for the communications because he knew of no other way.

I assume that, if we had a wayif we had something that was available to us that General Flynn knew of, he would have said: Well, I have this suggestion for something thats available to us that I know of to be able to get the information. Since he didn't have a way to get the information that he knew of, I wasn't going to ask the Russian Ambassador if he knew of anything in our government that was appropriate for him to transmit the information to.

A 2015 agreement between Moscow and Washington did establish a communication channel the so-called deconfliction channelbetween the two sides on the ground in Syria, however, a fact which it seems Flynn should have been aware of at the time.

Kushners outreach to Russian officials also apparently did not end with his proposed back-channel. According to the transcripts, he also met with the chairman of a U.S.-sanctioned Russian bank at Kislyaks initiative in December 2016.

I mean, it's funny, people asked me after, they said, did you know his bank was under sanctions? Kushner told investigators of his meeting with Sergey Gorkov of Vnesheconombank.

Kislyak had promised that Gorkov could provide much more insight into what Putin's thoughts were on a potential new relationship, Kushner said.

He said the topic of U.S. sanctions never came up, and that after talking to Gorkov, you would have thought his bank was the best bank in the world.

So he was clearly selling what a great job they were doing. And I think he mentioned that they financed the Olympics, and that was really the extent of it.

Flynn, who President Trump on Thursday praised as a warrior, baffled some Pentagon officials during his brief reign as national security adviser with his push to expand military communications with Russia in Syria. As The Daily Beast previously reported, Flynn raised eyebrows among some officials with a proposal to team up with Russia in Syria in a way that would actually likely violate defense provisions that bar such close cooperation.

The transcripts detailing Kushers own admissions on the proposed backchannel were released on the same day the Department of Justice sparked outrage by moving to drop the case against Flynn

While both Kushner and the White House have downplayed the significance of the 2016 back-channel proposal with Russia, it was not the only time that Team Trump tried to bypass traditional communication channels for interactions with Russian officials.

Trumpworld insider and Blackwater founder Erik Prince similarly tried to set up an alternate channel during an early 2017 meeting with the head of Russias sovereign wealth fund. Prince claimed that the two just happened to meet, one of several patently untrue statements about the get-together. The House Intelligence Committee referred Prince to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution last year.

Kushner, for his part, told the committee he had no knowledge of any such meetings.

-- Noah Shachtman contributed reporting

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 16:50:01|Editor: huaxia

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KABUL, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) on Friday reported 215 new COVID-19 cases within the past 24 hours, taking the total cases to 3,778.

The ministry said in a statement that four COVID patients were discharged from hospitals across the country during the period, bringing to 472 the number of patients who recovered from the disease.

Three COVID patients died since early Thursday, bringing the death toll to 109.

Earlier in the day, Afghan health authorities confirmed that Public Health Minister Firuzuddin Firuz tested positive for the coronavirus.

To contain the pandemic, the Afghan government has put big cities including Kabul under quarantine since late March, calling on people to remain at home.

In a latest effort to support the COVID-19 response, the government has extended the quarantine for a third time for a further 21 days which is expected to end on May 30. Enditem
BOISE  Idaho Gov. Brad Littles office announced Thursday that it has filed the necessary petitions to ask the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn a ruling requiring Idaho to pay for a transgender inmates gender confirmation surgery.

Its the second time the state has appealed a ruling directing it to provide the surgery to 31-year-old Adree Edmo, a transwoman who is serving a sentence of three to 10 years for sexual abuse of a child under 16 in Bannock County. Last August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmills previous ruling that denying Edmo the surgery constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The 9th Circuits decision goes against the text and original meaning of the Eighth Amendment and contradicts more than four decades of Supreme Court precedent, Little said in a news release. We will vigorously litigate the 9th Circuits unprecedented ruling at the Supreme Court because the taxpayers of Idaho should not have to pay for a procedure that is not medically necessary.

Edmo sued the Idaho Department of Correction and its medical provider, Corizon, in 2017, arguing that the surgery is a medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition that can cause severe distress in individuals whose biological sex does not align with their gender identity.

Littles news release noted that the state asked the 9th Circuit Court to rehear the case, but was denied.

Ten judges dissented from the denial. One of those dissents, joined by eight judges, found the 9th Circuits decision to be as unjustified as it is unprecedented,  the news release said.

At least four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court judges must agree to hear a case before it is considered by the Supreme Court.

If Edmos surgery is performed, it could be the first gender confirmation surgery performed on a U.S. inmate in custody.

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A Covid-19 community assessment hub based in a major acute hospital is caring for homeless and other vulnerable people unable to access treatment.

The new hub at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, officially opened by the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, will treat those most marginalised in the inner city.

The hub has a mobile as well as a hospital-based assessment unit so it will be able to reach out to people living in poverty and those living in congregated settings.

Marginalised groups often live in overcrowded settings where physical distancing and self-isolation or cocooning is difficult or impossible and this increases the spread of the virus.

Safetynet and the Mater Hospital, together with the support of the HSE, are providing the bespoke service.

Mr Harris said the community assessment hub provided a rapid response service to test for Covid-19 among people who were homeless, those living in extreme poverty, undocumented migrants and other vulnerable groups in the inner city.

The number of cases of Covid-19 among people who are homeless is less than expected and this is a testament to the effectiveness of this targeted approach, he said.

Consultant in infectious diseases and inclusion health at the Mater Hospital, Dr Tara McGinty, said the Covid Hub solution was a much needed and valuable addition to the resources needed to protect and treat the most vulnerable.

The Mater Hospital is making a purpose-built assessment facility available to the medical charity, Safetynet Primary Care, to assess and treat patients from marginalised communities.

Safetynets chief executive, Dr Fiona OReilly, said the partnership with the Mater and HSE increased their capacity to assist vulnerable people without access to care.

Safetynet Primary Care has reconfigured its services to respond to the Covid-19 health crisis so it can identify, triage, test and treat homeless and vulnerable people.

Chief executive of the Mater, Alan Sharp, said the partnership was very much in keeping with the key ethos of SlainteCare, which was about hospitals and the community working closely together to deliver the highest quality care at the most appropriate level.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

In accordance with the rules envisaged by the Azerbaijani Law on Environmental Impact Assessment, when assessing the impact on the environment by enterprises disposing and processing safe and hazardous waste, as well as designing of the structures and landfills, an appropriate document subject to the mandatory state expertise must be drawn up, Trend reports.

The corresponding issue has been outlined in the amendment to the law on industrial and household waste, discussed at the meeting of the Azerbaijani parliament on May 8.

In accordance with the proposed amendment, the third and sixth parts are added into the seventh article of this law.

The amendments imply the following:

- if the facilities envisaged in the third part of this article (residential buildings, enterprises, structures during the operation of which waste is generated) comply with environmental requirements on environmental impact indicators, an environmental impact assessment document is not required during the reconstruction of these facilities or the replacement of their facilities and equipment. However, the appropriate changes are made in the documents (permissible limits of waste, permissible limit of wastewater, environmental passport), issued for these facilities by a structure determined by the corresponding executive body given the requirements of legal acts, technical acts related to the environment protection;

- if the conditions of use of the abovementioned facilities do not meet the environmental requirements on environmental impact indicators or in case of application of technologies and technological methods differing from those envisaged in the initial draft, it is necessary to re-evaluate the environmental impact on them;

- in case of detecting transboundary impact during the environmental impact assessment of the facilities envisaged in the third part of this article, the issues of transboundary impact assessment in connection with these facilities are resolved in accordance with international treaties, in which one of the sides is Azerbaijan.

Following the discussions, the amendments were put to the vote and adopted in the second reading.
Pritzkers Restore Illinois plan breaks the state down into four regions, each of which could reopen on its own timeline based on coronavirus infection rates, hospitalizations and other measures. Under the plan, gatherings of 10 or more people would continue to be banned until Phase 4, and none of the regions would fully reopen until theres a vaccine or effective, widely available treatment.
The rising cases of Coronavirus in the state of Maharashtra, especially among the Muslim communities, has prompted the state epidemiology department to issue Coronavirus awareness messages in Urdu in select hotspots.

The government has also decided to rope in Islamic clerics and local religious leaders for outreach towards Muslims to contain the spread of Chinese pandemic, reports Indian Express

According to the reports, at least 239 deaths out of the total 548 deaths recorded in Maharashtra are from the Muslim community, making a whopping 44 per cent of the total deaths in the state, which is almost thrice their share of the population in the state. The numbers are quite alarming as Muslims are reportedly less than 12 per cent in the states population.

Since the first death reported on March 17, 89 Muslims died of the 187 deaths reported till April 15 in the state. Between April 15 to May 3, of the 361 additional deaths, 150 were from the community.

Incidentally, only one death of a Filipino national is linked to Tablighi Jamaat mid-March event in New Delhi. 69 coronavirus positive cases in Maharashtra were traced to the Tablighi Jamaat.

Maharashtra acted late in enforcing ban on religious congregations: Experts

The state officials and experts have pointed out several reasons behind the surge in coronavirus cases in the Muslim community. The authorities pointed out that curbs on travellers from the Gulf came only as late as mid-March leading to spread of the virus.

In addition to that, the state authorities did not impose a ban on the religious aggregation as Friday prayers in many mosques continued until March 20.

The Indian Express report also states that a significant share of the community lives in neighbourhoods where social distancing is difficult, the authorities noted. The high population density in Muslim-dominated areas is also among the reasons for the rising number of coronavirus cases among Muslims in the state.

A lot of people working (in the Gulf) returned home and were missed during airport screening. That was a game-changer. We noticed that several of them, although asymptomatic, spread infection in the community, state epidemiologist Pradeep Awate said.

Additionally, it was only after March 16, almost two months after the first China advisory, that the government started the quarantine of passengers coming from the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. The same day, passengers from EU, Turkey and the UK were banned, and on March 22, all international flights were suspended.

Social distancing is difficult in slums

Awate added that most cases were now coming from the lower socio-economic strata. He added that the cases are spreading in slums not because of a particular religious group, but because of poor living conditions. In the slums, Muslims are in large numbers and at least 8-10 people live in a small room where social distancing is difficult, Awate said.

It was evident is wards of Agripada and Nagpada, where 34 deaths were recorded, the second-highest coronavirus toll after the G-South ward (Worli) in Mumbai.

Several in this ward live in chawls and it is there that cases are increasing. One residential building with Muslim residents had 26 people with foreign travel history, but only one tested positive. The infection did not spread in the building. But in a chawl one case can potentially infect several others, and all nearby chawls have Covid cases, said Prashant Gaikwad, assistant commissioner, BMC.

Govt ropes in community leaders, Mosques

Following the development, the state public health department has roped in Mosques and local Maulanas to relay coronavirus awareness messages to the Muslim community.

We are now trying to look for local popular figures who can act as messengers and disseminate information about the disease locally. We will soon issue awareness messages in Urdu in hotspots like Malegaon and Mumbai to reach out to minority, said Awate.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra had recorded 651 deaths and 16,758 cases of coronavirus. Mumbai and Pune together account for 75 per cent of cases of the state.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he vetoed the Iran war powers resolution: AP

Despite attempts from his allies to reportedly stop him from striking down a landmark healthcare law that has helped insure millions of Americans, Donald Trump is pressing forward with plans to gut the Affordable Care Act, as millions of people are facing the loss of their care amid a public health emergency during the coronavirus pandemic.

The president has previously claimed the administration has developed a plan of its own to help insure people who rely on healthcare plans through the ACA to continue their coverage  but over the last three years of his presidency, no such plan has been surfaced.

Meanwhile, states are prepared to make steep cuts to Medicaid as enrolment numbers surge in the wake of mass layoffs, adding to a growing rate of newly uninsured Americans.

Before a Wednesday deadline approached to make any last-minute changes to the administration's challenge to the law in the US Supreme Court in the fall, Attorney General William Barr tried to convince the president to limit its scope and keep some parts of the law intact, CNN had reported.

But the president appears ready to "terminate" the entire law, he said on Wednesday, despite pleas from officials in his own administration, fearing disastrous political fallout that could risk his re-election.

The law is a recurring target in his stump speeches and other events where he has promised to gut the legislation, while also promising to keep pre-existing condition protections intact.

Passed in 2010 under then-President Barack Obama, the ACA sought to bridge gaps in health coverage by offering plan subsidies and extending Medicaid to low-income Americans that previously were not covered under the state-administered programme.

Following its passage, the number of uninsured Americans decreased from more than 46 million in 2010 to less than 27 million in 2016, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The rates of uninsured Americans began to dip from more than 17 per cent before the law's passage to 10 per cent in 2016.

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But under the Trump administration, which lifted individual mandate element of the law, the number of uninsured Americans has climbed or stalled out.

This week, he called it both a "disaster" and said "we've run it very well", while also claiming he "already pretty much killed it because we got rid of the individual mandate"

"We're replacing it with a great health care at far less money and it includes pre-existing conditions," he said.

The president also has repeatedly insisted that people with pre-existing conditions will continue to be covered if his administration successful dismantles the ACA -- but striking down the law without other measures in place would eliminate those protections for millions of people.

More than 11.4 million signed up for coverage through the ACA in 2020. Another 12.5 million people were enrolled through the Medicaid expansion.

With unprecedented unemployment claims, nearly 13 million people have likely lost their employed-provided plans since the onset of the outbreak, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The president has also rejected a push for a special enrolment period to allow people to access the federal health insurance marketplace during the pandemic, though some states with their own state-administered marketplace have re-opened their programmes.

Several state officials, meanwhile, are proposing steep cuts to Medicaid, as millions of laid-off or out-of-work Americans look to enrol into the state-run health plan for lower-income Americans.

More than 70 million people rely on the programme for health coverage.

But with a decimated tax base and no revenue coming in during the crisis, and more people enrolled thanks to the ACA's Medicaid expansion, states are prepared to slash their Medicaid budgets and turning to Congress for a bailout.

Congress, meanwhile, has launched a defence of the ACA to the Supreme Court, stressing that healthcare access is a "life-or-death matter for millions of Americans", attorneys wrote in briefs this week.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created an "indispensable precondition to the social intercourse on which our security, welfare and liberty ultimately depend," they wrote.

California and more than a dozen other states also wrote to the nation's high court to defend the law.

Read more

Americans risk their lives or face losing healthcare and unemployment

Trump vows to 'terminate' Obamacare despite warnings from allies

US unemployment at record high with 33m jobless claims filed

Supreme Court agrees to hear major Obamacare challenge

35 million Americans could be left without health insurance

Ruth Bader Ginsburg challenges Trump from her hospital bed
Senator Orji Uzor Kalu has hailed the apex court for voiding his 12-year term on Friday.

The apex court had on Friday nullified Kalus conviction and ordered fresh trial.

In a statement issued shortly after the judgement was delivered, Kalu said his case was a story of initial injustice that was caught and ultimately corrected, a story of restoration, and of how a wrong was righted and how justice and truth prevailed in the end.

Noting that the Nigerian Supreme Court has remained the veritable compass to the highest ideals of justice attainable in the country, he said this long tradition of the court was exemplified in todays judgment.

Read: BREAKING: Supreme Court Nullifies Orji Uzor Kalus Conviction

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I was humbled by the courts boldness and sense of justice as shown in my case, he said.

Kalu commended the Justices of the Supreme Court for their unwavering commitment to rule of law, adding We all stand reminded of the consistent and strategic relevance of the Nigerian Supreme Court in holding this country together, even in moments of great peril.

He said he looked forward to rejoining his colleagues in the Senate as soon as possible.
MANILA, Philippines  The ABS-CBNs petition against the shutdown order of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) will be raffled on Monday, May 11, the Supreme Court (SC) said.

In a statement on Friday, the SC Public Information Office confirmed receipt of ABS-CBN Corporations petition which seeks to nullify and set aside the cease and desist order issued by the NTC.

The SC said the media network also pleaded for the release of a temporary restraining order (TRO) and/or preliminary injunction to prevent grave and irreparable injury to the network and its employees.

The Supreme Court received yesterday, May 7, 2020 at 3:16 pm a Petition for Certiorari with prayer for TRO and/or Preliminary Injunction filed by ABS-CBN Corporation against the National Telecommunications Commission, the SC said.

The petition will be raffled to a member-in-Charge on Monday, May 11, who will then make a recommendation for the consideration of the Court En Banc, it added.

The NTC issued a cease and desist order on May 5, directing ABS-CBN to stop operating its various TV and radio broadcasting stations nationwide due to the expiration of its legislative franchise. The networks franchise expired on May 4.

In its petition, the media network said the NTC acted with grave abuse of discretion and violated its rights to equal protection and due process by issuing the order.

The company claimed that the NTC should have deferred to Congress that have earlier sent a formal letter asking the agency to allow ABS-CBN to continue operating while bills seeking for its franchise renewal remain pending in the House of Representatives.

Malacanang earlier said that President Rodrigo Duterte is completely neutral on the issue, stressing that the president has already accepted ABS-CBNs apology over his unaired political advertisements in 2016.

The Palace also said that the president wanted his allies in the Congress to vote on the ABS-CBNs franchise renewal according to what their conscience dictates.

The post ABS-CBN petition vs NTC closure order to be raffled on Monday  SC appeared first on UNTV News.
Shortly after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, two former Special Forces soldiers saw a business opportunity that married their past experience with a present danger.

The plan: to place former military veterans like themselves in schools to combat the mass shooters of tomorrow.

"Cops were there, but they didn't do anything, because they weren't trained to act," said Drew White, an ex-Green Beret. "Special operators are trained to move forward and end a threat."

His former comrade Jordan Goudreau ran with the idea and launched Silvercorp USA. Its motto: protecting our most precious assets.

That was early 2018. The plan never got off the ground, according to White. And now, two years later, Goudreau is at the center of a foiled plot to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In a video posted from an undisclosed location, Goudreau claimed responsibility for the failed raid that Venezuelan authorities say resulted in the deaths of eight people and the arrests of several others, including two ex-Green Berets.

"I'm just at a loss for words, honestly," White told NBC News. "It's mind-blowing to me."

Goudreau, 43, did not return repeated requests for comment. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. had no "direct involvement" in the armed incursion last weekend but will use "every tool" available to secure the return of the captured Americans.

Much of how the plot came together remains murky, but a portrait has emerged of Goudreau, a decorated U.S. commando who has boasted about having protected President Donald Trump and has attended at least one Trump rally wearing an earpiece and scanning the crowd as if he were a security guard.

Image: Jordan Goudreau (Silvercorp)

Born in Canada, Goudreau graduated from the University of Calgary with a computer science degree and went on to enlist in the Canadian army, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He later served in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces medical sergeant and indirect fire infantryman from 2001 to 2016, an Army spokesperson said. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining a reputation as a fearsome warrior with an expert shot.

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"The best of the best," White said. "He was exceptional."

Goudreau has said that after he left the military, he did private security work in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Then came the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which 14 students and three staff members were killed.

"I saw Parkland, and I was like, 'Well, nobody's really tackling this, so I want to fix this,'" Goudreau said in an interview with The Washington Post in November 2018.

Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics

Speaking at a school safety expo in Florida, where he was among about 100 vendors hoping to land business, Goudreau said he wanted to secretly embed former Special Forces operators in schools.

"He's a cool shop teacher," Goudreau told The Post before role-playing a potential conversation with a student. "'Hey, what's up, fellas.' I go sit down with a kid who's alone, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I just try to see whether there's any problems."

"The beauty of it is it's all for the price of a Netflix subscription," added Goudreau, who said he wanted to charge individual parents  not the schools  $8.99 each.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, on Oct. 26, 2018, the Florida-based Goudreau attended a Trump rally in Charlotte, N.C., according to a review of video and still images from the event. Goudreau is seen wearing a black suit and tie, with an earpiece, walking around Bojangles' Coliseum with his eyes fixed on the crowd.

An Instagram photo uploaded to the Silvercorp USA page shows him at the rally standing next to a man wearing a lanyard around his neck with the word "security" printed across it.

"Protecting our Greatest Assets," read the caption of the post, which has since been removed.

A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency "does not use contract security organizations or personnel to conduct protective operations."

"This individual is neither an employee nor a contractor of the U.S. Secret Service. It is common for organizations that host events to contract with companies and individuals to assist in managing attendance and attendees."

A spokesman for President Donald Trump's campaign said it "never hired Mr. Goudreau, his company Silvercorp USA, or any of his other companies."

A spokesperson for Bojangles' Coliseum said it didn't contract with Goudreau or Silvercorp for the rally.

White, the former partner, said he and Goudreau drifted apart after the company failed to secure a single school contract.

The pair had met a decade earlier when they were serving together in Germany. Goudreau went on to become the best man at White's wedding, he said.

"I was all in on school security," White said. "He said there were other things he wanted to do, and I just wasn't into anything outside the borders of the U.S."

According to White, Goudreau had signaled that he was interested in following the path of a private security company like the one formerly known as Blackwater, which gained infamy for its operatives' deadly tactics while doing security work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"He wanted to take contracts more like Blackwater," White said, before referring to the company's new name, Academi.

The Silvercorp website says it operates in more than 50 countries and has advised some of the "most prolific units on the planet," including Delta Force, Israel's Duvdevan, Germany's KSK and Britain's SAS.

White said that he didn't know whether any of that was true and that he had remained largely in the dark over Goudreau's activities throughout much of 2019.

Goudreau's social media accounts offer some clues to his professional dealings.

The first indication of any connection to Venezuela came in February 2019, when he worked security at a concert along the Colombian border that was held in support of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader recognized as Venezuela's interim president by the U.S. and several other countries. The "Venezuela Live Aid" event was organized by the British billionaire Richard Branson.

"Controlling chaos on the Venezuela border where a dictator looks on with apprehension," Goudreau wrote in a photo posted to his Instagram account showing him standing on the concert stage.

In August, Goudreau got in touch with White about a plan to help secure oil fields in Venezuela.

White said he set up a meeting with some potential investors, but Goudreau ultimately presented a very different operation: a plot to oust Maduro by force.

The idea seemed half-baked, and it rubbed everyone the wrong way, including White.

"The assumption was that it would just go away," he added. "It never seemed actionable. It never seemed like anything real."

But on Sunday, Goudreau and a former Venezuelan army captain appeared in a video identifying themselves as the organizers of an effort to invade Venezuela.

"A daring amphibious raid was launched from the border of Colombia deep into the heart of Caracas," Goudreau said. "Our units have been activated in the south, west and east of Venezuela."

In a similarly curious move, Goudreau tweeted about the mission late Sunday and tagged the president. "Strikeforce incursion into Venezuela. 60 Venezuelan, 2 American ex Green Beret @realDonaldTrump," it read.

The overthrow plot was foiled, Maduro announced Monday. Eight people were killed while trying to make landfall, and several others were arrested, including Americans Luke Denman and Aidan Berry, Venezuelan authorities said.

In an interview with an exiled Venezuelan journalist, Goudreau said the operation was initially supported by Guaido.

"They said they were going to finance it," Goudreau said, referring to Guaido and his team. "But in the end they didn't."

Goudreau claimed that he was left to seek donations to support his men, whom he described as "60 Venezuelans who were hungry, still training, thinking about liberation, and they went and did it."

Guaido has denied any involvement in the raid.

Image: Venezuelan soldiers (Reuters TV / Reuters)

Trump said Friday that the U.S. government had no role in the failed incursion.

"This was a rogue group that went in there, a lot of Venezuelans," Trump said in a interview with "Fox & Friends." "I think people from other countries also. It was a group of people that went in and I saw their pictures on a beach and it wasn't led by General George Washington obviously."

Goudreau has stopped giving interviews, and his whereabouts are unknown. He's now being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible arms trafficking, according to The Associated Press, which was first to reveal details of the plot.

According to an extensive Washington Post account of the failed incursion, Goudreau had pitched Guaido representatives a self-funded plan to take out Maduro in exchange for a nearly $213 million payout. The relationship soured, but Goudreau still set the operation in motion, The Post reported, even after Guaido's team had considered it dead.

In an interview with NBC News, Ephraim Mattos, a former Navy SEAL who runs a nonprofit humanitarian aid group in war zones and provided medical training to some of Goudreau's men, said he was shocked and horrified to learn that the operation went forward in such helter-skelter fashion.

"It's so beyond stupid, the plan that they put together, that it's hard to fathom that Goudreau allowed it to go forward," Mattos told NBC News. "I feel horribly for the Venezuelan guys who followed him and got involved. These are really good guys."

Mattos works with Venezuelan exiles who smuggle food and medical supplies into the country. One of them told him about a group of other Venezuelan defectors who were living in Colombia and were interested in getting tactical medical training.

Mattos arrived in early September to find about 20 ill-equipped men living in a five-bedroom house with little food and no running water. They told him about an imminent plan to oust Maduro. That came as a shock to Mattos, whose understanding was that these former soldiers and policemen were hoping to take back their country at some point in the future.

Mattos wanted to know who was in charge. They gave a name he had never heard before: Jordan Goudreau. Mattos said the Venezuelans described him as a Delta Force member and Trump bodyguard who had the backing of the U.S. government.

Mattos was immediately skeptical. He looked up Goudreau's website and realized that he was, in fact, a civilian contractor. After running a two-week training course, Mattos returned home to the U.S. feeling apprehensive about their plans and concerned that they were being misled.

"It was unacceptable that they thought he was a representative of the U.S. government, because he should know better as a Special Forces guy to make it extremely clear who he is and what he represents," Mattos said.

Mattos later tried to get in touch with Goudreau to "try to talk some sense into him," but after a brief introductory exchange via Instagram  which was viewed by NBC News  Goudreau didn't respond to a follow-up message.

Mattos stayed in touch with the Venezuelans and became convinced that nothing was going to happen despite their repeated claims that weapons and U.S. reinforcements were on the way.

Now that two Americans are among the captured, Mattos said he believes Goudreau should turn himself into the Venezuelan government in exchange for their return. "There's a good chance that those guys are going to rot in prison because of what he did, and he wasn't even with them," Mattos said.

White said he, too, was stunned to learn that Goudreau had moved forward with the plan. He's also worried about the fate of Denman and Berry, both of whom he served alongside.

As for the idea to stock American schools with former Special Forces operators? "I still believe in the cause," White said.
As coronavirus infections continue to rise in Russia and the countrys economic crisis deepens, political disaffection with the government of President Vladimir Putin is growing. On Thursday, the country witnessed its largest one-day increase in diagnosed casesmore than 11,000bringing the total number of infected to well over 177,000. Recently released data show that joblessness is surging, as popular support for the Kremlin falls to new lows.

Three top government officialsthe prime minister, the minister of culture, and the minister of constructionhave contracted COVID-19. Outbreaks have also taken hold in Russian orthodox churches and monasteries, where religious leaders falsely claimed that clergymen and parishioners were safe from the disease. On Thursday, Russian mining tycoon Dmitri Bosov, who had a net worth of $1.1 billion, killed himself with a gunshot wound to the head. While his motives remain unclear, an associate close to the oligarch said that recently he began selling off assets, possibly gripped by anxieties over the pandemic and its consequences even as he faced a series of legal challenges to his business operations.

At the Chayanda oil field in Yakutia, over one-third of the 10,500 workers on site have now tested positive for COVID-19, according to the federal Russian Health Ministry. Last week, protests erupted at the Gazprom-run facility, with employees charging management with transforming the workplace into a hotspot by quarantining ill and healthy workers together. The company failed to provide adequate food, masks, protective gear or medical care. Some 8,500 workers have now been evacuated from the oil field, with those remaining required to continue production.

A woman wearing a face mask to protect against coronavirus walks past a graffiti dedicated to the victory of the Soviet Union in the World War II, in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, May 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

The head of Russias atomic energy corporation, Aleksei Likhachev, has also warned that the countrys nuclear cities, centers of the industry that were once closed to outsiders, are unable to secure the health of their workforces. The situation in Sarov, Elektrostal, and Desnogorsk is particularly alarming, he warned, due to a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.

In Moscow, the epicenter of Russias outbreak, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that there are more than 92,000 official cases, but the real number is likely close to 300,000. Nonetheless, on May 12, the city will reopen industry, manufacturing, and construction, with thousands of workers sent back to their jobs, even as the Sobyanins administration tightens other restrictions for the general population.

Medical workers continue to suffer high infection and death rates in Russia, as in other parts of the world. The head physician of one of Moscows main clinics died this week due to the virus. Entire hospitals in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities have been sealed off because of COVID-19 outbreaks among staff and patients. Three doctors involved in fighting the pandemic fell from windows over the last two weeks. Social media posts reveal that health care personnel who complain about the dearth of PPE and other basic resources are threatened with firing.

Despite the unrelenting toll of the disease, the government has unveiled a multi-phased reopening plan for the country as a whole, with the process initiating in some areas this coming Tuesday. It is based on the same profit-driven calculations behind similar moves in countries around the world.

The Bank of Russia estimated late this week that due to the six-week-long shutdown of the economy, Russian gross domestic product has contracted by 1.5 to 2 percent.

Joblessness in Russia has risen to 1.234 million, with an additional 735,000 joining the unemployment rolls just during the period from March to April 2020. Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Anton Kotyakov said Thursday that the real number is likely 3.7 million. It is expected to rise to somewhere between 5 and 6 million by the end of the year. Just 1.8 billion rubles ($24.3 million) has been allocated to fund the additional demand for unemployment benefits. Recipients receive less than $150 a month in support.

In an interview with the online press Gazeta.ru, the pro-rector of the Academy of Finance of the Russian State, Aleksandr Safonov, said that the prediction of 5 million unemployed by the end of 2020 is the optimistic scenario. He further stated that the unfolding collapse in earnings will exceed that experienced by ordinary Russians in the 1990s, when capitalism was restored, or the 2008-2009 global economic crisis. Safonov further pointed out that while in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR some free social services remained for a period of timesuch as day care, for instancethese have since been privatized or monetized. The fall in incomes will have an even more devastating impact than previously experienced.

Echoing the position taken previously by other government officials, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said this week that the government could not make direct payments to the population. If the Russian ruble served as a world reserve currency, Siluanov said the state could shower money as if from a helicopter, but without this it could only help a limited number of particularly needy people. And while the finance minister insisted that the governments social obligations, of course, will be completely fulfilled, he stated that the time frame for moving forward with a whole series of national projects, much-vaunted by the Kremlin as a sign of Russian economic prowess and commitment to social wellbeing, will be extended.

Support for the Putin government is eroding, as the coronavirus pandemic exposes the rot in every sector of Russian economic and political life. The Russian presidents approval rating, according to the Levada Center, has fallen to 59 percent, a historic low. The polling agency reports that 33 percent of the population actively disapprove of Putins administration. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was quick to reject the accuracy of the data and insisted that popular support for Putin remains high. However, the release of Levada Centers numbers follows on the heels of data put out by the official polling agency VTsIOM, which show that only 28 percent of people have trust in the government.
Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary tested positive for the coronavirus Friday, becoming the second confirmed infection this week in a White House where top officials, from President Trump on down, have been reluctant to follow their own public health guidelines.

Trump identified Katie Miller as the staffer who had tested positive, although he continued to downplay the risk to himself or others at the White House. She is married to Trump's senior aide for immigration, Stephen Miller.

One of Trump's personal valets, a member of the military, had tested positive on Wednesday. The president normally has two office valets and three in the residence to act as personal assistants, doing everything from serving meals to ironing his clothes.

The White House said both Pence and Trump are tested daily, and that tests are given to anyone they meet at the White House. Both have come under fire for not wearing masks at public events, flouting public health advice.

Although Miller said she showed no signs of illness, her positive test early Friday delayed the vice president's flight to Iowa after officials determined she had recent contact with six other staffers planning to fly to Des Moines with Pence.

All six deplaned before Pence took off from Joint Base Andrews, and they later tested negative for the coronavirus, according to a senior administration official. Miller was not scheduled to be aboard the flight.

Trump called Miller "a wonderful young woman" and said he's had little recent contact with her.

"This is why the whole concept of tests arent necessarily great," he said. "The tests are perfect but something can happen.... She was tested very recently and then tested negative and then today I guess for some reason she tested positive."

Trump's comments were striking given the challenge many Americans, even some showing symptoms, still face in getting coronavirus tests three months into a disease outbreak that already has taken about 77,000 U.S. lives.

Story continues

Staffers in the West Wing are tested regularly. Those next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are tested less frequently although their work often brings them into the White House and in contact with aides who work closely with the president.

Roughly 10 members of Pences staff are tested daily, the senior administration official said.

Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, said extra precautions were added this week but declined to say what is being done beyond testing and social distancing. More than a dozen Republican House members met with Trump Friday at the White House, and all were tested first.

It's probably the safest place you can come to," Meadows said.

He said people who come in contact with Trump and Pence have tested negative and that interactions are done in a way that makes sure that we keep the president safe.

The two positive tests in the West Wing have intensified the scrutiny on Trump's refusal to heed many of the social distancing measures that members of the White House coronavirus task force recommend.

For weeks at nightly news briefings, Trump stood close to Pence and others around the lectern. He has refused to wear a face mask, saying last month,"I don't see it for myself." He wore goggles but no mask Tuesday when he toured a mask factory in Phoenix.

Pence also has resisted wearing a mask in public, although he expressed regret for not wearing one last week when he visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he interacted with patients at risk for serious complications from coronavirus.

Photos showed him as the only person not wearing a mask at the medical center, which has a policy requiring visitors to wear masks. He wore one two days later while touring a General Motors plant in Indiana, his home state.

On Friday, Trump went to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the allied victory in Europe. He addressed a group of veterans well into the 90s at a wreath-laying ceremony.

When reporters later asked Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany why Trump didn't wear a mask at the event, she said the veterans "made the choice to come here because theyve chosen to put their nation first."

She also said that Trump is confident he is negative for coronavirus because he is tested so regularly.

"This president will make the decision as to whether to wear a mask or not," she said.

The 14 reporters in the White House briefing room all wore masks, as did the photographers and the White House stenographer. The press secretary and three press aides in the room did not.
At the end of the Modernist era it became increasingly taboo to interpret an artist's work in relation to his or her biography. Only the formal qualities of a piece were deemed relevant, with information about the artist's life being mere gossip. The irony of course is that there are now numerous biographies and memoirs of those days. Even Clement Greenberg, the most prominent formalist critic, has been the subject of at least two full-scale biographies.

One sees the futility of trying to interpret art as if it were somehow separate from its creator. It's almost commonsensical that the more we know about an artist's life the better we understand their work.

Self Portrait in a Bamboo Mirror by Edoaurd Vuillard.

When studying a famous artist I've always found nothing more illuminating than a good biography. Some artists lend themselves to the process, none more so than Pablo Picasso, who was a global celebrity. His friend and rival, Henri Matisse, was so private that no biography existed until Hilary Spurling's volumes of 1998-2005. There is still no biography of Pierre Bonnard, arguably the most important modern French painter after Matisse.

Before the coronavirus lockdown Bonnard was set to be the subject of the National Gallery of Victoria's winter blockbuster. There'll need to be some rearrangement of dates but hopefully we'll still get to see the exhibition. It might be thought that Bonnard, who was even more reclusive than Matisse, would provide scant material for a biographer, but as Julia Frey has demonstrated in her new book on Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), with an artist a little biographical knowledge unlocks a trove of insights that may be found in the work itself.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 17:29 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d2f0f 1 News France,Germany,Schengen,visa-application,travel,destination Free

Visa application data in 2019 show that France and Germany were the two favorite destinations for Schengen visa applicants.

The two Western European countries have held the top positions for years.

According to the official website of Schengen Visa Information, French consulates received 3.98 million short-stay visa requests, or 23.4 percent of the total 16.9 million Schengen visa applications filed abroad.

Read also: Here's how to get a five-year Schengen visa

The rejection rate among the French consulates for Schengen visa requests was the third highest of all Schengen countries with 16 percent of applicants rejected.

Germany, which ranked second in the popularity list, received 2.17 million visa requests in 2019. Germanys visa application rejection rate reached 9.8 percent last year.

The highest number of applications were from China, with 709,616 applications filed at French consulates in China and 31,817 at German ones. (gis/wng)
US Counties Defy Stay-at-Home Orders to Protect Civil Liberties: We Like Our Bill of Rights

As some county officials across the United States defy state stay-at-home orders and small-business owners begin reopening businesses during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus lockdowns, sheriffs and experts say such decisions are driven by issues of civil liberty, and reopenings should be based on specific on-the-ground realities.

In the past few weeks, three counties in California, two in Arizona, and one in Washington state have reportedly begun defying governors orders to either reopen segments of their economies before the states scheduled dates or refusing to arrest citizens found defying lockdown orders.

County officials defying orders in various ways include those in Modoc, Yuba, and Sutter in California, Mohave and Pinal in Arizona, and Franklin County in Washington state. Additionally, there are reports about small businesses around the country deciding to reopen before their states give the OK.

Such actions of defiance are related to the issues of individual sovereignty and liberty, Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview.

Were sort of free-spirited people. We like our freedom. We like our liberty. We like our Bill of Rights. And thats whether youre a liberal or conservative. This has nothing to do with politics, he said.

Activists hold signs and protest the California lockdown due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, in San Diego, Calif. on May 1, 2020. The protesters demands included opening small businesses, churches, as well as support for President Trump. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

So when Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb decided not to enforce Arizona Gov. Doug Duceys stay-at-home order, he had the same thoughts in mind.

As a sheriff, my first job first and foremost is to protect the Constitution, Lamb told The Epoch Times.

I felt like this was a time when we had to take a stand and protect peoples freedoms and their ability to go out to peacefully assemble and live their lives. And as the Declaration of Independence says the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, he said.

He added that while hes not asking people to not follow the governors orders, hes not citing and arresting them.

I still encourage people to follow the guidelines. So if I get a call, Im going to go out to that call. And were going to just continue to educate people. I do not think that making criminals out of innocent people or citing business owners who are already under extreme amounts of pressure and stress, we dont find that to be conducive, he said, adding that hes looking at the legal challenges faced on the constitutionality of it.

Sheriff Adam Fortney of Snohomish County in Washington state, who in a Facebook post on April 21 condemned and refused to enforce Gov. Jay Inslees lockdown orders, has found himself at the center of a storm of opinions.

While more than 4,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org seeking his recall for his refusal to enforce the lockdown, his supporters have campaigned and raised more than $37,000 on GoFundMe after the Snohomish County prosecutor refused to defend him from the recall effort.

Meanwhile, Martin Modey Hicks, the mayor of the small New Mexico city of Grants, vowed to defy the statewide lockdown order of fellow Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, after 81 business owners signed a petition requesting that he and the city council approve a resolution to allow local businesses to reopen.

Mayor Martin Hicks talking to reporters about reopening businesses in the small New Mexico city in defiance of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams statewide lockdown on April 22, 2020. (KOAT-TV/AP)

Reality Varies by County

Lamb said the reopening of the counties cant be determined by the gross number of CCP virus infections and deaths across the whole state. He gives the example of counties in Arizona that have very few deaths but are under the same kind of restrictions.

And a lot of those counties are very rural. And, you know, shutting them down for two months. Most of those businesses probably wont reopen, or at least a good percentage of those businesses probably wont reopen, said Lamb, adding that it is important to assess the situation in each county, especially the remote ones, when states are seeking to impose lockdowns or reopen the economy.

Data analysis by the Heritage Foundation supports Lambs opinion. As of May 4, 30 of the nations 3,007 counties reported more than 50 percent of the overall U.S. cases of infection and more than 57 percent of the deaths, according to the analysis by Norbert J. Michel, the director of the Center for Data Analysis. Fifty-two percent of the counties have reported no deaths, 14 percent have reported only one death, and another 14 percent have reported two to five deaths.

Modoc County, a rural county in California that continues to have zero confirmed cases, allowed its bars, restaurants, and churches to reopen on May 1.

Modoc County Sheriff Tex Dowdy said in a statement on Facebook on May 3 that the county will continue to be cautious and follow guidelines and to reopen safely, smart, and slow. He said 80 percent of the land in the county is public lands and the recreational spaces on that land arent yet open to the public.

Heritages Stimson said the reality on the ground drastically varies from county to county in each state, which means the actual adherence to lockdown orders also may vary from county to county and even from neighborhood to neighborhood.

He gave the example of Montana and said except for the two main population centers, Billings and Bozeman, the rest of the state is sparsely populated.

So if youre 800 miles away, in a county far from Bozeman or Billings, in rural, rural, rural Montana  are you really going to listen to the governors stay-at-home orders when your closest neighbor is 10 miles away, Stimson said.

He questioned the validity of lockdowns in any sparsely populated rural county where, for example, only 50 people might live in a 500-square-mile area.

A person buys produce at a drive-through farmers market in Baton Rouge, La. on April 25, 2020. Due to the threat of COVID-19, the farmers market has adapted to a drive-through format to minimize contact. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

I mean, please, do they actually need to stay at home? Or should they go out on their farm? They should go out and farm. So do they have to listen to the people in their state who base their decisions on fact to match the threat, Stimson said.

Lamb says that while everyone is focusing on the health care situation, he also must manage the public safety concerns that arise.

What about the people who are home, who are out of money and are stressed, bills stacking up and worse, responding to domestic violence calls, the neighbor problems, to a suicidal subject, he said. And were putting my deputies at far greater risk in responding to those calls. The intensity of those calls has been elevated.

Better Communication Needed

As states start to reopen in stages, therell be a need for constant communication between state administrations and the counties to be able to take realistic decisions, Stimson said. Thats a way to avoid one-sided approaches about where to extend the lockdown and how and where to reopen.

One thing I can say with confidence is the governors need to be in constant communication with the counties in their state, he said. They have to be realistic and not taking a one-size approach, but also listen to the federal government and the health care data, and focus on where the actual cases of coronavirus are and who is actually at risk.

He said communication is an essential part of the relationship between county and state governments, and how a republic functions.

I think it has to be a constant feedback loop, Stimson said. The constant process of listening and talking and gathering facts and adjusting along the way.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The Bank Holiday sunshine has seen groups set up picnics in London's parks while drinkers set up outside a closed pub as people flout social distancing guidelines that have been in place for more than a month.

Police ramped up efforts to prevent rule-breakers flouting lockdown by carrying out random stops and patrols at parks, beaches and other popular spaces.

Officers were this morning braced for hordes of restless Britons to breach restrictions as warm weather, VE Day celebrations and government mixed messaging tempts people outdoors.

By Friday evening revellers had set up in most of London's parks and were seen sunbathing, playing football and drinking.

In Salford Quays police were forced to break up a gathering of between 50 and 100 people who were dressed formally and seen opening champagne.

The group, which residents said numbered up to as many as 100, were spotted near The Alchemist at around 1.30pm playing loud music and spraying champagne bottles.

Nearby residents claimed most of the group left after around 40 minutes but a couple remained and continued to drink and play music.

It is believed they were eventually dispersed at 2.35pm when police arrived at the scene.

Paramedic Kerry Jones said it was "upsetting" to see social distancing guidelines being ignored so blatantly.

Constables fear compliance is already starting to fray and have warned that their job of preventing bored citizens from flouting the rules is becoming impossible.

To ensure only cars making essential journeys are on the roads, Merseyside Police has warned drivers face spot-checks and will be quizzed on where they are travelling over the weekend.

Chief Inspector Chris Joughin said: 'As with the previous bank holidays weekends we will be out and about to check that people aren't flouting the restrictions and to remind people why the restrictions are in place and to encourage them to do the right thing and go home.

Groups gathered for a kickabout and to sunbathe on Clapham Common, south London during the warm weather on Friday's VE Day Bank Holiday

Pubs may have shut as part of the lockdown, but this group brought plastic cups to the benches outside the Lansdowne pub in Primrose Hill, London on Friday

Clapham Common in south London was filled with groups of people enjoying the Bank Holiday sunshine, despite the coronavirus lockdown measures being in place until at least Sunday

In Primrose Hill, left, groups brought their own drink outside the Landsdown pub, while sunbathers lounged on the grass at Clapham Common

Police stepped up patrols in areas such as Battersea Park once again on Friday as the warm weather returned to Britain in time for the Bank Holiday weekend

Seats outside the Lansdowne pub in Primrose Hill, London, were filled with drinkers on Friday who had decided to take advantage of the Bank Holiday weather

Bringing their own drinks in plastic cups, this group flouted lockdown rules and decided to gather outside a pub on Friday

Some businesses with outdoor seating may be able to open with social distancing measures on Monday, but more will be revealed when Boris Johnson addresses the nation on Sunday

Visitors flocked to St James Park on Friday and did little to obey two metre social distancing guidelines which were set out by the government in March

While the Lansdowne's lights are off behind them, groups gathered on the Primrose Hill pub's outdoor benches to enjoy their own drinks on Friday afternoon

Cyclists and walkers were spotted taking a break on Primrose Hill, London, as bright sunshine brings high temperatures to much of the UK

A pair of Londoners were seen enjoying the sunshine in Battersea Park on Britain's 46th day of lockdown

One family got creative with their one daily exercise as the group donned roller skates to wizz through Battersea Park in London

Londoners photographed enjoying the sunshine at Battersea Park this morning

Officers fear compliance is already starting to fray and have warned that their job of preventing bored citizens from flouting the rules is becoming impossible (Battersea Park pictured)

In Richmond Park, south-west London, visitors maintained their distance as they did their daily exercise in the summer weather

A man was seen running behind a pram in Battersea Park this morning as the bank holiday weekend brings glorious weather

Britons walked along the promenade in Brighton for their one daily exercise as the warm weather continued

People cycled along the promenade in Brighton as they took advantage of the warm weather for their daily exercise

Dozens of Londoners with their bikes outside Buckingham Palace on the 75th anniversary of VE day

Londoners soaked up the bright May sunshine in St James' Park as the country remains under lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus

A group of shirtless men gathered outside the gates to Buckingham Palace as they waited on their bicycles

He backed up his warning by reminding people that rule-breakers have already been arrested and slapped with fines.

But Britons appear to be following the rules as most are keeping a two-metre distance from others and are only outside to exercise.

London's green spaces were already busy early this morning with runners and cyclists pouring into Regents Park.

Metropolitan Police officers were also spotted having words with sunbathers soaking up the rays in the capital's beauty spots.

And across the country homes were decorated in Union Jack bunting as streets geared up to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

A man and woman were spotted lying on the grass enjoying the sunshine at Battersea Park, London, this morning

Police spoke to people who were not obeying strict lockdown rules by sunbathing and having picnics in Greenwich Park, London

Police were seen speaking to members of the public lying down on Primrose Hill, North London, as lockdown continues

Walkers were seen enjoying the sunshine in Richmond Park, London. Children were spotted on their bikes as families got some fresh air

Police spoke to a man playing football on the grass in Greenwich Park, London. The warm weather has brought many people outside

A woman pushed a pram as she made her way through Battersea Park, London, in the sunshine. She wore a protective facemask as lockdown measures continue

Two people jogged through Battersea Park while maintaining their distance from other walkers as coronavirus lockdown continues

A woman was spotted exercising in Battersea Park, London. As lockdown hits day 46, Britons are safely enjoying the bright sunshine

Two women relaxed on the grass in Battersea Park, London, as the long weekend brings bright sunshine to much of the UK

Officers were this morning braced for hordes of restless Britons to breach restrictions as warm weather, VE Day celebrations and government mixed messaging tempts people outdoors (Battersea Park pictured)

Metropolitan Police officers were also spotted having words with sunbathers soaking up the rays in the capital's beauty spots (Primrose Hill pictured)

Member of the public exercise in Regents Park in the early morning sunshine at the start of the Bank holiday weekend, during lockdown

Londoners photographed enjoying the sunshine at Battersea Park this morning

The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day

There are concerns that would-be rule-breakers will be spurred on by reports Boris Johnson is set to ditch the 'stay at home' slogan in his address to the nation on Sunday.

The refrain has been drilled into the public consciousness for the past seven weeks and police chiefs warn that replacing it with a watered-down alternative will give the green light for people to head outdoors.

Downing Street is now scrambling to dampen mounting speculation that the lockdown will be significantly eased, insisting the Prime Minister's road map will follow 'maximum caution'.

Insiders last night said that the current social distancing curbs would likely stay in place until June and that Sunday's warning would only make minor tweaks.

The Welsh government accused Number 10 of 'mixed messaging' which could undermine social distancing efforts this bank holiday.

The VE Day celebrations, sunny spells and unclear government messaging threatens to create the perfect storm which will spur thousands of bored people out of their homes and into beauty spots.

But ministers are warning that if the public do not abide by the restrictions, any adjustments made on Sunday will be rowed back.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden told the BBC this morning that if there was 'any indication that things are starting to get out of control' following the lockdown easing, the government 'won't hesitate to step back' and reimpose certain bans on interactions.

Police forces across the country are poised to deal with rule-breakers, but have warned the lockdown is becoming increasingly 'unpoliceable'.

One chief constable told the Guardian: 'The public are getting tired. There's about a 10 per cent increase in foot and road traffic compared to the start of the lockdown.

'People were reluctant to go out, they are less reluctant now. Most are complying but there is a slow, marginal growth of people not observing it.'

Another said it was impossible to catch motorists making non-essential journeys, saying 'it is unpoliceable. You would have to stop so many legitimate people to find a few lawbreakers.'

'We have always said we need a clear and consistent message from government to the public but there is now a view that things are being relaxed. A lot of people seem to have decided that it is all over,' a senior police officer told the Times.

Two women were seen running through Hyde Park a safe distance from others as they took advantage of the bright sunshine

Two dogs played together in Hyde Park during their walk in the bright May sunshine. The weather is set to remain warm this weekend

A family and their dog took a short rest while cycling through Hyde Park, London, as they took advantage of the warm weather

Several Londoners had the same idea as hoards flocked to Hyde Park to take their one daily exercise in the bright sunshine

Hardly anyone walked along the beach in Brighton today, in stark contrast to the hundreds who usually flock to the shore on bank holidays

A woman walks along a nearly-deserted Brighton beach as Britons continue to follow strict lockdown rules

Paddle boarders were spotted enjoying the calm sea in Brighton as the UK-wide lockdown continues

A woman walks her dog along Brighton Beach in the warm bank holiday weather on Friday

Police forces across the country are poised to deal with rule-breakers, but have warned the lockdown is becoming increasingly 'unpoliceable'

A cyclist was seen taking a break from his exercise by lying on the grass in the warm sunshine

Bank holiday will be blessed with highs of 26C (78.8F), with parts of the country forecast to be hotter than some of Europe's top tourist destinations including Monaco and Corfu.

The fine spell should continue for most areas into Saturday, but many beaches and open spaces are likely to be largely empty as people stay at home due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The Met Office said an area of high pressure will move across the south of England on Friday, bringing sunny skies and warm weather, with the mercury soaring into the mid-20s in London and the South East by the afternoon.

Scotland will reach highs of 17C (62.6F), Northern Ireland will see the mercury rising to 18C (64.4F), and northern England and Wales could each see peaks of 21C (69.8F).

The sunny spells are down to warm air to the south of England which will begin to move north over Friday morning.

Met Office forecaster Oli Claydo, said: 'It will be a bright and warm day for most on Friday, with temperatures rising as high as 26C (78.8F) in London.

'There will be some early morning fog in the Midlands and west of England, and scattered showers in Scotland, but that should clear by mid-morning.

'By the afternoon it is likely to be clear and pleasant for all, and could be pretty hot for most. But this will start to change on Saturday as a cold front will move from Scotland, bringing scattered showers in parts.'

By Sunday the temperature could drop as much as 11C as Arctic air sweeps in from the north of the UK to bring rain and colder temperatures, with possible wintry showers in northern Scotland.

Mr Claydon added: 'There is expected to be a drastic drop in temperature on Sunday, falling as low as 15C (59F) in London, and there could even be a chance of snow in hilly areas of Scotland, but it is unlikely to set.'
With 1,089 new patients testing positive for Covid-19 and taking the total number to 19,063, Indias worst affected state Maharashtra is now inching towards the 20,000 case mark and probably may touch it on Saturday. The state saw deaths of 37 coronavirus patients, the second highest single day tally so far.

The death toll in the state has touched 731.

Mumbai reported 748 new cases on Friday taking its tally to 12,142 Covid-19 cases and the death toll to 462. The state health department has added a disclaimer to the data it released saying that the 146 patients from Mumbai have been added to the ICMR data of cases on its portal on Thursday, but the reconciliation of the figure of the Mumbai cases is yet to be done. It has also stated that since the collection of data is a progressive process, the numbers could vary.

ALSO READ | Army will not be deployed in Mumbai, we will fight Covid-19 together: Uddhav Thackeray

The state also reported 37 Covid-19 deaths on Friday, taking the toll to 731. Mumbai saw 25 deaths, while 10 were in Pune and one each in Jalgaon and Amravati. 17 of the patients who died on Tuesday were above 60 years of age, while 16 were in the age group of 40-59 years, remaining were below 40 years of age. 27 of them had high-risk co-morbidities.

Maharashtra is inching towards the 20,000 cases mark and is expected to reach it by Saturday. If it happens the state would register 10,000 cases in just 9 days, after breaching the 10,000-case mark on April 30, with a total of 10,498 cases. It crossed 15,000 cases on May 5 when the total of the Covid-19 cases was 15,525.

The mortality rate in the state stood at 3.86%, down from 7.21% on April 12, but the number of deaths is increasing, with 362 deaths in the past ten days. The countrys mortality rate is hovering around 3.35%.

ALSO READ | Covid-19 hotspots in Maharashtra could see lockdown extension: Report

In the past 24 hours, the state has carried out 10,245 coronavirus tests and 1,089 people have tested positive, which is 10.62% of the total number of people tested. The number of tests in the state touched 2,12,350 on Friday. 1,92,197 of them were negative. 1,39,531 people are currently under home quarantine, while 13,494 are under institutional quarantine. 13,552 teams of health workers have screened 52.64 lakh people for suspected infection, after they came in contact with patients.

At least, 3470 patients have fully recovered from various hospitals, after testing positive in the past six weeks. Maharashtra has 1139 containment zones earmarked for the strict lockdown owing to the high number of positive patients. In Mumbai, the municipal corporation has broken the zones into smaller ones for better monitoring.

Maharashtra breached the 10,000 mark on April 30, 53 days since the first case on March 9. The state took five days to cross the next 5,000. Indias worst-hit state has been witnessing a rapid rise in cases over the past few days. In the past ten days, since April 26, 7,897 cases and 299 deaths have been recorded across the state. Mumbai has seen 4,455 cases and 196 deaths in the period.

The tragic rail accident killing 16 migrant workers in Aurangabad on Friday morning led to a blame game between governments. The state government has blamed it on the Centre for the delay in response to the states demand for special trains for the evacuation of migrants. But at the same time, the authorities are facing the criticism within for the failure of the district administration in putting the migrants in shelter camps.

Allowing the migrants to walk on the highways and railway track was a big flaw in the system. They were walking for the last four-five days on the highways in the absence of means to travel back to their homes. They should have been given confidence about the travelling arrangements to return, said a minister requesting anonymity.

The ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party have criticized BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka alleging that the states have been refusing entry to the migrants going back from Maharashtra. Congress leader and revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat said on Friday that that owing to the delay in the permissions from other states the evacuation has been delayed.

We have more than 10 lakh migrant workers who want to go back to their respective states. 32 Shramik trains have so far departed from various stations in Maharashtra, but a few states are not giving permission as quickly as expected. The entire process of sending these migrants is intricate and time consuming and needs quick response from the receiving states, Thorat said.

The expert committee of bureaucrats including retired IAS officers constituted to suggest the steps for the revival of the state economy submitted its report to the state government on Friday. The committee has suggested, among others, for the earmarking of the Negative list of activities than Permitted list during lockdown to outline the non-containment zones. It has stated that it will help in boosting business activities. It has suggested that the list be based on activities precluding social distancing and the activities that are not very critical for economy.

The committee has also recommended emphasis on Mumbai by launching a special project to re-start the economy and has also suggested a special programme to support vulnerable groups like street vendors, drivers, and self employed service providers. It has also recommended addressing individual sectors and activities and new business classes. Deputy chief minister and finance minister Ajit Pawar said that the report will now be kept before the state cabinet for a final nod.
Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ahunna Eziakonwa, talks to Africa Renewal's Kingsley Ighobor on COVID-19: the sectors that need urgent interventions and how women are disproportionately affected. Excerpts:

Which sectors in Africa will need urgent intervention post-COVID-19?

First, strengthening the health system is crucial. This crisis is revealing deep structural deficiencies in our health infrastructure. We should conceive programmes in healthcare as part of the public good. It cannot be that only the elite, the rich, can get the best health services where they are offered. Currently, if you're poor and are not able to access those expensive services or to travel out of your country, your fate is determined by poor services at home. This pandemic has shown us that if the poor people are not safe, even the rich are not safe.

Secondly, this pandemic will shatter economies. In tourism, for example, African countries will be affected differently, for example, the small island developing states such as Mauritius, the Seychelles and Comoros will be affected differently from landlocked countries. Therefore, countries that depend heavily on transport and tourism will need help to recover.

Thirdly, it is important to also look at issues related to debt. Africa was already saddled with rising debt. This crisis will lead to additional debt if alternative resources are not found to help countries address the impact of COVID-19. Debt relief options such as grants, as opposed to expensive borrowing, are crucial.

We need to look at how Africa's money can work for Africa's development and recovery. Where are the resources parked? Where is the money parked? For instance, pension funds or sovereign wealth funds. Africa needs to leverage its own financial resources.

We can add education in the mix. In East Africa alone, for example, more than 100 million children are now out of school. Some parents may be able to home-school their children, or some schools may have online learning possibilities, but we know that for most people on the continent, if children are taken out of school, there's no schooling for them. Yet we don't know how long this pandemic is going to last.

So, we need to invest in tele-education that includes poor households, not just for those who can afford computers at home. This is very critical because if it is not addressed, we will deepen the inequality that already exists on the continent because it means some children will not learn for the next six to nine months while others do.

How are women disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?

We know that gender-based violence has increased in the lockdown, which is a period of anxiety, and the courts are not functioning at the level that is required. So where do people get justice, especially women who are facing domestic violence or gender-based violence? UN Women's work on this is now informing the response plans that countries are making. Through an advocacy campaign, we are highlighting the disproportionate impact on women by COVID-19 and making sure that there is access to justice.

On the economy, 70 per cent of women are involved in cross-border trade. With the borders shutting down, their livelihoods are also affected. We need to ensure that policies adopted by countries and by sub-regions, whether it's ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] or EAC [East African Community], or SADC [Southern African Development Community], that they consider the need to open corridors to enable cross-border livelihood opportunities for women.

On education for girls, online platforms and other methods being used should ensure that girls are not left out. Often when hardship hits the family, it is the girls who are pulled out of school to do the work to keep families afloat and so many of them are likely to miss out on critical education during this period.

Are countries making progress?

In any crisis, there are opportunities and I think these are starting to be leveraged in Africa. I was very heartened to hear of Ethiopian startups being unleashed to produce 500,000 face masks. A lot of these startups are led by young people. We are a youthful continent. If we don't factor young people and their talents, creativity, knowledge and livelihoods into the response to COVID-19 then we lose the fight. So, we have these islands of hope emerging where countries are creating conducive regulatory frameworks for young people to come in and produce some of the essential materials that are needed to fight this pandemic.

In my country Nigeria, I was very happy to see one of the state governments invest in tailorsnot a lot of money, but enough to create momentumand have them start to sew protective gear for health workers. With the importation bans, Africa cannot afford to wait. Local production, tapping into the young talent and the SMEs, have given us hope.

In the digital world, many startups are developing apps that help with contact tracing. In Senegal, a company is producing affordable test kits that can give results in less than 10 minutes. Countries are starting to look at the vulnerability of their populations and to understand how strict social distancing measures can be applied in ways that offer protection to those populations. We see some good things coming out of South Africa and Cameroon. Governments taking action to ensure that the most vulnerable are registered and those relief materials are distributed to them. In Uganda women traders in the markets have capitalized on existing mobile tools to help vendors in safely delivering and selling their fruits and vegetables. A lot of creativity in that way is good.

We also see regional leadership taking hold with the African Union establishing the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and empowering it to coordinate the response on the continent. And they are having a unified voice on financing that is required to help Africa get through this period.

For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus
- A frontliner in Cainta, Rizal has recently passed away due to heatstroke while he was on duty

- He was identified as Arvic Macarilay, 38, an audio technician and DJ who voluntarily assisted in monitoring checkpoints in Cainta

- Arvic became dizzy and unconscious while on duty on May 6, during the heat of the day

- He suffered seizures and chest pain, then later on died after a vessel in his brain ruptured

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A frontliner in Cainta, Rizal has recently passed away due to severe humid weather while he was on duty.

According to GMA News, the frontliner was identified as Arvic Macarilay, 38 years old, an audio technician and DJ who voluntarily assisted in monitoring checkpoints in Cainta amid the enhanced quarantine community.

He is a member of the Barangay Community Action Group in Cainta in charge of apprehending ECQ violators.

According to his relative, Arvic became dizzy while on duty on May 6, during the heat of the day. He then became unconscious and was taken to the hospital.

Although he went conscious at the hospital, Arvic suffered seizures. He also experienced chest pain.

According to the doctor, Arvic died after a blood vessel in his brain ruptured.

The volunteer, who lost his life from heatstroke while performing his duties, was honored for his heroism in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to WebMD, Heatstroke results from prolonged exposure to high temperatures, usually in combination with dehydration, which leads to failure of the body's temperature control system.

The medical definition of heatstroke is a core body temperature greater than 104 degrees Fahrenheit, with complications involving the central nervous system that occur after exposure to high temperatures. Other common symptoms include nausea, seizures, confusion, disorientation, and sometimes loss of consciousness or coma.

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In a previous report by KAMI, a head nurse from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) was found unconscious inside her room after working for seven straight days.

The coronavirus outbreak started out in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China. Scientists believed that the virus came from an animal at one of Wuhan's wet markets. At present, the Philippines is under a state of calamity while the entire Luzon is under an enhanced community quarantine.

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In this video, a 4Ps member replied to critics and provided an explanation as to where her cash aid goes! Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

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As many states begin to reopen  most without meeting the thresholds recommended by the White House  a new level of COVID-19 risk analysis begins for Americans.

Should I go to the beach? What about the hair salon? A sit-down restaurant meal? Visit Mom on Mother's Day?

States are responding to the tremendous economic cost of the pandemic and people's pent-up desire to be "normal" again. But public health experts remain cautious. In many areas, they note, COVID cases  and deaths  are still on the rise, and some fear new surges will follow the easing of restrictions.

"Reopening is not back to normal. It is trying to find ways to allow people to get back out to do things they want to do, and business to do business," said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "We can't pretend the virus has gone away. The vast majority of the population is still susceptible."

So far, state rules vary. But they involve a basic theme.

"They are making assumptions that people will use common sense and good public health practice when they go out," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director with the American Public Health Association.

As states start to reopen, people will have to weigh the risk versus benefit of getting out more, along with their own tolerance for uncertainty. The bottom line, health experts say, is people should continue to be vigilant: Maintain distance, wear masks, wash your hands  and take responsibility for your own health and that of those around you.

"It's clearly too early, in my mind, in many places to pull the stay-at-home rules," said Benjamin. "But, to the extent that is going to happen, we have to give people advice to do it safely. No one should interpret my comments as being overly supportive of doing it, but if you're going to do it, you have to be careful."

An added caveat: All advice applies to people at normal risk of weathering the disease. Those 60 or older and people with underlying health conditions or compromised immune systems should continue staying home.

"Folks who are at higher risk of having a more severe reaction have to continue to be very careful and limit contact with other people," Plescia said.

So, should I go to the beach?

There's nothing inherently risky about the beach, said Benjamin. But, again, "if you can, avoid crowds," he said. "Have as few people around you as possible."

Maintain that 6-foot distance, even in the water.

"If you are standing close and interacting, there is a chance they could be sick and they may not know it and you could catch it," Plescia said. "The whole 6-foot distance is a good thing to remember going forward."

Still, "one thing about the beach or anywhere outside is that there is a lot of good air movement, which is very different than standing in a crowded subway car," he said.

Even so, recent images of packed beaches and parks raise questions about whether people are able or willing to continue heeding distancing directives.

But if we're all wearing masks, do we really need to stay 6 feet apart?

Yes, for two reasons. First, while masks can reduce the amount of droplets expelled from the mouth and nose, they aren't perfect.

Droplets from sneezing, coughing or possibly even talking are considered the main way the coronavirus is transmitted, from landing either on another person or surface. Those who touch that surface may be at risk of infection if they then touch their face, especially the eyes or mouth. "By wearing a mask, I reduce the amount of particles I express out of my mouth," said Benjamin. "I try to protect you from me, but it also protects me from you."

And, second, masks don't protect your eyes. Since the virus can enter the body through the eyes, standing further apart also reduces that risk.

Should I visit Mom on Mother's Day?

This is a complex choice for many families. Obviously, if Mom is in a nursing home or assisted living, the answer is clearly no, as most care facilities are closed to visitors because the virus has been devastating that population.

There's still risk beyond such venues. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows 8 out of 10 reported deaths from the coronavirus are among those 65 or older. Underlying conditions, such as heart or lung disease and diabetes, appear to play a role, and older adults are more likely to have such conditions.

So, what if Mom is healthy? There's no easy answer, public health experts say, because how the virus affects any individual is unpredictable. And visitors may be infected and not know it. An estimated 25% of people show no or few symptoms.

"A virtual gathering is a much safer alternative this year," said Benjamin.

But if your family insists on an in-person Mother's Day after weighing Mom's health (and Dad's, too, if he's there), "everyone in the family should do a health check before gathering," he said. "No one with any COVID symptoms or a fever should participate."

How prevalent COVID is in your region is also a consideration, experts say, as is how much contact you and your other family members have had with other people.

If you do visit Mom, wear masks and refrain from hugging, kissing or other close contact, Benjamin said.

My hair is a mess. What about going to the salon?

Again, no clear answer. As salons and barbershops reopen in some states, they are taking precautions.

States and professional associations are recommending requiring reservations, limiting the number of customers inside the shop at a given time, installing Plexiglas barriers between stations, cleaning the chairs, sinks and other surfaces often, and having stylists and customers wear masks. Ask what steps your salon is taking.

"Employees should stay home if they are sick or in contact with someone who is sick," said Dr. Amanda Castel, professor of epidemiology at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. "Also, employers should make sure they don't have everyone congregating in the kitchen or break room."

Some salons or barbers are cutting hair outside, she noted, which may reduce the risk because of better ventilation. Salons should also keep track of the customers they see, just in case they need to contact them later, should there be a reason to suspect a client or stylist had become infected, Castel said.

Consider limiting chitchat during the cut, said Plescia, as talking in close proximity may increase your risk, although "it feels a little rude," he admitted.

What if your stylist is coughing and sneezing?

"I would leave immediately," he said.

What about dining at a restaurant?

Many states and the CDC have recommendations for restaurants that limit capacity  some states say 25%  in addition to setting tables well apart, using disposable menus and single-serve condiments, and requiring wait staff to wear masks.

"That's the kind of thing that does help reduce the chance of spread of infection," Plescia said.

If your favorite eatery is opening, call to ask what precautions are in place. Make a reservation and "be thoughtful about who you are having dinner with," said Plescia. Household members are one thing, but "getting into closer physical contact with friends is something people should be cautious about."

Overall, decide how comfortable you are with the concept.

"If you're going to go to a restaurant just to sit around and worry, then you might as well do takeout," he said.

And travel?

Consider your options and whether you really need to go, say experts.

Driving and staying in a hotel may be an option for some people.

If hotels are adequately cleaned between guests, "you could make that work," said Plescia. Bring cleaning wipes and even your own pillows. Again, though, "if you're going to see an elderly parent, you don't want to contract something on the way and give it to them."

Regarding air travel  airlines are taking steps, such as doing deep cleaning between flights. Fresh and recirculated air goes through special HEPA filters. While there is little specific research yet on the coronavirus and air travel, studies on other respiratory and infectious diseases have generally concluded the overall risk is low, except for people within two rows of the infected person. But a case involving an earlier type of coronavirus seemed to indicate wider possible spread across several rows.

Maintaining distance on the plane and in the boarding process is key.

"Wear a mask on the plane," said Benjamin.

And plan ahead. How prevalent is the coronavirus in the areas you are traveling to and from? Are there any requirements that you self-isolate upon arrival? How will you get to and from the airport while minimizing your proximity to others?

But if it's not essential, you might want to think twice right now.

"People who absolutely don't have to travel should avoid doing it," said Plescia.

Worship services are important to me. What precautions should be considered?

The distance rule applies as houses of worship consider reopening.

"As much as you can within religious rules, try to avoid contact," said Benjamin.

He is not giving any advice on Holy Communion, saying that is up to religious leaders. But, he noted, "drinking from the same cup raises the risk if a person is sick or items are touched by anyone who is sick."

Finally, keep in mind that much is being learned about the virus every day, from treatments to side effects to how it spreads.

"My own personal approach is, try to play it on the cautious side a bit longer," said Plescia.

Castel agreed.

"We need a little more time to fully understand how COVID-19 works and more time to ramp up our testing, find treatments and hopefully a vaccine," she said. "We all have social distancing fatigue. But we can continue to save lives by doing this.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer told CNBC on Friday he believes people are following the city's new rules for beaches, calling it a positive sign as California seeks to ease up on coronavirus-related restrictions.

"I was out there on the beaches myself last week with our lifeguards. You can walk, you can run, surf and swim right now. No sitting down. To see that compliance I think bodes extremely well for when we start to reopen our businesses," Faulconer said on "Squawk Alley."

San Diego beaches were reopened last week with restrictions, following weeks after closures in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. According to a report in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Saturday, most beachgoers were obliging with the restrictions on sitting or standing around.

California has in recent days moved to relax restrictions on some businesses. As of Friday, retailers that sell items such as toys, clothing, books and sporting goods can begin offering curbside service. Certain manufacturers can also begin production.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's four-phase plan to reopen the state also includes a roadmap for counties, giving local officials specific criteria to meet in order to ease additional restrictions on dine-in restaurants and shopping malls, for example. The criteria includes demonstrating the spread of Covid-19 has stabilized as well as other requirements on testing and contact tracing capabilities, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Eric Jensen hoped that if Friendswood High Schools production of Matilda the Musical could win just one Tommy Tune Award from its 13 nominations, it would be for best direction.

I felt like it would be very well-deserved, so that was my main goal, said the FHS senior.

When his family hooked up their television to watch the live-streamed announcement of the winners on April 28, a Zoom call on Jensens phone kept him connected with fellow FHS thespians, who were practicing social distancing due to COVID-19.

Jumped out of my chair

Ultimately, Matilda won one award, but it wasnt best direction. It was best leading actor, for Jensens cross-dressing performance as the shows evil headmistress, Miss Agatha Trunchbull.

At first, I didnt know how to react, said the 18-year-old. It was really shocking, but I was quite excited. I jumped out of my chair.

In a more normal year, Jensen would have gotten to make a speech as he accepted the honor before a sold-out audience at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Houston.

He and co-star Thomas Massey, an FHS senior who portrayed Matildas sleazy father, Mr. Wormwood, would have been featured in a best-actor medley that is always a highlight of the Tony Awards-style ceremony that caps off a year of competition among some 45 Houston-area high school musicals.

And normally the best leading actor winner advances to the Jimmy Awards in New York City, but this years master classes and talent showcase on a Broadway stage were canceled due to COVID-19.

That was definitely the thing I was looking forward to, in case I won, Jensen said. It would be a dream, such a cool experience and really helpful in learning how the business works.

Jensen had been rehearsing the part of a character tried for treason in Private Peaceful before the pandemic canceled this years University Interscholastic League one-act play competition.

The son of Steven and Nancy Jensen was cast as World War I soldier Charlie Peaceful, who must decide between disobeying a commanders order or saving his brothers life, in the 2004 stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgos novel for older children, Private Peaceful.

Doing voice work to honor veterans

On the flip side, Jensens victory at the Tommy Tunes brought him to the attention of city leaders who are working on a celebration to honor local military veterans.

I was told after the Tommy Tune Awards that there was an opportunity to do some volunteer voice-over work, Jensen said. I had no idea what I was going to be doing exactly until I contacted (city spokesperson) Jeffrey Newpher, who is coordinating the recording. He told me that instead of the normal Memorial Day service, due to the recent outbreak, they are going to release a video displaying pictures and such on YouTube, and they asked me to voice one of the essays that will be written for the service.

Jensen plans to major in acting in college, while his twin sister, Katherine, hopes to pursue a degree in political science. Neither has committed to a college yet.

Two FHS thespians  Taylor Greny and Ashley Adams  were among 14 graduating seniors from the region who shared $44,350 in scholarships from the Tommy Tune program, which is sponsored by Theatre Under the Stars. The scholarships are awarded to students who plan to pursue a career in the arts.

Before the winners were announced on the virtual Tommy Tunes show, the nominees for best musical were presented in 30-second videos, including a clever one submitted by FHS sophomore Dechlan Stopher. For his mini version of Matilda the Musical, Stopher enlisted his father, Dylan Stopher, to portray Miss Trunchbull, and his mother, Mollie Stopher, to play Matildas sweet teacher, Miss Honey.

In the FHS production, Dechlan Stopher portrayed Bruce, a child who gets punished for stealing a piece of Miss Trunchbulls cake.

For further information, visit www.tuts.com.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be contacted at donmaines@att.net
Stage Stores, which operates department store brands in predominantly rural areas and small and midsized markets, is preparing for a bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as next week, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC.

The people, who requested anonymity because the plans are not yet public, cautioned that the plans are not yet definite, and a filing could still be delayed or avoided. Representatives for Stage Stores didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.

The move would further underline how the coronavirus pandemic has hammered companies regardless of whether they cater to the wealthy or the working class. Bankruptcy for the Houston-based Stage Stores  which owns the Gordmans, Bealls and Goody's chains in states like Kansas, Mississippi and West Virginia  would be the latest in a string of retail bankruptcies this month. This week already, preppy apparel chain J.Crew and luxury retailer Neiman Marcus have filed for bankruptcy.

It would also put further pressure on the job market after a record 20.5 million positions were lost in April, helping to drive the unemployment rate up to 14.7%. Stage Stores employed roughly 13,600 full-time and part-time employees as of February 2019.

Stage Stores has about 700 department stores predominately in small towns and rural communities. They sell mostly brands like Adidas, Calvin Klein, Estee Lauder and Levi's. It also has a number of off-price stores selling brands at a cheaper price point in larger Midwestern markets.

In its last fiscal year, Stage Stores had a loss of $87 million off of $1.58 billion in net sales, as it was hampered by costs related to buying and distribution. As of November, it had $26 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand.

The company was founded as a family owned business in the 1920s. Over the years, it grew through acquisitions of regional department stores, buying up brands like C.R. Anthony Co., located in the South Central United States, and Uhlman's stores in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.

It's also bought the brands or leases of bankrupt retailers, including Goody's in 2009 and off-price retailer Gordmans in 2017. The 2017 deal, which included at least 50 Gordmans leases and the opportunity for more, paved the way for Stage Stores to announce two years later plans to convert all of its department store brands to the Gordmans banner.

But time may be running short for regional department store owners like Stage Stores. They were already struggling to compete with the scale of giants like Macy's, which have greater clout to negotiate with brands and more resources to invest in e-commerce. Walmart, Target and Amazon have all further encroached on department stores' territory, as have a number of upstart digital brands.

As with Neiman Marcus and J.Crew, the coronavirus may serve as a fatal blow to Stage Stores, as stores close and consumers keep tighter watch on their finances during the pandemic.

Stage Stores disclosed in a regulatory filing last month that it had begun discussions with landlords, vendors and other business partners to reduce its lease and contract payments, as well as other concessions. It also said that it was "exploring financing opportunities to enhance liquidity."

"We cannot predict when we will be able to reopen our stores, and our ability to reopen will depend in part on the actions of a number of governmental bodies over which we have no control," the company wrote in the filing.

It added, "Moreover, once restrictions are lifted, it is unclear how quickly guests will return to our stores, which may be a function of continued concerns over safety and/or depressed consumer sentiment due to adverse economic conditions, including job losses."
If South Carolina doesnt expressly outlaw self-service dining when restaurants are allowed to reopen dining rooms, one of Myrtle Beachs biggest buffets may stick with the format.

We hope we dont have to be limited, says Matt Vigari, general manager of Captain Georges Seafood Buffet, which seats 1,087 customers. Well see what were allowed to do first: Theyre figuring out a plan in the home office if we cant do buffet, but obviously I hope (for) buffet.

Buffet is big business along the Grand Strand, where vacationers queue up to help themselves to steamed shellfish, fried rice and sausage links, among other buffet favorites.

But the genre has come under fire from public health organizations trying to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. In its guidance plan for reopening, obtained by The New York Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises restaurant owners to avoid offering any self-serve food-or-drink options, such as buffets.

Souplantation, a 42-year-old buffet brand, on Thursday announced it would shutter all 97 of its locations permanently in light of an earlier advisory from the Food and Drug Administration discouraging salad bars.

The regulations are understandable, but unfortunately, it makes it very difficult to reopen, the companys CEO told The San Diego Union Tribune. And Im not sure the health departments are ever going to allow it.

Vigari says Captain Georges, which operates four locations in three states, could operate its buffets as manned cafeteria lines if self-service is prohibited, although stationing hungry diners at appropriate physical intervals would be a logistical nightmare, he says.

Another option is to switch over to family-style service at the table, but Vigari says his workers arent trained in sit-down dining.

Our servers are used to taking dirty dishes and bringing out clean ones, he says, adding that even when servers have limited interactions with guests, he needs 125 of them on the floor in the busy summer season. Like many in the industry, hes worried about bringing back enough former employees to keep Captain Georges running smoothly.

We sent a letter out the other day, and theyve all been responding pretty good, he says. But we need to know the date.

Hes also not keen about potentially having to make his employees wear masks: At an auto parts store, its not a big deal. But at a restaurant, its crazy.

Its not clear whether Vigaris attitude is representative of the Grand Strands buffet industry at large. A representative of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association did not return a message seeking comment.

A spokeswoman for The Original Benjamins Calabash Seafood, who immediately before the pandemic told The Post and Courier that it was business as usual at the 1,000-seat restaurant, also did not respond to a phone call and email.

Captain Georges closed after on-premise dining was suspended statewide, but recently rolled out a takeout menu. Vigari said it was carefully constructed to leave out fresh ingredients, such as milk and dairy. Much of the cooking has fallen to managers, who have also busied themselves cleaning carpets and scraping the gum off table undersides while they wait for a reopening signal from the state.

The takeout menu includes crab legs, corn and coleslaw, and not much else. There are 15 items in total. When Captain Georges is in free-for-all mode (or at least $37.99-for-all mode), it serves 250 different dishes.
We in the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) gives the following comments applauding the decision of the NATION'S Apex court setting aside the conviction of Orji Uzor Kalu the Chief Whip of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria:

" Today, just a while ago, the Supreme Court of Nigeria set aside the judgment of the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos State delivered by Hon Justice Mohammed Idris on April 24, 2019 which sentenced Senator Orji Uzor Kalu to 12-years imprisonment for alleged fraud. The rationale for the judgment of the apex Court which lead judgment was read by Ejembi Eko, JSC was that the trial judge was no more a judge of the Federal High Court having been elevated to the Court of Appeal prior to conclusion of the trial. The apex Court accordingly directed a re-trial of the case by another judge of the Federal High Court.

You will recall that the trial began with a charge preferred against Senator Kalu on October 31, 2016 but the trial judge was elevated and sworn in to the Court of Appeal in June 2018. However in a somewhat twist of events, the trial judge was ordered by a fiat to conclude the trial, a matter which raised some concern about the circumstances of the trial and possibility of interest from high places towards a pre-determined end. One was therefore not surprised with the manner and outcome of the case.

It is apt to note at this juncture that section 249 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) provides that the Federal High Court shall consist of a Chief Judge of the Federal High Court and such number of the Judges of the Federal High Court as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly. Under section 253, the constitution of the Court is clearly outlined in the following words:

The Federal High Court shall be duly constituted if it consists of at least one judge of that Court. (Emphasis supplied).

It presupposes that since a person cannot be a judge of the Court of Appeal

and of the Federal High Court at the same time, once one is elevated from one

Court to the other, he can no longer function as a judge of the former, not

even by a fiat because the first rule of interpretation of Statutes is the literal

rule which posits that once the words of a legislation are clear, they should be

given their ordinary meaning. The constitution of a Court is a jurisdictional issue

and fundamental to the whole trial so much so that a breach of it during a

proceeding, makes such proceedings void as one that never happened.

This immortal principle was enunciated by the Supreme Court in the locus

classicus of Madukolo v. Nkemdilim (1962) 2 SCNLR 34. In the case of RODA v.

FRN [2015]10 NWLR (Pt.1468)427 at 462, Paragraph F, the Supreme Court held that:

Jurisdiction is the pillar upon which the entire case before the court or tribunal rests.

In the case of JAMES v. INEC [2015] 12 NWLR (PT.1474) 538,597, D-G, the

Supreme Court re-iterated the rule when it held thus:

A court is competent when:

(a) It is properly constituted as regards member and qualification of the members of the Bench and no member is disqualified for one reason or the other;

(b) The subject matter of the case is within its jurisdiction and there is no feature in the case which prevents the court from exercising its jurisdiction.

(c) The case comes before the court initiated by due process of law and upon fulfillment of any condition precedent to the exercise of jurisdiction. [emphasis supplied].

In the case of Sodeinde v. The State Suit No.FCA/1B/20/77 the Court held that a judgment delivered by the Chief Judge of Oyo State on a date after he had been transferred to Ondo State as Chief Judge was null and void. Similarly, in the case of Okino v. Obanebira (1999)13NWLR (Pt.636) 535, the appeal at the Court of Appeal was heard on March 10, 1993 by Uthman Muhammed and Achike, J.J.CA (as they then were) and Okunola, JCA, and judgment was reserved. Before June 9, when judgment was delivered, Uthman Muhammed had been elevated to the Supreme Court and his opinion was read by Achike, JCA (as then was) sitting with Okunola, JCA. The Supreme Court held the judgment on appeal to be null and void because although the judgment was written before his elevation, it was delivered when he was no more a member of that Court and therefore the Court lacked jurisdiction.

It does not therefore come as surprise that the decision setting aside the conviction of the Senator Kalu is a unanimous judgment of the full panel (seven justices) of the Supreme Court. It is judgment which speaks to common sense, validate the suspicion of unfair trial leading to the judgment and re-state the Court as the last hope of the common man in upholding the rule of law.

The holding of the Supreme Court in the case of GADI V. MALE [2010] 7 NWLR

(PT.1193) 225 at 266, Paras E-G that the Courts are the primary custodians of the Constitution, nay the rule of law inherently inbued with sacrosanct and far-reaching fundamental powers to preserve, interpret and uphold the Constitution must not only be in words or seen to be a one off thing but a daily practice as experienced and perceived by the people.

COMRADE EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO

NATIONAL COORDINATOR

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA).
People will lose their eligibility for the Covid-19 pandemic payments if they are offered their job back and refuse to accept it, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

A series of payments were introduced by the Government in March after businesses were forced to shut their doors as Covid-19 spread across the country.

(PA Graphics)

Mr Varadkar told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that the pandemic unemployment payment and the temporary wage subsidy cant last forever.

He said: In order to withdraw them, you would do it in a gradual way and you would do it as businesses have the opportunity to reopen and as people have the opportunity to get their jobs back.

Bear in mind if you are offered your job and you refuse to take your job back, youd lose eligibility for that payment.

But that hasnt arisen yet and in some cases that may not arise until August.

Mr Varadkar said the payment will be extended beyond the middle of June, adding that the details of how long the scheme will run for has not been finalised.

From the 18th of May the Government of Ireland plans to begin the reopening of the country on a carefully managed, phased basis.

Click here for an overview of what will happen in each phase. For details go to https://t.co/xmBIsPrLqj #InThisTogether #Covid19Ireland pic.twitter.com/QfkLZb0AcR  MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) May 3, 2020

Minister Regina Doherty is developing an options paper for government and should be able to make that decision by the end of May, Mr Varadkar added.

About a quarter of the people who receive this payment are actually getting more every week now than they did when they were working, largely because they were part-time workers.

Im happy about that, you know I dont want to begrudge anybody the payments, but I dont think anyone ever intended or expected to be better off as the consequences of the pandemic.

What we wanted to do originally was to give people about 70% of what they had earned previously every week, up to a maximum of 350, but in order to administer that it would have taken many weeks to do that.

We would have left people short or with no money at all for weeks.

Meanwhile, chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said he does not see any pubs opening in June.

It comes as publicans urged the Government to allow them to open earlier in the countrys phased recovery plan, after presenting a range of social distancing proposals.

Bars are currently scheduled to open in the fifth and final phase of the blueprint, on August 10.

Cafes and restaurants are set to start welcoming back customers in the third phase, on June 29.

The Licensed Vintners Association (LVA) and the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI) want pubs to open at the same time as cafes and restaurants.

However, Dr Holohan told RTEs Sean ORourke show that the sector should prepare to open on the date laid out in the Governments roadmap.

Dr Holohan also said that visitors did not take Covid-19 into nursing homes in Ireland.

He added: We followed the infection and we can see the point at which this infection occurred in the general population was about two weeks earlier than the point at which it began to appear in nursing homes.

At the point we introduced the visitor restrictions and said now is the right time to stop visiting, not just to nursing homes but to hospital and other healthcare settings where there are vulnerable people, at that point was before we had any clusters infection reported.

It was at least another two or three weeks before we began to see an increase.
PORT ARTHUR, Texas  An unmarked police vehicle stolen in Louisiana was used in two attempted armed robberies in Texas that ended with the suspect being shot and killed by a man he tried to rob, authorities said.

Opelousas police in Louisiana were carrying out a narcotics investigation at a motel Tuesday morning when someone stole a patrol vehicle from the parking lot, news outlets reported.

Opelousas police spokesman Maj. Mark Guidry said an officer left the car running after he exited the vehicle quickly. A rifle, the officers body armor, badge and other equipment were in the vehicle, police said.

Police in Port Arthur, Texas, located the vehicle Tuesday evening.

Port Arthur Police Chief Timothy Duriso said Leon Jones III, 25, of Opelousas, was shot and killed by a man he tried to rob. The man and his wife were fishing for crab when Jones threatened them with a rifle. The man retrieved his own gun and exchanged fire with Jones, killing him.

Jones had also tried to steal a vehicle at gunpoint from a man and a woman nearby, but they were able to drive away, Duriso said.

Police were reviewing surveillance video from the motel in Louisiana to confirm whether Jones was the person who stole the patrol car, The Acadiana Advocate reported. Its unclear why the vehicle was taken to Texas.

We cant find any foot pattern, Duriso said. Its puzzling to us how he ended up in Port Arthur, Texas, over two hours away. We havent found any (personal ties to the area) at this time.

The man who shot Jones wasnt injured, police said. Its unclear whether charges would be filed.
Drug major Dr Reddy's Laboratories on Friday said the US health regulator has closed inspection of its manufacturing facility in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh

New Delhi: Drug major Dr Reddy's Laboratories on Friday said the US health regulator has closed inspection of its manufacturing facility in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh.

DRL gets EIR from @US_FDA for Srikakulam (CTO VI) unit. EIR indicates closure of inspection. Facility is determined as VAI. Srikakulam was issued warning letter in Nov 2015 & was under official action indicated.After this, all facilities under warning letter now determined as VAl pic.twitter.com/2HmwIJBKFw  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) May 8, 2020

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) had issued a warning letter to the facility in November, 2015, after inspecting it in 2014.

Click here to follow LIVE news and updates on stock markets

"We have received the establishment inspection report from the USFDA, for the Srikakulam facility, indicating closure of the audit and the inspection classification of this facility," Dr Reddy's Laboratories said in a regulatory filing.

With this, all facilities under warning letter are now determined as voluntary action indicated, the drug major said.
Life after lockdown hasnt been easy to navigate for most. For the Roma community, it has never been under more pressure.

As families face financial insecurity, a disproportionate risk of infection and reduced access to education and services, the UKs Roma community has also been met with an increase in discriminatory attitudes. Serving as scapegoats for societys ills is a burden that the Roma have sadly suffered from throughout history. Yet as were attacked, demonised and targeted by racists, media representation doesnt seem to be getting better either.

In early April this year, Channel 5 broadcast the latest series of Gypsies on Benefits and Proud. The show trivialises the lives of migrant Roma and mocks Roma and eastern European culture, with no concern for the communities it targets. No wonder then, our community is often too scared to talk to the media.

During this time of lockdown  when all of us are vulnerable  we need to come together, increase our understanding of each other, find common ground and common decency. Like other minority groups, our community is suffering. Flavius, a young Roma I spoke to working in the construction industry, has been deeply affected.

A few weeks ago, his mother started to feel poorly. Not wanting to be a burden on Flavius, she insisted it was just the flu. On Saturday 28 March, she began to feel much worse. The next morning, his mother was admitted to the hospital. The doctors decided to put her in a medically induced coma.

On 4 April, Flavius got a call. Doctors told us that my mother will not survive. No one, absolutely no one, should go through this. My mother, Luminita, died on 4 April 2020, losing the fight against Covid-19. She was 42 years old.

But the heartache didnt stop there. Flavius had to struggle to return his mothers remains to her homeland of Romania: an almost impossible feat during lockdown. I cant imagine what this young man is going through right now. Sadly, hes not the only one.

Covid-19 has dramatically exposed and exacerbated the inequalities that exist in our communities. There is overwhelming evidence that its impact is disproportionally felt by Bame communities across the UK. And this includes Roma.

Having fled eastern and central Europe, Roma have tried to free themselves from institutional racism, segregated education, destitution, and acute inequalities in employment, housing and health steeped in their long history of discrimination with 500 years of slavery and genocide during the Second World War.

There are an estimated 200,000 Roma in the UK, coming from different eastern European countries. And these culturally diverse and vibrant communities all share the common experience of discrimination.

With this and the Covid-19 pandemic, the community is set for a fight they simply cannot win. In European Union countries, data on life expectancy for the Roma population indicates estimates ranging from seven to 20 fewer years of life. At the same time, Roma in the older age groups (65+) report a much steeper increase in chronic disease-related problems (70 per cent compared with 56 per cent for non-Roma).

Unfortunately, in some places, the community has been hit hard by coronavirus. Diana Blaj from Ideea Rom Association, a Nottingham-based Roma organisation, reports that about 40 of the 400 Roma theyre working with have been infected or had symptoms. She admits that whatever help the organisation has comes from local authorities  but more support is needed. Some days I have dozens of missed calls and we just simply do not have capacity to support more.

Most Roma in the UK live in poor areas and the majority are renting in the private sector, from unscrupulous or rogue landlords. Even under lockdown many are threatened with eviction.

Some of the less fortunate Roma are sleeping rough. The Combined Homelessness and Information Network 2018-19 report for Greater London, recorded a total of 8,855 rough sleepers. Of these, as many as 7 per cent were recorded as Gypsy/Roma/Travellers. Although there is support available, we have to ask ourselves in this time of pandemic: are there enough efforts in place to make sure the Roma are accessing these services?

Roma are affected economically too. Working as frontline workers in care, cleaning and food production sectors, many Roma are overexposed to the virus. A number have been forced to give up work to care for family or elders, or become unwell or lost their jobs. One such example is Cosmin Vlad.

After working for years in a warehouse and trying his luck in business, on 1 March, Vlad opened a Romanian/Roma restaurant in Nottingham. By 18 March he was forced to close down.

Last week, a Roma who called the Roma Support Group support line for help, said: I have been working in this factory without a day off for the last three years. When this crisis started they sent 200 of us home. Deal with your agencies, they said. No information was provided to us and now I dont know what to do.

When it comes to benefits, the question of accessibility is still being ignored. How many Roma have equipment or know how to access universal credit applications in the first place?

Local authorities should have in place plans to engage the Roma community. Just like everyone else, Roma need information and support to access services. And they should be delivered in a language and through channels the community can reach.

Furthermore, our children are missing out on education.

An initial assessment done by my charity, the Roma Support Group (RSG), shows hat about 70 to 80 per cent of the children we support are missing the equipment needed to access the online platforms. Authorities should ensure that Roma children have all resources needed to continue the education process.

And, on top of all that, the Brexit threat is still there. We still have to make applications under the EU Settlement Scheme. Fort those who dont have passports, it is now impossible to apply. In normal circumstances, people relying on national IDs could make their applications and send their ID to the Home Office later on. Now the Home Office is asking people not to send documents to them due to Covid-19. Subsequently, those with only national IDs, without a readable chip, cannot make applications at all.

But while Roma are a community who often dont have access to all the vital information they need to protect their own health and the health of their loved ones, our own community has risen to the challenge.

Ciprian Jacheanu, leader of the Roma church Rugul Aprins in Dagenham, east London, says members from his church have volunteered to support community members affected. They are delivering food parcels and call those affected to provide some comfort.

In Glasgow, a group of six Roma, working at local charity Community Renewal, are delivering weekly food parcels to 47 Roma families. They are also providing accessible information to Roma through social media.

Meanwhile RSG has been working closely with charities like Community Renewal in Glasgow and Europia in Manchester to provide information regarding Covid-19. RSG has made informative Covid-19 videos as well as other materials in the relevant languages, all of which are available for the community and professionals supporting it. We are also helping those affected access financial and emergency support as well as supporting children to continue learning.

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

And Alexandra Bahor, a Roma activist in Liverpool, is helping to feed around 300 vulnerable families with weekly food parcels supported by local decision makers and authorities through her charity.

Other Roma are key workers, who run a higher risk of contracting Covid-19  for example, Peter Kotlar, who works in the Specialist Operation Response Team in Crewe, Cheshire, dealing with Covid-19 incidents. He also supports community volunteering for the Gypsy Roma Traveller Police Association, making sure police deal with any discrimination cases against the Roma community. Without efforts like these, the current situation would undoubtedly be harder to manage.

Adversity makes you strong, people say. Well, Roma communities are strong. We have ties of kinship and family which help us even during times like this when the enemy is invisible. But we also need the government and local authorities to do everything they can, and the media too, to help us have the same access to health information and services as everyone else does. We are not asking for special treatment. We want fairness.

Mihai Calin Bica is a campaigning and policy worker for the Roma Support Group
India: Hindu nationalists falsely accuse Christians of mob lynching

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Hindu nationalists in India have falsely accused Christian missionaries of being behind the lynching of two Hindu priests, placing the countrys already-persecuted Christian minority further at risk.

UCA News reports that after two Hindu priests and their driver were murdered by a mob in Gadchindhali village in Maharashtra's Palghar district in April, Christians were quickly blamed for the killing despite no clear evidence that any believers were involved.

The three individuals were on their way from Mumbais Kandivili to Silvassa to attend a funeral when they were stopped by a vigilante group that was set up by locals to patrol during the night, the Times of India reported.

After questioning the men they suspected of being kidnappers or robbers, the mob pelted stones at them and later beat them with sticks. Though police attempted to intervene, the mob killed the three travelers. The police have detained over 100 people and nine minors in connection with the lynching.

Days later, Rakesh Sinha, a member of parliament from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and a senior spokesperson for the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, claimed on national television that Christian missionaries and the Communist Party of India were behind the murders, UCA News reports.

Without providing any evidence for his allegation, Sinha claimed Hindus would not attack priests unless caught in immoral acts and a mob of some 200 people could not come together late at night without being organized by a leader.

Insisting it was a planned murder involving Christians and communists, Sinha said: "A probe will prove it. But I'm making an allegation.

According to The Wire, videos of the incident also began circulating on social media, with some insinuating it was a communally-motivated crime committed by members of either the Christian or Muslim communities.

An image of the two deceased men was also shared on social media with a graphic that accuses the goons of Christian missionaries for the attack.

However, the states Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray repeatedly clarified that the killings had no sectarian angle.

Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh also took to Twitter to quell rumors, releasing a list of names of those arrested to show that attackers and victims were from the same religious background.

The list of the 101 arrested in the #Palghar incident. Especially sharing for those who were trying to make this a communal issue, he wrote in an April 22 tweet. He also tweeted, Palghar mob lynching is a grotesque incident which happened due to rumors on social media about child kidnappers & thieves prowling in the area. A high-level inquiry is going on & meanwhile people are requested not to fall for rumours & verify the facts from trusted sources.

Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, told Morning Star News that linking Christians to the attack looks like a deliberate attempt to malign the Christian community and can increase attacks on Christians not just in Palghar district but also elsewhere.

Rumors spread through social media, and vicious attacks by cow vigilantes have resulted in several incidents of lynching throughout India in the recent years, and we condemn each and every one of them. The Christian community has lost at least four of our own to these senseless killings; the Muslim community has lost many more, he said.

Archbishop Felix Anthony Machado of Vasai, which covers the area where the murder happened, told UCA News the allegations are part of a conspiracy to defame Christians" and an "attempt to communalize" the incident at a time when the country is "fighting the deadly global pandemic.

"There are no Christians in the area where the trio were killed," he said, adding that while Christians have been facing such accusations for a long time, the truth will prevail."

Prabhakar Tirkey, national president of Rashtriya Isai Mahasangh, an ecumenical forum of Christians, said the allegation is part of "a well-orchestrated attempt to whip up communal frenzy in the country."

"If not nipped in the bud, it will kill more people than the Covid-19 infection," he warned.

According to Christian leaders, the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, and supporting Hindu groups have regularly blamed Christians for violating laws in efforts to keep villagers and tribal people away from missionaries.

EFIs Lal told Morning Star News that the attempts to connect Indias already-persecuted Christians to the killings could have dangerous consequences.

Last year there were at least three incidents of attacks on Christian in the district in the months of February, May and November respectively, Lal said. Palghar has been a sensitive district where churches, fellowships and Christians have been targeted by religious radicals belonging to various right-wing fundamentalists groups, and some of those attacks have been gruesome and violent in nature. I can personally recollect attacks from as long back as January 2013.

It is an unfortunate act that should not have taken place and shows how rumors can take lives, Lal said. I hope that this unfortunate killing of the Hindu sadhus is not used by people who spread hate to further their agenda, to target Christians in this tribal belt as well. We appeal to the state government of Maharashtra to let the rule of law prevail and to bring the guilty to justice, and at the same time ensure security of the minority communities in the state.

India is ranked at No. 10 on Open Doors USA's 2020 World Watch List of the countries where it's most difficult to be a Christian. Additionally, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on April 28 urged the U.S. State Department to add India as a Country of Particular Concern to its list of nations with poor records of protecting religious freedom.
The Bombay High Court on Friday



directed the Maharashtra government to file an affidavit clarifying its stand on the authority of a municipal commissioner to issue an order imposing revised lockdown in Nagpur city on par with Mumbai, Pune and Malegaon.

Justice R B Deo of the Nagpur bench of the high court was hearing a petition filed by a group of lawyers challenging the May 3 notification issued by the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), imposing a revised lockdown in the city on par with the Mumbai, Pune and Malegaon regions, till May 17.

The plea, filed by four lawyers Prakash Jaiswal, Kamal Satuja, Manoj Sable and Shreerang Bhandarkar, has challenged the notification and termed it as illegal, arbitrary and unreasonable.

The petitioners' advocate Shyam Dewani on Friday told the court that the municipal commissioner has no power or jurisdiction to take such a decision under the Disaster Management Act.

Nagpur civic body lawyer S M Puranik told the court that on May 5, the civic chief had issued another notification prescribing certain guidelines that are consistent with the ones issued by the state and union government.

After hearing the brief arguments, the court noted that the petition deals with the interplay between the provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act and the Disaster Management Act and the same has wide ramifications.

"In view of the matter, it would be appropriate to direct the state government to file an affidavit. The government would be expected to clarify its stand on the authority of the Municipal Commissioner to issue the impugned directions," the court said in its order.

The bench has directed the affidavit to be filed on May 15 when the petition would be heard.

As per the plea, the Union government on May 2 issued guidelines, under which each area or district across the country was divided into three zones - red, orange and green depending on the severity of COVID-19 in that particular area.

The guidelines prescribed activities and relaxations on the lockdown in each zone.

The Maharashtra government also issued guidelines to allow opening of standalone shops, liquor outlets, private offices with 33 per cent and other relaxations in COVID-19 non-containment zones.

It extended the easing of restrictions for shops in the red zones as well.

The petition said that even though Nagpur was in red zone, the guidelines permitted liquor shops, standalone shops and private offices with 33 per cent staff strength to start functioning.

"However, on the same day, the Nagpur civic body through its commissioner altered the guidelines issued by the Union government on the ground that considering the number of COVID-19 positive cases in Nagpur, it was necessary to implement even more strict measures during the lockdown period till May 17," the petition said.

The revised lockdown puts Nagpur on par with the lockdown imposed in the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, and Malegaon (in Nashik district), the plea said.

"The notification issued by the Nagpur civic body is abuse of power and (it was) passed without any authority under law, and is illegal, arbitrary, unreasonable and perverse, which deserves to be quashed and set aside," the petition said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Qantas just tossed a lifeline to Australians stuck overseas. The carrier today announced new flights from the UK and the US to Australia. Qantas has also found a way to potentially enable expats to bring their pets.

The new flights will be from Los Angeles and London to Melbourne. This differs from previous repatriation flights, earlier on in the pandemic, which flew from LA to Brisbane.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Qantas (@qantas) on Feb 27, 2020 at 2:22pm PST

Brisbane, however, does not have the facilities to quarantine pets, which forced Australians planning to fly home in this time of crisis to leave their pets in the US or else not to return to Australia.

Australias border rules state that cats and dogs must arrive directly into Melbourne Airport and be quarantined at Mickleham, near Melbourne.

According to the SBS, The Australian government has requested owners of pets planning to fly back to Australia on one of the new Melbourne flights to contact Qantas and their chosen pet carriers to check on animal transportation.

As for the US flights: Qantas new limited Los Angeles to Melbourne flights are scheduled for May 16, 23 and 30 and June 6, (SBS).

This adds to United Airlines flights, which are currently flying daily from San Francisco to Sydney.

The new Qantas London-Melbourne flights will take place on May 13, 15, 20, 22, 27, 29 and June 3 and 5.

This comes in a context where airlines international flight schedules have been decimated, and their domestic ones slashed.

While Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is optimistic we will soon see a travel uptick (and a loosening of restrictions) domestically, he remains doubtful international travel will return to normal any time soon.

Qantas repatriation efforts also prove how important it is to have an airline with Aussie DNA in the skies.

While Qantas has one of the best PR teams in the business, and  as you would expect  makes the most of its positive actions, the fact remains that having an airline that sells itself as being accountable to Australia is great in a time of crisis.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Qantas (@qantas) on Dec 31, 2019 at 3:00pm PST

While repatriation efforts would still exist in a Qantas-free world, one questions whether other carriers would go to the same lengths to help expats furry friends get home too.

As the Virgin Australia take-over unfolds, with everyone from China Southern Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Bain Capital, BGH Capital, Wesfarmers and The Macquarie Group tipped to be interested, its certainly something to consider.

Read Next
Jerusalem, May 8 : Israeli President Reuven Rivlin tasked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming a new government.

On Thursday, Rivlin formally informed Netanyahu in a letter that he has two weeks to put together a new coalition government, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We are in the midst of an unprecedented period, during which the country has undergone three consecutive rounds of elections in the last year and has, in addition, faced the coronavirus along with the rest of the world," Rivlin said.

Rivlin's move came after Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's former rival-turned ally, that 72 lawmakers of the 120-member parliament endorsed Netanyahu. The endorsement means Netanyahu has the majority needed to form a government.

Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party and Gantz's centrist Blue and White party signed a power-sharing deal under which Netanyahu will continue to serve as prime minister for at least 18 months, followed by Gantz.

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, approved a package of the bills required by the controversial power-sharing deal between Netanyahu and Gantz.

The new legislation came a day after Israel's Supreme Court ruled that Netanyahu could form a new government while facing criminal charges.

His trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust is expected to begin on May 24.
In a first for the Madison Township Police Department in southwestern Ohio, a 25-year-old alligator was discovered living in a mans basement last March.

Paramedics who had been called to the home made a report to the local law enforcement officers when they saw what was living down below the house, prompting police commander Darrell Breneman to enforce possibly the wildest seizure in his 17 years with the department.

Ive never seen anything like that in my 17 years in the department, he told CNN.

According to the mother of the homes resident, the man living at the address in question had purchased the alligator at a reptile flea market a quarter century agoand had been raising it in captivity ever since. It lived in a tank down in the basement of the home, where it seemed to be in normal condition for an alligator of its age living in captivity.

The homes resident had hooked the tub up to a sump pump, which likely kept the water from the tank from causing the rest of the basement to suffer from any mold, mildew, or excess moisture.

Measuring nearly 5 feet long, this was no gentle-looking reptile that the police department found themselves faced with when they peered into the tub-like apparatus built on the basement floor. But the man in possession of the alligator, who explained that hed owned the massive creature since it was about a foot long, wasnt just in possession of something interestinghe was in possession of something illegal.

Its against the law in the state of Ohio to own an alligator, which is one of a number of exotic pets that the state has banned over the years.

Rather than face a fine, though, the man willingly gave up his scaly friendwho will now head to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The 25-year-old alligator will live out the rest of its days at an alligator and reptile sanctuary, where it will have a more favorable climate for its species and be able to roam more freely from now on.

They kind of grow to the size of the enclosure that theyre in, so hes not reached his full potential, and I think its pretty exciting to know that hes going to an alligator sanctuary in a warmer climate where he can reach his full potential and experience that, Breneman explained in an interview.
MUSKEGON, MI  The annual Unity Christian Music Festival that brings thousands to Muskegon each August has been canceled this year due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

The four-day festival, which was scheduled for Aug. 5-8, was postponed until August 2021 to curb the spread of COVID-19, festival organizers announced Friday.

While we know this news is a huge disappointment to many families in West Michigan, we also believe that this one time change will only make it more special when we are together again next year," Festival Director Kevin Newton said in a released statement.

With the COVID-19 situation still very much driving many decisions, we do not want to ask our fans, artists, staff, volunteers or vendors to take any of the risks that may come from a huge event.

Next years festival will take place Aug. 11-15, organizers announced.

The lineup for this summer included such Christian artists as Chris Tomlin, for King and Country and TobyMac, according to the festivals website.

This summer would have been the festivals 20th year, where organizers would have celebrated having donated $1 million to local Christian ministries.

During the coronavirus crisis, the festival has donated $80,000 to keep Muskegon area ministries afloat, organizers announced. With the cancellation of this years event and subsequent loss of incoming revenue, the Unity Christian organization has taken a huge hit.

While we have some reserve funds to cover contingencies, this crisis goes well beyond any normal planning scenarios and is threatening the existence of many businesses and organizations, Newton said. A festival season with zero income is a huge loss.

The annual Christian music festival beings around 50,000 visitors to Muskegons Heritage Landing, supporting the local economy as area hotels and campgrounds are filled to capacity, organizers said.

Festival organizers are asking for donations to survive the year without the event, according to the news release. Donations can be made on the festivals web page.

In order for Unity to stay in business, we WILL NEED financial donations," Newton wrote in the release. Our ministry exists to support our Partner Ministries who are working every day to provide critical services and the love of Christ, to West Michigan.

When you help Unity, you not only help keep our much loved festival operating, you also help these wonderful ministries continue to build the support they need.

Festival organizers announced three different options for those who have already purchased tickets for this years festival. Ticket-holders can hold onto their tickets for entry to the 2021 festival, donate their ticket funds to the festival or request a full refund.

Unity Christian Events will send an email to all ticket-holders by Tuesday, May 12, with options to donate or refund tickets. No action is required for those who want to keep their tickets for next year. The deadline to submit a refund request is Thursday, May 22.

Funds from donated tickets will go to Alive On the Lakeshore, the Michigan-based non-profit organization that runs the annual Christian music festival.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

More on MLive:

Electric Forest 2020 canceled due to coronavirus pandemic

Miss Michigan 2020 contest postponed due to coronavirus crisis

Muskegon tourism hit by coronavirus uncertainty amid cruise ship cancellations
The US President highly valued Vietnam's COVID-19 response and thanked Vietnam for its supply and transportation of medical equipment as well as presenting face masks to the US.

He suggested the two countries continue working closely together in the COVID-19 fight, expressed his regret about the postponement of the special ASEAN-US summit due to the COVID-19, and hoped the bilateral relations will be further enhanced in the coming time.

For his part, PM Phuc updated President Trump on Vietnam's COVID-19 fight and expressed his sympathies over the losses and difficulties that the US people are facing due to the disease.

However, he said he believes that under the leadership of President Trump, the US will soon curb the disease and restart the economy.

The PM spoke highly of the bilateral cooperation in coping with the COVID-19, and thanked the US President for his goodwill to present ventilators to Vietnam as well as to provide financial support for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including nearly US$10 million for Vietnam to improve medical capacity and rehabilitate the economy.

The leaders expressed their satisfaction at the practical progress in the two countries relations in all fields over the past time.

They said they are glad to see that two-way trade continued to increase in the first quarter of 2020, of which the US exports to Vietnam rose by 17 percent over the same period last year.

The two sides agreed to further step up bilateral economic-trade relations, while continuously opening markets for their goods in the time to come.

They also exchanged ideas on measures to deepen the bilateral comprehensive partnership, especially on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties.

President Trump affirmed that the US attaches importance to the comprehensive partnership with Vietnam, and said that the Vietnam-US ties have strongly developed over the past 25 years.

He said he believes in the ties further development in the coming time, while expressing his hope to see PM Phuc again.

Earlier, on March 26 and April 28, the two leaders sent letters on COVID-19 to each other.

Also on May 6, at the request of the US side, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh held phone talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during which they agreed that the Vietnam-US relations continue maintaining the positive development on various aspects, especially economy-trade.

They also agreed to closely coordinate to organise and implement cooperation activities on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the bilateral diplomatic ties in 2020, thereby further deepening the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership.

Pompeo spoke highly of Vietnams role in responding to common challenges, and agreed to increase coordination to promote the ties between ASEAN and the US during the time when Vietnam serves as the ASEAN 2020 Chair and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Both sides also discussed international and regional issues of common concern.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Evacuation precautionary: Vizag police dismiss report of second gas leak

Police in Visakhapatnam on Friday rejected late night reports of another gas leak at the chemical plant in RR Venkatapuram village and said that the order to evacuate people from nearby areas was only precautionary, according to news agency ANI. Read more.

Pak launches terrors new face in Kashmir, Imran Khan follows up on Twitter

The Resistance Front, the brand-new terror group that has rushed to take responsibility for major terror attacks and firefights in Jammu and Kashmir over the past few weeks, is being controlled by three top handlers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, an intelligence report submitted to national security planners in New Delhi has said. Read more.

Video shows Covid-19 victims bodies kept in ward with patients in Mumbai, probe ordered

A day after a video surfaced showing how bodies of Covid-19 victims at Lokmanya Tilak General Hospital, also known as Sion hospital, were left in a ward for an extended period alongside patients, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has ordered an inquiry into the matter. A committee for the same has been asked to submit its report within 24 hours. Read more.

Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2020: Inspirational quotes and messages by the Bard of Bengal

Rabindranath Tagore, the literary scholar, polymath, poet, musician and artist, is best known for writing the national anthem of two nations, India and Bangladesh, and the Sri Lankan anthem is inspired by his work, but the scholar has many more achievements to his name and is remembered fondly around the world. Read more.

Rishi Kapoor could make fans go weak in the knees: Priyanka Chopra remembers Chintu uncle, offers support to Neetu, Riddhima, Ranbir

Actor Priyanka Chopra has written a piece for Time magazine, in remembrance of the late Rishi Kapoor, who died on April 30 at the age of 67, after a two-year battle with leukaemia. Priyanka lauded his effervescence and flamboyance and said that he had the passion of a Shakespearean hero with a generous dollop of innocence added in. Read more.

Xiaomi Mi 10, Mi Box, Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 to launch in India today: How to watch livestream

Xiaomi has a major event in India today where it will launch the Mi 10 smartphone. Xiaomi will also launch more products including the Mi Box and Mi True Wireless Earphones 2. Read more.

Roads worth 15 lakh cr in next 2 years; auto scrapping policy soon: Gadkari

The government is planning to build highways worth 15 lakh crore in the next two years, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday. Read more.

Watch: Special flight with 177 Indian nationals from UAE lands in Kochi

Flight carrying stranded Indians in Abu Dhabi landed at Cochin International Airport. The repatriation flight of Air India Express brought back 177 Indian nationals. Watch here.
Slate is making its essential coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism.

In early March, a friend from New York City visited me in New Orleans. Over the course of a long weekend, we went out for dinner twice, hit some bars, and I had him over to my house for drinks. Four days after I gave him a big hug goodbye and sent him off, I got a troubling text message. He was back home in New York, he explained, and had started running a fever. He went to his doctor and was given a test for COVID-19. Twenty-four hours later, he texted again to say the results were in. The test was positive.

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The very moment my friends text came in, I stopped rationalizing my mild symptomsI guess I wasnt unusually winded riding my bike because Id eaten and drank too much over Mardi Gras, as Id told myselfand sought out a test. I called a local urgent care that had just been designated an all-COVID facility and told them I had hosted a confirmed COVID-19 patient in my house and was having symptoms. They told me to come in for a test.

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New Orleans still looked normal that Friday the 13th, but the urgent care already did not. The parking lot was uncharacteristically filled to capacity, and I had to park around the corner on a side street. As a designated COVID-19 response center, the urgent care was packed with patients with all manner of respiratory illnessessome with conventional pneumonia and the flu, and others with the novel coronavirus. The waiting room was so packed that patients were unable to sit every other seat for their protection. As patients coughed through the masks theyd provided, I figured if I didnt have the famously infectious coronavirus yet, I surely would by the end of my time at the urgent care.

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At intake, the nurse asked my age42and whether Id experienced any of roughly a dozen symptoms. There were of course the Big Threefever, cough, and difficulty breathing. Of those, Id only definitely experienced difficulty breathing. Walking up one flight of stairs felt like two or three. Earlier in the week, Id also woken up with night sweats and chillssigns of feverbut couldnt find my thermometer to know for sure. I didnt have a cough at all. As a childhood asthma sufferer, I was keenly aware that my breathing had gotten worse but not in the usual asthmatic way that feels wet, with lots of phlegm. This was totally dry. The nurse also asked about pinkeye, which I had indeed developed that weekand again, not in the usual goopy wet eye crusty way but in a dry scratchy viral version. Then she asked about lack of appetite. Once she said it, I realized I had been experiencing the most severe lack of appetite of my entire life. I had lost interest in eating as well as cooking, two of my passions. I chalked it up to stress, first from work and then from the impending pandemic. Never had it occurred to me that this could be caused by a virus. (Research on COVID-19 symptoms is complicated and changing rapidly, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently added several symptoms to the main three.)

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In the end, my trip to the urgent care proved fruitless. Because I didnt have a high enough temperature on-site, I was denied a test, despite having hosted a confirmed patient in my home and having symptoms of the novel coronavirus. The manager of the urgent care, who came to my examination room accompanied by a gun-toting armed guard, told me to act like I had the flucoughing into my armpit, staying home from workeven though her staff had just tested me for flu and it had come back negative. The manager assured me there was little to worry about, that the coronavirus was nothing but, in her words, mass hysteria. Then she sent me on my way. Instead of getting a test, I had spent two hours in a waiting room being exposed to COVID-19 patients and gotten a lecture full of talking points I could have watched from the safety of my own couch on Fox News.

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In addition to the Big Three symptoms, the nurse asked about another: loss of arousal.

Following best practices as well as I could glean them from reading up on the pandemic and texting with friends and colleagues who had gone through it in China, I decided to self-quarantine for 14 days and contact people I had seen in the previous week. I texted my barber and a friend Id had a beer with at a bar, and emailed the hosts of a theater talk-back panel Id attended with an audience of about two dozen people, many of them elderly. But all I could tell them was that I had been exposed to the virus, experienced some symptoms, and was unable to get a test. As for what exactly they should do with this information, I was at a loss. Behave normally? Self-quarantine? It was unclear. The talk-back venue sent out an email to everyone who attended informing them that they may have been exposed.

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A few days later, I woke up to a text from a friend who works as a doctor in a local emergency room telling me that a drive-thru testing site had opened up in the suburbs of New Orleans, and I should try to get a test there while supplies last. I called the hospitals COVID-19 hotline dozens of times that morning and finally got through to a nurse. Like the intake nurse at the urgent care, she rattled off a dozen or so symptoms that could be related to COVID-19. In addition to the Big Three and several others, she asked about loss of arousal. As with the urgent care nurse who had asked about my appetite, the minute this nurse mentioned arousal, I realized I had experienced that as well. As a generally healthy 42-year-old male, I wake up consistently with what urologists call nocturnal penile tumescence, or NPTbetter known as morning wood. When she flagged it for me, I realized that my usual morning wood had gone MIA for a full week. Since I hadnt read about this being a symptom, I later confirmed with an expert, Dr. Amin Herati, the director of mens health at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, that this really could be a COVID-19 symptom. Theres a really interesting dynamic with testosterone and illness, he told me. Illness depresses testosterone levels, which in turn lessens arousal, including the weakening or disappearance of NPT. In concert with other more COVID-specific symptoms, Herati said, loss of NPT could be a sign of coronavirus infection.

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Even with my myriad symptoms and confirmed exposure, the nurse thought my chance of getting a test at the drive-thru without manifesting a fever on-site was low. The previous day, she told me, more than 200 vehicles had shown up at the drive-thru testing site, and only 14 people had been given a testa rejection rate of more than 90 percent. Still, she suggested I might as well do a telehealth exam with a hospital doctor over Zoom. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I went ahead with it. The doctor for my virtual visit assured me that with my confirmed exposure and symptoms, I would be given a test. When I told her that I had gone to the urgent care with the same guarantee only to be denied a test, she texted the medical director of the entire hospital and got confirmation. With an emailed letter from her in hand promising a test, I got into the car.

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After a two-hour wait at the drive-thru clinic, I was given a test that afternoon. The doctor who swabbed me said results would take anywhere from two to seven days. But I was concerned that the doctor had not gone deep enough into my nose with the swab. Having already taken two flu testsone at the urgent care and one in the drive-thru line right before the COVID testI had become a bit of a connoisseur of swab technique. One seemed very deep, one medium deep, and this one just barely in the nostril. More worrisome, since I was already feeling better, I figured my body may have already killed off the virus, so it might no longer be present to trigger a positive test result. Early evidence suggests that the longer the delays in getting tested, the more likely the virus is to have moved into the lungs and no longer be present in the nasal cavity where the swab goes looking for it.

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Days 2 through 7 came and went with no results. Finally on Day 9 (of 7) the test came back: negative.

Confused, I circled back to every doctor I had talked to about my symptoms. Because my primary care physician had been so overwhelmed with more critically ill patients as the outbreak overran New Orleans, we werent able to connect by phone or in person. But friends and family who were doctors were always eager to stay posted on my symptoms and progress. To my surprise, with confirmed exposure and the telltale respiratory symptoms, none of them would budge on their positive diagnoses just because of this negative test result. Testing is missing a number of cases, my emergency room doctor friend told me. If someone has COVID-19 symptoms, and not strep throat or the flu, they have corona. Two others agreed that clinically, I had it.

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Still, with my results finally in fully three weeks after my exposure to the virus, I circled back to my contacts. The theater that had hosted the talk-back sent out a new email beginning I am happy to report that the attendee who came into contact with COVID-19 has tested NEGATIVE. This is wonderful news. The email did not mention that none of my doctors had changed their diagnosis from positive to negative on the basis of the test though I did inform the event organizers.

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As the days went on, news reports on false negatives began to appear. The day after my results came back, a local newspaper ran a story about New Orleanss most terrifying death of the outbreak: a 39-year-old woman who began having respiratory symptoms, took a test, and then collapsed dead in her kitchen before the test came back. Her results later turned up negative as did a subsequent test of her body. A Yale medical school professor, writing in the New York Times, cited a study from China that suggested about 30 percent of the tests come back as false negatives. And the Wall Street Journal reported that in the rush to get tests available, the Food and Drug Administration relax[ed] requirements for labs to prove their tests actually work.

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My lingering uncertainty is bigger than me. Its a problem for us all.

Last month, I tried to get into a clinical trial for an antibody test run by Stanford University that was collecting samples from outbreak-stricken New Orleans. But I was told the study excludes anyone who has tested negativeeven though the intake staffer said she too thought I was a false negative.

I then volunteered to donate blood to the Red Cross, which is seeking antibody-rich plasma to help COVID-19 patients fighting the disease in the hospital. But donating requires a positive test result, so Im excluded. The Red Cross explained to me in a form email that soon it will have its own test to screen potential donors, but not yet.

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Just this week, I messaged my primary care doctor to see if he could order an antibody test, which are becoming more widely available. He wrote back that he still had no access to them but to check back next week.

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Even once I get an antibody test, the results might not be bankable. The same type of hurried FDA process that made the swab tests unreliable was used to rush blood tests to market. The tests are promising for research, but they may not be especially meaningful for individuals.

One day there will be a reliable test that I can take that will resolve my uncertainty. But it could still be many months away. For now, I do my best to suppress any assumptions that I already had COVID-19 and am likely immune. When Im in public around other people, I wear a mask and convince myself that even if I can no longer catch or spread the virus, modeling good behavior is a good in itself.

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But my lingering uncertainty is bigger than me. Its a problem for us all. The testing fiasco, with its delays and false negatives, has made it impossible to trace contacts and isolate in America the way its being done in places with better responses, like South Korea. The effects of that uncertaintyonly getting a definitive answer about whether my barber, my friend, and the audience at the theater panel were exposed, at best, nine weeks after the factare irreparable. For the elderly audience members, getting the email about my test results even three weeks later was already irrelevant to their health and behavior. By now, a chain of infection I may have started could have infected thousands, but we just dont know. This mass uncertainty is central to our worst-in-the-world outbreak. It is why the U.S. and South Korea discovered their first cases on the very same daybut more than 275 times as many Americans have since died of COVID-19.
Putin Bans Armed Forces Members From Carrying Electronic Devices, Gadgets

By RFE/RL May 07, 2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree banning members of the armed forces from carrying smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets capable of recording and storing information while on duty.

According to the decree, signed on May 6, military personnel may not possess gadgets that can track locations and transmit audio and photo materials.

"The violation of the regulation will be considered a gross disciplinary offense," the document says.

A similar law adopted last year banned military personnel from carrying gadgets with cameras or that can connect to the Internet.

In recent years, photos and video footage inadvertently posted online via the smartphones of members of the Russian military revealed information about the location and movements of its troops and equipment.

Some of the photos and videos have been used to prove the presence of Russian military personnel in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian armed forces have been fighting Moscow-backed separatists since April 2014.

Russia has denied a troop presence in the Ukrainian eastern region known as the Donbas, where some 13,200 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict.

Human rights activists have sometimes also been able to obtain from videos and photos on the Internet proof that can be used in cases involving the brutal hazing of young recruits in the Russian military.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-bans-armed -forces-members-from-carrying-electronic -devices-gadgets/30598888.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.

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SAINT HELIER, Jersey, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The CoinShares Group, a digital asset focused financial services firm, today announced the final step in the acquisition of GABI Trading with the rebranding and the launch of a new suite of trading tools and services under the CoinShares Capital Markets brand.

These initiatives are part of CoinShares' mission to provide clients with a sophisticated, fit-for-purpose suite of products and services designed specifically for digital assets. This acquisition is part of a larger strategic realignment under the firm's new leadership comprised of Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Marie Mognetti; Chief Strategy Officer, Meltem Demirors; and Chief Revenue Officer, Frank Spiteri. The CoinShares Group has specialized in digital assets since 2014 and has a presence in multiple jurisdictions, with offices in Jersey, London, Stockholm, and New York.

CoinShares Capital Markets (CSCM) began as the proprietary trading arm of the Global Advisors Group and was formerly known as GABI Trading. In the last six years, CSCM has built a powerful portfolio of products and services, including proprietary trading technology and trading systems. In 2019, CSCM traded over $3 billion of notional volume in digital assets and reported over $1.5 billion of notional volume traded in the first quarter 2020 alone.

CSCM has historically supported the Group's passive products under the XBT Provider brand and the firm's actively managed family of funds, while also deploying proprietary trading strategies. Unlike many OTC desks or agency brokers which match buyers and sellers, CSCM clients trade alongside the firm, benefiting from best-price execution.

Jean-Marie Mognetti, CoinShares CEO and head of CoinShares Capital Markets commented on the news, "With their deep expertise in trading, programming and mathematics, we're excited to welcome the Capital Markets team to the CoinShares Group. We look forward to leveraging the experience of the team, which complements our knowledge of the digital asset market structure and proprietary approach to managing market and infrastructure risk. By joining together, our clients will benefit from a broad suite of global, cross asset trading technology and services."

CoinShares' Chief Strategy Officer, Meltem Demirors, added "The strategic integration of the Capital Markets team into the group enables CoinShares to bring best-in-class trading technology and services to our partners, portfolio companies, and clients. Professional investors in the digital asset market desperately need systems that provide efficiency, scale, and sophistication, and already our clients are responding very positively to this new offering."

The CSCM offering covers linear and nonlinear products. It includes electronic trading, liquidity provisioning, lending and borrowing, as well as bespoke hedging and risk management solutions for miners, exchanges, brokers, crypto funds, and other specialized firms.

For more information on CoinShares,visit: https://coinshares.com/. For more information on CoinShares Capital Markets, visit https://coinshares.com/investment-products/capital-markets

For an in-depth look at the changes occurring in the trading space, see our series on the Future of Capital Markets, which was hosted by CSCM and our venture investing team.

About the CoinShares Group

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Credit: Krystal Pollitt

Whether it comes from second-hand cigarette smoke, motor vehicle exhaust, building materials or the fumes from household cleaning supplies, toxic air is all around us.

Doctors and scientists are notably concerned about air pollution as it ranks among the top 10 global health risks associated with non-communicable diseases. Organic air pollutants have been shown to contribute to respiratory and cardiac disease as well as reproductive and neurobehavioral problems.

Yet measuring personal exposure levels remains tricky.

Some scientists use expensive air monitors placed in strategic locations. Others employ bulky backpacks loaded with expensive filters and pumps. Wearable detection badges are useful for people working dangerous jobs. Yet each approach has its own limitations, from time consuming laboratory analysis to high risks of unrelated environmental contamination.

Yale School of Public Health Assistant Professor Krystal Pollitt is introducing a new optiona lightweight, unobtrusive, wearable air pollutant sampler she calls the Fresh Air wristband.

During initial testing, the device reliably collected and retained air pollutant molecules over time, allowing for easy analysis and scale-up to monitor large segments of a population.

While the wristband was initially designed to detect air pollutants, in light of the current pandemic, Pollitt is exploring its potential use in monitoring exposure to small airborne pathogens such as coronavirus. She is working with Jordan Peccia, the Thomas E. Golden Jr. professor of chemical and environmental engineering, and Dr. Jodi Sherman, associate professor of anesthesiology and of epidemiology (environmental health sciences), in conducting a field test of the wristbands' capabilities with the help of health care providers at Yale New Haven Hospital.

In a study recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Pollitt and a team of YSPH graduate students used the Fresh Air wristband to investigate air pollutant exposure in a group of school-aged children in Springfield, Massachusetts. In this first large scale test of the device, the wristbands detected elevated levels of exposure to pyrene, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants among children with asthma, those living in certain housing conditions and those taking cars rather than buses to school, illustrating the wristband's potential applications.

Credit: Yale University

"These results show the potential utility of the Fresh Air wristband as a wearable personal air pollutant sampler capable of assessing exposure among vulnerable populations, especially young children and pregnant women," said Pollitt, who holds joint appointments in the YSPH Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering in the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science.

So how does it work? The Fresh Air wristband looks like a fashionable Swatch wristwatch with a quarter-sized plastic air sampler embedded where the watch face would normally be. Pop open the cover and inside is a small foam pad coated with a chemical (triethanolamine) that reacts with nitrogen dioxide, an air pollutant that is a byproduct of burned fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The device also contains a small sorbent bar made of a silicone-based polymer (polydimethylsiloxane). The bar collects volatile organic compounds (the chemicals found in such things as glue, pesticides, cigarettes, and solvents) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) like phenanthrene and chrysene, which can be found in car exhaust, cigarette smoke, wood smoke and fumes from cooking. The Fresh Air wristband is particularly good at capturing heavier molecular compounds and retaining them over multiple days.

The sampling pad and sorbent bars contained in the wristband can be easily inserted and removed, especially when testing personal exposures over time. As samples are collected, the wristband materials are placed in airtight amber glass vials for preservation until chemical analysis. Rather than extracting the samples using solvents (a labor-intensive lab process), Pollitt says her device allows for faster and easier analysis using mass spectrometry to get a detailed chemical profile of a person's chemical exposures.

In the Springfield study, 33 children ages 12 and13 wore the wristbands for 5 days, only taking them off at night where they were left next to their beds. The participants were predominately girls (69%) and a third had physician-diagnosed asthma. Key findings included:

Girls had higher levels of pollutant exposure than boys.

Children with asthma had elevated exposures to pyrene and acenapthylene, two aromatic hydrocarbons which could exacerbate breathing problems.

Children living in houses with gas stoves had increased exposure to certain pollutants compared to those with electric stoves.

Children in homes using stove ventilation hoods had lower exposure levels of nitrogen dioxide compared to homes without ventilation hoods.

Children who traveled by car to school had increased levels of aromatic hydrocarbons compared to their peers who walked or traveled by bus.

The research team has expanded its work globally and is currently using hundreds of the Fresh Air wristbands to explore chemical exposures among pregnant women, seniors and other demographics in other countries.

Pollitt, who invented the device, is currently in the process of filing for a patent. Students from her research group, Elizabeth Lin, Jeremy Koelmel, Alex Chen, and Anmol Arora, are forming a start-up company to make the product available to the public. The group was a recent finalist in this year's Startup Yale innovation and entrepreneurship competition. They have also received multiple start-up grants from the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale and InnovateHealth Yale.

Pollitt envisions many important uses for the Fresh Air wristband.

"We see the Fresh Air wristband being an important tool in future epidemiological studies and potentially also for citizen science," said Pollitt. "It can provide insight into a single individual's pollutant profile and be scaled-up to collect data across large populations, which can help us better understand the environmental risk factors for disease."

Explore further Wristband samplers show similar chemical exposure across three continents

More information: Elizabeth Z. Lin et al. The Fresh Air Wristband: A Wearable Air Pollutant Sampler, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (2020). Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology Letters Elizabeth Z. Lin et al. The Fresh Air Wristband: A Wearable Air Pollutant Sampler,(2020). DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.9b00800
P rince William and Kate heard stories about Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's "secret" birthday message his son when they chatted veterans about their VE Day memories.

Champagne was flowing when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made a video call on Wednesday to residents of an East Sussex care home to chat about the day the war ended in Europe.

Residents had already started their celebrations early and when the royal couple asked what they would do when the Covid-19 outbreak was over, the sprightly group said, hold VC Day - "Victory over Coronavirus".

Charles Ward, the oldest resident at Mais House, a Royal British Legion Care Home in Bexhill-on-Sea, joked about how he served tots of rum to fellow servicemen.

Mr Ward, aged 101, had a varied military career during the war and after first being called up into the London Irish Rifles he later served in North Africa before joining the Special Operations Executive to encrypt, or cipher, messages from British agents parachuted into France and Italy.

He joked about the day the war ended in Europe while he was a sergeant stationed in Greece

"VE Day was very good, I had to go round and give all the men a drink of rum," he said with a laugh.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge video call World War II veterans / Kensington Palace

Mr Ward, from South Kirkby in Yorkshire, said he told the Cambridges about working on "secret" messages from wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.

He said: "The message came from Churchill I had to decipher it, re-incypher it and send it to his son in Yugoslavia to say 'Happy Birthday'.

"And then there was another one from the son (Randolph Chruchill,Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston from 1940 to 1945) to Churchill himself to say congratulations on your speech in parliament."

Charlies Ward, Susan Barnes and Jean Hull speak to Kate and Will over video call / Kensington Palace

"When I told William and Kate that story they giggled."

The residents began VE Day with a religious service performed by a minister on a balcony, to maintain lockdown rules, before they were entertained by a comedian and historian - in character as Churchill - and enjoyed a lunch washed down with more champagne.

Mais House went into lockdown before the government issued social distancing rulings, has remained virus free and has been receiving supplies of personal protection equipment for staff, said Sue Barnes, the registered home manager.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge talk to James Pyett and Thelma Hobden / Kensington Palace

Resident James Pyett, 95, also chatted to the royals and he said: "They said to me 'we've heard you've had some adventures during the Blitz'."

The family of the veteran, who served as a driver with the Royal Corps of Signals during the war, were bombed out of their Limehouse home in the East End of London, but when they sought refugee in Bournemouth they found themselves targeted again by the Luftwaffe.

VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures 1 /118 VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures Veteran Lou Myers, 93 looks up at the Cenotaph before taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Duchess of Cornwall lays flowers after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall observe the two-minute silence at Balmoral War Memorial Getty Images Local residents celebrate outside their homes in Altrincham Getty Images A window in Altrincham marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day Getty Images Boris Johnson observes the two-minute silence at Downing Street Getty Images Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames during a flypast in central London PA Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Britain's Prince of Wales and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall walk to take part in a two minute silence AP A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA A woman wears a Union flag apron as she takes part in celebrations Getty Images Jan Sleightholm, 61 from Redcar poses for a photograph as she wears a self-made poppy design dress during celebrations Getty Images A veteran makes his way to the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images A lady lays a wreath at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images Members of the public take part in the two-minute silence at the Carshalton Ponds War Memorial in Wallington Getty Images David Fryer, Chairman Royal British Legion Thorner and Scarcroft Branch in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial via REUTERS The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London via REUTERS Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA Graham and Sue Gillson stand in the street outside their home in Hampshire as they take part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Residents in West Yorkshire observe the two-minute silence PA Second World War veteran Bernard Morgan, 96, poses as he takes part in the two-minute silence Getty Images People observe the two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images The Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a parade with their first world war guns and observe the two-minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence PA Sergeant David Beveridge prepares to fire a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA Railway staff at Waverley Station in Edinburgh observe two-minute silence Getty Images Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA People observe a two-minute silence in St James Park, London REUTERS A police officer observes two minutes of silence on the Mall AP Officers and soldiers of Household Division observe social distancing as they take part in a 2 minute silence and wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade AFP via Getty Images An ambulance worker at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA Members of the public applaud at the Cenotaph after taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Veteran Lou Myers, 93 bows his head at the Cenotaph as he takes part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA People observe two minutes of silence as they stand in Whitehall AP Members of the public in Windsor take part in two minutes of silence to honour the service Getty Images People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA A Royal British Legion standard bearer lowers his standard in respect during a two minute silence in Redcar, North Yorkshire PA People applaud as a WWII veteran walks past after two minutes of silence was observed in Whitehall AP Members of the public applaude after two minutes of silence Getty Images Senior officers and soldiers of the Household Division salute before a two minute silence to mark VE Day at Horse Guards in London REUTERS The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast in central London PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast to mark VE Day PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horse Guards PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over London AP Traffic on the Mall as people wait for the Red Arrows AP The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace PA The Red Arrows fly over Westminster AFP via Getty Images Cyclists watch as Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AP The Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Red Arrows fly over London AP The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS A man watches the Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS The Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, waiting for the Red Arrows to pass over London AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace in London during a flypast in central London PA A policeman stands in front of 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary AFP via Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach PA A tribute in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Royal Navy of sailors, soldiers and Royal Marines aboard support ship RFA Argus patrolling the Caribbean spell out 75 on the flight deck to mark the 75th anniversar PA A couple on a Vespa scooter carry a Union flag as they drive past the Cenotaph AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson prepares to light a candle at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior AP Pageantmaster of VE Day 75 Bruno Peek and his dog Wilson, as he decorates his house in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk PA Two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly over the cliffs of Dover Getty Images The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Pipe major Andy Reid of The Scots Guards plays his pipes on the cliffs of Dover, Kent, as two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly overhead PA Children at Breadsall Primary School in Derby during a VE Day lunch party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Boris Johnson speaking on VE Day in a video message @BorisJohnson / Twitter The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA A display by the Ministry of Defence and the British Legion on the Lights in Piccadilly Circus in central London to thank Second World War Veterans PA The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party PA A policeman walks past 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day AFP via Getty Images PA PA

The 95-year-old said: "I was blown up and put in hospital and my father said 'right if we're going to be bombed here, we're going back to London'."

Mr Pyett said his family were given a home in Clapham, south London but within hours of moving in their new property was destroyed.

UK falls silent in remembrance on VE Day 75th anniversary

"My mum was down the air raid shelter but we were up in the house when the house got bombed, the roof fell in and we were covered in dust and dirt," he said.

"We went into the air raid shelter and my mother looked at my father and she said 'I knew we bloody well should have stayed in Bournemouth'."

The 95-year-old was in Holland on VE Day, returning to his unit's base in Ghent, Belgium, "when we got back we had a whale of a time", he said with a laugh.

He added: "When William and Kate were talking to us they asked about the end of this period we said we'd celebrate it like VE Day, but we'll call it VC Day, Victory over Coronavirus."

Jean Hull, 78 from Little Eaton in Derbyshire, was a small child on VE Day but went on to serve with the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service.

After speaking to William and Kate she said:"I was very young at the time but I remember the celebrations, the masks that the children wore were a bit like a Mickey Mouse mask and if you blew hard the nose sort of went bluugh - they thought that was quite funny."
WASHINGTON  If a Supreme Court vacancy opens up this year, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn says, the Senate has a responsibility to consider a nomination from President Donald Trump. But in 2016, Cornyn joined the GOP in refusing to consider any Obama nominees because the presidential election is well underway.

With 87-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized for gallbladder treatment this week and the high courts term ending next month, the prospect of a possible opening has again been raised on Capitol Hill.

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Senate Republicans say theyll fill it, despite denying even a hearing for Merrick Garland, whom former President Barack Obama nominated in March 2016, Politico reported Friday.

Among them is Cornyn, who told Politico that if you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious, this would probably be that on steroids.

Nevertheless, Cornyn said, if the president makes a nomination, then its our responsibility to take it up.

But in February 2016, Cornyn signed a letter with other GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee refusing to hold any hearings on Obama nominees to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia.

The presidential election is well underway, the letter said. The American people are presented with an exceedingly rare opportunity to decide, in a very real and concrete way, the direction the Court will take over the next generation. We believe The People should have this opportunity.

The president may nominate judges of the Supreme Court, the letter said. But the power to grant, or withhold, consent to such nominees rests exclusively with the United States Senate.

EXPOSED TO COVID-19? Trump valet tested positive before Gov. Abbotts Oval Office meeting

A Cornyn aide said Friday that this election is different and that the senators views have not actually changed. Obama couldnt run again in 2016, and the Senate was controlled by a different party than the White House. It has been more than a century since the Senate confirmed an election-year nominee by a president from a different party.

Since 1900, there were only six times a Supreme Court vacancy popped up in a presidential election year before 2016: in 1968, 1956, 1940, 1932, 1916 and 1912, according to the New York Times. In four of those years, the presidents party also controlled the Senate, which successfully confirmed the nominee, according to the Times.

Youd have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy on the Supreme Court occurring during a presidential election year was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a Fox News interview in February. McConnell has said blocking Garlands nomination was one of his proudest moments.

That was the situation in 2016, McConnell said. That would not be the situation in 2020.

ben.wermund@chron.com
Consumers Energy is getting fined $10,000  the maximum amount allowed by law  for the January 2019 fire at its Ray Compressor Station in Macomb County that led to a statewide natural gas emergency.

The Michigan Public Service Commission announced the fine on Friday, May 8, concluding its investigation into the incident.

The root cause of the fire was grounding interference on the electrical system of the facility. That led to an automated blowdown, which is when natural gas is released into the air to protect workers and public safety, the MPSC investigation found.

But the natural gas didnt disperse into the air as it normally would, because of the cold temperatures and high winds. It came into contact with high-temperature plant equipment, igniting the gas and causing the fire.

Because the discharged gas created a hazard, Consumers violated federal safety standards, per the MPSC.

The utility has agreed to pay the $10,000 fine. The company had $680 million in net income in 2019.

We appreciate and thank our customers across Michigan for all they did to help Consumers Energy and their neighbors during the unprecedented January 2019 event at the Ray Compressor Station," Consumers Director of Media Relations Katie Carey said in an email. "We did what was necessary to keep homes warm while safely returning the facility to operations in order to serve customers during the extreme cold temperatures during historically high demand for natural gas.

The station has been repaired with modifications made to reduce future risk, per the MPSC. Consumers is also required to submit evaluations for its other blowdown systems across the state by June 1.

The Jan. 30, 2019 fire forced the Ray Compressor Station  Consumers largest natural gas storage and delivery facility  to shut down temporarily. And with record-cold temperatures sweeping across Michigan, officials feared heat interruptions.

The state of Michigan sent out a late-night emergency text message, pleading with residents to turn down their heat to 65 degrees. Dozens of companies also shut down production to save natural gas, including 18 auto plants between General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and Ford.

It worked, as usage decreased 10% after the emergency plea, and there were no heat interruptions.

Consumers used a Super Bowl regional ad slot it previously bought to thank Michiganders for their efforts.

Related stories:

Michiganders answered call, cut gas usage 10 percent after emergency plea

Consumers Energy Super Bowl ad thanks Michiganders for turning down heat

Despite polar vortex scare, Michigans energy supply reliable
How will Americans rate US President Donald Trumps handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the run-up to this years presidential elections

US President Donald Trump is in a race against time to wake up from the Covid-19 nightmare before the race to the White House begins to pick up pace after the primary conventions of the Democrat and Republican Parties take place in August.

Democrat Joe Biden will most likely be selected at the Democratic Party convention to stand against the Republican Trump in the US presidential elections in November.

For Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic is a challenge in which he will need to prove his acumen in leading the country as it navigates one of its most serious crises in a century. The US economy is stumbling under a near blanket shutdown in order to contain the pandemic at a time when there is no real cure for the disease.

Douglas Schoen, who served as an adviser to former US president Bill Clinton, said that many Americans today are scared and looking for leadership. The way that Trump manages the pandemic will likely make or break his chances of re-election and perhaps even more importantly define his presidency, Schoen said.

Even more optimistic predictions believe finding a vaccine or cure for Covid-19 will not come before the winter, and the economy will likely not pick up before the first quarter of next year. This means that Trump will enter the elections after his main achievement, the improving of economic conditions in the US during his first term, has crumbled.

It is unlikely that his promise of greatly improving the economy by the beginning of next year will be enough to convince US voters to vote for him in the November elections, since this looks more like wishful thinking than a realistic possibility.

Meanwhile, Trump is facing serious challenges as most media outlets in the US have been closely examining his statements on the pandemic, pointing out that many of them may make little sense and portraying Trump as someone without rhyme or reason. One case in point was when Trump apparently suggested injecting Covid-19 patients with disinfectant.

The media has also tried to drive a wedge between Trump and his administration, for example by publishing proof that the US intelligence agencies had warned Trump about a killer virus spreading in China that could become a global pandemic. According to these sources, Trump ignored the warnings.

Even the CIA, which recently published a report denying that Covid-19 was developed in a Chinese lab, appears to have rejected accusations that China was responsible for engineering the virus, contrary to what Trump has sometimes proclaimed. This apparently destroys any foundation for Trumps vow to make China pay compensation for the pandemic.

Another difficult situation for Trump has been his quarrels with several US state governors who have refused to ease the lockdown imposed on nearly half the country unless specifically recommended to do so by the US health authorities and World Health Organisation (WHO). Such fights, and Trumps inability to have his way since states rights are guaranteed by the US Constitution, are certain to further disfigure his image as the countrys leader in difficult times.

Opinion polls published on the website www.fivethirtyeight.com show that Trumps approval ratings have been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and Biden has been benefiting from Trumps performance. One poll this week gave Trump 42 per cent of the vote versus Bidens 48.3 per cent if elections were held today.

Biden is also ahead of the incumbent in all projections in key states for the constitution of the electoral college that will go on formally to select the next president. The same poll showed that only 42.9 per cent of those polled approved of Trumps performance in general, compared to 45.8 per cent three weeks ago.

While such polls are not indicators of what could happen at US polling stations in November, since they do not take into account fluctuations in the opinions of voters and their convictions, ignoring them could be a real threat to Trump. The upcoming elections will be taking place amidst an unprecedented crisis that has put American voters under great psychological pressure and could cause them to radically switch their views at any moment.

However, Trump still has a fighting chance of defeating Biden and the Democrats in November and preventing them from taking advantage of the Covid-19 crisis to undermine his chances of winning a second term.

He could divert attention from the minutiae of the pandemic and talk about steps his administration will take to ease the economic shutdown and stimulate the economy over the next few months, for example. He could also attack Biden personally regarding sexual harassment allegations made by a former aide that took place 27 years ago and point to the hypocrisy of the Democrats because they maligned Trump in 2016 on sexual harassment issues but are now standing behind a candidate accused of the same thing.

Trumps campaign could also focus on reviving allegations against Bidens son, who was a board member of a Ukrainian gas company when his father was former US president Barack Obamas vice-president. It is rumoured that Biden senior peddled his influence with Kiev, exchanging favours for his sons company in return for positions and services from Washington.

One thing that Trump can no longer do is divide Democrat ranks by taking advantage of the fact that Democratic senator Bernie Sanders had not officially endorsed Biden, since he did so on 13 April. Sanders had wanted to make his endorsement contingent on Biden adopting some of Sanderss electoral platform, which the US media has described as socialist.

Biden has been trying to combine two divergent goals in aiming to maintain the Democrat Partys unity before the elections, while reassuring major stakeholders that he will preserve the foundations of American capitalism and protect it from the threat of Sanders and his supporters. Appeasing Sanders would have boosted the partys unity but could also have unsettled various interest groups about Bidens policies if he was influenced by Sanderss ideas.

Upsetting Sanders and his supporters would have allowed Biden to pull in votes from Trumps camp, but it could also have led to dividing the Democrat camp and perhaps decimating the votes of Sanderss supporters, who might have chosen not to vote for Biden or even boycotted the elections.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Mental health disorders and suicides are expected to spike with COVID-19, and now residents in New York, Illinois and Michigan can seek remote mental health care and medicine delivery through telemedicine startup Cerebral.

With parts of the nation still in quarantine, COVID-19 has impacted the way most people go about their day to day lives. 30.3 million people have filed for unemployment in the past 6 weeks and the number continues to rise. As many find themselves out of work and school or mandated to stay at home, social isolation continues to challenge mental health. Telemedicine companies like Cerebral are offering mental health care and prescriptions through live video meetings to support people during this time.

The company was founded by CEO Kyle Robertson and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ho Anh, who was previously the Founding Medical Director at the telemedicine upstart Hims and Medical Group President at Lemonaid Health. It has been available to residents in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas for months and has just launched in New York, Illinois, and Michigan. Those who find themselves struggling with mental health in those states can now access the care they need without risking exposure to COVID-19 at physical clinics.

Cerebral clients report feeling heard, supported, and more focused. Because of their work with Cerebral, one of its clients has successfully managed their anxiety, allowing them to help out with food supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19. They were able to stay focused and set up new supply chains for the farmers, moving nearly 100,000lbs of food in one week that was otherwise going to go unused.

Specialists fear the long-term impact of institutional closures on public healththe 2008 recession claimed over 10,000 lives by suicide in the United States and the UK, and this time, the impacts could be even more devastating. Cerebral is tackling the rising mental health crisis by providing over-video diagnosis and support. Those seeking treatment may set up an initial meeting with a provider and continue to meet with a personal Care Counselor each month to track treatment outcomes. Care Counselors are also available to support clients outside of regularly scheduled meetings through online messaging and text. Cerebrals services are now available in New York, Illinois, and Michigan.

Cerebral is creating an easy and accessible process by which people are treated for anxiety and depression through the screen. The startup is growing rapidly due to additional demand for remote mental health services, having hired more than 30 new mental health clinicians in the past month alone.

If you would like more information, please visit Cerebrals website at getcerebral.com or email support@getcerebral.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: https://www.prweb.com/releases/covid_19_fuels_growth_for_remote_mental_health_services_as_cerebral_expands_to_new_york_illinois_and_michigan/prweb17100455.htm
(Newser)  After JetBlue decided to honor first responders in New York City by flying three planes at low altitude over the city Thursday night, critics called it a terrible idea and wondered if the airline had forgotten what two planes flying at low altitude did to the city on 9/11. The New York-based airline described the move as a "flyover salute for our hometown healthcare heroes and first responders" and stressed that the FAA had approved the altitude of the three flights, the Washington Post reports. The planes flew at 2,000 feet, which is only 200 feet higher than One World Trade Center, the city's tallest building, reports the Week.

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The three planes circled the city for around an hour starting at 7pm. One Twitter user slammed the move as "frivolous, tonedeaf, and savagely useless," Business Insider reports. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: "Nothing like a corporate PR campaign that burns jet fuel at low altitudes over vulnerable communities dying from a respiratory virus that compounds on our preexisting and disproportionate exposure to air pollution to show healthcare workers we care." In a move received more positively than the flyover, JetBlue also announced this week that it will donate 100,000 pairs of round-trip flight vouchers to health care workers, starting with 10,000 for workers in New York City, the Hill reports. (Read more New York City stories.)
As many countries continue with lockdowns and closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a white horse with free reign over a town has become a beloved local legend and international celebrity.

Germany has closed its schools, playgrounds and many businesses to attempt to flatten the curve of COVID-19. That's common to many parts of the world. What's not common is how Frankfurt, Germany has a white Arabian mare that's allowed to freely roam the streets.

For more than a decade, Jenny has meandered through her local Fechenheim area, a district of Frankfurt on the bank of the Main river. Every morning she leaves her stable and trolls through the town, bringing streetcars to a stop and bringing smiles to the locals' faces.

"Everyone else has to live with coronavirus restrictions but Jenny is as free as ever," her owner Anna Weischedel, 65, told AFP.

According to her owner, Jenny, 25, has always been a favourite in the town but her popularity has increased as of late.

"People seem to notice her more because they have more time. A lot of passers-by stroke her, maybe because they are missing some human contact," said Anna.

In case people are confused by the majestic white horse casually walking through the town, Jenny wears a note around her neck that reads: "I haven't run away, I'm just out for a walk."

Jenny's walk around the town usually ends around 4:00 p.m. when Anna's husband, Werner, hops on his e-scooter to track her down along her usual route.
WASHINGTON  An estimated 43,000 millionaires will receive an average tax cut of more $1.6 million thanks to changes quietly approved by Congress in its massive coronavirus stimulus bill.

The changes allow all businesses with net losses in 2018, 2019 or 2020 to seek refunds on previously paid income taxes, among other similar reforms. While the changes will provide some relief to smaller businesses, most of the benefits will flow to wealthy business owners and partners, at great expense to the federal government.

According to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, 82 percent of the benefits will go to owners of pass-through business owners who make $1 million or more in annual income. The millionaires who will benefit the most are hedge fund investors and real estate professionals, the Tax Policy Center found.

"I get relief for businesses, especially to the extent that we're trying to keep businesses afloat so they can keep employees retain," said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute. "However, in some instances we stretched to fix problems that exclusively effect the highest of income [earners]."

Although they voted for the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that included this tax provision, now some Democrats, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Rep. Paul Tonko of Amsterdam, say they want to repeal it. Many Democrats have sponsored legislation to change the provisions, but its unclear if such a measure could pass the Republican-led Senate. Some have signed a letter asking leadership to repeal the provisions in the next coronavirus bill.

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Democrats have claimed they didnt know the tax break was in the nearly 900-page stimulus bill at the time they voted. It is estimated the tax break will cost the government more than $150 billion this year.

It is deeply unfortunate that an emergency provision meant to help small businesses was expanded and abused to provide massive tax cuts to those who are literally least in need," Gillibrand said.

Tonko called it a "corrupt provision."

Chair of the Finance Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said lawmakers opposing the measures were pandering for votes and driven by class warfare.

Expanding the ability of companies to use net operating losses to reduce their taxes is a bipartisan method to aid businesses that was used in 2002 after the Sept. 11 attacks, in 2005 for taxpayers affected by Hurricane Katrina and in 2009 after the financial crisis, Grassley said. Over 90 percent of American businesses are pass-through entities  the business structure most likely to benefit from the changes  the Tax Foundation found.

These businesses are facing cash-flow catastrophes, Grassley wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. Whats more, they employ more than half of the U.S. workforce. And yet, the partisan critics dont want to allow some Main Street businesses to get a tax break for their losses if the losses are too great.

Kevin P. O'Leary, a certified public accountant and managing director at Marvin and Company, P.C. in Latham, said he is working with many clients  a mix of privately held pass-through businesses, S-corporations and some C-corporations  to see which would benefit from carry back losses after these changes.

"I've had some clients who said that the losses were pretty immaterial so I'll just let it flow forward to the 2019 return, not a big difference," O'Leary said. "But for the larger ones, we are definitely carry back."

Congress lifted a cap that had limited refunds for business losses. The cap was at $250,000 for individuals or $500,000 for joint filers. Individual business owners would have to had to have over $250,000 in other taxable income and over $250,000 in losses to take advantage of the lifting of the cap.

You take a small restaurant, they are not in the excess business loss situation, said Richard Pomp, professor of Law at the University of Connecticut and expert in federal taxation. . The small restauranteur or the hairstylist, or whoever else you want to focus on, they may have only business income, business losses. They dont have a lot of dividends and capital gains. They havent been subject to this cap to begin with.

Lets take a wealthy person who is a hedge fund manager," he added. "Theyre the ones who are going to have other income which they can offset with this business loss, and theyre the ones that theyre going to have some much other income that they were caught by the cap. ... Most mom and pop shops wont have enough excess business losses or other income to benefit significantly from the changes.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The tax break may reap benefits for many New York residents. New York had the seventh highest share of households earning $200,000 or more in 2018. New York accounts for just under half of all U.S. hedge fund industry assets and has more hedge fund managers and investors than anywhere else in the country, according to Preqin, a financial data company.

The tax break includes changes that allow companies to carry back net operating losses for five years to get refunds on taxes they paid prior to 2017, when higher corporate tax rates were in effect. The reforms also permit companies to deduct 100 percent of business losses, not limited by 80 percent of taxable income. Finally, it also includes changes for a certain kind of property, something that may allow some companies to claim more losses.

The changes allow some businesses to get "a benefit right now" while the pandemic is ongoing, O'Leary said, if they had 2018 or 2019 net operating losses to claim. For companies that only had losses during the coronavirus in 2020, they will have to wait until they file taxes in 2021 to see tax relief flow to them.

"For companies in 2020 right now, there is nothing you can do," he said. "If you had profits in 2018 and 2019, but you're really struggling right now in 2020 ... you're not going to be able to tap into the net operating loss ... until you file your 2020 return and carry back."

Carry backs on businesses net operating losses were prohibited by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed by a Republican-majority Congress, as on offset to a large reduction in corporate tax rates.

It has been on their agenda to get that reinstated, Pomp said. Now it has been reinstated with a vengeance.

Tonko pinned the blame on the provision on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"As it turns out, he was also busy cutting back room deals that included a money grab for his wealthiest friends and political donors," Tonko said. "This is beyond unacceptable. It is vulgar.

Ashley Schapitl, a spokesperson for Democrats on the Senate Finance committee, said the provision was included in Republican proposals from the beginning of negotiations on the CARES Act and while Democrats blocked other corporate tax giveaways, they did not block this one.

The Joint Committee on Taxation projects the tax break will cost the federal government roughly $154 billion this fiscal year. In the next fiscal year, the federal government will lose about $73 billion from the changes.

In their legislation to repeal the provision, Democrats would replace it with a narrower provision that would allow companies with less than $15 million in receipts to carry back net operating losses from 2020 for two years would offer taxpayers advanced refunds of up to $100,000.

The tax changes in the stimulus bill are among many ways Congress and the administration have aided businesses and corporations during the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government created a tax credit for companies that retain their employees during coronavirus-related closures and delayed payments of payroll taxes.

It created the Paycheck Protection Program to issue small businesses loans that can be forgiven if used mostly to cover the cost of payroll and has other loans for small businesses. For large corporations, the U.S. Treasury is distributing hundreds of billions in loans and relief to airlines and other companies.
Men are twice as likely to die from coronavirus as women, the biggest-ever study into the disease's risk factors has found.

Elderly, obese and ethnic minorities are also substantially more likely to fall victim to the illness, according to NHS England analysis of 17.4million patient records.

It revealed that black and Asian people are 1.7 and 1.6 times more likely to die from the virus than white people, respectively.

This is in line with a finding from an Office for National Statistics report yesterday showing ethnic minority groups were more vulnerable to the disease.

The latest study, by scientists from Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also suggested smoking has a protective effect.

Those who had never smoked were twice as likely to die from the virus compared to current cigarette users.

It is the latest in a growing line of studies to suggest smokers have a lower risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19, which researchers describe as 'weird'.

The rate of risk (in red) is relative to groups in the same category, with the one as the reference. Men are twice as likely to die as women, and people over 80 are 12 times as likely to die as those in their fifties

The latest study, by scientists from Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also suggested smoking has a protective effect

Among the 17.4 million people included in the research database, 5,707 died from COVID-19 between February 1 and April 25.

The NHS research found that being over 80, or having a comorbidity such as heart disease or uncontrolled diabetes were by far the biggest risk factors.

But it also showed sex and age played a huge role - with men 1.99 times as likely to die as women.

People in their sixties were twice as likely to die as those in their fifties, while the risk for over-70s went up fivefold. For those older than 80, it was 12 times as high.

University of Oxford's Dr Ben Goldacre, who co-led the study, said the findings should be used to decide policy when easing lockdown.

He endorsed the idea of letting young healthy Britons have some freedoms back but shielding elderly people for a while longer - something already proposed by the Government's scientific advisers.

An Office for National Statistics report on Thursday found ethnic minorities were at an increased risk. Pictured: Death rates are adjusted to take into account age, which shows that black people face four times the risk of dying compared to white people

Figures that take into account age and location reveal that black people and Brits of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage face are 2.3-fold risk of coronavirus death than white people

When deprivation is also adjusted for, it shows the odds of dying is still higher for almost every ethnic group

And statistics that take into account underlying health conditions as well as all the factors above show the risk is still between 89 and 93 per cent higher for black people

WHY ARE SO MANY CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS FROM BAME BACKGROUNDS? A series of worrying studies have shown the risk of dying from coronavirus for BAME communities is several times higher. The findings prompted an urgent Number 10 investigation into the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on black and minority ethnic Britons. Experts say there is unlikely to be one sole reason as to why ethnic minorities are more likely to become severely ill or die from the virus. They could also be more at risk because of their professions, according to Shaomeng Jia, an economics professor at Alabama State University's College of Business Administration. Those working in retail, in supermarkets and in construction - who cannot work from home - were still mingling and risking infection even when the outbreak peaked, she said. Meanwhile, health care jobs, including NHS workers and care home staff are exposed to bigger loads of the virus more often because they come into face-to-face contact with gravely ill patients. Having a high viral load - the number of particles of the virus someone is first infected with - gives the bug a 'jump start', scientists say. Members of ethnic minority communities are twice as likely to be affected by poverty, and are often hit the hardest by chronic diseases. Those living in poverty smoke and drink alcohol more and are more likely to be obese - all of which increase the likelihood of chronic health conditions. Patients with pre-existing health troubles struggle to fight off COVID-19 before it causes deadly complications such as pneumonia. Impoverished people are also more likely to use public transport more often and live in crowded houses - driving up their chance of catching and spreading the virus. Advertisement

A bulging waistline also drove up the risk of COVID-19 death - those who were morbidly obese (with a BMI over 40) were 2.3 times more likely to die.

The finding that black and Asian people were 1.7 and 1.6 times more likely to die, respectively, than whites follows similar ONS research yesterday.

The ONS data found black people are four times more likely to die from than white people - but once underlying health conditions and poverty were stripped out, the risk was 1.9 times.For men from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds the figure was 1.8 times.

Liam Smeeth, of the LSHTM, the co-lead on the NHS England study, told The Times: 'A key question is why. One possibility is that people from black minority ethnic groups have higher rates of things like obesity or diabetes or high blood pressure, and that this is contributing to their risk of dying from Covid-19.

'The research looked at people's underlying health conditions when establishing differences in risk for various groups. What we saw was that while these clinical factors explained a small part of the excess death risk among these groups, it was only a small part of the explanation.'

The researchers also found that uncontrolled diabetes doubled someone's risk, and severe asthma increased the risk by about 25 per cent.

Dr Goldacre said he had expected the risk for asthmatics to be higher and proposed that asthma medication may have a protective effect.

He told the paper: 'There's a very small possibility that that's due to a protective factor which has been discussed quite widely already among the medical community, which is that possibly inhaled corticosteroids may be protective. We've been asked to look at that by folk in senior roles in in the NHS and government.'

The NHS England study - which has not yet been published in a journal or scrutinised by other scientists - is the latest to suggest smokers are at less risk of falling seriously ill with coronavirus.

A report by the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infections (ISARIC) last month found fewer than 10 per cent of COVID-19 hospital admissions were smokers  more than a third less than the national rate of 14.4 per cent.

And a scientific literature review done by University College London also found hospitalisations were lower for cigarette users.

UCL academics looked at 28 papers and found the proportions of smokers among hospital patients were 'lower than expected.

One of the studies showed that in the UK the proportion of smokers among COVID-19 patients was just five per cent, a third of the national rate of 14.4 per cent.

Another found in France the rate was four times lower. In China, a study noted 3.8 per cent of patients were smokers - despite more than half of the population regularly smoking cigarettes.

Commenting on the matter, Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said 'there's something weird going on with smoking and coronavirus'.

Professor Bauld said the way the virus enters the body may be blocked by effects of nicotine - the addictive compound found in tobacco.

The coronavirus enters cells inside the body via structures called ACE-2 receptors, which coat the surface of some cells, including in the airways and lungs.

The numbers of ACE-2 receptors someone has are thought to vary depending on genetics and some evidence suggests that they are higher in smokers.

This could, in theory, put them at a higher risk of contracting the coronavirus.

However, the virus is known to cause lung damage by depleting the numbers of ACE-2 receptors, so the fact that smoking increases them could reverse the effect and prevent harm to the lungs.

On the other hand, other studies show that nicotine reduces the action of the ACE-2 receptor, suggesting smokers are less likely to catch the virus in the first place.

Some experts say hospitals are probably not recording patients' smoking status properly, potentially because they are too busy, patients are too sick to answer, or because people lie in their answers.
To the Editor:

Re Father and Son Arrested in Killing of Black Jogger (news article, May 8), about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Ga., in which two white men have now been charged:

That it took months before the men were arrested is further proof the countrys justice and law enforcement apparatus is racially biased. There clearly was no sense of urgency among officials in the case.

If not for the video footage and subsequent media reports that stirred the countrys collective outrage, the chances of justice for Mr. Arbery would have probably remained distant. That in itself is a chilling commentary on life in America today.

Cody Lyon

Brooklyn

To the Editor:

Re The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery, by Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, May 6):

As best as I can tell, the killing took place on land that once belonged to my slaveholding ancestors, the Scarlett family of Glynn County, Georgia. So there is a direct geographic line between the death of this young man and the torment and death to which enslavers like my forebears subjected African-American men, women and children.

I am sad, ashamed, angry and bewildered to be a part of this legacy, which seems to have no end.

Leslie Stainton

Ann Arbor, Mich.
Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang has said Vietnam rejects Chinas unilateral decision on fishing ban in the East Sea from May 1 to August 16.

Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang

Answering reporters queries about the issue on May 8, Hang reiterated that Vietnam has sufficient historical and legal evidence affirming its sovereignty over Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes in accordance with international law.

As an East Sea coastal country and a member of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Vietnam has sovereignty, sovereign right and jurisdiction over its waters as defined in the UNCLOS and enjoys other legitimate interests at sea in line with the UNCLOSs regulations, she said.

Given the regional and global context at present, Vietnam asks China not to further complicate the situation in the East Sea, she added./.VNA
Virus-hit Iran allowed worshippers to attend Friday prayers for the first time in more than two months, but the capital remains under restrictions amid the Middle East's deadliest coronavirus outbreak.

Since reporting its first cases in mid-February, the Islamic republic has struggled to contain the spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

The government on Friday urged Iranians to take social distancing "more seriously" as it announced more than 1,500 new cases of coronavirus infection in the Middle East's hardest-hit country.

In order to contain the spread of the disease, Iran has taken various restrictive measures, without ever imposing a lockdown or quarantine.

Schools have been shut, major events postponed and inter-city travel banned since mid-March as part of those efforts.

But cash-strapped Iran has allowed a gradual reopening of shops since April 11.

It gave the green light for the reopening of mosques on Monday in about 30 percent of the counties where the risk of renewed outbreaks is considered low.

MASK-CLAD WORSHIPPERS

But mosques remain shuttered in the capital.

State television broadcast footage of worshippers attending Friday prayers at a mosque in East Azerbaijan province.

They were seen wearing masks and sitting farther apart than usual in accordance with social distancing guidelines.

The authority in charge of organising Friday prayers said they would be held in 180 locations, describing it as a "great honour".

Mohsen Alviri, an academic and theologian from Qom, the Shiite holy city that was the epicentre of Iran's coronavirus outbreak, stressed the importance of Friday prayers in the country.

"Friday prayers are an opportunity to create interaction between the government and the masses," he said.

"In addition to the religious aspect of Friday prayers, the public is informed about the affairs of the country," he told AFP.

"Therefore, it is one of the most important symbols of public participation in the political arena of Iran."

DISTANCING URGED

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 55 new virus fatalities in the past 24 hours took the overall death toll in the health crisis to 6,541.

He said another 1,556 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus over the same period of time, taking the country's caseload to 104,691.

"We (Iranians) are urged to continue to follow health advice, especially social distancing, more seriously than on previous days and weeks," Jahanpour said in televised remarks.

Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts over the country's COVID-19 figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher than reported.

On Saturday, the government's official tally of daily infections hit 802 -- its lowest level since the start of March.

Iran's count stayed below 1,000 for a second day, however its caseload rebounded on Monday and has stayed above that mark on each day since then.

Mosques were Monday allowed to reopen to worshippers in 132, or around a third, of Iran's administrative divisions which are considered low-risk.

The country has started using a colour-coded system for different areas to classify the virus risk.

Worshippers have been obliged to enter mosques with masks and gloves and told they can only stay for half an hour during prayer times and must use their personal items.

Mosques were told to refrain from offering them food and drinks, provide hand sanitisers and disinfect all surfaces.

Iran requested a $5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund to battle the coronavirus outbreak.

But its arch enemy the United States, which effectively holds a veto at the IMF, signalled it has no intention of agreeing to give Iran such a credit line.
A New Jersey school district is aiming high to honor students and their families who are not able to be in the classroom because of the coronavirus.

Old Bridge Township Public Schools will be flying a banner reading OB Schools We Miss Our Kids and (heart) the 2020 Class. Stay well, over the township on Saturday between 11:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Superintendent David Cittadino said in a statement that he booked Manalapan-based Fly Sky Ads to fly the plane over the township as a way to show support for the districts students and the graduates of the Class of 2020. Cittadino said he is personally footing a majority of the bill for the gesture, with an assist from the Old Bridge Education Foundation, a nonprofit that supports various programs in the district.

The school declined to release the cost of the flight.

I wanted to do something that was original, memorable, and truly a New Jersey thing, Cittadino said. The banner planes at the New Jersey Shore are iconic symbols of the Jersey Shore experience. For me, the concept of a banner plane sending a positive message to our students and the Class of 2020 is more symbolic than anything else.

Cittadino said he hopes the students can get a few good selfies with the banner flying above them.

As a superintendent, I am presented with many suggestions from what other districts across the nation are doing to recognize their students during these very difficult times, Cittadino said. When you have nearly 8,500 students, and approximately 750 of them are from the Class of 2020, certain ideas, like putting up pictures of every senior around town, are not as feasible as when a school that has 30 seniors does something like that.

If the weather does not cooperate, the banner will fly on Sunday.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Chris Franklin may be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com.
If India remains focused on its objectives without letting domestic political compulsions come in the way, the COVID-19 pandemic may propel Indias rise

The post-pandemic world will be a curious one. Not only will the virus usher in behavioral, social and political modifications at a micro level and trigger indelible domestic changes, it will also impact nation-states at a macro level. Economic vulnerabilities will be exposed, and the shifting of geopolitical sands will be accelerated. It will also level the playing field, making the global order susceptible to the rise of middle powers.

If geopolitical standing stems from a nations economic prowess, then one may have already seen COVID-19s lopsided impact where the damage caused by the virus is directly proportional to a nations economic status. The pandemic is affecting all economies of the world but the major ones  based on the data points that we have at this stage  seem to have suffered greater damage.

Using latest IMF and World Bank data, Dhruva Jaishankar, director of the US initiative at ORF, shows the potential vulnerability of each major world economy and finds that India is moderately placed on almost every criterion, with neither excessive vulnerabilities relative to others nor major causes for complacency and posits that the pandemic may serve to actually reduce Indias current account deficit.

Though conjectures about the post-pandemic global order has so far been dominated by the relative decline or rise of the worlds superpower and its challenger and their struggle for dominance over the international system, one may do well to stop defining the world solely through the US-China prism. It is now evident that both nations will suffer considerable damage to their global standing and their power projection may be affected.

Not only may American and Chinese national power be hit by the crisis  some of it might even be exacerbated due to increasing strategic rivalry between the two nations and likely economic decoupling.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, former prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd posits that neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Rather, both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad. And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management.

But where Rudd sees steady drift towards international anarchy, it is possible to decipher securing of interests and projection of strategic altruism by regional powers who are willing to seize the diplomatic opportunity provided by the pandemic. These middle powers appear ready to influence the material and ideational trajectory of international politics.

Foremost among powers such as France, Germany, Australia, South Korea and Japan is India, which has so far managed to both contain the scope and scale of the pandemic within its own shores and present a humanitarian face abroad  even flexing a bit of diplomatic muscle by initiating a limited, collective response.

In this, India has taken a path less travelled. While the nations of the world, including major powers, sought to tackle the virus on their own and even ran into a desperate collision with other states over critical medical equipment  nowhere has this behavior been more evident than in Europe where the pandemic ripped European union into shreds  India resurrected a couple of moribund and obsolete platforms to present a united front against COVID-19. This was smart diplomacy.

I would like to propose that the leadership of SAARC nations chalk out a strong strategy to fight Coronavirus. We could discuss, via video conferencing, ways to keep our citizens healthy. Together, we can set an example to the world, and contribute to a healthier planet.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 13, 2020

In reviving the SAARC and holding the first summit since 2014 (though a virtual one) and creating a COVID-19 emergency fund where India pledged $10 million  more than half of the total contribution  Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a message of regional unity that was duly noticed elsewhere.

Global challenges require coordinated and agile responses. The recent videoconference among #SAARC leaders on #COVID19 showed how leaders can present practical proposals, such as establishing a regional fund. Lets all keep working together to fight this worldwide outbreak. AGW  State_SCA (@State_SCA) March 16, 2020

Similarly, the NAM platform  that Modi had ignored in the past, refusing to even attend the summits in 2016 and 2019  was suddenly transformed from a Nehruvian and Cold War-era relic to a platform to project Indias diplomatic outreach and humanitarian response. In a virtual summit, Modi highlighted how India has promoted coordination in the immediate neighbourhood, organised online training to share Indias medical expertise with smaller neighbours and ensured medical supplies to over 123 partner countries, including 59 members of NAM".

In shaping a collective response, dispatching consignments of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to African, Latin American and Central Asian nations including even developed economies such as France, Russia, US and the UK, in extending online training to health care professionals in South Asia and other neighbouring countries on COVID-19 management strategies and sending teams of Indian military doctors to countries like Nepal, Maldives and Kuwait, India has shown a diplomatic outreach, political will and a capability to safeguard its own interest and of those in its sphere of influence.

As professor Harsh V Pant and Paras Ratna point out in Livemint, New Delhi has also played a crucial role in evacuating stranded Indians as well as foreign nationals. Its rapid deployment of C-17 Hercules transport aircraft indicates a growing response-projection capability and a matching appetite to take on the responsibility of regional leadership.

While this aspect of Indian diplomacy has been evident, navigating the post-pandemic world will require a more nimble-footed response when it comes to managing great power relationships. Here, Indias mettle will be tested on several parameters and sustained questions will be asked of its ability to explore strategic responses. A quick look at the trajectory of Indias bilateral relationships with China and the US is warranted.

Managing the China puzzle

While ties with China has historically involved elements of competition, cooperation and conflict, these edges may become sharper in a post-pandemic world. In absence of democracy, the legitimacy of Chinas authoritarian leadership rests on economic progress for its people. The pandemic has struck at the very root of that foundation by not only slowing down economic activity but also inflicting a sustained and massive economic damage. As Rudd calculates in his Foreign Affairs article, Chinas overall 2020 growth is likely to be around zero the worst performance since the Cultural Revolution five decades ago.

This presents a tricky problem for the Chinese Communist Party that is also witnessing a simultaneous uptick in global antagonism towards China, and facing the prospect of large-scale exodus of foreign investment, manufacturing and exports from its shores. Japan has already made its move, pressure is growing in the US to decouple its economy from China-dominated global supply chain and chorus of a similar sentiment is growing in the EU which is also looking to diversify its interests.

The collective weight of these moves will have a bearing on Chinese economy that is already under strain, and the decline in Chinese economy may translate into a frontal pressure on the CCP whose credibility may see a concomitant decay. Since Chinas politics and security policy are closely tied to its economic performance  as Jaishankar points out in the piece mentioned above  this raises the possibility that China may double down on a diversionary tactic such as the one India witnessed in 1962 when conflict coincided with the calamitous Great Leap Forward.

Though both India and China have since grown more powerful, the power differential between both nations, if anything, has widened even more. The emergent crisis from the pandemic may incentivise the CCP to be more assertive and probe Indias responses to threats to its external security environment  the likes of which we saw during the Doklam crisis.

For instance, China seems to have suddenly become quite aggressive on its maritime periphery. A spate of recent incidents has come to light. These curiously timed incidents indicate an opportunistic behaviour by the Chinese that seeks to exploit perceptions of weakness or distraction in its adversaries and advance own interests through gradualism.

China sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel, established new administrative districts for the contested Spratly and Paracel island chains, raided Taiwanese airspace in a daring nighttime flyby, forcing Taiwan to scramble its jets, a Chinese fishing vessel collided with a Japanese destroyer, and CCPs cynical adventurism was on display during a tense standoff with US Naval forces alongside Malaysias Borneo coast.

These behaviours, taken separately, hardly indicate a flare up of epic proportions but the pushing of envelop by gray zone tactics is notable. As Abraham Denmark, Charles Edel, and Siddharth Mohandas write in War on the Rocks, This approach reflects a maxim of Vladimir Lenin, whom the Chinese Communist Party continues to revere to this day: Probe with a bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push. In multiple instances, Beijing has continued to push when it perceives that its actions are unlikely to cause a significant response. But when Chinese assertiveness has been met with resolute counterpressure, Beijings response has not been predictably escalatory.

Chinese behaviour here is of particular interest to India. New Delhi successfully deployed denial of access mechanism to stymie Chinese design on Bhutanese territory during the Doklam incident, and it must be ready to encounter similar misadventures as Chinese Communist Party seeks to distract disaffected population through a dose of assertive behaviour. India must continue to explore hedging and hard-balancing options while engaging the top Chinese leadership to manage the relationship.

The Trump unpredictability

This is where Indias relationship with the US assumes more importance. China is a hegemon in unipolar Asia, a competitor and threat to India, and it makes sense therefore for New Delhi to deepen its partnership with Washington in areas other than defence and strategic partnership.

For the US, developing its partnership with the worlds largest democracy with which it shares values and interests is reason enough, and ties have become increasingly more broad-based as Washington gets involved in a long-term strategic rivalry with China.

Along with dovetailing of India-US interests, Chinas aggressive behaviour, missteps on COVID-19, attempts to rewrite the narrative on the pandemic and publicity efforts over a global health and economic crisis have made India-US cooperation easier.

There is scope for extension and deepening of the relationship, powered by mutual bipartisan goodwill and intense people-to-people connections, but the pandemic may push the relationship into some areas of discomfort. More so at a time when the US is going for presidential elections and all issues are on the table, including the issue of immigration that  along with trade  have proven to be particularly tricky to solve.

As the US economy tanks over the crisis, chorus will grow inside the US to double down on economic nationalism and the impulse will most likely be a bipartisan one during the election time. Already, four Republican senators have written to Donald Trump, asking him to suspend all immigration work visas to the US until the unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic returns to normal levels.

There is also the possibility that a severe downturn in the Indian economy may force the hand of the Modi government in postponing arms deals with the US, drawing the ire of an unpredictable US president who places great score on these parameters.

Finally, Trumps random mood swings may grow more frequent as elections draw near, and darker as US economy grapples with pandemic woes. So far, this White House has shown a marked inability to insure foreign policy from such unpredictable presidential behavior. That will likely be an added challenge for India.

On the flip side, India is aware of its asymmetric capacities in managing the great power relationships and has stitched a careful mosaic of strategic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific that will allow for hedging and policy flexibility. If India remains focused on its objectives without letting domestic political compulsions come in the way, the pandemic may propel Indias rise.
Lesotho's ruling party on Thursday told parliament it was quitting a coalition government and forming a new one with an opposition party, a move likely to lead to the ousting of embattled Prime Minister Thomas Thabane.

The All Basotho Convention Party (ABC) joined hands with the Democratic Congress (DC) party and started the process shortly after Thabane reiterated his intention to retire by the end of July.

Ruling party officials and opposition groups have piled pressure on Thabane to leave office earlier over allegations he had a hand in the 2017 murder of his estranged wife -- a case that has gripped the tiny southern African nation.

"A letter informing the speaker of the national assembly that we are no longer part of government was handed over to the speaker today," ABC spokesman Montoeli Masoetsa told AFP.

"We expect him to read the letter tomorrow," he added. After that parliament will relay the information to the Council of State, which advises Lesotho's King Letsie III.

The Council of State is then legally obliged to ask the king to appoint a new prime minister -- choosing a member of parliament backed by the majority of MPs.

Earlier on Thursday, the 80-year old Thabane repeated his intention to retire by the end of July this year on the grounds of "old age".

"I wish to once again reaffirm my decision to retire as prime minister," Thabane said in an address to the nation, without setting a clear date.

"I have always been consistent that it is my wish to retire from office by the 31st of July, 2020, or earlier... if all the necessary conditions for my retirement are put in place," he added.

The prime minister said the decision was "voluntary" as he was "no longer as energetic" due to his age.

Not a 'dignified' exit

Thabane and his previous wife Lipolelo Thabane, 58, were going through a bitter divorce when she was gunned down outside her home in the capital Maseru, just two days before her husband's inauguration in June 2017.

Police have since found Thabane's mobile number in communications records from the crime scene -- prompting rivals within the ABC to demand his immediate resignation.

Last week, the ABC rejected a demand for immunity from prosecution after Thabane steps down.

The prime minister's current wife Maesaiah Thabane, whom he married two months after Lipolelo's death, is deemed a co-conspirator in the murder case.

She has already been charged with murder and is out on bail.

Thabane suspended parliament for three months in March after the lower house barred him from calling fresh elections if he lost a no-confidence vote.

But that suspension has been overturned by the constitutional court, stifling his attempts to remain in power.

Without snap elections, the new ABC-led government will be formed in parliament.

"His speech was the same old story," said DC deputy leader Motlalentoa Letsosa.

"(Thabane) is denying himself and opportunity to leave office in a dignified manner."

str-sch/ach
The White House's new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was a harsh critic of President Donald Trump during his candidacy and spoke against him in multiple interviews slamming his comments against Mexican immigrants as 'racist' and 'not the American way'.

Once Trump became the forerunner on the Republican ticket in the 2016 presidential election, she changed her tune and became a fierce advocate for him.

The Republican writer and pundit was named White House press secretary on April 7. After Trump was elected she had served as spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

In resurfaced interviews with CNN and Fox Business from 2015 McEnany said it was 'unfortunate' and 'inauthentic' to call Trump a Republican.

The White House's new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was a harsh critic of President Donald Trump during his candidacy and slammed his comments against Mexican immigrants as 'racist' and 'not the American way' back in 2015

Before McEnany became White Press Secretary on April 7 she had shifted her views on President Trump. In early 2015 she was outspokenly critical of him and called him an 'inauthentic' Republican. Once he started to lead in the polls she began to vehemently defend him

She gave a scathing criticism in response to Trumps controversial statement that Mexico was sending 'rapists' to the US and immigrants were bringing drugs and crime to the country.

'To me, a racist statement is a racist statement. I dont like what Donald Trump said,' she said on CNN in late June 2015, slamming his comments as 'derogatory'.

'Donald Trump has shown himself to be a showman, I dont think he is a serious candidate. I think it is a sideshow. Its not within the mainstream of the candidates, she said at the time.

In an interview from June 23, 2015 McEnany said that Trump didnt deserve to be polling in second in New Hampshire.

'Donald Trump is number two and doesnt deserve to be there,' she said during an appearance as a commentator on Fox Business Kennedy.

'I appreciate his boldness and I think some of his rhetoric got the base excited, but it is not welcome rhetoric. Some of the things we heard in his speech when he said, when Mexico sends people across the border, they're sending criminals and rapists and maybe some good people. Look, the GOP doesn't need to be turning away voters and isolating them. We need to be bringing them into the tent. Donald Trump is the last person who's going to do that,' she added.

In a June 23, 2015 interview of Fox News' show 'Kennedy' she said 'Donald Trump is number two and doesnt deserve to be there' after he polled at number two in New Hampshire during his presidential candidacy

On June 29, 2015 speaking to CNN she slammed Trump for his incendiary comments on Mexican immigrants where he claimed their were bringing drugs and crime into the country and called them 'rapists'. McEnany said: 'I want to make it clear, I don't support what Donald Trump said'

She doubled down on her comments on June 29, 2015 she said: 'I want to make it clear, I don't support what Donald Trump said. I think he said something very unartful, very inappropriate.'

She further said that in regards to Trump's border security policy, most Republicans don't support deporting undocumented immigrants.

'I think the mainstream Republican does not want to send the illegal immigrant back to Mexico. I think that they're here to stay, that's not the American way. We're not going to ship people across the border. There has to be some path to citizenship,' she said.

'So, in that sense, I don't think Donald Trump is consistent with mainstream Republicans,' she added.

Then on June 30, 2015 she said Trump wasnt a true Republican.

By October 2015 she was fiercely defending Trump and said his comments on Mexicans were taken out of context during an HLN interview

Donald Trump is benefiting from all of this, because here is the thing, because every time someone tries to falsely put words in his mouth, they say that he said all Mexican immigrants are criminals, but he did not say that,' she said in that October 2015 HLN interview. 'He said, when Mexico sends people, that is different'

'I dont want to claim this guy. Donald Trump, if we're going to be honest, is a progressive. He supports eminent domain. He supported tax increases before. He's donated 300,000 to Democratic candidates,' she said.

'So, the fact that the Republican Party is now having to claim him, is both unfortunate, and to me, inauthentic. Because this is not a true Republican candidate. And the fact that he's being portrayed as such in media is troublesome and not accurate,' she added.

By July 8, 2015 Trump was leading in the polls and McEnany seemed to switch her stance and defended Trumps comments about Mexican immigrants by comparing them to comedian Amy Schumers jokes about Latino men being rapists.

'It seems like comedy is this veil where you're allowed to say anything you like whereas what she said is - really, if you think about it - more offensive than what Donald Trump said,' McEnany said.

By October 2015 she was fiercely defending Trump and said his comments on Mexicans were taken out of context.

'Donald Trump is benefiting from all of this, because here is the thing, because every time someone tries to falsely put words in his mouth, they say that he said all Mexican immigrants are criminals, but he did not say that,' she said. 'He said, when Mexico sends people, that is different.'
The dream of becoming a Canadian was within reach for Joyce de Paula until COVID-19 hit in March. All she needed was four more months.

Instead, that dream is now shattered after she was laid off as a marketing analyst, just four months shy of the one year of Canadian work experience she required to be eligible for permanent residence in Canada.

The Brazilian woman is among tens of thousands of former international students whose immigration plans are now in limbo because they are running out of time to secure a job in the midst of massive layoffs and an economic slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There are hundreds and hundreds of us, but there is nothing we can do, lamented de Paula, 28, who graduated from Centennial College with a postgraduate certificate in market research and analytics last May before landing a 12-month contract with Dufflet Pastries in July.

Studying in Canada has become a shortcut to immigration in recent years, with Ottawa putting more emphasis on Canadian education and work experience in the selection process.

Those who graduate from a Canadian college or university are granted a postgraduate work permit that lasts between one and three years, depending on the duration of their academic programs.

Immigration candidates must have at least one year of Canadian work experience before their work permits expire in order to get the bonus points for their applications. Anything short of that threshold wont count.

Attaining the coveted permanent residence status should have been smooth sailing for de Paula, who wouldve had her 12-month experience under her belt when her work permit expires in August.

Its so hard to get any job now. Who is going to hire someone with a work permit expiring in four months? asked de Paula, who has started an online petition urging Ottawa to extend the postgrad work permits of international graduates affected by COVID-19. The petition has already collected more than 1,270 signatures.

Phil Lao, who just finished the one-year construction project management postgrad program at Londons Fanshawe College in April, said the window for getting a relevant job in his field is narrowing.

For many of the international students, our end goal is permanent residence. This is very disconcerting and we need more time to wait out the storm, said the 29-year-old, who has an undergrad degree in architecture from the Philippines and earlier this month started working in a factory assembling respiratory equipment like nebulizers and inhalers. This is so stressful.

The pandemic has also wreaked havoc for international students seeking internship opportunities, which many had hoped could lead to jobs upon graduation.

Ashton Samson, also from the Philippines, was supposed to start a placement at a visual effects studio in Toronto in late March, but it was cancelled. Now, he has finished the visual effects and editing for contemporary media program at Fanshawe without any Canadian experience.

He said most productions have shut down their offices and there are few job openings even in graphic design, something he used to do in the Philippines.

Some graduating international students have chosen to take more courses or enrol in another program to buy time to delay applying for a postgrad work permit, but Samson said he has already spent $28,000 studying here  including $17,000 in tuition  and has no money left.

The pressure is immense, said the 24-year-old. We have invested so much in this country that we hope Canada can see our effort and help us in any way it can. We just need to buy more time.

Marcelo Moraes, who completed his postgrad certificate in digital media content strategy at Humber College in April, was fortunate enough to secure a paid co-op placement at the school, but said trying to find a job will be a tall order even after the pandemic is over, let alone for someone on a work permit.

I have sent out more than 70 resumes. Everyone is putting their hirings on hold, said the 46-year-old Brazilian, who has years of experience in assessing, implementing and managing media content strategies. Its a challenging job market. COVID just makes everything that much more difficult.

For Meenal Devgan, going back to school is not an option because she is already on her work permit, which is only given out to an international student once.

The 28-year-old, who has a degree in legal studies from India, enrolled in the human resources management program at Conestoga College in Kitchener in 2018 and started a job as a restaurant supervisor last August before her layoff on March 22. She has since applied to 100 jobs, but is still unemployed.

This is a big deal for our future. It is not our fault that businesses are closed, said Devgan, whose work permit expires in August. A lot of people are in the same boat. We have no options. I just hope immigration (officials) can count our layoff time toward our permanent residence applications.
Venezuela will try two Americans allegedly captured during a failed bid by mercenaries to invade the country, President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday, as the US vowed to "use every tool available" to bring them home. Venezuela announced Monday that it had arrested the two former US special forces soldiers on suspicion of trying to topple Maduro in an operation supported by the US-backed opposition. "They are convicts, confessed, caught red-handed and are being judged by the republic's attorney general, by Venezuela's civil courts, and the process will be full of guarantees and fair," said Maduro. The leader of the crisis-wracked South American country insisted the Americans, identified as Luke Denman and Airan Berry, were being "well treated, with respect." Maduro showed the passports of Denman, 34, and Berry, 41, on state television. The US army has confirmed they were former members of the Green Berets who were deployed to Iraq. In Washington, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the government would "use every tool that we have available to try to get them back." US President Donald Trump had denied any involvement by his administration with the mission, and Washington accused Maduro of launching a "disinformation campaign." Russia, a close ally of Maduro's, hit out at Trump on Wednesday and described his denials as "unconvincing." Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Monday that opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is backed by the US and more than 50 countries, had signed a $212 million contract with "hired mercenaries" using funds seized by the United States from the state oil company PDVSA. Denman and Berry are among 17 people arrested for allegedly being part of an invasion force that was intercepted early Sunday just off the coast, about 40 minutes from the capital Caracas. Another eight alleged attackers were killed. "They have confessed their guilt, they broke international law, they broke Venezuelan law," Maduro said. "They're in the hands of justice now and we guarantee there will be justice in this case with these two Americans and with the rest of the mercenaries, and that the truth will come out." - Bay of Pigs 'remake' - The president repeated his accusation that Trump was directly behind the attack, claiming he contracted with a former US army medic, Jordan Goudreau, to train the mercenary force. "President Donald Trump is the direct leader of the whole incursion," said Maduro, who showed a video in which Denman confesses he was hired by Goudreau for the mission, which first aimed to take control of the international airport in Caracas. Maduro described the raid as a "remake" of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when Cuban exiles covertly financed and directed by the US government attempted to overthrow then Cuba leader Fidel Castro. Pompeo mocked Maduro's claims, saying that if the United States "had been involved, it would have gone differently." Canadian-born Goudreau, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, has admitted the existence of the operation in a video, and claims the private security firm he runs, Silvercorp USA, was contracted by Venezuela's opposition. He told The Washington Post that he hired Denman and Berry as "supervisors" and had known them for years. In the video, Goudreau shows what he claims is a contract signed by Guaido, whose press team subsequently denied having any agreements with private security firms. Maduro -- who has also accused the president of neighboring Colombia, Ivan Duque, of involvement -- said he would ask the United States to extradite Goudreau. The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that "all options are on the table" when discussing possible measures to help Guaido force Maduro from office. Washington has also ramped up sanctions against Maduro, top members of his government, and PDVSA. Venezuela, which is almost entirely dependent on its oil revenues, is reeling from six years of recession, with millions of people facing a shortage of basic necessities. Poverty has soared while around five million people have fled the country, according to United Nations figures.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says there's no sense in engaging in a blame game about who was responsible for the spread of the coronavirus.

Kurz was asked Friday whether the Austrian government will apologize to other countries for what happened in ski resorts such as Ischgl, where tourists were infected and carried the virus as far away as Iceland and Norway.

Kurz said that Austria responded earlier than other countries to the pandemic.

He added: I would never demand an apology from the Italians for Italian guests bringing the virus to Austrian ski resorts, because they certainly didn't do it deliberately.

Kurz said that it doesn't make sense to play an international blame game about who is responsible for this pandemic.

He said it's important to be self-critical and examine what could have been done better.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Battle of Britain veteran died just hours before VE Day, leaving one surviving member of 'The Few' who protected Britain from Nazi Germany in 1940.

Terry Clark was 101 when passed away from natural causes in a care home on Thursday evening, just as the nation was preparing to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day on Friday.

It means that John 'Paddy' Hemingway is the only surviving member of 'The Few', a crew of RAF pilots who protected the UK from the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Terry Clark, who was one of only two remaining members of 'The Few' who defended the nation in the Battle of Britain, has died at the age of 101

Mr Clark was responsible for protecting York and its nearby airfields during the Battle of Britain and made six kills. The pilot also protected Allied soldiers in Normandy on D-Day 1944

Mr Clark died from natural causes in a care home just hours before VE Day, where the nation celebrated the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War by flying planes across the skies of Britain (pictured)

In 1938, Mr Clark joined the Auxiliary Air Force as a 19-year-old. A year later, he was called up to RAF Catterick where he operated as an air gunner and a radio operator on the Bleinheim and Beaufighter aircrafts respectively.

He then joined Bleinhem fighter unit No. 219 Squadron in July 1940 as an Aircraftman Second Class, protecting York and its nearby airfields during the Battle of Britain, and was responsible for six kills.

He was awarded with the Distinguished Flying Medal in July 1941 for his bravery, as well as the Battle of Britain 'clasp' that all 3,000 serving men during the Battle received.

GLORIOUS FEW WHO STOOD AGAINST NAZI DOMINATION They fought the most important battle this country ever faced and their victory saved Britain from the tyranny of Nazi Germany. The heroes of the Battle of Britain repelled Hitler's Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940 but only one is now still alive. At the time were in their late teens or early 20s when they took to the skies in Spitfires and Hurricanes from July to October 1940. Others flew in Blenheims, Beaufighters and Defiants, becoming the 'aces' of the Battle, shooting down plane after plane. During the Battle, Sir Winston Churchill said: 'The gratitude of every home in our island, in our empire, and indeed throughout the world, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.' When it was over, 544 RAF pilots and aircrew were dead and had made the ultimate sacrifice to keep generations of Britons safe. Advertisement

Also from the skies, he protected Allied troops on the Normandy beaches during D-Day 1944.

Tributes have poured in to pay tribute to Mr Clark, who himself described the Battle of Britain victory as 'vital' and the 'turning point of the war'.

RAF Benevolent Fund controller Air Vice-Marshal Chris Elliot said: 'Our condolences go to Terry's family and friends at this sad time.

'Terry belonged to a generation of servicemen and women who answered their country's call without question.

'We owe a debt of gratitude to every one of them and their legacy must be to remember their service.

'John 'Paddy' Hemingway is now the last surviving member of The Few and in September we will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the battle.

'The RAF Benevolent Fund will be paying tribute to those pilots and air crew who 'gave so much to so many'.

'We honour their memory by supporting the Second World War and National Service veterans who need our help, before it is too late.'

Aviation artist Steve Teasdale, a Yorkshire resident and long-term friend of Mr Clark, said: 'He was a true gentleman and a wonderful man.

'It's mixed emotions currently. We have got the flags and bunting out, we are here grieving and yet we are celebrating at the moment.

Mr Clark was one of 3,000 men who received the Battle of Britain medal for their service in what is often described as the turning point of the Second World War

Mr Clark was a radio operator and an air gunner for both Blenheim (above) and Beaufighter aircrafts

'It's very difficult. All I can think about is Terry.'

Major Chris Chapman, branch secretary of the British Legion's York branch, said: 'It is sad to hear we have lost one of the Few, and perhaps even sadder that in the current circumstances we are not able to attend his funeral to pay our respects.

'Our thoughts are with his family.'

The flag at the Battle of Britain memorial will be flown at half past by the RAF Association to pay tribute to Mr Clark.
No one writes better legal thrillers than John Grisham. There was a time when his bestsellers were being adapted to screen every year. Top directors and top actors vied to be a part of such prestige projects. His books were racy page-turners and the film adaptations did justice to them in most cases. Presenting a list of some of the best adaptations of John Grishams fast-paced novels for your viewing pleasure during the lockdown period.Director: Sydney PollackCast: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, Hal Holbrook and David StrathairnMitch McDeere (Cruise) is a brilliant law student whose life changes when hes hired by a boutique law firm set in Memphis, Tennessee. At first, it all looks too unbelievable to be true. Hes given a luxury car, a well-furnished house and his employers are even willing to pay off all his student loans at one go. All they demand in return is utmost loyalty. Mitch and his wife Abby (Jeanne Triplehorn) feel things couldnt be better for them than this. Then, things start to unravel. Mitch finds out that what mostly his firm does is to help maintain offshore accounts of rich clients. That their biggest client is a mafia family and the firm runs a money-laundering scheme for them. He cuts a deal with the FBI to get out but getting out isnt that simple. Hes going to need all his wits and his courage in order to do that.Director: Alan J. PakulaCast: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, John Heard, Tony Goldwyn, James B. Sikking, William Atherton, Robert Culp, Stanley Tucci, Hume Cronyn, John LithgowLaw student Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) writes a brief about the possible similarities between the murders of two supreme court judges. She passes on her finds to her professor Thomas Callahan (Sam Shepherd), who's also her lover. Callahan gives it to FBI lawyer Gavin Verheek (John Heard) to read and all hell breaks loose when the brief is brought to the attention of the White House. The brief alleges that an oil tycoon, who wanted a dodgy oil deal to go through, is behind the killings as the judges who were killed were staunch environmentalists. As the businessman is close to the president, the powers to be want her to stop investigating. They even get her professor killed. She enlists the help of investigative journalist Clay Grantham (Denzel Washington) working for the Washington Herald. He too has arrived at the same conclusions as Darby. They team up to gather evidence to back their theory and even at the cost of great personal danger manage to do so. The film ends with Grantham eventually breaking the story in his newspaper.Director: Joel SchumacherCast: Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia, Anthony Edwards, Ossie Davis11-year-old Mark Sway (Brad Renfro) and his little brother are witnesses to the suicide of a mob lawyer. His brother falls into a coma stunned by the event and he himself becomes the target of both the mob and the federal prosecutor Roy Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones). The gangsters and Roy both suspect that the dying man has told the brothers where the body of a senator killed by the mob is hidden. They both make life hell for the boy in their different ways. He somehow gets Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon) a recovering alcoholic with her heart in the right place to represent him. Love fights hard to get the brothers into a good witness protection programme and tries to get the authorities to their side. Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones performances were much appreciated by the critics.Director: Joel SchumacherCast: Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Spacey, Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, Charles S. Dutton, Ashley Judd, Patrick McGoohan, Donald SutherlandThe film asks two very pertinent questions --can a black man receive a fair trial after killing two white men who had raped and assaulted his daughter? And can this man get fair legal representation? Matthew McConaughey gives the performance of a lifetime playing Jake Brigance, the white lawyer chosen by Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), to represent him. He faces constant threats by white supremacists for his stance. His house is burnt down and even his wife and daughter get threatened. In the end, he makes an emotional appeal to an all-white jury, asking them to let go of their bias and evaluate the merit of the case in human terms without bringing the politics of colour into perspective. His words win through and he succeeds in getting a not guilty judgement.Director: Francis Ford CoppolaCast: Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Mary Kay Place, Mickey Rourke, Danny DeVitoRudy Baylor (Matt Damon), fresh out of law school and desperate for a job, accepts the offer of a shady lawyer Lyman "Bruiser" Stone (Mickey Rourke) to become his associate. Sadly for him, Bruiser gets busted by the police, leaving Rudy to fend for himself. He becomes friends with an eccentric paralegal, Deck Shifflet, played wonderfully by Danny DeVito. Together, they intend to start a law firm. One of their cases involves domestic violence, which Rudy solves by giving the husband of his client a taste of his own medicine. The second case is more serious. The 22-year-old son of his clients Dot and Buddy Black is dying of leukaemia but could have been saved with a bone marrow transplant. However, their insurance carrier Great Benefit declines to pay them the money. Rudy hasnt argued a single case in the court before and hes up against a big entity with a battery of experienced lawyers. Hes flustered at first but later, his and Shifflets persistence paid off and they are able to prove the insurance companys negligence in the court. He wins the case but the insurance company declares itself bankrupt and is unable to pay any damages to his grieving clients. Now that he has made a name for himself, Rudy decides to forego active practice and makes up his mind to teach law.Director: Gary FlederCast: John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Bruce Davison, Bruce McGill, Jeremy Piven, Nick SearcyA stockbroker (Dylan McDermott) is gunned down in his office, along with 10 other co-workers. His widow (Joanna Going) takes the gun manufacturer to court. Feeling threatened, the gun manufacturers hire the services of Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman), who is an expert in picking up an expert jury. On the other side of the fence is Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) an upright lawyer who wants to teach a lesson to the gun lobby. Both sides are shocked to know that there is someone on the jury who can help influence the verdict. They are both made an offer amounting to millions. Both are reluctant to pay at first but are forced to rethink their strategy as things escalate. The film asks the question that where is the moral victory when the jury itself can be bought? Both Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman were superb as antagonists and so were John Cusak and Rachel Weisz, the influencers who were able to manipulate the jury to their whims.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday expressed concern over increasing COVID-19 cases in Central Armed Police Forces like the BSF and the CRPF and discussed with officials ways to check the spread of the deadly disease, officials said.

The issue of a large number of coronavirus cases in these forces was discussed at a high-level meeting, chaired by Shah and attended by directors-general of BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP, SSB and NSG and senior home ministry officials.

Shah chaired a meeting of the DGs of all Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) where he appreciated the commendable work done by these forces and expressed concern over increasing COVID-19 cases, a home ministry spokesperson said.

He also discussed measures taken to prevent further spread of the disease and ensure the wellbeing of the forces.

As many as 530 CAPFs personnel have tested COVID-19 positive so far while five personnel succumbed to the disease - two each from the BSF and the CISF and one from the CRPF.

Among the active coronavirus cases, 221 were in BSF, 161 in CRPF, 35 in CISF, 94 in ITBP, and at least 17 in SSB.

These forces are about 10 lakh personnel strong and they are shouldering a variety of internal security duties in the country.

The CAPFs have launched multiple measures to contain the infection by sanitizing the premises and asking troops to strictly follow anti-coronavirus medical protocols, officials said.
Handout photos from Family members of Lea DiRusso, when she was in the hospital after she had surgery. Read more

Today, protests against business closures that have taken place across the country are coming to Philadelphia. Multiple groups plan to gather at City Hall and demand a plan to reopen the city. Officials are urging residents to stay the course as coronavirus statistics improve in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We also have more on Grittys parade in Delco, Temple Universitys unconventional graduation ceremony, and what the Eagles schedule looks like  if theres a full NFL season.

 Lauren Aguirre (@laurencaguirre, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

Lea DiRusso spent her 28-year teaching career at two South Philadelphia elementary schools. The schools had crumbling asbestos that was largely papered over for decades. Nine months ago, DiRusso was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer caused by asbestos. Its incurable. She wants her death to mean something, her diagnosis to be an impetus for Philadelphia to finally rid its schools of the carcinogen.

DiRusso said she imagined a silver lining when schools closed in March due to the coronavirus. The district would have the time to carefully remove asbestos. But since the shutdown, the district has still grappled with high levels of airborne asbestos. One of the schools with a contamination is also a city-designated site for families to pick up meals once a week during the pandemic.

Since the lockdown began, Pennsylvania has paid out more than $5.34 billion in unemployment benefits, officials said Monday. More than 1.7 million Pennsylvanians have now filed claims. And the need is rapidly depleting unemployment funds, which will force many states to borrow money to make up the difference.

With so many Pennsylvanians out of work, Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order extending a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through July 10. It was originally set to expire Monday. Wolf said the extension is a public-health necessity to make sure people stay in their homes to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday reversed the convictions of two onetime allies of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The two were involved in the political scandal known as Bridgegate, and had faced or even served prison time.

Their convictions stemmed from a 2013 scheme in which prosecutors alleged that they had caused massive traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge in order to exact retribution against a New Jersey mayor for his refusal to endorse Christies reelection campaign.

What you need to know today

Through your eyes | #OurPhilly

Glad you could snap this shot. Its a beautiful Philly sunrise. Thanks for sharing, @phillyfaddist!

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

Im a strict coronavirus rule follower, but choosing between following the rules and feeding your family is not a choice. And while claiming a God-given right to haircuts is an idiotic thing to protest about when thousands of people are dying every day, closing barbershops that are vital in communities for so many reasons beyond a close cut make this national isolation even harder.  writes Inquirer columnist Helen Ubinas on local barbers saying the mandatory corona shutdowns have created Prohibition 2.0.

Many young patients fear gun violence as much as COVID-19, writes Philly pediatrician Dorothy R. Novick.

America cant avoid a Great Depression II because were hard-wired to cheat the working class, writes Will Bunch, Inquirer national opinion columnist.

What were reading

You might have heard of the salon owner in Dallas who was jailed for reopening her business during the pandemic. The Texas Supreme Court has ordered her to be released. The Dallas Morning News has the latest.

Philadelphias controller office created a data visualization tool to clarify the citys newly proposed budget. Technically Philly breaks it down.

With its stores forced to close, a Philly ice cream company shifted to online sales and deliveries. Its revenue has shot up 132%. Eater Philadelphia has more.

Your Daily Dose of | Graduation

This year, Temple University canceled its in-person graduation ceremony due to the coronavirus. But that didnt stop graduates from showing up on campus. On Thursday, many of them went to pose for photos and celebrate their commencement. Instead of a traditional ceremony, graduates were directed to a website where they could see prerecorded messages by university leaders and a video time capsule.
The disruption of Easter festivities, liturgies, and church gatherings due to COVID-19 this year left many Christians disappointed with their inability to properly celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Now, during the Islamic month of Ramadan (April 23May 23, 2020), many Muslims are experiencing a similar disruption of their annual religious holiday.

Fouad Masri, the founder of Crescent Project and author of Connecting with Muslims: A Guide to Communicating Effectively, believes the pandemic is a unique opportunity for Christians to find common ground with their Muslim friends and neighbors. Originally from Beirut, Masri founded Crescent Project in 1993 with a desire to nurture transformational relationships between Christians and Muslims.

Throughout the past decade, the organization estimates that more than 321,000 people have been involved through their ministry experiences and have held 1.5 million conversations about Jesus. CT asked Masri to share how he believes this is a unique opportunity for Muslims and Christians to build relationships.

Can you tell me a little bit about Crescent Project?

Today there are more than 1.6 billion Muslims. Roughly one out of five people is a Muslim. Many Muslims today are seekingtheyre hungry, theyre curious to know about God, eternity, Jesus. Yet many of them live in countries where the gospel is not accessible. Their governments forbid accessibility to the Bible. So in the last 15 years, there has been a huge increase of curiosity for Muslims to know [about Jesus], but theres no accessibility, or if there is, its usually minimal.

On the flip side, most Christians today dont know how to communicate in an effective way, in a respectful way with their Muslim friends. Our dream is to see followers of Christ moved from avoidance to hospitality. From fear of Muslims to loving Muslims. And from silence to sharing.

Our vision at Crescent Project is that every Muslim has an opportunity to respond to the gospel. We want to see every Muslim have a connection with a follower of Christ because thats how they can see the true message of Jesus. We started Crescent Project to help Muslims understand the teachings of Jesus and equip Christians to begin a conversation and share the good news with their Muslim friends, neighbors, colleagues.

What is Ramadan, and why is it especially significant to Muslims?

Ramadan, or Ramazan, is the third pillar of Islam that must be practiced by every Muslim. Ramadan is a lunar month and ranges between 28 to 29 days. Ramadan is the month of fasting and feasting for the revelation of the Quran because thats what they believe was revealed during Ramadan.

Muslims are not allowed to eat or drink as long as theres daylight. Once sunset happens, Muslims are allowed to eat as a community celebrating the coming of the Quran. During this month, Muslims spend time listening to the reading of the Quran, visiting each other, praying as a group, and eating delicious, exotic meals.

According to Islam, performing the rituals during Ramadan will give you good works that will aid in your attainment of salvation on judgment day. The month of Ramadan ends with Eid al-Fitr, a celebration where Muslims give gifts and end the monthlong fast.

A lot of Christians felt impacted by the shelter-in-place recommendations during Easter due to the coronavirus. How is the pandemic impacting Muslims during Ramadan?

The COVID-19 pandemic has really rocked this planet. It has devastated the country. On top of that, Christians had to deal with it during Easter because we could not congregate. Yet for our faith, its about the relationship with Jesus. I can still celebrate Easter. Itd be great to be in a family setting or a church setting, but I can celebrate Easter because its my relationship with Jesus. Im remembering that he rose victorious from the dead, defeating sin, defeating Satan, and defeating death.

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However, the same pandemic is hitting the Muslim world. In this month of Ramadan, in many Muslim countries Muslim families are dealing with, How do we practice Ramadan during this month of fasting? Many Muslim families are not gathering together. Many mosques or places of worship are not open or available. Many countries have put curfews on people and forbid travel. Its disrupting not only the social fabric and communication with each other but also the religious sense of attaining salvation by doing the good works that come with Ramadan.

Added to that, the shelter-in-place regulations in the US are restricting travel. As Christians, we feel for this predicament the Muslims are in. As Christians, we love to be with our families. We like to rejoice together and in our faith. Many Christians have Muslim friends who might be frustrated, anxious, and concerned about this pandemic. As believers with a Savior who loves and cares for all people regardless of background or ethnicity, we are burdened to show the love of Jesus to them.

So how can Christians reach out to their Muslim friends and neighbors during this holiday, especially given social-distancing measures? Can we empathize with them based on our experience of an isolated Easter?

Today more than ever, the Christian virtue of hospitality and welcoming the stranger among us is needed. Christ the Redeemer of all compels us to see Muslim neighbors, colleagues, and classmates as people who need kindness and hospitality in this time of pandemic. We feel for Muslims that their greatest need is for a friend who listens, encourages, and prays for them.

At Crescent Project Ive seen many Christians rally to show hospitality to Muslim friends. We have been encouraging Christians to pray for Muslims in the month of Ramadan and we have seen an increase of people joining us in prayer through Facebook, through emails, and through chat rooms.

A couple in California took a picture of their family, added their phone number and email, copied it, and put it on the door of every house in their neighborhood with the message that they are willing to help any needs the neighbors have. This family discovered there were five Muslim families in the community who reached out to them, thanked them, and began a conversation with them. Another American couple started praying for the mosque down the street and they reached out to neighbors who needed some groceries.

Hospitality is the best response to reach Muslims during this pandemic. Hospitality begins with a kind word or a request to pray for someone if they have a need. Hospitality can be seen as we greet Muslimswe could use statements like Ramadan Mubarak or God bless you this month.

Hospitality is also a willingness to share a meal or experience togetherwelcoming a conversation and a friendship with our Muslim neighbors, friends, and classmates. In some places, were allowed to have five people in the house and some places you cant. But the idea is that we need to be people of action.

What kind of gospel opportunities are there for Christians during this time?

Christians today have a great platform to show Christs power during this pandemic. According to Islam, judgment day is coming. All people will be judged by God according to their good works. The Quran teaches that on judgment day, a scale will weigh the deeds of all humans, the good works on one side, the bad works on another. Whichever way the scale tips you, that will determine if you are going to live with God in paradise or going to hell, which is a burning fire. The Islamic faith is built on attaining as many good works in your lifetime so then when you arrive on judgment day, you can attain paradise through your individual good works.

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A religious system that has work-based salvation demands of its follower complete adherence to the rituals; hence Ramadan during a pandemic creates problems for Muslims who are trying to attain more good works if they cannot perform all the rituals. This failure of performing all the rituals of Ramadan results in fear of being punished by God now on this earth and on judgment day.

This is a stark difference between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the Quran. While the Quran stresses human rituals and healing works to please God, Jesus says, I will redeem you. All humans have sinned regardless of religion. And rituals cannot produce righteousness in the sight of God. Christ the Redeemer can change us sinners to be righteous in the sight of a holy God. Therefore, the gospel message today for our Muslim neighbors is that redemption has come in the Savior Jesus.

How can people who dont have any kind of connection to Muslim communities care for them during this holiday season?

Crescent Project is challenging Christians everywhere to take a step of faith to begin a conversation with a Muslim. You can commit to pray for Muslims every Friday at noon. Friday is when Muslims pray [together], and noon is an easy hour to remember. Why dont you commit right now as you read this to pray for Muslims, not only in your country but around the globethat God will send someone to tell them about Jesus.

Crescent Project has online outreach opportunities for people to build bridges with Muslims. We have a couple of testimonies of people talking to Muslims in Iraq, in Syria, in Saudi Arabiaeven during this time of Ramadan because theyre thinking about God.

Another way Christians can reach out to the Muslim neighbor is prayer walking. Some Christians have been walking the neighborhoods, praying for each house, especially if they are from Muslim backgrounds. God has opened conversations many times as people walk. An American couple has been walking and praying every day in their neighborhood during quarantine and found that they had a Muslim neighbor from Jordan who had lived there for many years. They kept to the six-feet distance rule but they were able to talk for an extended time. And that led to more conversations as theyve walked in the neighborhood.
'Every morning, when I had to step out, my wife would cry.'

'I would tell her that if I don't do it, many people will suffer; many people would die.'

Photographs: Kind courtesy Dr Deepti Naik

Sofyan Shaikh knew these were unusual times.

With unusual challenges.

The biggest of which is hunger.

Soon after the lockdown was announced, he began stepping out in the evenings, providing food to a few impoverished families.

"It has always been difficult for me to see people hungry, people starving," he tells Savera R Someshwar/Rediff.com. "I stay in Bandra (north west Mumbai) and I knew that, after the lockdown, many people would be struggling to feed themselves and their families."

"So, every evening, I would take cooked food and dry snacks that I could source from the local baniya (shopkeeper) and give it to any labourer or poor person I saw," Sofyan adds.

When his neighbours heard about what he was doing, some of them pitched in with meals.

"I was managing to help five to 10 people every day."

Sofyan, who is 29, is part of the brand acquisition team at an e-retail company, Primarc Pecan Retail Private Limited. He dipped into his savings and his family helped; in a few days, they spent about "Rs 10,000" feeding people.

As a salaried employee, he worried that his resources were inadequate to battle the hunger he was witnessing.

"That's when I came across Ruben Mascarenhas's post on Facebook (Mascarenhas is one of the founders of Khaana Chahiye, a volunteer-based service which has been driving around Mumbai, providing food to the hungry)," says Sofyan.

"Ruben is someone I know because I have always been interested in social work. And I have been helping whenever and wherever I can," he adds.

"I met Ruben for the first time eight years ago when they were running a campaign against unnecessary and illegal posters put up by politicians in Mumbai."

"When I read they were planning to feed hungry people, I got in touch with him again."

On the first day, he helped Ruben and Pathik Muni (one of Khaana Chahiye's core team members) distribute food from Bandra to Dahisar, north west suburbs on the Western Express highway.

It was a decision that upset his pregnant wife. Earlier too, she had not been in favour of Sofyan stepping out in the evening with food parcels.

"We have been married for one-and-a-half years. We are expecting our baby in June," he shares.

Terrified by the highly infectious nature of COVID-19, Sofyan's wife did not want him to go.

But that first trip had opened Sofyan's eyes to the desperation and the hunger caused by the lockdown.

He decided he wanted to help as much as he could.

"But I did not think I would become so involved," he says.

The initial few days, during which the distribution process was being set up, was tough.

He would leave at noon and only return by 5-6 pm.

"After that, we started getting volunteers and my work reduced. Now, I only go for three to four hours. By God's grace, Khaana Chahiye now has a lot of volunteers. Honestly, we didn't think we will get so much support and so many people will come to help us."

At the same time, says Sofyan, it was difficult for him to see his wife so unhappy.

"Every morning, when I had to step out, she would cry. I used to spend 10, 15 minutes convincing her that this something we need to do," Sofyan says.

"I would tell her that if I don't do it or if everyone would only think about their immediate family, many people will suffer; many people would die. So we should not think just about ourselves."

Sofyan explained to his wife about the precautions he was taking. "I told her I take the necessary precautions. I wear a mask; I wear gloves; I use a sanitiser."

"I understand her fear, but what I am doing is important. In today's times, if we just think about ourselves, it is a terribly selfish act. We need to think about other human beings as well."

"People are hungry. They are desperate for food which is such a basic human need."

"And when you know that is happening, how can you ignore that and sit at home and enjoy a meal?"

Sofyan's wife is now at her mother's home for the last few weeks of her pregnancy.

The Khaana Chahiye team has asked him to take a break since he will soon be a father.

"One my colleagues there, Mazhar, explained that my newborn child will have zero immunity. He said that if I want to go near my child I should stop going out."

But Sofyan does not want to "back out thinking of my own personal needs."

Instead, he is being even more careful with the precautions he is taking.

And he has made a vow to himself. "I've promised myself that I will not touch my child for a few days. Before I touch my wife and child, I will get myself tested for COVID-19 so that I know I am not posing any kind of risk to them."

He knows he is in danger of contracting the virus every time he steps out of the house.

"You can see the desperation in people when we go do distribute food," he says. "Sometimes, they forget about social distancing and swarm the car, but we ensure they maintain distance before we distribute the food."

"I told my wife you should see the condition they live in. I explained to her that when you give food to a starving person, the happiness you see on their face is not something I'd see on her face if I was able to gift her a car."

"That level of happiness, when they get food, is something else altogether."

"People like us should be very thankful to God that we don't have to face such desperation."

"My father says when death has to come, it will come. We don't need to worry."

"In these times, though, we need to take proper precautions."

And as Sofyan steps out for his next run as a food ninja, that's exactly what he is doing.
captain amarinder singh

Chandigarh : Citing the challenges faced due to labour shortage and the need for ensuring food safety amid the Covid crisis, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider an MSP of Rs 2902 per quintal for Paddy, along with Rs 100 per quintal as incentive bonus to check stubble burning.

Narendra ModiIn a letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister said the state had already written to the Ministry of Agriculture recommending a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy @ Rs. 2902/- per quintal, as calculated by the Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana, against last years MSP of Rs. 1835/- per quintal.

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Given the need to ensure food safety in the time of the present pandemic, it is imperative that farmers may be given the appropriate price signal by announcing a remunerative MSP for paddy, stressed Captain Amarinder, seeking the Prime Ministers personal consideration in this matter, as well as on the issue of incentive bonus.

The Chief Minister noted that Punjab was successfully moving, in the service of the nation, towards meeting its target of wheat procurement, notwithstanding the challenges imposed by lockdown and health safety concerns of social distancing. Post the wheat procurement, Paddy transplantation in the State was scheduled to commence in mid-June and may require to be slightly advanced due to shortage of labour in the State, he observed.

Stubble BurningNoting that it is unlikely that we will see much seasonal labour coming from UP and Bihar for paddy transplantation due to Covid, Captain Amarinder expressed concern at the serious challenges this could pose for farming operations in the coming paddy season, besides leading to escalation in labour costs.

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The Chief Minister further underlined the importance of providing farmers a non-burning bonus @ Rs. 100/- per quintal to defray their expenses in handling of paddy straw, thus preventing the burning of paddy stubble. In this context, he also pointed to the Supreme Court directions, asking the Centre and States to work out an incentive structure to overcome the problem of paddy stubble burning.

This monetary incentive deserves to be announced ex-ante, i.e. along with the MSP, to allow farmers to prepare for its management and for the State to work towards proper implementation, stressed Captain Amarinder, adding that this bonus would also help incentivise the desired behaviour and encourage farmers to move to better and ecologically sustainable farm practices.
Members of the Vietnam Airlines Group, including Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific and Vasco plan to increase the frequency of flights from May 16 to meet the increasing travel demand of passengers after the COVID-19 outbreak ends.

Vietnam Airlines will completely restore the domestic airway network from June.  Vietnam Airlines

The move is under the direction of the Ministry of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), in which the domestic airway network is expected to be completely restored from June.

The national carrier Vietnam Airlines will increase to 23 flights per day from the current 17 flights on routes between Hanoi and HCM City, eight flights per day on routes between Da Nang and Hanoi and HCM City, seven flights between HCM City and Phu Quoc, five flights between HCM City to Hai Phong, Thanh Hoa and Vinh, and one to four flights on the other routes.

Vietnam Airlines said it would restore its entire domestic flight network after re-operating two routes between Da Nang, Van Don and Can Tho. The firm is studying to open new routes to diversify products, meeting the needs of passengers and promoting growth again after the COVID-19 pandemic.



From May 7, budget carrier Jetstar Pacific will operate one flight per day connecting HCM City with Da Nang, Vinh, and Thanh Hoa, four flights per week between HCM City and Pleiku, Chu Lai and Dong Hoi on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The airline will monitor the situation of market demand to increase flights in the coming days, especially on the route between Hanoi and HCM City.

Meanwhile, Vasco has increased the frequency of flights between HCM City and Con Dao to six-eight flights per day. It plans to operate regular flights of two-three flights per week on routes between Hanoi and Dien Bien, HCM City and Rach Gia and Ca Mau, and Can Tho and Con Dao, each.

A Vietnam Airlines representative said Vietnam Airlines offers passengers special discounts with fares from only VND199,000 (US$8.5) per way (equivalent to VND689,000 including taxes and fees) on many routes. The sale programme lasts for five days from May 7 to May 12, applying to tickets departing from May 7 to June 30.

In order to ensure the prevention of COVID-19, the firm said it still complies with the strict standards of the ministries of Health and Transport, in which passengers are instructed to check body temperature and declare their health before the flight and wear a mask during the flight. Airlines continue to disinfect aircraft and do not serve meals on domestic flights as prescribed by the CAAV. VNS

Local airlines increase flights after national social distancing Domestic airlines will increase flights on several domestic routes from Thursday while offering new promotions to increase demand after national social distancing ends.
Among the regions of Ukraine, Kyiv city and Kyiv region have spent the largest amount of funds to fight the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19, almost UAH 259 million and UAH 208 million, respectively.

Chairman of the Accounting Chamber Valeriy Patskan wrote about this on Facebook.

"The Accounting Chamber continues to monitor budget expenditures to tackle COVID-19. In the context of regions, the largest sums were spent: Kyiv - almost UAH 259 million, Kyiv region - UAH 208 million, Kharkiv region - UAH 108 million; the lowest sums: Kirovohrad region - UAH 12 million and Luhansk region - UAH 13 million," Patskan wrote.

According to him, monitoring the budget expenditures for the fight against coronavirus makes it possible to see the general trend and determine possible risks.

"A total of UAH 64.7 billion is envisaged in the state budget fund to fight COVID-19. And we will make sure that the funds are used efficiently and for intended purpose," Patskan said.

As Ukrinform reported, according to data provided by the State Treasury, from March 1 to April 29, payments for UAH 1.8 billion from budgets of all levels were made to fight the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19, including UAH 455 million from the state budget and UAH 1,349 million from local budgets.

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Moodys Investors Service on Friday cautioned that the countrys sovereign rating could be downgraded if its fiscal metrics weaken materially, following a similar warning from Fitch Ratings. The rating agency also slashed its growth projection for India to 0% for FY21.

This would probably happen in the context of a prolonged or deep slowdown in growth, with only limited prospects that the government would be able to restore stronger output through economic and institutional reforms, the rating agency said.

Last November, Moodys had revised its outlook for Indias sovereign rating from stable to negative. Moodys credit rating of Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade score, is better than those of S&P Global Ratings and Fitch, which have assigned the lowest investment grade to India with a stable outlook.

Indias nationwide lockdown, considered the severest in the world, has led to massive retrenchment and loss of output. Unemployment rate climbed to a staggering 27.1% in the week to May 3, while around 121.5 million reported job losses in April, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy showed. The government is contemplating the size and nature of a stimulus package, including the source of its financing.

Advocating monetisation of government deficit in a measured way, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday said if the fiscal deficit and the growth in government debt are deemed unsustainable, investors and rating agencies will take fright. This is where we need to put in place measures that ensure we will go back to fiscal health over the medium termsuch as the debt target and the fiscal council suggested by the NK Singh Committee. Modern Monetary Theorists are wrong to think that central bank financing of the government can be ignored, he wrote on Linkedin.

A marked and long-lasting weakening in the health of the financial sector would both raise associated fiscal costs should the government need to support some financial institutions, and increase the risk that growth remained too low to prevent a rise in the debt burden, Moodys said.

It added that Indias credit profile is supported by its large and diverse economy, and stable domestic financing base. This is balanced against high government debt, weak social and physical infrastructure, and a fragile financial sector, which face further pressures amid the coronavirus outbreak. The shock will exacerbate an already material slowdown in growth, which has significantly reduced prospects for durable fiscal consolidation, the rating agency added.




North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a "verbal message" to Chinese President Xi Jinpng, lauding Beijing's success in stemming the spread of the new coronavirus, state media reported Friday.







In the message, Kim "congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic," according to the Korean Central News Agency.







"Kim Jong Un wished Xi Jinping good health, expressing conviction that the Chinese party and people would cement the successes made so far and steadily expand them and thus win a final victory under the wise guidance of Xi Jinping," it added.







It did not specify when and how the message has been delivered to the Chinese leader.







This marked the second time that he has sent a message to Xi with regard to the coronavirus this year. In late January, Kim conveyed his support and unspecified aid for Beijing's fight against the virus that had been fast spreading in the neighboring country.







North Korea has frequently praised China for its successful antivirus efforts since the COVID-19 broke out first in its central city of Wuhan last December, apparently highlighting their friendly relations.







North Korea and China have been boasting of their strong relations following Xi's trip for a summit with Kim last June. It was the first visit by a Chinese head of state to North Korea in 14 years. (Yonhap)






China supports a World Health Organisation (WHO)-led review into the coronavirus pandemic after it is declared over, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The review should be conducted in an open, transparent and inclusive manner under the leadership of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying said at the regular ministry briefing on Friday.

Huas comments come in the backdrop of increasing global pressure to allow an international probe into the origins of the pandemic and the novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Coronavirus outbreak: Full coverage

China has dismissed US allegations that the virus came from a laboratory.

More than 3.8 million have been sickened in the Covid-19 pandemic and over 268000 have died.

The epidemic situation in China has improved dramatically with the government having lowered risk levels for the country on Thursday; daily cases are in low single digits.

Hua said the enquiry should be carried out an appropriate time after the pandemic is over.

It should also be based on the protocols of the International Health Regulations, and be authorised by the World Health Assembly or Executive Committee - the WHOs dual governing bodies.

Countries including the US and Australia have called for an international probe into the origins of the pathogen and others like the UK and Germany have urged greater transparency from China.

Until now, China has rejected similar calls for an investigation, accusing the US of politicising the issue.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has claimed that the US has evidence that the virus originated from a high-security lab in Wuhan.

We have asked him several times: where is the evidence? Take it out if you have it, spokesperson Hua said at Fridays briefing.

We have stated the facts many times, but Pompeo still repeatedly smears and attacks China on the issue. We are forced to expose the US according to public information and media reports, Hua said.
A total of 583 migrant workers



stranded in Madhya Pradesh due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown left for Jhansi in their native Uttar Pradesh from Indore on specially arranged buses on Friday, officials said.

These labourers, who were in two different shelters here, belong to Basti, Bahraich, Chitrakoot districts among others in UP, an official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 14:07:03

FDA Approves New ICDs and CRT-Ds with Advanced Remote Capabilities

DUBLIN, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) today announced results from late-breaking clinical trials evaluating the MyCareLink Heart mobile app and the Micra Transcatheter Pacing System (TPS), products that provide needed care for patients and optimal management of their symptoms  while reducing potential exposure between patients and their clinicians. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, procedures and therapies that reduce exposure to other people are important because that also reduces the potential for spreading the virus. The results were presented at the annual Heart Rhythm Society Scientific Sessions, held virtually for the first time.

Results from the BlueSync Evaluation study demonstrated that patients who used the Medtronic MyCareLink Heart mobile app (MCLH), a remote monitoring application on a patients phone or tablet, were more likely to adhere to their pacemaker remote monitoring schedule than patients who used traditional bedside monitors.

The study found that patients using the MCLH technology successfully completed 94.6% of scheduled transmissions, which was superior to all three Medtronic bedside monitor control groups (whose results ranged from 56.3% to 87.1%).

Higher patient adherence to scheduled transmissions of remote monitoring suggests that patients who use the MCLH app are more likely to benefit from remote monitoring than those with low or no adherence to remote monitoring.

Numerous peer-reviewed, published studies have demonstrated the benefits of remote monitoring; it has been shown to:

provide earlier detection and evaluation of patient clinical and device related events 1-4 ,

, reduce in-person clinic visits with no change in patient safety 5-8 ,

, improve patient quality of life 9-11 and

and be associated with improved long-term patient survival12-14.

Medtronic introduced the worlds first remote cardiac monitoring system in 2002, and it has been embraced by two million patients worldwide. Because remote monitoring helps limit in-person contact between patients, caregivers and physicians, it potentially reduces exposure to bacteria and viruses, including the virus that causes COVID-19.

Remote monitoring for cardiac health is associated with better patient outcomes and is playing an important role in the care of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic as in-person clinic visits are restricted,  said Rob Kowal, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer of the Cardiac Rhythm and Heart Failure division, which is part of the Cardiac and Vascular Group at Medtronic. These findings are very promising for this first-of-its-kind technology, suggesting patients using this app-based approach are more likely to successfully transmit the important remote cardiac device data that physicians need to manage their patients.

Micra TPS CED Study

Results from the Micra Coverage with Evidence Development (CED) Study showed that patients implanted with a Micra TPS experienced a 66% reduction in chronic complications at six months compared with patients who received a traditional transvenous VVI pacemaker (TV-VVI). These results provide the first insight into the real-world comparative effectiveness of Micra TPS in the Medicare population, and represent the largest evaluation of leadless pacemakers to date.

These results show that Micras lower likelihood of complications in earlier clinical trials is being maintained in real-world practice, said Jonathan P. Piccini, M.D., associate professor of medicine and director of cardiac electrophysiology at Duke University Medical Center.

Approved by the FDA in 2016, the Micra TPS is the first and only leadless pacemaker option available globally. Micra does not require leads or a surgical "pocket" under the skin, so potential sources of complications related to leads and pockets are eliminated  which may reduce in-office or hospital visits, an important consideration during this pandemic.

FDA Approves Cobalt and Crome Portfolio

Medtronic has received FDA approval for its Cobalt and Crome implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD) and cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillators (CRT-D), the first Medtronic high power devices to offer connected health, including the ability for clinicians to program devices from a physical distance, thereby reducing potential exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19. The devices use the MyCareLinkHeart mobile app, along with other exclusive features including:

TriageHF  Heart Failure Risk Status: TriageHF automatically provides patients heart failure risk assessments to clinicians and identifies changes that may lead to worsening heart failure. It evaluates multiple factors that can lead to hospitalization such as heart rate variability, atrial fibrillation and fluid status, and it is compatible with all Medtronic ICDs and CRT-Ds with the Medtronic OptiVol fluid status monitoring feature, including those currently implanted in patients.

TriageHF automatically provides patients heart failure risk assessments to clinicians and identifies changes that may lead to worsening heart failure. It evaluates multiple factors that can lead to hospitalization such as heart rate variability, atrial fibrillation and fluid status, and it is compatible with all Medtronic ICDs and CRT-Ds with the Medtronic OptiVol fluid status monitoring feature, including those currently implanted in patients. CareAlerts: New CareAlert notifications help physicians manage clinically relevant events and direct their attention to patients who need it most, potentially before patients need in-office care. Clinicians can opt to receive CareAlerts via text, email and/or voicemail.

New CareAlert notifications help physicians manage clinically relevant events and direct their attention to patients who need it most, potentially before patients need in-office care. Clinicians can opt to receive CareAlerts via text, email and/or voicemail. Intrinsic ATP: Intrinsic ATP (anti-tachycardia pacing) gives patients individualized therapy in real-time, with devices automatically adapting to a patients abnormally fast heart rhythms (ventricular tachycardia) and attempting to terminate them with painless pacing therapy, possibly avoiding the need for shocks and their associated hospitalizations.

About the Studies

The full recorded late-breaking presentations on the BlueSync Evaluation and Micra CED studies can be accessed at Heart Rhythm 365 .

The BlueSync Field Evaluation was a prospective, multicenter study measuring the success rate of scheduled transmissions in pacemaker patients using the MCLH mobile app for 12 months. Scheduled transmission success was compared to 3 distinct groups of bedside monitor device users from the Medtronic de-identified CareLink database.

Compatible with Medtronic BlueSync technology-enabled cardiac devices, the MCLH mobile app is designed to securely and wirelessly send cardiac device data to the Medtronic CareLink network via a patient-owned phone or tablet, eliminating the need for a dedicated bedside monitor or other remote monitoring hardware.

The Micra Coverage with Evidence Development Study evaluated device performance in 5,746 Medicare patients implanted with a Micra TPS and 9,662 Medicare patients implanted with a traditional pacemaker (TV-VVI, regardless of manufacturer) using claims data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Along with a significant reduction in complication rates, Micra TPS patients also had a reduction in the rate of device revision compared to patients implanted with a TV-VVI device. While event rates are low, cardiac effusion and/or perforation within 30 days was higher among Micra TPS patients than transvenous patients in both unadjusted and adjusted models (unadjusted, 0.8% vs. 0.4%, P<0.001; adjusted, 0.8% vs. 0.4%, P=0.002); however, results were consistent with findings from the Micra TPS investigational device exemption (IDE) study and post approval registry.

In collaboration with leading clinicians, researchers and scientists worldwide, Medtronic offers the broadest range of innovative medical technology for the interventional and surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrhythmias. Medtronic strives to offer products and services of the highest quality that deliver clinical and economic value to healthcare consumers and providers around the world.

About Medtronic

Medtronic plc ( www.medtronic.com ), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is among the worlds largest medical technology, services and solutions companies  alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life for millions of people around the world. Medtronic employs more than 90,000 people worldwide, serving physicians, hospitals and patients in more than 150 countries. The company is focused on collaborating with stakeholders around the world to take healthcare Further, Together.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, including risks related to the impact of COVID-19 on our business, operations and production, as well as demand for our offerings, competitive factors, difficulties and delays inherent in the development, manufacturing, marketing and sale of medical products, government regulation and general economic conditions and other risks and uncertainties described in the Companys periodic reports on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission including the most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K of the Company, as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In some cases, you can identify these statements by forward-looking words, such as anticipate, believe, could, estimate, expect, forecast, intend, looking ahead, may, plan, possible, potential, project, should, will, and similar words or expressions, the negative or plural of such words or expressions and other comparable terminology. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results. Medtronic does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements or any of the information contained in this press release, including to reflect future events or circumstances.

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China is touting the claims of New Jersey Mayor Michael Melham who says he contracted COVID-19 as early as November to cast blame on the US for the coronavirus outbreak

China is honing in on claims made by a New Jersey mayor that he contracted COVID-19 as early as November, suggesting that the devastating virus could have emerged in the US, not China.

On Wednesday Belleville Mayor Michael Melham told China Global Television Network that he believes he caught the novel coronavirus back in November  over a month before China reported their first case and two months before COVID-19 was believed to have landed in the US.

On Thursday Lijian Zhao, the spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry, continued his campaign against the US, by casting blame on the US for the pandemic that has ravaged countries across the globe.

Chinese spokeswoman: More reports on previously undiscovered COVID-19 cases are emerging. New Jersey mayor was infected in November; 171 cases in Florida by January & NONE had been to China, Zhao tweeted Thursday.

'What else hasnt been revealed in the US' he added.

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On Thursday Lijian Zhao, the spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry, continued to point fingers at the US by sharing Melham's claim saying: 'What else hasn't been revealed in the US'

On Wednesday Belleville Mayor Melham said he contracted the virus in November in Atlantic City and his doctor diagnosed him with a bad case of the flu. He claims that it was COVID-19, a month before the virus was first reported in China and two months before it landed in the US

The mayor of Belleville, NJ, Michael Melham @michaelmelham said he tested positive for #COVID19 antibodies and believed he contracted the virus in November last year, which was two months before the first reported cases in the US. #GlobalWatchTopStory pic.twitter.com/ToRLuHNxVn  CGTN Global Watch (@GlobalWatchCGTN) May 7, 2020

Mayor Melham claimed he caught the virus at a convention in Atlantic City, but his doctor had diagnosed him with a bad case of the flu.

He had no respiratory symptoms and never tested for the coronavirus.

However, a recent blood test revealed he had coronavirus antibodies, which suggest but do not confirm, that he had the virus.

Melham said multiple people from the conference have contacted him saying they too experienced extreme flu-like symptoms after the gathering.

He described whatever virus he contracted made him feel 'like a heroin addict going through withdrawals', according to Fox News.

'I didn't know what was happening to me. I never felt that I could be so sick,' he said.

On Tuesday Melham tweeted a warning that China is twisting his words and alluding that the virus originated in the US, saying 'I never claimed to be patient zero...I never claimed the virus started in the US'

He followed up saying: 'In no way was I implying it started in the US. I'm merely saying, it was here earlier than claimed'

'We all hear about how COVID-19 didn't really exist here in the US until January. That is obviously not the case. I am living, breathing proof that we were all dealing with it months earlier,' he added.

Now China is pushing his claims to defend their name, especially as the Trump administration has accused China of failing to contain the virus and of concealing the severity of the breakout that has now infected more than 3.7million and killed more than 264,000 worldwide.

However, data from a genetic study in London released this week suggests that the virus emerged in China as early as October.

The US believed its first case of COVID-19 was a man in Washington state who passed away on February 28.

However, late last month Santa Clara County posthumously identified three people who died of COVID-19, including a person who passed away on February 6, three weeks earlier than when the virus was believed to have touched down in the US.

Santa Clara County also reported two other COVID-19 deaths on February 17 and March 6.

In the US overall there are over 1.2million cases and over 76,000 deaths from the virus. New Jersey currently has the second largest breakout of COVID-19 in the country with over 133,000 infections and over 8,800 fatalities as of Thursday evening.

Now China is pushing his claims to defend their name, especially as the Trump administration has accused China of failing to contain the virus and of concealing the severity of the breakout that has now infected more 1.2million in the US.

Mayor Melham has been criticized for his comments and claims as the state continues to reel from the impact of the virus.

New Jersey Advance Medias Jeremy Schneider condemned Melham for his account.

'New Jersey is in crisis. There is no room for conjecture right now, especially from public officials, who should be keeping all our little panic planes grounded in fact,' he said.

China has also honed in on new health data from Florida saying that as many as 171 people in the state had COVID-19 as early as January.

Those records were obtained by the Palm Beach Post, however they dont say if patients reported the systems until months later or if officials were investigating the virus at the time. The state pulled those records from their website late Monday.

'This thing was here earlier than we thought. I was talking to the head of the [Super Bowl] committee and I was like, theres no way we didnt have this in the Super Bowl,' Gov. Ron DeSantis said on May 1.
The UK Governments vote on controversial abortion regulations in Northern Ireland has been put on hold.

However, the regulations put forward by Secretary of State Brandon Lewis at the end of March continue to apply.

He was required to submit regulations for Parliaments approval after Westminster legislated to change abortion laws here last year.

On Thursday night the Government told MPs that next weeks votes would not go ahead.

The Northern Ireland Office is expected to submit redrafted regulations in the coming weeks.

Opponents had criticised the regulations for going further than abortion laws in Britain and the Republic.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (Spuc) said: The rule of law and democratic procedures were brushed aside in a rush to create the most extreme abortion regime in Europe.

Seventy-nine per cent of the people who responded to the public consultation rejected the Governments proposals.

Now that Downing Street has effectively admitted that its regulations are legally flawed, the Prime Minister should realise the decision to force abortion on demand on the people of Northern Ireland against their will lacks all legitimacy.

Spuc would like to thank everyone who has lobbied Parliament for the withdrawal of these barbaric abortion regulations but we need to maintain pressure on the Government to do the right thing.

However Grainne Teggart, Amnesty Internationals Northern Ireland campaign manager, said nothing has changed. The minor technical issue identified with the regulations does not change anything. Abortion remains legal and can be lawfully carried out in line with the current regulations, she added.

The priority remains the commissioning of services. We urge the Department of Health to ensure they are accessible to all who need them without delay. During the Covid-19 pandemic this is all the more urgent, as travel for this healthcare is not viable and so women and girls are being put at risk.

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TUV leader Jim Allister said there is an onus on the Secretary of State to act urgently.

It was always my belief that the regulations went well beyond what the law required and it was nothing short of disgraceful that the Government was so dismissive of the strong opposition manifest in the responses they received to their consultation, he said.

There should be a fundamental rethink by Government on this issue. Northern Ireland doesnt want and certainly doesnt need abortion, and its time that was recognised.

A Government spokesperson said: These regulations came into effect on March 31, 2020 and on that date became the new law on access to abortion services in Northern Ireland.

Given the unprecedented situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact this has had on Parliamentary proceedings, we intend to remake these regulations on Monday, May 11, giving Parliament an additional 28 sitting days to consider them.

The UK Government remains under a legal obligation to implement these regulations under section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today lashed out at Gau Rakshaks or cow vigilantes, accusing them of misusing the term to make profit through hooliganism.

PM Modi, speaking at his first-ever Townhall in Indira Gandhi Indoor Statidum in New Delhi, said that 80 per cent of such rakshaks are fake and they make him angry.

He asked state governments to prepare dossiers on the so-called cow protectors as 80 per cent of them do illegal activities at night and become cow protectors in the day, asserting that running such help groups does not mean harassing others.

Gau raksha ke naam pe jo log dukaan khol ke baithe hain, mujhe unpe bada gussa aata hai (People who have opened their shops in the name of cow vigilantism make me very angry), said PM Modi.

He added, There are many cow vigilantes, but they just want to run their black market business under the shield of the title. Cows mostly die of eating plastic bags and these Cow rakshaks should urge people not to throw plastic on roads, this will be a big service, he said.

His comments come at a time when his government and BJP are facing flak over incidents of violence against Dalits and Muslims by cow vigilantes in various states including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Recalling his own work in the service of cow, he said at one health camp organised by him for the animal, at least two buckets full of plastic were removed from the stomach of one of them.

(With PTI Inputs)

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL) said Friday that it has reduced workforce by about 26 percent of more than 5,000 shoreside employees in the U.S, and significantly reduced ship operating expenses. The move has reduced operating expenses during the suspension of its global cruise operations. It suspended travel for shoreside employees and instituted hiring freeze across the organization. The company estimates that its average ongoing ship operating expenses and administrative expenses is about $150 million to $170 million per month during the suspension of operations. The company said it may seek to further reduce this average monthly requirement under a prolonged non-revenue scenario. As part of the global containment effort, the company suspended its global cruise operations from March 13 through at least June 11, 2020. Continued disruptions to travel and port operations in various regions may result in further suspensions, the company said. The company had $2.4 billion in customer deposits, as of March 31, 2020. This includes about $0.8 billion of future cruise credits related to previously announced voyage cancellations through June 11, 2020. The company said it also continues to take future bookings for 2020, 2021 and 2022, and receive new customer deposits and final payments on these bookings. As of April 30, 2020, the company had liquidity of about $2.3 billion all in the form of cash and cash equivalents. On May 4, 2020 the company increased the 364-day senior secured credit facility and drew $150 million, further enhancing the Company's liquidity profile. 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.
UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th May, 2020) The United Nations has allocated $3 million to assist the Central African Republic (car) in its efforts to address the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a briefing on Wednesday.

"With 94 confirmed cases of [novel corona]virus as of yesterday, the Central African Republic is facing increasing needs within the context of extremely limited national capacities to detect and respond to the pandemic," Dujarric told reporters about the allocation.

The spokesperson noted that the funds come as part of a larger humanitarian assistance package amounting to $12 million.

"The allocation will enable us and our humanitarian partners to implement priority projects in health, water hygiene, sanitation, camp management, shelter as well as non-food items, food security, nutrition, protection and logistics sectors," Dujarric said.

Dujarric deplored the ongoing deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Central African Republic amid the ongoing conflict and political tensions.

The 2020 humanitarian response plan for the Central African Republic seeks $401 million, but it is funded only at 28 percent of the needed sum.
"Champagne is the drink of celebrations," said Eric Marzec, an analyst for the market research firm IRI. "And the French are not in the mood to celebrate." (Patrick Hertzog / AFP/Getty Images)

The pop of a Champagne cork: Around the world, but perhaps especially in France, few things better symbolize conviviality and celebration than the pouring out of fine bubbly and the clink of raised glasses. But the coronavirus crisis has changed all that.

With France in a near-total shutdown since March 17, large festive gatherings like weddings vanished overnight, restaurants and hotels were shuttered, export markets cratered, and one of the countrys most emblematic products suffered a sales collapse.

The pandemic has brought with it dire forecasts of Europes deepest recession of the postwar era. According to forecasts this month, the 27-nation European Union's economy will shrink by 7.4% this year, the steepest fall in the bloc's history.

Employees at Champagne Martin Huguenot in Epernay, France, turn fermenting bottles while abiding by health safety rules. (Comite Champagne)

Amid the wider economic peril, scores of prized regional European specialties  each of them redolent of local pride, cultural heritage and painstaking tradition  are taking a huge hit.

Champagne is the drink of celebrations, said Eric Marzec, an analyst for the market research firm IRI. And the French are not in the mood to celebrate.

In France, the list of world-renowned delicacies endangered by the outbreak includes foie gras  duck or goose liver  and Armagnac, the aromatic brandy produced in the countrys southwest.

In coronavirus-devastated Italy, the pandemic imperils iconic offerings like buffalo mozzarella. In Germany, Oktoberfest, the giant Bavarian beer bash, was canceled for the first time since World War II.

In a time of pandemic, bemoaning the fate of luxury goods like Champagne can seem jarring. But behind the high-end image of such products are not only many lives and livelihoods, but also a sense of national patrimony.

Champagne holds a particular place in the French imagination  and the annals of European Union bureaucracy. Under the blocs rules, sparkling wine isnt Champagne unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. Across the continent, many other foods and beverages are similarly legally protected against imitators.

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According to IRI, which tracks French shopping habits, direct consumer purchases of Champagne from stores have fallen up to 55% from the previous years. Some estimates place the overall decline in indirect sales, via hotels, restaurants and exports, at closer to 80%.

No one is sure how or when the industry might recover.

In April, it was a disaster, said Jean-Marie Barillere, co-president of the Comite Champagne, an industry group. And I think it will be a disaster in May. And after that, its hard to know.

In Italy, sales of mozzarella di bufala, or creamy mozzarella made with buffalo milk, have fallen by as much as 40% as pizzerias, restaurants and hotels were forced to close nationwide on March 10, said Pier Maria Saccani, president of the Consortium for Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP.

An immediate stop from one day to the next caused a lot of damage, Saccani said, especially for a product such as mozzarella that has a short shelf life. Weve had to look for other distribution channels because when you have a product this fresh, you have to distribute it."

Champagne Martin Huguenot employees monitor the distillation process in Epernay, France. (Comite Champagne)

The consortium represents about 90 mozzarella producers, most of them in the southern region of Campania near Naples, that meet the requirements for a European protected designation of origin. About 35% of the 50,000 tons of mozzarella they produce each year is exported to countries such as France, Germany and the U.S., meaning that grounded flights and uncertainty about truck transport  particularly at the beginning of the health crisis  contributed further to early losses.

The industry also involves about 350,000 buffalo raised across southern Italy that still need to be cared for.

The animals produce milk every day  theres no faucet, Saccani said.

The buffalo, which have uniform dark brown coats and symmetrical light brown horns that grow back away from their faces, have been raised in and around Campania for the past 1,000 years.Monks in the countryside near Naples started using their milk to make cheese around the year 1200, according to the consortium.

As a result, mozzarella di bufala unites the territory and represents a sort of calling card for the region, with iconic images such as Mt. Vesuvius, mozzarella and Pompeii all connected in peoples minds, Saccani said.

The regional government has allocated about 19 million euros ($20.5 million) of financial aid for buffalo farmers, but the mozzarella producers themselves havent received any special government assistance. Normally the summertime is the busiest season of the year for mozzarella sales, as Italians and tourists alike flock to outdoor restaurants and pizzerias, but this year's prospects remain uncertain.

The situation is still evolving, Saccani said. We still need to see what consumers new habits will be and how that will impact our industry.

In Champagne  the region, not the drink  the mood has been grim as producers try to navigate the uncertainty. Barillere said producers had taken advantage of some government financial support programs while also placing some employees on temporary unemployment.

But managing the vineyards requires vigilance. The weather this spring turned unseasonably warm, causing vines to grow quicker. So workers took to the fields sooner than usual to begin tending the vines and pruning while wearing masks and maintaining social-distancing rules.

Stocks of Champagne need regular attention, because its a product that is carefully built over several years. Bottles must be rotated as they ferment. Yeast and sugar must be added and then later filtered out.

Foreign tourists, who lug home edible and drinkable souvenirs, will likely be barred this summer, with the borders expected to remain closed, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned.

At Champagne Lanson, a house that traces its lineage to 1760, work had just been completed on a new reception area that would have opened this summer to welcome guests and host events.

Lanson also has the only vineyard in the Reims city limits, allowing visitors to see how the grapes are cultivated and then directly visit the production facilities. But its hard to know when the complex can welcome tourists, even domestic ones, because Reims lies in Frances red zone  meaning coronavirus infection rates there run high  requiring dates for reopening to be further delayed.

Thibault Marronnier, the North America manager for Lanson, says there has been a spirit of camaraderie as some employees who normally work in sales and marketing have agreed to work in the fields.

Across the Champagne region, the memory still lingers of World War I, when the fighting and trench warfare almost completely destroyed the vineyards. During World War II, the land was mostly spared, but Germans did their best to pilfer the best labels for consumption back home.

As they face the pandemic, which as of Monday had killed more than 284,000 people worldwide and infected more than 4.1 million, producers are trying to remain hopeful that the crisis may pass in time for a strong holiday season in November and December, when sales typically surge.

These people have a very long-term perspective, Marronnier said.

In the nearer future, there are worries about harvest season, which typically starts in August or September, depending on weather. Normally, about 50% of field workers come from Eastern Europe to pick the grapes. Champagne fields could instead find themselves competing with other French farmers for scarce labor.

A glass of Champagne at a wine-making event in Paris. (Joel Saget / AFP/Getty Images)

And although unsold Champagne should still be in good condition to sell later, eventually production and storage facilities will run out of space as a new harvest comes in and production on future bottles begins.

Arnaud Molin, founder of e-commerce website Champmarket, said hed seen increases in the number of people sending Champagne to friends as a present even if they couldn't be together for a celebration.

And sales of half-bottles, typically bought by older consumers, have increased slightly. One of the classic problems with Champagne is it that doesnt keep for long once opened, making it unappealing to open a bottle just for one glass.

Alexandra Andre, an independent public relations specialist, said she had a workaround for the Champagne storage dilemma: Drink it every day. While most of her friends on Zoom happy hours known as visio-apero opt for beer or wine, Andre sticks with her favorite tipple.

But mainly, shes looking forward to sharing a bottle with friends, as France begins a gradual reopening.

Champagne is the drink we drink when we are feeling festive, Andre said. Im sure that when confinement ends, people will be ready to toast.

O'Brien and Brancolini, special correspondents, reported from Toulouse, France, and Milan, Italy, respectively. Times staff writer Laura King in Washington contributed to this report.
The Mongol horde had besieged the city of Caffa, tucked on the coast of the Black Sea and known today as Feodosia, for years. But the citys walls still stood.

Beaten, the Mongols marched away, but not before leaving a gruesome parting gift. Using catapults, they hoisted bodies riven with a strange and lethal new disease over Caffas walls. That disease ripped through Caffa and the rest of Europe.

Thats what some history books would tell you: the Mongols of the mid-14th century are to blame for bringing the Black Plague to Europe, much as many now seek to blame the Chinese for bringing the world COVID-19.

The only problem with this origin story? It probably never happened.

We historians now simply do not believe the story of Caffa true, says Dr Matthew Champion, a medieval historian at the Australian Catholic University.
CLEVELAND, OH / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Mace Security International, Inc. (OTCQX:MACE or "the Company"), a globally recognized leader in personal safety products, recently donated a batch of pepper spray dispensers to ACCESS Shelter of Akron, OH to be handed out to its residents who are often traveling alone on public transportation. Gary Medved, CEO & President of Mace Security International, states "while we believe everyone should have access to non-lethal personal safety products, we are especially sensitive to those who are in immediate need and could use the added protection our products offer. Providing these units to those in need, speaks to our overall mission of keeping our communities safe."

Sanjay Singh, Executive Chairman of Mace Security International commented "I was very impressed by the work that is being done by the team at ACCESS when I took a tour of their facility a few years ago. We are happy to assist the residents and team members of ACCESS by providing them peace of mind."

Jackie Hemsworth, Executive Director of ACCESS, added "ACCESS is so pleased to receive this generous donation of personal protection items for our residents. A great majority of our residents both walk and ride the bus alone to their destinations. The Mace products, along with education on personal safety, will help to empower and keep those we serve safe."

About ACCESS Shelter:

ACCESS is an emergency shelter for women and children in Akron, OH. Opened in 1984, the organization has served more than 20,000 individuals currently experiencing homelessness. ACCESS Shelter encourages the development of self-esteem and the attainment of self-sufficiency through its commitment of providing a holistic, safe and supportive environment, and through its programs of housing, advocacy and empowerment. For more information, visit www.access-shelter.org.

About Mace Security International, Inc.:

Mace Security International, Inc. (MACE) is a globally recognized leader in personal safety and security. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the company has spent more than 40 years designing and manufacturing consumer and tactical products for personal defense and security under its world-renowned Mace Brand - the original trusted brand of defense spray products. The company also offers aerosol defense sprays and tactical products for law enforcement and security professionals worldwide through its Mace Take Down brand, KUROS!  Brand personal safety products, Vigilant Brand alarms, and Tornado  Brand pepper spray and stun guns. MACE distributes and supports Mace Brand products through mass market retailers, wholesale distributors, independent dealers, Amazon.com, Mace.com, and other channels. For more information, visit www.mace.com.

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Press Contact:

Gary E. Medved

President/Chief Executive Officer

gmedved@mace.com

(440) 424-5322

SOURCE: Mace Security International, Inc.





View source version on accesswire.com:

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Kristi Nix

Due to future uncertainty created by COVID-19, Fort Bend ISD officials say it is too early to know what will happen when school starts in August, but online classes are likely to continue on either a full-time or part-time basis.

Its just going to be a matter of how many students and what format that would take because if were given direction from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the governors office that we can only have 25 percent to 30 to 50 percent of our students in the building at one time, or that we have to provide a certain type of social distancing requiring a certain amount of space or (the TEA) limits the number of students in the classroom, then we know we would have some students in the building while other students at home, Dupre told trustees at an agenda workshop Monday.
In this seemingly unending era of lockdown and staying at home, many questions come to mind. Some of them are pertinent and deserve pursuing, while others can easily be discharged.

Having followed closely the historic cooperation between Egypt and the European Union as our prime economic and trading partner at different stages of my career as a diplomat, a professor and lastly as an adviser to the minister of trade and industry, I am now wondering whether the time has come to renew our vows.

It has been more than 15 years since Egypt and the EU negotiated their Association Agreement (AA), which after the massive evolutions of free-trade agreements (FTAs) now appears to be a shallow one focusing only on trade in goods and tariff reductions. If Egypt decides to renew the framework of its cooperation with the EU today, it will have to venture into a deeper and more comprehensive free-trade agreement (DCFTA) known as a new generation FTA.

The AA, also referred to as the Partnership Agreement with the EU that has been in force since 2004, binds Egypt to certain obligations and establishes a free-trade area over a 12-year transitional period. But this is confined to trade in goods, whereas negotiating a new generation FTA with the EU would encompass trade in services as well, including telecommunications, e-commerce and digitisation, investment and competition policies, sustainable development and intellectual property rights.

This article will look into whether such a new and broader agreement would be worth pursuing and whether Egypt is ready for it. This will help to provide recommendations on policy implications, highlighting the potential value-added preferences of a new generation FTA as well as revealing its possible downsides.

Attempting to negotiate a DCFTA is the natural course of action to take by two partners whose history of trade agreements and cooperation dates back to the early 1970s. The EU has granted preferential access to Egypt since 1973 under the so-called Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), which provides tariff reductions across the board. Yet, even so Egypt has lagged behind other developing countries such as India, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as Morocco and Tunisia, in making the best use of the GSP system.

In the aftermath of the 1973 War between Egypt, Syria and Israel, Egypt signed an upgraded Cooperation Agreement with the EU in 1977 when the EU did not withhold aid to Egypt at that time. EU assistance to Egypt accounted for the lions share of more than 30 per cent of the total aid to the Mediterranean countries, amounting to hundreds of millions in the then European currencies.

In the late 1990s, as a replacement for the Cooperation Agreement Egypt and the EU moved to the Association Agreement based on exchanging preferences. Once again, the EU did not fail to provide grants and soft loans to Egypt to upgrade its exports with a view to readying them for international competition. But the agreement has come well short of expectations, as Egypts economy has undergone only limited diversification and there has been insufficient growth in its exports to the EU. This is what makes many in Egypt doubtful about negotiating a new agreement with the EU with additional obligations at a time when they feel Egypt is not yet ready for it.

The Association Agreement has come under heavy scrutiny and criticism as Egypt has continuously suffered a chronic deficit in its trade balance with the EU, reaching five billion euros in 2019. However, this deficit should come as no surprise as our exports to the EU consist of mainly agricultural exports alongside oil and gas, while we import industrial inputs, machinery, medical materials, cars, auto parts and so on from the EU.

Without going into an in-depth discussion of advantages and disadvantages, we must acknowledge that in the absence of the agreement our agricultural exports would have hardly been able to penetrate European markets. Financial and technical assistance were generally disbursed to Egypt after signing the agreement to help the country to upgrade its industrial sector and promote its exports.

Despite the criticisms the AA has elicited, a new generation of trade agreements that are deeper and more comprehensive than the current ones are becoming more compelling than ever for the two partners. Cognisant of Egypts strength and its strategic position, the EU is convinced of the stabilising role played by Egypt in the region and its effective role in combating illegal immigration. The EU also recognises Egypts influence in Africa and its war against terrorism nationally and regionally, and it is keen to nurture strong and steady relations with Egypt that are essential to the Mediterranean Basin as a whole.

A DCFTA is also certainly worth the costs for Egypt to help to elevate its economy to the next level. A new generation FTA would not deal with tariffs as they have already reached their lowest point, but it would address issues of trade in services, the digital economy, and the promotion and facilitation of investment, which are of interest to Egypt.

Upgrading the services sector is key for the Egyptian economy. Services are the speedy highways of trade. From telephones and faxes to telecommunications and the Internet, no economy can prosper without an efcient services infrastructure, high-quality broadband connectivity, and an efficient and competitive financial system. Though Egypt is better off than some others in this domain, it still has a long way to go to reach a more comfortable level of digitising its economy.

It is important after the coronavirus pandemic has abated, ending the current lockdowns, to contemplate how best to embark on giant steps to reach full digitisation. Tighter cooperation with the EU to enable Egypt to advance in this respect represents a potential trajectory. Any costs Egypt will have to bear will look trivial when compared to the benefits it will reap in availing itself of the opportunity to bridge the digital divide. Negotiating a DCFTA with the EU is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

Although there are no upfront guarantees that European investment will be forthcoming in the wake of a DCFTA, the ensuing conducive and predictable environment, as well as a more transparent regulatory framework, will certainly help Egypt better integrate into the European supply and value chains and thus incentivise its private sector. This is yet another enticement for Egypt not to shy away from negotiating a new generation FTA with the EU.

There are certainly also other incentives and motivations, which due to a lack of space are omitted here. However, let me venture into answering the equally important second question of readiness. Yes, Egypt is ready to negotiate a more complex follow-up agreement with the EU, as it has matured thanks to its stringent and recent economic adjustment programme that has attracted much praise by donors and multilateral financial institutions alike. Though the coronavirus pandemic has led to setbacks for the economy, the readiness of Egypt to undergo more reforms remains intact. It is also ready to deal with behind the border impediments to trade and upend its weaknesses to derive all the benefits it can from a DCFTA.

Based on past practice, Egypt should not fail to get aid for trade to prepare itself for some long and tedious negotiations. By modernising its services sector and establishing its competitive edge, an agreement with the EU would also raise Egypts profile in its dealings with the African continent within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.

We should not shy away from such negotiations, as the Egyptian negotiator with all his accumulated and extensive experience over the years can easily excel and achieve the maximum interests of Egypt and its people. Concluding a DCFTA with the EU will signal confidence in Egypt in its dealings with its partners and give it additional credibility at the international level and with EU member states.

*The writer is former assistant foreign minister for international economic affairs.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The Delhi Police received 801 calls on their helpline number within a period of 24 hours till Friday afternoon on issues related to the lockdown, officials said here.

A total of 40,176 phone calls have been received by the city police so far on its 24x7 helpline number 011-23469526 for assistance in resolving issues being faced by people due to the lockdown, they said.

Police received 801 calls from Thursday 2 pm to Friday 2 pm.

Out of these, 85 calls were related to areas outside the national capital which were referred to the respective state helpline numbers.

Two calls were regarding having no food or money and were forwarded to NGOs for direct relief at their addresses, the police said, adding that 444 calls were related to movement passes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
According to intelligence data, seven members of Russia-led forces were killed and another five were wounded on May 7.

Russia's hybrid military forces on May 7 mounted 21 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with six Ukrainian soldiers reported as wounded in action.

"The Russian Federation's armed formations violated the ceasefire 21 times in the past day," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation Headquarters said on Facebook in an update as of 07:00 Kyiv time on May 8. "As a result, six servicemen of the Joint Forces were wounded in enemy shelling."

Read alsoUS$1.3 bln on salaries alone: Ukraine official tells of Russian expenditures in occupied Donbas

Russian-led forces opened fire from proscribed 122mm artillery systems, 82mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, UAVs, weapons installed on infantry fighting vehicles, heavy machine guns, and rifles.

Under attack were Ukrainian positions near the towns of Maryinka and Avdiyivka, and the villages of Starohnativka, Shyrokyne, Novoselivka Druha, Taramchuk, Pisky, Nevelske, Novotoshkivske, Orikhove, and Krymske.

Joint Forces returned fire to each enemy attack. According to intelligence data, seven members of Russia-led forces were killed and another five were wounded on May 7. In addition, an enemy military truck was destroyed.

"Since Friday midnight, Russia-led forces have attacked Ukrainian positions near Orikhove, using 120mm mortars and tripod-mounted man-portable antitank guns," the update said.

There have been no Ukrainian army casualties since Friday midnight.
Waiting in the long grass: A herd of Nelore cattle - the breed accounts for approximately 80pc of Brazils 200m national herd. Brazil is pushing to increase its beef exports and could be one of the big winners if Britain pursues a cheap food policy post-Brexit.

Brazilian beef exports in 2020 will likely set a new record in terms of volume and value despite the novel coronavirus pandemic, Antonio Camardelli, president of beef group Abiec, said on Thursday.

No beef plants in Brazil were paralyzed because of the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, he said during a live video session, adding that demand from China remained strong.

Camardelli estimated Brazilian exports would generate $8 billion in sales this year, up from $7.65 billion in 2019, while beef volumes could reach 2 million tonnes, almost 130,000 tonnes more than in 2019.

He said when the pandemic is over, the countries which have the most organized supply chains will boost their share in global beef markets, naming Brazil as a natural candidate.

In the first four months of 2020, Brazil boosted exports to China by 111% to 202,000 tonnes, with $1.1 billion in sales to the country, Camardelli said.

Given Brazils better sanitary status relative to rival suppliers, Camardelli also noted he is hopeful the countrys meatpackers would soon be able to access alternative markets that buy more expensive cuts.

He said Brazilian beef companies have yet to reach 40% of importing countries that pay the best prices, citing Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Canada.
Hollywood is shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, but eventually someone will make a movie about the coronavirus pandemic. Who would play Gov. Andrew Cuomo?

The New York governor appeared on The Late Show Thursday night with Stephen Colbert to discuss the states COVID-19 response and late-night hosts who are desperate to get in front of an audience again. Colbert, whos been broadcasting from his home for weeks, said that Robert De Niro was on the CBS show Wednesday and the actor said hed like to play Cuomo if (and when) the COVID-19 crisis gets adapted into a film.

De Niro, I am a big De Niro fan, Cuomo told Colbert. He is just phenomenal. The breadth of his ability, I mean, just look at all the roles hes played. He can do anything, right? Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, he can do comedy ... how about Taxi Driver?

Cuomo even offered to recreate a famous scene from De Niros Oscar-nominated performance as Travis Bickle in 1976.

Im going to do Taxi Driver. The next press conference, when a reporter asks me a question: You talkin to me? You talkin to me? Oh, boy, thatd be a treat. Im a big De Niro fan. Hes a genius.

Cuomo, 62, was previously portrayed by The Sopranos actor Michael Imperioli in Ben Stillers Showtime series Escape at Dannemora.

De Niro, 76, is a born-and-raised New Yorker like Cuomo and has experience playing real-life figures, including Jake La Motta in Raging bull, former FBI director Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live, and mobster Frank Sheeran in The Irishman. On Wednesday, De Niro said that hes supporting Joe Biden in the 2020 race but hopes to see Cuomo in the White House someday.

Hes doing what a president should do, De Niro said of Cuomos coronavirus response. "Hes doing a great job.

Colbert also asked about Cuomos newfound popularity with women and his brother Chris Cuomos recent angry haircut from the CNN hosts wife, plus more serious issues like the Empire States $13 billion deficit and efforts to get Congress to help states in its next relief package.

If you want to get the economy back running, you have to fund states, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. The federal legislations (help) small businesses, airlines, et cetera. The states fund police, fire, schools, teachers so you have to fund the states. The bailout argument is just nonsensical. If you look at who pays the bills in this country, who contributes more money  New York contributes more money to the federal government every year than it gets back. We, in essence, have been subsidizing the federal government and other states to the tune of billions of dollars. We put in about $30 billion more every year than we get back. So if anything, New York has been bailing out the nation for many, many years.

But look, this is not a Democratic or Republican issue. Its just not. The virus does not discriminate ... Its not a red state-blue state issue. Its a national issue. It is a red, white and blue issue.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Stephen Colbert jokes about vampire Andrew Cuomo; brother Chris Cuomo mocks Love Gov

Brad Pitt plays Dr. Fauci on SNL, making Cornell alums wish come true (video)

YouTube removes Plandemic video with coronavirus claims by Dr. Judy Mikovits
Suspect in murder was cleared of killing American student in Rome in 2016.

Rome police have launched an investigation after a man was attacked and killed on the banks of the river Tiber near Ponte Sisto, in the city centre, at around 19.20 on 7 May.

The body of the 38-year old Romanian man was found with what appeared to be knife-wounds to his face and hands. He also appeared to have been attacked by a dog, according to reports in local media.

Police have arrested the alleged perpetrator, identified by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera as 45-year-old homeless man Massimo Galioto who last year was acquitted of murdering the American student Beau Solomon in the early hours of 1 July 2016.

The scene of the crime. Photo Corriere della Sera.

Beau Solomon

Prosecutors had alleged that Galioto - a former soldier turned 'punkabbestia' - pushed Solomon into the Tiber after a violent argument, causing him to drown. However Galioto denied the charges of aggravated homicide and said Solomon tripped and fell accidentally.

Witnesses told police that they had seen somebody pushing Solomon into the river, and when the student's body was found near Ponte Marconi four days later, it had a serious head wound, consistent with a fall. The autopsy found water in Solomon's lungs which ruled out the possibility that he was dead when he entered the river.

The case attracted media attention around the world, with Pope Francis consoling the student's parents in a private audience.

Rome mayor Virginia Raggi responded by staging a high-profile blitz to "clear" the river banks of illegal camps belonging to homeless people, who subsequently returned.

In another separate case in 2015, Galioto was the main suspect in the death of a man who fell into the river after getting into a fight beside Ponte Garibaldi. There were no witnesses and there was nobody convicted in the case which is now closed.

Photos Corriere della Sera
Dhaka, May 8 : The Bangladesh cabinet has approved an ordinance paving the way for the courts in the country to hold digital trials via video-conference.

After the cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, spokesman Khandker Anwarul Islam told the media on Thursday that the cabinet gave its approval to the ordinance titled "Usage of Information and Communication Technology in Court 2020", reports Xinhua news agency.

He said Bangladesh was in dire need for such an ordinance currently as stockpiles of pending cases are on the rise since the nationwide shutdown over the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the government is keen to launch virtual courts within a week to resume trial activities at least on a limited scale.

As courts in Bangladesh had been reportedly closed for nearly two months, people are not getting due legal services and the proceedings of a lot of cases are pending.

The cabinet secretary said first time in the history of Bangladesh, trials could be held digitally without having physical presence of lawyers and their clients in court rooms when the ordinance comes into effect.

"We hope that the ordinance will soon come into force following the honourable President's approval." The development comes after COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh has surged to 12,425, with 199 deaths.
Just how bad are the April employment figures going to be?

We know they will be awful. After all, the number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance was in the millions for the seventh straight week last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday (US time). But it is the monthly jobs report  showing job creation or losses, and the unemployment rate  that investors and the news media generally scrutinise for evidence of how the economy is evolving.

People wait in line to collect their unemployment benefits in Las Vegas. Credit:AP

When released Friday morning, the April numbers will show exactly how stunning the US economy's plunge has been. It will be hard to find words to capture what those tables of figures will show.

The last time the economy was in free fall, I wrote this: "The economy is unravelling so fast as to defy analysis through the usual statistical models. Among the phrases found in normally sober reports from the nation's top economic forecasters yesterday: 'god-awful,''wholesale capitulation,''shockingly weak' and 'indescribably terrible.'"
In 1755, Benjamin Franklin warned us that People who trade liberty for safety deserve neither and will lose both. As we move forward together in our fight against the China virus, I am concerned that we have given up some of our civil liberties to gubernatorial and mayoral edict. My liberty itch has developed into a full-blown rash.

I was encouraged when I read about the lawsuit that Michael Amato and Joy Monsanto, owners of 50s Lounge in Westville, have filed against Mayor Justin Elicker and Gov. Ned Lamont. Filed in U.S. District Court on April 3, 2020, the lawsuit alleges that Amatos and Mosantos First Amendment rights (freedom of assembly and freedom of association) and their 14th Amendment rights (depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law) have been violated. More specifically, it is alleged that Lamonts order limiting the activities of businesses and deciding which businesses can remain open based on their purposes regulates the use of private property to such a degree that it effectively deprives the Plaintiffs of the economically reasonable use of their property to the point where it deprives them of the value of their property. I hope that this lawsuit is just the beginning.

It is clear to me that many of our governors and mayors are tapping into their inner tyrant. In Philadelphia, a man was dragged off a bus by three policemen because he wasnt wearing a mask. In Rhode Island, the National Guard helped to conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine. The Nevada governor banned the prescribing and dispensing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for COVID-19. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer did something similar, but she also banned vegetable seeds, and residents were urged to call the cops on neighbors violating stay-at-home orders.

LA Mayor Garcetti threatened to cut off the water and electricity from non-essential businesses if they ignored the citys stay at home order. NYC Mayor de Blasio threatened permanent shutdown of any churches where people gathered for services, and people who broke social distancing rules would face fines of up to $500. A Colorado man was handcuffed in front of his 6-year-old daughter in a park for violating the social distancing order (which itself was violated by the police officers doing the handcuffing). In Vermont, big box stores are being told what they can and cannot sell. And the list goes on.

And then there is technology. In his April 10, 2020 Foreign Policy article, Only Surveillance Can Save Us From Coronavirus, Bruno Macaes discusses how using smartphones might work. The government would have access to cell-phone users individual data. Once a person has been confirmed to be infected, his or her close contacts could automatically be traced and instructed to get tested. Meanwhile, the infected persons compliance with lockdown instructions could be tracked using digital tools that monitor individual travel and behavior patterns, and it goes on from there. Governor Lamont is mulling over something like this as we speak. The privacy implications are massive. We have a taste of using smart phones here in Connecticut. Local citizens in Hartford have been urged to download the SeeClickFix app to snitch on their neighbors if they see that they are violating the six-foot distancing rule. In Detroit, they are using plane flyovers and video surveillance to disperse crowds and enforce social distancing. In NYC, drones are flying over parks to monitor coronavirus distancing requirements, using speakers to broadcast warnings of non-compliance.

Then there are guns. Once the issue of gun stores being seen as essential or non-essential surfaced, the predictable gun-control narratives emerged. Liberal heads exploded when President Trump issued an Executive Order deeming gun makers and gun stores as essential nationwide. While Second Amendment advocates cheered the Executive Order, Shannon Watts from Moms Demand Action urged governors around the country to ignore it. Opponents have a shocking lack of understanding of the Second Amendment: what it is and why it is important.

All Americans have the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-defense is part of that, and the Second Amendment protects that right. Many people do not realize that guns are necessary to protect ourselves from government tyranny, signs of which we are seeing every day during this crisis. When American feel threatened, they buy weapons. Are gun stores essential during a pandemic? Yes. Are they essential at any time? Yes.

Americans dont like to be bossed around, yet here we are. There are politicians who are enjoying their extraordinary powers entirely too much. While we can acknowledge that governors and mayors have broad powers in the case of a public health crisis, there is a point at which these powers are outside of Constitutional bounds. Fortunately, we are starting to see pockets of resistance in Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. On April 15, there was a protest by thousands in Lansing, Michigan against Governor Whitmers stay-at-home order. A sign draped across a commercial van read: Liberty once lost is lost forever.

And that brings us back to Benjamin Franklin in 1755.

Sandy Lueder is a retired college professor. She lives in Cheshire.
The three-stage plan to allow greater freedoms for Australians starts with measures allowing five visitors at home and gatherings of 10 people in businesses as the first step, as well as the reopening of primary and secondary schools. But each state will set its own timetable for the return-to-normal plan and Mr Andrews warned Victoria would not include all of the changes in step one of the "national framework". While the ACT and Queensland announced widespread relaxations of their restrictions soon after national cabinet agreed on the framework, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian took the same stance as Mr Andrews, with Ms Berejiklian announcing residents would have to wait until after the weekend to be told of updated rules. Premier Daniel Andrews has promised he will make announcements about easing restrictions next week. Credit:Eddie Jim

On Friday afternoon, the Premier said changes in Victoria would be announced on Monday, but they would not take effect immediately. "Next week, I'll have more to say about what the rest of May looks like," he said. "And then progressively we'll talk about the second stage and the third stage and getting back to as close to normal as we can. "Next week will be filled with lots of different announcements that are cautious and careful but will, I think, be welcomed by Victorians, because they're based on science, they are based on the biggest testing protocol that our country has seen right throughout this global pandemic." Victorias state of emergency expires on Monday, which is when the state government has said it will review school restrictions.

"The nature of that, I can't pre-empt, because there's still further work that has to be done." "We've always been keen to give parents as much notice as possible. "We did that when we brought the school holidays forward and of course, we'll do that if and when those policy settings change." Mr Andrews did not indicate that a schools announcement would come on Monday and teachers, principals and unions, who have all said they would follow the state's medical advice on a return to classrooms, have indicated they would need at least one week's notice before recommencing face-to-face learning.

Amid Fridays developments, the state opposition was left fuming after learning that the Premier, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and other senior ministers were refusing to appear in person at the state parliaments inquiry next week into the COVID-19 pandemic, and would instead take part via video link. Opposition Leader Michael OBrien said the government, which has cited social distancing precautions for its decision, had no excuse for not fronting up to the committee holding the inquiry after parliament had been suspended, along with other avenues of parliamentary oversight. Loading More than 127,000 people have come forward to be tested for coronavirus during the government's two-week blitz - far exceeding the government's target of 100,000. The number of active COVID-19 cases has fallen to 738 nationwide from 1461 two weeks ago, according to federal figures. On Friday afternoon there were 517 active cases in NSW, 123 in Victoria, 45 in Queensland, 39 in Tasmania, 9 in Western Australia, two in the Northern Territory and one in the ACT.

A further 13 confirmed cases in Victoria were announced on Friday, bringing the total number diagnosed in the state to 1467. Decisions on lifting restrictions, and when they will be announced, still hinge on the results of the unprecedented testing program which will be assessed by Professor Sutton and his team. "Nothing changes today, nothing changes tomorrow, nothing changes Sunday, the rules remain in place," the Premier said on Friday. "Let's not give everything back, let's not throw away all the progress we've made by letting our frustration get the better of us ... We just have to be a little patient for a little longer." There will be no change to social distancing restrictions in Victoria this weekend. Credit:Joe Armao

Mr Andrews said Victoria was not like other states "that have literally had no community transmission". "We have many more [cases of] community transmission and that's been a feature of Victoria," he said. About one in 10 coronavirus cases in the state are the result of unknown community transmission. With David Crowe
By Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a week or so sick in bed in their New York City apartment in March, members of the Johnson-Baruch family were convinced they had been stricken by the novel coronavirus. Subsequent test results left them with more questions than answers.

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a week or so sick in bed in their New York City apartment in March, members of the Johnson-Baruch family were convinced they had been stricken by the novel coronavirus. Subsequent test results left them with more questions than answers.

Tests both for the virus itself and for the antibodies the immune system produces to fight the infection are becoming more widely available, but they are not perfect. The tests can come back with false positives, false negatives or confoundingly ambiguous results. Doctors cannot always offer definitive explanations.

For Maree Johnson-Baruch, her husband, Jason Baruch, and their two teenage daughters, their experience ran the gamut.

They all became sick around the same time with the same symptoms. But each set of tests they subsequently took, whether for antibodies or the virus, came back with conflicting results among family members - some positive some negative. Eventually, after several weeks and additional tests, they were able to confirm that all four had indeed been infected.

"I feel a little bit like a science experiment," Johnson-Baruch said. "But no one really knows how this virus is behaving."

Widespread testing is touted by many policymakers and public health experts as a central tool for reopening closed economies and for tamping down any future outbreaks of the virus. But these public health experts have said that the limitations of tests must be factored in, and that there must be time for more research into the degree that antibodies, for example, confer immunity against future infection.

Johnson-Baruch, an actress, began to feel ill shortly after she finished her final performance in the pivotal supporting role of Madame Giry in the Broadway musical "The Phantom of the Opera." It was a Thursday matinee on March 12, the day New York City began closing non-essential businesses to try to slow the spread of the virus.

Over the weekend she had occasional aches but thought she was just imagining symptoms. By Monday, she had a fever. One by one, her husband and daughters fell sick over the following week. Johnson-Baruch noticed she could not smell the pine-scented disinfectant she was using to clean the family's apartment.

The family called the New York State Department of Health's coronavirus hotline. The federal government had botched the rollout of test kits, which then remained scarce - and limited in New York mostly to only those sick enough to require hospitalization. The family followed the advice to recuperate at home and by April everyone felt recovered.

Soon after, Johnson-Baruch read about a new experimental therapy at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital in which the antibody-rich blood plasma of patients who have recovered from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, is donated to people hospitalized with the illness.

In late April, she and her husband put on face masks and went to the hospital, where healthcare workers decked in protective gear drew blood.

"The strange thing was I tested positive and Jason tested negative," Johnson-Baruch said.

Such disparities do not surprise Dr. Ania Wajnberg, who oversees Mount Sinai's antibody testing efforts.

The antibody test developed at Mount Sinai fails to detect antibodies in about 6% of patients who actually have them. The intensity and recentness of the original infection can also affect whether antibodies are detected, Wajnberg said.

"I do think sometimes the results are surprising to people," Wajnberg said. "And, more than anything, I get tons of questions about what the results mean, and we don't know exactly what they mean."

Although antibodies are thought to be likely to provide at least some immunity for some period of time, it remains the subject of study.

"Overall, everyone understands that this is so new and that they are sort of participating in the learning process," Wajnberg said.

'WE WERE SURPRISED'

About six weeks after calling the state health department, Johnson-Baruch heard back from an official saying the family could finally get a test for the actual virus that works by looking for distinctive parts of the pathogen's genetic material, RNA, in a patient's sample.

"We were well over a month out of our symptoms by that point, so we were surprised to get the call from them sort of out of the blue," Johnson-Baruch said.

Johnson-Baruch noticed her eldest daughter particularly squirmed when healthcare workers stuck swabs, one by one, deep into the back of their noses.

Once again, the results surprised them. Johnson-Baruch, her husband and their youngest daughter all tested positive. Their eldest daughter tested negative.

What did it mean, the family wondered. Were they still in some sense sick? Could they still infect others?

A health department official who called to relay the results was not much help. "She was quite surprised to hear we were sick six weeks ago," Johnson-Baruch said.

The tests used by the health department "cannot distinguish between RNA from live or dead virus," Jonah Bruno, a department spokesman, wrote in an email. "This persistent positive test result can continue long after a person has recovered and does not necessarily indicate that a person continues to be infectious."

Some 60 different RNA or antibody tests are now available after under emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but the makers of those tests must continue to submit accuracy data to the regulatory agency before final approval is given.

Dr. Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at New York University's School of Global Public Health, said it was challenging to get the general public to accept the limitations of tests.

"People are way more comfortable with 'yes' or 'no' than 'maybe,'" Ompad said. "Unfortunately, that's where the science has us right now: we just don't know, and it's much better to say that we don't know than to try to make predictions without having the data there because that can be detrimental."

The Johnson-Baruch family members are not quite done with testing. The daughter who had negative virus results has since tested positive for antibodies for the virus after going to a walk-in clinic. Such facilities made testing more widely available this month.

Jason Baruch, a lawyer for Broadway theaters, is also seeking a second antibody test, this time hoping it comes back positive. A positive test would offer some comfort that he may have some level of immunity.

"No one's really willing to put themselves on the line and say, 'Hey, you're home free, you have antibodies,' or, 'You're still contagious,'" Baruch said. "No one really wants to tell us - definitively - anything."

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Mike Segar and Aleksandra Michalska; Editing by Ross Colvin and Will Dunham)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The global online doctor consultation market is expected to grow by USD 3.80 billion as per Technavio. This marks a significant market growth compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. Moreover, healthy growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 7%.

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Person-to-person transmission is one of the key factors associated with the increase in the incidence of COVID-19 across the globe. Consequently, governments around the world have enforced lockdown at different levels, limiting the movement of people. However, this may affect patients in need of a doctor consultation. Online doctor consultation services can largely mitigate the risk of unnecessary exposure under such situations and ensure continuity of care to patients without compromising on the speed and quality of care. Several vendors are also launching COVID-19 related apps to provide people with the necessary support. For instance, in March 2020, Babylon Healthcare launched a new service that provides users with updated information about coronavirus, its symptoms, and also helps them get appropriate assistance. Developments such as these will have a positive impact on market growth.

Technavio's custom research reports offer detailed insights on the impact of COVID-19 at an industry level, a regional level, and subsequent supply chain operations. This customized report will also help clients keep up with new product launches in direct indirect COVID-19 related markets, upcoming vaccines and pipeline analysis, and significant developments in vendor operations and government regulations.

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The market is driven by the growing adoption of remote patient monitoring. In addition, the imbalance between high patient influx and understaffing at health centers is anticipated to boost the growth of the online doctor consultation market.

The increasing demand for remote patient monitoring is one of the key factors driving the market growth. Remote patient monitoring includes collecting clinical and other health-related data through digital technologies. Healthcare professionals use this data to make assessments and recommendations for the effective treatment of patients. In addition, remote patient monitoring helps in providing patient-centric care at homecare settings, thereby reducing the rate of hospital admissions. Remote patient monitoring solutions are used as an early symptom management tool to monitor patients with chronic conditions. This also curbs healthcare costs and increases patients' access to care in areas with limited healthcare resources. As a result, the demand for remote patient monitoring is increasing, thereby stimulating demand for online doctor consultations.

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Major Five Online Doctor Consultation Companies:

American Well Corp.

American Well Corp. offers telehealth services for hospitals, governments, skilled nursing facilities, patients, and others. The company offers online doctor consultation for urgent care, therapy, psychiatry, pregnancy and postpartum nutrition, menopause nutrition, menopause consulting, cardiology, dermatology, neurology, and other medical fields.

Babylon Healthcare Services Ltd.

Babylon Healthcare Services Ltd. offers health consultation to its customers by connecting them to health care professionals and doctors through its app. The company offers the COVID-19 Care Assistant on its app platform.

Dictum Health Inc.

Dictum Health Inc. has business operations under various segments, such as telehealth devices, RPM and CCM, software modules, accessories and disposables. The company offers online doctor consultation solutions through which physicians can assess, make clinical decisions, and monitor even their most at-risk patients.

Doctor Anywhere Pte. Ltd.

Doctor Anywhere Pte. Ltd. offers video consultation for medical, aesthetics and newborn care. The company's online medical consultation services include prescribing medications, and issuing medical certificates and referrals.

MDLIVE Inc.

MDLIVE Inc. offers online doctor consultation for various medical conditions such as cold, flu, allergies, diarrhea, headache, anxiety, depression, depression, bipolar, stress, acne, spots, rash, and other medical conditions. The company offers a Virtual Primary Care platform to improve patient access to healthcare.

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Online Doctor Consultation Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2020-2024)

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Online Doctor Consultation Product Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2020-2024)

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It gets them every time.

How many of you, I ask a roomful of half-awake 18-year-old students, are familiar with the term MILF? Theres a frenzied exchange of knowing smirks.

Determined to maintain an academic tone, I ask the next question. And how many of you know the etymology of this acronym?

Mom Id like to fuck! one particularly enthusiastic scholar blurts out.

Thank you, I say over the tsunami of snickers. Thats what it stands for. But where does it come from?

Roughly half the students in my film elective correctly identify Stiflers mom, the sultry divorcee from the 1999 comedy American Pie, as MILF Zero, the woman to whom those four letters owe their provenance. Heres the thing, I press on, Stiflers mom may be Hollywoods most explicitly sexualized and predatory mother. But she wouldnt exist without Mrs. Robinson.

Whos Mrs. Robinson? a student inevitably asks. And thats where our unit on The Graduate begins.

***

The Graduate, in case you need a refresher, is Mike Nicholss iconic 1967 film centering on Benjamin Braddock, a young man played by a splendidly awkward Dustin Hoffman. Benjamin returns to his affluent California family after a successful conquest of some unnamed eastern college feeling lost in life despite countless achievements. Enter Mrs. Robinson, the wife of Mr. Braddocks law partner. Mrs. Robinson, brought to life by the vivacious Anne Bancroft, proceeds to help Benjamin become a man.

In American popular culture, Mrs. Robinson is the O.G. hot mom, matriarch of a cinematic family tree that abounds in forbidden fruit. Her descendants include Maude (Harold and Maude, 1971), Marion Wormer (Animal House, 1978), Stella Payne (How Stella Got Her Groove Back, 1998), Kathleen Kitty Cat Cleary (Wedding Crashers, 2005) and, of course, Sitflers mom. Although earlier films flirted with the taboo notion of an older woman taking a younger lover, The Graduate was the first to confront the subject head on. That it did so with an unapologetic celebration of female sexuality, compounded by its subversive portrayal of generational strife, is what made its release so socially controversial, critically successful and outrageously lucrative. The film grossed $105 million in 1967 and received seven Oscar nominations, winning one, for Best Director. As often as the Academy flubs this particular award, they got it right with Nichols. If nothing else, The Graduate is a revolutionary piece of filmmaking.

The films narrative and technical elements transformed the topography of American cinema by changing the rules for what stories could be told en masse and how directors could tell them. While Nichols isnt working from original source material  The Graduate is based on a 1963 novel of the same title by Charles Webb, who famously sold the film rights for a flat fee of $10,000 rather than opting for a slice of the profits  he is responsible for turning the novels antagonist into a prowling and rapacious maneater. A dialogue-heavy work, Webbs version includes few cues as to Mrs. Robinsons appearance beyond a brief snippet when she first appears in the story: Mrs. Robinson was wearing a shiny green dress cut very low across her chest, and over one of her breasts was a large gold pin. Thats all we get. Her sexuality is discernible, but its valence is unclear.

Using the tools of his medium, Nichols is much more decisive. Consider this shot early in the film, when Mrs. Robinson has just persuaded Benjamin to leave his own graduation party and drive her home:

Embassy Pictures

A master of composition, Nichols has a clear vision for how he wants his audience to perceive this femme fatale. The tiger-striped dress, the brilliant green vegetation that looks more like a jungle than a backyard, the actress perched high above the camera  Mrs. Robinson is a predator. And shes on the hunt.

In the next shot, arguably the films most iconic, Nichols guides our attention to her prey with a slightly more overt arrangement:

Embassy Pictures

An incredulous Benjamin has just uttered, Mrs. Robinson, youre trying to seduce me. The most striking element of this shot is the framing. Nestled under Mrs. Robinsons leg and flanked by her flora, Benjamin is trapped. Nichols also lights the shot to emphasize the scenes sexual politics. Benjamin, innocent and chaste, is bathed in light. Looming large in the foreground, however, is that leg: dark, mysterious, enticing.

***

We have a word for predators like the one embodied by Mrs. Robinson: cougar. The designation is similar but not identical to the one that would pop up three decades later  MILF  in a bawdy teen comedy.

Why does the distinction even matter? Thanks to American Pie, we can retroactively call Mrs. Robinson a MILF. This word says a lot  about the person it refers to, sure, but also the culture that invented it. But what about cougar? Like most pop vernacular, it is difficult to pinpoint the moment when the term entered our cultural lexicon.

The term, which refers to an older woman who consorts with younger men, is fresher than you might guess. Most accounts, including a 2008 article in the Chicago Tribune, locate early usage in Canada. One unsubstantiated rumor claims that the 1989 Vancouver Canucks referred to their elder groupies as cougars. Another points to the Canadian website CougarDate.com, which launched in 1999. But its Valerie Gibsons 2002 nonfiction book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women to Dating Younger Men that is most widely credited with originating the species.

Gibson, a former sex columnist for the Toronto Sun, says she first heard the term in Canadian bars in the early aughts, and decided to embrace it wholeheartedly. The book begins shortly after her fourth marriage has ended.

I found that being forty-four, single, and hotter than a chili pepper was by no means the social drawback one might expect, she writes. In fact, far from finding myself alone and dateless, I appeared to be just what quite a number of men  younger men  were after. They certainly turned out to be what I was after.

When contemplating the cultural legacy of The Graduate, the murky etymology of cougar is telling. The fact that the term itself is relatively new highlights the prescience of Nicholss vision; Mrs. Robinson was a cougar before cougars existed, at least linguistically. As is often the case, the idea is much older than the word. Nichols, though, did not invent a new type of female character. What he did was much more destabilizing: he trained a spotlight on an archetype that had been relegated to the shadows of humanitys collective consciousness for millenia.

***

Archetypes  heroes, villains, Chads, Karens  exist for a reason. They establish the borders and expectations of human experience by conceptualizing the different roles individuals can occupy in art, as well as life. And as is the case with most archetypes, the natural starting point for a discussion on the legacy of the cougar is ancient mythology, which brings us to Joseph Campbell.

In his 1949 masterpiece, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell argues that all mythological narratives, regardless of their cultural origin, share the same fundamental structure. Campbell outlines this structure in his introduction: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from his mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. Replace hero with a proper noun  Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Jake Sully, Maria von Trapp  and you begin to see how that sentence serves as a blueprint for every story ever told.

Shortly before his death in 1987, Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers, the acclaimed journalist and Johnson administration Press Secretary. Moyers intuited a gender imbalance in Campbells approach, and asked the scholar if only men could be heroes. Campbell quickly refuted the idea:

Oh, no. The male usually has the more conspicuous role, just because of the conditions of life. He is out there in the world, and the woman is in the home  Giving birth is definitely a heroic deed, in that it is the giving over of oneself to the life of another.

Beyond its resemblance to a 1950s bumper sticker, that last sentence is noteworthy for highlighting the structural limitations imposed on female archetypes. Most ancient and early modern constructions of femininity defined women in terms of their relationship to men, hence the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, an archetypal view of womanhood that predates the Bible. In this model, a woman can be one of two things: a nurturing mother or a deplorable slut. In her 1991 essay Archetypes, Stereotypes, and the Female Hero, classicist Terri Frontgia identifies the underlying problem with Campbells praise for motherhood. While acknowledging the heroism of motherhood is affirming, Frontgia says, it also works to keep female identity in a tightly confined box and is yet another manifestation of womens old nemesis, biological determinism.

Because this view is pervasive in mythology, it is almost impossible to find examples of women who operate outside the paradigm  almost. Thankfully the ancient Greeks had a useful literary device that allowed them to explore taboo aspects of human nature without attributing them to humans: the deities.

The Greek goddess Eos, the personification of dawn, is one of the earliest incarnations of the archetypal cougar. She was known for kidnapping young men and leading them into the woods for sexual encounters, her abductions so renowned that depictions of them adorned many Grecian vases, such as the one below (left), believed to be from the 4th or 5th century BC:

Two Ancient Grecian vases depicting courtships of mortals by gods (L: Boston Museum of Fine Arts; R: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Note the strength of the winged Eos grip on the boy, Tithonos: she has him by the wrist and neck, as if wrestling a calf to the ground. And should there be any doubt about who holds the power here, their dress provides further clarity. Eos is elegantly festooned in robes and scarves; Tithonos is completely starkers.



Likewise, there are plenty of depictions in which male gods abduct mortals (both women and young men), like Zephyros does in the vase on the right. But these scenes tend to paint a different picture: the male gods never appear to take their mortal prey by force, instead winning affection via a seductive glance or a gentle caress of the arm.



Eos, meanwhile, refrains from making eye contact with her mortal. The irony here is comical  the male deity, paragon of strength, resorts to sensuality, while the female deity relies on brute strength  but the implications are much darker.



It has been suggested, Wellesley classicist Mary Lefkowitz writes, that painters of these vases concentrate on the negative aspects of the abduction in order to send a covert message about womens sexuality. The message, to finish Lefkowitzs thought, could be that unbridled female sexuality spells danger for males. To project this fear onto a grander canvas: female agency, as embodied by a woman who cannot be defined or explained by the Madonna/Whore model, poses a significant threat to patriarchy. This conceit may sound extreme, but it explains why nearly 1,000 years would pass before a mortal female character explicitly fulfilled the cougar archetype.

The goddess Eos might be considered the ur-cougar (Kristen Liu-Wong) Kristen Liu-Wong

Entrenched in the heart of English patriarchy as a courtier to King Edward III, Geoffrey Chaucer was an unlikely candidate to craft the voice of one of the loudest cougars in the history of literature.



The Canterbury Tales, Chaucers 14th-century opus is essentially a road-trip narrative. A group of pilgrims travel together from London to Canterbury and engage in a storytelling competition to pass the time. These pilgrims come from all walks of life  the pilgrimage itself, to a storied cathedral, appears to be their only unifying trait  and Chaucer uses the occasion to satirize various elements of medieval society.



Although the pilgrims are predominantly male, the Wife of Bath is easily Chaucers most memorable character. (Shes also had the greatest influence on contemporary pop culture: the Mel Gibson rom-com-fantasy flick What Women Want and a quietly awesome Les Blank documentary called Gap-Toothed Women are both inspired by her.) What makes her so striking is the way she flaunts ideas that art and humanity sought to repress for millennia. Similar to Valerie Gibson, the Wife has been married several times. This is how she talks about her fifth husband  as translated from the original Middle English courtesy of Harvard:



He was, I believe, twenty years old,

And I was forty, if I shall tell the truth,

But yet I had a colts tooth.

With teeth set wide apart I was, and that became me well.



And a few lines later:



And, truly, as my husbands told me,

I had the best pudendum that might be

For God as my salvation,

I never loved in moderation.



The number of parallels one can draw between the Wife and Mrs. Robinson is striking: an older woman with a ravenous sexual appetite takes a younger lover without a modicum of shame. In many ways, the Wife would have been far more unsettling to her contemporary world than Mrs. Robinson was to her own. Note how she repeatedly references her pudendum (translated from queynte, an early iteration of the C-word). Such language might have been tolerated from the mouth of a brothel wench, but the Wife is nobility; imagine Caroline Kennedy dishing to a room full of strangers about her lady parts. As arresting as the Wifes language and sexuality are, however, they would not disturb Chaucers audience nearly as much as the substance of her message.



A self-proclaimed expert in the woe that is marriage, the Wife promises to tell her fellow pilgrims a tale that will answer the question that has eluded every husband since Adam: What do women truly want? And she does. To make a long story short, the Wife claims that every womans greatest desire is sovereignty: control over her own life as well as her husbands.



In a 1976 essay, Chaucerian scholar Kenneth Oberempt considers how medieval society would have reacted to such a brazen claim. The Wife of Bath would be viewed as an unmitigated advocate of vaginal politics and her argument for wifely sovereignty [as] evidence indeed of her perverted character, he writes. This psychology goes a long way in explaining why prominent female characters who approach todays conception of the cougar are an endangered species in the Western canon.



To her credit, the Wife practices what she preaches. As she proudly tells the pilgrims when reflecting on the power dynamics in each of her five marriages: I had them wholly in my hand. This language should resonate with contemporary readers. As any Seinfeld fan knows, hand is a universal symbol for power and control.

***

There is one shot in The Graduate that makes my students blanch every time I screen the film. It occurs near the halfway point. Elaine, Mrs. Robinsons daughter and Benjamins ultimate love interest, has just discovered the truth about the relationship between Benjamin and her mother. As Benjamin leaves the Robinsons house, he exchanges one last glance with his ex-lover:

Embassy Pictures

Tell me what you see, I prompt my students when we revisit this shot. Their visual literacy skills have come a long way since the course began.



They see everything: the wide, slightly down-angled shot Nichols uses to pin Mrs. Robinson in the corner and make her look weak (for the first time in the film); Benjamin looming large in the foreground (occupying more space than Mrs. Robinson for the first time in the film); the black-and-white contrast that connotes prison; and, of course, the fact that Mrs. Robinsons right hand is gone. The implication is glaring: Mrs. Robinson has lost the power she once wielded so fiercely.

This symbolic amputation  castration through a Freudian lens  represents the demise of a devious character. For cougar sympathizers, the message is disheartening. As progressive as The Graduate is for bringing a controversial archetype into the mainstream, the film ultimately retreats to a patriarchal safe space by turning Mrs. Robinson into a pitiful villain. Why, some viewers might ask, cant the cougar win the day? The simplest answer, and its an unsatisfying one, is that it was 1967. Thankfully, weve come a long way.



Jeanine Stifler does not appear in the flesh until the final 14 minutes of American Pie. Paul Finch, a drooping and dejected high-school senior who recently squandered his chances of losing his virginity due to a bathroom incident incited by one Steven Stifler, stumbles into a room that has been cordoned off from the younger Stiflers prom afterparty. Who does he encounter? Stiflers mom, of course. They engage in flirtatious repartee and the overtones of The Graduate are not subtle, namely because Simon and Garfunkels Mrs. Robinson is simmering in the background.

Universal Pictures

When Finch asks Stiflers mom if she would object to him calling her quite striking, she gives a demure smile and asks, Mr. Finch, are you trying to seduce me? In a role reversal of the adjacent scene in The Graduate, it feels like the young, untested cub has the upper hand. For a moment, it feels like the film has no intention of advancing the notion that the cougar poses an existential threat to the male race. But then the camera pans to Stiflers mom as she casts her gaze on the pool table. When she turns back to Finch, his expression tells us hes scared shitless.

Stiflers mom puts down her Scotch, grabs Finch by the wrist, and purrs, Youre dead.

The post The Long and Decorated Literary History of the MILF appeared first on InsideHook.
Nokia 6.1 tipped to launch with Zeiss optics, Qualcomm SoC

It looks like Nokia is planning a new mid-range smartphone alongside the often leaked Nokia 7.3 and Nokia 9.3 PureView this year. According to a report by Nokia Power User, HMD Global is planning to launch the Nokia 6.3 in Q3 2020. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the launch date may change. The new device is tipped to start at EUR 249, which is approximately Rs 20,000. Interestingly, the report claims that the base variant of the phone will offer 3GB RAM and 64GB storage.

Specifications

Sources told the website that HMD Global considers the price point of the Nokia 6.X quite important. The report also adds that the new device may be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 670/675 SoC. It could also feature a Zeiss-branded quad-camera setup at the back, which should help market it over devices like the Nokia 5.3, which would be placed lower in the price bracket. It further adds that the phone may feature a 16MP front camera housed inside a teardrop notch.

Nokia is also tipped to release the Nokia 7.3 and Nokia 9.3 PureView in Q3 2020 and it is quite possible that the company will release all three phones together. The Nokia 7.3 will be another mid-range device from the company, but it will be priced higher and offer more premium features. Reports suggest that the phone will be powered by a Snapdragon 700-series SoC. The Nokia 9.3 PureView, on the other hand, will be a new flagship smartphone and is tipped to pack a multi-camera setup at the back. It will most likely be powered by a Snapdragon 865 SoC and is tipped to sport a 6.29-inch QHD+ pOLED display.
In a statement, Kingsley Fanwo, commissioner for information, said the team chose to return to Abuja than to be tested or self-isolated.

Fanwo



The government of Kogi has tackled the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) over the alleged refusal of some of its officials to be tested for COVID-19, TheCable reports.

A delegation the federal government sent to the state on Thursday to boost its capacity returned to Abuja after the governor asked those in the delegation to go on isolation and be prepared for test.

In a statement, Kingsley Fanwo, commissioner for information, said the team chose to return to Abuja than to be tested or self-isolated.

Fanwo asked if the agency was hiding anything from the people of Kogi.

He said why the officials refused to be tested was a matter of concern to the government of Kogi, calling on the centre to investigate the issue.



It was drama today at the Kogi State Government House as officials of the National Center for Disease Control sent to ascertain the COVID-19 status flee the state  Fanwo said.



The Officials said they were not ready to be tested for COVID-19 and went back to Abuja. Today, the Governor showed the statesmanship in him once again by appreciating the support of the NCDC and defending the health interests of his people.

NCDC quarantined the Chinese professionals that came to give them technical support and also took their samples for test. It is a normal practice and protocol set by NCDC.

So NCDC will have a lot to explain as to why its officials refused to test for COVID-19. How can we be sure of their status? What are their fears? Why did NCDC sent people who are afraid of test to our State? What was their intention? The officials that came have done an integrity blow to the works of the NCDC. Is there something they are hiding? It is time NCDC opened up and apologize to the good people of Kogi State. How will they encourage people to test when its own officials are afraid of test? This is sad.
By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - How do you ensure that someone sick with COVID-19 stays home?

As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology  including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps  could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers.

But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

Case in point is Hawaii, which considered the sweeping use of GPS-enabled ankle bracelets or smartphone tracking apps to enforce stay-at-home orders given to arriving air passengers, according to Ronald Kouchi, the president of the Hawaii state senate.

Kouchi said Hawaiian officials were concerned that many travelers were flouting the state's 14-day quarantine order, putting the archipelago's inhabitants at risk. But he said that the plan for mass tracking of incoming travelers - inspired by similar technology in place in South Korea - was put on the back burner after the Hawaii attorney general's office raised concerns.

"America is America," Kouchi told Reuters. "There are certain rights and freedoms."

In response to written questions to the attorney general's office, Hawaii's COVID-19 Joint Information Center said the "various ideas being evaluated for tracking those under mandatory quarantine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are right now just that, ideas."

Similar ideas have already been executed in a few other states, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Seven people who broke quarantine rules in Louisville, Kentucky were court-ordered to wear GPS-tracking devices manufactured by Colorado-based SCRAM Systems, according to Amy Hess, the city's chief of public services. She told Reuters that while she would rather not have had to use the devices at all, state law permitted the imposition of home confinement to protect public health.

Story continues

"We don't want to take away people's freedoms but at the same time we have a pandemic," she said.

In West Virginia's capital, Charleston, Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford told Reuters his force had leased 10 additional location-monitoring ankle bracelets from GEO Group Inc. at the outset of the epidemic "to be on the safe side," although he said they've so far just sat on the shelf.

Industry executives including Shadowtrack Technologies Inc. President Robert Magaletta, whose Louisiana-based company supplies nearly 250 clients across the criminal justice system, said they had fielded calls from state and local governments about repurposing their tools for quarantine enforcement, although they wouldn't name the prospective buyers.

Kris Keyton, of Arkansas-based E-Cell, said he had recently been approached by a state agency that wanted to adapt his detainee-tracking smartphone app for quarantine enforcement.

He said the changes the agency requested were purely cosmetic, including swapping out the word "client" - E-Cell's term for arrestees - with the word "patient."

"They just wanted to reskin our app," he said.

"UNCHARTED TERRITORY"

The industry has two main ways of keeping track of offenders: One is through the traditional ankle bracelet, a battery-powered device which is fastened to a person's leg and is monitored through GPS. The other is through a smartphone app, either used in conjunction with facial or voice recognition technology to make sure it's attached to the right person or, as with the app made by E-Cell, tethered via Bluetooth to a fitness tracker-style wrist band to ensure it stays on or near the person it is meant to follow.

A QR code-enabled version of the app-and-wrist band solution is already being used in Hong Kong to enforce quarantines on incoming travelers. Poland uses a facial recognition-powered version of the technology that regularly prompts users to upload a selfie to prove they're indoors.

Other governments are weighing similar technology, said Magaletta of Shadowtrack, who said he was in talks with half a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In a call with reporters last month, Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union noted that several governments were toying with the idea of using smartphones as ad hoc ankle monitors.

"As a technological matter that probably would be effective as long as too much precision is not expected," Stanley said. But he cautioned that enforcement approach to public health "often tends to backfire."

Magaletta also foresaw thorny issues as far as the United States was concerned, saying he was less comfortable tracking patients with COVID-19 than he was enforcing house arrests for convicted criminals.

"Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who's innocent?" he asked. "It's uncharted territory."

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin)
Huntsville, Alabama, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AAR (NYSE: AIR) a leading provider of aviation services to commercial and government operators, announced today that its AAR Integrated Technologies division has been awarded a firm-fixed-price (FFP) contract from the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, to provide contractor logistical support (CLS) for a fleet of 18 AN/MSN-7 Communication Central Systems. The support requirements include program management, supply of all the AN/MSN-7 parts, support equipment components, all system materials and consumables as well as replenishment of spare parts. The effort also requires AAR to provide depot-level maintenance and system level down to Line Replaceable Unit (LRU) level repair as needed, procurement, and installation services on an as required basis. The firm-fixed-price contract with AAR Integrated Technologies is for five years (base year with four one year renewal options) for an estimated value of $5.1 million.

This multi-year FFP contract ensures the US Air Forces AN/MSN-7 Communications Central Systems, also known as the Tower Restoral Vehicle (TRV), will be operational and sustained for todays mission and for years to come. The TRV is a deployable air traffic control tower used for control of aircraft during taxi, takeoff and landing on and around airfields. The AN/MSN-7 operates as a self-contained system. Its primary mission is to provide rapidly deployable Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower services for USAF deployment operations, such as bare bases and alternate off-base landing areas.

AAR Integrated Technologies is proud to continue providing contractor logistical support for this strategic US Air Force program and its worldwide mission, said Jeffery Jackson, Vice President and General Manager, AAR Integrated Technologies. This multi-year firm-fixed-price contract will ensure that the AN/MSN-7 fleet will maintain a high state of operational readiness along with upgrading to state-of-the-art equipment to meet the US Air Forces mission requirements.

For more information about AAR Integrated Technologies, visit https://www.aarcorp.com/cargo-products/integrated-c4isr-systems/.

# # #

About AAR

AAR is a global aerospace and defense aftermarket solutions company that employs more than 6,000 people in over 20 countries. Headquartered in the Chicago area, AAR supports commercial and government customers through two operating segments: Aviation Services and Expeditionary Services. AARs Aviation Services include Parts Supply; OEM Solutions; Integrated Solutions; and Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) Services. AARs Expeditionary Services include Mobility Systems and Composite Manufacturing operations. Additional information can be found at www.aarcorp.com.

About AAR Integrated Technologies

Brown International Corporation DBA AAR Integrated Technologies (InTech), based in Huntsville, Alabama, performs C4 system development, deployment, and technical support services for ground-based C4 systems in vehicles, hard- and soft-wall shelters, and transit cases. Our customers include US and allied military agencies, defense system OEMs, and system integrators, including small businesses requiring expanded engineering and production capability to meet delivery requirements. InTech services include system engineering, prototyping, testing, and production fabrication and integration services, backed by training, 24/7 help desk support, field service representative (FSR) support, and in-service sustaining engineering services and system upgrades. More information can be found at https://www.aarcorp.com/cargo-products/integrated-c4isr-systems/.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:50:39|Editor: huaxia

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SINGAPORE, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Rising anti-globalization sentiments pose a serious challenge in the wake of a global crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak and there needs to be strong cooperation between China and the United States, an economic expert has said in Singapore.

Gu Qingyang, an associate professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, told reporters on Thursday that the global economy is facing a serious challenge.

The global spread of the coronavirus has accelerated anti-globalization sentiments, especially in the United States, which may lead to a global recession, he warned.

Gu said that the rise of anti-globalization has surfaced over the years, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit and rising protectionism shown by the United States. With the global economic fall-out caused by COVID-19, it has provided the "ammunition" to fuel another wave of anti-globalization.

Gu noted that while globalization has contributed significantly to global economic growth and technological process, it is also a double-edged sword. It can bring many problems, such as an uneven distribution of growth outcomes, cross-border crime, terrorism, cultural conflicts and the spread of infectious diseases.

But these issues need to be addressed through "appropriate global governance and global cooperation," he said.

In a country's economy, one cannot rely on the market system to allocate resources efficiently but on governance as well.

Similarly, with globalization, the formation of a global resource trading system, can enhance the goal of economic efficiency but it does not automatically guarantee equitable distribution of increased welfare.

An effective system of global governance is hence a necessary condition for the functioning of globalization.

Gu cited how coronavirus pandemic outbreak took place in an era of globalization, where people, information and resources flow through a market-oriented global system.

However, when a major infectious disease occurs and its enormous negative externality causes the market-oriented global trading system fail, there is an "urgent need" for a strong international governance body to step in, said Gu.

Unfortunately, effective global leadership and global collective action has not emerged from this crisis, he added.

For instance, The World Health Organization, as the coordinating body for global public health, has not had the support of some of the major powers to deal with such a major global public health crisis, said Gu.

Gu called the spread of this epidemic as a crisis of global governance, not a crisis of globalization" and that the aftermath of this lack of global governance has been "disastrous."

In fact, globalization has played a crucial role in the fight against the epidemic, said Gu.

The world has provided China with scarce medical supplies. Likewise, when the United States and Europe situation worsened, the international community, led by China, provided much support as well.

This process of mutual support therefore illustrates the importance of global production and supply chain systems in supporting global disasters, and in allowing for international aid to reach disaster areas quickly, said Gu.

Some might think that a shortage for medical emergency supplies like masks due to more demand is a problem caused by the global supply chain and that the future solution is to localize medical supplies, Gu said.

In times of crisis, however, the reality is that the principle of efficiency or timely supply of critical goods cannot be guaranteed.

"Because the probability of such rare public health emergencies occurring frequently is very small, we can't know in advance which country the crisis will occur," he said.

While political interference may affect globalization in the short term, globalization will not end, as long as enterprises seek to maximise profits, and consumers pursue their interests.

Hence, as globalization is inevitable, countries should make strengthening global governance their top priority, because globalization without global governance is "fragile and even dangerous," said Gu.

The world has undergone fundamental changes, with the growth of developing countries which still lack a voice on global governance.

As the power of the U.S. continues to wane, it cannot sustain its unipolar hegemony, and is further weakened by Trump administration's decision to pull out in many areas of global governance, said Gu.

The most important need now is for the world to form a multi-polar system of governance as soon as possible, he said.

This can be done through a reform of the existing governance system, as well as establishing new institutions. But either way, multilateralism and the participation of developing countries should be important elements, said Gu.

For this to happen, cooperation between the two major powers of China and the United States is essential to solve many of the existential crisis facing the world.

"Now is the best time for U.S.-China cooperation, and any attempt to decouple China and the United States cannot stand the test of a global crisis," said Gu.

Globalization should also not be confined to economic aspect, but include broader goals such as global health and safety, global environmental protection and global human development, said Gu. Enditem
Experts in the fields of health, education, criminal justice and the economy shared what they think the future could hold in Hearst Connecticut Medias Innovation Edition on Sunday.

During a webinar hosted by Editor-in-Chief Wendy Metcalfe on Thursday they took reader questions about what lies ahead for Connecticut residents.

The panelists included:

Mike Lawlor, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and formerly Gov. Dannel P. Malloys undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning in the Office of Policy and Management.

Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the school of health sciences at the University of New Haven.

Sousan Arafeh, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Southern Connecticut State University.

Fred McKinney, the Carlton Highsmith chairman for innovation and entrepreneurship and director of the Peoples United Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Quinnipiac University.

Dan Haar, Hearst Connecticut Media Group columnist and associate editor.

James Walker, Hearst Connecticut Media Group columnist and host of the podcast, Real talk, Real people.

Here are some of the points made by the panelists.

Mike Lawlor

Lawlor said there is an extraordinary opportunity to change the criminal justice system in Connecticut.

There will be fewer and fewer prisoners, he said. Prisons will be sparsely populated and a fair number will close.

Lawlor said since fewer young people are being arrested, the need for prisons will also decline.

He also sees a large number of retirements in the Department of Correction. With 6,000 employees, it is the largest department in the state.

We have an opportunity to reboot the prison system, Lawlor said.

He said Connecticut correctional facilities should be more like Europe which are more humane and safer.

Fred McKinney

McKinney sees our backs are against the wall.

We are spending a ton of money, he said, some of it isnt thought through.

He views the economy as pessimistic in the short term and optimistic in the long run.

He said the pandemic will cause people to rethink which workers are essential.

Now, its the people who work low-wage jobs like the grocery store employee and the meat packer.

Essential has a new meaning, he said. We dont think about how valuable things are until we lose them.

The pandemic has shown us the market system has real flaws: We need to rethink societys priorities, he said.

McKinney said municipalities will need help because revenue is shrinking and costs are increasing.

Its a formula for disaster, he said.

There should be more regionalization in Connecticut towns for such services as fire, police and public works, he said.

Regional partnerships would save money and reduce the need to raise taxes.

Now is the time to do it.

No good crisis should go to waste, McKinney said.

Summer Johnson McGee

As the crisis worsens, there will be calls for significant health care reform and a dramatic change on how we provide health services, Johnson McGee said.

It will be a different kind of health care system where more personal information is shared with government agencies, she said.

Tracking people who have the coronavirus to stop its spread may require us to give up some of our freedom, liberties and privacy, she said.

People who had the coronavirus should be willing to share information and their immunity, she said.

Sousan Arafeh

The pandemic will give us new opportunities on how we provide education, Arafeh said. How we are going to attend school in person and online, she said.

We need to think more broadly to address the severe inequity it has given students and families.

Look at the inequity we have seen, she said.

Some people are not valued like some racial groups and those who are have lower income, she said.

Arafeh doesnt know if nursery schools will reopen in September. We dont have enough health information at this time to make that decision. she said.

We need to rethink what we are doing to safeguard our children, she said.

James Walker

We have to regain trust in our government. Trust a system that works for everyone, Walker said.

The current system gives little support to people with with low income, who need affordable housing and job resources, he said.

We need to help people get back on their feet, he said.

Walker said three months ago, we didnt care about the grocery worker who couldnt get a full weeks work. We put little value there, he said. Now we do.

He said the criminal justice system is antiquated with bail so high that people arrested on a misdemeanor charge stay behind bars.

We need to give low-income people a hand up, he said.

Dan Haar

Five years out, we will not forget the tragedy of families and the economy. We will find out what we learned and move forward, especially with the economy, Haar said.

Haar has an optimistic view that we will become a stronger nation and have more social programs to help people.

He said in 2016, there was bipartisan support for rebuilding infrastructure.

He believes we will find the $3 trillion to rebuild the infrastructure.

It will also extend to rebuilding systems that lead to health equality in the United States, he said.
After his breakout role in Hulus Little Fires Everywhere, Jordan Elsass is making a name for himself. In the limited series based on Celeste Ngs novel of the same name, Elsass played Trip Richardson, a popular jock and the eldest son of Elena Richardson, played by Reese Witherspoon.

Through the lens of two families whose lives become interwoven, Hulus adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere explored motherhood, race dynamics, and classism in the 90s, culminating in a gripping finale that aired on April 22. Recently, Showbiz Cheat Sheet caught up with Elsass to discuss the finale of Little Fires Everywhere and the actors upcoming projects.

[Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 1 Episode 8 of Little Fires Everywhere.]

Jordan Elsass | Erik Voake/Getty Images for Hulu

Little Fires Everywhere was a breakout role for Jordan Elsass

Elsass got his start in community theater when he was 11 years old after his mother encouraged him to audition for a production at a local theater.

She was just like, You know, try something new. Ill give you some extra video game time So I did it. I went for it and I agreed to it without really realizing what I was getting into, Elsass told Showbiz Cheat Sheet over the phone. Id say, until maybe two years ago, I wasnt like, I really want to do this for a living. It was definitely a passion, but it was more just of a hobby up until a couple of years ago.

Flash forward a few years, and Elsass was cast as Trip Richardson in Little Fires Everywhere alongside Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, and Joshua Jackson. For Elsass, the opportunity to work with such experienced actors for his first major project proved to be invaluable.

Its weird to even be in a scene with somebody thats so high-level and thats been doing it for so long. And you learn so much from them just being in a scene with them. You know, theyre so giving. And they just play off you so differently than a lot of actors that you may have worked with that are maybe just starting out, he said.

Jordan Elsass on Trips relationship with his mother

In the finale of Little Fires Everywhere, a number of story lines come to a head. Most notably, Elena evicts Mia (Washington) and Pearl (Lexi Underwood) and they leave Shaker Heights. This effectively ends Trips romantic relationship with Pearl and leaves Izzy (Megan Stott) feeling abandoned by Mia, who she had come to think of as a surrogate mother.

Distraught, Izzy pours gasoline over her bed, only to be stopped by her family before she can set it on fire. Elena then tells Izzy she never wanted her in the first place.

When asked how this confrontation affected Trips view of his mother, Elsass replied, I think that he was very, very disturbed, and I think thats almost, I dont want to say permanently going to change his perception of his mom, but to some degree it is.

Little Fires Everywhere differs from the book

In the climax of the episode, Izzy runs away and Elena refuses to follow her. Deviating from the book, Trip, Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn), and Moody (Gavin Lewis) decide to finish what their younger sister started, and they set small fires throughout their house.

I think that he is a little bit of a follower more than a leader, Elsass said of Trips choice to set the fires with his siblings. And I think that because of the intense emotions that he has about Pearl leaving especially, and because of what he just witnessed his mom say to Izzy. And because of Izzy just leaving And so theres just so much emotion. And then he sees his siblings kind of going with it.

While Lexie is the one to suggest setting the fires, Trip leads the charge.

He finally takes this step as a leader. And hes kind of like, Lets do this. Like, Were gonna follow in Izzys footsteps. Lexie is the one who says it, but Trips the one who grabs that gas can and then like commits to it. You know, and I thought that was really powerful, Elsass told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.

What comes next for Jordan Elsass

Big Little Lies notoriously had a second season despite originating as a limited series. Since the finale of Little Fires Everywhere aired, Elsass has not been told anything about the show receiving a second season.

I think there is always a possibility, Elsass said. You never know. I mean, I havent heard any talk as of right now. And I definitely cant be like, Oh yeah. Well theres gonna be one. Theres not gonna be one. I have no idea. But its always a possibility.

After the success of Little Fires Everywhere, Elsass has two projects in the works.

Before quarantine and everything, you know, I had an Amazon Prime show called Panic that I was working on. And then after that, hopefully pretty soon Ill be headed out to Vancouver to shoot a CW show, an upcoming CW show, called Superman and Lois. Ill be playing Supermans son. So pretty excited for both of those projects.
(JNS)Outside of Israel, it was the alternative ceremony that got the most coverage. The official commemoration of Yom Hazikaronthe countrys Memorial Day that occurs the day before celebrating the Jewish states Independence Daybegan with a one-minute siren that sounded throughout the country and continued at the Western Wall, where President Reuven Rivlin and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi led a small ceremony that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, had no audience.

Most Israelis, all too many of whom have lost a loved one or friend who was killed during the countrys wars or as a result of terrorism, will deal with the pain of this day of remembrance each in their own way though they will not be able to go to cemeteries, which are closed this year because of the ongoing lockdown.

But outside of Israel, most of the attention was neither on official efforts to remember the fallen nor the private grief of the families. Instead, much of the press was reporting about the efforts of peace activists to essentially hijack the nations day of mourning and turn it into a day devoted to promoting coexistence and mutual recognition of the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.

This Joint Memorial Day event, which was started in 2006 by Israeli parents of fallen soldiers, is organized by two groups with both Israeli and Palestinian members: Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum. But this year, it received an outpouring of support from American Jewish groups, including the Reform movements Union of Reform Judaism, J Street, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, as well as the openly anti-Zionist IfNotNow and Churches for Middle East Peace, an interfaith Christian group that is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state.

Indeed, it is likely that this foreign support helped boost the Internet audience for the ceremony this yearincreasing from a reported 20,000 tuning into the Internet to the 170,000 who are supposed to have watched it online via Facebook. That allowed organizers to claim to The New York Times that it had been the biggest joint Israeli-Palestinian event in history.

According to the organizers, the point of the event is to introduce people to the suffering that occurs on both sides of the conflict. On the surface, that seems hard to criticize. It ought to be possible to empathize with all those whove suffered losses. Demonstrating a common humanity and a kinship with suffering shouldnt be criticized.

But even in some of the heart-rending stories told by both sides, it was possible to discern the problem with the event. Many Israelis denounced it as more of an attempt to create a false moral equivalency between those who died that Israel might live and those who died as a result of an ongoing Palestinian war aimed at the destruction of the only Jewish state on the planet. By asserting that there is no difference between efforts to defend and eradicate Israel, organizers are likely encouraging those who want to continue the conflict, rather than those who want to end it.

The most prominently featured Palestinian speaker was Yaquab al-Rabi, whose wife, Aisha, was killed as a result of his car being stoned by an Israeli teenager. The al-Rabi family suffered a terrible tragedy, and the perpetrator deserved to be severely punished. But the irony of highlighting a Palestinian victim of a stoning was lost in most press accounts of the ceremony. Though even one such incident was too many, examples of Israelis attacking Arabs in this manner are rare. By contrast, Arab stoning attacks on Israelis carswith often similarly terrible resultsare commonplace.

While civilians have died on both sides of the conflict, the notion that the two sides are morally equivalent fails to take into account the fact that Palestinians who attack Israelis target civilians, while the Israel Defense Forces try hard to avoid civilian casualties that are generated because terrorists use human shields.

The both sides are to blame narrative also ignores the way that the two societies regard those who commit acts of terrorism. The teenager held responsible for Aisha al-Rabis death was prosecuted. The same is true of three Israelis (serving long prison sentences for their crime and held in contempt by the country) who murdered a Palestinian boy in July 2014 in revenge for the gruesome murder of three Israeli teenage boys several weeks beforehand, who were kidnapped by Palestinians while walking home from school.

By contrast, the Palestinian Authority continues to honor terrorists. Just last week, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Fatah movement honored the perpetrators of the Munich Olympic massacre on the anniversaries of their deaths. Similarly, those Palestinians who maim and kill Israelis in terror attacks continue to receive pensions and salaries from the P.A. as a reward for their crimes.

No one has the right to tell any Israeli family how to honor its loved ones, and if some reach out to bereaved Palestinian families in the hope of promoting peace, we must all hope they succeed.

But the contrast between the large Israeli peace movement and the almost non-existent Palestinian peace movement is telling. Palestinians consider their compatriots who support dialogue with Israel as traitors working to normalize the Jewish state (and terrorists are martyrs dying for the cause). The Gaza resident who organized a cooperative Zoom meeting between Palestinians and Israelis earlier this month was arrested by Hamas and hasnt been seen alive since then. The fact that he was turned in by a Palestinian journalist who has worked for Amnesty International makes it all the more obvious that there is no comparison between the way the two societies think about peace.

We should mourn all victims of senseless violence, be they Jews, Arabs or any other people. But we should be wary of efforts to establish a false analogy between those who died to save Jewish lives and those whose purpose was to spill Jewish blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
SACRAMENTO,CALIFORNIA--MAY 1, 2020-- Over 1,500 people attending a rally at the capitol in Sacramento asking for the civil liberties and the opening of the economy, closed due to the coronavirus. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times) (Carolyn Cole/Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

The crowds protesting California's stay-at-home orders aimed at stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus have a litany of grievances: Open the beaches. Free the churches. End the tyranny of a governor who has gone too far.

They hop barricades to surf. They cite the Constitution. They wave American flags. They sport Trump 2020 gear. They rail against vaccines. In other states, including Michigan, protesters have shown up at government buildings carrying rifles.

Despite their varied causes, the protesters have been almost entirely white  even in California, a state that mostly is not.

The raucous protests in wealthy, coastal Orange and San Diego counties and at the state Capitol in recent days have, for many, highlighted racial and class disparities amid a pandemic that has killed more than 2,500 Californians  a disproportionate number of whom are black, Latino and poor.

In Los Angeles County, where nearly half of the state's more than 61,000 confirmed coronavirus cases are located, public health officials say residents of low-income communities are three times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those in wealthier neighborhoods. A Times data analysis found blacks and Latinos under 50 are dying of coronavirus in significantly greater numbers than other groups, including whites. Experts believe one reason is that many work in "essential" service jobs that require them to leave home, putting them at a higher risk of infection.

The overwhelmingly white makeup of the protests is not lost on people of color, some of whom see it as an overt display of privilege. This has been especially striking in California, where Latinos make up 40% of the population, outnumbering whites.

"When Latinos are out protesting immigration or other problems, the first things you hear are white people saying, 'Get a job!' or 'Follow the rules!'" said Alexis Rodriguez, 22, of East Los Angeles. But when its white people in Huntington Beach, its all about fighting for your rights.

Story continues

Rodriguez, a senior at Cal State L.A., and Ashley Arreola, a 25-year-old senior at UC Irvine, were volunteering this week at Eastman Avenue Elementary School in East L.A., handing out laptops to young students who needed them for distance learning. Arreola noted that most of the families , all Latino, wore masks and gloves  unlike the white demonstrators.

The protesters have had a strong ally in the White House. President Trump  who has repeatedly called the novel coronavirus the "Chinese virus," even after reports of racist attacks on Asian Americans  has encouraged people to demonstrate, tweeting for protesters to "liberate" states with stay-at-home orders.

After White House economic advisor Stephen Moore compared people protesting government lockdowns to a "modern-day Rosa Parks," Trump said he "could see where he's coming from."

In Huntington Beach last week, hundreds of demonstrators gathered to demand stay-at-home orders be lifted and to decry Gov. Gavin Newsom's temporary closure of Orange County beaches, some of which were allowed to reopen this week.

Huntington Beach Councilman Mike Posey said he had "a hard time believing there's a racial element to protests."

"Beaches are open to everyone and the beaches are free... All I saw in the news is people asking the governor for the beach back and for science and data and not to single out Orange County."

Polls show conservatives are less supportive of stay-at-home orders. Those polls also show the protesters are outliers  with the overwhelming majority of Californians strongly supporting the rules.

Audrey Webb, 22, a barista at Harun Coffee in Leimert Park, makes smoothies for customers. Webb thinks the "Reopen California" protesters are selfish and was horrified that some compared themselves to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times)

Audrey Webb, a 22-year-old barista at Harun Coffee in Leimert Park, who is black, said she worried that the protesters, crowded together and unmasked, could spread the virus to food service workers, delivery drivers, medical workers, police officers and others on the front lines of the pandemic.

Webb, who wore a mask while she worked, said she worries about her mother, a breast cancer survivor, and her father, a Los Angeles Police Department officer.

"Pandemics don't pick and choose," Webb said. "They get everyone. It doesn't matter if you are in the stock market or if you work stocking a grocery store. The same rules apply to everyone, but people don't want to act like that. They want to act like, just because they have money, they can say and do as they want."

Sonia Lewis, a black woman who participated in protests against the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man, by Sacramento police in 2018, said there is "most definitely a race issue" in who is protesting the stay-at-home orders.

Lewis, an activist with The Liberation Collective for Black Sacramento, said black business owners are fearful of defying closure orders, even though they face the same economic devastation as their white counterparts.

I realize that doing business and just existing in my black skin will not give me the ability to defy the law, said Lewis, who is a doula and runs an educational consulting company.

I cant worry about a beach," she added. "I am worried about my rent and my mortgage and getting my kids fed.

White men with guns have become a common sight at the protests, including at the state capitols in Wisconsin and Arizona. Protesters carrying assault rifles and wearing tactical gear, some of whom were members of militias, converged on the Michigan statehouse last week. Afterward, Trump tweeted that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer should "make a deal" with protesters and that they are "very good people, but they are angry."

Whitmer said this week that some of the protesters carried nooses and Confederate flags and displayed swastikas.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that it's mostly white people out there," Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said about the demonstrations.

Nationwide, protests have been attended and lauded by white supremacists, members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, militia members and conspiracy theorists trying to exploit the chaos created by the pandemic, Miller said. In "the most extreme parts of the far right," people are celebrating the virus because they know that it disproportionately affects minorities, she said.

For Cornell William Brooks, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and former national president of the NAACP, the protests have recalled an adage: When white America gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia.

Brooks said that when his mother was a teenage student at South Carolina State College in the early 1960s, she dressed up in her Sunday best, wearing a new coat, to protest segregation. She was met by police officers who used fire hoses to push students against the wall.

"That generation was angry about the un-American way they were being treated, but they demonstrated their love for America," Brooks said. Today's protesters, he said, are "wrapping themselves in the flag and demonstrating a certain contempt for the country and their fellow citizens. In their civic vocabulary, the pronoun is 'I'  'I want to be free to do what I want,' as opposed to a generation that said, 'We want to be free.'"

A protest outside the statehouse in Sacramento last week included some people who had previously gathered there to decry the Black Lives Matter movement and rally support for law enforcement under the credo "Blue Lives Matter."

But last week, as California Highway Patrol officers with face shields and full tactical gear began pushing protesters off the Capitol grounds, unmasked protesters, inches from their faces, screamed that they were traitors, urging them to uphold a Constitution they believe is under threat.

Leigh Dundas stands in a speedboat outside the California state Capitol to protest the closure of beaches because of the coronavirus. (Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)

Is this what you signed up for as police?! one woman screamed.

As the officers advanced, Auburn resident Amber Beasley, who is white, sat down in their path with her 4-month old daughter and her mother, Julia Ebel. Beasley breastfed the infant, defying commands to move. Police formed a circle around her but kept moving, leaving the small group and their stroller alone until Beasley finished. Then an officer held out a hand to help Ebel up.

Asked why she had taken a seat, Beasley replied: For freedom.

Leigh Dundas, a human rights attorney from Orange County, stood in a speedboat parked at the Capitols curb, exhorting protesters to stand up for their constitutional rights. Last year, she participated in anti-vaccination protests at the statehouse. She said vaccine requirements and the coronavirus shutdowns are government overreach.

Dundas, who is white, said she understands that the virus hits some populations harder than others but believes the overall threat is less than what officials have stated.

The beauty of America is that if you are in a demographic that subjects you to a higher risk, you have the ability to self-regulate and say, I am at higher risk and I am not going out into the world, she said.

Dundas said that while the majority of protesters gathered last week were white, there was both racial and economic diversity. Citing the arrests by California Highway Patrol officers of more than 30 protesters, she said the color of their skin was not a panacea.

On Thursday, a group of men wearing Proud Boys T-shirts and carrying a flag with the group's name were among hundreds of protesters who once again gathered at the state Capitol. Demonstrators said they were angry about last week's arrests. Some carried signs directed at law enforcement that read: "We forgive you. Join the people."

At 2 Fast 4 U Wireless, a small cellphone store in East Los Angeles, signs this week instructed customers to stay six feet apart and wear masks. Employee Sandra Castillo, a 25-year-old Latina, said business had plummeted by at least half since the stay-at-home orders went into effect seven weeks ago.

"I think we're getting close to needing to open up," she said. "The businesses need it."

But as for the protesters? "I think they should wear masks and do everything to be safe," she said.

At a Huntington Beach protest last week, Victor Valladares, 34, a community activist from the city's predominantly Latino Oak View neighborhood, wore a long-sleeved shirt, dark sunglasses and covered his nose and mouth with an American flag bandanna to fit in. He had come to livestream the protest for the grass-roots group Oak View ComUNIDAD and was not surprised to see few Latinos.

"We'd automatically be labeled as instigators, agitators or trying to start a riot instead of trying to exercise our free speech. They wouldn't even call us patriots," Valladares said. "Because they're white people, they're patriotic."
Texas was one of the few states that declared abortion a non-essential procedure amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As the rest of the United States fight to recover from the coronavirus threat, officials in Texas fought hard in the state's courts to refused women access to abortions.

The court hearing was a war between the state and various women's health groups who claim the state's assertion that abortions were non-essential during the lockdown are damaging to females.

Texas won the hearing. Abortions-which sees over 50,000 annually in the state alone-were effectively banned. The recent decision to lift restrictions, however, has allowed doctors to resume the "elective" medical procedure.

Waitlists

While the procedure was allowed again, multiple clinics across the state have reported a long waitlist. Others were closed for an indefinite amount of time-some refused to reveal whether or not they would offer the services again.

Many doctors refused to perform the procedure, claiming it was only available to save the life of the mother or the child. Louise, who was pregnant with one dead baby and another destined to die at birth, was refused access to the service.

Most U.S. states introduced restrictions on non-essential medical procedures in an effort to preserve the supply of medical equipment. Despite the time-sensitive nature of the procedure, Texas decided abortion was non-essential.

'It Was a Choice'

The decision drew a lot of anger from human rights groups. Abortion providers also took legal action. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton remained defiant amid the backlash. He claimed abortion was "elective," mainly because "proponents have always claimed it was a choice."

He said rights groups' very own definition and narrative classified the procedure as non-essential and extremely reliant on a woman's right to choose, therefore justifying his decision to include it in the ban.

"They can move to other states," Paxton said. "There's nothing preventing them from doing that."

Many have decided to make the grueling 13-hour drive to New Mexico to receive the services they need. This meant using up their savings as their health insurance would not cover the procedure.

Reproductive health clinics in Albuquerque are seeing quadruple of their usual number of patients. Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada have also reported an influx of patients seeking to avail of the procedure in local Planned Parenthood clinics during the coronavirus lockdown.

According to data, clinics in other southwest states saw a 706 percent increase of patients who lived in Texas between March 23 and April 14.

Abortion, when delayed, can cause increased complications and inaccessibility of the service. Health care centers offering the procedure are often targeted by smear campaigns, threats, and demonstrators. They also find themselves caught in politicized attempts to close the establishments.

Dr. Epsey, a medical professional who performs abortion procedures, believes anti-abortion activists are willing to utilize any situation to justify elimination access to the service. She said she was surprised the COVID-19 situation was taken advantage of for political purposes.

Catch up on the latest news from the U.S. and Latin America:
Westmeath County Council is working in association with Longford County Council and Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) to develop a scheme to upgrade a 52km section of the N4 between Mullingar and Longford (Rooskey), including the assessment of alternatives.

This 52km section of the N4 is currently a single carriageway road that passes through or close to several settlements, including Ballinalack, Rathowen, Edgeworthstown, Longford and Newtownforbes.

This section of the N4 between Mullingar and Longford (Rooskey) is operating with traffic levels in excess of those catered for by the current road cross section. Safety is compromised with over 500 at-grade junctions and private accesses along this section of the N4.

This project intends to support the economic performance of the local and wider North-West region through the provision of improved transport infrastructure, whilst minimising the environmental impact of the transport intervention.

Previously, a Preferred Route Corridor and Route Selection report for this scheme were published in July 2010 but at that time, due to funding restrictions, further work on the project was suspended.

Due to changes in environmental legislation, design standards and in order to comply with the requirements of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Public Spending Code, it is now necessary to fully re-appraise the proposed project through the TII planning and design process, including Concept and Feasibility, Options Selection, Design and Environmental Evaluation and the Statutory Processes. As a result, studies carried out over a decade ago must be revisited.

Westmeath County Council in conjunction with Longford County Council propose to invite the residents of the local area, members of the public and interested parties, over the coming weeks to participate in a new public consultation (Study Area and Constraints) for the N4 Mullingar to Longford (Rooskey) scheme.

Due to the measures taken in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, it is not possible to arrange formal events in the local area at this time. Instead the project website https://n4mullingartolongford.ie/ now contains all the information that would normally be displayed at such an event.

Brochures and questionnaires are being distributed to households and businesses throughout the study area. Landowners previously impacted by the 2010 preferred route corridor (PRC) will also receive a separate letter from WNRO informing them that design work on the scheme has resumed.

Questionnaires can be completed and submitted by post or alternatively can be summitted digitally via the project website. Closing date for receipt of submissions is 26th June 2020. For further information please log onto https://n4mullingartolongford.ie/ or contact the design team at info@n4mullingartolongford.ie.

Alternatively, you can write to us at ROD-AECOM, Unit 23C Lough Sheever Corporate Park, Robinstown, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath N91 V340 or phone 086 059 9895.
We want to do our part to help parents and teachers educate students in a fun, hands-on way during their time away from school, Novey said of the online camp. We also have a rich trove of historical information throughout our website for students, teachers, families and anyone interested in history to peruse at their leisure.

HIAH Board Chairman Anne Vravick credited Novey  who was hired as executive director in October  for the nonprofits new offerings and expects more will be announced in the coming weeks and months.

In his first open season, Adam (Novey) is already demonstrating what a gem he is for Portage, Vravick said. We want to recognize him because he has come up with all of these amazing plans to make sure children and adults alike can visit the Agency House during the pandemic and experience what early American history was all about. And its national history  not just Wisconsin history.
FLINT, MI -- The sister of a suspect in the shooting death of a Flint Family Dollar security guard has been arraigned on charges of tampering with evidence and lying to police.

Brya Shatonia Bishop, 24, was arraigned Friday, May 8, on three felonies related to her actions following the shooting death of Calvin James Munerlyn, on Friday, May 1, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton announced in a Thursday, May 7 news release.

Munerlyn, 43, of Flint was shot at the Family Dollar store off East Fifth Avenue following an alleged verbal altercation with 45-year-old Sharmel Teague. Munerlyn reportedly told the womans daughter, Brya Bishop, she needed to wear a mask while inside.

U.S. Marshals offer $5k reward for tips leading to arrest of suspects in Flint security guard shooting

Following the altercation, Larry Teague Jr. and Ramonyea Bishop, Teagues husband and their son, returned to the store an were in an altercation with Munerlyn.

According to the police, Brya Bishop engaged in activities that interfered with ongoing efforts to locate and apprehend Larry Teague Jr. and Ramonyea Bishop. She is charged with tampering with evidence, a 10-year felony, lying to police investigating a violent crime, a 4-year felony and accessory after the fact to a felony, a 5-year felony.

"Brya Bishops attempts to shield family members will not be tolerated and we will likewise hold anyone else involved in offering shelter and assistance to Larry Teague or Ramonyea Bishop accountable under the law, Leyton said in the release.

Slain Family Dollar security guard mourned at candlelight vigil

She is in custody at the Genesee County Jail.

Leyton is seeking murder and felony firearm charges against Ramonyea Bishop and Larry Teague Jr., both of whom are still at large following the shooting. They also face a charge for violating the governors order which calls for people to wear masks while inside an enclosed building.

On the day of the shooting, Munerlyn told Sharmel Teague to leave the store and instructed a cashier not to serve her, according to Leyton.

Sharmel Teague fled in a red GMC Envoy, but Leyton said she returned 20 minutes later with her husband, 44-year-old Larry Teague Jr., who accused Munerlyn of disrespecting his wife. Their son Ramonyea Bishop also traveled to the store, where he allegedly shot Munerlyn.

Bishop and Larry Teague managed to make a getaway from the store on foot after the shooting and have been on the run ever since.

Sharmel Teague was arraigned Tuesday, May 5 in Genesee District Court on first-degree murder and felony firearm charges. She is being held in the Genesee County Jail without bond and faces life in prison on the murder charge. She has a court hearing date set for May 14.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Bishop or Larry Teague is asked to contact the U.S. Marshals Service Tip line at 866-865-TIPS(8477) or text a tip to https://www.usmarshals.gov/tips/.

Read more:

Woman arraigned in fatal shooting of Flint security guard over face mask

Gov. Whitmer offers condolences to family of Flint security guard killed over mask dispute

3 charged in fatal shooting of guard enforcing mask use at Flint store
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Researchers supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation have analyzed how sadistic sexual murderers assaulting child victims commit their crimes and discovered a number of specific patterns. A better understanding of these crimes may help police in their investigations.

Sexual homicides involving children are often highly publicized. These events are traumatic for the public, especially while the offender remains unidentified and not sentenced. Moreover, the prosecution of these cases is complex, lengthy and expensive.

With support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Julien Chopin, a postdoctoral researcher and criminologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, examined an as yet unexplored aspect of these homicides: sexual sadism.

Access to police data

In his study, published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Chopin highlights patterns associated with these homicides. His insights have practical application: "Our study provides new knowledge to police that can help them to reconstruct the sequence of events even when the evidence present at the scene of a crime is confusing", he says. The findings may also contribute to the search for relevant profiles, to identification of suspects and to their possible arrest. "They show also that we cannot continue to blindly apply what we know about cases involving adult victims to the specific case of crimes committed against children", says Chopin.

Exploiting clues from the crime scene

The researchers pointed out that crimes of sexual sadism committed against children have unique characteristics that distinguish them from both crimes of sexual sadism committed against adult victims and conventional sexual crimes committed against children.

The study shows that there is a certain logic to the way offenders plot their crime. They think about it and plan it at length. "They target areas of predation and children or teenagers who are unsupervised, for example while riding their bikes or hitchhiking. They use subtle ruses to lure the children. They commit their crime in isolated places so as not to be noticed", says Chopin.

These crimes have other special characteristics: the sexual acts are varied and extreme, death occurs by strangulation or asphyxiation, and victims are often left naked. "Since they may be recidivist offenders, it is in the interest of the police to systematically collect clues at the scene of the crime and compare them with their databases", Chopin adds.

Systematically analysing the offender's modus operandi

Thanks to the collaboration of the police, Chopin and his colleague Eric Beauregard, professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, had access to all the extra-familial sexual homicides that occurred in France and Canada between 1948 and 2018. With this information, they created one of the most extensive international databases on sexual homicide. A key feature of this database is that the dataset is sufficiently large to allow for statistical analysis. It includes 772 cases, of which 136 involve victims classified as childreni.e. under 16 years of age.

To determine which of the cases had sadistic features, the researchers developed a scale based on eight criteria relating to what can be observed at the crime scene, for example evidence of sexual mutilation or sexual domination. Each criterion was assigned a value, either 0 (not present or unknown), 1 (perhaps present) or 2 (present). The combination of criteria results in a diagnosis of sexual sadism when the score is at least 6. Of the 136 cases of child sexual homicide in the researchers' database, 35 were identified as sadistic crimes (mean score 6.97) and 101 as conventional crimes (mean score 2.69).

For each of the 136 cases, the scientists then analysed the offender's decision-making process before, during and after the crime. They studied 34 variables using statistical models: 6 for the context of the crime, 3 for the location, 6 for the crime characteristics, 14 for the method of killing and the body recovering characteristics and 5 for the strategies used by the offender to avoid being identified. They were thus able to identify the main characteristics of sadistic sexual child homicide.

Explore further A study of economic compensation for victims of sexual violence in Europe

More information: Julien Chopin et al. Sexual Sadism: Its Role in the Crime-Commission Process of Sexual Homicide of Children, Journal of Interpersonal Violence (2020). Journal information: Journal of Interpersonal Violence Julien Chopin et al. Sexual Sadism: Its Role in the Crime-Commission Process of Sexual Homicide of Children,(2020). DOI: 10.1177/0886260520916844
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Black Iron Inc. ("Black Iron" or the "Company") (TSX:BKI)(OTC PINK:BKIRF)(FRANKFURT:BIN), announces that it has closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement of units of the Company (the "Offering"). Pursuant to the Offering, the Company issued a total of 36,534,420 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of $1,826,721.

Interest to participate in the Offering was extremely strong and Black Iron management asks that investors who were unable to receive an allocation of the Offering, or their target allocation, purchase Black Iron shares in the market. The cornerstone investor in this Offering is United Kingdom-based RAB Capital who acquired a ~10% ownership position and is now a reporting insider of the Company. RAB Capital has a history of successful investing in development mining projects and intends to be a long-term supportive shareholder of Black Iron.

Philip Richards, Founder and Honorary President of RAB Capital, stated: "Black Iron offers a unique investment opportunity in a world-class iron ore development. We believe its low impurity and high-grade magnetite will be in strong demand from many global smelters. Experienced management and good local infrastructure should make the build process a successful near-term reality."

Certain insiders of the Company have subscribed for Units pursuant to the Offering (the "Insider Participation"). The Insider Participation is considered to be a "related party transaction" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101"). The Insider Participation is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101.

Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (each a "Common Share") and one-third of one common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant") entitling the holder to acquire a Common Share at a price of $0.06 for a period of three years from the date hereof.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering to advance the Company's Shymanivske project (the "Project"), including negotiations to secure essential land surface rights, discussions and negotiations on construction financing and for general working capital purposes.

The Company paid cash finder fees of $96,600 to certain finders and did not issue any finders warrants in connection with the Offering. The securities underlying the Units will be subject to a four-month hold period that expires on September 8, 2020. Closing of this Offering is subject to receipt of regulatory approval, including final Toronto Stock Exchange approval.

Lind Option Exercise

Lind Global Macro Fund LP ("Lind") has invested an additional CAD$415,000 less a 3.5% closing fee of $14,525, into Black Iron by exercising a portion of their CAD$1.25 million First Convertible Security Option ("First Option") pursuant to the previously announced convertible security funding agreement (the "Agreement") with Lind (see the Company's press release dated September 18, 2019 for further details).

Pursuant to the Agreement, the Company has issued to Lind a convertible security with a principal amount of CAD$415,000 (the "Convertible Security"). As part of this financing, Black Iron has issued to Lind 3,384,991 warrants exercisable for a term of 48 months at an exercise price of $0.0797 per share. The number of warrants issued is equal to 50% of the funded amount divided by the 20-day VWAP of Black Iron's shares as traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

This investment is in addition to the CAD$2.7 million principal amount previously invested by Lind and is being made under the same terms (please see the Company's press release dated September 27, 2019). Under the terms of the Agreement, the Convertible Security will be repaid by Black Iron through the issuance of common shares at pre-agreed conversion limits to Lind over a 24-month period. Lind will have the option to convert up to 1/20th of the face value of the Convertible Security per month at a price equal to 85% of Black Iron's five-day volume-weighted average share price ("VWAP") immediately prior to each time Lind notifies Black Iron of its intent to convert.

Black Iron has the option to buy-back the outstanding convertible securities in cash at any time with no penalty. If Black Iron exercises the buy back option, Lind will have the option to convert a maximum of 33% of the outstanding face value of the convertible securities amount into Black Iron shares.

"It is great to have the financial support from RAB Capital and Lind during this time of uncertainty as both are great firms to have as investors as they take a strong interest in the companies they invest into and are able to make follow on investments to support project development" stated Matt Simpson, CEO of Black Iron. Matt also added added "as is currently being stated by leaders of some of the world's largest countries, once people start returning to work, government economic stimulus packages are likely going to shift to focus on job creation largely through greater spending to repair and upgrade of ailing infrastructure. Infrastructure upgrades will entail a large consumption of steel and therefore iron ore. Black Iron's project is well-positioned to become a new supplier of iron ore given its low-cost position and close proximity to growing market demand."

Project Update

Despite Ukraine's borders currently being closed to help contain the spread of Covid19, Black Iron's management continue to have positive discussions with large investors to fund project construction and with Ukraine's government on land transfer which once concluded are transformative for the Company.

As an update on construction funding, there are potential offtake (steel mill and global trading house buyers of iron ore) and construction investors located in Asia and outside which are impacted differently. Groups located within Asia are now slowly starting to return to work as the number of coronavirus cases reported daily continues to decline and seems to be more under control. Progress with Asia based investors is currently gaining traction, particularly on the construction financing front. For groups located outside of Asia, discussions are progressing positively but are unlikely to conclude until impacted countries, including Ukraine, reopen their borders for travel so due diligence and commercial negotiations can be finalized.

On land transfer, Ukraine's President made some major changes to government Ministers on March 4, 2020 including the appointment of a new Prime Minister, Minister of Economy and Minister of Defence because he was upset at their rate of implementing economic reforms. Black Iron's file has since been transferred from the responsibility of Ukraine's Prime Minister directly to the President and meetings are currently ongoing on the terms and compensation for land transfer. Black Iron has senior personal located in Ukraine that are not impacted by the coronavirus and along with strong support from Canada's Embassy to Ukraine plus use of video conference technologies is able to progress discussions with various Ukraine government representatives.

About Black Iron

Black Iron is an iron ore exploration and development company, advancing its 100% owned Shymanivske project located in Kryviy Rih, Ukraine. The Shymanivske project contains a NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimated to be 646 Mt Measured and Indicated mineral resources, consisting of 355 Mt Measured mineral resources grading 32.0% total iron and 19.5% magnetic iron, and Indicated mineral resources of 290 Mt grading 31.1% total iron and 17.9% magnetic iron, using a cut-off grade of 10% magnetic iron. Additionally, the Shymanivske project contains 188 Mt of Inferred mineral resources grading 30.1% total iron and 18.4% magnetic iron. Full mineral resource details can be found in the NI 43-101 compliant technical report entitled "Preliminary Economic Assessment of the Re-scoped Shymanivske Iron Ore Deposit" effective November 21, 2017 (the "PEA" or "Preliminary Economic Assessment") under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Shymanivske project is surrounded by five other operating mines, including ArcelorMittal's iron ore complex. Please visit the Company's website at www.blackiron.com for more information.

The technical and scientific contents of this press release have been prepared under the supervision of and have been reviewed and approved by Matt Simpson, P.Eng, CEO of Black Iron, who is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

For more information, please contact:

Matt Simpson

Chief Executive Officer

Black Iron Inc.

Tel: +1 (416) 309-2138

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, opinions and estimates of the date such statements are made based on information available to them at that time. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's ability to develop the Shymanivske project, the use of proceeds of the Offering and the First Option, the Company's ability to issue subsequent convertible securities under the Agreement, the Company's ability to raise adequate capital, the Company's ability to secure the requisite land rights and the Company's future plans. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Company notes that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

SOURCE: Black Iron

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/588970/Black-Iron-Closes-Private-Placement-Announces-Lind-Option-Exercise-and-Project-Update
Credit: David Herraez Calzada, Shutterstock

The question over how Homo antecessor, the earliest known hominin species in Europe, is related to other Homo species and where it sits on the evolutionary tree has been much debated. Although genetic data and fossil records provide insight into the origin of modern humans, the degradation of ancient DNA poses a challenge for precisely tracking their evolutionary progress. To address this issue, a team of researchers has used a new technique to study proteins in the dental enamel of an 800 000-year-old human species to help place it on the family tree.

Partially supported by the EU-funded projects HOPE and TEMPERA, the researchers used a method called palaeoproteomics that enabled them to extract molecular evidence and to accurately reconstruct human evolution from further back in time than ever before. By applying mass spectrometry technology, they sequenced the ancient proteins in the enamel of a Homo antecessor tooth and compared these with their equivalents in other hominins like Homo sapiens. This process helped the researchers pin down Homo antecessor's position on the human family tree. Their findings were published in the journal Nature. Hominins refers to a group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors.

Next-generation protein analysis

Quoted in a news release by the University of Copenhagen, coordinator of both HOPE and TEMPERA, the study's first author Frido Welker says: "Ancient protein analysis provides evidence for a close relationship between Homo antecessor, us (Homo sapiens), Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Our results support the idea that Homo antecessor was a sister group to the group containing Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans."

According to lead author Enrico Cappellini from the University of Copenhagen, the information on the evolutionary relations between our species and others "is based either on the results of ancient DNA analysis, or on observations of the shape and the physical structure of fossils. Because of the chemical degradation of DNA over time, the oldest human DNA retrieved so far is dated at no more than approximately 400.000 years." The analysis of ancient proteins with mass spectrometry helps scientists overcome this challenge and enables them to compare such information with that of other hominins to determine how they are genetically related, as explained in the news release.

Homo antecessor a basal species of emerging humanity

The same news release notes that the fossils analysed by the researchers were found in 1994 in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Although scientists initially concluded that Homo antecessor was the last common ancestor to modern humans and Neanderthals, later the exact relation between these hominins was widely debated. Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, the paper's co-corresponding author, says: "The features shared by Homo antecessor with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier than previously thought. Homo antecessor would therefore be a basal species of the emerging humanity formed by Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans."

The HOPE (HOminin Proteomes in human Evolution) project "aims to reconstruct the genetic relationships between our and extinct hominin species from sites and time periods incompatible with ancient DNA preservation through mass-spectrometry based sequencing of ancient hominin proteins," as noted on CORDIS. The TEMPERA (Teaching Emerging Methods in Palaeoproteomics for the European Research Area) project offers training for early-stage researchers to help them read ancient protein sequences and interpret the recovered information.

Explore further Oldest-ever human genetic evidence clarifies dispute over our ancestors

More information: HOPE project: HOPE project: cordis.europa.eu/project/id/795569 TEMPERA project website: sites.google.com/palaeome.org/tempera Frido Welker et al. The dental proteome of Homo antecessor, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2153-8 Journal information: Nature
Washington/Kabul, May 8 : US Secrtary of State Mike Pompeo has called on the Afghan government to open a "full investigation" into reports that said Afghan migrants were "abused, tortured and drowned" by Iranian border guards to prevent their illegal entry into the country, a media report said.

Addressing the media in Washington, Pompeo on Thursday said he was "appalled" by the reports, adding that this happened when Afghans "dared to cross the border simply in search of food and work", TOLO News reported.

Pompeo's comments came a day after the government in Kabul announced that a joint Afghanistan-Iran team would probe the incident.

According to Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry, initial assessments suggested that at least 70 Afghans who were trying to enter Iran from bordering Herat province were beaten and pushed into the Harirud river.

The Harirud river basin is shared by Afghanistan, Iran and Turkmenistan.

An Afghan official on Wednesday said that so far 16 of the Afghan nationals have been rescued, 18 to 20 were missing, and 16 bodies have been found.

Also on Thursday, a number people staged a protest outside Iran's embassy in Kabul, calling for the punishment of the perpetrators while criticizing Afghan political leaders for their "silence".

A similar rally was held in the city of Herat in the west of Afghanistan, a province that shares a border with Iran.

The development comes after Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said earlier this week: "The incident affecting a number of Afghanistan's citizens has taken place on that country's soil and the Islamic Republic of Iran's border guards have denied any involvement in this regard.

"Taking into account the significance of the issue and in order to obtain accurate information about how the incident took place on the Afghan soil, we have been probing the issue in cooperation with that country's officials."
The Board wishes to provide further guidance on the expected full year results for the year ended 31 March 2020 (FY20).

QEX generated an improved second half result following a tough first half of the year as reported to the market in November last year. The full year unaudited revenue for FY20 is expected to be $63 million, an increase from $59.4 million in the prior corresponding period (FY19).

EBITDA for the full year is expected to be in the range of $2.8 million to $3.0 million and net profit before tax is expected to be in the range of $1.5 million to $1.7 million. This includes the impact of costs related to establishing the new Australian operations.

QEX has transitioned to the new IFRS 16: Leases financial reporting standard for the first time. Application of this new standard is expected to increase EBITDA by $750,000 and reduce net profit before tax by $50,000 compared to FY19.

The Company is still working to finalise the full year result, which will then be subject to audit. As part of this process, the Company is working to assess any impact of Covid-19 on receivables. The final audited results may be impacted due to these matters.

In Quarter 1 of FY21, following very strong sales in March, revenue in April has returned to similar levels to the prior corresponding period in 2019.

QEX is in a sound financial position and funds raised from its current capital raising initiative will be used to fund the Companys growth and expansion as outlined in the share purchase plan Offer Booklet.

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The rules around travelling into and out of the country during the Covid-19 outbreak could be changed from next week.

It was confirmed this evening that 27 more people with the virus have lost their lives, bringing the death toll to 1,429.

There are now 22,541 confirmed cases after a further 156 positive tests were detected in the past 24 hours.

Over the course of six days last week - April 28 to May 3 - one-third of passengers arriving at Dublin Airport did not provide their quarantine details to authorities, according to the Department of Justice.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan says Ministers will discuss changes at ports and airports.

"We gave consideration to the whole question of travel and point of entry," said Dr Holohan.

"We will be providing advice as a result of that through the Minister for Health to government who will consider that advice before anything is made public in relation to what will happen.

"Then we gave consideration and offered the view that we think it is important that other sectors, departments, agencies and other organisations start in earnest the purpose of preparedness planning for potential easing of restrictions."
The IRS has begun sending out COVID-19 stimulus money, with Americans receiving up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child. But for most people who are struggling, a single coronavirus stimulus payment won't be enough -- especially if the great lockdown continues.

Some lawmakers are aware they haven't done nearly enough, so support is growing for a proposal that would provide at least $2,000 in monthly stimulus money to most Americans. And this payment would continue automatically for the next six months.

Support grows for monthly coronavirus stimulus money

While there are no votes scheduled in Congress for a second stimulus payment at this time, support is growing for the Emergency Money for the People Act. In fact, this Act, which started with 18 co-sponsors, has gained an additional 10 since its introduction on April 15.

If it passes, it would provide:

$2,000 in stimulus money to every American 16 or older with an income under $130,000. Married couples with no children would receive $4,000 if they have an income under $260,000.

$500 per qualifying child for up to three children. A married couple with three children and an income under $260,000 would receive $5,500 monthly.

Those claimed as dependents would qualify too. They'd receive a stimulus payment, and their parent or guardian would still receive $500 in dependent credits.

Those with no past history of earnings would also get the money, as would individuals and families who wouldn't have been eligible based on 2018 or 2019 earnings -- they'll simply have to submit two consecutive months of paychecks to show eligibility.

More stimulus money is definitely on the table

The Emergency Money for the People Act would bring the U.S. response more in line with some other countries, including Canada, where the government has promised payments of 2,000 CAD per month over the next four months.

It would also meet growing need for more assistance, as more than 6 in 10 Americans have said they'll need another influx of funds within the next three months.

But even though passage is far from certain, Congress members from both sides of the aisle have acknowledged demand for additional aid is high among Americans. And President Trump indicated in a press conference in mid-April that the government could "very well do a second round," of stimulus payments.

So those waiting for additional cash have strong reason to hope more COVID-19 money will come -- and it could even continue on a monthly basis during the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

What to do while you wait for help to come

If you're waiting for more stimulus help, it's a good idea to look into options currently available to you if you're struggling.

The CARES Act, the bill that authorized the initial stimulus payment, also expanded unemployment benefits, boosting weekly benefits by $600. There are also programs aimed at helping small businesses, which some independent contractors and gig workers could take advantage of.

You'll also want to be sure you received the correct amount of coronavirus stimulus money during the first round of checks and make smart choices about whether you save, spend, or invest that money.
KYIV -- Georgia summoned its ambassador to Ukraine back to Tbilisi in a sign of its displeasure over Kyivs decision to name Mikheil Saakashvili to a government reform body.

Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said May 8 that the nations ambassador to Ukraine, Teimuraz Sharashenidze, will be recalled to Tbilisi for consultations.

The decision comes a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named Saakashvili, the controversial former Georgian president, to head the executive committee of Ukraines National Reform Council.

Ukraines Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kateryna Zelenko said Kyiv needs Saakashvilis experience and called on Tbilisi not to make its reform agenda hostage to the health of their bilateral relations.

"These [reform] challenges require new approaches and new solutions from the Ukrainian government. Mikheil Saakashvili is a citizen of Ukraine. He has extensive experience and significant achievements in implementing reforms, Zelenko told RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service.

Ukraines National Reform Council was created in 2014 to carry out strategic planning and coordinate reforms. Zelenskiy campaigned last year on a reform agenda, winning the April 2019 vote by a landslide.

Saakashvili, 52, served as Georgias president from 2004 until 2013, during which he carried out political and economic reforms that were praised by some in the West. However, he was criticized, especially later in his two-year term, for an authoritarian style of ruling.

His party, United National Movement, was defeated in the 2012 parliamentary elections by Georgian Dream, a coalition formed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, a critic of the then-president. Saakashvili left Georgia shortly after his presidential term ended in late 2013 as some members of his party were arrested.

In January 2018, a Georgian court convicted him in absentia of covering up evidence in the case of the killing of a Georgian banker and sentenced him to three years in prison. In June 2018, another court convicted him of abuse of power and sentenced him to six years in prison.

Saakashvili has denied all the accusations and says the charges are politically motivated.

In 2015-2016, Saakashvili served as governor of Ukraines Odesa region. When he resigned, he accused Zelenskiys predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, of corruption. Poroshenko, in turn, stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.

As one of his first acts as president last year, Zelenskiy restored Saakashvilis Ukrainian citizenship, facilitating Saakashvilis return to Ukraine.

Last month, Zelenskiy proposed appointing Saakashvili as deputy prime minister in charge of reform, but his candidacy was not put to a vote in parliament.

With reporting by Reuters
Midland County recorded its eighth death related to the coronavirus  the fourth in just over a week  and no new cases Thursday, according to the daily state report. The county case count stands at 63 cases.

All eight of the Midland County deaths have been elderly, said Fred Yanoski, Midland County Public Health director/health officer. The state lists the average age of deceased at 75, with people 80 and older accounting for 41 percent of the state's coronavirus victims.

"The residents of long-term care facilities have been particularly devastated around Michigan by COVID-19," Yanoski said. "These individuals are very vulnerable, and likely have a higher risk of having trouble dealing with a COVID-19 infection."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended Michigan's stay-at-home order through May 28 late Thursday afternoon.

There isn't one specific geographical area of Midland County that has been hit the hardest, he said.

"To be honest, we have a fairly small sample size to draw any relevant trends from," he said. "Additionally, we have not seen any geographic 'hot spots' that would indicate a certain area of the county is impacted at a higher level."

Yanoski said he expects more cases and more deaths in Midland County, and with no current treatment or vaccine, it is a person's behavior that is the most powerful tool to lessen the spread of coronavirus.

"There is still a lot that we do not know about what will happen with COVID-19 in the summer months, and again as we move into next fall and winter," he said. "I still anticipate that we will see cases and deaths in the weeks and months ahead. I do know that our behaviors will have a lot to do with how well we will be able to mitigate the spread of disease moving forward."

MidMichigan Health System, which covers a 23-county region and includes a hospital in Midland, classified today its inpatient volume as "very low" and reported a continued decrease of COVID-19 cases in its health system and service area.

Bay County on Thursday added three new cases, bringing its total to 179 cases and nine deaths. Gladwin and Isabella counties added no new cases, with their counts at 15 cases and one death and 61 cases and seven deaths, respectively. Saginaw County added 12 new cases and four deaths, bringing its total to 772 cases and 78 deaths.

The state added 592 new cases and 93 deaths. Thirty-eight of the 93 deaths are from review of death certificate data conducted by state Department of Health and Human Services staff three times a week, according to the state.

Overall, Michigan is at 45,646 cases and 4,343 deaths.

Social distancing and how people interact with others in public will remain key once the community starts to open, Yanoski said.

"I would certainly stress that we all need to remain committed to doing our part as our businesses start to open up," he said. "If we as a society do not act responsibly and follow practices like social distancing, it could have detrimental effects on the progress we have made in the last few months."

The county health department can help businesses in planning a safe reopening, Yanoski said, and is happy to answer any questions and offer guidance to area businesses to help to keep their staff and patrons safe.

The county on Friday will add "recovered" individuals and "probable" cases to its Midland County dashboard on its website, https://www.co.midland.mi.us/coronavirus.aspx

The state lists the total recovered at 15,659 cases, as of May 1, 2020, which represents COVID-19 confirmed individuals with an onset date on or prior to April 1, 2020, according to the state website, mich.gov. The numbers will be updated every Saturday.

The state lists the majority of races in positive cases as 32% Black/African American; 34% Caucasian and 19% unknown, and the top three races in deaths as 41% Black/African American; 49% Caucasian and 5% unknown.

The total positive cases are 46% men, 53% women and 1% unknown.

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.

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 can also e-mail 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.
DECEMBER 16: The club has made the deal official (hat tip to Scott Merkin of MLB.com).

DECEMBER 15: The deal is done, per Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com (Twitter links). After earning $13MM next year, Cabrera will take home $14MM in 2016 and $15MM in the final year of his deal. He also obtains a limited no-trade clause, per Heyman.

DECEMBER 14: The White Sox have agreed to terms with Melky Cabrera on a three-year contract, 670thescore.coms Bruce Levine tweets. Cabreras deal is worth $42MM, according to Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com (on Twitter).

The deal, which is pending a physical, is only slightly backloaded, tweets Bob Nightengale of USA Today. The White Sox will pay Cabrera $13MM in 2015. Cabrera is a client of the Legacy Agency.

The move continues an offseason transformation for the White Sox, who so far have traded for Jeff Samardzija and signed David Robertson, Adam LaRoche and Zach Duke to help aid a team that won 73 games in 2014. The switch-hitting Cabrera is a proven offensive player, and at age 30, theres no reason he cant produce at least a couple more productive, high-average seasons, as he did in 2014, when he batted .301/.351/.458 in 621 plate appearances for Toronto.

If anything, three years seems rather light for a player of Cabreras age and talent. MLBTRs Steve Adams predicted in October that Cabrera would receive five years and $66.25MM. The average annual value of his contract will, apparently, be slightly higher than that projection, but the difference in years is still significant. Cabrera rejected a four-year offer from an unknown team because his preference was to play for the White Sox, tweets CBSSports.coms Jon Heyman.

Still, that Cabrera would receive a three-year deal was perhaps somewhat predictable after watching his market develop. It was surprising in the past week to read reports suggesting that the Mariners and other teams were unwilling to go past three years for Cabrera. (Cabrera had also previously been connected to the Orioles, Royals, Giants and Reds.)

While Cabrera isnt a strong defensive player and he walks infrequently, hes batted above .300 in three of the last four seasons, typically with a bit of power. His solid season in 2014 figured to put his past PED connections mostly behind him, too, especially since the examples of Jhonny Peralta and Nelson Cruz provide precedent for PED-connected players receiving lucrative long-term deals.

Cabrera will presumably slot into left field in Chicago, bumping Dayan Viciedo from a starting spot. Viciedo hit just .231/.281/.405 while playing poor defense last season, so Cabrera represents a big upgrade. The Mariners, who were seen as front-runners for Cabrera, also have shown interest in Viciedo. Perhaps Cabreras pact with the White Sox will clear the way for a trade that sends Viciedo west.

Cabrera rejected the Blue Jays qualifying offer earlier this offseason, so Toronto will receive an extra pick at the end of the first round of the 2015 draft. The White Sox first-round pick, No. 8 overall, is protected, and they already gave up their second-round pick to sign Robertson, so they will have to sacrifice their third-round pick once their signing of Cabrera is complete.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Independent TD for Laois-Offaly Carol Nolan has cautiously welcomed the decision of the Minister for Education, Joe McHugh, to postpone this years Leaving Certificate examinations.

Deputy Nolan was speaking after the Minister also confirmed that the decision will leave the state open to legal vulnerabilities.'

Despite the fact that there was a certain inevitability to this decision, it is still a relief for students and schools to finally have some kind of clarity," Deputy Nolan said.

"The Minister has now stated that teachers will be asked to provide a professional judgement of each students attainment which will be subjected to a rigorous in-school alignment process to ensure fairness.

"I do think however that there are very real difficulties with this, and that students and teachers alike will need to have clear guarantees around transparency within the process.

"From what the Minister has said marks and rankings submitted by schools will now be examined and may be adjusted using statistical methods to ensure a common national standard is applied.

"I also understand that it will be up to school principals to approve the estimated scores and the ranking of each student.

"This is going to place an enormous bureaucratic and indeed mental and emotional burden on to the shoulders of Principals.

"We certainly needed clarity, but the measures and the process outlined today still give rise to many serious questions.

"What will happen to homeschooled children? How will they be assessed?

"We need to provide absolute assurances that a robust and transparent appeals process will be put in place for any student who may have issues with their grade, concluded Deputy Nolan.
York Region police have charged a Toronto man with impaired driving after he crashed into two houses in Markham.

Just before 6 p.m. Thursday, police received reports of an impaired driver in a white Acura RDX near Main Street and Ninth Line in Whitchurch-Stouffville.

Police said they attempted to pull the vehicle over on Ninth Line near Bur Oak Avenue in Markham but the driver fled police while speeding and running red lights.

The vehicle was later located on Major Buttons Drive, a residential area near Highway 7 and Ninth Line. Photos taken at the scene show the vehicle had crashed through the garage of one house and ended up wedged on the side of another house.

A building inspector deemed both houses unsafe to occupy.

Jeagadeeswaran Ratnasabapathy, 47, of Toronto, was arrested at the scene and taken to hospital for minor injuries. He has been charged with impaired driving, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and fleeing from police.

TY Tom Yun is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @thetomyun

Read more about:
VANCOUVER, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. (the "Company") - (TSX: ITH) (NYSE American: THM) today announces that the Company's Board of Directors has approved a work plan to prepare a Pre-Feasibility Study on the Livengood project.

The Company believes that the recent strength in the price of gold arising from the unprecedented accommodative fiscal and monetary stimulus from central banks and governments globally provides the necessary macroeconomic backdrop to support the advancement of the large, highly-levered, and long-life gold asset at Livengood.

"Over the last several years, we have quietly remained laser focused on improving our geological and metallurgical understanding of the Livengood Gold deposit, which reported a 11.5 million ounce gold resource in our 2017 NI 43-101," said Karl Hanneman, CEO. "We intend to use new tools that have emerged in recent years, such as Whittle Enterprise Optimization, to incorporate this new information with our previous solid technical work to design the best possible Livengood Gold project and to update our NI 43-101 to further de-risk the project and demonstrate its value in a higher gold price environment."

"Since 2016 we have conserved our cash to maximize optionality for ITH shareholders, and we are well positioned to embark on a new phase for the Livengood project as a result of the favorable macro-economic backdrop for gold." said Marcelo Kim, Chairman. "ITH owns the largest independent gold-only resource in North America and we believe that in a rising gold price, the Livengood project becomes one of the most coveted and substantial assets in a geopolitically safe jurisdiction, in a time when most gold companies are struggling to replenish their reserves. Our aim is to unlock that value for shareholders by proceeding with a Pre-Feasibility Study that will update our project's parameters."

The Company is mindful that the worldwide pandemic has caused extreme disruption to personal lives and to normal business practices. With this in mind, and with Board authorization to proceed, the Company will immediately begin work with its team and technical consultants to develop a more definitive timeline and budget for completion of the Pre-Feasibility Study update and release of an NI 43-101.

The Company invites you to attend a conference call and webcast hosted by Chairman Marcelo Kim, Lead Independent Director Steve Lang, and CEO Karl Hanneman to discuss the Company and this news release.

Conference Call & Webcast Details:

INTERNATIONAL TOWER HILL MINES's conference call and webcast details are provided below:

Date: May 12, 2020 at 12:00 pm ET Webcast: https://services.choruscall.com/links/thm200512.html North American callers: 1-877-270-2148 International callers: 1-412-902-6510

The Company also today announced that it has filed its unaudited first quarter Financial Statements and associated Management Discussion and Analysis and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three-month period ended March 31, 2020.

As of March 31, 2020, the Company had working capital of $6.4 million.

Shareholders can obtain copies of the Company's unaudited Financial Statements and associated MD&A and Form 10-Q on SEDAR at: www.sedar.com, EDGAR at www.sec.gov and on the Company's website at: www.ithmines.com. The Company will also provide hard copies of these documents, free of charge, to shareholders who request a copy directly from the Company.

About International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. has a 100% interest in the Livengood Gold Project located along the paved Elliott Highway, 70 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

On behalf of

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

(signed) Karl L. Hanneman

Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements with respect to the potential development of any mine at Livengood, production levels and the price of gold are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, the price of gold, the potential inability of the Company to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and certain securities commissions in Canada and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and its United States public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sec.gov. Readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical report filed with respect to the Livengood Gold Project.

This news release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

SOURCE International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.towerhillmines.com


Technavio has been monitoring the optical modulators materials market and it is poised to grow by USD 6.39 billion during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of 6% 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/20200508005016/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Optical Modulators Materials 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. Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic, Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd., Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd., CASTECH Inc., CLaser Photonics, Inc., Cristal Laser SA, Fabrinet, Gooch Housego Plc, HC Photonics Corp., Inrad Optics Inc., Optolita UAB, Photon LaserOptik GmbH are some of the major market participants. The expansion of the telecommunication network 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.

Expansion of the telecommunication network has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Segmentation

Optical Modulators Materials Market is segmented as below:

Application Telecommunications Data Centers CATV Others

Material Optical Material Non-optical Material

Type Fiber-coupled Optical Modulators Free-space Optical Modulators

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=IRTNTR32149

Optical Modulators Materials 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 optical modulators materials market report covers the following areas:

Optical Modulators Materials Market Size

Optical Modulators Materials Market Trends

Optical Modulators Materials Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies the development of high-speed optical fibers as one of the prime reasons driving the optical modulators materials market growth during the next few years.

Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the optical modulators materials market, including some of the vendors such as Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic, Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd., Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd., CASTECH Inc., CLaser Photonics, Inc., Cristal Laser SA, Fabrinet, Gooch Housego Plc, HC Photonics Corp., Inrad Optics Inc., Optolita UAB, and Photon LaserOptik GmbH. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the optical modulators materials market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023

Detailed information on factors that will assist optical modulators materials market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the optical modulators materials market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the optical modulators materials market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of optical modulators materials 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

Telecommunications Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Data centers Market size and forecast 2018-2023

CATV Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Others Market size and forecast 2018-2023

PART 07: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY MATERIAL

Market segmentation by material

Comparison by material

Optical materials Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Non-optical materials Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Market opportunity by material

PART 08: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE

PART 09: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY TYPE

Market segmentation by type

Comparison by type

Fiber-coupled optical modulators Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Free-space optical modulators Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Market opportunity by type

PART 10: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC Market size and forecast 2018-2023

North America Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Europe Market size and forecast 2018-2023

MEA Market size and forecast 2018-2023

South America Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Key leading countries

Market opportunity

PART 11: DECISION FRAMEWORK

PART 12: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES

Market drivers

Market challenges

PART 13: MARKET TRENDS

Development of high-speed optical fibers

Emergence of IoT

Increasing focus on developing smart cities

PART 14: VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Overview

Landscape disruption

Competitive scenario

PART 15: VENDOR ANALYSIS

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd.

Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd.

CASTECH Inc.

CLaser Photonics, Inc.

Cristal Laser SA

Fabrinet

Gooch Housego Plc

HC Photonics Corp.

Inrad Optics Inc.

Optolita UAB

Photon LaserOptik GmbH

PART 16: APPENDIX

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

Definition of market positioning of vendors

PART 17: 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/20200508005016/en/

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Professor Justice Sir Dennis Adjei made the call when he delivered via Zoom, the maiden lecture of the 14-week long Law and Ethics Web Series, dubbed: "Covid-19, Legal Practice and its implications for Judicial Decision Making".

The lecture is being jointly organised by the African Centre on Law and Ethics (ACLE) and the African Centre of International Criminal Justice (ACICJ), both based at the GIMPA Faculty of Law.

Prof Justice Sir Adjei said, "Doctors are working, Engineers are working, Lecturers are teaching online, so Judges too must deliver and the Courts must work.

In the phase of Covid-19, every institution must work but we must observe physical distancing and where you can use internet facility to achieve the purpose of your work, you must use it."

The Justice of the Court of Appeal said there were few laws on the statute books of Ghana that would have to be amended to accommodate his suggestion of online adjudication of court cases.

"We should look at Order 33 of CI 47, which requires the Court to provide for a place of trial. It could be amended to include any other electronic mode that the Court may determine and not a physical place as in the courtroom," he indicated.

"Order 36 of the High Court civil procedure rules, CI 47, which requires parties to attend a trial in person and failure of which attracts sanctions could also be amended to make video link or any other digital means to amount to physical appearance".

The Law and Ethics Web Series is expected to be held every Wednesday at 1400 hours, which began May 6, this year, on the online meeting platform; Zoom.

There are pending presentations on May 13, May 20, May 27, June 3, June 10, June 17, June 24, July 1, July 8, July 15, July 22, July 29, and August 5, which will come on as scheduled.

Various speakers have been lined up for the series.

It is being coordinated by Dr Kwaku Agyeman-Budu, a Lecturer and Head of Law Centre at the GIMPA Faculty of Law.

The maiden session was moderated by Ms Diana Asonaba Dapaah, also a Lecturer at the GIMPA Faculty of Law, under the distinguished patronage of the Rector of GIMPA, Professor Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson.

---GNA
Armenian ex-president Robert Kocharyan's attorneys have presented a petition to release ex-president on a personal guarantee during the first trial after an almost two-month break.

The former prime ministers of Armenia Vazgen Manukyan, Khosrov Harutyunyan, Karen Karapetyan, and the former Prime Minister of Artsakh Anushavan Danielyan are ready to vouch for Kocharyan.

Attorney Hayk Alumyan presented copies of written statements by former prime ministers.

Despite the fact that the defense side still had requests to change the preventive measure, the court decided to first consider the submitted petition. The ex-PMs were invited to the trial and verbally made a personal guarantee statement.

Each of the guarantors is required to pay AMD 500 thousand. If the defendant does not show proper behavior, the money will not be returned.

The guarantors signed copies of the protocol and left the trial.

Then Hayk Alumyan submitted a second motion - dated March 24, when a state of emergency was already declared in the country. The defense seeks to amend or cancel the preventive measure amid the coronavirus pandemic. He noted that European structures unequivocally declare the need to release, if possible, those arrested and imprisoned in connection with the pandemic, in particular those at risk.

According to the attorney, Kocharyan is in several such groups at once.

I am petitioning, first of all, to cancel the preventive measure. Either change it to a preventive measure not related to deprivation of liberty, or on bail, he said.

Speaking about the medical report on Kocharyan's health state, the attorney noted that if the court considers it necessary to publish the report, first let it consider holding a closed session.

Having resumed the hearing, the court continued to consider the application. Lawyer Hovhannes Khudoyan recalled that the situation with the spread of coronavirus is getting worse.

Lawyer Aram Orbelyan recalled that the world has not yet managed to develop a vaccine.

While the petition was under discussion, it became known about COVID-19 cases among prisoners, said ex-CSTO chief Yuri Khachaturov's lawyer, Mihran Poghosyan. The official report notes that the coronavirus was found in 5 arrested and 5 prisoners in 3 penitentiary institutions.

Judge Anna Danibekyan inquired about the conditions of Kocharyans detention.

"Employees work once in three days. No one can say what they do in their free time. 90% are young people," Kocharyan noted. "But there are contacts, otherwise it is impossible. It is impossible to maintain distance when moving around the building."

The personnel is trying to comply with the requirements - they wear masks and gloves. But there are neither conditions, no ventilation, the ex-president added.

Aram Orbelian reminded that many prisoners have already been released in Armenia amid the COVID-19 pandemic while refusing to release the former president is discriminatory.
One in three Rio Tinto investors has backed demands for the Anglo-Australian miner to set targets to slash the emissions of its customers across the world, in the latest sign of the escalating climate push facing Australia's top resources companies.

More than 36 per cent of Rio Tinto investors on Thursday called for deeper cuts to the miner's own emissions and for the introduction of new targets covering the vastly greater carbon footprint caused by customers using its products  known as "Scope 3" emissions  such as the Chinese steel mills that buy Rio's iron ore.

An investor push for Rio Tinto to expand its carbon-reduction targets to include its customers' emissions has escalated. Credit:

"Rio's Scope 3 emissions are massive  comparable to the carbon footprint of Australia," said Julien Vincent of Market Forces, the advocacy group that prepared the resolution at Rio's investor meeting.

"This is a staggering level of climate risk for any company, and hence for any investor, to bear."
Briefing with Special Representative for Syria Engagement and Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Ambassador James Jeffrey, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Henry Wooster, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Christoper Robinson On Russian Engagement in the Middle East

Special Briefing

James F. Jeffrey, Special Representative for Syria Engagement and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS

Henry Wooster, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Maghreb and Egypt

Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs

Christopher Robinson, Deputy Assistant Secretary

Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs

Via Teleconference

May 7, 2020



MS ORTAGUS: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Good to be on with everybody this Thursday afternoon. This is going to be another on-the-record briefing here at the State Department, and please, as always, this briefing is embargoed until the end of the call.

Today we want to shed some light on Russians'  Russian malign engagement in the Middle East with a specific focus on Russian actions in Syria and in Libya. We have all been witnesses to Russia cynically helping the deadly Assad regime stay in power, hanging on by a thread and refusing to budge on meaningful political dialogue with the Syrian opposition. More recently, Russia has exploited instability in Libya to advance its own military, economic, and geopolitical interest in that country and throughout North America.[1]

To help provide additional context, we have an all-star cast of briefers today, real experts in the field whom most of you know on this topic. We have Deputy Assistant Secretary Christopher Robin[2] from our Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs. He'll speak first. We'll be followed  he'll be followed by Deputy Assistant Secretary Henry Wooster from our Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs who covers the Maghreb and Egypt portfolios. Last but not least, we have my favorite ambassador, of course, Jim Jeffrey, who's our special representative for Syria engagement and the special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

And just a reminder that while this call is on the record, this briefing is embargoed until the end of the call. Chris, go ahead.

MR ROBINSON: All right. So good afternoon. It's a real pleasure to be here with all of you. Wish we could do this in person, but allow me to frame the conversation from the Russia perspective to start this out. As I recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Russia has ramped up its unconstructive behavior in the Middle East since 2015, when Russia expanded its actions in Syria in support of the Assad regime. More recently, Libya has become the next venue for Russia's malign efforts to exploit regional conflicts for its own narrow political and economic gain. While Russia often publicly claims support for a political solution, such as in Syria or Libya, it simultaneously engages in activities that undermine a political peace process and widen the conflict.

In Libya, Russia continues its military support for the Libyan National Army of General Haftar. Russia has provided material and logistical support to the Wagner Group, a U.S.-sanctioned entity led by Putin crony Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also sanctioned by the United States. Russia's surge in support to the LNA has led to a significant escalation of the conflict and a worsening of the humanitarian situation in Libya. Wagner is often misleadingly referred to as a Russian private military company, but in fact it's an instrument of the Russian Government which the Kremlin uses as a low-cost and low-risk instrument to advance its goals. More recently, Russia in coordination with the Assad regime has ferried Syrian fighters to Libya to participate in Wagner operations in support of the LNA.

Meanwhile, Russia for years has conducted a disinformation campaign to discredit international organizations working on these conflicts such as the United Nations and the OPCW. Russia has leveled ludicrous claims that the United States is responsible for the creation of ISIS, that the White Helmets in Syria have links to terrorism, and that the UK special forces fabricated the 2018 chemical attack in Douma.

Finally, Russia has engaged in a disinformation campaign to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic. Russian disinformation claims that the United States or Western powers are the origin of the virus while instilling uncertainty about the international response. Through such tactics, Russia clearly signals it's willing to take advantage of a global crisis in order to pursue its own destabilizing agenda without any regard for the human consequences. This administration is engaged in a range of actions to blunt Moscow's efforts to exert malign influence in Libya and Syria, and it's not too late for Moscow to change course and genuinely support a political settlement to both of these conflicts.

I'll stop there and then we can move on to  and get to questions.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay, great. Thanks so much. Henry.

MR WOOSTER: Hey, thanks, Morgan, and thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, folks out in the virtual ether. In Libya we've got two goals: one, an immediate end to the conflict; and two, a return to political negotiations, or dialogue, if you will. So let me walk you through how we see malign influence out there.

Our starting point is that foreign intervention has exacerbated divisions, widened the conflict, transformed it into a proxy war, threatened regional stability, and as you can imagine, in combination all of these things impinge upon (inaudible) if they don't harm, in fact, U.S. interests  thus our interests. So as Chris noted, the Kremlin uses this combination of military power, proxies, and disinformation to shape outcomes, and specifically, Moscow is seeking an enhanced presence in Libya to expand its influence across the Med and also onto the African continent.

And more specifically, Wagner support to Haftar's LNA or, if you will, the Libyan National Army has escalated the conflict. It's emboldened the LNA to continue its offensive which in turn is destabilizing, pushing the Government of National Accord  the internationally recognized government which the United States recognizes  it's pushed them to seek increased Turkish support to counter the Wagner-based LNA assault. So you see the escalatory effects here.

No one should think that Russia is going to pack up and leave now that they've invested in the Libyan conflict. So the way to end Russian and other foreign interference in Libya is to first end the Tripoli conflict  of course, that's the pretext  end that and revive political talks between the Libyans, and this done through UN-facilitated negotiations.

Lastly, on my end of it, a coordinated response from the international community pressing all the actors, Libyan and external, to deescalate is imperative. We, the United States, for our part will continue to press Russia, Turkey, the UAE, among others to encourage LNA and the GNA to return to these UN negotiations. We're looking for a lasting ceasefire that they (inaudible) sides had agreed to in Geneva in February. Thank you much.

MS ORTAGUS: Thanks so much, and now Jim. Jim Jeffrey, do we got you?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Hi, Morgan. Thank you very much for those kind words, and hello everybody.

Let me give a little bit of background on Russia in Syria. Most of you follow the day-in day-out stuff quite well. First of all, Russia came in in 2015 to save the Assad regime, which was apparently on its last legs facing an uprising of much of its population. Russia succeeded quite quickly in its initial goal of stabilizing the situation. At the end of 2015, it agreed to a UN resolution, 2254, which is still the relevant resolution for resolving the Syrian conflict that calls for a compromise political solution under the UN, a new constitution, and UN-monitored elections.

Meanwhile, however, in the subsequent two years, Russia, with Iranian engagement as well, saw the Assad regime retake much of Syrian territory from the opposition. So its ambitions seemed to grow. The problem is that two new factors complicated Russia's life. First of all, Iran not only was willing to use forces to bolster the Syrian regime, it also started introducing long-range weapon systems, precision-guided missiles  some for its own forces in Syria, some pushed onward to Hizballah to seriously threaten Israeli security, and the Israelis have reacted in various ways. Occasionally they talk about their operations over Syria to that end. That complicated Russia's calculations. We see no indication they thought that the Syrians would allow the Iranians to exploit it that way.

Secondly, the Assad regime has run into considerable trouble retaking the rest of Syria. For various reasons, U.S. and Turkish forces, as well as Israelis, have entered Syria for one or another security reason. This complicates both Russia and Assad's situation. And Assad has done nothing to help the Russians sell this regime. It is being condemned, as we've seen in the last few weeks, by the secretary-general of the UN himself on the refusal to allow cross-border humanitarian deliveries, by the board of inquiry; the secretary-general (inaudible) for the deliberate attack on supposedly off-limits humanitarian sites such as hospitals in Idlib, and thirdly for use of chemical weapons in 2017 that the OPCW has come out with.

There's obviously growing Russian frustration with Assad because he will not bend. Compare the way the Iranians try to sell themselves with people like Zarif and Rouhani. You find Assad has nothing but thugs around him, and they don't sell well either in the Arab world or in Europe.

Russia seemed to be willing to look at a compromise about a year ago. Mike Pompeo went along with Morgan and me to Sochi to meet with Lavrov and with Putin, and we laid out a way to resolve this on a step-by-step basis. But then soon after, Russia seemed committed to a military solution. That led to the debacle from the standpoint of the Syrian forces in Idlib who now have a ceasefire that appears to be holding. Russia may be more willing now  we've seen some indications in the Russian media and in certain Russian actions to be more flexible on the constitutional committee, but they may once again be willing to talk with us about a way to resolve this short of a military victory, because it's very clear at this point to Russia that they're not going to get a military victory certainly no time soon in Syria. Meanwhile, the Syrian economy is in freefall and the diplomatic isolation continues.

I'll stop there.

MS ORTAGUS: Thanks, Jim. Just a reminder to everybody who's on the call that you dial 1 and then 0 in order to get into the queue. And first up in the queue is Barbara Usher.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. My one question about Libya. I've been reading that there are Syrians, Syrian mercenaries on both sides being brought in by the Russians and also the Turks. And if you could give us some detail about that. And then to Ambassador Jeffrey, the  could you talk  do you have any information about the COVID situation in northwest Syria? Some of the humanitarian agencies are forecasting a possible 240,000 cases if there's going to be an outbreak in the first six weeks. Do you have any eyes on that? And  I know this is a third question, but the Israelis are also reporting that the Iranians seem to be backing down on their ambition to establish a military foothold in Syria.

MR WOOSTER: So I'm happy to take the question on the mercenaries. Yes, Syrian mercenaries are fighting with both sides in the conflict, so with the GNA and the LNA. And we have been clear with both the Libyans and both sides within the Libyan conflict as well as the foreign backers of both of those sides that we deploy  sorry, that we oppose the deployment of mercenaries.

So long story short, mercenaries of any stripe or type go into the bad column. Over.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Anybody else on that one?

MR ROBINSON: (Inaudible.) Go ahead. Go ahead, ambassador.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: We've seen no cases of COVID that we can independently verify in the northwest. The overall COVID rate throughout Syria and the three areas that are separate that we look at  the northeast, where we have some forces; the northwest; and in the regime-held area  seems to be remaining very low. We don't trust the regime's figures completely, but we have all kinds of other indication that COVID has not spread widely so far. And as I said, we haven't seen any in the northwest.

In terms of the reports, and we saw them, out of Jerusalem on the Iranians withdrawing, we see some Iranian movement around Syria pulling back from areas where the Israelis have struck them. We've also seen a withdrawal of Iranian-backed militias  some Hizballah, some from other countries. But this may be chalked up to a relative lull in the fighting. These are frontline combat forces. What we have not seen  and I want to underline this  is any strategic Iranian commitment not to try to use Syria both as a second launching pad for long-range weapons against Israel and as a conduit  the famous Shia Crescent  on to provide Hizballah more lethal and more modern precision-guided missiles, again, to threaten Israel. That would be the big change. That is central to our goals in Syria. Mike Pompeo talked about that at length, the withdrawal of all Syrian-commanded forces yesterday. That remains at the center of our policy there and we're pressing all sides to achieve that.

MR ROBINSON: If I could just jump in real quickly on the COVID point, that we have seen the Russians  this is Chris Robinson  we have seen the Russians push this story that we, U.S. forces in Syria, have spread COVID or that we've enabled it either in northwest Syria or in the Rukban camp in order to undermine the Assad regime. But again, this is part of the Russian disinformation campaign.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Exactly.

MR WOOSTER: If I might  and if I might just to close out, I neglected to mention on the question of Syrian mercenaries, there is a very troubling other element here, and that is the Libyan National Army's or Khalifa Haftar's establishment of so-called diplomatic relations with the Assad regime, which is very much a part of the piece of the question of Syrian mercenaries, at least on his side of the equation. Over.

MS ORTAGUS: Great, thank you. I think we have Nick Wadhams in the queue next.

QUESTION: Hi, thanks very much. I just had two quickies. One: Could you just spell out what the policy is toward Haftar right now? We had the statement from the White House a year ago saying that the President recognizes Haftar's significant role in fighting terrorism. That seemed to contradict statements that Secretary Pompeo had made before. So does the U.S. support Haftar or believe that he has a significant role to play? What is our stance toward him? And then Chris, could you just elaborate on what you said where you mentioned that Russia is using  is trying to exploit COVID in the region? Do you have any examples for how Russia is trying to take advantage of the global crisis? Thank you.

MR WOOSTER: Henry Wooster, and I'll go quick on the answer about U.S. support for Haftar. No, the United States does not support LNA military action against Tripoli. So for us, the attack on the capital diverts resources from what is a priority for us, which is the counterterrorism against specifically ISIS and AQIM. It also brings about a humanitarian crisis. Long story short, it's bad news. We don't support it, and we don't support him doing this. Over.

MR ROBINSON: Sure, Nick, on your last question on COVID, so it's both a broader global problem and then in the region specifically, is that the United States  what we've seen Russian peddle. And this is from the government, from their media outlets, from their Twitter and Facebook surreptitious accounts, but directly from the foreign ministry spokesperson, for example, that U.S. troops in Syria have spread the virus, that U.S. defense labs around the region have created the virus and then released it on purpose to target some of these conflict zones. And then we've seen them exploit it to say that we should either end sanctions against one party or another in order to advance Russia's cause. So we see them both propagating a disinformation campaign and then using that disinformation to advance a particular policy goal, whether that's support for one regime or another, or to compel us to drop sanctions.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Great. Thanks so much. Next up is Shaun Tandon.

QUESTION: Hi. Thanks for doing this. I wanted to see if you had an estimate of the strength of the Wagner Group. There was the UN report that came out recently that was saying up to 1,200 fighters perhaps in Libya. Do you have a sense of the size and the significance of that? And related to that, there have been a series of reports or indications that perhaps the Russians have soured on Haftar, that they don't see him as really the best game in town and somebody who's going to do the job in terms of their interests. What's your read on that and what's the endgame for the Russians in terms of what they're looking for with supporting Haftar? Thanks.

MR WOOSTER: Henry Wooster 

MR ROBINSON: Yeah. Go ahead, Henry.

MR WOOSTER: Yeah, sure. In terms of the numbers, we had  Assistant Secretary David Schenker did testimony late 2019 on this, and I don't remember the math so I'm  hesitate to toss out a number saying to you, "I think it was about this." We used a number  I don't recollect what that number was off the top of my head. If it's important to you, we can get that for you. That number will have changed. It will have only gone upwards.

Chris, over to you.

MR ROBINSON: Yeah, I mean, we've seen it fluctuate. I would note that they do possess very heavy and advanced weapons, and we've seen them in public media accounting, and social media that follow the conflicts have captured photos of really advanced equipment that private companies don't tend to have that really illustrates that this is the Russian Government operating the  Wagner.

And on the endgame, look, they may have  find working with General Haftar difficult, but when they say they're not wedded to one particular actor  but we saw that in Syria, and they got themselves pretty wedded to Assad. We see them say that about Haftar, but they seem to double down on him. Or in Venezuela, and they've doubled down on Maduro. They do tend to not back down, even when they've made a bad bet.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: This is Jim Jeffrey. Of course, the reason they make all these bad bets is self-respecting, decent governments and leaders around the world really don't want to boogie the way Venezuela, Haftar, and Assad do with Russia. They have to take their allies where they can find them among the rogue states of the world.

MS ORTAGUS: Thanks. Okay. I think we have Matt Lee left in the queue.

QUESTION: Hi there. Happy Thursday. I just want to know have you  I think it was you or Henry who said no one should expect that Russia's going to pack up and leave, and I think you were talking about Libya specifically, but I assume you may have meant Syria as well. And I'm wondering: In light of that, if that's what you think, what are you guys actually doing about it? And then if there is, in fact, growing Russian frustration with Assad, Ambassador Jeffrey, and you do see maybe some signs of the Iranians pulling back, what do you expect next? Thank you.

MR WOOSTER: Where do we want to start with that one?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Yeah, I'll start, Morgan. We, as I said, do see the Russians unhappy with Assad, and this has been something relatively new that they've been so vocal about it. But  and we have seen some tactical displacement of Iranian, some of it because they don't need as many ground forces and they're expensive at a time when they're under sanctions pressure from the U.S. and also COVID financial pressure. But these may be tactical actions. Also, it's typical of the Russians to show more or less tactical flexibility with us on a Syrian solution, while at the end of the day defining what a compromise is in terms that looks like it's 80 percent our compromising and only 20 percent Russia compromising, which is not acceptable to us or to the many countries that work with us.

In terms of getting Russia out of Syria, that has never been our goal. Russia has been there for 30 years. It has a long-term relationship with Syria. We don't think it has been healthy for the region. We don't think it really is even healthy for Russia. But that's not our policy. Our policy right now is to restore the situation in 2011 before the conflict began, and that would eventually lead to all of the other military forces that have entered leaving. Ones were most interested in, of course, are the Iranians and the Iranian-commanded militias.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Thanks. I think we have Kim Dozier up next.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) doing the call. You touched a little bit on a decrease in Iranian activity. I also wanted to ask what you were seeing vis-a-vis Russia with the Idlib refugee situation. And also, what prompted this on-the-record call? Was there a specific Russian action? And does naming and shaming their actions  have you seen them change their behavior when called out?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Kim, what was the first part? Because I was focused on the naming and shaming. But the first one was related to Syria as well?

MS ORTAGUS: I think she was asking  they might have muted her line. Jim, she was asking about the impetus of this call, like what was the  why did you guys decide to have this on-the-record call? What was the goal?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Yeah. Morgan, I think you can tackle that better. We're always ready to talk with anybody on anything.

The  again, we're trying to find out what the Russian motivations are and what they're trying to signal by criticizing Assad publicly. We're also, again, watching the Iranian shifts. We see them so far mainly as tactical. But there's no doubt they are under considerable pressure. There's no doubt that the naming and shaming, which Kim mentioned, has seen  we've seen a very strong Russian reaction to that, possibly because much of it is coming from the UN, from Secretary-General Guterres personally, on humanitarian line-crossing, from the Board of Inquiry he set up, which very, very starkly and strongly essentially accused Russia of passing on the UN coordinates for no-hit targets in Idlib to the Syrian Government, and then someone hit them. They weren't specific on whether it was the Syrians or the Russians. And also the findings of the IIT group from the OPCW on the use of chemical weapons by very high levels  the decision by high levels of the Syrian Government.

When these things come out, the Russians do two things immediately: They lash out and react against us  and we've certainly seen this, including against me, but  and anybody else who calls them out. But at the same time, they are very sensitive to that, because their effort is to try to do this whole conflict  and I suspect Henry would know better, the Libyan conflict as well  on the cheap by eventually getting the rest of the international community to accept Assad to take the lead in rebuilding the country that would require, by Assad and other World Bank estimates, between 300 and 400 billion dollars, and basically to allow the Russians a cheap victory. The more Assad is considered a pariah and outcast by organizations like the OPCW, and indirectly the UN  or at least his actions are  the harder it is for Russia to sell this cheap, easy victory scenario within their own system and to the world more generally. So I think we're seeing a reaction to that.

MR ROBINSON: Ambassador, if I could just jump in on the shining the light component, we do  and this circles back to Matt Lee's question, too  we do engage with Russia diplomatically to solve these and other regional conflicts. But while one hand Russia engages in the diplomacy, if on the other hand  with the other hand it engages in these malign campaigns that actually foment and foster the conflict, then we really aren't going to make progress solving them. So where we can shine a light on malign behavior, on the disinformation campaigns, and show  convince Moscow that these malign actions aren't ultimately going to be effective to advance their interests, then hopefully that can help get back to our efforts, as Henry laid out on Libya, to de-escalate the tensions, to de-escalate the conflict, and to find a lasting settlement. But when Russia engages in these sort of pseudo covert campaigns, then it undermines that effort. So when we can shine a light on them, that really advances our policy goal.

MS ORTAGUS: And guys, I think that Kim also asked about an update for Idlib refugees.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Oh, yeah. The Idlib refugees, Kim  first of all, they're  we see no movement across the Turkish border. The ceasefire basically froze everybody in place. In fact, what we've seen is several hundred thousand people who were internally displaced from Idlib  that is they're either permanent residents of Idlib or they're people who had earlier fled to Idlib from other areas of Syria, and who had then fled to that zone along the Turkish border where we had about a million people two months ago when I was there with Kelly Craft  we've seen several hundred thousand of them return, because the ceasefire appears to be holding. And the Turks have significantly reinforced further the quite powerful force they had in there two months ago and which dealt such heavy blows to the Syrian army.

MS ORTAGUS: Great. Thanks so much. Guys, we're at the 30 minutes, but we still have a lot of people in the queue. Can you take a few more questions?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: As long as people are on, I'm on, Morgan.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Great.

MR WOOSTER: Same here. I'm good.

MR ROBINSON: Here.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. We'll try to get through  we'll try to  for everybody, we've got a pretty lengthy queue. We don't be able to get to you all, but we'll try to get to as many of you as possible. So keep your questions succinct please, so we can try to get as many people in the bullpen. John Hudson, you're up next.

QUESTION: Thanks. Just a quick question for Ambassador Jeffrey. How are you interpreting the recent move by Assad's cousin on Facebook, criticizing the regime? Is this sort of the long-sought sort of fissures within the Assad regime that you're looking at? Or is it not really any time to get hopes up?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: One, it is important. This guy controls or has controlled a huge part of the Syrian alternative economy and even the actual official economy. Secondly, he's very close to his cousin, Assad. He is a major figure in the Alawite community, which basically rules the roost in Syria for 50 years. We put a lot of significance into this.

Now, we can interpret it in one of two ways. Way one is this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't think so; I wish so, but I don't think so. The second one is this is another indicator, like the fall of the Syrian pound, like the difficulties the Syrian Government has in getting oil shipments in, like the difficulties it has putting bread and other staples in the stores, that the regime is under extraordinary pressure. We think it's one of the reasons why the Russians may be more interested in talking to us again about a possible compromise.

So we're not coming to any conclusions. We just find it fascinating, of course, because it's exposing the dirty laundry in one of the worst regimes in the 21st century. And we're hoping it indicates that there will be more dislocation and more disintegration of that evil regime.

MS ORTAGUS: Great. Thank you so much. Okay, let's see. Jessica Donati.

QUESTION: Thank you. I have a quick question for Secretary Wooster. In terms of the regional fight against extremism, the U.S. has been considering reducing its troop presence in Egypt. And I was wondering if this is a sign of a downgrade in ties between the U.S. and Egypt and how it could further impact the situation there.

MR WOOSTER: I'd refer you on questions about U.S. troop presence and the MFO to the Pentagon. Over.

MS ORTAGUS: Great, thanks. Abbie Williams.

QUESTION: Hi, thanks so much for doing the call. You spoke about Russia taking advantage of the pandemic, but I wondered if you have any insight into how you're seeing ISIS behave during this time. Have you seen any resurgence as was feared, maybe not just in Syria, but in other places? And have you seen any noticeable impact on the ability to maintain the Syrian camps with ISIS families since U.S. efforts to get resources there?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: This is Jim Jeffrey. General White, the CJTF Operation Enduring Response[3] commander in Baghdad, will be giving a press conference and address this tomorrow, so I don't want to get too ahead of him on the military side of things. Generally speaking, we have not seen a significant overall increase in ISIS activity because of the COVID virus and various military shifts in response to that and other things going on in both Iraq and Syria since last fall.

That said, two exceptions. One is we saw a major and complex attack, as we call it, near  in Salah ad Din province last week that roughly 70 Iraqi Security Forces  now, these were mainly police and these pro-Iranian militias. They weren't the A team, but still that's a lot of people to be lost in one battle or set of battles.

Secondly, in the Badiyah desert and elsewhere all the way to the southwest near the Jordanian and the Israeli border, we have seen a certain uptick in ISIS activities, largely because the regime and the Russians have been so focused on Idlib with their best forces. They put the third team in the desert against ISIS, and the third team obviously doesn't do too well against a force that still is capable. We do not see this as a strategic change, but we are watching it. Again, White will have more comments tomorrow.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. No one else? We're good on that? Okay. Let me just see. Sorry, let me figure out who's next in the queue here. We had a little bit of an issue. We have Michel Ghandour who is up next.

QUESTION: Yeah, thank you for doing this call. My question is for Ambassador Jeffrey. How do you view the Russian criticism to Assad, first? And is Russia playing any role in the conflict between Assad and Rami Makhlouf? Is it supporting Makhlouf, who is based in an area controlled by the Russians?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Again, we're not quite sure whether the Russian public criticism by folks close to Putin reflects some sort of signaling to us or to Assad himself that Russian tolerance for Assad's refusal to make any compromises, refusal to help  if you will, to help the Russians sell Syria as a going proposition for the areas of the world, mainly North America, Europe, and the Middle East, that would give Syria diplomatic recognition and acceptance and shell out hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction assistance. We're still trying to figure out what that means.

Now, the Makhlouf question is particularly interesting because I've seen both, that this is an effort by the Syrian Government to respond to Russian pressure, which is to clean up your own house  and believe me, that would start with a guy like him  but secondly, we've also seen that  we have seen a number of suggestions and rumors  this isn't anything solid  that in fact, the Russians are supporting this guy and are very concerned about where Assad is going. That typically is linked with a "the Iranians are against him, the Russians are for him" argument. But there's all kinds of rumors out there. You cannot imagine how much the whole Syrian community, both pro- and anti-Assad, is exercised by this development. It is a significant development.

MS ORTAGUS: Thanks, Jim. Said Arikat.

QUESTION: Thank you, Morgan. Ambassador Jeffrey, very quickly to follow up on Michel Ghandour's issue with Rami Makhlouf  can you hear me?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: I can.

QUESTION: Yeah, okay. Great. On Rami Makhlouf, do you see him as a serious challenger to Bashar al-Assad? And you also said that Assad maybe  may have alienated the Russians. How is that likely to impact any possible solution, say  let's say in the next six months or a year? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Okay. Rami Makhlouf is no challenge to Assad unless both Russia and Iran got behind him. I do not see that as possible. I won't go into the details, but we have heard repeatedly from Russians we take as credible in terms of determining Russian policy that they understand how bad Assad is. They also don't see any alternative, and that would include Makhlouf. Again, it's very hard to assess where this is going. We're just watching it carefully. I think many of you out there who follow Syria closely probably have your own views.

MS ORTAGUS: Thanks, Jim. Okay, let's see. I think it's Humeyra. You're up next.

QUESTION: Hello. Thanks for this. I have, very quick, two questions. Haftar has had some  several setbacks on the front line. Do you think there is any chance that his foreign backers would persuade him to end the Tripoli offensive?

And the other thing: You expressed discontent over Haftar establishing ties with Assad. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? And specifically, have you seen Assad send Syrian fighters to help Haftar in his Tripoli offensive? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Henry, we both 

MR ROBINSON: Go ahead.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY:  know the answer to the latter, but why don't you take the whole thing?

MR WOOSTER: Sure thing. Okay. On the matter of different backers, Haftar's foreign backers, no, we don't  look, for as long as there is an objective that they can meet through Haftar as an instrument, we don't see them backing down. Believe me, we are discussing these things with them all the time. We bring these concerns all the time to the backers on both sides, not just with Haftar, and the fingers keep pointing one side at the other. So I don't think that in the near-term offing, at least in the foreseeable future, there is any likely prospect whatsoever that that will happen.

Jim, did you want to roll into the other element of that?

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: No, except that we know that certainly the Russians are working with Assad to transfer militia fighters, possibly third country, possibly Syrian, to Libya, as well as equipment.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Thanks. I don't think  I think Robbie dropped off the queue. Ruben, are you showing anyone else in the queue?

MR HARUTUNIAN: No, that's it.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay. Okay, great. Well, thanks, everybody. I appreciate it. And thanks to our speakers for staying on the line a little bit longer than normal. We appreciate it and we will speak to all of you tomorrow. I think we have at least two briefings tomorrow, so it'll be a busy Friday. Thank you.

[1] North Africa

[2] Robinson

[3] Operation Inherent Resolve

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Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, May 11, 2020 13:26 618 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d8199 1 City social-aid,COVID-19,coronavirus,anies-baswedan,Sri-Mulyani-Indrawati,Jakarta-administration,finance-minister,Jakarta-governor Free

Since Jakarta implemented large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) to curb the spread of COVID-19, 38-year-old Rasmono from Batang, Central Java, has lost his livelihood as a hawker in the Sunda Kelapa area. None of the social aid from the Jakarta administration and the central government has reached him.

"Our neighbors in Kerapu village [in North Jakarta] have received the staple food packages from the President, but not those who are not permanent residents, although weve given our data to the neighborhood unit head [RT], Rasmono told The Jakarta Post.

Massage therapist Nurul Hanafiah has also yet to receive any government assistance, although she and her children are registered for the city-funded Healthy Indonesia Card (KIS) program. Now she is unable to pay her monthly rent for her house in Srengseng Sawah in South Jakarta.

"I need help, but my name isn't registered, even though I'm a Jakarta resident. My RT does not care about people who live in rented houses," she said. Nurul has signed up for unemployment benefits and for a training subsidy program, the Preemployment Card, but has yet to receive any cash aid.

Budget and data problems have hampered social aid distribution in the capital city. President Joko Jokowi Widodos ministers are saying the city does not have a budget for social aid, even though Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said he had allocated more than Rp 5 trillion for COVID-19 handling from the unexpected spending item in the citys budget.

Read also: COVID-19: Jokowi calls for transparency in social assistance distribution

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said she had received a report from Coordinating Human Development and Culture Minister Muhadjir Effendy on Jakartas lack of funds to deliver on its promise to distribute social aid to 1.1 million residents.

The central government and the Jakarta administration previously agreed to cover 3.6 million beneficiaries through the citys social safety nets, of which the central government would take care of 2.5 million.

"The Jakarta administration apparently did not have the funds and asked for central government assistance [...]. No, we [the central government] are covering all of those, Sri Mulyani said in a hearing with House of Representative Commission XI, which oversees finance, on Wednesday.

On top of the budget feud, data problems are resulting in overlapping social aid distribution. Social Affairs Minister Juliari Batubara said residents in at least 15 areas were registered for aid programs of both the ministry and the city administration.

The initial agreement was not like that. The central administration should only be responsible for those who cannot be covered by the city administration, said Juliary.

Read also: Govt expands social aid for poor to prevent Idul Fitri mudik

The city administration began distributing staple food packages on April 9, a day before large-scale social restrictions were officially implemented in Jakarta. To date, 1.16 million families have received assistance out of the 1.19 million packages prepared.

On April 20, the central government, through the Social Affairs Ministry, began distributing staple food packaged called Presidential assistance to 947,126 households in Jakarta.

The Jakarta administration's assistant for public welfare, Catur Laswanto, said the social aid prepared by his office did not cover laid-off workers, ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers, fishermen, bajaj (three-wheeled motorized vehicle) drivers, art performers, houses of worship keepers and urban migrants.

These people, he said, were not initially poor but had been economically devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the administration had submitted additional data of 2.2 million beneficiaries to the Social Affairs Ministry for the second phase of aid distribution.

The ministry is still verifying the data. Once the official figures come out, we will continue the distribution. We hope to finish the distribution before Idul Fitri, Catur said.

Read also: Govt to disburse social assistance to Greater Jakarta poor by April 20

Mujiyono, the Jakarta Legislative Council's head of Commission A overseeing administrative affairs, called on Sri Mulyani to pay off revenue sharing (DBH) to the city administration to help fund its budget.

According to the Democratic Party politician, the Finance Ministry owes the city Rp 7.5 trillion of DBH funds but has only paid Rp 2.56 trillion, while Finance Ministry Regulation No. 36/2020 mandates the acceleration of DBH payments by 50 percent for COVID-19 handling.

Sri Mulyani, however, stated that the central administration should only pay the DBH in August or September of the following year, or after the Supreme Audit Agencys (BPK) state budget audit.

"What Pak Anies always asked for was the 2019 DBH [...]. The BPK will state the tax revenue of the previous year, then we pay according to that figure, Sri Mulyani said.

Read also: Red tape stymies social aid

Jakarta Council Deputy Speaker Zita Anjani criticized the feud between the central government and the city administration, noting that problems did not only occur in Jakarta but that other regions also experienced difficulties in social aid distribution.

"Anies asked for central government assistance because he want to help the citizens. This is not a matter of public image anymore. The people need help and the pandemic must pass. There are many things we must do and the costs for it are huge, the National Mandate Party (PAN) politician said.
The governments income support programs have made Canadians a bit more hopeful about the future in general.

In the latest edition of the Bloomberg-Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, the composite gauge inched up to 37.7 in the week ending May 1, from the 37.1 reading a week prior.

The share of Canadians who are preparing for a weaker economy over the next six months posted its second weekly decline, to 76.1% from the 80.2% the week prior.
Jack keeps noticing  and duly pointing out, to the uninterested others  parallels between current events and the stories in my book. There are more, even, than he catches: Theres a birth in a barn, a plague, a Moses, a Cain and an Abel, even a crucifixion. But part of the novels genius is that these allusions never really lead anywhere  they dont coalesce into some superstructure of metaphor. The baby born in the manger is just a baby. The allusions arent symbols or clues; theyre just faint echoes, like puzzle pieces too few to fit together. They dont mean what were used to them meaning.

Its Jack who teases out, using the spare parts of these old parables, a new system of understanding their devolving world. And its pretty good: God, he decides, is a code word. When the people in the book say God, they mean nature. Whats more, if God equals nature, then Jesus equals science. He makes a chart for comparison between Jesus and science: heals the sick  check; makes blind people see  check; turns hardly any food into lots 

And the proof is, theres lots the same with Jesus and science, Jack says. Like, for science to save us we have to believe in it. And same with Jesus. If you believe in Jesus he can save you.

Science can still save us if we believe in it. That knowledge doesnt exactly hit the other characters with the force of a revelation. It doesnt change the outcome of events. But its there, Jack insists; its in his book. And now its in Millets book too, for those with ears to hear.

On the farm, the children find a shaky but peaceful equilibrium, for a while. Even in the Bible, of course, there are bad guys; and they come here in the form of looters, heavily armed and sadistic, whose base of operations is a nearby former McDonalds. The children have nothing with which to fight back. But, as in the Bible, every disaster story is also an origin story.

To Jack, the Bible is an old book found in a decaying summer house, an artifact to try to make sense of, a missive from some lost world. With brilliant restraint, Millet conceives her own low-key bible the same way. Its not a history, not a tract or a jeremiad; the truth it bears is not going to overwrite the future. Its a tale in which whoever or whatever comes after us might recognize, however imperfectly, a certain continuity: an exotic but still decodable shred of evidence from the lost world that is the world we are living in right now.
Newly discovered court documents show that in 1996, Tara Reade told her ex-husband that she was sexually harassed in U.S. Senator Joe Bidens office.

Reades then-husband Theodore Dronen filed the declaration, which was obtained by the San Louis Obispo Tribune, while contesting a restraining order that Reade had filed against him after he filed for divorce. Dronen explains that Reade told him on several occasions about a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Senator Joe Bidens office.

It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on (Reade), and that she is still sensitive and effected by it today, Dronen explains, saying that the alleged incident and others described in the document color [Reades] perception and judgment with respect to the restraining order.

Reades lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, said the document is further support that Ms. Reade was sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by then Senator Joe Biden, although Dronen does not mention that Reade told him it was Biden that had sexually harassed her.

Reades former neighbor has come forward to state on the record that Reade told her Biden had assaulted her in 1995, two years after the alleged assault occurred. Reade has also identified a woman, who called into a 1993 clip from CNNs Larry King Live to discuss problems her daughter had had with a U.S. senator, as her mother.

Dronen also said that Reade had said she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senators office and left her position. Joe Bidens campaign responded to the new revelation by providing a comment from Ted Kaufman, Bidens chief of staff in 1993, who denied that Reade ever approached him.

I have consistently said what is the truth here  that she never came to me, Kaufman said. I do not remember her, and had she come to me in any of these circumstances, I would remember her. But I do not, because she did not.

Reade, appearing in an exclusive interview with Megyn Kelly, called for Biden to drop out of the 2020 race. I want to say, you were there, Joe Biden. Please, step forward and be held accountable. You should not be running on character for the president of the United States, Reade stated.

More from National Review
Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday transferred Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi and two other additional commissioners amid rising number of coronavirus cases in the city.

IS Chahal has been appointed as the new Mumbai civic chief. The state government has also appointed Sanjeev Jaiswal and Ashwini Bhide as additional municipal commissioners of the BMC replacing Abasaheb Jarhad and Jayshree Bhoj, said a senior official.

Chahal was working as principal secretary urban development department.

Pardeshi is likely to be appointed as additional chief secretary in urban development or home department.

The state government has been facing criticism for the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases, especially in Mumbai. It was also under pressure from the Centre to control the situation in the financial capital.

The number of Covid-19 infected persons in Mumbai is now close to 12,000, higher than any other city in the country.

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan had recently expressed concern over growth in positive cases in the state.
Just two months ago, it was standing room only at Michigan airports.

Now those same terminals are in free fall amid the national coronavirus emergency, burning through cash and losing flights on routes that took years to establish.

These airports are like ghost towns, said Peter Hansen of Mio, who flew into Flint Bishop Airport from Florida on Tuesday, May 5.

Id be fine flying again," Hansen said. Its kind of nice without all the people hanging around, but who knows how long this will last. Its probably going to be (this way) throughout the summer if not longer.

Hansen is seeing with his own eyes what airport officials and analysts have seen in the balance sheets since mid-March.

Daily passenger counts at Transportation Security Administration screening stations dropped more than 95 percent on some days last month when compared to the same date one year ago.

Airport officials estimate each departing passenger lost costs them about $20, not including landing fees, which are different at each commercial airport in the state. If passenger traffic were to remain down 90 percent for the year, that would translate to a loss of more than $347 million at airports statewide with Detroit accounting for more than 90 percent of those losses.

Airport managers and analysts say a full recovery is likely to take years, not months.

With fliers staying at home and flights reduced to the bare minimum required by the federal government, revenues from parking and landing fees are quickly drying up, too. Meanwhile the cost of keeping the lights on remains.

At Bishop and MBS Airport, which is owned by Bay County and the cites of Saginaw and Midland, airport officials have even stopped charging for parking because the cost of the operation is more than the money being collected.

Normally we would have a terminal with 12,000 to 14,000 people in it every day coming and going," said Tory Richardson, chief executive officer of Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids. "It would be hustling and bustling. Our garage up until the COVID-19 pandemic  was at capacity and we were having to close it because it was full several days a week every week 

Today you can walk through the building and see literally just a handful of people -- maybe. The restaurants, the bars  those places are closed  theyre dark. The lights are off. The chairs are shoved in a corner and the tables are shoved back so you can clearly walk through the building and say something is not right. This is not the way you would normally expect it to be."

Losses are staggering

Grand Rapids passenger counts are down about 95 percent compared to a year ago; 15 employees have been laid off, furloughed, or outsourced; an early retirement program is being offered to 24 eligible employees, and officials are considering something that was unthinkable just a few months ago -- closing one of two concourses that connect the Gerald R. Ford terminal in an effort to weather the storm.

At Detroit Metro Airport, officials arent yet discussing just how badly passenger traffic has suffered in April, but passenger counts in March alone were down more than 50 percent compared to the same month last year.

Spokeswoman Lisa Gass said in an email to MLive that DTW officials are still assessing the full, long-term impact of COVID-19.

As you know, U.S. airlines are continuing to reduce their flight schedules, which affects the revenue that we receive from them. In addition, there are fewer passengers, which impacts revenue ranging from parking to concessions. We are analyzing the data. We should be able to share more information in the near future, Gass said.

Although flights are continuing at DTW and elsewhere, they are being cut back as airlines adjust to very low demand, staying afloat with federal money that requires them to fly in markets they served before the coronavirus emergency.

At MBS, United Airlines could end its flights provided by SkyWest and the flights it is providing are being routed through to Muskegon on the way to and from Chicago, said James Canders, assistant airport manager.

Passengers not ready to fly

Theres still going to be a lot of people who are scared" going forward, Canders said. As soon as youre in that airplane, social distancing is gone ... youre all together in that tube.

Airlines like Delta have asked the Department of Transportation for exemptions that would allow them to stop service to some markets, including Flint, Lansing and Kalamazoo/Battle Creek -- a request thats still pending -- and United requested but was rejected in its bid to end service in Kalamazoo while still collecting money thats been provided through Coronavirus Aid, Recovery, and Economic Security Act.

Aviation consultant Brad DiFiore of Ailevon Pacific said the struggles of airports will continue as long as people are staying away from flying because of worries about COVID-19. Airlines are in a survival mode -- parking and decommissioning aircraft they dont see a need for on the horizon, he added.

The industry is in an existential crises. Never before has basically the entire industrys revenue gone down to virtually zero overnight ..., said DiFiore, who has consulted with both Flint and Grand Rapids. Its primarily driven by the fact that nobody wants to fly anywhere. Thats completely understandable, but it certainly puts the industry in a really, really difficult situation ... Its not going to get any better until people feel its safe to fly."

Timm Allen, a travel agent who works in customer relations and industry affairs at Travel Brokers, which has offices in Flint, Fenton and Grand Blanc, said he still has clients who are flying, but its just a small fraction of what it was just two months ago.

Not only are fliers worried about their health, they dont know when the locations they are traveling to will reopen.

People are just beginning to reschedule flights for after the first of the year, Allen said. We still have people traveling for some business, but its extremely rare ... I think, until theres a vaccine and that assurance, our world is not going out to travel like we normally do.

Hard road back

Airports across the country got a boost of $10 billion from the federal government on March 27, but Bishop officials, for example, expect to spend their portion of that -- $7.2 million -- long before things return to normal.

In Flint, there have been no layoffs or furloughs of employees because of the coronavirus slowdown, but the hiring of seasonal temporary employees has been shelved, overtime has been eliminated unless an emergency exists, an economy parking lot has been closed and projects have been deferred to save money.

A strong start to 2020 helped Bishop and other Michigan airports deal with terrible March and April business.

Before the coronavirus emergency, passenger traffic statewide was up more than 10 percent after two months compared to the same two months of 2019, according to state Department of Transportation records.

Those gains have been erased, and in addition to Flint, Grand Rapids officials have also deferred capital improvement projects.

We have had to reduce our operating and capital expenses," Richardson said. Capital projects that we can defer, we are doing that. In some cases we are delaying them indefinitely. In other cases we may not even proceed with a project if we dont see the traffic come back to the way it was. Those are literally put on hold for a future decision once we know what the future holds.

Some things that have changed due to coronavirus arent going away, Richardson said, including more regular and rigorous cleaning and extra hand sanitizing stations.

Nino Sapone, Bishop Airport director, said thats part of the new normal for aviation regardless of what happens next.

Airlines, airports are the cleanest theyve ever been. You see our airport now, its immaculate and thats the standard now," Sapone said. "Thats going to be the standard going forward ... Were here to support it. Were ready to go as the public responds and the airlines respond.

Its going to take a long time to recover

But DiFiore says it will take years to return air travel to what it was before coronavirus and theres a secondary fallout from the pandemic -- peoples uncertainty over their own pocketbooks with unemployment high and businesses shuttered.

Its going to take a long time. ... two to three years I think is probably the minimum" before passenger traffic returns to 2019 levels. This isnt going to be a short-term impact. Were expecting now for 2020 the entire year is going to be down over 50 percent for pretty much the entire country and probably more than 50 percent.

Richardson said he expects Grand Rapids will operate through the summer at no better than 15 percent of the traffic they had during the same months a year ago.

Finishing the year, I would say around 50 percent of where we were a year ago. I think thats probably pretty optimistic and I think that trend will continue into next year, he said. "But nobody knows. Is there another cycle of this that hits us in the fall? Is the economy going to do something that will further exacerbate whats going on in the business cycle? There are those two caveats out there, but I think the optimistic view at this point is that airports get back to at least 50 percent of where they were a year ago by the end of this year with recovering continuing probably for the next two years before we can get back to  record-breaking growth.

Delta Air Lines files to suspend all flights in Flint, Lansing and Kalamazoo

Grand Rapids airport is nearly empty with plane ridership falling 90 percent because of coronavirus

Kalamazoo airport loses 94% of passengers amid pandemic
Arthur Stark, Chair, William Daroff, CEO, and Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, issued the following statement:

We commend the German Interior Ministry for taking action against the terrorist organization Hezbollah by instituting a ban on all of its activities within Germanys borders.

An Iranian proxy with the blood of countless innocents on its hands, Hezbollah conducts criminal operations in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere to finance its terror activities around the world. No quarter should be given to these purveyors of murder and vicious anti-Semitism, who are unyielding in their quest to destroy the Jewish State.

We look forward to seeing the bans swift implementation and encourage other countries to join Germany in taking this critical step.
Bob and Cortney Novogratz are navigating the coronavirus pandemic by working on projects from home, talking to clients, contractors and vendors by phone and video meetings and keeping six of their seven kids focused on schoolwork.

The husband-wife design team shifted from their Manhattan base to their vacation home in the Berkshires because it seemed safer. Their three school-age kids came with them, of course, and three college-age children came home from school, too. (Their oldest, Wolfgang Novogratz, is 22 and a working actor.)

They design large projects all over the world for well-heeled clientele, but on a recent day, they were more concerned with their internet connection at home. It was sketchy and their kids couldnt stay connected to do their homework, so Cortney booked two rooms at a nearby Ramada Inn because the place was vacant and had better WiFi.

In addition to a variety of home projects for clients and building two houses, the Novogratz  they refer to themselves as a couple as the Novogratz  are promoting their latest book, Novogratz Design Fix: Chic and Stylish Tips for Every Decorating Scenario.

In 11 chapters, they present 11 favorite projects that cover a lot of ground: a large home in Hollywood Hills that was their own and required a massive makeover; a classic townhouse; a prefab surf shack; even an Airbnb space.

Bob Novogratz recently spoke with VIP about their book, design trends and the value of art.

More Information Tips from "Novogratz Design Fix" Flea markets: There are great bargains to be had at flea markets. Arrive early, take cash and when you see something you like, buy it. (It's not likely to be there when you go back for it.) Vintage items you can find here add personality to your home. Shelves: Mix books (arranged by color or size), decorative items, photos, keepsakes and plants. Creating an open floor plan: Remove nonstructural walls. Use a single paint color and one flooring choice throughout for continuity. Splurges: Spend your money where it matters, things such as good steel windows and doors, reclaimed wood floors and nicer kitchens. (Tip: You'll save money buying floor samples.) Lighting: Mix vintage and modern, high and low; hang the best lighting in the main areas of your home. Trees: Plant fruit trees. In addition to shade and privacy, you'll also get free fruit. Man caves: Channel Ralph Lauren rather than TGI Fridays. Remember that comfortable seating can be stylish, and don't let the TV overtake the space. Window treatments: They're essential for every window, and function should dictate what you use - more formal draperies for more formal rooms and less formal shades for kids rooms and the kitchen. Blackout shades and draperies are needed in bedrooms. Bedrooms: Better beds and bedding are worth the investment since we spend one-third of our lives in bed. See More Collapse

Q: Your book covers such a variety of sizes and styles of homes, and is very how-to at a time when so many other design books focus on beautiful rooms in big-budget homes.

A: I think this is our fourth book, and we like for each to be a little different. We do such unique projects, the castle in California or the townhouse in Manhattan, but we also did a trailer in Montauk and an Airbnb in the Pacific Northwest and a bungalow in San Diego. Theres also a mix of high and low, like weve always done. We have a lot to say about a lot of different things  trends, smaller living and shared experiences. We like to keep old houses and bring them back to life.

Q: Two chapters are homes that were your own  do you keep seeing the same problems in homes, or do you just like to reinvent older homes for life in them today?

A: We try to find the next big area. Hollywood Hills has always been a hot area, but the few blocks around us werent as expensive as some others. It was a weird house when we bought it. We always make them a little different from everyone else. Thats how we do better than everyone else; people will pay a premium if a house is unique.

In LA, people want views, privacy and parking  those are the big three. To me, the yard was the biggest thing; we played wiffle ball in the backyard with the kids. That, to us, was awesome.

Q: What do you think are the most difficult elements for people who are trying to pull it together themselves?

A: One thing we always do well is we buy a wreck, gut it and start fresh  its the best way to do it. You go in a house and its OK but not your aesthetic. Its in good shape but dated. You have to rip it up anyway, so it doesnt matter how ugly it is. Most people dont have the vision to see that.

Q: Color seems to be an important element of your designs. Does color take care of a lot of problems?

A: We use every color in bedrooms. Color is something Cortney and I always responded to. Its a quick fix and an easy fix, and if its wrong and you dont like it, you can change it. Few of us can do plumbing or electrical work or hang wallpaper, but most of us can paint. Color makes you happy  and it gives a house personality and a sense of fun, which a lot of homes lack.

Q: Art plays a big role in your homes. What advice would you give someone wanting to start buying art?

A: Weve collected art for 25 years. Art is something people think they need permission to start collecting. They dont know how to get going  what do I spend, what kind do I buy? We talk about art in one chapter; art is a great way to add color to a home.

I say everything is relative to your own budget.

If youre buying something expensive, research it a little. Find out where youd buy it and who else is in the gallery. Have they had any art in museums? Theres also inexpensive art. You can buy oil paintings in flea markets or limited-edition prints. Colleges all over the country have great art departments, and you can buy from students.

I always bought young artists. Now, very few people can afford anything but young artists. Its fun to buy a young artist and later see them do well.

Q: What are the essential elements for a good room?

A: Its changed for us through the years. I think the bones of the house are the most important thing. The millwork and the hardwoods and tiles. The best houses weve taken over had good bones to start with. Good bones are hard to re-create.

Q: What do you want people to learn from your book?
The Vietnamese foreign ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang has said Vietnam rejects Chinas unilateral decision on a fishing ban in the East Vietnam Sea from May 1 to August 16.

Answering reporters queries about the issue on Friday, Hang reiterated that Vietnam has sufficient historical and legal evidence affirming its sovereignty over Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes in accordance with international law.

As an East Vietnam Sea coastal country and a member of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Vietnam has sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction over its waters as defined in the UNCLOS and enjoys other legitimate interests at sea in line with the UNCLOSs regulations, she said.

Given the regional and global context at present, Vietnam asks China not to further complicate the situation in the East Vietnam Sea, she added.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Thirteen new COVID-19 cases in Victoria have been detected, including eight connected with Cedar Meats, taking the total cases stemming from the Melbourne abattoir to 71.

The government and police warned people on Friday that although there might soon be an easing of stay-at-home restrictions they must not pay any visits on Mother's Day or attend planned protests in the CBD. Police Minister Lisa Neville said the message for the weekend remained "stay at home".

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton with Police Minister Lisa Neville at a media conference in February. Credit:Paul Jeffers

The warning comes as a police crackdown on family violence during the lockdown found cases in one in three at-risk families they visited.

Up to 100 people are expected at two protests planned for Melbourne's CBD over the weekend: one against vaccinations and 5G phones, the other against lockdown rules.
Businesses located hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest coronavirus case are pleading with the state government to end lockdown restrictions sooner in a tiered approach that allows virus-free towns and regions to resume normal life.

Victorian government data shows only a handful of active COVID-19 cases have been detected outside of Melbourne's metropolitan area.

Regional businesses, many already reeling from a disrupted summer and Easter period, say they are being disproportionately affected by Victoria's tight restrictions.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed Australias three-step re-opening road map on Friday.
SEATTLE, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jeff Reynolds, founder of UrbanCondoSpaces.com and longtime Windermere Real Estate top-producing agent, announced he has joined Compass in Seattle. The veteran condominium sales and marketing expert has nearly $500 million in career sales, with more than $56 million total sales volume in 2019.

The New Construction Sales Specialist Brings Years of Local Market Knowledge to King County's Fastest-Growing Real Estate Brokerage

Reynolds brings 18 years of experience in land acquisition and new construction condominium sales to Compass, which is the only major local brokerage to not decrease in market share in dollars of transactions in Q1 2020 (NWMLS). He will be based out of the firm's office at 501 East Pike Street, Seattle, Washington.

"Jeff is a foundational agent in the Seattle community whose reputation on delivering an amazing client experience is known throughout King County. We're excited to have him join the Compass family and take his business to the next level," said Matt Rosenberg, Compass Chief Revenue Officer. "We've seen amazing growth in Seattle, especially as it is the home of our West Coast product and engineering hub. It is Compass' ability to attract agents like Jeff who have a vision for what agents need that will help our team continue to build the future of real estate."

Reynolds is looking forward to the opportunity to join Compass as it continues to attract top talent as the fastest-growing brokerage in King County.

"I've admired Compass and their expansion into the Seattle market. As the Seattle Compass team continues to expand their footprint in real estate technology and artificial intelligence, I hope to utilize my market knowledge and Compass technology to continue to serve my loyal and valued customers."

Reynolds plans on helping Compass expand into larger-scale, high-rise condominiums sales. Jeff is the editor and founder of UrbanCondoSpaces.com, a blog dedicated to urban living and real estate in Seattle and Bellevue. In his years of experience in the greater Seattle real estate market, Reynolds has consistently led his peers.

"I'm looking forward to elevating the services I can provide for my clients," said Reynolds. Compass has a focus on empowering brokers with world-class technology and programs so they can grow their business. I'm ready to hit the ground running."

ABOUT COMPASS

Compass is a leading national real estate technology company, providing tools and services to help real estate agents grow their businesses and better serve their clients. As one of the largest groups of small business owners in the country, real estate agents utilize the end-to-end Compass platform to improve their productivity and help them manage their business more effectively. Compass currently powers over 16,000 real estate agents across 100+ U.S. cities, who were responsible for over $91 billion in real estate transactions in 2019. For more information on how Compass powers one of the largest groups of business owners in the country, please visit www.Compass.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Jenny Mueller

Senior Marketing Advisor/PR Lead  Compass Seattle

720.340.0417

[email protected]

BROKER CONTACT

Jeff Reynolds

206.794.1118

[email protected]

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A stunning hut in rural New South Wales is tempting keen travellers, with its private hot tub, picture-perfect interiors and sweeping views of the beautiful surrounding countryside.

Sweeneys Hut is the premium offering from the rural farm experience company Kimo Estate, and it is situated over a view of the Murrumbidgee River Flats near Narrandera in New South Wales.

Those who have stayed at the $500 per night boutique accommodation have repeatedly described it as 'the best stay I have ever had' and 'one of the most romantic places' in the world.

A stunning hut in rural New South Wales is tempting itchy-feeted travellers, with its private hot tub, picture-perfect interiors and sweeping views of the beautiful surrounding countryside (Sweeneys Hut pictured)

Sweeneys Hut is the premium offering from the rural farm experience company Kimo Estate, and it offers guests all sorts of locally-sourced produce alongside the sweeping views (pictured)

'Beautiful and unique, this is the real Australia and we loved our stay,' one recent guest reviewed the hut on Airbnb.

'A perfect getaway. The views were breathtaking, the sunrise in the morning and stars at night were amazing. Highly recommend,' another added.

Travel bloggers including Tara Milk Tea, who made it onto the Instagram Rich List for 2019, have also enjoyed a stay at Sweeneys Hut after the recent Australian bushfires, describing it as a 'beautiful home'.

Those who have stayed at the $500 per night boutique accommodation have repeatedly described it as 'the best stay I have ever had' and 'one of the most romantic places' in the world

Alongside the views and the hot tub, guests of Sweeneys Hut will also enjoy a cosy log fire, beautiful linen, homegrown, locally-sourced produce and a space all to themselves - with no one around for miles (pictured)

Travel bloggers including Tara Milk Tea, who made it onto the Instagram Rich List for 2019, have enjoyed a stay at Sweeneys Hut after the recent Australian bushfires, describing it as a 'beautiful home' (Tara Milk Tea pictured at Sweeneys Hut)



Alongside the views and the hot tub, guests of Sweeneys Hut will also enjoy a cosy log fire, beautiful linen, homegrown, locally-sourced produce and a space all to themselves - with no one around for miles.

The property boasts floor-to-ceiling windows so that guests can see the sun and the stars, and there is plenty to explore in the surrounding region if you get bored of the peace and quiet, including walks, wineries and restaurants.

The hut sleeps two people, and the estate has been known to host weddings and events too.

The property boasts floor-to-ceiling windows (pictured) so that guests can see the sun and the stars, and there is plenty to explore in the surrounding region if you get bored of the peace and quiet, including walks, wineries and restaurants

All of the huts are off grid, but allow you to go 'back to nature in style'; the estate has also been known to host events and weddings in the past (Sweeneys Hut pictured)

There is other accommodation available at Kimo's Estate too, such as Daleys Cottage which has three bedrooms and other eco huts like JR's Hut, which is similar to Sweeneys without the hot tub.

All of the huts are off grid, but allow you to go 'back to nature in style'.

For more information about Sweeneys Hut and the other Kimo Estate properties, please click here. You can also follow them on Instagram here.
NEW HAVEN  A party traveled through the city Friday, and everyone was invited.

The suggested price of admission? A completed census form.

With DJ Rob Nice on the microphone from the bed of a truck, city officials and partners traveled through some of the most undercounted areas in the city to encourage people to fill out their census forms.

Were doing this because of Covid-19. Its not like we can do the outreach we had planned, said Keith Lawrence, coordinator of New Haven Complete Count 2020. Were trying to reach the harder-to-reach households.

As of Friday, 46 percent of the city has filled out a form; 38 percent of the city completed it online. 2020 is the first census year where the form is available online.

Karolina Ksiazek, Complete Count program manager and a consultant for the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, said the city receives roughly $3,000 for every resident who completes a form.

I hope once things open up well be able to meet them where they are, she said. This is the easiest way to get almost $3,000 more for your community.

Ksiazek said any extra time granted by Congress would be helpful.

Mayor Justin Elicker, who went on a citywide door-knocking campaign while running for office in 2019, said he knows how difficult it can be to reach residents of the city.

Its very hard to find people, he said. There might be eight doorbells for a three-family home.

In the absence of door-knocking, city officials hope to spark confidence and awareness in residents.

Lisa McKnight, a volunteer with Witnesses to Hunger, said New Haven is notoriously undercounted, and she once was among those who did not fill out the form every 10 years.

Some communities dont harbor a lot of trust for number counting, she said.

Rachel Schmidt, also a volunteer for Witnesses to Hunger, said federal tax dollars are going somewhere, so if New Haven residents dont respond, then the money goes elsewhere.

The distrust in contributing data to the federal government is not unfounded Schmidt said, but the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly ruled against those attempting to access U.S. Census data.

Elicker said that undocumented residents of the city have a constitutional right to be counted, and as such they should fill out the form,

Lawrence said the citys efforts do not end with Fridays caravan. He said the Complete Count committee has considered text messaging and phone banking efforts so they can count as many city residents before the deadline as possible.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com.
That was fast: Tickets for Monday's reopening of China's Shanghai Disney Resort have already sold out.

Those tickets were gone by Friday though there were passes available for Tuesday as of Saturday night, according to the park's website.

Though the Shanghai park can accommodate 80,000 guests, the Chinese government is restricting admission to 30%  or 24,000 guests per day  during the initial reopening phase. But Disney CEO Bob Chapek says even that number is a ways off.

"We are going to open up far below that to have our training wheels on," he said during the company's earnings call on Tuesday. In a few weeks, he said the park will ramp up to the new limit."

Chapek added, "We will take a phased approach with limits on attendance using an advanced reservation and entry system, controlled guest density using social distancing and strict, government-required health and prevention procedures," he said. "These include the use of masks, temperature screenings and other contact tracing and early detection systems."

On Friday, Shanghai Disney Resort published a video that walks Chinese visitors through what they can expect when the park reopens. Among the takeaways: get ready to have your temperature taken and don't hug Mickey Mouse.

.

Disney's Shanghai park to reopen Monday with precautions: What about US parks?

The video, narrated in Standard Chinese with English subtitles, warns day visitors that they'll need to purchase a ticket online for a specific date in advance. Annual pass holders must also reserve a date ahead of time. Customers will need to bring their reservation and QR code with them when they visit, along with a valid government ID. (Digital or printed copies will not be accepted.)

Guests must wear face masks for the duration of their visit, except when dining.

Upon arrival, their first stop will be a health screening checkpoint where they'll show their reservations to employees and have their temperatures checked. Admission will be denied to anyone whose temperature is over 99.3 or 37.3. Inside the health-screening tent, there will be instructions and markings on the ground indicating where to stand so that social distancing can be maintained.

Story continues

Guests will need to make a reservation to visit Shanghai Disney Resort and when they do, they'll have to go through temperature and bag checks.

Assuming guests pass the health screening, they'll stand on floor markings placed six feet apart in the queue for a security screening, where they'll once again show their reservations. Their bags will be checked and they'll pass through a metal detector. They'll also encounter socially distanced markings on the ground as they approach the ticket turnstiles, where they'll show their tickets and IDs, which must match the name used to book each ticket.

"As you enter the park, the vast majority of attractions, rides, shows and shopping and dining locations will be open but at controlled capacity," the video cautions.

Ride queues will also have social-distancing markers and when it comes time to board the ride, the park asks that guests put empty seats or rows between them and the groups before and after them. Rides with small cars will only allow one group to sit together.

Disney also asks that guests use hand sanitizer provided at the exit point for each ride.

Interactions with Disney characters, a popular experience for children visiting the park, will be temporarily off-limits, the video warns. However, characters will be available for photos at a distance.

When dining, visitors are asked not to sit at tables with cards, which are meant to be left empty so that social distancing can be maintained.

"While in stores, please only touch merchandise you intend to purchase," the narrator says, "and we recommend using contactless payment options."

When it's time to leave, the park will provide receptacles for mask disposal.

During the earnings call, the company indicated that it hopes to use the information gained during the Shanghai reopening as a blueprint for how to safely reopen its parks elsewhere in Asia, Europe and the two U.S. resorts, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

The American facilities have been closed since mid-March and the company has no reopening date in mind yet. But on Tuesday, Disney's chief medical advisor, Dr. Pamela Hymel, said that the company is considering some of the same tactics when the U.S. parks eventually reopen.

She outlined some of the tactics being explored for Walt Disney World and Disneyland, including a phased reopening that calls for opening retail and dining locations before the parks themselves, as Shanghai has done. It reopened its stores and restaurants in March after the infection rate began to abate in China.

To that end, the company announced Thursday that Disney Springs, the retail and dining complex near Walt Disney World will reopen May 20.

"Disney Springs will begin to reopen in a way that incorporates enhanced safety measures, including increased cleaning procedures, the use of appropriate face coverings by both cast members and guests, limited-contact guest services and additional safety training for cast members," Disney Springs vice president Matt Simon wrote in a blog post on the Disney park site.

Need a dose of Disney magic? Disney Springs plans May 20 reopening

Contributing: Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Reopening day tickets at Shanghai Disney Resort sell out
The number of people staying at home has risen since lock down on 23 March

The government has revealed new Google mobility data that shows people are flocking to parks during sunny lockdown weather and avoiding shops, workplaces and public transport.

At a coronavirus pandemic press briefing at Downing Street today, Medical Director for NHS England Professor Stephen Powis shared data showing the public's movements for the first time.

In a televised address to the nation on 25 March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that movement would be restricted due to the surge in coronavirus cases sweeping through the country.

Since that date, according to the data collected by Google, there has been a massive drop in people's movement outside the house, while numbers of people staying at home has risen.

Pictured: Graph revealed today showing the nation's mobility since social distancing measures were introduced in March

Pictured: NHS Director Stephen Powis speaks during the daily Downing Street press conference on 3 May, 2020

Police stepped up patrols in areas such as Battersea Park once again on Friday as the warm weather returned to Britain in time for the Bank Holiday weekend

The number of people leaving the house to go shopping for groceries or to pick up medicine from pharmacies dropped sharply after the announcement and reached a 40 per cent decrease within a week.

Work places, like transit stations and retail centres, had begun to see a reduction of numbers before the announcement, but saw a dramatic decrease of around 50 per cent in the weeks after the prime minister spoke to the country.

People leaving home for retail and recreation has dropped almost 80 per cent in the weeks since lockdown.

One outside trip which has seen a different trend is visits to green spaces.

'You will see a variation in the use of parks which is consistent with sunny weather,' Powis told the press conference today.

Other graphs showed the number of daily tests was slightly up today, with 97,029

Another graph from the conference shows an additional 626 deaths from the coronavirus in the last 24 hours

New cases were recorded at 4,649 today, though the preliminary data there were likely to be more to come

Looking at the changes in mobility, Powis added: 'When it comes to transport, retail, and recreation, there has been a reduction since the social distancing measures have been introduced.'

The Bank Holiday sunshine has seen groups venturing out today, with people caught splashing champagne in the capital's park, as the sunshine draws revellers to break social distancing guidelines that have been in place for more than a month.

Police ramped up efforts to prevent rule-breakers breaking lockdown by carrying out random stops and patrols at parks, beaches and other popular spaces.

Officers were this morning braced for hordes of restless Britons to breach restrictions as warm weather, VE Day celebrations and government mixed messaging tempts people outdoors.

More data shows that those requiring medical attention in hospital for the disease has dropped from 14,346 to 11,788

Data shows the steady decrease in the number of critical care beds being occupied by patients suffering from Covid-19

Preliminary data shows the UK in comparison to other nations, while reminding the viewer it is difficult to compare statistics

Another finding from today's press conferences is that fast food takeaway shops, like McDonald's and KFC, were never told to shut during the coronavirus crisis but did so because they felt it was not 'socially acceptable' to stay open.

Food Secretary George Eustice said the government had never 'explicitly mandated' that takeaways had to close.

But he said a combination of reduced footfall, staff anxiety and apparent social pressure had prompted many of the big players in the industry to do so.

Pictured: The five tests Boris Johnson announced will need to be met before lockdown is loosened

Mr Eustice said he believed it is 'quite possible for these venues to reopen and reopen safely' as he insisted drive-through restaurants were 'made for the social distancing situation'.

A number of companies have now started to reopen their restaurants with pilots in place for some drive-throughs across the country.

Mr Eustice's comments are likely to now speed up the reopening process.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Julia Gargano is on the verge of superstardom.

The 22-year-old from Westerleigh secured her spot in the top 11 of American Idol last week, and will be competing again this Sunday at 8 p.m. on ABC.

The Advance/SILive.coms Gracelyn Santos has been covering Garganos journey since her audition -- which floored the judges with her original song, Growing Pains.

Before Sundays performance, which will take place remotely from inside Garganos home due to the coronavirus outbreak, heres everything you need to know about her.

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WATCH AMERICAN IDOL ON HULU

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well my friends, we made it to Top 11 on @AmericanIdol. When I say I am overwhelmed with love, I mean it. Thank you for your votes, THIS IS NUTS.  #AmericanIdol  Julia Gargano (@Julia_Gargano) May 5, 2020

Shes been singing since high school. Gargano, who is a senior at the College of St. Rose in Albany, is an alumna of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. She is expected to graduate this year from the College of St. Rose with a bachelors degree in music industry.

Her family is her biggest support system. Garganos family includes her parents, Jeanne McManus and Frank Gargano; her stepparents, Michael McManus and Elana Gargano; and her siblings, Frank Gargano, Lizzie McManus and Jack Gargano.

Before the live episodes of American Idol began filming, Gargano visited her younger brother Jacks school, greeting his classmates and teachers at the The Seton Foundation for Learning.

Shes been an American Idol fan for years. Growing up on Staten Island, I was a very big Idol fan, Gargano told the Advance/SILive.com. My family watched it religiously every week, especially the first couple of seasons.

American Idol aside, you may know her from the Staten Island music scene. Before garnering American Idol clout, Gargano performed at the Westerleigh Folk Festival, Historic Richmond Town, Back to the Beach and at the St. George Theatre with the Divine Woman LLC. She also has performed at The Kettle Black, HoBrah and ONeills.

Julia & Kacey, Kacey Velazquez (left) and Julia Gargano perform at the Westerleigh Folk Festival Saturday, September 21, 2013.(Staten Island Advance/ Bill Lyons)

Her first job was at a Staten Island music spot. Gargano worked at Castellanos House of Music as a teenager, claiming it to be a great first job and they have become a part of my family.

When she was 8, Julia played her first song for our House of Music instructor Laine Thompson and began recording her original music shortly after, owner John Castellano said. She grew up in our program as a student for 11 years, then became a staff member, teaching guitar, piano and vocals. She is brilliant."

Her music took her to Hawaii. Gargano and her fellow American Idol contestants performed at Aulani, a Disney Resort & Spa in Hawaii, as part of the top 20. Her song of choice? A soulful performance of Glitter in the Air by Pink.

Shes lent her voice to coronavirus public service announcements. During the pandemic, Gargano recorded a message -- shared by the Staten Island borough presidents office -- highlighting the importance of social distancing and staying inside during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Her home has been turned into her personal studio. Gargano has been vocal about how American Idol" has changed her life, but recently the show has taken over her Westerleigh home. Check out the tour she gave her Instagram followers during a remote live show.

According to ABC, the singing competition was able to continue with social distancing by shipping equipment to each home. Each performer gets one take, unless a technical glitch occurs.

Shes still in a New York State of Mind." In her latest appearance on American Idol," Gargano performed her rendition of Billy Joels New York State of Mind, which was met with applause from celebrity judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan and Katy Perry.

Im speechless, Bryan said after her performance. That might be my most favorite performance of the year thus far.

Fans will get to see her perform again Sunday night. American Idol continues every Sunday at 8 p.m. on ABC. For further updates, check SILive.com after the show airs or follow the shows social media channels.

Latest stories about Julia Gargano:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 01:04:39|Editor: huaxia

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LOS ANGELES, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A major north-south freeway in Southern California has been closed for hours after police fatally shot a knife-wielding man early Friday morning.

California Highway Patrol officers arrived about 1:30 a.m. local time Friday after the Long Beach Police Department reported that a man was walking along the 710 freeway lanes in the area while holding a large knife, reported the Los Angeles Times, citing a police report.

Police officers fired at the man who disregarded orders to drop the weapon and charged officers "in an aggressive manner with the knife," according to the report.

The unidentified man was transported to a nearby hospital but died of his injuries later.

The northbound 710 Freeway in the area has been closed in the wake of the shooting due to police activity. Southbound traffic resumed in the morning.

A police investigation into the incident is underway. Enditem
BEIJING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- China and Mongolia should strengthen joint prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday in a phone conversation with Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar.

Noting that China and Mongolia are good neighbors and good friends, Wang said that in the battle against the epidemic, the two sides have written another chapter on cooperation between neighboring countries which help each other and share weal and woe.

Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga, as the first head of state of a foreign country who visited China after the outbreak of the epidemic, demonstrated his support for China with practical actions, Wang said, adding that Battulga's offer of 30,000 sheep on behalf of the Mongolian people has generated a warm response among the Chinese people, and enhanced the traditional friendship between the two sides.

Wang said that with arduous efforts, China has successfully brought the epidemic under control, and is steadily restoring economic and social order while conducting regular prevention and control measures.

The Chinese side is glad that Mongolia took effective prevention and control measures at an early date and has halted the spread of the disease in Mongolia, said the Chinese foreign minister.

Wang urged the two countries to continue to strengthen joint prevention and control measures, explore the resumption of bilateral economic and trade cooperation in an orderly and scientific way, and push for resuming work and production of key projects.

He expects the two sides to explore the establishment of a green channel to facilitate personnel exchanges and cargo delivery.

Wang stressed that the epidemic is a common challenge facing the humankind, and that the international community should join hands to tide over the crisis.

Noting that solidarity, cooperation and determination are in need at this time, Wang said any words and deeds that run counter to them are inappropriate, and attempts to politicize the epidemic and label the virus are unacceptable.

China is ready to work with Mongolia to actively advance international anti-epidemic cooperation and strive for an early and complete victory over the virus.

For his part, Tsogtbaatar said that after the COVID-19 outbreak, China has taken timely and effective prevention and control measures to contain the epidemic in a short period of time, which demonstrates its strong mobilization capabilities and medical science and technology.

China's success will inspire other countries in their fight against the virus, while China's experience is also of great significance to the rest of the world, he added.

Recalling the Mongolian president's visit to China in February and an important consensus reached with President Xi Jinping on anti-epidemic cooperation, Tsogtbaatar said with joint efforts, Mongolia and China have registered no infections from the other side.

Mongolia is ready to strengthen coordination with China, and realize its promise of sending 30,000 sheep to the Chinese people, said the Mongolian minister.

On the premise of safeguarding the health and safety of the two peoples, Mongolia is ready to take advantage of the two countries' joint prevention and control mechanism and other platforms, explore with China the establishment of the green channel and an express line, improve logistics efficiency at border ports, and gradually resume bilateral economic and trade exchanges, he said.

Mongolia is willing to deepen coordination and cooperation with China, so as to overcome the impact and challenges brought by the epidemic at an early date, he said.
As more than 180 factories have suspended operations or shutdown recently in Cambodia, affecting around 200,000 workers, Hong Kong-owned Ming Fai factory worked fast to find an alternative source of revenue to avert the global economic slowdown induced by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Kampong Speu-based factory manufactured products for hotels and airlines, and with global travel and tourism coming to a grinding halt, the factory needs to pivot soon. To remain open, the factory tweaked its production line to supply the global demand for surgical masks.

Em Sarat, a factory representative, said with limited access to export markets in the United States, the European Union, Singapore, and Australia, surgical mask production was the best solution for the time being.

The demands for surgical masks are increasing on the buyers sides so that we added masks as another product from our manufacturing chain, Em Sarat told VOA Khmer by phone from the factory in Kampong Speus Samraung Torng District. Ming Fai is one of the three factories that have pivoted their operations to feed the demand for medical equipment globally. Roo Hsing Garment and Global Apparel and Textile (Cambodia) are the two other factories, but representatives for these companies declined to provide comment for this story.

If the factory had been unable to tweak its production line to make masks, Em Sarath said, there was no guarantee the approximately 2,300 workers would still be employed.

He added that demand for their old products, such as cloth slippers, socks, and eye masks, had dropped by as much as 70 percent, but with face mask production as many as 70 percent of their workers were still employed.

This is in sharp contrast to other factories, which have completely suspended operations for up to two months on account of low global orders or have shut down altogether, leaving workers financially helpless.

Cambodia is home to around 1,200 garment, footwear, and travel goods factories, according to Labor Ministry statistics, employing some 750,000 workers. Garment and footwear products are a key pillar of Cambodias exports, accounting for as much as 80 percent of trade with the European Union.

Amid the global novel coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization has reported the shortage of masks, protective gear, and ventilators, as global infections grew to 3.5 million cases this week.

This lack of personal protective equipment has hamstrung hospitals and medical facilities, especially in countries like the United States and Italy, and put the lives of medical personnel at risk.

Fadela Chaib, a spokesperson for WHO, said the organization encouraged the industrial switch to production of medical equipment when possible.

We have seen many factories around the world switching their production to manufacture medical equipment, Chaib told VOA Khmer in an email. It is needed in these very special troubled times.

But this production switch was not easy nor was it possible on a large scale, said Ken Loo, Secretary-General of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia.

It is very difficult, Ken Loo said. First of all, the machines are completely different. Secondly, the requirement is also different because if you want to produce surgical masks you need to do it in a cleanroom. You do not do it in the open environment.

He said it was not simple for factories to make this change and that in the interim, until orders and production returned to normal, there were not many factory owners could do in Cambodia.

Secretary of State at the Industry Ministry, Oum Sotha, said the government supported the initiative to transform production lines to manufacturing masks and other protective gear, admitting it was not an easy process.

It doesnt mean that they [factory owners] dont want to, Oum Sotha said. But such conversions can be a challenge for some as they lack technicians and you cannot just do it overnight due to changes needed in production chains.

Ministry records obtained by VOA Khmer showed there were seven factories and seven workshops producing or seeking permits to produce masks and protective gear as of early April. Once fully operational, the records show they could produce at least 91.2 million medical masks, 17.8 million sets of protective clothing, and 9 million face shields a month.

These factories will now be able to export their products after the trade was suspended for five weeks, since March 30, and export permits were required.

Kun Nhim, chief of the Finance Ministrys General Department of Custom and Excise, in a May 4 letter granting carte blanche to producers to export mask because the Royal Government could manage and secure sufficient stockpiles of masks to serve the domestic fight against the COVID-19.

While the production transformation can help workers, Yang Sophorn, president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, said it needed to also ensure workers' safety, such as maintaining social distancing, to ensure that workers are not put at risk due to the pandemic.

In the production workflow, items are either jointly worked on or passed from one [worker] to one another, said Yang Sophorn. This raises questions about safety and hygiene practice that requires the factories to be extremely vigilant.

Back at the Ming Fai factory, despite the production switch to the now-in-demand masks, Em Sarat was unsure of its sustainability.
Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper

F. D. Roosevelt signs lend-lease law RFE/RL

On February 24, 1943, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft with serial number 42-32892 rolled out of a factory in Long Beach, California, and was handed over to the U.S. Air Force.

On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. From there, it flew 5,650 kilometers to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, one of some 14,000 aircraft sent by the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II under the massive Lend-Lease program.

This particular C-47 was sent to the Far North and spent the war conducting reconnaissance and weather-monitoring missions over the Kara Sea. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. On April 23, 1947, it was forced to make an emergency landing with 36 people on board near the village of Volochanka on the Taimyr Peninsula.

On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. The others were never found.

The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk.

"I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. It is our living history. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia."

An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. Overcoming massive defeats and colossal losses over the first 18 months of the war, the Red Army was able to reorganize and rebuild to form a juggernaut that marched all the way to Berlin. But the Soviet Union was never alone: Months before the United States formally entered the war, it had already begun providing massive military and economic assistance to its Soviet ally through the Lend-Lease program.

From the depths of the Cold War to the present day, many Soviet and Russian politicians have ignored or downplayed the impact of American assistance to the Soviets, as well as the impact of the entire U.S.-British war against the Nazis.

A Soviet report by Politburo member Nikolai Voznesensky in 1948 asserted that the United States, described as "the head of the antidemocratic camp and the warrior of imperialist expansion around the world," contributed materiel during the war that amounted to just 4.8 percent of the Soviet Union's own wartime production.

The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War."

Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory."

Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. Most famously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."

Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.

"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."

The Lend-Lease act was enacted in March 1941 and authorized the United States to provide weapons, provisions, and raw materials to strategically important countries fighting Germany and Japan -- primarily, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. In all, the United States shipped $50 billion ($608 billion in 2020 money) worth of materiel under the program, including $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union. In addition, much of the $31 billion worth of aid sent to the United Kingdom was also passed on to the Soviet Union via convoys through the Barents Sea to Murmansk.

Most visibly, the United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks.

However, the real significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort was that it covered the "sensitive points" of Soviet production -- gasoline, explosives, aluminum, nonferrous metals, radio communications, and so on, says historian Boris Sokolov.

"In a hypothetical battle one-on-one between the U.S.S.R and Germany, without the help of Lend-Lease and without the diversion of significant forces of the Luftwaffe and the German Navy and the diversion of more than one-quarter of its land forces in the fight against Britain and the United States, Stalin could hardly have beaten Hitler," Sokolov wrote in an essay for RFE/RL's Russian Service.

Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper.

Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft.

The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.

In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease.

"It should be remembered that during World War I, the transportation crisis in Russia in 1916-17 that did a lot to facilitate the February Revolution [which lead to the abdication of the tsar] was caused by a shortage in the production of railway rails, engines, and freight cars because industrial production had been diverted to munitions," Sokolov wrote. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union."

The Lend-Lease program also sent tons of factory equipment and machine tools to the Soviet Union, including more than 38,000 lathes and other metal-working tools. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production.

American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots.

"In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats."

In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is continuing its efforts to remove contaminated soil from a Superfund site in north Birmingham despite the coronavirus pandemic.

We think it's really important and valuable work and we want to be able to continue to, to advance the cleanup, EPA Region 4 Administrator Mary Walker said in a phone interview. And in the neighborhoods, we have made really significant progress. We just want to continue that progress, especially because we know people are increasingly home in those areas.

Agency spokesman James Pinkney said that the EPA has taken soil samples from 1,970 out of about 2,000 residential properties in an area designated the 35th Avenue Superfund site.

Of those, 658 had levels of lead, arsenic or polyaromatic hydrocarbons that were high enough to require cleanup of the contaminated soil. Pinkney said EPA has spent about $28 million so far on the cleanup.

The EPA says the contractors and agency personnel conducting the cleanup are taking extra precautions to avoid spreading the coronavirus, including increased social distancing and more hand washing stations. Workers are also taking individual vehicles instead of carpooling and each has a temperature check during shift meetings.

We are working really hard right now to make sure that as we engage, we do it in a way that is not putting residents or our workers at risk, Walker said. We think it's really important work to continue this cleanup for the community.

Cleanup site

The site includes three residential neighborhoods  Fairmont, Collegeville and Harriman Park -- located in a heavily industrialized area in north Birmingham.

Cleanup is finished at 494 of the 658 residential properties, plus three schools, and two housing communities within the site footprint.

The cleanup usually involves removing the top 6-8 inches of contaminated soil and replacing it with clean dirt, then replanting grass and replacing items like fences that had to be removed for the cleanup.

Pinkney said the cleanup is expected to be complete by 2023.

The site was proposed for listing on the Agencys National Priorities List in 2014 but was never added to the list after pushback from local and state officials.

Years later, an executive of Drummond Company and an attorney representing the company were convicted of bribery and wire fraud for paying State Rep. Oliver Robinson to oppose the NPL listing and efforts to expand the EPA sampling outside of the designated site into nearby Tarrant.

Trey Glenn, Walkers predecessor at EPA, resigned as Region 4 Administrator after he was charged with state ethics violations in connection with work he did as a consultant to oppose the listing. Some of the charges against Glenn were dropped last year, and he is fighting the rest in court. Glenn was also formerly the director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The EPA pledged in 2018 to complete the cleanup even though the site was never added to the NPL.
The number of cases of COVID-19 has increased by 504 in Ukraine over the past day, this is less than the previous day (507), while 310 people have recovered, and 21 have died, with the total number of people infected as of May 8 of 14,195, Minister of Health of Ukraine Maksym Stepanov told a briefing on Wednesday morning.

"Over the past day, 504 new cases of coronavirus infection have been recorded in Ukraine, of which 44 in children and 98 in medical workers. Some 237 people were hospitalized in health facilities. A record number of 310 people recovered in the past 24 hours, but 21 patients died," said Stepanov.

In his words, the cumulative number of coronavirus cases in Ukraine reached 14,195.
Negative: Donald Trump has been tested at least twice for the virus. Photo: REUTERS

US president Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence have tested negative for the novel coronavirus after a member of the US military who works at the White House was found to have been infected, a White House spokesman said yesterday.

The military official was identified by CNN as a personal valet to Mr Trump.

"We were recently notified by the White House medical unit that a member of the United States military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus. The president and the vice-president have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health," spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement. He declined to give further details about the military member's role at the White House.

Mr Trump has now been tested at least twice for the coronavirus and both times tested negative. A test on April 2 came out negative, the White House said. White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said yesterday the president was being tested routinely.

On April 3, the White House said anyone expected to be near Mr Trump or Mr Pence will be given a rapid Covid-19 test out of an abundance of caution.

White House staff working in the West Wing have not been wearing masks around the president or each other. During a trip to Arizona on Tuesday, the president, military personnel, Secret Service agents and White House aides did not wear masks.

On Wednesday at a meeting with nurses, who were standing closely around him in the Oval Office, Mr Trump noted that everyone had been tested for the coronavirus and quipped that he hoped the tests worked. One guest coughed a few times, into her hands, during the event.

Mr Trump has been criticised for giving mixed messages during his handling of the pandemic. Ahead of the trip to Arizona to visit a mask factory, he said he would likely wear one there. He did not wear one during the tour and said later he had not done so after being advised by the Honeywell chief executive that it was not necessary.
Four extraordinary individuals to receive honorary degrees from Brandeis

Brandeis will award honorary degrees to Ruth Calderon, Alan Hassenfeld, Marta Kauffman '78 and Howardena Pindell

Clockwise, from left: Jewish cultural scholar Ruth Calderon, television producer Marta Kauffman '78, artist Howardena Pindell, philanthropist Alan Hassenfeld

Each year at commencement ceremonies, Brandeis and many other universities award honorary degrees to individuals who stand as an inspiration to the graduating class. While the COVID-19 pandemic has put a stop to on-campus commencement exercises for this year, Brandeis will still celebrate the accomplishments of honorary degree recipients, with plans to honor them in person at a later date.Brandeis will award honorary degrees to, a scholar of Jewish religious texts and a former member of the Israeli Knesset; philanthropist, retired CEO of Hasbro and co-chair of the Brandeis International Business School board of advisors; television producer, creator of the iconic series Friends and more recently Grace and Frankie; and, American painter and mixed-media artist whose body of work since the 1960s confronts racism and other forms of inequality.All our honorary degree recipients have distinguished themselves through perseverance, resilience, and the ability to adapt with changing times. These are all characteristics shared by our impressive class of 2020, which has performed outstanding work this spring under extraordinary conditions, said Brandeis President Ron Liebowitz. Just as we plan to have an on-campus celebration of our 2020 graduates next year, we hope our honorary degree recipients will join us at Brandeis to be celebrated at a later date.Changes to the academic calendar as a result of the conversion to online learning for all Brandeis students resulted in the university moving the official date of degree conferrals for undergraduate and graduate students to May 24 from May 17. The university and its individual departments are planning virtual celebrations for students on and after that date, and an on-campus celebration for all students receiving degrees this spring will be held next spring. Ruth Calderon will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree. She believes her personal mission is to create a Jewish renewal by encouraging and teaching Jews  in Israel and in the Diaspora  to turn to Jewish texts like the Talmud and Torah and interpret them with their own understanding. She has founded several pluralistic organizations dedicated to Jewish learning and culture, and spent two years in the Knesset, including serving as deputy speaker. Alan Hassenfeld will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree. He spent 35 years at Hasbro, the toy company founded by his immigrant great grandfather in 1923, building it into a multi-billion-dollar global company. Since retiring as CEO in 2003 he has led his familys philanthropic foundation to make significant contributions to the health and well-being of children. He made a major gift to establish the Hassenfeld Family Innovation Center at Brandeis and serves as co-chair of the board of advisors of Brandeis International Business School. Marta Kauffman 78 will receive a Doctor of Creative Arts honorary degree. Kauffman majored in theater at Brandeis and went on, with David Crane 79, to create and produce Friends, one of the most iconic comedy series in television history. The series garnered 62 Emmy nominations over its decade-long run. More recently, she created and produced Grace and Frankie, which has generated 11 Emmy nominations since premiering in 2015. Earlier this year, she received the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America. Howardena Pindell will receive a Doctor of Fine Arts honorary degree. Each of her pieces carries traces of her personal history, while also making bold statements on issues such as racism, sexism, AIDS, homelessness, and war. After earning her MFA from Yale University she became the first female African American curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Her five-decade-long career was the subject of What Remains to be Seen, a major exhibition at the Rose Art Museum earlier this year.
In Alabamas only female prison, pregnant incarcerated women are given 24 hours to bond with their baby before their child is ceded to a relative or whisked into the foster care system and the mother brought back to Tutwiler empty handed.

Tutwiler, a documentary by the Marshall Project and PBS, explores Alabamas Prison Birth Project, a volunteer-organized doula program that pairs pregnant inmates with a support system throughout their pregnancy, delivery and then in postpartum programs at the prison. The film can be watched online at PBS.org. Reckon is hosting a Facebook watch party of the film on the Reckon by AL.com Facebook page on May 12 at 7 p.m. Reckon Womens Abbey Crain will then host a Zoom panel discussion with the films director, producer and a member of the Alabama Prison Birth Project on May 14 at 7 p.m.

A lot of the women referred to [their experience in the hospital] only as the separation, and sort of warned each other about it coming, and how difficult it would be, said Alysia Santo, a reporter who worked on the documentary. ... and it's unimaginable. And it's something that so many women who are in prison go through.

Deputy commissioner of women's services at Alabama Department of Corrections Wendy Williams, said 40 to 50 pregnant women come through Alabamas Julia Tutwiler Prison each year.

The film follows incarcerated mothers, prison guards and founder of the Alabama Prison Birth Project Ashley Lovell Rossi, as they navigate mothering from inside the walls of Tutwiler, located in in Wetumpka.

Before the Alabama Prison Birth Project, pregnant inmates had no one to support them in the hospital while they gave birth. They went through labor alone aside from a guard and hospital staff. Now, thanks to the project, inmates are paired with doulas to help them through the birth and eventual separation. Santos said the women she talked to the cherished single photo of them with their baby, often taken by the doula, a non-medical labor support companion, in the 24 hours after birth.

Santo, a reporter for the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on issues related to criminal justice, said she first learned about Tutwiler after a report by the Department of Justice in 2014 found the prison to be unconstitutional due to "a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment." The report, based on DOJ investigators four-day trip, documented sexual assault by prison guards, rape and retaliation.

Since the DOJ report in 2014, the Alabama Department of Corrections says it spent $4.6 million on improvements at Tutwiler, including installing more than 300 cameras for around-the-clock surveillance, increasing the number of female prison guards and decreasing the number of male guards to curb sexual misconduct.

Santo was drawn to report on Tutwilers pregnant inmates after she learned of Rossis work at the Alabama Prison Birth Project, which began in 2016. In 2018 APBP helped create a room in Tutwiler Prison for moms to pump breast milk so it can be delivered to their babies outside the prison. Prior to the partnership, mothers were unable to nutritionally support their babies on the outside. The room is decorated in pastel colors and contains a rocking chair along with breast pumping supplies for mothers to pump with. The doulas then deliver the milk to each womans baby outside the prison. The doulas also host postpartum groups to support mothers as they learn to live without their children.

Latasha James was incarcerated in Tutwiler during her pregnancy in 2019 and was able to use the room to provide food and sustain a bond with her baby on the outside.

It helps me feel kind of somewhat bonded without us being around each other, James told AL.com in 2019.

According to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative, women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. In Alabama, the womens prison population grew while the mens prison population has declined since 2009. Women make up around 6 percent of the incarcerated population in Alabama.

Elaine McMillion Sheldon, the Tutwiler documentary director, said almost all of the women they talked to were in prison for low-level, drug-related offenses. She said she hopes the film sparks conversation on how the justice system considers the incarceration of pregnant women.

We're working at the intersection of two broken systems, maternal health in Alabama and [the need for] access to really good health care, doctors, proper help that you need as a new mother, as well as the prison system that is also broken, Sheldon said. I think the doulas feel the weight of all the things mentioned and more. That's why I think they often feel like there's just so much that they can't do. But what they are doing is very valuable and that's what we kind of focus on.

Tutwiler will be broadcast on PBSs America ReFramed on May 19, and digitally on FrontlinePBS and The Marshall Project on May 7.
By Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Government on Thursday decided not to conduct individual registration of returnees to avoid congestion at border check points as a large number of buses with migrants continue their homeward journey. Many people returning to Odisha in buses have not pre-registered, this is leading to congestion at the border check points.

Therefore, registration of individual returnees at the border check posts may not be insisted upon. However, registration of the vehicle with details of the driver (name, driving licence number), number of passengers and destination district(s) is absolutely necessary, a notification issued by the Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) said.

A revised SOP issued by Odisha Government maintained that the drivers have to obtain a vehicle entry pass, as per the prescribed format which will be printed in duplicate. According to guidelines, the first copy of the pass will be affixed on the windscreen of the vehicle and the second copy will be handed over to the driver who will then report to the destination district reception centre.

The reception centre at the destination district will verify the number of people who arrived with details in the second copy of the vehicle entry pass provided by the driver. In case of any discrepancy in the number of people, the vehicle and the driver will be detained for further investigation and action will be taken as per law, the notification said and added that every passenger will be stamped on their right inner forearm.

Meanwhile, Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) has decided on Thursday that no returnee from Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat will be allowed to stay in home quarantine in any area under the civic bodys jurisdiction. All people returning from Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat will be kept in institutional quarantine mandatorily. Home quarantine option will not be made able available, an order said.

As many as 24 migrants from Surat, who returned to Ganjam on Thursday, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday. To ensure hassle-free entry into Odisha, fast forward counters have been opened at the border check posts. If your vehicle is registered and all the passengers are registered and tagged to the vehicle on Covid portal of Odisha then use fast forward counter, said STA.

Eye on returnees

Bhubaneswar: Police Commissioner Sudhansu Sarangi said adequate measures are being taken to ensure that returnees coming from other States do not get down in the Capital in an an unauthorised manner.

Sarangis statement comes after 12 Surat returnees alighted from a bus illegally here on Tuesday before reaching their destinations in different districts. This paper had reported about migrant returnees alighting from buses in the Capital, on way to their destinations in other districts leading to fear of

Covid spread.
Stock Photo. An Aer Lingus jet prepares to land at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, in 2010. Photo: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

An Aer Lingus aircraft with new livery photographed over Ireland's west coast. Pic: Frank Grealish

Aer Lingus will waive change fees for all flights scheduled to depart up to September 30, the airline has said.

Previously, it had waived such fees to the end of May.

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the change reflects the fact that schedule disruption and unease about travel is likely to continue through the summer.

"We want you to be able to book with peace of mind," Aer Lingus says.

Changing a flight normally costs 40.

Customers will be liable for fare differences, however - i.e. they will have to pay any difference between the price of original and rescheduled flights.

The move comes as airline passengers continue to vent frustration over what they claim are difficulties and long wait times in receiving refunds and vouchers for cancelled flights.

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Both Aer Lingus and Ryanair say they will honour EU Regulation 261/2014, which stipulates that passengers whose flights are cancelled must be offered the choice of a refund or a rebooking.

Refunds should be issued within seven days, it adds.

Such is the volume of cancellations, however, that Ryanair has said it could take up to three months to process refunds at this stage.

Aer Lingus has expanded its call centre and social media teams, it says, but is struggling with high demand and has asked customers only to contact them directly if they are due to fly in the next 72 hours.

It is also charging a 5 administration fee per person, per flight, for calls to its reservations team.

"This is to allow our team to focus on assisting guests with immediate travel plans within 72 hours," it says. "Of course if you require special assistance when booking, we'll waive this fee."

Meanwhile, Ryanair said this week that it would continue to operate a vastly reduced flight schedule until at least May 28.

"At this time, we expect scheduled flights to return sometime in July," it says.
ME Bank has in recent years carved out a reputation for being clever at marketing. For example, last year it ran a 'Bank-xiety' advertising campaign designed to capitalise on a lack of consumer trust with its 'big four' rivals.

But this week, the boutique lender had to use clever marketing  a full page ad in this newspaper asking for a 'MEa culpa'  to apologise for its own shortcomings.

Many of the Australians who took out loans or deposited money with ME Bank may have thought they were giving their business to an institution with a different culture to the 'big four'. That's why the revelations over the past week that ME Bank had abruptly changed policies around redraw facilities in the middle of an economic crisis shocked so many customers.

ME Bank is facing mass complaints from customers. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

The move, which in effect could have denied thousands of customers access to crucial funds in the middle of a global pandemic, was reversed by the bank on Friday, within a week of it being reported by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. It came at a time when the 'big four' banks have pledged to be lenient to customers struggling with the economic impact of the coronavirus.
The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) will this year honor past AGS President Todd Semla, PharmD, MS, AGSF, with the prestigious Nascher/Manning Award, given biannually at the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21, to be held next year May 13-15 in Chicago, Ill., following the cancellation of the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting due to COVID-19). Dr. Semla, who served as the AGS's first pharmacist president, now joins a cadre of less than 20 geriatrics healthcare professionals recognized with the Nascher/Manning Award since its inception in 1987.

"I've been fortunate to call Dr. Semla my mentor and to follow in his footsteps leading our country's largest interprofessional society dedicated to the care we all need as we age," noted Sunny Linnebur, PharmD, FCCP, FASCP, BCPS, BCGP, AGS board chair. "Across his career and commitment to the AGS, Dr. Semla has modeled and championed the collaborative team spirit that's a hallmark of geriatrics. That's as much a testament to Dr. Semla as it is to the interprofessional commitment he helped us achieve."

A clinical associate professor with the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Dr. Semla has 40 years of experience in geriatric pharmacotherapy, the study of using pharmaceuticals to help manage an older person's health. He also has decades of experience leading and influencing geriatrics expertise and education for the pharmacists, doctors, nurses, physician assistants, social workers, and other health professionals who increasingly comprise care teams for older people.

In his tenure at the AGS, for example, Dr. Semla has co-led all three major updates to the AGS Beers Criteria, a compendium of medications potentially to avoid or consider with caution because they may present an unfavorable balance of benefits and harms for older adults. With Dr. Semla's help, the AGS Beers Criteria has not only become one of geriatrics most frequently cited references but also has expanded to include additional tools, from guidance for older adults, health systems, and health insurance stakeholders on its appropriate use to additional lists of alternative medications for those that may no longer be appropriate.

Of no less note is Dr. Semla's tenure as the AGS's first pharmacist president, which helped herald the increasingly interprofessional nature of geriatrics and the AGS. As president from 2007-2008 and AGS board chair from 2008-2009, Dr. Semla worked with society leaders and staff to launch a variety of important initiatives, from the AGS's inaugural presence on Twitter to its co-convening of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance. He has been a member of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society editor board since 1996, and currently serves as an associate editor.

Dr. Semla earned his doctoral degree in pharmacy from the University of Iowa in 1985, having previously earned a master's degree in science focused on clinical and hospital pharmacy. Dr. Semla went on to complete a geriatrics fellowship at the University of Iowa from 1985-1986 before transitioning to positions at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern. From 2003-2018, Dr. Semla also served as the National Pharmacy Benefits Management (PBM) Clinical Pharmacy Program Manager for Mental Health & Geriatrics at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Nascher/Manning Award celebrates a geriatrics pioneer like Dr. Semla, who helped build the professional foundation for what is now the AGS. Ignatz Leo Nascher, MD, was the first clinician to advocate for establishing a specialty focused on the care of older adults. Through the generosity of the Manning family, Dr. Nascher's namesake award is one of several honors conferred by the AGS at its Annual Scientific Meeting. The 2020 award recipients include more than 20 healthcare leaders representing the depth and breadth of disciplines championing better care for us all as we age. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.

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About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for more than 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

The Health in Aging Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Nascher/Manning Award

Ignatz Leo Nascher, MD, argued that medical care for older adults should be considered a separate specialty, for which he coined the term "geriatrics" in 1909. Through the generosity of the Manning family, the intent of the Nascher/Manning Award is to honor Dr. Nascher's pioneering work in the field by recognizing an individual with distinguished, life-long achievement in clinical geriatrics.

About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting

The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. Following the cancellation of the 2020 gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 3,000 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene next year from May 13-15 (pre-conference program on May 12), in Chicago, Ill., to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org..
The Syrian National Coalition has called on Guernica 37 to official complain about the treatment of Syrian refugees on Greek territory reports Brocar Press.

The Syrian National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC) requested that international legal justice chamber Guernica 37 file an official complaint over Greeces poor treatment of Syrian refugees on its soil.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the SNC expressed its shock at the poor treatment by Greek authorities of Syrians fleeing their countrys war for Europe. According to the statement, treatment at the border is inhumane, and many refugeesincluding women and childrenfaced physical violence leading to critical injuries, and confiscation of their possessions.

The SNC requested that the London-based Guernica 37 group file an official complaint to the UN concerning migrants rights, and contact European Union and Council of Europe bodies that deal with human and refugee rights, due to the violations committed against Syrian refugees by Greek authorities.

The statement added that the SNC provided Guernica 37 with contact information for those impacted by the poor treatment of Greek authorities. Guernica 37 had reached out, according to the statement, and clarified the victims shocking accounts, as well as how these actions do not comply with Greeces adherence to international laws.

The SNC closed its statement by calling on Greece and the EU to, hold the perpetrators accountable and provide compensation for the Syrian refugees who were impacted by this treatment. It also called on Greece to, prevent the recurrence of such actions, and respect laws related to the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

The SNC reaffirmed the need for a comprehensive political solution, which would be the only way to end the suffering of Syrians, and in accordance with UN Resolution 2254.

Guernica 37 is an organization specialized in international litigation to enforce human rights and international criminal standards in national courts. The group includes lawyers from Europe, the UK and the US who have extensive experience in building strategies for legal accountability around the world. It also has experience in providing advice and assistance to countries embarking on structural reforms and transformation after periods of political instability, conflict, authoritarianism and corruption.

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.
By Akbar Mammadov

Twenty-eight years have passed since the occupation of Shusha, one of the most strategically important places of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region during the Nagorno-Karabakh war with neighboring Armenia in the early 1990s.

The occupation of Shusha region was one of the most painful loss of Azerbaijan in the Karabakh war because of the fact that Shusha was the capital city of the historical Karabakh khanate of Azerbaijan.

The last Armenian attack on Shusha began on the night of May 7-8, 1992. The city came under heavy fire from rockets, artillery, tanks and other weapons. After that, Armenian infantry forces attacked from Khankendi and Karkijahan. Although the city was defended until the evening of May 8, it could not withstand the invaders, who were superior in terms of weapons and manpower. The Armenian armed forces first captured Shusha, then the nearby villages of Kosalar and Shirlan.

During the defense of the city, 195 civilians were killed and 165 were injured. 114 Azerbaijanis captured by Armenians and detained in Shusha prison were later killed with special cruelty, 58 residents of the city are missing. Before Shusha was occupied, about 25,000 people lived there, of which more than 24,000 people of Shusha have been become internally displaced persons and settled in 58 regions of Azerbaijan.

The reasons for the collapse of Shusha in such a short time, which was considered an impregnable fortress, was the lack of defense of the city. Armenia had gathered a large number of military equipment and manpower around Shusha. According to Armenian sources, about 100 armored vehicles and tanks and 11,000 manpowers took part in the attack on the city. Even foreign mercenaries were brought to fight in the Armenian armed forces.

As a result of the occupation, Armenian armed forces destroyed and looted many valuable historical and cultural monuments in Shusha. This includes a total of 279 religious, historical and cultural monuments, including the famous Shusha fortress, the Khan Cave, the Gakhal Cave, more than 170 residential buildings, temples and mosques, which are considered architectural monuments.

The Shusha History Museum with about 5,000 exhibits, a branch of the State Carpet Museum and the Museum of Folk Art, the Karabakh State History Museum, as well as the Agoghlan Temple in Lachin, Azykh cave of the Paleolithic period, which is considered to be an important archeological monument, the Askeran Fortress in Khojaly, unique expositions of the Kalbajar History Museum and other cultural centers, art galleries were destroyed and looted, sacred temples and mosques were desecrated, libraries were burned, and unique manuscripts were destroyed.

At the same time, 25 schools, 31 libraries, 20 healthcare facilities, 17 clubs, 8 culture houses, 4 technical schools and 2 institute branches, 7 kindergartens, 4 cinemas, 5 culture and recreation parks, 2 sanatoriums, tourist base, 2 hotels, Shusha State Drama Theater, Oriental Musical Instruments Factory, State Art Gallery, Children's Health School were destroyed as a result of the Armenian occupation. Among the destroyed historical places are the house-museums of several Azerbaijani literary and cultural figures like Khurshidbanu Natavan, Abdurrahim bey Hagverdiyev, Gasim Bey Zakir, Mir Mohsun Navvab, Suleyman Sani Akhundov, Nadjaf Bey Vazirov, Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli, Khan Shushinsky, Sadigjan, Uzeyir bey Hajibeyli, Bulbul and others.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

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Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent his first formal message to China since re-emerging from an almost three-week public absence, praising President Xi Jinping for his "success" in managing the coronavirus.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Friday that Kim sent a verbal message congratulating Xi, saying the Chinese leader was "seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic." Kim also "wished Xi Jinping good health," as he and the ruling Communist Party move forward to "win a final victory," KCNA said.

China's foreign ministry declined to provide details on the message. "China and North Korea are close neighbors and have maintained close communications over the fighting of the coronavirus," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Friday.

While North Korea has often sent such messages to its neighbor and main geopolitical benefactor, this one may receive more scrutiny because it follows Kim's prolonged absence from events. That lull ended when official media showed a smiling Kim appearing at a May 1 ribbon-cutting event to open a new fertilizer factory, wearing a Mao suit and being greeted by the cheers of workers.

The health of North Korea's leader is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the country, only known by a few people in the inner circle. While North Korea's state media almost never speaks on the subject, a prolonged absence can lead to speculation in the outside world.

Reuters reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter, that China had sent a medical team to North Korea to advise on Kim. North Korea state media has made no allusions to Kim's health, but the Seoul-based JoongAng Daily newspaper separately reported that the North Korean leader had been in self-quarantine after one of his bodyguards was confirmed with a coronavirus infection.

In a separate North Korean media report Friday, a spokesman for North Korea's armed forces called a South Korean military drill set for this week "reckless" and a "provocation." Pyongyang has often used such exercises as a pretense for its own military displays.

The comment came after Seoul accused North Korean troops Sunday of firing on South Korean personnel in the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries. South Korea said the action violated a 2018 military agreement between President Moon Jae-in and Kim to suspend hostile actions that could prompt conflict.

Beijing has for decades worried about leadership instability in nuclear-armed North Korea that could ignite a humanitarian crisis on its border, or even a collapse of the regime. That would open the door to the emergence of a unified Korea supported by the U.S.

No Cases?

The stability of impoverished North Korea concerns not only China and its other immediate neighbors, but the world. A power vacuum would raise questions about who controls its estimated stockpile of enough fissile material for as many as 60 nuclear bombs and hundreds of missiles capable of delivering an atomic payload.

Despite being between China -- the original epicenter of the virus outbreak -- and South Korea, which briefly was one of the hardest-hit countries, North Korea has said it hasn't had any confirmed cases of Covid-19. Some including the commander of U.S. Forces Korea have expressed doubts about that claim.

China and South Korea have both seen dramatic falls in new infections over the past several weeks and are starting to re-open their economies after massive efforts to contain the virus. North Korea is one of the world's poorest countries and its antiquated medical system could be overwhelmed by a severe Covid-19 outbreak.

North Korea's KCNA on Friday said that preventive measures are being taken in all regions "against the widespread malignant virus infection that comes to be a world disaster," adding the country is stockpiling materials for anti-epidemic efforts and working to develop a vaccine.
WASHINGTON  Shortly after admitting guilt to a federal judge in December 2017 for lying to the F.B.I., Michael T. Flynn issued a statement saying what he did was wrong, and through my faith in God, I am working to set things right.

It turns out that the only higher power that Mr. Flynn needed was Attorney General William P. Barr.

Mr. Barrs extraordinary decision to drop the criminal case against Mr. Flynn shocked legal experts, won President Trumps praise and prompted a career prosecutor to quit the case. It was the latest in Mr. Barrs steady effort to undo the results of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. Mr. Barr has portrayed his effort as rectifying injustice, and the president more bluntly as an exercise in political payback.

In his decisions and public comments over the past year, Mr. Barr has built an alternate narrative to the one that Mr. Mueller laid out in his voluminous report. Where the special counsel focused on Russias expansive effort to interfere in the 2016 election, the Trump campaigns openness to it and the presidents determination to impede the inquiry, Mr. Barr has focused instead on the investigators. He has suggested that they were unleashed by law enforcement and intelligence officials bent on bringing political harm to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Barr has also mischaracterized the findings of the Mueller investigation, questioned why it began in the first place, used legal maneuvers to undo its courtroom successes and opened his own investigation by a handpicked prosecutor that could bring criminal charges against former American officials who played a part in setting the original inquiry into motion. Mr. Mueller and Mr. Barr, once close friends, have been like two students standing shoulder to shoulder at a blackboard: what one has diligently written down, the other has tried to steadily erase.
Help India!

Naazish Hussain, TwoCircles.net

RANCHI: Given the ongoing lockdown crisis, the Jharkhand government initiated the program of bringing back the migrants stranded in other parts of the country. The government also initiated an online registration form and helpline numbers to facilitate the procedure of the migrants return. However, technical glitches are acting as a roadblock for the stranded migrants.

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According to a report published in The Indian Express around 6.54 lakh labourers from Jharkhand are stranded in various states of the country. Confusion, lack of communication and uncertainty over ration, wages and confirmation of reaching home has caused anxiety among migrant workers.

Twenty eight year old Krishna Jamuda from Paschim Singhbhum, village Baikia of Jharkhand is stranded in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh where he was working at a Maruti plant.

Krishna went to work out of Jharkhand for the first time in December last year. Since the March 24 lockdown, he along with his co-workers is stuck there.

Now the biggest problem before us is going home. One week before, I applied in the online registration form issue by the Jharkhand government. Since then I am waiting for the confirmation but I have not received any message, Krishna told TwoCircles.net.

Asked about the functionality of helpline numbers issued by government, he said, We also called the helpline numbers issued by the government there it was said that we will be given details but we dont know when.

Krishna is staying with 27 other migrant labourers from Jharkhand. He says around 8-9 people are staying in one room.

Talking about the difficulties faced by the labourers in a lockdown situation, he says, We have run out of money. We dont have rations. There is not even a soap to wash clothes. Earlier the owner would provide us the ration. Now he is saying it has been so many days how can I provide for so long. In a day we are somehow managing little food for two times only.

The workers have also not been paid their wages in full for the work they did.

We have not been paid wages. The owner says I dont have money, he said.

On the twitter handle of COVID Control Room Jharkhand there have been number of complaints regarding the poor working of the online link and the helpline numbers issues by the government.

The link keeps crashing, many users complained.

Many users said that they are also not able to get the confirmation message post filling the online application.

Forty year old Rando Marla, construction worker from Chakradharpur Jharkhand is stranded in Krishnagiri Tamil Nadu.

He wants to go home as there is no work during the lockdown.

There is no proper food here. There is no work or salary here. Somehow we are managing but the problems are there, 25 year old Rinki Munda from Moradi village in Chakradharpur told TwoCircles.net.

17 people are stranded here. We applied for available online form. But we dont know what is next. We tried on the given helpline number but we couldnt connect. Sometime, it said the line was busy, says Marla.

TwCircles.net tried reaching the Nodal Officers assigned to help the stranded migrant workers for their comment; however, the calls went unanswered.

It is the month of Ramadan and we want to go home. We applied for the Jharkhand government online registration form but we did not get any message. Later we registered with in the Tamil Nadu government. But we dont know when and by which train we will be going back. So we are waiting for the update, says 26 year old Shahbu from Jamtara, Jharkhand who is now in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

Shahbu along with 10 other people were working in Coimbatore as construction workers.

Had the engineer paid us we would have left before the lockdown but now we are stranded here, says Muhammed Bakrid, one of the workers.

We are about to run out of money. And the prices have hiked for ration. Also our salaries are due. Daal is selling for 120/kg which we got after so many days today. Potatoes are 60/kg. Whatever vegetable we buy costs us more than 80-90/ kg. Its very expensive, adds Bakrid.

Bakrid adds that the festival of Eid is approaching and they wish to be home.

After this is over, we have to again look for jobs. If we work daily we eat, if there is no work then we will starve. We dont know if there will be employment opportunities there. If we would have found employment in the home state we wouldnt have come here. Now we have to see what government has planned for us there, he said.
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ThingLogix, Inc. (http://www.thinglogix.com) is a world leader in Serverless, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology today announced that it has delivered an advanced solution that provides no-contact check-in and check-out for businesses which easily screens skin surface temperature and identifies individuals with an Elevated Body Temperature (EBT). Thinglogix Workwatch enhances the early detection of sick individuals with fever symptoms of Novel Coronavirus (COVID19).

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Carl Krupitzer CEO, ThingLogix stated, A variety of customers, including healthcare providers, government and education institutions, transportation agencies, private businesses, and factories are already using or plan to use ThingLogix Workwatch as part of their health and early detection screening process. Handheld thermometers are not a viable option. They tend to get misplaced and rely on a person to comply with the policy to work. Weve seen thermometers left on counters with a box of wipes next to them and a note asking employees to self-report. Our solution provides a no-touch way for employees and guests to be screened for a fever and might be sick with COVID19.

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By Ann Saphir

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. economy shed 20.5 million jobs in April, and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%, a government report Friday showed.

But these grim numbers -- both slightly less horrible than economist expectations - don't capture the staggering impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the workforce in the world's largest economy.

The true unemployment rate may be closer to 19.5%, the government said in a note attached to its report.

And that figure does not even count people whose hours were cut sharply due to the virus, or who couldn't look for work because of stay-at-home orders.

The unemployment rate is part of a monthly report from the federal government's Labor Department, showing how many people don't have jobs as a percentage of the overall American workforce. The "jobs report," as the release is known, provides two important labor market yardsticks: that unemployment rate, generated by a survey of households, and nonfarm payrolls, from a survey of businesses.

The unemployment rate has long been an indicator of the health of the economy, shrinking when jobs are plentiful and rising when times get hard.

A 14.7% unemployment rate means that nearly 15 people out of every 100 who want work don't have jobs. That is a lot more than the 4.4% rate in March.

But as many as 7.5 million unemployed people were probably misclassified in as being employed, the report said, and millions more wanted to work but were not even classified as being in the labor force.

Here is what the "jobless" report does and doesn't show:

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE CLAIMS

Many U.S. workers who lose their jobs are eligible for weekly payments to help tide them over until they find their next job.

These payments, which workers and employers fund, are known as unemployment insurance benefits. Some 33.5 million people have filed for them since mid March, when states first began imposing stay-at-home orders, weekly data published Thursday shows https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/millions-more-americans-file-for-jobless-benefits-productivity-tanks-idUSKBN22J0HT. [L1N2CO25O]

That is about one out of every five workers in the United States.

Story continues

But that doesn't mean the economy has 33.5 million jobs fewer than it did then, because even during a severe recession, some employers - supermarkets or delivery truck drivers right now - are still hiring. There have been three jobs added for every 10 layoffs, a recent Atlanta Fed survey https://www.frbatlanta.org/blogs/macroblog/2020/05/01/covid-19-caused-3-new-hires-for-every-10-layoffs found.

The unemployment claims only count the layoffs. Friday's report shows the net change in jobs.

The unemployment insurance claims do not reflect every job lost in the United States, because not everyone who loses their job is eligible for unemployment insurance. There have been long delays in some states for processing claims, and the claims do not count until they are processed.

Confusing matters further, businesses that got loans under the government's $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program may have hired back some people who had previously filed for unemployment benefits. And some states such as California, the country's largest by population and GDP, let people file an unemployment claim if their hours were cut, even if they did not "lose" their job.

THE UNCOUNTED

The Labor Department publishes six measures of unemployment, based on its survey https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm of households. The main one is technically called U-3, and to qualify you need to be both out of work and looking for a job to be counted. That is the one that rose to 14.7% on Friday.

A broader measure of unemployment, called U-6, captures people who are not counted in U-3, like those working fewer hours than they would like, or who looked for work in the past but just not recently.

Last month this rate jumped to 22.8%, from 8.7% in March.

Even that broader measure does not tell the whole story of who is not working right now.

While the unemployment rate is supposed to capture people furloughed due to the pandemic, the report said that many such people were misclassified as employed but just absent from work - a category that is usually very small and includes mostly people on parental leave or on vacation.

Adding back those people into the ranks of the unemployed, the report said, generates an unemployment rate of 19.5%, not 14.7%.

The unemployment rate also misses people who lost their jobs but cannot look for or do work because of stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of COVID-19. If you aren't looking for work, you aren't counted among the unemployed. The government noted there were 9.9 million people who wanted a job but were not counted in the labor force.

A pair of economists at the Chicago Fed recently crunched the numbers and found that accounting for such people could lift the real unemployment rate in the United States by several percentage points above and beyond the U-6. An immediate estimate of this higher number wasn't yet available Friday.

(Adds missing word "number" in last paragraph)

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Heather Timmons, Daniel Wallis and Chizu Nomiyama)
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. cryptocurrency investor on Thursday sued a suburban New York high school senior, accusing the 18-year-old of being the mastermind and ringleader of a cybercrime scheme that defrauded him out of millions of dollars in digital currencies.

The plaintiff, Michael Terpin, accused Ellis Pinsky, of Irvington, New York, and his alleged co-conspirators of stealing $23.8 million of cryptocurrency in January 2018, when the defendant was 15, and is seeking triple damages of $71.4 million.

"On the surface, Pinsky is an 'All American Boy,'" Terpin said in a complaint filed in federal court in White Plains, New York. "The tables are now turned."

Pinsky could not immediately be reached for comment. Calls to a phone number for him obtained through court records and a public records search were not answered. It was unclear whether Pinsky has a lawyer.

Cryptocurrency crime is a growing problem, with losses soaring to $4.52 billion last year from $1.74 billion in 2018, according to cybersecurity company CipherTrace.

In his complaint, Terpin said Pinsky and his "gang of digital bandits" would steal from victims after gaining control of their smartphones through "SIM swaps," and that Pinsky bragged to friends that he would never get caught.

Terpin accused Pinsky and his alleged co-conspirators, none identified by name in the complaint, of violating federal laws against racketeering and computer fraud.

Terpin in May 2019 won a $75.8 million civil judgment in a related case in a California state court against Nicholas Truglia, an alleged Pinsky associate who has faced criminal hacking charges in California and New York.

Terpin said the New York charges relate to the $23.8 million theft. Terpin is also suing his carrier AT&T Mobility in Los Angeles for $240 million, court records show. A judge is considering AT&T's bid to dismiss that case, the records show.

SIM swapping occurs when a hacker tricks a mobile phone carrier into transferring a target's phone number from a registered SIM card, the small plastic chip connecting a phone to a cellular network, to a SIM card he or she possesses. This can be done with help from someone at the carrier, or by stating information about the target obtained from social media and other accounts. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Younger will be returning for a seventh season, but now there is a new spin-off in the works focusing on Hilary Duff's book editor character Kelsey Peters.

The comedy spin-off is in early development, and an episode has yet to be filmed or scripted, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

As of now, it's uncertain if the show would air as planted episode of the upcoming season of Younger.

New chapter: Younger will be returning for a seventh season, but now there is a new spin-off in the works focusing on ambitious book editor Kelsey Peters

The show, which will be a collaboration between Younger creator Darren Star and Viacom CBS, could potentially air on Paramount Network, where Younger was once set to move to, or another network.

Hilary has played millennial book editor Kelsey on Younger since 2015.

The show stars Sutton Foster as a 40-year-old single mother who pretends to be a 26-year-old in order to score a job at a publishing house.

She befriends her ambitious coworker, Kelsey, who becomes a prominent part of the series.

Accomplished: Hilary has played millennial book editor Kelsey on Younger since 2015

The TV Land show has been a ratings hit, and has been renewed for a seventh season.

This is not the first time Hilary would be reprising a beloved role.

Hilary had begun filming a Lizzie McGuire reboot for Disney+, and the series was set to follow her 30-year-old character living and working in New York City.

Fiction: The show stars Sutton Foster as a 40-year-old single mother who pretends to be a 26-year-old in order to score a job at a publishing house

However, the show was put on hold after series creator and showrunner Terri Minsky stepped down from her role.

Hilary slammed Disney last month as she fought against a PG rating for the series, explaining the show needed to illustrate the realities of her older character.

However, progress appears to be made after the show's writers were seen having a Zoom call last month.

Lights, camera, action: Duff pictured on the set of Younger in 2016

Terri, surprisingly, was pictured in the call.

Hilary told People last month: 'There's still conversations going on in hopes that we can find a way to meet in the middle and both bend a little bit.

'I understand that they have to protect their brand and there's pretty strict guidelines on what that looks like.'

'I just have to make sure it's the right move for me and that I feel like I'm honoring her and the character, and that it will be relatable to the people who grew up with her because those are the people I really want to speak to.'
Protests at a makeshift detention centre in inner Brisbane have entered their fifth week, with advocates fearing an outbreak of COVID-19 given the cramped conditions asylum seekers are living in.

About 120 men are being held at the Kangaroo Point hotel, which has been used to house asylum seekers transferred from offshore detention for specialist medical treatment.

Asylum seekers protest on the balconies of a detention centre in Brisbane.

Each Friday, community members have been walking laps around the hotel in solidarity, while the men undertake their daily exercise session.

Protesters plan to picnic outside the hotel this Friday to "test the legalities of Queenslands loosened lockdown laws".
Copper Mountain Mining Announces Improved Feasibility Study Update Results for Eva Copper, Improves NPV and Increases Total Production by 57%

Posted by Publisher Internet

Copper Mountain Mining Corporation (TSX:CMMC | ASX:C6C)? (?Copper Mountain? or the ?Company?  https://www.commodity-tv.com/play/copper-mountain-mining-q4-and-full-year-2019-numbers-published/ ) is pleased to announce positive results from its 2020 Feasibility Study Update (?2020 FS?) on its 100% owned Eva Copper Project (?Eva? or ?the Project?), which is located in Queensland, Australia. The 2020 FS demonstrates significantly improved economics and operating metrics, including a higher after-tax NPV, increased production, lower cash costs and a longer mine life, when compared to the prior 2018 Feasibility Study.? ?All dollars are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated.

2020 FS Highlights

Economic metrics highlights:

After-tax Net Present Value (NPV)(1) at an 8% discount rate of $437 million.

After-tax Internal Rate of Return (IRR) (1) of 29%.

Total initial development capital $382 million.

(1) Assumes bank consensus metal prices: Year -1 of $2.97 per pound copper and $1,466 per ounce gold, Year 1 of $3.03 per pound copper and $1.434 per ounce gold and Year 2 and long-term prices of $3.04 per pound copper and $1,362 per ounce gold.

?These results demonstrate the high quality nature of the Eva Copper Project,? commented Gil Clausen, Copper Mountain?s President and CEO. ?We have improved the Project with higher production, a longer mine life and lower operating costs.? The Blackard and Scanlan deposits were added ?to Mineral Reserves, increasing total Mineral Reserves by 46%, and we have made process flow sheet optimizations. Eva Copper has the potential to add significant production and cash flow to our existing solid operating base. While we are and will continue to add value to Eva Copper, it should be noted that we will only move forward with development in the right copper price environment. Eva provides Copper Mountain shareholders with high quality organic growth potential in a low risk jurisdiction.?

Mining

Conventional open pit mining methods, which include drilling, blasting, loading, and hauling, will be employed at the Eva Copper Project. There are seven pits that make up the Project?s mine plan: Little Eva is the primary pit and will be supplemented by progressively mining six satellite pit areas at Blackard, Scanlan, Turkey Creek, Bedford, Lady Clayre, and Ivy Ann. ?The pit designs for the seven deposits were based on a Whittle Lerchs-Grossmann optimization at US$2.75 per pound copper price, generated using Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources only. Mining costs are based on a first-principles model based on locally-sourced costs for major inputs.

The mine plan includes mining 551 million tonnes of ore and waste from seven deposits over a mine life of 15 years. Total ore mined is expected to be 170 million tonnes and total waste is expected to be 380 million tonnes, for a waste to ore strip ratio of 2.2 to 1. With an overall copper recovery of 87%, the Project?s total copper production is expected to be approximately 1.5 billion pounds of copper, while gold production would be 205,000 ounces based on a gold recovery of 78%.? Metal production on an average annual basis would be 100 million pounds of copper and 13,650 ounces of gold. ??However, the first two years of mining are expected to produce approximately 128 million pounds of copper per year.

Processing

The process plant is designed to mill 31,200 tonnes per day (tpd) for an average throughput of 11.4 million tonnes per year. ??Sequenced mining from the seven deposits will deliver a mixture of sulphide and native copper ore in a ratio of 75% to 25%.? ?The sulphide deposits include Little Eva, Turkey Creek, Bedford, Lady Clayre, and Ivy Ann, whereas the Blackard and Scanlan deposits contain both native copper and sulphide ore. The processing flowsheet consists of a crushing, grinding, gravity separation and flotation to recover copper and gold in concentrate form. ?The flotation concentrate will be thickened, filtered and stockpiled for shipping to the Mt. Isa Smelter. Full transportation, smelting and refining costs were based on the Company?s existing long-term contract with Glencore?s Mt. Isa Smelter, which is situated 194 kilometres to the SW of Eva Project area.

A key update in the 2020 FS flowsheet from the 2018 Feasibility Study is the change from a SAG mill and pebble crushing circuit to a secondary crusher and High-Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR) design. The ball mill has also been upsized in order to support 31.2 kt/d at a P80 target grind of 165 ?m. The process plant flowsheet developed for the Eva Copper Project is a standard concentrator design and all the unit operations selected for the plant consist of proven technology and are considered low-risk.

The Project is near existing infrastructure with power available through a 220 kV powerline. Water for the operations will be supplied through a well field located near the processing facility, pit dewatering and water reclaimed from the tailings storage facility, all of which are located on the Company property. The well field has been drilled, pump tested and verified by independent hydrologists as sufficient for the Project?s water consumption needs.

A summary of mining and production parameters is provided below. A summary of the Eva Copper Project?s life of mine production schedule by year is available in appendix 1. A detailed life of mine production schedule by deposit and zone is available in the 2020 FS Technical Report.

Capital and Operating Costs

Total initial development capital for the Eva Copper Project is estimated to be approximately $382 million, which includes a contingency of $42 million and pre-production revenue of $11 million. Capital is estimated using an Australian dollar to U.S. dollar exchange rate 1.55 to 1.

Total life of mine development capital is estimated to be $492 million which includes total sustaining capital of approximately $34 million and total rehabilitation costs of $14 million.

Average C1 cash cost, net of by-product credits, is approximately $1.44 per pound of copper. Total operating costs are estimated to be $11.39 per tonne milled. Total mining costs are estimated to be $1.66 per tonne mined or $5.26 per tonne milled.? Total operating costs do not include royalties, which are estimated to be approximately $1.18 per tonne milled.

Economic Analysis

The after-tax NPV using an 8% discount rate is $437 million and the after-tax IRR is 29%. The economics are calculated using average bank consensus metal prices, which are as follows: for copper, $2.97 per pound in Year -1, $3.03 per pound in Year 1, and $3.04 per pound in Year 2 and long-term. For gold, $1,466 per ounce in Year -1, $1,434 in Year 1 and $1,362 per ounce Year 2 and long-term. The Australian Dollar to United States Dollar exchange rate used was 1.55. ??A sensitivity analysis on varying copper prices and other variables was completed on the after-tax NPV (8%) and the results are summarized below.

Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves

The Eva Copper Mineral Reserve increased 46% to 171 million tonnes grading 0.46% copper and 0.05 g/t gold for a total of 1.7 billion pounds of copper and 260,000 ounces of gold, when compared to the previous September 2018 Mineral Reserve. The Mineral Reserve is included in the Mineral Resource and the effective date of the Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource is January 30, 2020. A summary of the Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource is provided below. A complete detailed Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource table by deposit is available in the 2020 FS Technical Report.

Mineral Reserve Notes:

1. CIM Definition Standards were followed for Mineral Reserves.

2. Mineral Reserves were generated using the December 31, 2019 mining surface.

3. Mineral Reserves are reported at an NSR cut-off value of $8.95/t for Little Eva and Turkey Creek, $9.35/t for Bedford and Blackard, $10.32/t for Lady Clayre and Scanlan, and $11.44/t for Ivy Ann.

4. Mineral Reserves are reported using copper and gold prices of $2.75/lb and $1,250/oz, respectively.

5. Average process recoveries of 95% for copper sulphide, 63% for native copper, and 78% for gold were used for all deposit areas.

6. Little Eva, Turkey Creek, Bedford, and Lady Clayre have an equivalent 5.3% NSR royalty; Ivy Ann has an equivalent 5.8% royalty.

7. Blackard, Scanlan, and Turkey Creek do not contain gold.

8. Totals may show apparent differences due to rounding.

Mineral Resource Notes:

1. Joint Ore Reserves Code (JORC) and CIM definitions were followed for Mineral Resources.

2. Mineral Resources are inclusive of Mineral Reserves.

3. Mineral Resources are constrained within a Whittle pit shell generated with a copper price of $3.50/lb, a gold price of $1,250/oz and an exchange rate of AU$1.35 = US$1.00.

4. Density measurements were applied (ranges from 2.4 t/m3 to 3.0 t/m3).

5. Significant figures have been reduced to reflect uncertainty of estimations and therefore numbers may not add due to rounding.

Technical Report

The 43-101 compliant technical report for the Eva Copper 2020 FS (?Technical Report?) is available on SEDAR at www.SEDAR.com and on the Company?s website at www.CuMtn.com.? Ausenco Limited (Ausenco) designed the 2020 process plant and associated site infrastructure for the Eva Copper Project and provided technical input into the preparation of this Technical Report. Klohn Crippen Berger (KCB) designed the 2020 Tailings Storage Facility and provided input to water management. Merit Consultants International (Merit), a division of Cementation Canada Inc., developed the 2020 capital cost, construction management, and execution plan of the Project.

Qualified Persons

The Mineral Resource estimate for the Eva Copper Project was prepared by Copper Mountain Mining Corporation in accordance with standards as defined by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (\CIM\) \CIM Definition Standards-For Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves\, adopted by CIM Council on May 10, 2014.

Messrs. Paul Staples, Alistair Kent, David Johns, Peter Holbek, Stuart Collins, Mike Westendorf, Roland Bartsch and Richard Klue serve as Qualified Persons as defined by National Instrument 43-101 for the Technical Report related to the Eva Copper Project. Mr. Stuart Collins of SEC Enterprises Corp., who is independent of the Company, is the Qualified Person for Mining and the Mineral Reserve. Mr. Peter Holbek, Vice President, Exploration at Copper Mountain Mining Corporation, is the Qualified Person for the related Mineral Resource. Mr. Alistair Kent, Senior Project Manager for Merit Consultants International, who is independent of the Company, is the Qualified Person for the Development Capital Estimate.? Mr. Paul Staples, Vice President and Global Practice Lead for Ausenco Limited, who is independent of the Company, is the Qualified Person for Ore Processing. ?Mr. Richard Klue, Mr. Alistair Kent, Mr. Paul Staples, Mr. Johns, Mr. Peter Holbek, Mr. Mike Westendorf, Mr. Roland Bartsch and Mr. Stuart Collins have reviewed and verified that the technical information related to the Eva Copper Project in this news release is accurate.

Competent Persons Statement

The information in this report that relates to Exploration Targets, Exploration Results, Mineral Resources or Ore Reserves is based on information compiled by Peter Holbek, B.SC (Hons), M.Sc. P. Geo. Mr. Holbek is a senior officer and a full time employee of the Company and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the ?Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves?. Mr. Holbek does consent to the inclusion in this news release of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which it appears.

About Copper Mountain Mining Corporation:

Copper Mountain?s flagship asset is the 75% owned Copper Mountain mine located in southern British Columbia near the town of Princeton. The Copper Mountain mine currently produces on average approximately 90 million pounds of copper equivalent annually.? Copper Mountain also has the development-stage Eva Copper Project in Queensland, Australia and an extensive 4,000 km2 highly prospective land package in the Mount Isa area. Copper Mountain trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ?CMMC? and Australian Stock Exchange under the symbol ?C6C?.

Additional information is available on the Company?s web page at www.CuMtn.com.

On behalf of the Board of

COPPER MOUNTAIN MINING CORPORATION

?Gil Clausen?

Gil Clausen, P.Eng.

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Letitia Wong, Vice President Corporate Development & Investor Relations

604-682-2992 Email: Letitia.Wong@CuMtn.com? or

Dan Gibbons, Investor Relations 604-682-2992 ext. 238 Email: Dan.Gibbons@CuMtn.com

In Europe:

Swiss Resource Capital AG

Jochen Staiger

info@resource-capital.ch

www.resource-capital.ch

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, ?forward-looking statements?) within the meaning of applicable securities laws.? All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements.? Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as ?plans?, ?expects?, ?estimates?, ?intends?, ?anticipates?, ?believes? or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results ?may?, ?could?, ?would?, ?might?, ?occur? or ?be achieved?.? Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance and opportunities to differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements.? Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include the successful exploration of the Company?s properties in Canada and Australia, the reliability of the historical data referenced in this press release and risks set out in Copper Mountain?s public documents, including in each management discussion and analysis, filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.? Although Copper Mountain believes that the information and assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all.? Except where required by applicable law, Copper Mountain disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
As I see images of the Vizag gas leak from the LG plant and hear of the deaths and injured people, it is an eerie flashback to the time I visited Bhopal in 1985 a few weeks after the toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in December 1984. I was shocked to see the number of people sick and dying in the Bhopal hospitals.

In both cases, the accident happened at night and the gas plume escaping from the plant affected the nearby community. Both plants were resuming production after a period of downtime, and it is clear that errors occurred in the protocols.

As it turned out, the methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide plant was more toxic than the styrene that leaked from the LG plant. However, the 11 deaths so far and hundreds of affected people in hospital indicate that styrene must have escaped in extremely high concentrations and affected the nearby population.

Styrene is a chemical used in plastic and rubber manufacturing, and is toxic to the brain and lungs. The permissible exposure level (PEL) mandated by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is 100 ppm (parts per million) for an adult worker for eight hours and the Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health level is 700 ppm. This level has been severely exceeded, indicated by the number of deaths and injured.

The health effects of styrene on the lung include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, cough, shortness of breath, chemical inflammation of the lung tissues, and possible accumulation of fluid which can lead to death, a condition known as pulmonary edema. Brain effects include a feeling of drunkenness, changes in colour vision, tiredness, confusion, slowed reaction time, concentration and balance problems.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified styrene as a possible carcinogen. There is no known antidote to this toxin so aggressive supportive management and treatment is the need of the hour. The supportive treatment is typically washing skin to remove the chemical, administration of oxygen, and symptomatic treatment.

The questions that need to be answered immediately are: How much of the toxin escaped into the environment? What were the emission levels downwind of the plant? Are there other toxins that also escaped? What is the area of spread of the gas? Which neighborhoods are affected, Did the toxin seep into the soil and water? And how many people were at risk of exposure to this toxic gas cloud?

Some of these questions can be answered by urgently modelling the gas plume dispersion.

Note that the PEL of 100 ppm is for a healthy adult worker but the exposed population in Vizag would certainly comprise children, pregnant women, older individuals, and people with heart, lung, and other disabilities which would render them more vulnerable to the toxic effects of styrene. In addition, in people with Covid-19 infection, the inflammatory effects of styrene could be far worse.

Concurrent with the immediate treatment, a search must be made for the population potentially exposed to styrene, so that they may be monitored in the immediate aftermath, as well as in the medium and long term.

Thirty six years after the Bhopal disaster, it is distressing to see accidents from hazardous industries. The fields of occupational and environmental medicine, toxicology, and epidemiology which study and prevent industrial accidents have still not been developed adequately to cater for the amount of industrial development that has occurred in India. After the Bhopal disaster, I was frustrated that this field was not available in India and I had to go overseas to study these subjects. In 2020, Im not sure very much has changed.

(The writer is a specialist in occupational and environmental medicine and is a member of the International Medical Commission on Bhopal. He teaches at the Indian Institute of Public Health in Hyderabad).

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The UK is asking manufacturers to produce virus-fighting gear; will it be enough to improve the industrys outlook?

London, United Kingdom  At the beginning of 2020, the UK manufacturing sector experienced its sharpest decline in output since 2013. For years, trade bodies such as Make UK have been raising the alarm about the sectors Brexit-fuelled negative outlook, worried that new regulations could stymie growth or lead to a decrease in international trade, but the coronavirus is changing everything.

For the last couple of years, its been tough for the manufacturing sector  firms have been holding off spending on long-term hiring, investment, recruitment and machinery, says Seamus Nevin, the chief economist at Make UK. A degree of certainty was starting to be restored this year. But this pandemic has created a whole new set of uncertainties. Its disrupted supply chains [and] customer demand.

In April, as the novel coronavirus took hold in the UK, reports of shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) started to emerge at hospitals and National Health Service (NHS) trusts. By mid-March, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, called on the UKs manufacturers to produce 10,000 ventilators to deal with growing pressures on the UKs NHS. The call triggered a wave of retrofitting, innovation and retooling among manufacturers. It was all coordinated at a level that would have seemed impossible even a few short months ago, leading many British companies to consider whether it will have long-term benefits for their countrys manufacturing sector.

The coronavirus shapes UK manufacturing

The virus is not only impacting demand for UK goods but it is also testing the resilience of its supply chains, the willingness of its companies to cooperate and how well the government communicates with its businesses.

In March, the coronavirus and related mitigation efforts led UK manufacturing to contract to its lowest level since 2012, according to a joint report by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply and IHS Markit. The situation may even get worse if social distancing continues for an extended period. The long-term trend in jobs in manufacturing is down, because of productivity improvements and automation, says Steve Coulter, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. If anything, COVID will hasten this trend.

This Seamus

customer demand.]

Design and architecture firms, agrifood giants and brands such as Burberry have also taken similar steps to answer the governments call. This lesser-known category of manufacturers has been producing masks, hand sanitiser and face shields to address the shortages of PPE for front-line workers. In a growing number of cases, former competitors are working together to produce protective equipment for first responders.

They are recognising that they want to share knowledge, insight [and] help each other  and in many cases, the supply chains are so integrated that firms are converting their warehouse spaces, seconding staff to each other, adds Nevin. Product development has been really rapid but this level of flexibility demonstrates how important it is to have a robust manufacturing base when these challenges arise.

The demand created by efforts to slow the spread of the virus may also alter how companies are structured. Companies may look at forming more flexible groups to make products, breaking up existing rigidity, says Jeroen Bergmann, an associate professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford.

Another effect could be an emphasis on resilience in supply chains and production. Supply chains in the UK have often been optimised for efficiency and cost  such as sourcing component parts for electric equipment from abroad because it works out cheaper.

This whole episode will lead a lot of organisations to question the wisdom of complex interdependent supply chains, says Nick Oliver, a professor of management at the University of Edinburghs Business School. Its similar to how the supermarkets ran out of food but the corner shops didnt.

Corner shops are not typically places where people go to buy food in bulk, and many do not try to compete with massive chains on price. On a system level, changing those [supply] chains may be less efficient but its more resilient and thats going to be crucial, said Oliver.

One major X factor in the future of UK manufacturing is confusion about the British governments current strategy and whether it rejected offers to join a European Union-wide medical equipment production scheme.

In those early stages [of the outbreak], we had an unrealistic strategy, coupled with an ideological overtone: lets show how independent and resourceful British manufacturing is, says Oliver. Early in the pandemic, several British news outlets reported that when UK firms offered to help with testing for COVID-19 or production of PPE, the government rebuffed or ignored them. The accusations have led to concerns that medium-sized firms will not be offered government contracts and may have to lay off employees.

The Vauxhall manufacturing plant is seen as the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Luton, Britain [File: John Sibley/Reuters]

The myth of the wartime footing

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, health secretary Hancock and other British politicians have referred to the current state of affairs as a wartime footing, in reference to the last time that there was such widespread retooling and retrofitting. The UK government realised during World War I that it was woefully underprepared for another global conflict, so it started to draw up plans for what it would do in the event of another major war. Those plans were used during World War II when factories and warehouses around the UK were repurposed to manufacture bombs and other weaponry.

In the 1930s, the British government was making detailed plans for ramping up the production of armaments and that just isnt the case in this scenario, says David Edgerton, an historian at Kings College London. They didnt see the need for tests on a large scale, nor did they anticipate the need for ventilators, even though they were warned that this was happening.

Its interesting that people go straight to this war analogy, says Edgerton. But the reality is that you can only ramp up production of things that already exist.

Case in point: the most successful ventilator consortiums have been those that worked with existing manufacturers of medical equipment, to ramp up their production instead of creating completely new designs.

The similarity [between the coronavirus and World War II] is that theres a clear need for switching priorities: the public takes precedence over everything else, which means overriding private interest, says Mark Harrison, an economic historian formerly at the University of Warwick.

The Brexit threat, for which the government has recently said it will not request an extension, looms closer, too. Big businesses  particularly those that had significant links with the EU  were already worried about how their supply chains would have to shift or adjust with new tariffs, regulation and a different business environment. Negotiations should be finalised by December 31, but the viruss disruption to supply chains is significantly affecting proceedings, says Oliver.

Data from Make UK shows that firms are unlikely to return to anything resembling normalcy soon. Remote working may become increasingly desirable, driving down demand for new cars but increasing pressure on computing infrastructure.

Big crises like this have a tendency to disrupt established patterns and hasten new trends, adds Coulter. It may encourage reshoring because of problems with supply chains.

However, reshoring rarely works exactly in reverse. It doesnt happen often that manufacturing is reshored in the same method as it was before, says Jostein Hauge, a research associate at the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the University of Cambridge.
#5YearsOfPiku Trends On Twitter, Fans Call It Irrfan Khan's 'Most Subtle' Performance
(Newser)  Authorities in Tennessee believe they've nabbed a serial killer. Clark Perry Baldwin, a 59-year-old former truck driver, was arrested in Iowa Wednesday and charged in the 1991 death of a 24-weeks-pregnant woman in Tennessee. In March 1991, Pamela McCall was been found strangled in Spring Hill, Tenn., a few miles from a truck stop where she was seen getting into a tractor trailer. Per CNN, DNA from the scene was submitted to a national database a year ago, and it matched DNA from two killings of unidentified women that occurred near interstates in Wyoming in March and April of 1992. "Those homicides were also similar in nature to the McCall homicide with a truck driver possibly being the suspect," said 22nd Judicial District Attorney Brent Cooper.

story continues below

"I think he preyed on young women that frequented truck stops," Cooper told People. "It appeared they would travel with him and then he would end up possibly raping them and then killing them." Baldwin was tracked through genetic genealogy: Investigators followed him to a Walmart and swabbed a shopping cart and items he returned to shelves. The collected DNA "matched the profile at our murder scenes," says Cooper. Baldwin is being looked at in other cases, per the Des Moines Register, including two more from 1992. Baldwin had been arrested for raping and strangling a female hitchhiker in Texas a month before McCall was killed. But the charges were dropped after the out-of-state woman refused to return to Texas. Cooper says Baldwin will be extradited to Tennessee and then to Wyoming "once the Tennessee charges are resolved." (Read more serial killers stories.)
In 1991, Philip Hardy founded Barnstorm Theatre Company in Kilkenny to develop and provide theatre to a wide audience of both children and adults.

Originally from Dublin, Philip has been living in Inistioge for the past 30 years. He attended the Brendan Smith Academy and the Oscar School of Acting and was a professional actor for the first few years of his professional career.

I first came across Philip when Barnstorm Theatre Company asked me to sit on their Board - it was an experience I will never forget.

It opened my eyes to what goes on behind the scenes of every single production  the funding, grant applications, script writers, directors and producers, cast and crew, set designers, promoters and the office staff. They are one of the hardest working bunch of people I have ever met, who mostly do it for the love of it.

Philip was an accomplished actor before he became a director. His early directing experience was as Assistant Director on the world premiere of Dancing with Lughnasa at the Abbey Theatre, which coincidentally celebrated its 30th anniversary this month.

The 1990 premiere of Brian Friels play was the beginning of modern theatre and we are blessed that it led Philip Hardy to Kilkenny.

Here is a glimpse into Philips world

Philip you moved from an actors life London to live in beautiful stillness of Inistioge. What brought you here?

Im afraid it was tragedy that brought me back to my mothers hometown. My eldest sister was widowed at the age of 35 with four young children and I came home to help out for a while.

The theatre was still in me and that was when I started Barnstorm. I always thought that I would return to London, but life and career had other plans!

Why set up Barnstorm Theatre Company for children?

Theatre is for everyone and my dream was to make theatre with and for different audiences. We produce for adults and children as well as communities; and we have three youth theatre groups where the members explore and create their own theatre.

We also provide a similar opportunity to adults with the Adult Theatre Club which has led to the formation of the Barn Owl Players in Kilkenny.

Barnstorm productions are quirky, thought-provoking modern fairy tales, dealing with real life subjects, such as dementia in Mondays Child, growing up different in The Ice Child, and online addiction in Alice and the Wolf. Yet the young audience receive them so openly and adore the daring story lines.

Storytelling! We all love stories and in the theatre we suspend disbelief and enter into the world of the story and the characters.

Great writers, actors, design team and production crew make the magic with the specific audience in mind. And we can all engage in challenging subjects and storylines. It is sometimes a dark world, but an exciting world that we live in and children can deal with a lot as they navigate it.

Barnstorms latest production Alice and the Wolf dives into the online world. Again with a powerful message.

Alice and the Wolf is about a teenage girl who spends virtually all her time online playing Wolf Wood. This game is the worlds deepest, darkest online game.

She is consumed by the gaming world, after her dad leaves, and her mothers is busy with her new her best friend who she met on line!

On top of that her best friend dumps her for a You Tube star. But what happens when the people you meet online come looking for you in real life? Who can you trust, and who is the Big Bad Wolf?

My favourite line was delivered by Alices granny, this isnt the internet young lady, you cant go around pretending you are someone you are not. It resonates with me every time I post something online now.

Its written by Tom Swift and it is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story in a digital fairy tale, thats deliciously funny and full of dangerously dark twists.

The moral of the play is its not about who you are, but who you pretend to be, so be careful.

Do you miss acting?

Some would say that I never stopped acting! I dont so much miss it  it is a long time since I was on stage.

I think the actor I was is gone now and I sometimes wonder what he would be like now. And I dont envy the director that would work with me  I have strong ideas and because I teach too I would need to remember my role as an actor.

You have also established an exciting outreach programme.

The programme provides access to theatre as a resource to groups, communities and individuals in Kilkenny such as womens groups, marginalised youth, after-school Childrens projects, primary and post-primary teachers and students.

Kilkenny Youth Theatre (Senior, Middle and Junior) runs weekly workshops for young people 11 to 18 years and is renowned for its annual productions in The Barn Theatre and Watergate Theatre.

So what are they all doing to keep up their acting skills during Covid-19?

Well there are only three staff and six members of our Board of Directors and we are all still working from home, planning and developing projects for the future.

Our Youth Theatre meets weekly through Zoom with Anna Galligan and Orla McGovern their facilitators  they were in the middle of rehearsals for their annual productions which would have happened April, May and June.

Barnstorm is still searching for a new home in Kilkenny with the support of Kilkenny County Council so that occupies us all. We have been based in our present home since 1996. And we have ambitious plans for the future.

You are also involved in producing and directing plays that are on the school syllabus.

In 2016, I directed a production of Translations by Brian Friel for the inaugural programme of Curriculum Play Live! in association with the Watergate Theatre and consulted with teachers in choosing future plays to be produced for local schools and general public.

Since then CPL has produced The Plough and the Stars by Sean OCasey (2017), All My Sons by Arthur Miller (2018), and The Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge (2019).

Whats the next production for Barnstorm?

Philadelphia Here I Come by Brian Friel is this years Curriculum Play Live production which will hopefully start rehearsals in early September. The play is on the Leaving Cert and, fingers crossed, we hope to stage it in November.

This is a project close to my heart and brings together a number of elements  the professional company, the venue, the schools in the region, local actors and the general public in an annual production of a classic in international theatre.

You have a super team in Barnstorm Theatre Company. I have to mention your right hand man Vincent Dempsey. How long have you worked together?

Vincent and I have worked together for so many years even before Barnstorm. I met Vincent when we both worked for Team Educational Theatre Company in the eighties  me as actor/teacher and he as Tour/Stage Manager.

When I started Barnstorm it was just me and few local youth theatre members but as we began to grow I went out to poach Vincent and I succeeded. That was 25 years ago. Anna Galligan joined us 11 years ago and has built a wonderful Outreach programme including Kilkenny Youth Theatre.

You have come through a lot over the years. How does a theatre company survive the downturn?

With a lot of help from our friends!

Friends of Barnstorm are essential in ensuring the ongoing success and world-class quality of this theatre company. If you would like to become a Friend, contact 056-775 1266 or email philip@barnstorm.ie for more information.
As many as 600 people tested positive for coronavirus on Friday taking the total cases in Tamil Nadu to 6,009, as the Madras High Court ordered closure of liquor shops a day after they reopened citing violation of guidelines but allowed door delivery and online transactions.

Actor Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam, which also had moved the court against the opening of liquor outlets, and main opposition DMK welcomed the court ruling.

A Shramik Special train, meanwhile, departed to Hatia in Jharkhand from Katpadi in Vellore District of Tamil Nadu.

The passengers were patients and their care givers who had come to Vellore for treatment at CMC Hospital and got stranded due to the lockdown, General Manager, Southern Railway said on his twitter handle.

Similar trains had been operated in recent days from here and Katpadi to ferry guest workers and others like those who had come to for medical treatment.

Three men died of COVID-19 including an octogenarian and of the total 4,361 active cases as on date, 1,589 were linked to the Koyambedu market here, a health department bulletin said.

The market for vegetables, flowers and fruits here is seen as the biggest hotspot for the spread of the contagion in Tamil Nadu eclipsing the earlier single source (a Delhi event in which about 1,500 people from Tamil Nadu had taken part in March) for the dispersion of the virus.

The market is barred for public now and it is being shifted to suburban Tirumazhisai and Chief Minister K Palaniswami is expected to inspect arrangements at the new, makeshift premises.

As seen in earlier days, there were a number of children below 10 years among the newly infected.

A bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Satyanarayana of the High Court noted that there were huge crowds before the shops and no social distancing was maintained.

Passing order on a petition filed by advocate G Rajesh, besides a plaint by MNM, the bench said there was total violation of its interimorder issued on Wednesday, when it declined to stay a government order allowing resumption of sale of liquor.

Besides the guidelines issued by the state government and the TASMAC, the sole retailer of liquor in Tamil Nadu, were also violated, it said.

However, the court allowed online sale of liquor and door delivery till the lockdown to check spread of coronavirus was over.

After a dry spell of 43 days due to the COVID-19 induced lockdown since March 24, liquor sales resumed at the TASMAC outlets in Tamil Nadu except Chennai on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the bench had directed the government to ensure strict implementation of all appropriate rules, as notified by the state, including maintenance of social distancing at liquor shops while allowing the resumption.

When the matter came up on Friday, petitioner Rajesh submitted there was a total violation of the guidelines framed as per G.O.No 223 of May 5 and also the norms stipulated by TASMAC and the court.

Kamal Haasan in a tweet welcomed the ruling saying it has proved that trust on court and truth will triumph.

DMK chief M K Stalin welcomed the order and asked the government to not appeal against it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On Thursday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, in connection with the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Both were charged with murder and aggravated assault. The McMichaels were taken into custody and will be booked into the Glynn County Jail, authorities said.


Abbas Padilla thought he would have a week or two to re-open Bayou City Barbershop, the business he co-owns with Peter Blanford. But when Gov. Greg Abbott announced that hair salons could welcome back customers beginning May 8, Padilla and Blanford sprang into action.

I just knew I had to go into full-speed ahead mode because my barbers have been out of work for almost eight weeks now, Padilla said. I posted on social media, turned the shop phone on and said, Lets just start taking appointments. It hasnt stopped ringing since.

Theyve only had three days to sanitize their hip EaDo shop from top to bottom. The barbershops vintage decor includes a working cash register from the 60s. People get a kick out of hearing that old bell, Padilla said.

Come Friday morning, hell tape signage to the register explaining expectations for social distancing and wearing masks at all times.

Hell post the Center for Disease Controls suggested guidelines for hand-washing in the barbershops bathrooms and on the front door, too.

I drove around Houston collecting as much hand sanitizer as I could find so that our customers can feel like they have plenty of options within arms reach, Padilla said.

There will also be a box filled with extra masks in case clients forget to bring their own. And the row of stadium-style seating has been removed from the waiting area, replaced with single chairs spaced six feet apart. A few extra chairs will be placed outside, but any additional overflow will have to wait elsewhere.

Its a big change for Bayou City Barbershop, which will celebrate its five-year anniversary in July.

When we opened, I was taken aback by the sense of community built around our shop. That part of the business really surprised me, Padilla said. His customers felt comfortable just hanging out, and would often stop in for beer after work until the traffic died down. Thats going to change  at least for awhile.

Still, hes confident that once customers sit in that familiar barber chair, old feelings will come rushing back.

To prepare his four-person staff to make the necessary adjustments, the company held its first-ever Zoom meeting. Padilla expected the video conference to last half an hour, but conversations continued for nearly 90 minutes.

They talked about using Barbicide  the blue or purple stuff that youll see combs soaking in  to spray down and disinfect each station in between customers.

One barber asked how they should perform hair or beard services if their client is wearing a mask.

I feel really confident that everyone is taking this matter very seriously, Padilla said.

Good thing, there are few appointment slots left available for Bayou City Barbershops reopening weekend.

Across town in the Heights, Cin and Min co-owner Cindy Hutchinson received a detailed list of safety requirements from her landlord, Sola Salon Studios.

There are probably 20 to 30 studios here, so were part of whole herd of people prepping to reopen, Hutchinson said before explaining the advantages of her setup. Its typically just you and your client in the space. Two of us share our studio, though we recently upgraded to a larger area.

Even with the extra room, her buildings reopening guidelines allow one client in each studio at a time  including children. Sometimes people cant find a sitter, but theyve got to leave their kids at home now, Hutchinson said.

She and her business partner Minda Kilpatrick are determined to make it work. They were forced to close Cin and Min just three weeks after signing their new lease.

Hutchinson has never had this much time off work before. Not even to have my child, she said.

During the stay home/work safe order, she and Kilpatrick would drop off color kits for their clients to perform root touch-ups at home. It quickly became a popular service, though their customers are eager to get back in the chair.

My clients were so grateful to have color on their hair, Hutchinson said. But the guys who normally get their haircut every two or three weeks? Theyre losing their minds. Theyre the most frantic.

Phayes Two Barber Shops customers are itching to get their edges trimmed up. Thats why two managers, Joseph Hayes and Quincy Floyd, spent Thursday lugging heavy barber chairs out of the shop and onto the sidewalk. Everything had to be cleared out for a deep clean before Friday morning.

Everything is different, Hayes said.

Floyd added that appointments and masks for West Bellfort shop will be required for entry. No more than 10 people will be allowed inside at a time, and they must be six-feet apart.

To accommodate the crowd, Phayes Two will open earlier than its usual 8 a.m. start if necessary. Its not about the money, Id rather people be safe, Floyd said.

Not all stylists are ready to welcome clients back. Fay Farkas wont be opening her Montrose salon Friday. She said the health policy experts she has talked to say reopening is premature and could result in a flare up of Covid-19 cases.

Im currently planning to open the studio again when the supplies to meet the requirements are in place, hopefully after Memorial Day, she said in an email to her clients.

Mark Mulligan contributed to this report.

amber.elliott@chron.com
Police in Navrongo in the Upper East Region have secured a warrant from the Magistrate Court in the area to arrest an Ex-convict who is on the run for allegedly carrying out series of robberies on the Navrongo-Naga highway.

The suspect, Abdulai Bari, 26, also known as Sambo is of Fulani extraction and a Burkinabe but lives at Tankuna in Navrongo.



According to the Public Relations Officer of the Upper East Regional Police Command, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Mr David Fianko-Okyere, the suspect was last spotted in Navrongo on April 17, 2020 wearing a black T-shirt over a pair of black trousers.



He is believed to be hiding in Yagba, Sandema, Navrongo and Fumbisi hence the need for the public and residents of the Region to volunteer information that can lead to his arrest.



Incident



ASP Fianko-Okyere indicated that on March 22, 2020, the suspect was identified by a victim during a robbery incident which took place on the Navrongo-Naga road.



The suspect, and six other armed men blocked the road to vehicles and robbed victims of an Apsonic Motorbike with registration number M-20 UE 4341, assorted mobile phones, a purse containing an amount of GH500, passport pictures with a cash amount of GH3,237 and later fled the scene.



The PRO further explained that a search conducted in the suspects room in the presence of his wife uncovered a passport picture and a key to the Apsonic motorbike belonging to one of his victim's.The police then retained these items for evidential purposes".



ASP Fianko-Okyere stressed that while the police are making frantic efforts to arrest the suspect and prosecute him,residents of the Region who have information about his whereabouts should immediately report to any nearest police station or contact the Upper East Regional Police Command on its emergency numbers; 18555,191 or 054-1379624,054-3804864 and 054-0751802 for his immediate arrest.

Source: Daily Graphic









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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 01:45:04|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Friday condemned the collusion between local and foreign forces to destabilize Hong Kong.

According to media reports, an official of the European Parliament made unwarranted remarks on Hong Kong affairs and threatened to push for a European Union version of the Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on Hong Kong in a video call with Hong Kong opposition figures.

This is another evidence of the collusion between foreign and local forces to mess up Hong Kong, a spokesperson of the commissioner's office said when commenting on the matter.

It has been 23 years since Hong Kong's return to the motherland, but some local lackeys of foreign forces, who have no national dignity and disregard Hong Kong's future and the interests of their compatriots, conspired with foreign forces to meddle in Hong Kong affairs and begged their "foreign masters" to sanction Hong Kong and oppose their own nation, the spokesperson said, calling such acts legally unacceptable and contemptible.

Some foreign forces defied international laws and the basic norms of international relations, ignored the fact that Hong Kong has returned to China, and attempted to regard Hong Kong as an independent and semi-independent political entity, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson condemned those foreign forces for interfering in Hong Kong affairs, undermining the rule of law and judicial independence in Hong Kong, and jeopardizing China's sovereign security, stressing that they should be blamed for the prolonged violence, the damaged rule of law and the social unrest in Hong Kong.

Those who betrayed their own nation and messed up Hong Kong will be remembered as shameful figures in history forever and anyone who plotted to damage China's sovereign security is doomed to fail, the spokesperson said. Enditem
Tributes to frontline workers during the coronavirus have been spotted in many forms, from car parades to food & protective equipment donations. However, the latest form of tribute to take place in the skies of Laredo as the Texas Air National Guard F-16 unit performs a flyover above Laredo Medical Center Monday afternoon.

According to a statement from the Texas Air National Guard, the guard's F-16 until will fly over Laredo Medical at 1:10 to 1:20 p.m. on May 11. The group will fly north to south over the Laredo hospital between Bustamante Street and Highway 59, and between Meadow Avenue and Foster Avenue.

Following the Laredo flyover, the team will head to Corpus Christi, where the team will flyover CHRISTUS Spohn Hospital.

A different set of F-16 units will also fly over hospitals and medical support facilities in Lubbock area as part of their display in honor of Texas medical professionals on Monday.

We wanted to show our appreciation to all the frontline responders who are out there every day combating this virus, Col. Raul Rosario, 149th Fighter Wing commander said in a statement. As Guardsmen, who live and work in many of these local areas, we value the dedication of those who tirelessly serve our communities to help make what we do to defend the nation possible."

The flyover follows similar performances by air units such as the Blue Angels in Houston and Air Force Thunderbirds in San Antonio. While the performance is mainly a tribute to local medical workers, it also serves as a morale boosts for locals who have been confined in their homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

We know most people love to watch flyovers, and people could probably use a boost right now,Col. Matt Jensen, commander of the 149th Operations Group said. Fortunately for us, these flyovers also provide important proficiency training to our pilots, so it is a way to do something nice for the community through already-allotted flight hours at no extra cost to the taxpayer.

The flyovers are part of Operation American Resolve, which was created as a way to lift morale in cities across America as the cities around the nation are adopting stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. While the Air National Guard certainly wants to lift the spirits around the state with the performance, it also wants to remind locals to keep in mind social distancing and personal protective members when watching the flyover.
Gurkhas negotiated river crossings and land slides as they travelled 4,000 miles through the Himalayas to rescue more than 100 British tourists stuck in remote parts of Nepal.

Soldiers, UK embassy staff and drivers embarked on a three-week rescue mission to reach people stranded in mountainous towns, villages and national parks, the Foreign Office (FCO) said.

The operation, involving soldiers from the British Gurkhas Nepal network, based in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Dharan was launched to help the 109 Brits, along with 28 foreign nationals, reach repatriation flights chartered by the government last month amid strict lockdown measures.

British travellers were stranded in isolated parts of Nepal when the coronavirus outbreak struck but have since been rescued by the Gurkhas

Sergeant Prakash Gurung, of 29 Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, navigated treacherous roads to rescue a British solo traveller from Manang, in north-west Nepal, before driving the nine and a half hours back to Kathmandu to catch a UK charter flight.

Sgt Gurung, who has completed three tours of Iraq, as well as serving in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Kenya and Germany, said: 'I stepped up to volunteer because I thought it was a part of my job.

'Helping people in dire situations gives me a sense of satisfaction.

'The gratitude people expressed in messages has encouraged me to do more of this sort of work.'

Army transport, pictured, was used during a three-week operation to ultimately repatriate 109 Brits who were stuck in Nepal

The coronavirus outbreak severely reduced transport routes in Nepal, leaving tourists stranded in remote locations.

Some soldiers and drivers sent to their rescue had to set up camp for the night on the side of the road because of the long and hazardous journeys, the FCO said.

British ambassador to Nepal Nicola Pollitt said: 'Getting British nationals home in such an unprecedented time is a huge challenge around the world, but in a country like Nepal, with such extreme conditions, it would have been impossible to get everyone back without the close collaboration of the embassy and British Gurkhas Nepal.

A map, pictured, shows how far Sergeant Prakash Gurung brought a British solo traveller - nine and a half hours from Manang to Kathmandu - so they could fly home

'We have been able to reunite more than 700 British travellers with their families in the UK, and that would not have been possible without the tireless work of our embassy and Gurkha team.'

Lt Col Peter Wettenhall, Deputy Commander of the British Gurkhas Nepal, added: 'It is both fitting and in keeping with the role of the armed forces that when called on for assistance that we do our very best to support those in need.

'We are delighted that we were able to assist the British Embassy, British nationals and our soldiers and families in Nepal through this trying time.'
Most Americans support the lockdowns and want the government to bring the coronavirus under control before opening up the economy. But most is not all, and a small minority is eager to end all the restrictions now, even as the virus spreads and Covid-19 caseloads continue to grow.

A small faction of that minority has taken to the streets in vocal opposition to stay-at-home measures and the politicians responsible for them. They carry guns and wave Confederate flags and denounce virus mitigation strategies as tyranny, an imposition on their liberty to shop, consume and do as they please.

The vast majority of these protesters  like the vast majority of those who want to prematurely reopen the economy  are white. This is in stark contrast to the victims of Covid-19 (who are disproportionately black and brown), as well as those who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic (who are also disproportionately black and brown), as well as those who have been or will be forced to work  or work more  as a result of reopening (the service workers and laborers who are again disproportionately black and brown).

Its true that not every racial disparity speaks to some deeper dynamic of race and racism. But this one does. I dont think you can separate the vehemence of anti-lockdown protesters from their whiteness, nor do I think we can divorce their demands to reopen the economy from the knowledge that many of those most affected belong to other racial groups. Its not so much that theyre showing racial animus (although some are), but that their conception of what it means to be free is, at its root, tied tightly to their racial identity.
New Delhi, May 8 : Around 1,200 migrants from Bihar forced to stay in shelter homes in Delhi in the wake of a nationwide lockdown since March 24 midnight left for their home state on a special train here on Friday.

The Delhi government said it will bear their travel expenses as their home state had "not responded on who would bear the travel cost".

"As per the current guidelines, the central government and the home state of migrants should bear the cost of their travel. The Delhi government has already reached out to the respective states with lists of migrants stranded in Delhi. Most of these states are yet to respond on who will bear the travel costs. Therefore, the Delhi government has taken the decision to bear the expenses to avoid any further inconvenience to the stranded workers," Cabinet Minister Gopal Rai said.

The special train departed from the New Delhi railway station for Muzaffarpur at 3 pm, with the city government ensuring social distancing and food and water for all passengers.

The Delhi government is working round the clock to ensure safe travel of all the stranded workers, he said.

Rai also said that the state government had arranged several buses to ferry these workers to the railway station from shelters across Delhi.

"Teams of doctors were appointed to screen them and after thorough check-ups, medical certificates were issued to them. The Delhi government also ensured today's lunch along with water bottles for the train journey. All the people were given food packets apart from dry fruits, biscuits, and bananas." To ensure social distancing, the Delhi government permitted only 12 people on each bus that brought the migrants to the railway station. "Thermal screening of passengers was also done before they boarded the buses." Civil defence volunteers were appointed at each bus, the government said in a statement.

"The volunteers distributed masks to every passenger and instructed them to ensure social distancing during travel. The volunteers also asked them to wash their hands thoroughly from time to time. Medical certificates and tickets were given to the passengers once they reached the railway station," the Delhi government said.

On Thursday, a train carrying 1,050 migrants left Delhi for from Madhya Pradesh.
New Delhi: At this time the campaign to bring back the Indians trapped abroad due to the ongoing lockdown in the country due to coronavirus has been started. The government has named this mission as 'Vande Bharat Mission'. Under 'Vande Bharat Mission', 363 Indians were brought back home from Abu Dhabi and Dubai today and both special flights landed in Kerala on Thursday night. The first flight of the Air India Express carrying Indian citizens reached Kochi in Kerala from Abu Dhabi on Thursday and the aircraft flew from Abu Dhabi to Kochi at 5:07 pm (local time).

PM Scott Morrison says "These places will get relaxation in the first phase"

The second flight left for Kozhikode from Dubai at 5:46 pm (local time) and an Air India Express spokesperson said that "The first plane carrying four newborns and 177 passengers at 10 o'clock at night nine. Landed at the international airport in Kochi. "A Kerala government official said," Returning citizens to quarantine centres prepared by the administration in their respective districts''.

Aurangabad train accident: CM Shivraj announces Rs 5 lakh relief to the families of the deceased

The Navy warship INS Jalashw has reached Male to bring the Indians trapped in the Maldives. And another warship INS Magar is also on the way to Male. INS Jalashv is expected to leave for Kochi with around 750 people by Friday or this evening and after that INS but will return to the country with about 250 people. Due to social distancing and medical facility, in the first batch, the Navy will bring only 1000 people from Male. About 3500 Indian people are trapped in the Maldives.

CM Amarinder Singh writes letter to PM Modi regarding lockdown 3
Rajesh Asnani By

Express News Service

JAIPUR: Fuelled by fears over the alleged role of bats in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, people in Rajasthans Churu district have been killing the flying mammals in large numbers.

An alarmed forest department has been forced to issue a special circular to all forest officials in tiger reserves district to take special steps to remove the rumours and popular misgivings about bats in their area. Despite this, if bats are killed by anyone, the circular instructs officials to initiate strong action under the Indian Wildlife Act.

Besides the coronavirus, rumours about bats have spread rapidly in recent months. In Rajgarh block of Churu district, residents got so traumatized that they beat bats with sticks in some locations. Teams of the forest department then had to make a special effort to treat and save the injured bats.

Rajasthans Chief Wildlife Warden, Arindam Tomar, has said in his special order, We need to remove the fears and misunderstandings that have developed among people about bats. There is no firm proof that bats have played any role in the spread of corona pandemic. In reality, bats play an important role in nature. The order further says, Given the crucial role of bats in nature, if any incident of killing or attacking bats now comes to notice, strict legal action should be taken. Also, we must begin a special campaign to remove misconceptions about bats.

Ever since rumours began in social media about the role of bats in the spread of coronavirus, people have been worried and now see bats with suspicious eyes. Forest officials, however, point out that India has a total of 128 species of bats of which 25 reside in large numbers in Rajasthan. They are also pointing out that bats are not only useful in many farming activities but also pose no health hazard for human beings.

As such, the Rajasthan forest department now plans to carry out an extensive campaign to educate people to realize the need for co-existence and for saving rather than harming bats. Wildlife campaigners are also assuring people that bats cannot directly infect humans with Covid-19, and the effort should be to protect these harmless flying mammals.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are still adjusting to a new way of life now that theyve left the royal family. The duke and duchess have settled down in California, though rumor has it theyre still looking for their permanent home.

Although Harry and Meghan left the family to start a new life, one royal expert is convinced that the move is actually going to benefit Meghan more than Harry  and that it will result in the prince being at the bottom when the dust settles.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle officially left the royal family in March

Back in January, the duke and duchess announced on Instagram that they would be stepping back from their roles as senior royals. Ever since the couple wed back in 2018, theyve dealt with a massive amount of bad publicity  mostly directed at Meghan. The media dug into Meghans past and pulled up information about her family. Outlets also targeted Meghan as having started a feud with Kate Middleton, and the duchess couldnt catch a break. It led Meghan to have a difficult time winning over the public.

Meghan and Harry left to Canada shortly after their announcement, only to return to the United Kingdom once in March to finish out their royal duties. As of March 31, the two were officially former senior royals.

Harry has hinted in the past that he never wanted to be a royal

Harry didnt have an easy time growing up in the spotlight. The prince went through a lot after his mother died in 1997, and in 2017, 20 years after her death, Harry revealed in an interview with Newsweek that he still hasnt healed from the loss.

Writer Angela Levin also noted in the article that Harry said numerous times that he longs to be something other than Prince Harry. Though the world didnt put two and two together at the time, Harrys statement might have been hinting at a potential royal departure all along.

One expert is convinced the move will leave Harry at the bottom

Harry and Meghans shift to a new life seems to be what is best for them; it allows them to move out of the spotlight and start a new life as a regular couple rather than as two of the worlds most important people. However, one royal expert thinks it will have a negative effect on Harry.

Kelvin Mackenzie, former editor of The Sun and someone who has been following the royals for years, thinks that Meghan and Harrys departure will leave Harry with less than it will leave Meghan. I massively admire Meghan She came from nothing and ended up at the top, Mackenzie told Express. Harry, started at the top, ending up down the bottom Hes going to end up as a butler.

The bottom might be exactly where Harry wants to be

Mackenzie essentially said that Meghan and Harrys marriage will result in Meghans fame and Harrys demise, and suggested the two will end up divorced for that reason. But being a butler might be exactly what Harry wants. Hes always shied away from fame, and though he certainly hopes his marriage with Meghan works out, he might not mind if she ends up the more famous of the two.

In Archies birthday video, Harry was behind the camera  still there, but out of sight  seemingly exactly where he wanted to be. His marriage to Meghan could potentially be the best thing that ever happens to him.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Higg Co, the San Francisco-based technology company founded in 2019 to unify and scale sustainability measurement, announced today it has appointed former Nike Executive, Del Hudson, as the company's new VP of Marketing & Communications.

Higg Co develops and hosts sustainability measurement tools, allowing companies to integrate measurable data directly into internal systems, improving end-to-end decision-making. Its goal is to unify sustainability measurement practices within consumer goods industries.

The technology company was spun out of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) last year, with additional Series A funding from impact investment firms Titan Grove Holdings, Buckhill Capital and Sanjeev Bahl of Saiburg B.V. Supporting the apparel, footwear and textile industries to scale digitalization of sustainability data across global supply chains is Higg Co's current priority.

Hudson, who has spent 20 years in communications and sustainability leadership roles in the US, UK and New Zealand will oversee brand marketing, communications and stakeholder relations for the company. Since launching a year ago, Higg Co has expanded product offerings to include brand assessments, upgraded the Higg Index user experience, enabled completion of more than 10,000 factory assessments in 80+ countries and now employs more than 50 people.

At Nike, Hudson held various leadership roles in Global Communications then Sustainable Business Innovation, where she was responsible for external partnerships, brand integration, sustainability reporting and ESG disclosure. Under her leadership, Nike was a founding contributor to the New Textiles Economy initiative and was named Multinational category winner of The Circulars business awards at the 2017 World Economic Forum. After Nike, Hudson headed the North American office for UK-based circular economy think-tank, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Higg Co CEO, Jason Kibbey, says, "Del's experience building purpose-led brands and supporting industries in transition will be incredibly valuable for the next phase of our growth. I first collaborated with Del around seven years ago and her understanding of both the sustainability journey and emerging opportunities within our clients' industries is a real asset. We couldn't be more thrilled to have her join Higg Co."

Hudson says the COVID-19 crisis presents a pivotal moment to accelerate sustainability. "Businesses and governments need meaningful data now, more than ever, to inform decisions and rebuild global supply chains," says Hudson. "Trust and product provenance are increasingly important and companies are seeing that digitalization of supply chain data can accelerate sustainability, circularity and transparency, just as it has accelerated all other dimensions of commerce," she adds. "I'm energized by Higg Co's opportunity to help business respond responsibly as we emerge from this crisis."

Higg Co board member, investor and Titan Grove Chairman, Jeff Tannenbaum, says "Del's global experience in sustainability and brand communications, with companies like Nike and AstraZeneca, and her knowledge of risk management and ESG disclosure add an exciting dimension to Higg Co's executive team. The Board welcomes her expertise and insight."

Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, Hudson received her Bachelor's degree in Media Studies & Communication from Massey University. She recently began studying towards a Master of Science in Nutrition. Hudson lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

About Higg Co.

Higg Co is a technology company formed to deliver, implement and support unified sustainability measurement tools for consumer goods industries, beginning with the Higg Index. The Higg Index is a suite of tools, originally developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), that enables brands, retailers and facilities of all sizes - at every stage in their sustainability journey - to accurately measure and score a company or product's sustainability performance. The Higg Index delivers a holistic overview, enabling businesses to make meaningful improvements that protect the environment, well-being of factory workers and communities. For more information visit www.higg.com

Last week, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group and the SAC, Higg Co launched Weaving a Better Future" Rebuilding a More Sustainable Fashion Industry After COVID-19, an industry report observing that retailers and brands that are more deeply integrating sustainability efforts within their business rather than retreating, are poised to come out of the current pandemic crisis in a position of strength.

CONTACT:

media@higg.com or +1 707-241-3042

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1165663/Higg_Co_Logo.jpg
RACINE  As community members work through the Safer At Home order and general struggles caused by the COVID-19 crisis, the Racine Police Department and City Health Department are reminding the public that dogs are not allowed on city beaches.

In particular, there have been a large increase of complaints regarding people bringing their dogs to North Beach, the Police Department said in a press release.

City Ordinance 70-90 states that no person who owns, possesses, or is in control of an animal shall permit such animal to be in or upon any park, beach, cemetery or public swimming area.

It is understood the majority of pet owners are responsible in cleaning up their pets waste, but according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it doesnt take a large amount of waste before beaches and waterways can become contaminated to the point of being unsafe.

Dog waste contains many types of bacteria, parasites and other disease that can easily be transmitted to humans. Children are especially susceptible to these harmful diseases.

The Police Department asks the community to work together and adhere to the prohibited animal ordinance and appreciates the communitys cooperation as it works together toward avoiding any setbacks due to high bacteria levels if at all preventable.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 11:22:38|Editor: huaxia

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GUIYANG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Lei Sheng, former deputy general manager of Kweichow Moutai Liquor Sales Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinese liquor giant Kweichow Moutai, was prosecuted on the charge of taking bribes, according to the Guizhou provincial people's procuratorate Friday.

The prosecution was filed by the People's Procuratorate of Luodian County. The procuratorial organ informed the defendant of his litigation rights during the review and prosecution stage, verified relevant evidence and listened to the opinions of the defender.

The indictment accused Lei of taking advantage of his post to seek benefits for others, illegally accepting a huge amount of cash and valuables from others. Enditem
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At a concentrated quarantine area (Photo: VNA)

Except for the imported cases, there was no infection in the community for the 21st day.

The new cases were among 297 Vietnamese citizens flown home from the United Arab Emirates on flight VN0088 on May 3.

Following arrivals, all of them were quarantined in Bac Lieu province and had their samples tested for SARS-CoV-2.

Later on May 7, the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City found 17 positive and 280 negative.

All 17 patients are being treated at a general hospital in Bac Lieu, and in stable conditions.

In compliance with the Prime Ministers Directive dated April 10, Vietnam has welcomed back 1,657 citizens returning via airway since April 14.

In the near future, more flights will take Vietnamese citizens home based on their wish. All passengers entering Vietnam will be subject to a 14-day quarantine to prevent infection in the community.
A medical staff works in a laboratory that examines samples for Covid-19 testing at HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases, April 10, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

The Health Ministry is considering a lung transplant for a 43-year-old British Covid-19 patient who has been critically ill for some time.

"Patient 91," a Vietnam Airlines pilot, has been hospitalized at HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases since March 20.

"We are considering the option of performing a lung transplant for the patient," Professor Nguyen Van Kinh, Chairman of the Professional Council under the Ministry of Health, said at a Thursday meeting with international organizations on a new Covid-19 treatment and testing strategy.

Kinh said the British patient was still in critical condition. Both of his lungs are condensed, his liver enzymes and infections have increased. He is currently being treated with antibiotics and dialysis. The pilot has been put on a life support machine called Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which involves pumping blood out of the body and to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back, for 32 days.

Samples taken from his pancreas came out positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, while samples taken from his blood and bronchial lavage showed negative results. The patient had tested negative five times earlier.

The patient, who weighs 100 kg and 1.83 meters tall, is obese with a body mass index (BMI) of 30.1. He suffers from a blood clotting disorder and cytokine storm syndrome, an intense immune response where the immune system releases a lot of cytokines through the bloodstream which works against the body.

The patients body has been resistant to all types of domestic coagulant drugs and the health ministry has had to purchase drugs overseas for his treatment.

Two other Covid-19 patients in critical condition have shown progress.

"Patient 20" no longer needs the support of ECMO or as much support of a ventilator as before. She can talk and eat and drink normally. She is currently going through rehabilitation and a nutrition boost regiment.

The 64-year-old Vietnamese woman is the aunt of 26-year-old Nguyen Hong Nhung, Hanoi's first Covid-19 patient who landed March 2 in Hanoi from London. She was confirmed infected on March 7, one day after her niece who has recovered and been discharged.

"Patient 161" has recovered from the disease and returned to Hanois Bach Mai hospital to resume physical therapy for her stroke, which she got before contracting the coronavirus.

The 88-year-old woman, Vietnams oldest Covid-19 patient, is from Van Lam District in the northern province of Hung Yen. She suffered a stroke on March 17 and was paralyzed in the left side of the body. She was rushed to the local Pho Noi Hospital where she was diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage. She was then taken to Bach Mai Hospital, where she stayed in the same room with a Covid-19 patient from March 17 to 22. She later tested positive for Covid-19 at the hospital which had become the countrys biggest Covid-19 hotspot.

Vietnam has recorded no Covid-19 deaths to date. The country has gone through 22 days without community transmission of the disease. Its Covid-19 count went up to 288 Thursday evening after 17 Vietnamese repatriated from the UAE tested positive.

The latest patients were among 297 Vietnamese repatriated from the UAE last Sunday. They landed at the Can Tho Airport in the Mekong Delta and were quarantined in nearby Bac Lieu Province.
The Jewish festival of Lag BaOmer should resonate emotionally during this pandemic since it commemorates the end of a vicious medieval plague.

Beginning on the evening of May 11 and ending the evening of May 12, Lag BaOmer is traditionally celebrated with songs, feasts and a bonfire. Next week, Rabbi Israel Rubin (whose son Mordechai oversees the Chai Jewish Center in Colonie) is preparing a Lag BaOmer parade Tuesday at 10 a.m. that thanks the essential workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Between 10 and 20 vehicles decorated with rainbows, signs and posters will roll along New Scotland Avenue between Albany Medical Center and Saint Peter's Hospital.

The parade is called Saluting Our Helpers." Israel Rubin names the helpers in a statement: They are the first responders, farmers, mail carriers, grocery store employees, pharmacists, factory workers, health care workers, delivery drivers, civil service employees, journalists  anyone working to keep us safe, healthy, informed and as close to our normal lives as possible.

Lag BaOmer memorializes both a historic tragedy and a joyous landmark.

The pestilence killed thousands of people before it was over, including 24,000 disciples of the renowned Talmudic sage, Rabbi Akiva.

But Lag BaOmer also honors the day when one of Rabbi Akivas leading disciples revealed a luminous treasure, the Zohar or Book of Splendor." The Zohars wisdom plumbs the mysteries of psychology, God, mans place in the universe and the Kabbalahs mysticism.

Lag BaOmer celebrates the resilience of the Jewish spirit. This year, the Rubins hope Americans can feel it as celebration of the human spirit.

Normally, Lag BaOmer celebrants gather around a bonfire that symbolizes spiritual light. There are songs and feasting. Mordechai Rubin says his father plans a Zoom program with music. Instead of a virtual bonfire, celebrants are invited to light candles at their homes.

The Parade Saluting our Helpers will share the message that kindness, love and patience are also highly contagious, Mordechai Rubin said, quoting a proverb, mitzvah goreret mitzvah or one good deed brings another. Now, more than ever, we offer each other comfort and solidarity.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Its not enough to stop the coronavirus spread, he continued. We must unite around the universal values of hope and loving-kindness that inspires more kindnesses. Rainbows drawn in sidewalk chalk by little kids, rainbow art displayed in neighborhood windows are COVID-19-era symbols of hope.

Hes reminded of the Biblical story of Noahs Ark: And rainbows are reminders of the covenant that the world will not be destroyed again.

Call 518-423-4103 or email RRalbany@gmail.com for more information or if you would like to help.
Russias regional businessman detained as part of double homicide case

 krasnoyarskmedia.ru

13:55 08/05/2020

MOSCOW, May 8 (RAPSI)  The Sverdlovsky District Court in Russias Krasnoyarsk on Friday placed businessman and ex-regional lawmaker Anatoly Bykov in detention in the 1994 double murder case, RAPSI was told in the courts press office.

According to the Russian Investigative Committee, in the first half of 1994, Alexander Naumov, the 23-year old member of a criminal group headed by Bykov, had a conflict with the gang leader because of unjust, according to him, dividing of the joint criminal income. Later, Bykovs car was exploded. The businessman suspected Naumov and his friend Kirill Voytenko of the blast organization and decided to kill them. He ordered his acquaintance Vladimir Tatarenkov to organize the murder; the latter in turn involved his gang members in the crime. On July 24, 1994, Naumov and Voytenko were shot dead, investigators claimed.

One of the killers Sergey Bakurov was sentenced to life. Another one is on a wanted list. Tatarenkov was sentenced to 13 years in prison, the Investigative Committees statement reads.




MIAMI, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL) today provided a business update and the Company's response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"These are unprecedented times for all of us. Travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders are important to slowing the spread of the virus, but they have severely impacted our operations," said Richard D. Fain, Chairman and CEO. "We are taking decisive actions to prioritize the safety of our guests and crew while protecting our fleet and bolstering liquidity."

COVID-19 Related Suspension

The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented global response to contain the spread of the disease. These global efforts have resulted in travel restrictions and created significant uncertainty regarding worldwide port closures and availability. As part of the global containment effort, the Company previously announced a voluntary suspension of its global cruise operations from March 13 through at least June 11, 2020. Continued disruptions to travel and port operations in various regions may result in further suspensions.

"Our top priority is to ensure the safety of our guests and crew during the suspension period and when we resume operations," said Mr. Fain. "The Company's fleet is now either in port or at anchor and we have developed strict protocols to protect our crew that is still onboard our ships."

The Company has been developing a comprehensive and multi-faceted program to address the unique public health challenges posed by COVID-19. This includes, among other things, enhanced screening, upgraded cleaning and disinfection protocols and plans for social distancing. The Company will continue to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, global public health authorities and national and local governments to enhance measures to protect the health, safety and security of guests, crew and the communities visited when we are out of service and once operations resume.

Update on Bookings

Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Company started the year in a strong booked position and at higher prices on a prior year comparable basis. Given the impact of COVID-19, booking volumes for the remainder of 2020 are meaningfully lower than the same time last year at prices that are down low-single digits. Due to the suspension in sailings, booking trends reflect elevated cancellations for 2020 and more typical levels for 2021 and beyond. Although still early in the booking cycle, the booked position for 2021 is within historical ranges when compared to same time last year with 2021 prices up mid-single digits compared to 2020.

The Company has instituted several programs in order to best serve its guests: for cancelled cruises, guests are offered the choice of future cruise credits valued at 125% of the initial cruise fare paid in lieu of providing cash refunds. As of April 30, 2020, approximately 45% of the guests have requested cash refunds. For non-cancelled cruises, the Company has implemented a "Cruise with Confidence" policy.

As of March 31, 2020, the Company had $2.4 billion in customer deposits. This includes approximately $0.8 billion of future cruise credits related to previously announced voyage cancellations through June 11, 2020.

The Company also continues to take future bookings for 2020, 2021 and 2022, and receive new customer deposits and final payments on these bookings.

Update on Recent Liquidity Actions and Ongoing Uses of Cash

"Since late January, we have undertaken several proactive measures to mitigate the financial and operational impacts of COVID-19." said Jason T. Liberty, executive vice president and CFO. "Our focus is on bolstering liquidity through significant cost cutting, capital spend reductions, and other cash conservation measures. In addition, the Company is considering additional financing sources. We continue to evaluate all options available to us to further enhance liquidity."

As of April 30, 2020, the Company had liquidity of approximately $2.3 billion all in the form of cash and cash equivalents. On May 4, 2020 the company increased the 364-day senior secured credit facility and drew $150 million, further enhancing the Company's liquidity profile.

Reduced Operating Expenses

The Company has taken significant actions to reduce operating expenses during the suspension of its global cruise operations:

Significantly reduced ship operating expenses, including crew payroll, food, fuel, insurance and port charges

The Company's ships are currently transitioning into various levels of layup with several ships in the fleet transitioning into cold layup, further reducing operating expenses

Eliminated or significantly reduced marketing and selling expenses for the remainder of 2020

Reduced workforce by approximately 26 percent of more than 5,000 shoreside employees in the US

Suspended travel for shoreside employees and instituted hiring freeze across the organization.

The Company estimates that its average ongoing ship operating expenses and administrative expenses is approximately $150 million to $170 million per month during the suspension of operations. The Company may seek to further reduce this average monthly requirement under a prolonged non-revenue scenario.

Reduced Capital Expenditures

Since the last earnings call, the Company has identified approximately $3.0 billion and $1.4 billion of capital expenditure reductions or deferrals in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The 2020 reductions and deferrals are comprised of:

$1.2 billion , of non-newbuild, discretionary capital expenditures and

, of non-newbuild, discretionary capital expenditures and $1.8 billion in reduced spend or deferred installment payments for newbuild related payments which the Company is currently finalizing.

The Company believes COVID-19 has impacted shipyard operations and will result in delivery delays of ships previously planned for delivery in 2020 and 2021.

Debt Maturities, New Financings and Other Liquidity Actions

Since the last earnings call, the Company has taken several additional actions to further improve its liquidity position and manage cash flow:

Increased the capacity under its revolving credit facilities by $0.6 billion , and fully drew on both facilities

, and fully drew on both facilities Entered into a $2.35 billion 364-day senior secured credit facility with an option to extend (secured by 28 ships with a net book value of approximately $12 billion as of March 31 , 2020)

364-day senior secured credit facility with an option to extend (secured by 28 ships with a net book value of approximately as of , 2020) Obtained a $0.8 billion , 12-month debt amortization and financial covenant holiday from certain export-credit backed facilities

, 12-month debt amortization and financial covenant holiday from certain export-credit backed facilities Amended its non-export-credit backed bank facilities to incorporate a 12-month financial covenant holiday

Agreed with its lenders that it will not pay dividends or engage in stock repurchases.

As of May 5, 2020, expected debt maturities for the remainder of 2020 and 2021 are $0.4 billion and $0.9 billion, respectively.

The Company estimates its cash burn to be, on average, in the range of approximately $250 million to $275 million per month during a suspension of operations. This range includes ongoing ship operating expenses, administrative expenses, and debt service expense, hedging costs, expected necessary capital expenditures (net of committed financings in the case of newbuilds) and excludes cash refunds of customer deposits as well as cash inflows from new and existing bookings. The Company is considering ways to further reduce the average monthly requirement under a prolonged out-of-service scenario and during start-up of operations.

The Company continues to identify and evaluate further actions to improve its liquidity. These include and are not limited to: further reductions in capital expenditures, operating expenses and administrative costs and additional financings.

On March 10, 2020, the Company withdrew its first quarter and full-year 2020 guidance. The magnitude, duration and speed of COVID-19 remains uncertain. As a consequence, we cannot estimate the impact of COVID-19 on our business, financial condition or near or longer-term financial or operational results with reasonable certainty, but we expect to incur a net loss on both a US GAAP and adjusted basis for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 and the 2020 fiscal year; the extent of which will depend on the timing and extent of our return to service.

About Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL) is a global cruise vacation Company that controls and operates four global brands: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Azamara and Silversea Cruises. The Company is also a 50% joint venture owner of the German brand TUI Cruises and a 49% shareholder of the Spanish brand Pullmantur Cruceros. Together these brands operate a combined total of 62 ships with an additional 16 on order as of March 31, 2020. They operate diverse itineraries around the world that call on all seven continents. Additional information can be found on www.royalcaribbean.com, www.celebritycruises.com, www.azamara.com, www.silversea.com, www.tuicruises.com, www.pullmantur.es, www.rclcorporate.com or www.rclinvestor.com.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release relating to, among other things, our future performance estimates, forecasts and projections constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to: statements regarding revenues, costs and financial results for 2020 and beyond. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "driving," "estimate," "expect," "goal," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "seek," "should," "will," "would," "considering", and similar expressions are intended to help identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current expectations, are based on judgments, are inherently uncertain and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied in those forward-looking statements. Examples of these risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to the following: the impact of the economic and geopolitical environment on key aspects of our business, such as the demand for cruises, passenger spending, and operating costs; our ability to obtain sufficient financing, capital or revenues to satisfy liquidity needs, capital expenditures, debt repayments and other financing needs; the effectiveness of the actions we have taken to improve and address our liquidity needs; incidents or adverse publicity concerning our ships, port facilities, land destinations and/or passengers or the cruise vacation industry in general; concerns over safety, health and security of guests and crew; the impact of the global incidence and spread of COVID-19, which has led to the temporary suspension of our operations and has had and will continue to have a material negative impact on our operating results and liquidity, or other contagious illnesses on economic conditions and the travel industry in general and the financial position and operating results of our Company in particular, such as: the current and potential additional governmental and self-imposed travel restrictions, the current and potential extension of the suspension of cruises and new additional suspensions, guest cancellations, an inability to source our crew or our provisions and supplies from certain places, the incurrence of COVID-19 and other contagious diseases on our ships and an increase in concern about the risk of illness on our ships or when traveling to or from our ships, all of which reduces demand; unavailability of ports of call; growing anti-tourism sentiments and environmental concerns; changes in US foreign travel policy; the uncertainties of conducting business internationally and expanding into new markets and new ventures; our ability to recruit, develop and retain high quality personnel; changes in operating and financing costs; our indebtedness and restrictions in the agreements governing our indebtedness that limit our flexibility in operating our business, including the significant portion of assets that are collateral under these agreements; the impact of foreign currency exchange rates, interest rate and fuel price fluctuations; vacation industry competition and changes in industry capacity and overcapacity; the risks and costs associated with protecting our systems and maintaining integrity and security of our business information, as well as personal data of our guests, employees and others; the impact of new or changing legislation and regulations or governmental orders on our business; pending or threatened litigation, investigations and enforcement actions; the effects of weather, natural disasters and seasonality on our business; emergency ship repairs, including the related lost revenue; the impact of issues at shipyards, including ship delivery delays, ship cancellations or ship construction cost increases; shipyard unavailability; and the unavailability or cost of air service.

In addition, many of these risks and uncertainties are currently heightened by and will continue to be heightened by, or in the future may be heightened by, the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not possible to predict or identify all such risks.

More information about factors that could affect our operating results is included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, copy of which may be obtained by visiting our Investor Relations website at www.rclinvestor.com or the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this release, which are based on information available to us on the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.rclcorporate.com


MANILA, Philippines  Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar on Thursday (May 7) decried claims that President Rodrigo Duterte had a hand in the decision of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to issue a cease and desist order (CDO) against media network ABS-CBN.

The PCOO Chief said the NTCs decision to stop ABS-CBNs radio and television broadcast was independent and impartial.

We decry any claims and assertions associating President Duterte with the National Telecommunications Commissions independent and impartial decision to impose a cease and desist order against ABS-CBN Corporation, he said in a statement.

Andanar said such action of the NTC is not an issue of press freedom. He emphasized that freedom of speech under the Duterte administration remains protected.

This is not an issue of press freedom but an issue regarding legislative franchise. Democracy, and the free press and free speech that come with it, is very much alive in the country and effectively protected, he said.

He stressed that tagging Duterte as the person behind the shutdown is bereft of truth and just a rehash of an old malicious imputation to bedevil the President and his administration.

One should understand, first and foremost, the Philippines legislative processes and rule of law before connecting any precedents as being orchestrated by the President, he said.



Andanar said the assertion that NTCs decision was driven by Dutertes previous rant against ABS-CBN is a false narrative and remarkably erroneous, lacks objectivity and scant on factual basis.

It is, therefore, totally unfair and objectionable for some parties and some international media to insist that what happened to the network is due to having incurred the ire of the President, he explained.

Similar to the statement of Presidential Spokesperson Secretary Harry Roque, Andanar reiterated that the President has already accepted ABS-CBNs apology through the networks CEO and President Carlo Katigbak in February and that the President holds no grudge against the network.

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He noted that the NTC is just bound by law to decide and execute what the Constitution dictates and that the CDO is part of the NTCs independent, regulatory, and quasi-judicial undertaking.

Dutertes intervention to it, Andanar said, would be in violation of the law or a Constitutional infringement.

Andanar emphasized: No one is above the law, even ABS-CBN.

ABS-CBNs shutdown was brought about by the expiration of its 25-year legislative franchise last 4 May 2020, he said.

It is within the purview of the Constitution that NTC, as a regulatory body, disallows the continued operation of any broadcast network with an expired franchise, he added.

READ: ABS-CBN may ask SC for TRO against shutdown order  NTC

The PCOO chief emphasized that at this point, the fate of ABS-CBNs franchise is within the purview and wisdom of Congress.

The mandate of a broadcast franchise issuance and renewal is within the authority of the Congress, and not solely of the President, who only signs the law to be executory, Secretary Andanar concluded.

The post Andanar cries unfair over intl media reports linking Duterte to ABS-CBN closure appeared first on UNTV News.
Cairo and Marsa Alam International Airports received on Friday six repatriation flights carrying 774 Egyptians from Sudan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as part of the country's plan to bring back home all nationals stranded abroad due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The first plane arrived in the Red Sea resort of Marsa Alam from Khartoum in the afternoon with 170 passengers onboard while a second carrying 32 passengers came from Tunisia in the evening, according to Egypt's state news agency MENA.

Two more planes carrying 196 passengers arrived in Marsa Alam from Istanbul, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.

Two EgyptAir flights that took off from Jeddah and Riyadh with 587 passengers onboard also landed at the Cairo International Airport.

Egypt began repatriating its citizens in March, when, like many countries, it shut down commercial flights due to the coronavirus.

The country is keeping its airspace open to inbound charter and special flights to transport outbound passengers, and to cargo and domestic flights.

Egypt's president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has recently vowed to repatriate the Egyptians stranded abroad at the earliest opportunity.

"I assure all Egyptians [stranded abroad] who are listening to me, even if our circumstances are difficult, we will not leave you. As a state, we are obligated to bring home all stranded Egyptians, who are estimated at 3,500 citizens or slightly more, as soon as possible," El-Sisi said during the inauguration of a number of national projects east of the Suez Canal on 22 April.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Thursday that authorities are trying to repatriate nationals stranded abroad before the three-day Eid Al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday that concludes the holy month of Ramadan, which is set to begin on 23 May.

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A Winnipeg man accused of leading police on a wild chase in a stolen fire truck has been granted bail.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man accused of leading police on a wild chase in a stolen fire truck has been granted bail.

Bai Koroma, 36, won his release following a hearing Thursday afternoon before Queens Bench Justice Chris Martin.

Martin ordered that Koroma be released into the custody of the Behavioural Health Foundation, where he will undergo residential treatment and counselling. Koroma will remain in custody until a bed becomes available at the treatment centre.

Koromas lawyer told court Koroma is still awaiting a psychiatric assessment to determine whether he can argue he was not criminally responsible for his actions.

"This is a complete aberration, completely out of character," said Kathy Bueti, who told court Koroma suffers from depression and suspected bi-polar disorder, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder arising from his youth in war-torn Sierra Leone.

Bueti said Koroma suffered a mental breakdown after the end of his marriage. The night before his arrest, Koroma had been locked out of his home, had been using drugs, and slept just two hours.

"He appears to have been in a manic state at the time of the incident," Bueti said.

Koroma was arrested Nov. 29 after a fire truck that had been left running and unattended in the 1600 block of Henderson Highway was stolen. During a 40-minute chase, the truck rear-ended one car, injuring its driver, then headed downtown where police deployed four spike belts. The truck, then riding on rims, came to a stop underneath the Midtown bridge.

The incident resulted in an estimated $110,000 in damages to the fire truck, victim's vehicle and city property.

After being taken into custody, Koroma told police he was sorry and "needed to know what it felt like  I got high and thought it would be fun."

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Koroma is charged with theft of a motor vehicle, two counts of failing to stop at the scene of an accident, operation of a conveyance while impaired by alcohol or drugs, dangerous driving, possession of a weapon, fleeing from police, and driving without a valid licence.

Koroma was on bail at the time of his arrest for allegedly assaulting his ex-wife.

While the circumstances of the truck theft and chase were "exceptionally bizarre," Martin said he was satisfied Koroma would not pose a risk to the public if released.

"This does appear to be a crime of opportunity affected by drug intake and fatigue," Martin said. "As serious as this was, it doesnt appear to be a circumstance where Mr. Koroma intended to harm anyone in any way."

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

The global precision agriculture market is anticipated to reach over USD 13,016 million by 2026, According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research. In 2017, the yield monitoring application dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to the global market revenue during the forecast period.

There has been an increasing adoption of precision farming across the world owing to growing agricultural industry, and high-demand for food crops. The global precision farming market is driven by the increasing need to improve the quality of crops produced, maximizing crop production, and enhanced crop monitoring. Technological advancement along with government subsidies further boosts the market growth. However, high initial investment and lack of awareness limit the precision farming market growth.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market/request-for-sample

North America generated the highest revenue in the precision agriculture market in 2017, and is expected to lead the global market throughout the forecast period. This is due to high cost of labor, and presence of large farmlands in the North American region. Increasing investments and subsidies in the agriculture sector by governments boost the precision farming market growth during the forecast period in the region. Increasing need to improve food quality and productivity along with increased industrialization of farming equipment further supplements market growth.

Various applications of precision farming include irrigation management, crop scouting, yield monitoring, weather tracking and forecasting, field mapping, inventory management, and farm labor management. In 2017, yield monitoring accounted for the largest share in the global market, and was estimated at $1,974 million in 2017, registering a CAGR of 13.2% during the forecast period. This is attributable to the benefits offered by yield monitoring such as reduced cost, improved yields, and enhanced decision making. Yield monitoring is further divided into on-farm yield monitoring, and off-farm yield monitoring.

Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market

The well-known companies profiled in the report include Ag Leader Technology, AGCO Corporation, Deere and Company, Topcon Corporation, Trimble, Inc., The Climate Corporation, Farmers Edge Inc., and AgJunction, Inc. among others. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers.

Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Hardware Type Automation & Control Drones Application control devices Guidance system Remote sensing Driverless tractors Mobile devices VRT Wireless module Sensing devices Antennas/access points

Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Deployment Type Web-Based/Local Cloud Based

Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Service System Integration Managed Services Maintenance & Support Consulting

Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Application Irrigation Management Crop Scouting Yield Monitoring Weather Tracking and Forecasting Field Mapping Inventory Management Farm Labor Management

Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Region North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Italy Russia Asia-Pacific China India Japan Australia Latin America Brazil Middle East & Africa



Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market/request-for-discount-pricing

About Polaris Market Research

Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for 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. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to our customers.

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Host Hotels CEO: Group Business Travel Will Be Last to Recover But Remains Key to Industry

One of the largest U.S. lodging real estate investment trusts expects leisure travel to bounce back from the coronavirus downturn in travel first, but the company is still banking on business group bookings.

Host Hotels & Resorts, owner of hotels like the New York Marriott Marquis and the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, lost $630 million in group bookings in the first quarter, the company announced Friday during an earnings call. Roughly 90 percent of Host Hotels group bookings for the first half of 2020 were cancelled. Similar to most hotel analysts and executives, Host Hotels President and CEO James Risoleo expects drive-to destinations will fare better in the initial recovery than fly-to. But that doesnt mean hes giving up on group business travel.

We continue to believe in group meetings, Risoleo said. In the long run, we believe group volumes will remain a cornerstone of the lodging business.

Get the Latest on Coronavirus and the Travel Industry on Skifts Liveblog

Host Hotels, with many Marriott and Hilton-flagged convention hotels in its portfolio, saw a significant wave of business group cancellations as coronavirus spread across the U.S. in the first quarter. A bulk of the companys lost total group revenue came from six markets: San Diego, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Boston. Nearly 12 percent of the group business travel cancelled by May 4 has been rebooked, most of that in the second half of 2020.

Risoleo is optimistic the overall group business travel sector will return, but he acknowledged the timeline hinges on a coronavirus treatment and eventual vaccine.

We feel group travel is not likely to start meaningfully coming back to hotels until mid-2021, he said. At this point, with the need for cleanliness and confidence in consumer safety, I would say until we have a vaccine, its not likely youll see group come back in any meaningful way.

Shaving Costs Into a New Operational Model

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Revenue per room, or RevPAR, at Host Hotels 80-hotel portfolio dropped 23 percent in the first quarter, mainly in March when coronavirus began to noticeably spread throughout the U.S. RevPAR began the year up 2.2 percent but plummeted 65 percent in March along with a 52 percent drop in occupancy, Host Hotels & Resorts Senior Vice President and Principal Financial Officer Brian Macnamara said. Group business, which accounted for 35 percent of Host Hotels 2019 room sales, fell 25 percent in the first quarter.

While Host Hotels leadership looks to the future, the company almost certainly has another tough quarter ahead. The portfolio had a 29 percent average March occupancy, and initial April forecasts show a 12 percent average occupancy due to travel restrictions in many U.S. states. Because of the low April occupancy, Macnamara said he expected as much as a 95 percent drop in RevPAR for the month.

Host Hotels suspended operations at 35 of its hotels, and Risoleo said they will reopen when they have the ability to generate revenue greater than the incremental costs of staying open. The company reduced operating costs across its portfolio by as much as 75 percent to mitigate the downturn in travel.

Cost-savings measures included furloughing 80 percent of the workforce across the 80-hotel portfolio, reducing fees, suspending food and beverage outlets, temporarily suspending brand standards, and closing off unused guest floors and meeting space at hotels that remained open.

A New Operational Model

While some cost-cutting measures wont be permanent, Host Hotels executive team recognized the downturn could lead to a shift in operational strategy going forward.

We view this opportunity and crisis as an opportunity to redefine the hotel operating model, Risoleo said.

Host Hotels also sees opportunity in further reductions to property costs, focusing on brand standards and determining which can be eliminated or modified, and adapting to changing customer preferences. Those preferences could incorporate expanded technology features that eliminate or reduce contact at high-touch areas like a check-in desk, Host Hotels Executive Vice President of Strategy and Analytics Sourav Ghosh said. The push to technology would likely minimize the anticipated costs associated with a variety of new standards of cleaning rolling out across the portfolio.

Host Hotels views its ties to global brands like Hyatt and Marriott position it well for an industry recovery, especially with travelers expected to value cleaning standards higher than before. Both of the hotel companies have announced new standards of cleaning that call for the use of new products and social distancing measures.

We think this is a distinguishing factor relative to the independent hotel operator, Risoleo said. We can tell you, based on some focus groups that have taken place, the customers dont really care so much about [Average Daily Rate] as they do their personal safety.

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  The Landbank of the Philippines has launched a "study now, pay later" program to help students in select academic institutions to continue their education. amid financial difficulties due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Landbank's Access to Academic Development to Empower the Masses towards Endless Opportunities (ACADEME) lending program aims to loan money to educational institutions, which they can in turn relend to their students.

The banks lending program offers zero interest to students.

Generoso David, Landbank assistant vice president for program management , said they are targeting private non-DepEd junior and senior high schools, private technical, vocational educational training institutions, and private higher educational institutions.

Yung mga parents definitely nahihirapan sa cash flow nila ngayon. Pumapasok kami para matulungan ang mga estudyante para tuluyan pa rin silang makapa- enroll, David told CNN Philippines on Friday.

[Translation: Parents are definitely having a hard time right now with their cash flow. We are coming in to help students so that they will still be able to enroll.]

David added that while loans to students will have zero interest, lending to schools will be charged 3%.

It is very low considering the market rate, he said.

The repayment scheme depends on the arrangement of the students with their school. It can be after the semester, after the school year, or even until graduation.

David said this can also help academic institutions in keeping the number of their enrollees up despite the current health crisis and economic downturn.

It is to enable them to increase their number of enrolees. The more number of students, the more revenue income, David added.

In an interview on September 28, David introduced the bank's Interim Students' Loan for Tuition towards Upliftment of Education for the Development of the Youth (I-STUDY) program to help students.

David told CNN Philippines the loan will be available for students not over 30 years old and will be enrolling for the 2021-2022 school year.

Eligible borrowers can loan up to P150,000 per school year; while up to two students per family can take part.

"The interest rate for the student is five percent per annum. Six for the entire of the loan, and it is released either lump sum for the semester or it can also be a short-term loan line na payable within a year," David said.

The requirements for application are posted on Landbank's website.
A deputy U.S. Marshal accused of driving drunk and killing a woman in a head-on crash, and a woman who allegedly beat and stabbed an elderly relative to death, were each indicted by a Bexar County grand jury this week.

Jonathan Paul Jones, 40, was charged Wednesday on a count of intoxication manslaughter in the death of 23-year-old Taylor Angelle McCowan.

Jones was allegedly drunk when he drove the wrong way onto Loop 1604 at about 1 a.m. on Jan. 31 near the Babcock Road exit, according to San Antonio police.

He then is accused of crashing head-on into a sedan driven by McCowan, investigators said.

McCowan was on life support until she died on Feb. 15. Her mother said she suffered permanent brain damage.

A University of Texas at San Antonio graduate, McCowan was a devout Christian involved in mentorship and missionary trips through local Christian groups and churches, according to her obituary.

Jones was arrested at the scene, but posted a $50,000 bond and was released that day.

The U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement that Jones was relieved of his operational duties and placed on administrative leave.

This case is in the 144th District Court. Jones was re-arrested Wednesday and his bail was increased to $60,000, according to court records. He posted bond and was released the same day.

In a separate case, Tamera Tamika Laws, 24, was charged with Tuesdayin the death of 70-year-old Doris Ruth Novella.

On Feb. 22 just after midnight, officers responding to a 911 call in the 8500 block of Spotted Deer found a man was screaming in a driveway. The man, whose name was redacted from the police report, told officers that Laws killed Novella.

He told police that he had just arrived home and was getting ready for work when Laws walked into the room covered in blood.

She apologized to him for having done something, a police report states.

He ran to Novellas bedroom and found her dead on the ground. He then began arguing with Laws before running outside and calling police.

As officers walked inside, Laws told police: I let him know I killed her because (name redacted) told me to.

The indictment alleges that Laws struck Novella with a hammer, stabbed her with a knife, and choked her.

Investigators alleged in the report that Laws was high on methamphetamine.

The case is in the 175th District Court. Laws remains in the Bexar County Jail with bail set at a $150,000.

Jacob Beltran is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. To read more from Jacob, become a subscriber. jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA
An ice rink featuring a frozen waterfall in Beijings Changping district has become a popular destination among climbing enthusiasts and newcomers to ice sports. Located in the Huyu Natural Scenic Area, the rink consists of a 40-meter-high climbing area. With the approach to the Beijing Winter Olympics, ice and snow activities are attracting fans across the country. The China Tourism Academy estimated that 305 million people will visit such venues nationwide this season

Jan 18, 2022 05:36 PM
Jersey Citys Board of Education cant agree on whether to raise the school tax levy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Five of the nine BOE trustees are now looking to lower the school tax levy in next years massive $736 million budget and ensure that every dollar spent is a necessary expense as the COVID-19 pandemic continues wreak havoc on the local and national economies.

The proposed spending plan, which the BOE must approve by May 14, would raise an average homeowners tax bill by $700.

During Wednesdays virtual BOE meeting, Trustees Lekendrick Shaw, Mussab Ali, Alexander Hamilton, Noemi Velasquez, and Marilyn Roman all questioned whether the proposed budget is suited for the current economic conditions.

I am not proposing we have a budget where we just cut everything  We need to increase our budget, but we need to do it responsibly, Ali said. We cannot have the same exact budget that we presented one month ago and pretend nothing happened across the world.

But Superintendent Franklin Walker, BOE President Lorenzo Richardson and Trustee Joan Terrell-Paige all pushed back on potential budget cuts, asserting the proposed budget needs to remain untouched to help the district meet the challenges of reopening in September.

We again have a responsibility to raise the levy to the needs to be met for the student, thats our key responsibility, of course we have to be conscious about that because I am a taxpayer myself, Richardson said.

Under a new state aid formula, Trenton began phasing out a form a funding in 2019 that would have brought the district $175 million that year. Since then, New Jerseys second-largest district has cumulatively lost out on $120 million in state aid.

But Richardson said because the citys tax base is growing, the state could phase out as much as $248 million over the seven-year period that began in 2019.

The district and state have been at odds over Jersey City;s local fair share  the amount the state believes local taxpayers should kick in for the school budget. The local fair share for Jersey City is $474 million, three times more than the current tax levy.

The proposed 2020-21 budget calls for a 47% hike to the school tax levy from $136 million to $200 million. Property taxes are composed of municipal, county, and school taxes.

We are in a tougher situation now because there are decisions, we should have made other years that we didnt make, Walker said, referring to hiking the tax levy. This pandemic has really exposed us as being unprepared for the digital support for our students.

The discussion reached its most heated point when Roman asked whether 404 positions that have been left empty need to be filled. Richardson defended the levy and filling those vacant positions.

We are not in a position to lower this levy in the position we are now in based off COVID-19, Richardson said. This is a reasonable levy considering the circumstance.

Its only a reasonable levy if we have looked over every single thing in this budget and said for each thing we put in the budget, this thing is necessary, Roman replied.

Not everything in this budget is necessary for a good education  well we would like to do it but I dont think we should be doing it this year," Roman added.

Minutes later, Roman returned to the subject of filling the 404 vacant positions and commended her colleagues who were questioning elements of the budget. She added that Richardson needs to come off the dime to have that discussion.

404 jobs look like an employment agency to me and I have been here for employment agencies before and I just want to be very, very accurate in saying that I dont want part of an employment agency, Roman said.

Trustee Roman, are you saying we are hiring people just to be hiring people, Richardson replied. Are you literally saying that?

No, I am not saying that, Roman responded.

The heated back-and-forth continued until Trustee Gerald Lyons asked Roman to let it go.

During the meeting, Walker also said if the budget was presented today based off the last two months, it would be much higher than what was previously presented to meet the schools needs post-COVID.

There are some areas we can make adjustments with and repurpose some things, but it does not mean that we reduce the budget we are requesting, Walker said.

In order to be effective in terms of our children it is going to require probably more money and we are hoping the federal government will recognize it because we are not in the situation by ourselves.

Walker had planned to save over $10 million because of school closings, but due to an executive order by the governor requiring districts to still pay vendors, the savings wont be as much as expected, he said.

Walker said the district could see furloughs, buyouts, and early retirements to offset the budget.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived as the district is facing down an estimated $150 million budget shortfall, due in large part to the state funding change that will cut an additional $55 million from the schools next year.

On top of everything, Jersey City notified the BOE on March 20 that it cant guarantee the $86 million in payroll tax revenue to offset the state aid cuts, citing the financial uncertainty the coronavirus has unleashed.

Lyons asked what will happen if the city is incapable of providing the payroll tax fund and where that will leave the district as it is not allowed to run on a deficit.

Walker said the revenue from the payroll tax can still be fulfilled but may not be the full $86 million the district had expected to receive. If that happens, he said he would do what is necessary to keep the district operating.

We will have to make some hard cuts and then the other thing that we dont want to do," Walker said Thursday, "is lay people off.
Suva, May 8 : Its economy hit hard due to lack of tourists and cash in short supply, Fiji is seeing its citizens engage in barter system to fulfill their needs and other demands, reports said on Friday.

A Facebook group called Barter for a Better Fiji, whose cover photo stresses "no cash accepted" on both sides of its logo, now has more than 120,000 members in a country of fewer than a million people, the BBC reported.

One deal saw two piglets traded in return for a kayak, another, hair braiding in exchange for toys.

While the Pacific island nation has been spared the worst of the coronavirus - with 18 cases and no deaths, as per the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, its vital tourism sector has been hit hard.
Credit: Salesforce

Everybody loves to hate taxes. And unless you are lucky enough to live in one of a small handful of countries with no income taxBermuda, Monaco or the United Arab Emirates, for instanceyou likely dread Tax Day when you dig deep into your pockets and send a chunk of your hard-earned cash to government coffers.

Billions of words have been written about taxes. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. proudly declared, "I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization." But Mark Twain scowled, " The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."

In the end, what we can most hope for is a fair tax system. Economists have opined about the most equitable system of taxation for ages. Tax too much and you reduce the incentive to earn more. Tax too little and those who are not rich suffer more. There has always been little agreement among economists on the best approach. Place 10 economists in a room, as the saying goes, and you will come up with 11 opinions.

Against that backdrop, scientists at the U.S. business technology company Salesforce devised an artificial intelligence system charged with testing and developing the ideal tax system in a simulated environment. The program, called AI Economist, applies reinforcement learning to help governments worldwide achieve a more equitable taxation system. Reinforcement learning is the application of reward and punishment to machine algorithms for the purpose of maximizing desirable outcomes. That concept was used in Google's DeepMind projects AlphaGo and AlphaZero.

The AI Economist team states in a report recently posted on the company's website: "Economic inequality is accelerating globally and is a growing concern due to its negative impact on economic opportunity, health and social welfare. Taxes are important tools for governments to reduce inequality. However, finding a tax policy that optimizes equality along with productivity is an unsolved problem."

Richard Socher, who heads up the six-person research team, further explained, "With the AI Economist, we've applied reinforcement learning algorithms to discover how novel tax frameworks can reduce inequality and improve economic productivity, and ultimately make the world a better place."

The program basically creates massive numbers of ecosystems with theoretical workers who trade currency and construct homes. Pay levels and skill sets vary and a "tax master" controlled by AI determines optimal tax rates. Millions of years of hypothetical economic models are constructed to determine the system that achieves the greatest productivity and the greatest income.

Salesforce researchers say economists tend to rely on theorems based on rational behavior. Machine learning allows them to introduce unexpected behaviors.

"Our model is incredibly powerful," said team member Nikhil Naik. "Our world today is getting more complex and economic theories of the future need to be able to seamlessly incorporate additional requirements such as environmental protection. In addition, economic agents often exhibit complex, irrational, competitive or collaborative behaviors. AI helps to model such complexity and a broad spectrum of behaviors."

The researchers say their models have achieved scenarios that are 16 percent more effective than real-world economic models created by economists.

Recognizing the problem of corruptive political considerations in tax policy, team member Alex Trott said, "It would be amazing to make tax policy less political and more data driven."

Salesforce is releasing all AI Economist code and encourages economists, governments and all other interested parties to try their hand at devising a better tax plan.

 2020 Science X Network
A meagre stipend of little over Rs 230 per day has left MBBS interns in government medical colleges of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh fuming with the budding doctors launching a social media campaign demanding a hike in the allowance.

Despite facing a slew of hardships due to the coronavirus pandemic and working for more than 10 hours daily to screen and survey people in remote areas, the interns have launched the #WeDemandStipendIncrement and #Rajasthan_Intern_Stipend_Badhao campaigns on microblogging site Twitter.

Only calling us Hero or Warriors is not enough. MBBS interns get stipend Rs 233/day, is this justified, a medical intern named Shivam Raika tweeted.

Another intern B L Bijarniya wrote, 4.5 years of tireless efforts and hard work makes us who we are today and to get Rs 233/day in return is a shame on the system.

The medical interns said that Rajasthan pays the lowest monthly stipend of Rs 7,000 in the entire country followed by Rs 7,500 in Uttar Pradesh while states like Assam and Himachal Pradesh pay Rs 30,000 and Rs 17,000 per month respectively. Most of the states pay above Rs 15,000 per month, they said.

After completing their MBBS, medicos are sent on a one-year rotatory internship to get hands-on experience in the field during which a stipend is paid to them by the respective governments.

In 2017, Rajasthan government had revised its stipend paid to interns from Rs 3,500 to Rs 7,000. We have now written a letter to the Chief Minister, Shyam Sundar, President of Sardar Patel Medical College Student Union told PTI.

Rajasthan pays the lowest stipend in the country. If the fees is being increased 10 per cent every year then why not stipend, he added.

Post graduate resident doctors in Jodhpur have also come out in support of the interns.

A stipend of Rs 233/day is less than what a daily wage labourer earns. It is the lowest among all states. We have written to the Chief Minister and Health Minister in support of interns, Dr Vikash Choudhary, President of Resident Doctor's Association in Jodhpur said.

Taking note of the issue, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra questioned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while in Rajasthan, opposition BJP tried to corner the Ashok Gehlot led government.

MBBS interns are working with all strength in this crisis in UP. Their lives are also at risk. But, they get only Rs 250/day. The stipend is very low CM @myogiadityanath ji. To my understanding, it is your responsibility to increase stipend paid to interns, Vadra tweeted.

In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, BJP's state president Satish Poonia said: Intern medicos are giving services with full dedication in fighting coronavirus at lowest stipend. It is a request to the chief minister to increase the stipend on the lines of other states."



Rajasthan has recorded 100 COVID-19 deaths and has 3,453 positive cases, including frontline workers such as doctors and nursing staff.

The state government has announced Rs 50 lakh insurance for its employees if they die while on duty in the fight against coronavirus.

In Uttar Pradesh, the total number of COVID-19 patients rose to 3,059 on Thursday evening while 61 deaths have been reported from the state so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Gyms, pools and bars will be allowed to open with limitations starting Friday under the next phase of the state's plan to reopen parts of the economy that had been forced to shut down amid efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Other businesses that were allowed to reopen April 24  including retail stores, restaurants for dine-in services, salons and other businesses that were classified as non-essential  will be able to boost their capacity from 25% to 50% under plans announced Wednesday.





. . .
North Korea Building Grand Storage Base for Nukes, Think Tank Claims Amid Stalled Trump-Kim Talks

Sputnik News

Lilia Dergacheva. Sputnik International

05:57 GMT 07.05.2020(updated 06:00 GMT 07.05.2020)

The configuration and whereabouts of the base and its underground facility from the 1980s are deemed as an indication that it can be used for the assembly of ballistic missiles from components delivered by rail from local plants.

North Korea is constructing a massive storage compound according to a new batch of satellite pictures jointly analysed by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies and Jane's Intelligence Review.

The new base, a stone's throw from Pyongyang's main airport, is reportedly comprised of underground storage areas and hangars tall enough to house the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in an upright position for testing and maintenance. It can also store the mobile "transporter-erector-launcher" or TEL on which it can be inconspicuously moved around the country, and thus avoid destruction before launch.

The facility is found to house its own rail terminal with a concealed loading area to prevent incoming and outgoing equipment from being detected by spy satellites.

According to Joseph Bermudez, author of the report, the structure, named the "Sil-li Ballistic Missile Support Facility" could "accommodate all known and anticipated North Korean ballistic missiles and their . . . launchers [for] maintenance, storage of ballistic missiles and their transporters, or any combination of these functions".

The underground storage area is understood to have been built in the 1980s to shelter and protect from attack fighter planes that were to protect Pyongyang during the event of a war. The planes were later moved elsewhere and it fell into disuse.

Separately, there are 17 air defence bases and barracks in close proximity - within three miles of the base, which is reportedly protected by surface-to-air missiles.

"While the precise function of the facility is unclear, its configuration and the size of its buildings and UGF [underground facility] indicate that it can be used for the assembly of ballistic missiles from components delivered by rail from nearby factories", the think tank noted.

The blunt-nosed Hwasong-15 was tested in November 2017 and has since become a hallmark of the country's nuclear aspirations. At the time, it was celebrated in state media as a "new-type of inter-continental ballistic rocket weaponry system capable of carrying super-heavy nuclear warheads and attacking the whole mainland of the US".

However, Kim embarked on a process of rapprochement with the US that has so far resulted in three landmark meetings with President Trump. For instance, before their first summit in Singapore, he agreed to suspend nuclear and ICBM testing.

Neither side has since given ground on the central condition of the other party  Trump's insistence on North Korea's full denuclearisation, and Kim's demand for the removal of international sanctions.

At a second summit in Hanoi in late February 2019, Mr Trump insisted on an "all or nothing" agreement on denuclearisation, stipulating that the North Koreans give up not only all of their nuclear arsenal, but also all of the chemical and biological weapons in their possession.

Kim fired back in response that the two sides must first build up trust through a series of smaller agreements. In return for the partial removal of international economic sanctions, for instance, he offered to shut down his nuclear plant at Yongbyon, which Trump rejected.

In late June 2019, Trump became the first sitting American commander-in-chief to set foot in North Korea as he met Kim Jong-un this time on North Korean soil, at the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone, and the two agreed to give a new start to negotiations on a long-elusive nuclear agreement.

North Korean spokespeople previously emphasised that the end of the last year was the deadline for progress in the talks, which have now been hindered by the raging pandemic and subsequent global lockdown.

A Sputnik

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For thousands of migrants leaving the city for want of money and food, their connection with Ludhiana is not over, as most believe they will return to their karmabhoomi once the lockdown is over.

Around 4,500 migrants boarded four Shramik Special trains from Ludhiana on Friday. These were headed to Saharsa and Sitamarhi in Bihar, Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh and Daltonganj in Jharkhand.

Today, we are left with no work and money. Factory owners have made it clear they are not in a condition to pay salaries, while there is no regular supply of ration from the administration either. This has made it difficult for us to survive in Ludhiana, said Nizamuddin Ansari, 28, who lived in Chhawani Mohalla and was travelling to Sitamarhi.

Ansari said he had worked in Ludhiana as a tailor in hosiery units for the past four years, but it was not the end. I will return after spending a few months at home. Hopefully, the factories will also reopen by then, he said.

Dinesh Yadav, 38, who lived in Sukhdev Nagar, has assured his employer that he will be back. I have worked as a tailor in hosiery factories for 10 years. I know the business and understand that my employer cannot pay me. Therefore, I have informed my boss that I am going back home and will return when business resumes, he said, adding that his employer had allowed him to leave.

There are also migrants, who want to return home, despite job opportunities. Ismail Ansari, 35, of Jeewan Nagar said he needed to go home to look after his agricultural land. I had planned to go in March, but couldnt due to the lockdown. I will return after handling pending work back home, he said.

DELAYED TRAINS: MP BITTU HOLDS MEETING

Local member of Parliament chaired a meeting at the Guru Nanak Stadium on Friday to take a stock of the Shramik Special trains.

The meeting was attended by MLAs Surinder Dawar and Sanjay Talwar, mayor Balkar Singh Sandhu, Ludhiana Improvement Trust chairman Raman Balasubramaniam, deputy commissioner Pradeep Kumar Agrawal, commissioner of police Rakesh Kumar Agrawal, municipal corporation commissioner Kanwalpreet Kaur Brar and several other senior officials from various departments.

DC Agrawal shared that 11 trains had departed from Ludhiana for various states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh since May 5. Over 12,000 migrants had left the city on these trains.

He said the operations were being streamlined and more trains will run in the coming days.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper hosts a press engagement outside the NORAD and USNORTHCOM, the command leading DoDs COVID-19 pandemic operations, during his visit to North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Thursday, May 7, 2020. (Chancey Bush/ The Gazette)
A pedestrian adjusts his facemask while walking past a closed Artisan House restaurant in Los Angeles on May 7, 2020. Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt economies and lives in ways we never could have imagined. But the world won't stay on lockdown forever. We asked public health and industry experts to share their thoughts on what things will look like when the pandemic finally recedes. In this segment of our series "The Next Normal, we look at what experts are saying about when restaurants and bars may reopen for business. Restaurants and bars have been among the hardest-hit businesses during coronavirus quarantines. While some establishments will reopen with limited capacity sooner rather than later, the sector is likely to face widespread decimation, according to industry and health experts. The National Restaurant Association projected the industry would take in $899 billion in sales in 2020 before coronavirus quarantines swept across the country. But most depend on consistent cash flow to keep their doors open and people employed. Since widespread lockdowns began in March, more than 8 million restaurant industry employees have lost their jobs or have been furloughed, according to a survey of 6,500 establishments by the association. That equates to a loss of $80 billion through April, and up to $240 billion by the end of the year. While some restaurants and bars have pivoted to offering takeout and delivery, many others chose to close their doors entirely for the duration of local lockdowns. That could be a death knell for thousands of locations. The California Restaurant Association estimated in late March that 30% of the state's 90,000 restaurants would not survive the crisis. Restaurant owners are facing steep costs to reopen, including hiring back staff, paying off invoices and replacing spoiled ingredients. Even the country's best restaurants won't bounce back from prolonged closures. "There is definitely a question mark over Eleven Madison Park  if it will reopen," Daniel Humm, the owner of the three-Michelin-star New York restaurant, told Bloomberg Pursuits this week. "It will take millions of dollars to reopen. You have to bring back staff. I work with fancy equipment in a big space. I want to continue to cook with the most beautiful and precious ingredients in a creative way, but at the same time, it needs to make sense."

What reopening might look like

From a public health standpoint, restaurants and bars should have an easier path to reopening than arenas, schools and many offices because owners or managers can space out tables and limit capacity, said Dr. Peter Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he also runs the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes. Restaurants in Asia are providing U.S. owners with a model of how to reopen their dining rooms, with wider spacing between tables, customer temperature checks and masked wait staff. Black Sheep, a Hong Kong-based restaurant chain, has publicly shared its 17-page playbook on how it is navigating the pandemic. Suggestions include requiring customers to sign health declaration forms before entering the restaurant and offering a hygienic way to store masks during a meal. Black Sheep co-founder Syed Asim Hussain said that he has heard from restaurateurs from around the world about the guidelines and how to adapt their businesses. "I've been telling them, if anyone is waiting for things to go back to how they were, you'll be waiting a long time," Hussain said.

A pedestrian wearing a protective mask walks in front of a temporarily closed Starbucks coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday, April 27, 2020. Gabby Jones | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Starbucks plans to reopen 85% of its U.S. coffee shops by the end of this week, emphasizing cashless payments and contactless and curbside pickup. "The foundation of our approach comes from what we have learned in China, where more than 98 percent of our stores are now open and operating under revised protocols," Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in letter Monday to Starbucks employees and customers. California restaurants have already drafted their own proposed plan to allow the industry to reopen with an array of safeguards, like requiring servers to wear masks and placing hand sanitizer on every table, while avoiding more drastic measures such as taking every customer's temperature upon entrance, The Associated Press reported this week. The plans are only recommendations and haven't been approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Social distancing will need to be part of any proposal to reopen, said Dr. Ashish Jha, professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Jha recommended 50% capacity cuts, while noting that "even 50% capacity feels a lot to me with bars." "I don't know that you even want to get to 75% without a vaccine," he said. The problem is opening doors at 50% capacity probably is seldom economically feasible. "For most restaurants to open and only have 50% of their seats occupied indoors, they're probably not going to make enough money to stay open  unless they sell a lot of alcohol," said Stephani Robson, senior lecturer at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. In Texas and Georgia, where restaurants were allowed last Friday to reopen dining rooms with limited capacity, fewer than half of restaurant operators resumed operations that day, according to Black Box Intelligence.

More than an economic question

Even if restaurants find it economically feasible to reopen, there's no guarantee Americans would feel safe enough to show up in the numbers necessary for a recovery. In fact, 68% percent of Americans say they would feel uncomfortable eating at a restaurant, according to a late April survey from SAP's Qualtrics, the employee management software company. Building up the courage to return to restaurants may be one of the most essential elements to returning to normal, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Restaurants can serve as a confidence bellwether for Americans who are dipping their toes back into normal society, he said. "People miss it, and it's relatively inexpensive," Gordon said. "We're going to go stir crazy. It's something that doesn't require a lot of planning. And it's public, so other people will see it and ask themselves, 'Am I ready for this?''" But confidence becomes a chicken-and-egg question, as the current lack of consumer demand will likely cause restaurants and bars to stay closed. If restaurants were to reopen and demand was poor, employees whom they tried to hire back would no longer be eligible for unemployment because they'd have a job opportunity that they were turning down. That's an incentive to keep doors shut until it's clear people are ready to come back. "It doesn't matter what Trump or any governor might say, when people still see the number of deaths in their state or region are considerable, people aren't going to participate in normal everyday life," said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. "They're not going to feel safe going back to crowded airplanes, restaurants, bars, sporting events, anything." Restaurants may also be reluctant to reopen for liability reasons. "If business interruption insurance didn't cover the industry when this happened, what makes them feel that the insurance companies would cover them on the liability of coronavirus lawsuits?" said Aaron Allen, founder and CEO of restaurant consultancy Aaron Allen & Associates.

Fast food will bounce back first

Fast-food chains have largely weathered the coronavirus quarantines, leaning on drive-thru lanes, delivery and lower prices. Same-store sales declined less than 2% in the week ended April 26 compared with a year earlier, according to industry tracker Black Box Intelligence.

Fast food restaurant chain, Wendy's seen in Tokyo, Japan. Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images

With little impetus to open dining rooms, fast-food restaurants aren't in a hurry to serve people in person. "We'll see what folks are talking about at the state level, but we're not going to rush to reopen our dining," Wendy's CEO Todd Penegor told analysts on Wednesday. Chick-fil-A, the third-largest U.S. restaurant company by sales, is preparing to reopen some restaurants for takeout by installing plexiglass partitions at its front counters and adding more hand sanitizer stations. Floor decals will help customers maintain their distance from other people. Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti said that there will be fewer cashiers and self-order kiosks inside the burger chain's locations. Shake Shack is also planning to modify restaurants with drive-thru lanes and pick-up windows. WATCH: Restaurant brands remain optimistic about a consumer rebound
Research indicates that infected travelers from New York transmitted nearly 65% of new coronavirus cases across the US, according to The New York Times.

The genetic signature of the strain of the virus prevalent in New York connect it to outbreaks in Europe, while the infections in Washington state were linked to China, scientists found.

Enforcing stay-at-home orders earlier would have helped cut down on the infection's transmission.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Thousands of travelers carried the coronavirus from New York around the United States in early March, triggering most of the new cases that erupted nationwide.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that tiny genetic mutations helped researchers track between 60% and 65% of new infections back to the outbreak in the country's biggest city.

"We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country," Nathan Grubagh, of the Yale School of Public Health, told the Times.

Grubagh said that introducing social-distancing guidelines earlier would have helped reduce the disease's spread.

New York's schools were shut down on March 15 and Gov. Andrew Cuomo put the state on lockdown one week later. But by then, New York had already become "the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places," David Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona, told the Times.

The number of cases statewide shot up from 15,168 cases on March 22 to 59,513 patients by March 27, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

As of Thursday, more than 327,400 people across New York have been infected by the coronavirus and at least 26,144 have died.

"It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread," Kristian Andersen, an immunology and microbiology professor at Scripps Research told the Times. "I keep hearing that it's somebody else's fault. That's not true. It's not somebody else's fault, it's our own fault."

Story continues

The Times analyzed cellphone and travel data and discovered that the number of cases in different places depended on how many people went there from New York about two weeks before the state's stay-at-home order was issued.

The newspaper also found that the minor genetic mutations of New York's virus connect it to COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe, while the infections in Washington state were linked to China. (The strains do not differ in terms of the symptoms or severity of infections.)

Benjamin Branham, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told the Times that customs officials "only screened passengers from China," not from Europe.

Dani Lever, communications director for Cuomo, criticized the federal government for the "enormous failure" of leaving the East Coast "exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no COVID cases throughout the entire month of February."

But Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, disagreed.

"Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe  an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread," he told the Times.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Dayak women of Indonesia resist gender inequality exacerbated by palm oil production

by Lauren Bowman

May 08,2020 | Source: Mongabay

In the rural Indonesian village of Hongoi, indigenous Dayak Modang women like Lina* have had to come up with creative ways to continue their long-held tradition of weaving. Some Dayak women use their skills to sell or exchange their crafts as a source of income. In the absence of the forest materials necessary for this practice, many women have replaced traditional materials like rattan vines with things like single-use plastic cups and straws.



Finding the plastic is the hardest part, Lina told Tessa Toumbourou, a researcher from the University of Melbourne, as quoted in a study published in February in Asia Pacific Viewpoint. Once I have them, weaving them together is easy, it only takes a few nights.



The study examines the relationship between palm oil development and increased gender division in Hongoi, East Kalimantan province, where the Modang community resides. The Modang are a subgroup of the Dayak Kayanic group, who have lived in the area dating back to the 16th century.



The palm oil boom that started in the 2000s brought large-scale deforestation to the region and increasingly diminished access to materials and resources that people once gathered from ancestral forest landscapes.



Researchers focused on three main factors that influenced how palm oil impacted men and women differently: social inequality, livelihood strategies, and food security. The basis of this research was formed on feminist political ecology and it emphasized the act of sustaining livelihoods, despite the pressures of palm oil development, as an act of resistance.



Lead author Toumbourou emphasizes the importance of the Modang communitys ability to maintain the productivity and cultural significance of their land.



Holding onto their land and continuing to sustain a livelihood in these times is an act of resistance, she said in an interview. Communities are under intense pressure to be assimilated into the palm oil industry  In such conditions, many assume that communities would inevitably give up. By choosing to maintain their socioeconomic status on their own terms instead of being absorbed into the palm oil industry as landless laborers, they are actively resisting the allocation of resources into external markets.



Over the past decade, all neighboring villages eventually conceded land to oil palm plantations, and Hongoi became completely surrounded by oil palms. In Hongoi and elsewhere in the region, companies have taken advantage of ambiguity in the precise location of village borders to encroach on ancestral forests and farmland.



Though there are different views across the village about how  and whether  to negotiate with palm oil companies, no one wanted to give up their village land entirely, as this would mean the loss of their autonomy as farmers and their cultural practices and knowledge, Toumbourou said. By sustaining livelihoods, women are also helping to prevent the need for their village to release land to companies and become landless laborers.



Swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture and cash crops like cocoa, banana and coffee have long been common sources of food and income in the Dayak community. Villagers would also gather food and materials from the forest and nearby river. However, as oil palm plantations have replaced forest landscapes, the loss of resources, as well as the loss of ecosystem services, have threatened main livelihood staples.

 2020 Copyright Conservation news

Theme(s): Communities and Organisations.
To accuse India of Islamophobia is truly perverse. Given the wounds inflicted by centuries of Muslim rule, India as a majority Hindu country could have been deeply intolerant towards Islam. Instead, it has embraced Islam as an integral part of India.

Attempts at peace

Islamic fundamentalism ravaged India in 1947, long before the world discovered the pernicious nature of this ideology centred on a clash of civilisations, refusal to accept modernity and diversity, the violent assertion of religious identity, religious intolerance, terrorism, unspeakable brutalities, territorial ambitions, and so on. The belief that Muslims formed a separate nation created Pakistan. Up to 2 million were possibly killed during Partition and 14 million made refugees. The Muslim issue, despite Partition, has continued to torment India with Pakistans aggression in Kashmir, and Islamic terrorism against India since 1990 by jihadi groups based in Pakistan. The Kashmiri pundit community has been the victim of ethnic cleansing in the Valley.

The Muslim leadership has been content to play divisive politics in India in league with those political parties also averse to any form of Hindu consolidation. (Representative photo: Reuters)

India has nevertheless striven since independence to build a socially peaceful, secular, democratic home for all Indians, including the Muslim community. India gave itself a secular constitution in tune with the accommodating and tolerant Hindu spirit, which even embraced the minority concept and made special provisions for the Muslims and other minorities to manage their religious and educational institutions and leaving almost untouched their personal laws.

While the Hindu majority has been willing to shed the bitter load of history and move forward towards an inclusive future, the conservative Muslim leadership has resisted the change in thinking needed to become real partners in this national ethos and endeavour. Instead of becoming secular in its thinking for better integration, identity assertion with Arabised accoutrements has become more visible. Extremist Muslim organisations have emerged in southern India. The agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act, as well as the National Register of Citizens, has communal roots dissimulated under a constitutional cover. Kashmir has lost its Sufi traditions and has become Islamised. Its leadership has kept the wound of partition alive by nurturing separatism and lionising terrorists. The Ram Mandir issue was made into a prolonged test of political and social will by the Muslim leadership, with the Supreme Court judgment not accepted with grace.

The resistance

Without being secular themselves, Muslim leaders like Owaisi constantly take shelter behind the secular Indian constitution to disgorge their communal bile. The liberal leftist lobbies in India see no contradiction in the Hindu community being exhorted to be secular to protect the right of the Muslims to be non-secular. Their focus is therefore always on the non-secular acts or statements by a Hindu and not on the communal acts or statements by a Muslim.

The Muslim leadership has been content to play divisive politics in India in league with those political parties also averse to any form of Hindu consolidation. Its electoral strategy not to vote for the BJP as a Hindu party is itself communal in approach. If the BJP wins without the Muslim vote, as it has, the Muslims are bound to lose politically, as they have. They cannot then fall back on the constitution to compensate for the failings of their political strategy.

The secular Indian constitution is no barrier to pan-Islamism, which is antithetical to Indian nationalism. The Muslims by virtue of their faith cannot delink themselves from Muslims worldwide. This explains the reputedly moderate Delhi minority panel chiefs reprehensible tweet thanking Kuwait for standing with Indian Muslims and reminding Hindu bigots of the huge goodwill Indian Muslims enjoy in the Arab and Muslim world, and praising in the process a terrorism instigator like Zakir Naik.

Global hypocrisy

This explains why when the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USICRF) castigates India as an Islamophobic country and recommends sanctions against it, no denunciation comes from Indian Muslim leaders. When Turkeys Erdogan speaks about his concern for his Muslim brothers and sisters in Kashmir or Malaysias Mahathir condemns India for occupying Kashmir by force, no Muslim organisation rejects this interference in Indias internal affairs and reminds the USCIRF or foreign Islamic leaders that as Indian citizens they have the protection of the Indian constitution and do not need foreign support.

Organisations like the USICRF, whose focus is on conversions to Christianity in India, have no historical understanding of the Muslim question in the subcontinent and the remarkable tolerance with which Hindu society addressed it in independent India. They should contrast it with the cavalier killings of blacks by the American police even though blacks never ruled America and suppressed whites, a stigma that even the half-Black President Obama failed to handle. Europeans would understand the Indian situation better if they reflected on how their Muslim population, which never ruled them and has no historical angst to sublimate, resists integrating itself into their democratic, secular polities and sections of it are still attached to sharia, not to mention their involvement in terrorism at home and participation in the excesses of the Islamic State in West Asia. It is Hinduphobia to accuse India of Islamophobia.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Also read: The tipping point for Indian Muslims is not too far away
Over 80% of people surveyed in a study do not plan to conceive during the COVID-19 crisis, perhaps putting to rest suggestions that the lockdown could lead to rise in birth numbers.

Looking at parenthood desires during the ongoing pandemic crisis in Italy, a team of experts, led by the University of Florence, carried out 1,482 online interviews. Their results, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology, show that some 1,214 (81.9%) did not intend to conceive during the pandemic crisis.

Moreover, of the 268 participants who were planning to have a child before the pandemic, over one-third (37.3%) then abandoned the intention. The main reasons that led people to this decision included worries related to future economic difficulties (58%) and any potential consequences on pregnancy (58%) due to the disease.

The questionnaire, carried out in the third week of the lockdown in Italy, surveyed 944 women (63.7%) and 538 men (36.3%) aged between 18-46 years, and in a stable heterosexual relationship for at least twelve months. Study author, Dr Elisabetta Micelli from the Assisted Reproduction Technologies Center, suggested that mental wellbeing during lockdown had an impact on the desire to have a baby.

"The impact of the quarantine on general population's perception of their stability and peacefulness is alarming. In our study sample, the majority of participants gave significantly higher total scores to their mental wellbeing before the pandemic, while lowest scores were reported in the answers referred to the COVID-19 period.

"We aimed to evaluate if pandemic-related concerns and worries are affecting the desire for parenthood in couples who were already planning to have a child or if quarantine is encouraging reproductive desire.

"What we found the main reasons that led people to not wanting to conceive included worries related to future economic difficulties and consequences on pregnancy.

"Interestingly, although almost half of the people referred no interruption in their job activity and no variations of salaries, probably due to the 'smart working' adapting strategy, over 40% of participants reported a worrying reduction of monthly profits. Remarkably, the fear of imminent and future economic instabilities led those who were searching for a pregnancy to stop their intention in 58% of cases."

Nevertheless, despite most people not wanting to conceive during the pandemic, 60% of the 268 correspondents already planning to conceive have carried on in their quest - with the experts suggesting that the fear of infertility potentially occurring in the future, outweighs the worries of the consequences of COVID-19 infection.

Additionally, some 140 (11.5%) people in fact revealed a new desire for parenthood during quarantine.

Specifically, the wish was mainly expressed by women. In most cases, the respondents referred "the will for change" (50%) and "the need for positivity" (40%) to be the main reasons of this intention. Only six out of the 140 (4.3%), however effectively tried to get pregnant in this period.

Co-author Dr Gianmartin Cito, in specialist training in Urology at the University of Florence, added: "Again, fear of consequences on pregnancy in addition to the economic impact on families are probably the reasons why almost the whole group of couples who unexpectedly started to express a desire for parenthood during quarantine did not translate this dream into a concrete attempt."

The study also measured people's reported levels of sexual activity. 712 respondents (66.3%) who did not experience the desire for parenting before the pandemic, nor during, reported no reduction in sexual intercourses - with no significant differences among genders. 60% of the couples who were already involved in childbearing attempts, continued in this project and did not report a reduction in the number of sexual intercourses.

Commenting on the limitations of the study, the authors add that "it is unknown whether these findings will result in a substantial modification of birth rate in the near future".

###
MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Editorial Advisory and Securities Review Committee of BetterInvesting Magazine today announced The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) as its July 2020 "Stock to Study" and Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc. (NYSE: ZBH) as its July 2020 "Undervalued Stock" for investors' informational and educational use.

"Rather than focusing just on which companies will win and which are likely to lose during the stay-at-home orders nationwide, the Securities Review Committee today reminded investors to concentrate their investment approach and stock studies on the long-term," said Ken Zendel, CEO of BetterInvesting. "Factors that were impacting a company's business before COVID-19, such as work from home, digital transformation, etc., will most likely accelerate in the coming days, months, and years."

Check BetterInvesting's August issue for more details about these selections. Go to the trial version of BetterInvesting's online tools to study the investment potential of Home Depot and Zimmer Biomet by viewing their fundamental data and applying judgments.

Committee members are Robert M. Bilkie, Jr., CFA; Daniel J. Boyle, CFA; Marisa Bradbury, CFA; Philip S. Dano, CFA; and Walter J. Kirchberger, CFA.

As stated, the BetterInvesting committee's Stock to Study and Undervalued Stock choices are for the informational and educational uses of investors and are not intended as investment recommendations. BetterInvesting urges investors to educate themselves about the stock market so they can make informed decisions about stock purchases.

About BetterInvesting

BetterInvesting is a national nonprofit organization that has been empowering individual investors since 1951. Founded in Detroit, the association (formerly known as National Association of Investors Corporation) was borne of the conviction that anyone can become a successful long-term investor by following common-sense investing practices. BetterInvesting has helped more than 5 million people become better, more informed investors by providing webinars, in-person events, easy-to-use online tools for analyzing stocks, a monthly magazine and a community of volunteers and like-minded investors. For more information about BetterInvesting, visit its website at www.betterinvesting.org or call toll free (877) 275-6242.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

SOURCE NAIC-BetterInvesting

Related Links

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The United Kingdoms plans to launch a smartphone application to track potential COVID-19 infections wont include Apple and Google.

The countrys National Health Service has designed its own mobile software to do contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus, the BBC reported Monday.

The NHS reportedly found that its own tech, which runs in the background on Apples iPhone, works sufficiently well.

One hangup with some contact tracing apps is that they work only when a phone is active and the app is running in the foreground, which can sap battery life.

The NHS app conserves battery life by waking up the software in the background when a phone encounters another phone running the app.

However, the Apple-Google engine may conserve even more power, because it doesnt have to wake up link to another device running it.

Apple and Google earlier this month released APIs to help developers, including nation states, create contact tracing apps for the Exposure Notification system theyre collaborating on.

The companies plan to incorporate the system into future versions of their mobile operating systems, iOS and Android.

Centralization vs. Decentralization

With its app, the NHS chose a centralized model for its data collection and storage.

When the app senses another version of itself on a phone it makes note of it and sends the information to an NHS computer server. If someone using the program tests positive for COVID-19, that information is sent to the server, which then alerts every app user who had contact with the person of their exposure to the virus.

Apple and Google have set up a decentralized framework for their mobile contact tracing solution.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

As with the NHS app, when phones running a tracing app are within proximity of each other, they exchange information in the form of a key code. Users let the app know when they become infected.

The app then updates an online database with the codes of the contacts of the infected person. That database is downloaded to phones periodically so users of the app are kept current about whether theyve been exposed to the virus.

Apple and Google say their decentralized method preserves an individuals privacy better than a centralized method. They contend that the method makes it more difficult for a hacker or the state to track individuals and their social interactions, because data is stored on their phone and doesnt leave it without the owners permission.

The NHS contends that by centralizing the data, it can obtain more insight into the spread of COVID-19, which can help it further refine its app.

Dynamic Tension

There is a tension between the NHS and Apple-Google camps, noted Alain B. Labrique, director of Johns Hopkins Universitys Global mHealth Initiative in Baltimore, Maryland.

The tension is between a centralized data repository controlled by the government and a system that makes data available only to individuals.

When data is only available to individuals, it takes away the potential for abuse, Labrique told TechNewsWorld.

In many countries theres a popular concern about giving government granular access to not just where youve been but who youve been in contact with and for how long, he said.

Protecting that kind of data during a pandemic comes with some disadvantages.

As a public health authority, the more information I have about contacts, the more capability I have to address the pandemic effectively, Labrique explained.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Not all countries are going the centralized route. Switzerland, Estonia, and Austrias Red Cross have endorsed decentralization, as has Germany, after considering a centralized approach.

Countries that are accepting the decentralized approach are also accepting a tradeoff, Labrique said. Theyre willing to sacrifice some level of control in order to get another tool out there that people can use to fight back against coronavirus.

Location Protection

The centralized approach adopted by the NHS has the potential for abuse, even though data collected by the program may be anonymized, said Omer Tene, chief knowledge officer of the International Association of Privacy Professionals in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In a big data context such as this, even anonymized information can be attributed back to individuals, sometimes through crossing with other available databases, he told TechNewsWorld.

Under the Apple-Google approach, as well as a solution by a group of European scientists known as DP-3T, there is no central database and instead data is stored on users devices, Tene noted.

Both the NHS and the Apple-Google solution employ Bluetooth technology rather than collecting geolocation data, he pointed out. [*Correction  May 5, 2020]

Location data can be incredibly revealing and sensitive, showing where people live, work, which doctors they go to, who they associate with, and so forth, Tene continued. For contact tracing, location is not needed as its enough that two individuals were close to each other  for one of them to pass the virus on to the other.

More Nations Adopting Apps

Smartphone contact tracing apps have been rolled out in a number of countries, including China, Israel and Singapore.

Australia released its contact tracing app on Sunday. Within hours of its release, more than a million Aussies had downloaded the app.

The software, which is based on a similar program used in Singapore, uses Bluetooth wireless technology to gather data from other phones running the app when it comes within 1.5 meters (4.2 feet) of them. When someone with a phone running the software is diagnosed with COVID-19, all users of the app who had contact with the infected user for 15 minutes or more receive an alert telling them theyve been exposed to the virus.

Only state health authorities will be able to access the data gathered by the app. Not even law enforcement officers with a court order will be able to access the data. Whats more, data will be erased from the phone every 21 days, or if the app is removed from the device.

In order for the app to be effective, its estimated that 40 percent of the countrys population must use it.

The main problem is that contact tracing apps are only effective if broadly adopted and standardized, Tene said.

For example, Singapores TraceTogether app was downloaded by just 13 percent of the population, meaning that in any interaction between two random passersby theres only a 1 percent chance they both use the app, he said. Obviously thats insufficient to allow people to have confidence that their encounter with a patient will be flagged.

*ECT News Network editors note  May 5, 2020: Our original published version of this story stated the following: The NHS app has an edge over the Apple-Google solution when it comes to protecting location data, he (Tene) continued. The NHS app is based on Bluetooth proximity tracking as opposed to GPS or cellular location. That is a much more privacy friendly approach, since it doesnt require collection of geolocation data, Tene explained. Following publication of our story, Tene offered this clarification: Deploying a BT based solution is a strength of the NHS app and not a relative strength compared to the Apple-Google solution because that too is Bluetooth based.
Is Now When I Should Panic?: A Chat With Roz Chast

Friday at 4 p.m. on Facebook

Roz Chast, a cartoonist for The New Yorker, depicts anxiety-riddled city dwellers and their quirky, relatable tendencies. She probably has plenty to draw from these days. On Friday, Chast will join the Museum of the City of New York for a virtual conversation  titled (what else?) Is Now When I Should Panic?  about her work, discussing particularly timely examples of her art and taking questions. The program is hosted by Fran Rosenfeld, the museums director of public programs and the curator of the 2016 exhibition Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs.

When: 4 p.m.

Where: The MCNY Facebook page and YouTube channel. Attendees are encouraged to register here.

Myq Kaplan, From the Nowhere Comedy Club

Friday at 10:30 p.m. on Zoom

Myq Kaplan, a.ka. Mike Kaplan, wants to chase your quarantine blues away. On Friday, the comedian  who has appeared on the late-night shows of Conan OBrien, David Letterman and Seth Meyers, as well as on Comedy Central Presents and the NBC shows Last Comic Standing and Americas Got Talent  will celebrate his new comedy album, appropriately titled A.K.A. The live special is part of the Nowhere Comedy Club events: a virtual comedy club experience. Tickets are $10 to $25.

When: 10:30 p.m.

Where: Purchase tickets here to get access to the Zoom chat.

Music and Mental Health Awareness

Friday through Sunday on Facebook, beginning at 11:30 a.m. each day

A virtual concert with a focus on mindfulness and mental health awareness. Thats the goal of 320 Festival this weekend, which will mix live performances and Q. and A. sessions  Chris Martin of Coldplay, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Kiiara, Lindsey Stirling, Art Alexakis of Everclear, Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October, Frank Zummo of Sum 41 and more are taking part  with more than 20 panels. Topics include thriving after trauma, womens mental health and anxiety in the social media age.

When: 11:30 a.m., and runs through the evening.

Where: The 320 Festivals Facebook and YouTube pages, as well as KNEKT.TV Network on Roku and Apple TV.
"At the federal level, we have made significant reforms to our tax system for income earners and small and medium-sized businesses, enhanced competition through the implementation of the Harper Review and legislated the Consumer Data Right," he says. He singles out the Productivity Commission's Shifting The Dial report from 2017, which highlights the need for co-operation across governments, with 22 of the 28 recommendations in the report either the sole or joint responsibility of the states. "Commonwealth and state governments are working together to boost the nations productivity in important areas of infrastructure, health, skills and industrial relations reform, including cutting red tape and deregulation," he says. Benjamin Cooper, head chef at Chin Chin, co-ordinating deliveries from the empty restaurant. Credit:Eddie Jim The Shifting the Dial report calls for red tape reduction to improve the efficiency of markets and outlines changes to areas from agriculture to copyright regulations which could save up to $3 billion a year.

Among its more significant recommendations are a call to move away from the community pharmacy as the vehicle for dispensing medicines to instead allowing automatic dispensing supervised by a qualified person at most locations. 'Regulations we thought would take three to five years have happened in the space of a month.' Tim Doyle, Eucalyptus During the COVID-19 crisis, regulatory changes at state and federal level have allowed something similar to happen. Pharmacists have been able to provide a wider range of medicines without a prescription if it is seen as impractical for a consumer to obtain one and they have been prescribed the drug before. Pharmacist Catherine Bronger says continued dispensing had been vital for patients who are self-isolating and she wants to see it kept in place. "That is something I think pharmacists should be able to do ongoing," she says. "New dispensing arrangements mean patients can be called at home and doctors can transmit electronically prescriptions by fax, text or mainly by email - then we can deliver the medications without having to come into contact with that patient."

Another pharmacist, Anthony Tassone, agrees: "Lets not turn the tap on and off due to a perceived bureaucratic hurdle  lets do what is right for patients and their care." Healthcare startup Eucalyptus has two portfolio companies, Kin and Pilot, which offer telehealth services for fertility issues and men's health respectively. Chief executive Tim Doyle says there has been a significant uptick in demand for both. "It has been an unbelievable change in the telehealth and pharmacy space, regulations we thought would take three to five years have happened in the space of a month," he says, highlighting bulk billing for telehealth services. The Shifting the Dial report also calls for abolishing alcohol excise taxes and moving to a uniform volumetric tax rate for alcoholic beverages. It suggests stamp duty should be repealed in favour of a broad-based land tax, and that road user charges should replace fuel excise taxes. The report also calls for reform of the Fair Work Commission.

Further cuts to regulation are backed by the Business Council of Australia, which wants to make it easier for businesses to get back on their feet. "There is a good reason so much outdated and unnecessary red tape has been put on hold as we deal with this crisis - it holds back new investment," BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott says. "Thats why a strong recovery will need a focus on strengthening our global competitiveness and efficiency". Westacott says the starting point should be to look at measures that have been suspended during the crisis and ask whether they were really needed in the first place. "Governments have already acted to unshackle employers by lifting restrictions on retail trading hours, getting rid of unnecessary curfews that prevent supermarkets from restocking and making it easier for employees to take leave or change their working arrangements," she says.

Pharmacist Catherine Bronger wants to see continued dispensing kept. Credit:Anna Zhu In the education sector, the founder of ASX-listed OpenLearning, Adam Brimo, says regulations have changed for many of the company's customers, enabling them to continue to operate. "What has been interesting is the speed at which the regulators and government are responding to changes, including being flexible on the interpretation of some regulations already in place - for example, enabling international students to study online where previously they would not have been able to do that while keeping their visas." Rebecca Lines, co-owner of Banskii restaurant in Sydney, has been able to keep her business going by offering food delivery alongside wine and cocktails under relaxed regulations. Co-owner of Banskii restaurant Rebecca Lines has added alcohol delivery to her business. Credit:Rhett Wyman

"The ability to sell alcohol out of our restaurant has been great as liquor licensing is usually very strict and it is almost impossible to get a restaurant licence and an off licence at the same time - why, I don't know." Lines says restaurants should be able to continue to offer alcohol for delivery when the lockdown ends: "Coming out of this if you have the ability to have a side hustle, that is going to be really important." Stephanie Reuss, co-founder of flexible job specialist startup Beam, says key changes enabled under the JobKeeper program included allowing businesses to make changes to work hours, job responsibilities and locations with immediacy. Previously under some awards employers were required to give at least a week's notice. "This undoubtedly helped a huge number of businesses to retain their people by moving them to part-time instead of making them redundant, when needing to make tough decisions for business continuity," she says. Any move to make such temporary changes to workplace laws permanent is likely to be fiercely contested.
Governor Greg Abbott speaks at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Dallas, Friday, May 4, 2018.

Sue Ogrocki/AP

Gov. Greg Abbott announced plans last month to gradually reopen Texas businesses.

Publicly, the governor has said that there will be an increase in cases of the novel coronavirus but attributed a possible rise to more available testing.

In a private call with lawmakers on Friday, however, the governor acknowledged that scientific research shows that reopening the state will lead to infection spread through person-to-person transmission, the Daily Beast reported.

The outlet posted a recording of the call and confirmed its authenticity with Abbott's office.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In a private phone call with lawmakers on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott acknowledged that reopening businesses in the state will lead to an increase in coronavirus infections, the Daily Beast reported.

Abbott announced his plans to end lockdown measures in Texas late last month and has previously said publicly that if there is an increase in coronavirus cases after the reopening they will be tied to increased testing.

However, in audio of the call posted in the Daily Beast's report, the governor said that "every scientific and medical report shows" that reopening will lead to more transmissions.

"How do we know reopening businesses won't result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?" Abbott asked during the phone call with members of the state legislature and Congress. "Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopeningwhether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of societyin the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It's almost ipso facto."

The Daily Beast confirmed was authentic with Abbott's office.

"The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility is for transmission," Abbott said during the call. "The goal never has been to get transmission down to zero."

Story continues

The Friday call wasn't the first time Abbott acknowledged that there "can" or "could" be a correlation between the reopening and a spike in confirmed cases, but his tone in the call indicated a clearer understanding of the risks, the outlet noted.

John Wittman, a spokesperson for Abbott, told the outlet that Abbott's language in the audio message doesn't deviate much from a recent interview he gave to a local TV station. In the interview, Abbott said, "all scientists and doctors say that as we do begin to open up, there could be an increase in the number of coronavirus cases."

However, the governor said in the interview that the possible spike would be a result of improved capacity for testing in the state, rather than the increase of personal contact as public spaces open back up.

"The Governor has said this from the beginning, as we begin to open up, we will see flare-ups, whether we open now or three months from now," Wittman told The Daily Beast. "The key is ensuring we are able to contain that spread, which is where contact tracing comes into play."

Abbott announced last month that the state would deploy a multi-stage reopening plan beginning on May 1 with retail stores, malls, restaurants, and movie theaters.

The second wave is slated for May 18 and will include barbershops, hair salons, bars, and gyms. As part of the gradual ease of restrictions, public establishments will be required to operate at no more than 25% capacity and up to 50% in select rural areas.

Read the original article on Business Insider
COLUMBIA  When salons and fitness centers are allowed to reopen in South Carolina, they'll likely have to limit the number of people inside and constantly clean up in an effort to keep clients and staff safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drafted guidelines discussed Thursday by a panel advising Gov. Henry McMaster on how to safely reboot the economy include rearranging salons' waiting areas or eliminating them altogether, keeping a station empty between clients, and instructing stylists to change their smock after each appointment.

Beyond limiting total capacity, gyms and fitness centers may need to keep every other piece of cardio equipment empty and prohibit use of saunas, steam rooms and showers. Members could be told to bring their own towels and stop drinking from the water fountain.

Core recommendations for all businesses, as well as houses of worship, include allowing at least 6 feet between people or families "to the greatest extent possible." Even walking tours, whenever they resume, are advised to allow "6 feet of space between parties."

Salons, gyms and other close-contact businesses are among those still ordered to remain closed in South Carolina.

But McMaster said this week he hopes to make an announcement soon on how and when they can open their doors again. The Republican governor has said he recognizes people are ready for a professional haircut. And he's put himself in that category.

The safe-practice guidelines salons could be encouraged to follow are so detailed, they include propping their doors open when the weather's nice so customers don't have to touch the handle when entering and exiting.

Many South Carolinians have also been asking about gym reopenings, said Jennifer Fletcher, deputy secretary for Commerce, who's leading the accelerateSC panel focused on the challenges for reopening businesses.

"Fitness centers have been a hot topic of late. While they were itching to get outdoors now theyre itching to get back into their fitness routine," she told the panel during its online meeting Thursday. "So we tried to fast-track some guidance on fitness centers."

Those guidelines include checking the temperature of every employee and member as they walk in and only letting them inside with a reading of less than 100.4 degrees. The drafted recommendations include encouraging gyms to clean bathrooms every hour and the entire facility every two hours, as well as wiping down equipment after each use.

Guidelines are still in the works for letting people get back into communal swimming pools, whether at hotels, fitness centers or condo buildings.

McMaster gave no indication of when he will announce decisions on reopening any of the facilities discussed by the group.

"Great meeting. Great thoughts. Keep it up," he said at the meeting's conclusion.

The group also had separate guidelines for religious organizations, for whenever they decide to welcome congregants again.

McMaster encouraged but did not order in-person services to stop, saying he could not violate people's First Amendment religious rights. Services largely moved online as COVID-19 infections rose in the state. Some have continued services outdoors.

Voluntary suggestions for when in-person services do resume include eliminating the use of frequently touched items such as offering plates, removing hymnals from pews and discouraging handshakes and hugs.

Houses of worship are asked to prevent people from gathering near doorways and lobbies and to continue streaming services online for people in high-risk categories for complications with COVID-19 or those who just don't want to risk it.

They're also asked to continue supporting parishioners' mental and spiritual health and providing social services and meals, while also social distancing as much as possible. The document doesn't address church choirs or other musical parts of the service.

The various drafted guidelines conclude with the same message: "It is very important that all members of this industry understand that while these guidelines are voluntary, it is in everyone's best interest to diligently follow them as we move to reopen our economy and keep it open."
Adopting a contact-tracing battle plan to fight coronavirus will require tests to be processed and returned within a tight 24-hour window, an Oxford scientist has stressed.

Professor Christophe Fraser, who is advising the government on its new NHSX app, said that urgency was the key to wrestle down the spread of the outbreak.

Underscoring the need for speed, he said a fast turnaround could 'make the difference between an epidemic starting to resurge towards the second wave or not'.

NHSX has been heralded as the ticket out of lockdown as it will allow the government to tack away from imposing blanket restrictions and only isolate those who have come into contact with someone who has the disease.

On the first phase of the nationwide roll-out, being trialled on the Isle of Wight, users self-report their symptoms and, if judged to have coronavirus, the app will contact people who have recently come into their close proximity.

But in the future it will be equipped with an in-built function to order a testing kit, so suspected cases can confirm if they have the virus.

Professor Christophe Fraser, who is advising the government on its new NHSX app, impressed the need for urgency to wrestle the spread of the outbreak under control

Yet getting back test results can currently take as long as 36 hours, which Prof Fraser believes is too slow.

He told Sky News: 'A 72-hour delay really means that you're having very little impact on the epidemic. A 48-hour delay is pretty bad.

'You really need to be getting the information across in 24 hours.'

Isle of Wight residents have been urged to download the NHS contact tracing app after it was revealed 40,000 people have so far signed up.

Experts have said that at around 60 per cent of the population - 84,000 - will need to download NHSX to make the software effective.

But technology teething problems and nervousness surrounding data protection have stopped many islanders partaking in the first phase of the nationwide roll-out.

Isle of Wight council workers and NHS staff were encouraged to download the app on Tuesday, with instruction letters sent out to the rest of the island yesterday.

As of yesterday evening, 40,000 people have downloaded the app, according to the MP Bob Seely.

While this number has likely since swelled, some islanders have described their reluctance to use the app because of a cloud hanging over privacy protection.

Charlie Harris, 25, from Cowes, told MailOnline he would not be installing the app because of privacy fears.

He said: 'To me it's an invasion of my privacy, any app you download you don't know who's controlling it.

'I know it's a government app but whose to say they won't go through your phone.'

Tests have found the app sometimes 'goes quiet' when running in the phone's background, throwing into question its ability to connect with other devices.

Technology company Reincubate found the app sometimes 'goes quiet' when 'backgrounded' for 90 minutes.

Tech whizz Aidan Fitzpatrick wrote that 'there's a threshold whereby the NHS COVID-19 app can go quiet when left in the background for a period of time, and device logs show examples of this.'

However he reassured that it will continue to scan for over and hour and a half, which can be extended if other apps running on the phone are using bluetooth.

Teething problems have already been raised, with people receiving error messages telling them the app is not compatible with their devices.

Many have reported the app is not working on Huawei, iPhones and Samsungs released before mid-2017.

Some 30,000 people downloaded the app just hours after it was launched, but it has already been besieged by problems.

Residents have since been sharing their frustrations on local Facebook groups, with Richard Mitchell pointing out the app did not work for him or his wife.

Jayne Allabaster added: 'I've got a new phone but the app doesn't show on it.'

People are receiving error messages telling them the app is not compatible with their devices, with others reporting glitches including pop-ups. This picture appears to show one of the devices not compatible with the app

NHS worker Anni Adams looks at the new NHS app on her phone on the Isle of Wight yesterday

Hache L Jones wrote: 'I have a Samsung Galaxy JX phone running Android v 10.0. But the Covid app doesn't work on it.'

Sam Parkinson added: 'I would love to download the app but my Samsung S6 Edge has Android version 7 so can't download it. My phone isn't that old and otherwise works perfectly well.

'This could be an issue to take up, so hopefully this may get picked up as part of the trial and extra Android versions will be added.'

Health chiefs have awarded an IT development firm a 3.8million contract to see if it can use Apple and Google software in the new coronavirus contract tracing app.

NHS digital innovation arm NHSX has asked the London office of Swiss firm Zuhlke Engineering to develop and support the app which is on trial on the Isle of Wight.

The contract includes a requirement to 'investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility' of using Apple and Google software in the new 'NHS Covid-19' app.

The move revealed in the Financial Times signals a potential U-turn towards the global standard proposed by Apple and Google just two days after the trial began.

The UK is one of the few major countries to have turned down the offer of assistance from the technology giants in developing the app.

Residents have since been sharing their frustrations on local Facebook groups, with Richard Mitchell pointing out the app did not work for him or his wife

Hache L Jones wrote: 'I have a Samsung Galaxy JX phone running Android v 10.0. But the Covid app doesn't work on it'

Apple and Google are working with health authorities in several European countries including Germany and Italy to build contact-tracing technology.

Critics of the UK's approach say the app will be less effective if it does not incorporate Apple and Google's software.

There are also concerns about whether the UK app will be compatible with those being developed by other countries which are using the Apple and Google model.

If it is not, Britons travelling abroad in the future could face barriers.

How is the NHS tracing app different to one made by Apple and Google? The app technologies developed by Google/Apple and the NHS are based on the same principle - they keep a log of who someone has come into close contact with - but the way they store data is the main difference. The NHS's keeps information in a centralised database, while the Google/Apple app is de-centralised. NHS app: Lists on NHS servers The NHSX app will create an alert every time two app users come within Bluetooth range of one another and log this in the user's phone. Each person will essentially build up a list of everyone they have been in 'contact' with. This will be anonymised so the lists will actually just be numbers or codes, not lists of names or addresses. If someone is diagnosed with the coronavirus or reports that they have symptoms, all the app users they got close to during the time that they were considered infectious - this will vary from person to person - will receive an alert telling them they have been put at risk of COVID-19 - but it won't name the person who was diagnosed. NHSX insists it will delete people's data when they get rid of the app. Apple/Google: Contained on phones In Apple and Google's de-centralised approach, meanwhile, the server and list element of this process is removed and the entire log is contained in someone's phone. That app works by exchanging a digital 'token' with every phone someone comes within Bluetooth range of over a fixed period. If one person develops symptoms of the coronavirus or tests positive, they will be able to enter this information into the app. The phone will then send out a notification to all the devices they have exchanged tokens with during the infection window, to make people aware they may have been exposed to COVID-19. The server database will not be necessary because each phone will keep an individual log of the bluetooth profiles someone has come close to. These will then be linked anonymously to people's NHS apps and alerts can be pushed through that even after the person is out of bluetooth range. It is understood that if someone later deletes the Google/Apple app and closes their account their data would be erased. Will NHS benefit from central data? If the NHS collects the data it may be able to use it as part of wider contact tracing efforts as well as being able to detect local outbreaks using location data. In future, if someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, members of an army of 18,000 'contact tracers' will be tasked with working out who else that patient has come into contact with and put at risk. It is not clear how much access the human contact tracers will have to data collected through the app. Advertisement

The app is viewed as key to lifting lockdown and the Government plans to roll it out nationwide in the coming weeks if the trial on the Isle of Wight is successful.

A spokesman for NHSX said it did not currently intend to switch to the Apple/Google standard, saying: 'We've been working with Apple and Google throughout the app's development and it's quite right and normal to continue to refine the app.'

It comes after fears were raised yesterday that the app only 'half-works' on iPhones after experts claimed it can only effectively operate on the devices if the screen is unlocked.

The further series of concerns were raised one day after experts warned that it was open to abuse because it lets users trigger alerts to all their contacts themselves simply by telling the program they feel unwell.

This could lead to chaos if too many people 'cry wolf' and trigger a slew of false alerts.

An expert has claimed that the app only half works on iPhones  because its Bluetooth technology only 'listens' for other phones when the handset is locked and does not broadcast its status.

It means that when two locked iPhones with the app are together, they will not record contact.

The joint Google and Apple technology in the tech giants' own contact tracing app fixes this flaw, but the NHS app does not use this software.

In another potential flaw, residents on the Isle of Wight taking part in the trial told MailOnline that the app appeared to drain their phone's battery life at a faster rate while others on the island said that privacy fears made them reluctant to download the app.

And the Scottish government also dealt a potential hammer blow by saying it will only commit to the technology if it is shown to work and is secure.

Dr Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at University College London, told MailOnline that the app 'only half-works on iPhones'.

He added: 'This is because the UK has decided, unlike countries such as Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Estonia and more, to not use the new decentralised building blocks Apple provides in its new iOS 13.5 operating system next week.

'In particular, iPhones are only able to 'listen' when they are locked, and not to reach out to other phones. To talk to another phone and register a contact, they need a phone that can reach out to prod them and 'wake' them up, or they won't spot them.

'When two iPhones users are together, as they are both only listening, no contact will be made or recorded. It is only if there is a nearby Android phone present that the phones can be nudged to 'wake up'.'

The same issue was faced by Singapore, which was the first country to try a contact tracing app. TraceTogether gained only a 20 per cent uptake with many users finding their iPhone had to be unlocked for it to work properly.

Another technology expert, Timandra Harkness, author of Big Data: Does Size Matter?, told the New Statesman that the app 'wouldn't work with the phone locked or while you are using it for anything else'.

She added that a friend in Singapore found this to be an issue on the TraceTogether app, which meant that 'you have to leave it on and  'upside down' in your pocket to go into Low Power mode.'

If a person with the app reports Covid-19 symptoms, a risk score for an interaction is calculated based on the distance between devices, how long they were in contact for and the infectiousness of the person at the time.

It comes as the Scottish government dealt a potential hammer blow to Health Secretary Matt Hancock's plans for the app after saying it will only commit to the technology if it is shown to work and is secure.

Nicola Sturgeon has said she is 'cautious' about the app and has stressed Scotland's approach to stopping the spread of the disease will be more 'old fashioned'.

Meanwhile, Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland's national clinical director, said he will only download the app 'once I'm confident that it works' and the 'security is good'.

Should Scotland refuse to recommend the app it will undoubtedly hit the UK government's efforts to hit the 60 per cent threshold.

The NHS is rolling out its new app for testing. This is how it will work: The user will provide the first three digits of their postcode to activate the app. If the user starts experiencing they will enter them into the app. The data is sent to an NHS server, which will calculate which of the user's contacts are at risk and send them an alert telling them to self isolate

It came amid growing concerns over the way in which the app works and the data it will collect with experts warning Mr Hancock it is 'almost inevitable' he will face a legal challenge.

How will the NHS app work? The NHS is rolling out its new coronavirus track-and-trace app today for testing across the Isle of Wight. This is how it will work STEP ONE: DOWNLOAD THE APP Britons will be able to download the app for free from the Department of Health website. It is also available via the Apple and Android app stores or via a link sent by email to NHS and public sector workers. It is being tested on the Isle of Wight before a potential roll-out across the country, probably one region at a time. STEP TWO: PROVIDE A PARTIAL POSTCODE To register the person will be asked to provide the first half of their postcode, which shows the NHS the town or borough they live in - but not their name or their exact home address. The user will be asked to allow the app to use the phone's bluetooth to keep track of other phones it comes in to close to and for how long for. The NHS insists it will not be tracking location data - only phones But while the Government has said 'your postcode will not be used to track your location' - it is less clear if they also mean your location will not be tracked at all. STEP THREE: KEEP YOUR PHONE ON The user will be told to keep their phone and Bluetooth switched on at all times and the app will run in the background without them doing anything. The user will also be asked to allow 'push notifications' - which allows the NHS to send a person messages directly to their phones. When an individual goes out, the app will keep a log of every time it comes within Bluetooth range of another phone - but that person must also have the app. All IDs will be anonymous, with each app registered to a code rather than a person or address. STEP FOUR: REPORT YOUR SYMPTOMS IF YOU BECOME ILL If someone becomes ill they will be asked to log on to the app and input it. They will be asked if they have the common symptoms of coronavirus such as a high temperature and a continuous cough. If no, nothing will happen. If yes, they will be told to order a coronavirus test. STEP FIVE: APP SENDS YOUR DATA TO THE NHS SERVER FOR ANALYSIS BY EXPERTS If it is a suspected coronavirus case, these symptoms and the anonymous IDs of all the phones the user has come into contact with are automatically sent to an NHS server. The NHS will analyse the data sent by the original sufferer using an 'algorithm' based on distance of between one and two metres, and the amount of time, probably around ten to 15 minutes. STEP SIX: NHS SENDS AN ALERTS TO CONTACTS It will then alert app users who have been in 'significant contact' with the original person with symptoms. In early versions of the app, this warns the user that they have been in contact with someone who has reported symptoms and should self isolate. If the original sufferer tests positive, everyone they have been in contact with will receive a stronger 'red' alert telling them to go into quarantine. The original sufferer triggers the red alert by entering a PIN issued by the NHS after they test positive. The Department of Health has not revealed exactly what the alerts will say. The Department of Health says: 'The app will advise the public what action to take if a user has been close to someone who has become symptomatic. The advice on what people should do can be adapted as the context and approach evolves.' The app will calculate how at risk a contact is by measuring their exposure to the person with symptoms. It will measure exposure by time and proximity. The NHS analysts will set the risk parameters that trigger alerts. STEP SEVEN: ORIGINAL SUFFERER CONTACTED BY HUMAN NHS CONTACT TRACERS The app will issue the original person with symptoms instructions on how to get a test using the software. One of around 10,000 UK human contact tracers may also get in contact on the phone and ask the app user how many people are in their household, where they have been and who they have been close to, that they know of, to find people who may not have been picked up by the bluetooth. They will also try to contact these new contacts if required. STEP EIGHT: SUFFERER IS TESTED Once the Covid-19 test arrives at the person's home they will be expected to swab and then put it back in the post to an NHS testing centre. They may also be eligible for a home test by a health worker or visit one of the country's test centres. The result should be available within 48 hours. There are then two possible outcomes:  The person tests negative. In this case, your contacts are told via a message that it was a false notification.  The person tests positive. In this case, your contacts are asked to isolate for 14 days, and get them into the clinical testing path. STEP NINE: HUMAN CONTACT TRACERS CONTACT AT-RISK CONTACTS OF ORIGINAL SUFFERER AND PLOT HOTSPOTS The NHS' army of human contact tracers will contact app users who have been in 'significant contact' with the original person with symptoms will be alerted through the app. They will provided with 'health advice'  which may include self isolation  based on the NHS' assessment of their level of risk. Not everyone who has been in contact will be alerted based on the NHS algorithm. This advice will be constantly modified by doctors based on the current siutuation. Advertisement

Civil liberties campaigners and barristers are demanding the government legislate to restrict the way in which the data collected by the app can be used.

Some are concerned that the lack of regulation could result in the movement of people data eventually being used to identify anyone who is not sticking to social distancing rules so they can be punished.

The UK government has insisted so-called 'shoe leather epidemiology' will be part of its 'test, track and trace' programme with 18,000 staff due to be recruited - but the app will be integral to its success.

It began to be trialled on the Isle of Wight this week with a view to then rolling it out nationwide in the coming months.

The proportion of Apple IOS to Android users in Britain is roughly 50:50, while 75 per cent of people responding to a poll in the Island Echo said they intended to download the app.

The results of another online survey carried out by Isle of Wight Radio were similar - showing that 79 per cent of respondents said they would download it while 21 per cent said they would not.

The Isle of Wight's population is about 140,000, meaning more than 100,000 people could download it during the trial.

The app, developed by NHSX, works using bluetooth which logs whenever someone is within two metres of someone else for more than 15 minutes.

People will be told to tell the NHS when they develop coronavirus symptoms and at that point the data collected by the app will be used to contact everyone the infected person has been close to in recent weeks.

The Government has insisted that all data will be completely anonymised, with Mr Hancock rejecting claims the app could open the door to 'pervasive state surveillance'. He said that was 'completely wrong'.

But the Health Secretary is facing an uphill battle to win over critics of the initiative after the UK adopted a different path to other European nations.

Britain's app will see contact information held centrally by the NHS with ministers arguing this will speed up the tracing part of the programme so that people can be tested quickly.

But other European nations are using decentralised apps, one of which is backed by Google and Apple, which see phones communicate directly with each other.

Experts believe this approach is less likely to face a legal challenge because the data is not stored centrally.

Barristers told the Telegraph that the UK's app proposes 'significantly greater interference with users' privacy' and as a result it will require 'greater justification'.

They argued the government is yet to justify its approach and that it is 'almost inevitable' that legal proceedings will be brought against it with the potential for a protracted court battle.

The fact the UK has chosen a different path to many other European countries has sparked fears that the different systems will be incompatible.

That could result in Britons having to unnecessarily quarantine themselves for 14 days when travelling to another country.

But Mr Hancock said misunderstandings about privacy issues with the UK's contact tracing app are making it harder to fight coronavirus.

Amnesty International UK has been among the voices to share their fears that privacy and rights could become another casualty of the virus as a result of the app, while a group of UK academics working in cyber security, privacy and law recently signed a joint letter saying it could open the door to surveillance once the pandemic is over.

The Government has refuted such suggestions, saying data is kept on a person's smartphone and can only be shared with the NHS when the individual decides, if they are displaying symptoms and request a test.

Speaking to Sky News, the Health Secretary said concerns that the app could track people are 'wrong' and 'not based on what's happening in the app'.

'I haven't yet seen a critique based on privacy that is accurate or based on actual understanding of what the app does, so if anybody... has those concerns or is proposing to write about them, I would suggest that they go and look at what the app actually does before doing so,' he said.

'Because if you are spreading those sorts of stories and discouraging people from downloading the app, then what you're actually doing is making it harder for us as a community to fight this virus.

'I'm being quite robust in my response to these critiques because we have taken the concerns into account.'

Mr Hancock reiterated that an ethics advisory board will oversee the app, and there are plans to publish a data protection impact assessment and the source code for public scrutiny.

One of the key issues has been around the decision to take a centralised approach, meaning when a person chooses to share their data it is sent to a computer server anonymously, instead of staying between smartphone devices, known as decentralised.

Professor Michael Parker, a member of the Government's Sage advisory group and an NHS adviser on the app, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday: 'The advantage of a centralised system is that we want our health system to be coherent, we want it to work in a way that is intelligent.

'And we want the NHS to be taking control of this. We don't want, I think, our health system to be managed by tech companies in a way that is potentially disconnected.

'I would argue that we really want an integrated system that is centralised but carefully managed and in an approach that treats patient information in a way that is appropriately depersonalised.'

Former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has called for legislation to protect the personal data of those using the NHS coronavirus app.

Meanwhile, there are also fears the UK app could be abused because it is reliant on people reporting symptoms.

Experts believe mischievous pupils could falsely report having symptoms in order to shut down schools or disaffected workers could do the same to try to get firms closed.

Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: 'Someone might feel that they are fed up with their boss and want to cause some trouble so they self-report and get half of the work force sent home to self-isolate.'

Lawyers are also concerned that the app is not underpinned by its own legislation.

Some civil liberties campaigners are concerned that the lack of regulation could see the data collected being abused in the future.

For example, they fear the data could be used to show who has been breaking social distancing rules with punishments then being dished out.

Legal experts have put forward a draft bill which would set 'basic safeguards' on how the app could be used in the future.

Those safeguards would include a guarantee that no one would be penalised for not having a phone, for leaving their house without a phone and that no one will be 'compelled' to install the app.

Concerns have been raised about the safety of the NHS holding such sensitive data given the fact the health service has previously been targeted by hackers.

STEPHEN POLLARD: The tracing app has got lawyers howling about human rights, but what about the rights of people like me - left highly vulnerable by cancer - to stay alive!

Six weeks ago the word 'shielding' meant nothing to me. Today it defines my life.

As someone with cancer  a chronic form of leukaemia  I've spent six weeks 'shielding' in one room at home.

I have watched the debate over lockdown with a kind of detached jealousy, because I know that even when the restrictions start to ease, I'll still be especially vulnerable.

Indeed, there are only two ways my semi-imprisonment will end. A vaccine would be best, as it would for all of us.

Six weeks ago the word 'shielding' meant nothing to me, writes Stephen Pollard

But with no guarantee that will happen for at least a year (if then), the only alternative is ensuring that the virus is repressed.

For only then will it be relatively safe to venture outside for those of us whose underlying health conditions mean we may not be able to fight the disease if infected.

But for that to happen, we need some means of identifying those who may be infected and tracing their contacts.

In this way, we can keep a lid on viral spread and enable Britain's commitment to lockdown to pay off longer term.

Relieved Which is why I  and, I'm sure, my million and a half fellow shielders  were relieved to read about the new NHS app being launched in a pilot trial today on the Isle of Wight.

The app is our only means of escaping from a life in limbo. It's a source of hope and something close to joy, as we dare to contemplate being able to move beyond four walls again.

Those of us shielding will have our own individual causes of misery. For me, nothing has been more upsetting than being unable to hug my children, aged ten and eight.

I can wave them goodnight from my room but the routine we have had for their entire lives  ending the day with a kiss and a cuddle  is now just a memory for them and me.

One day soon, when the lockdown eases, they and most of the country hope to be able to take some careful steps back to normality.

I accept that I will have to follow them later to be safe. But without the NHS app, it will not be a few weeks later  it will be at some indeterminate date in the distant future.

Yet, astonishingly, there are those who seem intent on thwarting the app.

Critics say the technology could be readily exploited by hackers and fraudsters, while others protest that the app, in effect a tracking device, represents an infringement of civil liberties and should be banned.

Yet the objections of both groups are, I would argue, knee-jerk and their claims flawed.

And they choose to ignore the reality that in today's digital world, every one of us is dealing with the devil on a daily basis when it comes to our data and privacy.

Yes, the NHS Covid-19 app knows where you are and who you have been with but in an entirely anonymous way.

No name, no address, no NHS or NI number. Once downloaded on to a smartphone, the app uses Bluetooth technology to 'recognise' other devices nearby with the same app.

That information, in the form of a randomly generated number, is stored on a central database.

If someone develops symptoms and notifies the NHS via the app, a message can be sent to anyone who the app deems has been in close contact with the symptomatic individual to ask them to self-isolate for 14 days.

If a subsequent test for the virus proves negative, all contacts can be told to come out of isolation (if positive to continue isolation for a week).

It's a simple idea but, of course, immensely complicated in practice.

It relies on people downloading the app and following instructions to the letter, hence the trial before the scheme is rolled out nationwide later this month.

It's not perfect, not least because it's not compatible with some apps used abroad, but it is the best option now.

So when I read that the likes of Matrix Chambers, the leading human rights barristers, pronounce that the app is an 'interference with fundamental rights and would require significantly greater justification to be lawful' I am not just angry  I am despairing.

Depressing And what a depressing irony that their ideology, that everything must bend before socalled human rights, poses a direct challenge to my human right, and that of 1.5million others, to be able to live something resembling a life again.

These lawyers and shrill civil liberties campaigners insist that the app opens the door to State surveillance, dismissing the fact that the data is anonymous and that in developing the app scientists at GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre and NHSX, the digital arm of the NHS, put privacy and security front and centre.

As former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt wrote yesterday, the explanation from GCHQ is 'unprecedented' in what it has revealed about the app to reassure people on matters of privacy.

In truth, some truly ludicrous arguments are being put forward, including that we risk allowing the Government to impose Chinese levels of control if we use the app  the 'slippery slope' cliche.

Unlike China, we live in a democracy, where governments are accountable and elected and can be removed if they overstep the mark  so this claim is entirely removed from reality.

On social media and via radio phone-ins, others express fears that the app is really being used as a Trojan Horse for mass surveillance of the population.

Or that it is all a plot by Boris Johnson's puppet master, Dominic Cummings, to keep the Tories in power.

Coronavirus is leading to some truly deranged behaviour. The reality is that we are in the middle of one of the worst ever crises to face this country.

More than 30,000 people have died so far. The economy is devastated. In order to plot a way through this disaster, most people would agree that it's worth running the potential risk that the NHS might find out where you were at 10am last Tuesday.

In the real world, away from human rights lawyers' chambers, most of us blithely allow a host of other apps to invade our privacy, such as letting 'location services', track our movements.

If we use public transport we swipe our travel passes which can be tracked. And we happily sign away our privacy in using Amazon's Alexa, for example, or through online shopping, Google searches and social media posts, allowing private firms access to reams of information about us.

Thrilled If we are willing to give up our privacy for such trivial convenience, allowing the NHS access to anonymous information to allow us to defeat a global pandemic, save lives and start rebuilding the economy is not so much a small price to pay as a bargain most of will surely be thrilled to have.

And the opponents conveniently ignore the fact that installation of the app will be voluntary. If you're worried about the supposed loss of privacy, the solution is simple: don't download it.

As with any new tech, there will doubtless be problems to be ironed out. The central idea is both sensible and vital.

Instead of letting ideologically driven human rights campaigners destroy hope for the rest of us, let's embrace the technology, thank the people who have made it possible and look forward to a future where we defeat Covid-19.

Stephen Pollard is Editor of The Jewish Chronicle.
The Osun State University on Thursday announced its resolve to hold the 13th matriculation ceremony of the institution online for newly admitted students of the Ivory Tower.

According to the Public Relations Officer of the school, Mr. Ademola Adesoji, through a statement sent to DAILY POST in Osogbo, the move was in line with the Federal Governments directive to all tertiary institutions in Nigeria to activate virtual learning environment in the face of protracted lockdown.

Adesoji added that virtual teaching has been part of the universitys innovation even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, including holding meetings through digital means.

He said: In line with the directive of the Federal Government that all institutions should activate virtual learning environment to enable students to continue their studies through digital devices, the management of Osun State University has commenced plans to conduct its 13th matriculation ceremony online on Wednesday, 13th May 2020.

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READ ALSO  Drama AS NASU Locks UNIOSUN Graduating Students And Parents Out During Their Convocation

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Labode Popoola had said that it is an academic tradition that we officially admit fresh students to the University. However, in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic which would not allow such a gathering, the University has resolved to conduct online matriculation for the fresh students.

All fresh students are hereby implored to visit the university website to complete their registration for the online matriculation, complete the matriculation oath form and submit online, all the necessary details required from them.
* Malaysia crude palm oil out to fall 1% from 2019 -MPOC

* Malaysia end-2020 palm oil stocks likely at 1.9 mln tonnes -MPOC

By Mei Mei Chu

KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 (Reuters) - Crude palm oil output in Malaysia, the world's second-biggest producer, will drop in 2020 by 1% from a year earlier because of drier weather last year limiting yields and the country's lockdowns this year to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Output this year is expected to drop to 19.7 million tonnes from a year earlier, state agency and industry body the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) said.

"This is based on the impact of low fertilizer application in 2019, dry weather in the middle of 2019 which is resulting in diminished oil palm fruit yields and also a brief suspension of Sabah oil palm estates and mills due to COVID-19 pandemic," MPOC wrote on its website http://mpoc.org.my/malaysian-palm-oil-supply-and-demand-outlook-for-2020, referring to the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Sabah, Malaysia's largest palm oil producing state, temporarily shuttered some plantations and mills during a six-week partial lockdown that started in March to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

MPOC said the partial lockdown also interrupted harvesting, milling and created a manpower shortage and logistics issues that will also dent palm oil production.

According to data from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, fresh fruit bunch yields in the first quarter of 2020 fell 21% to 3.37 tonnes per hectare (1.36 tonnes per acre), compared to 4.28 tonnes per hectare in 2019.

The MPOC forecast Malaysian palm oil stockpiles at the end of 2020 to dip to 1.9 million tonnes from 2 million tonnes last year.

A lower inventory might support palm oil prices which have plunged 37% from the start of the year to trade at 1,997 ringgit ($464.31) per tonne on Friday.

MPOC's Chief Executive Kalyana Sundram told Reuters on Tuesday that global demand for the world's most widely-used vegetable oil may have bottomed out after being hammered by the pandemic and is now set for a slow recovery.

($1 = 4.3010 ringgit) (Reporting by Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Guwahati: The total number of coronavirus cases in Assam rose to 56 with three persons testing positive for the disease on Friday and the test report of a 16-year-old girl confirmed the infection after her death, Health minister Himanta Biswas Sarma said.

The three persons had returned from Rajasthan. The girl was suffering from fever and a pain in her leg. When her condition deteriorated, she was admitted to B Barooah Cancer Hospital on Thursday where she died later, the minister said at a press conference.

Her sample, taken for COVID-19 testing, and was found to be positive. It is "very unfortunate as she did not get the necessary treatment", he said.

"We will have to discuss with the Union Health Ministry whether we can declare that she died due to COVID-19 as we did not treat her for the disease. She was found to be positive after her death," Sarma said.

The Kamrup (Metro) district administration has declared two hostels and areas around the Guwahati Medical College Hospital, the employers' colony near the B Barooah Cancer Institute where the girl lived with her grandmother and certain areas in Kharghuli and Chandmari as containment zones.

Sarma said of the total cases in the state, 21 are active while 34 have been cured of the disease and one died.

The health minister said that a bus carrying 45 passengers had arrived in Silchar on Wednesday from Rajasthan's Ajmer.

Three of them tested positive on Friday, taking the the total number of cases related to this particular group to eight. Thirty-three were negative and results of other tests are awaited, he said.

Since the passengers had gone home briefly after screening, several areas in four villages of Cachar district have been declared as containment zones, Sarma said, adding direct and indirect contact tracing was on and 185 people have been quarantined in facilities.

In the last 24 hours, Assam reported a sudden spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. Of the 11 cases reported since Thursday, nine have travel history.

After a post-graduate student of the medicine department of Guwahati Medical College Hospital tested positive for COVID-19, the facility has been closed for new patients and 386 people, including hospital superintendent, doctors, students and several workers, have been quarantined, the health minister said.

Their swab tests have been conducted and the results were expected by Friday night. The medical student was engaged in screening of COVID-19 patients from May 4, Sarma said.

A 55-year-old woman from Kharghuli Hills area of Guwahati has tested positive and admitted to GMCH. Her family members have also been quarantined.

The fourth person to test positive in Guwahati had returned from West Bengal on May 6 along with two others in a personal vehicle. The person has been admitted to Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital while the other two have tested negative, Sarma said.

"This is the second case with travel history to West Bengal and we have asked the police department not to issue passes to those originating their journey from this state, except in humanitarian cases," the minister said.

Sarma said that three positive cases in Guwahati with no travel or contact history indicates that traces of the novel coronavirus may be prevalent in the city.

"People should, however, not panic but strictly follow the guidelines and report to doctors in case they have influenza-like illness (ILI) and diarrhoea," he said.

So far, 1,032 people have entered the state since May 6 through check posts at Srirampur and Chagalia along the Assam-West Bengal border from where they proceeded to the five screening centres at Kokrajhar, Guwahati, Tezpur, Jorhat and Silchar.

The minister also said that harassing doctors, nurses and health workers is a non-bailable offence under the Epidemic Control Act and the Disaster Management Act.
In April, amid the shut downs, lays offs and stay-at-home requirements of the coronavirus pandemic, Massachusetts Dunkin franchise owners Monica MacFarlane and Nicole Alger knew they needed to help reinvigorate their community  with more than just caffeine.

They challenged their workers to start writing positive messages on cups.

Everyone needs a little bit of a pick me up, said Alger. Its just to bring some positivity, bring some smiles. Its been rough for everyone.

Messages included, After the storm, theres always a rainbow, just keep swimming, stay fabulous, and more.

Dunkin employees wrote messages on cups to "bring some positivity, bring some smiles" to people during coronavirus pandemic.

The idea originally came from something the employees were already doing, often drawing smiley faces or quick sayings to make people smile.

Thats how Alger got the idea to make it into a contest for employees. The person from each location owned by MacFarlane and Alger who got the most notoriety on social media for their messages would win $50.

The response was overwhelming  from both employees and customers.

Some of them have continued doing it, even after the contest ended because the response was just so positive, Alger said.

Pembroke residents especially loved it, she said, often posting on the Pembroke Connect Facebook page.

Its a very tight knit community, very tight knit, she said.

Alger said that under normal circumstances people would come in three to four times a week before work to get coffee. During the pandemic, even the simple routine of getting coffee changed for a lot of people.

Having the opportunity to get out and see a familiar face was good for people, Alger said.

They really just missed the people because thats what its all about, she said. You can go to a Dunkin anywhere, theyre on every corner. But we have a really good connection in the towns that we operate in.

For them and their community, its about more than just coffee.

I think its just seeing that smiling face, she said. It makes people feel normal in such a crazy time.

Dunkin employees wrote messages on cups to "bring some positivity, bring some smiles" to people during coronavirus pandemic.

Related Content:
Sana Shakil By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Prominent Muslim organisations on Friday demanded withdrawal of the sedition case filed against Delhi Minorities Commission chief Zafarul Islam Khan. In a joint statement in support of Khan, several Muslim clerics and leaders condemned the FIR and said Khan was being punished for speaking up for the oppressed. Khan was booked after he shared a post thanking the Muslim countries for taking note of the alleged persecution of Muslims in India.

Calling the Delhi Police biased, the clerics and Muslim leaders from different parts of the country alleged that the case against Khan is just another form of targeting Muslims.

One may differ with the content of Dr Khans tweet and he had issued a clarification regarding the same. However, according to reports, the Delhi Police officers reached his residence without any prior notice and were adamant to take him along with them. This kind of action during the lockdown, exactly before Iftar time, against the head of a quasi-judicial institution, gives an idea about the level to which the police can stoop, read the statement jointly issued by 20 Muslim personalities.

The leaders said that after failing to arrest those responsible for the huge loss of life and property during the riots of North-East Delhi in February this year, the Delhi Police is targeting Muslims in different ways.



Ignoring the nefarious activities, poisonous speeches, statements and organized attacks, well known to the whole world and punishing those who raise their voice for the oppressed or to target those who oppose the government policies at the hands of the police, is extremely dangerous for the entire country. We demand that the government should immediately take back the FIR against Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan and stop the Delhi Police from taking action against innocent citizens, the statement said.

The signatories of the statement included Arshad Madani of Jamiat Ulema e Hind, Tauqeer Raza Khan of Bareilly's Milli Ittehad Council, Syed Sadatullah Hussaini of Jamaat e Islami Hind, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas of Welfare Party of India, Labeed Shafi of Student Islamic Organization of India, Dr Manzoor Alam of All India Milli Council Navaid Hamid of Muslim Majlis e Mushawaat.

In a social media post on April 28, Khan had thanked Kuwait for standing with Indian Muslims and for reacting to the tide of Islamophobia in India. Khan's post read, The Hindutva bigots calculated that given the huge economic stakes involved the Muslim and Arab world will not care about the persecution of Muslims in India. He also named some Indian Muslims who had contributed to the Islamic culture and civilisation and among those mentioned was Zakir Naik, declared a fugitive offender by India, as a respected household name in the Arab and Muslim world.

Khan had also said, Mind you, bigots, Indian Muslims have opted until now not to complain to the Arab and Muslim world about your hate campaigns and lynchings and riots. The day they are pushed to do that, bigots will face an avalanche.

Having found himself in a controversy for his comment, Khan issued a statement the very next day, saying he never tried to tarnish the image of his country and is a patriot.

Earlier this month, an FIR was registered against Khan under sections 124 A (sedition) and 153 A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) of Indian Penal Code.
The number of small and midsize businesses registered for a cashless payment program, introduced by the government to reduce the negative effects of a hike in the consumption tax last October, topped 1 million in mid-February.

The nine-month program set to run through June appears to have been widely accepted in society, with the number of businesses registered doubling, from around 500,000 at the time of the tax increase, within four and a half months, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.

Along with the tax rate increase, from 8 percent to 10 percent, the government introduced the program to refund up to 5 percent of payments for goods and services purchased from small and midsize businesses, such as retailers and restaurants, if the purchases were made using cashless payment methods such as credit cards and QR codes on smartphones.

The refund is made in the form of points that are accumulated and used later for other purchases. The program was aimed at preventing a drop in consumer spending following the tax hike and stimulating consumption to raise the share of cashless payments in Japan, which is lower than other Asian countries such as China and South Korea.

The government has set aside a total of A700 billion to promote the program in its budgets for fiscal 2019 and 2020. There were 1.04 million registered businesses across Japan as of March 1.

With the program applicable to an estimated two million firms, the ministry official said it had "made a certain advance" in terms of promoting cashless payments.

But the refund system and other measures taken by the government to stimulate consumption cannot fully compensate for the negative impact of the tax increase.

Japanas economy, as measured by gross domestic product, shrank an annualized 7.1 percent in price-adjusted real terms in the October-December period from the previous quarter, due to a sharp fall in personal consumption, among other factors, according to revised government data.
Animal protection body, the RSPCA can expect a tidy windfall from the sale of three Deepdene properties that belonged to its late high profile president Hugh Wirth.

Dr Hugh Wirth left the bulk of his estate to the RSPCA. Credit:Jesse Marlow

The adjoining properties at 185 Whitehorse Road and 1-3 May Street have sold for a total $7.025 million - about $2.5 million more than the estimate in Dr Wirths will.

Dr Wirth died in 2018 after decades of service to the RSCPA. He ran his practice, the Balwyn Veterinary Surgery out of 185 Whitehorse Road and 1 May Street between 1967 and 2006.

Fitzroys agents Chris Kombi and Ervin Niyaz sold the sites to two buyers.
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Pangolins are one of the most trafficked animals in the world, despite their protected status under international laws, and now there are Pangolin trading that is taking place on Facebook for everyone to see and participate in.

Illegal trading of an endangered species

A new report from the Tech Transparency Project, a tech watchdog group, details how Facebook users are engaging in the illegal sale of trafficked pangolin parts, even though the practice is prohibited and deemed illegal by Facebook itself.

A public page of Facebook called "Pangolin Scales for Sale in Vietnam" advertised the sale of pangolin products and the page is asking potential buyers to send a private message to the seller through email or WhatsApp.

Another public page on Facebook named "Rhino Horns And Pangolin scales For sale In China," was created in March and the page directed customers to embrace their business like never before. The page was created in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

There are also other pages that offered the sale of pangolin oils. Most of the sites were hiding in plain sight, and they can be easily found by using basic search terms like the phrase "pangolins for sale" in English or the word for "pangolin" in Vietnamese.

Facebook itself has rules that prohibit the sale of live animals as well as anything that encourages, promotes, or even coordinates the poaching of endangered species and their parts. Facebook joined an anti-wildlife-trafficking coalition in March of 2018, but since that date reports have detailed the ongoing sales of everything from hornbill parts to tiger teeth through direct sales and ads facilitated by Facebook.

Also Read: Azerbaijan Pit of Fire Never Stops Burning for 4,000 Years

Pangolins and other wild animals are in the spotlight right now as the scientific community is searching for answers about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. According to scientists, wild animals carry coronaviruses and it can transfer to humans and make them ill. It is said to the reason behind the 2002 SARS outbreak and the current coronavirus pandemic that allegedly originated from bats.

New research shows that pangolins carry coronaviruses that are related to the one that caused COVID-19. Most scientists believe that the coronavirus originated in bats, but how the virus spread rapidly from bats to humans still remains a mystery.

What are pangolins used for?

Pangolins are believed to be the world's most trafficked non-human mammal. Tens of thousands of pangolins are poached every year, and they are killed for their scales that are used in traditional Chinese medicine. They are also killed for their meat which is a delicacy among wealthy people in China and Vietnam.

The scales of pangolin are made of keratin, which is the same material that makes up hair, fingernails, and horn.

Pangolin scales have no proven medicinal value, yet they are used in traditional Chinese medicine to help with ailments such as lactation to arthritis. The scales of pangolin are dried and grounded into powder and turned into a pill.

For years, pangolins found in Asia were the target of poachers and traffickers. But now that their numbers have depleted, smugglers are turning to African pangolins.

In April 2019, Singapore seized a 14.2-ton shipment and a 14-ton shipment of pangolin scales, from an estimated 72,000 pangolins, coming from Nigeria.

Related Article: Invasive Giant 'Murder' Hornets Spotted in the U.S

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General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has revealed that the suspended former Central Regional Chairman of the party Mr Bernard Allotey Jacobs was cautioned by the partys National Chairman Ofusu Ampofo before his suspension.



A statement signed by the NDCs National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, on May 6, 2020, says Mr Allotey Jacobs was suspended pursuant to Article 46 (1) and 46 (6) and 46 (8) (b) of the Partys constitution.



The statement says his suspension was based on what it termed persistent anti-party conduct, indicating that the decision to suspend him was taken at a National Executive Meeting held on Wednesday, May 6, 2020.



Allotey Jacobs suspension, the letter says, has been referred to the disciplinary committee of the party for further action.



Acording to the NDC Chief Scribe, before Allotey Jacobs was suspended from the NDC, the National Chairman of the party had had several closed door conversations and warned him about his actions which are contrary to the orders of the party.



I have not called Allotey Jacobs but I know that National Chairman Ofosu Ampofo, you know he is an Elder of the Pentecost Church and for him to take such a serious action, he would have made every effort privately to engage Allotey Jacobs with nothing fruitful came out of it, he hinted.



Ofosu Ampofo told me that he has spoken with Allotey Jacobs at the time we realised that his behaviour contradicts the directives of the party, and there was mutual understanding of the consequences of behaviour; thus, he was reminded of what might happened if he continued on that tangent, he indicated.



Asked what possibly might have led to Allotey Jacobs' recent conduct, General Mosquito as affectionately called, said he cannot tell.



I cannot tell why Allotey Jacobs is doing this to the party and I am not on radio to discuss the lifestyle and how long he has served in the NDC. It is not part of the charge against him. He is an independent person and so he can choose to do whatever he likes, he said.



He, however, was clear that suspending someone for whatever offensive conduct is not determined by how well or not that person has served the party.



The partys disciplinary procedure does not mean that if someone has served for 10 years and goes against the directives of the party, the persons punishment should be less than someone who is just 2 years in the party. We dont have such disciplinary procedure in the party and so if you have been a member for thousand years in the party and you violate the laws of the party, the punishment is just like someone who is considered a small fry in the party"



"....we are saying that political party is an association and we have our rules and regulations. You can only be part of the group if you adhere to its orders but if you think you cannot abide by our rules and want to act independent, then you cannot stay in the party," Asiedu Nketiah pointed out.



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The domestic equity barometers traded near the day's high in morning trade. The Nifty was trading above the 9300 mark. Buying in index major Reliance Industries (RIL) pushed the benchmarks higher. At 10:29 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 441.29 points or 1.40% at 31,884.67. The Nifty 50 index rose 122.10 points or 1.33% at 9,321.15.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index gained 1.09% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index added 0.80%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On the BSE, 1160 shares rose and 560 shares fell. A total of 91 shares were unchanged. In the Nifty 50 index, 40 shares advances and 10 shares declined.

Index major Reliance Industries (RIL) jumped 2.53% to Rs 1545.40 after the company said private equity firm Vista Equity Partners will invest Rs 11,367 crore in Jio Platforms for a 2.32% stake. This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore, RIL said in a statement on Friday. This is Jio Platforms' third deal after Facebook and Silver Lake's share acquisition plans over the last two weeks.

RIL has soared about 30% in last one month as compared to a 6.5% rise in benchmark BSE Sensex.

Q4 Results Today:

Adani Gas (up 2.26%), Procter Gamber Hygiene and Healthcare (up 1.35%), Shree Cement (up 1.1%), Swaraj Engines (up 2.64%) and Reliance Capital (down 5%) are some of the companies that will announce their quarterly result today.

SBI Cards and Payment Services (up 1.08%) will announce its first ever quarterly result after listing on exchange on 16 March 2020

Earnings Impact:

RBL Bank added 0.27% to Rs 129.25. The bank's net profit declined 53.7% to Rs 114.36 crore on a 20.7% rise in total income to Rs 2708.77 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019. Net Interest Income (NII) grew 38% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 1,021 crore during Q4 March 2020 from Rs 739 crore in Q4 March 2019. Net interest margin (NIM) grew to 4.93% in Q4 March 2020 from 4.23% reported in Q4 March 2019.

The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at Rs 2136.52 crore as on 31 March 2020 as against Rs 2010.48 crore as on 31 December 2019 and Rs 754.62 crore as on 31 March 2019. The ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances stood at 3.62% as on 31 March 2020 as against 3.33% as on 31 December 2019 and 1.38% as on 31 March 2019. The ratio of net NPAs to net advances stood at 2.05% as on 31 March 2020 as against 2.07% as on 31 December 2019 and 0.69% as on 31 March 2019.

The bank's provisions and contingencies soared 207% to Rs 614.08 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019. The bank in notes to accounts said that it has created a provision of Rs 107.95 crore in addition to the RBI prescribed norm on the back of SARS-CoV-2 virus. RBL Bank's provisioning coverage ratio stood at 64.04% as on 31 March 2020 as against 58.07% reported on 1 Dec 2019.

RBL Bank reported a 41.7% drop in net profit to Rs 505.67 crore in the full year ended on 31 March 2020 (FY20) as compared to a net profit of Rs 866.95 crore posted in the full year ended on 31 March 2019 (FY19). While the bank's total income rose 34.6% to Rs 10424.63 crore, provisions and contingencies soared 212% to Rs 1998.85 crore in FY20 over FY19.

SKF India surged 7.72% to Rs 1450. The company's board recommended a special dividend of Rs 130 per share at the meeting held on 7 May 2020. At current price, the stock offers a dividend yield of 8.97% on special dividend of Rs 130 per share.

SKF India's net profit fell 8.3% to Rs 75.34 crore on a 18.5% decline in net sales to Rs 610.21 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019. Other income of the company surged 59.3% to Rs 46.44 crore in Q4 FY20 from Rs 29.16 crore in Q4 FY19. It includes profit of Rs 34.9 crore earned from the sale of land for a consideration of Rs 35.46 crore.

While the company's total expenditures shrunk 14% to Rs 548.34 crore, its interest payments remained flat at Rs 1.82 crore in Q4 FY20 over Q4 FY19. The company's overall profitability was impacted by higher depreciation costs which rose 26.9% on a year-on-year (YoY) basis to Rs 14.66 crore in the quarter ended on 31 March 2020. Profit before tax (PBT) stood at Rs 91.83 crore in Q4 FY20, down by 27.6% from Rs 126.78 crore in Q4 FY19. During the quarter, total tax expense fell 63% on a YoY basis to Rs 16.49 crore.

Gillette India fell 1.32% to Rs 4925. The personal grooming products manufacturer's net profit 40.3% to Rs 52.38 crore on a 12.7% decline in net sales to Rs 406.57 crore in Q3 March 2020 over Q3 March 2019.

Cyient slumped 6.97% to Rs 215.55 after consolidated net profit slumped 58.26% to Rs 45.20 crore on a 2.92% decline in net sales to Rs 1,073.60 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q3 December 2019.

The board of Cyient has approved the increment in the aggregate investment limits of foreign portfolio investors from the existing 49% to 74% of the total paid up equity share capital of the company, subjected to regulatory approvals and approval of shareholders.

ICICI Securities surged 4.54% to Rs 394.05. The financial services provider's consolidated net profit jumped 28.3% to Rs 155.88 crore on a 12.5% increase in total income to Rs 481.94 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

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Nebraska will hold a virtual Memorial Day observance on May 25 with an all-day salute to veterans in the Capitol Rotunda.

The event, which will substitute for traditional Memorial Day gatherings that are being canceled throughout the state as a result of the coronavirus, will be livestreamed on NET.

"People can participate all across the state," Nebraska Veterans Affairs Director John Hilgert said Friday.

Hilgert joined Gov. Pete Ricketts at the governor's daily coronavirus news briefing to outline plans for the event.

The observance will occur from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

A candle will be lit by Gold Star mother Monica Alexander at 8 a.m. and extinguished at 8 p.m. by Gold Star father Mel Alexander.

Their son, Army Cpl. Matthew Alexander of Gretna, was killed on May 6, 2007, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baqubah, Iraq.

Honor Guard sentinels from veterans organizations will watch over the candle in half-hour shifts during the day.

Participants at the Capitol will come and go, observing the 10-person limit on gatherings in Nebraska at this time, Hilgert said.

Hilgert noted that Friday marked the VE Day anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe in 1945.

Some 144,000 Nebraskans served in World War II, he said, and 2,500 are still living. Some 3,000 Nebraskans were killed in combat during the war.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is holding his daily press conference on the Covid-19 outbreak, which has infected more than 327,469 people across the state as of Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

On Thursday, Cuomo said he's not willing to trade people's lives to reopen the state's economy, saying it's "absurd" to argue over how many deaths are worth reopening the state.

"This is not a situation where you can go to the American people and say, 'How many lives are you willing to lose to reopen the economy?' We don't want to lose any lives. You start to hear these, to me, what are absurd arguments," Cuomo said at his daily press briefing.

On Wednesday, Cuomo said most new Covid-19 hospitalizations in New York state are from people who were staying home and not venturing much outside. The preliminary data was from 100 New York hospitals involving about 1,000 patients, Cuomo said at his daily briefing.

It shows that 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%.

"This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home," he said. "We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we've taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home."

Read CNBC's live updates to see the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.
Not even a lockdown could stop the campaign of Lynn Dictor, known by her radio listeners as Moira, a first-time candidate for Seminole County Tax Collector. Dictor, a Democrat, always intended to qualify by petition for her spot on the November 2020 ballot. But shelter-in-place orders prohibited Dictor and her field team from attending any gathering of Seminole County voters to complete the petition drive.

Dictor needed 3,037 Seminole County registered voters to sign her ballot petitions by the May 11 deadline. On March 1, she still needed 960 verified signatures to meet that requirement. But Dictor was undeterred.

The Dictor petition team completely restructured its approach to gathering the petitions during the pandemic. In the past seven weeks, respecting the new social distancing requirements, the Dictor petition team called, emailed, texted and slipped the petitions under the doormats of dozens of Seminole County neighbors, family and friends. Dictor, a former local radio personality, even created a daily FaceBook LIVE segment, "Couch Chat", to keep her followers motivated and keep the petitions flowing.

On April 29, the team crossed the finish line with 3,050 official, verified petitions.

"I am extremely grateful for the groundswell of support from Seminole County, Central Florida and across the nation," said Dictor. "I am so heartened that Seminole County residents desperately want a change, and they showed that by propelling our campaign over its first major hurdle. We can now focus on bringing good stewardship back to the office of Seminole County Tax Collector."
Influencer Dixie D'Amelio has revealed that she has been getting death threats after her old photo of a room with Trump-Pence campaign signs on the wall resurfaced online.

The 18-year-old, who has more than 23 million TikTok followers, came under fire on Tuesday when a fan tweeted a picture that was shared on her VSCO account in 2017. The image shows someone playing a keyboard in front of a wall that is decorated with an American flag and three Trump-Pence signs.

'UMMMMMMM,' the person wrote, prompting Dixie to deny it was her room. 'Bruh this isnt even my house lmaoo,' she clapped back.

Scary: Dixie D'Amelio has revealed that she has been getting death threats after her old photo of a room with Trump-Pence campaign signs on the wall resurfaced online.

Backlash: The 18-year-old came under fire on Tuesday when a fan tweeted the old snapshot, which was shared on her VSCO account in 2017

Dixie and her younger sister, Charli, rarely talk politics, and many commenters pointed out that she never denied being a Republican or a Trump supporter in her response.

'Girl you posted it for a reason,' one person tweeted, while another commented: 'Girl u dad a republican why lie.'

The TikTok star's father, Marc D'Amelio, ran as a Republican for the Connecticut State Senate in 2018 but lost to the incumbent, Democrat Bob Duff.

Drama: 'UMMMMMMM,' the person wrote, prompting Dixie to deny it was her room. She also responded to another tweet about the photo, insisting, 'Again, this isn't my house!'

In his campaign mission statement, the D'Amelio family patriarch vowed to 'look past political party' and 'stand up to Democrats, Republicans, and the President' if he didn't agree with their policies.

Another Twitter user went on to share the controversial photo, writing: 'Not Dixie D'Amelio having a picture of an American flag and the Trump/Pence flag on her VSCO.'

'Again, this isn't my house!' Dixie hit back. 'At 15 years old I didn't give two s***s about politics. My parents have let my sister and I make her own decisions about what we support and what we don't. What I support is the spread positivity/happiness and that's all [sic].'

Miss Independent: Dixie eventually set the record straight by releasing a statement on Twitter, revealing she has actually received death threats over the photo

Family affiliation: The TikTok star's father, Marc D'Amelio, ran as a Republican for the Connecticut State Senate in 2018 but lost to the incumbent, Democrat Bob Duff

Not their thing: Dixie and her younger sister, Charli, rarely talk politics despite their father's political aspirations

The screenshot of the exchange was later shared on The TikTok Shaderoom Instagram account, and people continued to question whether or not she is a Trump supporter.

Dixie eventually set the record straight by releasing a statement on Twitter, revealing she has actually received death threats over the photo.

'I am an independent voter and I will always vote for the person and never the party,' she tweeted. 'I find it sad that I have received death threats due to inaccurate speculation of my political belief. I have never supported Trump. Period.'

The post has been liked more than 77,000 times, and many people agreed that she shouldn't be receiving death threats no matter what her political affiliation.
Germans in Berlin are celebrating a public holiday to mark the end of the Second World War for the very first time.

Normally 8 May passes without any significant attention in Germany, but for 2020 and the 75th anniversary, the city of Berlin decided to declare it a new public holiday for not only the defeat of Nazism but the rebirth of democracy.

However, many of the public events planned for the day have had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Street parties had been planned across the city, and an open-air exhibition, and several museums had arranged events to tie in with the day, but all public events have been postponed until Germanys lockdown is relaxed.

But the group Kulturprojekte, which is behind many of the plans, has pressed ahead with a digital theme week which runs until May 8.

VE Day celebrations: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday April 29, 2020. The future Queen, then just 19, and her sister Princess Margaret, 14, joined thousands of revellers as they gathered in front of the royal residence on May 8 1945 PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London, marking the end of the war in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Mansion House, with the Lord Mayor of London on the balcony, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Sir Winston Churchill leaving the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, now 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures A parish priest waves a newspaper with news of Germany's unconditional surrender to elated pupils of a Roman Catholic parochial school in Chicago. Corbis via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures A group of six young women wearing party hats prepare to celebrate Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) to mark the end of European conflict in World War II, in Trafalgar Square, London, 8th May 1945. Popperfoto via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Jubilant Londoners dancing in Piccadilly Circus on VE Day, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day In London - pub. 19th May 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany, 7th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A van load of beer passing through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day. The statue of Eros, protected during the war by advertising hoardings, can be seen in the background. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A victory street party near Clapham Common, London to celebrate Victory in Europe. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of London girls waving flags in front of the staue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations in Downing Street, London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London's Piccadilly, at the end of World War II, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day in London - pub. 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE day, held to commemorate the official end of World War II in Europe, is celebrated by crowds at Trafalgar Square in London, 8th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table, given by residents at Kentwell Close, Brockley in south London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) , driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations in London, 8th May 1945. Getty VE Day celebrations: In pictures An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall. Getty Images

Using augmented reality apps, a series of podcasts and a digital exhibition online, Berliners are being invited to go back in time to spring 1945 to see what life was like at the end of the war in several symbolic locations across their city.

But the project also exists in the real world, as posters featuring images of a wartorn and bombed-out Berlin have been displayed across the city with the slogans In the beginning was a choice  a choice and a result.

Kulturprojektes website says the campaign aims to remind Berliners that the Nazi era began with democratic elections and that it is the responsibility of everyone to ensure that history does not repeat itself.

Recommended The unsung heroines who risked their lives to defeat Nazism

Marking 8 May as a public holiday offers the opportunity to send an unmistakable message against fascism and war and for peace, the group added.

Moritz van Dulmen, the head of Kulturprojekte, said the commemorations were even more important following a series of deadly terrorist attacks by far-right extremists in Germany in recent years.

We are also keen to reach a young audience, particularly those with a migrant background, who have little knowledge of German history, he told the BBC.

Both Germanys chancellor Angela Merkel and president Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be in Berlin to lay wreaths at the citys memorial for the victims of war and tyranny as well.

However, it is controversial for the city to have decreed 8 May as a public holiday, as for many decades VE day was either ignored by most Germans or seen as a shameful reminder of their countrys defeat.

 What is the cultural significance of VE Day?

The only federal public holiday marked by all of Germanys 16 states which commemorates a part of the nations history is 3 October, celebrating the date of the reunification of West and East Germany at the end of the Cold War in 1990.

However, in more recent decades 8 May has gradually been seen by some also as a day of liberation from Nazi rule.

One Holocaust survivor has called for the day to become a permanent and nationwide public holiday and 101,000 people have signed a petition supporting her.

Although some left-wing parties have backed this suggestion, the far-right AfD party is deeply opposed to the idea.

Alexander Gauland, a leading figure in the AfD, said: You can't make May 8 a happy day for Germany. For the concentration camp inmates it was a day of liberation. But it was also a day of absolute defeat, a day of the loss of large parts of Germany and the loss of national autonomy."
At least someones found love during the pandemic. Photo: YouTube

Ariana Grande subtly (and philanthropically) confirmed her relationship with Dalton Gomez in the music video for Stuck With U, her coronavirus relief song with Justin Bieber. And if youre thinking Dalton Gomez? Who? Thats exactly what she wants. At the end of the music video, which featured sweet clips of fans, the Biebers, and other celebrities, Gomez and Grande dance together and kiss! Grande already told us she learned from the pain of her previous celebrity relationships. This time around, shes saving herself the heartache by keeping it on the down low with a regular ol civilian, just like us. Dalton Gomez is a luxury real-estate agent from Southern California. You may recall him from his role as rando Ariana Grande made out with at a suburban mall. Not much is known about how they met, but it might have been through Miley Cyrus, who Gomez has previously hung out with.

According to People, the two have been dating for around four months and are currently sheltering-in-place together. Last month on her Instagram Story, Grande echoed Florence Pughs post defending her relationship with Zach Braff. Sharing special, personal life things that make u happy on the internet can be truly traumatic, Grande replied. I know Ive taken a step back from doing so to protect my loved ones and myself but I just wanted to share this and let u know how perfectly u expressed this and how appreciated u are for doing so @florencepugh. After three highly publicized relationships and breakups, no one can blame Grande for finding a lower-profile, universally mom-approved real-estate agent to love. But trust that if he breaks that girls heart, her fans will make sure he has a lot more to worry about than a line in thank u, next.
Lucknow:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday announced financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh each to the two victims of the Bulandshahr gangrape incident.

Yadav said all were hurt with the incident and no amount can compensate for the mental trauma of the victims.

He said the state government will ensure that the culprits get the strictest punishment and warned police that stern action will be taken against them if such incident happen again in the state.

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Jennifer will be responsible for building the commercial strategy and expanding the commercial organization to accelerate icometrix's growth strategy.

Jennifer earned an MBA at Caldwell University and is a graduate of the Jack F. Welch Global Leadership Development Program in Crotonville, NY. Jennifer's passion to improve patient care and outcomes, while helping healthcare systems work better for their patients, brought her to icometrix.

"I'm excited and honored to join the icometrix team," says Jennifer. "I have always had an affinity for radiology and the value it delivers to patients, clinicians, and research. icometrix is shaping the future of radiology and is dedicated to improving patient care and outcomes, both through the referring physicians it serves, as well as through the pharmaceutical industry. We have an opportunity to bring together various clinical stakeholders to improve the quality of life for patients with neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis, dementia, and brain trauma."

"We are thrilled that Jennifer Young joined our amazing team as CCO," says Wim Van Hecke, CEO of icometrix. "Her combined expertise in radiology, the pharmaceutical industry, and the payer market is extremely unique. I look forward to working closely with Jennifer to help radiologists, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and above all, patients," Wim Van Hecke concludes.

About icometrix

icometrix offers AI solutions to obtain clinically meaningful data from MR and CT scans. Its icobrain portfolio incorporates brain volumetrics for patients with neurological conditions in clinical practice. icolung, an AI solution launched to help fight COVID-19, quantifies lung pathology on chest CT in admitted COVID-patients. Today, icometrix is internationally active in over 100 clinical practices and works with healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies on the evaluation of drug trials for neurological diseases.

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En espanol | Mark Ruffalo, 52, famous for virtually bulking up to play the Hulk in the wildly popular films about and including the Marvel superhero, bulked up in real life this year to play identical twins in the six-part HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True (HBO, May 10, 9 p.m. ET). And scared himself half to death in the process.

Ruffalo's decision to change his own body size was based on a key difference between the twins: One is mentally ill and on medication with a weight-related side effect. Those antipsychotic drugs make you put on weight, he explains. So, we took a six-week break, and I gained 30 pounds. It was hell! Indigestion, heartburn, acid reflux. Ruffalo felt so ill from his sudden weight gain, he said, he believed he was actually having a fatal heart attack one night. The first thing I thought was, Do we have enough material to put the whole series together? Can they finish it without me?'"

That was scary, especially because Ruffalo had experienced a dangerous medical premonition once before. At 33, the actor dreamed he had a brain tumor, woke up, consulted doctors and discovered he actually did. After surgery and a year of partial facial paralysis, he bounced back in films that grossed more than $10 billion and earned him three Oscar nominations: The Kids Are All Right, Foxcatcher and Spotlight.
To celebrate Archie Harrison's very first birthday, Meghan Markle posted a super-cute video to Instagram where she read Duck! Rabbit! to her son and, well, anyone who wanted to watch the clip. While some people took issue with the sentiment, Jennifer Garner thanked the former senior royals for their partnership with Save the Children, a charity that works to "create lasting, positive change in the lives of children in more than 120 countries worldwide, including the United States."

The charity's U.K. branch, Save the Children UK, also shared Markle's video to get the message to even more people. Garner, who also works with the charity, posted a thank-you note to Meghan and Prince Harry on her Instagram feed, letting her followers know that she appreciated the gesture and was more than happy to celebrate Archie's birthday with the family.

Jean Baptiste Lacroix/Getty Images

RELATED: Here's What The Hidden Detail In Archie's First Birthday Video Could Mean

Dear Meghan and Harry,

Thank you for sharing your gorgeous son with the world and allowing us to join you in celebrating his first birthday.

We are humbled and grateful that you chose @savewithstories to mark this special day and in so doing  have raised the visibility of @savethechildrens work in the US and UK and have helped feed and educate children in desperate need of both.

More than anything  watching you lovingly talk through the pictures while your clever Archie turns the pages  lifts all of us up and reminds us that what may seem like a duck just might turn out to be a rabbit. Thank you for this joyful and meaningful shift in perspective.

Best,

Jen

RELATED: Author Emily Giffin Apologized After Calling Meghan Markle "Unmaternal" and "Phony"

Garner, along with fellow actor Amy Adams, launched the #SaveWithStories campaign with Save the Children to bring attention to the needs of children during quarantine and the pandemic.

"Committed to meeting the most urgent needs of children during the global pandemic, Save the Children and No Kid Hungry are providing books, learning materials and nutritious meals to children in Americas most impoverished communities, as 57 million students across the country depend on school for learning and development and some 30 million children rely on meals served at school," the charity site reads.

A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan notes that they're working with Save the Children on both sides of the Atlantic and wanted to share Archie's milestone and also shine a light on how children everywhere are being impacted by COVID-19.

"The family is participating in the campaign across both the U.S. and UK to help bring much-needed support to children who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic," a statement reads. "As they celebrate this family moment, the Duke and Duchess wanted to continue to raise awareness around the urgency of bringing food and learning resources to millions of children."
Three terrorists who plotted to sail a fishing boat from northern Australia to overthrow the Filipino government have been accidentally freed from jail without any supervision.

'Tinnie terrorists' Paul Dacre, Antonino Granata and Kadir Kaya were released from a Victorian prison on Friday after serving four years behind bars.

The trio were part of a six-man team who wanted to bring Islamic law to the Philippines in May 2016.

They were picked up by Australian Federal Police (AFP) driving near Cairns, towing a seven-metre fishing boat they intended to sail from Cape York.

The trio served their complete jail term and therefore on release were not placed on parole or subjected to court-ordered supervision, The Herald Sun reported.

But AFP had applied to the Supreme Court of Victoria for the men to receive continuing detention orders which can keep high-risk offenders in custody for up to three years after the conclusion of their jail term.

The application was rejected by the court due to red tape, with sources claiming authorities were not allowed to have two concurrent applications in process.

'Tinnie terrorists' Paul Dacre (right), Antonino Granata and Kadir Kaya (left) were released from a Victorian prison on Friday after serving four years behind bars

When police learnt the application was denied, they attempted to seek interim control orders at the Federal Court in Melbourne.

Papers were filed on Wednesday but it was too late to stop Friday's release date.

The men's cases were each adjourned to later this month. The applicant was Australian Federal Police's Detective-Superintendent Sandra Booth.

'The AFP and Victoria Police are aware of the release of Paul Dacre, Kadir Kaya and Antonino Granata from prison today,' an AFP spokesperson told The Herald Sun.

'The AFP have Interim Control Order applications in place in relation to these individuals.

'The AFP works with partner agencies to use Control Orders - and other available legislative measures - to ensure the ongoing safety of the Australian community.'

The trio were part of a six-man team who wanted to bring Islamic law to the Philippines in May 2016. Pictured: Antonino Granata

Shayden Thorne, another 'tinnie terrorist', was released from a Victorian jail in March and returned to his home state, Western Australia.

He was placed on an interim control order by a Federal Court judge and is being closely monitored.

Murat Kaya, who was also involved in the plot, walked free in January under a control order. He was sentenced three years and eight months' behind bars and served his entire term.

Ring leader and Islamic preacher Robert 'Musa' Cerantonio will remain in bars until 2023.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted AFP for comment.
Unemployment has almost doubled in April to record high of 694,683 workers as a result of the economic lockdown that aims to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The latest data from the Central Statistics Office showed that the unemployment rate stood at 28.2pc of the workforce in April, up from 15.5pc at the end of March once those who are receiving the 350 a week pandemic unemployment payment.

The standard measure of underlying unemployment ticked higher to 132,900 people, or 5.4pc up from 5.3pc, the CSO said.

The hardest hit group was those aged between 15 and 24 years where more than half were without jobs.

The drop in employment in a little over a month has been about sixty times the scale seen on average through the downturn that followed the financial crisis. As a result, numbers at work in the Irish economy are currently back at levels last seen around twenty years ago, said KBC Ireland Chief Economist Austin Hughes.

The unemployment numbers were published as the Government plots a way to reopen the economy and to cut pandemic payments.

The bill for furloughed workers and those on wage support from the State is running at 4.5bn for the 12 weeks it has been budgeted.

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe defended the high level of the Pup payments on a conference call organised by PwC in which questioners said the 350 a week payment was acting as a disincentive for people to return to work.

Mr Donohoe said that as the pandemic strengthened its grip on Ireland, he and other officials were confronted with a dynamic that without precedent and was changing literally by the hour and that the most important issue was to get aid to workers as quickly as possible.

Really concerning things could have happened with the standard of living of citizens who were finding themselves very quickly without a job, many of whom were correctly thinking they would never have to face a journey like that again, he told the call.

The Minister said he did understand the concerns now being raised by employers.

But this is just a consequence of us having to get really bigger things right and quickly right, he said.

The Government is set to examine over the next number of weeks how to deal with this in a fair and affordable way, Mr Donohoe said.

Mr Hughes at KBC said that a fall of up to 10pc in economic output in the State after 5pc plus growth in 2019 implied a hit of up to 50bn to incomes this year.

The biggest risk to the economy is not adding to State debt, Mr Hughes wrote, adding that a rapid return to economic growth was key and that demanded a fiscal stimulus that is both early and aggressive.

In this context, the overriding focus should be on supporting employment which means that stimulus measures concentrate on firms rather than households, he said.

The Government has recently unveiled a package of loan guarantees and schemes to help business that have lifted the total potential support measures to more than 7pc of modified gross national income.
Libya's Tripoli government has been battling rebel forces led by General Haftar for over a year - Anadolu Agency

The US believes Russia is working with Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, to send militia fighters and equipment to Libya, according to senior officials.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, US special envoy for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, said Libyas increasingly shadowy battlefield could get even more complicated.

We know that, certainly, the Russians are working with Assad to transfer militia fighters, possibly third country, possibly Syrian, to Libya, as well as equipment, he said.

His comments came a day after a leaked UN report confirmed the presence of Russian and Syrian mercenaries operating in Libya in support of renegade military commander, Khalifa Haftar.

The report revealed that Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group, has up to 1,200 mercenaries operating in Libya in support of General Haftars forces, which are already backed by the UAE, Russia and Egypt.

The report, seen by Reuters, is one of the first indications of the scale of Wagners military operation in Libyas messy battlefield, as well as the first time the UN has confirmed the presence of the shadowy Russian mercenaries.

Since 2014, the oil-rich North African country has been split between areas controlled by the internationally recognised Government of National Accord in Tripoli and the northwest, and territory held by Gen Haftars eastern-based forces in Benghazi. For almost six years Gen Haftars forces have been at war with a coalition of militias from the west of the country who support the government in Tripoli. Turkey is the only military backer of the Tripoli government that is currently trying to stave off Haftars year-long offensive on the capital.

The UAE and Egypt have long strengthened Haftars forces with military equipment, including aircraft and helicopters, while Moscow provided private contractor forces. As the conflict has drawn on and involvement has increasingly become the stage for a struggle for power in the region, diplomats say both Turkey and the UAE have deployed drones and the use of mercenaries has increased, now seemingly including forces from Russia and Syria.

Story continues

Libya has been mired in chaos since a 2011 NATO intervention helped topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and its battlefields increasingly populated with foreign fighters in a shadow-war.

Russian mercenaries were first reported fighting alongside General Haftars forces in Libya in 2018. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, however, insisted that those mercenaries do not represent the Russian government.

Yet when General Haftar visited Moscow in 2018, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with long-standing ties to Mr Putin and suspected owner of Wagner, was seen in the footage of the meeting, sitting near the Russian defence minister.

Russia, which also backs Assads government in Syria, has maintained a delicate balancing act in Libya, forging ties with both the UN-recognised government and with the rebel commander.

But Moscows patience with General Haftar began to run out earlier this year when he and his entourage in January abruptly left the much-anticipated cease-fire talks in Moscow mediated by Russia and Turkey without signing the deal.

Henry Wooster, deputy assistant secretary at State Departments Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs also expressed increasing concern over the ties between the Libyan commander and Syrias president, who are both bitter enemies of Turkey and fighting Turkish-backed militant groups on their soil.

Haftars establishment of so-called diplomatic relations with the Assad regime...is very much a part of the piece of the question of Syrian mercenaries, at least on his side of the equation, he said.

While the leaked report also confirmed the presence of Syrian mercenaries in Libya fighting alongside Haftars forces, Pro-Turkish Syrians are also known to be fighting with the Tripoli government, against General Haftar.
A former Tibetan political prisoner died at his home in Chinas Sichuan province on Thursday after authorities repeatedly denied his requests to seek medical treatment for failing health resulting from harsh treatment in prison, Tibetan sources said.



Choekyi, who was also a monk, had served a four-year term in Sichuans Mianyang prison for making a T-shirt celebrating the 80th birthday of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and was released on Jan. 18, 2019, sources living in exile said.



During his detention, Chinese police severely tortured him, resulting in damage to his liver and kidneys, one source said, citing local contacts and speaking on condition of anonymity.



The day after his June 19, 2015 arrest, Choekyis sister Kyidzom and her son Drakpa were taken into custody for questioning by police, another source said., adding They were beaten during interrogation and were held for 15 days before they were let go.



After being released to his home in Sichuans Serthar (in Chinese, Seda) county, historically a part of eastern Tibets region of Kham, Choekyi began to petition authorities for permission to travel, but was repeatedly refused, one source said.



And even though his family could pay his medical expenses, the authorities did not allow him taccess to inpatient services at local hospitals before he passed away, the source said.



The patient was advised to go to Lhasa to seek medical treatment in a hospital, and the monk Choekyi was very willing to make the journey, but the authorities would not give him permission to go, added another source, speaking from Tibet.



On April 29, Tibetan writer and former political prisoner Jetsang Takmik visited Choekyi at his home in Serthars Nyitoe village and found him in rapidly failing health, Dorjee Tseringa Tibetan researcher living in Australiasaid, citing an article by Jetsang Takmik describing their meeting.



He was frail, and uttering even a word had become too difficult for him, Tsering said, quoting Takmiks written account.



Choekyis family have now arranged for a memorial service for him according to tradition and the customs of the local people, former political prisoner Golog Jigme told RFA, citing local sources and speaking from exile in Switzerland.



Reported by Lobe Soktsang and Kalden Lodoe for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stop the sale of liquor across the country but took the view that states should consider its online sale or home delivery in keeping with social distancing norms.

The observation by the court came on a PIL filed by a public-spirited citizen Guruswamy Nataraj who sought a stay order on the May 1 notification issued by the Centre permitting liquor vends and shops to open across the country from May 4.

The petition highlighted the public health threat attached with this decision. Social distancing was given a complete go-by at some of these vends that saw unmanageable crowds. At some places in Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, police had to resort to a lathicharge.

Arguing the petition, advocate J Sai Deepak told the bench that direct contact sale of liquor must stop. In case of absolute necessity alone, the Centre must consider modifying its decision to permit online sale of liquor, he added.

The bench of justices Ashok Bhushan, SK Kaul and BR Gavai saw merit in the suggestion of providing liquor online but felt this decision rested with the states and not the Centre. Chhattisgarh has started online sales and Punjab has arranged for home delivery of alcoholic beverages. The option of online sale has been provided by Delhi government and in Karnataka the same was undertaken on an experimental basis, Sai Deepak told the bench.

But he felt that a uniform directive must come from the Centre as an entire country under lockdown cannot afford to give social distancing a go-by. This would also negate the effect of the complete lockdown aimed at flattening the curve of the coronavirus disease, he argued.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, present during the hearing conducted through video conferencing, said the decision of the Centre does not restrict states from resorting to online sale.

The matter was dismissed but the bench noted in its order, It shall be open for the concerned state government to consider non-direct sale including online sale/home delivery of liquor to facilitate social distancing.

Liquor sales have shored up state coffers that were running dry. States have resorted to levying additional tax as high as 70% on sale of liquor but this has hardly dented demand. The petitioner told the court that there are only 70,000 licensed liquor vends in the country, which can hardly meet the demand. But the court felt that any decision on sale of liquor lay exclusively within the policy domain of the governments and for this reason it refused to tie the Centres hands.
Jasmine Arbery, the older sister of Ahmaud Arbery, the unarmed Georgia man who was shot and killed while jogging on February 23, joined Chris Cuomo on Cuomo Prime Time Thursday night to speak about the long-awaited arrest of the men allegedly responsible for her brothers death.

We feel a sense of relief, Jasmine said. Its been a long time, feels like its been a long time. So this day was a turning point in recovering my brothers case and getting justice for him. So were relieved and happy.

According to Arbery family attorney, Lee Merritt, Arberys family was told by local authorities that Ahmaud was shot and killed by a homeowner during an attempted burglary. It was only after a video surfaced of the incident and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation got involved that arrests were made. Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault. The confrontation occurred after the McMichaels pursued Arbery believing he resembled a man suspected of several recent break-ins, according to authorities. The two men, who purportedly pursued Arbery with a shotgun and a .357 Magnum, claimed self defense. Jasmine believes race was the motivation behind the incident.

I believe it was a hate crime, Jasmine said. When Cuomo asked how so, she replied, There was one black guy and three white guys. A third man, William Roddie Bryan, a neighbor of the McMichaels family, was the person who shot the cellphone video and, per the district attorney, is listed as a witness. He was not charged with the McMichaels.

Now, the Arbery family just wants justice for Ahmaud.

We want justice. Were seeking justice, Jasmine said. This whole situation was senseless. It could have been avoided.

Cuomo Prime Time airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on CNN.

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Life in Australia is likely to involve a lot more lining up, with businesses initially allowed to open their doors to just 10 people at a time under eased restrictions.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed details of National Cabinet's three stage plan to reopen the economy by July on Friday afternoon.

Each stage will last four weeks, with the first set of laxer rules allowing shops to open, customers to dine-in at restaurants and open houses and auctions to go ahead.

But patience is a virtue, and Australians will need plenty of it, with the new freedoms coming hand-in-hand with strict social distancing measures - and the likelihood of unprecedented queuing.

While Australia is opening up, shoppers are likely to see more scenes like this - with smaller retail outlets set to reopen and introduce social distancing measures

Gyms will reopen to 20 people at a time under 'stage two' restrictions - leaving the gymgoers will have to queue or make reservations to use workout equipment

Only ten people will be allowed in open homes and auctions at a time under the first stage of the new restrictions - meaning more scenes like this

Under the first stage of the new rules, restaurants and cafes will be allowed to seat up to 10 customers at a time, after months of takeaway only.

Each patron will be required to have four square metres of personal space, meaning some small venues won't be able to seat too many customers.

That means those seeking to celebrate the coming end of lockdown with a weekend brunch will probably have to set aside some time to line up.

The government has instructed workplaces to get cracking on designing social distancing measures and to allow employees to work from home, if possible.

Any rush back to work could see queues for 'peak hour' office lifts, plastic shields between cubicles, the end of hotdesking and staggered start times for staff.

Commuters are likely to face lines to board their train, tram or bus home. Workers have been advised to avoid peak hour travel through each stage of the plan.

Long queues for supermarkets such Coles and Woolworths, discount variety stores such as Kmart and Big-W and warehouses like Bunnings will are set to continue.

Likewise, while smaller retail stores are encouraged to open, all will have to abide by 'COVID Safe' guidelines - that is, only allowing a safe number of people inside.

When gyms finally open back up under stage two of the measures, only 20 people will be allowed inside to work out at any one time.

Gyms will be forced to introduce booking systems or set up queues for those keen to pump some iron.

Social distancing lines for warehouses such as Bunnings and other larger retailers have become commonplace

Mind the gap: Commuters may be delayed by social distancing queues with possible limits on the number of passengers on board train carriages and bus services

Only a handful of swimmers are likely to be allowed to jump in public pools when lockdown restrictions ease

Public pools will open with specific restrictions likely to allow only a small number of swimmers per lane.

Renters and home-buyers will have to patiently wait their turn to inspect property or attend an auction, with limits of 10, then 20, then 100 people allowed inside.

And when pubs are finally allowed to open, customer restrictions are likely to come hand-in-hand with a cold beer.

Only 100 pubgoers will be allowed inside at the one time.

All of these rules are likely to differ between the states and territories and will rely on individual businesses following the rules.

The Northern Territory is already at stage one, while South Australia will move to stage one on Monday and Queensland next Friday.

Western Australia will announce its position on Sunday and New South Wales and VIctoria will reveal their plans on Monday.

The ACT will allow gatherings of 10 from Saturday and Tasmania has not announced any changes.

The path to freedom: These are the national COVID-19 guidelines for how the states will ease lockdown measures in the weeks to come. Prime Minister Scott Morrison hopes the country will reach stage three by July

The three-step plan to relaxing lockdown in Australia STAGE 1 * Five visitors allowed at home * Gatherings of up 10 in business and public places * Work from home if it works for you and your employer * Small restaurants, cafes and shopping open with max of 10 customers * Home sales and in-person auctions resume * Children back in classrooms * Libraries, community centres, playgrounds and outdoor boot camps open * Local and regional travel resume STAGE 2 * Gatherings of 20 people in your home, business and public places * Work from home if it works for you and your employer * Gyms, beauty, cinemas, galleries and amusement parks open with COVID-safe plans * Organised community sport allowed * Caravan and camping grounds reopen * Some interstate travel * States and territories may allow larger numbers in some circumstances STAGE 3 * Gatherings of up to 100 people * Return to workplaces * Pubs, clubs, nightclubs, food courts, saunas and some gaming venues open * All interstate travel resumes * Consider cross-Tasman, Pacific island and international students travel * States and territories may allow larger numbers in some circumstances Advertisement

The current number of coronavirus cases across Australia: 97 people have died and 6,029 patients have recovered from the deadly virus

It will be up to the states and territories to decide when beaches can reopen for sunbathing - and whether lines will be necessary. Pictured: Surfers' Paradise

The Prime Minister warned that outbreaks will happen but, in a message to state premiers who are reluctant to relax restrictions, he said: 'Outbreaks are not a reason to slow things down.'

'Outbreaks are going to happen. All Premiers and Chief Ministers understand that. And so it's how you respond to them,' he said.

'There will be risks, challenges, outbreaks and more cases, there will be setbacks. Not everything will go to plan. There will be inconsistencies. There will undoubtedly be some human error.

'But we cannot allow our fear of going backwards from stopping us from going forward.'

The Treasury estimates the relaxed measures, if introduced across the board, will bring back 850,000 jobs.
Columbia-led findings in mice bolster efforts to map circuitry of brain's memory center; point to new areas of research into panic and post-traumatic stress disorders

A woman walking down the street hears a bang. Several moments later she discovers her boyfriend, who had been walking ahead of her, has been shot. A month later, the woman checks into the emergency room. The noises made by garbage trucks, she says, are causing panic attacks. Her brain had formed a deep, lasting connection between loud sounds and the devastating sight she witnessed.

This story, relayed by clinical psychiatrist and co-author of a new study Mohsin Ahmed, MD, PhD, is a powerful example of the brain's powerful ability to remember and connect events separated in time. And now, in that new study in mice published today in Neuron, scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute have shed light on how the brain can form such enduring links.

The scientists uncovered a surprising mechanism by which the hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory, builds bridges across time: by firing off bursts of activity that seem random, but in fact make up a complex pattern that, over time, help the brain learn associations. By revealing the underlying circuitry behind associative learning, the findings lay the foundation for a better understanding of anxiety and trauma- and stressor-related disorders, such as panic and post-traumatic stress disorders, in which a seemingly neutral event can elicit a negative response.

"We know that the hippocampus is important in forms of learning that involve linking two events that happen even up to 10 to 30 seconds apart," said Attila Losonczy, MD, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and the paper's co-senior author. "This ability is a key to survival, but the mechanisms behind it have proven elusive. With today's study in mice, we have mapped the complex calculations the brain undertakes in order to link distinct events that are separated in time."

The hippocampus -- a small, seahorse-shaped region buried deep in the brain -- is an important headquarters for learning and memory. Previous experiments in mice showed that disruption to the hippocampus leaves the animals with trouble learning to associate two events separated by tens of seconds.

"The prevailing view has been that cells in the hippocampus keep up a level of persistent activity to associate such events," said Dr. Ahmed, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and co-first author of today's study. "Turning these cells off would thus disrupt learning."

To test this traditional view, the researchers imaged parts of the hippocampus of mice as the animals were exposed to two different stimuli: a neutral sound followed by a small but unpleasant puff of air. A fifteen-second delay separated the two events. The scientists repeated this experiment across several trials. Over time, the mice learned to associate the tone with the soon-to-follow puff of air. Using advanced two-photon microscopy and functional calcium imaging, they recorded the activity of thousands of neurons, a type of brain cell, in the animals' hippocampus simultaneously over the course of each trial for many days.

"With this approach, we could mimic, albeit in a simpler way, the process our own brains undergo when we learn to connect two events," said Dr. Losonczy, who is also a professor of neuroscience at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

To make sense of the information they collected, the researchers teamed up with computational neuroscientists who develop powerful mathematical tools to analyze vast amounts of experimental data.

"We expected to see repetitive, continuous neural activity that persisted during the fifteen-second gap, an indication of the hippocampus at work linking the auditory tone and the air puff," said computational neuroscientist Stefano Fusi, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and the paper's co-senior author. "But when we began to analyze the data, we saw no such activity."

Instead, the neural activity recorded during the fifteen-second time gap was sparse. Only a small number of neurons fired, and they did so seemingly at random. This sporadic activity looked distinctly different from the continuous activity that the brain displays during other learning and memory tasks, like memorizing a phone number.

"The activity appears to come in fits and bursts at intermittent and random time periods throughout the task," said James Priestley, a doctoral candidate co-mentored by Drs. Losonczy and Fusi at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and the paper's co-first author. "To understand activity, we had to shift the way we analyzed data and use tools designed to make sense of random processes."

Ultimately, the researchers discovered a pattern in the randomness: a style of mental computing that seems to be a remarkably efficient way that neurons store information. Instead of communicating with each other constantly, the neurons save energy -- perhaps by encoding information in the connections between cells, called synapses, rather than through the electrical activity of the cells.

"We were happy to see that the brain doesn't maintain ongoing activity over all these seconds because, metabolically, that's not the most efficient way to store information," said Dr. Fusi, who is also a professor of neuroscience at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "The brain seems to have a more efficient way to build this bridge, which we suspect may involve changing the strength of the synapses."

In addition to helping to map the circuitry involved in associative learning, these findings also provide a starting point to more deeply explore disorders involving dysfunctions in associative memory, such as panic and pos-ttraumatic stress disorder.

"While our study does not explicitly model the clinical syndromes of either of these disorders, it can be immensely informative," said Dr. Ahmed, who is also a member of the Losonczy lab at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute. "For example, it can help us to model some aspects of what may be happening in the brain when patients experience a fearful association between two events that would, to someone else, not elicit fright or panic."

###

This paper is titled "Hippocampal network reorganization underlies the formation of a temporal association memory." Additional contributors include Angel Castro, Fabio Stefanini, PhD, Ana Sofia Solis Canales, Elizabeth M. Balough, PhD, Erin Lavoie and Luca Mazzucato, PhD.

This research was supported by the Leon Levy Foundation, the American Psychiatric Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (T32MH018870, K08MH113036, T32NS064928, F31MH121058, K25DC013557, R01MH100631, U19NS090583 R01NS094668), National Science Foundation NeuroNex program (DBI-1707398, the Simons Foundation, the Grossman Foundation, the Gatsby Foundation, the Kavli Foundation, the Searle Scholars Program, the Human Frontier Science Program and the McKnight Memory and Cognitive Disorders Award.

The authors declare no financial or competing interests.

Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute brings together a group of world-class scientists and scholars to pursue the most urgent and exciting challenge of our time: understanding the brain and mind. A deeper understanding of the brain promises to transform human health and society. From effective treatments for disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression and autism to advances in fields as fundamental as computer science, economics, law, the arts and social policy, the potential for humanity is staggering. To learn more, visit: zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu.
Dallas County Sheriff(DALLAS) -- BY: MEREDITH DELISO



The Dallas salon owner who defied an executive order to shut down her business amid the state's coronavirus response has been released from jail early.



Responding to a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed by her attorney, the Supreme Court of Texas on Thursday ordered that Shelley Luther be released from Dallas County Jail. She was serving a seven-day sentence for contempt of court.



Luther, who was booked on Tuesday, was released as of 2 p.m. CDT Thursday, her attorney's office announced on Facebook.



"We're thrilled with the court's decision to uphold our writ and we look forward to her release," Annette Norred, the managing paralegal for Norred Law, told ABC News ahead of Luther's release.



The case drew the attention of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who had called for Luther's release this week, saying that the judge's ruling was "excessive."



On Thursday, the governor modified his executive order to eliminate jail time for those who violate the order. Previously, violators could face up to 180 days in jail. The modification is retroactive to April 2, when the stay-at-home order went into effect.



Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also called for Luther's release. In a statement released Wednesday, he called the judge's order a "shameful abuse of judicial discretion."



Abbott's stay-at-home order expired April 30, at which point the state began lifting restrictions on nonessential businesses. Restaurants, movie theaters and malls were allowed to reopen May 1. On Tuesday, Abbott announced that hair salons, barber shops and nail salons could reopen on Friday.



Luther had kept open her business, Salon a la Mode, last month despite a citation, a cease-and-desist letter and a restraining order. She publicly ripped the cease-and-desist letter and kept her salon open for more than a week after she was issued the restraining order.



During a hearing on Tuesday, Luther admitted that her business was still open partially. Dallas Civil District Judge Eric Moye scolded her for blatantly disobeying an order meant to protect residents.



"The rule of law governs us. People cannot take it upon themselves to determine what they will and will not do," he said during the hearing.



Luther told Moye she didn't regret her actions.



"If you think the law's more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon," she said.



In addition to the jail time, Moye ordered Luther to pay a fine of at least $3,500.



Dallas is the second-highest Texas county with COVID cases, 4,869, according to data from the state and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The county has seen 123 deaths.



Texas saw a jump of 968 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, to 35,390 total, and an increase of 25 fatalities, to 973, according to the latest data from the state.

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Nursing home deaths continue to represent more than half of Connecticut deaths linked to COVID-19, data released by the state Thursday shows.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday during his afternoon briefing on the pandemic that as state leaders look to gradually reopen Connecticut in the coming weeks, health officials will continue to monitor staff and residents at nursing homes.

I cannot over-emphasize how important it is to focus on our vulnerable and high risk populations, Lamont said. Its the right thing before and its the smart thing to do.

There have been 1,627 lab-confirmed and probable deaths linked to the virus among nursing home patients as of Wednesday, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the states 2,718 deaths as of that day, the new data showed. Last weeks data indicated nursing home deaths represented about 57.6 percent of statewide fatalities.

The 1,627 deaths in nursing homes were an increase from the 1,249 deaths linked to the new coronavirus reported in nursing homes statewide as of April 29. The number of confirmed cases in nursing homes represent about 19 percent of the total cases statewide.

Several Connecticut nursing home facilities reported more than 30 confirmed and probable virus-associated fatalities as of Wednesday, including Saint John Paul II Center in Danbury, which reported 27 confirmed and three probable deaths.

Last weeks data showed the Danbury facility had 20 confirmed and two probable virus-related deaths.

In Torrington, Litchfield Wood reported 28 confirmed and two probable deaths linked to the new coronavirus, a slight increase from 25 confirmed and two probable last week.

Abbott Terrace Health Center in Waterbury reported 31 confirmed and seven probable virus-related deaths, only seeing one additional lab-confirmed virus death since last week.

Kimberly Hall North in Windsor reported 15 confirmed and 25 probable deaths linked to the virus, a slight bump from 13 confirmed and 26 probable last week.

Josh Geballe, Lamonts chief operating officer, said teams began traveling to nursing homes last weekend to test everyone whether theyre symptomatic or asymptomatic.

Health officials started onsite inspections last week at all of the states 215 nursing homes. Those efforts were aided by the National Guard and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Geballe said the tests at nursing homes would be repeated in the future.

Well try to strategically focus the testing on areas where the public health team identifies the most risk or if we see flare-ups in a certain area, he said.

Geballe said the teams identified some issues in nursing homes involving donning and doffing of protective gear and training on infection-control procedures.

Its not widespread. Mostly the inspections have been positive. The nursing homes overall are doing an incredible job under exceptionally difficult circumstances, he said.

The states plan to reopen, and the prospect of a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in the fall, raised some concern among public health care workers on Wednesday.

This is a game of attrition right now, and we may not be winning this game, said Bill Garrity, president of University Health Professionals Local 3837 and a registered nurse at UConn Health Center, speaking during a teleconference.

Other public-sector health care workers said they were concerned about the mental health and resources available to them as experts warn a second wave of the virus could strike in the fall, similar to what the country experienced during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Dr. Michael Parry, chairman of infectious diseases at Stamford Health, said the increase in nursing home cases is likely due to more testing being done.

I dont think most of this reopening and resuming services affects the nursing home population very much  theyre not out and about, Parry said.

He pointed out that the states reopening committee has recommended opening nail salons and restaurants for outdoor dining, neither of which residents of nursing homes will be using.

Lamont also announced last month that assisted living and nursing homes that fail to comply with reporting cases to state health agencies could face fines of up to $5,000 for each occurrence. That came after President Donald Trumps administration laid out new federal guidelines ordering nursing homes to notify family members of residents after the first case of COVID-19 appears at a facility.

Dr. Albert Ko, chairman of the epidemiology department at the Yale School of Medicine and advisor on the governors reopening task force, said hospitalizations are still the best metric to determine when it will be safe to reopen.

The problem with evaluating cases is as you ramp up testing, youre testing more people and youre identifying more people, even though the transmission within the community may be lower, Ko said Thursday.

Parry said hospitals may begin scheduling elective surgeries if their net number of patients being treated for COVID-19 continues to fall. Those will likely begin with urgent procedures, such as surgeries to treat cancer, he said.

Some procedures havent stopped. If you come in with a perforated appendix, you go into the OR today, COVID or not, he pointed out.

Advocates for nursing homes have said the facilities have lost revenue while short-stay patients, who typically stay at nursing homes after elective surgeries like joint replacements, have stayed away.

Parry said that will be done while carefully monitoring the states hospitalization rate for the disease.

From a hospital perspective, were saying this is a resumption of normal services, Parry said.
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador's top doctor says workers returning from an Alberta oilsands site with a COVID-19 outbreak should self-isolate and contact public health officials to be tested.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador's top doctor says workers returning from an Alberta oilsands site with a COVID-19 outbreak should self-isolate and contact public health officials to be tested.

The province announced two more cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total to 261 with 244 people recovered.

Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province's chief medical officer of health, said one of the new cases is linked to the Imperial-owned Kearl Lake work site north of Fort McMurray.

Fitzgerald said workers at the Kearl Lake and Horizon sites in Alberta who have returned to Newfoundland and Labrador since April 12 should self-isolate for 14 days even if their COVID-19 tests come back negative.

She said their immediate household contacts should also self-isolate.British Columbia and Saskatchewan health officials have also advised residents returning from the Kearl Lake area to isolate since the outbreak was detected last month.Fitzgerald said Newfoundlanders are "certainly" among the hundreds of non-permanent Alberta residents who work at the camp and said public health officials want to detect and trace any positive cases linked to the site."Because we do need to control the importation of cases, we want to make sure we're capturing those people as quickly as possible," Fitzgerald said.The two new cases announced Thursday follow several weeks with few new infections detected. The province is preparing to relax some restrictions next Monday, while also tightening its border controls.A ban on entry came into effect Monday, barring anyone besides permanent residents and essential workers from entering the province, unless given a pre-approved exception.Legislation passed earlier this week strengthened police powers to detain and transport people to exit points while enforcing orders under the public health emergency.Fitzgerald said the strict ban, which applies to part-time residents who usually spend summers in the province, is the best way to control the importation of new cases.

"Right now, the level circulating in our communities is low and we want to keep that low," Fitzgerald said. "Our biggest risk is importation.

Elsewhere in the region, Nova Scotia health officials reported three more COVID-19 deaths that occurred at the Northwood long-term care home in Halifax.

Forty-four people have died from the illness the province, with most of the deaths at Northwood.

Nine new cases of the virus were also identified Thursday for a total of 1,007 confirmed cases, including 708 recoveries.In New Brunswick, the number of cases remained at 120 on Thursday, with only two active and 118 people recovered.This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2020.
People without a college degree, earning less than $50,000 a year or living in rural communities were slightly less likely to have heard much about the program. Those who said they planned to take leave were more likely to be in their 20s or 30s; Hispanic or African-American; government workers; or parents of children under 12.

The share who plan to take it is lower than some analysts and policymakers expected. Chanel Archer, a behavioral health specialist in Indianapolis and the single mother of a 4-month-old, had not heard of the paid leave option when she told her supervisor she was feeling overwhelmed.

I always believe anything is possible, but it is truthfully nearly impossible to work and take care of a newborn, she said.

Her supervisor told her that as a parent without her usual child care options, she was eligible for two weeks of leave at two-thirds of her pay, which she plans to take. Ms. Archer said she did not know about the additional time available.

Surveys of business owners show concern about how employees new health and child care needs are affecting their work, but also deep uncertainty about the paid leave program.

A survey of 502 leaders of businesses eligible for the policy showed a split: 44 percent thought it was helpful, and 37 percent thought it was harmful. A large share, 70 percent, said the need to provide paid leave contributed to their decision to lay off or furlough workers. Forty percent said no employees had taken the leave, and 20 percent said only a few had, according to the survey, which was conducted by Morning Consult for the Bipartisan Policy Center. Companies that provide the leave receive a credit against taxes they pay quarterly to the federal government.

Surveys of members of the National Federation of Independent Business, an advocacy group for small business owners, show widespread anxiety about the program. Nearly three of five respondents said they were very or moderately concerned about the programs mandates as the country began to reopen the economy.
Face masks are delivered across dividing lines in Ireland and Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates sends medical supplies to rival Iran, and China and Japan exchange rare warm words. The coronavirus pandemic may have exacerbated global tensions, especially between the United States and China. But in some cases it has also sparked cooperation between longtime rivals. In one ray of light amid the gloom, Northern Ireland's unionist Orange Order last month secured a shipment of personal protective equipment for distribution both north and south of the border with the Republic of Ireland. That was highly unusual as unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, are usually wary of cross-border cooperation, seeing it as a gateway to Irish unification. But the Belfast executive, which includes unionists, also signed a non-binding deal with Dublin to beef up cooperation. "We face a common challenge," said Northern Ireland's health minister Robin Swann, from the hardline Democratic Unionist Party. "Facing that challenge will test us as never before." His comment echoed the words of Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, who argued in March that "both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems (requiring) global cooperation". Writing in the Financial Times, Harari warned that "a collective paralysis has gripped the international community" as the world faces a choice between "nationalist isolation and global solidarity". - Reaching across borders - Calls by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in March for a "global ceasefire" also appear to have fallen on deaf ears, with fighting continuing in battlefields from Libya to Yemen. Yet in some cases, the need to fight the virus has trumped old rivalries. On the divided island of Cyprus, the government last month sent 4,000 items of protective equipment and 2,000 chloroquine tablets across the UN-guarded ceasefire line to help the breakaway north. It was a rare act of goodwill between the EU member and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Ankara. Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded the northern third of the island in response to a Greek-backed coup. But the delivery, nearly three years after peace talks collapsed, came under fire from nationalist politicians. Prime minister Ersin Tatar accused TRNC president Mustafa Akinci of breaking customs regulations and argued that "if we need something, we request it from Turkey". The health minister in the north, Ali Pilli, begged to differ, telling news channel BRT TV that "no matter where (the aid) comes from, we accept it". - Generosity and pragmatism - Earlier in the year, as the COVID-19 illness ravaged China, Japanese businesses and the government donated thousands of protective garments. Chinese social media users hailed the gifts, and Beijing's foreign ministry said it was "extremely touched" -- a far cry from the bitterness often overshadowing their relations since before World War II. As in other cases, this generosity may have been partly motivated by pragmatism. As regional expert Victor Teo told AFP, "it is definitely in Japan's national interest that the health threat remains contained." Broader geopolitical trends may also have played a role. Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, pointed out that China was "always more solicitous to Japan" when tensions rise with Washington. The pandemic has also inspired unusual gestures in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates evoked the virus as part of its outreach to the president of war-torn Syria, Bashar al-Assad, for years shunned by Arab governments. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan called Assad late last month for the first time since Syria's civil war began in 2011, pledging his country's "willingness to help the Syrian people". No aid deliveries to Syria have yet been reported. But the UAE did dispatch a military plane in March carrying UN medical experts and aid to Assad's ally Iran -- despite the fact the Emirates are allied with Washington against Tehran. - 'In the firing line too' - The help for Iran, hit by the Middle East's deadliest outbreak, was all the more remarkable as it followed heightened tensions in the Gulf. Recent months saw attacks on shipping, the downing of a US drone and the American killing of a top Iranian commander that had sparked fears of regional war. But senior Emirati aid official Sultan Mohammed al-Shamsi said that "aid should reach all people regardless of their background." Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif thanked the UAE, calling the pandemic a "global issue that requires the combined will of all countries to be defeated". Michael Stephens, of the RUSI think tank in London, noted that "aid diplomacy is a big thing in the Islamic world". But he also pointed at self-interest. Despite their disagreements, the UAE and neighbouring Iran have close trading links, and tens of thousands of Iranians live in Dubai. "I think the deliveries were pragmatic more than anything else -- if your neighbours get the virus, you're in the firing line too," he said. Moreover, he added, "anything that lowers tensions is a good thing." The United Arab Emirates sent a military plane carrying UN medical experts and aid to Iran, despite tensions with Cyprus has been divided since 1974, but last month the Republic of Cyprus sent medical aid to help the breakaway north fight the novel coronavirus United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly called for a global ceasefire to allow war-torn nations to combat the coronavirus pandemic
Armenian parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan has issued a congratulatory message on the anniversary of Shushi liberation.

The statement runs as follows:

"Dear compatriots,

I congratulate all of us on the anniversary of Shushi Liberation.

Glory to those, who won this victory! This victory will never be conceded.

Glory to those who fell in the battle! Their memory will never be forgotten.

Glory to all heroes! They created one of the most glorious pages of our history.

Long live Free Artsakh!"
UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres has warned that jihadist groups in the Sahel area of North Africa are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to step up attacks, according to documents seen by AFP. The United Nations chief called for better coordination among the various anti-jihadist forces fighting an array of armed groups. "Terrorist groups are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify their attacks and to challenge state authority throughout the sub-region," said Guterres. He noted the problem was particularly acute in the area known as the Liptako-Gourma triangle, a border zone between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. "Evidence also suggests that there is increased coordination and cooperation between some of the terrorist groups operating throughout the Sahel, from Mauritania to the Lake Chad basin," he said. "The dire situation in the Sahel region is further compounded by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa, with terrorist groups exploiting it for both propaganda and action purposes, with potential grave impact on the region," the secretary general added. Because of the pandemic, which led to the border between Mali and Mauritania being shut, operations of the so-called G5-Sahel anti-jihadist force have been put off. The G5 is a 5,000-strong force with troops from Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Mauritania cooperating with French troops to combat a growing Islamist insurgency. "The impact of the pandemic on the ability of the Joint Force and international forces to conduct operations in the coming months is difficult to ascertain at this point and will need to be carefully and continuously assessed," said Guterres. The secretary general's report on recent security developments in the Sahel region stressed that "the number of people who died from terrorist attacks has increased five-fold since 2016, with more than 4,000 deaths reported in 2019 alone as compared with an estimated 770 deaths in 2016." Since November the reality on the ground "was marked by a deterioration of the security situation in Mali and the Sahel region, characterized by a rise in increasingly complex terrorist attacks, primarily targeting armed and security forces," the report warned. Guterres called for "stronger coordination between the different forces and clarity with regard to command and control." Besides the various national armies and the G5 force deployed in the Sahel area, the region also has a 5,100-strong French force and a 15,000-member UN peacekeeping group operating there. There is also a new international force being launched after a French initiative and dubbed Takuba, which groups special forces from different countries. A Niger soldier looks at the graves of 71 Niger troops soldiers killed in a jihadist attack on December 10, 2019, ahead of a regional summit to coordinate a response to the growing unrest.
New Delhi/Pithoragarh: An 80-km strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass at a height of 17,000 feet along the border with China in Uttarakhand with Dharchula was thrown open by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday.

The new road is expected to help pilgrims visiting Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet as it is around 90 kms from the Lipulekh pass.

After inaugurating the road through video-conferencing, Singh said pilgrims going to Kailash Mansarovar will now be able to complete their journey in one week instead of up to three weeks.

The road originates at Ghatiabagarh and ends at Lipulekh pass, the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar.

"With the completion of this crucial road link, the decades old dreams and aspirations of the local people and pilgrims have been fulfilled," the defence minister said.

He also expressed confidence that local trade and economic growth in the region would receive a boost with the operationalisation of the road.

Military officials said the road will also help in speedy movement of troops in the strategically key region bordering China.

Singh flagged off a caravan of nine vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji to mark the opening of the road.

The caravan included four small vehicles and some loaded vehicles of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Chief Engineer of Project Hirak, Vimal Goswami, said.

"After commissioning of the road, the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra from Lipulekh pass has become more convenient for pilgrims who can now return to India in one day after having the sacred darshan," he said.

With the inauguration of the strategically vital road, over 80-km of tough Himalayan terrain, between the Mangti camp near Tawaghat and Gunji in the Vyas valley, and the security posts on the Indian side of the border, has become accessible, the official said.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had announced last year that the road will be completed by April 2020.

"While 51-km long portions, beyond Bundi, were constructed much earlier, followed by a 23-km long portion from Tawaghat to Lakhanpur, the most tough portion between Lakhanpur to Bundi posed challenges and took much time," BRO officer Goswami said.

The construction of the road began in 2008 and was scheduled to be completed in 2013, but it got delayed due to the tough terrain in the portion between Nazang to Bundi village.

"The 15-km long most challenging portion of the road from Nazang to Bundi was outsourced in 2015 to a private company under technical guidance of BRO engineers, which completed the portion despite all odds before the set date by the minister last year," said the BRO officer.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS

MSMEs need money or they'll shut shop - definitely top priority for government

States are desperate for funds as they deal with revenue loss and additional expenditure due to coronavirus

Banks need confidence to lend in a high risk environment; recapitalisation will build risk-taking appetite

India's poor - migrant workers, daily-wage earners - need money to survive

The government's decision to borrow additional funds of Rs 4.2 lakh crore to fight coronavirus means it's readying a war chest for economic stimulus. The total gross borrowing has now been increased from Rs 7.8 lakh crore to Rs 12 lakh crore in FY21.

This is a first hint that the government has assessed its finances based on the loss of budgeted revenues and the expected additional expenditure required on account of coronavirus.

So where will the additional funds be deployed?

ALSO READ: Govt to borrow Rs 4.2 lakh crore more: 5 harmful effects on economy

MSMES

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are first in queue as they urgently need money to survive.

The banks' outstanding credit to MSMEs is around Rs 15 lakh crore and they are reluctant to deploy more amid heightened risk environment. Similarly, there are many coronavirus-impacted sectors like MFIs, hospitality, restaurants, transportation, where money has not reached despite surplus liquidity created by the RBI. In fact, the surplus liquidity is flowing back from banks to RBI.

The government will now have the comfort of offering a credit guarantee to banks to lend money or push funds to agencies like NABARD, SIDBI or other institutions who indirectly support the impacted segments. It could also come out with a plan to directly support MSMEs.

STATES

The states are the next big claimant. They have been asking for additional grants as they are the ones fighting coronavirus on the ground. The fall in GST collections has hit states' revenues. Their internal sources through liquor and stamp duty have also been impacted due to the lockdown. States' health infrastructure facilities, including temporary set up for coronavirus, need a massive push because of rising cases. The big danger is that the cases are yet to peak. There is also the risk of second wave of coronavirus infections.

ALSO READ: Govt to borrow Rs 4.2 lakh crore more; FY21 fiscal deficit to be 5.5%

BANKS

The money could also be used to support public sector banks (PSBs) by way of recapitalisation. The banks may be asked to support industries. It should allow them to take little bit of risk with government backing them with capital. They may extend the moratorium benefit and NPA classification norms. The additional capital will especially help the banks as their revenues have been impacted due to deferred EMIs.

The government could either directly pump in capital or use the bond route to support banks, in which case the net hit on the government would be in terms of interest outgo. Under the bond route, the government issues bonds to banks, who pay the subscription to government and when the government gets the money, it redirects it to banks as capital.

MIGRANT WORKERS

There is a large segment of migrants and poor people who need some sort of a direct transfer of money. In the first phase, the government did come out with income support measures. But more funds are needed as lockdown has been extended. Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has estimated a sum of Rs 60,000 crore for transferring cash directly to poor and supporting them by way of food supply through public distribution system.

JOB CREATION

The government could also start roads and other public works in a big way to create employment and boost economic revival. Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had earlier hinted that a package for infrastructure would be announced soon. With additional money in its hands, the government can increase the allocation for infrastructure including roads.

ALSO READ: 'Debt monetisation should not constrain govt spending,' says Raghuram Rajan
New Delhi: The Delhi Police cyber cell on Friday (May 8, 2020) recorded statements of six students who are accused of being a part of the Instagram group 'Bois Locker Room'. All six students are adults.

In order to gather further information on the matter, the police officials have also quizzed some of the juveniles at their residence in front of their parents and NGO members.

Earlier, on Wednesday the CyPAD Unit (Cyber Crime Cell) of the Delhi Police arrested the admin of Bois Locker Room and on Monday, Delhi police have apprehended a juvenile, who was also a group member.

After identifying ten members of the group including minors, the police said, '' the minor is being quizzed and the devices used to engage in the "offensive and vulgar communication" have also been seized from the group members.''

Meanwhile, two advocates have urged Delhi High Court Chief Justice DN Patel to take suo motu cognisance of the incident of "Bois Locker Room". In a letter to Chief Justice Patel, advocates Neela Gokhale and Ilam Paridhi urged him to direct the authorities concerned to register FIRs for the alleged offenses.

Bois Locker Room is the Instagram private chat group in which teenage boys planned gangrape and made derogatory remarks on girls. Nearly 20 boys were part of the group in which they shared pictures of minor girls and commented on their body parts. The teenage boys are students of schools located in South Delhi.
The country is ranked among the five most attractive economies in terms of software export services.

Vietnams software and IT service industry has recorded revenues of about US$9 billion per year, according to a report by the Vietnam Association for Software and Information Technology Services (Vinasa) on April 27 on the occasion of the 18th anniversary of its establishment.

Photo: ICTNews

The software and IT services have so far grown 180 times in the past two decades, of which software export revenues reached over US$ 3.7 billion. The industry employs a total workforce of nearly 300,000. Vietnam is second largest partner of Japan - one of the three largest importers for IT services in the world.

According to the Vinasa, the industry earned roughly US$50 million in 2002 when the organization was founded with 55 members. It now has nearly 400 members that include major IT businesses namely FPT, CMC, MISA, VNG, TMA, Viettel, VNPT, KMS. They represent 65% of the workforce and 70% of the industrys total revenue.

The Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted serious damage on economies across the globe. Measures to prevent its spread including social distancing enhance the need to work from home and to shift all activities of businesses, economic organizations or socio-political to digital platforms.

The pandemic, despite the havoc it is wreaking on the economy and businesses, it is also opening up golden opportunities for digital transformation activities in Vietnam.

Chairman of the Vinasa Truong Gia Binh expected that every enterprise would quickly adapt to the new circumstances to overcome difficulties through applying new technologies. Hanoitimes

Nhat Minh

E-learning software market: no control, no censor HCM City authorities have released a document allowing students to stay off school until the end of February because of Covid-19.
A high-level European delegation on Friday lauded certain recent steps taken by the Uttar Pradesh government for labour reforms and suggested setting up of a European business desk in the state, a minister said.

The suggestion was made during a video conference by state MSME and export promotion minister Siddharth Nath Singh with members of the European Business Council, which included Ambassadors of Italy, Belgium, Denmark and Latvia.

"The participants were of the view that this will send a positive message to investors and they will be easily attracted towards investing in UP," Singh told PTI.

With a view to bringing about a comprehensive improvement in industrialisation, UP has taken up reforms in electronics, warehousing, logistics, pharmaceutical, industrial parks and food processing sectors, he said.

The state government has decided to exempt various industries in the state from different labour laws for three years to revive the state's economic activities which have come to a grinding halt amid the COVID-19-induced lockdown.

The step is aimed at reviving and boosting various businesses and industries that have more or less come to a halt due to the national lockdown and also to give impetus to industrial and economic activities and create more investment opportunities besides bringing back the existing industry back on track.

During the interaction with the team, Singh said that UP has developed a favourable atmosphere to attract global investment under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and is all set to attract investments from across Europe.

Construction of Asia's largest airport at Jewar in Gautam Budh Nagar district is in full swing and development of 11 smaller airports in the state were being carried out to improve air connectivity, he pointed out.

Besides, to improve road connectivity, construction of expressways in the state was in progress.

The minister said that special emphasis was being laid on attracting to Uttar Pradesh those companies which were migrating from China in the aftermath of coronavirus pandemic.

Singh, who is also UP government spokesperson, assured the delegates that whatever important suggestions that have been made by them will be implemented quickly.

The video conference was attended by Ambassador of Denmark Freddy Sven, who suggested an MoU with MSME units of Denmark for technology upgradation of MSME in Uttar Pradesh.

An HP India sales representative expressed a desire to set up 3D Printing Center of Excellence in UP.

Representatives of companies like Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical International Pvt, IBM India, KPMG India, Microsoft Corporation, Panasonic India, PepsiCo and Red Bull also participated in the webinar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Two days after announcing an economic relief package over Covid-19 crisis in the state, Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa will meet opposition leaders led by Congress Legislative Party Chief Siddaramaiah.

The opposition will raise the issues of farmers and traditional occupation workers at Fridays meeting. He is the second chief minister in the country to call for an all-party meeting to discuss measures to contain COVID.

Vegetable and fruit growing farmers have been left out of the states compensation package. Migrant workers welfare has been compromised. Communities that are involved in traditional occupation or handiwork have not been considered for one-time compensation. We intend to raise these issues tomorrow, said a Congress source.

A delegation of traditional occupation workers met Siddaramaiah on Thursday urging him to take up their cause with the government. While the government announced a compensation of Rs 5,000 to unorganised sector workers like barbers and washermen, many who are involved in pottery, leatherwork, carpentry, etc have been left out of the relief package. The opposition is expected to highlight the plight of these communities. The government had come in for a great deal of criticism over the migrant issue.
Google this week announced upgrades to two programs: one will assist users researching words and expressions and learning foreign languages, and the other will help children who are learning to read.

The Google Lens app is a popular tool used by people who need instant translations of foreign words or phrases. They point their phone camera at the wording of a public sign or a page in a book, and Lens translates the text into any of about 100 languages.

Beginning this week, Lens will pronounce the words, too. Just tap on selected text and the new feature, Listen, will say it. Further, Lens will serve up explanatory notes about selected words or phrases. Want to know more about coronavirus? Tap on the word and Lens will pull up relevant search results.

The Listen feature is currently operating on Android. An iOS version is due soon.

Google is also adding a nifty new application to Lens. It will let you copy and paste handwritten notes from a notepad to your computer. To do this, fire up Google Lens and point your smartphone at your handwritten notes, wait for the text to be recognized and tap "Copy to computer" on your phone. On your desktop, open your project in Google Docs, click Insert, and watch your text appear.

A few requirements: You must have the most recent version of Google Chrome on your desktop and either the Google Lens app on your Android device or Google app on an iOS device. On iOS devices, Lens is accessed by an icon in the Google search bar. Also, you must be logged on to your Google account in both devices.

Last, if your handwriting resembles the jagged lines of a seismograph machine during high activitythat is, if your handwriting is unrecognizable to most other human beingsthe Lens cut-and-paste operation will likely not work well. Be sure to write legibly. Lens can perform wonders, not miracles.

Also unveiled this week is a program that will be welcomed by millions of parents involuntarily drafted as teachers for their children in this era of quarantine. The Read Along app is designed for children 5 years of age and above who are learning to read. Utilizing text-to-speech and speech-recognition, the app holds children's hands as they navigate sentences in stories geared to their age level. A digital reading buddy named Diya recognizes when the child is struggling with pronunciation and offers encouraging feedback.

When children need help pronouncing a word or defining one, they can ask Diya and the assistant will provide the answer. Diya also provides positive feedback throughout the sessions.

Read Along keeps track of children's progress through the storiesthere are about 500 in alland makes recommendations on future stories based on how well they do. Children are rewarded with in-app prizes and mini word games.

Originally called Bolo, the app was first used in India last year. Following its success, Google renamed the app and expanded it to more than 180 countries and nine languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Urdu.

Google emphasizes there are no in-app ads or purchases, and no voice data is retained on Google servers.

Read Along may be downloaded from the Play Store.

Explore further Google Assistant to read web pages aloud on some devices

 2020 Science X Network
SACRAMENTO, Calif.  Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed an executive order allowing employees across Californias economy to apply for workers compensation if they contract the coronavirus, with a presumption that it was work-related unless employers can prove otherwise.

The presumption applies for the next 60 days and is retroactive to March 19, when Newsom first ordered all but essential workers to stay at home to ease the risk of transmitting the virus. He said the change is needed now as California prepares to relax those orders in coming days and weeks.

Similar debates are happening in Congress and across the nation as leaders debate how much legal protection to give companies whose employees are infected.

Employees in California will be eligible if they tested positive for the coronavirus within 14 days after being at work, the maximum known incubation period. And they must have exhausted other state and federal benefits.

The states Workers Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau previously said such a decision could cost from $2.2 billion to $33.6 billion annually, depending on the details. The mid-range estimate of about $11 billion is about 60% of the entire annual estimated cost of the states workers compensation system before the pandemic.

Employers pay for the program, but in turn employees give up their right to sue for liability.

Business, insurers and local government organizations objected that employees already were covered under Californias no fault, employer-funded system if they could show they contracted the virus on the job.

Newsoms order flips that burden of proof by creating the legal presumption that the infection was job-related unless employers can show otherwise under what the governor called strict criteria.

Victoria Hassid, chief deputy director at the California Department of Industrial Relations that oversees the program, said the state will provide more details in coming days. She said the presumption will apply to workers including our nurses, our first-responders, janitors, warehouse workers, farm workers, grocery store workers, and all of those that are putting themselves on the line.

There is no limit on job classifications in the executive order, and Newsom said it is important that all employees returning to work in coming days are confident that they have protection if they are infected.

As we move into this second phase, we want to keep workers healthy and keep them safe. The worst thing we can do is have a worker that has tested positive but doesnt want to tell anybody and can spread the disease because he or she cant afford not to work, Newsom said. And so thats why expanding to all sectors of our economy this workers comp presumption is so important, because we want people to feel confident and comfortable, theyll have their benefits.

Newsom, a Democrat, said the discussions leading to his decision were very passionate and involved labor and business leaders, who were split in their response.

The California Chamber of Commerce said many employees already are covered under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program without putting more strain on the states employers.

Newsoms order will unnecessarily and significantly drive up costs for California employers through increased workers compensation insurance rates at a time when they are struggling to keep Californians employed, the chamber said in a statement.

American Property Casualty Insurance Association president David A. Sampson said it potentially jeopardizes the stability of the workers compensation system.

But the Service Employees International Union hailed his decision as an important protection for health care workers, many of them racial minorities, who daily face the threat of infection on the job.

The last thing an ill worker or the family of a fallen worker needs is to spend months in court to secure the health care and other benefits they need to keep food on the table during the hardest time in their lives, said April Verrett, a local president and SEIU executive board member.

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 and death.

The state Legislature, overwhelming dominated by Democratic lawmakers, had already been considering several similar actions.

About the photo: This April 9, 2020, file photo shows Palisades Park along Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica, Calif., closed and fenced off as the city takes steps to limit public access to beaches and parks amid efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic. If Gov. Gavin Newsoms so-called roadmap to ease coronavirus restrictions hinted at a return to a normal Californians could appreciate  a summer trip in the car  it quickly became apparent they wouldnt be leaving home soon. The governors sobering message foreshadows a summer without baseball games under the lights, large outdoor concerts, rides at amusement parks or trips to the beach. In short: a summer bummer. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This week, Dunkin' (which officially dropped the "Donuts" from its name last year) started selling DIY decorating kits and, according to store managers, people can't wait to get their hands on the customizable sweet treats.

In early April, Norma Valkenaar, an employee at a Dunkin' location in Concord, California, asked her boss if she could take some plain doughnuts, frosting and sprinkles home to entertain her nephews. Matt Cobo, the franchise owner, immediately thought Valkenaar was onto something big  and so did Dunkin' executives.

Dunkin' Donuts is selling DIY doughnut decorating kits at select locations. (Adam Goldman)

The reality of this experience has set in, and we know its not going anywhere anytime soon, Cobo said in a press release. Like most parents, we were looking for ways to entertain our kids and bring a little levity to this situation.

Shortly after his employee came up with the concept, Cobo began selling boxes of unfrosted doughnuts, along with a variety of sprinkles and frostings, at two store locations. In the last few weeks, more and more locations nationwide have been following Cobo's lead.

Guests visiting participating Dunkin' locations can choose between a four-doughnut option for $5.99, or the nine-doughnut pack for $9.99. Each kit comes with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry frosting. Customers get three varieties of sprinkles with the large pack and two with the small.

Since the kits are only available at select locations, a spokesperson from Dunkin' suggested calling your preferred location ahead of time to see if that store is offering it.

Related: The customer has been coming to the bakery for nearly 50 years.

Adam Goldman, a Dunkin' franchise owner in West Orange, New Jersey, said he has sold more than 1,200 DIY boxes in three weeks.

The first day we did it, we had cars lined up at our drive-thru for 45 minutes, Goldman, 52, told TODAY Food. Parents are looking for something different to do with their children.

Boxes sold at Goldmans store include decorating tips, instructions and an important reminder about washing your hands before getting busy in the kitchen.

Story continues

One key step to a smoothly frosted surface? Microwave the frosting for about 15 seconds to make it easier to spread with a knife.

Goldman said he understands how hard it's been for both kids and parents to be cooped up inside for a long period of time.

Im happy to be able to give them a unique activity, he explained. Theyre also learning a cool new skill.

Though the packs are not currently available for delivery (Dunkin' is now available on Uber Eats), Goldman said that customers may be able to call stores ahead of time to reserve a kit.

Related: Dunkin, Chipotle, Krispy Kreme and others are offering free food to say thanks to front-line workers.

Cobo, a father of three, isn't surprised the idea has taken off.

"Parents are really enjoying the 30 minute break," Cobo told TODAY. "They get to sit back and enjoy the laughter  and a mimosa!"

Baskin-Robbins is introducing Do-It-Yourself Sundae Kits. (Baskin Robbins)

If doughnuts aren't your jam, Baskin-Robbins, which is part of Dunkin Brands Inc., is also getting in on the DIY fun. The ice cream chain is rolling out customizable Do-It-Yourself Sundae Kits for $24.99.

Each kit comes with two quarts of your favorite ice cream flavors, a can of whipped cream, cherries and three toppings of your choice. And because the company knows you can't stomach the thought of washing one more dish  youll also get five sundae cups and spoons!
Holding that the fight against COVID-19 cannot be just from the PMO, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday asked the prime minister to devolve power and make the states partner in decision-making.

Gandhi said there will be a "calamity" if the fight against coronavirus is centralised.

Addressing a press conference through video conference, he also asked the government to adopt transparency in its actions to tackle coronavirus and work together with states.

His remarks came after complaints by Congress-ruled states that they were being pushed into fiscal distress in the absence of the Centre providing them resources to fight the pandemic.

Gandhi also called upon the government to immediately put money into the hands of the poor and provide a financial package to the industry to help revive the economy.

He said the lockdown is not an on/off switch, but is a transition which requires cooperation of all - Centre, states, district magistrates and the people of India.

"We need to decentralise power in dealing with the virus. If we keep this fight in PMO, we will lose. The PM must devolve power. If we centralise, there will be a calamity. PM has to trust chief ministers and chief ministers have to trust district magistrates," he said.

Gandhi also asked the government to tell the people what criteria it would use to open the lockdown or continue it post May 17, as the transition out of it is a serious challenge before the country.

He said the government needs to work on a psychological change and if it has to open lockdown, it has to convert people's fear of the disease into confidence, as it is not deadly for most of them.

Noting that the country is facing an emergency situation, the Congress leader said the idea of injecting immediately a sum of Rs 7500 directly into the hands of poor is critical.

He also called for providing a financial package soon to protect the industry which provides jobs.

"We have to protect the job creators and have to build a wall for them to protect jobs and wages of workers. We have to give them financial support," Gandhi said.

The former Congress president said the economic package is being delayed as the government feels India could be downgraded by international agencies.

"We need to start our domestic economy soon, the more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," he noted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Transportation Security Administration will now require its workers to wear face masks at screening checkpoints.

The agency said the measure will help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and raise overall health and safety in airports.
The annual prom and class reunion at The Felician School for Exceptional Children has been an enduring tradition for the past 25 years -- and the school wasnt about to let the coronavirus pandemic stop it.

Thats why officials decided to have a virtual party this year, complete with a DJ, lights and plenty of dancing. More than 100 current students and alumni of the school for the developmentally challenged in Lodi are expected to log on to a Zoom teleconference Saturday and dance the night away.

This whole situation has been so horrible and something good coming out of it is important, said Danielle Savastano, a teacher and administrator at the school. Our kids are so special and so wonderful. They really are just a terrific bunch of kids and alumni and family."

School administrators across the state and nation will likely face similar challenges in coming weeks on how to salvage milestone events like high school prom and graduation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Phil Murphy this week announced schools in the state would stay closed through the end of the academic year.

New Jersey schools have responded in different ways.

Alexis Lee, a senior at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta participated in a virtual prom on Instagram Live last weekend, NBC News reported. The WE ARE WELL PROM featured music, dancing, a digital red carpet and celebrities like DJ Jazzy Jeff, who was the DJ.

Highland Park Superintendent Scott Taylor said his districts prom has been postponed until August 13, with a backup date in January. The district has 115 students who expected to attend their prom on June 4 at Arianas Grand in Woodbridge.

They were told this week that the event date was pushed back because of the coronavirus restrictions.

We know theres nothing that can replace this celebration, Taylor said. The kids need to put some closure on the year, even if they have to come back from whatever theyre doing after high school.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The virtual prom the Felician School dreamed up this week may not be a universal solution, but it works for them.

We just thought we could figure out a way to keep the kids going, make everyone happy and give them something to look forward to, Savastano said. We hope this is going to lift spirits and get everyone together.

Savastano is the coordinator of the adult preparation program. The school has students ranging from age 2 to 21. The prom is for students 16-21 but also includes up to 100 alumni, some as old as 50.

Savastano said a former student who passed away this year from COVID-19 will be remembered at the prom. She said Thomas Martins, 30, who lost several family members to the virus over the past month, loved to dance. She said she wants to remember Martins but still make sure Saturdays party is uplifting for students and alumni with developmental difficulties, autism and other challenges.

They surprise me all the time, she said.

Vinnie Giaquinto has DJed the schools prom for years. He had to step up his game to pull it off over for a virtual party, Savastano said.

The next challenge may be virtual graduation. Listening to Pomp and Circumstance on a cell phone simply cant be the same experience.

The coronavirus outbreak in New Jersey has now claimed at least 8,801 lives, with 133,635 total cases in the state, according to the latest update by state officials Thursday.

Murphy has said that his unprecedented stay-at-home orders, nonessential business closures and shutdown of schools has resulted in a slowing of the spread of the coronavirus in New Jersey over the last few weeks.

Staff writers Matt Arco and Allison Pries contributed to this report.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com.
Vice President Mike Pence was conspicuously maskless at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in late April, contributing to the red-blue war over covering your face during the pandemic. (Pool Report )

The first long, hot walk I took in a cloth mask was lovely and liberating, until it wasnt. The stroll became a trudge. Finally I was longing to get back inside, into my stuffy house, for a gulp of fresh air.

Nevertheless, I persist.

Wearing a mask is not only an act of respect for other humans in a viral world; its a plausible path to Ironman-caliber lung power, which we can flaunt the next time we can walk, sprint and cavort bare-faced.

At the same time, Im trying to avoid thinking of the mask as a crucifix necklace or an Affliction-brand face tattoo, something that marks me as part of one fight club and not another. Because of course there are those who dont and wont wear masks. And its going to be a long, terrible summer if, as the coronavirus death toll mounts, the United States erupts in Sharks-Jets street fights over who masks and who doesnt.

The semiotics of the mask contest are hard to miss.

Mask-rejecters are flouting public-health guidelines the way chain-smokers used to, grounding their individuality in their defiance of nanny-state edicts and in their outlaw freedom to trash their own health and endanger others.

Mask-wearers, by contrast, announce themselves as duty-bound citizens, proud to be up on the latest COVID-19 news, which means some are patronizing scolds. In New York City, mask devotees have taken to shouting at unmasked joggers, although there is scant evidence that joggers transmit the virus.

The battle over masks maps closely onto the dangerously inflamed red-blue divide. MSNBC field reporter Craig Melvin wears one. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, citing masks as advertisements for fear and intimidation, does not. President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have refused masks; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has a drawerful of handsome, practical cloth face coverings.

This daft showdown wouldnt matter if we didnt live in the political tinderbox that is Trumps America. The mask wars have already turned costly. In Texas, workers in a reopening Dallas restaurant were told they were forbidden to wear masks or face coverings at work. Wear one, lose your job, in other words.

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This would seem to be an especially self-defeating move for a restaurant. Its akin to a salad bar manager banning sneeze guards and making sure customers knew about his rebellious new policy.

Mask politics have even turned deadly. On Monday, three family members were charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting to death a security guard at a Flint, Mich., Family Dollar Store after the guard asked a fourth family member to wear a state-mandated face mask in the store.

Over a mask? asked Tina James, a cousin of the victim, Calvin Munerlyn. Over a mask?"

No kidding. And yet, face coverings, from veils to sunglasses to hoodies to balaclavas to beards, nearly always acquire cultural significance far beyond their purpose.

In 2011, France took the extreme measure of banning full-face coverings in public, except a few required for elite sports, like fencing masks. The policy, which passed under a center-right but highly secular government, was understood by progressives as a way to extend state surveillance by ensuring that faces could be registered on security cameras. It was also a clear case of religious bigotry against Muslims. (Now cities in Europe that have noisily complained about only seeing Muslim women's eyes are noisily mandating coronavirus masks for one and all.)

Pandemics can bring out all kinds of irrationality in humans (the words panic and pandemic have the same Greek root). When angst sets in, lies go viral.

Nearly 1,500 years ago, the historian Procopius sternly warned the people of Constantinople against listening to sophists and astrologers during the Plague of Justinian. Desperate citizens were falling prey to charlatans  though, lucky for them, none as dangerous as a world leader advocating the use of intravenous bleach. (That would be ridiculous.) Nor do records show that anyone was advised to spurn their anti-plague cone masks. What do you think, the people of the Early Middle Ages, for whom a handful of leeches was the height of biotech, were idiots?

A few hundred years later, in A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Daniel Defoe notes that the anti-mask crowd of his day came to unfortunate ends: Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines.

Today's quacks want us to believe masks are for libs, which I guess redefines "lib" as someone who does not want to die. Wearing a mask to protect yourself and others is not an affectation. it is not the new latte or avocado toast. I can say with certainty that hot, soggy masks are a far cry from even diner coffee, and wearing one around Ralphs does very little for your social status.

Wear a mask anyway. Do it even if your heroes object. Let it signify this fact: Whatever your politics, you have a pronounced bias for health over sickness.

@page88




Vietnams prospective carrier Vietravel Airlines is working toward its eligibility to enter the aviation market in early 2021, as it anticipates that the airline and tourism industries will bounce back from COVID-19 shock in one years time.

On Thursday, Vu Duc Bien, CEO of Vietravel Airlines, said the carrier was funneling resources into obtaining an air transport license and air operators certificate, preparing for its maiden flight in the first half of 2021.

The move is expected to help the airline catch up with the market upsurge after an idle period caused by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

Bien said last year the carrier had planned to launch its first flight in 2020.

Last month, the carriers parent company Vietravel received in-principle approval from the prime minister to establish Vietravel Airlines with a charter capital of VND700 billion (US$30 million).

According to registration documents, Vietravel Airlines is modeled as a passenger and cargo carrier with a focus on promoting tourism and other travel demands of general customers.

The airline plans to start with three aircraft and acquire more from Airbus, Boeing or other equivalent airliner manufacturers, subject to the approval of authorities and demand from the market.

Based at Phu Bai International Airport in the central province of Thua Thien  Hue, the carrier targets one million passengers in its first year of operations.

Vietravel chairman Nguyen Quoc Ky said although the company is one of the hardest-hit by the impact of COVID-19, a commitment to accelerating forward is the only way out for the firm to retake its place in the competition.

According to prospective economic recovery scenarios of Ho Chi Minh City, the tourism market will see a 33 percent rebound in international tourist numbers from now until December 2020, Ky said.

The tourist industry may need two more years to fully recover, but businesses have to start acting now.

The aviation market of Vietnam, which has a population of 96 million people, had been growing at double-digit rates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnams biggest listed firm Vingroup had applied for a license to launch an airline in 2020, after property and leisure firm FLC Groups Bamboo Airways started its maiden commercial flight in January 2019 to become the fifth Vietnamese airline.

Then in January, Vingroup scrapped its aviation project to focus on technology and manufacturing.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is going send a letter to the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France with a statement on Ukraine's participation in the Partnership in the near future

The Cabinet of Ministers has approved Ukraine's accession to the Biarritz Partnership international initiative on the promotion of equality between women and men. This was reported by the press service of Ukraine's Foreign Affairs.

"Following the example of the G7 countries and Australia, Chile, India, Senegal, Rwanda, which are already members of the Biarritz Partnership, Ukraine is strengthening the implementation of a policy of equal opportunities for women and men," the statement said.

Within the framework of the Biarritz Partnership, the Government of Ukraine has defined the following obligations: ending gender-based violence; ensuring fair and quality education and health; promoting womens economic empowerment; ensuring full equality between men and women in public policies.

As we reported earlier, on September 30, 2019, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky approved sustainable development goals for Ukraine until 2030.

Ukraine is expected to:

1. Overcome poverty.

2. Overcome famine.

3. Ensure healthy living standards.

4. Ensure comprehensive and equitable quality education.

5. Ensure gender equality.

6. Ensure stable management of water sources and sanitation.

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern sources of energy.

8. Support economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work.

9. Create a sustainable infrastructure

10. Reduce inequality.

11. Ensure security, resilience and environmental sustainability of cities.

12. Take urgent measures directed in fighting with climate changes and its consequences.

13. Conduct conservation and management of oceans, seas and water resources.

14. Protect and restore ecosystems, support their rational use.

15. Build a peaceful and inclusive society, ensuring access to the judgment.

16. Revitalize work within a global partnership towards sustainable development.
Stantec Inc (NYSE:STN)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call

, 4:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to Stantec's First Quarter 2020 Earnings Results Conference Call. Leading the call today are Gord Johnston, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Theresa Jang, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is a webcast, and Stantec invites those dialing in to view the slide presentation, which is available in the Investor section at Stantec.com. All information provided during this conference call is subject to forward-looking statement qualification set out on Slide 2, detailed in Stantec's Management's Discussion and Analysis and incorporated in full for the purpose of today's call. Dollar amounts discussed in today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars and are generally rounded.

With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Gord Johnston.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I will begin our call today with a review of our response to COVID-19 to date, and then provide an overview of our first quarter performance. Theresa will then delve deeper into the financial results. Following the presentation of our first quarter results, I'll walk through each of our business units to discuss near-term drivers and potential impacts due to the pandemic. Theresa will then provide an update to our outlook before I return with closing remarks.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, our highest priority has been to keep our people, our families, our clients, and our communities safe. We modeled our response based on our core values, which are shown across the top of the slide. Our first value is we put people first. To protect our people, and as part of our culture of safety, Stantec assembled a Pandemic Committee more than a decade ago. This group of operational, safety and other health experts monitored the outbreak, and we mobilized our response plan before the World Health Organization officially declared the pandemic.

Secondly, we are better together. We quickly transitioned our global workforce to work from home. Our investments in IT and business continuity systems have allowed our people to continue to work together seamlessly to support one another and our clients.

Our third value is we do what is right, which means we provided our employees with flexible work arrangements, and we are proactively engaged with our clients to provide services to meet their evolving needs. We've also taken steps to protect our balance sheet by significantly reducing discretionary spending.

And our final value is we are driven to achieve. We continue to build long-term client relationships by supporting them through the crisis with innovative solutions and service offerings to meet their needs in responding to COVID-19. Our values have allowed us to respond rapidly to protect our people, to serve our clients, and to safeguard shareholder value.

Against the backdrop of this disruption, I'm very pleased that Stantec delivered solid first quarter results that were in line with our pre-pandemic expectations. We drove a 5.7% year-over-year increase in net revenue, led in large part by 4.2% organic growth. Each of our regions and businesses generated organic growth in the quarter, with a particularly strong performance from the United States. Acquisitions delivered 1.4% growth, mostly in buildings.

We saw strong organic growth across all of our business operating units. Growth was especially strong in energy and resources, environmental services, and water. Energy and resources achieved 10.5% organic growth this quarter, with contributions from every sector. Work increased on several mining projects in North America. We also saw higher activity from the Trans Mountain pipeline project, the Koysha Hydro project in Ethiopia, and our work on a tissue mill located in Georgia in the United States.

Organic growth of 6.3% in environmental services was equally split between Canada and the United States. In Canada, environmental management work for infrastructure projects was up year-over-year. In the US, growth was more evenly split between oil and gas, mining, water, and power transmission. In water, organic growth of 5.7% was the result of several new projects. This includes the San Fernando groundwater basin remediation project, which is a progressive design build to treat contaminated groundwater.

5.7% net revenue organic growth in our US operations was driven by water, buildings, energy and resources, and environmental services. We saw a slight retraction in infrastructure due to some localized challenges on certain community development projects. Gross margin in the US was impacted by a number of projects in our transportation business transitioning from the higher-margin design phase to the lower-margin construction administration phase.

1.8% organic growth in Canada was driven by environmental services, energy and resources, and transportation. This was partially offset by a retraction in community development, water, and buildings. Our margins were impacted by increased volume of lower-margin work related to the midstream oil and gas sector, which is impacting energy and resources and environmental services. That said, utilization for our midstream sector is among the highest in all of our businesses, which, combined with minimal marketing spend, drives a solid EBITDA contribution.

Global's 4% organic growth was driven by the UK infrastructure business, a strong quarter in water, partially offset by project wind-downs in power and dams and lower activity in environmental services in Europe. Margins in our global operations were primarily impacted by project mix and some ongoing pricing pressures for our services in the UK and Europe. In our UK water business, AMP7 is now well under way, and we've continued to ramp up in the delivery of contracts we secured last year with Yorkshire Water and United Utilities. We're also pleased to report a number of significant AMP7 project wins in the last quarter, securing further AMP7 frameworks for the next five years.

The first is with Southern Water, where Stantec has been reselected as strategic solutions partner for the new AMP7 period from 2020 to 2025. Under this contract, Stantec will support Southern Water across all areas of the water and wastewater business, including feasibility studies and outline design, project and program management, and water resource planning and environmental management.

In addition, just last week, Stantec was awarded two significant packages of work for AMP7 with Thames Water, the largest water provider in the UK. These include securing positions on the Thames Water project management office framework and on the capital delivery project management and assurance framework.

At the end of the quarter, our contract backlog increased to a record high of CAD4.7 billion, which represents approximately 12 months of work. This was up 11% from year-end, with 5.9% of the increase due to organic growth.

I'll now turn the call over to Theresa for a review of our financial performance.

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Gord, and good morning, everyone. Adjusted net income from continuing operations increased 8% to CAD54 million in the first quarter, and adjusted earnings per share increased 9% to $0.49 per share. This was largely due to a 5.7% increase in net revenue and lower administrative and marketing expenses driven by our cost reduction initiatives. Gross margin for the quarter increased 3.7% to CAD507 million. As a percentage of net revenue, gross margin was 53%. Admin and marketing costs were CAD367 million, representing 38.5% of net revenue. The 100 basis point year-over-year improvement is the result of our drive for operational efficiency and a focused reduction on discretionary spending. Adjusted EBITDA increased 10% to CAD140 million, representing 14.6% of net revenue, a 50 basis point improvement relative to the same quarter last year.

Our balance sheet remains strong. At March 31, net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA, which typically expands in the first quarter, remained at the low end of our targeted range at 1.3 times. We remain in full compliance with all financial covenants. Days sales outstanding was 86 days at quarter-end, compared to our target of 90 days. DSO increased by seven days since year-end, partly as a result of contract terms that influenced the timing of invoicing, as well as slight disruptions in payment processes for some of our clients due to COVID-19. Bear in mind that DSO at year-end benefited from the receipt of certain milestone-based payments.

We remain focused on invoicing and collection activities, but also anticipate that DSO may increase over the balance of the year. Given our strong mix of public sector clients and high quality of our private sector clients, we do not believe our credit risk has increased meaningfully as a result of the pandemic.

Moving on to liquidity and capital allocation, our free cash outflow for the quarter improved by 38% compared to Q1 '19. Operating cash flows for continuing operations, typically an outflow in the first quarter, were CAD45 million, a CAD43 million improvement compared to Q1 '19. The improvement was driven by an increase in cash receipts from clients and a decrease in cash paid to suppliers. Cash flows used in investing activities were CAD21 million, a CAD78 million decrease compared to Q1 '19 when we funded the Wood & Grieve acquisition. Capital expenditures were also lower this quarter compared to Q1 '19.

We used CAD24 million for net financing activities compared to cash inflows of CAD62 million in Q1 '19. This quarter, we saw a CAD65 million net reduction in drawings on our revolving credit facility, a CAD21 million increase in share repurchases, partly offset by a CAD20 million increase in proceeds from the exercise of stock options.

I'll hand the call back to Gord now to review our 2020 outlook.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Theresa. Turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year, the pandemic has created an unprecedented degree of uncertainty. While we are not able to reliably forecast the financial impact for 2020, we can give you some insights about the key drivers to our business.

Our business is well diversified across geographies and sectors. We've learned the importance of maintaining a balanced mix to guard against over-exposure to any particular end-market, and we feel that we've achieved a good balance. Client mix is also important, and our weighting toward public project, and those for which the end client is a public agency, is now more than 50%.

Having said that, no one will be immune to the impacts of the pandemic, including us. Water will likely be the most resilient of our businesses, and we are actually seeing an acceleration of contract awards in the UK. We see strong investment drivers continuing here, as well as the potential for government stimulus spending. Infrastructure is holding up quite well, with the vast majority of projects continuing without interruption. The maintenance deficit in global infrastructure will require continued investment, and this space also has the potential to receive government stimulus spending. We have, however, seen a slowdown in community development, which you might expect.

Our buildings business is currently very busy assisting healthcare institutions and governments in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes the design of temporary hospital facilities, like McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, and the retrofitting of isolation wards into existing hospitals. We expect to see a decrease in commercial and hospitality projects in the near- to mid-term. But COVID-19 will likely shift the paradigms for workplace, education and healthcare environments, and we are well-positioned to help transition these spaces to what will become the new normal.

Even though most of the work we do in environmental services is for the private sector, we continue to benefit from investments in environmental stewardship, renewable energy, and Greenfield developments. An example of this is the midstream contract we won in Q1 to provide environmental services to LNG Canada for the construction and commissioning period for the LNG project in Kitimat, British Columbia.

While lower commodity prices will be a headwind for our mining and oil and gas sectors of energy and resources, we see continued support for the renewable power sector. In our oil and gas group, the majority of our activity supports the midstream sector, which continues to proceed on schedule thus far. Our exposure to the more challenged upstream oil and gas sector remains immaterial at less than 1% of net revenue in Q1 2020. We also anticipate there will be opportunities to participate in the recently announced orphan well remediation program for western Canada.

So as we stand back, we see our business as being quite resilient to the impact of the pandemic, noting that water and infrastructure, among our largest businesses, are expected to be the least impacted.

I'll now turn it back over to Theresa to review our Q2 outlook.

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Gord. So while we aren't able to reliably forecast our financial results for the full year, we do have a line of sight to Q2 relative to our first quarter results. We expect nominal organic net revenue retraction for Q2, partially offset by the expected continued benefit from a strengthened US to Canadian dollar exchange rate. More than 50% of our net revenues are generated in the US.

In the US, we expect Q2 revenues to remain relatively consistent with Q1 before the expected benefit of foreign exchange, as project delays in the commercial sector of our buildings practice and the completion of certain water projects are expected to be offset by the continued ramp-up of activity on major infrastructure projects. In Canada, we expect nominal net revenue retraction in Q2. Our global business is experiencing some delays in private sector work, and these challenges are partly offset by recent project wins in water.

Given the unprecedented uncertainty facing the global economy and our inability to provide a reliable forecast of net revenues for the second half of 2020, we are withdrawing our guidance for the balance of the year. We remain committed to strong project execution and driving solid gross margins. We're monitoring the quality of utilization for our fixed fee contracts in particular, which make up less than half of our total portfolio.

And while we're on solid financial footing, we've taken steps to further bolster our resiliency. Our Board and senior leaders have taken voluntary reductions in compensation, and discretionary spending has been significantly reduced. We've implemented a number of staffing strategies that are intended to preserve the quality of our workforce to ensure that we're positioned to quickly rebound when the economy begins to recover. We'll work diligently to maintain administrative and marketing costs at or below 39% of net revenue, the upper end of our previous target range.

As previously mentioned, our balance sheet remains strong. Based on our internal modeling, we expect to remain within our 1 time to 2 times leverage range throughout 2020. With no near-term debt maturities that require refinancing, and in addition with more than 70% of our debt at a floating rate, the current low interest environment will provide a tailwind. We have ample liquidity, with more than CAD250 million in undrawn capacity on our revolving credit facility. We also have access to an additional CAD600 million in funds, if required.

We remain committed to deploying capital to generate the best risk-adjusted return for shareholders. All non-essential capital expenditures have been put on hold. We've paused acquisition activities, but remain very well positioned to act when an opportunity presents itself. And we're adjusting to the realities of the current environment. We remain committed to returning capital to shareholders through the payment of a dividend. And while we were active in repurchasing shares during the first quarter, we've slowed this activity.

And I'll hand the call back to Gord now to wrap things up.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

As the pandemic continues to unfold, we remain focused on monitoring and responding to potential impacts to our clients, our communities; and, most importantly, our employees. Our end-markets have proven to be resilient in past downturns, and we are better positioned than ever to weather the impacts of this downturn, thanks to our increased geographic and business diversification.

Our balance sheet is in great shape, and investors should take comfort in our solid cash flow, low leverage, and robust access to capital. Our core value of putting people first has never been more important, and I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our employees for supporting our clients and our communities as we continue to navigate these exceptional circumstances together.

And with that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator?

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we would like to open the floor for questions. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Jacob Bout, CIBC.

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

Good morning.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Jacob.

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

I want to talk -- just could you provide a bit more granularity about the risk in the private sector? What areas do you think is most vulnerable? And then maybe about the collection of receivables in the private sector to date?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Sure. I'll start talking about the private sector overall, and then Theresa can talk more about receivables. So from the private sector, as we've said, in western Canada, the majority of the work that we do, and everyone has thoughts, of course, first is oil and gas. But our work in oil and gas in Canada is really related to the midstream pipeline sector. And so, we're seeing there, between our work in -- on Trans Mountain, our work on Coastal Gas and so on, we're not seeing any concerns there.

One area where we're seeing a bit of trepidation, I think, just from a confidence perspective, is with private sector land development clients. We're seeing a bit of that in the southern United States. We're seeing some of that -- some of the planning work that we had anticipated would come in in the UK. The latter part of last year, I think we've mentioned before, was a bit slow as developers were looking for certainty related to Brexit. And now, we see that -- now that the COVID uncertainty has caused a little bit of confidence issues with some of those developers, as well. So those would be the two main areas that we'd be looking for in the private sector.

And over to Theresa on the collections side.

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So, I think the first thing I'd say is that we're obviously monitoring it very closely. And we haven't yet seen really any shift in the behaviors in our receivables. And so, that's positive. Our cash flow appears to be in line with our expectations as well. So we're not seeing much of a change there yet.

In terms of our overall receivable profile, it's interesting. If you look at our balance sheet, we've got about CAD1.3 billion that comprises our receivables and our WIP. And as we look at our 10 largest clients in North America, that doesn't represent a disproportionate piece of those receivables or WIP. In fact, our largest client with receivables and WIP outstanding makes up about 3% of that, and then it just kind of goes down from there. So that really speaks to the strength of the diversification of our portfolio. And I might add as well, that in the top 10 clients that I just referred to, those are all largely well-capitalized companies, or federal or other large government agencies. So we don't believe that there is really any significant risk at all where it comes to our receivable profile.

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

And is there much of a difference in DSO between private and public?

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

No, not really. I don't have a statistic off the top of my head for this. We look at DSOs more broadly. We don't tend to see much of a difference at all.

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

Okay. And then, my last question here, just on -- along the lines of what you're learning from the pandemic so far, what changes -- are you thinking about longer term that you can make on how you're operating. Obviously, working from home, less travel, along those lines, what are you thinking right now?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

The -- one of the -- I think the first learning that we had was just how incredibly resilient our employees have been. As we've moved them home, as we've gotten set up on our IT systems, it's been extremely -- we've seen the productivity continue very strong. So really pleased with the strength of our overall employee base.

But certainly, some of the other things that we're looking at is, as we begin to move these people back to the office, what percentage of them will we need to bring back and then, what would be the long-term impact, the short- and long-term impact on real estate. But the other thing that we've been talking about quite a bit is we've seen how efficient we can be working remotely, working via Skype and videoconferences and so on. So I do think that you'll see a reduction in travel for meetings going forward, because we've found that we can operate extremely efficiently without having to get people on airplanes all the time and really utilize the technology that we've invested in over the last couple of years.

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Great. Thanks Jacob.

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question will come from Mona Nazir, Laurentian Bank.

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

Good morning. And congrats on the quarter. And taking my questions, thank you. So, firstly, just in regard to your guidance for Q2, which is appreciated, the nominal retraction that you're seeing in Canada and the US, I'm just wondering if you could share what you factored in for the energy and resources or environmental segments. Is it safe to assume, particularly for the energy segment, that it turned to contraction from the 10.5% organic growth in Q1?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Our environmental services and energy and resources, a lot of that work that we're doing in Canada in particular is related to the midstream pipelining work, so I don't see a significant retraction there. In Canada in general, where we were thinking is that the overall Canadian economic picture was never forecast to be as strong as the US going into 2020. So as we're early into Q2, we're not seeing a lot of the typical ramp-up in field programs and project starts and so on that we would see this early into the second quarter. But again, we're only a month in, so as provinces and others begin to open up, we may see some additional strengthening of that. But however, the slower Q2 ramp-up, coupled with the overall weaker Canadian economy, is really what made us forecast that NR might retract nominally from Q1 in Canada.

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

Okay. Perfect. That's helpful. So just to confirm, for Q2, you have not factored in -- you're still seeing work, and you haven't factored in a material contraction?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

That's correct.

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

Okay. Perfect. And in your MD&A outlook, you speak about preserving the quality of the workforce, so that you're well positioned to quickly rebound. I'm just wondering, given your guidance for Q2, if you could speak about the balance of maintaining a certain margin profile and keeping staff. I'm just wondering, have you identified certain thresholds or time periods? And where are your thoughts on preserving workforce, and how could that change?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

So, what we did, Mona, at the very beginning, we developed an overall playbook to help us as we were thinking about workforce management through this. So we gave people options, such as rather than having to move to a layoff or a furlough situation, we'd look at things like a reduction in hours or a work sharing, or if people wanted to use up some of the bank's time that they had in jurisdictions where we're allowed to bank time. So we're looking for a lot of alternatives in order to have people not charging time if they weren't busy, of course, but also to maintain that staff load to the best that we could through it.

So I think you're right that, that whole workforce management is very, very important, because as we come out of this, and I think nobody is really sure what the recovery will look like, we want to ensure that we have the staff that we need to respond appropriately, but through those strategies, like work sharing, reduced work weeks and so on. And I should clarify, we have not asked our broader employee base to take a salary reduction. We want to keep those folks with us and engage the best we can, so we're in best position to -- for the recovery.

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

That's very helpful. And just lastly for me, just wondering if you could give us some insight into the type of conversations that you're having with customers in your end-market and where you're seeing some of the most significant pivots. I know that you touched on water accelerating, for example.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Right. Well, it's interesting. As we've talked to a number of different levels of government, we're hearing some discussion about what projects might there be available that we could pull forward from a previous -- from a subsequent year into this year. And of course, we're on the front end to that with the environmental work and the design work that needs to be done. They're looking to what projects can we pull forward to even increase capital spending in 2020 and early 2021, so that we can get these projects out on the street and get people working again.

So, certainly in the public sector, we're hearing a lot of talk about potential stimulus programs, what shovel-ready program -- projects might there be that they could advance. And so, I think pretty positive from that perspective, but, again, we haven't seen any programs announced yet from an infrastructure stimulus perspective. But I think I'm still encouraged by the amount of discussion that we're having on it.

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Benoit Poirier, Desjardins Capital Markets.

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

Thank you very much. And good morning, Theresa and Gord.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

Yeah. First question, when we look at your backlog, it grew 5.9% organically on a sequential basis, so that was a nice achievement. Could you talk about what drove that sequential increase and whether it's sustainable in light of your bidding pipeline you see in front of you?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Thanks, Benoit. We saw increase in gross -- sorry, in backlog in each of our Canada, the United States, and global. So it was probably -- it was very broad-based. And certainly, we saw a lot of great water projects coming in in Q1. We saw some good transportation projects. So I think we feel pretty good about it. We have seen the cadence of new RFPs issuance did slow a little bit near the end of Q1, and we saw that a little bit through April as well.

Now, we've seen a bit of strengthening in that in some jurisdictions into May, but I think it's probably still a little bit lower than -- lower in terms of new project RFPs than we would typically see this time of year. But we're hopeful, as I mentioned into Mona's question, would be the discussions that we've been having with various government clients in particular, that they're looking to bring at least some projects forward. And if they do, then as soon as people hopefully can get back to the office, we'll see the issuance of some of those RFPs and hopefully, we'll see that return to a more normal level. But again, time will tell.

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

Okay. Perfect. With respect to the government stimulus, you mentioned that there is a lot of discussion that are taking place, although we haven't seen anything yet. But more specifically, about the CAD1.5 trillion that was recirculated by Mr. Trump lately, could you talk about that potential opportunity and maybe whether it might materialize and the timing, and which sector would benefit the most, Gord?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Sure. We -- typically, as we look at a lot of this infrastructure stimulus, I think that we would be -- it's hard to speculate, but the discussion typically goes along the lines of transportation projects. But I think we might also see some support for healthcare going forward, as we talk about either healthcare facilities or those sorts of things. So I would suspect some areas there. Certainly, we hope to see some in the water space as well, but again, it's all just speculation at this time because I haven't seen any details on any sorts of programs.

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

Okay. And last question for me. Obviously, given the travel ban restriction, you mentioned in the past that little bit tougher to perform due diligence. But could you maybe provide an update on the M&A opportunities and whether you're -- whether it's still ongoing in terms of discussion, and whether we might see some to materialize in 2020? Thank you.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

We still think, Benoit, that if things go the way we hope, and from a recovery perspective, we certainly would like to bring a few across the finish line in 2020. We have a number of ongoing discussions in various levels of the process, but there's a couple things that we need to work through. We can do a lot of the due diligence through data room, with a number of these firms that we're in discussions with. We've already met with senior leadership. We're very comfortable from a cultural perspective.

But near the end, we still want to get in front of people, look at the whites of their eyes a little bit, and talk about projects, perhaps even talk with some clients to make sure that the long-term client support will still be there. I think we also want to have a good look at valuation now. We typically look at valuations based on performance historically. And assuming that, that performance would be similar or with some synergies, we can improve it going forward. But the issue is now we really have to get a level of comfort with what the performance would look like going forward, before we want to confirm our valuation.

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

That's great color. Thank very much for the time.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Great. Thanks, Benoit.

Operator

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Ben Cherniavsky, Raymond James.

Ben Cherniavsky -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Good morning guys.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Ben.

Ben Cherniavsky -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Nice to see, you got some of your mojo back in quarter. I wanted to just ask a little more about, obviously, the outlook for the rest of the year. I respect the difficulty of providing guidance, and that makes sense to me. But you did make some comments on what you've seen second quarter in terms of activity in your projects. But if I recall correctly from past downturns, yours is a little bit of a lagging business. The stuff that's broken ground continues for several months and quarters. It's a question of how you refill that pipeline going forward for, say, back half of the year and next year.

Without getting granular about the numbers, just directionally, am I thinking about that correctly, that if you're going to see a more material impact from COVID and from some of the markets outside of, say, infrastructure, some of the private markets -- because, clearly, the macro variables are flashing red all over the place that, that might show up a little later as your business lags and you try to replenish the backlog?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I think you're right. We saw, certainly not just in our business, but the overall industry, didn't see a big hit quickly like some of the consumer, hospitality and airlines and so on did. And so, I think Q1 is still reasonably solid, and we've provided some color there for Q2.

It's interesting. As you look at the significant increase in backlog that we saw in Q1, and so those projects we'll see starting up through Q2 and into Q3 and Q4. Hopefully with that will come some public infrastructure spend that'll come and will help to continue to fill the backlog and bolster that. But I think your point on private is a very good point, because we don't really know what our private sector recovery might look like.

So as we're looking, and I think we had a little color that we do expect to see a bit of a downturn in the commercial buildings market. I would expect to see our community development, or land development business slow a little bit as well, just from an overall industry confidence perspective. So I think that's one of the reasons why we really thought that we wanted to withdraw guidance, just because there's -- until we have a little bit more certainty, it's really difficult for us to speculate.

Ben Cherniavsky -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Right, but I mean, I'm not even really talking about how the recovery looks yet. I think we're -- I mean, I hope we've found bottom, but we're clearly in a retraction mode now. The -- but I guess my point is the impact of that gets felt several quarters out for just generally in your industry particularly, like I said, on the private side. There's a lag there, right?

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Right. I think that's exactly right, Ben. So if no more -- if we see a real lack of private work coming in, it will be a couple of quarters when we'll see more softness in our business.

Ben Cherniavsky -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Right. That's consistent with what we've seen the last couple of downturns that you guys have had, I think. So I just wanted to confirm that nothing had changed. Thanks very much.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Ben.

Operator

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Speakers, at this time, we have no further questions in the queue.

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Great. Well, I just wanted to thank everyone for joining us on the call today. I know it's a busy morning with a lot of calls there. So certainly, we appreciate you spending some of your time with us. And we look forward to chatting with you through the quarter. Thanks very much.

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Duration: 40 minutes

Call participants:

Gord Johnston -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Theresa Jang -- Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Jacob Bout -- CIBC World Markets -- Analyst

Mona Nazir -- Laurentian Bank Securities -- Analyst

Benoit Poirier -- Desjardins Securities -- Analyst

Ben Cherniavsky -- Raymond James -- Analyst

More STN analysis

All earnings call transcripts
Bollywood actor Raveena Tandon has shared a throwback video which late actor Rishi Kapoor recorded just before he left for the US in 2018 to undergo treatment for cancer. Rishi had recorded a birthday message for Raveenas dad and filmmaker Ravi Tandon.

Rishi says in the video, HI Ravi ji! Let me wish you a very happy 80th birthday. Mai soch raha tha, apki aur humari mulakat 42 saal purani hai. I think we met in 1973, we worked first in Khel Khel Mein, Neetu and me, both of us. We worked in a few films - Jhootha Kahin Ka, Rahi Badal Gaye, Aan Aur Shaan. You know we have had a very good synergy in our work relationship and I have enjoyed working with your. My association with Neetu was principally because of you- you worked in two very important films in both our lives. He also thanked Ravi and then went on to praise his family.

Also read: Iulia Vantur asked when she is marrying Salman Khan, says spending your life with someone more important than papers

Sharing the video, Raveena wrote on Instagram, Dearest dearest Chintu uncle.. you are missed everyday. Just before his going to New York for treatment, he recorded this for papa, and then surprised him by being there with us on papas birthday. you will always be there at home and in our hearts forever Chintuuncle. we love you.

Rishi Kapoor breathed his last on Thursday morning after battling with leukaemia for two years. Neetu later took to Instagram to thank the people who played an important part in their lives these last few years, As a family, we have a deep sense of loss..when we sit together and look back at the past few months what we also feel is immense gratitude - gratitude towards the doctors at HN reliance hospital! The whole team of doctors, brothers and nurses headed by Dr Tarang Gianchandani treated my husband like he was their own - they advised us like we were their own.. and for all that and more I thank them from the bottom of my heart.. @rfhospital.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Copa Airlines' plane is pictured at Tocumen International Aiport after the company said it will suspend all operations in order to weather the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, in Panama City

By Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Marcelo Rochabrun

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Stress has been mounting for Latin American airlines as carriers brace for a slow recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, but Brazil's government on Thursday reduced the loan aid available for carriers, while Panama's Copa Airlines said it did not need a bailout.

"We're not requesting nor are we expecting any aid from the government," Copa Chief Executive Pedro Heilbron told analysts on Thursday. "I think the government has bigger issues to deal with."

In Brazil, a source familiar with government discussions said that the country's BNDES state bank had shrunk by a third the loan aid available for Brazil's top three carriers to 6 billion reais ($1.03 billion).

The Brazil CEOs for carriers Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes <GOLL4.SA>, LATAM Airlines Group <LTM.SN> and Azul SA <AZUL.N> have pushed for government loans that they see as essential. They had been hoping for 3 billion reais in available aid for each company within Brazil.

The contrast in messaging between Copa and Brazil's carriers highlight the differences in their financial health. While Copa could have distributed a dividend this year, flying in Brazil almost always leads to a loss for its airlines.

But there is an extra wrinkle in Brazil, the source said. LATAM Airlines Group is in line for aid but is headquartered in Chile, which has created obstacles.

"They have many problems and complexities as they're in several jurisdictions," the source said. "It's not easy."

LATAM is the continent's largest airline and operates in many countries in South America, but complications in its Brazil negotiations could leave it without aid in its single largest market.

At the same time, LATAM is forging closer ties with Delta Air Lines Inc <DAL.N> with the formalization of a joint-venture agreement announced on Thursday night.

LATAM declined to comment.

Story continues

Gol and Azul are Brazil-based and operate just a handful of international flights.

The 6 billion reais available in Brazil do not include a separate negotiation with planemaker Embraer SA <EMBR3.SA>, which is seeking up to $1.5 billion in government aid after a long-awaited deal with Boeing Co <BA.N> unraveled last month.

In Panama, Copa has reinforced its liquidity privately, most recently with a $350 million bond offering in late April, part of a plan to build a "fortress" of cash," Heilbron said.

It added it was planning to retire early its fleet of 14 older Boeing 737-700 NG planes, the latest carrier to do away with planes due to the coronavirus crisis.

Copa said it would focus on a leaner fleet composed mainly of its Boeing 737-800 NG planes instead.

Copa also has six Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes, but those have been grounded worldwide since last year, after two deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun and Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Peter Cooney)
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Hon. Osei Kyei Osei Mensah Bonsu, has raised concerns over a possible constitutional crisis if the country fails to combat the COVID-19 pandemic before the December elections.



Speaking in an interview on the 'Frontline' on Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm, he argued that the nations 1992 constitution does not provide clarity on who should take over the management of the state if the sitting Presidents tenure expires in unforeseen circumstances.



The outbreak of the coronavirus has led to debates over what should be done in the event that Ghana is unable to go to the polls.



Commenting on the challenge confronting the nation, the MP for Suame constituency said it would be prudent for Ghanas Electoral Commission to put in the required measures towards the conduct of the election.



President Akufo-Addo he disclosed does not want to go even one day beyond the constitutional mandate that he has to administer the affairs of this country.



The experienced parliamentarian emphasised the need for stakeholders to identify the lapses in the constitution and put drastic measures to address them.



Commenting on the one on parliamentarians, he said in case of any emergence, provision is made and expressed under the constitution on how the life of Parliament is extended by one year in any event not more than four years.



He further argued that although the constitution provides that when the Speaker acts as President within three months, there should be the conduct of an election to elect a President, the provision is conflicting and calls for a resolution.

Source: rainbowradio.com









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Featured Video
Anti-lockdown protesters won't be armed or flip Canadian flags upside down or hinder traffic when they assemble Saturday near the steps of the Manitoba Legislative Building.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anti-lockdown protesters won't be armed or flip Canadian flags upside down or hinder traffic when they assemble Saturday near the steps of the Manitoba Legislative Building.

But even if the number of demonstrators is scant, the collective message will be loud and clear, says rally spokesman Gerry Bohemier.

"This is friends of ours and myself, and we all discussed it and decided maybe we should go speak our truth. That's a right of democracy," said Bohemier, who said he was a retired Winnipeg chiropractor and noted during an interview Thursday that he spent much of his career studying and administering "natural health."

Their truth? The shutdown of many services, businesses, activities and public spaces across Manitoba and the rest of the country owing to the COVID-19 pandemic is more harmful to human health than the novel coronavirus.

"This was overblown. Many other doctors around the world, scientists around the world... have spoken up against the excessive decisions made by the World Health Organization and the immediate compliance that all of our leaders did without considering other opinions. It was one opinion and that was it," said Bohemier.

The group, calling itself Winnipeg Aware, is holding a "Rally for Freedom and Human Rights" at the stately building at Broadway and Memorial Boulevard at 2 p.m.

Bohemier and his backers are planning a small, peaceful protest  and will adhere to the provincial health guideline of keeping a two-metre distance from one another.

"The shutdown of a country for that long, the economy, the number of people that have suffered financially, loneliness and when people are isolated. There are going to be serious ramifications that have happened already and will happen if these kinds of very exaggerated manoeuvres are tried again," Bohemier said.

"This was overblown. Many other doctors around the world, scientists around the world... have spoken up against the excessive decisions made by the World Health Organization and the immediate compliance that all of our leaders did without considering other opinions. It was one opinion and that was it."  Gerry Bohemier, rally spokesman

"When is it going to stop? They're going mad on one pathway right now without consideration of any other qualified person's opinion. We had no science behind sequestering healthy people... When you create unemployment like they did, you're going to cause extra deaths."

The local group is not affiliated with any other Canadian or U.S. organization.

Similar demonstrations have been staged in several Canadian cities, such as Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.

Headline-stealing protests have also been held in no fewer than 15 American centres, including a May 1 event in Lansing, Mich., that attracted hundreds of armed protesters who stormed the state capitol in defiance of statewide lockdown orders.

The protesters' rally cry is not a theme that resonates with the majority.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford called anti-lockdown protesters "a bunch of yahoos" in late April, and said they were being "selfish" and "irresponsible" for demonstrating against provincial emergency orders. After a rally in Toronto last week, Ford snapped at the "the utmost disrespect" when he saw protesters carrying Canadian flags flying upside down.

On Thursday, Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial medical health officer, said Manitobans are free to voice their concerns but advised people to "avoid large groups, even outside."

Enforcement of public health rules is the responsibility of the province, although Winnipeg police are aware of the rally and will monitor the situation.

"If it's determined we need to deploy resources, that's something we may do. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we want to ensure the safety of everyone involved," said Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Jay Murray.

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell
Government stimulus checks and expanded unemployment benefits appear to have helped backstop consumer finances. Still, there are concerns about the trade-offs that low-income renters must make to pay their rent, and how long they can continue to do so with millions of new unemployment claims filed each week.

Two Democrats, Representative Denny Heck of Washington and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, introduced bills on Friday providing $100 billion to cover about six months of housing costs for tenants. This bill will help tenants pay their rent, without placing the burden on landlords, Mr. Heck said in a statement.

The handling of the Paycheck Protection Program was faulty, inspector.

The Small Business Administrations inspector general said on Friday that flaws in how the agency put the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program into place were likely to have left rural, minority and women-owned businesses unable to get loans and could leave thousands of borrowers saddled with debt.

The report represents the first formal review of the embattled Paycheck Protection Program, which is the centerpiece of the governments economic relief effort. The program, created as part of the $2 trillion CARES Act, has funneled billions of dollars to firms struggling to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, but has been criticized for favoring bigger businesses and for complex requirements that are out of step with economic realities.

According to the inspector generals report, the S.B.A. did not issue guidance to ensure that lenders would prioritize underserved communities, as required by law.

The report also highlights another concern that has gripped borrowers: the S.B.A.s rule that 75 percent of loan proceeds be used to cover payroll costs and 25 percent go overhead costs such as rent.

Because so many businesses will remain shuttered after the eight-week loan period, and because many workers have opted to take more generous unemployment insurance benefits, businesses are fearful that they will be unable to spend enough of the loan money on payroll. In that event, parts of the loans would not be forgiven, saddling the borrowers with debt.
Banks need to be prudent: Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf admits some will find themselves unable to complete house purchases. Photo: Vivek Prakash/Bloomberg

Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf has defended banks that are withdrawing mortgage offers to people whose incomes are hit by the fall-out from the pandemic.

He admitted there was a risk that some people would find themselves unable to complete house purchases.

But he insisted: "It's in everyone's interest that banks make prudent lending decisions... unlike the reckless lending of the past".

The governor was asked on the 'Today with Sean O'Rourke' show, on RTE, about reports in the Irish Independent that banks and other lenders were putting the house deposits of home buyers at risk because they had tightened lending criteria due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Banks were looking carefully at creditworthiness and making decisions accordingly, he said.

Borrowers and lenders needed to maintain open communications "to make sure everyone in the system understands the situation they're in".

Brokers report banks are asking people whether they are receiving the pandemic unemployment payment or the temporary wage subsidy.

Some lenders who are told people have temporarily lost their jobs are withdrawing loan offers and approvals in principal.

This has meant that prospective home buyers are being put at risk of losing their deposits due to problems which have arisen since Covid-19 lending checks were introduced by banks.

The Law Society has reported clients committed to buying property are encountering difficulties drawing down loans already approved by lenders.

The issue has arisen after the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) issued new guidance about mortgage approvals and the drawdown process in April.

Conveyancing solicitors have reported problems for clients getting funds released by lenders on some approved loans, even though all the usual pre-drawdown requirements are in place.

Mortgage broker Michael Dowling said banks were seeking proof that people had not been laid off by demanding to see April payslips.

He said the approach of lenders was inconsistent, with some banks withdrawing loan offers, while others are being flexible.

It comes as a number of banks, including Bank of Ireland, KBC, Ulster Bank and Dilosk/ICS, have temporarily suspended offering exemptions from Central Bank lending rules on the size of deposits and the amount that can be borrowed relative to income.

Goodbody Stockbrokers economist Dermot O'Leary expects mortgage lending to crash by 40pc this year.

He said measures limiting the spread of the virus were restricting physical viewings of property for most of April, May and June.

"While we previously expected a mortgage market of around 10.7bn this year, the lack of activity in Q2 [the second quarter], the unprecedented shock to demand and supply, and a tightening of lending standards will instead result in a large fall in new lending, possibly of the order of 40pc for the year overall."

This would imply lending would fall to 6.42bn.

Figures this week showed a sharp fall-off in the numbers of people approved for a mortgage in March.

There were just 3,733 mortgages approved in March, down 400 from the same month last year.
VANCOUVER - Expanded protections for endangered southern resident killer whales off British Columbia's coast focus on contaminants, noise, physical disturbances and accessibility of chinook salmon, the orca's primary prey.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this Jan. 18, 2014 photo, an endangered female orca leaps from the water while breaching in Puget Sound west of Seattle, as seen from a federal research vessel that had been tracking the whales. The endangered southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea off the southern coast of British Columbia will see enhanced protections this year, the federal government says. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP -Elaine Thompson

VANCOUVER - Expanded protections for endangered southern resident killer whales off British Columbia's coast focus on contaminants, noise, physical disturbances and accessibility of chinook salmon, the orca's primary prey.

The actions announced by several government departments Thursday include closures for recreational and commercial salmon fishing in areas of the Juan de Fuca Strait and Southern Gulf Islands, with specific dates announced in June, the federal government said.

A ban in April on tourist or whale watching vessels with over 12 passengers will continue until the end of June, a measure aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19.

All fish harvesters are being asked to voluntarily stop fishing within 1,000 metres of orcas in B.C. waters.

Interim sanctuary zones established last year for the whales off Pender and Saturna islands will be back up from June 1 to the end of November, a month longer than 2019.

Fisheries and Oceans says the population of the southern residents has fluctuated between 70 and 99 whales since 1976, and their small population size and lack of calves means the unique family of orcas is "facing imminent threats to their survival and recovery."

Andrew Trites, the director of the marine mammal research unit at the University of British Columbia, said the orcas are in real trouble.

"Particularly with having so few births, having so few females in the population, having had a couple males dominate breeding, and then just all the added pressures put on the environment," said Trites, pointing to ocean noise, dwindling fish stocks and the warming ocean.

No vessels will be permitted in sanctuary areas with the exceptions of emergency and Indigenous vessels, while boats are also prohibited from coming within 400 metres of any killer whale starting June 1, the federal government said.

There is an exception to that rule in place for whale watching and tourism companies that receive federal authorization, allowing them to view all whales except southern residents from 200 metres.

Vessels are also asked to reduce their speed within 1,000 metres of a whale and turn engines to neutral if a whale is within 400 metres, a measure the government said is in place year-round.

Officially, there are 73 southern residents, but the Centre for Whale Research in Washington state said the most prolific male is missing and presumed deceased.

The federal government said a technical working group has identified and compiled guidelines for key contaminants affecting whales and their prey.

Terry Beech, a Burnaby MP and parliamentary secretary for the minister of fisheries, said the government has taken unprecedented steps to protect the southern resident population over four years.

"We've shown how far we're willing to go, and if there are measures that we can continue to take to protect this iconic species, all options are certainly on the table."

Beech said more decisions about the chinook fishery will be made in the coming weeks.

Trites said it's good to see the government take steps to create more favourable conditions for the endangered orcas.

The orcas haven't been seen in the Salish Sea the way they once were, he said.

"It's not clear if the whales have seen the memo of all the changes that the government has put in place to make things better for them," he quipped.

The whales' range extends south to California, and Trites said all jurisdictions must take action to ensure their survival.

"So much attention is focused on just the Salish Sea. It's like trying to save migratory birds by only protecting the bird feeder in your backyard."

He said it's not clear why southern residents are faring worse than their northern cousins, whose range extends from waters in B.C. to southeastern Alaska.

The northern residents, with four-times the population, may be getting "first dibs" on salmon returning to the ocean from coastal B.C., said Trites, adding the southern residents' habitat is also more industrialized.

With fewer vessels and noise in the water due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trites said there's some hope that scientists will be able to observe a change in behaviour and gain insight into what's been affecting the whales.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2020.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said a whale watching ban was announced Thursday.
New Delhi, May 8 : Despite hundreds of districts said to be corona free for sometime, India on Friday recorded a surge in the number of positive cases taking its tally to 56,342 as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and Delhi continued to pile up cases.

According to the Union Health Ministry of the total cases, 37,916 are active while 1,886 people have lost their lives. There were 3,390 people to tested positive in just 24 hours while 103 died in the same time.

A total of 16,593 have also recovered as India undergoes the third-phase of the nation-wide lockdown as the shutdown period touched Day 45. A total of 111 foreign nationals and one migrated patient is included in the tally, said the Health Ministry.

According to the ministry, Andaman-Nicobar, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Manipur remain corona-free while the number in Andhra Pradesh has increased to 1,847, out of which 780 have been discharged from the hospital, and reached 38 have died.

As of Friday morning, the number of COVID-19 positive cases in Assam has increased to 54, out of which 34 have been discharged from hospitals. So far, only one has succumbed to the disease. In West Bengal the figure has reached 1,548, 364 have been discharged and 151 have died so far -- the fatality rate has been high in the state.

The number of positive cases in Bihar has reached 550, of which 246 have been discharged. Five have died so far. While, in Chandigarh, the virus-count has reached 135 out of which 21 were discharged and one has died.

In Chhattisgarh, the total tally has reached 59, of which 38 have been discharged. Whereas, in Dadra and Nagar Haveli only one COVID-19 case has been reported so far.

Maharashtra continues to top the tally with 17,974 cases and 694 fatalities, while 3,301 people were cured in the state. It is followed by Gujarat with 7,012 cases and 425 deaths and 1,709 recovered.

There are at least 5,980 cases in the national capital with 1,931 recoveries and 66 deaths. Other states which saw an increased number of cases are Tamil Nadu (5,409), Rajasthan (3,427), Madhya Pradesh (3,252) and Uttar Pradesh (3,071).

The COVID-19 count in Haryana has reached 625, while 260 have been discharged. The state has reported seven deaths so far. In Himachal Pradesh the figure has increased to 46, 38 have been discharged, and two have died.

The number of people infected with Coronavirus in Jammu and Kashmir has reached 793, of which 335 have been discharged and nine have died.

As many as 132 cases have been reported in Jharkhand so far -- 41 were discharged and three have died. The figure has reached 705 in Karnataka, 366 was discharged and 30 have died.

In Kerala, this figure has reached 530, with 474 been discharged from hospital and four have died. In Ladakh, the figure has gone up to 42 by Friday morning while 17 have been discharged from the hospital.

There have been 12 cases in Meghalaya, 10 were discharged and one has died. So far only 1 case has been registered in Mizoram. There have been 219 cases in Orissa, 62 have been discharged. Two have died.

The number of people infected with the virus in Puducherry is 9.

Meanwhile, 1,644 people have been reported to be suffering from the virus in Punjab, out of which 149 have been discharged, 28 have died.

In Telangana the figure has reached 1,123, out of which 650 have been discharged and 29 have died.

The number of corona victims in Tripura reached 65 by Friday morning, of which two have been discharged from the hospital so far.

Uttarakhand has reported 61 COVID-19 cases, out of which 39 have been discharged and one has died.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 7, 2020) - Regulus Resources Inc. (TSXV: REG) CEO of Regulus Resources, John Black, speaks about the company's primary project - a copper-gold-silver project in northern Peru.

If you cannot view the video above, please visit:

https://www.b-tv.com/regulus-resources-copper-gold-ceo-clip-90sec/ 

Regulus Resources is being featured on BNN Bloomberg on May 9th & 10th, 2020, throughout the day and evenings.

Regulus Resources Inc. (TSXV: REG)

www.regulusresources.com

About CEO Clips:

CEO Clips is the largest library of publicly traded company CEO videos in Canada and the US. These 90 second video profiles broadcast on national TV and online via 15 top financial sites including: Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance and Stockhouse.com.

BTV - Business Television/CEO Clips Contact: Trina Schlingmann (604) 664-7401 x 5 trina@b-tv.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55550
Sacramento, CA  Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued the broadest loosening of his stay-at-home order so far, allowing some retailers to reopen curbside but not have customers in stores.

Were moving away now from essential and non-essential to lower risk, relayed Newsom. Really looking more specifically within that lower risk sector at the variation on the frequency and the time and manner to which these businesses engage with customers and how that impacts risk to customers and communities.

Citing improvement in battling the coronavirus, the Governor says lower risk businesses in the retail, manufacturing, and logistics sectors can resume operations on Friday, May 8th if they follow new rules issued by the Department of Public Health.

Retailers like bookstores, clothing stores, toy stores, and florists, are being asked to develop contactless payment procedures, have hand sanitizer available for employees and customers, ensure employees have proper protective gear, and ask employees to deliver goods to customers cars when possible.

Manufacturing must provide a working space that allows workers to maintain physical distance and have access to face coverings and/or gloves. Additionally, break rooms should be closed and replaced with outdoor break areas with spaced out seating, where possible. The logistics sector, which includes warehouses and deliveries, is being asked to follow similar guidelines.

Newsom noted that the guidelines for variances into the 2nd phase will be out next Tuesday, May 12th, while the state is also working on developing guidelines that will allow office buildings, dine-in restaurants, shopping malls, and outdoor museums to reopen next.

All businesses that want to reopen will need to train employees on how to curb the spread of the disease, monitor themselves for symptoms, and ask workers to stay home if they feel sick.

County officials will have the ability to decide how quickly they move into Stage 2 of reopening and move faster than the state if county public health officials prove they meet the following criteria:

No more than one new COVID-19 case per 10,000 residents in the past 14 days

No COVID-19 deaths in the past 14 days

Essential workers must have access to PPE

A minimum of 1.5 tests per 1,000 residents being conducted daily

At least 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents

Ability to temporarily house 15% of the countys homeless population

Hospitals are equipped to handle a 35% surge at minimum

Nursing facilities have a two-week supply of PPE

Continue to monitor metrics to potentially re-enact restrictions

Newsom explains, The foundational predicate is self-certification, but self-certification with conditions. These counties that want to move deeper into the second phase have to do so with all of these tough questions answered on testing, tracing, surge, and protecting vulnerable communities.

The governor added that the state will provide technical assistance and is open to arguments centered on a countys unique conditions and circumstances. He stressed the state will try to provide some flexibility. However, Newsom cautioned, Lets not get ahead of ourselves at peril that we see this disease come back in a second wave that makes the first wave pale in comparison. Lets continue to do what weve done to get to this point, and I hope folks see some light at the end of this tunnel.

Details regarding Stage 2 guidelines can be found here. Click here for more details on how Calaveras counties are addressing Phase 2 business operation moving forward and here for Tuolumne. For the states Resiliency Roadmap that includes the guidelines to reduce infection risk, click here and here for the states Report Card on COVID-19.
In nature, every species must be equipped with a strategy to be able to survive in response to danger. Plants, too, have innate systems that are triggered in response to a particular threat, such as insects feeding on them. For example, some plants sense "herbivore-derived danger signals" (HDS), which are specific chemicals in oral secretions of insects. This activates a cascade of events in the plant's defense machinery, which leads to the plant developing "resistance" to (or "immunity" against) the predator. But despite decades of research, exactly how plants recognize these signals has remained a bit of a mystery.

In a new study published in Communications Biology, a research team from Tokyo University of Science, Ehime University, Okayama University, The University of Tokyo, and Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, led by Prof Gen-ichiro Arimura, attempts to shed light on exactly how plant HDS systems work. They chose to study membrane proteins called "receptor-like kinases" (RLKs), which are found in soybean leaves. They based their study on previous evidence from plants like Arabidopsis, tobacco, and cowpea, in which RLKs play a major role in HDS systems. Prof Arimura says, "Scientists have been trying to understand the molecular mechanism of plant resistance for years, but the 'sensors' involved in plant recognition of insect pests are still not known. Thus, we wanted to get a detailed understanding of these mechanisms."

To begin with, the scientists focused on soybean RLK genes that were structurally and functionally similar to a RLK gene, which is known to trigger a danger response by recognizing "oligosaccharides" (small carbohydrate molecules) during pathogen attack. They speculated that owing to these similarities, soybean genes might also show a mechanism similar to that seen in pathogen resistance. They found 15 such genes through genetic analysis. Next, the scientists generated 15 types of Arabidopsis plants, each plant uniquely expressing only one of the 15 individual soy genes. When they tested these plants using oral secretions from the pest, they uncovered genes for two novel RLKs that showed a defense response specific to the oral secretions, called GmHAK1 and GmHAK2. These findings were unprecedented: the role of these RLKs in soybean HDS systems had never been revealed before. Moreover, when the scientists dug deeper into the mechanism of these regulatory factors in Arabidopsis, they found two proteins, a HAK homolog and PBL27 (which play a role in intracellular signaling), to be involved in this pathway. Accordingly, this confirmed what the scientists had initially expected--soybean and Arabidopsis possess similar mechanisms for "danger response."

In agriculture, it is crucial to develop strategies for pest control in crop plants to avoid incurring losses. This study takes a massive step in this direction by uncovering an important cellular mechanism that triggers defense response in plants. Manipulating this innate cellular system may even help scientists to fuel the development of new agricultural products, potentially making life easier for farmers. Prof Arimura concludes, "It has been challenging to find new pest control methods that are effective and do not harm the ecosystem in any way. Our study offers a potential solution to this problem by uncovering the details of how certain plants develop resistance."

###

Reference

Title of original paper: Soy and Arabidopsis receptor-like kinases respond to polysaccharide signals from Spodoptera species and mediate herbivore resistance

Journal: Communications Biology

DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-0959-4

About The Tokyo University of Science

Tokyo University of Science (TUS) is a well-known and respected university, and the largest science-specialized private research university in Japan, with four campuses in central Tokyo and its suburbs and in Hokkaido. Established in 1881, the university has continually contributed to Japan's development in science through inculcating the love for science in researchers, technicians, and educators.

With a mission of "Creating science and technology for the harmonious development of nature, human beings, and society", TUS has undertaken a wide range of research from basic to applied science. TUS has embraced a multidisciplinary approach to research and undertaken intensive study in some of today's most vital fields. TUS is a meritocracy where the best in science is recognized and nurtured. It is the only private university in Japan that has produced a Nobel Prize winner and the only private university in Asia to produce Nobel Prize winners within the natural sciences field. Website: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/

About Professor Gen-ichiro Arimura from Tokyo University of Science (TUS)

Dr Gen-ichiro Arimura is a Professor in the Faculty of Industrial Science and Technology, Department of Biological Science and Technology at TUS, Japan. He completed his graduation at the Hiroshima University Graduate School, after which he worked in the field of plant biology for several years before moving to TUS in 2013. A senior and well-respected researcher, he has more than 110 publications to his credit. His key research interests include plant biotechnology, ecology, and biochemistry.

Funding information

This work was financially supported by the MEXT Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (18H04786 and 20H04786) and JSPS KAKENHI (20K15878, 20K06058, and 20H02951).
A health worker dressed in full personal protective equipment (PPE) takes a nasopharyngeal swab sample from a patient for Covid-19 testing at the Machakos County Field Hospital near Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday, May 4, 2020.

The novel coronavirus could kill between 83,000 and 190,000 people in Africa in the first year and infect between 29 million and 44 million in the first year if it is not contained, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

The projections are contained in a new WHO Africa study based on assumptions that no containment measures are put in place, which has fortunately not been the case, WHO Africa head Matshidiso Moeti told reporters in a teleconference.

Most countries on the continent have imposed restrictions on public gatherings, international travel and curfews among other measures meant to curb the spread of the virus.

The virus hit Africa later than other continents and transmission rates are lower than elsewhere. Still, this could translate into a prolonged, years-long outbreak, WHO said.

"COVID-19 could become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region. We need to test, trace, isolate and treat," Moeti said in a separate statement.

The organization warned that small countries, as well as Algeria, South Africa and Cameroon, could be severely affected.
You're sick, perhaps very sick, so you head to the local emergency department fearing the onset of COVID-19. But what symptoms most clearly point to a need for urgent care?

Based on a review of more than 1,000 patients who've already sought care for respiratory illnesses since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in March, researchers at Harvard Medical School are offering up a new list of symptoms to watch out for.

First of all, fever isn't necessarily at the top of the list.

"Fever is not a reliable indicator" of COVID-19, said a team led by Pieter Cohen. He's an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and a physician with the Cambridge Health Alliance, in Boston.

Often, people who show up at hospital ERs with respiratory symptoms have only slightly elevated body temperatures, the researchers noted. They added that other symptoms are often more specific to COVID-19.

"COVID-19 may begin with various permutations of cough without fever, sore throat, diarrhea, abdominal pain, headache, body aches, back pain and fatigue. It can also present with severe body aches and exhaustion," Cohen's group explained in a Harvard news release.

Another key sign of coronavirus illness: A loss of the sense of smell within the first few days of symptom onset.

And what really sets more serious cases of COVID-19 apart is something that's almost never seen in influenza or other respiratory illnesses: severe shortness of breath.

"In serious COVID-19, shortness of breath is a critical differentiator from other common illnesses," Cohen's group said.

Shortness of breatha feeling that you can't fill your lungs with air as you normally doalmost never appears within the first day or two of the onset of other symptoms. But it "can appear four or more days after onset of other symptoms," the team added.

Shortness of breath can also occur in an anxiety-induced panic attack, and of course the fear that you might have COVID-19 could spur such an attack.

But the shortness of breath that is indicative of clinical COVID-19 manifests somewhat differently, the research team said.

First of all, "anxiety-induced shortness of breath occurs rapidly, seemingly out of the blue, while COVID-19 shortness of breath tends to develop gradually over a few days," the researchers noted. And when shortness of breath comes from a panic attack, it typically occurs when a person is at rest or trying to fall asleep.

In contrast, COVID-19 shortness of breath "gets worse with physical exertion, including performing simple daily activities like walking, climbing stairs or cleaning," the researchers said.

Shortness of breath tied to COVID-19 is a real warning sign that a person might need to seek medical help because of a dangerous dip in oxygen levels in the blood. "Blood oxygen levels can drop precipitously with exertion, even in previously healthy people," the team said.

Doctors can quickly monitor blood oxygen levels using a simple finger-clip device called a pulse oximeter. Once COVID-19 shortness of breath has been diagnosed, these patients might be released back home, but will still require "very close monitoring and frequent follow-up to check how the shortness of breath is evolving, and whether a patient may be deteriorating and may need to go to the hospital," the team said.

"Early recognition and proper triage are especially important given that, in the first days of infection, people infected with [the new coronavirus] may experience symptoms indistinguishable from a variety of other acute viral and bacterial infections," Cohen added.

Cohen's team published their findings April 20 in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal. The study is based on more than 1,000 patients seen at a COVID-19 outpatient clinic in Boston.

Reading over the new report, New York City emergency medicine physician Dr. Robert Glatter said, the findings "mirror the clinical picture of patients that I continue to see."

Some patients come to his department at Lenox Hill Hospital without any drop in blood oxygen, but with "fatigue, muscle aches [and] often loss of smell," Glatter said. These patients are still able to eat and drink and they're typically discharged back home.

"There is also a subgroup of stable patientswith mild symptoms and mild hypoxia [low blood oxygen]who, after careful evaluation, can be safely discharged and monitored in the home-setting with pulse oximetry and frequent telemedicine follow-up to check for progression of symptoms," he added.

"But most important, we must pay close attention to those patients who experience worsening and new symptomschiefly difficulty breathing or chest discomfort up to a week after onset of symptoms, along with fever who then present for re-evaluation in the emergency department," Glatter said.

It's these patients who are most at risk for the onset of a "cytokine storm"a very dangerous condition where the immune system's response to the new coronavirus runs amuck.

When blood oxygen levels fall too low, these patients may require hospital admission, Glatter said.

So, "it's important to look at all aspects of patients' concerns along with their chief complaint when they present to the emergency departmentchiefly the timeline and course of their symptomswhen evaluating patients who may be at risk for complications and progression of COVID-19," Glatter said.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

Copyright  2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
A 79-year-old man has been rushed to hospital by helicopter after his ride-on lawnmower rolled down and embankment.

The elderly man was pinned under the mower for two hours on the weekend after it rolled on him at a property at Webbs Creek, 80km north-west of Sydney.

NSW Ambulance Special Operations team and SES crews worked to free the man, who was trapped under the lawnmower's collapsed roof, without further injuring him.

A 79-year-old man has been pinned under a ride-on mower for two hours after it rolled onto him while he was working on a hillside at Webbs Creek in rural NSW

The 79-year-old was transported by the Careflight Team to Westmead Hospital with lower leg injuries.

At least five crew members were seen working on the steep hillside as they carefully considered how to free the man.

Ropes were seen attached to the chassis to stop it falling further down the embankment during the rescue.
Hydrogen is an essential commodity with over 60 million tons produced globally every year. However over 95 percent of it is made by steam reformation of fossil fuels, a process that is energy intensive and produces carbon dioxide. If we could replace even a part of that with algal biohydrogen that is made via light and water, it would have a substantial impact.

This is essentially what has just been achieved in the lab of Kevin Redding, professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and director of the Center for Bioenergy and Photosynthesis. Their research, entitled Rewiring photosynthesis: a Photosystem I -hydrogenase chimera that makes hydrogen in vivo was published very recently in the high impact journal Energy and Environmental Science.

"What we have done is to show that it is possible to intercept the high energy electrons from photosynthesis and use them to drive alternate chemistry, in a living cell" explained Redding. "We have used hydrogen production here as an example."

"Kevin Redding and his group have made a true breakthrough in re-engineering the Photosystem I complex," explained Ian Gould, interim director of the School of Molecular Sciences, which is part of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "They didn't just find a way to redirect a complex protein structure that nature designed for one purpose to perform a different, but equally critical process, but they found the best way to do it at the molecular level."

It is common knowledge that plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: Photosystem I (PSI) and Photosystem II (PSII).

Algae (in this work the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, or 'Chlamy' for short) possess an enzyme called hydrogenase that uses electrons it gets from the protein ferredoxin, which is normally used to ferry electrons from PSI to various destinations. A problem is that the algal hydrogenase is rapidly and irreversibly inactivated by oxygen that is constantly produced by PSII.

In this study, doctoral student and first author Andrey Kanygin has created a genetic chimera of PSI and the hydrogenase such that they co-assemble and are active in vivo. This new assembly redirects electrons away from carbon dioxide fixation to the production of biohydrogen.

"We thought that some radically different approaches needed to be taken -- thus, our crazy idea of hooking up the hydrogenase enzyme directly to Photosystem I in order to divert a large fraction of the electrons from water splitting (by Photosystem II) to make molecular hydrogen," explained Redding.

Cells expressing the new photosystem (PSI-hydrogenase) make hydrogen at high rates in a light dependent fashion, for several days.

This important result will also be featured in an upcoming article in Chemistry World -- a monthly chemistry news magazine published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The magazine addresses current developments in the world of chemistry including research, international business news and government policy as it affects the chemical science community.

The NSF grant funding this research is part of the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). In this arrangement, a U.S. scientist and Israeli scientist join forces to form a joint project. The U.S. partner submits a grant on the joint project to the NSF, and the Israeli partner submits the same grant to the ISF (Israel Science Foundation). Both agencies must agree to fund the project in order to obtain the BSF funding. Professor Iftach Yacoby of Tel Aviv University, Redding's partner on the BSF project, is a young scientist who first started at TAU about eight years ago and has focused on different ways to increase algal biohydrogen production.

In summary, re-engineering the fundamental processes of photosynthetic microorganisms offers a cheap and renewable platform for creating bio-factories capable of driving difficult electron reactions, powered only by the sun and using water as the electron source.
Over 400 stranded Indians, including medical students, were brought back home on Friday from Bangladesh and Singapore in two Air India aircraft as part of the government's mega repatriation mission Vande Bharat.

The first flight from Singapore landed at the Delhi airport around 11.45 am with 234 passengers, senior officials said.

Within a couple of hours, the second special flight with 167 students arrived at the Srinagar airport from Dhaka.

The Indian government on Monday had announced phased repatriation from May 7 of its citizens stranded abroad. It said Air India will operate 64 flights till May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indians stranded abroad due to the coronavirus lockdown.

India imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country, grounding all domestic and international flights since late March.

After the returnees reached IGI airport, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said all arrangements have been made for the Indians coming from other countries.

"Delhi govt has made all arrangements for the Indians arriving from abroad," he tweeted.

All the arriving passengers were put through screening and triaging to find out any infection of coronavirus.

After immigration and customs formalities, they headed towards paid quarantine facilities where they will spend 14 days, before going home.

Officials in Srinagar said the 167 medical students underwent screening at the airport before they were sent to administrative quarantine for a period of 14 days as mandated under the guidelines issued for curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Srinagar Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary expressed his gratitude to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka for the "tremendous efforts" in getting these students home.

"Profound gratitude to Indian High Commission @ihcdhaka for tremendous efforts. More to follow. For convenience of students -- bulk tickets next," Chaudhary said in a tweet.

The High Commission of India in Bangladesh had launched a dedicated link on its website for the registration for Indians wishing to return home. High Commissioner Riva Ganguly Das interacted with the students at the airport as they prepared to complete the formalities to fly back home.

It (the flight) is carrying only students. The students are enrolled in medical colleges in the country. We were in constant touch with them and their colleges have also taken good care of them," she said in Dhaka prior to the departure.

She further said that a total of seven flights will be operated from Dhaka.

Strict precautionary measures were taken to ensure social distancing when the Indians arrived at the IGI airport. The returnees waved, smiled and gave thumbs-up to waiting mediapersons as they were taken to quarantine facilities in buses.

"Those from Delhi will stay at 8-10 hotels that have been readied in New Delhi, South and South East Delhi as well as Aerocity, as paid quarantine facilities," said a government official.

Nearly 20 buses, including of DTC and neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, were deployed at IGI airport for carrying people to quarantine facilities.

According to standard operating procedure of the government for Indians arriving at IGI airport, resident commissioners and nodal officers will take care of people of their respective states regarding transport and quarantine facilities.

Several medical teams drawn from municipal corporations, New Delhi Municipal Council, and Rao Tula Ram Memorial Hospital were deployed for screening the passengers from Singapore.

Meanwhile, an Air India flight with around 200 Indians from Sharjah will arrive in Lucknow on Saturday night, A K Sharma, director of the Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport, said.

Over 700 Indians are also being evacuated by sea from the Maldives who were stranded in the scenic island due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions.

The Indian Navy's amphibious warship INS Jalashwa reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu', the High Commission of India in Maldives said.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff.

The INS Magar, an amphibious warfare vessel of the Indian Navy, will also join the repatriation mission in Male as part of the efforts to bring back around 1,000 stranded Indian nationals to the Kochi port in Kerala over the next few days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 07:33:17|Editor: huaxia

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People wearing face masks are seen shopping at a supermarket in Foster City, the United States, April 22, 2020. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua)

California is taking steps to move further into stage 2 of a four-stage plan for a gradual reopening statewide economy. Some lower risk businesses such as clothing stores, bookstores, florists, sporting goods stores will reopen under the new rules.



LOS ANGELES, May 7 (Xinhua) -- California Governor Gavin Newsom released guidelines Thursday for reopening businesses starting Friday in the most populous U.S. state.

"We're moving forward but we are doing always with an eye being led by the data, by the science, by public health," Newsom said at a daily press briefing as the state is taking steps to move further into stage 2 of a four-stage plan for a gradual reopening of the country's largest state economy.

Some lower risk businesses such as clothing stores, bookstores, florists, sporting goods stores can reopen, following the new rules issued by the California Department of Public Health.

Retailers should increase their pickup and delivery services and encourage physical distancing during pickup and install hands-free devices. Manufacturers should close break rooms, create outdoor break areas with physically distanced seating. Warehouses should carry sanitation materials during deliveries and use personal protective equipment for each stop, according to the new rules.

The state is also planning to allow office, seated dinning at restaurants, shopping malls and outdoor museums to reopen in the gradual move to stage 2.

Staff sell aquatic products at a supermarket in Foster City, California, the United States, March 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

The governor noted that these modifications will affect 70 percent of the state's economy.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said at the press briefing that stage 2 doesn't mean a return to normal while COVID-19 is still spreading.

As some counties of the state are rushing to reopen their businesses, Ghaly urged them to meet regional variance criteria, including epidemiologic stability, testing capacity, containment capacity and protection of stage 1 essential workers.

According to the criteria, the counties which are eager to move deeper into stage 2 should have no more than 1 confirmed case per 10,000 people in the last 14 days and no COVID-19 deaths in the past 14 days.

According to Newsom's plan announced earlier this month, California will gradually reopen some lower risk workplaces with adaptations in the second stage, including retail with curbside pick-up, manufacturing, offices and more public spaces. The third stage will be a gradual reopening of some higher risk environments with adaptations and limits on size of gatherings. And the fourth stage will be ending the stay-at-home order.

There are more than 61,000 positive cases and 2,523 deaths related to COVID-19 in California so far, according to a continuous Los Angeles Times survey of numbers released by local health agencies across the state. 
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 09:51:45|Editor: huaxia

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Supplies donated by Wanxiang Group are seen at the United Center in downtown Chicago, the United States, May 7, 2020. Wangxiang Group, a Chinese automotive components manufacturer, on Thursday donated 250,000 face masks and 30,000 face shields to the central U.S. city of Chicago to assist its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The City of Chicago hosted a brief ceremony at the downtown United Center to receive the donated anti-coronavirus supplies. (Photo by Joel Lerner/Xinhua)

CHICAGO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese company on Thursday donated 250,000 face masks and 30,000 face shields to the central U.S. city of Chicago to assist its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City of Chicago hosted a brief ceremony at the downtown United Center to receive the donated anti-coronavirus supplies.

Attending the ceremony were Deputy Mayor Samir Mayekar and Ni Pin, president of the donor company Wanxiang America Corporation, a Chicago-based U.S. branch of the Wanxiang Group, a Chinese automotive components manufacturer.

"We face big challenges today," Mayekar told Xinhua. "Our great corporate partners step up saying we will help you at the time you most need, so they got hundreds of thousands of PPEs (personal protective equipment) ... it's something the City will never forget."

In her thank-you letter addressed to Ni and his company days ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the donation not only "supports the countless Chicagoans working day and night to fight this disease, but you are helping to lay the foundation for our strong recovery."

"We are truly all in this together," she added.

Learning that face masks and shields are in great need of Chicago, "we decided to give all PPEs from China," Ni told Xinhua. "We have a lot of investment in Chicago, so this is for ourselves."

Wanxiang Group is donating 1.1 million face masks and 50,000 face shields to 12 U.S. states, including Illinois.
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Linkedin Rizki Fachriansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 11:11 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6ada94 1 National labor-union,holiday-bonuses,THR,Manpower-Ministry,COVID-19 Free

The Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI) has spoken out against a circular issued by the Manpower Ministry that would purportedly allow employers to cut holiday bonuses (THR) and postpone the distribution of financial incentives ahead of Idul Fitri, amid the turbulence triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

KSPI chairman Said Iqbal said the circular violated Law No. 13/2003 and Government Regulation No. 78/2015, which stipulate that every employer is obligated to provide a holiday bonus to employees who have worked at the company for more than one year without any prior negotiation.

Employees who have been on the payroll for less than one year, meanwhile, have a right to receive an incentive provided in accordance to the duration of their employment, Said added.

We must reject the ministrys circular; employers must provide 100 percent of their employees holiday bonus. Providing less than full holiday compensation, or releasing the funds in installments is simply out of the question, he said in a statement on Thursday.

Read also: Concerns arise as government undermines rule of law in pandemic response

Said went on to say that the organization would file a lawsuit against the ministrys circular at the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) as he claimed the document had directly contradicted prevailing laws.

Furthermore, the labor organization would also set up emergency posts across 30 provinces where employees were able to safely report unfair compensation from their employers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted business activities as consumers stay home to curb the virus spread, resulting in weakening demand. Companies across the country, mainly those operating in the hospitality sector, have furloughed or laid-off employees.

Last month, the Industry Ministry discussed the possibility of providing businesses with soft loans to enable them to pay Idul Fitri holiday bonuses as the economic downturn is forcing companies to withhold or cut the bonus payment.
RTHK: US Senate set to move on Xinjiang legislation

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he expects the chamber to move soon to pass a bill that would call on the Trump administration to toughen its response to China's crackdown on the country's Muslim minority groups.

McConnell said the bipartisan bill introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio would urge President Donald Trump "to use targeted sanctions against those responsible for the repression".

A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a vote could come as soon as next week but might still be delayed.

The latest US move comes amid steadily worsening relations between the Trump administration and Beijing over the global Covid-19 pandemic, which Washington has blamed on China's lack of transparency about the initial outbreak there.

"I expect the Senate will soon look to pass Senator Rubios Uighur Human Rights Policy Act," McConnell, the senior Republican in Congress, said in a speech to the Senate.

Rubio's office said it hoped the bill could be passed by unanimous consent soon, but could not say when this might happen. McConnell's office would not elaborate on what he meant by "soon".

The Senate ended this week's session on Thursday and does not reconvene until Monday. Under unanimous consent, which is designed to expedite Senate proceedings, an action is approved provided no senator objects.

The United Nations estimates that more than a million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in camps in China's Xinjiang region over recent years as part of a wide-reaching campaign by Chinese officials to stamp out what they characterize as terrorism.

In addition to the Uighurs, the bill covers other Muslim minority groups in China.

Beijing has condemned moves to pass legislation in support of the Uighurs as malicious attacks and a serious interference in its internal affairs that would affect bilateral cooperation. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2020-05-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Many of the proposed vaccines, including the one being developed in Saskatoon, will be made in fermenting tanks if they prove to be effective and safe. Thats led to suggestions that breweries and distilleries, factories with very large fermenters already in place, could be transformed into vaccine factories.

But Dr. Gerdts dismissed that idea, saying that it would be impossible to clean them sufficiently to safely produce vaccines.

Just imagine you had a vaccine and you had a fungus growing in it because you had some fungal spores in that room, he said. It would be a disaster.

And if thats not enough of a delay, Dr. Gerdts said that once vaccines become available, setting up operations to make them wont be just a matter of following a recipe.

Canadians, Dr. Gerdts said, will need patience when it comes to a coronavirus vaccine.

We dont want to panic people and say even if we have vaccine, there is not going to be enough for you so and get your gun now and make sure you get in line, he said. We dont want to get to that point. But I think what we all understand is that Canada needs more manufacturing capacity and thats being recognized. And I think this is a good exercise for when the next pandemic comes.

Finally, James Gorman, The Timess science writer at large, reports that we may all develop a case of the summertime blues. A study by scientists at the University of Toronto and in Switzerland is the latest to conclude that the return of warm weather wont drive away the virus.

[Read: Summer Is Coming, but the Virus Wont Be Going]
World Socialist Web Site reporters recently spoke with migrant workers and homeless people in Chennai about the worsening social conditions they now confront because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Tens of thousands of workers from various Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, are living in Chennai, the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. These low-paid migrant workers are employed in construction and global production plants located in nearby industrial hubs, such as Sriperumbudur and Oragadam.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly imposed his ill-prepared national coronavirus lockdown on March 24, some workers were able to return to their home villages. Many, however, were unable to leave because of transport shutdowns and remain trapped in dangerously overcrowded accommodation in parts of Chennai.

WSWS reporters spoke to workers in Ayanavaram and the Rajiv Gandhi Nagar slum in Perambur where there are about 500 overcrowded and small huts.

According to a survey by Jan Sahas, a non-governmental organisation, over 90 percent of migrant workers in India are not registered. This means they do not have a Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (BOCW) card and cannot access meagre welfare benefits, such as medical cover, pensions and housing loans. Some workers do not even have ration cards allowing them to purchase essential food items at subsidised rates.

Ranganathan, 34, is a day-hire construction worker from the Thiruvannamalai district in Tamil Nadu. He spoke to WSWS reporters near the Pananthope railway colony, a housing estate for railway workers, while he was waiting to be hired by a contractor.

I earn 100 rupees ($US1.3) as a daily worker. Theres no work for me in our village because theres been no rain, and so our whole familyseven peoplemigrated to Chennai looking for jobs. All of us work in the construction sector but we dont get regular employment.

Ranganathan

Since the imposition of the [coronavirus] curfew, weve not worked at all but we have to pay monthly rent of 5,000 rupees. Weve had to pawn our jewellery to meet our immediate expenses, including food.

The government said there would be some relaxation of curfew rules in the construction and painting sectors from April 20. We come here every day as usual, but no contractors have come to hire us.

Sankar, 53, holds a BOCW card but has not received the promised 1,000 rupees from the governments COVID-19 relief fund. He was critical of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), a union federation run by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The CITU doesnt stand for workers interests. It did not even fight to get us the 1,000 rupee welfare money which construction workers are eligible for during the [national lockdown] unemployment period, he said.

The COVID-19 relief fund allocated by the Modi government for the people is just a pittance. Tamil Nadus ruling AIADMK [All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] state government functions as a puppet of [Modis] Bharathiya Janatha Party government.

Sairaj, 25, a construction labourer who has also not worked since the lockdown, explained that he had been struggling to survive even before the pandemic.

Sairaj

I came from Andhra Pradesh. I was earning 500 rupees per day but have to pay 4,000 rupees per month for rent and theres no toilet facility. The accommodation is very small for four family members. Here in the Rajiv Gandhi Nagar slum area, some houses with five people are rented for 2,000 rupees per month. None of the city corporation officers visit this area and we dont even have face masks to protect us from the virus.

Parthasarathy, 50, also from Andhra Pradesh, said: Most of the workers living in this slum are from Andhra Pradesh. My parents depend on my salary but virtually all my salary is spent on food and rent. This slum area belongs to the government but local politicians, most of them from the opposition DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] party, occupied this area and built small houses to make money from poor people.

Savithri, 42, a widow, explained that there was no work in her home village of Seiyaru and so her family migrated to Chennai. I see that all the parties are corrupted, not just in my village, but in Chennai too. Politicians from different parties only visit our slum at election time to try and get our votes. She had no face mask and said she could not afford to buy one.

WSWS reporters also spoke with some homeless daily wage workers who have been sleeping on the floor of the Ayanavaram bus terminus. Of the 15 families at the bus terminus, only 10 have ration cards allowing them a pittance of financial support from the government. They have to pay to use nearby city-corporation owned toilets and bathrooms.

Parthasarathy

The miserable living conditions of these homeless families have been further compounded by the pandemic. They cannot afford basic protective equipment like face masks, and frequent hand washing, as advised by the government, is out of question because they cannot buy soap or sanitisers.

Selvam, a construction worker living at the Ayanavaram bus terminus, said: I havent had any work since the curfew was declared, more than 20 days ago. Weve received no help whatsoever from any political parties or the government. None of us living here have been given a coronavirus medical test or provided with face masks for safety

All of us are staying in an open-air bus terminuselderly people and women and childrenbut for more than 20 days the government has taken no action regarding our health and wellbeing. Were scared about the impact of the coronavirus. We only cook rice at night before we sleep and cook and sleep in the same open place. We eagerly wait each day for someone to give us food. Now and then some NGOs provide us with food.

Lalitha, 30, said: I have a child but no husband and so I live alone with my child. We used to be able to pay and use the city corporations bathroom and toilet but now we are not allowed to use them. We dont have any money to buy food and we are starving.

Pushpa and Lalitha

The Indian government and its state counterparts are utterly indifferent to the plight of these poverty-stricken workers and their families, whose dangerous social conditions are common place for the tens of millions of day-hire workers and homeless toilers across the country.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- More than a dozen states loosened lockdowns in the past week even though many have yet to fully control the spread of Covid-19.

The consequences wont be visible in the data on infections for some time, because loosened state restrictions take time to generate more human contacts and infections, the coronavirus takes time to incubate, and tests take time to process. Yet theres already reason to worry that several states are reopening too soon.

The case against loosening restrictions before outbreaks are well-controlled is dead simple: When there is a higher base level of infection in a population, it takes fewer interactions between individuals to spread the virus. That makes every step taken to mitigate the spread less effective, and every day that people spend in public more dangerous. When testing, contact tracing and the ability to isolate infected individuals is limited, as continues to be the case in large parts of the U.S., the risk is higher still.

Theres a great deal we dont understand about why Covid-19 hits some areas harder than others. Spread is determined by a combination of factors that includes initial seeding, density, demographics, public health response and plain luck. Some states that never issued statewide stay-at-home orders, or put them in place late in the pandemic, have avoided major outbreaks, while others are now seeing many new infections. However, as states allow renewed activity, the harsh reality of viral spread will come into play.

States to be most concerned about are those where the rate of population-adjusted cases is still growing or elevated, and testing is limited. Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Colorado and Kansas all arguably fall into this category. Colorado at least has seen a reduction in average new cases over the past week or so, but because it remains close to its peak and testing is not up to speed, safety in reopening is not a sure thing.

States are moving forward in various ways. Nebraska and Iowa never had statewide stay-at-home orders, and both are now allowing many businesses to open at limited capacity. Indiana and Colorado are keeping many retailers and restaurants closed for in-store business. Kansas is taking a middle path, allowing restaurants to open dining rooms as long as they maintain distancing, but keeping gyms and personal service businesses closed. Time will tell if this variation leads to diverging outcomes, but the virus is poised to punish incautious moves.

Story continues

None of the states in this chart are above average in either the number of tests being conducted per capita or in the rate of positive results  which indicates of the severity of an ongoing outbreak. A high percentage of positive tests suggests that many cases are going undetected, and that a testing capacity isnt meeting the need, let alone providing the kind of expanded surveillance that should accompany reopening efforts.

Other reopening states have high numbers of new cases that may be explained at least partially by comparatively good testing rates. These include Mississippi, Tennessee and, to a milder extent, Utah.

Texas continues to have a comparatively small number of Covid-19 cases per capita, but its seeing a significant growth in cases as it begins to reopen. South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and North Dakota have managed to stay on a plateau, but not to reach the other side. Missouris infection rate was on a good trajectory for weeks, but its beginning to rise just as the state is allowing even large venues to reopen.

Starting off in a better position are Maine and Oklahoma, both at relatively low plateaus with positive-test rates that suggest theyre not missing a lot of cases. Florida, Arkansas and South Dakota have achieved a reasonably sustained decline in new cases, though South Dakotas especially high number of per capita cases may yet seed renewed growth.

Premature openings will almost certainly lead to avoidable deaths. States that jump the gun risk a return to shutdown and, worse, a delay in bringing the epidemic under control.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Max Nisen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, pharma and health care. He previously wrote about management and corporate strategy for Quartz and Business Insider.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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Vietnams tra fish exports fell 29.3 percent year on year to 334 million USD in the first three months of this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the industry  a big foreign currency earner  may fully recover in the third quarter.

Farmers feed tra fish in Cho Moi district, the Mekong Delta province of An Giang

At a meeting in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang on May 7, the Vietnam Pangasius (Tra Fish) Association reported that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected tra fish production, processing and exports since the beginning of the year, leading to a year-on-year decline of 5.7 percent in the new farming area to 777ha, 20.8 percent in the harvested area to 602ha, and 23.6 percent in output to nearly 180,000 tonnes.

Besides, the pandemic has been developing complicatedly in countries such as China, the US, the Republic of Korea and some European nations, which are major importers of Vietnamese tra fish.

As a result, aquatic exports to key markets in Q1 plummeted compared to the same period last year with shipments to China down 48 percent, the EU 47.3 percent, and the US 19.8 percent.

The association said the sudden decrease has caused difficulties for exporters with a knok-on effect on the production of raw materials as well as support businesses like aquaculture medicine and feed producers.

Drought and saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta, the largest agricultural hub in Vietnam, have also added a further complication to the tra fish industry.

However, the association noted, interruptions to supply chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic are just temporary, and trading activities are likely to resume once it is under control.

Tran Dinh Luan, General Director of the Directorate of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), said China has managed to control the outbreak and begun to recover trading activities, while the inventory in some other large importers currently stands at a low level.

He forecast the tra fish industry will fully recover in Q3, and exports to China may revive right at the end of this month. Therefore, it is necessary to work out plans to regulate production to prevent a shortage of input materials for processing and export.

At the meeting, MARD Minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong said Vietnam has developed a tra fish industry raking in billions of USD from exports every year with products shipped to nearly 120 countries. However, the export volume and value have yet to match the potential.

The pangasius association, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, the MARD and Mekong Delta localities will work to tackle pandemic-caused difficulties facing exporters and promote export to the markets that have partly contained the COVID-19. They will also coordinate to boost shipments to potential markets like Russia and Brazil, along with sales in the domestic market to avoid overdependence on exports, he added./.VNA
The UAE has welcomed the formation of the new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, expressing hope the new cabinet would fulfil the ambitions of the people of Iraq for security, stability and development.



Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, has expressed sincere wishes of success to the new government, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



He said that he hoped the new cabinet would lead Iraq to more stability and prosperity as well as ensure the country's national sovereignty, while meeting the expectations of the Iraqi people.



He underscored the UAE's keenness to widening prospects of cooperation and advancing the brotherly relations with Iraq across all fronts for the common good of both countries' peoples.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Car thefts keep rising on Staten Island during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, continuing a trend of grand larceny auto incidents in the borough, data from the New York Police Department shows.

From April 27 to May 3, police responded to nine grand larceny auto incidents on Staten Island -- an increase of seven more thefts compared to the same period last year, the data shows.

Six of those grand larceny involved the thefts of a car, in one occasion a truck was stolen and in the remaining two incidents two motorcycles were stolen, the data shows.

Car thefts are up in the most recent 28-day period as well, with 25 from April 6 to May 3, 15 more than last year.

In the same 28-day period, the thefts rose in the whole five boroughs as well with a 56% increase overall -- from 348 to 543 overall.

THIEFS COME FROM OTHER BOROUGHS

Car thieves from Brooklyn and the Bronx consider Staten Island an easy target, law enforcement sources previously told the Advance/SILive.com.

Every time we catch someone, another two show up, a Staten Island law enforcement source said. This is what were dealing with every night.

Sources say suspects who reside outside Staten Island travel by train, bus and ferry in search of unlocked vehicles and potentially valuable possessions inside of them.

Typically, the suspects are teenagers and young adults traveling in groups, looking to jump in an unlocked vehicle and take it for a spin across New York City, police sources said.

In some cases, the license plate is flagged the next night crossing over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge back into Staten Island, where suspects use stolen vehicles to target other cars on the East and South shores.

Other times, the vehicle is tracked to a neighborhood in Brooklyn, where it has been dumped.

Some of the suspects are repeated offenders who often commit vehicle-related thefts in a matter of days, if not hours.

Last year, we were locking them up and putting them away," an officer on Staten Island recently told the Advance/SILive.com. This year, it feels like were getting laughed at."
7. Ace the video interview. In-person interviews are tough, but video interviews can be even more nerve-wracking because it's harder to establish a rapport and pick up on social cues.

Be overly prepared: test out your framing, audio and background well ahead of your interview. Dress as you would if the interview was done in person (that includes appropriate pants or a skirt -- you never know if you are going to have to get up to get something).

Show your engagement by nodding along and smiling -- maybe even more than you are used to. "It will be harder for them to detect your enthusiasm," said Salemi. "Look genuinely excited about this opportunity and show that you want to learn more."

That said, don't overdo it. "If you play it up too much, it can come off as inauthentic," she added.

8. Don't be scared to negotiate. When an offer comes in, make sure to get it in writing and review it to make sure it's in line with your expectations and market research.

"You should still negotiate. The worst they can do is say no," said Salemi.

However, if the numbers are way off it might not be worth it.
Britains Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) aims to get business interruption insurance policies examined by a court as soon as July, a member of a policyholder action group said on Thursday.

The Hiscox Action Group, which is seeking to sue Hiscox over allegations that legitimate business interruption (BI) claims have been rejected during the coronavirus pandemic, held a discussion with the FCA this week, Daniel Duckett said.

Duckett, who is a member of the 450-strong action groups steering committee, told Reuters it was the FCAs ambition to bring the case before the court in July. Thats 16 weeks from the start of the lockdown, which really concerns us, he added.

The FCA, which said last week it would seek clarity from the courts about whether the wording of some BI insurance policies should provide cover as a result of the pandemic, had no immediate comment on the timing of the case.

It has not named the insurers whose policies it is seeking to put before the court.

Hiscox and other insurers have said they understand these are difficult times for shuttered businesses and that they are paying valid claims fairly and quickly.

The late March government lockdown, designed to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, has forced many companies in Britain to temporarily suspend operations and furlough staff in an effort to survive. Many had also banked on BI payouts and a number of insurers have been threatened with legal action.

The dispute hinges on whether the lockdown and the coronavirus are enough to trigger a clause in business interruption insurance, designed for insured premises that cannot be used because of restrictions imposed by a public authority and in the event of a notifiable disease or infection.

Top insurers such as Allianz, AXA, RSA , QBE and Zurich also face potential multi-million pound lawsuits from British businesses such as pubs, hotels, restaurants and leisure groups that allege legitimate business interruption claims have been rejected.

QBE said last week it had received a letter from the FCA.

RSA has not been asked to take part in the FCAs court request as of Thursday a spokesman said.

Small businesses in dispute with their insurers can also turn to the Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS), a body set up to settle disputes for claims capped at 355,000 pounds ($437,000) between consumers and businesses providing financial services.

The FOS said it would progress those cases it could, but would also consider what the FCAs decision to obtain a court declaration would mean for its work.

Lloyds of London chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown told an online conference on Thursday that he would like to see coordination between regulators, ensuring that the ombudsman would accept the court findings.

($1 = 0.8127 pounds)

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Kirstin Ridley; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Related:

Topics COVID-19
ATHENSAfter standing empty for two months, Greeces ancient sites, including the Acropolis hill towering over Athens, will reopen to visitors on May 18, authorities said on May 7.

The ancient monuments were closed along with museums in mid-March in Greeces lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Restrictions have gradually been eased this week.

A ferry sails next to the caldera of Oia, Santorini, Greece, May 6, 2020. (REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis)

Museums will open again in mid-June while open-air performances will resume in mid-July, Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said. Distance and safety rules will apply.

The many historical sites are one of the mainstays of Greeces vital tourism sector and efforts will now kick in to encourage visitors after travel restrictions and widespread closures caused a collapse in bookings.

A view of Oia, Santorini, as the sun sets, May 6, 2020. (REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis)

Hundreds of musicians, actors, and art workers rallied outside parliament to demand more support for their sector.

We are here, read a message drawn in chalk on the street. Protesters waved a giant theater puppet. In the northern city of Thessaloniki, musicians performed tied up in a red and white cordon tape.

Many artists have performed live online for those staying home since Greece reported its first case of the new coronavirus in February.

We stayed home but we didnt stay silent, artists unions said in a statement.

Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou
LG Polymers in Vizag gets Styrene inhibitor from Dorf Ketal to increase safety

Two dead after Ammonia gas leak at Prayagraj's IFFCO plant in Uttar Pradesh

Vizag Gas Leak: NGT directs LG Polymers to immediately deposit Rs 50 crore

India

oi-Briti Roy Barman

New Delhi, May 08: National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed LG Polymers, India on Friday, to deposit an initial amount of Rs 50 crore on an immediate basis, taking note of damages caused due to the gas leakage that took atleast 11 lives and over 800 hospitalised after gas leaked from LG Polymers plant in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam.

NGT has also issued notice to LG Polymers, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on the fatal accident of Andhra Pradesh.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel stated that NGT would take up on Friday the matter that titled, "In re: Gas Leak at LG Polymers Chemical Plant in RR Venkatapuram Village Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh".

Glitch in refrigeration unit led to Vizag gas leak

A plea was filed seeking constitution of a high-level committee to investigate the gas leak incident earlier on Thursday after the incident occured.

The NGO, Centre for Wildlife and Environmental Litigation Foundation, has sought constitution of a high-level committee, comprising of judges and officers, not below the rank of Joint Secretary, to probe the incident.

It has sought direction to the state government to ensure the protection and security of the residents of the surrounding area and imposing exemplary costs on violators.

The owner of this Vizag plant is a South Korean company LG Chemical Ltd.

Vizag gas leak: AIIMS director says long-term health effects due to styrene vapour exposure small

An official of LG Polymers issued a statement that there were 1,800 tonnes of styrene in the storage tank. He said that due to stagnation and changes in temperature it could have resulted in auto polymerization which could have caused vapourisation.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, May 8, 2020, 14:11 [IST]
Amid the coronavirus lockdown across the world, different industries have been affected in varying degrees. While essentials service workers are having to clock-in extra hours to cater to the increasing needs of the people amid this chaos, industries like fashion and beauty have been hit the worst.

As people have moved indoors, inevitably no one cares for the new trends that hit the market this season or what to look out for in the next season. The only clothes most people care about is comfortable PJs to get them through the day. With an uncertain world around us, retail therapy seems like an activity of the past.

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However, for major fashion giants like Zara , strategy for when things will resume to normal never really stops. This, essentially means that workers at the backend, the ones assembling the clothes, swimwear, accessories, and shoes together are being affected.

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Fast fashion had also plagued the pre-coronavirus world, at the heart of it, fast fashion is responsible for the deepening inequity between garment workers who work at one end of the supply chain and wealthy individuals like Zaras Spanish billionaire owner Amancio Ortega, who is the worlds sixth-richest man, is rebranding the chain as a benevolent saviour amid the coronavirus crisis.



At the epoch of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain, Zaras parent company, Inditex, shut more than 3,000 stores. Ortega helmed the initiative of making hospital gowns and masks, and also, according to Forbes, flew in medical supplies worth millions from China.



Ortega also made headlines for ensuring that Zaras Spanish employees received salaries in full, all good things that make up for great PR, so much so that an ambulance crew gathered outside his residence to wish him on his birthday.





Las ambulancias de La Coruna delante de la casa de Amancio Ortega para expresar el agradecimiento de toda la sociedad y felicitarle por su cumpleanos. Felicidades Amancio, Marca Espana  pic.twitter.com/QnqHr6lzjc  Nacho Louro (@NachoLouro) March 28, 2020



According to BuzzFeed News employees from two factories that form part of Zaras supply chain in Myanmar, workers put in 11-hour shifts, six days a week, for a meager $3.50$4.74 per day (approximately Rs. 350 a day on the higher end.). More than 500 of these workers at the two factories were laid off when they asked to be supplied with durable masks and for social distancing to be introduced to protect them from the coronavirus. One of the factories, Myan Mode, fired every single member of a workers union, along with a woman who had complained of being sexually harassed at the factory last year.





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Inditex, in response, has told BuzzFeed News that it was working with suppliers to ensure they were following official guidelines to protect workers. A spokesperson said that the dispute at Myan Mode had been at least partially resolved, with 29 sacked workers reinstated.



We could all die, and for what? Making already rich brands super-rich, one worker said on the phone from Myanmars capital, Yangon, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The working class is being sacrificed so they can wear good clothes.





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The coronavirus has so far not spread extensively in Myanmar, despite the country sharing a nearly 1,400-mile border with China.

But like other countries in Southeast Asia, it is difficult to know what's really happening courtesy insufficient testingas of May 1, 2020, the government had administered 8,300 tests which are far too less for a population of 55 million.



About half a million people in Myanmar work in garment factories like that of Zara's, live in dormitories that factories rent to them for half their salaries. The countrys minimum wage is one of the lowest in Asia, and following a wave of strikes last year, approximately 50,000 garment workers have joined or formed unions. Myan Modes union was able to negotiate small demands like permission to be up to 15 minutes late for work, and more reasonable working hours than other factories demanded44 hours a week, with up to 14 hours of overtime.





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Aside from producing personal protective equipment, Zara also delivered washable, splash-proof, and hospital gowns to medical workers in the city of La Coruna. Soon after that, Ortega flew in another 3 million units of PPE from China, along with 1,450 ventilators for Spain.



In a pre-coronavirus world, while Zara was accused of many controversies like discriminating against black employees at its corporate offices (Zara denied the reports), and abysmal conditions in factories in Brazil that were likened to slavery, is accused of tax evasion worth over 550 million euros (about $596 million).





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So, while the 2013 Bangladeshs Rana Plaza tragedy that killed over 1,000 garment factory workers brought into effect a worker safety accord for Bangladeshi workers, that even Zara signed, accords like these clearly hold no value to a company that has already pushed for encouraging workers to return to factories amidst a pandemic.





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Across the Asian continent, countries have either responded with a complete shutdown like India and Sri Lanka, or a partial lockdown with restrictions, like Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar, where governments have banned public gatherings but kept factories running. This has been done keeping the country's economy, public health, and other respective factors in mind. While the workers were suffering before the pandemic, they're suffering even more so and will possibly be hit the worst right now.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents a daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 08.05.2020:

 May 8, 2020, marks the 28th anniversary of the unique operation, by the Artsakh defense army and Armenian volunteer detachments, for the liberation of Karabakhs strategic town of Shushi, from Azerbaijani armed forces.

The liberation of Shushi was a crucial phase in the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Sushi had turned into an Azerbaijani military base during this war that was unleashed by Azerbaijan.

The Armenian side had 57 losses during this military operation, whereas the Azerbaijani army suffered between 250 and 300 casualties.

By the way, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan will head to Artsakh tomorrow to take part in May 9 events.

The Armenian people celebrate the triple holiday on May 9, the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the liberation of Shushi, and the anniversary of the establishment of the Artsakh Defense Army.

 As of May 8, 11:00 AM, 3,029 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Armenia with 1,218 recoveries and 43 deaths. 1,758 patients with COVID-19 are currently undergoing treatment. In total, 29,205 tests have been completed. Thus, we have 145 new cases and 33 recoveries.

Regarding the latest case of death, the 48-year-old female patient had a pre-existing chronic disease. 1 case of death was registered yesterday when the patient had tested positive for COVID-19, but the cause of death was another disease. The total of such death cases is 10.

Later on Thursday, the Artsakh health ministry has reported that another two citizens have tested positive. Now Artsakh has confirmed a total of 10 COVID-19 cases, and six of the patients have already recovered.

 Armenian defense minister Davit Tonoyan noted that nearly two dozen servicemen have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to him, there are also those isolated in the army.

 The situation in the Armenian parliament heated up during the speech of Edmon Marukyan, chair of the opposition Bright Armenia party, and the fists were raised. The fight occurred between him and My Step ruling bloc MP Sasun Mikaelyan.

Later, the Bright Armenia party left the session in protest. Marukyan noted that both they and the My Step MPs are responsible for the current incident.

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, in turn, noted that what happened in parliament is their biggest defeat since the revolution. He noted that all this is connected with the law on the confiscation of illegal property and various criminal cases.

In the meantime, the Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia has been studying the incident.

 Armenian ex-president Robert Kocharyan's attorneys have motioned to release him on a personal guarantee during the first trial after an almost two-month break.

The former PMs of Armenia Vazgen Manukyan, Khosrov Harutyunyan, Karen Karapetyan, and the former PM of Artsakh Anushavan Danielyan vouched for Kocharyan.

Each of the guarantors is required to pay AMD 500 thousand. If the defendant does not show proper behavior, the money will not be returned. The guarantors signed copies of the protocol and left the trial.

Kocharyan's attorney submitted a second motion - dated March 24, when a state of emergency was already declared in the country. The defense seeks to amend or cancel the preventive measure amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He noted that European structures unequivocally declare the need to release, if possible, those arrested and imprisoned in connection with the pandemic, in particular those at the risk group.

Later Judge Anna Danibekyan has left to make a decision. It will be made public on May 13 at 5:50 pm.
CAPE MAY, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Jeff Reichle, Chairman of Lund's Fisheries, Inc., issued the following statement on President Trump's "Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth":

Lund's Fisheries has been in business since 1954; I myself have been with the company since 1974. This is the first time in my memory that a sitting President has taken the time and initiative to recognize the hard work and value of this country's fishing industry and its importance in feeding Americans.

Fishermen are notoriously independent people, seldom looking for help, and most often overlooked by their government. It is refreshing, to say the least, that the President has chosen to recognize our industry in this time of national crisis.

We at Lund's Fisheries are extremely grateful to this Administration for this recognition and Executive Order. With 5 processing companies employing over 300 people in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, we are ready to continue to meet the country's needs during this crisis.

We are especially grateful to hear that the Administration will help us with trade barriers and inequities in our international import/export business. Far too often trade barriers have been put in place by foreign nations against our products with no pushback from the U.S. government. We cannot thank the President enough for his tough negotiations on these matters, and look forward to working with his Administration on these issues following his welcomed announcement yesterday.

We further look forward to working with the Administration to ensure that the commercial wild fishing industry is able to stay healthy and vibrant without being impeded by the installation of wind turbines on historical fishing grounds. We hope that the opening sentence in section 1, which states "America needs a vibrant and competitive seafood industry to create and sustain American jobs, put safe and healthy food on American tables, and contribute to the American economy" will include safeguarding this historic industry by ensuring that our ability to produce seafood into the future will not be lost in a rush to produce subsidized wind energy at any cost.

PRESS CONTACT:

Robert Vanasse

bob@stoveboat.com

202-333-2628

SOURCE: Lund's Fisheries Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589089/Lunds-Fisheries-Supports-President-Trumps-Order-Promoting-American-Seafood
Ten Bangladeshi nationals, who allegedly entered India illegally six-seven months ago in order to find some work in Tripura, were arrested on Friday.

They were arrested from Rajnagar area adjacent to the Indo-Bangla border near Agartala while on the way back to their country.

The Bangladeshi nationals had been living in the Bitterban area in Tripuras capital Agartala since arriving in the state.

Additional director general of police Rajiv Singh said their preliminary investigation found they came here seven months ago.

We came here in search of daily-wage work seven months ago. But we have no work these days due to lockdown. That is why we were returning to Bangladesh, Mohammad Masud Rana, one of the arrested Bangladeshi nationals told the media persons.

India has been under a lockdown to curb the spread of coronvirus outbreak since March 25 which has been extended twice and will now end on May 17.

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz had something to say after the San Antonio City Council passed a resolution condemning racism during the pandemic.

The city council voted Thursday night to reject the use of terms like "Kung Fu virus" and "Chinese virus" to refer to COVID-19, saying it encourages hate crimes against Asians.

READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio

"This is NUTS. SA City Council behaving like a lefty college faculty lounge, triggered by Chick-fil-A & the words 'Wuhan virus.'" the senator wrote in a tweet Thursday night.

He continued to say that publications like the New York Times and CNN have referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese coronavirus."

Many of Cruz's followers echoed the senator's sentiments, claiming the nicknames fall under free speech and condemning the resolution as being too politically correct.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, however, said the resolution came after an increase in racial hate crimes throughout the city since the pandemic started aimed mainly at Asian Americans.

We have a diverse mosaic of people here in San Antonio, Nirenberg said at the meeting. We want them to know, we want all of us to know that we stand side-by-side with everyone in this community and that we will call out racism and bigotry and hate speech when we see it, especially if it's taking advantage of a pandemic.

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net | @TaylorPettaway
Tripoli: Missiles hit 50m from Italian diplomatic residence Sources say Supreme Court hit, rockets fall on port

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MAY 8 - Ashraf Shah, a senior member of the government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, told ANSA in a statement that in the attack by Libyan general Khalifa Haftar's forces on Tripoli on Thursday night, "a Grad missile fell about 50 metres from the Italian (diplomatic) residence, causing the death of two passersby".



"Another Grad fell in front of the Turkish embassy, two other rockets on the port, and one between the foreign ministry and the Supreme Court," said Shah, a former political advisor to the presidency of the High Council of State.



According to media, residents cited by the website Al Wasat said "two rockets hit last night in the area of Zawiyat al-Dahmani, the location of radio offices, the foreign ministry, the Al Mahary hotel, the Turkish embassy and the residence of the Italian ambassador".



A local source added, "four of the different rockets launched by the Libyan National Army led by General Haftar hit the Supreme Court building, next to the Turkish Embassy in Tripoli".



Mustafa al-Majai, media centre spokesman for the Tripoli government's "Operation Volcano of Rage", told Anadolu news agency that other rockets hit the area around Mitiga international airport and the port, without any victims.



On Twitter, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya tweeted, "Tonight, IOM staff who were at Tripoli main port awaiting the disembarkation of roughly 25 migrants, had to evacuate the location as it came under shelling. The migrants remain on the coast guard vessel".(ANSAmed).




Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday condoled the death of 14 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtras Aurangabad.

The workers were mowed down by a goods train early this morning.

Deeply saddened to learn about the loss of lives in a train mishap in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. My heartfelt condolences to bereaved families, Naidu said on Twitter.

According to police, the workers were returning to Madhya Pradesh and had been walking along the rail tracks. They had slept on the tracks due to exhaustion.
She updated her supporters on Thursday night to reveal her husband Derek Draper is 'still with us' and 'fighting so hard' to beat coronavirus.

And on Friday morning, Kate Garraway's Good Morning Britain co-stars Charlotte Hawkins and Ben Shephard, 45, sent her 'so much love' in a sweet moment.

Charlotte, 44, looked understandably emotional as she said: 'Well Kate, we send so much love back to you.

'This is especially a poignant moment for Kate, so sending lots of love.'

'This is an especially poignant moment for her': Emotional Charlotte Hawkins and Ben Shephard 'send love' to Kate Garraway on GMB on Friday as her husband Derek Draper battles coronavirus

Ben appeared alongside Charlotte after previouly wishing Kate, 53, a happy birthday earlier in the week as she was without Derek, 52, on her special day for the first time in 16 years.

The night before, Karte joined millions of people around the country in a nationwide applause for the NHS, police and key workers.

The Good Morning Britain host cut a casual figure as she stood on the street outside her house and filmed her neighbours joining in the applause.

Showing incredible strength: Kate 53, joined millions of people around the country in a nationwide applause for the NHS, police and key workers during the coronavirus pandemic

Taking to Instagram, Kate shared a video of her street once again applauding NHS staff with some even setting off red, white and blue smoke flares in honour of Victory in Europe (VE) Day.

In a lengthy caption she updated fans on Derek's condition, revealing he's 'still with us,' as he continues to battle the virus.

Kate added she's still 'awestruck' by NHS workers working on the frontline to fight the deadly virus, and urged her fans to take inspiration from Captain Tom Moore ahead of the Second World War Anniversary on Friday.

Love: The broadcaster also told fans that her husband Derek was 'still with us' and 'fighting so hard,' as he continues to battle COVID-19 in hospital (pictured together in December)

Amazing: Taking to Instagram Kate shared a video of her street once again applauding NHS staff with some even setting off colourful smoke flares in honour of Victory in Europe (VE) Day

Kate wrote: 'The neighbours turned into ''red arrows'' tonight for #clapthecarers #nhs & #keyworkers.

'Have taken so much comfort & inspiration from the spirit of the country beautifully personified by Captain Tom these past few weeks.........and with VE Day tomorrow it's a reminder of the strength and resilience that we all have within us if we pull together and keep going.

'Derek is still with us, fighting so hard to beat this virus & everyday I am awestruck by how hard every member of the nhs team is fighting to turn things around & bring him ( & so many others) home to their loved ones.

'You are amazing - thank you thank you Sending love to you all in these terrible times #staypositive #hope #standtogether.'

Still fighting: The broadcaster went onto praise NHS staff for caring for her husband and the nation during the pandemic

Kate donned a pale blue hoodie for the evening along with a pair of blue denim shorts and a pair of dark shoes as she stood outside her home to applaud NHS staff.

The broadcaster completed her look for the evening by styling her blonde locks into an updo.

The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star looked in good spirits as she clapped for the country's key workers.

It comes after Kate's Good Morning Britain co-host Ben Shephard said she is 'finding comfort' in talking to her husband every day as he continues to fight COVID-19.

Clap for carers: Kate cut a casual figure as she stood on the street outside her house and filmed her neighbours joining in the applause

Family: Kate was joined by her daughter Darcey, 14, as she filmed the applause

Casual: The star was sporting a cosy grey hoodie and denim cut-off shorts as she documented this week's Clap For Carers

Derek Draper is understood to be in an unresponsive critical condition after being admitted to hospital with the deadly bug, which has so far claimed over 269,000 lives, on May 8.

But devoted Kate is said to be phoning her husband, with whom she raises children Darcey, 14, and William, 10, on a daily basis while he remains on a ventilator in intensive care.

Talking to COVID-19 survivor Julie Stanfield, her daughter Gabrielle and the NHS staff who saved her life on Wednesday's edition of GMB, Ben, 45, admitted his co-host had found a degree of reassurance in calling Derek.

He said: 'One of our colleagues, Kate Garraway, has said that one of the things that has been really comforting for her is the fact that the staff are taking her phone in the evenings and she can talk to her husband.

'She has no idea if he's responding but it certainly gives her a sense of comfort and there is the hope that it is.'

Difficult: Kate has been openly sharing insight into her husband Derek's battle with coronavirus

We love you! She joined most of the UK honouring NHS and other key workers during the coronavirus pandemic

Support: She was seen filming the applause outside of her home during the lockdown

Reassurance: It comes after Kate's Good Morning Britain co-host Ben Shephard said she is 'finding comfort' in talking to her husband every day as he continues to fight COVID-19

Unresponsive: Derek Draper is understood to be in a critical condition after being admitted to hospital with the deadly bug

He added: 'It is an incredibly touching and personal thing to do to take that phone and be there for the families of these patients.'

Kate recently shared a moving tribute to Derek after spending her first birthday in 16 years without him.

The Good Morning Britain presenter turned 53 on May 4th, and admitted it was a 'tough one' for her family as her spouse continues to fight for his life in hospital following his COVID-19 diagnosis.

Opening up: Talking to COVID-19 survivor Julie Stanfield, her daughter Gabrielle and the NHS staff who saved her life, Ben admitted his co-host had found a degree of reassurance in calling Derek

Kate resolved to stay positive and be grateful for the 'joy of life', thanking her friends and family for their kind gestures of support and gifts to make her day better.

Taking to Instagram, she wrote: 'So yesterday was always going to be a tough one - 1st birthday in 16 years without Derek - so for the kids & I, his absence was very present.

'But we resolved to do what I think we are all having to do at the moment aren't we - treasure & be grateful for the love around us - however distanced we are from it .

Care: Devoted Kate is said to be phoning her husband, with whom she raises children Darcey, 14, and William, 10, on a daily basis while he remains on a ventilator in intensive care

'And focus on the joy of life & love in the moment - the small things that are huge & really should be at the core of everyday but usually the everyday gets in the way.'

Kate accompanied her post with two pictures - a throwback snap of Derek in his younger years at university, and a picture of the birthday cake she received from her I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! campmate Roman Kemp.

She continued: 'So THANK YOU so much for all your messages they mean such a lot, to the friends @itv who sent chocolate for the kids & uplifting smellies for me, to mates who dropped off food, posh teabags & milk & made me smile at silliness.

'(Derek is a great believer in the healing power of silliness), to my amazing family, to derek's friends who sent me messages of fun times they have had with him.

Tough: The Good Morning Britain presenter turned 53 on May 4th, and she told Instagram followers t was a 'tough one' for her family as her spouse continues to fight for his life in hospital following his COVID-19 diagnosis

Missing her husband: Kate accompanied her post with two pictures - including a throwback snap of Derek in his younger years at university. She joked, 'insert your own ' his taste in birds' joke here!)'

'(Pictured is when Derek was editing a student newspaper - insert your own ' his taste in birds' joke here!)

'And the strangers who got this cake >>> from @romankemp & all at @global & worked out it was actually meant for me ( was it the bourbons that gave it away??!!) - THANK YOU all.

'But most of all thank you to the NHS teams keeping derek still with us e& battling everyday to inch him toward recovery #hope #positivethinking #standtogether.'
Georgia has recalled its ambassador to Ukraine for consultations after Georgias former President Mikheil Saakashvili was appointed as a chairman of the Ukrainian Executive Reform Committee, the foreign minister said.

Georgias strategic partners decision to appoint a person, who is convicted by Georgian courts and prosecuted, raises questions, David Zalkaliani told reporters on Friday.

He said the decision did not mean breaking diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In 2018, Georgia convicted Saakashvili of abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the 2005 beating of an opposition member of parliament when he was president  charges the former leader dismissed as politically motivated.

Saakashvili also has a troubled history with Ukraine.

He was appointed on Thursday to the senior role on the body chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The move marked another political comeback for one of the post-Soviet worlds most recognisable politicians, although it was not immediately clear how much influence Saakashvili would be able to exert over Zelenskyys administration.

He joins as Ukraine faces a recession caused by a nationwide lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and as the government tries to secure aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that is contingent on Kyivs reform performance.

According to a decree published by Zelenskyys office, Saakashvili will head an executive committee at the National Reform Council.

Several bottles of excellent Georgian wine from my village broke through the lockdown and reached me today. In principle, today there is something to celebrate, Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page.

The former Georgian president had been sounded out for the post of deputy prime minister in April, but that move petered out after he held talks with legislators in Zelenskyys party who would have needed to confirm his appointment.

Saakashvili also served for a brief but turbulent spell under Zelenskyys predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, and became an outspoken critic of Poroshenkos government.

The council was set up by Poroshenko in August 2014 to drive reforms but it has not met since Zelenskyys election  which was supported Saakashvili  by last year.

Former Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who served under Zelenskyy, said the council had become a decorative institution and the significance of Saakashvilis appointment would depend on whether the body would be given more heft.

The role in the council could bring Saakashvili closer to Zelenskyy and also allow him to speak his mind, Honcharuk said.

In the national council, he is closer to the president. Moreover, as the deputy prime minister, Saakashvili would not have been able to criticise the prime minister. Now it will be much easier for him to do this, Honcharuk told Reuters News Agency.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday exhorted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to devolve power and make the states partners in efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, contending that "if we keep this fight in PMO, we will lose".

Gandhi said there will be a "calamity" if the fight against the novel coronavirus is centralised in the prime minister's office.

Addressing a press conference through video conference, he also asked the government to adopt transparency in its actions to tackle the coronavirus and work together with states and take them into confidence.

His remarks came after complaints by Congress-ruled states that they were being pushed into fiscal distress in the absence of the Centre providing them resources to fight the pandemic.

Gandhi also called upon the government to immediately put money into the hands of the poor and provide a financial package to the industry to help revive the economy amid the nationwide lockdown to combat the deadly virus.

He also called for having a migrant policy in place as also a lockdown exit strategy in consultation with states.

"I am deeply disturbed and saddened by news of trains being cancelled and migrants being forced to stay back in some states. They are not bonded labour and should be allowed to travel home as per their own free will. After announcements of buses and trains, why are thousands still forced to walk back to their villages," he asked.

He said the lockdown is not an "on/off switch", but is a transition which requires cooperation of all -- the Centre, states, district magistrates and the people of India.

"We need to decentralise power in dealing with the virus. If we keep this fight in PMO, we will lose. The PM must devolve power. If we centralise, there will be a calamity. PM has to trust chief ministers and chief ministers have to trust district magistrates," he said.

Gandhi also asked the government to tell the people what criteria it would use to open the lockdown or continue it post May 17, as the transition out of it is a serious challenge before the country.

The Congress MP said the government needs to work on a psychological change and if it has to open lockdown, it has to convert people's fear about the disease into confidence, as it is not deadly for most of them.

WATCH: Rahul Gandhi on Aarogya Setu App

Noting that the country is facing an emergency situation, the Congress leader said the idea of injecting immediately a sum of Rs 7,500 directly into the hands of poor is critical.

He said as the virus continues to spread across the country, the reality is that the total lockdown has unleashed on India "an economic tsunami of unimaginable proportions".

The Congress leader said it is clear that "we will not be able to get our economy moving again without a massive economic stimulus" from the government and most countries have already announced huge stimulus packages to help restart the economy and ease the pain of their citizens.

"However in India, the government has been dragging its feet on announcing an economic package targeting vulnerable groups like farmers, migrant labourers and daily wage earners as well as industry

clusters like travel and tourism, automobiles, retail etc. that have been severely damaged.

"The longer the government delays announcing this package, the more the pain will grow and the tougher it will become to re-start the economy," he said.

The former Congress president said the economic package is being delayed as the government feels India could be downgraded by international agencies.

"We have to protect the job creators and have to build a wall for them to protect jobs and wages of workers. We have to give them financial support," Gandhi said while calling for a financial package to the MSME sector as well as other industry.

"We need to start our domestic economy soon, the more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," he noted.

Gandhi also made several suggestions, including providing Rs 7,500 to the poor that will entail a total expense of only Rs 65,000 crore, doubling of MGNREGA employment guarantee days to 200 from the current 100 a year, food security to the poor and vulnerable by providing them foodgrains.

He also called for wage protection and credit guarantee scheme of Rs one lakh crore each for MSME sector and credit guarantee/ interests subsidy to large industries to ensure there are no layoffs and supply chain continues, besides sops to farmer and agri sector and shopkeepers.

The Congress leader hoped the government will give serious consideration to the suggestions by the Congress and incorporate them in the economic stimulus package, which should be announced without any further delay.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,886 and the number of cases climbed to 56,342 in the country on Friday, registering an increase of 103 fatalities and 3,390 infections in the last 24 hours, according to the Union health ministry.
Almost from the moment JBs Barber Shop on Austin Highway opened at 6:45 a.m. Friday, all three chairs were filled with customers desperate to get shorn.

I normally start at 7, but the parking lot was full at 6:30, owner Alfred Saldana said. So I figured, Lets go.

Only five customers are allowed in the shop at a time, masks are required and anyone showing symptoms of COVID-19 will not be allowed in.

We want to take all the right precautions, he said.

Saldana said it was scary when he had to close the shop for seven weeks because of government mandates aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. But after getting help from the city and customers who paid for cuts in advance, he feels hes weathered the storm.

Its a relief to be working again, he said. To be able to provide for my wife and family.

Jorge Canseco also was relieved, but only because he was able to avoid being clipped by his daughters, ages 18 and 13.

They were telling me I looked pretty shabby and wanted to cut my hair, he said. I told them Id wait until I could get a professional to do it.

At Sisters Boutique Salon on Lockhill Selma Road, Ted Andrews plopped down in a chair Friday morning, eager for a cut.

I was going crazy, he said. I was afraid the dog catcher was going to come after me.

The phone has been ringing off the hook since the salon announced it was reopening, said Valerie Glenn, who co-owns the facility with her sister Billie Hartless. Adjusting to the new routine hasnt been too difficult: the salon has ample space, and shes used to cleaning and disinfecting equipment frequently.

We have a lot of loyal clients, and theyre excited, Glenn said.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that beauty salons and barber shops could reopen Friday, the second wave of his plan to revitalize Texas flagging economy. Retail stores, movie theaters, restaurants and malls were allowed to open last week at limited capacity.

Now Playing: The mayor met with the Express-News Editorial Board to discuss the reopening of San Antonio after Governor Abbott announced reopening Texas. You can watch the full video of the 1-hour session on https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/ Video: mySA

Salon and barber shop owners in San Antonio who reopened Friday said theyve been overwhelmed with calls, emails and messages from clients eager to get trims and touch-ups.

Unlocking their doors, though, came with mixed emotions. Some feel nervous and wonder whether its too soon, but they have bills to pay and customers clamoring for appointments.

Under Abbotts order, the shops must keep at least 6 feet between operating work stations. Employees and contractors should be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and wear masks, work stations should be sanitized after each customer and disposable supplies should be used when possible, according to checklists posted online for the businesses.

Appointments should be scheduled ahead of time to limit the number of people inside salons and customers should wait in their cars or outside, wear masks and wash their hands, the checklists says.

At Urban City Barbershop, barbers wore masks, gloves and disposable aprons, and containers of hand sanitizer and Barbicide sat atop counters. Some customers wore masks and others slipped them down to avoid getting hair in their mouths.

Owner and store manager Juan Gonzalez kept the doors locked until each client arrived at the shop, which is operating by appointment-only.

We want everybody to be safe, he said.

Urban City was one of the only businesses open Friday morning at the Shops at Rivercenter, but it was humming with activity. Friday was fully booked, and, as of 11 a.m., there was one slot left for today.

Men are just as tied to their hair as women, Gonzalez said.

A lot of nails, too, needed tending to Friday.

During the shutdown, Alejandra Cano kept texting her manicurist updates on the status of her neglected nails.

I suffered without them  I suffered a lot, she said. It feels so good to be back.

Valerie Barrera, who co-owns a nail business with her mother, Margie Rodriguez, and rents space at Salon and Spa Suites, had been doing Canos nails every month for two years until the salon closed.

She kept telling me, I miss you, Barrera said. She sent me pictures.  I was like, Oh, no. Im sorry!

Shutting down the salon was difficult. Rodriguez filed for unemployment, was denied, appealed the denial and has yet to hear back, she said.

It was scary for a while because there was no money coming in, she said. It was stressful.

Clients started calling as soon as they found out the business was reopening. Rodriguez and Barrera went on a frantic shopping spree Thursday, looking for thermometers to check customers temperatures, disinfecting sprays and no-touch trashcans.

The two booked only a handful of customers Friday to give themselves extra time to clean and adjust to the new routine.

We are so excited to get back to work and make some money and be able to catch up on our bills, Rodriguez said. I am nervous to make sure we follow the proper guidelines.  but once we get into the routine of what were supposed to say, itll be OK.

For Sam Ward, owner of Sams Barber Shop on East Commerce Street, two months off taught him more about his faith and God than anything else in his life. People looked out for him: family and friends called to check in and several customers sent him money.

God has given me a lot in my life, but this made me realize who He is and that Hell take care of me, Ward said. Thats my testimony.

Being back at work is a breath of fresh air, Ward said. Before the shop reopened, he sanitized and bleached everything, and when a customer entered, he asked the man to wait outside in his car so there wouldnt be too many people inside at once.

I want to stay healthy now that Im back here, he said.

At Arcadia Hair Studio in Alamo Heights, customers are allowed in one at a time and must wear face masks and have their hands sprayed with sanitizer before theyre allowed to sit in the old-fashioned barber chairs.

Before reopening, owner Heidi Mowles and her son spent Thursday giving the place perhaps its deepest cleaning since it opened in 1967. Shes already booked through May 14 and thrilled to be back.

I missed my customers even more than I missed cutting hair, she said.

At Sol y Luna, a North Side hair salon, owner Samuel Paniagua had one word to describe customers hair Friday: Long.

It was so nice of them to wait, though. I just keep saying Thank you so much for waiting. Thank you for coming to see us, Paniagua added.

Since closing his salon, hed been hustling to provide as many no-contact services as possible: offering online instruction to clients on how to trim their own hair, selling gift cards and advertising specials on new products.

I was finding different resources to still stay engaged with my clients, Paniagua said. Its so hard to wrap my head around this new norm.

Before the pandemic, Sean Bennett was getting his hair trimmed every two to three weeks.

Its a big fur ball if I dont get it cut, he said. I get coconut head if it gets too long.

He was nervous about making an appointment, comparing the feeling to the anxiety that sets in when hes shopping at H-E-B, where hes hyper-aware of what people have touched and his proximity to other shoppers.

But after going through Sol y Lunas series of precautionary measures  waiting outside before his appointment, answering a series of questions about his health, washing his hands constantly  he felt at ease.

I feel like Im in good hands here, he said.

The customers, Paniagua, and his assistant all wore masks and each client received a new smock wrapped around their neck. The space was sanitized between each appointment.

I love being able to make someone feel good about themselves. You dont know what people are going through, whats happened to them, so to lift someone up with a haircut  it helps, Paniagua said. Putting a smile on their face means that Im doing my job.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
Margie had been wondering if there was a shelter-at-home order in her county. She didn't really use the computer very much, but her daughter had recommended she look at the Orlando Senior Help Desk's website when she was looking for some assistance for her husband who had recently been ill. She remembered how easy it was. She went to http://www.orlandoseniorhelpdesk.org, and right there on the front of the site was an area saying "COVID-19 Coronavirus" with a big easy button saying "Information." She clicked on the link and found several easy connections to everything she was looking for, and then some.

During this time of confusion, the Orlando Senior Help Desk, sponsored by The Jewish Pavilion, is there to help. You can now find information, helpful links, stories and articles regarding the COVID-19 coronavirus at http://www.orlandoseniorhelpdesk.org . You can also link to other senior services and information, all free.

After years of spending time in elder-care facilities, the staff of the Jewish Pavilion realized that there was a need for free referrals and information for seniors and their families in Central Florida. For the last six years, The Orlando Senior Help Desk has been offering free advice and guidance in Seminole, Orange, and now Osceola, Lake, Marion and Sumter counties.

Recently, staff of the Orlando Senior Help Desk has been able to help seniors and their families from across the United States to find elder-care facilities, transportation services, legal services, Medicare information, home healthcare and many other items. You can also email info@jewishpavilion.org if you would like to be added to their mailing list and sent and informative newsletter once monthly.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, most of the children who have become sick with the syndrome tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, meaning they likely had COVID-19 earlier, anywhere from two to four weeks before they became ill, Belmonte said. Many of the children who developed the new illness had no previous health conditions, he said.
As more businesses open up per Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order, Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta is encouraging residents to stay smart and cautious as they venture out of their homes more frequently.

Im hopeful that citizens will continue to practice all the things theyve been told about (during the novel coronavirus pandemic)  social distancing, washing hands, he said. I hope they dont throw those things out the window.

Some folks think they are bulletproof

However, the judge admitted there are challenges when it comes to guiding peoples behavior, even in the midst of a health crisis. Sebesta said that at their core, people are social critters who, over the last two months, have been asked to change a lifetime of habits.

Some folks, especially older folks and those who are immunocompromised, they will be much more conscious (of keeping with governmental recommendations), but others are reluctant, he said. Some folks think theyre bulletproof.

As of May 8, the county reported 613 total COVID-19 cases, which include eight deaths, 286 active cases and 319 recoveries. One of the deaths was a woman with underlying health conditions who lived at Windsong Care Center in Pearland, where an outbreak of the virus was reported May 3.

An interactive map of cases in the county is available here.

Abbott recently ordered a phased-in approach beginning May 1 to reopen nonessential services at limited capacity including restaurants, malls, theaters, museums, gyms, public pools and salons among others, as well as churches and other places of worship. The full order can be viewed here.

Sebesta encouraged county residents to read the order in full, familiarize themselves with the rules and stipulations businesses must follow to reopen and throw their support behind those establishments that are in compliance.

You need to go read the requirements that these people are supposed to be operating under. For businesses that are doing their best to keep people safe, patronize them and they will get a reputation for having their things together, he said.

Nursing home outbreak

The state stepped in with a strike force when the outbreak at the Windsong center was reported. The Brazoria County Health Department reached out to Texas Health and Human Services and the Department of State Health Services to test all residents and employees at the facility.

Sebesta said more than 100 people, including residents and employees, were tested. In addition to the woman who died, 15 residents and one employee had tested positive for the virus as of May 8.

Sebesta said the county is continuing to support efforts at Windsong to keep people there safe.

We are working with them to get them additional PPE (personal protective equipment) so they can do the things they need to do, he said.

Sites offer COVID-19 testing

In addition to offering guidelines and recommendations to the citizenry in an effort to keep the spread of COVID-19 contained as much as possible, the county has partnered with the state military and Community Health Network clinics to offer income-based mobile testing sites at various locations.

CHN testing sites are at: Adoue Family Health Center, 1111 W. Adoue, Alvin; Scarsdale Family Health Center, 10851 Scarsdale Blvd., Suite 160, Houston; Freeport Community Health Center, 905 N. Gulf Blvd., Freeport; Sweeny Community Hospital (through May 9), 305 N. McKinney, St. Sweeny; and Brazosport College (May 12-15), 500 College Drive, Lake Jackson. Call 281-824-1480 and press 2 for information.

Other facilities offering testing are Houston Methodist Emergency Care Center Pearland, 11525 Broadway, Pearland, 713-363-8020; Next Level Urgent Care Pearland (only testing high-risk patients), 8325 Broadway, Suite 220, Pearland; Optional Urgent Care, 208 Oak Drive S., Lake Jackson, 979-285-2273; and UTMB Health Access Center, 136 E. Hospital Drive, Angleton, 979-849-6467, (after hours) 409-772-2222.

Sebesta said residents also can be tested at all local hospitals or through their physicians. People seeking a COVID-19 test must be prescreened and, if they are going through a doctor-recommended private laboratory or local hospital, should call ahead before going in.
By PTI

AHMEDABAD: A 40-year-old man, apparently mentally unsound, has been arrested in Bhuj town in Gujarat's Kutch district for allegedly `creating enmity between different communities'.

Maamad Abdulla Luhar sneaked into a mosque on Thursday midnight, gave untimely Azaan (call for prayer) through the mosque's loudspeaker and allegedly asked the community members to come out with weapons, police said.

He was arrested under IPC section 153 (A) (creating enmity between different groups), said sub inspector K M Agravat of Bhuj A Division police station.

He was also slapped with sections 269 and 270 of the IPC for indulging in a negligent and malicious act which was "likely to spread infection" for breach of lockdown, the police officer said.

As per the preliminary probe, Luhar, who appeared to be mentally unsound, did not have any objective in mind when he made inflammatory remarks from the mosque's loudspeaker, he added.

The accused lives in Sanjognagar and never prayed at this mosque in Bakali Colony, the inspector said.

"Luhar does not appear to be mentally sound. He found the keys from a shelf near the main gate of the mosque and entered. Around 2:20 am he gave Azaan using loudspeaker despite knowing it is not the time for prayer. He also announced he was the `king of Kutch' and asked community members to wake up and come out of their houses with weapons," said Agravat.

"When mosque authorities learnt about the incident, they informed the police and he was arrested," he added.
Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti or simply Rabindra Jayanti is a celebration in remembrance of the Nobel Laureate on his birth anniversary. This year, 2020, marks his 159th birth anniversary. Celebrated annually and globally, it falls on the 25th day of the Bengali month Boishakh. Each year, Bengalis observe the day with cultural programmes involving songs, dances, and theatre performances. Though the scenario is very different this year, it didnt dampen peoples spirits. This video of sisters Antara and Ankita Nandy paying a virtual tribute to Kobiguru proves that perfectly.

Taking to Facebook and YouTube, Antara Nandy shared a video of herself performing two beautiful songs by Rabindranath Tagore, along with her sister. The songs are called Mamo Chitte and Amaar Bela Je Jaaye.

Had there been no lockdown, there would have been little cultural functions all around West Bengal today. Heres our little cultural function - a tribute to the Kobi guru from our balcony! This is just a humble attempt at spreading positivity! We will get through this together, family! Nandy wrote and shared the video.

Here are the sisters singing the songs in a magical voice while playing ukuleles:

Since being shared just a few hours back, the video has already garnered over 3.2 lakh views and the numbers are only increasing. From writing how talented they are to thanking them for their performance, heres how people reacted, both on Facebook and YouTube.

Im from Assam and Im feeling really happy that you guys have sung the songs so beautifully, in every aspect, wrote a YouTube user. So beautifully sung! So melodious! Lots of love to you both! expressed another. Overwhelmed after listening Rabindra Sangeet from your voice. Thank you. Keep it up, commented a third.

As for the Facebook users they used varied adjectives from beautiful to melodious to react.

As per the Bengali calendar, Tagores birthday overlaps on either May 8 or May 9 on the Gregorian calendar. West Bengal celebrates the day following the Bengali calendar. However, other states observe the day as per the Gregorian calendar on May 7 annually.

What do you think of this tribute by the sisters on Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti?
Ceat Tyres on Friday said it has extended warranty on tyres by three months to support customers due to coronavirus-led nationwide lockdown.

The decision to extend warranty on tyres has been taken to express solidarity with customers amidst the continued lockdown, Ceat Tyres said in a statement.

The extention is valid on tyres whose warranty is due to expire between March 1 and May 31, it added.

"We have taken the decision keeping the safety of our customers in mind. While we all are following the government's directive of social distancing, we want to ensure that our customers continue to get the benefit of the warranty during these trying times," Ceat Tyres Chief Operating Officer Arnab Banerjee said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ANCA Executive Director Aram Suren Hamparian issued a statement on Shushi Liberation Day.

The statement runs as follows:

The fact is that Turkey and Azerbaijan want to destroy Armenia.

That's a painful truth.

A heavy truth.

But thats our reality.

Now and for the foreseeable future.

Ankara and Baku are trying to conquer Artsakh because they aim to crush Armenia.

They work to destroy our Diaspora because they want to defeat our homeland.

They try to erase our past because they want, ultimately, to deny us our future.

Azerbaijans merciless hammer strikes upon Ankaras neo-Ottoman anvil fall hardest on those young souls protecting our Armenian homeland  devastating the families of those lost or injured, but - make no mistake - these attacks are against all of us.

They target each and every Armenian. Our very existence. Our place on this planet.

Me and you. Our sisters and brothers. The young and old.

From all parties and every political point of view.

From all corners of the earth - from Armenia, Artsakh, and Javakhk to the Americas, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. No exceptions.

Just like 1915. Just like 1988.

Theirs is a modern, multi-billion dollar campaign to finish the work of the genocide.

Their weapons have changed, but not their aims. They seek  as did those who held the reins of power before them:

-- To capture Artsakh;

-- To empty our homeland;

-- And destroy our Diaspora.

They have vast resources, and they are not holding any in reserve.

We dont have their government revenues or oil dollars, but we do have something more powerful:

-- Our honor;

-- Our pride;

-- Our faith;

-- And our will.

We are each an ambassador for our nation.

We are - every man, woman, and child - responsible for our cause.

Together, as a diaspora, we represent a second army of the Armenian nation - an unmatched international legion - protecting our homeland, preserving our heritage, and advancing our rights.

An army of identity, of ideas, of inspiration.

As citizen soldiers, we are not called upon the make the sacrifices of those brave sentinels who stand guard today along the frontiers of Armenian freedom.

But the enemies we face are just as powerful. The stakes of our struggle just as high.

This is our generations Avarayr. Our Sardarabad. Our Shushi.

Khrimian Hayrik, in honoring Vartan, wrote: You perished, and Armenia arose.

So too is it for each of us.

All of us Vartans, struggling upon our own Vaspurakan, striving, searching, and sacrificing for a better tomorrow. Not for only ourselves, but for all our brothers and sisters.

Not simply for today, but for all our tomorrows.

That is the price of Armenias survival. Always has been.

For, as Mer Hayrenik teaches us, death is the same everywhere; A man dies but once; but blessed is he who gives his life for the freedom of his nation.

So much has changed, but that simple truth has not.

Our nation calls to us today, as she has so often through the centuries.

The words of Charents echo in our hearts:

Ov hai joghovurd, ko miak prkootyune ko havakakan uji mej eh

Oh! Armenian people, your salvation lies only in your collective power

The songs of our youth still stirs our souls:

Zartir Lao, mrnim kzi.

Awake, my son, I would die for you.

A mother awakening her son for battle, just as our mother, Mayr Hairenik, tearfully summons us, her children, to her defense.

Let us rally to the call of our nation.

Let us rise together to the challenge of our age.

Let us unite, and show our strength.

Working with and for and through the Hai Tahd movement, as the proud sons and daughters of one Armenian Nation - one Armenian Cause - we will, as we must, defend the Armenian people in this hour of danger.

It is the devotion we owe to our past.

The determination we owe to our future.

And the debt we owe to ourselves.
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Linkedin Budi Sutrisno (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 17:27 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d238e 1 National McDonalds-Indonesia,McDonalds,Sarinah,Thamrin Free

Indonesia's first McDonald's restaurant in the Sarinah shopping center in Central Jakarta, which for years has been an icon for urbanites in the capital, will permanently shut its doors this Sunday after nearly three decades in business.

McDonalds Indonesia bade farewell to the flagship store after receiving an official letter from the management of Sarinah on April 30, stating that the government-owned building would undergo a renovation and make changes to its business strategy in the near future.

Many Jakartans turned to social media after the announcement to share their memories of the fast food restaurant, which has been a go-to spot for workers, students and families.

McD Sarinah became a trending topic on Twitter on Thursday evening, with more than 20,000 tweets related to the restaurants closure.

One of my familys traditions in the month of Ramadan that cannot be fulfilled this year is sahur [predawn meal] at McD Sarinah, Twitter user @tweetiani posted on May 3.

Another user, @AmmarshaR, posted a picture showing the back of Ronald McDonald  the clown mascot of the restaurant chain  waving goodbye to the McDonald's store, located in the corner of the historical shopping center on Jl. MH Thamrin.

[The store is] a cultural heritage, many may say. One of the oldest fast food establishments in the country," the user tweeted on Friday, "Ive had my fair share of time spent there, from waiting for a date to a quick dinner after a midnight trip. Its a place of fond memories."

McD Sarinah is an institution. A cultural heritage, many may said. One of the oldest fast food establishment in the country.



Ive had my fair share of time spent there. From waiting a date to a quick dinner after a midnight trip. Its a place of fond memories. pic.twitter.com/V9P9Uz05ie  Ammarsha | #TheAmateurs (@AmmarshaR) May 7, 2020

Some Jakartans also remembered how the restaurant was a silent witness of chaotic incidents on one of the busiest streets in the capital, including a bombing in 2016 and the deadly post-election riots following the 2019 presidential race.

McDonalds Indonesia marketing and communications director Michael Hartono said he was aware of how McDonalds Sarinah had become an important place for some and that many customers had had their first experiences in the restaurant.

We express our deepest gratitude to all our loyal consumers who have jointly raised McDonalds Sarinah and created millions of sweet memories with us there, Michael said in a press statement released on Thursday.

It will certainly have a very deep mark on us because of the history, memories and celebrations of important events taking place at McDonalds Sarinah. We will continue to try to provide the best for our customers and look for other strategic locations.

The company said it would ensure that all employees who had been working at McDonalds Sarinah would keep their jobs and be relocated to other restaurants.

There are 227 McDonalds restaurants across Indonesia.

McDonalds Sarinah first opened on Feb. 23, 1991, with the management license partly owned by businessman Bambang Rachmadi, who also managed 12 other restaurants in the country, together with McDonalds Corporation.

In 2009, McDonalds Corporation sold its master franchise to the Sosro Group, a subsidiary of the Rekso Group, which resulted in Bambang changing the name of the McDonalds in Sarinah and elsewhere to ToniJacks.

A year later, ToniJacks had to close a number of its outlets, including those in strategic places like Sarinah, amid sluggish business. Rekso Group retook the Sarinah building in February 2011 and brought back McDonalds.

PT Sarinah president director Gusti Ngurah Putu Sugiarta Yasa said that the renovation of the Sarinah building this year would support the companys new business concepts.

He said the renovation would start with the annex and department store areas in the beginning of June and that the company would prioritize accommodating tenants currently in Sarinah.
Colonel Tom Moore today revealed he would be spending VE Day reflecting on 'the deep joy' of the date 75 years ago.

The Second World War veteran, 100, told MailOnline he is staying at home with his family in Bedfordshire as he waits for a flypast in his honour.

He also implored the country to remember those who continued the fight against the Japanese after victory in Europe was declared.

Britain is commemorating the official surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945, following the brutal conflict.

Large-scale public events are unable to go ahead, but tributes will be paid by politicians and members of the Royal Family.

Colonel Tom's (left and right as a soldier) involvement in the war began in 1940, when the then 20-year-old Yorkshireman was conscripted into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. He told MailOnline he will spend VE Day at home with his family

Colonel Tom (pictured front centre, sitting on a tank), has also shared memories of watching Vera Lynn perform for the troops, and his bittersweet recollections of VE Day

Speaking at his home in Marston Moretaine, where he launched his 32million NHS charity work, Colonel Moore said: 'I remain so happy that there was a victory in Europe all those years ago.

'We must also remember the brave soldiers who continued fighting in the Far East for a further three months.

'We should all quietly reflect VE Day and remember the deep joy it bought, but also the sorrow in the loss of lives which gave us all the freedoms that we sometimes take for granted.

'I am spending today at home with my family. We will be having a lovely meal and then sharing stories.'

Earlier the veteran appeared on Good Morning Britain and told how he had been concerned about his comrades still fighting in Burma after VE Day.

Colonel Tom, who turned 100 last month, said his fellow soldiers were 'very pleased' the conflict in Europe was over.

But he told how the fighting still raged away from the Continent as the Japanese continued to battle for another three months in places such as Burma, now called Myanmar.

Colonel Tom Moore (pictured at home in Bedfordshire with his daughter Hannah) today recalled the 'very very happy' VE Day celebrations 75 years ago but revealed he had been concerned about his comrades still fighting in Burma

The former army officer told GMB: 'It's a very special day that is celebrating the end of a very fearsome war in Europe.

'But today it really is a very fine day, the sun is shining on us too, so I think we all need to be very happy that the war in Europe did come to an end.

'It was a very important day and everyone concerned was absolutely very pleased that this was the end ... the bombing of London, the bombing of other cities ... had come to an end. It was a very, very happy day.'

Despite war ending in Europe, bloody battles continued elsewhere across the world, with the Japanese not surrendering until September 2, 1945.

Colonel Tom added: 'At the time I was very concerned that all my comrades I had left in Burma were still fighting.

'My thoughts were with them because although there were great celebrations here all my comrades were still fighting in Burma with the Japanese.'

The former British Army Officer, who raised over 32million for the NHS during the pandemic, survived fever, the Japanese and giant spiders during the 1942-45 Burma campaign

Colonel Tom's role was to ride to the frontline on a motorbike because he was an expert motorcyclist, having bought his first vehicle aged 12 (pictured, sitting with trophies)

A two-minute national silence will be observed at 11am to honour the memories of the British servicemen and women who gave their lives during the conflict.

The silence will be led by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and broadcast from a location in Scotland, where they are self-isolating.

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will reflect on the 'courage and sacrifice' of the war generation, describing reconciliation and hope as the 'two great tributes we can pay'.

At 9pm, the Queen will address the nation in a televised message - the exact moment her father, King George VI, gave a speech over the radio three-quarters of a century earlier.

The Red Arrows will also fly over London, while RAF Typhoons will appear above Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast as the Air Force pays its respects.

Britain is today commemorating the official surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945, following the brutal war. Pictured: Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach this morning

A guardsman stood beside a memorial to servicemen in London this morning, ahead of VE Day celebrations

The 'Tommy' war statue by artist Ray Lonsdale in Seaham, County Durham at sunrise this morning

Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach overlooking the Firth of Forth on the 75th anniversary of VE Day

Also on GMB this morning, veteran Douglas Moore - who was recently applauded out of hospital for beating Covid-19 - spoke about his recovery from the deadly bug.

When asked how he was feeling, he said: 'Very well actually. I feel very well indeed, as I do most mornings.

'It's a joy to wake up and see the sun shine as it's been sunny for many days now and I look forward to sitting in my daughter's conservatory and looking down at her wonderful garden.'

Talking about being given a guard of honour and applauded by the hospital staff as he left the ward, Douglas said: 'There was an awful lot of people there. As I was being pushed along the way to the exit, they were all cheering me and I was clapping, enjoying myself.

Also on GMB this morning, veteran Douglas Moore - who was recently applauded out of hospital for beating Covid-19 - spoke about his recovery from the deadly bug

'I'm going home, thank you very much, I had a nice time. They're wonderful, absolutely wonderful. The two things about the hospital was the food was very good and the staff were excellent.'

And later Second World War navy veteran Ken Benbow made his second appearance on the programme.

Mr Benbow, who went viral for a video which showed his care home carer Kia Tobin handed him a cushion with his late wife's image on it, spoke about how much celebrating VE Day means to him.

'I wasn't in the UK when V.E Day happened. I happened to be in the Pacific, we were on our way to invade Japan.

'We were picking up men in the sea that had been shot down and taking them back to their aircraft carriers.

'We were doing various things, but we heard on the wireless that the war in Europe had ended and Germany had been defeated, which was a wonderful feeling and we all were so very, very pleased.

'But we couldn't do much, because as I say, we were in the middle of a battle.'

Talking about wanting to get back to the UK to celebrate with his friends and family, Ken said: 'Definitely, that was the most important thing.'

When asked what he will be saying in his speech later today in the care home, Mr Benbow said: 'I'll thank the Lord for my life. I've had a marvellous life, I had the most wonderful wife in the world.

'I've got the most wonderful carer now, but they're all angels here, I couldn't wish to be in a better place.'

Second World War navy veteran Ken Benbow (pictured) also made a second appearance on the show this morning to talk about his memories of VE Day

Colonel Tom fought in the 'forgotten' Allied campaign in Burma during the Second World War and survived dengue fever, the Japanese and giant spiders in Asia.

In an ITV programme called Captain Tom's War, which is being aired tonight, the veteran said he was enthusiastic about being conscripted and loved the military.

While serving in the brutal Burma campaign, known as the 'Forgotten War', Colonel Tom's role was to fight on the frontline while riding a motorbike.

He has also shared memories of watching Vera Lynn perform for the troops, and his bittersweet recollections of VE Day which took place after he got home.

Colonel Tom's involvement in the war began in 1940, when the then 20-year-old Yorkshireman was conscripted into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment.

He was posted to India, then under British control, the following year. 'Being conscripted didn't do me any harm at all,' he said.

'The reason for conscription was that the country had got desperately short of soldiers. I didn't mind at all. I mean at 20 you don't think too hard about it.

'I thought, 'Oh great, it's going to be great'.'

He described India as 'an entirely different world to anything I've ever been in before', and said the air conditioning they had was 'quite necessary'.

'It did get a bit hot,' Colonel Tom chuckled in the documentary.

Colonel Tom is hoping to draw attention to the Burma campaign, which was part of the South-East Asian theatre of the Second World War.

One million Allied troops from 40 countries attempted to repel Imperial Japan from the then British colony over almost three years, between 1942 and 1945.

Speaking of the Japanese fighters, he recalled: 'They were quite a formidable force because there were people who didn't mind if they died'.

He continued: 'They were awful, they were what we say, were completely without morals. They starved people to death and didn't care. That was bad.'

'I was only 21 or 22. You don't get very frightened at 22'.

Colonel Tom's role was to ride to the frontline on a motorbike because he was an expert motorcyclist, having bought his first vehicle aged 12.

He said: 'During the night, I was at the forefront with the Indian Army, fighting the night Japanese. And then, in the morning, when we thought the Japanese had gone home, my motorcycle came back into the picture.'

Decorated war hero Colonel Tom is hoping to draw attention to the Burma campaign, which was part of the South-East Asian theatre of the Second World War

Colonel Tom walks behind an NHS hero sign just a week after his 100th birthday celebrations

'The only way of getting to the front from the tanks was on a motorcycle through several miles of jungle, which fell to me again. I went back to the Regiment and that was a signal that the roads were clear and people came out again.'

Alongside Japanese soldiers, he said he had to battle fever and spiders 'the palm of your hand', adding: 'That takes a little bit of getting used to'.

The 'Forgotten War': Burma's involvement in the Second World War The Burma campaign was a series of battles fought in the then British colony of Burma, now Mynamar. It was part of the South-East Asian theatre of the world war, and primarily involved the Allied powers: the British Empire, the US, and China. They faced Imperial Japan, supported by the Thai Phayap Army and two collaborationist independent movements and armies, the first being the Burma Independence Army. Puppet states were established in the conquered areas and territories were annexed, while the Allied forces in British India launched several failed offensives before August 1945. There were four phases: the Japanese conquest of Burma in 1942; failed attempts by the Allies to mount offensives into Burma from 1942 to early 1944; the 1944 Japanese invasion of India, which ultimately failed following the Battles of Imphal and Kohima; and the successful Allied re-occupation of Burma by mid-1945. The Burma campaign was the only land campaign by the Western Allies in the Pacific Theatre. It was prolonged by seasonal monsoon rains, which allowed effective campaigning for only just half of each year; by famine and disorder in British India; and by the priority given to defeating Germany. Advertisement

Colonel Tom said his commanders kept up troop morale with live music.

'This charming young lady appeared. It turned out to be Vera Lynn. And to a lot of men who hadn't seen girls for a long time, it was quite something,' he revealed. 'She did a little song for us, so it really boosted the moral of everybody.

'All I know is she appeared amongst us with Lord Mountbatten. I thought at the time, these top people get the best jobs!'

Dame Vera told the programme: 'Burma was a special time for me and one that I will never forget. I was well protected by all the boys and never felt frightened. It was so good to help them feel that they were not so far away from home.'

Colonel Tom also shared his memories of VE Day, which happened after he returned to the UK and became a tank instructor. They bring back some bittersweet memories, he said.

'We stopped instructing for the day and there were certain activities in the bars. A lot of girls and a lot of boys and put those together and you get a good time.

'I wasn't all that happy because all my friends were still out in the Far East, still fighting. They didn't have a day off for VE Day, they were still fighting. I was a little bit unhappy about that bit.'

It would be three more months before the Japanese surrendered in 1945, and the world war against the Axis powers was finally over.

A cold war between the USSR - one of the Big Three - and the US and its allies would come to divide the world and dominate the rest of the 20th century.

Reflecting on his experiences, Colonel Tom said: 'I can't say I didn't enjoy myself because I did... being in the Army, I really enjoyed being in the Army'.

The programme is narrated by actor Sir Kenneth Branagh and features contributions from the 100-year-old's daughters, Lucy Teixeira (left) and Hannah Ingram (right)

Colonel Tom was awarded a Colonel's rank by the Queen after fundraising for the NHS this year. He is offering words of comfort for Britons stuck at home.

The secret to persevering through a tough challenge is simply, he explains: 'You start off with the first one, it's a bit hard. Then you do another one, and another and think, well I can do another one, and that's how you have to keep going.

'The Yorkshireman, his word is his bond. I said I'll do it and I'll do it.'

The programme is narrated by actor Sir Kenneth Branagh and features contributions from the 100-year-old's daughters, Lucy and Hannah.

Captain Tom's War is on ITV tonight at 8pm.
Boston Dynamics' robotic dog, Spot, is roving Singapore parks in an effort to remind pedestrians to remain a safe distance from one another.

According to a statement from the country's National Parks Board, Spot will traverse a 4-mile swath of Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park during off-peak hours while playing a recorded message that reminds park-goers 'observe safe distancing measures.'

The bot will also be fitted with cameras that are 'enabled with... video analytics' which will be used to estimate the number of people in the park.

According to a statement, the cameras will not track or record specific individuals, and no personal data will be collected.

MailOnline has reached out to Singapore's Government Technology Agency to find out more about the video analytics system equipped to the bot and will update with further information.

Spot will apparently be controlled remotely which government officials say will reduce the need for human patrols and potentially minimize the risk of physical contact for volunteer 'safe distancing ambassadors' and park visitors.

Spot is also designed to traverse various types of terrain which gives it an advantage for patrolling parks over other wheeled robot.

To help the bot avoid humans, Spot also uses sensors and will be accompanied by a human during its test period.

Spot is being deployed in Singapore (pictured) to help remind pedestrians to keep a safe distance from one another and also estimate the number of people

This isn't the first time Spot has been deployed to help mitigate the effects of coronavirus.

Last month, the bot was deployed to help healthcare workers at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard University treat coronavirus patients remotely in an attempt to limit the virus's spread.

Spot was equipped with a custom mount and attachment for a notepad which allows doctors and other healthcare workers to video conference with patients in testing tents outside of the hospital.
A heroin addict who killed a British backpacker by tossing her from a bridge will be released from jail.

Caroline Stuttle, from York in north east England, was walking back to the caravan park she was staying at in Bundaberg, Queensland, when she was attacked by Ian Previte late at night on April 10, 2002.

Previte threw Caroline off a bridge after trying to snatch her bag in a botched robbery.

The 19-year-old's body was at the bottom of the 10-metre Burnett River Bridge.

Previte, 32, was found guilty of murder in 2004 and jailed for 15 years.

He is expected to be released on parole on Friday after serving his full sentence, the Courier Mail reported.

Caroline Stuttle, from York, was walking back to the caravan park she was staying at in Bundaberg, Queensland, when she was attacked by Ian Previte late at night on April 10 in 2002

Previte (pictured) threw Caroline off a bridge after trying to snatch her bag in a botched robbery

Caroline's brother Richard Stuttle said Previte's release was harder on the family than they had thought it would be.

'We knew this day would come, his life sentence is over but ours will last forever.

'The release of the man who stole my sister's life has hit our family harder than we thought, it's been nearly 18 years since we lost Caroline and life without her still hurts everyday.

'We strive to stay positive, reminding ourselves of Caroline's Rainbow Foundation and all the work we have done to support backpackers and young travellers, helping to keep them safe when travelling.

'This is Caroline's legacy and how she will always be with us.'

British backpacker Caroline Ann Stuttle was travelling around Australia during a gap year when she was killed

Caroline was nearing the end of her gap year abroad with her friend Sarah Holiday when she was killed

Following her death, Caroline's family set up the Rainbow Foundation, which promotes travel safety awareness for anyone going abroad.

Caroline was nearing the end of her gap year abroad with her friend Sarah Holiday when she was killed.

On the night of the attack, Caroline had been using a payphone to call her boyfriend in England.

She was walking back to her caravan, when she was approached by Previte, a drifter, on the bridge.

He had taken a dangerous cocktail of drugs in the hours before the attack, including the antidepressant Seroxat and morphine.

He had tried to steal her bag but when she fought back, he pushed her over the railing.
Kuwait will soon start a complete lockdown to fight the coronavirus while other countries in the region are easing restrictions.

The Ministry of Information announced the decision on Twitter today. The total curfew will begin Sunday and go until May 30.

The council of ministers decided to implement a total curfew in the country, ministry spokesman Tariq al-Muzaram said.

Muzaram said details about the decision will be announced shortly, but the language suggests round-the-clock restrictions on movement. Kuwaits current set of rules started April 20 and includes a 16-hour shutdown from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. Work in the public sector will continue to be suspended, according to Reuters.

Kuwaits announcement means the lockdown will coincide with Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim feast holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Observers fast during the day during Ramadan, and then traditionally have large meals with family and friends for several days during Eid.

The move comes as Kuwaits neighbors in the region are relaxing their coronavirus-related restrictions. Iraq loosened restrictions on movement for Ramadan, as did Dubai and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia also eased its lockdown, but created a special police unit to pursue people violating its rules preventing gatherings of more than five people.

Kuwait recently announced an uptick in the countrys coronavirus cases. The country registered 641 new cases today, bringing its total to 7,208, according to the Ministry of Health.

Like other Gulf countries, Kuwait hosts a large foreign worker population that is now in a difficult situation. Many have sought to go home due to the loss of jobs and travel restrictions resulting from the crisis. A group of Egyptian workers who violated the countrys residency laws rioted in housing units they were put in last week. They wanted to be sent home, according to Reuters.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex might be living a brand-new life, well away from the judgment and rules of the royal family, but it seems likely that she will never be able to escape that influence entirely. Many are still fascinated with the period of time that Meghan spent within the royal ranks, and would love to know more about why she had such a hard time, why she seemed to run through staff members so quickly, and what palace staff really thought about the Duchess of Sussex. Fortunately for such fans, a brand-new book is being released in a few weeks, one that promises some truly explosive information.

Meghan Markles difficult entry into the royal family

Meghan Markle | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Meghan and Prince Harry started dating in 2016 and announced their engagement in late 2017. While Prince Harry and Meghan were undoubtedly over the moon with excitement, the feeling from the British tabloids and even members of the public was less than enthusiastic.

The fact that Meghan is American was one strike against her, as was her profession. An actress was seen by many as an unsuitable match for Prince Harry, who had always been a beloved member of the royal family.

Meghan endured a lot of negative press in the days following her engagement. Some press coverage crossed the line and many accused British tabloids of deliberately inciting racist dialogue.

Sadly, it didnt get better, and even after Meghan and Prince Harry tied the knot in May 2018, the two continued waging war against the press. As for Meghan, it seems as though she was waging a different war  one that involved her shaky public image.

Why was Meghan Markle so disliked?

Not long after her marriage to Prince Harry, Meghan was already considered to be one of the least-liked women in the royal family. While some of that could absolutely be attributed to racism or other baseless prejudices, it was clear that there was a disconnect between Meghan and those in both her inner and outer circles.

Celebrity journalists like Piers Morgan spoke out against Meghan, accusing her of being a social climber and of being a hypocrite. Certainly, when she attended a lavish baby shower in New York City, it seemed a bit against the grain for a member of the British royal family.

Her quest for privacy also rubbed many the wrong way, considering that being a member of the British royal family is a public-facing position. Ultimately, it seems as though people disliked Meghan for a wide variety of reasons.

Meghan Markles unfortunate nicknames

Meghan, according to many reports, made no friends within the royal family, especially when it came to members of the palace staff. For months, rumors have circulated the Duchess of Sussex was given cruel nicknames by the staff, perhaps in response to what was termed as her demanding nature.

A few of these nicknames included Duchess Difficult and Me-Gain. The reports were confounded by the fact that Markle couldnt seem to keep an assistant on hand for longer than a couple of months before the assistant would quit.

Meghan Markles other cruel nicknames referenced Princess Diana

Still, the nicknames might have been worse than previously thought. According to recent reports, citing some former royal staffers who went on record in an upcoming tell-all book, Meghan was often compared to the late Princess Diana in a very unflattering way.

Supposedly, Meghans nicknames included Di 2 and Di Lite, which could reference the fact that she seemed to share Dianas passion for charity work and philanthropy  but lacked the affection that the public had for Diana.

At the time of their engagement, in 2017, Prince Harry said in a BBC interview that his mother and Meghan would have been thick as thieves and that Diana would have been over the moon over his choice to marry Meghan.

Prince Harry has even drawn parallels to how his mother was treated to how his wife is being treated. The Duke of Sussex said the ruthless campaign against Meghan is history repeating itself, alluding to his mother.

I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces, said Prince Harry in a powerful statement defending the Duchess of Sussex.

Altogether, the pressure of facing intense dislike on a daily basis was clearly too much for Meghan. In January 2020, she and Prince Harry announced their resignation as senior members of the royal family.
China on Friday asked American politicians not to "waste" their time by trying to drive a "wedge" between the ruling Communist Party and the Chinese people over the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying during a media briefing here said it was under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Chinese people made important progress in fighting the pandemic.

Accusing Chinese political system. We cannot accept this. They are doing it out of malicious intentions. They want to drive a wedge between the CPC and people," Hua said.

The US politicians shouldn't waste time in driving a wedge between the CPC and the people. Our political systems can co-exist and this serves the common interest of both the people," she said, responding to criticism on a host of issues related to China by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In recent days, US President Donald Trump and Pompeo have claimed that the deadly virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak was first detected last December.

The Trump administration is currently weighing punitive actions against China over its early handling of the global health emergency. Washington is also pressing Beijing to allow American experts to probe the origin of the deadly virus.

China has stoutly denied the allegations and says the US wants to distract from its own response to the pandemic ahead of the November presidential election in which Trump is seeking re-election.

The US is home to the world's largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 75,000 fatalities and over 1.2 million cases.

Pompeo, who is regularly accusing China on a slew of issues relating to the COVID-19, dominates the Chinese Foreign Ministry press briefings almost every day with a host of Chinese journalists raising questions one after another seeking response for comments.

This promoted her to say that the ministry's briefings have become a venue to refute Pompeo's "lies".

Stating that China and the US should not be enemies but "comrades" in this fight against this pandemic, she said, Facing the coronavirus pandemic, ideological and political differences can be put aside. Life matters the most."



On Trump's allegation that China may have made enormous mistake, Hua said what enormous mistakes we made. This is a sudden disease we confronted among the first to be affected by the virus, she said.

China took comprehensive and rigorous measures and our efforts have been recognised by the international community. When we look at the US it is simple math. Who has been making an effective response and who has not. I don't want to compare the two countries but you reporters make us compare," she said.

She also backpedalled on the allegations made by her colleague Zhao Lijian earlier stating that the US army may have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan during the last year's military games.

Asked about reports that some athletes had fallen ill during the world military games held in Wuhan in October last year and the allegation by Zhao blaming the US army, Hua said, I notice that he used the word 'may be' but you (media) kept paying attention to that.

On March 12, Zhao, previously China's deputy Ambassador to Pakistan tweeted @CDCDirector ;2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! The US owes us an explanation!.

While the US lodged diplomatic protest over his comments, China did not press for investigations on his allegations.

Hua said China's government position is that tracing the origin is a scientific issue and should be assessed by scientists and professionals. Almost all scientists in the world haven't got to any conclusion about the origin of the virus. Their biggest consensus is that it comes from nature, she said.

Slamming China for a "disinformation campaign, Pompeo accused the World Health Organization of failing in its mission to provide the information to the world in a timely fashion about the risk that was emanating from China.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has taken over slain Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour's five properties, estimated to be worth over Rs 3.2 crore, for auction, according to a media report.

Mansour, who was killed in a drone strike along the Pakistan-Iran border on May 21, 2016, purchased the properties, including plots and houses, in Karachi using fake identities, Dawn newspaper reported.

He had assumed the leadership of the Taliban in July 2015, replacing its founder and the one-eyed reclusive long-time spiritual head Mullah Mohammad Omar who died in 2013.

Islamabad-headquartered Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the country's border control, criminal investigation, counter-intelligence and security agency, had booked him under the stringent Anti-Terrorism Act among other provisions.

The revelation of the properties was made in a report submitted by the FIA to the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC)-II in July last year over a probe into a case relating to the alleged fundraising by Mansour and his accomplices through the purchase of properties on forged identities, sources told the newspaper.

Since January, the court has been directing the investigation officer (IO) to complete the process of attachment of Mansour's properties and proclamation of his two alleged absconding accomplices Akhtar Mohammad and Amaar.

On April 24, the court ordered a Nazir (a court official) to take over the properties of Mullah Mansour after the IO submitted a report on the completion of the attachment process of the properties by the FIA.

The court ordered the Nazir to auction those properties and get advertisements published in newspapers.

When the matter came up before the ATC-II judge recently, the Nazir filed a report on the seizure of the properties owned by Mansour on behalf of the court.

The judge has scheduled a hearing in the case from June 11.

During a previous hearing, the IO informed the court that the FIA had unearthed five properties purchased by the Taliban leader before his death.

The estimated value of the properties is Rs 3.2 crore.

The court has already called for reports from the commissioners of Peshawar and Quetta on the process of proclamation of Mansour's alleged absconding accomplices and attachment of their properties, the paper added.

In 2016, US President Barack Obama confirmed that Mansour was killed in the US drone strike in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, hailing his death as an "important milestone" in efforts to bring peace to war-torn Afghanistan.

He was issued a Pakistani national identity card in 2005, according to reports in 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- A microbe discovered by researchers in Kenya may provide a safe biological way of fighting malaria

- It is believed the microbe, or bug, which is found in mosquitoes, can stop the transmission of the diseases that kills thousands annually

- They studied mosquitoes infected with the microbe and found that none of them carried the parasite responsible for malaria

- Microsporidia MB is a single-cell bug that lives in a mosquito's gut and genitals, where it produces spores

- It is found in 5% of mosquitoes in a high-risk region around Kenya's Lake Victoria, where the researchers focused their work

A team of scientists in Kenya has discovered a novel method with significant potential to completely stop mosquitos from transmitting the parasites which cause malaria in humans.

The scientists, most of whom are from Kenya, the UK and one from South Africa were biologists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi.

READ ALSO: Kariobangi chaos: Smoke, tears as residents barricade roads in protest against forceful evictions

Mosquitoes inject their saliva into the skin to facilitate blood-feeding. Their saliva contains plasmodium, which is injected together with the saliva resulting in malaria transmission. Photo: CNN

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Nurses protest outside White House to honour colleagues who died of COVID-19

They discovered Microsporidia MB, a microorganism that lives in a mosquitos reproductive tract and gut and completely protects the mosquito from being infected with plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria.

According to a report by Quartz Africa, the study showed the Microsporidia MB reduces the establishment of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite in the guts of the mosquitoes.

The researchers published their findings in the science journal, Nature Communications showing the microbe also impairs the colonization of the salivary glands by the parasite.

READ ALSO: Generous driver surprises little girl with ice-cream cupcakes on her birthday

Microsporidia are fungi, or at least closely related to them. Like plasmodium, which is protozoans, they are also known to live inside mosquitoes as parasites.

Mosquitoes inject their saliva into the skin to facilitate blood-feeding. Their saliva contains plasmodium, which is usually injected together with the saliva resulting in malaria transmission.

Scientists believe this makes the Microsporidia MB a realistic candidate as an eco-friendly and sustainable strategy to replace harmful mosquito population with harmless ones.

READ ALSO: My heart will be at peace knowing my tenants are comfortable, safe - Generous Mombasa landlord

The hope is that by infecting mosquitoes in a region with Microsporidia they will no longer be able to infect humans with malaria parasites.

"Step two is increasing the levels of the microbe in mosquitoes, which will be the hard part, but it is very encouraging to see how infectious this microbe is," one of the researchers Jeremy Herren said

"Its ability to be spread from a mother mosquito to her offspring is an incredibly powerful feature,' he added.

READ ALSO: 87-year-old grandfather sells houses he gave his children after they refused to attend his wedding

Herren said the scientists are studying other ways the microbe could spread through the mosquito population, such as releasing spores.

The team of scientists had been studying mosquitoes on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya.

This strategy has been demonstrated before in a city in northern Australia where mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia, a bacterium, were deployed on a large scale.

That effectively stopped all outbreaks of dengue fever for more than four years.

READ ALSO: Landslide: West Pokot's 2019 survivors move into new houses

In April 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that progress in the fight against malaria, which kills 400,000 people annually, had stalled.

There had been reports of drug resistance, such as Artemisinin resistance, in several regions and insecticide resistance in 73 countries in 2019.

The new RTS,S malaria vaccine approved in 2015 has low efficacy and only decreased malaria cases by 39% and severe cases by 29% in clinical trials.

READ ALSO: Coronavirus found in semen of male patients - Chinese researchers

The vaccine could only decrease malaria cases by 39% and severe cases by 29% in clinical trials.

This efficacy of the vaccine is low compared to 85% to 95% for most routine vaccines for children. There has been no significant reduction in the annual numbers of malaria cases since 2014.

These have led to concerns that if better methods are not developed to control the disease, the progress that has been achieved so far may be revered.

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
- The Metro Manila Council eyes another 15-day extension of the enhanced community quarantine over Metro Manila

- MMC chairman & Paranaque Mayor Edwin Olivarez said that it would be necessary for a possible second wave of COVID-19

- However, Olivarez clarified that it is just a recommendation that will be formalized through a resolution

- The final decision of the ECQ will be up to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease

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The Metro Manila Council wants to push another 15-day extension of the enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila amid the COVID-19 crisis.

KAMI learned that the council recommends the extension as it may be necessary for a possible second wave of coronavirus disease cases in the country.

In an interview on Unang Balita, Metro Manila Council chairman and Paranaque Mayor Edwin Olivarez said that the recommendation will be formalized through a resolution during their meeting on Saturday.

"Most likely yun ang tinitignan natin, yung magkaroon ng another 15 days extension," he said.

"Tulad sa amin sa Paranaque, meron kaming mga residente na nagtatrabaho sa Makati. Kung ang Makati ay GCQ (general community quarantine), kami ay ECQ, pano sila makakalagpas papunta dun sa boundary namin?" he added.

However, the councils chairman reiterated that the final decision will still be coming from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Ang nagdi-decide ay IATF. Ang Metro Manila Council ay recommendatory lang po," Olivarez said.

As reported by the Philippine Star (authored by Ralph Edwin Villanueva), Olivarez said that there would be no hard lockdown for Paranaque.

[Hard lockdown] is not the proper solution to the pandemic as long as the patient is still staying in the area, he said.

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In a previous report by KAMI, President Rodrigo Duterte hinted that the Metro Manila will be placed under general community quarantine after May 15.

As of posting time, there are 10,343 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Philippines. Meanwhile, about 1,618 of the patients have recovered.

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!

In this new episode, we explain to you the symptoms of COVID-19 that everyone should be aware of amid the pandemic. Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Lucknow, May 8 : While activities in all political parties have been halted due to the corona crisis and the ongoing lockdown, the BJP in Uttar Pradesh has started reaching out to its cadres through hi-tech communication tools, including audio bridge, interactive voice response (IVR) and video conferencing. The party is quietly preparing for the Panchayat elections in the state, which is likely to be held later this year.

The party's IT cell has created around 40,000 WhatsApp groups for rapid communication transmission, right down to the booth level workers.

According to state BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, the idea is to keep the morale high.

"Our workers are well informed about the latest technology and we have no problem in communicating with the cadres. The idea behind creating 40,000 WhatsApp groups was to ensure that party decisions percolate to grassroots." The BJP has already ensured that all the district offices are equipped with a video-conferencing facility. This helps the leadership in contacting party workers, giving instructions and implementing them on the ground.

The party is also working through audio bridge that allows multiple audio inputs to be mixed and sent to audio outputs.

"We are able to interact with around 20,000 party workers at a time. This is the first time that I am using the audio bridge to reach out to workers," he said.

The party also has a database of mobile numbers of all functionaries and uses IVR technology to allow workers to be in sync with party's core team.

The BJP is also using the lockdown period to prepare for the Panchayat elections, likely to be held later this year.

The BJP has nominated over 75,000 'election warriors' to ensure the party's victory in the polls.

The BJP has decided to nominate one convenor each for 60,000 village Panchayats and 15,000 block and district Panchayats. These convenors, called 'sanyojak', will function as the eyes and ears of the state leadership and will help in finalizing the party's poll strategy and will also suggest names of candidates.

This will be the first time in Uttar Pradesh that the BJP will contest the three-tier Panchayat elections under the party banner.

Sunil Bansal, state BJP organising secretary, said that to gear up the election machinery and activate booth level workers, the party has decided to appoint one election convenor for every seat at the village, block and district level.

He said that by the end of this month, the nomination process for all 60,000 village Panchayats would be finalised.

The party leadership is addressing booth level leaders through video-conferencing and aims at activating the party machinery for the Panchayat polls.
Courtesy of the office of Rep. M /

WASHINGTON  Rep. Mike Thompson thinks its time for the shelter-in-place beard to go. But he wants it to do some good first.

The St. Helena Democrat has been growing a beard while sheltering in place amid the coronavirus pandemic, like several of his peers in Congress. The progress of the white beard has been visible in the 69-year-old Thompsons online town halls and pictures of him working from home.
(JNS)The U.N. agency responsible for international health, the WHO, and its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, have come increasingly under intense criticism for playing dangerous partisan politics. Tedros, the Ethiopian microbiologist who has led the U.N. agency since 2017, visited China in late January to deferentially praise the actions China has implemented in response to the outbreak and its leaders transparency regarding the coronavirus epidemic.

But while the WHO was praising Chinas handling of the situation, the countrys Communist authorities had censored information regarding the diseases victims, muzzling physicians from sounding early warnings. Citizen journalists reporting about the victims had suddenly disappeared, and American journalists were expelled from China. Publication of academic research on the origin of the virus was subject to vetting and approval by Chinese central government officials. As information continued to emerge about Chinas downplaying the extent of the COVID-19 outbreakan action that worsened its impact in the United States and European countriescriticism mounted.

A Wall Street Journal editorial noted the coronavirus epidemic has exposed the [WHOs] process for declaring emergencies as prone to politicization... But this is not the first time that the WHO director-general has been criticized for allowing political considerations to influence his actions. Nor is it the first time the WHO has used its platform for political purposes.

The WHO has long politicized the topic of Palestinian health care in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

These territories belong to the WHOs Eastern Mediterranean region, made up of largely Arab and Muslim countries (unlike Israel, which belongs to the European region). They are the only non-states included in the WHOs Eastern Mediterranean region and are labeled Palestine.

The anti-Israel bias of this division of the WHO is akin to that of the Arab-Soviet Third World bloc that dominated the U.N. General Assembly since the mid-1970s, passing resolutions to demonize Israel under the guise of support for the Palestinians, including the infamous, now repealed, 1975 Zionism is racism resolution.

The political and sectarian approach to health care in the West Bank and Gaza is made clear by the WHOs consistent reference to Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as in the document that sets out the strategic vision in establishing health policies, strategies and plans for Palestinian health-care development efforts. Shortcomings are blamed on Israel with no acknowledgement of the role of the Palestinian leadershipeither the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, which run the West Bank and Gaza, respectivelyin the conflict itself or in the decisions it makes that compromise health-care delivery.

Similarly, a report on Palestinian health care, published at the end of 2017, lays the blame for problems squarely on Israel, claiming that as [an] occupying power, it bears ultimate responsibility.

Missing from both these documents is the context of Israels complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and its takeover by Hamas. There is no discussion about the effect of Palestinian terrorism that impacts the delivery of health care, nor of the decisions by their respective leadership that have an impact on the delivery of health care. No mention of medical ambulances subverted by terrorists, Hamass rejection of essential medical supplies from Israel or the diversion of resources by Hamas to benefit its terrorist infrastructure; nothing about the reduction of essential services and halting of medical shipments by the P.A. to Gaza resulting from the internecine Palestinian fighting between it and Hamas; no discussion of the P.A.s role in delaying or suspending payments for the referral of patients to medical treatment outside of Gaza, or denying access to Israeli hospitals to average Palestinians while allowing senior Palestinian officials to avail themselves of Israeli care.

The WHOs refusal to address the complexities of the situation and all the factors that disrupt optimal health care for Palestinians speaks to its lack of credibility on the subject.

Much like the reliance on the Chinese Communist government as a source of information on the coronavirus outbreak, the WHO relies on Gazas Health Ministry officials as a source of information without regard to the fact that they are employees of a terrorist regime sworn to Israels destruction, and that they are following Hamas guidelines for reporting events to outsiders. These health-ministry officials have been shown time and again to lack credibility.

The WHOs reports about health care in the territories amount to nothing more than partisan political documents to be weaponized by those who seek to demonize Israel. As for the WHOs country-specific website for what it calls Occupied Palestinian Territory, that, too, serves as a source of crude anti-Israel propaganda in the form of videos, health-situation reports, referral-access reports and interviews that are twisted to demonize Israel.

The pandemic has made evident the WHOs lack of neutrality and politicization of health care. If the WHO is to reclaim its original mission of promoting keeping the world safe, then it must become a neutral arbiter of health care by renouncing political partisanship across the board.

Ricki Hollander is a senior analyst at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
There was a special Mass for the repose of the soul of Benito Mussolini and a failed effort to do the same for one Adolf Hitler.

For most of Europe it was an occasion of unbridled joy and celebration. But VE Day on May 8, 1945, in Ireland was less straightforward, marked by clashes and flag burnings and public expressions of anti-British and anti-US sentiment.

Ireland had an 'emergency' - not a war - and in fact that emergency officially continued another 15 months to August 1946. Recurring British and American hostility to Ireland's decision to remain neutral was heightened days earlier when Taoiseach Eamon de Valera called at the German embassy in Dublin to express the nation's sympathy at the death of the Fuhrer.

Strict media censorship, which was only relaxed somewhat days later on May 11, 1945, meant many Irish people did not know the level of opprobrium heaped upon de Valera for that piece of wrong-headed "neutrality gone mad".

Ireland was one of just five European states, along with Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, which managed to stay neutral through World War II. But other smaller states, comparable to Ireland, like Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, had their neutrality truncated by Nazi invasion.

De Valera's Ireland was lamentably ill-prepared to sustain the political rhetoric its government purveyed about self-reliance, with a small army, a non-existent navy and a fledgling air corps. But it got through because Germany did not think it worthwhile to invade; the UK realised it could not defend a second island; and the USA could not face the moral opprobrium which would come from such an invasion.

As the war progressed, Ireland quietly became "neutral for the Allies". The "Donegal corridor" allowed allied planes fly from Fermanagh to the Atlantic, and crash-landing or shipwrecked allied airmen and sailors were sent north of the Border, often deemed to have been on "logistical" rather than "operational" missions. By December, 1944, there were 232 German and three Japanese airmen and sailors detained in the Curragh Camp - no one from the allies.

Economic dependence upon the UK meant there was still close personal contact between the two countries.

By 1944 it is estimated that at least 100,000 Irish people were working in Britain, taking the place of Englishmen gone to war.

British figures indicate that by 1944 there were 37,000 men and 4,500 women from southern Ireland serving in the wartime British forces. Historian Diarmaid Ferriter reasonably estimates the real figure was nearer 100,000, factoring in those who joined via Northern Ireland, and earlier emigration to Britain. Records show they won a total of 780 decorations, including seven Victoria Crosses.

Charlie Haughey, linked to the burning of a union flag in Dublin on VE Day 1945, noted that during his Dublin boyhood many neighbours and schoolmates joined the British forces. But it took right up to the 1990s for official Ireland to ever acknowledge this reality.

Friendly neutrality or not, there were frequent flashpoints. The US ambassador in Dublin, David Grey, caused a furore with a demand that the Japanese and German diplomatic legations in Dublin be shut down as they were havens for spies. This despite close intelligence co-operation between Ireland and the UK.

In his war victory address, UK prime minister Winston Churchill unleashed a scathing tirade against De Valera and Ireland for its neutrality. De Valera replied with a very well-measured riposte on Irish radio which clawed back some ground for the Hitler sympathy call and was really well received in Ireland.

But amid all this, what about those requiem Masses for the Italian fascist tyrant Mussolini, and the murdering sociopath Hitler? Here Joseph F Carroll, author of the first book about Irish world war neutrality, completes the tale.

Mr Carroll writes that German and Italian sympathisers wanted to have Masses said for both fascist leaders. Irish diplomats were appalled.

"A Franciscan priest managed to celebrate Mass for Mussolini. But military intelligence found out in time about the Mass 'for the repose of the soul of Adolf Hitler and the welfare of the German nation' and Archbishop McQuaid had it stopped," the historian wrote.

The standout public event of VE Day in Dublin came when students at Trinity College climbed on the university roof singing 'God Save the King', 'La Marseillaise' and 'Rule Britannia'. A Justice Department report said the students responded to protests from a hostile crowd on the street that the Irish Tricolour was wrongly set beneath the flags of the UK and France.

The students took down the Irish flag and burned it. A rival group of students from University College Dublin, including a 19-year-old Charlie Haughey, took a UK union flag off a lamppost and burned that. A mini riot ensued, and gardai baton-charged the street crowd to defend Trinity, which was still considered a "citadel of unionism".
: South Korean electronics giant



Samsung has contributed Rs two crore to Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority in its fight against the coronavirus, the company said on Friday.

Besides, the company had also handed over groceries to authorities to be distributed among migrants in Kancheepuram and Cuddalore districts.

The Rs two crore fund to the State Disaster Management Authority follows the Rs 20 crore funds earmarked by Samsung to support the Centre as well as state governments, a press release said.

Samsung had recently contributed Rs 15 crore to PM CARES Fund, the release said.

"In Tamil Nadu, while we continue to support the community around our manufacturing unit in Sriperumbudur, we are also engaged with local authorities to understand how Samsung can contribute," Samsung India, corporate vice- president, Peter Rhee said.

"Our contribution to Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management authority is part of that commitment", he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jeff Lillie, mayor of Earlham, Iowa, with thank you notes sent to city hall after an anonymous donor's $82,000 gift. Read more

Like every mayor across America, Jeff Lillie would like to know when life will return to normal  even in small ways  in Earlham, Iowa, population 1,450.

Lillie, 40, who works as a plumber when he isnt taking care of Earlham city business, has watched as many in Earlham have been laid off or furloughed from their jobs during the COVID-19 crisis, and he knows that many are struggling to pay the bills and keep their pantries full.

Theres a lot of hardship out there  people are worried and hurting, he said. Because of the pandemic, weve been forced to close our community center and our library, and weve even shut the doors at city hall as a precaution. A lot of bad things have been happening here, just like anywhere.

Something very good happened in Earlham recently. Lillie was heading into the office when his cellphone rang just after 8 a.m. on March 26.

The unidentified person on the line told him he had heard from a man who wanted to pump some money into the local economy and help make life a little easier for the citizens of Lillies town, located about 30 miles outside Des Moines.

He told me that this guy was thinking of buying 100 $50 gift cards from our local grocery store  the Hometown Market  and to the West Side Bar and Grille, then having us give them away to people in need, Lillie recalled. I said, Wow, what a great idea  thats incredibly kind and generous.

The benefactors friend called again.

The man told Lillie that he would like to pay for 250 gift cards instead of 100, so the mayor suggested that he add a new diner in town, Trostels Broken Branch.

Before Lillie could break down the arithmetic, the man phoned again, telling him the donor wanted to give away 500 gift cards worth $50 each.

I told him, Wow! Thats about one per household, said Lillie. We have 549 residences in town, and I thought it was just incredible that theyd be divided among our only grocery store and our two restaurants, giving almost every household a chance to pick up a few extra groceries or treat their family to some takeout.

The generous gift giver then said he didnt want to leave anyone out. And he said he didnt want to split 549 cards among the three businesses.

Instead he said he wanted Lillie to buy 549 gift cards from each of the three businesses, for a total of 1,647 gift cards, at a total cost of $82,350, and then mail three gift cards to every family in town so that each household would receive $150 in gift cards.

I called the store and the restaurants to see if they could get hold of that many cards, he said, and when they told me they could, I lost it. I went home and when my wife looked at me, I started bawling. I'm a working, blue-collar guy, and this just hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew how much this would mean to so many in our town."

So on March 31, once the gift cards had been purchased by the anonymous benefactor and stuffed into envelopes addressed to every household in Earlham, Assistant City Clerk Amy Willem loaded up two boxes and dropped them off at the post office.

Each envelope also contained a letter from Lillie, explaining that the cards werent a scam and telling anyone who didnt need the cards to feel free to drop them off in the bill slot at city hall for distribution to families who belonged to the Earlham Community School District but lived outside the city limits.

I was beyond excited for everyone to get their gift cards  I couldnt wait for Facebook to light up, said Willem, 50, a single mom of three boys who works part-time at city hall and recently lost her second job as a steak house waitress in the nearby town of Waukee.

Like everyone, I've had to cut back a little, she said, and getting some takeout for dinner is a treat. To know that there's somebody out there who wanted to anonymously help everyone in town just warmed my heart."

Once the envelopes landed in mailboxes, the phones started ringing at city hall, Lillie said. A lot of people really did want to pay it forward  weve had almost 50 cards come back so far, he said.

Leslie Mineart, a single mother of two teenagers who works from home as a public health educator, was among those inspired to make a difference for somebody else. She donated her grocery store card because she figured that would have the most impact for someone who is unemployed, she said.

It was such a nice surprise to find those cards in my mailbox that I knew I should pass that joy down to somebody else, said Mineart, 43.

In Iowa, we call it Iowa Nice, she said.

Lillie said it was above and beyond.

I dont believe thank you is a big enough word, he said. I cant even describe the level of gratitude that I have for this person. I honestly dont know what to say. Im speechless.
Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked the Narendra Modi government over the death of 15 migrant labourers who were crushed under a goods train in Mahrashtra on their journry ack to their home state.

"I am shocked at the news of the death of the labourers and brothers after being run over by a goods train. We should be ashamed of the treatment being given to our nation builders. My condolences to the families of those killed and pray for the early recovery of the injured," the Congress leader tweeted.

His remarks came after 15 people died and one was injured after run over by a goods train between Karmad and Badnapur railway stations in Maharashtra's Nanded division on Friday around 5.30 a.m.

The group of labourers has started on foot from Maharashtra's Jalna on Thursday evening. After walking for over 36 km 14 members of the group sat on the railway track and fell asleep. The railways has ordered an enquiry into the incident.

The politics over the transportation of stranded migrants has heated up in last few days. Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi on Monday announced that the party will bear the cost of the rail tickets of migrant labourers who want to go back to their respective states.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Prime Minister and Chair of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Silveria Jacobs hereby updates the general public for today, Thursday, May 7, 2020, as part of the process to keep the community of St. Maarten informed about the latest developments and the Governments COVID-19 containment, mitigation and response measures.



Based on the latest available data provided by Collective Prevention Services (CPS) Epidemiologist Eva Lista-de Weever, for today, May 7, 2020, as of 4:00 PM, there have been no new reported COVID-19 confirmed cases. The data does, however, show a decrease in active cases by 2, which relates to 2 more persons who have recovered. Furthermore, CPS updates that all patients who were isolated at the governments isolation facility have recovered and have returned home. CPS continues its community outreach, and will continue to test, and do contact tracing as needed to ensure that the virus is contained.



The measures undertaken are having the desired effect. However, anyone identifying with flu-like symptoms should immediately contact their doctor or CPS at 914 as soon as possible. Symptomatic persons, as well as those who may have come into contact with them, should remain in self-isolation (alone) and/or quarantine (if without symptoms) for at least 2 weeks thereafter, to ensure the virus does not spread. Such persons are not allowed to be moving around in society as this will indeed cause a second wave or continuous spread of the virus. Please see info on these topics on our government website www.sintmaartengov.org/coronavirus.



Since April 27th, there have been no new COVID-19 confirmed admissions to (SMMC). The number remains at five COVID-19 confirmed patients admitted to SMMC. One of the patients is in the ICU tent and four are in the Mobile Medical Pavilion (MMP). Two of the five patients have recovered however, arrangements are still being made to have them discharged and sent back home.



On Monday, May 11th, SMMC will start with gradually resuming non-emergency medical care. The plan which includes safety measures is aimed at allowing regular care to continue while safeguarding the health of patients and staff when the State of Emergency is lifted while continuing to do their part in mitigating the further spread of COVID-19.



Today, May 7, Emergency Support Function (ESF) 6 coordinator Fenna Arnell held a meeting together with the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM), CPS, St. Maarten Laboratory Services (SLS) and Microbiologist Radijn Steingrover to discuss the logistics for the arrival of the serology tests. During the meeting, the defining criteria for serology tests based on testing capacity was also discussed. This meeting was a follow up of the Ministerial Consultation held with the Ministers of Health within the Dutch Kingdom and RIVM yesterday, May 6, 2020.



A subsequent meeting was also held with ESF 3 coordinator Louis Brown and ESF 6 coordinator Fenna Arnell together with the management of SMMC to discuss hurricane preparedness regarding medium care at the MMP and Hospitainer located next to the medical centre. ESFs 5, 6, 7, and10 together with their respective teams are finalizing their proposal on the business guidelines and phased opening of businesses for public access. This will be officially presented to the EOC upon completion for decision making.



ESF 9, is responsible for governmental affairs. As such, all administrative and legal measures related to the public administration, which need to be taken by the government during a disaster, require advice from the ESF 9 coordinator and general affairs secretary-general Hensley Plantijn. For example, this entails requests for military support, preparing the national decree for the State of Emergency, and the necessary adjustments needed at government administration level pertaining to government services coming online during the de-escalation process in the next few weeks.

On Tuesday, May 5, a meeting held with Prime Minister Jacobs and ESF 9 concerning the phasing in of the various government services. ESF 9 reported that their focus at this time is the continuity of government via contingency plans that are being coordinated by a sub workgroup of ESF 9. This sub workgroup called the Ministerial Operations Center (MOC) consists of representatives of all ministries within government. Therefore, ESF 9, dealing with governmental affairs, is not just tasked with emergency disaster management, but also the recovery phase of disaster management.

Regarding the phasing in of the government services, ESF 9 coordinator Plantijn reported that the government is currently focused on the re-opening of the essential services to be offered to the public. The guidelines on proper hand hygiene, proper mask usage, and social distancing when entering the administration building will be shared and published for civil servants as well as for the public once finalized and approved. Social distancing remains a challenge in the government building, therefore, very strict measures are being worked out in order to keep both the public and civil servants safe.

As we finalize the de-escalation schedule and the associated guidelines and measures that will be taken soon, I implore each business or organization to start making plans, protocols and policies which will ensure the safety of your employees, clients and/or customers. If the proposed guidelines have not yet been communicated to the individual sector or business, this will happen shortly. This is the only way that we can continue to see a decline in our numbers until we are COVID-19 free. When we get there, and I have faith that we will, all measures must be upheld by us all. It will take all of us working together, looking out for each other to make this work, stated Prime Minister Jacobs.



I also want to encourage individuals who have not yet done so, to have that conversation within their households; plan exactly what measures will you continue/start to take to ensure your family remains safe. This can be as simple as remembering to wash your hands often or showering upon re-entering your home and before interacting with members of your household. While I do not think, we should ever live in fear, being proactive will prevent the spread. This will indeed be a new normal for us. We must build new customs and be disciplined as we protect our health and livelihoods and prepare to get St. Maarten back up and running. May God Bless St. Maarten and all her people, concluded Prime Minister Jacobs.
Russia continues to work with Armenia on a draft bilateral intergovernmental memorandum of understanding on biosafety issues and hopes that talks on the document will be completed soon, said Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

According to her, the Russian side is convinced that the signing of this document and the implementation of its provisions will have a beneficial effect on ensuring the sanitary and epidemic well-being of the peoples not only in the two countries but throughout the post-Soviet space, TASS reported.

She noted that details of pending agreements on such sensitive topics should not be disclosed in public space in accordance with an established practice.

Earlier, the Armenian MFA's press service reported that the draft of this memorandum is currently in the process of internal state approval, which is being postponed amid a state of emergency declared in the country.

On November 11, 2019, Russian FM Sergei Lavrov, following talks with his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, announced the completion of talks on the text of a memorandum guaranteeing the absence of foreign military personnel in the biological labs of Armenia. Lavrov noted the document will strengthen the interaction of the two countries in the field of ensuring biological safety.
Qantas chairman Richard Goyder has called on Perth Airport to immediately withdraw termination notices issued to the airline on Friday, saying they amounted to eviction notices and would result in operations at the airport stopping within a fortnight.

On Friday morning, Perth Airport signalled it was prepared to begin tearing up several leases of its biggest customer, as tensions between the two businesses reached a breaking point over claims Qantas owed $20 million in aviation and rental fees unpaid since February.

Tensions between Perth Airport and Qantas are escalating.

Of Qantas 39 leases, 18 are in short-term "holdover" arrangements and 21 are current.

Perth Airport chief executive Kevin Brown said action had to be taken and Qantas had been served breach notices for non-payment on current leases and 30-day notices that all holdover leases would not be renewed.
Friday, May 8, 2020

Last Week! We Hope you Found Something Good to Read from our Shelves During the COVID Shutdown

Here are our last ten choices for Week Eight.

JUST $.99 Each in eBook format

You Save $2.98 On Most Books.

We know even if youre home and the bills are covered, its been a scary time. The virus has reached, and will continue to reach, into our communities, and life has been difficult.

The authors at Who Chains You Books wanted to make our books accessible to ALL during this time. The best way for us to do that is to offer them in eBook format at the minimum kindle price allowable:

JUST $.99 EACH!

Rest assured, you dont need a kindle device to read our books in kindle. All you need is a smartphone OR the tablet of your choice, including the iPad. Just download the free kindle app from your app store, use your normal Amazon login in, and youre all set up and ready to go! Then you can choose any of our 10 weekly selections from the links below (or ALL of them), and your titles will be sent right to your kindle app reading library on your device.

We wish you all the very best during this scary time. We hope youll enjoy our books, and get to know some of our authors. Reach out to them through their social media, and drop them a review on Amazon. Your reviews help our authors reach a wider audience. Be safe, were thinking of you.

This Weeks selection Includes books for all ages, from pre-school on up. Choose from the below titles:

The Wrath of Dog: The Chained Gods Series Book 1

By Tamira Thayne

Buy in Paperback | Buy on Kindle | Buy Audiobook

The hairy beast growled and lunged at Baylee, his rusted logging chain straining to breaklike it did every morning she cut down his back alley.?? She hadnt dubbed him The Wrath of Dog for nothin.

Bravos Freedom

By Samantha K. Riggi

?Illustrated by April Pedersen

Buy in Paperback | Buy on Kindle | Buy Audiobook | Watch Trailer

Fifteen year old Gabriel is chosen by his village to travel to Old Guinea, where he must face the rulers to stop them from destroying the planet. With the impacts of global warming in full effect, Gabriel leaves his village with evidence that there is still time to reverse the damage and repair the planet

The Case of the Mysterious UFO

By Ronnell Jackson

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| Buy Audiobook

What was that, a meteor? Some kind of aircraft? As the dogs and their friend Icebox investigate The Case of the Mysterious UFO, truths about the mistreatment of animals on our planet and the disappearance of their fellow canines come to light, and their world will never be the same

Emmas Second Chance

Written by Brandy Herr

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Emma learns what its like to love again, finds herself not one but two caring families, and even gets the chance to pay it forward, becoming a real-life hero in the process

Squeak the Squirrel

Written and Illustrated by Rhonda Van

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| Buy Audiobook

Squeak felt something big and wet lick him. Yuck, what was that? A dogs tongue? The dog picked Squeak up in his wet mouth and ran happily around the yard. EEP EEP! Squeak cried. EEEP! EEEEP!

Guess What? The Below Titles are Always $.99! Shhhh.

A Rats Guide to Owning a Human

Written by The Rats of Happy Endings Rat Rescue?

Translated into English by Heather Leughmyer

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While owning a human can sometimes prove to be a challenging experience, it can also be very rewarding if you know how to handle them. The key lies in finding the human who is right for you, and ensuring that they do not share their homes with legless creatures of the reptilian variety.

The Kings Tether: A Chained Gods Series Prequel Story

Written by Tamira Thayne

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Interested in checking out a fiction series that advocates for chained dogs too? Get your start today with The Chained Gods Series by Tamira Thayne. The Kings Tether can be read either before or after The Wrath of Dog, shown above. Discover the roots of the Chained Gods Series in this 6,000 word prequel story to the paranormal world of 17-year-old Baylee and her crew.

The Knights Chain

By Tamira Thayne

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| Buy Audiobook

The Knights Chain, a short story, precedes The Curse of Cur, and can be read before Book 2 of The Chained Gods Series or after to flesh out the character of the Knight.

The Akita was massive, a fine example of the breedwith the single exception of his current physical state: skeletal, matted, and attached to a cement post by a thick logging chain. He refused to let those things bother him, however; they were mere nuisances, after all.

The Listeners Tale

By Laura Koerber

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Anna didnt even know she had an aunt. Aunt Moira had appeared the day after Annas parents died in a car crash: a tall grey figure through the screen door, silhouetted against the bright sun. But Anna hadnt warmed to her aunt or her pug, whose eyes eerily tracked Annas every move. Something wasnt right

The Shapeshifters Tale

By Laura Koerber

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Two worlds intertwine in this second of the Our Side Collection, where Mediators, Protectors, and Listeners travel the countryside of a simpler world to bring justice and harmonyyet outliers, dragons, ghoblainns, and shapeshifters bely the truth of a society that may not be so simple after all

Want to see all our Books for Animal Lovers? Click here.

Special Pricing! Weve made It Went to the Dogs: How Michael Vicks Dogfighting Compound Became a Haven for Rescue Pups just $2.99 in e-book through May 31st! Grab it now.
Eastin Grand Hotel Saigon providing value to MICE tourism

As Asia continues to be an enthusiastic contributor in global tourism, Vietnam undoubtedly grasps the trends, becoming one of the fastest-growing MICE destinations, luring visitors to the country with its charming beauty, vibrant culture, efficient infrastructure, and services to handle the needs of event organisers and meeting planners.

Among those, the capital city of Hanoi, the bustling metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City, and other commercial centres in Central Vietnam such as Danang and Nha Trang, have now been recognised as important hubs for luxury MICE tourism. Foreign investors are now most interested in high-end hotels in the central business districts of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City where they can utilise their services.

With the potential to branch out, MICE tourism attracts more than 50 per cent of international tourists to Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City, thanks to its rapid economic growth along with good investment attraction and business climate, has become a popular spot for many international business forums, receiving a growing number of international meetings, seminars, and MICE tourists.

The southern pearl has identified MICE tourism as a part of the four strategic tourism products, along with shopping tourism, eco-tourism, cultural tourism. Therefore, there has been more interest in investments in infrastructure and human resources, especially restaurants, hotels, and convention centres.

Of all the facilities in Ho Chi Minh City, Eastin Grand Hotel Saigon is seen among those 5-star hotels with the best value for money. Ideally located at the gateway to the city centre, the hotel can be reached within 15 minutes from Tan Son Nhat International Airport. The hotel offers 5-star luxury services with excellent hospitality and provides conference rooms with state-of-the-art facilities and great dining experiences in its three restaurants and one bar.

Event organisers and meeting planners would find it pleasing to host successful conferences and meetings at Eastin Grand Hotel Saigon, as the business centre hotel offers a range of meeting and event facilities. As such, the hotel boasts a Grand Ballroom, which seats up to 460 guests and includes a large pre-function area, two multi-purpose meeting rooms as well as three executive boardrooms with built-in LCD projectors, automatic screens, and wireless internet access, suitable for small- to medium-sized events. The outdoor poolside terrace provides an alternative choice for tailor-made cocktail parties and similar events.

Pledging to provide value for every occasion, Eastin Grand Hotel Saigon offers its best deal this season for business travellers who are looking for luxurious and safe accommodation in Ho Chi Minh City, starting from VND1,900,000++ per room per night.

The 5-star hotel offers 268 well-appointed rooms and suites, including 34 connecting rooms, all equipped with essential facilities and standard amenities. In addition, guests staying in one of the Executive Club rooms and suites are entitled to additional benefits that will surely be of interest to the discerning business travellers.
Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here.
The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Parliament is demanding an audit into all expenditure related to the COVID-19.



The Minority, at a press conference in Parliament House in Accra, condemned the Government for misapplying funds, both local and international, in issues related to the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.



The Government, with the approval of Parliament, has sourced US$100 million facility and another US$1 billion facility from the Breton Woods Institutions and established the National COVID-19 Trust Fund into which individuals and institutions are making donations to make funds available to deal with the dreaded virus.



The House has also approved a request by the Finance Minister, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, to lower the cap on the Ghana Stabilization Fund (GSF) from US$300 million to US$100 million and the amount transferred into the Contingency Fund to support the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP).



However, Minority Leader and Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale South, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, accused the Government of failing to recognise the seriousness of the disease, saying it did not anticipate the effects of COVID-19.



Citing the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), late closure of borders, and distribution of relief items including prepared meals among other things, Mr Iddrisu urged the Government to come clear on those issues.



Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2).



Some people infected with the COVID-19 will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.



Older people and those with underlying medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness.



In Ghana, there are 3,091 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 303 recoveries and 18 deaths.

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.

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Zacharias Cavasos, 21, has been charged with sexual abuse of a minor in federal court for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old girl while secretly living in her bedroom for a month

A Washington state man is facing federal charges after prosecutors say he secretly moved into a 12-year-old girl's bedroom on an Indian reservation in Oregon and molested her for a month after meeting her on social media.

Zacharias Cavasos, 21, is facing a charge of sexual abuse of a minor stemming from the disturbing incident that took place over the winter on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon.

According to prosecutors, Cavasos first made contact with the victim in December 2019 online, exchanging messages with her on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

In early February, Cavasos traveled from Washington to the reservation in Oregon and, unbeknowsts to the girl's family, ensconced himself inside her bedroom by hiding in a cavity under the bed after removing some slats that hold the mattress, Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Martin said, according to reporting by OregonLive.com.

The 21-year-old man also sometimes hid in the girl's bedroom closet.

It was not until two weeks later, on February 25, that the 12-year-old's grandfather first noticed the stranger in the house and told him to leave.

Prosecutors say Cavasos first connected with the victim on social media in December, and in February traveled to the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon (pictured) and moved into her home without her family's knowledge

Cavasos initially complied, but according to prosecutors, he then sneaked back into the house and remained in the child's bedroom until March 11, when he was discovered a second time and arrested.

According to court documents obtained by DailyMail.com, Cavasos admitted to staying in the child's bedroom and repeatedly having sex with her, even though he knew she was just 12 years old.

When police searched his cellphone, they allegedly found a video showing Cavasos exposing the victim's breast and pressing his penis against her forehead.

On Wednesday, a judge agreed to release Cavasos to a sober living facility, where he will remain under GPS monitoring and a curfew until his trial.

Under the conditions of his release, Cavasos is not allowed to make any contact with the victim or travel for the reservation where she lives. His phone and computer activities will be subjected to checks.

Martin argued to keep Cavasos in jail, telling the judge that the Washington resident has no family in the area and no job, and pointing to the fact that he returned to the girl's bedroom even after being told to leave her alone.

His defense lawyer countered by saying that his client may have an intellectual disability and is emotionally immature. He also stressed that Cavasos had no prior criminal record or a history of violence.

The judge narrowly sided with the defense, although she noted she was surprised and troubled by the allegations against him.

'I have never been aware of anyone alleged to have been living in a 12-year-olds bedroom for a month,' US Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You said in court.
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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Facebook Inc. will allow most of its employees to continue to work from home through the end of this year, according to a report by CNBC.



The social media giant will reportedly begin to open most of its offices on Monday, July 6, and is in the process of identifying which employees can report to the office.



According to the report, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may make an announcement on the company's decision soon. Employees who can do their work remotely will be allowed to continue to do so.



Facebook was among the first tech companies to ask its employees to work from home as the coronavirus outbreak began to spread. The company's employees are working from home since March.



Facebook currently employs 48,268 people, an increase of 28 percent year-over-year.



The Menlo Park, California-based company said in mid-April that it would require the vast majority of its employees to work from home through at least the end of May.



At that time, Facebook also said that a small percent of its critical employees, who cannot work remotely, such as content reviewers working on counter-terrorism or suicide and self-harm prevention, and engineers working on complex hardware, may be able to return sooner to office.



The company has also cancelled any large physical events it had planned with 50 or more people through June 2021.



To date, Facebook has committed over $300 million in investments to help the broader community during the COVID-19 crisis, including creating a $100 million grant program to help small businesses and investing $100 million to support the news industry.



Last week, Facebook reported a profit for the first quarter that surged from the year-ago period on higher revenues. The company also said that despite an initial steep decrease in advertising revenue in March, it witnessed 'signs of stability' in the first three weeks of April.



Revenues of Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, continue to rise every quarter as companies and other firms continue to spend heavily to advertise on the social network. However, Facebook had previously warned that it cannot sustain the growth at the same rate in the future.



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- A former Kapuso host lambasted 24 Oras for its interview with FICTAP president

- He was specifically pertaining to the interview conducted by Jessica Soho on May 5

- He claimed that the said interview was one-sided and did not uphold fair journalism

- He also stated that the news program should have interviewed other resource persons

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24 Oras recently interviewed the president of the Federation of International Cable TV and Telecommunications Association of the Philippines (FICTAP) about the ABS-CBN shutdown.

KAMI learned that the top official of the said federation bravely enumerated the alleged violations of the giant network that led to its controversial closure.

One of the issues that the FICTAP president raised was the franchise renewal documents of ABS-CBN which were different from what it submitted in 1995.

Sinabi po namin na kung yung original na franchise ng ABS-CBN noong 1995, just a pure renewal, hindi po kami mag o-object Kapag yung original, hindi po kami mag o-oppose. Bagkos, tutulungan pa namin ang ABS-CBN, the FICTAP head said.

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After the interview aired on national television, a former host in the Kapuso network slammed 24 Oras for being one-sided.

Kiko Rustia, the former host of Born to Be Wild, claimed that if the program really upholds fair journalism, it could have invited someone who has no vested interest on either side.

He also stated that ABS-CBN should have been given the same chance to speak up and defend itself from the serious allegations of FICTAP.

Im sorry, GMA network, my home network, but last nights report did sound one sided, he wrote on social media.

If fair journalism was the goal, you should have interviewed someone without vested interest on either side. Or at least, with your FICTAP interview, fairly extended the same venue to ABS-CBN, he added.

In a previous article by , other details about the claims of FICTAP against the Kapamilya network were reported here.

The ABS-CBN shutdown continues to be one of the hottest topics on various social media platforms. Many people have been urging the government to reverse the decision of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

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!

Filipino nurse: "We actually don't want to become heroes Si Kimberly ay isang nurse sa Bacolod, isa siya sa mga frontliners na binubuwis ang buhay araw-araw. Narito ang kanyang masasabi sa nararamdaman ng mga frontliners tulad niya.  on HumanMeter!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trumps 2016 Republican campaign.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Associated Press he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trumps presumptive Democratic opponent in the November election.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, the firm said in a statement.

Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. Shes accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff. He has denied her allegation.

On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be held accountable and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.

Pressed by a Florida television station about Reades comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

The truth is what matters, he told Bay News 9. In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.

Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct. He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill OReilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused. In 2018, he spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Wigdor has been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He has not donated to either Trumps or Bidens 2020 campaign.

Wigdor said he plans to help Reade in her dealings with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur. He said the two have not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule that out.

Wigdor suggested Reade's earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of politics.

I think highly of a lot of these people, he said. These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.

Over the weekend, another attorney, William Moran, told the AP he was working with Reade.

Moran, who works at a law firm in Columbia, Maryland, previously wrote and edited for Sputnik, a news agency founded and supported by the Russian state-owned media company Rossiya Segodnya. A January 2017 report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russias interference in the 2016 campaign said Sputnik was part of Russias state-run propaganda machine, which contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.

Reade herself has faced questions about her past writing praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reade on Thursday expressed concern to Kelly about having been called a Russian agent and said she had received a death threat from someone who thought I was being a traitor to America.

There is no evidence to suggest Reade or Moran worked at the behest of Russia with respect to the Biden allegation.

Moran contacted the AP on behalf of Reade to complain about and seek changes in a story detailing what Reade says she remembers writing in a Senate complaint about Biden. Reade said she did not allege sexual assault in the complaint and did not explicitly use the words sexual harassment, though that is the behavior she believes she was describing.

Moran told the AP in a text message Thursday that he found the focus on his past work disgraceful. He said Reade requested that he reach out to the AP on a limited matter.

I do not turn away clients who I believe and who have credible causes of action. I never will, he said.

Wigdor said Reade told him she was connected to Moran through Katie Halper, a podcaster who first interviewed Reade about her sexual assault allegation against Biden in March. Its unclear how Reade connected with Wigdor, who said he believed she found the firm through word of mouth and our reputation.

Reade first spoke out about her alleged interactions with Biden in 2019, telling journalists he had touched her inappropriately while she worked on his Senate staff. She came forward in 2020, around the time Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, with new allegations of assault.

She says she didnt initially disclose the assault allegations because she was scared of backlash and was still coming to terms with what had happened to her.
When my husband comes home from the hospital on Monday, he will have been there for three weeks, a good portion of it in the intensive care unit. He does not have the coronavirus, but many of the same rules apply in the hospital. I dropped him off at the entrance of the emergency room in the middle of the night, and havent seen him, except on FaceTime, for all these weeks. The nurses and doctors have been outstanding, both in the diagnosis and in the lifesaving treatments, and, in case you didnt know, even though he doesnt have COVID-19, no nurse or doctor walks into his room without protective glasses, masks and body cover.
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An incredible photograph of Jupiter taken by astronomers has been revealed which highlights the viscous storms that dominate the enormous planet's thick atmosphere.

It is a mosaic formed from three years' worth of 'lucky images' taken by the Gemini telescope in Hawaii and combined with data and photos from Juno and Hubble to produce one of the clearest photos of Jupiter ever taken from Earth.

Images were taken in infrared and stitched together to reveal a 'jack-o-lantern' appearance of the gas giant.

The brightest sections are the ones bereft of cloud cover while the dark regions are where no infrared radiation can be seen due to dense cloud cover.

The researchers used a method called 'lucky imaging' when creating the photo, which involves taking hundreds of photos and only using the one that is clearest and minimally impacted by Earth's atmosphere.

The study which created the remarkable image reveals lightning storms on Jupiter are generated in 'convective cells' which produce vast plumes of moist air and form above deep clouds of water, both frozen and liquid.

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An incredible photograph of Jupiter taken by astronomers has been revealed which highlights the viscous storms that dominate the enormous planet's thick atmosphere. It is a mosaic formed from three years' worth of 'lucky images' taken by the Gemini telescope in Hawaii (pictured)

The images included in the mosaic were cherry picked to highlight each region at its most violent.

For example, each section of the planet would be imaged hundreds of times, but only the image where the surface is most turbulent made it into the final image.

Gemini, located in Hawaii away from as much light pollution as possible, takes infrared measurements using a tool called Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI).

Infrared is a wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum with a slightly longer wavelength than that of visible light. Infrared is emitted by Jupiter and is able to escape the planet's dense clouds.

Visible light, which has a shorter wavelength, can not escape the Jupiter's cloaking cloud and infrared allows astronomers to gaze deeper into the planet than is possible with the naked ye or other telescopes.

This can be useful in tracking the deep movements of Jupiter's atmosphere and a study led by the University of California at Berkeley used it to learn more about Jupiter's weather patterns and, specifically, its epic storms.

The researchers used a method called 'lucky imaging' when creating the photo, which involves taking hundreds of photos and only using the one that is clearest and is not impacted by the warping effect of Earth's atmosphere. Left, a blurry image due to Earth's image and right, a 'lucky' image used in the mosaic

The study which created the remarkable image reveals lightning storms on Jupiter are generated in 'convective cells' which produce vast plumes of moist air and form above deep clouds of water, both frozen and liquid

Astronomers combined the infrared images taken by Gemini with visible light images from Juno, which orbits Jupiter, and Hubble, which remains in a fixed location in space.

'The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule,' said Michael Wong of UC Berkeley.

'These images rival the view from space.'

Juno, which was launched in 2011, orbits Jupiter and identified unusual flurries of activities. This was relayed back to scientists running observations at Hubble and Gemini who focused their lens on the planet whenever possible.

They focused on gathering high-resolution, wide-area maps of the giant planet.

Juno provided detailed information on the location of powerful lightning flashes called sferics or whistlers in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates.

Gemini would then assess this region in infrared light while Hubble did the same thing in visible light.

This process and cooperation allowed scientists to discover the origin of Jupiter's lightning strikes which can be up to three times more energetic than Earth's as well as some of Jupiter's very largest storms, measuring up to 40 miles from base to top.

The team found that the lightning strikes are generated in 'convective cells' which produce vast plumes of moist air.

They develop over deep clouds of water, both frozen and liquid.

'Scientists track lightning because it is a marker of convection, the turbulent mixing process that transports Jupiter's internal heat up to the visible cloud tops,' explained Wong.

'Ongoing studies of lightning sources will help us understand how convection on Jupiter is different from or similar to convection in the Earth's atmosphere.'
YEREVAN, 8 MAY, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 8 May, USD exchange rate up by 0.97 drams to 484.11 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 2.99 drams to 524.73 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.03 drams to 6.58 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 2.36 drams to 599.62 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price up by 248.09 drams to 26522.68 drams. Silver price down by 1.00 drams to 233.16 drams. Platinum price up by 225.57 drams to 11797.89 drams.
Second positive in two days forces White House staff to don protective gear, a measure so far avoided by the president.

A member of United States Vice President Mike Pences staff has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, briefly delaying his Friday flight to Iowa and prompting some fellow passengers on Air Force Two to disembark, according to a White House official.

Pences flight was delayed more than an hour on Friday morning and, according to press pool reports, passengers who were Pence staff members appeared to disembark before departure. It was not immediately clear whether the infected staffer had been aboard Air Force Two on Friday morning.

The staffer who tested positive was later identified by US media outlets as Katie Miller, the vice presidents press secretary and the wife of senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller. She is said to be asymptomatic.

Fridays positive case was the second in as many days. President Donald Trump on Friday said certain White House staff members had started wearing face masks because his personal valet tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Thursday.

Trump, asked whether those who serve him food would now cover their faces, told Fox News in an interview that White House staff had already made that change.

Theyve already started, he said on the networks Fox and Friends morning programme.

The White House on Thursday said Trump and Vice President Mike Pence tested negative for the virus and were feeling well after the staffer  a US military service member who works at the White House as a valet  tested positive for the virus. It also said the two leaders would now be tested daily instead of weekly.

President Donald Trump participates in a tour of a Honeywell International plant that manufactures personal protective equipment, while not wearing any [Evan Vucci/AP Photo]

Trump has said he would not wear a mask and has not publicly worn a mask to any of his events so far during the COVID-19 pandemic, but told reporters this week that he tried some on behind the scenes during his visit to a Honeywell face mask factory in Arizona.

As I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens  I dont see it for myself, I just dont, Trump said in early April when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending mask use to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The virus, which first surfaced in Wuhan, China late last year, has killed more than 75,000 Americans and driven millions into unemployment as a result of lockdown measures to curb a rise in infections.

Lockdown measures are being eased in some states, but many are still requiring mask use.

Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have drawn fire for not donning face masks, with critics arguing they are setting a bad example for Americans.

Pence did not wear a mask while visiting coronavirus patients during a recent visit to Minnesotas famed Mayo Clinic, noting that he was tested frequently for the disease. But he later said he should have worn one, saying it carries a symbolic weight as well.

The vice president, who has led the White House coronavirus task force that Trump this week said he was going to wind down before reversing course to keep it, was travelling to Iowa on Friday to meet with faith leaders about holding responsible gatherings and to discuss the food supply at the headquarters for Midwestern grocery chain Hy-Vee Inc.





Trump attended a public event at the World War II memorial on Friday before meeting with Republican members of Congress at the White House, according to the White House.

The Republican president also told Fox News that he has not yet been tested for antibodies to the novel coronavirus but probably would be soon. Such a test could confirm previous exposure to the virus.
The industry still seems somewhat protected: Health care jobs have fallen by less than jobs in the rest of the economy. But in the Great Recession, as jobs of nearly every kind plummeted, health jobs kept growing at a good clip. In the eyes of many economists, it was health care that led the economic recovery, by providing a powerful and reliable jobs engine. All those new health workers helped strengthen their local economies.

And in many places hit hard by the recession, the local hospital became a dominant employer, supporting entire communities. There were some small reductions in the use of health services in the following years; those led to a slowdown in what had been seen as the inexorable growth of health spending. Those changes, which earned the nickname slowth among health care analysts, were unusual enough to be major news. Health care still grew, however, just more slowly. About 60 percent of health care spending goes to labor, so all the growth, almost by definition, meant new jobs.

That growth was seen as good news in the short term for the economy. But health cares ever-growing share of the national economy has not always been seen in a positive light. The rising costs of the Medicare and Medicaid programs have meant that health care has come to represent a larger share of the federal budget, limiting capacity for other government investments. Strain under the growing costs has caused many employers to switch from older forms of insurance, which were comprehensive, to plans with high deductibles for workers, shifting the financial burden onto individuals and families, and leaving them vulnerable to big bills.

This downturn is clearly different, and the enormous reductions in the health work force mean the recovery may be different, too. Some of the lost jobs in health care are likely to come back later. Cancer patients who postponed chemotherapy, or people who canceled their hip replacements, will eventually want that care. But other changes may be permanent.

Over just a few weeks, there has been a shift to telemedicine visits, in which patients can talk with their doctors by video, telephone or even email. Many health systems had long avoided setting up an infrastructure for them. But the new virtual visits have many advantages: Patients can avoid travel and waiting rooms; caregivers can easily participate; and several doctors can talk to the same patient at once. There are no clipboards full of personal information to fill out by hand, and no person needed to retype the answers into a computer system before such visits.

Other changes are more invisible. Hospitals have been forced to find small ways to digitize processes and share records that used to involve labor and bureaucracy. Bob Kocher, a partner at the venture capital firm Venrock, has been acting as an adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California through the crisis. He said he had seen hospitals adapt quickly to begin sharing their daily bed counts with one another and the state, for example, a task that used to involve hours of phone calls and faxes. Data about laboratory testing  how much is being done, how many patients have been found to have coronavirus  has been similarly digitized in real time.

Are those sorts of on-the-fly tweaks enough to have an appreciable effect on long-term health care employment? Mr. Kocher thinks so, describing the recent cuts in health care administration as a silver lining of the crisis, while acknowledging the short-term pain of the job losses.
Our brother-in-law who was in the service in Germany had [Gamber] do some work for him, Rust said. When Gamber received a commission to work in Atlanta, the brother-in-law suggested that Rust hire him as well. It took Gamber about two weeks to finish the mural.
Australia has secured the emphatic support of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in its push for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus as the United States retreats on claims it has evidence the disease started in a Chinese laboratory.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently discussed the inquiry with Mr Johnson and has identified two mechanisms at the World Health Assembly that could lead the investigation. Australia will use a European Union motion to zero in on China's handling of the initial outbreak and the global health response.

Scott Morrison has secured Boris Johnson's support for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus. Credit:

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Thursday revealed there were rising suspicions within the Australian government and intelligence services that the US embassy in Canberra had leaked a western government dossier that tied the virus to a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Senior sources said the research, reported by News Corp Australia on Saturday, contained no intelligence and was made up of publicly available material, including news reports. Australia has maintained that the most likely scenario is the virus emerged from a wildlife wet market in Wuhan.
Tsui Wah Holdings Limited (HKG:1314) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 11% in the last month. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last half decade have been stomach churning. Like a ship taking on water, the share price has sunk 87% in that time. So we don't gain too much confidence from the recent recovery. The important question is if the business itself justifies a higher share price in the long term.

We really feel for shareholders in this scenario. It's a good reminder of the importance of diversification, and it's worth keeping in mind there's more to life than money, anyway.

Check out our latest analysis for Tsui Wah Holdings

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

In the last half decade Tsui Wah Holdings saw its share price fall as its EPS declined below zero. At present it's hard to make valid comparisons between EPS and the share price. However, we can say we'd expect to see a falling share price in this scenario.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

SEHK:1314 Past and Future Earnings May 7th 2020

It's probably worth noting that the CEO is paid less than the median at similar sized companies. But while CEO remuneration is always worth checking, the really important question is whether the company can grow earnings going forward. This free interactive report on Tsui Wah Holdings's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

We'd be remiss not to mention the difference between Tsui Wah Holdings'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. Tsui Wah Holdings's TSR of was a loss of 84% for the 5 years. That wasn't as bad as its share price return, because it has paid dividends.

Story continues

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 11% in the twelve months, Tsui Wah Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 54%. 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. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 31% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. Even so, be aware that Tsui Wah Holdings is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on 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.
For every generation categorized as lazy or uninformed, along comes a group of young people to Shut. That. Down.

In 1960, it was four college students in Greensboro, N.C., who began the sit-ins that led to lunch counter desegregation. A few years later, it was students on college campuses who initiated widespread protests of the Vietnam War.

More recently, there was the Standing Rock youth movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Black Lives Matter movement, formed in response to the acquittal of the man who killed the black teenager Trayvon Martin.

Clearly, young people have been at the forefront of social change for decades.

The 17-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg once said, I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is. This directive might also serve as the unspoken motto for Maya Rehman and Jamie Goldberg, the protagonists of Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeeds YES NO MAYBE SO (Balzer + Bray, 448 pp., $19.99; ages 14 and up).
Newly released emails show FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page pushed to keep the case against Michael Flynn open, despite the bureau suggesting the investigation could be closed due to a lack of 'derogatory information'.

The emails between Strzok and Page, sent in January 2017, were among documents released last week - just before the Department of Justice dropped charges against Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump's national security advisor.

At the time of the investigation into Flynn, Strzok was serving as the FBI Deputy Assistant Director, while Page was working as a senior lawyer for the Bureau.

Strzok had taken a lead role in the investigation into Flynn - known as 'Crossfire Razor' - to determine whether he had inappropriate interactions with Russian officials.

The robe of him was part of the sweeping counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Newly released e-mails show FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page pushed to keep the case against Michael Flynn open, despite the Bureau suggesting the investigation could be closed due to a lack of evidence

On Thursday, the Department of Justice dropped charges against Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump's national security advisor. Documents reveal Strzok and Page pushed to keep the case against him open, despite a lack of evidence he committed any crimes

According to messages sent on January 4 2017, Strzok and Page discussed potentially charging Flynn using the Logan Act - a law enacted in 1799 that criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments who are having a dispute with the United States.

Later that same day, Strzok learned that the case against Flynn would not be closed, and excitedly messaged Page.

'Razor still open,' he wrote, describing the news as 'serendipitously good'.

'Phew, but yeah, that's amazing that he is still open. Good I guess,' Page replied.

'Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. 20% of the time I'm guessing :),' Strzok then responded.

Appearing in a celebratory mood, Strzok also asks Page if she wants 'chips and Oreos'.

GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana are demanding more information from the FBI after bombshell revelations in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn (pictured) were brought to light last week

The affair between the two FBI employees was revealed in December 2017. That month, the Justice Department released text messages that showed them talking derogatorily about President Trump.

Strzok has insisted he is not politically motivated - but the texts only increased Trump's suspicions that the FBI were not a neutral organization.

The investigation into Flynn continued, and culminated with him pleading guilty to 'willfully and knowingly' making 'false, fictitious and fraudulent statements' to the FBI in December 2017.

However, on Thursday, the Justice Department withdrew its case against Flynn Michael Flynn Thursday.

In a nearly unheard-of reversal, the department said in a filing that Flynn's December 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI in an interview over his Russia contacts was moot because the lies were insignificant.

It also said the FBI's original probe of him had no 'legitimate investigative basis.'

President Donald Trump has defended his former national security advisor Micahel Flynn

The decision by close Trump ally Attorney General Bill Barr effectively reversed 18 months of work by the department and FBI under Barr's predecessors.

It also added fuel to Trump's allegation over the past three-plus years that the Russia investigation was a political 'witch hunt.'

Reacting to the news Thursday, Trump stated: ''I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price, because they're dishonest crooked people. They're scum and I say it a lot. They're scum, they're human scum'.

The case has now galvanized several Republican lawmakers, who are demanding more information about the FBI's investigation into Flynn.

Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana on Thursday they are they are demanding meetings with FBI Director Christopher Wray and with an agent from the bureau, Joe Pientka.

Pientka had helped in the 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution.

The lawmakers are looking into what they descried as 'troubling details about the politicization and misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden administration,' reports Fox News.

Jordan and Johnson also have asked the FBI to produce all documents and communications referring or relating to 'Crossfire Razor'.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump stressed his desire for arms control that includes both Russia and China in a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the White House said in a statement. 'President Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race,' the White House said

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump stressed his desire for arms control that includes both Russia and China in a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the White House said in a statement.

"President Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race," the White House said.

Trump has repeatedly argued - so far to no avail - for China to join the United States and Russia in talks on an arms control accord to replace the 2010 New START treaty between Washington and Moscow that expires in February.

New START restricted the United States and Russia to deploying no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads, the lowest level in decades, and limited the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers that deliver them.

China, estimated to have about 300 nuclear weapons, has repeatedly rejected Trump's proposal, arguing its nuclear force is defensive and poses no threat.

The call, which took place on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe, also covered working to defeat the new coronavirus outbreak as well as other issues, the White House said, with Trump saying the United States stood ready to help any country fighting the disease, including Russia.

In its own statement, the Kremlin said "it was proposed by the American side to send a cargo of medical equipment to Russia" but provided no further details.

The Kremlin also said the two leaders discussed the global oil market as well as other issues.

It made no specific reference to arms control, other than a brief reference to the two countries being capable of working together to ensure "strategic stability."

(Reporting By Jeff Mason and Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Andrew Osborne in Moscow; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
George McBride (left) in RAAF uniform in the Second World War.

George McBride was the go-to man in the RAAF during the Second World War who turned around difficult repair and salvage operations in often difficult conditions. After the war he was at the forefront of mechanisation and development in the rapidly developing sugar cane industry.

George McBride was the first son of Robert McBride, a blacksmith, and Elsie (Clark), a seamstress. George grew up first in Irvinebank on the Atherton Tableland then later in Cairns.

He first trained as a motor mechanic before joining the RAAF in 1940 at the age of 19 years. He served in the Pacific theatre generally with aircraft ground crew involved in maintenance and repair. He was also seconded to a special unit involved in difficult repair and salvage operations undertaking duties in extremely trying and risky conditions.

In New Guinea he earned the nickname 'Wizzer' because of his ability to do the seemingly impossible through improvisation, borrowing, begging or exchanging  essentially from American units  to keep aircraft operational and in salvaging crashed and damaged aircraft.
By Laura Sanicola

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices settled 5% higher on Friday in their second consecutive week of gains as U.S. producers cut production with the number of drilling rigs falling to a record low, and as more states moved ahead with plans to relax lockdowns intended to halt the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of operating oil and natural gas rigs fell by 34 to an all-time low of 374 this week - reflecting data going back 80 years - as the energy industry slashes output and spending to deal with the coronavirus-led crash in fuel demand.

North American oil companies have shut production faster than analysts expected and are on track to withdraw about 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of output by the end of June.

Brent crude settled up $1.51, or 5.1%, at $30.97 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) gained $1.19, or 5%, to $24.74 a barrel.

Both contracts posted a second week of gains, with Brent advancing over 18% this week and WTI up about 33%.

"This advance of the past couple of weeks has been a bit suspect given the fact that coronavirus cases continue to increase and the U.S. crude surplus is maintaining a steep up trend where a record U.S. stock level is likely to be achieved in next week's EIA report," Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois, said in a report.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly report on Wednesday showed 15 weeks of consecutive rises in crude stocks although the rate of growth in inventories has slowed since a record build of 19 million barrels in early April.

The market was now watching for more data that shows that Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia - known as OPEC+ - are complying with a record 9.7 million bpd production cuts that began this month, according to Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston.

"I expect now prices will pull back to $20 a barrel because skepticism will come into the market about the compliance of OPEC+ on the production cuts," said Lipow.

Iraq has yet to inform its regular oil buyers of cuts to its exports, suggesting it is struggling to fully implement supply cuts.

Story continues

"All it takes is one or two countries not to comply and it could open the door for others," Lipow said.

Australia on Friday became the latest country to plan an easing of lockdowns, while France, parts of the United States and countries such as Pakistan are also planning to ease restrictions.

Market participants were also watching how the economic crisis unfolding in the United States affects oil demand in the coming months. The world's biggest economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, the steepest plunge in payrolls since the Great Depression.

(Reporting by Laura Sanicola in New York and Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick in TOKYO; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Kirsten Donovan)
These prayer shawls were left on Andrew Parver's doorstep in answer to his request for donations.

(JTA)-Andrew Parver's phone hasn't stopped ringing since Sunday.

That's when Parver, the director of operations at the Hebrew Free Burial Association in New York City, put out a call for donations of prayer shawls for traditional Jewish burials. Less than 48 hours later, he had collected 150 himself and pledges of hundreds more to come from as far away as South Florida and Pittsburgh.

"My phone yesterday was nonstop-phone calls, emails, WhatsApps," Parver told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday. "I know rabbis have been sending this out to their congregations and I don't even know the rabbis."

The Hebrew Free Burial Association performs free Jewish burials for any Jew who dies without the funds for funeral expenses. Usually it has enough prayer shawls on hand to last for months.

But the coronavirus pandemic in New York City has caused an unprecedented spike in demand for its services. Since April 1, the association has performed 134 burials-more than four times the number it did in the same period last year. The group quickly ran out of shawls.

"We basically exhausted our supplies and our reserves," Parver said. "We've never had anything like this."

So on Sunday, Parver send out the word on an email list for the Jewish community in Teaneck, New Jersey. The next morning he posted an appeal on Facebook.

"Do you have any old Talleisim, regardless of condition, that you can donate to Hebrew Free Burial Association?" he wrote on the association's Facebook page, using the Hebrew word for prayer shawls.

The donations started pouring in immediately.

By Sunday night, Parver had picked up about 100 shawls from homes in his area and found another 50 left on the doorstep of his home. Another 10 people volunteered their homes in New York, New Jersey and Baltimore as drop-off points for donations, thus far collecting at least 200 prayer shawls.

With over 350 shawls collected already, Parver isn't quite sure how many more to expect. But with calls from across the country continuing to come in, he's sure there are more on the way. He's also sure the need will continue to grow.

Traditional Jewish burial customs dictate that men are dressed in white shrouds and wrapped in a shawl before they are interred in a Jewish cemetery. The association does not dress women in prayer shawls, in line with Orthodox custom.

"For thousands of years, Jews have been buried the same way-plain shrouds, plain pine box," Parver said, adding that it's a way of "connecting to our ancestors."

The association typically receives donations of shawls at a steady pace year round. They come from synagogues that close down or people who buy new ones after an older shawl wears out. Sometimes they come from people who find old shawls that belonged to parents or grandparents.

"Each tallis tells a story," Parver said. "Somebody wore that tallis in shul, somebody shed tears while wearing that tallis, praying for something that was important at that stage of life."

Some of the calls he's received have hinted at the emotional connection people feel to their shawls. One rabbi told Parver that he had held on to an old shawl for years because of its sentimental value, but was prepared to let it go after hearing about the need.

Parver sees the outpouring of donations as another way people are helping where they can at a time when leaving the house is a dangerous proposition.

"This is just a very tangible method for people to connect and give back more good into the world when we need it," he said.
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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Fri, May 8, 2020 16:08 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6c98f7 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,virus-corona,virus-korona-indonesia,mental-health,online-services,kesehatan-mental,psychiatric-problems,psychology Free

Psychiatrists and volunteers in Bandung, West Java, have initiated an online mental health assistance program called Ruang Empati (Empathy Room) to ensure people with mental health problems can access necessary help during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Elvine Gunawan, a psychiatrist working at the Melinda 2 Hospital in the city, has been working with fellow psychiatrists and volunteers to provide online consultation sessions via the Instagram account @ketik.hasaka and the website ruangempati.com.

They are currently serving 48 patients.

Around three or four of them have been mentally affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Some can still be helped through relaxation sessions, but two others needed to be referred to psychiatrists, Elvine said, adding the online service did not replace face-to-face consultation sessions in the hospital.

She added that the service had also been used by people from regions outside Bandung, such as Jakarta, Jambi and North Sumatras Medan.

Ruang Empati spokesperson Teddy Hidayat said the program was a joint effort from several medical and academic institutions in the province, including the West Java administrations mental health prevention team, Melinda 2 Hospital, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Padjadjaran University.

Read also: Three stages of emotion on COVID-19 journey: Where are you now?

Teddy went on to say the program aimed to reduce anxiety and panic attack caused by the economic difficulties and stay-at-home requirements triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Anxiety and stress can lower a persons immunity level. Handling those stresses can help someone boost their immune system, said Teddy, who is also a scholar from Padjadjaran University Medical School.

Apart from consultation sessions, Ruang Empati also provided art psychotherapy sessions to help patients express their emotions and reduce their anxiety and sadness, said ITB School of Art and Design researcher Ira Adriati.

Those who wish to access the online psychiatrist services provided by Ruang Empati can send a chat message through WhatsApp at 0818-272-255 or send a message to @ketik.hasaka on Instagram. Psychiatrists and volunteers will respond to messages sent to those accounts from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. (nal)
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Editor's Note: The article was updated to reflect weaker gold prices in delayed reaction to April nonfarm payrolls data.

Gold prices are hovering below $1,720 an ounce, Friday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 20.5 million jobs were lost in April. However, the data beat expectations; according to consensus forecasts, economists were expecting to see job losses of 22 million.

Jim Wyckoff, senior technical analyst at Kitco.com said that gold is not seeing much movement this morning following the employment data because a lot of this bad news was already priced into to markets. Weekly U.S. jobless claims reports the past few weeks actually show the U.S. workforce has lost over 30 million jobs in less than two months, he said.

Economists noted that in a single month the U.S. economy has lost most of the jobs created in the last decade after the 2008 financial crisis.

"Employment fell sharply in all major industry sectors, with particularly heavy job losses in leisure and hospitality," the report said.

June gold futures last traded at 1,723 an ounce, down 0.18% on the day in initial reaction to the employment numbers.

The unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. According to consensus forecasts, economists were looking for a reading around 16%.

Looking at wages, the report said that average hourly earnings increased by $1.34 to $30.01. Wages increased a whopping 4.7% last month; economists were expecting to see a 0.5% increase in wages.

However, the report noted that the wage growth was not a positive factor for the labor market.

The increases in average hourly earnings largely reflect the substantial job loss among lower-paid workers; this change, along with earnings increases, put upward pressure on the average hourly earnings estimates, the report said.

Andrew Grantham, senior economist at CIBC, said that however bad the data was, it was not enough to underscore the damage done to the U.S. economy and labor market.

The drop in non-farm payrolls and rise in unemployment rate were historically bad, as expected. Unfortunately, if anything both understate the weakening seen in the labour market as social distancing measures to fight the COVID-19 outbreak brought many sectors to a standstill, he said.

Grantham added that he paid close attention to hours works in the latest employment data, which dont bode well for economic growth in the second quarter.

The sharp decline in aggregate working hours in today's report confirms that the hit from COVID-19 to Q2 GDP will be severe, and we currently forecast a contraction of around 40% in annualized terms.
Photo: Insights West

A new poll by Insights West indicates British Columbians overwhelmingly support the B.C. Government's plan to reopen the province.

The poll canvassed 747 B.C. residents immediately after Premier Horgan's Wednesday press conference.

The majority of respondents, 79 per cent, back the plan. However, many (41 per cent) residents feel the reopening is moving too quickly, and there is some resistance towards social gatherings of small groups, eating at restaurants, in-person schooling, and hair salons.

Only 18 per cent are opposed to the plan and 5 per cent, 'strongly oppose' the plan.

The poll found younger British Columbians, less supportive of the plan than their elders, 68 per cent of those 18-34 support the plan versus 81 per cent of people aged 35-54 and 84 per cent of 55 plus.

Rarely in polling do we find support above 70 per cent for any public initiative that is announced by a standing Premier says Steve Mossop, President of Insights West. John Horgan can rest assured that the public is backing his planand if anything, he should continue to proceed ultra-cautiously, as BC residents are leaning towards a very conservative approach of returning to normal in the Province of BC as this pandemic unfolds.

One area that saw almost unanimous support is the resumption of elective surgeries, 91 per cent of those polled feel the timing is right or could have happened sooner.

78 per cent support the re-opening of provincial parks but the support for other measures is mixed.

Only 60 per cent of respondents believe the timing is right to open salons and 66 per cent are in favour of retail stores opening. From there, the numbers are less supportive, only 50 per cent are in favour of small social gatherings and 49 per cent support the re-opening of restaurants.

The poll indicates that despite kudos for Horgan and the overall plan, British Columbians want to err on the side of caution, 41 per cent feel the pace of the plan is too fast as opposed to 10 per cent who feel the pace is too slow, 46 per cent believe the pace is just right.

Those numbers are supported by a recent Castanet Poll which asked "How do you feel about BC's reopen plan?" a plurality, 4,502 of those who responded felt it was just right as opposed to a virtual split on whether it is too cautious, 1,946 or to aggressive, 2,007.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said it would immediately begin a fresh trial of former governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu, for theft of public fund and money laundering.

The Supreme Court had on Friday voided Mr Kalus conviction to a 12-year jail term for allegedly stealing about N7.1 billion from Abia State treasury while he served as governor of the state between 1999 and 2007.

A seven-member panel of the apex court led by Justice Amina Augie held that the Federal High Court in Lagos acted without jurisdiction when it sentenced Mr Kalu.

It held that trial judge, Justice Mohammed Liman, was no longer a judge of the court as he had been elevated to the Court of Appeal at the time of the judgement and thus lacked the powers to return to sit as a high court judge.

The court, therefore, ordered a fresh trial of Mr Kalu and the other defendants.

In reaction to the verdict, the EFCC in a statement on Friday described the order as quite unfortunate.

It vowed to prepare a fresh and immediate trial of the case, saying this is because its evidences against Mr Kalu and the others were overwhelming.

Read the EFCC statement.

EFCC SET FOR FRESH, IMMEDIATE RE-TRIAL

The attention of the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has been drawn to the judgment of the Supreme Court nullifying the trial of a former governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu , his firm, Slok Nigeria Limited and Jones Udeogu, a former Director of Finance and Account of Abia State Government and ordering their fresh trial at the lower court.

The apex court based its verdict on the grounds that Justice Mohammed Idris, who convicted Kalu and others had been elevated to the Court of Appeal before the judgment and returned to the lower court to deliver the judgment which it considered as illegal.

The EFCC considers the judgment of the apex court as quite unfortunate . It is a technical ambush against the trial of the former governor. The Commission is prepared for a fresh and immediate trial of the case because its evidences against Kalu and others are overwhelming. The corruption charges against Kalu still subsist because the Supreme Court did not acquit him of them. The entire prosecutorial machinery of the EFCC would be launched in a fresh trial where justice is bound to be served in due course.

Dele Oyewale

Head, Media & Publicity
The number of people evaluated for signs of stroke at U.S. hospitals has dropped by nearly 40% during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study led by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who analyzed stroke evaluations at more than 800 hospitals across 49 states and the District of Columbia. The findings, published May 8 in the New England Journal of Medicine, are a troubling indication that many people who experience strokes may not be seeking potentially life-saving medical care.

"Our stroke team has maintained full capacity to provide emergency stroke treatment at all times, even during the height of the pandemic," said lead author Akash Kansagra, MD, an assistant professor of radiology at Washington University's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR). Kansagra sees stroke patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "Nevertheless, we have seen a smaller number of stroke patients coming to the hospital and some patients arriving at the hospital after a considerable delay. It is absolutely heartbreaking to meet a patient who might have recovered from a stroke but, for whatever reason, waited too long to seek treatment."

Nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. experience a stroke every year. It is the fifth leading cause of death and the leading cause of long-term disability. With advances in stroke care such as better diagnostic tools, surgeries to remove blood clots or repair broken blood vessels, and clot-busting drugs, people have a better chance of recovering from a stroke today than ever before - as long as they receive treatment promptly. Clot-busting drugs are generally safe only within 4 hours of symptom onset, and surgeries are only possible within 24 hours of symptom onset. The earlier the treatment is started, the more successful it is likely to be.

Worried by the low numbers of stroke patients being evaluated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and hearing similar reports from colleagues at other institutions, Kansagra - along with co-authors Manu Goyal, MD, a Washington University assistant professor of radiology and neurology, and statistician Scott Hamilton, PhD, and neurologist Gregory Albers, MD, both of Stanford University - set out to determine how pervasive the problem was.

When patients arrive at a hospital and are showing signs of a stroke, they often get a brain scan so doctors can identify what kind of stroke has occurred and choose the most effective treatment. Many hospitals, including Barnes-Jewish Hospital, use software known as RAPID to analyze such brain scans. Kansagra and colleagues assessed how often the software was used in February, before the pandemic, and during a two-week period from March 26 to April 8, when much of the country was under shelter-in-place orders.

In total, the software was used for 231,753 patients at 856 hospitals representing the District of Columbia and all 50 states except New Hampshire. During February, the software was used for an average of 1.18 patients per day per hospital. During the pandemic period, software use per hospital averaged 0.72 patients per day, a drop of 39%.

"Across the board, everybody is affected by this decrease," said Kansagra, who is also an assistant professor of neurosurgery and of neurology. "It is not limited to just hospitals in urban settings or rural communities, small hospitals or large hospitals. It is not just the old or the young or the people with minor strokes who aren't showing up. Even patients with really severe strokes are seeking care at reduced rates. This is a widespread and very scary phenomenon."

There's no reason to believe people suddenly stopped having strokes. And the drop was large even in places where COVID-19 cases were few and hospitals were not overwhelmed, so patients should not have found it unusually difficult to obtain treatment.

"I suspect we are witnessing a combination of patients being reluctant to seek care out of fear that they might contract COVID-19, and the effects of social distancing," Kansagra said. "The response of family and friends is really important when a loved one is experiencing stroke symptoms. Oftentimes, the patients themselves are not in a position to call 911, but family and friends recognize the stroke symptoms and make the call. In an era when we are all isolating at home, it may be that patients who have strokes aren't discovered quickly enough."

Common signs of a stroke include the sudden onset of numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body; speech difficulty; confusion; difficulty seeing or walking; and severe headache.

Even during a pandemic, it is critically important for people who may be experiencing a stroke to receive care immediately, Kansagra said. The risk of delaying care for a stroke is much greater than the risk of contracting COVID-19.

"The effect of coming in too late is the same in many respects as not coming in at all," Kansagra said. "When patients come in too late, they may no longer be candidates for treatments that they would have qualified for just hours before. And as a result, they may not have access to treatments that are extremely effective in reducing death and disability."

###
BERLIN (Reuters) - China is open to an independent investigation to determine the origins of the coronavirus now sweeping the world, its ambassador to Berlin told a German magazine on Friday, amid U.S. allegations that it came from a laboratory. China has dismissed as groundless U.S. and Australian questioning of how it had handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had been open and transparent, despite growing scepticism about the accuracy of its official death toll. We are open to an international investigation, Wu Ken told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview. We support the exchange of research among scientists. ...But we reject putting China in the dock without evidence, assuming its guilt and then trying to search for evidence through a so-called international investigation. Australia has called for an international investigation into the origins and spread of the virus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. ADVERTISEMENT U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo say there is evidence it originated in a Wuhan laboratory, without saying what the evidence is. A German intelligence report cast doubts on their accusation. Some 3.86 million people have been reported to be infected around the world and 268,620 have died, according to Reuters tally. ADVERTISEMENT Responding to Australias efforts to establish support for an international inquiry, France and Britain have said their focus is fighting the virus, not apportioning blame. Trump has been fiercely critical of China and the World Health Organization and has announced the United States will withdraw funding from the U.N. agency. Many scientists and politicians say now is the time to increase, not cut, funding to the WHO so that it can help find a vaccine. Writing by Joseph Nasr; editing by Nick Macfie

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
This dog owner has gone to extraordinary lengths to distract his hound while he clips its nails - squirting canned cheese onto his bald head and letting the pet lick it off.

Greg Lee, 41, from Williamsburg, Virginia, was fed up with battling his 6.5-stone Rhodesian Ridgeback Jax every fortnight to cut his nails so he devised a clever plan.

Previously he had used peanut butter but found it 'too sticky' so started using Cheese Whiz so his one-year-old dog could lick it off his head.

Greg Lee, 41, from Williamsburg, Virginia, goes to extraordinary lengths to distract his dog Jax, one, while clipping his claws - by squirting Cheese Whiz on his bald head

Bizarre footage shows Mr Lee's daughter standing over him and supplying a constant stream of the canned cheese to keep Jax occupied for the 20 minutes it takes to trim his claws.

Instead of getting freaked out by the noise of the electric trimmers, Jax focuses on licking the tasty treat off his master's head, only trying to pull away momentarily.

But Mr Lee admits that Jax enjoys licking his head anyway and is known to do it even when he sweats.

He said: 'I was struggling with Jax and my oldest daughter was getting him a toy to soothe him and sarcastically said, "We should put Cheese Whiz on your head and let him lick it off."

Mr Lee was tired of battling his 6.5 stone Rhodesian Ridgeback every fortnight to clip his claws

'The whole family laughed and latched onto it, so we did it and it worked! It was hilarious for the family and Jax got a treat too.

'Jax often licks the sweat off my bald head - like a salt lick for dogs.

'Ridgeback nails grow quickly because they are meant to be outside runners, so I have to do it about every two weeks.

'At four weeks, grinding the nails is like the pedicure scene from the movie Dumb and Dumber.

Mr Lee's daughter stands over him and supplies a constant stream of the canned cheese to keep the Jax occupied

'Trimming a dog's nails can be tedious. They are often scared of the clippers and the loud noise of the Dremel tool.

'To accustom the dog to trimming, you feed him treats while doing the trimming. Eventually, he will allow you to do it with no problem.

'However, Jax is a 90lbs Rhodesian Ridgeback and they are known to be stubborn and very strong. They are also very food motivated, so this keeps him in one place and allows me to focus on one paw at a time.

He admitted that Jax enjoys licking his head anyway and is known to do it even when he sweats

'My last dog had to be muzzled and I had to lay on top of him to trim his nails, so I'm trying to avoid that with Jax.'

Natalie Sweetapple from Queensland uses a slightly different approach to cutting her dachshund Daisy's nails.

She uses a 'nail clipping hammock' made from a blanket with holes for Daisy's feet to poke through with an added distraction of peanut butter on the wall.

The distraction allows Natalie to snip Daisy's claws while she licks away at the tasty treat in a video posted on April 10.

ICU nurse Linds Shelton from Pismo Beach, California, shared her dog grooming hack on TikTok at the end of last month.

In the video, she wraps her head in cling film and smears it with peanut butter in a nifty hack which lead people to call her a 'genius'.

Miss Shelton lifts her dog Schmidt's head several times before it notices the peanut butter.

Once Schmidt notices the treat, it doesn't notice as Miss Shelton lifts its paw to clip its nails.

Dogs can eat peanut butter in moderation so long as it doesn't contain xyliotal, an artifical sweetener used to keep foods sweet but sugar free.
Police and other people carry a man, center, who lost consciousness following a gas leak incident to transport him to a hospital in Visakhapatnam, Thursday. AFP-Yonhap



By Kim Yoo-chul



LG Chem, the world's top electric vehicle (EV) battery supplier, said Friday it's been cooperating with Indian authorities and the Korean Embassy in India to take "all possible and available measures" to protect everyone affected by the latest gas leak.



At least 11 people were confirmed dead and hundreds more have been hospitalized as the result of a gas leak at LG Polymers plant in India, which lies near a town of at least 3,300 people on the outskirts of the Indian city of Visakhapatnam. Some 1,000 people were directly exposed to the gas and about 20 to 25 people are in critical but stable condition, said Kamal Kishore from the National Disaster Management Authority.



LG Chem's headquarters in South Korea denied foreign media reports that there was a second leak at the plant, forcing the firm to initiate evacuation procedures.



"Regarding reports that there was a second gas leak at the LG Polymers India plant, we can confirm there was no second leak. LG asked the local police to evacuate residents near the accident site just in case as there were worries that temperatures inside the gas tanks may rise," said C.S. Song, head of LG Chem's public relations office.



"As of Friday afternoon, or May 8 (KST), necessary procedural work such as the infusion of water in gas tanks has been underway," according to the company's communications chief.



Song added that LG Chem is also collaborating with the Korean Embassy in India as well as Indian authorities to handle and manage "everything relating to the gas leak." Local authorities are in the process of investigating the main cause of the leak. But he declined to elaborate on LG's next steps, including possible compensation for those affected.



The gas has been identified as styrene gas, a flammable substance that is widely used to make a variety of industrial products, including latex, rubber, fiberglass and polystyrene. It's still unknown what led to the gas leak.



The LG plant there was preparing to reopen after a temporary shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The leak happened during the process of restarting operations of the factory, according to Indian government officials. LG Chem acquired the plant from Hindustan Polymers in 1996, and uses it to produce a wide range of polystyrene products, including engineering plastic, an industrial raw material for vehicles and electronic parts.



India is significant to South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his signature New Southern Policy. President Moon thanked India for its support for his ASEAN bloc-centered diplomacy with Seoul, vowing to provide substantial help in fighting the contagious virus.


Jamia Millia Islamia has decided to adopt the guidelines issued by the UGC on academic calendar and exams, the varsity said on Thursday.

The varsity held its academic council (AC) meeting through Google Meet on Wednesday which was attended by vice-chancellor Najma Akhtar and deans and other members of the council.

The AC has taken a decision to adopt the new guidelines issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in totality, the varsity said. The new academic session for freshers may begin in universities from September and for already enrolled students in August in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, the UGC told universities last month.

Detailing the guidelines for examinations and academic calendar for the universities in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, the commission said the exams for final semester students be conducted in July.

Examination for only final semester/year students will be held offline between July 1 to July 31 in the university. Students are requested to submit online examination forms as early as possible, the varsity said.

Summer vacations will start from June 15 and continue till June 30, it said. The university will reopen and classes for regular students will start from August 1.

The varsity has decided to hold online classes till May 31. Earlier the classes were scheduled to finish by April 30.

The last date for submission of assignments has been extended to June 5. All teachers are requested to upload the assignment marks/internal assessment marks by June 15 on the website of the Controller of Examinations of the university, it said.

The varsity has also extended the last date to submit online application forms for the session 2020-21 to May 31.

The entrance tests will start from August 1 and will go on till August end.

The new academic session will begin from September 1. PTI SLB RDM RDM
TEHRAN, Iran, May. 8

Trend :

Head of the Tehran Crisis Management Organization Reza Karami Mohammadi has warned the Tehran residents to stay on alert for the next three days, Trend reports citing IRNA.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.1 struck Iran early Friday, prompting some residents in the capital to get evacuated from their homes.

The earthquake occurred at 00:48 a.m. local time in Damavand district of Tehran at a depth of seven kilometers (4.34 miles), according to the Tehran University Seismological Center.

Previously four major faults were identified around Tehran, including Mosha-Fesham, North Tehran fault and South and North Rey faults. According to experts, Mosha-Fesham and Rey faults are susceptible to a Richter 7+ magnitude earthquake.

"Considering the seismicity of the Mosha fault, we recommend that citizens install the Ready City application and stay alerted on the possible quakes, Mohammadi said.

He advised citizens not to block emergency roads and streets.

Karami also said that the municipal crisis management services have been activated and are ready for the next 3 days.
Some states may be starting to reopen businesses, but theres not exactly a rush to get back into stores on the customer side of this COVID-19 equation, and that could also translate into another dismal aspect of the state of affairs for employment: Some layoffs might be permanent for more reasons than one. Hairstylists may be among the few whose jobs are safe, with stay-at-home restrictions keeping people from getting haircuts leading even to armed protests (in Michigan), where residents know whats really important.

The constitutional freedom to get haircuts aside, some other key jobs may be sidelined even when the pandemic is over.

Against the backdrop of an additional three million Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week--bringing the total to 33 million Americans who have made claims in the past two months--its fair to ask whether some layoffs might be permanent.

The current rate is 20.6%, a level reminiscent of the 1930s Great Depression. The pace of layoffs has slowed, and as parts of the US reopen those numbers should drop off, but for some industries, it could take months--or years--to see demand return to 2019 levels.

That means many people will be out of jobs indefinitely.

Airbnb said earlier this week it is laying off a quarter of its staff, or about 1,900 people worldwide. Uber also announced it would get rid of 3,700 jobs or 14% of its staff. Lyft has already laid off about 17% of its workforce, while some major airline companies have announced job cuts into the thousands.

Goldman Sachs expects growth to rebound 19% in the third quarter and for the economy to be nearly recovered by the end of 2021. But not everyone will be spared: Some industries and sectors, such as traditional retail and business travel, may never fully recover.

Economists are warning that even when shutdown orders are lifted, consumer spending may be slow to recover and that the companies that intend to rehire workers will struggle to do so if the coronavirus outbreak lasts into late summer or fall.

Workers who lost their jobs are a bit more optimistic and the majority think they will return once the pandemic is over.

A new poll by The Washington Post/Ipsos finds that 77% of laid-off workers expect to be rehired by their former employers.

Related: Politics Takes Charge Again With Immigration Ban Threat

The optimism is trounced by some analysts, however.

A report by the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago projects that 42% of jobs lost in the pandemic is never coming back. And even if some jobs return, its not going to be immediate.

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang told Business Insider earlier this month that many people that are being laid off during the coronavirus pandemic may not have jobs to return to.

Yang said that a lot of companies that furloughed their workers are already automating many of their processes, while many public-facing businesses aren't going to come back at full steam.

The fact is right now this virus is the perfect environment for companies to get rid of people, bring in robots and machines, and figure out how they can operate more efficiently, Yang said.

"Were going to see 10 years worth of change in 10 weeks," Yang said, with companies adapting to fewer workers.

By Michael Scott for Safehaven.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:
While the United States has been most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, New York has been the major hotspot as the state has recorded almost third of total deaths in the country. For the first time since 1904, New York's famed subway has halted its all-night service as the coronavirus outbreak brings "the city that never sleeps" to its knees. Plans to close New York City's subways at night to disinfect trains during the coronavirus pandemic. This has also impacted the hundreds of New York's homeless who call the subway home.


Another Republican has dropped out of the race for U.S. Rep Jahana Hayes, D-Conn.,s seat, leaving only one GOP candidate.

Litchfield resident Ryan Meehan suspended his campaign on Thursday, endorsing Republican David X. Sullivan on Friday. This means there will be no primary in the race, Sullivan said.

I am happy to support David X. Sullivan, Meehan said in a statement. He has the drive and experience needed to defeat Jahana Hayes in November. I look forward to participating in his campaign and attending events for him and other Republican candidates.

Meehans bow out of the race comes less than a week after Republican Robert Hyde ended his run.

Hyde became a well-known national figure this winter when text messages between him and Soviet-born businessman Lev Parnas were released during the presidential impeachment hearings.

At one point, there were four candidates in the race for the 5th Congressional District.

The first to suspend his campaign in late April was New Britain resident Ruben Rodriguez, who threw his support behind Meehan.

Sullivan, a New Fairfield resident and former prosecutor, praised Meehan for attracting more attention to the race.

Ryan Meehan is a highly motivated and accomplished individual, Sullivan said. He clearly recognizes the many shortcomings of Jahana Hayes inexcusably poor performance in Congress. I thank him for stepping forward and offering to serve.

If elected, Sullivan said he would push for relief for small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic, according to his website. He supports the Second Amendment, would back legislation that would restrict abortion and is running against a government-run Medicare For All health plan, his website says.

Hayes, a former National Teacher of the Year from Waterbury, is serving her first term and is the first black woman elected to represent Connecticut in Congress.

Her platform includes investing in the public education system, protecting the environment and passing common sense gun laws, according to her website. Her spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment.

Hayes has raised $1.12 million, while Sullivan has raised more than $136,000, as of March 31, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
COVID-19 has hit Native American communities harder than most. As a member of Isleta Pueblo, I am deeply concerned. Currently, the New Mexico Department of Healths website reports that Native Americans account for nearly 50 percent of our states COVID-19 cases, and there is no telling what that number could be by the time you read this.

To make matters even worse, the Native population also has the highest uninsured rate in New Mexico.

As a lifelong advocate for the health and well-being of Native Americans, I worry that many of our community members will not have access to the healthcare they may need during this pandemic. At BeWellnm, we want to make sure Native Americans have appropriate health insurance that covers the ten essential health benefits required by the federal government.

Data from two states with significant Indian Country populations shows how the #Coronavirus is taking a disproportionate toll on the first Americans, whose health care is promised by the federal government yet often falls far short of the need. #COVID19 https://t.co/vE0LuRzowS  indianz.com (@indianz) April 15, 2020

No matter what, every Native American in New Mexico qualifies for health coverage, either through Medicaid or beWellnm, the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange. Both options are a great complement to care provided by Indian Health Service.

Depending upon income and family size, Native Americans may be able to qualify for Medicaid through the New Mexico Human Services Department. Generally, individuals who make $1,468 a month or less will qualify for Medicaid, but that amount could be higher based on family size.

For those who dont qualify for Medicaid, there is the opportunity to enroll in a qualified health plan through beWellnm, today. Unlike the rest of the population, Native Americans can enroll in coverage all year long. Native Americans also have access to free and low-cost plans and can visit any in-network doctor throughout the state.

A healthier family means one healthier Tribe. A healthier Tribe means a healthier New Mexico. BeWellnm is committed to your health. #BecauseYouJustNeverKnow #beWellnmhttps://t.co/qm3aAaLcUd pic.twitter.com/bKXihceLFP  beWellnm (@NMHIX) April 29, 2020

Furthermore, no one with a health plan through beWellnm has to worry about being covered during COVID-19. New Mexicos Superintendent of Insurance issued a rule in March that mandates any insurance carrier to cover testing and treatment for COVID-19.

As a cancer survivor, I cannot stress enough the importance of having health coverage. I know that if I had not been on a health insurance plan, when I became sick, I would not have been able to pay for the care I needed. I encourage every uninsured Native American to contact either Medicaid or beWellnm to find out which option is best for them. Its more important than ever for our communities to get covered.

Teresa Gomez is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Isleta and a life-long resident of New Mexico. Teresa has dedicated her career to serving Tribes and advocating for issues affecting American Indians. In 2006, Teresa served as the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department. Teresa also served as the Deputy CEO for the NM Behavioral Health Purchasing Collaborative.

Join the Conversation
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the special judge conducting a criminal trial against BJP leaders LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti in the Babri Masjid demolition case to complete the proceedings and deliver judgment by August 31.

The top court also asked special judge SK Yadav to make use of video conferencing facilities to ensure that recording of evidence is complete and there is no inordinate delay in concluding the trial.

We may indicate that video conferencing facilities are available and should be used by Shri Yadav in order to complete all evidenceWe extend the period to complete evidence and deliver judgment till August 31, the bench headed by justice Rohinton Nariman said after the special judge wrote to the court on May 6 stating that recording of evidence is yet to be completed.

This would be the third time the court is setting a deadline for completion of trial in the 28-year-old case.

The BJP leaders are on trial for the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. They have been charged for various offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that include promoting enmity between religious groups (section 153A), making statements affecting national integration (section 153B) or which are likely to cause public mischief (section 505).

In April 2017, the top court had ordered that additional charges of criminal conspiracy under section 120B of the IPC should be framed against the accused BJP leaders.

BJP leader Kalyan Singh, who was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh when the Babri Masjid was demolished and who is one of the accused in the case, was given immunity by the top court under Article 361 of the Constitution since he was the Governor of Rajasthan. Article 361 affords protection to the President and Governor from criminal proceedings when in office.

The apex court had also ordered the special court to complete trial within two years.

However, the matter was taken up again by the Supreme Court in July 2019 after the special judge sought additional time to complete the trial and deliver his judgment. The apex court allowed the same and extended the deadline by 9 more months.

The deadline expired on April 19 and the special judge Yadav wrote to the apex court on May 6 seeking further extension of time.

The court then listed the case on Friday and decided to extend the deadline one last time.

We are cognisant of the fact that Shri Yadav is making all efforts in order that the trial reach a just conclusion. However, given the original time frame and the extended time frame, the effort must now be to complete the proceedings and deliver judgment latest by August 31, the Supreme Court said.

In its historic verdict on November 9 last year in the Babri demolition case, the court decided the title suit in favour of Hindu parties while also acknowledging that the demolition of the masjid which stood at the site was a calculated act.

During the pendency of the suits, the entire structure of the mosque was brought down in a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship. The Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago, the November 9 judgment said.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Assembly Insurance Committee voted today to allow insurance companies to raise rates on homeowners and renters in violation of voter-approved Proposition 103. The bills would force unjustified insurance rate hikes on homeowners in the very communities devastated by wildfires that they purport to help, said Consumer Watchdog.

"These bills do nothing to require insurance companies to renew homeowners' insurance policies at an affordable price, or to protect Californians' homes from the devastation of wildfires. Insurance companies are trying to use climate change as an excuse to fulfill a decades-long wish to escape the regulation of insurance rates mandated by California voters," said Harvey Rosenfield, author of insurance reform initiative Proposition 103 and founder of Consumer Watchdog.

The Committee approved AB 2167 authored by its chair, Orange County Assemblymember Tom Daly, and SB 292 by Los Angeles County Senator Susan Rubio, to allow insurance companies to evade Prop 103's rules that require insurance companies to justify their rates before they take effect.

At the hearing, lobbyists for the insurance industry complained that Proposition 103 had kept homeowner rates in California "17% below the national average," an acknowledgment that the bills would allow insurers to impose rate increases that are not justified, said Consumer Watchdog. The insurance industry representatives promised that they would sell more insurance if they were allowed to charge whatever they wanted for it.

The bills would allow insurance companies to evade Proposition 103's bans on price-gouging and discriminatory practices against communities. Under AB 2167 and SB 292, a new taxpayer-funded commission composed of political appointees and insurance executives will meet behind closed doors to determine how homeowner and renter insurance rates will be set.

The bills would also allow insurance companies to use secret "models," developed by insurance companies, that purport to project future claims from wildfires. These black box models would be used by insurance companies to non-renew entire communities  without having to disclose how the models work or whether they are accurate.

Both bills are couched in the creation of "insurance market assistance plans" that would allegedly assist insurance companies in addressing climate change and wildfire issues. However, Proposition 103 already gives the Insurance Commissioner the authority to establish such plans, subject to Proposition 103's protections.

Read Consumer Watchdog's letters opposing AB 2167 and SB 292 .

The California Department of Insurance, and organizations including United Policyholders and Consumer Federation of California, also opposed AB 2167.

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog

Related Links

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org


By Akbar Mammadov

Representatives of relevant agencies in the field of transport and foreign affairs of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Romania have held discussions on transport and logistics, the Ministy of Transport, Communications and High Technologies reported on May 7.

The video conference, supported by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, focused on expanding cooperation in the implementation of relevant projects in transport and logistics.

As the Azerbaijani side, The Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy, the State Customs Committee, Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC, Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, the State Motor Transport Service under the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Representatives of the Maritime Agency and Baku International Sea Trade Port CJSC attended the meeting.

At the same time, the sides also touched upon the improvement of the normative regulatory base in the aforementioned area.

It should be noted that the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Turkmenistan signed a joint declaration The international transport route Caspian Sea - Black Sea, in Bucharest on March 4, 2019.

The Black Sea and Caspian Sea play an important role in the promotion of the cargo transportation route as a competitive link connecting Europe and Asia. The Black Sea-Caspian Sea international transport route, connecting Central Asia with Europe via the two seas, is the shortest and the most cost-effective route out of available transport networks.

The first meeting of the quadripartite working group on the Caspian-Black Sea international transport route between Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Romania was held in Bucharest, 27 June, 2019.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Reliance Industries (RIL) share price rose more than 4 percent intraday on May 8 after a US-based private equity fund said it is going to pick a stake in the company's digital unit.

The stock is just 4.5 percent away from its record high of Rs 1,617 registered on December 20, 2019.

The stock has rallied about 40 percent since April.

Vista Equity Partners will pick up a 2.32 percent stake in the company's Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore.

The US-based private equity firm that runs the worlds largest exclusively tech-focused fund.

Vistas investment is at 12.5 percent premium over the Facebook deal announced in April. The investment by Silver Lake Partners in Jio announced earlier this week was also at a similar premium to the Facebook deal.

"Like our other partners, Vista also shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. They believe in the transformative power of technology to be the key to an even better future for everyone," said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director - Reliance Industries.

At 10:48 hrs Reliance Industries was quoting at Rs 1,567.50, up Rs 60.25, or 4.00 percent on the BSE.

: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.
A senior U.S. official told the Chosun Ilbo on Thursday, "The U.S. faces many difficulties, including the coronavirus epidemic and a $1.3-billion offer is realistically not bad. This was approved by President Trump."

U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly demanding US$1.3 billion a year to maintain American troops in Korea. That is a whopping 53.3 percent higher than the W1.4 trillion Korea had to pay last year.

A high-ranking government official here said, "We have been considering annual increases in defense spending to raise the amount to $1.3 billion over the next five years, but I believe the U.S. wants that right now."

Another U.S. government source said if Korea pays less, the number of troops here "could decline," and claimed Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has told his Korean counterpart Park Han-ki so. But Park denied this on Wednesday.

The pressure from Trump seems to be intended to divert from his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic as his re-election chances dwindle.

But his hands are tied. The U.S.' National Defense Authorization Act prohibits a downsizing of American troop presence in Korea below the current 28,500. For any further reduction, Congress requires proof that the downsizing benefits national security interests and negotiations with allies Korea and Japan.

The Korean government on Thursday said the U.S.' demand is "excessive." "The results of negotiations must be acceptable to both sides," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "They must be reasonable and fair to either side."

The spokesman declined to comment on the actual figure, saying it is "under discussion." Some pundits now believe the defense cost-sharing talks could be postponed until after the U.S. presidential election in November since Trump has to focus on his campaign.


Director of the Economic Council Larry Kudlow speaks during the Wall Street Journal CEO Council, in Washington, on Dec. 10, 2019. (Al Drago/Reuters)

Kudlow Says Formal Talks on Next Relief Bill Kind of Paused

White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Friday that formal talks on the next COVID-19 stimulus package, dubbed phase four, have been put on hold.

Were kind of paused as far as formal negotiations go, Kudlow told reporters, adding that the talks would not resume until late May or early June.

Kudlow explained the rationale for pausing the phase four talks. We just had another big infusion, he said, referring to three major previous stimulus packages plus the recent $480-billion top-up of the popular Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, along with funding for hospitals and testing. All told, the COVID-19 relief aid so far has totaled over $3 trillion.

Kudlow, the director of the White Houses National Economic Council, added that the stimulus measures enacted so far have been well worth it, adding that the administration was now adopting more of a wait-and-see approach.

Lets see what happens, he said. As we move into the reopening phase this month, maybe spillover to June, lets have a look at it before we decide who, what, where, when.

Kudlow said that informal talks would continue, adding that he and White House advisor Kevin Hassett had a great phone call yesterday with about 50 house lawmakers in both parties.

Regarding the thrust of those informal discussions, Kudlow cited President Donald Trumps support for a payroll tax cut, some form of liability insurance for businesses, and opening America up to boost the economy.

His philosophy from day one was lower taxes, lower regulations, opening up energy, and fair trade deals. And I would argue those worked and produced a very strong economy, even as recently as January and February, Kudlow said.

So whatever policies we come up with will be consistent with that point of view. Its a free enterprise point of view, he said, adding, But on specifics, were at a lull right now.

Kudlows comments come as Democrats craft their proposal for the next aid package, which they have repeatedly insisted must include hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for states and local governments, along with direct relief to households.

Republicans, meanwhile, have been cautious about new spending, and have insisted on caveats of their own, such as liability protection for businesses, amid a general disdain for what they say are bailouts of Democrat-led states with a history of fiscal mismanagement, rather than relief related to the pandemic.

The outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, has battered economies worldwide.

In the United States, the virus-related lockdowns and plummeting demand have destroyed a record 20.5 million jobs in April, according to Labor Department figures released Friday, and pushed the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent.

Kudlow called Fridays jobs numbers heartbreaking, and referred to the weekly jobless claims numbers released earlier nothing but hardship.

Demand collapsed. The coronavirus worldwide caused the collapse in demand. Through no fault of anybody, this virus has pushed us into a big economic contraction, Kudlow told CNBC in a recent interview.
Plan: Boris Johnson will set out a rough timetable for when measures will be lifted. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Boris Johnson could lift parts of the UK lockdown every two weeks under plans being discussed by ministers.

The British cabinet will meet on Sunday to agree a "road map" for lifting the lockdown which will be revealed by the prime minister in a televised address to the nation that evening.

He will also set out a rough timetable for when key measures will be lifted, such as schools and shops reopening, but will describe tough "milestones" that must first be reached.

It means it is likely to be several months before the lockdown is lifted in full, with bars, restaurants and indoor events among the last on the list.

Mr Johnson told cabinet ministers yesterday that he wants to be able to show the nation "light at the end of the tunnel" after more than six weeks of lockdown, and ordered them to come up with dates for when they expected to be able to lift measures that come under their departmental remits. But he stressed he would "advance with maximum caution" and that any decision to lift restrictions would be subject to "maximum conditionality", backed by scientific evidence.

Mr Johnson may also reveal the latest "R" value, which measures the rate of infection, to reassure the public that it is safe to relax measures.

Meanwhile, Belgians have been told to pick four relatives or friends who will be allowed to visit them at home, as the country prepares to further ease its coronavirus lockdown.

The edict is ripe with potential for social embarrassment and the brewing of simmering resentments, as citizens make their selections which they cannot change.

But the reunions are likely to be surreal affairs as social distancing measures must still be observed.

The "buddy system", which comes into force eight days earlier than planned, on Belgium's Mothering Sunday, will be hard to enforce.

But Sophie Wilmes, the prime minister, told people they must respect the rule or risk a return to the stricter lockdown measures and a second wave of infection.

She also confirmed all shops will reopen on Monday but under strict social-distancing restrictions.

Belgium is planning to hire 2,000 call-centre "corona detectives" rather than rely on a phone tracing app, which the authorities don't believe enough people will download to make it useful.

Belgium, which has a population of 11.5 million, has the highest per capita death rate from coronavirus in the world which has been put down to its meticulous reporting system.

The country has recorded 50,781 cases and 8,415 deaths.

Sweden's state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, has said that the success or failure of the country's less restrictive coronavirus strategy depends almost entirely on whether the authorities can get the number of infections in care homes under control.

Last week, a union health-and-safety officer reported Berga Elderly Care to the authorities because 27 of its 96 residents had died in less than a month, at the same time as half of the home's staff were off sick.

Berga is perhaps the most shocking case of a situation seen all over Sweden. Coronavirus infections have been reported in more than three-quarters of care homes in Stockholm.

Nearly two-thirds of the 2,941 who have died in the country with the virus have been over 80. Some 90pc are over 70, while just under half, 948 people, were living in care homes.

If the authorities fail to get a grip on the situation, Tom Britton, a mathematics professor at Stockholm University, estimates that the final death toll could sit between 8,000 and 20,000.

Spain weighed up further steps to bring life back to normal as the coronavirus epidemic ebbed, but the capital Madrid and the city of Barcelona could remain under tight restrictions for the time being.

Both cities and their surroundings have registered the highest number of coronavirus deaths and infections in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global pandemic.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's government is anxious to get the country up and running again without igniting a second wave of infections as the economy reels and Spaniards gradually emerge from nearly eight weeks under lockdown.

Parliament voted on Wednesday night to extend a state of emergency for two more weeks from Sunday.

This gives the government power to control people's movements as it relaxes the lockdown, which succeeded in curbing the outbreak.

The Health Ministry gave Spain's coronavirus death toll for the past 24 hours as 213 on Thursday, down from 244 the previous day and far below peaks of nearly 1,000 in early April.

Deaths from the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 274 on Thursday, against 369 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new infections declined marginally to 1,401 from 1,444 on Wednesday. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
DALLAS, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A woman who works at Dallas' R+D Kitchen will be allowed to wear a face covering at work, following a ruling by a Dallas County district court.

California-based Hillstone, which operates R+D Kitchen and more than 40 other restaurants in 12 states, had forbidden the employee, who goes by "Jane Doe" in court filings, from wearing a face covering on the job and refused to provide her any hours to work unless she agreed to work without one.

That's despite recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and an April 23 order  backed up by another this month  from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins requiring workers at businesses that re-open to wear face coverings.

But Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker granted Ms. Doe's application for a temporary restraining order mandating that Hillstone require or at least permit Ms. Doe to wear a face covering at work, and that the restaurant not retaliate against her.

"My client wants nothing more than to protect those around her  and Hillstone's own customers  from the possibility of contracting COVID-19. And she wants to follow the law," said her attorney Charla Aldous, founding partner of Aldous\Walker in Dallas.

Her lawyers argue Hillstone has in effect fired Jane Doe by refusing to give her any hourly work until or unless she follows the company's no face-covering policy.

"Hillstone as a company is violating the law and endangering its workers and the public with its misguided policy," said Brent Walker, who also represents Jane Doe. "The question now is, will Hillstone follow the law and require the rest of its employees to use face coverings? If they are not going to follow the law, will they at least do the reasonable thing and allow employees who want to wear face coverings consistent with CDC recommendations to do so? If not, we'll be ready to go to court on their behalf as well."

The temporary restraining order will remain in place for 14 days. The case is Jane Doe v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, Inc., Cause No. DC-20-06494 in the 116th Judicial District Court in Dallas County. Following the TRO decision, defendants in the case removed it to federal court.

The Aldous\Walker LLP law firm represents clients in civil litigation, personal injury, medical malpractice, products liability and wrongful death cases. Learn more about the firm at http://www.aldouslaw.com .

Media Contact:

Mark Annick

800-559-4534

[email protected]

SOURCE Aldous\Walker LLP

Related Links

http://www.aldouslaw.com


Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy with showers of rain and wet snow this morning. Morning high of 42F with temps falling to near 20. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 13F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph.
KAMPALA  Deputy speaker Jacob Oulanya has called for a separate lane of motorcycles or bikes on roads.

His suggestion came as he rocked parliament Friday afternoon on a bike to conduct business in his office which moment surprised majority of the people at parliament including journalists.

Oulanya who told Journalists that it took him seven minutes from his home in Muyenga to parliament, said that riding would be enjoyable in Kampala if roads were wide but unfortunately its a risk venture due to disorder and indiscipline of drivers and narrow lance of roads.

On the other hand, NRM parliamentary committee chairpersons have objected to the proposed constituencies taskforce fund of Shs50b.

Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Nankabirwa said that the MPs feared the public opinion against them especially now that theres even the confusion of Shs20m Covid-19 money.

Nankabirwa says they have agreed to postpone the constituency taskforce fund process bill which was tabled last year in October but rather remained supportive to the process at a later stage.

Related
ALBANY  A region-wide search for a boy allegedly abducted from Clifton Park by his father ended Friday night with the man's apprehension and the 9-year-old's recovery after they were spotted on an Albany street, police said.

The suspect, Nivaldo P. Oliveira, was taken into custody near Ontario Street and Livingston Avenue, police department spokesman Steve Smith said in a tweet at about 9:45 p.m.

Smith said that shortly after 9 p.m., Albany community members notified the police after seeing Oliveira walking with the child, Gustavo Oliveira, on Ontario Street. They called police and patrol cars were on the scene almost immediately, Smith said.



The boy was not injured and police brought him to South Station. "The child is safe," Smith said.



Oliveira, 41, was apprehended after a brief chase. Police said he was taken to a local hospital to have a cut treated. There was no word later Friday on the charges he could face.

Oliveira was being evaluated at Albany Medical Center for the minor injuries sustained while attempting to avoid apprehension, State Police said at about 11 p.m.

State Police, who issued an Amber Alert that was heard early Friday morning on cell phones throughout the region, said the boy was allegedly taken at about 1 a.m. Friday from his Tallow Wood Road home.

"The child was taken under circumstances that lead police to believe that they are in imminent danger of serious bodily harm and/or death," troopers said in the alert.

At about 11 a.m., State Police searched the area around Tivoli Lake in Albany as officials followed leads in an effort to find the boy.

Police during the day had expressed fear that Oliveira might harm the boy and himself.

"There is a history of domestic violence and there was a violation of an order of protection in place," Trooper Kerra Burns, the State Police public information officer, said earlier Friday. "Any time domestic violence is involved, we always take that very seriously."

Burns could not confirm whether police or the child's guardian had been in contact with Oliveira or his son.

Oliveira had been accused of burglary and stalking earlier this year after he allegedly broke into a Halfmoon home while his estranged wife and her child hid in an upstairs bathroom.

State Police said Friday that while Oliveira was inside the home in February, he disconnected a surveillance camera and left before troopers arrived. He was arrested later and charged with second-degree burglary, a felony, and stalking, a misdemeanor. Under New York state's bail reforms, Oliveira was released from custody after his arrest in the Feb. 12 incident.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

State Police have not said if the alleged abduction was connected to the earlier incident in Halfmoon, and declined to identify the victims in the February incident.

Neighbors Friday said the boy was frequently seen biking and playing in the yard near the row of townhouses. One neighbor, Lindsey Ascioti, said the family kept to themselves and she didn't know them well.

"They have a lot of cars and people going in and out," Ascioti said. "We don't pay too much attention with what's going on."

State Police also had this statement:

"Thank you to the Albany Police Department and to the public for their assistance in successfully recovering the child unharmed. We also extend our appreciation to the Albany Police Department, Colonie Police Department, the FBI, and our AMBER Alert partners for assisting with this case throughout the day."
ROCKVILLE, Md. - A Maryland police officer fatally shot a man who charged at him with a knife, authorities said Thursday.

Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones told reporters that officers were dispatched to a call about a man who threw a rock at a neighbours window and yelled for them to call police.

When officers arrived, Jones said they encountered the man as he held the knife. One officer ordered the man to get on the ground, Jones said, adding that the unidentified man rushed at the officer, walked backward, ignored commands to drop the knife and then came at the officer again before he was shot.

The chief said the officer performed first aid on the man before he was taken to a local hospital, where he died.

Jones said there is body-cam video as well as eyewitness video of the incident. He also said witnesses were being interviewed by police.

The races of the officer and the man who died werent released on Thursday, and a police didnt immediately respond to a request for additional information.
A Vietnam Airlines aircraft seen at the Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. Photo by Shutterstock/Cesare Palma.

Flag carrier Vietnam Airlines will resume all domestic flights in June after grounding most of them for more than a month.

The airline said in a statement that it was currently operating 17 flights a day between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and in the second half of this month it will increase this to 23.

It will also add more flights this month Hanoi and HCMC to Da Nang City, and from HCMC to Phu Quoc Island, Hai Phong City and Thanh Hoa Province.

Jetstar Pacific, the low cost arm of Vietnam Airlines, resumed its flights from HCMC to Da Nang City and other destinations Thursday.

All domestic flights of the two airlines are set to be resumed next month under management of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).

The Vietnam Airlines Group reported a loss of over VND2.6 trillion ($110 million) in the first quarter as the Covid-19 pandemic severely impacted the aviation industry.

On Thursday, Vietnam lifted restrictions on the number of flights between Hanoi, HCMC and Da Nang City. Passengers are no longer required to sit one seat away from each other, but still need to wear face masks and keep a distance of one meter from each other during flight procedures.

The number of flights by local carriers dropped by up to 85 percent year-on-year in the March 18  April 19 period, according to the CAAV.

Last year, domestic airlines served 55.3 million passengers, up 11 percent year-on-year, General Statistics Office data shows.
[May 07, 2020] Teradata Board Appoints Steve McMillan President and Chief Executive Officer Teradata (News - Alert) (NYSE: TDC) today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Steve McMillan President and Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors, effective June 8, 2020. Mr. McMillan was previously at F5 Networks (News - Alert) , Inc. as Executive Vice President of Global Services. He succeeds interim President and Chief Executive Officer, Victor Lund. Mr. Lund will step down from the Company's Board of Directors, effective upon the appointment of Mr. McMillan as CEO on June 8, 2020. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006090/en/ Teradata Board Appoints Steve McMillan President and Chief Executive Officer (Photo: Business Wire) With nearly two decades in senior leadership positions, Mr. McMillan is a seasoned technology executive with an impressive track record of transforming enterprise services and product businesses into industry-leading cloud portfolio offerings. His relentless focus on customers and strong bias for action will help propel Teradata to new levels of success. "During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Teradata than Steve McMillan," said Mike Gianoni, Chairman of the Teradata Board of Directors. "Steve is a proven leader with tremendous operational experience and business acumen, and he has a unique ability o bring people together to achieve outstanding results and drive companywide transformations to the cloud. His vision for how data will be leveraged around the world is precisely what Teradata needs as we accelerate our transformation, customer success, product innovation, and return to growth." Most recently, at F5, Mr. McMillan was responsible for more than half of the Company's worldwide operations and achieved significant top-line growth and industry-leading customer satisfaction. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Customer Success, and Managed Cloud Services at Oracle (News - Alert) , where he guided the Company's transformation from a traditional hosting business to a high-growth, high-margin differentiated cloud offerings platform. Before Oracle, Mr. McMillan spent nearly 20 years at IBM (News - Alert) , where he held a variety of increasingly senior leadership roles driving operations and execution with a consistent record of exceeding revenue and profit targets, business transformation, and collaborative leadership. "It is a privilege to have the opportunity to lead Teradata in the next chapter of its growth strategy," said Mr. McMillan. "Leveraging insights from data has never been more important, and Teradata is leading the way in helping global enterprises unlock real business value from this asset. Teradata has a unique position in a large market, best-in-class technology, a blue-chip customer base, and talented employees. I intend to take a customer-led approach and bring my collaborative and open leadership style to this great franchise to advance its strategy and to ensure Teradata is the partner of choice for customers around the world who need hybrid, cloud-based solutions." Mr. Gianoni added, "I would like to thank Vic for his extensive contributions to Teradata. We look forward to continuing to benefit from his institutional knowledge as an advisor to the Company through the end of the year and wish him all the best." 2020 First Quarter Financial Results In a separate press release to be issued today, Teradata will report 2020 first-quarter financial results. Teradata will host a conference call at investor.teradata.com today, at 2 pm PT, to discuss its financial results. The live broadcast and a replay will be available on the Teradata website at investor.teradata.com. About Teradata Teradata transforms how businesses work and people live through the power of data. Teradata leverages all of the data, all of the time, so you can analyze anything, deploy anywhere, and deliver analytics that matter most to your business. And we do it on-premises, in the cloud, or anywhere in between. We call this pervasive data intelligence, powered by the cloud. It's the answer to the complexity, cost and inadequacy of today's approach to analytics. Get the answer at teradata.com. The Teradata logo is a trademark, and Teradata is a registered trademark of Teradata Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and worldwide. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006090/en/

[ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ]
Close to 20 percent of auto retailers or 3,500 outlets and workshops have opened shop this week in compliance with Home Ministry guidelines after the lockdown was relaxed, and 50,000-60,000 employees in the sector are now back to work, with social distancing and sanitisation practises in place.

Customers, however, are absent, as restrictions on non-essential movements - especially in cities (which are red zones) - continue, The Economic Times reported. Besides movement curbs, loss of jobs, pay cuts and priorities on savings have led to muted response from customers, it noted.

Maruti Suzuki has opened 680 dealerships till May 6 and is seeking permission to open another 1,220 outlets while the remaining 500 - which are in containment zones - remain shut. So far, only Goa, Karnataka, Delhi and Kerala have allowed dealerships to open regardless.

Shashank Srivastava, the executive director (marketing and sales) at Maruti Suzuki, told the paper that, till May 7, the company had sold 300 vehicles via contactless deliveries. While these were mostly prior booked orders, he was still optimistic as there have been some walk-ins and enquiries.

Notably, the company has not had many cancellations of prior orders and has reached out to 150,000 potential buyers. Srivastava also noted that there is a definite shift in customers wanting to move from public to personal transport over health concerns  which would likely trigger future demand.

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

Follow our LIVE Updates on the coronavirus pandemic here

Suzuki Motor Corporation also recorded a 15-16 percent surge in web enquiries compared to the volume of such requests before the coronavirus pandemic. Such enquiries prior to the lockdown were 3-4 percent, it said.

Besides Maruti, Hyundai has also begun delivering vehicle orders booked during Navratri and Gudi Padwa. It has retailed 170 cars till week. The South Korean giant has opened 255 outlets, and said it received 4,000 enquiries and 500 bookings so far.

Ashish Kale, the president of the Federation of Automotive Dealers Association, has told the paper that no one knows when the recovery would begin. Revival will strongly depend on the support package from the government and the extent of it and even the initiatives and support from the vehicle makers, he added.

Hero Motocorp and Mahindra & Mahindra dealer Nikunj Sanghi, said they received requests for cancellations for vehicles booked earlier, adding that they have asked customers to wait till lockdown ends on May 17.
Anouk Aimee in Lola.

LOLA (90 minutes, Unrated)

Stan

For elegant yet heart-piercing romantic longing, you can't do better than Jacques Demy's 1961 first feature, shot in widescreen black and white and described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimee has the title role, as a showgirl pining for the sailor who left her behind.

THE ELEPHANT MAN (125 minutes, M)

MUBI

David Lynch's breakout success came with this moving 1980 account of the life of the deformed John Merrick (John Hurt) who is rescued from a sideshow from a kindly doctor (Anthony Hopkins) and becomes the toast of Victorian London. As always with Lynch, there are as many layers of meaning as you care to look for.

BEST IN SHOW (90 minutes, PG)

Tubi

A modest but wonderful film, Christopher Guest's 2000 mockumentary uses a Philadelphia dog show as a pretext to poke fun at the foibles of human nature, embodied by the members of Guest's stock company including Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard. Tubi

ANTOINE AND ANTOINETTE (88 minutes, Unrated)

MUBI

A chase after a missing lottery ticket powers Jacques Becker's 1947 comedy about a young working-class couple (Roger Pigault and Claire Maffei), which starts out briskly and gathers speed from there, folding in a wealth of whimsical detail and showing why New Wave director Francois Truffaut was among Becker's biggest fans.
Chennai, May 9 : The first evacuation flight of Air India Express to Chennai from Dubai landed at Chennai International Airport with 179 passengers and three infants on Saturday at about 1.10 a.m.

According to an official of Air India Express, the flight IX 612 landed safely with 179 passengers and three infants.

One more repatriation flight (IX 540) with 177 passengers is expected to land at the airport later.

The flights are being operated as a part of Indian's government's plan to bring back Indian's who were stranded in foreign countries due to Covid-19 lockdown called Vande Bharat Mission.

According to an official of Tamil Nadu Health Department about 10 flights carrying stranded Indians are expected to land in Chennai - one or two flights daily with a total of about 400 passengers.

He said the passengers will be screened at the airport and they would be advised to be quarantined. There will be about 60 health department officials deployed at the airport.

An airport official had earlier said the passengers will deboard the plane in small batches.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 8, 2020) - Metals Creek Resources Corp. (TSXV: MEK) (OTC: MCREF) (Metals Creek or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the company has received a $20,000 option payment for the Tilt Cove option from Anaconda Mining Inc. on the 6th May, 2020.

Under the revised terms of the Tilt Cove Agreement, to maintain the Option with respect to the Licenses in full force, ANX shall pay to MCR the following amounts:

on the Effective Date (November 7, 2016) - $20,000 in cash by wire transfer and 50,000 Consideration Shares (see definition below); (Paid)

on the first anniversary of the Effective Date - $40,000 in cash by wire transfer and 100,000 Consideration Shares; (Paid)

on the second anniversary of the Effective Date - $60,000 in cash by wire transfer and 150,000 Consideration Shares; (Paid)

On the third anniversary of the Effective Date - $20,000 in cash and 100,000 Consideration Shares; (Paid)

On or before February 6, 2020 - $20,000 in cash; (Paid)

On or before May 6, 2020 - $20,000 in cash; and (Paid)

On or before August 6, 2020 - $20,000 in cash

To further maintain the Option in full force with respect to the Licenses, Anaconda shall fund Expenditures with respect to the Licenses aggregating a minimum of $150,000 at any time or times during the Option Period.

All other terms of the agreement remain unchanged.

About Metals Creek Resources Corp.

Metals Creek Resources Corp. is a junior exploration company incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario, is a reporting issuer in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, and has its common shares listed for trading on the Exchange under the symbol "MEK". Metals Creek has earned a 50% interest in the Ogden Gold Property from Newmont Goldcorp, including the former Naybob Gold mine, located 6 km south of Timmins, Ontario and has an 8 km strike length of the prolific Porcupine-Destor Fault (P-DF). In addition, Metals Creek has recently signed an agreement with Newmont Goldcorp, where Metals Creek can earn a 100% interest in the past producing Dona Lake Gold Project in the Pickle Lake Ming District of Ontario.

Metals Creek also has multiple quality projects available for option which can be viewed on the Company's website. Parties interested in seeking more information about properties available for option can contact the Company at the number below. Additional information concerning the Company is contained in documents filed by the Company with securities regulators, available under its profile at www.sedar.com.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Alexander (Sandy) Stares, President and CEO

Metals Creek Resources Corp

telephone: (709)-256-6060

fax: (709)-256-6061

email: astares@metalscreek.com

MetalsCreek.com

Twitter.com/MetalsCreekRes

Facebook.com/MetalsCreek

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55553
Above, the FBI's Peter Strzok, one of two agents at Flynn's interview.

By Mark Hemingway, RealClearInvestigations

May 8, 2020

The Justice Departments closing of its criminal case against President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday came as new red flags emerged from recently released documents revealing the FBIs handling of the matter.

Michael Flynn: New documents reveal irregular handling and editing of his FBI interview form.

Former FBI agents and federal prosecutors tell RealClearInvestigations that the documents show suspiciously irregular handling and editing of Flynns FD-302 form, the official document used to record what happens in FBI interviews. That form served as a key record used to charge Flynn with lying to federal agents. He pleaded guilty to that charge in December 2017 but had been trying to withdraw the plea, arguing, as his lawyer put it, that he was deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.

Since the documents were released last week, much attention has focused on a handwritten note by FBI counterintelligence head Bill Priestap in advance of the January 2017 interview with Flynn that would result in the retired lieutenant general being charged with lying to federal agents: What is our goal? Priestap asked, Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?

The new irregularities concern what happened after Flynn was interviewed by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka on January 24, 2017  the interview in which Flynn was alleged to have lied about a December phone call with the Russian ambassador. FBI procedure is that one agent asks questions while another takes notes. Here, lead agent Strzok was the questioner and Pientka was responsible for memorializing the interview. After completing an interview, those notes are required to be organized and written up on an FD-302 form, which then becomes an official document used as evidence in an investigation.

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page was involved with drafting the form memorializing the FBI's interview with Flynn -- a break with procedure since she wasn't present. She texted Peter Strzok: "Is Andy good with the 302?"  presumably referring to FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

FBI policy requires 302 forms to be submitted within five working days of an interview. The FBI took three weeks to deliberate on and compose Flynns 302 form, and it was mislabeled a DRAFT DOCUMENT, requiring a resubmission of the form three months later. A prosecutor working in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which eventually charged Flynn, was required to submit a separate document to a federal judge to explain that irregularity.

The new Flynn documents shed light on what happened during the unusual three weeks composing the 302. They include texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who were communicating extensively during an extramarital affair in interchanges revealing anti-Trump bias and resulting in their later dismissal from Muellers investigation.

In one text, dated February 10, Strzok tells Page he is heavily editing Pientkas 302 form to the point hes trying not to completely re-write it. Other messages reveal that Page, who did not attend the interview, reviewed the 302 form and made editing suggestions. On February 14, Page texts Strzok, "Is Andy good with the 302?"  presumably referring to FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. The next day, February 15, the Flynn 302 was officially submitted and filed with the FBI.

FBI supervisors like Strzok, however, are not supposed to rewrite other agents 302 forms. Nor are 302 forms supposed to be edited by FBI personnel who were not present at the interview, and both of these things happened in the Flynn case. I've probably written in the close to the low thousands of 302s. I've probably supervised or overseen thousands upon thousands of more of those, James Gagliano, retired 25-year veteran of the FBI and current CNN analyst, told RealClearInvestigations. This is not how we do business as an FBI supervisor. I never, ever materially altered a 302.

withdraw from the Flynn prosecution came amid allegations he had withheld exculpatory information from Flynns attorneys. Brandon L. Van Grack: His request to

Former Special Agent Thomas J. Baker agreed: We never changed an agent's 302. An agent would fight a supervisor who wanted him to change the 302, because it's what that agent observed and heard and in his interview. So for us to read, whats documented in this new material, that coming back from that interview with Flynn, which is a key event, that Peter Strzok said he virtually rewrote the whole thing  it damned them with their own words.

Both former agents also expressed concern that Page, who was not present at the interview, was editing the 302 form against FBI protocol. For [Strzok] to send that 302 to Lisa Page, a non-badge wearing, non-credential-having FBI agent, is unconscionable, says Gagliano.

Baker said it was not normal and suspicious that it took three weeks for Pientkas 302 form chronicling the Flynn interview to be filed. Gagliano also found the time delay concerning. If the interview is on Monday, you better have that 302 uploaded on Friday. That's a requirement. Now if you go outside of that, does that mean that there's some skullduggery afoot? No, but you're going to explain that in court, Gagliano said. A defense attorney worth his or her salt will make hay with that. Hey agent Gagliano, you know what the requirement is in the Bureau, right? Why was this thing typed up seven days after the interview? And then you sit there hemming and hawing and a dead-to-rights case gets blown open because you didn't follow a protocol.

Even after the Flynn 302 was collectively written during the weeks-long delay in submission, the original wasnt initially used in the case. Instead, Baker said, Muellers team submitted their own interview with Strzok about his recollection of the interview with Flynn five or six months ago. Now thats just bizarre.

Eventually, the 302 was filed to the court in two versions, requiring a convoluted explanation about what had happened. In a cover letter to District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan dated December 17, 2018, Brandon Van Grack, a prosecutor on the Mueller probe, explained:

Pursuant to the Courts Minute Order dated today, the government hereby files two redacted versions of the FD-302 report summarizing the FBIs interview of the defendant on January 24, 2017. See Attachment. The content of both versions of the report is identical, except that the first version, which was digitally signed and certified in February 2017, inadvertently contained a header labeled DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL. Once that error was recognized, the header was removed and a corrected version, omitting only the header, was re- signed and re-certified in May 2017.

Sol Wisenberg, a former federal prosecutor who served as deputy independent counsel during the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigation, says that Van Gracks letter is very embarrassing as a prosecutor. Forget about the five day rule, if it's three weeks or a month, it's just like, What took you so long?

On Thursday, shortly before news broke that the Justice Department was dropping the Flynn prosecution, Van Grack submitted a request to withdraw from the team of federal prosecutors on the Flynn case. Van Gracks withdrawal request also came amid allegations he had withheld exculpatory information from Flynns attorneys that was contained in the document dump the previous week.

Hovering over all these questions about what happened with Flynns 302 is the silence of Joe Pientka, the other agent who was present for the Flynn interview. The FBI rebuffed congressional requests to make him available for questions. The Bureau argued that because Pientka was assigned to the Mueller probe, interviewing him would interfere with the special counsels investigation.

However, the Muller probe concluded last year, and the new revelations are shining a spotlight on Pientkas absence. On May 4, Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding, among other things, that he make Pientka available for a transcribed interview regarding Flynn.

And other key lawmakers are determined to hold the FBI accountable for what happened in the Flynn case. The FBI set up General Flynn -- that is clear as day, Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tells RealClearInvestigations. There is FBI leadership ordering the case kept open when agents wanted to close it for lack of evidence, the discussion of getting Flynn to lie or trying to get him fired, the ambush interview, the withholding of exculpatory evidence, and many other acts of blatant malfeasance. None of this is standard procedure. Its a naked abuse of authority.

Correction

8:41 AM Eastern, May 8, 2020

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a former FBI agent. He is James Gagliano, not Galiano.
The capsule of China's experimental new-generation spaceship successfully landed in a designated site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday, the country' space agency said, a major step in its ambitions to run a permanent space station and send astronauts to the moon.

China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said the test was a "complete success".

China launched the trial version of the new spaceship without a crew by the country's most powerful carrier rocket Long March-5B from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in southern China's island province of Hainan on Tuesday.

The experimental spaceship flew in orbit for two days and 19 hours, during which it carried out a series of space science and technology experiments, CMSA said.

It also tested key technologies including the heat shielding and control during its re-entry into the atmosphere, as well as multi-parachute recovery and partial reuse, it said.

The spacecraft entered the return orbit at 12:21 pm after which its return capsule separated with its service capsule at 1:33 pm.

Three parachutes slowed its descent. Before touching down, its six airbags were deployed and inflated to help it land softly, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said.

At 1:49 pm, the return capsule landed safely. The search team found it in a timely manner and confirmed that the capsule structure was intact, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

The future missions of the spaceship were expected to be manned missions.

It is an advanced space transport vehicle adapted to multiple tasks. It can be used not only in low-Earth orbit missions to support the construction of China's space station but also for deep-space exploration, such as manned lunar exploration, CMSA said.

Developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) under the CASC, the test spaceship is nearly 9 metres tall and about 4.5 metres at its widest point. It weighs more than 20 tonnes.

Different from the three-capsule structure of Shenzhou spacecraft currently in use, the new spacecraft comprises a return capsule, which is the command centre and the living place for astronauts, and a service capsule, which provides power and energy, according to the CAST.

The return capsule is designed to be reusable. Star sensors, computers and other high-value equipment have been moved from the service capsule to the return capsule so that they can be recycled after returning to Earth.

China initiated the manned space programme in 1992. In recent years, it has emerged as a major space power with manned space missions and landing a rover in the dark side of the moon.

It is currently building a space station of its own expected to be ready by 2022 and a mission to Mars.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Under the protocols staff who display coronavirus symptoms during the working day will be directed to a designated isolation area by a manager.

EMPLOYERS will have to have special isolation areas for staff who display coronavirus symptoms under new protocols for reopening workplaces.

The government is to launch its Return to Work Safety Protocol tomorrow which include a raft of measures that will have to be implemented in businesses, offices and construction sites.

Among the measures expected to be in the plan are no handshake policies and the installation of plastic sneeze guards at workplaces where two-metre separation social distancing is not possible.

The plans were developed by the Department of Business along with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, employers group Ibec and the Construction Industry Federation.

The Department of Health and the HSE were also involved and the Health and Safety Authority will enforce the rules.

Under the government's roadmap for re-opening Ireland some outdoor workplaces like construction sites may be able to reopen as early as May 18.

Read More

Independent.ie understands that employers will have to put plans in place for how to respond to suspected Covid-19 cases in the work place.

Under the protocols staff who display coronavirus symptoms during the working day will be directed to a designated isolation area by a manager.

Two-metre distance will have to be maintained as transportation is arranged for the worker to go home or to get medical attention.

They will have to avoid public transport.

Logs of work groups will have to be put in place for contact tracing and a risk assessment of any incident would have to be carried out.

Sources said the introduction of temperature checks for workers would be dependent on public health advice, which at present does not require them.

However, some companies may introduce enhanced measures and the protocols are the minimum standards they must comply with.

Workers will have to undergo Covid-19 training on the latest public health advice before a work-place reopens.

A staff representative must be appointed to liaise with management to ensure the measures are strictly followed.

Employers must update safety plans before reopening that are agreed with the workers.

These plans should include implementing social distancing, providing hand sanitisers and having clear procedures on hand-washing and respiratory etiquette.

Tissues should be provided along with somewhere they can be disposed of safely.

In workplaces where social distancing is not possible protective measures like plastic sneeze guards will have to be put in place.
Ahmaud Arbery, a man from Georgia, was killed by two white men gaining attention from lawmakers and athletes after the video of the incident was released online.



Ahmaud Arbery Was Killed by Two White Men

Gregory McMichael, 64 years old, spotted Ahmaud Arbery jogging on February 23. He called 911 to report a "black man running down the street." Following this, he called his son Travis, armed themselves, and followed Arbery.

According to the claims of Gregory McMichael, he suspected that Arbery was involved in recent burglaries. His son tried to stop Arbery by shouting, "Stop, stop, we want to talk to you!" However, McMichael claimed that Arbery attacked his son. The police officers said that Travis then fired two shots.



Released Footage

The claims of McMichael contradicted a video, which was released online. The said video shows Arbery running at a slow pace towards a white truck. Two other men were seen outside of the truck, one of them standing on the truck's bed.

The video showed Arbery trying to run around the truck but his attempt failed. The man on the truck's bed is seen in the video holding a handgun.

Meanwhile, Arbery's family said that he was just out for his daily jogging and he was not involved in the alleged burglaries recently.



Lawmakers, Lebron James, and Other Athletes Speak Up for Justice

A representative from a district in New York said: "Ahmaud Arbery was murdered for being Black. His White assailants were allowed to roam free [for months] after lynching him. They faced no charges, no arrests. Police had video of Ahmaud's murder the day it happened. His family deserves justice. Our country deserves answers."

At the time of the incident, no charges were filed for the assailants. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California. also tweeted and wrote: "Justice must be blind. Bring #Ahmaud Arbery's killers to justice."

Meanwhile, Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp was prompted to speak about the said incident. He said that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was assisting the prosecutor who assigned on the case to ensure a thorough, independent, investigation about the shooting.

Gov. Kemp added: "Georgians deserve answers. State law enforcement stands ready to ensure justice is served."

The shooting also caught the attention of some athletes, one being Lebron James, who made a comment on Wednesday and said that African-Americans are literally hunted everyday or every time they go outside.

On his Twitter account, James wrote: "We're literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes! Can't even go for a damn jog man! Like WTF man are you kidding me?!?!?!?!?!? No man fr [for real] ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!! I'm sorry Ahmaud(Rest In Paradise) and my prayers and blessings sent to the heavens above to your family!"

There are other athletes who also shared sympathy through their social media account. Brian Orakpo wrote: "In tears of anger right now making this post about #AhmadArbery Unbelievable."

Torrey Smith also wrote: "How do I explain what happened to #AhmaudArbery to my 6 year old son?" while Tavon Young and Enes Kanter are both asking for justice.

Authorities in Georgia pledged that they will have a full investigation about the shooting incident and will bear the experience that the agency has in resolving this matter.



Read a related article:
A very large chunk of the world is under lockdown, with over 200 countries affected by the novel pandemic Coronavirus. During this time, we have heard different stories of how animals are behaving while humans are locked up inside their homes.

While some are evidently glad that there are no human beings around, to destroy their habitats, one dolphin is missing her human friends. Fungie, the Dolphin is one such animal who likes to interact with human beings on a daily basis, and a lovely fishermen named Jimmy Flannery is making sure that the friendly aquatic mammal gets what he deserves.

Tripadvisor

Flannery belongs to Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, and is a vastly experienced fisherman who has also helped in founding the local fishermen's group.

When he discovered that Fungie - a dolphin who has been Dingle's heartthrob since 1983 - is quite upset with the absence of human beings, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

To keep Fungie company, Flannery now heads out of Dingle harbour twice a day to make sure that the dolphin isn't feeling lonely.

Independent/Jimmy Flannery

He told The Independent, "Fungie was lonely alright. He follows the (commercial) fishing boats out but they don't have time for him. They are too busy heading to the fishing grounds."

Since all sorts of leisure activity has come to a mandatory halt, Fungie is feeling lonely due to the lack of human interaction he is used to. Being a lover of people and attention from photographers, Fungie lives for the audience that cheers him on.

So, to ensure that Fungie does not have to suffer the lockdown blues like the rest of us, Flannery has come to his rescue.

Flannery also said that Fungie is an absolute star and he misses his fans who would celebrate him. The kind fishermen hopes that Fungie doesn't forget him once his admirers return after the lockdown is over.

Adventures Abroad

Fungie is also known as the Dingle Dolphin and is a male common bottlenose dolphin. He was first spotted in the summer of 1983 and ever since, has become quite the sensation in Dingle. He left marine biologists completely in awe of his capabilities to seek out human interaction.

Aside from this, Fungie has also been known to contribute to marine science by being the first dolphin to enjoy eating garfish which is also known as the sea needle.

The Daily Edge

It is safe to say that the friendly dolphin is a huge reason for the marine tourism industry in Dingle, and we genuinely hope he is feeling a little better now that he has a friend, whose visits he can look forward to.
The National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, on Friday reviewed for the second consecutive day the situation arising out of the gas leak at a factory in Andhra Pradesh's Vishakhapatnam.

At a meeting of the NCMC, attended by officials of the central and the state governments, the cabinet secretary took stock of the current situation, the preparedness, the rescue and relief operations, and directed that all assistance, as maybe required by the state, be provided to mitigate the situation, an official statement said.

The chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh briefed the NCMC on the ground situation as well as the actions taken by them to evacuate people and contain the leakage at the plant.

It was informed that all efforts were being taken by them to prevent any further emissions from the tanks. Issues related to the long-term impact of the gas on health and on the quality of water and air were also discussed.

Consultations between national and international experts on chemical safety and industrial processes and the officials on site would be carried out through video-conferencing, and a team of such experts would also be flown in as per requirements, the statement said.

Similar consultations with medical experts would also be arranged to determine the protocols to be followed.

Requirement of assistance by way of dispatch of inhibitor chemicals was also to be ensured, it said.

Secretaries of the Ministries of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Chemicals and Petrochemicals and Pharmaceuticals, DGs of NDRF and Health Services, Director, AIIMS, and officers from MHA and the Central Pollution Control Board attended the meeting.

The chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh joined the meeting through video-conferencing, along with officials of Vishakhapatnam district.

Eleven people lost their lives and 1,000 more were exposed to a gas leak incident at a chemical factory in Vishakhapatnam on Thursday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kids for Kids "We just want to say thank you to all of the amazing brands and people that have stepped up to help accomplish our mission of feeding first responders in this time of need," said Catalano.

In the continued battle against COVID-19, local NYC nonprofit Kids for Kids Foundation has expanded its focus to supporting hospitals and first responders throughout all five boroughs, several facilities in New Jersey, and will be heading to Long Island next!

The Kids for Kids Foundation traditionally hosts fundraising events to support their beneficiaries and continue their mission of raising money for children and families struggling with medical challenges. With events put on hold, the organizations members and staff jumped into action launching their Feeding First Responders initiative.

They recruited their generous donors to take on a new way to support the men and women on the front lines and the overwhelming response is truly inspiring.

Several members of the Kids for Kids Board and Committee, especially Paul Lombardozzi, Vice Chair of Events, have stepped up to lead this initiative, which kicked off its start on Sunday, April 12th. Sitting on the sidelines is not something that Kids for Kids knows how to do, shared Kids for Kids Development & Events Manager, Suzanne Karath, who is currently coordinating the locations visited alongside members of her team. Karath alludes to the mentality of Kids for Kids, its members, and its mission in saying, All challenges are opportunities for us to unite and support our communities. We aim to tie our communities into all we dowhether through events, our Committee, or our Junior Committee, bringing people together and helping others is what gives us purpose.

Monday, May 4th marked the beginning of Week Four of the Feeding First Responders initiative, and just last Thursday, through the support of their donors and local restaurants, Kids for Kids celebrated surpassing a 10,000-meals-delivered milestone! "We just want to say thank you to all of the amazing brands and people that have stepped up to help accomplish our mission of feeding first responders in this time of need," said Robert Catalano, Kids for Kids Founder and Board Chair. "The fact that we can do this with the best products in their respective brands is beyond what I ever could have imagined. It's our hope that, through these efforts, we are able to provide some relief and a sense of normalcy during these challenging times."

Kids for Kids has partnered with OWYN (Only What You Need) plant-based protein drinks to supplement meal deliveries over the past 3 weeks and will continue sharing their products at locations scheduled for the coming weeks. Also working with local restaurants and through personal contacts, Kids for Kids will be teaming up with New York Citys most exclusive restaurant  Raos! We are excited to work with Raos outside of the fundraising we do with them regularly in the year and get their dishes into the hands of as many heroes we can shared Karath when looking ahead to the next deliveries in the schedule.

A new relationship with Dough Doughnuts, kicked off last Wednesday at Elmhurst Hospital in which Dough provided their delicious doughnuts, Kids for Kids assisted with handing out OWYN drinks and Birch Coffee joined in the day supplying coffee through NY Loves Coffee  masks could not hide the smiles of Elmhursts staff! This visit coincided with Noshes For Nurses, GoFundMe driven support effort started by Real Housewives of New Yorks Jill Zarin. Kids for Kids will team up again with the doughnuts and coffee duo for a visit to Paterson, NJ with a friend of the foundation, Dolores Catania of Real Housewives of New Jersey. Dolores has supported Kids for Kids mission through events like their Winter Ball at the Oheka Castle and the organization is proud to now return the favor by providing meals to two special locations, St. Josephs Medical Center and the Paterson Police Department.

Feeding First Responders has a packed schedule of deliveries to Hospitals, EMS Stations, Police Precincts, Fire Houses, Sanitation Garages, Bus Depots, and moreall of the amazing people within these essential roles are true heroes. We are all truly in this together and providing meals to keep the front lines going, hopefully providing a bit of a morale boost too, is the very least we can do, shared Karath. She and the Kids for Kids team, partners, and supporters hope this initiative communicates the strongest message possible of the support and gratitude that affected communities have for those on the front lines.

To learn more about the Kids for Kids Foundation and this initiative, visit http://www.kidsforkidsnyc.org and follow their entire team on their delivery routes on social media @kidsforkidsnyc.

Want to join this effort, contact the Kids for Kids Foundation at 212-365-5800 or donations@kidsforkidsnyc.org or donate to this initiative at http://www.kidsforkidsnyc.org/feedingthefrontlines


In April 2020, a video has been shared numerous times on Facebook and Twitter. The viral video allegedly shows corpses in body bags at an apartment that is home to an Islamic group in New York.

Misleading video

The post claim that the victims died in the apartment after contracting the coronavirus because they ignored social distancing rules. However, the claims are misleading, as the footage shows body bags at an Islamic funeral home in New York during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to a spokesperson for the mortuary who talked to AFP, the deceased were people of many faiths. The video was shared on Facebook on April 24, 2020, and it lasted for three minutes and 26 seconds.

The caption of the post reads: "The Dawah group USA (similar to India Tablighi Jamat) announced they were not afraid of Covid19 and would go everywhere even if they had the virus. What is the result now in New York? The Dawah Group is littered with dead bodies inside their own apartments. This virus is unsparing and demands that we take care of."

Also Read: Hot Weather Dries Up COVID-19 Droplets, But Virus May Travel Farther in Windy Days

According to the Collins Dictionary, the term Dawah means the practice or policy of conveying the message of Islam to non-Muslims. There is no Dawah Group in the United States.

India Tablighi Jamat is a reference to a gathering that Tablighi Jamaat, which is an Islamic revivalist movement, organized in Delhi in March 2020. The event was said to be a hotspot for COVID-19 after being linked to dozens of infections and several deaths, according to AFP.

What the video shows

The footage shows body bags at the Islamic International Funeral Services, which is a mortuary located in Brooklyn that offers Islamic funeral services. Two phone numbers can be seen on the front window at the video's three-minute 15-second mark, and it matches the numbers that are listed on the website of the company.

A spokesperson for the Islamic International Funeral Services told AFP on April 29 that the video was recorded inside the company premises. The spokesperson clarified that the dead bodies that were kept inside were of COVID-19 victims from all religions. The spokesperson added that they have kept the bodies of COVID-19 victims irrespective of their religion in the wake of the rising death tolls due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There was also a separate keyword search that was found that showed the Islamic International Funeral Services was featured in a YouTube video published by Ruptly, a German-based news agency which is part of the Russian-government funded news network RT.

The video as a title of "USA: Funeral services overwhelmed as coronavirus deaths top 4,000 in NYC." The video shows the same front window of the funeral home and it talked about the issue of overloaded mortuaries due to the pandemic.

The video's caption reads: "Footage shows vans arriving and leaving Schaefer Funeral Home and Islamic International Funeral Services in Brooklyn, with signs outside the building reading, "Due to the coronavirus there are absolutely no families allowed in the building. We are more than happy to serve you by phone, we apologize for any inconvenience."

Related Articles: COVID-19 Cover-Up: Out of 20, Only 5 Deaths Listed by Nursing Home to Conceal Alarming Numbers

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TWO women from Bulawayo had to seek medical treatment after allegedly being brutally assaulted for hours with batons on their backs, hips and legs by police officers who accused them of violating the ongoing national lockdown.





National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi yesterday, without giving details, said six people had been arrested over the incident.





The officers allegedly detained the women overnight at Cowdray Park police base after refusing to let them pay fines.





The siblings, names withheld, were arrested on April 16 at a supermarket in the suburb where they had gone to buy food for their children.





Pictures of the battered and bruised women have since gone viral on social media. Under the lockdown imposed by Government to contain the spread of the deadly Covid-19, only essential service staff and people seeking vital services like medication or buying food are allowed outdoors.





The women alleged three cops picked them out from a queue at the supermarket and cuffed their hands behind their backs.





The officers allegedly force-marched the victims through a bush to Cowdray Park Police Base, making frequent stops along the way to beat them with the batons.





The siblings alleged two male police officers would force them to sit down before assaulting them with batons while hurling insults at them.





The women alleged three cops picked them out from a queue at the supermarket and cuffed their hands behind their backs.





The womens ordeal continued at the police base where the officers allegedly made them sit behind a parked vehicle and took turns to assault them with batons. They told us they would teach us a lesson. They said they wanted to show us that they had better women than us at their homes. They said our being yellow boned (light skinned) did not exempt us from the stay at home order, said one of the sisters with tears trickling down her cheeks.





We asked them why they were beating us and they said we were rude.





The sisters said the police refused to let their relatives pay fines for them and kept them at the base overnight. They said their relatives wanted to take them to hospital because their buttocks and hips were swollen. The pain was excruciating yet they refused to let us seek medical attention. We were eventually fined $200 each the following day in the afternoon. That is when relatives took us to Mpilo (Central Hospital) for treatment, said one of the victims.





Asst Commissioner Nyathi condemned the heavy-handed approach to law enforcement by the police officers. We have six suspects who are appearing in court tomorrow. That is what we can say for now, said Asst Comm Nyathi.





Pressed to confirm if all the suspects are police officers he said: We will release more information soon but what we can assure the public is that the case has been investigated and is being well handled. Nothing has been swept under the carpet. That is why we are taking the case to court.





Asst Comm Nyathi said police officers should be professional while executing their duties.





They should not get carried away when they perform their duties. They should stick to the mandate which the police have in terms of the constitution of the country, in terms of the deployment which would have been done by their commanders. So, anyone who goes outside the deployment order and does their own things will face the full the wrath of the law, said Asst Comm Nyathi.





The National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) yesterday said they assisted the victims to make a formal report.





NPRC investigators led by Commissioner Leslie Ncube who is in charge of the three Matabeleland provinces said they had to intervene because any form of violence is not tolerated and is a threat to peace in society.





Comm Ncube said he was shocked by the level of abuse the women were subjected to.





They were brutally attacked by male police officers who beat them on the thighs and buttocks while insulting them. We are told that the officers were insulting them using derogatory language which also fuels ethnical hatred. The victims told us that the officers were telling them that there is nothing special with their hips as they also have wives with even bigger hips. So clearly the police officers became too personal instead of executing their police duties.





The police are supposed to be the custodians of law and are supposed to protect the lives of the vulnerable in our society. We condemn the behaviour of the said police officers. The victims were allegedly insulted. Such actions are not expected from the police officers especially in an independent Zimbabwe, said Comm Ncube.




OTTAWAFirst Nations, Inuit and Metis leaders are raising concern about a growing number of outbreaks of COVID-19 in Indigenous communities and say its getting harder to find the money and supplies to deal with them.

National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations tells a House of Commons committee that provinces and jurisdictions should be cautious about lifting pandemic restrictions, given that the number of COVID-19 cases in First Nations has increased.

While the virus has been slower to reach First Nations, Bellegarde says the number of cases has been rising daily and Indigenous communities need more money than the federal government is offering.

Bellegarde also raised concern that decisions being made about First Nations allocations of resources to deal with the crisis are being made without input from Indigenous leaders.

Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, says he is thankful that northern territories have been spared large outbreaks so far, but noted that pandemic restrictions are having major economic impacts on the already challenged Inuit territories and he also called for greater testing capacity.

Metis National Council vice-president David Chartrand says his people are falling through jurisdictional cracks, which he believes has contributed to a sharp rise in COVID-19 outbreaks in Metis communities in western Canada.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 9

Trend:

Azerbaijan marks the Day of Victory in the Great Patriotic War on May 9.

Years of the World War II were the most difficult in the 20th century for all the mankind.

During the war, Azerbaijanis showed courage and heroism on the front line as well as on the home front. A battalion of 87 jet fighters and 1,224 self-defense groups were created in the country in a very short period of time. More than 600,000 Azerbaijanis were sent to the front between 1941 and 1945. Divisions from Azerbaijan marched from the Caucasus to Berlin.

About 130 Azerbaijanis earned the name of the Hero of the Soviet Union, 30 more were awarded the Order of Honor. As many as 170,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and officers were awarded various USSR orders and medals.

Hazi Aslanov, twice named the Hero of the Soviet Union, other heroes of the Soviet Union as Israfil Mammadov, Aslan Vazirov, Adil Guliyev, Ziya Bunyatov, Geray Asadov, Malik Maharramov and Mehdi Huseynzadeh, generals Mahmud Abilov, Akim Abbasov, Tarlan Aliyarbeyov, Hajibala Zeynalov and many others brought honor to the history of the Azerbaijani people.

Much was done inside the country to direct the economy towards the front line.

Light and food industries started working for the front. In a short period of time Baku turned into a real arsenal of a fighting army. Despite all the difficulties, Azerbaijani oilmen worked hard to supply the front line and the industry with fuel. During the war years, a new aviation fuel producing technology was created under supervision of Academician Yusif Mammadaliyev. With the hard work of the Azerbaijani oil workers, the oil production in Azerbaijan reached its peak in 1941 when 23.5 million tons of oil was produced, making up 71.4 percent of all the oil produced in the USSR. In total, the Azerbaijani oil workers gave the country 75 million tons of oil and 22 million tons of fuel during the years of war. Baku's oil was one of the main factors in gaining victory in the Great Patriotic War. It should be noted that four of five planes, tanks and cars ran on fuel from Baku. WWII once again proved the heroism and courage of the Azerbaijani people. After Azerbaijan gained independence, the participants of the WWII were not deprived of state care and attention. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signs orders every year to provide them with financial assistance. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an Order in April 2019 under which participants of the World War Two, widows of those who died in or after the war, and persons who were awarded orders and medals for selfless labour on the home front got a one-off payment.

Under the presidential Order, participants of the World War Two received a one-off payment of AZN1,000, while widows of those who died in or after the war, and persons who were awarded orders and medals for selfless labour on the home front, as well as holders of medals and badges for the defense of Leningrad and participants of the Siege of Leningrad got AZN500.
Minister for MSME, NRI, textile, investment and export promotion Sidharth Nath Singh on Friday interacted with 74 members of the European Business Group Federation, including the ambassadors of Italy, Belgium, Denmark and Lativa, through video conference.

The interaction was part of the Yogi Adityanath governments effort to attract those foreign companies which want to relocate to Uttar Pradesh from China after the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the interactive session, Singh informed them about labour reforms, the progress of work at the Jewar international airport, set to be Asias biggest, and 11 other small airport projects to improve air connectivity in Uttar Pradesh.

The minister also apprised the European delegates of the expressway projects designed to improve road connectivity across the state.Singh stressed on efforts being made by the state government to bring companies migrating from China to Uttar Pradesh.

He assured the European delegates that all suggestions given by them would be implemented. During the session, the European Business Group president suggested creating a dedicated European Union desk in Uttar Pradesh for the convenience of European entrepreneurs.

The state government has already decided to set up a dedicated Japanese helpdesk for assisting Japanese companies willing to relocate to Uttar Pradesh from China Representatives of companies like Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical International Pvt, IBM India, KPMG India, Microsoft Corporation, Panasonic India, PepsiCo and Red Bull among others participated in the webinar.

In another webinar, industrial development minister Satish Mahana interacted with Moradabad Export Association, assuring it of early resolution of all its problems. The minister said revival of industry was the state governments priority.
Liverpool, N.Y.  Walking has become the main event for many people while social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus. With nothing else to do people have been outside more  when weather permits. Social media has help spread themes to support people while out on their daily walks.

View the above gallery for a look back at community support since the beginning of social distancing in the Liverpool area and beyond.

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com
Authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa must ensure their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic include specific protections for the rights of women and girls, Amnesty International, Women's Link Worldwide and the International Planned Parenthood Federation Africa Region (IPPFAR) said in a report published today.

The document provides a roadmap for governments and regional organisations for taking the necessary measures to protect the rights of women and girls, who are often disproportionately affected in crisis situations. It highlights states obligations to guarantee the right to live free from discrimination and violence and calls on governments to ensure access to essential sexual and reproductive health services, commodities, and information during the pandemic.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerability of women and girls. Their health and wellbeing is not only negatively impacted by the disruption of essential sexual and reproductive services such as contraceptives counselling, maternal and newborn health, gender-based violence (GBV), and testing and treatment for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, but also their livelihoods and even their lives are threatened when sexually based crimes go invisible and stay unpunished, says Marie-Evelyne Petrus-Barry, the IPPF Africa Regional Director.

This is why the African Union, regional economic commissions, governments and women rights defenders must redouble their efforts in ensuring that the sexual reproductive health and rights of women and girls are protected and upheld and violations of these rights are documented dealt with by justice systems.

The organisations are calling for governments to take urgent action to protect the rights of women and girls, highlighting the specific gender risks which the COVID-19 pandemic poses.

Example highlighted in the report includes the right to live free of violence and any form of torture, inhumane or degrading treatment.

During times of crisis and turmoil such as the one we are living in, women and girls face an increased risk of suffering violations of their rights. This is especially true for women already living in marginalized situations. For this reason, it is urgent that we work to ensure that their rights are respected and guaranteed, said Viviana Waisman, President & CEO of Womens Link Worldwide.

These guidelines are a roadmap to allow us to carry out this monitoring and advocacy work and demand that governments comply with their obligations and maintain their commitment to the rights and lives of women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the report, the implementation of measures such as curfews, lockdowns or travel restrictions may lead to police brutality and violence which ultimately poses a risk for women and girls to being subjected to sexual violence. There are also concerns of increase in teenage pregnancies, as previously observed in Sierra Leone following the lockdown imposed to halt the spread of the Ebola epidemic. Governments should put safeguards in place to ensure women and girls are protected from sexual violence and have access to sexual and reproductive health services and commodities.

The organisations also call for better protections for refugee and migrant women. Africa hosts more than 25.2 million refugees and internally displaced people and houses four of the worlds six largest refugee camps in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Refugee camps in the region usually provide inadequate and overcrowded living arrangements that present a severe health risk to inhabitants.

As COVID-19 spreads across the region women and girls have reportedly already faced an increase in domestic violence. Restrictions on movement, social isolation and lockdowns can make it even harder for women to access essential services like sexual and reproductive healthcare and protection from domestic violence, said Samira Daoud, Amnesty International West and Central Africa regional director.

We call on governments in the region to act urgently to prevent gender gaps increasing. Any measures taken to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic must respect and protect womens rights, including the right to live free of violence and torture and other ill-treatment, and the right to access justice.

ABOUT OUR ORGANISATIONS

Amnesty International: Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 7 million people who take injustice personally. We are campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.

IPPFAR: The International Planned Parenthood Federation Africa Region (IPPFAR) as the leading sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service delivery organization in Africa, and the leading sexual and reproductive health and rights advocacy voice in the region.

Womens Link Worldwide: Womens Link Worldwide is an international nonprofit organization that uses the power of the law to promote social change that advances the human rights of women and girls, especially those facing multiple inequalities.
Ankara: Turkish prosecutors have charged four pilots, an airline company official and two flight attendants for their alleged roles in former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn's daring escape from Japan to Turkey and from there to Beirut, Turkey's state-run news agency reported. Anadolu Agency said prosecutors in Istanbul have completed an indictment against the seven, formally charging the four pilots and the official with illegally smuggling a migrant. The two flight attendants are accused of failing to report a crime, the agency said. Carlos Ghosn escaped from Japan but he's now in Lebanon, where he grew up and still enjoys the backing of elite circles. Credit:AP A trial date will be set after a court in Istanbul's Bakirkoy district formally accepts the indictment. Details of the indictment were not immediately available.

Ghosn, who was arrested over financial misconduct allegations in Tokyo in 2018, skipped bail while awaiting trial in Japan late last year. He flew to Istanbul and was then transferred onto another plane bound for Beirut, where he arrived December 30. He is believed to have escaped his apartment in an instrument case. The Turkish airline company MNG Jet said in January that two of its planes were used illegally in Ghosn's escape, first flying him from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, and then on to Beirut. The company said its employee had admitted to falsifying flight records so that Ghosn's name did not appear on them. Loading The company employee and four pilots remain in custody while the flight attendants were released after questioning. The suspects have been identified by their initials only. Prosecutors in Japan have separately issued arrest warrants for Ghosn and three Americans who they say helped and planned his escape. Japan has no extradition treaty with Lebanon and the former Nissan chief is unlikely to be arrested. Lebanon has indicated it would not hand over Ghosn who holds French, Brazilian and Lebanese nationalities.
Pallbearers in the back of the armored vehicle used by SWAT officers, was named after Cpl. James Connor. This vehicle is in route to the cemetery after funeral mass ended. The funeral for slain Philly Police Cpl. James O'Connor IV at Our Lady of Calvary Church on Friday morning. Read more

James OConnor IV had countless friends, but was closest to his wife, parents, two children, and extended family. He was relentlessly energetic, always unable to sit still. He was a proud Philadelphia SWAT officer whose father, son, and many cousins were also on the police force.

And he will forever be thought of as a hero after he was fatally shot in March while seeking to arrest a murder suspect in Frankford.

OConnor, 46, was remembered as each of those things and more Friday morning by his family and colleagues during an abridged and unique Funeral Mass in Northeast Philadelphia.

The service at Our Lady of Calvary Church came eight weeks after OConnor was shot while trying to serve an arrest warrant during an early-morning raid. It was delayed and greatly modified due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A limited number of people were allowed inside for the 10 a.m. memorial, while a large cavalcade of police officers and vehicles lined the street outside. Most in the church had to sit on opposite ends of the pews, and all had to wear masks. The proceedings were livestreamed.

OConnors son, also named James, said the restricted service was not the way we want to say goodbye to my father, but he vowed: When the time is right, we will give my dad a proper sendoff.

Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw each acknowledged the unusual circumstances as they spoke to the limited audience, which included OConnors children  his son and daughter Kelsey, who is in the Air Force  as well as his wife Terri, his mother, and his father, a retired city police officer. Archbishop Nelson Perez also attended and spoke to the family, expressing gratitude for how many of them were public servants.

Kenney said: The city has not, and the city will not, forget Cpl. James OConnor. We wont forget the sacrifices he made, or the sacrifices your family has made.

Outlaw awarded OConnor, a 23-year veteran, the departments Medal of Honor, a Purple Heart, and the Medal of Valor, which is named after slain Sgt. Robert Wilson III. She hugged OConnors wife, Terri, while presenting her the Medal of Honor, and said the other two commendations had been pinned to the uniform in which OConnor was to be buried.

OConnor was shot about 5:40 a.m. March 13 when he and other SWAT officers entered a rowhouse on the 1600 block of Bridge Street searching for Hassan Elliott, 21, who was wanted on an arrest warrant for a March 2019 homicide.

As OConnor climbed the stairs to reach the second floor, authorities said, Elliott fired a rifle through a closed bedroom door. OConnor was struck in an arm and shoulder and was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Elliott was later charged with murder and related counts in the shooting of OConnor, as were two men who authorities said were in the bedroom with Elliott at the time, Khalif Sears, 18, and Bilal Mitchell, 19.

Elliott was also charged with the March 2019 slaying of Tyrone Tyree in Frankford, the crime for which police initially had been seeking to arrest him.

OConnor  the first person on the 6,500-member force to be killed in the line of duty in five years  was posthumously promoted to sergeant. And in March, in lieu of a funeral that had to be postponed due to the pandemic, hundreds of people gathered to watch as a large caravan of police, fire, and other official vehicles drove by OConnors home in Northeast Philadelphia.

In advance of Fridays ceremony, dozens of police vehicles lined Knights Road near the church and officers stood in the road with masks on. The Philadelphia Police and Fire Pipes and Drums ceremonial bagpipe and drum band played Danny Boy as OConnors casket, draped in an American flag, was carried inside.

On an overcast morning, a few neighbors stood across from the church, and houses on Knights Road honored OConnor with signs saying Never Forget 8162 and Thank you 8162, a reference to his police badge number.

After the funeral, the flag-wrapped coffin was returned to an armored black SWAT vehicle. A thunderous roar of police cars and motorcycles then began, as OConnors body was driven to Resurrection Cemetery in Bensalem, with police on either side guiding the way.
Hershey India Pvt Ltd will distribute 1,20,000 fortified beverages and cookies across 20 cities pan India to express their gratitude and support towards the medical staff, police, sanitation workers, migrant laborers and underprivileged children in these tough times. The organization will be distributing Hersheys Milk Shake, Sofit Almond Milk, Sofit Soy Milk and Sofit Protein Cookies. The distributed products are fortified with essential vitamins and minerals.

Hershey India has associated with India Food Banking Network (IFBN) of the Food Security Foundation India to conduct the distribution. The organization will also be distributing their products to the medical staff in All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhopal and Sion Hospital in Mumbai.

Commenting on the activity Herjit Bhalla, MD, Hershey India, said, As India and the world continue to battle the pandemic, this is a small gesture of gratitude and support by Hershey India to lift the spirits of all the brave frontline workers and the affected communities. We salute the medical staff and the police who are gallantly serving the society in these critical times and hope that they continue to stay safe.

Highlighting the steps taken by the organization internally he further added, We have also rolled out several programs to ensure protection and safety for our frontline sales force, contract workmen and depot staff in these challenging times. We have implemented our Hershey Cares program which ensures suitable insurance scheme for all our frontline sales force. Additionally, we have allocated a special fund to cater to medical needs of our frontline sales force and contract workmen.

Hershey India and employees have also contributed towards PM cares. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an alarming health crisis across India and the world, with the healthcare infrastructure overwhelmed with critical patients. The need of the hour now is for everyone to stand together and support the communities that need utmost care in these trying times.
Joanna Lumley took part in the programme (Ian West/PA)

Sir Tom Jones, Joanna Lumley, Shane Richie and Anton du Beke have joined the BBCs tribute to those who lived through the Second World War.

Jones spoke to a war veteran about his experiences of the conflict via a video call, while Lumley spoke to a factory worker.

Presenter Sophie Raworth hosted the programme from outside Buckingham Palace.

The programme featured a video montage of members of the public singing along to Dame Vera Lynns Well Meet Again, as well as musical performances by a number of famous faces.

Actors Adrian Lester and Richie, as well as Strictly Come Dancing star du Beke, sang wartime classics with the backing of a military orchestra outside the palace.

Beverley Knight also performed for viewers while Katherine Jenkins sang during the rendition of Well Meet Again.

Expand Close Sir David was among those to speak to people who lived through the war (Yui Mok/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Sir David was among those to speak to people who lived through the war (Yui Mok/PA)

Actor Sir David Jason and broadcaster David Dimbleby also made video calls to people who lived through the war.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also featured in the programme in a video call to residents of an East Sussex care home to listen to them reminisce about the day the war ended in Europe in 1945.

Video of the Day

The programme ended with an address from the Queen.
Wherever Brigham Young, the former American leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, is today, one thing is sure: He will be proud of Tony Onyemaechi Elumelu, the Nigerian economist, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Young, the first governor of the Utah Territory, United States, and until his death, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was credited with the popular quote: You educate a man; you educate a person. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.

Apart from imbibing Youngs philosophy of development as his personal philosophy, Mr Elumelu, who is the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, the United Bank for Africa, Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, has taken it beyond just education, into the realm of business, management and contemporary leadership.

Mr Elumelu is consciously establishing a reputation as a modern-day chief executive who firmly believes in the power and capacity of women to make a difference in a world hitherto dominated by his kind. Its a legacy he says he is committed to sustaining.

Recognised by Forbes magazine as one of Africas 20 Most Powerful People in 2012, Mr Elumelu appears to have created a niche and legacy for himself as a champion of the causes of women.

Paying special personal attention and identifying and promoting women into strategic leadership positions, whether in organisations he owns, or in other groups he is associated with, appears to come naturally to him.

A father of five girls himself, Mr Elumelus style of co-opting women as important allies in his succession planning in business, by giving them equal opportunity as men to succeed, exemplifies the kind of world he wants to create for his children in particular and women in the larger society as a whole.

Walking his talk

He does not only talk. He walks his talk. Most companies owned by Mr Elumelu are managed by women.

For instance, in the United Bank for Africa, where Mr Elumelu sits as the founder and Chairman of the Board, the demography of the staff, including those in affiliated financial establishments, show a diversity reflecting a fine balance between men and women.

The Consolidated Financial Statement of the bank as at December 31, 2018 shows that out of about 12,909 staff of the bank group, 6,988, or 54 per cent, are men, while 5,921, or 46 per cent, are women.

Under the bank structure, out of a total of 9,624 workers in over 1,000 branches across 23 countries, including Nigeria, Benin Republic, Tchad, Gabon, CotedIvoire, Congo Brazzaile , Sierra Leone and 13 other African countries, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France, about 5,187, or 54 per cent are men, against 4,437 women, or 46 per cent.

An average gender analysis of the Board of Directors and top management positions held by both genders in the report showed that out of the 20-member board, five, or 25 per cent are women, while 23, or 26 per cent of the 90-member strong top management staff are also women.

Women hold the aces

Details of the banks Board and top management staff composition show that of the 10 non-Executive Directors, five are women. They include Foluke Abdul-Razaq; Owanari Duke; Erelu Angela Adebayo, Angela Aneke, and Uju Hassan Baba.

Of the 32 General Managers, nine are women; the same among the 19 Deputy General Managers, while five women are also among the 39 Assistant General Managers of the bank.

They include Noellie Tiendrebeogo, who is the CEO, UBA Burkina Faso; Sarata Kone, CEO, UBA Cote Divoire; Chioma Mang, CEO, UBA Gabon; Nkechi Arizor, CEO, UBA Liberia, and Adesola Yomi-Ajayi, CEO, UBA New York.

Others are Bola Atta Group Head, Corporate Communications; Dupe Olusola; Group Head, Marketing; Abiola Bawuah; Regional CEO, West Africa 1; Amie Ndiaye Sow, Regional CEO, West Africa 2; Patricia Aderibigbe; Group Head, Human Resources; Emem Usoro; Directorate Head Abuja & North Central Bank.

Similarly, in Africa Prudential, one of the affiliates of the Elumelu growing business empire, of the seven-member Board of Directors, a woman, Eniola Fadayomi, a member of Federal Republic (MFR) presides as the Chairman.

Eniola Fadayomi

In Afriland Properties Limited, Uzoamaka Oshogwe, another woman of substance, is in charge as the Managing Director/CEO, with Catherine Nwosu as Chief Operating Officer; Khaddijat Abdulkadir as the Chief Technology Officer; Bridget Bayo-Ajayi as Chief Commercial Officer; Ivy Ikpeme-Mbakwem, as Chief Experience Officer.

Also, Ammuna Lawan Ali is an independent director on the Board of the company, along with Agatha Obiekwugo.

Ammuna Lawan Ali

In Avon Healthcare Limited, a health management provider in which Mr Elumelu also has substantial interest, a significant population of women are on both its Board and top management.

Apart from Elumelus wife, Awele Vivienwho is the Chairperson of Avon Healthcare Limited, Adesimbo Ukiri is the Managing Director/CEO, under whose guidance and vision the company became one of Nigerias leading healthcare maintenance organisations.

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Adesimbo Ukiri

A trained lawyer, Ms Adesimbo holds an LLB from Obafemi Awolowo University and is a Sloan Fellow of London Business School, where she obtained an MSc in Management.

Ms Adesimbo has over 20 years of professional experience within a number of sectors, including financial services, FMCG, telecommunications and healthcare.

The Board of the company also has Gloria Patrick  Ferife, and Owen Omogiafo, with Kehinde Oyesiku in charge of new business development and financial growth.

In Tony Elumelu Foundation, an African private-sector-led philanthropy established by Mr Elumelu to empower African entrepreneurs, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu presides as the Chief Executive Officer.

More women get new appointments

Perhaps, in continuation of his tradition of identifying with excellence and female leadership and deliberately supporting women to succeed, Mr Elumelu announced significant appointments into the Board and Executive Management of the Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc Group involving several women.

Transcorp, reputed to be Nigerias leading listed industrial holding company, has interests in a wide range of sectors, including power and energy, hospitality, agribusiness as well as upstream oil and gas industries.

Mr Elumelu sits on the Boards of Transcorp Power, operators of the 972 mega-watts (MW) 972MW Ughelli Power plant in Delta State, Nigerias largest power generator; Transcorp Hotels, owners of the iconic Transcorp Hilton in Abuja, and Transcorp Oil & Gas Limited, operators of the Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 281 asset located in Delta state.

Among the new appointees is Owen Omogiafo, who was appointed President/Group CEO of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc, with effect from March 25, 2020.

Owen Omogiafo

Ms Omogiafo who is currently the MD/CEO of Transcorp Hotels Plc will succeed Valentine Ozigbo, who is retiring to pursue a career in public service, having served Transcorp for close to a decade.

She has over two decades of corporate experience in organisational development, human capital management, banking, change management and hospitality.

The new Chief Executive holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology & Anthropology from the University of Benin, a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics as well as Political Science.

An alumnus of the Lagos Business School and IESE Business School, Spain, Ms Omogiafo is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, UK and a Certified Change Manager with the Prosci Institute, USA. She has received multiple awards and been named as one of Africas top 100 Female CEOs.

Also appointed as the Managing Director/CEO of Transcorp Hotels Plc, is Dupe Olusola, effective from March 25, 2020.

Dupe Olusola,

Ms Olusola who is currently the Group Head, Marketing at United Bank for Africa Plc, has over 21 years of corporate experience, including being the MD/CEO of Teragro Juice Concentrate Plant.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Leicester and a Masters in Development Economics from the University of Kent.

A certified Project Manager, with qualifications in Project Management Professional and Prince 2, Ms Olusola has received numerous awards and was named by the Ventures Africas as one of the 10 Most Influential Nigerian CEOs of 2015.

The Board of Transcorp Hotels Plc also approved the appointment of Helen Iwuchukwu as an Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer of the company.

Helen Iwuchukwu

Ms Iwuchukwu, who is currently the Group Company Secretary of Transcorp Plc, holds an LL. B. (Honours) degree in Law.

She was enrolled as a Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1993 (BL Hons) and holds a Master of Laws degree (LL. M.) from Middlesex University Business School, London.

The new CEO is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, with over 25 years in legal advisory, corporate law, corporate governance, administration, human capital management and government relationship management. The Board of the hotel also has Hajia Saratu Umar as an Independent non-Executive Director

Also, the new appointees approved by the Elumelu Group include Okaima Ohizua as the Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer of Transcorp Power Limited as well as a member of the Board of the company.

Ms Ohizua who is currently the Executive Director, Customer Services at Transcorp Hotels Plc, has over 25 years working experience and has been key to the continued service transformation at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, since joining the Board and Management of the company in 2013.

A graduate of Law from the University of Benin and the Nigerian Law School, Ms Okaima also holds an Advanced Management Programme certificate from the Pan-African University  Lagos Business School.

Following the appointments, Mr Elumelu, a holder of the national honour of the Commander of Order of the Niger (CON), expressed confidence that the newly appointed chief executives and non-executive directors will further strengthen Transcorps mission of improving lives across Nigeria.

These appointments demonstrate our commitment to nurturing talent and rewarding success. We have a deep pool of highly qualified and dedicated employees, who can be challenged with more responsibility in attaining our corporate vision.

We remain committed to diversity and inclusion (of women), and are delighted by the depth and quality of experience that this leadership team brings to our group. These appointments further indicate our internal succession capacity and strong corporate governance practices, he said.
Hectic preparations in a short period of time, ferrying staff from different places amid the lockdown and deploying a total of around 180 crew members for operating 24 Air India Express flights to bring back Indians stranded overseas.

As Air India Express operates flights as part of 'Vande Bharat Mission', its chief of operations Captain V S Rajkumar is confident of completing the operations smoothly.

Budget carrier Air India Express is part of the Air India group.

Rajkumar, who will be operating the evacuation flight from Trichy to Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, said a total of 24 flights would be operated by the carrier till May 13.

"I am confident that the operations will go on smoothly... There were quite a lot of preparations in the last one week," he told PTI.

A total of 60 pilots and 120 cabin crew members would be deployed for the 24 flights. The airline has around 1,200 pilots and cabin crew.

"We are happy and proud to take part in this operation... it also proves we have the capability to deploy such a large workforce in a short time and transport large number of people which was completely unplanned while the entire airline industry is shut," Rajkumar said.

All said, the chief of operations has a request for neighbourhoods of the crew members -- that they should be more considerate towards the members so that they can perform their jobs.

His comments come against the backdrop of instances of airline crew members not being allowed to go home or not treated properly by residential associations and societies amid fears of coronavirus infections.

"We request all neighbourhood people of our crew, residential associations, to be more helpful... lot of people do not cooperate. There are lot of complaints from crew members that resident associations threaten that they will not allow them (crew) to come in.

"My crew is surely doing a job as risky or rather more as anybody else who is involved in healthcare. If neighbours do not cooperate, it will be difficult for them and their families," he noted.

As part of the mission, Air India Express operated the first two flights on Thursday -- one from Abu Dhabi to Kochi and another from Dubai to Kozhikode.

Amid the lockdown, he said crew members had to be brought from various locations to the places from where flights are to operate and various regulatory requirements had to be complied with.

"What we see is that our pilots, including me, coming into the limelight but behind the screen there is a huge workforce that is making it happen," he said.

A total of nine planes would be used for operating the flights.

Since there is a lockdown, additional efforts were required to mobilise manpower and other resources, including PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), sanitisers and masks, according to an official.

In each seat, a snack box -- having two vegetable sandwiches and one cake -- and half-litre water bottle are kept before passengers start boarding the aircraft. Besides, a 100 ml bottle of sanitiser and two masks are provided for each passenger, as per the official.

After completing a flight, each crew member is tested for COVID-19. Once the test results are negative, they are allowed to go home and after five days, they have to again undergo a reconfirmation test. Only if the second test also comes negative, a crew member would be permitted to be part of a flight.

Since the people are being brought back in the wake of coronavirus pandemic, there would be minimum interaction with the passengers onboard and nine seats are left vacant. These seats are kept vacant so that those can be used in case there is any emergency for a passenger.

Air India Express has Boeing 737-800 NG planes which have a seating capacity of 189 people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
People who use the Uber Eats app to order delivery from their favorite restaurants in Jersey City will have to start ponying up some extra cash.

The popular food delivery service announced Friday that it will charge Jersey City restaurant customers an extra $3 in response to Mayor Steve Fulops executive order capping how much food delivery apps can charge eateries.

Fulops executive order, which he signed on Thursday, caps the fees at 10% during any State of Emergency. City officials say the delivery apps charge eateries up to 30% of an order, reducing businesses profit margins at a time when eat-in service is prohibited.

Uber Eats spokesperson Harry Hartfield said Friday that a 10% commission charge is not enough to cover fair pay for delivery people. In a $30 order, a 10% commission cap is only three dollars to pay a delivery driver, cover credit card processing fees and operations, he said.

This was a tough decision, and we know it will impact customers and restaurants in Jersey City, Hartfield said. The fee will only apply to Jersey City restaurants, so customers in Jersey City can still order from surrounding areas to avoid the additional cost.

Similar caps are being considered and instituted around the country, including Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco. But Jersey Citys cap is the lowest in the country, Hartfield said, and its now the only city with the added customer surcharge.

Whether its exploiting their Uber drivers or Uber exploiting local restaurants by squeezing their margins, Uber continues to show that as a multibillion dollar company they care very little about working people, even in a pandemic," Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said in a statement.

As a city, our administration will work with the City Council and we wont back down, she added. "Instead, we will continue to amend and strengthen our policy until Uber stops their predatory ways against working people.

The company does expect to see a decrease in demand for Jersey City restaurants and an increase for orders from businesses in surrounding areas like Hoboken, which introduced its own 10% limit on delivery fees during Wednesdays City Council meeting. The surcharge will be around $3 per order but could be slightly higher or lower based off the cost of delivery.

Aaron Morrill, owner of Two Boots Pizza on Newark Avenue, said he understands the spirit of Fulops executive order, but added that the Uber Eats customer surcharge is a foreseeable result of acting unilaterally and without thought as to the consequences.

The city needs to sit down with delivery companies like Uber eats and help to negotiate fair rates," Morrill said.

Pragmesh Patel, owner of Newark Avenue restaurant Curry On, said theres no business right now because of the coronavirus so, whatever comes up we got to accept it.

Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh said it seems discriminatory for Uber Eats to single out Jersey City, punishing it for trying to help restaurants. Its not an unreasonable ask to cap delivery fees during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

Its unconscionable to be doing that during a time of crisis where everyone is strapped for cash, Saleh said. We have to have an approach that essentially prioritizes the well-being of people and well-being of restaurants and if you squeeze the small businesses too much there wont be any small business left.

We are trying to make sure they survive.

In a joint statement issued Thursday, Uber Eats, Doordash, Grubhub and Postmates called the executive order potentially disastrous.

The companies said Jersey Citys cap will devastate restaurants that are being kept afloat thanks to the delivery and take-out services provided by these companies.

The cost of delivery includes pay for workers, background checks, insurance and other expenses that help ensure that consumers have the best possible experience, the companies said. The delivery platforms are eager to find solutions that make sense for all stakeholders and encourage council members to immediately revise this ill-advised ordinance that will hurt workers, restaurants and Jersey Citys economy.

If the restaurant has its own full-time delivery driver, Uber Eats charges between 10 and 15% per order. The commission reaches up to 30 percent per order if the restaurant uses an Uber Eats delivery person.

Customers will see the additional charge before finalizing their order.
This article shows which states have suffered the greatest loss in critical business foot traffic and examines some of the reasons why.

This article was first published on Stacker
Yesterday saw the online premier of a mini-episode of a new animated comic series based on the classic Gilbert Shelton underground comic, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. As a hippie wannabe teen in the 70s, this (and Zap! Comics) was everything to me.

In 1969, life in San Francisco consists of free love, communal living, and political protest. Freewheelin' Franklin Freek (Harrelson), Fat Freddy Freekowtski (Goodman), Phineas T. Phreakers (Davidson) and their mischievous, foul-mouthed cat, Kitty (Haddish) spend their days dodging many things - the draft, the narcs, and steady employment - all while searching for an altered state of bliss. But after partaking of a genetically-mutated strain of marijuana, the Freaks wake up 50 years later to discover a much different society. Quickly feeling like fish out of water in a high-tech world of fourth-wave feminism, extreme gentrification and intense political correctness, the Freaks learn how to navigate life in 2020 - where, surprisingly, their precious cannabis is now legal.

OK, sounds good. But is it? If the reaction to the first mini-episode is any indication, maybe the Freaks should have remained in their drug-induced coma. As one Facbooker commented: "Get yourself a collected set of the original comic and skip this drivel!"
The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on petrochemicals and chemicals sector will differ across value chains, with segments like packaging witnessing an uplift, a report said.

In the chemicals sector, the crisis has resulted in several Indian companies getting order inflows from global chemical players to meet the short-term supply disruptions from China, which is a credit positive for these players, rating agency Icra said.

The report further said the lockdowns have adversely affected the demand for chemicals and petrochemicals owing to decline in consumption and shutting down of manufacturing plants, supply chains and distribution networks.

Packaging, especially food packaging, sanitary and medical applications, are seeing an uplift mainly due to stockpiling, an increase in delivery services and the high healthcare-focused activities, it added.

"The sharp decline in crude oil prices has significantly altered the ethylene cost curve. While earlier, natural gas and ethane-based crackers enjoyed a large cost advantage vis-a-vis mixed feed or naphtha-based crackers, the competitiveness of the latter has improved owing to the decline in crude oil and consequently naphtha/LPG prices," Icra Senior Vice President and Group Head, Corporate Ratings, K Ravichandran said.

Accordingly, naphtha/LPG-based crackers are beneficiaries of a lower crude oil price environment, he added.

"As for the Indian petrochemicals industry, which is primarily naphtha-based, it is a key beneficiary as tolling margins of ethylene crackers have improved.

"While prices of various petrochemicals have declined for Indian manufacturers, the decline in prices of feed stocks has been higher, thereby improving the spreads," he added.

Regarding impact on the chemicals industry, Icra said with pesticides getting placed under the essential commodities category, the functioning of the industry has been close to business as usual.

Additionally, since the application of the agrochemicals begins by end-May and continues till September, the product off-take is not expected to be impacted, it added.

While domestic demand is expected to remain stable, exports are expected to witness headwinds owing to challenges related to port handling and international logistics.

Indian agrochemical industry imports a major portion of its raw material requirements from Chinese technical manufacturers.

Nevertheless, with easing of the lockdown in China and the Chinese government offering export rebates to pesticide manufacturers, the production levels in China have reached around 70 per cent of the normal production levels.

For the upcoming kharif season, agrochemical players are not expected to witness any shortage of raw materials.

Icra Vice President and Co-Head, Corporate Ratings, Prashant Vasisht said in the initial phase of the lockdown in India, several specialty chemical players had to shut down their manufacturing plants, barring production of chemicals classified under essential commodities.

"The production, however, is expected to resume soon as the government has relaxed various norms related to the lockdown. Additionally, owing to the over-dependence of global chemical players on Chinese supplies, the disruptions have sent global players scrambling for alternate supply sources.

"As a result, several Indian players have witnessed order inflows from global chemical players to meet the short-term supply disruptions from China, which is a credit positive for these players," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The London Essence Company launches consumer campaign and pledges 10,000 to The Drinks Trust

Another brand has offered its support to The Drinks Trust, with luxury mixer producer The London Essence Company calling on consumers to support the charity. The campaign, called Cheers to You, can be donated to via text, and London Essence has kicked things off with a 10,000 pledge of its own.

Moreover, the Company has promised to contribute 10% of its Whisky Exchange sales to the charity until the beginning of July.

By texting CHEERS2U to 70212, consumers can donate 10 to The Drinks Trust, and those who donate will be given the chance to win a years supply of London Essence to make their favourite drinks from the comfort of home.

The Drinks Trust offers practical, financial and emotional support to those in the drinks industry, including wellbeing therapies. With social distancing measures in place, the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit in terms of lost revenue, and will also be one of the last to fully emerge from lockdown. Consequently, The Trusts services are in particularly high demand at this time.

Ounal Bailey, of The London Essence Company, says: As we all face such challenging times, it has never been more important to work together to support our community and the industries that are currently at risk. Cheers to You encourages consumers and bartenders to contribute to an important support scheme for drinks industry professionals.

Click here to see how else The Drinks Trust has been supported during Covid-19.

11 May 2020 -
At a time when the government is struggling to generate revenues, one of the suggestions which the Finance Ministry is actively considering is regulating the sale of non-virginia tobacco.

According to government sources, " India produces close to 500 million kilograms of various varieties of tobacco which are under the non-virginia tobacco category and it is used in the manufacturing of bidi, pan masala, gutka, etc. These varieties of non-virginia tobacco are directly sold by farmers to manufacturers. The government is exploring to bring this category under regulated sales format either to be sold through auction route by Tobacco Board of India or via APMCs."

Currently, no effective institutional arrangements for the regulation or marketing of bidi tobacco exist, due to strong opposition of bidi tobacco traders.

The proposal came to the fore post discussion with an understanding that virginia tobacco, used in cigarettes, is already sold by government regulatory mechanism and yields about Rs 20,000 crore of revenue per year., whereas, non-virginia tobacco, produced much more in the country is sold directly by farmers with no capping or regulation.

People in the know have told CNBC-TV18 that "once under regulation, the government can introduce a reverse charge levy of 30-40 percent on the selling price of non-virginia tobacco sold by farmers, which will be paid by the manufacturer/dealer. It is estimated that a 30 percent levy can yield up to Rs 30,000-40,000 crore per year."

The government feels that the move, considered as taxing sin goods, would help in curbing both direct and indirect tax evasion by manufacturers and help in getting additional revenue through the levy to the Centre.

The government currently earns Rs 20,000 crore of excise duty from tobacco and tobacco products and earns Rs 5,000 crore by way of foreign exchange per year.

The tobacco distinction

There are two major categories of tobacco- Virginia, and Non-virginia. Virginia tobacco also known as Flue Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco is used by cigarette manufacturers.

A wide variety of non-virginia tobacco is of non-cigarette types. These include bidi, chewing, hooka (hookah), cigar, and cheroot tobaccos. Even though tobacco comes under state jurisdiction, the government of India plays an important role in the growth and development of the tobacco industry.

The Centre through various rules and regulations governs a basic policy that is to promote the production of tobacco, improve quality, and ensure remunerative prices for growers.

The Tobacco Board, established in 1976, provides marketing services for FCV tobacco, through its compulsory auction system. Virginia tobacco at the primary level is sold through auctions conducted by the Board. Exporters of tobacco, manufacturers of cigarettes and dealers in tobacco wishing to participate in the auctions have to register as a buyer for each auction floor, wherever they intend to operate.

But, on the other hand, the marketing of non-FCV tobacco has been a major problem and there have been allegations of agents exploiting farmers.

The marketing and distribution of bidi tobacco continue to be the domain of the private sector and the industry is totally free. Thus, with the current proposal, being considered by the finance ministry, the government will be able to address these issues of non-FCV or non-virginia tobacco farmers as well.

It was way back in 1984, a compulsory auction system was introduced for the Virginia varieties normally used in cigarette manufacture and sold in overseas markets. But, the space of non-virginia tobacco remains without any regulations.

Experts say that as the market for bidi tobacco, in contrast, is largely unregulated, bidi farmers do not get prices as remunerative as in the case of FCV tobacco or the tobacco used for Cigarettes. Despite growing a cash crop, in most cases, the non-virginia tobacco trading community finances the farmers, and the price-setting power lies with the trader. In some cases, the farmer is not paid until almost a year after the sale occurs.
Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp. (HKG:322), which is in the food business, and is based in China, saw a double-digit share price rise of over 10% in the past couple of months on the SEHK. With many analysts covering the mid-cap stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stocks share price. But what if there is still an opportunity to buy? Today I will analyse the most recent data on Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holdings outlook and valuation to see if the opportunity still exists.

See our latest analysis for Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding

What is Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding worth?

Good news, investors! Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding is still a bargain right now. My valuation model shows that the intrinsic value for the stock is HK$19.30, but it is currently trading at HK$13.88 on the share market, meaning that there is still an opportunity to buy now. However, given that Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holdings share is fairly volatile (i.e. its price movements are magnified relative to the rest of the market) this could mean the price can sink lower, giving us another chance to buy in the future. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for share price volatility.

What kind of growth will Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding generate?

SEHK:322 Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by a double-digit 11% over the next couple of years, the outlook is positive for Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Since 322 is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to accumulate more of your holdings in the stock. With a positive outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as financial health to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Story continues

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on 322 for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its prosperous future outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy 322. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the track record of its management team, in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding. You can find everything you need to know about Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

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.
With Miguel Harth-Bedoya stepping down after 20 transformational years, Tim Diovanni talks to musicians and observers about potential successors and finds that there is, as yet, no clear favorite.  The Dallas Morning News
The Great British Bake Off winner Frances Quinn was banned from Waitrose after being accused of shoplifting, it has been claimed.

Quinn, who won the long-running baking show in 2013, was approached by store detectives on suspicion of not paying for her shopping.

According to The Sun, Quinn was questioned by police after they were alerted by the store, and she was later banned from the premises after handing back the goods.

A spokesperson for Leicestershire Police confirmed that a 38-year-old woman had been banned from entering the premises over claims of shoplifting.

A woman had entered the shop and was detained when she tried to leave without paying for goods, the spokesperson said.

She admitted her involvement to officers and the matter was dealt with by way of a community resolution.

A community resolution means no formal police record is issued for the offender.

The Independent has approached Quinn for comment.

Quinn won Bake Offs fourth series in 2013, triumphing over fellow finalists Ruby Tandoh and Kimberly Wilson. She released a book, Quinntessential Baking, in 2015.
Five hospitals, two from Ahmedabad and one each from Chennai, Jodhpur and Bhopal, have so far been approved to conduct randomised controlled clinical trials under WHO's Solidarity Trial to find an effective treatment for COVID-19.

The hospitals, including the AIIMS in Jodhpur, Apollo Hospital in Chennai and the B J Medical College and Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, will be conducting clinical trials on four treatment protocols remdesivir, combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir and ritonavir with Interferon beta-1a.

According to Dr Sheela Godbole, national coordinator of the WHO-India Solidarity Trial and head of the Division of Epidemiology at ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute, there is a plan to enrol at least 20 clinical sites across India.

The clinical trials on any of the treatment protocols would be discontinued if it showed any adverse effects on any of the patients, Godbole said.

The health facilities need to get regulatory approval from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and have to be registered on the Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) for this.

Four of the hospitals have already begun the trial.

"We want as many patients as possible to be quickly enrolled in the randomised controlled clinical trial so that results also can come out soon," she said, adding the sample size has to be at least1,500 in total from all clinical sites.

Patients are being enrolled in several countries in these clinical trials to generate enough strong evidence on their efficacy to treat COVID-19 patients, Godbole said.

"The Solidarity Trial aims to rapidly discover whether any of the drugs slows the disease's progression or improves survival. Other drugs can be added based on emerging evidence," she said.

Godbole further said the drug remdesivir and Interferon beta-1a have been provided by the global health body to India to conduct clinical trials. US-based pharma company Gilead Sciences has donated the antiviral drug to the WHO.

Over 100 countries are working together to find effective therapeutics as soon as possible, via the Trial, according to the WHO website.

The global data safety and monitoring boards will periodically be reviewing the trials and accordingly, inform the WHO.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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MOUNT STERLING  Since March, Dot Foods has donated $2.5 million worth of food to schools, pantries and other agencies in the 12 U.S. cities in which it has distribution centers.

When COVID-19 arrived in the United States in late January, Dots 12 U.S. warehouses were filled with food in anticipation of their busiest season of the year. When business abruptly slowed, Dot decided to donate it to food banks to help feed the hungry.
IT IS a good job Paddy Walsh and John Dillon didnt organise a Pallaskenry Agricultural College reunion for the class of 1963/1964 later in the year as God knows when they could have it.

But on March 7 - before Government restrictions - they gathered together and shared memories, stories and jokes. It was only two months ago but it may as well have been another world. Even looking at these photos of people sitting side by side is strange.

Paddy, from Bilboa, Cappamore, and John, Killuragh, Pallasgreen, came up with the idea of a class reunion during a chance conversation at last years Cappamore Show in August 2019. Both men had attended Pallaskenry Agricultural College in 1963-64. Paddy said work began in earnest straight after Christmas 2019.

The starting point was the class photo from 1963-64. For a class that was together for just one year, 56 years ago, the odds were stacked against us from the start. However, we were proved wrong and had a brilliant response, said Paddy.

The class was broken down into three class groups. Section A (Leaving Certificate completed) - this group had to do a compulsory year in agricultural college before going on to study dairy science / agriculture science. Section B (Inter-certificate completed) and Section C (primary education completed), traditionally this group of lads returned home to the family farm. Students came from Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Clare, Galway and Waterford.

GDPR and all the regulations that go with it was a challenge but Paddy and the former IFA president love a challenge. With no access to contact addresses or phone numbers invitations were sent directly from Salesian Agricultural College.

Both men would like to sincerely thank the current principal Derek ODonoghue, Mary Culloo, Mary OConnor, Fr Dan Carroll and Breda Walsh for all their time and support in helping to organise this event.

They appreciate the lengths they went to, to ensure the invitations were sent, said Paddy and John.

The original plan was to focus on the Section C class group and have a small gathering of 15-20. However, as calls were made and word got out, things started to snowball, a gathering for one class group suddenly became a gathering for three class groups. A small group of 20 had morphed into a gathering of 50.

Paddy, John and Breda could now start their own detective agency as they did everything they could to locate all the students - Google searches, phone calls to post offices, churches, Sunday drives to rural locations, approaching random people in villages hoping they will recognise the name. Even Sean Kelly MEP in Brussels was roped in to locate missing Kerry students.

All the hard work was worth it as they met at 3pm in the college on March 7 for a Mass celebrated by Fr Dan Carroll, college chaplain, followed by group photo, refreshments and a farm walk. Next was the Woodlands House Hotel for a meal, slide show and a few speeches to reminisce.

A special mention goes to Kevin Woods, aged 85, who travelled from Tralee. Kevin taught engineering and farm machinery maintenance in Pallaskenry in 1963.

Such was the turn out of the room it would have led you to believe there were 500 in attendance and not 50. Conversations went on into the early hours of the morning and even continued at the breakfast table. Old memories recalled, friendships renewed and a great day enjoyed by everyone just on the cusp of Covid-19.
The Charger Blog

Isabelle Lupinacci 22 spent countless hours preparing to be the teaching assistant for the University of New Havens inaugural Model United Nations Summer Academy. Even though the program was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, she says the work was worthwhile and rewarding. By Renee Chmiel, Office of Marketing and Communications

The Universitys award-winning Model United Nations team.

Isabelle Lupinacci 22, a member of the University of New Havens award-winning Model United Nations team, was excited to share her passion with high school students. A national security major, she created exercises and presentations and organized guest speakers for what she hoped would be the Universitys inaugural Model United Nations Summer Academy.

Originally planned to take place this July, the program has been canceled due to the global coronavirus pandemic. The University hopes to be able to offer the program next summer.

"I have gained so many professional skills, and I have experienced so much personal growth through my involvement in Model UN," she said. "These are skills I wish I had started developing earlier. I am excited to pass on what I have learned to high school students."

Isabelle Lupinacci 22 (center).

Lupinacci, who would have served as a teaching assistant, worked with Chris Haynes, Ph.D., an associate professor political science and national security and director of the Universitys Model UN program, to create the academy.

Designed for students entering grades 9 through 12, the academy was created to simulate what it might be like to be a United Nations diplomat as they discuss and explore solutions to real-world challenges. Geared toward high school students who are interested in national security, global issues, and politics, it is intended to help students build their critical thinking, public speaking, and writing skills.

"This program is unique in that it would not only provide students with the information and understanding of the world of international diplomacy and affairs, but it would show them how to engage in it," said Dr. Haynes. "Our goal was to give them the opportunity to practice the skills that are critical to being successful."

The University has seen interest in the MUN Academy from local high school partners.

Upon completing the program, participants would earn three college credits from the University of New Haven. Haynes says he looks forward to seeing students debate, research, and develop a foundational understanding of international relations, diplomacy, global issues, and the work of the United Nations.

"I have seen tremendous excitement and interest for the MUN Academy from many high school students and faculty who have attended our annual ChargerMUN high school conference, including from our high school partners at Notre Dame and West Haven high schools," said Dr. Haynes. "We are disappointed it will not take place this year, but we will be sure to have a program next summer that is fun, exciting, creative, and action-packed."

When the academy is held, students will have the opportunity to tour the United Nations in New York City, engage in real-world simulations, and listen to expert guest speakers on diplomacy and international affairs.

"I think it is a great experience for high school students to develop the skills and confidence that are crucial for succeeding in college and beyond," said Lupinacci, who plans to assist with the program next summer. "I am sure that once they have a chance to take part, the participants will gain a lot of confidence in their public speaking, teamwork, and leadership skills."

Help University of New Haven Students Charge Ahead

We've launched the Charge Ahead Student Support Fund in an effort to raise financial assistance for our students for such necessities as remote learning technology, food, housing, medical expenses, and other emergency needs. Please click here to make a contribution that will assist those in our University community who need our support.
An edutech startup by an IIT alumnus has launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based test series for UPSC aspirants to enable them seamless preparation during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The test series, available at www.excelonacademy.com provides personalised results and feedback to every single user and helps aspirants identify their blind spots and weak areas in each major subject of general studies. Of the 12 to 15 month-long effort that a candidate undertakes to prepare for Preliminary Examination of the UPSC, the last few weeks are very crucial as one consolidates and applies their knowledge by solving multiple question papers. It is here that the AI-based test series provides immense value, by not only calculating the scores and giving question-wise explanation (which other tests also do), but also highlighting the candidates blind spots, said T Uday Kumar, co-founder, ExcelOn Academy.

Kumar, a mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Madras, has founded the startup with Muthu Kumar Raju, a US-based tech entrepreneur.

Some of the features of the test series include -- strike off options when arriving at the right option, ability to mark questions for review to revisit later, a reverse timer for overall test and timer for each question, and three levels of personalised feedback analysing the performance through multiple dimensions.

The civil services preliminary examination, scheduled to be held on May 31, has been deferred in view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) announced earlier this week.
The global thermal treatment air filtration market is expected to grow by USD 888.29 million as per Technavio. This marks a significant market slowdown compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. However, healthy growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 5%. Request free sample pages

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005333/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Thermal Treatment Air Filtration Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Thermal Treatment Air Filtration Market Analysis Report by Type (RTO, thermal oxidizer, catalytic oxidizer, and RCO) and Geography (APAC, North America, Europe, MEA, and South America), and the Segment Forecasts, 2020-2024".

https://www.technavio.com/report/global-thermal-treatment-air-filtration-market-industry-analysis

The market is driven by the expanding water and wastewater treatment industry. In addition, the need for high energy efficiency is anticipated to boost the growth of the thermal treatment air filtration market.

Rapid urbanization and growing population are exercising pressure on existing freshwater resources globally. In addition, despite the presence of well-developed water treatment infrastructure, many economies lack proper distribution facilities. Consequently, the water may get contaminated in transit. Various European countries are now focusing on municipal water treatment infrastructure. Germany and the UK are planning to invest heavily in developing municipal water treatment infrastructure. However, developing countries such as India and China still lack access to potable water. There is a lack of strict government control over industrial wastewater disposal in APAC countries. Therefore, various countries in APAC have increased their investments in developing industrial and municipal water treatment infrastructure in a bid to prevent river contamination and promote water reuse. Thus, the water and wastewater industry is expanding, thereby driving the growth of the market.

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Major Five Thermal Treatment Air Filtration Companies:

CECO Environmental Corp.

CECO Environmental Corp. has its business operations under various segments, such as energy solutions, industrial solutions, and fluid handling solutions. The company offers a broad range of products for air pollution control, such as thermal oxidizers and catalytic oxidizers under the brand CECO Adwest.

CTP Air Pollution Control GmbH

CTP Air Pollution Control GmbH operates its business through three segments, such as systems, processes, and services. The company offers regenerative thermal oxidizers, including VOXcube RTO, AutoTherm RTO, and MultiTherm TO.

Cycle Therm LLC

Cycle Therm LLC designs, fabricates, and installs regenerative thermal oxidizers, and distributes Cell Stone heat recovery media and tower packing. The company offers regenerative thermal oxidizers, which have 99 percent VOC destruction efficiency.

Durr AG

Durr AG has its business operations under various segments, such as paint and final assembly systems, application technology, clean technology systems, measuring and process systems, and woodworking machinery and systems. The company offers a comprehensive range of systems that uses thermal processes for air pollution control, such as thermal oxidizers, and RTO, which are available under the brand Ecopure.

Perceptive Industries Inc.

Perceptive Industries Inc. industrial ovens and dryers, HD series batch ovens, thermal oxidizers, and heat recovery systems. The company offers a wide range of thermal treatment air filters, which includes RTO, catalytic oxidizers, and recuperative thermal oxidizers.

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Thermal Treatment Air Filtration Type Outlook (Revenue, USD mn, 2019-2024)

RTO

Thermal oxidizer

Catalytic oxidizer

RCO

Thermal Treatment Air Filtration Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD mn, 2019-2024)

APAC

North America

Europe

MEA

South America

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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'In Mumbai, the mortality rate was reaching a percentage of almost 8 plus in about April.'

'But now over last one month, we have come down.'

'We have drastically controlled mortality.'

'We are now about 3.9.'

IMAGE: A healthcare worker checks the temperature using an infrared thermometer in Mumbai. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters

A special committee of medical experts was formed, mid-April, by the Maharashtra government to examine the deaths that have occurred so far due to COVID-19 in Mumbai and surrounding areas.

Its further purpose was to recommend ways in which to reduce mortality in Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which includes the seven municipal corporations -- Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayandar, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Bhiwandi-Nizampur and Ulhasnagar.

The committee is headed by Dr Avinash Supe, executive director at the Hinduja hospital, Khar, north west Mumbai, who had a long innings as the dean of the King Edward Memorial Hospital and its attached Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Parel, central Mumbai.

Dr Supe tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel about how the committee is going about investigating the patterns of COVID-19 deaths.

First, Some important updates on the situation in Mumbai and nearby that emerged from the interview with Dr Supe:

Mortality rates for Mumbai and nearby districts:

"In Mumbai the mortality rate was reaching a percentage of almost 8 plus in about April. But now over last one month, we have come down -- we have drastically controlled mortality -- and we are now about 3.9. This is a very positive side according to me.

"Thane has more cases but less deaths.

"Areas like Raigad, Palghar, sometimes, in some pockets there are deaths. Cases may be there, but death rates are similar, 3 to 4 per cent, not really high."

Spread between Mumbai and its surrounding regions needs to be curbed:

"Mainly these deaths are because people are coming to Mumbai and going back.

"Many hospitals and many areas in Mumbai have people working in essential services. They stay in Kalyan, Dombivili, Thane, Vasai Virar...

"These are the people who have to be careful (every time they go home) either maintain social distancing, washing and all those kinds of things. Because that is where the spread is occurring."

IMAGE: Minister Eknath Shinde inspects a COVID-19 quarantine facility, at the CIDCO Exhibition Center in Navi Mumbai, May 7, 2020. Photograph: PTI Photo

Case peaks for COVID-19 in Mumbai and surrounding areas:

"Predictions are that numbers will continue to rise till May end. Maybe first week of June will be our peak. Then maybe numbers will start to recede some.

"The way the lockdown is lifted will have its own implications."

On the Mumbai lockdown:

"The idea of having a lockdown is to flatten the curve so the city's health system doesn't collapse.

"Trying to have dignity in the management of the health system so that more people are taken care, nobody is left untreated and mortality is under control.

"That is what we have to look at, in these kinds of decisions...

"If numbers come in a huge wave, then Mumbai we will not be able to handle it.

"If there is no lockdown, then these issues will come.

"If you have a lockdown, we will be able to flatten the curves and manage these patients better.

"Some areas can be released, where there are not many patients.

"Some areas which are hotspots, containment has to continue.

"The lockdown has been slightly released now. We need to worry about rural areas.

"If we don't take care to quarantine people, who are going into a rural area, then there might be an uprise of cases in those areas."

IMAGE: A medic shows samples collected for tests in Mumbai. Photograph: Kunal Patil/PTI Photo

On the number of asymptomatic cases:

"India has done 12 lakhs of tests and 56,000 are positive.

"Now 15,000 cases in Maharashtra and 10,000 cases in Mumbai.

"Number of tests in Mumbai and surrounding regions fairly high, but the number of tests which have come positive are only 10,000, in Mumbai for instance.

"Asymptomatic patients are also high. We have 50 to 60 per cent patients in Mumbai who are asymptomatic, or have mild symptoms.

"Asymptomatic patients need to be contained, kept in quarantine and not spread cases to rural areas."

IMAGE: Health staff stamp a resident's hands in Mumbai. Photograph: ANI Photo

Highlights from the first report of this committee examining mortality:

"The first report is of about 131 patients.

"Mainly talking about the kind of pattern of deaths. We were seeing that males were predominantly more than women, 65 per cent were males.

"Age group of deaths: More were seen from age 51 to 70. Saw some deaths from age 21 to the 40s. A few deaths.

"About 76 to 77 per cent of patient deaths had some kind of a comorbidity. The main comorbidities were the presence of diabetes, hypertension, some kind of a cardiovascular diseases. A few patients had cancer.

"Maximum had hypertension, diabetes, diabetic ketoacidosis (a diabetes complication, when excess ketones are produced) and other comorbidities."

Most important finding:

"Between onset of symptoms to death, the time was around 6.5 to seven days.

"Time between onset of symptoms and hospital admission was around four to five days. Maximum patients died within two to three days of admission into hospitals.

"Need to pick up patients early. Then will be able to save them better.

"The Maharashtra government has acted upon (this information) very well to reduce the time interval. Screening patients quickly... They have set up oxygenation centres... There is an ambulance line and the helpline 1916, which manages allocation of beds and ambulance services for patients."

How long will the battle against COVID-19 go on for?

A little longer struggle than one or two months. It is going to be a year-long struggle.
Shelling reportedly launched by the forces of General Khalifa Haftar struck in the heart of Tripoli, Libya, on the night of May 7, killing and wounding several people.

This footage was posted in the early hours of May 8 by a media arm of the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is battling Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA) for control of the city.

The UN reported that shelling took place in the neighborhood of Zawiyat al-Dahmani, near the Turkish embassy and Italian ambassadors residence. The UN cited reports that at least two civilians were killed and three others injured. A spokesperson for the GNA said two security staff and a civilian were killed, while the number injured stood at four.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya said in a statement that it was deeply alarmed by the intensification of indiscriminate attacks at a moment when Libyans deserve to peacefully observe the holy month of Ramadan and a time when they are battling the COVID-19 pandemic. These despicable actions are a direct challenge to calls by some Libyan leaders for an end to the protracted fighting and for the resumption of the political dialogue. Credit: Burkhan Media via Storyful
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 13:22 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6b8e90 1 Business foreign-reserve,exchange,bank-indonesia,APRIL Free

Foreign exchange (forex) reserves surged to US$127.9 billion in April on the back of the governments issuance of US dollar-denominated bonds in the same month, Bank Indonesia announced Friday.

The current reserves level, an increase from $121 billion in March, is estimated to be sufficient to support 7.5 months of imports and to bear the payment for the governments short-term debts, according to the central bank.

It is also deemed to be above the international adequacy standard of about three months worth of imports.

The increase in forex reserves in April was due to the governments global bonds issuance, the central bank said in a statement.

The government sold dollar-denominated bonds worth $4.3 billion in early April to finance its widening budget deficit and fund its fight against COVID-19, which has impacted the economy.

The bond includes the longest-dated dollar bond ever issued by an Asian nation of 50-year tenure.

BI is of the view that the current reserve level is strong enough to support the countrys resilience to external factors, as well as to maintain macroeconomic and financial system stability.

Forex reserves dropped by around $9 billion in March when BI stepped up rupiah intervention amid pandemic-related capital outflows, as foreign investors dumped Indonesian assets of around Rp 120 trillion ($8.03 billion) and flocked to safe-haven assets.

The government expects a widening budget deficit of 5.07 percent as it struggles to finance the fight against the outbreak.

It has announced Rp 436.1 trillion worth of stimulus packages to boost healthcare spending, social spending and tax incentives, among others.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  The total number of health workers with the coronavirus disease has increased to 1,934 after 48 more contracted the deadly illness, the Department of Health reported on Friday.

The DOH said at least 721 nurses, 616 physicians, 124 nursing assistants, 71 medical technologists and 38 radiologic technologists, tested positive for COVID-19. Of the total number, 1,451 are active cases, 982 are mild, 462 have no symptoms, and seven are classified as severe cases.

The latest figure means 19 percent of the country's total or one out of five cases is a health worker, the department said. Cases of COVID-19 throughout the Philippines have reached 10,463 as of Friday.

Meanwhile, recoveries among health personnel are now at 449 after 46 more frontliners survived the disease. The death toll remains at 34, with no new reported fatalities over the last five days.

The health department reiterated that the daily count of infected health workers continues to slow down since April 11, adding that its coordination with hospitals on the proper use of protective gear may have been a factor.

The agency also deployed 756 nurses in different areas in the country and opened 3,042 slots for new health workers in 56 hospitals and quarantine facilities. It said it received requests from 73 facilities looking for new recruits.

The World Health Organization last month sounded the alarm on the high number of health workers in the Philippines who have been infected with COVID-19, underscoring the importance of proper protective gear for frontliners. It said then that around 13 percent of infected patients in the country are health workers  much higher than the 2-3 percent in the WHO's Western Pacific Region comprising 37 member states including China.
With the number of coronavirus cases in the country climbing to 56,342 on Friday, the Union Health Ministry said that "we have to learn to live with the virus" and that "it is a difficult battle, we need everyone's cooperation".

Addressing mediapersons, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary at the Health Ministry, said, "We have to learn to live with the virus. We need to introduce certain behavioural changes to implement these (social distancing) practices."

The response from the Health Ministry came after a sudden spurt in the number positive cases in the past few days when the tally crossed the 3,000-mark each day.

"A total of 3,390 new cases and 103 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours till 8 a.m. on Friday," Agarwal said.

Responding to a query over AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria's recent comment that Covid-10 cases will peak in India in June-July, Agarwal said, "If we follow the required dos and don'ts, we may not reach the peak in number of cases and our curve may continue to remain flat."

According to the Health Ministry, 16,540 Covid-19 patients, which is about 29.36 per cent of the total cases, have recovered so far, while in the past 24 hours, 1,273 people have been cured.

The total number of confirmed cases in India is 56,342. Out of this, 37,916 are active cases while 1,886 people have succumbed to the dreaded virus so far.

"In 216 districts, no positive case has been detected. In 42 districts. no new case has been detected in the last 28 days, while 29 districts have not reported any case in the last 21 days," the Health Ministry said.

It added that 3.2 per cent of the total active cases are on oxygen support, 4.2 per cent in ICUs and 1.1 per cent on ventilator support.
Under the new initiative of Mahindra -- Own-Online, a customer can finance, insure, exchange, accessorise and own a company vehicle, in four simple steps, from the comfort of their homes, the auto major said.

New Delhi: Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) on Friday said it has launched an integrated online platform that will provide end-to-end sales experience for prospective buyers amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the new initiative -- Own-Online, a customer can finance, insure, exchange, accessorise and own a company vehicle, in four simple steps, from the comfort of their homes, the auto major said.

"With our pre and post purchase online solutions already in place, reimagining the car purchase experience was a logical next step for us," M&M CEO  Automotive Division Veejay Nakra said in a statement.

In the recent times, online has been a preferred purchase channel across categories and going forward, the online purchase of vehicles is set to gain more traction, he added.

"We are ready to lead this change in automotive retail by providing many industry-first experiences to our customers," Nakra noted.

Under the initiative, the customers can personalise their vehicles, instantly generate an exchange, get finance and insurance quotations and make booking payment, making the car ownership journey end-to-end and online in the true sense, the company said.

M&Ms pan-India network of over 270 dealers and 900 plus touchpoints is integrated with the Own-Online platform through back-end technology and process cohesion, it added.

Dealerships have upgraded their procedures and processes and are trained to minimise physical contact, it noted.

Besides, the company is also taking additional precautions across the customer interaction processes such as test drives, document collection and vehicle delivery to ensure high hygiene standards are maintained, it said.
MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon television program, Copyright MMXX, all rights reserved. MoneyTV does not provide an analysis of companies' financial positions and is not soliciting to purchase or sell securities of the companies, nor are we offering a recommendation of featured companies or their stocks. Information discussed herein has been provided by the companies and should be verified independently with the companies and a securities analyst. MoneyTV provides companies a 3 to 4 month corporate profile with multiple appearances for a cash fee of $6,950.00 to $11,995.00, does not accept company stock as payment for services, does not hold any positions, options or warrants in featured companies. The information herein is not an endorsement by Donald Baillargeon, the producer, publisher or parent company of MoneyTV.

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.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Ilkin Seyfaddini  Trend:

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a significant recession of the global economy including the countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Chief of the Europe and Central Asia Division of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Jacek Cukrowski told Trend.

"In order to contain the spread of the virus and alleviate its consequences, the majority of the countries of the region have introduced bold containment measures ranging from lockdowns, border closures and travel restrictions to school closures and bans on public gatherings," he said.

Cukrowski noted that these measures come at high economic costs while justified from a health policy point of view.

"The economic impact of COVID-19 depends  amongst others  on the nature and duration of virus containment policies and measures, as well as on the structure of an economy. According to the World Bank, Uzbekistans transition to a market economy slows down as the COVID-19 health crisis expands into an economic crisis affecting growth and job creation in tourism, horticulture and services. In addition, foreign investment and remittances are projected to fall significantly," he noted.

"UNIDO is fully prepared to assist the government, companies and citizens of Uzbekistan to fight COVID-19 and to rebuild economy and industries in the years to come," stressed the chief of the Europe and Central Asia Division of UNIDO.

The organizations response will be structured in three phases, Cukrowski said.

"In the immediate and short-term, UNIDO provides concrete support to the global emergency response. This implies a range of initiatives, including designing new technical cooperation projects or re-calibrating existing ones in agreement with relevant donors and counterparts, as well as facilitating sharing of best practices," Cukrowski added.

He also noted that UNIDO may also provide support to manufacturing capacity and related supply chains in the framework of health and humanitarian assistance.

"In the short and mid-term, UNIDO provides policy advice to governments and the global community on what is needed to reactivate production and supply chains and for broader inclusive and sustainable economic recovery in the aftermath of the emergency. In mid and long-term, the approach includes refocusing of UNIDOs integrated service packages to support an accelerated recovery from the economic crisis," Cukrowski added.

According to him, UNIDO will focus on a selected range of key services within its mandate as well as on addressing the specific needs of the most affected groups, including women and youth.

"The organization's UNIDO COVID-19-specific service packages will be prepared on the basis of thorough assessments of Uzbekistans needs to provide support during the distinct phases," she pointed out.

UNIDO is the specialized agency of the United Nations that promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalization and environmental sustainability. Its mandate is to promote and accelerate inclusive and sustainable industrial development in Member States. This mandate is fully recognized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular in SDG 9, which calls to "Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation".

UNIDO provides a variety of technical cooperation services to promote increased access to energy for productive uses while at the same time supporting patterns of energy use by industry that mitigate climate change and are otherwise environmentally sustainable. This involves promoting industrial energy efficiency and the adoption of renewable energy sources in the industrial sector, enhancing energy access, particularly in rural areas to promote productive activities as a major contribution to reducing rural poverty, and championing industrial energy perspectives in the global debates about energy-related sustainability issues.

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop shop in Notting Hill has been targeted by vandals who left a heap of manure at the door.

Two wheelbarrow-loads of excrement were tipped against the door of the shop overnight, attracting flies and making people walking past feel unwell.

A local resident told The Sun: 'This is a smart parade of boutique shops with A-lister celebs such as Damon Albarn and Steven Spielberg very nearby.

'Someone has it in for Gwyneth': Paltrows Notting Hill Goop shop has been targeted by vandals who left a giant heap of manure on the doorstep

'Someone has it in for Gwyneth. Its a real puzzle. The mess appeared overnight. It was left right up against the door and cannot be a coincidence.

'Gwyneth could have a phantom muck-spreader on her hands.'

The shop is not open at the moment due to the coronavirus lockdown and the publication said the manure was left on Wednesday and remained on Thursday.

Incredible: Gwyneth, 47, opened the store in 2018 following the huge success of her controversial well-being website and the brand is now said to be worth $250m

Gwyneth, 47, opened the store in 2018 following the huge success of her controversial well-being website.

It's stocked floor-to-ceiling with skincare, homeware, health supplements, clothing and accessories - and previously had a 3,600 diamond ear cuff and a 123 'vibrator necklace' for sale.

Set over two floors overlooking a leafy courtyard, the store is decked out in plush velvet - with rustic details like woodchip walls and shelves adding a touch of hipster pop-up.

Poop Goop: Set over two floors overlooking a leafy courtyard, the store is decked out in plush velvet - with rustic details like woodchip walls and shelves adding a touch of hipster pop-up

Gwyneth first launched her brand Goop in 2008 as a weekly newsletter offering fans her lifestyle recommendations including her favourite recipes, products, and health and fitness tips.

The huge empire is now said to beworth a staggering $250 million (192 million).

However, Goop has received its fair share of criticism, with the company agreeing to pay out over misleading health claims.

The company reached a $145,000 (112,000) settlement over products including Goops Jade Egg and Rose Quartz Egg - intended to be placed into the vagina to improve health.

A Goop statement said the settlement acknowledged no liability on the companys part and addressed only advertising, not the products themselves.

A look inside the store: This picture was taken when the store opened and shows the lifestyle selection Gwyneth sells at the upmarket branch

In 2017, Gwyneth defended her brand and said: 'Unfortunately people who are critical of us get attention for being critical of us.

'The difficulty is that you're suggesting that people have autonomy over their health and some people love that and some people are like, "f*** you, just write me a prescription".'

'There's something that feels inherently dangerous to [some] people about women completely being autonomous in that way.

' had a couple days over the last three months where I was like, "f*** it, this is so deeply unfair" and I wish that people would actually like read the article or do their homework before they are vitriolic about it.

'Because a lot of times they're not even really addressing what's on the website...but at the end of the day, your work stands for itself.'

In January, Goop released a sold-out candle with the name 'this smells like my vagina' which retailed at 76.

Lavish: Shoppers can snap up items including a crystal-imbued water bottle, break the bank clothing and skincare

Lots to see: Glass cabinets stocked with skincare and beauty products take pride of place on the mezzanine level
A wage top-up for essential workers is the least we could do.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $4-billion, shared-cost program with premiers on Thursday that the provinces will distribute as they see fit  perhaps to the personal support workers, the cleaners, the grocery store clerks and those who are central to our food supply.

You deserve a raise, the prime minister said, and they most certainly do.

They also deserve safe working conditions, especially if theyre going to be convinced to stay on the job or return to their posts from the relative security of their living rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The same could be said for the workforce writ large. Until Canadians have confidence that they can safely go to work without putting themselves or others at risk, the reopening that has sprouted up here and there across the country wont take root.

A sustained and inclusive recovery will require more than just extra money. It will also need easy access to plentiful and reliable tests, and personal protective equipment for everyone who feels the need for it  with an emphasis on feels the need, because confidence is as important to an economic relaunch as good health.

Polling done recently by Abacus Data suggests that we are not feeling confident at all. Just 12 per cent of respondents said they were comfortable enough with the state of the pandemic to go back to the office. But 81 per cent said they would be comfortable with certain safety measures  extra cleaning, distancing, fewer people and lots of masks.

Public transit is on even shakier ground. Only seven per cent said theyd take the bus right now. With safety measures such as sanitizing, distancing and masks, 69 per cent theyd hop back on. But a quarter of respondents wont go anywhere near public transit until there is a vaccine.

Thats not a problem for those of us who can walk to work, or drive. But its a big problem for the many people who cant afford to live downtown, cant afford a car, and have no other way to get to work.

The polling also shows that parents are iffy about sending their kids back to school, especially in provinces where COVID-19 rates are still high. And thats a huge conundrum for returning workers who would have no one at home to take care of their children.

That lack of confidence is especially poignant at the centre of the epidemic in Canada: long term care homes. The personal support workers who keep them running and the residents comfortable and healthy are supposed to have access to all the protective gear they could possibly need  gloves, high-quality masks, gowns.

But many of them are coming down with COVID-19. A few of them have died. And many more of them are complaining that in fact they dont have all the equipment they need to stay safe.

Unions have filed labour board complaints about at least two homes in Ontario where they say safety inspections were not done in person and many problems were overlooked, and where there are now large and deadly outbreaks of COVID-19. And in Quebec, the health-care system is short 11,600 people, many of them either too sick or too scared to come to work.

Restoring confidence is foremost, for the workers and for any company hoping to find a workforce and a customer base to rekindle an economic recovery.

If Canada has had any success in controlling the spread of the virus, it was based in a common understanding of the need to do whatever it takes to get the upper hand. That was built on mutual trust. Politicians and public health authorities trusted the public to comply with their advice on how to keep each other safe, and the public trusted them to give them solid guidance based on science.

But as the provinces reopen, that mutual trust risks fraying unless people are able to find the confidence to send their children to school or daycare, take public transit and go into the office.

Yes, politicians are feeling the pressure from constituents whose businesses are about to go under. But its counterproductive to rush the reopening if workers and customers alike lack the supports they need to come back to work with confidence.

Thats not just a message from unions. Its from big business too. In a recent open letter, the Business Council of Canada asked for national standards for safety in workplaces and child care settings. It also stressed the need for employees to have easy access to all the protective equipment they want to feel safe.

Theres no shadow of a doubt that the workers who have kept Canada on the right side of disaster deserve better pay, not just now but in perpetuity. But the extra money also needs to come with ample supplies of top-notch equipment, safe public transit and widespread, reliable child care, with a helpful hand from our governments to source and help pay for the necessary resources.

We have all agreed to do whatever it takes. Thats what it takes.

Read more about:
NSW should wait at least a fortnight before any widespread easing of coronavirus restrictions, public health experts have said as they warned that authorities need to remain vigilant to prevent an explosion of infections.

Epidemiologists and health specialists cautiously welcomed the federal government's staged approach to easing restrictions, but said self-discipline and caution were crucial.

Professor Stephen Duckett, Head of Health Economics at the Grattan Institute said he would hold off introducing the federal government framework in NSW until the state recorded fewer than five new infections per day for at least two weeks.

But there is room for some easing, like allowing five people to visit homes or reopening libraries. Things that mean contact tracing can swing into gear relatively easily to contain any spread, he said.
South Africas government will assist the authorities in Madagascar to test and analyse an unproven herbal treatment for Covid-19, according to health minister Zweli Mkhize. Madagascars President Andry Rajoelina is promoting a tea infusion based on the artemisia plant, praising its benefits in treating the coronavirus.

I actually did get a call from the government of Madagascar, they did ask us, they would like to be assisted in the process of trying to validate, try to help investigate the scientific basis on which such a drug could be used, Mkhize told journalists this week.

Rajoelina has been in touch with leaders in several other African countries, encouraging demand for the branded Covid-Organics products in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has yet to receive any data on using artemisia against the coronavirus, saying there was no basis to claim it was an effective treatment.

I had a call with the foreign affairs of Madagascar and there had been a call from the president and we then said our scientific research institutions will be willing to support an analysis, said Mkhize.

Researchers in South Africa are keen to get their hands on the Malagasy artemisia tonic, although questions remain about the contents of the alleged treatment.

Unknown quantity

At this moment in time I dont know what that remedy contains, said Frank Van der Kooy, an expert in pharmaceutical sciences at North-West University in South Africa.

I would love to know whats in it, a list of ingredients, so I can test it, added Van der Kooy. Thats why Im quite keen to help our minister to do the analysis because thats the first thing Ill do.

Tea infusions based on the Artemisia annua plant only remain stable for a few hours as the active ingredient breaks down, according to Van der Kooy, who has researched medicinal use of artemisia for several years.

Artemisia already has strong credentials as a malaria treatment, while previous research has also explored its potential against SARS, another coronavirus.

Story continues

And Van der Kooy, who works at North-West Universitys Pharmacen centre, has conducted research into artemisias effectiveness against HIV.

Research needed

Accessing funding for clinical research into artemisia has always been difficult, according to Van der Kooy, explaining there was little interest.

He told RFI he had contacted research funding agencies over the course of several weeks about artemisia and its potential use against Covid-19, but was yet to receive any response.

There doesnt seem to be much interest, so Im not sure what our minister meant when he said: 'Well do the analysis, said the researcher.

Up to 190,000 people could die from the coronavirus in Africa and as many as 44 million could become infected, the WHO said on Thursday.

It warned that smaller African countries, as well as Algeria, South Africa and Cameroon were at high risk if measures to contain the spread of the virus were not made a priority.

The modelling by WHO revealed that those needing hospital treatment would overwhelm available medical capacity.

A potential public health catastrophe with Covid-19 on the African continent makes a homegrown herbal cure even more attractive, especially given what is already known about the plants medicinal qualities.

Artemisia is one of those herbs that really shows promise, said Van der Kooy.
WASHINGTON - Transportation Security Administration officers will now be required to wear masks when they screen passengers at airport security checkpoints.

The decision, announced Thursday, comes as airlines began implementing mandatory mask policies for passengers and crew members. On Thursday, Amtrak also announced that passengers would have to wear masks when they travel.

Officials said the goal is to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, which has continued to sicken thousands across the country, officials said. More than a million people in the U.S. have been infected and more than 75,000 have died. At TSA more than 500 employees have contracted the virus and at least six have died.

Masks had previously been optional for officers. The agency said officers may also wear protective eye wear if they choose, but the agency will not require it.

"TSA is making this change to protect our employees and travelers as social distancing cannot always be maintained in the screening process." said TSA Administrator David Pekoske in a statement that accompanied the announcement.

The agency said that passengers are encouraged to wear facial protection, but may be asked to lower their coverings temporarily in order to be identified or if they trigger an alarm when being screened. Airlines also are requiring passengers to wear masks during the check-in process.

TSA has made other adjustments to the screening process. It has installed floor markers to encourage spacing between travelers as they enter screening lines. At some airports, screening lanes have been staggered and clear barriers have been installed. The agency also is allowing travelers to bring bottles of hand sanitizer up to 12 ounces through checkpoints.
Nordstroms store at the Clackamas Town Center is among 16 the Seattle company is closing permanently amid the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

These types of decisions are never easy because we realize what this means for our employees, Nordstrom said in a written statement to Portland TV station KOIN-6. Were committed to taking care of them as best we can, including providing support and resources through this transition.

The company said the Clackamas store will close by August. Nordstrom closed its Vancouver and Lloyd Center stores in 2015 and closed its Salem store in 2018.

Nordstrom, like many established large retailers, has been feeling pressure for years as consumer buying habits change. The coronavirus outbreak has added to those difficulties retailer J. Crew filed for bankruptcy Monday and Neiman Marcus submitted its own bankruptcy filing Thursday.

Even as it pares back, though, Nordstrom is making plans to reopen stores in parts of the country where local governments allow it. The company said Monday that when stores do reopen, Nordstrom will screen its employees health, provide workers with face masks, increase cleaning within the store and take other steps to limit spread of the coronavirus.

On Thursday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said boutiques and large retailers can reopen May 15 if they limit the number of customers in their store, mandate facemasks and clean the stores frequently.

Nordstrom has given no indication of its reopening plans in Oregon. It has three stores in the Portland area, including the Clackamas locations, and four Nordstrom Rack stores.

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway |

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
May 7, 2020

Release

U.S.-Australia Defense Policy & Strategy Talks Press Statement

The United States and Australia held the inaugural Defense Policy and Strategy Talks on May 6, 2020, with U.S. co-chairs David Helvey (Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs) and Vic G. Mercado (Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities), and Australian co-chairs Hugh Jeffrey (First Assistant Secretary, International Policy) and Celia Perkins (First Assistant Secretary, Strategic Policy).

The candor and breadth of the talks are clear testimony to the adaptability of the U.S.-Australia Alliance in responding to new and emerging strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. and Australian co-chairs were united in their commitment to sustain the high level of coordination and collaboration within the U.S.-Australia Alliance  the Unbreakable Alliance.

The Alliance senior officials affirmed their shared vision for an Indo-Pacific region that is open, inclusive, rules-based and respectful of sovereignty, and where disputes are resolved peacefully and free of coercion. They emphasized their commitment to maintain a strong presence in the Indo-Pacific and address activities that undermine regional security. They also agreed that now is a time for heightened international cooperation, and underlined their strong support for partners throughout the region to deal with the impacts of COVID-19, as well as ensure they have the strategic space to make decisions in their national interests.

Senior officials agreed that the Alliance remained resilient and responsive in a challenging, complex environment and discussed efforts underway to enhance interoperability, consulting on a range of defense initiatives and activities. They welcomed the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin proceeding this year, committed to leveraging the full capabilities of the Alliance to support common priorities and achieve Alliance objectives. They underscored the close relationship between the United States and Australia  prepared to move forward, shoulder-to-shoulder, into the next 100 years of mateship.

https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2180052/

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New Delhi: The National Commission for Women on Friday (May 8) sought a detailed action taken report from the Haryana police after a migrant woman was allegedly gang-raped by two people in the state's Hisar district.

According to a media report, a migrant woman was gang-raped by two people in a village in Hisar on May 2.

The NCW said it is concerned about the safety and security of woman and despite the enactment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, crimes against women continue to occur.

"In view of the above, the commission has written to Manoj Yadava, Director General of Police, Haryana with a copy to Superintendent of Police in Hisar, for a detailed action taken report be sent to the commission at earliest," the NCW said in a statement.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Fidan Babyeva - Trend:

The creation of a digital platform on which the lists of agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, consulting, IT and other services for cooperation between Indian and Azerbaijani companies can be placed will play an important role in the activities of entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan and India.

Deputy Secretary General of the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of Azerbaijan Fuad Humbatov made this statement during an online conference on the promotion and development of business between India and Azerbaijan, as well as problems and prospects after post-pandemic period, Trend reports.

Business consulting of the confederation also plays an effective role in this direction. In addition, taking into account the interests of Indian entrepreneurs, especially in the production of pharmaceuticals, leather goods and agricultural products, it is necessary to consider state support mechanisms to open production facilities in the relevant industrial parks in Azerbaijan and encourage investment in these parks, said Humbatov.

Humbatov also informed about the effective activities of the confederation in the created working groups in the country in relation to the pandemic, and spoke in detail about the state support for the economic and social sectors.

Azerbaijan and India have great potential for cooperation in these areas, in particular in the areas of tourism, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, services, consulting, and IT, and we need to develop a roadmap for cooperation in the post-pandemic period, he said.

The meeting, initiated by the Indian Embassy in Azerbaijan, was also attended by President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry DK Aggarwal, Indian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Bawitlung Vanlalvawna, Vice-President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Pradeep Multani and General Director Naveen Seth, Secretary of the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of Azerbaijan, Head of Investment Department at Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Fund (AZPROM) Zohrab Gadirov and others.

The participants exchanged views on the current situation in the world in connection with the pandemic, and its impact on, and consequences for, the global economy. The need to restore trade and economic ties between countries in the post-pandemic period was also noted.

In conclusion, the representatives of the confederation and AZPROMO answered numerous questions of Indian entrepreneurs.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: Fidan_Babaeva
As I have only witnessed the Coronavirus lockdown from the perspective of the United Kingdom thus far, I wonder if those of you who have been based on the island have noticed some of the extraordinary social aspects of Staying At Home? For instance, it has been reported that up until the beginning of May, some 220,000 British citizens have grassed-up their neighbours to the police for breaking the British governments lockdown mantra. I understand that most of these curtain twitchers arent denouncing large scale, curfew breaking raves parties and pub lock-ins, but merely neighbours who have the temerity to take a short stroll twice a day with their kids rather than the designated once a day. I suppose that some people just cant help themselves in this regard, but I find the whole business deeply discomforting. Ive always liked to think that we Brits are above this sort of thing - and if anybody needs to be reminded of their civic duty a quiet word in their ear should suffice. I also understand from that bastion of middle-class womanhood i.e. Mumsnett - some people are condemning their neighbours for not clapping in support of NHS workers at 8pm on a Thursday evening. It seems that nasty social media criticisms are posted online, pointing out that Mr & Mrs Jones were not seen at their front door last week clapping enthusiastically or banging kitchen utensils in support of doctors and nurses and shouldnt they be ashamed of themselves or perhaps stoned. I suppose both groups see themselves as Covid-19 vigilantes; what is it with some people? Happily, it was reported the other day that there has been a surge in hospital admissions when over-enthusiastic clappers and saucepan bashers injure themselves trying to outdo each other in their neighbourhood virtue signalling competition. This I like!

Have you ever seen the film Groundhog Day? Well, for many of us we are living that film and if you are a chap, your grumpiness will have even outstripped Bill Murrays character already, or until all this malarkey is over. At the beginning of this lockdown, we would phone/Skype/WhatsApp most of our extended family in the UK at least twice a week; but, what do you do when you have nothing new to say and the grandkids are less than enthusiastic than ever to grunt Hello grandad whilst being pinched by their mothers? Nevertheless, the worst thing by far is the dullness of our conversations during this enforced idleness. For instance, last week we had a 34 minute conversation over who we hated the most - Gordon Ramsay or Piers Morgan. We have also had debates over the desirability or otherwise of French Pugs - what is your favourite sofa cushion and should you pull the loo chain or turn the toilet light on in the middle of the night? This is a vital question because, even if you want to flush away number 2s - I will certainly wake her up and her mother as well, thus being in trouble for two things - geddit? I might have mentioned to you once or twice in the past that I do our family shopping - I just dookay! Well, thats not the half of it. As I buy a good deal of wine for myself and my mother-in-law, I have started to lie about just how many people are living in our household. The last time I was questioned by the second best looking cashier in our local Co-op store, Im afraid to say that I told her I was shopping for five people, which seemed to pacify her somewhat as I think shes in the Salvation Army.

I am old enough to remember that British policemen were once men who walked very slowly and deliberately with their arms locked behind their back and would say things such as - Hello, ello, ello - whats going on ere then?. As a lairy teenager, I remember one such plod actually saying to me - Dont get lippy with me son - or else. As you can imagine, I didnt hang around long enough to find out what or else might have involved. Nowadays however, some police-persons seem to want their job to include elements of show business. Now then, I am not at all keen on glowering Spanish policemen, who mostly like to look handsome and hard at all times - but, even thats better than coppers messing about for the benefit of something called Tik Tok which is apparently a something-or-other on the inter-web. Anyway, after a few of these fun-filled japes went viral, various Chief Constables have ticktocked them off for being wholly unprofessional whilst reminding them that they have more important things to do - such as harassing elderly couples out for a stroll and searching shopping baskets for unessentials. However, I have always had a deeply held theory that says that if a person should want to become a policeman, that in itself should be reason enough for him not to be chosen to become one. Does this make me an anarchist?

frankleavers@hotmail.com
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to impact our world, many writers and actors are sharing how fictional characters would respond. Now This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia has shared how Jack Pearson  aka one of the best TV dads of all time  would handle the current crisis. And basically, the actors answer confirmed what viewers already know.

This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia shares how Jack would handle the coronavirus

Milo Ventimiglia as Jack on This Is Us | Ron Batzdorff/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

On May 7, the Cant Stop Watching podcast from the LA Times released an interview with Ventimiglia. Then when asked how Jack would deal with the coronavirus, Ventimiglia knew exactly what the This Is Us character would do.

Hed be having a ball with his kids, the actor said. And deep down, whatever fears he has going on out in the world, he would never let them see it.

Then Ventimiglia explained one of his close friends is currently living out how Jack would respond to the pandemic.

He is one of my models of Jack, Ventimiglia said. I FaceTime him a couple of times a week and hes with his kids. Hes in the pool and theyre swimming and theyre doing games and theyre having fun. He built a studio in their house so they could record an interview show and interview their friends over Zoom.

The This Is Us star continued: But then I know that when the kids are busy doing whatever theyre doing by themselves, hes in the garage with a mask, with gloves, sterilizing the food thats come in. But not for them to see. So I imagine Jack is much the same.

And although Jack would make it fun for his kids, Ventimiglia reassured fans the character would still understand the gravity of the situation. He said:

Jack is the guy thats gonna be there, almost making an adventure out of it with his family. But at the same time, understanding this is a very real, very serious, very scary time for a lot of people. Jacks gotta look out for his, and hopefully, do what he can for everybody else. But Jacks got to look out for himself because if you dont look out for yourself, then you wont be around to look out for others.

How Milo Ventimiglia is doing now

Still speaking on the Cant Stop Watching podcast, Ventimiglia shared how he is personally dealing with the pandemic. The actor explained he is quarantined in New Mexico. Ventimiglia went down for his Evel Knievel project  a role he dyed his hair blonde for. Then when production shut down, he remained in the state.

Nevertheless, Ventimiglia is staying busy. And alongside at-home workouts and brushing up on his Japanese, it seems Ventimiglia is doing what he can to stay healthy  both mentally and physically.

Im taking my vitamins, social distancing, keeping active, talking to friends, talking to family, looking out for myself, and eating well, he said. So I think in doing that, the only thing I gotta contend with is this dry skin out here in New Mexico. But thats about it.

Milo Ventimiglia reveals how the This Is Us cast stays in touch

Meanwhile, Ventimiglia revealed he still gets in touch with the This Is Us cast from time to time. But he also acknowledged everyone is living their own life.

I havent seen any cast Zooms. Its kind of like a band on tour. When youre on tour, youre there tying each others shoes, Ventimiglia said. But when youre not on tour, youre kind of off on your own. And maybe you keep this tether to one another.

He continued: Ive definitely traded messages with Mandy [Moore]  Ive FaceTimed with Justin [Hartley], and Ive traded messages with Sterling [K. Brown]. A bunch of us are collectively trying to find ways to reach out to the community of the This Is Us audience. You try and do what you can  And you try to shine a light on things that need the attention.

Even so, Ventimiglia hinted theres plenty going on in group chat among the This Is Us team. But he wasnt able to share any details. Then, of course, theres the completely goofy sh*t that we cant even really talk about that usually, [executive producer] Ken Olin starts, but we all contribute to, he said.

Now when the This Is Us crew is able to reunite to create the fifth season, its likely things will have to change. During the Cant Stop Watching podcast, Ventimiglia speculated what will happen moving forward. He suggested productions sets could become a sterile environment, where people are scrubbing in and out. But ultimately, everyone is still trying to figure it out.

I think these conversations are really starting to kick into high gear in Hollywood, Ventimiglia said. We all want to get back to work so that we can one, do our craft. And two, put shows out. The show must go on, we gotta find a way.

He added: What a heavy load the writers must have right now trying to consider, Well geez, do we put in the script that Jack and Rebecca share a kiss? Is that putting Milo and Mandy in danger? Can they hold hands? Do we have to shoot them six feet apart and make it look like theyre only a foot or two away? How does that work?

Clearly, theres plenty up in the air right now. But hopefully, This Is Us fans are willing to accept whatever changes are needed to keep everyone safe.

Read more: This Is Us: Will Rebecca Leave for the Clinical Trial? Fans Predict What Happens in Season 5
Actor Priyanka Chopra has written a piece for Time magazine, in remembrance of the late Rishi Kapoor, who died on April 30 at the age of 67, after a two-year battle with leukaemia. Priyanka lauded his effervescence and flamboyance and said that he had the passion of a Shakespearean hero with a generous dollop of innocence added in.

From his first leading role in 1973s Bobby, he was the keeper of our hearts, ushering in a new era of romance in Hindi movies, Priyanka wrote. His charisma was in his extraordinary smile, one that made his fans go weak in the knees. And when he danced, he made us all want to jump up and join him.

About the latter part of his career, Priyanka wrote that Rishi began playing characters that were removed from his earlier films. I had the privilege of working with him in Agneepath, in which he played a fierce, no-holds-barred character, someone to hate rather than love, she wrote.

Also read: Rishi Kapoor could beat any actor hollow, took my attention away from Saif in Hum Tum: Sharmila Tagore

Priyanka wrote that Rishis death is the end of an era for Hindi cinema, but as the late actors father Raj Kapoor once said in Mera Naam Joker, the show must go on.

She concluded, To your beautiful family, Neetu Maam, Riddhima and Ranbir: the world grieves with you... Im so grateful for having had the opportunity of knowing you personally as wellyour candour, your laughter, your zest for life. Thats how Ill always remember you.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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One of the latest options slated for potential adoption as a sponsored flavor in the Ubuntu family of Linux desktops is UbuntuDDE.

A beta version, released earlier this month, offers an interesting hands-on experience well outside the norm found with typical Ubuntu platforms. This new Linux distro is based on Ubuntu 20.04 and runs a slightly different version of the Deepin Desktop Environment, or DDE.

UbuntuDDE offers a new special flavor that offers a serious desktop computing opportunity. It comes with the expected stability and familiarity of an Ubuntu LTS (five year) support release based on Canonicals Ubuntu 20.04 upgrade announced Thursday.

The DDE desktop brings to Ubuntu something rarely found in its growing family of flavors: a strikingly beautiful design. Given all things Ubuntu, this remix operating system is already a solid performer.

Although remix distros typically are not among the official offerings of the Ubuntu Linux line, they can become fully accepted within the Ubuntu community.

UbuntuDDE is the brainchild of lead developer Arun Kumar Pariyar, who conceived the idea of creating a distro that mixed one of the most powerful Linux distributions with what easily could qualify as one of the most beautiful desktop environments in the Linux world. That makes UbuntuDDE the best of the two worlds in his view.

Pariyar worked in close cooperation with Ubuntu code writers to get a path ready for acceptance into the Ubuntu family. My recent review of the Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix shows how this Ubuntu remix channel expands Canonicals desktop reach.

DDE is a gorgeous-looking desktop environment created by the China-based developers of Deepin Linux. Initially, Deepin Linux was based on Ubuntu, but it later switched to Debian.

Defining Deepin

One of the more modern desktop environments, DDE is one of the first Linux distros to take advantage of HTML 5 technology. It is offered in a variety of popular Linux desktops, including Archlinux, Manjaro, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, Puppy Linux, SparkyLinux, Antergos, Pardus and openSuse.

The Deepin Desktop has an efficient and convenient workplace switching system that includes a graphical interface and desktop shortcuts. It has a dynamic bottom panel that lets you switch between two modes: fashion or efficient.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The Deepin Desktop Environment gives this Ubuntu remix distro an uncluttered look with a stunning design in its styles, wallpapers and menu displays.  click image to enlarge 

One functions much like a traditional full panel across the bottom of the screen. The other is more like a macOS dock bar. Either way, you can show or hide a center section that holds numerous system icons and notifications. You can switch modes and other related placement settings instantly by right-clicking on the dock.

What is evident the first time you run the Deepin desktop is its elegant and intuitive design. Its easy-to-change styles plus stunning collection of wallpaper images contribute to its overall beauty. A nice touch is how the wallpapers display in scrolling mini views at the bottom of the screen when youre selecting or changing them.

Other features include hot corners, special effects, and a more visual approach to working with virtual desktops. They make DDE one of the most attractive desktop choices available.

UbuntuDDE has a virtual workspace display that resembles the ChromeOS in function and design.  click image to enlarge 

No Cause for Spyware Alarm

If one thing has blunted DDEs rise to popularity as part of the Deepin distro, it no doubt is lingering worry over the use of spyware embedded into the in-house apps developed by Deepins Chinese originators. However, Pariyar insists his use of the Deepin desktop in the remix distro has nothing to do with spyware.

I was one of the reviewers who discussed this worry when I reviewed a Deepin Linux distro upgrade released last year. I included comments from computer security pros. Some of this concern stemmed from the Deepin App Store being Web-based and associated with cnzz.com, the website of a Chinese Web analytics firm.

Two things UbuntuDDE developer Pariyar emphasized in published reports seem to calm those spyware concerns. One is that UbuntuDDE does not ship with the Deepin Web Store. Instead, it uses the Ubuntu Software Center and the Canonical repository. The second is that UbuntuDDE packages are built with the open source versions of the DDE desktop environment and do not collect any user data.

An important aspect of this project, according to Pariyar, is regular maintenance of the DDE packages for Ubuntu. His mission is to help users enjoy the full DDE experience.

Thus, his UbuntuDDE distro is not just a combination of DDE and Ubuntu. It is also the fusion of select packages and design changes the UbuntuDDE Team made.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

DDEs Look and Feel

Transparency and blur effects are really well done in UbuntuDDE. The transparent side panel displays all settings and notification controls in a stunning scrollable fashion.

This approach is in lieu of a dedicated settings app. It is nice eye candy with a little animated functionality.

The side panels content is visible in two vertical columns arranged by category. Click on a category to have another wide panel slide over the category list.

Depending on the category selected, more sub-menus appear. A narrow vertical column of icons on the left edge provides menu access to all of the operating systems settings and controls. Click the All Settings button at the top of the slide-out panel to return to the original two-column display.

Whether you will prefer this process over having a traditional control panel accessible from the main menu remains to be seen. If not, you can dispense with the slide-out panel and use the main menu launcher at the far left of the bottom panel or dock.

A dual-function dynamic dock bar plus a slide-out settings panel give this new remix distro an elegant, intuitive user experience.  click image to enlarge 

Working With Desktops

The dynamic dock at the bottom of the screen is enticing. Next to the menu launcher is a button for multitasking. Click on it to see the virtual workspaces.

This serves as the workspace switching tool. It presents a row of thumbnails of virtual workspaces along the top edge of the screen and an expo-like view of all open windows and the applications running in them on the rest of the screen.

Click the mini-window to move to that workspace. Or click the edge of the previous workspace on the left screen edge, or drag and drop windows from one workspace to another. You also can right-click on the top window border to move a window to another workspace.

The mechanisms at play in DDE are very similar to what transpires in navigating virtual workspaces in both GNOME and KDE Plasma. If you are familiar with the multitasking process in the ChromeOS with Chromebooks, the switching works much the same way.

Too Little or Just Right

I found the extent of personalization within the DDE settings to be a bit limited. It falls short of the amount of tweaking you get with the KDE Plasma and the Cinnamon desktops.

What unfolds in UbuntuDDE is a balancing act between fewer animation effects and a stunning collection of fluid movements with the special effects that are built-in.

Another setting trade-off is balancing the age of the computer with the modern effects UbuntuDDE provides. I found that turning off the window effects setting can smooth out the animation and transition performance.

In fact, if you want to see an even smoother system performance with UbuntuDDE on more modern hardware, try running it with the window effects still turned off. It just seems smoother and more blended.

Your best result may come down to a personal preference. Of course, this is an early beta release, so tweaking overall system performance no doubt is still in the works. For the most part, the beta I tested showed no major difficulties.

Bottom Line

The Deepin Desktop Environment is very elegant and comfortable to use. Its simplicity, coupled with improved functionality and configurability over earlier versions, makes it a nice choice for those looking for something new.

The Deepin desktops integration into the Ubuntu 20.04 base masks some of the stumbling blocks new users encounter when learning about the Linux OS in general and Ubuntu in particular. Ubuntu DDE works right out of the box with nothing to adjust or configure.

Beta releases are not good products to use on a production machine, but this beta version is a strong demonstration of what UbuntuDDEs performance will be in its final form.

UbuntuDDE uses the Calamares installer. The process includes disk-partitioning options and an easy click-to-choose graphical display.

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Is there a Linux software application or distro youd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Pleaseemail your ideas to me, and Ill consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 04:53:33|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Thursday launched an updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan that requires 6.69 billion U.S. dollars to help fragile countries cope with the pandemic.

The fund requirement of the original response plan, which was launched on March 25, was 2 billion dollars.

The updated plan is adding nine countries -- Benin, Djibouti, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Togo, Zimbabwe, bringing the total number to 63.

UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock, who launched the updated plan, said urgent action is needed to help the most vulnerable countries.

COVID-19 has now affected every country and almost every person on the planet. But the most devastating and destabilizing impacts will be felt in the world's poorest countries, Lowcock told a virtual event for the launch of the new appeal.

Apart from the direct health impact, the global recession and the domestic measures taken to contain the virus will take a heavy toll on the poorest countries, he said. "We can see right now incomes plummeting and jobs disappearing, food supplies falling and prices soaring, children missing vaccinations, meals and school."

He warned that the first peak of COVID-19 is expected in many of the poorest countries in the next three to six months.

The international community must be prepared for a rise in conflict, hunger, poverty and disease as economies contract, as export earnings, remittances and tourism disappear, and as health systems are put under strain, said Lowcock. "This cannot be business as usual. Extraordinary measures are needed, reflecting the extraordinary problem we face."

The updated response plan includes more of a focus on food insecurity, as well as how to help the most vulnerable and how to address gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse.

Lockdowns and economic recession may mean a hunger pandemic ahead for millions. In many places, the impact of national measures to contain the spread of the virus and the global recession may be larger than the direct impact of the disease, said Lowcock.

"We must fight the disease, but in the poorest countries, it won't be the only battle we face. A coronavirus vaccine is essential, but it will not save a child starving to death."

If the international community does not act swiftly, it faces a reversal of the development gains that have been made over several decades, he warned.

The United Nations estimates that the cost of protecting the most vulnerable 10 percent of people in the world from the worst impacts is approximately 90 billion dollars. That might sound like a lot. But it is equivalent to just 1 percent of the global stimulus package the world's richest countries have put in place to save the global economy, said Lowcock.

To meet these costs, wealthy countries will need to make significant one-time increases in their foreign aid commitments. And international financial institutions will need to change lending agreements with vulnerable countries, he said.

The alternative, said Lowcock, is dealing with the spill-over effects over many years to come. That would prove even more painful, and much more expensive -- for everyone.

"I urge donors to act with both empathy and in their own self-interest today," said Lowcock. "As the (UN) secretary-general has said, this pandemic threatens the whole of humanity. The whole of humanity must respond."

Lowcock was joined at the virtual event by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi; World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley; head of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies, Mike Ryan; and the president and CEO of Oxfam America, Abby Maxman. Enditem
KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Cyber attack to cost company approximately $50-$70 million in Q2

Q2 operating margins to be the lowest for the year

Expects incremental costs with lockdown exits

The company says ransomware attack encrypted its internal systems, effectively disabling them

The recent Maze ransomware attack on tech major Cognizant Technology Solutions hurt the company's revenues and corresponding margins by $50-$70 million . Brian Humphries, the CEO, said over an investor call that the company responded immediately to the crisis by mobilising the entire leadership team and drawing on the expertise of IT and security teams, also bringing in leading cybersecurity experts to investigate and respond to the attack. The company has also reported the attack to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. "We proactively provided clients with Indicators of Compromise or so called IOC, namely forensic data that a company can use to identify potentially malicious activity and defend against attacks from external actors," said Brian.

Also read: Cognizant suffers Maze ransomware attack, clients face disruptions

The company said the ransomware attack encrypted some of the company's internal systems, effectively disabling them. The company proactively took the other systems offline. As a result of the ransomware attack, some of the company's clients opted to suspend the access to Cognizant's networks.

"With the ransomware attack now contend, we've restored VDI in automated laptop provisioning. Further, with previously ordered equipment now physically in India and distribution constraints less respective per the latest state directives, we're now substantially work-from-home enabled," said Brian. While the company expects a majority of revenue and margin impact from the ransomware attack to be reflected in the coming quarter, the ongoing remediation costs could spread beyond Q2.

Apart from Covid-19, Cognizant expects ransomware attack to negatively impact the company's performance for the year. Karen McLoughlin, CFO, said: "We anticipate that our Q2 adjusted operating margin will be the lowest quarter of the year, given the combined impact of COVID-19 and the ransomware attack". The company which in early April withdrew the earlier full year revenue guidance of 2-4% growth said that in near term there could be other covid-related costs which it will continue to identify separately. "It is likely that there will be incremental costs in the near term as we prepare to exit the lockdown periods," said Brian .

Cognizant posted a revenue growth of $4.2 billion dollars for first quarter, up 3.5 percent in constant currency terms. The company's digital revenue share, as a percentage of total revenue stood at approximately 41 percent for the quarter, a 19 percent YoY growth.

Also read: Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms scores hat-trick; bags Rs 11,367 cr investment from Vista after FB, Silver Lake


The International Day of Vesak and the 20th anniversary of the adoption of United Nations General Assembly resolution 54/115, which recognized internationally the day of Vesak, was commemorated today at a special virtual commemoration organized by the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva together with the Permanent Mission of Thailand to the UN Geneva and the International Buddhist Foundation in Geneva.

The opening remarks were delivered by Director General of the United Nations Office in Geneva, Tatiana Valovaya, while Ven. Ajahn Amaro, Abbot of the Amarawathi Monastery in the United Kingdom delivered the keynote address at this online event which had over 250 virtual participants.

Initiated by Sri Lanka in 1999, UNGA Resolution 54/115 acknowledges the contribution that Buddhism, one of the oldest religions in the world had made, for over two and half millennia, and continues to make, to the spirituality of humanity.

Delivering the opening remarks, the Director General of the United Nations Office, Geneva highlighted that, while being sacred for millions of Buddhists around the world, Vesak day was also widely observed by non-Buddhists who draw strength and inspiration from the philosophy of Lord Buddha. She also noted the particular relevance of the teachings of the Buddha such as compassion, solidarity and mindfulness, in times of global emergencies such as the current COVID-19 crisis.

According to the Buddha, to realize enlightenment, a person must develop two qualities  wisdom and compassion. He also told that nothing exists in isolation and that all phenomena are interdependent. Just as profoundly, the Buddha taught that we cannot be happy as long as others suffer. On the contrary, when we do reach out, we discover the best in ourselves, the Director General stated, noting how the Buddhist concept of mindfulness or here and now can inspire renewal of commitment to building world solidarity to ensure peace and dignity for all.

Ajahn Amaro, delivering the Keynote address, spoke of the actuality of loving kindness, radical acceptance of things as they are, and the capacity of the human mind for spiritual training.

Addressing the commemoration event via video link, Mr. Ravinatha Aryasinha, Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Relations of Sri Lanka, paid special tribute to late Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the then Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka who pioneered the initiative, and proposed, in his address to the UN General Assembly on 23 September 1999, that Vesak be recognized as a special day at the United Nations. In his remarks on The Significance of Vesak Day, Foreign Secretary highlighted how the teachings of the Buddha have offered to mankind, many millennia ago, the bedrock of modern progressive libertarian values such as peace, freedom, equality and dignity for all humans as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The significance of Vesak, therefore, lies squarely on the universal and timeless nature of the Buddhas teaching, and its ever-increasing relevance to present day societies that strive to champion universal human values in the midst of war, distress and widening inequalities, he stated.

The Foreign Secretary also noted that, as a country with one of the oldest Therawada Buddhist traditions in the world, Sri Lanka is proud to have contributed, throughout its history, to the noble cause of sharing the teachings of the Buddha with the rest of the world, which includes the first ever transcription of the Buddhas teachings on ola leaf as far back as in the First Century B.C.

H.E. Mr. Sek Wannamethee, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Thailand to the United Nation in Geneva, in his remarks on Buddhists in the era of New Normal after COVID-19, discussed how the values and principles expounded by the Buddha could help in coping with the realities that have and would follow from the current global pandemic.

The commemoration event also included an address by Ven. Halyale Wimalarathana, President of the International Buddhist Foundation in Geneva on the relevance of Buddhist teachings in the modern world.

On the invitation of the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva, the Permanent Representatives of Armenia, Estonia, Fiji, India, Israel, Lao PDR, Libya, Mongolia, Myanmar, Oman, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Bhutan (CDA), and other members of diplomatic missions from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates participated at the event.

Ms. Dayani Mendis, Actg. Permanent Representative proposed the vote of thanks, on behalf of the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka in Geneva and its staff.

Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka

Geneva

08.05.2020

Press Release in PDF
The president also laced into Mr. Barrs predecessor, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Mr. Trump has never forgiven for recusing himself from the Russia investigation over his own 2016 contacts with the Russian ambassador, a move that led to Mr. Muellers appointment.

Jeff Sessions was a disaster, Mr. Trump said. He was a very average guy.

The presidents commentary was a kind of flashback to a pre-coronavirus reality  when the Russia investigation and Mr. Trumps impeachment dominated the national political discourse. It came in a nearly hourlong appearance on one of his favorite Fox News programs, Fox and Friends. The pandemic did not come up until nearly 20 minutes into the interview.

Even then, the president compared the virus favorably with his persecutors in the Russia matter, calling the coronavirus a much smarter enemy, and adding, Those are people  they are not in the same league.

This is a very brilliant enemy, and it happens to be invisible, Mr. Trump said. And I think that were doing really, really well.

Despite the disastrous unemployment numbers announced Friday morning, the president vowed to restore the American economy quickly as the nation reopens with his strong encouragement, even as public health experts strongly caution against too much social and economic activity.

Mr. Trump lamented that the virus had interrupted a period of economic growth, saying that advisers had come to him and said: Sir, youve got to turn it off. We have to close the country.

As president, we had the strongest economy in the history of the world, the strongest economy, weve ever had, he said. Well be back, and theyll be back very soon. And next year were going to have a phenomenal year, people are ready to go.
Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday transferred Mumbai municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi and two other additional commissioners amid the rising number of coronavirus cases in the city.

IS Chahal will take charge as the new chief of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), while Sanjeev Jaiswal and Ashwini Bhide have been appointed additional municipal commissioners, replacing Abasaheb Jarhad and Jayshree Bhoj, said a senior official. Pardeshi will now take position as the additional chief secretary of the urban development department.

The state government has been facing criticism for the rapid rise in cases, especially in Mumbai. Till Friday evening, Mumbai accounted for 12,142 of the states 19,063 cases. The Thackeray government is under tremendous pressure to control the outbreak in Mumbai, the financial capital of the country.

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan had recently expressed concern over the rise in cases in the state. Although Pardeshi and his team were seen as working hard to counter the outbreak, cases have been spiralling for quite some time.

The decision is being seen as an attempt to show that the state government is taking tough measures. Pardeshi has a reputation of being a hard-working and efficient official and has handled several significant assignments, which is why Thackerays decision has surprised many in the state government circles.

Before Fridays developments, Chahal was the principal secretary of the urban development department. Jaiswals last posting was as the Thane civic chief, while Bhide was head of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation, which is building the underground Metro-3. Both officials had been appreciated for their work during their previous postings.

Jarhad has been appointed as secretary, relief and rehabilitation department, and Bhoj has been posted as managing director, Maharashtra Small Scale Industries Development Corporation (MSSIDC).

A 1985-batch officer, Pardeshi was a key member of former chief minister Devendra Fadnaviss core team since he became CM in November 2014. Pardeshi took charge as the civic chief last May and held on to his post, despite the change in the states regime in November last year.

Jaiswal, former chief of the Thane municipal corporation, was awaiting a posting, while Bhide was already working with the BMC as member of the task force to contain the epidemic. Jarhad has replaced Kishor Raje Nimbalkar, who has been posted as secretary, public works department.

Chahal is a 1989 batch officer who was appointed as principal secretary of urban development department only in February this year. Before that, he was heading the water resources department as principal secretary.

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Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has expressed his anguish at the Aurangabad train tragedy early Friday morning, when 16 migrant workers were crushed to death and four others injured by a goods train while sleeping on the tracks.

Around 20 migrant workers had begun marching from Jalna in Maharashtra on Thursday evening to their villages in Madhya Pradesh and slept on the railway tracks near Aurangabad after approximately walking for about 40 km, said authorities.

Todays accident in Aurangabad was painful. I appeal to the migrant labourers that they should not get restless. We are in touch with various states. Keep your patience for a few more days. Maharashtra government is with you, Uddhav said.

Uddhavs assurance follows a similar appeal by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who said the state government was in the process of bringing back stranded labourers from other states. He pointed out that about 80,000 workers had already been repatriated.

I will like to make an appeal to all the labourers stranded in other states to stay where they are. The state government is making all arrangements to bring them back, he said.

The bodies of the migrant labourers will now be brought back to Madhya Pradesh after Chouhan spoke to Uddhav and Railways minister Piyush Goyal, requesting for a special train to bring back their bodies. Four others who were injured in the incident are under treatment.

The labourers who were killed in the accident belonged to Shahdol and Umaria districts in Madhya Pradesh, said state police.

Also Read: Aurangabad train accident: Loco pilot blew horn to warn labourers, says ministry

The Railways has announced a comprehensive probe into the accident which took place at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad.

Madhya Pradesh government has announced of Rs 5 lakh each for the kin of the deceased as ex-gratia amount. A team of high ranking officials from Madhya Pradesh is flying to Aurangabad in a special plane and it will arrange for last rites of the labourers and the treatment of the injured.

Several thousands of migrant labourers employed in Maharashtra have been desperate to reach home. While the state governments in partnership with the railways are now running special Shramik specials to take them home, several have been found to be walking along the highways in absence of interstate road transport during the nationwide lockdown clamped to slow down the spread of coronavirus.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
A man who said he was 'bored and wanted to look at pretty women' has been arrested after travelling 15kms on a train amid coronavirus lockdown.

The 29-year-old was spoken to by police officers at Cabramatta Railway Station in Sydney's west about 9.45am on Thursday.

He did not have a valid Opal ticket and when officers questioned him he revealed he had travelled from his house in Wiley Park without any legitimate reason.

The 29-year-old was spoken to by police officers at Cabramatta Railway Station in Sydney's west about 9.45am on Thursday

Officers from the Transport Command then arrested the man and he was driven to Fairfield Police station.

He became irate at the station and allegedly started hurling abuse at the officers.

The man was charged with not complying with coronavirus rules and using offensive language in a public place.

He was refused bail and appeared at court yesterday, where he was granted conditional bail to re-appear on Thursday May 21.

New South Wales has strict laws regarding coronavirus lockdowns in the form of public health orders.

Those who break the rules can be fined $1,000 in NSW and even more in other states.

Victoria has some of the harshest penalties with fines of $1652 for breaking social distancing laws.

Some of the strictest uses of the fine in that state include a 17-year-old girl being fined for taking a driving lesson with her mother and three males fined for playing video games in a lounge room.
Hail to the graduates: Virtual events, recognitions to honor students

Friday, May 8, 2020

Various virtual and online celebrations are set for Kansas State University's May and summer graduates.





MANHATTAN  Commencement ceremonies may be delayed at Kansas State University, but celebrations and recognitions for the university's nearly 3,350 spring graduates are set. The class of 2020, which also will include students earning their degrees this summer and in December, is the 153rd to graduate from K-State.

K-State's May graduates, who have been invited to participate in commencement ceremonies in December, include nearly 2,500 students who will earn bachelor's degrees, more than 650 students earning master's degrees, about 100 students earning doctorates, and 107 students receiving a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. More than 275 students earned their degrees through distance education and nearly 200 students are earning multiple degrees.

"Kansas State University congratulates its May graduates and applauds their resiliency and perseverance in completing their degrees during these unprecedented times," said Richard Myers, university president. "While our in-person commencement ceremonies are delayed and I won't be able to personally hand each graduate their diploma this spring, I salute these graduates from the class of 2020 for their diligence and adaptability to reach this important milestone in their lives."



Students will receive their diplomas, K-State diploma covers, special commencement program and honor cords  if earned for academic performance  in the mail this summer. Each K-State college and the K-State Alumni Association also will recognize the graduates with their traditional gift of a year's free membership to the association.



"What these members of the class of 2020 have achieved is truly special," said Charles Taber, K-State provost and executive vice president. "That's why we hope as many of our new graduates as possible will take part in commencement ceremonies on Dec. 11 and 12 in Manhattan and at Kansas State Polytechnic in Salina. Your hard work deserves to be acknowledged and we welcome your family, friends and loved ones to join in this celebration."



Even though the ceremonies have been delayed, K-State colleges have planned special events, recognitions and tributes to honor their spring graduates:



 Kansas State Polytechnic will have a virtual ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 9.



 The College of Veterinary Medicine will have a virtual ceremony on Friday, May 15.



 The College of Architecture, Planning & Design will share a slideshow recognizing each graduate on Saturday, May 16.



 In the College of Arts and Sciences, each department is sending its graduates a message of congratulations along with a congratulatory video message from the dean, Amit Chakrabarti. Some departments also have planned virtual celebrations.

 The College of Education will send a video to all of its graduates that ends with Dean Debbie Mercer ringing the Bluemont Bell, a college tradition on commencement day. The college also will recognize its student award winners and post messages from the graduates on social media.



 The College of Business Administration will provide an online tribute to its graduates. It will include a video from the dean and a graphic for each graduate and be posted at cba.k-state.edu.

 The College of Agriculture will share a senior video in recognition of its spring and summer graduates on its social media channels, @kstateag.



 The College of Health and Human Sciences will share the names of all graduates at 4:30 p.m. May 16, which would have been the time of the college's spring ceremony. The college also will recognize its outstanding seniors on social media May 10-15.

 The College of Engineering will provide special video messages to its graduates. They will be posted by May 16 at engg.k-state.edu/spring-2020-graduates.



 K-State Global Campus is continuing its tradition of offering a virtual commencement website for its distance education graduates, online.k-state.edu/student-support/virtual-commencement/. The students have been invited to submit videos, photos and messages that will be posted on the site.

More K-State commencement information is available at k-state.edu/graduation. The website also includes a "K-State grad" photo frame that graduates can use with their Facebook profile picture.






Iris Love, who has died aged 86 after being diagnosed with COVID-19, was a passionate archaeologist, her greatest contribution being her role in the discovery of the Temple of Aphrodite in 1969.

She arrived with her team of archaeologists in Knidos, at the tip of the Datca peninsula of south-western Turkey, in the summer of 1969 during a break from her work as a college teacher. They came in search of one of the most elusive sites in ancient history: a ruined sanctuary said to contain a statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, that dated back to the 5th century BC.

From left: Archaeologist Iris Love, TV personality Phyllis George and gossip columnist Liz Smith at a Wild West fundraiser for Literacy Volunteers of America in 1991. Credit:Getty

This white marble artefact was so renowned in the classical world that the Roman historian Pliny, writing in the first century AD, had declared: "With this statue [the sculptor] Praxiteles made Knidos a famous city." Yet, like the ruins of the (perhaps mythical) Troy, it had long eluded archaeologists.

By 1967, when Iris Love was appointed research assistant professor of art history and archaeology at Long Island University, she was in a position to attempt a trip of her own. In preparation she had made a close study of Pliny's account, concluding that the sanctuary would have to be circular if it was to show off the statue from every angle.
New Delhi, May 8 : The current reality in these unprecedented times has made everyone celebrate life and one another differently.

Airbnb recognises that this Mother's Day this year may feel different, especially as we home shelter in lockdown.

Whether your mom lives in another country, another state, or down the street, the leading travel portal has tailored a collection of Online Experiences for all those planning the perfect day for mom. Guests can choose from a collection of Online Experiences that allow you to connect with family and friends virtually and find meaningful ways to celebrate the mothers in your life from a distance.

Online Experiences offer guests unique opportunities to shower mom with affection this month, even if physically separated. Tap into your creative side with DIY gift ideas taught by expert hosts, including songwriting with a Nashville musician or baking Latin pastries. Gather loved ones to make wine with an archeologist or song bathe with a Singapore DJ alongside with mom.

Other Online Experiences include: Cocktail Hour Jazz Club (London, United Kingdom)

Bring the Flavors of India to Life at Home (New Delhi, India)

The Meditative Art of Forest Bathing (Sintra, Portugal)

Make Cheese with a Mama Goat & Her Kid (Malibu, California)

Showstopping Brunch with a Food Star (Los Angeles, California)

Pancake Flip-Along for a Good Cause (San Francisco, California)

Mind & Body MasterClass with an Olympian (Frisco, Texas)

Learn to Collage with a Barcelona Artist (Barcelona, Spain)

Hand Lettering and Modern Calligraphy (Grosse Pointe, Michigan)

Sake Secrets from Japan's Oldest Brewery (Tokyo, Japan)

To celebrate the special woman in your life, guests can opt for private bookings, all from the comfort and safety of home. Experiences for Mother's Day are now available at airbnb.com/online-experiences and are led by expert hosts from various cities across the world, including Barcelona, New Delhi, Singapore, New York, Miami, and more.

Launched in April 2020, Online Experiences unlock unprecedented access to inspiring hosts across the world, including Olympic medalists, Buddhist monks, magicians, and more. Whether its wine tasting in Portugal os making coffee with a professional coffee taster, your mum ad you have the chance to connect with new people and travel virtually, all from the comfort of their own living room.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Nollywood actor, Yul Edochie says he doesnt understand why Nigerian leaders are looting the country dry.

Read Also: Good People Are Hard To Find  Yul Edochie Hails Actor Nonso Diobi

Speaking via his official Twitter handle on Friday, he further queried if they are in a cult that forbids them from developing their countries.

He wrote: I dont understand. These Leaders who are looting our country dry, whats really wrong? To fix all sectors of this country will cost less than what you people are stealing. Will you die if you fix Nigeria? Are you people in any cult that forbids you from developing our country? 

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Last week, after Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that Los Angeles was offering COVID-19 tests to all city and county residents, I decided to get one myself  and test Garcetti's bold new promise in the bargain.

I was surprised how easily I was able to log on to L.A.'s testing website. I answered a few questions about myself, including whether I had any symptoms of the disease  the answer was no  and within three minutes, I had a same-day appointment at one of eight city-run testing sites.

In fact, it was a same-hour appointment. I rushed out of the house unshowered to drive across a large swath of the county to the site  a Los Angeles Fire Department training center next to Dodger Stadium.

The trip would easily take 90 minutes in non-pandemic times, but I got to the designated freeway off-ramp in under half an hour. That's when the traffic jam began: It took 75 minutes to snake my way the additional half-mile to a red tent, where a masked fire department employee handed me a zip-close bag containing the testing materials.

She directed me to one of three lanes up ahead, where I sat in my car and performed the test on myself.

I rolled a cotton swab in my mouth for 30 seconds, dropped it into a clear liquid inside a test tube, twisted the cap onto the tube and placed it back in the plastic bag. A protectively swathed attendant plucked the bag from my hand with metal tongs as I held it out of my car window, and deposited it in a large blue bin.

It was all very simple. I was now among 10,000 L.A. County residents who visited a city testing site that day  triple the number of previous days, when tests were limited to those with coronavirus symptoms or those considered high-risk even if asymptomatic.

The mayor is clearly proud of his new strategy. At a news conference last week, he spoke of the praise he had received from doctors, public health officials and other mayors who, he said, told him, "Thank you for leading the way."

At a time when a shortage of tests still impedes efforts to grapple with the virus in many parts of California and the rest of the U.S., it is noteworthy that Garcetti is now offering testing to all 10 million-plus residents of the nation's largest county.

"That's a story in and of itself: that they have the availability and they can make this effort," Ronald Brookmeyer, dean of the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA, told me.

But Garcetti's plan is not a silver bullet. Though public health experts say it is vital to know how many people without symptoms are virus carriers, millions of people may choose not to get tested. And even if you don't have the virus when you take the test, that's no protection against future infection.

What officials do with the results is crucial, said Brookmeyer. They need to follow up on the positive cases to reach friends, family members, colleagues and other contacts who may have been exposed  a process known as "contact tracing." They must also find ways to safely isolate those who test positive and protect vulnerable people in their lives. "We have to get the most bang for the buck of every single test that we do," Brookmeyer said.

Garcetti said he would hand over COVID-positive cases for contact tracing and other follow-up to public health officials from L.A. County, which includes the city of L.A. and nearly 230 smaller communities.

Testing sites run by the county are sticking to the more restrictive policy of accommodating only those who are symptomatic or at high risk, which now includes people in essential jobs, such as health care employees, first responders and food supply workers.

That decision was made in part because testing capacity is still constrained, Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of L.A. County's Department of Health Services, said at a news conference.

Garcetti promised the city's test sites will continue to give priority to those groups, even as testing is opened up to the general population, but he said the city has stockpiled 300,000 tests, with more on the way. Kyle Arteaga, a spokesperson for the supplier, San Dimas, California-based Curative Inc., said the company can meet L.A.'s expanded demand.

The city is paying an average of about $120 for each test, but the price could drop as much as 10% if there were a significant increase in volume. If L.A. ended up doing a million tests, it would likely cost the city between about $110 million and $120 million.

Wider testing of the population will ultimately be critical to subdue the virus, largely because a significant number of infected people have no symptoms and need to know so they can avoid infecting others.

But the testing program has limitations. First, any results will provide a biased sample, since the Angelenos who make and keep appointments will be skewed toward those with the time, inclination and transportation required.

And while Garcetti suggested that negative test results could ease worried minds, any such relief is only temporary. "A negative test one day doesnt mean that you won't get infected the next day, or the one after that," said L.A. County's Ghaly.

Finally, the accuracy of the self-administered mouth-swabbing tests used in L.A. has not been fully proved. Having a health care worker in full protective regalia plunge a swab all the way to the back of your nose is still the officially preferred method.

The reliability of the L.A. test suffers if you don't cough forcefully a few times to bring up potentially virus-laden sputum before rolling that cotton tip around in your mouth. A four-minute video I watched before driving to the test site instructed me to do so, but there was no reminder when I got there and no staffers watched me to make I sure I did.

I think I did it correctly, though, so I am confident in the result: negative. But that only means I was "probably not infected" at the time of the test, the notice told me. And it cautioned that I can still be exposed to the virus at any time.

I still see lots of hand-washing and social distancing in my future.

California Healthline correspondent Anna Almendrala contributed to this report.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Iran Says Two 'Terrorist Cells' Destroyed In Western Parts Of The Country

By RFE/RL May 07, 2020

Iran's Intelligence Ministry says it has tracked down and dismantled two "terrorist cells" in the Western part of the country.

The ministry said in a statement issued late on May 6 and quoted by Iranian news agencies that the terrorists affiliated with "separatist groups" had entered Iran from neighboring areas to carry out acts of terror and sabotage.

It said its forces arrested 16 members of the groups and confiscated their arms, including two AK-47 rifles, as well as some ammunition.

"The ringleader of this terrorist group is residing in Europe and being supported by a certain Arab country," the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted the ministry as saying.

The claims could not be verified independently.

Iranian media said some of those arrested had been involved in killing civilians and extortion from manufacturers and traders in the west of the country.

"One of the terrorist teams had [killed] the child of a supporter of the [clerical] establishment," the reports said without providing more details.

Earlier this week, Iranian media reported that three members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), including a colonel, were killed in a shoot-out with unknown gunmen near the country's Western border with Iraq.

The reports said "several counterrevolutionaries" were also killed in the fighting near the Kurdish town of Divandarreh, about 60 kilometers from the Iraqi border.

No details were given on the affiliation of the gunmen.

The area has seen occasional fighting between Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists, as well as militants linked to the Islamic State extremist group.

Based on reporting by Tasnim, Fars, AP and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-says-two- terrorist-cells-destroyed-in-western-parts-of -the-country/30599336.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.

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Additional reporting: Aoife Moore

The central heating system in the Kerry direct provision centre where at least 25 people have tested positive for Covid-19 has been in disrepair since last December.

The Skellig Star hotel in the south Kerry town of Caherciveen has been at the centre of a major coronavirus outbreak over the last month. At least 95 asylum seekers were accommodated in the hotel on March 18 and at least a quarter have since tested positive for the virus.

A number of children were among those who arrived in the hotel from Dublin.

As a result of the lack of heating, up to 50 standalone oil heaters had to be sourced in Tralee, 40 miles away.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said that an issue arose with the boiler in the hotel on the day the asylum seekers arrived.

That is factually inaccurate. The incident with the boiler system occurred on December 28  two and a half months before the asylum seekers arrived. A fire engine attended at the scene on that evening and the heating system has been out of action since then.

A request for further clarity on the Departments knowledge about when the heating system failed was not addressed in a later reply.

The Irish Examiner has also learned that an elevator engineering company is demanding to know why one of their engineers was inaccurately told that Covid 19 was not present in the hotel when he attended for a routine service.

Kone Engineering, based in Shannon, has written to the hotel pointing out that its engineer was assured three times that the virus was not present in the hotel before he conducted a service on April 19. On leaving the premises, a garda told him there were six confirmed cases in the hotel. It later emerged that the first four positive cases were confirmed on April 14.

The company wrote that its engineer cannot now fulfill his duties in any other location because he worked in a premises where the virus was present and that Kone relies on open and honest feedback from its customers.

The asylum seekers who have tested positive have been moved to another location in Cork. Those who remain have displayed signs saying they want to be moved from the hotel as soon as possible as it is not suitable accommodation.

In response to a question as to whether the hotel was audited for suitability as a direct provision centre prior to signing contracts, a spokesperson for the Department said a senior official visited the premises as part of the assessment carried out".

In a later reply the Department said this official visited on September 25, 2019 and identified a modern commercial kitchen and dining areas with all bedrooms ensuite.

The Irish Examiner has established that the visit did not include an audit to determine how many people could be accommodated in each bedroom. This was conducted by another official soon after the asylum seekers had already moved in.

There was no consultation with the local community in advance of the opening. The reason given by the Department of Justice for the sudden arrival of 105 asylum seekers in the town was that it was an emergency response to the coronavirus. The asylum seekers were moved from the greater Dublin area with less than 24 hours notice.

Meanwhile Health Minister Simon Harris has confirmed that 160 healthcare workers here are currently resident in Direct Provision.

Mr Harris added: "When were thanking front line workers, we should remember those 160." I want to thank them, because some individuals dont extend a cead mile failte to people from other countries." There have been 164 cases of confirmed Covid-19 in Direct Provision residential facilities.

At a glance:

29 deaths in the past 24 hours

1,403 deaths in total

137 new confirmed cases

22,385 confirmed cases in total

2,891 hospitalised

376 admitted to ICU in total

0.5-0.6 - virus reproduction number
As the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II cannot be prosecuted for any crime, because all laws in England are carried out in her name. Reigning is not the same as ruling, however. That duty falls to the prime minister who, incidentally, can be prosecuted if he or she commits a crime. So, who is more powerful? The queen or the prime minister? The answer may surprise you.

The girl who would be queen

The queen was born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor to Prince Albert, Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Duchess of York, on April 21, 1926. At the time of her birth, Queen Elizabeths grandfather, King George, was king, and her father was second in line for the throne behind his older brother, Edward.

When Queen Elizabeths grandfather passed away in 1936, her uncle Edward ascended to the throne. His reign didnt last for long, though.

Less than one year after becoming king, then-King Edward abdicated in order to marry a divorced American socialite named Wallis Simpson. Because Edward had no children, the crown went to Queen Elizabeths dad who adopted the regnal name of George VI to honor his late father, reports Mental Floss.

As a youngster, the girl nicknamed Lilibet had no idea she would someday become Englands longest-reigning monarch. When her father ascended to the throne, she became heir presumptive. When he died in 1952, 27-year old Elizabeth was coronated and everything changed.

Royal power: What the queen can and cannot do

Prior to the issuance of the Magna Carta in 1215, the ruling monarch held absolute power over his or her subjects. Once King John affixed his seal to the historic document, the people of England gradually gained more rights as the power of the monarchy became more limited, explains Encyclopedia Britannica.

Powers held by the reigning monarch are known as the royal prerogative and encompass a range of executive privileges. Though rarely used (Her Majestys appointed ministers tend to most issues) the queen wields the power to summon or suspend Parliament, issue and rescind passports, and even declare war.

The queen may commission (or remove) military officers as well as create a hereditary peerage for anyone of her choosing, explains Culture Trip. She can even drive without a license.

As a reigning queen, Queen Elizabeth may appoint or dismiss a prime minister, but she cannot vote nor can she ever be arrested. She may not change the line of succession to the throne, and she can not belong to any religion but the Church of England.

British politics in a nutshell

The constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom operates under a bicameral, or two-chambered parliamentary system. The so-called lower house is the House of Commons filled with elected members known as members of parliament or MPs.

The prime minister is the principal governmental member of the House of Commons. The upper side of parliament is the House of Lords with its appointed and hereditary members, some of whom are parliamentary members for life, explains Reference.

The third branch of British rule is governmental. The Government is responsible for enacting laws passed by Parliament and also manages education, healthcare, and domestic issues. Day-to-day business such as the armed forces and police are overseen by MPs, and the whole shebang is presided over by the prime minister, or PM.

Boris Johnson, appointed by Queen Elizabeth in 2019, is PM, and it is his job to chair cabinet meetings and direct both legislative and executive branches of government. The PM works in concert with a chancellor to oversee the nations taxation and spending policies and may appoint ministers to parliament. The PM answers questions in parliament and holds regular meetings with the queen for her guidance and advice.

So, who is more powerful, the queen or the prime minister?

Queen Elizabeth II | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Queen Elizabeths constitutional monarchy extends to 16 different countries, including Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, and New Zealand. Other countries that are constitutional monarchies with kings or queens who wield limited power include Japan and Sweden.

As the British head of state, Queen Elizabeth has the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn, but she is required to act on the advice of her governors, even when she disagrees with them. She does, however, retain the absolute right to veto any legislation she deems unfit.

She can also fire the prime minister, and he cant do the same to her, so it seems that when all things are taken into consideration, the queen is more powerful than the prime minister.
The USS Montgomery sails near the Malaysian-contracted drillship, West Capella, in the South China Sea, May 7, 2020.

Updated at 8:22 a.m. ET on 2020-05-09

The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet called on China to end its bullying behavior in the South China Sea as the U.S. sent a warship near the spot where a Malaysian-contracted oil exploration ship is operating and close to a recently deployed Chinese survey vessel.

The U.S. Navys 7th Fleet said in a press release that on Thursday it had sent the USS Montgomery and transport ship USNS Cesar Chavez near the West Capella, the oil exploration ship which is operating within Malaysian waters.

The Chinese survey ship Hai Yang Di Zhi 8, escorted by China Coast Guard (CCG) ships and maritime militia, has been conducting a survey nearby since April 15. That is widely viewed as an attempt to intimidate Malaysia out of exploiting resources in waters that China also claims.

The USS Montgomery is the second American littoral combat ship to sail in that area of the South China Sea within two weeks, after the USS Gabrielle Giffords patrolled there on April 26.

The Chinese Communist Party must end its pattern of bullying Southeast Asians out of offshore oil, gas, and fisheries. Millions of people in the region depend on those resources for their livelihood, Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in a press release.

Tensions

Tensions have been rising in the resource-rich South China Sea, which China largely claims for itself, notwithstanding conflicting territorial claims involving five other governments. Assertive behavior at sea and recent Chinese declarations of administrative authority over the contested area have drawn protests from both neighboring countries and the U.S. government.

China frequently sends research vessels, coastguard ships, and paramilitary forces to assert its claims. The CCG is much bigger and better armed than most navies in the region, including that of Malaysia. But experts said that by sending ostensibly civilian law enforcement ships, China increases pressure on its rivals without allowing territorial disputes to spiral into war.

James R. Holmes, a professor of maritime strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, said the recent deployments of U.S. littoral combat ships hint at a new role for these advanced but smaller vessels, which may be better suited to countering gray-zone tactics employed by China.

The U.S. Navy rotates its four littoral combat ships in and out of Singapores Changi Naval Base.

A photo taken from the littoral combat ship USS Montgomery, shows the USNS Cesar Chavez (left) and a Chinese Navy warship, May 7, 2020. [Courtesy U.S. Navy]

A littoral combat ship, especially one bulked up with naval strike missiles, may provide a good tool for this mission because it outguns anything in the China Coast Guard or maritime militia, yet its outclassed by heavy ships from the PLA Navy. Its intermediate in capability, Holmes said.

If the U.S. Navy were to send more muscular warships, it would risk looking more provocative than China and potentially escalating the situation, he said.

Malaysia signaled its discomfort when the U.S. sent two bigger warships, the USS America and USS Bunker Hill, on an exercise in the same area on April 18. The littoral combat ships are smaller and less heavily armed.

For my money this is a form of diplomatic jujitsu we ought to test out in the South China Sea, Holmes said.

The littoral combat ships ran into numerous difficulties during their development and commissioning into the U.S. Navy. There were originally meant to be 55 of the ships built, but the Navy decided not to acquire any more after the first four, and in February, the Navys budget director recommended decommissioning them.

The United States has accused China of exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea.

China has said that the Hai Yang Di Zhi 8 survey ship is conducting normal activities and have accused U.S. officials of smearing Beijing.

But adding to the current tensions, China last week announced a unilateral fishing ban in a large area of the South China Sea until Aug. 16, prompting protests from fisheries associations in Vietnam and the Philippines.

On Friday, Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs also officially rebuked China over the ban.

Vietnam demands that China not further complicate the situation in the South China Sea, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said in a statement.

Her comment follows a conversation Wednesday between U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Vietnams Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh. They agreed on the importance of ensuring freedom of the seas, and the unfettered pursuit of economic opportunity throughout the Indo-Pacific region, the State Department said in a statement.

Also this week, in an apparent reference to the recent Chinese and U.S. naval activities in the South China Sea, Indonesias top diplomat called on all relevant parties to exercise self-restraint and to refrain from undertaking actions that may erode mutual trust and potentially escalate tension in the region.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi urged restraint while negotiations for a code of conduct (CoC) in the contested sea region were being delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Indonesia continues to follow closely recent developments in the South China Sea, she said Wednesday during a news conference in Jakarta about COVID-19, according to a transcript.

Indonesia expresses its concerns on recent activities in the South China Sea which may potentially escalate tensions at a time where global collective efforts are vital in fighting COVID-19.

Indonesia, the foreign minister added, underlines the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, including to ensure freedom of navigation and over-flight and to urge all Parties to respect international law.

Ahmad Pathoni in Jakarta contributed to this report.

The latest updated version of this report adds comments by the Indonesian foreign minister about the South China Sea.
Former Nationalist Congress Party MP Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil and three others figure in the list of Bharatiya Janata Party candidates for the May 21 Maharashtra Legislative Council poll.

The list was released from Delhi on Friday, a state BJP functionary said.

Senior state BJP leaders Eknath Khadse and Pankaja Munde don't find a place in the list, which instead has lesser-known faces like Gopichand Padalkar, Praveen Datke and Ajit Gopchhade.

Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil who joined the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is the son of former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Vijaysinh Mohite Patil.

While Ranjitsinh joined the BJP officially, his father hasn't done so formally.

Padalkar who joined the BJP ahead of last year's assembly polls, had unsuccessfully contested against Ajit Pawar from Baramati. Pawar had retained his seat with a margin of over six lakh votes.

The Council election is being held for nine seats, for which the electoral college is the 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

The quota for a winning candidate is 29 votes.

The election assumes importance Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is among the candidates.

While Pankaja Munde lost the 2019 assembly election from Parli to estranged cousin and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde, Khadse who was denied Assembly poll ticket by his party, had recently declared that he would like to contest the May 21 poll.

The BJP has 105 MLAs and the party has claimed support of 11 members of smaller parties and independents. It needs 116 first preference votes to get its four candidates elected.

Talks are still on among the three ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance partners with the Congress adamant on fielding a second candidate. If the allies contest more than five seats, there would be an election.

During the trust vote in the assembly, the MVA had secured support of 169 MLAs, while four MLAs (Communist Party of India-Marxist 1, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena 1, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen 2) had abstained.

The biennial elections are being held to fill in seats which fell vacant after Council members retired on April 24.
By Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state capital is all set to welcome expatriates as the first flight to Trivandrum airport will arrive on Sunday from Doha. A thermal face detection camera has been set up in the airport to scan passengers as soon as they enter the lounge.

The thermal and optical imaging face detection camera with artificial intelligence can identify symptoms in people quickly. The camera was bought utilising the MP fund of Shashi Tharoor. District Collector K Gopalakrishnan visited the airport and evaluated the preparations in place.

There are seven health check-up counters at the airport through which people will be checked for symptoms. Anyone with symptoms will be immediately moved to the Government Medical College Hospital here. All passengers arriving here will be quarantined.

Pregnant women, children below the age of 10 and senior citizens will be given consideration for home quarantine. First-line care centres have been set up in the district. The corporation has identified 330 buildings with 9,100 rooms to keep the returnees under observation.
Two medical doctors and one nurse were reportedly held hostage on Thursday by COVID-19 patients at Kwanar Dawakin isolation centre in Kano.

A former chairman of the Nigeria Medical Association in Kano, Aminu Muhammad, announced this while featuring on WAZOBIA FMs make una wake up show on Friday morning.

He said the health workers were on a ward round when the incident occurred.

Mr Muhammad, a professor of medicine, explained that the fully kitted workers with personal protective equipment were locked in a room with a COVID-19 patient for about four hours. He said they were almost suffocating before they broke the door and forced their way out of the ward.

One of the patients admitted at the isolation centre also called the radio programme but gave a slightly different narrative of what transpired.

The patient, who declined to be named, confirmed the protest to WAZOBIA FM. He said their action was to protest inadequate attention and the delay in testing and confirm their status after seven days of being on medication.

What happened really was that they are not attending to the patients and they kept on deceiving the patients they are coming and they wont come. At the end of the day, patients might end up sleeping with hunger, sleeping without drugs.

For example, you can imagine somebody spending two weeks (coughing) and still not done his first test because you supposed to do first test after seven days to know if you are now negative. But many of us spending two weeks or 10 days now without first test, for how long are we going to stay here?

READ ALSO:

He said the affected health workers did not break the door, rather one of the patients who held the key eventually released it following the intervention of the leader of the health workers at the centre.

When contacted, the Coordinator of the Kano State Task Force on COVID-19, Tijjani Hussain, said he was not aware of the development.

He promised to find out and revert as soon as possible.

As of Friday afternoon, Kano State has recorded 482 cases of coronavirus including 55 recorded on Thursday.

A total of 13 people are recorded to have died from the disease in the state.
By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - A group of Republican lawmakers from energy-producing states on Friday called on President Donald Trump to prevent banks from halting loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels while they have access to federal assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Wall Street's big banks ... should not be able to reap the benefits of participating in federally guaranteed loan programs laid out in the CARES Act, such as the Paycheck Protection Program or the trillion dollar Federal Reserve facility lending programs, while simultaneously targeting American energy companies and workers," the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Democratic lawmakers like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who want and economic recovery featuring investments in conservation and alternative energy to fight climate change, have been calling on Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to bar oil and gas companies from accessing loans through the Main Street facility.

Many energy companies have been struggling to stave off bankruptcy due to a meltdown in global crude prices after governments around the world issued stay-at-home orders that obliterated demand for motor and jet fuel.

For years, environmental activists have pressured banks and financial firms to drop support of fossil fuel companies.

The Republican lawmakers, led by North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, and Representatives Don Young of Alaska and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, accused some major U.S. financial institutions of halting fossil fuel investments to "placate the environmental fringe."

They specifically cited investment giant BlackRock, which has been given a central role in the COVID-19 corporate recovery.

BlackRock announced in January it was divesting from coal burned in power plants and its global head of sustainable investing is Brian Deese, who was a White House climate official under former President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Story continues

"Considering BlackRocks central role as a Federal Reserve fiduciary for the distribution of CARES Act credit facilities, its hostility towards the American energy sector is unacceptable and should be closely scrutinized," the lawmakers wrote.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Republican lawmakers urged Trump to use "every administrative and regulatory tool" to prevent those institutions from participating in federal lending programs while "discriminating" against investments in parts of the energy sector but did not specify what measures could be taken.

Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a recent interview that he and Mnuchin also planned to work with U.S. regulators and the banking industry to ensure financial institutions dont discriminate against oil drillers when choosing who to provide credit to. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by David Gregorio)
ATLANTA  The Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged a father and son with murder Thursday evening in the death of a black jogger who they suspected was a burglar running through their neighborhood, eventually shooting him on the street and touching off racial outcry throughout the country.

Gregory McMichael, 64, a former police officer, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were both jailed on charges of murder and aggravated assault in the Feb. 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. Local prosecutors had initially refused to charge the pair.

A viral video taken by another man in the neighborhood has sparked outrage because it appears to show two white men laying in wait for Arbery as he jogs down the street in broad daylight.

The McMichaels, who still maintain that they believed Arbery was a possible burglary suspect, were taken into custody Thursday and were being booked into the Glynn County Jail.

Latest on Arbery's case: Day after father, son arrested on murder charges, a dedication run is planned for Ahmaud Arbery's birthday

The original decision not to arrest the McMichaels or Bryan, and the more than two months that passed before charges were filed, fueled outcry across the nation with attorneys for Arbery's family saying he was racially profiled. Local officials and community leaders say a history of nepotism and privilege in the district attorney offices of Waycross and Brunswick has allowed the killers to remain free.

The district attorney who previously led the investigation told police he did not see grounds for an arrest of the McMichaels or the man who recorded it from his vehicle, according to a memo obtained by USA TODAY.

Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill said in the memo that Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan were in "hot pursuit of a burglary suspect" when they shot Arbery, 25, as he jogged through the Satilla Shores neighborhood just outside of Brunswick, Georgia. Barnhill sent the memo to Glynn County Police Capt. Tom Jump

Story continues

"It appears it was their intent to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived," Barnhill wrote. "Under Georgia law, that is perfectly legal."

Ahmaud Arbery was killed Feb. 23 outside Brunswick, Ga., in Glynn County.

Barnhill also identifies Bryan, who is white, as the man who shot the video of the killing of Arbery. Bryan has an address listed in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, according to the police report.

Barnhill said in the letter that he was recusing himself from the case over a conflict of interest. In the memo, he stated that Arbery's mother wanted him off the case because his son worked in the Brunswick District Attorney's office.

Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson had previously recused herself from the case because Gregory McMichael was a retired investigator from her office. Gregory McMichael is also a former Glynn County police officer.

"You have relational connections that run back for generations," said Rev. John Perry II, president of the Brunswick NAACP. "We believe the privilege of relationships caused the delay we are experiencing."

Perry has called for Glynn County Police Chief John Powell, who is currently on paid administrative leave for violating oath of office in an unrelated matter, to step down.

Based on his negligence to say that an arrest should be made, there is no way that our taxpayer dollars should be paying him," Perry said.

The case is now being led by Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tom Durden, who on Tuesday of this week formally requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into the killing. It took the bureau two days to investigate and arrest Gregory and Travis McMichael.

Durden had previously promised to send the case to a grand jury to consider criminal charges. But that may not have happened until June because Georgia courts are largely closed due to the coronavirus.

The video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery has been spread widely on social media.

Alan Tucker, a criminal defense attorney in Brunswick, said in a statement Thursday that he released the video because "there was entirely too much speculation, rumor, false narratives and outright lies surrounding the event."

"My sole purpose in releasing the video was absolute transparency because my community was being ripped apart by erroneous accusations and assumptions," said Tucker, adding that he had not been retained by anyone for the case.

Tucker did not respond to a request for comment on why he had the video.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the Arbery family, posted a photo on Twitter Thursday of a man he says is Bryan.

"If he chased down Ahmaud and filmed his execution, he should be arrested and charged with aiding and abetting them in committing this crime of murder," Crump said.

Gregory McMichael told police they followed Arbery because he appeared to be the person seen on a surveillance video breaking into homes, the police report said.

USA TODAY filed an open public records request with the Glynn County Police Department for burglaries and home break-ins in the Satilla Shores neighborhood between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23. The department's records office said in an email Thursday it had no records matching that request.

In Barnhill's memo, he said the video shows Arbery attacking Travis McMichael which led to a tussle over McMichael's shot gun. He suggests that it's unclear who pulled the trigger leading to Arbery's death.

"Arbery's mental health records and prior convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man," Barnhill wrote.

Glynn County Commissioner Allen Booker said he doesn't fault the Glynn County Police Department for not making the initial arrest and believes Johnson's office made the call.

It's obvious there was special treatment because they aren't in jail," Booker said prior to them being arrested.

Booker said Arbery was a family friend and often saw him in the neighborhood doing landscaping work with his father. He described Arbery as "polite" and "always smiling."

"Everybody is mad, heartbroken, some folks who grew up here say we know that racism is here in this community like every where else," Booker said. "But we didnt think there were folks with that much hatred that they would hunt down a young man like a dog and kill him. And then not be in jail for it."

Contributing: Grace Hauck of USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ahmaud Arbery video: First DA said shooting was 'perfectly' legal
New Delhi: Markets ended lower on Thursday with the BSE Sensex falling 242.37 points or 0.76 per cent to close at 31,443.38. The broader NSE Nifty slipped 71.85 points, or 0.78 per cent, to 9,199.05.

Only five Sensex constituents finished in the green -- IndusInd Bank, M&M, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank and Tech Mahindra, spurting up to 6.58 per cent.

Here are the major stocks in focus on May 08, 2020

Cyient

IT firm Cyient on Thursday reported a 74.4 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 45.2 crore for March 2020 quarter.

Gillette India

Shaving products maker Gillette India Ltd on Thursday reported a 40.31 per cent decline in net profit to Rs 52.38 crore for the January-March quarter 2020.

RBL Bank

RBL Bank on Thursday reported a 54 per cent decline in its net profit to Rs?114 crore for the March 2020 quarter, as the provisioning for bad loans spiked manyfold.

ICICI Securities

ICICI Securities on Thursday reported a 28 per cent jump in profit after tax at Rs 156 crore for the March quarter on account of growth in revenue and changes in statutory tax rates.
The Bono Regional Health Directorate in collaboration with the Regional Coordinating Council has quarantined 78 COVID-19 suspects after the region recorded first confirmed case of the disease on Wednesday.



The case was detected at Sampa, a town along the Ghana  Cote dIvoire border in the Jaman North District.



Most of the suspects whose specimen, according to the Directorate has been taken to the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR) are in self-quarantine, while the District Assembly has arranged a centre for few of them.



The patient is a-27-year-old Togolese man who illegally entered the country with nine others through an unapproved route at Sampa, the district capital, and he has since been quarantined.



He and the other nine foreigners, who have tested negative to the virus, were apprehended by the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS).



They have since been handed over to the National Security operatives.



Addressing a news conference in Sunyani on Friday, Dr Kofi Issah, the Bono Regional Director of Health Services said the region recorded its first suspected case of COVID-19 on March 9 and had so far investigated 538 cases, taken 202 samples and received results of 128 samples.



The region is yet to receive results for the outstanding 74 samples, Dr Issah who spoke on behalf of Mrs Evelyn Ama Kumi-Richardson, the Bono Regional Minister indicated.



He explained the RCC and the GHS had stepped up surveillance in the 12 districts to enable them to gain a broader picture of the state of infection within the region and thereby respond appropriately.



We have also increased behaviour change communication and continue to emphasise social distancing to prevent community spread, he said and advised people in the region to adhere fully to the hygiene protocols and the wearing of nose masks.

Source: GNA









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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:43:01|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- About 25 illegal immigrants have been rescued off the Libyan coast and brought back to Libya, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Thursday.

"Tonight, IOM staff who were at Tripoli main port awaiting the disembarkation of roughly 25 migrants, had to evacuate the location as it came under shelling," the IOM tweeted.

"The migrants remain on the coast guard vessel," the IOM said.

Following the 2011 uprising that toppled late leader Gaddafi, Libya became a preferred point of departure for thousands of illegal immigrants towards Europe.

Many immigrants are detained in shelters across Libya with poor living conditions, despite international calls to close those centers.

The IOM has repeatedly called for an end to disembarkation of immigrants in Libya, due to the deteriorating security conditions in the country.

The east-based army has been leading a military campaign in and around Tripoli since April 2019 in an attempt to take over the city and topple the UN-backed government.

The fighting has killed and injured thousands of people, and displaced more than 150,000. Enditem
C.S. Goldsmith, A. Tamin, HOGP / Associated Press

Clear Lake-area residents will be able to pick up free face masks at a distribution event at Clear Lake City County Freeman Branch Library starting at 8 a.m. Friday, May 8.

Organized by the office of Houston District E Council member Dave Martin, officials will hand out masks on a first-come, first-served basis to residents via drive-through at the library, 16616 Diana Lane, Houston. Each vehicle will be limited to four masks.
SOUTHFIELD, Mich., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Word of Faith Christian Church in Southfield, Michigan is pleased to learn of the arrest of the two (2) men who allegedly shot and killed jogger, Ahmaud Arbery. We are looking forward to the start of the investigation into his murder, and we would like to see justice done to those who committed this senseless crime.

SOURCE Word of Faith International Christian Center

Related Links

http://www.woficc.com


US President Donald Trump said Friday he was in "no rush" to strike a deal with Democrats over emergency relief for suffering Americans even as the raging coronavirus pandemic causes staggering job losses. Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they are crafting what could become another trillion-dollar-plus rescue package potentially including funding for state and local governments, paycheck protections and rent or mortgage assistance. Pelosi signalled that her "bold CARES 2 package" could soon get a vote if the House of Representatives returns to regular session next week. The president appeared to wave off the urgency. "We're in no rush," Trump said at a roundtable with Republican lawmakers when asked about speeding up negotiations given the staggering 14.7 percent unemployment figure released Friday. Trump said he wanted to see what Democrats were proposing in the draft bill, adding that the administration "got what we needed" in previous rescue packages. Congress in March passed an unprecedented $2.2 trillion rescue, triggering the distribution of checks to millions of families. The package pumped $349 billion into a loan program to salvage small businesses and directed $150 billion to state and local governments. A subsequent $483 billion plan followed in late April. Now, leading congressional Republicans and the White House are advocating for a pause in new relief to see how the latest package helps. "We're throwing money at it," Trump said of the earlier efforts. "We can sit back and we're going to watch" the negotiations, Trump said. "We'll do what's right for the country." - 'Big bold approach' - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has joined Trump and other Republicans in seeking a pause on new rescue efforts, angering top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer. "We need a big, bold approach now to support American workers and families," Schumer said in a statement. "No one could look at today's jobs report, the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, and say we should hit the pause button on further government action." Several Democrats have introduced measures to help stricken Americans. Senators Kamala Harris, Ed Markey and Bernie Sanders unveiled a bill Friday that would provide most Americans with a monthly $2,000 check for the duration of the crisis. Sanders said tens of millions of Americans "are living in economic desperation," and that the one-time $1,200 checks that many recently received "is not nearly enough to pay the rent, put food on the table and make ends meet." Trump has advocated for a payroll tax cut, an idea that has hit resistance within his own party. And on Friday he floated a capital gains tax cut. Both proposals would be fiercely opposed by Democrats. Several roundtable attendees told Trump they were happy to see dozens of states easing lockdown restrictions in order to jumpstart their frozen economies. "Texas is reopening and I think it can actually be a model for this country as we step out of retreat," congressman Dan Crenshaw said.
An Indianapolis man was fatally shot by police after a high-speed chase in an incident that appeared to have been broadcast on Facebook Live, sparking outcry and protests throughout the night.

More than 100 people from the community gathered at the scene of the shooting to express their outrage Wednesday night, chanting No justice, no peace! as they demanded answers from police about the latest officer-involved death. Protestors continued demonstrating Thursday, with dozens marching through the streets before congregating outside of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department headquarters.

We deserve better, one community activist told The Indianapolis Star. I am disgusted, horrified, tired, and angry.

Youre Gonna Kill Me: Body-Cam Footage Shows Cops Mocking Dallas Man as He Dies

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said the incident began around 6 p.m. when officers began pursuing a man who they observed to be driving recklessly. After the driver exited the car, an officer chased him on foot before gunfire was exchanged at around 6:14 p.m., police said in a press release, without revealing who fired first. In the unconfirmed Facebook video of the incident, at least 13 or 14 gunshots can be heard.

In another video obtained by The Indianapolis Star, a detective who arrived after the shooting can be heard saying: Looks like its going to be a closed casket, homie.

We are aware of inappropriate comments made by an IMPD detective on the live stream, Indianapolis MPD Chief Randal Taylor said at a Thursday press conference. Let me be clear: These comments are unacceptable and unbecoming of our police department.

While Taylor did not confirm the authenticity of the Facebook live stream, he did stress he was concerned with the things on social media, stating he thinks that some comments online lack trust as to what occurred.

Authorities have not yet identified the name of the driver but said he and the officer who shot him were both black men. Family members identified the driver to local media outlets as 21-year-old Dreasjon Sean Reed. The officer who fired the fatal shot has been placed on administrative leave pending further investigation.

Story continues

I feel like to lose a life, especially at a young age, theres never going to be justice, Jazmine Reed, the 21-year-olds sister, told WISH, adding that her family watched the pursuit and shooting on Facebook as it happened. Cause hes gonetheres never justice for that. Even if somebody was to get time or whatever for it, its never going to be justice because hes never coming back.

The sister said she drove to the scene after watching the video, not knowing whether her brother was still alive. I shouldnt have to bury my little brother, she added.

The Indianapolis MPD said the incident began after two officers saw a Toyota Corolla being driven recklessly. They followed the driver in unmarked cars and asked for assistance as they said the vehicle continued at a high rate of speed and the operator was disobeying all traffic signals and nearly hit another car.

In the Facebook video, titled High-speed case lol, Reed, who is shirtless, appears nervous as he speaks to his 2,000 viewers and points his camera to show the moving police cars behind him.

Almost lost him yall! he says. Almost got rid of his ass!

Video Shows Florida Deputy Violently Yanking Middle Schoolers Hair During Arrest

At one point, he appears to pull over and stop his car. Authorities say the driver disregarded the officers verbal commands to stop and ran out of the car, prompting an officer to chase him on foot.

Im on 62nd and Michigan, Reed says in the video, just before exiting the vehicle. I just parked... Im gone.

He added: Please come get me! Please come get me! Please come get me!

Reed can then be heard running for approximately 30 seconds, as a voice behind him yells: Stop! Stop!

Fuck you, Reed replies.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Chief Chris Bailey said during a Wednesday news conference that the officer first used his taser, but its unclear if it worked and is not seen on the purported video from the scene.

It is believed at this time that shots were fired by both the officer and the suspect, Bailey said.

In the video, Reed appears to start screaming before collapsing on the ground. About eight seconds later, 11 or 12 gunshots can be heard in rapid succession. The live stream did not show Reed talking about a gun or firing a weapon.

After a brief pause, two more shots can be heard as the camera faces the sky while the opening lyrics of Young Dolphs 16 Zips appears to be playing off the phone. By the end of the gunfire, more than 4,000 people had tuned in to watch the live stream, according to the Star.

Bailey said Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services arrived shortly after and pronounced the driver dead at the scene. The officer was uninjured.

Taylor on Thursday stated that a loaded gun was recovered at the scene that appeared to have been fired twice and that it belonged to the driver. He added that disciplinary action will be taken against the detective who made the casket comment.

After the incident, the Facebook Live video, which has been widely shared on social media, was removed from the victims account, Bailey said. Bailey added that authorities are aware of Facebook videos.

Cop Charged With Assault After Video Shows Him Slamming Suspects Head Into Pavement

Both the officers and the detectives have done their due diligence in preserving that evidence through the proper legal channels, and if its associated that theres information on there thats appropriate for the investigation, theyll utilize it, he said.

Taylor added Thursday the police officers involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras, but he has no reason to believe they acted inappropriately. But after the press conference, dozens of protesters took to the streets demanding more police action, shouting all lives matter, as drivers stopped their cars and put their fists out their windows in solidarity.

About eight hours after that shooting, Indianapolis police fatally shot another man during an investigation into a burglary at an apartment complex. Authorities said that around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, four officers responded to the apartment and were immediately fired upon by a man with a rifle.

All four officers returned fire and hit the man, who was pronounced dead at the scene, police said in a news release.

In response to both incidents, Taylor stressed at a Thursday press conference that he will provide residents with the truth whether we are right or wrong.

We have long talked about the kind of police department we want to beone that serves with the community, that's not policed ata police department that is trusted, one where every resident feels a comfortable calling, Taylor said. We recognize and are saddened that this mutual trust that is so valued has been eroded over the last 24 hours.

Investigators are now conducting a separate investigation into that shooting, and police said theres evidence the victim called 911 with the intent of ambushing the responding officers.

Our hearts this morning are with the families who lost loved ones during these tragic events. All of us are trying to make a new normal in an un-normal time. Incidents like these do not help restore normalcy to our community, Chrystal Ratcliffe, the president of the NAACP branch in Indianapolis said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on Thursday called for a prompt, thorough, and transparent investigation into Reeds death.

Whether someone is unarmed or armed, compliant or resistant, police officers should be properly trained in de-escalation tactics and turn to the use of force only as a last resort, not a first option, the statement read.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Czech shoots, which have been robust in recent years as a steady stream of series decamps to Barrandovs soundstages, were suspended over virus concerns this spring, but now the country has been reopened to shooting and the sector is expected to rebound, says the Czech Film Commissions Pavlina Zipkova.

The country reopened its borders to European citizens on April 27, and the European Union is expected to lift its recommendation that citizens from non-European countries are denied entry on May 15. With theaters opened May 1 and the Czech Cinematography Fund adding flexibility for projects claiming incentive rebates while the Culture Ministry works on increasing the fund, Most of the affected productions we are hoping will come back. Everything is in negotiations, says Zipkova.

More from Variety

The two most affected major productions, the second season of Amazons Carnival Row and the first season of Amazon/Sony Pictures Television series Wheel of Time, starring Rosamund Pike, have both committed to resuming, Zipkova adds.

Netflixs Transatlantic 473, the Peter Thorwarth-directed story of a hijacking with a supernatural twist co-written by Stefan Holz, is also expected to resume its Czech shoot, making good on the emergency funding help the projects crew has received from the Hardship Fund, which Netflix created for all its interrupted productions worldwide.

A Prague location shoot in March for Marvel TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was one interruption not expected to resume. Filming was abruptly shut down after the Atlanta-based crew rolled into the Czech Republic just as coronavirus shutdowns were taking force.

Story continues

Czech bizzers have begun planning virus-safe production strategies, working with the European Institute for Health and Safety in Film Production, in particular smoothing the procedure of crossing the borders for international filmmakers, says Zipkova.

The Czech Audiovisual Producers Assn. has also formulated strict on-set risk protection protocols while the government begins gradual reductions in its strict shutdown rules. Filming should resume June 8 with crews of up to 50, but industryites are seeking exemptions for larger productions.

Meanwhile, Czech films such as the David Ondriceks ambitious Zatopek, about the Olympic runner, sits in post, uncertain that its August release date will happen.

Czech Titles on Tap

Havel

Director: Slavek Horak

Producers: Czech TV, Tvorba Films

Key cast: Viktor Dvorak, Anna Geislerova, Martin Hofmann

The first major fact-based biopic on the global human-rights icon and Czech president focuses on Vaclav Havels formative years starting with the Prague Spring of 1968 through his transformation over two decades, turning on lesser-known events and gaps in the official biography.

Owners

Director: Jiri Havelka

Producers: Marek Jenicek, CinemArt, Czech TV

Distributor: CinemArt

With 12 Czech Lion awards noms  including best film, director, screenplay and acting  in 2020, the pic centers on the coming together of members of a building co-op to save their homes.

Traces of a Landscape

Director: Petr Zaruba

Producers: Alice Tabery, Cinepoint, Mammut Film, Czech TV

Czech-Italian doc tells a story of Czechoslovak painter, photographer and experimental filmmaker Jan Jedlicka, who was forced to leave the country in 1968, settling in Switzerland before falling in love with the vistas of Tuscany.

Pripyat Piano

Director: Eliska Cilkova

Producers: Jindrich Andrs, Gamma Pictures

The Jihlava doc fest Silver Eye winner focuses on the radioactive pianos left behind when Pripyat was evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It also tells the story of the 1986 nuclear meltdown in its own way.

Zatopek

Director: David Ondricek

Producers: Lucky Man Films, Czech TV, Barrandov Studios, Innogy, T-Mobile, Z Films

Key cast: Vaclav Neuzil, Martha Issova, James Frecheville

The biopic of Emil Zatopek, which chronicles the Czech runners unlikely rise to four Olympics wins while living under the communist regime in the 1950s, is one of the countrys most ambitious projects.

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DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation says he has called for the release of an American captured by Taliban-linked militants in discussions with Taliban leaders as continued violence threatens to scuttle a peace deal to end Americas longest war.

In a series of tweets from his official account on Thursday, Zalmay Khalilzad said he pressed Taliban leaders during an overnight meeting in Doha, Qatar, to secure the release of Mark R. Frerichs, a Navy veteran turned contractor, who was abducted by militants in late January.

The tweets by Khalilzad mark the first public statement about the capture from a Trump administration official. They come on the heels of an investigation by The Associated Press last week that noted there had been no public indications that Frerichs has been part of the peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. Khalilzad could not be reached by the AP for comment. The State Department also did not respond to a request for comment.

American officials believe Frerichs, of Lombard, Illinois, was captured by members of the Haqqani network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Obama administration in 2012.

While little is known about the circumstances of how the 57-year-old Frerichs was abducted, U.S. officials believe he was held for a time in Khost, an eastern province along the border with Pakistan and its so-called tribal regions. The mountainous area has historically been a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida militants. The AP investigation revealed how Navy SEALs and the U.S. intelligence community tried to gather information that would lead them to Frerichs recovery but the trail went cold.

The Taliban kidnapped my brother in January. In February, the U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban. My brother wasnt part of the deal, Charlene Cakora, one of Frerichs sisters, said in a statement provided to the AP last week. Now we are arranging for the Taliban and Afghan government to exchange thousands of prisoners, why cant we make an American hostage be one of them?

On Friday, the FBI released a kidnapping poster for Frerichs in multiple languages. The poster said he was last seen wearing black boots, green tactical pants, a green jacket with a hood, and a silver scarf.

While the Taliban-linked Haqqanis are known to carry out assassinations and kidnappings for ransom, theres uncertainty within the rank-and-file over who exactly has abducted Frerichs and where he is located. Since his capture, no formal demands are known to have been made, and no group is known to have claimed responsibility for his abduction.

I have not received any information about him, a Taliban official who wasnt authorized to speak about the case publicly told the AP on the condition of anonymity. There has been no clue despite my contacts with every side to get information.

In Doha, Khalilzad, the main architect of the February accord designed to offer the United States an exit from its longest war, said he had a long meeting with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar  the co-founder of the Taliban and the head of its political office  and his Taliban delegation on a host of issues that threaten to scuttle further peace negotiations.

We sought progress on a range of topics: a reduction in violence, humanitarian ceasefire as demanded by the international community to allow for better co-operation on managing COVID-19 pandemic in Afghanistan, Khalilzad wrote on Twitter.

He added, Acceleration of prisoner releases by both sides, actions necessary to secure the freedom of U.S. citizen Mark Frerichs, regional & international support for the peace process, and movement to intra-Afghan negotiations.

This is the second trip Khalilzad has made during the coronavirus outbreak to salvage deadlocked negotiations over provisions in the accord signed between the United States and Taliban leadership on Feb. 29. Khalilzad said he will be meeting again with Taliban negotiators after a trip to India and Pakistan.

President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has sought to end the long war in Afghanistan, which has left permanently shattered thousands of American families and cost trillions of dollars. More than 2,400 service members have died in Afghanistan since the U.S. first invaded in October 2001.

But despite heavy losses on both the American and Afghan sides, Taliban insurgents have ignored appeals for a ceasefire, even amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Taliban has accused the United States of not upholding its end of the peace deal.

It is the responsibility of all military sides to reduce the violence, Army Gen. Scott S. Miller, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in late April. You reduce the violence so you can give the political process a chance to take hold. We need the Taliban to reduce the violence. If the Taliban continue to attack, then what they should expect is a response.

But as calls by American officials for a reduction in violence on Afghan security forces go largely ignored by the Taliban, a political power struggle has also stalled intra-Afghan negotiations. The rivalry between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah  Ghanis former chief executive, who has declared himself de facto president  continues to complicate matters. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo voiced frustrations after he failed to mediate the political infighting between the two.

This is going to be resolved through a political process, and it is time for that political process to begin with all the Afghans coming together around the table, Pompeo told reporters last month.

___

Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, and Eric Tucker in Washington, contributed to this report.

___

Contact APs global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.
While the start of Phase Zero on Monday 4 May lifted some restrictions, there has been little activity at bars and restaurants along the Costa del Sol for the past two weeks.

During this time they have been permitted to prepare meals for customers to take away, having ordered in advance by phone or internet. Relatively few businesses thought it was worth their while.

Phase One, due to start on Monday 18 May, brings more changes and should see more businesses raising their shutters. For the first time in more than 60 days, bars and restaurants will be able to serve customers at tables on their outdoor terraces.

The government's original Phase One plan stated that bars would only be able to fill 30 per cent of their client capacity, however this was increased to 50 per cent at the weekend.

Some local councils, including Malaga and Marbella, have said they will allow bars to occupy more space than usual with their tables.

The owner of the bar Vuala in Malaga's Plaza de las Flores, Salvatore Ciliberti, was busy this week getting ready. It wasn't that easy, he admitted, as suppliers had to be contacted and the premises disinfected. He has installed screens around the bar to avoid direct contact between staff and customers.

"I came to work this morning with a smile on my face," he said.

It won't be until Phase Two (25 May, conditions permitting) that bars and restaurants will be able to serve customers at tables inside their establishments. Distancing restrictions will continue to apply.

Still wary

Not every bar owner is keen to open their doors at the first opportunity, however.

Tara Tallon, owner of Pat Murphy's pub in Torremolinos, has decided not to open her bar on Monday because it would not be financially viable. Originally from Dublin, Tara and her husband John have owned the bar since 2003, but they are reluctant to open until travel restrictions are lifted.

"We will not be opening because it would cost us money to do so. Our business is 95 per cent tourists, so we will have to play it by ear," Tara said.

The Olive Tree in Coin will also keep its doors shut for at least another two weeks, as owner Tina Mattin is putting her staff and customers' health first.

"I have been asked a lot if we are opening back up but my answer is no. A lot of my clients are of the older generation, so I am not willing to risk their health just yet. We will see what effect opening up slowly in the coming weeks holds, and if everything looks as if it's going well, then we will open end of the month," Tina explained.
By ANI

PYONGYANG: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a verbal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping, praising Beijing for its success in stemming coronavirus spread, Yonhap News Agency reported.

In a message, Kim "congratulated him (Jinping), highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic," according to the Korean Central News Agency.

"Kim Jong Un wished Xi Jinping good health, expressing a conviction that the Chinese party and people would cement the successes made so far and steadily expand them and thus win a final victory under the wise guidance of Xi Jinping," it added.

FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES HERE

The agency did not clarify how the message has been delivered to the Chinese president.

This is a second time Kim has sent a message to Xi with regard to the coronavirus this year. In January, he conveyed his support and unspecified aid for Beijing's fight against the virus.

Last week, Kim Jong-un has made his 'first public appearance' after 20 days of absence.

The report of Kim's illness started doing rounds following his absence at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang on the birthday of late state founder and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, earlier this month.
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Estate agents have seen a surge of interest in rural 'out of city' locations as Britons have been browsing for their dream houses while getting very comfortable working from home.

Upmarket state agent Savills, which has more than 100 offices across the UK, reported a huge rise in enquiries about properties in Winchester in Hampshire, Newbury in Berkshire, Canford Cliffs in Dorset and the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland.

Meanwhile interest in properties in the far-flung Scottish city of Inverness have sky-rocketed by 167 per cent compared to last year and homes on the Shetland islands have seen a 131% rise in online viewers, according to RightMove.

Visits to RightMove were up 20 per cent in general during April as Britons stuck indoors browsed for somewhere to potentially sit out a second wave of the pandemic with more space and a bigger garden.

In what agents at Savills have dubbed Britain's 'rural renaissance', a survey of 700 of their registered buyers and sellers has revealed 49 per cent of Britons believe home working will continue after lockdown, with one in four saying they would favour a country location more than they had previously.

It comes as hundreds of thousands of house sales were stalled due to the crisis after estate agents were forced to close and government minister Michael Gove told people not to exchange contracts.

Londoners tempted to leave the big smoke for a location like Winchester will find their money goes a lot further, with a 1.25m one-bed Mayfair apartment worth the same as a four-bed detached Victoria home in the historic city.

Here's what YOU could buy for around 200,000 in these key locations according to Rightmove:

Kirkmichael, Blairgowrie, Scotland, stunning, detached, four-bedroom property at 235,000

This stunning, detached, four-bedroom property in Kirkmichael, Blairgowrie, is situated just off the road and has a private driveway with enough space for multiple vehicles

The kitchen is spacious and quaint with bright colours and sleek and modern finishings. There is ample storage space and loads of counter room

The kitchen leads onto an open dining area with a quaint fireplace. The property has an authentic feel to it with enough space for a small family

Havelins, Dorset, beautiful two-bedroom cottage at 240,000

This two-bedroom cottage is on the market for 240,000 in Havelins, Dorset. It boasts a thatched roof and quaint windows

The front door leads onto the living room of the property which has a fireplace, acting as a stunning central feature to the room

The rooms of the house are just as ornate and original with wooden beams visible on the ceiling and bright windows letting in ample sunshine

Newbury, Berkshire, two-bedroom loft apartment at 230,000

This two-bedroom loft flat in Newbury is on the market for 230k. It is situated off road making it even more appealing to house-hunters

The open-plan living room and kitchen area is sleek and modern. The real focal point of the room are the stunning steel and wooden beams on the vaulted ceiling

The ceiling features are carried through to the bedrooms with roof windows adding plenty of natural light

The bathroom is sleek and modern with white tiling on the walls and black on the floor. The stainless steel finishings add a futuristic touch

Meanwhile, in London, 220,000 gets you this small studio apartment:

This studio is all you'd get for 220,000 in the capital, compared to prices elsewhere in the UK

Here's what YOU could buy for around 500,000 in these key locations according to Rightmove:

Newbury, Berkshire, three-bed detached home with modern fittings throughout on the edge of the countryside at 500,000

This three-bedroom detached property in Newbury has a private drive with a garage and stylish vines climbing up the sides

The living room is modern and stylish while still being large enough to fit a family. The huge windows offer ample natural light

The bedrooms have been decorated in the same sleek style as the downstairs with light-coloured walls and carpet giving the space an open, breathable finish

The kitchen is a key focal point of this property with white cupboards and cabinets contrasting brilliantly with the mint-green walls

Winchester, Hampshire, three-bed bungalow at 600,000

This three-bedroom bungalow in Winchester, Hampshire, boasts a private drive and ample garden space

The bright, airy living room is really spacious and modern with crisp, clean colours and large windows. The space is ideal for a someone looking for a tranquil retirement

The dining space is chic and modern with stunning views onto the garden. The wooden floors are sleek and easy to clean and there is enough room for hosting

The bathroom has been finished with a modern flare with elegant tiles and a large corner bath. The window offers plenty of natural light

Inverness, Scotland, lavish SEVEN-bedroom home is the city's most expensive at 580,000

This lavish seven-bedroom Victoria detached Bed & Breakfast villa comes with extensive extensions and has a range of original period features. The property features a large private lounge with feature fire and bay window to the front. There also a private bedroom with large en-suite bathroom and a spacious kitchen and a large utility room

North Finchley, London, three-bedroom semi-detached at 600,000

This three-bedroom semi-detached property in desirable north London boasts three bedrooms and a modest front garden

The property has outdoor space - a hugely desirable factor for property hunting in London - but the kitchen is modest and could do with some TLC

The property's living room has floor-to-ceiling windows that let in significant natural light. The built-in wardrobe offers storage and the fireplace would make a stunning centre piece

The property's bedrooms have huge potential and are spacious with high ceilings. The fire place gives the space oodles of character

Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Stunning five-bedroom detached house with huge gardens at 595,000

This stunning property is on the market for less than 600,000 and boasts five bedrooms and these beautiful gardens

The living room has huge amounts of space, perfect for a family, and offers stunning views spanning over hills and fields

The dining room of the property maintains the traditional feel. It offers ample space for hosting and is decorated beautifully

The property is decorated beautifully with an authentic, traditional feel to the interiors. The windows let in plenty of natural light

The huge garden and breath-taking views are a huge selling point for this property. Fields and hills span as far as the eye can see

Inverness, Scotland, Modern five-bed set in the heart of the countryside at 515,000

This four-bedroom detached house in Inverness, is set in the scenic countryside and has a plot size that is approximately 0.17 acres

Here's what YOU could buy for around 1million in these key locations according to Rightmove:

Winchester, Hampshire, modernised five-bedroom home with an entrance hall garden and THREE reception areas at 1,000,000

This five-bedroom property in Winchester comes with three reception rooms, two bathrooms and private parking. The extended home comes with an entrance hall garden, a spacious kitchen/breakfast room with adjacent conservatory, double aspect sitting room with fireplace and dining room on this floor.

Newbury, Berkshire, five-bedroom home with a galleried landing at 900,000

This five-bedroom property in Newbury offers a spacious garden and and has a galleried landing with high ceiling The property also comes with a kitchen/family room, which has French doors providing direct access out to the rear garden, a large sitting room and two en suites. The house is close to the A34 and provides road links to the M4 motorway.

Poole, Dorset, five-bedroom home with panoramic view of Poole Harbour at 1,000,000

This five bedroom detached house is for sale on Rightmove comes with a master suite occupying the entire top floor and offers panoramic views to Poole Harbour

Spacious lounge area that leads onto a conservatory on this five-bed Art Deco style 1million Poole Harbour mansion

Master suite takes up the entire top floor giving panoramic views of the area with a south westerly balcony

A step inside the property reveals a large kitchen area that also offers prospective buyers a dining and seating area

The detached property also offers a lavish cinema room that comes with a comfortable seating area and a carpet

Here's what you could buy for around 2million in these key locations according to Rightmove:

Winchester, Hampshire, four-bed detached complete with its own terrace, 1,850,000

This four-bedroom detached house is currently on the market for just under 2,00,000. The property, which is 3,024 sqft, comes with an impressive kitchen/dining/family room with bi-fold doors to the terrace. There is also a drawing room with wood-burning stove and a separate study should the buyer wish to use it.

Canford Cliffs, Poole, Dorset - Luxury home with access to private marina - 2,000,000

This house located in Dorset can be accessed is designed to appeal to both principal and second home buyers. Prospective buyers will be will able to access of Poole Bay and a number of private Marinas. The property is also close to train links to London

Newbury, Berkshire, four-bed period home on the edge of the countryside for 1,200,000

The period house is a popular residential area on the south west edge of the town. The house, which has four bedrooms in total, is close to the A34 and M4 motorway and is on the edge of attractive open countryside. It also offers a double garage with a large reception room on the ground floor and a separate kitchen.

Meanwhile, in London, this four-bed would cost you around 1million

This four-bed in south-west London would set you back 1 million compared with sprawling properties elsewhere in the UK

Here's what YOU could buy for around 2million according to Rightmove:

Inverness, Scotland, EIGHT-bedroom detached home for 2.3million

This stunning eight-bed home in Inverness, Scotland, is on the market for 2.3million and boasts massive gardens in an idyllic setting

Here's the London complex in which you could have a two-bed flat... for a higher price:

Pictured: The Atrium in north-west London, where a two-bed apartment would set you back 2.5million

Lucian Cook, Savills head of residential research said: 'It is clear that the current crisis has made people think more about the space they live in, the attributes they most value in a home and in some cases, where they want to live, all of which is likely to drive activity at the top end of the market as we come out of lockdown.

While analyst at Savills, Frances Clacy, added: 'Greater space has become a prerequisite for those anticipating increased home working and those with children.

'More outdoor space and access to countryside are also likely to be of greater importance to parents looking for a new home.'

The survey, which comes as Britons across the country remain in lockdown, also found that 39 per cent of buyers who were under the age of 50 displayed an interest to upsize their property.

While those with children attending school also showed an interest to move to the countryside.

Elsewhere, the estate agent Rightmove also reported a noticeable surge in those looking to move to the countryside after comparing property searches last month with April 2019.

Rightmove have seen a rise in property searches in areas such as Inverness, Belgravia and Mayfair

The estate agent found that there was a 167 per cent increase in interest for properties in Inverness

The findings suggested that during the coronavirus lockdown people have been contemplating moves to remote locations by the sea or in the countryside, and have perhaps been inspired by their favourite television shows.

The property company reported a huge increases in searches for properties in Inverness, Shetland, Sandbanks, St. Davids in Haverfordwest, South Devon, Marston Moretaine, Belgravia, Cotswolds, Ullapool and Mayfair.

Inverness and the Shetland Islands in Scotland saw the biggest rise in searches, increasing by 167 per cent and 131 per cent respectively.

The BBC's popular murder-mystery drama Shetland was previously said to have boosted tourism on the islands.

Duncan Chisholm, director of Munro and Noble in Inverness, said: 'The city has been developing quickly in recent years and so the fact that it's still relatively affordable compared to other cities around the UK makes it an appealing place to live.

'Not to mention the amazing scenery, beaches and hillsides that we're fortunate to have on our doorstep.'

Captain Tom Moore's village of Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire also took a spot in the top ten, with a 46 per cent increase, and picturesque St Davids in Pembrokeshire, Wales, saw a 58 per cent rise.

The research also suggests people have been occupying some of their time by browsing through dream million-pound properties in recent weeks.

Sandbanks in Poole, where the average house price is 1.2 million, has seen the third biggest increase in property searches, at 64 per cent.

While Belgravia - also the title of an ITV period drama from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes - has seen a 42 per cent increase in searches, despite the average price tag being upwards of 3 million.

A survey carried out by the estate agents Savills found more than half of prospective buyers with children attending school were looking to move to a countryside location

Steve Isaacs, director of Luxury and Prestige in Sandbanks, said: 'Sandbanks is the ultimate lifestyle location in the UK, though we know there's only a fortunate few who are lucky enough to afford to live in the area.

'It has miles and miles of fabulous beaches.'

Rightmove housing market analyst Miles Shipside added: 'People often use Rightmove to daydream, so it's not surprising to see some of the search areas on the up being the most expensive in the UK.

The top ten places buyers are looking to move to according to Rightmove Inverness Shetland Islands Sandbanks St Davids South Devon Marston Moretaine Belgravia Cotswolds Ullapool Mayfair Advertisement

'The beautiful areas in the far north in the list are likely a mixture of people dreaming of living somewhere more remote, and those seriously thinking about changing their lifestyle after lockdown.

'Locations in Scotland feature three times in the list, and with property prices comparatively affordable compared to others in the top 10, it's highly likely that properties in these areas will find buyers more quickly when restrictions are eased.

'As well as the UK public expressing their passion for property, there seems to be a growing desire to find a quiet place to live.'

The latest figures come as estate agents look to bring staff back to work as people become desperate to move house and London faces a potential 10 per cent slump in house prices.

The London agency Chestertons has seen some of its lettings staff back at work after noticing a 28 per cent increase in requests to view its rental properties after the lockdown.

In March, Savills predicted that the pandemic would lead to a drop in London house values of up to 10 per cent, bringing the average price from 483,922 down to 435,529, Homes & Property reported.

Are you dreaming of a house like this in lockdown? Two in five Britons want village life and an escape to the country after being stuck at home

Where people would like to live in the future has been changed by the coronavirus outbreak, it has been claimed.

We crave bigger homes and prize open green space and gardens more than before, according to a new survey by estate agents Savills, perhaps unsurprisingly after 45 days and counting at home during the coronavirus lockdown.

In particular, village locations in the British countryside have become so desirable that 40 per cent of house hunters say this is the type of area they would now like to live in - shifting focus away from traditional favourites, such as walking distance to the station.

For many this will mean getting more space for the same amount of money, but even with homes tending to be cheaper out of cities and an expectation that house prices will fall, homes like the five dream properties we have picked with Savills' help will remain just a dream for most.

Buyers crave large private outdoor spaces during lockdown, such as the one found at this Berkshire home. However, with a 10million price tag for this property, most will need to set their sights lower that this dream property

Those looking for a move out of the city are expecting to get more for their money after lockdown. More than half of the home owners quizzed by Savills said they thought house prices would fall and that they would have less to spend on a new home, with expectations of a 10 per cent decline in property values.

Its survey said that 71 per cent of younger buyers crave more outdoor space and rural locations, while older home owners are more committed to downsizing.

The findings also suggested that 39 per cent of those aged under 50 now want a bigger home.

'Everyone is spending more time at home and are realising they need more space,' explained Savills' Frances Clacy.

For some, this would mean moving away from the city where their office is based, and having a longer commute. But widespread working from home during lockdown has somewhat changed the perception of how viable this is, says the estate agent, with more people believing they could move further out.

This seven-bed house in Pulborough, West Sussex, has plenty of space outdoors and indoors but again that comes at a price - a cool 3,695,000 for this slice of country living

Open interiors: The stunning Pulborough house is for sale with Savills, which released a report suggesting more buyers are now craving an escape to the country

By moving out of town, buyers are likely to be able to afford more space as prices tend to be lower.

The average price of a property in London is 671,989, compared to less than half that amount at 319,967 for the country as a whole, according to property website Zoopla.

Commuters say they would be prepared to consider such a move, nearer to the countryside, even if they couldn't work from home. Savills said that as many as one in six say they are now ready for a longer commute.

Some things won't change, however, and schooling remains an issue. A village location could potentially be an problem for parents concerned about getting their children into local secondary schools, as many base admissions criteria on distance.

However, this didn't stop 54 per cent of survey respondents with school age children saying that they now find the idea of a countryside location more attractive than before the lockdown.

'Greater space has become a prerequisite for those anticipating increased home working and those with children,' added Ms Clacy.

'More outdoor space and access to countryside are also likely to be of greater importance to parents looking for a new home.'

This seven-bed house in Linton, Cambridgeshire, sits in gardens of more than an acre and is for sale at 2,295,000, via Savills. The village is on the Cambridgeshire and Essex border and is only a short distance from employment in Cambridge and the much-loved market town of Saffron Walden

The Linton house has a one-bedroom annexe and manages to combine beautiful gardens with the River Granta running through the grounds. The Queen Anne Grade II Listed mansion has 7,500 square feet of accommodation

Savills surveyed almost 700 buyers and sellers amid the lockdown, between April 21 and 27, to see how attitudes to moving are changing.

Buyers' choices are not only being affected by the size of the property and its location. The amount of time spent in lockdown is also changing how much buyers are willing to spend on a new home.

Just over half said they believe their home will have fallen in value, while a similar number also said they would now be willing to pay a lower amount for a property to move to.

Expectations were for prices to fall by 10 per cent or less and a surprising number expected resilience with 45 per cent saying they do not expect the selling price of their existing home to have changed as a result of the virus. While 44 per cent said the amount they are willing to spend on a new property will not change.

Of those questioned, 20 per cent of respondents felt that their budget to buy a new home might fall by more than 10 per cent. A small optimistic cohort of 5 per cent said they believe the value of their home could have risen.

Savills' Lucian Cook added: 'This suggests there is likely to be some downward pressure on pricing in the short term, coupled with a period of much lower activity.

'Reassuringly, the survey suggests that buyers and sellers broadly agree on how they believe the lockdown has impacted values, and this alignment should help underpin the recovery as we come out of lockdown and buyer caution begins to lift.'

Time outside: This four-bed house in Marlow, Buckinghamshire has a large landscaped garden and a 2,995,000 price tag and while it looks like a country house and has landscaped gardens it is actually in the town itself

The Marlow property offers plenty of space or eating outside with the family surrounded by the green gardens and is a short walk from the River Thames and the beautiful English countryside in the area around Marlow, Hambleden and Henley

Property website Rightmove also reported recently that a growing number of potential buyers wanted to ditch big cities like London, Birmingham or Edinburgh for more rural locations.

At this point a year ago, just over 40 per cent of Londoners getting in touch with estate agents were looking to move outside the capital. Since lockdown, this figure has risen to 51 per cent, according to Rightmove's latest findings.

There seems to be a similar trend growing in Edinburgh, where 60 per cent of residents are now looking to move outside the city, up from 53 per cent at the same time a year ago.

A similar picture is also emerging in Birmingham, where half of residents looking to buy a new home are now looking outside of the city, up from around 45 per cent at the same point last year.

Cities like Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and Bristol are starting to see the same pattern emerge.
Regulatory News:

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) ("PSH") today announced that it has purchased, through PSH's agent, Jefferies International Limited ("Jefferies"), the following number of PSH's Public Shares of no par value (ISIN Code: GG00BPFJTF46) (the "Shares"):

Trading Venue: Euronext Amsterdam Ticker: PSH Date of Purchase: 8 May 2020 Number of Public Shares purchased: 47,779 Shares Highest Price Paid Per Share: 21.00 USD Lowest Price Paid Per Share: 20.70 USD Average Price Paid Per Share: 20.88 USD

PSH will hold these Public Shares in Treasury. The net asset value per Public Share related to this buyback is 31.02 USD 24.93 GBP which was calculated as of 5 May 2020 (the "Relevant NAV"). After giving effect to the above buyback, PSH has 198,711,866 Public Shares outstanding, or 204,539,318 Public Shares calculated on a fully diluted basis (assuming that all Management Shares had been converted into Public Shares at the Relevant NAV). Excluded from the shares outstanding are 12,244,884 Public Shares held in Treasury. The prices per Public Share were calculated by Jefferies.

The number of PSH Management Shares and the one special voting share (held by PS Holdings Independent Voting Company Limited) have not been affected.

About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd.

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American companies.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005444/en/

Contacts:

Media

Camarco

Ed Gascoigne-Pees Hazel Stevenson +44 020 3757 4989, media-pershingsquareholdings@camarco.co.uk
Belarus Election Commission Confirms Presidential Election In August

May 07, 2020

Belarus will hold its presidential election between August 9 and August 30, the chairwoman of the country's Central Election Commission (CEC) said on May 7.

CEC head Lidziya Yarmoshina told Russia's Interfax news agency that her commission will ask lawmakers to select a specific date within that interval.

Earlier in the day, the chief of the press service of the House of Representatives of Belarus, Vitaliy Ermolovich, told reporters that the legislature would hold an extraordinary session on May 8 to decide the date of the election.

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said on May 4 that the presidential poll will be held "in a timely manner in accordance with the constitution before August 30. He also repeated his earlier statements confirming that he will seek another term in office.

Lukashenka has ruled the country of 9.5 million people since 1994 and is currently serving his fifth presidential term. Belarus abolished presidential term limits in a referendum in 2004.

Based on reporting by Interfax, Belapan, and BelTA

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-election- commission-confirms-presidential-election -in-august/30599642.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.

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San Francisco, May 8 : Microsoft has come out in the open against ecommerce giant Amazon's Cloud arm, slamming Amazon Web Services (AWS) for once again challenging the US government's decision to award $10 billion Pentagon Cloud project to Satya Nadella-run enterprise - this time out of view from the public and directly with the US Department of Defense (DoD).

AWS has filed a bid protest directly to the Department of Defense, challenging "ambiguous aspects" of the Pentagon's revised solicitation for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract given to Microsoft in October last year.

AWS' fresh challenge comes after the Department of Defense's Inspector General in mid-April said that Microsoft's win of the prestigious JEDI contract was not influenced by US President Donald Trump as alleged by Amazon, and was completely legal.

In a statement, Frank X. Shaw who is Corporate Vice President, Communications at Microsoft said that this latest roadblock is disappointing but not surprising.

"We received notice on Tuesday that Amazon has filed yet another protest - this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD - about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. If their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court, it's likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time," emphasized Shaw.

He slammed AWS, saying that the only thing that's certain about Amazon's new complaint is that it will force American warfighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need - "perpetuating Amazon's record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs".

Shaw said that the latest filing with DoD is another example of Amazon trying to bog down JEDI in complaints, litigation and other delays designed to force a do-over to rescue its failed bid.

"Think about it: Amazon spent the better part of last month fighting in court to prevent the DoD from taking a 120-day pause to address a concern flagged by the judge and reevaluate the bids. Amazon fought for a complete re-do and more delay. Amazon lost. The judge granted the DoD's request for a timeout in the litigation to address her concerns," explained Shaw.

AWS earlier this year sought 'preliminary injunction' from the court to temporarily block Microsoft from starting work on the JEDI project.

Amazon also filed a suit with the US Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision.

In its complaint against the US government decision, Amazon alleged Trump abused his position to put "improper pressure" on decision-makers for personal gains and show his hatred towards Jeff Bezos who owns The Washington Post.

Shaw further said: "From the DoD's independent Inspector General's report, to the court's granting of a preliminary injunction, to refusing to even give the DoD a chance to address court's narrowly scoped concerns, you have to ask, When will enough be enough for Amazon? When will they say that they've been heard?" As AWS spokesperson was quoted as saying in media reports that the company is committed to ensuring it receives a fair and objective review on an award decision that the court found to be flawed.

"AWS repeatedly sought clarity from the DoD around ambiguous aspects of the amended solicitation and the DoD refused to answer our questions. We simply want to ensure a common understanding of the DoD's requirements and eliminate ambiguity that could impact a fair evaluation," said the spokesperson.
COLUMBIA  Restaurants across South Carolina on Monday can reopen their dining rooms, which almost two months ago were closed by Gov. Henry McMaster in hopes of containing the coronavirus.

McMaster on Friday wiped out his earlier order, allowing restaurants to again welcome guests without restriction, although he strongly urged their owners to comply with guidelines prepared by the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association.

Those guidelines, issued in conjunction with the reopening of outdoor dining this past Monday, suggest restaurants operate at no more than 50 percent of permitted occupancy.

They also recommend spacing tables at least 6 feet apart if possible, limiting tables to eight people and rearranging bars and waiting areas to create 6 feet of space between guests.

"This virus still presents a serious threat to South Carolinians, but I have faith in the people of our state and their ability to act responsibly and in the best interest of the communities they live in, McMaster said in a statement announcing that the return of dine-in service was just three days away.

McMaster said he would likely address reopening gyms and salons on Monday.

Restaurants were the first businesses McMaster ordered to close to try to stem COVID-19 infections. His March 17 order also banned gatherings of more than 50 people at publicly-owned sites and came one day after schools statewide were forced to shutter.

Mandated closures and limitations on travel and outings increased as confirmed infections climbed. But McMaster began rolling back restrictions April 16 by reopening boat landings and ramps, while still barring tie-ups, beaching and more than four people in the same household on the same boat.

His order Friday also ends those remaining boating restrictions, effective immediately, with one caveat. McMaster noted law enforcement officers can still arrest people in groups posing a threat to public health, "whether that's three or 23 or 103."

In late April conversations with restaurant industry leaders, McMaster had pressed them to consider reopening in time for Mothers Day, but his suggestion was rebuffed on the grounds that restaurateurs needed more time to restock their inventories, recall and retrain employees and obtain the supplies needed to keep their workers and guests safe.

McMaster's coronavirus reopening advisory group also concluded it would be a bad idea to resume inside dining for what's typically one of the industry's busiest days of the year.

Brooks Reitz of Charleston-based hospitality group Neighbourhood, which includes Leons and Melfis, said earlier this week that decided against reopening his restaurants, despite having ample and attractive patio space, because the sped-up timeline struck him as at odds with proper hospitality.

There are currently too many unknowns and too many gaps, many with potentially serious downsides, for us to feel comfortable opening at this time, he said, adding that it would take weeks to experiment with seating schemes to maintain social distance and reservation systems to eliminate lines.

Of the opportunity to reopen, Reitz said, Just because we can, doesnt mean we will.

Michael Shemtov of Charleston's Butcher & Bee, who also declined to open patio seating immediately after it was greenlighted, earlier this week said, Almost every restaurant owner I know would like a few more weeks. He's planning to convert the restaurant's patio into a picnic area for takeout orders in the coming days.

Jessica Shillato of Columbias Spotted Salamander this week decided against reopening her lunch cafe out of concern for her employees' safety. "Im nervous about people," she said. "Some people, they just dont care about other peoples safety and wellness.

While she initially thought the reopening announcement was too soon, she said talking with other business owners made her more sympathetic to the short notice.

If they dont open now they will lose their business, she said. Like I said, Im on the fence about it, I just feel really bad about those that have to reopen to survive.

By Monday, 21 states will have reopened restaurant dining rooms with varying degrees of restrictions. South Carolina is one of only six states permitting patrons to sit at bars.

Texas and Florida both capped restaurants at 25 percent of occupancy, but S.C. restaurant association president Bobby Williams said his group recommended the 50 percent figure because those owners held to 25 percent capacity "are just dying on the vine."

The question remains how many people are eager to dine out while COVID-19 is still raging, with a daily national death toll in the four figures. Novelty, pleasant weather and the Cinco de Mayo holiday helped populate Lowcountry patios earlier this week, but a study released Friday by research firm Datassential shows 55 percent of Americans would "definitely avoid" going to restaurants if given the chance.

When Charleston City Council on Wednesday discussed whether to turn the states restaurant guidelines into an ordinance, which would allow the city to enforce its provisions, councilman Peter Shahid pointed out that reopening restaurants alone wont ensure a steady flow of business to them.

You can open a door, but you (need) a mechanism for consumers to feel comfortable coming back to that establishment, he said.

Reitz's decision to keep his restaurants dark for another month stemmed partly from a lack of confidence in the measures contributing to that mechanism.

We are waiting on specific requirements in terms of health, capacity and protocols," he said. "They remain too fluid, and we need the city and state to be in lockstep."

Council is slated to take up the topic again at its Tuesday meeting.

Absent a local ordinance, restaurant owners are unlikely to face sanctions if they don't abide by the guidelines, which McMaster referred to as "suggestions" and "recommendations." He said the state is counting on restaurant owners to "do something about it" if they witness "dangerous conduct."

"If law enforcement sees a situation where courtesies are not being taken, they can step in and disperse the crowd and, if necessary, issue citations," he said. "Theyll know it when they see it."

Asked if reopening restaurants at this point is safe, State Epidemiologist Linda Bell stressed that South Carolinians must continue to practice social distancing, regardless of whether they're seated in a restaurant.

"There is concern that the virus will spread if we dont wear masks," she said. "As the openings are occurring, we see people participating in behaviors we know put them at risk: Face-to-face contact with someone without a mask puts you at risk."

Businesses that must remain closed include gyms, salons, tattoo parlors and other businesses that require people to be in close contact, although McMaster said he would likely address them on Monday. He earlier this week said he recognizes that people are ready for a professional haircut.

Hairstylists were hoping that announcement would be Friday. Were ready, said SueEllen Castros, one of four stylists at Willow Salon on James Island. People are banging down the doors at this point.

Shes been booking appointments on the hope she can reopen her doors.

Im totally booked next week, she said. Now shell again have to postpone her bookings by another week.

She said its not fair that other businesses can open their doors and she cant.

Her salon is set up for greater-than-suggested spacing between clients. She and her colleagues are ready with masks, wipes and sanitizer. And new capes for customers are just waiting for the customers to be able to walk in, she said.

We need to get back to work, she said. Its been almost six weeks.

Becky Baker of Myrtle Beach said shes repeatedly written McMaster to push for the reopening of salons. The 75-year-old said the inability to get her hair cut once a month, as usual, has sent her into serious depression.

My hair grows like a weed and it just looks terrible. There's nothing I can do with it, she said. This is not a vanity thing.  I want my beauty shop opened!

She said she recognizes her age puts her at higher risk of developing complications from COVID-19, but she considers herself a germophobe anyway and is careful to wear a mask and keep sanitizer handy.

As long as things are clean, Im not worried about it, Baker said. And at this point in my life, I just want a haircut.

David Clarey contributed to this report.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky arrived on a working trip to Luhansk region and paid tribute to the victims of World War II in the town of Milove divided by Ukraine-Russia border.

"In Milove, the President visited the memorial complex "Ukraine to Liberators." Volodymyr Zelensky honored the memory of those killed in World War II," the Office of the President reports.

The Head of State laid flowers to the Eternal Flame and put icon lamps near the sculptural composition as part of the memorial complex in the town center. Next to the monument, there is a mass grave where hundreds of known and unknown soldiers, who had been killed during the liberation of Milove, were buried. Overall 1,066 names of fallen heroes are engraved on 27 memorial plaques near the mass grave.

The village of Pivnivka is located not far from this place. The village was the first inhabited locality where the expulsion of the Nazi occupiers from Ukrainian land began in December 1942.

On May 8, Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation to commemorate the victims of World War II.

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08.05.2020 LISTEN

Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi, and Kasoa were put under lockdown for three weeks. The purpose according to the president was to contain the spread of the coronavirus, enhance contact tracing, and do mass testing.

The lockdown affected movement i.e only essential workers were allowed to move out to work.

On April 19, President Nana Akufo-Addo in his bi-weekly address to the nation on the state of COVID-19 lifted the restriction of movement in Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi, and Kasoa. This meant that people could go on with their regular activities.

Life returned to normal as traders and other non-essential workers in the large informal sector had the opportunity to continue with their economic activities by continuously practicing the preventive measures of regular hand washing, nose masking, and social distancing.

Increase In The Use Of Nose Mask And Decline In Social Distance

Prior to and during the restriction of movement, the majority of Ghanaians were very regular with hand washing and practiced social distance. The demand for hand sanitizers were so much that most companies switched to producing sanitizers in bulk.

The narrative changed right after the restrictions were removed. People felt life has gotten back to normal hence the disregard for the precautionary measures.

The crave for nose masks increased and has become a trend. Everyone is in a nose mask now but the use of hand sanitizers has reduced drastically. For social distancing, it doesn't exist again. Supermarkets are packed and people seem not to care again.

I visited a grocery shop earlier today. I was refused entry by the gatekeeper because I didn't have my mask on. I picked my mask from my backpack and fixed it on. I entered the shop and realized everyone had taken their mask off because of heat. The place was full of people and there was no room for social distancing.

I moved out, visited a couple of grocery shops and the same thing replicated. Some even had a notice in front of the shops that reminded people to put on a mask before entering but social distancing was disregarded completely.

If society does not change its approach towards the social distancing practices, then Ghana is really in for huge trouble. The disease spreads when people come into close contact with each other. Wearing a mask is not the solution to the problem  all measures should be practiced religiously.
Billionaire philanthropist Melinda Gates has graded the Trump administration a D-minus for its coronavirus response, citing how more funding towards vaccines and testing were needed in the United States.

The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars towards public health research, rated Donald Trump and his administration low because they lacked coordination for the national response to Covid-19.

You know, if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing, Mrs. Gates told Politico.

We would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and youd be doing contact tracing. And we would be able to start thinking about slowly, slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways, but we have a lack of a coordinated effort. Thats just the truth, across the United States.

In comparison, she thought the state governors were stepping up with 50 different homegrown state solutions to handle the novel virus.

Funding towards vaccines and testing was absolutely recommended by Mrs Gates as a proactive response. Organisations should also be looking into funding vaccine development, she added.

The Trump administration was also criticised for its response to the pandemic on an international stage.

What were just beginning to see in Africa, youre going to see a lot more food insecurity there and a lot more health issues, Mrs Gates said. And when you have that there, it also bounces back into Europe, into the United States. So far, more is needed for the international response, which the US really has been lacking in its response completely on the international front.

Her critical comments come as White House spokesperson Judd Deere has defined the presidents response as an unprecedented approach when working with state governors.

The ongoing response to this global pandemic has been about close coordination and partnerships with State and local governments, he said.

The White House has been working with governors and their teams since January on this whole-of-government response, including supply chains, testing, data-driven guidelines for social distancing, and now a responsible plan to open America again.
Families in Ecuador are now searching for the missing bodies of their deceased relatives from hospitals to morgues, according to a recently published article.

Dead Bodies Have Been Piling Up Everywhere In Ecuador

Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, admitted that they were not able to prepare for the impact of COVID-19 on their healthcare system. Now, the corpses of COVID-19 patients can be found everywhere.

Recently, it was reported that dead bodies were abandoned in hospitals, left decomposed inside homes, and in some cases were wrapped in plastic and cardboard and were left on the streets.

A video also went viral after a woman begged the government to recover the body of her husband in her house. She cannot do what she needs to do because she is in quarantine. The government insisted that they will come to transport the body.

This time, the situation in Guayaquil is becoming worst. More families grieve not because they don't know where to have corpses of their dead relatives will be buried, but they cried because the dead bodies of their loved ones are missing.

Dead Bodies Are Now Missing

Arturo Ramos, whose father died due to COVID-19, shared his experience about searching for the body of his father, Flavio.

He said that he rushed his father to the hospital because Flavio was gasping and had lost consciousness. When they arrived at the hospital, the hospital staff told him the facility was already full.

The doctor informed him that there are no beds for patients. Arturo also said that if they were told that if they stay at the door, a guard will be called to kick them out of the hospital.

After four hours of searching for hospitals that would admit his father, he ended up in General Guasmo Sur Hospital. It was the eleventh hospital he tried. Arturo recounted that his father was in a room with two patients who were already dead.

On April 1 at around 9:30 in the morning, he stepped out of the hospital to have some breakfast. He said that he was just gone for 15 minutes and when he returned his father already died. He said: "No one was with him when he died."

When he returned a day after his father died, authorities told him that they could not find his father's corpse. Instead, he was told by the authorities to go the different morgues and try to locate through the unidentified remains himself.

He started searching for the remains of his father. He said: "[Inside the morgue] there were bodies stacked one on top of each other. Going into that room, it's like hell." He also added that dead bodies inside the morgue were separated by those who have been identified and those who had not.

He went into different morgues and had searched for roughly 250 corpses, but still, he had not found the remains of his father. Now, it's been almost a month, but still, his father's remains were not found. The worst, in his days of searching the missing corpse of his father, last week, he tested positive for the virus.

This is just one of the cases in Ecuador where bodies of dead people went missing. There are still others until now who are searching for the remains of their loved ones. To avoid infections as what happened to Arturo, the government created a website where relatives can search the names of the missing body of their loved ones.
Vietnams Foreign Affairs Ministry has opposed Chinas unilateral East Sea "fishing ban" and asked Beijing not to complicate the situation further.

In the context of the current international and regional situation, Vietnam has asked China to desist from further complicating the situation in the East Sea, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said in a statement Friday.

The East Sea is internationally known as the South China Sea.

Vietnam has full legal basis and historical evidence to assert its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands, as well as its legal rights over its waters in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), she said.

As a country alongside the East Sea and a member of the 1982 UNCLOS, Vietnam has sovereignty and jurisdiction in its territorial waters established in accordance with the Convention, and has the right to enjoy other legitimate interests at sea as stipulated in the Convention, Hang affirmed.

On April 30, the Hainan Provincial Department of Agriculture announced that Chinas annual "fishing ban" on the South China Sea has begun on May 1 and would last until August 16, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported, citing the South China Sea branch of the China Coast Guard.

The ban would apply to certain sea areas of the South China Sea that encompass parts of the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands.

No fishing activities are allowed in sea areas under Chinas sovereignty within the time period, except in certain cases, according to the Hainan department. During the ban, China would perform safety checks for fishing equipment and vessels, as well as instruct its fisherpeople on relevant policies and skills, it said.

Soon after, the Vietnam Fisheries Society expressed opposition Monday to Chinas unilateral decision, saying "the fishing ban has no legal value over sea areas under Vietnams sovereignty. Vietnamese fishermen have the right to fish in sea areas under Vietnams sovereignty."

China has been issuing similar "fishing bans" every year in recent times and Vietnam has consistently condemned and rejected such acts. China claims the bans seek to promote sustainable fisheries development and improve marine ecology.

China had seized the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam by force in 1974, and has been illegally occupying it since.

In 2012 it established the so-called Sansha City with the archipelago's Woody Island as its seat. The "city" also covers a number of reefs in the Spratly Islands that China seized by force in 1988 and the Scarborough Shoal.
SANTA CLARITA, Calif., May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 28, Election Integrity Project, California (EIPCa) sent notice to California's Secretary of State (SOS) of the state's failure to comply with federal voter list maintenance laws. EIPCa's report, based on its analysis of California's official voter registration file, includes evidence that the coronavirus-related proposal to mail ballots to all California voters has heightened the risks to the integrity of the November 2020 election:

Over 458,000 California registrants who have likely died or moved will be mailed ballots . These registrants have not voted or updated their registrations since November 2008 or prior. Though likely deceased or relocated, they remain classified as "active" status. Almost 178,000 have never voted. Almost 2,000 have birthdates indicating they are 105+ years old.



. These registrants have not voted or updated their registrations since or prior. Though likely deceased or relocated, they remain classified as "active" status. Almost 178,000 have voted. Almost 2,000 have birthdates indicating they are 105+ years old. Over 38,000 Californians appear to have more than one voter registration. 24,000 of them will be mailed two or more ballots under an all-mail scenario, because they have more than one active registration each.

Mailing hundreds of thousands of ballots to non-existent addressees opens the door to election crime. Mass "seeding" of unclaimed ballots, coupled with ballot "harvesting" by unscrupulous operatives, is a significant risk to the integrity of the November election. Mailing two or more ballots each to thousands of duplicated registrants allows-- even "invites" --voters to vote twice. California's SOS has already confirmed double voting in the March 3 primary by duplicated registrants who were mailed two ballots each.

"Federal law requires the state to maintain voter lists free of those who have died or relocated and to remove duplicated registrations," said EIPCa President Linda Paine. "This is especially critical under all-mail voting. Unless ineligible registrations are removed, hundreds of thousands of unclaimed ballots will likely go into circulation without chain of custody protections, due to state-sanctioned ballot harvesting. Defective laws and mismanaged voter rolls continue to risk the integrity of California's November election."

EIPCa's letter asks the SOS to work with the counties to investigate and remove all registrations found to be ineligible so they are not automatically mailed ballots.

SOURCE EIPCa

Related Links

www.eip-ca.com


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State Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon unveiled the plan Wednesday as she announced that schools in Maryland would be closed for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year. She called it a comprehensive plan designed as not a mandate but as guidance for school systems as they begin to consider how they will bring students and educators back.
Ride sharing services (Representative Image)

The coronavirus pandemic has gutted the so-called sharing economy. Its most valuable companies, which started the year by promising that they would soon become profitable, now say consumer demand has all but vanished.

It is not likely to return anytime soon.

In earnings reports this week, Uber and Lyft disclosed the depth of the financial damage. The companies said their ride-hailing businesses all but collapsed in March, the last month of the first quarter, as shelter-in-place orders spread through Europe and the United States.

To track all live updates from the coronavirus pandemic, click here

The red ink extends beyond ride hailing. Home-sharing company Airbnb, which investors valued at $31 billion, had planned to go public this year. Instead, the company has slashed costs and raised emergency funding, and on May 5 laid off 1,900 employees, about 25 percent of its staff. It also reduced its revenue forecast for this year to half of what it brought in last year.

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

While we know Airbnbs business will fully recover, the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short-lived, Brian Chesky, Airbnbs Chief Executive, wrote in a memo to employees.

The companies, founded on the notion that they should become as big as possible as quickly as possible and worry about making a profit somewhere down the line, now face an uncertain future. And their timelines for turning a profit appear  for now  to have been tossed aside.

Even when people return to the office and start travelling, the pandemic could change how they behave for years to come. Thirty percent of gig-economy revenue could disappear over the next one to two years, with a portion of it unlikely to return, said Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities.

Based on our analysis of the gig economy and the overall pie of consumers, unfortunately, theres a slice that  until theres a vaccine  will not get in a ride-sharing vehicle or use an Airbnb, Ives said.

On May 5, there was another threat to Uber and Lyft: Californias attorney general sued the companies, claiming that they misclassified their drivers as independent contractors. If the lawsuit is successful, the companies could have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and back wages for drivers.

Airbnb faces a different challenge. How will hosts  most of them offering rentals as a side business  deal with virus safety? In an effort to bolster confidence in its listings, the company announced a set of new cleaning standards for its rentals in April. Guests can also opt for a 72- or 24-hour vacancy period before they enter.

There is not much to look forward to in the current quarter for the companies, according to financial analysts. Ives said he expected Ubers revenue to contract 69 percent and Lyfts 66 percent during the period, which covers April through June.

Lyft said rides on its service fell nearly 80 percent in late March and remained down 75 percent in mid-April. In May, passengers began to return cautiously to Lyft, but rides were still down 70 percent, Lyft executives said on a May 6 earnings call with financial analysts.

If passengers continued to stay away from the service at similar rates, Lyft predicted it would lose nearly $360 million on an adjusted basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and other expenses, during the current quarter. Its adjusted loss in the first quarter was $97.4 million.

These are the hard truths were facing, Logan Green, Lyfts Chief Executive, said on May 6. In late April, Lyft laid off 17 percent of its employees. Executives took a 30 percent pay cut, and employee pay was trimmed 10 percent.

On May 7, Uber said revenue in the first quarter grew 14 percent from the same quarter last year, but the companys losses ballooned 190 percent to $2.9 billion. That deficit was largely driven by a $2.1 billion loss caused by its investments in international ride-hailing businesses, like Grab and Didi, that are also experiencing low demand because of the virus.

I wont sugarcoat it. COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on rides, Dara Khosrowshahi, Ubers Chief Executive, said on May 7 in a call with investors. Use of Ubers ride service was down 80 percent in April, he said. But Uber saw a bright spot in its food delivery, which grew 89 percent since the previous year, excluding India.

Although Uber has not yet given a new date by which it expects to become profitable, Khosrowshahi said the pandemic will impact our timeline by quarters, not years. Before the outbreak, Uber said it would be profitable, excluding some costs, by the end of this year.

Uber laid off 14 percent of its employees Wednesday as it cut 3,700 people from its recruiting and customer service organisations.

Khosrowshahi will not take a salary for the rest of the year. He said in an email to remaining employees, seen by The New York Times, that the company continued to look for ways to cut costs and may eliminate more jobs over the next two weeks.

While Uber Eats, the food delivery service, has experienced increased demand and restaurant sign-ups in some markets, the company also shut down Uber Eats in several international markets where it had been burning cash and laid off 50 employees from that division.

Financial analysts expect the companies to begin to recover as consumers return to work. They are still sitting on a lot of money. Uber has $9 billion, and Lyft has more than $2 billion. Before the virus, Airbnb had $3 billion in cash on its balance sheet; since then, it has raised $1 billion in funding and secured a $1 billion term loan.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here

Despite the downturn in business, Lyfts stock was up more than 20 percent on May 7 as it exceeded investors expectations for revenue in the first quarter and reassured them with its layoffs last month that it would cut costs. Ubers stock was up more than 8 percent in after-hours trading on May 7.

All investors are trying to figure out industries that the pandemic will permanently transform for the better or permanently transform for the worse, said Tom White, a Senior Research Analyst with financial firm DA Davidson.

c.2020 The New York Times Company
" " Karl Marx is considered by many as the man whose ideas spurred on authoritarian communist regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere. HowStuffWorks

One quick glance at Karl Marx's curriculum vitae says a lot. Economist, philosopher, journalist, sociologist, political theorist. Historian. Add to that socialist, communist (in the original meaning of the word) and revolutionary, and that's just a start.

Karl Marx was one of the most respected minds of the 19th century. His meditations on how societies work, and how they should work, have informed and challenged humans for more than 150 years.

Yet to the uninitiated, Marx may be only a bushy-mugged symbol of revolution, the Father of Communism, the hater of capitalism. He is considered by many, especially in the West, as the man whose ideas spurred on authoritarian communist regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere.

That, again, is selling the man short because it's not entirely right.

"Viewed positively, Marx is a far-seeing prophet of social and economic developments and an advocate of the emancipatory transformation of state and society," writes Jonathan Sperber in "Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life." "From a negative viewpoint, Marx is one of those most responsible for the pernicious and evil features of the modern world."

If nothing else, Karl Heinrich Marx was a keen observer of the human condition. He was a deep thinker with bold ideas about how to make life better.

"Marx himself was first and foremost a kind of scientist," says Lawrence Dallman, who teaches a course on Marx and philosophy at the University of Chicago and is the co-author of a chapter on Marx and Marxism in "The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism." "He was a student of reality. But he himself struggled throughout the course of his career with how exactly to put his ideas to politics."

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Growing Up Karl Marx

For the truly uninitiated it's important to note that, despite his one-time lofty standing in the former Soviet Union, Marx was born in Trier, in the Kingdom of Prussia, in 1818. That's what's now known as the Rhineland area of Western Germany. After the failed German revolution of 1848, Marx fled to London, where he died in 1883. He's buried beneath a large tomb in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Marx grew up privileged, the son of well-off and liberal parents, in an ancient town that had been racked for decades before his birth by war and revolution. That upheaval  cultural, religious, and political  shaped his parents and was a big part of young Marx's upbringing.

Later, Marx attended universities, studying law and philosophy, where he became engaged to (and later married) a Prussian baroness, Jenny von Westphalen. The two met in their hometown of Trier, while teenagers. It was while studying philosophy and law that Marx was introduced to the works of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas he used to later form his take on communism.

Marx began a career as a journalist in his early 20s, writing for radical newspapers in Cologne and in Paris. Throughout, he consorted with other liberal-minded philosophers and, by his mid-20s, met and collaborated with one of the major influences in his life, Friedrich Engels. It was Engels who convinced Marx that society's working class would be the instrument to fuel revolutions and bring about a more fair and just society.

In 1848, the two published a pamphlet that would be the basis for a new political movement: "The Communist Manifesto."

In 1883, after Marx's death, Engels summed up the main idea in The Communist Manifesto:

[T]hat economic production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles.

"Marx was always concerned to understand the real underlying causes of social phenomena, the events and institutions that shape the social world," explains Dallman. "Marx wanted to dig down beneath the appearances and see what was really going on. Early on in his career, he thought that the best arena to do that in was philosophy. And then as time went on, he transitioned more into the social sciences.

"What's most important about Marx is that he very much had an engineering mentality about society. He wanted to know what makes it work and how, if we want to change it, do we change it. What are the levers that we have to pull?"

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Communism vs. Capitalism

Marx's 1847 economics work, "Capital. A Critique of Political Economy," a takedown of capitalism that decried the exploitation of the working class, crystallized a debate  one that continues today  between the West's ruling social and economic theory, capitalism, and Marx's idea of communism. To many, it's a fight that pits rich versus poor; bourgeoisie versus proletariat; ruling class versus workers. It is even more than that to those who debate it: It's right versus wrong, an argument about the best path to a perfect society.

But that, of course, is criminally simplistic and doesn't get Marx's thinking right.

"Above all else, the association that people have with Marx, that he's some utopian, pie of sky, dreaming up a perfect world that is free of all the nastiness we live in now ... really, that couldn't be further from the truth," Dallman says. "As I said, Marx had a kind of engineering mindset. He was, probably of all the major figures in the history of political thought, the most practical, the most realistic. He was the most concerned with what is really possible in the real world."

What Marx defined as communism  boiled down, a society that produces goods only for human need, not for profit, and in which there is no master-slave/royalty-peasants/owner-worker relationship (and therefore no need to overthrow anybody)  certainly clashes with the materialism of capitalism. But it's a long way from what many see as communism, too.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, and later under Joseph Stalin's reign, some of Marx's ideas (along with those of Vladimir Lenin) were used to build a new empire. Millions were killed along the way. Similarly, millions died in China under the rule of Mao Zedong's communist party.

"It's hard to even talk about what Marx thought of communism without dragging in all the weight from Soviet Russia and communist China," Dallman says. "And, obviously, a lot of people hold Marx responsible for that."

" " Karl Marx and his daughter Jenny, a left-wing journalist and her fathers secretary, in 1869. Public Domain

Clearly, authoritarian rules like Stalin's and Mao's were not what Marx had in mind. It's important to note, too, that Marx did not hate capitalism. Far from it. He actually saw some virtue in the system. He saw it as a necessary precursor to communism. He envisioned some of the technological challenges  automation unseating workers, for example  that are true today.

"Marx was very impressed with the progressive character of capitalism. By forcing people from all different walks of life into the same workplaces, capitalism breaks down the old divides between communities," Dallman says. "And so things like race and gender and religion divide people less, the more people are forced to see each other as equals in the workplace."

Marx recognized and marveled at the economical and technological growth that capitalism spurs, and saw it as an improvement from previous societies. Later in life, Dallman says, Marx suggested a growth in capitalism might be a way to move toward communism, instead of all-out revolution.

But he still saw communism  with no master-slave dynamic  as the end goal.

In that way, and in others, Marx's idea of communism was far from the atrocities committed in the name of communism elsewhere. And his ideas are still, perhaps strangely to many, a beacon in a search for a better way of life. In that, a practical man and deep thinker of the 19th century still has relevance in today's world.

"Marx was so committed to giving a rational criticism of everything. Not just the enemy, but to himself and everything," Dallman says. "He was willing to criticize the old modes of life and show how capitalism improved on them, but he was also willing to criticize capitalism and show how we could foresee improvement coming in the future. That is still a hopeful vision."

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING Marx's tomb in London, topped by a huge bearded bust, is inscribed with the words, "Workers of All Lands Unite." Those are the last words in "The Communist Manifesto." Kind of. The real words read "Proletarier aller Lander, vereinigt euch!" or "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" In the English translation, the last lines go like this: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"
A GRANDFATHER has been charged with the manslaughter of his baby grandson, who died after being left in his care while the child's parents were out.

Chan Cheng Wang (54) was left babysitting Sean Wang hours before the 10-month old was rushed to hospital in cardiac arrest, a court heard.

Despite efforts by medics to save him, the infant lost his fight for life two days later.

Mr Wang is facing trial and was remanded in custody after a bail application was deferred.

The accused, a Chinese national of Melville Rise, Finglas, is charged with the manslaughter of Sean Wang at that address in August last year.

Detective Garda Siobhan Tolan told Dublin District Court she arrested the accused at his home at Melville Rise, Finglas at 8.34am this morning.

He was brought to Blanchardstown Garda Station, where he was charged at 9.43am and made no reply after caution. The court heard the gardai would be objecting to bail.

Defence solicitor Tracey Horan said the incident was alleged to have occurred last August and she was unaware the accused was being brought to court this morning, so bail was not being sought today.

She said the accused consented to being remanded in custody to Cloverhill District Court next Wednesday.

Det Gda Tolan said the DPP had directed trial on indictment in the circuit court. She said there was consent to Mr Wang being sent forward for sentence on a signed plea of guilty should that arise.

Det Gda Tolan said the deceased, Sean Wang, was the accused's 10-month old grandson. Outlining the prosecutions case, she said on the night of August 12, 2019, Sean was left in the care of his grandfather while the childs father and mother were out with friends.

At 12.38pm on the morning of August 13, baby Sean arrived at Temple Street Childrens Hospital in cardiac arrest, accompanied by his parents, Det Gda Tolan said.

Medical staff performed CPR, after which a heartbeat was detected.

Sean was subsequently admitted to the intensive care unit but lost his fight for life on August 15, 2019, the garda said.

He was pronounced dead at the ICU. Gardai were notified of suspicions and an investigation commenced, led by the incident room at Finglas Garda Station.

Judge Jones asked if it was alleged the accused and his grandson were alone in the house at the time.

Chan Cheng Wang was the sole guardian of Sean at the time, Det Gda Tolan said.

Judge Jones remanded the accused in custody to May 13, for a bail application. He granted legal aid after hearing Mr Wang was not working.

Ms Horan said the accused had been living at the same address where the offence was alleged to have happened.

Judge Jones issued a warrant for Mr Wangs production by the prison authorities on the next day, at Ms Horans request.

The accused, wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and PPE mask, was assisted by an interpreter as he sat in court. He was not required to speak during the brief hearing and has not yet indicated a plea to the charge.
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court while appreciating the efforts of the police for ensuring proper observation of lockdown norms by the general public, has also chided them for being overzealous in their duty and has asked the commissioner of police to rein in such officers. The observations were prompted in a PIL which complained of police subjecting senior citizens and known personalities to humiliation by making photographs of these persons holding placards saying they are violators of lockdown, viral. The PIL prays for curbing of such high handedness of the police.

A single bench of justice Rohit Deo while hearing public interest litigation through video conferencing filed by Sandip Nair was informed that in anxiety to strictly enforce the lockdown directives issued to combat the Covid Virus, certain personnel of the police force are guilty of gross violation of human rights. Advocate Anil Kamble submitted instances of senior citizens on morning walks, being subjected to inhuman indignities by the police in the form of alleged violators being photographed holding placards declaring that there are enemies of the nation, the society, the family and humanity as they are breaking the law.

This Kamble submitted was published in prominent newspapers and have gone viral on social media. He said that making a humiliating spectacle of the violators is a serious infringement of human rights and the constitutional right guaranteed under Article 21 and hence sought directions to curb such high handedness of the police.

The additional government pleader K S Joshi admitted that while some instances were true, others were uncorroborated and sought time to confirm whether the photographs were taken by the police.

After hearing the submissions the court observed, The police personnel who have indulged in a blatant violation of human dignity were expected to be alive to our society being a civilized society governed by the rule of law. While extraordinary situations may call for extraordinary measures, the measures must have the sanction of law. Human dignity and rights cannot be sacrificed at the altar of extraordinary situations nor can the constitutional right to a dignified life be hostage to supposed intentions. This Court would request the Police Commissioner to sensitise the personnel under his command to ensure that such sordid incidents do not occur. The matter has been posted for hearing after May 21.
Gov. Phi Murphy will hold a 1 p.m. press conference on Friday to provide the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic in New Jersey.

The gathering at the Trenton War Memorial will be streamed on the governors YouTube channel.

State Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli, State Epidemiologist Dr. Christina Tan and State Police Superintendent Colonel Pat Callahan will also be at the press conference.

Murphy will speak publicly six other times Friday, including scheduled appearances on CNN at 8:15 a.m., Fox 5 at 8:40 a.m., the Today Show at 9 a.m., MSNBC at 9:20 a.m., 1010 WINS at 4:45 p.m. and ITV Gold at 7:30 p.m.

At least 8,952 in New Jersey have died of COVID-19 related causes since March 10.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rodrigotorrejon.
Imagine the humiliation of any alderman today if he or she had gambled that City Hall would always earn a sweet return on $10 billion in pension bond proceeds. This years market turmoil has battered pension funds. Not that its ever smart for governments to plan on reliably lush investment returns. As New York Citys then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg once warned about optimistic expectations for pension fund investments: If somebody offers you a guaranteed 7% on your money for the rest of your life, you take it and just make sure the guys name is not Madoff.
A delegation of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh met union Home minister Amit Shah on Friday. The delegation demanded provisions to ensure those stranded midway must reach home on priority; jobs to those who are still around their work places and extension of MGNREGA schemes for work opportunities to workers who are back in their home states.

The delegation also said that provisions should be made for those migrant workers who are interested in returning to their place of work; all registered constructions workers must get the relief payment through banks or in cash on basis of identification and verification of their documents.

Unregistered construction workers be extended the relief amounts on production of identification documents. For the benefit of Beedi workers; tendu leaves and tobacco should be made available around their homes by their factories and payment of minimum wages ensured, the delegation told Shah.

They have also sought reduction in GST, unregistered beedi workers to start getting BPL benefits; non-fishing allowance for fisherman and a years tax holiday for the self employed.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. Hustler Hollywood has announced that it has made curbside pick-up available daily from Noon to 8 p.m. at its boutiques in Bakersfield, California, located at 3601-B Ming Avenue, and in San Diego, which store is located at 929 6th Avenue, as well as its Los Angeles-area stores in West Covina, Hollywood and West Hollywood. These locations join a growing list of the retailers stores offering curbside service across the country including Nashville, TN, St. Louis, MO, Charlotte, NC, Lexington, KY, Phoenix, AZ, and Dallas and San Antonio, TX.

Customers can phone the Bakersfield store directly at 661-835-8069, or the San Diego store directly at 619-696-9007, place an order, and have it delivered to them curbside without having to leave their car or enter the store. For those not sure as to what they might want to purchase, they can visit the companys website HustlerHollywood.com for products.

We have been helping people with intimacy and relationships for years, and right now, many people have the extra time to do some exploration, and that is where we come in," said Philip Del Rio, vice president of retail. "We can provide our customers with a safe way to obtain our products immediately while isolating, and we couldn't be happier, and neither can they."

With thirty-five U.S. locations, Hustler Hollywood's upscale lifestyle boutiques offer the top pleasure product brands, lingerie, and much more, including an extensive selection of high-quality toys, apparel, sportswear, accessories, jewelry, gifts and novelties, along with bath and body items. Education is a top priority. The stores' staff receive monthly training from some of the most renowned experts in the country to keep the information fresh and up to date to best serve a diverse and inclusive customer base.

The first Hustler Hollywood opened in 1998 on the famed Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, making this the companys 21st year in business.
The Times Union has lifted the paywall on this developing coverage to provide critical information to our community. To support our journalists work, consider a digital subscription.

Total COVID-19 cases:

 330,407 in New York state, including 26,243 deaths. 56,378 recovered. 1,121,543 total tested.

 1,283,908 in U.S., including 77,178 deaths. 198,993 recovered. 8,408,788 total tested.

 3,937,813 worldwide, including 274,655 deaths. 1,319,447 recovered.

Note: The figures include presumed COVID-19 deaths. The number of positive confirmed cases is cumulative and includes people who have recovered as well as those who died.

Additional resources:

 Where to get tested for COVID-19.

 If you were in charge, tell us how you would reopen New York.

 Here are the latest cancellations and postponements.

 For a detailed map, check out the Times Unions New York Coronavirus Tracker

 To get regular updates on our coverage, sign up for our coronavirus newsletter.

 Share stories about people helping others in our Facebook Group.

Friday's latest updates:

4:42 p.m. Saratoga County reports virus outbreak at Cook Adult Home in Halfmoon

The county Department of Public Health Services said it learned Friday that 10 residents of the Cook Adult Home, an assisted living facility in Halfmoon, have tested positive for COVID-19.

One of the residents is in the hospital, another is in a rehabilitation center, and the remaining eight are in isolation at their residences.

The county said it's working closely with the administration at Cook Adult Home to mitigate any further spread at the facility.

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4:15 p.m. Memorial Day ceremony canceled

American Legion Mohawk Post 1450 (Halfmoon) Commander John Lepine said the legion's Memorial Day ceremony has been canceled this year due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19.

Although the Post's ceremony will not be held this year, "it is hoped that we will all take the time on Memorial Day to reflect upon and honor those men and women who have lost their lives in service to our country," the Legion said in a statement.

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3 p.m. Columbia County nursing home sees huge spike in virus cases

The number of residents at The Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing at Barnwell facility in Valatie who've tested positive for the novel coronavirus shot up by 80 in just one week to 117 as of Friday, newly released county data show.

According to public health director Jack Mabb, the home has also had 28 staff test positive for the virus. Three residents have died, including one reported Friday.

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2:32 p.m. Warren County loses another nursing home resident to virus

County officials reported Friday that a 24th resident of the county has died after becoming infected with the novel coronavirus.

The victim was a resident of a nursing home in the southern part of the county, they said.

Of the countys 24 deaths to date, 22 have been residents of a nursing home or assisted living facility.

The Glens Falls Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Queensbury and the Pines at Glens Falls Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation are currently battling outbreaks of the virus. According to state Department of Health data released on Friday, 14 residents of the Glens Falls Center and four residents of the Pines have died in the facilities after becoming infected with the virus.

Nursing home residents across the state and nation have become particularly vulnerable to the virus.

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2:17 p.m. Schenectady County reports 4 more confirmed cases of virus

The county reported Friday that 547 residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus to date, up five from the day before. Of those, 420 have recovered and 28 have died.

Fifteen people were hospitalized with the virus in the county on Friday.

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1:14 p.m.: Under new criteria, more essential workers can be tested for the coronavirus

Albany County officials announced Friday that the state-run COVID-19 test site at the University at Albany will be expanding its criteria for who can get tested.

The new testing criteria allows anyone who is considered an essential worker to get tested, including health care workers, first responders, grocery store employees, automotive shop employees, and so on. The move greatly increases the number of people eligible for testing in the county.

County Executive Dan McCoy also announced two more deaths from the novel coronavirus  a man in his 80s and a man in his 90s. Read more

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11:38 a.m.: Saratoga County reports 17 new cases of virus

The county reported Friday that 17 more residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total reported to the county since the pandemic began to 387.

Seven residents are currently hospitalized with the virus. No new deaths were reported. The county's known death toll from the virus stands at 14.

The county has been updating a new data dashboard with additional data, including the number of residents tested to date, cases by age and municipality, the number of quarantines, and deaths by age.

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8:33 a.m.: Troy faces layoffs as revenues fall

Double-digit cuts in state aid and sales tax income will hit the citys 2020 budget in June, leading to layoffs if federal aid does come in to stave off revenue declines caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Patrick Madden told the City Council Thursday night.

We should be good through the end of May the way things are going right now. But again shortly after that were going to have to be making some painful choices in terms of services, Madden said.

The city has 31 open positions it wont fill and has directed 10 percent cuts in department spending. But its state aid is expected to drop 13 percent and its April sales tax revenues are projected to fall by 25 percent. The city has budgeted state aid revenues of $12.3 million and sales tax income of $16.5 million in its $74.7 million budget for 2020. Those numbers arent expected to hold. Read more

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6:33 a.m.: Phone woes close Jumpin' Jack's Drive-In

Jumpin' Jack's Drive-In, the popular Scotia eatery that just opened this week using social distancing rules, said Thursday afternoon it will be closing until further notice because of problems with its phone system.

An advisory on its website and Facebook page said it will keep customers updated with a reopening date and time and with thanks "for your patience." Read more

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6:25 a.m. Capital Region hospitals get state OK to resume elective procedures

At least four Capital Region hospitals got the green-light this week to resume elective outpatient surgeries and procedures, roughly two months after the state ordered the procedures to stop amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Albany Medical Center, Glens Falls Hospital, Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson and St. Mary's Healthcare in Amsterdam confirmed Thursday that the state Department of Health has approved their requests seeking a waiver from a recent set of state guidelines that had made them ineligible to resume the procedures. Read more

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Thursday: Known cases, recoveries and deaths by county of residence

Albany County: 1,277 (+25) cases, 28 hospitalized, 7 in ICU, 753 recovered, 56 (+3) deaths

Columbia County: 317 (+12) cases, 8 hospitalized, 4 in ICU, 117 recovered, 17 (+1) deaths

Fulton County: 101 (+4) cases, 7 (+3) deaths

Greene County: 215 (+15) cases, 92 active, 123 resolved, 3 hospitalized, 13 (+2) deaths

Montgomery County: 57 (+1) cases, 48 recovered, 1 under medical care, 1 death

Rensselaer County: 385 (+10) cases, 222 recovered, 12 hospitalized, 2 in ICU, 23 deaths

Saratoga County: 370 (+2) cases, 8 hospitalized, 393 recoveries (presumed and confirmed cases as of April 29), 14 deaths

Schenectady County: 543 (+6) cases, 19 hospitalized in the count (regardless of patient's county of residence), 406 recoveries, 28 deaths

Schoharie County: 42 cases, 8 hospitalized, 39 recovered, 1 death

Warren County: 185 (+0) cases, 3 hospitalized, 116 recovered (presumed and confirmed cases), 23 deaths

Washington County:; 174 (+8) cases, 72 active, 92 recovered, 10 deaths

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Thursday: New York state-run campgrounds are closed until at least June 1

Camping season at state operated facilities has been pushed back till at least June 1 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That means thousands of people who had been planning a camping trip for the Memorial Day weekend won't be destined for a state campground. Its a further blow to the tourism industry in a number of upstate regions ranging from the Adirondacks and Catskills to western New York.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, in response to a query on Thursday, added that people who have already made paid reservations can get full refunds. Read more.

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Thursday: Schenectady County to open testing site Friday at Rotterdam Walmart

The new drive-thru coronavirus testing site will be located in the parking lot of the retail store at 1320 Altamont Ave.

Weather permitting, the site will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Testing will be for adults who meet the Center for Disease Control and state and local guidelines on who should be tested, including first responders, health care providers and others with symptoms as well as those in high risk groups without symptoms, according to the news release.

There will be no testing inside the store, only outside.

The site is a partnership between the county, Walmart and Quest Diagnostics. Read more.

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Thursday: Fulton County loses three more residents to coronavirus

According to the state's COVID-19 tracker, seven residents of Fulton County have now died from the virus, up from four reported on Wednesday.

As of Thursday, 101 residents had tested positive for the virus, up from 97 a day earlier.

Unlike most counties in the region, Fulton County has not been publishing its own coronavirus data.

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Thursday: Warren County reports no new coronavirus cases, fatalities

After 16 straight days of rising cases, Warren County said it was happy to report Thursday that no new cases or fatalities had been confirmed. That comes as testing at the Warren County County Municipal Center continues to run at high capacity, it said.

To date, the county has lost 23 residents to the novel coronavirus. Almost all of them (21) have been tied to a nursing home or assisted living facility.

The county has had a total of 185 confirmed cases of the virus since the outbreak began. Of those, 92 involve residents of nursing homes, 11 involve assisted living facilities and 82 occurred in the community.

Three residents remained hospitalized for COVID-19 on Thursday  all in critical condition.

The county also documented an additional recovery Thursday. In all, 116 residents have recovered from the virus so far, including 26 who were presumed to have it but not tested.

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Read more updates from Thursday
Some traders who were relocated to the La-Nkwatanang Basic School from Madina Zongo Junction in Accra have moved back onto the streets to catch customers.

The traders were moved to the school by the La-Nkwatanang Municipal Assembly as part of the efforts to decongest the streets of Madina and ensure social distancing to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

But a visit by Citi News to the area showed that the traders are flouting the social distancing protocol.

Some traders said it is difficult for them to abide by the directives as most of their potential customers prefer to shop on the streets.

The first trader said Displaying your items is not a problem but locating the customers is the problem. After displaying items and they are not bought, it becomes a waste of time and energy. We came here because our items are not bought there and some going bad, she narrated.

Another trader added: Most of us market women are the ones taking care of the house now and when we sell, we don't make profits because the city guards are always after us. How do we cope with this? she quizzed.

But the Public Relations Officer for the La-Nkwatanang Municipal Assembly, Isaac Odoom Agyin said the authorities will continue to ensure that the traders comply with the laid-down directives.

Its like they don't even believe that the disease is real. When we go there to educate them, they think it's the disease for the whites but we will continue to ensure that stricter measures are put in place for them to comply with the directives because we are not used to these measures but we all have to play our parts to help contain the spread of the disease, he said.

Relocation and Market closures

A number of District and Municipal Assemblies are taking measures to space out their markets in a bid to help contain the spread of the novel Coronavirus in the country.

Some have relocated their main markets to other spacier places to ensure social distancing is adhered to.

---citinewsroom
By PTI

NEW DELHI: A CISF official died of coronavirus infection on Friday, taking the death toll in the five paramilitary forces tasked with internal security to five, as the active COVID-19 cases climbed to over 530, officials said.

The Assistant Sub Inspector-rank official, posted at the Indian Museum security unit in Kolkata, was the second Central Industrial Security Force personnel to die of the virus.

With his death, five Central Armed Police Force personnel have succumbed to COVID-19 -- two each from BSF and CISF and one from CRPF.

ALSO READ: Indian Museum in Kolkata sealed after CISF personnel dies of COVID-19

Officials said living in clusters, like barracks, and usage of common bathrooms and travel in vehicles by multiple personnel together are thought to be the main reasons for the spread of the infection in the forces.

The five forces, about 10-lakh strong, have launched various measures to contain the infection by sanitizing their premises and asking troops to strictly follow protocols.

"All instructions and directions of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare are being strictly followed. The frequency of sanitization of workplaces/barracks have been increased."

"In addition to existing apparatus of sanitization, water cannons are being used for quick disinfection of buildings and establishments, and BSF personnel is being repeatedly sensitized to firmly adhere to preventive measures," BSF spokesperson Shubhendu Bhardwaj said.

The total number of active cases in CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, and SSB, according to the data accessed by PTI, is over 530 and thousands of the personnel have been quarantined.

The Border Security Force has the maximum active cases among the five paramilitary forces at 221, with 30 reported on Friday.

Two BSF men have recovered. The BSF spokesperson said in a statement that six fresh cases were reported from Delhi and 24 from Tripura.

"All of them are under the best available medical care at AIIMS-Jhajjar and G B Pant Hospital, Agartala," he added.

Out of the six cases from Delhi, two were posted at the headquarters and four were posted at other units in the city.

Personal staff of an additional director general-rank officer and a head constable in the personnel affairs wing at the headquarters tested positive for the virus, officials said.

A floor in the eight-storeyed headquarters in CGO Complex on Lodhi Road has been shut for sanitization, the officials said, expressing concern over the rising number of COVID-19 cases at the headquarters as at least four personnel have been infected here till now.

The two worst numbers in the BSF come from units deployed for law and order duties in Jamia and Chandni Mahal areas (77) and from the frontier state of Tripura (78).

In the CISF, apart from the Kolkata official, a jawan posted at the Mumbai international airport has died. The force has 35 active cases including one in its VIP security unit based in Greater Noida.

The Central Reserve Police Force has a total of 161 active cases with three fresh cases reported in the last 24 hours.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police, tasked primarily to guard the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control with China, reported 12 fresh cases from its Delhi-based units.

The number of total active cases in ITBP is 94, an official said.

The 80,000-strong Sashastra Seema Bal, guarding the borders with Nepal and Bhutan, has at least 17 active cases.
A Parkdale bar behind on rent has had the locks changed by the landlord.

Pretty Ugly at 1237 Queen Street West received a notice from its landlord and found its doors locked on Tuesday.

The notice posted on the bar warned owner Grant Van Gameren that items from the bar will be removed and used towards paying off the rent if the arrears are not paid by Sunday.

The restaurateur and chef owns several bars and restaurants in the city, including Bar Ravaly and Bar Isabel in Little Italy, Rosalinda downtown, Tennessee Tavern in Parkdale, and El Rey in the Kensington Market.

This is not a forfeiture of the lease, but a distress against your goods, and is not intended in any way to terminate the lease, advised the notice from the bailiff representing the landlord. Any attempt by you to remove distrained goods from the premises is unlawful.

Van Gameren told the Star they were able to negotiate deals with most of the landlords at their other locations.

We have had great success negotiating mutually beneficial and long term healthy agreements with most of our landlords, Van Gameren said. Unfortunately we are not having such success at this location.

Prior to the pandemic the rent was always paid on time at the Queen Street West bar, he said.

Landlords do have the right to lock you out after 15 days of failure to pay rent, he said. It's a unique time and hopefully this can be solved amicably.

Small businesses have been struggling to stay afloat since the beginning of the pandemic. On Wednesday, the Ontario government gave the green light for businesses to start offering curb side pickups as distancing measures on some businesses begin to slowly lift.

Van Gameren became known in Torontos restaurant scene while co-owning and working as a chef at The Black Hoof, which opened in 2008 and has since closed.
President Muhammadu Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has explained the continued absence of Vice Preside...





President Muhammadu Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has explained the continued absence of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.





In an interview on Wazobia Radio, Adesina insisted that Osinbajo is busy working with the Economic Sustainability Committee.





He heads the Economic Sustainability Committee. They hold meetings and these news (items) are on the televisions, he said.





Adesina noted that some of these meetings are now virtual or through videos, assuring that Osinbajo is hale and hearty.





He also explained that Lagos State secured a grant of N10billion from the Federal Government in the fight against the outbreak of COVID-19, because of their commitment to curb the pandemic.





Technical support is very very important, very vey important Lagos State got technical support before it got financial support, manpower support is very good, facility support is very good, he added.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orezone Gold Corporation (TSX.V: ORE, OTCQX: ORZCF) (Orezone or the Company) announces that its senior management team and Board have voluntarily agreed to a 20% reduction in salaries and fees during the current COVID-19 situation. Senior staff and employees in Burkina Faso have also taken wage reductions during this same period and other non-essential expenditures have been reduced or eliminated.



Patrick Downey, President & CEO stated, I am pleased that the Orezone team, including our workforce in Burkina Faso, have agreed to these pay reductions during this challenging period, demonstrating the commitment of our employees and Board to the overall success of the Company and the Bombore project. As significant shareholders, Orezone management is consistently focused on the efficient use of capital. Although the Company maintains a strong cash position, these measures will maximize the use of our funds towards the development of Bombore while minimizing general and administrative costs during this temporary care and maintenance phase. Orezone is in a solid financial position to manage current activities and to rapidly resume project works in the future.

As previously announced, Orezone has temporarily suspended operations at its Bombore Gold Project in Burkina Faso and all facilities are under care and maintenance. During this period, the Orezone team are investigating key areas for project optimization and are preparing detailed plans for re-start of construction once the COVID-19 restrictions are eased.

Orezone has implemented strict safety, environmental and community relations safeguards at the Bombore project to ensure operational readiness when the Burkina Faso government restrictions are lifted. Orezone will continue dialogue with its staff, host communities, contractors, and suppliers to ensure the safe restart of construction activities at Bombore.

Story continues

Orezones compensation committee has also granted stock options for a total of 5,167,000 common shares of the Company to directors, officers, and employees of the Company. These stock options are exercisable at C$0.54 per common share and will expire on May 5, 2025.

Following this grant of stock options, the Company has a total of 21,543,838 stock options outstanding, representing approximately 8.6% of the 251,147,806 common shares currently issued and outstanding.

Orezone Gold Corporation

Orezone Gold Corporation is a Canadian development company which owns a 90% interest in Bombore, one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in Burkina Faso. Bombore hosts a large oxide resource underlain by a larger, open sulphide resource, and will be developed in two stages.



Patrick Downey

President and Chief Executive Officer

Vanessa Pickering

Manager, Investor Relations

Tel: 1 778 945 8977 / Toll Free: 1 888 673 0663

info@orezone.com /www.orezone.com

For further information please contact Orezone at +1 (778) 945-8977 or visit the Companys website at www.orezone.com .

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain information that may constitute forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information in this press release relates to statements with respect to the voluntary salary reduction and the Companys ability to manage the current business environment. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of 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 information, including the risks inherent to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the risks identified in Orezones annual information form under the heading Risk Factors. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. All forward-looking information contained in this press release is given as of the date hereof and is based upon the opinions and estimates of management and information available to management as at the date hereof. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
Face masks could be mandatory for passengers on all flights within Australia, but a reprieve from planes' dreaded "middle seat" could be short-lived as airlines prepare for interstate travel restrictions to ease.

Interstate travel is allowed in the third stage of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's plan to re-open the country unveiled on Friday, with states and territories to decide exactly when that will occur.

A pilot wearing a mask at Brisbane International Airport in January. Airlines are working out what precautions to put in place as travel demand slowly returns. Credit:AAP

Qantas and Virgin Australia and their budget arms Jetstar and Tigerair have cut their combined domestic flying to 128 return services per week underwritten by the government. For Qantas, that is around 5 per cent of its normal schedule.

But passenger demand is expected to slowly return when COVID-19 restrictions ease, raising the question of how airlines will manage the risk of COVID-19 transmission in packed aeroplanes and busy airports.
Rick Bright, deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response for Health and Human Services (HHS), listens during a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., March 8, 2018.

A government watchdog has found that there is evidence that federal scientist Rick Bright was ousted as head of a health agency for pushing back against a controversial coronavirus drug treatment embraced by President Donald Trump, Bright's lawyers said Friday.

The watchdog, the Office of Special Counsel, will ask the Health and Human Services Department to stay his removal from the job, Bright's lawyers said.

Bright was booted last month as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of HHS, after what he said was his resistance to embracing expansion of the use of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug touted by Trump.

Bright has claimed in a whistleblower complaint filed this week to the Office of Special Counsel that he was transferred to a job in the National Institutes of Health "without warning or explanation" over his refusal to increase access to the drug.

The OSC is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, which, among other things, investigates alleged violations of the federal Whistleblower Protection Act.

Bright's attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, in a statement said that on Thursday afternoon they "were notified by the Office of Special Counsel ... that it had determined there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe that Dr. Bright had been subjected to a prohibited personnel practice  i.e., that there was sufficient evidence to believe that his involuntary removal as" BARDA director "was retaliatory."

"OSC further advised that in light of this determination, it would contact the Department of Health and Human Services ... to request that it stay Dr. Bright's removal as Director of BARDA for 45 days to allow OSC sufficient time to complete its investigation of Bright's allegations," the lawyers said.

A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel declined to comment. "OSC cannot comment on or confirm the status of open investigations," the spokesman said.

Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for HHS, said, "This is a personnel matter that is currently under review."

"However, HHS strongly disagrees with the allegations and characterizations in the complaint from Dr. Bright," Oakley added.

Katz and Banks said they "strongly" urge HHS Secretary Alex Azar "to agree to this request" to stay Bright's transfer.

"Dr. Bright should not be denied the right to have his complaint investigated fully and fairly before he is formally transferred to NIH  a move that will harm not only him, but the country as well," the lawyers said.

"This country is in an unprecedented health crisis and needs the expertise of Dr. Bright to lead the nation's efforts to combat COVID-19," the attorneys said. "We hope the Secretary will grant the Special Counsel's request and allow Dr. Bright, one of nation's leading vaccine scientists, to return to his position leading BARDA and serving his country."

Trump, when asked about the finding on Friday, said, "I don't know. To me he looks like a disgruntled employee. I don't know who he is."

"But to me, he's a disgruntled employee. And if people are that unhappy they shouldn't work," Trump said.

"If you're unhappy with a company you shouldn't work there, go out and get something else, but to me he's a disgruntled guy, and I hadn't heard great things about him."
This year, TIF is holding a virtual discussion in which patient advocates will talk about the accessibility and affordability of novel therapies for thalassemia

Thalassemia is a chronic and genetic blood disorder due to which a patients body cannot make enough hemoglobin leading to anemia.

This disease is passed from parents to children through genes and people suffering from it require blood transfusions to survive.

To honour patients suffering from this disease, World Thalassemia Day is observed on 8 May. On this day, people also express gratitude to all scientists whose dedication and enduring efforts are making life better for Thalassemia patients.

Theme

This year the theme for World Thalassemia Day is The dawning of a new era for thalassaemia: Time for a global effort to make novel therapies accessible and affordable to patients.

How it is observed

Thalassemia International Federation (TIF) is holding many online events on World Thalassemia Day 2020. In view of the coronavirus pandemic, some activities have been postponed to 8 September.

This year, TIF is holding a virtual discussion in which patient advocates will talk about the accessibility and affordability of novel therapies for thalassemia. Apart from this, it is organising a video challenge and writing contest.

India reports most cases in the world

India is known as the thalassaemia capital of the world with 40 million carriers, which means one in eight of thalassemia carriers live in India. Over 1 lakh patients across the country lose their life to the disease before they turn 20 due to lack of access to treatment. Every year 10, 000 children with thalassaemia major are born in India which approximately accounts for 10 percent of the total world incidence of thalassemia.

Prevention and Treatment

Thalassemia has no known cure but the treatment involves blood transfusion, bone marrow transplant and gene therapy, making the maintainence of treatment highly cost intensive for parents of children born with Thalassemia.

According to a report in BBC, blood stem cells were extracted, treated and re-introduced in 22 patients in 2018 to stimulate red blood cell production. Out of the 22, 15 were able to stop transfusions altogether, while the remaining need fewer of them. The results of this gene therapy trial offered a hope that in future there would be reduced need for blood transfusions.

But treatment remains expensive and out of reach for many Indians. This is why doctors and experts have been urging to put increased focus on prevention and awareness to help better management of the disease. And awareness is important because both or either parent of a child can be a thalassemia gene carrier without showing any symptoms or with just mild anemia, which went undetected throughout their lives.

Carrier testing for at-risk relatives and prenatal testing are possible if the disease-causing mutations in the family are known. Doctors are also encouraging anemic parents to opt for prenatal testing of fetus for Thalassemia.
Congressional Republicans continued their assault on Beijing on Thursday, launching a campaign to change the address of its embassy in Washington in honour of the late whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang, and announcing the establishment of a party-led "China task force" in the House of Representatives.

Under new bills introduced in both the Senate and House, the official address of the Chinese embassy in Washington's leafy northwest would be changed from 3505 International Place to 1 Li Wenliang Plaza.

"Renaming the street outside of the Chinese embassy ensures that Dr Li's legacy is never forgotten and will serve as a stark reminder to the Chinese government and Communist Party that the US will stand with the oppressed and not with their oppressors," said Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the bill's original cosponsors.

If enacted, the legislation would require that maps, regulations and any other official records referencing the location be updated.

While physically located in the city of Washington, the embassy sits on a tract of federal land. Under the legislation, the federal government's administrator of general services would be directed to erect signs bearing the new street name in the style of Washington's signage.

The legislation came as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, unveiled a new task force in the lower chamber that would conduct probes into a wide range of China-related issues.

On its agenda will be investigations into China's influence campaigns on US soil, "economic threats" posed by the country to the US and allies, and China's role in the origins and spread of the coronavirus, said McCarthy, who accused China of a "cover-up".

The treatment of Li, who worked as an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, has become a fixture of US political figures' criticism of China's early missteps in its handling of the outbreak.

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Li died in February after succumbing to Covid-19, the illness he had privately alerted medical school classmates in a chat group to in December " a warning that was later leaked online. Li was questioned and then officially reprimanded by authorities in Wuhan, where the outbreak is believed to have begun, for "spreading rumours".

Both abroad and within China, Li has been hailed as a wronged whistle-blower, despite the fact he had not necessarily intended his warnings to go public.

Senator Tom Cotton is an increasingly vocal China hawk on Capitol Hill, and authored the bill. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Senator Tom Cotton is an increasingly vocal China hawk on Capitol Hill, and authored the bill. Photo: EPA-EFE

Thursday's bill was authored by Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, an increasingly vocal China hawk on Capitol Hill who recently raised eyebrows with his calls for Chinese students intending to study advanced science programmes in the US to be denied visas.

A companion version of Cotton's legislation was introduced in the House by Liz Cheney of Wyoming, also a Republican.

The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

The move would not be without precedent. Lawmakers successfully legislated in the 1980s to have the street outside the then-Soviet embassy renamed after Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear physicist-turned-pacifist and human rights advocate.

More recently, a grass roots campaign in 2018 led to unofficial signage bearing the name of murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi being placed outside the Saudi embassy.

The move will also not be the first time US lawmakers have targeted the Chinese embassy with a campaign to change its address as a form of protest against Beijing's governance.

In 2014, lawmakers lobbied the city government to name the street outside the diplomatic outpost after Liu Xiaobo, the prominent Chinese human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Back then the Chinese embassy protested the campaign, telling The Washington Post that Liu had "violated Chinese laws" and arguing that the US public would "not like to see a US street be named after a criminal".

Crafting a response this time round, however, could prove a thornier task.

Despite being initially castigated by local authorities for "spreading rumours", Li has since been posthumously praised for his actions by Chinese officials and other government organs, with state media reporting in April that he was among a group of deceased doctors to be officially bestowed the title of "martyr".

"Maybe people are not aware, he was a member of the Communist Party," Cui Tiankai, Beijing's envoy to the US, said in an interview with NPR days after Li's death in February.

Another difference distinguishing Thursday's legislation between the 2014 campaign is the absence of Democratic support, a further indication of the cracks that have formed in Capitol Hill's long-standing consensus about challenging China's actions and policies.

The pandemic has seen Republicans harden their position on Beijing, in step with an internal 57-page campaign playbook directing party members to focus on blaming China for the outbreak rather than attempt to defend US President Donald Trump's response.

Some Democrats have raised concerns that hard-line legislation and rhetoric targeting China risks is fanning the flames of anti-Asian racism within the US.

The split was on full display on Thursday, as McCarthy said the new Republican-led China task force was originally intended to be a bipartisan affair, and accused the Democrats of pulling out "a few months ago."

The panel will produce a report of its findings, including policy recommendations, by October, McCarthy said.

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.
Ukraine was unable to secure the release of a number of detainees in the ORDO, largely because of the position of coordinator of the working subgroup on humanitarian issues of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) in Minsk Toni Frisch. This became known to the Interfax-Ukraine agency from sources familiar with the work of the subgroup.

So, according to sources, at one of the meetings of the subgroup, representatives of Ukraine were not able to obtain information about 20 specific persons. "This happened because Frisch simply stopped discussing this issue," the source told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, Frisch, for unknown reasons, suggested accelerating the date of mutual release, as a result of which many established persons were not transferred to Ukraine. At the same time, he noted, the coordinator of the humanitarian subgroup did not visit Ukrainian citizens in ORDO jails.

According to the Ukrainian side, the agency's source said, it is necessary first of all to divide all the lists into "established" and "not established," and then implement the Minsk agreements, which clearly indicate that the release should take place in respect of all those kept for all kept persons.
Amritsar: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh applauded locals for rushing to the aid of an Indian Air Force pilot after a MiG-29 fighter jet crashed in the Hoshiarpur district on Friday (May 8) morning. The Chief Minister also attached a video where the locals were seen attending to the pilot and shielding him from the scorching sun by making a makeshift tent with their turbans.

"I am relieved to know that @IAF_MCC pilot ejected to safety in Hoshiarpur after his MIG-29 crashed today. Thank the local people for immediately rushing to the aid of the pilot. Proud of you all!," the Punjab Chief Minister said in a tweet.

I am relieved to know that @IAF_MCC pilot ejected to safety in Hoshiarpur after his MIG-29 crashed today. Thank the local people for immediately rushing to the aid of the pilot. Proud of you all! pic.twitter.com/fcno2yQDck  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) May 8, 2020

A MiG-29 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed near Nawanshahr in Punjab on Friday morning. The MiG-29 pilot ejected after the plane developed a technical snag and failed to respond. The pilot, identified as Wing Commander MK Pandey, ejected safely and was rescued, an official said.

The jet, which had taken off from Adampur Air Force Station near Jalandhar, was on a training mission. As per PTI, the crash took place around 10.30 am.

An IAF spokesperson confirmed that the MiG-29 aircraft was on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar. "The aircraft had developed a technical snag and the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft," he said.

The official said the pilot has been rescued by a helicopter and a Court of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident.

It may be recalled that the IAF has lost several MiG 21 trainers and MiG 29 fighter jets in crashes due to technical snag in recent years.
The global death toll from the coronavirus has reached nearly 270,000 with more than 3.8 million infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the new respiratory illness.

Here's a roundup of COVID-19 developments in RFE/RL's broadcast regions.

Pakistan

Coronavirus cases in Pakistan surged past 25,000 on May 8, officials said, just hours before Islamabad was due to ease its lockdown measures.

Authorities recorded 1,574 new cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections nationwide to 25,837 -- one of the highest rates in the region after Iran, which has reported more than 103,000.

Pakistan, with a population of some 220 million people, has suffered 594 deaths due to COVID-19.

Despite the climbing figures, Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Pakistan will ease its lockdown beginning May 9, amid fears for the country's economy as it sinks into recession.

Khan said the easing of restrictions, aimed at helping the country's most impoverished citizens, would be lifted in phases.

Small markets and shops will be the first to open, with restricted hours, while big malls and other spaces that attract large crowds will remain closed for now.

Schools will stay shut until mid-July and a decision on reopening intercity transport would be made at a later, unspecified, date.

Khan warned people that the epidemic could get out of control if they did not take precautions. He added that restrictions could be restored if the outbreak worsens.

Russia

Russia has registered 10,669 new coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859.

It was the sixth consecutive day that cases had risen by more than 10,000, but down on the May 7 record daily rise of 11,231.

The coronavirus crisis response center also reported 98 new fatalities from COVID-19, bringing the total death toll in Russia to 1,723.

Russia's relatively low official death rate has triggered criticism that the authorities may be covering up the real toll of the outbreak by failing to correctly identify coronavirus deaths as such, accusations that have been rejected by authorities.

But Russian officials say the outbreak in their country started later than in other parts of the world, allowing authorities to better prepare for the pandemic. Russia now has the fifth-largest number of cases in the world, according to a running tally by the Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

The residents of Moscow, which is in its sixth week of lockdown, must stay at home except when buying food and medicine. They must obtain a digital permit to travel anywhere by public or private transport.

President Vladimir Putin has voiced support for a plan put forward by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to gradually begin lifting some lockdown restrictions in the capital after May 12, allowing certain industrial activities to resume.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and TASS
Inmates who have tested positive for coronavirus at a privately operated ICE detention center in California have been mixed with the rest of the prison population, a Mexican detainee has revealed.

In an interview published Friday with Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, a detainee identified as Oscar Giovanni described Otay Mesa Detention Center as a place where the guards do not have a strategy to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The center is where the first undocumented immigrant detained by the United States government died from the coronavirus on Wednesday.

'Today they removed about 100 detainees who had been in quarantine because some had been infected and left them to mix with the rest,' Oscar Giovanni said. 'Just like that without even taking [their] temperature.'

DailyMail.com reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CoreCivic, the private company that owns the detention facility, for comment on Friday.

Oscar Giovanni, a Mexican immigrant being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Otay Mesa Detention Center in Otay Mesa, California, told Spanish-language daily newspaper La Opinion that about 100 detainees who had been in quarantine because some had been infected had been mixed with the rest of the prison's inmates

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia contracted the virus at Otay Mesa Detention Center in California. The 57-year-old native from El Salvador is the first undocumented immigrant in custody of ICE to die from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States

Oscar Giovanni slammed the Otay Mesa, California, jail staff for allegedly failing to properly respond to sickened patient, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, who contracted the virus and was hospitalized for over a week before he died Wednesday.

The 57-year-old native from El Salvador is the first undocumented immigrant in custody of ICE to die from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

'Mr. Escobar was only taken to the hospital when he was already unconscious, lying down and we could not approach him for fear of contagion,' Oscar Giovanni said.

ICE reported Thursday that 133 inmates at the jail had tested positive for coronavirus. U.S. Marshals has 66 detained undocumented immigrants at the jail, too.

Overall, 753 detainees are infected with the virus at 41 ICE detention centers.

Furthermore, out of the 42 ICE employees who contracted the virus, 10 are assigned to Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Detainees at the prison have individually reached out to California governor Gavin Newsom, senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, and congressman Juan Vargas seeking their intervention.

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia (right) is the first undocumented immigrant in custody of ICE to die from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The native of El Salvador was 57

A protestor waits outside a vehicle with a sign reading 'FreeThemAll' during a Pueblo Sin Fronteras-organized car rally on April 11, 2020 protesting the alleged pepper-spraying of immigrant women detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center

Pedro Rios, director for the San Diego-based advocacy group American Friends Service Committee, said at least 72 undocumented immigrants at Otay Mesa Detention Center were part of a list of inmates who were granted release based on health conditions which put them at risk if they caught the virus, but only two were actually released.

'The overwhelmingly high representation of people in detention among San Diego County's coronavirus cases is not at all surprising,' said Mindy Pressman of Otay Mesa Detention Resistance.

'There is no safe way to detain people in a pandemic. If ICE Field Director Gregory Archambeault and CoreCivic cared one bit about our community's safety, they would have willingly released people weeks ago. Instead, our friends are left to languish in these facilities that are motivated by profit.'
The Okyehene Amaotia Ofori Panin, GREDA and two other institutions today [Thursday, May 7, 2020] presented cheques totaling GH270, 000 to the National Covid-19 Trust.



The gesture was in line with a request made by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo towards the relief of affected people during the Covid-19 pandemic.



Presenting the cheques, Nana Asabea Ofori Panin on behalf of her husband, Okyehene Amoatia Ofori Panin, expressed appreciation to organsations that have for the past weeks supported the Trust with cash and other items.



Mrs Sophia Akuffo,Chairperson ,National Covid-19 Trust receiving a cheque for GHC100,000 from Mr Frank Boamah, General Manager, Bafla.



Stop the Spread



She mentioned that the Okyehene had supported deprived communities and supported individuals with since the coronavirus broke out in the country, adding that he also found it necessary to support the national efforts.



"We are well informed about spread of the virus and we are here to join government to fight it together", she noted.



Mrs Sophia Akuffo, Chairperson, National Covid-19 Trust receiving a cheque for GHC100,000 from Mr Patrick Ebo Bonful ( left), President, GREDA



She said the Okyehene has pledged his wiliness to do everything possible to ensure that the pandemic is stopped from spreading and called on all traditional leaders across the country to join the fight in whatever means they could support.



Commendation



She also commended the various security agencies and health workers and all frontliners for their selflessness in the discharge of their duties.



Nana Asabea Atta expressed the hope that their efforts will yield success in the end.



"Observing all the mandatory measures is a sure way of ensuring that the pandemic leaves the globe", she retorted.



Mr Pateic Ebo Bonful, President of GREDA also added that the fight to end the pandemic was not for government alone, hence appealing to all organisations and individuals to support the governments efforts to win the fight.



"We are all but in this together and must act as a united Ghana and not a divided Ghana", he stated.



Appreciation from the Trust



According to Mrs Sophia Akuffo, Chairperson to the National Covid-19, the cash donations and items donated will be disbursed to the required institutions for the reason for which they were presented.



She further added that similar donations have been made to deprived homes and orphanages in the Greater Accra region and was hopeful that all these deprived and affected Ghanaians will reap the benefits from the benevolence from these organisations.





Source: Daily Graphic









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On World Ovarian Cancer Day, today, 8th May, an impressive array of Irelands public buildings and landmarks are lighting up in teal, the signature colour of the campaign to fight ovarian cancer throughout the world.

Generously agreeing to Light Up in Teal in support of this global initiative are Kilkenny Castle; City Hall, Cork; Convention Centre, Dublin; East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support Centre, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway; Heuston Station, Dublin; National Concert Hall, Dublin; National University of Ireland, Galway; Pearse Lyons Distillery, Dublin; University College Cork.

World Ovarian Cancer Day is a global movement bringing women living with ovarian cancer, their families and supporters, patient advocacy organisations, medical practitioners and researchers together to raise awareness of ovarian cancer. This is the 6th most commonly diagnosed female cancer in Ireland. Approximately 441 women are diagnosed each year with 279 women losing their lives due to the disease. Ireland ranks among the highest in the world in terms of mortality from ovarian cancer.

Early diagnosis and treatment are vital and campaigners hope that the Light Up in Teal campaign will provide a timely reminder to women not to ignore the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, women should consult with their GPs if they have persistent bloating, abdominal or pelvic pain; changes in urination, bowel or eating habits including eating less and/or feeling full more quickly.

Raising our voices in solidarity in Ireland are Breakthrough Cancer Research, Cancer Trials Ireland, East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support Centre, Emer Casey Foundation, Irish Cancer Society, Irish Society of Gynaecological Oncology, Karen Fenton Ovarian Cancer Fund, Lynch Syndrome Ireland, Marie Keating Foundation, National Cancer Control Programme, OvaCare, SOCK, St. James Hospital Foundation (GynaeCancerCare) and Trinity College Dublin.
[May 08, 2020] Pandemic Fallout: US Tech Sector Sheds Record Number of Jobs in April, CompTIA Analysis Reveals

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. information technology sector suffered historic job losses in April as the nation's unemployment rate reached a level not seen since the Great Depression, according to CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global IT industry. The loss of 111,900 tech sector jobs represents the largest monthly contraction in the industry's history, according to CompTIA's analysis of employment data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport The previous low point occurred during June 2001 when 62,800 positions were eliminated. "Job losses of this magnitude are undoubtedly alarming," said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. "The job posting data and occupation data for technology professionals working across every industry sector provides a degree of reassurance, although given the highly unpredictable situation, it will continue to be wait and see." No major industry sector was spared from business shutdowns, furloughs and layoffs brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April, with restaurants (-5,491,300), retailers (-2,106,900), healthcare (-1,436,300), government (-980,000), and construction (-975,000) the hardest hit. Steep decline in IT services and software jobs Employment in the IT services, custom software development and computer systems design category took the biggest hit, eliminating an estimated 93,200 jobs last month.



The second component of tech employment, IT occupations, showed an increase of 82,000 in April.1 The IT occupation figure should be viewed as directional because it is subject to much more volatility than the monthly employment data reported to the BLS by employers.

The number of job postings nationwide for core IT professionals totaled just over 270,000 in April, a decline of nearly 90,000 from March.2 Software and application developers were in the highest demand, with an estimated 89,786 job postings across the country. Computer systems engineers and architects (20,689), computer user support specialists (19,672), computer systems analysts (17,121), and web developers (15,064) rounded out the top five occupations employers were looking to hire. The number of April job postings in each of these categories was lower that the totals for March. All states and metropolitan areas recorded declined in the number of IT job postings last month. The top five states with the lowest percentage decline were Rhode Island, New Mexico, Hawaii, Idaho, and New Hampshire. Among metro areas, the top five were Sacramento, Calif., Dayton, Ohio, Albuquerque, N.M., Providence, R.I., and Columbia, S.C. By industry, professional, scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing, and information had the largest numbers of IT job postings in April. The "CompTIA IT Employment Tracker" is available at https://www.slideshare.net/comptia/comptia-it-employment-tracker-may-2020. About CompTIA

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a leading voice and advocate for the $5.2 trillion global information technology ecosystem; and the estimated 75 million industry and tech professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers the world's economy. Through education, training, certifications, advocacy, philanthropy, and market research, CompTIA is the hub for advancing the tech industry and its workforce. Visit www.comptia.org to learn more. Contact:

Steven Ostrowski

CompTIA

630-678-8468

[email protected] 

www.comptia.org 1 Tech sector employment includes all workers employed by technology companies, including both technology workers and non-technical employees. IT occupations data refers to all technology professionals working in technical positions regardless of industry. About 47% of technology professionals in the U.S. work for tech companies and 53% are employed by organizations in other industries. 2 Job posting data should be viewed as an indicator of where companies are headed with their investments in personnel and technology rather than a forecast of future hiring. Every job posting does not result in a new hire. On average, for every eight jobs postings, there is one new hire. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pandemic-fallout-us-tech-sector-sheds-record-number-of-jobs-in-april-comptia-analysis-reveals-301055911.html SOURCE CompTIA

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Eight political parties write to President Kovind over labour law dilution

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, May 08: Accusing the Centre of diluting labour laws using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, eight political parties jointly wrote a a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday registering their protest over the issue.

The workers are being treated as slaves, said the letter signed by CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI General Secretary D Raja, CPI (ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattarcharya, All India Forward Bloc General Secretary Debabrata Biswas, Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) General Secretary Manoj Bhattacharya, RJD MP Manoj Jha, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal president Katchi Thol.

Thirumavalavan and Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav.

"Reducing them to this status is not merely a violation of the Constitution but its nullification," they said.

Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab have extended working hours from eight to 12 without amending the Factories Act.

The parties raised a concern that the others states are likely to join this list. Uttar Pradesh has exempted factories, businesses, establishments and industries from the purview of all, but three labour laws and one provision of another Act for three years.

The Madhya Pradesh government too announced exemption of all establishments from obligations under all labour laws for a period of thousand days.

The parties said the Indian economy was already in a tailspin hurtling towards a recession even before the outbreak of this pandemic.

The government has done little to help those who lost their livelihood. Fourteen crore workers have lost their jobs since the lockdown began, they said.

"Diluting labour rights seems to be the logic employed by 'your government' at the centre and by some state governments, rather than concentrating on fighting the pandemic by augmenting our health facilities and protecting our doctors and health workers and taking care of the people's requirements," the letter stated.
By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - A series of studies of the genomes of thousands of samples of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 show that it is mutating and evolving as it adapts to its human hosts. Here's what experts are saying about those findings and how they might affect the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to develop vaccines and treatments.

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - A series of studies of the genomes of thousands of samples of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 show that it is mutating and evolving as it adapts to its human hosts.

Here's what experts are saying about those findings and how they might affect the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to develop vaccines and treatments.

WHAT HAVE THE STUDIES FOUND?

* Using a database called the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States tracked genetic changes, or mutations, in the "spike" of the new coronavirus - the part that gives it its distinctive shape.

Their preliminary research found 14 such mutations. The researchers said one, called D614G, was "of urgent concern" because it appeared to be emerging as dominant and may make the disease more infectious.

* Using the same GISAID database, a team at University College London in Britain screened the genomes of more than 7,500 viruses from infected patients around the world.

The UCL team found 198 mutations in the coronavirus genomes they analysed but said none appear at this stage to be particularly worrying.

* Another study by scientists at Britain's Glasgow University, which also analysed mutations in the genomes of SARS-CoV-2 virus samples, found that these changes did not signal that there are different strains.

That contradicted a previous preliminary study by Chinese researchers that suggested there had been two strains circulating in people at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, and that one had been more "aggressive".

WHAT DO THOSE FINDINGS TELL US?

"This multiple strains idea has to be very much debunked," said Eric Topol, a cardiologist, geneticist and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

"We know there is only one strain."

Jonathan Stoye, head of the division of virology at Britain's Francis Crick Institute, said that taken together, the studies offer "fascinating" insights in the evolution of the virus, and emphasise that it is "a moving target".

"The virus is evolving and is changing. And we don't yet know what the consequences of those changes are," Stoye said.

"This coronavirus mutates just like any good RNA virus should," said Mark Schleiss, a molecular genetics expert at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

IS SARS-CoV-2 GETTING MORE DANGEROUS?

Genetics and biology experts say it's still too early to know whether any of the mutations are meaningful.

Lawrence Young, a professor of molecular oncology at Britain's University of Warwick, said that while there is "much speculation about the possible emergence of more aggressive strains", studies so far show that is not the case.

"Overall the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not mutate at a high rate... and there is currently no compelling evidence that the mutations have had a significant effect," he said

Topol said scientists will have to conduct studies in functional genomics - examining precisely how a specific genetic mutation affects the behaviour of a virus - to find out more.

WILL THIS AFFECT THE SEARCH FOR VACCINES AND DRUGS?

The mutations found by the UCL were not evenly distributed across the virus genome, with some parts of the genome less likely to mutate, and others more likely to vary.

Lucy van Dorp, who co-led the UCL work, said those more stable parts of the virus could be better targets for drug and vaccine development. "We want to target the parts of the virus that, as far as we have observed, aren't changing. If they haven't changed much in the course of the pandemic so far, hopefully they won't change much in the future."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland in London and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
In a study published today in Current Biology, researchers from University of Sydney have identified the single gene that determines how Cape honey bees reproduce without ever having sex. One gene, GB45239 on chromosome 11, is responsible for virgin births.

"It is extremely exciting," said Professor Benjamin Oldroyd in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. "Scientists have been looking for this gene for the last 30 years. Now that we know it's on chromosome 11, we have solved a mystery."

Behavioural geneticist Professor Oldroyd said: "Sex is a weird way to reproduce and yet it is the most common form of reproduction for animals and plants on the planet. It's a major biological mystery why there is so much sex going on and it doesn't make evolutionary sense. Asexuality is a much more efficient way to reproduce, and every now and then we see a species revert to it."

In the Cape honey bee, found in South Africa, the gene has allowed worker bees to lay eggs that only produce females instead of the normal males that other honey bees do. "Males are mostly useless," Professor Oldroyd said. "But Cape workers can become genetically reincarnated as a female queen and that prospect changes everything."

But it also causes problems. "Instead of being a cooperative society, Cape honey bee colonies are riven with conflict because any worker can be genetically reincarnated as the next queen. When a colony loses its queen the workers fight and compete to be the mother of the next queen," Professor Oldroyd said.

The ability to produce daughters asexually, known as "thelytokous parthenogenesis," is restricted to a single subspecies inhabiting the Cape region of South Africa, the Cape honey bee or Apis mellifera capensis.

Several other traits distinguish the Cape honey bee from other honey bee subspecies. In particular, the ovaries of worker bees are larger and more readily activated and they are able to produce queen pheromones, allowing them to assert reproductive dominance in a colony.

These traits also lead to a propensity for social parasitism, a behaviour where Cape bee workers invade foreign colonies, reproduce and persuade the host colony workers to feed their larvae. Every year in South Africa, 10,000 colonies of commercial beehives die because of the social parasite behaviour in Cape honey bees.

"This is a bee we must keep out of Australia," Professor Oldroyd said.

The existence of Cape bees with these characters has been known for over a hundred years, but it is only recently, using modern genomic tools, that we have been able to understand the actual gene that gives rise to virgin birth.

"Further study of Cape bees could give us insight into two major evolutionary transitions: the origin of sex and the origin of animal societies," Professor Oldroyd said.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect arising from this study is the possibility to understand how the gene actually works functionally. "If we could control a switch that allows animals to reproduce asexually, that would have important applications in agriculture, biotechnology and many other fields," Professor Oldroyd said. For instance, many pest ant species like fire ants are thelytokous, though unfortunately it seems to be a different gene to the one found in Capensis."
The White Sox have officially signed first baseman Adam LaRoche to a two-year, $25MM deal, as first reported on Twitter by Bob Nightengale of USA Today. LaRoche, a client of Relativity Sports Mike Milchin, will earn $12MM in 2015 and then $13MM in 2016, per a tweet from Dan Hayes of CSNChicago.com.

Left-handed power has been a priority for the Sox this offseason, and LaRoche will bring just that to the table, having averaged 26 homers per year over the past three seasons to go along with a solid .256/.346/.458 batting line in that same span. LaRoche will team up with American League Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu to create a formidable punch in the middle of manager Robin Venturas order. Hes regarded as a plus defender at first base, although he may see some more time at designated hitter with Abreu also figuring to log significant innings at first.

LaRoche has spent the past four seasons with the Nationals but will now move to a much more hitter-friendly environment in the form of U.S. Cellular Field, which should only serve to boost his already solid power marks. However, LaRoche does come with a sizable platoon split, having batted just .201/.269/.325 against southpaws over the past two seasons after a more promising line of .268/.319/.506 in his excellent 2012 season, when he finished sixth in the NL MVP voting.

The 35-year-old LaRoche reportedly had a two-year, $20MM offer from the Marlins and has also been connected to the Padres, but hell instead head to the south side of Chicago where GM Rick Hahn is acting quickly to build a team that has eyes on contention in the near future. (In a free agent profile for LaRoche, I was a bit more bullish, pegging him for $30MM over this same two-year term.) In addition to Abreu, the Sox have a pair of nice young outfielders in Adam Eaton and Avisail Garcia, and the rotation is fronted by a stellar combination of Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. Carlos Rodon, the No. 3 pick in this years draft, looms as a possible addition to that duo.

LaRoche is the second major free agent signing for Hahn and his lieutenants this week, as the Sox also inked southpaw reliever Zach Duke to a three-year, $15MM contract on the heels of a dominant season that can be largely credited to altering his delivery. Chicago still figures to add at least one more relief arm and could entertain trades for shortstop Alexei Ramirez, as has been rumored of late, but Hahns aggressiveness signals a clear goal of putting a contending group on the field in 2015.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
She welcomed her first child, a daughter named Demelza, in January.

And Amy Willerton revealed she will stop breast-feeding soon as she took to Instagram to share a snap of her breast pumps on Friday.

The television personality, 27, said she is slowly accepting that she will not be able to breast feed anymore because Demelza has grown teeth.

First time mum: Amy Willerton revealed she will stop breast-feeding soon as she took to Instagram to share a snap of her breast pumps on Friday

The star went make-up free as she showed off the pumps in a white bra for the candid selfie.

Amy told fans 'I'm slowly not able to pump anymore... and as Dem now has teeth I'm more accepting of that...

'But these pumps have been something I've been soooo damn proud of whilst breastfeeding.

The next stage: The television personality, 27, said she is slowly accepting that she will not be able to breast feed anymore because Demelza has grown teeth

Baby: Amy told fans 'I'm slowly not able to pump anymore... and as Dem now has teeth I'm more accepting of that...'

'I show everyone how cool they are and I have challenged what I can do whilst "pumping".

'My fav memory is being in Cheesecake Factory in Dubai eating red velvet cheesecake whilst pumping when Dem was 3 weeks old.. it's also the first time she ever smiled at me.'

It comes after Amy admitted she felt guilty and worried after having a cesarean.

The beauty queen had a traumatic birth when her daughter became 'wedged' on a nerve in her back.

Mum guilt: It comes after Amy admitted she felt guilty and worried after having a cesarean

Amy shared a picture of her caesarean scar as well as an adorable snap of the moment she welcomed Demelza alongside a lengthy caption.

She penned: 'I don't think anyone can prepare you for the mental , physical , emotional journey motherhood through any form of birth takes you on... truth be told , despite being unplanned,I loved my cesarean...

'After 3 days of non progressive but aggressive labour that spinal block was my dear glorious friend and my baby girl arrived safely so I have nothing but praise for this procedure. [sic]'.

Candid: Amy shared a picture of her caesarean scar as well as an adorable snap of the moment she welcomed Demelza in a candid Instagram post last month

Amy previously spoke about her traumatic birth with HELLO! magazine, revealing that after 46 hours of labour she opted for a 'semi-elective' Caesarean.

She explained: 'I said: 'Take me to theatre.' I just wanted to know our baby would be safe...'

Amy announced she was expecting her first child with fiance Daniel Day back in October. The family are currently isolating in Valencia after the coronavirus pandemic made it 'unsafe' to travel back to the UK.
As the State of Connecticut wrestles with how best to try and open back up the economy, those of us in the restaurant business have been working on our own set of protocols that both address public safety and public perception of safety. The news this week that the state is talking about allowing restaurants to possibly open for outdoor seating and possibly 25 percent occupancy are both non-starters and call into question exactly who is coming up with these policies.

Everyone in the restaurant business knows a couple of things. One is that outdoor seating is not something that can be guaranteed to a customer given the fact that it rained 20-plus days in April and that the weather never guarantees anything. Two, if restaurants are offered 25-percent capacity, very few if any are going to open given the small margins that they operate on when fully occupied.

Also, it is not just throwing a switch to open back up these business. Many staffers will be averse to giving up unemployment checks that guarantee them a specific amount as opposed to risking with a marginal business with no guarantees. And the idea that you should be reporting employees who refuse the offer of work is nothing short of Soviet state style of turning in your neighbor  something that none of us want to be involved with.

What compounds the staffing problem is the well-intentioned but still not thought through Payroll Protection plan which gives us funds to hire back staff with an eight-week time line for forgiveness. Unfortunately, this is tied not to the opening of the restaurant, which for now is not allowed, but the time you get the funds. Funds that we all did not want to risk not taking for fear of SBA running out of available cash.

What is clear is that we are all working on our own protocols that we will put in place once we have approval to open. Our long list includes bathroom attendants who clean bathrooms every time someone uses them  something from a time gone by. Further, all staff will wear masks. Our servers will handle clean plates and bus people will handle only dirty ones. We will erect glass partitions between tables to give a sense of separation and safety. We will remove enough tables to give proper distancing.

Our kitchen staff will be masked and pared down to give proper separation in our kitchen. We will only take reservations on weekends and no walk-ins so we can control the flow both in our dining room and our bar where people will not be allowed to bunch up. There are a number of other precautions that we will utilize to make people feel safe.

We all know now that we are not the same people we were two months ago. That goes for everyone. Business owners and patrons understand the fear of this illness and we want to ensure our ability to protect our staff and our patrons from risk.

What is most important for the State of Connecticut to think about is all of the practical solutions as opposed to the ones that defy business logic and will keep most, if not all, restaurants from opening under their proposed guidelines. The governors council on opening the state has little, if any, real representatives from the restaurant business other than the exhaustive efforts of Scott Dolch and the Connecticut Restaurant Association. This is clear based on its recommendations.

The restaurant industry, which supports so many workers in the state, cannot be treated in a manner that is uninformed and defies practical logic. There is so much at risk for our state economy and real guidelines are required to get us both back in business and protect the public.

Andy Glazer is a resident of Norwalk.
New Delhi: The Kerala high court on Friday sought the response of the Union government in a plea challenging its May 1 directive to make the mobile application Aarogya Setu mandatory for all persons working in government and private companies.

The bench headed by justice Shaji P Chaly, however, did not stay the directive while asking the Centre to file its response by May 12.

The petitioner John Daniel, who is the general secretary of the Thrissur District Congress Committee, on Thursday challenged the governments mandate to use Aarogya Setu -- a key tool in the Union governments bid to contain the spread of Covid-19 -- alleging that it violates the privacy and autonomy of an individual.

He submitted that Aarogya setu app collects personal information of an individual without consent, contended that forcible extraction of personal information is unheard of in a democratic country, and called it an attribute of a dictatorial system.

He also argued that Centres directive asked the state governments to proceed under Section 188 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) against anyone who does not install the app. Section 188 of the IPC states that any person who disobeys an order given by a public servant can be punished with imprisonment up to six months.

If a particular citizens disapproves the use of the same, it could be said that the information was forcibly and coercively taken from him without his consent and by inflicting fear of penal consequences. Such coercive and forcible extraction of personal information from an individual is unheard of in a democratic and republic setup and it is attribute of a dictatorial system, the petition said.

The central government launched Aarogya Setu on April 2 to disseminate information regarding Covid-19, and to collect data from individuals. It is a tracking mobile application which uses the smartphones GPS and Bluetooth features to track the coronavirus infection. It determines whether or not an individual has been within six feet of a Covid-19  infected person by scanning through a database of known cases across India.

On April 29, the app was made mandatory for all central government employees. On May 1, it was extended to all employees in private and public institutions.

The petitioners contention is that the app continuously collects data of an individual once it is installed on the mobile phone. By forcing people to download the app, there is no question of consent in providing personal information, the petitioner argued.

Privacy and autonomy are facets of right to life under Article 21 as per the landmark 2017 Supreme Court judgment in KS Puttaswamy matter (nine-judge bench), the petitioner submitted.

He (an individual) is forced to give away data to a system which he may or may not approve of, thereby attacking his right of informational autonomy, the petition said.

A French computer researcher -- who goes by the nom de guerre Elliot Alderson -- on Tuesday posted on social media a technical analysis of the alleged flaws of Aayogya Setu on Wednesday, saying the application has vulnerabilities that could compromise the identity and movement of the millions of Indians who use it.

The Union government, which dismissed the contention, maintains said the platform is absolutely robust, safe and secure. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad earlier this week said it was a perfectly accountable platform to help in the fight against Covid-19.
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A 17-year-old boy, who was allegedly travelling nationwide and putting the public at risk, has become the first juvenile to face court charged with breaking the new Covid-19 movement restriction laws.

The boy, who cannot be named because he was a juvenile, was charged today with three counts of breaching the Health (Preservation and Protection and other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act, 2020.

Members of his family have been infected with the coronavirus, the Dublin Childrens Court was told.

The breaches of the new laws aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus are alleged to have occurred in Clondalkin and Blanchardstown in Dublin, on April 28 and three days earlier, and in Co. Limerick on April 27.

Garda Gary Farrell objected to bail and cited the teens 18 bench warrants for failing to turn up to court for other cases, from February 2017 until March this year.

He told Judge Brendan Toale the teenagers family has been affected by the pandemic but the boy was driving around the country posing a danger for everyone he is in contact with.

He is travelling nationwide in MPVs (mechanically propelled vehicles), causing risk to the public not only by travelling but by spreading covid, he said.

Defence solicitor Sandra Frayne said those charges were subsumed with other matters and he had the presumption of innocence.

He also faces 26 other charges of theft, cannabis possession, dangerous driving, and other motoring offences such as having no licence or insurance. These offences allegedly happened between March 12 and April 27 this year.

His solicitor pleaded for bail to be granted to the teenager whose mother was present for the hearing.

She asked the judge to note that all his bench warrants had been sorted out and there were none live at present. He has found a previous one-week stint in custody difficult because he was the only foreign national there at that time.

He was also aware of the consequences of the pandemic which had affected his own family, she submitted. The teenagers record of coming to court far outweighed the amount of non-appearances by the boy. He had come on three out of every four of his court dates, she estimated.

Judge Toale told the youth when the court sets a date for his next appearance, it is not for the craic and you come if you like.

He granted bail but ordered the teenager to remain within five kilometres from his home and comply with Covid-19 guidelines for the duration of the health emergency.

He cannot drive a motor vehicle and must obey a 10pm to 6am curfew at his home.

The case resumes in two weeks when the court will decide whether his bail will be revoked for breaking bail terms  by repeatedly breaching curfew and driving a car while banned  in connection with other theft charges.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Ohio officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have discussed testing for the coronavirus at wastewater treatment plants, which public health experts say could help predict future outbreaks of COVID-19.

The EPA has reached out to the Ohio Department of Health about testing sewage, ODH spokeswoman Melanie Amato said. She said state officials are looking into performing the tests, but could not immediately provide any other details.

The EPA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are conducting research to develop and apply methods for testing sewage, and a pilot surveillance project will begin soon in Ohio, an EPA spokeswoman said. The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati has agreed to provide samples, but it was not immediately clear where else the testing could take place or exactly when it will begin.

Preliminary research indicates that testing could indicate low levels of infections in a community and serve as an early warning system for public health officials. Scientists are still working to develop and refine the testing, but are hopeful it could help identify the level of infection within a community, according to the science journal Nature.

Related: Testing poop at wastewater treatment plants could help predict coronavirus outbreaks, research says

The EPA and CDC research team has establish a biweekly meeting with groups including the Association of Ohio Metropolitan Wastewater Agencies and the Ohio Water Environment Association, the EPA spokeswoman said.

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has also had preliminary discussions with the EPA about testing the sewage at its three wastewater treatment plants, NEORSD spokeswoman Jennifer Elting said previously.

Testing sewage for the virus that causes COVID-19 could help public health experts plan for an outbreak, according to multiple scientific studies. In the Netherlands, scientists found the virus in a local sewage system three weeks before the country confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.

If officials detect a high concentration of COVID-19 in wastewater, it could be a sign an outbreak is imminent, experts say. That could give officials valuable time to warn the public, and to stockpile medical supplies into an area in case more people need to be hospitalized.

Testing could also indicate the coronavirus is more prevalent in an area. In Boston, wastewater epidemiology company Biobot Analytics worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Brigham and Womens Hospital to analyze sewage samples. The data suggested there could be five times as many COVID-19 infections in the area as officials had confirmed at the time, according to The Boston Globe.

There have been no confirmed reports of people contracting COVID-19 from feces or untreated wastewater, and scientists believe the possibility is low, according to the CDC. The EPA says wastewater treatment plants will treat COVID-19, the same way they treat other viruses.
Earlier this year, Voltas launched a Maha-Adjustable campaign for its new range of ACs that could adjust between multiple tonnage modes. And since the lockdown, the words Maha-Adjustable have been reborn with a very different message at their heart. A message that urges understanding, compassion and hopes to decompress the building stress in every home, through the small acts of helping out with household chores.

The video doing the rounds, sees Gajraj Rao speaking to his followers not as his character in the Voltas films, but as himself. He speaks about how the lockdown has changed him as a person. He makes light of his pre-lockdown habits, and how he is now a happy and willing participant in the domestic chores. In the end, he advises viewers to be more understanding and adjustable to the needs of their loved ones, in these trying times.

The challenge, objective and idea:

As a quintessential domestic brand for the aspiring middle-class Indian family, Voltas has time and again captured the slice of life of the common man. With the entire country under lockdown for over a month, most Indians have felt the heat of staying home all day long. The new campaign addresses the status quo and offers a way for viewers to do their bit for each other while staying indoors.

Ritu Sharda, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy India-North: This lockdown really has changed everything. Our Voltas Inverter ACs were Maha-Adjustable, and now weve also become maha adjustable. Not just in what we do in our homes, but also how so many of us from different cities have managed to come together to create this beautiful message in the most delightful way. It was an absolute joy to collaborate with Gajraj Rao on this film. Not only did he feature in it, but also volunteered to produce it for us, with his son Nikhil wearing the directors hat. Its work like this that makes one also look at all the good this new normal brings.

Conceptualised by Ogilvy, the new chapter in the Voltas Maha-Adjustable story, maintains the quirky tone of its campaigns. It sends out a social message without being preachy about it.

Gajraj Rao had this to say about the campaign: I feel these are extraordinary times which can only be overcome with some extra effort in our lives and homes. Ritu Sharda and her team at Ogilvy Delhi have articulated this spirit in the most brilliant way in this unique film for Voltas. We are excited to present this special film where we could collaborate with our extended work family from their homes. The team was quite eager to try their hands in creating this labor of love with the limited resources at hand during the lock-down, while also peeling onions or maybe washing the dishes from last night.

The campaign is a perfect example of how the Lockdown is changing Advertising as a whole. Not just in the way the film has been executed, but also in its message. How brands are more sensitive to the need of the hour. How they are participating in important conversations, in today's environment, rather than just trying to sell a product.

This DVC is an interesting launch pad for the idea, "Voltas Maha Adjustable Stories", a property which the brand wants to create, to engage with its audience in the long run; without deviating from the core brand promise.

For most summer brands this summer has been challenging. Voltas was ready to charge towards a blockbuster season when the pandemic hit the world, bringing the market to a grinding halt. The lockdown affected all brands across categories. The real question left unanswered was, how do brands matter in such a crisis? How do you maintain relevance as a leader brand for when the lockdown is lifted? Societal good in the form of providing services to all essential categories like hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, data centres, ATMs and airports, is crucial in a health crisis and the country shall remember the deeds performed by Voltas for a good cause. But it is also important for the brand to show empathy in the everyday life of a consumer, in order to not lose touch and it is for this that we endeavour to strike a perfect balance of relevance & positivity by creating a piece of communication for every Indian.



CREDITS

Agency: Ogilvy India-North

Client: Voltas Ltd.

Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy India-North: Ritu Sharda

Creative Team: Kartikeya Dixit, Siddharth Menon, Jigi Yadav, Saroj Patra, Vikas Tyagi

Writer: (Sam) Soumya Shiva Nagabhushan

Head of Strategic Planning, Ogilvy India (North): Rohitash Srivastava

Planning: Ashwani Sinha

Account Management Team: Atif Rahman, Rohit Sachdev, Saumya Sahni

Production House: Code Red Films

Producers: Subrat Ray & Gajraj Rao
NAPLES - The secretary of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the Mediterranean Institute for Water met with sector representatives from Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Palestine, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey to share the response to drought and outline responses for the coming months.



Participants at the meeting agreed that finding sustainable access to water is essential for many work activities.



They discussed their plans for responding to the lack of water in the Mediterranean in a year that has been very dry, but also in perspective of estimates showing about 250 million people will have little water in the next 20 years in the Euro-Mediterranean area, with numbers that risk worsening due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its need for frequent disinfecting.



Covid-19, in fact, is putting reserves under pressure.



Jordan and Turkey have water problems, while other countries have redirected water from farming use to homes.



The UfM said in a statement that it is working together with the Joint Research Centre (JRC), a department of the European Commission, to find a scientific response to the drought due to the epidemic, in particular for countries that use treated waste water for farming.



From the talks it also emerged that three out of four work activities are tied to water, and international dialogue on the topic is needed.



UfM is ready to support policies and action plans, starting with three pilot countries in the Maghreb, Mashrek, and the Balkans.



"Water will be at the centre of any plan for restarting and development to face the Covid-19 crisis in the region, a crisis that reminds us how this vital sector must always be maintained as financially sustainable and technically active," said UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel.



The measures will be included in the regional UfM agenda for water, implemented in 2017 to reach the goal in 2030 of ensuring everyone has access to water.


The farming industry is Floridas second-largest economic driver, according to the Associated Press, yielding $155 billion in revenue and supports about 2 million jobs. With much of the state shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the restaurants and other foodservice businesses that Floridas farms and food growers rely on to stay afloat arent open for business, or simply arent seeing enough of a demand right now to come close to meeting the supply of perishable products agricultural producers have to offer.

To support our local farmers, go and buy direct from the farms, and maybe try to demand our local grocers to stock more local produce from here in Central Florida.

Here is a small list of local farms to support here in Central Florida:

Long and Scott Farms: Zellwood Sweet Corn

??Scotts Country Market is located on our farm with a wide variety of produce and goodies.

Tuesday-Saturday 9-5 Cash and card accepted.(26216 County Road 448A, Mt. Dora, FL 32757)

??Our 441 roadside stand across from the North Orlando Airpark has corn only. Cash only.

Thursday-Friday 10-6, Saturday-Sunday 9-5 (4185 N Orange Blossom Trail, Apopka, FL 32712) Closed this Sunday for Mothers Day

Tom West Blueberries

A locally owned and operated blueberry farm in Ocoee, FL. Father and son team, Milton and Scott West, own and manage the farm, supplying blueberries to the Florida market each spring. The Wests believe that quality and safety are paramount, and adhere to Good Agricultural Practices.

324 E Orlando Ave, Ocoee, FL 34761

http://tomwestblueberries.com/more-info/varieties/

Lake Meadow Naturals

10000 Mark Adam Road, Ocoee

321-206-6262

Known for their farm fresh eggs and chicken, Lake Meadow Naturals also includes a Farm Market stocked with fresh eggs, raw honey, meats, bread and vegetables. The market is open but only allowing 6 customers at a time in the store.

Southern Hills Farms

16651 Schofield Road, Clermont

321-239-3137

The farm is open for online orders and curbside pickup, but you-pick is closed for now. You can order fresh blueberries, peaches, sunflowers, blueberry donuts and more.

Mick Farms

4261 Canoe Creek Road

Saint Cloud, Florida

(407) 791-6873

A farm stand from their on site farm sells fresh berries, greens, tomatoes, squash and onions alongside honey, canned goods and more. The farm is currently open Monday-Saturday from 10am-6pm and Sundays from noon-4pm.

To place an order, visit square.com/store/southernhillfarmsmarket.

Everoak Farm

2335 Carrington Dr.

Orlando, FL,32807

(407) 879-3338

everoakfarm@gmail.com

Sunday 9:00am  1:00pm

For more farms, visit:

https://www.ffva.com/consumersales?fbclid=IwAR2cX7WHHBrSoKr3jZB_EuijOjoKRb04IQeg8nddZ4Vprlb3pp-YOjycNPs

Check their social media pages for latest information.
SPRINGFIELD  Oil production in Illinois has been on the decline for many years, but a steep drop in demand brought on by the economic slowdown spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a big bite out of the industry.

Our production for the first quarter was actually a little bit stronger, quarter-over-quarter, but theres no doubt that our production will decline in the second quarter, Seth Whitehead, spokesman for the Illinois Petroleum Resources Board, said during an interview this week. You know, just the eyeball test looking around, where I live in Fayette County, there are a lot of shut-ins at the moment. And right now, the price of oil is about $12 to $15 below where it needs to be for producers to turn a profit.

According to the industry website oilmonster.com, Illinois crude oil was trading at $21.25 per barrel on April 3, well below the roughly $35 per barrel most producers need to turn a profit. But as most states have asked their residents to limit nonessential travel, demand for oil in the United States has plummeted, and on Thursday, May 7, Illinois crude was down to $10.50 per barrel.

Although it is a relatively small part of Illinois overall economy, oil production remains an important industry in parts of the state, especially southeast Illinois. Whitehead said one reason it is often overlooked is because the industry is concentrated in sparsely-populated counties.

You know, 15 counties produce 90 percent of the oil in Illinois and 2 percent of the entire population resides in those counties, he said. So, its very spread out over a very rural area.

In the early part of the 20th century, according to IPBR, oil production was a major part of the states economy and Illinois was the nations third leading oil producing state.

Today, the state produces only about 9 million barrels per year, Whitehead said. Still, he said, about 4,000 jobs in Illinois are directly tied to the industry, plus another 14,000 jobs in refineries and other industries that are indirectly tied to oil production.

The industry also accounts for $770 million in personal income in the state and it provides royalty income to more than 30,000 individuals. It also generates about $330 million in tax revenue for the state, plus $93.4 million in property tax revenue for local governments.

Even before the pandemic hit the United States, oil prices had been falling due to overproduction in countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia and a lack of storage capacity in the United States. It remains to be seen how long it will take for prices to recover enough for the oil industry in Illinois to bounce back. But Whitehead said industry officials here remain optimistic.

Well definitely see a short-term production decline he said. But if the pandemic eases and things get back to normal sooner, rather than later, the industry has a better chance of coming out of this looking in pretty good shape. But the longer it goes on, obviously, the tougher itll get.
In this article the Conroe Noon Kiwanis Club wanted to reacquaint you with some of our leaders in our organization.

The Conroe Noon Kiwanis club has been serving children and youth in the Greater Conroe area since 1952. In 1954 Mickey Deison joined the Conroe Kiwanis Club and helped build the Kiwanis Shelter, operated by the club until 1980. William Moran donated a 25-acre tract to be used for the facility which eventually became the Buckner Child Care in 1980 and later turned over to Montgomery County Youth Services, or now known as Yes to Youth. Deison served as mayor of Conroe in 1991-1994 and County Judge of Montgomery County from 1977 to 1982. During his term as County Judge, in 1979 Deison was Chairman of the Board for the Conroe Chamber of Commerce. He has served on the Conroe Airport Advisory Board to assist with improvements and expansions, and in 2013 the Deison Technology Park was named in his honor as a compliment to his economic vision to business growth.
In Texas the politics of COVID-19 ratcheted up this week with head-spinning speed, and the divides  Republican vs. Democrat, state vs. local  grew even deeper. Masks, seen by public-health officials as a crucial tool to control the spread of the disease as people go back out into the world, have instead become partisan symbols.

How did we get here? To explain whats going on, we turned to veteran journalist Scott Braddock, co-host of Texas Take , the Houston Chronicles politics podcast, and editor of Quorum Report , a newsletter as pugnacious as the Texas politicians it covers.

Thursday evening, we talked about the weeks wild political swings, particularly with Gov. Greg Abbott  and the one thing the cash-strapped Texas Legislature probably wont discuss, even when they say that everything will be on the table.

Could you start by giving us an overview of Texas political situation with the coronavirus?

If anybody thought that this would not devolve into a full-on culture war, then I would like to welcome them to Texas. Stay awhile! This is what we do around here.

It's happening in other parts of the state and other parts of the country as well. But I think it's extra pronounced here because of the kind of politics that we have. When someone says Texans can't get their hair cut or can't their nails done, the first thing people here think is Come and take it! Thats Texas.

Last week the governor of Texas and the state attorney general were threatening the Montgomery County judge, saying that if the county didn't keep hair salons and gyms shut down, etc., that people could be prosecuted. The governor was trying to use a heavy hand and say that from his office, he's able to mandate certain businesses be shut down.

Basically, the governor and the attorney general were saying, People might end up in jail if folks dont do what we say. Gov. Abbott was saying this was all about doctors and data, what's good for people and keeping people safe.

In the meantime, political pressure came to bear. As soon as somebody actually went to jail up in Dallas, it was like they never said that. Conservative activist Republican lawmakers spoke out, defending the salon owner, Shelley Luther, and this became a national story.

Luther was sent to jail for contempt of court because this is a civil matter. You almost never see people in civil court go sit in the jailhouse, but she was going to have to do that because she refused to follow the order. The judge said that if she would just apologize and shut down her hair salon, he would let her go. How many criminal defendants would love to be in that situation? To just say they're sorry and not go to jail?

MORE Q&AS: Rice University political expert on coronavirus voting: Democracy is at issue here.

But instead, Luther said that she would go to jail. Because this is a civil matter, she could only be held for seven days.

There was a quick court action at the Texas Supreme Court. The court said that Luther could be free for now, while this is all worked out.

And the governor and attorney general have demanded that she be released. The governor has completely backed off what he said. A couple of weeks ago he was saying that hed have local jurisdictions enforce stay-at-home orders as they saw fit. Then he was saying that they needed to lock people up. Now hes saying, retroactively, that people shouldnt be locked up for violating these orders.

So this has turned quickly into the kind of politics we're used to in Texas: the Tea Party-style, don't-tread-on-me, liberty-over-safety sort of messaging.

Is that Texas style becoming a national model? Greg Abbott met Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday.

The governor and the president were talking about Luther at the White House.

They met on the same day that one of the presidents personal valets was reported to have tested positive for COVID-19. They were asked about that.

Dr. Deborah Birx, who's done many of the White House briefings, was asked if Texas is a model for the nation in the way that we're opening up our businesses. And she was quick to say every state is different. She praised Houston and Dallas for containing and mitigating the epidemic, but she did not say that Texas was a model  even though the president was sort of touting Texas.

What we're seeing all over the country is that there's no great answer, no perfect way to do this.

At first Texas laid out a plan tailored to big business. That plan would allow big-box retail stores to open up at 25 percent capacity, and restaurants to open up at 25 percent capacity. Only big national chains can make that work, and they're probably not even turning a profit. For a small business to make money, they need to be at complete capacity. A lot of those small restaurateurs are not even opening up.

That plan quickly crumbled. Over the last few days, as we were talking about just a moment ago, small businesses like hair salons and mom-and-pop shops, which had been sort of in line to be collateral damage with the big-business-tailored plan, are now being allowed to open up. We'll see what the public-health consequences are.

Though Abbott has talked about doctors and data publicly, weve heard different things from him privately. Could you talk about the recording that was leaked?

Over the last two months, Texas government has really been conducted largely in secret, with the governor convening most members of the Texas Legislature along with members of Congress on massive conference calls, and telling them his version of events in private. The media is not allowed to listen to these calls.

I'm a little surprised that my friends in the newspaper business haven't made more out of this. Usually the editorial boards will scream about government secrecy  rightly, I think  and write about how sunlight is the best disinfectant and say that we need to have more transparency in government.

So we reporters are doing a lot of work to try to report out what they're saying on these conference calls anyway, to piece it together after the fact.

Some audio leaked from Abbotts conversation with lawmakers last Friday in which he said something different from what he has said publicly. Jeremy Wallace at the Houston Chronicle had reported very well on that. Publicly the governor has been saying that we're going to see a spike in COVID-19 cases because we have more testing going on. And that makes sense, right? The more testing we do, the more positives tests are going to come up.

But that was not said what he said to lawmakers in private. He said  this was the quote  It's almost ipso facto, the more that you have people out there, the greater possibility there is for transmission of the disease.

What he's saying is that the more you open up business, the more the disease will spread. That's not at all what he had said publicly.

The president and the governor and other elected officials all over the country are all talking about this in different ways.

Texas governor and the president have been talking about it sort of like they can wrap a warm blanket around everybody and act as if they can have everything  that people can have their cake and eat it too, that we can have a robust economy and go back to the way that it kind of was, and not be putting people at risk of catching this nasty disease.

And that's just not true, according to the science.

MORE Q&AS: Texas A&M pandemic expert: We should expect a dangerous new spike' in coronavirus cases

You might have seen where Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, talked to CNNs podcast this past week. He's always been one of those gruff guys who will say whats on his mind, and he's even more liberated now that he's not in office or running for anything. He said: Look, we should open the economy, but we have to understand and prepare people for the fact that people will die if we do that.

After Abbotts comments were leaked, Republicans said to me, why didnt he just say this in his initial announcement about opening the state up for business? Why didn't he just say that, yes, we are going to be putting people at greater risk of transmitting the disease and catching the disease by opening up business. That way, at least people could make informed decisions for their own health, for the people in their lives.

Trying to keep people from catching the disease is a community effort. It's not just about you individually and whether you would get the disease, but whether you would carry it to other people.

For instance, a lot of folks are sheltering in place who don't necessarily care if they get the disease personally. But they think that if they get the disease, and are an asymptomatic carrier, they could give it to one of their elderly relatives.

But the governor has not, in public any way, been straight with folks about that  that as business opens up, there's more of a chance that people will track in this disease. But it's certainly what he said when he was on a private conference call.

I've been interested in the symbolism of face masks. We don't see Gov. Abbott wearing a face mask in his press conferences  but youd think that to keep businesses open, wed want to do everything we can to prevent transmission. Do you see a split there?

Its interesting, the political science about way that our elected officials appear. Officials in the big cities, like Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, wear masks when they do press conferences, and they make the point that people should wear them.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick wears masks when he goes to certain photo opportunities. He sends email to supporters that include photos and media clips, and I saw that when he was in East Texas, he was wearing a mask when he was out and about with just regular folks. But in other instances, he does not.

I don't think I've seen Gov. Abbott wear a mask once during this entire thing, and President Trump doesn't wear the mask. The elected Republican leadership seem interested in saying that they encourage people to wear masks. But Democrats are the ones showing people that they are wearing masks and leading by example.

The politics of the mask is fascinating. It's a stand-up-and-be-counted moment. If you're wearing the mask, everyone can see that you're doing it right.

Its interesting to see how angry some people are about it. The thing in Texas is, it's redneck politics: You can't tell me what to do. I might wear the mask, but don't tell me that I have to wear the mask.

We have such an independent streak. People just don't like to be told what to do.

The consequences of being hunkered down for so long, combined with the oil crash, are about to wallop state budget. Sales tax collections dropped more than 9 percent for April  the biggest decline in a decade. How fast will that affect state spending? And what do you expect to start happening?

The consequences of all this  of the coronavirus and the associated shutdown and the collapsing price of oil  are just starting to come into focus.

Putting together the Texas budget is a Herculean effort. It's a quarter-trillion-dollar document that is written for a 24-month horizon. You would not be able to do that at your house. You could not figure out how much money exactly you're gonna have for the next two years. But that is the way we do budgeting in Texas.

And your household budget is to writing the state budget what parking your car is to landing a man on the moon. Try to anticipate revenues for a state of nearly 29 million people spread across 254 counties and two time zones. Then try to anticipate that over a two-year time span.

The Comptroller of Texas  Glenn Hegar, a Republican  is sort of the accountant for the state. When he was providing a revenue estimate to lawmakers to write the current budget that we're living under, he expected oil prices to be around $50 or $55 a barrel this year and next.

But earlier in the year, even before the coronavirus pandemic really set in, we saw the Saudis and the Russians in a price war over oil, and oil prices dropped like a rock. As you know, low gas prices are a double-edged sword in Houston. In other parts of the country, when you do that story, its just a positive story: Everyone is happy when the price of gas goes down.

MORE FROM LISA GRAY: Hes 16 years sober. Its been a month since AA stopped meeting in person due to coronavirus.

But not in Houston, or in Texas: We rely on oil and gas for so much of our economic output, particularly in Southeast Texas and the Permian Basin. Low oil and gas prices have ripple effects throughout the rest of our economy.

Sales tax has dropped through the floor, as you mentioned, and that's what's naturally happens when you suddenly tell retailers and restaurants and bars that they can't interact with their customers anymore. And naturally, that affects sales taxes, and so it affects how much Texas can spend.

I don't think they've really gotten their minds around that in Austin. Folks who've watched the budget process for many years are telling me that we have a lot of conservative Republicans in the legislature who think that they've been through a conservative budget process before, but they have never seen anything like this.

If you look at the turnover in the Legislature, over the past few cycles, there are probably at least 100 members of the Texas House, out of 150, who have never been through a budget-cutting session. The last budget-cutting session was in 2011, when $5 billion in public education funding was cut. Some of that was restored in 2013, and they've done some work to restore that even further.

In 2019, the Legislature claimed that they had fixed public school finance. One of the veteran education lobbyists told me that fixing school finance is easy: I've seen them do it at least five or six times, he joked.

Thats the way it always goes. The Legislature will write a budget to fund public education at a certain level. Then schools sue the state over it, and the courts will find that it's unconstitutional the way that Texas is funding schools. Wash, rinse, repeat. That's the way we've always done it.

This time around, in 2019, they were not under court order to fix the school finance system. They took it on themselves to make a change in the way schools are financed.

They were also buying down property taxes when they did that. That decision may not look very good now, because what they did was spend most of the surplus that they had in 2019 on buying down property taxes.

I don't think a lot of Texans are real excited about their property tax bills; I don't think that they have seen a huge change. And I don't think a lot of folks would tell you that they've seen some big improvement in their schools, either, since 2019  and it wouldn't be fair to expect that schools would change that quickly. But the average voter out there hasn't seen improvement in schools or reduction in the property taxes.

The comptroller will issue his next revenue estimate in July. He says he expects that, because of the price of oil dropping, and because of the recession that we're now in, he will revise the revenues for the state budget down by billions of dollars.

I've been talking with budget experts about this in Austin. When lawmakers return in 2021, we could expect to see a deficit of $15 billion to $20 billion.

Everything to raise revenue will be on the table, a senior Republican told me: casinos; legal marijuana; Medicaid expansion. Then theyll have to figure out where, in that quarter-trillion-dollar document, things can be cut.

Everything is on the table: Could that mean a state income tax?

[Laughs.] I didn't hear that come out of his mouth.

The old joke is that we'll have seen casinos in Baptist churches before we would have an income tax in Texas. I think that'll still hold up.

Any parting thoughts? Should we have spent more time discussing Democrats?

Ill spend more time on them when theyre the ones making the decisions.

Parting thoughts: This is a wild time to be doing news, isn't it?

It's a cliche to say that these are uncertain times, that this is all unprecedented. I like to tell people, You know what time was uncertain? All the time! The time before this was uncertain because nobody knew all this was about to happen.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

lisa.gray@chron.com, @LisaGray_HouTX
Reliance Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), has sold a 2.3 per cent stake to Vista Equity Partners, a US-based private equity firm that runs the worlds largest exclusively tech-focused fund, for Rs 11,367 crore.

Vistas investment is at an 12.5 percent premium over the Facebook deal announced in April. The deal puts Jio Platforms' equity value at Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value at Rs 5.16 lakh crore.

This is the third high profile-investment in Reliance Jio in as many weeks, after Facebook acquired a minority 9.9 per cent stake for Rs 43,534 crore and Silver Lake invested 5655 crore for a stake of 1.5 per cent.

The investment by Silver Lake Partners in Jio announced earlier this week was also at a similar premium to the Facebook deal.

Jio Platforms has now raised Rs 60,596.37 crore from leading technology investors in less than three weeks as the company looks to pare its debt.

Vista has a track record of investing in cutting edge tech companies in their early stage, and each of its investments have been profitable in its history of 10 years. This is Vistas first sizable investment in India.

This reaffirms Jio as a strong tech-enterprise focused on one of the most exciting and large markets in the world and emphasises the quality of management, RIL said.

Vistas investment showcases Jio as the next-generation software and platform company, beyond a telecom enterprise. This reaffirms Jios continuing attraction among global investors for its deep understanding of the Indian markets, the rapid digitisation opportunity post-Covid-19 and its capabilities to bring cutting-edge technologies and tools such as AI, Blockchain, AR/VR and Big data into play for all Indians.

Diverse marquee investors are becoming long-term shareholders of Jio Platforms because of a unique set of technologies and platforms under one entity. There are no similar opportunities available anywhere else globally.
At least two more individuals who allegedly participated in a failed plot to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and fly him to the United States, have been arrested according to defense minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

The two men, whose faces are completely covered with t-shirts in a photo shared by the official on Twitter, were arrested in Puerto Cruz, a neighborhood in the Caribbean coastal city of La Guaira, on Friday.

The suspects were surrounded by three military servicemen in a photograph tweeted by Lopez.

'We are looking for you and you CANNOT BE HIDDEN! We have captured two mercenaries in the mountainous sector south of Puerto Cruz and we are going for more,' the ruling socialist government's defense minister wrote on Twitter. 'Where are your political bosses who paid for this incursion?'

On Friday, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Venezuelan authorities were seeking to arrest 22 other individuals who were reportedly part of Sunday's plot crafted by former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who owns the Florida-based security firm Silvercorp USA.

Venezuela announced Friday the arrest of two individuals, who reportedly participated in an attempt to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro last Sunday

Former U.S. soldiers Airan Berry (left) and Luke Denman (right) are being held in Venezuela for their alleged role in participating in a foiled plot to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro

Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau claimed responsibility for masterminding the failed Venezuelan coup to overthrow its leader Nicholas Maduro

Venezuelan officials have arrested a total of 31 men, including two former U.S. soldiers, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, who were part of the plot.

Berry and Denman were scheduled to appear in court Friday and will be charged with terrorism, conspiracy, and illicit trafficking in weapons of war.

The Venezuelan nationals will be charged with conspiracy with foreign government, terrorism, treason, rebellion, illicit trafficking in weapons of war and terror financing.

Goudreau has appeared on video claiming responsibility for masterminding the failed Venezuelan coup to out Maduro.

It is just one of many missteps made in the lead-up to the failed coup by Goudreau and Silvercorp, who a former U.S. Army paratrooper has now dubbed 'the gang that can't shoot straight'.

Goudreau has found himself under federal investigation for weapons smuggling after identifying himself Sunday as the ringleader of the mission and can now also add plagiarism to his list of infractions.

Large passages copied straight from the Department of Homeland Security, inspirational speaker Tony Robbins, and online educational website MasterClass were found on the Silvercorp website, according to an Associated Press report.

An Associated Press investigation found that last year Goudreau helped train a team of Venezuelan military deserters in Colombia to carry out a raid and traveled back to the training camps or to pick up new recruits on several occasions over the past few months.

On Monday two U.S. former special forces soldiers Luke Denman (top) and Airan Berry (bottom) were arrested in Venezuela after their 'plot to assassinate Maduro' was foiled

In December, Silvercorp bought a 41-foot fiberglass boat, Florida vessel registration records show, and proceeded in February to obtain a license to install maritime navigation equipment.

On his application to the Federal Communications Commission, Goudreau said the boat would travel to foreign ports.

The boat next appeared in Jamaica, where Goudreau had gathered with a few of his special forces buddies looking to participate in the raid, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke with AP.

But as they were readying their assault, the boat broke down at sea on March 28 and an emergency position-indicating radio beacon was activated, alerting naval authorities on the island of Curacao.

Goudreau was rescued but returned to the United States unable to get back Colombia to carry out his own plot.

Sean McFate, a former U.S. Army paratrooper who worked as a private military contractor, said Goudreau's behavior should raise serious concerns about the lack of enforcement of U.S. laws requiring Americans who conduct private military training abroad to obtain U.S. government licensing.

'Charlatans and amateurs have always haunted the mercenary business,' said McFate, who is the author of The New Rules of War on the foreign policy implications of privatized warfare.

Airan Berry was shown in two different video clips Thursday while being interrogated by Venezuelan officials about his role in a botched attempt to overthrown President Maduro

Luke Denman was arrested alongside fellow American Airan Berry and six Venezuelan mercenaries as part of the foiled coup of Venezuela. He appeared on Venezuelan TV on Wednesday speaking about the failed attempt

'But Goudreau finds the new bottom. Silvercorp is literally "the gang that cant shoot straight".'

Goudreau has been placed at the center of a plot hatched with a rebellious former Venezuelan Army General, Cliver Alcala, to secretly train dozens of Venezuelan military deserters in secret camps in Colombia to carry out a swift operation against Maduro.

He has said he was hired last year by opposition leader Juan Guaido, something the U.S.-backed Venezuelan lawmaker has denied.

JJ Rendon, a Miami-based adviser to Guaido, said that he gave Goudreau $50,000 as requested to cover some expenses. Goudreau acknowledged the payment to the AP and other media.

The failed military incursion, which aimed to capture socialist leader Maduro, resulted in the detention in Venezuela of two of his former special forces colleagues: Berry and Denman

Eleven Venezuelans were also arrested as President Maduro revealed that they had knowledge of the raid plans after infiltrating the group in Colombia and were waiting to capture them.

The attack was foiled as the group attempted to enter Venezuela on fishing boats. Locals alerted authorities and they were arrested.
There are other paths for pathogens. The most likely one comes directly from our insatiable appetite for meat. As people around the world get richer, they tend to eat more meat. Some 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for meat each year around the world. Most livestock is factory-farmed  an estimated 99 percent in the United States, and 74 percent around the world, according to one animal rights group. That entails crowding thousands of animals inches from each other in gruesome conditions that are almost designed to incubate viruses and encourage them to spread, getting more virulent with each hop. Voxs Sigal Samuel quotes the biologist Rob Wallace: Factory farms are the best way to select for the most dangerous pathogens possible.
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.

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Lita Martinez contributed reporting to this story.

Orange County beaches are now open for "active" recreation only, which essentially means you can use the beach for everything except sunbathing and large gatherings. Basically, no loitering.

Swimming, surfing, scuba diving, jogging, walking, stand-up paddle boarding, kayaking, boating, dog-walking (where permitted) and boogie boarding (siiiiick) are all allowed. Just don't sit around or, as the All American Rejects said, move along.

Sunbathing, sitting down (yes, really), sandcastle-building, bonfires, volleyball (and other "high-touch" sports), beach blankets, beach chairs, coolers, BBQs, tents, umbrellas and bascially all beach toys are against the rules.

The county received approval from the state of California to launch its four-phase plan to reopen county-operated beaches today, according to a press release from OC Supervisor Lisa Bartlett. Earlier this week, Bartlett brought the motion for the plan forward; it was approved by a 3-2 vote. The "active recreation" addition is part of Phase 2.

This comes just one week after Governor Gavin Newsom ordered Orange County beaches to shut down, after throngs crowded them in defiance of COVID-19-prompted stay-at-home orders.

If you have questions about specifics, prepare to be confused, since each coastal city has their own set of rules, which are also all subject to change.

Here's what we know so far:

SEAL BEACH

Hours: Beginning May 11 at dawn, beachgoers can hit the sand, surf, or swim from Monday to Thursday during daylight hours.

Fines: Picnics, sunbathing or other large gatherings are still off-limits and violators are subject to a $1,000 fine.

Details: Seal Beach police sergeant Nick Nicholas says the city welcomes visitors from out of town but officers and lifeguards will be out to make sure everyone keeps moving and practicing proper social distancing.

"About 40% of our population is 65 years of age or older," Nicholas said, "so we want to take proactive measures to make sure that people in Seal Beach don't get sick, especially if they're in one of those vulnerable population groups."

Seal Beach is also home to Leisure World, a gated retirement community of about 9,000 residents.

Seal Beach plans to gradually expand access to its shoreline based on changes to public health guidelines, although officials are prepared to rescind the reopening order if beaches get too crowded.

LAGUNA BEACH

What's Open: Laguna Beach has implemented a four-phase plan to reopen all city-owned beaches, beginning May 5. City-run beaches span from Treasure Island in the south to Victoria Beach in the north.

South Laguna beaches are controlled by Orange County, however, and will remain closed for now.

Hours: City beaches will be open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. for "active recreation only," so again, no sunbathing.

Fines: None

HUNTINGTON BEACH

What's Open: The city of Huntington Beach has opened all of their beaches, except those in Huntington harbour, for "active recreational use" starting May 5. The beach bike pathway will also be open. State beaches, which include Huntington State Beach and Bolsa Chica State Beach, will also be open for active recreation. Social distancing is required.

Within Huntington Harbor and all connected channels, active recreation such as kayaking, boating, and paddle boarding is allowed.

Hours: Open beaches are accessible from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., every day.

What's Closed: The Huntington Beach pier and beach playground will remain closed, along with the open grass and picnic areas next to the beach.

Fines: The city has not announced fines for anyone who violates this policy, but if you tamper with the new signage about active recreation, you could be arrested.

NEWPORT BEACH

What's Open: All city beaches in Newport are now open for active recreational use.

Hours: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.

Details: According to the city website's FAQ section, the following rules apply: "Passive games," loitering, sunbathing and other stationary activities are NOT allowed. Gatherings of people (even if engaged in active recreation) outside of those within their immediate household are not allowed. Coolers, umbrellas, beach blankets and towels are also against the rules.

Things that are allowed include walking, running, hiking, swimming, surfing, bodysurfing, boogie boarding, kite surfing, paddle boarding, skim boarding, kayaking, fishing and recreational activities that keep individuals in "non-stationary, active motion."

Fines: None

If you want to jog in place on the beach, this is your time to shine.

State-approved "active recreational use" of beach.

DO: Walking, running, swimming, surfing, and other similar ocean activities.

DON'T: Loiter, gather in groups, sunbath, play volleball or passvive games.

Wear sunscreen, swim near a lifeguard, have fun#NewportBeachLG pic.twitter.com/fUFMXBBfL2  Newport Lifeguards (@NewportBeachLG) May 7, 2020

DANA POINT

What's Open: Doheny State Beach, Salt Creek Beach, Strands, Baby Beach, Capistrano Beach and Dana Cove.

Hours: 6 a.m. - 10 p.m.

What's Closed: Doheny State Beach is closed to car access (no parking facilities and roadside parking is prohibited). Parking lots and "amenities" are closed at Salt Creek Beach, Strands, Baby Beach and Capistrano Beach; restrooms are open with "high-frequency sanitation protocols," according to the city's website.

County beaches in Dana Point have received approval from the State to open. That includes Salt Creek, Strands, Capistrano Beach and Baby Beach. The City has compiled the latest information about local beaches on our webpage linked here: https://t.co/40pYTY9Wz0 pic.twitter.com/nQojmJXddL  City of Dana Point (@CityofDanaPoint) May 7, 2020

SAN CLEMENTE

What's Open: As of May 5, the San Clemente Pier is open for active use with "two-way travel" but closed to fishing, rail-leaning, sitting, bicycles and dogs. As of May 4, the beach is open for active use.

Hours: Not specified.

What's Not Open: All beach restrooms and beach parking will remain closed until further notice.

Fines: None.

See? Not confusing at all.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Read more about what's open/closed right now:

You can explore other how other counties, states and the U.S. on the whole are faring in the pandemic at COVID-19 Case Mapper.
Old Navy is selling cloth face masks in a variety of designs for adults and children.

The masks come in a variety of patterns in a pack of five for $12.50. According to the website they are, however, on back order and will ship around May 27.

According to Old Navy the reusable, non-medical masks come in assorted colors, prints and patterns made from excess fabric from some of our most popular items.

The masks are 3-ply, 100 percent soft and breathable cotton with elastic over-the-ear straps.

There is a limit of three packs per customer.

The masks also are washable.

Old Navy also is donated 50,000 face masks to Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The Center for Disease Control recommends that everyone wear a face mask in public, such as at the grocery store or pharmacy, to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf in mid-April made it mandatory to wear a face mask when out in public.

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The government is hiding a lot of information about the COVID 19 pandemic and the public needs to start digging up this information if they ever want to know the truth, says licensed emergency medicine doctor, Rashid. A. Buttar, who has been practising medicine for about 30 years.

The first coronavirus that was discovered in the 1960s and has been studied over 14, 000 times since then. In all these studies, the virus has never been seen to cause much of a problem and often been described as not a big deal and very self-limiting.

However, in 2010-2011, patents of replications of the virus started to be discovered. Dr.Buttar, in an interview with TheDeenshowTV, notes that one can onlypatenta virus if its been changed, adulteratedor mutated, which means that the coronavirus was altered. The medical process used for adulterating such viruses is called gain-of-function. Of viruses, gain-of-function means, taking a virus with lower resistance and making it worse.

In 2013, the government passed a law to discontinue any gain-of-function studies, arguing that there is no reason to make a virus more resistant than it already is, however Dr. Anthony Fauci, the current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came along and made it possible for the research money on gain-of-function research to be diverted to Wuhan. Buttar believes that it is the continuation of this research that led to the formation of COVID 19.

According to Dr.Buttar, if you check the European Union patent database, youll find multiple patents of the coronavirus that has already been made, one of those patents were found and granted in Nov 2019, which was just before the first case of COVID 19 in Wuhan.Interestingly, this 2019 patent and other class of patents are owned by Pirbright, an institute funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is quite interesting, how Bill Gates, who is by no means a health or medical officer, has always been involved with virus research. According to Buttar, Gatescouldnt keep viruses out of Microsoft but tries to keep viruses out of the human body. As if viruses need to be kept out of the human body. Humans depend on viruses to evolve.

Bill Gates has given a lot of money to the CDC, WHO and many global health organizations in a bid to have a say in their research. He believes in population control and has talked about how vaccines are necessary to decrease the population.

Buttar accuses Gates of paying scientists to make the coronavirus worse, then being at the forefront of finding a cure and trying to force people to adopt this cure.

The UK changed its legislation on the 27th of April to reflect mandatory vaccines for everyone and the entire world would follow suit in no time.

It has become apparent that the cycle is to create a problem, try to find a solution to the problem and then force this solution on everyone.

Worse still, the truth about the COVID 19 virus is getting taken off the internet, and the government is making it hard for the public to have access to this information.Right now if you say anything about 5G on Facebook and Youtube your post would get taken down. These 5G-coronavirus videos hit millions of views before they get taken down because people feel the truth in these videos.

Buttar believes that there is a link between the 5G technology and the novel coronavirus and that the more the government rolls out the 5G technology, the more people are going to get sick, and then they would use mandatory vaccines to make people even sicker and continue to decrease the worlds population.

Obama had predicted that the 2009 HINI pandemic, was going to kill 60 million Americans but the real number of deaths ended up being 12,469 because no one took the vaccine. The public must also resist mandatory COVID 19 vaccines to prevent the governments population control agenda.
One of our faves, Yvonne Orji, is just about ready to release her HBO comedy special titled Momma I Made It.

The Nigerian-American Hollywood actress, known for her role as Molly in the HBO series Insecure, shared the trailer on social media today, saying:

MOMMA, I MADE IT! June 6th on HBO



Naija made me America raised me

So it was only right that for my first @hbo comedy special, I PUT ON for both of my homes. What a moment it was to bring cameras all the way to Lagos AND deep in the village to get a sneak peak into the family that birth my funny. And then finally bringing it full circle to the DMV and taping in front two sold-out crowds at the Howard Theater. Its been a LOOOONG journey, but how sweet it is, to finally be able to say, #MOMMAiMadeIt!

Interspersed with vibrant, personal footage shot in Nigeria, Yvonnes native home, during a milestone trip in early January, YVONNE ORJI: MOMMA, I MADE IT! takes an intimate, hilarious look at what being Nigerian-American means to Yvonne  from her international haggling addiction and having her phone tapped by her parents as a kid, to the fine line between cursing people out and putting curses on them. The special was filmed before a live audience at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The comedy special will be released on HBO on the 6th of June and we absolutely cannot wait

The post Yvonne Orjis HBO Comedy Special is Almost Here! appeared first on .

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On May 8, President of Pakistan Arif Alvi made a phone call to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

Pakistani President Arif Alvi extended his congratulations on the occasion of a recent videoconference of the Non-aligned Movement dedicated to fight against coronavirus which was held on the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev. He hailed the importance of the conference in terms of strengthening efforts to combat the pandemic.

President Ilham Aliyev noted that the event made a significant contribution to consolidating solidarity and international cooperation between the countries.

The heads of state expressed their confidence that the two countries will continue to support each others stance at the international level.

During the telephone conversation, President Ilham Aliyev and President Arif Alvi highlighted the measures taken to combat the coronavirus and exchanged views on prospects for bilateral ties, including the development of economic and trade relations between the two countries.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Three Northern Ireland barbers have hit out at those still operating on the black market during the lockdown.

Most barber shops closed before the government shutdown on March 23 yet some are still advertising home visits or accepting appointments from clients to visit their premises.

The National Hair and Beauty Federation (NHBF) has warned hairdressers and barbers that they should not be operating under any circumstances until the government gives them the green light. It is not expected to be included in Boris Johnson's revision of coronavirus restrictions to be announced on Sunday.

Yet the NHBF said its members have been bombarded with requests for "lockdown cuts" from clients pleading with stylists to break restrictions.

They include Garry Jackson (57) who runs Garry's Barber Shop in Holywood and has been in business for 31 years.

He said he is heartbroken to see some barbers blatantly breaking the law, possibly transmitting the virus and charging over-inflated prices for their services, without being insured or paying tax.

"My wife Mari is a former nurse and knew about the dangers of cross contamination and infection so we closed our business on March 17 and furloughed all our staff," Garry said.

"What these other guys are doing is so wrong on every level but especially to those hard working barbers who have done the right thing. It's illegal and immoral and I just don't understand why anyone would put themselves in that crazy situation."

His view is shared by Neal Toner (32), of JFH Social in Belfast and Newcastle.

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Neal said: "This is an industry that I'm extremely passionate about and how I make my living so for once we are all in the same boat in terms of money worries. But those who are stepping out of our tribe to make a quick buck are potentially spreading this virus, bringing death to someone's door and prolonging my chance of getting back to work to provide for my own family.

"In my 11 years in the business the longest I had ever been closed prior to this was four days due to a power cut.

"Having been in the salon over the last two nights to consider how we might safely return, it's a really eerie feeling when the place should be full of energy, music, craic and chat."

Gregg McNeil (33) of Bareknuckle Barbers in Londonderry added: "It's so frustrating to see some barbers still working away when businesses like mine have been closed for several weeks.

"If we all followed suit and stayed shut for the sake of everyone's safety then this would be over sooner and we could all get back to work.

"Every day I'm getting calls and messages being offered stupid amounts of money which I find really insulting because these people obviously aren't worried about either their safety or mine."

In a letter to members urging them not to flout restrictions, the NHBF said: "This would be against the government's strict social distancing instructions which say you must stay at home apart from essential travel.

"We need to do all we can to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Also - please bear in mind that your insurance will probably not cover you if you normally work in a salon or barbershop."

Salons in the Republic of Ireland will not reopen until July 20, according to the Irish government's roadmap for easing restrictions.

However RTE reported earlier this week that hairdressers are being offered up to four times the usual price for a haircut, with treatments that usually cost between 40 (35) and 50 (43) seen for 200 (175) on the black market.
A 60-year-old man who tested positive for Covid-19 died after he developed pneumonia at the Government Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) in Greater Noida on Friday.

According to GIMS director Rakesh Gupta, the man died of respiratory failure at 3.45 am on Friday He was the first resident of Gautam Budh Nagar district to succumb after testing positive for the Coronavirus.

A resident of Sector 22 in Noida, the man was admitted to Metro Hospital in Sector 11 on May 4 for treatment of comorbid disease, and tested positive for Covid-19 on late Thursday evening.

Coronavirus outbreak: Full coverage

After the test results, the man was transferred to GIMS. The patient was brought to us by 3.30 am on Friday and he died at 3.45 am of respiratory failure as he was suffering from pneumonia developed because of COVID-19, said Gupta.

Authorities at Metro Hospital said all information about the man had been provided to the chief medical officer of Gautam Budh Nagar and only the health department would speak on the matter.

Health officials from the district health department said the man was moved to GIMS after his condition deteriorated. His report of Covid-19 infection came a few hours before his death.

The deceased was undergoing treatment for pulmonary disease at Metro Hospital. The Metro Hospitals officials decided to shift the patient to GIMS after he was put on ventilator and his condition continued to deteriorate, said a senior health official.

Officials are in the process of completing all required precautions and formalities before disposing of the body according to protocols. The health department has put under quarantine the medical staff of Metro Hospital who came in contact with the man.

On May 4, a 47-year-old man from Ghaziabad, who was being treated at Felix Hospital in Sector 137, died of Covid-19. The man was from Khoda Colony. The death will be counted in Ghaziabads records, said health officials of Gautam Budh Nagar.

According to the officials, this man too was being treated for a respiratory problem. He first went to ESIC Model Hospital in Noida, from where he was referred to Felix Hospital on Saturday.
Guest Column The Closer and Better the World Cooperates, the Faster Well Overcome COVID-19

A municipal worker disinfects a market area in Mandalay in March. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

On May 4, more than 50 world leaders, heads of international organizations and companies followed an invitation from the European Union to come together to fight a double-headed virus: corona and selfish nationalism. Together, they pledged to invest 7.4 billion eurosmore than 11.13 trillion kyatsfor testing, treatment and most importantly: a vaccine.

The novel coronavirus does not stop at national borders. Our response to this pandemic can therefore not be isolation; while we distance ourselves physically from each other to help prevent the further spread of the virus, we need to move closer together as nations to effectively fight it.

A truly global approach means that once the vaccine is developed, access will be given to everybody, not just the highest bidders. We need to prepare now, together, to have sufficient production capacity for the vaccine to be deployed to every corner of the world. In fact, countries like Myanmar, with limited testing capability and local pharmaceutical industry, should be among the first to receive the vaccine.

COVID-19 has affected all of us, taken lives and jobs, separated us from our loved ones, confined us in our homes, turning our world upside down. There are legitimate questions as to whether the Chinese authorities could have been more transparent instead of silencing Wuhan doctors who raised concerns. But now is not the time to make vague allegations, nor to stigmatize any race or nationality with finger-pointing, discrimination, disinformation or conspiracy theories. We need global scientific cooperation, not politics, to lead the way, to focus on finding the source of the coronavirus so we can effectively fight it and get back to a normal life as soon as possible. At the World Health Organizations annual World Health Assembly on May 18, the European Union will propose an independent investigation to find the source of this pandemic.

The coronavirus has hit Europe hard. So far, health authorities reported almost 1.5 million confirmed infections and 145,000 deaths linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of Europeans have spent weeks inside their homes and many schools remain closed. Like in Myanmar, millions of Europeans have lost their incomes, jobs and livelihoods as the streets all over Europe have fallen silent. Europe has taken a hard blow but we are still standing, and the European spirit of solidaritywithin Europe and with our partners around the globehas been mobilized.

Let me pay tribute to the Myanmar government for taking up the fight against the coronavirus with admirable calm and professionalism, despite limited resources and a lack of key medical supplies, particularly in remote areas. The low number of confirmed infections in Myanmar is probably partly due to the low rates of testing but overall, Myanmar has done better than several developed nations with vast resources.

These strict measures, however, come at a price, and the socio-economic impact on Myanmars people is very harsh. Growth this year will be halved, or worse. The European Union stands in solidarity with Myanmar, and we have shown this in a number of practical ways, using our many programs across the country to help the government inform people on how to help fight the spread of the virus and how to stay healthy and safe. Our projects also provide essential hygiene and personal protective equipment to communities, officials and health workers across the country.

A special effort is being made to ensure that humanitarian aid continues to reach the most vulnerable, including IDPs and people affected by conflict. As government revenues decline during this crisis, we have accelerated our disbursements to the Ministry of Education to keep education on track. The National Health Laboratory, a pivotal part of Myanmars COVID-19 response, is already receiving strong joint support from the European Union and the French Development Agency to increase its capacities to test and boost its preparedness for this and the next epidemic.

To me and to the EU, supporting the women in the garment sector is a special, top priority. Tens of thousands of jobs have already been lost and many more are at riskfirst due to the disruption of raw material supplies from China, then to cancelled orders from global buyers and now factory closures under quarantine. These women did nothing to deserve this misery. Most of them are young women from across Myanmar who, with their salaries, support their children and families back home. Half a million jobs have been created thanks to the opening of the EUs markets under its Generalized Scheme of Preferences, and this success story must be preserved. Now that the crisis has hit, I am glad that the EU could respond quickly to the dramatic situation with the Myan Ku Emergency Cash Fund that is set to disburse cash to up to 90,000 workers, helping them through this crisis.

The world will overcome COVID-19. The closer we cooperate, the faster well put it behind us. But will we learn from it? Our ambition should not be to return to normal. This is a wake-up call to the world with several messages: First, we cannot afford to weaken or politicize key international institutions like the WHO or the UN as a whole. Second, if and when the zoonotic (viral transmission from animal to human) origin of COVID-19 is confirmed, it must lead us to take strong, collective action to ban all wildlife trafficking, including in Myanmars border areas with the current Chinese market. Bats and pangolins belong in nature, not on the dinner table.

Third, a virus is not natures revenge: we did this to ourselves, and we should think deep and hard about our respect for planetary boundaries. We need a leap forward into a modern, clean and sustainable economy that uses resources responsibly and protects the worlds biodiversity. Our new normal must be a green normal, where we do not compromise on decisive measures against climate change, protecting our future livelihoods and our planet.

Fourth, global trade and transport is not to blame for this, but the pandemic reminds us that global norms and standards are there for a reason and must be upheld.

And fifth, while this crisis has disproportionally hit the poor and the vulnerable, it has also exposed our interdependence and shown that no society is stronger than its weakest link. We need societies with safety nets, not as emergency measures but as permanent features, and we need them for the international community.

On May 9, the EU marks Europe Day and the 70th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration. In 1950, former French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, in a powerful speech, laid out his vision of a peaceful, prosperous Europe that is built on such unity and solidarity. In the face of the coronavirus crisis, his words ring truer than ever: We are stronger together.

Kristian Schmidt is the Ambassador of the European Union to Myanmar.

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Eurofins Launches CE-IVD Marked Multiplex Real-Time PCR Assay for SARS-CoV-2 Detection

By HospiMedica International staff writers

Posted on 08 May 2020



Illustration

Eurofins Technologies (Budapest, Hungary) has launched its CE-IVD marked multiplex Real-Time RT-PCR (reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction) assay for the direct qualitative pathogen detection of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).



The launch of Eurofins new GSD NovaPrime SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Real-Time PCR follows the commercialization of CE-IVD marked serology-based antibody detection ELISA kits that were successfully launched in April 2020. The GSD NovaPrime SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is a Multiplex Real-Time PCR for the direct qualitative pathogen detection of SARS-CoV-2. The assay simultaneously detects two target sequences inside the N gene.



The multiplex PCR allows a streamlined workflow in one reaction and provides results in approximately two hours. An extraction/inhibition control and a positive control is included in the reagents. The PCR assay demonstrates excellent performance with a 100% Negative and Positive Percent Agreement (NPA, PPA) for all tested samples and no cross-reactivity with other common widely spread coronaviruses. The analytic sensitivity shows a limit of detection of 3.75 copies/reaction.



The development of the assay has been spearheaded by affiliate companies, Gold Standard Diagnostics Inc., VIROTECH Diagnostics GmbH and NovaTec Immundiagnostica GmbH, who are well-established providers of testing solutions with a strong focus on scientific excellence in infectious diseases testing. The affiliate companies have been collaborating closely with Eurofins scientists around the world in the design and validation of the new product.






Fulton said the parks department has been attempting to make all city playgrounds ADA-compliant, using a portion of the departments bond money. However, he said the playgrounds still wont be ADA-accessible if the pathways to them arent.
Read about Donbas conflict, coronavirus, Ukraine and IMF relations, Saakashvili appointment and other news of the week

About Donbas conflict

Russian mercenaries continue to shell Ukrainian positions in Donbas, using Minsk-banned weaponry, such as artillery and mortars. Militants also launched an unguided S-8 aircraft missile in Donetsk region; it landed not far from residential buildings on the outskirts of Pavlopil. This week, more attacks on civilian infrastructure occurred in Luhansk region, too; no casualties were reported, but buildings took damage.

Leonid Kuchma, the second President of Ukraine, will be leading this country's delegation for negotiations in the Minsk trilateral contact group.

SBU, the State Security Service of Ukraine found out that currently, 214 Ukrainians remain in captivity of Russian mercenaries in the occupied Donbas.

Head of Ukraines Presidents Office Andriy Yermak held a phone talk with political advisers of the leaders of the Normandy Format countries. The Ukrainian side offered to reboot the work of the Trilateral Contact Group.

U.S. State Department insisted that the local election in Donbas would be impossible until Ukraine re-gains control over the state border with Russia. Safety guarantees should be provided, too.

About coronavirus

As of May 8, 14,195 cases of Covid-19 infection were spotted in Ukraine. 1,721 infected are registers in Kyiv.

On May 4, Ukraines government extended the lockdown until May 22. However, it also provided a number of mitigations. It was also stated that the quarantine might be extended until September 2020.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament adopted two laws. The first one enables involving interns and doctors without confirmed qualification to the fight against coronavirus on a voluntary basis. Another one provides the state insurance for employees of the medical and academic institutions who got the degree of disability or died due to the coronavirus.

Besides, it was underlined that the Covid-19 pandemic not to affect the visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU. Instead, the Council of the EU made the decision to provide Ukraine with 1.2 billion Euros for overcoming the economic and social consequences of coronavirus.

About Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation and Victory Day in Ukraine

In 2020, a lot of holidays celebrated a little differently than before due to the coronavirus pandemic. May 8 is the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. It is marked in Ukraine annually since 2015.

May 9 is the Victory Day to mark the Day of Victory over Nazism in World War II. And only May 9 is an official day off in Ukraine. As this year, May 9 falls on the weekend, May 11 will be the day off.

The mass rallies will for sure be banned on this day in Kyiv. In the regions of Ukraine, it is also planned to refrain from holding mass gatherings.

About Ukraine and IMF

On May 7, Ivana Vladkova-Hollar became the leader of the IMF mission in Ukraine. She previously led the Fund's missions in Moldova and North Macedonia.

Meanwhile, IMF Representative in Ukraine Jerry Rice reported the switch to the 18-months-long stand-by program between the Fund and Ukraine.

As a result, Ukraine will start preparing for a new EFF cooperation program with the IMF next summer. The next step is the consideration of banking law that may take place on May 13.

About Saakashvili's appointment

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky assigned Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of Head of Executive Committee of Reforms. This is mentioned in the decree released on the website of the head of the state. The document also puts Oleksandr Olshansky second in charge in the Executive Committee of Reforms of Ukraine, that is, Saakashvili's deputy.

Thus, Saakashvili got an office in the Ukrainian government. His compatriots in Georgias top authorities are obviously disappointed with Ukraines decision. On Friday, Foreign Minister of Georgia David Zalkaliani claimed that his country recalled the ambassador for further consultations, which is a common diplomatic procedure when bilateral relations spoil.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the Georgian sides move a mistake, insisting that appointments in the Ukrainian government belong to Ukraines inner policy.
On May 6, the Peoples Committee of Quang Binh Province issued a document on the price reduction of a number of tourism products and services in the province.

In particular, Oxalis Adventure Tours, the leading jungle and cave adventure tour operator in Vietnam, was allowed to lower the price of the tour Conquering Son Doong  the worlds largest cave to US$2,500 per tourist, which will apply from May 15 to December 31, 2020.

The province also encouraged local travel enterprises to reduce prices for other tours exploring the cave systems of Va, Nuoc Nut, En and others to implement the 2020-2021 tourism stimulus programme in the post-pandemic period.

The provincial authorities have also allowed the managing board of the Phong Nha  Ke Bang National Park to continue to pilot the tour exploring Vom-Gieng Vooc Cave until May 31 of this year.

After the pilot period, the managing board will report the trial results to the provincial authorities to consider the official operation of the tour.

The fee for a one-day tour to Vom-Gieng Vooc Cave was also lowered to VND120,000 from VND200,000 per tourist.

The provincial Department of Tourism said that the province welcomed approximately 35,000 visitors during the 45th anniversary of the liberation of the South and National Reunification Day on April 30 and May Day. The visitors mainly came from Hanoi and neighbouring provinces.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 18:45 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d8e36 1 National Anarcho-syndicalism-Indonesia,vandalism,arson,looting,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,coronavirus,virus-corona,riot,social-unrest Free

Tangerang District Court in Banten has sentenced two underage members of a so-called anarcho-syndicalist group to four months in prison despite attempts to get them noncustodial sentences.

The underage offenders, identified as A and RH, have been sentenced [to four months in jail] after three failed attempts to enter them in the juvenile diversion program," Jakarta Metropolitan Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Yusri Yunus said on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com.

In the diversion program, an underage convict can avoid imprisonment and do social work instead. Low-risk youths such as first-time offenders are usually deemed eligible for the program.

Yusri added that the police had completed the case on another three suspects and submitted them to the district court in late April for trial.

Read also: Books seized, five arrested as police claim anarcho-syndicalists plan mass looting in Java

Police arrested five people suspected of being involved in the so-called anarcho-syndicalist group on April 10, after they allegedly painted graffiti inciting people to riot amid public anxiety over the COVID-19 outbreak.

Police claimed the suspects had spray-painted the walls of a shopping complex in Tangerang with messages saying "it's a crisis now; it's time to burn", "kill the rich" and "fight or die ridiculously".

They had been charged under articles 14 and 15 of the 1946 Misinformation Law and Article 160 of the Criminal Code on incitement, which carry sentences of up to 10 years' imprisonment.

Human rights activists warned the police following the arrest not to act arbitrarily and make arrests simply based on the ideology of certain people without sufficient evidence to prove their crimes. (vny)
Over the last few years, social networks have instituted slightly stiffer policies against misinformation, but those systems are being pressed to their limit by a fast-spreading new video. The Plandemic clip spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and features a discredited biologist. Meanwhile, the removal of coronavirus misinformation has pushed theorists to suggest such reasonable moderation is just another conspiracy. Ugh.

-- Richard

Apple MacBook Pro review (13-inch, 2020)

Finally.

Dana Wollman / Engadget

For the first time in years, our discussion of new Apple laptops doesnt include any consideration of waiting for an updated keyboard. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is the last machine in its lineup to get the new/old Magic Keyboard design as part of a hardware refresh that also brings Intels latest 10th-generation Core CPUs with more power and better battery life. Now, about that Touch Bar...

Continue reading.

Xbox Series X third-party games take the stage

Microsofts gameplay event was just the beginning

Neon Giant

Well. Weve had our first look at a bunch of next-gen games, and even if Microsoft is slightly massaging the meaning of gameplay, its 20/20 event gave some impressive previews of Xbox Series X action. Jessica Conditt has a breakdown of the 13 games shown, with 10 supporting Smart Delivery that stretches purchases across console generations.

Of course, some dont support it because they wont be available on Xbox One at all, like The Medium. But more conventional experiences will, including Assassins Creed: Valhalla, Dirt 5 and Madden 21. You can catch all the action with no filler in our 15-minute supercut or click through below for an evaluation of everything we saw and what Microsoft has yet to reveal about the Xbox Series X.

Continue reading.

The new Surface notebooks are a grab bag of bad decisions

Certain design choices make Microsofts latest convertibles hard to recommend.

Microsoft

Microsofts new Surface lineup looks good, and Cherlynn Low was impressed by the companys efforts in audio with new earbuds and headphones. Where she does have questions is its notebook strategy -- the Surface Go 2 gets expensive quickly when you upgrade the processor and add on a must-have keyboard cover, while the Surface Book 3s detachable screen design is the thing holding it back from including more powerful six- or eight-core CPU options.

Continue reading.

Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs abandons its Toronto smart-neighborhood project

Just like that, it's over.

Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs will no longer pursue its dream of a smart neighbourhood in Toronto. In a Medium blog post, CEO Daniel Doctoroff said, unprecedented economic uncertainty meant it was too difficult to achieve its dreams for Quayside, a proposed redevelopment on the citys waterfront.

Doctoroff said the coronavirus pandemic had made his team feel even more strongly about the importance of reimagining cities for the future. He said his team would continue to work on smart city innovations, including factory-made mass-timber construction. The big question, though, is whether Sidewalk will attempt another large-scale development like Quayside.

Continue reading.

Samsung will introduce an 'innovative' debit card this summer

Can you call it innovative when half the competition has already done it?

Samsung

Samsung wants to do more with payments than offer a virtual prepaid card. The company plans to grow Samsung Pay this summer by introducing a new experience that includes an innovative debit card supported by a cash management account. Details are only slated to arrive in the coming weeks, but itll have help from the financial startup SoFi.

Its not a surprising move for Samsung. Apple has offered a credit card since 2019, and Huawei is following suit. Google is believed to be working on a debit card of its own -- it seems like the company has a case of financial FOMO.

Continue reading.

FDA approves a rapid COVID-19 test that uses CRISPR

This is the first time the FDA has authorized the gene-editing tool.

Sherlock Biosciences has received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA for a rapid COVID-19 test that uses CRISPR technology. This is the first FDA-authorized use of the gene-editing tool, which combines massive potential and possible ethical issues.

Sherlocks test uses a CRISPR molecule to detect the genetic signature of the virus. If it finds the virus, the CRISPR enzyme is activated, and that releases a detectable signal. The kit is designed for use in laboratories authorized to perform high complexity tests. While its considered a rapid test, Sherlock did not say how long it takes to process the results.

Continue reading.

But wait, theres more...

Best Buy price drops the 75-inch TCL 8-Series Roku TV from $2,999 to $1,799 for one day only

US senators ask Amazon why it keeps firing COVID-19 whistleblowers

HBO Max's launch lineup includes anime from Crunchyroll

Gocycles GXi is a folding e-bike with few equals

Sony's latest true wireless earbuds offer ANC and adaptive sound for $200

LG finally takes the wraps off its mid-range Velvet smartphone

How do you feel about the Nintendo Switchs Joy-Con gamepads?

Alamo Drafthouse offsets closures with an on-demand movie service
- Alan Peter Cayetano got slammed by some people for the controversial shutdown of ABS-CBN

- The house speaker responded that the NTC should be blamed for what happened to the Kapamilya network

- According to Cayetano, the said commission did not keep its assurance to the public that the network can continue airing while the ABS-CBN franchise renewal request is still pending

- He added that the NTC got pressured by Solicitor General Jose Calida to shut down the network

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House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano was blamed by some politicians and netizens for the controversial shutdown of ABS-CBN.

The shutdown occurred after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) ordered ABS-CBN to cease and desist from broadcasting on television and radio, just a day after its 25-year operating franchise expired.

KAMI learned that Cayetano finally released a statement regarding the issue. The house speaker commented that the NTC should be blamed for what happened to the Kapamilya network.

He explained that the said commission did not keep its assurance to the public that the network can continue airing while the ABS-CBN franchise renewal request is still pending.

Cayetano added that the NTC got pressured by Solicitor General Jose Calida to shut down the network.

Despite their assurance given under oath. Despite the legal opinion of the Department of Justice. Despite a resolution from the Senate, and several verbal and written assurances given to Congress  the NTC appears to have succumbed to pressure from the Solicitor General, and issued a cease and desist order to ABS-CBN.

As for the sudden flip-flopping of the NTC and the unconstitutional meddling by the Solicitor General in the business of Congress, I promise you  there will be a reckoning, the house speaker posted on Facebook.

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KAMI reported earlier that Senator Tito Sotto commented that President Duterte should not be blamed for the ABS-CBN closure.

Alan Peter Cayetano is a Filipino politician, currently serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He is also known as one of the most vocal supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte.

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In this new episode, we explain to you the symptoms of COVID-19 that everyone should be aware of amid the pandemic. Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

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On a chilly Wednesday in November in New York City, Catalina Garcia and Santiago Prieto were mulling their future. The pair helped found Monsieur Perine, a group whose wide-ranging taste and delicate, hand-played songs have attracted a devoted following in Colombia and among the members of the Latin Recording Academy (5 nominations and a win). But there was still more to do.

We need to grow, and its not the same to grow in Latin America as it is [to grow] in Europe and the U.S., Garcia explained. We want success in terms of mainstream shit, but we want to do a very craft music  music that is well done, which has imagination, magic, life.

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Weve been trying to do more modern sounds without losing the human playing, Prieto added. Were trying to find a new horizon, different landscapes, different rhythms.

The first taste of that new horizon arrived on Thursday: Mundo Paralelo, a jaunty, percussive, reggae-tinged track about the simple things in life, Garcia said recently. Those things include, but are not limited to, walking on the grass barefoot, feeling the rain, and having fun with your dog. Mundo Paralelo also features a husky verse from Pedro Capo, fresh off his billion-views-plus global hit Calma.

Garcia and Prieto spoke again last week from Colombia, where both are locked down. Im suffering a lot; I have cried a lot, Garcia says. We cannot get used to it. This is a need we have to connect through people, and not through [the phone]. I love to be on stage.

Monsieur Perines current stasis is directly at odds with the past decade, during which they gigged their way around the world. We are building our name like the ancient bands, Prieto said in November. Playing, playing, playing, and playing. Sweating and bleeding! Garcia added happily.

Story continues

This is how the band started: performing at baptisms, birthdays, weddings, corporate things around Colombia, Prieto said. They somehow fused their varied upbringings. Prieto grew up hearing Cuban music from the 1940s and 1950s through his mom, Pink Floyd, U2, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers from his brother, and rock en espanol from the radio; Garcia absorbed operas and Spanish gypsy music from her grandfather, salsa from the streets, and later, Musica Popular Brasileira, which she explained, was the best way to study Portuguese.

While Monsieur Perine were mashing these disparate styles together, many Colombian musicians had their attention elsewhere. Everyone at that time was doing cumbia with electronics, Garcia said. The first big contest that we won, all the bands were drums and electric guitars and sequencers. We had a double bass and were super acoustic. We were weird.

But not unappealing  Suin Romanticon, their lead single, which sounds like it might soundtrack a dance scene in a 1920s period drama, was heavily played on Colombian public radio. Soon the group left weddings behind completely and toured Europe. We were playing weird music with weird customs, Prieto recalled. People in Europe loved it.

After Monsieur Perine recorded their second album with help from Eduardo Visitante Cabra, known for his work in Calle 13, Sony Colombia signed the group. Soon after, Monsieur Perine won Best New Artist at the 2015 Latin Grammys. Their next album, Encanto Tropical, again recorded with Visitante, spawned their most popular song, the pulse-quickening Bailar Contigo.

But at a time when reggaeton dominates Spanish-language pop, the industry appears to enforce a ceiling on groups that try anything else. An international presence is ultimately important for long-term commercial health  we cannot live only by playing in Colombia, Garcia said. You have to look for other markets. If most non-reggaeton singles wont zip around the globe on their own, then the group has to do the legwork instead. Last year, Monsieur Perine embarked on their biggest U.S. tour to date, along with making multiple trips to Spain, Argentina, Chile, and Peru.

They also connected with a new producer: Mundo Paralelo was made with help from George Noriega, who recently co-wrote and co-produced Calma; his long credit list also includes work with Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Draco Rosa, especially the Mad Love album, which is one of Garcias favorites. She says of Noriega, we were trying to find someone who could understand all the rhythms of the Latin world but also understand what is going on with pop music right now.

The beat in Mundo Paralelo is meaty enough for the radio, and the hand-played bass was strengthened with a doubling synth bass line, but the main material was still acoustic, according to Prieto. Strings and a French horn add unexpected flourishes.

When we were mixing, George said something I liked a lot: This song has a vibe from the Sixties or Seventies, kind of Beach Boys or Beatles, Prieto added. Thats what were striving for. Pop music, but also art music.

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This article is part of the Free Speech Project , a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

In the wake of COVID-19s spread across the world, countries are dealing with the rise of both intentional fake news and well-meaning misinformation about the virus. Some hard-hit countries have enacted new laws related to the spread of misinformation, while others are reckoning with constitutional limits on free speech. For instance, a recent court challenge forced the French government to take down its own website debunking COVID-19 related fake news. Even more countries facing major outbreaks are using existing laws to crack down on alleged spreaders of misinformation like in India and Morocco.

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Though many Asian nations are dealing with very serious outbreaks, Vietnam appears to be one of the most successful in halting the spread of the infection. As of May 8, it has reported just 288 cases, 241 recoveries, and a remarkable zero deaths. While there have been suspicions that China may be underreporting its infected and death rates, there have not been any major accusations of Vietnam doing the same. In fact, many media outlets have praised the Vietnamese governments aggressive measures, which have included early restrictions on travel, quarantining affected villages, providing free masks, and even writing viral songs. However, the efforts to fight COVID-19 misinformation and fake news online, including with a law enacted in April, reveal the darker side to public awareness efforts in Vietnamone that stems from a long history of censorship and authoritarianism.

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In addition to proactive physical measures, Vietnam has been active in setting up online public health resources like websites and a mobile app in order to more efficiently disseminate accurate information as well as speed up testing. At the same time, the government has taken a hard-line stance on the spread of rumors and misinformation, instituting a hefty fine for the posting of fake news on social media. The governments censorship apparatus has allowed it to quickly stem the spread of rumors and act against people profiteering off supplies.

Vietnam has long censored its press and the ability of laypeople to express opinions contrary to the official state or party line. Its a one-party state, and any criticism of government officials or policy positions is strictly curtailed. Official state media outlets are heavily edited, and private social media platforms are routinely censored. Theres also a history of arresting dissidents for their posts on Facebook, such as prominent blogger Ho Van Hais 2016 arrest for propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Many topics of discussion and ideas are forbidden, though somesuch as anti-Chinese sentimentare too widely popular for the government to censor entirely, as Vietnam and China officially remain allies, even in light of increased political and military tensions.

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One example of the Vietnamese governments attempts to censor online discussion over controversial events happened earlier this year. In January, an ongoing land dispute between the government and Dong Tam, a small village near the capital of Hanoi, erupted into a deadly incident that allegedly resulted in the deaths of the elderly village leader and several police officers. Anti-government Facebook posts, including a statement from the village leaders widow, were censored, and several dissidents were arrested over posts they had made about the incident. The Vietnamese governments social media brigade mass-reported Facebook profiles of dissidents to take them down and flooded the platform with pro-government sentiments.

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The Vietnamese government censorship apparatus works hand in hand with private companies, as we found out in April. Reuters reported that earlier this year, state-owned telecom companies throttled traffic to Facebook, rendering access to the platform impossible at times, until Facebook agreed to take down content the Vietnamese government deems anti-state. (In a statement emailed to Reuters, Facebook acknowledged the governments request and said it complied in order to to ensure our services remain available and usable for millions of people in Vietnam, who rely on them every day.) As one of the fastest-growing social media networks in the country, Facebook is well-positioned to assist with public health awareness efforts. But the Vietnamese government has been accused of continually throttling access, blocking the website entirely, and even having government agents spy on dissidents.

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In April, Amnesty International reported that between January and March, 654 people were detained by police to attend working sessions related to their virus-related Facebook posts. In these sessions, posters are forced to admit that their posts contained false information about COVID-19 in Vietnam, delete them, and pledge not to reoffend. The content of the posts included claims that there have been deaths in the country and suggest corruption in the government response efforts. Some smear the leadership of the Party and the state, according to state media.

Central to this debate is Viet Tan, a political opposition group that is illegal inside Vietnam. Viet Tan has questioned the efficacy of the governments COVID-19 measures and the truthfulness of its COVID-19 reporting, and it has amplified suggestions that China is ultimately responsible for the spread of the pandemic. Viet Tan is a frequent critic of the regime, and long before the Amnesty International report, it spoke out against Facebooks alleged complicity in taking down dissident voices. The Vietnamese government considers Viet Tan a terrorist organization, stemming from its origins as a violent revolutionary organization based in the United States.

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Although it is suppressed within the country, Viet Tan continues to serve as an outlet and mouthpiece for dissident voices operating both within and outside of Vietnam, many of whom rely on Facebook and other social media platforms to get their messages out. Facebooks latest act of cooperation with the government comes at a key moment in the country: the 2021 elections. In January, the Communist Party of Vietnam will hold its the 13th National Congress, and the National Assembly will hold its elections in May. Vietnam holds direct elections for its National Assembly, but the top positions in government are elected by the legislative body, not citizens. Those top four leadership positions, the four pillars, are the party secretary general, the state president, the prime minister, and the chairperson of the national assembly. Vietnam is no stranger to restricting free expression ahead of elections, and so this clampdown of COVID-19 fake news appears to be perfectly timed.

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Key to these suppression is the April 15 decree outlawing fake news. In addition to banning COVID-19 related misinformation, it restricts all social media posts that share banned books and publications, documents deemed to be state secrets, or even maps and charts failing to show the Vietnamese claims in the South China Sea. The crackdown on COVID-19 fake news and Vietnams use of nationalism to unite the country against the virus have been the primary focus of much of the media attention surrounding this decree. But the broad terms by which fake news is being defined provides yet another potent weapon in the Vietnamese authorities arsenal of online repression, Tanya OCarroll, director of tech at Amnesty International, told Reuters.

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With a public health crisis as an excuse, the Vietnamese government is maintaining its suppression of dissident speech. And although this digital silencing is becoming more common, Vietnam continues to clamp down on free expression in all other forms, such as its harassment of Mai Khoi, dubbed the Lady Gaga of Vietnam. She is currently renting a secret apartment from a friend after getting evicted for holding up a banner that read  Peace Piss on you Trump during the U.S. presidents visit to Vietnam. (This was not the first time she has been evicted for voicing protests against political figures.) Vietnams long history of repression and censorship should cause one to suspect that Vietnam is not just fighting COVID-19, but also free expression.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
<! A lawyer with face mask: New norm in Nigerian courts. Photo credit: Opera News >

By Sandra Umeh

The National Judicial Council (NJC) has made wearing of face masks compulsory in all the courts, to reduce the spread of Coronavirus.

This was part of the guidelines for court sittings issued by the NJC Committee headed by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour.

It is entitled: The National Judicial Council Guidelines for Court Sittings and Related Matters in the COVID-19 period.

NJC Director of information, Mr Soji Oye, said the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice I. T. Muhammad, in a corresponding circular with Reference Number NJC/CIR/HOC/II/660, urged all heads of federal and state courts to abide by the guidelines in the formulation of their rules and directives.

Heads of court shall have primary responsibility of ensuring compliance of judicial officers, over whom they superintend, with the provisions of this guidelines.

Heads of courts shall liaise with relevant security agencies to ensure that entrances to court premises are well manned by security personnel and entry into the premises are regulated in a manner that guarantees and enforces the minimum two-meter (six feet) distance between persons as it relates to all entrants into the premises.

The courts shall ensure that all security personnel who work in the court premises and in particular the security personnel who man the entrance(s) to the court premises are well informed on COVID-19 including in particular, the methods of its spread, its basic symptoms, how to prevent its spread, etc, it said.

Heads of courts should ensure that all security personnel including those attached to judicial officers and courtrooms would be well-kitted and supplied with disposable gloves, face masks and hand sanitisers.

Security personnel at the entrance of the court premises shall be equipped with temperature monitors for testing and determining the temperature of each visitor to the court premises.

 They should be trained in the use of the temperature monitors, and visitors must be shown their temperature readings on the monitors before their admission into the court premises.

Every person wishing to go into the court premises, without exception, shall be subjected to the temperature monitor reading for the determination of his or her body temperature, it said.

It added that anyone who refuses to submit himself or herself for the reading of temperature should be politely refused entry into the court premises and advised to leave the entrance immediately.

Heads of courts should procure advice of health experts on the temperature levels that warrant concern and be indicative of a person with fever (high temperature threshold).

The security personnel at the court entrance(s) must be trained in that regard.

Any visitor to the court premises, who has a high temperature, based on the temperature monitor reading at the entrance to the court or who is coughing while going through the entry protocols, should be politely advised to seek immediate medical assistance and refused entry into the court premises.

Security personnel at the court premises shall further ensure that only persons with face masks are allowed entry into the court premises, without exception.

It said that judicial officers and legal counsel must be exemplary in that regard and must ensure that their support personnel would comply strictly with the requirement.

At no time and in no circumstance should anyone, while within the court premises, including inside courtrooms, offices and the chambers of judicial officers, not wear a face mask.

Anyone who refuses, neglects or is unwilling to wear face mask at any time while in the court premises should be politely advised to leave and be escorted outside the premises by security personnel.

Face masks must be properly worn by everyone within the court premises to cover their mouths and noses at all times.

With regard to the court premises itself, as much as possible, heads of courts must ensure that toilet facilities in the court premises are functional and have constant running water, soap and tissue papers.

It said that the toilets must be kept clean at all times.

It added that visitors to the court premises must maintain social and physical distance and avoid congregations or assembly of more than 10 persons within the court premises, excluding courtrooms.

It said that court-related businesses that could be transacted without physical visits to the court premises should be transacted through available alternative channels.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to hold a press conference outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa about the pandemic, on May 7, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Ottawa Announces $4 Billion Deal with Provinces and Territories to Boost Essential Workers Wages

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that the federal government has reached a $4 billion agreement with the provinces and territories to boost the pay of essential workers who are earning minimum wage.

We see across the country people working on the frontlines, in essential services, in our senior care system, in our long-term care, in our health care systems and elsewhere who are making very low wages while doing extraordinarily important work, Trudeau said during his daily briefing on May 7.

Were relying on these workers now more than ever, and we will be there to support them.

All the provinces and territories have either confirmed or are in the final process of confirming this cost-share wage top-up program, and each province and territory will have the right to determine who qualifies for the wage increase.

People employed in non-medical industries like grocery store workers, farmers, and delivery drivers may also be eligible for this top-up plan, but Trudeau didnt say definitively whether the federal government has provided an evaluation guideline to the provinces and territories.

[B]ut the bottom-line is this: if youre risking your health to keep this country moving, and youre making minimum wage, you deserve a raise, he said.

The federal government will cover three-quarters of the cost of the program, while provincial and territorial governments will kick in the rest.

A spokesperson from the Prime Ministers Office said that a plan negotiated between the federal government and the provinces and territories earlier last month to provide temporary financial support to low-income essential workers who make less than $2,500 per month was dropped, to better reflect the wide range of payment conditions of essential workers, according to CBC News.

Looking to the future after the pandemic is over, Trudeau said changes will need to be made in sectors that employ low-paid essential workers.

We know, however, that once we get through this, in the months and years to come, were also going to have to have reflections about how we manage and how we maintain our long-term care facilities, how we support essential workers who are very low-paid, how we move forward as a society to make sure that our vulnerable are properly taken care of and properly rewarded for the important work that they do, Trudeau said.

Trudeau added that in the fight against the pandemic, roughly 1,200 Canadian Rangers have been deployed to provide assistance to limit the spread of the virus across the country, including 200 in Nunavut and parts of Quebec. More than 670 Canadian Armed Forces personnel are providing support at 20 long-term care homes in Quebec, with more to come.

We expect that next week there will be a total of 1,350 military personnel as part of that operation to provide support in 25 facilities, he said.
Medical staff wearing protective clothing and an official acting as a patient conduct a demonstration of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab test for the COVID-19 coronavirus. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP) (Photo by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images)

Follow the latest coronavirus news in Ireland and across the world on the Independent.ie live blog.

20:00 08/05/2020

State to guarantee refunds for holiday-makers as ministers approve support for travel agents

Reports Cormac McQuinn, Political Correspondent

The government has approved proposals to support coronavirus-hit travel agents.

Transport, Tourism and Sport Minister Shane Ross brought the plans to protect the travel trade industry to Cabinet.

The help is to come as a State guarantee in the form of a refund credit note for package holidays booked though Irish-registered travel agents and tour operations.

The notes can be offered by the travel industry to customers in circumstances where they are not able to provide a cash refund or a full cash refund.

The credit not can be to the value of the full refund or partial refund alongside cash.

Read More





18:00 08/05/2020

27 more people have died and a further have tested positive for Covid-19

Expand Close Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, pictured this evening at a Covid19 update press conference. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin / Facebook

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Whatsapp Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, pictured this evening at a Covid19 update press conference. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

The Department of Health has been notified of 27 further deaths linked to Covid-19, and 156 additional confirmed cases.

There are now 22, 541 cases of coronavirus in Ireland.

Ireland's death toll now stands at 1,429.

Data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, as of midnight, Wednesday, 6 May (22,301 cases), reveals:

57 pc are female and 43 pc are male

the median age of confirmed cases is 49 years

2,915 cases (13 pc) have been hospitalised

Of those hospitalised, 373 cases have been admitted to ICU

6,586 cases are associated with healthcare workers

Dublin has the highest number of cases at 10,885 (49 pc of all cases) followed by Kildare with 1,312 cases (6 pc) and then Cork with 1,199 cases (5 pc)

Of those for whom transmission status is known: community transmission accounts for 61 pc, close contact accounts for 35 pc, travel abroad accounts for 3 pc





17:20 08/05/2020

Labour criticises use of predictive grading as Leaving Cert is cancelled

Reports Cormac McQuinn, Political Correspondent

The Labour Party has hit out at the use of predictive grading to assess Leaving Cert students due to the postponement of this year's State examinations amid the coronavirus crisis.

Its education spokesperson Aodhan O Riordain has said the move to calculated grades with the input of teachers and national standardisation will be open to legal challenge.

And he raised serious concerns if what he termed "appalling suggestion of school profiling" is to play a part in determining results.

Education Minister Joe McHugh announced today that this summer's exams have been cancelled.

Students will have the option of accepting a predicted grade or sitting the Leaving Cert at a later date.

Mr O Riordain said the move could result in legal challenges.

He said it's "clearly open to legal opinion as to whether this Leaving Certificate with a different grade system would actually have the same status as the Leaving Cert 2019."

15:35 08/05/2020

US jobless rate soars to 14.7%

The US unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, the highest since the Great Depression, as 20.5 million jobs vanished in the worst monthly loss on record.

The figures are stark evidence of the damage coronavirus has done to a now-shattered economy.

The losses reflect what has become a severe recession caused by sudden business shutdowns in nearly every industry.

Nearly all the job growth achieved during the 11-year recovery from the Great Recession has now been lost in one month.

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14.46 08/05/2020

Ryanair calls on Taoiseach to take action to stop Dublin Airport 'profiteering' from crisis

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Low cost airline Ryanair has called on the Taoiseach to take action and reverse "unjustified 'parking' charges" which are imposed on aircraft grounded at Dublin airport by government travel bans.

In a statement, the airline said that while it "fully supports" travel bans, Dublin Airport should not profit from the crisis "at the expense of customer airlines grounded by Government travel bans"

It called for the charges, deemed "excessive fees" to be waived by Dublin Airport.

Ryanair DAC CEO, Eddie Wilson, said: It is wrong that state-owned Dublin Airport should be allowed profiteer from customers whose aircraft have been grounded by Government travel bans. We call on the Irish Government to ensure that these charges are cancelled for all airlines.

14.41 08/05/2020

Students who wish to complete traditional Leaving Cert exams will still have the opportunity according to alternative plans

Reports Education Editor Katherine Donnelly

Sweeping changes to this years Leaving Cert will allow students the option of being assessed through a system of calculated grades instead of exams.

However, candidates who want to sit the traditional exams  and they have a legal right to do so - will also be facilitated at a later date.

That special sitting of the Leaving Cert will take place when it is considered safe to hold the exams, but it wont be time for college entry this year.

The exams scheduled for late July/August are definitely off and there will be no Leaving Cert fee for this year

That means that CAO applicants will be relying on predictive grades as a basis for selection for a college place..

Arriving at calculated grades, also known as predictive grades, will be a four part process, involving both school-based and national standardisation.

WATCH: Leaving Cert cancelled as Minister reveals alternative plans

Education Minister officially cancels Leaving Cert 2020

Expand Close Education Minster Joe McHugh (PA) / Facebook

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Education Minister Joe McHugh has officially cancelled Leaving Cert exams, which were due to take place this June.

Speaking at Government buildings this afternoon, he said that the decision was made with a "heavy heart".

"The interest of students must come first," he said.

The exams have now been postponed to a later date, while students can opt to receive predicted calculated grades in the meantime.

These will be provided by teachers and signed off by schools, after approval by the principal.

This is Plan C, according to the minister.

"There is no simple solution to this issue," he said, as the State Examinations Commission cannot be involved in the process.

A special unit within the education department will be set up to deal with the 2020 Leaving Cert exams.

Students will be able to appeal grades.

"Some students adjusting better than others to the new normal," added the minister.

"I am disappointed that we have been unable to run things as in previous years."



14.02 08/05/2020

Harris says he treats all protected disclosures with the 'utmost seriousness' but can't confirm probe into St Mary's

HEALTH Minister Simon Harris has said he treats any protected disclosures with the "utmost seriousness" and said it's very important that people come forward with any concerns they have.

His remarks come after Independent.ie revealed that a whistleblower in a HSE nursing home where 24 patients have died from Covid-19 has alleged that strong enough efforts were not made to prevent fatalities.

The staff member at St Mary's nursing home in Dublin's Phoenix Park made a protected disclosure to Mr Harris and HSE chief executive Paul Reid on Wednesday.

Mr Harris this morning said that legally he is not allowed to confirm receipt of a protected disclosure.

Read More

12.42 08/05/2020

No realistic prospect of pubs reopening in June, says CMO

There is no realistic prospect of pubs reopening in June, according to Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Tony Holohan.

Speaking on RTEs Sean ORourke show this morning, Dr Holohan responded to calls being made by pub representative groups, calling for bars to open in June with strict social distancing guidelines.

Currently, under the governments roadmap to reopening the country, pubs are scheduled to reopen during the last phase on August 10.

The pubs came to us in March and said we understand your public health advice and we dont think we can implement it in pubs and that was the reason they were asked to close on that occasion.

Read More

WATCH: Harris defends coronavirus response in nursing homes as 23 deaths reported in one facility

Dealgan House nursing home in county Louth confirmed that 23 deaths have taken place there since April 1, with many of these linked to the virus.

Concerns about the home - which has been taken over by a HSE hospital group - were raised in the Dail yesterday where Sinn Fein TD Ruairi O Murchu said he had heard the deaths could have been as high as 26.

Mr O Murchu also said that staff at the home have been told that workers from the RCSI Hospital Group will no longer be present in Dealgan House by the weekend.

Read More

Unemployment rate jumps to 28pc as more than half of young workers lose jobs

Expand Close Under the temporary wage subsidy scheme, an eligible employer will be supported by up to 70pc of an employee's take-home income, up to a maximum weekly tax-free payment of 410 (ie 70pc of take-home weekly income of 38,000 per annum). / Facebook

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Whatsapp Under the temporary wage subsidy scheme, an eligible employer will be supported by up to 70pc of an employee's take-home income, up to a maximum weekly tax-free payment of 410 (ie 70pc of take-home weekly income of 38,000 per annum).

The unemployment rate for April has jumped to 28.2pc, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office.

The figures which highlight the impact of the Covid-19 containment measures, shows that unemployment has almost doubled in April to 694,683 workers as a result of the economic lockdown.

Almost one in three people are now out of work, including more than half of younger workers.

Men (30pc) are more likely to have lost their job than women (26.1pc). However, age is the real fault line in the current jobs crisis.

Read More

11.21 08/05/2020

Over 150 GoFundMe campaigns started this week in aid of Pieta House

Over 150 online fundraisers have been set up in aid of suicide prevention charity Pieta House this week.

Online fundraiser platform GoFundMe is reporting a "huge increase" in campaigns set up to fundraise for the charity, which like many others, has been affected by Covid-19 restrictions.

Its annual fundraiser Darkness Into Light was cancelled and, which resulted in the loss of 5m for the charity.

Over 150 GoFundMe campaigns have been set up since the start of May raising almost 200k to date.

10.57 08/05/2020

National Ploughing Championships cancelled in 'interest of public safety'

Expand Close Anna Marie McHugh, one of the Ploughing organisers / Facebook

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It has been confirmed that the National Ploughing Championships which take place each year in September has been cancelled.With all mass gatherings of over 5,000 banned until the end of August, there had been huge doubt cast on the event taking place.

Over three days each September, the Ploughing Championships attracts 300,000 people from all over the world to view its exhibits and trade show.

However, assistant managing director of the event Anna Marie McHugh said that following a meeting of the NPA executive yesterday afternoon a decision was made to cancel this year's event due to take place in Ballintrane, Fenagh, Co Carlow.

"It's a tough day for us, but everybody's conclusion was the same. In the interest of public safety, running just wasn't an option," she told RTE radio this morning.

"The Association could never live with the risk that we could have brought a second wave of the virus into Carlow. That's not something we would have wanted to be responsible for," she added.

Aer lingus waives change fees for all travel to September 30

Aer Lingus will waive change fees for all flights scheduled to depart up to September 30, the airline has said.

Previously, it had waived such fees to the end of May.

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the change reflects the fact that schedule disruption and unease about travel is likely to continue through the summer.

"We want you to be able to book with peace of mind," Aer Lingus says.

Changing a flight normally costs 40.

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10.01 08/05/2020

'Stringent rationing of PPE led to infections' - St Mary's whistleblower

Expand Close St. Mary's Hospital, Phoenix Park. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin / Facebook

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A whistleblower in a HSE nursing home where 24 patients have died from Covid-19 has alleged strong enough efforts were not made to prevent fatalities.

The staff member, who works in St Mary's nursing home in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, has claimed concerns about the welfare of residents were not listened to.

She said she first highlighted concerns with senior management in early March.

In relation to personal protective equipment (PPE), she alleges there was "stringent rationing", and staff became infected.

Read More

Centurion: No Croker bash but Rita Rafter still plans to raise the roof for 100th birthday

Her 100th birthday bash at Croke Park may have been put on hold, but great-grandmother Rita Rafter is still planning to raise the roof.

Born on May 8, 1920, Rita has lived on the North Circular Road for 100 years and is considered a legend around the streets of the north inner city.

She made headlines in 2017 when she faced having to move out of her home as she could not afford repairs that needed to be carried out to the roof.

However, following a social media appeal, a kind-hearted builder offered to fix the roof for free.

Read More

08.07 08/05/2020

Pandemic unleashing a tsunami of hate, says UN chief

The coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing "a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering", UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said.

He appealed on Friday for "an all-out effort to end hate speech globally".

Mr Guterres said "anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred".

He said migrants and refugees "have been vilified as a source of the virus and then denied access to medical treatment".

Read More

New cases reported in China and South Korea as lockdown measures ease worldwide

Expand Close Brian Waldret, co-owner of Hello Salon in Arizona, in the US, disinfects surfaces (Ross D. Franklin/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Brian Waldret, co-owner of Hello Salon in Arizona, in the US, disinfects surfaces (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

China and South Korea both reported more coronavirus infections Friday after reopening economies damaged by devastating outbreaks.

Governments around the world are opting to accept the risks of easing pandemic-fighting restrictions, that left huge numbers of people without income or safety nets.

In the US, some governors are disregarding or creatively interpreting White House guidelines in easing their states' lockdowns and letting businesses reopen.

An Associated Press analysis found 17 states appeared to have not met one of the key benchmarks set by the White House for loosening up - a 14-day downward trajectory in new cases or positive test rates.

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07.15 08/05/2020

EU finance ministers resume talks on virus crisis fallout and fixes

Expand Close A man wearing a protective face mask and glove drinks a coffee, as Italy begins a staged end to its nationwide lockdown. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane / Facebook

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Today EU finance ministers resume video discussions on how to tackle the coronavirus economic carnage which threatens everyone in Ireland.

It's time to assess how much Brussels can really do to help.

How bad is it all?

It gets worse every day. On Wednesday, the EU's policy-guiding commission said coronavirus would mean the bloc's economy would shrink by 7.7pc this year with Ireland just about on that appalling average, with 7.5pc. Yesterday opened with the ECB suggesting the contraction could be as bad as 12pc. Let's remember that as recently as the end of February all talk was about economic growth. Remember also that economic growth is what creates and sustains jobs and prosperity.

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Renewed hope we can ease the lockdown as new coronavirus cases lowest in weeks

Expand Close Richard Madeley helping load up food to deliver to people with dementia (PA) / Facebook

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New daily cases of coronavirus are at their lowest level in weeks - offering some degree of optimism that Ireland is on course to begin easing its lockdown.

Just 137 people were diagnosed with the virus yesterday, while the number of patients in intensive care dropped to 76. It had reached 140 at one point.

And fewer than two cases are being admitted to hospital daily, down from four to six last week, according to Professor Philip Nolan of Maynooth University, who is advising the Government on trends.

He also revealed the R number - which indicates how many people a person with the virus is likely to infect - had fallen to 0.5 to 0.6, down from the 5 or 6 in late February or early March. By mid-March, it was around 1.6.

"There has been great success up to now and we need to find ways to keep the spread of the virus at a very low level for many weeks to come," he said.

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Students will have to opt in to sit Leaving Cert papers

Sweeping changes to this year's Leaving Cert will allow for predictive grades, while students will need to opt in to sit the exams.

The 61,000 students will have to choose and, in the first instance, will be asked whether they want to be assessed via predictive grades, which would be based on their performance in school.

But it is understood that candidates who want to sit the traditional exams - and they have a legal right to do so - will be facilitated.

A student survey conducted last weekend showed that 79pc of sixth years now support the option of predictive grades, suggesting that a significant majority would take this route.
Kelsey, the Rhoda of the Younger universe. Photo: TV Land

One way or another Hilary Duff is going to get herself her own TV series where she is a millennial in New York who has sex and such. According to The Hollywood Reporter, ViacomCBS is developing a spinoff of New Yorkpublishingindustry fantasia Younger that would star Duffs character, Kelsey, the age-faking Sutton Fosters actually younger, actually millennial colleague in the industry. Duff is also supposed to be starring in Disney+s revival of Lizzie McGuire, which was supposed to meet up with Lizzie while she was living a very Kelsey-like life in New York. That stalled after its creator, Terri Minsky, left, reportedly over adult material that Disney+ didnt want to air, leading Duff to publicly ask if they can please bring that show to Hulu. But hey, if Lizzie cant have fun, maybe Kelsey can.

The Younger spinoff is in early development, and according to THR, hasnt been filmed or written yet, and could air on a Viacom network or elsewhere. Notably, Younger creator Darren Stars other Viacom project Emily in Paris, as Vulture reported, may head from the Paramount Network, for which it was originally written, to Netflix, and THR speculates that the Duff series could end up there. Wherever it ends up, you can bet Duff will be ready on Instagram to announce her feelings about it all.
IIEA Webinar - The EU: Facing the challenges of COVID-19

Speech

Speech by Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr. Simon Coveney, T.D.

IIEA Webinar - The EU: Facing the challenges of COVID-19

8 May 2020

Thank you for the warm welcome.

I would like to begin by thanking the IIEA for inviting me to speak today, and to all participants for logging in in such large numbers. The current circumstances of course mean that we cannot hold events like this in person, but I commend the IIEAs hard work and innovation in continuing to deliver an ambitious and inspiring programme. We are all getting used to working differently.

Tomorrow we mark Europe Day, 70 years since Robert Schuman first set out his vision of a peaceful and united Europe.

We have come a long way since Schuman first presented his proposal for a European Coal and Steel Community. Schuman delivered his speech just five years after the end of the Second World War, and against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Schumans primary concern at the time was to prevent another war tearing through Western Europe. As the lived memories of the survivors of that era pass with age, we must grasp the responsibility of energising his legacy with a renewed commitment to peace, solidarity and respect for the rule of law.

The solidarity and unity between European states that is often taken for granted today was hard-fought for over many years. Europe Day provides a timely opportunity each year to acknowledge and recommit to this achievement.

Irish attitudes towards the EU

On Europe Day, we should also reflect on the European Union as it is today. Red C and EMI carry out a poll around this time each year which gives us a useful snapshot of the attitudes of Irish people to the EU and its policies.

This years poll was carried out at the end of March, just as the coronavirus took hold across the continent, and as the Union, like its member states, struggled to respond quickly to the new reality.

While the results of the poll should be understood in that context, it is of course disappointing to see support for Irelands membership of the EU fall to 84% this year from a high of 93% last year. The proportion of people answering dont know on whether they agreed with EU membership rose to 9%, up from 2%.

While these figures show higher support for EU membership in Ireland than in many other Member States, they are nonetheless a reminder that support for the Union in this country should never be taken for granted. We must, and can, do more to enhance the debate that we have in Ireland about our membership of the European Union.

EU response to Covid-19

Let me talk a bit about the EU response to Covid 19.

While the Union has taken unprecedented measures in support of Member States, most Europeans have looked to the nation state to protect and guide them through the current phase. The EU has been perceived as somewhat peripheral to the key decisions related to the domestic medical response, lockdown and re-opening of societies.

But recovery - and economic recovery in particular - will depend on EU solidarity and decisive, swift action. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs would be lost were it not for the financial support facilitated by the EU and ECB.

It would be fair to say that, at the beginning of the crisis, the EU struggled to communicate the comprehensive nature of its response. Some of this initial hesitancy can be explained by the fact that health is a national competence, and is not shared at EU level.

Understandably, Member States activated their own emergency planning to prepare their health systems for the onslaught of the coronavirus, first in Italy and then as the virus spread across the Union.

And some initial responses - such as closing borders - were taken perhaps in an uncoordinated manner, adding to negative perceptions of the European response.

But the truth is that the EU is carrying out a series of unprecedented measures to address the health and socio-economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis.

For example, to counteract the problems caused by border closures, the Commission worked immediately with Member States to create Green Lanes, which removed cross border blockages hindering the free movement of people and goods and keeping supply chains open.

It also provided guidelines for border management measures to protect citizens health, all while preserving the integrity of the Single Market. Ensuring the availability of goods and essential services is of vital importance to us all.

Also vital is research on the coronavirus which will help develop much needed vaccines and treatments. The European Commission very quickly announced funding of 48.5m from Horizon 2020 to fund projects, including one which is coordinated by the Irish company Hibergene Diagnostics.

The EU also set up joint procurement processes for EU Member States, to help provide quicker access to vital medical equipment and Personal Protective Equipment.

And individual European countries have assisted each other, for example, in treating French patients in hospitals in Germany.

At the same time, the EU has tackled the economic crisis provoked by the pandemic.

On 18 March, ECB President Lagarde announced a 750bn response to the pandemic. The ECBs Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme is a temporary asset purchase programme of private and public sector securities, which aims to ensure that all sectors of the economy can benefit from supportive financing conditions that enable them to absorb this shock. This applies equally to families, firms, banks and governments.

Two days later, the Commission proposed the activation of the general escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact. This allows Member States to take measures to deal with the crisis, while departing from the budgetary requirements that would normally apply under the fiscal framework.

For Ireland, the EU has approved two separate state aid packages, worth 400 million in total, which allows us to support our affected companies during the pandemic.

Through these financial measures and EU state aid approval we can make sure that support reaches those who have lost their jobs because of this crisis.

Following intensive work by the Eurogroup throughout April, EU leaders agreed a crisis response package of 540 billion. The initiatives outlined under this package are due to be operational by 1 June. They will be vital in helping us to support our businesses that have been impacted by the pandemic, as well as the workers who have lost their jobs or require temporary income support.

Most importantly, these measures show the solidarity, and support for innovation that is needed to devise an unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis.

Work is also ongoing for an EU Recovery Fund, while the Commission is revising its proposal for the EUs budget to support programmes designed to kick-start the economy.

Again, these measures will ensure EU solidarity with the most affected member states.

Consular assistance

One of the core roles of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is our consular work  that is, supporting and assisting our citizens overseas.

At no time has this been more important all around the world than during the COVID-19 crisis.

Since the outbreak of the virus, my Department has advised and assisted many thousands of our citizens overseas. Over 5000, in fact. What started as a country-specific situation rapidly evolved into the coordination of the biggest repatriation effort in the history of the State.

Cooperation with fellow EU Member States and like-minded partners has been a crucial factor throughout. The sharing of information, and coordination of action, with EU partners has been an enormous strength. Whether through sharing flights, information or resources, we have been far more effective, and better able to support our citizens by working together.

EU coordination efforts have ensured that EU citizens can avail of places on repatriation flights organised by individual Member States. I am delighted that Ireland has already been able to charter two special flights - one from Peru and one from India - and we have repatriated citizens from a number of other EU Member States, and the UK, on those flights.

Irish citizens  627 of them to date - have been repatriated on special flights from 126 different locations organised by other partners, making use of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism.

We have protected our citizens abroad to an extent that would not have been possible if we were not a member of the Union. The Union has made a concrete difference for our citizens lives and health.

We continue to work closely with partner EU Member States, as well as our British friends, the US, Canada and others, as we support and assist Irish citizens overseas. Let me also take this opportunity to note the cooperation we have received from airlines and the aviation industry, which have played a crucial role in our efforts.

Multilateralism

It has become increasingly clear that only a global effort will contain and minimise the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic until a vaccination can be developed and rolled out globally. As Dr Mike Ryan of the WHO has said: No one is safe until everyone is safe.

The EU is playing a leading role in the fight against the pandemic.

On Monday of this week, President von der Leyen co-hosted a Coronavirus Global Response Pledging Conference which raised 7.4bn for global efforts to defeat the coronavirus. Pledging 18 million on the part of Ireland, the Taoiseach said on Monday that the virus did not respect borders  Covid19 is a shared enemy of all of humanity and all governments.

On 8 April, EU Development Ministers endorsed the Team Europe package of support for partner countries. The EU will help the most vulnerable countries in Africa, in the EUs neighbourhood and further afield.

Total financial support for this EU collective action, from the Commission and the EIB, will amount to over 15.6 billion. Combined with contributions from Member States, the total amount is expected to reach at least 20 billion.

At a time when there has been a move by some countries away from the principles of multilateralism and towards nationalism, the pandemic has shown how we will all suffer if we fail to work together. It is right that the European Union shows leadership in this way.

Exiting restrictions

Although the start of the crisis was marked with some uncertainty and perhaps incoherence, I very much hope that the easing of restrictions across Europe will be much more coordinated.

The EU has developed a Joint European Roadmap towards lifting COVID-19 containment measures to help strategically plan the recovery. While it is for Member States to make their own decisions about the timing and scope of removing restrictions, based on their own circumstances, it is helpful for the EU Institutions to work on a coordinated approach with Member States.

Many other European countries have published staged action plans similar to our own, and we have much to learn from each others experiences as they ease restrictions in different sectors.

However, it is important to recognise also that Member States are at different points in the pandemic, and the vital message to citizens is that we must continue to slow the spread of the virus and not ease up on our efforts.

Although the COVID-19 emergency has rightfully dominated our politics for the past few months, we remain focused on other key priorities, including the EUs ongoing negotiations with the UK on its future relationship with the Union.

Brexit

Ireland is working as part of the EU27 to ensure that our collective approach to the Future Relationship negotiations reflects our values and interests. To date we have had two full negotiating rounds and a number of more technical exchanges. For Ireland, alongside a Free Trade Agreement in goods, with a level playing field for our businesses, we continue to take a close interest in justice and security cooperation, fisheries, transport connectivity and data exchange.

Both sides now have a fair idea of where there is clear convergence or divergence between our respective positions.

Progress has been much slower than we hoped. The restrictions of COVID-19 and talking by video conference are part of the reason for this  but not the only reason.

The UKs level of ambition is much lower than the EUs, and fundamental differences remain between the two sides on some of the most important issues. These include level playing field provisions and governance, as well as fisheries.

Two further negotiating rounds will take place in the coming weeks. Michel Barnier has been very clear that we need to see much better engagement from the UK in these rounds.

June will be a key moment. At a High Level Conference, the EU and UK will jointly consider the progress made at that point and what this means for the period after.

The end of June is also the last point at which the Joint Committee can decide to extend the transition period. This would have to be a decision made by the EU and UK jointly.

The UK Government continues to say very clearly, both publicly and privately, that they will not agree to an extension. This is the reality that must be factored in - both for the future relationship negotiations and preparing for the end of the transition.

A second separate, but related, stream of work is the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland /Northern Ireland. Implementation is vital as the Protocol underpins a more permanent set of arrangements to address the challenges of Brexit on the island of Ireland.

Ireland has attended and participated in the recent meetings of the Joint and Specialise Committees. These meetings have considered the preparatory work needed for a number of decisions the Joint Committee must take under the Protocol, and the range of work that the UK needs to take forward to implement the Protocol.

Together with the EU, we have strongly underlined with the UK how important it is that the UK now makes clear, detailed progress on implementation of the Protocol. Implementation of the Protocol will mean some changes. We are all aware that this will be complex work, requiring run-in time and engagement with stakeholders to ensure the Protocol works for Northern Ireland and the all Island economy.

We welcome the UKs continued commitment to fully implement the Protocol. We hope to see further, more detailed engagement from the UK at the upcoming meetings of the Specialised and Joint Committees.

I would agree with Michel Barniers view that faithful and effective implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement is absolutely central to the progress of the negotiations.

The third stream of ongoing work is on preparedness - to assist citizens and businesses get ready for the end of transition.

The Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol ensures we are no longer faced with a No Deal Brexit and the challenges that brings.

However, Brexit represents a substantive change in our relationship with our closest neighbour. It will fundamentally affect how we do business together across many areas.

The UK has left the EU. At the end of the transition period, the UK will leave the Customs Union and Single Market. Even the best possible FTA between the EU and UK will impact supply chains and trade flows and result in checks and controls in both directions on EU-UK trade.

With less than 7 months to the end of transition, we remain committed to doing everything in our power to ensure that citizens and businesses are as ready as they can be for the end of transition.

We continue to develop the infrastructure and systems at our ports and airports. We are working with our partners and the Commission to ensure the UK Landbridge remains an efficient route to market.

Brexit comes at a time when business are already struggling in the face of the challenges brought by COVID19. Brexit preparation will necessarily be part of a wider business recovery agenda, and we will look at how best business supports can be deployed in support of Brexit challenges.

There will be a lot of uncertainty in the months ahead. Irelands best interests will continue to be served by us playing our part as a member of the EU27.

Conclusion

In the short-term, our response to the COVID-19 emergency will dominate the agenda for some time to come. But our recovery in a post-virus world will be the defining issue for the Union over the lifetime of every government in every member state.

The path ahead is not clear. This is a profound shock that has a direct impact on the life of every European. Even after the virus is defeated, its aftershocks and the new constraints it imposes will define what Member States and the Union do for the next decade.

The emergency and recovery will change politics, economies and societies across Europe. Citizens attitudes will also change  their views on the state, on the proper organisation of society, on work.

The future role and relevance of the EU will be decided both by how it performs during this crisis, and by how it facilitates the recovery.

Ireland will have to be agile in adapting to the changed political and policy environment.

Existing alliances have shifted and will continue to do so. Solidarity with fellow Member States will be sought and expected. Greater EU resilience and autonomy in strategic supply chains will be inevitable. Brexit negotiations will be influenced by the impact of the crisis both in the EU and the UK.

Now and in the coming months, we must take a critical look at the assumptions behind our existing positions on the dominant EU issues and assess how they might be impacted by COVID, if they remain fit for purpose and, if not, how they should change.

Our discussion here is part of that critical examination. I would like to thank the IIEA again for their work, and I look forward to hearing your questions.

Thank you.

ENDS

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Uttarakhand government in its cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Thursday decided to levy healthcare tax on the sale of liquor and increase the price of petrol and diesel in the Himalayan state.

The price of the of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) has been increased by Rs 20 to 200 per bottle, country-made liquor by Rs 20 per bottle and foreign-made liquor by Rs 475 per bottle. With this, the state expects to generate additional revenue of Rs 250 crore. The price hike on liquor will be effective from Friday.

The price of petrol and diesel were increased by Rs 2 and Re 1 per litre respectively. At present, the price of petrol in the state is Rs 72.55 per litre and diesel costs Rs 63.17 per litre. The increase in petrol and diesel price will help the state government generate additional revenue of Rs 120 crore.

During the cabinet meeting, 15 proposals were discussed, of which 13 were passed, said Madan Kaushik, cabinet minister and spokesperson of the state government.

Kaushik said various issues related to coronavirus epidemic were discussed during the meeting. He said they were expecting the centre to categorise all districts in the state under orange and green zone within a day or two.

At present, Haridwar is the only district which is under the red zone. The state has 61 positive Covid-19 cases out of which 39 (64 %) have recovered. This situation here is much better than in the neighbouring state Uttar Pradesh or at the national level, said Kaushik.

Kaushik said that 1.7 lakh people stranded in other states have registered for return to the state so far. Of these, 7,625 from Garhwal and 4,895 from Kumaon have urged that they want to return using private vehicles. Those who want to return through public transport provided by the state government include 79,592 from Garhwal and 78,137 from Kumaon region. These stranded people will be brought back over the next few days, he said

To retain the people who have returned to the state during the lockdown, employment through Mukhyamantri Swarojgar Yojana will be provided to them, said Kaushik. Under MSME, we have created three categories, and these people will be provided loans to start their ventures here so that they can stay in their home state and earn their livelihood, he said.

According to the state rural development and migration commission, over 59,360 migrants working away from their home districts have returned to the state during the lockdown.

SS Negi, vice chairman of the commission, said, We have utilised the database of the returned migrants created by the state health department. Using the details, we contacted some of them to find out what measures could be taken to make them start working here.

Negi said out of the total 60,000 people approximately, 65% work in other states like Delhi, Goa and Chhattisgarh followed by 25 % in plain cities of the state and 5% in foreign countries like Australia, New Zealand, Gulf and China.

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India has ramped up output of an anti-malarial drug hailed by US President Donald Trump as a "game-changer" in the fight against coronavirus, even as its pharmaceutical industry struggles to make other key medicines in a lockdown.

Drug companies have seen demand for hydroxychloroquine soar since March when Trump's remarks sparked a run on the medication and caused a global shortage  despite health agencies warning over its safety in the treatment of Covid-19.

But a nationwide lockdown in the world's biggest producer of generic drugs has hampered production with many factory workers stuck at home and most transport services halted.

India accounts for 70 per cent of the global production of hydroxychloroquine, which is also used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Despite the challenges, Indian companies have managed to export the medicine to 97 countries during the pandemic, the health ministry said.

Brazil, Germany and a number of South Asian and African nations are reported to have been among those to ask India for major supplies of the medicine as they deal with the contagion.

Trump said the United States had secured 29 million tablets after New Delhi bowed to pressure to lift a ban on exports.

To meet the growing demand, Ipca Laboratories, one of four key makers of hydroxychloroquine, is increasing output by a third to 130 million tablets a month in May  despite having only 40 per cent of its 18,000 workers on deck.

"It is a priority and we are producing it despite all the difficulties," joint managing director Ajit Kumar Jain told AFP.

"The biggest challenge in the last few weeks has been to organise production logistics and to motivate workers to come to the plants."

Ipca is arranging food, transport and shelter for many of its workers amid reports villages near some factories are stopping locals going to work over fears they could spread the virus.

Zydus Cadila, another major producer, said it would boost production tenfold to about 150 million tablets a month in May.

Story continues

Drug Doubts

India's government considers hydroxychloroquine a legitimate treatment for Covid-19. It showed early promise against the deadly disease in small-scale studies in France and China to reduce virus levels among people badly infected and several other trials are underway.

But its effectiveness has been questioned and serious concerns have also been raised about potential side effects.

The US Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against using it for Covid-19 outside of a hospital or clinical trial due to the risk of heart problems.

A study in New York hospitals found no evidence the drug significantly affected the risk of death.

India exports about $20 billion of pharmaceuticals a year and increased production of hydroxychloroquine has come at the cost of making other drugs commonly used to combat diseases ranging from tuberculosis to cancer.

"Some of our other production has been hampered but (hydroxychloroquine) shouldn't get affected as that is the current need of India and world," said Jain of Ipca.

Himachal Drug Manufacturers Association president Rajesh Gupta said the sector was "in crisis" because of the lockdown, which began March 25 and is now starting to be eased.

On top of the labour problems, the soaring price of raw materials -- 70 per cent of which come from China  and transport had hit companies, Gupta told AFP.

"Many major raw material companies are now not even quoting prices and most companies have jacked up prices between 25 and 200 per cent," he said
The coronavirus pandemic is changing when, where and how we gather to worship. Are these changes long-term? Will they affect us for many years to come, long after the threat of COVID-19 has passed?

Area churches have been creative. From services at the drive-in to sitting in vehicles to enjoying church in the comfort of ones home, local churches and their congregations have gathered in unique ways to worship.

This Sunday is Mothers Day, typically a day when many families attend church with their mothers and grandmothers. So what will services look like this Sunday at churches in the Parkland?

Check this alphabetized list regarding some of the area churches.

And remember this virus might have created plenty of fear, it is also a time of grace and faith.

Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.  1 Chronicles 16:11

Bismarck Assembly of God

Two services will be held Sunday at 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. to allow for social distancing. Masks and hand sanitizer will also be available. The church has already been sanitized.

Calvary Church, Fredericktown

This Sundays services will be at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Social distancing guidelines will be followed with no missions breakfast or coffee shop. In addition, no Sunday school classes, nursery or childrens church will be held. Until further notice, pews will be marked and families must sit together. Only the two main restrooms outside the sanctuary and the two handicap-accessible restrooms in the Connect Center will be available. All areas will be cleaned between services. Services will also be available through Facebook Live and on the churchs YouTube channel. Anyone who has a fever or does not feel well is asked to not attend in-person worship services. Face masks and hand sanitizer will be available.

Copper Mines Free Will Baptist Church, Fredericktown

Sundays service will be at 10:30 a.m. outdoor worship service at the pavilion. For the remainder of the month, outdoor services will be held at the pavilion and in the grass. Please bring your own lawn chairs. Please sit six feet apart from individuals who do not live in your household. The pavilion will be marked with lines to assist with this. Also, please greet each other with a smile instead of shaking hands or hugging.

Farmington Presbyterian Church

Online services will be held Sunday at 10 a.m. Congregation members will then be asked if they feel comfortable to return to in-person worship the following week. Facebook Live streaming of church services will be offered indefinitely, even after in-person worship resumes.

Fellowship Free Will Baptist Church, Park Hills

A family service takes place at 10 a.m. without childrens church, nursery or Sunday school. Facebook Live streaming, as well as overflow in the student center, will be available. Please wear a mask and practice social distancing with six feet between attendees. Every other pew has been marked off. No offering plate will be passed and drink stations will be unavailable. No communion will take place. There will be limited access to restrooms.

First Assembly of God, De Soto

This Sundays service begins at 10:30 a.m. The congregation is urged to wear a mask and will be asked to social distance. If too many people attend the 10:30 service, an additional service will be held to maintain social distancing.

First Baptist Church, Desloge

Online services will be held May 10 and 17. Church leadership members will meet May 18 to consider shifting to in-person services.

First Baptist Church, Fredericktown

The church is opening its doors this Sunday at 10:45 a.m. with social distancing guidelines observed. The congregation is asked to not shake hands and to stay six feet apart. Pews are sectioned off with areas for families of more than three and then smaller groups of people. The Sunday morning service begins at 10:45. Those who are elderly, have underlying health conditions or are not yet comfortable with getting out are welcome to watch the online service.

First Free Will Baptist Church, Park Hills

Sunday morning worship begins at 10:30. Families will be together in the auditorium with an integrated time for children. Attendees will be asked to sit in every other pew and to follow social distancing guidelines. The service will also be streamed online.

First United Methodist Church, Park Hills

This Sundays service will be broadcast via Facebook Live and the churchs YouTube channel. The building itself is still closed. A small crew including pianist Sharron Archer, organist Bob Gerig, music leader Ryan Hassell, and the tech crew members John Christeson, Adam Brewer and Angie Hassell will assist with Pastor Eddie Bone. The church has experienced great success with more than 10,000 views of their online church services. The churchs doors will remain closed until June when reopening the church will be re-evaluated.

Irondale Assembly of God, Washington County

Sundays service begins at 10:45 a.m. with Sunday school at 9:45 a.m. with social distancing inside the sanctuary. The church has been sanitized. Pastor J.C. Moore will be preaching and the Hartley family will lead praise and worship.

Leadington Free Will Baptist Church

The church will be open this Sunday for the 10:45 a.m. service only at this time. The congregation is hoping to be back to semi-regular services the following Sunday. Some modifications are in place now: children will go straight to childrens church instead of going to the sanctuary and someone will be posted at the doors to open them and welcome attendees. No handshaking will take place. The collection plate will not be passed around but instead located on the altar.

Lively Stone Tabernacle, Desloge

Although online services will continue, the church will open this Sunday. Morning worship will be held at 10 a.m. Sunday school classes will be postponed until further notice. An RN will be taking attendees temperatures and inquiring about any symptoms before people enter the building. Disinfecting will occur after each service and event. Seating will follow social distancing guidelines. Calls and messages for prayer requests are being accepted and will be shared with the congregation.

Memorial United Methodist Church, Farmington

The church will continue to alternate between drive-in and online services during May. This Sundays service will be an online service. The service is pre-recorded and released on Facebook Saturday at 8 p.m. The pastor is Ron Beaton.

Mineral Area Fellowship, Park Hills

The church will continue its Facebook Live streaming until the state of emergency ends June 15. If no spikes occur, then church leaders will re-evaluate the situation.

New Life Church, Farmington

Weekly online services through Facebook Live will continue at local businesses at 11 a.m. Each week, Pastor Kevin Kappler, guitar player Colby Yordy and sometimes guitar player Kris Kappler travel to a local business to have worship and a message from that business.

Pleasant Hill Christian Church, Potosi

Services will again be held at the Starlite Drive-in at 10:30 a.m. Because of social distancing, the congregation wont be able to do their usual Mothers Day traditions so there is discussion of celebrating all of the missed events later when regular worship services resume.

Restoration Worship Center, Park Hills

Sunday service will begin at 11 a.m. Social distancing guidelines will be followed.

Twin Oak Free Will Baptist Church, Fredericktown

The church will continue its drive-in service at 10:30 a.m. with singing and worship time and a sermon given by Pastor Raymond Michael.

United Assembly of God, Desloge

This Sundays service will be broadcast via Facebook Live. Regular services wont be held for a few more weeks. At that time social distancing guidelines will be in effect for services in the sanctuary.

White Oak Grove Church

Parking lot service 10 a.m. (7 miles west of Potosi); First Baptist Church parking lot services 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. (P Hwy, Potosi next to City Park. Must stay in vehicles, no access to facilities, transmitted by FM radio.

Pam Clifton is a contributing writer for the Daily Journal

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The coronavirus epidemic mixed all the cards in the already complicated relations between Russia and Ukraine - the borders are closed; negotiations are paused

Russian President, Ukrainian President Open source

The coronavirus epidemic mixed all the cards in the already complicated relations between Russia and Ukraine - the borders are closed; negotiations are paused or they are conducted in an unusual format of video conferencing. It is already clear that the breakthrough in Donbas issue settlement, for which there were timid hopes in 2020, is canceled, and the further trajectory of the conflict and relations as a whole will depend primarily on the socio-economic state of the two countries emerging from the epidemic.

Donbas issue on pause

For the Ukrainian authorities, the outbreak of the epidemic actually prevented the brewing political crisis associated with the Donbas conflict settlement. The head of the Presidents Office, Andriy Yermak, weakened by the corruption scandal with his brother, was hit by an agreement signed in Minsk with Russian counterpart Dmitry Kozak. An attempt to create an advisory council with the participation of representatives of Luhansk/Donetsk Peoples Republics (LPR/DPR) threatened to turn into protests in Kyiv, but against the background of the outbreak of the disease and quarantine, Donbas agenda receded into the background.

The transfer of negotiations to the remote mode, without informal meetings and behind-the-scenes agreements, sharply reduced their effectiveness. The Russian side is unhappy that Yermak, being under pressure, began to justify himself and abandon the agreements reached, and requires more transparency in the work of the tripartite group.

The large exchange of prisoners planned for Easter actually had rather modest proportions and could hardly be called a breakthrough. Shelling in Donbas does not stop, and the parties actively include coronavirus on the agenda of the information war. It got to the point that Roskomnadzor for the first time blocked the Ukrainian government website for publishing concealment of Covid-19 cases in a part of Donbas that was not controlled by Kyiv.

In fact, the entire breakthrough outlined for 2020 in a peaceful settlement was disrupted. The holding of local elections announced by Ukraine in October throughout the country, including Donbas enclave, obviously will not take place (and the elections themselves can be postponed). The opposition blocked the possibility of concessions to Russia with its red lines. The Kremlin, in turn, notes the incompatibility of the Kyiv authorities and is in no hurry to soften its position.

The extension of quarantine postpones for an indefinite time a new meeting in the Normandy Four format, and the parties, in fact, have nothing to go to. Without the ability and the will to solve key political issues, it seems that until the end of 2020, Kyiv and Moscow will be limited to some point tasks  a new exchange limited to the withdrawal of troops and so on.

But the longer the epidemic and quarantine last, the stronger will be the blow to the economy  of both Russia and Ukraine. Against the background of economists' apocalyptic forecasts, previous foreign policy priorities might be revised.

Moscow and the oligarchs

Russia continues to make symbolic gestures against the part of Donbas, which is not controlled by Ukraine. After Russia restricted entry for foreigners, the residents of the "LPR" and "DPR" were made an exception for some time. The State Duma abolished the state duty when applying for a Russian passport with "simplified citizens" from Donbas. However, soon the epidemic suspended the very procedure for issuing passports.

However, the economic crisis and the recession in the energy market can make the "LPR" and "DPR" too expensive for the Kremlin. Not only the direct costs of their maintenance but also international sanctions, most of which were imposed due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, can play a role here. Of course, in the eyes of the Kremlin, geopolitical prestige has always outweighed economic considerations, but if the scope of the recession reaches critical levels, then Russia's willingness to compromise will inevitably increase.

Some signals of greater openness on the Russian side have already appeared. Moscow lifted sanctions from partner oligarch Rinat Akhmetov Vadym Novinsky and another metallurgical magnate, Andriy Kyseliov.

It seems that the Kremlin is looking for new partners and new approaches to the Kyiv authorities.

Do not forget about Kolomoisky, whose relationship with Zelensky finally deteriorated. Because of problems with American justice, the oligarch is increasingly willing to try on the image of an anti-Western opposition. It is hard to imagine that the Kremlin can consider Kolomoisky as a partner, but it is quite another lever of pressure on the Ukrainian authorities.

Kyiv is hoping that the economic crisis would soften Russia's position. The head of the new Ministry for Reintegration, Aleksei Reznikov, said in an interview: "Russia is pouring large sums of money on maintaining the occupied territories, on paying salaries, ensuring the work of the state apparatus, on the army that is present there. Is that acceptable for their [Russian] citizens? Now we have this pad piece but what will happen next? Everything will change, and very quickly, and we may have a window of opportunity.

Such hopes that some external factor unexpectedly changes the situation in their favor are typical of the improvisational tactics of Zelenskys team. They readily believe in a miracle of salvation: the Lord blew, and they scattered. At the same time, the question remains, what is the safety margin of Ukraine itself and whether its economy, where the recession began even before the epidemic, can show the best results in such a survival race.

Zelensky's choice

The combination of gloomy economic prospects with the specter of surrender in Donbas plays into the hands of the national-patriotic opposition. Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister under Poroshenko Pavlo Klimkin already warns that the pandemic is chaos and, conversely, is untying the Kremlins hands in relation to weakened neighbors.

The epidemic increases uncertainty and catastrophic moods in Ukrainian society (68% of Ukrainians believe that the situation in the country will worsen), which already affects Zelenskys main asset  his popularity. The presidential rating fell from 74% in the fall of 2019 to 44% this April. The number of supporters of the party Poroshenko, on the contrary, is increasing. Her rating has almost doubled.

Waiting tactics, which the Kremlin can still afford, are an impermissible luxury for Zelensky. Losing support even in the ranks of his own party, the president is forced to maneuver and resort to situational alliances either with the national-patriotic camp (for example, when voting for a key reform of the land market) or with the pro-Russian opposition (with staff appointments of the prosecutor general and new ministers). He seeks to maintain the centrist core of his constituents, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a universal, satisfying option.

The personnel crisis is pushing Zelensky to make bizarre decisions. His idea of appointing Mikheil Saakashvili as deputy prime minister for reform has not been realized, but there is no doubt that the possibility of such an appointment has not added credibility to the Ukrainian president in the Kremlin.

In addition, instead of playing for a long time, Zelensky himself sets himself deliberately impracticable terms: to solve Donbas issue in a year, "on the eve of the elections" and so on. In his rhetoric, he does not take into account the real state of negotiations, nor the balance of power. He did not have a complete and consistent strategy during this time.

A year ago Zelensky won with the promise of peace, but now he has faced the threat of not fulfilling it. He overestimated the willingness of Ukrainian society to compromise: the passive majority, by whose votes Zelensky was elected, is waiting for immediate results, the active 25% are eager for his failure. The idea of peace at all costs is unpopular even in the pro-Russian Donbas, but Ukrainians do not want to continue the war.

High expectations turn into a wave of disappointment - a typical Ukrainian story. Zelensky has little choice: the adoption of Russian conditions will lead to a large-scale crisis that may cost him power, freezing the conflict will deprive Ukraine of the support of European allies. It remains only to maintain the status quo, hoping that in a changing world for Ukraine a window of opportunity will open.

Konstantin Skorkin

Read the original text here.
Germanys defence ministry and BND foreign spy agency have privately cast doubt on American claims that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Chinese lab, media reported Friday.

An internal memo prepared for Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer classifies the American claims as a calculated attempt to distract from Washingtons own failings, Der Spiegel reported.

US President Donald Trump is attempting to distract from his own mistakes and direct Americans anger at China, Spiegel cited from the document.

A defence ministry spokesman declined to confirm the existence of the memo when contacted by AFP.

Meanwhile public broadcaster NDR cast doubt on the existence of a reported joint paper from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of Britain, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand that allegedly accuses China of playing down the extent of the virus outbreak.

BND chiefs told MPs in a confidential Berlin parliamentary committee hearing that its Five Eyes partners claimed to have no knowledge of such a report, NDR wrote.

Chancellor Angela Merkels office, responsible for oversight of the BND, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump on Wednesday described the coronavirus pandemic as the worst attack weve ever had, calling it worse than Pearl Harbor... worse than the World Trade Center and saying it could have been stopped in China.

On Friday, Johns Hopkins Universitys real-time tally showed 2,448 US coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the American total to 75,543, while total cases numbered over 1.2 million.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed his widely contested charge that the coronavirus pandemic likely originated in a Chinese laboratory.

We dont have certainty, and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true, he told reporters, adding later that China had perpetrated the virus.

Beijing has repeatedly hit back at the claims.

We urge the US side to stop shifting the blame to China and turn to facts, Chinas foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying retorted at a press briefing Thursday.

Spiegel reported that German authorities also targeted China with criticism, citing BND information that Beijing pressured the World Health Organization to delay issuing a global warning after the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

In a January 21 telephone call, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to hold back information about person-to-person transmission and delay a pandemic warning, the news weekly wrote on its website.

According to the BNDs assessment, Chinas information policy cost four to six weeks of time to fight the virus worldwide, Spiegel added.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has nominated Dr Isaac Dasmani as the Municipal Chief Executive for the Prestea-Huni Valley Municipality of the Western Region.



Dr Dasmani is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cape Coast.



A statement issued and signed by Hajia Alima Mahama, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, on Thursday, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, in Accra, requested the Western Regional Minister to therefore, liaise with the Regional Electoral Commission to conduct the confirmation process of the nominee.



This is in accordance with article 243(1) of the 1992 Constitution, and section 20(1) of the Local Governance Act, Act 936, it said.

Source: GNA









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The prime minister has said the spirit of the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived must be deployed against coronavirus as the country marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

As people across the UK prepare to remember the end of the Second World War in Europe at home this year, Boris Johnson has written to veterans thanking them for their valour, fortitude and quiet yet invincible courage during that conflict.

He said Britain must display the same spirit of national endeavour exemplified by those who fought against Hitlers Nazi regime 75 years ago while it is engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus.

In a message paying tribute to both those who fought on the front lines, as well as those who toiled on the home front, the prime minister wrote: The truth is that no other generation of Britons can rival your achievement.

Those of us born after 1945 are acutely conscious of the debt we owe, he added. Without your trial and sacrifice, many of us would not be here at all; if we were, we would surely not be free.

VE Day celebrations: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday April 29, 2020. The future Queen, then just 19, and her sister Princess Margaret, 14, joined thousands of revellers as they gathered in front of the royal residence on May 8 1945 PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London, marking the end of the war in Europe. A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Mansion House, with the Lord Mayor of London on the balcony, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures huge crowds at Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Trafalgar Square, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, 75 years ago. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs. PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures Sir Winston Churchill leaving the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, now 75 years ago PA VE Day celebrations: In pictures A parish priest waves a newspaper with news of Germany's unconditional surrender to elated pupils of a Roman Catholic parochial school in Chicago. Corbis via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures A group of six young women wearing party hats prepare to celebrate Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) to mark the end of European conflict in World War II, in Trafalgar Square, London, 8th May 1945. Popperfoto via Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Jubilant Londoners dancing in Piccadilly Circus on VE Day, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day In London - pub. 19th May 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany, 7th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A van load of beer passing through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day. The statue of Eros, protected during the war by advertising hoardings, can be seen in the background. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A victory street party near Clapham Common, London to celebrate Victory in Europe. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: A group of London girls waving flags in front of the staue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures 8th May 1945: Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations in Downing Street, London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London's Piccadilly, at the end of World War II, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day in London - pub. 1945 Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures VE day, held to commemorate the official end of World War II in Europe, is celebrated by crowds at Trafalgar Square in London, 8th May 1945. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table, given by residents at Kentwell Close, Brockley in south London. Getty Images VE Day celebrations: In pictures Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) , driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations in London, 8th May 1945. Getty VE Day celebrations: In pictures An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall. Getty Images

To us, you are quite simply the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has also paid tribute to the millions of people from across the UK and from across the world who helped secure victory in the Second World War.

In a video message on Friday morning, he praised the shared values of those who stood together and highlighted the legacy of those that rebuilt and renewed our country after the war.

As commemoration events are put on hold this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Sir Keir said: In normal times we would be paying tribute to their achievements in street parties, in gatherings and events at the Cenotaph. This year we cant do that.

We commemorate those who stood together for a better future. We remember their service, and also their sacrifice.

Ed Davey, acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said we must never grow complacent or be fooled into thinking that war is impossible.

He added: This anniversary we must honour the sacrifices made and recommit to ensuring that international cooperation and hard-won peace across Europe is protected so that we may never suffer the death and destruction of World War Two again.

In a video address filmed in lockdown, the Archbishop of Canterbury called on people to honour the sacrifice of the wartime generation by remembering the importance of reconciliation and holding on to hope.

Justin Welby reflected on the years of courage and sacrifice between a National Prayer Day in May 1940, when the outlook was bleak, and the end of the war in Europe on 8 May 1945.

He described reconciliation and hope as the two great tributes we can pay to the 1945 generation, and spoke of the country being united against the threat of coronavirus.

Dame Vera Lynn said the nation must remember the brave boys and what they sacrificed for us.

The Forces Sweetheart, who paid morale-boosting visits to the front line during the war, said she hoped this years commemorations remind us all that hope remains even in the most difficult times.

She added: Most of all, I hope today serves as a reminder that however hard things get, we will meet again.

Last month, the Queen used one of Dame Veras most famous wartime lyrics when she told the country in a televised address: We will meet again.

The UK is set to fall silent for two minutes at 11am as it honours the sacrifice of the Second World War generation.

There will be none of the traditional large-scale street parties and parades because of the coronavirus pandemic, but a host of novel events are going ahead across TV, radio and online.

Royal Air Force flypasts over London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, a rebroadcast of Sir Winston Churchills victory speech, and a message from the Queen are also among the national activities taking place.

Additional reporting by Press Association
A brazen Louisiana chicken has run afowl of the law for its bullying ways at a bank  in turn supplying some fine social media fodder.

The Walker Police Department  the chief law enforcement agency in the city of Walker, Livingston Parish  posted a be on the lookout advisory on Facebook last Saturday after being dispatched to a bank in response to a complaint of an aggressive chicken.

Despite a quick arrival, the chicken had fled on foot.

According to the complaint, the chicken had been terrorizing bank customers all week, at both the walk-up ATM and the drive-thru, the post says. Bank officials told officers that the chicken chased customers, attempted to enter customer vehicles and on a number of occasions, failed to engage in proper social distancing.

Area patrols, however, failed to scratch up the perp, who, by the way, is said to be reddish-tan, 18 inches tall and 6 to 8 pounds.

The chicken is wanted on charges of assault, attempted battery, attempted burglary, terrorizing and ignoring an order of the governor, the post says. Given the chickens history of aggressive behavior, the public is urged to avoid confronting the fowl and to instead contact Walker Police if seen. Thank you!

In a follow-up post Monday, Capt. John Sharp of the Walker Police Department said the agencys initial post had reached over 114,000 people and was plucked for use by local, regional and international news organizations.

The (mostly) true post was prepared upon the belief that we could all use a little humor during this remarkable period we are all experiencing, Sharp said. Were pleased that you enjoyed it!
The world has been turned upside down for indie booksellers: their traditional business models do not apply when it comes to promoting and selling books during a pandemic that has shut down the nation. But, if theres one characteristic that indie booksellers share, its got to be adaptability. Booksellers have long been used to nimble pivots when it comes to doing businessalthough now they must maintain social distancing with their customers in an industry in which human interaction plays such an essential role. Below are some images of booksellers and bookstores captured this past week, as some states in America's Heartland began relaxing restrictions on "nonessential" businesses, while others continue to maintain tightly-enforced lockdowns.

On Monday, Bob Dobrow, owner of Zenith Bookstore in Duluth, Minn., hands off a bag of books to a customer. It was the first day since March 25 that bookstores in Minnesota were allowed to offer curbisde pickups.

On Tuesday, bookseller Alex George celebrated the publication day of his latest novel, The Paris Hours, inside an empty Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, Mo. Bookstore manager Carrie Koepke said of the occasion: "While we have feelings about missing a 'normal' launch, there is some joy in being able to take over the study table upstairs and not worry about being in the way of customers."

Bookseller Nathan McDowell wears a mask while showing off a few of his favorite indie press reads at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, the bookstore division of indie press Two Dollar Radio.

Raven Book Store owner Danny Caine stands next to his book delivery car in Lawrence, Kans. Caine bought the new car topper sign once he realized that "delivery would become a semi-permanent part of our business model" due to the pandemic. Three Raven employees deliver 50-75 books on average each day. "That ticks out to around 3,000 miles total," Caine says, "And I've covered about 1,000 of that, delivering books to around 750 houses myself."

Andersons Bookshop in the Chicago suburb of LaGrange, Ill., has rebranded its Blind Date mystery book selections: henceforth, the wrapped books for adventurous customers who don't mind surprises will be known as Quarantine Reads. Assistant manager Shabeeh Syed, who conceived of Quarantine Reads, says that they started selling immediately after she put them in the window.

Madison Street Books in Chicago launched a weekly Zoom video conference a few weeks ago, featuring special guests in conversation with store personnel, called the "Mad Street Mixer." Last week's event, "Mad Street Mixer: Middle Grade, featured (from top l.): Clare Vanderpool, Newbery Medalist for Moon Over Manifest; store owner Mary Mollman; Keir Graff, author of The Phantom Tower; and Mary Winn Heider, author of The Mortification of Fovea Munson.

Packages are ready for both shipping and curbside pick up at Excelsior Bay Books in suburban Minneapolis. Owner Ann Woodbeck, who bought the store less than six months ago, says that online sales are up 650%.

One Excelsior Bay Books customer asked for their purchases to be left on a bench outside the store. Note the handwritten sign in the store window with a number to call for those who want to buy one of the puzzles on display.
Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin takes questions as President Trump looks on during the April 21, 2020, White House coronavirus briefing. (Getty Images)

To the editor: It hardly seems a mere coincidence that two articles on the same front page of the May 2 California section described such diametrically different aspects of the current financial situation.

One described many private schools with healthy endowments receiving financial payouts from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. These are schools where tuition costs tens of thousands of dollars per year.

Some schools did not request support, and others have been shamed into returning their checks, but that still leaves many of the small businesses the program was designed to support without a dime.

In contrast, columnist Nita Lelyveld wrote about the desperate pleas for help on GoFundMe.com from people too ashamed to tell family and friends how dire their situations are. The closing statement ties the two articles together: "So you cry out in the dark and hope somebody, somewhere is listening."

Margaret Gascoigne, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: Elite private schools with endowments  like the one Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin's kids attend in Brentwood  have somehow received coronavirus relief funds. President Trump and Mnuchin suggested they "should consider returning the money," which the Brentwood School did.

The government watchdog who was to prevent waste, abuse and mismanagement of these funds, Defense Department acting Inspector General Glenn Fine, was abruptly fired by Trump in early April, and the decisions of where to direct funds are being made by the U.S. Treasury, headed by Mnuchin.

Is anyone interested in knowing who is really pulling the strings on this latest and greatest taxpayer giveaway?

June Maguire, Mission Viejo

..

To the editor: Trump and Mnuchin designed the aid programs and are responsible for the inadequate oversight.

They can enjoy the headlines they get for criticizing the very private schools that their own children attend, but the truth is that the programs are rife with questionable spending, for which they are responsible.

Norman H. Green, Los Angeles
MIAMI, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On Saturday, May 9 at 10am, Barry University will host a virtual degree conferral for over 1,000 graduating students.

"This is an occasion that's incredibly exciting for our students and their families, and we are so pleased to be celebrating and honoring the work of our graduates," said Dr. Scott Smith, Barry's Vice President for Mission and Student Engagement. "We are disappointed that we can't gather in person right now, but we are committed to hosting in-person commencement exercises when the situation allows."

The event, which will stream on Facebook Live, will include a welcome from Barry University President Dr. Mike Allen, a prayer from University Chaplain Father Cristobal Torres, messages from each of the College and School Deans, as well as celebratory toasts from Board of Trustees Chair John Bussel, Alumni Board of Directors President Jaime Lizotte and other special guests.

This is the third virtual degree conferral the university is hosting, having expedited graduation for two College of Nursing and Health Sciences Programs in order to speed the transition of qualified, well-educated health care professionals into the fight against coronavirus.

"The feedback from students and their parents has been phenomenal," Dr. Smith said. "They appreciate the opportunity to pause and celebrate, especially given all that is going on right now."

Barry's 45 graduating podiatric medical students also participated in a virtual Hippocratic Oath ceremony on Friday, May 1. Those students officially become doctors upon degree conferral.

Barry University's final Spring 2020 virtual degree conferral will take place on Friday, May 15 for graduates of Barry's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law.

SOURCE Barry University

Related Links

http://www.barry.edu


BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

Trend:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan has issued a statement on the 28th anniversary of the occupation of the city of Shusha by armed forces of Armenia, Trend reports citing the ministry.

"As part of a systematic policy of aggression of the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan, a historical Azerbaijani city of Shusha was occupied by armed forces of Armenia on May 8, 1992. As a result of the occupation, Shusha city and 30 villages of Shusha district were destroyed, 195 innocent civilians were killed, 165 were wounded and 58 persons went missing, more than 24.000 inhabitants of Shusha were subjected to ethnic cleansing.

The tangible cultural and spiritual heritage of the Azerbaijani people has been severely damaged as a result of the occupation of Shusha, a city of exceptional historical, cultural, spiritual and symbolic significance for the people of Azerbaijan and known as Cradle of the Azerbaijani music, Conservatory of the Orient. More than 170 buildings with the status of an architectural monument, 160 cultural and historical monuments, mosques, a number of rare manuscripts were destroyed and subjected to vandalism in Shusha. Imarat of Panah khan complex and library, Khan Palace and Karvansaray, Ashaghy Govharagha and Saatly Mosques, Mausoleum of Vagif, Natavans House and many others are among them.

The aggressor state Armenia, following the ethnic cleansing conducted in course of Shusha's occupation, in contradiction to the requirements of international humanitarian law, destroys the historical and cultural heritage of Azerbaijan and gradually changes the cultural image of the city. Thus, thousands of people have been illegally resettled in Shusha. The Yukhary Govheraga (Juma) Mosque, built by the order of Govharaga, the daughter of Karabakh ruler Ibrahim Khan, is "restored" by the Armenians and presented as a Persian one. All these clearly demonstrate the intentions of the occupiers to shadow the fact that Shusha is a prominent Azerbaijani city.

But the Armenian side has to understand that all these attempts have no prospects, the occupation is temporary. The Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan, this region has always been and will remain an inalienable part of Azerbaijan.

According to the position of all international organizations and states of the world, in particular, the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, Nagorno-Karabakh recognized as an integral part of Azerbaijan and immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of occupying forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is demanded.

Azerbaijan is the most interested party in the soonest negotiated settlement of the conflict and ensuring lasting peace in the region. The objective of the ongoing negotiations process on the settlement of the conflict is to ensure the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent districts of Azerbaijan, the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders and the return of IDPs to their homes. The achievement of that objective is a must, not a compromise. Azerbaijan considers no political solution to the conflict beyond this framework and participates in the settlement process on the basis of this understanding.

If the negotiations fail to bring as an outcome the ending occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, Azerbaijan retains its inherent rights under the UN Charter to ensure the restoration of its sovereignty and territorial integrity within the internationally recognized borders.
A Delhi Police constable posted at the Mandir Marg police station here tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, officials said.

The constable was placed in isolation and 11 more police personnel were quarantined at separate places, they said.

The Mandir Marg police station barracks, where the COVID-positive constable stayed, was sealed, the officials added.

Three more Delhi Police personnel, including a traffic inspector, tested positive for the infection on Thursday.

The 59-year-old traffic inspector was in charge of the Sangam Vihar area of Southern Traffic Range.

The other two are a 46-year-old head constable posted in Mahendra Park police station and an inspector deployed at the Lodhi Colony office of the Delhi Police Special Cell.

Contact-tracing is underway, the officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Trend





Nagorno-Karabakh conflict needs an early political settlement, European Union Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar told Trend.

He pointed out that despite the current difficult context related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union continues to closely follow developments around the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, be it the situation on the ground or recent public remarks about the current phase of negotiations led by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

In this vein, I had telephone conversations with both the Azerbaijani and the Armenian Foreign Ministers last week. These were exchanges on recent developments in the region, including on the impact of the coronavirus, which is a common challenge for the world and demands common efforts to overcome it. As you know, High Representative Josep Borrell on behalf of the European Union made a strong statement in support of the appeal by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for an immediate global ceasefire in light of the global coronavirus pandemic," added Klaar.

In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement context, he reiterated the European Unions call on strictly observing the ceasefire, devoting energy and resources to fighting the pandemic and remaining meaningfully engaged in the peace process led by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs,

He noted that the European Union fully supports the efforts of the Co-Chairs, who ensure the continuity of the conflict settlement process, as well as their approach and proposals toward peace and security in the region.

The joint meeting between the Foreign Ministers and the Co-Chairs that was held via videoconference on 21 April  and resulted in a joint statement  is a welcome positive development, added Klaar.

He pointed out that the status quo is unsustainable.

The conflict needs an early political settlement. We expect the sides to take measures to reduce tensions further and engage substantively on core issues and next steps in line with the joint statement made on 30 January 2020 after intense three-day discussions in Geneva facilitated by the Co-Chairs. The European Union looks forward to the resumption of face-to-face meetings and implementation of previously agreed humanitarian measures as soon as the situation allows it. We stand ready to support steps to help prepare the populations for peace, Klaar concluded.

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 regions.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Indias Cadila Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest privately held pharma companies in the country, shut down its formulations manufacturing plant in Ahmedabad on Thursday after more than two dozen of its employees tested positive for the new coronavirus.

A senior government official said late on Thursday that five employees had tested positive for Covid-19 six days back, while 21 others tested positive this week.

We had collected samples of 30 employees of Cadila on May 5, and 21 of the samples returned positive a day later, said Arun Mahesh Babu, the District Development Officer of Ahmedabad.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

He added the plant was ordered to be shut down on Thursday, 95 employees had been quarantined and sanitization work at the site had begun.

The incident comes just days after India began to ease some of its lockdown restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the new coronavirus. Ahmedabad, however, is one of the more badly affected cities in India and has moved to tighten restrictions this week.

In a statement, Cadila Pharmaceuticals said, Recently, 26 of our employees from our Dholka manufacturing facility tested positive for Covid-19. Following this, we have closed our operations on our own.

The company also said it is cooperating with the local administration to ensure the safety and security of its facility and surroundings.

Besides Dholka, Cadila Pharmaceuticals has manufacturing facilities in other parts of India and in Ethiopia. The company is a major producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) - the key ingredients used in making a drug.

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Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba and Foreign Minister of Poland Jacek Czaputowicz discussed the arrival of seasonal workers from Ukraine to Poland in a phone conversation on Thursday.

"In a telephone conversation, Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers Jacek Czaputowicz and Dmytro Kuleba discussed the arrival of seasonal workers in Poland, the resumption [of activity] of Polish consulates in Ukraine and the fight against COVID-19," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland posted on Twitter.

As noted, the ministers reaffirmed their support for the further development of the Eastern Partnership before the EU-EP summit in June.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Kuleba and Czaputowicz paid special attention to the preparations for the forthcoming Eastern Partnership summit and cooperation within the framework of the EU-Ukraine agenda. Czaputowicz assured of Poland's continued support for the European and Euro-Atlantic choice of the Ukrainian state and reaffirmed the need to maintain EU sanctions against Russia. The ministers discussed issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as the efforts of both countries to counter the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

As reported, up to a million Ukrainians stay in Poland now.

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Senate Republicans are quietly beginning to contemplate the possibility of an election-year confirmation battle for the Supreme Court.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs hospitalization this week and the looming end of the Supreme Courts term raise the prospect of yet another prized vacancy for President Donald Trump. And if there is a surprise opening or retirement in the months before the presidential election, GOP senators plan to act on it, despite denying President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat in an election year.

Republicans say they wish Ginsburg a swift recovery and have no inside knowledge of a retirement but are prepared to move if a vacancy presents itself.

Were going to fill it if there is one, said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the No. 3 GOP leader. With Justice Scalia ... people might not have thought he was the one, because he wasnt the oldest at the time. You just never know.

So in whats already been the most consequential year for politics in a generation, with a presidential impeachment and a rampaging pandemic, Capitol Hill could get significantly crazier.

If you thought the Kavanaugh hearing was contentious this would probably be that on steroids, said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Nevertheless, if the president makes a nomination then its our responsibility to take it up.

While no one says they expect a Supreme Court vacancy, GOP senators also acknowledge its plausible that Trump could find himself with a third nominee. And one thing is clear: Most Republicans have no qualms about approving a Supreme Court pick from a president in their own party, even if it is an election year.

In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said voters should decide in the election which president should choose the next Supreme Court justice because the Senate and White House were controlled by different parties. And in the Trump era, hes repeatedly asserted that he would fill a vacancy in 2020.

McConnell and his allies argue the situation is different because Republicans control both the White House and the Senate. They say that makes the situation far different than when Obama was president and McConnell refused to even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland.

Story continues

Democrats acknowledge they could get run over in the next eight months. Supreme Court nominees can now be confirmed by a bare majority after McConnell changed the rules in 2017 to overcome a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch, Antonin Scalias successor.

Theyre not troubled by inconsistencies, said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). It would be completely inconsistent with everything that was said [in 2016]. But we knew when they were saying it they didnt mean it. We knew that was a situational answer.

The remaining months of Trumps first term could also be the last chance the GOP has to put its stamp on the courts for years to come. McConnell could lose his majority or Trump could be ousted by former Vice President Joe Biden  which means Republicans would take no chances and move quickly to fill an empty seat on the high court.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., questions Boeing Company President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg as he appears before a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on 'Aviation Safety and the Future of Boeing's 737 MAX' on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

My guess is yes. Thats ultimately a decision the leader makes. But I think youve heard him speak to the subject before. He believes if there was a vacancy, hed fill it, said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the GOP whip. Confirmation hearings in the age of COIVD-19 would be very interesting but Im sure no less contentious than the last one.

Republican senators are not publicly pushing for a vacancy nor are they advertising their plans to fill any that presents itself. However, the last two vacancies occurred in election years. And Trump already has a list of potential Supreme Court picks.

In a brief interview, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declined to say there was a cut-off to when a new vacancy might be considered. His predecessor, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), declined to hold a hearing for Garland.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said a Supreme Court opening represents the ultimate hypothetical  but one Republicans would be prepared to respond to whenever it occurs.

Theres no cut off, said Blunt, the No. 4 GOP leader.

In addition to Ginsburgs health, senators are also keeping tabs on whether any other justices will retire. Four justices are 70 or older: Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

When Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018 and sparked the confirmation fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he made his announcement in late June after the spring term concluded. That allowed the Senate GOP to confirm Kavanaugh before midterms that threatened their majority.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a former Supreme Court clerk, said he had heard no inside chatter about an impending vacancy. But he said that given the age of the courts current members, you have to be prepared.

I would be very surprised if we didnt move forward with hearings and try to fill the seat. Im sure it would be very controversial, principally because of the balance of the court, Hawley said. If its replacing someone like Justice Ginsburg, that would be a big shift, that would be a big deal.

In that hypothetical scenario, the GOP would need the support of 50 of its 53-member majority to fill a vacancy. Vice President Mike Pence can cast a tie-breaking vote.

Still, at least one Republican senator believes the approaching election should weigh on any decision to fill an empty seat.

Youre coming pretty close, though, to the presidential election, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the only Republican to oppose Kavanaugh. That is something that you factor into these discussions about how we move forward.


The Guardian, 7 May 2020

The filmmakeras latest venture is an excruciating mishmash of environment falsehoods and plays into the hands of those he once opposed

Denial never dies; it just goes quiet and waits. Today, after years of irrelevance, the climate science deniers are triumphant. Long after their last, desperate claims had collapsed, when they had traction only on aalt-righta conspiracy sites, a hero of the left turns up and gives them more than they could have dreamed of.

Planet of the Humans, whose executive producer and chief promoter is Michael Moore, now has more than 6 million views on YouTube. The film does not deny climate science. But it promotes the discredited myths that deniers have used for years to justify their position. It claims that environmentalism is a self-seeking scam, doing immense harm to the living world while enriching a group of con artists. This has long been the most effective means by which denial a most of which has been funded by the fossil fuel industry a has been spread. Everyone hates a scammer.

And yes, there are scammers. There are real issues and real conflicts to be explored in seeking to prevent the collapse of our life support systems. But they are handled so clumsily and incoherently by this film that watching it is like seeing someone start a drunken brawl over a spilled pint, then lamping his friends when they try to restrain him. It stumbles so blindly into toxic issues that Moore, former champion of the underdog, unwittingly aligns himself with white supremacists and the extreme right.

Occasionally, the film lands a punch on the right nose. It is right to attack the burning of trees to make electricity. But when the filmas presenter and director, Jeff Gibbs, claims, aI found only one environmental leader willing to reject biomass and biofuelsa , he canat have been looking very far. Some people have been speaking out against them ever since they became a serious proposition (since 2004 in my case). Almost every environmental leader I know opposes the burning of fresh materials to generate power.

There are also some genuine and difficult problems with renewable energy, particularly the mining of the necessary materials. But the filmas attacks on solar and wind power rely on a series of blatant falsehoods. It claims that, in producing electricity from renewables, aYou use more fossil fuels to do this than youare getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first placea . This is flat wrong. On average, a solar panel generates 26 units of solar energy for every unit of fossil energy required to build and install it. For wind turbines the ratio is 44 to one.

Planet of the Humans also claims that you canat reduce fossil fuel use through renewable energy: coal is instead being replaced by gas. Well, in the third quarter of 2019, renewables in the UK generated more electricity than coal, oil and gas plants put together. As a result of the switch to renewables in this country, the amount of fossil fuel used for power generation has halved since 2010. By 2025, the government forecasts, roughly half our electricity will come from renewables, while gas burning will drop by a further 40%. To hammer home its point, the film shows footage of a alarge terminal to import natural gas from the United Statesa that aGermany just builta . Germany has no such terminal. The footage was shot in Turkey.

There is also a real story to be told about the co-option and capture of some environmental groups by the industries they should hold to account. A remarkable number of large conservation organisations take money from fossil fuel companies. This is a disgrace. But rather than pinning the blame where it lies, Planet of the Humans concentrates its attacks on Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, who takes no money from any of his campaigning work. Itas an almost comic exercise in misdirection, but unfortunately it has horrible, real-world consequences, as McKibben now faces even more threats and attacks than he confronted before.

Once again Michael Moore stirs the environmental pot a but conservationists turn up the heat on him

But this is by no means the worst of it. The film offers only one concrete solution to our predicament: the most toxic of all possible answers. aWe really have got to start dealing with the issue of population a without seeing some sort of major die-off in population, thereas no turning back.a

Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When wealthy people, such as Moore and Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, aitas not Us consuming, itas Them breeding.a Itas not hard to see why the far right loves this film.

Population is where you go when you havenat thought your argument through. Population is where you go when you donat have the guts to face the structural, systemic causes of our predicament: inequality, oligarchic power, capitalism. Population is where you go when you want to kick down.

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We have been here many times before. Dozens of films have spread falsehoods about environmental activists and ripped into green technologies, while letting fossil fuels off the hook. But never before have these attacks come from a famous campaigner for social justice, rubbing our faces in the dirt.

a George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
BEIJING, May 7 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign trade is still under considerable downward pressure despite improvement in April trade data, the country's commerce ministry said here Thursday.

With the continued global spread of COVID-19 weighing on the world economy and trade, China's foreign trade is facing unprecedented risks and challenges, said Gao Feng, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, at a press conference.

China's foreign trade of goods inched down 0.7 percent year on year in April to 2.5 trillion yuan (about 352.6 billion U.S. dollars), narrowing from a drop of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, with exports rising 8.2 percent from the same period last year, according to customs data that came out Thursday.

Foreign trade companies are facing many difficulties, including order cancellations or delays, difficulty of signing new orders and poor logistics, said Gao, citing surveys into domestic chambers of commerce and enterprises.

The commerce ministry will work to help foreign trade companies pull through the hard times with more targeted measures, for instance supporting exporters to sell their goods on the domestic market and keeping the global logistics chain stable and smooth, he said.

Authorities will also strengthen online channels to promote trade. The 127th session of the China Import and Export Fair, also known as Canton Fair, for instance, will be held online from June 15 to 24 due to the epidemic.
With only reindeer and polar bears for neighbors, two women Arctic explorers are enduring the worlds most extreme lockdown conditions with no clear end in sight as the coronavirus pandemic leaves them stranded.

Sunniva Sorby, 59, and Hilde Falulm Strm, 52, co-founders of the Hearts in the Ice polar education campaign, set off in August to the Svalbard archipelago, located between Norways mainland and the North Pole, to collect environmental data and raise awareness about climate change. They were due to return this month but the vessel designated to pick them up was canceled amid global travel restrictions.

There have been tears, Strm told NBC News during a video call from her post in the Arctic Circle. You are scared and you feel small in this big environment.

Image

The pair  the first women in history to overwinter in the Arctic without a male team member  are settled in at the remote Basembu trappers cabin  built in the 1930s for whalers  about 87 miles from any other people.

Strm, a Norwegian, has spent more than 22 years living in the far north leading a variety of Arctic expeditions, while Sorby, a Canadian, spent 23 years working as a guide and historian in Antarctica.

Their collective experience is reassuring, they said, and has helped them navigate the challenges of storms, aggressive polar bears and endless hours of darkness.

Climate change is affecting the Arctic much faster than the rest of the planet, with warming happening at a rate double the global average.

As citizen scientists, they have been collecting weather and wildlife data, monitoring clouds, the aurora borealis, sea ice and organisms for several international agencies, including the Norwegian Polar Institute and NASA. Their project is funded by a range of donors and sponsors from around the globe.

Theyve tested an array of new technology, including electric snowmobiles, and conveyed their results to not only scientists but also more than 5,000 children through online workshops.

Story continues

Their daily chores to simply survive also involve a lot of work collecting firewood, and ice for water, since there is no indoor plumbing. Solar and wind power fuel the rest of their activities.

Download the NBC News app for latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak.

Leaving their 215-square-foot cabin is a production. They have to don more than 20 pounds of clothing to shield them from the elements, plus carry a flare, a Swiss Army knife and a rifle.

Its not just a stroll. We have to go out prepared for the worst, Sorby said.

Having only each other for companionship apart from their calls to the rest of the world, theyve navigated the solitude by maintaining a routine of sleeping regular hours, keeping active and doing normal activities such as watching movies, dancing and cooking.

Neither one of us have lived this long with anybody 24/7, Sorby said, adding she imagines people living in lockdowns around the globe are facing similar tensions.

While coping with the distance from their loved ones by immersing themselves in their routine and the awe of their surroundings, they said the unpredictability of the environment has posed unique challenges.

Image: Relaxing (Hearts in the Arctic)

On one occasion, a polar low  referred to as Arctic hurricane  ripped open the door to the cabin, leaving the pair scrambling to stay sheltered, unable to make repairs until the winds died down. In another instance, a pileup of snow overnight made it impossible for them to open the door, leaving them to resort to climbing out a window.

We were so thankful we do yoga, Sorby said of the narrow escape.

Although well stocked with supplies, theyre rationing some of their food given the uncertain length of their stay. Theyre planning for a new supply of essentials and equipment, anticipating they wont leave the site until September and there remains the chance theyll have to stay another winter.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

At a time when lockdowns have postponed research projects and disrupted climate data collection around the globe, they see the extension of their work as a silver lining, delivering welcome information to the scientific community.

They have very little understanding whats underneath the sea ice and we can continue collecting that for them, which gives them a big understanding around biodiversity and whats happening in the ocean with the ice loss up here, Sorby said.

Their mission has significant social implications, as well, especially since they have marked the first time that women have passed the winter in the Arctic without the presence of a man.

With that in mind, they decided to add personal flair to the experience, both packing a little black dress among the essentials in order to throw celebrations throughout their stay.

We dressed up for Christmas with our heels and our dresses outside with our rifles over us. It was ice cold, Sorby said.

More significantly, they said it marks womens leadership in the fight against climate change. Mother Nature needs her daughters and we have answered the call, she said.
Under the Paycheck Protection Program, businesses with fewer than 500 employees can borrow up to $10 million over two years. According to recipients, 75% of the money has to be used for payroll, with the remainder going to mortgage, rent or utilities. Most or all of the loan will be forgiven if certain rules are followed, including retaining employees for eight weeks.
Matt and Anna Davis, with son Benjamin. Credit: Matt Davis

It was a pretty simple e-mail. Just a couple of lines. "It looks like low-dose ketamine is an up-regulator for ADNP. Do you think this makes sense for ADNP patients?"

Matt Might sent that e-mail to Matt Davis on Feb. 18, 2019. Might is the director of the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. Davis is chief resident in the Department of Neurosurgery at UAB and the father of Benjamin, a child with a developmental delay caused by a variant in the ADNP gene.

And that e-mail was the first step toward a just-launched clinical trial that may make a world of difference for children like Benjamin.

The condition

Variants in the ADNP gene are thought to be one of the single largest genetic causes of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders. Children born with ADNP syndrome have one healthy copy of the ADNP gene and one broken copy. The healthy copy produces the ADNP protein, which is essential for proper neurologic development, while the broken copy does not. As a result, the child does not get enough ADNP protein for normal development.

Benjamin's a good example. He's three now and was diagnosed just before he turned one. His hearing was affected, followed by slowed speech development. He has some fine motor skill delays, and other developmental issues.

"Through all that, he's a happy, active three year old," said Davis. "But as a physician, I wanted to do all I could to find a way to treat or reverse this condition."

The tool

Enter Matt Might. Might is a computer scientist by training who made himself an expert in precision medicine following the birth of his son Bertrand. Bertrand has a rare genetic conditionso rare that it had not been previously identified. Bertrand is, in effect, patient number one for a condition called NGLY1 deficiency.

Might dove headlong into the study of genetics and precision medicine, blended with his computer skills, to find a way to treat his son. His journey led him to a role with the Obama White House Precision Medicine Initiative and then as inaugural director of UAB's Precision Medicine Institute in 2017, setting the stage for his e-mail to Davis about a potential treatment for ADNP.

"We've developed an artificial intelligence tool we call mediKanren, with funding from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences," said Might. "It has read all of the medical literature and uses AI reasoning to make deductions. I knew about Benjamin, and when we received a second request for assistance from a family with ADNP, we were able to load enough information into mediKanren to get started. It returned one major result. Ketamine."

The drug

Ketamine has been approved for use in the United States since 1970. It is used in anesthesia and pain management, and recently as a treatment for depression. It has some limited use in treating asthma and seizures.

"MediKanren sorted through the questions we'd asked of it and searched the literature," Might said. "Ketamine was the only practical solution that it found. I sent Davis that e-mail and he took it from there."

"I looked at the scientific studies that mediKanren found," said Davis. "In several studies using animal models, researchers reported that ketamine appeared to boost ADNP production in brain cells. Since kids with this condition are only getting half of the ADNP protein that they should be getting, boosting production of the healthy gene could make a profound difference."

The foundation

Enter Sandra Sermone. Her son Tony was the first patient diagnosed in the United States with ADNP syndrome. Now 12, he was diagnosed just a few months after Bertrand was identified as the first patient with NGLY1. That shared experience connected Might and Sermone. Inspired, she launched the ADNP Kids Research Foundation. She now has a registry of 250 children diagnosed with the condition, virtually all those in the world identified so far.

"Matt Davis joined with us after Benjamin was diagnosed and shared my interest in repurposed drugs," said Sermone. "He's now the chair of our medical and scientific committee. He told me about the potential ketamine treatment that Matt Might had discovered using AI and we were off to the races. We began validating the information and spent months pulling publications, researching and contacting other scientists. We investigated, drafted ideas and collected clinical data and started preparing to file for IP and to present to our medical research team."

The clinical trial

Sermone then turned to the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai in the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, where researchers are conducting the largest study of ADNP syndrome to date. She presented the case for ketamine to center director Joseph Buxbaum, Ph.D., and investigator Alex Kolevzon, M.D., who were intrigued by its potential. After internal investigation, they began the process of initiating a clinical trial and gaining clearance from the Federal Drug Administration to proceed earlier this year.

"The foundation is funding the trial, and our study contact registry provides the study subjects," Sermone said. "Since ketamine is an already approved drug, we can move ahead quickly to find out if, or hopefully how well, it works. This means we could have a drug available years before a non-repurposed drug. For our children, time is brain, so the faster we can find a treatment, the faster we can hopefully stop some of the negative effects of the disorder."

Sermone and Davis say the trial should begin enrolling patients this spring.

"This type of re-purposed drug will most likely cost millions of dollars less to develop as the safety studies have already been done," Sermone said. "The entire phenomenon of re-purposed drugs are nothing short of a miracle for rare diseases like ours with a small patient population that big pharma has no interest in helping."

The future

"We have high hopes, tempered with caution," Davis said. "If it works, it could reverse the condition in very young children whose brains are still adaptable enough to overcome the deficits caused by low levels of the protein. It could also provide some benefit for older children, even if it can't achieve a complete reversal of the effects. That would be a remarkable victory."

Might believes this is the first time that an artificial intelligence tool has directly led to a clinical trial.

"This is the first time someone has massed enough evidence starting with our recommendations to go to the FDA to get permission to do a study," Might said. "We've always dreamed of the time when someone, such as a foundation or support group, took recommendations forward and did the hard work that led to a patient trial with the potential to really change lives."

Sermone says that now armed with the ketamine hypothesis delivered by Might and Davis, and with a willing research partner in Mt. Sinai, they only lack two things. More funding and more patients.

"We could be on the verge of an incredible breakthrough for this condition," Sermone said.

"This is the kind of progress we hope to achieve every day through the Precision Medicine Institute," Might added. "It's exciting to know that the clinical trial is underway and that we've been able to make a contribution to what we hope is good news for families with ADNP syndrome."

Explore further The medical odyssey of an undiagnosed child
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Vista Equity Partners will pick up a 2.32 percent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore, making it the third high-profile investment in Reliance Industries' unit in as many weeks.

Experts feel the deleveraging process seems to be on a fast track and huge digital opportunities going ahead will take Jio to new scale in terms of business as well as valuations.

"Firstly from value of $50 billion that Facebook had given to now new deal at a premium to even the Facebook deal, 12.5 percent premium, suggested a value of $63-64 billion for Jio Platforms. So at the current level itself there is a scope for higher valuations," Jal Irani, Senior Vice-President - Wholesale Capital Markets at Edelweiss Financial Services told CNBC-TV18.

"Potential for growth tends to be extremely significant and it is how Reliance will execute this growth which will drive value going forward," he said.

Siddhartha Khemka, VP - Head of Research (Retail) at Motilal Oswal Financial Services also told Moneycontrol that it is definitely a positive deal with global private equity firms which generally invest for 4-5 years and they are big tech PE firms with large business sense and ideas.

"Net-net the money will be good for their capex and growth plans. With long term support from such PE investors, they can get more ideas from global companies where they invest globally, which will ultimately help Reliance to scale up business very fast in coming years," he said.

Follow all of our coverage on Jio-Vista Equity Partners deal here

This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore, company in its BSE filing said, adding Vista's investment will translate into a 2.32 percent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis, making Vista the largest investor in Jio Platforms behind Reliance Industries and Facebook.

"I already said they will be monetising total 15 percent stake, of which they already completed 13.47 percent stake sale (to Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista Equity Partners) and the rest around 1.5 percent will give them additional Rs 7,500 crore. And another 10 percent stake will be retained for IPO which may be likely by March 2021. So Reliance Industries eventually will be wanting to keep 70-75 percent stake of Jio Platforms with themselves," SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com told CNBC-TV18.

He said so net around Rs 68,000 crore will come in Jio Platforms, and Rs 54,000 crore of rights issue, making total of around Rs 1.22 lakh crore, while the net debt as of March 31, 2020 is Rs 1.61 lakh crore. They are still short of around Rs 40,000 crore which the company needs to garner.

"If I add FY21 cashflow of RIL on standalone basis that gives me around Rs 25,000 crore. Then also there is still a shortage of around Rs 20,000 crore," he added.

He said Jio Platforms also has debt of Rs 25,000 crore and they would be requiring capex of Rs 30,000-50,000 crore on annual basis as they may be upgrading their technology to 5G.

Hence, Tulsian said eventually the market would be looking that Saudi Aramco deal has to happen. "Originally it was envisaged to be happening at $75 on EV valuation of O2C business. Now I am expecting that to be around $60 a barrel. Even if I take 20 percent dilution of stake that gives me around $12 billion dollars or Rs 90,000 crore."

"So we have about Rs 54,000 crore from rights issue, Rs 90,000 crore from Saudi Aramco deal and Rs 25,000 crore of cash flow FY21 from RIL standalone that makes the perfect equation," he said.

Siddhartha Khemka feels if debt comes down, the debt rating will improve which will help the company to reduce the cost of debt and as a result overall debt cost of Reliance Industries will also come down.

According to him, Reliance Jio IPO is unlikely before at least next three years given the investment by these PE firms. "Jio Platforms is doing very well and if they continue with small stake sale with global investors then they might not need to do Jio IPO also in future."

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on Moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

'Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.'
The Independent Investor: Workers face a serious dilemma

During the last week or two, the federal government has done an about face concerning the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. From the nightly exhortations to social distance, work at home, and expect more deaths, the message has now switched to go back to work, re-open the economy and, oh, about those deaths, expect even more.

The Trump White House has "officially" left it up to the governors of the states to set a timeline for reopening their economies, since it is illegal to do anything else. The guidelines advise that each state should monitor the number of new cases. Only when they see hard evidence that those cases have not only plateaued but started to descend, then it would be safe to consider a gradual re-opening of the economy.

However, that is not what is happening. Informally, the president is doing everything in his power to convince, cajole, and threaten states to reopen, regardless of the human toll. As such, the president has once again turned a national crisis into a partisan battle for supremacy.

As a result, many states (mostly with Republican governors beholden to the president) are ignoring the guidelines, even as coronavirus cases continue to increase in some of their states. And while state residents are supposed to continue to socially distance, wear masks and follow other guidelines, many are not only ignoring those restrictions but are actively protesting against them.

While large and small businesses alike lobby to open, the labor force is expected to toe the line and show up for work. If workers, afraid for their health, balk at these orders there will be hell to pay. Aside from the threat of being laid off permanently, the states and companies have other means at their disposal.

Technically, if the state governments, for example, no longer consider the pandemic as a reason to claim unemployment, two things could happen. Workers would be unable to file for unemployment. Companies could also suspend health insurance benefits at the same time. Cruel, but effective. In addition, there is an added benefit to the politicians. The unemployment rate would come down, because those workers who refused to go back to work would not be "officially" counted as unemployed and would be taken off the jobless rolls.

From the administration's point of view, with just six months left to the election, the economy needs be on the mend by then, and unemployment dropping. However, over the last several days, many areas of the country continue to experience both a rise in COVID-19 cases and a higher death count. Given those facts, the political and economic argument has necessarily had to change from "things are getting better, so re-open" to "sacrifices must be made just like in any war."

The issue for workers is that they are on the front line. Reported cases of virus-infected employees at various "essential" businesses such as Walmart, Amazon, and several meat processing plants throughout the country, make the danger all too apparent. What is worse, few of these establishments have done much, if anything, to attempt to safeguard returning workers from catching the virus.

What makes the situation even worse is the continued lack of testing throughout the country. Not only does that dilemma understate the number of cases/deaths attributed to COVID-19 but leaves workers completely at the mercy of whomever walks through their doors. This lack of testing has already led to multiple cases of the virus in some stores, plants, and other companies, especially where workers are packed together.

And yet, as the government ignores its own medical experts, and urges businesses and workers to return to work, is there any recourse? Out of work, worried about how to support their families, it appears laborers will be forced "to do," and maybe die, or at least get real sick as a result.

I suspect that if this scenario does play out, lawyers will be busy from here to eternity as individual employees and worker class action lawsuits proliferate. Of course, as a next step, the government could rule that companies in this situation would be held harmless. That sort of legislation is being discussed presently. If so, workers may have no recourse at all.
This Friday, British people will be celebrating VE Day, to mark 75 years since the Allies accepted Nazi Germanys surrender in World War Two, on Tuesday, May 8, 1945.

The traditional early May bank holiday has been moved from Monday, May 4 to Friday, May 8 to coincide with the anniversary.

The planned service at Westminster Abbey and procession down The Mall, and other veteran parades and street parties have been cancelled due to coronavirus.

However, people can still celebrate with their households, and make their own decorations and bunting to mark the anniversary.

Here's how to make your own - or where to buy decorations if you're feeling less creative...

Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures 1 /66 Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures VE Day, 1945 Crowds celebrate in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Joyce Digney (nee Brookes) and Cynthia Covello (nee Lowe) who were famously photographed celebrating VE Day with two sailors in a fountains at Trafalgar Square, PA Evening Standard VE Day front page Evening Standard VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill joins the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace Rex Features VE Day, 1945 An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A victory street party near Clapham Common Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table in Brockely Getty Images VE Day, 1945 An American soldier in London reads the news of the German surrender at the end of World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A van load of beer passes through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds swarm in Trafalgar Square to rejoice Rex Features A group of London girls wave flags in front of the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) giving the 'V for Victory' salute as his car passes through crowds during a VE Day parade in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London PA VE Day, 1945 Men fixing the loudspeakers in Trafalgar Square before the King's VE Day speech Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Passing the crowds outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. A father takes his child on a tour of London's West End in unorthodox style Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Jubilant crowds at Piccadilly Circus celebrating victory in Europe Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers hitching a ride on a lorry in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations at Downing Street, London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill leaves 10 Downing Street by the back entrance to avoid the large crowds awaiting his appearance Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers blowing party trumpets in Piccadilly Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Crowds in Piccadilly Circus climb lampposts and Eros Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 Sir Winston Churchill leaves the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Crowds cheering Churchill as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, and made an official announcement that the war in Europe was over Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) crosses Parliament Square in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 A victory tea party at Amber Road, Finsbury Park in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Mansion House PA Prime Minister Winston Churchill watching a march celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day PA Sir Winston Churchill (centre in centre blacony) addresses a huge crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Health, Whitehall, London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmers Green, North London waves a newspaper containing the news of Germany's surrender in World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Some of the huge crowds who were in Whitehall, London, to hear Churchill's speech on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Evening News vans in Carmelite Street decorated to celebrate VE Day Associated Newspapers Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Cromwell tanks of the British Army, in a victory procession pass through Admiralty Arch Getty Images Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War PA Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs PA The Flying Scotsman locomotive leaves Paddington Station in 1965 at the head of a special train to commemorate the 20th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA St Paul's Cathedral floodlit during victory celebrations in London at the end of the war in Europe Getty Images

How to make your own bunting

To make bunting, you will need paper or card, fabric or another material for the flags, and bias binding tape or a ribbon to hang the flags on.

Draw a triangle on a piece of paper or card, the size you want your bunting flags to be. Cut the template out with scissors or a paper cutter.

Buy British or English flag material to use for the bunting. Fabric takes longer to assemble than paper does, but will withstand the rain. A simple fabric like a cotton-polyester blend is easiest for sewing. You could also paint red, white and blue colours on fabric or paper.

Pin each corner of the template to a straight edge of the fabric, making sure the edges are straight. Cut around the template with fabric scissors or shears, making sure to keep the material taught. Repeat the process until you have the number of flags you want to make.

If the material is single-sided, cut twice as many flags as you need, and stitch pairs together with a sewing needle or thread.

Arrange the flags along bias binding tape so they are evenly spaced. Fold the binding tape over each flag and secure it down with pins, and then sew the binding tape to the flags.

Alternatively, you could cut diamonds or long rectangles instead of triangles, and fold them in the middle over the tape or ribbon so a triangle or shorter rectangle comes down on either side.

Where to buy decorations

You can buy VE bunting online. Independent businesses are selling bunting and other decorations on Etsy and Ebay, as well as their websites.

Stationery chain Paperchase is selling Union Jack bunting, paper napkins and plates to mark the day.

You can also visit the Cotton Bunting Company, which has free delivery on all orders.

Party Pieces, Kate Middleton's parents' shop, offers a wide range of bunting, balloons and other festive items.

The Flag Shop and Midland Flags are also selling Union Jack flags and buntings to commemorate the anniversary.

On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage.
Dairy farmers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have challenged their devolved governments to match Defra's hardship funding for England.

English dairy producers will be entitled to claim up to 10,000 each to cover 70% of their lost income during April and May, Defra announced earlier this week.

The scheme also aims to ensure they can continue to operate and sustain production capacity without impacts on animal welfare.

The loss of markets overnight as a result of Covid-19 has affected dairy farmers across the UK, causing hardship to those supplying processors who have been most impacted by the closure of the food service and hospitality sector.

But no hardship fund is currently available to dairy farmers in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, many of whom are struggling due to the coronavirus crisis.

NFU Cymru has signalled its 'disappointment' that Welsh government has not yet taken similar action to support farmers in Wales.

Many have been forced to throw thousands of gallons of milk away for which there was no market, while prices in markets have at times fallen below 10 pence per litre.

We cannot express enough the urgency of the situation and we hope that Welsh government will now act and come forward, without further delay, with direct financial support for businesses," NFU Cymru deputy president, Aled Jones said.

"As every day passes, these businesses face further financial pressure and additional strain."

In recent weeks, the union has presented Welsh government with evidence highlighting the impact the loss of these markets is having on dairy farming.

"We have continually pressed on our minister the urgency of the situation. As each day passes the situation on farm only intensifies - we now need action, Mr Aled added.
(Natural News) The vaccine industry is busy concocting a new jab for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), but radio talk show host Michael Savage is having none of it.

During a recent broadcast, Savage announced that he plans to refuse any Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine that ends up being foisted on the masses because it will be ineffective and dangerous.

I would join a militia before I took a vaccine, he stated. Id go to the hills. Im not taking it  I refuse.

You can listen to his entire Savage Nation broadcast at this link.

Savage, by the way, is of the same perspective as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is both real and killing people. He does not, however, support the agenda of eugenicist Bill Gates, who wants to unveil both vaccines and digital certificates to prove vaccination status.

Covid vaccine  I will refuse to take it! Savage went on to proclaim. It will be ineffective and dangerous. There are now 20 known mutations!

Like many of us, Savage has never taken a flu shot, either. Flu shots do not work, for one. They are also highly dangerous, and thus not worth the risk.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, warns that the people pushing vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are quacks:

Flu shots 50 percent effective at most, says Savage

As we, too, often receive, negative comments began to flood Savages Twitter feed following his remarks. One individual wrote that he had never heard Savage advocate against vaccines on the radio, adding that flu shots help to keep people safe against the flu.

This same commenter added that he hopes the same will be true of (a) coronavirus vaccine.

Savage immediately shot back with a comment of wrong! adding that flu shots are at most 50% effective and frequently produce severe side effects.

Savage is almost right, as flu shots are pretty much zero percent effective when you really look at the data. Between the flu they often cause, not to mention the horrific side effects, it is questionable at best to suggest that they provide any benefits whatsoever.

But the point is that Savage is right on when it comes to a future Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine. There is no chance that it will work or be safe, and yet there will almost certainly be calls by many to make it a mandatory rite of passage to be allowed back into society.

This is the slippery slope of tyranny that we have been warning our readers about for years. All forms of medicine require informed consent, and if the option to decline is removed then all you have left is a total medical police state, which is what the world is now seeing form right before our very eyes.

I tweeted something that got me mad, because theyre all talking about a COVID vaccine, and I know, having studied these things, having studied the flu vaccines which are about thirty to forty, maybe forty percent effective, Savage further explained during his broadcast.

 if you look at flu vaccines, not only are they ineffective  thirty-seven percent to fifty percent is what were seeing in reports  there are huge side effects to flu vaccines.

He concluded that rushing a vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) will be a disaster, and that he is basically willing to do whatever it takes to avoid having to be forcibly injected with one.

To keep up with the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

MichaelSavage.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Twitter.com
Text of a Notice on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to the Actions of the Government of Syria

May 7, 2020

On May 11, 2004, pursuant to his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. 1701-1706, and the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, Public Law 108-175, the President issued Executive Order 13338, in which he declared a national emergency with respect to the actions of the Government of Syria. To deal with this national emergency, Executive Order 13338 authorized the blocking of property of certain persons and prohibited the exportation or reexportation of certain goods to Syria. The national emergency was modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13399 of April 25, 2006, Executive Order 13460 of February 13, 2008, Executive Order 13572 of April 29, 2011, Executive Order 13573 of May 18, 2011, Executive Order 13582 of August 17, 2011, Executive Order 13606 of April 22, 2012, and Executive Order 13608 of May 1, 2012.

The President took these actions to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions of the Government of Syria in supporting terrorism, maintaining its then-existing occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.

The regime's brutality and repression of the Syrian people, who have been calling for freedom and a representative government, not only endangers the Syrian people themselves, but also generates instability throughout the region. The Syrian regime's actions and policies, including with respect to chemical weapons, supporting terrorist organizations, and obstructing the Lebanese government's ability to function effectively, continue to foster the rise of extremism and sectarianism and pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. As a result, the national emergency declared on May 11, 2004, and the measures to deal with that emergency adopted on that date in Executive Order 13338; on April 25, 2006, in Executive Order 13399; on February 13, 2008, in Executive Order 13460; on April 29, 2011, in Executive Order 13572; on May 18, 2011, in Executive Order 13573; on August 17, 2011, in Executive Order 13582; on April 22, 2012, in Executive Order 13606; and on May 1, 2012, in Executive Order 13608, must continue in effect beyond May 11, 2020.

Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared with respect to the actions of the Government of Syria.

In addition, the United States condemns the Assad regime's, and its Russian and Iranian enablers', brutal violence and human rights abuses. The United States calls on the Assad regime and its backers to stop its violent war, enact a nationwide ceasefire, enable the unobstructed delivery of humanitarian assistance to all Syrians in need, and negotiate a political transition in Syria that will forge a credible path along the lines of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254. The United States will consider changes in the composition, policies, and actions of the Government of Syria in determining whether to continue or terminate this national emergency in the future.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

May 7, 2020.

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Salon owner Shelley Luther holds a citation and speaks with a Dallas police officer after she was cited for reopening her Salon A la Mode in Dallas, Texas, on April 24, 2020. (LM Otero/AP Photo)

Salon Owner Shelley Luther Speaks Out After Release From Prison

Salon owner Shelley Luther said after being released from prison that she wasnt going to apologize for reopening her business in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbotts stay-at-home mandate.

That was the last thing I was going to do, honestly, she said.

I just couldnt, I couldnt bring myself to apologize, she added later.

Luther, a mother, was speaking during an appearance on Fox News Hannity just hours after being released from Dallas County jail.

Luther was sentenced to seven days in prison after a judge found her in contempt of court for refusing to apologize and say she was selfish for operating her business, Salon A La Mode. The move prompted Abbott to eliminate jail as an option for violators of his orders. The state Supreme Court ordered Luthers release.

Salon owner Shelley Luther begins to speak to the media after she was released from jail in Dallas, Texas, on May 7, 2020. (LM Otero/AP)

Luther told Sean Hannity that she was forced to close on March 22 and spent weeks unsure when she could reopen. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins continued pushing back the reopening date.

When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, I have to open, my stylists are calling me, theyre not making their mortgage,' Luther said. She was also behind on her mortgage.

My stylists were telling me that they wanted [to go] underground and go to peoples houses, she said. I just said, You know, thats not a good idea because we cant control the environment there. We dont know if its been disinfected or anything like that, and I just decided I would open.

Luther said her stay in jail was unpleasant but she did not have a cellmate.

Luther walked out of jail Thursday to a cheering crowd.

I just want to thank all of you who i just barely met, and now youre all my friends, Luther said. This would have been nothing without you. Thank you so, so much.
Police personnel and people carry a man (C) that has fainted following a gas leak incident to transport him to a hospital in Visakhapatnam on May 7, 2020. At least seven people were killed and hundreds hospitalized after a pre-dawn gas leak at a chemical plant in eastern India on May 7 that left unconscious victims lying in the streets, authorities said. The gas escaped out of tanks at a complex owned by Korea's LG Chem that had suspended operations because of India's coronavirus lockdown. AFP



LG Chem Ltd., South Korea's leading chemical firm, said Friday there was no second gas leak at its plant in India, a day after a leak of toxic gas killed at least 11 people.



LG Chem said it has asked Indian police to evacuate residents near the LG Polymers chemical plant in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh due to concerns of the rising temperature of a tank of gas.



LG Chem's response came hours after Reuters reported there is a wider evacuation as gas began leaking again from the LG Chem plant.



People in a 5-kilometer radius of the plant were being moved out, Reuters said, citing N. Surendra Anand, a fire officer in the Visakhapatnam district, where the plant is located.






The Small Business Administration is working to fix some of the well-documented missteps in its effort to get money into the hands of small-business owners reeling from the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a top official said Thursday.

The Paycheck Protection Program was meant to help small businesses keep employees on payroll during the pandemic. Initially, Congress approved about $350 billion in funding under the $2.2 trillion economic rescue package. But banks disbursing the loans were overwhelmed by demand, and mom-and-pop businesses struggled to get cash, even as many bigger firms quickly saw money.

The program burned through the first round of funding in a matter of days. But with additional funding approved by Congress, the SBA is now actively encouraging Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware small businesses and nonprofits to apply for PPP loans to help finance eight weeks of payroll and other overhead.

So far in the second round of funding, the SBA has distributed $175 billion in loans to more than 2.2 million small businesses as of May 1. The agencys regional administrator, Steve Bulger, told The Inquirer on Thursday that theres $100 billion more left.

His interview ha been edited for clarity.

Are you satisfied with the SBA banks and other non-bank lenders so far? Are you reaching the people you need to reach?

"Are we satisfied? No, Im not. I want every small business or eligible nonprofits to get it. Theres still some people who arent sure they should do it or are scared off from Round 1. There is $100 billion or more sitting there for small businesses that we absolutely want to get out in their hands.

 READ MORE: Public companies in Pa. and N.J. got millions in emergency coronavirus PPP loans meant for small businesses

"Our objective is to make sure that a portion of the remaining $100 billion goes to small businesses that need capital to keep their businesses going.

"What we saw in Round Two was a dramatic falloff in the size of loans on a national level from $205,000 down to $77,000 or so [the average loan size for Pennsylvania and New Jersey].

What that meant is that clearly smaller businesses are getting funded. Anyone who didnt get funded in Round 1 has been funded in Round 2. The smaller businesses are getting [money] from smaller lenders. Thats exactly what we were hoping for, so thats very encouraging.

What are you telling business owners who still havent applied?

Do it now! Theres money left, were all caught up with applications. Theres no delays. Go to our website [www.sba.gov] and find a lender.

Restaurant owners in Philadelphia and at the Jersey Shore say they are afraid to take PPP money before knowing whether they can reopen before the repayment period expires. Might SBA extend that into the summer?

"Congress is talking about making modifications, but until and unless thats done, we still have the eight-week deadline.

The intent [of PPP] was to have paychecks going out during the shutdown period to small-business owners employees, whether furloughed or on the job. I know a lot of restaurants said they want to use the money once theyre back open. Thats not what its designed for. Its a pretty big misconception. Its not the Small Business Survival program. It was targeted to employees, not for [business owners] to pay their bills any way they wanted.

 READ MORE: SBA slashes disaster-loan limit from $2 million to $150,000, shuts out nearly all new applicants

But a lot of employees are making more on unemployment. They arent coming back to work.

Were very aware of that situation. We just came out with new guidance to address that: The goal is get people off unemployment and working again. If youre offered a job, and youre on unemployment, you cant turn down a job. Thats not what the system is designed for, so bottom line, if the small-business owner offers [workers] a job in writing, say in an email, in good faith, and that employee says no, that the calculation [for loan forgiveness] will be changed. They [the small-business owners] dont have to include that employee in their calculation.

When will the SBA identify borrowers and lenders as the agency has in the past?

"I would expect it as soon as possible. Congress is asking for that and we want to get that information out there. Right now, we just want to get the money out. Theres going to be a list of those borrowers that initially got money, and eventually those borrowers who got forgiveness. There will be a lot more detail coming out. I dont know when. But yes, all this will be public record.

Look, this was the largest loan program for small businesses ever in the history of the world. We put it together in six days after Congress approved it. We were building the airplane as were flying.

Have you seen incidence of fraud? And is the Department of Justice investigating those claims?

"There are lenders out there trying to scam business owners. If youre responding to a phone call or online solicitation, be wary. Go to our website first and make sure they are on our list of verified lenders.

Scammers are out there. We urge all small-business owners to do due diligence before you give out any information to anyone such as bank information, tax identification numbers, or credit scores.

 ASK US: Do you have a question about the coronavirus and how it affects your health, work and life? Ask our reporters.

The Justice Department said it is already investigating PPP fraud. Do you expect there is more fraud in PPP than the usual SBA loan programs?

Thats probably a reasonable expectation because a lot of the guidelines in place for a typical loan  credit score check, collateral, personal guarantee  none of that applied here. But we are not holding the banks responsible for doing those checks which we normally would do. Because of the need for speed here a lot of those guardrails have been taken out, or the program wouldnt have worked. Its very clear ... the borrower will be held accountable. ... The Justice Department will be going after people who submit false information.
In October 2015, Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan helped block Kevin McCarthys bid to become speaker of the House. Three years later, Jordan unsuccessfully challenged McCarthy for minority leader following the Democratic takeover of the House.

Yet now, when McCarthy needs a Republican attack dog for a tough partisan assignment, his go-to guy is Jordan.

McCarthy added Jordan to the House Intelligence Committee in November as that panel became ground zero for the Trump impeachment effort. Jordan became one of President Donald Trumps most outspoken defenders during that ordeal. In addition, Jordan currently serves as the top Republican on both the Judiciary and the Oversight and Reform committees, two powerful posts he got only through McCarthys support.

And on Thursday, McCarthy named Jordan as a one of five Republicans on a select committee chaired by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) to help oversee distribution of coronavirus relief funds.

Like McCarthy, Jordan is also a frequent visitor to the Oval Office, or a recipient of presidential phone calls. And Jordans own combative style plays heavily into one of Trumps key attributes  always be on the attack, never defend.

CORRECTS JORDANS OFFICE TO REPRESENTATIVE, INSTEAD OF SENATOR - Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asks a question of Corey Lewandowski, former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The alliance with McCarthy comes as the Ohio lawmakers profile rises in the Trump era, morphing from a Freedom Caucus bomb thrower to a successful fundraiser, mentor to younger lawmakers and presidential pal.

I believe the select panel is Impeachment Phase 2 and, if so, send your pit bull for the event, said Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.), a member of GOP leadership. I am sure it makes the folks at White House more satisfied.

McCarthy and GOP leaders strongly opposed the creation of the Clyburn select committee, seeing it as Democrats attempts to launch Impeachment 2.0 against Trump over his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who also isnt afraid of mixing it up with Democrats, will serve as ranking member on the panel.

Story continues

Some Republicans had urged McCarthy to boycott the panel, arguing it would just validate the Democratic-led effort. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) named some of her own fiercest partisans to the Clyburn panel as well, including Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)  whom Trump has slammed as Crazy Maxine Waters  and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), an outspoken advocate for Trumps impeachment.

But ultimately, GOP leadership decided it was better to have a seat at the table so they could mount a vigorous defense of Trump's response to the pandemic. The select panel is expected to be at the center of congressional oversight action in the coming months.

Jordan has taken a lead role in describing the coronavirus Clyburn panel as a politicized effort to tar Trump heading into the last six months of his reelection campaign. That prompted some Democrats to retort about Jordans own history as a member of the Benghazi select committee, which dogged Hillary Clintons presidential campaign  and that McCarthy once indicated had an overtly political purpose.

"We fear this Select Committee is nothing more than the Speakers politicization of a crisis in a last-ditch attempt to attack the President after her impeachment sham and other witch hunts failed," Jordan said in a statement. "The Oversight Committee and the other relevant committees are more than equipped to ensure accountability for taxpayers. Instead of relying on them, Speaker Pelosi put Joe Bidens key House advocate in charge of a powerful new panel that is more like an arm of the DNC than the U.S. Congress.

To Democrats, Jordan is seen as one of the more zealous Trump apologists who will seemingly explain away any behavior by the president, no matter how outrageous.

"Donald Trump had a no more ferocious partisan defender than Jim Jordan throughout the impeachment proceedings in the House," said Raskin, who also tangled publicly with Jordan recently over the issue of whether members should wear face masks during the coronavirus pandemic. "He's a man of real talent but where does the Constitution fit in, where does the public interest fit in? It's not clear to me."

"You shouldn't make a career out of defending people who abuse their power," Raskin added.

But for many Republicans, Jordan is a battle-tested warrior who knows how to push an aggressive message. He played a starring role in the Houses impeachment battle last year as a temporary member of the Intelligence Committee  a move that was encouraged by Trump, but enabled by McCarthy.

Earlier this year, GOP lawmakers  with McCarthys blessing  elected Jordan to serve as ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, hoping to put Trumps fiercest defender on the front lines of combating Democratic oversight efforts.

Former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), meanwhile, was tapped to be the ranking member on Oversight. When Meadows resigned from Congress to become Trumps chief of staff in March, Jordan took back the reins on Oversight. And with the coronavirus pandemic keeping lawmakers away from the Capitol, there are no immediate plans to replace Jordan, leaving him as the top Republican on two key panels.

Jordan has earned leaderships trust and is seen as a team player, a dramatic reversal from how he was seen just a short time ago. The Ohio Republican  first elected to Congress in 2006  was a thorn in the side of GOP leadership when they were in the majority.

Jordan and Meadows used the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus to go after McCarthy and other party leaders, often wrecking top Republicans plans on spending bills or other measures. After Trump was elected, the pair would go over leaderships head to pitch their plans directly to the president, playing to his most antagonistic instincts on high-profile issues. Jordan and Meadows helped push Trump to engage in the disastrous 2018 government shutdown, for instance, despite heavy opposition from McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

McCarthys newfound alliance with Jordan is sure to earn him plaudits with conservatives down the road, support the California Republican may need if the GOP doesnt win back the House in November.

This is all about internal Republican politics, griped one GOP lawmaker. Appease the hard right at all costs.

Yet Republicans repeatedly described Jordan's ability to help boost the profile of younger members as one reason he's fostered fierce loyalty among his colleagues. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said Jordan has made a concerted effort to mentor junior lawmakers including himself, as well as Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Kelly Armstrong of New Dakota to become more effective in high profile hearings. Rep. Jamie Comer (R-Ky.) said Jordan allows less senior members to take starring roles in committee hearings that feature issues they care about and know well.

Another huge plus for Jordan is that his growing national profile as a Trump ally has turned him into a fundraising power house. Jordan has $2.6 million cash on hand and has fundraised for dozens of his GOP colleagues.

Multiple lawmakers also credited McCarthy with being willing to set aside his adversarial relationship with Jordan for the good of the Republican Conference.

"It says a lot about McCarthy too that he's secure enough to use the guy who ran against him for speaker. They both get along great now," Comer said. "They're stronger working together than fighting each other.

Comer recalled Jordan allying with McCarthy a few weeks ago to pass a bipartisan bill updating federal surveillance laws that had been panned by the Freedom Caucus. Comer said Jordan stood up against his longtime allies to help make the case for the bill.

Jim is an excellent investigator and has an excellent team, said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a conservative hard-liner who serves on the Judiciary panel and is the new chief of the Freedom Caucus. He is dogged in his pursuit for truth, and so I think hes a perfect choice.

Jim is our most talented member, and Jim is our hardest working member. Kevin is our most likable member. Together, they've made a great team, added Gaetz.

Both [McCarthy and Jordan] recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and both have realized that they work together as a team, he said. I don't think that realization would have occurred in the norms of Washington absent the crucible of impeachment.


Tourism Bay of Plenty has rolled out a series of marketing initiatives to support the regions tourism industry.

The Destination Management Organisations new website, bayofplentynz.com, went live in early March after six months of development with digital agency Maverick Digital.

The organisation says the website will support the regions tourism industry through storytelling and content to entice visitors to the region when it is safe to do so.

Chief Executive Kristin Dunne says the new website will share the Coastal Bay of Plentys stories with the world, highlighting the reasons to visit to specific target markets identified through extensive research into the regions DNA.

We needed a platform worthy of the beauty of the Coastal Bay of Plenty to show what makes our special place so unique to future-visitors that we know are going to love it too. I encourage anyone dreaming of an escape to the Bay to visit bayofplentynz.com - youll fall in love with the Coastal Bay of Plenty all over again."

Tourism Bay of Plenty has also released a new video and marketing campaign specifically for locals that launches today.

The organisation hopes it will encourage Coastal Bay of Plenty locals to feel proud of the region and appreciate what it has to offer and share it with their visiting friends and relatives as the alert levels allow.

With domestic tourism potentially allowed during alert level two, were excited to remind locals about all of the amazing places we can visit when it is safe to do so. For your post-lockdown inspiration, visit noplacelikehome.co.nz.

We were fortunate to shoot a new video just prior to lockdown and have since reimagined it into a story for our community. Its only right that the first people we share it with are the Coastal Bay of Plentys biggest fans, our locals.

We know that many of the Kiwis who choose to holiday in the Coastal Bay of Plenty come to visit friends and relatives, so it makes sense that we inspire locals to share the incredible experiences that they have in their backyard."

Kirsten says that timing the website launch in the wake of COVID-19 means the organisation can support the industry more broadly.

Our focus is to encourage locals to support tourism as the COVID-19 alert levels allow, and to maintain the Coastal Bay of Plentys position at the top of many domestic and international would-be travellers bucket lists.

When the time is right, we will welcome international visitors back and create magical memories for them once again. Right now, were focussed on supporting our tourism industry to get through and these marketing initiatives are how we can best do that.

Tourism Bay of Plenty promotes and develops the tourism industry for Tauranga City, the Western Bay of Plenty and Whakatane District  the area known as the Coastal Bay of Plenty.
Sweet, summer afternoons of lounging with the latest bestseller or that old favourite might feel like a postcard from a sepia-tinted past, but the days of reading aren't over -- they have just shifted from dog-eared pages to digitally bookmarked ones.

With a nationwide lockdown that has been in place since March 25 and is only now beginning to relax in some sectors, everyone is adapting to the new normal of staying indoors. And so are readers who are turning to ebooks, some reluctantly, still viewing them as inferior to the physical book, and others eager to embrace new technology as the way to go in a post-corona tomorrow.

Publishers have largely welcomed the change and see it as an opportunity to enter a new market they hadn't tapped properly before.

Clients like Reva Malhotra, PR professional and former literature student who must read for a couple of hours before she goes to bed, are their target



It is more out of lack of choice that I had to switch. I have never been an ebook person, I come from a background in literature so I always preferred a physical copy. But since shops are closed and nobody is delivering, I don't have an option, Malhotra told PTI.

Not so long ago, she would just pop into a bookstore, browse through tall shelves, and bring home a new book. Now, Malhotra has downloaded the Amazon Kindle app on her phone and manages to get in her quota of reading.

That publishers are constantly adding new titles to their inventories to accommodate all kinds of readers helps.

With a new digital store on Kindle and over 260 new ebooks, publisher Bloomsbury India has recorded a significant spike in sales.

Yogesh Sharma, senior VP sales and marketing, Bloomsbury India, said traditionalists experimenting with ebooks are making the difference.

Monthly sales of ebooks have more than doubled in the lockdown period. Though the trend may not continue in the post-lockdown period, those who experimented reading from ebooks for the first time will help expand the ebook readership in the long run.

I think a large section of readers, even traditionalists who love the look, feel, touch of physical books, will now see ebooks as an option. Those who still don't like the idea or the experience of ebooks will probably stock up more print books in the future, Sharma said.

Roli Books has registered a 50 per cent increase in the sale of ebooks and Hachette India sold 80 per cent more ebooks under the lockdown.

In the third phase of the lockdown, which started from May 4, the Union Home Ministry allowed standalone shops, including bookshops to operate. Many welcomed this, of course, but commuting is still a problem with no public transport and the fear of the spread of the infection anyway keeps customers away.

Delhi-based The Bookshop was among the first to start "shipping anywhere in the city" and open the store to customers on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Bahrisons, another old Delhi bookshop, also informed its readers on Twitter this week that they could now order books sitting at home.

The Oxford Bookstore remains shut and is not taking orders either.

Ankur Singhal, a chartered accountant, is among those who want to wait it out and try ebooks for now.

It's good to know the shops are open, but I think it's better to stay indoors for now. I am not particularly into ebooks, but for the last 40 days they have been a constant support.

Earlier I thought it would be difficult to get used to, but once you get a hang of it, it's all about reading a good book, he said.

To maintain reader interest in the digital format, Penguin Random House is collaborating with authors on social media and has launched online communities to increase engagement with its customers.

To keep this interest going, we are releasing some very topical and suitable ebooks. We are also closely reviewing the trends, genres that are attracting people's attention and accordingly building awareness about our titles in those genres, said Niti Kumar, senior vice president, marketing, digital and communications, Penguin Random House India.

Readers have shown particular interest in "mythology, romance, well-being, spirituality and cookery" during the lockdown period, Kumar said.

Switching from the printed word to the digital one is an opportunity to tap into a new market, according to Riti Jagoorie, general manager, product, Hachette India. Jagoorie believes physical books will once again rule the market after shops open.

The lockdown has shifted the focus to ebooks as all access to physical books was denied to readers but physical books will again reign supreme in our market once the lockdown is over and the book business gets back on its feet.

A change we might see is publishers here may look at creating more ebooks there is a definite market to be tapped into, even if it seems quite small at the moment, Jagoorie said.

In this period, Hachette has not brought out any new titles but has handpicked over 700 of their top titles to curate a Kindle store. The oeuvre includes "A Man Called Ove", "Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography" and "Shantaram".

A similar ebook store has been opened for children's books with over 700 titles, including all-time Enid Blyton favourites such as "The Famous Five" and "The Secret Seven" series.

Roli Books' director Kapil Kapoor is also of the opinion that the digital readership may decrease once the lockdown is lifted, but will still be more than what it was.

While I don't think the growth rate for ebooks will remain this high once the lockdown has lifted, it will definitely be more than what it used to be before the lockdown. This is because many new users have been introduced to ebooks for the first time, Kapoor said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Australians are turning to the dark web to buy an anti-malaria drug touted by US President Donald Trump as a coronavirus treatment, despite recent studies showing there is no good evidence to suggest it is effective in fighting the disease.

Australian Border Force revealed the amount of hydroxychloroquine detected at the border had surged since January, with officers intercepting thousands of tablets shipped from overseas.

A hydroxychloroquine consignment seized at the Australian border.

While the tablets may be legally produced in their country of origin, accessing hydroxychloroquine without a prescription is banned in Australia.

Hydroxychloroquine is commonly used to treat malaria and autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but it can potentially cause serious side effects such as sudden heart attacks and irreversible eye damage, and can also lead to a coma.
P olice chiefs have complained that they are the villains of the pandemic as they brace to send scores of Brits home this Bank Holiday weekend.

Senior officers said they had accepted they would meet the wrath of the public by cracking down on sunbathers, picnickers and VE Day revellers who flout the lockdown.

Cabinet Secretary Oliver Dowden admitted on Friday morning that the lockdown is facing a major test from the sunny weekend ahead.

Forces are understood to be furious that the Governments mixed messaging around easing some restrictions has diluted the message.

Officers and devolved ministers have accused Number 10 of mixed messaging / PA

One senior officer told the Times: We have always said we need a clear and consistent message from government to the public but there is now a view that things are being relaxed. A lot of people seem to have decided that it is all over.

We are being asked to enforce the lockdown and we are going to be painted as villains once again when we stop people enjoying the sunshine and having VE Day parties with their neighbours.

Several forces that cover national parks have urged the public to be vigilant despite Boris Johnson hinting at a very limited easement of curbs from Monday.

The PM is set to unveil his roadmap which is rumoured to include relaxing the stay at home message, but reports suggest the lockdown will remain until June.

London during Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures 1 /66 London during Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures A woman jogging near City Hall, London, the day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the UK in lockdown PA An image of Queen Elizabeth II and quotes from her broadcast on Sunday to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA A pedestrian walks past a billboard reading "Please believe these days will pass" on Broadway Market in east London AFP via Getty Images Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge Getty Images Boris Johnson Jeremy Selwyn Sun-seekers cool off in the water and sunbathe on the riverbank at Hackney Marshes in east London AFP via Getty Images Ed Davey is shown on screens as he speaks via videolink during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London PA A herd of fallow deer graze on the lawns in front of a housing estate in Harold Hill in east London AFP via Getty Images A woman wearing a mask crosses a bridge over Camden Lock, London PA An empty Millenium Bridge PA A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" is seen on an underground station platform Getty Images People push to enter the Niketown shop in Londo AP Jo Proudlove and daughter Eve, 9, follow the daily online "PE with Joe" Joe Wickes' exercise class on "Fancy dress Friday Reuters Police in Westminster Jeremy Selwyn Waterloo station looking empty PA Getty Images A quiet Parliament Square Getty Images PABest A man walks along a passageway at London's Oxford Street Underground station the day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the UK in lockdown to help curb the spread of the Coronavirus PA Social distancing markers around the camel enclosure at ZSL London Zoo PA A police car patrols Greenwich Park in London PA The Premier League in action in front of empty stands AP Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed. A deserted Piccadilly Circus PA A general view is seen of a deserted Trafalgar Square AFP via Getty Images Getty Images The iconic Abbey Road crossing is seen after a re-paint by a Highways Maintenance team as they take advantage of the COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown and quiet streets to refresh the markings Getty Images A view of 20 Fenchurch Street (the 'Walkie Talkie' building) in the City of London, the day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the UK in lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus PA A deserted Chinatown PA A person looks at graffiti on a JD Wetherspoon pub in Crystal Palace, south London. Wetherspoons workers have described founder Tim Martin's lack of support for his chain's 40,000 employees as "absolutely outrageous" PA The London ExCel centre that has been turned into a makeshift NHS Hospital and critical care unit to cope with the Coronavirus pandemic PA The Palace Theatre, which usually shows the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play, sits in a deserted Shaftesbury Avenue PA The Sondheim Theatre, which usually shows the Les Miserables musical, sits in a deserted Shaftesbury Avenue PA Two members of a British Army mounted regiment exercise their horses in Parliament Square AP Westminster Bridge is deserted PA A quiet Canary Wharf Underground Station PA An empty street and bus stop at St James's Park AFP via Getty Images Whitehall Jeremy Selwyn A quiet Canary Wharf Underground Station PA A single pedestrian walks past The national Gallery AFP via Getty Images London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn Kings Cross and St Pancras Jeremy Selwyn Buckingham Palace looking empty in London, PA London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn Kings Cross and St Pancras Jeremy Selwyn London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn London's Carnaby Street empty as shops closed after a lockdown was announced in the latest bid to stop the spread of coronavirus through the UK AP A quiet Jubilee line westbound train carriage PA A single pedestrian walks past The national Gallery AFP via Getty Images A quiet Canary Wharf Underground Station PA Empty Embankment Jeremy Selwyn

But Nicola Sturgeon fired a warning shot to Number 10 on Thursday by extending the shut down, while the Welsh Government has accused ministers of mixed messaging.

The PM redoubled the call for Brits to stay indoors on VE Day, warning the fight against coronavirus demands the same spirit of national endeavour" as World War Two.

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Already over 9,000 fines have been handed out to people breaching the rules since lockdown began and some 400 repeat offenders have been recorded.

It came as fresh official survey data suggested 400,000 people in the UK could already be infected. The death toll passed the grim milestone of 30,000 earlier this week.
Tim Allen and Tom Hanks share a relationship that extends far beyond the silver screen. The Toy Story actors actually appear to be good friends and often support each other in big moments. That said, it makes sense that Allen reached out when he learned that Hanks had caught the coronavirus, a disease that can have deadly consequences. But instead of sending the usual well wishes, Allen gave Hanks some advice inspired by the hit Pixar film.

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen on the red carpet at a movie premiere in June 2019 | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Looking back at Tom Hanks coronavirus diagnosis

Hanks was the first celebrity to announce that he had caught the virus, which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has since spread all over the world (via The New York Times). On March 11, he took to Instagram and announced that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had contracted the virus while they were in Australia.

Hello, folks. Rita and I are down here in Australia, he began before detailing how they realized something was wrong. We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches. Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers too. To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for Coronavirus, and were found to be positive.

Well, now. What do we do next? The Medical Officials have protocols that must be followed, he continued. We Hanks will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires. Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no?

Although he seemed to be taking the news well, Allen still reached out and shared some kind words with Hanks.

The advice Tim Allen gave to Tom Hanks

Allen talked about his conversation with the Castaway actor in an April 23 interview with Extra. It began when reporter Billy Bush asked, Have you spoken to your Toy Story co-star, great friend Tom Hanks, who is absolutely a legend of coronavirus? I found him to be extremely comforting at a time when we were really all very anxious.

Allen replied: Yeah, I did He was just like you said  its just like Hanks to be that way.

As far as the advice he gave Hanks, Allen said: I wrote him and said, You should have worn the Buzz Lightyear protective suit, and then you wouldnt have gotten into that trouble. You put the bubble down.

How is Tom Hanks now?

Hanks has not publicly said much about his health, but he appears to be better than ever. E! News reports that he and Wilson made a full recovery some time in March and returned to the United States later that month.

Hanks even went back to work, appearing on an April episode of Saturday Night Live. But sadly, theres still no word on the rumored Toy Story 5, which would follow the fourth installment that came out in 2019. For updates, keep up with Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
The Astros announced that they have signed infielder Jed Lowrie to a three-year contract that runs through the 2018 season. Lowries contract reportedly guarantee him $23MM: $8MM in 2015, $7.5MM in 2016 and $6.5MM in 2017 with a $6MM club option ($1MM buyout) for 2018. The team will announce a corresponding roster move on Tuesday.

The 30-year-old Lowrie, a client of CAA Sports, will serve as Houstons shortstop in the early stages of the contract  presumably until top prospect Carlos Correa is ready to take over the position. At that point, Lowrie could see time at third base (though the Astros also have prospects Colin Moran and Rio Ruiz rising through the system), serve as a super utility player, or potentially have appeal to other clubs in a trade.

In the meantime, the addition of Lowrie isnt particularly good news for incumbent shortstops Jonathan Villar and Marwin Gonzalez. Villar opened the season as the teams starting shortstop, and while he possesses game-changing speed, he didnt hit or get on base enough to take full advantage of that excellent tool. Gonzalez is the better defender of the two internal options, so he is seemingly the more likely of the two to fill a reserve capacity for Houston now that Lowrie is on board.

With this contract, Lowrie will return to the organization with which he enjoyed a solid but injury-shortened 2012 season. After years of promise in the Red Sox organization, Houston acquired Lowrie (along with Kyle Weiland) in exchange for Mark Melancon three years ago (almost to the day). Lowries original stint with the Astros lasted for just one season, as he and Fernando Rodriguez were flipped to the As for Chris Carter, Brad Peacock and Max Stassi the following offseason.

Lowrie enjoyed an excellent 2013 season with the As in which he batted .290/.344/.446 with 15 homers and a career-best 45 doubles. His bat slipped in 2014, however, as he batted just .249/.321/.355. While defensive metrics suggested that he improved at shortstop in 2014, defense has never been Lowries calling card, and many clubs expressed trepidation over deploying him at short. He drew interest from clubs as a second baseman and a third baseman, but one would imagine that Houstons promise to give him some time at shortstop, along with the fact that Lowrie resides in Houston in the offseason, gave the Astros a leg up over their competition.

With Lowrie now off the free agent market, Asdrubal Cabrera is likely the best remaining infielder available to teams with a free agent need. However, while clubs had their doubts about Lowries defense, those doubts seem to be even more pronounced in Cabreras case.

As for the Astros, this marks the third significant free agent signing for the club in the past week, as theyve also inked right-handed relievers Pat Neshek and Luke Gregerson, the latter of whom seems likely to be a closer for new manager A.J. Hinch. Houston could still address its starting rotation on the open market, and while they havent given up a draft pick with any of these signings, they showed a willingness to do so with a pursuit of David Robertson.

Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle first reported the terms of the agreement (All Twitter links). SB Nations Chris Cotillo and Jon Heyman of CBS Sports tweeted further details.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
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Linkedin Kirsty Needham and Colin Packham (Reuters) Sydney, Australia  Fri, May 8, 2020 16:30 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6cc379 2 World Australia,coronavirus,US,China,bilateral-spat,COVID-19,Origin,virus-corona,pandemic Free

Australian officials are frustrated that their push for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus is being undermined by the White House, which has sought to link the outbreak to a Chinese lab, government, diplomatic and intelligence sources told Reuters.

Washington's attack on China has given Beijing room to argue that Australia's request for an independent inquiry is part of a US-led agenda to blame it for the coronavirus outbreak, the sources said.

Canberra has been caught in a diplomatic squeeze between Washington, its main security ally, and already strained relations with Beijing, it major trading partner, even as its successful handling of the coronavirus has it planning to reopen the economy.

One government source said that officials were working hard to cast the review as open-minded and global, and that the American approach of "let's get China" wasn't helping.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, responding to criticisms about whether an inquiry would hurt trade with China, sought to underscore Australia's independence during an interview on ABC radio on Friday.

"We're not doing this as some sort of lapdog of the United States," he said. "You'll see there are some marked differences between some of the things that the Australian Government has said and some of the commentary coming out of the United States and that's because we take our own analysis, our own evidence, our own advice and we will take this issue through to the World Health Assembly."

China's foreign ministry has said the calls for an inquiry are "political manipulation" and said Australia should "give up its ideological prejudices".

Dossier

Last weekend, Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper said a "dossier prepared by concerned Western governments" showed China had deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak.

The report was published shortly after US President Donald Trump said he had seen evidence the coronavirus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said there was "a significant amount of evidence" the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory, although he has also said there wasn't certainty.

Government and intelligence officials said the document the article referred to was a compilation of public reports and newspaper articles, and was not based on intelligence sources.

"It's a research paper. I can tell you, we aren't paying much attention to it," an intelligence source said.

No public evidence has linked the outbreak to the lab in Wuhan, and scientists have said the coronavirus appears to have developed in nature.

Australia shares intelligence with the United States under the "Five Eyes" arrangement which also includes Canada, Britain and New Zealand.

An official familiar with the 15-page document cited in the article told Reuters it was American, appeared to be designed to gather support for the US position, and wasn't a piece of intelligence work.

The document included bullet points describing ways in which China hadn't been transparent in dealing with the coronavirus, sourced to newspaper articles and other claims already in the public domain, the official said.

There was no input from Australian agencies into the document, the source said.

Australian media have reported concerns that the US embassy in Canberra may have been the source of the document. The US embassy declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

"The Australians are pushing for reform at the World Health Assembly; this doesn't help those efforts. You can understand their frustration," said one Western diplomat, who declined to be named as the diplomat, like the other government and intelligence sources, is not authorized to talk to the media.

Tense ties

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly said that he has seen no evidence to support the theory the virus came from a lab, and that the most likely source was a wildlife market in Wuhan. He said the goal was to know how to prevent another outbreak.

"It's not directed at anyone, we just want to know what happened so it doesn't happen again," Morrison said on Friday, when asked whether the US focus on the Wuhan lab theory was counterproductive.

"It's a pretty honest question, with an honest intent and an honest motive. And I'm seeing more and more support for that position," he said, referring to Australia's goals.

Morrison wrote to G20 leaders this week seeking support for an independent inquiry. The European Union will raise the issue at the World Health Assembly this month.

Australia hopes that if there is wide international support for an independent investigation, China will cooperate.

But China is Australia's largest trading partner, and an already fraught diplomatic relationship has become more strained by the push for an inquiry.

China's ambassador warned last month that Chinese consumers could boycott Australian products, which the government said was a threat of economic coercion.
HYDERABAD, India - Indian authorities evacuated more people from villages near a South Korean-owned chemical factory where a gas leak killed 12 people and left about 1,000 struggling to breathe.

Authorities said the evacuation was precautionary, but it triggered panic among people overnight that another gas leak was occurring.

No, there was not another leakage, National Disaster Response Force spokesman Krishan Kumar said Friday.

Factory owner LG Chem said it asked police to evacuate residents because of concerns that rising temperatures at the plants gas tank could possibly cause another leak. The company said it was injecting water into the tank and applying other measures to keep temperatures under control.

A state administrator in the district, Vinay Chand, said authorities flew in chemicals from a neighbouring state to neutralize the gas completely before allowing people to return to their homes.

Expert teams were checking the factorys vicinity for any aftereffects of the gas leak. Residents of five villages are waiting for a clear signal to return to their homes, Chand said.

The initial evacuations on Thursday affected about 3,000 people.

The death toll rose to 12 on Friday with one person dying in a hospital, P.V. Sudhakar, a doctor, said.

Chand said 316 people were being treated in hospitals and were in stable condition. State police chief Damodar Gautam Sawang said 800 people were released after treatment on Thursday.

The chemical styrene, used to make plastic and rubber, on Thursday leaked from the LG Polymers plant on the outskirts of the eastern coastal city of Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state while workers were preparing to restart the facility after a coronavirus lockdown was eased.

The leak was suspected to have come from large tanks left unattended over the past six weeks.

Our initial information is that workers were checking a gas storage tank when it started leaking, said Industries Minister M. Goutham Reddy.

Videos and photos from the area showed dozens of people lying unconscious in the streets, arms open wide with white froth trailing from their mouths. People fled on foot, on motorbikes and in open trucks as police officers, some wearing gas masks, rushed to get people out of their homes.

The scene evoked bitter memories of the Bhopal industrial disaster in 1984 that killed at least 4,000 people and injured another 500,000, many of them with chronic health problems today, according to the government.

The blanket of gas spread about 3 kilometres (1.8 miles), sickening people in at least four villages. The leak was stopped by 8 a.m. Thursday, officials said.

A neurotoxin, styrene gas can immobilize a person within minutes of inhalation and be deadly at high concentrations.

LG Chem Ltd. is South Koreas largest chemical company and produces a range of industrial products, including petrochemicals, plastic and batteries used in electronic vehicles. It is part of the family-owned LG Corp. conglomerate, which also has an electronics arm that globally sells smartphones, TVs and personal computers.

South Koreas Foreign Ministry said Friday its ambassador to India had expressed regrets and condolences over the gas leak. A ministry statement said the South Korean government is closely monitoring efforts to handle the aftermath.

LG Chem began operating the plant in Vishakhapatnam in 1997 and its Indian operation is one of the leading manufacturers of polystyrene and expandable polystyrene in the country. The Vishakhapatnam plant has around 300 workers.

The bowl-shaped coastal city in Andhra Pradesh state is an industrial hub known for frequent gas leak accidents. In December 2019, a leak from a pharmaceutical company killed two people.

We have not learnt from our past mistakes, said E.A.S. Sarma, a former senior state official, referring to the 1984 Bhopal gas leak.

Considered the worlds worst industrial accident, the leak of methyl isocyanate at a Union Carbide India pesticide plant prompted successive Indian governments to pledge to improve safety standards. But many similar accidents, although on a smaller scale, continue.
Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla met on Thursday to look at options to allow online meetings for Parliament committees, amid growing demand from Congress leaders for resumption of such meetings.

The two Houses will closely follow the governments decisions on resumption of flights for general people before a roadmap for such meetings is decided. Naidu and Birla felt that if the situation does not allow regular conventional meetings of the Committees in the near future, alternative means of enabling such meetings may be explored, said an official release.

At least three Congress leaders, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Shashi Tharoor and Anand Sharma have sought permission from Naidu or Birla for holding their meetings online.

At the meeting between Birla and Naidu, held at the latters residence, the feasibility of holding such meetings was discussed and accordingly, they directed the Secretaries General of both the Houses to examine in detail the pros and cons of Parliamentary Committees holding meetings by video conferencing, a release said.
SOUTHWICK  Searchers, prompted by the discovery of a unoccupied kayak, recovered a body from Congamond Lakes Thursday.

Police Chief Kevin Bishop told Western Mass News the body of an adult male was found about 11 a.m.

At this time this incident appears to have been a tragic accident, Bishop wrote in a post on the departments Facebook page.

Emergency personnel began searching for a potential victim Wednesday after a kayak, empty save for a life preserver and a paddle, was found floating on South Pond. A search Wednesday, conducted with the aid of a state police helicopter, did not find a victim.

Police have yet to release the name of the victim pending notification of family. The incident remains under investigation.

Western Mass News is television partner to The Republican and MassLive.com.
Georgian Ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze has been recalled to Tbilisi for consultations as Georgia's former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who faces several convictions in Georgia, has been appointed chair of the executive committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council.



"Georgias strategic partners decision to appoint a person, who is convicted by Georgian courts and prosecuted, raises questions," Georgian foreign minister David Zalkaliani told reporters.



He said that the decision did not mean breaking diplomatic relations between the two countries.



However the appointment of a man who was convicted in Georgia and is wanted by Georgian law enforcers by a strategic partner causes questions. That is why with the involvement of the ambassador, we should figure out what should be done in this situation not to affect bilateral relations, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.



The ministry stated that the appointment of Saakashvili to the reforms council and not as vice PM of Ukraine, as was initially considered, points at the sceptical attitude to Saakashvili by the Ukrainian political spectrum and parliament.



"At the same time, we believe that the Georgian attitude, as a strategic partner, was also taken into account (when Saakashvilis candidacy was withdrawn as vice PM for reforms in Ukraine)," Agenda.ge cited the ministry as saying.



President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree yesterday to appoint Saakashvili as the chair of the executive committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council. Zelensky expressed hope that Saakashvili will give impetus to the council and help make important changes' in Ukraine.



Initially, Saakashvili was offered the post of vice PM of Ukraine for reforms. However, his candidacy was later withdrawn.

The possibility of appointing Saakashvili in Ukrainian government immediately caused dissatisfaction in official Tbilisi. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia, President Salome Zurabishvili and Parliament Speaker Archil Talakvadze said that Saakashvilis appointment in the Ukrainain government would be absolutely unacceptable.
Kolkatas iconic Howrah Bridge was lit up on Friday using special light and sound system to mark the 159th birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and to honour the frontline Covid warriors.

While the bridge was first lit up in tri-colour to mark the birth anniversary of Tagore, Asias first Nobel laureate, the colours later changed to white to honour the frontline Covid-19 warriors including medical and police personnel. Three colours  red, orange and green  were then used to portray the three zones demarcated for the coronavirus pandemic. The entire bridge was finally lit up with green lights, indicating victory over the disease.

In these troubled times we planned to send a symbolic message  Message of Hope  to all people through the special lighting installed on the bridge, said Sanjoy Kumar Mukherjee, senior public relations officer of Kolkata Port Trust, which maintains the bridge.

This is the same interactive light and sound system that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2020 during his visit to Kolkata.

Rabindra Setu, popularly known as Howrah Bridge, was commissioned in 1943 and is considered to be an engineering marvel as it does not have nuts and bolts, but was formed by riveting the whole structure.

There have been similar displays of the countrys gratitude to the Covid-19 warriors in the last few weeks. In end March, PM Modi had asked people to clap for them during the one-day Janata Curfew followed by lighting of candles and diyas in April. Last week, the armed forces showed their appreciation towards the Corona Warriors by organising fly-pasts, lighting up warships and other displays including playing the army bands.
The Small Business Administration has so far approved loans to nearly 4 million businesses. Now in its second round of funding, an increasing number of loans are going to the smallest companies. The average loan size in the $349 billion first round of funding was $206,000; as of Wednesday the average loan size for the second round was $75,000. Proponents like Marco Rubio, R-FL, head of the Senate small business committee, note that many loans are being made by community banks to local businesses.
India is dispatching medicines to more than 25 African countries as part of assistance for them to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.

It said medicines included hydroxychloroquine, paracetamol and other drugs which are immediately required to fight the pandemic.

"These medicines are expected to complement the national efforts of the various countries in Africa to combat the pandemic," the MEA said in a statement.

On April 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a telephonic conversation with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and conveyed to him India's "full support" to the African continent in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Ramaphosa also heads the African Union, a continental body comprising 55 African nations.

Modi held telephonic talks with President of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed.

Last month, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar too held telephonic conversations with his counterparts in several African countries to reiterate India's solidarity with the African people in the fight against COVID-19.

India has provided over three million hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) tablets and two million paracetamol tablets to various countries as part of its assistance.

Hydroxychloroquine has been identified by the US Food and Drug Administration as a possible treatment for the COVID-19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi, May 8 : Asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be Achilles heel of COVID-19 pandemic, and experts suggest it may have largely contributed towards the recent spike in positive cases in the country.

According to a UK study, the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the United States and the globe, the clear evidence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from asymptomatic persons, and emphasis should be on broadening testing to include asymptomatic persons in prioritized settings, which include healthcare workers.

Speaking to IANS, Prof. K Srinath Reddy, President of Public Health Foundation of India said, "Lockdown intent and effect was to slow down the transmission. It does not expel the virus from our country or the planet. There will be more cases- both tested and labelled and untested and asymptomatic. These numbers by themselves should not alarm us." He insisted on monitoring some crucial indicators -- number of new cases detected daily as a percentage of the number of new tests performed daily and number of influenza like illness detected by symptom based syndromic surveillance.

"Monitoring coronavirus positive cases of serious acute pulmonary infection in hospitals and weekly death count of the positive cases. We can track the speed and slope of the epidemic by these measures while accepting the reality that we must continue physical distancing, hand hygiene and masks for at least a year more", added Prof. Reddy.

With a surge of 3,390 new cases and 103 new fatalities in the past 24 hours, the total tally of novel coronavirus cases in India stood at 56,342 on Friday. Of the total cases, 37,916 are active while 1,886 people have lost their lives. A total of 16,593 though have recovered as India undergoes the third-phase of the nation-wide lockdown.

Dr. Vikas Maurya, Director and Head - Pulmonology at Fortis Hospital, said : "Cases are mounting and the possible reason could be increase number of people being tested now, or pending reports are coming positive now or could be due to asymptomatic transmission now affecting other people or could be due to relaxation given in lockdown." He insisted that this is worrisome and it looks that peak is yet to come in India.

"Presently cases were increasing at a linear rate but with spurts now for the last couple of days. It looks like lockdown needs to be extended further along with other social behaviour measures.... Very difficult to pinpoint any one point and we may well be peaking in near future", added Maurya.

In the last week, China began to release data on asymptomatic coronavirus patients, which experts say will help other countries to attune their response to the pandemic and also provide crucial information on the spread of the virus.

A study out of Singapore released earlier this week, estimated the transmission rate by healthy-looking individuals was major, and it found that around 10 per cent of new infections could be from asymptomatic patients.

(Sumit Saxena can be contacted at sumit.s@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has reiterated that a new voters register will enhance the electoral fortunes of the country as it has been recommended by the Electoral Commission.



Speaking in an interview on 'Frontline' on Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm, the legislator said it would be best for the country to spend money in compiling a new register to safeguard the integrity of the election than to have an old register which has proven to lack credibility.



Ghanaians he stated must appreciate the need to have an election that is transparent, credible and accepted by all parties with an "expensive register as claimed by some persons than to have an election that would be challenged by some parties.



He said the NDC should understand that as a sovereign country the Electoral Commission is independent and cannot be coerced by any political party to sing to their tune.



The EC has consistently maintained the current Biometric Voter Management System which is made up of BVRs, BVDs, Software application, data center etc. is obsolete and cannot guarantee a credible and transparent election.



Members of the Inter-Party Resistance against the New Voter Register (IPRAN) have also slammed the EC over the decision to compile a new register.



According to them, the time left for the 2020 general elections is woefully inadequate for the EC to procure a new system, train its staff, compile a new voters register, generate a provisional register, conduct an exhibition exercise, do de-duplication, and other activities.



It is also their case that the compilation is a misplaced priority and an absolute waste of over GH800 million of taxpayers monies for the procurement of a needless new system and a new register.



But the Majority Leader and MP for Suame insisted it would be best for the country to spend money on a new system that will guarantee a credible, transparent election that all competing parties will accept.



To him, we cannot compromise the integrity of our elections by ignoring the need for a credible system because a few are against the laudable idea.



The EC in March this year postponed the voters registration until further notice.



This was a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The EC said it would review the decision at the end of April or early May this year.



It had originally fixed April 18, 2020, for the commencement of the compilation of a new voters register.

Source: rainbowradioonline.com









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First Lady Melania Trump is marking her "Be Best" campaign's second anniversary to help families, children, leaders, and "stakeholders to help all parties help to be invested in helping the American children" succeed and surpass obstacles.

For two years now, "Be Best" has played a vital role in creating awareness, successful programs, and acts of kindness. Not to mention encouraging private-public sector associations to assist children as they overcome the struggles they encounter every day.

Weighing in on the 2nd-anniversary celebration, Stephanie Grisham, who served as the Chief of Staff and Press Secretary of the White House, said in a statement, that since the initiative's launch, the First lady has used "Be Best" in connecting with children, families, and key leaders as well as the stakeholders from different backgrounds to listen to their different stories and learn about the problems they face.

Mrs. Trump, Grisham added, will continue addressing the vitality of internet-based safety, encourage the children's wellbeing, and keep on finding more ways to help households impacted by addiction and opioid.

Highlighting Some of the Successes of the First Lady's Campaign

In commemoration of its second anniversary, the White House came out with the highlights of the success of Mrs. Trump's "Be Best" initiative. One of the main highlights is her being able to visit more than 20 classrooms and meet with almost 4,000 students globally.

Another highlight of the success of "Be Best" is that she has already toured almost 20 hospitals, both local and international, accenting their groundbreaking programs and crediting the health workers for their commitment to their parents.

Essentially too, almost every government agency has its own "Be Best" Ambassador, who concentrates on both opportunities and resources available within their department and employs them to make a difference in the children's lives.

On top of the First Lady's world tour, she has invited thousands of children, too, to the White House for the last two years to take part in the activities of "Be Best."

The First Lady's Initiatives in Participation to "Be Best" International

The press office of the First Lady provided information too, about her initiatives in participation to "Be Best" International.

The First Lady said, "It is my hope that talking" about this initiative's values, with the young people in America and all over the world, the parents, teachers, and children "will strive to share them with friends and families" within their respective communities.

Specifically, during her trip to Kenya, Mrs. Trump was able to visit the Nest Children's Home. This place focuses "on children whose mothers are in jail" and provides them food, emotional support, clothing, educational opportunities, as well as medical care.

Another initiative of the first lady is a program known as "Be the Best You Can Be!" which focuses on veterans and their children.

This program concentrates on empowering and engaging the youngsters on the essentiality of resilience and respect.

Check these out!
In a shining example of communal harmony, a burqa-clad woman from Delhi has been going viral on the internet after she was spotted disinfecting temples, churches, gurudwaras and mosques amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Imrana Saifi, a resident of North Delhi, has been visiting religious places of worship in the area every day along with a sanitiser tank to disinfect the buildings.

Saifi, who is a mother of two, has gathered her own team of "corona-warriors" and even though she observes fast for Ramzaan every day, Saifi is unwavering in her initiative. Every day, she visits religious places of worship such as the Nav Durga temple in Nehru Nagar to sanitise the buildings, NDTV reported.

According to the corona-warrior, she has faced no problems either from temple priests or from locals. In fact, Saifi told NDTV that the priests have been welcoming and help her in her rounds. The report also mentioned that Saifi managed to get the sanitiser tank after requesting local authorities.

Not just religious places, Saifi also provides aid to those affected by the violence that ensued in North East Delhi in February following the clashes between supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) and anti-CAA protesters.

Earlier in April, fake news about burqa clad women spitting in houses in Kota to spread coronavirus went viral. A fact-check by AltNews, however, found the video to not be entirely true. While the women did spit at people's houses, it was with the intention of scorning the families that did not pay alms. A detailed investigation by the police found that the women spitting had nothing to do with coronavirus.

The incident came in the backdrop of heightened communal tensions and widespread Islamophobia following the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in New Delhi's Nizamuddin in March which led to an exacerbation in positive coronavirus cases across the country. Many on social media hailed it as an example of communal harmony and India's diversity.

#CoronaWarrior in burqa helps sanitise Delhi temples, priests welcome her. pic.twitter.com/787cMxAS0X Akbarowaisiyouthicon (@AUOYOUTHICON) May 8, 2020

This is what my India is and has to be!Corona Warrior In Burqa Helps Sanitise Delhi Temples, Priests Welcome Herhttps://t.co/6xDSFpZaiIShared via NDTV News App (Android - https://t.co/i5D13wRz6R | iPhone - https://t.co/uSWnAlc19r ) Ashish Damle (@ashishdamle1976) May 8, 2020
(TNS)  Two days after refusing to divulge details of a secretive deal to purchase protective masks from a Chinese electric car maker, Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration abruptly reversed course on Wednesday  disclosing a 42-page document that only hours earlier was changed, requiring the company to reimburse the state $247.5 million by the end of the week.The repayment by BYD, through its U.S. subsidiary headquartered in Los Angeles, was attributed to a one-month delay in certification of the company's N95 masks. Those masks may not be approved for effectiveness by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health until the end of May.Newsom downplayed the setback during a coronavirus briefing earlier Wednesday, calling it a "little bit" of a delay and suggesting it was because the masks were a "new" product for the company to manufacture. "All these things work out themselves," he said.The last-minute reimbursement, according to a new amendment to the contract, was agreed to because the original $495-million deposit by the state was contingent in part on some of the N95 masks being delivered in May.On May 4, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services rejected a request byto disclose the contract, an agreement made between the state and BYD on April 7 and sought the next day under provisions of California Public Records Act."Publishing the agreement now  before performance under the contract is complete  would introduce substantial and unnecessary risk to the State's ability to secure necessary supplies," Ryan Gronsky, an attorney with the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, wrote in a letter toIt is unclear why the administration changed its decision.The price tag of the contract is larger than previously stated. In all, the state agreed to pay BYD more than $1 billion for the masks. Most of the money, $990 million, was to purchase 300 million N95 protective masks over a two-month period at a cost of $3.30 apiece. The contract calls for an additional $54.9 million to purchase an additional 100 million surgical masks. The agreement gives the state the option of extending it beyond June 30, at the same price point."We negotiated a pretty good price in the middle of all this," Newsom said Wednesday, noting inflated prices being paid by others in the early weeks of the crisis. "I hope you'll consider those price points that we were able to negotiate, up against where the market was."Frank Girardot, a spokesman for BYD, said the per-mask price includes all taxes and duty fees plus the freight costs for air delivery. He said once those costs are factored in, the pre-shipping cost per mask to the state was $2.88."Our cost is fair," Girardot said Wednesday. "There is nobody that can make this quantity, this fast."Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, the chairman of a New York media nonprofit group that is working with the government consulting firm Raymond Associates to secure better mask deals for government agencies, estimated the $3.30-per-mask price could be some 30 cents per mask higher than it's costing the company to manufacture and ship overseas.He said with the amount of money California can muster, the state could have propped up its own factories in the state, employed Californians out of work and made large quantities of similar masks for "easily under a dollar.""The state could have launched 190 new companies around this," Fernandez de Cordova said. "Pandemic times lead to pandemic decisions, which are not usually well thought out."Ken Curley, a retired Army colonel and president of Raymond Associates, questioned why the state didn't go to a manufacturer such as 3M, which already makes N95 masks, to broker a better deal."The state has a lot of leadership, juice, money," Curley said.U.S. company 3M has said the list price for its most common N95 respirators ranges from 63 cents to $3.40, depending on the model. It's unclear what the equivalent type of N95 mask BYD is producing for California. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a deal with Honeywell for N95 masks that will cost the city 79 cents apiece  though most of the masks in that agreement won't arrive until the summer and fall; the ones purchased from BYD were expected to arrive this month.first learned of the cost for each N95 mask through records obtained from the California State Treasurer's Office. But emails and other documents in that disclosure suggest the BYD deal was still in the process of being vetted by state officials when Newsom boasted about it during a national TV broadcast last month."We're not waiting around any longer. And we're no longer interested in the progress that we were seeing in the past," the governor toldhost Rachel Maddow on April 7.The next day, Newsom's budget office told the staff of state Treasurer Fiona Ma that the deal was all set."Per the governor's announcement last night, this payment has become certain (pending 72-hour notification to the Legislature)," California Department of Finance analyst Thomas Todd wrote in an email. "The amount is now $495 million, and we will want to make the payment on Friday (the first day we can do so after the 72-hour notification)."Following that email, officials at the treasurer's office asked if the vendor had been vetted. Thomas replied that "they're vetting the vendor as we speak."Nor was the deal finalized. On April 15, the contract between the state and BYD was modified. The documents provided by the Newsom administration late Wednesday show a change in the model number of the N95 masks being provided, but no other information. BYD's Girardot referred all questions to the governor's administration, which could not immediately provide an answer.BYD announced in March that it had shifted its manufacturing from vehicles to protective gear. Its U.S. subsidiary, headquartered in Los Angeles and long promoted by the state for its electric bus production, helped arrange the deal. Global Healthcare Product Solutions, the limited liability company set up by the company in March, shares the same address as BYD's headquarters in L.A.In describing the vetting process, Tabitha Stout of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services told the treasurer's office the state agency followed standard practices for contracting in an emergency and included Federal Emergency Management Agency contracting terms in the deal."During the initial engagement with the vendor, Cal OES confirmed that FEMA along with large medical supply companies vetted this manufacturer as well," Stout wrote in an email April 9.The refusal to release the contract was met with sharp criticism in recent weeks by members of the Legislature, who were informed of its existence just before Newsom mentioned the deal on MSNBC. ."Many of us are going to be very insistent at seeing the terms of that contract," state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), said during an April 16 hearing at which legislators voiced concerns with the administration's secrecy over the deal. "And what is in the contract that ensures the deliverability, timely, is going to be really, really important."The governor's advisers told lawmakers they feared the masks would somehow be diverted away from California if they revealed too much. And Newsom insisted on Wednesday that it was his administration's attorneys, not him, who delayed the disclosure of the BYD agreement."I mean that I'm guilty of wanting to deliver and get this done, and to save lives," he said. "At the same time, damn it, to be as transparent as I humanly can be to you, because you deserve it."
At 4 a.m. I opened up the web browser and looked at the news.When I found front page, Sassy was back, I knew my day was going to be good. This man is my favorite puppet wandering for America politician, bar none anywhere in the world

I know I sound facetious, but really I do like this guy. I could be friends with him, as long as you know how to keep him in his place. He is the type of guy who you (America) can throw under the bus and he smiles as he gets up and thanks you for doing that. Everyone needs a friend like that. A friend to take all the blame for your antics

Seriously, everyone needs a Sassy-villi

Can anyone say, Peacock? After weeks of rumors and speculations, Mikhail Saakashvili, former Georgian president who is wanted for embezzlement at home, was appointed as the head of Ukraines executive council on reforms. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on Thursday confirming Saakashvilis new political role. Zelensky said that he sincerely congratulated the 52-year-old on this new challenge, adding that he trusts Saakashvili to be able to provide impetus to the body and help him with implementing important changes in the life of the country. According to media leaks, Saakashvili was initially considered for the job of deputy prime minister, but there was no unity on his candidacy even among members of Zelenskys own party. The National Reform Council, which he has now taken charge of, is a presidential advisory body  and does need an impetus, as it last convened more than two years ago.

Source: Reformer again: Controversial Georgian ex-president Saakashvili takes charge of Ukraines reform body  RT World News

Who needs King Corona Virus to destroy your country, when you got Sassy to do it for the King?

This guy has more lives than a cat and he is looking good. Lost weight, standing straight and is full of himself again. Has he recovered from his tie eating days?

Americas favorite Ukraine destruction weapon, none other than Mikhail Saakashvili, otherwise known as, Sassy

Well, Ukraine does deserve Sassy and Sassy seems to have a definite paid sponsor for keeping him in Ukraine under and against all roadblocks set up to stop him

May Ukraine enjoy Sassy and his antics.Hell at 52 years old, he has a bunch of fun to cause as he traipses around the world. Just a youngster

Again and again

Go Sassy!

WtR
Thick smoke emanates from the LG Polymers factory at Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. At least 11 persons were killed in the industrial accident. (DC Photo: P Narasimha Murthy)

Horrific as Thursday mornings styrene gas leak tragedy in Visakhapatnam was, the port city is no stranger to industrial accidents; in particular, adverse events at chemical factories. Heres just a top-of-the-mind recall:

June 13, 2012: Explosion in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant killed 19 people

August 23, 2013: Fire in HPCL refinery claimed 27 lives

January 6, 2013: Two killed in fire at Hetero Drugs facility

December 27, 2019: Two die in Smilax Laboratories in Pharma City, Visakhapatnam

By one count, there have been no less than 40 industrial mishaps in and around Visakhapatnam in the past six years which claimed at least 32 lives.

But each time there is a mishap, politicians and power bureaucrats intervene to ensure that business soon goes back to usual. In the process, lakhs of rupees -- sometimes crores, depending on the magnitude of the mishap -- exchange hands.

Sources in the Andhra Pradesh government told Deccan Chronicle there have been multiple instances of politicians, bureaucrats and IPS officers rushing to the rescue of a factory or industry found to have been lax with safety precautions.

After several such mishaps in the past, there was a proposal by the then TDP regime to constitute an Industrial Safety Council comprising officials from various departments. It was decided that the council would seek periodic reports from all industries and factories.

''But that proposal was made just to calm the tempers of the public. It was never meant to take off,'' said a source, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Citing an example, a senior police officer recalled how, after an industrial mishap a few years ago, a senior minister in the Chandrababu Naidu cabinet called his subordinate official and asked him to go slow on the case. ''He (the managing director of the industry) is close to us,'' was what the politico told the officer.

Sources said that every time there is a mishap, the factories/industries pay compensation to the family members of the victims while keeping politicians and bureaucrats, including some in the AP Pollution Control Board (APPCB) and the Inspectorate of Factories in 'good humour.'

''That is enough to bail them out,'' sources said.

The industries, besides maintaining rapport with politicians and bureaucrats, also participate actively in government programmes to strengthen their bonds with those in power.

A case in point is that of LG Polymers, where the gas leak claimed close to a dozen lives. As part of AP government's initiative 'Green Visakha, a target of planting 55,000 saplings was given to this firm by the social forestry department. On its part, LG Polymers, a south Korean company operating since 1961, achieved 100 per cent of the target by planting 55,000 saplings in March last year.

Another official, who worked in the Inspectorate of Factories till some time ago, stated that if factories and industries do not adhere to the prescribed safety and maintenance norms, it invariably means that there has been political and bureaucratic intervention on their behalf. ''Norms remain mostly on paper. All industries are well-connected. Highly expensive gifts are given. Whenever any industry is in trouble due to a mishap, both parties take care of each other,'' says the official. He added that the axe falls only on those who cannot pay up or are not all that well-connected.

''There have been several instances wherein industries have been served closure notices or asked to stop production for not complying with norms. But most of them manage to get favourable orders from the government after a period of time,'' he says.

In fact, outspoken bureaucrat EAS Sarma has been vocal about the nexus between promoters and politicians.

Sources further said that complaints are frequently lodged by people residing close to these industries or anonymous letters are written by factory workers to various agencies, detailing the wrongdoings of the company. But no action is taken.

While Visakhapatnam has 392 factories/industries in the red zone, there are 439 in orange zone, 132 in the green zone and one in white zone, totalling 964.

When it comes to the AP Pollution Control Board, the sanctioned employee strength is 289 but the number of employees at present is merely 124.
Uncertainty in the real estate market of Toronto where it was planned has made the project unviable, Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs said.

Sidewalk Labs, a unit of Googles parent company Alphabet, had been proposing to turn a rundown part of Torontos waterfront into a wired community but the project is no longer financially viable. (Illustration | Sidewalk Toronto)

Toronto: Google said Thursday it is abandoning its smart-city development in Toronto and blamed unprecedented economic uncertainty.

A unit of Googles parent company Alphabet had been proposing to turn a rundown part of Torontos waterfront into a wired community, but Sidewalk Labs chief executive Dan Doctoroff said in a statement that it is no longer financially viable.

As unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan, Doctoroff said.

Sidewalk Labs had partnered with a government agency known as Waterfront Toronto with plans to erect mid-rise apartments, offices, shops and a school on a 12-acre (4.9-hectare) site _ a first step toward what it hoped would eventually be a 800-acre (325-hectare) development.

Heated streets would have melted ice and snow on contact. Sensors would have monitored traffic and protected pedestrians, and driver-less shuttles would have carried people to their doors.

But some Canadians balked at the privacy implications of giving one of the most data-hungry companies on the planet the means to wire up everything from street lights to pavement. Changes were since made to make it more palatable but some celebrated Googles decision to scrap it.

This is a major victory for the responsible citizens who fought to protect Canadas democracy, civil and digital rights, as well as the economic development opportunity, said former BlackBerry chief executive Jim Balsillie, a smartphone pioneer. Sidewalk Toronto will go down in history as one of the more disturbing planned experiments in surveillance capitalism.

Doctoroff had said the company was not looking to monetize peoples personal information in the way that Google does now with search information. He had said the plan was to invent so-far-undefined products and services that Sidewalk Labs could market elsewhere.

Concerns in Canada intensified following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and Google.
Coronavirus Might Hobble Sabres Travel Tech Ambitions for Months

Recent stay-at-home orders have gutted the travel industry, which drives a majority of the revenue for technology company Sabre. The Southlake, Texas-based companys software-processing revenue comes from helping travel companies sell and market products, process transactions, and manage operations.

The coronavirus pandemic prompted a grisly decline in Sabres net airline bookings, which declined by 23 percent in February and by 111 percent in March, due to cancellations overtaking new bookings. Sabre has been processing only about 100,000 flight bookings a day compared to the 1.5 million a day it ordinarily handles.

Executives said the company has sufficient liquidity, with a cash balance of $1.7 billion, to cope with continued turmoil.

We believe our current liquidity is more than sufficient for a year and a half even in a zero booking, no travel scenario, said president and CEO Sean Menke during an earnings call on Friday. Two-thirds of the companys cost structure is variable, which helps provide protection in a prolonged downturn.

The cushion may come in handy. Menke predicted that leisure travel would be more likely to rebound ahead of corporate travel as businesses juggle their responsibilities to maintain the health of their workers and face cost cuts on travel spending due to recession. About 70 percent of Sabres airline bookings involve travel management companies, which primarily serve corporate travelers, while about 30 percent is for online travel agencies, most prominently Expedia Group.

The crisis will set back some projects. In January, the company had announced that Accor would hire Sabre for a first phase of building a full service management system that any hotelier who wants to contract for the solution would be able to. That project has been postponed primarily due to Accors furlough of about 75 percent of its workforce, Menke said.

Get the Latest on Coronavirus and the Travel Industry on Skifts Liveblog

Story continues

During the first three months of the year, Sabre generated $659 million in revenue, down 37 percent year-over-year. It reported a net loss of $213 million, compared with net income of $57 million, a measure of profit, in the same quarter a year earlier.

Cash on Hand

Sabre had ended 2019 with about $436 million cash and marketable securities. It has since drawn $375 million in credit. It has also issued $1.1 billion in more debt, and it has begun a cost-cutting program to save a few hundred million more.

The company has also saved by abandoning its bid to buy Farelogix. In March, Sabre paid Farelogix $46 million in a $21 million termination fee and certain attorneys fees it had advanced the vendor. The break-up costs equaled 12 percent of the planned acquisition price of $360 million. A reduction in taxes paid in the quarter partially offset the termination costs.

A Story Owing a Debt to Debt

Sabre had a net debt of $3.033 billion at the end of March. Like its travel technology competitors, Sabre will likely see its earnings drop dramatically this year. That will make it harder for Sabre and its rivals, Amadeus and Travelport, to take on more debt to cope with surprises or take advantage of opportunities.

One way to measure this indebtedness is the companys consolidated leverage ratio, also known as a net debt-to-earnings before interest depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) ratio. The ratio suggests how long it might take for a company to pay back its debt. Ratios higher than five often mean a company will struggle, experts said.

At the end of 2019, Sabres net debt was 3.1 times its earnings, compared with larger rival Amadeus, whose net debt was 1.2 times its earnings and privately held Travelport, whose net debt was seven times earnings, said rating agency S&P Global.

The coronavirus has overturned the path of these companies, cutting revenues and likely earnings. As of the end of March, Sabres net debt to Sabres adjusted earnings for the last 12 months before interest depreciation and amortization ratio stood at 4.3.

The companys main fix was to borrow more as cost cutting wouldnt be enough to help it survive.

The new debt, along with reduced earnings, will later this year elevate Sabres leverage ratio to 8, a level that S&P Global forecasts will remain until at least early next year. The ratings agency assumes that Sabres transaction volumes will be down at least 80 percent in the second quarter of 2020, with significant cancellations and with a slow recovery through the last half of 2020.

Blame Private Equity

Some experts assigned blame for Sabres indebtedness on private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Partners, which took Sabre private in 2007. Before the buyout, Sabres consolidated leverage ratio was 2.24. By 2013, the owners had piled the company with debt without significantly enhancing the company, boosting this ratio to 5.5.

The companys initial public offering in 2014 raised cash that it used to pay down its debt. Refinancings and tax law changes also helped cut its borrowings.

Yet the private equity owners had deferred significant investments in the company, and that put the company at a competitive disadvantage, experts said.

Sabre has had to pile up debt in recent years to make catch-up investments in its technology and products. It acquired tech companies like Abacus and the Trust Group. Last year, Sabres $110 million acquisition of airline passenger service system provider Radixx gave it software that appeals to many budget airlines that Sabre hadnt been able to reach with its more premium product, SabreSonic.

Sabre might enter next year with a precarious pile of debt. But its principal debt maturities dont arrive until 2022 ($1.15 billion) and 2024 ($1.78 billion), allowing enough time to recover under likely scenarios.

CORRECTION: This story originally said 2023 for the first maturity.

Yet Sabre must make interest payments and charges on its loans. In its first quarter, it faced a $31 million in a bad debt expense. But executives highlight its flexibility. Some of its credit agreements have covenants requiring the company to keep its total net leverage ratio to under 4.5. Still, those agreements allow Sabre to avoid penalties due to the sharp decline in travel volumes.

We believe Sabre is resilient and well-positioned for a post-crisis environment, Menke said.

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From 13 April, the education department of the Maharashtra State Government started rolling out e-learning content to students from both Government and aided schools for grades I to IX. Its hosted on the DIKSHA app  an e-learning platform of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Tarabai Sonawane is scared of the risk that the lack of internet has brought to her. For the last nine days, her three daughters are forced to leave the house for a few hours every day. The reason  access to the internet for e-learning.

From 13 April, the education department of the Maharashtra State Government started rolling out e-learning content to students from both Government and aided schools for grades I to IX. Its hosted on the DIKSHA app  an e-learning platform of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Along with these videos, the respective school teachers send out several videos of science, maths, English, stories, images of paintings, assessments, online tests, PDF files of English sight words, and much more.

Tarabais daughters, Pallavi, Akshata, and Tejaswini, who stay in the Dhakale hamlet (Bhadole village in Hatkanangle taluka of Maharashtras Kolhapur district), go to their friends house to ensure they dont miss out on the learning.

Why do they go out though?

Their stories reveal how education has become a privilege. Tejaswinis father, Vilas, who works as a Gavandi (mason), ran out of mobile balance in the first week of April. Tarabai puts things in perspective, Theres no work since 22 March. We didnt have ration to eat. Now in her mid-40s, she works as an agricultural labourer. An ill-planned lockdown forced her to buy grains on credit. So far, we have bought grocery worth Rs 1,000, she says. An extended lockdown brought in more risk, and now she anticipates that a further extension from 3 May might kill them of starvation.

The Sonawanes cant afford a mobile recharge now. Every money ill-spent means inviting starvation. Also, it delays the time by which they have to repay the grocery shopkeeper.

Although Tarabais daughters cover the face with a handkerchief or stole, her fears resurface in the conversation. Shikshan tar jhala pahije (The education should happen), she says on the call. Shes particularly scared about her younger daughter, Tejaswini, whos in grade VII at Vidya Mandir, Dhakale, because her friend Sanika lives on the opposite side of the hamlet (500 metres away). Its risky so she goes out early in the morning or the evening, she says. What can we do?. In the afternoon, the police presence makes it difficult for the kids.

Her elder daughter Pallavi who is in grade XII and enrolled in Indira Gandhi Junior College, Vadgaon in an art course, says, The teachers send us videos and assessments on phone. Ive to go to my friends house to watch this. For the Sonawanes, bargaining with social distancing comes at a cost which she cant quantify anymore  the cost of inequality.

Education never came easy for Vikram Sonawane, 18, who awaits his grade XII result. For the past two years, he has been working odd jobs to support his junior college education and family. Today, he has many more responsibilities than just choosing the stream he wants to pursue post-XII.

Two months before giving his board exams in March 2020, he took a break from a firecracker factory in Vadgaon, where he worked as a labourer.

Immediately after his exams got over, he had planned to find a job for helping his family. There was no vacation or de-stress time for him. It was from the second week of April when his younger brother Surajs school teachers started sending the curriculum, videos and reading material on WhatsApp. Vikram had run out of mobile recharge in the last week of March, and recharge now seems farther than his hopes of the lockdown being revoked on 3 May. The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have forced several people to take loans for buying grains and medicines in the hamlet already.

Suraj, unfortunately, has been finding it difficult to cope up with this. A grade VIII student, schooling has been no less than a challenge for him. Hes a student at Shrimati Indira Gandhi Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Vadgaon. For a few months, he could afford the bus fees of Rs 70 monthly, but since January he had to reduce it to a one-way trip. While returning, I walk 5 km to my home, he says. We cant afford it.

A lack of access to the internet has invited several risks for Suraj. Every day he goes to his friend, Mayuris house to borrow her single notebook. She jots down the things she understands from the e-learning material, and it becomes a reference or go-to point for at least five of her classmates in the hamlet.

When I ask Suraj, if he understands the concepts from the notes, he answers honestly, I just copy it down and learn. Suraj isnt responsible for this. The system has failed him.

His father, Vijay, 45, travels the remote villages of the Konkan region in Maharashtra for nine months a year to cut bamboo and rests for the remaining three months. With the lockdown, he is stranded in his home. Surajs mother, Shalan, 40, works as an agricultural labourer in the nearby villages.

When I was talking to him on call, they had received a PDF file with the names of elements (periodic table). Suraj didnt understand a word of it but had no other resort rather than just mugging it up.

Students are even asked to take online tests related to their subjects. A lot of students like Suraj are deprived of it. While Vikram managed to give his board exams, now he fears, if he will be able to continue with the education. For him, the most pressing thing is finding a job immediately.

In the second week of April, the headmaster of Vidya Mandir Dhakale, KB Patil, started surveying the households and made a handwritten contact list of parents with their WhatsApp number. Of the 31 students enrolled in grade V, VI, and VII, about 16 had WhatsApp. The school has a strength of 66 from grade I to VII.

He says, The ones who are interested will even go to others houses to see the videos, and the ones who want to do nothing will be home. The output of such initiatives is only 50 percent, but we try for 100 percent. The students have to see the videos and solve the questions in their notebooks and send it to us so that we can assess them." The success of such steps depends on how much the students want to learn and how much do their family members support, he adds. He plans to send the soft copies of local newspapers also.

However, times have become much more difficult for Sangeeta Sonawane, 35, an agricultural labourer from the same community.

Divas dhaklat jayecha (We keep passing the days), she says. The Sonawane family with five members got 25 kilograms of rice from the State Government in the second week of April. Sangeeta has bought other required grains, dals, and groceries from a shop in her hamlet and has a credit of Rs 500. We dont have any money left to buy a notebook, she says.

Her son, Sanket, who is in grade V, goes to his friend, Pranavs house, wearing a handkerchief wrapped as a mask  to not miss out on the e-learning material. My son understands that we are going through a tough time, and thats why he doesnt even ask us to buy a notebook. He is taking the notes of seven subjects in a single 180-page notebook and will exhaust it soon. Another day, he told me that once we get some money, well buy the book.

Sanket jots down what he understands. However, how much of the content he can comprehend remains a big question mark. Sometimes he asks me doubts, says Sangeeta, who dropped out of grade X.

Mobile recharge is something not in the vicinity of the Sonawane family. Weve to go to Vadgaon (5 km) for getting a recharge done (Roughly Rs 500 for three months), she says. Vadgaon, however, has been facing a brutal lockdown after a Corona positive patient was found on 27 March. We dont even have the balance to make a phone call, she rues.

Her husband, Vinayak, 35, is a mason and goes to the nearby villages as and when he gets the work. From 22 March, both havent been able to go out for work. While the restrictions on farming have been lifted, Sangeeta says that the police and village authorities dont allow them to go out.

The education department has planned to air the content on radio and television for students who dont have access to a smartphone. Director of Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training, Dinkar Patil, said in an interview to Hindustan Times, MHRDs Swayam channel will host this content for two hours in the morning and evening every day. We are working on the content and it should begin in a couple of days.

There are 66,033 Zila Parishad schools in Maharashtra. As per the State Education Department, there are roughly 2.25 crore students enrolled in schools (both private and government) in Maharashtra. As per the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2019-2020, the dropout rate in primary schooling is 1.09 percent which increases to 2.15 percent for upper primary and reaches a stark 8.8 percent for secondary schooling in the state for 2018-2019.

A crisis like this can fuel drop-out rates quickly and has even forced several students in Dhakale to consider picking up odd jobs to support their families.

Ravindra Sonawane, who awaits his previous months salary, is scared of his daughter dropping out. Around 20 March, he had to return to his hamlet from Kasegaon village (Walwa taluka in Maharashtras Sangli district) where he works at a dhaba. Upon asking for the due salary, the owner just said, Baghuya (Lets see), he tells me on call.

However, Ravindra cant say lets see to ration. His elder daughter Mayuri, whos in grade VIII, goes to a guardians house in the community who has internet. With public service announcements on Covid-19, Mayuri is now scared of stepping out. A few days back, she asked her father, Why cant we see the videos on our phone? Ravindra wasnt prepared to answer this.

Its important to educate the children, but I need money for recharge, he says. His hope from education stems from his past. I couldnt go to school, so I want my children to get educated.

Mayuri takes the help of Vishal Sonawane (the local guardian) to understand the concepts. We dont have any resources like glue, motor, battery, etc for science experiments, she says. This adds more to the misery. Frustrated, Ravindra describes the plight in four words, Kaam nahi, ration nahi (Theres no work, no ration).

All images courtesy of the author.
US President Donald Trump reached out to several world leaders, including those from Germany and Saudi Arabia, to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and the global economy on Friday, the White House said.

Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia discussed the latest positive developments in defeating the coronavirus pandemic and re-energising global economies, the White House said in a readout of the call.

The two leaders agreed on the importance of stability in global energy markets and reaffirmed the strong United States-Saudi defence partnership, it said.

Trump and King Salman also discussed other critical regional and bilateral issues and their cooperation as leaders of the G7 and G20, respectively, the readout of the call said.

In a separate phone call with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the two leaders discussed positive developments in defeating the coronavirus pandemic, research efforts and reopening the American and German economies.

"The President thanked the Chancellor for Germany's strong response to the pandemic. The two leaders also discussed critical regional and bilateral issues," the White House said.

Trump spoke with Merkel to commemorate and reflect upon the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. He thanked her for her elegant message, the readout said.

According to the White House, Trump also spoke with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin of Malaysia to discuss efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The president thanked Muhyiddin for his government's assistance with Project Air Bridge and efforts to keep supply chains open.

"The two leaders committed to continue working together to promote a swift economic recovery and enhance the United States-Malaysia Comprehensive Partnership," the White House said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Globally Ranked 14 th out of the 12,076 companies (Global Universe)

Globally Ranked 1st out of 668 Companies in Software & Services (Industry Group)

MUMBAI, India, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In recognition of its superior Environmental, Social and Governance models, Vakrangee Limited (VL) announces that it has globally ranked No.1 in the Sustainalytics ESG Risk rating rankings out of the 668 companies assessed in the Software and Services industry across worldwide. Sustainalytics mentions that the company's overall management of material ESG issues is strong.

Rating Overview - The company is at negligible risk of experiencing material financial impacts from ESG factors, due to its low exposure and strong management of material ESG issues.

Sustainalytics is a global leader in Environment, Social and governance (ESG) ratings. ESG ratings coverage launched with 9,000 companies and has now expanded to cover 12,000 companies.

Regarding the Data Privacy & Security, Vakrangee has received 100/100 score, depicting strong and robust Data Privacy and Data Security Policies in place. In the Environment field, Vakrangee has received an Industry Leader score, proven by the company's strong policies on Green Procurement, GHG Reduction program, leveraging technology to implement Go Green Initiatives such as Paperless Banking, Biometric enabled evaluation and Paperless ATM.

Commenting on this, Mr Dinesh Nandwana, Managing Director & Group CEO, Vakrangee Ltd. said, "We are honoured and excited to receive this rating from Sustainalytics. At Vakrangee, we have always attempted to be a Responsible and Socially Conscious company. This rating is a validation of our belief and commitment to our Business model of Nextgen Vakrangee Kendras. Our Business strategy has been mapped with the sustainability initiatives along with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals."

Please Click:

https://vakrangee.in/pdf/Analyst_Coverage/Vakrangee%20Ltd%20-%20Sustainalytics%20ESG%20Risk%20Rating%20Summary%20Report.pdf

About Vakrangee Limited(BSE Code: 511431; NSE Code: VAKRANGEE )

Vakrangee is the unique technology driven company focused on building India's largest network of last-mile retail outlets to deliver real-time BFSI, ATM, e-commerce and logistics services to the unserved rural and urban markets. Vakrangee currently has 23,000+ (10,000+ Operational & 13,000+ under on-boarding process) which are spread across 30 States & UTs and 6,150+ postal codes. More than 70% of these outlets are in Tier 5 and 6 towns. Planned target is to reach 25,000 Kendras by 2020.

For information, please contact: investor@vakrangee.in

Ammeet Sabarwal

Chief Corporate Communications & Strategy Officer

ammeets@vakrangee.in

Vakrangee Limited - www.vakrangee.in

+91-022-67765100

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PITTSBURGH, May 8, 2020 - Chronic rejection of transplanted organs is the leading cause of transplant failure, and one that the field of organ transplantation has not overcome in almost six decades since the advent of immunosuppressive drugs enabled the field to flourish.

Now, a new discovery led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Houston Methodist Hospital suggesting the innate immune system can specifically remember foreign cells could pave the way to drugs that lengthen long-term survival of transplanted organs. The findings, based on results in a mouse model, are published this week in the journal Science.

"The rate of acute rejection within one year after a transplant has decreased significantly, but many people who get an organ transplant are likely to need a second one in their lifetime due to chronic rejection," said Fadi Lakkis, M.D., who holds the Frank & Athena Sarris Chair in Transplantation Biology and is scientific director of Pitt's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. "The missing link in the field of organ transplantation is a specific way to prevent rejection, and this finding moves us one step closer to that goal."

The immune system is composed of innate and adaptive branches. The innate immune cells are the first to detect foreign organisms in the body and are required to activate the adaptive immune system. Immunological "memory" -- which allows our bodies to remember foreign invaders so they can fight them off quicker in the future -- was thought to be unique to the adaptive immune system. Vaccines, for example, take advantage of this feature to provide long-term protection against bacteria or viruses. Unfortunately, this very critical function of the immune system is also why transplanted organs are eventually rejected, even in the presence of immune-suppressing drugs.

In the new study, Lakkis, along with co-senior authors Martin Oberbarnscheidt, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of surgery at Pitt, and Xian Li, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Immunobiology & Transplant Science Center at Houston Methodist Hospital, used a genetically modified mouse organ transplant model to show that the innate immune cells, once exposed to a foreign tissue, could remember and initiate an immune response if exposed to that foreign tissue in the future.

"Innate immune cells, such as monocytes and macrophages, have never been thought to have memory," said Oberbarnscheidt. "We found that their capacity to remember foreign tissues is as specific as adaptive immune cells, such as T- cells, which is incredible."

The researchers then used molecular and genetic analyses to show that a molecule called paired Ig-like receptor-A (PIR-A) was required for this recognition and memory feature of the innate immune cells in the hosts. When PIR-A was either blocked with a synthetically engineered protein or genetically removed from the host animal, the memory response was eliminated, allowing transplanted tissues to survive for much longer.

"Knowing exactly how the innate immune system plays a role opens the door to developing very specific drugs, which allows us to move away from broadly immunosuppressive drugs that have significant side effects," said Lakkis.

The finding has implications beyond transplantation, according to Oberbarnscheidt. "A broad range of diseases, including cancer and autoimmune conditions, could benefit from this insight. It changes the way we think about the innate immune system."

###

A complete list of study authors can be found in the journal article.

The study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants AI145881, AI080779 and AI099465, and the University of Pittsburgh.

To read this release online or share it, visit https://www.upmc.com/media/news/050820-lakkis-science-transplant.

About the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences

The University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences include the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Graduate School of Public Health. The schools serve as the academic partner to the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Together, their combined mission is to train tomorrow's health care specialists and biomedical scientists, engage in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and participate in the delivery of outstanding patient care. Since 1998, Pitt and its affiliated university faculty have ranked among the top 10 educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health. For additional information about the Schools of the Health Sciences, please visit http://www.health.pitt.edu.

http://www.upmc.com/media

Contact: Arvind Suresh

Mobile: 412-509-8207

E-mail: SureshA2@upmc.edu

Contact: Erin Hare

Mobile: 412-738-1097

E-mail: HareE@upmc.edu
By Albert Bender

People's World

The case of McGirt v. Oklahoma sits at the top of the Supreme Court docket as the Indian law case that will decide the issue of whether eastern Oklahoma will be returned to reservation status. Oral arguments in this matter had been scheduled for April 21, but the Supreme Court delayed the hearing to June due to COVID-19, but has now announced McGirt will be heard on May 11, 2020, presumably by teleconference

This issue began with what is now known as the case of Sharp v. Murphy. This cause of action was previously known as Carpenter v. Murphy and Royal v. Murphy to reflect that this case has been pending through three different wardens in the Oklahoma penal system.

Some minimal background in this matter is helpful for the uninformed. The petitioner who originally raised this issue was Patrick Wayne Murphy, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation (MCN) of Oklahoma, convicted of murder in Oklahoma state court in 2000.

Indian Country had been waiting on the U.S. Supreme Court to reach a decision in the case of Sharp v. Murphy. The Court, if ruling according to firmly established precedent, would have to return three million acres of eastern Oklahoma to the Muscogee Creek Nation, and as a monumental ripple effect would result in the return of an additional 16 million acres to the other four southern nationsthe Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminoleforcibly removed, in the 19th century, from their ancient homelands.

These nations, collectively and historically called the Five Civilized Tribes (a term of colonial European origin, unpleasant because of its implicit racism, better replaced by Five Tribes or Five Southern Tribes) are sovereign governmental entities with outstanding political impact.

The argument of the Murphy case is that the Muscogee Creek Nation, where the crime for which Murphy was convicted occurred, was never disestablished. Therefore, Murphy, who is an enrolled tribal citizen, should never have been tried in state court as only federal courts have jurisdiction under the Major Crimes Act of 1885. The case went to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, which ruled in favor of Murphy. The state of Oklahoma appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.

The overarching issue is whether most of eastern Oklahoma is still the reservations of the Five Tribes. The Court could not reach a decision in its last term as it was hopelessly deadlocked 4-4. The ninth Justice, Neil Gorsuch, who has extensive expertise in American Indian law and could have broken the tie, recused himself from the matter because he participated in the case when it was heard before the 10th Circuit Court on which he sat at that time.

On the last day of the Supreme Courts last term on June 27, the Court announced it would rehear arguments in Sharp v. Murphy in its new term which started in October. But that never happened, probably because the deadlock would not be broken as long as the court was minus a judge.

This brings in McGirt v. Oklahoma, involving the same Indian law issues, with an appeal from an Oklahoma state court conviction, that would be heard by the full nine-member court. The crimes in this case also were committed within the historic boundaries of the MCN.

This new case on the docket involves Jimcy McGirt, a member of the Seminole Nation who was convicted of sex crimes against a child by the state of Oklahoma within the historic Indian boundaries in 1997. Based on the decision issued by the 10th Circuit, McGirt argued that only the federal government could prosecute him. The McGirt litigation has the same issues as the Murphy case. Do the 1866 territorial boundaries of the Muscogee Creek Nation within the former Indian Territory of eastern Oklahoma still constitute an Indian reservation today under federal law?

Like Murphy, McGirt argues that the MCN continued to exercise sovereignty after Oklahoma statehood. The case law is in favor of the Indigenous petitioner, set by Supreme Court precedents beginning with Solem v. Bartlett (1984), which held that the opening up of reservation lands for settlement to non-Indians does not constitute the required Congressional intent to disestablish or to diminish reservation boundaries. The 10th Circuit found that all three million acres of the MCN reservation, whether owned by Indians, non-Indians, state or city governments, was still Indian Country. The MCN reservation was still in existence!

In another later case, Nebraska v. Parker (2016), involving the same issues, the Supreme Court took into account other factors in reaching its decision which can be used in the McGirt case and will identically relate to the arguments raised in Murphy. The Court ruled that the demographic history of the land in question could be examined (whether there was still a Native presence on the land in contention).

The Court first looked at the issue of non-Indian presence on the land and concluded that this was not determinative in reaching a decision. The Court also found that the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska had been absent from the land for 120 years and had not enforced its laws or offered any services in the area. But still, the Court found that it could not override the lack of explicit Congressional intent to diminish the reservation. The Court found in favor of the Tribe, despite the lack of Native presence and services. In reference to eastern Oklahoma, in regard to Native presence and the offering of services, there is just the opposite demographic situation.

The issue of Indian presence and services offered in the matter of eastern Oklahoma works overwhelmingly in favor of the Indigenous nations. Eastern Oklahoma is home to tens of thousands of Native Americans with a huge social, economic, and cultural impact on the region.

Additionally, the governments of the Five Southern Tribes are functioning polities exercising an outstanding sovereign presence encompassing extensive social services and law enforcement entities. The Five Tribes are justly awaiting the rightful return of tribal lands taken by the federal government in a most egregious violation of law and sacred treaties circa the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the Murphy case, which features essentially the same arguments presented in the McGirt matter, the petitioner contended that the land on which the crime was committed was still part of the MCN Reservation guaranteed in the Treaty of 1866. When Murphy went before the 10th Circuit, the court ruled that it could not find any statute diminishing or disestablishing the reservation. There was no Congressional intent to end the reservation. The reservation still existed. The Supreme Court should have found it easy to reach a decision.

In Solem, the Supreme Court established three principles to determine Congressional intent to diminish or disestablish a reservation. First, only Congress has the authority to diminish reservation boundaries. The Court stated that once a block of land is set aside for an Indian reservation and no matter what happens to the title of the individual plots within the area, the entire block retains its reservation status until Congress explicitly states otherwise. Second, the Court ruled that the intent to diminish or disestablish will not be lightly presumed. Since only Congress has this power, it must clearly state the intent to disestablish or diminish or make an overt statement from which the intent can be inferred. Third, the intent to diminish or disestablish can be determined by legislative history.

Amid #COVID19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 11, 2020, will hear arguments in one of the most important Indian Country cases in decades. Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle @rebeccanagle has more in The Atlantic @TheAtlantic. #ThisLand #Sovereigntyhttps://t.co/Pp5IKrs3io  indianz.com (@indianz) May 8, 2020

An example of diminishment is the case of Hagen v. Utah (1994), where the Court, using the principles laid down in Solem, ruled that Congress had intentionally diminished reservation lands with surplus land acts affecting the Uintah Reservation in northeastern Utah. The Court decided that the specific language be restored to the public domain in the Hagen case in reference to the surplus lands unambiguously indicated that the area in dispute was not to remain reservation land, but in fact reduced the reservation boundaries.

The principles of Solem, presented to determine whether Congress had disestablished the MCN reservation, came forth in Sharp v. Murphy as to whether a Native person convicted of murder should be under the state of Oklahomas jurisdiction if the reservation was disestablished or the federal government if the reservation was still extant. The 10th Circuit, applying Solem, ruled that Congress did not disestablish the MCN Reservation. Again, the decision had been scheduled for rehearing by the Supreme Court in its 2019 term as it had deadlocked 4-4 unable to reach a decision. Subsequently, the Court left Murphy in legal limbo and elected to hear the McGirt case on the same overarching issues.

Again, in the area of eastern Oklahoma being contested, there is a major Indian presencethe Five Tribesthat has been extant in the disputed area for over 180 years. They contribute millions of dollars to the economy of the state every year. For example, the Cherokee Nation alone contributed from gaming operations $18 million in revenue to the state in the last fiscal year, and some $116 over the last eight years. Overall, the Cherokee Nation contributed in 2019 almost $2.2 billion into the state economy from its businesses by way of employment, labor income, and production of goods and services.

Additionally, the Cherokee health system takes the burden off overworked private and state facilities. The Nation also puts millions of dollars into economic development for small towns in the region. For pre-K and higher education, more millions have been provided by the Nation. The Cherokee Nation also builds public roads and bridges and brings clean and reliable water to the regions rural areas. Together, the Five Tribes provide firefighters, paramedics, and police officers to rural Oklahoma communities that, otherwise, they could not adequately provide on their own.

There is also the issue (although not addressed at this time) of the legality of the attempted permanent dismantling of the governments of the Five Southern Tribes by the federal government over 100 years ago. This brings forth the huge related issue of whether the U.S. government actually has plenary power over U.S. Indigenous nations.

In this regard, most notably Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has his own serious doubts of U.S. plenary power over Native nations, something which he has raised over the years. In 2004, Thomas took the unheard of step of directly and vehemently challenging the Congressional claim of plenary power over Indian affairs. In his concurring opinion in United States v. Lara (2004), he wrote: I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause provides Congress with plenary power to legislate in the field of Indian affairs. At one time, the implausibility of this assertion at least troubled the Court, and I would be willing to revisit the question.

An opening brief has been submitted on behalf of Jimcy McGirt, the Indian inmate whose U.S. Supreme Court case is poised to resolve the sovereign status of millions of acres in Oklahoma. #Sovereignty #ThisLand https://t.co/O1yjJPIZt8  indianz.com (@indianz) February 5, 2020

Also, questioned by Thomas was the constitutionality of Congresss 1871 law ending the long established practice of treaty-making with Indigenous nations as infringing on the constitutional powers of the executive branch. The core of Thomass concern is that federal Indian law would remain constrained in a maze of confusion and contradictions between two opposing principles: On the one hand, Congress possesses plenary power over Indian nations, while on the other hand, Indigenous nations have retained inherent self-determination as sovereign, independent states.

The retention of inherent sovereignty would render the exercise of plenary power illegal. This is earthshaking. The ramifications are huge. The paramount issues being raised under U.S. and international law are respectively: Does the Indian Commerce Clause give Congress plenary power over Indigenous nations? Does the assertion of military conquest confer plenary power over Indigenous peoples?

Justice Thomas said further in Lara: The Court should admit that it has failed in its quest to find a source of Congressional power to adjust tribal sovereignty. This is of potentially seismic importance. Lack of plenary power would have enormous, monumental consequences for the entire country.

In the meanwhile, the legal duty and moral obligation of the Supreme Court is crystal clear: Return eastern Oklahoma to the Five Southern Tribes.

Albert Bender is a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance reporter for Native and Non-Native publications. He was an organizer and delegate to the First and Second Intercontinental Indian Conferences held in Quito, Ecuador and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Recently, he has been an active participant and reporter in the Standing Rock struggle in North Dakota. He is an attorney and is currently writing a legal treatise on Native American sovereignty. He is also writing a book on the war crimes committed by the U.S. against the Maya people in the Guatemalan civil war of the late 20th century. He is also the recipient of several Eagle Awards by the Tennessee Native American Eagle Organization and a former Director of Native American Legal Departments and a Tribal Public Defender.

This article originally appeared on People's World . It is published under a Creative Commons license

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 18:37:27|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writers Yang Shuxin, Zhao Jiasong

GUANGZHOU, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Sana'a Ahmed Nagi has spent the past three years living in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and never left the city during the outbreak of COVID-19, instead, she has built a bridge between China and the Arab world.

"The Chinese government has put in place strict quarantine rules to save people's lives, regardless of their nationalities," the Yemeni student told Al Jazeera in an interview.

In 2008, Sana'a studied medicine at Taiz University in Yemen. It was then she went to a local hospital for an internship and met a group of Chinese doctors.

During that period, Yemen was experiencing a lack of medical resources, and some departments could not open in many hospitals. It was the Chinese doctors who helped their Yemeni counterparts establish the departments of ophthalmology and orthopedics.

"Many patients preferred to see Chinese doctors as they all believed in their expertise and abilities," Sana'a explained. And that's where her idea of studying in China came from.

In 2016, Sana'a quit her well-paid job in a private hospital and went to Guangzhou for her master's degree after applying for the Chinese Government Scholarship.

"Most people would choose to study in European and American countries, but China was my first choice. And the physiology major in Jinan University is quite renowned," Sana'a said. "I feel really lucky to have made the choice to come here and China has opened a new door for my future."

In February, Sana'a volunteered to provide a translation service for foreign Arabic speakers, helping them to communicate better with locals during the epidemic.

"Many would call me for help and I would tell them how to get through this COVID-19 situation," she said. Besides foreigners, her Chinese neighbors also called her for help. "Since I'm a medical student, they all rely on me, and I'm willing to do my part for the community as well."

"I want to become a better doctor and help more people, so I should march on." Sana'a has decided to further her PhD studies in China. "The influence of China's scientific research is increasingly profound globally. Many of my Yemeni friends came to ask me about life in China and how they can apply to study here."

"We stay here and feel safe because we believe that China's epidemic control measures are the best," Sana'a said. "And finally China has won this anti-virus war." Enditem
In a significant development, the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) designed and produced by the Indian Navy have been tested by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) Delhi, a DRDO organization tasked with the testing and certification of PPE.

As a result, the PPEs designed by Navy have been certified to be mass-produced and used in clinical COVID situations by the frontline warriors in the battle against the deadly virus. The PPEs were designed by a collaborated team of the Institute of Naval Medicine, Mumbai and the Naval Dockyard Mumbai.

READ | Vizag Gas Leak LIVE Updates: Gas Fumes Leak Again, People In 2 Km Radius Asked To Evacuate

READ | Vizag Gas Leak: FIR Registered Against LG Polymers For Negligence After CM Initiates Probe

"The PPE has been tested by INMAS Delhi. It has been passed with 6/6 synthetic blood penetration resistance test pressure," the release said.

"It can be made by basic gown manufacturing facilities. The PPE is noteworthy for the innovative choice of fabric used, which gives the PPE its 'breathability' and penetration resistance rendering it both comfortable and safe for the user. The cost for this PPE is significantly lower than those commercially available," the release added.

The Indian Navy is playing a significant part in the fight against the pandemic and protecting the Indian nationals in the crisis situation. Indian Navy in an official statement on Tuesday said that three Naval warships have sailed out to bring back Indian citizens from Maldives and United Arab Emirates (UAE) who are stranded due to Coronavirus pandemic. These warships include INS Jalashwa, INS Magar and INS Shardul and these will return to Kochi.

READ | Vizag Gas Leak: Centre Orders 500 Kgs Of PTBC Chemical To Neutralize Styrene Gas

READ | AIIMS Director Predicts Peak Of COVID-19 Cases In June-July; Urges People To Be Cautious

Evacuated personnel will be disembarked at Kochi,Kerala&entrusted to care of State authorities.This operation is being progressed in close coordination with Ministries of Defence,External Affairs,Home Affairs,Health&various other agencies of Govt of India&State govts: Indian Navy https://t.co/IsQEJZikn6  ANI (@ANI) May 5, 2020

INS Jalashwa deployed off the Mumbai coast, along with INS Magar, diverted for the Maldives on Monday night. While INS Shardul diverted to Dubai to evacuate the expatriates. INS Magar and INS Shardul are Southern Naval Command ships, while INS Jalashwa is from Eastern Naval Command. The 16,900-tonne INS Jalashwa, the countrys second-largest warship after aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, apart from its crew can carry around 800 to 1,000 people.

(With ANI inputs)
Several workers and cops were injured in clashes and subsequent cane charge on Friday, when violent protests broke out in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district over non-payment of full wages by Chenab Textile Mills, officials said.

Police have also detained over two dozen persons in this connection.

A large number of workers came out of CTM and held protests on Friday against the failure of the management to pay full wages to them, they said.

The mob of workers turned violent and broke furniture, windows and other material and ransacked offices at the mill complex, they said.

Later they came on the highway and blocked it amid protests sloganeering. Police asked them to disperse to allow the traffic but workers turned violent and clashed with police, which resorted to cane charge, they said.

In the clashes and subsequent cane charge, several workers and cops were injured. Over two dozen workers were detained for damaging police vehicles and other items, they said.

"Six to seven thousand workers are working at CTM. Their problem is related to payment. They feel payment given to them by management is insufficient. They have misunderstood that (other) staff have been given full payment and they were given very less amount," SSP Kathua Shailendra Kumar told reporters here.

Second, they want to return to their villages, the SSP said.

"We have talked to them and will sit with CTM management to address the issues," he said.

Workers alleged that they were given only Rs2,000 as monthly wage.

"Neither the management is paying us full wages nor they are allowing us to go back to our homes in various states," a worker, Arvind, said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 19:22:33|Editor: huaxia

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XINING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Pregnant Tibetan antelopes have begun their annual migration to the heart of northwest China's Hoh Xil nature reserve to give birth, according to the statement released on Friday by the reserve's management bureau.

On April 30, the first group of 43 Tibetan antelopes passed the Qinghai-Tibet highway en route to Zonag Lake and other breeding areas in Hoh Xil, about a week earlier than last year.

As of Thursday, more than 590 Tibetan antelopes had already crossed the highway on their journey towards their "delivery room."

Every year, tens of thousands of pregnant Tibetan antelopes start to migrate to Hoh Xil in May to give birth, after mating in November or December, and leave with their offspring in around August.

Under the first-class state protection in China, the once-endangered species is mostly found in Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The Tibetan antelope population drastically dropped from 200,000 to 20,000 due to illegal hunting in the 1980s. However, it has recovered thanks to the ban on illegal hunting and the measures put in place to improve its habitat.

In July 2017, Hoh Xil became a world heritage site and is home to about 60,000 Tibetan antelopes. Enditem
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Aurangabad: At least 16 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra on Friday morning, police said.

File PhotoTwo other labourers were injured in the accident which took place at 5.15 am under the Karmad Police station jurisdiction, an official said.

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The workers were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station said.

They were sleeping on rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from Jalna, around 40km from Karmad, he said.

"The labourers, working in a steel factory in Jalna, left for their home state on foot last night. They came till Karmad and slept off on the tracks as they were tired," police officer Santosh Khetmalas said.

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PhotoSixteen workers lost their lives in the accident, while two others were injured, he said, adding three labourers who were also part of the group survived as they were sleeping some distance away from the rail tracks.

The injured are undergoing treatment, Khetmalas said.

The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape police attention.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed anguish over the death of 16 migrant workers in the train accident.

Narendra Modi

He said all possible assistance is being providedIn a tweet, the prime minister said, "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation".

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Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments announced financial aid of Rs 10 lakh - Rs 5 lakh each - to families of the deceased.
Zalkaliani says this is not about breaking off diplomatic relations with Ukraine.

Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani has said the government is calling back its Ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze for consultations over the appointment of former President of Georgia and ex-Governor of Ukraine's Odesa region Mikheil Saakashvili as Chairman of Ukraine's Executive Committee on Reforms.

Read alsoSaakashvili outlines main tasks in new position in Ukraine

Zalkaliani says this has nothing to do with breaking off diplomatic relations with Ukraine or revising the strategic partnership between the countries, as reported by RFE/RL's Echo of the Caucasus media project.

The minister said "the level of the post originally proposed to Saakashvili has been downgraded." Zalkaliani associates this with skepticism toward Saakashvili in the Ukrainian politics.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by his decree on May 7 appointed Mikheil Saakashvili as Chairman of the Executive Reforms Committee, an advisory body created in 2014.
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The Torch is a weekly newsletter from the Committee to Protect Journalists that brings you the latest press freedom and journalist safety news from around the world. Subscribe here.

In the Philippines, the countrys broadcast regulator ordered the ABS-CBN network to stop broadcasting and cease and desist operations after its 25-year franchise agreement with Congress expired.

In Colombia, the military carried out extensive monitoring of more than 130 individuals, including local and international journalists, according to a new report by the newsweekly Semana. One of the international journalists profiled was CPJ Andes Correspondent John Otis, who also contributes to The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio.

This week, CPJ spoke with Tim Bousquet, founder of the Halifax Examiner, who covered the Nova Scotia mass shooting in April. He discussed the challenges that he and his team faced navigating COVID-19 safety precautions while covering the deadliest shooting in Canadas history.

CPJ also spoke with a journalist in a Rohingya refugee camp about covering the pandemic without access to the internet, and two Brazilian journalists about the daily challenges of informing residents of Rio de Janeiros favelas.

Journalism in the time of coronavirus

YouTube censors independent Nicaraguan news outlets after copyright complaints from companies owned by members of presidents family

The Mexican government threatened news outlets over their coverage of COVID-19

Swaziland journalists harassed, threatened with treason charges over reporting on king

Malaysian journalist faces six years in prison over coronavirus Facebook posts

Network shutdowns restrict reporting during COVID-19 crisis

CPJ joined more than 100 civil society organizations in a letter calling on Colombia to strengthen protections for journalists

Hackers steal information from two journalists covering COVID-19 and corruption in Paraguay

Turkish journalist Fatih Portakal charged for tweet about presidents speech

Spotlight

Beyond the pandemic

Radio reporter Rex Cornelio Pepino shot and killed in the Philippines

Family of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl files to uphold convictions in 2002 murder

Missing Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol arrested after being found near Indian border

What we are reading

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Colombo, May 8 : Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has express optimism that the economy adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic could be re-built on a solid basis, the President's Media Division (PMD) said.

The Presidential Task Force in charge of the Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication has been entrusted with the responsibility of formulating a new economic model to achieve this objective, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Friday citing the PMD as saying.

The President expressed these views during a meeting with the members of the newly-appointed Task Force held at the Presidential Secretariat on Thursday to discuss modalities relating to the resumption of civilian life and work from May 11.

"Apparel and tourism sectors which make a huge contribution to the national economy should be revitalized to suit the changing situations," he said.

Rajapaksa was also of the view that new opportunities were now open to attract tourists from countries where the pandemic had subdued.

While members of the Task Force were told to pay attention to promote domestic tourism so that the local hotel industry could be saved from collapse, the President also pointed out the possibility of attracting more foreign investors to invest in the Port City and the Industrial Zone in Hambantota.

Head of the Task Force Basil Rajapaksa said that it will support new businesses and extend the fullest cooperation to already existing large, medium and small scale enterprises.

The number of coronavirus cases in Sri Lanka currently stands at 824, with nine deaths.
Srinagar:

Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in Anantnag and Shopian districts of south Kashmir today even as curfew continued in many parts of the Valley and normal life remained paralysed for the 29 consecutive day.

21 persons were injured in violence in Chee in Anantnag when protesters staged a rally, a police official said, adding the security forces used various crowd control measures to disperse the protesters.

Protesters pelted stones at a police post at Herpora in Shopian but there were no reports of anyone getting hurt in the incident so far, he added.

Curbs on movement of people had to be extended today in view of fresh violence in some parts of the Valley yesterday which left three persons dead and over 150 others injured, the official said.

Curfew remains in force in six police station areas of SrinagarNowhatta, Khanyar, Rainawari, Safakadal, Maharajgunj and Batamalooas a precautionary measure to maintain law and order, a police official said.

He said curfew was also in force in four towns of Budgam districtChadoora, Khansahib, Magam and Budgam , Anantnag town and Khanpora area of Baramulla district. Restrictions on assembly of four or more people continue to remain in effect in rest of the Valley, the official said.

54 people have died and more than 6,000 injured in clashes between protesters and security forces following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8.

Normal life remained disrupted due to the curbs imposed by the authorities and the separatist sponsored strike.

Schools, colleges, business establishments, petrol pumps banks and private offices remained closed while public transport remained off roads.

The attendance in government offices was also thin, the official said. Mobile internet services continued to remain snapped in the entire Valley where the outgoing facility on prepaid connections is barred. The separatist camp has extended the shutdown call in Kashmir till August 12.

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The government today announced it will borrow Rs 4.2 lakh crore from the market. The total gross borrowing target has now increased from Rs 7.8 lakh crore budgeted for FY21 to a staggering Rs 12 lakh crore. The government needs the additional money to meet coronavirus-related expenditure. It particularly needs to provide support to states gasping for funds. But nothing comes without a cost - the additional borrowing will have negative implications.

Higher Fiscal Deficit

A higher borrowing amid falling revenues will push up country's fiscal deficit. In the last 4-5 years, the government maintained fiscal deficit target of 3 to 3.5 per cent - an acceptable level with a glide path to reduce it to 3 per cent. But this road map is now out of the window; additional borrowing means fiscal deficit will breach the 5 per cent mark. The current borrowing programme is based on the assessment of disruption caused by coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdown. Unfortunately, the pandemic is far from over and the government may need more money in near future.

High cost of borrowings

The yields on government securities are likely to shoot up as there is going to be a large supply of securities in the market. The RBI will definitely try to maintain the yield, but pressure will mount as there is only limited money chasing government securities.

Impact on state development bonds

Not just central government, state governments are also in the market to borrow funds to meet coronavirus-related expenditure. However, investors are the same - banks, pension funds, insurance companies. They invest in SDLs (State Development Loans) and central government securities. The yield for state government are also likely to spike. While the RBI has opened the overdraft window for states via increased limit under ways and means advances, the second half of the year would see bunching of all the securities.

Action by global rating agencies

The global rating agencies give a higher weightage to things like government debt and fiscal deficit. Clearly, these two key macro economic parameters are moving northwards. There is likely to be a rating action soon. This has implications for foreign investment in India both in terms of FDI and capital market. The cost of raising money for Indian corporate will move up.

Lesser funds for private sector

When the government is going to mobilise all the money from the market, there will be little money left for the private sector. And the banks are the only source for the private sector to get money.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Maharashtra lockdown may extend to May-end, hints CM Thackeray; cases-17,974

Also read: Country needs to know when lockdown will be lifted; it's not on, off switch: Rahul tells govt
As a former Green Beret with the U.S. Army Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom, Matthew Summers knows firsthand what it means to step in and aid his country during a time of need. Thirteen years after his tour, Summers is a successful entrepreneur and business owner who has once again found a way to serve his country amid the growing COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2014, Summers has designed, patented and started selling his Speedbox modular container system to both military and civilian clients through his Mississippi-based company, Speed Box, LLC. In early March, as concern over the spread of COVID-19 in America began to increase, it became apparent to Summers that his military vendors were in dire need of something else  hand sanitizer.

Summers immediately switched gears, organizing suppliers and quickly establishing a dependable supply chain that would allow him to supply hand gel-based sanitizer by established producers to the US Department of Defense and his military vendors. He retrofitted his Ridgeland-based assembly facility into a distribution center and lined up deals with FedEx and other local small businesses to facilitate drop shipping operations -- something completely new to the company. In less than a week, Speedbox began filling orders to VA hospitals, military bases and base supply stores from coast to coast.

This week, as Mississippi prepares to reopen its economy under new precautionary guidelines, including providing hand sanitizer to customers, Summers is now making his supply available to the general public and starting here in MS.

Hand sanitizer is in really high demand but its incredibly difficult for small business to procure at the moment. If you order from Amazon or anywhere online at the moment, they cant ship until June in most instances. Unlike them, we have supply in our Ridgeland warehouse and are fulfilling orders daily, Summers said, Being a Mississippi company, I think this is a great opportunity for us to work with our community.

The gel-based hand sanitizer is produced by a full-time hand sanitizer manufacturer. It contains 70% alcohol and is labeled to remove 99.9% of bacteria found on hands. The hand sanitizer can be purchased in individual gallon-sized bottles or 3-gallon cases through the companys website, Speedbox.us. Summers says the orders will ship within 1-3 business days.

For more information on Speedbox or to place an order, visit https://www.speedbox.us/ or contact Matt Summers by email at summers@speedbox.us or phone by calling 910-964-7947.

More About Speedbox

Based in Ridgeland, Mississippi, Speedbox has supplied both military and civilian clients with rugged, roto-molded interlocking containers since 2006. Its products are used by Army Special Forces, Navy EOD, and Air Force Pararescue Jumpers. Speedbox founder Matthew Summers served honorably as a Green Beret with the US Army Special Forces from 2002-2007 during Operation Enduring Freedom.
ANN ARBOR, MI  Pink-slipped from her job as an event manager at an Ann Arbor hotel, Melissa Pedigo had a choice: join the more than 1 million Michiganders on unemployment or take a chance on her side hustle.

She rolled the dice, turning her part-time gig as a food delivery driver for GrubHub into a full-time, $1,000-a-week job. It more than pays the bills for Pedigo, an Ypsilanti mother of three.

I dont know what wed do without GrubHub, she said.

Restaurant and food delivery services like GrubHub and Uber Eats are booming in Michigan following Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order and the closure in mid-March of in-person dining at restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic. Forced to either close or beef up delivery services, many restaurants have turned GrubHub and other established delivery services to keep their doors open.

For folks like Pedigo, who has to come up with college tuition this fall for twin 17-year-olds, its been a lifesaver.

Its more complicated for restaurant owners -- who need GrubHubs customer base and reach -- but dont relish the 30% commission theyre required to pay on each delivery.

We have about a 40% growth rate in customers with GrubHub and other third-party processors, said Ahmad Hodroj, owner of Palm Palace in Ann Arbor. People are used to going to GrubHub to look for restaurants, and if your restaurant is listed, that becomes a potential (sale).

When they mentioned that they take 30% (of every order), though, we figured that was just unbelievable.

A spokesperson for GrubHub declined to comment for this article.

How do I take care of my kids?

In March, Pedigo was working 60 to 70 hours a week, about 40 to 50 hours as a banquet captain at the Kensington Hotel in Ann Arbor, and another 20 hours as a GrubHub driver. She was laid off from the Kensington Hotel after Whitmer banned large gatherings.

At first, Pedigo was reluctant to lean on her GrubHub gig due to fear of exposure to COVID-19.

Im the only provider, she said. Why would I go out there and put myself at risk?"

But, the rent was due and her bills werent going anywhere, so she decided to go all in.

Groups call on Michigan to waive the damn rent during coronavirus outbreak

First, though, she had a heart-to-heart with her three teenagers.

Heres the deal, she recalled telling them. If something were to happen to me or dad (who lives in Jackson), this is my expectation for you, ... dont let anything be an excuse for you not to succeed. You keep trying and you become successful, whatever happens.

Pushing past the initial fear, Pedigo has committed to an average of eight hours delivering meals every day, she said.

The last three weeks, Ive hit $1,000, she said. I can choose what hours I want to work. My kids are staying up late and sleeping in, so I get up early, work all the shifts, come home, do dinner and help with homework. Sometimes, I clock back in if you know theres nothing going on.

With the ban on dine-in restaurants, Pedigo fields 15-20 orders a day, significantly higher than before the pandemic, she said.

Theres always something available on GrubHub, she said. It used to be really hard to get a shift, and now theyre always open.

We need 50 orders a day to survive

Restaurants are attempting to strike a balance between leaning on their online orders to reach a new customer base and limiting commission costs to approach a profit.

For example, downtown Indian restaurant Shalimar has seen its delivery business increase three-fold since it started using GrubHub, said owner Samir Patel.

Its obviously going to go up, because there is no other source of people to order the food from, so theyre going to go online and order it," Patel said. Its almost three times more business than what the restaurant was doing before, but in return, we have to pay more commissions.

Attendees wait in line for food from Shalimar during Taste of Ann Arbor on Main Street between William and Washington on Sunday, June 2, 2019. Attendees were able to purchase food form various restaurants in Ann Arbor with tickets. Each ticket was $1 and food was priced between $1 and $4. (Mary Lewandowski | MLive.com) Mary Lewandowski

In order to break even, Shalimar needs to fulfill about 50 orders a day, Patel said.

Just for the payrolls and rent and everything,  he said. "I dont know other peoples stories, but as long as youre doing 50 takeouts, you should be fine.

When dine-in restaurants closed statewide, Patel waited three days to evaluate the market. He found customers ordering online 25 to 30 times a day, and has leaned into third-party services to increase to the desired 50-order threshold.

One thing that helped is GrubHubs easily accessible platform, which posts several discounts to increase orders, he said.

GrubHub is my highest volume seller, he said. They have $3 of $5 off customer promotions, and you can find those right off the bat on the app.

He went as far to estimate that GrubHub has provided $70,000 worth of business to his restaurant, while UberEats another $20,000.

However, the 30% commission rate provides very little room for profit, said Hodroj, owner of the Palm Palace.

You have a 15-20% profit margin if youre lucky, Hodroj said. Its a very low margin industry. So 30% means every order you process, youre losing 10-20%.

That loss per order has a positive side from the sense of advertising and growing the customer base, he said, but that assumes that every order will be a repeat customer. If the delivery driver doesnt arrive at their destination quickly enough, the quality of the food might not be sufficient to attract repeat business, he said.

The high commission rate has prompted Shalimar to push for more orders on UberEats, which takes 14-15% off every order, Patel said. He also has started pushing for Google and Facebook advertisements that drive business to the restaurants personal homepage.

Any cut on the high commission rate would allow businesses to thrive in the present economy, Patel said.

If Im being frank with you, if they (GrubHub) would give us a break on the commission, the sales would go up like a rocket, he said.

However, that commission has been nice for drivers such as Pedigo, she said. To see what drivers make on a per-order basis, GrubHub has a pay calculator on its website.

As she attempts to pay for his twin boys college this fall, she needs all the funds she can get, she said. Though she doesnt want to seem greedy, she is hell-bent on securing quality education for her children, even during these uncertain financial times.

One avenue she is taking is direct donations. If you are interested in helping Pedigo, you can email her at melissapedigo36@gmail.com.

Im gonna do whatever I need to do to get them money for college, she said. I tell them to not let anything be an excuse for them to not to succeed.
Once Upon a Time  in postwar Hollywood, aspiring actor Rock Hudson lived with African American screenwriter Archie Coleman; Hattie McDaniel became a mentor to Camille Washington, the first black woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar; the wife of legendary studio boss Ace Amberg took the reins when Amberg suffered a heart attack; and Vivien Leigh had an ongoing sexual affair with a failed actor named Ernie who operated a prostitution ring out of a full-service gas station.

If only some of those names ring a bell, thats because in the Netflix limited series Hollywood, co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan (Glee, Scream Queens) have fashioned a revisionist history look at 1940s Hollywood with a mix of real-life and fictional characters, a la Quentin Tarantinos Once Upon a Time  in Hollywood. The main players in Hollywood  a director, a screenwriter, a couple of actors, the aforementioned studio chief and the gas station owner/pimp  are made up, but they interact with the likes of Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward, Anna May Wong, real-life talent agent Henry Willson, Cole Porter, even Eleanor Roosevelt. Its a fascinating blend of fact (or at least stories based on factual characters) and fiction, and the performances from the cast of rising stars and reliable veterans are dazzling. But like many a motion picture, Hollywood cant overcome script problems that surface about midway through the story.

With big-band classics from Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller on the soundtrack and a nonstop parade of fabulous period-piece fashions and automobiles helping to set the postwar Golden Age tone, Hollywood devotes its early episodes to introducing us to a group of young hopefuls who arrive in Los Angeles around the same time to pursue their showbiz dreams, including:

 Jack Costello (David Corenswet), a handsome corn-fed actor from the Midwest.

 Raymond Ainsley (Darren Criss), a talented aspiring director, who lives with Camille Washington (Laura Harrier), a gorgeous actress with real star power.

 Archie Coleman (Jeremy Pope), a screenwriter whose very first script is garnering some serious buzz.

 Rock Hudson (Jake Picking), a gee-whiz fella from Illinois who looks like a Greek statue come to life but is a very unpolished actor, and thats putting it kindly.

When we meet this bunch, theyre all struggling, and in some cases, they resort to desperate and seedy measures to survive. Jack is married with a child on the way, but he hesitates for all of a Hollywood minute before joining the team of handsome young gigolos who pose as attendants at the Golden Tip Gasoline Station, who are in reality prostitutes, hired by the aforementioned Ernie to service the older men and women who pull up and announce their intentions by uttering the code phrase: I want to go to Dreamland.

One such regular customer is Patti LuPones Avis Amberg, the neglected wife of bombastic studio chief Ace Amberg (Rob Reiner). Before you can say Tinseltown three times fast, Avis is teaming up with director Raymond, screenwriter Archie and lead actors Jack and Camille to make a movie called Meg, which is sure to cause controversy, given that its an interracial love story. All the while, Hollywood constantly explores the theme of individuals trapped in the heartbreakingly unfair social mores of the time. Avis is taken seriously as a businesswoman only when her husband is literally in a coma, and Rock cant go public with his romance because it would destroy his career.

Jim Parsons turns in a darkly funny performance as powerful agent Henry Willson, who isnt above turning to the mob for help in quashing a scandalous tabloid story. (The real-life Henry Willson, who repped the likes of Tab Hunter and Troy Donahue, as well as one Roy Scherer, whose name he changed to Rock Hudson, wound up traveling a very different life path than whats depicted in the series.) Samara Weaving sparkles as Claire, the spoiled-rotten daughter of Ace and Avis Amberg, who wants to be an actress, much to their dismay.

Heck, everyones terrific, from the opening curtain to the closing credits. We find ourselves rooting for the band of up-and-comers as they begin to realize their dreams in almost ridiculously rapid fashion. But Hollywood makes some curious choices, e.g., depicting Ernie the gas station pimp as an avuncular figure, loved by one and all, even though this guy is raking in cash by turning out impressionable, financially strapped young men. Plausibility is further stretched by three major characters experiencing radical changes in personality, as if a magic wand had appeared and suddenly made all three infinitely more likable human beings. Hollywood winds up being a project that falls just short of living up to the pitch.

Hollywood

2.5 stars

WHERE: Now streaming on Netflix
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:57:25|Editor: huaxia

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JOHANNESBURG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and its South African counterpart held a video conference on Friday to share experience of combating COVID-19.

Seven Chinese military medical experts and officers from the Medical Service Directorate of the Logistic Support Department of Central Military Commission, shared their experience on subjects such as Treatment of COVID-19 patients, Analysis of Important Cases, Management and Control of COVID-19 in Hospitals, and COVID-19 Testing Technology and Methods.

They also shared knowledge on the vaccine development, asymptomatic patients examination, anti-COVID-19 medication, the usage and sensitivity of the testing kits, disinfecting materials with experts from South African National Defence Force (SANDF).

All the Chinese experts and officers have just accomplished their anti-COVID19 operations in Wuhan, so they well provided information, experience and suggestion for SANDF's anti-COVID19 operations.

On behalf of SANDF Chief General Solly Shoke, Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Lindile Yam expressed his appreciation to the Chinese experts for sharing the precious experience.

SANDF Surgeon General Lieutenant General Zola Dabula said that the Chinese solution against COVID-19 was meaningful to the SANDF, adding that the PLA and SANDF should keep close contacts by such kinds of communications.

"The virus respects no borders and nationalities. Solidarity and cooperation are the most powerful weapons to overcome the COVID-19 for the international community. China will firmly support South Africa's effort in fighting COVID-19, and is prepared to help where we can," said Shang Hong, the Chinese Defence Attache in South Africa.

South Africa and China have forged strong bilateral defense and security ties over past years by implementing mutual visits, personnel training, joint exercises, defense industrial cooperation and so on.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the SANDF and Chinese PLA have had close cooperation on PPE provision, South African citizens repatriation, virus control and treatment measures sharing. Enditem
Italy will stage its first digital Fashion Week in Milan in July, as the luxury fashion sector struggles to rebound from the coronavirus crisis.

This is a concrete response to the need for promotion and business on the part of brands, Italys National Chamber of Fashion said in a statement.

Milano Digital Fashion Week from July 14-17 will allow for the presentation of spring/summer 2021 mens collections and spring/summer 2021 mens and womens pre-collections, along with a platform designed to give access to showrooms.

The digital offerings will include photo and video content, backstage interviews with designers, as well as webinars and live streaming of keynote speeches, visible on www.cameramoda.it, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Weibo and YouTube.

The French Federation of Haute Couture and Fashion announced a similar initiative on Wednesday, with an online presentation of spring/summer 2021 mens ready-to-wear from July 9 to 13.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the upcoming ready-to-wear week and haute couture shows in Paris in June and July have been cancelled.

In March, Italys fashion chamber announced that mens shows scheduled for June would be pushed back until September, joining the womens shows.

The coronavirus emergency erupted in Italy in late February, during Milans Fashion Week, causing some designers to present their runway shows without audiences.

Thousands of Chinese buyers and media were prevented from traveling to the shows, forcing the fashion chamber to offer digital alternatives to the runway shows and showrooms.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. )

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The polar vortex is heading towards the northeast on Friday, bringing snow, potentially record-breaking cold temperatures and blustery winds.

Friday will start with sunny skies and pleasant temperatures across Massachusetts before it will feel as though winter has returned overnight.

The polar vortex - a large area of low pressure and cold air near the North Pole - will head south Friday night, bringing bone-chilling cold to Canada and the northeast.

Storms will start as rain late Friday before transitioning to snow as the temperature falls overnight.

Snowfall is expected in parts of Central and Western Massachusetts overnight.

In the Berkshires and Hilltowns, one to two inches are largely expected, with up to three inches possible in pockets of communities. Under an inch is forecast for the Pioneer Valley. In Central Massachusetts, one to two inches of snow is likely, with under an inch expected in Worcester and one to two inches in Fitchburg.

Snow will transition back to rain or a mix of rain and snow showers on Saturday with little to no snow accumulation expected.

Then wind speeds will pick up.

Wind gusts up to 45 to 50 miles per hour are expected Saturday increasing in speed into overnight.

The strongest wind gusts are expected on Cape Cod, the islands and in the Berkshires.

Wind gusts will reach 45 to 50 miles per hour Saturday on the Cape and Islands.

In the Berkshires, wind gusts will reach 40 to 50 miles per hour - with a pocket of potential for 55 mile per hour wind gusts.

Across the majority of the state, wind gusts will top out between 30 to 40 miles per hour.

Saturday night into Sunday, temperatures will drop again, reaching the low 30s, high 20s across most of the state. Temperatures will drop to potentially record-breaking lows for May and will feel colder due to wind chill overnight.
Machete attacks are taking place every two hours on Britains streets, figures show.

Rising numbers of criminals are choosing the fearsome blades as their weapons of choice to instil terror in victims and rival gang members.

Police forces dealt with spiralling offences involving the knives, including murders, rapes and robberies, during an orgy of violence. In January, handyman Muhammad Rodwan was sentenced to 16 years in prison for setting on PC Stuart Outten, 29, with a 2ft machete during a routine traffic stop in east London.

The officer was left with deep wounds to his head and needed emergency hospital treatment. And in February, Asante Campbell, 24, was hacked to death in Hendon, north London, by a gang who ambushed him on his way to work.

Machete attacks are taking place every two hours on Britains streets, alarming figures show

In the latest example of Wild West Britain, statistics uncovered using freedom of information requests show that in the final two months of 2019 police dealt with 664 crimes involving machetes  an average of 11 a day, or one every 130 minutes.

It represents a dramatic rise from just three years before, when the deadly blades were used in only 100 crimes a month over the same period.

But the toll will be significantly higher because only 34 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales responded  with stabbing hotspots London and Greater Manchester refusing to provide data.

In January, handyman Muhammad Rodwan was sentenced to 16 years in prison for setting on PC Stuart Outten (pictured), 29, with a 2ft machete during a routine traffic stop

The shocking figures come after Home Secretary Priti Patel admitted in an interview with the Daily Mail last week that the latest rise in knife crime was appalling  and vowed that a tough new approach would mean thugs caught with a knife going to prison.

David Spencer, of the Centre For Crime Prevention thinktank, said: This huge growth in the use of machetes by hardened criminals is deeply troubling. There is absolutely no reason for anyone in the UK to own a machete.

These new figures should hasten the outlawing of these brutal blades. Anti-knife campaigner Tracey Hanson, who founded the Josh Hanson Trust in memory of her murdered son, said: People use bigger and bigger weapons to try to instil fear in the people they are threatening.

The machete was originally intended as a tool to cut undergrowth or sugar cane in Latin America and Africa. Critics say they have little legitimate use in the UK, but they are not on a list of banned blades. Gangsters, especially those in county lines drug gangs, are increasingly spreading fear with gruesome machete attacks.

New figures show a dramatic rise from just three years before, when the deadly blades were used in only 100 crimes a month over the same period

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that last year police recorded 45,627 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument  a 7 per cent increase on the previous year.

A Home Office spokesman said police had been given tougher powers to seize dangerous weapons. This Government is doing everything in its power to protect communities from the devastating effects of knife crime, he added.

We are recruiting 20,000 more police officers over the next three years, making it easier to use stop and search and ensuring the most violent offenders spend longer behind bars.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent congratulatory messages to the leaders and citizens of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia as well as the peoples of Georgia and Ukraine, on the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, Kremlin press service reported.

Kremlin's statement runs as follows:

The President of Russia underscored the sacred reverence felt in our countries for the memory of the heroes whose courage at the front and selfless labour in the rear helped secure the Victory over Nazism  our great shared heritage. It is the sacred duty of todays generations to preserve forever the memory of those who defended the freedom of their native land at the cost of innumerable sacrifices and hardships, and to surround our dear veterans with care and attention, noted Vladimir Putin.

The Russian President again called for resolute opposition to any attempts to rewrite the results of the Great Patriotic War, to whitewash or consign to oblivion the inhuman crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices.

Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that the shared memory of the heroic deeds of our fathers and grandfathers would have a constructive impact on bilateral cooperation in a variety of areas and on partnering to confront modern threats and challenges like the coronavirus pandemic.

Vladimir Putin offered words of sincere gratitude and wishes of good health, long life, happiness, and wellbeing to all veterans of the Great Patriotic War, partisans, and homefront workers.

The President of Russia also sent greetings to the leaders and people of Great Britain, the United States of America, and France.

In his message to Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Boris Johnson, the Russian leader noted, in part: The Great Victory was a pivotal event of the 20th century with enduring significance for the fate of all humankind. It was achieved thanks to the joint efforts of the Soviet Union and the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. That invaluable experience is no less needed today. Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that the memory of our nations brotherhood-in-arms would help develop constructive Russian-British dialogue and cooperation in the face of current threats and challenges.

In his message to President of the United States of America Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin stressed that people in Russia remember with gratitude the contribution of the anti-Hitler coalition allies to our common Victory and will never forget about the Soviet-American wartime comradeship.

The President of Russia added: The decades since WWII have brought new threats  from terrorism and regional conflicts to large-scale natural disasters, man-made catastrophes, and epidemics. Russia and the United States are now at the forefront of the response to global challenges. Following the traditions of cooperation established in war time and acting in the spirit of the Elbe, our countries could do a great deal for the sake of international security and stability.

In his message to President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin said in part: The heroism of the Normandy-Neman Flight Regiment pilots, who fought at the Soviet-German front, will be forever in the hearts of Russians. Thousands of Soviet patriots who joined the French Resistance also made a considerable contribution to Victory. The Russian leader underscored the need for Russian-French cooperation now given the difficult international climate.
Ghana has been cited by the European Commission (EC) for anti-money laundering and terrorism financing concerns.

Three other African countries including Botswana, Mauritius and Zimbabwe have also been listed for the same reason of posing financial risks to the European Union (EU).

They have all been subjected to financial transaction scrutiny.

A report by the Commission released on Thursday, May 7, 2020, indicated that the blacklisting, however, needs approval from the European Parliament to back its effect beginning October 2020.

The findings are also part of a comprehensive approach to further strengthen the EUs fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Other countries that have been listed include Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Cambodia, Mongolia and Myanmar.

Executive Vice-President of the Commission, ValdisDombrovskis is quoted in the press release as saying: We need to put an end to dirty money infiltrating our financial system. Today we are further bolstering our defences to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, with a comprehensive and far-reaching Action Plan. There should be no weak links in our rules and their implementation. We are committed to delivering on all these actions  swiftly and consistently  over the next 12 months. We are also strengthening the EUs global role in terms of shaping international standards on fighting money laundering and terrorism financing.

All the listed countries were identified after a systematic assessment of their integrity of the EU financial system by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In order for them to be delisted, the affected countries must show a strong commitment to addressing the menace.

Given the Coronavirus crisis, the date of application of today's Regulation listing third countries  and therefore applying new protective measures  only applies as of 1 October 2020. This is to ensure that all stakeholders have time to prepare appropriately. The delisting of countries, however, is not affected by this and will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal, the report noted.

European Commission includes Ghana in 'dirty money' blacklist

In February 2019, Ghana was added to a list of 23 countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.

Ghana and her West African neighbour Nigeria were added to an already existing blacklist of 16 countries announced by the European Commission.

The list, however, did not include any specified sanctions, restrictions on trade relations or impediment to development aid.

Ghana's inclusion on the European Commissions dirty money list 'flawed'  Finance Ministry

At the time, the Finance Ministry described as regrettable the decision of the European Commission to add Ghana to its lists of countries defaulting in the anti-money laundering and the financing of terrorism framework.

According to the Ministry, Ghana's commitment to enforcing the anti-money laundering and the countering of the financing terrorism framework has been acknowledged by the global standard regulatory body, the Financial Action Task Force [FATF].

The European Commission's blacklist of Ghana, therefore, does not reflect the current of Ghana's AML/CFT regime, This is unfortunate, and Ghanaian authorities are willing and ready to engage with the commission about the true status of the country's AML/CFT regime and efforts at strengthening it and removing Ghana from their list of countries with strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT framework.

A statement issued by the public affairs unit of the Finance Ministry explained that the process by which the European Commission decided on Ghana as a country with strategic deficiencies in AML/CFT is flawed adding that there were no prior engagements between Ghana and various regulatory agencies and stakeholders.

The government of Ghana thus called on the European Commission to reverse its decision against the country. Read the full release from the EU below:

Commission steps up fight against money laundering and terrorist financing

The European Commission has today put forward a comprehensive approach to further strengthen the EUs fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Commission has published an ambitious and multifaceted Action Plan, which sets out concrete measures that the Commission will take over the next 12 months to better enforce, supervise and coordinate the EUs rules on combating money laundering and terrorist financing. The aim of this new, comprehensive approach is to shut down any remaining loopholes and remove any weak links in the EUs rules.

Executive Vice-President ValdisDombrovskis said: We need to put an end to dirty money infiltrating our financial system. Today we are further bolstering our defences to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, with a comprehensive and far-reaching Action Plan. There should be no weak links in our rules and their implementation. We are committed to delivering on all these actions  swiftly and consistently  over the next 12 months. We are also strengthening the EUs global role in terms of shaping international standards on fighting money laundering and terrorism financing.

The Commission has also published today a more transparent, refined methodology to identify high-risk third countries that have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes that pose significant threats to the EUs financial system. This will enhance our engagement with third countries and ensure greater cooperation with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Finally, the Commission has also adopted a new list of third countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.

Action Plan for a Comprehensive EU policy on Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing

Todays Action Plan is built on six pillars, each of which is aimed at improving the EUs overall fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as strengthening the EUs global role in this area. When combined, these six pillars will ensure that EU rules are more harmonised and therefore more effective. The rules will be better supervised and there will be better coordination between Member State authorities.

The six pillars are as follows:

Effective application of EU rules: the Commission will continue to monitor closely the implementation of EU rules by Member States to ensure that national rules are in line with the highest possible standards. In parallel, todays Action Plan encourages the European Banking Authority (EBA) to make full use of its new powers to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing. A single EU rulebook: while current EU rules are far-reaching and effective, Member States tend to apply them in a wide variety of different manners. Diverging interpretations of the rules therefore lead to loopholes in our system, which can be exploited by criminals. To combat this, the Commission will propose a more harmonised set of rules in the first quarter of 2021. EU-level supervision: currently it is up to each Member State to individually supervise EU rules in this area and as a result, gaps can develop in how the rules are supervised. In the first quarter of 2021, the Commission will propose to set up an EU-level supervisor. A coordination and support mechanism for Member State Financial Intelligence Units: Financial Intelligence Units in Member States play a critical role in identifying transactions and activities that could be linked to criminal activities. In the first quarter of 2021, the Commission will propose to establish an EU mechanism to help further coordinate and support the work of these bodies. Enforcing EU-level criminal law provisions and information exchange: Judicial and police cooperation, on the basis of EU instruments and institutional arrangements, is essential to ensure the proper exchange of information. The private sector can also play a role in fighting money laundering and terrorist financing. The Commission will issue guidance on the role of public-private partnerships to clarify and enhance data sharing. The EUs global role: the EU is actively involved within the Financial Action Task Force and on the world stage in shaping international standards in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. We are determined to step up our efforts so that we are a single global actor in this area. In particular, the EU will need to adjust its approach to third countries with deficiencies in their regime regarding anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing that put our Single Market at risk. The new methodology issued alongside this Action Plan today provides the EU with the necessary tools to do so. Pending the application of the revised methodology, todays updated EU list ensures better alignment with the latest FATF (Financial Action Task Force) list.

To ensure inclusive discussions on the development of these policies, the Commission launched a public consultation today on the Action Plan. Authorities, stakeholders and citizens will have until 29 July to provide their feedback.

Refined methodology

The Commission has today published a new methodology to identify high-risk third countries that have strategic deficiencies in their national anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes, which pose significant threats to the EUs financial system. The aim of this new methodology is to provide more clarity and transparency in the process of identifying these third countries. The key new elements concern: (i) the interaction between the EU and FATF listing process; (ii) an enhanced engagement with third countries; and (iii) reinforced consultation of Member States experts. The European Parliament and the Council will have access to all relevant information at the different stages of the procedures, subject to appropriate handling requirements.

Updated List

Under the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD), the Commission has a legal obligation to identify high-risk third countries with strategic deficiencies in their regime regarding anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing. Pending the application of the above-mentioned refined methodology, the Commission has today revised its list, taking into account developments at international level since 2018. The new list is now better aligned with the lists published by the FATF.

Countries which have been listed: The Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cambodia, Ghana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Panama and Zimbabwe.

Countries which have been delisted: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Guyana, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.

The Commission amended the list in the form of a Delegated Regulation. It will now be submitted to the European Parliament and Council for approval within one month (with a possible one-month extension). Given the Coronavirus crisis, the date of application of todays Regulation listing third countries  and therefore applying new protective measures  only applies as of 1 October 2020. This is to ensure that all stakeholders have time to prepare appropriately. The delisting of countries, however, is not affected by this and will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal.

Background

The Commissions Anti-Money Laundering Package of July 2019 highlighted a number of weaknesses in the EUs anti-money laundering / countering the financing of terrorism framework. While the transposition and entry into force of recent legislation will address some of these issues, other problems remain. In response to this package, the European Parliament and the Council invited the Commission to investigate what steps could be taken to achieve a more harmonised set of rules, better supervision, including at EU level, as well as improved coordination among Financial Intelligence Units. Todays Action Plan is the Commissions reply to this call for action, and the first step to achieve the Commissions priority to deliver a new, comprehensive framework to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. The new methodology to identify and mitigate threats that strategic deficiencies in the anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing of third countries pose to the integrity of the EUs financial system, also issued today, will further equip the EU to deal with external risks.
For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.

Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Two of the most-watched shows in the English-speaking world right now havent even been released yet. Neighbours, which resumed production in suburban Melbourne two weeks ago after a four-week hiatus (the episodes now being filmed wont screen for four more months), and Children of the Corn, a US-financed feature nearing the end of its shoot in Richmond, on the edge of Sydney, have captured the attention of the filmmaking world by showing it is possible to keep working through COVID-19  albeit with some major modifications. And according to some heavy hitters in the industry, that means Australia could be poised to attract a lot more foreign production and co-production as it emerges from the shutdown than might otherwise have been the case. Weve always been seen as an overachiever, says Chris Oliver-Taylor, CEO of FremantleMedia Australia, which produces Neighbours. Our crews and cast are world-class, were English-language, we have a good climate, its safe, there are great facilities, and the dollar is in a great position for internationals looking in. The only issue well have is can we get people into the country  and thats a global issue, so there's no advantage or disadvantage, were all the same. But I think we are best placed and weve got to take advantage of that, to show the rest of the world just how good we are. If Australia does emerge from the pandemic sooner than the rest of the world, the sector wants to be ready with protocols in place to make cast and crew feel it is safe to work. To that end, the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) has spent the past couple of weeks consulting with various screen agencies, production companies, broadcasters and the unions to develop a 50-page Working with COVID document, which went to state and federal health advisers this week for feedback. The hope is that it will be ready for adoption in workplaces within two weeks.

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Obviously theres a desire to return to production, says AFTRS chief Nell Greenwood. Were trying to balance that with having in place a really robust set of protocols. There is some difference in opinion about whether an industry-wide set of guidelines is the right approach, with The Block producer Julian Cress saying this week that each show has to look at its own set of circumstances and develop its own guidelines. And its easy to see that the circumstances of a MasterChef  which has continued production throughout  are vastly different to a Married at First Sight, which is almost impossible to conceive with physical contact restricted. Each production is going to have to navigate its own set of conditions and pressures, says Greenwood. But not all productions have the resources or the time to research and establish their own practices. We can do that, we can help develop these for the industry as a whole. In the early days of the pandemic in Australia, with information about what was safe practice and what wasnt changing almost daily, the scriptwriting department on Neighbours attempted to tweak on the run. But a week shy of a planned Easter break, Oliver-Taylor says, it was all getting too much, the writers were on their knees, rewriting every day. Being blessed with space has been a key factor in Neighbours' early return to production. Credit:FremantleMedia So Fremantle decided to put the show on hiatus and over the next four weeks we rebuilt the whole plan. The 25-page Working with COVID document developed for the show and shared with the AFTRS taskforce illustrates perfectly the tension between general principles  such as hand sanitiser stations dotted around set, daily temperature checks upon arrival, individually pre-packaged meals, make-up artists dedicated to single performers and wearing PPE while working on them  and show-specific conditions.

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Neighbours is really big, and thats our advantage, says Oliver-Taylor, referring to the former Channel 10 studio complex in Nunawading that is now solely used for production of the show. It has been split into four colour-coded precincts, with production teams assigned to each of those (and given a matching-colour lanyard). Cast are only allowed to move from one zone to another on a Friday so we have a bit of time if someone develops symptoms. Oliver-Taylor isnt permitted to visit. Even the executive producer, Jason Herbison, cant go on set, he adds. Its all designed to minimise crossover and risk wherever we can, and to work out where people have been if someone does come down with illness. Weve tried to build resilience in the system so that if we do close down one unit, the others can still keep shooting. It works on paper. On the US feature Children of the Corn, based on the Stephen King short story, producer Lucas Foster has had his own unique set of circumstances to deal with, and to help him. He decided to shoot in New South Wales after scouting locations last November. By January, hed had a field of corn sown, and by February 6 he was ensconced on location. Filming started in late March, but even before it became apparent the situation was deteriorating rapidly, he had made the key decision that would allow production to continue. Everybody on our movie has been self-isolated for the better part of two months, nobody has gone home, he says. Weve basically created a cluster of our own, if you will  a safe cluster  that has been isolated for several months. And by the time we shot any scenes that involved any touching, we were way past the 30-day mark. Its just a non-issue.

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This is the full-production quarantine model that is gaining some currency as a way forward. But it doesnt come cheap. It was a low-budget film that is now kissing the mid-budget range due to COVID-19, he says. Though declining to name a figure, he says the mid-budget movies he generally produces are typically in the $50-$60 million range. Whatever the final cost, Foster  who also produced the Oscar-winning Ford v Ferrari  has at least bought himself a unique marketing angle when the film is ready for release, which he hopes will be by the end of the year: as far as anyone can tell, it is the only significant feature film in production anywhere in the English-speaking world. Production on MasterChef has continued throughout the crisis. Of course, plenty of other productions  both scripted and unscripted  have not been able to continue, including big-budget features such as Marvels Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which was filming at Fox Studios in Sydney, and Baz Luhrmanns untitled Elvis Presley biopic, which was a week away from production at Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast when the pin was pulled. In Victoria, the Netflix series Clickbait was just 2 weeks from wrapping when cast and crew  including American star Adrian Grenier  were sent home. The priority will be on getting those shows finished as soon as possible, but the challenge will be the restrictions on international travel. We are going to need everybody to play nice, says Screen Australia chief Graeme Mason. Where something was mid-production, we need to have everybody agree that they can go first.

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That said, he adds, the more complex the show, the slower it will be to come back. If youve got a crew of 20 and one on-screen talent its much easier than 900 crew and 200 extras. Coming back wont necessarily mean a return to the Pre-Times, though. Many of the practices being developed now under emergency conditions may well linger into the post-COVID world. I've always looked at filmmaking as creative problem solving  the bigger the problem, the more creatively exciting the solution, says Kriv Stenders, the prolific director of feature film Red Dog, documentary The Go-Betweens: Right Here and the miniseries The Principal and Wake In Fright. For me it's always been a case of embracing your limits and reverse-engineering. It's a creative industry and I think that if we all work together we can work out clever solutions and ways forward. The will and need is simply too great for something not to happen. One of the big problems facing the sector will be getting international talent, such as Clickbait star Adrian Grenier, back into the country. Credit:AP/Jeff Christensen For an industry currently on its knees, there is perhaps a great opportunity in all this. Over the last few months we have maintained our strong relationships with international partners, studios and streaming platforms and forged new contacts who are actively looking to bring productions here, says Screen Queensland CEO Kylie Munnich.

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After a well-earned break following six weeks treating coronavirus patients in the University Medical Center ICU, Dr. Kyle Happel, a pulmonologist and critical care medicine specialist at LSU Health Sciences Center, can't help but "chart-stalk" some of his former charges.

"You're just dying to know if they're doing well, are they still alive, said Happel.

Many of the people he treated were on ventilators, which means that a large percentage were likely to succumb to the disease. But for those that make it, a long recovery in the hospital is likely to become an even longer recovery at home due to the excessive time spent on narcotics and breathing machines.

During normal times, patients in the ICU might stay on a ventilator for three or four days. But it is not unusual for coronavirus patients to stay on ventilators for a week or two  or, in some cases, a month or longer. And those patients are requiring massive amounts of sedatives, painkillers and paralytic drugs.

+8 Drug trials, fewer ventilators: here's how Louisianas coronavirus treatments have evolved Louisiana physicians faced a troubling scenario in early March when coronavirus patients started appearing in the states intensive care units

The amount of sedation required to help people is astronomical and unlike anything weve ever seen, said an Ochsner ICU nurse with decades of experience, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak by her employer.

For patients who spend a month or more in the ICU on unprecedented doses of drugs, the physical and mental toll of coronavirus often results in delirium  and doctors worry about the long road to real recovery. Even if coronavirus doesnt kill patients within weeks, they could live with the effects for years.

A lot of these folks will not be able to return to the same level of daily functionality or daily living, said Happel. Many times they are not going to be the same people they were before. Some might require placement in long-term acute care or skilled nursing facilities. Some may require dialysis. In survivors, there will be significant morbidity.

According to the largest mortality study of patients with coronavirus on ventilators, the majority who go on the ventilator do not come off. Among 98 ventilated patients in the U.K., only 33 were discharged.

Other studies are even more sobering. In a small study out of China, 19 of 22 ventilated patients died.

The ventilator itself is dangerous for patients. While it can be a life-saving measure, staying on it for too long can cause complications.

I tend to think of the ventilator as a race, said Happel. Its a race for you to get off before you develop a complication: lung injury or pneumonia.

As coronavirus patients linger on ventilators, they develop a tolerance to the drugs that allow them to permit having a plastic tube down their throat.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid used as both a sedative and a pain manager, has been essential.

We used metric tons of it, said Happel.

Some hospitals, such as Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge, relaxed maximum dosing allowances for nurses because so many patients were requiring higher levels of medication.

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+4 'Its horrendous': Louisiana coronavirus patients' final moments are often without loved ones In the hurried minutes before a coronavirus patient is intubated, sedated and placed on a ventilator, nurses are rushing to set-up phone calls

"Patients are on the ventilators longer than we typically have," said Bud O'Neal, the hospital's medical director of research.

And the longer time on ventilators leads to a patient becoming accustomed to the narcotics necessary for their treatment.

All of the opiates  fentanyl, morphine, deltoid  patients can develop tolerance, said O'Neal, who said the hospital is still treating patients that came in during the first wave in late March. Sometimes we do have to continually go up on the patients.

Doctors try to give patients the bare minimum of medication in the ICU, because the powerful opiates and other narcotics are addictive and are not meant to be used long-term.

The dependency can lead to withdrawal when patients are able to slowly come off the ventilator, another difficult battle.

In March, demand for sedatives, paralytics and pain drugs surged 73% nationwide, according to Vizient, Inc., which negotiates drug prices for hospitals throughout the country. With so many patients on ventilators, hospitals in Louisiana faced shortages, too.

When the Ochsner ICU nurse tried to get fentanyl from the pharmacy, she would get a message back: It would say there is a critical shortage and they would give you alternatives. Instead, she and her colleagues used a more potent form of fentanyl, then switched to Dilaudid, another opiate.

"Collaborative teams ... worked together to develop treatment protocols for multiple scenarios and equal alternatives for all medications needed," according to a statement from Ochsner Health emailed by the hospital's public relations team.

Beyond withdrawal, patients also have a much higher risk for post-intensive care syndrome, a series of health problems that follow a prolonged stay. One in three patients in the ICU experience delirium, making it difficult for them to eat, sleep, think or remember where they are. The effects of high levels of sedation for a long period of time may play out for years, said Dr. E. Wesley Ely, a pulmonologist and critical care physician at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

+5 How did coronavirus get to Louisiana? New York is possible source, but scientists aren't sure Infectious-disease experts are getting close to mapping how the coronavirus spread across the U.S., and while New York is emerging as a potent

"It's too much for too long," said Ely, a Shreveport native who received his medical degree at Tulane. He's also seen patients exit the ICU with muscle weakness, newly acquired dementia, depression and PTSD. "We have a guy right now trying to wake up after 30 days on a ventilator. They're delirious, out of it, weak and can barely move."

It's still too early for studies to show the long-term effects of COVID-19. But the long-term outcomes for patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome provide some clues. In one study, patients were still experiencing a reduced quality of life due to continued poor lung function in the one to two years after lung injury. In a large review of medical literature, ARDS patients also experienced high levels of depression, anxiety and PTSD in the 6 months to two years after their stay in the ICU. About 44% were jobless one year after their stay and only half had returned to work after four months.

"General health-related quality of life was significantly reduced compared with a matched population in all studies," the authors wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Current Opinion of Critical Care in 2018.

When patients do come out of the ICU, they will need time to recover for an extended period. Elderly family members, especially, may not be able to do what they did before the illness.

"Even though they're out of the hospital, brain recovery can take many, many months," said Happel. "The patients don't want to be less functional. But thats a function of prolonged critical illness."
Poland's parliament on Thursday voted to allow a presidential election delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic to go ahead via a postal ballot, triggering opposition and EU concern over democratic standards.

The moves came amid a chaotic week during which voters were left in the dark over whether they would be able to cast ballots in a presidential election scheduled for Sunday.

The right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government had initially stuck to the May 10 poll date despite opposition calls for a delay over worries that a free, fair and safe election was impossible during the coronavirus lockdown.

In a last-minute delay, the PiS and a key coalition partner agreed late on Wednesday to postpone the election. The PiS then managed on Thursday shore up opposition within its own ranks and push through the controversial postal ballot.

Opinion polls suggest that PiS-allied incumbent President Andrzej Duda could capture more than 50 percent of the vote for a first-round victory in May. Analysts said the prospect had made PiS leaders push hard for an election this month.

Although a new election date was not immediately set, PiS deputy prime minister Jacek Sasin told local media on Thursday the ballot could take place as soon as June.

- 'Serious crisis' -

The EU's top justice official Didier Reynders warned Thursday in Brussels that the adoption of a postal ballot "raised questions about the ability of all Poles, including those abroad, to take part".

"There has not been a true open campaign," he added.

The postal ballot gave rise to doubts about data protection, he said, "since clearly there have been requests to the Polish postal service for personal data to prepare the election".

Reynders said that if the election is delayed long enough, "there is no reason the vote cannot take place physically in polling stations".

Poland's centrist and leftist opposition parties have rejected a postal ballot, insisting it could open the door to election fraud.

Borys Budka, leader of the centrist Civic Platform main opposition party, accused the government of "failing" to keep their promise to guarantee "equal, free and universal elections and instead providing (voters with) a postal service".

Budka also pointed to constitutional provisions requiring voting rules to be changed at least six months before election day.

Leftist presidential candidate Robert Biedron called for an independent parliamentary inquiry to investigate the chaos surrounding the delayed presidential ballot and to hold government leaders legally accountable.

"All of this has led to the most serious crisis we have had since 1989," Biedron said, referring to the breakthrough year when Poland transitioned from communism to democracy.

- Fundamental rights -

Warsaw-based political scientist Stanislaw Mocek pointed to "several violations of the constitutional order" in the PiS's handing of the election.

Powerful PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his coalition ally Jaroslaw Gowin effectively postponed the May 10 election themselves, announcing late Wednesday they expected the Supreme Court to declare it null and void due to the pandemic.

The PiS government "should have declared a natural disaster to lawfully postpone the election," Mocek told AFP, adding that "now we're in a fog of legal absurdity".

The PiS rejected opposition calls to declare a disaster or emergency over the pandemic that would automatically postpone the election.

Declaring a state of disaster is the only "lawful way to postpone" a presidential election, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said in a Thursday statement.

The election uncertainty has underscored long-standing EU concerns about democratic standards in Poland.

Last week the European Commission launched its fourth infringement procedure against PiS-authored judicial reforms, which it says test the rule of law by undermining judicial independence.

Commissioner Vera Jourova also appeared to caution the PiS government over its handling of the presidential election.

"We cannot compromise or put in lockdown our fundamental rights and values," Jourova said.

"The virus must not kill democracy."
Thiruvananthapuram: The first batch of 354 non-resident Indians, mostly Keralites, who were stranded in Gulf countries following Covid-19 pandemic landed in the state from Abu Dhabi and Dubai on Thursday night.

Elaborate arrangements were made at Kochi and Kozhikode international airports to receive the expatriates. Buses of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSCTC) were deployed at the Kochi airport to take the passengers to their destination. Taxis and private vehicles have been arranged to take pregnant women, elderly persons, people with ailment and children to their homes where they will remain under home quarantine for 14 days.

The first Air India Express flight from Abu Dhabi carrying 177 persons including 48 pregnant women and four infants, landed in Kochi international airport at 10.08 pm.

The second flight from Dubai with 177 passengers including 19 pregnant women and five infants, landed at the Kozhikode International Airport at 10.34 pm.

The health officials will monitor temperature including wrist temperature of the expatriates through thermal temperature tracking system even while maintaining social distance norms. In case of abnormal temperature there will be warning and alarm alert.

Adequate precautionary measures were taken by the staff at the airports who are equipped with personal protective equipment (PPE).

Besides, 50 ambulances were kept ready for taking people with suspected Covid  19 symptoms to Covid Care Centres in Kochi and hospitals from the thermal gate of the airport. In the event of people with symptoms at Kozhikode, they will be sent to Kozhikode and Manjeri medical colleges. KSRTC buses, taxis and private carries have been lined up at the airport to take the expatriates to quarantine centres and home.

All passengers in the two flights were subjected to thermal scanning and antibody tests by the UAE health authorities with the assistance of Embassy officials. With none detected with Covid  19 symptoms, the UAE health authorities gave the green signal to all passengers to travel. All passengers and the crew members were also directed to comply with the Covid  19 safety protocol.

By God's grace we have landed happily at the Kochi airport. Primary tests were conducted at the Abu Dhabi airport. Blood samples were taken and results were out within minutes. Later we were declared fit for travelling," Vineeth, one of the passengers who came by the flight, told a regional TV channel.

The passengers underwent Covid  19 tests including a thermal screening at the airport before coming out in batches from the terminal. Elderly people, people with non -Covid illnesses, pregnant women and children will be taken home where they will remain under quarantine for 14 days.

The remaining people will be sent to Government quarantine facility in their respective districts where they will remain for seven days and on the seventh day subjected to RC PCR test and antibody test. In case of positive result the person will be sent to Covid care centres while the negative cases will be permitted to undergo the remaining seven days quarantine at home.

In the first five days around 2000 people from various Gulf countries will arrive at the four international airports; Kannur, Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram. Thirteen fights will operate between Gulf and Kerala sector during this period. Over 5 lakh non-resident Keralites have registered with the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs Department (NORKA ) for returning home.

With the return of non-resident Keralites and people from other states, the government machinery and health care sector is set to come under huge pressure to sustain the positive trend.

At the moment the state has only 25 active cases and 16,693 persons under surveillance. The government has taken all precautionary measures to prevent any spike in Covid - 19 cases following the return of the expatriates to Kerala.

The government has informed the Kerala High Court that 1,0500 beds have already been arranged for quarantine and more facilities will be put in place in the coming days. "As of now only government quarantine facilities will be provided. Private quarantine facilities will be decided later," said health minister K K Shailaja.

Government stops issuing passes to Keralites coming from outside the state

With Keralites returning from other states in large numbers during the past three days, the state administration has come under tremendous pressure to make arrangements for quarantine. The government has stopped issuing fresh entry passes to people coming from other states in view of the rush.

Chief secretary Tom Jose said next lot of passes would be issued once quarantine arrangements for the existing persons are completed. Till Wednesday 6000 plus persons arrived in Kerala from other states.

So far 38,862 passes have been issued by the government. People coming from Red Zones have to undergo 14 days mandatory quarantine and on the seventh day if their PCR test is found negative they would be sent for home quarantine for the remaining week.
Big Almaty Lake is one of natures paradises found in the Tian Shan Mountain to the north of Ile Alatau. The scenic reservoir may be small, but it is big in reputation and worth a drive. It is flocked by tourists eager to have a taste of the unique mountain atmosphere.

Image: instagram.com, @flazinhotravels

Source: UGC

Big Almaty Lake got its name from the gorge within which it is located  Almaty Canyon. Those who know it better call it BAO or the Russian version of its name, Bolshoe Almatinskoe Ozero. You can find this beautiful scenery which is about 15 km from Big Almaty Lake to Almaty city to the south of the city.

The reservoir is part of the Ile-Alatau National Park. Before getting the name Big Almaty Lake, it used to be called the Zhosalykol, which means reddish. A Big Almaty Lake tour is worth every minute and penny spent.

Origin of Big Almaty Lake

This reservoir was formed as a result of an earthquake as is the case with many other lakes and reservoirs in Kazakhstan. It is believed that more than 2000 years ago there was a landslide on the slope of the Big Almaty peak thus blocking the gorge and, in the process, forming a natural dam which became the Big Almaty Lake.

Photos

It is easy to conclude that Big Almaty Lake pics are photoshopped, but the reservoir is as beautiful as the images show. The changes that may appear are due to different seasons of the year and times of the day.

1. A sight to behold

Image: instagram.com, @flazinhotravels

Source: UGC

This beautiful paradise is a breathtaking sight at any time, but you should see it in the morning when the sun is rising. The sky above is pure blue, the mountain tops are covered in snow, and then there is the surrounding green vegetation. It is the perfect place for peaceful meditation or even just sightseeing.

2. When it is winter in Big Almaty Lake

Image: instagram.com, @wanderbirdtravel

Source: UGC

The mountain ranges may be covered in snow, but the water remains in liquid for the most part of the year. In the evening, it provides a beautiful contrast of colours that are attractive to look at. The good thing about this place is that it looks just like in the pictures, so one gets the real deal when visiting the reservoir.

Why is Big Almaty Lake blue? The waters of the reservoir are sometimes blue in appearance, especially when the sky is clear and reflecting on the surface of the water.

3. White as snow, clear as day

The reservoir represents the purity of mother nature in many ways. The water is ever clear and unpolluted with vegetation climbing the mountain slopes to the point where it meets with the snow.

You need not carry a mirror because you can see your reflection in the water and on a cloudy day, the reflection of clouds adds to the natural beauty of the place.

4. A warm summer

Image: instagram.com, @wanderbirdtravel

Source: UGC

It is not always winter in the reservoir. When summer comes, it is also a spectacular spot for sunbathing and enjoying the scenery. During such days, you can easily lose track of time and find yourself spending the entire day just staring.

5. The Big Almaty Lake blossom

Image: instagram.com, @wanderbirdtravel

Source: UGC

In spring, there is a blossom of vegetation at the reservoir. All varieties of plants grow during this time, and it is no problem spotting lilies and other flowers sprouting.

It is a place one easily falls in love with, and there is no doubt once you go there, you will wish to return again and again.

6. Big Almaty Lake on a cloudy day

You have been here on a sunny day, but what does it look like on a cloudy day? It is just like adding color contrast on a painting when the clouds shield the sun from shining on the reservoir. The landscape becomes even greener while the water looks like an array of colors due to the reflecting of the clouds and vegetation.

Restrictions for visitors

The reservoir is an asset to the people of this city not just for its beauty but also because it is the source of their tap water. This means the site has to be protected for conservation and sustainability purposes. Therefore, you should be aware of Big Almaty Lake restrictions.

Swimming in the reservoir is not allowed. Picnics are also not allowed in the reservoirs territory. Be warned then that in the Big Almaty Lake canoeing and other activities are not allowed other than seeing the reservoir from the road.

How to come

Tourists can access the reservoir by car, but this will take a one hour drive from the city center. Those without a vehicle can board Big Almaty Lake bus 28 from the Presidents Park.

Alternatively, adventurous individuals can go to the reservoir by bike or hiking. Hiking will take about half a day, so tourists are encouraged to begin early. The reservoir is 15km from the city center and is located within a national park.

This means tourists have to pay a fee to get granted access. Tourists are encouraged to visit the reservoir more than once to enjoy different views during different seasons of the year.

The water level always fluctuates, and it changes from pale green to deep blue depending on the time of the year.

Proximity to the astronomical observatory

Since there are restrictions against camping and swimming in the reservoir, tourists find it more valuable to observe it from the nearby Tian Shan astronomical observatory.

The astroclimate here is almost perfect with high transparency of the atmosphere, negligible light pollution, and turbulence. The Big Almaty Lake archaeology museum is among the many other places you can go to when you visit the reservoir.

Among the marvels of nature, Big Almaty Lake trumps many for aesthetics. Here, it is an all-round package within the same area. You will find mountains, beautiful gorges, the sea, unique vegetation, and snow. It is scenic, and the residents have preserved it remarkably well. So when you hear that Big Almaty Lake appears just like in the pictures, you better believe it.

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Media Research Users Council India (MRUC India), today released the last and final quarter  Q4  of IRS 2019. IRS 2019 Q4 is a rolling average of four quarters of IRS 2019 data, that is, Q1+Q2+Q3 and Q4 2019, the fieldwork (Q4) of which covers from December 2019 through March 2020. The sample size of IRS 2019 is 3.27 lakh households across India, out of which urban sample size is 2.14 lakh households and rural is 1.13 lakh households. IRS 2019 Q4 is the full year report covering four quarters of a continuous and uninterrupted IRS 2019 fieldwork.

As per the latest IRS data, newspaper readership is on a slow decline and is a trend seen across Hindi, English and Regional languages. However, radio listenership is growing, while TV viewing, too, is showing growth even on a very big base.

Dainik Jagran continues to top dailies readership, but has seen a dip in its Total Readership (TR) in IRS 2019 Q4 at 68,667,000, while its Average Issue Readership (AIR) has also dipped to 16,872,000. Dainik Bhaskar is placed in the second spot with TR at 52,429,000, which is marginally lower than in Q3. However, in terms of AIR, the daily has garnered 15,566,000, which is marginally higher than in Q3.

In terms of Total Readership, Daily Thanthi (No. 6), Lokmat (No. 7) and The Times of India (No. 9) have seen growth.

The Times of India (TOI) and Hindustan Times (HT) top the English dailies space. While TOI is the most read English daily in Mumbai, registering TR of 2,894,000 and AIR of 1,205,000; in Delhi it is HT that leads this space, garnering TR of 1,822,000 and AIR of 773,000.

In Mumbai, HT is placed second with TR of 2,042,000 and AIR of 770,000. Both TOI and HT have seen growth in their Total Readership, however, in terms of AIR, both the dailies have seen decline compared to Q3.

Mumbai Mirror is the third most read English daily in Mumbai with TR of 1,867,000 and AIR of 660,000. The daily has seen a decline as compared to Q3.

Media landscape is rapidly evolving with multi-media adoption seen across consumer strata. Overall Media reach continues to grow even as the consumption of each media remains more or less stable, with Internet making a noteworthy exception by leading this growth curve, particularly in rural India. Among other highlights from IRS 2019Q4 data  Electrification in India has surged, premium durable ownership in households have increased and so has individuals online shopping and smart phone ownership across both urban and rural India.

Pratap Pawar, Chairman of MRUC India and Chairman of Sakal Media, We have successfully completed and released all four quarters of IRS 2019 data. I thank our Board of Governors and IRS Technical Committee for their unwavering commitment and their resolve in providing the industry with a robust, reliable and timely research study.

Vikram Sakhuja, IRS Technical Committee Chairman and Group CEO, Madison Media & OOH, Madison World, commented, With 4 Quarters of 2019 data now complete, we are reporting a complete years picture. Earlier quarters had also included some part of 2017 data. A few trends are emerging. Internet penetration has increased substantially and is now mainstream along with TV and Print; NCCS D&E are reducing quarter on quarter faster than HH socio economic status, thereby suggesting the need to Relook at the NCCS definition; ability to read and understand English has increased and while overall Print Readership is holding, daily readership has started showing signs of decline.
Mercury Prize-nominated rapper Ty has died aged 47 after contracting coronavirus, according to a fundraising page set up to support him (Yui Mok/PA)

Mercury Prize-nominated rapper Ty has died aged 47 after contracting coronavirus, according to a fundraising page set up to support him.

The musician, whose real name is Ben Chijioke, had been in hospital after testing positive for Covid-19, the page said, and had been placed in an induced coma to help his body fight the infection.

Tys condition improved and he was awake in mid-April, according to the GoFundMe site.

Expand Close British rapper Ty has died at the age of 47 after contracting coronavirus (Yui Mok/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp British rapper Ty has died at the age of 47 after contracting coronavirus (Yui Mok/PA)

However, page organiser Diane Laidlaw has now said he died on May 7.

She wrote: The family would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has reached out and expressed their concern since he was admitted in hospital but right now they would value having their privacy, so they can mourn privately. They just need time to process.

Born in London to Nigerian immigrants, Ty released his debut album Awkward in 2001.

His second release, Upward, was nominated alongside Amy Winehouse and the Streets for the prestigious Mercury Prize in 2004.

He went on to release three more albums and collaborate with artists including De La Soul and Roots Manuva.

Luther star Idris Elba led the tributes, describing Ty as a UK hip hop pioneer.

Video of the Day

Elba wrote on Instagram: Im broken by this man. I remember when we did a tune somewhere in S.london back in the day, that was when I was doing 1st season of Luther and we talked about the Wire a lot. Prayers to your family .

Actor Noel Clarke was also among those who paid tribute.

He said on Twitter: Except a few, most people wouldnt know but this guy was my Friend. Today Covid took him. Stay home. This thing is not a joke.

Rest my Brother. You did good. @tymusic  Roots Manuva (@rootsmanuva) May 7, 2020

Roots Manuva wrote: Rest my Brother. You did good.

Grime rapper Ghetts said on Instagram: RIP TY. This ones deep I had a lot of respect for ty one of the first from the older generation to embrace me and show me love fly high ty.

Rest in peace Ty. Rapper, poet, activist and one of the finest talents the United Kingdom has ever produced. Your music will live forever oga  Ghostpoet (@ghostpoet) May 7, 2020

Ghostpoet added: Rest in peace Ty. Rapper, poet, activist and one of the finest talents the United Kingdom has ever produced. Your music will live forever.

I'm so sad about the news that @tymusic passed away today. He was a huge part in the development of Hip Hop and spoken word in this country. An original no nonsense voice always sharp always witty. todays generation of rappers owe him a lot - a true gate opener. RIP  Gilles Peterson (@gillespeterson) May 7, 2020

Radio DJ Gilles Peterson said: Im so sad about the news that @tymusic passed away today. He was a huge part in the development of Hip Hop and spoken word in this country. An original no nonsense voice always sharp always witty. todays generation of rappers owe him a lot  a true gate opener.
Gujarat witnessed a sharp spike of about 47% in Covid-19 positive cases in one week, revealed analysis of the data.

Till May 2, the number of cases in the state was 5,054 which rose to 7,403 on May 8, which means the number of cases increased by 46.47%.The number of deaths also increased by 71.37% in this period. Till May 2, 236 deaths were reported, this increased to 449 on May 7.

Out of a total of 7,403 positive cases in the state, 390 cases and 24 deaths were reported on Friday.

Three districts in the state account for 88.8% of the total cases. These three districts are Ahmedabad (5,260), Surat (824) and Vadodara (465). Of the 449 deaths, 343 have been reported from Ahmedabad, 38 from Surat and 31 from Vadodara.

Jayanti Ravi, principal secretary (health) said that the state has crossed 1lakh tests to identify Covid-19 patients. The tests are done through pooling method, a time and resource-saving technique, which analyses multiple samples together.

Till date 1,872 people have been discharged which means states recovery rate has improved by over 374% in past one week, she said.

The state government on Friday also decided that the process for approvals for new industries in Gujarat will be totally moved online. The industries approved, will be allocated land within 7 days and all the necessary permissions related to the same shall be provided in 15 days of their application, said a government official.

In Ahmedabad, policemen were attacked in Shahpur area around 5 pm on Friday. Few people were roaming out at Rajaji Ni Pol, Shahpur and Nagori Gate at around 5 pm. When police asked them to stay inside their houses some people started pelting stones. Police had to use mild force and three shells of tear gas to control the situation. Ten people have been detained. Strict action would be taken against the accused so that a message is conveyed, said Pradeep Singh, state home minister, Gujarat.

The Gujarat government has announced a fund to encourage new startups joining the battle against Covid-19 with their knowledge and expertise with a Rs 100 crore fund.

A senior government official said chief minister Vijay Rupani held a video conference with heads of seven leading equity companies on Thursday, who then decided to allocate Rs 100 crore as a venture capital fund to support such startups. As many as 31 such startups are supported by this fund, the official said.

The Director General of Police Shivanand Jha said the Rajasthan Government has sealed the interstate borders and only those with permission from border district collectors or the home department are allowed to enter. He appealed to the Rajasthan migrants to stay where they are.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

67 Covid infected police officers have recovered now, while 601 personnel, who had come in contact with them and were home quarantined, have completed their term and are completely healthy, Jha informed.

The Gujarat police chief said that 701 cases have been registered for spreading fake messages and rumours on social media, and 1,441 accused were arrested.

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The 'American Dream' isnt an ethos that is only limited to American citizens. In reality, it is a shared Dream that surpasses borders, language and skin colour. Every year, several people look for ways to become American, only to be turned down or launched into a nightmare instead.

Just like Baroda-born Harold DSouza, who much like thousands of other Gujaratis, grew up believing 'Going to America is like going to heaven. Only God's people go there.' And Harold did ultimately turn out to be one of the chosen ones, but only to have his life turned around upside-down.

From falling prey to human trafficking, and eventually meeting the Obamas at the White House after a decade of surviving injustices, Harolds American Dream is a reminder that everything comes at a cost, and it depends on us how much were willing to pay.

Speaking to Humans of Bombay, Harold shared I was born and raised in Baroda, where many people migrate to the US. I grew up watching Hollywood classics and listening to The Beatles; whenever neighbours visited from the US, I'd stare at them like they were celebrities! But for me, America was a faraway dream.

Belonging to a humble family, Harold's father struggled to provide the best life to his family, but never compromised on his childrens education. But to Harolds dismay, he was not good at studies and failed often. He barely cracked his 12th, but with his fathers constant support he tried his hands on every other job and completed his Bachelors while at it.

Eventually, he found his calling as a sales representative and settled in. Soon, he was married off to his wife Dancy, and over the next decade reached a good place by 2003 as a regional manager at a tech company.

Thats when I met him for the first timemy trafficker. My brother-in-law introduced us. He was from my father-in-law's village, so we trusted him. Plus, he was known amongst our circles as a multi-millionaire who threw parties at 5 stars. His opening line was, 'How would you like to become a millionaire?'I was hooked. He painted a beautiful picture of living the 'American Dream' with a $75,000 job as a business development executive at his friend's factory.

That mans glorious proposition tantalised the Gujarati in Harold, and at 37 he got ready to leave his perfect little world in India, and settle in the US.

Prior to shifting base, Harold visited Cincinnati to ensure he was making the right move. It was perfect. For 2 weeks, my employer showed me around, took me to his million-dollar mansion & convinced me to work at his restaurant, rather than the factory. I was so excitedI couldn't wait to move. I came back & took my wife & kids with me.

But his dream soon turned out to be a nightmare.

When we landed, he took us to our apartment, which had only 1 room. When I asked him why, he said he was figuring out a better place. We didnt know, but hed planned everything. He'd gotten a place next to the restaurant so that labour was available 24x7. He asked me to hand over cash & documents for safekeeping. He then took us to the restaurant, said we owned it & made my wife the signing authority. There, he revealed our real job washing dishes & cleaning the place.

Soon the exploitation began, Harold and Dancy would end up working for 16 hours a day. Then came the even greater blow - the debt bondage.

It started with his trafficker forcing him to apply for a 5 figure loan in his name. When Harold got the required cheque amount, He took me to his home, poured a drink & said, 'Cheers! You're a rich man!' Even before I took a sip, he produced a chit & said, 'You owe me $40,000!' I was shocked. He then patted me & said, 'Actually Harold, you owe me a lot more than thatI was in debt bondage; my trafficker had me in his clutches.

Thereafter, things only kept going south. Harolds trafficker emptied his entire savings, including the loan amount. It had already been 18 months since their arrival in the US and they hadnt been paid a single rupee. Things got worse when the trafficker moved beyond exploitation and began using other means to silence them - abuse both psychological and physical.

After 2 years of suffering, my wife couldn't take it anymore & confronted him. She demanded to be paid, but he said, 'You're illegal here! You can't even work on your VISA.' He threatened to have us jailed & deported. My world came crashing down.

Thats when Harold finally decided to not give a shit about what lay ahead and contacted the police. I asked the officer, 'Will you arrest us?' He laughed & said, 'No,' & suggested we file a case with the Department of Labour. We frantically began making calls, until we got through to an agent. Finally, the investigation began & my employer got a notice. The same day, he threw us out of the restaurant & threatened to kill me.

If you think things couldnt get worse, youre wrong. As Harold recalls, My trafficker wasnt donehe hired a hitman to kill me. 9 blood bags & 8 surgeons later, I was discharged from the hospital. After the case was filed, there wasn't much to doall we could do was wait. Those 6 months were gruelling. Finally, we won both our cases, but before we could even breathe & celebrate, my trafficker slapped a civil case on us for $100,001 on uswe were still at war.

He continued his attacks, but we held our ground & I fought the case myself. I wrote a 1000 page handwritten report & sued him for $3 million. Once a month, I went to court, while his lawyer fought for him. He showed up once, to ask me to withdraw the casebut I was adamant. Finally, he filed bankruptcy & the case was closed.

Dr. Ludy Green, @USAID's Lead on Counter-Trafficking w/ Ambassador John Richmond, Stewart Young from the @WhiteHouse and Survivor Harold D'Souza at the Release of the 2019 US Advisory Council on Human Trafficking Annual Report @StateDept#ivankatrump#doj#hhs#dol#humantrafficking pic.twitter.com/E9WJKtwWPQ  USAID/DRG (@USAIDDRG) May 10, 2019

Harold and his family could finally have a fresh start. Harold and Dancy picked up multiple jobs to provide for their sons and send them to school.

When the principal found out about their situation, she spread the word and other parents reached out to them with help. And when Harold finally got the NCP VISA, he took up a job at a hospital and happily worked for 16 hours every day because he loved it. After three more years, Harold had saved enough money to buy a house.

Dubai: Mangalurean Harold D'Souza addresses human trafficking, other issues at Expo 2020



- https://t.co/jwHHRD5uAD pic.twitter.com/aiP0sOAm3O  Daijiworld.com (@daijiworldnews) January 22, 2020

To celebrate, we invited everyone who'd helped us for dinner. We made chicken & pulaothey loved it! It felt good to show them our home. Still, all I could think about was that my trafficker wasnt prosecuted. There was no law on human trafficking in Ohio & that made me angry. I began sharing my story & travelled all across to raise awareness about trafficking. Finally, my voice was heard when I got the call; the call from the White House.

"President Obama was starting an Advisory Council on Human Trafficking & wanted survivors on board. On 16th December, I got a call from the White HouseI was the only Indian American appointedthe word spread. It was all over the news; my phone blew up with texts from everyone; even those who thought wed brought shame. The boy from Baroda had gone far. And in Jan 2016, the unthinkable happened. Me, a supposed illegal, met Barack & Michelle Obama at the White House.

But this wasnt Harolds proudest moment. I thought it was my proudest moment, until Michelle Obama said to me, 'I need to send my kids to your house. Your kids are so well brought up.' I couldnt hold back the tears.

Harold and his family went on to make up for the lost time, went on many trips and shared long dinner conversations they had missed out on. Today, his elder son works at Tesla & the younger one at Apple.

Dancy and Harold have dedicated their lives to fight human trafficking. Im still a part of the Council, but we also founded Eyes Open International & have helped over 200 victims. Before all of this began, my son asked me, 'Why are you doing this?' I said to him, Because we wouldnt be here if we didnt have people to help us.

That was one survivor story worth reading, wasnt it?
The Istanbul stock exchange has now Corona once left behind. In the most vigorous stock market rally since 1988, the economic Agency Bloomberg, the downstream has been attributed to the important Index of the largest 100 values of the Istanbul stock exchange, the BIST 100, to run in the start of the week his since the beginning of the year made up for its losses. Since the Low on may 23. In March, the Index had risen by 36 per cent, and I left the other stock indices such as the MSCI Emerging Markets and Stoxx Europe 600 behind. This is not only for enthusiastic domestic investors, the wear due to negative interest rates and a lack of investment opportunities for your money in the stock market. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be delighted with it.

Andreas Mihm

Economics correspondent in Vienna.

F. A. Z. Twitter

Because of him and his son-in-law, Minister of Finance, Berat Albayrak, controlled Turkish state Fund is good in domestic stock companies invested: He holds nearly 7 percent of Turk Telekom, 36 percent of VakifBank, one of Turkey's largest banks, 49 percent of Turkish Airlines and a full 100 percent of the largest tea producers in the country, bottom-six teams.

Political signs

20 companies so far. Soon the majority of the mobile network operator Turkcell has been added. After a long dispute, the Swedish Telia sold its 26 percent stake for $ 530 million. The Istanbul stock exchange is not part of, with 90 per cent of the Club, which is why it fell Erdogan by the end of 2019 hard to make the American ex-prisoners of bankers Hakan Atilla the boss. Political signs everywhere. Atilla had been convicted of violation of the American of the Iran sanctions to 32 months in prison.

Like many countries, Turkey has a sovereign wealth Fund. On Tuesday, the American Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute rated the assets of 222 billion dollars. He was ranked 14 of 93. But the Fund is difficult to compare, he plays in a League of his own.

Differently than the model States with "Sovereign Wealth Funds", such as Norway, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia or Singapore, Turkey does not generate Income through exports, such as, for example, Oil and Gas in the state budget or in the current account, you could invest in a state Fund "for a rainy day" or future generations, especially abroad. On The Contrary. Turkey accounted for regularly, a deficit in the current account and invested at home.

Against the Background of Gunter analyzed Deuber of Raiffeisen Bank International in Vienna: "in this respect, the activities of the Turkish state-Fund, seem to be rather direct interior - and to be economic of a political nature." History speaks for this Thesis: Established the Fund in 2016, had been, after the failed coup against Erdogan. At the time of state were transferred to the investments in the Fund, which had been held to date, the Ministry of Finance for the purpose of privatization. Life was supposed to. the Fund of the receipts from him, also awarded license for sale of the state lottery and dividends

Updated Date: 24 June 2020, 04:19
But an investigation by The Post found that many covid-19 deaths went uncounted in March and early April: There were nearly twice as many additional deaths in the United States as were publicly attributed to coronavirus at the time. Data from local governments suggests that many of those additional deaths were people dying at home of covid-19.
ATLANTA  The two white men who were seen on a widely shared video as one of them fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, were arrested and charged on Thursday in connection with the shooting  two days after the graphic footage became public and more than two months after the killing itself.

The men, Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were each charged with murder and aggravated assault and booked into a jail in coastal Glynn County, Ga., where the killing took place, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

The details of Mr. Arberys killing  and the fact that no one had been arrested in the months since it happened  led to a wave of outrage nationwide from figures as diverse as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the basketball star LeBron James and Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Public pressure for an arrest intensified on Tuesday with the release of the video that showed Mr. Arbery running toward a truck, engaging in a struggle with a man holding a shotgun, and then falling to the ground.
Chron.com is following the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area.

2:40 p.m.

Since March 17, a total of 9,182 viable complaints have been made to the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office accusing businesses of violating county or state-issued orders related to COVID-19, according to communications director Rachel Moreno. So far this week, from Monday through Friday afternoon, the office has received 1,104 complaints.

So far, the office has not written any citations and not ordered anyone to go to jail for violating an order, Moreno said. She added most cases the office investigates concern business owners who either were confused about the orders or were desperate enough to open their doors in defiance of the orders in order to feed their families. "Our number one concern is the health and safety of our staff and the public," Moreno said. "So when we are out checking in on these companies our main goal is education and letting the business owners know what the governor the judges are asking and why it's important." If a business has been deemed in violation of an order, the office works with the owner to bring them back into compliance.

12 p.m.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo gave Klein High School student Sneha Shenoy a special shoutout by signing her art-inspired Pledge to Distance campaign to promote social distancing.

Hidalgo tweeted a drawing provided by the campaign of her face with the letters of her name forming the shape of a mask. Each pledger receives a customized piece of artwork of their own faces to share on social media to inspire others to take the pledge as well.

The people of our community are incredible, Hidalgo stated in a May 8 Twitter post. So proud of Klein High School junior Sneha Shenoy for starting the @PledgeDistance campaign. Sign the pledge to fight #COVID19 with #Social Distancing as much as you can & shell send some personalized artwork.

The #PledgeToDistance campaign is on social media @PledgeToDistance on Instagram, @PledgeDistance on Twitter, and Pledge To Distance on Facebook. The pledge and more information can also be found at www.pledgetodistance.com.

8:00 a.m.

A free face mask distribution is underway at the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library.

Organized by the office of Houston District E Councilmember Dave Martin, officials are handing out masks on a first-come, first-served basis to residents via drive-through at the library, 16616 Diana Lane, Houston. Each vehicle will be limited to four masks.

7:42 a.m.

Mayor Sylvester Turner on Thursday night tweeted out a message expressing his concern about the rate at which businesses are reopening in Harris County.

Turner claimed he was worried that some people are mistaking open businesses for business as usual as the county continues to battle new cases of COVID-19.

"I do believe we are moving too quickly when it comes to reopening our economy," Turner wrote. "I am concerned that individuals are treating this #COVID19 epidemic, especially in underserved communities, as if it is over and not basing our decisions based on scientific facts."

Turner's remarks came the same day as stinging comments about Houston public officials' handling of the coronavirus from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who falsely claimed the city was threatening to jail individuals for not wearing masks.
Authoritiesworldwide face the formidable challenge of returning millions of children to classrooms shut due to the coronavirus outbreak, weighing the need to limit the educational damage against the risks of fuelling a surge in new cases. Although young people appear less vulnerable to COVID-19, experts say they could still be a vector for contagion, a major worry for both parents and teachers. "Some are impatient to renew the contact with students, but others are scared," said Xavier Toussaint, a secondary school teacher in Waterloo, Belgium. And even if the crisis eases, social distancing measures will drastically change how classrooms look -- and how children interact with their teachers and each other -- for months, if not years. At Toussaint's school of 800 pupils, only 10 classes consisting of small groups will resume from May 18, meaning officials will have to choose who can come. "The requirement is a maximum of 10 per class, with four square metres (43 square feet) of space per student, plus eight square metres for the teacher," he said. Similar restrictions are planned across Europe: France is ordering continual hand-washings throughout the day, no group play at recess, one-way hallways to avoid mingling, and face masks for all but the youngest students. Parents are also being urged to take their children's temperature each morning when the country begins its staggered returns next week. In Paris, schools will be able to accomodate just 15 percent of students, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said this week. She and more than 300 other mayors in the greater Paris region have called to push back the returns, echoing worries in other countries keeping most schools shut for now. Italy and Spain, hit hard by the coronavirus, have cancelled class until September, as have Bulgaria, Ireland, Portugal, Tunisia, and the state of New York. In China's Wuhan, where the outbreak erupted in December, students began returning to class only this week, wearing masks and walking in single file past thermal scanners, after being shut out since January. - 'Immense effort' - At the height of the crisis, an estimated 1.5 billion learners from kindergarten to university were stuck at home in 195 countries, a number that stood at 1.3 billion as of May 7, the UN education agency UNESCO said. It has warned the lockdowns could further widen education gaps between rich and poor since half the world's students lack access to computers for home schooling. "The decision on when and how to reopen schools is far from simple," UN chief Audrey Azoulay said this week. "But as numerous students fall behind in their learning... reopening must be a priority," she said. Even in developed countries, officials are racing for students to have at least a few weeks in the classroom before the summer break, a tacit admission that "distance learning" cannot make up for the educational deficit from two months or more of home confinement. "It's not bad that they do it in this way," said Alice Laval, a French teacher in Vienna who agreed home schooling had increased disparities between students with good support networks and those without. "At first it will be all about checking how the kids are doing," she said of the return. Laval said preparing Austrian schools for the strict sanitary rules, dividing classes and reworking schedules, had been "an immense effort." Other teachers have been less sanguine, many taking to social media to mock decrees such as cleaning every crayon before it is shared, or making sure five-year-olds respect a safe social distance of one metre from their classmates. "It's broadly accepted that this pandemic is far from under control, and everyone is worried about a second wave" of cases, France's FSU teachers' union said in a statement. "As of now, there is no guarantee that the conditions for health safety will be met in France for public servants, children or their families by May 11," it said. - Risk-free? - As the virus continues to exact heavy tolls, authorities will be closely watching those countries reopening schools to see if there is a flare-up in new cases that could overwhelm hospitals. Scandinavian countries in particular have moved quickly to reopen schools or, in the case of Sweden, avoided closures altogether. "Students are happy to be back and are following the rules to stay in small groups and limit contacts. And they've become expert hand-washers," said Kathrine Wilsher Lohre, principal at a school outside Oslo in Norway. "From what we've seen so far, respecting the safety distances in groups has been hardest for the children, but I think good hand hygiene will help to stop any spread of infections," she said. Some parents were wary -- A Norwegian Facebook group called "My child should not be a guinea pig for COVID-19" garnered some 27,000 members. Officials have tried to play down the risks, while emphasising the need to revive economies battered by the business closures and stay-at-home orders to combat the outbreak. "The share of children with the disease is small. The risk of a child infecting an adult is not realistic. Opening schools is risk-free," said Finland's top public health official, Mika Salminen. France's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has also rejected claims that the government is moving too fast, warning this week that the lockdown has been a "catastrophe for the most vulnerable children and adolescents." "Reopening schools is a priority for us," he said. An elementary school in Pardes Hanna-Karkur in central Israel on May 3, 2020, after authorities began allowing younger students to return to class after seven weeks of COVID-19 confinement measures. A teacher puts tape on the ground to mark safe distance areas for a classroom in Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, western France, ahead of the gradual reopning of schools from May 11. Third graders washing their hands at a school in Oslo after Norway began reopening schools in late April. A high school senior checked a fellow student's temperature in Wuhan, China, this week as the city's schools reopened for the first time since January.
The Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic, has said the countrys national carrier is considering introducing scheduled commercial flights to China in the coming period. In comments following a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Serbia, Mr Vucic said, We held very good and important talks  Serbia is very popular in China due to its friendly relations and we are considering for Air Serbia to launch flights to the country in the coming period, with assistance from China. We are in discussions. He added, Last year we registered 269.000 overnight stays by Chinese tourists. With a solid program, plan and campaign in China, we believe that number could reach up to five million. Obviously, not straight away, but we believe we can significantly increase these figures. It would considerably strengthen our hotel and tourism sectors. Chinese tourists are always welcome in Serbia.





The Chinese Ambassador to Serbia, Chen Bo, noted, We exchanged our thoughts with the Serbian President concerning bilateral relations in infrastructure, tourism, innovation and trade. We discussed closer cooperation in these spheres as part of the Belt and Road Initiative and the 17+1 mechanism, as well as economic recovery. Hainan Airlines abruptly suspended its two weekly service between Beijing and Belgrade via Prague in 2018 due to low demand following a year of operations. Prior to the coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak, Belgrade was the eleventh busiest unserved route from Shanghai and the seventh busiest European market lacking flights to China's most populous city.





As of this morning, Air Serbia has operated a total of thirty flights to China with its Airbus A330 and A320 aircraft since March 21 to transport medical supplies and equipment . Cargo-only flights were run to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen. Last September, the Serbian President also discussed the resumption of flights between Beijing and Belgrade with Chinese officials. At the time, the Serbian Ministry for Construction, Transport and Infrastructure said, There are valid reasons for the resumption of these flights, considering the existing economic cooperation between the two countries and an increase in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Serbia.




A Russian shopping centre has apologised today after it failed to recognise a picture of Adolf Hitler without his moustache, posting it on their 'wall of fame' of war heroes to celebrate Victory in Europe day.

The startling gaffe came from the 'Cosmos' shopping centre in the city of Chelyabinsk in the western Russian region of Chelyabinsk Oblast and was reportedly the result of a joke in poor taste.

The shopping centre created a 'wall of fame' for Russian war heroes for the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe day and were posting images of the soldiers online as well as on big screens inside the shopping centre.

This picture was posted online by a shopping centre in the western Russian region of Chelyabinsk Oblast, when the moderator failed to see that the image was that of Adolf Hitler without his mustache. The text says it is paying tribute to Russian soldier Sumin Vladimir who died on the Eastern Front in 1945, but a trickster sent an image of Hitler as a prank

However, when paying tribute to Russian soldier Sumin Vladimir who died on the Eastern Front in 1945, the shopping centre unwittingly displayed a photo of Adolf Hitler.

The image that was sent by the prankster was put into a template with the shopping centre's branding on, commemorating the 75th anniversary of VE day and paying tribute to Sumin Vladimir.

However, web users were quick to express their outrage and the shopping centre have now publicly apologised for the incident, and have clarified what happened.

The shopping centre's head of advertising Ildar Yarulin, said: 'We launched this project for the nation to get to know its heroes from WWII and called people to send their relatives' photos with a short description of how they helped the army beat the Nazis

The 'Cosmos' shopping centre is in the city of Chelyabinsk in the western Russian region of Chelyabinsk Oblast (city pictured in stock image)

Hitler pictured with his recognisable mustache, which had been removed from this image by the person who played the prank on the shopping centre

Ildar said: 'Our team was mostly focused on the description of the feat, so our social media marketing specialists somehow did not notice the bad joke and proceeded with the story.'

He added that the marketing specialist who allowed the Hitler post to be published had been reprimanded but it is unclear if they were removed from their position.

The post has been removed from social media and the police are currently searching for the person responsible.

Russian hero Vladimir joined the Soviet army in 1942 and died in 1945 during the Vistula-Oder Offensive, a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in January 1945.

Countries around the world are celebrating VE Day today, albeit in a more reserved way during the global coroanvirus pandemic, with May 8 2020 marking 75 years since Nazi Germany surrendered, bringing the Second World War to an end in Europe.
Drs. Geof Tidey, Anish A. Shah, Erika B. Johnston-MacAnnany and Michael Edelstein of Shady Grove Fertility Richmond. While this pandemic shook all of us to our core, what never wavered was our commitment to our patients. Were thrilled we were able to devise safe, effective care strategies that keep our patients advancing and progressing toward their goal of building a family.

SGF, a pioneer in reproductive medicine, research, and innovation, announced today that SGF Richmond has resumed all fertility procedures and treatments in its Stony Point location. While its Henrico Doctors Hospital  Forest location is still closed temporarily, all Greater Richmond area patients may start or resume fertility care.

COVID-19 Safety Precautions

Weve modified the current environment with the safety of patients and care team the top priority. This means prescreening patients before they enter the building, limiting the number of patients in our waiting rooms, providing additional space throughout the facility for physical distancing, increasing our infection control protocols, wearing masks, and much more. Were all doing our part and remain diligent to providing care in the safest environment possible, shared Anish Shah, M.D., of SGF Richmond.

Fertility Treatments Now Available in Richmond

Comprehensive fertility services, such as fertility and ovarian reserve testing and diagnosis, semen analysis, a full range of fertility treatments such as ovulation induction and intrauterine insemination (IUI), and cycle monitoring, in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor egg, sperm, and embryo treatment, genetic screening and testing, IVF for inherited genetic disease prevention, gestational carrier, egg freezing, fertility preservation for patients with cancer, and LGBTQ family building are all currently available at SGF Richmond. Patients seeking a fertility consult with an SGF physician may do so using during a secure, private video consult.

While this pandemic shook all of us to our core, what never wavered was our commitment to our patients. Were thrilled we were able to devise safe, effective care strategies that keep our patients advancing and progressing toward their goal of building a family. Infertility is a disease that affects us emotionally, physically, spiritually, and often financially. Its been inspiring to see the strength of the human spirit persevere during this time of uncertainty. Fortunately, thanks to the tremendous efforts made by frontline healthcare professionals and everyone doing their part to shelter in place for a while, the number of new cases and hospitalizations has drastically reduced across our nation. New guidance allows us to provide care for infertility as an essential service, said Erika Johnston, M.D., of SGF Richmond.

Read more about SGFs safety protocols.

SGF Richmond Makes Treatment Affordable

SGF Richmond offers a variety of insurance networks as well as innovative financial programs, including a 100% refund guarantee program. This exclusive program provides patients with the opportunity to pay a fixed amount for up to six fresh IVF or donor egg cycles and any subsequent frozen embryo transfers (FETs). In the event the patient does not take home a baby, SGF provides a full refund. Eighty-two percent of participants take home a baby using their own eggs and 86 percent take home a baby when using a donor egg.

SGF Richmond also offers a Shared Help Discount Program, an income-based program that offers a discount on most treatments and procedures provided by SGF Richmond, the Military Discount Program, which offers active U.S. military and reservists a discount off qualifying self-pay rates, and a Shared Donor Egg Program, which reduces the cost of donor egg treatment by up to 50 percent when sharing donating eggs with other patientsan approach that does not lower the chances of conception but does significantly lower the cost.

To learn more or to schedule a video consult with an SGF Richmond physician, call 1-888-761-1967.

About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF)

SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with more than 85,000 babies born and counting. With 38 locations throughout FL, GA, MD, NY, PA, VA, D.C., and Santiago, Chile, we offer patients virtual physician consults, individualized care, accept most insurance plans, and make treatment affordable through innovative financial options, including treatment guarantees. More physicians refer their patients to SGF than any other center. Call 1-888-761-1967 or visit ShadyGroveFertility.com.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (L) shakes hands with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters after her speech during the 2018 budget presentation at Parliament on May 17, 2018 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

New Zealand Says It Backs Taiwans Role in WHO Due to Success With COVID-19

WELLINGTONNew Zealand on Friday weighed in on the debate around whether Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying the country has a lot to offer given its success in limiting the spread of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Taiwan has something to offer at the WHO right at the moment, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said at a news conference when asked if New Zealand would support Taiwans inclusion in WHO as an observer.

Robertson was addressing a daily media briefing on the countrys fight against the CCP virus.

Taiwans exclusion from the U.N. body, due to objections from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing, which claims the island as one of its provinces, has isolated the Taiwanese government. Despite not having access to the WHOs information, Taiwan has reported fewer cases of CCP virus than many neighbours due to early detection and prevention work. It was the first country to report concerns about the CCP virus to the WHO in December 2019, when it urged for transparent information on the situation from China.

Robertson said Taiwan has employed a number of successful methods of dealing with the virus, and have a number of epidemiologists and public health experts who have provided a great deal of advice that many countries have benefited from.

They have been an observer at the WHO in the past and I think in this time of the post COVID-19 crisis, there is room for them to be there again, he said.

Warm thanks to @winstonpeters for supporting #Taiwans @WHO participation. #NewZealands deputy PM & foreign minister put it beautifully: You want every country in an international organization designed to improve the worlds health. Its just logic. JWhttps://t.co/56r4HEL0p1   Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan)  (@MOFA_Taiwan) May 6, 2020

Foreign Minister Winston Peters told local media, Youve got to have every organisation in the world in the WHO if its to have any meaning. He said he had supported that position for 30 years. In the interests on international health you want every country in an international organisation designed to improve the worlds health. Its just logic.

Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly as an observer from 2009-2016, but China blocked further participation after the election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, whom China accuses of being a separatista charge she rejects.

Earlier this week, New Zealands Foreign Minister Winston Peters told reporters at Parliament on May 5 that he has supported Taiwans position for 30 years.

In the interests on international health you want every country in an international organisation designed to improve the worlds health. Its just logic, he said.

Charles Finny, chairman of the Taiwan New Zealand Business Council, welcomed Peters comments.

On issues like this, it is important to put politics to one side and have everyone in the room to try and address what is a global problem, Finny told the New Zealand Herald.

Its a nonsense having 24 million people in a full democracy who travel here in large numbers, who travel around the world in large numbers very close to the epicentre of all this, not included in the global process.

The United States and Australia, among others, have supported Taiwans participation at the assembly as an observer, adding to tension with China over its handling of the CCP virus.

Read More Taiwan Gains International Support for Participation in Key WHO Meeting

Robertson said New Zealand continues to strongly value the relationship with China, its biggest trading partner.

Its a relationship with a lot of depth, its a relationship where we have come over time to rely on one another and support one another. Nothing has changed about that at all, he added.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
Scientists advising the Government on how to handle the coronavirus crisis are furious that their criticisms have been left out of published meeting papers.

Experts working with SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said they were furious and 'bemused' that parts of the papers were blacked out when they went public.

The bits left out had been critical of the Government, they said, and had been hidden in a 'Stalinist' and 'bloody silly' attempt to stop officials from looking bad.

Members of SPI-B - the Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours - aired their grievances anonymously to The Guardian.

It comes after SAGE made the unprecedented step this week of publishing some of its work and the names of its members before the pandemic has ended.

Some parts of the documents had been blacked out but others set out some of the advice politicians have been given since the COVID-19 crisis began.

They showed that at least 12 different strains for the virus were thought to be circulating in the UK in March; that scientists believe China was hit considerably harder than its government has let on; and that officials were warned that any 'immunity certificate' programme could lead people to infect themselves deliberately so they could return to work.

Some of the SAGE documents released this week included heavily redacted pages, including one on how to relax lockdown measures

One member of SPI-B, Professor Stephen Reicher, said he had been 'bemused' by the Government's decision to redact parts of the SAGE files.

Professor Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said in a tweet: 'Personally, I am more bemused than furious.

'The greatest asset we have in this crisis is the trust and adherence of the public. You want trust? You need to be open with people.

'This isn't open. It is reminiscent of Stalinist Russia. Not a good look.'

Professor Stephen Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and a member of SPI-B, said in a tweet: 'Personally, I am more bemused than furious'

SAGE ADVISER SAYS GOVERNMENT HARDLINE ON CORONAVIRUS 'TERRORISED THE PUBLIC' Boris Johnson's hardline coronavirus lockdown message has 'effectively terrorised' the UK population into believing they will die if they catch coronavirus, one of the government's experts has said. Professor Robert Dingwall suggested Britain had 'completely lost sight' of the true nature of the disease because 'mostly it isn't' killing people. His comments illustrate the potential problems facing the Prime Minister as he prepares to set out his lockdown exit plan in an address to the nation on Sunday night. Polling published yesterday showed almost two thirds of the population are worried about the effects of lifting the draconian curbs too early. Some experts are concerned that so-called 'coronaphobia' could prove a major barrier to getting the nation back up and running. Professor Dingwall, from Nottingham University, sits on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), which feeds into the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). He told The Telegraph: 'We have this very strong message which has effectively terrorised the population into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you. And mostly it isn't. 'Eighty per cent of the people who get this infection will never need to go near a hospital. The ones who do go to hospital because they are quite seriously ill most of them will come out alive - even those who go into intensive care.' Professor Dingwall said the UK had 'completely lost sight of that' because of an 'obsession' with the death toll and international comparisons. Advertisement

Officials decided to publish the SAGE papers after coming under pressure to be more transparent about their regular claims of being 'guided by the science'.

But the decision to blank out parts of the files has produced new accusations of secrecy from the very people who were crucial to making the documents.

SPI-B is an independent group which provides advice to the Government without being paid for it and members are now concerned this move - deciding to hide their criticisms - puts its reputation as unbiased experts at risk.

One member told the Guardian: 'We weren't given any advance notice and we still haven't been given a satisfactory explanation.

'This government has failed to show any self-criticism whatsoever, when it is glaringly obvious to everybody that big mistakes have been made.

'If you want the trust of the population you hold up your hand and you say "we've made these mistakes, this is why they happened, we regret it, we're learning from it".

'Rather than just keep saying "we've done the most fantastic job" and not being open to criticism in any way.'

The SPI-B members said their response to lockdown measures proposed by the Government was among the redacted text.

They had said that stricter movement restrictions and more heavy-handed punishments might put people off following lockdown rules, which they might otherwise feel was easier because of 'a sense of community cooperation'.

Another member told the newspaper: 'What is recorded in the redacted document is us criticising those proposals. They were just not particularly well thought out.

'Here we were being independent, and you can't see it'.

The Government Office for Science, which represents Whitehall's advisers, said: 'The only redactions relate to comments made by a Sage subgroup where specific reference is made to policy still under consideration or to remove contact.'

The secret SAGE files the government DOESN'T want you to see: Advice on wearing masks, stopping flights from specific countries and the impact of school closures among documents STILL not revealed - with mysterious passages missing from others

A huge swathe of coronavirus documents used by the Government to battle to pandemic have yet to be published to avoid 'unnecessary confusion' of the public, the Government claimed today.

Some 16 documents from Special Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) meetings since February were released on Tuesday, May 5, taking the total to 28.

But according to a Government-supplied list it leaves more than 90 that remain secret.

They include advise for ministers on stopping flights from certain countries, on when to stop contact tracing, and another on the impact of school closures.

The list also includes unpublished documents on the use of face masks, the risk of pets passing on the virus, and advice on restricting flights from specific countries.

These are all highly contentious issues as the death toll mounts and the Government seeks a way out of the current lockdown.

Additionally, some of the documents released this week included heavily redacted pages, including one on how to relax lockdown measures.

But according to a Government-supplied list more than 90 that remain secret after 16 were revealed today

Other secret documents of scientific evidence that helped shape the Government's response to the crisis were released today. They revealed:

Ministers were warned lifting the coronavirus lockdown and then reimposing restrictions later would be seen by the public as a 'serious failure of policy';

A traffic light system could be used to explain to the public the new rules when lockdown is eased, according to behavioural experts;

Scientists urged the government to tell people to stop shaking hands the same day Boris Johnson was boasting about shaking hands with 'everybody';

Officials were told employers could shun workers who have not had COVID-19 after lockdown, prompting people to actively try to catch the disease.

The issue of school closures was raised at the daily coronavirus press conference tonight with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab saying reopening all schools at once would lead to a 'very real risk' of the infection rate rising, creating the possibility of a second peak.

'The crucial bit for us is the five tests and the risk of a second spike in relation to any new changes that we would make and that must of course included schools,' he said.

'We have asked Sage to look at different options, I don't think it's binary.

'At least to date the evidence has been that we wouldn't be able to open up all schools without a very real risk that the R rate - the transmission rate - would rise at such a level that we would risk a second spike.

'We have asked Sage for the options on this and we will, as ever, continue to be guided by the scientific advice we get.'

The Prime Minister's official spokesman told reporters today: 'We will publish all of the evidence in the coming weeks and months.

'Some evidence remains under live considerations for policy decisions being made by Government and as such it wouldn't be appropriate to publish at this time.

'Releasing policy still under formulation could cause unnecessary confusion for the public at a time when clear guidance is the top priority

'Other documents that have been considered will be published in organised tranches once they have all the relevant permissions and are OK to be in the public domain.'

The SAGE files: At least 12 different strains of coronavirus were circulating in the UK in March - including one that has only ever been found in Britain, Government-funded study finds At least a dozen different strains of coronavirus were spreading through the UK in March, a Government-funded study has found. Leading genetic scientists analysed the genomes of the killer virus in 260 infected patients from all corners of the UK. They say they have identified 12 unique lines of the virus, one of which has only ever been found in Britain  meaning it mutated on UK soil. But the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) said the number of strains is very likely substantially higher due to under-sampling in the UK. The scientists say most of the strains were imported from Italy and Spain, the worst-hit countries in the world at the time the research was carried out. There is no suggestion that any of the strains are any more potent or infectious than another, infectious disease experts say. Professor Paul Hunter, at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline it is 'entirely plausible' this could happen to one of the strains if it continues to evolve. The report, made public today, was given to the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in March to help them map the outbreak's spread. Advertisement

The Sage Files: UK scientists believe that coronavirus cases in China are TEN TIMES higher than claimed - as communist state's ambassador warns Tory MPs their criticism of the Beijing regime could 'poison' relations

China underplayed the scale of the coronavirus outbreak and may have suffered ten times as many cases as it has confirmed, documents released today suggest.

Documents released today from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) show that UK scientists believed that the number of cases was vastly higher than admitted by Beijing.

They do not accuse the authoritarian regime of lying but the revelation in Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) minutes released today will fuel claims that China has questions to answer over its handling of the outbreak.

It also suggests that deaths from the outbreak in China could be many times higher than the 4,300 so far admitted to.

In the US, President Donald Trump is blaming China for covering-up the lethality of coronavirus and colluding with the WHO to let it spread around the world while Beijing saved face.

Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also say they have seen 'overwhelming' evidence that the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab near Wuhan.

A raft of documents from Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meetings over the past few months on coronavirus were released today.

Chinese ambassador in the UK Lui Xiaoming warned Tory MPs critical of his regime that ongoing animosity could 'poison' Sino-British relations

It came as the Chinese ambassador in the UK Lui Xiaoming warned Tory MPs critical of his regime that their ongoing animosity could 'poison' Sino-British relations.

Speaking in a China-Britain Business Council webinar today, he said: 'Such talks are a political virus.

'If they go unchecked they'll poison UK-China relations and even international solidarity.'

He insisted that the outbreak in his country was 'under control'.

Afterwards the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'We have continued to work with all of our international partners including China on the global response to this pandemic.

'The First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab) has also talked about the fact that once this response is over there are questions that need to be answered about the origin and the spread of the virus.'

A raft of documents from Sage meetings over the past few months on coronavirus were released today.

They included a statement from a sub-committee on modelling contagious disease outbreaks on February 3.

The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace yesterday reignited the war of words over whether China suppressed information about the virus

It noted: 'The number of confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV in China is estimated to be at least 10 times higher than the number currently confirmed.'

Downing Street has said China has 'questions to answer' over the outbreak and many Try MPs have voiced their own anger.

The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace yesterday reignited the war of words over whether China suppressed information about the virus - whose first cases were reported in Wuhan - which prevented other countries from taking steps to save more lives.

It came as Donald Trump's US administration scaled up its rhetoric over Chinese culpability, with the president accusing the communist state of a cover-up after making a 'horrible mistake'.

The SAGE files: Government science experts warned ministers 'immunity certificates' mean firms could discriminate against those who haven't had coronavirus - and desperate workers could TRY to get infected

Employers could shun workers who have not had coronavirus after lockdown, prompting people to actively try to catch the disease, the government's science experts warned ministers.

Secret documents prepared by the independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) last month outlined the potential drawbacks of introducing widespread antibody testing and so-called 'immunity certificates'.

Such tests would show if someone has had the disease and if they have some degree of immunity with accompanying digital certificates then showing employers the health status of staff.

Antibody tests are viewed as one of the key pieces in the puzzle when it comes to getting the UK back to work.

But SPI-B, a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said introducing the tests could result in people trying to 'game' the system.

The documents suggest workers who do not have antibodies could be discriminated against, effectively creating two classes of employee, with those who have had the disease prized because of a belief that they will not get ill again.

Those who are antibody negative could then turn to trying to obtain fake test results or even trying to get ill on purpose to boost their chances of returning to work.

Meanwhile, the documents also warned positive tests could result in people wrongly thinking they no longer need to wash their hands, risking an increase in the transmission of the disease.

Those who are antibody negative could also be too afraid to leave home and could refuse to return to work, the group said.

The warnings about antibody testing came as separate documents showed scientists were urging Boris Johnson to tell people to stop shaking hands on the same day that he boasted he was still shaking hands with 'everybody'.

Newly-released records on the advice given to the government as the coronavirus crisis erupted show Mr Johnson seemingly flouted the recommendations from his own experts.

A meeting of the behavioural group that feeds into SAGE on March 3 concluded that 'Government should advise against greetings such as shaking hands and hugging, given existing evidence about the importance of hand hygiene'.

Boris Johnson, pictured in St James' Park this morning, was warned by the government's science experts that antibody testing and 'immunity certificates' could have unintended negative consequences

Mr Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock have relied heavily on advice from Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance during the crisis. The four are pictured in Downing Street on March 12

Scientists advised against shaking hands on same day Boris Johnson said he was still shaking hands with 'everybody' Scientists were urging Boris Johnson to tell people to stop shaking hands the same day the PM was boasting about shaking hands with 'everybody', it was revealed today. Newly-released records on the advice given to the government as the coronavirus crisis erupted show Mr Johnson seemingly flouted the recommendations from his own experts. A meeting of the behavioural group that feeds into SAGE on March 3 concluded that 'Government should advise against greetings such as shaking hands and hugging, given existing evidence about the importance of hand hygiene'. 'A public message against shaking hands has additional value as a signal about the importance of hand hygiene,' the Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) said. 'Promoting a replacement greeting or encouraging others to politely decline a proffered hand-shake may have benefit.' However, that evening Mr Johnson told a press conference in Downing Street that he 'continued to shake hands' and the important thing was washing them. He said: 'I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands. 'People obviously can make up their own minds but I think the scientific evidence is our judgement is that washing your hands is the crucial thing.' Advertisement

A mass-produced antibody test which is accurate enough to be rolled out at a national level is yet to be identified by any country in the world.

But the UK government is hoping for a breakthrough in the near future with the tests viewed as one of the keys to getting Britain back to work.

Ministers are in talks with tech firms about developing an 'immunity certificate' app which would show if someone has been tested and if they have coronavirus antibodies.

The SPI-B committee was tasked with examining the potential negative outcomes of introducing antibody testing.

Documents written on April 13 and finally published today show such a regime could have devastating unintended consequences.

The experts warned that 'some employers may discriminate on the basis of antibody status'.

That could include not allowing people who have tested negative to return to work or only hiring people who are antibody positive.

The group said that could prompt people to try to cheat the system or to try to catch coronavirus.

The experts wrote: 'If a test result is a requirement for a resumption of work, a range of strategies to "game" the system may arise.

'These include people deliberately seeking out infection or attempting to purchase a fake test result, commercial organisations selling unapproved tests, or approved tests becoming available through private organisations at prices that make them unavailable to most.'

Meanwhile, those workers who have not had coronavirus could be too afraid to go outside, reducing their social contact to unhealthy levels, and some could simply refuse to return to work.

The group said: 'It is possible that people told they have not yet had the virus may feel more vulnerable and wish to avoid specific activities at work that pose a risk to their health, or seek to avoid attendance at work entirely.'

The group also expressed major concerns that positive tests could drastically alter people's behaviour.

Those who have tested positive for antibodies may wrongly 'believe they have no chance of becoming infected with COVID-19 in the future'.

That means that if they developed the key symptoms of a cough or fever they may not think they need to self-isolate, increasing the risk of infecting others.

Experts: More than 12 coronavirus strains were spreading across UK in March At least a dozen different strains of coronavirus were spreading through the UK in March, a Government-funded study has found. Leading genetic scientists analysed the genomes of the killer virus in 260 infected patients from all corners of the UK. They say they have identified 12 unique lines of the virus, one of which has only ever been found in Britain  meaning it mutated on UK soil. But the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) said the number of strains is very likely substantially higher due to under-sampling in the UK. The scientists say most of the strains were imported from Italy and Spain, the worst-hit countries in the world at the time the research was carried out. There is no suggestion that any of the strains are any more potent or infectious than another, infectious disease experts say. Advertisement

People who test positive could also stop washing their hands, the scientists said, which would also boost transmission.

Scientists are yet to determine with 100 per cent certainty whether people who have had coronavirus have a high level of resistance to the disease. They are also trying to establish whether that immunity could wane over time. But total immunity has already been ruled out.

The SPI-B group also raised concerns about the accuracy of the tests and the potential for people to be given a false sense of protection.

For example, if five per cent of tests were actually incorrect then thousands of workers could wrongly believe they are safe from the disease.

This would have particularly bad consequences if people with positive antibody tests decided to volunteer for high coronavirus exposure jobs, the group said.

'Some testing Antibody Positive may actively volunteer to take on activities at work with high exposure to COVID-19,' the experts said.

'This might include customer-facing roles or tasks within health or social care that involve greater contact with COVID-19 patients.

'This would be particularly problematic if the test result was incorrect.'
BALTIMORE  As the coronavirus rampaged across the U.S. economy, it slashed a cruel path of job losses, reduced hours and hardships for Americas most vulnerable workers.

The 20.5 million jobs lost in April fell disproportionately on African Americans, Latinos, low-wage workers and people with no college education. Fridays jobs report from the government  the worst on record  exposed the deep seams of inequality within the worlds wealthiest nation and the threat they pose to an eventual economic recovery.

The paradox is that if the economy is to fully bounce back, those same workers will need to be restored to jobs at restaurants, hotels, offices, factories, warehouses, medical facilities and construction sites. The flow of commerce hinges on their ability to deliver packages, cook meals, run clinics, provide public transportation and clean and maintain buildings. And their income, though typically low, supports the consumer spending that fuels most U.S. economic activity.

This represents a huge loss for the productive capacity of the economy, said Stephanie Aaronson, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. The economy is smaller and grows much less quickly when these workers are isolated from employment.

African Americans are more likely to die from the virus. Latinos and non-college graduates are heavily concentrated in low-wage occupations, including jobs that have helped keep the nation fed and safe during the pandemic. Those groups were also among the first to lose their jobs as the economy crashed at a speed unrivaled in modern American history.

For April, while the overall U.S. unemployment reached 14.7%, the rate for African Americans was 16.7%. For Latinos, it was an all-time high of 18.9%. For workers with only a high school diploma, a record 17.3%. For immigrants, 16.5%.

By contrast, the unemployment rate for white Americans was 14.2%. And just 8.4% of college graduates  who often enjoy the flexibility to work from home  were unemployed.

Latinos likely suffered disproportionately from the layoffs because they are more likely to work in the leisure and hospitality sectors  at hotels, restaurants and bars  where job cuts have been especially brutal, noted Gbenga Ajilore, an economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

This shows that when the economy recovers, we have to be intentional about tackling the structural barriers that limit the employment outcomes of these groups, Ajilore said.

The vast magnitude of the layoffs has laid bare the inequalities that endured long before the viral outbreak.

President Donald Trump frequently highlighted the job gains achieved by minorities during his first three years in office, pointing to them as evidence that his administration was bridging the nations wealth gap. But the pandemic has shown that the 11-year expansion did not provide much financial cushion to these workers, many of whom are now struggling to buy food and pay their housing bills.

Among them is Erika Romero, a native of El Salvador who abruptly lost her job last month as a janitor at the Postal Square Building in Washington. Romero was left without health insurance or the ability to pay most of the monthly mortgage on the Maryland home she shares with her husband, their two daughters, her adult son and both sets of grandparents.

Her husband had his daytime job reduced to three days a week, and his overnight cleaning job was cut. She has received one unemployment check so far, not nearly enough to support her substantial family.

Where am I going to look for work in this epidemic? said Romero, who lives in the United States on a temporary protected status after an earthquake struck El Salvador. Its just unfair.

More than 100 members of Romeros union have died of the coronavirus, and 20,000 others have lost jobs, according to the local Service Employees International Union, which represents 175,000 janitors, security guards, doormen and other property service workers. Many lack legal status in the United States, said Jaime Contreras, vice president of the local union.

Those workers cant apply for unemployment, he said. They dont get the stimulus money. They are left in the dark. To me, that is a huge mistake because this pandemic knows no legal status.

Seven of the countrys top cleaning companies are pushing Congress for payroll protection in the form of grants and tax credits. They warn that it could take weeks or months to rebuild their workforce at the very time when demand for professional cleaning could surge as schools, stadiums, gyms and other public spaces re-open.

The last thing we want to do is have to rebuild the skilled network back up just as we get more demand, said Josh Feinberg, chief strategy officer for ABM Industries, a contract cleaning company.

Many minorities who work in the construction sector and restaurant industry, for example, have developed specialized skill sets. Last month, construction companies cut a stunning 975,000 workers, a record monthly loss.

At the same time, retailers cut 2.1 million jobs. Administration and waste services dropped 1.5 million. Restaurants and bars shed an unprecedented 5.5 million jobs.

Alex Tellez was working as a bartender and server at a Chicago steakhouse when he was told by a manager in mid-March to file for unemployment aid. Born in Mexico, Tellez had steadily moved up in the restaurant industry over 23 years, earning up to $60,000 year to support his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 5. But now he has fallen several thousand dollars into credit card debt to support his immediate and extended family.

Tellez, 43, is considering a career change. He doesnt see how the restaurant industry can survive a future with social distancing rules and precautions in place indefinitely.

As a bartender, I cant serve you unless youre one or two feet away from me, he said. It breaks my heart that I might have to leave. I love being in the industry. Its a passion of mine.



Olson and Anderson reported from New York.
As the coronavirus pandemic spread across New Jersey in mid-March, a young patient arrived in a Bergen County emergency room with a different set of concerns.

Septic shock. Low blood pressure. Signs of cardiac failure.

A coronavirus test came back negative.

But more than six weeks later, doctors at Hackensack University Medical Center say this case, originally diagnosed as pneumonia, was possibly the first patient with a rare inflammatory illness in children being linked to the coronavirus.

In this case, there were a ton of things that werent on our radar screen at the time relating to COVID, Dr. Aryeh Baer, an infectious disease specialist at Hackensack University Medical Center, told NJ Advance Media on Thursday. When he tested negative, we didnt think much of it from a COVID point of view.

"Looking back on that now, we were wrong about passing it off because there was a link after all.

Doctors and health officials have identified at least 12 children  five at Hackensack, five at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and two at St. Josephs Hospital in Paterson  who have been or are being treated for a syndrome that resembles Kawasaki disease, an illness that causes inflammation in blood vessels.

The majority of the patients, who range between the ages of 3 and 13, have recovered and none have died. All five who were treated at Hackensack have been discharged. Three of the five at Rutgers RWJ remain in intensive care and one of the two at St. Josephs remains hospitalized.

Its really not a common thing yet and hopefully wont be," Baer said. "Well see what happens. Whats important is that parents keep an eye out. They need to keep an eye out that their child may be sicker from this than a typical viral illness.

The New Jersey Department of Health first acknowledged cases on Wednesday. More than 60 patients have been diagnosed in New York state, after European health officials warned doctors to look out for it.

During Gov. Phil Murphys media briefing on Thursday, Dr. Edward Lifshitz urged hospitals and health care workers to be aware of Kawasaki-like cases relating to the coronavirus. However, the state Department of Healths medical director stressed the disease is rare.

This is not something that Im terribly concerned about, Lifshitz said. We do not know exactly how often it occurs, but certainly its rare. So certainly this isnt something thats going to have a large impact on the kids that are out there, but we do want clinicians to be aware because its certainly something that can happen or appears possible to be something that needs to be reacted on quickly if it does happen.

In New Jersey, there have been no coronavirus deaths in people younger than 18. Only 2% of the states 133,635 positive tests have been pediatric cases, Lifshitz said.

The patients at Rutgers RWJ had carditis  inflammation of the heart  and cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that hinders its ability to pump blood. Cardiac failure makes the illness potentially deadly if untreated, according to Dr. Jennifer Owensby, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Rutgers RWJ.

Kawasaki disease symptoms include conjunctivitis, a fever that lasts at least five days, a very specific rash and a strawberry tongue, according to Owensby. Her patients in New Brunswick have showed several symptoms, but not all that are required to be diagnosed with Kawasaki, a disease usually found in kids younger than 5.

She suspects the coronavirus is causing a post-infection syndrome that is quite similar to Kawasaki disease. The first case in her unit arrived at the end of April. All five cases tested positive for the coronavirus.

What happens is they get COVID. They may or not have symptoms, but this develops later with the inflammation of the immune system," Owensby said. It usually is seen later after an infection, so I think thats why were seeing it later.

However, not all of the patients at Hackensack University Medical Center tested positive for the coronavirus.

Its unclear how the inflammatory disease relates to the virus. Lifshitz said the health department is seeking guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and gathering more information from health commissioners to get a better understanding.

Baer said while not all five patients who were treated at Hackensack tested positive for the coronavirus, the inflammatory syndrome was likely a post-infectious manifestation" that could have developed even if the patients were asymptomatic.

The virus may not have severely impacted the children, "but its an immune response that causes collateral damage to different systems of the body and the sepsis syndrome were seeing, Baer said.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Patrick Lanni may be reached at planni@njadvancemedia.com.
The Border Security Force (BSF) said on Friday that 30 more of its personnel have contracted the coronavirus disease Covid-19. Out of these, 24 are from Tripura and six from Delhi.

In a statement, the BSF said, All of them are under the best available medical care at AIIMS (Jhajjar) and at G B Pant Hospital (Agartala).

It also said that after surfacing of these cases, frequencies of sanitisation efforts of work places and barracks have been increased. Improvised methods like water cannons are used for quick disinfection of buildings and establishments. BSF personnel are repeatedly sensitized to firmly adhere to preventive protocols, the statement said.

Talking about the fresh cases in Tripura, Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb said that all of them were reported in the 86th battalion headquarters of the BSF located at Ambassa in Dhalai district.

ALERT 24 persons from 86th-Bn BSF Ambassa found COVID-19 POSITIVE. Total COVID-19 patients in Tripura now stands: 88 total cases, active cases: 86, discharged: 02. There is no POSITIVE case among civilians. Stay Safe, he tweeted.

 ALERT 



24 persons from 86th-Bn #BSF Ambassa found #COVID19 POSITIVE today



Total #COVID19 patients in Tripura now stands: 88



Active cases: 86

Discharged: 02



There is no POSITIVE case among civilians.



Stay Safe.



 Updated at 10.30 pm / May 7#TripuraCovid19Count  Biplab Kumar Deb (@BjpBiplab) May 7, 2020

22 Covid-19 positive cases reported from 138 battalion BSF Ambassa including a lady and three children. Samples of all 298 BSF personnel in 138 battalions have been collected and tested. In the same campus, 86 battalion of BSF is also located. At present, 673 samples of BSF are under screening from both these battalions at the Ambassa and other camps, said S K Rakesh, Assistant CS of Tripura.

He said 30 persons including doctors, nurses and paramedics are being specially trained for dealing with Covid-19.

Two BSF personnel had succumbed to Covid-19 on Thursday. A Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawan deployed at Mumbai airport also died due to the disease, taking the total Covid-19 cases in central paramilitary forces to over 500.

These were first casualties due to the pandemic in BSF and CISF, which guard several airports and the Delhi Metro.

Till Wednesday, the tally of Covid-19 cases in the paramilitary forces was around 400, according to government data.
The former director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has given the House 10 plain truths about the coronavirus pandemic during a House Appropriations Committee hearing.

Dr Tom Frieden, speaking to the committee, characterised the coronavirus as scary and unprecedented, confessing that in his 30 year career in public health, hed never seen anything like this.

Responding to the growing number of conspiracy theories surrounding the nature of the virus, ranging from it being a creation of a Chinese lab to a recently released video of a discredited doctor claiming the coronavirus is just a bad strain of flu from the mid-aughts, Mr Frieden laid out 10 things he says are undeniably true about the virus.

1. New York City has been ravaged by the virus

New York City is the US epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. Researchers suggest a European-strain of the coronavirus has been spreading in the city since at least February. There have already been 173,288 confirmed cases with 43,676 deaths in the city.

Mr Frieden said that despite there being a significant decrease in the death rate, there are still twice the number of deaths in New York City from the coronavirus than from any other causes combined.

2. Were still in the early stages

More than 33m Americans have filed for unemployment, prompting rent strikes and long lines at food banks. At the same time, far-right groups have mobilised aggressive protests demanding states reopen their economies and lessen social distancing guidelines.

Despite this, Mr Frieden told the House that the US is still in the early stages of the viruss spread.

As bad as this has been so far, were just at the beginning, he said. The bottom line is that our war against Covid-19 will be long and difficult.

3. Information is key to beating the virus

Mr Frieden said data collecting is necessary to give researchers and health experts the information they need to prevent clusters of infection from worsening into full blown outbreaks. By identifying clusters of infection, health experts can then try to cut off further transmission.

We need clear goals and a clear understanding of what success looks like, so everyone is focused and working off the same plan, Mr Frieden said.

4. Cutting off the virus is essential, which means more social distancing

Sheltering in place is a blunt but effective weapon; it suppresses spread of the virus but inflicts severe hardship on individuals and the economy, Mr Frieden said. To shorten the time of sheltering and to reduce the risk we will have to retreat again into our homes, we need to deploy all of the effective weapons in our arsenal.

As states like Florida and Georgia begin to reopen and states across the nation prepare for limited re-openings, Mr Frieden emphasised the need to continue the practices meant to prevent mass spread of the virus, even after the curve begins to flatten.

In what he dubbed the Box it in strategy, Mr Frieden suggested four tactics for isolating and defeating the virus; aggressive testing, the isolation of infected individuals, contact tracing and two week quarantines for people who have had contact with infected people.

5. A balance between public and economic health has to be maintained

Mr Frieden said that protecting the public and protecting the economy are not mutually exclusive goals. Health researchers recommend that the US conduct 3.5m coronavirus tests per week before choosing to reopen the economy. That level of testing would allow health professionals to track and respond to clusters. Currently, the US is testing 1.6m people per week. That is an increase over the USs testing efforts in the early days of the virus, but still far from what is necessary to safely reopen the country.

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The new normal will require redesigning processes  how we do things  as well as redesigning our physical environment, he said. This is the design and engineering challenge for our society, and Im excited to learn about innovations that will keep us safer.

6. Frontline and essential workers need continued protection

Mr Frieden called for the protection of healthcare workers and other essential staff  the frontline heroes of this war during the hearing.

Several lawmakers, including Senator Mitt Romney and Congressman Tim Ryan, have proposed plans for hazard pay intended to directly benefit front-line healthcare workers and essential service workers.

They shouldnt have to put their lives at risk to care for us, Mr Frieden said.

In a positive development, New York governor Andrew Cuomo reported that healthcare workers in New York were not becoming sick at higher rates than the public.

7. At-risk people need more protection

Mr Frieden warned that urgent action was necessary to protect the elderly and other vulnerable populations as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the US.

Nursing homes and other vulnerable congregate settings house approximately 4 million people in the United States, he said. Unless we take urgent action, at least 100,000 residents of Americas nursing homes will die in the next year, and there could potentially be hundreds of thousands of deaths in all congregate facilities, including among those who work in these locations.

Elderly care facilities in Sweden  where the government decided to remain open and issued advisories for people to practice social distancing  have seen substantial death due to the coronavirus.

He also noted that the communities of people of colour  especially African American, Native American and Hispanic individuals  were in need of more protection after suffering disproportionately from the virus.

8. The private and public sector must partner to make vaccines and treatments

The former CDC director called on the government and on private companies to pull their resources and develop a vaccine for the virus, specifying that they should be available quickly and fairly to everyone in the world.

As is currently being done, governments and private companies must join forces to make massive, continued investments in testing and distribute a vaccine as soon as possible, ensuring rapid and equitable access in this country and around the world, he said. Nothing else will enable life to get back to a pre-Covid normalcy.

Two drugs  a treatment drug developed by Gilead called remdesivir and a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed at Oxford University  are the most notable pharmaceutical developments in the fight against coronavirus.

9. People have to take their non-coronavirus health issues seriously

Mr Frieden noted that underlying health conditions significantly increase the risk of severe illness or death in Covid-19 patients, and called for people to take steps towards improving their personal health  like getting more exercise or stopping smoking. He also called for the preservation of normal healthcare meetings.

We need to preserve health care services despite the pandemic. We must take steps to avoid people postponing care for strokes and heart attacks, delaying cancer diagnosis, or deferring essential preventive care because of fear of Covid-19, he said.

10. We can never again be so unprepared

He concluded his meeting with the committee by calling on the countrys leaders to never again allow such an unprepared response to a global health threat. Mr Frieden said that though future outbreaks are inevitable, the impotent response to the pandemic is not.

Part of that preparation, he argued, was sustainable funding for health organisations and agencies within the US government, including the CDC. He proposed a Health Defence Operations budget designation that would put fewer bureaucratic hurdles in the way of health organisations seeking appropriations from the budget.

You have a unique opportunity to protect Americans from future pandemics. If you take strategic action now, you can protect our country from another inevitable microbial sneak attack, Mr Frieden said. If we as a society fail to do this, we will remain unprepared both domestically and abroad, shortchanging our health and economic security and costing American lives.
Hyderabad, May 8 : Despite being exempted from lockdown, the bulk drug manufacturers in Telangana are operating at only 50 per cent of their capacity, struggling to meet the demand for critical drugs including anti-viral drugs for treating COVID-19 patients in sufficient quantities.

Ever since the lockdown began in March, the bulk drug manufacturers in Hyderabad and surrounding districts have not been able to operate their units at full capacity to meet the domestic and global demand.

The pharma companies rue lack of proper coordination among police in four commissionerates which cover these districts. The frequent checking of the buses carrying their employees and the seizure of the vehicles carrying the materials are hampering their efforts to operate at full capacity to ensure proper supply of essential drugs during the lockdown period.

"We are operating our units at 50 per cent of the capacity due to problems for movement of our employees and materials, P. Eshwar Reddy, executive director, Bulk Drug Manufacturers' Association (BDMA) told IANS.

"Most of the time police stop our buses and trucks despite showing them the passes. There is not much coordination among the police in four commissionerates. Police personnel in one commissionerate say the pass issued by the other commissionerate is not valid. I can't take passes from all four commissionerates," he said.

The operations are also affected due to interruptions in the movement of vehicles carrying the material.

"Our raw materials and various chemicals have to come from outside. The transport movement is not smooth. There are various issues with regard to availability of vehicles, labour and checkposts formed for enforcing the lockdown." Accounting for 40 per cent of the total bulk drug production in India, Telangana is known as the bulk drug capital of India.

The bulk drug and pharmaceutical production mainly takes place in Hyderabad and surrounding districts of Rangareddy, Medchal, and Sangareddy.

Officials said during the lockdown the companies successfully supplied azithromycin and other anti-viral drugs used for treating COVID-19 patients in sufficient quantities.

The Telangana State Pollution Control Board also recently gave its consent to pharma companies to establish and operate industries to produce life-saving drugs such as Hydroxychloroquine or its intermediates, to check the Covid-19 outbreak.

Some existing bulk drug/drug intermediate manufacturing industries are coming forward to manufacture Hydroxychloroquine and other life saving bulk drugs or their intermediates to meet the global demand.

Hyderabad and surrounding districts form the largest pharmaceutical hub with more than 800 life sciences companies employing about 1.20 lakh people.

Facing a totally new situation, the companies are taking all precautions like health of the employees, hygiene and social distancing while continuing the production.

Leading vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech, for instance, had to deploy additional buses for their employees.

"A bus with 40-50 seating capacity is today carrying only 20 people because of the social distancing guidelines issued by the authorities. We are following all the guidelines," said Suchitra Ella, Joint Managing Director, Bharat Biotech.

As the company is located in Genome Valley, the employees have to travel 80-100 km every day.

She said the company had to divide all its employees into three shifts to continue the operations. "Ours is a continuous process operation. All our freezers work at -20 to -70 degrees. Certain systems in production technical block can't be turned off. They have to run 24X7," explained Suchitra.

The vaccine maker is ensuring supplies of vaccines including polio and rabies vaccines to the government of India and the state government.

The bulk drug companies are also trying to maintain the supplies for exports. On Wednesday, a commercial B777 Passenger to Cargo (P to C) flight of Aeroflot Airlines of Russia with about 50 tonnes of medicines and vaccines took off for Moscow from Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.

(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contacted at m.shafeeq@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
ROME (AP)  Pope Francis has long lamented that he can't walk around town unnoticed like he used to before becoming pope. But he seems to have nevertheless kept his sense of humor after he was caught on camera making an unannounced visit to a Rome record shop this week.
Representative image

The number of COVID-19 positive cases crossed 56,000 on May 8, with nearly 1,900 deaths across the country. Maharashtra, with nearly 19,000 COVID-19 cases, continues to report the highest number of infections, followed by Gujarat (7,012) and Delhi (5,980).

Globally, over 3.75 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 259,474 deaths, have been reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Here are the top developments of the day:

>> Seventeen migrant labourers died in an accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, when a goods train ran over them as they lay sleeping near the track on the Aurangabad-Jalna railway line.

>> Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, in a press briefing this evening, dismissed all rumours of Mumbai coming under military rule. He also condoled the death of the 17 labourers in the Aurangabad train accident.

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

>> After going back and forth with regard to its policy regarding wage cuts for the month of April, IndiGo has finally announced pay cuts for its employees under a 'limited, graded leave-without-pay program for the months of May, June and July.

>> Unemployment in the US hit 14.7 percent, the highest rate since the Great Depression, as the country shed 20 million jobs in April alone as a result of the viral outbreak.

>>The number of COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra has reached 19,063, with 1,089 more people testing positive today. 37 people lost their lives due to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 731.

748 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Mumbai today, taking the total number of cases in the financial capital to 11,967.

>> All university students in Maharashtra, except those in the final year, will be promoted to the next class without examination due to COVID-19 lockdown. The final year examinations will be held in July, state Education Minister Uday Samant said.

>> The Delhi High Court today asked the Centre and the AAP government to respond to a PIL seeking directions to them to provide free laptops, tablets or mobile phones to poor kids so that they can access classes online during the COVID-19 lockdown.

>> The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will conduct the class 10 and class 12 board exams, which were postponed due to the coronavirus lockdown, from July 1 to July 15, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' said.

>> The Madras High Court has ordered the closure of all state-run TASMAC liquor shops in Tamil Nadu, allowing for sale of liquor only via online and door delivery modes until the end of the lockdown.
Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill has said she wants no regrets over how the Executive is protecting care home residents from Covid-19.

Speaking at the daily Executive briefing, Mrs O'Neill said she understood why many would be "up to the ceiling" with worry for their loved ones in care homes.

It follows news that the Public Health Agency is investigating confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19 in 110 care homes here.

"If you're someone out there who has a loved one in a care home right now and you read the reports every day... it's only natural and normal that you will be up to the ceiling," Mrs O'Neill said.

"You would be absolutely so anxious about what's happening to your loved one. Especially given the fact that you haven't been able to get in to see them for such a long period of time. For some people it's over two months.

"I think there's a varying pattern in terms of nursing homes. There's some nursing homes that are completely free, there's some care homes that have seriously concerning numbers and need a considerable effort put in there.

"I don't want to have regrets on the other side of this. We want to know that every day we're asking the right questions and steering things in the right direction. It's more than words just to say we need to look after our vulnerable, we need to do everything that we need to do."

The Sinn Fein vice president welcomed extra resources being made available for care homes, and that NHS staff are providing assistance.

"If we have to keep doing more then that's what we have to do," she said. "We're in this pandemic together and we need to work our way through it together."

First Minister Arlene Foster agreed with comments from the Health Minister earlier this week, who described care homes as the new battleground of the pandemic.

"We must put every bit of energy, effort and resource into making sure that we give every bit of support that we can to our nursing homes at this time," she said. "We have to have our preventative measures in place. So what does our new normal look like, what are the social distancing measures that we're going to have to adhere to?"

She said further information will be communicated in the coming days after the Executive has more time to finalise a roadmap plan for recovery in Northern Ireland.

"Those people in our care and nursing homes are our most precious and vulnerable people and we need to do all that we can," she added.

Mrs Foster also said that the Health Minister confirmed 70 dental students are providing help in care homes, and a pilot scheme for care home staff living on site full-time was being considered.
Winters first frost reminds me that each night 105,237 Australians are homeless, some 28,000-odd in Sydney. At the same time, another multi-billion-dollar Sydney development on public land is nearing approval with not a single subsidised dwelling on offer. Not one.

An artist's impression of the proposed Central Place project in Sydney. Credit:

Central Place Sydney is a $2.5 billion development on the Lee Street side of Central Station reportedly "poised to gain final stage approval". Stage one of a development bigger than Barangaroo, these towers by Frasers and Dexus will offer about 150,000sqm of office space. On. Public. Land.

Towers are fine. If theres any proper place for them, the middle of Australias oldest and most populous city is it. But the middle, near transport and services, is also the place for our poorest citizens. Thats obvious. So we should not bestow these development rights  on any land but especially on public land  without getting something back, especially social housing.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning, or MIZ, requires a percentage (usually between 10 and 30 per cent) of all new residential development to be affordable. Its practised in dozens of cities in the US, the UK and Europe. Why is it so hard for us?
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OMNICOMMANDER , a financial technology firm specializing in website design, branding, and marketing for credit unions, launches the newest offering of their custom website service as their French translation site goes live.

OMNICOMMANDER designs and produces fully custom websites and marketing solutions specifically for credit unions. As such, each website is tailored to meet the unique needs and desires of their clients based on the community in which a credit union is located. OMNICOMMANDER previously executed this vision for Community Credit Union's new website, and continued the project by building a mirror-image of the site in French to better meet the needs of their members. The website can be switched between viewing in English and in French with a simple click of a toggle button, which is a superior member experience over services such as online translation software.

Community Credit Union 's location in Maine has seen a growth in its community of African immigrants, which has led to the need to provide their services in French. Embracing their neighbors in their native language enables them to easily read and process necessary documents to join the credit union or take advantage of services offered.

OMNICOMMANDER kicked off 2020 by celebrating its third year in business and has separated itself from the industry by continuing to expand what can be done for a credit union's digital presence. Since inception, the company has focused on a more inclusive experience by leading the way following ADA compliance and accessibility guidelines. OMNICOMMANDER's next step in making a more accessible internet was offering Spanish translated sites, and this newest site may be the first American credit union site in French.

OMNICOMMANDER Founder and CEO, Eric Isham said, "This is a really exciting launch since it's the first time we've ever done a French translation for a credit union. When Community Credit Union approached us about doing the site in French, the first thing I thought was "Why not"? We've done dozens of Spanish sites and are in the process of a few other languages as well, so I was excited about the challenge. As usual, the Project Management team took the request and delivered an amazing finished solution. Nous les meilleurs!"

About OMNICOMMANDER

OMNICOMMANDER is a veteran owned and operated credit union website design and social media marketing firm. Focusing on member experience, the company ensures every touchpoint has a remarkable user experience. Along with incredible design, OMNICOMMANDER creates sites with built-in mobile responsiveness, SSL encryption, and observance of ADA guidelines. OMNICOMMANDER provides marketing services including targeted marketing, branding, and social media to enhance every aspect of a brand's digital presence.

For more information, visit OMNICOMMANDER on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram .

CONTACT: Melanie Tucciarone, 800-807-3109, [email protected]

SOURCE OMNICOMMANDER

Related Links

https://www.omnicommander.com


When The Oregonian/OregonLive first reported on Gov. Kate Browns plan for reopening restaurants and bars Tuesday, the biggest head-scratcher for many business owners came in the form of a 10 p.m. curfew.

"What, the virus goes into overdrive at 10?!, read a typical response.

The curfew is part of Oregons Phase 1 guidelines for reopening, a process determined by each of Oregons 36 counties and their ability to meet thresholds for testing, contact tracing and more. When restaurants and bars are finally allowed to reopen their dining rooms, employees will have to wear masks, and businesses will have to separate customers by six feet and ask them to finish their food and drink by 10 p.m.

During a Thursday news conference announcing Oregons Phase 1 reopening plan, Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state health officer and epidemiologist, said the rule was part of Oregons attempt to encourage social distancing.

"Were asking people to sit down with their party and sit six feet from others, and we know if those bars are open late into the night, often times, people lose track of how much theyve been drinking, they may not keep their physical distance as much, Sidelinger said. Its really an attempt to try and make sure that we can let people go out, enjoy a visit to a bar, enjoy a visit to a restaurant, but not open up like it was before this pandemic arrived.

Sidelinger said the governors office would continue to reevaluate all criteria, but stressed that during Phase 1, things arent going to return to the way they were."

That answer didnt sit well with some restaurant and bar owners. Earlier this week, Andy Fortgang, the general manager of Le Pigeon, pointed out that the curfew would mean anyone seated after 8:30 p.m. or later would likely have to be asked to leave 90 minutes later  a less-than-sweet finish to what is usually a special occasion meal.

Tip Hanzlik, the owner of Diamond Darcys, a video lottery retailer and bar in Wood Village, went further, saying he considered the curfew rationale baloney.

"We dont serve drunk people. So just stop it right there at that, Hanzlik said. What, at 10 Oclock we lose our morality and our civility? We have folks who work at Lowes and Fred Meyer right down the street who get off work at 10, and theyd like to have a beer, hear a joke. And theyre going to have to tug on a locked door?

Hanzlik said electricians were at work at his bar, moving circuits to allow his video lottery terminals to stand six feet apart, part of a subsection of guidelines allowing one of the states biggest revenue earners to go back online, so long as businesses could enforce social distancing between players. Video lottery machines had been shut off since mid March.

Im sure the governor is well intended, but theyre addressing a situation that is not a problem, Hanzlik said. Ive owned bars on and off for 30 years. I take serving very seriously. Nobody likes a drunk. For someone to presuppose that our standards slip at 10 p.m., I find that insulting.

-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell

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The Kerala State Planning Board has put out a report assessing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the state economy.

The report estimates Rs 80,000 crore loss in gross value added for Q1FY20 (April-June FY20), with March alone causing nearly Rs 29,000 crore of the shortfall, The Economic Times reported.

The total losses in agriculture for March and April are estimated at Rs 1,570.75 crore, while the loss for agricultural labourers is estimated at Rs 200.30 crore. Tourism  the worst-hit sector  is expected to lose Rs 20,000 crore from March to September.

The manufacturing sector is expected to take a total dip of Rs 8,000 crore split as Rs 1,500 crore in March, Rs 4,500 crore in April and Rs 2,000 crore in May.

A slump in trade, hotel and restaurant sectors means a combined hit of Rs 17,000 crore  with April seeing Rs 10,000 crore downfall. Net income loss from road transport is Rs 240 crore per day  estimated to come to a total of Rs 9,600 crore.

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

Follow our LIVE Updates on the coronavirus pandemic here

The direct and indirect gross state value addition (GSVA) based on the input-output model is estimated at 10 percent in FY20 and 20 percent in FY21, it added.

For the period of lockdown, in terms of wages, losses of self-employed and casual workers come close to Rs 350 crore  a cumulative Rs 14,000-15,000 crore over March to June, with April alone recording an estimated Rs 8,500 crore. Sector-wise, hotels, trade, restaurants, construction, manufacturing and transport are the worst affected, thus affecting 57.7 percent or 73.3 lakh of the states 127 lakh strong workforce, it said.

Notably, Kerala is the first state to work on such an assessment. It is an effort to provide a view of the magnitude rather than precise figures as estimates are based on available information, the report noted.
The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and AGS Health in Aging Foundation today announced that Alexander K. Smith, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF and one of geriatrics' most influential rising researchers and advocates, will be honored with the 2020/2021 Thomas and Catherine Yoshikawa Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Clinical Investigation. Following the cancellation of the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting due to COVID-19, the AGS shared that Dr. Smith would deliver his marquee presentation, "Confessions of an unfocused researcher," at the AGS 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21) in Chicago, Ill. (May 13-15; pre-conference day: May 12).

"Research is the power pushing geriatrics expertise forward, and we need to chart as broad a course as possible, since age affects all aspects of life", said Sunny Linnebur, PharmD, FCCP, FASCP, BCPS, BCGP, AGS board chair. "Dr. Smith's career is a prime example of casting as wide a net as possible to yield promising approaches to the challenges we know, the opportunities we don't, and the work that can yield solutions for both."

In his presentation at #AGS21, Dr. Smith will describe the benefits and challenges of different approaches to a research focus, particularly one that maintains a broad array of interests. The value of a diversity of avenues for scientific inquiry remains key, not only for maintaining intellectual interest and scholarship in multiple areas, but also for mentoring the current and future generations of clinicians, educators, and scientists.

"Researchers have long been taught to have a narrow focus," explains Dr. Smith. "But throughout my academic career, I've been drawn to holistic disciplines with central principles that run counter to this reductionist perspective: Primary care, geriatrics, and palliative care. My academic success, such as it's been, reflects this pull towards complexity, diversity of interests, and nurturing fresh ideas. I'm excited to share that approach with my colleagues."

That vagabond spirit developed early for Dr. Smith, who was born in Hilo, H.I., before his family moved to Michigan. After completing undergraduate studies in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Michigan, Dr. Smith pursued masters' degrees in public health from UC Berkeley and Harvard, in addition to a medical degree from UCSF. He joined the UCSF faculty in 2008, three years after completing his residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Then and now, Dr. Smith has remained a prolific researcher while also balancing priorities as a clinician, educator, and mentor. The author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Smith also has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on four grants to UCSF from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging. Since 2009, Dr. Smith also has co-produced GeriPal, a popular blog and podcast focused on the issues affecting geriatrics and palliative care clinicians. Like much of Dr. Smith's work, including his current tenure as an editor focused on social media and mentoring for emerging research reviewers for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, work on GeriPal and other endeavors not only helps Dr. Smith advance geriatrics expertise but also explore a diverse array of geriatrics questions in new and important platforms, a staple skill for recipients of the Yoshikawa Award.

First announced at the 2016 AGS Annual Scientific Meeting and supported thanks to generous contributions to the AGS Health in Aging Foundation, the Yoshikawa Award recognizes the research accomplishments of mid-career clinician-investigators directly involved in the care of older adults.

###

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for more than 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

The Health in Aging Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Yoshikawa Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Clinical Investigation

Named in honor of Dr. Thomas T. Yoshikawa and his wife, Catherine--who together served the AGS and the geriatrics community for more than two decades--the Yoshikawa Award will offer recognition and financial support to emerging geriatrics scholars who represent the early promise of the Yoshikawas' own illustrious careers. The award has been supported thanks to generous contributions to the AGS Health in Aging Foundation from AGS members, as well as friends and colleagues of the Yoshikawas.

About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting

The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. Following the cancellation of the 2020 gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 3,000 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene next year from May 13-15 (pre-conference program on May 12), in Chicago, Ill., to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.
ABBOTT PARK, Ill., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Abbott (NYSE: ABT) announced today new research, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, which found that its SARS-CoV-2 IgG lab-based serology blood test had 99.9% specificity and 100% sensitivity for detecting the IgG antibody in patients 17 days or more after symptoms began. Independent research was conducted by University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

Antibody testing can tell if someone has been previously infected with the virus and may be recovering or has recovered from the infection, in both people with or without signs or symptoms. Large scale antibody testing is seen as an important next step to understanding and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) surveillance strategy. Antibody tests will provide greater understanding of the virus, including how long antibodies stay in the body, how much of the population has been infected, and how this changes over time.

"Health systems will play a critical role in large scale testing, and collaboration with leaders such as the University of Washington helps to ensure that our tests are performing at the highest standards when they are used in real-world settings," said Robert B. Ford, president and chief executive officer, Abbott. "We want to do our part in providing hospitals and reference labs around the world with access to reliable antibody testing."

In April, Abbott announced the launch of its SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody blood test as the company's third COVID-19 test to help combat the pandemic. Abbott significantly scaled up its manufacturing and has already shipped more than 10 million antibody tests for its ARCHITECT platform to hospital systems and reference labs in all 50 states in the U.S. and around the world.

Researchers at University of Washington School of Medicine were one of the first health systems to receive the test and help validate its performance. The researchers found that when testing on 1,020 patient samples, the test had a specificity of 99.9% (ability to exclude false positives). When running the assay on 689 serum samples from 125 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases, they found 100% sensitivity (ability to exclude false negatives) at 17 days or more after symptoms began in this population.

Hospitals and reference laboratories are beginning to implement antibody testing. The data generated from these tests could help uncover new insights around the novel virus, including prevalence at local, state or country-wide levels.

About Abbott

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 107,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

Connect with us at www.abbott.com, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/abbott-/, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Abbott and on Twitter @AbbottNews and @AbbottGlobal.

SOURCE Abbott

Related Links

http://www.abbott.com


CAIRO - The head of Libyas U.N.-supported government on Friday warned of an escalation in the battle for Tripoli after rockets struck near foreign embassies in the capital, drawing sharp condemnation from the European Union and United Nations.

The Tripoli-based health ministry said an attack late Thursday killed at least three civilians and wounded four others when rockets struck near the perimeter of the Italian ambassadors residence in the crowded neighbourhood of Zawiat al-Dahmani. Earlier on Thursday, five civilians were reported killed in shelling of two other city neighbourhoods.

The U.N. again raised alarm that ordinary Libyans are bearing the brunt of an increasingly deadly siege by eastern-based forces under the command of Khalifa Hifter, calling the actions despicable and a direct challenge to peace efforts.

In the attack on Zawiat al-Dahmani, two policemen guarding a Libyan government building died, along with a civilian who happened to be on the street, said the ministrys spokesman, Amin al-Hashemi. Four more civilians suffered shrapnel wounds, he said, including a medic with the Libyan Red Crescent.

The European Union denounced the assault in the strongest possible terms, saying Friday that such indiscriminate strikes run counter to the respect for human life and international humanitarian law.

The U.N. Mission in Libya said it was documenting the violations to share with the International Criminal Court.

The U.S. Embassy echoed the concerns, urging the warring sides to focus their efforts on combating the coronavirus pandemic.

Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Sarrajs office said he spoke with the ambassadors of Italy and Turkey on Friday to ensure they were unscathed by the attack.

Ahmed al-Mosmari, a spokesman for Hifters self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces, denied they had violated international law, saying the forces have always sought to shield diplomatic sites from the violence of their siege. He accused unspecified terrorists of trying to turn international public opinion against Hifters campaign.

Hifters foreign-backed forces launched a push last year to capture Tripoli from Sarrajs government. The fighting has killed hundreds of civilians and displaced over 150,000, threatening to push Libya into a major conflagration on the scale of the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

As the Tripoli fighting rages, migration from Libyas shores to Europe is also increasing. A dinghy that set out carrying 25 migrants earlier this week was intercepted late Thursday by the Libyan Coast Guard.

The guard brought the migrants to the port in Tripoli but everyone on board was forced to wait till the shelling of the city subsided. Eventually, the migrants disembarked and were taken to one of Libyas detention facilities notorious for torture and abuse, the U.N. migration agency said Friday.

Commodore Masoud Abdal Samad, a Libyan Coast Guard commander, said that his forces provided medical aid to the desperate migrants while they waited. Then we handed them over to the immigration police, he said.
Startup Clearview AI has built a facial recognition system that claims to be able to ID people in real-time, matching them with billions of images pulled from databases and scraped from social media. Earlier this year, a list containing the names of private companies using or possibly interested in using the technology leaked out as regulators began to scrutinize the outfit, and people filed lawsuits.

According to Buzzfeed News, Clearview AI said in a filing that Clearview is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency, and cancelling the accounts of all entities in Illinois. Its being sued for allegedly breaking a state law concerning the use of biometric information by scraping images from the plaintiffs social media accounts to train its algorithm.

The leak listed companies like Best Buy and Macys as clients, showing how far-reaching the surveillance tech could become. In public statements and blog posts Clearview AI has pushed back against the idea that its system is a consumer tool or for use by anyone other than law enforcement agencies and select security professionals, although thats not exactly reassuring.

In a statement, ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler said These promises do little to address concerns about Clearviews reckless and dangerous business model. There is no guarantee these steps will actually protect Illinois residents. And, even if there were, making promises about one state does nothing to end Clearviews abusive exploitation of peoples faceprints across the country. Instead of taking real steps to address the harms of face recognition surveillance, Clearview is doubling down on the sale of its face surveillance system to law enforcement and continues to fuel large scale violations of Americans privacy and due process rights. The only good that Clearview has achieved here is demonstrate the vital importance of strong biometric privacy laws like the one in Illinois, and of laws adopted by cities nationwide banning police use of face recognition systems.
Global Downhole Tools Market was value US$ 3.9Bn in 2017 and is expected to reach US$ 5.8Bn by 2026 at a CAGR of 5.9%.

Downhole tools refer to the equipment used in upstream gas and oil operations such as the production of drilling, oil and gas, well interventions, and well completions. Downhole drilling tools form the main part of the overall market for downhole tools.

Downhole tools are used extensively in bottom hole assembly for numerous completion and work-over operations. The downhole tools aid in reducing the cost related to the oil recovery activities in order to ensure a large quantity of oil production in the upcoming years. The awareness among consumers regarding the benefits of using downhole tools is expected to encourage the growth of the overall market during the forecast period.

Drilling tools held the largest share within the global market driven by the increasing drilling activities globally. Increasing unconventional drilling methods and explorations in deep waters have also pushed the demand for more robust drilling tools.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/4024

Oil and Gas application segment is dominating the global downhole tools market. Downhole tools are used for effective and efficient production of oil & gas. The worldwide oil and gas industry is a key segment of the energy market and covers the locating, drilling, refining, delivering and marketing of oil and gas products. Oil meets much of the worldas demand for energy, around a third in Europe and Asia and over half in the Middle East.

Region-wise, North America continues to be the dominant market for the downhole tools with the U.S. being the biggest player in this region. This may be attributed to the presence of several oil field services companies and the use of new technologies on a large scale. Also, the shale boom backed by the major players in the market provided a great impetus to downhole tools market growth in North America.

Primary resources, which include experts and suppliers from the industry, have been interviewed to obtain and verify critical information also assess future prospects of the downhole tools market. Many secondary resources such as encyclopedias, directories, and databases have been used to identify and collect information that was useful for this extensive commercial study of the downhole tools market globally.

Make an Inquiry before Buying: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/checkout/4024/Single

Global downhole tools market report includes PESTLE analysis, competitive landscape, and Porteras five force model. Market attractive analysis wherein all the segments are benchmarked based on the market size, growth rate, and general attractiveness.

Scope of Global Downhole Tools Market

Global Downhole Tools Market, by Tool type

Flow & Pressure Control

Impurity Control

Downhole Control

Handling

Drilling

Global Downhole Tools Market, by Application

Completion

Well Intervention

Formation & Evaluation

Oil & Gas Production

Global Downhole Tools Market, by Region

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

South America

Key players operating in Global Downhole Tools Market

Oil States International Inc.

Halliburton Company Logan Oil Tools Inc.

Bilco Tools Inc.

United Drilling Tools Ltd.

C&J Energy Services

Schlumberger Ltd.

Weatherford International

Baker Hughes Inc.

National Oilwell Varco Corp.

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Syracuse, N.Y.  Tonight could be a dangerous night for plants.

Temperatures are expected to drop below freezing and fall as low as 26 degrees this evening in Central New York. The freeze could kill plants, according to the National Weather Service, and outdoor pipes could be damaged.

The weather service has issued a freeze warning for parts of CNY along with parts of the Finger Lakes and Western New York. Onondaga County, Cayuga County, Oswego County, Seneca County and Wayne County are among the counties included in the warning.

READ MORE: Snow on Mothers Day in Upstate NY? Its possible again

The warning starts at 8 p.m. today and is expected to end at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold, the weather service said. To prevent freezing and possible bursting of outdoor water pipes, they should be wrapped, drained or allowed to drip slowly.

Staff writer Samantha House covers breaking news, crime and public safety for Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. Have a tip or a story idea? Contact her at shouse@syracuse.com.
Hyderabad, May 8 : In another technology-based initiative, the Telangana Police will use Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system to identify through CCTVs people who do not wear face masks in public.

Terming it as first-of-its-kind initiative in India, Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy said the rollout will begin soon in Hyderabad, Cyberabad, and Rachakonda police commissionerates that cover Hyderabad and its suburbs.

The police chief said the initiative involved leveraging computer vision and deep learning techniques on Closed-Circuit Television (CCTVs).

In a move aimed at containing the spread of coronavirus, the Telangana government last month made wearing of face masks compulsory for people when they step out of their homes.

The police in the districts is imposing fines of Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 on the violators.

Meanwhile, the DGP on Friday directed all Commissioners of Police and Superintendents of Police to release vehicles seized for various violations during the lockdown period.

"The Enforcement Officers/Station House Officers have been directed to return all the vehicles seized during the lockdown to their owners immediately under proper acknowledgement," the DGP said The violators/owners will have to make payment of compounding fee, wherever applicable, as per rules and submit a set of photocopies of vehicle documents for record.

They shall also submit in writing declarations/understandings for presenting the vehicles in courts, if required.

The police chief said the entire process shall be completed within the next week in a transparent manner.

The police across the state had seized more than 1.5 lakh vehicles, mostly two-wheeler, since the lockdown began on March 22.

Following appeals from various quarters, Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar had last week announced release of about 34,000 vehicles.
Visakhapatnam, May 8 : The death toll in Thursday's gas leak tragedy in this port city rose to 12 on Friday as a man succumbed at a hospital in the early hours of the day, officials said.

A man identified as Gangadhara Chowdary, 32, died at a hospital at Kothavalasa in the early hours of Friday taking the death toll to 12 in the disaster that occurred early on Thursday with the leakage of Styrene from LG Polymers plant on the city outskirts.

Earlier, the Visakhapatnam police released the list of 11 people killed in the incident. They were identified as Meka Krishnamurthy (72), P Varalaxmi (38), Appala Narsamma (45), N Greeshma (9), AN Nani (40), Kundana Shriya (6), A Chandramouli (19), Ganga Raju (48), B Narayanamma (35), AV Nukaraju (60) and P Shankar Rao (40).

The victims belonged to RR Venkatapuram and other villages surrounding the chemical plant.

The autopsy on one body was conducted on Thursday. Officials said the autopsies on the bodies of the remaining victims would be conducted at King George Hospital (KGH) later on Friday.

Over 300 people including 48 children were also affected by the gas leak. They were admitted to various hospitals in the city and the condition of 20 of them stated to be critical.

Officials said 193 people were brought to KGH alone. The condition of some of them has improved and they are likely to be discharged later on Friday.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
No matter how hard we try to avoid it, were all doomed to hurt those we love. In quarantine, despite our best efforts, were all destined to annoy those we love.

People are discovering they cant stand the way their partners chew, talk and brush the cat. One woman even told her partner that if he dropped his pen one more time, theyd be heading for divorce. This entire experience has made me very much aware that I want a man in my life, just not in my house, Chris Enss, a comedian, quipped. Yesterday the man asked me where we keep the spoons. The spoons, for Gods sake! Weve been married 31 years. The spoons are kept where they always are kept  in the silverware drawer!

That hit close to home. A few weeks ago, during my annual attempt at cooking (making pancakes), I asked my wife where I could find the spatula. She kindly responded by rolling her eyes.

Since we probably cant anticipate when our behaviors will irritate others, we need to learn how to make amends afterward. Before the pandemic, the #MeToo movement offered a crash course in how not to apologize. Indeed, some celebrities apologies were essentially a second insult, making 2017 not just the year of bad behavior  but also the year of the bad apology.
Around him sat a sea of people stretching from Queen Street to Spring Street. All sorts of people. Students with Red Indian headbands; tough-looking wharfies; middle-aged men in business suits; mini-skirted girls; workers in construction helmets. But the young predominated. Join us, they shout Tens of thousands marched in quiet protest in other State capitals. Sydney had only seven arrests in a demonstration by 20,000 people.

Protesters sit down outside Myer on Bourke Street. Credit:The Age Archives In Melbourne some young mothers carried babies on their backs, "papoose" fashion. There were flags and banners. And placards of all sizes  crude and elaborate, idealistic and gory, obscene. There were Viet Cong flags  carried mainly by members of the Monash Labor Club, who chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh . . ." "Join us, join us," the marchers shouted to shoppers and the pavement bystanders. There was drama but little violence. The Victorian Civil Ambulance Service made four extra ambulances available. None was needed.

A dozen policemen guarded the U.S. Consulate all day and into the night. The marchers stayed away. The most dangerous incident occurred when three youths fought over a Monash Labor Club banner on a Town Hall parapet. Two press photographers were punched in a scuffle. Bolte cool Claiming a triumph for Melbourne's part in the nation - wide moratorium, Dr. Cairns said: "The will of the people is being ex-pressed here today as it has never been expressed in our lifetime."

Crowds gather at the Treasury Building before marching down Bourke Street. Credit:The Age Archives But Sir Henry Bolte estimated that only 20,000 to 30,000 marched, adding: "They were all of the one ilk." The ACTU president (Mr. Bob Hawke) last night described the moratorium rally and march as "the most significant public participation In a political event." Government backbencher, Mr. John Jess, said: "I thought it was well conducted." The Federal Leader of the DLP (Senator F. McManus) said the moratorium had won a victory  a right to take over a city.

"This is setting a very dangerous precedent," he said. "Now anyone with a grouch can take over Bourke Street." Many of Bourke Street's stores closed their doors as the marchers filled the street. In Coles' Bourke Street store, shoppers were locked in when the management closed the doors as the demonstration approached. As the crowd overflowed the tiny city square a march marshal  one of 400 called for three cheers for the police. Sheepish grins appeared on the faces of many grim-looking constables as the crowd roared its approval.

Loading The police just looked and smiled An angelic-looking blonde carefully pointed a placard at half a dozen police-men outside the Town Hall. It read: "Fighting for peace is like . . . for chastity". The police smiled just a little  and otherwise ignored her. Another time, perhaps, the blonde would have found herself in the City Watch House.

But this was a special day. A few yards away something nastier was happening. A long-haired youth wearing a studded leather armband climbed on to a Town Hall ledge and pulled away a big red Monash Labor Club banner. A Monash demonstrator climbed on to the ledge and scuffled with the youth, but came down when the crowd began chanting "peace, peace . .." A second demonstrator, hanging from the ledge, shouted obscenities and shook his fist at the intruder who stamped on his fingers. One young man was arrested  but not the one who grabbed the banner. He slipped away. Retrieved, the big red banner was put back in place. Nearby in Swanston Street a weirdly-garbed theatre group  La Mama  was miming and screeching the horrors of war and death. The crowd applauded.

Loading A young girl offered sweets from a paper bag to the police. They were a little dubious about accepting. "You can't be sure what's in them," one sergeant said half-jokingly. In Bourke Street, one of the few unsympathetic protestors, an elderly woman, held aloft a crude hand-drawn poster showing Australia being bombed fiercely by arrows from the north. "1942-45 and all that God Bless America," it read. At the City Square, several agile demonstrators hung flagsincluding a Viet Cong flaghigh up on light poles. A dummy soldier was strung up on one.
Six Burkina Faso nationals who entered Ghana through unapproved routes have been arrested by the Upper West Regional Command of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) at the Nadowli Police checkpoint.



The migrants, who comprised four men and two women and aged from 2 to 55, were arrested with support from the Ghana Police Service on Thursday, May 7, 2020.



Mr Ibn Yussif Duranah Abdul-Mumin Seidu, the Upper West Regional Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the GIS made this known to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa on Thursday.



"Upon a tip off, the patrol team chased the mini bus and intercepted it with the ECOWAS nationals at a police checkpoint", he said.



According to Mr Seidu, the irregular migrants attempted using alternative routes in order to swerve the GIS inland checkpoint at Babile in the Lawra Municipality.



"They hired a mini bus with registration number BA 2761-14 with the intent of using alternative routes to Wa in order to swerve the immigration Officials on duty at the Babile inland checkpoint", he said.



He said the arrested Burkinabe migrants had been screened by the health personnel, sent to the Hamile Sector Command of the GIS and handed over to the Burkina Faso authorities for the necessary action to be taken.



The GIS had arrested several Burkina Faso nationals in the region for violating President Akuffo-Addo's order on the closure of the national borders in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.



Mr Seidu said the GIS would not relent on its efforts to secure the borders and to enforce the president's order to the letter.



He called for support from the public, especially the border communities, to police the borders.



He warned that any person or group of persons found aiding any foreigner to enter the country illegally would be made to face the full rigours of the law.

Source: GNA









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Featured Video
If the mere thought of the 'National Have a Coke Day' today makes you want to sing, you are not alone. The 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing,' song was accompanied the dazzling hilltop commercial of Coke with the words, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke," as well as the words, "It's the real thing," added for it to make Coke's enduring and haunting synthesis.

This said song was recorded innumerable times from the time it was written in 1971. Started over 125 years ago as a medicinal elixir considered as "cocaine-fueled," Coke ultimately transformed into a non-narcotic beverage of choice for the so-called "baby-boomers" coming from the 60s decade.

As the Coca-Cola grew, it added more varieties and flavors of its original Coke. Presently it continues to be pertinent as the largest firm in the whole world that offers a soft drink.

In addition, the company has also expanded its extraordinarily American taste into the largest developing markets of the world, to turn into a global label. This is what the company calls "commercial diplomacy."

Therefore, once you begin humming and eventually singing the lyrics of the song you recall from this hit song of Coke in the early 70s, know that even those around the globe are singing along with you, but maybe, in their native language.

Coke Is Everywhere in One Mexican Town, and so Is Diabetes

Maria del Carman Abadia may have lived in one of the rainiest regions of Mexico, mainly in San Cristobal de las Casas. Still, ironically, as reported in the New York Times, "she has running water just once every two days.

When the water drops from her tap, she described, it is heavily chlorinated and not potable. Essentially, drinkable water is progressively is rare in San Cristobal de las Casas, a scenic town in the Chiapas's southern state where some communities have a supply of running water only a few times each week.

In addition, a lot of households here are obligated to buy additional water supply from tanker trucks. As a result, instead, a lot of residents drink Coke, which a local bottling plant produces. This beverage is easy to find than the bottled water, not to mention, nearly as cheap as water.

In a nation that's one of the top sugary beverages consumers of the world, Chiapas is considered "a Champ."

More so, the San Cristobal de las Casas residents, as well as those in the luxurious highlands that develop in the city, consume the said sweet drinks more than two liters or an equivalent of over half a gallon each day.

Impact on Public Health

The impact of a more abundant consumption of Coke than water has undeniably been disturbing. According to health reports, "The death rate from diabetes in Chiapas" rose 30 percent from 2013 to 2016," and the illness is currently the second-leading cause of fatality in the state, next to heart disease.

To date, diabetes in Chiapas has been claiming over 3,000 lives each year. Additionally, 35-year-old Abadia, a security guard who also struggled with diabetes and obesity like her parents.

According to a 33-year-old doctor, Vicente Vaqueiros, whose clinic is located at San Juan Chamula, said health workers struggle to combat the swell in diabetes.

The doctor recalled, when he was a kid, "and used to come here," Chamula was an isolated town and did not have any access to processed food.

Now, he continued, kids are seen drinking Coke instead of water. At present, Vaqueiros said diabetes occurs in adults although, he sees it happening next in kids, and this could be very overwhelming.

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The Birim Central Municipal Assembly today, Friday begun enforcement of mandatory wearing of fase mask in the municipality after a first positive case of coronavirus was recorded in the area.

Majority of residents in Akim Oda go about their daily activities without observing the health protocols in place.

Some residents who spoke to Citi News blamed the neglect of the protocols on lack of public education and sensitization by the local assembly and relevant institutions.

I am so worried because we keep getting new cases day in day out from Accra and other regions. The WHO has made it clear that this disease is airborne, and so looking at what is going on here in Oda, the situation is very worrying. I had an experience with a market woman when I went to buy Hausa Koko in the morning. She wasn't wearing a nose mask so I asked her why she wasn't wearing one and her response was that God will save her.

In Oda, those in authority like the MCE have been talking about the wearing of nose masks and other COVID-19 protocols but in town, people are not doing so. A few people wear the nose masks while others carry it in their pockets, another resident added.

The Municipal Chief Executive, Madam Victoria Adu who is worried about the development says a task force will from today enforce the mandatory wearing of the nose mask to prevent the spread of the deadly virus and possibly close down the market and other business entities who fail to adhere to all protocols.

The task force will go round to make sure that they have them [nose masks] on and also check the distancing especially when we go to the commercial bank here in Oda; a whole bank has allowed customers to gather themselves as if they have not heard anything. So we are going to inform the managers to be very careful because when it comes to that point we are going to close them down. We have also informed the market authorities to ensure the distancing because we have divided them into two groups.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Region has confirmed a total of 95 COVID-19 cases after one new case of the virus was recorded on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.

Many health facilities in the Eastern Region are still struggling to get the full complement of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers in spite of individual, institutional and Group donations and some few distributions by the Ghana Health Service.

---citinewsroom
Press Release

May 8, 2020 One News PH Agenda interview of Senator Win Gatchalian with Cito Beltran on the ABS-CBN franchise and MSMEs [start recording] Q: What are your thoughts on the [cease and desist order issued by NTC against ABS-CBN]? SEN WIN: In the same manner, we had hearing in the Senate and the same statements were heard from NTC Chairman and we were assured by him that a provisional authority can be given considering that conditional authority has been given many, many times. Hindi lang ito sa big networks kundi even small networks are given provisional authority. This is because of timing issues. Sometimes, Congress takes a while to approve franchises and it's unfair for existing operators to just completely shutdown so the remedy for that is NTC issues provisional authorities and once the franchise has been given out, the franchise will take over legally. So in other words, the provisional authority has been given out many times in the past so for me, I don't see any reason why a provisional authority cannot be given at this time. Yung assurance na binigay sa amin both in the House and the Senate ay totally nasira that's why a lot of us were quite surprised. Q: Ang depensa ng NTC ay wala na silang franchise eh, wala na tayong pag-uusapan. Trabaho namin na sabihan silang wag na wag kayong mag-eere kasi wala kayong franchise. Illegal yan. SEN WIN: Correct. That was a question raised during the Senate hearing and DOJ Secretary Guevarra gave a statement that the principle of equity, meaning kung nag-ooperate ka na at maraming mga tao ang nakasalalay, 11,000 in fact of ABS employees are hinged on this franchise. The NTC is given the authority being a quasi-judicial body to issue a provisional authority. They have the power to do that because of many things. Number one is employment, number two is operations and number three, the whole industry will actually be affected if the ABS will completely cease operations. Q: Not to mention that we are in a middle of a global health crisis. SEN WIN: Correct. Timing is also very important. In this case, the flow of information is very important. ABS-CBN commands a whopping 80% of the market. It is virtually in the homes of every Filipino and information flow right now is very important. We see IATF, DOH giving regular briefings so that people will understand what's happening. People will be guided on what's happening and we need every single medium to give information to people. With all that understanding in mind, this merits to NTC to give a provisional authority. This is provisional so it can be revoked at any given time given the circumstances. Q: During the hearings in the Senate and in Congress, tumatayo kayong guarantor. Some of your associates were standing in as guarantors that the franchise will be given to ABS. Thank you for explaining the principle of equity. Many of us don't understand that principle of equity. We keep thinking of NTC as a bureau, but they are a quasi-judicial body and therefore, they are independent of anybody including the Office of the Solicitor General. SEN WIN: Correct and the NTC itself is a regulator and it can make decisions, they can actually punish those industries that it regulates. But they are guided with a lot of jurisprudence, a lot of things that they have done in the past. From my observation and research, provisional authority is nothing new. It's been given to many tv and radio stations especially those ones that deliver important public service to their locality. So looking at all of this-pandemic happening, information flowing to our homes, ABS employees, NTC can come up with the logic that a provisional authority is needed for it to continue to operate because without it, much graver situation can happen. Q: The second issue, the NTC Commissioner Cordoba, he stood before Congress and the Senate and made a verbal commitment ba yun? Or because he was in the Senate, he took an oath to state the truth and nothing but the truth. Therefore, anything said there had the power of a contract? Did he make a commitment to issue actual provisional authority? SEN WIN: Correct. I was there at the hearing. In fact, he asked the DOJ. I remember him saying na oh before we can decide, we have to get the legal opinion from DOJ. The DOJ Secretary was there, and he made a categorical statement that the principle of authority will prevail in this type of circumstance meaning, kung nag-ooperate ka na at maraming nakasalalay dito, this can be a justification and an argument for you to issue a provisional authority and he was relieved. I remember that eh. Hindi ko makalimutan because that was the point of contention at that time. He was relieved ang sabi niya, oh andito na pala ang DOJ, meron nang justification, therefore, we can issue a provisional authority. That statement is a very important statement because that guided us the Senators and also Congress in terms of how to approach this franchise and what process will we have to take in order to approve that franchise. Of course, we respect each other's process. But that statement guided the base and the process then all of a sudden, iba pala ang gagawin mo? So binigyan mo kami ng isang statement na sinundan namin as a guide pero iba pala ang nangyari. That's why we are quite surprised and it can be a justification for contempt because at that point in time, he gave us a statement that we held and we used to guide us in our decision-making. Q: You pointed out that they are a quasi-judicial body, why did they even have to ask the DOJ for an opinion? Sabi ng DOJ advice lang ang binigay namin dahil hindi kami pwedeng magbigay ng opinion. SEN WIN: Well, it became a habit in the government kung hindi ka sigurado legally, hingi ka ng opinion sa DOJ, sa OSG, sa OP. I've seen that many times, kung may isang agency o Secretary na hindi sila sigurado, hingi ka ng legal cover sa ibang agency. It's a practice that been happening in government but it's something that gives legal cover to NTC. In fact, they were given legal cover at that time. Q: Going back to the issue of NTC doing the flip-flop, Senator Sonny Angara basically suggested that in between the time Cordoba gave the assurance to the Senate to give a provisional authority to ABS until the time of May 5 when NTC issued a cease and desist order, someone must have spoken to the NTC to decide otherwise and we all know that the Solicitor General made a threat that if the NTC issues a provisional authority, magkakaso sila against NTC. Is that fair? Hindi ba yun matatawag na intimidation, grave threat or abuse of authority of the part of the SolGen because while he may have brought the case to the supreme court wala siyang pakielam sa trabaho ng NTC, nakikielam siya? SEN WIN: I think the best decision NTC should have made is what is best for the country at this time we all need information. Kanina I just tweeted, Cito magkaedad tayo, ever since nagkamulat ako DZMM na nasa kotse namin, ngayon wala nang DZMM and I remember ever since TV Patrol or News at Night na yung pinapanood namin. The flow of information right now in light of what is happening in our country is very important. At the same time we have 11,000 employees would be out of their jobs. So I think the most important decision the NTC should have made is to take moral high ground, think of what's good for the country not what's good for me because what's happening right now, bahala na yung bansa basta ako hindi ako mahabla. Binigyan naman sila ng legal cover ng DOJ so it's really disappointing that they took a very selfish decision by protecting themselves first. Bahala na 11,000, bahala na yung bansa natin basta ako hindi ako mahahabla at hindi ako malalagay sa alanganin. Q: Last question on this subject, the little I know about speaker Allan Peter Cayetano bagama't Christian siya medyo in fairness to the speaker he took a beating on this one and he said there will be a day of reckoning. Congressman Benny Abante has already proposed the abolition of the NTC and let the DICT handle it etcetera what are the sentiments of your colleagues in the Senate? SEN WIN: We know that Speaker Allan is a very meticulous person and he is a very experienced public servant, matagal na siyang naglilingkod sa atin and his style is to approach things very meticulously and he scrutinizes things closely and that's why he wants to scrutinize ABS and that's their prerogative. In fact, that's the job of Congress and the Senate, to scrutinize bills very closely. Having said that, that's why during their first hearing and also in the Senate we asked point black NTC and DOJ if the time comes that a franchise will not be issued what are the remedies? Provisional authority was in order that time. That's why nagulat kami nangyari ito especially at this time. We have a pandemic in our midst, we need a flow of information as much as possible and I was caught off guard and many of our colleagues we're caught off guard. Q: So are you guys going to support the abolition of the NTC? SEN WIN: We will have to study this carefully because NTC has other jobs also for example regulating telecom. I think the problem is not within the NTC but the problem is with the persons in NTC, the decision makers. We will have to look at the persons instead of the organization. Q: Other topics, the principal reason why I reached out to you because I had many calls and expression of concern. From people who bought cars for TNVS, who bought property, who put up businesses and well pag nanonood sila ng TV, they watch international and they hear of government bail outs abroad, bail outs for small businesses etcetera while they feel that who are we going to go to because we don't have business, we don't have income and now they are faced with a choice, kaya pa naman yung one month. Most business owners are simply giving out the 13th month pay to help out their employees. But now after one month we're now on day 50 something they are confronted by a choice, we continue to give out of our own pockets, salaries for people who have no jobs for companies that have no business? or do we simply say goodbye and say kanya-kanya na tayo, you are on your own, I also need to think about my family. What's happening, is anyone even addressing this or is someone in-charge as far as this is concerned? MSMEs SEN WIN: Well Cito from my existence in this planet we are facing one of the most difficult challenges our country has ever faced, not only our country but the entire world. Now the world is interconnected via transportation, via internet more than one country affects the other. This crisis is so deep that it creates a lot of uncertainty in the minds of our people and that uncertainty is very unsettling for many us. Di to katulad ng bagyo o sunog at least you know after ng bagyo at sunog you can rebuild. This pandemic, even after lockdown, there is still uncertainty. Ano ba ang mangyayari satin? Magkakaroon ba ng second wave? Do we find a vaccine that will magically eliminate the virus? Do we find a medicine that can reduce the time of recoveries. Marami pang uncertainties and these uncertainties create sleepless nights especially to our entrepreneurs. I want to focus on our MSMEs because they are the ones being battered right now, left and right. Two difficult things that our entrepreneurs are facing. Number one, liquidity, may pera ba ko na nakatabi so that kung mag G-GCQ na tayo tatanggalin na natin yung lockdown I have money to buy for working capital, I have money to pay for my bills and restart my business. Number two, our employees a lot of our businessmen their priority is their employees but of course may hangganan rin sila, they cannot sustain this for a long time. I really salute our entrepreneurs I know a lot of entrepreneurs right now from medium and small enterprises even though they are now dipping into their personal savings they are making sure that their employees are getting some form of salary some form of help. [end recording]
The first batch of 168 Indian students, stranded in Bangladesh due to the coronavirus-linked global travel restrictions, left for home on Friday on board a special Air India flight, officials said here.

The evacuation flight carrying the students from here will land in Srinagar directly.

More such flights are also being readied by the authorities to facilitate other Indians as part of the Operation Vande Bharat - A homecoming', India's massive repatriation operation to bring home its citizens stranded abroad.

The High Commission of India in Bangladesh launched a dedicated link on its website for the registration for Indians wishing to return to India'.

High Commissioner Riva Ganguly Das interacted with the students at the airport as they prepared to complete the formalities to fly back home.

On the occasion, she posted a video message on Twitter saying as part of the Vande Bharat operation, India's first flight from Bangladesh carrying stranded students is going to Srinagar directly.

It (the flight) is carrying only students. The students are enrolled in medical colleges in the country. We were in constant touch with them and their colleges have also taken good care of them.

She further said that as part of a massive exercise by the Indian government, a total of seven flights will be operated from Dhaka.

The Indian envoy also expressed satisfaction that the students are being flown back home ahead of Eid.

Taking to Twitter, the Indian mission posted the pictures and videos of the first batch of Indian students at the airport.

Today, we are preparing to send home our students stranded in Bangladesh. The 1st Air India flight from Dhaka will take them home to Srinagar on 8/5/20. There are more flights being readied as well.

First Batch of Indian Students have arrived at airport for boarding #AirIndia flight home to India. They are being assisted in completing the formalities by @ihcdhaka, it said.

The Indian High Commission also thanked the college authorities for the support.

Indian Students going home, thanks to Operation #VandeBharat speak.

Thanks college authorities for supporting us all through the lockdown. Now, our students are going home, the Indian mission said in a series of tweets.

Talking to the Indian mission officials, the students thanked the Indian government for the evacuation flight.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Hectic preparations in a short period of time, ferrying staff from different places amid the lockdown and deploying a total of around 180 crew members for operating 24 Air India Express flights to bring back Indians stranded overseas.

As Air India Express operates flights as part of 'Vande Bharat Mission', its chief of operations Captain V S Rajkumar is confident of completing the operations smoothly.

Budget carrier Air India Express is part of the Air India group.

Rajkumar, who will be operating the evacuation flight from Trichy to Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, said a total of 24 flights would be operated by the carrier till May 13.

"I am confident that the operations will go on smoothly. There were quite a lot of preparations in the last one week," he told PTI.

A total of 60 pilots and 120 cabin crew members would be deployed for the 24 flights.

The airline has around 1,200 pilots and cabin crew.

"We are happy and proud to take part in this operation, it also proves we have the capability to deploy such a large workforce in a short time and transport a large number of people which was completely unplanned while the entire airline industry is shut," Rajkumar said.

All said the chief of operations has a request for neighborhoods of the crew members -- that they should be more considerate towards the members so that they can perform their jobs.

His comments come against the backdrop of instances of airline crew members not being allowed to go home or not treated properly by residential associations and societies amid fears of coronavirus infections.

"We request all neighborhood people of our crew, residential associations, to be a more helpful a lot of people do not cooperate. There are lot of complaints from crew members that resident associations threaten that they will not allow them (crew) to come in. My crew is surely doing a job as risky or rather more as anybody else who is involved in healthcare. If neighbors do not cooperate, it will be difficult for them and their families," he noted.

As part of the mission, Air India Express operated the first two flights on Thursday -- one from Abu Dhabi to Kochi and another from Dubai to Kozhikode.

Amid the lockdown, he said crew members had to be brought from various locations to the places from where flights are to operate and various regulatory requirements had to be complied with.

"What we see is that our pilots, including me, coming into the limelight but behind the screen, there is a huge workforce that is making it happen," he said.

A total of nine planes would be used for operating the flights.

Since there is a lockdown, additional efforts were required to mobilize manpower and other resources, including PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), sanitizers and masks, according to an official.

In each seat, a snack box -- having two vegetable sandwiches and one cake -- and a half-litre water bottle are kept before passengers start boarding the aircraft.

Besides, a 100 ml bottle of sanitizer and two masks are provided for each passenger, as per the official.

After completing a flight, each crew member is tested for COVID-19. Once the test results are negative, they are allowed to go home and after five days, they have to again undergo a reconfirmation test.

Only if the second test also comes negative, a crew member would be permitted to be part of a flight.

Since the people are being brought back in the wake of coronavirus pandemic, there would be minimum interaction with the passengers on board, and nine seats are left vacant.

These seats are kept vacant so that those can be used in case there is any emergency for a passenger.

Air India Express has Boeing 737-800 NG planes which have a seating capacity of 189 people.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), in a statement on Friday, said it recognised traditional, complementary and alternative medicines, which had many benefits, especially in Africa as the Continent had a long history of traditional medicine and practitioners playing an important role in providing care to the population.

It, however, warned that the use of products to treat COVID-19, which had not been robustly investigated, could put people in danger, giving a false sense of security and distracting them from observing the safety protocols, cardinal to the disease prevention.

The statement said medicinal plants such as Artemisia were being considered as possible treatments for COVID-19 and should be tested for efficacy and adverse side effects.

Africans deserve to use medicines tested to the same standards as people in the rest of the world. Even if the therapies are derived from traditional practices and natural, establishing their efficacy and safety through rigorous clinical trials is critical, it said.

The statement said African governments, through their ministers of health, adopted a resolution urging member states to produce evidence on the safety, efficacy and quality of traditional medicine at the 50th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in 2000.

It said countries also agreed to undertake relevant research and required national medicines regulatory agencies to approve medicines in line with international standards, which include the product following a strict research protocol and undergoing tests and clinical trials.

These studies normally involve hundreds of people under the monitoring of the national regulatory authorities and may take quite a few months in an expedited process.

The WHO is, therefore, working with research institutions to select a traditional medicinal products, which can be investigated for clinical efficacy and safety for COVID-19 treatment.

In addition, the WHO will continue to support countries as they explore the role of traditional health practitioners in the prevention, control, and early detection of the virus as well as case referral to health facilities, it said.

The statement said over the past two decades, WHO had been working with countries to ensure safe and effective traditional medicine development in Africa by providing financial resources and technical support.

It had also supported clinical trials, leading 14 countries to issue marketing authorisation for 89 traditional medicine products, which had met international and national requirements for registration, of those, 43 had been included in national essential medicines lists, it said.

These products are now part of the arsenal to treat patients with a wide range of diseases including malaria, opportunistic infections related to HIV, diabetes, sickle cell disease and hypertension.

Almost all countries in the WHO African Region have national traditional medicine policies, following support from the Organisation.

The statement said as efforts were underway to find treatment for COVID-19, caution must be taken against misinformation, especially on social media, about the effectiveness of certain remedies.

It said many plants and substances were being proposed without the minimum requirements and evidence of quality, safety and efficacy.

The WHO, however, welcomed every opportunity to collaborate with countries and researchers to develop new therapies and encouraged such collaboration for the development of effective and safe therapies for Africa and the world, the statement said.

---GNA
Around noon on Easter Sunday, Leona Hernandez, a registered nurse, pulled up in a van to a strangers home on the South Side of Minneapolis.

Her children, ages 2, 4 and 6, were with her. One asked, Mom, is this New York?

It was not. But it was the temporary home of a New Yorker, who gave Ms. Hernandez, a resident of nearby St. Paul, Minn., the keys to her Manhattan apartment, along with some instructions.

Two days later, Ms. Hernandez left Minnesota, apartment keys in hand, to work with coronavirus patients in the intensive care unit of a major New York City hospital.

Hannah Cairns, the New Yorker, said she was thrilled to donate her apartment to an I.C.U. nurse. A few weeks before the key handoff, she had arrived in Minneapolis to crash on her fathers sofa for the duration of the outbreak. A work colleague then told her about Ms. Hernandez.
After riots broke out, Venezuelan Prison Observatory rights group provided the latest figures of dead and wounded prisoners at Los Llanos Prison Center in Guanare City, Venezuela, according to a recently published article.



Riot Inside the Los Llanos Prison Center in Venezuela

The Los Llanos Prison Center is one of the most overcrowded and dangerous prisons in Venezuela. It was built and designed only for 750 detainees, but now holds an estimated 2,500 inmates. This means that the prisoners are extremely vulnerable to virus transmission and the spread of illness could be swift and devastating.

There are, however, conflicting reports as to why the riot started. According to the army's official report, inmates started destroying the facility's security fences and were staging a massive escape.

However, this report was not accepted by the Parliamentary Deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez and the Venezuelan Prison Observatory rights group. They firmly believe that the riot started because prisoners were deprived of access to food and medicine brought to them by their families due to the risk of virus transmission.

If any of the prisoners catch the virus from the outside or from their relatives who brought food and medicine for them, there would be widespread contagion. Venezuela today has the world's worst economic and humanitarian crises, and conditions of its prisons are as bad as anywhere else in the world.



100 Inmates Dead or Wounded Due to the Riot

According to the Venezuelan government, based on initial tallies, 17 prisoners were killed, and nine wounded.

However, it contradicts the data of the OVP and Martinez as they have confirmed 47 deaths, while 75 inmates were wounded. All those who died were detainees, but several of those injured were officers, and that includes the prison's director and a lieutenant of the Bolivarian National Guard.

It was also alleged that as the tension escalated, the guards opened fire resulting in the death or wounding of over 100 people. Carolina Giron, director of OVP, said that the identities of those who were killed were later confirmed by relatives.

This event caught the attention of the Human Rights Watch. They said: "Corruption, weak security, deteriorating infrastructure, overcrowding, insufficient staffing, and poorly trained guards keep armed gangs in effective control over prison populations in Venezuela. The United Nations has reported that prison infrastructure is infested with rats and insects, and detainees do not always have access to natural light, food, or water."

It can also be observed that since the global health pandemic, there is unrest in the different prison centers around the globe because either they were restricted from their liberty or because of the fear of catching the virus inside the cell.

It can also be remembered that prisoners in Peru staged a riot and protest after 600 inmates tested positive for the virus while the other prisoners were asking medicines to combat the infectious and deadly virus COVID-19.



Read next: Riots Breakout as More Than 600 Peruvian Prisoners Test Positive for COVID-19
An alleged drug peddler was arrested in Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district with nearly 2 kgs of charas, police said on Friday.

The arrest was made on Thursday evening, they said.

A resident of Byaser village, Meher Chand was nabbed by a team of Kullu police during patrolling at Balu Pathar Pul, Kullu Superintendent of Police Gaurav Singh said.

A total of 1.708 kgs of charas was recovered from his possession, the officer said.

An FIR under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act has been registered against Chand at the Kullu police station, Singh said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
King County in Washington has agreed to settle a civil rights lawsuit for $2.25 million, an apology and a sheriffs promise to pursue a new policy to be named after the teenage victim of a fatal police shooting.

The settlement announced Monday requires Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht to pursue a new policy requiring deputies to use body and dash cameras, The Seattle Times reported.

The mediated agreement follows the death of 17-year-old MiChance Dunlap-Gittens, who was shot during a 2017 sting operation by King County sheriffs detectives.

The settlement includes a provision that Johanknecht meet with Dunlap-Gittens parents to review a report on the shooting issued by the countys Office of Law Enforcement Oversight in February, a family attorney said.

In a joint statement announcing the settlement, King County said it extends its condolences to the Dunlap-Gittens family and apologizes for the loss of life.

Dunlap-Gittens was a high school senior when he was killed while fleeing from three plainclothes detectives who sprang from an unmarked van in Des Moines, 19 miles (31 kilometres) south of Seattle.

The arrest team mistakenly believed a 16-year-old companion of Dunlap-Gittens had been involved in a hit-and-run accident two days earlier that killed the adopted son of a Seattle police officer.

Dunlap-Gittens father, Frank Gittens, said the settlement, including the push for dash and body cameras, is a major victory and I think Chance will be smiling down on us.

Efforts to implement dash or body cameras in the King County Sheriffs Office  one of the largest agencies in the state that does not require video recordings of officers actions  would require approval by the King County Police Officers Guild, which has opposed similar reforms.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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MACHIASPORT, ME / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Glenn Cooke, CEO of the Cooke family of companies, provided the following statement after President Donald Trump signed the first ever Executive Order that includes provisions to improve U.S. aquaculture competitiveness and economic growth on Thursday."I am very pleased President Trump has recognized that domestic farmed production of aquaculture seafood is vital to help correct the severe trade imbalance and strengthen local food security. This should be viewed as a call to State and local governments that the country is in dire need of domestically produced seafood protein and that they should find ways to support, promote, and expand this essential food sector as other countries have.As a family company, with marine fish farming operations in Maine and Washington and shellfish farming in North Carolina, and wild fisheries in other states including Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alaska, we are extremely proud of the hard work and dedication that our people put in every day to produce healthy seafood meals for families across the USA. Cooke Aquaculture USA in Maine was very proud to have been chosen as the supplier of sustainably farmed Atlantic salmon for the President's 2017 inauguration. Our strong operations have shown that aquaculture presents a tremendous opportunity to create thousands of jobs and build vibrant working waterfronts co-existing with traditional fisheries in rural coastal communities.President Trump and his Executive Agencies are to be commended for their leadership to address the regulatory challenges with establishing seafood farms by revising the National Aquaculture Development Plan and implementing a Nationwide Permit authorizing finfish, seaweed or multi-trophic culture in federal marine waters." About Cooke Aquaculture Inc.Cooke Aquaculture Inc. is a vertically integrated family company based in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, with salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, the United States, Chile and Scotland as well as seabass and seabream farming operations in Spain. The Cooke family of companies includes global aquaculture divisions including its wholly-owned subsidiary Cooke Aquaculture Inc. and Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd, as well as seafood and wild fishery divisions under Cooke Seafood USA, Inc., Icicle Seafoods, Inc., Wanchese Fish Company, Inc., Omega Protein Corporation, Cooke Uruguay S.A. and Seajoy Seafood Corporation, one of the largest premium shrimp farms in Latin America. Cooke ships fresh, sustainable True North Seafood branded products to over 67 countries. Cooke is committed to continuous improvement of quality and environmental performance. Certifications for the company's farm-raised or wild-caught products include; Best Aquaculture Practices (4-Star: sea sites, processing plants, feed mills, and freshwater hatcheries), Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management, Label Rouge, Soil Association Organic, Friend of the Sea, Global G.A.P., British Retail Consortium among others.Contact:Joel RichardsonVice President, Public RelationsCooke Inc. / For Cooke Aquaculture USA40 Wellington Row, Saint John, NB, Canada E2L 3H3+1-506-721-1093 mobile/ +1-506-694-4939 officeSOURCE: Cooke Inc.
With several inmates at Arthur Road Jail infected with tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, health experts are worried that the number of Covid-positive people at the premises can increase. The jail has currently 103 Covid-19 cases.

Deepak Pandey, inspector general of police (south region) of state prisons department, did not respond to repeated calls and messages.

Arthur Road prison has a capacity of 800 but houses 2,600 inmates currently. The situation is the same at the citys other major jail at Byculla, where over 500 prisoners are squeezed into a space meant for 200 people.

As per data procured from the Mumbai District Aids Control Society (MDACS), there are 22 inmates with HIV at Arthur Road Jail while 29 HIV patients are at Byculla Jail, including 14 from the womens jail. There are 18 TB patients at Arthur Road Jail as per the state tuberculosis department.

Due to overcrowding in the jails with common bathrooms and mess rooms, it is difficult to stop the spread of the infection, say health experts. Prisoners living with HIV and TB have higher chances of contracting the infection due to low immunity.

There is a need to make special arrangements for such vulnerable prisoners. Jail authorities should have followed the international guidelines to stop the spread, said Blessi Kumar, of the Delhi-based Global Coalition of TB Activists (GCTA).

During the outbreak of the virus in China, prisons had turned into a breeding ground for the disease. As of February 25, there were 555 confirmed infections in five prisons of three provinces  Hubei, Shandong, and Zhejiang.

Taking note of it, the World Health Organization released prison guidelinesPreparedness, prevention and control of Covid-19 in prisons. It recommended screening of all inmates and special provision for patients with blood-borne viruses, TB and drug use disorders. Particular attention should be paid to persons with contagious diseases...refined allocation procedures should be considered that would allow prisoners at highest risk to be separated from others, read the guidelines.

But when HT contacted recently released prisoners from both the jails, they claimed that there is no provision of hygiene, social distancing and lack of sensitisation at the prisons.

A 42-year-old HIV-positive inmate, who recently got discharged from Byculla Jail, said, For over 500 prisoners, there were only 4 common bathrooms. We bathed together and slept with over 30 prisoners in a cell. He was at the jail for three months.

Avinash Roy, a state lawyer, spoke about one of his clients who is infected with TB and is an inmate at Arthur Road Jail. Despite getting approval for his bail, due to the lockdown, the inmates family couldnt complete his security procedure to bring him out of the jail. When my clients family tried talking to the jail authority, they said that his being inside the jail is safer. Who will take responsibility if anything happens to him? he said.

Dr Pranita Tipre, head of TB department, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, The jails have isolation facilities where they will keep the suspected patients. But so far, we havent received any instructions from the jails for testing all the TB patients.

Health activists have criticised jail authorities for not taking provisional measures.

Eldred Tellis, executive director, Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust said, These prisoners should be given preventive medicines like HCQ or Ayurveda. They keep using the same mask for days without sanitising it. Plus, they arent even given gloves. The food given in jails is of poor quality which doesnt even boost immunity.

As per experts, as these inmates have already compromised health, conditions, if they contract the infection, the mortality rate can become higher. Their early diagnosis is necessary for timely treatment, increasing their chances of recovery, said Ganesh Acharya, a TB/HIV activist.

During the initial days of the nation-wide lockdown, there was a gap of 7 to 8 days in the procurement of HIV drugs in jails. Taking note of this, MDACS provided medicines for a month in advance to the prisons.

It is important to keep the viral load (presence of HIV in blood) in the body under control. With regular intake of medicines, the patients are at a lesser risk of contracting the infection, said Dr Srikala Acharya, additional project director of MDACS.
The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany this week attacked one of the fundaments of the European Union, the primacy of Union law.

It is long-settled practice that, in its field of operation, EU law has superiority over national law.

The FCC of Germany has also rejected the primacy of decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), over decisions of national courts, on the meaning of EU treaties.

The FCC has furthermore attacked the independence from the politics of any one country of the European Central Bank (ECB).

It instructed the German Bundestag and the German government to ensure the ECB did a new analysis of its bond-buying programme in light of the principles it laid down. Failing that, the ECB bond-buying in question should not be applied in Germany, it said.

This is wrong. It is not the prerogative of any one EU country to instruct the ECB.

I remember how at the Dublin EU summit of 1996, which I chaired, German chancellor Helmut Kohl defended the independence of the soon-to-be-created ECB. He did not want member states to be able to pressurise it to pursue loose monetary policies. Now, a German Court wants a German government to interfere with the independence of the ECB, something that would have horrified Mr Kohl.

The German FCC decision was about the bond-purchasing programme of the ECB, instituted by Mario Draghi to support the euro in the wake of the 2008-2010 economic crisis. This bond-buying programme was known as the PSPP.

The ECJ had found this PSPP programme to be legal under the EU treaties, in a decision on December 11, 2018. The German Court this week flatly rejected this ECJ decision. It described it as "untenable".

It condemned it in the following terms: "In its judgment of December 11, 2018, the ECJ held that the decision of the ECB Governing Council on the PSPP and its subsequent amendments were still within the ambit of the ECB's competences.

"This view manifestly fails to give consideration to the importance and scope of the principle of proportionality (Art. 5(1) second sentence and Art. 5(4) TEU) - which applies to the division of competences between the European Union and the Member States - and is simply untenable from a methodological perspective given that it completely disregards the actual economic policy effects of the programme."

The German court added that the PSPP bond-buying programme of the ECB is "ultra vires (beyond its powers) and not to be applied in Germany", and instructed the German authorities to this effect.

It even criticised the methodology of the ECJ in reaching its decisions - a remark designed to annoy.

The EU can only work if its laws are interpreted consistently in all 27 member states. If a German supreme court can overrule the ECJ interpretation of the EU treaties, so also could the Hungarian or Polish supreme court.

Soon we could have 27 different interpretations of what EU law meant, and the single market would quickly disappear.

The German court did say it was not making a decision about the more recent bond-buying programme, introduced in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, and which is supporting countries like Italy and Spain, hardest hit by the virus.

But the logic of the German FCC's decision this week clearly implies it would also find against that programme too when, as is likely, the same German litigants bring a case against the new programme before the German courts.

A major showdown is now inevitable, at a time of maximum vulnerability for the European economy.

A robust answer must be given by the EU institutions to the German court.

The intergovernmental conference, including the German government that finalised the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, said, when it promulgated that treaty: "In accordance with the well settled case law of the EU Court of Justice, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties, have primacy over the laws of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law."

The European heads of government, including Angela Merkel, must urgently reaffirm that declaration, and declare their unequivocal support for the ECJ decision of December 2018, and for the independence of the ECB from the authorities of Germany, and from those of any other EU state.

By undermining the ECJ, the German court is providing a precedent that could be used by semi-authoritarian governments in some EU states, who do not like some EU decisions on matters like the rule of law, academic freedom or media pluralism.

To be fair, the doctrine underlying the German Basic Law is one which has democracy, and respect for democratic procedures, at its centre. The German FCC has frequently defended the democratic prerogatives of the German federal state.

It has, however, failed adequately to recognise that the EU is a democracy too.

It has an elected parliament, to which the ECB accounts for itself.

That is where German concerns should be pursued, by political means, and not by mischief-making court cases decided by judges who set themselves above the EU.
Visakhapatnam, May 8 : The gas leakage situation at LG Polymers here is now under control and the operation to plug the emissions will be launched soon, officials said on Friday.

They said except five villages in the close vicinity of the plant which were evacuated after the gas leakage early Thursday, there was no threat to any other area.

Reports of more leakage from the plant had triggered panic late Thursday night with people in areas as far as four km from the plant had moved to safe places.

A day after the gas leak killed 11 people and affected hundreds, Andhra Pradesh Tourism Minister Avanti Srinivas said the situation was completely under control.

He said the operation to plug the emissions of Styrene would begin soon. "This process is likely to be completed by Friday evening or maximum by Saturday morning," the minister told reporters.

The minister, who is monitoring the situation at the plant, said the process to completely plug the emissions would be slow as the experts feel that if they try to rush through, the tank could blast. "I told them to take their own time so that the entire process is completed in a safe manner," said the minister.

Srinivas said 500 tonnes of PTBC inhibitor, an antidote for styrene, had reached the city along with the experts.

Experts from National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) held a meeting with the officials from Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB), industries department, fire services and LG Polymers to chalk out an action plan to plug the leakage.

Authorities continued spraying water at RR Venkatapuram and surroundings to reduce the gas density in the air. Officials said the air quality was being monitored regularly.

People evacuated from the five villages on Thursday were asked not to return till the area is declared safe. They were advised to remain in the shelters provided by municipal authorities.

Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner R. K. Meena said areas other than these five villages were safe and appealed to people not to believe the rumours.
The Towns School Modernization Committee met (virtually) this week for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest, and, boy, have things changed.

The last time the group discussed the Cheshire School Districts infrastructure future, the world hadnt effectively shut down and 400,000 people hadnt filed for unemployment in Connecticut. But thats the reality the committee faces today, one that offers as uncertain a future as the nation has confronted in decades.

So, what is the right course of action? How should the Town go about putting together a sweeping (and expensive) proposal to address Cheshires ever-aging school buildings while also grappling with an economic downturn that could not months but years?

The answer is the same for this committee as it is for the Town as a whole. Work must continue. Plans must be made. A detailed analysis of what school buildings require to bring them more fully into the 21st century must be completed. But all of it must be done with this in mind: The economy is likely to look very different in moving forward, and proposals should reflect that.

Whatever comes out of the School Mod Committee meetings, it was always going to be phased in, spreading the work and cost over a period of years. But now, that timeline may be pushed back even further, and cheaper, more cost-effective work moved to the front of the line.

Maybe, instead of including projects for consideration at referendum this November, the Town will have to wait until next year. Perhaps instead of implementing any part of the plan in 2020 or 2021, the School District will have to simply continue basic maintenance work.

Of course, we dont know what we dont know, and that fact has been hammered home on numerous occasions during the course of the coronavirus crisis. We are, all of us, reacting as best we can to a fluid situation that provides no clues as to what tomorrow, let alone next year, will look like.

It may be that the economic downturn currently being predicted by so many will turn out to be less calamitous than is feared. After all, as bad as the current public health crisis has been, many feared it would be far worse, resulting in many more thousands dead. We have, thankfully, and for the moment, avoided those worst-case scenarios.

When the state begins to open back up, the economy may also open, and a V-shaped recovery may occur.

If thats the case, then the Town can look to be more aggressive in pursuing its infrastructure projects and move forward feeling more confident.

But as we know, it is usually better to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

When the dust begins to settle, the Town, as well as the state, will be in a better position to accurately assess the damage done by the coronavirus. Until then, we should be expecting that, just like our lives at the moment, big-ticket projects will have to be put on hold for the time being.
The number of coronavirus disease cases crossed the 56,000-mark on Friday, with Maharashtra tally reaching a staggering 17,974. The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the country are 1,886.

According to the Union health ministry figures at 8 am, the total number of Covid-19 cases in the country are 56,342. Thats an increase of 3,392 from Thursday.

At least 4,500 new cases have been detected across the country between Wednesday and Thursday, figures announced by different states and union territories showed.

A 55-year-old CISF head constable posted at the Mumbai international airport succumbed to Covid-19, while two personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF) have also died, officials said. The BSF also reported 41 new cases of infection, taking its tally of confirmed cases to 193.

While Maharashtra and Gujarat continue to top the nationwide tally, Tamil Nadu is no inching towards 5,500. Five hundred eighty new cases were reported there on Thursday. The death toll of the southern state has reached 37, with two more women succumbing to Covid-19 yesterday.

On Thursday morning, the health ministry had said that the Covid-19 death toll in the country has risen to 1,783 while the number of cases has climbed to 52,952, registering an increase of 89 deaths and 3,561 cases since Wednesday.

Speaking at a virtual global Buddha Purnima event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India is making every effort to save the life of every citizen from coronavirus, but it is also taking its global obligations during the pandemic very seriously.

He also said that Indias growth will always be aiding global growth.

A nationwide lockdown has been in place since March 25, which was first imposed for 21 days but got extended first for another 14 days till May 3 and then for further 14 days in the third phase, with considerable relaxations, till May 17.
Residents from Leopold Street in the Woodvale area of North Belfast take part in street commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Angela Brown and Jacqueline Kell dress up as Winston Churchill and Vera Lynn. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Socially distanced VE Day celebrations took place across Northern Ireland on Friday as the public marked the event despite the coronavirus restrictions.

Residents found novel ways to celebrate the 75th anniversary with many commemorative events being held online.

Alongside a two minute silence to remember those who lost their lives, many communities held socially distanced street parties with bunting on display.

It comes after five further coronavirus-linked deaths in Northern Ireland were announced by the Department of Health.

The latest figures show two deaths occurred in the 24 hours up to 9.30am on Friday, May 8 with three not previously reported.

It brings the death toll to 427 in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) show there has been more than 130 extra deaths linked to the coronavirus in NI than previously reported.

The statistics show 516 deaths mentioning Covid-19 on the death certificate occurred up until May 1 (including those registered up to and including May 6).

The comparative number of deaths reported by the Department of Health during this same period was 383, meaning 133 extra deaths have now been reported.

The figures from the Northern Ireland statistics and Research Agency differ to those provided by the Department of Health as they take into account information provided on death certificates. They may or may not have previously tested positive.

Read More

Here's how Friday unfolded:
[MUSIC - MIKLOS SZENTHELYI, VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OP. 61, III. RONDO, ALLEGRO] CARY: Hey! Youre here. SIMON: We like that the house has evolved over time. The very earliest part was built in 1795. Our most recent addition was built in 2011. It was designed by Robert Venturi. CARY: This is the first part of the house that was built in 1795. Gouache on board by Peter Saul, [BLEEP] Los Angeles, 1968. SIMON: Our collection of right royal English tea mugs. CARY: This is one of my paintings, and this backgammon table was once owned by Clark Gable. CARY: A print by Jonathan Borofsky. SIMON: And Oprah Winfreys hand-me-down couch. SIMON: This is certainly one of our favorite pieces. CARY: This is the Grandma Moses room. I bought fabric by the yard on eBay and SIMON: Pretty well, everythings covered in it at this point. SIMON: Better say your prayers. Were going up those stairs. CARY: This is my collection of photographs of people standing in front of Mount Vernon. You know, lots of school groups, post office workers, Mrs. Khrushchev. I feel sorry for this group because they dont have the house behind them. CARY: This is a sculpture done by a friend of ours, Katharine Umsted. Its called Endless Column. CARY: This is one of our pieces of Carol Channings luggage. I dont travel with it. Its not really functional. CARY: The bedroom. SIMON: Not too many people make it this far. CARY: And this plant stand was owned by Lauren Bacall. CARY: This is the room that Robert Venturi designed. SIMON: And spinning still life by Jonathan Borofsky. SIMON: You might have noticed that the fireplace is fake, but the blossoms are real. CARY: Time Piece by Richard Artschwager. SIMON: Thanks for coming! CARY: Dont be a stranger! [MUSIC PLAYING]
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 09:20:16|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese health authority said Friday that it received report of one new confirmed COVID-19 case on the Chinese mainland Thursday.

The new case was domestically transmitted in Jilin Province and no new imported cases were reported Thursday, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.

Three suspected cases imported from abroad, all in Shanghai, were reported.

No deaths were reported Thursday on the mainland, according to the commission.

Altogether 36 people were discharged from hospitals after recovery Thursday, while the number of severe cases decreased by five to 18.

As of Thursday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 82,886, including 260 patients who were still being treated, 77,993 people who had been discharged after recovery, and 4,633 people who died of the disease.

By Thursday, the mainland had reported a total of 1,680 imported cases. Of the cases, 1,461 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 219 remained hospitalized with five in severe conditions. No deaths from the imported cases had been reported.

The commission said six people, all from overseas, were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

According to the commission, 6,167 close contacts were still under medical observation after 645 people were discharged from medical observation Thursday.

Also on Thursday, 16 new asymptomatic cases, all domestic ones, were reported on the mainland. No cases were re-categorized as confirmed cases, and 42 such cases, including 10 from overseas, were discharged from medical observation, according to the commission.

The commission said 854 asymptomatic cases, including 71 from overseas, were still under medical observation.

By Thursday, 1,044 confirmed cases including four deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 45 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 440 in Taiwan including six deaths.

A total of 944 patients in Hong Kong, 40 in Macao, and 347 in Taiwan had been discharged from hospitals after recovery. Enditem
argentinaexchangebondholders.com to provide critical information and resources to investors

NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ad Hoc Group of Argentina Exchange Bondholders (the "Exchange Bondholder Group") today announced that it has launched a website and Twitter page to provide investors with information pertaining to Argentina's debt restructuring, and a means to maintain regular communication with the group. The URL for the website is argentinaexchangebondholders.com.

Investors can now also follow the group on Twitter at @Argexchangebond.

Following the Exchange Bondholder Group's recent webinar, which was attended by over 1,800 participants and viewed by hundreds more afterwards, there were many questions from around the globe related to Argentina's unilateral exchange offer. The Exchange Bondholder Group's new website, will provide answers to the most frequently asked questions from investors, as well as other materials including recordings of the recent webinar in English and Spanish and the presentation materials.

The Exchange Bondholder Group is comprised of 18 investment institutions represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and collectively holds over 15% of the outstanding Exchange Bonds issued by Argentina under its 2005 indenture and 2010 indenture supplement. Exchange Bonds were issued to investors who participated in the 2005 and 2010 debt exchanges, through which bondholders voluntarily accepted large reductions in net present value to assist Argentina's recovery from the 2001 default.

Media Contacts:



Unboxed Communications

argentina@unboxedcommunications.com



Spanish Language Media:

Juaniramain@infomedia.consulting
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's decision to drop its prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday was greeted as a triumph by President Donald Trump and his allies, who have argued for years that Flynn was set up - but with dire alarm by Trump's opponents, who saw the move as an attack on the rule of law.

The extreme division mirrored three years of partisan combat over how the FBI handled Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an investigation that shadowed much of Trump's time in office.

And the circumstances of the development - delivered by a loyalist attorney general after a key prosecutor withdrew from a case in which Flynn had previously acknowledged guilt on multiple occasions - appeared only to harden positions.

At a celebratory White House, aides cheered Attorney General William Barr, whose decision to appoint a new prosecutor to review the case paved the way for Thursday's move.

Barr was largely credited with "shepherding the recommendation" and staying engaged on the Flynn case and matters related to the Russia probe, according to one White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal reaction.

Trump advisers are discussing deploying the Flynn case as a weapon against putative Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden this fall - and also are contemplating a possible visit to the White House by Flynn in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The White House declined to comment on whether the president would be making an appearance soon with Flynn.

Trump - who fired his national security adviser in early 2017 because the president said Flynn had lied about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the United States - showered Flynn with praise Thursday, calling him "an innocent man."

"Things are falling out now and coming in line showing what a hoax this whole investigation was," he told reporters. "It was a total disgrace, and I wouldn't be surprised if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks. This is just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle."

Congressional Democrats said they were appalled.

"With no legitimate prosecutorial basis, they've simply thrown away a conviction," Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, said in an interview. "It's sad and outrageous for the justice system to be used in this way, for naked political ends and a coverup - and they're obviously exploiting the pandemic as a means to distract from this."

Democrats, Blumenthal said, "should use every platform and bully pulpit we have to fight this."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Americans should be "furious" with a move he said was the act of a "politicized and thoroughly corrupt" Justice Department. He called for the decision to be investigated by Justice Department's inspector general.

And a chorus of former federal prosecutors and FBI officials decried the move, saying the Justice Department had caved to years of pressure from Trump and provided Flynn an outcome he would not have received were he an ordinary defendant.

Barr - who has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the Russia investigation - said in an interview with CBS that it was the Justice Department's "duty" to dismiss the case because prosecutors could not establish that a crime had been committed.

He disputed that he was doing Trump's bidding - "No, I'm doing the law's bidding," he retorted - and said he was ready to take criticism for the decision.

"I'm prepared for that, but I also think it's sad that nowadays, these partisan feelings are so strong that people have lost any sense of justice," Barr said.

Trump ousted Flynn after the retired general served only 23 days as national security adviser, saying that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and others about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in the weeks before Trump took office.

During the calls, Flynn urged Russia not to respond to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 campaign, according to special counsel Robert Mueller III's report.

Flynn pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to FBI agents during a January 2017 interview about the phone calls with the ambassador. He agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team as it investigated Russia's actions in the presidential campaign.

After Flynn pleaded guilty, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," adding that Flynn's lies were a "shame" because he had done nothing illegal during the transition.

However, after Mueller concluded his work and issued his report last year, Flynn replaced his legal team and then sought to withdraw his plea, arguing that his FBI interview had been a setup designed to catch him a lie and that he had not intended to be untruthful.

A 20-page court filing from the Department of Justice on Thursday essentially endorsed those views, arguing that the FBI had no justifiable reason to interview Flynn and would not be able to prove in court that he had made false statements.

The filing was signed by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy Shea, but in a statement, another prosecutor, appointed by Barr in January to review the Flynn matter, said the move had been his recommendation.

The decision came without the blessing of officials who had originally decided to investigate and then prosecute Flynn. FBI Director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, who had directed Flynn's interview, were both ousted by Trump. In statements and tweets, they both blasted the decision.

"This is simply a pardon by another name. A black day in DOJ history," tweeted Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and inspector general at Justice who now represents McCabe.

Through a representative, Mueller declined to comment. But the final member of Mueller's team who had remained involved with the Flynn case, Brandon Van Grack, withdrew from the case Thursday just before the filing was entered.

Current and former national security officials said they were dismayed by the Justice Department's reasoning, which seemed to argue that it was improper to question Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador as part of the FBI investigation into possible cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign.

New documents filed in the case show the FBI had been preparing to close its counterintelligence investigation into Flynn as it caught wind of his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, having found no derogatory information about him after several months of work.

Flynn had been a senior campaign adviser for Trump and had traveled to Russia in 2015 at the behest of a Russian state-run media organization, facts that the Justice Department noted in its motion to withdraw the charges.

"There's no question that predication existed" for the FBI to talk to Flynn, said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency and the executive editor of Lawfare. "I think this brief makes selective arguments as though they represent the totality of conditions, in order to make completely reasonable, fully supported investigative decisions seem as if they were illegitimate or even unlawful."

And national security experts who think Russia was never held accountable for its role in disrupting the 2016 election said they fear the Kremlin would be pleased.

"Russia will see this as a huge victory. A sign both of American weakness and of a corrupt judicial system, in which they can continue meddling in our affairs and get away with it," said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia at the time of the 2016 U.S. campaign.

On Thursday, Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, afterward telling reporters that he had discussed with Putin how "the Russia hoax" had damaged his ability to work with Moscow.

"They're a very powerful nation. Why would we not be dealing with each other? But the Russia hoax, this absolute dishonest hoax, made it very difficult for our nation and their nation to deal," Trump told reporters.

The end of the Flynn prosecution provided Trump a resounding final victory over the Mueller investigation, which consumed nearly two years of his presidency but ended last year with a finding that the evidence did not establish that Trump's campaign conspired with Russia in 2016.

Likewise, despite compiling a lengthy, damaging narrative of Trump's efforts to derail the probe, Mueller declined to offer a finding as to whether Trump had engaged in obstruction of justice. In the end, Trump emerged from the investigation essentially unscathed. Mueller disbanded his office in June.

Then, in a 434-page report last year, the Justice Department's inspector general found that the FBI's investigation had not been driven by political bias but also concluded that there were serious flaws in the surveillance of Trump aide Carter Page, who was investigated in 2016 but never charged.

Also last year, Barr intervened to reduce the sentencing recommendation issued by career officials who had prosecuted Trump confidant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress, obstructing an official proceeding and witness tampering, prompting the withdrawal of all four prosecutors who had overseen the case.

Stone was ultimately sentenced to 40 months in prison. He is appealing his conviction. As with Flynn, Trump has repeatedly bemoaned Stone's prosecution and insisted that he has been treated unfairly.

Across the right wing of the Republican Party, the Justice Department's recommendation was embraced as validation of their own views of the Russia probe, with many allies of the president's casting the prosecution of Flynn as an example of an attempted "coup" by the "deep state" and allies of the Democratic Party and former president Barack Obama.

In a tweet, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted the Flynn and Page findings, and added, "Someone remind me [why] we needed $30M+ Mueller collusion investigation?"

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a top ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the recommendation "reminds me of a haunting question by ex-Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, who after his acquittal in a 1987 fraud trial, asked, 'Which office do I go to get my reputation back?' "

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is influential in conservative legal circles, tweeted, "What happened to Gen. Flynn was a travesty." And Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called Flynn "the victim of a plot hatched at the highest levels of the FBI to take down" Trump.

Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell indicated that the Justice Department's decision was not the end of the matter, calling it "the first step toward restoring the importance of truth and the rule of law."

Republicans signaled that they intended to continue to press what they see as their advantage on the Russia issue, particularly as Trump's campaign against Biden heats up.

Two White House officials and an outside Trump adviser said Thursday afternoon that the campaign was considering using the Flynn case to argue that Biden and former president Barack Obama should be blamed for what the White House sees as an unjust conspiracy against the president.

Hours later, the Trump campaign put out a statement saying that "a corrupt witch hunt" against Flynn had taken place "on Vice President Joe Biden's watch." And the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., on Twitter called for revenge against officials who had been involved in the investigation.

"It's time for some transparency & bad actors should be punished accordingly, you know, they way they would have punished us!" he wrote.

- - -

The Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
By Express News Service

Kasaragod: On Thursday, Rukhiya Ibrahim handed over a cheque of Rs 1 lakh to Kasaragod collector D Sajith Babu. The money will go to the Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund.

Gratitude should not be expressed in words alone, she felt. Six members of her family had contracted COVID-19. All of them have recovered from the viral disease. "This is a gesture of gratitude to the government for providing excellent care and boosting our confidence when we were in the hospitals fighting the disease," she said.

Rukhiya's son Ali Askar -- a resident of Eriyal in Mogral Puthur gram panchayat -- returned from Dubai on March 16. He tested positive for COVID-19 on March 21. In subsequent days, his mother Rukhiya, Ali's wife, his sister-in-law, and her two daughters tested positive for the viral disease.

Soon, the District Health Service isolated five houses in the locality. The residents pointed fingers at the family for spreading the viral disease. "But the hospital staff and health officials stood by us and gave us the confidence to fight the disease. That is the Kerala Model," she said.

When all the family members returned home after recovering from the disease, they decided to do more than just say 'Thank You'. On Thursday, Ummath Foundation, a trust run by the family, donated Rs 1 lakh to CMDRF
Glynn County Sheriff's Office

SAVANNAHGregory and Travis McMichael have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in connection with the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday.

According to police, the white father and son, 64 and 34, chased Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, after he ran by Travis McMichaels home in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick on Feb. 23. He was unarmed and jogging at the time.

This is a start towards victory, Thea Brooks, Arberys aunt, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. This only the beginning though, but this is what we were all hoping for.

The McMichaels said they believed Arbery was a burglar responsible for a series of break-ins in their neighborhood and that they pursued him in their pickup truck while armed with a shotgun and a .357 magnum. The GBI alleges the McMichaels confronted Arbery, and that Travis shot him.

A local prosecutor previously indicated a third man, William Bryan, took part in the chase and filmed the incident.

Its Murder: This Shooting of an Unarmed Black Man Is Roiling Georgia

At least two shots hit the 25-year-old, the Glynn County Coroners Office told The Daily Beast last week.

Video that Brooks said depicted her nephews death elicited a furious reaction nationwide, and residents of the area protested the initial failure to prosecute a case on Tuesday.

Its murder. Its heartbreaking to even look at. The whole city has seen it, Brooks told The Daily Beast after the video was released this week.

The Georgia NAACP echoed her words in a Thursday response to the McMichaels arrest: The murderers of Ahmaud Arbery have been arrested.

Gregory McMichael, a former cop and investigator with a local prosecutors office, previously told The Daily Beast he never would have gone after someone for their color. He also said the closest version of the truth about the incident was captured in a letter effectively clearing him and his son that was written by a prosecutor who recused himself from the case, George Barnhill.

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McMichael also admitted he had no direct evidence that Arbery was a thief. But hes the guy whos there without permission, he said from behind the closed front door of his sons home.

The owner of an unfinished home just down the street from Travis McMichael's home, Larry English, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he had surveillance footage that appeared to show Arbery stopping to look at the foundation of his still-under-construction home.

While Gregory McMichael claimed to police that Arbery had been caught on surveillance video, it was not immediately clear what video he was referring to. English told The Daily Beast he had no knowledge of the McMichaels seeing his surveillance footage.

McMichaels ties to law enforcement helped fuel a haze of suspicion around the killing from the beginning. Barnhill was one of two area prosecutors who looked into the incident before recusing themselves. A third prosecutorDistrict Attorney Tom Durdensought a GBI probe ahead of the arrests this week.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Ariana Grande banned Tiger Kings Carole Baskin from appearing in her new music video with Justin Bieber.

The pair had previously asked fans to send in clips of themselves dancing around the house with their loved ones for the video to new song Stuck With U, which debuted in the early hours of Friday morning.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Buble and Kendall and Kylie Jenner were among the stars to appear, but one famous face not to make the cut was Tiger Kings Baskin, who instead featured in a teaser shared on Biebers Twitter with the caption: Tonight. #stuckwithu. He aint going nowhere.

In the bizarre clip, Baskin is seen dancing to Stuck With U with husband Howard and her cat, the married couple dressed in animal print kaftans and lion head hats.

Replying to her collaborator, Grande reassured her fans that the star of the Netflix documentary would not be in her video, writing: For the record, I did not allow or approve this clip to be in the actual video. But nonetheless. It exists and thats ..... unique.

After a fan joked that they were laughing at her response, Grande replied: I am very glad someone is laughing. The f***ing heart attacks I had over this.

Recorded fully at home during the coronavirus lockdown, Bieber sings his part of the song to wife Hailey Bieber, while Grande serenades her dog, with boyfriend Dalton Gomez making a brief appearance at the end.

Elsewhere, the video sees fans from around the world dancing to the song, including students in their prom dresses and graduation gowns, as well as healthcare workers and nurses in their scrubs.

All proceeds from the songs streams and sales will be donated to the First Responders Childrens Foundation, which helps give funding grants and scholarships to the children of key workers on the frontlines during the pandemic.
Mikheil Saakashvili is a citizen of Ukraine, and not a single state in the world can tell Ukraine where he can be appointed, and where not. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba stated this in interview with LB.ua.

He noted that the Ukrainian government would try to maintain strategic relations with Georgia.

With all the charisma of Mikheil Nikolozovich, he is a citizen of Ukraine, who previously held government posts here. Therefore, for my part, I will make every effort to ensure that our relations with Georgia remain truly friendly and strategic. If our Georgian partners take some drastic steps, well, we will survive, and then we will restore everything that was lost," Kuleba said.

The Foreign Minister also said that he had a calm and thorough telephone conversation with his Georgian counterpart, David Zalkaliani.

"We talked with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia. It was a very calm, balanced conversation. He explained the position of his government to me. We proceed from very simple theses. The first one is that relations between Ukraine and Georgia are so special that they cannot become a hostage the fate of one person. Second, we understand the domestic political context in Georgia and do not interfere in it, but for us, Mr. Saakashvili is a citizen of Ukraine. And no state in the world can tell us where to appoint or not to appoint our citizens," Kuleba noted.

As we reported before, following the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as Head of Ukraines National Reform Council, Georgia decided to recall Ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze for further consultations. This process is a common one in the diplomatic work.
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The spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Belgrade

By Ivana Sekularac

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Facing growing public discontent, the Serbian government has decided to ease coronavirus lockdown measures this weekend despite warnings by doctors.

Serbia has so far reported 8,724 coronavirus cases and 173 deaths. The number of people unhappy with strict preventative measures introduced by the government of President Aleksandar Vucic is increasing, and many have joined opposition protests from their balconies.

On Thursday the government reversed its decision to lock the entire country down during the coming May Day weekend and instead introduced a curfew from 6 p.m. on Thursday until 5 p.m. on Saturday despite calls by doctors not to relax restrictions.

Serbia's chief epidemiologist, Predrag Kon, a member of the government's crisis team, said the decision was a compromise. "I do not feel good about it," he told state-run RTS TV. He said a three-day lockdown would have been a better and safer decision to prevent the disease spreading.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported 227 new coronavirus cases and 5 deaths. Neighbouring Bosnia reported a rise in cases on Wednesday after the government began easing restrictions.

The number of patients in the KBC Zvezdara hospital in Belgrade, which has been turned into a COVID-19 clinic, halved compared to a few weeks ago to 200 on Thursday, Doctor Vesna Dopudja told Reuters.

"Considering what we have been through we are a bit afraid of easing the measures," she said.

The government had adopted a policy of gradual easing, under which restaurants and cafes open from next week, public transport in Belgrade resumes on May 8, while kindergartens will open on May 11. Hairdressers were allowed to go back to work this week, but with new safety measure.

Mladen Ivanusa, a representative of the World Health Organisation, warned that caution was necessary.

"The first wave of epidemics is not over yet, and it is always possible to see a worsening of the situation," Ivanusa told Reuters.

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He said people will have to change their habits to prevent the virus spreading, despite the easing of government measures.

"Normality we are going back to now (as governments ease measures), is not the normality we are used to," Ivanusa said.

For the first time since March 17, when it recorded its first coronavirus case, Montenegro, a small Balkan state of only 630,000 people, reported no new cases.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Aditional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Giles Elgood)
A fugitive wanted for killing rapper Momoh's real estate agent girlfriend in Minneapolis in an elaborate murder-for-hire plot has been arrested in Illinois after a four-month search.

Berry Davis and another alleged co-conspirator, Cedric Berry, 41, have been indicted on first-degree murder charges for their alleged roles in Monique Baugh's kidnapping and killing on New Year's Eve.

Baugh, 28, was lured to a phony home showing in Maple Grove, a Minneapolis suburb, abducted in a U-Haul truck, possibly tortured, and found shot dead in an alley, according to prosecutors.

Scroll down for video

Berry Davis, 41 (left), was arrested in early May in Chicago, four months after allegedly taking part in a murder-for-hire plot in Minneapolis that left Monique Baugh (right), 28, dead

The plot also targeted Baugh's boyfriend, rapper Momoh (left), pictured with Bizkit at a dinner at 40/40 Club in New York City in May 2019

Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said on Thursday that Davis was arrested in Illinois by another agency, but the circumstances of the arrest were not immediately known, reported Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Online records for the Cook County Jail in Chicago show Davis, 41, was booked May 1 and is being held without bond.

At least eight people were involved in varying degrees in the plot revolving around a dispute over a record deal between Baugh's boyfriend, Minnesota rapper Jon Mitchell-Momoh, known by his stage name Momoh, and a fellow rapper, investigators said.

Police believe Momoh was the intended victim of the alleged plot. He was shot and wounded at the couple's home while their two young children were nearby. The children were not hurt.

The suspected gunman is in federal custody on an unrelated charge, according to authorities. So far, no official charges have been filed against him in the Baugh case.

Momoh was shot multiple times by a masked gunman inside the home he and Baugh shared with their two children in Minneapolis (pictured)

Momoh told detectives he believed that he was targeted either because he had been flaunting 'a lot of money' on his social media accounts or that people suspected him of cooperating with police, according to court filings.

Investigators learned that Momoh had a dispute with a former friend over a record deal and that man may have ordered the hit on him, according to a warrant.

Cedric Berry, 41, Davis' brother-in-law and alleged co-conspirator, has been been indicted on first-degree murder charges

Prosecutors previously charged Shante Davis - Berry Davis' sister and Cedric Berry's wife - with being an accomplice after the fact.

In mid-January, Elsa Segura, 28, a former probation officer, was charged with one count of kidnapping for allegedly luring Baugh to her death.

Court records showed that Segura was a child survivor of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August 2007 that killed 13 people and injured 145 others.

According to the charges against Segura and Davis, Baugh received a voice mail from an unknown phone number on December 29, 2019, from a woman named 'Lisa' who requested a showing for a home. The caller said she wanted the showing 'maybe tomorrow morning.'

Baugh later received several calls from the number and 'found this very odd,' the charges said.

'She expressed to others that she did not know how this person obtained her personal phone number,' according to the complaint.

Police traced the phone number to Segura, whose voice was 'verified by law enforcement personnel who were personally familiar with her.'

Baugh arrived to a house viewing in Maple Grove at around 3pm. A short time later, a U-Haul truck parked near the garage of the property.

CCTV footage was said to have captured a person appearing to force another into the back of the van before departing.

Momoh, who recorded a song featuring the late Nipsey Hussle (right), told cops he believed that he was targeted after flaunting 'a lot of money' on his social media

According to court records, Baugh had her hands bound before being shot in the face and torso at a close range.

She was found fatally injured in an alley at around 6.30pm and later died at a hospital.

About an hour earlier, police said Berry had entered Momoh's home wearing a black mask and shot him multiple times while the musician was with his two daughters, aged one and three.

The rapper, who had released a song featuring the late Nipsey Hussle, has since recovered from his injuries.

Berry is being held in jail on $2million bail pending his next court appearance scheduled for August 31.
Ayya Lmahamad

Azerenergy OJSC has restored 250 MW of "lost" generating capacity of 6 modular power plants in Azerbaijan from September 2018, the energy operator reported on May 8.

"The rehabilitation program, launched in September 2018, covers 12 power plants, 6 of which are modular type power plants, such as Sangachal. To date, within the framework of the program it has been restored 250 MW of "lost" capacities of all 6 modular power plants," the operator said.

According to Azerenergy, within the framework of these measures, the work on restoration of 100 MW of "lost" generating capacity of the Sangachal power plant of modular type has been completed. The power plant capacity is 300 MW and it plays a special role in the energy supply of Baku and the Absheron Peninsula. Thus, about one third of the capacity of the Sangachal Power Plant has been restored. By comparison, 100 MW of capacity is equal to the average power demand in 4-5 regions of the country.

Prior the beginning of rehabilitation program, 4 out of 18 units at the Sangachal power plan were not operating at all, while the remaining 14 worked with breaks. In the course of repair the outdated units were replaced with new ones, the main spare parts were replaced for the rest.

As reported, within the framework of the program until 2022, it is planned to restore about 1000 MW of "lost" generating capacity.

The total cost of the program on rehabilitation of the energy system of Azerbaijan is estimated at AZN 560 million ($329.4m).

It should be noted an accident occurred at the Azerbaijani thermal power plant in Mingechevir city in July 2018. As a result, power supply was cut off in 39 cities and regions across the country.

A special State Commission came to the conclusion that one of the main reasons for this accident in the power system of Azerbaijan, was the unpreparedness of Azerenergy, the existing technical and a number of other shortcomings in the activities of the company, which did not allow an adequate response to the incident.

The Ministry of Energy and "Azerenergy" in the second half of 2018 signed a contract with the German VPC to conduct a technical audit of the Azerbaijan thermal power plant, development of the general plan for the rehabilitation of this plant, as well as optimization of electricity transmission in the system of Azerenergy.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
"We're witnessing the tale of two labor markets. Food service, beauty, and hospitality are fueling unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression," said Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education. "At the very same time, employers are grappling with the seemingly endemic skills gaps in healthcare, supply chain and skilled trade fields. Next Chapter helps bridge that gap and works with employers who are stepping up to help workers navigate the labor market riptide."

The core of the platform is a collaboration between employers adversely impacted by the crisis, and healthcare, supply chain, and tech employers that are hiring. Unlike traditional outplacement services, which were designed to place workers in jobs similar to the ones they left, Next Chapter was created to help workers make the leap to higher wage roles with access to education and training resources that enable them to prepare to transition into new careers or industries.

"Rapid reskilling and access to education will be more important than ever as we emerge from this crisis," said Drew Holler, Walmart's Senior Vice President of Associate Experience and HR Operations. "Next Chapter will play a crucial role in matching Americans who are suddenly out of work with future proof skills so they can transition to in-demand jobs."

A recent survey from the nonprofit Strada Education found that 57% of Americans in the workforce are worried they will lose their jobs and 33% believe that if they lose their jobs, they will need additional education and new skills to find a comparable one.

"Unemployment rates are eclipsing anything we've seen in the past by a substantial margin, leaving millions of Americans without a means of income or the skills needed to find work outside of their field," said Jessica Lindl, Vice President and Global Head of Education, Unity Technologies. "Developing skills in software and emerging technologies can provide a pathway to careers where demand currently outpaces supply. With Next Chapter, we are not only able to help Americans reskill themselves, but will also give them access to top-notch training and support to transform their careers for the better."

"The employment crisis is staggering, but there may be a silver lining for displaced workers," said Frank Britt, CEO of Penn Foster. "This is about rewiring the labor market in a way that enables workers to move from lower wage jobs into middle skills careers that will be higher paying, and far more resilient."

"From the beginning, TTEC has upheld the philosophy that positive employee experiences result in positive customer experiences," said Ken Tuchman, CEO of TTEC. "In the difficult COVID-19 financial climate we face, thousands of companies have woken up and are seeing how compassion for employees affected by layoffs and furloughs directly impacts how customers experience brands. At no other time has our purpose to deliver humanity to business been more important than now."

For workers lacking the skills to jump into higher wage roles, Next Chapter will offer accelerated retraining programs through partner institutions, including Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue University Global, Penn Foster, Pathstream, and Brandman University. Displaced workers can pursue programs like Facebook's Digital Marketing Certificate or the Salesforce Administration Career Certificate, offered through Pathstream, as well as skilled trades programs, in demand job fields like plumbing, electrical trades, or appliance repair, through Penn Foster.

For additional information, visit nextchapter.guildeducation.com .

About Guild Education

Guild Education is on a mission to unlock opportunity for America's workforce through education, with a double bottom-line business model that does well by doing good. Guild partners with leading employers and organizations to help offer education benefits to America's workforce. To do so, Guild partners with the nation's top universities and learning providers, with classes, certificates and programs focused on serving working adults. Guild has been named a Fast Company Most Innovative Company, Top Woman-Owned Business of the Year, Employee Initiative of the Year and was one of only three female-led companies listed on the Forbes Cloud 100 2019 List. As one of the fastest growing companies in Denver, Guild is hiring across departments. To learn more about Guild Education, visit www.guildeducation.com.

Additional Quotes from the Next Chapter Collaboration

Brandman University: "Brandman University is pleased to play a role in the development of Guild's Next Chapter education model," said Chancellor Gary Brahm. "Now, more than ever, it is incumbent upon us to come together to find solutions that enable people to get on their feet and back to work. Brandman is proud to be a part of this forward-thinking group of partners."

Gainsight: "We recently surveyed executives from the leading SaaS companies and found that while many are considering staff cuts overall, 85% said their Customer Success team is one they actually plan to maintain or grow as they focus on mitigating churn," said Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. "Meanwhile, a growing number of people are currently out of work, particularly in the hospitality industry. Coincidentally, many of the most successful Customer Success Managers we work with have a background in hospitality. The Gainsight team wants to support those most affected by providing training and education in Customer Success and access to more job opportunities."

Kaplan Higher Education: "As pioneers and enablers in online higher education, we are excited to offer our expertise as a partner in this initiative to help America's workforce learn marketable new skills and competencies for the new economy," said Gregory Marino, Chief Executive Officer for Kaplan Higher Education, which provides online enablement and support services for Purdue University Global, one of the participating institutions.

Paschall Truck Lines: "Paschall Truck Lines is proud to serve America during its time of need," said Brett Terchila, VP of Capacity Development at Paschall Truck Lines. "As an essential business we're working hard to keep the supply chain moving throughout the COVID-19 crisis. As America returns to work, Paschall Truck Lines remains committed to providing superior training and lasting careers for people interested in the trucking industry."

Pathstream: "Now, more than ever, is the time to provide accessible opportunities for people to reskill into modern digital careers," said Eleanor Cooper, CEO of Pathstream. "In the Great Recession, 75% of the 7.2M jobs lost were low skill jobs, while 99% of the jobs of the recovery went to college degree holders. The current pandemic will again reinforce this trend, with a growing emphasis on remote digital skills. Pathstream is excited to bring our digital skill certificate programs, built in partnership with leading technology companies, to frontline workers through Guild and Next Chapter. We know that hiring managers want people who can adapt quickly and learn to use new tools and technologies. Learners want practical, job-aligned curriculum to help them reskill efficiently. Next Chapter is an initiative that will help bring all these pieces together."

Southern New Hampshire University: "At SNHU, we know that we will all need to work together to help our fellow Americans gain the future-proof skills they need to thrive in an increasingly complex workforce and society," said Paul LeBlanc, President and CEO, SNHU. "We're proud to be working with this new initiative to lend our support and offer SNHU's workforce-relevant programs to the nation's furloughed and unemployed workers."

SOURCE Guild Education

Related Links

www.guildeducation.com


Survivors of the Aurangabad



train accident frantically raised alarm to alert their group members sleeping on tracks about a fast-approaching freight train, but it all went in vain as 16 of them were crushed to death at the crack of dawn on Friday.

Chilling details emerged about the tragedy involving a group of migrant workers who were on their way to native places in Madhya Pradesh on foot from Maharashtra and had taken a break to rest on rail tracks out of sheer fatigue.

The accident left 16 migrant workers dead and one injured while three others survived. All of them were working in a steel manufacturing in Jalna, a district adjoining Aurangabad in central Maharashtra, and were heading home in the amidst of coronavirus-enforced lockdown, officials said.

"A group of 20 stranded labourers started walking from Jalna. They decided to take rest and most of them lied on rail tracks. Three of them were taking rest in a nearby plain area.

"After some time, these three saw a goods train coming and immediately raised the alarm but it went unheard," Superintendent of Police Mokshada Patil told PTI.

"I had a word with the survivors. They started walking from Jalna and tried to reach Bhusaval on earlier night which is around 30-40 km away from the place of the accident (near Karmad near Aurangabad)," Patil said.

"The three survivors, who were resting a little away, tried to wake up the people sleeping on the tracks by frantically shouting, but that provide futile as the train ran over them," the police officer said.

"This is an unfortunate incident. Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station," she added.

The survivors were identified as Inderlal Dhurve (20 district Mandla), Virendrasingh Gaur (27, district Umaria) and Shivman Singh Gaur (27, district Shahdol) and the injured Sajjan Singh (resident of Khajeri district).

A video clip from the scene of the tragedy showed the mutilated bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader and state minister Sandipan Bhumre and Member of Legislative Assembly Ambadas Danve visited the Government Medical College and Hospital here and met the injured.

Danve said, "The state government is making efforts to send migrant workers to their home states. People should have patience."



The deceased includeed Dhansingh Gond, Nirlesh Singh Gond, Buddharaj Singh Gond, Rabendra Singh Gond, Rajbohram Paras Singh, Dharmendra Singh Gond, Shreedayal Singh Suresh Singh Kaul, Santosh Napit, Brijesh Bheyadin (all from Shahdol district), Bigendra Singh, Pradeep Singh Gond, Nemshah singh Munim singh (all Umaria district).

One of the deceased was identified as Acchelal Singh, but his native district was not yet known, police officials said, adding another vicitm was yet to be identified.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Retailers that were already struggling before the coronavirus pandemic started are beginning to crumble.

Fashion chain J. Crew Group and luxury department store retailer Neiman Marcus Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the first week of May as they faced mounting losses with their stores temporarily closed.

While both companies are planning to remain in business, bankruptcy poses the possibility of permanent store closings or outright liquidation as COVID-19 throttles sales.

J.C. Penney, which was facing declining sales and several years of losses heading into this crisis, is also considering filing for bankruptcy and hoping to avoid liquidation.

Of the 125 restaurant or retail companies tracked by S&P Global Ratings, about 30% now have a credit rating that indicates they have at least a 1-in-2 chance of defaulting on their debts, which is often a precursor of bankruptcy or liquidation.

A sign marks the location of a J.C. Penney store in Riverside, Illinois, on Aug. 12, 2003.

"We believe the economic shutdown and lingering social distancing behaviors will trigger a broad shakeout of retail as the industry will be forced to meaningfully reduce its physical footprint and rapidly evolve to reach the post-pandemic consumer," S&P credit analyst Sarah Wyeth wrote Monday in a research note. "In particular, if there were any doubts about the eventual demise of many American malls, the impact of the pandemic will likely dispel them."

COVID-19 fallout: J. Crew store closings possible as retailer files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Debt weighs Neiman Marcus down: Luxury department store chain files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

For every day that retailers are closed during the coronavirus crisis, the chances that they won't survive this pandemic grow larger.

While some retailers are flourishing  namely chains with grocery sales like Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco  others are trying to stave off doom, like Forever 21, Jo-Ann Stores and David's Bridal. In many cases, these retailers were already in trouble as Americans shopped increasingly online.

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U.S. retailers have so far announced 2,210 permanent closures this year, most of which were made public before the pandemic began, according to retail analytics firm Coresight Research.

The digital transition's effect on retail was already painfully evident before the pandemic began. Papyrus, Modells Sporting Goods and Art Van Furniture had already revealed plans to liquidate all 635 of their locations this year. That follows a year in which more than 9,700 stores closed, according to Coresight Research.

Its a battle of whos going to survive, whos just going to close and whos going to need to file for bankruptcy, Camilla Yanushevsky, a retail stock analyst for CFRA Research, said in a recent interview. The companies that are most at risk at the ones that were already distressed before the crisis.

But it's not bad for all retailers. Home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's and drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS have experienced an increase in business.

Heres a list of retailers that are trying to avoid bankruptcy or store closings, according to USA TODAY research, public data and analyst reports:

J.C. Penney

J.C. Penney is considering filing for bankruptcy protection as the retailer grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and its own long-in-the-making struggles.

The Plano, Texas-based company is exploring the possibility, along with a range of other options, including out-of-court debt restructuring, according to a person familiar with the deliberations who was not authorized to speak publicly.

With most of its stores temporarily closed because of the coronavirus, J.C. Penney is bleeding cash while it awaits the chance to get back on its feet. The company has been challenged for years with the decline of the department store sector.

J. Crew Group

J. Crew filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 4, after years of struggling with too much debt.

The company, which leases all of its stores, disclosed in a court filing that it had hired a real estate consultancy and liquidator to help it evaluate its leases and negotiate rent relief. Permanent store closings are possible.

Neiman Marcus

The luxury department store chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 7 after dealing with too much debt.

The company said in a statement that it's not planning "mass store closings" on a permanent basis after reaching a restructuring deal with a majority of its creditors. But the company said it may consider future closings on a "case by case basis."

Forever 21

Forever 21 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September with plans to close roughly 100 struggling stores and save the rest of the business. The company then finished a deal on Feb. 19 to sell most of its remaining assets to a group of investors led by Authentic Brands and mall owner Simon Property Group, which had previously used a similar model to rescue fashion retailer Aeropostale.

Talk about tough timing.

Exactly a month later, while still deciding which stores to liquidate, the buyer temporarily closed all Forever 21 locations due to the pandemic.

The pandemic disruption threatens to derail Forever 21s comeback before it even gets underway.

Sears and Kmart

These sibling chains have been out of bankruptcy for about 15 months, but it was hard to envision a return to greatness before the pandemic, let alone after it.

Sears and Kmart have closed more than 3,500 stores and cut about 250,000 jobs over the last 15 years. After tumbling into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2018, the chains narrowly escaped total liquidation after a last-minute sale in February 2019 to their parent company's longtime investor and former CEO Eddie Lampert.

But time is running out for Sears and Kmart to stabilize their businesses. In February 2020, another 51 Sears and 45 Kmart locations were set to close, leaving some 182 surviving stores.

Jo-Ann Stores

The fabric chain was already under pressure due to the effect of President Donald Trump's trade war with China, which led to tariffs on many of the goods the company sells. Now, temporary store closings have worsened things.

"We believe Jo-Ann will run into liquidity problems within the next 12 months," S&P's Wyeth wrote.

Steak n Shake

The restaurant chain has been ailing for years. With a term loan due March 19, 2021, the timing of the coronavirus couldn't have been worse.

S&P rates the company as a significant risk to default further on its debts.

California Pizza Kitchen

Trouble was mounting for this restaurant chain well before the pandemic began.

S&P had predicted that the company would "breach its financial maintenance

covenants" without a last-minute financial maneuver, such as relief from lenders.

But "given the catastrophic impact to casual dining and the company's weak performance going into it, we believe California Pizza Kitchen" will "likely restructure its capital structure in the next six months," Wyeth reported.

Davids Bridal

Davids Bridal survived Chapter 11 bankruptcy, emerging from the process in January 2019 and charting plans to cut prices, improve its digital operations and add additional selections.

Now, weddings and receptions have been disrupted throughout the country, with many governments limiting the number of people who can attend.

While normal weddings may resume after the crisis subsides, the economic effects of the pandemic could lead couples to delay plans or spend less on their big day.

Davids Bridal has already announced plans for a substantial reduction in expenses, capital expenditures and inventory commitments, as well as pay cuts and furloughs for most store employees and more than half of its corporate workers.

Ascena Retail Group

The company's stores include Lane Bryant, Justice, Loft and Ann Taylor. And like other apparel retailers with a heavy commitment to shopping malls, Ascena was grappling with declining foot traffic long before the pandemic.

Now, hopes of a sudden influx of business in the wake of the pandemic seem especially dim.

In 2019, 62% of store closure announcements came in the apparel sector, according to global marketing research firm Coresight Research.

GNC Holdings

Listed by Moody's as among the most distressed retailers, GNC had already announced at least 304 store closures this year by the time the pandemic began, according to Coresight Research.

On March 20, S&P Global Ratings downgraded the credit rating for the chain of nutrition-product stores to CC. It cited the companys likely inability to repay debt.

We believe conditions for GNC are deteriorating substantially due to the coronavirus pandemic, the anticipated macroeconomic downturn and the limited access to capital markets, S&P reported.

Pier 1 Imports

Pier 1 Imports announced in January that it would close up to 450 stores, or nearly half of its locations. Then the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February.

The company reportedly received approval from a federal judge to put off rent payments. But while the company is still mired in bankruptcy, it's unclear whether it can chart a path out amid this crisis.

Contributing: Kelly Tyko

Follow USA TODAY reporters Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Store closings, bankruptcy add up as retailers face existential crisis
A German-Israeli research group has gathered for three days to discuss which storage technologies may outperform lithium-ion batteries in the future. They concluded that there is no such a thing as a "post Li-ion" era in sight. They recommended a "side-by-side" approach for multiple technologies in different applications, as well as the hybridization of technologies. The group highlighted the strong potential of redox flow storage, which in their view may outperform Li-ion, although only for stationary applications.Researchers from Germany's Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) and the Technion - Israel ...

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.
PATNA

Hours after the Noida police Friday arrested two persons and impounded two privately-run buses for duping migrants returning to their homes in Bihar, the state government said it would take up the issue at an appropriate level and made it clear it was running no such buses of its own.

One such racket was busted in Noida on Friday, wherein migrants were lured in the name of free bus service organized by the Bihar government for migrant workers stranded in Delhi-NCR (national capital region) during the lockdown but were charged Rs 3000 per person.

Bihars information and public relations minister Neeraj Kumar said the government had resisted bringing its own people by buses, as it could lead to serious trouble in the absence of total disregard to social distancing, and waited till special train services were started by the Centre at the governments request.

Strong action should be taken against the bus owners and operators. It is not as simple as it looks. There could be some hidden agenda behind it. How do these unscrupulous elements inform prospective passengers about such buses operating around midnight? Our government will certainly take cognizance of such things and take it up at the appropriate level, he said.

Earlier also, there had been reports of private bus services charging three times the normal fare from already harassed migrants in other states. Many passengers had complained about it when they were dropped at Bihar borders a couple of weeks ago from different places.

Meanwhile, stranded migrant workers also complained about of lack of information.

Vikas Ram, Md Qudus Ansari and around 20 others are desperate to head home in Bihar and Jharkhand from Aurangabad in Maharasthra, but dont know how. They are making frantic calls to whatever number they get in the hope of help.

We worked at a welding work in a factory here, but everything is closed now. There is no point staying here, as we cannot sustain, Ansari, not sure how he would reach Banka district in Bihar, said on phone.

We got ourselves medically examined and we have certificates. We went to the local police station, but they said we should get registered online. We dont know how to do it online. There is nobody helping us, he said.

Ram form Jharkhand said they would take a bus about which someone informed them. Regarding train, we are not aware. Which bus service we would take, we still dont know.

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Sikh volunteers are rushing to make meals for 300 Australians who recently returned home after being stuck in India for two months during the coronavirus pandemic.

Families returned to Sydney from from New Delhi on Friday morning and were forced into 14-day isolation at hotels around the city.

Kindhearted volunteers at Guru Nanak's Free Kitchenette in Sydney will be cooking around the clock to provide meals for the travellers after getting a desperate call for help on Wednesday afternoon.

Lucky Singh, who founded the charity, has had to take time off work to prepare food for the families.

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Lucky Singh (pictured), who founded the charity, has had to take time off work to prepare food for the families

Kindhearted volunteers at Guru Nanak's Free Kitchenette in Sydney have been providing meals for those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic

Ms Singh, who is an ESL teacher, said many of the families are vegetarian and are worried the hotels will not be able to provide them with a decent selection of healthy vegetarian food during their 14-day isolation.

'After school on Wednesday I was busy writing down all their names, their room numbers and what they need.'

With the help of 150 volunteers, they will provide each family with a package filled with enough food for three days.

Among some of the treats being handed out by the volunteer group was a handful of Indian favourites including dahl, paneer, rajma and homemade roti bread.

Volunteers will also provide fresh fruit and the dessert gulajamina.

It's tireless work, but Ms Singh loves it.

'I have a real passion for this. I love doing it, the feeling you get helping people is priceless.'

Among some of the treats being handed out by the volunteer group was a handful of Indian favourites including dahl, paneer, rajma and homemade roti bread (Pictured: A stall where students can go grab food)

During the pandemic, the charity has been providing food for frontline workers as well

Guru Nanak's Free Kitchenette Sydney has operated in Sydney for eight years providing food for the homeless in the city, the elderly at nursing homes, international students with less support and women affected by domestic violence.

During the pandemic, the charity has been providing food for frontline workers as well.

Shaizy Singh is pictured outside Westmead hospital delivering free meals to frontline health workers on ANZAC Day

They give away Indian meals to the less fortunate in pursuit of the centuries-old Sikh tradition of Langar.

Under the practice of Langar free vegetarian meals are served to anyone in the community regardless of their religion, caste, gender, economic status or ethnicity.

Two special Qantas flights carrying hundreds of Australians left New Delhi on Thursday heading for Sydney and Melbourne.

The Sydney bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner arrived about 10.45am, while the other arrived in Melbourne around 11am.

A third planeload of Australians will arrive in Sydney on Sunday.

In total, about 500 Australians are being brought home after being stranded in India following the onset of the coronavirus crisis.

All are expected to be quarantined in hotels for two weeks.
Tara Reade, the woman who's accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, told her ex-husband that she was sexually harassed in the then-senator's office, a court document from 1996 has revealed.

Theodore Dronen described what Reade had told him in the court declaration filed in their divorce, writing: 'On several occasions [Reade] related a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office.'

He went on to write that Reade said she 'eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator's office and left her position'.

'It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on [Reade], and that she is still sensitive and effected [sic] by it today,' he wrote.

The document, obtained by The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California, on Thursday, shows that Reade had shared her account of what happened in Biden's office in the years after the alleged incident, though it does not mention her current allegations against the presumptive presidential nominee.

Tara Reade, the woman who's accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, told her ex-husband that she was sexually harassed in the then-senator's office, a court document from 1996 revealed

'The affidavit from Ms. Reade's ex-husband is further support that Ms. Reade was sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by then Senator Joe Biden,' Reade's New York-based attorney Douglas Wigdor told the Tribune.

Biden's campaign has declined to comment on the development.

Biden has vehemently denied Reade's allegations that he sexually assaulted her when she worked for him in 1993

Reade, 56, claims that when she was a senate aide in 1993, Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt and assaulted her - while Biden has vehemently denied the allegations.

Reade says she described her concerns about Biden in a complaint she filed with the congressional personnel office - though she says she did not use the words 'sexual harassment' or 'sexual assault' in the complaint.

Biden's campaign has called for the secretary of the Senate to release any complaint Reade filed, but the office says it cannot disclose that information due to confidentiality concerns.

Last week, Reade's former neighbor came forward to say that Reade told her about the alleged attack sometime in 1995 or 1996.

The 1996 divorce filing emerged just as Reade sat down with Megyn Kelly for her first major on-camera interview, where she provided new details about the alleged incident and called for Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

The 1996 divorce filing emerged just as Reade sat down with Megyn Kelly for her first major on-camera interview on Thursday

Megyn Kelly (right) teased an interview with Joe Biden's sexual assault accuser Tara Reade (left) on Thursday, which included these images of the two women

For the first time in the telling of her story to news organizations, Reade told Kelly that Biden 'said something vulgar' to her during the alleged assault.

'He said I want to f*** you,' Reade said.

'And he said it low. And I was pushing away and I remember my knee hurting because our knees, because he had opened my legs with his knee and our kneecaps clashed, so I felt this sharp pain,' Reade said. 'His fingers were inside of my private area, my vagina.'

In every telling of the story, Reade said Biden told her she 'was nothing' before walking away. 'I think that's the hardest thing,' she told Kelly. 'Those words stayed with me my whole life.'

'I remember small things,' the accuser continued. 'I remember trying to put my shoe back on because I came out of my shoe and I remember my knee hurting and I remember the smell.'

She told Kelly that she wanted to say 'stop.' 'I thought it, I don't know if I said it,' she said.

She also said she wanted Biden to end his presidential run and face the music.

'I want to say you and I were there, Joe Biden, please step forward and be held accountable, you should not be running on character for president of the United States,' Reade told Kelly, who had asked what her message was for Biden.

Kelly followed up by asking Reade if she wanted Biden to withdraw from the presidential contest.

'I wish he would,' Reade answered. 'But he won't, but I wish he would, that's how I feel emotionally.

She previously wrote on social media that Americans should support Bernie Sanders, Biden's former Democratic primary rival.

She then told Kelly that an apology now wouldn't be sufficient. 'I think it's a little late,' Reade said.

Reade revealed to Kelly that she had taken her complaint to both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris' presidential campaigns when they were still active.

'I tried to reach out to them,' Reade said. 'I didn't get a response.'

She said she chose Harris because as a Californian, the ex-2020 candidate is her senator.

Reade also told Kelly that she would testify under oath and be cross examined, but she'd only take a polygraph test if the former vice president took one first.

'I'm not a criminal,' Reade said. 'Joe Biden should take the polygraph. What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence? Does that mean we're presumed guilty? And we all have to take polygraphs.'

'So I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, but I am not a criminal,' Reade added.
A train in India crashed into a group of migrant workers walking along the railroad tracks on to their way back to their home state on Friday, killing at least 16.

The railway ministry has launched a probe into the incident.

According to railway officials, the workers were walking towards their home state Madhya Pradesh after they lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Most public transportation has already been cancelled due to the lockdown.

These workers had started from Jalna to go to Bhusawal (both in Maharashtra) - a distance of 157 kilometre - and had planned to go to their native places Umariya and Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, which is about 850 kilometres away.

According to railways, they left Jalna at 7 pm on Thursday and initially walked on road and later onto the track towards Aurangabad. After walking for about 36 kilometres, these workers started feeling tired and sat on the track between Karnad and Badnapur railway stations for taking some rest. They gradually went into deep sleep.

It was at 5.22 am that the approaching goods train ran over these labourers, the railways ministry said in a statement. The driver tried to stop the train but couldnt do so in time, it added.

There were 14 people on the track, two adjacent to the track and three away from it, the railways said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled the deaths on Twitter. Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided, he tweeted.

Amid the nationwide lockdown, thousands of migrant workers stranded in several other cities have been on an unending toil to return to their native places on foot.

The interstate bus service, passenger, mail and express train services have been suspended since March 24.

The Railways has started running Shramik Special trains to transport the stranded migrants to their native places since May 1. Till Thursday railways has run 201 Shramik Special trains.

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The Justice Department moved to dismiss charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

The criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Trumps disastrous first national security advisor, took the latest of many twists Thursday when the Justice Department moved to drop the prosecution against him. Never mind that Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador between the 2016 election and Trumps inauguration. (He later tried to withdraw the plea and have the charge dismissed.)

In a motion filed with a federal court, Timothy Shea, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., moved to dismiss the case against Flynn because continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice. Shea said that the interview that led to Flynns guilty plea was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBIs counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn. Shea also said that Flynns statements during the interview, even if untrue, werent material."

Given the recent history of the Trump Justice Department  including the softening of a sentencing recommendation for Trump loyalist Roger Stone  many Americans may find it hard to take that conclusion at face value. Either Congress or a federal court  or both  need to scrutinize the departments case for clearing Flynn and make sure that politics played no part.

On Thursday, Trump said he didnt know that the Justice Department motion was happening at this moment. I felt it was going to happen just by watching and seeing, like everybody else does. Despite the fact that Trump said he fired Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his Russian contacts, Trump has expressed sympathy for Flynn and even floated the possibility of a presidential pardon.

As for the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. William Barr asked Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to conduct a review of the case against Flynn. Jensen said on Thursday that "I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Atty. Gen. Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.

In his motion, Shea tried to preempt any decision by a judge to refuse to dismiss the charges, arguing that a court should not deny a motion to dismiss based on a disagreement with the prosecutions exercise of charging authority or because the judge believes the defendant should stand trial. But, as University of Texas law professor Stephen I. Vladeck pointed out, federal rules of criminal procedure say that dismissals are made with leave of court  that is, a judges permission.

But even if the court agrees to dismiss the case, the political overtones demand an effort by Congress to satisfy itself that considerations of law, not politics, drove this decision. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that he will question Barr about the decision. Nadler will also ask the Justice Department's inspector general to conduct an investigation. If Barr is confident that the department has acted correctly, he should welcome such an investigation.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 05:18:09|Editor: huaxia

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Workers wait in line to enter a CityMD office for COVID-19 tests in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, on May 8, 2020. New data showed that U.S. employers cut a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, erasing a decade of job gains since the global financial crisis and pushing the unemployment rate to a record 14.7 percent. While this marks the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, analysts said the figure does not capture the full scale of the COVID-19-induced job crisis, and the worst is yet to come. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Xinhua) -- New data showed that U.S. employers cut a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, erasing a decade of job gains since the global financial crisis and pushing the unemployment rate to a record 14.7 percent.

While this marks the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, analysts said the figure does not capture the full scale of the COVID-19-induced job crisis, and the worst is yet to come.

LABOR MARKET "IN FREE FALL"

In April, the unemployment rate surged by 10.3 percentage points to 14.7 percent, the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series dating back to January 1948, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday.

"As tragic as this number is, it comes as little surprise as more than 26 million individuals had filed for unemployment benefits between the March employment survey and the April survey," Jay H. Bryson, acting chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in an analysis.

Since mid-March, numerous U.S. states have rolled out "stay-at-home" policies and shut down nonessential businesses in a bid to slow the spread of the virus, leading companies to cut millions of jobs in weeks.

"There was no sub-category that was spared from the carnage," Bryson said.

Employment in leisure and hospitality plummeted by 7.7 million, or 47 percent, the report showed. Almost three-quarters of the decrease, or 5.5 million, occurred in food services and drinking places.

The manufacturing sector shed 1.3 million workers, and employment in retail trade was down 2.1 million jobs. The education and health sector, which is a reliable job creator during "normal" times, lost 2.5 million jobs, Bryson noted.

Government employment also dropped by 980,000 in April, according to the bureau. Employment in local government was down by 801,000, in part reflecting school closures.

"Today's devastating jobs report confirms that the labor market is in free fall, undoing years of economic progress," said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "Unfortunately, we already know it gets worse from here."

Hispanics and African-Americans have been hit the hardest in the job crisis. Data showed that the unemployment rate in April jumped to 18.9 percent for Hispanics, 16.7 percent for African-Americans, 14.5 percent for Asians and 14.2 percent for whites.

Average hourly earnings in April increased by 1.34, or 4.7 percent, to 30.01 dollars, the report showed. Noting that average hourly earnings have been rising by 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent on average for the past few years, Bryson said the sudden surge is "hardly a sign of strength."

"Because job losses in April fell disproportionally among low-wage workers, the average wage jumped," Bryson said. "If, as we expect, the unemployment rate remains elevated in coming months, then growth in hourly earnings should weaken considerably."

UNEMPLOYMENT COULD BE HIGHER

The record unemployment figure, however, might not capture the full scale of job loss amid the COVID-19 fallout, due to the survey's timing and the traditional definition of unemployment, among other things.

"Because of the survey's timing, these data give a snapshot of the labor market from three weeks ago," Akabas said. The BLS's household survey reference period is generally the calendar week that contains the 12th day of the month, in this case April 12 through April 18.

"Since then, millions more have lost their jobs, as evidenced by the ongoing streak of record-setting unemployment insurance claims," Akabas said.

The new unemployment data came one day after the bureau reported that the number of initial jobless claims totaled nearly 3.2 million last week. In the prior week, the figure reached 3.8 million.

Besides, the BLS said that if the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons," which is over and above the number in a typical April, had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than reported.

Former BLS Commissioner Erica Groshen noted that millions have been laid off or left a job and are not hunting for a new one amid the pandemic, and they might not be defined as unemployed, the Marketplace reported.

The BLS report also showed that the labor force participation rate dropped by 2.5 percentage points over the month to 60.2 percent, the lowest rate since January 1973, when it was 60 percent.

"The unemployment rate would have jumped even higher had not 6.4 million individuals left the labor force," Bryson said.

Considering these factors, Chicago Fed economists Jason Faberman and Aastha Rajan said in a blog earlier this week that the official data for April could vastly understate job destruction from the pandemic.

"To count as unemployed, one must be out of work and either on temporary layoff or actively looking and available for new work. This leaves out many people who want to work but did not look for work in the period covered by the data, as well as people who may remain employed but at substantially reduced hours," they argued.

The Chicago Fed economists estimated a 'U-Cov' rate in April of somewhere between 25.1 percent and 34.6 percent.

CAN REOPENING SAVE JOBS?

As the U.S. economy witnesses its biggest slump since the global financial crisis, with 33 million jobless claims filed within seven weeks, the potential economic recovery following the reopening could be welcoming news for many.

According to a recent projection from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, partially reopening would increase GDP on June 30 by 1 percent year-on-year, to a 10.7 percent contraction. About 4.4 million jobs would be saved, though 14 million jobs will still be lost between May 1 and June 30.

White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett recently said that every U.S. state will mostly reopen by the end of May, and most forecasters predict an economic rebound in the second half of the year.

President Donald Trump said Friday on Fox News that with the reopening of the economy, lost jobs will come back. "Those jobs will all be back, and they'll be back very soon," the president said.

Economists, however, seem to believe otherwise. Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana, said that "the bulk of job losses fall in sectors which will continue to suffer low demand after shelter in place orders have been loosened."

"Regardless of state action to relax shelter in place rules, the economy will continue to experience Great Depression levels of stress until COVID-19 vaccinations or treatments are available," Hicks said.

Hicks, however, said the good news is that of the 20.5 million workers unemployed over the month, 18 million reported they were experiencing a temporary layoff. "This signals the expectation that they may regain their jobs as conditions improve," Hicks said.

According to Bryson, the unemployment rate "will still be in excess of 6 percent at the end of next year."

Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter that "I don't know what unemployment will be in 2 years. I fear still very high but could get lucky."

"Either way the right policy is the same: include triggers that make future assistant contingent on what actually happens. If unemployment rate is high continue it automatically," Furman said, referring to the COVID-19 relief package passed by the U.S. Congress.

Analysts said it could take years to return to the historically low 3.5 percent unemployment rate the country experienced before the COVID-19 outbreak. Since September last year, the unemployment rate had been hovering around 3.5 percent to 3.6 percent until February. Enditem
Were doing everything we can to make life easier for our neighbors during this difficult time.

As a member-owned, not-for-profit institution, WyHy knows how a helping hand can make a huge differenceespecially now. Thanks to its members commitment to a community-first mindset, WyHy just made a $5,000 donation to the Wyoming Food Bank of The Rockies, an organization thats working on the front lines to serve people most impacted by this ongoing public health crisis.

We want to ensure those affected by this COVID-19 crisis get the food they need to feed their families, said the Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies, Director, Tony Woodell. Were doing everything we can to make life easier for our neighbors during this difficult time. And it is partners like WyHy Federal Credit Union who are helping us offset the costs to feed Wyoming families in need.

Additionally, WyHy was thrilled to announce that its application for a matching grant was approved by the Mountain West Credit Union Foundation, the charitable arm of the Mountain West Credit Union Association. This grant gives an additional $2,500 to Wyoming Food Bank of The Rockies, which brings the total donation amount to $7,500. Together, all of these organizations definitely are making a difference!

This contribution, made on behalf of WyHys members and MWCUF, will provide 30,000 meals to those most affected by this sudden shift in daily life. Senior citizens, young families, and people with limited income currently face an increased risk of food insecurity. Since Wyoming Food Bank of The Rockies distributes goods to all other food banks across the state, WyHys donation efforts will provide relief to families throughout the great state of Wyoming.

The team at Wyoming Food Bank of The Rockies works tirelessly to both uplift and nourish communities across the state, and WyHy is proud to help support its members and employees mission in whatever way possible. If you would like to find out more about Wyoming Food Bank of The Rockies, make a donation of your own, or host a virtual food drive, please visit their website at: wyomingfoodbank.org.
The following speech was delivered by Ulas Atesci, a leader of the Sosyalist Esitlik (Socialist Equality Group) in Turkey, to the 2020 International May Day Online Rally held by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International on May 2.

I bring fraternal greetings from the Socialist Equality Group in Turkey, a gateway between Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the devastation caused by decades of imperialist war and austerity in this region.

Turkey is now the country in Asia with the most cases. Workers in many workplaces have launched wildcat strikes to demand that production be stopped in non-essential industries. However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogans government has kept many workers on the job to churn out profits for the capitalist class. As a result of this policy, imposed together with Turkeys bankrupt parliamentary opposition parties and trade unions, the rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases among workers is almost three times above the average in Turkey.

The speech by Ulas Atesci begins at 1:30:32 in the video.

The pandemic exposes not only the bankruptcy of the Middle Eastern bourgeoisies, but the true face of imperialism. Initially, Iran emerged as the regional epicenter of the pandemic. Already, before the pandemic, Washington had imposed sanctions slashing Irans oil exports, crippling its trade and freezing it out of the US-dominated global financial system.

This year began with the US drone murder of General Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian governments second-highest official, in Baghdadwhere the Iranian regime helped Washington set up a puppet regime during the US occupation of Iraq. This state killing, directly ordered by the US president, aimed to terrorize the entire region.

As the pandemic began, the Trump administration took the barbaric decision to use the coronavirus as a weapon of war. Imposing new sanctions, it blocked trade in medical goods critical to treating tens of thousands of innocent Iranian men, women and children ravaged by the disease. Since then, thousands of Iranians have died.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its sympathizers in Turkey, the Socialist Equality Group, unequivocally condemn the US and European sanctions imposed on Iran. These sanctions must be immediately lifted.

Across the region, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine and other war-torn areas are the most vulnerable to the virus. Their health care infrastructure has been virtually destroyed by decades of war and bombings by the US, its European and Middle Eastern allies and their proxy forces. What remains of a medical system cannot properly diagnose and monitor the sick, let alone treat them.

This is the result of decades of war in the Middle East since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991, eliminating the main military counterweight to imperialism. Since then, millions have died in imperialist wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and beyond. Waged by Washington to counterbalance the erosion of its economic power by establishing its domination of this oil-rich, geo-politically vital region, they have left the region desperately exposed to the pandemic.

Launched amid revolutionary working class uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, the imperialist proxy wars in Libya and Syria and then the onslaught on the Yemeni people continue alongside the ongoing persecution of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. This can only proceed because of the complicity of the Middle Eastern bourgeoisies: the Turkish government; Kurdish nationalist groups in Turkey, Iraq and Syria; the Arab states, and the Zionist regime in Israel. Bourgeois nationalism has proved totally bankrupt.

The struggle against COVID-19 in the Near and Middle East can only be waged by the working class against imperialism and its regional allies.

The Turkish government has played an especially reactionary role in the Syrian war, which has led to over 500,000 deaths and 10 million people becoming refugees. Serving as a tool of Washington, it attacked the Syrian regimes forces inside Syria just two months agorisking a direct clash between Turkeys ally, America, and the Syrian regimes main backer, Russia.

As for the Kurdish nationalist militias, they emerged as key proxy forces of the imperialist powers in the Syrian war, imprisoning thousands of people without trial in prison camps. While uncompromisingly defending Kurdish and other oppressed people in the Middle East, the ICFI gives no support to the Kurdish or any other bourgeois nationalists.

More than 110,000 Yemenis have died and hundreds of thousands have been wounded since the Saudi monarchy invaded Yemen, the Middle Easts poorest country, in 2015. Saudi-led coalition forces bombed hospitals, schools, homes and weddings. In the worlds worst humanitarian catastrophe, about 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine.

Refugees trapped in Turkey and Greece amount to a significant fraction of the over 70 million refugees fleeing imperialist war and poverty around the globe. A vast network of prison camps stretches from the Near East across the Mediterranean. In these camps, often funded by the European Union, innocent refugees face beatings, torture and even rape, slavery and murder. Lacking basic sanitation, they are in grave danger of succumbing to COVID-19.

It is a critical task of the international working class, in particular in Turkey and Greece, to defend refugees against persecution. They must be released from detention, receive medical care and obtain full democratic rights, including citizenship rights.

The same capitalist crisis that produces the insanity of imperialist war also provides the impulse for socialist revolution. The eruption of revolutionary struggles in Tunisia and Egypt confirmed this analysis. However, without a revolutionary leadership in the working class, both the old military regime in Egypt and the old bourgeois-nationalist regime in Tunisia managed to hold on to power.

The crisis today directly poses the question of building the international revolutionary leadership giving a socialist perspective to the working class. The bitter experiences of the past century and first two decades of the 21st century have vindicated Leon Trotskys Theory of Permanent Revolution.

In countries of a belated capitalist development, the bourgeoisie cannot lead the struggle for social and democratic rights and establish its independence from imperialism. That task falls to the international working class, fighting for the overthrow of capitalism as part of the world socialist revolution. Against imperialism, the battle cry of workers across this region must be: for the United Socialist States of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The only revolutionary alternative for workers, youth and oppressed people across this region is the International Committee of the Fourth International. The ICFI alone has waged an uncompromising, decades-long fight against imperialist war and for the continuity of Marxism and socialism. We urge our listeners to join us and build the sections of the ICFI, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky.
By Lee Min-hyung





Industrial Bank of Korea CEO Yoon Jong-won

Financial companies here are in a rush to compensate investors for losses from high-risk, high-return overseas private equity funds (PEFs) in a bid to ease rising customer complaints.



It is causing controversy as some banks and investment firms are taking the action even before the funds' expiration dates arrive. The move was taken amid growing concerns that some of the PEFs incurred losses.



The companies are giving back the money to investors in the form of provisional payments to avoid potential violation of a capital market law under which fund sellers are not allowed to directly compensate investors for losses.



Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) recently sold a U.S. fund run by Discovery Asset Management and drew 91.4 billion won ($75 million) from local investors. But with the fund postponing its plan to return the invested capital since February, investors have expressed complaints to IBK.





KB Securities CEO Park Jeong-rim

Amid the controversy, IBK decided to return part of the initial investment to investors in near future and details are still under internal review.



The fund is set to expire in June and the lender is in a position to retrieve as much as the invested capital until then.



In case the fund incurs losses, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) will judge whether IBK engaged in the mis-selling of the financial product.





Hana Bank CEO Ji Sung-kyoo

Last month, IBK CEO Yoon Jong-won also pledged to make its "utmost efforts" from the viewpoint of customers to fulfill its responsibility as a seller of the investment fund.



Most banks consider any involvement in such a financial scandal as the worst-case scenario for their future growth at a critical time when their business outlook remains murky amid the virus shock.



For this reason, banks and financial firms are preemptive in their movement for compensation, as they want to avoid any controversies regarding the mis-selling of financial products.



Last year, Woori Bank and Hana Bank tarnished their brand image by being mired in the mis-selling of derivative-linked fund (DLF) options, which affected hundreds of people.





Shinhan Investment CEO Lee Young-chang
Photos spark talk of 2nd stealth fighter's PLA commissioning

Global Times

By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/7 20:08:52

The maker of the FC-31, China's second stealth fighter jet following the J-20, recently revealed photos of a scale model of the aircraft painted with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) insignia, a move military observers said suggested the warplane might join PLA service, despite being a made-for-export model.

State-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute recently released photos of a scale model of the FC-31 painted with the August 1st Insignia of the PLA, reported Weihutang, a program on military affairs affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV), on Wednesday.

The model resembled the initial design of the FC-31 rather than the latest, upgraded one. It featured missiles under its wings, an open weapon bay under its belly, and a PLA insignia on a tail fin.

This has again sparked discussions over the warplane's potential commissioning into the PLA, Weihutang reported, noting that other media reports said that the made-for-export FC-31 would eventually enter PLA service.

The future of the aircraft could become clear soon, as China's in-development third aircraft carrier is expected to use a new fighter jet, a military expert who asked not to be named told the Global Times on Thursday.

China's current ship-borne fighter jet, J-15, could face challenges in dealing with the F-35, which is one generation more advanced than the current Chinese jet and has become widely deployed in the Asia-Pacific region by the US and its allies, the expert said.

Long believed to be a candidate to become China's next generation carrier-based fighter jet, the FC-31 is comparable to the F-35. The J-20 and a totally new aircraft are the other candidates.

The FC-31 is a single-seat, twin-engine multi-role fighter jet catering to the demands of future battlefield environments. It's 17.3 meters long and has a wingspan of 11.5 meters, according to an info flyer obtained by the Global Times at Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province.

The FC-31 and J-20 need to be modified if one of them is to board a carrier, the expert said.

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Shopping malls in Kyiv will open during the next stage of lifting of the restrictions but the capital may return to the strict quarantine again as Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reported.

Concerning the opening of large shopping malls  it will be the second wave of lifting of the restrictions. And we will rely only on the incidence statistics. If the outbreak of the infection occurs against we may return to the strict quarantine, he said.

Klitschko added that the shopping malls will resume work when the restrictions for the work of public transport are lifted.

We prepare to it. I hope that after May 22, more mitigation will be introduced, he said.

Schools, kindergartens and playgrounds are still closed in Kyiv.

The opening of schools and kindergartens, where a great concentration of children to occur, may lead to the outbreak of infection again. The decision not to open schools and kindergartens is tied only with this fact. If the adults may stick to the rules, it is very difficult to control children in kindergartens, schools and playgrounds. That is why, not to spread the infection and keep the health of our children, we will not open the education facilities on the first stage, Klitschko said.

As we reported, Ukraines Cabinet of Ministers intends to extend the lockdown in Ukraine until May 22. However, some easing is expected. So, that is what should be expected to start from May 11: the opening of parks, squares, recreation areas, beauty salons, summer venues of food establishments, libraries, museums.
Chief Superintendent Joanne Shanahan was killed in a car crash in Adelaide on Anzac Day

A senior South Australian police officer has been remembered as an inspirational and loving woman in an emotional tribute from family, friends and workmates.

Chief Superintendent Joanne Shanahan, who was killed in a car crash on Anzac Day, was laid to rest on Friday at a service where the number of mourners was limited by coronavirus restrictions.

Police including officers on horseback lined the streets of Adelaide's inner-south to pay a final tribute to the decorated officer and mother of two.

Chief Superintendent Shanahan's cortege drove from her family's home to Berry's Funeral Home at Norwood in Adelaide's eastern suburbs.

Amazing Grace was sung as her coffin was carried inside.

Her husband Peter Shanahan, a retired detective who was driving when their car was hit by another vehicle, said he was a lucky man to have spent 36 years of his life with his 'Jo'.

A senior South Australian police officer has been remembered as an inspirational and loving woman in an emotional tribute from family, friends and workmates. Distraught colleagues of Chief Superintendent Joanne Shanahan are pictured at Berry's Funeral in Adelaide on Friday

Police including officers on horseback lined the streets of Adelaide's inner-south to pay one final tribute to the decorated officer and mother of two. Amazing Grace was sung as her coffin was carried inside Berry's Funeral Home

Chief Superintendent Shanahan's husband Peter puts his arm around their son Nicholas at her funeral. 'Jo made everyone feel special, important, supported,' Peter Shanahan said

'Jo made everyone feel special, important, supported,' Mr Shanahan said.

'She welcomed everyone into her life and home, and was always my inspiration.'

Mr Shanahan said it was the saddest but also the proudest day of his life.

'I'm so proud to be a South Australian at this time of uncertainty. To have the state spontaneously and freely honour Joanne is extraordinary.'

Son Nicholas Shanahan said his mother was known for helping others and gave sound advice.

'Mum wasn't just a mother to me but to so many people,' he said.

'I realised quickly a lot of my friends actually liked hanging around my house not necessarily to see me but rather to keep current with Mum and all the cool things she was doing.

Chief Superintendent Shanahan, 55, joined the force in 1981 and was appointed the inaugural officer in charge of its family and domestic violence branch. Her casket was topped with an Australian flag and her police hat

Son Nicholas Shanahan said his mother was known for helping others and gave sound advice. 'Mum wasn't just a mother to me but to so many people,' he said. He is pictured with his father Peter

Family and friends of Chief Superintendent Shanahan gather for the funeral of the well-respected officer. Chief Superintendent was a recipient of the Australian Police Medal

'She'd make dinner for 10 just in case we had a few guests call as we almost always did.

'She was the most loving person I've ever met and would say the right thing at the right time.'

The 55-year-old joined the force in 1981 and was appointed the inaugural officer in charge of its family and domestic violence branch.

She received a number of national awards, including the Australian Police Medal on Australia Day last year, and was only the third woman in the history of the state's police force to rise to the rank of chief superintendent.

'Coming from quite a strict Greek background and going into the police force as a female was quite significant for my family,' she told the Adelaide Advertiser about her Australia Day award.

'They were totally shocked that their daughter wanted to be a police officer. But when I was accepted they were proud as punch.'

Officers formed a guard of honour outside Norwood police station (pictured) as Chief Superintendent Shanahan's cortege made its way from her family home to the funeral

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens had barely held back tears as he told reporters after her death that Detective Chief Superintendent Shanahan was a 'dear friend'. A guard of honour is pictured outside Norwood police station

Footage was shown during the service of a traditional Greek blessing that had been conducted on Thursday.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said it was clear an endless number of people were inspired and motivated by Chief Superintendent Shanahan.

Mr Stevens had barely held back tears as he told reporters after her death that Detective Chief Superintendent Shanahan was a 'dear friend'.

On Friday he said the officer was an 'outstanding advocate for domestic violence', a role model and showed great leadership qualities.

'She was someone who meant so much to so many people,' Mr Stevens said.

'Joanne cared about people and that was demonstrated every day, from bringing in a cake to the team to reaching out and supporting those experiencing difficult things at work or at home.

'She was one of a kind and we are lesser for her not being here.'

Mourners outside Berry's Funeral Home in Adelaide watch Chief Superintendent Shanahan's funeral as it is live-streamed on their mobile phones

Mourners at Chief Superintendent Shanahan's funeral had to stay outside during the service due to coronavirus social distancing rules which restricted numbers to ten people inside

The commissioner also read messages from South Australian Governor Hieu Van Le, Premier Steven Marshall, Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas and the Metropolitan Fire Service and Country Fire Service chiefs.

Chief Superintendent Shanahan's casket was carried into the service by uniformed officers.

Those who were able to attend farewelled the fallen officer by laying a red rose on her casket.

Prior to the service, police and emergency service workers, family, friends and members of the public lined the route taken by the cortege as a sign of respect.

Chief Superintendent Shanahan died in a three-car collision at Urrbrae at the foot of the Adelaide Hills on April 25, along with 53-year-old Tania McNeill, the driver of a second car.

Commissioner Stevens said Chief Superintendent Shanahan was an 'outstanding advocate for domestic violence', a role model and showed great leadership qualities. The hearse carrying her casket is pictured outside Norwood police station

Fellow officers carry Chief Superintendent Shanahan's casket into the funeral home. The number of mourners able to attend her funeral was restricted by coronavirus social distancing

Mr Shanahan, who now holds a senior leadership role as the general counsel for South Australia Police, was taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital after the crash.

On Friday he vowed to support the McNeill family, who had 'endured an immense loss of their beautiful Tania.'

Harrison Kitt, the 20-year-old driver of the third car, has been charged with two counts of aggravated causing death by dangerous driving and one count of aggravated causing harm by dangerous driving.

Chief Superintendent Shanahan's niece Selena Steiner prayed for the family of Kitt, reports the Adelaide Advertiser.

'During this time of shock and sadness, may they be comforted as they struggle to come to terms with the consequences of this tragic event,' Ms Steiner said.

'May they know the love of God who comforts those who mourn.'
Plans are under way to launch a Covid-19 Charities fund, valued in the region of 15m, to help support Northern Ireland charities impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey revealed her plans yesterday.

She said: "I am acutely aware that our local charity sector, who do so much good work for such a diverse range of causes, are facing difficulties during these challenging times.

"Many in this sector have been at the front line in responding to the emergency and to supporting our most vulnerable citizens now and as we plan for recovery."

The minister explained that her department are working quickly to develop a support programme - as she acknowledged the impact the pandemic was having on traditional fundraising.

She said: "My officials are urgently developing a Covid-19 Charities Fund, to assist charities to deal with the impacts of this emergency.

"I recognise the impact this emergency has had on traditional fundraising activities, and that this is a worrying time for many in the sector.

"The sector is made up of diverse groups doing fantastic work in our communities. Given this is a limited fund, it is important that the scheme is carefully considered and ensures the best possible use of the resources available, to support and prioritise needs within the sector.

"A public announcement will be made once the funding arrangements and the application process have been finalised and then agreed by the Executive."
Authorities in southern India say at least five people are dead after a gas leak at an industrial plant Thursday.

Over 100 residents in the city of Visakhapatnam were taken to local hospitals after a leak of styrene gas was detected coming from the LG Polymers chemical plant located on the outskirts of the city.

Styrene is used in the manufacture of plastics and rubber.

Swaroop Rani, a local police official, told Agence France Presse that the gas leaked from two 5,000-metric-ton tanks that had been unattended since Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown in March to stem the coronavirus outbreak.


Took him home to Scotland and taught him magic trick for Britain's Got Talent

Simon Cowell found himself moved to tears as he watched a performing rescue dog wow the audience on Britain's Got Talent.

Miracle the dog and owner Amanda Leask appeared on the talent competition to perform a magic trick, but ended up stealing hearts for a slightly different reason.

And talent show judge Simon, 60, who is also a well-known dog lover, was among those close to breaking down when he heard about pooch's incredible story.

Miracle the dog and owner Amanda Leask wowed the audience on Britain's Got Talent with their incredible story of being rescued from Thailand's illegal meat trade

The crossbreed was rescued from a cage stuffed with more than 1,000 dogs in Thailand's illegal meat trade and adopted by Amanda Leask, who has won awards for her work with rescue dogs

The crossbreed was rescued from a cage stuffed with more than 1,000 dogs in Thailand's illegal meat trade and adopted by Amanda Leask, who has won awards for her work with rescue dogs.

Simon and his fellow judges welled up as she told them: 'Miracle has been at the heart of our family for six years, but he wasn't always as happy and healthy as he is today.

'He spent the early part of his life in unimaginable conditions as a victim of the dog meat trade.

Talent show judge Simon Cowell, 60, who is also a well-known dog lover, was among those close to breaking down when he heard about pooch's incredible story

'When the rescuer first saw him she thought he was dead, but when her camera flashed, he opened an eye. It was a miracle he was still alive.

'We brought him back to Scotland and slowly nurtured him back to health.'

In the show, Miracle performs a magic trick that cleverly reveals some other four-legged friends his owner has brought along.

'It is a very special audition,' an insider told the Mirror. 'All the judges love dogs and they are won over by Miracle.'

Owner Amanda first read about dogs rescued from the meat trade in Thailand online but it was photos of one hound that got to her.

Pooch Miracle now has a special bond with Amanda's son Kyle, who has cerebral palsy and autism

After eight weeks of searching online, she tracked him down to a Thai rescue centre, arranged for him to be flown to the UK and took him home to Edinburgh.

Miracle now has a special bond with her son Kyle, who has cerebral palsy and autism.

She said: 'If Kyle becomes upset by a situation such as too many people invading his space, Miracle will go to him and let him grab the fur on the back of his neck for comfort.'

Britain's Got Talent airs on Saturday at 8pm on ITV
Author Pooja Pande explores the spectrum of experiences mothers have as women, as humans - from ecstasy to depression, jealous possessiveness to indifference, exhaustion to sensual desire - in her new book in which she reveals the personal, social and emotional roller-coaster motherhood can be.

Pande says she wrote "Momspeak: The Funny, Bittersweet Story of Motherhood in India" in response to the half-joking conundrum posed by Anne Enright: "Can mothers not hold a pen?" - while attempting to channel the spirit of Karl Marx's Thesis Eleven - "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."



The book, published by Penguin Random House India, talks about pivotal moments in the journey of motherhood.

"There is an impetus each answers to, and also a logic. There is an interrogation of everything we presume and assume about mothers and motherhood - instinct, impulse, rationale," Pande says.

"There is an aching back to buried memories and emotions, mine and that of others - forages into the uncharted dark oceans where motherhood often leaves us, to sink, or swim, or rise; journeys into the sunnier spaces that are as close to blessings as we can get," she writes.

The digital launch of the book will be done by Penguin, Crossword and Shoppers Stop on Saturday.

Writer-director Tahira Kashyap Khurrana, who has praised "Momspeak" for being "funny, witty and lively", will be launching the ebook at the digital launch. She will also be reading from the book and will be in conversation with the author.

Pande, through vignettes of her personal journey, and hilarious and poignant episodes in the lives of different mothers - married, divorced, single, queer, adoptive - celebrates and shines new light on this transformative, life-affirming experience of motherhood.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dallas, Texas salon owner Shelley Luther has become the face of the movement to free the nation from the oppressive lockdowns imposed by despotic governors and mayors.

She is a modern-day Rosa Parks, but more on that in a moment.

An inspiration in these dark times to patriotic Americans who yearn to have their most basic constitutional rights respected, Luther was sentenced to seven days in jail on May 5 for daring to open her salon despite emergency decrees mandating the continued forced closure of businesses like hers that have arbitrarily been deemed non-essential.

But Luther was liberated May 7 after the Supreme Court of Texas ordered her released pending final disposition of this case. On May 8, Texas will allow hair salons to reopen with conditions.

The judicial process against Luther moved with the alarming speed of a drumhead court-martial.

According to a somewhat ungrammatical Judgment of Contempt and Order of Confinement signed May 5 by 14th Judicial District Court Judge Eric Moye, Luther and her business, S&B Hot Mess Enterprises LLC, doing business as Salon A La Mode, violated a temporary restraining order dated April 28 that directed the salon to cease operating.

She bravely refused to shutter the salon, saying she (and her employees) needed to work to feed their families.

Luther was sentenced to seven days imprisonment for criminal contempt and seven days for civil contempt, with the sentences to run concurrently. Her business was ordered to pay $500 a day for criminal contempt for the 7 days as they [sic] willfully violated the Order of this Court. The business was also ordered to pay an additional $500 a day for civil contempt for each day from this day forward during which the Salon remains in operation from the date of the Temporary Restraining Order until May 7, 2020.

The order stated that any time the Defendants should wish to purge themselves of their Contempt, they may petition this Court for release from confinement, provided that they cease operating the salon and publically [sic] express contrition.

Luther had previously ripped up a citation at a rally, earning the ire of Judge Moye.

"Im not anyone special, she reportedly said at the event. I just know that I have rights. You have rights to feed your children and make income, and anyone that wants to take away those rights is wrong.

Luther said she, along with several of her 19 stylists, had fallen behind on paying their mortgages. Its either come in and make money to be able to feed your family or stay home and freak out.

From the bench, Judge Moye, this soulless elected Democrat, who makes $158,000 a year in his supposedly essential job, told the cash-strapped Luther to pound sand in a vast run-on sentence.

If you would like to take this opportunity now to acknowledge: that your actions were selfish, putting your own interests ahead of those in the community in which you live; that they disrespected the executive orders of the state, the orders of the county, and this city; that you now see the error of your ways and understand that the society cannot function when ones own belief in the concept of liberty permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings of duly elected officials; that you owe an apology to the elected officials who you disrespected by flagrantly ignoring and, in one case, defiling their orders which you now know obviously regard to you; that you know the proper way in an ordered society to engage concerns you may have had is to hire a lawyer and advocate for change, an exception, or amendment to laws that you find offensive; that you publicly state that this is the way that citizens in the states should behave and that you represent to this court that you will today cease operation of your salon and not reopen until after further orders of the government permit you to do so; this court will consider the payment of a fine in lieu of the incarceration that you have demonstrated that you have so clearly earned. [emphasis added]

Of course, Americans fought a long, bloody war against the British empire so they could flaunt their disdain for the rulings of government officials.

Luther was not intimidated by the thuggish judge. She replied:

Judge, I would like to say that I have much respect for this court and laws, and that I've never been in this position before, and it's not some place that I want to be, but I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I'm selfish. Because feeding my kids is not selfish.  I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they'd rather feed their kids. So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then, please, go ahead with your decision, but I'm not going to shut the salon."

For defiantly speaking truth to power, Luther appears to have started a new civil rights movement, just as Rosa Parks did decades earlier in the Democrat-dominated Jim Crow South.

Parks refused to yield her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. Three other black passengers had already complied with the drivers direction to move. When he asked Parks, "Why don't you stand up?" she answered, "I don't think I should have to stand up." She was arrested.

This righteous act of defiance by Parks against an unjust law was the catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott, which breathed life into a nationwide push to end the racial segregation of public facilities.

Former Congressman Allen West, a Texas Republican, likened Luther to Rosa Parks.

Shelley Luther is our modern-day Rosa Parks, and she has sparked a movement[,] he wrote May 5 on Twitter. (So did Mark Levin on his radio program May 6.)

Comparing anyone no matter how courageous to Parks proved too much for angry left-wingers.

For example, talk show host Nicole Barrett, a black woman, bitterly denounced West, a black man, referring to him by the racist epithet coon.

You Clown. What a disgraceful thing to stay. Bootlicking, Dishonorable, Coon[,] Barrett tweeted. If you want to sleep with her that bad just ask[,] she added.

Even greater abuse was heaped on economist Stephen Moore, a member of the White House task force on reopening the economy, weeks ago when, before Luther had grabbed the national spotlight, he compared anti-lockdown protesters in general to Parks.

This is a great time for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices, Moore said April 14 on the Freedom on Tap YouTube show.

On April 17, the Washington Post quoted Moore saying, I think theres a boiling point that has been reached and exceeded.

I call these people the modern-day Rosa Parks  they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties, he said.

The over-the-top vitriol from verified frothing-at-the-mouth left-wingers came quickly on Twitter, the censorship-happy social media website that has cemented its position as the favorite venue of the angry mob.

The always-wrong failed magazine publisher Bill Kristol sarcastically congratulated Moore on a comment at once strikingly stupid and deeply offensive.

Pundit Tiffany Cross unloaded on Moore:

Stephen Moore, please kindly [shut the f*** up]. Times are entirely too dangerous to politely disagree or offer filtered retorts. The #MAGA tribe is killing us. And Id rather fight to the death before I lay down & die. They dropped civility a long time ago. Cool. [Because] Ive got none for you.

Perhaps the vilest, most un-American statement came from Ibram X. Kendi of American Universitys Antiracist Research & Policy Center. He likened those protesting lockdowns to deadly pathogens.

Kendi tweeted:

Stephen Moore calls them modern-day Rosa Parks. But Parks desired different freedoms. These folk want the freedom to infect, like they have wanted the freedom to enslave, lynch, deport, exclude, rob. They have always protested the loss of liberties.

Sadly, thats what America has become in the COVID-19 era.

The Left, which includes the elitists in the mainstream media and academia, viciously slanders those who only want to earn a living as antisocial, rapacious vermin who should just shut up and stay home and starve to death  or become dependent on government handouts.

With heroic figures like Shelley Luther showing the way, it is time for patriotic Americans to throw off their chains and begin rebuilding the country.

Matthew Vadum is an independent investigative reporter in Washington, D.C. and author of Team Jihad: How Sharia-Supremacists Collaborate with Leftists to Destroy the United States and Subversion Inc.: How Obamas ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

(See my previous American Thinker columns on the ongoing COVID-19 debacle:

March 27 American Thinker, Dictatorship of the Immunocompromised?;

April 3 American Thinker, New York City is lying about Chinese virus death rates; April 9 American Thinker, The CDC Confesses to Lying About COVID-19 Death Numbers; April 15 American Thinker, Liberate America by Turning the Political Pain up to 11)

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of screen shot from Hannity / YouTube. and public domain image.
Fine Gael TDs and Senators have expressed doubt as to whether it is credible to commit to reducing carbon emissions by 7% when dealing with a 30 billion deficit this year.

Speaking during a video conference call on Thursday with party chairman, Martin Heydon, several TDs and Senators raised concerns about what a deal with the Green Party would mean for rural Ireland.

Dismissed by some as a box-ticking exercise given the absence of key senior ministers such as Simon Coveney and Paschal Donohoe on the call, the meeting still ran for three hours and was the second such meeting this week.

The party hierarchy are selling the idea of going into government hard. But many remain to be convinced. There is a lot of concern over the Greens and this bonkers commitment to reduce carbon emissions to 7%, said one party figure.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has had to apologise for his leaky ministers over a story in the Irish Examiner yesterday.

Speaking on Newstalk, when asked by host Pat Kenny about our report which quoted Cabinet sources that the chances of government formation were 50/50, Mr Varadkar said: Once again I have to apologise for some of my leaky Ministers. If you go back over the history of our democracy, once talks start  at least up until now  there has always been a deal at the end. Fine Gael has entered these talks in good faith.

He said government formation talks are still open to the Social Democrats and Labour Party. Whats happened is that talks have begun at long last between Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Greens and it is still open to Labour and the Social Democrats to join those talks, and were still keeping in touch with Independents who might be willing to support a new government, Mr Varadkar said.

Im confident that well be able to bring those talks to a conclusion.

Mr Varadkar said that any agreement with Fianna Fail will be on the basis of an equal partnership: We have agreed with Fianna Fail that any government we take part in will be an equal partnership. The key test for me and people in our party is can we come up with a programme for government thats in the interests of the country thats realistic and helps get us through this help crisis  get people back to work, businesses open again, and the economy humming again."

This is an unprecedented situation politically as well as in terms of the history of our country. Theres always been a deal at the end, and that deal has always been ratified by the parties involved in the Dail  but things that we believed to always be true up until the last few weeks have turned out to be different."

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, meanwhile, has said he doesnt buy the argument that tackling climate change and helping rural Ireland are mutually exclusive.

A carbon emissions reduction of 7% is a red-line for the Green party, but some Fianna Fail TDs have raised concerns about the impact of that on farming and rural communities.

Mr Martin said that he believed a new government could focus on reducing emissions without damaging rural Ireland in the process: I dont buy the argument that climate change and rural Ireland are somehow mutually exclusive  I take an opposite view, actually."
Autonomous Cars Software Market 2020-2024 | Benefits Associated with Autonomous Cars to Boost Growth | Technavio

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technavio has been monitoring the autonomous cars software market and it is poised to grow by USD 3.26 billion during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 36% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, the latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

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 on the Autonomous Cars Software Market

The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Baidu Inc., BlackBerry Ltd., Cisco Systems Inc., Delphi Technologies Plc, Intel Corp., NVIDIA Corp., Robert Bosch GmbH, and Tesla Inc. are some of the major market participants. Although the benefits associated with autonomous cars will offer immense growth opportunities, the huge cost of autonomous cars will challenge the growth of the market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Benefits associated with autonomous cars has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. However, huge cost of autonomous cars might hamper market growth.

Autonomous Cars Software Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Autonomous Cars Software Market is segmented as below:

Product Level 3 Autonomous Cars Level 4 Autonomous Cars Level 5 Autonomous Cars

Geography North America Europe APAC South America MEA



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=IRTNTR43256

Autonomous Cars Software Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our autonomous cars software market report covers the following areas:

Autonomous Cars Software Market Size

Autonomous Cars Software Market Trends

Autonomous Cars Software Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the automotive industry as one of the prime reasons driving the autonomous cars software market growth during the next few years.

Autonomous Cars Software Market 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the autonomous cars software market, including some of the vendors such as Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Baidu Inc., BlackBerry Ltd., Cisco Systems Inc., Delphi Technologies Plc, Intel Corp., NVIDIA Corp., Robert Bosch GmbH, and Tesla Inc. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the Autonomous Cars Software Market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Autonomous Cars Software Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist autonomous cars software market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the autonomous cars software market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the autonomous cars software market

Analysis of the markets competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of autonomous cars software market vendors

Table Of Contents :

Executive Summary

Market Overview

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 - 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by Product

Market segments

Comparison by Product

Level 3 autonomous cars - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Level 4 autonomous cars - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Level 5 autonomous cars - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by Product

Customer landscape

Overview

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

North America - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Europe - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

APAC - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

South America - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

MEA - Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Alphabet Inc.

Apple Inc.

Baidu Inc.

BlackBerry Ltd.

Cisco Systems Inc.

Delphi Technologies Plc

Intel Corp.

NVIDIA Corp.

Robert Bosch GmbH

Tesla Inc.

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

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, Technavios 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 Technavios 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.
<! No reprieve in Russia Coronavirus cases >

Russia posted yet another mind-boggling 10,699 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Friday.

It was the sixth successive day that the country has posted such humongous number, starting from Sunday.

The national total is now 187,859 cases with 1,723 deaths, 98 of which happened in the last 24 hours.

On Thursday, the country reported 11,231 cases, the highest daily cases so far.

The successive high numbers appear to confirm the statement by the mayor of Moscow that over 300,000 people in his city have been infected with the virus.

The fact that we have identified so many patients is not a minus, but a huge plus, Sergei Sobyanin said on state television.

Obviously, there are even more really sick people in the city. According to screening studies, they are in the region of 2 to 2.5 percent of the total population of Moscow, in terms of numbers it is about 300,000, Sobyanin told Russia 24.

At the moment, Russia has overtaken France and Germany to become the fifth hardest-hit country in the world.

It is the fourth in Europe, after Spain, Italy and the UK.
(Natural News) For months, the establishment has been dishing out a narrative claiming that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is a natural, albeit mysterious and unexplained, phenomenon that probably originated at a Chinese meat market. But contrary evidence continues to surface suggesting that the virus actually originated inside a Chinese laboratory and research center.

Many virologists continue to deny this, of course, claiming that there is no evidence to support the notion that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) might in any way be unnatural. But the genetic hallmarks they are looking for as proof may not be as evident as previously believed because modern genetic engineering can be done without leaving a trace.

Believe it or not, a Swiss research team was able to create a synthetic clone of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) in less than a month. And they did this by inserting genetic fragments in such a way that, unless a scientist knows exactly what to look for, would not necessarily be apparent.

Over the past 15-20 years, researchers have been actively studying, dissecting, reconstructing and otherwise tampering with coronaviruses of various types. This includes the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), which one scientific researcher describes as an obvious chimera, meaning it is a combination of at least two pre-existing viruses.

This scientist, who goes by the name of Yuri Deigin and edits the Open Longevity journal both in Russian and English, says that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is based on an ancestral bat strain of coronavirus known as RaTG13, but with a replaced receptor binding motif (RBM) in its spike protein.

The Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) also contains an added stretch of four different amino acids that he says were inserted into the virus, creating a furin cleavage site that, as virologists have previously established, significantly expands the repertoire of the virus in terms of whose cells it can penetrate.

Because of this, Deigin speculates, the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) was probably able to mutate and jump species, leaving its original host and infecting humans. And it just so happens that this very type of research was taking place at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which is where the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) originated.

Virologists like Shi Zhengli, Deigin points out, have done many similar things in the past, including replacing the RBM in one type of virus with the RBM of another. They have also added new furin sites to coronaviruses, creating new artificial species-specific coronaviruses that borrow from other coronaviruses in their ability to do new things.

Now this does not necessarily mean that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) was an intentional bioweapon, at least in Deigins view. It could be that it was an experiment gone wrong rather than an intentional effort at plunging the entire world into a pandemic. At the same time, it does seem clear that the virus did, in fact, come from a lab, and probably from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Teams led by Shi Zhengli have created at least eight artificial chimeric coronaviruses over the years, and received money from NIH

Deigin uncovered that between the years of 2007 and 2017, Shi Zhengli and colleagues created at least eight new chimeric coronaviruses with a variety of RBMs. And in 2019, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) actually gave the Wuhan Institute of Virology $3.7 million as part of a grant entitled, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.

That same year, Shi Zhengli co-authored a paper calling for continued research into these and other synthetic viruses, both in vitro and in vivo, arguing that there are no clinical treatments or prevention strategies currently available with regard to human coronaviruses.

All of this is highly suspicious, seeing as how 2019 was the very same year that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) first emerged in China, and in the same city where Shi Zhengli and colleagues were working on similar coronaviruses. There is little doubt that this chimeric virus originated in that lab, despite continued denial by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

But it no longer matters what the CCP claims as people all over the world are figuring out the truth on their own. It is at least apparent that something went amiss with the containment of this virus, and it is possible that whatever happened was intentional.

Deigin lays out the details from Shi Zhenglis 2019 paper about the relative ease with which even a graduate student in the field could create such a virus. He also spells out the detailed biology of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) as evidence that it definitely matches the type of thing that Shi Zhengli describes.

Based on the evidence he puts forth, which you can peruse in its entirety at this link, the only logical conclusion is that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is genetically modified and came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He also traces the origins of the RaTG13 strain from which the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) was derived.

Amazingly, Shi Zhengli admitted just this year that she was the one who isolated RaTG13 back in 2013 from Yunnan horseshoe bats of the Rhinolophus affinis variety. None of this was known, however, until January 2020 when the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) first started arriving in the U.S.

All of this absolutely implicates communist China in the unleashing of this global pandemic, not to mention the NIH that helped to fund this type of research. Heads need to roll, and those who have been victimized by this thing  including everyone who has been forced into lockdown  deserves a full measure of justice.

Bioweapon or not, the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is a product of China, as well as a product of our own federal government. And both entities need to be held accountable for the roles they played in scourging the planet with this invisible beast.

On the other hand, if it was all just an accident as Deigin believes was probably the case, then those involved need to fess up and admit their error rather than continue to claim that this is all just some wild conspiracy theory.

More of the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is available at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

Medium.com

NaturalNews.com
Beijing has kicked off a campaign to help graduates entering the labour market as the country faces growing pressure to reboot the sagging economy and tackle unemployment.

Ten initiatives were announced to find jobs for this years 8.74 million new graduates in an online launch on Wednesday by officials from the labour, education, human resources, and industry and information technology ministries.

The 100-day campaign  highlighting the urgency for young people to find work  includes more graduate degree programmes for universities, hiring an extra 400,000 graduates as teachers, expanding army enlistment, increased hiring by state-owned enterprises, more subsidies for small businesses, and encouraging graduates to start their own businesses.

It comes as Chinas economy is facing daunting economic problems resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The countrys economy shrank 6.8 per cent in the first quarter this year  an unprecedented GDP contraction.

Employment is high on the governments agenda  preferential job creation measures to support businesses were discussed early this week at a cabinet meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang.

Cheng Yuhong, an associate professor of economics at Jinan University in Guangzhou, said the coronavirus pandemic had hit China hard and would make it tough for Beijing to maintain a stable job market.

In a globalised world, it is difficult for China to escape unscathed even though the Chinese government has tried various means to keep the economy going, Cheng said.

With the United States and Europe still fighting the pandemic, it will affect the export sector and put pressure on China in terms of creating jobs.

But I also believe that some of the measures taken by the government  such as subsidising people to start their own businesses and offering more graduate programmes  could help ease the pressure.

A report published by recruitment website zhaopin.com last month said more than half of the most recent crop of graduates had not yet found jobs.

Story continues

Of those who had received offers, almost half said they had been hesitant to take the job because the salary was lower than they expected and it was not in line with their career goals.

But the main reason graduates had not found work was because there were fewer jobs available. The report gave the example of online gaming, an industry that had been burgeoning in recent years. But now, job ads by online gaming companies were down by about 70 per cent while the number of applications went up 14 per cent, the report said.

Li Xin, a spokeswoman for the website based in Xian, told Shaanxi Metropolis News that competition was tougher than ever.

University graduates who arent good at demonstrating their abilities are less likely to find jobs, she said. So they need to lower their expectations for future jobs, be realistic about career success and pay more attention to getting experience as an intern.

But at the same time, society should give these graduates more support because this year is different, she added.

Additional reporting by Kristin Huang

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[May 08, 2020] COVID-19 Impact and Recovery Analysis- Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023 | Expansion of Telecommunication Network to Boost Growth | Technavio

Technavio has been monitoring the optical modulators materials market and it is poised to grow by USD 6.39 billion during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of 6% 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/20200508005016/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Optical Modulators Materials 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. Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic, Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd., Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd., CASTECH Inc., CLaser Photonics, Inc., Cristal Laser SA, Fabrinet, Gooch & Housego Plc, HC Photonics Corp., Inrad Optics Inc., Optolita UAB, Photon LaserOptik GmbH are some of the major market participants. The expansion of the telecommunication network 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. Expansion of the telecommunication network has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Segmentation Optical Modulators Materials Market is segmented as below: Application Telecommunications Data Centers CATV Others

Material Optical Material Non-optical Material

Type Fiber-coupled Optical Modulators Free-space Optical Modulators

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=IRTNTR32149 Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-203: Scope



Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our optical modulators materials market report covers the following areas: Optical Modulators Materials Market Size

Optical Modulators Materials Market Trends

Optical Modulators Materials Market Industry Analysis This study identifies the development of high-speed optical fibers as one of the prime reasons driving the optical modulators materials market growth during the next few years.

Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the optical modulators materials market, including some of the vendors such as Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic, Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd., Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd., CASTECH Inc., CLaser Photonics, Inc., Cristal Laser SA, Fabrinet, Gooch & Housego Plc, HC Photonics Corp., Inrad Optics Inc., Optolita UAB, and Photon LaserOptik GmbH. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the optical modulators materials 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 Optical Modulators Materials Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023

Detailed information on factors that will assist optical modulators materials market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the optical modulators materials market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the optical modulators materials market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of optical modulators materials 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

Telecommunications - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Data centers - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

CATV - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Others - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 PART 07: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY MATERIAL Market segmentation by material

Comparison by material

Optical materials - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Non-optical materials - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Market opportunity by material PART 08: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 09: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY TYPE Market segmentation by type

Comparison by type

Fiber-coupled optical modulators - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Free-space optical modulators - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Market opportunity by type PART 10: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

North America - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Europe - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

MEA - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

South America - Market size and forecast 2018-2023

Key leading countries

Market opportunity PART 11: DECISION FRAMEWORK PART 12: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers

Market challenges PART 13: MARKET TRENDS Development of high-speed optical fibers

Emergence of IoT

Increasing focus on developing smart cities PART 14: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview

Landscape disruption

Competitive scenario PART 15: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Beijing Jiepu Chuangwei Optoelectronic Technology Co. Ltd.

Bluebean Optical Tech Ltd.

CASTECH Inc.

CLaser Photonics, Inc.

Cristal Laser SA

Fabrinet

Gooch & Housego Plc

HC Photonics Corp.

Inrad Optics Inc.

Optolita UAB

Photon LaserOptik GmbH PART 16: APPENDIX Research methodology

List of abbreviations

Definition of market positioning of vendors PART 17: 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/20200508005016/en/

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Katie Miller, press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, listens as President Donald Trump speaks about reopening the country, during a roundtable with industry executives, in the White House in Washington on April 29, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Pence Aide Tests Positive for CCP Virus

A second aide to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for the CCP virus, just days after a military member who works at the White House tested positive for the new illness.

Katie Miller was identified as the aide. She works as Pences press secretary.

Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes. Im doing well and look forward to getting back to work for the American people, Miller said in a social media statement late Friday.

Miller is married to White House adviser Stephen Miller.

We have put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing, all of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers, we are now putting in place here in the White House. So as America reopens safely, the White House is continuing to operate safely, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters at the White House.

An administration official told reporters traveling with Pence that the staff member tested positive early Friday. The person, who tested negative on Thursday, was in contact with six people who were scheduled to fly with Pence.

The staffers were removed from Pences plane, delaying his departure from Joint Base Andrews for about an hour. Pence was flying to Iowa to meet with leaders of different faiths and to hold a roundtable discussion about Americas food supply.

Neither Pence nor Trump had recent contact with the aide, the official said.

Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a discussion with local faith leaders to encourage them to resume in-person church services in a responsible fashion in response to the CCP virus pandemic, in Urbandale, Iowa, on May 8, 2020. (Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

A member of the military who works on the White House campus tested positive for the CCP virus in recent days, the White House said Thursday.

Trump and Pence have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health, spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement.

Ive had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman, Trump told reporters later in the day at the White House.

I know who he is. Good person. But Ive had very little contact. Mike has had very little contact with him. But Mike was tested and I was tested. We were both tested, he added.

Trump and Pence will be tested on a daily basis going forward, officials said. They were previously tested on a weekly basis.

People who come into contact with Trump will also be tested every day, Pence said.

The other staffer who works for Pence tested positive in March.

Last month, the White House began testing anyone who would be near the president or vice president.

Trump said in a Friday interview with Fox & Friends that hes been tested a number of times.

He has not been tested for antibodies, which signal that someone has had the CCP virus in the past, but said he will be in the future.
London: The UK on Friday observed a two-minute silence to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, which marked the end of World War II, including tributes to an estimated 87,000 Indian martyrs who fought as part of the British Army.

With 2.5 million men, the Indian Army of the Second World War during the British Raj era in the 1940s was the largest volunteer Army in history.

"Millions of people from communities across the Commonwealth and the world served in the British armed forces during the Second World War, and hundreds of thousands gave their lives serving on land, at sea, and in the air," said the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), which has launched a digital campaign calling on the public to take part in an act of virtual remembrance given the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

"Indians served in theatres of war across the world, including India and Burma; Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong; the Middle East and North Africa; Greece and Italy. They served at sea and in the air, as well as contributing to support and medical care," it added.

"The CWGC commemorates more than 87,000 people who lost their lives while serving with Indian forces during the Second World War. The CWGC works to ensure that those who served and died during the Second World War are never forgotten."

On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered, ending the Second World War in Europe. The British people had been at war for 2,075 days by then and endured bombing and the loss of loved ones. As the darkest days were now firmly behind them, people took to the streets to celebrate the victory.

Coronavirus restrictions have seen major VE Day commemorations and street parties cancelled, moving to more socially distant forms of celebration.

Prince Charles and wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, led the UK's silence at 11am local time to honour servicemen and women during the war, with Queen Elizabeth II set to address the nation later on Friday evening. The pre-recorded message from the Queen will be televised at 2100 local time, the exact moment her father, King George VI, gave a radio address 75 years ago.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked the VE Day generation, saying "our gratitude will be eternal" and called for a similar spirit of ?national endeavour? to combat the war against Covid-19.

"We can't hold the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past, but all of us who were born since 1945 are acutely conscious that we owe everything we most value to the generation who won the Second World War," he said.

While all public gatherings stand cancelled due to the social distancing rules in place to curb the spread of the deadly virus, the occasion was marked with a fly-past over London by the Royal Air Force display team the Red Arrows, while RAF Typhoon jets flew over Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

Victoria Wallace, Director General for the CWGC, said: ?At this dark time, we want to give people a way to honour those brave men and women who gave their lives in the second World War, creating this virtual Wall of Remembrance, so they can take part in VE Day.

"Whether it is a simple thank you, a picture or a few lines of text, we want to collect as many tributes as possible. Despite trying circumstances, we will ensure that these men and women are remembered in perpetuity."

Alongside the online "Wall of Remembrance", the CWGC has launched a new podcast series, 'The 1.7 Million Stories of CWGC', which explores some of the stories of those who lost their lives, the history of the wars and how the CWGC is still working to bring those stories to life today.

It has also launched an interactive digital exhibition on Noor Inayat-Khan, the Indian-origin British spy who died in the line of duty under interrogation of the Nazi Gestapo during World War II.
Dave Chappelle is undoubtedly one of the funniest stand-up comedians in the world. He has been in the industry for a long time and still finds new content to make us laugh. As any comedian will tell you, it is not an easy task making people laugh, and that is why there are not so many top comedians at the level Dave is. The entertainer has a beautiful family which he finds time amid his busy schedule touring different cities.

Image: instagram.com @DaveChappelle

Source: UGC

Dave is known for his comedy sketch series dubbed Chappelles Show that aired between 2003 and 2005. He also established himself in the comedy circles by winning top awards such as two Emmy Awards and three Grammys.

It is because of such achievements that Rolling Stone ranked him number 9 in their list of 50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time. That said, Dave Chappelle has not been without his controversies despite being funny. He has found himself in trouble for some of his jokes regarding subjects like race, gender, politics and sexual violence, among others.

Dave Chappelle wife and kids

Who is Dave Chappelle married to? He is married to a gorgeous woman called Elaine Chappelle. She has been his pillar for a long time supporting him through thick and thin.

The world has grown accustomed to celebrities not being able to have lasting marriages, but the tale of Dave and Elaine is that of weathering storms together and sticking to their vows no matter what. Dave Chappelles family comprises his wife and three children, two boys and a girl.

Who is Elaine Mendoza Erfe Chappelle?

Image: instagram.com @DaveChappelle

Source: UGC

Elaine was born on August 31st, 1974 in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of New York. She is the daughter of Christian Filipino. Dave Chappelle wife ethnicity is, therefore, Asian meaning theirs is an interracial marriage.

Elaine and Dave met in New York and dated for long before deciding to tie the knot. In the early days of their relationship, Elaine was not sure about pursuing a star-like Dave.

Since Elaine was raised as a staunch Christian by her parents, her relationship with Dave seemed to be doomed when the comedian decided to switch to Islam back in 1997. This decision did have an impact on their relationship, but it is love that won with Elaine not losing faith in him.

It is in 2001 that the couple decided their dating life needed to go to the next level and so they got married. This marriage has withstood the test of time, and the union has stood firm for almost two decades.

READ ALSO: Kobe Bryant wife and kids (photos)

Dreams of being a chef

Elaine is believed to have had dreams of becoming a professional chef from a young age. Even though she is now living a dream life, she never got the opportunity to become a chef as she had intended.

Getting into family life brought along its responsibilities, and once she had children, she opted to be a housewife instead so that she could devote all her time to raising the children. On his part, Dave also had to take his professional life more seriously after the birth of his children.

Dave and Elaine Chappelles kids

The fruits of the marriage between Dave Chappelle and his wife Elaine can be seen in three beautiful children, namely Sulaymana, Ibrahim and Sonal. Like many celebrities, Dave has tried all he could to shield his children from the public and the adverse effects of being children of famous people.

It is because of that that the family lives in Ohio to shield the children from fame. Somehow, even though Dave has had to contend life with the hawk-eyed paparazzi following him around, he has managed to gift his children with a low-key life devoid of the pressures that come with fame. This is because, in Ohio, people barely notice Dave.

Dave Chappelle family photos

For apparent reasons, Dave Chappelle is not fond of posting photos of his family. Rarely is the entire family seen out in public save for important occasions such as when he is receiving an award. He wants his family, especially his children, to live their lives without being impacted by the fame of their parents.

1. Dave and Elaine posing for a photo

Is this not just a perfect match for a couple? We do know that women love men who are dark, tall and handsome. Those must have been the qualities Elaine looked at before falling for the comedian.

However looking at this photo also reveals one of two things, either Dave is very tall, or Elaine is very short. The couple has devised just the perfect pose to fit in this photo without revealing the height difference between them.

2. Party time with friends

They might have chosen to live in a small rural town in Ohio, but that does not mean that Dave and Elaine completely gave up their social lives.

Occasionally, they do meet with their friends and party hard. Being with their crew is time for them to have not only fun but also bond even more while creating time for their friends.

3. A loving father

Image: instagram.com @DaveChappelle

Source: UGC

There is no doubt that Dave is a good father to his children. Other than providing them with a good life, he is there to spend time with them. Here, he is seen walking with his three children with skateboards in their hands. It is an excellent way to spend their leisure which in turn strengthens the bond between them.

4. A show of support

Image: instagram.com @DaveChappelle

Source: UGC

One of the rare occasions Dave Chappelle's family was seen in public is when he was being given the Mark Twain Prize. On that occasion, his entire family stood by his side to show their support and appreciation. In the same way, they have stood by him even in the low moments, which is what a good family should always do.

5. Vacation time

Image: instagram.com @DaveChappelle

Source: UGC

It is moments like this that remind families how lucky they are to have one another. Not all families have the habit of travelling together, let alone going for family vacations.

Dave Chappelle has made sure his family get a better life than he had as a child. This includes family trips and most importantly being a present dad all the time.

Dave Chappelle wife and kids are lucky to have a comedian for a husband and father. The family must make surprises, though because to be a successful comedian, it means long durations away from home. Imagine juggling between Saturday Night Live, Chappelles Show, Netflix specials, stand-up comedy tours and many other activities while at the same time having to set aside some time for the family. This requires patience, understanding and true love. Somehow, his family has remained somewhat a mystery eluding media.

READ ALSO: Travis Greene wife and kids: names, age and photos

Source: TUKO.co.ke
A criminal case has been opened in the Special Investigation Service of Armenia on the fact of the incident between the vice-speaker of the Armenian parliament Alen Simonyan andthe head of the Adekvad union Artur Danielyan, said SIS spokesperson Marina Ohanjanyan.

The case was instituted on hooliganism and intentional infliction of slight harm to health. A preliminary investigation is underway.
ELYRIA, Ohio  A 37-year-old Elyria woman is in custody Thursday after police say she stabbed a 33-year-old woman to death.

Officers were called to the 400 block of Lorain Boulevard just before 5 p.m. Thursday, according to police Capt. William Pelko. Police and EMS workers found Jamie Royster with a stab wound to her upper body. Royster was taken to University Hospital Elyria Medical Center, but she died of her injuries, Pelko says.

Holly Baire of Elyria is being held in the Lorain County Jail on a charge of murder, Pelko says. She is scheduled to appear in court Friday morning.

Pelko did not release details on the incident.

More crime-related stories on cleveland.com:

Airbnb party host in Clevelands Ohio City cited with violating Ohios stay-at-home order

Cleveland homicide suspect arrested more than a year after shooting killed woman, injured daughter at West Side apartments

Violence suspected in death of man found in backyard of Cleveland home, police say

Cleveland man released from prison after winning new trial in wifes 1974 slaying that he says he didnt commit
The emergence of the coronavirus may be a tipping point for telemedicine. Before the pandemic, about 10 percent of Americans had used such services. The director of telehealth for the Mount Sinai Health System in COVID-19 hot spot New York City says that demand has increased tenfold Those at greatest risk from COVID-19 recently gained more access to online care. In March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced new guidelines for that expand coverage for telehealth services.As health-care infrastructure is overloaded, online pre-screening gives concerned citizens a chance to talk to caregivers without adding to crowds and risks in waiting rooms. A number of bills have been introduced since the beginning of March to further the use of these telehealth services, some with applications beyond the current health crisis.Maryland bill HB1663 aims to help citizens who are having difficulty accessing services, whether they are affected directly by COVID-19 or by the broader circumstances of the health emergency. It would authorize health-care professionals who are licensed out of the state to provide telehealth to Maryland residents.New Jerseys A3860 also allows out-of-state practitioners to provide and bill for services to its residents for the duration of the states public health emergency. If the out-of-state provider does not have a pre-existing relationship with a patient in New Jersey, services are limited to screening for, diagnosing or treating COVID-19. During the pandemic emergency, the director of the Division of Consumer Affairs is to waive legal or regulatory requirements necessary to facilitate the provision of health care services using telemedicine and telehealth. The bill was signed into law on March 16.Georgia's HB1151 addresses the potential for telemedicine to enable low-income, medically underserved children and adults to have access to care. It adds language to the states insurance code requiring the insurance commissioner to include telehealth with other systems when considering whether a health carriers network coverage is sufficient in numbers and types of providers.North Carolinas HB1037 requires both insurers and the State Health Plan to provide coverage for telephonic healthcare and electronic patient visits. This includes physical, occupational and speech therapy. Deductible charges may not be greater than if these services were provided in person, and providers will be reimbursed at the same rate as for in-person services. The bill prohibits requirements for pre-authorization of such services. AB998 , in Wisconsin, addresses a narrower aspect of online care, setting out guidelines that allow a dentist or dental hygienist to use telehealth in the practice of dentistry or dental hygiene. Teledentistry may have particular value for rural and disadvantaged children who have never had a dental exam Kansas bill SB490 also addresses a specific telehealth specialty. It establishes guidelines for an audiology and speech-language pathology interstate compact. States that join the compact will allow patients in their state to be treated using telehealth by professionals from any member state.
The law regarding what counts as material is extremely forgiving to the government, Mr. Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.

James G. McGovern, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely bought a defendants argument that a lie did not involve a material fact.

If you are arguing materiality, you usually lose, because there is a tacit admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury, he said.

No career prosecutors signed the motion. Mr. Shea is a former close aide to Mr. Barr. In January, Mr. Barr installed him as the top prosecutor in the district that encompasses the nations capital after maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.

Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly quit the case against Mr. Trumps longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Mr. Stone was convicted of committing  including witness intimidation and perjury  to conceal Trump campaign interactions with WikiLeaks.

It soon emerged that Mr. Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over F.B.I. documents showing internal deliberations about questioning Mr. Flynn, like what warnings to give  even though such files are usually not provided to the defense.

Mr. Flynns defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the F.B.I. as running amok in its decision to question Mr. Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administrations imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.
Astronomers say they have discovered a black hole that is closest to Earth, roughly 1,000 light years from our planet. A light year is the distance light travels in a year which is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

Until now, the closest-known black hole was one perhaps three times further away, reports Reuters.

The black hole is at least 4.2 times the mass of the sun and is gravitationally bound to two stars in a so-called triple system, according to a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Just around the corner in cosmic terms, Thomas Rivinius, the lead author of the study, was quoted as saying about the discovery by news agency Reuters. Rivinius is a Chile-based European Southern Observatory astronomer.

A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying, according to American space agency Nasa.

Because no light can get out, people cant see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars.

What makes this discovery more exciting is the fact that the black hole is so near that the two stars dancing with it can seen by the naked eye, reports Fox News.

Called HR 6819, the newly-discovered black hole is a triple system which can be seen from Earths southern hemisphere with the naked eye, in the constellation Telescopium.

Prior to this discovery, there have been only a few dozen stellar-mass known black holes known but there may be hundreds of millions or even a billion of them in the Milky Way, astrophysicist and study co-author Petr Hadrava of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic was quoted as saying by Reuters.

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Trump vetoes resolution to limit war power against Iran

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:23, May 07, 2020

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed a resolution aimed at limiting the president's power to use military forces against Iran.

"This was a very insulting resolution, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on Nov. 3 by dividing the Republican Party," Trump said in a statement regarding the veto, adding that "the few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands."

Trump noted that the resolution would have harmed the president's ability to protect the United States, its allies, and partners.

"Congress should not have passed this resolution," he added.

U.S. media reported later in the day that the Senate on Thursday would attempt to override Trump's veto, but it is expected to fall short of the two-thirds' support needed.

"I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to override his veto-Congress must vote before sending our troops into harm's way," tweeted by Virginian Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who led the legislative effort.

The House approved the resolution in a largely party-line vote of 227 against 186 in March, and the Republican-controlled Senate passed the resolution in February.

The veto came as the tension between the United States and Iran is still lingering. Trump said last month that he had instructed the U.S. Navy to destroy any Iranian gunboats if they harass U.S. ships at sea. Iranian officials downplayed U.S. threats and vowed to respond if the security of Iranian territory is at stake.

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A Dubliner who stabbed his friend 17 times with a scissors, leaving him needing two life-saving operations, has brought an appeal against the severity of his eight-and-a-half year sentence.

Kenneth Broe (47), of Alderwood Green, Springfield, Tallaght, Dublin 24 was convicted by a jury of assault causing harm and causing serious harm to Kristian Shortt in Letterkenny on October 9, 2008.

During the trial at Letterkenny Circuit Court in Co Donegal in May 2018, Garda Harvey Maughan gave evidence that Mr Shortt's injuries were so bad that he could not tell if he was a man or a woman when he arrived at the scene.

Broe and Mr Shortt had been out drinking in the town before calling to a friends apartment on Letterkennys Main Street in the early hours of the morning. Alcohol and cocaine was consumed in the apartment before an argument broke out between the two men.

Mr Shortt testified at the trial that Broe had produced a pair of scissors and used all his power and force to repeatedly stab him. Mr Shortt was stabbed a total of 17 times - four times in the neck, three in the back of the head and three in the chest, and he was also wounded in the hands and back area. He spent two weeks in intensive care and received two "life-saving operations".

Broe fled the scene of the attack and was caught in Monaghan the following day with 1,100 worth of cocaine on him.

The defendant was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with the final 18 months suspended by Judge Thomas John Aylmer on December 19, 2018.

Broe moved to appeal the severity of his sentence today, Friday in the Court of Appeal on grounds that the sentencing judge had erred in law by suspending a portion of the sentence rather than imposing a reduced sentence, when he found that mitigating factors existed.

Moving to appeal his sentence, his barrister, Colman Fitzgerald SC, said the mitigating factors had been dealt with entirely by a suspended sentence rather than by a reduction in sentence.

There had been a large gap of time between the offence being committed and sentencing, he submitted, and significant efforts had been made by the defendant during this time to rehabilitate himself. "There was no accounting for the fact at the time of sentencing that Mr Broe was deserving of an amelioration of the headline sentence," remarked Mr Fitzgerald.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Patricia McLaughlin BL, argued that to say mitigating factors and factors relevant to one's continued rehabilitation ought to be distinguished was an "artificial distinction". These factors were all intrinsically linked and the plea had been presented in that way, she submitted. She said "it was most appropriate to give him credit for mitigating circumstances" but a sentence should be imposed "that would also protect society".

Reserving judgement, President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, said the court hoped to have a decision in two weeks.
MBABANE - Bukhosi Zwane has challenged health practitioners to consider researching about traditional herbs in this era of the COVID-19 pandemic.



Zwane is the farmer who met with Dr Gugu Sibandze, a Researcher for Traditional Medicine at the University of Eswatini.

The duo met at the Eswatini Broadcasting and Information Services last Monday during the radio stations morning breakfast show.



He asserted his firm beliefs that Artemisia afra also known as African wormwood (umhlonyane) could play a vital role in the treatment of coronavirus symptoms. However, he said his beliefs were not scientifically proven hence the need for research so that a true position about the herb could be known.



Researches



We have many health practitioners who studied medicine abroad; however, none of them have bothered doing research about traditional plants. To me, this shows that we are not doing enough as a country. What have our researchers done since the outbreak? he asked.



He likened the current situation to a third world war, which needed people to join hands in the fight.

He stated that scientists would be in a position to either approve or dismiss the use of the herb had they bothered to research about the plant.



He said as he locked himself in the house during the partial lockdown, he recalled that serious flu, similar to the coronavirus, was not the first of its kind in the country.



Zwane stated that he then recalled that in the ancient times, there were illnesses which were treated with umhlonyane.

I left my house to harvest the plant because I recalled that my parents used it to relieve symptoms of flu and asthma. It worked best if added to warm water. We used to drink or inhale it while soaked in warm water, he said.



Zwane also claimed that the herb was used to deal with mosquitoes in the absence of mosquito coils though some held the belief that it was used to treat malaria. Zwane said isolation of people with flu was not a new idea. He stated that the same used to happen during the treatment of flu during his youth.



Government is doing the right thing by encouraging people to isolate or quarantine if they are suspected to have the virus. Our parents used to isolate us from other children when treating us for flu because it spreads easily, he said.



Concerned



He differed from Dr Sibandze, who advised that umhlonyane should only be used if one was sick. Zwane stated that as far as he was concerned, the herb should be used regularly so that the virus could not get a chance to invade the body.

His argument was that the virus could stay for about four days without any symptoms showing.



He claimed the more people drank the herb, the fewer chances they would contract the virus.

The farmer spoke about another plant known as lippia javanica (umsutane), which he said also needed researchers for proof of its sanitising power.

According to Zwane, the plant could be used as a sanitiser. It is his belief that the plant could kill germs and viruses if used in water. My belief is that anything that has smell and alcohol could be used as a sanitiser, however, my opinion is subject to verification by proper research. It was not by mistake that our fore-fathers used the plant to wash hands after attending funerals. Some people still believe that washing hands with the plant is a ritual yet it is meant for hygiene, he said.



He added that sharing his knowledge was not about the sale of the plant but encouraging health practitioners to conduct research about it.



Zwane shared his knowledge after Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina endorsed Artemisia aunua, as a herb for relieving symptroms of COVID-19. Research has shown that Artemisia aunua, which was sourced from Mainland China, in the 1970s for the treatment of malaria, is the same species as umhlonyane.

In South Africa, they described umhlonyane as a multi-stemmed perennial that grows up to two metres with aromatic, grey-green feathery leaves.



Indigenous



The South Africans believe that the plant is one of the oldest and best known of all the indigenous medicines in southern Africa.

It is believed that the plant has diverse uses that should be considered as a significant tonic in its own right.

They believe that the plant is used to treat symptoms of flu, sore throats, coughs, asthma, pneumonia and headache. The herb is taken orally or inhaled as a steam bath.



The South Africans also believe that the plant could be used to treat gastritis, indigestion, poor appetite, flatulence and colic.

It is believed that the plant could also be used to treat diabetes, intestinal worms, constipation and gout.

Normally, the plant grows naturally.
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The World Health Organization is holding a briefing Friday on the coronavirus, which has infected more than 3.8 million people worldwide and killed at least 269,881, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

On Wednesday, WHO officials warned world leaders that there can be "no going back to business as usual" following the coronavirus pandemic. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries cannot "let preparedness go by the wayside. As we work on responding to this pandemic, we must also work harder to prepare for the next one."

WHO officials also said they have been in talks with China to send a follow-up mission to the country to investigate the source of the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said Wednesday that it's critical for officials to determine from what species the virus emerged.

Officials have previously said the coronavirus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan, China, and likely originated in bats, then jumped to an "intermediate host" before infecting humans.

 CNBC's William Feuer and Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.

Read CNBC's live updates to see the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.
The Pentagon is set to pull Patriot missile defense systems from Saudi Arabia amid internal pressure to transfer military assets to counter China, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Why it matters: The United States has a total of four Patriot batteries in Saudi Arabia, largely in response to a cruise missile and drone attack on the Abqaiq and Khurays oil refineries in September 2019, which the United States accused Iran of carrying out. Washington also sent F-22 fighters and B-52 bombers, as well as thousands of military personnel and a second aircraft carrier to the region in order to deter further Iranian attacks. CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told Congress in March that killing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad had reestablished a rough form of deterrence  at the level of state-on-state attacks by Iran. But Iran-linked militias in Iraq continued to launch rocket strikes on US positions in Iraq  one of the reasons the United States decided to consolidate its troops at larger bases and introduce missile defense systems to Iraq.

Whats next: The Donald Trump administration is working to roll back the expansion of Irans military influence in the region but at the same time is increasingly concerned with countering a rising China, and the Defense Department simply does not have enough resources to go around. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly emphasized Chinas activities in the South China Sea in recent weeks. Esper said Tuesday he is still reviewing force posture around the world, but there is no sign of a let-up in the Trump administration's economic war against Irans government.

Know more: Adnan Abu Zeed takes a look ahead to strategic dialogue planned for June between Baghdad and Washington over the future of US military presence in Iraq.
For 56 days, the coronavirus pandemic kept Howard Smith apart from Lois Kittson, his wife of half a century. Their separation ended this week with a short but stirring reunion  at a safe distance  outside her nursing home in upstate New York.

Howard, who for years had visited his wife almost every day at the home, was able to meet Lois for 35 minutes Tuesday at the entryway of the New Paltz Center facility where she has lived since 2015 as a late-stage Alzheimers patient. The visit came with special precautions in the coronavirus era: No touching was allowed. Howard had to wear a mask and stay more than six feet from Lois.

Howards eyes lit up when Lois, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a sun hat, was rolled out of the nursing home in her wheelchair, with assistance from the facilitys activities director. He spent the visit calmly bringing her up to date on news of the world, their family home in New Yorks Hudson River Valley, and their 27-year-old daughter, Laurel, in Manhattan, who hopes to join him for another visit soon.

Lois, whose illness has taken away her ability to speak, smiled several times and made faint noises. It is her way of communicating joy, Howard said.

Last month, Reuters published a story about the couples life together, culminating in their recent separation during the pandemic. As COVID-19 ravages vulnerable populations in nursing homes across America and the world, it was unclear whether Howard and Lois would ever see each other again.

Their visit may offer a glimmer of hope for thousands of families separated from loved ones who live in U.S. nursing homes. Even as expectations grow that the coronavirus pandemic will drag on for many months, the reunion underscores how U.S. nursing homes and other long-term elder-care facilities are trying to arrange for limited visits without putting residents or staff at risk.

Across the country, the facilities that house more than 1.5 million vulnerable seniors have been in lockdown since March. Banning visitation is meant to keep the virus at bay, but for loved ones, its been a painful separation. During normal times, family visits are a vital part of weekly routines for many residents, including those with dementia like Lois.

For weeks in many nursing homes, phone calls and video have been the only means of checking in on loved ones. But as the pandemic continues, many of the facilities are coming up with creative solutions to allow non-traditional visits.

Some offer staff-supervised patio or parking lot visits, as long as family members and residents keep their distance. Others encourage so-called window visits, in which loved ones can interact with residents separated by glass, singing Happy Birthday, eating a common meal on either side, or bringing signs to cheer up residents.

In addition, nursing homes in New York and elsewhere are introducing new measures to ensure residents and staff can all be tested for the coronavirus. New York also now requires nursing home operators to inform families when residents at a facility have tested positive. To date, the New Paltz Center facility has reported no cases of COVID-19.

After Tuesdays meeting, Howard said he felt a deep sense of relief that his wife remains stable and well taken care of by staff at the home. He said the nursing home should be commended for making these efforts and hopes its just the first of many such visits.

One robin doesnt make a spring, but she was pretty engaged, he said. This was an experience for her, and it was reassuring to me.

Of the distancing requirement, Howard said it was perfectly understandable, and a small price to pay for the chance to see his wife again.

It wasnt as good as being next to her, but I was OK with it.

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Liubov Mikhailova is the head of the Donetsk-based Izoliatsiya International Cultural Foundation. In 2014, militants turned her art center into a prison. UNIAN talked with a businesswoman about how Donetsk entrepreneurs and internally displaced persons perceive the latest "settlement" initiatives of the Ukrainian authorities, why Minsk talks should also cover economy, and what's wrong with the idea of integrating the occupied territories.

Not so long ago, Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak, proposed involving members of parliament and cabinet officials in the Minsk talks on Donbas settlement. What do you think about it?

I think that we're being offered point changes unable to influence the very essence of talks. Moreover, this is done in order to meet the deadline, which Volodymyr Zelensky set for achieving peace in Donbas  12 months from the date he took office.

Instead of just swapping participants in negotiations, it's better to follow the line that is optimal for Ukraine. We need to promote our scenario, not slide down to positions imposed on us in a difficult period. Let's not take steps toward the abyss. Resolving everything quickly and reducing everything to an "internal conflict" is beneficial to Russia, but unacceptable to us.

The Minsk format doesn't imply instant solutions. Let me give you an example: for 28 years, Belarus has been hosting talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue (they're also called "Minsk Talks"). This is a long and difficult path, so we need to be ready for it. Well-thought-out strategies for all stages and aspects of the peace process are required. We've got nowhere to rush.

This is Russia and its "republics" who are rushing  they are only able to exist when they grab new territories. They have already determined their "state borders" along the lines of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, so we shouldn't relax. But neither it is possible for us to agree to whatever conditions we're offered only to end the war.

Have you heard anyone on the other side talking of being willing to integrate? As long as there is no major movement of people, like it was from the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany, as long as they don't jump over the "wall", fleeing en mass, the integration issue must remain off the table. Ultimately, the "wall" will collapse itself and Ukrainian laws will be restored. But it takes time.

Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksiy Reznikov believes that the implementation of the reintegration strategy will take at least 25 years. Is this a realistic term?

This is a long-term process, but I question not so much the terms but the strategy itself. Reznikov announced that in a couple of weeks he would develop a comprehensive plan for Donbas reintegration. In one of his interviews, he says that he took into account issues that sparked public criticism of the authorities, including compensation for damage over seized property. But it seems that everything was done hastily, again  a quickly sketched strategy, which, upon closer examination, won't yield any concrete results.

Which aspect do you think is least reflected in the strategy?

Experts discuss the political component of the strategy, but for some reason forget about economy. Even minimal research of the subject casts doubt on any ideas of integration.

The occupied territory, de facto, has been fully integrated into the Russian economy. Everything is in the Russian ruble, settlements are made through Sberbank. Russia controls the railway and supplies gas. Products made at "nationalized" enterprises are exported to Russia. And another important issue is the Russian passports offered to the local population. The appointment schedule for obtaining these documents is full until late December...

Therefore, before talking integration, it's necessary to determine how deep the aggressor state penetrated these territories. How many people there are holders of three passports? What is the volume of the ruble mass circulating there? Without this, how can we negotiate with an aggressor state that seeks to move from the position of a responsible party to the one of an observer?

Haven't we already done this? Haven't we determined this penetration level?

I know that Ukraine doesn't even have a register or information about the seized property of private individuals, businesses, or government. Can damage be assessed without this? Why the Ukrainian government hasn't paid attention to the issue since 2014, no one can say.

Protecting property rights is one of the important topics of concern for Ukrainians who have been forced to leave their homes or businesses behind in the occupied Donbas. In 2018, an Action Plan was adopted for the implementation of the Strategy for the Integration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Paragraph 6 included the assessment of material damage and compensation to IDPs after control over the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions has been regained. At the same time, no deadlines or specific actions were laid down.

Our experience of communication with authorities suggests that there's simply no real political will to work out the issue. And now I'm not seeing any real prerequisites indicating that loud words will in two weeks be followed by something that hasn't been done for six years.

It is necessary to assess all damage incurred by the aggressor. We should be talking with those responsible for this. And it's the Russian Federation who's responsible.

Have you heard whether the issue was touched upon in Minsk?

No! But sooner or later, the issue will come about compensation to owners of seized enterprises. Imagine us going to such negotiations tomorrow and it turns out Ukraine doesn't have a clear position on the matter! There are no lists of seized enterprises; for six years the damage hasn't been assessed and no bill was handed to those responsible for the activities of the so-called "LDRP" [occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions]...

Let's put these questions forward in Minsk and focus on the economic component. We are being led into populist talk about some mystical integration, although, de facto, this is even a wrong term. It should be about restoring the Ukrainian legal field in the occupied territories, not integration with pseudo-entities.

The latest developments suggest that Ukraine has no will to restore property rights of those affected by conflict. Many of the enterprises that have been seized have foreign investors, and it is weird for them to hear promises of Ukrainian politicians to create "investment nannies" for large businesses. Who will be willing to invest in Ukraine if the country's judiciary doesn't even recognize their past investments as "lost as a result of the seizure by terrorist organizations"! Therefore, all these stories about attracting investment into Ukraine under the existing judicial system are a mere PR campaign. However, as Brits say: "Wake up and smell your coffee!"

What is the situation with enterprises in the occupied Donbas?

According to Ukrainian laws, your enterprise located there is considered your property, but for the so-called "republics", you "left it behind" if you didn't register with them. We've long been getting those letters where they urged us to register and pay taxes. But that would mean financing terrorists. We didn't go for it. As a result, the companies were "nationalized."

Special "laws" get written in "LDPR", while Russia mentors them. For example, they adopted "legislation" on the introduction of interim administrations. From their perspective, companies that are not registered by their "laws" are seen as abandoned by owners, so they move in to "protect" them. But that's actually a robbery. Front mediator firms registered in Ossetia, products get exported to Russia's Rostov region, where paperwork is altered three times and then Russian certificates for those products appear, and then they get shipped across Russia and beyond.

What happened in the uncontrolled territory is called economic dependence, and this infection will spread further. De facto, the Russian Federation seeks to control us. But we don't want to become a Ukrainian republic that's part of the Russian Federation, right? Look at how many Russian companies are entering the Ukrainian market now. I'm not an expert in this matter, but at my human level, I talk with Russians who are now waiting for the start of land sales. They are all set and ready. And, indeed, we can finally get a "big investor", but the name is Russia.

And here I'd like to once again speak about the responsibility of those who talk integration. Who's integrating with whom? Is it Ukraine with Russia? Just say it directly that our course has changed, and that we're "brothers" again.

Have you contacted Ukrainian law enforcement regarding damage assessment?

For many years we have appealed to the SBU, the prosecutor's office, and the National Police about this. We would file reports stating that our enterprise had been seized and someone else had been operating there. In response, we would get: "Contact the police at the place of residence." And that's been going on for six years now.

Recently it turned out that the Minsk Group has a certain list of seized enterprises. We again persistently appealed to government bodies to find out some details. As a result, we were assured: "Yes, you're on the list." But what is this list? No one saw it. And no one knows why it's been drawn...

It seems that our country's citizens haven't been put on quarantine, but into a virtual world, where everything's happening in dissonance with reality. Any specifics are being eroded by political statements constantly spun in the media space, while being far from reality. This includes the statement by Andriy Yermak about the intention to include "civil society" from the "LDPR" into the settlement process.

But there are pro-Ukrainian activists in the occupied territories, aren't there?

Yes, there are  for their pro-Ukrainian position, they've been put behind bars and thrown into cellars, so Yermak's proposal is simply irresponsible. Cooperation with representatives of the actual civil society from "LDPR", who aren't in prison yet, puts their lives at risk.

But why can't Yermak engage in dialogue with the activists who have already been freed from captivity and are now living in the free Ukraine? Take Ihor Kozlovsky or Stanislav Aseiev. The latter, incidentally, spent several years in captivity on the territory of our enterprise  the Izoliatsia Plant in Donetsk, which was seized by militants and turned into a secret prison.

You said earlier that it's a "DPR official" Roman Lyagin who stands behind setting this prison up. I heard he was supposed to be put on trial. Is there any progress in this case?

Among recent events, which I don't want to believe are real is a closed case of Roman Lyagin, who stood at the origins of the "DPR" creation, who organized an illegal "referendum" there. It was he who led the seizure of our enterprise, where Ukrainians have been tortured and killed for six years.

As I said, we've been knocking on all doors, expecting that the government will finally deal with the seizure of private property. And last year, Ukrainian law enforcers got hold of a participant in and witness of various schemes behind the "DPR" functioning and property seizure from true owners. It seemed that finally there would be progress. But we were wrong.

The hearing was adjourned six times, under various pretexts. The Supreme Court of Ukraine rightfully considered us the victims in the case of Roman Lyagin. And the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv at the latest hearing simply threw us out of the proceeding, ruling that we were not victim (also, the judge ruled to hold subsequent hearings behind closed doors, expelling media and activists from the courtroom).

Isn't it strange to fail to consider victim someone whose property was taken to set up a concentration camp on the premises? The indictment act said Lyagin was charged with an episode of seizure as part of the "DPR" forces of the land plot and facilities owned by Izoliatsia, but it seems that the act was either withdrawn from the case file or altered. We want to find out and we also demand that it be published.

Do you think that someone in Donetsk is following the developments in the case?

The lack of progress in the case of the founding father of the "DPR" can be perceived in the "republics" as Ukraine's gradual surrender. On the other hand, this is an illustration of the authorities' reluctance to take real action towards restoring peace in Donbas. Indeed, to this end, they need to clearly understand what's happening with the economy in the occupied territories, as well as what to do with accomplices of the occupation regime who are already in the hands of Ukrainian judiciary.

Judging by the government's actions, it seems that letting go and forgive is the path, imposed by Russia, which Ukraine intends to walk. Ukraine is rewriting the history of the Maidan and closing cases of those who set up the "republics" in Donbas. They put activists behind bars, while setting criminals free. Are they preparing for capitulation?

Vlad Abramov
Administrators of a debt-ridden state-owned wood pulp mill located in the Mekong Delta province of Long An have yet to find a buyer for it though the government has made three attempts at attracting investors.

In a report submitted to the lawmaking National Assembly, the Ministry of Industry and Trade offered an explanation for its progress in handling 12 ineffective projects, including the Phuong Nam wood pulp mill in Long An.

In mid-2019, the ministry transferred the jurisdiction over state capital at 11 out of 12 such projects to the Commission for the Management of State Capital (CMSC) at enterprises.

The paper plant, which is being liquidated, was exempt from the list.

The plant, which saw its investment balloon to over VND3.4 trillion (US$145 million) from an original investment of VND1.49 trillion ($63.55 million), was initially developed by Transport and Industry Development Investment JSC (Tracodi) under the Ministry of Transport.

The plant later became a subsidiary of state-owned Vietnam Paper Corporation (Vinapaco).

The first sod was turned at the project in March 2006 in Long An, around 60 kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, and was put into operation a year later with a production capacity of 100,000 metric tons of paper pulp per year.

The plant became fraught with financial difficulties in 2008, prompting authorities to indefinitely suspend its operations.

Vinapaco was never able to pay off the debt principal and interest it owed to Vietnam Public Joint-stock Commercial Bank (PVcomBank) for the probject, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Last October, PVcomBank brought a lawsuit against Vinapaco, which asked the firm to repay a total of VND592.3 billion ($25.26 million).

The ministry also told Vinapaco to hire a consultant to appraise the entire assets and inventories of the pulp mill that same month.

In January of this year, the ministry sought feedback from Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue on how to handle collateral associated with the project.

The ministry said Vinapaco put the paper mill up for auction for the first time in 2017, but there were no buyers.

Vinapaco is now partnering with a consultant to evaluate the value of the plant for the third time.

A report revealed that as of late 2015, the plants accounts receivable, known as money owed to a company by its debtors, had amounted to over VND18.7 trillion ($797.59 million).

The figure has been reduced to around VND4.05 trillion ($172.74 million) after some accounts receivable have been recovered.

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Nearly 200 pastors sign petition urging Va. Gov. Northam to allow weekly in-person church services

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Over 190 pastors in Virginia have signed onto a petition letter calling on the governor to modify two executive orders so churches can gather for in-person worship at least once a week as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

As pastors of churches in Virginia, we thank you for your labors these last several months to care for the people of the Commonwealth, the letter sent to Gov. Ralph Northam on Monday reads.

We have been praying for you. We write now to urge you to modify Executive Orders 53 and 55 to allow  at minimum  once-weekly gatherings of religious organizations, provided that reasonable public-health precautions are taken.

Most Virginia churches have been unable to gather for in-person worship for the past several weeks since Executive Order 53 was enacted on March 23 banning in-person gatherings of 10 people or more.

Additionally, Executive Order 55 enacted on March 30 explicitly bans outdoor and indoor religious gatherings of 10 people or more. The orders will remain in effect until June 10 unless amended or rescinded by further executive order.

Mondays joint letter was spearheaded by Michael Law Jr., senior pastor of Arlington Baptist Church just outside of Washington, D.C. Pastors were invited to join the petition by signing online. An updated list of signatories was released Thursday.

The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a hospital for the spiritually sick, the pastors letter reads. Yet corporate worship services of more than 10 people have been banned in Virginia since March 23, regardless of the public-health protocols in place and notwithstanding that groups are permitted to gather in settings such as non-retail offices and essential retail businesses.

The letter contends that prohibiting corporate worship services has exacerbated the sense of sorrow, isolation, and fear felt by so many citizens across the Commonwealth.

Corporate worship is commanded by Scripture and has been a foundational element of Christian life for nearly 2,000 years. Alternatives such as live-streamed services and drive-through worship are not adequate substitutes to the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27) united together in corporate worship.

The letter goes on to state that Scripture commands believers in the Lord Jesus to assemble.

In Hebrews 10:24-25, the writer to the Hebrews exhorts Christians not to neglect meeting together, but instead to stir up one another to love and good deeds and to encourage one another, the letter explains. In 1 Timothy 4:13, the Apostle Paul exhorts Timothy, a pastor in the city of Ephesus, to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture.

According to the pastors, people must be present for the reading to be public.

Ephesians 5:19 tells Christians to address one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, the letter adds. Indeed, physical presence is vital for all aspects of corporate worship  prayer (1 Timothy 2:1), teaching (Colossians 3:16), preaching (2 Timothy 4:2 and Galatians 1:23), baptism (Matthew 28:18-20), and the Lords Supper (1 Corinthians 11:27-34).

The pastors added that in-person gatherings are one of the ways God heals and restores souls.

The longer the government bars Christians from meeting, the more damage is done to the spiritual well-being of Virginians in need of spiritual care during this difficult time, the pastors stress.

Because corporate worship is central to Christian life, it is extraordinary for churches to forego meeting for even a single Sunday. Thus, with each passing week that corporate worship is banned, as churches stand ready to implement reasonable public-health precautions, the government pushes Christians closer to the point where they must choose to sin against God and conscience or violate the law.

The letter also quotes former President James Madison, a founding father of the United States from Virginia, who stated: It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.

The Commonwealth has long recognized that it should not force citizens to choose between their conscience and obeying the law unless there is truly no possible alternative, the pastors explain, adding that the Virginia Constitution calls for citizens to be equally entitled to the free exercise of religion.

We fully recognize that you have limited gatherings with the goal of reducing the spread of COVID-19. As pastors, we share that desire and are committed to protecting the physical well-being of all who attend church services.

The pastors say that enacting safety protocols such as those recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would fulfill the Executive Orders goal of protecting public health while also permitting us to satisfy our religious obligations and serve the spiritual needs of our communities.

Such measures include disinfecting hard surfaces, keeping congregants 6 feet apart, avoiding physical contact, closing Sunday school classes and nurseries as well as encouraging the sick and vulnerable to stay home.

The Executive Orders are rightly intended to prevent avoidable deaths. Yet the sobering truth is that, unless the Lord Jesus returns, each of us that survives the pandemic will still die, the letter states bluntly. There is no escaping death, for death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23), and we have all sinned (Romans 3:23).

One pastor who signed the letter is David Schrock, the preaching pastor at Occoquan Bible Church.

The Church is a witness for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Schrock told The Daily Signal in an interview. That is why we gather on Sunday. Because that was the day that He was raised from the dead. And it gives a public testimony to the fact that He is alive and present to help all who trust in Him.

In April, Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island led by Pastor Kevin Wilson filed a lawsuit against Northams executive order after Wilson was served with a summons and threatened with imprisonment or fine for holding a Palm Sunday service attended by 16 congregants who observed social distancing protocols.

Vice President Mike Pence spoke out in defense of the church during an episode of the The Brian Kilmeade Show on Wednesday.

The former Indiana governor and senator explained that even in the midst of a national emergency, every American enjoys our cherished liberties, including the freedom of religion.

The very idea that the Commonwealth of Virginia would sanction a church for having 16 people come to a Psalm Sunday service when I think the church actually seats about 250 was just beyond the pale, Pence opined. We are going to stand by men and women of faith of every religion in this country and protect, even in this challenging time, protect their freedom of religion.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: After his military aide tested positive for coronavirus, US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would undergo the COVID-19 test every day.

A military aide of Trump, whom officials described as a personal vale, tested positive for coronavirus.

The president said he had very little contact with him.

"I have had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman. I know who he is. Good person. But I have had very little contact. (Vice President) Mike (Pence) has had very little contact with him. But Mike was tested and I was tested. We were both tested," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

Responding to questions, Trump said he, the vice president and other staff of the White House would be tested for coronavirus every day.

"I just had a test. In fact, I had one yesterday and one today, and it is negative. Mike just had a test and it is negative," he said.

"But they do the tests and it just shows you that the fallacy -- it is what I have been saying -- testing is not a perfect art. No matter what you do, testing is not a perfect art. So we test once a week. Now we are going to go testing once a day. But even when you test once a day, somebody could -- something happens where they catch something," the president said.

The spread of the deadly coronavirus across the globe from China was either a terrible mistake on the part of the Chinese or probably it was incompetence, Trump also said on Thursday.

"It (coronavirus) could have been stopped at the point. It could have been stopped right at the source. It would have been easy to do, but something happened. Something happened," he told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

"Either they made a terrible mistake -- probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid and they did not do the job that they should have done. It is too bad," the president said in response to a question.

More than 2,64,000 people have died of COVID-19 globally and 37 lakh tested positive for the disease.

In the US alone, more than 76,000 Americans have died and 12 lakh people tested positive for coronavirus.

The deadly virus has spread to over 180 countries, Trump pointed out.

Meanwhile, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy announced the formation of the China Task Force, which will bring together select members from key committees to help reinforce Congressional efforts to counter the current and emerging cross-jurisdictional threats from China.

The task force was originally designed to be a joint effort with Democrat colleagues, but after delaying for more than a year, the majority never launched the initiative, the Republican leader said.

"As we learn more about COVID-19, one thing has become clear -- China's coverup directly led to this crisis. The Communist Party of China hid the seriousness of the disease, led a propaganda campaign blaming the US, used their supplies to exert influence and continue to refuse international experts to investigate what happened," McCarthy said.

"It follows the same threatening pattern of behaviour we have seen from the Chinese Communist Party for years -- something that has long been the bipartisan consensus in Washington," he added.

In a related development, 27 members of the Senate and House condemned Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye's comments and expressed support for Australia's decision to pursue the investigation.

The comments insinuated that Australia may face economic retaliation after calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, including boycotts of Australian wine and beef.

"This incident is part of a broader and concerning pattern from the Chinese government," the lawmakers said in a statement.

"As we continue to confront this deadly disease and its consequences, we will be faced with many tough decisions, including those that may arise from the Chinese government's continued lack of cooperation and transparency. One decision that is not difficult is to always stand with our Australian mates. No matter the external pressure or coercion, we will always have Australia's back, just as Australia has always had ours," they said.
Hundreds of thousands of unemployed Australians face a huge cut in their incomes just before Christmas as the Morrison government prepares to wind back income support despite warnings from the Reserve Bank the economy will not return to its pre-coronavirus size until 2022.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday stood by the government's plans to phase out the coronavirus supplement for JobSeeker recipients and the JobKeeper program from mid-September, saying they came at a significant cost that would have to be borne by future generations.

The Reserve Bank of Australia, releasing its first major economic forecasts since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, expects unemployment to reach 10 per cent in the June quarter and recede only slightly to 9 per cent by the end of the year.

It forecast the jobless rate, which was at 5.2 per cent in March, to still be at 6.5 per cent by the middle of 2022, saying unemployment will not fall quickly.
The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape the attention of police.

IMAGE: Police personnel inspect the spot after a goods train ran over a group of migrant workers while they were sleeping on the tracks in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district. Photograph: PTI Photo

A goods train ran over a group of migrant workers who fell asleep on the rail tracks on Friday killing 16 of them in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, in a tragedy that highlighted the plight of thousands of labourers hit by coronavirus lockdown walking long distances back to their native states.

Aurangabad district police chief Mokshada Patil said that three of the four survivors from the group of 20 men returning to their home state of Madhya Pradesh tried in vain to wake up their colleagues who had slept on the track after a overnight walk from Jalna, around 40 km from the site of the accident.

The railways announced a comprehensive probe into the accident which occurred at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad city.

As reports of anxious migrant workers demanding transport facility to return to their home state came from several parts of the country, several states pressed for deployment of more Shramik Special' trains to ferry lakhs of labourers.

A video clip from the accident scene in Karmad that has gone viral showed the bodies of workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

Pieces of roti were found strewn near the tracks.

The victims, aged between 20 and 35 years, hailed from Umaria and Shahdol districts of MP and were working in a steel factory in Jalna, police said.

In a statement, the South Central railway said the train driver had seen the sleeping men and had even tried to alert them up by honking but failed to save their lives.

The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, left Jalna on Thursday night and were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape the attention of police.

The workers, who were headed to Bhusawal in MP, came till Karmad and fell asleep on the rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from the Jalna side, an official at the Karmad police station said.

Three of the four survivors were sleeping some distance away from the rail tracks, he said.

"I had a word with the survivors. They started walking from Jalna on Thursday night and tried to reach Bhusaval, Mokshada Patil said.

Bhusawal is about 180 km from the accident site.

"Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station,"she said

Jalna SP S Chaitanya said the migrant labourers had left without informing their employer or the local administration.

Hours after the accident, the railways took to social media, urging people not to squat, walk or indulge in any activity on the tracks.

Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety Shailesh Pathak also wrote to the Railway Board Chairman, calling for abundant caution and requesting him to issue instructions to ensure that such accidents do not recur.

Due to the lack of congestion on their routes, the average speed of freight trains have increased by 66 per cent during the lockdown.

Despite the railways running migrant special trains since May 1 and ferrying almost three lakh migrants since then in more than 251 trains, many of them have started their journey home on foot or bicycle, as they apparently could not wait for their turn any longer due to lack of food and employment.

IMAGE: The workers were walking along rail tracks to their home state Madhya Pradesh. Photograph: ANI

According to a report by SaveLIFE Foundation, about 140 lives were lost in over 600 road accidents over the course of the two phases of the nationwide lockdown between March 25 and May 3.

Of this count, 30 per cent of the victims were migrant workers returning to their homes, it said.

Terming the death of migrants as "painful", Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar urged the labourers to have patience and not undertake risky journeys to their home states.

Pawar, who is also the state's finance minister, said the state government was working on a war footing to send migrant workers to their native states and this was being done with the cooperation from the Centre and other state governments.

The MP government sought 25 additional trains from the Railways to bring back migrant labourers of the state from other parts of the country, a senior official said.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath asked officials to reach out to their counterparts in other states for better coordination in bringing the migrants home and urged the workers to not walk or cycle to the state as this could endanger their health and security.

Flouting lockdown norms, nearly 2,000 migrant workers gathered at a government office in the Gota area in Ahmedabad hoping they will somehow find a way to reach their native places, police said.

The gathering, which started since the morning, was apparently triggered by a rumour about a bus reaching outside the government office to ferry migrants to railway station.

In Karnataka, over 700 migrant workers belonging to northern states staged a protest in front of the central railway station in Mangaluru demanding that arrangements be made for them to return to home towns.

The crowding of workers at the railway station is learnt to be prompted by a social media post which went viral giving false information that free special trains have been arranged for workers, sources said.

Hundreds of migrant labourers at a construction work site in Bengaluru claimed they are being kept confined at the place and appealed to the government to send them back to their native places.

In a related incident, at least 22 migrant labourers, who had returned from Andhra Pradesh, escaped from a COVID-19 quarantine centre in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, police said.

The labourers escaped from a quarantine facility in Dantewada late on Thursday evening and a search was launched to trace them, Dantewada superintendent of police Abhishek Pallava said.

The Noida Police also busted an illegal bus service for duping people on the pretext of being a free transportation service of the Bihar government for migrant workers stranded in the Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) due to the lockdown, an official said.

Two men were arrested and two privately-operated buses impounded during the police action around 1.30 am on a Noida-Greater Noida road, the official said.

The accused had stationed the two buses bearing banners that read 'Free bus service for migrant labourers by Bihar government'.

"The passengers told the officials they got onto the bus thinking it was a free service but were being charged Rs 3,000 per passenger," the police said.

The National Human Rights Commission also issued notices to the Maharashtra chief secretary and the district magistrate of Aurangabad over the accident involving the migrant workers.

The accident sparked attacks against the Centre from the Congress which alleged the policy of providing buses and trains to transport migrant workers was poorly designed, coordinated and implemented.

After announcements of buses and trains, why are thousands still forced to walk back to their villages?" asked senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

"The tragedy that happened this morning could have been avoided if governments had gone to the rescue of the migrant workers in time,said another Congress leader P Chidambaram.

Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati said the death of the migrant labourers was a result of the "insensitive attitude" of the Centre and the Maharashtra government and demanded better arrangements be made for workers returning home.
President Donald Trump talks to journalists after signing a proclamation honoring National Nurses Day in the Oval Office at the White House May 06, 2020

Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

New York  the epicenter of the US's coronavirus outbreak  is finally seeing a decline in new infections, deaths, and hospitalizations related to the virus.

But the virus is continuing to surge across the rest of the US, even as 30 states begin or are looking to begin loosening social distancing policies and reopening businesses.

Most of these 30 states haven't met the Trump administration's national guidelines for reopening, according to a Thursday New York Times report.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

New York  the epicenter of the US's coronavirus outbreak  and its neighbors in Connecticut and New Jersey are finally seeing a decline in new infections, deaths, and hospitalizations.

But the virus is continuing to surge across the rest of the US, even as 30 states begin or are looking to begin loosening social distancing policies and reopening businesses. New hot spots have emerged in the South and Midwest, including inside and in areas around meat processing plants and prisons.

Most of these 30 states haven't met the Trump administration's national guidelines for reopening, according to a Thursday report in The New York Times.

These guidelines include that states should see a "downward trajectory" in cases for two weeks before they begin reopening. Eighteen of the 30 states don't meet that threshold.

If a state doesn't see a general decline in new infections, it could begin reopening if its proportion of positive tests is lower than it was two weeks prior. Nine of the 30 states have seen an increase in their share of positive tests.

Twenty-eight of the 30 states haven't met federally recommended 152 daily tests per 100,000 and in 18 states. And total testing in two states that are looking to reopen  South Dakota and Utah  is actually declining.

Experts say this data indicates there will likely be a dangerous surge in infections across the country as states reopen.

Story continues

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York's numbers, as compared to the rest of the country, indicate that other states should follow his lead in continuing to implement a strict lockdown.

"To me, that vindicates what we're doing here in New York, which says follow the science, follow the data," he said during a Wednesday press conference. "Put the politics aside and the emotion aside. What we're doing here shows results."

Still, New York's outbreak is not under control. The state continues to average about 3,000 new coronavirus cases every day. And new data reveals travel from New York City is to blame for much of the virus' spread across the country.

ny nj ct cases vs rest of country 5 6 20

Andy Kiersz/Business Insider

ny nj ct deaths vs rest of country 5 6 20

Andy Kiersz/Business Insider

Read the original article on Business Insider
More than 80 per cent of New Yorkers ticketed by police for running afoul of the citys social distancing measures were people of colour.

Of the 374 summonses issued by police between the middle of March and 5 May, nearly 200 were handed to black residents, while 111 were issued to Hispanic residents, according to data from the New York Police Department.

When I saw those numbers I found them to be an indicator that somethings wrong and we need to fix it, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said during a press conference on Friday. We will fix it.

The data follows widely circulated and condemned photos and videos of a police officer thrashing a bystander of colour, as police handed out masks to mostly white sunbathers in packed parks and public areas in Manhattan as warm weather lured people outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic.

In footage that has now gone viral, Officer Francis X Garcia flashed his gun to a crowd, then knocked down a bystander and punched him while he was on the ground.

The officer was later stripped of his badge and his gun, according to police.

Criminal justice advocates have warned that enforcing social distancing guidelines would fuel a racially driven double standard, inflaming a public health crisis that has already disproportionately impacted people of colour.

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane WIlliams, who has criticised the citys enforcement of social distancing mandates, said that the virus has disproportionately claimed thousands of black and brown bodies, and now, in response, it is black and brown bodies facing the kind of over-policing never seen in other communities.

Analysts have argued that thousands of American workers arent able to work from home and effectively socially distance themselves from their communities. Less than one in five black workers and roughly one in six Hispanic workers are able to work from home, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Thousands of police officers have patrolled public spaces, from parks to subways, hoping to clear people from off the street and enforce statewide orders from Governor Andrew Cuomo to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Within six weeks, police officers made at least 120 arrests and issued nearly 500 summonses for social distancing violations.

Black residents made up 68 per cent of arrests, while Hispanic residents made up nearly a quarter, according to NYPD deputy police commissioner Richard Esposito.

In Brooklyn, there were 206 summonses issued, 121 of which were issued at a dozen social gatherings.

Within that timeframe, white residents accounted for only 7 per cent of arrests for social distancing violations.

Two-thirds of the summonses distributed to white residents were in neighbourhoods that include large ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in parts of Brooklyn, according to police data.

Jewish leaders fumed at the mayors warnings targeting the Jewish community following a large Hasidic funeral that drew large crowds outdoors.

 'Were finally ahead of the virus': Cuomo announces New York victory at curbing pandemic while still urging caution

The racial disparities are far more stark among arrests for the same violations in Brooklyn  the boroughs district attorney revealed that 40 people arrested for violating social distancing between mid-March and 4 May, 35 were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez declined to prosecute all of them.

We do not accept disparity, Mayor De Blasio said. When we see disparity were going to address it.

In a statement, DA Gonzalez said: The disturbing images of arrests for social distancing throughout our city serve to erode the process that has been made in enhancing police accountability and strengthening trust in our criminal justice system...My office is reviewing allegations of excessive force during recent Brooklyn arrests and will investigate these incidents to determine if disciplinary recommendations or criminal charges are warranted.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who also is a former NYPD captain, said that police need to get out of the business of social distancing enforcement and said the pandemic has created a moment of re-culturing for law enforcement.

People are not used to interacting with the police this way and it is causing major negative impacts, and a lot of it has to do with the inconsistent ways policing is being done, he said.
The governor of California has warned the first case of community spread in the state was determined to stem from a nail salon, as states across the country begin to reopen businesses amid the pandemic.

Gavin Newsom said at a news briefing on Thursday he was very worried about the new findings, which may begin to shed light on how the novel coronavirus managed to spread rapidly throughout the US in the initial months of global outbreak.

This whole thing started in the state of California, the first community spread, in a nail salon, the governor said.

He added: Im very worried about that.

The comments come as California was preparing to enter the second phase of its four-part reopening plan, allowing low-risk businesses to begin reopening with reduced and otherwise modified operations. Nail and hair salons are not included in the second phase of the reopening plan, while retail stores, florists and bookshops are all allowed to begin a slow process of reopening.

Businesses like gyms and hair salons, which have been deemed high-risk, do not have an official reopening date. The governor declined to provide a timeline as for when those stores will be able to begin reopening with modified operations.

Nail salons are included in the states third-phase of its reopening plan.

More than 60,000 people have contracted Covid-19 in California, and at least 2,400 people have died in the state as a result of the pandemic.

Nail salon owners expressed frustrations with the revelations, saying they had not been informed by local health officials that community spread of the virus was occurring within their shops.

Had they known that this was the situation, absolutely zero information was ever sent to any nail care people in the industry at all, Michelle Saunders James, owner of Saunders and James Nail Care in Oakland, California, told CNBC. It was very scary to hear that.

She added: I am just intuitively kind of following the rules of what a nurse would wear or a physician, or something that is more in the medical field.
Iranian Human Rights Activist Ali Ajami Mysteriously Drowned In Houston Park Lake

05/08/20

Source: Radio Farda

The body of Ali Ajami, an Iranian human rights activist, was discovered in McGovern Lake at Hermann Park, Houston, Texas, on Wednesday. The cause of death remains unknown.



Ali Ajami

Houston Police on Wednesday started an investigation into the death of a deceased male found in a pond at Hermann Park but said no other information was available yet.

Iranian social media users have reported that the body belonged to thirty-seven-year-old Iranian human rights activist Ali Ajami.

According to local media, Houston police are waiting for an autopsy of the body of the well-dressed male that was discovered by a member of public in the pond. The man may have been in the water for some time, police who are treating the case as a homicide said.

UPDATE: The man found drown in Hermann Park is thought to have been there for a while, according to HPD. https://t.co/rCW866wzSX pic.twitter.com/VUeCIbED9x  Mycah Hatfield (@MycahABC13) May 6, 2020

Ali Ajami who was a student of law at Tehran University was arrested in 2009 in his home village in Sabzever in eastern Iran in the aftermath of a disputed election that reinstated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president.

A Revolutionary Court sentenced Mr. Ajami to two years in prison on charges of collusion and propaganda against the Islamic Republic and acting against national security.

Mr. Ajami was the editor of a left-leaning student publication before his arrest and imprisonment and was consequently expelled from the university only months before his graduation.

Sometime after being freed from prison Mr. Ajami left the country for Turkey and from there, to the United States where he remained and worked as a journalist and human rights activist until his death.

Mr. Ajami was an editor of the Iranian Human Rights News Agency (HRANA) which monitors human rights in Iran.
A New York nurse has been arrested for stealing a dying coronavirus patients credit card to buy $60-worth of groceries and gas, police say.

Nurse Danielle Conti, 43, stole the credit card of Anthony Catapano, 70, and used it three days before he died of COVID-19 on April 12 at Staten Island University Hospital North in New York.

Conti, of Old Bridge, New Jersey, was arrested Thursday and charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and petit larceny according to police.

She allegedly swiped Catapanos American Express card as he was fighting for his life during one of her hospital rounds between April 4 and 12.

On April 9 she rang up $60.23-worth of charges on the card at a gas station and at a ShopRite store.

New York nurse Danielle Conti, 43, (above) was arrested Thursday for stealing the credit card of ailing coronavirus patient Anthony Catapano, 70, and using it on April 9, three days before he died, police say

She swiped Anthony Catapanos (above) American Express card as he was fighting for his life in the hospital's ventilator unit during one of her hospital rounds between April 4 and 12. On April 9 she rang up $60.23-worth of charges on the card at a gas station and at a ShopRite store, the same day he was transferred to the ventilator unit of the hospital

Conti has been suspended and faces possible termination from Staten Island University Hospital North (above)

Catapano's 37-year-old daughter Tara Catapano discovered the charges she reported it to Staten Island police on April 28.

'I cant believe a person could do something like that to someone fighting for his life,' Tara Catapano said to the New York Daily News. 'This is a nurse who took an oath to treat, protect and save patients. Its disgusting ... Never in a million years did I expect any of this to happen.'

'She is a despicable human being. How would she feel if somebody did this to her parents when they were gravely ill? I hope she gets what she deserves, and loses her license and her job,' she added.

She said the charges were rung up on the same day her father was moved into the ventilator unit as his condition worsened.

'A total of $60.23. Thats what she risked her job for. She took total advantage of my fathers condition. Im sure she assumed he wasnt going to make it, and his family wouldnt notice,' Tara said.

Conti has worked at Staten Island University Hospital North since 2007. Pictured above in old social media photos

Catapano's 37-year-old daughter Tara discovered the charges she reported it to Staten Island police on April 28 (Tara and father Anthony above). 'I cant believe a person could do something like that to someone fighting for his life,' Tara said

Conti, who has worked at the hospital since 2007, has been suspended and faces possible termination. Its unclear if shell be paid during her suspension.

Danielle Conti has been temporarily suspended and faces termination in response to the felony charges. We are working closely with the law-enforcement authorities and the hospital is conducting its own investigation, a hospital spokesman said.

She had no prior arrests.

Who knows how much has already been going on? Its just a waiting game to see those people brought to justice, one police source said to the New York Post.

Theres bad apples in every industry. Its just that these are the people you think are going to take care of you. Meanwhile, theyre committing grand larcenies against you, another police source added.
The bank immediately contacted customers who weren't able to secure loans during the first round of funding, encouraging them to try again. And while many banks limited PPP loans to existing customers, Carter Bank & Trust opened up the program to the community, accepting applications from both customers and noncustomers.

"We learned of a church and its school a few states away that wasn't able to get funding in the first round, and their current bank wasn't calling them back," Speare said. "We asked them to send the application to us. Within the same hour we received the application, the loan was approved. They have since moved their entire relationship to Carter Bank."

Speare said the bank has been working with about 60 percent existing and 40 percent new customers. New customers, he said, have been leveraging online account opening, and the bank has seen a 7 to 8 percent increase in digital banking enrollments over the traditional growth rate.

All of that led to bank associates working around the clock to help current and new customers. Speare said there are associates who will say they have to grab a couple hours of sleep, and then he'll see them back on the phone an hour later.

"Our associates are even stopping by customers' sites and homes to drop off documents," he said.

Committed to the Community

As soon as applications were approved by the SBA, the bank contacted applicants with the good news.

"The response from the community was overwhelming," Speare said. "People who received the loans were so grateful knowing they received a desperately needed lifeline for their business and their employees."

In the second round of PPP loans, Carter Bank & Trust achieved 100 percent SBA approval on loan applications through the first three days of the program, securing funding for 400 applications totaling $38 million for local small businesses. The bank's loan size averaged $88,000, highlighting that the money was truly directed toward Main Street businesses.
New York, May 8 : Two Indian-origin doctors, a father and daughter, who died of COVID-19 after contracting the deadly disease while treating infected patients, have been hailed by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy for their selfless dedication to caring for others.

Murphy said on Thursday that Satyender Dev Khanna and his daughter Priya Khanna "dedicated their lives to helping others and we lost both of them to COVID-19".

They were part of a family of five doctors and Murphy said of the three survivors. "I hope that the fact that our entire state mourns with them is some small comfort." Satyender Khanna was a pioneering doctor and was among the first surgeons to perform laparoscopic surgery in New Jersey, the Governor added.

He had worked as head of surgical departments for decades at several hospitals and died at Clara Maass Medical Center where he had worked for more than 35 years, Murphy said.

Satyendra Khanna, 78, graduated from Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi in 1964, according to WebMD.

Murphy said that his colleagues remembered him as "a gentle and caring physician".

According to Kaiser Health News, Priya Khanna's sister had put out an appeal on Twitter: "Plasma donor needed urgently for my beautiful young sister who dedicated her life to helping others," and a donor was found within a day.

But she died on April 13, also at Clara Maass Medical Center, and her father followed her on April 21.

Priya Khanna, 43, was a nephrologist, who had received her medical degree from Kansas City School of Medicine in 2003.

Murphy said that she was the medical director at two dialysis centres and also trained doctors.

He said she was "taking pride in teaching the next generation of doctors. And it should be noted that the ICU (intensive care unit) physician who cared for her was trained and taught by her as well".

"Priya will be remembered as a caring and selfless person who put others first." Murphy said that he had spoken on Thursday morning to Komlish Khanna, the wife of Satyender Khanna, to condole their deaths.

He said that two other daughters of Komlish and Satyender Khanna are also doctors. Sugandha Khanna is an emergency doctor, and Anisha Khanna is a paediatrician.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Government ministers are being urged by an expert panel to prioritize children's play and socializing over formal learning when lifting the UK's coronavirus lockdown.

Children must be given ample opportunity for play and interaction with their peers as a priority in order to avert a nationwide mental health crisis, recommends the panel led by child mental health experts at the University of Sussex, University of Cambridge and University of Reading.

The panel of psychologists, psychiatrists and other experts have written to senior ministers strongly recommending that small gatherings of children for outdoor play should be permitted as soon as it is safe to do so as one the first steps in loosening the lockdown.

Re-opened schools should ensure that all children have opportunity to play and interact with their peers each day and throughout the school day, the panel recommends.

Sam Cartwright-Hatton, Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the University of Sussex, said:

"All the research indicates that children's emotional health is suffering in the lockdown and it seems likely that this suffering will, in many cases, continue into the long term. We are urging ministers and policymakers ensure that children are afforded substantial, and if possible enhanced, access to high quality play opportunities as soon as possible."

Dr. Jenny Gibson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said:

"It's easy to dismiss play as unimportant, but for children, playing with friends and classmates has a very significant impact on their social development. Critically, it is an important way of working through emotions and will therefore be one of the principal ways in which they cope with the isolating effects of the lockdown. For that reason it's important that whatever steps are taken to ease social distancing restrictions, children are given time and space to play with friends. My own research suggests that social play skills are directly related both to children's social-emotional adjustment and their academic achievement, so it is a concern that this is something that has been missing from many children's lives for a number of weeks."

The authors formed their recommendations supported by a review of relevant academic literature which confirmed the harmful impact of isolation on children and the alleviating benefits of play.

A study examining parental reports of their children's mental health following social distancing measures in countries affected by previous pandemics found children who experienced quarantine or social isolation measures were five times more likely to require mental health service input than those who did not.

The therapeutic benefits of play on child mental health have been shown in studies of children in war zones and survivors of Romanian orphanages.

Recent polling data shows that around two-thirds of primary school children are currently feeling lonelyan increase of approximately 50% compared to normal levels.

Dr. Kathryn Lester, Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of Sussex, said:

"Although many children may be spending more time playing during lockdown than usual, they may currently have a play deficit because the physical and social restrictions in place deprive them of the chance to play with their peers. We know that play with peers is critically important for children's development. Play has substantial benefits for children's emotional wellbeing especially during periods of anxiety and stress. It provides a sense of control, it helps children make sense of things they might be struggling to understand, and importantly it makes children happy."

Helen Dodd, Professor of Child Psychology at the University of Reading, said:

"Returning to school after a long period at home will be challenging for lots of children. It will be especially challenging if they are expected to remain 2 metres away from their friends. It is vital that this is recognized and that schools are given the time and resources necessary to support the transition carefully, with children's wellbeing in mind. We ask that, once it is safe to do so, the loosening of lockdown is done in a way that allows children to play with their peers, without social distancing, as soon as possible. This may mean that close play is only permitted in pairs or small groups or within social bubbles that allow repeated mixing with a small number of contacts."

Explore further Finland to reopen schools mid-May
Given all thats going on in the world, a good old-fashioned bromance feels oddly reassuring  especially when its between two hermanos with heart: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Broadway megastar behind Hamilton and In the Heights, and Jose Andres, the acclaimed chef and leader of World Central Kitchen, which has produced millions of meals over the past several weeks in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

They are fond of retweeting each others good works  whether its the sweatshirts Miranda curated to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS or Andress hunger-relief efforts throughout New York City  and even vacation together with their families. Miranda and his father, Luis, co-wrote the foreword for Andress book, We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time, about World Central Kitchens remarkable response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. And then there is #RecipesForThePeople  hilarious Instagram videos in which Andres cooks with his daughters while singing along to the Hamilton soundtrack and enjoying a glass of wine. Boom! he yells at them. Lets go! Its for today!

Andres himself has a life story worthy of a Miranda musical. In 1990, he was on board to work for his best friend (and future celebrity chef) Ferran Adria at El Bulli, the gastronomic temple that would go on to garner three Michelin stars, on Spains Costa Brava. But after an ill-fated meeting with Adria, Andres was fired, and he moved to New York instead with just $50 in his pocket. Over the next 30 years, he built a restaurant empire that stretches from Washington, D.C., to Las Vegas to Disney World, then became the person everyone turns to during a crisis and found himself nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

How did this Spanish line cook, a son of two nurses, grow up to be a hero and a statesman? When posed with this question, Andres, who can be very modest for someone with so much bravado, shrugs. I only light the fire, he says. If anything, I give the push. Then its amazing men and women and  boom!  they are doing it. Were all in this together, and everybodys doing their part  everybody here, Lin, and so many others. And if we all do our part a little bit more, were going to take care of this. We will.

Story continues

What follows is an excerpt from their chat over Skype.

Andres in Puerto Rico in 2019. Photo: courtesy

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Maestro! Chef! Good to see you!

JOSE ANDRES: Hello, Lin! What are you drinking?

LMM: Una Coca-Cola. [laughs]

JA: Ah, like a commercial.

LMM: Cafeina, porque ya tome mi cafe por el dia [caffeine, because I already drank my coffee for the day] and Im trying to ration the coffee.

JA: Coffee! Puerto Rican coffee, Im having today.

LMM: Well, Im very proud of you. Speaking of Puerto Rico, we met actually during Hurricane Maria. We were both kind of signal-boosting from our respective departments in the world on Twitter. I just remember being struck by how you were getting to places that we hadnt heard from. And you were filming these dispatches from where you were setting up places to serve food. And then I think I DMd you, and you sent me a message about our friend Erin Schrode, who was on your team, because she knows all the words to In the Heights.

JA: She does.

LMM: It was such a crazy time, and you experienced it firsthand.

Andres in Oakland, Calif., where the Grand Princess cruise ship was docked with quarantined passengers in March. Photo: courtesy

RELATED: Jose Andres's #nowaste Veggie Confetti Tastes Good on Everything

JA: I still remember the day that you and many others landed in San Juan bringing hope, bringing a message of love. You also brought money and things that were needed, like water. I realized that every gesture in these situations matters in ways that we dont even understand. I connected to you and all your amazing family through Hurricane Maria. And all of a sudden, my family was like, Wow, you look like youve been friends forever. And you sent us this kind of amazing message  your words, rapping and making up that song of hope, thanking the men and women at World Central Kitchen. And we were able to deliver this to everybody. I can tell you that, for me, this was even more important than any money we were receiving from donors because this gave hope to every single cook and every person delivering the food, all across the island, who was working with us. Long story short, we were able to open 26 kitchens. We delivered almost four million meals. And everything we did was bringing the same hope that you and all your friends brought to the island. Sometimes a moment of empathy becomes a very powerful weapon.

LMM: We became friends from that because we checked in often during that time, and then I think the first time we saw each other [in person] was in D.C., probably six months later. We had a big bear hug and a lot of drinks at a hotel bar. [laughs] Let me ask you something. I feel like whats happening right now is sort of the ultimate test of World Central Kitchen because its not one hot spot; its not one natural disaster. It is this thing that has spread across our country and our world. Youve got something going on in San Juan, and youve got things going on in Detroit and Chicago, but still every day I see the places where New Yorkers can get a meal. How are you able to scale your incredible work?

JA: Just for the record: We were not really drinking. We were supporting the local economy.

LMM: Its true.

JA: Thank you. But listen, at World Central Kitchen, weve been doing this now for years. Puerto Rico, I would say, was the first time we went so big so quickly. And we just came back from the Bahamas, where we prepared almost three and a half million meals and we were delivering food to 14 islands. We saw very quickly that this was going to be a humanitarian crisis, for people who were losing their jobs and had a lot of difficulty feeding their families.

At World Central Kitchen, were trying to bring as many people as possible together under one umbrella. We want them to be themselves, but we want all to have a clear objective, so we are not stepping on each other. So right now, we are providing meals for hundreds of hospitals, and we are partnering with hundreds of restaurants across America, making sure that money donations go directly to their employees so these places can continue doing what they do best: provide meals to the elderly, to shelters, to the homeless, to hospitals, and to the police. We are in more than 150 cities right now in the United States and growing. Its amazing for me to see the local leaders and how important they are. They go and lead and put themselves at the service of other people.

Andres in Harlem during the coronavirus pandemic in April. Photo: courtesy

LMM: Heres a question I have: What is in your coffee that doesnt seem to be in everybody elses? Because you seem to have more energy  and this is not just true when theres a crisis and youre stepping up and acting, which is often, but Ive been on vacation with you! You talk about tomatoes and sea urchins with the same urgency. Tienes esa energia! [You have that energy!] Whats in the engine there, papi?

JA: Im just good at creating mayhem and bringing the urgency of now, now. When you talk about food and youre talking about water, the urgency of now is yesterday, Lin. Yesterday. So our teams, they have a very simple mission: Feed the hungry and bring water to the thirsty. Thats it. Im trying to connect the dots, and in an emergency, you have the oomph, the energy, or you dont.

LMM: I love your videos where youre cooking all inside the time of a Hamilton song, and thats a wide range, from King Georges three-minute song [Youll Be Back] to Non-Stop, which is a more substantive meal. What was the thinking behind that como el pensador de esta tradicion [as the thinker behind this tradition]?

JA: OK, Im too embarrassed to say that I have a crush on Lin-Manuel.

LMM: [laughs]

JA: And Im a guy who, since I was very young, I would always sing. I would make my own songs, and I would sing about life and about things that were very important to me. And to this day I do it, but I do it in the shower and in the bathroom, when no one sees me, of course. But I like it, and I make crazy songs  and my daughters love to sing Hamilton. Every single child I know seems to know Hamilton. Youve done more than anybody else for the history of America by planting seeds in every childs brain. [laughs]

I love to cook to the rhythm of music, and sometimes I make sounds with the fork and the knife, and sometimes we start singing. This [idea] began many years ago when I had a cooking show in Spain. We were running out of time, and it was a long day and everybody was tired, and I still had [to film] one entire recipe. Usually, an entire recipe would take us two hours to film. But the teams were destroyed. I was kind of destroyed. We had to finish the show because it had to go on TV two days later. I told them, You know what Im thinking? Give me one song. And it was the Bolero, by [Maurice] Ravel  the music.

RELATED: The Original 'Hamilton' Cast Reunited on John Krasinski's Show to Surprise this 9-Year-Old

Andres in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., in April. Photo: courtesy

LMM: [laughs]

JA: And it was, like, five, six minutes. And I told them, I want all the ingredients in front of me. I want the pan, the ingredients. And were going to cook in six minutes without stops. All the cameras are rolling, and in 10 minutes, were out of here. Instead of two or three hours to film the recipe, we did it in six minutes. And everybody went home, and it was actually one of the best recipes we ever did. So this stayed in my brain. I put on a song; I put out the ingredients as a challenge to see if I can make the dish in the time of the song. And thats where we began with Hamilton  which my family and I love. When we were in New York a few weeks ago, before we came to be quarantined at home, the last thing my family did  I couldnt because I was working  was go to see Hamilton on Broadway.

LMM: Oh, wow!

JA: And they came back home with the thing of Hey! We need to do Hamilton cooking! Im like, Lets do it! So thats how it happened.

LMM: Wow. Whether its your cooking show in Spain or the Hamilton videos or your responses, the running theme is urgency: We gotta do it now. We can spend three hours, or we can do it in 10 minutes. But urgency is your fuel source. What do you think well look like when we start to emerge from our homes again? And how do you think World Central Kitchen will evolve to sort of go with that? Because I think were going to be entering a new economic age and that people are going to be hungrier on the other side of this thing.

Andres in the Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian last year. Photo: courtesy

JA: Well, what we are trying to do is what many people are trying to do. Make sure that the government makes the right decisions  not to throw money at the problem but to invest in solutions. Right now, we see that our farmers are throwing [out their produce] because they dont have anywhere to sell it. And at the same time, we see that families in places across America have difficulty to bring food to their homes. And so this is a problem that actually has a very simple solution. Feeding America with the food banks is going to be part of the solution, but we need more. We need to be using all the stadiums and baseball fields as meeting points for these families to make sure that people can drive in, pick up a box of food for a week, and go home. We need to start opening more farmers markets in the cities, on every corner  especially in the food deserts.

People dont want our opinion. People want our respect. So you give them respect. I think in this new America I see a lot of empathy. I think we need to weaponize empathy. We need to weaponize the good things that bring us together above all. And I believe that if we do that, the America were going to see wont be about if youre [on the] right or on the left. If youre white or youre black, or if you have an accent. Were going to see that a virus like this can get to all of us and that we need shorter walls and longer tables because a wall cannot stop a virus. A wall will not stop hungry people. If youre a father, youre a mother, and your family has to eat, nothing will stop you.

So I hope that were going to see a world where were investing in the betterment of the lives of people. We need to make sure people are lifted up. If we push people down, were going to see a tomorrow that we dont like. So whoever we vote for, we need to make sure that these people understand that they are here to serve the people and empower the communities. If they dont do that, we dont want those leaders. If we have leaders who only think theyre at the top, we dont want those leaders. We need to make sure that leaders empower everybody to succeed in this beautiful America, in this world were all a part of.

Andres at El Barretal migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2019. Photo: courtesy

LMM: Well said! I cant wait to be in the kitchen with you again and have our kids listen to Hamilton  and go to the market, get some ingredients, and watch you go to work.

JA: Serve you cocktails?

LMM: Yeah!

JA: Da, da, da [singing]  I love you, Lin!

LMM: I love you! Thanks for taking the time. Its always inspiring to talk to you.

Andres in Mozambique in 2019. Photo: courtesy

JA: Say hi to your family! Everybody!

LMM: All right, Im gonna eat my lunch.

JA: Boom!

For more information about World Central Kitchen and to donate, go to wck.org.

For more stories like this, pick up the June issue of InStyle, available on newsstands, on Amazon, and for digital download May 22.
The Willakenzie Grange Hall building in Eugene, Ore. Credit: Lilly Anderson, Oregon State University

In the ongoing struggle to address health care disparities in rural communities across the U.S., a recent Oregon State University study found that the perfect partner may be hiding in plain sight.

The grange, founded in 1867 and officially titled the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, is a community-based organization that is likely familiar to anyone who's spent time in a small town or attended a county fair. In addition to political advocacy on behalf of farmers, the grange's missions around community and family also align closely with the goals of public health.

OSU's study, recently published in the Journal of Community Health, reviewed scientific literature that mentioned the grange, in both medical and agricultural publications. Researchers also pored over the grange's own materials to assess the organization's key messages for the past two decades.

A significant portion of those publications dealt with the study's domains of health and health care, social cohesion and community context, economic stabilityincluding food instabilityand the neighborhood and the built environment.

"It's this overlooked source that's been there this whole time. They've been in the community for more than a hundred years," said Veronica Irvin, assistant professor in OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences and one of the authors of the paper. "They have community support, they have physical space, they have similar missions to public healthit's this natural partner that we've just not met up with."

Compared with big cities, rural communities have less access to health care services. The populations are generally older than urban populations; the towns have fewer walking paths and other places dedicated to physical activity; and despite being centered around farms, many rural areas are termed "food deserts" because of limited availability of healthy foods.

Those issues are all relevant to grange members, said Susan Noah, master of the Oregon State Grange and co-author of the paper.

"Everyone is becoming more and more conscious of what it means to be a healthy society, especially as it relates to food and agriculture," she said.

While individual granges have different areas of focus, they all have physical buildings equipped with kitchens and classroom space, which has allowed them to partner on several health initiatives, including blood drives, mental health awareness classes and Alzheimer's caretaker education programs. In Philomath, the Marys River Grange has hosted a low-cost medical clinic for farm workers.

Now, researchers and grange leaders hope the new findings will spur greater collaboration with health care providers, including as communities start to reopen from COVID-19 shutdowns.

As with most fraternal organizations, the grange's membership is aging. But it's working to adapt and bring in new people, Noah said. There's no longer a requirement that members be actively involved in agriculture, and many granges are now focusing on sustainable practices, growing your own food and eating local. Some are offering yoga and jazzercise classes.

Noah sees the grange playing an important role in helping communities recover from the social isolation caused by COVID-19, as well as potentially becoming a source of trusted, evidence-backed information for members with questions about the virus.

Lead author Lilly Anderson, a 2019 OSU master's in public health graduate, says more coordination between the grange and public health organizations could help avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and allow them to work in tandem more often.

"This very well-established and trusted community resource is in a position to be an excellent partner for public health in rural areas where we desperately need it," she said. "I think if we combined resources and gave them some much needed publicity for their good work, we could really increase our outreach in these areas."

Explore further Leaving no one behind during the coronavirus pandemic

More information: Lilly L. Anderson et al, The National Grange: A Rural Community Resource to Increase the Reach of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in the United States, Journal of Community Health (2020). Lilly L. Anderson et al, The National Grange: A Rural Community Resource to Increase the Reach of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in the United States,(2020). DOI: 10.1007/s10900-020-00819-7
Weekly briefing: Christians decry Ahmaud Arbery killing, contraceptive mandate hearing, prayer campaigns

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We've compiled the top stories of the week. Here's what you need to know:

Christians condemn Ahmaud Arbery killing: We cant ignore this

Many Christians joined the outcry against the killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot while jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, by a white former police officer and his son in February. A video of the shooting was posted this week.

Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, were arrested Thursday and charged with murder and aggravated assault.

Under any Christian vision of justice, there is no situation in which the mob murder of a person can be morally right, nor grounds for a person to be chased down and shot by private citizens.  Russell Moore, president of ERLC

Supreme Court hears arguments on contraceptives mandate exemption

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the phone Wednesday regarding the Affordable Care Acts contraceptives mandate and the Trump administrations rule expanding religious and moral exemptions to groups opposed to the mandate.

As some reports said the justices seemed divided, Becket Laws Diana Verm, which helped represent the Little Sisters of the Poor, is optimistic the court will rule in their favor.

No one had an argument, none of the justices and none of the counsels for Pennsylvania had a good argument for why that exemption shouldnt apply to the Little Sisters.  Diana Verm

Christians in US, world engage in prayer campaigns

Tens of thousands of people joined the National Day of Prayer online this week, as many others kicked off other prayer campaigns amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"Perhaps in our day, God is using the COVID-19 pandemic in the world as a precursor, as a forerunner for a great revival that is coming to the Earth.  William Wilson, president of Oral Roberts University

Other prayer campaigns include Pastor Robert Jeffress 4:01 Challenge, where Christians are urged to pray for 40 days for an end to the pandemic; the War Room prayer event on Friday; and Go2020, a global 30-day prayer and fasting initiative in which Christians are encouraged to share the Gospel every day throughout May.

Some churches reopen with caution

Some churches, including the popular Fellowship Church in Texas, reopened this past weekend and allowed a limited number of attendees.

Worshipers had to wear masks and reserve their seats ahead of time before attending Fellowship. Champion Church in Yuma, Arizona, also resumed in-person services. Life.Church, one of the nations largest churches, will be reopening its campuses this weekend with reduced capacity.

Most pastors plan to resume in-person services in June or later, according to a Barna survey.

Meanwhile, some continue to fight state bans on church gatherings. Nearly 200 pastors in Virginia have petitioned their governor to allow for weekly gatherings. In California, a federal judge ruled against Cross Culture Christian Center in its fight to be allowed to meet for services.

Check out CPs podcast

Hope amid a pandemic: Hearing God in crazy times

In case you missed it

Singer Charles Billingsley details battle with COVID-19, how it affected his faith

Pastors Henry, Alex Seeley say quarantining is revealing foundation marriage was built on

Pray for

Christians at Xingguang Church who were injured in a raid

New releases

Albums:

The Lost Demos EP by TobyMac (May 8)

God Finds Us by Jason Upton (May 8)

Books:

Fields of Joy by Ruth Chou Simons (April 28)

The Truth about Us: The Very Good News about How Very Bad We Are by Brant Hansen (April 21)
On Thursday, the White House acknowledged the positive test result for a member of the U.S. military who works on the White House campus and added that Trump and Pence had since tested negative. The infected staffer is one of Trumps personal valets, the military staff members who sometimes serve meals and look after personal needs of the president. That would mean the president, Secret Service personnel and senior members of the White House staff could have had close or prolonged contact with the aide before the illness was diagnosed.
The third-largest continent on our planet, North America is considered as a part of the "New World". The Caribbean, the mountain saturated west, the Plains, the Laurentian Plateau, and the eastern region are the major physical regions of this continent. Various animals and plants exist in these regions, characteristic for this exact environment. Its rich human geography shares a resemblance to its varied physical environment.

Both North and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first one who suggested that the Americas were a landmass separate from Indies. The United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, are only some of the many countries that span through the territory of this continent.

Just as there are many physical or topographical features of North America, there are also those that are political. Political maps are also extremely helpful in determining the political features of any given area, and the same goes for North America. Generally, these maps display various countries in the area, the states, cities, highways, and other things. Simply put, it shows the political boundaries of a certain area.

History Of Political Geography In North America

It is no secret that the political geography of The United States helped shape the history of this area. Political geography encompasses all the different relationships between various territories and governments of North America. One big historical event is the contact between the Europeans and Native Americans, which resulted in the colonization of parts of North America and many relocations and the killing of indigenous communities. Reservation systems were developed in today's Canada to protect Native American communities but unfortunately prevented their development.

Parts of Central American and the Caribbean, as well as Mexico, had a much better integration of native communities, which played a bigger role in the political systems of the culture. Many conflicts left lasting repercussions on the relationship between some of the countries in North America. For example, Canada and the United States share the longest "peaceful" border, signifying their cooperative relations.

Parts of Central American and the Caribbean, as well as Mexico, had a much better integration of native communities, which played a bigger role in the political systems of the culture.

The Mexican War (also known as U.S. intervention in Mexico) is a prime example of a conflict that arose in North America, where the United States obtained around 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory. One event that had drastic effects on the political geography of Canada was The Seven Years' War that took place between 1756 and 1763, which spanned across five continents, and affects the politics of Canada to this day. Many civil wars happened in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras between the 1970s and 1990s, resulting in immigration. Civilians were forced to move to the United States, Canada, and other countries.

What Is Happening Today In North America?

Economic and geographic trends are very influential in constructing North America's political geography nowadays. Influential policies like NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), an agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States responsible for the creation of a trilateral trade bloc have been extremely important factors in determining the trade between countries of North America.

NAFTA is also responsible for the removal of duties on the agricultural exports of Canada and The United States. These policies and agreements made trading an easier endeavor, but they also gave birth to many political issues. The supply and demand for labor changed, with Mexico and parts of the Caribbean becoming more economically sound locations due to being less expensive. These events have, in turn, proved to be detrimental to the manufacturing sector of The United States.
New Delhi, May 8 : As India carries out one of the world's biggest rescue mission for stranded Indians abroad, Vande Bharat, amid novel coronavirus pandemic, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued additional guidelines for quarantine of returnees from abroad, their contacts and isolation of suspects or confirmed cases in private facilities.

In the guidelines issued on Thursday, the Health Ministry has said there are a large number of facilities such as hotels, service apartments, lodges which remain unoccupied due to the impact of COVID-19 on travel and tourism. There are also instances where people who don't have the requisite space at home may opt for such facilities. This is likely to reduce the pressure on the family, give comfort to the person, and protect the family members and immediate neighbourhood.

The ministry has directed the owners of the facilities to make them either a quarantine or isolation facilities as they cannot co-exist. These facilities will offer single room on a paid basis to contacts and cases with attached washrooms. The ministry said the tariff for the accommodation and services shall be fixed by the facility in consultation with the state government and widely publicised.

Those who are clinically assessed to be pre-symptomatic or very mild shall only be kept in an isolation facility. The ministry said that facility dedicated for isolation will follow the norms established for COVID Care Centres by the Central government.

"Such facility that opts for isolation will have separate earmarked areas for keeping suspect cases and confirmed cases and will ensure no inter-mingling of these two categories. The contact or patient opting for such quarantine or isolation facility will give an undertaking available at the ministry's website," said the Health Ministry.

The Health Ministry also asked the owners of the facilities to ensure in-house availability of a trained doctor and a nurse on 24X7 basis. The doctor will monitor the contacts or cases in quarantine/isolation facilities once a day on basic parameters of temperature, pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and pulse oximetry and keep record of the same. He shall also inform the District Surveillance Officer regarding the list of cases/contacts admitted to such facility and their health status. The facility should network with an approved laboratory for testing samples as per the ICMR guidelines. The quarantined or isolated persons should not be allowed to meet visitors however, the ministry said, they could talk on the phone.

The Ministry also said that the facility should have wifi service and ensure that the people availing the facilities must download Aarogya Setu App on their mobiles.

The Ministry also has asked the owners to provide fresh food through room service with adequate physical distancing. The linens, towels, etc. and rooms should be disinfected and the facility will follow infection prevention and control practices as per the guidelines and the staff should be trained to call free ambulance service at 108 or other ambulance as per the requirement. The discharge of the contacts/cases from the facility will be in accordance with the discharge policy, said the Health Ministry.
Mariangela Marseglia sums up the current situation at Amazon in three words: Crisis as usual. Born in Ostuni, Italy, in 1974, Marseglia is the vice president and country manager of the online conglomerate for Italy and Spain, the European countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. She is referring to the fact that the US multinational has been forced to make a significant number of operational changes in response to the crisis. But many other companies would like to be in Amazons position. In a video link with EL PAIS, Marseglia admits there has been an enormous increase in demand due to the fact actual stores have been shut under the coronavirus lockdown, making Amazon one of the few winners of the health crisis.

Amazon and online commerce are a lifeline for many consumers in confinement Mariangela Marseglia, country manager for Italy and Spain at Amazon

Since the state of alarm was declared in Spain in mid-March, Amazon.es has hired 1,500 extra staff, mainly for their warehouses. The company has had to substitute a few staff members, who either tested positive for Covid-19 or needed to be placed in quarantine. All those on sick leave have been paid 100% of their salary, insists Marseglia, while those working between mid-March to the end of April have been paid an extra 2 an hour.

Regarding the controversy over price hikes for various health products, such as masks or gloves, Marseglia says that they are doing everything possible to detect and remove vendors on Amazon who are taking advantage of the situation.

We have zero tolerance for these practices, especially with goods like masks or things that people need to keep healthy, she says, adding that around 6,000 sellers have been blocked along with half a million products, which the companys algorithms have flagged up for unjustified price hikes.

Marseglia rejects demands by the Spanish Confederation of Commerce (CEC)  the umbrella association for small businesses  that Amazon and others like it be banned from selling non-essential products, as is the case in France, where the companys activities have been curtailed. Amazon and online commerce are a lifeline for many consumers in confinement, she says, explaining that she believes it legitimate to address their needs as long as the safety of the staff is guaranteed. Isnt it essential for a mother who cannot leave the house to get a toy for her child? she asks.

A roaring trade

The increase in Amazons business, which Spains labor union CCOO puts at 30%, is not without its critics. In the last week of March, after three complaints from the CCOO, the Work Inspectorate visited Amazons macro-warehouse in San Fernando de Henares, in the Madrid region, and gave the company three days to introduce better health and safety measures, such as improving disinfecting practices and changing the manner in which work was being carried out. Since then, activity at all the companys logistic centers has continued uninterrupted.

We have changed 150 procedures in our warehouses to ensure safety, says Marseglia, citing examples such as increasing space to two meters between work stations, taking workers temperature, recommending and supplying masks and other means of protection, getting rid of the daily meeting before shifts, and increasing disinfecting cycles.

According to Marseglia, these measures have slightly dampened the potential growth in Spain, though she prefers not to go into detail. We have had to go slower than we normally would, she says. If we had not taken all of these measures, we could have met a greater increase in demand.

The increase has been particularly noticeable in basic commodities, such as packaged food and detergents. Many people have tended to shop online for food during the lockdown but Marseglia is not considering increasing this line of Amazon Spains business, which is small in comparison with other product categories. We dont see the crisis that way, she says. Were not thinking about riding the crest of the wave.

English version by Heather Galloway.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Cytokinetics, Incorporated (NASDAQ:CYTK) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for omecamtiv mecarbil, a novel selective cardiac myosin activator, also known as a cardiac myotrope,1 being developed for the potential treatment of chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF).

Cytokinetics Logo

Fast Track designation may potentially expedite the review of a drug that is intended for the treatment of a serious or life-threatening disease or condition and demonstrates the potential to address an unmet medical need for such a disease or condition.

"This Fast Track designation represents an important milestone in the development of omecamtiv mecarbil," said David M. Reese, M.D., executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen. "Today, half of heart failure patients will die within five years of diagnosis, underscoring the urgent need for new therapies for this grievous condition."

"We are pleased that the FDA has granted Fast Track designation for omecamtiv mecarbil for the potential treatment of heart failure," said Robert I. Blum, president and chief executive officer of Cytokinetics. "The prevalence of heart failure is growing with our aging demographics, and GALACTIC-HF is designed to assess the clinical effects of our novel myosin activator in patients meaningfully at risk."

GALACTIC-HF (Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac Outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure), one of the largest Phase 3 global cardiovascular (CV) outcomes studies in heart failure ever conducted, is designed to evaluate whether treatment with omecamtiv mecarbil, when added to standard of care, reduces the risk of heart failure events (heart failure hospitalization and other urgent treatment for heart failure) and CV death in patients with HFrEF. GALACTIC-HF enrolled 8,256 patients in 35 countries who were either hospitalized at the time of enrollment for a primary reason of heart failure or had a hospitalization or admission to an emergency room for heart failure within one year prior to screening. Dose selection for omecamtiv mecarbil in this study uses a blood test. Top-line results from GALACTIC-HF are expected in Q4 2020.

About Omecamtiv Mecarbil and the Phase 3 Clinical Trials Program

Omecamtiv mecarbil is a novel, selective cardiac myosin activator, also known as a cardiac myotrope,1 that binds to the catalytic domain of myosin. Preclinical research has shown that omecamtiv mecarbil increases cardiac contractility without increasing intracellular myocyte calcium concentrations or myocardial oxygen consumption. Cardiac myosin is the cytoskeletal motor protein in the cardiac muscle cell that is directly responsible for converting chemical energy into the mechanical force resulting in cardiac contraction. 2-4

Omecamtiv mecarbil is being developed for the potential treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) under a collaboration between Amgen and Cytokinetics, with funding and strategic support from Servier. Omecamtiv mecarbil is the subject of a comprehensive Phase 3 clinical trials program composed of GALACTIC-HF (Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac Outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure), a Phase 3 clinical trial designed to evaluate the effect of treatment with omecamtiv mecarbil compared to placebo on CV outcomes and METEORIC-HF (Multicenter Exercise Tolerance Evaluation of Omecamtiv Mecarbil Related to Increased Contractility in Heart Failure), a Phase 3 clinical trial designed to evaluate the effect of treatment with omecamtiv mecarbil compared to placebo on exercise capacity.

About Heart Failure

Heart failure is a grievous condition that affects more than 64 million people worldwide5 about half of whom have reduced left ventricular function.6,7 It is the leading cause of hospitalization and readmission in people age 65 and older.8,9 Despite broad use of standard treatments and advances in care, the prognosis for patients with heart failure is poor.10 An estimated one in five people over the age of 40 are at risk of developing heart failure, and approximately 50 percent of people diagnosed with heart failure will die within five years of initial hospitalization.11,12

About Cytokinetics and Amgen Collaboration

In 2006, Cytokinetics and Amgen entered into a strategic alliance to discover, develop and commercialize novel small molecule therapeutics designed to activate the cardiac sarcomere for the potential treatment of heart failure. Omecamtiv mecarbil is being developed by Amgen in collaboration with Cytokinetics, with funding and strategic support from Servier. Amgen holds an exclusive, worldwide license to omecamtiv mecarbil and related compounds, subject to Cytokinetics' specified development and commercialization rights. Cytokinetics is eligible for pre-commercialization and commercialization milestone payments and royalties that escalate based on increasing levels of annual net sales of products commercialized under the agreement. Cytokinetics has co-invested with Amgen in the Phase 3 development program of omecamtiv mecarbil in exchange for increased royalties from Amgen on worldwide sales of omecamtiv mecarbil outside Japan and co-promotion rights in institutional care settings in North America. Amgen has also entered an alliance with Servier for exclusive commercialization rights for omecamtiv mecarbil in Europe as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States, including Russia. Servier contributes funding for development and provides strategic support to the program.

About Amgen

Amgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its biologics manufacturing expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to be the world's largest independent biotechnology company, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

For more information, visit www.amgen.com and follow us on www.twitter.com/amgen.

About Cytokinetics

Cytokinetics is a late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing first-in-class muscle activators and next-in-class muscle inhibitors as potential treatments for debilitating diseases in which muscle performance is compromised and/or declining. As a leader in muscle biology and the mechanics of muscle performance, the company is developing small molecule drug candidates specifically engineered to impact muscle function and contractility. Cytokinetics is collaborating with Amgen Inc. (Amgen) to develop omecamtiv mecarbil, a novel cardiac muscle activator. Omecamtiv mecarbil is the subject of an international clinical trials program in patients with heart failure including GALACTIC-HF and METEORIC-HF. Amgen holds an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize omecamtiv mecarbil with a sublicense held by Servier for commercialization in Europe and certain other countries. Cytokinetics is developing reldesemtiv, a fast skeletal muscle troponin activator (FSTA) for the potential treatment of ALS and other neuromuscular indications following conduct of FORTITUDE-ALS and other Phase 2 clinical trials. The company is considering potential advancement of reldesemtiv to Phase 3 pending ongoing regulatory interactions. Cytokinetics is collaborating with Astellas Pharma Inc. (Astellas) to research, develop and commercialize other novel mechanism skeletal sarcomere activators (not including FSTAs). Licenses held by Amgen and Astellas are subject to specified co-development and co-commercialization rights of Cytokinetics. Cytokinetics is also developing CK-274, a novel cardiac myosin inhibitor that company scientists discovered independent of its collaborations, for the potential treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathies. Cytokinetics continues its over 20-year history of pioneering innovation in muscle biology and related pharmacology focused to diseases of muscle dysfunction and conditions of muscle weakness.

For additional information about Cytokinetics, visit www.cytokinetics.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Amgen Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on the current expectations and beliefs of Amgen. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements on the outcome, benefits and synergies of collaborations, or potential collaborations, with any other company, including Adaptive Biotechnologies (including statements regarding such collaboration's ability to discover and develop fully human neutralizing antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 to potentially prevent or treat COVID-19), BeiGene, Ltd., or the Otezla (apremilast) acquisition, including anticipated Otezla sales growth and the timing of non-GAAP EPS accretion, as well as estimates of revenues, operating margins, capital expenditures, cash, other financial metrics, expected legal, arbitration, political, regulatory or clinical results or practices, customer and prescriber patterns or practices, reimbursement activities and outcomes, effects of pandemics or other widespread health problems such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on our business, outcomes, progress, or effects relating to studies of Otezla as a potential treatment for COVID-19, and other such estimates and results. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, including those discussed below and more fully described in the Securities and Exchange Commission reports filed by Amgen, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent periodic reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. Unless otherwise noted, Amgen is providing this information as of the date of this news release and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this document as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual results may differ materially from those Amgen projects. Discovery or identification of new product candidates or development of new indications for existing products cannot be guaranteed and movement from concept to product is uncertain; consequently, there can be no guarantee that any particular product candidate or development of a new indication for an existing product will be successful and become a commercial product. Further, preclinical results do not guarantee safe and effective performance of product candidates in humans. The complexity of the human body cannot be perfectly, or sometimes, even adequately modeled by computer or cell culture systems or animal models. The length of time that it takes for Amgen to complete clinical trials and obtain regulatory approval for product marketing has in the past varied and Amgen expects similar variability in the future. Even when clinical trials are successful, regulatory authorities may question the sufficiency for approval of the trial endpoints Amgen has selected. Amgen develops product candidates internally and through licensing collaborations, partnerships and joint ventures. Product candidates that are derived from relationships may be subject to disputes between the parties or may prove to be not as effective or as safe as Amgen may have believed at the time of entering into such relationship. Also, Amgen or others could identify safety, side effects or manufacturing problems with its products, including its devices, after they are on the market.

Amgen's results may be affected by its ability to successfully market both new and existing products domestically and internationally, clinical and regulatory developments involving current and future products, sales growth of recently launched products, competition from other products including biosimilars, difficulties or delays in manufacturing its products and global economic conditions. In addition, sales of Amgen's products are affected by pricing pressure, political and public scrutiny and reimbursement policies imposed by third-party payers, including governments, private insurance plans and managed care providers and may be affected by regulatory, clinical and guideline developments and domestic and international trends toward managed care and healthcare cost containment. Furthermore, Amgen's research, testing, pricing, marketing and other operations are subject to extensive regulation by domestic and foreign government regulatory authorities. Amgen's business may be impacted by government investigations, litigation and product liability claims. In addition, Amgen's business may be impacted by the adoption of new tax legislation or exposure to additional tax liabilities. If Amgen fails to meet the compliance obligations in the corporate integrity agreement between Amgen and the U.S. government, Amgen could become subject to significant sanctions. Further, while Amgen routinely obtains patents for its products and technology, the protection offered by its patents and patent applications may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented by its competitors, or Amgen may fail to prevail in present and future intellectual property litigation. Amgen performs a substantial amount of its commercial manufacturing activities at a few key facilities, including in Puerto Rico, and also depends on third parties for a portion of its manufacturing activities, and limits on supply may constrain sales of certain of its current products and product candidate development. An outbreak of disease or similar public health threat, such as COVID-19, and the public and governmental effort to mitigate against the spread of such disease, could have a significant adverse effect on the supply of materials for Amgen's manufacturing activities, the distribution of Amgen's products, the commercialization of Amgen's product candidates, and Amgen's clinical trial operations, and any such events may have a material adverse effect on Amgen's product development, product sales, business and results of operations. Amgen relies on collaborations with third parties for the development of some of its product candidates and for the commercialization and sales of some of its commercial products. In addition, Amgen competes with other companies with respect to many of its marketed products as well as for the discovery and development of new products. Further, some raw materials, medical devices and component parts for Amgen's products are supplied by sole third-party suppliers. Certain of Amgen's distributors, customers and payers have substantial purchasing leverage in their dealings with Amgen. The discovery of significant problems with a product similar to one of Amgen's products that implicate an entire class of products could have a material adverse effect on sales of the affected products and on its business and results of operations. Amgen's efforts to collaborate with or acquire other companies, products or technology, and to integrate the operations of companies or to support the products or technology Amgen has acquired, may not be successful. A breakdown, cyberattack or information security breach could compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of Amgen's systems and Amgen's data. Amgen's stock price may be volatile and may be affected by a number of events. Amgen's business performance could affect or limit the ability of the Amgen Board of Directors to declare a dividend or its ability to pay a dividend or repurchase its common stock. Amgen may not be able to access the capital and credit markets on terms that are favorable to it, or at all.

The scientific information discussed in this news release related to Amgen's product candidates is preliminary and investigative. Such product candidates are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and no conclusions can or should be drawn regarding the safety or effectiveness of the product candidates.

Cytokinetics Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). Cytokinetics disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements, and claims the protection of the Act's Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements. Examples of such statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to GALACTIC-HF; the potential benefits of omecamtiv mecarbil, including its ability to represent a novel therapeutic strategy to increase cardiac muscle function and restore cardiac performance; Cytokinetics' and its partners' research and development activities; the design, timing, results, significance and utility of preclinical and clinical results; and the properties and potential benefits of Cytokinetics' drug candidates. Such statements are based on management's current expectations, but actual results may differ materially due to various risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, potential difficulties or delays in the development, testing, regulatory approvals for trial commencement, progression or product sale or manufacturing, or production of Cytokinetics' drug candidates that could slow or prevent clinical development or product approval; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our research and development activities and business operations, Cytokinetics' drug candidates may have adverse side effects or inadequate therapeutic efficacy; the FDA or foreign regulatory agencies may delay or limit Cytokinetics' or its partners' ability to conduct clinical trials; Cytokinetics may be unable to obtain or maintain patent or trade secret protection for its intellectual property; Amgen's decisions with respect to the design, initiation, conduct, timing and continuation of development activities for omecamtiv mecarbil; standards of care may change, rendering Cytokinetics' drug candidates obsolete; competitive products or alternative therapies may be developed by others for the treatment of indications Cytokinetics' drug candidates and potential drug candidates may target; and risks and uncertainties relating to the timing and receipt of payments from its partners, including milestones and royalties on future potential product sales under Cytokinetics' collaboration agreements with such partners. For further information regarding these and other risks related to Cytokinetics' business, investors should consult Cytokinetics' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CONTACT: Cytokinetics

Diane Weiser, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Investor Relations

415-290-7757

CONTACT: Amgen, Thousand Oaks

Megan Fox, 805-447-1423 (media)

Trish Rowland, 805-447-5631 (media)

Arvind Sood, 805-447-1060 (investors)

References

Psotka MA, Gottlieb SS, Francis GS et al. Cardiac Calcitropes, Myotropes, and Mitotropes. JACC. 2019; 73:2345-53. Planelles-Herrero VJ, Hartman JJ, Robert-Paganin J. et al. Mechanistic and structural basis for activation of cardiac myosin force production by omecamtiv mecarbil. Nat Commun . 2017;8:190. Shen YT, Malik FI, Zhao X, et al. Improvement of cardiac function by a cardiac myosin activator in conscious dogs with systolic heart failure. Circ Heart Fail. 2010; 3: 522-27. Malik FI, Hartman JJ, Elias KA, Morgan BP, Rodriguez H, Brejc K, Anderson RL, Sueoka SH, Lee KH, Finer JT, Sakowicz R. Cardiac myosin activation: a potential therapeutic approach for systolic heart failure. Science. 2011 Mar 18;331(6023):1439-43. GBD 2017 Disease and Injury Incidence and Prevalence Collaborators. Lancet 2018; 392: 1789858. Yancy CW, Jessup M, Bozkurt B, et al. 2013 ACCF/AHA Guideline for the Management of Heart failure: A Report of the American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines. Circulation. 2013;128:e240-e327. Ponikowski P, Voors AA, Anker SD, et al. 2016 ESC guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure: The Task Force for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Developed with the special contribution of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC. Eur Heart J. 2016;37:21292200. Roger VL. Epidemiology of Heart Failure. Circulation Research. 2013;113:646-659, originally published August 29, 2013. Doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.113.300268. Kilgore M, Patel HK, Kielhorn A et al. Economic burden of hospitalizations of Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure. Risk Manag Healthc Policy. 2017; 10: 63-70. Jhund PS, MacIntyre K, Simpson CR, et al. Long-Term Trends in First Hospitalization for Heart Failure and Subsequent Survival Between 1986 and 2003. Circulation. 2009;119:515-523. Benjamin EJ, Muntner P, Alonso A. et al. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics2019 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2019;139:e56-e528. Rogers VL, Weston SA, Redfield MM, et al. Trends in Heart Failure Incidence and Survival in a Community-Based Population. JAMA. 2004;292:344-350.

SOURCE Amgen

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Rudolf Heltzel, who has died at the age of 79 after a long illness, was a kingpin in Kilkennys claim to be a world-class centre for arts and crafts, both during and after the rise and fall of Kilkenny Design Workshops, which had brought him to Ireland in the mid 1960s.

In fact, for over half a century he sustained, almost alone, the international reputation of the city for the pursuit of excellence in his chosen crafts of silver and gold smithing.

His modesty and generosity as artist and businessman were demonstrated by the fact that his main competitors in that area were those he had himself trained or mentored. They had been his apprentices - first at KDW and then at workshop/studios in his home, in rented accommodation on The Parade, and finally at 10 Patrick Street - and had later gone into business on their own account.

As a human being, his achievement is equally notable: he honoured Kilkenny, and Ireland, with his modest presence for over 50 years, wearing his knowledge lightly, making enduring friendships without regard to class or creed, and above all passing on his skill and motivation to the next generation - not only his son, who will carry on the Heltzel tradition, but the dozens of fellow artisans and indeed the hundreds of loyal clients - whose lives he has embellished in his inspiring and unassuming way.

Rudolf Heltzel was born into an artistic family in Berlin on 20 August 1940, when the city was riven by the early fallout from World War II.

His father, Rudolf snr, had come to the city from Bohemia in 1911 at the age of four and was raised by his mother in a small apartment, from where he immediately began to show aptitude for art, sketching scenes in streets and parks.

He was apprenticed to tailoring as a youth and combined this trade with his interest in art. In the mid-1930s he married Charlotte Wermter and, as the nation moved towards war, they began the task of rearing a young family that would eventually include two sons and a daughter.

A Catholic by background and a socialist by instinct and conviction, Rudolf snr was a conscientious objector to war service, but was drafted as an auxiliary in the Russian campaign, when he worked as a tailor in uniform depots and also painted landscapes and buildings that he encountered during the march on Moscow. After the war he maintained his interest in painting but also applied himself to sculpture, mainly in wood and oriented towards the sacred. His long career (he died aged 98 in 2005) would be marked by significant recognition, including the award of the Federal Cross of Merit as well as major exhibitions and publications relating to his work. (Rudolf jnrs mother, with whom he had re-established contact after his parents separated while he was still a young man, died in the late 1990s at the age of 86).

Rudolf jnr would later note that the only subject he showed any real interest or achievement in at high school was art. But he also knew at an early age that to have a successful career as an artist in Berlin, he would have to operate on a different stage - and not just because he would be competing with his father of the same name, but also because the city was still in ruins.

He enrolled in the Berlin Meisterschule fur Kunsthandwerk where, after an early brush with sculpture, he found his true metier: working in precious metals. Exceptionally, he was allowed to study both silversmithing (for hollowware and art pieces) and goldsmithing (for jewellery creation), attaining a unique combination qualification in both subjects in half the time it would normally take.

The course placed equal emphasis on design and fabrication, a combination that would also stand to him in later life: there was a huge need for design in the conventional jewellery industry as it existed then, and his understanding of fabrication made him independent of the manufacturing sector and able to operate in both areas.

His fathers influence was reflected in his next step: he went to Munich as an apprentice to the master-artisan Max Olofs, who specialised in church plate.

From there he went to Sweden to join the Stockholm studio of the jewellery designer Sigurd Persson, who had spend his formative years in Munich in the late 1930s. Now well-established and recognised internationally, Persson was glad to welcome the young German designer recommended to him by his former Munich colleagues.

During his two years in the Persson studio, Rudolf worked on the personal pieces that were its staple products; the use of geometric shapes, quirky choices of stones in glass or acrylic, and a touch of pure imagination that reflected the masters modest humorous essence, would set the tone for the apprentices artistic formation.

By the time that Rudolf left Sweden to return to Berlin in 1965, two other developments had occurred which would change the entire direction of his life. Firstly, he had met Eva Olson, a young Frobel kindergarten teacher who was in Stockholm from her native Karlskrona in the south of the country, on a visit to an aunt.

Secondly, the Kilkenny Design Workshops initiative established in 1963 had begun to be known in European craft circles and the Scandinavian inputs to the Irish government policy which started it were widely admired as an example to other countries.

This proved helpful to Rudolf when he was invited to Dublin to consider joining the staff of the workshops and to expand its production of precious metalwork. He was given accommodation before the interview at the Shelbourne Hotel, his first experience of anything above hostel standard.

Rudolf was nominated by a number of distinguished European crafts critics at the time, Jim King, the administrator of the project in its first years, observed. He had impeccable credentials.

Within weeks he was packing up his small workshop in Berlin to move to Ireland - and Kilkenny. The precious metals workshop there had been the first to be set up under the KDW initiative, headed by a young designer/artisan from Northern Ireland named Michael Hillier.

The Kilkenny to which Rudolf Heltzel came in 1966 was changing ever so slowly from being a quiet provincial town, though with historic city status, to becoming a centre of heritage tourism and enterprise - that year would see the donation of Kilkenny Castle to the state by the Marquess of Ormonde, the purchase of Rothe House by Kilkenny Archaeological Society, the restoration of Kytelers Inn as a hospitality venue by a group of local businessmen and the formation of a dairy production co-operative that would become Avonmore.

By the following year, Eva and Rudolf had married and she had joined him in what was to be their home for the rest of their lives.

The early days of KDW created a whole new universe in Kilkenny, with an influx of designers and craftspersons from many European countries, although the majority were British. Though some were on short-term contracts, many remained on in the city, operating on their own account during and after the original Kilkenny Design Workshops 25-year lifespan.

Rudolf Heltzel was a little impatient of the systems and procedures in effect at the workshop dedicated to precious metalworking, and was also very determined to make his future as an independent practitioner. In 2005, on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition on KDW mounted by the Crafts Council, he told Ruth Thorpe, a contributor to the exhibition catalogue, about his initial reaction:

I was shocked at the quality. (The industry was) protected by high duties on imported jewellery (and so) there were a number of companies producing abysmal stuff in low grade metals for the home market.

Rudolfs solution was to make the KDW precious metals workshop a production centre, turning out quality items that had a secure outlet in the Kilkenny Shop that fronted the stable complex.

Rudolf also introduced a scheme whereby the KDW team of two silversmiths and four apprentices were joined by four others from the Rionore jewellery manufacturing company established by Sir William Blunden and Sir Basil Goulding in conjunction with the Rio Tinto Mining Group.

The apprentices spent four days at KDW and one at Kilkenny Vocational School, learning freehand and technical drawing as well as various aspects of ancillary skills such as mathematical computation of alloys and the basic geology and properties of precious and semi-precious stones.

The result of this activity was an incredible outreach to the ordinary people of Kilkenny and beyond: young people with no background in arts or crafts came from urban and rural backgrounds to learn the basics of an inspired vocation at the hands of a young master, and in so doing, embraced a career that would change forever the complexion of Kilkenny as a centre of excellence and enterprise.

After KDW collapsed in 1988, Rudolf argued for a continuation of the apprenticeship system by the Crafts Council of Ireland, resulting in the establishment of the Jewellery Skills Course in 1993 under Jane Hutson in the Castle Yard.

In 1968 Rudolf went out on his own, in the local phrase, setting up a small workshop alongside his waterside cottage and beginning to test the market for the unique pieces that he wanted to create.

It took a little time to establish an approach to the market; he made sure to keep his designs just within reach of the public, both creatively and economically, while at the same time challenging and educating them to appreciate his art.

In 1970 the Heltzels set up (literally - they decorated and fitted it out themselves) a shop in Rothe House, with Eva taking charge of the small retail space to the left of the main entrance (it had formerly been used as a tourist office). This also allowed her to display her own designs for bowls in Irish elm, hand-turned by local craftsmen.

Despite his modest demeanour, from the beginning Rudolf realised the value of publicity and an early interview with a journalist from the Sunday Independent shows the technique he used: an invitation to dinner at his home with guests from Germany, France, Sweden and England, and some complimentary remarks about their host country:

He and Eva want to stay in Ireland, Mary McCutchan reported, there is a certain romanticism and simplicity here which pleases them both and they have made many friends.

That magic was to endure for the next 50 years.

In 1975 Rudolf purchased the Rionore company, the unlikely consortium of interests who had seen a decade previously the potential of jewellery as a craft that might benefit from a Kilkenny connection. Now a member of the Fitzwilton Group, it capitalised on the discovery by Rio Tinto of emeralds in Zambia. The stones were imported and cut in Kilkenny and the jewellery range was sold in two outlets in Dublin, one within the Brown Thomas department store and the other in Molesworth Street. After a David and Goliath court battle, Rudolf took control of the company as an adjunct to the marketing of his more individual offerings.

Meanwhile at his studio/workshop, Rudolfs output combined his passion for the creative concept of balance with the appeal of a carefully-selected range of precious stones (agates, topaz, moonstones, amethysts among others). To this combination he added the imaginative input from his German background and his Irish experience to focus mainly on rings and pendants.

Maeve Lynch, a young Dublin woman, took charge of sales when Rudolf later opened a workshop and retail unit on The Parade and remains with the firm to the present day.

In 1979 the Heltzels purchased No. 10 Patrick Street, one of the 18th Century houses built by Abraham Colles. It was located beside the site of Stathams Garage (now the Pembroke Hotel), which had later been replaced by a modern office building used by the then South Eastern Health Board. By coincidence the house was alongside one formerly occupied for almost half a century by the German musician Josef Koss, who had come to Ireland in 1905 and become organist at St Marys Cathedral in 1912 (Mr Koss also operated as an agent for German musical instruments and had a piano and harmonium wareroom on the ground floor).

At No 10 the Heltzels began the task of turning what had most recently been used as a storage area into a world-class workshop studio and showroom venue for their craft lines.

Patrick Street had not then the collection of smaller specialist outlets that would eventually spring up there, although Christopher Wrays Lighting Emporium, established three years earlier in the old Kilkenny Theatre, was beginning to draw footfall up from the centre. The Heltzel shop would confirm that trend.

In that year too Rudolf became a founding member of a new branch of Rotary International, the international service organisation founded in the US in 1905 and brought to Europe in 1911 with the setting up of a branch in Dublin, the first outside North America.

Rudolf stood out among the founders of the Kilkenny branch, which also included county manager Paddy Donnelly and banker and hurling legend Eddie Keher - he was the only one directly engaged in what might be called a manual occupation. All the rest were in financial services, the law, the medical and dental professions, and the service sector.

Rudolf was involved in, and proud of, the wide variety of projects that Rotary initiated including the installation of new windows in the old Evans Home, helping establish the Aislinn Centre in Ballyragget and building a playground for the Mother of Fair Love School  which fostered a relationship between the school and Rotary Kilkenny that lasts to this day.

The current Rotary president Jason Dempsey paid Rudolf this tribute:

His fun loving, charming personality with a great sense of humour (and the odd heckle!) often heard from the back of the Club House Hotel meeting room at the Rotary Monday lunch was part of the fabric of our club for the past 41 years.

In the following year, tragedy struck. Rudolf and Evas beautiful daughter Rebecca, aged only eight, died of cancer. But as they continued to bring up their two young boys and develop their business, the future brightened and they resumed their ambitious development as Kilkenny became more popular as a visitor destination.

Unfortunately a lease renewal offer at an exorbitant rent and an economic downturn forced Rudolf to close Rionores Dublin operation in 1985, though the company remains in Heltzel ownership.

The financial pressures caused by these developments caused Rudolf to make a tough decision: he would maintain the studio operation in Kilkenny so as not to disturb the lives and incomes of his employees, but he himself would seek employment elsewhere. And so for the next few years he moved to Northern Ireland with his family, first to work on a jewellery range development project known as Tir na nOg, and then as an adjunct lecturer in the Fine Arts department at Queens University.

But by the late 1980s the Heltzels were back in Kilkenny and over the next quarter of a century they would maintain their progress and position, not only in the city, but also in the international crafts community. They visited Germany regularly, including in their itinerary the Idar Oberstein region near the French border where the precious stones Rudolf favoured in his work were supplied and polished by specialist operators. Rudolf commented:

I start with an idea, which could be influenced by the beauty of a precious gem, the discovery in a museum of a particular painting which appeals to my sense of aesthetic, or even the abstraction of forms in nature.

During that period, the Heltzels would both drive and benefit from the emergence of Kilkenny as a prime visitor destination. They were helped by the revolution they had helped to create in craft production and marketing, not only in jewellery but also in pottery, glasswork, textiles, leatherwork, basketry and woodwork, with more than two dozen retail and workshop/studio locations now part of the Kilkenny Crafts Trail.

In the early 2000s, Rudolf was approaching the traditional retirement age, and had begun to wonder about the future of his business. His two sons, Christopher and Julian, were already embarked on careers away from both Kilkenny and the crafts scene, in film production and information technology respectively. In 2004 Christopher made the fateful decision to return to Kilkenny and begin the daunting process of learning the jewellery craft and trade from his father.

Rudolf, of course, remained heavily involved in the business. Although increasingly affected by arthritis, he continued to work on special projects. He also undertook assignments for national and international development agencies, including the EU, involved in the promotion of the craft sector, working in Guyana, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Botswana, the West Indies and Pakistan.

In 2009 Limericks Hunt Museum, in one of its last initiatives under the direction of Callan-born Virginia Teehan (now Chief Executive of the Heritage Council), mounted an exhibition of Rudolfs work under the title The Devil is in the Detail: Celebrating the Jewellery of Rudolf Heltzel.

The noted authority and critic Joseph McBrinn wrote in the Irish Arts Review that challenging the politics of value created by the combination of gem stones and their settings in modern jewellery is the cornerstone of Heltzels work .. stones such as agate, pearl, quartz, carnelian, onyx, topaz and tourmaline, often playing on the unique beauty found in their oxidisation and crystallisation.

Over the years, Kilkenny made little fuss about its distinguished resident, artist and entrepreneur, and that is the way Rudolf wanted it to be. But he was proud of his own survival in that scene:

I dont know anyone else who works like me in any town in Europe, he told Katharine Blake for a Kilkenny People profile in 2010.

The Heltzels original cottage home had been developed into a stunning modern residence, and he and Eva were able to enjoy the company of a wide variety of Irish and international friends, as well as the increased cultural opportunities that urban and rural venues delivered.

Rudolf also met regularly with the friends who accompanied him on hill-walking expeditions and shared the coffee-klatches at various Kilkenny hostelries, most recently at the Hibernian Hotel.

In 2018, when Rudolf was 77, he received his final accolade: an exhibition of his work, under the title In Precious Metal, at the Craft Council of Ireland Gallery in Kilkenny and the State Apartments in Dublin Castle.

It featured 30 cultural pendants grouped in four collections that reflected themes from his work over 50 years - Rock Crystal, Treasure Cave, Tourmaline Butterflies and a new collection developed in the 21st Century under the title Druze.

When the exhibition opened in Kilkenny in February 2018, it was the occasion for a great outpouring of appreciation and gratitude for what Rudolf had done for his art and the city.

And it attracted attention from the type of media whose coverage is more than worth its weight in gold: The New York Times. They sent the former war zone correspondent and assistant editor of The Observer, Sandra Jordan, to interview Rudolf.

He was sanguine. He had originally exported most of his work but now had an almost entirely Irish clientele, some of whom had more than 50 pieces in their personal collections.

Its all by word of mouth, he said. We have grandmothers and granddaughters from the same families buying our pieces.. Every piece is thought out and mulled over in an intellectual process. Art is communication with my clients. It could be 20 or 30 years before I have enough (stones) to make a perfect piece.

It was fortunate that The New York Times readers could also learn of another Heltzel achievement: at the 2018 Golden Globes Awards and again at the Oscars, the nominated Kilkenny-based animator Nora Twomey, whose engagement and wedding rings had been made by Rudolf, wore his pendants, one of them a vintage 18-carat-gold piece set with stones he had first acquired 50 years previously. Their time had come.

After its Kilkenny debut the In Precious Metal exhibition was accompanied by an ambitious tour/outreach program, which began with a launch in Dublin in February 2019 at which the special guest was Mary V Mullin, a seminal figure in the development of Kilkenny Design Workshops who has gone on to become an international expert in arts and crafts administration, promotion and presentation.

It also included a lecture by Rudolf entitled The Arduous Road to the Creation of a Jewel as well as school tours and events for children presented by Christopher Heltzel and Maeve Lynch.

Rudolf Heltzel died at St Lukes Hospital, Kilkenny on April 18, 2020 following an illness that had finally defeated him in a brave battle fought over almost four years. His funeral took place through the streets of Kilkenny, the pavement lined in social distancing by his fellow-members of Rotary, to Cork Crematorium.

In addition to his immediate family, his wife Eva and sons Christopher and Julian, he is survived by his sister Maria, who lives in Berlin, and the family (including Rudolfs five nieces and nephews) of his brother Christoph, a woodworker who died in January 2020.

Sadly he did not live to celebrate the arrival of his first grandchild, a daughter due shortly to expectant parents Christopher and Cruzcelis.

Some years ago, a young German moved to settle in rural County Leitrim, working energetically to establish a forestry plantation and gaining the admiration of the local smallholders for his energy and ingenuity.

Soon they began to consult him about technical matters, and eventually when any difficulty presented itself the first step would be to ask our German.

For Kilkenny, Rudolf Heltzel was our German, an example not only of the skill and determination of that wonderful race, but of its willingness to embrace without formality, and sometimes with delight, the precarious nature of artistic integrity and survival in modern Ireland. He might even understand it when we say of him Ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris.

Denis Bergin
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday asked Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to focus on more effective surveillance, contact tracing and early diagnosis to keep low fatality rate in COVID-19 cases.

He also asked these states to intensify surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and influenza like illness (ILI) in unaffected districts and districts which have not reported any fresh cases in the past 14 days and more through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme network in collaboration with medical colleges and hospitals.

"Such measures will help to indicate the presence of any possible hidden infection at an early stage thus helping in its timely containment," Vardhan stressed.

The minister also asked the states to ensure adoption of infection, prevention and control (IPC) practices in all healthcare settings to avoid and reduce chances of infections to health care workers.

In continuation of a series of meetings with the states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha, Vardhan held a high-level meeting with Health Minister of Tamil Nadu C Vijayabaskar, Telangana Health Minister Etela Rajendra and Medical Education Minister of Karnataka K Sudhakar on Friday.

Vardhan, along with Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey, reviewed the situation, actions being taken and preparedness for management of COVID-19 in the three states, a health ministry statement said.

Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka have registered 37, 30 and 29 COVID-19 fatalities and have reported 5409, 1123 and705 cases respectively till 8 AM on Friday.

Appreciating the dedication of all the states in combating COVID-19 in the country, Vardhan said appropriate measures are being taken with the cohesive efforts of both the Centre and states in scaling up the number of dedicated COVID hospitals, isolation and ICU beds and quarantine facilities.

"So far we are well-prepared to face any eventuality due to COVID-19," he said.

The states informed about some of the best practices adopted at the district level such as deployment of mobile testing laboratories and distribution of medicines for non-communicable diseases for a period of two months in advance in containment zones, home delivery of bleaching powder in slum areas and use of tele-medicine as an alternative to OPD.

Vardhan appreciated the work done by the state governments and the dedication shown by frontline health workers, anganwadi workers, police and paramilitary personnel who are working beyond the call of duty in the interest of nation.

He reminded states to provide them preventive medicines and immunity boosters along with testing as and when required.

It was reiterated to the states that attention needs to be accorded to provisioning of non-COVID essential health services such as immunisation drives, TB case tracing and treatment, providing blood transfusion for dialysis patients, treatment of cancer patients and antenatal care of pregnant women, the statement said.

It was also stated that the Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres could be used for screening for hypertension, diabetes and three types of cancers.

Tele-medicine and tele-counselling could be used for a larger population in view of the lockdown. States have been advised to keep adequate stock of essential medicines, he said.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,886 and the number of cases climbed to 56,342 on Friday, according to the Union Health Ministry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As countries work to reopen after weeks of lockdown, contact-tracing apps help to understand the spread of the deadly coronavirus strain, COVID-19.

While most governments lean toward privacy-focused apps that use Bluetooth signals to create an anonymous profile of a person's whereabouts, others, like Israel, use location and cell phone data to track the spread of the virus.

Israel-based private security firm NSO Group, known for making mobile hacking tools, is leading one of Israel's contact-tracing efforts.

Security researcher Bob Diachenko discovered one of NSO's contact-tracing systems on the internet, unprotected and without a password, for anyone to access. After he contacted the company, NSO pulled the unprotected database offline. Diachenko said he believes the database contains dummy data.

NSO told TechCrunch that the system was only for demonstrating its technology and denied it was exposed because of a security lapse. NSO is still waiting for the Israeli government's approval to feed cell records into the system. But experts say the system should not have been open to begin with, and that centralized databases of citizens' location data pose a security and privacy risk.

Codename 'Fleming'

NSO began work on its contact-tracing system codenamed Fleming in March.

Fleming is designed to "pour" in confirmed coronavirus test data from the health authorities and phone location data from the cell networks to identify people who may have been exposed to a person with the virus. Anyone who came into close proximity to a person diagnosed with coronavirus would be notified.

The unprotected database was hosted on an Amazon Web Services server in Frankfurt, where the data protection regime is one of the strictest in the world.

It contained about six weeks of location data, spanning around March 10 to April 23. It also included specific dates, times and the location of a "target"  a term that NSO used in the database to describe people  that may have come into contact with a potentially infected person.

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The data also included the duration of the encounter to help score the likelihood of a transmitted infection.

The login page for NSO's Fleming is protected with a password. Its backend database was unprotected. (Image: TechCrunch)

"NSO Group has successfully developed 'Fleming', an innovative, unique and purely analytical system designed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic," said Oren Ganz, a director at NSO Group. "Fleming has been designed for the benefit of government decision-makers, without compromising individual privacy. This system has been demonstrated worldwide with great transparency to media organizations, and approximately 100 individual countries," he said.

TechCrunch was also given a demonstration of how the system works.

"This transparent demo, the same shown to individual countries and media organizations, was the one located on the open random server in question, and the very same demo observed today by TechCrunch. All other speculation about this overt, open system is not correct, and does not align with the basic fact this transparent demonstration has been seen by hundreds of people in media and government worldwide," said Ganz.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, part of the Munk School at the University of Toronto, said that any database storing location data poses a privacy risk.

"Not securing a server would be an embarrassment for a school project," said Scott-Railton. "For a billion-dollar company to not password protect a secretive project that hopes to handle location and health data suggest a quick and sloppy roll out."

"NSO's case is the precedent that proves the problem: rushed COVID-19 tracking efforts will imperil our privacy and online safety," he said.

Israel's two tracing systems

As global coronavirus infections began to spike in March, the Israeli government passed an emergency law giving its domestic security service Shin Bet "unprecedented access" to collect vast amounts of cell data from the phone companies to help identify possible infections.

By the end of March, Israeli defense minister Naftali Bennett said the government was working on a new contact tracing system, separate from the one used by Shin Bet.

It was later revealed that NSO was building the second contact-tracing system.

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a privacy expert and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told TechCrunch that she too was given a demonstration of Fleming over a Zoom call in the early days of the outbreak.

Without the authority to obtain cell records, NSO told her that it used location data gathered from advertising platforms, or so-called data brokers. Israeli media also reported that NSO used advertising data for "training" the system.

Data brokers amass and sell vast troves of location data collected from the apps installed on millions of phones. The apps that track your movements and whereabouts are often also selling those locations to data brokers, which then resell the data to advertisers to serve more targeted ads.

NSO denied it used location data from a data broker for its Fleming demo.

"The Fleming demo is not based on real and genuine data," said Ganz. "The demo is rather an illustration of public obfuscated data. It does not contain any personal identifying information of any sort."

Since governments began to outline their plans for contact-tracing systems, experts warned that location data is not accurate and can lead to both false positives and false negatives. Currently, NSO's system appears to rely on this data for its core functions.

"This kind of location data will not get you a reliable measure of whether two people came into close contact," said Scott-Railton.

NSO's connection to the Middle East

Israel is not the only government interested in Fleming. Bloomberg reported in March that a dozen nations were allegedly testing NSO's contact-tracing technology.

A review of the unprotected database showed large amounts of location data points in Israel, but also Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Spokespeople for the Saudi, Rwandan and Emirati consulates in New York did not respond to our emails. NSO did not answer our questions about its relationship  if any  with these governments.

A map showing a sample of about 20,000 location data points across Israel (top-left); Abu Dhabi and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (top-right); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (bottom-left) and Rwanda (bottom-right). (Image: TechCrunch)

Saudi Arabia is a known customer of NSO Group. United Nations experts have called for an investigation into allegations that the Saudi government used NSO's Pegasus spyware to hack into the phone of Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos. NSO has denied the claims.

NSO is also embroiled in a legal battle with Facebook-owned WhatsApp for allegedly building a hacking tool designed to be delivered over WhatsApp, which was used to hack into the cell phones of 1,400 users, including government officials, journalists and human rights activists, using AWS servers based in the U.S. and Frankfurt. NSO also rebuffed the claims.

Privacy concerns

Experts have expressed concerns over the use of centralized data, fearing that it could become a target for hackers.

Most countries are favoring decentralized efforts, like the joint project between Apple and Google, which uses anonymized Bluetooth signals picked up from phones in near proximity, instead of collecting cell location data into a single database. Bluetooth contact tracing has won the support of academics and security researchers over location-based contact-tracing efforts, which they say would enable large-scale surveillance.

Shwartz Altshuler told TechCrunch that location-based contact tracing is a "huge infringement" of privacy.

"It means that you can't have any secrets," she said. "You can't have any meetings if you're a journalist, and you can't go to places where people want to know where you are."

Favoring their own contact-tracing efforts, Apple and Google have already banned governments building contact-tracing apps utilizing their joint API from using location tracking, fearing that data stored on a centralized server could be breached.

Just this week, the U.S. and U.K. governments warned that nation-state hackers are targeting organizations involved in the coronavirus response.

Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey, said location data makes it "possible to build social graphs and to begin identifying who met who, when and where."

"Even if it is just trial data, its still sensitive if it's real people," he said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was on Thursdays The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he discussed the recent move by many governors to start reopening their states. He is concerned because the data suggests it is a significant mistake to reopen while new cases of COVID-19 are on the rise.

Many of the other states, the numbers are still going up and they're reopening, said Cuomo. That not only violates CDC guidelines, that violates common sense. The Centers for Disease Control has provided a set of guidelines to help states prepare for reopening.

Cuomo said that New York will only rely on data to determine when and how it reopens. However, he did admit that he can relate to the other governors. The pressure to open is tremendous, said Cuomo. People need a paycheck, they want to get back to work, they want to make sure they have a job. I get it.

He warned governors of states that are starting to reopen that the short-term gains will not outweigh the long-term losses. Cuomo said, To open and then close two weeks later or three weeks later because that infection rate goes through the roof again makes no sense.

Cuomo suggested that governors, Calibrate the opening and don't open until you have those numbers under control. He added, I think it is a mistake to respond to the emotion when you know the facts are saying something different.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.

Watch as Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls out selfish New Yorkers for not wearing masks:

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 CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

Trend:

We have once again shown ourselves, our people and the whole world that we are a dignified country, said Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev while making a speech at the opening of the first modular hospital complex in Baku, Trend reports.

I can also say that our economy is also suffering from the pandemic, of course. It is possible that the results of the second quarter will not be very reassuring. But this is a secondary issue. The primary issue is the health of our citizens. We know that if we tighten the quarantine regime for the reasons I have mentioned, this will have a very negative effect on our economic situation. But we will go for it because the health and social well-being of our people are in the first place. For this purpose, 3.5 billion manats were allocated, said President Ilham Aliyev.

He noted that the state pays a significant part of the salaries of about 700,000 people who lost their jobs in the areas worst affected by the pandemic.

To this end, 600,000 unemployed, low-income and unofficially employed people are provided with material assistance by the state. We are doing all this work in order to keep the social and material situation of citizens stable. Of course, all these steps are also being evaluated by the international community. I have already said this but I want to say again that the World Health Organization appreciates the measures taken in Azerbaijan in the field of combating the pandemic and describes us as an exemplary country. This is really the case. We are taking all necessary measures in Azerbaijan, first of all domestically. At the same time, we are speaking our word on the international plane. I can say that we have provided assistance to more than 10 countries. We sent technical and financial assistance, airplanes, transport airplanes to countries that asked us for help, countries with limited financial capabilities which had no-one else to turn to, lets put it that way. We have assisted more than 10 countries, and I believe that we did the right thing. Because it is on such days and at such a time that the true face of both people and countries is manifested. In a good situation, everyone is friends with everyone, said President Ilham Aliyev.

The head of state pointed out that everyone says nice words, speaks at international events, discusses mutual support, but this must be shown in practice.

We are the country that has demonstrated this in practice. In the global fight against the pandemic, we were one of the first countries to donate $5 million to the World Health Organization. Recently, as the country chairing the Non-Aligned Movement, we donated an additional $5 million to the World Health Organization so that, in agreement with us, assistance was provided to member countries of the movement. As you know, two summits were held on my initiative  the Summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States and the Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. Azerbaijan currently chairs both these organizations. This initiative was timely and appropriate. We can say that the whole world community welcomes this and acknowledges the role of Azerbaijan. We didnt have to do that. Would anyone blame us for that? No! Who could blame us for not putting forward this initiative in such a difficult time? But we did this because we are a responsible country and a reliable partner. The Summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States was the first summit in an online format on a global scale. And the Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement brought together 120 countries, said President Ilham Aliyev.

The head of state noted that UN Secretary General Guterres, the President of the UN General Assembly, the Chairman of the African Union and the Vice President of the European Commission sent greetings to the Summit.

I must also say that, as far as I know, there were no serious contacts between the Non-Aligned Movement and the European Union because these two institutions are at different poles and their views often dont coincide. Therefore, this was also the first time. If we take the number of countries, we can see that 120 members are united in the Non-Aligned Movement, 27 in the European Union, which makes up 147, and there are 55 members in the African Union. True, some of them are members of the Non-Aligned Movement too. Despite this, the absolute majority of the world has, on the initiative of Azerbaijan, formed a single platform against COVID-19. I can say quite frankly  not for boasting but simply to voice the truth  that Azerbaijan unites the world. First, on a national basis, i.e. all work and the measures carried out on the territory of the country are exemplary. In terms of the per capita spending, the socioeconomic package we have initiated is perhaps among the first in the world, said President Ilham Aliyev.

The head of state pointed out that Azerbaijan acts as a responsible participant on the international plane.

Again, in proportion to the gross domestic product, there is no country that would make such a donation as us. True, some countries have declared large figures but where are these funds? They are not there. We provided cash. Initiatives put forward within the framework of international organizations are also appreciated and endorsed by the international community. In this difficult time, it is possible to see the true face of everyone. Who is capable of what, who and how controls the country, who does what against the crisis, who was able to mobilize people, society and who simply remains dependent on external assistance and asks for outside help. So we have once again shown ourselves, our people and the whole world that we are a dignified country. National interests are a priority for us. And people's health takes priority among national interests, said President Ilham Aliyev.

He noted that today's opening ceremony is of great importance.

First, because after the commissioning of 10 hospitals, we will have an additional 2,000 beds. But most importantly, it shows that having mobilized all the resources in a short time we, we were able to achieve great results. Of course, I would like to once again note the activities of doctors. They have indeed shown great dedication and heroism. I wish you continued success. But I also want to ask you to take care of yourself, dont come down, always live on and create as patriots, professionals and people who love others and provide medical services to citizens. Thank you! said President Ilham Aliyev.
The European Union has excised reference in a public letter that the coronavirus pandemic originated in China, after receiving pressure to do so from the Chinese foreign ministry.

The European External Action Service was pressured to remove a reference to the 'outbreak of the coronavirus in China' as an explanation for an abandoned EU-China summit.

The opinion piece was published in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

Pictured: An aerial view of the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China

The EU received pressure to take out the origin claim after accusing the country of spreading falsehoods about coronavirus.

The EU's ambassador to China, Nicolas Chapuis, who co-wrote the opinion piece, said it was 'regrettable' the sentence about the spread of COVID-19 had been 'edited'.

It had been written to mark nearly a half century of diplomatic relations between the European Union and Beijing.

Norbert Rottgen, head of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, was said to be in shock 'not once but twice', according to a report in The Telegraph.

Adding: 'First the EU ambassadors generously adopt Chinese narratives and then the EU representation accepts Chinese censorship of the joint op-ed.

'Speaking with one voice is important but it has to reflect our shared European values and interests.'

The letter would never have been published without the edit, according to The Telegraph.

A European External Action Service spokesperson said: 'The EU delegation was informed that publication could only take place with agreement of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs.

'The EU delegation made known its concerns. The EU continues to advocate a free press.

'In this case the EU delegation decided to proceed with publication with reluctance because it considered it important to communicate the key messages.'

Pictured: Virologists wearing high grade protective clothing inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan

China is seeking to quell an investigation into claims the pandemic originated there, spurred on by EU influence in the World Health Organisation.

America has shown support for the UN resolution on a probe into the origin.

But China hit back at the US yesterday accusing it of shifting focus over COVID-19 after President Donald Trump claimed the impact of the virus had been worse than Pearl Harbour or the 9/11 attacks.

The US-China tit-for-tat has seen President Trump proclaim the virus originated from a Wuhan laboratory.

China hit back saying the US military planted it there.

'We urge the US side to stop shifting the blame to China and turn to facts,' said Hua Chunying, from China's foreign ministry.

China said scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained in America and France. French President Emmanuel Macron said there was no evidence linking the Wuhan lab to the virus.
TELEMMGLPICT000137680279.jpeg

More than 700 detainees including convicted criminals have been released by the Home Office from immigration detention centres because the coronavirus pandemic means they cannot be deported.

The Home Office was forced to release at least 50 of them by judicial tribunals despite warning that they could pose a risk to the public.

The Government has had to free them because by law they can only detain them if they can remove them from the UK within a reasonable time.

More than 40 countries to which the Home Office planned to remove them have either closed their borders or imposed travel restrictions, making deportation impossible and requiring the detainees to be released.

A further 370 - described as largely convicted foreign offenders by the Home Office - are still being held in immigration detention centres

The release follows legal action begun in March by Detention Action, which claimed a significant proportion of the 1,500 held in immigration detention centres had serious underlying health conditions which left them facing a significant risk of serious harm or death from coronavirus.

It warned their continued detention was unlawful given the lack of flights in which to remove them within a reasonable period of time.

The Government challenged the release of 58 of the immigrants who had appealed their detention, saying it was reasonable in light of their particular situation, the likelihood of their absconding if released, and the level of risk they pose to the public.

The 700 include those who have overstayed their visas, asylum seekers, illegal migrants and people with convictions.

Detention Action is now considering further legal action to force the release of the remaining 370 to protect them from the deadly coronavirus.

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said any foreign offenders released would have served their time and be subject to the same conditions as British offenders including probation and licence restrictions.

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We are thinking about options that I think will involve some future litigation because we dont think the response so far is adequate, she said.

Meanwhile, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said a spike in migrant boats making the dangerous crossing of the English Channel is linked to lockdown restrictions on road and train crossings.


Pray for Leah Sharibu



14 May will mark Leahs third birthday as a captive of the Islamic States West Africa Province, an offshoot of the notorious Boko Haram terrorist group.



Christian Solidarity Worldwide and others continue to call on the Nigerian government to do everything in its power to ensure Leahs immediate and unconditional release. CSW calls on Christians to pray for Leah's release



As the world continues to contend with the coronavirus, there are many for whom COVID-19 is just one more threat on top of many others they have faced for years, and for whom threats to their lives and livelihoods are likely to continue long after the pandemic has passed.



This is indeed the case for many Christians in northern and central Nigeria. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) receives news of attacks, abductions and intimidations from these areas on a near daily basis. Church leaders are particularly vulnerable. A Christian girl called Leah Sharibu has come to represent the plight of many in her country.





Pray for Leah



On 14 May Leah turns 17 years old, but there will be no celebrations. The date will mark Leahs third birthday as a captive of the Islamic States West Africa Province (ISWAP), an offshoot of the notorious Boko Haram terrorist group.



Leah was one of 110 girls abducted from their school in Dapchi, Nigeria, on 19 February 2018. Five of them died in captivity. The following month the surviving girls were put into vehicles and returned to their families following government negotiations, but Leah was not among them.



The sole Christian in the group, Leah, who was just 14 at the time, was told she would be freed only if she renounced her faith and converted to Islam. However, in a show of inspiring and unwavering bravery, Leah refused. She has remained the terrorists captive ever since.



Leah shares her captivity with another Christian, nurse Alice Ngaddah, who was abducted with two other humanitarian workers in March 2018. In October 2018, following the execution of both of Alices Muslim colleagues for alleged apostasy, ISWAP declared that Leah and Alice would be their slaves for life.





Leah is still alive



In July 2019 ISWAP released a video in which an abducted aid worker implied both Leah and Alice had been executed. However, this was quickly discounted. Instead, reports indicate that both Leah and Alice are alive and well in spite of their circumstances. In an interview with Nigerian media in January 2020, another aid worker released by the terrorists reported that she had met Alice during her captivity, who confirmed that Leah is still alive and is currently being held at an undisclosed location.



It is in light of this knowledge that CSW and others continue to call on the Nigerian government to do everything in its power to ensure Leahs immediate and unconditional release, as well as that of all those held by terrorist factions. Earlier this year Leahs mother Rebecca joined a CSW-organised protest outside the Nigerian High Commission in London to mark the second anniversary of her abduction.







Mrs Sharibu delivered a petition signed by over 12,000 people to the High Commission, which called on the Nigerian government to take action. Addressing protesters gathered outside the High Commission, Mrs Sharibu urged them to continue praying until Leah is freed, and said that she was pleading with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfil his promises that he has made to me personally, that he is going to rescue Leah and ensure that she is released, and not just Leah, all the others in captivity.





Keep praying



Although current circumstances mean it is not possible to gather once again outside the High Commission to mark Leahs 17th birthday, CSW and others will be doing everything they can to act on Mrs Sharibus encouragements, including by holding an online prayer event on the evening of 14 May, as well as encouraging churches to pray on Sunday 17 May.



Please join us in praying the words of Psalm 142:7 over Leah and her fellow captives: Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.



It is difficult to imagine what Leah has been through over the past two years, but her brave refusal to renounce her faith is a powerful inspiration to us all. Even at such a young age she has shown the same steadfast faith as that of those listed in Hebrews 11. As we continue to pray for Leahs release, we must do so with that same faith, confident that she will one day be free to tell her story all over the world and inspire many more.



This article was written by Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Find out more about the online prayer event at 7.30pm on 14 May for Leah here.

Baptist Times, 08/05/2020
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 09:01:29|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- As of Thursday, the Chinese mainland has 219 imported cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that remained hospitalized, with five in severe conditions, the National Health Commission said Friday.

The Chinese mainland reported no new imported cases of the virus Thursday and the total number of imported cases is 1,680.

Three suspected cases imported from abroad were reported in Shanghai.

Of the total imported cases, 1,461 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, the commission said.

No deaths had been reported from the imported cases. Enditem
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Linkedin Yunindita Prasidya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, May 11, 2020 14:52 618 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6cd451 1 Business Indonesia,halal-food,COVID-19,Inventure-knowledge,McKinsey,Muslim-countries,Brazil,Australia Free

Halal food is rising in popularity as people turn to religious practices for comfort during this time of heightened uncertainty and anxiety, reports have shown.

Inventure Knowledge, a local research and consulting company, said in a report published on Monday that concerns over the risks of COVID-19 had contributed to an increase in peoples awareness about the importance of consuming halal and hygienic food, as the SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have started in a wet market in Wuhan, China. The economic powerhouse has since imposed a blanket ban on wild animal trade and consumption.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware that non-halal food and food that is not processed in a hygienic manner have great potential to cause diseases such as the one we see today, said the report, synonymizing halal with healthy and hygienic food.

The insight supports findings by McKinsey & Company, which showed a shift in consumer behaviors. Consumers prefer foods that are healthy and locally sourced more now than before the pandemic, the consulting company stated in an April 2020 report titled Reimagining food retail in Asia after COVID-19.

Yet, even before halal food gained in popularity due to increased hygiene concerns in recent weeks, reports on the global and domestic halal economy showed that the industry has been growing for years.

The worlds 1.8 billion Muslim consumers spent an estimated US$2.2 trillion in 2018 across different sectors of the halal economy, which indicated 5.2 percent year-on-year growth. The overall halal economy is projected to be worth $3.2 trillion by 2024, based on the 2019 State of the Global Islamic Economy report produced by DinarStandard, a research and advisory firm.

Indonesia Halal Lifestyle Center chairman Sapta Nirwandar explained in a webinar on April 24 that Indonesias Muslim consumers spent around $218.8 billion across core sectors of the halal economy in 2017 and that the figure was estimated to reach $330.5 billion by 2025. The food and beverage sector will see the biggest growth in value as spending in the sector is forecast to hit $247.8 billion by 2025, up from a recorded US$170.2 billion in 2017.

These are pre-COVID-19 projections, Sapta clarified, noting that the overall halal economy would be impacted due to declining purchasing power. However, he said that the halal food sector was among those least affected by the health crisis, alongside the halal pharmaceutical and halal media sectors. On the flip side, halal travel, halal cosmetics and modest fashion would be strongly affected, he said, as people were cutting back on non-essential spending. The trend is not only visible in Indonesia, as other countries have also recorded a surge in demand for halal food. The United Kingdom Halal Monitoring Committee (HMC), a halal certifying body, reported a significant increase in demand for halal meat due to the outbreak. With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, the demand for halal meat has increased. Where the average customer would buy, for example, 1 kg each week, they are now asking for up to 10 times more in the same visit, thus putting a strain on the market to fulfill the increased demand, the HMC said in a statement released on March 31. Despite Indonesia having a steadily growing halal economy  in 2019 the country became the fifth largest halal economy according to the Global Islamic Economy Indicator (as shown in the chart below)  the country has yet to fully benefit from it. As reported by DinarStandard, Indonesia ranks first for the most spending on halal food, amounting to $173 billion in 2018, significantly more than second-placed Turkey with $135 billion. However, Indonesia did not make it into the top five countries for most exports to members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, with the top five being Brazil, Australia, Sudan, Bangladesh and Turkey. The report also suggests that halal ingredients, halal feed, halal food-tech and meat-based meals and snacks are among the hot sectors for growth in 2020, emphasizing that there are prospective business opportunities to be tapped into across the halal food space. With the recent outbreak, people are looking to boost their immunity through healthy eating. The World Health Organization (WHO) has appealed to the public to consume more healthy food and avoid or reduce alcohol consumption as it weakens the immune system. This reflects halalan thoyyiban [adhering to Islamic principles]. This is indirectly promoting halal food, Sapta said during the webinar in response to the WHO guidelines, suggesting optimism about the growth of the halal food sector amid the pandemic.
The post-coronavirus world will need not only a vision, but also practical mechanisms to translate hopes and aspirations into robust reality

Two visions and schools of political analysis are emerging in the current COVID-19 pandemic era. The first is ambitious, seeking to lay the foundations for a new form of international relations, based on collective and multilateral action to face health, environmental, economic, security and political challenges. It further seeks a new prosperous, participatory world with concepts that exalt scientific research and its results, in which countries exchange experiences, knowledge, tools and tasks that improve everyones ability to tackle pandemics, economic risks and fluctuations.

A vision that is based on belief in science and technology, and academics as a source of national wealth for their countries of origin and the rest of the world.

It believes in the importance of white armies, complementing traditional armies in preserving the concept of a new development for national security that includes the health of societies and the environment, as well as attention to the concepts of political and economic security as determinants of national security.

A world devoid of wars and conflicts  dedicated to good public health, environment, economic development, working together towards peace and stability, integration and construction. It promotes the establishment of needed institutions and committees that will act like platforms to achieve each objective. A sincere and advanced vision committed to service all humanity and one that realises the value of the information age and the future of artificial intelligence. It develops concepts such as working remotely, lightening the burdens on traffic, the environment and the costs of daily life and its problems.

A vision that promotes a new participatory system free of exploitation based on belief in the human being and his or her happiness, welfare, security and health. It promises to exert all efforts to end conflicts, wars and occupation, surpassing an ancient system based on exploitation oppression and injustice.

The second vision is that which prevailed pre-pandemic, with all its protagonists who benefited from vexed atmospheres of political and economic exploitation and conflict. A system run by a few profiteers and based on prolonged wars or debt. Many will fight to protect and go back to the fundamentals of the old regime, to regain their power and interests as before.

We must work from now to launch, promote and protect the values of the first vision.

I suggest that the best mode of action to achieve that is launching a Universal Declaration of Principles, an international agreement, that includes all these principles.

There is no better place and timing than the next meeting of the UN General Assembly in September, where the international community and leaders of the countries of the world meet.

From now until September, I call upon diplomats to work together to draft the declaration and mobilise support from other world leaders. The initiative should come from the heads of states. It is important, for example, for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to speak with French President Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and they will communicate together with US President Trump and Russian President Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping to launch the drafting of the document.

After consulting at the summit level, each president can be tasked with putting forward the initiative and forming a supportive environment in public opinion, exchanging diplomats to help spur the new global declaration.

From now until September, there will be discussion and contention around the rules and foundations of our new world. Condensing its hopes and aspirations in the form of enforceable principles that take legitimacy from the consensus of the leaders of the countries of the world and its institutions could be a momentous step forward. Some may be satisfied with a change in language. But goodwill would fade within days if not matched with mechanisms and dynamics and as a reference point for a new world that we all deserve.

The proposed initiative should begin with a high-level philosophical introduction, thereafter including all the aforementioned principles and hopes in a declaration to be endorsed by world leaders in the General Assembly in September.

To conclude, documenting our aspirations for a new future is important in spite of any expected resistance, as the principles of any great revolutions or changes require registration for possible present or future use. The French Revolutions principles alone did not bestow enlightenment upon the world, except after decades of setbacks and returns to old and regressive regimes. When after crises these principles were matched by practical mechanisms, then they radiated and dazzled.

*The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Q: Due to the COVID-19 situation, my employer has told us that everyone making over $75,000 will be furloughed for one week every month from July until December 2020. Will I be able to collect unemployment from the Texas Workforce Commission for those weeks?

A: The short answer to your very complicated question is you should file a claim with the TWC ( www.twc.texas.gov) and see what happens. The worst is that your claim will be denied.

Note, if you are a salaried employee, your furlough week can be unpaid only if you do absolutely no work. That means no emails, phone calls or meetings. If you do any work at all, then technically you are entitled to your full salary.

Check out the TWC website for more information on COVID-19 claims.

Q: My wife and I each have children from prior marriages, and our wills contain a complex division of assets after we have both passed away. For our bank and brokerage accounts, should we name each other as the first beneficiary, and then have the second beneficiary be my estate under the terms set forth in Last Will and Testament dated June 6, 2018?

A: The answer to your question depends on the type of account you have.

If the account is one held as joint account with rights of survivorship, you dont need to add any beneficiaries. The survivorship feature means the account will pass to the one of you who outlives the other, and after you have both died, the account will automatically pass through the survivors estate.

If the account is held as tenants in common, then its a non-issue as to beneficiaries, as each of your half interest in the account will pass through your estate upon your death. Typically, you do not need to name beneficiaries with a tenants in common account.

If the account is an individual account, where only one of your names is on the account, thats where you need to be careful. You could name each other as the primary beneficiary, but the contingent beneficiary should either be my estate or you should have no alternate beneficiary.

Adding the words under the terms set forth in Last Will and Testament dated June 6, 2018 is not a good idea because there is no need to say all of that. There is also the risk that one of you might change your will and forget to change the contingent beneficiary on the account.

Of course, after one of you dies, the surviving spouse will be free to change how your properties are to be distributed. Often, the complex division of assets is replaced by a new and very different division soon after the first spouse dies. It often happens shortly after the children from the deceased spouse start asking about their inheritance.

Other times, the surviving spouse gets remarried (often within months of the first spouses death), and that introduces even more complexity into the situation.

The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Readers with legal problems, including those whose questions are addressed here, should consult attorneys for advice on their particular circumstances. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is board-certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Email questions to stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com.
GCI Liberty (GLIBA) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.26 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of $0.20 per share. This compares to loss of $1.12 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.

This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of 230%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this communications provider in Alaska would post a loss of $0.26 per share when it actually produced a loss of $1.92, delivering a surprise of -638.46%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates just once.

GCI Liberty, which belongs to the Zacks Wireless National industry, posted revenues of $235.80 million for the quarter ended March 2020, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 7.18%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $217.74 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters.

The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.

GCI Liberty shares have lost about 12.9% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -11.8%.

What's Next for GCI Liberty?

While GCI Liberty has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?

There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.

Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.

Story continues

Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for GCI Liberty was favorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to outperform the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is -$0.26 on $220 million in revenues for the coming quarter and -$0.85 on $889 million in revenues for the current fiscal year.

Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Wireless National is currently in the top 16% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.



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Newly discovered cell type plays crucial role in immune response to respiratory infections

With a discovery that could rewrite the immunology textbooks, an international group of scientists, including the teams of Bart Lambrecht, Martin Guilliams, Hamida Hammad, and Charlotte Scott (all from the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) identified a new type of antigen-presenting immune cell. These cells, that are part of an expanding family of dendritic cells, play a crucial role presenting antigens to other immune cells during respiratory virus infections, and could explain how convalescent plasma helps to boost immune responses in virus-infected patients.

Inflammation and immunity

When our body faces an infection, it responds with inflammation and fever. This is a sign that the immune system does its work, and leads to the activation of many cells, like soldiers in an army. Dendritic cells (DCs) are the generals of that army. They can precisely activate and instruct the soldiers to kill infected cells by presenting antigens derived from the 'invaders' to cells of the immune system.

Mistaken identity

There are several types of DCs that perform antigen-presenting functions in the body. A first type of conventional DCs continuously scan the body for dangerous invaders, even when there is no infection. When there is inflammation triggered by infection, another subset of DCs emerges from inflammatory monocytes. Because monocyte-derived DCs are easily prepared in vitro from monocytes isolated form human blood, it was always assumed these cells were very important antigen-presenting cells. Clinical trials using monocyte-derived DCs in cancer therapy have however been disappointing.

A study by the teams of Bart Lambrecht, Martin Guilliams, Hamida Hammad, and Charlotte Scott (all from the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) and international colleagues, shows that monocyte-derived DCs are poor antigen-presenting cells, but have wrongly been assumed to have these functions because of a case of mistaken identity.

The scientists studied mice with a viral respiratory infection (pneumonia virus of mice and influenza virus) with single-cell technologies. This single-cell resolution allowed them to finely separate the monocyte-derived cells from other DCs during their response to the infection. They found that monocyte-derived DCs do exist, but actually do not present antigens. The reason for all the confusion in the past is that a look-alike new DC emerges - called inflammatory type 2 conventional DC, or inf-cDC2 - that combines some of the best characteristics of monocytes, macrophages, and conventional DCs, to induce the best form of immunity.

Bart Lambrecht: "This was a big surprise for us. We've all been taught that monocyte-derived cells are excellent antigen presenting cells, certainly when there's inflammation. Now, we show that it's actually a new hybrid DC type that's doing all the work. This really changes what we know about the immune system and is very important knowledge for understanding respiratory viral infections and other inflammatory diseases."

Martin Guilliams: "It took a massive team effort but the strength of single-cell sequencing has finally cracked the complex DC code. Many contradicting findings from the last two decades now make much more sense. This also opens tremendous therapeutic opportunities, since vaccination strategies can now be designed to trigger formation of inf-cDC2s and thus generate a stronger antiviral immune response."

Charlotte Scott: "Through the use of single cell technologies we have been able to align all the findings from the past few years and identify the distinct cell types involved. Moving forward it will be very interesting to see under what other inflammatory conditions these inf-cDC2s are generated and how they can potentially be targeted therapeutically."

Convalescent plasma and COVID-19

The findings of the researchers also have a direct relevance for the current COVID-19 pandemic, caused by another respiratory virus. An emergency treatment that is currently being explored is the use of convalescent plasma, or the blood plasma of recovered patients.

Cedric Bosteels, lead author of the new paper: "One of the unique features of the new DCs is that they express functional Fc receptors for antibodies that are found in the plasma of patients who have recovered from COVID-19"

This study is the first to show that one of the mechanisms through which convalescent plasma and the virus-specific antibodies in it work, is via boosting of inf-cDC2. Since boosted DCs induce a much stronger immune response, this study reveals a new target for therapeutic intervention for viral infections and other inflammatory diseases.

###

Publication

Bosteels, Neyt, et al. (2020). Inflammatory Type 2 cDCsAcquire Features of cDC1s and Macrophages to Orchestrate Immunity to Respiratory Virus Infection. Immunity. 52: 1 - 18.

DOI: j.immuni.2020.04.005.

Funding

This study was funded by the European Research Council, University Ghent, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), and the Health Research Council New Zealand.

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Around 1300 students from different parts of Bihar have left for their homes by a special train, arranged by Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

The special train, up to Purnia in Bihar, was arranged after AMU vice chancellor Prof Tariq Mansoor talked to railway authorities as there were no examinations scheduled in May and June and students also wanted to go to their homes for Ramzan and Eid. Students were screened and medical check up was arranged at the proctor office, informed proctor Prof M Wasim Ali.

The DSW Prof Mujahid Beg, who happens to be the chairman, department of medicine, deputed doctors for screening students for fever and other symptoms, related to coronavirus. GRP personnel are also accompanying students for the security purpose.

Earlier, vice chancellor Prof Mansoor directed all the provosts of the university residential halls to make adequate arrangements for Iftar, dinner and Sehri of the students, proceeding by special trains to various districts of Bihar.
Moody's had, in November 2019, downgraded India's outlook to negative from stable on concerns of lower economic growth.

New Delhi: Moody's Investors Service on Friday projected India's growth at zero percent for the current fiscal and said the negative outlook on the sovereign rating reflects increasing risks that GDP growth will remain significantly lower than in the past.

The outlook also partly shows weaker policy effectiveness to address economic and institutional issues, it noted in the update to its November 2019 rating forecast.

Stating that the negative outlook indicates that an upgrade is unlikely in the near term, Moody's said high government debt, weak social and physical infrastructure, and a fragile financial sector face further pressures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Downgrade of India's rating would occur if fiscal metrics weaken materially, the countrys growth slowdown reduces prospects for durable fiscal consolidation, Moodys says The credit rating major pegs India's real GDP growth at zero for FY21 & 6.6% for FY22 pic.twitter.com/9AwLrRRaDk  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) May 8, 2020

Moody's had, in November 2019, affirmed India's 'Baa2' rating but revised downward the outlook to negative from stable on concerns of lower economic growth.

'Baa2' is an investment-grade rating with moderate credit risk, and is two notches above the junk grade.

The negative outlook reflects increasing risks that economic growth will remain significantly lower than in the past, it said.

This is in light of the deep shock triggered by the coronavirus outbreak, and partly reflects lower government and policy effectiveness at addressing longstanding economic and institutional weaknesses, leading to a gradual rise in the debt burden from already high levels," Moody's said in a credit opinion titled 'Government of India- Baa2 negative'.

It said the shock from coronavirus pandemic will exacerbate an already material slowdown in economic growth, which has significantly reduced the prospects for durable fiscal consolidation and government measures to support the economy should help to reduce the depth and duration of a slowdown.

However, prolonged financial stress among rural households, weak job creation and, more recently, a credit crunch among non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) have increased the probability of a more entrenched weakening, Moody's said.

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It added that prospects of further reforms to support business investment and growth at high levels, and significantly broaden the narrow tax base, have diminished.

Moody's projected India's economic growth for 2020-21 fiscal at 0 percent, lower than 4.8 percent estimated in 2019-20. Growth is expected to rebound to 6.6 percent in 2021-22 fiscal.

For calendar year 2020, Moody's had last month projected a 0.2 percent growth.

The rapid and widening spread of the COVID-19, deteriorating global economic outlook, falling oil prices, and financial market turmoil are creating a severe and extensive economic and financial shock, Moodys said.

Lower growth and government revenue generation, coupled with coronavirus-related fiscal stimulus measures, will lead to higher government debt ratios which we project to rise to around 81 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) over the next few years," it noted.

At present, Indias debt is about 72 percent of the estimated GDP of 2019.

It said the economic shock from the pandemic and the fiscal policy response will result in significant slippage from the 3.5 percent fiscal deficit target in current fiscal.

"Further increases in fiscal expenditure to support the economy, combined with weaker overall revenue and disinvestment receipts, are likely to drive the central government deficit to around 5.5 percent of GDP in fiscal 2020 (2020-21)," Moody's said.

The international rating agency said consistent slippage from central government deficit targets, a widening of state-level deficits, and challenges in implementing the goods and services tax indicates that fiscal policymaking has been "less effective".

Also, slow progress in resolving banking sector asset quality issues and addressing non-bank financial sector risks, as well as lack of progress on land and labour reforms at the national level, highlight still material government and policy effectiveness issues, it added.

The outlook for India's debt burden is significantly dependent on trends in nominal GDP growth, it stated.

On 26 March, the government had announced a stimulus package worth Rs 1.7 lakh crore comprising of free foodgrains and cooking gas to poor and cash dole to poor women and elderly.

A second package, aimed at industries, is said to be in works and is likely to be announced shortly.

Overall, the fiscal stimulus is modest compared with support packages implemented in many other countries, particularly given the breadth of India's nationwide lockdown measures.

We expect the government will announce additional measures in the future... While the measures will help reduce some of the economic damage to households, the lockdown and ongoing stress in the financial system will cause a sharp decline in India's overall growth, exacerbating fiscal pressures, it said.

Several international agencies including International Monetary Fund and World Bank have cut India's growth forecast over concerns about the fallout of COVID-19 pandemic.

The IMF has slashed India's GDP growth projection to 1.9 percent in 2020 from 5.8 percent estimated in January.

Similarly, the World Bank has estimated India's economy to grow between 1.5 to 2.8 percent in the 2020-21.

Fitch has projected India's GDP to grow at 0.8 percent this fiscal, while S&P pegs GDP growth for India at 1.8 percent in the current fiscal.
On the occasion of World Thalassaemia Day, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) has appealed to various organisations to come forward and donate blood to the hospital that is facing shortage of blood due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

The department of paediatrics along with department of immunohematology and transfusion medicine jointly observed the day at DMCH.

Realising the gravity of the situation, the Punjab ministry of health had also recently issued a circular to the hospitals to make adequate arrangement of blood units as no blood donations camps were being organised due to curfew in the state.

Thalassaemia is a genetic blood disorder, caused due to fewer red blood cells and less haemoglobin in the body.

Dr Amarjit Kaur, professor and head of transfusion medicine, said that the patients of thalassaemia, oncology and other emergencies in the hospital still required blood and blood components and the hospital was running short on blood reserves.

Dr M Joseph John, head of department, clinical hematology, Christian Medical College and Hospital, also admitted that there were initial hiccups in blood donation due to the lockdown, but things were gradually being streamlined.

As many as 270 thalassaemia patients are enrolled with DMCH and 60 with Christian Medical College and Hospital, where 73 have recently undergone bone marrow transplants.

On May 7 and 8, Shah Satnam Ji Green S Welfare Force Wing of Dera Sacha Sauda, Sirsa, and Waheguru Blood Sewa Society donated 84 and 34 units, respectively.
Right to peaceful protest and open criticism of government policies does not extend to disturbing public order, a Delhi court said on Friday, dismissing the bail plea of Shahrukh Pathan, who allegedly pointed a gun at a head constable during the northeast Delhi riots.

Taking note of the viral video footage of the incident, Additional Sessions Judge Sanjeev Kumar Malhotra refused to grant relief to Pathan.

"The right to protest is a fundamental right in a democracy but this right of peaceful protest and open criticism of government policies does not extend to disturbing the public order... Keeping in view the totality of facts and circumstances of the case at this stage, I am not inclined to grant bail to the accused. Bail application accordingly stands dismissed," the judge said in the order.

During the hearing held through video conferencing, Special Public Prosecutor, appearing for the police, opposed the bail application saying Pathan was leading the mob and the whole country saw the manner in which he was leading the mob.

He further claimed that the weapon of offence has been recovered from Pathan and the police is still investigating the role of the accused with respect to the criminal conspiracy of the riots.

Advocate Asghar Khan, representing Pathan, had sought bail for the accused contending that there was a delay of two days in lodging of the FIR.

Pathan had sought bail on the ground that jails are overcrowded and pose a higher risk of catching coronavirus.

The accused sought bail saying he has been languishing in jail for over a month now.

The Delhi High Court had on Tuesday asked a trial court to ensure that if Pathan files a bail plea, it is heard within two days.

Following the high court's direction, Khan withdrew the bail application and sought liberty to approach the sessions court with the bail plea.

Khan had told the high court that a bail application was earlier filed before the sessions court but it was not taken up for hearing on the ground that there was no urgency in the matter.

Pathan, 23, whose picture showing him pointing a gun at unarmed Delhi Police head constable Deepak Dahia during the communal riots went viral on social media, was arrested on March 3 from Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district.

The police registered a case against him under the sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Arms Act.

The police said it recovered the pistol that Pathan had allegedly pointed at the police official, from his house.

After opening fire, he kept the pistol at home and fled from the city in a car, police had said.

In the viral video, Pathan, a resident of northeast Delhi's Ghonda area, could be seen pointing his pistol at the policeman on the Jaffrabad-Maujpur road on February 24.

Police had said after seeing himself on channels following the incident, Pathan changed his clothes and fled to Punjab. He then moved to Bareilly in UP before hiding at a friend''s house in Shamli in the state.

In February, clashes broke out in northeast Delhi between the groups supporting and opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, in which at least 53 people died and about 200 were injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Today is V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.

Seventy-five years ago today, on May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe officially ended, as Germany unconditionally signed a surrender agreement to the United States and Great Britain. Unconditional. No apologies to the Germans for winning or regrets for their justified loss. Unconditional. And backed up.

On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms. In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark  the German surrender was realized in a final ceasefire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

Although most of the commemorative events for this auspicious anniversary have been modified or canceled because of the Wuhan coronavirus-19 crisis such as this flyover, the Library of Congress will honor the occasion utilizing modern technology by hearing from the World War ll veterans themselves.

The library's Veterans' History Project announced Tuesday the launch of "End of World War II: 75th Anniversary," an online collection of video and audio interviews with World War II veterans about their experiences and what the end of the war meant to them. The library said in a statement that many of the oral histories are being put online for the first time. (snip) All these stories and more are available at the Library's Experiencing War site.

As the site explains:

75 years ago, the world watched, waited, and finally celebrated as years of war came to an end. As hostilities drew to a close, first with the Allied victory in Europe in May 1945 and then four months later with Japan's surrender in August, American servicemen and women grappled with the reality of postwar life. Though peace was welcome and sweet, the end of the war brought about profound changes and challenges. Here, the Veterans History Project presents a look into the wartime experiences of just a few of the 16 million Americans who served during World War II, and what they confronted at war's end.

Stars and Stripes details the virtual events of U.S. forces in Europe honoring the anniversary.

The Pentagon will go virtual Friday to call attention to the sacrifices on the 75th anniversary of V-E Day. At U.S. European Command's Patch Barracks headquarters in Stuttgart  a base named after Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch, who led the allied push into southern Germany  public events will also go virtual. On Friday, Gen. Tod Wolters, EUCOM chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, will participate in a virtual wreath laying in Belgium. "On this milestone anniversary of V-E Day, we remember all who resisted behind enemy lines, those who tirelessly worked on farms and in factories to supply and equip the war effort, who fought on land, sea, and in the air," Wolters said in a statement. "We also reflect on the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, the tremendous destruction, the millions of lives lost which are all solemn reminders of the importance of preserving peace."

Remember: Never forget! Never forgive!

Image credit: Galt Museum & Archives, public domain.
Spains banks are using a government loan program designed to help small businesses ravaged by the coronavirus outbreak to shift risky credit off their books, a study found.

About 37 per cent of loans granted under the program to small- and medium-sized companies in Catalonia went to paying down old debt, according to a survey by Pimec, an association that advocates on behalf of such businesses in the region. Most of the countrys large banks were following that practice, led by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA and Banco de Sabadell SA, said the study, which is based on responses from 432 companies.

BBVA didnt immediately provide comment. Sabadell wasnt immediately available for comment.

Some lenders are telling companies they must use government-backed loans to pay off existing credit lines in order to get access to new financing through the crisis program, the study showed. The practice threatens to undermine the the goal of quickly getting liquidity to companies so that they can survive one of Europes strictest lockdowns.

If it continues, this initiative will not increase liquidity, Pimec president Josep Gonzalez told journalists. It could mean that the funds that the government is destining to this program would be insufficient to respond to the decline in economic activity.

Economy Minister Nadia Calvino has said that using state-backed loans to pay down existing debts isnt allowed under the program. A ministry spokesman said government officials and Spains central bank are closely monitoring the program.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pledged in March that Spain would back as much as 100 billion in loans to companies. So far the government has approved three tranches of about 20 billion euros for loans that are backed by the Institute of Official Credit, or ICO. The country guarantees 80 per cent of loans to small and mid-sized companies, and 70 per cent of loans to large corporations affected by the crisis.

While most of Spains major banks appear to use the program to have old loans paid down, some have done it more than others. The poll found that 79 per cent of loans through BBVA were used to pay off existing loans. For Sabadell, the proportion was 62 per cent, for Banco Santander SA it was 40 per cent and for CaixaBank SA 11 per cent.

CaixaBank declined to comment. Santander didnt immediately provide a comment.

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B rits have been urged to stick to the coronavirus lockdown rules over the Bank Holiday weekend as temperatures are set to soar.

People are set to bask in glorious sunshine over the long weekend with most of the country enjoying wall-to-wall sunshine.

The mercury is expected to peak at 26C in the south - some 10C above average for this time of year.

But the Met Police's Chief Superintendent Karen Findlay, who is running the force's response to the Covid-19 pandemic this weekend, urged Londoners to comply with the current restrictions.

She said: I know its a bank holiday weekend, and the weather is due to be good but I would ask that you continue to follow the restrictions, this is about keeping you safe.

The restrictions remain to only go out for one of the four following reasons : exercise, to get essential shopping, for medical reasons or essential travel to work."

Ch Supt Findlay warned that officers will be out on patrol and that: Enforcement will always be a last resort where it is absolutely necessary."

A runner in the sunshine in Greenwich Park / AFP via Getty Images

On following the rules, she said: The vast majority of people are, and I thank them for their continued support and co-operation at this challenging time, in order to prevent the spread of the virus and extra burden on our NHS colleagues."

It comes as Dominic Raab told the public to "follow the guidance" and resist the urge to linger outdoors this bank holiday weekend, despite the sunshine and warm temperatures forecast.

Speaking at the Downing Street briefing, the Foreign Secretary insisted there will be no change to social distancing rules until the Prime Minister makes an address to the nation on Sunday evening.

Dominic Raab: virus is not yet beaten and still infectious

Mr Raab said on Thursday: "Any changes in the short term will be modest, small, incremental and very carefully monitored."

He added: "For the moment it is really important, particularly as people look towards a warm bank holiday weekend, that we continue to follow the guidance in place at this time."

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He denied Boris Johnson had been "unhelpful" in hinting at a change to the lockdown just before the bank holiday, but without offering any detail as to what it might entail.

Much of the UK will be bathed in glorious sunshine, with temperatures expected to soar up to 26C (78.8F) on the VE Day bank holiday on Friday - before falling again over the weekend.

Met Office forecaster Matthew Box told the Standard: There will be some cloud around, but its going to feel warm, widely into the low 20s, with highs of 25C or 26C in London."

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said previously: "There is no change to the advice.

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"We are asking people to stay at home in order to stop the spread of the virus and, by doing so, protect the NHS and save lives."

Asked if that meant "don't sunbathe this weekend", the spokesman said: "If you want to put it like that."
WASHINGTON - When Attorney General William Barr put together a long-awaited national commission to study policing in America in January, all 18 commissioners were members of law enforcement, with no members from the defense bar, civil rights organizations or academia. The commission then announced 15 working groups, but those, too, were made up of nearly all police officials or prosecutors.

When the commission began holding hearings, it did not formally announce them nor allow the public to attend or participate. So the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, known as the LDF, is now asking a federal judge to halt the commission's work.

In a lawsuit against Barr, the Justice Department and the commission, the LDF argues that the panel has violated a law setting out how federal advisory commissions must be composed and function. Barr has indicated he does not think that law applies to the policing group.

"It has been abundantly clear since its inception," said Sherrilyn Ifill, the LDF's president, that the policing commission "was created to perpetuate the false notion that law enforcement is under attack, which Attorney General Barr and President Trump have frequently espoused as a justification for undermining measures to promote police accountability."

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit, which will be heard in federal court in Washington by Senior U.S. District Judge John Bates, a President George W. Bush appointee. The LDF is seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the commission from meeting or issuing any reports.

A presidential commission launched in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson helped lead to such innovations as the 911 emergency number and improved police training. Police groups in recent years have pushed for a similar group, and President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing in 2015 recommended a "national crime and justice task force." Both the Johnson and Obama commissions included police and civilian members.

But two bills in Congress authorizing a new policing commission, with bipartisan support and backing from numerous civil rights groups, stalled, so the International Association of Chiefs of Police urged President Donald Trump to enact one by executive order. Trump did so at the IACP convention in October, setting out a year for the Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice to present him with a report and recommendations. He tasked Barr with determining the composition and procedures of the new commission.

Barr announced and swore in the panel members in January. The chairman of the commission is Phil Keith, a former Knoxville, Tennessee, police chief and director of the Community Oriented Policing Services in the Justice Department. The other 17 commissioners are either federal or local law enforcement members or prosecutors. A number of civil rights and defense groups said they were not consulted before the commission was announced.

The commission then announced 15 working groups that, in addition to focuses on technology and crime reduction, have themes such as "Respect for Law Enforcement" and "Police Officer Health." Of the 112 people on these 15 working groups, only five are not from law enforcement - three elected officials, one federal tribal official, and one public defender.

Terry Cunningham, deputy executive director of the IACP, said in December that he hoped the commission would be diverse. "We want to make sure we have people that are not in lockstep with law enforcement," Cunningham said. "That gives the commission the credibility that it needs to create a living, breathing document." He said Thursday that he stood by that statement, that "to get the best solutions, we need to hear from folks that don't always agree with us," but the IACP was not involved in selecting members of the commission.

After the commission's first meeting following its swearing-in at the Justice Department in January, it met publicly at an IACP meeting in Miami in February. Subsequent meetings have been held by teleconference due to the coronavirus pandemic. The hearings are announced by press release to the news media, who are invited to listen in, but with no other public notices or availability. Experts from various subject areas have read short statements to the commissioners, who sometimes ask questions of the speakers. The audio and transcripts of 14 such meetings have been posted to the commission's website, though not the February meeting.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), first passed in 1972, governs "any committee, board, commission . . . established or utilized by the President in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President." The act requires that all such meetings shall be open to the public and that notices of each meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, which the commission has not done.

The FACA also requires that interested people be permitted to "file statements with any advisory committee," and the commission has allowed members of the public to file written statements. But after the pandemic hit, the policing commission moved up the deadline for submission of public comments, from May 31 to April 30. "The Commission has operated in a way that has largely shut the public out from meaningful participation," the LDF argued.

The federal committee act also requires such commissions "to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented" so that they "will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest." The LDF lawsuit repeatedly invokes this part of the law to criticize the makeup of the policing commission, noting there are no criminologists, no public health or mental health or recovery practitioners, no civil rights or community leaders, or labor, business or religious group representatives.

"The intended goal is clear," the LDF wrote, "recommendations that will give more power and protection to law enforcement, reinvigorate tough-on-crime measures, and cut down on the rights of citizens."

The suit cites the FACA violations as reasons for Judge Bates to enjoin the commission from meeting or acting. But in the last sentence of a seven-page memo implementing the commission, Barr wrote that the commission "is not intended to be subject to . . . the Federal Advisory Committee Act."

Natasha Merle, senior counsel for the LDF, responded: "Just because Attorney General Barr wills it doesn't make it so. There are very clear guidelines of when a commission is subject to FACA and when it isn't. They are violating pretty much every provision of FACA." She noted that the government has 60 days to respond to the complaint and said she hopes that Bates would move the case quickly after that.

Although Barr has tasked the commission with improving police-community relations, "you don't fix relationships unless both sides are at the table," said Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution. The commission is "lacking in accountability and transparency," she added. "If you're going to study the relationship between law enforcement and the community, your process has to have integrity, because integrity is essential to building trust."

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which was also integral in the creation of the commission, declined to discuss its lack of civilian members because his organization was not involved in selecting the members. He said the commission was "a unique opportunity to develop a blueprint for improving the way in which we do our jobs" and "to improve relationships and cooperation with the community, which would be to everyone's advantage."
Kristie Rodriguez and her daughter Xochitl spent a lot of time planning the teen's quinceanera celebration to mark her 15th birthday.

Every little Hispanic girl dreams about her quinceanera and her wedding. Those are your two big days in your life, Rodriguez, 45, from San Antonio, told NBC News.

Then the coronavirus hit  and stay-at-home orders left Rodriguez having to reimagine the venerated Latino tradition in a very different way.

It took some creativity and work, but Rodriguez and her husband, Jimmy, surprised Xochitl on April 21 with a low-key but unforgettable version of her big day: a drive-by quinceanera. Xochitl was able to share it with her closest family and friends  at a safe distance.

Across the country, families have found ways to celebrate.

Happy 15th to our baby girl!! Quinceanera... covid 19 style pic.twitter.com/Mc7I7otBk2  Kristie Rodriguez (@JagMathKRod) April 22, 2020

A rite of passage, celebrated a new way

The quinceanera, observed in Latin America and in many U.S. Latino households, celebrates the transition of a young girl into womanhood on her 15th birthday. Generation after generation passes on the tradition.

Usually, there is a Mass where the priest blesses you as you get ready for your transition, from being a young girl to becoming a woman, which of course we couldnt do, Rodriguez said, emotionally, over the phone.

In the months leading up to her only daughters celebration, Rodriguez had meticulously shopped with Xochitl for the right dress, complete with a tiara, and planned for a church Mass and an elaborate reception with family and friends.

Xochitl Rodriguez, 15, on the day of her quinceanera on April 21. 2020. (Alexandria Guerrero)

Remembering her own celebration in 1990, Rodriguez, who is of Mexican American heritage, was sad she couldn't do the same for her daughter in the age of COVID-19.

The family adapted, though. For instance, the celebration involves having 14 couples representing each year of the young girl's life, "and then youre No. 15, Rodriguez explained.

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Instead, Rodriguez and her husband searched throughout their home for clothing from their daughters doll collection and her Build-a-Bears, dressed up the figures and gathered them outside.

Xochitl was told to dress up in her special dress for a photo shoot outside on her special day.

Image: Xochitl Rodriguez (Jimmy Rodriguez)

We had blown up the balloons the night before and had kept them in the garage and then kind of made the mad dash to decorate the yard when it was time for her to go outside, Rodriguez explained.

When Xochitl came out, she didnt just find a photographer. Instead, family and friends welcomed her, snapping photos, singing the popular Spanish song Las Mananitas and wishing her a happy birthday near the sidewalk in front of their home.

Image: quincea?era (Jimmy Rodriguez)

Xochitl said she never thought she would be able to see the closest people in her life on her special day.

I kind of lost hope of having anyone over or having a normal birthday where I can see my family, and I feel like my mom and my dad really made it special, trying to get the people that were closest to me, she said.

Rodriguez saw her daughter's gratitude and was so happy they could pull it off.

We actually miraculously kept it a secret from my child, which was really hard in this situation when youre together 24/7, Rodriguez said.

Xochitl's drive-by quinceanera has not been the only one. Another in California shows the updated version of the traditional celebration.

One Puerto Rican dad from Kokomo, Indiana, also held a quinceanera for his daughter, Alyvia, outside his family's home as family and friends watched at a safe distance, some from inside their vehicles.

They danced to "My Little Girl" by Tim McGraw on her birthday, May 5. "She couldn't stop smiling and talking about it. She still talks about how excited she was, and I was so glad I was able to pull something off for her," Jason Vazquez, 36, told NBC News.

@somegoodnews @johnkrasinski we had to cancel my daughters Quinceanera due to COVID-19. We still wanted to do something to celebrate, so we invited friends and family to follow social distance protocol and join us for a Changing of the Shoes ceremony in front of our house. pic.twitter.com/DbTy7wr2tV  Jason Vazquez (@Corpsmanjv) May 4, 2020

Still, there are aspects of the tradition that families miss.

It was very different, because our culture is very much about physical affection  you know, the hugging, the kissing, the touching  and it was really hard to see them and not be able to touch them, Rodriguez said, speaking of the relatives and friends who came to cheer Xochitl on.

Its just hard," Rodriguez said. "Although my daughter will never forget that birthday  whether its what we wanted or what we planned or not  we tried to put as many of the traditions as we could."

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When filmmaker Kerry David first started researching the poaching crisis in Africa criminals killing endangered animals for profit  she only saw men on the front lines fighting to protect them.

Then she started hearing about some fierce females  rangers and even a former police captain who started a rhino orphanage  who were doing everything they could to protect elephants, rhinos and other endangered species that poachers are quickly making extinct.

As an award-winning filmmaker, David knew she had to tell their stories.

The result? The breathtaking documentary Breaking Their Silence: Women on the Frontline of the Poaching War, which shows firsthand what courageous women are doing to protect endangered animals.

The illegal wildlife trade, David points out, not only puts endangered species at risk  but it has contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced the world to isolate at home and social distance as more than 269,000 have died, per the latest figures from the New York Times.

Kerry David

I never could have imagined how timely my film would be when I set off to meet these courageous women who fight on the frontlines of this mostly silent war, David tells PEOPLE.

The connection that illegally poached wildlife, specifically the pangolin in an Asian market in this instance, has a direct impact on our well-being," she continues. "We might well be home and quarantined because we ventured into areas where humans and wildlife should not interact."

David adds, We are not supposed to be interacting with much of the wildlife that brings us viruses (MERS/SARS/COVID-19). Hopefully this great universal pause will give all of us a chance to examine our relationship to wildlife and the planet.

For two nights only on Saturday and May 14, viewers worldwide will be able to watch Breaking Their Silence: Women on the Frontline of the Poaching War on Vimeo for $19.99.

The film can be viewed for a full 24 hours. The rental includes a one-year membership to Davids non-profit organization OverAndAboveAfrica.com  a $60 value. For more information, visit the page on Vimeo.

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A 20-year film industry veteran, David began her film career at Paramount and went on to serve as the assistant for Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise before starting her own production company in 2001.

Her film credits include the Agent Cody Banks franchise starring Hilary Duff and Muniz and Like Dandelion Dust, based on The New York Times best-selling book and starring Mira Sorvino and Barry Pepper.

But it was her work as a philanthropist through her non-profit Over and Above Africa that introduced her to the nightmare that Africa and Asias endangered species face every day as poachers torture and maim them to make money.

Keeping the animals alive helps the economy more than killing the animals, David has said.

The Big Life Foundation, an organization that protects elephants and wildlife, did a study showed that each elephant brings in $140 million over its lifetime because of tourism, David said in a 2019 interview on CNN.

But if you kill it just to hunt it, it's $40,000, so actually it is more effective to find ways to keep these elephants alive and find ways to live in harmony with mankind than it is to actually lift the banand declare open season on these elephants, which are such beautiful sentient beings, David told CNN.

At the time, Botswana had lifted its ban on elephant hunting  a law David is trying to fight.

We must take accountability that we have taken up every square inch of this planet," she says, "leaving little space for the wildlife that contributes crucially to our biosphere peacefully."

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. PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMe to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, click here.
A Google affiliate has abandoned plans to build a futuristic neighborhood on Toronto's lakefront, depicted in this undated photo.

A Google affiliate on Thursday abandoned plans to build a futuristic neighborhood on Toronto's lakefront that was to include robots for delivering mail and collecting garbage, citing economic uncertainty.

Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google's parent Alphabet, had proposed building a carbon-neutral community "from the internet up," where tall buildings would be made of timber and technology would be geared to catering to every aspect of modern living.

A provisional green light to build on the 12-acre site was granted in October 2019. A final say was expected later this month.

But Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff said in a statement that "as unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan."

"And so, after a great deal of deliberation, we concluded that it no longer made sense to proceed with the Quayside project," he said.

Conceptual innovations and design work on the project launched in 2017, however, still "represent a meaningful contribution to the work of tackling big urban problems," Doctoroff said.

"While we won't be pursuing this particular project, the current health emergency makes us feel even more strongly about the importance of reimagining cities for the future."

Sidewalk Labs had envisioned heated sidewalks and bike paths that melt snow in winter, street-side parking that could be pre-booked, and underground robots that distribute parcels and manage waste.

Sensors would also have measured pedestrians' gait, water consumption and trash productionall in hopes of better understanding and adapting to the dynamics of urban life.

Proponents including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had heralded the opportunity to create an innovation hub where tens of thousands of people would live and work in Canada's largest metropolis.

But, in an era of global concern over data protection, the blueprint also faced a flurry of criticism over the potential for lost privacy and data misuse, as well as over the privatization of public services.

 2020 AFP
'Two consecutive quarters of negative growth are the technical definition of an economic recession, and for the first time in this generation's memory, we may be staring at one,' observes Aakar Patel.

IMAGE: A worker pulls a loaded cart at a market in Old Delhi, May 4, 2020. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo

Let's have a look at the economic fallout of the current lockdown today and why measuring it will be easier than such shocks have been in the past.

One of the problems India has as a modern economy is that of data.

This is something that the government and the prime minister have acknowledged and they have attempted to change this lack of information, though without much success.

The problem, briefly described, is as follows.

India's economy is largely in the informal sector.

The informal sector means that economic activity which is not taxed directly, and which may not even be registered.

Almost all businesses that use only family labour, paanwallahs, sabziwallahs, many shopkeepers even, all labourers and most labour contractors, most farmers, domestic workers, many traders and some professionals come under this informal economy.

The government's Economic Survey of 2018-2019 said that more than 9 out of every 10 Indian workers are in this informal sector, meaning it is much more relevant and significant than the formal sector.

However, we do not even know what the size of the informal economy is.

Of course, by its very nature, it does not have deep engagement with the State in terms of tax payments or being regulated and so the government does not know of its existence.

The second issue is that some of this informal economy also operates on the formal side.

Some small businesses work as suppliers to larger businesses that are formal, meaning regulated and taxed.

Many small businesses are partially tax paying and partially regulated.

All this makes the collection of data and therefore the estimation of economic growth difficult in India.

India's GDP, or the total value of goods and services produced by our country, is derived primarily from the formal sector's data.

This data is then used and it is assumed that they have a relationship with the informal sector and thus a national figure is estimated.

The formal sector, though it is not very big, has good data including high frequency data such as the sales of automobiles.

Companies like Maruti and Bajaj around the first of every month put out the total number of vehicles that they have sold to their dealers in the previous month.

On May 1, Maruti announced that for the first time in its history it had achieved zero sales in April because of the lockdown, and probably something quite close to zero in production as well.

But such accurate and frequent indicators are absent from most of the economy which means we need to rely on guesswork.

This is a problem and it is why the prime minister and others in government have been seeking to change this, though without much success.

So why is this relevant at this point in time?

Let us compare the current crisis to the one that was similar: The demonetisation or notebandi, which was announced on the night of November 8, 2016.

It became clear around mid December 2016 that this would lead to economic difficulties and wipe out many small businesses.

The government denied that this would happen and challenged its opponents to come out with data that supported the theory that demonetisation had damaged the economy even temporarily, much less permanently.

This data, the critics did not have because nobody had it.

The formal sector of the economy was not hurt at first and the estimates of GDP based on numbers it was putting out were more or less in line with what they would have been without demonetisation.

IMAGE: A child collects food from a volunteer in Kolkata. Photograph: PTI Photo

The first signal that something was dramatically wrong was in imports.

The goods which India had been importing from others shot up after demonetisation.

The reason was that those companies that were previously supplying these goods locally were damaged or shut by demonetisation, making India depend on foreign goods.

This would also mean that consumption in India would suffer because companies shutting down would lead to a loss of employment.

Again, this is not an area where the government has good data.

It does household surveys, but these also have been endangered by the mess over the National Citizenship Register.

It is unlikely that in the near term we will have good official data on unemployment from the government.

It is the private sector, particularly one company, the Centre for the Monitoring of the Indian Economy, with its hundreds of field agents and its real time data that provides the most credible numbers on unemployment in India.

CMIE showed that indeed unemployment was rising in India, and by the time of the 2019 election it had reached historic levels never before recorded.

The third sign of the damage came in the formal GDP numbers as well.

As businesses were wiped out and people were unemployed, consumption suffered.

This began to reflect before long even in the high frequency and other data.

India's GDP growth as measured by the government through the formal sector began to slip and fell every quarter between January 2018 and January 2020.

Why? Because demonetisation weakened it in ways that are structural.

IMAGE: A mobile shop in Chennai, May 4, 2020. Photograph: PTI Photo

This time, there are three things that are different.

First, the economic shock is more severe than it was in demonetisation.

Second, it will be longer lasting, not only because the disruption is vast and also that it is global, but also it will take time to rebuild trust.

Third, the data will be clear from the start.

The formal sector, shut down fully in April and limping along from May, will report results that will show a contraction of the economy.

Two consecutive quarters of negative growth are the technical definition of an economic recession, and for the first time in this generation's memory, we may be staring at one.

Aakar Patel is a columnist and writer.

You can read Aakar's columns here.
Frankfurt Airport in Frankfurt, Germany during COVID-19 outbreak. (Xinhua/AP)

As COVID-19 is sweeping across Europe and the US, some American and European scientists are worried that the coronavirus will spread quietly among the people as many countries are about to resume work and production, leading to more asymptomatic cases till another round of outbreak in fall. In that case, jointly tackling the pandemic is the only way for the US and European countries to defeat the virus. But in reality, the outbreak has widened the division between them. This pandemic that is bound to leave a profound impact on human history will cause more rifts in the 70-year Atlantic Alliance.

The crisis of the Atlantic Alliance didn't begin with the pandemic. During the Cold War, Washington and Europe formed and maintained a "special relationship" that was built on the anti-Soviet Union cornerstone, but this relation went through historic adjustments and the alliance became increasingly loose with the changing international situation and the rising EU after the end of Cold War. Particularly after Trump took office, the crossAtlantic relation became extremely fragile with conflicts popping up in various sectors.

On trade, the US and Europe have had constant clashes that have, more than once, almost dragged them into the mire of a trade war. On climate change, the US went back on its original position by pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which not only embarrassed the EU, but also forestalled its further measures such as the "emission tax" aimed at European integration. On the Iranian nuclear issue, Washington's unilateral withdrawal made worthless the key architecture that Europe has established with enormous diplomatic resources to ease the Middle East tension. What's more, European enterprises that have already entered the Iranian market had no choice but to get out for fear of US sanctions. On NATO, Trump demanded the European allies to increase their military budget and buy more American weapons. In response, French President Emmanuel Macron who was not pleased with Trumps intimidation proclaimed NATO as "brain dead" at the organization's summit, laying bare the US-Europe security disagreements in broad daylight.

The pandemic is like a magnifier that fully reveals the divergences between the US and Europe, which, once allies across the Atlantic Ocean, seem to have chosen to go their separate ways in the face of the outbreak.

According to reports by German media, a batch of masks that Berlin bought from China were snatched and transported to the US, which was described as "an act of modern piracy" by Berlin's Interior Senator Andreas Geisel. French media also reported Americans confiscating their masks. While the US and Europe were scrambling against each other for medical supplies, European countries detained each other's supplies too and restricted the export of domestic medical materials to others on the continent, throwing the unified European market back into the days of segmentation. Under such circumstances, many European countries had no choice but send aircraft to China to pick up medical supplies and equipment directly without stopping en route.

The US-Europe divide on unilateralism and multilateralism is more prominent during the outbreak. Since the outbreak, the US has taken a series of unilateral moves, including stopping funding WHO, which hasbeen widely criticized in Europe. The Coronavirus Global Response Pledging Conference, an EU-led fundraising event billed as a show of global solidarity in the fight against Covid-19 was attended by about 40 countries and international organizations, who pledged 7.4 billion Euro (over USD 8 billion) in total, but the US government refused to join the global effort. "The EU responded favorably to a call for global action, the US refused. They are the ones who are isolating themselves," one EU official told AFP. Some participating leaders expressed the concern that Trump's "America first" policy may lead to a vaccine race across the Atlantic Ocean.

The growing chasm between the US and Europe amid the COVID-19 pandemic has filled some European scholars with the worry that the pandemic will become a watershed in US-EU relations that will leave irreversible, permanent damages. To restore the relation after the outbreak is over, they suggested that American and European leaders set up a reserve mechanism within the NATO framework to cope with the public health crisis in preparation for similar events in the future. Establishing a new cooperative mechanism and reserve is a convenient solution to ease the current conflicts between Washington and Brussels and also to pave the way for future crossAtlantic collaboration, but the spread of the virus and the consequent economic slowdown will only make it harder to bridge their rift.

A potential prospect is that as populist forces keep rising in the US and Europe, some politicians who have taken advantage of such outbreak to become populist leaders will be the "star" on the American and European political stage. They will force the moderate section and leaders of other parties to become more extreme and will try to draw eyeballs with more populist policies. Therefore, there will be a growing trend that the US and Europe will smear and pass the buck to each other in the attempt to scapegoat the other side for their responsibilities.

In an increasingly multi-polar world, the US-Europe relation will become more complicated, and the complex game will not be smoothed away by the cross Atlantic alliance.

Disclaimer: This article is originally published on haiwainet.cn, which is the website of Overseas Edition of the People's Daily. The article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
Six Pakistani security personnel, including an officer, were killed in a roadside bomb attack near the South Asian nations border with Iran.



Pakistans Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the militarys media wing, said May 8 that the security forces were returning from patrolling duty when an improvised explosive device (IED) hit their reconnaissance vehicle.



The ISPR statement said the incident happened 14 kilometers from Pakistans border with Iran in the Kech district within the Balochistan Province. One officer and five soldiers were killed in the attack.



No group so far claimed responsibility for the blast.



Balochistan is Pakistan's largest and most volatile province, bordering both Afghanistan and Iran.

It is home to ethnic Baloch separatists as well as several sectarian groups in the area. Parts of the province are also believed to be the sanctuaries of the Afghan Taliban.

Bombings in the region have killed dozens of Pakistani officers and citizens over the past year.
A MAN who is accused of giving false or misleading evidence to the High Court during a personal injuries case is to be prosecuted on indictment before the circuit court.

The 41-year-old, who as an address at Dooradoyle, Limerick appeared before Limerick District Court in recent days after he was charged with two offences arising from a minor road accident and subsequent civil proceedings.

The man is charged with deception and with giving evidence, to the High Court, which he knew was false or misleading.

The charges both relate to the two-car collision which occurred at Ballinacurra Road, Limerick in February 2015.

The defendant, who works as a delivery driver, was previously awarded more than 17,000 in damages by the civil circuit court but this was overturned and his claim dismissed following an appeal, which was heard before the High Court sitting in Ennis.

In his judgment, the presiding judge found the plaintiff had given misleading evidence regarding the circumstances of the accident, the nature of the impact and in particular the effect of that accident on his neck and back.

The court concluded the neck and back pain of which he complained was not caused by the very minor contact between the two cars.

The contact between the two cars was so minor that it did not lead to any damage to her (the other driver) car and led to only a minor dent to the rear bumper of the plaintiffs car, he stated.

The High Court also found the plaintiff was not a credible witness as he was evasive and suggested he did not understand questioning when it did not support his claim.

It also rejected his evidence that there was a female passenger in his car at the time of collision. That woman has been charged with deception and is to be prosecuted on indictment.

A criminal investigation was launched by gardai in Limerick last year after Allianz insurance made a formal complaint following the conclusion of the High Court proceedings.

A file was subsequently prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions who directed that criminal charges should be preferred.

Detective Garda Fiona OConnell of Roxboro Road garda station told Judge Marian OLeary the defendant replied; Ill talk to my solicitor when he was formally charged following his arrest at his home.

She confirmed the DPP has directed trial on indictment and that the matter to is proceed before Limerick Circuit Court.

Sergeant Michelle Leahy said there was no objection to bail and she requested an adjournment to facilitate the preparation of a book of evidence.

The defendant, who was granted legal aid, must live at his home address and sign on two days a week at a garda station in Limerick.

He was also ordered to surrender his passport and he must not have any contact with a named woman  who has also been charged and is before the courts.

The matter was adjourned to October when, its expected the book of evidence will be complete.
So Bewley's, Grafton Street's 'legendary, lofty, clattery cafe', one-time haunt of Maud Gonne, James Joyce, Micheal Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards, is gone - again - and this time it appears to be for good.

Landlord Johnny Ronan is painted as the villain of the piece, castigated for refusing to reduce the eye-watering 1.5m annual rent and give Bewley's a break.

And while one would need to have a heart of stone not to sympathise with those who have lost their jobs, Ronan is not the only landlord in the capital declining to negotiate these days.

While an inability to negotiate on the rent may have been the final nail in the Bewley's coffin, it's been clear for some time that the cafe has been struggling.

It may well have succumbed even without the added pressure of Covid-19, despite 600,000 customers passing through its doors each year.

Founded in 1840, Bewley's began as a coffee and tea company, built on the entrepreneurial success of Samuel Bewley and his son Charles, from a prominent Quaker family. They broke the East India Company's monopoly by importing 2,099 chests of tea directly from China to Dublin.

Expand Close Hustle and bustle: Bewleys on Grafton Street has been paying 1.5m a year in rent. Photo: Steve Humphreys / Facebook

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Whatsapp Hustle and bustle: Bewleys on Grafton Street has been paying 1.5m a year in rent. Photo: Steve Humphreys

The Grafton Street Cafe was opened by Ernest Bewley in 1927 and, according to Hugh Oram, author of the definitive history of Bewley's, the cost of developing the premises, complete with the famous stained-glass windows commissioned from Harry Clarke, was such that the firm nearly went bankrupt.

Not until the end of the 1930s did Bewley's start to overcome that debt mountain.

One of Ernest's sons, Victor, took over the running of the business in 1932 after the sudden death of his father and later handed the firm over to his employees, complete with a profit-sharing scheme.

The business declined, though, and in 1986 was taken over by Paddy Campbell's Campbell Catering, which ran it until 2004, when it closed.

The following year, Jay Bourke - then riding high in the Dublin restaurant scene - came on board in a joint venture and Bewley's Grafton Street became Mackerel, which lasted until the crash, before reverting to being Bewley's.

The cafe limped along until 2016, when it closed for refurbishment. The 12m work took much longer than planned - the building is a protected structure - and the cafe eventually reopened in late 2017. Now it is no more.

So what went wrong? Theories abound, but it's clear from the outpouring on social media that those who are sad about the loss of Bewley's are nostalgic for its distant past, rather than its most recent incarnation.

In the 1980s, when I was a student in Trinity, I spent a lot of time in Bewley's. We lingered there for hours.

Those who could stomach it opted for milky coffee (I thought it disgusting), the rest of us for strong tea.

We trimmed the cakes that sat uncovered on a plate in the middle of the table in the smoky room so we could taste without paying.

Kathleen 'Tattens' Toomey and the other black-uniformed waitresses turned a blind eye.

Because of the way they were constructed, the almond buns lent themselves to trimming more than the cherry version.

Every city has its iconic cafes - think of Cafe Montmartre in Prague, Colbert in Rome and Cafe Central in Vienna - and Dublin's was once Bewley's.

However, there are those who feel it was desecrated under Campbell Catering's ownership, in terms of the physical building and in the application of an industrial catering model.

In recent years, people complained about the prices, but prices in prime locations are high because rents are high, and they don't stop us wanting to go there.

We are happy to pay for lingering over our macchiato, for the sheer pleasure of being somewhere gorgeous. Bewley's could have been that place, but it was not.

Last summer, I visited Bewley's in my capacity as the Irish Independent's restaurant critic for the first time since the refurbishment, having been on only a handful of occasions since my student days. I had held off because I didn't want to ruin all the great memories I had of Bewley's back in the '80s.

What I found was a place that should have been a showcase for simple Irish food and good baking but instead offered a hot mess of a menu trying to be all things to all men.

The lunch menu that day featured everything from crayfish linguine to chicken cassoulet to mozzarella and plum tomato bruschetta to new-season (in July?) asparagus salad to a tartine of shredded chicken seasoned with chilli and spiced mayonnaise, served on turmeric-infused cornflour sourdough bread and another of 'coronation' chickpeas mixed with vegan mayonnaise, soya yoghurt, mango chutney and curry spices, topped with grated carrot and red cabbage on walnut and raisin sourdough bread.

Yes, really.

In my review, I wrote that I could not think of another capital city in the world where the most-famous cafe on the best-known street would squander an opportunity to make a proud statement about the food of the nation.

My lunch that day came to an abrupt end when I discovered an insect in my salad.

So, yes, we mourn the loss of a once-great institution and, yes, the loss of the lunchtime cafe theatre is a blow. But let's be honest, the reason Bewley's has failed is because it simply wasn't good enough.

When the Covid-19 crisis has passed, it will be interesting to see what happens to the building next.

A few years back, Zara and H&M were both known to be keen to take it on, but a more interesting rumour doing the rounds recently was that The Wolseley restaurant is on the hunt for premises in Dublin.

Those familiar with the classy operation that Chris Corbin and Jeremy King run in London will find that a tasty prospect.
Gletscherschmelze : Von wegen ewiges Eis

Wahrend sich die Erde immer starker aufheizt, schmelzen uberall auf der Welt die Gletscher. Wissenschaftler wollen herausfinden, wie sich dieser Prozess auf die Natur auswirkt. Der Fotograf Joe Raedle hat sie in Alaska bei ihrer Arbeit begleitet.

Emily Baker, Geophysikerin des United States Geological Survey (USGS), lauft durch eine Eishohle unter dem Wolverine-Gletscher in den Kenai-Bergen Alaskas. Bild: Joe Raedle/AFP

Der amerikanische Fotograf Joe Raedle setzt sich intensiv mit dem Klimawandel auseinander, seit Hurrikan Sandy 2012 an der Atlantikkuste der Vereinigten Staaten wutete. Raedle lebt in einem Gebiet Sudfloridas, das besonders stark vom steigenden Wasser und den schweren Sturmen, die durch die Erderwarmung verursacht werden, betroffen ist.

Kurz darauf reiste Raedle im Auftrag von Getty Images nach Alaska und Gronland, um sich dem Klimawandel fotografisch zu nahern. Diese Bilderstrecke zeigt, wie er Wissenschaftler des United States Geological Survey (USGS) begleitet, die den Wolverine-Gletscher in Alaska seit 1966 untersuchen. Wahrend die Gletscher schmelzen, versuchen die Wissenschaftler zu verstehen, wie sich dies auf die Umwelt und den Wasserspiegel in den Weltmeeren auswirkt.

First of all wed be interested to know what you experienced during the photo shoot and what made you pick that particular theme?

I became interested in covering the climate change story after Hurricane Sandy passed along the Florida coast and caused an immense amount of erosion along the coastline. On top of that, I live in an area, South Florida, that is one of the most vulnerable to the rising waters and severe storms that are happening due to climate change. After Hurricane Sandy hit I wanted to simply see where the majority of water was coming from that caused the erosion and flooding. Getty Images sent me to Greenland in 2013 to document this story and I was able to show the scientists out studying the melting glaciers as well as local farmers, fisherman and youth facing a different future with changing temperatures.

Getty Images has had an initiative to cover the changing climate story and this year I went to Kivalina, Alaska to show what is at stake for the village that is situated at the very end of an eight-mile barrier reef located between a lagoon and the Chukchi Sea. The village is 83 miles above the Arctic Circle. Kivalina and a few other native coastal Alaskan villages face the warming of the Arctic, which has resulted in the loss of sea ice that buffers the islands shorelines from storm surges and coastal erosion. The residents of Kivalina are hoping to stay on their ancestral lands where they can preserve their culture, rather than dispersing due to their island being swallowed by the rising waters of the ocean. I think the feeling for most people in the village can be best summed up by City Administrator Colleen Swan who said that, their way of life in the village will change with the changing climate and they will adapt. In days gone by, she added that they could just migrate to another spot, which isnt possible in the modern world. But with the magnitude of the problems climate change brings, they must hope that the rest of the world reverses the trend, which she sees as being man-made, and save their way of life.

When and where were you born, where have you been educated and what are stages of your professional career?

I was born in Concord, New Hampshire in the United States. I graduated from the University of Miami in 1987 and joined the staff of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida that year and spent 11 years enjoying that job before moving to El Paso, Texas to freelance. From there, in 2000, I joined Getty Images as a staff photographer.

What is your standard camera equipment? Is there any special or favorite gear?

I use Canon gear mostly two Canon 1d Mark II X and a 5D. I have the full range of lenses from zooms to fixed focal lenses.

How do you process/edit your images? What particular darkroom technique, software or apps do you utilize?

Getty Images has a proprietary workflow system called Focus that I use to ingest my pictures. It allows me to edit the ones I want, move them into photoshop and back into the Focus software to attach my cutline information.

Do you have photographic role models?

I think when I was young the photographers I most admired were what we would call the masters these days: Robert Capa, Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange among many others. These days, its my contemporaries since these are the photographers who are looking at todays world and capturing the most important images that may help make the world a better place.

Is there a portfolio or photobook that inspired you?

I would say the book that inspired me the most was one that I read a very long time ago when I first thought about becoming a photographer. It was The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present by Beaumont Newhall. I was in awe as I read about the history of photography.

Joe Raedle auf Instagram: @jraedle
China on Friday asked American politicians not to "waste" their time by trying to drive a "wedge" between the ruling Communist Party and the Chinese people over the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying during a media briefing here said it was under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Chinese people made important progress in fighting the pandemic.

"Accusing Chinese political system. We cannot accept this. They are doing it out of malicious intentions. They want to drive a wedge between the CPC and people," Hua said.

"The US politicians shouldn't waste time in driving a wedge between the CPC and the people. Our political systems can co-exist and this serves the common interest of both the people," she said, responding to criticism on a host of issues related to China by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In recent days, US President Donald Trump and Pompeo have claimed that the deadly virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak was first detected last December.

The Trump administration is currently weighing punitive actions against China over its early handling of the global health emergency. Washington is also pressing Beijing to allow American experts to probe the origin of the deadly virus.

China has stoutly denied the allegations and says the US wants to distract from its own response to the pandemic ahead of the November presidential election in which Trump is seeking re-election.

The US is home to the world's largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 75,000 fatalities and over 1.2 million cases.

Pompeo, who is regularly accusing China on a slew of issues relating to the COVID-19, dominates the Chinese Foreign Ministry press briefings almost every day with a host of Chinese journalists raising questions one after another seeking response for comments.

This promoted her to say that the ministry's briefings have become a venue to refute Pompeo's "lies".

Stating that China and the US should not be enemies but "comrades" in this fight against this pandemic, she said, "Facing the coronavirus pandemic, ideological and political differences can be put aside. Life matters the most."

On Trump's allegation that China may have made "enormous mistake", Hua said "hat enormous mistakes we made. This is a sudden disease we confronted among the first to be affected by the virus", she said.

"China took comprehensive and rigorous measures and our efforts have been recognised by the international community. When we look at the US it is simple math. Who has been making an effective response and who has not. I don't want to compare the two countries but you reporters make us compare," she said.

She also backpedalled on the allegations made by her colleague Zhao Lijian earlier stating that the US army may have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan during the last year's military games.

Asked about reports that some athletes had fallen ill during the world military games held in Wuhan in October last year and the allegation by Zhao blaming the US army, Hua said, "I notice that he used the word 'may be' but you (media) kept paying attention to that".

On March 12, Zhao, previously China's deputy Ambassador to Pakistan tweeted "@CDCDirector ;2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! The US owes us an explanation!".

While the US lodged diplomatic protest over his comments, China did not press for investigations on his allegations.

Hua said China's government position is that tracing the origin is a scientific issue and should be assessed by scientists and professionals.

"Almost all scientists in the world haven't got to any conclusion about the origin of the virus. Their biggest consensus is that it comes from nature", she said.

Slamming China for a "disinformation campaign, Pompeo accused the World Health Organization of failing in its mission to provide the information to the world in a timely fashion about the risk that was emanating from China.
By Caroline Humer, Joseph Tanfani and Roxanne Liu

(Reuters) - As the coronavirus pandemic engulfed the United States, Joe Shia, a consultant to Chinese medical companies, said he was bombarded with inquiries from American firms who saw a golden opportunity in selling tests to determine coronavirus immunity.

Unlike his typical clients, some firms seeking his help had never before sold medical equipment. Others wanted to register test kits with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration without approval from the manufacturer, or to offer home-based tests, which are not allowed by the FDA. One was in the window business, he said.

"They replace windows and do window cleaning," said Shia, adding that he did not do business with the company. "That is just awful  think about it. Someone who doesn't know anything about medical devices."

As demand escalates for blood antibody tests to determine who might be fit to release from lockdown, an array of distributors with no background or established competency in medical testing have joined experienced companies in an all-but-unregulated marketplace, Reuters found. The rush to obtain, advertise and find buyers for test kits follows the FDA's unprecedented decision last month to allow any company to sell antibody tests in the United States without prior review by the agency.

Pounded by criticism for a delay in expanding diagnostic tests for coronavirus infection, the FDA has swung in the opposite direction in overseeing tests for coronavirus immunity. This take-all-comers approach, Reuters found, has provided an entree for questionable vendors and middlemen  including an electronics salesman hawking an unauthorized home test kit and a former physician convicted in a fraudulent gold-peddling scheme.

"There are literally dozens and dozens of companies jumping out of the blue that I've never heard of, and they are saying to us that, 'If you put money up front before we deliver tests, we can put you first in line for our allocation,'" said Stefan Juretschko, senior director of infectious disease diagnostics at Northwell Health Laboratories, the laboratory testing division of Northwell Health, one of New York's largest hospital systems.

Story continues

The sums of money up for grabs are vast. Antibody tests can retail for between $25 to more than $100. It is too early to know how many Americans will seek testing and how often. But - conservatively - if tens of millions get tested just once, that translates into a multi-billion-dollar market.

Under the FDA's new rules, a vendor must only notify the FDA it is selling a test, affirm the product is valid and label it as unapproved. On its website as of April 29, the FDA listed 164 tests that it had been informed would be offered on the market, more than half of them manufactured in China.

The agency has said it is working with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to validate tests, including tests already on the market. It is unclear how many antibody test kits have been distributed for sale in the United States.

In a statement to Reuters, the FDA said the aim of its policy was to provide laboratories and healthcare providers early access to the tests. But the agency said that it would adjust the approach as needed.

"Every step we have taken as part of our approach to COVID-19 testing has been a careful balancing of risks and benefits in order to meet the urgent public health needs as we combat this new pathogen," said Anand Shah, deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, in the statement.

In a separate statement, FDA spokeswoman Sarah Peddicord said some test developers had falsely claimed that their tests were FDA approved, that they could diagnose COVID-19 - the disease caused by the coronavirus - or that they were appropriate for home use.

"When we become aware of these issues, we have and will continue to take appropriate action," she said, including rejecting tests at the U.S. border.

Antibody tests are different from the nasal-swab diagnostic tests that show an active infection. They are blood tests intended to determine who at some point has been infected by the virus and now could be immune. Antibodies, disease-fighting proteins formed in the days and weeks after infection, may protect a person from re-infection, at least for a time, although it has not been proved whether that holds true for the coronavirus.

Propelling demand for the blood tests is a foundering economy, a sharply rising rate of unemployment and a stir-crazy public anxious to return to their former lives.

"Think about it, testing is an emotional thing," said Meg Wyatt, senior director of diagnostics for Premier Inc, a leading buyer of equipment for hospitals and nursing homes. "It's this one single thing that can tell me, am I ok, is my family ok, when can I visit my older parents again? It is a good hook" for sellers.

'NOT EASY TO MAKE'

The entry of unqualified or unscrupulous manufacturers and brokers into the antibody testing business poses risks. Perhaps the greatest one is that they'll sell a test that indicates immunity where there is none - known as a "false positive." That could lead people to return to the community while unwittingly posing a risk to themselves and others, infectious disease experts say.

A team of scientists in California and Massachusetts recently evaluated 14 blood antibody tests now on the market and found significant variation in their performance.

The tests were generally effective at detecting antibodies three weeks after an infection but much less so for more recent cases, said Patrick Hsu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who was involved in the research.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, whose House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy is investigating the regulation of antibody testing, sent letters this week to the FDA and four of the companies cited in the study. He expressed concern about lax regulation of the testing and has called for the FDA to remove tests that don't meet the agency's usual standards from the market.

Antibody tests are easy to administer, sometimes requiring only a finger prick to derive a blood sample. Some samples are analyzed in laboratories; other test results are readable on a device, like a pregnancy test, within minutes.

But "if you want good quality, (the tests) are not easy to make," said Alberto Gutierrez, who led the FDA's office overseeing diagnostic testing from 2009 to 2017. "They do require a fair amount of expertise."

Some companies that have notified the FDA of their intent to sell kits without securing approval have separately applied for "emergency use authorization (EUA)," a temporary stamp of approval that requires some review but far less than is typical for a medical device.

Nine tests had been approved for emergency use as of Thursday, including those made by Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, an established testing company owned by private-equity firm Carlyle Group Inc.

The company said it made every effort, as did the FDA, to ensure the tests were reliable and accurate.

Chockalingam "Palani" Palaniappan, Ortho's chief innovation officer, said the EUA approval process took about a week, but nonetheless was based on a substantial amount of data, including validation of about 400 test samples.

MONEY UP FRONT

Without a rigorous FDA approval process or enough trusted suppliers, hospitals and others in need of antibody tests say they are left to weed out the good products from the bad.

"All they want to talk about is price and quantity," Wyatt of Premier said of testing companies whose claims strike her as dubious. Those pitches lack the usual scientific documentation and generally are not from established distributors, she added. The offers often are full of misspellings or appeals to emotion such as, "In order to help America," she said.

"It's just been extremely distracting for our member health systems," she said. "They're under such pressure to maximize testing capacity."

Reuters found a number of aspiring antibody test distributors that have made questionable or false claims.

In one case, a distributor called BodySphere claimed in a Business Wire release that it had access to a test that had already been approved for emergency use as a "two-minute" coronavirus "diagnostic" test. BodySphere told Reuters its supplier was Safecare Biotech Co Ltd, based in Hangzhou, China.

Safecare - a client of the Maryland consultant, Shia - told Reuters it had no distribution deal with Bodysphere and that its test takes 10 to 15 minutes, not two, to deliver results. Moreover, Safecare has not received an EUA for its antibody test. And contrary to BodySphere's release, the Safecare test is not diagnostic.

After being contacted by Reuters, BodySphere retracted its claim of receiving an EUA from U.S. health regulators. The company said it mistakenly had believed that the product was authorized.

Another vendor, David Melman, of Tel Aviv, recently sent Reuters an email and press release promoting an "accurate, fast, affordable, easy-to-use" antibody test "designed for everyone at home, providing results within a few minutes."

Melman, who identifies himself on LinkedIn as a sales representative for an electronics firm, has taken on a new title: chief executive of a company called COVI-Labs. He claimed in his pitch that his company's test had received "pre-EUA approval" for the home test - impossible because the FDA does not allow this type of test.

In response to questions from Reuters, Melman said he intends to perform "research and evaluation" on the kit before distributing it and that he would sell the kit for home use in the United States only if it received an EUA from the FDA.

TWO MEN AND A TEST

A fight between two would-be distributors - both of whom had previous run-ins with the law - illustrates the race to cash in on the new testing marketplace.

Edward Joseph Eyring, a 52-year-old former colorectal surgeon in Utah, set up a company and a website in March offering antibody test kits under the name CoronaCide. He notified the FDA of his intent to sell and began talking with potential partners. These included businessman George Todt, who was working as a consultant for a California startup called Wellness Matrix, a publicly traded company.

Todt proceeded to market CoronaCide kits on his own: "Home test kits now! Approved by FDA," he tweeted on March 19. After National Public Radio reported the claim, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended trading in Wellness' stock.

On April 8, Eyring filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Todt and Wellness pitched CoronaCide kits without his permission and knowing they weren't approved for home use. The trademark suit says those actions damaged CoronaCide - a company that Eyring's lawyer, Anton Hopen, told Reuters was intended to help customers "better cope with the COVID-19 pandemic."

Todt could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for Wellness, William Dailey, said in a statement to Reuters that the company did nothing wrong and wasn't involved in Todt's actions.

Eyring and Todt each have separate histories of defrauding investors.

Todt was sued by the SEC in 2005 for two stock manipulation schemes. In a judgment, he was fined $130,000 and ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution.

Eyring allowed his medical license to lapse after he stipulated to making clinical errors and violating accepted professional and ethical standards in 2010 and did not complete the terms of his settlement, Utah state records show.

In 2017, he pleaded guilty to "a pattern of unlawful activity" to resolve charges in Utah that he lured investors into a fraudulent African gold trading venture. In a plea agreement, he said he would pay $473,039 in restitution. He was placed on probation, which ended last month - two weeks before he formed CoronaCide.

He will "take advantage of anybody and everybody he can," said Carolann Fredericks, a nurse in Poughkeepsie, New York, now helping to care for critically ill coronavirus patients. A former friend of Eyring, Fredericks gave Eyring $200,000 for the gold deal, according to an affidavit in the case.

In written responses to Reuters, attorney Hopen said Eyring regrets that he and his investors lost money and has done his best to repay his debts.

WAITING ON CHINA

Though virtually unrestricted by the FDA, many antibody test distributors in the United States have run into obstacles posed by China's export policy.

After European countries criticized the quality of China's coronavirus tests, China adopted a new policy on April 1 that holds up exports of tests until the products have a certificate from the country's regulator, the National Medical Products Administration.

Thus far, China has only certified about a dozen of the 90 China-made antibody tests on the FDA list of prospective sellers, leaving many U.S. distributors without kits to sell.

This past weekend, however, China's commerce ministry said it would loosen those restrictions. It would allow domestic manufacturers to export test kits, provided an authorized trade association verifies that the tests are approved for use in the importing countries.

It was not immediately clear how the move would affect exports to the United States, since FDA approval is not required for antibody tests.

Some medical experts and policy makers say that as the market expands and the stakes grow higher for the tests, the U.S. regulator needs to take on a more assertive role.

Historically, "the FDA has been there as a bulwark for accuracy and reliability," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. "If they give up that role, that opens the door to all kinds of mishaps."

(Caroline Humer reported from New York, Joseph Tanfani from New Jersey and Roxanne Liu from Beijing. Carl O'Donnell contributed from New York and Chad Terhune from Los Angeles; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Julie Marquis)
ALBANY  New York will extend the Child Victims Act's one-year "look-back" window by another five months to give survivors additional time to lodge lawsuits against those who had allegedly sexually abused them as children, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Friday.

Cases that would have been filed under the act  which in August opened a one-year period for survivors to lodge previously time-barred cases against their alleged abusers  have been on pause since March, when the state court system stopped accepting nonessential filings amid the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo said the state will extend that window until Jan. 14 to make up for time lost during the public health crisis.

"People need access to the courts to make their claim because justice too long delayed is justice denied," Cuomo said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

Cuomo had previously issued an executive order in late March suspending statutes of limitations while the courts were shuttered, but there was widespread confusion among lawyers and advocates about whether that directive also applied to the look-back period. Survivors and activist groups had rallied for extra time, arguing that victims would be stripped of justice that had been promised to them when the act was signed into law in February 2019 after more than a decade of advocacy.

A spokesman for the state court system on Thursday said that New York would allow victims to file cases before the window would sunset in August, saying an exception for those filings would be enacted "in the coming weeks." The legislative sponsors of the law  state Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, both Democrats from Manhattan  said that while the development was welcome, it would be unrealistic to expect cases to be filed during a pandemic, when New Yorkers are otherwise worried about their health, safety and finances.

Both are also the sponsors of an act to extend the look-back window by another year, which they say is necessary regardless of the pandemic, as many survivors have reported difficulties finding lawyers or coming to terms with their abuse in the one-year period.

"This is a crucial step to help survivors of child sexual assault seek justice," Hoylman tweeted Friday. "Lets give survivors the assurance that well stand with them after the pandemic ends. We must pass my bill with @LindaBRosenthal to extend the CVA for a full year."
After completing a gruelling challenge of running four miles every four hours over a 48-hour period at the weekend, Emma Hanrahan plans to take on more challenges to raise vital funds for Jack & Jill Children's Foundation.

Emma Hanrahan, from Balbriggan, completed her challenge of 48 miles within the 2km guidelines for Covid-19 restrictions, and her partner Rob Hendrick and their children Casey, Kia and Lily cheered her on as she crossed her finish line on Sunday morning.

Emma said she will now take on more challenges to raise vital funds for the foundation, which has been of huge support to her, Rob and their family as their little girl Lily has an extremely rare syndrome called DYRK1A.

Emma said: 'Lily is the only child in Ireland with this rare syndrome,' Emma told Fingal Independent.

'Because she needs 24 hours care, the Jack & Jill Foundation has been so good to us.

'We have gotten a lot of nursing hours support from the foundation which helps us spend more time with our two other children.

'Jack & Jill Foundation has been there for us, helping us through the hard times in hospital.

'They have made life so much better for us as parents and stood by our side when we had hard decisions to make for Lily.'

The Balbriggan mum added: 'And because Covid-19 has prevented an awful lot of fundraising events from going ahead for this charity and lots of other charities, I wanted to do something to give back to them.

'Lots of charities are struggling at the moment without donations.'

The Jack & Jill Children's Foundation was set up in 1997 by Jonathan Irwin and his wife Mary Ann O'Brien, in memory of their son Jack who suffered a brain trauma shortly after birth that left him developmentally delayed and shattered the dreams and hopes of his parents.

However, despite the medical advice at that time that there was no support for Jack outside of the hospital, the family brought Jack home and cobbled together a homecare plan with the help of five local nurses from their neighbourhood.

Baby Jack lived at home for 22 months and died on 13th December 1997 in the arms of his favourite nurse, having taught his family and friends what the best homecare looks like and how short lives can have such a long lasting impact.

His parents vowed that no other family would have to walk this difficult care journey alone and the Jack & Jill Foundation became the pathway from hospital to homecare through Jack's legacy. Jack's homecare plan was the blueprint for the Jack & Jill Foundation's unique model of child and family centred care that gives the parent carer a break from the intensive home care regime required for a child like Jack and since then over 2,400 precious children and their family have been supported by the Foundation.

And in a bid to raise even more funds for the charity, Emma said she is going to take on more challenges within the coming weeks.

'I will do more challenges and I am hoping more people will donate to the charity. I have a link on my Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/emma.hano where people can donate to the foundation,' said Emma.

Her partner Rob was meant to join her on her 4/4/48 challenge but unfortunately he suffered an injury.

But, he has already raised 1,000 when he did a head and beard shave last year in the Milestone Inn.

'Rob grew his hair and beard for a year and then we held the head and beard shave which was a great success,' said Emma, who is also a volunteer for SVI Balbriggan (Self Isolation Volunteers), helping those who are cocooning and vulnerable during this pandemic.

'I really appreciate all those who have sponsored me so far and hope more people will continue to donate,' she said, adding that if more people want to take on challenges to help raise funds for Jack & Jill Foundation they can contact her on her Facebook page.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Ten Indonesian nationals, arrested for not disclosing that they had attended the Tablighi Jamat gathering in Delhi which turned out to be a coronavirus hotspot, were granted bail by a court here on Friday.

The applicants, which included six women, are all members of the Islamic organisation Tablighi Jamat and had attended its meet at Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi in March.

The group arrived in Mumbai later, but allegedly did not inform the authorities about their participation in the event and thus avoided quarantine.

The city police subsequently tracked them down.

They were quarantined and arrested after their isolation period was over.

The applicants moved sessions court after failing to get bail from a court in suburban Bandra.

The holy month of Ramazan was underway and there were no proper facilities in jail for pre-dawn meal and post- fasting Iftar meal, their bail applications said.

Moreover, the government misused the police machinery by arresting them under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 307 (attempt to murder) without any evidence, the plea said.

All ten of them had tested negative for coronavirus and there was no need to arrest them, it said.

Accepting the plea, the court granted them bail.

According to the police, while the accused arrived in Mumbai on March 7, they began to live in an apartment in Bandra area only on March 29, implying that they had been roaming around for 22 days.

They were part of a 12-member group, and as two of them tested positive for coronavirus, others were put in 20-day isolation and arrested on April 22.
- Outgoing Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Samson Mwathethe officially handed over to his successor Robert Kibochi on Friday, May 8

- The soft spoken military officer joined the Kenya Navy on May 11, 1978, and rose through the ranks to the top most position

- While handing over, Mwathethe thanked his wife Amina for steering the family as he was busy building the nation

Retired Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) General Samson Mwathethe has showered his wife Amina with praises for always supporting him in his military career that spanned over 40 years.

Mwathethe joined the Kenya Navy on May 11, 1978, and rose through the ranks to the top most position in the armed forces in April 2015, until his retirement on Thursday, April 30.

READ ALSO: They didn't work: COVID-19 ravaged UK questions testing kits from China days after Magufuli raised alarm

General Mwathethe (left) officially hands over to incoming CDF Robert Kibochi in a ceremony on Friday, May 8, in Nairobi. Photo: KDF.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Poll shows majority of Kenyans wear masks to avoid police arrest, not for protection

While officially handing over to his successor Robert Kibochi on Friday, May 8, at the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) headquarters in Nairobi, the outgoing CDF thanked his better half for steering the family as he was busy building the nation.

"I wish to thank my family for their understanding and tolerance to my military way of life: To my dear wife Amina allow me to congratulate you too, the way I see it is this retirement is for you too,While I spent most of my time pondering military tactics, strategies and plans, you steered the family.

"Your presence, invaluable support and encouragement made every day better for me and our children. Thank you for enduring the trials that come with being married to a military husband. I know there were days you must have felt they were overworking me and probably underpaying me," the soft spoken general said.

READ ALSO: Baba nisaidie, ole Kina amwambia Raila

Mwathethe used the occasion to launch a book, War for Peace, which details the story of Kenya military's quest to restore peace in Somalia.

President Uhuru Kenyatta had commended Mwathethe for the exemplary work he did during his tenure as the country's military general.

General Mwathethe with Uhuru at a past function. Photo: State House.

Source: Facebook

"During your tenure, we detected and expunge early enough a number of plans by those who do not mean well for our country, in good time," he said in a statement released by State House on Thursday, April 30.

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

Eastleigh residents' plea to Uhuru | Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
As many as 26 people, who had recently returned from Surat, tested positive for COVID-19 in Odisha on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 245, a health department official said.

Of the fresh cases, 19 are from Ganjam, five from Kendrapara and two from Bhadrak districts.

"These people had come from Surat and were in quarantine centres. They were symptomatic," the official said.

With these new patients, the number of cases in Ganjam has gone up to 47 since May 2, when the district had reported its first case, he said.

The tally for Bhadrak now stands at 23, while Kendrapara has a total 8 cases, the official said.

Migrant workers from Odisha, who were stranded in Gujarat's Surat city due to the lockdown, have been returning to the eastern state in droves by buses and trains after the Centre allowed their movement.

Nearly three lakh Odia workers mostly from Ganjam district are engaged in diamond cutting, textiles and other works in Surat.

The state health department had on Thursday conducted 2,460 tests for coronavirus, he said.

Odisha has so far tested 52,974 samples.

With these new patients, the number of active cases now stands at 181, while 62 patients have so far recovered from the disease. Two persons from Bhubaneswar have died of the infection.

Jajpur district has reported the maximum number of cases at 55, followed by Bhubaneswar in Khurda district 50, Ganjam 47, Balasore 27, Bhadrak 23, Sundergarh 12, Kendrapara 8, Jagatsinghpur 5 and Mayurbhanj 4.

Two cases each have been detected in Cuttack, Jharsuguda, Bolangir, Keonjhar and Kalahandi, and one each in Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Koraput districts.

The state had on Thursday reported 34 new cases.

Over 100 cases have been reported in the last eight days, the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Six members of a family were killed on Friday in a collision involving an SUV and a car in Rajasthan's Sirohi district, police said.

The driver of the SUV and two other family members, including a minor, who were travelling in the car, were seriously injured and referred to Udaipur, they said.

The accident occurred near Kirvali village, Assistant Sub-Inspector Bhanwar Singh of Abu Road Sadar police station said.

Two of the car occupants died on the spot while 4 others succumbed to injuries at a hospital.

"The family belonged to Kalindri in Sirohi district and had settled in Pune, where they had a cloth business. Amid the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, they had set off from Pune for their home in Sirohi after taking requisite permission," said SHO (Abu Sadar) Anand Kumar.

The deceased people were identified as Govind (55), his wife Bhagu Devi (50), their son Arvind (28) besides Rekha (38), Pushpit (15) and Vipul (35), police said.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot expressed grief over the accident and condoled aggrieved family members.

Two other family members, Praveen (32) and Divyanshi (2), and the driver of the SUV, Chandan Yadav (34), are undergoing treatment at Udaipur, they said.

Yadav had come from Mumbai in his car to drop a family in Sirohi and had been on his way back to the Mumbai.

The bodies have been kept at a mortuary of government hospital in Abu Road, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Word-obsessed, "continually questioning" Esme is a literary heroine with an idiosyncratic appeal that rivals Jo March. Her mother died in childbirth, so her role model and constant companion is her lexicographer father, now amiably wedded to the dictionary. Their companionable relationship of equals is one of this novel's great pleasures: in a wonderful observed detail, he is that rare kind of man who rinses his own cup at the sink.

Like Simon Winchester in his non-fiction bestseller, The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Williams takes a thread of the dictionary's history as her inspiration  but her purpose is less to illuminate the men behind it than to restore the voices of the women largely written out of its story.

Esme spends her childhood under the table in the Scriptorium, the grandly named shed in editor James Murray's backyard where he and his assistants are assembling the dictionary at an enviably meticulous pace. The building blocks are masses of words on slips of paper, sent in by volunteers from around the world. "We have embarked on the verb go," says an editor at one point. "And I suspect it will consume me for months.

Credit:

This novel values the kind of quiet, dedicated behind-the-scenes work epitomised by this statement, and Esme is a perfect peripheral narrator of her time and place. She observes not just from the sidelines of the dictionary, but of conventional middle-class femininity (her female role models are the Murrays' indentured maid, Lizzie, and an intellectual family friend, Ditte, who believes "convention has never done any woman any good") and of the burgeoning suffragette movement (she gloriously befriends an actress who takes centre stage).

But Esme also longs to contribute something meaningful. As a child, she compulsively steals words  because she's conscientious, words that she calculates are "superfluous to need"  and stashes them in her own secret suitcase, under Lizzie's bed. One of them is the word "bondmaid", later discovered absent from the dictionary's first edition.

(This real-life mysterious absence is the historical detail that Williams took as her starting inspiration for the novel, along with the character Ditte is based on  a historian, Edith Thompson, who significantly contributed to the dictionary from its early days.)
The Haryana government on Friday decided to send back migrant workers in the state to their respective hometowns over the next week. The migrant workers will be allowed to travel without incurring any cost and the state government will bear all the expenses.

In the next seven days, migrant workers will be sent in 100 trains and 5000 buses to their home states. While 100 special trains for labourers will be run for Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, 5,000 buses will be sent to Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand.
Our homes are shrinking. New homes completed so far this year are almost a third smaller than their equivalent 10 years ago.

That is only partly accounted for by the fact that a new home is now more likely to be an apartment than previously. Single houses have fallen in size by 25pc and houses in schemes of two or more units by 14pc.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) findings point to a move towards higher-density living, which is encouraged as it makes better use of available land and reduces the sprawl that leads to long commutes and congestion.

But they also provide food for thought as hundreds of thousands of workers now struggle to make space to work from home, and face doing so for a further prolonged period.

A single house completed 10 years ago had an average floor space of 229sqm, 50sqm bigger than its equivalent today.

Average size grew further to 237sqm in 2013 before falling gradually to 179sqm. This was the average for one-off houses completed between January and March this year.

Houses in schemes were at their largest in 2014 when they averaged 142sqm, but that has fallen to 123sqm.

Apartment size rose and fell in alternate years for the first half of the decade, but they have seen a gentle rise to 85sqm since 2016.

While apartment size has grown, so too has the number of apartments displacing the traditional family home.

Some 75pc more were completed in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year.

Home building in general had its best start to a year for at least a decade with almost 5,000 new dwellings completed in the first three months, even taking into account that construction sites shut before the end of March.

Of the 4,986 homes completed, 1,094 were single houses, 2,848 were houses in schemes and 1,044 were apartments.

In total, that was a 17pc increase on 2019.

Had that pace continued, with the anticipated surge that normally happens later in the year, it was expected that more than 20,000 new homes would have been completed by the end of the year.

With an almost two-month shutdown, however, and restricted working practices to be observed when sites reopen on May 18, progress in completing developments is expected to slow significantly.

The CSO's figures show a clear urban-rural divide in house building with 81.3pc of all completions in urban areas and just 18.8pc in rural areas.

Dublin accounted for 33pc of all completions and also for 80pc of all new apartments.

Just over half of all dwellings completed in Dublin were apartments and that proportion rose to more than 90pc in the city centre.

Of all the local authority areas in the country, Dublin city had the greatest number of new dwelling completions with 684, while Leitrim had the lowest at just five.

It comes amid claims as few as 18,000 homes may be built this year due to coronavirus restrictions, 7,000 short of the government target.

The estimate was made by Fianna Fail TD Darragh O'Brien as the Dail debated the impact of the emergency on the existing housing crisis.

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said 5,000 homes had been built in the first quarter of the year before construction work was halted.
On May 7, the armed formations of the Russian Federation launched 21 attacks on Ukrainian positions in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area in Donbas.

The enemy used 122mm artillery systems, 120mm and 82mm mortars banned under the Minsk agreements, grenade launchers of different systems, UAVs, weapons on infantry fighting vehicles, heavy machine guns, and small arms to shell Ukrainian positions. The Joint Forces units decisively responded to shelling of the enemy, making them again obey the ceasefire regime, the press center of the JFO Headquarters reports.

In the zone of action of tactical force East, Russian-occupation troops used 82mm mortars, tripod-mounted man-portable antitank guns, heavy machine guns, and small arms to shell Ukrainian troops near Marinka (23km south-west of Donetsk); 82mm mortars, grenade machine guns, heavy machine guns  outside Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol); grenade machine guns  in the area of Novoselivka Druha (36km north-east of Mariupol); grenade machine guns, hand-held antitank grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and small arms  near Avdiivka (17km north of Donetsk); grenade launchers of different systems, heavy machine guns, and small arms  in the area of Taramchuk (29km south-west of Donetsk), Pisky (11km north-west of Donetsk), and Nevelske (18km north-west of Donetsk). Outside Starohnativka (51km south of Donetsk), the enemy used an UAV to drop VOG-17 grenade on positions on the Joint Forces, and later shelled Ukrainian troops, using weapons on infantry fighting vehicles.

In the zone of action of tactical force North, Russian-led forces opened fire from 122mm artillery, 82mm and 120mm mortars on Ukrainian positions near Novotoshkivske (53km west of Luhansk); 82mm mortars, grenade launchers of different systems, heavy machine guns  on the outskirts of Orikhove (57km north-west of Luhansk); 120mm and 82mm mortars  near Krymske (42km north-west of Luhansk).

Six Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the enemy shelling over the past day.

According to the intelligence data, at least seven invaders were killed and five more were wounded on May 7. An enemy truck was destroyed also.

Today, the Russian-occupation forces have already fired 120mm mortars and tripod-mounted man-portable antitank guns on Ukrainian positions near Orikhove.

ol
Manitoba is lifting the 30-day limit on prescription drug refills, saying supply issues surrounding COVID-19 have stabilized.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba is lifting the 30-day limit on prescription drug refills, saying supply issues surrounding COVID-19 have stabilized.

In March, Manitoba and other provincial and territorial governments restricted prescription refills to one month in response to potential global drug shortages. The novel coronavirus pandemic response measure caused many patients to pay higher dispensing fees than they normally would, and many have complained publicly.

Effective Monday, Manitobans who have prescriptions for long-term medications will be able to obtain up to a three-month supply, as per prescriber's directions, if the drug is not affected by shortages.

"At this time, the evidence is pointing to the fact that the situation has stabilized," Health Minister Cameron Friesen said Friday.

Manitoba is the third province to lift the cap on 30-day refills, after New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, according to the Canadian Association for Retired Persons.

"We are pleased to see Manitoba move in this direction, as well," spokesman Sean Fitch said from Toronto. "The initial justifications for this measure were fears over supply chain issues and hoarding due to COVID-19."

Such concerns seem to have lessened since provinces began reopening or preparing to reopen for business, he said.

"In reality, drug shortages existed before COVID, and will persist afterwards," said Fitch. "That a province has decided to lift the cap is likely due to pressure from consumers around the increased costs."

Since late March, the Manitoba Liberals have gone after the province to do something about the added dispensing fees. They're now calling on Premier Brian Pallister to issue refunds.

On Friday, the Liberals issued a statement saying some Manitobans faced double and triple dispensing fees, while others lost pharmacare support, resulting in thousands of dollars in extra costs.

"Pallister should stop being such a skinflint and do the right thing," said Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont.

Manitoba's decision to limit refills was in response to advice from the Canadian Pharmacists Association and the Canadian Association for Pharmacy Distribution Management, Friesen said. Another factor was March is typically a high-volume month in Manitoba for dispensing drugs, because it's the last month of the pharmacare fiscal year, he said.

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"It has not been easy for all Manitobans to have to pay, in some cases, triple the dispensing fee for the same supply of drugs and it wasnt easy when, at the same time, we continued to tell people they should stay home, they should isolate themselves and avoid going to public places as much as possible," Friesen said.

The government is now more confident about the drug supply situation than it was a couple of months ago, he said.

"Theres a better understanding... We know that some manufacturers in China who had ceased or slowed production have come back on line, and we know that the global distribution issue has proven to be more intact than was previously expected."

The minister also announced the establishment of a COVID-19 drug shortage working group to monitor availability in the province. Only those listed in short supply on the federal government's drug shortages website will be subject to the one-month fill limit.

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
Medical tech startup Lazarus 3D usually sells organs. Not the human kind, but fake squishy hearts, life-sized arms and coral-pink esophaguses eerily similar to the real things.

When there isnt a pandemic, its warehouse on Houstons South Side, a short drive to the Texas Medical Center, fills up with 3D-printed orders for surgeons who use the soft-tissue replicas to practice procedures. But when March rolled around and coronavirus infections jumped, those surgeons became much less concerned about getting the practice devices.

What they really wanted, really needed, was personal protective equipment such as masks and face shields. The company pitched a business shift to PPE to investors, who responded in two days with $700,000 in loans to jumpstart production.

Weve been laser-focused because so many doctors are desperate, said Jacques Zaneveld, who founded Lazarus with his wife, Smriti.

Across the globe, medical and health tech startups like Lazarus are pivoting to face masks and other COVID-19- related products such as testing kits as the new coronavirus puts a spotlight on health care innovation. Unlike startups in other sectors, those startups are not strapped for cash and investors and clients havent shied away yet.

Digital health startups reported $2.9 billion in funding deals during the first quarter of 2020, doubling the amount raised during the same period in 2019, according to research by MobiHealthNews, which tracks trends in health care. By focusing on a niche like COVID-19, companies can draw both public and private sources of funding as both government and investors look for an end to the pandemic that has ravaged the global economy, said Yadin David, the former director of the biomedical innovations department at Texas Children's Hospital.

STARTUP STRUGGLES: Houston's nascent startup scene struggles as COVID-19 pandemic continues

As long as we have headlines like we see now, David said, theres going to be market pressure to fund (coronavirus-related products).

Money for innovation

Overwhelmed by demand for hospital beds and equipment, medical providers are looking for innovations that fix troubled health care systems. Medical and health tech startups are in a particularly good spot to capitalize on the problems caused by the pandemic.

Many were already working on products that could be deployed quickly in the case of a pandemic, such as telehealth software. Others are focused on vaccines or drugs that have a longer horizon.

Emily Reiser, a senior manager for innovation community engagement at the TMCx accelerator program, said investors who fund medical and health technology are still pretty bullish because of their confidence in growth opportunities from the COVID-19 response.

The most successful startups attract investors by identifying something that needs to be fixed, devising solutions quickly and moving those solutions into commercial production, said Jon Nordby, managing director for another Houston accelerator program, MassChallenge Texas.

Hard to find a bigger problem than a global pandemic, right? Nordby said.

Product switches

Health care startups are adapting business models, strategies and products to fill needs created by COVID-19.

Basic science laboratories went from looking at virus mutations to conducting research for finding COVID-19 treatments. Startups selling vitamin deficiency and food sensitivity tests are now focusing on packaging test kits for at-home coronavirus testing. Taking advantage of a new demand for telehealth, virtual urgent care and video conferencing providers are rolling out products faster than before.

Lazarus is another example. Up until the last week of March, the company had raised just $500,000 in the six years since it was founded by the Zanevelds, who came up with the idea of making model organs on which doctors could practice while studying at the Baylor College of Medicine.

But on March 25, its hospital clients were calling about using their 3D printers to manufacture personal protective equipment. But to tap into that that demand  some hospitals were seeking well over 100,000 masks  Lazarus needed more capital to fulfill the massive orders.

They began prototyping the first of their face masks and shields, delivering models to local hospitals overnight to get feedback on comfort. The first batches were printed on a row of eight white 3D printers in their 1,500-square-foot space, but demand quickly outstripped production. At most, they could produce 125 face masks a day; their customers needed thousands.

THE CORONAVIRUS FLIGHT: Life Flight adapts, creates new rules for COVID-19

They moved their production to factories in China, which had the expertise and capacity to manufacture the personal protective equipment on a mass scale. As of the first week of May, their suppliers had produced 1.6 million masks and 120,000 face shields, much of which has been shipped to local hospital buyers like the Harris Health System.

By March 28, they had pulled together $700,000 in loans. In three days, they had raised more than theyd been able to do in five years, demonstrating the demand for health tech that quickly gets to market.

What makes good investments

Companies dealing in telehealth, patient communication and remote monitoring spaces are likely to benefit from investors looking to capitalize on the pandemic. In addition, the coronavirus also has spotlighted long-term health care issues need of solutions that present opportunities for medical tech startups and investors.

When you pressure test a system like this, Nordby said, those needs become very obvious.

Chief among those long-term needs is finding ways to reduce costs while increasing hospital revenue and improving patient care, analysts said, making startups that can improve efficiency and quickly deliver products, such as personal protective equipment, sought after by investors.

That is why telehealth companies are attracting new investment, as are startups, such as Lazarus 3D, which can show they can pivot quickly to meet market demands.

Startups that respond to COVID are likely build new relationships with key decision makers, said Reiser, and demonstrate their ability to provide value to a new partner.

Whats ahead

The clocks ticking for companies providing tests, PPE and COVID-19 related treatments. Researchers could take 18 to 24 months to develop a working vaccine. Much of this pandemic could be manageable by the end of the year.

Startups are already seeing a shift in demand toward the products they were creating before COVID-19. Just last week, Smriti Zaneveld got a call from a client asking if they were still manufacturing organ models, and she rushed to print out 40 model colons.

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The tools that made surviving a pandemic easier will still have use in the future. Doctors and nurses will still need face masks and shields; patients will find telehealth convenient when their schedules fill up again.

Rather than throw its mask prototypes in the trash, Lazarus 3D is exploring the development of face masks that can be sanitized and reused in addition to going back to its training organs.

Analysts and startups are hopeful investors infusing cash into COVID-19 related products will stick around. If young companies can show they can quickly turn around a product under pressure, and turn a profit, investors will feel encouraged to back them.

Houston medical startups, meanwhile, are well positioned to grow because they have access to both investors hungry for the next big thing and a built-in client base: the worlds largest medical center, experts said.

There is zero doubt in my mind that Houston will absolutely be the innovation hub for health tech in the future, Nordby said.

gwendolyn.wu@chron.com

twitter.com/gwendolynawu
A Port Authority harbourmaster said he thought NSW Health's low-risk classification for the Ruby Princess meant it posed minimal risk, despite 15 passengers aboard awaiting results for COVID-19 swabs.

Cameron Butchart, who was the duty harbourmaster the night before the cruise ship docked, told the special commission inquiry that he was emailed NSW Port Authority's policy that stipulated if there were COVID-19 tests onboard a cruise ship and results were pending, the boat was to be treated as if it was positive.

"I didn't understand the content of the email," he said.

The special commission inquiry into the Ruby Princess continues. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Mr Butchart was also informed NSW Health had assessed the Ruby Princess as low-risk.
The Mayor of County Cork, Charleville-based Cllr Ian Doyle, has said the annual Cahirmee Horse fair in Buttevant must not go ahead this year as it would pose a serious risk to public health.

One of Ireland's oldest horse fairs, with a lineage apparently stretching back to the days of Brian Boru, it is steeped in history and attracts thousands of visitors each year to the North Cork town - all eager to take in the sights, sounds and smells and, if they are lucky, grab an equine bargain in the process.

A unique aspect of the fair is that it has no organising committee, something that Cllr Doyle said could potentially pose a problem in trying to get the message out to the general public that this year's events should not go ahead.

"This is primarily a horse fair and I think that those involved in the equine and agricultural sectors will understand the concerns surrounding the Coronavirus and already have it in their minds this year's fair will not be going ahead," said Cllr Doyle.

"I think when people sit down and look at this logically they will understand why the fair can not go ahead."

However, he said there was concern within the local community that some traders and members of the public might disregard advice and turn up for the event anyway.

"There is no question people are concerned as social distancing if large numbers of people do turn up for the fair will be impossible. Locals do enjoy the fair but this year the circumstances are different. Hopefully, everyone involved will take the sensible option and stay away," said Cllr Doyle.

He said that if necessary gardai may have to block all roads leading into the town on fair day.

"Obviously that will be a decision for them to make on public health grounds, but I hope it will not have to come to that," Cllr Doyle.

"The key to this will be getting the message that the fair must not go ahead out to people early. The plan is that local community groups, gardai, council representatives and the gardai meet over the coming weeks to discuss how best to do this," he added.
According to the president, the appointment of Saakashvili is the inner policy of Ukraine

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the recall of Ambassador Teimuraz Sharashenidze from Ukraine by Georgia is the mistake as Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

With Georgia, Georgian people, we have wonderful relations. We, despite everything, will not recall our ambassador to Ukraine for consultations. Because the relations between our countries are longer than any leadership of any country. I believe it is the mistake of the Georgian side. I believe that after the consultations all sides will understand that in each state, the personnel policy concerns this state and citizens who live in it, Zelensky said.

Besides, the president noted that the appointment of Saakashvili as the Head of Executive Committee of Reforms of Ukraine is the decision of the president of Ukraine; it is the inner policy of the country.

Mr. Saakashvili is the citizen of Ukraine, with Ukrainian passport and I as the president of Ukraine appointed him as the Head of Executive Committee of Reforms of Ukraine at the president of Ukraine; thats it, he added.

As we reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky assigned Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of Head of Executive Committee of Reforms. The mentioned presidential decree also puts Oleksandr Olshansky second in charge in the Executive Committee of Reforms of Ukraine, that is, Saakashvili's deputy.

Later, Georgia recalled its ambassador in Kyiv for consultations. Such move is due to the recent appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian leader who is, from now on, the head of the Executive Committee of Reforms.
Oklahoma City Police Department

Three McDonalds workers have been injured in a shooting in Oklahoma City over a dispute regarding the restaurants seating area closures amidst the coronavirus, police said.

The suspect, Gloricia Woody, was allegedly angry that the restaurants dining area was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, police said on Thursday.

The suspect was said to have been asked to leave the restaurant, and after she refused and a physical altercation allegedly ensued between her and the employee.

The suspect was forced out of the restaurant by employees, She reentered the restaurant with a handgun and fired approximately three rounds in the restaurant, police Captain Larry Withrow said.

One of the employees was reportedly shot in the arm and two other employees were hit by shrapnel.

One worker also suffered a head injury during the initial physical confrontation, according to police.

No-one is thought to have been seriously injured during the incident. McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski told ABCs Good Morning America that the employees were expected to make a full recovery.

It was originally thought that only two employees had been hit by the gunfire.

The 32-year-old has been taken into custody on four counts of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, Mr Withrow said.

It was not known if Ms Woody has an attorney according to police.

What youre seeing in this situation is really what youre seeing in a variety of situations across the country, which is this tension about opening and peoples concern about it, Mr Kempczinski said.

But theres absolutely no excuse for violence, particularly gun violence, so Im just happy that our people are going to be OK.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

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As the Vande Bharat Mission was flagged off on Thursday, another flight took off from Singapore on Friday. The Air India flight AI381 carrying 234 passengers departed for Delhi at 9 am. The update was shared by the Indian High Commission in Singapore. Earlier on Thursday, the first flight carrying stranded Indians arrived in Kochi from Abu Dhabi.

READ: MEA Commences Preparations To Rescue Indians Stranded Abroad Under 'Vande Bharat' Mission

Stranded Indians in Singapore depart for Delhi

The Indian High Commission also thanked all the authorities like MEA, MOCA, MHA, MOHFW, and state governments for their assistance in the evacuation in a short span of time.

AI381 With 234 passengers under #VandeBharatMission left #Singapore for #Delhi at 9 am. Thank you #TeamIndia , MEA MOCA, MHA, MOHFW, MOCA , State Govs for doing it in shortest possible time .

Happy citizens returning home ! pic.twitter.com/nSf4DsgTnF  India in Singapore (@IndiainSingapor) May 8, 2020

READ: First Air India Flight Carrying Stranded Indians From Abu Dhabi Lands At Kochi

SOP for returning back to India

According to the SOP, those who who wish to return to India must register themselves with the Indian Missions in the country where they are stranded, along with necessary details as prescribed by the Ministry of External Affairs. They will have to travel to India by non-scheduled commercial flights that will be arranged by the Civil Aviation Ministry (MoCA) and naval ships to be arranged by the Department of Military Affairs (DMA). Only those crew/staff, who have tested negative for COVID-19, will be allowed to operate the flight/ship.

The MHA said priority will be given to compelling cases in distress including migrant workers/labourers who have been laid off, short term visa holders faced with the expiry of visa, persons with medical emergencies/ pregnant women/ elderly, those required to return to India due to death of family member and students. The cost of travel, as specified by the MoCA and DMA will be borne by such travellers.

READ: BJP Slams Kerala CM's Criticism Of Vande Bharat Mission; Assures Pre-boarding COVID Tests

READ: Delhi Government Issues Guidelines For Handling Of Passengers Under Vande Bharat Mission
(CNN)  U.S. President Donald Trump has spent three years discrediting and sidelining institutional sources of facts, truth, and trust that threaten his political and personal goals.

Rarely has that mission combined in a single day to such a grave result as it did this week. The White House rejected new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on safely reopening the country  with US deaths from the coronavirus surpassing 75,000 and the handpicked officials leading the Justice Department dropped charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Both cases show how Trump disdains government structures meant to dispense independent and fact-based policymaking, science, and justice, free from corrupting political influences.

The CDC guidance contained detailed advice on safe reopening for child care programs, schools, religious communities, employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants, bars, and mass transit systems.

But the White House rejected it as too stringent and too prescriptive, sources told CNN. The move was the latest instance in which Trump has ignored or downplayed CDC advice in his aggressive push to reopen the country, despite warnings from scientists that doing so could cost tens of thousands of lives. His dismissal of that guidance and White House efforts to lower the profile of his top medical advisers strengthen the impression that he has turned against a comprehensive response to the worst public health threat in 100 years.

They also foment the vacuum in national leadership from a White House that has turned over responsibility for fighting the virus to states, is squarely focused on a full-bore economic rebound, and is ignoring its own guidelines on safe state reopening.

News about the rejected CDC advice came on the same day the US death toll from the pandemic passed a new milestone, with more infections reported, and days after Trump wavered on the future of his coronavirus task force. After first saying he was phasing it out  which earned sharp criticism the President on Wednesday said it would continue "indefinitely."

But the administration's sharpest focus appeared to be on the Russia investigation and Trump's conspiracy theories that he is the victim of a "Deep State" plot to subvert his presidency.

Flynn, whose plight has become a rally issue for conservative media pundits, had twice pleaded guilty in court to lying to the FBI. He lied about his contacts with Russia and his business lobbying for Turkey, while he was working for Trump. He also lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Yet in Attorney General William Barr's latest controversial intervention to shield the President, the Justice Department said that it had concluded its own case was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation" into Flynn.

The stunning development in the Flynn case raises fresh concerns about the independence of a Justice Department that appears to be acting as private counsel for Trump and his associates. It undercuts the principle that investigations by special counsels can ensure that sensitive investigations are not politically tainted, and suggests wide political impunity for the President and associates.

And along with his attitude toward the CDC, it appears to be yet another instance where Trump is expanding his personal power by discrediting all contrary sources of authority that expose his falsehoods, as he has done previously with the FBI, the judiciary, scientists in his own government, the media, and US intelligence agencies.

CDC recommendations could slow Trump's push to reopen economy

Devastating unemployment data expected Friday will show why Trump is on firm ground in arguing that the economy cannot stay closed much longer, given the more than 30 million livelihoods being destroyed in shutdowns ordered to slow the spread of the virus.

But in his haste to convince states to get back to normal, the US President appears to be trampling warnings about an increased death toll and precautions that could permit a stage-by-stage opening but would be unlikely to produce the quick economic resurgence he seeks.

The White House said the rejected CDC guidelines suggest that all states face the same level of threat from the virus. That reasoning, however, ignores the fact that one state may have more cases than another, but the virus acts the same whether it's in New York or Tennessee if people are not sitting at a safe distance in a restaurant, for instance.

The sidelining of the CDC guidelines effectively leaves states and businesses on their own in deciding on how to best protect workers and customers, and deprives them of the kind of expert medical advice needed in an epochal pandemic.

The move comes in a week in which Trump has pivoted from stressing the medical challenge from the pandemic which is still raging, and getting worse in some states  and concentrated more on the need to reopen the economy as soon as possible.

Unlike in previous health crises, this White House has rarely used top CDC officials as a trusted voice of scientific rigor. Trump, who prefers to keep the spotlight on himself, has shown his medical understanding to be rudimentary, while touting unproven therapies and poor predictions about the pandemic.

Richard Besser, a former acting director of the CDC, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Thursday that the agency's reopening guidance "makes a lot of sense," and that states wanted it.

"During a public health crisis, one of the most critical success factors is trust. Does the public trust the leaders, that they are doing things to protect their health?" he asked.

"You get that trust by being transparent, by going with the public health science, by having your public health leaders out there, answering tough questions from the media."

Flynn admitted to crimes that U.S. Justice now says don't matter

After days of political drama dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the sudden burst of action related to the Russia investigation felt like going back in time  though the way it highlighted the Trump administration's contempt for normal presidential guardrails did have much in common with the President's handling of the current emergency.

Flynn's defenders argue that he was trapped into lying to the FBI by Justice officials appointed by the Obama administration. His case has been at the center of attempts by the U.S> President and conservative media to deflect from the multiple links between Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race, in which US intelligence agencies say Moscow intervened to help Trump.

Flynn's attorneys seized on a handwritten note from Bill Priestap, the then-counterintelligence director at the FBI, that mused how agents should approach a critical interview with the then-national security adviser in January 2017.

Flynn asked then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak not to retaliate against the Obama administration's sanctions, and to oppose the Obama administration in an upcoming United Nations vote on Israel.

The U.S. Justice Department argued on Friday that the investigations into Flynn's calls with Kislyak during the Trump transition should never have happened, but that there was no underlying crime in the case. Unusually, the U.S. Justice Department filing was not signed by career prosecutors but by DC US Attorney Timothy Shea, a political appointee considered to be a key Barr ally.

The situation is so irregular because Flynn had already pleaded guilty twice, and had agreed to a generous plea deal to cooperate with the Mueller team.

Flynn admitted he did "willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations" to the FBI.

In December 2018, Judge Emmet Sullivan told Flynn he was disgusted by the retired lieutenant general's actions.

"Arguably, you sold your country out," Sullivan said.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN on Thursday that he had never seen such a flagrant political act by the U.S. Justice Department.

"The fix is in," said Honig, who's a legal analyst for CNN.

"This is an absolute injustice. Michael Flynn lied to the FBI  he pled guilty under oath in federal court to doing that; he took a plea; and then, what does Bill Barr do? He says of all the tens of thousands of cases he's been in charge of in the U.S. Department of Justice, look at that one."

"And now, we see Bill Barr doing Donald Trump's dirty work."

The intervention raises serious concerns about the commitment of the right to equal justice under the law, since it amounts to special treatment for a presidential associate. It focuses new attention on Barr's conduct, after he leaned on prosecutors to soften a sentencing recommendation for another Trump crony, Roger Stone, and misrepresented special counsel Robert Mueller's report to cover for the President.

Barr, after igniting yet another fierce Washington controversy, however, accused others of politicizing the case, despite his own unprecedented move.

"I'm doing the law's bidding," Barr told CBS News in an interview Thursday evening.

"I also think it's sad that nowadays these partisan feelings are so strong that people have lost any sense of justice," he added.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Trump puts political goals above facts in CDC and Flynn dramas"
Zoom will finally add end-to-end encryption to stop messages being intercepted as they are sent.

The company had previously suggested that its chats were protected with the technology  but further analysis showed that it was weaker than expected.

Now the company has committed to increase its security protections after buying a secure messaging and file-sharing service.

The video-conferencing platform has acquired Keybase, an encrypted messaging platform for an undisclosed fee.

Zoom said it would use Keybase engineers joining the company to help it build end-to-end encryption into its video platform as part of an ongoing pledge to improve the firm's security features.

Zoom had been criticised for previously suggesting on its website that it used end-to-end encryption when in fact it did not.

At the beginning of April, the company revealed it had suspended all other product development to focus on security features after a number of concerns were raised about safety on the service as it gained millions of new users during the coronavirus lockdown.

A 90-day programme to improve Zoom's security settings was then launched by the firm.

On the promise to introduce end-to-end encryption, Zoom chief executive Eric Yuan said: "There are end-to-end encrypted communications platforms. There are communications platforms with easily deployable security. There are enterprise-scale communications platforms. We believe that no current platform offers all of these.

"This is what Zoom plans to build, giving our users security, ease of use, and scale, all at once.

"The first step is getting the right team together. Keybase brings deep encryption and security expertise to Zoom, and we're thrilled to welcome Max (Krohn, Keybase co-founder) and his team.

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

"Bringing on a cohesive group of security engineers like this significantly advances our 90-day plan to enhance our security efforts."

Zoom said its intention is to offer end-to-end encryption meetings to all paid account users.

"We believe this will provide equivalent or better security than existing consumer end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, but with the video quality and scale that has made Zoom the choice of over 300 million daily meeting participants, including those at some of the world's largest enterprises," the firm said.

Industry expert Tim Mackey, principal security strategist at Synopsys' Cybersecurity Research Centre (CyRC), said Zoom's announcement appeared to be a positive step.

"Zoom's acquisition of the Keybase team allows it to lay the foundation for what's known as end-to-end encryption within their platform," he said.

"This looks like proper end-to-end encryption, but of course the devil is in the details so the implementation will be the true test.

"For normal users, the addition of end-to-end encryption should be viewed as enhancing the overall security of their meetings.

"With recent examples of inappropriate accesses to meetings on the conferencing platforms, this end-to-end encryption helps ensure that any potential for a meeting to be intercepted or for someone to otherwise 'hack' into a meeting are minimised."

Additional reporting by agencies
Mayor Brian Bowman wants the province to help Winnipegs economy recover from pandemic losses, through a strategy that could result in more tax revenues flowing into city coffers.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayor Brian Bowman wants the province to help Winnipegs economy recover from pandemic losses, through a strategy that could result in more tax revenues flowing into city coffers.

Bowman said a provincial partnership is needed after social-distancing measures sparked steep losses at the municipal level.

"Were losing about $12 million per month, as a result of the measures put in place to comply with provincially mandated social-distancing measures," he said Thursday.

If those measures remain in place until the end of August, the city expects to lose $78 million.

The mayor asked the Manitoba government to support the city through the following actions:

 Providing existing levels of capital and operating funds to the city through 2023;

 Speed up Winnipeg capital and operating grant payments in 2020, and give the city "full discretion" on how to spend them;

 Immediately support a $643.4-million request for provincial and federal funding to support the first phases of a $1.8-billion north end sewage treatment plant upgrade and two recreation centre projects;

 Support joint requests to ensure Winnipeg receives all possible federal transit funding;

 Help create a growth-oriented funding model for the capital city.

The mayor described growth funding as a predictable revenue source that would grow as the economy does, deeming provincial PST, federal goods and services tax (GST) and income taxes to fall into that category.

As an example, he said, the province could devote a share of its provincial sales tax revenue to municipalities.

Bowman did not request a specific type of growth funding model, stressing that should be negotiated with the provincial government.

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"Its ultimately a decision that would be made by the province. They provide the legal framework by which we can collect revenues," he said.

In an emailed statement, Municipal Relations Minister Rochelle Squires repeated her governments pledge to fulfill existing municipal funding commitments this year.

"We look forward to continued collaboration with all of our municipal partners, including the City of Winnipeg, during these challenging times and as we carefully and safely restart our provincial economy," wrote Squires.

Beyond confirming 2020 grants, the minister did not directly respond to the mayors specific funding requests.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
Two more persons tested positive for COVID-19 in Uttarakhand on Friday taking the number of coronavirus cases in the state to 63.

Of the two latest cases, one is from Haridwar district and the other from Udham Singh Nagar district, the daily health bulletin here said.

The 31-year-old patient from Haridwar district who tested positive had been admitted at AIIMS-Rishikesh on Thursday with pancreatic ailments, nodal officer for coronavirus cases at the facility Madhur Uniyal said.

The other positive case reported from UdhamSingh Nagar district is that of a 23-year-old from Kashipur in the district who had returned recently from Delhi.

As many as 45 COVID-19 patients have been discharged after recovery till date and the number of active cases stands at 17, the daily health bulletin further said.

One COVID-19 patient had died at AIIMS-Rishikesh last week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
VinaCapital has predicted a 3 percent GDP growth rate reduction because of Covid-19, while Fitch has projected a modest growth rate of 3.3 percent, and ADB 4.8 percent.

VinaCapitals report on Covid-19 impacts on Vietnams economy predicted that Covid-19 would be contained in Vietnam in late Q2 thanks to the strong and prompt measures taken by the government.





Covid-19 is expected slow global economic growth in the next two years.



Vietnam will be affected by the pandemic as it is a highly open economy with export/GDP and import/GDP ratios at 100 percent.



Sixty percent of Vietnams export products have low added value, such as textiles and garments, and low-cost wooden furniture. Meanwhile, the other 40 percent of exports have higher added value, including smartphones (accounting for 20 percent of total export value), digital cameras and household appliances.



The impact of the slowdown to the economy will be smaller than the sharp fall in the number of foreign travelers to Vietnam.

The value Vietnam gets from every dollar foreign travelers spend in Vietnam is higher than the money it earns from assembling products for export.

The value Vietnam gets from every dollar foreign travelers spend in Vietnam is higher than the money it earns from assembling products for export.

VinaCapital estimated that Covid-19 would lower Vietnams GDP by 3 percentage points this year. The 50 percent reduction in number of foreign travelers would lead to a 1.5 percentage point GDP decrease, while the production output growth would slow down by 1 percentage point and lower domestic consumption by 0.5 percentage point.



Fitch Ratings believes that Vietnams GDP will grow by 3.3 percent this year, the lowest growth rate since the mid-1980s.



The firm has revised the Outlook on Vietnams Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to Stable from Positive, and has affirmed the rating at BB.



This years GDP growth rate is unpredictable since it depends on the pandemic both in Vietnam and its key export markets. The number of coronavirus cases reported so far remains low, but it may increase in the future, while some economic activities have been suspended to prevent the spread of the virus.



ADB on April 3 released a report, predicting that Vietnams GDP would grow by only 4.8 percent this year because of Covid-19 and the global trade decline.



A series of business fields, from manufacturing and processing to retail and import/export, all saw decline in Q1. The GDP growth rate in Q1 dropped to 3.8 percent from the 6.8 percent of the same period last year.



A survey conducted by the Advisory Council for Administration Procedure Reform in March found that 74 percent of polled businesses may have to suspend operation if COVID-19 cannot be contained by June 2020.

Thanh Lich

Vietnam must reach GDP growth of 5 per cent this year: PM Vietnams GDP growth in 2020 must reach 5 per cent, higher than the 2.7 per cent the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has said.
Washington

The Senate failed on Thursday to overturn President Donald Trump's veto of a resolution seeking to block him from taking further military action against Iran without explicit approval from Congress, falling short in its latest effort to curtail his unilateral moves on matters of war and peace.

The unsuccessful override attempt, the second in two years aimed at limiting Trump's war-making powers, was defeated on a 49-44 vote, a margin well below the constitutionally required two-thirds majority that would have been needed to enact the measure over his veto. But the bipartisan support for doing so underscored lawmakers' deep skepticism about the president's penchant for defying Congress on military matters and his expansive authority to wage war without consulting a co-equal branch of government.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats to support the measure.

"Congress needed to stand up in a bipartisan way to make plain that this president should not get into a war with Iran, or any war, without a vote of Congress," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. and the sponsor of the measure. "Congress has expressed what is the popular will."

Kaine introduced the resolution after the president ordered a strike against Iran's top security commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a provocation that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran and unleashed a bitter dispute in Congress. Lawmakers were furious about the White House's failure to confer with them before the strike as well as a classified document notifying them of the move that provided no information on future threats or an imminent attack  the justification the president initially cited for the strike in the first in a series of shifting explanations.

Trump vetoed the measure Wednesday evening and used his formal veto message to frame the legislation as a personal affront, calling it "a very insulting attack, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on Nov. 3 by dividing the Republican Party."

"We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognizes that the president must be able to anticipate our adversaries' next moves and take swift and decisive action in response," Trump said. "That's what I did!"

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and the majority leader, on Thursday praised the strike as sending a strong message to Iran.

"We must maintain the measure of deterrence we restored with the decisive strike on Soleimani," McConnell said. "That starts today with upholding the president's rightful veto of a misguided war powers resolution."
New Delhi, May 8 : The extended lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which has stalled traffic on the ground as in the air, is expected to heap enormous losses on infrastructure industries in both sectors, Crisil has said in a report.

According to the report by Crisil Infrastructure Advisory, aviation industry will crash-land this fiscal with revenue loss of Rs 24,000-25,000 crore.

Airlines will be the worst-affected, contributing more than 70% of the losses, or Rs 17,000 crore, followed by airport operators with Rs 5,000-5,500 crore, and airport retailers (including retail, food and beverages and duty-free) with Rs 1,700-1,800 crore, the infra advisory services of global analytics form said.

The losses would reverse the trend growth of 11% per annum the industry has logged over the past ten years, making it one of the most adversely affected s ectors of the economy.

What's worse, Crisil said, the losses will climb if travel restrictions last longer in hubs such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. " We expect the aviation sector will take at least 6-8 quarters to reach pre-pandemic levels," it said.

According to Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, Director and Practice Leader, Transport & Logistics, CRISIL Infrastructure Advisory, "These are prelimina ry estimates, and aggregate losses could increase if the lockdown is extended beyond the first quarter. As and when operations resume, overall operational capacity will hover at 50-60% for the rest of the fiscal. Consequently, mergers and acquisitions of airlines, and relook at expansion plans of private and upcoming greenfield airports would be possibilities." With regards to the roads and highways sector, the estimates in the report s uggests that it will see developers/ toll operators incurring toll revenue l osses of Rs 3,450-3,700 crore during March-June.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will lose Rs 2,100-2,200 cro re in toll over this period.

In addition to the loss in toll revenue, stakeholders will suffer losses on a ccount of accrued interest, increase in costs of under-construction projects , time overruns, and a rise in disputes between the private sector and gover nment authorities, the report said.

Moreover, the NHAI had planned to raise Rs 80,000-85,000 crore through fiscal 2025 by monetising 6,000 km of operational public-funded toll roads. This asset monetisation programme through toll-operate-transfer and infrastructure investment trusts will likely take a hit.

According to Akshay Purkayastha, Director, Transport & Logistics, CRISIL Infrastructure Advisory, "Tolling operations resumed on April 20 and co nstruction on select projects has also restarted. Going forward, the ramp-up in traffic, availability of labour and raw materials for construction, and expeditious dispute resolution will be the key monitorables. In addition, roa d authorities such as the NHAI will have to step up initiatives beyond conve ntional avenues such as development of way-side amenities and formation of s pecial purpose vehicles/ joint ventures for both, financing and revenue.a
PNC General Secretary, Atik Mohammed, has delivered a word of advice to the doorstep of opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) over their boycott of Peace FM's Morning Show 'Kokrokoo'.



The National Democratic Congress (NDC), released a statement to the effect that beginning on Wednesday, May 6, 2020, the party will no longer engage on the platform.



"The National Communication Bureau of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) wishes to inform all its Communicators, Media Monitors, and Officials that the Party has boycotted Peace (104.3) FMs morning show (Kookrokoo) effective today, Wednesday, 6th May 2020.



"This decision has been occasioned by the unfair paneling system that the Production Team of that program has continuously foisted on the NDC over a number of months. Specifically, the reason for this boycott has to do with the unreasonable decision of the Producers and Host of the program to permanently reserve one (1) of the two (2) slots the party has traditionally had on Wednesdays on the show to Mr. Allotey Jacobs, who is often introduced by the host of the program as a 'Social Commentator with strong leanings to the NDC', ostensibly to spite the NDC," the statement read.



The party went ahead to describe the host of the programme, Kwami Sefa Kayi, and his production team as a "dictatorial Host and his poodle" and directed their "Communicators, Media Monitors, Members, and Officials of the NDC" to refuse "invitations and/or interviews from the said program, until the station addresses our concerns and reviews their unfair paneling system".



" . . the National Communication Bureau of the NDC has decided to cease the placement of party communicators on the 'Kookrokoo' show forthwith," the NDC National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi issued.



Contributing to a panel discussion on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', Atik Mohammed, in reaction to the NDC's claims and boycott; said all political figures and their parties "have to understand that there are some things we have no control over. It's a privilege to be on this show. In fact, it's even a privilege to be given an opportunity to speak on any platform. We don't own the station. Did we purchase the frequency or pay your licence fee for you? Is it political actors that pay your employees' salaries? It's a privilege to be here. I am not saying people have no right to disagree or to take any course of action, but in doing so, in my earnest opinion, we're trying to deepen our democracy. We should disagree but in expressing our disagreement . . . we shouldn't undermine those (platforms). Because when we begin to attack them as being unfair when indeed it is because they didn't fall for our own whims and caprices, I think that is unfair to tag such entities and platforms as being unfair''.



Listen to Atik Mohammed in the video below





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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By Sheila Hagar, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Walla Walla Countys public health director changed direction Wednesday on so-called COVID-19 parties that drew national attention to the community this week.

Meghan DeBolt told various media outlets Wednesday night she had mischaracterized the supposed parties  said to include one or more people who had tested positive for the disease so that others in attendance could expose themselves to the virus.

Community Health first mentioned reports of such parties in the Walla Walla area with an update Monday sent via press release to media and posted publicly on the agencys social media account.

On Wednesday evening DeBolt sent out a formal recall of TV news interviews and told KREM news in Spokane, according to information posted online, that further investigation revealed no intentional COVID-19 parties, just innocent endeavors.

Neither Walla Walla County Commissioners nor health officials responded to the Union-Bulletin by press time today on DeBolts walk-back of her statement.

DeBolt told the Union-Bulletin on Monday after issuing the news release including information about the alleged parties that her staff had been hearing of instances of people  tired of being isolated at home  gathering together to intentionally spread COVID-19.

Some people think thats a way to form antibodies to COVID-19 in healthy people and build herd immunity within a community, DeBolt said, calling such behavior unacceptable and irresponsible.

She told the U-B that new positive test results in the county had resulted from these parties, and investigators tracing contacts of infected people were hearing of these parties, offering an example of seeing 25 potential exposures because of such a gathering.

The story was picked up by regional and national news outlets. DeBolt told other media, including The New York Times, that one or more local coronavirus parties had been confirmed.

In her communication with KREM on Wednesday, however, she wrote: After receiving further information, we have discovered that there were not intentional COVID parties. A copy of her message was posted on the TV stations website and social media pages.

Earlier Wednesday, Washington states Department of Health issued a statement saying officials were alarmed by reports of coronavirus parties and the increased risks associated with them.

Lauren Jenks, spokeswoman for the DOH, said her agency has received lots of questions about herd immunity and numerous ideas about how to open the state up again.

One idea is those parties, Jenks said today. It wasnt a good idea for chickenpox, and its a really terrible idea for COVID-19, for lots of reasons.

Coronavirus in the Northwest: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Chief Troy Tomaras said today the College Place Police Department has received no calls about COVID-19 parties, but noted that if his officers find intentional exposure to the virus, they will investigate and refer to the citys attorney.

Tomaras said his department continues to support the countys efforts to keep people safe from the virus.

They do a fantastic job, he said of Community Health employees, adding that its unfortunate the COVID-19 parties story took on a life of its own.

Chief Scott Bieber of the Walla Walla Police Department said today he thinks the coronavirus parties term was poorly used by public health officials, but that his stance remains the same:

When and if we find an intentional exposure to COVID-19, we will conduct an investigation and refer the matter to the city attorney for charging if appropriate.

His department has not received specific information from health officials that required enforcement, Bieber said, although a birthday party at Pioneer Park was reported.

While the party should not have taken place at a public park, it was not an intentional exposure event, he said.

More on coronavirus:

10 Oregon churches sue governor, want to worship without restrictions amid coronavirus pandemic

Oregon businesses that flout the governors reopening rules could be fined
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz reacted May 8 to reports about the United States considering to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula, saying, "The international force in Sinai is important, and the American participation in it is important. Certainly, the issue will be raised between us and the Americans." Steinitz was referring specifically to a May 7 statement by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who told The Wall Street Journal that the American military efforts in Sinai aren't the best use of department resources or worth the risk to the 400 American troops there.

The Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) was born after the 1978 signing of the peace accords between Israel and Egypt, with a mission to supervise the implementation of the security provisions of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. From the very start and over the years, the force enjoyed good cooperation with both Israel and with Egypt.

In fact, from Israels point of view, the MFO had established a much better image than that of other regional multinational forces such as UNDOF in Syria or UNIFIL in Lebanon. Contrary to UNIFIL, almost no frictions or conflicts were registered over the years between Israel and the multinational force in Sinai. Jerusalem views the MFO as an example of a successful and creative peacekeeping force. A former US State Department official told Al-Monitor that the American team that established the force maintained constructive and strong ties with their Israeli counterparts.

These constructive ties evolved over time, with Israel recognizing the efficiency of the force especially in the past six years, since the change of regime in Egypt. The strong security cooperation between Cairo and Jerusalem on combatting jihadis in Sinai and in calming tensions in the Gaza Strip, were projected also on the multinational force. Thirteen countries contribute soldiers to this force, but the Americans were always key players, a fact that surely contributed to the good trilateral military relations.

Jerusalem knows that the issue of withdrawing US MFO troops from Sinai has been on Washingtons table for quite a while now. Already in March this year, the Pentagon informed Congress it was exploring this possibility. Reports at the time in the Israeli press stressed fears that such a withdrawal would weaken the already fragile security situation in Sinai, while encouraging other countries participating in the MFO to also withdraw their troops. Recent attacks against the Egyptian army are only increasing fears, in both Jerusalem and Cairo, over the Americans pulling out of the region.
Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday refuted speculation that army will be called in to manage the coronavirus crisis in Mumbai, but said the state may ask for central forces if necessary.

Conducting a live webcast, Thackeray conceded that the "chain" of virus infection has not been broken in the state yet, but assured that adequate medical infrastructure was available, especially in Mumbai.

Number of coronavirus cases in Maharashtra has crossed 19,000, with around 12,000 of them reported in Mumbai alone.

Every citizen of the state is a soldier who is fighting coronavirus, the CM said, expressing confidence of winning the war against the virus.

Asking people not to believe rumours, the chief minister said the government may ask for "additional manpower"from the Union government, if needed,so that police personnel can take rest in a phased manner.

"This doesn't mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the clock, some have fallen sick and few of them have succumbed to the virus. They need rest," Thackeray said.

Relaxation of lockdown after May 17 depends on how far people maintain discipline and follow rules, he said.

"We have to come out of the lockdown one day or the other. We can't be staying permanently like this. But to come out of this sooner, you need to follow rules and maintain discipline of social distancing and use face mask," Thackeray said.

The chief minister admitted that even though the extent of the spread of the virus has been contained, there has been no success in "breaking the virus chain".

He also expressed anguish at the death of migrant workers in Aurangabad district who were run over by a goods train, calling it very unfortunate.

He appealed migrant workers not to panic, and said the Maharashtra government was in touch with the Centre and had sought more trains to ferry migrants to their home states.

Mumbai has adequate medical infrastructure for treatment of COVID-19 patients, Thackeray assured.

Though the number of coronavirus cases was rising, the number of patients who are recovering is also high, he pointed out.

If needed, medical facilities at the Central government institutions in Mumbai will be used for isolation centres, the chief minister said.

He also mentioned a viral video which showed patients being treated next to dead bodies at Sion Hospital in Mumbai. "Such mismanagement will not be tolerated," he said.
Empty streets leading to isolated colonies, people watching the sunrise from their window and birds and animals enjoying a quiet and less polluted environment. These are some of the scenarios that have been beautifully captured by actor Raqesh Bapat in his recent paintings which he is auctioning on social media to raise funds for Covid-19 relief efforts.

Whoever makes the higher bidding on messages, cracks the deal. All they have to do is donate that money directly to any of the funds mentioned in the post and share the receipt as proof. After the lockdown gets over, Ill make these paintings on a larger canvas and get them delivered, Bapat says.

Making the best use of his art for a noble cause, Bapat, 41, has already sold three-four paintings and raised around 40,000 and the numbers keep rising. For another philanthropic initiative, the actor is planning to start a free online teaching course for people to learn how to make eco-friendly Lord Ganpati idols. This year, there is going to be the scarcity of the Ganpati idols because most of the karigars have gone home. They start the process in March to make Ganpati idols in large numbers. Thus, I thought of starting an online course next month where Ill be training people how to make eco-friendly Ganpati idols from clay and paper pulp. I want to utilise my skills to make noble cause, Bapat shares.

Currently, stationed in Pune, the actor feels glad that his family is around. Apart from making the artwork, the actor shares that he is busy setting up his production house for his own projects and also working on commissioned paintings for some clients. I was also shooting for my web series Assi Nabbe Poorey Sau which has been put on hold for now, he adds.

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The privately owned nursing home was found to have placed its residents in immediate jeopardy and has been fined $220,000. The median fine by the federal agency over the last three years was $13,000.

The report was released on the same day that members of the National Guard arrived in Andover, N.J., to assist at the nursing home, a 543-bed facility that has been chronically short of staff and masks and has over the last two years received poor grades from federal and state inspectors.

At least 53 of its residents have died since March after testing positive for the virus.

An employee at the Andover home said they were told to expect 22 National Guard members whose duties would include cleaning and disinfecting. Over the past week, residents have complained that clothing and bedsheets had not been washed.

Its not sanitary, said Jewell Jones, whose brother, Ronald Young, 69, is a resident. The lights were out, flies in the room. Were just worried about him all the time.

She said staff members had been more responsive since last month, when federal and state inspectors began a review after the police found 17 bodies piled in a small morgue and employees reported that conditions were dire.
As many as 16 migrant labourers died after being crushed by a goods train at Aurangabad's Karmad in Maharashtra on Friday (May 8, 2020). A few others were seriously injured and two escaped unhurt, all of the workers are from Madhya Pradesh.

The accident took place near Karmad railway station between Jalna and Aurangabad of Nanded Divison of South Central Railways. They were sleeping on the railway track when the tragedy took place.

The injured have been taken to Aurangabad Civil Hospital.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences at the tragedy in Aurangabad and promised all possible assistance in the matter. Taking to microblogging site Twitter, he wrote: "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided."

Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 8, 2020

Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal too offered condolences on the deaths and ordered a probe into the incident.

In a statement released by the Railways, the persons run over are natives of Umarya and Shahdol of Madhya Pradesh and worked at SRG Company in Jalna, Maharashtra.

The statements adds that the supervisors of the company in Jalna informed that the workers left at 7 pm in the evening on Thursday by foot and walked upto Badnapore, later they started walking on the tracks towards Aurangabad. After walking for about 36 kms, they became tiresome and sat on the track and gradually fell sleep.

Fourteen of them were on the railway track, two members adjacent to the track and three members away from track. The injured have been shifted to government hospital. The local Police and Aurangabad GRP are at the spot.

Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan grieved at the loss of lives in Aurangabad and announced Rs 56 lakh ex gratia to the kin of the deceased. He also announced that a special team will visit Aurangabad and help the wounded.
Yahaya Bello, governor of Kogi, on Thursday asked a delegation of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the ministry of health to go on 14-day isolation or leave the state immediately.

The federal government had sent a delegation to Kogi to assist the state which has not recorded any COVID-19 case to boost its testing capacity.

Kogi and Cross River are the only states which have not recorded any case of the disease in Nigeria.

Last week, Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of the NCDC, had expressed dissatisfaction with the samples collected from the states, saying more tests need to be done.

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But the Kogi and Cross River governments had indirectly accused the agency of plotting to infect residents of their states with the disease.

When the team visited him at government house, Lokoja, the state capital, on Thursday night, Bello said the rules laid by the World Health Organisation (WHO) would be strictly followed.

WHO had recommended a 14-day quarantine for travellers after which tests would be conducted.

Noah Andrew, leader of the delegation from Abuja, had presented a letter titled: Deployment of Rapid Response Squad to help in fighting Covid-19, to the governor, explaining the mission of the health officials in the state.

He said they were there to provide logistics just like they had done in other states of the federation.

He said two members of the team would be left behind to help the state and support her efforts of the state government already in place.

We are here to support the state in shipping swabs and samples and ascertain the preparedness of the state in fighting Covid-19, he said.

Speaking shortly after receiving the letter, Bello outlined steps taken so far by the state to fight the pandemic.

He said that the state is highly experienced in fighting infectious diseases such as Lassa fever and malaria, adding that the experience has been brought to bear in fighting COVID-19.

He consequently asked that the NCDC officials be subjected to testing and isolated in the state quarantine center or should leave the state immediately.
Researchers have developed an easy-to-use cloud-based web interface powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that they say can detect COVID-19 quickly from radiology reports such as CT scan or X-Rays.

IMAGE: Medics collect samples from a COVID-19 patient to test the status of his infection at a hospital in New Delhi. Photograph: PTI Photo

The system may enable doctors and medical staff even in remotest villages of the country to get quick results on the COVID-19 status of a patient, the researchers said.

AI technologies that study CT Scans and X-Rays are being deployed as part of global efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, according to the researchers from Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Punjab.

However, one of the biggest roadblocks in their adoption has been the need for a high-tech device or computer to support the software, and a qualified technician for operating it, they said.

"The unavailability of resources in our healthcare system is a big hindrance in COVID-19 detection and treatment, especially in the remote areas of the country," Prabin Kumar Das, a BTech student at LPU told PTI.

"We wanted to build a cloud based system which could be accessed at minimal costs even from the remotest possible locations in the country while ensuring high quality results," Das said.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the novel coronavirus causes respiratory illness resembling viral pneumonia, resulting in fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

A study published in the journal Radiology found that chest X-ray scan features can aid in the early detection and diagnosis of the virus.

The interface developed by researchers at LPU is cloud-based, and does not need any high-tech device or technicians to operate.

It can be accessed by an authorised healthcare professional any where in the world via a basic mobile device with internet connectivity and a web browser, they said.

The researchers noted that the user will have to upload a patient's scan on the website and it will return the diagnosis result 'within a few seconds'.

The interface is connected to an AI model at a centralised server which processes the image received from the web portal and sends the results back to the web portal, they said.

The researchers said no extra technical skills are required to use the portal, except for uploading the images.

The portal is capable of hosting any AI model that is preferred by a hospital, and will accordingly be able to detect the infection as well as the extent to which it has affected the patient, they said.

"Several experts from around the world have strongly recommended the use of CT scans for quick diagnosis of COVID 19. We are proud to have come up with a solution that can rapidly scale these tests," Lovi Raj Gupta, Executive Dean of Science and Technology at LPU told PTI.

He said the team is in touch with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for further evaluation, and is also in talks with industry partners to collaborate by providing the most promising medically-certified AI models which can be used for diagnosis of COVID19.

This, Gupta said, will help doctors to segregate patients and make decisions to triage, isolate or put a patient on a ventilator, in order to use the available resources efficiently.

The images uploaded on the interface will be AES encrypted ensuring complete privacy for the patient, according the researchers.

It took the team, including B. Tech student Biswajyoti Roy, and professors Rajesh Singh and Anita Gehlot, around one month to develop the framework, they said.

The AI model that that the team built for testing the framework was trained and tested over more than 13,000 chest radiography images, according to the researchers.
Ruslana Korshunova (Russian   ) was a well-known Kazakh model of Russian descent. She became famous in the fashion industry for her fascinating thigh-length almond-colored hair coupled with piercing blue eyes. Before her death, she worked with various brands such as Vera Wang, Nina Ricci, Max Studio, and Old England. Her startling death sparked controversy and has remained the subject of widespread attention.

Image: facebook.com, @RuslanaKorshunova

Source: UGC

How old was the model before she passed on? Ruslana Korshunova was born on 2nd July 1987 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her father passed on when the model was still a little girl. Ruslana Korshunova brother, known as Ruslan, lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan with his mother, Valentina Kutenkova. At the time of her death, the model was twenty years old.

Profile summary

Name: Ruslana Korshunova

Ruslana Korshunova Date of birth: 2nd July 1987

2nd July 1987 Place of birth: Almaty, Kazakhstan

Almaty, Kazakhstan Father: Deceased

Deceased Mother: Valentina Kutenkova

Valentina Kutenkova Siblings: Ruslan

Ruslan Profession: Professional model

Ruslana Korshunova bio

Here is a look at the late models life, including her career, relationships, and unanticipated demise.

Early career

The Ruslana Korshunova long hair earned her the nickname Russian Rapunzel. She was discovered in 2003 when an in-flight magazine featured her photo in an article about the Kazakh town of Almaty. Debbie Jones, the modeling scout who found her, described Korshunova as looking like straight out of a fairy tale.

Image: facebook.com, @RuslanaKorshunova

Source: UGC

Defining features

The piercing blue Ruslana Korshunova eyes quickly earned her bookings in the modeling industry. Combined with the unbelievably long Ruslana Korshunova hair, the young girls body features made her the perfect candidate for high-profile modeling.

Ruslana Korshunova Vera Wang deal and others

The model was represented by Traffic Models in Barcelona, Beatrice in Milan, and IMG in London, Paris, and New York. A short while into her career, she spoke German, English, Kazakh, and Russian with varying fluency.

The Ruslana Korshunova Nina Ricci deal to promote the brands perfume is perhaps one of her best-known appearances in a commercial. Here are some other brands that model Ruslana Korshunova worked with.

Paul Smith

Pantene Always Smooth

Old England

Marithe & Francois

Kenzo Accessories

Girbaud

Ghost

Clarins

Moschino

Max Studio

Blugirl by Blumarine

Famous images

The Russian-born model was the main subject at several high profile photo-shoots involving renowned photographers and designers. Here are some of her most popular ones.

Ruslana Korshunova solitary refinement photo by Mario Sorrenti

Vlada Roslyakova and Ruslana Korshunova shot by Michelangelo di Battista for the Moschino spring/summer 2005 campaign

Image: facebook.com, @RuslanaKorshunova

Source: UGC

The Ruslana Korshunova Rachel Roy cruise paid tribute to the late model by posting a series of images depicting her modeling career.

Ruslana Korshunova death

On 28th June 2008, the model fell to her death after jumping off the balcony of her ninth-floor Manhattan apartment. Police investigations revealed no signs of a struggle and therefore concluded that the models death was the result of an apparent suicide.

One of the model's friends pointed out that the model had just come back from Paris and looked quite happy, thus questioning the reason behind committing suicide. The models mother, Valentina Kutenkova, ruled out suicide as her daughters cause of death.

In her opinion, the model would have talked about any issues that would have made her contemplate suicide. A concierge who worked at the models apartment described the scene at the site of Ruslanas death. One interesting observation involves the models hair, which appeared shorter and unevenly cut as if by someone who was in a hurry.

Many witnesses stated that there were no suspicious people near the models apartment around the time of her death. A while later, British filmmaker created a theory that the models death was connected to her membership at Rose of the World, a Russian organization that apparently trained its members for personality development,

The filmmaker, known as Peter Pomerantsev, attended several sessions at the organization aiming to understand its operations. The model's death was even more curious considering that another model, Anastasia Drozdova, had also committed suicide after joining the organization.

Ruslana Korshunova funeral

On 4th July 2008, Ruslana was laid to rest in Moscow, Russia. The funeral was attended by the models close friends and family. There were also various models in attendance at the somber occasion. The models mother pointed out how Russia had always been one of Ruslanas favorite cities in the world.

Ruslana Korshunova was undoubtedly among the people who passed on when their careers were rising. The Russian-born runway model will always be remembered, not only for her extraordinary hair but also for her exploits in the modeling world at a tender age.

Source: KAMI.com.gh
New Delhi, May 8 : After Rahul Gandhi on Friday trained his guns on the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was the turn of BJP, who in an official statement, accused him of speaking without full knowledge of a subject. As Gandhi hit out at Modi asking the decision to categorise zones should not be made from the PMO, BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi mocked him by calling him "evergreen youth leader".

"In spite all the efforts, communal politics is being played and efforts are being made to go against the government in international forums. But there has been no appeals made by the Congress party," said Trivedi.

The BJP claimed that the Centre is more than receptive to suggestions from the Opposition provided they are constructive and are based on facts. But, the ruling BJP accused the grand old part of repeating old accusations which the BJP said were devoid of truth or sense of cooperation.

Earlier in the day, in a press conference, Rahul Gandhi said, "Indian economy has stopped, businesses are collapsing and you need to create demand immediately. You need to get the system started, else there will be a catastrophe." The Congress leader said the need of the hour is to create demand, put money in the system and in poor people's hands.

The BJP hit back, saying, "As far as helping the poor and the needy are concerned, the Centre has given a package worth Rs 1.7 lakh crore, which is far bigger than the one which Rahul Gandhi discussed today." The economic package, Trivedi claimed, has benefited more than 39 crore people. He said benefits such as ration to even those without holding a ration card has been ensured by the BJP-led Centre. Similar is the benefit of providing free cooking gas cylinders for three months, he added.

The BJP claimed that the direct benefit transfer, which the former Congress President is harping on, has already been done and continues to be done by the Modi government. "Abhijit Banerjee has also welcomed it," he said.

Banerjee is a Nobel laureate with whom Gandhi recently had a much-publicized chat on ways to re-energize the Indian economy.
Amornrat Phuchom/iStockBy ERIN SCHUMAKER, ABC News

(NEW YORK) -- Dr. Mary Bassett addressed an audience in Boston last October.



"This epidemic is complicated, and like all epidemics, it tracks along fissures in our society, Bassett, a professor at Harvard's public health school, told the crowd.



Bassett was talking about the opioid crisis, but her turn of phrase was prescient.



She just as easily could have been referring to the COVID-19 epidemic, for which the United States has emerged as the epicenter, making up a third of the world's infections and a quarter of its deaths by May. Like past epidemics, COVID-19 is exposing cracks that already existed in our health system -- and widening them.



"Any time you have a whole population exposed to a disease, it reflects the structural underpinnings and the failures of our society," Bassett told ABC News in April.



The United States has the largest gross domestic product in the world and one of the highest per capita. But its health doesn't reflect that wealth. Instead, Americans are sicker than residents of other high-income countries. The United States leads the developed world in diabetes prevalence, and has a higher heart disease death burden than other high-income countries, data show. Asthma rates in the U.S. rise every year. And all three chronic conditions are considered comorbidities that raise patients' risk for developing severe and deadly COVID-19 complications.



Our chronically ill populace comprises one layer of America's strained health system. Stark inequality that's concentrated in communities of color makes up another. Then there's the health care system itself, experts tell ABC News. Despite spending twice as much on health care as other high-income countries, studies show the U.S. fails to produce healthier citizens. Instead, the sick sometimes face crushing medical debt and the uninsured cycle through our emergency rooms.



Without a nationalized public health response system in place, experts say government leaders in many cases panic and throw money at acute problems like COVID-19, but show little appetite for proactive investments to bolster population health.



Working in tandem, those failings appear to have worsened the United States' COVID-19 outbreak, experts said. Decision-makers can use that list of failings as a roadmap to make improvements now, experts added, or they can once again neglect the cracks in the system, until the next pandemic hits.

An unequal footing



While the United States is among the world's wealthiest countries, there are stark differences in how that wealth is concentrated.



According to the Brookings Institution, the net worth of a typical white family is $171,000, nearly 10 times greater than a black family's typical net worth of $17,150.



That wealth gap trickles down into various opportunity gaps, which are reflected in disparities in infection and death rates during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as a black-white health gap that existed before COVID-19.



Preliminary demographic data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appears to bear this out. Thirty-three percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are black, compared to 18% of residents in the surrounding community, suggesting an overrepresentation of black Americans among hospitalized patients, the agency notes. In New York City, the country's biggest COVID-19 hotspot, more than 20,000 residents have died, and black and Latino residents are more likely to die of COVID-19 than their white and Asian neighbors.



Those disparities include direct health care access problems, including higher uninsured rates among Latino and black Americans than among white Americans.



There are also less obvious health disparities than access to doctors or health insurance. A lifetime of social conditions, including where Americans are born, live and play, shape their health. So do education and employment opportunities. Housing plays a role. Incarceration and immigration status matter, experts say.



As COVID-19 has devastated the black community, it's also unmasked the effects of structural racism to the wider public, according to Dr. Camara Jones, an epidemiologist and past president of the nonprofit American Public Health Association, who has also worked for the CDC.



"COVID-19 was rolled out as an equal opportunity infector, and all of a sudden, the black bodies are piling up so quickly that people cannot normalize it or ignore it," Jones said.



Black Americans fare worse than white Americans on nearly every measurable metric of health, including cancer death, HIV infection and maternal mortality rates.



COVID-19 has made those disease disparities strikingly clear. Because black Americans are more likely to have diabetes, obesity and asthma, the underlying health problems that predispose them to develop severe COVID-19 complications, they're also more likely to be hospitalized or die from the new disease.



"This is not genetic," Bassett stressed. "This is related to the way in which we structured our society."



While there's some variation between individuals when it comes to fitness, genetics and luck, "the reasons we get sick, or not, have more to do with our society than any biological features that we may have as individuals," Bassett said.



An analysis published last month by New York University's Furman Center, for example, found that the strongest neighborhood factors linked to high COVID-19 rates were having a large share of black and Hispanic residents, having a high proportion of overcrowded apartments and having a large share of residents without college degrees.



Since college-educated workers are more likely to be able to work remotely than people without a college education, people without degrees risk being exposed to the disease on the job, or are forced to choose between their health and a paycheck in some cases. And because fewer than 1 in 5 black workers and 1 in 6 Hispanic workers are able to work remotely, according to the Economic Policy Institute, on-the-job exposure disproportionately affects people of color.



"What it is showing is that we have huge schisms of opportunity and experience and exposure in a society structured by race," Jones said. "We actually have a system that does that. We have a system of opportunity and assigning value in this country, and thats what we call racism."



"If we were not to react to this data, we would be doing what racism often does  especially structural racism  showing itself through inaction in the face of need," Jones said.



While improving health care, education and neighborhood safety are important, those problems won't be solved overnight.



President Donald Trump addressed the disproportionate number of black Americans dying from COVID-19 during a White House press conference in April.

"This is a real problem, and it's showing up very strongly in our data," he said, adding that his administration would do everything in its power to support African Americans and address COVID-19 racial disparities.



In the short-term, Jones and Bassett pointed to the importance of addressing black Americans' acute needs during the outbreak. Frontline workers, and not just doctors and nurses, but also subway employees, bus drivers, janitors and delivery people, need personal protective equipment and paid sick leave.



"The important thing here is to make it easier for people to avoid exposure, just like its important to make it easier for people to eat healthy food," Bassett said.



In Bassett's mind, that includes challenging the impulse to blame those who fall ill for getting infected.



"All that anyone who gets infected will have been guilty of is breathing," she said.



The cost of care and medical debts deepen the risk



The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country, with little to show for it.



Even before the pandemic, health insurance costs for middle-class families were rising, to say nothing of the 27.5 million Americans who were uninsured pre-pandemic. Many Americans are perpetually on the edge of falling into medical debt, with 1 in 3 people reporting that they wouldn't be able to cover an unexpected $400 medical bill without borrowing money or selling their belongings.



With no national health care system and 33 million Americans filing for unemployment in recent weeks, citizens' access to affordable health care is only likely to get worse.



"Of course that will have a bearing on health insurance, because so many of us have our health insurance through our jobs," Bassett said.



The interdependent relationship between health and housing creates a relentless cycle, according to Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University.



Medical debt and ill health are risk factors for being homeless, he explained.

"When you lose housing, youre more susceptible to a lot of health issues. People who have health issues are more likely to lose housing," Beletsky said.

Without reliable and affordable health services, the homeless lean heavily on the hospital system.



"Most folks who are homeless cant access primary care outside of the emergency room, and they utilize the ER far more than is really necessary. Their care bills end up being extremely large without really conferring much benefit to those folks," Beletsky said.



"We basically help when it's too late. It costs a lot of money, requires heroic interventions and people continue being sick," he added.



"It's very much a microcosm for our health care system in general. Rather than investing in prevention, we dump an enormous amount of resources at a time when it really is too late," he noted.



The incarceration factor



There's also significant overlap between being incarcerated and being homeless, another vulnerable group that's been hard hit by COVID-19. According to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general population. In New York City, half of people who are released from prison move directly into the city's shelter system.



"It's one situation of mass living to another situation of mass living," said Dr. Alysse Wurcel, an infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center.



Shelters, jails and prisons contain a population of sicker-than-average people living in tight quarters, where social distancing is impossible and sanitation is often an afterthought. It's an environment ripe for disease spread.



Shelters in Seattle, Boston and San Francisco have all reported COVID-19 outbreaks.



Jails and prisons have fared even worse. Chicago's Cook County jail emerged as one of the nation's COVID-19 hotspots after more than 800 detainees and correctional officers tested positive. More than 14,500 people in prison have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the outbreak, according to the Marshall Project, which is tracking prison data from all 50 states and from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.



Instead of flattening the curve, the number of new infections is doubling each week. More than 5,000 corrections officers have tested positive for the disease, an ABC News analysis found.



"I wish there were more attention paid to the fact that incarceration is a comorbidity factor," said Kate Chatfield, senior adviser for legislation and policy at The Justice Collaborative, a criminal justice research and advocacy organization.



The prison population is also disproportionately black and poor. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, nearly 40% of the prison population is black, compared to 13 percent of the overall population.



"All of the things that would lead to bad health outcomes," Chatfield added. "And that's just upon custody."



Being in detention presents its own health risks. Every year served in prison reduces life expectancy by two years, an analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health found.



The COVID-19 infection numbers being released by prisons and jails are likely an undercount, experts say. It's unclear how many jails and prisons are thoroughly testing their populations, if they're testing at all.



"If youre not finding cases, you're an ostrich in the sand," said Wurcel, who is consulting Massachusetts jails on how to respond to COVID-19. "We are learning that rapidly in Massachusetts. Its pretty much everywhere."

Cycle of panic and neglect



One of the many eye-opening moments of the pandemic was watching U.S. governors bid against one another for ventilators, during a time when it was believed that there would be a severe ventilator crisis.



Although that anticipated shortage did not come to pass, residents in states with governors who could negotiate well would live, it seemed, while others would die.



Lack of national coordination has deepened division between states, resulting in some states adopting strict lockdown measures, while others have opened back up for business. It's also fueled a brutal cultural war between those who say their livelihood depends on returning to work and those who fear dying from the virus, should it be allowed to spread unchecked.



The splintered response to the pandemic in the U.S. has not only pitted Americans against one another, but also appears to be part of a larger trend of not preparing for the future, experts say.



Between 2008 and 2017, for example, funding cuts resulted in 55,000 jobs cut from local health departments across the country. Dozens of rural hospitals have closed over the past decade. And in 2018, Trump disbanded the global health security and biodefense unit, which is responsible for pandemic preparedness.



"Our job was to be the smoke alarm," Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in the Washington Post. "Keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire  all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze."

"You are doing something to prevent harm so you never see that harm realized," Beletsky said.

Prevention is a hard sell, he added. It's far easier for politicians to justify spending money on a crisis that's already in motion, like COVID-19.



"There you can justify pretty unlimited resources," he said.



"People cant wrap their heads around working upstream and preventing problems," according to Beletsky.

In turn, lack of upstream investment in affordable housing and health care, in preventative medicine and paid sick leave, in education and safe and healthy neighborhoods, have all exacerbated the United States' COVID-19 crisis, experts said.



Whether the harsh light COVID-19 has shone on outbreaks in prisons and shelters, and on racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths will force policymakers to invest in communities of color and in public health preparedness or usher in criminal justice reform, remains to be seen.



"There's a lot of talk about getting back to normal after COVID-19, but there's a range of issues where getting back to normal isn't desirable," Beletsky said.



"There are rays of hope in that. There are also a lot of reasons to be pessimistic," he added.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
The daily death toll from Covid-19 in the United States could have been more than halved if authorities had acted more swiftly in recommending self-isolation and the wearing of face masks, according to a new study.

Several US states began issuing stay-at-home orders in late March, while federal health authorities began recommending the use of face masks for all in early April. However, had such measures been implemented just four days earlier, the roughly 2,000 Covid-19 deaths currently being recorded each day would have been cut to less than 1,000, the study said.

Furthermore, lifting the measures in a bid to kick-start the economy would almost instantly increase the daily death toll to more than 3,000, it said.

"These findings may inform policymaking," said the researchers from Princeton Medical Centre and other research institutes in a yet-to-be-peer reviewed paper posted on Medrxiv.org on Wednesday.

US health authorities only began recommending the use of face masks for all in early April. Photo: Getty Images via AFP alt=US health authorities only began recommending the use of face masks for all in early April. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

The findings echoed comments made last month by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US.

"Obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different," he said in a television interview on April 12. "But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then".

Both Fauci and other senior health officials were banned from speaking freely to the media or testifying at congressional hearings by the Trump administration, according to media reports.

Swifter action "could have saved lives", he said, without giving an exact number.

But the figures could be found in publicly available data, according to the research team led by Lanjing Zhang, director of gastrointestinal and liver pathology at Princeton Medical Centre.

Story continues

By tracking the changes in the numbers of infections and deaths after the implementation of the containment measures in the US, Zhang's team was able to build a mathematical model to simulate the impact of the policies, and then used it to estimate what might have happened had they been introduced at different times.

California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order to its 4 million residents on March 19, and by April 7 similar restrictions had been implemented across the country, affecting almost 90 per cent of the population.

On April 3, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention changed its long-standing policy on the wearing of face masks, and urged everyone to cover their nose and mouth when in public.

The effect of the policies was almost instant, the study said. The growth rate for both infections and deaths began slowing on March 23 and by April 4 had plateaued and begun a gentle decline.

But according to the model, had the same measures been introduced just four days earlier, the number of new daily infections in April would have fallen by about two-thirds to 10,000. And had the move been made a week sooner, that figure would have dropped to just 3,000, with about 300 daily deaths, it said.

China imposed a total lockdown in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the initial outbreak, and imposed nationwide quarantine measures in late January.

According to Zhang's study, had the US introduced rules on self-isolation and mask wearing just a month after Beijing made its move " and about the time Fauci and other health officials were pushing the government to take aggressive mitigation efforts " the US would now be facing just 30 new infections and fewer than 10 deaths per day from Covid-19.

Zhang said that the massive dip in cases suggested by the model was due to the fact that measures such as social distancing and wearing face masks reduced the rate at which the virus spread. And removing them too soon would have the opposite effect.

"Caution is therefore needed in decision-making regarding the lifting of the stay-at-home orders," the paper said.

President Donald Trump is keen to reboot the US economy, after it shrank by 4.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year. Photo: AP alt=President Donald Trump is keen to reboot the US economy, after it shrank by 4.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year. Photo: AP

President Donald Trump is keen to reboot the US economy, after it shrank by 4.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year and economic indicators suggest unemployment is set to spike in the months ahead.

Zhang's findings have been replicated by other research teams. A model built by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under the US Department of Homeland Security, predicted that the daily death toll would jump to 3,000 and new infections to 200,000 by June if the containment measures were lifted too soon.

A team led by Professor Andrew Tatem from the University of Southampton in England, said that without a vaccine for the coronavirus or effective medication to fight Covid-19, the best way to contain its spread was through non-pharmaceutical intervention.

"China's aggressive, multifaceted response is likely to have prevented a far worse situation, which would have accelerated the spread globally," he said in a recent report.

Beijing's actions gave the rest of the world a "preparation window and fighting chance" against the deadly disease, he said.

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.
(Natural News) The Trump administration is paying huge numbers of people more money to not work than they used to make at their jobs, so even as economies attempt to reopen, small businesses cant find anyone who wants to work.

Why should they work, after all, when theyre collecting more money to not work?

How exactly is the US economy supposed to ever return to normalcy when workers are now being paid by the federal government to avoid working, even when jobs are available and small businesses are hiring?

Businesses looking for a quick return to normal are running into a big hitch: Workers on unemployment benefits are reluctant to give them up. For some workers, unemployment benefits are now paying more than their old jobs did, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Were seeing this dynamic firsthand. The Health Ranger Store has now lost one-third of its temporary warehouse workers because theyre making more money sitting at home, collecting money from the government instead of actually working. These are people who quit their jobs to collect unemployment, and the federal government is so desperate to blast helicopter money across the country that anyone can collect unemployment benefits, even if they quit their jobs.

Theres zero policing of any of this by the federal government, so employees across the country are committing massive fraud by simply quitting their jobs and claiming they were laid off of fired. And were seeing the same thing across a multitude of industries, from food production and restaurants to landscaping and many others. Ultimately, the Health Ranger Store is facing the same dire choice that millions of other small businesses face across America: We now have to out-bid government unemployment benefits to entice anyone to come back to work. That means paying $20 / hour for entry-level warehouse workers, which means well have to dramatically raise prices to cover the increased labor costs. The Trump administration has stolen our labor pool by paying people to sit at home and collect free money. This is the end of capitalism and the beginning of the total demise of small businesses across America.

The WSJ explains:

In Pittsburgh, Les Neilly, who co-owns a business that makes and sells residential awnings and tarps to trucking companies, said three employees he had brought back to work asked recently if they could work a rotating schedule with co-workers who were laid off, so they could take turns receiving unemployment benefits.

Do you see whats going on? Employees are actually structuring intentional joblessness so they can collect federal benefits. This is happening all across the country, and its absolutely crushing small businesses everywhere.

As the WSJ adds:

Ilona Luce-Fina, who was laid off from her job as a bartender at the airport in Ithaca, N.Y., said she hopes her boss doesnt call her back too soon. I was crying at work to leave, but then as time went on and I did receive benefits, it was like, wow, Im getting more than when I worked there, Ms. Luce-Fina said.

Exactly. All across the nation, workers are discovering they will be penalized for going back to work.

This genius plan could only come from government, of course. And its the dumbest economic experiment since communism.

The Trump administration has embraced such extreme economic socialism that AOC might even blush

This dumb-and-dumber economic experiment might actually be consistent with the policies of government stupidity, since the Trump administration is paying investors not to invest (by having the Fed buy up corporate bonds), and paying farmers not to farm (price control farm subsidies), why not pay workers not to work? Soon, well probably see full-blown communism on parade where factories are paid to not produce anything and airlines are paid to fly empty planes all over the country just to create the illusion of economic activity. Oh wait, thats already happening.

Its a zombie economy. No wonder the US Treasury is sending bailout money checks to dead people, then demanding the dead people send them back. If dead people can receive bailout money, theres no end to this economic insanity. Where is Pat Buchanan on all this? If Obama was pulling the same shenanigans, conservatives would be losing their minds with criticism.

All this brings up the obvious conundrum that Trump has yet to face: To get America back to work, the government will sooner or later have to stop paying workers to not work. But how many small businesses will even still exist by that time?

As Michael Snyder reports from TheMostImportantNews.com, 52% of small businesses now expect to be bankrupt within six months. A big part of the reason for that, of course, is that small business owners cant find anybody who wants to work.

While seemingly every Republican and Trump supporter in the nation is screaming about how the economy is being destroyed by the lockdowns, there are very few voices pointing out how Trumps own bailout policies are destroying small businesses across the country. Trumps stupid policies are doing far more damage than the coronavirus ever could.

And the unemployment numbers  which have now reached 33.5 million  are of course far higher than they should be because many people are quitting their own jobs to collect government unemployment benefits. Why work when you can be paid more money to not work? Thats how America has now reached 33.5 million unemployed, which is 14.7% of the workforce according to official statistics.

These are the worst numbers in history. And while we understand temporary help for people who lost their incomes due to the temporary lockdowns, this idea of paying people to not work even while small businesses are desperately hiring is nothing short of economic insanity.

And just to add insult to injury, lawmakers in Washington D.C. are going to clobber all the work visas for foreign workers because they claim the unemployment rate is too high for Americans. Thats because Americans are being paid to not work, you nincompoops. If you want to see fewer people unemployed, stop incentivizing them to stay unemployed.

I mean, its insane. How could lawmakers not understand that if you pay people to stay unemployed, you will get more people who are unemployed? The government has created a financial reward for quitting working. Why are they surprised when so many people quit their jobs and stop working, then?

Trumps zombie economy is the dumbest idea ever and certain to end in catastrophe

The only way to get Americas economy back on track is to end the Universal Basic Income that Trump has put in place. At some point, the free money from Uncle Sam has to stop as economies reopen, or theres no reason for any of these workers to even consider going back to their old jobs (or finding new ones). Yet any effort to cut off the unemployment benefits will now be met with screams and condemnation from the very people collecting those benefits.

Once you start paying people to not work, it turns out, most of them begin to believe you owe them a monthly paycheck for not working. While some people would prefer to have a career and a life with purpose, the free money parade becomes a way of life for far too many, and they demand the free money continue in perpetuity.

We may already be past the tipping point of America having any real hope of getting its economy running again. No one wants to work in the restaurants, the meat packing plants or the warehouses. Whos going to run the fulfillment centers? Restock the shelves at the grocery stores? Deliver the packages from Amazon? Sweep the floors at public schools?

With Trump likely to extend these bailout benefits through the election, its no stretch to point out that half of U.S. small businesses will be bankrupt by then. The economy will be in shambles. Real unemployment will skyrocket as businesses crater across the country. What will Trump do then, expand unemployment benefits to tens of millions more people that his own policies drove to bankruptcy and joblessness in the first place?

Will Trump be the president who drives everybody out of business and then pays people to collect government welfare checks as long as they keep voting for Trump?

Does Trump have any real plan to help anyone other than big business and the drug companies? Because from what we can see so far, his policies make it impossible for Americas economy to get back on track, regardless of whether states reopen or not. While bailout money is being funneled to all the wealthy bankers and big business moguls, small business owners across America are getting the shaft.

Senators now conspiring to extend the free money benefits indefinitely, making sure nobody has any incentive to go back to work

Oh, and just to make it all worse, members of Congress are now pushing to make the coronavirus unemployment benefits extend indefinitely, with no end in sight. Its called the Worker Relief and Security Act, but it might as well be called the, Crush the economy plan that will drive the final nail into the coffin of the United States of America.

You cant unleash economic recovery if you pay everyone to avoid working. The fact that we even have to point this out is beyond insane. In what sort of bizarro world does anybody think America can somehow bounce back when small businesses are getting completely crushed while workers are paid to avoid working?

Thats why, as Ive explained here, there really is no plan to reopen the economy. This is the end game for humanity. You are being corralled under house arrest, and prepped for the mandatory vaccine kill shot that will achieve the global depopulation objectives of the anti-human tyrants who run the world.

They have no real plan to reopen the economy because theres no plan for any future where you are still alive. The real plan is global depopulation  the killing of billions of human beings to save the planet and end all the entitlements that are bankrupting governments around the world.

You are being paid not to work for the same reason cows are given free food at the trough: Youre being prepped for the culling. Planet Earth is being prepared for a post-human era, get it?

Thats why humanity must fight for survival or DIE. Listen to this important podcast to understand the full truth:

If you want to survive the global depopulation purge, keep reading NaturalNews.com and listen to Health Ranger Report podcasts at Brighteon.com.
The tweets by Khalilzad mark the first public statement about the capture from a Trump administration official. They come on the heels of an investigation by The Associated Press last week that noted there had been no public indications that Frerichs has been part of the peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. Khalilzad could not be reached by the AP for comment. The State Department also did not respond to a request for comment.
MACHIASPORT, ME / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Glenn Cooke, CEO of the Cooke family of companies, provided the following statement after President Donald Trump signed the first ever Executive Order that includes provisions to improve U.S. aquaculture competitiveness and economic growth on Thursday.

"I am very pleased President Trump has recognized that domestic farmed production of aquaculture seafood is vital to help correct the severe trade imbalance and strengthen local food security. This should be viewed as a call to State and local governments that the country is in dire need of domestically produced seafood protein and that they should find ways to support, promote, and expand this essential food sector as other countries have.

As a family company, with marine fish farming operations in Maine and Washington and shellfish farming in North Carolina, and wild fisheries in other states including Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alaska, we are extremely proud of the hard work and dedication that our people put in every day to produce healthy seafood meals for families across the USA. Cooke Aquaculture USA in Maine was very proud to have been chosen as the supplier of sustainably farmed Atlantic salmon for the President's 2017 inauguration. Our strong operations have shown that aquaculture presents a tremendous opportunity to create thousands of jobs and build vibrant working waterfronts co-existing with traditional fisheries in rural coastal communities.

President Trump and his Executive Agencies are to be commended for their leadership to address the regulatory challenges with establishing seafood farms by revising the National Aquaculture Development Plan and implementing a Nationwide Permit authorizing finfish, seaweed or multi-trophic culture in federal marine waters."

About Cooke Aquaculture Inc.

Cooke Aquaculture Inc. is a vertically integrated family company based in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, with salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, the United States, Chile and Scotland as well as seabass and seabream farming operations in Spain. The Cooke family of companies includes global aquaculture divisions including its wholly-owned subsidiary Cooke Aquaculture Inc. and Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd, as well as seafood and wild fishery divisions under Cooke Seafood USA, Inc., Icicle Seafoods, Inc., Wanchese Fish Company, Inc., Omega Protein Corporation, Cooke Uruguay S.A. and Seajoy Seafood Corporation, one of the largest premium shrimp farms in Latin America. Cooke ships fresh, sustainable True North Seafood branded products to over 67 countries. Cooke is committed to continuous improvement of quality and environmental performance. Certifications for the company's farm-raised or wild-caught products include; Best Aquaculture Practices (4-Star: sea sites, processing plants, feed mills, and freshwater hatcheries), Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management, Label Rouge, Soil Association Organic, Friend of the Sea, Global G.A.P., British Retail Consortium among others.

Contact:

Joel Richardson

Vice President, Public Relations

Cooke Inc. / For Cooke Aquaculture USA

40 Wellington Row, Saint John, NB, Canada E2L 3H3

+1-506-721-1093 mobile/ +1-506-694-4939 office

joel.richardson@cookeaqua.com

SOURCE: Cooke Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589068/Statement-From-Glenn-Cooke-Commending-President-Donald-Trump-On-His-Executive-Order-That-Will-Improve-US-Aquaculture-Competitiveness-And-Economic-Growth
The devastation of the coronavirus outbreak in New Jersey continued Friday as state officials confirmed a death toll of 8,952 along with 135,454 total cases.

At his daily briefing, Gov. Phil Murphy announced 162 new deaths and 1,985 new confirmed cases.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage

We are still in the midst of a public health emergency, said Murphy. These are never just numbers.

Is the above map not displaying? Click here.

On Thursday he called the continued leveling of daily counts of deaths and cases a very positive sign."

The number of people being treated at New Jerseys hospitals hit its lowest number since first being released in early April and also dipped under 5,000 for the second day in a row. The states 71 hospitals had 4,605 coronavirus patients as of Thursday night after weeks of declines. The figure represents a 44% drop since the peak of hospitalizations on April 14 (8,270).

Is the above map not displaying? Click here.

ALSO: New charts show town-by-town breakdowns of coronavirus cases and deaths across N.J.

More than 267,000 N.J. residents have been tested for the coronavirus with a 39.1% positive rate.

Murphy also said the state plans to send 120 National Guard soldiers to New Jerseys hard-hit longterm care facilities. At least one positive test has been reported at 508 of the 670 facilities in N.J. Deaths in the facilities from COVID-19 account for about half of the states overall death toll.

Is the above chart not displaying? Click here.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Nick Devlin is a reporter on the data & investigations team. He can be reached at ndevlin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @nickdevlin.
By Trend





Turkey's car exports to China increased by 0.8 percent from January through March 2020 compared to the same period of 2019 and amounted to $11 million, the Turkish Ministry of Trade told Trend on April 29.

The export of cars from Turkey to China in March 2020 decreased by 56.5 percent compared to March 2019 and reached $4.7 million, the ministry said.

The export of cars from Turkey to the world markets from January through March 2020 decreased by 10 percent compared to the same period of 2019 and reached $6.9 billion.

The export of cars from Turkey makes up 16.3 percent of the country's total export of goods from January through March 2020.

Turkey exported cars worth $2.06 billion in March 2020 which is by 28.5 percent less than in March 2019.

The export of cars from Turkey in March 2020 accounted for 15.4 percent of Turkey's total export.

Turkey's export of cars from March 2019 through March 2020 amounted to $29.8 billion.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 8:30 am ET Friday, the Labor Department will release U.S. jobs data for April. Employment is expected to fall by about 22 million jobs in April, while the unemployment rate is seen jumping to 16 percent. Ahead of the data, the greenback held steady against its major counterparts. The greenback was worth 106.36 against the yen, 0.9708 against the franc, 1.2387 against the pound and 1.0842 against the euro as of 8:25 am ET. 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.
New Delhi: In a meeting with a visiting top American official in New Delhi on the Afghan peace process, India on Thursday reiterated its continued support for strengthening ... the democratic and inclusive polity and protection of rights of all sections of the Afghan society, including Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, adding that it is deeply concerned at the upsurge in violence and supports the call for immediate ceasefire and need to assist the people of Afghanistan in dealing with coronavirus pandemic.

In a veiled reference towards Pakistan, New Delhi also told the US official that putting an end to terrorist safe havens and sanctuaries is necessary for enduring and sustainable peace and stability in Afghanistan. This was conveyed by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval in a meeting with visiting United States Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad who landed in New Delhi on Thursday.

Khalilzad reportedly gave them an update on the US peace and reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan, the MEA said on Thursday, in a statement, adding that the US side recognised India's constructive contribution in economic development, reconstruction and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and laid importance to India's crucial and continuing role in sustainable peace, security and stability in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad is travelling to Qatar and Pakistan too to discuss the Afghan peace process, the US State Department also announced earlier, adding that he would meet Indian officials in New Delhi to discuss the important role of India in sustainable peace in Afghanistan and the region. He is travelling to Qatar to meet Taliban representatives to press for full implementation of the US-Taliban Agreement, the US said.

It may be recalled that India had last month welcomed the announcement by the Afghan Government on formation of a team for intra-Afghan negotiations with the Taliban, and had referred to the need to free that nation of the scourge of externally-sponsored terrorism, seen as a veiled reference to Pakistan which backs the Taliban.

Prime minister Narendra Modi has been in constant touch with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. India currently has extremely close ties with Afghanistan under president Ghani and New Delhi has successfully undertaken vast development projects there in the past few years, earning much goodwill from the Afghan people. India has also been supplying essential life-saving drugs and medicines to help Afghanistan battle the Coronavirus pandemic.
Anyone home-quarantined for suspected coronavirus infection but found breaching the seclusion rules will invite home confinement for all his family members, the Kangra police warned on Friday.

Kangra\s Senior Superintendent of Police Vimukt Ranjan said the new provisions have been made on Friday.

As per the fresh orders issued today, any person who has come to the district from other districts of Himachal Predesh or other states of India and placed on home quarantine for 28 days from the date of his entry in district Kangra will be shall be dealt more strictly for its violations, said Ranjan



He added that if a home-quarantined person with his other family members not confined along with him is found violating the seclusion rules, in any form, then his entire family members would be put in home0confinement along with him, he said. In Himachal around 90,000 persons returned home from other states on passes issued by state government in the past one week and another 20,000 plus are waiting to enter the state. So far 47 persons have been found corona-positive in the state and all of then brought the infection from other states, he said, adding in these circumstances, it is now difficult for the administration to keep an eye on the newly entered people who are breaking home quarantine norms and spreading a sense of fear of being a corona career.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(JNS)Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, reiterated on Wednesday that if elected in November, he would keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

The move shouldnt have happened in the context as it did, it should happen in the context of a larger deal to help us achieve important concessions for peace in the process, said Biden in response to a supporters question during a virtual fundraiser with Boston-area donors. But now that is done, I would not move the embassy back to Tel Aviv.

Early on in his campaign, Biden noted that he would not move the U.S. embassy out of Jerusalemthe city U.S. President Donald Trump recognized in December 2017 as Israels capital, followed by moving the U.S. embassy there five months later in May 2018.

Vice President Biden would not move the American embassy back to Tel Aviv, a campaign spokesperson told Axios in July 2019. But he would reopen our consulate in East[ern] Jerusalem to engage the Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Biden said he would indeed open the doors to the consulate to engage the Palestinians in an effort to reach a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As for the embassy, he continued, moving it when we did without the conditions that we met was short-sighted, frivolous in a way that Donald Trump did it.
CEO Ally Spinu Provides Resources and Tips to mSMEs to Weather the COVID-19 Storm

GLENDALE, California, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With the novel Coronavirus sweeping the globe, Export Portal and CEO Ally Spinu are well aware of how important it is to support small businesses and the global economy.

"We are in the midst of a global public health crisis unlike any that most of us have ever witnessed and we are rising to the occasion, united in a global cause with empathy, resilience, determination, and teamwork," said Ms. Spinu.

mSMEs not only account for an average 70% of jobs all over the world, but about $4.5 trillion dollars of the world's export business. It is essential that we continue to follow Export Portal's mission of providing mSMEs with everything they need to enter the world of international trade confidently, no matter the circumstances.

"As the CEO of an mSME-focused global portal, our response to COVID-19 is to continue our commitment to supplier mSMEs around the world," Ms. Spinu said. "To that end, from now until the end of 2020, all Certification fees and sale fees are waived."

Not only are Certification and sales fees waived, but Ms. Spinu is hosting a biweekly Global SME Forum online to answer questions, share insights, and bring the international mSME community together. To sign up, click here.

While the global pandemic has caused a lot of challenges for small businesses, support is not hard to come by. We know that as long as we continue to help each other, the strength of SMEs will only grow and expand - no matter the current market difficulties. In this current situation when one cannot welcome customers directly into one's workshops and stores, Export Portal's secure online B2B marketplace is the best place to be.

About Export Portal & CEO Ally Spinu: After personal experience with the difficulty of international trade, successful businesswoman Ally Spinu founded ExportPortal.com. Export Portal is a digital B2B marketplace aiming to be a comprehensive international trade hub for SMEs and their counterparts. Empowered by a proprietary blockchain technology, Export Portal prioritizes security, transparency, cost-effectiveness, and ease-of-use. Partners can confidently trade, network, and communicate with other verified companies and experts from all over the world.

To learn more about our platform, go to: https://www.exportportal.com/learn_more

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1165587/Export_Portal_Small_Businesses_During_COVID_19.jpg
The 2018 election wave may be followed by a Blue Tsunami in 2020. If this comes to pass, the Republicans could lose 11 seats in the Senate setting up a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate.

Recent polls show women favor Vice President Biden by a 16 point majority and that Men favor Trump by a 2 point majority. With that kind of demographic shift in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been elected with a majority in the U.S. Senate. Never during that fall campaign were the numbers for Trump as bad as they are now. It allowed him to win a squeaker of an election in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.

Among the 10 Senate seats in danger is Maines Republican Senator Sen. Susan Collins, who has won four consecutive Senate races. Women who have voted for her the past 24 years have increasingly soured on the self-described centrist as she has a record has drifted so far right that she is clearly a Trump sicophant since his 2016 election.

Maine has a history of being dominated by women voters. Approximately 77% of women residents are registered to vote, and of those, a whopping 65% of women of these voters turn out on Election Day. These dramatic numbers are both the highest in the nation, according to Politico.

Senator Collins has won past elections with more than 60% support from women, so the recent polls are a shocker finding more than 60% of women voters oppose her re-election. Her support among women voters shows she may not just lose but could be buried in the fall election because she has only 25% of the support of women under 50.

Susan Collins support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh made her a target of every left-leaning womens group in the country. They raised millions to oppose her in the upcoming election, and have already launched six-figure ad campaigns against her in Maine. Theres a bigger threat facing the incumbent senator. In a comprehensive Politico Magazine report many months ahead of the election determined that while her Kavanaugh vote angered women in the state, Politico investigation found a larger trend that the U.S. Senator is being seen as having abandoned her native Maine centrists in favor of improving her standing with her GOP peers and funding from her far-right corporate donors.

Senator Collins rejected this argument when interviewed by The Los Angeles Times earlier this year and at the same time said she could not understand what was driving her plummeting poll numbers. She told the LA Times

I am doing exactly the same thing Ive always doneIve always cast votes with an eye to how they affect the state of Maine and our country.

Senator Collins echoed those thoughts in an interview of Politico by saying she still views herself as very much

 a centrist who believes in getting things done through compromise, collegiality, and bipartisanship.

Both statements are complete nonsense. Collins sharp turn to the right came on the day she voted to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. More than one reporter and political analyst have pointed out that ten years ago, she voted against her party 31% of the time, the magazine noted. Last year, that number dropped to just 11%. Shes gulped down too much Trump cool-aid to go back.

Maine store owner Tricia Cyr interviewed by the press this past week said

I think Susan has forgotten where she came from, told the outlet. And I do believe shes trying to do everything right for the people of Maine, but her right and our right arent the same things anymore.

Cyrs statement as a Maines female voter shows why Collins has seen such an abrupt drop in popularity. While Collins won her last re-election race with about 70% of the vote, she is now ranked as the nations most unpopular senator, according to The Cook Political Report, which currently lists the race as a toss-up.

Collins did oppose President Donald Trumps candidacy in 2016 and voted against his nomination of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare. Her vote for Kavanaugh, support for the $1 trillion in 2017 Republican tax cuts without having the Congressional Budget Office score the cost of the legislation and voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial, arguing he had already learned a big lesson.

That quote about Trump learning his lesson was the biggest challenge until the coronavirus pandemic compounded the Chinese trade war.









Collins has shifted and become the focal point of Maine politics in recent months. Republican state Rep. Heidi Sampson told Politico that she had been inundated with questions and complaints about Collins at her own campaign stops

I get phone calls from upset people. I get emails from people. Constituents will come right up and complain about Susan to my face; People get really emotional.

An increasing number of voters have affixed Bye-Bye Susan bumper stickers to their cars as the election draws near. Those stickers gave way to ones reading, Wheres Susan? when Collins refused to attend several town halls with constituents earlier this year.

Politico interviewing Dan Shea, the chair the government program at Maines Colby College, told Politico

Every decision she makes seems to align her more closely with the Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell movementHere in Maine, thats become the anvil around her neck.

Advocacy groups have taken note, as well. The League of Conservation Voters, which supported Collins in 2008 and 2014, have withdrawn their support behind one of her possible Democrat challengers Speaker of Maines Speaker of the House of Representatives Sara Gideon. Calling her

a champion for environmental issues throughout her career, from her time as a town councilor through her tenure as the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.

Gideon, for her part, has pointed out that Senator Collins record on conservation issues fell from 100% in 2008 to 21% since Trump took office. Gideon evidence 

A member of Congress is expected to make up her mind about what is in the best interest of her constituents. Again and again, during Trumps presidency, Collins has shown shes not willing to do that.

Tiernan Sittenfeld, the League of Conservation Voters senior vice president of governmental affairs, told Politico.

We have an extreme and radical president who has so little interest in what is good for places like Maine. We need a champion who will stand up to him.

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which supported Collins early in her Senate career, also abandoned her and has endorsed Gideon this year, drawing accusations from Collins office that the group is being run by far-left activists.

PPACs Amy Cookson, communications director for the groups New England branch, rejected that argument telling Politico. 

Maine women and Maine voters have remained consistent Susan Collins is just not the leader she once was, particularly when it comes to reproductive health and rights. In the past, we counted on Senator Collins to put womens health and well-being ahead of partisanship and political games, but we can no longer do so.

Collins has been losing a considerable amount of support from Maines voters and has resorted to increasing her collection of corporate donations, which have risen from 47% in 2002 to more than 61% this year.





The corporate donations have raised eyebrows in Maine, where the poverty rate is at 12%. According to Politicos report, one former supporter was quoted as saying

I honestly dont recall a single time when she has been an advocate for the working poor, Hope Eye, a left-leaning voter that came to regret her past support for Collins, told the outlet. She likes to claim her humble roots, but she consistently lacks empathy for people like me.

Cyr, the store owner, pointed to Collins, plummeting popularity was quoted as saying

She used to be a visible character that would visit our region and genuinely seem interested in what people thoughtHonesty, I havent seen her here in years.









Susan Collins Claims Trump Has Learned His Lesson | All In | MSNBC








It will be very hard to be in the same household and have to tell him to stay 6 feet away from me at all times, she said. He does have some awareness of that because prior to him going to my sisters, we had explained it to him, but of course he would start crying.
Preventing the spread of the



coronavirus from urban to rural areas where majority of the population live will be a key in the country's battle against the COVID-19, a prominent health expert said on Friday.

As people start easing back into their normal lives, they should continue with the practice of social distancing, wearing of face masks and hand hygiene to contain the spread, President of Public Health Foundation of India Prof. K Srinath Reddy said.

"One of the important things is to try and reduce as much as possible flow of traffic between urban and rural areas, between hotspots and non-hotspots, at least till the hotspots are under control because rural areas are much protected even now in any state, he said.

PHFI is engaged in capacity building in public health in the country through education, training, research, policy development, health communication and advocacy.

There was less likelihood of the spread in rural areas as people there generally have less mobility, Reddy, who formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), told PTI in an interview.

By restricting traffic for only essential goods and travel needs, we will be able to contain it because that is our biggest asset, two-thirds of our population is in rural areas, if we protect them, then we will be much safer, he said.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,886 and the number of cases climbed to 56,342 in the country on Friday, registering an increase of 103 deaths and 3,390 cases in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health Ministry.

When you increase the number of tests, you will definitely find out more cases. We have to look at number of new cases, as a percentage of number of tests done. Thats the figure to look at, Reddy said.

Its true that the number of cases detected will increase with the number of tests and the virus is likely spreading, said Reddy, who has been involved in several major international and national research studies, having been trained in cardiology and epidemiology.

"But what we need to look at is how severe are the cases. Eighty-five per cent are very mild, or asymptomatic, then we may not have much to worry, because ultimately the virus is going to spread, we cannot suddenly arrest the virus but question is how fast its spreading and how severely are the cases being affected, Reddy said.

He said the COVID-19 death rate in India so far was 1.3 per million population, while its much higher in other countries like the US (26 deaths per million), the UK (449 per million) and Belgium (726 per million).

That means even if its spreading, its much milder in India for whatever reasons, he said.

So, we have to keep a watch but we should not panic, said Reddy, who presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard and is also an Adjunct Professor of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University and Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

Asked how India managed to keep the COVID-19 death rate low, Reddy, who obtained M.Sc. (Epidemiology) from McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada), cited that the country has a much younger population.

.and there could be other protective factorsBCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccine is protective or other things are protective, we dont know, its also possible. Given that we have been exposed to multiple infections, our innate immunity may be better. All of these may matter.

"Whether the temperature is also making the virus less virulent, we do not know. All these are speculative, (but) possible but we dont have clear-cut proof.

But age is one of the most important elements in our population. We have a much younger population, he added.

On some health experts suggesting that COVID-19 cases are likely to peak in India in June-July, Reddy said: We do not know because the idea is that by June-July, due to the combination high temperature and high humidity, other coronoviruses get less active."



If this coronavirus (COVID-19) also behaves like that, it might start subsiding but then "we will have to wait for winter to see whether it rises again, so we will have to wait and see. Right now, we dont have certainty, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Migrant workers line up at a construction site in Pathum Thani province, Thailand, to receive face masks from an NGO, April 12, 2020.

Migrant workers in Thailand who could not return to their home countries because of the COVID-19 lockdown have lost jobs and suffered financial hardship during the pandemic, but could soon see their outlook improve as the country starts to reopen.

Thailand has long been a regional magnet for millions of migrants who come from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and other neighboring countries to find work. But the public health crises, combined with its economic ripple effects and coronavirus-related movement restrictions have battered key Thai industries that employ many foreign workers since the first coronavirus case was detected here in mid-January, according to migrants and labor rights advocates.

Now, prospects for laid off migrants returning to work could brighten because Thailand this past week began to loosen restrictions and allow businesses start up again gradually, and is to ease more restrictions on them later this month, officials said.

By May 17, unless anything causes a change, we will implement a second phase of restrictions easing in crowded big business areas. So we seek your cooperation for now to not add to infection numbers, Dr. Taweesilp Wissanuyothin, spokesman for Thailands COVID-19 taskforce, told reporters on Thursday.

Shopping malls and large retail outlets selling construction materials are to reopen on that date, according to government officials. Already restaurants, food courts and supermarkets have opened, but social distancing requirements must be followed. Also open are public parks and beauty salons.

Nich Wan, a migrant who left Battambang in Cambodia more than a decade ago to find work in Thailand, said she had seen the negative effects of the pandemic.

She said she knew of more than 100 workers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar who had lost their jobs after construction projects where they were employed were halted.

Nich is relatively lucky compared with her peers. She receives a daily wage of 380 baht ($11.80) for her job at a construction site and has a second job at the contractors grocery shop to earn extra money.

Other migrants who are jobless in Thailand and have been unable to return to their countries have struggled to pay rent and utility bills as well as put food on their tables, labor rights activists said.

As COVID rages on, I have less work to do and earn less but I have to stay here, Nich told BenarNews, adding she had hoped to go home but was unable to cross the border to Cambodia during the Songkran New Year festival.

Migrant departures

At the end of March, the Ministry of Labor reported that more than 2.8 million migrant workers  mostly from Myanmar, Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam  were registered to work in Thailand. The United Nations estimated that another 2 million migrants work informally and are not included in the count.

Since then, a staffer with the Migrant Working Group (MWG), an NGO, estimated that more than 500,000 migrants lost their jobs because of COVID-19 while hundreds of thousands returned to their home countries.

In Myanmar, officials announced that more than 150,000 migrant laborers had flooded into the country since March after losing their jobs in Thailand and China, according to Radio Free Asia, a sister entity of BenarNews.

Around 40,000 arrivals that month overwhelmed state officials who had expected significantly smaller crowds and prompted the government to appeal to others to return only after April 15. Another 20,000 crossed into Myanmar at the end of April over the Myanmar-Thai Friendship Bridge 2, connecting Thailands Mae Sot with Myawaddy in southeastern Myanmars Kayin state.

Meanwhile, between Thailands border closure on March 23 and mid-April, about 113,000 Lao migrant workers returned home, the Laotian health ministry said at the time.

Suchart Pornchaiwisetkul, director-general of the Thai Department of Employment, said that while it was hard to estimate the number of migrant workers who remained, the government had aid available for them.

Thailand has two funds  compensation funds and social security funds  which both Thai and foreign enrollees are covered in the cases of injury or lay-off, Suchart told BenarNews. For those outside of the funds such as seasonal workers in agricultural sector, they can buy into a health plan provided by the ministry of public health.

In April, the cabinet of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha approved compensation of about 7,080 to 8,000 baht (U.S. $220 to $250) per month for three months from the social security fund for local and foreign enrollees.

In reality it is difficult for foreign workers to claim compensation, said Adisorn Kerdmongkol, a coordinator with the Migrant Working Group.

The government thinks the workers get compensated promptly, but they in fact need to go in person to the fund offices and deal with Thai-language paperwork, while certain areas are blockaded and officials work from home, Adisorn told BenarNews.

Also the laws require employers to find new jobs for workers within 30 days in the case of business suspension or a layoff, but there are no new jobs, making their situation even more complicated, Adisorn said.

Suthasinee Kaewleklai, a labor rights advocate at the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN), said the procedure was too complicated. She pointed out that workers were required to obtain layoff paperwork from their employers before they could file a claim for aid.

If the government is sincere in its efforts to fix the problems, it should ease the compensation claim procedure by allowing them to go and deal with the social fund office right away, she said. And the office should keep their records properly so it will be easy when they are to be reemployed after the COVID pandemic subsides.

Meanwhile, Suchart said the employment department was working with locals and labor envoys from neighboring countries to find jobs for workers.

We hear them and take care of them. The economy is bad and there are many who got laid off. We coordinate with labor envoys to help find them a new employer, he said. But asked when we can allow workers to come back? Its up to the government and the anti-COVID task force.

Thailand recorded eight new COVID-19 cases on Friday to bring the nationwide total 3,000. The death toll remains at 55.

Globally, more than 3.9 million people have been infected by COVID-19 and more than 272,000 people have died, according to the latest data compiled by disease experts at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Migrants concerns

Johny Adhikari, a Chiang Mai-based activist for Myanmar workers, told BenarNews that most were facing hardships in Thailand.

The majority of workers want to go home because they dont have money to pay rent, water bills, power bills and for food as they are jobless, while the borders are shut and there is no bus service, he said.

Ai Bee, 24, from Myanmars Shan state, said he had lost money because was paid on a daily basis while working for a small construction contractor in northern Thailand. He did not enroll in the social security system.

I was asked to work intermittently, working a day and off a day, so I earn less lately. I make a bit over 300 baht ($9.30) per day and when Im off I earn nothing, he told BenarNews.

If there is something the Thai government could do to help, please help us, he said.
A South Korean man will spend four years in jail for killing a woman in Nha Trang while driving drunk without a license.

A court in Khanh Hoa Province, central Vietnam handed down the sentence to Kim Sing Jin, 25, for a fatal hit and run accident in Nha Trang two years ago.

Kim Sung Jin (L), 25, stands trial at the Khanh Hoa Province People's Court for a fatal hit and run, May 7, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Khanh Hoa Newspaper.

Jin, director of construction firm Geo Pyeong in Saigon, had gone out with two of his friends, a fellow South Korean and a Singaporean, for dinner in a hotel on Tran Phu Street in Nha Trang on August 21, 2018. At around 3:30 a.m. the next day, he drove a car and hit a woman on her motorbike on the same street. She died instantly.

After realizing that he had hit someone, Jin tried to flee, but was stopped by nearby locals and reported to the police.

Local reports did not mention further details about the victim, only saying that Jin had reached a settlement with her family.

At the time of the accident, Jin had no international driving license, and breathalyzers recorded his alcohol level at 0.58 mg/l.

In Vietnam, the mere presence of alcohol in one's system amounts to a violation of the Law on Preventing Alcohols Harmful Effects. An alcohol level of 0.4 mg/l of breath or 80mg/100ml of blood is punishable by fines of up to VND40 million ($1,716) for car drivers and VND8 million for motorbike riders.

Violations of road traffic regulations are punishable by up to 15 years in jail.

Road crashes are a leading cause of death in Vietnam, killing almost one person every hour. More than 17,000 accidents in 2019 claimed 7,624 lives, a 7.1 percent decrease from a year earlier, according to official data.
It is the second message of support for China. Pyongyang is politically and economically dependent on Beijing. Collapse in trade between the two regimes. Kim needs Chinese goods to modernize his country.

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un congratulated Chinese President Xi Jinping on China's successes in the fight against coronavirus, Pyongyangs official KNA agency revealed yesterday.

Kim had already sent a message to his powerful neighbor in late January, immediately after Beijing had decided to raise the alarm for the disease. In it he expressed his support for Xi, offering aid.

The North Korean regime claims there are no infections in the country. However, it immediately closed the borders with China, where the pandemic exploded, also adopting strict quarantine measures for incoming goods.

This decision worsened Pyongyang's already difficult economic situation as it grapples with an international embargo on its nuclear and missile activities. China is essentially its only commercial partner, on which it depends for the supply of a large number of goods, especially energy.

According to the 38 North website, trade between North Korea and China fell 24% year-on-year in the first two months of 2020. North Korean exports plummeted 74% to $ 10 million; Chinese imports have dropped from $ 240 million to $ 198 million.

The pandemic crisis has effectively stopped the North Korean supply chain. Kim is reliant on the Chinese leaderships support (including political) to economically keep his country afloat.

Daily NK, which first launched the news of Kim's alleged illness, reports the resumption of some links between North Korea and China. In particular, it refers Chinese freight trains that transport iron and steel in violation of the embargo decreed by the United Nations. The material would be used for the construction of a new hospital in the North Korean capital, one of the major infrastructure projects announced by Kim in recent months.
Factions of the Turkish-backed opposition Syrian National Army are recruiting minors to fight in Libya, according to a report laying out in exhaustive detail Turkeys use of Syrian rebels to prop up Libyas Government of National Accord.

The 40-page document, prepared by Syrians for Truth and Justice and shared exclusively with Al-Monitor, cites sources on the ground in Syria and in Libya who say Syrian teenagers have been recruited and are part of their units in the battlefield. The report will be published Monday by the nonpartisan not-for-profit organization, which documents human rights abuses in Syria.

The children are among well over 2,000 Syrian rebels believed to have been deployed over the past year via Turkey in support of the Government of National Accord against the eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter, who is backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Our investigation revealed that children are issued forged identity documents with false information about their date and place of birth, and are accordingly registered in the personal status records of the [Syrian] National Army, the report says. Some of the children used the names of their older brothers in their fake papers, and the recruitment of child soldiers is ongoing, according to the report.

One of the sources, a civilian from the town of Marea in the Turkish-occupied Euphrates Shield zone in northern Syria, says that in January, a commander from one of the Syrian National Army factions, the Mutasim Division, came to his shop with three children between the ages of 15 and 16. The civilian, who was not identified by name to shield him from possible retribution, said, They told me they would go to Libya with the approval of their families. They were very happy to receive a salary of $3,000.00 [promised to them by recruiters].

"I asked one of them if he knew how to use a weapon, and he responded he would learn all of this in the military camp where he would be with his peers.

The child said the camp was set up by the Mutasim Division and trained children in groups of 25. The children were told that they could contact their families from Libya and return home in three months with a big amount of money and that they would get free cigarettes, food and housing.

The report also cites a fighter from the Sultan Murad Division, an ethnic Turkmen faction, which is fiercely loyal to Turkey. The fighter, who is currently in Tripoli, where the Government of National Accord sits, is quoted as saying there are at least five children in his group.

The fighter said, It is very clear that they are physically children.

The United Nations Optional Protocol on the Convention of the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was opened for signature in May 2000, says, Armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years. It additionally says, Parties shall take all feasible measures to prevent such recruitment and use, including the adoption of legal measures necessary to prohibit and criminalize such practices.

Syria, Turkey and Libya are all party to the Optional Protocol.

If Turkey and the Government of National Accord, which is recognized by the UN as the legitimate representative of Libya, are either colluding or facilitating the deployment of children under the age of 18 to fight in Libya, they are committing a grave violation of the Optional Protocol, said Mehmet Balci, co-founder of Fight for Humanity, a Geneva based nongovernmental organization that focuses on conflict prevention and promotes human rights.

Balci said in a telephone interview that Turkey frequently calls out the Kurdistan Workers Party, the Kurdish militant group that has been waging an armed insurgency against Turkish security forces since 1984, over its use of child combatants.

Bassam al-Ahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, told Al-Monitor that he had no evidence that Turkey or Syria were complicit in the deployment of child soldiers. The report does, however, provide compelling evidence that the Turkish government is directly involved in transporting Syrian fighters from Turkey to Libya; this has also been widely reported by the international media. Ahmad emphasized that his organization will soon be publishing a report on the recruitment of foreign mercenaries by Hifter as well.

A UN report leaked this week said the Wagner group, a Russian private military contractor, has deployed about 1,200 mercenaries to Libya in support of Hifter.

The United States has accused Russia of escalating the conflict.

The US special envoy for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, told reporters Thursday, We know that, certainly the Russians are working with [Syrian president Bashar al-]Assad to transfer militia to fighters, possibly third country, possibly Syrian to Libya, as well as equipment. Jeffrey did not mention Turkey's deployment of Syrian rebels.

Syrian National Army spokesman Yousef Hamoud denied in a statement to Al-Monitor that the group is sending fighters to Libya.

Ahmad, dwelling on the irony of Ankara and Damascus using foreign fighters to square off in Syria and now carrying Syrians to Libya to take part on opposing sides in yet another civil conflict, said, Here in Syria its a proxy war and people are using Syrians against each other but I never thought that Syrians would be recruited by Turkey and by the Assad regime and Russian companies to fight in Libya. He added, People who dont know my country well will think of my people as mercenaries. Its really very sad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged in a Feb. 21 interview with CNNTurk that Turkish forces had been deployed to Libya in a coordinating role alongside various teams drawn from an opposition force.

He was widely believed to be alluding to Syrian opposition rebels, many of whom have been lured to Libya with dubious promises of four-digit dollar salaries and eventual Turkish citizenship. According to another report on Turkeys intervention in Libya released by the International Crisis Group this week, Ankara has since January deployed at least 100 officers to help the Tripoli government and transferred shiploads of weapons along with a contingent of at least 2,000 fighters of the Syrian National Army.

The deployment of Syrian rebels allows Turkey to score a double win, argues Emadeddin Badi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Turkey momentarily gets rid of those that cause them problems in northern Syria while using them as cannon fodder to shift the tide in Libya, Badi told Al-Monitor. Its quite cruel, but thats the reality.

Turkeys expanded role is thought to have played a critical role in slowing down Hifters more than yearlong campaign to take Tripoli. But it remains uncertain whether Turkey can definitively tip the balance in the Government of National Accords favor.

Turkey maintains that its presence in Libya is legitimate because it is based on a pair of defense and maritime agreements signed with the Tripoli government in November. Egypt, which remains at loggerheads with Ankara over Erdogan's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, accuses Turkey of transporting "terrorists" to Libya and in a letter to the UN called the agreements void and invalid. Its claims are echoed by Turkey's other regional arch foe, the UAE.

Badi said that whether Turkey remains successful depends on whether the UAE and Russia still want to maintain some plausible deniability about their involvement in Libya, the UAE in particular. He continued, Mitigating the Ankara-induced shift in the tide of the conflict involves deploying its own aerial military assets, not drones, to conduct strikes in western Libya. And yes, there are child soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

The first credible indication that the presence of minors was more than just rumor emerged in January. Jesrpress, an independent Syrian newspaper, reported that a 17-year-old from Hasakah had died in Libya fighting in the ranks of the Sultan Murad division.

Images of his burial were posted on YouTube.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who closely monitors the Syrian conflict, said it was not surprising that children were being drawn into the conflict.

The force from which these fighters are dispatched, the so-called National Army, includes many minors in its ranks  boys with few years of schooling and no job prospects other than joining these factions in exchange for a salary, Tsurkov told Al-Monitor. A commander in one of these factions also told me previously that any boy who has gone through puberty is a man who can join, she added.
The sports court of the German football Association (DFB) has confirmed in the oral hearing, the penalties for Filip Kostic from Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt. The 27-year-old Serb remains, therefore, for four of the DFB Cup games locked. The lock ends, in any case, no later than the end of the season 2021/2022. Kostic was in extra time of the DFB-Pokal match against Werder Bremen on 4. March of referee Felix Zwayer due to the raw game of the field was referenced and therefore was absent already in the 1:2-defeat in the semi-final in Munich.

Hans E. Lorenz, who served as Chairman of the DFB sports court in the trial, said: "for the Benefit of the player's voice, that there is no infringement intention, he is not biased sports court, regretted his behavior and immediately and sincerely apologized. At the time of sentencing was also considered to be on the other side that the injury is a result of the affected player is significantly more serious than initially assumed. The player was able to ride until today, no game more best. Against this Background, a suspension of the punishment was probation eligible.

Against the judgment of the sports Tribunal within a week, appeal to the DFB Federal court is possible.

Updated Date: 23 June 2020, 16:19
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 10:12:43|Editor: huaxia

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HARBIN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- No new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Thursday, the provincial health commission said Friday.

By Thursday, the province had reported a total of 558 locally-transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 386 imported cases.

Also by Thursday, 518 locally-transmitted COVID-19 patients and 297 imported cases had been discharged from hospital after recovery.

The province still had 27 domestically-transmitted confirmed cases and another 15 asymptomatic cases. The number of imported confirmed cases was 89 by Thursday, with another two asymptomatic cases from other countries, according to the commission. Enditem
BOYNE, MI - When the coronavirus pandemic closed her Boyne storefront, Ivette Lopez had no idea Big Gretch would keep Outdoor Beerdsman from shutting its doors for good.

When the pandemic shuttered her physical location, Lopez thought the future of her business was in jeopardy. Her luck changed when someone from the Small Business Association in Lansing ordered a That Woman from Michigan shirt made by her business and sent it to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor then wore the navy-blue shirt on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on April 1.

Ever since, Lopez said business has been booming. In fact, due to popular demand, shes added a line of merchandise focused around Big Gretch, a nickname Detroit rapper GmacCash gave the governor in a hip hop song with the same name.

It didnt even cross my mind to put it on a shirt, Lopez said. But we kept getting requests for shirts with the phrase on it.

The Whitmer-themed merchandise began after President Donald Trump referred to Whitmer as that woman in Michigan." Boyne City Chamber member Kelsie King-Duff suggested she design merchandise to sell online with the saying on it, such as shirts, hoodies, mugs and more. Lopez then worked with her two employees to create more Whitmer-themed merchandise.

Since Outdoor Beerdsman started selling That Woman from Michigan merchandise, Lopez said she has received an overwhelming amount of orders. Before the pandemic, the six-year-old business barely sold anything online. She said she owes her success to the support Whitmer showed her business and others, such as Detroit vs. Everybody, by wearing locally-made apparel.

I cant even tell you, Lopez said. If it werent for this, I would have had to close my doors. The overwhelming response weve had from people has been so great. Ive had people asking me to do more, which is why we added the Big Gretch merch.

While many small businesses have suffered since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Lopez said she is thankful for the support Whitmer has shown Michigan businesses, which Lopez believes is a rarity other from politicians. Outdoor Beerdsman even received a thank you letter from Whitmer for the shirt she wore on The Daily Show.

I am so touched, Lopez said. She sent us a picture of her wearing the shirt and a thank you note for it. It means a lot that she sent out a thank you note, when shes the one who supported my small business. I dont even think she realizes how much it affected my business.

While Lopez said she supports Whitmer, she never meant the shirts to be a political thing, she said. Her Whitmer-themed merchandise came at the request of her customers, including the most recent line of merchandise, which reads Wolverine Queen. Lansing protesters called Whitmer this on April 30 for allegedly overstepping her authority by extending Michigans state of emergency.

The increase in sales have all be over these Whitmer shirts, Lopez said. And were still selling them.  Weve never had this amount of online sales ever.

Lopez has received some comments criticizing her and Outdoor Beerdsman for selling the merchandise, which they view as politically motivated. For Lopez, though, the shirts are a way for Michiganders to show President Trump they are unhappy with him referring to their governor as that woman.

It was more of a disrespect thing, I guess, Lopez said. He said that woman instead of Gov. Whitmer. I think that upset a lot of Michiganders. They were upset that he didnt use her name.

Politics aside, Lopez said one positive she believes will come out of the pandemic is a heightened focus on buying local. She believes the pandemic has made people realize how important local businesses are to the economy.

A lot of people are realizing that we are supporting our community, she said. Were the ones donating to the schools, to charities.

While Lopez knows the pandemic undoubtedly has hurt businesses, shes still grateful for the support Big Gretch has given to herself and other business owners.

Without the governor wearing my shirt, I wouldnt even be here still, she said.  The thought of losing my store because of the pandemic would have been crushing. Its everything Ive worked for during the last six or seven years.

Big Gretch, That Woman from Michigan and Wolverine Queen merchandise are available on the Outdoor Beerdsman website, which also hosts Lopezs Hoppy Hound Coffee Co. & Dog Bakery storefront. Lopez said the merchandise will available for the foreseeable future.

Several other local businesses have began selling Big Gretch apparel, too. The Grand Blanc-based Etsy shop VelocityTees is selling a We Got Big Gretch shirt for $25. Other local Etsy shops with Whitmer apparel include Ann Arbors SmittenbyKristen, Farmington Hills TopKnot + Twine, Berkleys Coolidge Creations, Saginaw Townships Green Mitten Valley and Coldwaters Old Timey Wimey Stuff.

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Turning the Corner: Food relief effort highlights COVID impact in Cherng Talay

PHUKET: What started as a small effort by Jens and Khun Arttie, to do what they could for the people in Cherng Talay, who are without any means to support themselves due to the COVID restrictions, has bloomed into a major source of support for many of those suffering in the area, and now provides at least 250 meals a day, as well as relief packages once a week.

COVID-19Coronaviruseconomics

By The Phuket News

Friday 8 May 2020, 10:00AM

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

Many of those helping with the effort are retired or urrently unemployed themselves. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

Many of those helping with the effort are retired or urrently unemployed themselves. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

The HWL - Helping With Love relief effort highlights how many people in Cherng Talay affected by the COVID-19 restrictions need help. Photo: Jens Klein / Facebook

People start queuing in front of the The Corner Restaurant near Boat Avenue in the heart of Cherng Talay at about 3:30pm each day, willing to wait an hour and a half for the food and drinks to be handed out.

Jens Klein, who opened the restaurant together with his partner Khun Arttie some seven years ago, explained that they started with one small table and just 40 meals that they had prepared to hand out. The food was gone within a minute, he recalled.

That was on April 14, one day after the Phuket Lockdown came into effect, banning all non-essential travel between any of 17 subdistricts in Phuket.

They said I was not allowed past the checkpoint in Bangjo, so I couldnt go home and decided to sleep in the restaurant for the time being. As the restaurant is located on the main road leading towards Laguna, besides the SuperCheap store, random people started coming to see us and asked for rice and other staples to get by every day.

One night I just couldnt sleep. I had to do something about this. Since we have all the facilities and equipment here, I decided to use all our potential and connections to help and created a FB post with the headline HWL - Helping With Love, Jens said.

Now he still sleeps on an inflatable mattress at the restaurant and his efforts have bloomed through the help of his staff and friends, and other goodhearted people in the community, and through contributions he is able to provide a minimum of 250 meals a day.

However, the number of meals provided changes every day. The other day we had to hand out 438 meals and, thus, needed to cook some 100 additional a la minute meals that evening, Jens explained.

People start queuing in front of the restaurant at about 3:30pm each day, willing to wait an hour and a half, until 5pm for the food and drinks to be handed out.

But the queue continues to grow with each passing day. More and more people keep on coming, Jens said.

At the beginning I always saw the same people, but now we get to see new faces almost every single day, especially more and more kids and Burmese workers. For these people one person out of work means the whole family has no support.

Even for those who have been recently rehired, they will have to wait at least a month before they can get paid, and that is only if they are not laid off after two-three weeks during their probation period, he said.

Jens lambasted critics and people saying there are no people suffering in the area. Some rather strange people commented on social media that they live here in the Cherng Talay-Laguna area and that there are no unemployed and poor people here and that restaurants, who provide free food, do so for publicity only.

That is rubbish. If these people are fine, why would they wait almost two hours in the heat just to get some food. Those needy people we serve food to are definitely not our future clientele and wont rush back after the crisis for high tea and a Schnitzel.

Instead of only complaining and criticise, those bored keyboard-warriors should rather come to help us and invest their own time, energy and money every single day, instead of blaming those who really make a difference, he challenged.

He also called out privileged people living in the area used to living upscale lifestyles to help out. A week of food provided to these people costs less than one ot two magnum bottles of premium champagne at a beach club, which you saw people boasting about in their posts on Facebook during normal times. For the same money you can provide at least two meals to 1,500 people, he said.

Jens welcomed support, especially from large stores. Every day large stores throw away a lot of food. That food could be put to good use. Even hotels and serviced apartments [that are still providing food for guests] can help, he explained.

The contributions, as Jens calls the daily giveaways, cost about B7,000-9,000 a day. Water alone costs about B2,000 a day, and thats the cheapest I can get, he said.

Other donations are welcome. Once a week we do relief packages, which include a bag of rice, cooking oil, canned fish, soap and toothpaste and other necessities, Jens explained.

Even shirts and shoes and other forms of clothing are welcome. This one lady in the queue every day was wearing the same trousers and t-shirt for two weeks, Jens noted.

We always have mothers with young children coming up to us and we do what we can to help them by providing diapers, baby milk and baby food, he said, adding that handing out a donated childrens toy to a young child remains a special memory.

Jens and Khun Arttie gave a special thank you to all the people who have supported the effort so far. The people who are helping us now here at the restaurant are either retired or are also out of work. There are also many good hearted people who keep helping who dont want to be named, they just want to do the right thing. Thankfully there are many more generous people in the community than those who just want to criticise, he said.

Those wanting to help the effort can contact Jens at The Corner Restaurant at 118/1 Bandon  Cherng Talay Road or by email at info@thecornerphuket.com, or contact Jens through his Facebook page or call him directly at 066-1649914.
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.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 23:28:01|Editor: huaxia

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DAMASCUS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Two new COVID-19 infections were recorded in Syria on Friday, bringing the total number in the country to 47, the health ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Syria has so far recorded 27 recoveries and three deaths from COVID-19, according to the ministry statement.

The first COVID-19 infection was reported in Syria on March 22 while the first death was on March 29.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday warned of a "real catastrophe" in case of an increase in the number of COVID-19 infections in Syria. Enditem
New Delhi, May 8 : India is completing the first road connectivity to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in Uttarakhand to ensure smooth ride of pilgrims to Kailash Mansarovar, the Ministry of Defence said on Friday.

The Border Road Organisation (BRO) completed the 80 km stretch connecting Ghatiabgarh and Lipulekh on April 17. After the trials were successful, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh opened the road by video conferencing on Friday.

"Delighted to inaugurate the Link Road to Mansarovar Yatra today. The BRO achieved road connectivity from Dharchula to Lipulekh (China Border) known as Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra Route. Also flagged off a convoy of vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji through video conferencing," Rajnath Singh tweeted.

He also said that the BRO team has done "tremendous work in the recent years and played a significant role in connecting the border areas". The road will also help in troops movement to the LAC.

The road ends at the 17,000 feet high Lipulekh pass. From there, Mount Kailash is located around 97 km north of the pass in Tibet. The Lipulekh pass, close to the Tri-junction of India-China-Nepal, is the lowest point in this section of the high Himalayas.

A senior Defence Ministry official said that with the construction of the road, pilgrims can travel to Lipulekh from Delhi in two days. The distance from Delhi to Lipulekh is 750 km.

Interestingly, the major travel would be in India -- 84 per cent -- and only 16 per cent in China.

The 80 km Ghatiabgarh-Lipulekh section has been made under the directions of the China Study Group (CSG) and it is funded by the Indo-China Border Road (ICBR).

The road was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 2005 at a cost of Rs 80.76 crore. In 2018, the CCS approved a revised cost of Rs 439.40 crore.

This route will reduce the usual travel time for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra by some six days.

The other route for the yatra via Sikkim is 2,780 km. It involves taking a flight to Bagdogra (1,115 km from Delhi), thereafter 1,665 km of road travel, including 1,490 in China.

Another existing route is via Nepal. It involves taking a flight to Kathmandu in Nepal, 1,150 km from Delhi, and thereafter a combination of two flights with road travel (1,940 km total) or two flights and one helicopter sortie (755 km) or total road travel from Nepal (840 km). The distance excludes 43 km on foot in China.

The new route via Uttrakhand will reduce a lot of time for the pilgrims. It would be the shortest and cheapest route and also one fifth distance of road travel as compared to the other routes.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A little more than a decade after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law, and as the nation struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump will bring his efforts to overturn the law to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear a Trump-backed challenge from Texas sometime this fall.

If Trump is successful, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans could lose their health insurance, according to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Browns office.

The law nicknamed Obamacare made it illegal for insurers to decline coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, expanded the Medicaid program in states including Ohio, and provided tax subsidies intended to lower insurance buying costs for households with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Kaiser Family Foundation says nearly 20 million more around the country had insurance coverage in 2016 than before the ACA was passed.

According to a legal brief that states defending the law filed at the Supreme Court, the nations uninsured rate dropped by 43 percent shortly after its major reforms took effect. In 2017, 10.3 million people received coverage through the health care insurance exchanges the law set up, with over 8 million receiving tax credits to help them pay premiums.

On Wednesday, the last day the Trump administration could could have officially changed its stance in the upcoming Supreme Court case, Trump pledged to terminate health care under Obamacare," calling it lousy health care, and telling reporters hell replace it with something better and less expensive.

Trump hasnt yet released details of his replacement proposal, leading to criticism from Democratic backers of the Affordable Care Act like Ohios Brown, who accuse the Trump administration of trying to cancel millions of Americans health insurance during the deadly COVID-19 outbreak.

Without the #ACA, health insurers could discriminate against or even refuse coverage to nearly 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions - one of the groups most likely to develop severe symptoms of the coronavirus.  Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 23, 2020

Browns office says more than 200,000 Ohioans were enrolled in ACA marketplace insurance in 2019, and more than 600,000 Ohioans have health care coverage because of the Medicaid expansion that the Affordable Care Act enabled. Browns office said that if the ACA is overturned, the number of uninsured Americans would rise by 65 percent, 5.5 million young adults would lose the option to stay on their parents health care plans, and hospitals would risk closure.

If the court decides to take away the entire health care law, heres what happens: Tax credits to help you buy health insurance -- gone," Brown told reporters after the case was argued in a lower court. Protections for pre-existing conditions -- gone. The ability to stay on your parents insurance until youre 26 -- gone. Ohios entire Medicaid expansion that Governor (John) Kasich and I did -- gone. Limits on how much you pay out of pocket each year -- gone. More affordable prescription drugs for seniors through closing the doughnut hole -- gone. Free preventive services, mammograms, bone density screenings, physicals for Medicare beneficiaries -- gone. The list goes on.

Ohios Republican U.S. Senator, Rob Portman, has always believed the law has constitutional challenges, but declined to comment on the court case through his spokeswoman, Emily Benavides. She said the ACA has increased already high insurance premiums and made health care more expensive. A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows individual market premiums in Ohio rose 86 percent between 2013 and 2017. It attributed much of those increased costs to the ACAs increased coverage requirements.

Benavides said Portman hopes the Senate can resume work on some of the bipartisan proposals it weighed last year, like efforts to eliminate surprise medical billing and to lower prescription drug costs.

He has consistently said that Congress should be more proactive in addressing the high cost of health care as opposed to letting the courts make these decisions," Benavides said.

John Corlett, a former Ohio Medicaid director and MetroHealth vice president who currently heads Clevelands nonpartisan Center for Community Solutions think tank, argues that the Affordable Care Act actually reduced health care prices by reducing the number of uninsured people whose uncompensated care costs were being passed along to those with insurance. He said expanding Medicaid eligibility to Ohioans reduced death rates as it reduced the number of people who couldnt pay for the medical care they needed.

When Obamacare was implemented during his time at MetroHealth, Corlett says it transformed care for thousands who could previously get low-cost or subsidized health care at the hospital, but couldnt pay for the prescription medications they needed until the ACA was implemented. He said the laws Medicaid expansion also increased access to behavioral health services for MetroHealth patients who couldnt previously afford it.

He said the ACAs repeal would eliminate that Medicaid expansion, as well as the laws prohibition on insurance carriers using pre-existing medical conditions to charge patients more or deny them coverage. He noted that a December report from the Urban Institute predicted that eliminating the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of uninsured people in Cleveland by 132 percent.

A large number of Ohioans covered through the ACA have pre-existing conditions, like high blood pressure, diabetes or being overweight, Corlett says. They might not lose coverage right away, but when their insurance is up for renewal, insurers would say you can still be covered, but it will cost you 10 times as much. Or you can be covered, but we wont cover the health care needed because of your pre-existing conditions.

He says the ACA adds about $4.4 billion in federal money each year to the states health care systems, and reducing it would cause layoffs and closures at hospitals and small behavioral health care providers that serve many Medicaid clients.

It would be a sucker punch for hospitals that are already struggling right now because of the epidemic," says Corlett. "Their uncompensated care would nearly double.

A July report from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated 29 percent of non-elderly adult Ohioans would be at risk of losing their insurance because of pre-existing conditions if federal courts strike down the Affordable Care Act. The report said that 53.9 million Americans and just under 2 million Ohioans had the sort of pre-existing medical conditions that could result in insurance denial, including cancer, mental health disorders, pregnancy, sleep apnea and arthritis.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Montana Attorney General Tom Fox, both Republicans, filed a court brief that urged reversal of the lower court decision to strike the law, arguing it would deprive millions of non-elderly Ohioans and Montanans of coverage for pre-existing conditions. It will also negatively affect countless others who organized their affairs in reliance on the Acts many unrelated provisions.

A group of 33 state hospital associations including Ohios filed a legal brief in the case that says they want the ACAs reforms to continue because reverting back to old delivery models would significantly disrupt" operations and patient care. It said the widespread insurance coverage loss from invalidating the ACA would itself have a significant impact on states, hospitals, and consumers.

Another legal brief filed in the case says the ACAs Medicaid expansion has also led to documented savings to people, states, and the health system. For example, self-reported medical debt in Ohio fell by nearly 50 percent after it broadened Medicaid eligibility.

Critics of the law like Texas Congressman Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, argue that employer-sponsored health care provides better benefits than the plans provided under the Affordable Care Act, and says the coverage it provides is expensive, with large out-of-pocket costs and narrow networks that often dont permit people to see the doctors theyre used to.

Champaign County Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, says the Affordable Care Act reduced health care choices and made premiums skyrocket. His denunciations of the law often cite what he calls the nine lies that ACA advocates told to secure its passage.

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Yall remember that one?" Jordan asked at a 2019 hearing on the law. How about the one, If you like your plan, you can keep your plan? We were told by the President of the United States premiums were going to go down. He then got more specific, Premiums will go down on average $1,500. He said deductibles would decline. Five false statements right there.

Jordan also likes to recall the initial security and software failures when the website to enroll in ACA insurance was unveiled, and the fact that a high proportion of the nonprofit insurance co-op plans created under the act went out of business.

The Trump Administration has worked to increase competition, transparency and quality of care in our health care markets, Jordan continued. Increased competition, transparency and quality of care are all goals we all should share. I dont know that theres anything the Trump Administration could do, though, that would satisfy my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

The nine lies of Obamacare pic.twitter.com/X7zONMXjP8  Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 10, 2019

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Washington: The US Justice Department's decision to drop the criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, is extraordinary and has no obvious precedent, criminal law specialists say.

"I've been practising for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University.

The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney-General William Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors who scrutinised Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the Trump campaign.

Michael Flynn, former US national security adviser. Credit:Bloomberg

The case against Flynn, for lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert Mueller. It had become a political cause for Trump and his supporters, and the President had signalled that he was considering a pardon once Flynn was sentenced. But Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.
Ladakh, J&K, Himachal and Uttarakhand likely to witness rise in high temp in 2030, 2050 and 2085: Study

DD to broadcast weather forecast of Indian cities in Pakistan occupied Kashmir

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: DD News and All India Radio will telecast and broadcast weather reports and temperatures of Indian towns and cities, including Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in their prime time news bulletins.

Secretary, Information and Broadcasting, Amit Khare said that this would come into immediate effect. The bulletin will be telecast at 8.55 am and 8.55 pm. This comes after the IMD started including Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad, which is part of Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

Two Lashkar operatives from PoK charged by NIA

The cities in PoK would be part of the overall forecast of the northwest division. This division comprises, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi-Chandigarh-Haryana, Punjab, east Uttar Pradesh, West Uttar Pradesh, east Rajasthan and west Rajasthan.

Last week India issued a demarche to Pakistan protesting the Pakistan Supreme Court's order on so-called Gilgit-Baltistan. India has said that the entire Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh including areas of Gilgit and Baltistan are an integral part of India.

On the order, the Ministry of External Affairs said that Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation.

Pakistan's Supreme Court had allowed general elections in the so-called Gilgit-Baltistan region.

It was further conveyed that such actions can neither hide the illegal occupation of parts of UTs of J&K and Ladakh by Pakistan nor grave human rights violations, exploitation & denial of freedom to the people residing in Pakistan occupied territories for the past 7 decades.

Government of India's position in the matter is reflected in the resolution passed by the Parliament in 1994 by consensus, the MEA also said.

Pakistan or its judiciary has no locus standi on territories illegally and forcibly occupied by it. India completely rejects such actions & continued attempts to bring material changes in Pakistan occupied areas of the Indian territory of J&K, the MEA also said.
Diana Souder, a Perdue spokeswoman, said the company has been relying on the latest science, including CDC guidelines. She said Merrills outreach to doctors was intended only to coordinate with these important partners as well as underscore Perdues prioritization of our associates safety. We have proactively opened a dialogue with community leaders, including health care providers, in the areas where we have production facilities, who share our goal of keeping people healthy. The safety and well-being of our associates is our top concern, and we recognize that successfully fighting this pandemic requires a community-wide approach.
Attorney General: Dropping Flynn Case Upheld the Rule of Law

Attorney General William Barr said the decision to drop the criminal case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn came because there wasnt a legitimate probe happening when FBI agents went to interview Flynn at the White House in early 2017.

Flynn initially pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI but recently moved to withdraw the plea. The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved to dismiss the case Thursday after a slew of new information came out casting doubt on the charge.

Prosecutors need a false statement, or a lie, and materiality to a legitimate investigation, Barr said.

Its on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on, the head of the DOJ said in an interview with CBS.

They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington, on Feb. 1, 2017. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

Flynn was speaking to a number of foreign officials as he and other members of then-president elect Donald Trump prepared to transition into the White House. He spoke over the phone with then-Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak in late 2016.

Obama administration officials claimed the conversation might have violated the Logan Act, a centuries-old law that has never been successfully prosecuted.

But Timothy Shea, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in the motion to dismiss that the interview of Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBIs counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynna no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureaus own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an absence of any derogatory information.

Documents released in recent days pertaining to the case included handwritten notes from an FBI official about the motivation to question Flynn and texts from an FBI agent showing he scrambled to keep the probe open when it was about to be closed. The agent, Peter Strzok, was fired in 2018.

As new information just became available that has a bearing on whether there was a legitimate investigation, that requires us, our duty, we think is to dismiss the case, Barr said.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok testifies at the Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Joint Hearing on Oversight of FBI and DOJ Actions Surrounding the 2016 Election in Washington on July 12, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Does new evidence show the counterintelligence case against Flynn was left open to lay a trap for him for lying? asked CBS News Catherine Herridge late Thursday. Yes. Essentially, Barr responded.

There was nothing wrong with Flynns call with Kislyak, Barr stressed.

In fact, it was laudable, contained nothing inconsistent with the Obama administrations policies, and  was in U.S. interests, the attorney general said.

He was saying to the Russians, you know, Dont escalate. And they asked him if he remembered saying that, and he said he didnt remember that.

Barr said that hes focused on restoring an equal standard of justice in the United States and that standard required dismissing the charges against Flynn.

Petr Savb contributed to this report.
KINGSTOWN, ST. VINCENT & GRENADINES / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / In light of the global pandemic, the financial trading platform OptioNante has donated 10,000 masks to the Australia region. With face masks being in dire need and short supply, the donation has been a welcome gift to thousands.

Thanks to the donation, the spread of the virus will become reduced. Countries, like those in the Australia region, are at a critical juncture where they are seeing reductions in the infection rate and the number of cases of the novel coronavirus. The more people that wear masks, the quicker and more significant the reduction in cases and infection will be.

Seeing the success of this initial donation of face masks, OptioNante is planning to make additional donations, once it can. With the health and safety of the world as one of its main focuses right now, OptioNante is demonstrating its commitment to being part of the solution to help "flatten the curve" for virus infections.

OptioNante's trading platform is involved with binary options trade, forex margin transactions, and unique trading methods. A new product, just launched, provides a set target profit that is reached by investments by special VIPs.

Media Contact Details

Name: Rene Streicher

Company: Optionante

Email: 2018support@optionante.com

Website: www.optionante.com

SOURCE: Optionante





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Worst downpours in months damage roads, houses and bridges and sweep away farms, Rwandan government says.

At least 65 people have died in Rwanda after heavy rains damaged houses and washed away bridges, according to officials.

The country has, in recent weeks, been hit by torrential downpours that have led to floods and landslides that crushed homes built on mountain slopes, with similar scenes playing out across East Africa.

In a statement on Thursday, Rwandas Ministry of Emergency Management said major rains the night before were the worst in months and caused a number of disasters in seven districts: Gakenke, Nyabihu, Muhanga, Musanze, Ngororero, Rulindo and Rubavu.

Up until midnight, 65 death cases had been registered due to floods. The rains also led to damage of infrastructure like roads, 91 houses, 5 bridges and several farms were swept away by the floods, said the statement.

The toll follows the deaths of eight people in heavy rains on Friday and Saturday, the ministry added.

Countries across East Africa have experienced major downpours in recent weeks, with devastating effects for the local populations.

In neighbouring Kenya, floods and landslides have killed nearly 200 people in the past month, while Ugandas Lake Victoria has overflown, submerging houses, a hospital and bridges and displacing thousands.

Four teenagers drowned in Kenya on Thursday after a river burst its banks, a day after the government announced 194 people had been killed due to floods and landslides since the rainy season began in April, and large areas of farmland and water infrastructure destroyed.

Ugandas President Yoweri Museveni on Thursday wrote on Twitter that Lake Victoria was near record levels.

A stopover at Kitubulu, Katabi Town Council on Entebbe Road. The water levels for Lake Victoria now stand at 13.4metres, one point less than the highest we have ever obtained (13.41metres in May 1964). Encroachers on Lake Victoria land should vacate before they are 'swallowed'. pic.twitter.com/LxOrF9aIiR  Yoweri K Museveni (@KagutaMuseveni) May 7, 2020

The Red Cross issued a statement on Thursday saying thousands were displaced in Uganda after two rivers burst their banks, and a major hospital in western Kasese had partly been submerged by water.

Somalia has also experienced flooding in several areas, with six people killed in northeast Puntland last month.
New Delhi: As part of the mission 'Vande Bharat' which has been intitiated by the Indian government to bring back all Indian citizens stranded in other countries due to coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown, atleast 167 Indian students stuck in Bangladesh capital will be flown back to India on Friday (May 8, 2020).

According to information shared by High Commission of India in Bangladesh the preparations to fly them back has been completed. The first flight will take off from Dhaka to Srinagar with 167 passengers onboard. It will leave at 11 am on Friday with medical students from Kashmir.

This the first Air India flight while more flights have been arranged as well.

The first Air India Express flight carrying Indian citizens from Abu Dhabi landed at the Kochi airport on Thursday night as India launched its biggest ever repatriation exercise in its history to bring back its nationals stranded abroad amid the international travel lockdown over the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, two flights from Abu Dhabi and Dubai landed in India on Thursday night with 181 and 182 passengers on board, respectively. While the Air India Express flight IX 452 with 181 passengers landed at the Cochin International Airport (CIAL) at 10.09 pm, the flight from Dubai with 182 Indians landed in Kozhikode on Thursday night.
Chennai, May 9 : The first evacuation flight of Air India Express to Chennai from Dubai landed at Chennai International Airport with 179 passengers on Saturday at about 1.10 a.m.

According to an official of Air India Express, the flight IX 612 passengers include three infants.

One more repatriation flight (IX 540) with 177 passengers is expected to land at the airport later.

The flights are being operated as a part of Indian's government's plan to bring back Indian's who were stranded in foreign countries due to COVID-19 lockdown called Vande Bharat Mission.

According to an official of Tamil Nadu Health Department about 10 flights carrying stranded Indians are expected to land in Chennai - one or two flights daily with a total of about 400 passengers.

He said the passengers will be screened at the airport and they would be advised to be quarantined. There will be about 60 health department officials deployed at the airport.

An airport official had earlier said the passengers will deboard the plane in small batches.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
State Unemployment Departments Beef Up Call Centers and Tech Amidst COVID-19

One in five U.S. workers has filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March, totaling more than 33 million claims in the past seven weeks. With rates approaching Depression-era levels, states are scrambling to keep up with claims and call centers are completely overwhelmed.

In Wisconsin, "outdated technology" has been blamed for residents' inability to get assistance through the state's unemployment insurance helpline. The issue has held up some residents' benefits for weeks or more, but Wisconsin is working on upgrades, according to the Governor's office.

The Department of Workforce Development has been hiring," said Ryan Nilsestuen, chief legal counsel to the governor, during a press call last week. "Weve been transferring employees from other agencies to fill in DWD. DWD also did a significant technology upgrade to be able to handle a significantly larger number of callers and that helped a lot to make sure people werent being dropped and that they were able to answer more calls. And theres going to continue to be those types of technology upgrades and additional employees and streamlining processes.

More than 1.18 million weekly unemployment claims have been filed in Wisconsin since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and nearly half of them have not been paid, according to the DWD. The state still managed to pay out more than $290 million, despite the DWD call center being overwhelmed.

Nilsestuen said the department receives approximately four to five million calls per week, although a majority had been getting dropped before the technology upgrade. DWD staff have been working overtime since the onset of coronavirus to process claims, take calls and update IT and telecom processes to better meet demand.

Hundreds of state employees from other departments have already been transferred just to answer phone calls about unemployment insurance. And Wisconsin has also partnered with an additional 500-employee call center to help offset the deluge of calls. Agents are still being trained, however, and are expected to be ready for calls by mid-May.

Other states have faced similar problems handling unemployment queries because of COVID-19. The New York State Department of Labor and the New York State Office of Information Technology announced a "Tech Surge" last month, partnering with Google Cloud, Deloitte (News - Alert) and Verizon to improve online and telephone-based unemployment insurance systems.

Hawaii also launched a new call center to handle its overwhelming number of unemployment claims. And Michigan added more computer servers as well as hundreds of additional staff to answer phone calls related to an unprecedented number of unemployment claims.
As many as 531 Maharashtra police personnel, including 51 officers, have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, an official said on Thursday.

Mumbai: As many as 531 Maharashtra police personnel, including 51 officers, have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, an official said on Thursday.

Among these infected police personnel, 480 are constables, who are being treated at various hospitals in the state, the official said.

Out of the 531 coronavirus positive police personnel, 39, including eight officers, have recovered from the disease, he said.

So far, five policemen have died due to the virus, the offical said.

Earlier in the day, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that 487 policemen have tested COVID-19 positive in the state ever since the nationwide lockdown came into force.

The lockdown was imposed on 24 March and has been extended till 17 May to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Taking to Twitter, Deshmukh said, "487 police personnel have tested positive for COVID-19 since the lockdown."

Meanwhile, the official said the Maharashtra Police have registered at least 96,231 offences so far under section 188 of the IPC for violation of lockdown-related norms and arrested 18,858 people.

The IPC section 188 deals with disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant.

Since the lockdown, there had been 189 incidents of assault on policemen (till 7 May) in which 73 personnel and a home guard sustained injuries, the official said, adding at least 683 persons had been arrested for these attacks.

Around 30 health professionals had been also attacked during this period, the official said.

Police have traced at least 649 people, who violated quarantine norms in the state, excluding the financial capital, the official said.

At least 85,309 phone calls were handled by various police control rooms across the state in connection with the virus, he said.

Police have registered 1,281 offences of illegal transport and seized 53,330 vehicles which had come on roads in violation of lockdown rules, the officail said.

A fine of Rs 3.56 crore has been collected from violators by the police for various offences during this period, he said.

Earlier, in a series of tweets, Deshmukh said 3,10,694 passes have been issued for essential service providers and those caught in emergencies till now.

The minister said that 2,24,219 people have been isolated in the state for possible exposure to the coronavirus and 649 were found to be violating quarantine norms.

"The state govt's running 4,738 relief camps where 4,35,030 migrant labourers have been given refuge with food & necessities. 1,281 offences have been registered for illegal transport," he said on the micro-blogging site.
An ex-boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith  who went to prison for threatening her and assaulting her neighbor  has been killed in a shooting, TMZ has learned.

Mark Hatten died Sunday after an incident with another man in Greeleyville, South Carolina turned deadly. Its currently unclear what led up to the shooting.

Hatten, reportedly known as Hollywood in Greeleyville, did have a Hollywood past with Anna Nicole  but it didnt end well.



According to the famous late Playmates testimony in 2002, she began dating Hatten in early 2000 and the 2 had a sexual relationship until June 2000, when he allegedly confronted her with a knife in the bedroom of her home.

She broke up with him, but Smith claimed he continued to stalk and threaten her for nearly 2 years afterward. In March 2002, he showed up at her home and assaulted her neighbor when the man asked Hatten to leave.

He stood trial and was found guilty of making criminal threats against Smith and attacking her neighbor. He was sentenced to nearly 7 years in prison.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
India Mounts Massive Operation to Evacuate Citizens Stranded Overseas

By Anjana Pasricha May 07, 2020

India has launched the biggest evacuation of its citizens in decades, deploying aircraft and navy ships to bring home thousands of Indians stranded in foreign countries after it shut its borders and stopped all international commercial flights in March due to COVID-19.

The operation is being carried out amid growing appeals from migrant workers, students and visitors overseas to be brought home amid lockdowns and restrictions imposed across countries battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Their return poses a fresh challenge to India as it grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases -- health experts say the country's stringent six-week lockdown has not slowed the pace of infections, which now number nearly 53,000.

Sixty-four flights will operate over the next week to bring back about 15,000 Indians from a dozen countries, including, the Maldives, United States, Britain, Singapore and Middle Eastern countries.

Two flights from the cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are scheduled to land late Thursday in India's southern state of Kerala, from where millions of Indian workers travel to work in Middle East countries. Some migrant workers said they need to come back after losing jobs in the wake of the economic disruption caused by the pandemic.

A naval ship, meanwhile, reached the Maldives to evacuate about 1,000 Indians, many of whom had been working in its now battered tourism industry. Another naval ship will reach there later this week.

Eventually, India plans to bring back about 200,000 citizens in what has been billed by local media as the biggest evacuation exercise since it airlifted 170,000 Indians from Kuwait during the 1990 Gulf War.

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri said the massive exercise is meant to help citizens who are stranded and in distress. "Many of them have visas, which have expired, some of them are to be deported," he told India Today. "We will take all safeguard measures that can possibly be taken to ensure that risk is minimized."

The coronavirus infection initially arrived in the country from Indians who had traveled overseas  the first case was a student who came home from the city of Wuhan, China where COVID-19 was first detected late last year.

Health authorities have mandated that all those returning will have to undergo screening and remain in quarantine for two weeks, either in hospitals or a government facility. The crews will wear protective gear, while all passengers will have to wear masks and follow social distancing norms.

India's lockdown, which has been partially eased in recent days as it tries to get the country's economy back on track, is due to end on May 17. Authorities have not yet said when international flights will resume.

However, the country has added new cases at record highs in recent days  Wednesday's tally of 3,600 cases was the biggest so far. Health experts point out that the surge is coming from a handful of places in the country, such as the financial capital, Mumbai, which has emerged as the biggest hot spot, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the country's total cases.

Calling Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is located, an area of particular concern, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has offered to assist state health officials. "The government is ready to help in every way possible -- be it manpower increase, capacity building, technical assistance or any kind of handholding that is required to manage the situation."

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A Qantas A380 taxis at Sydney Airport prior to the 100 Year Gala Event in Sydney, Australia on Oct. 31, 2019. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Qantas Brings Home Australians From India

Two flights carrying hundreds of Australians repatriated from India arrived in the morning on Friday, May 5 as part of a globe-spanning effort to return stranded travellers.

Two Qantas flights left New Delhi on Thursday heading for Sydney and Melbourne. A third plane carrying Australians will arrive in Sydney on Sunday.

Each flight carried 188 passengers, with a ticket costing $2,300. All tickets were sold out in 20 minutes.

The Australians are being brought home after being stranded in India following the spread of the virus.

Foreign minister Marise Payne told The Sydney Morning Herald on May 4, The situation in India has been, and remains, complex, with Australians located across 27 Indian states and with internal and external travel restrictions continuing to apply.

All are expected to be quarantined in hotels for two weeks.

In a series of comments posted on Twitter on May 8, the Department of Foreign Affairs welcomed back travellers from Laos, Vietnam, and Lebanon:

122 passengers arrived in Sydney this morning from Laos & Vietnam, incl 79 Aussies. Facilitated a special commercial @VietnamAirlines flight from Vientiane to Ho Chi Minh City, with an onward leg home to Australia Airplane.

122 passengers arrived in Sydney this morning from Laos & Vietnam, incl 79 Aussies     facilitated a special commercial @VietnamAirlines flight from Vientiane to Ho Chi Minh City, with an onward leg home to Australia   of  officials: @AusAmbVN #AustraliainLaos pic.twitter.com/KqDR5adxFD  DFAT (@dfat) May 8, 2020

A further 101 Australians and their families have arrived home from Lebanon

Our Embassy in Beirut worked with @qatarairways on a special commercial flight to Doha, linking passengers to regular services to Sydney and Melbourne.

A further 101 Australians and their families have arrived home from Lebanon    Our Embassy in Beirut worked with @qatarairways on a special commercial flight to Doha, linking passengers to regular services to Sydney and Melbourne.@SafirAustralia https://t.co/P3MVeyr8Sg  DFAT (@dfat) May 7, 2020

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on May 8, People had assumed (wed) finished, but were still welcoming Australians back from overseas in New South Wales.

As more people leave quarantine, we are accepting more planeloads of people coming in, she said.

Some 3,500 people are being quarantined in Sydney hotels, down from a total of 13,000 when border controls first came into effect.

Weve had 31 major hotels involved in this process, Berejiklian said.

The rescue efforts have seen Qantas flights going to Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, and Peru.

Payne told reporters on April 19 that around 11,000 Australians live across the world.

Around 300,000 people have returned to Australia since March 13.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has published additional information on the Smart Traveller website.

Qantas is currently offering flights from Los Angeles and London. Transit hubs Kuala Lumpur, Doha, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and Tokyo are still open.

Australians in other cities and countries will need to work closely with airlines and overseas consulates for travel arrangements.
Curfew-like restrictions have been imposed across the Kashmir valley on Friday to maintain law and order as authorities apprehend street protests against the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Riyaz Naikoo in an encounter with security forces.

Concertina wires and heavy deployment of security force personnel dotted the roads around densely populated areas of the city and elsewhere in the valley to ensure that only people with movement passes were out of their homes, officials said.

They said while the government is strictly enforcing the COVID-19 lockdown, the additional restrictions were imposed on Friday to ensure that the day passes off peacefully.

Naikoo and his aide were killed in an encounter with security forces in Beighpora area of Awantipora on Wednesday, prompting authorities to snap mobile telephony and Internet services in the valley.

Restrictions were also imposed in most parts of the valley including Srinagar city soon after the about Naikoo's killing spread.

A civilian was killed and 15 others were injured in clashes with security forces in Awantipora area of Pulwama district, hours after Naikoo and his associate were killed on Wednesday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On 13 March 2020, the Kenyan Ministry of Health confirmed the first case of infection by COVID-19 in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. Since then, 582 cases have been confirmed in 16 counties across the nation, with 26 deaths and 190 recoveries.

From the beginning of the outbreak, human rights impacts, including socio-economic and gender aspects, were rapidly felt by communities, particularly within informal settlements and vulnerable households. With the imposition of a nightly curfew from 27 March 2020, the manner of enforcement of emergency measures by police amplified negative human rights impacts, and led to deaths, injuries, sexual and gender-based violence and hundreds of arrests.

Li Fung is the Senior Human Rights Advisor to the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya. Since mid-March, she and her colleagues have worked with the UN Country Team, civil society, the national human rights institution and Government stakeholders to explore and respond to human rights dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis.

We asked Li to describe how the pandemic has affected human rights work and how UN Human Rights and its partners are supporting the Kenyan Government's response to the pandemic.

How has COVID-19 affected your work?

Personally, and as a team, we have had to adapt very quickly to different ways of working. For example, working remotely from home  whilst we are not locked down, we do not have very much movement. In this context, a key concern is how to keep up the team spirit, maintain good communication, work together and remain focused on the same goals. It is also important to try to support each other, particularly those who can't work remotely, through these difficult circumstances.

It has been challenging because some of our planned activities, which involved capacity-building activities for human rights organisations and defenders, were not able to proceed because of restrictions on movement. So we have had to look at how to reprioritize and adapt what we were already doing to respond to this new context.

What is UN Human Rights doing to protect people's rights during this pandemic?

What we have done is to try to hone what we were already doing to be able to respond quickly, and build on existing partnerships. As a Senior Human Rights Advisor to the Resident Coordinator, a large part of the work has been using human rights analysis to influence the UN Country Team approach and response. UN Human Rights was part of the Flash Appeal for Kenya that was launched in early April, and I am pleased to say that human rights monitoring, documentation and reporting is a key area of the governance response, and part of the overall COVID-19 response. It is very important to recognise that we cannot effectively fight this pandemic and address its impacts if we do not know what the situation is on the ground, and how it affects different communities and groups.

We also built on an existing partnership with a network of grassroots human rights defenders, the Social Justice Centres Working Group. We had worked with them a couple of months ago on monitoring the right to water in informal settlements in Kenya. This was very timely because, as we know, handwashing and the right to water are key to COVID-19 prevention. Right now, we are partnering with this network of defenders to monitor the human rights impacts of the crisis in 24 informal settlements across eight counties  looking at rights to water, housing and health, at socio-economic impacts and how families are coping, at gender impacts and increasing sexual and gender-based violence. A key issue is excessive use of force and violence by police - a longstanding concern in informal settlements - and analysing how this is playing out in the enforcement of the nightly curfew and emergency measures.

We are also continuing existing work on sexual and gender-based violence. Our work has focused on prevention of and response to sexual and gender-based violence in electoral contexts, but we have tried to tailor this to respond to the current COVID context. We have unfortunately seen a big spike in sexual and gender-based violence, including domestic violence. For survivors, there are not many safe places to go and little clarity on available response mechanisms. Now we are working with networks of survivors of sexual violence to help facilitate these responses.

Prior to COVID-19, we had an ongoing engagement with the police, prosecution and police oversight authorities on strengthening the investigation and prosecution of human rights violations. These partnerships have been vital to be able to have open discussions about issues such as guidelines regulating the enforcement of emergency measures, and ensuring that investigations of complaints regarding police excesses are moving forward.

We are also working closely with the national human rights institution and civil society to support efforts on coordination, monitoring and timely responses - and to advocate for the importance of their role in a human rights-based response to COVID-19.

What have been the biggest challenges and lessons learned thus far during the pandemic?

COVID-19 has just brought to the fore the existing human rights challenges in Kenya such as huge inequalities, excessive use of force by police, arbitrary arrests - which are linked to corruption, on a small scale - widespread sexual and gender-based violence, and impunity. In terms of lessons learned, I think this is a key one for the Government and for the international community  if we don't address these systemic human rights issues in normal times, then in times of crisis, for example the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters or political and civil unrest, these issues will only be further entrenched.

The importance of partnerships is one of the key lessons for our team and me personally. Having a diverse range of partnerships has been critical to be connected to the realities on the ground, to influence actions on different levels, and to raise difficult issues with actors who might not otherwise be open to such conversations.

Flexibility and adaptability are also lessons learned, because if we have a set way of doing things, we will not be able to respond to the changing situation on the ground. We have had to look at different ways of working - not just personally in terms of remote working while taking care of home schooling - but also to be able to deliver as a team and to support our partners.

Why is it important to stand together, for human rights, during this pandemic?

Only a human rights-based approach will be able to respond effectively to this pandemic, globally and in a country context. Responses will only be effective if they adopt a whole of society approach, addressing public health issues, but also social protection and providing for the needs of the most vulnerable, who don't have access to water, who cannot self-isolate and who cannot afford to eat if they do not work. A human rights-based approach is essential to better equip communities to ride out the crisis and emerge at the other end of this pandemic, without undercutting the development gains that countries have invested in for decades.

It is also very clear that the response has to be conducted in full respect of human rights and the rule of law. If emergency measures actually end up putting communities and individuals at greater risk or economic hardship, they will be ineffective and may even increase the risk of broader social unrest.

Personally, I believe it's important to stand together to show that we are all working in partnership - within the UN family, with Government, international partners, civil society and directly with grassroots human rights defenders to make their voices heard, to make their voices count and ensure they are able to participate and shape the response in their communities.

8 May 2020






The Congress-led Opposition on Friday demanded that the state government should seek a Rs 50,000 crore special economic package from the Centre in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

This is one of the 24 demands the Congress-led Opposition made during a meeting with Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa. Besides Congress, leaders from the JD(S), CPI, CPI(M) and farmers groups attended the meeting.

The state government should immediately ask the Centre to declare the COVID-19 pandemic as a national disaster and demand at least Rs 50,000 crore to deal with the disease and address problems faced by the people due to the lockdown, the charter of demands said.

During the meeting, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah said that the PM CARES fund had Rs 35,000 crore. Not a single paisa has come to the state from there. The Centre, at the least, shouldve given Karnataka whatever it got from the state, he said.

The former CM also asked the government to increase Covid-19 testing and ensure sufficient availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits in all districts. Experts have expressed worry that the virus may spread more in June and July. You have to be ready for that. And ASHA workers should be given financial incentives, he said.

The Opposition asked the government to increase the per-hectare compensation for farmers from Rs 25,000 that has been announced, Rs 10,000 crore to revive industries, Rs 10,000 for each construction worker registered with the government and so on.

Till the coronavirus (crisis) goes away, labourers should be given Rs 2,000 every month instead of a one-time relief of Rs 5,000, Siddaramaiah said.

The meeting started with Yediyurappa informing the Opposition of steps taken by the government. Compared with other states, the Covid-19 situation in Karnataka is under control, he said. I have information on various communities that are under distress. Giving them relief will be examined in the coming days. Also, by reviving economic activities, its our priority to ensure labourers are employed, he said, listing out several initiatives taken by the government, especially on the agriculture front.

Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar said a special session of legislature should be convened to discuss the Covid-19 situation. We have brought to the CMs notice various issues. If no action is taken, then Congress will hit the streets in protest.
Latinos are often considered a monolithic bloc, but a recent article debunks the monolithic myth, stating that Latinos, like the rest of the U.S. population, are diverse in their political opinions.

According to the data from Americas Society (AS)-Council of the Americas (COA), half of Latinos consider deportations of undocumented immigrants a critical policy goal for Washington, but 80 percent deem citizenship for the undocumented an important goal as well.

The disparity is also evident as AS-COA says the majority of U.S. Latinos think the government has done poor management in the U.S.-Mexico border problem, especially as far as asylum seekers are concerned. And yet more than half admit the U.S. is not responsible for taking in refugees from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

On the other hand, Latinos would agree with the rest of the country on issues of employment and healthcare, which they consider a top issue for Latino voters, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, Latinos are hit harder by the COVID-19 outbreak than other groups. Roughly 61 percent of Latino homes claim somebody in their household has either taken a pay cut or lost their jobs. This number is compared to 49 percent for the overall U.S. population, says Mark Hugo Lopez, director of global migration and demography research at Pew Research Center, who also leads Pew's research agenda on the U.S. Latino community.

Nonetheless, Lopez said there are still a few key characteristics that set the Latino electorate apart.

For instance, almost half of U.S. Latino voters age 35 or younger and are often first-time voters. In comparison to white voters, that statistics is just one in five. Additionally, young Latinos have a higher presence on social media more than their peers from other groups.

Check these out!

In an article by Latin Post, Latino millennials are more civically-engaged but are less likely to vote as revealed by a 2016 report from the Pew Research Center.

Younger Latinos also exhibit more approval in legal abortion and higher LGBT acceptance rate.

"We each have our core principles," said Murrieta, a 27-year-old who became a citizen in 2010. "Political parties should not be looking for the one perfect candidate who can talk to our issues. ... We're not monolithic in terms of partisanship. We're not one size fits all. Political parties are going to be very smart to realize this."

The good news for candidates who aim to win Latino support is that reaching out to them is one of the essential factors in getting them to turn out to vote in the 2020 elections.

Lopez also advised candidates that campaigning doesn't necessarily need to be in Spanish as three-quarters of eligible Latino voters were born in the United States, and English is the primary language for the majority of them.

"Focusing on just Spanish-speakers, while important, isn't necessarily always the best way to reach this group," Lopez said.
The pro-Beijing former LegCo chairman spoke about statements made by mainland officials who escribed Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement as a political virus that needs to be eradicated. Politics in the territory is polarised with scuffles breaking out over who chairs LegCos House Committee. Meanwhile, 171 teachers have been accused of misconduct for their support of protests. In April, 25 pro-democracy figures were arrested.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews)  Tsang Yok-sing, former chair of Hong Kongs Legislative Council (LegCo), said today in an interview that the more Beijing tightens it grip on Hong Kong, the more pro-democracy forces will resist the mainlands interference in the territorys affairs.

Tsang, founder of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), spoke after the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office described Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement as a political virus to be eradicated.

Tsang wants to see the authorities and pro-democracy groups engage in dialogue, noting that in a democracy the majority must rule respecting the rights of the minority. Only this way can the One country, Two systems principle on which Hong Kong's autonomy is based work.

Tsang spoke as pro-Beijing and pro-democracy lawmakers clashed, even physically, over the deadlock in the House Committee, which has been without a chair since last October.

Deputy Chairman Dennis Kwok, a pro-democracy lawmaker, has been chairing the Committee after Chairwoman Starry Lee quit to stand for re-election. Beijing has accused Kwok of undermining the committee's work and preventing the election of a new chair.

LegCo legal adviser Connie Fung said that the Committee could resume work under Lee without the election of a new chair. Pro-democracy members are opposed to this, saying that Kwok should continue to chair the committee.

The struggle in the LegCo mirrors the main divisions in Hong Kong society. Pro-democracy advocates have spoken out against Beijing's readiness to limit more and more the territorys political and economic autonomy, which is guaranteed until 2047.

For this reason, thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent months to protest against Chinas interference. They include about 171 teachers, who now stand accused of misconduct because of their support for the protest.

Education authorities told the LegCo yesterday that the teachers in question inappropriately used school material in class, as well as uttered discriminatory and hateful remarks.

Some of the teachers could face charges. About 39 teachers received reprimands; four received warning letters. All could lose their teaching license.

For pro-democracy groups, this is nothing but political censorship, a violation of freedom of speech and the personal rights of teachers.

The anti-government front suffered a major blow on 18 April, with the arrest of 25 leading figures, accused by police of organising and participating in unlawful assemblies in recent months.
While minors can become infected with the new coronavirus, very few have died or suffered serious symptoms.

With parents and policymakers agonising over when to reopen schools as lockdowns ease, scientists are still struggling to find out how the new coronavirus affects children.

While youngsters can become infected with the new coronavirus, very few have died or suffered serious symptoms. But could they still spread contagion?

Here is what we know so far.

Are children at risk?

This is one of the few questions where there is broad agreement. Only a tiny proportion of children appear to have become seriously ill with COVID-19.

There are three key questions: How much do children get COVID-19; how badly does it affect them; and do they spread it to others? said Russell Viner, president of Britains Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

We only have good data about the second of these.

Specialists writing for the British pediatric website Dont Forget the Bubbles (DFTB) said in a recent roundup of international research that only around one percent of critical cases involved children, while deaths remain extremely rare.





Do they get infected?

The short answer is yes.

Research indicates that children and adolescents are just as likely to become infected as any other age group and can spread the disease, says the World Health Organization.

But this is not reflected in global official data about the virus, with many countries largely focusing their COVID-19 testing on those who have gone to hospital with severe symptoms.

Frances health agency, which has amalgamated data from a host of international studies, said paediatric cases represent between one and five percent of all officially-documented global infections.

It said this is because children catch the virus, but generally exhibit only mild symptoms  or no symptoms at all  meaning they go uncounted.

But other experts believe that children, especially those under the age of 10, might not be getting infected as much in the first place.

It appears fairly convincing that children are less likely to acquire the infection than adults, by a significant amount, said specialists Alasdair Munro and Damian Roland of DFTB.

Their conclusions were based on several international contact tracing studies that looked at how the disease spread and to whom.

They also assessed data from places that have carried out mass community-wide testing  South Korea, Iceland and the Italian principality of Vo  all of which found that the proportion of infected children was far smaller than adults.





But are they silent vectors?

This is the area of greatest uncertainty.

Initially, researchers believed they could be spreading the disease, drawing comparisons with other viruses like the flu where children help accelerate infections.

But recent studies on the new coronavirus suggest that they are less likely to transmit the virus.

In one incident, a nine-year-old was among 12 people infected in a super-spreading event at a chalet in the Haute-Savoie region of France, after a British man returned from Singapore and went on a ski holiday.

A study of the incident  one of the first major clusters of infection in France  showed that the child, who only displayed mild symptoms, came into contact with 172 people while sick.

None of them contracted COVID-19, not even the youngsters two siblings. But the child did transmit other winter viruses, including the flu.

Children could be less infectious because they do not have as many symptoms and do not cough, French expert Arnaud Fontanet told a parliamentary hearing last week.

But a German study last month led by virologist Christian Drosten, an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel, concluded that children had a viral load comparable to that of adults.

They could be as contagious, it added.

Other scientists, including Munro, have disputed both the methodology of that study and its conclusion. On reanalysing the data, they said it might even be possible to draw the opposite conclusion  that age and viral load are correlated.

Even so, we cannot say for sure that a higher viral load makes a person more infectious.





A new threat?

In recent weeks, a spate of cases of children affected by an inflammatory illness resembling a rare condition called Kawasaki disease has caused alarm.

Symptoms are high fever, abdominal pain, rash and swollen glands. If untreated, patients can suffer heart failure, but those who are given medical care respond well.

A few dozen cases have been reported in New York, France, Britain, Italy and Spain, and while no link has been formally established to the new coronavirus, scientists believe it could be connected.

In an article published this week in the medical journal The Lancet, British doctors describing eight cases observed in London said it could be a new phenomenon affecting previously-asymptomatic children with the coronavirus manifesting as a hyperinflammatory syndrome.

Reports of the illness came just as several countries in Europe were mulling reopening schools, kindling fears among parents. But experts say the cases are too rare to affect policy decisions.





Should the schools open?

On this, there is much disagreement.

Authorities in Italy, which has the oldest teachers of OECD nations with almost 60 percent aged over 50, have expressed concern that reopening schools would risk infecting staff and reigniting the epidemic.

But many other countries, including Germany, Denmark and France, have prioritised reopening schools as they unwind lockdown measures.

In France, scientific estimates that it would be better to keep schools shut until September were outweighed by concerns about other social issues, particularly those facing children from troubled families.

School can be a haven of peace, explained Jean-Francois Delfraissy, who leads the scientific committee advising the government.

Other experts argue that the benefits of continuing education far outweigh the risks.

In a column published this week in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Munro and British infectious disease specialist Saul Faust called on governments to allow children to resume lessons, regardless of underlying health conditions, and conduct detailed surveillance to monitor safety.

Children are not COVID-19 super-spreaders: time to go back to school, they said.
Nearly 160 illegal Indian immigrants, including 132 from Haryana and Punjab, will be deported from the United States in the coming few days. The US authorities have communicated the details of 161 Indian detainees to New Delhi for deportation following the initiation of air evacuation operations for stranded Indian nationals due to the Covid-19 situation. These details were shared by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) with the states following a recent meeting between foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and the top brass of Haryana and Punjab governments, top officials said.

Officials who did not wish to get quoted said that there are 76 illegal migrants from Haryana and 56 from Punjab who are in the custody of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at detention centres in Texas, Arizona, California, New York and Washington, and being readied for deportation. The ICE air operations, the air transportation arm of the US agency, facilitates the removal of aliens to destinations worldwide using air charter services.

A ministry of external affairs (MEA) official authorised to answer media queries said the illegal migrants will be flown in by the US authorities. Though the transportation of deportees is not part of the evacuation operation to bring stranded Indians back from abroad, the MEA is making all necessary arrangements, including documentation, for the arrival of deportees. The deportees will be put at the disposal of the respective state governments after their arrival and will have to undergo 14-day mandatory quarantine, MEAs press relation officer said.

WHITE HOUSE ORDER ON REPATRIATION OF FOREIGNERS

The hastened deportation process is clearly the outcome of an April 10 executive order of US president, Donald Trump imposing visa sanctions on countries that deny or unreasonably delay the acceptance of aliens who are their citizens, subjects, nationals, or residents after being asked to accept those aliens from the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such an action, the executive order said, created unacceptable public health risks for Americans. The United States must be able to effectuate the repatriation of foreign nationals who violate the laws of the United States, said the presidential order which will cease to apply on December 31, unless extended. The presidential order would apply to illegal migrants also, officials said.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had earlier in March evaluated its detained population for high-risk cases to determine whether their continued detention was appropriate. Of this medical risk population, ICE released over 900 individuals after evaluating their immigration history, criminal record, potential threat to public safety, flight risk, and national security concerns. ICEs detained population has also steadily dropped by more than 7,000 individuals since March 1, 2020 as a result of the decrease in book-ins compared to this time last year, combined with continued repatriations of illegal aliens, as per a statement issued by ICE.

INDIA DETAINEES CROSSED OVER FROM SOUTHERN BORDER

Statistics show that 92 Indian migrants were detained by US Customs and Border Protection personnel in Texas after making illegal crossovers from the southern border abutting Mexico. There were 21 detentions in New York, 22 in Atlanta and 22 in San Francisco. Oregon-based immigrant rights activist, Navneet Kaur who often works as an interpreter for the Indian detainees said that most of the asylum pleas of Indian detainees have been rejected in the past one year. I have heard about only one positive outcome, Kaur said.

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WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump cast fresh doubt Friday on the future of his FBI director as federal law enforcement officials privately wrestled with fallout from the Justice Department's move to throw out the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The president's comments in a phone interview with Fox News highlight the ongoing distrust between the White House and some law enforcement officials in the wake of a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III into Russia's 2016 election interference and the Trump campaign.

"It's disappointing," Trump said when asked about Christopher Wray's role in ongoing reviews of the FBI's handling of the Russia investigation. "Let's see what happens with him. Look, the jury's still out."

Trump faulted the FBI director for "skirting" the debate surrounding the Russia investigation, although the agency and the Justice Department have insisted it has cooperated fully with those reviewing the case. He said more developments could come in the next two weeks but declined to elaborate.

While the president continued to criticize the FBI's conduct, multiple federal law enforcement officials interviewed Friday expressed varying degrees of anger, resignation and alarm over the decision by Attorney General William Barr to abandon the prosecution of Flynn for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. before Trump took office.

"The attorney general is supposed to be above reproach and apolitical in terms of how the department operates and how he or she as an individual operates, and he's just completely lost that," said one veteran Justice Department lawyer who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. "He's Trump's attorney. He's not the country's attorney."

A day after the Flynn reversal, more than a half dozen Justice Department employees expressed similar displeasure with the move, saying they did not agree with Barr's legal rationale and that they worried about what it might portend for the agency going forward. A smaller number of law enforcement officials contacted Friday said they were basically pleased with the outcome, and were critical of decisions made by former FBI director James Comey, who launched the Flynn investigation.

Several current lawyers in the department said they were disturbed by Barr's personal intervention in cases involving Trump's friends, and a few said they or their colleagues were updating their resumes and considering leaving.

Some described being torn between wanting to leave because they feel the institution's reputation is being ruined, and wanting to stay to stem the spread of what they see as political corruption. Most cases, the employees noted, do not attract the attorney general's attention, though they still require competent management.

More for you 'Never Seen Anything Like This': Experts Question Dropping of Flynn Prosecution

"It's exhausting," said one department lawyer. "You feel like it's a constant battle of you against the leadership of your country, and that's a horrible feeling."

A spokeswoman for Barr said any talk of people contemplating leaving in the wake of the Flynn decision "is not what we are hearing. In fact, we have received significant positive feedback from Department lawyers who are applauding the recommendation of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen."

Jensen, the U.S. attorney from St. Louis, was brought in by Barr to review the Flynn case, which had been turned over to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office after Mueller closed the special counsel's office last year. Jensen concluded Flynn's guilty plea to lying to the FBI should be dismissed because agents did not have a valid reason to be investigating him. Barr agreed.

Within the FBI, there was growing concern among employees that Wray's long-term tenure may be in jeopardy, given the president's comments.

Brian O'Hare, president of the FBI Agents Association, defended Wray in a statement Friday.

Wray "continues to lead through unprecedented challenges with a steady hand," said O'Hare, who credited the FBI director for making "the changes needed to ensure that the FBI is best positioned to deal with threats to the American people."

Barr, in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, also defended the FBI director, saying Wray "has always supported and been very helpful in various investigations we've been running." He called Wray "a great partner to me in our effort to restore the American people's confidence in both the Department of Justice and the FBI."

People close to the president, however, said Trump has complained privately that Wray has not spoken out forcefully against former officials like Comey, but they added that the president does not seem to be inclined to act on that dissatisfaction, at least not now.

"Wray is not going to be fired because there is a sense of realism, because we are in a pandemic, and it's in an election year," predicted one official, who added that Trump has little love for Wray but is not preparing to fire him.

A spokesman for Wray declined to comment on the president's remarks.

After firing Comey in May 2017, Trump nominated Wray to serve a 10-year term as FBI director, but on Friday, sought to shift the responsibility for his appointment to former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, a frequent target of Trump's ire.

A former colleague of Wray's complimented Trump's decision to put him in charge of the bureau.

"I think the president made a very wise choice when he chose Chris Wray to be the next FBI director, and in my view, the director's been - since he came aboard - he's been earnestly focused on fixing and helping the department work through some very tough situations that were not of his making," said John Richter, a former U.S. Attorney who worked with Wray in the Justice Department. "So far as I can tell, he's acutely focused to getting the right outcomes, but getting them in the right way, and I expect to see more."

In a statement earlier this week, the FBI went further than it has in the past to criticize previous officials' conduct, saying Wray "remains firmly committed to addressing the failures under prior FBI leadership while maintaining the foundational principles of rigor, objectivity, accountability, and ownership in fulfilling the Bureau's mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution."

The president's comments Friday suggest the FBI's statement did not assuage his concerns. But he heaped praise on Barr for reversing course on Flynn's case.

"These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible people, and hopefully they're going to pay a price some day in the not too distant future," Trump told Fox News.

Trump said Americans "owe a lot to Attorney General Barr," and praised his top law enforcement official as "a man of unbelievable credibility and courage." Had Barr been attorney general when the special counsel investigation began, Trump said, "he would have stopped it immediately."

"He's going to go down in the history books," Trump said.

Trump suggested he and Barr had discussed the Flynn matter at some point - though the president said he took a hands-off approach.

"I told Bill Barr, 'you handle it,' " Trump said. "I would be absolutely entitled, in theory, the chief law enforcement officer, in theory, but I said you know what, I want Bill Barr to handle it."

Trump suggested he would be vindicated further in the coming days.

"A lot of things are going to be told over the next couple of weeks," the president said, again without elaborating. Jensen's review of cases in the District's U.S. attorney's office is ongoing, and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham is conducting a broad review of the Russia investigation - though there are no indications of imminent major developments in their probes.

On Thursday, Timothy Shea, a former adviser to Barr who in January was named U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, filed court papers seeking to dismiss the case against Flynn. Shea wrote that Flynn's interview by the FBI in January 2017 was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn," and that it was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis."

The Justice Department cannot unilaterally dismiss the Flynn case. Its filing seeks U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan's approval to do so, and it remains to be seen how the judge will respond. In 2009, when faced with allegations of FBI wrongdoing in an investigation of the late senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, Sullivan appointed an outside lawyer to investigate the matter. The legal and factual basis for that move was different than in the Flynn case, but Sullivan could press Justice Department lawyers to further explain their decisions.

Trump forced out Flynn in February 2017, and when he pleaded guilty, the president tweeted: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pleaded guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to seek to undo a guilty plea, and comes just months after Barr pressed prosecutors in another of Mueller's cases to soften their sentencing recommendation for the president's friend and former political adviser Roger Stone.

Shortly before the Justice Department abandoned Flynn's prosecution, the line prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, formally withdrew - just as the Stone prosecutors had. Only Shea, a political appointee, signed the filing.

Flynn, 61, was a senior Trump campaign foreign policy aide who went on to serve 24 days as national security adviser, the shortest tenure on record. The retired three-star Army general was forced to resign from the White House in 2017 for misstating the nature of his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, senior White House aides, federal investigators and the news media.

In his plea, Flynn admitted he was in touch with senior Trump transition officials before and after his communications with Kislyak. The pre-inauguration communications with Kislyak involved efforts to blunt Obama administration policy decisions on sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel, according to his plea. He also admitted misstating his lobbying work for the government of Turkey.

- - -

The Washington Post's Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
A directive by the West Bengal



Police asking its units to play a COVID-19 awareness song written by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary has sparked a furore in the state, with the BJP terming it an "outright insulting" move.

The TMC, rubbishing the allegation, said the saffron party was trying to indulge in cheap politics over the matter.

The state's Additional Director General of Police (Law and order), in his directive, had asked all officers to organise a programme titled 'Kabi Pronam' at the districts and commissionerates on the occasion of Tagore's 159th birth anniversary.

"A small tableau be brought out with a cut-out of Tagore. A collection of selected Tagore songs are enclosed herewith along with the awareness song, written by Hon'ble CM Mamata Banerjee on Coronavirus.

"This should be played at important residential areas and housing complexes of cities and towns between 9 am and 11.30 am," the order issued on May 6 said.

Reacting to the government order, the Bengal unit of the BJP sought to know what has the bards life and legacy got to do with the CMs song on Covid-19 awareness.

"Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is the greatest icon whose teachings and wisdom guide the world. But what do Mamata Banerjee awareness songs have to do with celebrating Gurudevs life and legacy? It is not just an affront to Gurdev but also makes light of the fight against Corona!" BJP leader Mukul Roy, who was once a trusted aide of Banerjee, said.

The saffron party's Mahila Morcha president in the state, Locket Chatterjee, said the government was trying to "impose the CM" on people.

"West Bengal Police issues an order to mandatorily play Mamata Banerjee songs at important residential areas and housing complexes of cities & towns on the occasion of Rabindra Jayanti," Chatterjee tweeted.

"Instead of commemorating Gurudev, WB govt is imposing CM on people! This is outright insulting!" she added.

The Trinamool Congress, however, refuted the charge and accused BJP of indulging in "cheap and dirty" politics on the occasion of bard's birth anniversary.

"The chief minister had tried to use the occasion to spread awareness about COVID-19. But the BJP is using it to play dirty politics. We condemn such an attempt by the saffron camp," a senior TMC leader said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ANN ARBOR, MI  Saint Joseph Mercy Health System is reinstating procedures and surgeries that are time-sensitive.

Some procedures had been put on hold as a result of the intense demands of the coronavirus outbreak, but the hospital system now says its resuming care for ailments that arent immediately life-threatening, but may be damaging in the long run.

St. Joes and Mercy Health were previously only conducting time-sensitive surgeries, including urgent and emergent procedures.

While we know COVID concerns are still high, we dont want patients conditions to deteriorate or urgent needs to become emergent due to a reluctance to seek appropriate care, said Rosalie Tocco-Bradley, chief clinical officer for Trinity Health Michigan, in a press release.

"We are working together with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Michigan Health and Hospital Association and our fellow health systems in a coordinated effort to begin treating patients for both ambulatory and hospital-based non-COVID issues."

With safety precautions in place, patients can undergo cancer surgery, vascular bypass and diagnostic procedures, according to a hospital system press release.

Some of the safety measures include: COVID-free zones to ensure separation from confirmed patients; COVID-19 testing before surgeries or procedures; required use of masks; CDC cleaning standards; visitor restrictions; and access to PPE, medication and supplies.

"People need to know it is safe to continue to come to the emergency room for any urgent and emergency care need," said Tocco-Bradley. "We are concerned that people are putting off needed medical care; however, we are well-equipped and capable of handling all emergency care for our community, and have measures in place to ensure the safety of all patients and staff."

IHA and St. Joes Medical Group are both still offering e-visits and video appointments for patients to use from home.
As trials of anti-viral drugs gain momentum, the government has now turned its focus on ensuring that remdesivir, Gilead's repurposed Ebola drug, is available here for trials. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already given an emergency approval to the drug for its trials on coronavirus infected patients.

This has piqued Indian authorities' interest in conducting trials on patients here. "Our clinicians can use remdesivir on patients here on compassionate grounds. However, the drug needs to be available. It is a patented drug and we understand it is complex to make ...
To receive Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia each week via e-mail, subscribe by clicking here.

As Russia prepared for scaled-down Victory Day ceremonies, coronavirus infections rose fast and Moscow's mayor suggested the real numbers may be much higher than the official case count. Opinion polls and grim economic forecasts clouded President Vladimir Putins prospects for choreographing his own political future and reshaping the countrys past.

An ambulance doctor became the third medical professional to plunge from a window since late April, underscoring the severe strains the pandemic is putting on health-care providers.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

No Red Square military parade on this Victory Day, and no Immortal Regiment march on the streets a bit further from the Kremlin to put a civilian stamp on state-dominated World War II commemorations: just warplanes cruising over Moscow, and a fireworks display that the mayor has asked Russians not to attend.

The toned-down ceremonies, with most of the action occurring in the sky, are a result of the coronavirus, of course, and the lockdown measures it has led to in Russia and around the world. But they may be fitting for a president who commentators say is increasingly at a remove from the people even as he engineers constitutional changes designed to ensure he has the option of remaining their president until 2036.

As factions in the disunited Russian elite pursue their own interests, Putin is getting bored with many day-to-day responsibilities, and is distancing himself, Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst and head of the think tank R.Politik, wrote in a thread on Twitter on May 7.

Putin has arguably been aloof from day-to-day governance for years, swooping in at key moments such as his supposedly spontaneous but seemingly choreographed visit to the lower house of parliament on March 10 to give his public seal of approval to the abruptly announced amendment that would exempt him -- and him alone -- from the two-term limit that would have forced him from the Kremlin four years from now, on May 7, 2024.

Leader In Lockdown?

Putin set the stage for this sense of separation eight years ago -- on May 7, 2012 -- when he returned to the Kremlin to start his third presidential term after serving as prime minister for four years to avoid violating -- or changing -- the constitution. He had just weathered a series of street protests held by Russians dismayed at his return, including one the previous day, at Bolotnaya Square, that resulted in hundreds of arrests. 

As Putin rode to the Kremlin from his residence west of Moscow to be sworn in, the main avenue was blocked off by police vehicles and law enforcement officers were detaining more protesters and dragging people from parks and cafes near the convoys route.

On this May 9, of course, theres a good reason for Putin to be remote -- literally -- and he has apparently found a way to try to dispel the sense of distance from the people, or at least from the memory of the war and millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians who died in it. He is expected to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall, and to deliver an address from there.

But Putin has made the most of the military parade in the past -- part of his strategy of using the most positive moments in the history of tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, of which the defeat of Nazi Germany is the proudest, to bolster his legitimacy and seek to encourage unity among Russians, even if it means suggesting that a World War II ally such as the United States is now the one bent on world domination.

Missiles And Memory

The Cold War practice of putting weapons on display at the Victory Day parade was revived in 2008, two days after Putin handed the Kremlin keys to placeholder President Dmitry Medvedev and two months before Russian tanks entered Georgia in Moscows first foreign war since the Soviet era.

Paradoxically, perhaps, Putin may view the Russian people more as an instrument in such efforts than as their intended beneficiary.

With military parades, patriotic war movies, and grand projects such as a massive Russian Orthodox church being built in a military theme park outside Moscow, Putin and his government aim to legitimize their authoritarian practices by sacralizing the power of the state, wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

They limit history to the accomplishments of czars and political and military leaders, and treat people as expendable resources in the sweep of history, Kolesnikov wrote in an article published on May 5 and titled Our Dark Past Is Our Bright Future: How The Kremlin Uses And Abuses History.

In the process, even personal memories must be co-opted to fit a prearranged historical discourse, he wrote, adding that the state has taken control over the Immortal Regiment marches, initially a politics-free grassroots initiative in which Russians carry portraits of relatives killed in the war: A way to commemorate them without honoring leaders past or present.

WATCH: Moscow's Red Square Hosts Victory Day Parade (2018)

The Immortal Regiment is online this year, and the Red Square military parade -- like the nationwide vote in which the people, Kremlin critics say, will be instruments of Putins plan to potentially remain in the Kremlin past 2024 -- are to be held later in 2020.

Meanwhile, the absence of goose-stepping soldiers on the cobblestones may, for many, signify the state of Russia today and the predicament that Putin is suddenly facing just two months after the announcement of plans to enable him to remain president long after 2024.

Many of the things Putin does to boost his image at home -- or even Russias influence abroad -- rely more on show than substance. In addition to the Victory Day parade, that goes for other annual events like his yearly big press conference and the televised Q+A with Russians nationwide.

It also goes, to some extent, for his handling of bad news such as terror attacks and natural disaster: a televised display of decisiveness and resolve.

In the coronavirus, Putin is confronted with a large and persistent problem whose effects may be impossible to mitigate through propaganda or public relations.

That seems to make it the biggest challenge he has faced over more than 20 years in power, and one that brings clouds obscuring Russias future dramatically forward from the horizon.

But some observers suggest that developments have passed a point of no return, even if what lies beyond that point remains unknown.

Point Of No Return?

Last month, a headline from journalist and commentator Oleg Kashin declared that the relationship between the authorities and society -- Putin and the people -- will never be what it was before. 

In an article published on May 4, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Clara Ferreira Marques seemed to take that argument a step further, saying that Putins self-isolation at his residence outside Moscow has echoes of Mikhail Gorbachevs Crimean stay in 1991.

That was a startling reference to the attempted coup that August, when the Soviet leader was held captive at a vacation dacha on the Black Sea peninsula as hard-liners attempted to seize power in Moscow. When the putsch collapsed, Gorbachev returned to the capital -- but he never really recovered and was quickly eclipsed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Four months later, Gorbachev resigned as president of a country that had effectively ceased to exist.

There are many obvious differences between the two situations, and Ferreira Marques did not suggest that Putin is doomed. She wrote that with few perceived alternatives, the immediate risk for the leader is different this time, but that there may be implications for his long-term ambitions.

Putin will no doubt hope to be seen as riding to Russias rescue. He can dole out cash eventually, while dismissing early mistakes as bungling by ministers and local officials, she wrote. After two decades of concentrating power, however, it wont be easy to deflect the blame -- especially if Russia's convalescence is long and painful and his spending promises come to little.

The power of those promises has been undermined badly by the recent oil-price collapse, in which Russia played a part by rejecting a Saudi proposal to cut production right around the time the spreading coronavirus crisis was depressing demand by drastically curbing travel and closing industries.

Its The Economy

With the IMF predicting that Russias GDP will contract by 5.5 percent this year and some economists making grimmer forecasts, the $150 billion of oil revenues Russia has funnelled into a rainy-day National Wealth Fundcould end up being spent much more quickly than expected, the Financial Times said in an editorial on April 27. 

Small- and medium-sized business activity in April was cut in half compared to the same period in 2019, state-run RIA Novosti reported, slamming a sector that has always struggled under the weight of red tape and law enforcement pressure.

Unemployment could double to 10 percent, some predict, further fraying what was once Putins unwritten contract with the Russian people: I provide relative prosperity, you stay out of politics -- aside from voting for me and the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party.

Putin got some bad news about his relationship with Russian voters this week, when the independent Levada polling agency said a survey showed his job-approval rating had fallen to 59 percent in April -- the lowest level since he was prime minister and just emerging from obscurity in 1999.

A separate Levada poll showed that support for the constitutional changes -- including the one enabling him to potentially remain in the Kremlin until 2036 -- was at 47 percent, up from 40 percent in March, and 58 percent among those who said they would definitely vote.

State-run polling agency VTsIOM, meanwhile, put support for the constitutional changes at 50 percent --- and said that the figure it reported in March, 64 percent, was the result of a technical error and should have been 46 percent.

If Putin was hoping for good news on the march of the coronavirus in Russia ahead of the diminished Victory Day, he was disappointed.

Record Numbers

On May 7 -- 20 years to the day since he was first inaugurated as president -- authorities said over 11,000 new infections had been confirmed in the previous 24 hours, the highest daily total to date.

That official nationwide total was nearly 188,000 on May 8  more, now, than in France or Germany -- but Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin suggested this week that the actual number of cases in the capital alone could be as high as 300,000. The official death toll was at 1,723, but there are questions about the accuracy of that relative low number as well.

In a breathtakingly grim indication of the pressure on medical personnel in a health-care system that was struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, an ambulance-unit physician in the western Voronezh region became the third doctor to plunge from window since late April. 

The other two died of their injuries, one of them a doctor in Star City, the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, who herself contracted COVID-19 and whom superiors reportedly blamed for its spread locally.

Health-care personnel in other countries have committed suicide since the coronavirus crisis took hold. But in Russia, the British newspaper The Independent put it, a cocktail of guilt, secrecy and scapegoating seems to be exacerbating the stresses and strains of working through the pandemic.

In Moscow, Sobyanin extended the lockdown until May 31 and warned residents that police would be out to make sure crowd do not gather to watch the fireworks on May 9.

Please, watch the planes go by and the fireworks display from the balcony if possible  even better, watch them on TV, he said.

Past And Future

When Yeltsin stepped down suddenly on New Years Eve in 1999, he made Putin acting president  and the rest is history.

But history is malleable in Putins hands, critics and analysts say, particularly when it comes to World War II. 

Now Russias national historian, Putin is assisting a revision of key episodes in modern history, starting with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Adolf Hitlers Germany and Josef Stalins Soviet Union, Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, put it in a tweet introducing Kolesnikovs article.

Before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, at least a few world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping were planning to be in Moscow for Victory Day. The ceremonies could have contributed to what governments of countries that were in Moscows thrall for decades after World War II say is Putins campaign to rewrite history -- from the secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in which Hitler and Stalin carved up parts of Eastern Europe, helping unleash the conflict, to its long and bitter aftermath.

If COVID-19 has hampered Putins alleged efforts to revise the past, it may also hurt his chances of authoring his own future and Russias next two decades, after a setback in which the delivery of a key chapter  the constitutional amendments allowing him to rule for years to come -- has been delayed.

His grip is arguably loosening amid what Stanovaya suggested is a long-developing leadership problem that has been aggravated by COVID-19.

More and more important political decisions are being taken spontaneously, with Putin himself being informed post-factum, the analyst wrote. The system has been unravelling, and the current crisis has had a double impact: accelerating that unravelling and using up resources.
Trump Says He Hopes Sexual Assault Allegation Against Biden Is False

President Donald Trump said he hopes the sexual assault allegation against his likely challenger is false hours after a court document added additional corroboration to the claim.

Tara Reade, who worked for Joe Biden when he was a senator, says Biden sexually assaulted her at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 1993.

I dont know if its false or not, Trump said during a Friday interview with Fox & Friends.

I mean, Joe is going to have to be able to prove whatever he has to prove, or she has to prove it, but thats a battle he has to fight.

Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault by a number of women, said he has had many false accusations leveled against him.

Reades accusation might be false, he added. Frankly, I hope it is for his sake, Trump said.

Trump last commented on the matter one week ago, telling former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino on a podcast: I guess in a way, you could say Im sticking up for him.

He also mused that there will probably be more women coming forward to accuse Biden of sexual misconduct.

Tara Reade poses for a photograph during an interview in Nevada City, Calif., on April 4, 2019. (Donald Thompson/AP Photo)

Seven other women last year accused Biden of sexual harassment or other forms of misconduct.

Reade was the eighth but elevated her complaint earlier this year to sexual assault.

Biden denied the allegation last week before asking Julie Adams, the secretary of the Senate, to disclose any records about the alleged matter from the Office of Senate Fair Employment Practices.

Senate lawyers informed Adams that no documents can be lawfully disclosed.

Biden refused to call for a narrow search of Reades name in his records held at the University of Delaware, which said workers are still busy curating the collection of papers and electronic records.

Late Thursday, a court document from 1996 showed Reades ex-husband was aware of Reade allegedly being sexually harassed while working for Biden.

Also on Thursday, Reade called for Biden to drop out of the 2020 race and said she would go under oath and take a polygraph if he also takes one.

Bidens campaign hasnt responded to requests for comment.
Realme X3 SuperZoom, the upcoming camera-centric phone from the brand, has been headlining the rumour mill for the past few weeks. It is codenamed RMX2086 and has visited several certification websites and the Geekbench. While most of the smartphone specifications have been leaked previously, the feature which the term "SuperZoom" stands for has been teetering between 20x digital zoom and 50x digital zoom. A new leak has now claimed that the Realme X3 SuperZoom will feature 60x zoom prowess, justifying the term "SuperZoom" in the moniker. Although unspecified, it is obvious this will be digital zoom but there is allegedly another interesting feature called Starry Mode on the smartphone.

The information comes from the tipster who goes by @Sudhanshu1414 on Twitter, pertaining to the zoom capabilities of the Realme X3 SuperZoom. while there will be 60x digital zoom on the smartphone, the hybrid and optical zoom capabilities of the smartphone are not clear yet. But the information does hint at the existence of a periscope zoom sensor on the X3 SuperZoom. Moreover, the leak comprises another X3 SuperZoom feature called the Starry Mode. Going by the name, it sounds similar to the Astrophotography feature on Pixel 4. The tipster has claimed this feature will help to capture Milky Way shots. While this seems like an exaggeration, it will likely allow the photography of stars-laden skies.

The periscope cameras, especially, have begun to crop up more than often on premium smartphones. They are designed to click distant objects with clarity -- Huawei's P40 Pro has a SuperZoom camera that has been found to click clear photos of the moon in the sky. Xiaomi's Mi 10 Youth 5G too has one and it has been claimed to offer a magnification of higher level to click sky objects. Realme's periscope camera details are not clear though -- it will most likely be a Samsung sensor going by some of the recent Realme smartphones that have Samsung sensors on the rear. Samsung's recent Galaxy S20 Ultra also has a similar camera mode that can capture sky elements in photographs with maximum clarity.

According to previous rumours, the Realme X3 SuperZoom will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor, pack up to 12GB of RAM, and a 4200mAh battery with support for 30W fast charging. The smartphone is likely to be introduced in China first. Moreover, Realme is working on a vanilla version, as well. It is dubbed Realme X3 and will reportedly have lesser specifications when compared to the X3 SuperZoom.
The 159th birth anniversary of



Rabindranath Tagore was celebrated without fanfare this year amid the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, with netizens taking to social media to mark the day with live discussions and cultural performances.

Taking to Twitter, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee quoted the lyrics of one of Tagore's songs (Rabindrasangeet) to pay tribute to him.

"'Chironutaner dilo daak, pochise boisakh' (this dawn invokes the new, marks new beginning). Homage to Kobiguru Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary," she tweeted.

The Creative Arts, a performing arts group, hosted an online programme on Facebook for children.

Visual designer and graphic artist Aniket Mitra shared an illustration of Tagore on social media, where the bard is shown discussing his ideas with other literary figures, including Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Nabanita Dev Sen, Bangladeshi writer Humayun Ahmed, at the iconic Coffee House on College Street.

Children from different countries, including US, England, Canada and Australia, recited Tagore's 'Bharat Tirtho' in a video presented by elocutionist-actor-presenter Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee.

Various cultural organisations hosted online events on Zoom, Skype and similar other platforms on the occasion.

At Rabindra Bharati University's Jorasanko campus, the ancestral home of the Tagore family, the usual crowd and flurry of activities were missing on Friday. Vice Chancellor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Choudhury paid floral tributes to the bust of the poet in a brief ceremony.

The scene was similar at Santiniketan's Visva Bharati University, founded by Tagore, with Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty, accompanied by a few ashramites (ashram members), gathering at the prayer hall, Rabindra Bhavan and Chhatimtala to fondly remember the Nobel laureate and his contributions.

The SFI unit of Visva Bharati posted a video of song- recitals by the students of the varsity on YouTube.

A short programme has been organised at Rabindra Sadan-Nandan area here later in the day, which will be conducted maintaining social distancing norms, sources in the information and cultural affairs department said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When Seyedeh Kimia Kiaee enrolled to start Grade 12 in Canada, the Iranian student did not expect her school year would be marred first by a teachers strike and now the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead of getting a quality education and an exciting international experience, the 18-year-old was missing school due to the labour action in Ontario and since March, has found herself learning online in solitude in the bedroom at her home stay in Toronto.

My semester is going down the drain and it is not what my parents had paid for, said Kiaee, whose family in Tehran forked out $14,500 in tuition alone to enrol her in Newtonbrook Secondary School near Yonge St. and Steeles Ave. W.

Since the pandemic hit Canada in March, immigration consultant Roya Golesorkhi said she has received complaints from parents seeking refunds or financial credits for their children enrolled in the international student programs offered by Canadian school boards.

According to federal immigration department data, there are more than 70,000 international students enrolled in elementary, middle and secondary schools in Canada in the 2019-20 school year.

These kids in Ontario pay $15,000 for tuition, but have lost months of class time as a result of the teachers strike and the present situation with the virus, said Golesorkhi. They paid for a service that they did not receive.

School boards do not refund tuition fees if a student withdraws 30 calendar days after the start of the academic year, or if the student is dismissed from the program as a result of a violation of the law or board policies and procedures.

Refund policies also specify that school boards are not responsible for failing to provide education due to labour disputes or other causes beyond control.

Toronto District School Board spokesperson Marcy McMillan said international students with the board have been provided technology and resources for remote learning and support by teachers and other school staff during the pandemic.

We continue to work with our students and families, including incoming international students starting in September that can choose to defer to the next semester, or next school year, said McMillan, whose board has more than 2,100 international students this year.

Our refund policy will be reviewed should the COVID-19 pandemic impact the 2020-21 school year.

International students and tuition fees by GTA public boards 2,100students Toronto District School Board: $13,000 (elementary fees) and $14,500 (secondary fees) 2,019students York Region District School Board: $13,000 (elementary fees) and $14,500 (secondary fees) 600students Peel District School Board: $13,000 (elementary fees) and $14,500 (secondary fees) 565students Halton District School Board*: $15,475.00 (elementary fees) and $16,125 (secondary fees) 100students Durham District School Board: $13,800 (elementary fees) and $15,000 (secondary fees) *including application fee and health insurance Source: individual school boards

York Region District School Board spokesperson Christina Choo-Hum said its refund policy does not specifically address classroom interruptions resulting from circumstances such as the pandemic.

Choo-Hum said they are closely monitoring the situation along with education ministry and school board colleagues and are assessing all options available to us during this extended closure. The York Region District School Board has 2,019 international students in the 2019-20 academic year.

This school year, Halton District School Board has 500 international students in their secondary schools and 65 in their primary schools. Spokesperson Marnie Denton said a high percentage of them have remained engaged in distant learning under a contingency education plan that began on April 6.

Our goal has been to ensure the successful completion of the school year for all students, and make certain that all elementary students advance to the next grade and our secondary students earn credits and graduate, Denton said.

Golesorkhi, the immigration consultant, said one of the challenges parents face now is they must pay another full tuition fee if they want to register their kids for September before the boards will issue an admission letter required for the study permit renewal.

The parents have asked me to see if the school boards or government will give them financial credits or reduce the cost to help these students to get through this difficult time, she said. For international students, staying in Canada and being out of school has huge financial implications.

Meanwhile, Kiaee is still pondering what to do as she still needs a few more credits to graduate this December before beginning the winter term in university.

I would rather be sitting in class with my teachers and classmates. You feel more inspired and motivated, said Kiaee, whose goal is to go to medical school. In-class experience is what international students are paying for.

Correction - May 8, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to update the secondary fees for Peel District School Board.
NAIROBI, Kenya  When Valentine Ochogo arrived home in Kenya after being laid off from her job at a hot-air balloon business in Dubai, she was put in quarantine in a university dormitory with other travelers  one step in the governments aggressive, often-lauded campaign to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

But instead of the mandated 14-day quarantine period, she was confined for 32 days, often cold, hungry and so frightened that she said she blocked the door at night with an empty bed. Although she tested negative for the coronavirus three times, she said that government officials would not release her until she paid $434 in fees.

After she managed to negotiate the amount down to $65, Ms. Ochogo, 26, was freed.

Am out, a relieved Ms. Ochogo texted on April 24, saying later, I got really lucky.

Kenyas government is now facing mounting criticism for its response to the pandemic  particularly its use of quarantine centers.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Surrogates in New York state will be protected by some of the strictest safeguards in the nation, as laid out in legislation legalizing paid gestational surrogacy that passed last month.

Until April 2, when the measure passed in the states budget amid the coronavirus pandemic, New York was one of three states, alongside Louisiana and Michigan, that still outlawed the practice.

Advocates had been trying unsuccessfully to lift the ban since 2012.

"New York's surrogacy ban is based in fear not love, and it's past time we updated our antiquated laws to help LGBTQ couples and people struggling with fertility use commonplace reproductive technology to start families," Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

Cuomo began advocating for paid surrogacy, or commercial gestational surrogacy, last year.

New Yorkers will now legally be able to arrange and carry out paid surrogacy contracts beginning on Feb. 15, 2021.

The states paid surrogacy law includes the Surrogates Bill of Rights, the strongest protections for surrogates in the nation:

The surrogate must be at least 21-years-old

Intended parents must pay for the surrogates legal council

Intended parents are required to pay for health and life insurance for one year after the surrogate gives birth

Minimum compensation of $35,000 for the surrogate

Creates legal protections for parents of children conceived by reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination and egg donation

Establishes criteria for surrogacy contracts to protect all parties in the process

Eliminates burdensome and often expensive barriers for second parent adoption, instead requiring a single visit to court to recognize legal parenthood while the child is in utero

Today, we bring New York law in line with the needs of modern families, while simultaneously enacting the strongest protections in the nation for surrogates," said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (Scarsdale), who first introduced the bill in 2012, according to the Daily News.

Paulin first began fighting for the issue in 2006.

This law will allow families to avoid much of that pain by giving them the opportunity to have a family in New York and not travel around the country, incurring exorbitant costs simply because they want to be parents," Paulin said in a statement to NBC News.

FOLLOW KRISTIN F. DALTON ON TWITTER.
- And, in some way, on the oil and gas scene at least, COVID-19 is positioning Turkeys Erdogan for a bit of a win in the Mediterranean. Italian Eni

- Devon Energy Corp (DVN) said it would shut in 10,000 bpd for Q2, with the potential for additional cuts as needed, to be decided on a month-to-month basis. Devon is a major producer in the Permian basin, where it produces 84,000 bpd of its total 155,000 bpd expected after the curtailment.

- The Texas Railroad Commission gave up on the idea of planned production cuts after two of the three chairmen voted the measure down. The measure was supported mainly by smaller oil companies, while the larger more integrated--and therefore better positioned--companies were opposed to the measure. Chairman Ryan Sitton, in favor of production cuts for the industry, argued that the measure was never really seriously considered.

- If you want to know where OPECs production is heading, one needs only to look at their next months OSP, particularly to its largest market, Asia. This week, Saudi Arabia raised its June OSP to Asia, as well as to the US and Europe, in a clear sign that it is indeed cutting production and planning fewer exports. This isnt difficult for Saudi Arabia to achieve, as their April production was at an all-time high as it tried to regain market share in an aggressive grab designed to get the upper hand in the Russian production cut saga and quash US shale.

COVID Market Update

- If you want to know where OPECs production is heading, one needs only to look at their next months OSP, particularly to its largest market, Asia. This week, Saudi Arabia raised its June OSP to Asia, as well as to the US and Europe, in a clear sign that it is indeed cutting production and planning fewer exports. This isnt difficult for Saudi Arabia to achieve, as their April production was at an all-time high as it tried to regain market share in an aggressive grab designed to get the upper hand in the Russian production cut saga and quash US shale.

- The Texas Railroad Commission gave up on the idea of planned production cuts after two of the three chairmen voted the measure down. The measure was supported mainly by smaller oil companies, while the larger more integrated--and therefore better positioned--companies were opposed to the measure. Chairman Ryan Sitton, in favor of production cuts for the industry, argued that the measure was never really seriously considered.

- Devon Energy Corp (DVN) said it would shut in 10,000 bpd for Q2, with the potential for additional cuts as needed, to be decided on a month-to-month basis. Devon is a major producer in the Permian basin, where it produces 84,000 bpd of its total 155,000 bpd expected after the curtailment.

- And, in some way, on the oil and gas scene at least, COVID-19 is positioning Turkeys Erdogan for a bit of a win in the Mediterranean. Italian Eni and French Total SA are postponing their proposed gas exploration operations in the Cypriot EEZ for about a year in what will be spun as a major victory for Turkey. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Eni and Total had announced plans to start exploratory drilling in Block 6 and two other blocks in early February. The Cypriot government said it would extend the exploration contracts. Last month, ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum consortium also postponed drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Turkey is moving in the opposite direction announcing it will intensify exploration and drilling activities in the region.

Deals, Discovery & Development

- Algerian state-run Sonatrach and Russias Lukoil have signed an MOU for possible future E&P in Algeria, one of the top three oil producers on the African continent with proven reserves of around 4.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 1.5 billion tons of oil. After a protracted delay, while oil companies sat back and watched what would happen with Algerias political unrest, Sonatrach is trying to intensify the competition, signing the same deal with Exxon earlier this month.

- TechnipFMC has reportedly been hired by A-Property, a firm owned by Russian energy mogul Albert Avdolyan, to design a $10-billion LNG export terminal near Russias border with China. The plant would produce 13 million tonnes of LNG per year at maximum capacity.

- Thailands PTT Exploration and Production Pcl and its JV partners have made two deep-water oil discoveries in the Salina Basin, offshore Mexico. The commercial potential of the new discoveries will be assessed in the next phase. However, the company said that the prospect of developing new offshore sites would remain impractical until prices significantly rise. PTTEP also reduced its 2020 expenditure by 15-20% from a previous projection of $4.61 billion.

Asset Sales

- Shell has dumped its Marcellus shale assets, following similar actions from other supermajors in recent years including Chevron, Noble, and Indias Reliance. Its looking like the economics of extracting nat gas here in the current environment just dont make sense for the larger companies. This is evidenced not just by Shell ditching its holdings, but by the fact that it did so for pennies on the dollar. It paid $4.7 billion for the asset, selling it for $541 million.

- The U.S. investment firm Warburg Pincus is considering selling five of its eight international oil and gas investments. The firm has committed or invested some $13 billion into energy over the last decade, with the majority of it in the US and Canada.

- Without explanation, Brazils Petrobras is delaying the process that will allow it to divest its natural gas pipeline unit, Gaspetro. The potential buyer analysis that should have been complete on March 18 has now been extended to May 15. Its also halting the sale of offshore oilfields, including the huge cluster known as Marlim, which produces over 240,000 bpd.

The COVID Earnings Season (Cont.)

- Total SAs Q1 net profit slid 35% to $1.8 billion, but its keeping its dividend the same as Q1 2019. The French major has also pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, even as the pandemic is pushing oil majors to focus on efficiency and cost-cutting in the low-price environment.

- Canadian Natural Resources reported a loss of US$918 million for Q1, compared to a Q1 2019 profit of $689 million. It did, however, maintain its dividend.

- Probably the most startling news on the earnings front was last Fridays surprising loss from supermajor Exxon. The giant saw a loss of $610 million in Q1 after $2.9 billion in write-downs as prices crashed. It is its first loss in decades.

- Suncor Energy joined the dividend-cut club, slashing its quarterly dividend by more than half. The move is designed to lower Suncors cash breakeven to $35/barrel, after it recorded this week a net loss of US$2.5 billion for Q1, compared to net earnings of US$1.05 billion for Q1 2019.

- Highlighting once again just how poorly timed Occidental Petroleums acquisition of Anadarko was in retrospect, Oxy reported this week a net loss of $2.2 billion for Q1, after chalking up goodwill impairment charges of $1.4 billion. It will reduce spending by 50%, to land at $1.2 billion in spending cuts for this year alone.

- Murphy oil reported a Q1 loss of $416 million with $1 billion in revenue. It's also closing its Arkansas headquarters and Calgary office and heading to Houston in an effort to consolidate in these tough times.

- Marathon Oil Corp (MRO) reported a 1Q1 loss of $46 million and $1.23 billion in revenue. It is halting dividend payouts and share buybacks. Share prices have slid 64% in the past year. It cut its spending for the year by another $350 million; it is the second capex cut in 30 days.

- Apache reported a Q1 loss of $4.48 billion. A year ago, Apache's loss was $47 million. Shares are down 62% over the last year.

- Pioneer Natural Resources recorded a Q1 profit of $289 million and $2.26 billion in revenue. Pioneer announced a $300 million cut to capex - 55% lower than its original budget for 2020.

- Canadas Enbridge (ENB)--responsible for sending 3 million barrels of oil per day into the U.S., posted a net loss of US$1.02 billion for Q1, compared to a profit for Q1 2019. Mainline throughput is down 400,000 bpd in April - its average throughput on Mainline for Q1 was 2.84 million bpd.

Politics, Geopolitics & Conflict

- Armed militants linked to one of General Haftars sons stormed the headquarters of the Brega Oil Marketing Company in the easter city of Benghazi last weekend. The armed group the companys director by force because the director was supporting the eastern governments efforts towards a political agreement with the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Such an agreement would go against Haftars recent declaration of a popular mandate to rule all of Libya as we noted in last weeks newsletter. This is yet another sign of the dangerous rift between Haftar and his traditional allies in Benghazi.
The rescue deal was designed to protect a vital industry, Durbin said, recounting the agreement: The one thing we want you to guarantee us, though, is you are going to do everything in your power not to lay off your employees. Like everybody else, we want these paychecks to keep flowing. Well, United made an announcement  and said they were going to  start laying off and cutting hours on people. That to me kind-of breaks faith with the negotiations.
Treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients with anticoagulants -- blood thinners that slow down clotting -- may improve their chances of survival, researchers from the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center report. The study, published in the May 6 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, could provide new insight on how to treat and manage coronavirus patients once they are admitted to the hospital.

The study found that hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with anticoagulants had improved outcomes both in and out of the intensive care unit setting. The research also showed that the difference in bleeding events among patients treated with and without anticoagulants was not significant. The Mount Sinai researchers say their work outlines an important therapeutic pathway for COVID-19 patients.

"This research demonstrates anticoagulants taken orally, subcutaneously, or intravenously may play a major role in caring for COVID-19 patients, and these may prevent possible deadly events associated with coronavirus, including heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism," says senior corresponding author Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart (the nation's number six ranked hospital in Cardiology/Heart Surgery) and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital. "Using anticoagulants should be considered when patients get admitted to the ER and have tested positive for COVID-19 to possibly improve outcomes. However, each case should be evaluated an individualized basis to account for potential bleeding risk."

The publication of this study follows recent research out of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai that shows a large number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have developed high levels of life-threatening blood clots, leading to potentially deadly thromboembolic events.

A team of investigators evaluated records of 2,773 confirmed COVID-19-positive patients admitted to five hospitals in the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City (The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Queens, and Mount Sinai Brooklyn) between March 14 and April 11, 2020. They specifically looked at survival rates for patients placed on blood thinners versus those not placed on blood thinners. The researchers took certain risk factors into account before evaluating the effectiveness of anticoagulation, including age, ethnicity, pre-existing conditions, and those already on blood thinners.

Of the COVID-19 patients analyzed, 786 (28 percent) received a full-treatment dose of anticoagulants -- a higher dose than what is typically given for blood clot prevention, and one that is usually given to those who already have clots or are suspected to have clots. Treatment with anticoagulants was associated with improved hospital survival among COVID-19 patients both in and out of the intensive care unit setting. Of the patients who did not survive, those on anticoagulants died after spending an average of 21 days in the hospital, compared to the non- anticoagulant patients who died after an average of 14 days in the hospital. The effect of anticoagulation had a more pronounced effect on ventilated patients -- 62.7 percent of intubated patients who were not treated with anticoagulants died, compared to 29.1 percent for intubated patients treated with anticoagulants. Of the intubated patients who did not survive, those with no anticoagulants died after 9 days, while those on anticoagulants died after 21 days.

All patients in the study had blood work done when they arrived at the hospital, which included measuring various inflammatory markers. The analysis of their records showed patients who received anticoagulants had higher inflammatory markers compared to patients not treated with anticoagulants. This may suggest patients with more severe illness may benefit from anticoagulants early on.

The observational study also explored the association of systemic anticoagulant treatment with bleeding events. Major bleeding was defined as 1) hemoglobin <7 g/dL and any red blood cell transfusion; 2) at least 2 units of red blood cell transfusion within 48 hours; or 3) a diagnosis code for major bleeding including intracranial hemorrhage; hematemesis; melena; peptic ulcer with hemorrhage; colon, rectal, or anal hemorrhage; hematuria; ocular hemorrhage; and acute hemorrhagic gastritis. Among those who did not receive anticoagulants, 38 (1.9 percent) patients had bleeding events, compared to 24 (3 percent) among those who received anticoagulants, p=0.2).

"We are hopeful that this report of the association of anticoagulation therapy with improved survival will be confirmed in future investigations. The astute scientists at Mount Sinai continue to analyze our data on COVID-19 patients in order to contribute to worldwide efforts to find effective treatments," says David Reich, MD, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Mount Sinai Hospital.

"As a cardiologist who has been on service caring for COVID-19 patients for the last three weeks, I have observed an increased amount of blood clot cases among hospitalized patients, so it is critical to look at whether anticoagulants provide benefits for them," says co-researcher Anu Lala, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "It's important to note that further analysis and prospective studies are required to determine the effectiveness for widespread use of anticoagulants in hospitalized COVID-19 patients."

"This study is opening the door for a more extensive study that will be carried out with 5,000 COVID-19-positive patients, where we will evaluate the effectiveness of three types of antithrombotic therapy -- oral antithrombotic, subcutaneous heparin, and intravenous heparin -- and then perhaps engage our data for prospective clinical trials," says senior author Girish Nadkarni, MD, Co-Director of the Mount Sinai COVID Informatics Center. "We are excited about these preliminary results that may have a positive impact on COVID-19 patients and potentially give them a greater chance of survival, although more studies are needed."
Hrithik Roshan has been going all out to help all those fighting the Coronavirus on the frontline. The Super 30 actor recently contributed hand sanitizers to the Mumbai police force, who are working hard to ensure the safety of Mumbaikars.

To show gratitude for Hrithik's thoughtful contribution, Mumbai police shared a picture of the hand sanitizers he donated, and wrote, "Thank you @iHrithik for this thoughtful gesture of delivering hand sanitisers for Mumbai Police personnel on duty. We are grateful for your contribution towards safeguarding the health and safety of our frontline warriors. #MumbaiPoliceFoundation."

Hrithik replied to their tweet, "My gratitude to our police forces, who have taken our safety in their hands. Stay safe. My love & respect to all in the line of duty."

My gratitude to our police forces, who have taken our safety in their hands. Stay safe. My love & respect to all in the line of duty  https://t.co/aaE75HAjG0  Hrithik Roshan (@iHrithik) May 8, 2020

Not just this, a while back, Hrithik also donated safety equipment like the N95 and FFP3 masks to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) workers and others. He also pledged support to low income families of paparazzi in Mumbai city, who are out of jobs due to the lockdown.

Recently, the actor participated in 'I For India', a virtual concert organized by filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar, to raise funds for Coronavirus aid. He was one among numerous Bollywood and international stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, Virat Kohli, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Russel Peters, Will Smith and so on, to participate in the online concert, which raised over Rs 52 crore.

Talking about work, Hrithik was last seen in the action film War, starring alongside Tiger Shroff and Vaani Kapoor. The film was directed by Siddharth Anand. He will next be seen in the superhero franchise film, Krrish 4.

ALSO READ: Hrithik Roshan Pays Touching Tribute To Rishi Kapoor: Your Love Had So Much Energy

ALSO READ: When Michael Jackson Showed Up At Hrithik Roshan's Makeup Room & Introduced Himself To The Actor


Maharashtra train accident: MP CM announces Rs 5 lakh aid for deceased migrant workers' kin

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

Bhopal, May 08: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday condoled the death of 14 migrant workers who were in a train accident in Maharashtra and announced Rs 5 lakh each as financial assistance to their families.

The migrant workers, who were from Madhya Pradesh, were mowed down by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra in the early hours of Friday while they were allegedly sleeping on rail tracks.

14 migrants sleeping on railway track run over by goods train in Aurangabad; all dead

"I have spoken to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and demanded a probe into the accident besides aid to their families," CM Chouhan said and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased migrant workers.

"I am also in touch with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to get updates about the treatment and other arrangement being made for them," he said.

Politicians condole death of 14 migrant workers in Maharashtra

It is reportedly said that the migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh. The workers allegedly had slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion.
Sixteen migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks while returning to Madhya Pradesh were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra on Friday, police said.

Four other migrant workers survived in the accident which took place at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad, police said.

A video clip from the scene of the tragedy shows the bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

District police chief Mokshada Patil told PTI that the survivors had tried in vain to wake up their colleagues who had slept on the track after a overnight walk from Jalna, around 40 km from the accident spot.

The workers, who were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna along rail tracks, were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station told PTI.

They were sleeping on rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from Jalna, he said.

"The labourers, working in a steel factory in Jalna, left for their home state on foot last night. They came till Karmad and slept off on the tracks as they were tired," police officer Santosh Khetmalas said.

Three of the four were sleeping some distance away from the rail tracks, police said.

The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape police attention.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed anguish over the death of 14 migrant workers in the train accident. He said all possible assistance is being provided.

Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments announced financial aid of Rs 10 lakh - Rs 5 lakh each - to families of the deceased.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray expressed grief over the death of migrant workers and announced a financial aid of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan condoled the death of the migrant workers from his state and announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar termed the death of the migrant workers as heart-wrenching and said the Centre must work closely in unison with state governments to ensure labourers reach their homes safely.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
SKOKIE, IL  Skokie Patch is sharing the achievements of local high school graduates by putting them in the spotlight this month. Due to the coronavirus, in-person classroom teaching and extracurricular gatherings have been canceled for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year in Illinois.

We know these wonderful seniors are missing out on some of the last moments of the school year and we hope to give the community a way to share their pride in our class of 2020 high school graduates.

Here are some of the graduating high school seniors from the historic class of 2020:

Jonathan Cox, Niles West High School

(Courtesy Cox family)

Cox is considering enrolling in culinary school or enlisting in the armed services following graduation, according to his family.

Message from family: "Jonathan you are my first born and I couldnt be any prouder of you. I know this hasnt been the easiest year but you can do whatever you put your mind to and work hard for. You got this son and whatever else life throws your way. Love you soon congratulations to my son Jonathan Cox Niles West Class of 2020"

Brianna Covington, Niles North High School



Covington, who was a member of the cheerleading and track squads at Niles North, is planning on pursuing a career as a sonographer, according to her family.

Message from family: "I am very proud of my daughter Brianna. I always admired that what ever she put her mind to she can accomplish. She pushed through theses four years of high school and she made it to the end. I tell her skys the limit from here. Mommy loves you and keep making us proud!!!"



Ellie Henderson, Niles North High School



Henderson, who plans to pursue a career in primary art education, was president of Relay for Life and the Viking Media Club at Niles North.

Message from family: "You have already made a difference in so many lives; I look forward to watching this continue."

Thano Hatzopoulos, Niles North High School

(Courtesy Hatzopoulos family)

Hatzopoulos, who plans to attends University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall, participated in swimming and debate at Niles North. He was also president of the National Honor Society and an Illinois State Scholar, according to his family.

Story continues

Message from family: "Congratulations Thano on all of your outstanding achievements. We are all so proud of you!"

Razeen Ahmed, Niles North High School



Ahmed plans to attend the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the fall, according to his family.



Message from family: "We love and so proud of your success !!"

Lauren Hankes, Niles North High School

(Courtesy Hankes family)

Hankes was a member of the National Honor Society, the Niles North student government, DECA, the German National Honor Society. She was also an Illinois State Scholar and a four-year volleyball player, according to her family. She plans to major in environmental studies at the University of Central Florida.

Message from family: "Congratulations! We are so proud of you and all of your accomplishments. This isn't the senior year that you had planned, but better days will come, as your journey is truly just beginning! We love you so much. Mom and Dad"

Christopher Harris, Niles North High School



Harris has yet to decide on a possible career or plans for post-secondary education, according to his family.



Message from family: "Congratulations on turning the last page of your high school chapter of your life . Im wishing you all the best on your next chapter."



Rebecca Lustig, Evanston Township High School

(Courtesy Lustig family)

Lustig plans to attend University of North Carolina at Greensboro, according to her family.



Message from family: "Mazal tov, Rebecca! We are so proud of you! Love, Mom and Rena"

Skokie Patch congratulates the entire class of 2020. To add another local graduate to the list, fill out the form here.



This article originally appeared on the Skokie Patch
On the Frontline Against China, the US Coast Guard Is Taking on Missions the US Navy Can't Do

Competition with China has drawn more Pentagon resources to the Pacific, but the most visible U.S. military presence there...
Queenslands pubs, cafes and restaurants finally have a clear roadmap out of coronavirus lockdowns, but some are worried the easing will come too late to save their business.

The state again recorded no new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, with just 45 of its cumulative total of 1045 cases remaining active.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has outlined the roadmap to reopening. Credit:Dan Peled/AAP

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Friday also released the states roadmap to recovery from the virus, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison outlined the broader national plan agreed to at a national cabinet meeting.

Queensland restaurants, pubs, clubs, RSLs and cafes will be allowed to reopen a minute before midnight on Friday, May 15, as part of stage 1 of relaxed restrictions in the state.
PHILADELPHIA, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 13th and 14th, 2020, the citizens of Greater Philadelphia, and those who love the city, will convene to share stories, forge connections and envision the post-crisis reality for the city and its community. We'll hear from local leaders and celebrate community heroes  from medical professionals and first responders to transit personnel and grocery store workers  who have gone above and beyond to sustain the city during one of the worst crises we've faced together.

The caliber of expertise and talent among our panelists represents our goal of forging collaborative pathways to overcome the social and economic challenges of COVID-19. Join us for this virtual event to explore the immediate needs of our community, highlight positive stories that have emerged, and discuss approaches to infusing investment and innovation into the region.

Registration is free for this virtual event. Sign up here: newnormalforum.co/attend .

Our new normal will be built on our shared experiences. Share your personal story with us to get involved: newnormalforum.co/YourStory (Submissions will be accepted until 11:59pm ET on Monday, May 11, 2020.)

ImpactPHL envisions Greater Philadelphia as a leader in the emerging, global impact economy. We believe in aligning our local economic power with positive social, environmental, and economic solutions for our region and planet. Our mission is to help grow the impact investing community, increase the number of successful and growing impact companies, and positioning Philadelphia within the national and international impact movement.

We The People is a storytelling community that helps diverse voices hone and share their stories to bridge differences and create a more empathetic, connected tomorrow.

17 Asset Management designs investment products to support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We believe the SDGs provide a framework for designing a new generation of asset management products and financial advisory services that can result in superior long-term returns, while also contributing to a world that is economically prosperous, environmentally secure, and more inclusive.

About Intentional Media Intentional Media is a women-led family of media and event brands charged with catalyzing our transition to an economy that ensures our social, environmental and economic systems thrive together.

Primary Media Contact:

Heather McGee, 17 Asset Management

Email: [email protected]

Mobile: (917) 776-7237

SOURCE Intentional Media

Related Links

https://intentional.co/


Last week the news media across the nation released fear into many people in regard to the Murder Hornet. The name was inadvertently given to the insect, in an effort to get your attention. It seems to have worked. Due to much social media misinformation we started getting questions about the Asian Giant Hornet. There is always The rest of the story, as the famous Paul Harvey of radio use to say in his radio addresses. Hopefully we can clear up the mud that has been stirred up by misformation regardless of where it came from.

Last year (2019), a foreign wasp known as the Asian giant hornet arrived in Washington state and in British Columbia. It has yet to be determined how they arrived. Regardless of how it got here, the fact is: IT IS NOT IN TEXAS. Only of recent did TV networks start broadcasting the stories. Rumors, now with social media, spread like wildfire. The news media has given the insect the name of Murder Hornet. The actual common name is the Asian Giant Hornet or called by its scientific name, Vespa mandarinia.

In Texas, we already have a lot of stinging wasps and bees in our Texas landscapes. There are 3 characteristics that make the Asian giant wasp get a lot of attention. Their size (1 1/2 inches long and queens up to 2 inches) reportedly makes it one the largest wasp in the world. Secondly, the way they can sting ( stinger) repetitively and given its size it is safe to conclude that it is extremely painful especially since it injects a large amount of neurotoxin. Lastly, would be their large mandibles and a tough exoskeleton that makes it a formidable foe when it comes to other insects. The main concern is they prey upon honey bees.

According to Dr. Mike Merchant, Professor and Extension Urban Entomologist with Texas A&M University The bottom-line is that the chance of Asian giant hornets invading Texas soon is slim, given that at the moment only a few wasps have been found in only one county in the far northwest corner of the U.S. Also, hornets are less likely to be transported by humans than many other exotic insects, like fire ants or emerald ash borers. As with any social insect, hornets live and survive in colonies, not as individuals. So, an individual wasp that accidentally flies into a vehicle and gets transported cannot survive away from its colony. The only way to spread the wasp is by transporting an entire subterranean nest, or to transport a (much rarer) previously mated queen, capable of starting a new nest on her own. Currently, Texas does not seem to have the ideal conditions or habitat for Asian giant wasp.

Besides the Washington State Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture, neighboring state Departments of Agriculture and entomologist from all over the nation are involved and aware of the threat. All these agencies are monitoring, setting traps and studying the insect to isolate and eradicate it as soon as possible. In Texas, at the request of Gov. Greg Abbott, a specialized task force led by Texas A&M AgriLife experts is spearheading an initiative to protect Texas citizens, agriculture and honey. Although this pest has not been spotted in Texas, the hornet poses a threat to both agriculture and public health, said Patrick J. Stover, vice chancellor of Texas A&M AgriLife, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research. Because of this, we are bringing to bear the diverse expertise and knowledge base that exists within Texas A&M AgriLife to collaborate with federal partners and extension agents across the country to protect our state and the global food supply.

It is highly unlikely that the Asian giant hornet will be spotted in Texas. There are currently no sightings anywhere near Texas. Although, we have several species of large wasps in Texas, these are very different from the Asian Giant Hornet. So, lets call it what it is, and just remember the Giant Asian Hornet, Vespa mandarinia, is NOT IN TEXAS. And they are not "invading" the United States.

Dont forget to send your garden questions to Plant Answers at 9020 Airport Rd., Conroe TX 77303 or e-mail me at mpotter@ag.tamu.edu .
KYLE, Tex.  Nearly every day, I drove past that dreary little place.

It was no longer so dreary, lovingly restored over the years by a professor, a small legion of preservationists and even a long-lost nephew of a childhood friend of the woman who coined that description: Katherine Anne Porter. She was one of the greatest writers ever produced in Texas or, for that matter, anywhere.

A white-haired, independent woman, she was from Texas but not so much of Texas. She attained her first real fame with a work of fiction that best captured the last great pandemic, the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1919. Yet her work hauntingly applies, a century later, to 2020.

We seem as a people nearly incapable of mourning these dead then and now. In the wars and attacks, such as 9-11, we have lowered our flag to honor the dead, military and civilian alike. Yet if you look up across Texas and most of the nation you will see the American flag flying at full-staff, as if over 70,000 fellow citizens havent died. Yes, it flies at full staff at the White House, too.

Not long ago, I lived on a working cattle ranch just west of Kyle, at the very edge of the Texas Hill Country. Outside my window, big white Charolais cattle grazed, the remnants of a herd begun in the sky islands of Northern Mexico and brought to Texas by an historic ranching family. Sweet, wide-eyed cattle originally from France, they would bunch up at the fence to stare back when I stopped my car on my way out to the black-topped farm road.

Turning left, I would quickly come into the town of Kyle, ancient Center Street clinging to its history in the old rail town, even as the Austin suburbs encroached, like armies, over the hill. And there, on my left, appeared Porters childhood home, slightly expanded and painted an avocado green. Its lawn neatly trimmed, it had been lovingly restored and transformed, then placed in the ownership of the nearby Texas State University which, in turn, employed me.

Porter only lived in the home briefly during her early childhood. It had been the home of her paternal grandmother. Porter was born in Indian Springs in 1890 with the name Callie Russell Porter. But Callie most cherished and emulated her grandmother, Catherine Anne Porter, even taking her name with the slightest variation, and lived in that little house until 1902, the year after her beloved grandmother died. Later, after school, a series of failed marriages drew her away from Texas, as did her her chosen line of work: writing, first as a reporter in Denver during World War I.

It was there that she wrote and set Pale Horse, Pale Rider, one in a series of three short novels published as a collection in 1939 along with two other stories. It was also an account of a time that mirrors our own: The pandemic of the time was the Spanish flu.

Then as now, politicians prematurely ended quarantines and the virus struck like a diamondback, again and again, with two waves in 1918 and a third in 1919. Porter herself fell gravely ill right after settling in Denver and nearly died. After leaving the hospital frail and bald, according to biographer Darlene Harbour Unrue, she forever claimed that the short shock of white hair that grew back was a result of that near-miss with death.

Porters temperature had soared to 105 degrees, and while she was she had been threatened with eviction by her landlady, who feared the spread of the virus in her boarding house. Only her editor at The Rocky Mountain News saved her by getting her a bed in the overflowing hospitals of the time.

Yet while she was somewhere between life and death, a soldier she had been dating and who had been nursing her at her bedside before she was admitted to the hospital, Lt. Alexander Barclay, contracted influenza at a nearby army post. By the time she was back among the living, he was among the dead.

It simply divided my life, cut across it like that, she explained later in a 1963 interview. Everything before that was just getting ready, and after that I was in some strange way altered, really. It took me a long time to go out and live in the world again. I was really 'alienated.

It was, I think, the fact that I had participated in death and I knew what death was and had almost experienced it, she continued. Now, if you have had that, and survived it, come back from it, you are no longer like other people, and theres no use deceiving yourself that you are.

Porter connected her individual experience to that of a collective, the living mourning the dead and brought her concerns to life in the Pale Horse, Pale Rider. In it, she recounts the illness nearly as a bolt from the blue, surprising in its suddenness, overturning the eras gentility like an unwelcome stranger knocking over a living room lamp.

Don't you love being alive?" asked Miranda, the protagonist. "Don't you love weather and the colors at different times of the day, and all the sounds and noises like children screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and little bands playing in the street and the smell of food cooking?"

Then at another turn, the new reality sets in, stripping the age of its innocence.

It seems to be a plague, Miranda said to her beau, Adam, something out of the Middle Ages. Did you ever see so many funerals, ever?

The title of her story was selected from the Book of Revelation, where death arrives on a pale horse.

Porter was 20 years past her illness by the time her collection was published in 1939, an event that signaled her arrival both in New York and in the literary world. She had been somewhat out of step with other famed writers from the so-called Lost Generation after the war. Instead of joining Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and others in Paris, she traveled extensively in Mexico. As noted in her front-page obituary in The New York Times, she said, As a Texan and as an old North American, I had business in Mexico; I had no business in Paris.

But as the mid-century neared, she began to catch up. And the first praise she won was for her work based on her experiences during the pandemic. Now, over a century later, her work is disturbingly accurate  about our own time. In practical terms, governors of half the states, including our own, are anxious to get us shopping under the guise of getting back to work. The death toll is higher than the president ever predicted, and climbing. And then as now, people will leave the cocoons of quarantine. And just as it did a century ago, the virus is likely to come back in waves.

Contrary to Porters tale, there is no collective grieving in real life to create a collective memory that will persist. We dont see the dead on television or the funeral services of grieving families even as the politicians babble  incessantly and ignorantly  about the economy. The stock market plugs ahead against the toll of dead, sick, and out-of-work. Yet this time, there is no Lt. Barclay. There isnt even a Miranda. Mourning, grieving and worrying is all purely private matter, out of sight, out of the collective mind.

Then again, maybe thats not so unique. The memories of the Spanish flu were fleeting, too. The Spanish flu isnt well represented in the Western literary canon, Michael Agresta wrote in Texas Monthly recently. Perhaps it was forgotten as the United Statess attention moved on from the Depression to World War II, and then to a new society of affluence that doubted such plagues could ever touch it again.

The details that laced Porters stories were often drawn from Texas and her time in the early 20th century. But the lessons that she left seem forebodingly instructive about the future. She finally won the national adulation she craved in 1966, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, though her work had its critics till the end.

Her best-selling novel of 1962, Ship of Fools, recounted the sea voyage of a group of Germans from Mexico back to their homeland. Set in the 1930s, they are varyingly worried about living under Nazi rule or find ways to rationalize it. Of course, Porter wrote from both experience and memory, lacing both into her fictional recounting of the overcrowded ship and the squalid conditions. She drew on her time in Mexico and from her travels in Europe in the years before World War II. In the fall of 1936, she wrote to friends and politicians alike, warning of the rising tides of war on the Continent.

Wars are made by politicians of all shades and classes in pursuit of gain or for the enhancement of personal or party prestiges, she wrote that October in a letter co-signed by Ford Maddox Ford and other noted writers. This letter is intended, primarily, as a warning to politicians and those who influence public opinion to its ruin.

Im not saying that the period that will follow this one will be necessarily of armed strife. But the old ways are falling away, bit by bit but somehow quickly. The false hopes of cures, vaccines, instant remedies, soaring stock markets and magically restored wealth have all been promised before. And in each instance, they all failed, leading to things far worse: depression and war. This is why 2020 feels more like 1930 than 1920.

The past, Porter said, is never where you think you left it.

Parker, author of Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America, is a contributing columnist for the Houston Chronicle.
New Delhi: A 20-year-old man was shot dead allegedly by two men in outer Delhis Mukundpur, near Bhalswa Dairy, on Thursday night. The attackers fired at least five bullets, two of which hit the man, who died during treatment at a government hospital later. Police suspect that the murder was the result of either a personal enmity or attempt to establish dominance in the illegal gambling business in the area.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer-north) Gaurav Sharma said the attackers have been identified and police teams are conducting raids to nab them. He said the victim, Raju, was a history-sheeter and had been released from jail two months ago.

Raju was involved in a murder case in 2018. He was also involved in cases of theft. Investigation has revealed that one of the killers is a friend of the man Raju had murdered in 2018. Hence, personal enmity or revenge killing cannot be ruled out in Rajus murder, said an investigator, on the condition of anonymity.

According to the officer cited above, Raju was last seen with two men in a lane close to his home in Mukundpur. Around 9.30pm, the neighbours heard gunshot sounds in their neighbourhood and rushed out of their homes when Raju was found unconscious in the lane, bleeding. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he died during treatment. The doctors told police that two bullet entry wounds were found  one each on his face and chest.

We have taken some people in custody for questioning. There are specific leads about the attackers. They will be caught soon, the officer cited above added.

This is the seventh murder which has been reported in the national Capital within the past four days, from May 4 to May 7. Those murdered include a 32-year-old woman Delhi Police constable, whose husband, a head constable in the force, allegedly himself killed self with his service pistol in a village in Meerut, 14 hours after purportedly killing her in a car parked in south Delhis Lodhi Colony on May 5.
As the procession for the former five-term Edwardsville mayor Gary Niebur made its way through Edwardsville, many of the hundreds of people lining the streets to pay their respects, including dozens of first responders, placed a hand over their heart and saluted. All held a moment of silence as the hearse carrying Neibur passed through the streets of Edwardsville, followed by family and friends, Thursday morning. Niebur died at his Edwardsville home Saturday.
He is the sixth prime minister since the 2003 US-led invasion. The appointment of 15 ministers has been approved, five rejected, including justice and migration. Ministries for oil and foreign affairs also remain vacant pending new negotiations. Fighting the economic crisis and the new coronavirus pandemic are among the priorities. The fears of new ISIS violence.

Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Iraqi Parliament voted overnight to entrust former intelligence chief Moustafa al-Kadhimi with confidence, with the aim of ending almost six months of protests and deep political institutional turmoil.

Deupties, spaced out and equipped with gloves and masks to counter the new coronavirus pandemic, approved the appointment, while behind the scenes clashes continued between parties around key ministries, including oil.

The majority of the 255 parliamentarians present at the vote approved the government program and the majority of the ministers proposed by the 53-year-old al-Kadhimi, who thus becomes the sixth Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 US invasion.

Legislators supported the appointment of 15 ministers and five were rejected, including trade, justice, culture, agriculture and migration. The oil and foreign departments also remain vacant pending further negotiations.

After the green light, al-Kadhimi assured that "Iraq's security, stability and growth will be our guidelines." The new executive's priorities include the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, which has so far caused more than 2,000 infections and more than 100 victims, and bring the perpetrators of violence against demonstrators to justice in the context of popular protests.

Iraq has experienced profound political and social turmoil in recent months, with street protests against corruption and an economic crisis that prompted Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign in November. The authorities have repeatedly tried to quell the demonstrations, triggering clashes that have resulted in over 500 deaths. The Chaldean patriarch, Card Louis Raphael Sako, also intervened on the tensions, stressing the need for a "secular state" to overcome the divisions.

Among the priorities that the new executive will face is the serious economic crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, which caused a collapse in oil prices, the main source of income for the country. Added to this, is the growing violence of the Islamic State (SI, ex Isis), defeated on a military level but still active, and the regional tensions linked to the proxy war between the United States and Iran.
TAIPEI (dpa-AFX) - Taiwan's trade surplus decreased in April as exports declined more than expected amid rising imports, figures from the Ministry of Finance showed on Friday. The trade surplus decreased to $2.267 billion in April from $2.702 billion last year. Economists had expected a surplus of $2.80 billion. In March, the trade surplus was $2.782 billion. Exports decreased 1.3 percent year-on-year in April, following a 0.6 percent fall in March. Economists had expected a decline of 1.0 percent. Imports rose 0.5 percent annually in April, the same rate as seen in the preceding month. Economists had forecast a fall of 1.5 percent. Exports of parts of electronic product, information, communication and audio-video products grew in April, while exports of base metals and articles of base metal, machinery, plastics and rubber, and articles thereof declined. Imports of parts of electronic product, machinery, chemicals and information, communication and audio-video products gained in April, while imports of mineral products decreased. Exports to Mainland China and Hong Kong, Japan and U.S.A. increased, while shipments to ASEAN and Europe declined sharply in April. In the January to April period, exports and imports rose by 2.4 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively, from a year ago. 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.
The number of COVID-19 cases



in Aurangabad in Maharashtra rose by 90 on Friday, with 72 of them being State Reserve Police Force jawans who served in Nashik district's Malegaon area, a hotspot some 195 kilometres from here, health officials said.

With this addition, the number of coronavirus positive cases in Aurangabad has now reached 477, an official said.

"The swabs of 93 SRPF personnel who served in Nashik's Malegaon area, and had come back here on May 7, were tested and reports of 72 returned positive today. Five of them were symptomatic and were shifted to a private hospital here," Deputy Commandant Shaikh Illyas told PTI.

"The rest 67 are undergoing treatment in a temporary facility set up in an educational institute near the force's centre in Satara area here," he added.

He said total number of SRPF personnel in Aurangabad unit is over one thousand, including two teams that are currently serving in the state's Vidarbha region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Boeing 737 MAX airplane is seen parked at a Boeing facility on August 13, 2019 in Renton, Washington.

David Ryder/Getty Images

Boeing seeks to resume production of the 737 Max this month, CEO Dave Calhoun said on Friday.

The plane has been grounded worldwide since March 2019, and production has been suspended since January, 2020.

Boeing has about 450 completed planes in storage, which it has not been able to deliver to customers due to the grounding.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Boeing plans to resume assembly of the 737 Max, CEO Dave Calhoun said on Friday, five months after suspending manufacturing of the troubled jet.

In an interview with Fox Business News, Calhoun said that the company was aiming to reactivate the dormant assembly lines this month.

"I am confident we will start our line this month on the MAX again," he said.

737 Max production at Boeing's facility in Renton, Washington, near Seattle, has been suspended since January. Boeing has continued manufacturing the plane throughout its yearlong grounding, but has been unable to deliver them to customers while the plane was not allowed to be flown.

Boeing has about 450 completed but undelivered planes in storage. When it announced January's assembly suspension, it said that it was running out of space to store them.

Since the initial suspension, Boeing has seen the commercial aerospace landscape shift dramatically. Air travel demand is down as much as 97% for commercial airlines. Airlines have grounded large portions of their fleets and are expected to cancel orders for new aircraft or defer delivery.

The company did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on where newly completed planes will be stored.

Last week, Boeing announced that it would significantly pare back its aircraft production. Assembly of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner will be cut from 14 to 10 per month in 2020, and seven by 2022. Production of the 777 family of aircraft will be cut from five per month to three by 2021.

The 737 Max, which was produced at a rate of 42 per month from April 2019 through January, will be ramped up at a slower rate when production resumes, the company said, gradually increasing to 31 per month during 2021.

Story continues

During its first quarter earnings report in April, the company said it planned to reduce its workforce by 10% in response to the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, including 15% in its commercial aircraft division.

Boeing temporarily suspended production at its other commercial aircraft facilities in Washington state and South Carolina due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those plants have since reopened.

Do you work for Boeing or an airline affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Reach out to this reporter at dslotnick@businessinsider.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Many Spanish families live from the income of a small cafe or bar that doubles as a community centre, making it unfortunate that these businesses have been hit so hard by the coronavirus.

Although the re-opening programme is being finalised, the end-result is still vague, but the indications are that going out for a drink or a meal will be more stressful than staying at home. Proposals for our future safety could involve obligatory reservations, plastic screens between tables (four persons max of the same family), cleansing routines, extractor fans, and time limits for eating: 30 minutes for breakfast and 90 for main meals.

None of this is conducive to getting business back to pre-epidemic levels, so should we take a lead from Italy, where as many as 75,000 restaurants, bars and clubs have united in protest at post-lockdown social distancing measures, which could cause the estimated closure of half the businesses in the country's hospitality sector?

This week the affected owners will hand over their keys to local mayors, signifying they have no perceived future under post-Covid-19 regulations. The small amount of business that will result from the proposed June re-opening will not even cover running costs. Better to stay closed and accept government hand-outs.

The sector employs 1.5 million people, and the Italians reckon, reasonably - and Spain can make a similar claim - that by the disappearance of bars, cafeterias and restaurants, the country will lose a vital part of its cultural fabric. However it is difficult to understand why the proposed safety measures are considered necessary in both countries. Surely the simple solution is for all such businesses to have airport-type scanners that take the temperature of customers entering, and those with higher than normal temperatures are barred.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:25:04|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Friday held separate phone talks with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Tea Banh.

Speaking to Shoigu, Wei noted that China has achieved major strategic achievements in stemming the spread of COVID-19, stressing that China and Russia have been assisting and supporting each other in the fight against COVID-19.

Wei called on the two militaries to promote their exchanges and cooperation, adding that the Chinese military is willing to continue cooperating with the Russian military to strengthen border control and jointly curb the spread of the virus.

Shoigu expressed gratitude to China for its support and assistance, noting that the Russian side is willing to continue cooperating with China.

During the talk with Tea Banh, Wei said the Chinese government and people fought bravely against COVID-19, noting that while making solid efforts in curbing the virus, the Chinese side stands ready to promote high-level communications between the two militaries and strengthen pragmatic cooperation.

Tea Banh congratulated on China's achievements and spoke highly of China's contributions to the global cooperation on fighting the pandemic, adding that the Cambodian side appreciates China's assistance and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China on the prevention and control of COVID-19. Enditem
Toronto, May 8 : Temperature and latitude are not associated with the spread of the COVID-19 disease, say researchers, adding that they found a weak association between humidity and reduced transmission.

The results -- that hotter weather had no effect on the pandemic's progression -- surprised the authors. "Our study provides important new evidence, using global data from the COVID-19 epidemic, that these public health interventions have reduced epidemic growth," said study researcher Dr Peter Juni from the University of Toronto, and St Michael's Hospital in Canada.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at 144 geopolitical areas -- states and provinces in Australia, the US and Canada as well as various countries around the world -- and a total of more than 3,75,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases. China, Italy, Iran and South Korea were excluded because the virus was either waning in the case of China or in full disease outbreak at the time of the analysis in others.

To estimate epidemic growth, researchers compared the number of cases on March 27 with cases on March 20, and determined the influence of latitude, temperature, humidity, school closures, restrictions on mass gatherings and social distancing measured during the exposure period of March 7 to 13.

They found little or no association between latitude or temperature with epidemic growth of COVID-19 and a weak association between humidity and reduced transmission. "We had conducted a preliminary study that suggested both latitude and temperature could play a role. But when we repeated the study under much more rigorous conditions, we got the opposite result," Juni said. The researchers did find that public health measures, including school closures, social distancing and restrictions of large gatherings, have been effective.

"Our results are of immediate relevance as many countries, and some Canadian provinces and territories, are considering easing or removing some of these public health interventions," Juni added. According to the research team, summer is not going to make this go away.

The authors noted several study limitations, such as differences in testing practices, the inability to estimate actual rates of COVID-19 and compliance with social distancing. When deciding how to lift restrictions, governments and public health authorities should carefully weigh the impact of these measures against potential economic and mental health harm and benefits, they said.

However, last month, Indian microbiologist Professor Y Singh who worked with the NIH and also with the US Army Lab on 'Project Anthrax', had told IANS that an expected temperature of over 40 degrees by the end of April can slow down the affect of the coronavirus. In February, US President Donald Trump said that the coronavirus will "go away" in April. The logic he cited was that the heat generally kills this kind of virus.

Trump is not the only politician to express the hope that things will improve in the summer. Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock had also reportedly said that the virus could be less transmissible during summer.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
- The family of Tse Ping and Cheng Cheung Ling have gifted their 24-year-old son, Eric Tse, a share worth US$3.5 billion (KSh 371 billion)

- While the son and the family have refused to comment on the actual gift, Eric said he would want the wealth ascribed to his family

- With the new transfer of wealth, the 24-year-old son became one of the world's billionaires overnight

Money does not only make living enjoyable, but the act of distributing family wealth is also an enviable thing.

One of Chinas richest families, according to Bloomberg, gave their 24-year-old son a whopping US$3.5 billion (KSh 371 billion).

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The family, which owns Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd, transferred around a fifth of their companys share capital to their son, Eric Tse, an act that instantly made him one of the richest people.

It should be noted that this was not the first time there was a passing down of wealth to the next generation.

In 2018, four Chinese families transferred more than $17 billion into a family trust.

The company, Sino Biopharmaceutical, and the son never responded to messages asking for comments on the billion gift.

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While Eric was born in Seattle in the US, he attended primary school in Beijing and secondary school in Hong Kong before graduating with a finance degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Eric has, however, said that he will try to keep a low profile so as to discourage efforts by media organisations to put him on global wealth rankings, adding that he would want the fortune ascribed to the Tse Ping family.

In another statement on Wednesday, May 6, the company named Tse the executive director and member of the Sino Biopharmaceuticals executive board committee.

His shares would be held in holding companies like Thousand Eagles Ltd. and Remarkable Industries Ltd.

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The Government has stated that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC's) claims that the coronavirus situation in Ghana is worsening shows clearly that the party is clueless about the pandemic in the country.

It would be recalled that yesterday, May 7, NDC minority in Parliament, addressed the media on what it termed worsening COVID-19 situation and the national response.

But responding to the Minority today on behalf of Government, Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says the NDC minority was clearly merely invited to offer cover to their Flagbearer who has been badly bruised by the politicization of the COVID-19 Pandemic started by him.

According to him, the misinformation, deliberate distortions and warped analysis put out by the NDC flagbearer has been bemoaned and roundly condemned by many well-meaning Ghanaians.

He recounted that few days ago, the Presidential Candidate of the NDC, John Mahama in one of his COVID-19 political broadcasts on Facebook, embarrassed himself by ignorantly questioning why the government had accessed an IMF facility, claiming that no other African country had done so  an outright fabrication from a man who occupied the high office of President a few years ago.

He says Twenty (20) other African countries, including all the ones Mahama specifically listed, have accessed the IMF facility of $18 billion for African countries to help cushion them through the crisis..

Indeed, the Minister added, the facility is interest-free and without the suffocating conditionalities the IMF imposed on Ghana when forced by a toxic mixture of incompetence and insensitivity, Mr. Mahama and the NDC went to the IMF for a bailout and policy credibility.

It is clear that the NDC minority was only called in to do damage control, he stated.

Whiles it may ordinarily be a good thing for the NDC minority to have found their bearing and a voice several weeks after Ghana started confronting and containing the COVID-19 pandemic, it is pathetic that even upon hindsight the minority is still unable to offer any pragmatic alternatives but merely rehash those same lame queries that Mr. Mahama has asked during his political broadcasts on facebook, according to him.

Several weeks into COVID-19 and after several media engagements; both at the Presidential and other levels, it is disappointing that such deep levels of unawareness is being exhibited by the minority, he said.

It is disappointing for instance that the minority is unaware that across the various Metropolitan, Municipal and Districts Assemblies (MMDAs) public education is ongoing, according to Mr. Oppong Nkrumah.

He stressed that it is shocking, even embarrassing, that the NDC is still latching onto their very bogus proposal that the government should have repatriated Ghanaian students from Wuhan!

The students themselves have spoken to several media outlets and shown gratitude for the much wiser decision of the Akufo-Addo government. This week, schools have in fact reopened in Wuhan! And, for the records, not a single Ghanaian student in China was infected by Covid-19.

And yet instead of conceding that the government exercised far superior judgement  as we always have  they keep repeating this bankrupt and expired proposal..

He says under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo, monthly stipends for Ghanaian students studying abroad on Government Scholarship have been paid upfront and in advance.

Yes, the second quarter i.e. April, May and June have already been paid. This administration inherited an accumulated arrears of one year from the NDC and Mr. Mahama.

Whiles we decline the invitation of the NDC to engage in a blind and partisan banter on COVID-19, it is also imperative that for their education, we restate some of the facts around Ghana's very effective and successful COVID-19 Response Plan.

Very early into the global outbreak, the President of the Republic constituted a COVID-19 Task Force made up of technical persons, including Epidemiologists, Virologists, Medical Doctors, Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service Officials, Security Heads etc.

He added that the COVID-19 task force is coordinated by a former Deputy Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Asamoah Baah.

It is this task force of persons of reputable background knowledge, and expertise that advice the President on the policy options in fighting COVID-19 and not politicians masquerading as medical doctors in partisan COVID-19 teams, he added.

The claim from the NDC that Science has been relegated to the background and President Akufo-Addo seems more interested in his re-election than in the safety and life of Ghanaians is false and without basis, according to him.

The NDC cannot be allowed to approbate and reprobate on this matter. In one breath they claim, The scientist at Noguchi and all other testing facilities deserves this nation's thanks for the commitment they have shown in this national effort so far and in another breath indict them by claiming that they misuse scientific terminologies without empirical basis.

H.E. the President has led from the front and continues to address the nation honestly and regularly. Our health experts have also been enabled to offer regular updates and briefing. The claim therefore from the NDC about a certain lack of transparency is mind boggling.

President Akufo-Addo addressed the Nation and announced Ghana's preparedness way before Ghana recorded its initial cases.

The President announced an initial investment of GH35 million into our preparedness.

 This has now being ramped up to some $100 million for Ghana's response. The claim therefore by the NDC that the Government made no provisions for the eventuality of an outbreak in Ghana is not just unfortunate but also unfounded, he said.

It is regrettable the minority in Ghana's Parliament has lowered the bar on public discourse by making serious and yet unsubstantiated allegations.

 They claim that blatant falsehoods have been told to garnish the administration's image without providing an iota of evidence.

In asking the question couldn't Ghana have close its borders earlier, the NDC Minority suggest that by January 20, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global health emergency. What they deliberately did not add was that the WHO recommended that there was no reason for measure that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade at the time.

 For the records, the WHO declared COVID-19 global pandemic on 11th March, 2020.

Subsequently and when there was reasonably sufficient basis, Ghana's borders were close on March 22, 2020.

For their information, the strategy objectives of Ghana's COVID-19 Response Plan includes;

Limit and stop importation of cases Detect and contain cases Slowdown community spread Care and treatment for sick Limit impact on Social and Economic life Enhance Domestic Capacity and deepen self-Reliance, he added.

To limit and stop importation of cases, a number of steps were introduced including, Enhanced screening and surveillance at our points of entry to ensure that persons with manifested symptoms were identified and isolated, he noted.

---Daily Guide
A pro-Brexit campaigner has blasted the Electoral Commission as an 'out of control quango,' after a fine he was given in 2018 was overturned and police ended its probe spending during the EU referendum campaign.

Darren Grimes, founder of youth group BeLeave was fined 20,000 by the Electoral Commission in 2018 after he was accused of making false declarations in relation to a 680,000 donation to his youth-focused BeLeave group from the main Vote Leave campaign.

He successfully appealed the ruling in July last year and Met Police have today announced they've stopped investigating the 26-year-old, along with Vote Leave board member Alan Halsall.

BeLeave founder Darren Grimes raised 93,956 via crowdfunding to appeal the 20,000 fine handed to him by the Electoral Commission in 2018

Mr Grimes said the development called into question whether the Electoral Commission was 'fit for purpose'.

He had insisted since the allegations were first made that he was 'completely innocent' of making false declarations in relation to a 680,000 donation to his youth-focused BeLeave group from the main Vote Leave campaign.

The Electoral Commission found that BeLeave 'spent more than 675,000 with (Canadian data firm) Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave', which should have been declared by the latter but was not.

This spending took Vote Leave over its 7 million legal spending limit by almost 500,000.

In a statement, Mr Grimes, a former fashion student originally from County Durham, said: 'The Metropolitan Police has found, after investigation and consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, that there is no case to be answered.

'Once again the Electoral Commission has been found to be part of the mob, a quango out of control that isnt policing elections so much as punishing Leavers who have the temerity to win them.

'My ordeal at the hands of the kangaroo court that is the Electoral Commission is now over, but questions must now be asked of whether that body is fit for purpose.'

Met Police said it was taking no further action against Darren Grimes or Alan Halsall following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service it received in March

But Mr Grimes won an appeal against the fine in July, having crowdfunded to raise 93,956 to contest it in court.

A spokesman for the Leave campaigners said: 'The Metropolitan Police has written to Vote Leave board member Alan Halsall and BeLeave founder Darren Grimes to confirm that it will not be acting on allegations made against them by the Electoral Commission and various Remain campaigners.

'This marks the end of a two-year ordeal for both individuals.'

Mr Halsall, the responsible person for Vote Leave, said he was 'delighted to have been exonerated' and thanked the police for their 'professional' investigation.

'I was very disappointed that my colleagues at Vote Leave and myself were never given the opportunity of making our case in person to the Electoral Commission before being fined and reported to the police,' he added.

Alan Halsall, the responsible person for Vote Leave, said he was 'delighted to have been exonerated'

'It seems a rather unusual way of conducting an inquiry into such matters that only the so-called whistleblowers who made these allegations are interviewed by the regulator.'

A spokesman for the Met said an investigation into the Electoral Commissions allegations against Vote Leave and BeLeave, submitted on July 17 2018, was handed over in October to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

'On Tuesday, March 3 preliminary advice was received from the CPS,' said the force spokesman.

'This advice has now been duly considered and no further action will be taken.'
Indias high commissioner-designate to Sri Lanka, Gopal Baglay, who was unable to join his post for more than two months because of Covid-19-related restrictions, flew to Colombo on Friday in an air force transport aircraft that ferried 12.5 tonnes of medical supplies.

Baglay, who has served as spokesperson of the external affairs ministry and whose last stint was in the Prime Ministers Office, was named the next high commissioner to Colombo in February.

On Friday, Baglay hopped on to an Il-76 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force that transported 12.5 tonnes of essential medicines and medical items as a special friendly gesture from the Indian government during the auspicious Vesak week.

This was the fourth consignment of medical supplies sent by India to Sri Lanka in recent weeks, underscoring Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision of jointly fighting the Covid-19 pandemic that he had outlined during his video conference with leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) states on March 15.

Three consignments of life-saving medicines and medical gloves were delivered to Sri Lanka last month.

Soon after landing in Colombo, Baglay conveyed the greetings of the Indian people on the occasion of Vesak. He said the mission entrusted to him highlights the very high significance of steadfast friendship, solidarity and cooperation between India and Sri Lanka, two of the closest maritime neighbours in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, according to a statement from the Indian high commission.

Baglay reiterated Indias commitment to share its resources with friends and partners at a time when many countries are facing a scarcity of medical products due to the Covid-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions. He later assumed his duties while observing health protocols.

In a separate development, India said on Friday it is dispatching packages of medicines, including hydroxychloroquine, paracetamol and other drugs, to more than 25 countries in Africa to fight Covid-19.

This is in keeping with Indias traditionally strong bonds of friendship and solidarity with Africa, which has reached new heights in the last few years, the external affairs ministry said in a statement.

Prime Minister Modi had a telephone conversation with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is the current chairperson of the African Union, on April 17 and conveyed Indias full support for the joint African effort against the Coronavirus. Modi also spoke with Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on April 9 and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on May 6.

During April, external affairs minister S Jaishankar spoke to his counterparts in several African countries to reiterate Indias solidarity in the fight against Covid-19 and offered them all assistance.
Ottawa, May 8 : Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the federal government and all provincial and territorial governments have reached a cost-sharing agreement of 4 billion Canadian dollars (about US $2.9 billion) to raise payments for essential workers.

Under the agreement, the Trudeau government will provide 3 billion Canadian dollars and the provinces and territories will contribute the rest, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.

"Right now, we are finalizing the details with the last provinces, and I want to underscore that this has been a truly collaborative effort," Trudeau said at his press conference in Ottawa. "We are relying on these workers now more than ever and we will be there to support them." On April 15, Trudeau first promised that funding was coming to keep front-line workers, including those in seniors' homes, on the job and that wages would be increased for essential workers who are making less than 2,500 Canadian dollars a month through a transfer to the provinces and territories.

The move is meant to keep as many of these workers on the job, especially those in seniors' homes. Seniors' homes across Canada have seen staff become infected and others reluctant to show up for work because of concerns of inadequate personal protective equipment, leading to the Canadian military being called in to help.

The cost-sharing agreement involves a transfer of federal funds to the provinces and territories soon. "It will be up to each province and territory to determine who exactly qualifies for this wage increase," Trudeau said.

As of Thursday afternoon, there were 64,817 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada, and 4,404 deaths, according to a CTV News tally.
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Linkedin Mardika Parama (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 19:05 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d980c 1 Business PT-KAI,railway-operator-PTKAI,erick-thohir,State-owned-Enterprises-Ministry Free

State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir has replaced the president director of Indonesian railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) following the ministrys plan to restructure major state companies.

Didiek Hartyanto, previously PT KAIs financial director, has been appointed the companys president director, continuing the previous president directors tenure, according to a ministerial decree issued on Friday. Didiek replaces Edi Sukmoro, who had led the company since 2014.

Meanwhile, Rivan Achmad Purwantono replaces Didiek as the companys finance director.

Prior to his appointment as KAI finance director in February 2016, Didiek worked at state-owned Bank Mandiri as the banks executive vice president from February 2011 to January 2016.

Erick also appointed Jeffrie Korompis as KAI business development director, replacing Amrozi Hamidi; Magin U. Norhadi as the new commerce director replacing Dody Budiawan; and Agung Yunanto as the new human resources director replacing Ruli Adi.

The ministry introduced the restructuring program to improve profitability at state-owned companies as the increases of some of the companies asset growth were not proportional to their profit growth.

According to a government-commissioned joint study between McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group, of the 114 state-owned enterprises plotted by the study, only five bring added value to the country. Among the five are banks and a telecommunications company.
Residents at Acorn Manor Assisted Living in The Woodlands have been getting personal concerts performed from just outside their windows.

The pet-friendly assisted living facility closed to visitors in March due to the pandemic. The senior residents, who are more vulnerable to COVID-19, have been cut off from most in-person contact. Theyve maintained physical distance even from family members, who have kept in touch using Skype and Facetime.

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Acorn Manor owner Priyanka Johri has been asking local performers to come by the facility and sing outside of the windows of individual residents. After the first time that musicians performed at Acorn Manor, residents could not stop talking about it, she said.

It was supposed to be something to try out and see if it worked and they all loved it, so we brought (the performers) back, she said. Everybody has their own private window so they were able to serenade each of the individually. They had songs to request, they would request musicians and songs.

The musical visits stemmed from Johris efforts to keep residents entertained while physically separated from the outside world.

I started asking my friends all over the country to start sending me pictures and painting and all those kinds of things, Johri said. It started from there and then we started receiving paintings, sweaters, full scarves from all over.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates: Nearly 10k complaints lodged against places not following reopening rules

Johri, a Spring-area entrepreneur and realtor with Woodlands Eco Realty, has been finding ways to help her community during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to serenading older adults, Johri donated time and resources to show appreciation for medical professionals on the front line.

While sitting at home in March, Johri said she could not help but think about her friends working in hospitals while the COVID-19 continued to spread around the Houston area.

They said, We are right in front, we dont have a lot of PPE and were expecting all of these people to show up, and then it happened, Johri said. I was feeling very frustrated because I was in lockdown sitting there while my friends are out there exposing themselves to this virus and trying to help the community.

Johri began an initiative called 30 Days of Giving on April 1, sending meals purchased from local restaurants to hospital staff in northwest Houston, including at Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital and Tomball Regional Medical Center.

SENIORS SPECIAL: The class of 2020 can get a free cake at Houstons Arandas Bakery

Initially starting as a way to send food to her friends working in the hospitals, Johri began organizing meals to be delivered from local restaurants. She said the purchases were meant to help local businesses as well as doctors needing food in between shifts.

Its my way of thanking them, Johri said.

Although the 30 Days of Giving ended on May 1, Johri and friends are still sending masks, coffee, snacks and supplies to hospitals.

Johri is already thinking of more ways in which she could meet needs in the community. In the future, she hopes to advise businesses on how to continue operating through COVID-19 by adjusting their business model or finding sources of aid.

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Considering the emotional challenges nurses and doctors face when dealing directly with COVID-19 patients, Johri has also thought about doing guided meditation to help health care professionals in need of mental health support.

In the meantime, Johri is still delivering supplies to hospitals and working on ways to keep her residents entertained and socializing.

I think were going to be dealing with this COVID thing for a while, Johri said. Its not going away soon.

For more information, visit the Priyanka Johri Page on Facebook.

chevall.pryce@chron.com
Keeping your young adult active could make it easier for them to get through the lockdown

In March, after California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered most of the states residents to stay home, I found myself under virtual house arrest with an uncomfortably large number of Gen Zers.

Somehow I had accumulated four of my childrens friends over the preceding months. I suppose some parents more hard-nosed than I would have sent them packing, but I didnt have the heartespecially in the case of my daughters college roommate, who couldnt get back to her family in Vietnam.

So, I had to convince six bored and frustrated 18- to 21-year-olds that, yes, they too could catch the coronavirus, that they needed to stop meeting their friends, wipe down everything they brought into the house, and wash their hands more frequently than they had ever imagined.

The first two weeks were nerve-wracking. I cringed every time I heard the front door open or close, and when any of the kids returned home, I grilled them remorselessly.

The day after a house meeting in which I laid down the law, I found my son, Oliver, 21, inside his cramped music studio in the back of the house with a kid Id never seen before. And that night, I saw one of our extra-familial housemates in a car parked out front, sharing a mind-altering substance with a young man who used to visit in the pre-pandemic era.

If Ive been neurotically vigilant, its because the stakes are high: Ive got asthma and Oliver has rheumatoid arthritis, making us potentially more vulnerable to the ravages of the virus.

But even as I play the role of enforcer, I recognize that these kids are as anxious and worried as I am.

My daughter, Caroline, 18, is filled with sadness and despair, feelings she had largely overcome after going away to college last fall. She recently started doing telephone sessions with her old therapist. Oliver has begun therapyremotely, for nowafter dismissing it as pointless for the past several years.

A study released in April by Mental Health America, an advocacy and direct service organization in Alexandria, Virginia, shows that people under age 25 are the most severely affected by a rise in anxiety and depression linked to social isolation and the fear of contracting COVID-19.

That is not surprising, even though the virus has proved far deadlier for seniors. Mental health problems were already rising sharply among teens and young adults before the pandemic. Now their futures are on hold, they cant be with their friends, their college campuses are shuttered, their jobs are evaporatingand a scary virus makes some wonder if they even want those jobs.

Paul Gionfriddo, Mental Health Americas CEO, says parents should be attentive even to subtle changes in their kids behavior or routine. Understand that the first symptoms are not usually external ones, Gionfriddo says. Maybe their sleep patterns change, or theyre eating less, or maybe they are distracted.

If your teens or young adults are in distress, they can screen themselves for anxiety or depression by visiting MHAscreening.org. They will get a customized result along with resources that include reading material, videos, and referrals to treatment or online communities.

The Child Mind Institute (ChildMind.org or 212-308-3118) offers a range of resources, including counseling sessions by phone. If your young person needs emotional support, or just to vent to an empathetic peer, they can call a warmline. For a list of numbers by state, check Warmline.org.

Carolines case is probably typical of college kids. She moved back home from San Francisco in March after her university urged students to leave the dorms. Her stuff is stranded up there, and we have no idea when well be able to reclaim it. Meanwhile, she has been planning to share an off-campus apartment starting in August with four of her friends from the dorm. We could have gotten attractive terms if we had signed the lease by April 30but what if school doesnt reopen in the fall?

For Oliver, whos been living with me all along, the big challenges are a lack of autonomy, a need for money, and cabin fever. Those stressors got the best of him recently, and he started doing sorties for a food delivery service. Of course, it makes me crazy with worry every time he goes out, and when he returns home Im in his face: Did you wear a mask and gloves? Did you keep your distance? Wash your hands!

But what can I do, short of chaining him to the water heater? And if going outand getting some cash in his pocketmakes him feel better, that cant be all bad (unless he catches the virus).

If your kid dares to work outside the house, and you dare let him, several industries are hiringparticularly grocery stores, pharmacies and home delivery, and food services. Child care for parents who have to work is also in demand, so your fearless teen might want to ask around the neighborhood.

Volunteering, if they dare, is another good way for young people to feel independent and useful. In every community, there are vulnerable seniors who need somebody to shop for them or deliver meals to their homes. You can use NextDoor.com, a local networking app, to find out if any neighbors need help.

Food banks are in great need of volunteers right now. To find a food bank near you, go to FeedingAmerica.org. Blood donations are also needed. Older teens and young adults can arrange to donate by contacting the American Red Cross (RedCross.org). For a list of creative ways to help, check out Youth Service America (YSA.org).

While the kids are inside the house, which in my case is still most of the time, put them to work. Anxiety loves idle time, and when we dont have a lot to do, our brain starts thinking the worst thoughts, says Yesenia Marroquin, a psychologist at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

Ive harnessed the able bodies of my young charges for household chores. A few weekends ago, I decreed a spring cleaning. They organized themselves with surprising alacrity to weed the backyard, sweep and mop the floors, clean the stove, and haul out volumes of trash.

Considering the circumstances, the house is looking pretty darn good these days.

Bernard J. Wolfson is the managing editor for California Healthline, which is published by Kaiser Health News. This article was first published by California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Millions of Americans have received a $1,200 stimulus check from the government as part of economic relief in face of the coronavirus pandemic, including those who have died since filing their tax returns in 2018 or 2019.

The IRS now wants those checks back.

Families that have received a stimulus check on behalf of a deceased relative must mail the stimulus check back to the IRS, according to the website.

The tax agency recently updated its FAQ section of its website to include the question Does someone who has died qualify for the Payment?

No, the website states as an answer to the question. A Payment made to someone who died before receipt of the Payment should be returned to the IRS by following the instructions in the Q&A about repayments. Return the entire Payment unless the Payment was made to joint filers and one spouse had not died before receipt of the Payment, in which case, you only need to return the portion of the Payment made on account of the decedent. This amount will be $1,200 unless adjusted gross income exceeded $150,000.

The IRS also updated its website to include instructions for mailing back the checks.

Those who received a paper check are instructed to write void in the endorsement section on the back of the check and mail the check to the appropriate IRS location. Direct deposits are to be returned as a personal check made out to U.S. Treasury with 2020EIP written as an explanation as well as the taxpayer identification number, the website says.

Donna McGill is a Massachusetts resident and one of many to receive a $1,200 stimulus check for a deceased relative, MassLive reported.

There are a lot of people out there that I know that could desperately use some sort of income and it makes me wonder how many people have received checks and they havent taken the time to send it to people who really need it, she told MassLive.

In April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told The Wall Street Journal its possible their databases may miss something but the checks are to be returned.

Youre not supposed to keep that payment, he told the newspaper. Were checking the databases, but there could be a scenario where we missed something, and yes, the heirs should be returning that money.

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The West Bengal government claimed on Friday that it has upped its Covid-19 testing by 10 times in the past one month. The state government had earlier received flak for not testing enough.

Despite an increase, it is lagging behind Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, among others, in testing. While Bengal has conducted 32,572 tests till May 7, all these states had crossed the 30,000-mark by the third week of April.

We have increased the number of tests conducted per day more than 10 times since April first week. While on April 6 we had tested only 186 samples, on May 7 we tested 2611 samples, said a senior official of the state health department.

While the opposition parties and various doctors platforms had been criticising the state for low tests, the union home ministry sent a letter to the states chief secretary saying that Bengals response to Covid-19 has been characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2%, which is the highest for any state.

The number of tests per million is now around 300. Even 10 days ago it was around 188 per million. We are lagging in tests (per million) because of various reasons. Initially, we didnt have enough laboratories. Later, kits were found to be faulty, the matter had to be taken up with the ICMR, said a top official of the state health department.

Allegations had also surfaced that the state was not sending enough kits to the ICMR-NICED, which is a regional level Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (VRDL) under the union health ministry.

While we started with only one testing facility in March, the state now has 17 testing facilities, including five private laboratories. In many districts, where the disease has a low prevalence rate, pool sampling is being done to cover as many people. We had also started rapid antibody tests but it had to be stopped after kits were found to be faulty by the ICMR, said another health department official.

With more tests being done every day the number of Covid-19 patients in the state has almost doubled in the last one week. While the number of infected patients on May 1 was 795, it has shot up to 1,548 till May 7. Around 79 people have died so far due to Covid-19, while another 72 Covd-19 patients have died due to comorbidity, the state government said.

While West Bengal has just crossed 30,000 tests, some states have already conducted more than one lakh tests. Maharashtra has already tested more than two lakh samples, while Andhra Pradesh has done around 1.5 lakh tests till May 7.
[May 08, 2020] AIG to Participate in the UBS Virtual Insurance Conference

American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) today announced that David McElroy, President and CEO of North America General Insurance, will participate in a fireside chat at the UBS Virtual Insurance Conference on Thursday, May 14, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. ET. A link to the audio webcast will be available in the Investors section of AIG's website: https://www.aig.com. A replay of the audio webcast will be available at the same location through July 14, 2020. American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is a leading global insurance organization. AIG member companies provide a wide range of property casualty insurance, life insurance, retirement solutions, and other financial services to customers in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. These diverse offerings include products and services that help businesses and individuals protect their assets, manage risks and provide for retirement security. AIG common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Additional information about AIG can be found at www.aig.com | YouTube (News - Alert): www.youtube.com/aig | Twitter (News - Alert): @AIGinsurance www.twitter.com/AIGinsurance | LinkedIn (News - Alert): www.linkedin.com/company/aig. These references with additional information about AIG have been provided as a convenience, and the information contained on such websites is not incorporated by reference into this press release.



AIG is the marketing name for the worldwide property-casualty, life and retirement, and general insurance operations of American International Group, Inc. For additional information, please visit our website at www.aig.com. All products and services are written or provided by subsidiaries or affiliates of American International Group, Inc. Products or services may not be available in all countries and jurisdictions, and coverage is subject to underwriting requirements and actual policy language. Non-insurance products and services may be provided by independent third parties. Certain property-casualty coverages may be provided by a surplus lines insurer. Surplus lines insurers do not generally participate in state guaranty funds, and insureds are therefore not protected by such funds.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005377/en/

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Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) - The key work of tracing the animal transmission source of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) infection in humans is ongoing and must be carried out to prevent future health emergencies, a top UN health agency scientist said on Friday, after the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed more than 3
(JNS)Apparently, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is sensitive to criticism.

Over the past week, it received enormousand well-deservedflak after it announced the decision of its nominating committee to select former HIAS chairman Dianne Lob to serve as the Conferences next chairman. In what is largely viewed as a formality, the full Conference membership is expected to elect Lob formally on Tuesday. She will be running unopposed in an open election that will be held on a Zoom conference call. Conference CEO William Daroff and his associates are so certain of her victory that they are already referring to her as chairman-elect.

Lobs selection has drawn protests because HIAS, the organization she led from 2016-2019, is a post-Jewish organization. Its leaders openly support and defend anti-Semites like BDS leader and Hamas supporter Linda Sarsour. Sarsour, for her part, held a fundraiser for HIAS in October 2018. HIAS collaborates with Islamic groups that allegedly have links to Hamas and terrorist activities. It also works with other post-Jewish, pro-BDS groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

In short, HIAS works against, not on behalf of the interests of the American Jewish community. As its immediate past chairman, Lob oversaw many of HIASs anti-Jewish operations and as such, she seems a poor candidate to lead an organization that serves as the umbrella group for 53 American Jewish organizations and is widely seen as the most important Jewish organization in America.

As JNS news service reported last week, following the announcement of Lobs selection, 17 members of organizations that are associated with the Conference of Presidents signed a letter to the Conferences leadership setting out numerous violations of the Conferences bylaws that took place during the nominating committees deliberations. Among other things, members of the Conference were given less notice than mandated by the Conferences bylaws to consider Lobs nomination. They have not been able to privately vet her.

Daroff, who played a central role in the nominating process, allegedly acted in breach of the Conferences bylaws. AIPAC President Betsy Korn was a member of the nominating committee despite the fact that she didnt meet the Conferences criteria for committee membership.

A senior conference official divulged to Israel Hayom that another member of the nominating committee had an acute conflict of interest with one of the candidates that was not selected; the committee member in question had been fired by the candidate. She did not disclose her conflict of interest to the other members of the committee. Instead, according to another source, during the nomination process the committee member harshly criticized the candidate who had fired her and played an instrumental role in his disqualification.

Obviously, the members conflict of interest should have disqualified her from committee membership from the outset, and once it was discovered, should have compelled the other committee members to disregard her claims against the candidate. Instead, they selected the HIAS chief.

As the source close to the events explained, Basically every Conference bylaw was trounced to get Lob selected. Every procedure was breached. If they had run a fair process, Lob, who won by one vote, would not have been chosen.

Due to the widespread and stinging criticism directed against the Conference for choosing the leader of an organization that defends anti-Semites and collaborates with Hamas affiliates as its new leader, on Sunday, outgoing Conference chairman Arthur Stark and Lob released a joint statement to Conference members with the surprising announcement that the Conference had changed its bylaws. Under the new bylaws, Lob will serve as chairman-elect under Stark for the coming year. In April 2021, she will be inaugurated to serve as chairman.

On the face of things, the surprising move seems like a concession to the many Jewish groups and activists who vociferously oppose Lobs selection. But upon reflection, it is no such thing. Stark, Daroff, Lob and their associates have not budged from their determination to install Lob as the next chairman. They will not acknowledge the bylaw breaches endemic to the nomination process that selected her.

Instead, they have decided to neutralize the criticism by laying low for a year. They assume that within a few months, people will grow used to the idea that a woman, who led an organization that abandoned its Jewish identity officially in 2014 and works openly with political activists that seek to deny American Jews their civil right to express their support for Israel and their opposition to anti-Semites and terrorist organizations, will now be the head of the most important American Jewish organization in the United States.

Lob will undoubtedly go on a listening tour, and make everyone feel that they are being heard. And then, beginning in April 2021, she will allow her allies on the post-Jewish left to control the Conference, just as they control HIAS.

Last week, to calm concerned Jewish leaders and donors, Conference officials argued that even if Lob wants to transform the Conference into a HIAS knockoff, she wont be able to. The Conferences bylaws, they explained, require the leaders of the executive committee to act within the consensus of the Conferences members. This position is exposed as a lie by the speed with which Stark and Lob oversaw a radical change of the Conferences bylaws to create a new position of chairman-elect. Obviously, the bylaws can be changed at the drop of a hat.

There is a way to resolve this situation. Conference members can transform the formality of the vote on Tuesday into an actual election and vote against Lob. In so doing, they would send the entire appointment process back to the nominations committee for anothermore legitimateround of deliberations and votes. If this happens, there is a chance the Conference of Presidents will save itself from a hostile takeover by radical activists who oppose the views of 95 percent of American Jews and seek to transform the Conference into an anti-Israel, post-Jewish pressure group. Barring such action, however, the chance of saving the Conference from the post-Jewish Left will effectively disappear.

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
Tony Eusoff's "Quarantine Raya" is produced during the MCO period.

8 May  Actor Tony Eusoff revealed that he is working on a "screenplay" (a play for the small screen, according to his Instagram post) called "Quarantine Raya" in conjunction with the upcoming Aidilfitri celebration.

According to Tony, real name Anthony Joseph anak Hermas Rajiman, the project was produced during the several weeks that the Movement Control Order (MCO)  otherwise referred to as the Restricted Movement Order (RMO)  was enforced in Malaysia.

"Despite businesses slowly opening up, the reality is it's gonna be awhile before we'll be going to the cinemas or flock to the theatres for a show.

"So... [in conjunction with] our new normal Raya this year, we present to you Quarantine Raya: A ScreenPLAY. Yup that's right, it's a play but it's on your screens.

"The Restricted Movement Order has brought up strange feelings, especially when it's close to Raya," he posted.

The actor also shared photos on his Instagram showing him hard at work filming "Quarantine Raya".

"Quarantine Raya" follows the Zainuddin family, who is trying to adjust to online meet-ups and figure out how to deal with Raya this year.

With their mother gone and father stuck in Dubai after Umrah, no one is in the mood for celebrating anyway.

The project is written by Honey Ahmad, with Gavin Yap as director, who also helmed the "Dendam Pontianak" movie that Tony starred in last year.

Aside from Tony, "Quarantine Raya" also stars Nadia Aqilah, Siti Farrah Abdullah, Nabil Zakaria and Tina Issacs.

(Photo source: Tony Eusoff's Instagram)
President Barack Obama speaks alongside retired General James Clapper, Obama's nominee for director of national intelligence, during the announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on June 5, 2010. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

House Intelligence Committees Russia Transcripts Reaffirm Findings of No Collusion

High-level Obama administration officials admitted to having no knowledge of evidence about collusion between Donald Trumps campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, newly released transcripts show.

Special counsel Robert Muellers team found no evidence of collusion after years of investigation.

The interviews of officials who served in top positions in Barack Obamas administration were conducted in 2017 by the House Intelligence Committee.

I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election, James Clapper, director of national intelligence under Obama, told lawmakers. He made a similar statement in public.

Some anecdotal evidence was concerning to intelligence officials, he added, including the case of Trumps National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The government on Thursday moved to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn, arguing the matter lacked a legitimate purpose.

Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrives at the U.S. Capitol on her way to meet with members of the House Intelligence Committee in Washington on Oct. 20, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

I dont recall anything being briefed up to me, Loretta Lynch, Obamas attorney general, said when asked if she came across information showing a coordinated effort between Russian actors and the Trump campaign.

Asked the same question about conspiracy and collusion, she added, I wouldnt have been drawing those legal conclusions at that time.

I cant give you that definitive answer, she said.

I dont recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect that I saw priorof conspiracy prior to my departure, Susan Rice, former national security adviser, told lawmakers.

Asked whether there was information that she doesnt consider intelligence that she saw suggesting conspiracy, Rice said no. On the same question regarding collusion, she said she potentially saw evidence.

Her answer was largely redacted but she later cited Flynn and Carter Page, a Trump campaign volunteer who was illegally spied on by the Obama administration. A raft of problems were uncovered in a subsequent review of the FISA program.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice at the J Street 2018 National Conference in Washington, on April 16, 2018. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I recall hearing concerns expressed about Carter Page and potentially others, Rice said.

That was not the issue on which I was focused, Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations in the previous administration, told lawmakers when asked if shed seen proof of collusion.

I dont feel as if I can accurately or fairly answer the question yes or no,' she said.

Powers said she didnt want to mislead by saying no because it would suggest that shed seen all the evidence available, which she hadnt.

Pressed by then Rep. Trey Growdy (R-S.C.), she said she didnt possess unique information or see relevant info that came from outside the intelligence community.

Mary McCord, a longtime Department of Justice lawyer, declined to say there was evidence of conspiracy to hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or the emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, telling lawmakers that the matter was still being probed when she left in May 2017.

I cant recall if there was information, she said.

My view was that that was the beginning of the inquiry, and so I would not have been making a determination with finality at that point in time about this is this or the other thing, she said.

FBI Director James Comey testifies as Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates listens during Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 8, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Sally Yates, deputy attorney general, sounded a similar theme before adding she had not seen evidence that the Trump campaign was involved in the DNC hack. Former FBI official Andrew McCabe said he didnt see evidence of information showing Trumps involvement in the hack.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, also said he didnt see evidence of collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia.

Evelyn Farkas, a defense official in the Obama administration, said on MSNBCs Morning Joe in March 2017 that she urged her former colleagues to get information, including intelligence, before Obama left office.

I had a fear that the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about  the Trump staffs dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence, Farkas said.

Asked what information she wanted government workers to request, Farkas told lawmakers: I didnt know. Asked how she knew what the U.S. government knew if she left in 2015, she said she didnt.

I didnt know anything, she added. She also said she did not have information connecting the Trump campaign to a hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen also told lawmakers he didnt have evidence of the campaign colluding with Russia and Podesta twice avoided directly answering a question on whether he had any evidence of collusion.

Theres no relationship that I have with Russia, and its a very, very sad thing for our country, Trump said during an interview with Fox & Friends on Friday morning. Thats why Schiff  didnt want to release any of those documents.
It's all done and now Kaiser and her staff are working on recalling its employees and building schedules and staffing assignments.

Shara Overstreet, the managing partner at Granite Fitness, is excited to welcome back members and is grateful that Montana wasn't harder hit by the virus.

"We're in a good position to offer people health and wellness," she said.

It's something Granite has been doing even while it was closed. After the closure orders, Granite created an extensive online fitness program for its members and checked out equipment to those who wanted to participate, including items like barbells.

They ended up with 500 people enrolled, a surprising success for the fitness center and something it plans to keep in place even after it opens, Overstreet said. She's seen that being able to start fitness regimes at home often give people more confidence to eventually move to a gym.

"We see this as an opportunity to improve our service overall," she said.
Hamilton County Sheriff deputies on Friday morning made a stop on a stolen vehicle on I-75 and found a 19-year-old driver with a 15-year-old runaway.

At approximately 11 a.m., deputies received a BOLO for a stolen Chevrolet Impala that was possibly traveling into Hamilton County on Interstate 75. Deputies set up on the interstate to try to intercept the vehicle.

The vehicle was spotted traveling south on Interstate 75 and was subsequently stopped near Shallowford Road. The vehicle was driven by Hunter Elliott-Courisky, 19, of Hamilton, Ohio. He was taken into custody.

Deputies also located a 15-year-old runaway from Ohio in the vehicle. The juvenile was taken into custody for possession of drug paraphernalia. A parent of the juvenile was contacted and arrangements are being made for the two to be reunited.

Elliott-Courisky is currently at the Hamilton County Jail charged with theft of property over $10,000, possession of drug paraphernalia, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Elliott-Courisky was also found to be a fugitive who is wanted for robbery charges in Hamilton County, Ohio. Extradition arrangements will be made with that agency.



The owner of the vehicle, which was stolen from Butler County, Ohio, was notified and is making arrangements to take back possession of the vehicle.
Members of the medical team from Beijing's China-Japan Friendship Hospital visit a novel coronavirus pneumonia patient in an ICU ward at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, on March 25, 2020. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/chinadaily.com.cn]

Experts exploring new, innovative approaches to tackle novel coronavirus

Science and technology have played, and will continue to play, a decisive role in mitigating the pandemic, whether it is by discovering new features about the novel coronavirus, looking for new treatment or vaccines or offering expertise in psychological services, experts said.

But science does not always proceed in an unambiguous straight line toward progress. These undertakings, especially those involve pushing boundaries deeper into the unknown, are time-consuming, complicated and unpredictable. So it is important for the public to understand the scientific process to fully respect and appreciate these efforts, they said.

As President Xi Jinping has said, the COVID-19 epidemic is the "fastest spreading, most infectious and most challenging public health emergency since the birth of New China". He has also stressed that epidemic control efforts require the support of science and technology and urged scientists who are working on treatment and a vaccine to accelerate their research while upholding rigorous scientific practices and ensuring their products are safe.

With the leadership of Xi and joint efforts by the whole of society, the epidemic is now under control in China, said Huai Jinpeng, executive vice-president of the China Association for Science and Technology.

"But the disease is still spreading across the globe, and there is a strong downward pressure for the world economy and a noticeable spike in instability and uncertainty," he said at a meeting with the nation's science officials on April 30.

During this critical juncture, Chinese scientists need to be even more hardworking and pragmatic, and make a greater contribution to the nation's post-epidemic socioeconomic recovery with science and innovation, Huai said.

At the same time, they also need to expand their network of cooperation at home and abroad. Science officials and workers should maintain high ethical and professional standards, and be a role model for society, he added.

Wan Gang, president of the China Association for Science and Technology, said the nation's science workers were immediately mobilized to tackle the epidemic when the outbreak began, and have provided crucial scientific support in controlling the disease and assisting the socioeconomic recovery.

Communication is also a key aspect of the overall disease prevention and control effort, he said, adding that the various COVID-19 related information platforms under the association have attracted over 7 billion views in the past few months.

When Chinese microbiologist Wang Jun volunteered to go to Wuhan, Hubei province, to help the city's hospitals research the novel coronavirus, he said he felt like he was heading into a "battlefield".

The motive behind his action was simple. "Our institute (the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) has been researching the virus since the outbreak began," Wang said on April 20.

"With Wuhan being the first place to have reported the disease, I had a gut feeling that there must have been many questions that our front-line medical staff didn't even know existed, so we had to go to the battlefront to learn about the situation and their needs," he said.

Since the outbreak began, the academy has sent dozens of researchers to Wuhan. Their work has played a major role in the overall epidemic control effort. Their five main objectives were viral research, creating new diagnostic tools, testing clinical treatments, health evaluation for recovered patients and psychological counseling.

Wang said his team had discovered that children, who were believed to be less susceptible to COVID-19, could still spread the disease even when their symptoms were mild, making them potential asymptomatic carriers that might float under the diagnostic radar.

The virus also has some very intricate immunological effects that would make case tracing via antibody tests more difficult, so "more research is definitely needed", he added.

Jin Qi, director of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences' Institute of Pathogen Biology, said that scientists' understanding of the novel coronavirus remains limited and is constantly expanding, and with new information unearthed, new questions would emerge.

For example, most researchers agreed that a 14-day quarantine is generally sufficient for a patient to show symptoms, but there are now rare cases in which patients experience the onset of symptoms well after the two-week period, Jin said.

Drugs and vaccines

Wang Guiqiang, head of Peking University First Hospital's department of infectious diseases, said at a seminar in late April that drugs and vaccines are crucial for stopping the pandemic for good, but this will require time and effort by scientists around the globe.

China has three vaccines, one vectorwhich uses just a gene from the coronavirusand two inactivated, currently in Phase II clinical trials. The vector vaccine is spearheaded by Chen Wei, a senior preventive medical expert, and the results for the Phase II trial are set to be published in May, according to official sources.

The two inactivated vaccines were developed respectively by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd and Sinovac Research & Development Co Ltd.

Zhong Nanshan, a renowned respiratory expert, told People's Daily last month that although there has not been a wonder cure found for COVID-19, some drugs have proved to be effective to some extent.

"We're testing a variety of drugs, such as chloroquine, and experiment results have shown the drug is definitely effective," he said, adding that scientists are analyzing the data and would publish their findings soon.

Some traditional Chinese medicines, including Lianhua Qingwen Capsules, are also being studied. For the capsule, Zhong said although its anti-viral effect against COVID-19 isn't that pronounced, it does have a "remarkable anti-inflammatory effect" that can help patients recover quicker.

A major component of all scientific work is about testing available knowledge and methods, but not all tests can return positive results. Discovering what works, and, sometimes more importantly, what doesn't work and why, is crucial in expanding humanity's knowledge of the disease.

Cao Bin, vice-president of China-Japan Friendship Hospital, said at a seminar last month that they had found Lopinavir/Ritonavir, a combination of anti-HIV drugs that showed potential in treating COVID-19 in the early days of the outbreak, did not produce desirable results.

In late April, the Lancet medical journal published a study by Cao on his clinical trials on remdesivir in China. The study said the experimental drug from the United States did not significantly speed up the recovery of critically ill patients compared with the control group.

The authors warn that interpretation of their study is limited because it only recruited 237 adults, rather than the target of 453 patients, due to the rapid decline of COVID-19 cases in China. They concluded that more research is needed.

Pushing boundaries

Through strong government support and hard work, Chinese scientists are also exploring new and innovative ways to tackle the novel coronavirus.

Zhang Linqi, a professor at Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing, said his team has been using antibodies to "drive a wedge" between the virus' spike proteinits "key" for entering cellsand the receptor that it binds to.

That would effectively block the virus from entry. It has been very effective in animal tests, and may serve to inspire new vaccine candidates, he said at an online seminar in late April.

Scientists have discovered that there is a small but potent section of the spike protein that does most of the work called the receptor-binding domain, or RBD.

Knowing that, Zhang's team, along with scientists from Shenzhen Third People's Hospital, found two antibodies that, together, can insert themselves at the junction of the RBD and the cell's receptor, blocking the virus from latching onto the cell.

Zhang said they are testing the blocking effect in possible vaccines, and early results are "really encouraging". But research is still in its early stages and more rigorous studies and tests are needed, he added.

Hu Baoyang, executive president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, said since arriving in Wuhan on March 1, his team had been busy testing stem cell therapy to calm the overreacting immune system and repair the lung tissue of severe and critically ill patients.

In the 46 days that followed, Hu and his team traveled to 13 hospitals and screened over 650 candidate patients for this innovative treatment. At a news briefing on April 16, Sun Yanrong, deputy director of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development, said over 200 patients in Wuhan had received stem cell therapy, and current results show the treatment can improve the recovery rate of severely ill patients and is generally safe.

However, stem cell therapy is far from perfect. Stem cells can differentiate into various types of cells, and some might turn cancerous, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Some stem cells are also difficult to isolate and cultivate in large quantities, so more research and testing are also needed.

"Labs are our bastions, and our scientific research is the weapon against the epidemic," Hu said.
The UAE Ministry of Energy and Industry is collaborating with strategic partners in the medical sector to formulate plans to enhance the level of innovation, productivity, and competitiveness of the country's medical industries.

In cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Prevention and local health authorities, the plan will assess the national requirements for medical equipment and supplies in order to enhance production capabilities to build a greater level of national self-sufficiency in readiness for potential future crises.

Minister of Energy and Industry Suhail bin Mohammed Faraj Faris Al Mazrouei said the goal was to draw learnings from the current crisis that can be used to strengthen the UAEs healthcare sector, develop local capabilities, and allocate local resources accordingly, to enhance preparedness for future disruptions.

"HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, has directed our ministry to prepare an urgent action plan aimed at raising the level of productivity and competitiveness of the medical industry in the country," he stated.

The plan is aligned with the objectives of the UAE leadership to devise a post-Covid strategy, including drawing up action plans and setting specific goals and immediate and future targets to address the challenges resulting from the pandemic, while also developing forward-looking policies to deal with any other environmental and epidemiological challenges that may emerge in future.

This will begin with an evaluation of the deficiencies in sectors that have encountered the most difficulties in dealing with the current crisis.

It will be a five-phase plan, namely identifying priority products for the health sector, assessing the needs of the health sector for priority products, assessing local manufacturing capabilities and gaps to meet local demand, initial evaluation of data and choosing the first package of products, and finally, the submission of recommendations by the task forces for investment opportunities, the executive plan, proposed partnerships, and policies to support national industries in the medical sector.

"We are confident that our medical factories will be capable of covering a large part of the UAEs future medical requirements," remarked Al Mazrouei.

"The study will provide the information we need to make the necessary investments to enhance the strength of these factories and raise the readiness of national manufacturing," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Authorities in North Carolina filed the states first price-gouging lawsuit against a towing company accused of employing predatory towing and booting practices during the coronavirus pandemic.

A temporary restraining order was issued on Charlottes A1 Towing Solutions and its owner, David Satterfield, for allegedly violating the states price gouging statute, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement Tuesday. The order bans them from conducting their towing business until a court hearing.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Wake County alleges Satterfield and A1 Towing Solutions improperly booted and towed trucks that were delivering necessary supplies, including food and water, during the pandemic. According to the lawsuit, the company booted trucks that had permission to park from property owners, and then charged drivers more than $4,000 to release their trailers.

The lawsuit said the company also employed practices that doubled towing prices, and charged other inflated fees for credit card use and DMV filings.

As a result of A1 Towing Solutions and Satterfields actions, drivers were delayed in delivering critical supplies needed in North Carolina and other states to respond to the pandemic, Stein said.

The states price gouging statute went into effect on March 10 after Gov. Roy Cooper issued a state of emergency in response to the virus outbreak. Since then, Stein said their office has received 1,763 complaints of price gouging in the state.

The News & Observer could not reach A-1 Towing Solutions and Satterfield for comment on the story.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits COVID-19 North Carolina
To get a sense how the impetus for action on climate change has been eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic, you only need to look at how the medias interest on the matter has shifted.

From what looks like an all-time peak in Australias interest in a warming world during the bushfire crisis in January - with 4.5 per cent of articles about climate change - interest has since cratered to be less than 1 per cent, according to analysis from Streem, a media monitoring firm.

Stealing their thunder?: A climate change protester in Melbourne during the height of the bushfires. Credit:Chris Hopkins

By April, the number of articles given prominence on the homepage of 12 leading news sites that mentioned climate change in their first 100 words had dropped to 32 from 562 in January, when the bushfire inferno was at its worst. COVID-19 counted 13,256 slots last month alone.

"Certainly coronavirus has reached unprecedented levels of media saturation, being mentioned in 80 per cent of stories some days," Conal Hanna, a Streem media analyst, said.
Taliban militants have killed a provincial police chief and two others in a roadside bomb attack in Khost Province in Afghanistans southeast, officials said on May 8.

Khost police chief Sayed Ahmad Babazai was leading an operation against the militants in the western part of the province when he was hit by the bomb late on May 7, Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said.

Babazais secretary and one of his bodyguards were also killed in the explosion, local officials confirmed. Another policeman was severely wounded in the incident.

The Taliban militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

It comes as the U.S. peace envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on May 7 that he had talked to Taliban leaders in Qatar about a "reduction in violence" and a range of other issues related to the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed in February.

The deal paves the way for the withdrawal of all international troops from Afghanistan within 14 months. In addition to an exchange of prisoners, it is intended to lead to peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

According to the quarterly report of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Taliban has not launched any attacks on international troops since the agreement, but have increased attacks on Afghan government forces.

Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:12:59|Editor: huaxia

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SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Melinda Gates on Thursday gave a mark of "D-minus" for the lack of national coordination when asked to grade the U.S. administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We need leadership at the national level. We lost two months almost now in terms of our national response," Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in an interview with U.S. news outlet Politico.

"In terms of our national response, we have governors who are stepping up. Luckily. But now we have fifty different homegrown state solutions instead of a national response," Gates was quoted as saying.

"If we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you'd be doing contact tracing," she said.

"And we would be able to start thinking about slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways. But we have a lack of a coordinated effort. That's just the truth, across the United States," she added.

"We should be putting far more money into testing and tracing ... to where we can quarantine in the United States," she noted.

Pointing to a huge need at the global level "for a vaccine, for medicines, for testing," Gates said "more is needed for the international response, which the U.S. really has been lacking in its response completely on the international front."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to support endeavors combating COVID-19 globally.

It has been cooperating with national governments and international organizations such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund in the battle against the virus. Enditem
The earlier highest was 38, when two clusters were in full bloom -- Jubilant Pharma and Nanjanagud.

BENGALURU: After two months of dodging, worst has hit Karnataka, which has recorded highest spike in a day, with 45 fresh cases of COVID-19 reporting on Friday.

The earlier highest was 38, when two clusters were in full bloom -- Jubilant Pharma and Nanjanagud -- after people contracted the virus through those who returned from Delhi after attending the Tablighi Jamaat congregation. Interestingly, both factors have died down in the State.

The shock has come three days after the State relaxed lockdown norms, much more than what was allowed. While opening liquor shops was allowed by Centre, Karnataka had moved ahead to relax many more areas to ensure that most of the business establishments opened. The social distancing norms had been neglected during these three days.

This is the highest ever cases recorded in a single day ever since the deadly virus entered the state on March 9. Officials are scared as this number is as per the mid day update and the numbers will go up to set a new high in the state by evening. The total tally in the state is at 750 with 30 deaths.

Of the 45 fresh cases, 14 cases are from Davangere, 12 from Uttara Kannada, 11 from Belagavi, 7 from Bangalore and one case from Ballari. Last week, Mandya and Davanagere shot into news as new hotspots. While Mandya came under control quickly, Davanagere continues to haunt the medical faculty.

Worst is Bhatkal, which was one of the first district to get a cluster attack, but successfully brought the situation under control. However, one person visiting Mangaluru turned the almost green zone back into red zone.

BBMP officials, who were demanding the central government to announce all wards free from corona positive cases to be declared as 'green zones', are giving a second thought over the proposal. Out of 7 fresh corona positive cases from Bengaluru, in 3 cases they have not been able to establish the source of infection.

As per sources, the 7 cases are from Shivajinagar ward, (which was sealed early this week after a housekeeping staff tested positive) and from the containment zone Padarayanapura, which was among the first to be declared containment zone and witness seal down on April 10.

After the fresh cases from Shivajinagar, shops in Commercial Street which were open for business were asked to shut immediately.

Among the infected is a 34-year-old pregnant woman, a resident of Padarayanapura who had visited the BBMP Maternity Hospital near Sirsi Circle, Chamrajpet. Those admitted in the hospital have been shifted and the medical staff who attended the pregnant woman have been advised self quarantine. The hospital is sealed and being sanitised.

The pregnant woman who is expecting to deliver soon is shifted to the dedicated Covid 19 facility at Victoria Hospital.

Four of seven positive cases from Bengaluru have one source of infection.

Fourteen cases from Davangere have their source of infection in 2 positive cases - one with a history of Influenza like Illness and a SARI patient who succumbed to Covid 19.

All the 12 fresh cases from Uttara Kannada have one source of infection, a case of Influenza like Illness.

Eleven cases have been reported from Belagavi and they were primary contacts of more than five positive cases.

Like the cases from Bengaluru, officials have not been able to detect the source of infection in the case reported from Ballari.
Madam Charity Akua Foriwaa Dwommoh, District Chief Executive for Tain in the Bono region has urged the public to adhere to the directives and strategies outlined by the president of the Republic to combat coronavirus in the Country.

She said the Akufo-Addo lead government has put a number of measures in place to curtail the COVID -19 pandemic in the country since the outbreak of the disease in the country.

According to the District Chief Executive, the Assembly has adopted several approaches to combat COVID-19 in the district.

She mentioned that the Assembly has mounted barriers at all entry points in the district and provided Veronica bucket at all the barriers to check temperatures of passengers entering the district and also wash their hands with soap.

The DCE disclosed this when she went round to monitor the activities at all the checkpoints in the district to get first-hand information on the activities and challenges at the checkpoints and find possible ways of addressing those challenges.

She, therefore, called on the general public and all other stakeholders to help complement government effort in the fight against COVID -19 in the country.
(Newser)  The US and Britain recognize May 8 as a special dateand now Berlin is joining them, even going so far as to make it a public holiday. Victory in Europe Day commemorates May 8, 1945, the day when German troops surrendered to the Soviets, effectively ending World War II. For years, the date was either dismissed in Germany or looked at as a shameful marker of Germany's defeat. But now, on the 75th anniversary of that day, Berlin has become the first German city to "acknowledge 8 May as a day of liberation" from Nazi rule, per the BBC. Those in support of making V-E Day an official holiday nationwide are especially concerned that the significance of this date is being lost on the younger generationsa fact made more worrisome in light of recent deadly attacks by the far right in different parts of the country, a German cultural expert tells the BBC.

story continues below

Not everyone is on board with the new positive spin. Deutsche Welle reports that right-wing lawmaker Alexander Gauland is against making May 8 "a happy day for Germany," noting that while "for the concentration camp inmates it was a day of liberation ... it was also a day of absolute defeat, a day of the loss of large parts of Germany and the loss of national autonomy." Still, the holiday will proceed. Due to the coronavirus, in-person events that had been planned have been nixed. But the Independent reports that the Kulturprojekte group has been holding a "digital theme week" through Friday that includes podcasts, augmented-reality apps, and an online exhibition. Recognizing the day as a holiday "offers the opportunity to send an unmistakable message against fascism and war and for peace," Kulturprojekte notes. (Read more Berlin stories.)
Zurich Insurance Group announced it has appointed Ralph Brand as global head of Casualty, Financial Lines and Cyber, and Chris Waterman as global head of Property, Marine and Technical Lines.

With these newly created roles, Zurich further simplifies its Underwriting function by aligning the shorter-tail first party coverages and the longer-tail third party liability coverages.

Commercial Insurance Chief Underwriting Officer Sierra Signorelli said: The insurance industry continues to evolve and having the ability to provide customers with tailor-made services, solutions and advice is critical for our future success. This new setup will enable us to combine our expertise and resources across business lines and make better and more efficient underwriting decisions for our customers.

Both Brand and Waterman are highly experienced insurance executives with more than 30 years of experience in regional and local roles, which will help deliver the support, consistency and portfolio oversight that is needed across their respective lines of business, said Zurich in a statement.

Ralph Brand joined Zurich in March 2012 as CEO of Zurich Germany. He left in 2016 to start his own business and rejoined Zurich in 2019 as global head of Casualty. Previously, he held various leadership roles at AIG and Allianz across Europe and in the United States. Brand is based in Zurich.

Chris Waterman joined Zurich in July 2016 in Singapore, where he most recently was Head of Commercial Lines Underwriting APAC. Before joining the company, he held various leadership roles at AIG, including head of Property & Energy in Japan. Waterman will relocate from Singapore to Zurich.

Accident & Health and Credit and Surety will continue to be led by Drazen Jaksic and Piergiorgio DIgnazio, respectively.

Source: Zurich Insurance

Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance
A staff member works on the production line making Lianhua Qingwen capsules at Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical Co in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

SHIJIAZHUANG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A key Chinese medicine against COVID-19 has been approved for sale in Singapore, according to the drug producer Yiling Pharmaceutical.

The pharmaceutical firm based in Shijiazhuang, capital of northern China's Hebei province, said Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has been officially listed as Chinese Proprietary Medicine by Singapore's Healthy Sciences Authority, which means the Chinese medicine has been granted market access to Singapore.

Clinical observation in designated COVID-19 hospitals in China has showed that traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) including the Lianhua Qingwen Capsule are effective in the treatment of over 90 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said TCM treatment has significantly lowered the proportion of patients whose conditions turn from mild to severe.

In vitro experiment has proved that Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has a weak inhibitory effect on the virus but has good repair effects on cell damages and inflammation caused by the novel coronavirus, renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan has said.

The use of the medicine has been detailed in China's Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia.

Wu Xiangjun, general manager of Yiling Pharmaceutical, said Lianhua Qingwen Capsule has gained market approvals by drug administrations in eight countries including Brazil, Romania, Thailand, Ecuador and Singapore.

The company has donated a total of 3.5 million yuan (about 500,000 U.S. dollars) worth of Lianhua Qingwen to Iraq, Italy and other countries to aid their efforts in fighting the pandemic, said Wu.

He said the company's production lines of the medicine are working at full speed to catch up with orders from home and abroad.
Four persons, including a two-year-old girl, tested positive for coronavirus infection in Himachal Pradesh on Friday, bringing the total number of infected cases in the state to 51, said officials.

Sirmaur district in the state, meanwhile, became coronavirus-free on the day as a patient from the district was cured and discharged, Himachal Additional Chief Secretary (Health) R D Dhiman said.

In Chamba, Deputy Commissioner Vivek Bhatia told PTI that a two-year-old girl tested positive on Friday. Her father, a driver, had been found infected on Wednesday, the DC said.

The official said she will be admitted to RPGMC in Kangra for treatment.

The driver from Khad Jota panchayat in Salooni subdivision had a recent travel history to Baddi in Solan district. Samples of all his contacts except that of his daughter tested negative, the DC added.

Besides a woman from Amb in Una district has tested positive, a district official said.

She had returned from Delhi a few days ago and was kept in institutional quarantine, he added.

Similarly a person from Kangra district has tested positive at Tanda's Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC), Kangra Superintendent of Police Vimukt Ranjan said.

The patient's details were not immediately available.

Earlier in the day, a 42-year-old man tested positive for the coronavirus in Hamirpur district, Deputy Commissioner Hairkesh Meena said.

The man from Bijhari town in Bijhari tehsil had returned to Hamirpur from Delhi on April 29, he added.

Hamirpur had become coronavirus-free on April 29 after the last two patients in the district tested negative for the infection.

Himachal Pradesh has now nine active cases with three in Chamba, two in Kangra, one each in Una, Hamirpur, Mandi and Shimla districts, according to officials.

While 35 people have recovered from the infection, three have died. Four people were shifted to other states for treatment.

The fatalities include a 70-year-old Delhi resident who stayed at a guest house of a factory in Baddi in Solan and died at PGIMER, Chandigarh on April 2.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Executive has urged the public to use "natural clothing items" to cover their mouths when in enclosed spaces rather than clinical masks

Speaking at yesterday's Covid-19 briefing, First Minister Arlene Foster explained that the recommendation was based on specialist advice.

She said it was agreed that the public should consider using coverings for short periods of time in enclosed spaces where social distancing was not possible.

Mrs Foster added, however: "It is important to differentiate between masks manufactured for a clinical setting and face coverings which are often home-made or natural clothing items used by individuals in day-to-day life.

"We are focused on face coverings. The Executive's view is based on our own specialist advice and is consistent with the position of Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), which has concluded that, on balance, there is enough evidence to support the recommendation of community use of cloth face masks for short periods in enclosed spaces where social distancing is not possible."

Health Minister Robin Swann said that, in practice, the new guidance would translate into people wearing coverings while shopping or while travelling on buses and trains, for example.

He added that using face masks in no way reduced the need for social distancing or regular hand-washing.

"It is agreed that we recommend that members of the public consider the use of face coverings for short periods in enclosed spaces where social distancing is not possible," Mr Swann said.

"While evidence on the overall protection provided by face coverings is not conclusive, on balance it is sufficient to recommend that members of the public consider using them in particular circumstances. In practice, these circumstances will largely relate to public transport and retail environments.

"Their use will not be mandatory. Crucially, face coverings must not lead to any false sense of security about the level of protection provided.

"It is essential that everyone continues to practise social distancing as much as humanly possible, wash their hands thoroughly throughout the day and 'catch it, kill it, bin it' when they sneeze or cough.

"That's still the best way to protect yourself and others from Covid-19."

Earlier this month DUP leader Mrs Foster described the medical case for using face masks in public as "pretty weak".

She accepted, however, that they could potentially provide added reassurance to people venturing out when restrictions on movement begin to ease.

At the time, Mrs Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said the Executive was due to hold further discussions on whether it should issue an official advisory notice on the use of face coverings.

Northern Ireland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said last month that any benefit from wearing face masks would be "marginal at the very least".

Health Minister Mr Swann previously warned that any change in advice about the wearing of face masks in could create to a false sense of security.

However, the Scottish Government has recommended the wearing of face coverings in "limited circumstances".
A Tesla logo is seen at a groundbreaking ceremony of Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory in Shanghai

Reuters

Tesla paused production at its Shanghai factory, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

The plant was supposed to resume following a holiday that ended May 5.

With Fremont, California also halted because of the coronavirus, Tesla's vehicle production is effectively brought to zero.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla has abruptly halted production at its Shanghai factory, Bloomberg News reported Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.

Tesla did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to Bloomberg, many workers were supposed to return Wednesday following a national holiday which spanned May 1 through May 5, but were told by Tesla to extend the break and return on May 9. The reason for the shift was thanks to part shortages, according to a local tech site cited by Bloomberg. In a statement to Bloomberg, Tesla said it was conducting normal maintenance and used the holiday break to do so.

With its Fremont, California idled due to the coronavirus, the shutdown in Shanghai  which only recently re-opened from a similar pandemic stoppage  effectively means Tesla is producing no vehicles.

Tesla posted a surprise profit in the first quarter in April, but the shutdowns only briefly affected the three-month period ended March 31. Executives warned that the work stoppages could be a drag on Tesla's financial performance.

"The extended shutdown in Fremont will have an impact on our near-term financial performance, and we will need to work through how quickly we'll be able to ramp production to prior levels," CEO Elon Musk said on a conference call on April 29. He also called the shutdowns, designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, antithetical to freedom and has lambasted them on Twitter.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that Tesla is preparing to restart some operations at its Fremont factory, potentially breaking local shelter-in-place rules, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Read the original article on Business Insider
PHILADELPHIA, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- vybe urgent care, with 11 centers in the greater Philadelphia market, is pleased to offer COVID-19 serological antibody testing to help patients determine if they've already been exposed to the coronavirus. The COVID-19 serum antibody test is used to detect the presence of antibodies, not to diagnose active infection. A positive result indicates that the individual has had exposure to COVID-19. Some people infected with COVID-19 will never exhibit symptoms but will have detectable antibodies.

vybe offers COVID-19 antibody testing to tell patients whether they've been previously infected with coronavirus. COVID-19 testing begins with a telemedicine visit, allowing a vybe clinician to recommend the test that best meets the patient's needs.

With the addition of antibody testing, vybe is now offering patients two options for coronavirus testing:

PCR Diagnostic test (nasal swab) - A viral diagnostic test that tells sick or exposed patients they have an active COVID-19 infection. Since those currently infected can spread the virus, knowing their status helps patients to take proper health precautions for themselves and the community.

- A viral diagnostic test that tells sick or exposed patients they have an active COVID-19 infection. Since those currently infected can spread the virus, knowing their status helps patients to take proper health precautions for themselves and the community. Coronavirus antibody test (blood test) - An antibody test tells patients who have no current symptoms whether they've been previously infected with coronavirus. Although vybe can perform this test at any time, it can take 1-3 weeks for antibodies to be fully detectable after an infection.

The serology antibody testing offered by vybe urgent care differs from "finger prick" blood tests because a laboratory analyzes the blood sample for different types of antibodies that result after exposure to COVID-19. This test has been authorized by the FDA under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

"We've completed thousands of PCR tests for suspected COVID-19 patients. Knowing the high rate of asymptomatic individuals, we're pleased to now offer this highly accurate antibody test to patients who believe they may have been infected," said Peter Hotz, vybe urgent care's president and CEO. "We recognize how important these results are for patient's peace of mind and for understanding community health as we gradually return to work and other activities in the greater Philadelphia region. We've been actively talking with employers about safe return-to-work and business continuity programs and the proper role of testing in these initiatives."

All vybe's COVID-19 testing begins with a telemedicine visit, allowing a vybe clinician to recommend the test that best meets a patient's needs. For patients experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or who have potentially been exposed to someone who has tested positive, a visit may include a recommendation for a curbside swab test. Patients who meet criteria for the antibody test will go into a vybe center for a blood draw after the virtual visit is complete.

"With most viruses, the presence of antibodies would suggest some degree of immunity. We do not yet know if having antibodies to the coronavirus can protect someone from reinfection or how long that protection might last," said Dr. Geoff Winkley, vybe's medical director. "Still, knowing their status may help patients make better informed decisions as we learn more about COVID-19."

vybe urgent care locations remain open and see patients safely through advance online check-in and pre-entry coronavirus screening. Patients are escorted from the front door to a sterile exam room without the risk of contact with other sick patients. vybe urgent care delivers compassionate care for a wide range of ailments, including illnesses, injuries, stitches, x-rays, physical exams, vaccinations and lab testing, including COVID-19.

To learn more about vybe's video visits, COVID-19 testing and to see current hours, visit vybe.care/video-visits .

About vybe

vybe urgent care is Philadelphia's leading independent urgent care provider delivering care to adults and children in Philadelphia, Delaware, and Bucks Counties. vybe's vision is that everyone deserves great care, which is driving the expansion of high-quality care and unparalleled patient service. Open 7 days a week, vybe delivers an affordable and convenient alternative to long emergency room wait times and the limited hours of family physicians. In addition to welcoming walk-ins, vybe offers video visits for those who wish to have their visit take place from their home or office. vybe accepts major insurance plans and provides a comprehensive range of urgent care services such as illness and injury treatment, digital x-rays, EKG, lab testing, physicals, immunizations, and occupational medicine. Find the medical care you need with the convenience you want at vybe urgent care .

Media Contact:

Brian Gould, VP Marketing

215-999-6060

[email protected]

SOURCE vybe urgent care

Related Links

http://www.vybe.care


With COVID-19 disrupting the hospitality space so intensely, we are left wondering what the landscape will look like as we emerge on the other side of this pandemic. With hotels having to shut their doors, airlines flying mostly empty planes, and travel at a near standstill, the only silver lining is the time we now have to take a step back, measure the effectiveness of our previous digital efforts, and take the time to make a plan moving forward.
LG Polymers on Friday said there was no fresh gas leak at its Visakhapatnam plant and it has requested authorities to evacuate local residents living in the vicinity of the plant as a precautionary measure.

As many as 11 people died and around 1,000 were affected by styrene gas leak at the plant on Thursday early morning.

"We would like to clarify that the situation at the plant is currently under control and media reports of a second leak are incorrect," LG Polymers said in a statement.

The company also said that all necessary measures were being used to keep the temperatures under control. Styrene gas had leaked from a tank at the plant.

"We have requested authorities for evacuation of residents as a precautionary measure," LG Polymers said.

The company was working closely with the authorities to contain the damage and ensure the safety and health of all local residents and employees, it added.

LG Polymers is part of South Korea-based chaebol LG.

In a report submitted to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, thedistrict administrationsaid that it might take 18-24 hours for the remaining vapour to polymerise and turn safe.

Over 60 per cent of the styrene vapour that leaked from the tank has polymerised so far and all chemical tanks at the plant are safe, District Collector V Vinay Chand said on Friday.

"Styrene monomer is normally in a liquid state and is safe below a temperature of 20 degree celsius. But because of the malfunctioning of the refrigeration unit, the chemical started gasifying," the collector said on Thursday quoting a preliminary report by the Factories Department.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Govt mulls easing more curbs

BANGKOK: Shopping malls and large retail outlets selling construction materials will be allowed to reopen as lockdown measures are eased further on May 17 if there is no surge in new infections.

COVID-19health

By Bangkok Post

Friday 8 May 2020, 09:17AM

A train is about to depart Siam Station. City inspectors were roped in to help keep order and assist commuters at the BTS station. Photo: Nutthawat Wicheanbut / Bangkok Post

China and South Korea will also be the first countries to be removed from a list of the governments dangerous communicable disease zones.

The issues were discussed at a meeting of the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Thursday (May 7), reports the Bangkok Post.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1914360/govt-mulls-easing-more-curbs

Gen Prayut stressed that measures to assist people must be done with care and must not overlook anyone affected.

Taweesilp Visanuyothin, the CCSA spokesman, said the centre will gather opinions about the next round of disease control relaxation from today until next Tuesday and draft the relaxation measures next Thursday. The next stage of relaxation will begin on May 17 unless the number of new COVID-19 cases soars,| he said.

After the first round of relaxation and reopening of small premises on Sunday, the second round of easing and reopening of bigger premises will depend on cooperation from the public and operators.

If the situation is brought under control, shopping malls will be allowed to reopen. If each business can maintain [strict social distancing] measures, malls and other businesses can also resume operations. However, this also depends on cooperation from the people, Dr Taweesilp said.

Sukhum Karnchanapimai, permanent secretary for public health, said large retail outlets selling construction materials and furniture may also be allowed to reopen in the next stage because buildings and houses in several provinces have been destroyed and damaged by natural disasters and their owners badly need to buy new materials.

Meanwhile, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration will meet the Public Health Ministry today (May 8) to determine which businesses will be allowed to reopen in the second stage of easing.

Moreover, the CCSA agreed with a proposal by Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul that countries where the COVID-19 crisis has eased can be removed from the governments list of dangerous communicable disease zones. Mr Anutin told the meeting the proposed de-listing will help normalise Thailands relations with them.

However, it was also agreed that the de-listing process must be gradual and that people from those de-listed countries will not be allowed to enter Thailand straight away.

The CCSA will need to discuss necessary measures to handle them and prevent the spread of imported infections, Dr Taweesilp said.

The CCSA agreed to maintain restrictions on Thai returnees and efforts to curb crowded gatherings which are the main factors in COVID-19 infections in the country. Most local infection cases in the country came from infected returnees and people in close contact with them, he said.

COVID-19 is spreading in other countries and those that ease their disease-control measures experience a new wave of infections, Dr Taweesilp added.

The first group allowed to return home will be those who are ill, stranded at airports or have expired visas, as well as those who are tourists stranded in other countries. The next group will be monks on pilgrimages, students and laid-off workers, he said.

Meanwhile, the CCSA on Thursday reported three new coronavirus cases, all Thais, bringing the total in Thailand to 2,992. No additional deaths were reported, leaving the accumulated toll at 55.

Dr Taweesilp said one new case was a Thai housewife aged 59 in the southern province of Yala. The two other cases were Thai men, workers aged 46 and 51, who had returned from Kazakhstan.
American Electric Power Company, Inc. (NYSE:AEP) just released its latest quarterly report and things are not looking great. It looks like a weak result overall, with both revenues and earnings falling well short of analyst predictions. Revenues of US$3.7b missed by 13%, and statutory earnings per share of US$1.00 fell short of forecasts by 9.6%. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.

View our latest analysis for American Electric Power Company

NYSE:AEP Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus from American Electric Power Company's nine analysts is for revenues of US$16.2b in 2020, which would reflect a satisfactory 6.4% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to expand 14% to US$4.25. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$16.6b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$4.30 in 2020. The consensus seems maybe a little more pessimistic, trimming their revenue forecasts after the latest results even though there was no change to its EPS estimates.

The consensus has reconfirmed its price target of US$91.11, showing that the analysts don't expect weaker sales expectations next year to have a material impact on American Electric Power Company's market value. Fixating on a single price target can be unwise though, since the consensus target is effectively the average of analyst price targets. As a result, some investors like to look at the range of estimates to see if there are any diverging opinions on the company's valuation. There are some variant perceptions on American Electric Power Company, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$107 and the most bearish at US$76.00 per share. Analysts definitely have varying views on the business, but the spread of estimates is not wide enough in our view to suggest that extreme outcomes could await American Electric Power Company shareholders.

Story continues

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the American Electric Power Company's past performance and to peers in the same industry. For example, we noticed that American Electric Power Company's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with revenues forecast to grow 6.4%, well above its historical decline of 1.0% a year over the past five years. Compare this against analyst estimates for the wider industry, which suggest that (in aggregate) industry revenues are expected to grow 3.1% next year. Not only are American Electric Power Company's revenues expected to improve, it seems that the analysts are also expecting it to grow faster than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most obvious conclusion is that there's been no major change in the business' prospects in recent times, with the analysts holding their earnings forecasts steady, in line with previous estimates. They also downgraded their revenue estimates, although industry data suggests that American Electric Power Company's revenues are expected to grow faster than the wider industry. Yet - earnings are more important to the intrinsic value of the business. The consensus price target held steady at US$91.11, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

With that in mind, we wouldn't be too quick to come to a conclusion on American Electric Power Company. Long-term earnings power is much more important than next year's profits. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for American Electric Power Company going out to 2022, and you can see them free on our platform here..

Before you take the next step you should know about the 2 warning signs for American Electric Power Company (1 can't be ignored!) that we have uncovered.

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.
Ahmedabad: Cadila Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest privately held pharma companies in the country, shut down its formulations manufacturing plant in Ahmedabad on Thursday after more than two dozen of its employees tested positive for the new coronavirus.

A senior government official said late on Thursday that five employees had tested positive for COVID-19 six days back, while 21 others tested positive this week.

"We had collected samples of 30 employees of Cadila on May 5, and 21 of the samples returned positive a day later," said Arun Mahesh Babu, the District Development Officer of Ahmedabad.

He added the plant was ordered to be shut down on Thursday, 95 employees had been quarantined and sanitisation work at the site had begun.

The incident comes just days after India began to ease some of its lockdown restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the new coronavirus. Ahmedabad, however, is one of the more badly affected cities in India and has moved to tighten restrictions this week.

In a statement, Cadila Pharmaceuticals said, "Recently, 26 of our employees from our Dholka manufacturing facility tested positive for COVID-19. Following this, we have closed our operations on our own."

The company also said it is cooperating with the local administration to ensure the safety and security of its facility and surroundings.

Besides Dholka, Cadila Pharmaceuticals has manufacturing facilities in other parts of India and in Ethiopia. The company is a major producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) - the key ingredients used in making a drug.
Benalmadena town hall has strengthened its guarantee to supply basic needs to families at risk during the coronavirus crisis by signing an agreement with the Benalmadena branch of the Red Cross. The town hall initiated a 60,000 euro grant to provide the organisation with means for the procurement of food, hygiene, household cleaning and health products.

The initiative, which was backed by the Ministry of Social Rights, is designed to ensure immediate attention to vulnerable people whose needs have been increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those benefiting from the programme are chosen through a technical prescription report prepared by the Social Welfare Department.

"As a government team we enhance collaboration with the associations of the Third Sector to improve coordination and efficiency in the care of the most vulnerable sectors of the Benalmadena society. Social services will be able to concentrate greater efforts on processing the various aid available to meet the exceptional, social and humanitarian needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic," Mayor of Benalmadena Victor Navas explained.

The Red Cross has also signed a new collaborative agreement with the Maskom supermarket chain. The agreement aims to meet the demand for aid by the most disadvantaged social sectors during the health crisis in Benalmadena. The online supermarket has issued a bank account number (ES04 2100 8641 6102 0014 5073) for cash donations. All funds will be donated to the Benalmadena Red Cross and used to purchase food and essential products, which will be delivered by Civil Protection volunteers.

President of Benalmadena Red Cross Paqui Lopez said, "The Spanish Red Cross will always be available to the people of Benalmadena. We aim to help in every way we can during this health emergency situation."
Two months apart, without knowing they were doing so, Ray and Barbara Dalio described how they helped each other understand poverty in Connecticut, the richest state, where they are comfortably the richest residents.

The questions the Greenwich couple asked each other go a long way toward explaining why they have not only stayed, but raised the Nutmeg flag ever-higher  at a time when other uber-wealthy state residents have exited for sunnier, lower-tax places.

Those questions also point to why the Dalios are stepping up their activities in Connecticut in the coronavirus crisis.

Barbara Dalio immigrated to New York from Madrid in her 20s, more than 40 years ago. She met Ray, who had grown up in a middle-class neighborhood in Queens, son of a jazz musician. They married, moved to Connecticut, raised four sons and he built the worlds largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates in Westport.

I would ask Ray, Whats going on, why do we have this poverty? she said in a conversation she and I had on March 2, just before the pandemic gripped Connecticut and the nation.

That led her, a dozen years ago, after their youngest son was grown, to launch a long effort to boost engagement by students in the lowest-income, lowest-performing schools. She dove in, hoping to help educators make a difference.

She would come home and describe it and I didnt have any window into it, Ray Dalio said in late April, when the three of us talked  over Zoom, not in person unfortunately  about her sense of place, his views on where the world is heading and why their values keep them in Connecticut.

He had that window growing up in New York. In recent times, Barbara was the conduit. Shes still at it, as the driving force behind the Partnership for Connecticut, with $100 million commitment from the Dalios over five years and an equal amount from the state, aimed at helping the 33 most challenged school systems.

And both of them have doubled down on Connecticut despite the states financial woes, or maybe because of that  all the more now that coronavirus has struck, now that were in a deep recession.

Barbara and I share similar values and the most important things for us are meaningful relationships and our community, Ray said, describing two topics central to his 2017 book, Principles: Life and Work.

Connecticut is our home

In all, donations through Dalio Philanthropies in Connecticut, mostly for education led by Barbara Dalio, now push $45 million a year  and a lot of legwork to go along with those checks. Theyve stepped up their in-state giving but they and their consultants peg the total at $166 million since 2004, to many causes.

The long list includes $2.3 million to the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; $2.5 million to the Carver Foundation of Norwalk for middle school youth development; and $10.5 million for a project to strengthen youth organizations in Stamford and Hartford.

This years total includes their $20 million partnership installment, plus another $16 million for education programs not in the partnership, the Dalios told me.

For coronavirus, their giving includes $3 million for child care for first-responders through a Hartford area agency; and $1 million to two food banks. And it includes Rays help  in money and connections  in bringing supplies from China to fight COVID-19.

Later this month, just in time for schools to not reopen, the first 17,000 Dell laptops bought by the partnership will land in the hands of some of the states neediest and at-risk high school students. Another 43,000 laptops, loaded with software, should arrive by summer.

Outside of the partnership, theyre looking for online learning programs, which theyll pay for, to go along with the laptops  obviously a need with new urgency in the crisis.

This was the first time the Dalios have spoken in depth with a journalist about their roles in their financially troubled home state. Their message is that as global as Ray Dalios reach has been  and it has, from CNBC to China to Davos  Connecticut is the place they care the most about.

Giving in Connecticut represents nearly a third of the total amount they will donate worldwide this year.

We just feel a sense that Connecticut is our home and I think it has been very good with us, Barbara Dalio said in the recent conversation. We raised our kids here and we always felt that it was a great state and great community and we really felt a sense of appreciation and obligations towards it.

The machine and the community

In some ways of looking at it, conditions are in place for a couple of the Dalios age and means to move elsewhere.

Ray Dalio is transforming the ownership structure and management at Bridgewater, which he founded in 1975. Hes still co-chairman and co-chief investment officer but no longer holds the CEO title. That business has brought the Dalios a net worth of $18.7 billion as of last fall, according to a guess by Forbes.

He is 70, within a year of the age when two other Greenwich billionaires, Dean Metropoulos and Thomas Peterffy, both said farewell to Connecticut as residents four years ago, making their displeasure over the state of the state known to elected officials.

The Dalios arent weighing in publicly about Connecticut taxes, politics or debates such as tolls and public employee pension reform. They do talk about the states economic funk in a general way.

To me if youre part of a community with people you care about and theyre hurting, its important to help rather than leave, Ray Dalio said. When the conditions are worse for some in Connecticut, we want to step in and help rather than leave.

He described an esprit de corps in the states struggles, and said, I really believe that going through good and bad times together provides the greatest rewards. ... Relationships get tested by bad times.

That, too, is part of the philosophy Dalio has articulated in his writings, which often appear first on LinkedIn, and which grow out of the management methods he installed at Bridgewater. That includes a belief that reality, such as financial conditions, operates as a machine that can be understood; Ray Dalio has described himself as a mechanic but has also talked about humanitys power...to get to higher levels of well-being.

Most famously, the business axioms include radical transparency, in which dissent is not just allowed but required. Every participant in a meeting evaluates all the others, and those metrics form a database thats deployed to guide teams at Bridgewater.

Less transparent is whether the Dalios would accept and even welcome higher taxes on the highest income earners as a way of filling the states perpetual budget gaps, which were shrinking but now threaten to bounce back above the $2 billion-a-year level.

They signed The Giving Pledge, joining more than 200 super-rich, mostly billionaires, who promised to give away at least half their wealth in their lifetimes, or upon their deaths. And in making themselves leading philanthropists for in-state causes, and building up Bridgewater as an almost entirely Connecticut operation with 1,500 employees, many of them spectacularly paid, the Dalios have spoken.

We have the resources, we consider ourselves blessed and we consider ourselves part of this community, he said. In a good community everybody brings what they can. When we look at the other people and what theyre bringing  the teachers that Barbara works with and so on  we respect them a lotAnd we think its important to do what we can. Different people with different resources, so we bring what we have.

A fork in the road

Connecticut, global in finance, insurance, education, health care and manufacturing, sits as a fulcrum of what Ray Dalio calls, as the title of his new book, The Changing World Order. He places American prosperity and influence in the context of great empires of the past, with the question of where were heading.

Coronavirus adds punctuation.

I think were at a defining moment over the next three years, whether were going to have an attitude that were helping each other, pitching in and being understanding and empathetic with each other, or whether are going to fight each other for what we want or need, Dalio said.

By distilling the core problem to a human question of understanding and empathy, hes saying why he and Barbara have committed to their home state of four decades. At every level its about community and relationships.

Oh, and resources. Hes not predicting markets publicly but he is talking about the battles.

Theres the virus and there is the economy and its important not to confuse the two. I view this as an economic tsunami, and then as the virus recedes, you have the economic damage. With that economic damage there will be income and balance sheet holes....the government will not be able to rectify the balance sheets and the income statements of everyone.

The result: What will happen will be a much slower recovery than people expect, he said.

One reason: The established order of free-flowing goods and capital is breaking down.

Now were in transition from being interconnected to being self-sufficient in a still interconnected world. That adjustment process is going to be very painful. Its going to make everyone and everything less efficient, he said.

If he sounds pessimistic, hes not  at least when it comes to whether coronavirus makes us better or worse in the long run.

I cant tell you which fork in the road were going to take, he said. Ive seen fabulous stuff. Ive seen people contribute in all ways. Ive seen people run to the fire and help, and Ive seen enormous creativity and contributions by all different people. That has made me feel great....And then Ive also seen resentments and anger and even distortions in the media that fuels anger, so I honestly dont know.

Restructuring of debt and of the whole system is inevitable. My hope is that we do it in a bipartisan, mutually considerate way.

Im following Barbaras lead

The Dalio family came into my consciousness as a force of ideas in December 2007, when, as an editor, I asked a reporter to write about an odd advertisement they had produced in newspapers around the country.

The ad asked people to give gifts of charitable donations to friends and family, rather than more stuff that our loved ones might not want. The tagline: Lets redefine Christmas. By putting more Thanksgiving in it.

One of Ray and Barbara Dalios four sons, then 23, spoke about the familys commitment to charity. At that moment heading into the Great Recession, Bridgewater was already said to be the worlds largest hedge fund and his net worth was already in the billions, according to Forbes.

He anticipated the recession with warnings about the debt bubble. Bridgewater did well in the downturn, and Rays dispatches became Wall Street gospel in the way of an earlier Connecticut business titan, Harry J. Gray, who built United Technologies Corp. in the 70s and wrote op-eds in the New York Times titled Gray Matter.

Cut to the present; with so much philosophy of life floating around, and with thousands of impressionable youths in the picture through the couples educational philanthropy, I asked whether he wants his principles to be part of the school and community programs. He rebuffed that suggestion.

Barbara is the leader in most of these things in Connecticut, Im following Barbaras lead. People dont need to be preached at as to how they live their lives, he said. I only put it out there if people want to take it.Thats true around the world and especially in Connecticut.

That also applies to elections. Theyve made political donations in the past, but rarely and not recently. I am totally out of politics in Connecticut, he said.

Or anywhere, Barbara Dalio added.

Two state issues

The Dalios and the current and previous Connecticut governors have come under fire for two policy issues. The first was a 2016 state package of grants and loans for Bridgewater totaling $22 million under former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, who made the hedge fund one of his First Five large employers with targeted aid.

The incentives were for hiring and training, and to support hundreds of millions of dollars in physical improvements at Bridgewaters wooded campus in Westport and other offices. Republicans howled that spending millions on a business that was, in essence, printing money made little sense for a teetering state.

It was the best money Malloy ever spent, I argued at the time and still believe. No one knows publicly what Bridgewater and the Dalios are worth to the state in tax revenues but even a low estimate makes that $22 million look tiny.

New York and New Jersey, not to mention Florida, undoubtedly offered many times that amount, unsolicited, and if the Dalios have stepped up their commitment to Connecticut, maybe that gesture by Malloy helped seal it. They arent commenting.

As a reminder, General Electric at the time was busy moving its headquarters from Fairfield to Boston and dismantling its GE Capital division, costing Connecticut thousands of jobs.

The second issue was that the Partnership for Connecticut, the $200 million joint effort, was created as exempt under Freedom of Information and state ethics rules under Gov. Ned Lamont, a fellow Greenwicher. Lawmakers in both parties fought to change that right up until coronavirus shut down the debate two months ago.

Since then, the partnership has ordered those laptops at a speed that no government agency could, and has run its board meetings and finances transparently.

Barbara Dalio explained to me in March that the structure was key for reaching out to families confidentially. When they come and were discussing the different issues they might have, it would be very difficult, especially when youre dealing with mental issues, she said, to operate under government rules.

The structure also makes outside fundraising possible. It certainly didnt resonate with the public as an issue in town hall-style meetings Barbara Dalio started to convene before the coronavirus hit.

Some people in public education believe the answers should come from a purely public system. Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona isnt one of them. Connecticuts glaring achievement disparities is a problem that we must confront boldly, he said in a written statement, calling the Dalios support critical as we look to equalize access and opportunity.

He added, I have seen firsthand how their contributions benefit students ability to thrive in school.

Billionaires are no different

No place in America highlights the divide between rich and poor as starkly as Connecticut. Barbara Dalio doesnt have to drive far from Greenwich to reach some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country.

And Ray Dalio calls income inequality a dire emergency that threatens growth and stability.

Wait, dont they exemplify the divide? His unimaginable wealth was made in financial transactions, not in, say, the invention of the smart phone or an online retail empire  so its harder to understand as a product or service.

He rejects the irony.

Most people that I know who are very wealthy became wealthy because they had a passion for something that they were good at and happened to pay well, so they ended up making a lot of money, he said. Its not good to stereotype any group of people as being bad whether they are rich or poor, or are of any race, nationality or gender. Billionaires are no different.

I ask Dalio, a Harvard Business School graduate, whether his complex thinking comes from his fathers jazz music on complex instruments. He had a jazz-like personality, and I was around creative improv, and I loved that, he said. He tried to teach me to play the clarinet and that didnt go well.

In a sense, it did go well. And it has gone well for Connecticut. Ray Dalio says he cant speak for Bridgewater anymore, but said, Im speaking for the majority of people at Bridgewater and saying that they love Connecticut and Id expect Bridgewater to stay here as long as Connecticut remains a good place to be.

What, for them, makes this a good place beyond proximity to New York and physical comfort?

My goal is meaningful work and meaningful relationships. So for me and for Barbara we think meaningful relationships are the greatest rewards in life.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
As the threat of COVID-19 grew, almost overnight organizations moved to a virtual work environment to help flatten the curve. Now that those organizations and their employees have had some time to adjust to the new normal, the focus needs to turn to jump-starting an economy that has been largely paralyzed by the virus. And that means getting people back to their places of work.

The question isnt when but rather how this can be done in a manner that mitigates risk of a resurgence, protects our most vulnerable and doesnt overwhelm our health-care system.

Employers will follow the advice of public health authorities, but dont expect that to come in the form of an all-clear that employees can suddenly return to work. Its going to be more complicated and nuanced than that for a number of reasons.

Schools and daycares may remain closed for a longer period of time, affecting working parents. Personal protective equipment (PPE) will likely remain in short supply, and will be prioritized for front-line health-care workers, and rightly so.

A COVID-19 vaccine may not come for a while, posing the distinct possibility of a second wave, as we saw in Toronto with SARS. There could still be a shortage of supplies, including ventilators, for intensive care units at some hospitals.

Testing for the virus may not be as widespread as it needs to be. Antibody testing for immunity is still in the very early stages, which could lead to unsuspecting asymptomatic carriers of the virus infecting their co-workers. Contact tracing is easier said than done.

Public transit may not have the capacity to handle passenger volume while enforcing physical distancing. Workers themselves may fear returning to the physical workplace, and some employers do not have employee-assistance supports in place that might help them navigate those emotions.

All of this is to say that planning a return to work is going to be complicated for employers. The return will be gradual, and physical distancing will be a priority.

At first, organizations should extend their work-from-home policies until employees are comfortable returning to their desks. Scheduling will become more complex, as the work week may shift to four days from five.

Organizations will have to effectively monitor their employees locations and identify potential exposure to co-workers. Special accommodations will have to be made so those who are infected or at higher risk (older workers and those with underlying health conditions) can continue to stay home.

Employees themselves will have to conduct daily self-assessments before going to work. If they are sick, they will be obligated to notify their employer and stay home. Safe hygiene at home and at work will be crucial.

There will be no travelling to attend conferences, especially internationally. Those who do travel will have to follow public health guidelines regarding isolation following travel.

In the short term, the physical workplace itself is going to have to change, and it will be far different. Physical distancing is going to be the norm, necessitating a number of changes. Workstations may have to be moved apart, or every second workstation left vacant. Cleaning and disinfecting will have to be done more thoroughly and frequently than ever before.

Common areas, including conference rooms and cafeterias, will be closed, and there will be no in-person meetings of more than two or three people.

Hand sanitizer and PPE, including masks and gloves, will have to be made available in adequate quantities for all employees coming to work, and wearing PPE may be mandatory.

Visitors will be restricted from entering an organizations premises, and employee screening and testing upon arrival may become the norm, presenting challenges for employers and anxiety for employees.

Some organizations may conclude that their employees have been as productive working from home and can continue doing so. Benefits may include saving on commercial real estate costs, a reduction in a companys carbon footprint and greater flexibility and better work-life balance for employees.

Clearly, we need to jump-start the economy and get employees back to work. At the same time, all organizations must plan accordingly and consider their responsibilities not only to employees, customers and shareholders, but to society as a whole.
Boris Johnsons most senior aide is facing fresh allegations he flouted lockdown rules by taking a sightseeing trip on Easter Sunday.

The prime minister is facing mounting calls to sack Dominic Cummings amid claims he made several trips to see his family in County Durham, while the country was being told to stay at home.

Ministers vociferously defended Mr Cummings after it emerged he had made the 260-mile journey, insisting he had obeyed the rules by staying in one place while there.

However, an eyewitness told The Observer and the Sunday Mirror he had seen Mr Cummings on 12 April, 30 miles from Durham in Barnard Castle.

Another eyewitness said they saw the prime ministers most trusted aide in Durham on 19 April, days after he had been photographed returning to Downing Street.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 30 December 2021 Sunrise at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 29 December 2021 The Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, looks at Becket, a six month old red-billed chough as he visits Wildwood Wildlife Park in Kent on the anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket PA UK news in pictures 28 December 2021 Troops of the Household Cavalry are seen reflected in a puddle during the changing of the Queens Life Guard, on Horse Guards Parade, in central London PA UK news in pictures 27 December 2021 A pedestrian walks past a winter sale sign outside a John Lewis store on Oxford street in London Getty UK news in pictures 26 December 2021 Riders take their bikes through the snow near Castleside, County Durham PA UK news in pictures 25 December 2021 Patrick Corkery wears a santa hat and beard as waves crash over him at Forty Foot near Dublin during a Christmas Day dip PA UK news in pictures 24 December 2021 People stand inside Kings Cross Station on Christmas Eve in London Reuters UK news in pictures 23 December 2021 Christmas shoppers fill the car park at Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester PA UK news in pictures 22 December 2021 The sun rises behind the stones as people gather for the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Getty UK news in pictures 21 December 2021 People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh to mark the solstice and to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year PA UK news in pictures 20 December 2021 An auction employee displays poultry to buyers and sellers attending the Christmas Poultry Sale at York Auction Centre in Murton PA UK news in pictures 19 December 2021 Joao Moutinho of Wolverhampton Wanderers looks on during the Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea at Molineux Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 December 2021 Freight lorries queuing at the port of Dover in Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 December 2021 Newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, bursts 'Boris' bubble' held by colleague Tim Farron, as she celebrates following her victory in the North Shropshire by-election PA UK news in pictures 16 December 2021 Brussels sprouts are harvested by workers as they prepare for the busy Christmas period near Boston in Lincolnshire PA UK news in pictures 15 December 2021 Lewis Hamilton is made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 14 December 2021 The Royal Liver Buildings surrounded by early morning fog in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 13 December 2021 People queue outside a walk-in Covid-19 vaccination centre at St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster Getty Images UK news in pictures 12 December 2021 People take part in the Big Leeds Santa Dash in Roundhay Park, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 11 December 2021 People arrive at a Covid-19 vaccination centre at Elland Road in Leeds, PA UK news in pictures 10 December 2021 Stella Moris speaks to the media after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA UK news in pictures 9 December 2021 Camels are lead around Salisbury Cathedral during a rehearsal for the Christmas Eve Service PA UK news in pictures 8 December 2021 Margaret Keenan and Nurse May Parsons, a year after Margaret was the first person in the UK to receive the Pfizer vaccine PA UK news in pictures 7 December 2021 Snowfall in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire as Storm Barra hits the UK with disruptive winds, heavy rain and snow PA UK news in pictures 6 December 2021 A person tries to avoid sea spray on New Brighton promenade in Wallasey as the UK readies for the arrival of Storm Barra Getty UK news in pictures 5 December 2021 People release balloons during a tribute to six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes outside Emma Tustin's former address in Solihull, West Midlands, where he was murdered by his stepmother PA UK news in pictures 4 December 2021 People walk through a Christmas market in Trafalgar Square Reuters UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 2 December 2021 Duchess of Cambridge inspects a Faberge egg at the Victoria and Albert Museum Getty UK news in pictures 1 December 2021 Meerkats at London Zoo with an advent calendar PA UK news in pictures 30 November 2021 Workers put the finishing touches to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree ahead of the lighting ceremony later in the week PA UK news in pictures 29 November 2021 Home Secretary Priti Patel is greeted by a police dog at a special memorial service for Met Police Sergeant Matiu Ratana Getty UK news in pictures 28 November 2021 Riyad Mahrez of Manchester City battles for possession with Aaron Cresswell of West Ham United during a match at the Etihad during snow Manchester City/Getty UK news in pictures 27 November 2021 Residents clear branches from a fallen tree in Birkenhead, north west England as Storm Arwen triggered a rare red weather warning AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 An aerial picture shows a worker using a quad bike and trailer to transport freshly harvested trees at Pimms Christmas Tree farm in Matfield, southeast England AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 26 November 2021 A shopper browses Christmas trees for sale at Pines and Needles in Dulwich, London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 November 2021 A murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings fly over a field at dusk in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border PA UK news in pictures 3 December 2021 A pedestrian carries a dog as they dodge shoppers on Oxford Street in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 24 November 2021 Migrants are helped ashore from a RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) lifeboat at a beach in Dungeness, on the south-east coast of England, on November 24, 2021, after being rescued while crossing the English Channel. AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 23 November 2021 The coffin of Sir David Amess is carried past politicians, including former Prime Ministers Sir John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May, Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the requiem mass for the MP at Westminster Cathedral, central London PA UK news in pictures 22 November 2021 The scene in Dragon Rise, Norton Fitzwarren, Somerset where police have launched a murder probe after two people were found dead Tom Wren/SWNS UK news in pictures 21 November 2021 London-based midwife Sarah Muggleton, 27, takes part in a 'March with Midwives' in central London to highlight the crisis in maternity services PA UK news in pictures 20 November 2021 Police officers monitor as climate change activists sit down and block traffic during a protest action in solidarity with activists from the Insulate Britain group who received prison terms for blocking roads, on Lambeth Bridge in central London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 19 November 2021 A giant installation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson made from recycled clothing goes on display at Manchester Central, as part of Manchester Art Fair, in a 'wake-up call for the Prime Minister to tackle textile waste' PA UK news in pictures 18 November 2021 The scene at a recycling centre in Stert, near Devizes in Wiltshire after a large blaze was brought under control. 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He began his demonstration on 24 October after his wife lost her latest appeal in Iran, saying his family was caught in a dispute between two states PA

Earlier, Downing Street had described the first trip as essential, saying Mr Cummings needed his familys help to care for his young son because his wife was sick with coronavirus and he feared he was next.

Cabinet ministers lined up to defend Mr Cummings, saying he had put his family first and accused critics of trying to politicise the issue.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, used the daily Downing Street press conference to suggest that Mr Cummings had not broken lockdown rules because he had stayed put upon arrival in Durham.

But Robin Lees, 70, a retired chemistry teacher, told the papers he had seen Mr Cummings in Barnard Castle on Easter Sunday.

Mr Lees compared him to Catherine Calderwood, Scotlands former chief medical officer, who stood down after visiting her second home twice during lockdown.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP have written to Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, calling for an inquiry into Mr Cummingss decision to travel from London to Durham.

They want the probe to include when the prime minister was made aware Mr Cummings had left the capital.

Senior Tories also expressed concern that Mr Cummings's behaviour could encourage others to flout the rules, jeopardising the governments plans to gradually lift the lockdown.

The Independent can reveal that senior MPs are set to question Mr Johnson over Mr Cummings later this week, as pressure grows on the prime minister to explain what he knew about the trip under lockdown.

Parliament is in recess until June, meaning Mr Johnson will not have to face MPs at Prime Ministers Questions.

But members of the Commons Liaison Committee, which is made up of the chairs of other select committees, said they expected Mr Johnson to be questioned about Mr Cummings when he makes his first appearance before them later this week.

Pete Wishart, an SNP MP who sits on the committee and is a member of the "quad" which organises its business, said: If nothing has changed and Dominic Cummings is still in post by Wednesday, it would be very surprising if this was an issue that was not raised.

Another member of the committee said: Im sure one of my colleagues will crowbar the Cummings question in.

In a statement defending Mr Cummings, Downing Street said his trip had been essential to ensure his young son was properly cared for. After an offer of help from his sister and nieces, he travelled to a house near to but separate from his extended family.

A spokesperson for No 10, said: "Yesterday [Friday] the Mirror and Guardian wrote inaccurate stories about Mr Cummings. Today [Saturday] they are writing more inaccurate stories including claims that Mr Cummings returned to Durham after returning to work in Downing Street on 14 April. We will not waste our time answering a stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers."

There was confusion about the involvement of police, however. No 10 also said that at no stage was Mr Cummings or his family spoken to by the police.

On Saturday night Durham Police took the unusual step of confirming they had spoken to Mr Cummingss father.

Steve White, the police and crime commissioner for Durham Police, a former head of the Police Federation in England and Wales, said it was "most unwise" for Mr Cummings to have travelled when "known to be infected".

The SNP accused No 10 of a "cover up" after reports some in Downing Street knew Mr Cummings had made the 260-mile journey during lockdown.

Former Tory cabinet minister David Lidington, Theresa Mays de facto deputy prime minister, told Newsnight: "There's clearly serious questions that No 10 are going to have to address, not least because the readiness of members of the public to follow government guidance more generally is going to be affected by this sort of story."

Professor Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose modelling prompted the lockdown, quit as a government adviser for flouting the rules when he was visited at this home by his lover.

At the time Mr Hancock, the health secretary, said he was "speechless" and that he backed any police action against Mr Ferguson.

Sir Ed Davey, acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, called for Mr Cummings to quit over the allegations, while a spokesperson for Labour said: "The British people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings."

Asked by reporters on Saturday if he had considered his position, Mr Cummings said "obviously not".
YEREVAN.  Zhoghovurd daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: The government is likely to extend the state of emergency, which expires on May 14.

Zhoghovurd daily had written that the issue of postponing the referendum on constitutional amendments is being discussed within the authorities at the moment, and extending the state of emergency is one of its solutions.

Zhoghovurd daily asked RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's spokesperson Mane Gevorgyan for a comment on the issue of extending [the state of emergency], who, in a conversation with us, informed: "The issue of extending the state of emergency is currently under the discussion phase, there is no final decision, when there will be a final decision on extending or terminating the state of emergency, we will inform the public about it.

As for the constitutional referendum, this issue is not being discussed at the moment, as the priority is given to the health of our citizens, compatriots, and if there is a need to continue the state of emergency, it will be only for that purpose."

In other words, in fact, the referendum will not take place in the near future, and the issue of the CC [Constitutional Court], which is so important, will not be resolved.
Tara Reade poses for a photo during an interview with in Nevada City, Calif., on April 4, 2019. (Donald Thompson/AP Photo)

Court Document: Tara Reades Ex-Husband Spoke of Sexual Harassment in Bidens Office

A newly unearthed court document from 1996 shows Tara Reades ex-husband was aware of Reade allegedly being sexually harassed while working for Joe Biden.

Theodore Dronen submitted the declaration while contesting a restraining order that Reade filed against him shortly after he filed for divorce.

Reade discussed a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in U.S. Senator Joe Bidens office, according to Dronen.

The document was obtained and partially published by The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California, from the San Luis Obispo Superior Court.

Reades ex-husband said in the March 25, 1996 filing that he met her in the spring of 1993. Reade was working for Biden while Dronen worked for another member of Congress.

Dronen recalled Reade telling him that she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the senators office and left her position.

It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on Petitioner, and that she is still sensitive and effected [sic] by it today, he added.

Bidens campaign hasnt responded to multiple requests for comment on stories about Reade, including a request for comment on the court document.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whispers to judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg shortly before his committee began Ginsburgs confirmation hearing in Washington for the position of associate justice of the Supreme Court, on July 20, 1993. (Jennifer Law/AFP via Getty Images)

The document clashes with what Ted Kaufman, the chief of staff for Biden at the time, has said. Kaufman told CNN that he didnt remember Reade at all. He said no sexual harassment complaint was ever brought to his attention during his years working for Biden.

Dennis Toner, who was Bidens deputy chief of staff, also denied recollection of Reade or any discussions about alleged sexual harassment.

In a comment provided to other news outlets by the Biden campaign, Kaufman said: I have consistently said what is the truth herethat she never came to me. I do not remember her, and had she come to me in any of these circumstances, I would remember her. But I do not, because she did not.

While no former Biden workers have supported Reades claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault, others have, including a woman who lived near Reade in 1995 and 1996 and another woman who worked with Reade for California State Sen. Jack OConnell after Reade left Washington.

Reades brother has said his sister was upset in 1993 about Biden inappropriately touching her and that she told him that year that the congressman sexually assaulted her.

Several of Reades friends have also corroborated details of Reades story.

Reade and seven other women last year accused Biden of inappropriate touching, with some of them alleging sexual misconduct.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor announced Thursday that he is representing Reade. He said in a statement his firm believes every survivor of sexual assault has the right to competent legal counsel, and we will represent Ms. Reade zealously, just as we would any other victim of sexual violence.

Wigdor donated to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. He or his firm has also donated to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who voted to remove Trump from office and impeach the president, respectively.

Attorney Douglas Wigdor speaks in New York City in a 2012 file photograph. (Stan Honda-Pool/Getty Images)

Wigdor told The Associated Press that hes not being paid for his work on Reades case.

Wigdors announcement came as Reade gave her first on-air interview since Biden denied her claims. Reade called for Biden to drop out of the 2020 race.

She also said shed go under oath to speak about the matter.

Asked if shed take a polygraph, Reade told former Fox News and NBC host Megyn Kelly: Im not a criminal. Joe Biden should take the polygraph. What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence?

Does that mean were presumed guilty and we all have to take polygraphs? So, I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, she added.

Biden adviser Ronald Klain on Thursday shared a post from a Twitter user who said he hopes to get a hashtag about believing Biden trending on the social media platform every time this liar speaks in an apparent reference to Reade.

In a statement sent to media outlets, campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said, The truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity.
Representative image

Yes Banks auditor BSR & Co has flagged multiple breaches of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms and loan covenants in FY20.

BSR has warned that these breaches, coupled with the fact that the matter of the banks additional tier-1 (AT-1) bonds is pending in court  and could turn out negatively, may impact the lenders functioning going forward, Business Standard reported.

As per the auditor, Yes Bank has not maintained its common equity tier-1 (CET-1) and tier-1 capital ratios  both required to determine the capital adequacy of a bank.

The CET-1 ratio and the tier-1 capital ratio for the bank as of March 31 stood at 6.3 percent and 6.5 percent as compared to the minimum requirements of 7.38 percent and 8.88 percent, respectively, the auditor said.

The breach occurred as the lender sought to increase the provision for advances during the year-ended March 31 on a prudent basis to enhance its provision coverage ratio on its non-performing asset (NPA) loans over and above minimum RBI loan level provisioning, BSR said. The write-back of the AT-1 bonds in March resulted in resulted in the breach of tier-1 capital ratio (CET-1 ratio), it added.

The bank also failed loan covenants on its foreign currency debt and credit rating downgrades as it suffered a loss of Rs 16,418 crore in the last six months of FY20, saw decline in its deposit base and increase in ratio of NPAs and bad loans. This resulted in partial prepayment of foreign currency debt linked to external credit rating, it added.

Besides this, the minimum statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) and liquidity coverage ratio requirements for FY20 were also breached. Anticipating this, Yes Bank has provisioned Rs 334 crore as the penalty, it added.

Moneycontrol couldnt independently verify the report.

This is not entirely surprising as Yes Banks former Director Uttam Prakash Agarwal had in January pointed out corporate governance irregularities to the RBI. The management had then claimed Agarwal had to leave the board as he was 'unfit' as per RBI norms for directors.
By David Lawder and Roxanne Liu

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was "very torn" about whether to end the so-called Phase 1 U.S.-China trade deal, just hours after top trade officials from both countries pledged to press ahead with implementing it despite coronavirus economic wreckage.

In an overnight phone call, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He set aside rapidly deteriorating U.S.-China relations and discussed progress since the deal took effect in mid-February.

The two Trump cabinet officials said in a joint statement that both sides "agreed that in spite of the current global health emergency, both countries fully expect to meet their obligations under the agreement in a timely manner."

China's Commerce Ministry said the two sides agreed to improve the atmosphere for implementation of the Phase 1 deal, which calls for Beijing to boost its purchases of American farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion over two years compared to a 2017 baseline.

The deal brought a partial truce to an 18-month trade war between the world's two largest economies that heaped U.S. tariffs on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports.

Trump, who has blamed China's early handling of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019 for causing thousands of deaths and millions of job losses in the United States, has threatened to terminate the trade deal if China fails to meet its purchase commitments. He said on Wednesday that he will assess that effort within the next week.

China has rejected the Trump administration's assertions that there was evidence the new coronavirus came from a Wuhan laboratory and scientists have said it appears to have developed in nature.

FEELING DIFFERENTLY

Early on Friday, just before the U.S. Labor Department announced that a staggering 20.5 million U.S. jobs were lost in April, Trump told Fox News Channel that he was "having a very hard time with China."

While he was initially "very excited" about the trade deal's signing in January, the pandemic since then had changed his views about it.

Story continues

"Look, I feel differently than I did. I was the most - I was very tough with China," Trump said.

Asked if he was "breaking up" the Phase 1 trade deal, Trump said: "I'm very - I'm very torn as to - I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth."

Trump and some members of his administration have threatened punitive action against Beijing, including possible tariffs and shifting supply chains away from China.

While China has made some purchases of U.S. farm goods, some observers say these are running far behind the pace needed to meet the first-year goal of a $77 billion increase as China's economy is just now beginning to recover from shutdowns imposed during the pandemic. Beijing's new plans to implement tougher protections for intellectual property as part of the trade deal have met with mixed reviews.

Nonetheless, the more conciliatory statements from the U.S. and Chinese trade officials helped to boost Wall Street stocks on Friday, along with a jobs report that was not as bad as feared.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also cast the Phase 1 trade deal in a largely positive light. He said on Bloomberg Television that Beijing continues to tell Washington that "that they have every intention of meeting the requirements" of the agreement.

The U.S.-China Business Council, which represents U.S. companies doing business in China, said it was too soon to assess China's compliance with the trade deal, given that it only took effect on Feb. 15 as a global health crisis was unfolding.

"It would be extremely destabilizing if the president pulled out of the agreement without giving the Chinese a chance to meet their commitments," USCBC president Craig Allen said in a statement.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged Beijing to sharply increase its purchases of U.S. goods now that China's economy is recovering, to keep the deal on track.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Huizhong Wu and Lusha Zhang in Beijing, Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru ; writing by Se Young Lee; Editing by Murali Anantharaman and Grant McCool)
DECATUR  The Macon County Board is scheduled to vote on May 14 to give four elected officeholders annual raises for three years. The proposal comes as the board is considering furloughs to offset financial losses because of COVID-19.

The plan would give the county auditor, circuit clerk, recorder of deeds and coroner pay increases of 2% in 2021-2022 and 3% in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. Each currently makes about $83,000 annually and the increases would be based on the prior year annual salary.

The county finance committee by a 5-2 vote this month advanced the plan to the county board. Under the proposal, the pay raise would not start until the start of fiscal year 2021.

County Board member Laura Zimmerman, D-Decatur, who voted in favor of the adjustments, said the officeholders elected in 2018 have gone without raises for several years.

We felt it was a good compromise to hold salaries flat for the first year and then have a very small raise after that, Zimmerman said.  ... So hopefully the county will be through the worst by then.

The item was on the agenda because officeholder salary adjustments have to be considered under state law 180 days before an election. All four seats are on the November ballot.

Committee member Kevin Greenfield, R-Decatur, who is also county board chairman, voted against the plan. The other was Greg Mattingley, R-Decatur.

When we are looking at a very good possibility of furloughs and layoffs, how can we give the highest paid people in the county a raise? Greenfield said. We have an unbelievably difficult financial situation and this is a poor time to be thinking about raises for officeholders.

Greenfield said the positions also receive a $6,500 state stipend.

The board last month began discussing furloughing employees in multiple county departments in anticipation of a loss in sales tax revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic. The measure has not been put to a vote and officials say they still need more information before they can move forward.

Watch now: 2,641 new cases of COVID-19 announced by state health officials The Illinois Department of Public Health said the number of positive cases now stands at 70,873, including 3,111 deaths.

Board members during a Monday finance committee meeting asked department heads to come up with cost-savings plans, which Zimmerman said would give some breathing room.

My stance through these budget concerns is that it is our people that make Macon County great, Zimmerman said Thursday. These minimal raises that dont occur until 2021 wont stop me from advocating for peoples jobs right now.

The current fiscal year started off with a roughly $800,000 deficit. Greenfield said the shortage was carried over from the previous year.

The board meeting is at 6 p.m. on May 14. Audio recordings following the meetings have been posted on the county website. A live feed is on the PodBean application. Public comments can be submitted up until two hours before the board meeting.

How Pritzker's plan to reopen Illinois would work

Contact Analisa Trofimuk at (217) 421-7985. Follow her on Twitter: @AnalisaTro
Shimla, May 8 : Himachal Pradesh in coordination with non-government organisations has been providing food to nearly 13,000 migrant labourers in 24 food camps amid pandemic, the government said on Friday.

Besides, about 500 people have been provided shelter in 19 relief camps that have been set up in schools. Nearby temple is regularly supplying food to such people, it said in a statement.

Government officers are monitoring the situation on a day-to-day basis in these camps.

As a result of the situation arisen due to the lockdown, many migrant labourers reported that they barely had enough money to support basic household expenses.

Extending a helping hand, the government took the initiative to bear expenses of them.

Even at the request of the state thousands of workers are being provided shelter and food by their employers in the industrial units.

Besides food and shelter, people in need have been provided nearly 10 lakh ration and food packets by the government.

"The state gave us necessary facilities while providing relief in times of crisis," said Dil Bahadur and Rajan, both labourers of Nepal struck in the Kinnaur district.

Similarly, Munna and Amar Chand of Uttar Pradesh working in Kinnaur praised the government for its gesture.

--IANS vg/dpb

A
A specialised chemical called PTBC, made only in Vapi town of Gujarat, will be sent to Visakhapatnam on an urgent basis to help in neutralising the effects of gas leak at a polymer plant there, a Gujarat government official said on Thursday.

A major leak from a chemical plant of LG Polymers near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the wee hours of Thursday impacted villages within a 5-km radius, leaving eight people dead and scores of citizens complaining of breathlessness, nausea and other problems.

Para-tertiary butyl catechol or PTBC is currently being used in Visakhapatnam to neutralise the effect of the gas leak, said Ashwani Kumar, secretary in the Gujarat chief minister's office. "This chemical, used for reducing the effects of gas in the air after a leak, is manufactured only in Vapi. The Andhra Pradesh government requested Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani to facilitate airlifting of the chemical from Vapi to be sent there as soon as possible," Kumar said.

As instructed by Rupani, senior officials have asked Valsad district collector to make necessary arrangements to procure 500 kg of the chemical. The stock will soon be airlifted from Daman where it will be taken by road from Vapi, he said.

Also read: AP units handling hazardous materials need fitness certificate to reopen

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Govt asks factories set to reopen to strictly follow safety norms
Cuban health worker Yoet Michel Ramos Cordero collapsed and died after he did two sessions in quarantine. (Photo Source: Dominica Online)

A Cuban health worker who is part of the coronavirus/COVID-19 Medical Brigade serving in Domincia, has died in that country.





At a press briefing held on Wednesday 6th May, Dominicas Health Minister Dr. Irvin McIntyre did not reveal the name of the deceased, but expressed deepest sympathies and condolences on behalf of the government and people of Dominica, to the Cuban Medical Brigade in Dominica and the Cuban people in general.





THE VINCENTIAN has learned since, via Dominica News Online (DNO,) that the deceaseds name is Yoet Michel Ramos Cordero.





The Health Minister announced, "... last evening, there was an unfortunate incident where one of the Cuban Medical Brigade suddenly collapsed. He was a 42 year old male.





Dr. McIntyre said that the Cuban healthcare worker came to Dominica on March 29th as part of the Cuban COVID-19 Medical Brigade, and completed 2 weeks (14 days) of quarantine in Portsmouth.





He was then assigned to the COVID Isolation Unit at the Princess Margaret Hospital where he worked from the 16th - 20th April, 2020, after which he again completed another 2 weeks in quarantine, as required by existing protocol.





Health Minister McIntyre described the death as "a very sad day for the Cuban Brigade and for Dominica.





With respect to the situation as it relates to COVID-19 in Dominica, the two active cases are to be retested this weekend. (Dominica has the capability (in country) to test for the coronavirus.) As of press day, Wednesday, Dominica had recorded 19 cases of COVID-19.





Minister McIntyre reported that its been 28 days since the last positive case. He believed that this was largely due to: the closure of borders; effective contact tracing and isolation; efficient primary health care team; the ability to have in- country testing; compliance by the public with the public health and social measures; and the team effort involving all stake holders. (Compiled by Sheron Garraway)




Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund on Friday issued an unconditional apology to SEBI for its President and CEO Jenny Johnson's recent statement where she indicated that the Indian market's regulator sudden change in guidelines were responsible for the shutting down of six fund mutual fund schemes.

In a statement, the fund house further said Johnson was quoted out of context in some media reports, "which diluted the essence of her response".

It said that headlines and articles "erroneously" suggested that Johnson stated that the SEBI's guidelines on unlisted securities were the main reason for the decision to wind up the schemes.

"This is neither factually correct, nor substantiated by the comments made during the conference call. We deeply regret any misunderstanding this may have caused," it said.

During a recent analyst call, Franklin Templeton's President & CEO said that SEBI's directive of capping mutual funds' exposure to unlisted non-convertible debentures (NCD) at 10 per cent, "orphaned" about one-third of their funds as the unlisted NCDs could not be trade anymore.

The fund house said that Johnson had provided the general background concerning Franklin Templeton's experience in the Indian market as it existed before Covid-19. The reference to the regulations around unlisted securities was intended to be a part of these background statements to provide context to an audience unfamiliar with Indian markets, it added.

"We deeply regret any unintended slight this may have caused to the esteemed offices of SEBI whom we have always held in the highest regard and unconditionally apologize for the same," the Franklin Templeton statement said.

The statement, comes after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) late on Thursday advised Franklin Templeton Mutual fund to focus on returning money to investors, in the context of winding up six of their debt schemes.

SEBI also said that a section of the media has reported quoting the company that tightening of norms for investment in unlisted debt by SEBI was one of the factors that added to pressure on theirdebt schemes which resulted in winding up of their schemes.

"In the current scenario, Franklin Templeton should focus on returning the money of investors as soon as possible," SEBI said in a statement.
Forget trying to be witty or splashing out on a new outfit if you want a get a second date.

It seems the key to impressing a potential partner could simply be to order them a dessert.

Scientists found singletons were much more likely to be captivated by their date if they ate something sweet.

Scientists found singletons were much more likely to be attracted to their date if they tucked into sugary treats, such as cake, chocolate or pudding (file image)

Tucking into chocolate, cake or puddings made both men and women more attracted to other people, they said.

But scoffing salty treats like peanuts and crisps made no difference at all.

The findings suggest sweet flavours have a powerful effect on how we perceive prospective romantic partners.

Scientists already know sugary snacks tend to make us more sociable and increase our empathy for strangers.

The results showed people were more drawn to potential partners when eating sugary snacks, possibly explaining an association between sweetness and love in language (file image)

But the latest study, carried out at Berlin Medical School in Germany, examined the link with love as words like honey and sugar are so frequently used as terms of endearment.

Researchers recruited dozens of men and women to eat either sugary or salty nibbles.

They were asked to rate images of the opposite sex for attractiveness.

The results showed that they were more drawn to potential partners if they were eating sugary snacks.

The researchers said: Our results confirm that briefly experiencing sweet taste is enough to make us find others more attractive in a romantic way. This might explain why there is an association between sweetness and love in so many languages.
To the editor:

God commands all of us do not bear false witness yet the liberal news media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NY Times, etc.), also known as Fake News, continues to be deceitful and blatantly partisan.

For over two years after Trump took office, all of the Fake News pushed the Russia collusion hoax narrative and this enabled the Dems to win the House in 2018. Meanwhile Fox News reported the truth, and now some of the extreme corruption at the top of the FBI and DOJ is coming to light again as Gen. Mike Flynn will likely be exonerated soon. Fox News has covered this but I havent seen much coverage by Fake News. Instead of exposing the illegal government spying under Obama that was far worse than Watergate, Fake News appears to be accomplices of Democrat corruption.

When Justice Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court, all the Fake News quickly and viciously smeared him based on a totally uncorroborated sexual assault accusation that supposedly happened 35 years earlier. Nearly all Democrat senators said they believed the accuser because all women should be believed. Now Joe Biden is accused by one of his own former staffers of a sexual assault that allegedly happened 27 years ago; her accusation has some corroboration. Yet it took weeks before any of the Fake News touched this story and none of the Democrat senators has said they believe Bidens accuser. This hypocrisy shows the complete lack of integrity of these Democrat senators and the Fake News.

These are two examples of the Democrats and Fake News colluding. New examples are generated daily. All news media should be truthful, objective and fair; Fake News is none of these. For these reasons, I never trust Fake News and I always vote for conservatives. Please join me.

DAVE TOMASZEWSKI

Midland
Intellectual property rights are the centre of all efforts to create a green future, Dinh Huu Phi, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam, tells Vietnam Government Portal.

Dinh Huu Phi. Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam

How do you asses the development of intellectual property rights in Vietnam?

We live in an era in which science and technology have developed very quickly. All countries have acknowledged that intellectual property rights are a product and important to promote the rapid development of science and technology as well as the market economy in their own countries and internationally. A key objective of protecting intellectual property rights for all organisations, individuals and nations is to encourage more activities focusing on innovation and the protection of achievements in culture and arts for the development of society.

Trademarks, designs and such are key factors deciding the strengths of a company in a competitive market  be it in the domestic and international markets.

Can you tell us some of the activities the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam has done to promote the green economy?

To enhance the role of the intellectual property rights in national economic development, recently, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued a National Strategy for Intellectual Property towards 2030 with a hope that in the next 10 years Vietnam will achieve its goal of sustainable development  an important foundation for achieving a green future for the upcoming generations.

More recently the National Development Programme has been implemented in all 63 provinces and cities nationwide and brought many positive results, in both the agricultural and industrial sectors.

Project on Technology and Innovation Support Centres (TISC) and IP-Hub network have also been developed to foster technology transfer in universities and research institutes. The project has organised many training courses on writing and submitting patents.

Currently, there are about 60 research institutes and universities participating in the network.

Will you please explain more about the protection of intellectual property rights in the context of Industry 4.0?

In 2016, more than 5,000 patent applications relating to the Internet of Thing (IoT) were submitted to the European Patent Office  an increase of 54 per cent in the three years, from 2014-2016. This is a strong indication that there will be an acceleration of new patents in information technology to accompany the development of new materials and innovation created by AI.

Whats more important in my opinion is that Vietnamese policies should facilitate the development of science and technology and innovation, promote the commercialisation of IPs so that they could contribute to the socio-economic development of Vietnam.

Due attention should be paid to the capacity building of the IP offices in the processing of applications for registration of new innovation, and promoting cooperation on the protection and enforcement of IP rights on a regional and global scale, because many IP issues have moved beyond the borders of a single country and cannot be handled by any individual one.

In addition, the enforcement of IP rights in the digital environment will become more difficult, so policies need to be further scrutinised so as not to hinder the development of science and technology, while ensuring that security, confidentiality and intellectual property rights are adequately protected.

Enterprises should exercise its leading role in creating and exploiting intellectual properties. To bridge the gap from research to practical applications, businesses need to proactively and actively accompany universities and research institutes to create products and technologies that solve practical problems of Vietnam, especially ones having to do with the environment or sustainable development.

Another important issue is the need to increase information campaigns to raise the awareness of respecting IP rights, encourage consumers to support clean products and services. VNS

Vietnam urged to promote circular economy Vietnam should act fast to switch to the circular economy, heard a workshop on promoting the no-carbon circular economy held in Hanoi on November 12.
Iraqi MPs approve al-Kadhimi's cabinet, ending months of deadlock

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 8:12 AM

The Iraqi parliament has approved the government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, ending six months of political deadlock in the Arab country.

In their Wednesday session, the lawmakers gave votes of confidence to Kadhimi's picks for the ministries of interior, defense, finance, and electricity, among others.

However, several ministerial candidates failed to get the lawmakers' approval, meaning Kadhimi will begin his term without a full government.

The parliamentarians rejected the incoming premier's picks for justice, agriculture and trade ministries.

They also postponed voting on the oil and foreign ministries as political parties failed to agree on candidates.

On April 9, Iraqi President Barham Saleh officially tasked Kadhimi with forming a government after the 53-year-old director of the country's National Intelligence Service received the endorsement of the majority of the top political figures.

"I will work tirelessly to present Iraqis with a program and cabinet that will work to serve them, protect their rights and take Iraq towards a prosperous future," Kadhimi wrote on his official Twitter page.

He will replace caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who stepped down last November following demonstrations against corruption, staggering youth unemployment and poor public services, which erupted in the capital Baghdad and then quickly spread to other cities.

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EAST HAVEN  A driver was seriously injured after a crash with a stolen vehicle that was attempting to flee from police Thursday morning, officials said.

At 9:22 a.m., police from Rye, N.Y., called East Haven police to advise the department that they were tracking a stolen Ford Explorer that was stolen from Rye around 4 a.m. and was tracked to East Haven, accordign to Lt. Joseph Murgo.

Rye police said the suspect in the vehicle was possibly in possession of a handgun, Murgo said. Rye police continue to provide East Haven police with location updates as officers zeroed in on the stolen vehicle.

East Haven police officers spotted the stolen Ford Explorer in the area of Gerrish Avenue and tried to get the driver to pull over. Murgo said the driver instead ignored the officers signals to stop and continued east on Dodge Avenue to Hemingway Avenue.

While headed north on Hemingway Avenue, Murgo said, the driver of the stolen Ford Explorer hit a vehicle at the intersection of Hemingway Avenue and Main Street.

The juvenile driver of the stolen vehicle was uninjured, Murgo said. He was taken into custody at the scene and transported to East Haven police headquarters to be processed.

It was unclear if there were any weapons seized from the stolen vehicle.

The driver of the vehicle the juvenile hit was taken to Yale New Haven Hospital with serious injuries, according to Murgo. He said her exact condition was not immediately known.

The investigation is being led by the New Haven States Attorneys Office and the Connecticut State Police C.A.R.S. Unit.

Anyone with information about the collision or the moments leading up to it are asked to contact Trooper First Class Wayne Petralito at 203-630-8085 or wayne.petralito@ct.gov.
South Africa: Correctional services centres records three deaths

Correctional services centres across South Africa have 172 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with three deaths and 59 recoveries.

A total of 95 officials have tested positive for COVID-19, with 77 inmates also being affected by the virus.

Currently, our COVID-19 preventative measures are stretched to the brink.We have managed thus far, but the spread of the virus continues. We ought to act decisively and prevent this invisible killer from rapidly multiplying in our centres, Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola said.

The Minister was on Friday briefing members of the media in Tshwane on the Special COVID-19 Parole Dispensation following the Presidents authorisation for the placement of about 19 000 inmates on parole.

The President approved the placement of selected categories of sentenced offenders on parole as a measure to combat the spread of COVID-19 in correctional facilities, which are considered high-risk areas of infection.

This was in accordance with Section 84(2) (j) of the Constitution which gives the President the responsibility for pardoning or reprieving offenders and remitting any fines, penalties or forfeitures.

In addition, Section 82 (1)(a) of the Correctional Services Act also empowers the President to at any given time, authorise the placement on correctional supervision or parole for any sentenced offender, subject to conditions that may be recommended by the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board, the Minister said.

The COVID-19 parole dispensation excludes inmates who were serving sentences for sexual offences, child abuse, murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, sedition, high treason, sabotage and terrorism.

It also excludes offenders sentenced to life imprisonment, violations under the Domestic Violence Act, 1998(Act No 116 of 1998), any escaped/absconded inmate who evaded the justice system after being released on bail pending appearance and was still at large on 16 December 2019, those certified as mentally ill and detained in accordance with the Mental Health Act of 2002 (Act 17 of 2002).

The Minister said the placement on parole will be a decision of the parole boards, the Presidents decision only allows that these low risk offenders be considered for parole by the parole boards.

It will be done in phases and the most vulnerable, such as those with underlying health problems, elderly (aged above 60 years) and female offenders with infants, will be prioritised.

Approximately 19 000 inmates across the country will benefit from this decision provided they meet requirements of the parole board, the Minister said.

They will be considered on a case by case basis and those who qualify will be placed on parole after all the due processes, including victim offender dialogues, have accordingly unfolded.

This process will also include a comprehensive screening process for inmates including but not limited to, taking of their finger prints and DNA samples by the South African Police Services and soliciting inputs from departmental social workers and criminologists, which is a critical criteria for placement on parole, Lamola said.

Once completed, this process is expected to reduce overcrowding by 12.15% should those considered for parole by the boards be granted parole.

This reduction will be important from a clinical perspective as overcrowding affects the quality of oxygen circulation within cells and this contributes to the speedy spread of the virus thereof. The Department of Correctional Services will implement further preventative measures to safeguard those remaining under our care, the Minister said.

South Africa still has a high percentage of overcrowding which currently stands at 32.58% as of 04 May 2020.

We have a total of 157 208 inmates, whereas our accommodation capacity is 118 572. This number includes a total of 56 536 inmates who are in remand detention. This means our accommodation capacity is exceeded by 38 636 inmates, Lamola said.

The Eastern Cape has a highest prevalence of overcrowding at 54.88%, Gauteng follows with 52.10%, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West region stand at 39.18%, Western Cape stands at 29.08%, KwaZulu-Natal stands at 25.97% and Free State and Northern Cape region is at 0.45%.

One of our mitigation factors to alleviate overcrowding was construction of new infrastructure and upgrading of old infrastructure to increase bed space. In 2015, we upgraded Ceres Centre, Western Cape, resulting in 282 additional beds, the Minister said.

In 2017, government upgraded Matatiele in KwaZulu-Natal and Vanrhynsdorp in Western Cape, resulting in additional 352 beds.

In 2018, the Standerton Centre in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West Region were upgraded, resulting in 604 additional beds.

In 2019, upgrades were done in Estcourt in KwaZulu-Natal resulting in additional 309 beds. In 2020, C Max in Kgosi Mampuru was upgraded resulting in 12 additional beds.

In the next five years, we will create additional 3 006 bed spaces through upgrades and construction of new facilities in Emthonjeni, Brandvlei, Parys, Burgersdorp and Lichtenburg.

Experience has taught us that it is not possible for our infrastructure projects to outpace the rate of conviction due to our high crime rate in our country, the Minister said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) _ Forrester Research Inc. (FORR) on Thursday reported a loss of $513,000 in its first quarter.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said it had a loss of 3 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, were 37 cents per share.

The technology research company posted revenue of $106.3 million in the period.

For the current quarter ending in July, Forrester Research expects its per-share earnings to range from 26 cents to 34 cents.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $103 million to $108 million for the fiscal second quarter.

Forrester Research expects full-year earnings in the range of 90 cents to $1.20 per share, with revenue ranging from $410 million to $430 million.

Forrester Research shares have fallen 17% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $34.50, a decrease of 31% in the last 12 months.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on FORR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/FORR
Starting from next week one will be able to pay for the rooms online.

Ukrainian Justice Minister Denys Malyuska says the ministry has launched a service offering detention cells with improved conditions on a paid basis.

In particular, such cells are now available in the capital city of Kyiv (four cells: one double, one triple, and two four-bed ones). "The rest of the Ukrainian detention centers will catch up a bit later," he wrote on Facebook on May 8.

Accommodation rates in Kyiv's detention centers depend on the period for which the payment is made: UAH 2,000 (US$75) per day, UAH 8,000 (US$298) per week, and UAH 12,000 (US$447) per month. Starting from next week one will be able to pay for the rooms online at online.minjust.gov.ua.

Read alsoUkraine's Justice Ministry to introduce supervised probation (Video)

"The detention centers will use the funds to be received to maintain proper conditions in ordinary cells and to cover the cost of maintaining cells with improved conditions," Malyuska said.

According to him, the introduction of paid cells will prevent corruption, since the funds will go to the budget fund, as well as allocating additional financing for detention centers.

At the same time, the minister denies the idea violates human rights and claims these are not luxurious facilities.

"This is definitely not a VIP room, and as you can see from the photos  we do not offer or provide anything extraordinary. We provide the opportunity to use a larger area of cells than usual, as well as basic equipment such as a refrigerator, the TV set or cutlery. And they have recently been repaired unlike those one can often see in our detention centers," the minister said.

According to Malyuska, ordinary cells will be available along with paid ones, and the condition of the former will not be worse, "but on the contrary, it will be improved due to the funds received from the paid cells."
BONITA SPRINGS, Fla., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A deep desire to help healthcare workers. A commitment to its communities. A decades-long friendship. That was the package built out of passion and caring that has enabled Oasis Senior Advisors to provide plastic face shields for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities across the country.

Certified Senior Advisor Susan Doyle delivering face shields to healthcare workers Healthcare worker in Connecticut with box of face shields donated Oasis Senior Advisors

Oasis Senior Advisors is a nation-wide network of compassionate advisors who connect seniors and their families to the resources they need and help make the transition to a senior living community that is the right fit. That compassion took on new meaning recently as Oasis Senior Advisors President John Benbrook took an idea, connected with an old friend and soon thousands of face shields were being produced for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities that partner with Oasis Senior Advisors.

"We really felt like we could help in a good way, help our partners who need it most," Oasis Senior Advisors President John Benbrook said.

Benbrook reached out to high school friend Don Terwilliger, president of Digital Color Concepts, a high-tech printing company based in Mountainside, N.J., to inquire about their operation producing the shields.

"They jumped all over it," Benbrook said. "They saw the hotspots in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. It was no mystery to them. It literally took us five minutes to put this plan together."

To date, the printing facility has produced thousands of shields that have been distributed to Oasis Senior Advisors franchisees who have donated them to 51 hospitals and 91 skilled nursing facilities. Digital Color Concepts has the capability of producing 500 shields a day and could make up to 17,000. The company is making them for hospitals, nursing homes and food and beverage companies.

"And this is at zero cost to those receiving the shields," Benbrook said. There are shipping costs involved but those are being donated by the franchises distributing the masks.

"In the face of change and in the face of challenges, you focus on what you can control and where you can have a positive impact," said Benbrook, who also thanks his good friend for stepping up so quickly. "There is 35 years of trust there."

In this difficult time, Oasis Senior Advisors franchisees continue to work with senior living communities, skilled nursing facilities and partners in every industry to connect seniors and their families to the right resources.

"In this uncertainty and doubt, it is easy to get paralyzed," Benbrook said. "Our value is how we communicate. We are finding creative ways to connect to families and business partners through virtual tours and utilizing safety protocols."

Learn more about Oasis Senior Advisors and their locations throughout the United States at OasisSeniorAdvisors.com.

About Oasis Senior Advisors

Founded in 2014 by Tim Evankovich, Oasis Senior Advisors provides free, personalized assistance in finding senior living solutions for seniors and their families that best fit their needs. This includes independent living, assisted living, memory care, residential care homes, respite and more. The company, based in Bonita Springs, Florida, services a growing number of franchises across the United States. Their personalized and caring approach has built a dynamic network of partners such as hospital discharge planners, elder law attorneys, home care and more. Through client satisfaction and strong partnerships throughout the country, Oasis Senior Advisors is positioned for continued growth. Franchise opportunities are available nationwide. Visit oasissenioradvisors.com or call 888-455-5838 to learn more.

CONTACT

John Benbrook

President, Oasis Senior Advisors

610-574-8643

[email protected]

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CONRIC PR & Marketing

239-690-9840

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TORRINGTON  The end of high school should be an exciting time spent with friends and family and while the pandemic took that away, two local parents decided to do what they could to make seniors feel special.

Torrington residents Dora Carr and Kellie Bournique began the effort last month after they saw a Facebook group that was getting high school seniors adopted by other members of their community. Each student receives cards and tokens of recognition to honor their high school years.

The moms decided to try the same thing in Torrington and the effort has grown to include close to 1,000 students from across the state.

Carr and Bournique created a Facebook page and begin inviting their friends to join. It just took off, Carr said. I wrote my friends, she invited her friends, then theyd invite their friends ... people started inviting more and more people.

The pair knew from personal experience how tough the coronavirus pandemic has been on students.

Carrs son Bryon is graduating from Oliver Wolcott Technical High School, and Bourniques daughter Chelsea is completing her studies at the Academy of Science and Innovation in New Britain. Both seniors are disappointed that they wont be able to walk for graduation, or spend time with their friends.

(In) April, we both thinking about helping the seniors somehow, and then Kellie called me on a Saturday, and said she saw something online in New Mexico, where parents were getting seniors adopted, Carr said. We thought at first wed stay around Litchfield County and just include our friends, but now we have kids from all over Connecticut. Weve got close to 1,000 students adopted.

Bournique said she stumbled on this senior adoption page, and thought Connecticut needed this.

My daughter missed out on a lot of things this year. Shes OK, but she wanted to go to her prom, and she didnt go to any other functions, Bournique said. She got a very special dress, so she was bummed about not being able to go.

So far, Chelsea Bourniques adopting family has sent her gifts, a gift card, and a lawn sign decorated by the familys 4-year-old twins.

The outpouring of support has been amazing, Kellie Bournique said. For all these kids, maybe even just getting their favorite candy and a card, just puts a smile on their faces, she said. They deserve to be recognized for all their hard work.

For the parents, the elimination of June activities for seniors was just as difficult.

Its hard for everyone, said Carr. I feel bad for the kids, because its such an important time in their life. They all have worked so hard, and they havent seen their friends much at all, other than face time on the computer or the phone. Its just not the same.

High school seniors arent the only ones who are losing out on end-of-year celebrations.

There are eighth-graders and fifth-graders who are leaving their middle or elementary schools and going to a new school next year, and they havent had that chance to say goodbye to their friends and their teachers, Carr said. So its hard for all of them.

The women have continued adding names of eligible seniors to the page. If you want to adopt a senior, look under whos available and pick one, Carr said.

Im approving 20 to 30 students every day, meaning someone wants to adopt them, Bournique said. The other day, a parent contacted us about doing the same thing in her town in New York.

An eligible student is posted on the page with photos and a short biography. If a family want to adopt them, they message us and then contact the students parents, Bournique said.

Some of these adoptions have turned into pretty cool friendships, too, Carr said. The adopters can send a card with a gift card, or send a present to them. My son was adopted by someone from Post University (where hes going in the fall) and they sent him a sweatshirt and a hat from the school, and a gift card.

Carr adopted four students.

I sent my last package out today, she said. Its a brother and a sister ... the sisters very artistic, so I sent art supplies, a T-shirt and a bracelet. Another one was getting his Eagle Scout badge, and so it was a chance to congratulate him with a special card.

Adopting families are getting very creative with their gifts, the women said. Theres one mom whos trying to reach out to kids who are enlisting this summer in the armed forces, Carr said. Theres another one who surprised the student he adopted with driving school lessons .. hes going to UConn for nursing, and he hasnt gotten his drivers license yet.

Its been so great, reading all about the kids and their accomplishments, she said. Getting to know people ... its been a lot of fun, and something really positive.

The gifts dont have to be big, Carr said. It depends on the connections youre making with the parents and the student, she said. But its just a way to recognize that theyre special, that theyve accomplished something thats so important.

Carr and Bournique plan to continue the Adopt-A-Senior page until mid-June. I think that gives people enough notice, Carr said. If people want to do it, they need to do it now.

They hope the local schools will find a way to recognize the students in June. It would be so nice, even in June, to maybe let some of the seniors back in their schools, let them go to their lockers, or see their school, just to give them a chance to say goodbye, Carr said. Hopefully theyll be able to do something.

To sponsor a senior or post a senior to be adopted, go to their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/1300962470096507/?ref=share.
234 Indians stranded in Singapore reach home as Vande Bharat Mission gathers steam

Indians stranded in Singapore boarding flight back home as repatriation mission begins. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@IndiainSingapore

After the UAE, stranded Indians in Singapore were the next lot to get onto a repatriation flight back home. 234 Indians departed from Singapore on Friday morning aboard Air India flight AI381, and landed in Delhi.

AI381 With 234 passengers under #VandeBharatMission left #Singapore for #Delhi at 9 am. Thank you #TeamIndia , MEA MOCA, MHA, MOHFW, MOCA , State Govs for doing it in shortest possible time .

Happy citizens returning home ! pic.twitter.com/nSf4DsgTnF  India in Singapore (@IndiainSingapor) May 8, 2020

Indian High Commissioner Jawed Ashraf was himself present at the airport in Singapore to see off those boarding the flight. He also paid tribute to the pilots and crew of Air India undertaking this difficult mission.

Tribute to Air India ! As Government launches #VandeBharatMission to bring back stranded Indians from the world including #Singapore ; High Commissioner @JawedAshraf5 conveyed heartfelt gratitude to @airindiain pilots and crew. Imagine serving 8 hours in PPE kits ...! pic.twitter.com/CcpEmZppx8  India in Singapore (@IndiainSingapor) May 8, 2020

The Indian government has planned and put into action one of the largest ever evacuation missions as they attempt to bring home stranded citizens from across the world amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's a story so incredible it's hard to believe: a tiny, pure-bred baby dingo is dropped from the sky and lands, alive and well, in someone's backyard. That's what happened in August last year in Wandiligong, near Bright in north-east Victoria.

Happening upon the tiny bundle of fluff, not sure if it was a fox or a dog, a local phoned a vet who helped identify her find. Marks on its back suggested a wedge-tailed eagle had taken him (presumably from somewhere in the surrounding mountains) and accidentally dropped him mid-flight.

That five or six-week-old puppy then made its way to the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary and Research Centre in Victoria's Toolern Vale.

Established 18 years ago by Lyn Watson and her late husband Peter, the sanctuary is home to 42 pure dingoes, some of which have been bred and others  like Wandi, named for the place he landed  that have been sent there for protection and rehabilitation. Watson also set up the Australian Dingo Foundation, a not-for-profit to promote education, research and conservation.
Bangkok: North Korea leader Kim Jong Un sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping praising what he described as China's success in getting its coronavirus epidemic under control.

The report by North Korea's state media followed an assessment by South Korea's spy agency that the pandemic is hurting the North's economy, already crippled by decades of policy failures and U.S.-led international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.

China is North Korea's most significant ally and economic lifeline, accounting for about 90% of the country's external trade. With China's COVID-19 caseload easing, some experts say the North could reach out to China to reinvigorate cross-border trade that had been significantly reduced in past months.

The Korean Central News Agency says Kim in the message to Xi congratulated him, highly appreciating that he is seizing a chance of victory in the war against the unprecedented epidemic. It did not specify when the message was sent.

South Korea's spy agency recently told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that trade volume between North Korea and China in the first quarter declined 55% from a year earlier. In March, the bilateral trade volume suffered a 91% drop, lawmakers cited the agency as saying.

North took intense action to avoid an outbreak by closing its borders in January and quarantining thousands of people. It still contends it has had no cases of infection, though many outsiders doubt that.

A South Korean lawmaker who discussed the spy agency's findings earlier this week said the National Intelligence Service cannot rule out an outbreak in the North. But the agency concluded skyrocketing food prices and panic-buying in Pyongyang and a reduction in Kim Jong Un's public appearances this year were evidence of the impact, the lawmaker said.

South Korea reported 12 fresh cases of the new coronavirus, its first increase above 10 in five days.

Figures by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought national totals to 10,822 cases and 256 deaths. Three of the new cases were detected in the hardest-hit city of Daegu, and three were passengers screened at airports.
G Janardhana Rao By

Express News Service

VISAKHAPATNAM: Thursdays gas leak in LG Polymers reminded Vizagites of the HPCL fire on September 14, 1997 in which over 50 persons died. A blast occurred in oxygen pressure reducing station of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant on June 13, 2012, killing 19 persons. HPCL Visakh Refinery fire on August 23, 2013 claimed 29 lives. After a gap of almost seven years, yet another major industrial mishap occurred in LG Polymers at RR Venkatapuram. The gas leak left 11 dead and several hundreds sick.

Despite oft-repeated talk of safety audit, industrial accidents continue to happen in Visakhapatnam, which is dubbed the main industrial hub of Andhra Pradesh. The city also witnessed accidents in several pharma and chemical units at regular intervals, causing safety concerns. The gas leak in LG Polymers is the fourth biggest industrial mishap in the city, which made Vizagites recollect Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984. Despite repeated announcements by the government to make the third party auditing a must for all chemical and process plants, it is yet to become a reality, said a trade union leader.

On January 25, 2016, a major fire broke out in the warehouse of Deccan Fine Chemicals at Rajavaram under Payakaraopeta police station limits in the district due to electric short circuit. Though no casualties were reported, the mishap created panic among the people of four villages in the area. Though the managements of industries instal quality equipment to avert mishaps, they dont maintain it on a regular basis, leading to accidents, said another trade union leader.

AITUC leader and CPI State joint secretary JV Satyanarayana Murthy expressed concern over frequent accidents in Pharma City. The managements hardly pay any attention to industrial safety and pollution control measures. Most industrial accidents are occurring due to negligence by managements and lack of proper inspection by Inspector of Factories and officials of the Pollution Control Board, he said, while accusing the government of diluting the Acts for industrial safety. The regulatory agencies do not have enough manpower to conduct inspection of industries and ensure strict implementation of the guidelines for industrial safety, he added.
An Australian government-appointed inquiry into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and other institutions has found former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell was aware of child sex abuse by at least two priests in the 1970s and 1980s and failed to take steps to get the priests removed.

Previously redacted sections of the Royal Commission's report, first issued in late 2017, were released yesterday following Pell's acquittal last month on five counts of sexually assaulting two teenage choirboys in the 1990s when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

The report from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said Pell was aware of child sexual abuse in the church from the 1970s.

"We are also satisfied that by 1973 Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it," the commission, the country's most powerful public inquiry forum, said.

The commission did not look into specific allegations against Pell, but focused on whether he and other church leaders in Australia were aware of thousands of incidents of abuse dating from the 1970s and what they did to address those issues over the next three decades.

During that period, Pell rose from being a priest in regional Australia to become archbishop of Melbourne and then archbishop of Sydney.

He was the most senior Catholic cleric worldwide to be jailed for child sex abuse.

He was freed in April after just over a year in prison, when the High Court of Australia overturned his conviction on the grounds there was not enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The commission found Pell was aware of allegations of abuse by two priests, Father Peter Searson and Father Wilfred Baker, and should have pushed for their removal.

Rejected

It also rejected Pell's evidence that he was unaware of why Gerard Ridsdale, another offending priest, was being moved from one parish to another during the 1970s and 1980s.

Pell, who lives in Sydney, said in a statement he was "surprised by some of the Royal Commission's views about his actions", especially statements in the report about discussions regarding Ridsdale's transfers.

"The consultors who gave evidence on the meetings in 1977 and 1982 either said they did not learn of Ridsdale's offending against children until much later or they had no recollection of what was discussed," Pell's statement went on to say.

A spokesman for the Vatican said it had no comment.

The Catholic Church in Australia declined to comment and referred to statements from the archbishop of Melbourne and from Bishop Paul Bird of Ballarat, where Pell was an assistant priest from 1973 to 1984.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Hair salons, barber shops, day spas and nail salons will open May 15, Gov. Mike DeWine announced at his daily briefing Thursday.

Restaurants and bars can reopen their establishments to patrons with outside dining is allowed May 15 and inside dining beginning May 21, DeWine said.

On March 15, DeWine closed restaurants and bars -- with the exception of carryout and home delivery, after people sent him text messages of people sitting and standing close to each other in the settings.

Three days later, DeWine closed hair and nail salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors and spas.

On Thursday, there were at least 22,131 Ohio coronavirus cases, including 1,271 deaths.

How we open up is so very very important, and the how is the essential part of how successful were going to be in doing these two things, DeWine said.

All the businesses discussed Thursday will open with guidelines -- the result of working groups, with executives from around the state and state and local public health officials, who met over the phone and tried to come up with the safest plans for reopening.

DeWine has eased economic restrictions relatively slowly compared to some other Republican governors.

On May 1, hospitals, clinics and dental and veterinary offices were allowed to do more elective procedures. On Monday, May 4, offices, construction projects, manufacturing and distribution operations were allowed to reopen. Next Monday, May 12, retail stores and service businesses can reopen.

When shops open for customers, 89% of Ohios economy will be reopened, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said.

Once hair and personal care and restaurants -- assuming most of them are running at 50% occupancy -- then 92.5% of the economy will be up and running, he said.

DeWine said its not feasible to keep the economy shut down for the next year or more to keep people healthier. The economic devastation would be too much.

He asked people to wear masks, socially distance and stay indoors when not patronizing a favorite restaurant or store.

We control this, all of us, collectively, and we can do it, he said.

On Monday, DeWine said hell have an announcement about child care.

Restaurant details

Restaurants and bars are going to be asked to consider social distancing with their floor plans. Groups of over 10 people are not allowed, said Treva Weaver, COO of a company that owns Zoup!

Weaver was a member of the restaurant work group that DeWine assembled.

You might be asked to wait in your car for either seating or pickup, or there might be a designated area for queueing, she said.

Expect plexiglass dividing areas of the establishment Tall booths can also act as barriers.

People standing over hot grills dont have to wear a mask. Other employees will have to wear facial coverings. Customers may have to wear masks.

That will be at the discretion of the owner, Weaver said.

Hand-washing will be required.

Youre likely not going to see gloves on your cashiers or your servers, she said.

Bar considerations

If youre a bar with tables and chairs you can follow these guidelines, Weaver said.

However, bars with open spaces where people stand around cannot open. Weaver said that the bars can set up picnic tables or other tables to comply and open on the May 15 and May 21 dates.

Ohio Restaurant Promise

The Ohio Restaurant Association has signs that its members can display that will describe the states coronavirus regulations, and a commitment to follow the rules, Husted said.

Salons, spas, other personal care businesses

For the appointments, you might have to wait in your car until your appointment is ready, said Debra Penzone, owner of The Charles Penzone Salons and a member of the hair care working group.

For walk-ins, only the customer is allowed in, unless its a child -- then the parent can accompany them, she said.

Our professionals will be donning the masks, and really asking the clients and customers come with their face coverings and masks, Penzone said.

That may be mandatory in some businesses.

Salon employees will be cleaning more than usual, she said.

Infections will increase, DeWine says

As we open the economy let me state the obvious and not shy away from it: The risk is up, DeWine said.

DeWine said theres probably a 1 to 1 ratio -- every one person with coronavirus infects at least one other person.

We can expect the opening up of the economy is going to take those numbers higher, he said.

How does Dr. Acton feel?

Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said she was on the phone Wednesday night with colleagues in surrounding states. She said theres not a state that hasnt struggled with the decisions to open up.

We will watch the data very, very carefully, she said.

So much will be dependent on businesses operating safely and people helping by staying home and going out sparingly, following the social distancing and face covering standards.

Acton said that its hard to balance economic needs with public health.

We are really trying to find that sweet spot, but no one knows for sure, she said.

Testing

Thus far, over 175,000 Ohioans have been tested for coronavirus, Acton said.

Weve not had enough testing," DeWine said. "The testing is going up dramatically in Ohio. Its not enough. were not exactly where we want to be.

However, the situation is improving as the expanded contract tracing project that the state has embarked upon -- which requires everyone who has coronavirus to work with public health officials to identify everyone theyve had contact with. Then those people have to isolate for two weeks, which is about the time it takes for the coronavirus to incubate.

Rural Ohio

DeWine has a farm in rural Dayton and urged rural Ohioans to not be too lax.

We understand sometimes it feels like the virus is not impacting us as much, but we certainly see evidence that virus can come into the rural areas," DeWine said. "We can see people who die and we can seen a movement of this.

More coronavirus coverage:

Gov. Mike DeWine gives Thursdays coronavirus update: Watch live

Ohio coronavirus cases top 22,000: Thursday update

Ohio Senate sends House bill providing $350M in CARES Act cash to local governments

Ohio unemployment claims filed during coronavirus crisis exceed total from last three years

University of Akron releases plan for shifting from 11 colleges to five
The two white men who shot and killed Ahmaud Arbery while the 25-year-old was out jogging are in prison, according to the New York Times. Yesterday, Gregory McMichael, 64 and Travis McMichael, 34, father and son, were each charged with murder and aggravated assault, and booked into a jail in Glynn County, Georgia.

The arrests come over two months after Arbery's death, and two days after graphic footage of the altercation generated national public outrage. Although police had the video, which shows Arbery jogging down a residential street past the two men, followed by an unprovoked struggle and gunshots prior to its public release, the McMichaels' walked free until this week. It took calls from activists, celebrities and politicians, including LeBron James, Nina Turner, Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams, members of Black Lives Matter and the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P, for an investigation and arrests, to force law enforcement's hand.

Related | How You Can Demand Justice For Ahmaud Arbery

The man who filmed the video of Arbery's death, William "Roddie" Bryan, is also being investigated. Advocates for Arbery's family have called him an "accomplice" and Arbery's lawyer has called for him to be arrested.

National attention redirected the trajectory of the case, reigniting discussion about the politics of viral videos of police brutality, and the apparent necessity of a mass community of whistleblowers to ensure Black victims are treated fairly by the justice system. One of Ahmaud's friends said, per AJ+: "There's no way without the video this would have occurred."

After being on the case for nearly a month, district prosecutor Tom Durden only announced this week that he'll send the case to a grand jury. He's the third prosecutor on the case, after the first two recused themselves because of their relationships to the suspects (Gregory McMichael is a former police officer).

Before recusing himself, Durden's predecessor George Barnhill argued that the McMichaels were innocent based on stand-your-ground, open carry and the citizens' arrest statue, calling Arbery's death "perfectly legal."

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now assisting with the case, however, advocates like the Southern Poverty Law Center are calling for the FBI and Department of Justice to get involved, in order to expedite the process. Courts in Georgia will be closed until mid-June.

Today would have been Arbery's 26th birthday. In honor of his death and in solidarity with his family, supporters are running 2.26 miles and using the hashtag #RunWithMaud. Find other ways you demand justice for Arbery here, and a GoFundMe to donate his family here.
via Facebook

May 8, 2020

Press Release

Leaders of seven political parties have in a letter addressed to the President of India today raised concerns over the security, welfare, livelihood and future of crores of Indian working class and working people.

The full text of the letter is being released herewith.

***

The President of India

Rashtrapathi Bhawan

New Delhi

Dear Rashtrapathi ji,

We, the undersigned leaders of political parties represented in the Indian parliament, are writing to you on a very serious issue that concerns the security, welfare, livelihood and future of crores of Indian working class and working people. In fact, this concerns the well being and prosperity of our entire country and its future. The issue is the nullification of the labour laws and the hard-won democratic rights of the vast majority of Indian people in the name of fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequences of this prolonged national lockdown. We are drawing your attention to these issues which we think are anti-constitutional, hence against the law of the land.

Using the pretext of battling the Covid-19 pandemic, drastic changes are being made to the existing labour laws of the country which further jeopardises the lives and wellbeing of the working people. Already the country is witness to the most inhuman tragic dimensions of the plight of the migrant works since the national lockdown has been enforced. Far from protecting the fundamental right to life and dignity, todayas conditions are barbaric. Last night, sixteen migrant workers, mainly tribals, forced to walk thousands of kms back to their homes with no arrangements being made for them, were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra. The easing of restrictions have not been accompanied by the required safety measures and environmental concerns. Such negligence has led to the Vizag industrial accident claiming 12 lives and hundreds hospitalized. The concerns for the safety and survival of the workers is grossly neglected by ayour governmenta . Such is the state of affairs in our country.

Already ayour governmenta has initiated the legislative process of codifying 44 existing labour laws into four codes. One of these has been adopted by the parliament a the Code on Wages Bill. The others are in the process. Even before this codification gets a legislative sanction, the existing laws are being violated with impunity. Once this code gets the legislative sanction, then the executive i.e. the government can through an executive order change this without the need for any reference to the parliament or state legislatures. This is patently anti-labour and draconian.

Using the pretext of battling the pandemic, the daily working hours have been increased from eight to twelve hours through executive orders in various states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab without amending the Factories Act. Some other states are likely to join this growing list. The state government of Uttar Pradesh has suspended all labour laws, except three, for a period of three years. The Madhya Pradesh government, similarly, announced a cabinet decision to exempt all establishments from obligations under all labour laws for a period of a thousand days. The fundamental right for the workers to organise themselves into unions is also being gravely threatened.

Diluting labour rights seems to be the logic employed by ayour governmenta at the centre and by some state governments, rather than concentrating on fighting the pandemic by augmenting our health facilities and protecting our doctors and health workers and taking care of the peopleas requirements.

All this is being done in the name of reviving our economy due to the difficulties caused by the national lockdown. We may add that the Indian economy was already in a tailspin hurtling towards a recession before the outbreak of this pandemic.

aYour governmenta has done very little to look after the people who have lost all their livelihood and all capacity to meet their hunger needs. They are languishing. Fourteen crores of workers have lost their jobs since the lockdown began. Surely, you will agree that India cannot have more deaths due to hunger, starvation, poverty and deprivation than those infected by this deadly virus.

The manner in which the migrant workers in various states, except with honourable exceptions like Kerala, have been treated, leaving them without any support is deplorable. Worse, they are now being charged for their travel to return home. Many restrictions are also being placed on their movement virtually treating them as bonded or indentured labour.

Instead of moving towards a vibrant modern secular democratic republic, India is today being pushed back to medieval barbarism and slavery. It is simple, honourable President, workers under the Indian Constitution are not slaves. Reducing them to this status is not merely a violation of the Constitution but its nullification.

We, the undersigned, appeal to you, being true to the oath that you have taken at the time of assuming office of the President of India, to urgently intervene to stop such naked savagery against the working class and the working people, at this crucial juncture when the unity of all our people is our biggest strength in fighting and defeating this pandemic.

With regards

Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary, CPI(M)

D Raja, General Secretary, CPI

Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary, CPI(ML)-L

Debabrata Biswas, General Secretary, AIFB

Manoj Bhattacharya, General Secretary, RSP

Manoj Jha, Member of Parliament, RJD

Dr. Thol. Thirumavalavan, MP, President, VCK
HEERLEN, Netherlands, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal DSM today held its fully virtual Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Shareholders approved all resolutions on the agenda.

The following resolutions were approved at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders:

The Remuneration Report received a positive advisory vote

Adoption of the Financial Statements for 2019

Adoption of the dividend on ordinary shares for 2019 (see also separate press release)

Release from liability of the members of the Managing Board in respect of their managerial activities

Release from liability of the members of the Supervisory Board in respect of their supervisory role

Reappointment of Rob Routs, Eileen Kennedy and Pradeep Pant as members of the Supervisory Board

and Pradeep Pant as members of the Supervisory Board Appointment of Thomas Leysen as a member of the Supervisory Board

as a member of the Supervisory Board Reappointment of the external auditor

Authorization of the Managing Board to issue up to 10% ordinary shares and to exclude pre-emptive rights

 Authorization of the Managing Board to issue an additional 10% ordinary shares in connection with a rights issue

Authorization of the Managing Board to have the company repurchase shares

Reduction of the issued capital by canceling shares

DSM - Bright Science. Brighter Living.

Royal DSM is a global, purpose-led, science-based company active in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living. DSM's purpose is to create brighter lives for all. DSM addresses with its products and solutions some of the world's biggest challenges while simultaneously creating economic, environmental and societal value for all its stakeholders - customers, employees, shareholders, and society at large. DSM delivers innovative solutions for human nutrition, animal nutrition, personal care and aroma, medical devices, green products and applications, and new mobility and connectivity. DSM and its associated companies deliver annual net sales of about 10 billion with approximately 23,000 employees. The company was founded in 1902 and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam. More information can be found at www.dsm.com.

Forward-looking statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements with respect to DSM's future (financial) performance and position. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections of DSM and information currently available to the company. DSM cautions readers that such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and therefore it should be understood that many factors can cause actual performance and position to differ materially from these statements. DSM has no obligation to update the statements contained in this press release, unless required by law. The English language version of the press release is leading.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/657851/DSM_Logo.jpg

For more information:

DSM Media Relations

Lieke de Jong

tel. +31 (0) 45 5782420

e-mail: media.contacts@dsm.com

DSM Investor Relations

Dave Huizing

tel. +31 (0) 45 5782864

e-mail: investor.relations@dsm.com
With so many areas of society reeling with the effects of the current shutdown brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak, charitable contributions are more important than ever.

For the sake of efficiency, Warren County Habitat for Humanity (WCHFH) developed a fundraising initiative to benefit both health care employees working on the front lines and local small businesses, which have been hit hard by a drop in revenue.

Since April 24, the organization has collected donations through GoFundMe to buy gift cards from restaurants throughout the Washington area. Those gift cards are then donated to healthcare workers throughout the county in what WCHFH youth coordinator Daryl Detrick, a Warren Hills Regional High School computer science teacher, called a win-win donation.

We really are a small-town community around here. Small, local, family-owned businesses are basically the backbone of the community and have been for generations, Detrick said. Im afraid that this current pandemic could really change the scenery of that.

Considering restaurants will be without dine-in customers for a significant length of time, many are struggling to stay open until they can return to some semblance of normal business.

They really depend on it ...  Warren County Habitat for Humanity operations manager Melissa Flynn said. Every $100 makes a difference for these mom-and-pop stores, because theyre that small. Theyre bringing very little money home to their families. Its mostly going right back into their business.

The timing of the initiative was designed to draw donations from those who received a $1,200 stimulus check, who are not in dire straits and are still employed through the crisis.

Mansfield Emergency Service workers enjoy a meal courtesy of a fundraiser done by the Warren County Habitat for Humanity.Photo courtesy Warren County Habitat for Humanity

I think we can make it. Were hoping to do that sooner than later, Flynn said of the goal of $10,000. But well keep going. If the money keeps coming in, well just keep expanding to different businesses. Right now, were just trying to hit up food businesses.

The initiative has already sparked charitable reciprocation in its first week. After Juanitos Mexican Restaurant in Washington was told that WCHFH was buying their gift cards, the owners provided a free dinner to each of the 19 homes built by the organization.

(They) are trying to make ends meet, and it was pretty exciting that they rewarded us by giving our families a dinner, Flynn said. The other one is VonThun farms. They too were pretty excited that we thought of them, so they matched our gift certificates. We purchased 20, theyre going to give us 20 more for free.

A Franklin Township EMS worker has a meal provided by a fundraiser by Warren County Habitat for Humanity.Photo Courtesy of Warren County Habitat for Humanity

For WCHFH, this fundraiser is a great way to give back to the businesses that helped the organization complete many projects over the last two decades.

These are all businesses that we went to and asked, Can you help us out so that we can build homes for these families in need? Detrick said. Its nice that we can go back to these businesses when they are in need and say, We want to give back to you. I just think its about building relationships in the community.

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.

Follow him on Twitter @DesJBoyle.
Advertisement

An incredible submarine is all set to give tourists a sea view like no other.

The Triton DeepView 24 can take 24 passengers to depths of up to 100m (328ft) and afford them magnificent views thanks to vast panoramic windows  and all from the comfort of a 15.4m (50.5ft) long air-conditioned interior big enough to stand up in.

Anyone feeling nervous about stepping on board should note the company that has built it  Triton Submarines. It knows a thing or two about underwater vessels, having manufactured the Limiting Factor submersible that last year made a record-breaking dive to the deepest point in the planets oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench  10,927m (35,853ft) beneath the surface.

The Triton DeepView 24 can take 24 passengers to depths of up to 100m (328ft) and afford them magnificent views thanks to vast panoramic windows

DeepView 24 has been built by Triton Submarines, which manufactured the Limiting Factor submersible that last year made a record-breaking dive to the deepest point in the planets oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench

Florida-based Triton said in a statement that DeepView 24 is the most significant commercial tourism submersible to be brought to market in the past two decades.

The vessel, it explained, is virtually silent, entirely non-polluting and is easy to board and disembark  even for passengers with reduced mobility  thanks to a generous access hatch.

It continued: DeepView 24 was developed in response to the rise in demand from travellers and tourists alike for adventure and experience-based holidays. This sub-sea tourism has grown exponentially as interest in our oceans has developed, driven in part by the popularity of internationally recognised programs such as Blue Planet II.

Florida-based Triton said in a statement that DeepView 24 is the most significant commercial tourism submersible to be brought to market in the past two decades

The vessel has been commissioned by hospitality firm Vinpearl to provide guest experiences on Hon Tre Island in Nha Trang, Vietnam

The vessel was assembled at Tritons manufacturing facility in Barcelona

Today, an experience within the optically perfect hull of the Triton DeepView 24 will create an entirely new generation of stewards for our oceans.

The vessel has been commissioned by hospitality firm Vinpearl to provide guest experiences on Hon Tre Island in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

The vessel was assembled at Tritons manufacturing facility in Barcelona, where it successfully passed sea trials in March. Its due to operate ticketed dives for resort guests in December.

Bruce Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Triton Submarines, said: The Triton DeepView 24 with its panoramic view represents a quantum leap forward in submarine technology, providing a vastly improved, fully-immersive guest experience.

Of the near 60 tourist subs that have operated in the past 34 years, the DeepView 24 is competitively superior in all respects.

The variation in size, with models that will seat from six to 66 passengers means there is a sub suitable for a wide range of operators in different locations. And a DeepView experience is terrific for encouraging guests to promote environmental stewardship after directly experiencing the seafloor environment.'
MEXICO CITY  The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data reviewed by The New York Times.

The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nations biggest city and, by extension, the country at large.

But that has not happened. Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals in Mexico City say the reality of the epidemic is being hidden from the country. In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor, splayed on mattresses. Elderly people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds, while patients are turned away to search for space in less-prepared hospitals. Many die while searching, several doctors said.

Its like we doctors are living in two different worlds,  said Dr. Giovanna Avila, who works at Hospital de Especialidades Belisario Dominguez. One is inside of the hospital with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is.

Mexico City officials have tabulated more than 2,500 deaths from the virus and serious respiratory illnesses that doctors suspect are related to COVID-19, the data reviewed by The Times shows. Yet the federal government is reporting about 700 in the area, which includes Mexico City and the municipalities on its outskirts.

Nationwide, the federal government has reported about 3,000 confirmed deaths from the virus, plus nearly 250 suspected of being related, in a country of more than 120 million people. But experts say Mexico has only a minimal sense of the real scale of the epidemic because it is testing so few people.

Only 0.4 of every 1,000 people in Mexico are tested for the virus  by far the lowest of the dozens of nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which average about 23 tests for every 1,000 people.

The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the worlds largest countries, and on Monday its COVID-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.

We have flattened the curve, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the health ministry official who has become the face of the countrys response, said this week.

But the government did not respond to questions about the deaths in Mexico City. It also denied repeated requests by The Times over the course of three weeks to identify all deaths related to respiratory illnesses since January, saying the data was incomplete.

One former health secretary, Jose Narro Robles, has accused Lopez-Gatell of lying to the people of Mexico. And some state governments are beginning to draw similar conclusions: that, much like Mexico City found, the data presented by the government does not reflect reality.

Official counts in many countries have understated the number of deaths during the pandemic, especially where limited testing has prevented the virus from being diagnosed, a Times review of mortality data has found. In Ecuador, six times more people have died than official figures reflect, the data show. In Italy, the overall increase in deaths in March was nearly twice official counts.

In Mexico City, the doubts started a month ago, when the citys mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, began to suspect that federal data and modeling on the epidemic were flawed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

She had already instructed her staff to call every public hospital in the Mexico City area to ask about all confirmed and suspected COVID-19 deaths, the people said. In the last week, that effort found that the deaths were more than three times what the federal government reported.

The disagreements have taken place largely behind the scenes, as Sheinbaum, who declined to comment for this article, has been loath to publicly embarrass President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, her close political ally. The city and the federal government continue to work together on a number of fronts, including getting ventilators.

But the data from Mexico City calls into question the federal governments grasp of the crisis in the country.

With such limited testing and doubts about the governments models, experts say federal estimates for when the nation will reach its peak, how long the epidemic will last and how bad the damage will be may not be reliable.

That disconnect has left cities and states across the country scrambling to meet the demand for protective equipment and ventilators. It also underplays the severity of the epidemic for millions of Mexicans, making it hard for them to determine how bad the situation is  and how seriously to take it.

That is shocking, said Fernando Alarid-Escudero, who has a Ph.D. in health decision sciences and who developed an independent model in collaboration with scientists at Stanford University to chart the curve of the epidemic in Mexico. If that is case, and we are not really capturing all those people who eventually die, we are not getting a sense of the picture.

We are way underestimating the magnitude of the epidemic, he added.

In Tijuana, hospitals are already overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses across the country have held public protests against the lack of protective gear, and several hospitals along the border have suffered outbreaks of the virus among medical personnel. Federal officials have been scrambling to buy respirators, long after seeing the outbreaks grip China, Europe and the United States.

One big reason for the competing death tolls in Mexico has to do with way the federal government is testing, vetting and reporting the data. The official results include a two-week lag, people familiar with the process say, which means timely information is not available publicly.

More worrisome, they say, are the many deaths absent from the data altogether, as suggested by the figures from Mexico City, where the virus has struck hardest of all. Some people die from acute respiratory illness and are cremated without ever getting tested, officials say. Others are dying at home without being admitted to a hospital  and are not even counted under Mexico Citys statistics.

Beyond that, Mexico appears to be vastly underreporting suspected deaths from coronavirus. Data published by the federal government on May 7 show only 245 suspicious deaths nationwide.

The gap in information has left many Mexicans with a sense that their country has avoided the harrowing outbreaks afflicting nations like the United States, where nearly 1.2 million people have been infected and more than 70,000 people have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Publicly, Lopez-Gatell, the health ministry official, has become something of a celebrity, steering nightly news conferences in which he assures the public that things are moving according to plan.

But there have been problems with the governments assumptions from the very beginning, according to three people familiar with its preparations. As early as February, they said, the government was using Wuhan, China  the city where the pandemic originated  to model the potential needs and response in Mexico.

But those calculations quickly went awry, the people said, as officials realized the dynamic in China was entirely different from the one in Mexico. As the outbreak spread in Wuhan, Chinese officials locked down the city and the surrounding province, prohibiting tens of millions of people from traveling.

In Mexico, by contrast, the lockdown measures have been optional, with officials simply urging people to go to hospitals or stay at home, depending on symptoms. There are no travel restrictions in or out of Mexico City.

In the last month, the government has added experts to review the data and analysis, after urging from the countrys foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, and other officials. But even those newer models make assumptions that experts feel are inadequate.

The main model the country is believed to now be using assumes only 5% of the infected population show symptoms, and that only 5% of those patients will go to the hospital, according to modeling documents obtained by The Times.

Their model is wrong, said Laurie Ann Ximenez-Fyvie, a Harvard-trained Ph.D. at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, adding that symptomatic and severe cases could be significantly higher. There is very good consensus on that.

Several experts also questioned Mexicos assumptions of how quickly the epidemic will pass. Its model shows a sharp rise in infections, followed by a sharp decline. But in almost no other country in the world has there been a rapid decline after a peak.

There is a long tail for the curve, and the number of deaths does not drop to zero anytime in the near future, said Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor in the department of biostatistics at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. The graph they are using is inconsistent with the shapes of the curve in other countries.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
3 1 of 3 Courtesy: Sneha Shenoy/Lina Hidalgo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy of Sneha Shenoy Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has signed the Pledge to Distance, a campaign launched by Klein High School junior Sneha Shenoy to promote social distancing.

Hidalgo tweeted a drawing provided by the campaign of her face with the letters of her name forming the shape of a mask. Each pledger receives a customized piece of artwork of their own faces to share on social media to inspire others to take the pledge as well.
Sea level could rise by more than 1 meter by 2100 if emission targets are not met

An international study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists found that the global mean sea-level rise could exceed 1 metre by 2100 and 5 metres by 2300 if global targets on emissions are not achieved.

The study used projections by more than 100 international experts for the global mean sea-level changes under two climate scenarios - low and high emissions. By surveying a wide range of leaders in the field, the study offers broader assurance about its projections for the ranges of future sea-level rise.

In a scenario where global warming is limited to 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the experts estimated a rise of 0.5 metres by 2100 and 0.5 to 2 metres by 2300. In a high-emissions scenario with 4.5 degree Celsius of warming, the experts estimated a larger rise of 0.6 to 1.3 metres by 2100 and 1.7 to 5.6 metres by 2300.

Professor Benjamin Horton, Acting Chair of NTU's Asian School of the Environment, who led the survey, said that sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions.

Prof Horton said, "The complexity of sea-level projections, and the sheer amount of relevant scientific publications, make it difficult for policymakers to get an overview of the state of the science. To obtain this overview, it is useful to survey leading experts on the expected sea-level rise, which provides a broader picture of future scenarios and informs policymakers so they can prepare necessary measures."

Published in Nature Partner Journals Climate and Atmospheric Science on 8 May, the projections of sea-level rise exceed previous estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The NTU-led international study was a collaboration with researchers from The University of Hong Kong, Maynooth University (Ireland), Durham University (UK), Rowan University (USA), Tufts University (USA), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany).

"We know that the planet will see additional sea-level rise in the future," says co-author Dr Andra Garner, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Rowan University in the United States of America. "But there are stark differences in the amount of sea-level rise experts project for low emissions compared to high emissions. This provides a great deal of hope for the future, as well as a strong motivation to act now to avoid the more severe impacts of rising sea levels."

"This international study is based on the informed opinions of 106 sea-level experts and underlines the critical importance of pursuing a low emissions policy to limit sea-level rise," says Dr Niamh Cahill, Assistant Professor in the Dept of Mathematics and Statistics at Maynooth University in Ireland.

The 106 experts who participated in the survey were chosen as they were among the most active publishers of scientific sea-level studies (at least six published papers in peer-reviewed journals since 2014) identified from a leading publication database.

In response to open-ended questions, the climate change experts identified the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets as the greatest sources of uncertainty. These ice sheets are an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Satellite-based measurements show the ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate. However, the experts also noted that the magnitude and impact of sea-level rise can be limited by successfully reducing emissions.

Dr Andrea Dutton, Professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is not involved in this study, says, "One of the key take-aways from this study is that our actions today can make a profound difference in how much our coastlines will retreat in the future. That knowledge is empowering because it means that we can choose a better outcome through our actions."

###

Note for Editor:

The paper, "Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey", was published in Nature Partner Journals Climate and Atmospheric Science on Friday, 8 May 2020.

Media contact:

Mr Nur Amin Shah

Manager, Media Relations

Corporate Communications Office

Nanyang Technological University

Email: aminshah@ntu.edu.sg

Stephen R. Levine

Assistant Director, Office of Media & Public Relations

Rowan University

Glassboro, NJ, USA

Email: Levines@rowan.edu

Niamh Connolly

Head of Communications

Maynooth University

Email: niamh.connolly@mu.ie

Jonas Viering

Communications

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Email: press@pik-potsdam.de

About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.

NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes - the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering - and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Ranked 11th in the world, NTU has been placed the world's top young university for the past six years. The University's main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and it has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) building projects, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore's healthcare district.

For more information, visit http://www. ntu. edu. sg .

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, a variety of funding sources have helped local small businesses to navigate a changed business climate. With assistance from local philanthropic organizations and businesses, the Midland Business Alliance (MBA) has assisted in awarding small businesses $430,000 and supported 116 local businesses.

The MBA played a collaborative role in the effort led by the Midland Area Community Foundation (MACF), which offered small business loans of $5,000 with 0% interest. To date, this program has awarded $150,000 to 30 locally owned businesses.

On a regional level, MBA staff worked with economic development counterparts in Saginaw, Bay, and Arenac counties to create a platform for accepting, reviewing and awarding $400,000 collectively allocated to the region from the Michigan Strategic Fund via the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). In Midland County, $80,000 was awarded to 32 local businesses.

More than 1,400 requests for support were received across the region, with Midland County receiving nearly 250 applications across all sectors and industries. The local review committee awarded 32 grants of $2,500, according to criteria established by the MEDC; noting that there was a greater need than what was available. An additional $80,000 was identified for Midland County small businesses in the form of low-interest loans directly from the MEDC with the local review committee providing loan recommendations.

Our entire business community is impacted by the COVID-19 crisis; we are grateful to have been able to deploy these funds to our business community and continue to collaborate with local partners toward relief and recovery initiatives, said Nicole Wilson, vice president of economic development for the MBA.

Additionally, local philanthropic organizations contributed funds to provide grant support to the business community  totaling $200,000. The MBA was the recipient of these funds to support locally owned businesses that are a part of the legacy of our community. Small business relief funds were provided by contributions by the Dow Company Foundation, the Rollin M. Gerstacker Foundation and the Charles J. Strosacker Foundation.

The continued support of our local philanthropic institutions is much-needed support to our local economy, helping to sustain the livelihoods of so many of our community members and the businesses that contribute to the fabric of community, said Tony Stamas, president and CEO of the MBA.

Lastly, the MBA recently launched the Great Gift Card Giveaway in partnership with CBM Services as another way to support the local business community. This entailed giving away 40 - $100 gift cards on its Facebook page. Averaging a reach of more than 15,000 people per day, this program gives small businesses great exposure.

Midland has shown time and time again that it is a community that shows up to support one another when times get tough, Stamas said. Its inspiring to see the ways local businesses and organizations have creatively adapted and supported our community during this challenging time.

 Processed by Ashley Schafer, Ashley.Schafer@hearstnp.com
In the last two months, TV numbers are through the roof. Local news, streaming and on-demand movies have all spiked in viewership, receiving ratings bumps from people of all ages.

But experts recommend that you vary your new stay-at-home habits and find ways to fill your days without always being front of a screen.

So before you watch all of "Too Hot to Handle" in one sitting, consider these factors.

HOW MUCH TV IS TOO MUCH FOR ADULTS?

Doctors and researchers have come up with slightly different answers, but the general rule is that anything more than 3 1/2 hours of television each day can be excessive.

"There was no association with adverse effects for watching up to 3 1/2 hours a day," said Daisy Fancourt, an associate professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London who co-wrote a 2019 study that associated excessive TV watching among older adults with increased memory loss. "But (any time) beyond that was associated with cognitive decline."

One key connection doctors have found: People who watch excessive amounts of TV are usually also seated for long stretches of the day, a sedentary activity with side effects so dangerous that some within the medical community have referred to sitting as "the new smoking."

"If we're spending so much time watching TV, it may be that we're not spending enough time doing other activities that would keep our brains healthy, like exercising, reading and socializing with other people," Tina Hoang, a research associate at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, said via email.

In 2015, Hoang was a coauthor on a study that evaluated TV watching as a proxy for a sedentary lifestyle. Their research showed high television viewing and low physical activity in early adulthood were associated with worse cognitive function later in life, a potential risk factor for neurological disease such as dementia and Alzheimer's.

Similar studies have found excessive TV watching to increase the risks of other chronic illnesses such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and pulmonary embolism.

Of course, these studies evaluated long-term activity, collecting data over periods as long as 25 years. Still they serve as a warning: If bad TV habits developed during the coronavirus crisis prove to be more than temporary, they could come with serious health consequences later.

WHAT ABOUT KIDS?

The guidelines around TV watching and screen time for children are much more precise.

Infants and toddlers should be spending the least amount of time in front of a screen, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which advises children younger than 24 months to avoid almost all digital media outside video chats.

Between ages 2 and 5, the AAP notes that kids can benefit from watching small amounts of high-quality educational TV - for no more than one hour per day - alongside an adult who can answer questions and keep them engaged, a practice called co-watching.

"A lot of what kids get out of watching TV changes with their developmental abilities," said Miriam E. Bar-on, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "A child who is in the process of learning how to talk isn't going to benefit from watching TV unless somebody is watching TV with them and interacting. 'Sesame Street' says, 'Let's count,' and the person watching with the child counts with the child and has the interaction, then it becomes an interactive activity."

After the age of 5, the right amount of TV can help stimulate imagination and creativity in children, according to Bar-on. But if screen time becomes excessive, routinely surpassing four hours day, it has been heavily linked with a greater chance of childhood obesity.

"If a child is just plunked in front of a TV," Bar-on said, "he or she is not running around getting exercise."

The AAP has also found that content matters: The more violent or risky behaviors (e.g., smoking or drinking alcohol) a child is exposed to, the more likely they are to engage in it themselves over the course of their life.

Yet, Bar-on acknowledged that in these extreme times, some parents might need to bend these guidelines. The prevalence of online school has created a necessary rise in screen time. And during other parts of the day, TV can be one of the easiest ways to keep children occupied while parents work from home.

"While (the AAP's) basic policy remains in place for normal circumstances, I think you certainly can be much more flexible," Bar-on said. "There's no one set formula for what families can do. It needs to be fluid, what works for them."

WHAT ARE SOME ALTERNATIVES?

Doctors agree that staying physically and mentally active are the most important keys to good at-home health during the lockdown.

"The evidence would suggest that if you are watching TV, get up and take lots of breaks in between and try to engage in other stimulating activities," Hoang said.

Instead of watching five straight hours of "Ozark" or "Tiger King," go for a short walk or complete a quick workout between episodes.

"Critically, getting your body moving, which is also heart healthy, can help," Hoang said.

Or use your free time to do something that can't be found on your TV screen.

"Activities such as playing games, reading, creative activities such as music or art, crosswords, volunteering and social engagement can all be mentally stimulating," Fancourt said.

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The Enugu State government yesterday intercepted and turned back nine busloads of almajirai following a failed attempt to sneak them into the state.

Dislodged from the North, as governors in the region moved urgently to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, reports of the pupils trying to find new havens in the South have been prevalent.

Security operatives alongside council chairmen and youths stopped about three hundred of the pupils around the Enugu-Benue boundaries, particularly at Udenu, Igbo-Eze North and Nsuka Local Government Area.

Abia State had on Tuesday said it intercepted some buses bringing in about 100 almajirai into the state. The Commissioner for Information John Okiyi said the travellers were turned back because a presidential order banning inter-state transport was still in force. He added that the states Ministry of Homeland Affairs had been mobilised to beef up security at the boundaries.

President Muhammadu Buhari had recently imposed a restriction on inter-state trips to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The order had also coincided with the relocation of almajirai by several Northern states.

A statement by the Enugu State government yesterday disclosed that similar operations aimed at preventing infiltration and enforcing the ban on inter-state transport were ongoing at the Enugu-Abia boundary and Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway.

Mr. Philip Nwazi, who is the new Divisional Police Officer in charge of Udenu Local Government Council, explained that some offending vehicles in the area were intercepted and impounded between 11:00 p.m. (Tuesday) and 3:00 a.m. (Wednesday).

Nwazi said some of the intercepted vehicles had emerged from forests as their drivers tried to beat the restriction order.He said they were promptly turned back to serve as a deterrent to would-be violators.

The Chairman of Udenu Council Solomon Onah said the local administration was fully mobilised and working round the clock to ensure that the restrictions by the state and Federal Government were complied with.

Also, the Cross River State government yesterday reportedly turned back five truckloads of almajirai and other passengers from the North.

State Security Adviser Alfred Mboto was quoted as saying: We got a report from our security and task force teams at the Garkem border town yesterday night that trucks carrying a large number of children from the north, alleged to be almajirai, were intercepted after a thorough check and have been turned back.

In a scenario underscoring the desperation to relocate the almajirai from the North, the Benue States COVID-19 Action Committee Wednesday night intercepted 14 almajirai who were allegedly being smuggled into the state.

Reacting to the movement of almajirai to the South, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, urged governors of the region to boost security at their boundaries to prevent entry by unauthorised persons.

Deputy National Publicity Secretary Mazi Chucks Ibegbu described the situation as an attempt to flood some Igbo states with almajirai. He insisted: The Satanic act must not be allowed.

In a statement, Emma Powerful, spokesman for Igbo group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) said: It is no longer hidden that COVID-19 is currently ravaging Kano and other parts of the North. Instead of locking down to stem the spread as was done by all states in the East, Northern leaders opened their borders and allowed the free movement of their people, many of who have become infected with the virus. Now, they intend to infect the rest of us under the guise of relocating almajirai. We wont allow this evil plot as no almajiri is from the East.

Another Igbo organisation, South East Revival Group (SERG), said: A total lockdown of eastern borders is necessary to avoid needless deaths in the region because we are at war with a global pandemic that has continued to claim lives in thousands in countries with sophisticated health systems and facilities.

Addressing a press conference yesterday, SERG President Chief Willy Ezugwu said: There have been several reports of inter-state travelling from the North. A trailer-load of almajirai was intercepted in Abia State last week while another trailer and some buses loaded with the same almajirai were also intercepted by vigilance community leaders at Opi in Nsukka two days ago.

They pass through Kogi and Benue States undetected by security agents. Some security agencies in the region, like in many highways in Nigeria, take bribes to allow these buses and trailers to pass, contrary to a Federal Government directive.

He added: It is yet to be determined why these almajirai are trooping into the South East. But we suspect that it is either they are fleeing the North because of the increasing cases (of COVID-19) or they are being deliberately sent to the South East to infect the people of the region.

But responding to questions about police operations as busloads of almajirai pass, Force Public Relations Officer DCP Frank Mba said:

We have situations where a few recalcitrant persons have tried to break the law. But the good thing is that we have always caught up with them at the end of the day. Most of the persons who set out to break the rule dont drive through the major ways. They go through uncharted routes. They go through bush paths. But whenever they finally turn to the major highways, we always arrest them.

He added: We have done excellently well in our efforts to enforce the ban on inter-state movement. However, at a few monitored inter-state highways, you will certainly see some vehicles moving. The bulk of the vehicles you see plying the inter-state highways are those that fall within the categories of vehicles permitted on those roads.

Mbas assurances came as the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 yesterday complained about lapses in enforcing restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic.

We urge the various commands of the security agencies to enhance their monitoring machinery to ensure that we do not only achieve the objective of stopping the spread of the virus but also prevent the good name of the services from being tarnished, said PTF chairman and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.

Reports across the country show that they (vehicles) continue to hide passengers with the intention of ferrying them across state boundaries and continual transportation of almajirai across state borders is still evident, he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 19:58:13|Editor: huaxia

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KITWE, Zambia, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese community in Zambia has offered support to the Zambian government in the fight against COVID-19 by donating foodstuffs to children relocated from the street to various charity homes.

The Zambia Chinese Association (ZCA) has aided 27 street kids that have been relocated to various care homes in Kitwe district with 200 bags of maize flour (mealie-meal) in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Association Copperbelt branch president Wang Xin handed over the bags of mealie-meal in Kitwe recently. In an interview with Xinhua, Wang said the 200 bags of mealie-meal were handed over to Kitwe District Commissioner Chileshe Bweupe.

He said the Chinese community was concerned with the increase in the number of street children looming around amid the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore, the move by the government to find them homes was commendable.

He said in order to help the government provide foodstuffs and other resources needed during their stay in care homes, the association had donated 200 bags of mealie-meal to benefit the street children.

"We have seen that government has started relocating street children from the streets and more effort is needed from stakeholders in terms of food and other necessities, therefore as Chinese association, we are donating 200 bags of mealie-meal," he said.

Bweupe who confirmed receiving the mealie-meal bags thanked the Chinese association for the gesture. He said the donation would go a long way in sustaining the children relocated to care homes. Enditem
Seventy-five years after World War II ended in Europe, The Associated Press spoke to veterans who endured mortal danger, oppression and fear.

As they mark Victory in Europe Day on Friday, they also are dealing with loneliness brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Here is some of their testimony.

Tony Vaccaro is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19.

He was dealt a bad hand early, as his mother died during childbirth a few years before tuberculosis claimed his father.

By age 5, he was an orphan in Italy, enduring beatings from an uncle. By World War II he was an American G.I.

Now, at age 97, he is recovering from COVID-19. He attributes his longevity to blind luck, red wine and determination.

To me, the greatest thing that you can do is challenge the world, he said.

And most of these challenges I win. That's what keeps me going.

Vaccaro's grit carried him into a lifetime of photography that began as a combat infantryman when he stowed a camera and captured close to 8,000 photographs.

One of his famous images, "Kiss of Liberation," showed a US sergeant kissing a French girl at the end of Nazi occupation.

Vaccaro documented the reconstruction of Europe and returned to the US where he worked for magazines such as Look and Life and has fond memories of photographing celebrities including Sophia Loren, John F Kennedy, Georgia O'Keefe and Pablo Picasso.

Vaccaro lives in Queens, the New York City borough ravaged by the coronavirus, and next to his family.

He might have caught the virus in April from his son or in their neighbourhood, his daughter-in-law Maria said. He was in the hospital two days and spent another week recovering.

That was it, she said. He's walking around like nothing happened.

VE-Day was the end of four days of celebration for Ken Hay.

It began when the former prisoner of war got his first sight of home in almost a year from a Lancaster bomber he flew back in.

I went back to get a glimpse of England and was at first disappointed to see only water, but quickly realized that I was looking backwards ... And then, rather like a medal ribbon, there was the edge of the water, a grayish-blue, the white breakers, a white cliff edge and then green grass -- there's no color like English green,'' he said.

The past 11 months had been grim. Serving in the 4th Dorset Battalion of the 43rd Wessex Division, he was separated from his brother, Bill, and captured by Germans during the invasion of Normandy.

He was forced to work in a coal mine until the Nazi war machine began to unravel, and he was liberated in Germany by American troops.

After returning home to London, Hay learned Bill was stationed nearby.

Home,'' Hay wired his brother. Can you get leave?'' On VE Day, Hay and his family listened to Winston Churchill's broadcast, then attended a special service at church.

We were walking back home when I heard footsteps,'' Hay said. I turned around and there was my brother running down the road to get home, and he'd spotted us. We just threw our arms around each other. The last time I'd seen him was out in the field in Normandy.?



Both went into town in their uniforms. There were crowds everywhere, and some girls called for a kiss.

Who were we to demur? he said.

Mervyn Kersh likes to joke that he was probably the last British soldier to learn the Nazis had surrendered.

Pvt. Kersh, who was with forces that liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, was ordered to return to England for deployment to Japan so he was on a blacked-out train crossing Europe when the celebrations began. By the time he got to London, the party was over.

The cancellation of festivities marking the 75th anniversary of VE-Day offered fresh disappointment.

There's nothing going on, which is a great shame because this is the last chance those who took part in the war will have,'' he said.

"If you wait for another five years -- 80 years -- I don't think many of us will be here. Not many of us are here now.

It is also a time to remember not just the war but its aftermath. Kersh is proud that Europe has remained largely peaceful since then, and for his role in defeating the Nazis.

I may have been a small cog,? Kersh, 95, said. "But I made sure that I never let the greater machine down!"



Forgive British veteran Bob Sullivan for being unfussed about VE-Day. After all, on May 8, 1945, he was lying in Cossham Hospital, having been wounded in the closing days of the fight to defeat the Nazis.

As he couldn't move because of a plaster cast on his leg, he wasn't even able to attend a celebratory supper.

But more than that. Sullivan points out that the war wasn't really over.

The war in the Far East was still going on,'' he said.

I had visions of fighting it out with the Japanese.'' Sullivan is 97 now, and while proud of his service, he points out that it wasn't just the soldiers who won the war. Everyone was involved in the defeat of Adolf Hitler.

We just did our bit,'' he said. Everyone was in the same boat. Something had to be done.'' Now a pensioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a home for Army veterans, Sullivan has taken a philosophical view to lockdown and the downsizing of the anniversary celebrations. His movements are restricted, so something simple like a walk in the sunshine is more meaningful than a parade these days.

We have a beautiful park here,'' he said. It is, to my mind, quite attractive.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Liquor stores and other Lake County retailers that had been operating as curbside and delivery only, including apparel and jewelry stores, are able to open at 50% capacity as of Monday. Businesses in Lake County that offer personal services such as hair and nail salons, spas and tattoo parlors, as well as restaurants and bars that serve food, will need to wait one more week before opening with restrictions and safety precautions in place.
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia will consider letting shops reopen sooner as its daily tally of coronavirus infections has dropped to single digits and the numbers of recovered patients is outpacing new ones, Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Thursday.

The central European country has already started easing some restrictions - smaller stores, outdoor markets and takeaway restaurants were allowed to reopen last week in the first of a four-stage plan to restart the economy.

A team of public health experts will meet on Monday to consider letting all shops apart from malls go back to business, Matovic said.

"When I called (the experts) today, they said they were ready to reconsider steps in reopening if the numbers remain this good," Matovic told reporters.

But he said authorities would watch out for any resurgence in infections. "Slovakia would economically not survive the second or third wave."

Landlocked Slovakia has fewer cases than its neighbours and has recorded one of the lowest death tolls per capita in Europe, according to figures collected by Reuters.

Active cases peaked at 1,022 on April 22 and have been falling steadily since, reaching 849 as of midnight on Wednesday.

Almost two fifths of 1,396 people with the COVID-19 illness have already recovered while 23 have died.

The government has said the health experts, not politicians, will decided how quickly to proceed with the four-stage recovery plan.

Stage two is now expected to start on May 6 and includes opening short-term boarding houses, hairdressers and manicure and pedicure services, taxi services. It will also allow religious services and weddings with a limited number of guests.

The economy has been hard hit by the measures. The central bank predicted on Wednesday that the gross domestic product would fall by 5.8%-13.5% this year.

(GRAPHIC: New coronavirus in Slovakia - https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/bdwpkrrdnvm/eikon.png)

(Reporting by Tomas Mrva; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday blamed that state governments are not doing enough in free distribution of pulses to PDS householders under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Anna Yojana (PMGAY) during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Nearly a month's supply of pulses has already been dispatched to several states and union territories, but they have managed to distribute only 53,617 tonnes to ration card holders under the Public Distribution System (PDS), he said and urged them to speed up the process in the interest of poor people.

It may be noted that the government has decided to distribute free 1 kg pulses to each PDS householder for three months till June under the PMGAY to ensure nutrition security of the poor during the lockdown period.

"Distribution of pulses is the responsibility of the state governments. It has not been easy for us to get the raw pulses milled and transported to states/UTs in these difficult times. States should also put extra efforts to ensure at least whatever pulses have been sent to them are distributed via PDS," Paswan told reporters.

The monthly allocation of pulses is 1.95 lakh tonnes under the PMGAY. Of this, 1.81 lakh tonnes of pulses have already reached to states/union territories so far, out of which only 53,617 tonnes have been distributed to beneficiaries, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Douglas Wigdor donated thousands to Trumps 2016 presidential campaign as well as Democratic politicians in New York.

Tara Reade, a former United States Senate staffer who claims Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is to be represented by a prominent lawyer who worked on sexual harassment cases against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and Fox News, as she pursues a case against the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

The lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, donated tens of thousands of dollars to President Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, one of the leaders of the Democrats impeachment efforts in January, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He has not donated to either Trumps or Bidens 2020 campaign.

Wigdor told The Associated Press news agency that he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Biden.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, the firm said in a statement.

Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. She has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff.

On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be held accountable and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.

MK EXCLUSIVE: Will Tara Reade go under oath or take a polygraph? pic.twitter.com/aBXohhg14n  Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 7, 2020

Pressed by a Florida television station on Thursday about Reades comment, Biden repeated his denial of the allegation.

The truth is what matters, he told Bay News 9. In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.

Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct. He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliet Huddy, one of the women who accused host Bill OReilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused.

In 2018, he spoke out in the media in defence of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Wigdor said he plans to help Reade in her dealings with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur. He said the two have not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule that out.





Wigdor suggested Reades earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of politics.

I think highly of a lot of these people, he said. These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.

Reade first spoke out about her alleged interactions with Biden in 2019, telling journalists he had touched her inappropriately while she worked on his Senate staff. She came forward in 2020, around the time Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, with new allegations of assault.

She says she did not initially disclose the assault allegations because she was scared of a backlash and was still coming to terms with what had happened to her.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro met on Thursday with a group of industrial leaders, his Economic Ministers and other members of his cabinet to discuss ways to help Brazil's economy amidst the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic.

After the meeting, Bolsonaro and his ministers walked the 200-metre route from the presidential palace to the Supreme Court in Brasilia, to personally talk to the head of the Court and make their case for rolling back restrictions on gatherings and activity.

They did so even as Brazil's COVID-19 cases continue to surge.

During the meeting transmitted live on Facebook, Bolsonaro insisted that the consequences of fighting against the pandemic cannot be worse than the virus itself.

"We have to be worried about lives, yes, but also jobs because economy is life! In a country where the economy does not work, life's expectations fall," he said during the meeting.

Brazil's Economy Minister warned there could be a crisis if state quarantine measures are allowed to continue.

Paulo Guedes told the group that Latin America's largest market is at risk of "collapse", he said that Brazil does not want to "become Venezuela or even Argentina," - neighboring countries that were in deep economic crisis even before the pandemic.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that local governments, not the federal government, have jurisdiction to adopt such measures.

"People are going to the streets because we have reached a situation where, people want to go out" said the head of the Court, adding that the ease of the restrictive measures has to be coordinated among all the levels of government.

"I think that is basic a coordination with the States and Municipalities" Toffoli said.

Bolsonaro told reporters that he could include more jobs on the list of those considered "essential" to help the reopening of the Brazilian economy.

"Industry, commercial activity, is in the UTI (Intensive care unit)," he said comparing Brazil's health to that of a person.

"After the UTI (Intensive care unit) comes the cemetery and we don't want that for our Brazil."
Rumours of a fresh vapour



spread from the LG Polymers plant near here only heightened the fears of people of the five villages around the unit after Thursday's styrene vapour leakage but the government machinery stepped in to assuage their anxiety, asserting that there was no such leak.

State Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney, who reviewed the situation with the Visakhapatnam district administration in the evening, put the toll in Thursdays incident at 12.

The villagers may have to wait for another 48 hours till normalcy is established and they could return home from the relief camps set up in the city even as technical experts from Gujarat and Nagpur got fully engaged in the task of neutralizing the styrene.

The PTBC inhibitor that was airlifted from Gujarat to Visakhapatnam was put to use on Friday evening to neutralize the effect of styrene.

With the state government asking them to stay back in the relief camps until further advice, the over 10,000 evacuees are spending a rather uneasy time.

The state government is providing food to these people.

As more than 454 villagers, majority of them from RR Venkatapuram where the polymers plant is located, are still in hospital undergoing treatment for various medical conditions, their kin are also holed up in the hospitals tending to them.

Post-mortem on the bodies of the deceased was completed on Friday evening and the bodies were handed over to their families.

As most of the victims hailed from neighbouring districts like Vizianagaram and Srikakulam, the bodies were taken to their native places for cremation.

Of the total 454 people undergoing treatment in various hospitals, 20 were having major problems, Sawhney said.

All of them were recovering, she added.

"The temperature is still around 120 degrees in the styrene tank and the situation will come under control in the next 48 hours.

Watering of the styrene tank will continue for the next 24 hours and we will observe the density of the vapour in the air," Sawhney told reporters.

On Friday, the density of styrene was found to be 0.2 parts per million in RR Venkatapuram but zero in Vepagunta and other places.

Hence, she advised people of the villages to stay in the relief camps till the situation returned to normal.

The state government released Rs 30 crore to the Visakhapatnam district collector to distribute Rs one crore each as ex-gratia to the kin of the deceased and other assistance to those hospitalised.

In accordance with the Chief Ministers announcement, Rs 10,000 would be handed over to each family in the five villages.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), Lyft launched a new Health Safety Program this week that includes a self-certification for riders and drivers.

Before using Lyft, every rider and driver will be required to self-certify that they will wear a face mask throughout the ride, are symptom-free, and will follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and local regulations related to COVID-19, according to the e-hail company.

In addition to the personal health certification, the following initiatives are included in the Health Safety Program:

Required face mask for drivers and riders. Lyft has ordered hundreds of thousands of cloth face coverings for drivers and will continue to alert drivers as supplies are available.

Health safety education for drivers and riders, which is now available to drivers in their Lyft app and will roll out for riders soon. The educational content is based on the CDC Rideshare Guidance.

Cleaning supplies. The company is providing hundreds of thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and other cleaning products to its employees. Before its Health Safety Program launched, over 35,000 sanitizing products were already handed out.

Lyft has also asked its riders and drivers to certify that they will leave windows open when possible and avoid recirculated air. Additionally, riders are asked to not sit in the front seat.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

Earlier this week, the e-hail company announced that it is expanding its Wait & Save pilot program throughout most of the United States, including New York City. Through the program, riders can opt for a longer wait time but pay a lower fare than for a standard ride.

For those who need a quicker pickup, a standard Lyft ride is still available.

Lyft has also expanded the conditions under which drivers can receive funds from the company if they are unable to work.

Since March, the company has offered funds to drivers who have tested positive for COVID-19 or were put under individual quarantine by a public health agency.

Now, drivers who are diagnosed as being immuno-compromised and are directed to self-isolate by a doctor also qualify for funds through the company.

Drivers can find additional information by visiting the companys driver resource page.
How did Kerala become a model for development and social reform? The answer lies in its several movements that worked in tandem over a period of time, slowly eroding the old unjust power structures, and working towards establishing a more equitable society.

Three things about Kerala struck me when I landed there in 1970. The intense greenery, the uniform cleanliness, and the sight of my neighbourhood coconut-plucker sitting in the tea-shop every day, reading the newspaper and discussing politics.

For the next 20 years I lived in Trivandrum, which was a state capital like no other. A beautiful town that was not exactly a town because it had paddy fields running through it, interspersed with little rivulets, canals, and coconut groves. I soon realised that the houses, coconut groves and paddy fields were woven into the scenery of the state, and they stretched almost seamlessly right across, blurring the urban-rural divide. Also, like my neighbourhood coconut-plucker, everyone was politically aware and had a voice and an opinion. The Satyagraha gate at the Trivandrum Secretariat on the Main Road was testimony to that. Fishermen, coir factory workers, head-load workersthere was always a group agitating there. And many of them came from communities who were once marginalised.

It took me quite a while to understand the dynamics of this sliver of densely populated land at the very tip of the Indian peninsula. Winds from different countries had blown over it from times immemorial. Arabs and Jewish settlers, and an original Apostle of Christ had introduced Islam and Christianity and Judaism here long, long ago. All of them had coexisted peacefully with Hinduism for centuries.

Portuguese, French, Dutch and Chinese who came for trade had left their mark on the land.

There were, however, contradictions. On the one hand, the powerful and wealthy Nairs, who were a marital community, had matrilineal families, and on the other the Namboodiri Brahmins and the Syrian Christians were major land owners, following a patrilineal system. Even until the beginning of the 20th century it was a society with a most rigid and unjust caste system that denied lower castes basic rights. Power lay mostly in the hands of the landowners who were the feudal lords before whom the lower castes had to crouch out of sight.

So, how did such a society become a model for development and social reform? There were many movements that worked in tandem over a period of time, slowly eroding the old unjust power structures, and worked towards establishing a more equitable society. There were Communist governments that legislated radical reforms. Christian Missionaries preached equality, and set up schools and educational institutions in the state. There were activists and social reformers who broke caste barriers and led their people out of bondage. There was also a benign royalty invested in the welfare of its people rather than its own pomp and grandeur.

Sri Narayana Guru, the Ezhava saint, was born in 1855 at a time when social discrimination against lower castes was at its peak in Kerala. He sought to break the stranglehold of upper castes over religion and social life. Ezhavas and Thiyas were considered lower caste and just one step above Pulayars and Parayars who were considered untouchable. Narayanan Guru preached unity of humanity irrespective of caste or religion. His saying: One Caste, One Religion, One God for All" ("Oru Jathi, Oru Matham, Oru Daivam, Manushyanu") captures his philosophy. He established schools and worked as a teacher, managing to get the schools to open their doors to Ezhava children.

The famous Vaikom Satyagraha that paved the way for the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936 issued by the young Travancor Maharaja, Sri Chitra Tirunal, is said to have been triggered when this much revered Guru was denied entry into one of the roads flanking the temple over of his caste.

Ayyankali, a contemporary of Narayana Guru, was a Pulayar rebel and reformer. In 1893, he dressed like an upper caste Nair and rode his own ox-cart through a public road, thus defying many of the bans related to clothing, ownership of property, and access to public spaces faced by Avarnas. This is celebrated as one of the major achievements in the history of Dalit movements in Kerala. Though Pulayars gained the right to access roads, temples and schools were still out of bounds. Ayyankali was himself illiterate, but he fought to get children from his caste admitted to schools, and even attempted to raise money and set up schools for these children.

The first chief minister of Kerala who took his oath in 1957 was the iconic Communist party leader EMS Namboodiripad, a Brahmin who had rejected his orthodox roots. It was the first time in India (and perhaps in the world) that a communist leader was democratically voted into power.

EMS, as he was popularly known, was an idealist. He had a short tenure of a little over two years during his first term. But within that period, he introduced many radical reforms. Soon after he was sworn in, he introduced the revolutionary Land Reforms Ordinance. This was, however, rejected by the Supreme Court; so was the education bill that sought to regulate the functioning of schools. The attempt to get these bills passed triggered off an anti-communist movement known as the 'Vimochana Samaram' or Liberation Movement, leading to the collapse of the first government.

It was only in 1970, under the government formed by another CPI leader, Achutha Menon, that the historic Agrarian Reforms Bill was finally passed. This served as a death knell for the existing exploitative feudal system. The Agrarian Reforms Bill conferred ownership rights on land to all tenants, including sharecroppers. A ceiling on land ownership was fixed. Surplus land taken from landlords was distributed to the landless poor. EMS himself gave away many acres of his inherited land. Though the education bill was never successfully passed, its suggestions were incorporated in other legislation pertaining to education. And the fire had been lit.

Achutha Menon was the best loved and longest serving chief minister of Kerala. Among other things, he established several centers of excellence, like the Centre for Development Studies, and the Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology. He also introduced some innovative projects like the One Lakh Housing Scheme, for which he roped in the renowned architect Laurie Baker, known for his low-cost, environment-friendly housing.

Another path-breaking project that came later was the Kerala Literacy Mission started in 1998. Its slogan was Education for all and education forever. The program, which is fully funded by the state government, goes beyond just providing teaching basic literacy skills. Its stated objectives include creating awareness about environmental concerns and womens equality, and also disseminating information on development programs to deprived sections of society.

Healthcare is another area in which Kerala has shown remarkable success. The state has a better health standard than the rest of the country, with low birth and death rates. The sex ratio at birth is better than that in the the rest of India. The affordable healthcare system that was started in a small way after Kerala was formed has now become better organised. Also, a good network of private hospitals and schools have come up across the state built with remittances from NRIs.

All these seemingly disparate steps have merged over the years to create a society that is vibrant, politically and socially alive. The 'Kerala Model' has its roots in democratic socialism, where the focus is not on generating wealth, but on generating well-being for all.

Many years ago, I interviewed Mohamed Koya who was then briefly the Chief Minister of Kerala. Among other things, I asked him about the success of Keralas family planning program.

It is simple, he said. It is because we have so many rivers and so much water.

So? I asked, surprised.

So everyone is very clean. We all have a bath twice daily. That keeps us very healthy. Children survive better even in poor families because we have good healthcare for all. So, we dont need to have large families with more children. Everyone is satisfied with just two.

What sounded naive and simplistic in 1979 makes so much sense today in a coronavirus-struck world. Bathe regularly. Wash your hands and feet when you enter the house. Wear fresh clothes.

It is also a state with many political and social firsts  the first Indian state to have a coalition government; the first state in the world to have a democratically elected communist government; the first state in India to throw open temples to all castes. It is also one of the first states in the country where political parties with strong communal and religious roots formed coalitions to fight for a common cause.
The Jewish community in America finds itself in a dilemma concerning the 2020 presidential election. On one hand, President Trump has been a strong ally and friend of Israel. He understands the necessity of Israel moving forward in consolidating its security position and normalizing its relationship with the Sunni Arab world.

In the face of Iranian aggression and Palestinian intransigence regarding the peace negotiations, the Trump administration realistically recognized the nuclear and security threat posed by Iran and the implausibility of a two-state solution in the foreseeable future.

His moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem has for all practical purposes taken the issue of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem off the negotiating table. He has recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the forthcoming Israeli extension of sovereignty over the Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley as a fait accompli.

These policy decisions place President Trump among the heroes of the Jewish Renaissance and the historic and ongoing Shevat Tzion (Return to Zion).

However, many of his domestic policies have not found favor with a significant majority in the American Jewish community. His handling of the immigration fiasco, his position on gun control (I prefer the use of the word regulation), his opposition to womens reproductive rights, climate change, the increase in anti-Semitic and other hate crimes inspired by both the radical left and the radical right have not convinced many Jewish American citizens that he is worthy of a second term as president.

Further complicating support for the presidents re-election are his political style, narcissism and not so subtle lust for power. If re-elected to a second term he will no longer have the burden of standing again for election.

With no other election to face, the presidents personal style, erratic behavior and off-the-cuff and changing policy statements, along with degrading his own advisors and ignoring the intelligence services, could morph into actions and policies detrimental to our national security and our democratic institutions.

On the other hand, a Biden presidency will be faced with unrelenting political pressure from radical and extreme left Democrats who have embraced anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as part of policy positions, based on utterly false theories of intersectionality. Mr. Biden has already indicated a backward slide on the U.S unambiguous position that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He has publicly announced that he will re-open the Palestinian consulate in East Jerusalem without any preconditions for the Palestinian Authority returning to bilateral peace negotiations with Israel.

Mr. Biden acknowledges that he cannot win the general election without the support of the radical left represented by the Sanders/Warren wing of the Democratic Party, both of whom curried favor and support with known congressional anti-Semites during the primaries. While both have endorsed Mr. Biden, both will put extreme pressure on Mr. Biden to embrace an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic platform at the Convention in the interest of party unity.

The extreme left has tried to eliminate Jewish participation in promoting policy positions dear to most Jewish American hearts, including the womens rights for equality, reproduction and freedom from sexual harassment in all its forms, and compassion for undocumented refugees

The Jewish community has been in the forefront for more than 75 years in the fight for racial and minority equality. Yet by branding Jews as white, advantaged, privileged, and as oppressors, the extreme left has tried to alienate and separate us from these causes.

The political, economic and social problems facing America after the pandemic ends (if it does) are gargantuan. Are these the best qualified candidates the two great American political parties can come up with?

The choice facing the American Jewish community in the upcoming presidential election is the most accurate and realistic example of a Hobsons choice! (A Hobsons choice is a choice of taking what is available or nothing at all.)

If you wish to comment or respond you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner.

Mel Pearlman holds B.S. & M.S. degrees in physics as well as a J.D. degree and initially came to Florida in 1966 to work on the Gemini and Apollo space programs. He has practiced law in Central Florida since 1972. He has served as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando; was a charter board member, first vice president and pro-bono legal counsel of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, as well as holding many other community leadership positions.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo is not letting Gov. Greg Abbott slide for going on national television and blasting the city for how it is enforcing emergency orders during the pandemic.

On Friday, Acevedo slammed Abbott for being hypocritical in issuing executive orders calling for up to 180 days in jail for those who violated his orders, then going on television to deride local governments that enforced them.

Respectfully, @GregAbbott_TX, you shouldnt issue orders that include the jailing of violators to cover the science, just to turnaround & excoriate those who enforce YOUR executive order to cover the political backlash, Acevedo wrote on Twitter. Your actions are hypocritical.

Abbott had said all along that penalties for noncompliance would be a last resort, and state agencies such as the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said enforcement would start with warnings. His spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Thursday, Abbott amended his executive orders issued during the pandemic to remove the threat of jail time in response to the case of a hair salon owner who was being held in the Dallas County jail. Until yesterday, most of Abbotts executive orders had included the warning failure to comply with any executive order issued during the COVID-19 disaster is an offense punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000, confinement in jail for a term not to exceed 180 days, or both fine and confinement.

But at the White House on Thursday and during a national television interview on Fox News, Abbott decried any arrests of those trying to operate their businesses despite orders they stay closed.

We should not be taking these people and put them behind bars, Abbott said with President Donald Trump sitting by his side in the Oval Office.

STAY INFORMED: Get the latest from our Austin team with our Texas Take newsletter

Abbott also issued a written statement to the media: Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen.

Last week after Abbott announced he would allow restaurants, retail stores, malls and theaters to open at 25 percent capacity, he was asked by Houstons KPRC how those orders would be enforced. Abbott said, "more primary enforcement would be either the local level or the regulatory level."

During his Fox News interview Abbott also took aim at Houston.

In Houston, they were issuing fines and potential jail time for anybody who refused to wear a mask, Abbott told host Sean Hannity. Wearing a mask is the best practice, however, no one should forfeit their liberty and be sent to jail for not wearing a mask.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo did issue a face-covering order that included a potential $1,000 fine, but it did not include the threat of jail time that some other Texas cities had put in place. Hidalgo has said the goal was never to issue fines, but it was put into the order to make clear that the face-covering requirement was not optional.

Acevedo made clear in an interview on Friday that his officers have not arrested anyone failing to wear a mask.

We havent taken anyone to jail, he said.

Abbott has taken criticism from state legislators as well. State Rep. Mike Lang, R-Granbury, took to Twitter earlier in the week to remind his followers that the judge in Dallas was following Abbotts own executive orders when he jailed the hair salon owner.

In a nutshell, Gov. Abbott calls the actions of a Judge in Dallas excessive, when the judge was acting based on Gov. Abbotts order. Gov. Abbott is now upset that a private citizen is in jail for operating a private business, which is a consequence of his order, Lang wrote.
Aurangabad: At least 15 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra on Friday morning, police said.

Two other labourers were injured in the tragic mishap which took place at 5.15 am under the Karmad Police station jurisdiction, an official said.

The workers, who were walking to Bhusawal from Jalna in central Maharashtra along rail tracks, were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh, an official at the Karmad police station told PTI.

They were sleeping on rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from Jalna, he said.

"The labourers, working in a steel factory in Jalna, left for their home state on foot last night. They came till Karmad and slept on tracks as they were tired," police officer Santosh Khetmalas said.

Fifteen workers lost their lives in the mishap, while two others were injured, he said, adding three labourers who were also part of the group survived as they were sleeping some distance away from rail tracks.
World Red Cross day is observed on May 8 to celebrate the principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

Reuters

On this day, people pay tributes to the Red Cross volunteers for their contribution in helping those in need.

The main objective of Red Cross Society is to inspire, initiate and encourage all kinds of humanitarian activities through all times and circumstances.

Programmes conducted by the Red Cross Society can be broadly divided into four categories which includes the promotion of humanitarian principles and values, disaster response to the society, disaster preparedness and health and care.

This society of the Red Cross is based on 7 principles namely, humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary, unity and university.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on twitter said It's already World Red Cross Red Crescent Day in some countries around the (globe)!! Today and every day lets #KeepClapping for all volunteers and staff worldwide responding to COVID-19.

It's already World Red Cross Red Crescent Day in some countries around the !! Today and every day let's #KeepClapping  for all volunteers and staff worldwide responding to COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/M8G3qD6MS4  IFRC (@ifrc) May 7, 2020

In this post they have shared a video clip in which one can see people across the world applauding the efforts of staff and volunteers who are fighting with this global outbreak of COVID-19 on the frontline.

Red Cross and Red Crescent Day - History

Reuters

World Red Cross Day 2020 is celebrated to honor Henry Dunant, the founder of an International Red Cross Crescent Movement. It is celebrated by the National Societies affiliated to the International Committee of the Red Cross in their countries to create awareness about the need for life protection in some drastic conditions.

As a contribution to the peace after World War I at the 14th International Conference of the Red Cross, May 8 was introduced by an international commission. The principles of the Red Cross Truce were also presented and approved in 1934 at the 15th International Conference at Tokyo.

This day is celebrated by the people on an international level to diminish peoples suffering, protecting their life from emergencies and lots of natural disasters including epidemic diseases, floods, and earthquakes and enhancing their dignity.

It is celebrated by the various Red Cross organizations across the world to help people with its fundamental principles like independence, humanity, impartiality, universality, neutrality, voluntary, and unity.

Celebration of World Red Cross Day

Various events and programmes are organised on World Red Cross Day at many places to help people free of cost. This is a special thing done on May 8. 50 volunteers are enrolled by the District Red Cross Branches and 25 volunteers by the taluka Red Cross Branches to offer the humanitarian services every year.



Some of the National societies celebrate the World Red Cross Day by organizing events for anaemia and blood donation awareness programmes. New volunteers are chosen for awareness campaigns related to the subjects in the community according to the requirement as well.

Themes World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day -Themes year wise

The theme for the year 2019 was love

The theme for the year 2018 was Memorable smiles from around the world

The theme for the year 2017 was Less Known Red Cross Stories

The theme for the year 2016 was Everywhere for Every People.

The theme for the year 2015 was Get Together for the purpose of Humanity.

The theme for the year 2014 was Get Together for everyone people.

The theme for the year 2013 was Be Together for the reason of Humanity.

The theme for the year 2012 was Move of the Youth.

The theme for the year 2011 was Search for the Volunteer which is inside you.

The theme for the year 2010 was City.

The theme for the year 2009 was Change in the Climate and it causes on the Humans which serves as a Todays Solferino.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday (May 8) expressed concern over increasing COVID-19 cases in Central Armed Police Forces like the BSF and the CRPF and discussed with officials ways to check the spread of the deadly disease, officials said.

The issue of a large number of coronavirus cases in these forces was discussed at a high-level meeting, chaired by Shah and attended by directors general of BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP, SSB and NSG and senior home ministry officials.

Shah chaired a meeting of the DGs of all Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) where he appreciated the commendable work done by these forces and expressed concern over increasing COVID-19 cases, a home ministry spokesperson said.

He also discussed measures taken to prevent further spread of the disease and ensure wellbeing of the forces.

As many as 530 CAPFs personnel have tested COVID-19 positive so far while five personnel succumbed to the disease - two each from the BSF and the CISF and one from the CRPF.

Among the active coronavirus cases, 221 were in BSF, 161 in CRPF, 35 in CISF, 94 in ITBP and at least 17 in SSB.

These forces are about 10 lakh personnel strong and they are shouldering a variety of internal security duties in the country.

The CAPFs have launched multiple measures to contain the infection by sanitising the premises and asking troops to strictly follow anti-coronavirus medical protocols, officials said.
SYDNEY, May 7 (Xinhua) -- With debate about Australia's over-dependency on China intensifying recently, a report from an Australian think tank on Thursday said decoupling its economic relationship with China is not in Australia's interest.

"There is an increasing amount of commentary in Australia, particularly after COVID-19, advocating for a decoupling of the Australian and Chinese economies. Those calls are not sensible in terms of promoting Australia's national interest," said one of the authors, James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.

"So I thought it was important that we wrote a report laying out the facts and the evidence to argue that Australia's economic relationship with China is in the national interest," he said.

According to the report, Australia's trade with China in 2018-2019 reached 235 billion Australian dollars (151.5 billion U.S. dollars), compared with 88.5 billion Australian dollars (57 billion dollars) with Japan, putting it in second place.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia's trade surplus ballooned to a record 6.8 billion U.S. dollars in seasonally adjusted terms in March, largely on the back of strong Chinese demand for iron ore.

"The reality is that China wants what Australia is producing, and China also has the purchasing power to pay for it. That combination doesn't exist for other countries," said Laurenceson.

"I am sure that as we go forward, there will be more and more calls, particularly from those with a national security background to argue in favor of forcing a decoupling of the two economies. If we're going to have that conversation, we need to have a sensible and informed conversation that was based on facts and evidence, not based on fears and sound bites," he said.

Laurenceson believed the economic complementarity between the two countries is an important driver of their trade relationship, which will still play a role after the pandemic.

"I'm optimistic about the strength of the Australia-China economic relationship. The economic complementarities between the two countries are strong and quite robust," Laurenceson said.

"I don't see China becoming less important to Australia in the coming years. It's true that COVID-19 has hurt China's economic growth, but for the United States or for the European Union, the outcomes are likely to be even worse. So, if Australia is going to be exposed to a major global economy, I'd still prefer it to be China," he said.

He said the two sides should avoid letting politics affect the trade relationship and continue to find new areas for cooperation instead, such as advocating a rule-based international trading system.

"Trade is an area in Australia's interest and in China's interest so this is precisely the area that we should be working on together and trying to strengthen, not turning it into a weakness," he said.
WILTON  Its now officially months away at the very least, but Thursday night, May 7, the Board of Education got a first glimpse into what reopening the schools might entail.

Chuck Smith, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, gave a broad presentation highlighting the numerous areas that need to be examined and considered in relation to the reopening.

Were not quite ready to share detailed action plans, he said. Thatll be the next step.

But he presented a long list of academic, health, safety and logistical details that will have to be taken into account.

My first thought is how overwhelming this is on every single level, Chair Deborah Low said.

As hard as it was to close  and the challenges we went through with that  this is even more complex, she said.

Were trying to define the problem so we can come up with a very defined approach, said Smith, who said it is no longer just a reopening plan but will possibly need to be one with the flexibility for one or more future repeat closures.

The core purpose here is that we continue teaching and learning, he said, noting that while Wilton Public Schools has done an admirable job of facing the current COVID-19 crisis, it was entirely unprepared before. Thus, he said, a more robust learning management system needs to be put in place for the future.

One thing that Im very concerned about is to what extent are we ready to reopen with the right health and safety measures in place, Smith said, citing everything from air ventilation in the schools and cleaning procedures, to issues involved with transportation and food.

Even something as simple as hand washing really creates some district challenges, he said, as do questions of students and staff sharing supplies, as well as issues of people entering and exiting the buildings.

We might have to create cohorts thatll minimize interaction between students and teachers, he said. Well have to avoid large group gatherings.

Theres issues around contact tracing, Smith said, plus the larger question of how people are to be trained in dealing with all of these changes.

Will we offer an opt-out for some people? What will be the distance-learning options for some? he said, noting that the district will also need to rethink its staffing in relation to e-learning and how the educational delivery model ultimately unfolds.

Its absolutely mind-boggling, Chuck, what you guys are having to go through, observed Vice Chair Glenn Hemmerle, noting that many of the plans the district draws up all could go out the window if the state says something else.

Toward that end, he raised the questions of whether CABEthe Connecticut Association of Boards of Educationcould put some pressure on the state office to expedite guidelines.

Sadly, I just dont know, from a reality standpoint, what we can do without getting guidance from the state, he said.

Superintendent of Schools Kevin Smith said the state Department of Education was already feeling the pressure.

Per Commissioner Miguel Cardona, he said, guidelines will likely be presented in waves, with the first set of guidelines focused on summer school and summer camps, and expected to be made available on May 15.

Several board members said it was important to keep parents informed on whats happening.

The families will have to be very much integrated into whatever plans are implemented, Low said.

Smith said over the next two months working groups will be developed around different goal areas fleshed out in the plan, including a focus on timelines, curriculum adjustment, wellness and academic interventions.

He said he would have an update at the boards meeting on May 21.

Low, meanwhile, noted that she has scheduled tentative Board of Education meetings for each Thursday over the next seven weeks, and said even more may be required.

As we unveil these plans and get down these roads  it will probably take more meetings as well, so thats why Ive calendared on a tentative basis every Thursday between now and June 18  if needed, she said.

Things are going to be coming down the pike so fast and furious, Hemmerle said, I think that makes sense.

We have begun planning for what we believe may be a very disruptive return to school, Smith said.

Its crazy, Hemmerle said, just insane.
Johannesburg, May 6, (People's Daily Online) -- According to the Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, South Africa has had 148 COVID-19 related deaths nationwide, while the number of confirmed cases has climbed to 7,572 as of May 6.

Meanwhile, the provincial breakdown of positive COVID-19 cases are as follows: Eastern Cape 838, Free State 128, Gauteng 1,697, KwaZulu-Natal 1,142, Limpopo 40, Mpumalanga 57, North West 35, Northern Cape 26, Western Cape 3,609, Unknown 0.

Western Cape has nearly half the number of total cases and people there are showing resilience and ability in their fight against the pandemic. Only two weeks ago, pediatrician Dr. Jaco Murray, the Head of the Clinical Unit at Pediatrics, Paarl Hospital in Western Cape, appealed to the local community for support. An additional pediatric unit was needed at the hospital to treat children who may be affected by or are currently being tested for COVID-19. Due to the highly contagious nature of this virus, patients must be kept as far apart from each other as possible.

While the space and structure were already in place, Dr. Murray pleaded, To open the area, we require two fridges, one to use for medicine and another for the childrens feeds and milk to be stored. Any assistance or help will be greatly appreciated to acquire these fridges.

Within a day of hearing about this appeal, Chinese appliance manufacturer Hisense, with investment from the China Africa Development Fund and Hisense Group, made two large fridges available for donation to the unit via the Val De Vie Foundation, which were installed over the weekend. The Pop-Up Pediatric unit at Paarl Hospital is now fully functional, treating children who require special infection prevention and control measures.

"We hope that this small gesture will contribute to saving lives during this unprecedented pandemic, and we encourage all companies to support in whichever ways they can, said Jerry Liu of Hisense.

It is wonderful to see how people stand together in this time to fight the pandemic. The donated fridges will benefit many children over the next few months. It is with great appreciation that the Department of Pediatrics thanks Hisense for the generous donation, added Dr. Jaco Murry.

After hearing about unbearably hot conditions in a factory in the area that made masks, Hisense donated an industrial air-conditioner to make the environment more comfortable.

A similar situation was seen in Gauteng, where the Charlotte Maxeke hospital appealed for help due to a lack of provisions in its waiting area. On learning of the shortage, Hisense donated 4,000 masks, 1,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, two television sets, a microwave, and a fridge.

The hospitals really are at the front line of this pandemic. If we can help them, I believe we can help protect the country, Liu said.
A $10-billion tax deferral plan proposed by the Norwegian government has prompted two oil industry executives to voice concern that it would do nothing to support the sustainability of the oil industry in Europes largest producer, Bloomberg reports.

The chief executives of Equinor and Aker ASA said that while the plan will improve oil companies liquidity, it does nothing to address risks related to production capacity and the startup of new projects.

Changes to the proposal are required in order to avoid significant and permanent reduction in capacity and competency for the Norwegian supplier industry, said Aker ASAs chief executive Oyvind Eriksen.

Equinors CEO, Eldar Saetre, said the governments tax deferral would force the company to delay the start of several new projects.

The Norwegian government proposed the tax deferral plan at the end of last month, hoping to prevent a slump in investments. It boils down to letting companies write off investments more quickly, Reuters reported at the time, allowing them to delay paying taxes. It would also make their taxable income lower, allowing them to take more substantial deductions on new investments.

Even if the government pursues a policy of becoming less dependent on oil, its important to prevent the current crisis from making the decline so rapid that we lose key competence that will help the transition, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said at the time.

The proposed measures may be positive for exclusively Norway-focused companies, but Equinor also has operations outside the country, which would limit the benefits of the tax deferrals, a local energy analyst told Reuters in April.

Norway agreed last month to cut its oil production by 250,000 bpd in June and then maintain 134,000-bpd lower production until the end of the year.

The baseline for the cuts will be 1.86 million bpd, which, according to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, is substantially higher than the average production rate for March, which was 1.68 million bpd. The difference means that the actual June cut will be about 70,000 bpd, based on March levels, according to Oilprice calculations.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar took to social media to announce that he has gone ahead and contributed 1000 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits to help coronavirus frontline workers.

Farhan shared the information on social media and stressed the need for more supply of PPE kits in hospitals for the medical team and staff.

BCCL

The actor through a recorded video message on Twitter revealed that he "personally" has contributed 1,000 PPE kits to the government hospitals and also appealed to the people to donate as much as they can.

He later detailed the cost of the PPE kits, guided his followers on how they can make the contribution , and also mentioned that he would personally extend his thanks to everyone.

Farhan Akhtar/Mard

"Every PPE kit cost Rs 650, and they will be provided to the hospitals most in need."

EUROPEAN PHARMACEUTICAL REVIEW

Akhtar then shared the link of the website where people can visit and donate PPE kits to the corona warriors.

Help our COVID 19 warriors.

I am personally donating 1000 PPE kits which are in need across India for our doctors/medical staff



For ur contribution, Ill send u a personal thanks by mention/video shout/video call for ur generosity



Log in- https://t.co/8Mcz0LAN7w

 pic.twitter.com/AjRgu7LTFC  Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) May 7, 2020

"And for your donation, I would like to personally thank you. Either through a mention on a post, recorded video, or a video call." the Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara actor added.

Besides Farhan Akhtar, actor Vidya Balan and Sonakshi Sinha are also raising funds for donating PPE kits to healthcare workers.

Indiatimes

In April, Actor Arjun Rampal along with his family had also extended a helping hand by providing PPE kits to the hospitals, doctors, and nurses to help them in the fight against coronavirus.


Boxes of Vietnam's Covid-19 test kits, developed by the Vietnam Military Medical University and the Viet A Technologies Joint Stock Company. Photo by VnExpress.

Technology to make a Covid-19 test kit developed by the Vietnam Military Medical University will be transferred to Cuba, according to the defense ministry.

Deputy Minister of Defense Tran Don said on Thursday Cuba would in turn provide technology to produce antiviral drug interferon alfa-2b to Vietnams Army Medical Department in cooperation with the military university.

Speaking at a meeting with his ministrys Steering Committee for the Prevention and Control of Covid-19, he said a group of Cuban experts would come to assist Vietnam in fighting the pandemic.

"The General Logistics Department needs to instruct the university to complete procedures to export the test kits to Cuba."

The militarys medical units would continue to cooperate with Russia and the EU to study the disease and its treatment regime, vaccines and drugs, and help neighboring countries like Laos and Cambodia combat the disease, he added.

Last month the test kits developed by the military medical university collaboration with Viet A Technologies Joint Stock Company were recognized by the Emergency Use Listing (EUL) procedure of the World Health Organization.

The EUL procedure was established to expedite availability of diagnostics needed during public health emergencies, and it helps procurement agencies and countries navigate the large presence of different devices on the market and access quality products.

The test kits, which utilize molecular biological technologies, have been mass-produced in Vietnam since March. They have been approved for sale in Europe.

Vietnam has had 288 Covid-19 cases, with the latest patients, diagnosed on Thursday evening, being 17 Vietnamese arriving from the UAE. There has been no community transmission in the last 22 days.

The number of active cases is 55.
This agreement aims to provide the universities, partakers of the project, with the assistance in the increase of quality and reliability of their services and efficiency of use of the energy

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed the ratification on the grant agreement of the E5R Fund((Project Higher Education of Ukraine) between Ukraine and the European Investment Bank (EIB) as the bills card says.

The E5P Grant Agreement with the European Investment Bank for the implementation of the project Higher Education of Ukraine was concluded in order to provide co-financing of the project Higher Education of Ukraine financed by the European Investment Bank and the Northern Ecological Financial Corporation, at the expense of the E5P Fund, the text of the explanatory note reads.

This agreement aims to provide the universities, partakers of the project, with the assistance in the increase of quality and reliability of their services and efficiency of use of the energy by improvement of their institutional capacity through different events and works aiming for energy conservation and optimization of management processes of energy consumption.

On April 16, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine ratified the grant agreement on the E5R Fund (Project Higher Education of Ukraine) between Ukraine and the European Investment Bank.
Maharashtra:14 migrant workers were run over a by a goods train in Maharashtra between Jalna and Aurangabad district. Reports reveal that the workers, who were walking along the track slept on the tracks and were run over by the train at 5:15 am today morning.

Maharashtra: 14 migrants workers died after being run over by a goods train in Maharashtra. Reports reveal that the labourers were returning to Madhya Pradesh and were sleeping on the tracks when the incident took place. The migrant workers were run over by the passing train at 5:15 am in the morning at a district 360 km from Mumbai. Chief Public Relations Officer of South Central Railway confirmed the news by stating that the accident happened near Karmad when a cargo train ran over the people.

The tragedy has come just a day after the gas leak incident happened at LG Polymar chemical plant in Visakhapatnam which killed 11 people including a child. Though the government has agreed for special trains for migrant workers, many labourers have started walking back on their own. Further, the Railway Protection Force and the police has also reached the site.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed anguish over the deaths of 14 migrant labourers in the train accident and said that Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal will monitor the incident closely. He added that all possible assistance required will be provided.

Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 8, 2020

#UPDATE 14 people have died in the accident and 5 injured. The injured have been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital: Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) of South Central Railway (SCR) #Maharashtra More details awaited. https://t.co/VwXjLmWPM4  ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

During early hours today after seeing some labourers on track, loco pilot of goods train tried to stop the train but eventually hit them between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Parbhani-Manmad section

Injureds have been taken to Aurangabad Civil Hospital.

Inquiry has been ordered  Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) May 8, 2020

According to the tweet by Railway Ministry, the driver of the train tried to stop the train but eventually hit the labourers between Badnapur and Karmad stations in the Parbhani-Manmad section. The injured people are taken to Aurangabad Civil Hospital. The labourers who survived the accident are currently been counseled by the police. Further, an inquiry has also been ordered. The police said that the migrants assumed that the trains are not running due to the lockdown and slept on the tracks. Further, the track was strewn with personal belongings and footwear. Further, the food they were carrying were also kept on the tracks. Reportedly, there were no kids in the group.

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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 Asia-Pacific team. The April jobs report showed the U.S. unemployment rate skyrocketing to 14.7%, the worst job losses since the post-World War II era, as coronavirus restrictions shuttered businesses for the month and put millions out of work. State officials are attempting to thread the needle between reopening parts of the economy and preventing a resurgence of the virus. As the number of coronavirus cases and deaths rise in Russia, a delayed epidemic is taking hold of eastern Europe, while outbreaks in western Europe subside, according to the WHO. Italy reported 243 new deaths from the coronavirus, making it the third country to reach 30,000 deaths Global cases: More than 3.8 million

Global deaths: At least 269,881

U.S. cases: More than 1.2 million

U.S. deaths: At least 75,852 The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

8 pm: Plans to reopen US economy must 'talk about worker safety,' says AFL-CIO president

7:30 pm: Pfizer will focus on coronavirus vaccine production as it outsources some drug production

A logo for Pfizer is displayed on a monitor on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange, July 29, 2019. Brendan McDermid | Reuters

U.S. drugmaker Pfizer plans to outsource its medication production to external contractors as it prepares to ramp up the production of an experimental vaccine to treat Covid-19 if it proves to be safe and effective, Reuters reported. The drugmaker will tap into its network of around 200 outside contractors, including Catalent and Lonza Group AG, to play a bigger role in producing some of its existing medicines, president of global supply at Pfizer Mike McDermott told Reuters. "They have been hugely helpful in the past and will help us through this," McDermott said. Pfizer said Tuesday it has begun testing an experimental vaccine to combat the coronavirus in the United States. The U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant, which is working alongside German drugmaker BioNTech, said the first human participants in the United States have been dosed with the potential vaccine, BNT162. They began human trials of the experimental vaccine late last month in Germany. Riya Bhattacharjee, Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Reuters

7 pm: Economic recovery dependent on how many laid-off workers return to their jobs

While a government survey showed that 4 in 5 laid-off workers expect to return to their jobs, some economists think that employers may not be able to rehire those employees. If companies need less employees, it could make broader economic recovery slower and more uneven, CNBC's Patti Domm reports. The U.S. economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. Hannah Miller

6:42 pm: Democrats in the House roll on with next relief bill, but Republicans are pumping the brakes

Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, speaks to members of the media in Washington, D.C., on Friday, May 8, 2020. Shawn Thew | EPA | Bloomberg via Getty Images

House Democrats hope to vote on their next coronavirus bill as soon as next week. The legislation, which could reportedly rival the $2 trillion price tag of the rescue package passed in March, is expected to include relief for state and local governments and money to test for and trace the coronavirus, among other measures. On a caucus call Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told members he hopes to consider the proposal next week and will give lawmakers currently out of Washington 72 hours' notice before a vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide. Republicans, who control the Senate and White House, have not shown the same urgency to approve another relief plan. White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Friday that talks between the Trump administration and Congress are "kind of paused." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown concerns about spending more taxpayer money. He has expressed skepticism about aid for state and local governments, a priority for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Jacob Pramuk

6:21 pm: United Airlines halts $2.25 billion bond offering

6:16 pm: Multiple states to lift major restrictions over the next few days

States across the country are lifting significant business restrictions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Hair salons opened in Texas on Friday under new social-distancing guidelines that include keeping six feet of space between beauty stations.

Nevada will move into the first phase of its reopening plan on Saturday ahead of the May 15 expiration date of its stay-at-home order.

Starting Monday, both Arkansas and Alabama will allow dine-in service at restaurants under certain limitations.

Connecticut is also looking ahead to the summer months by allowing camps to open June 29 under social-distancing guidelines, including limiting groups to 10 kids. For more updates on states' reopening plans, click here. Hannah Miller

6:05 pm: California expects to have budget deficit through 2024

Demonstrators protest against the state's stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic, on May 1, 2020 in California. Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

California will continue to have a budget deficit through at least 2024, according to the state's Legislative Analyst's Office. The deficits could total up to $126 billion, depending on how the recession develops, the Associated Press reports. With businesses closed under Gov. Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order, California currently has an unemployment rate of 18% and the Legislative Analyst's Office said the state could expect to lose up to $39 billion in revenue this year. Hannah Miller

5:58 pm: Watchdog says there are 'reasonable grounds' that top vaccine doctor's removal was retaliatory

Rick Bright, deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response for Health and Human Services (HHS), speaks during a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, March 8, 2018. Toya Sarno Jordan | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rick Bright, the top federal vaccine specialist who was booted from running an agency involved in overseeing coronavirus response, should be temporarily reinstated in that post as he pursues a whistleblower complaint, a government watchdog has said, according to Bright's lawyers. Bright claims he was summarily removed as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency last month after he refused to embrace a push to expand access to an anti-malarial drug that President Donald Trump has said could be used to treat Covid-19. Earlier this week, Bright filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, allegedly he was transferred to another federal health agency in retaliation for his resistance to widespread use of the drug hydroxychloroquine. Bright's lawyers said the OSC has told them that there are "reasonable grounds" that his removal as BARDA director "was retaliatory." The attorneys also said that OSC plans to recommend to the agency's parent, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, that he be kept as director to allow enough time for his allegations to be investigated. Dan Mangan

5:15 pm: Tesla is not cleared to reopen US factory, local officials say

Electric vehicle makers Tesla intended to reopen their U.S. car plant in Fremont, California on Friday. However, local authorities said that they had not given the "green light" to Tesla to reopen, and that Covid-19 health orders were still in place at least for another week or two. Interim Health Officer for Alameda County Public Health Department, Erica Pan, noted in an online town hall on Friday that even though California Governor Newsom had relaxed Covid-19 restrictions at the state level, "If there are local orders, whichever is stricter prevails." Lora Kolodny

5 pm: San Diego mayor: Compliance with new beach rules bodes well for state business reopening

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said on CNBC's "Squawk Alley" that residents are following the city's beach restrictions, which he argued is a good sign as California tries to further reopen its economy." I was out there on the beaches myself last week with our lifeguards. You can walk, you can run, surf and swim right now. No sitting down. To see that compliance I think bodes extremely well for when we start to reopen our businesses," Faulconer said. Faulconer's comments came as California retailers who sell products such as toys, books and clothes were allowed to begin offering curbside service. The mayor said he believes San Diego residents are willing to comply with restrictions because they do not want to give back the tremendous gains that we've made, the sacrifices that we've made over these last six weeks." - Kevin Stankiewicz

4:45 pm: California governor says all registered voters can vote by mail in November

Gavin Newsom, governor of California, speaks during a news conference in Sacramento, California, on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. Rich Pedroncelli | AP | Bloomberg via Getty Images

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order allowing all registered voters in the state to receive a mail-in ballot this November. The move comes as several states weigh how to carry out their remaining 2020 elections while keeping voters safe from contracting and spreading the deadly coronavirus. "I signed an executive order," Newsom said, "that will allow every registered voter in California to receive a mail-in ballot."Newsom, who announced the move at a press conference, clarified that California will still provide an opportunity for people to vote in person at a polling center. "That mail-in ballot is important but it's not an exclusive substitute to physical locations," he said. Jennifer Elias

4:30 pm: Nordstrom is closing 16 stores. Here's where they are

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

Nordstrom had announced earlier this week its plans to permanently shut 16 stores, as it takes a hit with other retailers from the coronavirus pandemic. CNBC confirmed the full list of those locations Friday. The closures include department stores in California, Texas and Florida. The 16 stores represent about 14% of Nordstrom's fleet of full-line department stores. Lauren Thomas

4:15 pm: Google will start reopening offices in June

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gestures during a session at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos. Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai will begin reopening offices globally as early as June, targeting 10-15% capacity, he said in an email obtained by CNBC. "Our ramp back to the office will be slow, deliberate and incremental," he said, adding that the company has less than 5% of global employees working from offices currently and some sites in the Asia Pacific region are already at 30% of capacity. The majority of people who can work from home, will continue to do so "potentially" through the end of year, although they'll be allowed to come in now and then. Pichai also addressed employee burnout, encouraging employees to take a day off in late May. Jennifer Elias

4 pm: New York City partners with Salesforce to conduct contact tracing

Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, wears a protective mask while touring the Malia Mills swimwear factory, which has pivoted to manufacturing polypropylene gowns for medical workers, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will partner with Salesforce to deploy a call center as well as a customer relationship and case management system that will help officials track and isolate potential cases of Covid-19. De Blasio has said that tracking people who come into contact with infected individuals will be crucial to easing restrictions and reopening the city. The city is implementing a "test and trace corps" that will be tasked with testing New Yorkers for the infection and tracing all cases and contacts of known positive infections, de Blasio said. The goal is to hire 2,500 public health "foot soldiers" by June, who will be trained using the contact tracing program led by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Noah Higgins-Dunn

3:30 pm: Coronavirus brings uncertainty for restaurant summer jobs

An employee inside a restaurant waits for customers arriving for pickup in Alhambra, California on May 7, 2020. Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic has introduced serious uncertainty into the restaurant industry, leaving questions about how many jobs will be available this summer. While many restaurants are currently only offering carryout, curbside pickup and delivery services, fully reopening could be good for adding summer jobs at a time of high unemployment, CNBC's Kate Rogers and Betsy Spring report. For the past several years, the restaurant industry has typically added more than 500,000 jobs each summer. Hannah Miller

3:10 pm: Apple to reopen some stores in US

People wearing face masks look at a cellphone outside an Apple store during a May Day holiday in Shanghai on May 1, 2020. Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images

Apple said that it will reopen its retail stores in Idaho, South Carolina, Alabama and Alaska starting next week. The stores will limit the number of customers at one time and focus on servicing broken products. Apple will perform temperature checks and employees will wear masks as part of the reopening process. In recent weeks, a few locations have reopened in countries such as South Korea, Australia and Germany. Kif Leswing

2:50 pm: NFL teams seeing early ticket demand despite coronavirus pandemic, SeatGeek says

Crews test out architectural light ribbons and exterior sign lighting as construction continues at Allegiant Stadium, the USD 2 billion, glass-domed future home of the Las Vegas Raiders on April 23, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ethan Miller | Getty Images

Sales of National Football League tickets are up 234% year-over-year compared to the first 12 hours after the schedule release last year, despite concerns surrounding the global health crisis. The company, which specializes in mobile-based ticket reselling, said it is surprised by such early activity especially as the coronavirus continues to impact uncertainty around live sports events. "While we certainly assumed there would be some level of demand, we have been surprised to see how strong it is, as fans look forward to football this fall," Chris Leyden, a SeatGeek communications official, told CNBC via email. Jasmine Kim

2:45 pm: Media companies are expecting a tough quarter for TV advertising

Bob Bakish, CEO, Viacom Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Companies like Fox Corp. and AMC Networks are warning about TV advertising declines in the quarter ahead. A slew of media companies have reported earnings in recent days that showed how TV is trending as advertisers are pulling spend or postponing campaigns until later in the year. With many consumers stuck at home, consumers are tuning into linear TV, which is expected to add 8.3 million U.S. viewers this year, the first time viewership has seen positive growth since 2011, eMarketer said in a new forecast this week. But that viewership isn't equaling dollar signs. "At a time when lots and lots of companies are slashing their ad budgets, or at least pausing them, now the supply of viewing time or ad inventory exceeds the demand from advertisers to fill it," eMarketer analyst Ross Benes told CNBC. "It's great to get people to watch your show, but each viewer is being monetized much lower than they were months ago." Meg Graham

2:30 pm: Death of NYC child prompts investigation of impact on kids

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks at his daily briefing at New York Medical College during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Valhalla, New York, May 7, 2020. Mike Segar | Reuters



The New York Department of Health is investigating whether the coronavirus is causing a severe inflammatory condition in children after a 5-year-old boy in New York City died Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. Other countries, including the U.K. have reported children with the virus who develop the symptoms, which are similar to that of Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. The World Health Organization has asked its global network of clinicians to be "on alert" for such cases around the world. The coronavirus was previously believed to mostly spare children. The recently observed conditions in children remain rare, but indicate that the virus presents a threat to young kids." This is every parent's nightmare, right? That your child may actually be affected by this virus. But it's something that we have to consider seriously now," Cuomo said. William Feuer

2:15 pm: Families of dead Covid-19 victims may have to give back stimulus checks

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

As thousands die in the U.S. from the coronavirus, millions of $1,200 stimulus checks are getting sent out by the government. That prompts the question: Will families of those who recently died due to Covid-19 get to keep the $1,200 checks made out to the deceased? It turns out the answer is not clear cut. The IRS said this week that it mostly expects stimulus checks sent to the deceased to be returned. But there is an exception based on the timing of the death and when the stimulus checks were received. "A payment made to someone who died before receipt of the payment should be returned to the IRS by following the instructions about repayments," the agency states on its website. Take two people die on the same day in 2020, for example. One receives the stimulus payment via direct deposit the day before they die. The other is still waiting for a check in the mail. The first one's family will be able to keep the money. That might not be the case for the second family. "I predict more guidance. I predict changes in this," said Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. For now, Holtzblatt said families in this situation should hold off on spending that stimulus money. Lorie Konish

2 pm: Melinda Gates says US coronavirus response is 'chaos'

Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Chesnot | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Melinda Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, criticized the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic and gave it a grade of D-minus. The U.S. doesn't have national leadership to provide enough tests, protective gear and necessary supplies needed, and such lack of response created "chaos" in the country, said Gates Friday on NBC's "Today" show" In a separate interview with Politico on Thursday, Gates said "now we have 50 different homegrown state solutions instead of a national response" and gave the Trump administration a D-minus grade. Jasmine Kim

1:45 pm: WHO says 'delayed epidemic' takes hold in eastern Europe as coronavirus cases in Russia rise

People wear masks as a preventive measure against the coronavirus pandemic at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia on March 17, 2020. Sefa Karacan | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

As the number of coronavirus cases and deaths rise in Russia, a delayed epidemic is taking hold of eastern Europe, while outbreaks in western Europe subside. "Russia is just in a different phase of the pandemic and can learn some of the lessons that have been learned at great costs in Asia, in North America and in Western Europe," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's emergencies program, said at a press briefing. World Health Officials said the country has tested nearly 430,000 people and scaled up its public health measures and lab testing in response to the pandemic. Jasmine Kim

12:54 pm: Aide to Vice President Mike Pence tests positive for coronavirus

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Vice President Mike Pence looks on during a meeting with Texas Governor Greg Abbott about coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 7, 2020. Tom Brenner | Reuters

A staffer for Vice President Mike Pence has tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the second White House aide this week to contract the virus. On Thursday, the White House announced that President Donald Trump's personal valet had also tested positive. News of the Pence staffer broke as Air Force Two was on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base to take Pence to Iowa. The White House medical office has initiated a contact tracing program for the individual, and the retesting of individuals who had contact with them is ongoing, NBC reported. The two staffers' positive test results deepen concerns about the White House's informal policy of not wearing masks, despite CDC guidelines. Neither Trump nor Pence wears one, nor do the staffers around them in the West Wing and the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Christina Wilkie

12:27 pm: Abbott Labs antibody test delivers highly accurate results, study says

A coronavirus antibody test from Abbott Laboratories is highly likely to deliver correct results, according to the company. It cited a University of Washington School of Medicine study that found that the antibody test had a specificity rate of 99.9% and a sensitivity rate of 100%, Reuters reported Friday. The results indicate a low probability of incorrectly diagnosing a healthy person and no possibility of false negatives. Antibody tests are considered crucial in getting the country back to work, as the presence of antibodies could potentially signal immunity to reinfection. Hannah Miller

12:18 pm: Italy becomes the third country to reach 30,000 deaths

Priest Don Marcello blesses the coffins lined up in the church of San Giuseppe, waiting to be brought to the crematorium by the Italian military on March 28, 2020 in Seriate, Italy. Pier Marco Tacca | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Italy reported 243 new deaths from the coronavirus, making it the third country to reach 30,000 deaths, Reuters reported. The Civil Protection Agency said the death toll since the outbreak hit the country in February is 30,201, according to Reuters. The United States has the highest death toll from the virus, 75,852, and the United Kingdom's 30,689 fatalities is second highest, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Chris Eudaily

11:18 am: Amtrak reinstates more train service in Northeast

Amtrak will introduce a modified schedule for its Acela train service between Washington and Boston starting June 1. Amtrak will restore three weekday Acela round trips and increase service for its Northeast Regional lines from eight to 10 round trips. The railroad service is also implementing new safety measures such as mandatory cashless payments, new glass barriers at station ticket offices and limited seating in dining and cafe areas on trains. Amtrak announced Thursday that it would require employees and passengers to wear facial coverings on trains and in stations. Hannah Miller

11 am: More borrowers miss mortgage payments under CARES Act bailout

Nearly 4.1 million homeowners are skipping monthly mortgage payments, much higher than federal regulators expected. In just the past week, 225,000 more borrowers took advantage of the government mortgage bailout, according to data firm Black Knight. Homeowners can put off payments for 90 days under the CARES Act and then apply for extensions of a year. The total number of forbearances represents $890 billion in unpaid principal, CNBC's Diana Olick reports. Hannah Miller

10:50 am: More than 78% of workers see layoffs as temporary, a 'silver lining'

Nearly 4 in 5 unemployed workers see their layoff as temporary, and economists say that could be a good sign for the economy. The 18 million workers who described themselves as temporarily laid off expect to return to work in six months. Michelle Meyer, Bank of America head of U.S. economics, said that is a "silver lining" in the dismal April jobs report, which showed a loss of 20.6 million payrolls. But she said "time is of the essence" to get those workers back to their jobs, before they risk becoming permanent layoffs. Patti Domm

10:35 am: Tickets for reopening of Disney Shanghai sell out

A visitor wearing a mask walks outside the Shanghai Disney Resort, that will be closed during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday following the outbreak of a new coronavirus, in Shanghai, China January 24, 2020. Aly Song | Reuters

Tickets for the opening day of Disney's Shanghai theme park sold out within minutes of going on sale. Shanghai Disneyland, which has been closed since Jan. 25, will reopen to the public Monday. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the park saw around 80,000 visitors per day. The government has mandated that Disney operate at 30% capacity, or about 24,000 visitors, when it reopens. However, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said the park will start operations below that capacity and ramp up to the 30% threshold over the course of several weeks. Guests are required to purchase their admission tickets prior to arriving at the park and will need to wear masks while in the park, except when eating. Sarah Whitten

10:30 am: Restaurants and bars face rocky path to recovery

While some restaurants and bars will reopen with limited capacity sooner rather than later, the sector is likely to face widespread decimation, according to industry and health experts. Establishments already hurt by prolonged closures will face steep costs to reopen their doors and sharp cuts to profit margins because of capacity limits. And even if restaurants find it economically feasible to reopen, there's no guarantee Americans would feel safe enough to show up in the numbers necessary for a recovery. In fact, 68% percent of Americans say they would feel uncomfortable eating at a restaurant, according to a late April survey from SAP's Qualtrics, the employee management software company. Alex Sherman and Amelia Lucas

10:21 am: Leisure and hospitality sector loses 47% of jobs in April

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

The leisure and hospitality sector lost 47% of its jobs in April as the broader U.S. economy shed more positions last month than in any other since before World War II. The vast majority of the sector's 7.7 million decline was concentrated in the food service industry, including waiters, chefs and cashiers. Those workers alone saw net job losses total 5.5 million. Health care, too, saw a steep decline of 1.4 million jobs as providers paused elective surgeries and regular checkups to prioritize preparation for, and treatment of, Covid-19 patients. Thomas Franck

9:57 am: Sorrento Therapeutics, Mount Sinai develop antibody cocktail

Biopharma company Sorrento Therapeutics and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City announced they have joined forces to develop an antibody cocktail called COVI-SHIELD they hope will protect against the coronavirus for up to two months. This therapy is designed to be resistant to future virus mutations since it uses three neutralizing antibodies to ward off the disease. Utilizing an FDA-approved diagnostic test under emergency use authorization, Mount Sinai researchers have screened approximately 15,000 Covid-19 convalescent patients for highly concentrated, virus-neutralizing antibodies that will be used to produce the treatment. The jury is still out on how effective antibody treatment is against Covid-19. The FDA is trying to discern what level of immunity people have after they have recovered from the virus. Lori Ioannou

9:50 am: Stocks rise despite staggering job losses

Stocks rose in early trading, despite a staggering jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 300 points, or 1.3%, in early trading. The S&P 500 gained 1.1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which turned positive for the year on Thursday, gained another 0.8% in the first minutes of trading. Read more on the markets from CNBC's Fred Imbert. Sara Salinas

9:32 am: Moderna CEO says supply of coronavirus vaccine will be limited, US will help decide who gets it first

Moderna anticipates it will work "very closely" with the U.S. government to determine who will get the first doses of its experimental vaccine if it is proven to work, CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC. The company announced Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration cleared its potential vaccine for a phase 2 trial. "We will all be supply constrained for quite some time, meaning we won't be able to make as many product as will be required to vaccinate everyone on the planet," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." Read the full report on the Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel interview from CNBC's William Feuer. Melodie Warner

9:13 am: Tesla's Fremont plant will resume 'limited operations' on Friday

Tesla Chief Executive Office Elon Musk speaks at his company's factory in Fremont, California. Noah Berger | Reuters

Tesla will attempt to restart production at its U.S. car plant in Fremont, California, on Friday afternoon, CEO Elon Musk told employees in an e-mail sent overnight. The plant will resume "limited operations" by bringing back around 30% of the employees that would normally work on a given shift, Tesla's HR boss, Valerie Capers Workman, said in a separate e-mail. Alameda County, where the plant is located, has a shelter-in-place order effective through May 31, according to the county Public Health Department website. Read the full report on Tesla's Fremont plant operations from CNBC's Lora Kolodny. Melodie Warner

8:43 am: Unemployment rate jumps to 14.7% as a record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April

The U.S. labor market in April dropped to historic levels as 20.5 million workers were slashed from nonfarm payrolls, sending the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 14.7%, according to the Labor Department. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting payrolls to shed 21.5 million and the unemployment rate to go to 16%. April's unemployment rate topped the post-war record 10.8% but was short of the Great Depression high estimated at 24.9%. The Great Recession peak was 10% in October 2009. Read the full report on the U.S. labor market from CNBC's Jeff Cox. Melodie Warner

8:10 am: Hot spots of new cases spread in Southeast states

7:31 am: WHO calls for more research into role of Wuhan market

This photo taken on April 15, 2020 shows venders wearing face masks as the offer prawns for sale at the Wuhan Baishazhou Market in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP via Getty Images HECTOR RETAMAL

The seafood market in Wuhan, China, played a role in the outbreak, but more research is needed to determine whether it's the source of the virus or was an "amplifying setting," the World Health Organization said, according to Reuters. WHO officials previously said the coronavirus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan and likely originated in bats, then jumped to an "intermediate host" before infecting humans. Scientists continue to run tests on various animals but have so far not found the host responsible for the outbreak. "The market played a role in the event, that's clear. But what role [was] we don't know, whether it was the source or amplifying setting or just a coincidence that some cases were detected in and around that market," said Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert on food safety and zoonotic viruses, Reuters reported. The WHO is in talks with China to send a follow-up mission to the country to investigate the animal source of the virus, a WHO official said Wednesday. Will Feuer

7:03 am: Indonesia eases travel bans earlier than planned

Indonesian mural artist Bayu Rahardian poses in front of his artwork amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in Depok on April 16, 2020. Adek Berry | AFP | Getty Images
The McDonald's located at SW 89th and Penn Ave. on Thursday, May 7, 2020, in Oklahoma City, Okla. Four employees were injured after a customer opened fire due to the dinning room being closed on Wednesday.

OKLAHOMA CITY  Four employees at a McDonalds in Oklahoma City were injured Wednesday, after a customer saw the lobby was closed because of the novel coronavirus, police said.

According to police, Gloricia Woody entered the restaurant and was told by employees the dining area was closed. After refusing to leave, the 32-year-old woman got into a physical confrontation with a McDonald's employee. Woody was forced out of the restaurant by employees.

Woody left the store but returned with a handgun. Police said she fired approximately three rounds in the restaurant, hitting one employee in the arm. Two other employees were hit with shrapnel.

The three employees injured by gunfire were taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.

The woman was taken into custody without incident a few blocks south of the McDonald's.

Gloricia Woody.

'We need people to self-police': Mayor encourages constituents to 'socially shame' people not wearing masks in Rhode Island

McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski told ABCs Good Morning America that the employees were expected to make a full recovery.

The shooting comes amid tensions over restrictions because of efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic, as well as how people are responding to ongoing efforts to reopen portions of the United States shut down by the virus.

What youre seeing in this situation is really what youre seeing in a variety of situations across the country, which is this tension about opening and peoples concern about it, he said. But theres absolutely no excuse for violence, particularly gun violence, so Im just happy that our people are going to be OK.

Tensions have escalated into violence elsewhere in the country.

This week, a woman, her adult son and husband were charged in last weeks fatal shooting of a security guard who refused to let her daughter enter a Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan, because she wasnt wearing a face mask to protect against transmission of the coronavirus.

Story continues

Contributing: The Associated Press

These countries have no reports of coronavirus cases: But can they be trusted?

'Ahmaud Arbery's life matters': Attorneys, rights leaders demand arrests in slaying of Georgia jogger

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma City McDonald's shooting: Workers shot by patron, police say
Jerry Brown arriving in the Assembly for his first swearing-in as governor in 1975. (Los Angeles Times)

For decades, Californians watched, analyzed, criticized and voted for Edmund G. Brown Jr. And for all that, he remains one of the most captivating, bewildering, inspiring and infuriating figures in the states history. He may also be the most quintessentially Californian, embodying an admixture of contemplation, activism and self-contradiction at the heart of a nation-state with a population bigger than Canadas.

Jim Newton has been preoccupied with and fascinated by Jerry Brown for a lifetime, and his new biography, Man of Tomorrow, is a thoughtful look at the governor who shaped the state that has always reached the American future before the rest of the country.

Brown campaigning in Riverside, April 26, 1974. (Associated Press)

Brown left his footprints on the cities, suburbs, coasts, rugged uplands and arid deserts of California during a lifetime in public office. So much of his story is known  so much of it has been chronicled in these pages  that the story Newton lays out may seem familiar. But it is the play of this man of the mind against the experience of a veteran newsman  once the editorial page editor of the Times, now affiliated with UCLA  that makes this volume a formidable contribution to the history of both the state and the country.

Jim Newton, the author of 'Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown." (Steve Shroud / Little, Brown and Company)

Newton, who has published biographies of Dwight Eisenhower and Earl Warren, writes with verve, grace and the advantage over past Brown biographers of covering the finished product, rather than a work in progress.

Lets start at the beginning, for it helps us understand where Brown and California end up. Drawn to the confines of the seminary, Brown intended to become a Jesuit priest  trying, as he put it, to overcome the self-indulgent, weak part of human nature. This would turn out to be a lifelong goal. He picked grapes and picked over the Bible, thinking he had picked the right way to traverse the world: through abnegation and continuous mortification.

These would be his watchwords and guideposts, making him, as Newton puts it, subservient to God and mindful of nature and its immutable commands."

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The rhythms and nostrums of the seminary appealed to Brown, shaped him, motivated him. Newton portrays him as an oddity in American civic life, "a pragmatic liberal deeply committed to faith." He came of age in a cassock but lived for a cause.

Brown with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, left, and L.A. County Sheriff Peter Pitchess in 1978, signing an anti-crime bill. (Associated Press)

He and his father, Gov. Pat Brown, had an affectionate but uneasy relationship that Newton sketches with skill, and in his comparisons between father and son he sets the younger Brown in sharp relief: "His son would ... never, once he reached power, be accused of glad-handing  dealmaking, yes, but out of pragmatism, not out of uncertainty.

Making a decision that haunted him as much as it defined him, Brown left the Jesuits. But they didnt leave him, even as Zen teachings followed  "a fresh dogma-free alternative to Catholicism, Newton says, freighted with a familiar grammar, imbued with a fresh vocabulary.

In the early life of Jerry Brown, as in the early pages of this book, Newton sets out his central theme:

"Over time, the sturdy rope that ran from Saint Ignatius to Zen shaped Browns appetite for the great ideas of politics  notions otherwise as disparate as capital punishment, nuclear weapons and climate change  all of which had in common a necessary humility before fearsome powers such as death, destruction, the earth itself." All the rest, as a sage from the Jewish faith tradition put it centuries ago, is commentary.

And there is plenty of commentary in these 448 pages, and people too: Willie Brown, Henry Waxman, Richard Nixon, Alan Cranston, Mario Savio, Warren Christopher, Joan Didion, Ken Kesey, Charles Manson, Linda Ronstadt, Cesar Chavez, Patty Hearst, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones and the medfly. Newton has produced a history of California as much as a biography of Brown.

Brown, left, sits next to UFW leader Cesar Chavez at the graveside service for slain farmworker Rufino Contreras. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

But the reader comes back to the 34th and 39th governor of California, and to the result of Newtons deep examination of a man whose 16 years as governor were the longest reign in the state:

[H]e walked a path of tradition while also inviting discovery. That tension  contradiction, some might say  helped reinforce his detachment from the currents of the day. He could seem to outsiders so utterly modern, with his youth and girlfriends and talk of space exploration and technology, yet he was not and never would be a modernist. While others plotted political strategy and reveled in showing Reagan the door, Jerry Brown read Wittgenstein and sat quietly in monasteries, rising early, saying little, thinking deeply.

It wasnt only Wittgenstein. Newton plumbs the Brown mind, finding traces of E.F. Schumacher, Ivan Illich and Michel Foucault and unearthing the concept of subsidiarity, which translates in the political realm to decentralization  the delegation of solutions to those localities (or even families) most affected by the problem.

During his second tenure as governor, Brown holds the signed copy of a minimum wage bill. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

When Brown returned to the governors chair in 2011 after stints as mayor of Oakland and state attorney general, he was in a different period in his life  and California was in a different place too. Brown had gone from wise guy to wise man, from skinflint to a bit of a spendthrift; the bullet train caught his eye and his imagination, though it also courted controversy. Its not always easy, Newton concludes, to be a man of tomorrow.

It was not always easy to live down Browns yesterdays either. Im 79, John, he told Sen. John McCain, who was then 80. I dont have to bull anymore.

He didnt. I had a half-hour with him, there in the state Capitol, in his last hours as governor. He spoke a little Latin, maybe just for fun or for show, and of course he ranged from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the way Costco packages its milk, with a slight digression into the philosophy of Carl Jung. But nestled among his layer cakes of dependent clauses was a clear-eyed assessment of what he had accomplished and left unaccomplished  and what was left for others to do.

Newton saw that too. As Brown left office, he left a California of great wealth but of shocking poverty and glaring inequality as well, he writes. And yet the standard of successful leadership is not the elimination of all problems but rather proof of progress. By that measure, Brown was undeniably successful. In the end Newton calls Brown a gift to history. So is his book.

Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown



Jim Newton



Little, Brown: 448 pages, $30
MILFORD  A plan for a new dog day care, overnight boarding and grooming facility at 40 Quirk Road gained unanimous approval from the Planning and Zoning Board.

The boards 9-0 vote, which took place remotely via Zoom, approved a special exception and site plan review and accepted the nine existing parking spaces as adequate for the use. The special exception was required because the type of business is not listed as either an approved or prohibited use in the Limited Industrial zone. Special exceptions require at least seven yes votes for a project to be approved.

It sounds like an excellent use of the property, board member Brett Broesder said.

P&Z approval included two conditions, as written by Laura M. Miller, chief of the Environmental Health Division of the Milford Health Department, in a May 1 letter to Michele McHugh, who, with her son-in-law, Owen Botting, will operate the facility.

All Dumpsters shall be located on a concrete pad, enclosed and maintained rodent/fly proof and odor free. The building and grounds shall be maintained in a safe and sanitary manner in accordance with the CT Public Health Code, Miller wrote.

Agro Brothers Investments LLC, which lists Joseph M. Agro Jr. of Brewster Road, Milford, as member, is the property owner. The one-story, 6,750-square-foot building built in 1986 is located on a 1.18-acre parcel. The city assessor appraised the building at $388,010 in 2018. There are wetlands behind the property and a small pond on adjacent parcels to the west.

Board members and those who spoke at the public hearing had questions about how the sound from barking dogs would affect the nearby residential neighborhood, how dog waste would be handled, and whether the property has sufficient parking.

Attorney Thomas Lynch represented McHugh and Botting. Lynch said the building previously housed a Montessori school and day care center. He said McHugh and Botting are under contract to purchase the property from current owners Joseph and Louis Agro.

Lynch said McHugh and Botting will redo the building interior, but no new construction is planned, other than an outdoor dog play area at the rear of the building. The 20-foot-by-109-foot area will be enclosed with a six-foot-high vinyl fence.

Lynch said he believed the business would not be a problem to the residential neighbors across the street on Quirk Road because the property borders the Metro-North railroad tracks to the rear with a wide area of wetlands that provides a buffer. The buildings interior will be soundproofed, he said.

The way it is set up it would not be intrusive for the neighborhood, said Lynch.

Lynch said the nine parking spaces would be adequate because of how the business operates. He said there would be no more than three to four employees working at any given time and someone will be there at all times. He said there would not be much need for visitor parking.

The nature of the use is people will drive up to the front door and employees will retrieve the dogs from the cars, said Lynch.

Dogtopia has operated since 2002 in the United States and Canada, said Lynch. The companys website lists 130 locations. The Milford location would start with seven employees and 30 dogs and would expand to a maximum of 90 dogs per day, he said.

He said the building would have an industrial-grade HVAC system, so there will be no smells in the building. With close proximity to Interstate 95s Exit 40, Lynch said the building has a great location to serve Milford, Orange, and West Haven.

Lynch said the waste management plan received scrutiny from Inland Wetlands Officer MaryRose Palumbo and City Engineer Gregory Pidluski. Lynch said the outside play area would have a synthetic turf. Dog urine would be treated with a biochemical agenda, collected by a machine and then flushed to the drain inside the building. He said solid waste would be bagged, frozen and then placed in the dumpster.

Lynch said Palumbo was concerned the play area might be hosed down, with urine getting into the creek at the rear of the property. Lynch said the area would not be hosed down and he said Palumbo issued a ruling allowing the project to move forward. Finally, Lynch said the Sewer Commission issued approval for the amount of water to be used in the building.

In response to questions from the board regarding rain washing dog urine off the property, McHugh said Botting, who is the general manager, will not have dogs outside if there is a greater than 60 percent chance of rain.

We are concerned about sudden rainstorms, McHugh said.

McHugh restated what Lynch said about when the dogs are outside, the urine would be treated with a bio-enzymatic cleaner, then vacuumed up and placed in the mop sink in the janitor area. She said a log sheet would be used to record when the dogs are brought inside and the outside area is cleaned. She said the facility would have an average of 40 to 45 dogs at one time.

Responding to board questions about how the owners plan to protect the neighbors from dogs barking, Botting said there would be no more than 35 to 40 dogs outside at any one time. He said the companys trainers have 100 hours of training and part of their job is to stop dogs from barking.

McHugh said the dogs would be outside for a short, specified period of time. She said that with a six-foot-high fence and the distance to the houses across the street, noise would not be a problem.

We will do everything we can to not disturb the residents across the street, said McHugh.

In response to questions about disturbance to neighbors, Lynch said, There is probably 300 feet distance at least between where that pen is and where the houses are, and this building is in between.

Using the citys GIS maps, a line traced from the back of the building to the nearest house across the street on Quirk Road showed a distance of 185 feet.

Some board members expressed concern that nine parking spaces would not be sufficient. In response, Lynch said the business operates with people dropping off their dogs and there would not be a need for parking. He said there is paved space on the property that could be painted to accommodate more cars.

City Planner David B. Sulkis said people could also park on the street as long as there are no signs prohibiting parking.

Lisa Goubeaux, director of design for Dogtopia, said the companys parking ratio is two spaces per 1,000 square feet of building. Based on the building size, this equates to 12 to 14 parking spaces for the Milford facility.

We find we are not needing that many parking spaces, Goubeaux said.

Public Hearing

During the public hearing, Joseph Agro said he has owned the property for 25 years, and for more than 20 years it was an education facility, and has also been used for manufacturing. Agro said there are commercial industrial users on either side.

We think this is a most appropriate use of the property. The owners are the most professional in this field in the country. We are very comfortable recommending them, said Agro.

Agro said parking was never an issue for the Montessori school, which had 96 to 108 children with nine to 10 teachers. He said Quirk Road is 40 feet wide and always had on-street parking. He said he and his brother had a proposal from the state of Connecticut to relocate its judicial branch probation division from downtown Milford to the site. Since that use is compliant in the zone, it could have been approved administratively, he said.

My contact with any of the neighbors over the last several months is that this is a very preferential use of the property, said Agro, who said they are relieved the state facility would not be there. In deference to the residents, I chose Dogtopia over them.

Alderwoman Ellen Beatty of Elm Street said she had a concern about the initial introduction of the proposal. Beatty said at the dog facility on Woodmont Road, some dogs got loose. .

I am surprised at the number of dogs. Thirty to 40 seems to be a good number, said Beatty.

Teresa Sirico of Field Court said, I am perplexed as to why the neighbors were not notified by a letter. I dont believe that everybody is on Facebook or looking at the Patch. I dont have an opinion on this. I feel the neighbors should have been properly notified.

In response, Lynch said the application was properly advertised under state statutes. Earlier in the hearing, he said the public hearing notice was published on the city website, Facebook and Milford Patch. He said the building could be used for a machine shop or other uses that could be far more onerous.

Robert Mickolyzk, co-owner with Kathleen Mickolyzk of Snowflake Pet Center at 1 Rowe Ave., said he was surprised Milford is allowing another kennel, since there are already four to five in the city and they are having difficulty paying their bills because there are not enough dogs to go around.

Mary Beth Stark, owner of Bark Avenue Pet House at 32 Higgins Drive, said, I picked that road because there are no houses. You can hear my dogs barking to the post office. She said for that many dogs, there should be one person for 15 dogs, and she has six employees for 50 dogs, which is the most she wants to have in her 8,000-square-foot building.

In response, Lynch said he appreciates what Stark said, adding, We have no idea what type of installation she has on Higgins Drive. The architect here in her professional opinion said there would be no noise.
Aurangabad train accident: Survivors raised alarm, but in vain

India

pti-PTI

Aurangabad, May 8: Survivors of the Aurangabad train accident frantically raised alarm to alert their group members sleeping on tracks about a fast-approaching freight train, but it all went in vain as 16 of them were crushed to death at the crack of dawn on Friday.

Chilling details emerged about the tragedy involving a group of migrant workers who were on their way to native places in Madhya Pradesh on foot from Maharashtra and had taken a break to rest on rail tracks out of sheer fatigue.

The accident left 16 migrant workers dead and one injured while three others survived.

All of them were working in a steel manufacturing in Jalna, a district adjoining Aurangabad in central Maharashtra, and were heading home in the amidst of coronavirus-enforced lockdown, officials said.

"A group of 20 stranded labourers started walking from Jalna. They decided to take rest and most of them lied on rail tracks. Three of them were taking rest in a nearby plain area.

"After some time, these three saw a goods train coming and immediately raised the alarm but it went unheard," Superintendent of Police Mokshada Patil told PTI. "I had a word with the survivors. They started walking from Jalna and tried to reach Bhusaval on earlier night which is around 30-40 km away from the place of the accident (near Karmad near Aurangabad)," Patil said.

"The three survivors, who were resting a little away, tried to wake up the people sleeping on the tracks by frantically shouting, but that provide futile as the train ran over them," the police officer said.

"This is an unfortunate incident. Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station," she added. The survivors were identified as Inderlal Dhurve (20 district Mandla), Virendrasingh Gaur (27, district Umaria) and Shivman Singh Gaur (27, district Shahdol) and the injured Sajjan Singh (resident of Khajeri district). A video clip from the scene of the tragedy showed the mutilated bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader and state minister Sandipan Bhumre and Member of Legislative Assembly Ambadas Danve visited the Government Medical College and Hospital here and met the injured. Danve said, "The state government is making efforts to send migrant workers to their home states. People should have patience."

The deceased includeed Dhansingh Gond, Nirlesh Singh Gond, Buddharaj Singh Gond, Rabendra Singh Gond, Rajbohram Paras Singh, Dharmendra Singh Gond, Shreedayal Singh Suresh Singh Kaul, Santosh Napit, Brijesh Bheyadin (all from Shahdol district), Bigendra Singh, Pradeep Singh Gond, Nemshah singh Munim singh (all Umaria district). One of the deceased was identified as Acchelal Singh, but his native district was not yet known, police officials said, adding another vicitm was yet to be identified.
Celtic rockers Dropkick Murphys announced today that their Boston to Berkley Tour II is now canceled due to coronavirus pandemic concerns.

The two-headliner tour with Rancid was set to end at the ArtPark Amphitheater in Lewiston, New York, on May 24. The band posted their announcement on social media with hopes that the tour can come back in 2021. Ticket holders should be looking for an email from their local promoter for ticket refund options.

The Dropkick Murphys are currently scheduled to play a free concert at the New York State Fair this year for their third summer in a row. The band is known for their hits such as Im Shipping Up To Boston," Rose Tattoo," The Boys Are Back, and Going Out In Style.

California punk rockers Rancid performed alongside Dropkick Murphys at their first Boston to Berkley Tour in 2017 as well as shared the stage with them at the 2003 Vans Warped Tour. Known for songs like Ruby Soho, Salvation, and Time Bomb, Rancid is currently working on their tenth studio album.

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As a mark of gratitude, a group



of migrant workers painted, without charging a paisa, a school building in Arunachal Pradesh that sheltered them during the lockdown, an official said on Friday.

The labourers, mostly from Dhemaji and North Lakhimpur districts in neighbouring Assam, took shelter in the school in Yupia area of Papum Pare district, and they wanted to paint the building that was their home for several days, he said.

"Within a couple of days, the school building, which was not in a good shape, was given a new look," Papum Pare Deputy Commissioner Pige Ligu said.

Expressing her happiness, headmistress of the upper primary school Obbi Zirdo Rumi said the maintenance of the building was due.

"It is an unbelievable moment for the institution. I am very thankful to the workers and the district administration for their support and cooperation in this crisis period," she said.

The migrant workers also cleaned the school premises and repaired wooden benches, the headmistress said.

"We are habituated to hard work and happy to keep ourselves busy with activities in these tough times. It was our gratitude to the local administration that was taking care of us," one of the migrant workers said.

The deputy commissioner said the authorities were continuously monitoring the health condition of the workers, while they painted the building.

"We ensured that social distancing protocol and health safety guidelines were followed while they were working," he said.

The district administration had arranged two relief camps-one at the school and another at the UD Shopping Complex -to provide shelter to more than 145 labourers during the nationwide lockdown.

Papum Pare SP Jimmy Chiram said adequate security arrangements were made for the stranded labourers, and regular physical training sessions were arranged to keep them fit during their stay in the relief camps.

The administration along with police also helped all migrant workers reach their respective destinations safely.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court has nullified the judgment which convicted former Abia state governor and serving senator, Orji Uzor Kalu, and Ude Udeogo, the former Director of Finance and Accounts during Kalus administration.

Senator, Orji Uzor Kalu, and Ude Udeogo were arrested and jailed for diverting N7.6 billion belonging to the state government during their time in office.

Justice Idris Mohammed Liman of the Federal High Court in Lagos on December 12, 2019, sentenced Kalu to 12 years imprisonment after finding him guilty of N7.1bn fraud charges levelled against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Udeogo was also sentenced to 10 years.

Displeased with the judgement of the Federal High Court, Kalu and Udeogu filed an appeal to challenge their sentencing at the Supreme Court.

The apex court, in a unanimous verdict by a seven-man panel of Justices led by Justice Amina Augie, held that the Federal High Court in Lagos acted without jurisdiction when it convicted Kalu, his firm, Slok Nigeria Limited and former Director of Finance in Abia State, Jones Udeogu. It held that trial Justice Mohammed Liman was no longer a judge of the Federal High Court as at the time he sat and delivered the judgement that convicted the defendants for allegedly stealing about N7.1billion from Abia state treasury.

The apex court, therefore, ordered the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to reassign the case for trial.

Kalu served as the Governor of Abia State from May 29, 1999, to May 29, 2007.

The post The Supreme Court has nullified Orji Uzor Kalus conviction appeared first on .

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Consider writing a will to let people know what to do with your assets after you die and who you choose to be guardian of any children. Without a will, it won't be up to you who raises your kids and your estate could end up in probate, potentially causing more headaches and costs for those you leave behind.
(L-R) Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Australia's Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy address the media and the nation on March 24, 2020 in Canberra, Australia. (Lukas Coch - Pool/Getty Images)

Australian States Determine Pace of Three-Step Recovery Plan

Australia is progressing confidently and cautiously towards unlocking the country by July, and within that timeline, states and territories will determine the pace for its jurisdictions.

The plan will happen in three steps and has been agreed to by all state premiers and territory chief ministers.

Premiers and chief ministers have asked me to stress there should be no expectation of step one starting on day one, unless they are indeed already there. Moving on these steps will take some preparation, said Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a press conference on May 8.

The plan and framework were devised in conjunction with the national cabinet, an intergovernmental forum that comprises all state premiers, territory chief ministers, and the prime minister.

Read More Australian Health Workers Feel Positive About Pandemic Response

The first step includes lifting restrictions on house visits for family and friends to gather in groups of no more than 10.

During the second step, more amenities will reopen and greater numbers may gather.

The third step will see pubs and clubs reopen with some restrictions, and everyone will return to work where appropriate, including interstate travel and discussions about some international travel.

There is no day one and each state and territory has localised conditions to consider.

[States and territories will] be responsible for setting their own timetable and communicating that to their citizens and residents in their own states and territories, said Morrison.

Cautious States

New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria have experienced the highest total cases of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

In addition, both states have had fresh outbreaks at a meat processing facility in Melbourne and a nursing home in Sydney.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews described the plan as a menu from which states could pick restrictions to ease. He will wait until next week to announce any decisions. Until then, the current restrictions remain in place, he wrote on Twitter on May 8.

The current restrictions remain in place until then  and I trust everyone will keep doing the right thing over the weekend. Weve come so far and Victorians have given so much. Now is not the time to throw it all away because our frustrations got the better of us.  Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) May 8, 2020

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is set on a similar approach while the state deals with the Newmarch nursing home outbreak where 16 people have died from the virus.

States Already Easing Some Restrictions

Step one for Queensland begins on May 15, the states premier announced in a post on Facebook on May 8.

Queensland has already eased some restrictions allowing small visits with family and friends.

Travel up to 150 kilometers for day trips will also be allowed, and small cafes and restaurants can return to relatively normal operations.

Weddings up to 10 people are allowed, as well as funerals with 20 people inside and 30 outside.

South Australia will be taking a similar approach to funerals, and other restrictions from stage one but will not be announcing its plan until next week.

Tasmania is also taking a cautious approach following recent outbreaks in its northwest region.

The Northern Territory has had zero deaths from the virus and is already looking to open pubs and restaurants in early June. Restrictions on recreational activities such as swimming have already been lifted.

Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory will be making announcements over the weekend.

Federal and state governments have agreed to a July target for implementing the third and final stage of the plan.

We are prepared for an increase in case numbers or possible outbreaks, but relapse should not be an option.  The cost to our people, our economy, our social fabric, is too high. We should look to build success in each step, and move forward safely and with confidence, said Morrison.
All is well that end...
By James Pomfret and Jessie Pang

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Rival lawmakers scuffled in Hong Kong's legislature on Friday in a row over electing the chairman of a key committee, a fresh sign of rising political tension as the coronavirus pandemic eases in the Chinese-ruled city.

Lawmakers shouted and pushed one another at the Legislative Council meeting. Some democrats charged at a line of guards, seeking to eject a pro-Beijing lawmaker who attempted to chair the meeting in a move that democrats said violated procedure.

Guards carried several democrats out of the chamber.

Beijing has accused the former British colony's pro-democracy lawmakers of "malicious" filibustering to prevent some proposed bills from going to a final vote, effectively paralysing the legislature.

Democrats said the committee needs to elect a chairman first, before any legislation, including one bill that would criminalise abuse of China's national anthem, can be discussed.

"I have the right to start this meeting, said Starry Lee, of the pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, who attempted to chair the meeting from behind a wall of about two dozen guards in grey suits.

Democrats, who argue filibustering in the legislature is legal and an established international practice, responded by shouting Starry Lee, step down!" and holding placards reading "ultra vires, Latin for acting "beyond ones powers".

Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 with a guarantee of its much-cherished freedoms, such as an independent judiciary, not enjoyed on the mainland. Beijing rejects criticism that it is seeking to erode those freedoms.

Anger against the government remains widespread in Hong Kong, which was shaken by often-violent clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters in the second half of last year. Social distancing amid the pandemic has largely put a brake on protests since January, but demonstrations are expected to resume later this year.

Story continues

A few dozen protesters gathered in a downtown shopping mall on Friday and sang protest anthems, before they were dispersed by police.

Last May, scuffles also broke out in the legislature over a proposed extradition law which sparked the protests and was later scrapped.

The arrest of 15 activists in April, including veteran politicians, a publishing tycoon and senior barristers, thrust the protest movement back into the spotlight and drew condemnation from Washington and international rights groups.

China's Hong Kong affairs office warned on Wednesday that the city would never be calm unless "black-clad violent protesters" were all removed, describing them as a "political virus" that seeks independence from Beijing.

A war of words has intensified in the past few weeks, with Beijing's top official in Hong Kong urging the local government to work to enact national security legislation "as soon as possible", fuelling worries over what many see as further encroachment on the territory's freedoms.

(Reporting by James Pomfret and Jessie Pang; Editing by Marius Zaharia and Nick Macfie)
William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

While Gov. Greg Abbott is allowing pools to reopen throughout Texas on Friday, San Antonians will have to wait to swim in city pools.

Under the state's executive order, swimming pools can operate at 25 percent occupancy starting May 8, but only if permitted by the local government.
Austin, Texas

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday removed jail as a punishment for violating his coronavirus restrictions following outcry by conservatives over a Dallas salon owner who was jailed for refusing to keep her business closed.

In a reversal of his own rules, Abbott said his new order should free Shelley Luther, who was booked in the Dallas County jail this week for keeping her salon open in defiance of the governor's restrictions meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Luther refused to apologize for repeatedly flouting the order, leading a judge to find her in contempt of court and sentence her to a week behind bars. Her punishment quickly became a rallying cry for Republican lawmakers and conservative activists, and one online fundraising campaign had raised more the $500,000 for Luther as of Thursday morning.

"Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen," Abbott said in a statement. He also mentioned two women along the Texas border who were similarly jailed for violating his executive orders, but whose arrests have not drawn as much attention or inspired protests.

The reversal reflects the increasing pressure Abbott is under to reboot the state's economy at a much faster pace. It also comes just as Abbott was scheduled to meet Thursday with President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Texas began letting restaurants and retailers reopen last week under limited capacity. At the time, Abbott suggested it would not be until mid-May that barbershops and hair salons could resume serving customers. But some have balked and openly defied his timeline, including two GOP state lawmakers who let reporters film them getting haircuts outside of Houston earlier this week.

Texas has had more than 34,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 940 deaths related to the virus. On Wednesday, Texas reported 42 new deaths, one of its highest single-day totals since the outbreak began, but Abbott has said he is focused on hospitalization rates that remain steady and infection rates that have dropped since mid-April.

Luther was cited last month for keeping her salon open despite state and local directives that kept nonessential businesses closed, but she continued to defy the order and tore up a cease and desist letter in front of TV cameras.

"I couldn't feed my family, and my stylists couldn't feed their families," Luther testified Tuesday, saying she had applied for a federal loan but didn't receive it until Sunday.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moye said during the hearing that he would consider levying a fine instead of jail time if Luther would apologize and not reopen until she was allowed to do so, but Luther refused.

"Feeding my kids is not selfish," she told Moye. "If you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon."

Moye wrote in his judgment of contempt: "The defiance of the court's order was open, flagrant and intentional." He noted that despite being given the opportunity to apologize, Luther "expressed no contrition, remorse or regret" for her actions.
Jerry Seinfeld has won a copyright infringement dispute over the show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Plaintiff Christian Charles sued Seinfeld and others in February 2018, claiming authorship of the TV series.

The show came out in 2012 on Crackle and is now streaming on Netflix. Its 11th season aired in 2019.

An appeals court moved on Thursday to vindicate Seinfeld in the case.

The US court of appeals for the second circuit affirmed a previous decision to dismiss Charless copryight claim.

According to the appeals court, Charless claim is time-barred, meaning it was brought too late to be accepted by the court.

The district court identified two events described in the Second Amended Complaint that would have put a reasonably diligent plaintiff on notice that his ownership claims were disputed, court documents state.

First, in February 2012, Seinfeld rejected Charless request for backend compensation and made it clear that Charless involvement would be limited to a work-for-hire basis.

...Second, the show premiered in July 2012 without crediting Charles, at which point his ownership claim was publicly repudiated. ...Either one of these developments was enough to place Charles on notice that his ownership claim was disputed and therefore this action, filed six years later, was brought too late.

Seinfeld recently suggested that Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee might have come to an end.

We havent planned anything with that show, I kind of feel like if I did that tour, he told The Hollywood Reporter.

I know they look very casual and easy, but theyre actually kind of a lot of work to make, the editing is very intense. I dont know, I feel like I may have done that exploration at this point.
Polands Foreign Minister assured his Ukrainian counterpart of Poland's continued support for Ukraine's European and Euro-Atlantic choice and reaffirmed the need to maintain EU sanctions against Russia

Kuleba (on the left side) and Czaputowicz (on the right side) discussed preparations for an upcoming Eastern Partnership summit MFA of Ukraine

Polands Minister of Foreign Affairs Jacek Czaputowicz and Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba discussed preparations for an upcoming Eastern Partnership Summit during a telephone conversation. This was reported by the press service of Ukraines Foreign Ministry.

"The parties paid special attention to the preparations for the forthcoming Eastern Partnership Summit and cooperation within the framework of the Ukraine-EU agenda," the statement reads.

Czaputowicz assured his Ukrainian counterpart of Poland's continued support for Ukraine's European and Euro-Atlantic choice and reaffirmed the need to maintain EU sanctions against Russia.

The foreign ministers agreed on a schedule of diplomatic contacts that are expected to take place in the near future.

As we reported earlier, the European Parliament offered to create a single economic space with the Eastern Partnership.

The creation of the single economic space is the part of the strategy on gradual integration to the European block of six countries of Eastern Partnership program: Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova.
ALBANY  The heroism of nurses who have been on the front lines treating COVID-19 patients could lead more people to pursue a career in that profession at a time when experts have been predicting there will be a shortage of registered nurses nationwide as Baby Boomers age.

But the call-to-arms, according to some nursing students, could also result in the number of people who pursue a nursing career to remain level or potentially decrease because of the risks health care workers have faced during the pandemic.

From Feb. 12 to April 9, at least 9,282 health care professionals in the U.S. were confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only a fraction of data reported to the CDC asked whether the individuals were health care professionals, so the number is likely an underestimate.

Natasha Delehanty, a nurse manager in a medical-surgical unit at St. Peters Hospital in Albany, said she thinks that more people will go into nursing after the pandemic ends. Nursing was always an unknown career, she said, in that many people did not fully grasp what goes on in hospitals and other facilities, including residences, where nurses work.

I think this pandemic has really opened up nursing to the world  to see the faces of nurses, to see the many different roles that nurses play, and I think hopefully to give respect to the nursing community, Delehanty said. So I think it has enticed a lot of interest in nursing.

If her prediction is correct, it would ease current and future nurse shortages nationwide. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that that there will be an average of 203,700 openings for registered nurses each year from 2016 to 2026. Ann Kurth, dean of the Yale School of Nursing, said in rural areas and under-served areas, there are just way fewer nurses than it should be.

Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing Dean Patricia Cannistraci said her school has had to turn away qualified students because there is a faculty shortage as teachers reach retirement age. But Kurth said she hopes more people will go into nursing after the pandemic.

We certainly look for the next generation of wonderfully committed nursing students to come in, she said. Theyre really needed now more than ever, and I think theyll see that, and we certainly value it.

According to interviews with a number of nurses in Albany, some think there will be an increase in people joining their profession after the pandemic, including Christopher Jordan, the acute care chief nursing officer for St. Peters Health Partners.

I would expect that we're going to see some bump in the number of applicants into the field of nursing as a result of this, he said. I think the press and everything that youre seeing, whether it be on social media or it be in the traditional media and multi-medias, is really around the heroism of todays nurse and heroism of the health care worker."

In the Capital Region, Jordan said, he wouldnt go so far as to say there was a specific shortage of nurses. The main nurse recruiting challenge for Albany health facilities is that young nurses are drawn to working in New York City instead of Albany, Jordan said.

Delehanty, the nurse manager at St. Peters, said hospitals also face the challenge of recruiting and retaining nurses because many have options for where they can work, including out-patient settings.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Taylor Lewis, a second-year student at the Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing in Albany, predicted that the same number of people or even fewer people may choose to go into nursing after the pandemic.

I think a lot of people are really like frightened over something like this happening again so I think probably less people are going to want to be a nurse after this, just because they see what some of the nurses on the front lines are going through, she said. I think it probably will scare a lot of people.

Brooke Starr, an incoming student at University of Michigan School of Nursing, similarly said she thinks less people will go into nursing, because it is definitely a lot to take on and people might not know what theyre getting into.

Some people might be less inclined to put themselves at risk, because they might not be 100% sure that they want to be a nurse in the first place, she said. They might just be going into it because they dont really know what they want to do.

But for her, the pandemic has reinforced the crucial role nurses play in helping people.

Now more than ever, I want to become a nurse, because I know its really, really needed, she said. If anything like this happens again in the future, if its still happening, I can be there and actually help and have a degree to make a difference, I guess.

Anne Snabes is a reporter for the Medill News Service and a journalism masters student at Northwestern University.
The Assam government has facilitated the return of 35 students of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) in Barpeta and Hailakandi districts to their home states, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, officials said.

The students were stuck in the two districts due to the nationwide lockdown imposed by the Centre to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Twenty-three students of JNV Barpeta were sent to Madhya Pradesh by a special air-conditioned sleeper bus, Deputy Commissioner Munindra Sarma said on Thursday.

They had come to study in Class 9 as part of an exchange programme, officials said.

The students were provided masks, sanitisers and mementos of Assam, they said.

Along with the students, the principal, three teachers, a medical team and security personnel also travelled to Madhya Pradesh.

Likewise, as many students from the central government school in Barpeta had gone to Madhya Pradesh as part of the programme.

Sarma said the students from Assam in that state have also started their journey back home.

Both the groups will reach Patna on Friday at the same time and board buses.

A total of 12 students of JNV, Hailakandi have also begun their journey back to Chhattisgarh, Deputy Commissioner Keerthi Jalli said.

All the students adhered to prescribed safety norms while travelling back to their home states, officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Express News Service

BHOPAL/JAIPUR: Four COVID-19 patients in Indore have been successfully treated using plasma therapy and in Jaipur, too, two patients have shown remarkable improvement after plasma transfusion.

On Wednesday, 100-odd COVID-19 patients were discharged from different hospitals of Indore. They included three patients who won the battle against the deadly virus with the help of plasma therapy for which plasma was donated by three doctors, who had earlier been treated through the standard therapy. The treatment was carried out at Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS), a private medical college and hospital.

The three patients who recovered included a middle-aged Indore Development Authority official, a young woman software engineer and another youth. The fourth patient, a 40-year-old man, too, has tested negative and will be discharged within a day or two, sources at SAIMS said.

The plasma therapy was administered since April 26 to four patients who were on oxygen support due to COVID-triggered Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Two of them were critical as their lungs were infected and impaired up to 60 per cent, said Dr Ravi Dosi, a senior pulmonologist at SAIMS.

The plasma transfusion to the patients worked wonders and their oxygen support was removed within three days. One of the discharged patients said, The plasma therapy has saved my life. I want to donate plasma for saving the lives of other patients after completing the 14-day home quarantine.

Inspired by the positive results, a probationary IPS officer posted as additional SP in Indore, who had earlier recovered from the infectious disease, donated his plasma on Thursday to the MY Hospital which recently got the ICMR clearance for using the therapy on COVID-19 patients.

According to SAIMS sources, 18 other recovered patients have decided to donate their plasma to save lives
Relatives of an East Timorese woman living in Dungannon have paid tribute after she died from coronavirus

Relatives of an East Timorese woman living in Dungannon have paid tribute after she died from coronavirus.

Luciana Viviana da Silva is the country's first known death linked to the virus.

Dionisio Babo Soares, East Timor's foreign minister, confirmed the news.

He added that she passed away on Sunday night due to "complications from pneumonia".

A death notice said a private funeral took place on Tuesday in compliance with UK Government guidelines.

It said that her passing was "deeply regretted by family and friends".

Ms da Silva was also known as Anoy Soriano. She was originally from Dili, the capital of the south east Asian country, and worked for a local food processing company, according to the East Timorese ambassador to the UK.

A family tribute accompanying a death notice said: "You left us without warning dear sister Anoy. Not even a goodbye, and we can't seem to stop asking the question: Why? We didn't see this coming. It hit us by surprise, and when you left for Heaven a small part of us died.

"Your smile could brighten everyone's day, no matter what they were going through, and everyday for the rest of our life. We will be missing you."

Gil da Costa, East Timor's ambassador to the UK, conveyed the country's "profound condolences" to Ms da Silva's family.

According to East Timorese media, 24 people are confirmed to have contracted the virus. However, all but three have since recovered.

The 2011 Northern Ireland census recorded 894 residents born in East Timor.
What would you do if you found $135,000?

Jose Nunez-Romaniz, who is pursuing a criminal justice degree, recently found that much money in a bag next to an ATM. He then contacted the Albuquerque Police Department asking for help returning the money. It turned out that a contractor for Wells Fargo who was loading the cash machine accidentally left it behind.

Mayor Tim Keller and Police Chief Mike Geier honored Nunez-Romaniz for what APD called his selfless actions during a ceremony at the Police Academy on Thursday.
Is this going to get hard for Democrat Mark Kelly, astronaut husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, at some point? Shouldnt beating an incumbent Republican senator, even if shes just an appointee like Sen. Martha McSally is, in Arizona during a presidential election year be hard, for like a week even? Kelly is leading McSally by 8 percentage points in the polling average. He had nearly double McSallys cash-on-hand total at the end of the first fundraising quarter. This is the state of Barry Goldwater and John McCain and Jon Kyl and Joe Arpaio! Except its not, anymore. Part of the reason why its so difficult to appreciate that Kelly might just coast to a Senate seat in November is that its difficult to appreciate how firmly a swing state Arizona has become. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won a Senate seat there in 2018. She might be a centrist, sure, but she runs around the Senate floor in purple wigsand Arizona voters knew, when they were voting for her, that she probably would run around the Senate floor in purple wigs! Joe Biden has led in nearly every general election poll of the state. Can we allow ourselves to believe that Arizona is just going to be this way, from now on?
Tokyo:

Japan today marked 71 years since the city of Hiroshima was destroyed by a US atomic bomb, as its mayor urged the world to unite in abolishing nuclear weapons.

The annual ceremony came just months after Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit the city, paying moving tribute to victims of the first atomic bomb.

American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped its deadly payload, dubbed "Little Boy", on the western Japanese city at 8:15 am local time on August 6, 1945.



Much of the city was incinerated by a wall of heat up to 4,000 C (7,232 F) -- hot enough to melt steel -- killing tens of thousands.

Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui recalled the visit by Obamain his peace declaration during the solemn ceremony.



"(His visit) was the proof that Hiroshima's strong wishnot to tolerate the 'absolute evil' was shared by President Obama," he said.

"It is the time for us to make actions towards the abolition of the 'absolute evil', the ultimate form of inhumanity, united and with passion."

The bombing claimed the lives of 140,000 people. Some died immediately while others succumbed to injuries or radiation-related illnesses weeks, months and years later.



A second bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki three days later. Japan announced its surrender in World War II on August15.

Many in Japan feel the attacks amount to war crimes and atrocities because they targeted civilians and due to the unprecedented destructive nature of the weapons.



But many Americans believe they hastened the end of a bloody conflict, and ultimately saved lives, thus justifying the bombings.

Obama in May embraced survivors as he made his historic visit to the city and its Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

"71 years ago, death fell from the sky and the world was changed," he said of the bomb, adding it "demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself".



Obama offered no apology for the bombings, having insisted he would not revisit decisions made by then president Harry Truman.

But his moving tribute and brief conversations with elderly atom bomb survivors, which included an unexpected embrace with one of them, profoundly impressed most Japanese.



Since Obama went to Hiroshima the park and accompanying memorial museum have witnessed an increase in visitors.

But an association of atomic bomb survivors has criticised his speech, saying he failed to explicitly mention US responsibility for the bombing.



Abe, who also attended the service, faced harsh criticism last year, especially from A-bomb survivors, for his policy of expanding the role of Japan's military and opening the door to possibly sending troops into combat for the first time since the war.

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What an exuberant blend of sangiovese and sagrantino, with some merlot and cabernet sauvignon filling in the blanks. This wine brought a smile to my face at first sniff and carried the feeling through dinner. The winery has a Riserva ($30) that is 100 percent sagrantino aged in oak; it is also quite good, but save it for a few years and enjoy this beauty now. ABV: 14.5 percent.
May 08, 2020 / 08:52 AM IST

Equity benchmarks resumed their downward march on May 7 as rising cases of COVID-19 and a delay in government stimulus dealt a blow to investors' sentiment.

The Sensex closed the day with a loss of 0.76 percent at 31,443.38 and the Nifty settled 0.78 percent lower at 9,199.05.

According to pivot charts, the key support level for Nifty is placed at 9,157.35, followed by 9,115.65. If the index starts moving up, key resistance levels to watch out for are 9,259.3 and 9,319.55.

Trends on SGX Nifty indicate a positive opening for the index in India with a 91 points gain.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, top market experts recommend which stocks to bet on for good returns:

Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com

Buy IndusInd Bank with a stop loss of Rs 448, target at Rs 470

Buy JSW Steel with a stop loss of Rs 168, target at Rs 180

Buy Adani Ports with a stop loss of Rs 276, target at Rs 292

Buy Reliance Industries with a stop loss of Rs 1,485, target at Rs 1,545

Sell BPCL with a stop loss of Rs 340, target at Rs 315

Mitessh Thakkar of mitesshthakkar.com

Buy Escorts with a stop loss of Rs 734, target at Rs 778

Buy Reliance Industries with a stop loss of Rs 1,484, target at Rs 1,550

Sell PFC with a stop loss of Rs 90, target at Rs 83

Sell Titan Company with a stop loss of Rs 866, target at Rs 820

Prakash Gaba of prakashgaba.com

Buy Escorts with a stop loss of Rs 740, target at Rs 765

Buy Mahindra & Mahindra with a stop loss of Rs 390, target at Rs 415

Sell Apollo Hospitals with a stop loss of Rs 1,300, target at Rs 1,200

Sell Just Dial with a stop loss of Rs 346, target at Rs 320

Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
Piers Morgan, who is recovering at home, retweeted the video with crying emoji

Broke down in tears when talking about support from his 'wonderful' carer Kia

Piers Morgan was left emotional by the beautiful moment a D-Day veteran broke down in tears as he praised his carers for the 'marvellous' life he has had.

The presenter, 55, posted a crying emoji with footage of navy veteran Ken Benbow, 94, trying in vain to hold back tears as he thanked his carer Kia Tobin for her support.

The World War Two soldier was making an appearance on Good Morning Britain to commemorate V.E. Day.

But when the D-Day hero was asked what he thought about his dedicated 17-year-old carer, he welled up with emotion as he attempted to show his appreciation.

Fighting back tears, he added: 'I think she looks beautiful, she is lovely in every way. And so is everyone in the home. They couldn't do more for you. You couldn't wish to be in a better home anywhere.'

Piers, who is preparing to return to work on Monday following a short illness, shared the video with a crying emoji.

Dozens of viewers followed suit, saying that the special moment had reduced them to tears as well.

One said: 'Ken Benbow you made me cry such a lovely man I salute you !! Thankyou.'

Another fan wrote: Hands up if you had tears in your eyes again when Ken Benbow and @KiaTobin were on #GMB.'

And one more commented: 'Ohh ken & Kia such a lovely story so glad he's happy in his home #Gmb.'

Mr Benbow, who went viral for a video which showed his care home carer, Kia Tobin, handed him a cushion with his late wife's image on it, spoke about how much celebrating V.E. Day means to him.

'I wasn't in the UK when V.E Day happened. I happened to be in the Pacific, we were on our way to invade Japan. We were picking up men in the sea that had been shot down and taking them back to their aircraft carriers.

Ken Benbow, 94, burst into tears when Kia Tobin (left, together) handed him the pillow of Ada (right) at Thistleton Lodge nursing home in Preston, Lancashire

'We were doing various things, but we heard on the wireless that the war in Europe had ended and Germany had been defeated, which was a wonderful feeling and we all were so very, very pleased. But we couldn't do much, because as I say, we were in the middle of a battle.'

Talking about wanting to get back to the UK to celebrate with his friends and family, Mr Benbow said: 'Definitely, that was the most important thing.'

When asked what he will be saying in his speech later today in the care home, Mr Benbow said: 'I'll thank the Lord for my life. I've had a marvellous life, I had the most wonderful wife in the world. I've got the most wonderful carer now, but they're all angels here, I couldn't wish to be in a better place.'

Carer Kia, who has moved into the care home to better protect residents, bought Ken a pillow with a picture of his late wife Aida on it when they appeared on GMB last month.

At the time she explained that she was worried about him sleeping with a glass framed photo of Aida.

Speaking after the video went viral, Kia said: 'It's been really crazy. I can't really describe what it's been like! It's been lovely to see the support that we've been given - and the letters that have been written. I've been in tears looking through them.
A lot of Indians and Indian-origin persons are not on board with Mindy Kalings new Netflix show Never Have I Ever. Even Lisa Ray got debating on Twitter about all the ways the show is stereotyping Indian culture.

Never Have I Ever is about a teenage girl born to immigrant Indian parents in California. Her life as a uncool Indian girl at school, recovering from the loss of her father and navigating life under a strict mother form the core of the show.

However, Lisa thought the characters fake accents were too distracting. Is it just me or is #NeverHaveIEver rife with tired ethnic stereotypes and bad Indian accents? I thought we had outgrown all these old immigrant tropes and here we are dropping them into the mainstream. None of my Indian diaspora friends in Canada/US speak/think as portrayed, she wrote in a tweet.

Is it just me or is #NeverHaveIEver rife with tired ethnic stereotypes and bad Indian accents? I thought we had outgrown all these old immigrant tropes and here we are dropping them into the mainstream. None of my Indian diaspora friends in Canada/US speak/think as portrayed.  Lisa Ray (@Lisaraniray) May 6, 2020

A Twitter user pointed out the stereotypes in her own show, Four More Shots Please. Talking of stereotypes..in @4moreshotspls which you were a part of .. a girl who is a fierce journalist - Bengali, a girl who has weight issues, aimless and Spoilt - rich Gujarati family from SOBO, a girl who lifts weights and a trainer - lesbian .. is it me or just irony !! Lisa replied, You right to voice your opinion, as I am, and my opinion is independent of characters I play as an actor. Im primarily a writer and as I balance between India and the rest of the world, I am fine tuned to old ethnic stereotypes like the Indian mother which needs to evolve.

The problem w/#NeverHaveIEver is the overbearing mother and depiction of weird Indian pujas etc is endorsed by a woman of Indian origin. Feels like some sort of soul retrieval exercise to exorcise Mindy Kalings adolescence. Someone here said it felt like it was set in the 80s, she added.

The problem w/#NeverHaveIEver is the overbearing mother and depiction of weird Indian pujas etc is endorsed by a woman of Indian origin. Feels like some sort of soul retrieval exercise to exorcise Mindy Kalings adolescence. Someone here said it felt like it was set in the 80s https://t.co/HpAmJxTdKZ  Lisa Ray (@Lisaraniray) May 7, 2020

But it is not just Lisa who is unhappy with the show. A Twitter user wrote, Exactly, why showing such false and cliched apathy for Indian culture amongst NRIs. They actually love, respect and preserve our culture more than people in India, sometimes. I also had an issue with showing blind acceptance to bullish and manipulative American teen behaviour. Another tweet read, True. The accents are irritating and some of the ghost / traditions hullabaloo are just very weird. The content of the young kid and her life coming from certain roots is interesting.

The show is already a hit and many found Devis story relatable. A few viewers also saw their own strict mothers in Poorna Jagannathans Nalini who saw no point to mental therapy or would only allow her daughter to make TikTok videos in a skimpy red dress if she wore a T-shirt underneath.

#NeverHaveIEver explaining the South Asian approach to mental healthcare in one scene: pic.twitter.com/hLwhCA2Jzt  nadia gilani (@nadia_gilani) May 2, 2020

Also read: Rakul Preet Singh on video showing her buying alcohol: Wasnt aware that medical stores were selling alcohol

The Hindustan Times review of the show read: Part teen romance, part coming-of-age comedy, Never Have I Ever is a delicately written little show, an immigrant tale that feels just about authentic enough to survive in a world where Master of None and Little America exist. Aesthetically, its more of a sitcom than either of those two shows; something like Fresh Off the Boat, but it does a much better job at balancing the comedy and the drama.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Public schools in Tottori Prefecture in western Japan were reopened for the first time on Thursday after they were closed on April 27.

The decision came after Japan's government allowed prefectures, other than those under a special alert, to ease some of the restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

At an elementary school in Kurayoshi City, teachers greeted the students outside and inquired about their temperature and overall health condition.

The school says students who forget to take their temperature at home will be checked on the spot. Those with a fever will be taken home by their parents and told to see a doctor.

Windows in the classrooms were opened for ventilation and everyone wore a mask.

A class of sixth graders was told by their homeroom teacher to remember to gargle and wash hands, and to value their school time because many students in other prefectures are still staying at home.

One boy expressed worry that he might have fallen behind in his studies.
President Donald Trump, left and Attorney General Jeff Sessions attend a panel discussion on an opioid and drug abuse in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on March 29, 2017. (Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)

Former AG Sessions Defends Himself After Trump Criticism

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he followed the law in recusing himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, pushing back after harsh criticism from President Donald Trump.

To not recuse myself from that investigation, of which I was a target as a senior campaign official and a witness, would have been breaking the law. I do not and will not break the law, Sessions, who is running for his old seat in the Senate, said in a statement on Friday.

I did the right thing for the country and for President Donald Trump.

If he hadnt recused himself, it would have been a catastrophe, Sessions asserted.

The Democrats in Congress and the politically motivated bureaucrats all over Washington would have had a field day, alleging a Nixonian cover-up, and the President would not have been fully exonerated.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at the 2018 Opioid Roundtable hosted by the National Sheriffs Association and the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security, in Washington on May 3, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Trump said Friday morning on Fox & Friends that there would not have been a special counsel probe into alleged collusion between his campaign and Russia if William Barr, the current attorney general, was his first attorney general.

He would have stopped it immediately, Trump said, speaking a day after the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the case against Trumps former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Jeff Sessions was a disaster. I didnt want to make him attorney general, but he was the first senator to endorse me, so I felt a little bit of an obligation.

Trump said that Sessionswasnt equipped for the position but visited four times just begging for it.

He was from a state that I loveAlabama. You know, I won Alabama by a tremendous margin. He wanted it, and I said, all right, Jeff, Trump said.

While things went well for a little while, Sessions soon recused himself from the Russia investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took over and named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as the special counsel probing the matter.

Muellers team was unable to establish any evidence of collusion between Trumps campaign and Russian actors after nearly two years of investigation.

Jeff was just very weak and very sad, and when the name Russia was mentioned, just the word Russia, he immediately instead of being a man and saying this is a hoax, he recused himself, Trump said.

Sessions said he never begged for the job of Attorney General, not 4 times, not 1 time, not ever.
President Donald Trump on Friday predicted the coronavirus would 'go away without a vaccine' and vowed that America is going to 'transition to greatness.'

The president focused on the economy, reopening the country and the future in a meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers.

His confident words came as the United States recorded its highest rate of unemployment since the Great Depression, a second administration staffer tested positive and the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States is more than 76,000.

'This is going to go away without a vaccine. It's going to go away and we're not going to see it again,' Trump said as he admitted, 'you may have some flare ups.'

President Donald Trump predicted the coronavirus would 'go away without a vaccine' and vowed that America is going to 'transition to greatness'

Participants at the meeting were given a coronavirus test before it started and spaced out in the State Dining Room at the White House

President Trump claimed there have been other disease that came and went without a vaccine but they would just die off.

'There are some viruses and flus that came, when they went for a vaccine, they never found the vaccine and [the viruses] disappeared. It never showed up again. They die too like everything else. They die too,' Trump said.

The president was asked by reporters at the event what he meant by that, if he was saying a vaccine wasn't needed.

'I just rely on what doctors say,' Trump said. 'They say it's going to go. That doesn't mean this year, doesn't mean it's going to be gone. Frankly by the fall or after the fall, but eventually it's going to go away. The question is will we need a vaccine. At some point it will probably go away by itself. If we had a vaccine that would be very helpful.'

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who sits on the White House's coronavirus task force, was asked on Fox News last week about Joe Biden's comment that: 'This isn't going to be over until we have a vaccine.'

Fauci responded: 'There's truth to that. It's not going to be over to the point of our being able to not do any mitigation until we have a scientifically sound, safe and effective vaccine.'

The president has repeatedly sounded an upbeat note about the virus, which has infected more than 1.3 million Americans.

He said Friday that many people can get it without having bad cases or symptoms.

'The fact that you have it doesn't mean that it doesn't go away. You can have it and get through it very easily,' Trump said. 'Some people have a harder attack, most people get through it. Some people are devastated by I it. And I've had numerous people say they have it and there's almost no symptoms. Other people have it and bad things happen. But for the most part when you have it, you get better. Supposedly you are immune although they're not 100 percent sure how long that immunity lasts.'

The president has turned his focus to reopening the American economy. New unemployment numbers out on Friday found the US economy losing a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April - the steepest plunge since the 1930s Great Depression - putting the unemployment rate at 14.7 per cent.

'We're going to transition to greatness and we're starting right now,' Trump declared at his event.

The president had said earlier Friday the numbers were 'expected.'

'It's fully expected, there's no surprise,' Trump told Fox & Friends just moments after the report was released.

'Somebody said: 'Oh, look at this'. Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that. What I can do is I can bring it back. Those jobs will all be back, and they'll be back very soon. And next year we'll have a phenomenal year.'

President Trump has kept an upbeat tone when talking about combating the coronavirus

The largest monthly job loss prior to April was about 2 million in September 1945 after WWII. In March 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, 800,000 jobs were lost

President Trump, Vice President Pence and most White House staff are tested daily for the coronavirus

Trump's optimism came as a second White House staffer tested positive for the coronavirus this week.

Vice President Mike Pence's spokesperson Katie Miller, who also serves as a spokesperson for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, tested positive, a day after one of Trump's valets was reported to have it.

Miller is married to Stephen Miller, an adviser to President Trump who works in the West Wing near the Oval Office.

Pence was tested Friday and was negative. Trump, the vice president and most White House staff - which would include Miller's husband Stephen - are now tested on a daily basis, a change in policy made this week.

Trump said he wasn't worried about the risk of infection despite the virus moving closer to the Oval Office.

'I'm not worried,' he said. 'We're taking very strong precautions of the White House.'

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called the White House the 'safest place that you can come to.'

He said additional safety protocols have been put place over the last 48 hours but declined to detail them.

'I don't want to get into all the procedures that we've embarked on but I can tell you that this  it's probably the safest place that you can come to,' he said.

Staff are checked daily, give symptom histories and all work spaces get regular, deep cleanings, according to deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere.

Trump's optimism came as second administration staffer - Pence spokesperson Katie Miller (above in green jacket) - tested positive for coronavirus

At the meeting with Republican lawmakers, President Trump also defend his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has come under fire for his work on combating the coronavirus

At his hour long briefing with Republican lawmakers, where a majority of the time was spent with the member praising Trump's work for the country, Trump also defend his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Kushner, who serves as a senior White House adviser, was at the meeting. He's come under fire for running a shadow task force to combat the coronavirus, which works with private companies and some have accused him of a lack of transparency and causing confusion about who should speak to whom about what.

But Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka, bragged about the work his team and the White House has done on getting ventilators made and into position.

'Last year America made about 30,000 ventilators. This year we'll make about 150,000 in a four month period. And so we're in a place right now where we're doing well. A lot of our allies - the countries that are friendly with America - are starting to get ventilators from us, and we have more than enough to take care of all the American citizens. So it's been a great success story on testing,' he said.

Trump praised him and said he wouldn't have kept him in the administration -even though he's a relative - if he was doing a bad job.

'Thank you, Jared you've done a great job,' Trump told him. 'Someday people are going to appreciate it. They say 'Oh, he's a relation.' Well, if it wasn't a good relation I'd get him out of here so fast.'
CHICAGO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- SPLICE Software, (SPLICE), a customer engagement company specializing in automated communication workflows, digital communications and real business results, today announced the launch of Retail Fast Pass, an Integrated VIP Appointment Experience for virtual shopping, in-store shopping and product pick-up.

Retail Fast Pass is customized for the new normal. The platform communicates with customers and prospects via digital channels to update, inform and book appointments, allowing customers to shop the retailers they love with more certainty that the environment is safe for staff and for customers.

Using SPLICE's patented technology, Retail Fast Pass provides an intuitive workflow for retailers to:

Deploy personalized notifications letting their customers know they are open and what options are provided.

Allow customers to seamlessly book an appointment through any digital channel.

Confirm the appointment in advance and manage in-store traffic.

Provide real-time insights on staffing and conversion rates.

The program is designed to be a one-stop-shop for retailers that are ready to get ahead of the curve when it comes to the new normal.

"For 14 years we've been working with retailers to communicate with their customers and drive traffic and sales, and we continue to be there for them now," said Tara Kelly, President and CEO of SPLICE. "As we reopen for business in the new normal, providing meaningful online and in-store experiences is more important than ever. It's not about driving tons of traffic to the store, it's about personalized experiences, loyalty and value. The retailers that are set up for the challenge will earn the loyalty and the lifetime value of their customers and prospects."

The Retail Fast Pass program is available now and can be configured to support a variety of retail operational models and scheduling programs. The messaging module supports communications associated with in-store operations, delivery or pick-up procedures and appointment reminders, while the scheduling module supports staff and customer management as well as virtual tours. In all, the solution provides a safe re-entry protocol for the post-COVID-19 retail sector.

About SPLICE Software

SPLICE Software is in the business of driving REAL conversations with customers for retailers, insurers, financial institutions, and healthcare providers. SPLICE's Data-Driven Dialogs enable businesses to send automated messages to customers via their channels of choice, including phone, SMS/MMS messaging, and email. For more information on SPLICE, visit our website, connect via LinkedIn or follow us on Twitter at @SPLICESoftware.

Media Contact:

Courtney Baumann

[email protected]

715-851-4680

SOURCE SPLICE Software

Related Links

https://www.splicesoftware.com


Hayat Tahrir al-Sham highlighted the important role of the freedom of the press, while ignoring their own persecution and murder of journalist working in liberated area reports Al-Modon.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who killed Raed Fares, has no right to speak about freedom of expression.

Tahrir al-Sham on Wednesday sent a message to Syrian journalists and media workers in northern Syria, implicitly warning against criticizing the hardline group, or else face punishment.

According to a statement circulating in Syrian opposition media, Tahrir al-Shams public relations and media office said that there is one way to end prosecution and violations against journalists, We encourage them to take their true role of effective positive criticism, and transfer the mistakes that have happened to the relevant authorities, to share with them the responsibility and honesty placed on their shoulders to direct public attention towards the true interests of the battered people. They must not heed those who have made the journalistic profession a cover for anti-revolution political agendas, which they use for their own personal benefit while ignoring professional principles and ethics.

In fact, Tahrir al-Sham criminalizes everyone who criticizes it. The Syrian Network for Human Rights says that the group was responsible for a number of assassinations against prominent journalists such as Raed Fares. In an exclusive report released ahead of World Press Freedom Day, the Network said Tahrir al-Sham was responsible for killing eight journaliststwo of them due to torture. Three other journalists were detained in the groups prisons.

It is therefore ironic that Tahrir al-Sham, which until recently was tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, speaks about values such as press freedom. In its statement, Tahrir al-Sham said, The achievements of the Syrian revolution enjoyed by residents of areas liberated from Assads criminal rule are numerous and varied. Most importantly is freedom of the press. Liberated journalists realize this gain in light of the prosecutions and violations carried out against them under the Assad familys rule, as well as the grip of the intelligence forces that will not end until those areas are liberated, and freedom and dignity are defended.

It must be said that despite most of the violations carried out against journalists in Syria being attributed to the Syrian regime, which is responsible for 85 percent of killings targeted against journalists since 2011, Tahrir al-Sham nevertheless cannot pay lip service to protecting democracy and freedom at all. This is especially true, in that Tahrir al-Sham repressed ordinary civilians who went out in protests against the group. The group has also harassed foreign journalists in Idleb.

According to the Syrian network for Human rights, Tahrir al-Sham, harassed, on a large scale, citizens and journalists in areas under its control, as well as killed and assassinated those it felt posed a threat to its extremist ideology and approach. The Network documented dozens of arrests by the groups forces on the basis of them publishing writing against its policies or undertaking activity without obtaining permission. The Network also documented dozens of media workers injured by gunfire from the group while covering protests against it, causing the recent retirement or displacement of a large number of them.

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.
Venezuela has charged two former US soldiers with "terrorism" and "conspiracy" for allegedly taking part in a failed invasion bid to topple President Nicolas Maduro, the attorney general said on Friday.

Luke Alexander Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, were among 17 people captured by the Venezuelan military who said they thwarted an attempted invasion by mercenaries in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab said they had been charged with "terrorism, conspiracy, illicit trafficking of weapons of war and (criminal) association," and could face 25-30 years in prison.

Eight attackers were reportedly killed in the attempted incursion.

Saab said Venezuela had requested an international arrest warrant for the capture of former US army medic, Jordan Goudreau, who allegedly organized and trained the mercenary force.

Maduro has accused President Donald Trump of being directly behind the invasion -- and Saab said Friday that the Venezuelans involved would be tried for "conspiracy with a foreign government."

Trump has roundly rejected the accusation, telling Fox News on Friday: "If I wanted to go into Venezuela I wouldn't make a secret about it."

"I'd go in and they would do nothing about it. They would roll over. I wouldn't send a small little group. No, no, no. It would be called an army," he said. "It would be called an invasion."

Venezuela announced on Monday that it had arrested the two former US special forces soldiers and on Wednesday Maduro, who showed the pair's passports on state television, said they would be tried.

The US army has confirmed they were former members of the Green Berets who were deployed to Iraq.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US government would "use every tool that we have available to try to get them back."

In announcing the arrests, Saab claimed Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is backed in his challenge to Maduro's authority by the United States and more than 50 countries, was behind the mission.

Saab accused Guaido of signing a $212 million contract with "hired mercenaries" using funds seized by the United States from the state oil company PDVSA.
South Africa is drafting a plan to procure an additional 2,500 megawatts of nuclear power capacity within the next five years, according to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.

A road map for the project will be commencing soon, the department said in its strategic plan presented to parliaments energy committee on Thursday. The market will be tested for robust costing and funding options.

South Africa currently has a single nuclear plant. Support for additional facilities largely faded after the ruling party forced Jacob Zuma to step down as president in 2018.

More plants were widely considered unaffordable and the coronavirus-induced economic slump has further dented the governments ability to pay for them.

The nuclear build plan will go ahead and we will explore all options, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe told lawmakers.

A contract may be awarded to develop a modular nuclear station on a build, operate and transfer basis, and that means no there will be no immediate call for funding from the state.

The departments strategic outline for the next five years envisions a continued role for nuclear power, including extending the life of the Koeberg plant beyond 2024 and the replacement of the SAFARI-1 research reactor by a multi-purpose one.
WATERLOO REGION  Like many teenagers across the region, Ethan Evans found himself out of work, out of school and looking for something to do.

He offered to shop for his grandparents when they returned from a trip to Mexico in late March and had to self-isolate. He made trips for them whenever they needed food and dropped the groceries off at their doorstep.

It gave the Grade 12 student from St. Marys High School and a friend an idea: why not do this for others who are at risk and cant shop for groceries themselves?

In just a few weeks, the teens fledgling company, To Your Door Delivery, has served about 100 different people in the community and many of them have become repeat customers.

For the number of hours we are working we are probably not making close to minimum wage, but its a nice thing to do, Evans said.

For a small fee, Evans and his friends will take your grocery list, shop for you, and bring your groceries right to your door.

Were seeing people who are mainly the elderly or people with kids who dont want to put others at risk, Evans said.

Evans said business is picking up. A team of six people including Evans spend most of their day grocery shopping and making deliveries, but they make sure to carve out time to complete their school work as well, he added.

Evans said they do about five deliveries a day. It keeps him and his friends from getting bored while making a little bit of cash and helping others, he said.

I think what sets us apart is we can do same-day deliveries, he said, noting that most grocery stores will have up to a weeklong wait to deliver groceries.

They will also call from the store to let you know something is not available and will offer a substitution.

Evans said he makes sure everyone on his team wears a mask and gloves when they shop. They all keep bottles of hand sanitizer in their cars and maintain the proper physical distance from others when they shop to keep themselves, their families and their customers safe.
The governments population strategy is aimed at reaching a replacement rate of two children per couple. The targets are part of a birth rate adjustment programme towards 2030.

Hanoi (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has proposed a birth rate adjustment programme towards 2030 to encourage compatriots to marry before they are 30 and for women to have a second child before they are 35. The goal is a population strategy to achieve a replacement rate of 2 children per couple.

The programme is meant to increase the birth rate by 10 per cent in places with a low rate (less than two children per couple) and reduce the rate in places with a high rate of more than 2.2 children per couple.

Provinces and cities where women in reproductive age have 2 to 2.2 children should maintain the so-called desired fertility at the replacement level.

To achieve this goal, public servants and Party members are invited to set an example by not having more than two children, whilst local authorities are urged to promote policies to support couples in having and raising children.

Local authorities have also been asked to promote marriage and family counselling services such as dating clubs and pre-marriage health consultations.

Couples who have two children will see their income tax reduced and will be helped with childrens school tuition fees, rental housing or buying social housing.

The children of these families will have priority in admission to public schools.

Getting married or giving birth in old age is not encouraged.
Why it matters: After several months of dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, Google has made the unsurprising decision to extend its current employee work-from-home policy. While early versions of this policy were expected to expire as soon as last month for North American workers, Covid-19's continued spread has forced Google to alter its plans.

Moving forward, the search behemoth's employees will be working remotely through the remainder of 2020. This announcement came from Google CEO Sundar Pichai during an "all hands" meeting yesterday, according to a report from The Information.

This move will likely have a significant impact on Google's operations over time, but it's certainly the appropriate path forward. Given how many people Google employs, one could argue that the company has an inherent responsibility to play a role in curbing the spread of Covid-19.

Of course, the decision is also a win-win for the tech firm either way. Should Covid-19 resolve itself (or at least become a less serious threat) before 2021 kicks off, nothing is stopping the company from backtracking. Of course, if the opposite occurs, and the coronavirus situation only gets worse over the holidays, the new end date is far enough off that Google could easily extend its timeline if necessary.

During his announcement, Pichai informed workers that some could be allowed back into the office in June or July, but only if their job requires their physical presence. Examples were not given, but we suspect Google is referring to maintenance workers or those in similar roles.

Regardless, even for those workers, the in-office experience will not be business as usual. Google is reportedly planning to implement strict Covid-19 protection measures across its campuses locations, though we're unsure what those measures will be.

For everyone's sake, we hope that Google's announcement will prove unnecessary down the line, but only time will tell.

Middle image credit: Drazen Zigic
Together with T-Mobile and Qualcomm, OnePlus Pushes 5G Research and Development Forward with Successful SA 5G Data Session

NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OnePlus, a leading global manufacturer of premium flagship smartphones, has achieved another important 5G milestone in the United States, becoming the first smartphone company to successfully connect to T-Mobile's standalone (SA) network with a commercial device.

Together with T-Mobile and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., OnePlus successfully held the first low-band SA 5G data session with the OnePlus 8, the company's latest premium flagship smartphone. This achievement is a significant step towards bringing the power of 5G standalone to users in the United States.

"This is an important milestone for OnePlus and our long-time partners in the journey to bring users the best possible 5G experience, this time leveraging the extremely low latency and high data capacity potential of a standalone 5G network," said Pete Lau, Founder and CEO of OnePlus. "OnePlus went all in 5G with the launch of the OnePlus 8 series. Now, as we continue to lead in 5G research and development, we look forward to opening up even more possibilities and connecting more people around the world with a fast and smooth 5G experience."

With the OnePlus 8 flagship phone, the OnePlus R&D team achieved a number of low-band 5G milestones in recent field testing on the T-Mobile SA 5G network, including:

First voice over new radio (VoNR) call

First video over new radio (ViNR) call

First voice call with evolved packet system (EPS) fallback

First video call with EPS fallback

"We are proud of the significant 5G milestones achieved with T-Mobile and OnePlus that are instrumental in unlocking the potential of 5G to deliver exciting new experiences for consumers as well as increased performance and cost-effectiveness for businesses across the United States," said Durga Malladi, Senior Vice President and General Manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform with the Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System is at the heart of the OnePlus 8 smartphone driving the evolution towards 5G standalone mode, which will help create 5G-enabled experiences and transform how the world connects, computes and communicates."

Since 2016, OnePlus has continued to demonstrate its leadership in 5G R&D and has been among the fastest in the industry to bring 5G devices to users. The company has invested nearly USD 30 million to scale up 5G R&D labs, showcasing its commitment to bringing 5G technology to more users worldwide. After releasing its first 5G device last year in Europe, OnePlus launched the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren edition alongside T-Mobile's nationwide 5G network. These accomplishments helped OnePlus become the third-leading brand for 5G devices in the United States in 2019.

About OnePlus

OnePlus is a global mobile technology company challenging conventional concepts of technology. Created around the "Never Settle" mantra, OnePlus creates exquisitely designed devices with premium build quality and high-performance hardware. OnePlus thrives on cultivating strong bonds and growing together with its community of users and fans. For more information, please visit OnePlus.com, or follow OnePlus on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube.

###

Qualcomm and Snapdragon are trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries.

Qualcomm Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
SAGINAW, MI  Before the Saginaw County Commission on Aging began delivering meals to Cheryl Nashs door, there were days she didnt eat at all.

Nash is a retired nursing assistant and an amputee with diabetes. When a physical therapist referred Nash to the commissions meal delivery program about a year ago, her wheelchair was broken and she was struggling to get a new one covered by insurance. Her husband, Robert Nash, had been laid off from his job as a custodian. They were hungry.

If not for this program, There would still be a lot of days that I would go without eating, said Nash, 62, of Carrollton Township.

I had went up to like five days, sometimes maybe even a week, without anything to eat because I couldnt afford it. With my medications, the daily living, trying to make sure the bills are paid, I wouldnt have enough for groceries left," she said. Now, I know I can at least eat once every day, so it means the world to be able to do that. And I look forward to it. The program has really helped me out so much.

In addition to having meals delivered for herself and her husband, Cheryl Nash said her caseworker, Cindy Moffit, a gem," also helped her get a new wheelchair.

She doesnt feel like shes doing a job, she really feels like family," Cheryl Nash said.

Cheryl Nash is one of about 1,600 seniors ages 60 and older in Saginaw and Bay counties who rely on their respective Commission on Aging and Department on Aging for meals, a number that has grown amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order.

As of Wednesday, May 6, the pandemic had sickened nearly 46,000 people and killed 4,343 in Michigan alone.

Michigan seniors can get free meal delivery, daily wellness checks during coronavirus outbreak

Beverly Yanca is one of the Saginaw County employees delivering meals to about 750 Saginaw County seniors. Under normal circumstances, her role is that of activities volunteer coordinator. She has experience with meal delivery though and trains volunteers drivers.

For the past several weeks, Yanca has delivered meals on Mondays and Thursdays to seniors in Freeland. In addition to dropping off nutritious food, Yanca and her colleagues are also checking on seniors wellbeing.

We are another set of eyes and ears, and we act on it very quickly because a lot of them, they dont have family near or theyre the last ones surviving in their family and all their friends are gone, too," she said.

Yanca and her colleagues are taking extra precautions now to keep themselves and their clients safe: temperature checks, wearing gloves and masks, and social distancing, when possible. She said their clients are aware of the pandemic and theyre worried. Some have asked for masks, which the county has been able to provide.

Theyre very much aware and they are scared, Yanca said.

Jessica Sargent is director of the Saginaw County Commission on Aging. Prior to the pandemic, 50% of the programs drivers were volunteers, she said. Normally, the commission relies on more than 200 volunteers who help with deliveries and help at its senior centers and offices, which are temporarily closed to the public.

The number of seniors receiving the meals in Saginaw County has increased by about 50 to 75 people over the past month, she said. About eight people are on a waiting list, which is down from more than 50.

In order to meet demand with fewer people working, meal deliveries now take place twice a week instead of five days a week, but drivers deliver more food each time so seniors are still getting as many meals as before. Officials have also added five new routes and are encouraging seniors who can drive to take advantage of curbside pickup for to-go meals at shuttered senior centers on Wednesdays.

All of our staff that normally go to work in the office and our management team, everyone, is delivering or packaging or doing something with the nutrition program right now, Sargent said.

To be eligible for home-delivered meals, a senior must be at least 60 years old and homebound. For those who can afford to pay, theres a suggested donation of $2.25 per meal.

We dont turn away someone thats unable to pay, Sargent said. The purpose of the donation is to really help those in need and any donations we receive go back into the programs to help them function.

The Bay County Department on Aging has seen a similar uptick. Director Beth Eurich said a dozen drivers now deliver meals to 880 to 915 seniors per day, up from the usual 750 to 816 per day. The eligibility criteria in Bay County are the same as in Saginaw County, but the suggested donation in Bay County is $2.75 per meal and theres no wait list.

Do I see the need increasing? Always. And thats not because of COVID, I should say, just because of COVID. I see it increasing as people reach a different part of their life and health issues go hand in hand," Eurich said. "So many people are nervous about COVID right now, as they should be, and staying home...so thats why I think our numbers jumped so rapidly.

The Bay County Department on Aging tried offering to-go meals for curbside pickup, but the service wasnt popular so they stopped doing it.

It wasnt being utilized. A lot of people are nervous and dont want to come out, theyve been told to stay home, Eurich said.

The Bay County Department on Aging, which normally relies only on its staff for meal deliveries, is still bringing food to peoples doors five days a week. But Eurich said its not just food theyre bringing.

It means a friendly face every day, Monday through Friday, somebody checking in on them," she said. "Sometimes, its the only person they see.

Cheryl Nash said the pandemic has made the meal delivery service even more essential for her life.

"Im able to stay pretty much quarantined and still be able to eat without having to get out into a situation that could be dangerous, she said.

And caseworkers call seniors like Nash on the days they arent receiving meal deliveries just to check in on them, too.

A lot of the people that we serve are already feeling isolated and I think that the human connection is so important," Sargent said.

She encouraged those who are able to help seniors who are struggling through this difficult time.

People are lonely and theyre worried and theyre watching the news, and they dont have anyone to talk to about whats going, she said. "If you can provide any support to anyone that you know that is isolated, try to do that.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

The Powering Positivity campaign by MLive Media Group highlights how Michiganders are supporting one another during the coronavirus pandemic. It is sponsored by The MediLodge Group.

RELATED STORIES:

More coronavirus cases and deaths reported in Genesee, Saginaw and Bay counties on May 6

Thursday, May 7: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Michigan surpasses 1.3M unemployment claims since coronavirus crisis began
The first batch of 166 migrants stuck in Jammu and Kashmir due to the coronavirus lockdown was on Friday sent to their home states in six buses, officials said.

The migrants were from Patna, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, Sub Divisional Magistrate, Jammu North, Pawan Kotwal told reporters here.

Two buses carrying 88 migrants were sent to Patna, while one bus each with 39 people left for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The passengers were given packed food and water supply for the journey, he said.

He said 406 pilgrims, tourists and labourers stranded here have been housed at Radha Swami Satsang Garh for the past 44 days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gregory and Travis McMichael, videotaped chasing down jogger Ahmaud Arbery and killing him in the street, were today arrested and charged with his murder and with aggravated assault.

The killing, of an unarmed black man in broad daylight, occured months ago, but shot into the news after the shocking footage was leaked to the media. Evidence of such a blatant public lynching, in the deep south, immediately resulted in a barrage of criticism and condemnation aimed at local authorities' contempt for the victim and favoritism toward his killers.

As Thom wrote:

The shooters, George and Travis McMichael, had connections with the local police and district attorneys office, and, according to their lawyer, were acting within their rights to carry firearms and perform a citizens' arrest in the state of Georgia, thanks in part to Stand-Your-Ground laws that state, "A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge." The McMichaels claimed that Arbery attacked them after they chased him with guns, which, technically, made it self-defense; Arbery was not alive to refute this statement. The District Attorney recused himself from the case over personal conflicts of interest with the McMichaels family, but not before publishing a letter that smeared the late Arbery as a violent, mentally ill criminal.

The sudden attention from the press and politicians has somehow changed hearts and minds in the state of Georgia.

In a press release, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said investigations are "all active and ongoing."
Now that the Leaving Cert is out of the way for July, the next question is - will calculated grades work for college entry? The answer is 'yes'.

The CAO has confirmed that it will accept certification based on a calculated grades system or, indeed, any other State-certified means.

Colleges had been planning for a much later-than-usual start for first years. However, UCD deputy president, Professor Mark Rogers, said after Minister Joe McHugh's announcement: "We anticipate that our academic year for first years will open closer to normal start date."

The college will make offers for over 4,000 places and hopes to commence first-year classes within four weeks of the grade results being issued.

Other colleges also hope to get back to classes earlier than planned, but with health restrictions in mind.

There will inevitably be those disappointed students who don't get the calculated grades they feel they deserve. They will have the option of rejecting them and taking the Leaving Cert on an unspecified date in the future, if they want to go down that road.

This option will be availed of by some but will anger others who don't get their first preference course this year.

However, in the absence of the normal Leaving Cert, the new arrangement is the least-worst option and certainly better than all the rest.

For those looking for a college place, a fair and equitable system of selection is essential. There has been no shortage of ideas put forward in recent weeks, everything from colleges running their own matriculation entrance tests, American-style SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Tests) and even throwing the college doors open to all comers.

One politician suggested interviews, which would prove controversial, for instance, if they were introduced for courses such as medicine.

The universities are willing to see if they have any room for manouvre around enrolling more students for high demand courses like medicine, but there are laboratory constraints and restrictions around quotas for Irish students.

Indeed, if there is any legal action taken arising from the new arrangements it may well be by someone who cannot get into this particular high-demand faculty.

It brings to mind the quip by a former CAO manager who said that "the only fair selection system for college is the one that gets my daughter into medicine".

More than 73,000 applications have been lodged to date with the CAO and normally about 46,000 accept places in college every year. The numbers will be slightly higher this year because of the expected decline in overseas students.

But the idea of allowing every Irish applicant in was rejected by the Higher Education Authority, whose CEO, Dr Alan Wall, said it would have significant destabilising effects across higher and further education.

"It would also result in very significant student non-completion rates during the first academic year, as numbers are whittled down to ensure that adequate resources and physical facilities (e.g. labs) per student are available in subsequent years," he wrote to the Teachers' Union of Ireland, who had suggested some alternative options to select students this year.

He added: "The student:staff ratio would go through the roof."

Dr Wall said that, in theory, the higher education institutions could put in place their own admissions procedures (matriculation exam, SAT-type test, interviews etc) but these would face the same issues as the Leaving Cert with regard to organisation, social distancing and health and wellbeing risks.

Dr Wall added: "A central matriculation exam would need to be agreed across 22 institutions, standards set in the context of the curriculum, a marking scheme agreed, applied, moderated, marked and standardised.

"Forgetting about the issue of equity between different years of exam entrants, creating such a system as complex as the Leaving Certificate, but not run by the State Examinations Commission in a few months is no solution for anxious students."

He's right, and the complex arrangements announced by Education Minister McHugh, with help from Irish and overseas experts, have been welcomed by the IUA representing the universities and THEA representing the technological sector. They both accept that the arrangements are the best way to proceed.

The Irish Union of Second-Level Students has been involved in the advisory group discussing the arrangements and conducted two useful surveys. The second survey reflected the increasing numbers who wanted the July exam cancelled.

Not everyone will agree with the Government's decision, of course. We can probably expect a flood of appeals over calculated grades from many disappointed students this autumn.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday asked officials to reach out to their counterparts in other states for better coordination in bringing the migrants home and urged the workers to not walk or cycle to Uttar Pradesh as this could endanger their health and security.

His appeal came on a day 16 migrants were crushed under a goods train in Maharashtra when they were sleeping on rail tracks during their return home in Madhya Pradesh.

They had slept on the tracks due to exhaustion after walking for several kilometres.

Though the government has been running special trains to ferry migrants, many of them have started their journey home on foot or a bicycle, saying they could not wait for their turn any longer due to lack of food and employment.

Adityanath, whose government sent buses to Kota in Rajasthan to bring back students, reiterated the migrants should not walk or cycle as this could prove detrimental to their health and security.

During a review meeting, Adityanath also asked UP government officials to treat those returning to the state with honour.

Later, speaking about the meeting, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi said a "proper arrangement" has been put in place for the return of migrants from other states.

Awasthi stressed that Uttar Pradesh was ready to bring bring back all those willing to return if the state they are currently staying provides a detailed list and health certificate of the migrants.

Till Friday evening, he said, 69 trains with migrants have arrived in the state.

"When so many trains are coming, the CM said there is no need for anyone to walk to reach home and they should come back as per the proper arrangement made for them," Awasthi said.

Today, 11 trains have arrived, and 16 more will reach by night. They will together bring about 30,000 people from different parts of the country in a day," he said.

Apart from that, about 10,000 UP Transport Corporation buses are ferrying migrants to their homes safely, the senior government official said.

He said the return of migrants from Sharjah on Saturday was also discussed during the meeting, and said the flight that landed in Delhi on Friday carried 20 people from Ghaziabad and Noida.

Adityanath said those coming from abroad should be screened and kept in quarantine centres before they could be allowed to go home. He asked Chief Medical Officers of all districts to study patient record, prepare a case history and continue pool testing to increase capacity.

The Jansunwai portal is open for registration of those willing to return to their state and the response is good, he said.

He said the government has segregated hospitals to treat COVID and non-COVID patients and this could help in effectively controlling the outbreak.

The chief minister directed the fire department to ensure regular sanitization of hotspots and areas near hospitals as well as offices and market areas.

He said measures should be adopted to run emergency services in the hospitals.

He directed officials to ensure that the lockdown is followed strictly and in hotspot areas, sanitisation and door-step deliver of goods be ensure on priority.

The CM also asked them to speed up the delivery of fodder to cow shelters.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

New Mexico was approved for $97.8 million in federal funds for students who would normally receive free or reduced-priced meals at school.

Through Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, families will get an extra $5.70 a day per child who qualifies for free and reduced food.

The aim of the Pandemic EBT program is to make up for missed breakfasts and lunches from March 16 through June 19 after schools were closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 71% of students in the state qualify for free and reduced-priced food, according to Felix Griego, deputy director of the Public Education Departments Student Success and Wellness Bureau.

Any student (whose lunch) was free and reduced during the school year is going to get the benefits, Griego told the Journal.

Felix said an extra $5.70 a day will equate to about $119 for the month of May. That rate was calculated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is the agency that approved New Mexicos Pandemic EBT plan.

For the more than 98,000 children whose families utilize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Griego said the extra money will be automatic.

And for students who were getting free or reduced-priced meals at school but arent getting benefits through SNAP, Griego said EBT cards will be mailed to their households.

Families can also apply for Pandemic EBT benefits if they recently became eligible for food assistance.

With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in school shutdowns across the country, many worried what that would mean for students who rely on school-provided breakfasts and lunches. In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the PED said the expectation was to continue feeding students while schools were closed and districts across the state launched grab-and-go meal services.

According to the Human Services Department, families can continue to get grab-and-go meals from school sites in addition to using the Pandemic EBT Program funding.

March, April and May payments will be issued in May while the rest of the payments will be made in June.

Ashley Espinoza, spokeswoman for HSD, said the extra EBT funding can only be used on food products.
President Trump's Campaign Manager Brad Parscale embraced the 'Death Star' nickname for his operation in a Thursday tweet, leaving critics wondering if he'd seen the ending of not one, but two, 'Star Wars' films.

Spoiler alert: The Death Star gets blown up. Twice. And a third time if the next-generation 'Starkiller Base' from 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' gets counted.

'For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time,' Parscale tweeted, along with a photo of the planet-killing battlestation readying its primary weapon.

President Trump's 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale referred to his operation as the 'Death Star' in a Thursday tweet, prompting critics to question whether he'd watched the 'Star Wars' movies

Brad Parscale wrote that he'd been building a 'juggernaut campaign' for three years and 'in a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time.' Parscale included an image of the Death Star's primary weapon warming up

Joe Biden's digital director Rob Flaherty told Brad Parscale that he had a 'fun story' for him about what happens to the Death Star in the 'Star Wars' movies

In the films, the Death Star is destroyed twice. It's a man-made battlestation that's the shape of a planet and has the ability to wipe out entire planets. Luke Skywalker and his rebel allies are able to figure out a design flaw allowing a torpedo from a tiny spacecraft to blow it up

Mark Hamill, who portrayed Luke Skywalker in the 'Star Wars' movies chimed in with a number of quotes, including the warning his character gave to the emperor before both he - and Death Star 2.0 - were destroyed

IT'S A TRAP: Former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor floated that Brad Parscale knew how the movies ended, but tweeted the Death Star reference in order for people to point out that it blew up - increasing the tweet's engagement

In the films, when the Death Star first utilizes its weapon is blows up the entire planet of Alderaan, Princess Leia's adopted home world, killing the entire population.

In a follow-up tweet, Parscale explained, 'I didnt give our campaign the name, Death Star, the media did.'

'However, I am happy to use the analogy. The fact is, we havent used it yet. Laugh all you want, we will take the win!' he added.

The 'Death Star' moniker originated in a blind quote from a Republican strategist who talked to The Atlantic's McKay Coppins about the Trump operation 'admiringly,' Coppins described.

Coppins' reporting didn't unearth the Trump campaign building a giant physical machine like the Death Star or perhaps, more accurately, 'Westworld's' Rehoboam, an AI that knows everything about everybody on earth, but they are using technology in an organized way to 'wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history.'

'They may use gentler terminology - muddy the waters, alternative facts - but theyre building a machine designed to exploit their own sprawling disinformation architecture,' Coppins wrote.

Coppins goes on to write about some of the strategies: from micro-targeting ads, to traceless text messaging, to dirty tricks.

He recalled that in the final days of the 2016 campaign, Trump's team tried to suppress the number of black voters in Florida - who would like turn out for Trump's rival Hillary Clinton - by getting Facebook ads to show up for this voting bloc that read, 'Hillary Thinks African-Americans Are Super Predators.'

Coppins imagined the 2020 version of that - using text messaging technology, which the Federal Election Commission said in 2002 doesn't need disclosure, to inform Democratic voters that their polling location had changed.

It's a far cry from what the Death Star was capable of - destroying life on a scale hitherto undreamt of.

On Twitter, Joe Biden allies, fans of the sci-fi movies and Luke Skywalker himself - actor Mark Hamill - responded to Parscale's tweet.

Rob Flaherty, Biden's digital director, pointed to Pascale's tweet and wrote, 'Got a fun story for you about what happens to the Death Star.'

'Your overconfidence is your weakness,' Hamill wrote, quoting a warning he made to the evil emperor before his and Death Star 2.0's demise.

It's a trap, co-host of 'Pod Save America' and former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor floated.

He suggested Parscale intentionally used 'death star,' knowing that people would respond by pointing out the space station's demise - making the tweet go even more viral.

'Hey maybe Brad Parscale knows how Star Wars ends and he knows that a million WELL ACTUALLY tweets drives up engagement and virality of content,' Vietor wrote.

The Death Star has been a part of the American political conversation before.

After more than 25,000 Americans signed on to a White House petition in 2013, asking the American government to build a replica of the Death Star, the Obama administration responded by saying no and outlining why.

'The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it,' the administration's response read.

'The Administration does not support blowing up planets,' it continued.

'Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?' the document said.

In the films, the Death Stars are taken out by torpedoes shot at a vulnerable location from much smaller spaceships.
NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The April jobs report shows a staggering loss of 20.5 million jobs, which is the largest monthly loss in recorded history. Employment dramatically dropped across almost every industry. The unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate underestimates the amount of slack currently in the labor market. 5.1 million additional workers are now working part-time even though they prefer a full-time job. And the number of people outside the labor force grew by 6.6 million, showing many are currently discouraged to even try to find a job. Over the coming months, we should expect participation to increase again as the economy begins to open up.

The jump in average hourly earnings is not very meaningful as it rose for the wrong reasons. Large layoffs of mostly low-paid workers raised the average pay, as was the case in the Great Recession.

Dramatic as they are, the top line numbers are not very telling for what's ahead. It is obvious that when many businesses are shut down, and many workers are not allowed to go to work, unemployment rates will skyrocket. As the economy opens, millions of people will go back to work. From that perspective, the report offers a somewhat positive statistic: A large majority, 78 percent, of the unemployed are on temporary layoff.

The report shows that some demographic groups are much harder hit than others due to the layoffs thus far. While the overall unemployment rate increased by 11.2 percentage points between February and April, this increase was 12.8 for women, 14.5 for Hispanic people, 19.3 for those age 20-24 and 20.9 for those age 16-19.

Over the past 12 months, the overall unemployment rate increased by 11.1 percentage points. This increase was just 6.1 percentage points for management, professional and related occupations, versus a 23.1 percentage point increase for service occupations. While the labor market slack increased for all types of workers, it much more dramatically increased for those without a college degree.

About The Conference Board

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Turkmenistans government never fails to disappoint, and its latest action will keep that reputation intact.

For more than two decades the government has been touting its UN-recognized status as a neutral country to close itself off from the rest of the world and preserve the harmony Turkmen authorities say exists there.

For example, the Turkmen government continues to claim there are no cases of the coronavirus in Turkmenistan.

That claim is interesting to many parties, among them the World Health Organization (WHO) that had planned to send a delegation to Turkmenistan to discuss combating the coronavirus.

The WHO delegation is already in Tajikistan and after work there was planning to go to Turkmenistan, but officials in Ashgabat are using an old trick to delay and possibly prevent the delegation from arriving.

The postponement of the WHO delegations trip to Turkmenistan is a bit baffling.

If Ashgabat has been so successful in preventing the coronavirus from entering Turkmenistan, one would think the Turkmen authorities would be glad to allow the WHO delegation to document the countrys story of virological triumph.

Perhaps Turkmenistan is doing something other countries should be copying.

The obvious reason for not allowing the visit by the WHO delegation is that the claim by Turkmenistan of being free of the coronavirus that has raged all over the world -- infecting millions and killing nearly 270,000 people as of May 8 -- is almost certainly not true.

But there is another reason.

Every single one of Turkmenistans neighbors has registered cases of the coronavirus.

As of May 7, Turkmenistans eastern neighbor Uzbekistan had recorded 2,269 cases, northern neighbor Kazakhstan 4,530 cases, and southern neighbors Iran and Afghanistan had 101,650 and 3,392 cases, respectively (though in all these countries there are reasons to suspect the figures are being underreported).

Yet officials in Ashgabat claim not a single case in Turkmenistan.

Prior to April 29, it was possible to report that Turkmenistan and Tajikistan were officially saying they had no cases.

But Tajikistan suddenly went from no cases to reporting 15 cases on April 29, to having nearly 500 by May 7.

Many believed there were coronavirus cases in Tajikistan weeks earlier and officials there had allegedly given orders to attribute the cause of COVID-19 illnesses or deaths to something else, usually pneumonia.

Many think the situation in Turkmenistan is the same. Reports of an inordinate amount of people dying from pneumonia in Turkmenistan started already in February.

Why Numbers Dont Tell The Full Story A daily compilation of global coronavirus cases by Johns Hopkins University is currently the most comprehensive in the world, but it relies on information provided by governments. In many countries, there are restrictions on releasing such information or reasons why the full story might not want to be told. The methodology, immediacy, transparency, and quality of this data can vary dramatically country by country.



But hiding cases of coronavirus is no longer the sole problem Turkmen officials would face if they let the WHO delegation visit.

In February, as the magnitude of the spread of the coronavirus became increasingly obvious, Turkmen authorities established quarantine zones in the eastern Turkmen province of Lebap for its citizens who returned from abroad.

Everyone arriving by plane had to fly to the airport in the provincial capital Turkmenabat (formerly Charjou) and be isolated in camps for a short period to ensure they had not brought the coronavirus into Turkmenistan.

These camps would naturally be something a WHO delegation would want to visit and it appeared Turkmen authorities were preparing in advance for just such a visit.

Quarantine Camps

On April 23, Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, tweeted that the Tajik and Turkmen Foreign Ministries welcome the visit from the WHO technical teams and a WHO mission would be arriving in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan in the coming days as part of the Central Asia mission on COVID-19.

RFE/RLs Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, reported that after Kluges tweet, officials in Lebap started moving people out of the quarantine camps.

The Khronika Turkmenistana website, run by Turkmen activists who fled Turkmenistan, reported there were at least seven patients with coronavirus in the quarantine camps who were among those evacuated.

But on April 27, hurricane-type winds and rain swept through parts of Lebap Province (and Mary Province), causing extensive damage to the area, particularly to Turkmenabat.

The Turkmen government never mentions the natural disasters that occasionally strike the country and the fierce storm that hit areas of eastern and northern Turkmenistan with devastating effects was no exception.

On May 4, Human Rights Watch released a statement questioning why, more than one week after the storm, state media had still not reported on the disaster, and why police in the area were focusing on detaining people suspected of filming the damage on their mobile phones and posting it on social networks.

Azatlyk reported that at least 30 people were killed and later reported that the government would not be helping the thousands of people severely affected by the disaster, many of them homeless.

A little-known provincial Turkmen news website in Lebap called Jeyhun.news did report about the storm on May 4, saying a strong storm had blown roofs off several houses and knocked down trees and power lines, but assured all possible efforts were being made to repair the damage. On May 6, it reported that specialists were arriving from other parts of Turkmenistan to help repair work in Turkmenabat and in towns on the outskirts.

The WHO has no authority to demand access to suspect sites, or medical records, or make impromptu visits to hospitals. Individual governments define the level of cooperation with the international organization.

The WHOs on-site representative in Turkmenistan, Paulina Karwowska, had visited the quarantine zones in Lebap in early May.

"We rely on Turkmenistans health-care bodies to report about confirmed cases, and up until now we have not been informed about any cases," she said.

The report did not mention any comments from Karwowska about the damage in Lebap.

If it were just a case of bringing a WHO delegation to Potemkin quarantine areas, there probably would not have been any problems or delays.

But the damage in the Lebap area that state media and Turkmen officials have avoided mentioning would be impossible to hide.

The method of delaying the WHO delegations visit draws on an old Turkmen government trick for OSCE election monitors that dates back more than 20 years to when authoritarian leader Saparmurat Niyazov was president.

Niyazov said all who wish to monitor elections are welcome, but no one would be specifically invited.

The OSCEs Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) offers to monitor elections, and Turkmenistan is an OSCE member, but ODIHR requires a clear, official invitation to do so, and Turkmen authorities have never sent a specific invitation to ODIHR.

The WHO delegation is in a similar situation. They need an official invitation to visit Turkmenistan and Turkmen authorities have not sent one to them.

Perhaps sensing there could be problems, Kluge reportedly appealed to Anna Popova, the chairwoman of Russias Rosptrebnadzor (Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Well-Being) for assistance, including bringing Russian specialists to both Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Kluge tweeted late on May 5: I welcome Turkmenistan Governments invitation for @WHO_Europe to undertake a technical #COVID19 mission.

But he added that WHO was "ready to deploy as soon as possible," apparently indicating the WHO delegation had not yet received all the permission it needed to travel to Turkmenistan.

But "as soon as possible" might depend on how soon damage is cleared up in Turkmenabat.
Chile peppers arrived in Thailand in the 16th century from the Americas via Portuguese traders. To say the Thai people took to them is an understatement. They now grow more than 75 varieties in the Southeast Asian country, including some that reach six figures on the Scoville scale.

The central role of chile peppers in Thai cuisine is on full display at Pad Thai Cafe in the International District. Chile fires the curries and stir-fries; it insinuates itself into the chopped-meat salad called laab. The heat smolders on the tongue long after the meal is done.

The restaurant opened in 2015 across from the entrance to Talin Market in the aptly named International District around Louisiana and Central. Along with Pad Thai Cafe, the block is home to four Vietnamese restaurants, a couple of Mexican places and an Indian market.

Like so many of the Asian restaurants in town, Pad Thai Cafe is soldiering on through the COVID-19 pandemic as a takeout operation. The staffers all wear masks, and they even sell some beautifully embroidered ones at the counter for $7.

The menu offers all the familiar Thai dishes at prices that are on the low end of the range for similar restaurants in the city.

An appetizer of chicken satay ($6.95) offers six skewers of flattened white meat chicken burnished golden brown with curry powder. The accompanying peanut sauce is a wonder, the nuts, coconut milk and fish sauce conspiring to create something at once briny, pungent and sweet. A refreshing cucumber salad sits coolly at the other end of the spectrum.

Thai cuisine bears the influence of its neighbors, as in laab ($9.95), a salad of minced pork flavored with lime juice, fish sauce and chili powder that is the unofficial national dish of Laos. Rice, toasted and then ground into a powder, gives the dish an appealing grit and nutty fragrance. Pad Thai Cafes version is outstanding, the heat level noticeable but not intolerable, with cooling notes from the cilantro and mint.

Thai curries typically have a soupier consistency, thanks to the presence of coconut milk. At Pad Thai Cafe you can order from seven varieties, including red, green and yellow, and select a heat level from mild, medium and hot. At the medium level, the green curry with chicken ($9.95) is spot-on, an aromatic, sweet and savory tangle of bamboo shoots, basil and tender pieces of chicken in a broth thats the color of green tea with milk.

Spicy chili basil pad gra phow ($9.95), a popular Thai takeout lunch, has more fire than the curry, even at the mild spice level. A stir-fry of beef with onions, bell peppers and Thai chile, it had great flavor, although the beef in it was a roll of the dice  some pieces were tender, others tough.

A dessert of khao tom mat sai kluai ($3.95) brings together three formative products of the Thai landscape: rice, coconut and bananas. The rice is cooked with coconut milk, wrapped around banana slices and steamed inside a banana leaf. The result is a rubbery sleeve, faintly fragrant with coconut, with just a touch of sweetness from the banana. Its very starchy and might have benefited from a sauce.

When I ordered by phone, I was told it would be 30 minutes, but the food was ready when I got there in 20 minutes. Everything was bagged and stacked in a cardboard box for easy transport.

If you like your food spicy, then Pad Thai Cafe delivers. Theres no shame in asking for the mild spice level. Even there, its more than enough heat for the average person.

PAD THAI CAFE

3 stars

LOCATION: 110 Louisiana SE, 266-0567, padthaicafeabq.com

HOURS: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday; closed Tuesday (call to confirm)

TAKEOUT ONLY
Gov. Kay Ivey said she would yield control of federal money intended for coronavirus relief to the Legislature and said what she called a wish list from legislators shows why the public needs advance notice of how the money is spent.

The list includes 16 proposals on how the state could spend the $1.8 billion received under the CARES Act, including $200 million for a new State House and renovations to the Capitol.

To me, that is totally unacceptable and not how President Trump and Congress intended for this money to be spent, Ivey said in a statement.

A top lawmaker said it was not a wish list and that the Legislature would not spend CARES Act money on a State House.

The lists says the proposals would depend on federal guidelines for use of the money. Among other items on the list are $800 million to expand broadband access in Alabama, $100 million for state prisons, $100 million to reimburse state agencies for operations during the pandemic, and $75 million for emergency supplies related to the pandemic. Iveys office sent the list to AL.com after it was requested.

Iveys office released the statement as the House of Representatives was about to consider a bill on control of the CARES Act funding. The House took a one-hour recess and then passed the bill, which would give the governor authority to spend up to $200 million of the $1.8 billion. The rest would have to be appropriated by the Legislature in a special session. The Senate gave the bill final approval, which sends it to Ivey for her review.

In the statement released before the bill passed, Ivey referred to a conversation with House General Fund budget chairman Steve Clouse, R-Ozark. Heres the full statement:

I just got off the phone with House General Fund Chairman Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, and expressed to him my desire for the Legislature to have full control of the CARES Act appropriation, every single penny.

I made it clear to Chairman Clouse that this money belongs to the people of Alabama, not the Governor and, in my opinion, not even the Legislature. It comes to us in an emergency appropriation from President Trump and Congress to support the ongoing crisis that has killed 349 Alabamians, as of this moment, and wreaked havoc on our states economy, ruining small businesses and costing more than 430,000 Alabamians a job they had just a few weeks ago.

I have never desired to control a single penny of this money and if the Legislature feels so strongly that they should have that authority, I yield to them both the money and the responsibility to make good decisions  in the light of day where the people of Alabama know what is happening.

I promised Chairman Clouse that my Administration will send over to the Legislature the receipts for items such as PPE, medical supplies, testing kits and the like; items that have been needed and procured to support our health care system including our hospitals and nursing homes. I trust the Legislature will honor these expenses.

We have heard from countless cities and counties who are suffering from the effects of this pandemic; weve heard from colleges and universities, the K-12 system and a whole host of others who had hoped this money would be made available in a timely fashion. Regretfully, because of the Legislatures decision  at this last moment  these groups will now have to appeal to the 140 members for help.

Finally, I advised Chairman Clouse that I will not call the Legislature back into a Special Session unless and until they provide the people of Alabama  in advance  a full, detailed and public list of how the money will be spent in exact amounts, down to the penny. I have already seen one wish list that includes a new $200 million statehouse for the Legislature. To me, that is totally unacceptable and not how President Trump and Congress intended for this money to be spent.

As everyone knows, we are in the middle of an international health crisis, unlike any we have ever seen. It is both fiscally responsible  and absolutely essential  that the Legislature be transparent on the way they intend to spend this money. In my view, it has always belonged to the people of Alabama.

We look forward to seeing their proposed budget. It is obvious the Legislature has more work to do.

Clouse said Alabamas Constitution requires the Legislature to approve spending of taxpayer dollars, including federal dollars. He said the Legislature appropriated federal stimulus money Congress sent to the state during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

And its no different now," Clouse said. "Its part of our Constitution that the Legislature appropriates monies for state government.

Clouse said the $200 million allocated to the governors office is to cover immediate needs related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Clouse said the federal government has not yet fully defined how the state can use the $1.8 billion.

Clouse said he had seen the list Ivey released but said it was not a wish list from the Legislature.

Im not sure who wrote the list, Clouse said. I saw it. But there will be many more of those lists going around as far as where the money might potentially go if the feds approve for it to go there. Im not sure where that list came from. I did see it, though.

Clouse said lawmakers would have to pass legislation to spend the federal money and those bills would be subject to review by the governor. He said legislators would not use CARES Act money for a State House.

I dont think we would do that, Clouse said. I think somebody put that down because of all the circumstances were going under right now in this building. Not allowing the public in. You can see what were having go to through in the House right now of separating everybody by more than six feet. Members in the gallery and overflow rooms. This building is just not built for this type of pandemic. No, none of that money would go for a new State House.

Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh said the Legislature would follow an open process in how it allocates the CARES Act money. Marsh has advocated using $800 million for broadband access. Marsh said the shutdown of public schools during the pandemic shows the urgency of making high-speed Internet available statewide. Some communities could not offer virtual classes because of the lack of broadband.

This story was updated to say Iveys office sent the list after a request by AL.com.
The Australian Council of Trade Union's leadership has come under fire from within the union movement, with the militant Victorian and Tasmanian branch of the CFMEU calling its secretary Sally McManus a "stooge" who "tried (and failed!) to reduce penalty rates".

The branch, run by controversial secretary John Setka, praised another activist union for challenging a deal negotiated by the ACTU among others that was intended to save jobs but would have also reduced overtime and shift security for some workers in the fast-food industry.

Victorian CFMEU construction state secretary John Setka's branch has launched a broadside against the ACTU. Credit:Chris Hopkins

"You stood up against the SDA and the three ACTU stooges - Sally 'McDonalds' McManus, [assistant secretary] Liam 'Couldnt-organise-a-cup-of-coffee' OBrien and [president] Michelle 'Reduce-your-members' ONeill - who tried (and failed!) to reduce penalty rates for already low-paid, hard-working and vulnerable workers," the union said in a Facebook post.

"How un-Australian! Maybe they should take pay cuts themselves."
A total of 698 Indian nationals stranded in the Maldives due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions were evacuated on Friday from the scenic island nation on an Indian Navy warship.

India's High Commissioner in the Maldives, Sunjay Sudhir expressed his deep gratitude to the Indian Navy, the Government of Maldives and its agencies for extending complete cooperation for the success of the massive evacuation of Indian nationals.

An Indian Navy spokesman said there were a number of pregnant women and children among the evacuees who will travel to Kochi in Kerala.

The INS Jalashwa, the Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu'.

Sudhir said a second Navy ship INS Magar will leave for Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on Sunday with 200 Indians. He said the exercise will be repeated next week by the Indian Navy warships.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is part of the repatriation mission launched by the Indian Navy to bring Indian citizens home from foreign shores, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

Immigration procedures of the passengers were carried out in the Hulhumale' Ferry Terminal in Male City. "Fantastic job by the entire team of



@VelanaAirport for the safe repatriation of Indian nationals!" the high commission tweeted.

The massive evacuation exercise is testimony to Maldives-India friendship, it said in another tweet.

Several Indians who are travelling by the warship lauded the evacuation plan launched by the government.

"It is a very great thing that the High Commission did for us and we did not have any issues till now. We got everything with proper guidelines, all the things done by the High Commission," Pradeep, who hails from Palakkad, said. He works in a resort in Male.

"Jamsheed from Kerala thanks Govt of India, Govt of Kerala & @indiannavy for this historic Operation to repatriate #Indian nationals from the #Maldives," the High Commission of India in Maldives tweeted.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff, it noted.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is conducting its biggest ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad, including from the US, the UAE and the UK.

The High Commission in Male on its Facebook page said, MVR 600 or an equivalent amount of USD 40 will be charged as the Evacuation Services Charge from each person listed for repatriation by INS Jalashwa.

"This amount would be collected at the service fee collection counter after completion of the Immigration process at the Velana International Airport. Kindly carry exact change to avoid delay/ inconvenience," the post said.

Meanwhile, all arrangements as per government guidelines are in place at Cochin Port to facilitate the arrival of those who are evacuated from Maldives via the sea route, officials in Kochi said.

Before arrival at Cochin, on board the vessel, the Navy will get the self e-declaration data filled by all passengers and also identify the passengers symptomatic of COVID-19.

The symptomatic passengers will be disembarked first, followed by other passengers (district wise) in batches of 50 persons, the Port Trust said. Separate zone has been earmarked for the symptomatic patients.

The passengers disembarked will undergo further statutory verifications for clearances inside the Samudrika Cruise Terminal where Port Health Organisation will verify the self declaration forms, the Port Trust said.

All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on the Aarogya Setu app.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7. On Thursday, two special flights from the UAE carrying a total of 363 Indian nationals, including nine infants, left for Kerala as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two white men accused of fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery in what his family called a modern-day lynching will not face hate crime charges in Georgia, according to state investigators.

Georgia is one of four states in the USA that don't have a hate crime prevention law, according to the Department of Justice. If someone commits a crime motivated by bias, statewide authorities are unable to pursue additional charges or enhanced penalties for the perpetrator.

"There's no hate crime in Georgia," Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said in a news conference Friday when asked whether the men would face those charges.

Retired police officer Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were arrested by Glynn County police and charged with murder and aggravated assault Thursday night. The arrest came 36 hours after the Bureau of Investigation began assisting in the probe, which began more than 10 weeks ago.

Arbery's death: Why it took more than 2 months for murder charges and arrests

Reynolds said video of the incident that spread widely on social media was a key piece of evidence.

"We are going to go wherever the evidence takes us," Reynolds said. "In a perfect world, we would have preferred to have been asked to become involved in February, of course."

Ahmaud Arbery was killed Feb. 23 outside Brunswick, Ga., in Glynn County.

He said the department will investigate William Bryan, who filmed the incident, to determine whether he should be arrested, too. Bryan was not aware he was under investigation until Friday morning when the GBI made the announcement, said attorney Kevin Gough, who represents Bryan. Gough said his client was a witness to a crime and has cooperated with police.

Arbery, who was black, was killed Feb. 23 on a residential street about 2 miles from his home outside Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory McMichael told police he and his son saw Arbery running and believed he was a burglary suspect, so they armed themselves, got in a truck and followed him. They told police Arbery attacked them after one of the men got out of the truck with a shotgun.

Story continues

Bryan, who joined the father and son in "hot pursuit" of Arbery, recorded the killing on video, according to an internal memo from the district attorney obtained by USA TODAY.

Arbery's family and their attorneys said that Arbery was out for a jog when he was killed and that he was the victim of racial profiling.

Surveillance video recorded minutes before the slaying proves Arbery was not involved in a crime, attorneys for his family said. An individual believed to be Arbery was seen at a property under construction for less than three minutes before being ambushed a short while later, lawyers said in a statement Saturday night.

The surveillance video was "consistent with the evidence already known to us" that Arbery made a brief stop at the site while out for a run and "engaged in no illegal activity," they said.

"Ahmaud did not take anything from the construction site. He did not cause any damage to the property," the attorneys said. "He remained for a brief period of time and was not instructed by anyone to leave but rather left on his own accord to continue his jog. Ahmauds actions at this empty home under construction were in no way a felony under Georgia law."

The latest: Man who took video of shooting will be investigated

Georgia's lack of hate crime law

A bill that would have penalized crimes committed out of bias against race, color, religion or sexual orientation passed the Georgia House last year, but the bill failed in the state Senate.

The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus issued a statement Thursday encouraging the Senate to take up the bill when it reconvenes in June.

"In 2020, our state and our country have yet to reconcile with the vestiges of racism. At a time when we are uniting to fight against a global pandemic, another disease rears its head to again take an innocent life," the caucus said.

Georgia passed a hate crime bill in 2000, but it did not list specific protected groups, and the state Supreme Court threw it out because it was "unconstitutionally vague."

Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming also do not have hate crime laws, along with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the DOJ. Seventeen states and Puerto Rico have hate crime laws but dont require data collection on such crimes.

Lawyers and proponents of hate crime laws note that although Indiana technically has a hate crime law on the books, it is too vague to be implemented.

"Its an atrocious law," said Allison Padilla-Goodman, vice president of the southern division of the Anti-Defamation League. "The DOJ may say yes, they checked the box and got a law passed, but most groups in the know do not qualify them as a state that has a hate crimes law."

The Rev. James Woodall, president of the Georgia NAACP, said at a news conference Friday that the organization supports hate crime legislation but had not endorsed a particular bill. The NAACP is more concerned about ensuring justice within the existing legal framework, he said.

"We still have to make sure that the laws already on the books are enforced," Woodall said. "We already have a murder statute."

Asked whether he would support a hate crime prevention bill, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement, "We know conversations about legislation are already underway, and we will work through the process when the General Assembly reconvenes."

Federal hate crime charge may be an option

Even if a state or territory does not have a hate crime law, such crimes can be reported to the FBI, according to the DOJ.

"If, after the (Arbery) investigation is completed, and it was a hate crime, theres still the opportunity to bring federal hate crime charges," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said at a news conference Friday.

In South Carolina, which does not have a hate crime law, a white supremacist who fatally shot nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015 faced federal hate crime charges.

Xavier Persad, senior legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, said his organization called on Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the incident under federal hate crime law.

"Hate crimes are different from a regular crime. Its doesnt just affect an individual and their families, but the entire community," Padilla-Goodman said. "Weve been through many high-profile, just devastating hate crimes in this country over the last few years, between Pittsburgh and El Paso, and I think theres a lot more understanding of the necessity of a hate crimes bill."

The DOJ said it enforces federal laws that cover hate crimes motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.

There was an average of about 204,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2013 to 2017, according to the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI found that a majority of hate crimes were motivated by a bias against race or ethnicity. Of those, most were anti-black or anti-African American, the FBI reported in 2018.

"Year after year, the largest target of hate crimes is race-motivated hate crimes, and year after year, the most targeted group is African Americans," Padilla-Goodman said. "Addressing hate crimes is crucial for everyone, but we cannot ignore the role of race."

Persad said FBI statistics fail to reflect the full extent of the problem because of underreporting.

"State legislators must stop turning a blind eye to the persistent scourge of bias-motivated crimes and work swiftly to enact fully inclusive hate crime protections," Persad said.

LeBron James on Arbery video: 'ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Arbery video shooting: Georgia has no hate crime prevention law
Rosemary George, 21, Class of 2020 Biology major, threw her cap as Jimmy Tan, Class of 2018, took photos at the Bell Tower on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia, Pa. on Thursday, May 7, 2020. On Thursday, Temple University held their commencement online because of coronavirus closures. Read more

In graduation gowns, Kerra Masella and three fellow Temple University graduates stood on the stairs of Sullivan Hall, the schools main administration building, a little after noon on Thursday.

Each had a bottle of champagne.

The coronavirus robbed them and other college graduates across the country of a commencement ceremony; theirs was supposed to have been earlier in the morning. But there was no pomp and circumstance.

There was a pop. And a pop, pop, pop.

 READ MORE: Let the virtual graduations commence: Coronavirus has pushed ceremonies online

I feel like that was a proper celebration, said Masella, 22, an advertising major from Middletown, N.J., as champagne shot over the steps and all took a healthy swig from their bottles.

Lets graduate again, said Jaylene Everett, 22, a biology major from Harleysville.

So it went on the sun-splashed urban campus on a perfect picture-taking day, when little else in the world was perfect.

 READ MORE: For college seniors, coronavirus signals premature end of an era

Renee Johnson, 22, an applied math major from Oaks, sat in a circle with family and friends in front of Charles Library, opening gifts they brought for her, including plants, crystals, and a notebook full of quotes from loved ones.

We tried to make it as much a gathering as we could," Johnson said.

Nearby, graduates Lauren Livingston, 22, of Easton, Pa., and Dan Rantz, 21, of Royersford, were waiting in line to get their pictures taken in front of the Owl statue in OConnor Plaza.

Its bittersweet, said Livingston, a risk management and insurance major.

They both said they understood why the university couldnt hold a commencement. (Temple launched a commencement website with congratulation messages and videos Thursday, and promised an in-person ceremony when possible.)

Theres a lot more going on than just us graduating right now, said Rantz, a finance major.

Rosemary George, 21, a biology major from Northeast Philadelphia, went to campus to get photos, too.

It was just really sad. It didnt feel like we were graduating, she said. So I just kind of wanted a little memento of Temple and me.

Akina Abdullah, 24, a liberal arts major, was beaming.

I feel overwhelmed with excitement, she said. It was not an easy journey for me.

She took time off to give birth to her son, now 3, who sat nearby with other family members as she got her picture taken.

Abdullah said she had her own Zoom ceremony in the morning with family.

I walked across my living room stage, she said.

Alyssa Corse, 21, a civil engineering major from Annapolis, Md., and Erica DeProspo, 22, a strategic communication major from Bridgewater, N.J., donned their caps and gowns and checked out Temples commencement website in the morning. Then they walked around campus for pictures. Drivers honked and yelled Congratulations! as they passed.

Both said they felt pretty good.

We lost the end of it," DeProspo said, but we had such a great 3 years that its been OK.

As for the champagne poppers, they planned to order from their favorite restaurant, Philly Style, and eat cake.

Were making the best of it, said Whitney King, a legal studies major from Northern Virginia.
It's been 14 years since a contestant last scooped the top prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

And Jeremy Clarkson has hinted that fans may finally get to see another hopeful receive that coveted 1 million cheque, when the new series begins on Sunday.

The presenter, 60, also claimed that despite its ambiguous portrayal of the Charles Ingram cheating scandal in the ITV miniseries Quiz, he's convinced the Army Major was 'guilty as sin.'

Will it happen? Jeremy Clarkson has hinted that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire fans may finally get to see another hopeful scoop the top prize, when the new series begins on Sunday

Jeremy told The Sun that this series' contestants seemed far better equipped to answer all 15 questions and reach the top prize, but remained tightlipped on whether anyone actually reached the final question and answered it correctly.

However the Top Gear host did say one moment during filming nearly moved him to tears.

He said: 'There are occasionally moments that you go, ''Christ, I remember that''. And there is one coming up in this series  a truly brilliant, brilliant bit of television.

'I mean, I was just bowled over. The old tear ducts were welling up. I won't say any more than that but it is very good television.'

Shocking: The presenter also claimed that the infamous contestant Charles Ingram was 'guilty as sin,' after he was found guilty of cheating to win the show in 2001 (pictured)

The last Millionaire contestant to scoop the top prize was in 2006, when Ingram Wilcox was awarded that iconic seven-figure cheque.

Other winners were Pat Gibson in 2004, Robert Brydges and David Edwards in 2001, and Judith Keppel in 2000.

The last Millionaire contestant to come close to the million was teacher John Robinson, who walked away with 500,000 last year.

Exciting: Jeremy hinted that one moment during the new series nearly moved him to tears, but remained tight-lipped on whether anyone reached the 1 million prize

Jeremy took over as the host of Millionaire in 2018 when the show returned to screens to celebrate its 20th Anniversary.

The presenter went onto offer his views on the infamous contestant Charles Ingram, who was famously stripped of the million pound prize after being accused of cheating.

Last month many fans admitted they were unsure whether Ingram was actually guilty of deception, after ITV's Quiz ended the scandal on an ambiguous note.

Drama: The presenter did claim that Charles and his wife Diana (pictured) are 'guilty as sin' of cheating on the show

Charles and his wife Diana was convicted of deception in 2003 after being accused of using the coughs of fellow contestant Tecwen Whittock to answer questions correctly.

Jeremy remains adamant the former Army Major cheated, saying: 'That was the clever thing about Quiz, I thought. They are guilty as sin, I'm really convinced, but others are absolutely convinced of their innocence.'

Despite the show's success stories, Jeremy did admit he hopes that only 'intelligent' viewers will make it into the hot seat, urging less knowledgeable viewers not apply.

Steer clear! Despite the show's success stories, Jeremy did admit he hopes that only 'intelligent' viewers will make it into the hot seat, urging less knowledgeable viewers not apply

He told The Mirror: 'Don't waste my time! If you think you might be a bit stupid, just don't bother making the phone call.

'Don't waste my time, don't waste the viewers time and don't waste our time.'

Referencing the show's safety net, which contestants can set so they have a guaranteed sum of money if they answer a question incorrectly, he added: 'Youre there to win a lot of money, thats the whole point of the show.

'A lot of contestants set it at 32,000, I think the fact it was there historically plays a part in peoples thinking.'

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire returns on Sunday at 7:15pm on ITV.


The Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL) has indicated that it has not in any way sabotaged LCB's contract with the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Services, stressing that it did not sign any agreement with LCB.

The Company was reacting to a publication in the New Crusading Guide on Monday, May 4, 2020 edition.

In a Rejoinder signed by the Managing Director of GACL, Yaw Kwakwa he indicated that LCB Worldwide (LCB) by a letter dated 1st November 2019 notified GACL of an agreement between LCB and Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service for the disinfection of the exterior of vehicles, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods or postal parcels that enter and exit the ports of Tema and Takoradi.

The letter, he said also indicated that the mandate of LCB included the implementation of disinfection measures at all airports in Ghana and that per the letter, LCB was to invest an amount of US$19,000,000 while charging US$16 per round trip via ticketing of the end user.

LCB in that letter indicated that it would need the collaboration of GACL in the following: Physical allocation of space to be able to conduct their services ii. Information sharing to enable LCB trace and charge passengers iii. Working with GACL to make air passengers aware of the disinfection health services and its implementation, he stated.

According to Yaw Kwakwa, LCB indicated it would pay rental fees for spaces allocated to it and royalties and in its letter of 31st January, 2020 LCB still referenced the agreement between LCB and Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service as well the WHO declaration of the Novel Corona Virus as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern offered to immediately disinfect cargo and air passenger luggage free of charge.

GACL in response to the letters from LCB (1st November 2019 and 31st January 2020) indicated that the Board had agreed in principle to the disinfection exercise at KIA with no cost implication to GACL. GACL further invited LCB to a discussion on the challenge of passing on the cost to passengers as aviation/ airport charges as guided by IATA/ICAO protocols. At no point in time did GACL sign any agreement with LCB or indicated that it could not carry out its own disinfection exercise as and when required, he stated.

He however indicated that the recent disinfection exercise by Zoomlion was conducted at no cost to GACL.

He said: Meanwhile, Management has been engaging LCB and researching the following areas to negotiate a possible contract.

---The New Crusading Guide
U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) listens during a weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on May 7, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

House Republicans Launch Task Force to Curtail Threats from Chinese Regime

House Republicans unveiled a new committee on May 7 to combat threats from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the regimes role in the CCP viruss global spread comes under scrutiny.

Chinas coverup directly led to this crisis, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a press briefing announcing the initiative. It follows the same threatening pattern of behavior we have seen from the Chinese Communist Party for yearssomething that has long-been the bipartisan consensus in Washington.

Led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the panel includes the members of various committees overseeing relations with China: Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Jim Banks (Ind.), Andy Barr (Ky.), John Curtis (Utah), Mike Gallagher (Wis.), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), John Joyce (Pa.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Darin LaHood (Ill.), Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), Denver Riggleman (Va.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Chris Stewart (Utah), and Mike Waltz (Fla.).

Kevin McCarthy Hosts a Virtual Press Conference https://t.co/IIa6C5XlLl  Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) May 7, 2020

The 15-member task force will look at a wide range of China-related issues, including CCP influence operations in U.S. academic institutions, economic threats, the regimes efforts to gain the technological advantage, and its handling of the virus during the early stages of the outbreak, McCarthy said.

Not only do we have to hold the CCP accountable for their role in the spread of coronavirus, the United States must take bold action to address the CCPs malign agenda and better compete with China on the world stage, McCaul said in a statement. He stressed that it was the number one issue not only today but for the future.

The virus pandemic has accelerated hardening of the U.S. stance on the oppressive communist regime in China and put on another strain on the bilateral relationships, where concerns of academic infiltration, trade theft, and economic influence have long loomed large.

McCarthy said he had initially hoped to announce the task force as a bipartisan committee with House Democrats, after months of collaboration and planning on the initiative. But the Democrats pulled back a few months ago, McCarthy said, without notice or reason.

We cannot wait any longer, the stakes are too high to sit idly by, he said, adding that he invites Democratic lawmakers to join the force. There is no important time now to join with us together, to work as one nation as we face these challenges.

Time to Decouple

Republican Rep. Mark Green (Tenn.) recently announced plans to introduce a bill to help U.S. businesses move their supply chains back home to cut U.S. economic dependence on China.

Any efforts to decouple is  wise for us, both from an economic standpoint and from a national security standpoint, Green told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

Ranking Republicans from seven House committees have also pressed for a probe into Beijings investment in American colleges, following allegations that Chinas central government is suppressing academic research into the virus origin. The lawmakers noted that Beijing-funded culture programs such as Confucius Institutes have provided the regime with a window into U.S. culture, infrastructure, and planning as well as a gathering ground for Chinese intelligence agencies.

Banks, who is named to sit on the China Task Force, recently called for an international court trial against the Chinese regime for its handling of the virus. He also introduced a bill to warn Americans about national security threats from the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok.

Of the task force, Cheney said in a May 7 press release: The United States must lead the world in holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its coronavirus deception and its many years of pernicious activities around the globe.

This is a battle between freedom and totalitarianism, and we will never let the Chinese Government determine the kind of future we are going to live in, she said.
The widow of a man who died of COVID-19 during an outbreak at a College Station assisted living center has filed a wrongful death suit against the facility in what is believed to be the first legal action of its kind in Texas.

Fay Boothe alleges in the suit, filed Wednesday in district court in Brazos County, that the facility neglected to provide appropriate essential care to her husband, Joe, while he was in isolation, leading to his death. Boothe also claims that the facility failed to fully inform the family about the risk of infection from COVID-19 and about his care.

This is one of the clearest cases of gross neglect I have ever seen, Boothe's attorney Gaines West said in a statement. Boothe died because he was neglected and left alone to suffer. The Waterford, which was inundated with COVID-19 issues, and resulting deaths, can no longer hide what they failed to do for the Boothe family, and for many more.

Joe Boothe was one of 11 residents who have died so far in the outbreak at the Waterford. The facility housed one of the largest outbreaks in a care home in Texas with 32 residents out of 47 testing positive, as well as 13 staff members.

IN-DEPTH: As 11 residents died of COVID-19, College Station care home left families guessing

West said he was not aware of any other wrongful death suits filed in Texas against nursing homes or assisted living facilities, whose residents account for 45 percent of the coronavirus fatalities in Texas.

The suit comes as health care facilities in Texas and across the country ask lawmakers for immunity from legal action related to COVID-19. The facilities have won immunity in 14 states  including Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York  through executive orders and state laws, though some states have carved out exceptions for negligence suits like the one filed by the Boothes.

A representative of the parent company of the Waterford, Dallas-based Capital Senior Living, declined to comment.

Industry seeks immunity

In an April 3 letter, several Texas organizations, including the Texas Medical Association, Texas Health Care Association and Texas Hospital Association, asked Gov. Greg Abbott to issue an executive order extending statewide immunity for volunteers responding to the disaster to include health care professionals and facilities.

The law covering volunteers was passed last session and spearheaded by Houston-area, Republican state lawmakers Sen. Joan Huffman and Rep. Tom Oliverson.

On the federal level, there are some protections for suits related to the manufacture and distribution of some medical products, such as ventilators and N95 masks, but none for treatment of patients, said Jon Opelt, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Patient Access, which coordinated the letter.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Texas advocacy groups for care home residents and others, including the states long-term care ombudsman Patty Ducayet, have opposed the proposal, saying it would take away necessary protections for families.

It would, Opelt said, and yet as we have all heard it said: were all in this together. And its important to recognize that the parties rendering that care are in need of protection as well.

He continued: Theres a range of things that could happen where theyre dealing with some serious constraints in terms of their ability to render care, very out of the norm, such as a hospital that postpones a patients elective surgery and ends up delaying care, or a rural hospital that had to ration test kits.

The immunity the organizations are requesting would not cover lawsuits alleging injury or death caused by reckless conduct, or intentional, willful, or wanton misconduct.

They also asked in the letter for Abbott to prohibit any coronavirus-related lawsuits against health care providers until Sept. 1. Opelt said thats because health care workers need to be on the front lines, not sitting in depositions.

We ask you to take action now to remove the threat of litigation that risks delaying or hindering patient care needed to respond to this disaster, the letter stated.

Abbott did not respond to a request for comment on whether he plans to act on the request, and Opelt said the groups have not received a response from him.

Kept in the dark

The Brazos County suit claims that the Waterford failed to implement the necessary infection control to protect residents and, once the virus reached the facility, downplayed its severity in speaking with families. For example, the facility at first said a stomach bug was going around when it made the decision to restrict residents to their rooms.

Defendants intentionally kept Mr. Boothes family in the dark and away from him, while causing Mr. Boothe to languish and suffer alone, and to wither away, all without appropriate care or intervention, the suit states.

The suit also faults the facility for waiting to test employees and residents for the virus until after it became public that Boothe and others had died of it.

The Waterford said in a statement provided to Hearst Newspapers last month that it was unable to test all residents and staff at the beginning of the outbreak because test kits were not available. Instead, residents initially were not tested until being admitted to the hospital. Later, they received more kits and were able to expand testing.

The outbreak was first characterized as a stomach bug because facility officials did not associate gastrointestinal symptoms with COVID-19 at that time, it said.

The facility said it followed state and local health authority guidance in combating the spread of the disease.

At the Waterford at College Station, our top priority is always the safety and wellbeing of our residents and employees, the statement read. The Waterford has always had strict protocols in place to limit the spread of infectious disease in our community, and specifically in response to COVID-19.

Boothe is seeking monetary relief of at least $1 million in damages for the emotional toll her husbands death, as well as funeral and burial expenses.
A study conducted by Mastercard shows that South Africans are moving to contactless payments for everyday purchases, seeking touch-free payment experiences.

Image supplied

Findings from South African respondents show:

Contactless Tipping Point

As South Africa imposed necessary restrictions on social distancing in March, three-quarters of South African consumers (75%) say they are now using contactless payments, citing safety and cleanliness as key drivers. Consumer polling by Mastercard, studying changing consumer behaviours in 19 countries around the world, paints a picture of accelerated and sustained contactless adoption.The act of buying everyday supplies and other necessities has changed dramatically, with shoppers having to adjust to social distancing measures and other new challenges, said Mark Elliott, division president for Mastercard, Southern Africa.According to the new Mastercard study, this shift in behaviour is particularly clear at checkout as people express a desire for contactless and voice concerns over cleanliness and safety at the point of sale. Perceptions of safety and convenience have spurred a preference for contactless cards and reminded consumers of the convenience of tapping. Nearly half (47%) of South African respondents have swapped out their top-of-wallet card for one that offers contactless. The disruption has led to increased concern from consumers on cash usage and positive perceptions towards contactless due to the peace of mind that it provides. Forty-four percent of South African respondents said they have reduced their use of cash while 20% say that they do not use cash at all since the pandemic began.Eighty-seven percent of South African respondents are concerned about the cleanliness of signature or touch pads, and the majority (88%) view contactless as the cleaner way to pay. Furthermore, 79%say contactless payments are faster than cash, enabling customers to get in and out of stores quicker. Sixty-nine percent of South African respondents agree that contactless is now their preferred payment method, with 71% stating that they prefer shopping at merchants that accept contactless. The majority (78%) also say they will continue to use contactless post-pandemic.The study revealed that since the beginning of Covid-19 in South Africa, 89% of South African respondents have been using contactless to pay for groceries, 60% for pharmaceutical items, 39% for other retail items, 15% for fast food, and 8% for transport.Mastercard has been spearheading the shift to contactless for several years in South Africa. Tap & Go is already quite prevalent in the country, though conditions resulting from this pandemic are advancing consumer adoption further. South African shoppers are increasingly recognising contactless as a safer, cleaner, and faster way to pay, especially as they seek out ways to quickly get in and out of stores without touching terminals or handing over their cards, Elliott said.Globally, Mastercard data reveals over 40% growth in contactless transactions globally in the first quarter of 20201. Further, 80% of contactless transactions are under $25, a range that is typically dominated by cash.Mastercards insights on grocery and pharmacy trends  two areas where many day-to-day essentials are being purchased  showed that South Africa experienced significant spikes in contactless usage, with the number of contactless transactions growing 13X in March 2020 compared to March 2019.Furthermore, reinforcing changing behaviours and consumer checkout preferences, the number of contactless payments as a proportion of all face-to-face payments in South Africa was more than 10X higher in March 2020 than in March 2019.
Seven weeks after she filed for unemployment benefits, Nadine Josephs was running out of money. The birthdays of her two teenage children loomed, and she was spending her days pleading for forbearance on overdue bills.

Holed up in her apartment in the East New York, Brooklyn, Ms. Josephs, 46, had grown increasingly frustrated since she filed her claim on March 16. And she was tired of hearing assurances from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to the thousands of desperate New Yorkers like her that the checks would be in the mail.

She had checked the mail, her email and her voice mail: No word from Albany in more than a month.

Between negotiations with the phone company and a furniture-rental company, Ms. Josephs tried every avenue she could think of to draw attention to her plight. She called the New York State Department of Labor at all hours, posted pleas on Facebook and Twitter, and even tweeted daily at the governor himself.

Im just praying this can be resolved, she said in an interview. My back is against the wall.

Ms. Josephs was part of the first wave of unemployment claimants who overwhelmed the Department of Labor in mid-March. Since then, the state has received more than 1.6 million claims, including many from gig workers and other independent contractors who normally would not have qualified for benefits.
Established last month, Fingal COVID-19 Community Response Forum is already making an impact on the ground, offering targeted community support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-ordinated by Fingal County Council, the forum was set up to offer a dedicated community support helpline and email address to assist at-risk members of the public in accessing non-emergency and non-medical supports, and to offer advice during the COVID-19 emergency.

The forum is a collaboration of over a dozen agencies and organisations working to ensure there is a co-ordinated response to assisting the local community during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Mayor of Fingal and forum co-ordinator, Cllr Eoghan O'Brien spoke recently of the forum's success to date: 'It's working out very well so far. We've had almost 600 contacts over the first three weeks.

'Most of the calls that have come in is for the collection of groceries and prescriptions and that kind of thing.

'The groups that are tying in, all the different agencies have been working really well together and the exchange of information is helping us identify gaps, as well as picking up on issues that are there and reacting to them.

'For instance, last week the Lions Club, the Fingal Rotary Club, Fingallians GAA and Rush Scout Group organised a trolley drop of mainly healthcare and hygiene products. We did those in Swords, Sutton and Rush and we got over two van loads of stuff donated over the course of last weekend. So they've been dropped off to Empower and Crosscare, and they're being delivered out to vulnerable families around the Fingal area.'

He said: 'Bringing all the groups together has been really really positive, we've over a dozen agencies tied in, from local development companies to civil defence, the Order of Malta, the Rural Link Transport Group to An Garda Siochana and ALONE.'

Mayor O'Brien said many people are now contacting the helpline looking to volunteer themselves, which he said has been one very positive outcome of the initiative, and one which has demonstrated 'a really strong community spirit' in Fingal.

Socially isolated members of the community are also ringing the helpline to chat with volunteers and gain support, another service he said has proven very successful.

Mayor O'Brien explained the operation is now moving into 'Phase 2', which will focus on health and well-being for the wider community, rather than just focusing on those who are 'cocooning.'

To get in touch with the Fingal COVID-19 Community Response Forum, contact freephone: 1800-459059 or 01-8905000.
This year's record drop in carbon emissions due to the COVID-19 crisis has renewed questions about China's continued push for coal-fired power as the government pursues economic recovery.

Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that worldwide carbon emissions linked to global warming will plunge nearly 8 percent this year in the wake of the pandemic and production shutdowns.

Global energy demand will fall by 6 percent, a loss seven times greater than during the 2008 financial collapse, the IEA said in a 41-page report.

In the first quarter, China recorded the biggest cut with a slump in demand of over 7 percent following an eight-week lockdown to limit the spread of the disease.

"The absolute decline in global energy demand is without precedent, and relative declines of this order are without precedent for the last 70 years," the Paris-based agency said.

Among the stunning figures in the IEA's forecast, global oil demand could fall by 9 percent this year, rolling back consumption to levels of 2012.

Worldwide demand for electricity is expected to shrink by nearly 5 percent, driving coal demand down by 8 percent and cutting coal-fired power by over 10 percent.

The magnitude of the declines will draw attention to questions of not only when but how economies recover.

One of the wild cards in the forecast is what China will do to resume growth as the rest of the world struggles to restore demand in staggered time frames and recovery rates.

China's gross domestic product tumbled by a record 6.8 percent in the first quarter, according to official statistics.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast a partial improvement this year with 1.2-percent growth, rising sharply with expansion reaching 9.2-percent in 2021.

But if China's recovery relies on a big rebound in coal-fired power, the damage in terms of climate change could cancel out much of the emissions reduction expected this year.

"The recovery of coal demand for industry and electricity generation in China limits the global decline in coal demand," the IEA outlook said.

Global coal use could recede only half as much as forecast, "if China and other large consumers ... recover more quickly," the IEA said.

The report classifies China as "a coal-based economy." Despite gains in renewable sources and lower-carbon natural gas, the country still relies on coal for 57.7 percent of its primary energy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Roughly two-thirds of China's electricity is generated from coal, raising the odds that when the economy bounces back, so will coal consumption and carbon emissions.

"As after previous crises ... the rebound in emissions may be larger than the decline, unless the wave of investment to restart the economy is dedicated to cleaner and more resilient energy infrastructure," the IEA warned.

A passenger airliner flies past steam and white smoke emitted by China Huaneng Group's coal-fired power plant in Beijing, Feb. 28, 2017. The power plant was closed in March 2017 as part of the the Chinese capital's conversion to clean energy. Credit: Associated Press Gradual recovery

Recovery so far has been gradual, judging by China's recent data on power production.

Generation in the first half of April rose just 1.2 percent from a year earlier after consumption fell 6.5 percent in the first quarter, the China Electricity Council and state media said.

But the IEA also noted the close links between industrial output and electricity use in China, a factor that points toward future growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Industry accounted for over 60 percent of power consumption in China last year compared with 20 percent in the United States, it said.

A recovery for industry may inescapably drive a rebound of carbon emissions. But environmental advocates argue that the consequences will increasingly be a matter of choice as the cost of renewables comes down.

Environmental groups have argued for years that falling costs for solar and wind generation would undercut coal and eventually force investors to abandon coal-fired plants, turning them into "stranded assets."

According to a recent report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an independent financial think tank, the tipping point of price competition has already passed.

The report estimated that 71 percent of China's coal-fired generating capacity will cost more to run than building and operating renewable projects.

Yet, China appears to be pressing ahead with new coal-fired projects, responding to industry arguments that the country could face a supply squeeze in the next two to three years.

In March, activists writing for the British-based website CarbonBrief.org said that China already has 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired generation under construction, which would raise current coal capacity by nearly 10 percent.

Despite chronic underutilization and widespread operating losses, the industry has pressed for even greater capacity increases of 23 to 33 percent, the Carbon Brief group said.

The report estimated that "more than half of coal power firms (are) already loss-making ... with typical plants running at less than 50 percent of their capacity."

Affect on BRI projects

The cost comparisons and climate pressures also appear to be affecting plans to build coal-fired projects in countries cooperating with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to promote exports and infrastructure abroad.

In February, Egypt's Ministry of Electricity decided to indefinitely postpone construction of the 6.6-GW Hamrawein coal power project, planned by a consortium including China's Shanghai Electric and Dongfang Electric. The plant is to be replaced by a renewable energy project instead, Daily News Egypt reported.

The Hamrawein station would have been the second-largest coal-fired power plant in the world, the Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said.

Still, the IEA suggested that total reliance on renewables in countries around the world would pose its own risks.

"The rise of renewables has posed some problems for electricity security, however. In advanced economies, the main source of blackouts is the inability of the system to manage sudden changes in power flows and various network problems," the IEA said.

In China's case, utilization of coal-fired power and the resulting carbon emissions are likely to be determined by decisions on which source of power gets access to the electrical grid.

"If a more favorable dispatch for coal power plants is established, this could offer some relief for coal power producers," the IEA report said.

The relative costs and environmental consequences will raise more questions about why China continues to build so many new coal plants, despite economic setbacks that will only add to their losses now.

Philip Andrews-Speed, senior principal fellow at the University of Singapore's Energy Studies Institute, said the answer may also come down to economics.

"It is clear that construction has restarted on a number of suspended coal-fired plants and the government has relaxed restrictions in a number of provinces," Andrews-Speed said.

"Why are they building when there is such a massive surplus of power? I guess because it employs people and money is cheap," he said.

Andrews-Speed suggested that the government may also be planning to close a large number of more inefficient plants with 20 or more years of service, which is about half the retirement age for coal plants in the West.

Although the costs and environmental impact appear to be lesser considerations, Andrews-Speed noted that the government is pursuing renewable energy quotas and a national carbon trading system.

Decisions on which forms of energy will enjoy preferred access to the electrical grid may determine profitability.

"I guess that the dispatch decision will involve a delicate balance between the environmental objections on the one hand and local political priorities, notably employment and tax revenue," Andrews-Speed said.
The fairgrounds will be quiet in Salem this year, as a 156-year tradition grinds to a halt in Oregon.

The Oregon State Fair is canceled for 2020, following Gov. Kate Browns announcement Thursday that all large gatherings will be prohibited at least through September, as the state tries to reopen some sectors of public life amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Originally scheduled Aug. 28 to Sept. 7, the state fair is one of the larger annual gatherings in Oregon, drawing more than 250,000 people in recent years. Gov. Brown said the states current Phase 1 plan allows for local gatherings" of only 25 people.

State officials are still working out what that number will be for Phase 2 of the reopening plan, but said organizers of big events scheduled between now and September will need to cancel or significantly modify their plans.

That decision came quickly for the Oregon State Fair.

The safety of our fairgoers, exhibitors, competitors, performers, sponsors, vendors, contractors, volunteers and staff has always been  and will always be our top priority, Mike Paluszak, director and CEO of the Oregon State Fair, said in a news release Thursday afternoon. We are saddened by the news, but support our state leaders in their efforts to keep all Oregonians safe in the wake of COVID-19.

Gov. Brown spoke specifically about the Oregon State Fair at her news conference Thursday, responding to a question about the fate of the event. The governor said some aspects of the fair could continue with smaller crowds, physical distancing and face coverings.

Fair organizers said they will be meeting in the coming weeks to discuss those options moving forward, but said the fair as Oregonians know it will not return until next year.

The 2021 Oregon State Fair is scheduled for Aug. 27-Sept. 6 of next year.

--Jamie Hale; jhale@oregonian.com; 503-294-4077; @HaleJamesB

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
New Delhi, May 8 : Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi said on Friday that the nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) is not like an on-off switch, saying that if the government wants to end the lockdown, it must bring physiological change in the minds of the people and transperancy in exit plan.

In a video conference with mediapersons, Rahul Gandhi, who is also an MP from Kerala's Wayanad, said, "We have been having internal discussions on the suggestions to we would be giving the government." He said the country is beginning to run into a little bit of problem. "There is a strong feeling that we need to immediately release packages to the MSMEs, give money in the hands of the poor and have a strategy for the migrants besides preparing for the opening of the lockdown," he said.

Rahul Gandhi also urged the Central government to provide little bit of "transparency" about its actions.

"We need to understand that when they lift the lockdown, what would be the criteria for it, what are the boxes they want to tick before actually initiating the process. It is important that government tells the people about these criteria," the Congress leader said.

"We simply cannot continue without providing support to the people who are suffering due to the lockdown," he added.

The Congress leader further said that the lockdown is not only switching on a key, it requires a number of things to happen, it needs a psychological change.

According to Rahul Gandhi, the Covid-19 disease is currently very dangerous for the elderly, and people with ailments like diabetis, cardiac problem and lung disease.

"We need to bring a psychological change in the minds of the people. If the government wants to open up, it has to turn this fear into a sense of confidence. Otherwise people will start going out the moment the lockdown is lifted," he said.

"We need a stratgy to open up the lockdown. A massive transition is required... it requires coordination between the states, the Central government, district magistrates and many others. That is the challenge the government faces," he said.

This was the second interaction of the Congress leader with the media in the last one month amid the nationwide lockdown.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Dr Gyorgy Rakoczy, pictured, has been allowed to resume practice despite having problems with English

A bungling Hungarian doctor working in the NHS failed an English test six times - and then claimed that the requirement was age discrimination.

Dr Gyorgy Rakoczy argued that he was being put at a disadvantage because older people find it harder to learn new languages.

The 65-year-old consultant paediatric surgeon was initially suspended in 2012 after he wrongly injected a four-year-old with a potentially lethal amount of carbolic acid.

Despite the incident, he returned to work at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.

But he later failed English language tests in reading, writing, listening and speaking and was reported to the General Medical Council over concerns about his grasp of the language.

At a Medical Practitioners Tribunal in 2019 he was placed under conditional registration for a year and told to successfully complete an English language assessment course.

Now, at a review hearing, having still not passed a test, Dr Rakoczy argued it is harder for people aged 60 and over to pass language exams and said he was being discriminated against.

The bungling doctor took another test earlier this year, but again did not pass bringing the total of failed tests to six, the panel heard.

And he had given up attending English lessons, potentially putting patients at risk.

'(He) has taken and failed English tests six times, by two different examining bodies, on his own evidence,' the panel concluded. 'Dr Rakoczy has consistently asserted that his age is a contributing factor in his failure to pass the English language tests.

'He has complained to the GMC and to this effect. Neither this Tribunal nor the previous Tribunal found this submission persuasive.

'To be clear, this Tribunal does not consider that a doctor's age is an acceptable reason for being allowed to practise unrestricted without the requisite skills in the English Language.

'Dr Rakoczy stopped his English studies until just before his most recent failed attempt to pass (the test), yet he still asserted that he should be allowed to practise without any restriction.

Dr Rakoczy was allowed to return to work at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital following the incident with carbolic acid. He had previously been suspended for injecting an un-named boy with a toxic substance used to treat ingrowing toenails

'It was of the view that a lack of English language skills at the required standard could present a risk to patient safety.

'Further, the Tribunal considered that an ordinary and well informed member of the public would be surprised to learn that a doctor who had failed the English language tests had not been found to be impaired. '

The tribunal concluded that because his specialism is not required to fight coronavirus, the pandemic did not count as an exceptional circumstance that might change how the doctor was treated.

It determined that Dr Rakoczy fitness to practise is still impaired due to his lack of knowledge of the English language but allowed him to continue to work with conditions for 12 months.

The paediatrician had originally been suspended for three months after a botched operation at Manchester hospital in May 2009, in which an unnamed boy was injected with 80 per cent phenol, a toxic substance used to treat ingrowing toenails.

The potentially lethal amount of Phenol was handed to him by a nurse who had never worked with the drug before.

The boy was left with 'catastrophic' internal injuries and required a colostomy bag, having originally been admitted for a suspected haemorrhoid.

He required numerous corrective operations, including the removal of a section of his bowel.
The mix of information and misinformation, and exaggerated fears of the situation, result in symptoms of anxiety of various kinds depending on the age of the child, warns child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Amit Sen.

As the fear of COVID-19 and the lockdown that began on 25 March gripped the nation, the children found themselves on the sidelines of the narrative of the pandemic that focussed on the virus, the infection and mortality rates worldwide, the challenges to the medical infrastructure, and more. However, the fear of the pandemic and the lockdown have overpowered the young minds, as they are also more emotionally vulnerable, leading to high anxiety, aggression, mood swings, depression, and even Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

According to the UNICEF, 99 percent of children, adolescents and young people under 18 worldwide have been suffering due to partial or full lockdown. Apart from the actual threat of the virus and the necessary difficulties imposed by the lockdown, millions of families across the country are dealing with the disturbed mental health of their children, all due to the pandemic.

This underscores the urgency of proper care of children in India. In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, child and adolescent psychiatrist and co-founder and director of Children First  a multi-disciplinary centre for mental healthcare solutions for young people  Dr Amit Sen discusses the symptoms of the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of children and measures to deal with the situation. Edited

excerpts follow:

What is the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children and adolescents? What are the symptoms parents should be on the lookout for?

There are different kinds of impacts, which can broadly be categorised into two. One is the immediate impact of the physical threat of the virus itself and the other is the impact of the breakdown of infrastructure.

Because of the immediate threat of the virus, children are confronted with questions about life and death, what is this virus all about, who will get affected, etc. There is genuine fear in the community, and children being more vulnerable, feel it more. It is especially true if the channels of communication are not filtered because children have access to a lot of social and digital media. The mix of information and misinformation, and exaggerated fears of the situation, result in symptoms of anxiety of various kinds depending on the age of the child.

This anxiety appears in the way children react/ respond to any kind of stress, or even simple things like keeping to a routine, keeping up with the academics, cleaning their room, or maintaining daily hygiene. These things tend to get affected as anxiety becomes severe, leading to symptoms such as reactive behaviour, mood swings, becoming rude and defiant, refusing to do what is expected of them, and so on.

The other impact is due to the breakdown of infrastructure. We had so far taken simple things for granted, such as  our daily routine, waking up in the morning with a certain purpose, going to school, recreation, family time, etc. These things give a sense of structure and contribute hugely to a deeper sense of security. But now, these structures, of predictability in life, have gone out of the window.

In the beginning of the lockdown, many kids were happy that schools had closed and there was no classwork or homework. But within a week or two, they started missing school, complained about not having anything to do or not getting homework, and got bored and restless. In older children, the absence of these day-to-day things has led to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.

The other thing that gives children a sense of loss is that they cant anymore do things that give them pleasure  like ordering food, going out to eat/ to cinema/ parks, hanging out with friends, etc. This loss of freedom to choose is more marked in children who are impatient and impulsive.

Besides anxiety, some children might even be getting into depression or beginning to show the effects of trauma. Many children nowadays complain about not just nightmares but having vivid dreams, which they cant fathom. That happens usually in a trauma, a situation when an event has disrupted their lives in profound ways, when nothing seems familiar, or in control.

When trauma happens, there is acute anxiety, anticipatory anxiety of something may happen, constant scanning of the environment for something going wrong. Children usually become too vigilant in such times. Repeated watching of whats happening can come back as flashbacks.

I would like to highlight that children often respond to a situation the way adults respond to a crisis. If adults begin to lose hope, children will absorb it like a sponge. Its important for parents and adults to choose their reactions carefully.

What should they do to combat any negative impact?

It would be best for children to talk about their anxieties. Those who are able to do so are more fortunate because there is perhaps an atmosphere conducive to such conversation in the family and they have access to spaces that are supportive, allowing them to talk about their fears, anxieties, feelings, thoughts about COVID-19, etc. Such children are also in a better position to deal with the situation. Otherwise, it would show up not just in moods and behaviours but would also affect their sleep and eating patterns. They will go to sleep at 4-5 am and wake up at noon, and either they stop eating due to anxiety or start eating excessively for comfort.

In younger children, it could manifest in other behaviour such as crying very easily, having tantrums, and in more extreme cases, even bed-wetting.

Who are more vulnerable -- children, adolescents or young adults (YA)?

It depends on different age groups, as they have different challenges. Many YAs are stuck outside in colleges, universities or for work and couldnt get back home due to lockdown. They are isolated and completely on their own. Some cant even cook.

Adolescents, on the other hand, are now at home and have access to information better than younger children. Adolescence, anyway, is a stage of internal turmoil, relationship issues, mood swings, self-doubt, etc. Outwardly, adolescents appear stoic but carry a lot of vulnerability inside. Infrastructure such as family, institutions, recreation centres, etc. help adolescents go through this phase of turmoil but all that is gone now. As a result, inner turmoil has got aggravated.

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Whereas, younger children, including infants, pick up everything from parents  their body language and feelings, conflicts, underlying tensions, heaviness in a family atmosphere, etc.  almost as if absorbing it from the air. If parents are able to contain their own anxieties, then children are better off.

What are the best practices that should be adopted at home for children during this lockdown?

As I have said earlier, children are facing a challenge because of the breakdown of infrastructure and lack of activities that gave them joy. The only two things at our disposal are our homes and digital media, so we have to be creative in using these.

Most important is to have something called a Worry Break, to combat the immediate threat of the virus. The worry about COVID-19 is genuine but if it is lurking around all the time, it will not allow us to relax and will intrude in our consciousness, preventing us from doing anything else. So, we have to become aware of it, identify it and compartmentalise it.

In a worry break, we keep some time of the day to take stock of the situation. We slot over an hour/ half-hour period twice or thrice a day when the family comes together to discuss the pandemic. But you have to close the discussion at the end of the hour. If a thought or a message comes in between, you will not look at it but tell yourself that it will be addressed at the next time slot. Older children can do it themselves.

The in-between period has to be engaged in doing other things.

Second thing is to structure the rest of the day. The family can sit together and discuss all the things that give it pleasure, were done in the past or before the lockdown, but are missing from life now. Then, think about things that can be done individually, and together as a family. Like, reading books to your children, or the movies you watched together, or the holidays you have been to, playing board games, looking at photos there are many things that you can begin. Children can be engaged in cooking one day of the week, where they cook and serve like in a restaurant, as this generation is big on food.

By doing so, the pleasure element is created, giving a wonderful family time. This will give a sense of connectedness in times when we all are feeling uprooted. When we look at things from the past, they begin to root us, showing that our life is not just now but a longitude. The story of our lives often recharges us.

Third is about supporting the family by helping in household chores. Children need to participate in some way or the other and there has to be ownership.

If the children are not engaged thoughtfully through the day, they are likely to be hit by severe anxiety even by just being an observer of things around them. This has long-lasting effects. For instance, after 9/11 in the US, those constantly watching scenes of the attack also suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Is there a higher risk for children already dealing with pre-existing psychological conditions?

Yes, definitely. Those who were already in depression are now stuck. There are children who face abuse at home. They could avoid home by going out but now being completely at home, have become very vulnerable. Another ailment, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), is scaring them. Due to the present situation, there is a fear of contradiction. Unlike in the past, one is now asked to wash hands several times a day. It has a paradoxical effect. If one is symptomatic, now the condition will return with vengeance, which will lead to anxiety.

Could the pandemic have lasting effects on childrens mental health even after its over?

If the experience is very traumatic, the impact will be for a much longer period -- months or even years.

How can one help their child cope with isolation?

As a parent, I would add a caveat  you have to be constantly mindful about how you are feeling and keep yourself free from worries and anxieties. As discussed, you need to engage your child in a fun, productive and creative way, either in the kitchen or in the living room, recall happy memories, have a sense of togetherness, be realistic, firm, protected and assured that things will improve. This is the time we need to question things we take for granted, what do material things and success mean, we need to redefine those.

This pandemic has turned out to be a great leveller, affecting people across the class divide; it is not associated with poverty and deprivation, unlike TB. The class divide is very telling of our lives, and we need to have this conversation with our children, to help them see the world with different lenses as they grow. They have to learn to question the established values such as what it means to go to the best college, to succeed with a certain number of marks, to have a white-collared job, a posh car, etc. This small virus has challenged all the values that had been created over these years.

Due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, some parts of board examinations for Class 10 and 12 have got suspended, which has caused serious anxiety among students. How one can deal with it?

Not being able to write board examinations due to the lockdown causes anxiety. Some have got admissions in colleges but dont know if they would be able to go. Even those transitioning from middle school to senior school or from Class 10 to 11 are facing anxiety. All kids need a certain direction, certain goal and meaning to their life. Now as there is no certainty, it gives rise to another kind of anxiety altogether. They should keep an eye on longer goals and not lose hope.

The children with special education needs, such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), etc., are also at risk. What is your advice for their care?

Children with specific needs like ASD or ADHD thrive on structured routine. Once they get into a routine, its hard to change those. They have to be prepared in a systematic manner, at home and outside through schools, therapies and special educators they go to. Those become part of a daily ritual and they do well. The therapies we give to these children are very hands-on, you have to interact with the child, theres a lot of physical contact  gym, music, moving around with the therapist.

This disruption has raised the levels of tantrums. Its very worrying that some of them have shown regression of symptoms, been set back developmentally and experienced outbursts. As open spaces are not available due to the lockdown, we have to innovate quickly to help such children. We have tried our best to do things online but its very difficult for a child, particularly younger ones, to deal with the screen. We have made programmes, where we work in a group comprising child and a parent. Some broad principles that we have talked earlier about the structure, fun time, family time, bonding, apply here too and will help. Parents have to see the special area of interest of the child, which can help the child through the day.

For instance, a child with ASD may be fascinated with birds or dinosaurs, so you can make those stories with dinosaurs and make them part of your daily life.

According to the National Commission for Women, there is an increase in domestic violence during this lockdown period. What will be its impact on children?

No doubt the incidents of domestic violence lead to a traumatic experience for most of the children, who witness this. And children who have lived through domestic violence many times have huge psychological issues. Now when fathers cant go out to work or the mothers cant go out, they find that domestic violence behind closed doors has clearly gone up. This will lead to clinical depression and PTSD, especially when there are hopelessness and helplessness when the pleasures have gone away, and the connections we take for granted have gone away.

Can this isolation followed by anxiety and stress lead to clinical depression?

Of course, this sense of hopelessness and helplessness can lead to clinical depression.

Some cases of suicide by youngsters have been reported during this period, apparently over trivial issues. Is this an impact of the pandemic or is it a growing concern which has been around since pre-coronavirus times?

COVID-19 will, of course, exacerbate some of the already prevalent phenomena such as anxiety and depression, and when that happens, particularly with depression and PTSD, suicidal ideas, etc., become common. When the atmosphere is more conducive, it is easier to deal with the crisis. But when there are hardly any resources in the family and the family itself is under so much stress, it becomes so much harder.

Suicide rates in our country are one of the highest in the world. Its the number one cause of death for the 15-30 age-group. There are several reasons like pressure to prove oneself, perform better, high expectations, etc., but one of the biggest reasons is that we hardly pay any heed to emotional health in our country. We dont even pay much attention when children sometimes talk about killing themselves. We label it as attention-seeking behaviour, we completely rubbish it, we dont ask our children what is making them talk about taking their life. In fact, parents require more counselling than children.

World Health Organisation, which has in the past warned against Gaming Disorder due to video or digital gaming, as it leads to change in the behaviour pattern of an individual, is now actively encouraging people to play video games during this lockdown. Your take?

Thank you @RaymondChambers for mobilizing the gaming industry to feature @WHO advice on #COVID19 to their users. We all must #PlayApartTogether to beat the #coronavirus.https://t.co/jJNsjuHlBn  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 28, 2020

At present we have to choose between depression and Gaming Disorder, and I think the latter is better, having much less risk. Once the coronavirus threat is over, we will deal with it, as its a lesser evil. It may be worthwhile to have those conversations even when you allow children to do more gaming. Tell them, you also know it is not the right thing, but these are unusual times, then we prepare the child for future when the lockdown is over.

A lot of fake news or texts, photos and videos related to Coronavirus are being circulated on WhatsApp/ Facebook/Instagram and other social media platforms, creating panic among children who are now on mobile phones almost throughout the day...

Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., are making children extremely panicky. Thats why worry breaks are important. Instead of telling children, how can you even think or say such a thing,--let them open up. Often parents react sharply and call it trash, when they see children watching something on FB or WhatsApp. As a result, children clam up. Instead, parents should say, Oh let us see what they are saying. Let us see what the scientists say on this issue. Do you actually want to know or just want some fun? Next time when children visit any of these social media platforms, they will actually research on the veracity of the post and its source. So, we have to open up to these conversations, otherwise, children will remain isolated and we wont have an inkling of what they are doing or seeing.

At what point should a parent or guardian seek psychiatric help?

When events go completely out-of-hand; when none of the generic measures are helping; a child is showing these signs of severe anxiety, trauma, depression, panic attacks, massive mood swings, feelings like Ive had enough, I dont want this life, things going completely out of hand, or their sleep, appetite or hygiene is going down, making attempts to harm themselves, isolating themselves completely, shutting the room all the time, etc. -- all of these should prompt parents to reach out for help.

Finally, five key takeaways from you on dealing with the current situation.

First, be careful about the worry virus because like real coronavirus, the worry virus too can create havoc if not stemmed.

Second, be aware of the time being spent on worrying and discussing the coronavirus. It has to be limited.

Third, as parents, weve to ensure that our family remains stable and together.

Fourth, children and adolescents will go through emotional turmoil and there may be bad behaviour, which is a reflection of times were going through. We dont have to punish children as this will have an adverse impact.

And, fifth, its an opportunity to revisit our core issues like our values, aspirations, how we want to live after COVID pandemic gets over, etc in a positive manner. After lockdown weve known what kind of damage weve done to our environment. Pollution has plummeted to an all-time low. We need to rethink our priorities about materialism and ensure not to cause damage to the environment for our needs.
Philadelphia elections officials are asking the state for permission to cut the number of polling places the city will open for the June 2 primary by more than 60%, or to deploy the National Guard to compensate for an unprecedented shortage of poll workers.

If the state approves, Philadelphia will have fewer than 332 polling places, compared with its normal 830 or so. Otherwise, the citys chief elections official said, she wont have enough poll workers to hold the election.

Depending on the number of polling places that is acceptable to ensure state approval, we may require as much as 1,500 National Guardsmen to supplement our poll worker recruitment, said Lisa Deeley, chair of the Philadelphia City Commissioners.

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc with 2020 voting in Pennsylvania and many other states.

Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said this week/ that the National Guard could be called upon to staff election sites for counties short of poll workers. They would be dressed in civilian attire. About 2,400 citizen-soldiers and airmen from the Wisconsin National Guard served as poll workers for that states April 7 primary.

Philadelphia is one of four counties that have asked the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, to grant an exemption allowing it to reduce polling places by more than the 60% authorized in the emergency law that postponed the states primary from April.

Entire election boards are telling us that they will not be working due to COVID-19, Deeley said. We have been exploring our election day plan for some time now.

Its unclear how much more than the 60% reduction Philadelphia is seeking. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, has asked whether it can reduce its number of polling places by as much as 90%. Cameron and Forest Counties, two of the least populated in the state, have also requested exemptions.

Elections officials around the state have echoed Philadelphias concerns as poll workers cancel, wary of contracting the virus.

I cant blame them. Were not shopping around the most attractive product, said Tim Benyo, chief clerk of elections for Lehigh County, which is short about 200 poll workers out of 1,000. Low pay, long hours, and the chance of getting sick  thats not exactly something that people are knocking down the door to do.

Poll workers tend to be older, making them particularly vulnerable to the virus. Counties across the state have struggled to retain and replace poll workers who in some cases have dropped out en masse. Compounding the problem: Some locations no longer want to open up as polling places, including senior homes and private businesses that under normal circumstances host voting machines and thousands of voters.

Benyo said that in Lehigh County, his office is looking to erect tents outside facilities that dont want voting set up indoors. Hes posted poll-worker jobs on the states CareerLink website and is trying to make a push on social media and in the news media.

Elections officials, activists, and others are scrambling to try to ease the poll-worker and polling-place burden, including urging people to vote by mail. Bob Brady, the chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, said he is preparing to rally the citys elected officials to call for postponing the election for voter and poll-worker safety.

Theres no comfort level for people to go vote, theres no comfort level for people to man [polling places], he said. And you call in the National Guard, does that mean the National Guard wont get sick? Does that mean theyre immune to the virus?

Brady said hes also concerned about the possibility youre disenfranchising voters by going to a very low number of polling places.

The emergency changes in state law that allow for consolidating polling places also allow voters to work the polls outside their home precincts, expanding the pool by providing flexibility. The state on Wednesday also reduced the number of poll workers required at a given location when they consolidate polling places. That eases pressure, county elections officials said, but theyre still struggling to find enough willing staffers.

Allegheny County normally has about 6,500 poll workers, elections chief David Voye said. This election, depending on how few polling places the state allows it to open, the county will need 1,000 to 1,500 workers.

We have already nearly 500 committed to working on June 2 and have only been making calls for a few days, Voye said.

Counties must finalize their polling places by Wednesday. Some, including Berks and Bucks Counties, are planning to open as many polling places as usual, though theyve moved some locations. Others are reducing by up to the 60% mark. Montgomery County, for example, will open just 140 locations instead of 352.

Rural counties in the western part of the state, which have fewer voters and far fewer confirmed coronavirus cases, are also faring better.

In Mercer County, which has slowly started to reopen, elections director Jeff Greenburg said 84 of 85 polling locations have given his office the green light. Hes only down about 20 poll workers.

Clearly the eastern part of the state is in a much different situation, he said. Still, he looks at poll workers and says the pandemic has exposed the need to get younger people involved.

To me, the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, for the most part, have carried elections for decades, Greenburg said. And it is definitely time for Millennials and Generation X and Y to seriously look at contributing to their communities and their country in this way.

If youd like to be a poll worker for the June 2 primary election, submit this state form or contact your county elections officials directly.
In his first address on coronavirus, President Muhammadu Buhari, on March 29, ordered a total lockdown of Lagos, FCT and Ogun, and exempted food processing, distribution and retail companies.

This was to allow the continuous flow of the food chain, to avert a food crisis as predicted by the Food and Agricultural Organisation.

However, the reality was different for Lagos farmers who deal with daily production and sales.

Vegetable Farmers

Sirajudeen AbdulAzeez, a farm manager at a crop farm in Epe, narrated to PREMIUM TIMES how the coronavirus lockdown impacted on the production and sales of leafy vegetables, which is highly perishable.

Vegetables that get harvested within 45 days now stay for 60 days or more on the farm adding to the production cost, and limited transport workers to move the goods from the farm to market has increased the demand for drivers thereby increasing the transport fare from farm to market, he said, detailing the challenges.

Mr AbdulAzeez, who harvests from his farm twice a week, an average of 40kg weekly before the lockdown, now harvests 10kg in a week, as a method of ensuring minimal post harvest loss.

The cost of production and transportation to the market is N250 per kg while during this lockdown, it is N400 per kg.

By calculation, sales and profit made before the lockdown was N20,000 and N10,000 per week respectively, while during the lockdown the profit margin has been N1,000 with N5,000 sales per week, he noted. He said the farm could not have gone for sales price increment because they considered the buyers who are also struggling to make ends meet during these hard times.

Babatunde Agunbiade, a farmer at the Lagos Farm Estate in Ikorodu said until the whole pandemic is over, he is not going back to his vegetable farm because of the loss he suffered during the lockdown.

I lost half of my vegetable farm. They got dried up while still on the field as they have gone past the stage of harvesting. I cannot increase the price of my produce because we rarely have buyers coming for it due to the no-movement policy and even the few that come around complain of police harassment and low market.

I reinvest both my profit and capital into the business to keep expanding. Right now, Even the capital is nowhere to be found talk less of the profit.

Poultry Farmers

Just as a crop farmer, poultry farmers, who are into egg production suffer the same fate as egg produced and stored under normal room temperature can only last for two weeks.

Ayodokun Oluwafemi, a poultry farm manager, took to Twitter to market his produce. While narrating his experience, he said transportation of eggs from his farm to anywhere within Lagos is less of a challenge to him but the reduction in the purchase of eggs has led to great loss on the farm.

At this time, it is hard to get a crate of egg sold at N600, we have to peg our price to N500 and we still struggle to sell 30 crates of egg per day, while we sell an average 150 crates per day at N850 before the lockdown. We are experiencing egg loss, he said.

Mr Oluwafemi, who manages a poultry of 6,400 birds and has to empty 32 bags of feed to make up 800kg required by the birds daily at a cost of N102,400, said reduction in the sale of egg price had to be made in order to continue feeding the birds though the farm is running at loss.

Before lockdown, the farm makes a profit at a sum of N25,100 daily but the lockdown and decrease in price has made the daily farm income reduce drastically from N127,500 to N15,000 having a daily loss of N87,400, he noted while explaining his reasons for exploring marketing his produce on Twitter.

A similar experience was shared by Daniel Obinna, who also manages a poultry farm at the farm estate in Ikorodu.

I havent picked eggs from the tray in the last three days because I have no crates left to put them into, he said, pointing towards the pen of birds with a large amount of eggs on the tray, in front of the birds.

My Emergency funds have been used to buy feeds. Just last week, the rain destroyed my second pen and I was left with no option than to sell off all the birds affected because I have no money for reconstruction.

I resulted to reducing the price of the egg so as to get it disposed and I cant reduce the ration of feeds given to them,  it will later have effect on them on the long run.

Fishery

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Abiodun Damilola said his loss has been coming from middlemen who come to buy catfish from his farm as they forced the price downward.

The buyers who come to my farm have been using the coronavirus lockdown to force down the price of catfish from N800 to N500 but I went to the market recently and the prices have not been reduced.

We had no choice than to do that because we cant keep them longer than that if we do not want much loss as we either have to continue feeding for them not eat themselves or lose weight which is an additional production cost.

These experiences during the lockdown ranging from unavailability of access to market, low purchase, unavailability to input, middlemen extortion and decrease in farmers income mirror the challenges of smallholder farmers in a country where smallholder farmers consist of 80 per cent of those producing food.

Sanusi Muhammad, an agro consultant, asked the government to heed to the call made by FAO on how to assist the smallholder farmers.

I know a few credit facilities have been out from the government to assist farmers but that is not enough. What farmers need most at this moment is Input facilities to farmers and making sure Agro dealers are connected to the farmers for input and produce free is what can save the 2020 farming season.
(@FahadShabbir)

Bamako, May 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th May, 2020 ) :Two people suffered gunshot wounds Thursday after a protest in southern Mali against the outcome of legislative elections in March and April, local sources said.

They said the incident took place in Sikasso, in the south of country, which has been the scene of several protests since the election results were posted.

On April 30, amid charges of irregularities and fraud, the constitutional court awarded the ruling party 10 seats more than it had won according to the initial count.

The elections were repeatedly delayed and a first round on March 29 was disrupted by jihadist attacks as well as the kidnapping of opposition leader Soumaila Cisse.

Local sources said protesters blocked access to the town and it required security forces from the capital Bamako to clear them.

The security forces "used tear gas and bullets on us and we were surprised... they chased us and took down all the barricades", a local student Souleymane Traore said.

The elections were won by the ruling Rally for Mali (RPM) party of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita which took 53 of the 147 seats in the national assembly.

Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, is struggling with an Islamist revolt that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

The election was meant to take place in late 2018 after Keita was returned to office but was postponed several times, mainly because of security concerns.

The hope is that the new assembly will endorse changes to the constitution promoting decentralisation.

The government signed a deal with armed separatists in northern Mali in 2015 but the pact has largely stalled.

Violence in that region began in 2012 and was then fanned by jihadists.

Defying thousands of French and UN troops, the jihadists took their campaign into the centre of the country and now threaten neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Within four days of the state government allowing the sale of liquor, six people were murdered over violence related to drinking, one died after consuming cheap liquor and another of excessive drinking.

The city, which had not reported a single death due to violence while the liquor ban in connection with the COVID-19 lockdown was in force, saw an average of two to three murders every day, more than 70 cases of assault and attempt to murder cases after the ban on liquor was lifted.

On Monday, the very day the ban was lifted, an argument between two friends having liquor escalated and allegedly resulted in the murder of one of them at Bagalagunte. In another incident, a 42-year-old man was beaten to death by his friend while they were partying in JB Nagar.

For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here

The following day, a 34-year-old man was killed by his friend during a drunken brawl in Kamakshipalya, while a 62-year-old man died after he allegedly consumed excess alcohol. He was found dead near his house in Vasanthnagar in central Bengaluru. Violence continued into Wednesday when two persons were found murdered in drunken brawls in separate incidents at Ramamurthynagar and RT Nagar.

A 30-year-old man was bludgeoned to death and another injured in a fight between three people over a trivial issue at the City Railway Station on Wednesday.

On Friday, a 33-year-old driver died after consuming cheap liquor at Ganagammanagudi police station limits.

A senior police officer said, We did not expect so much violence. We will step up patrolling and also warn rowdies against indulging in violence. We will verify if these cases are due to consumption of alcohol or any other motives.

Ravi Krishna Reddy, president of Karnataka Rashtra Samithi who had called for a liquor ban, said there was a misconception that excise duty is the major source of income to the state government. He said the government missed a good opportunity to ban liquor as many people had given up the habit. He claimed the government gave in to the liquor mafia.




In response to the union's call for more protective equipment, Garnica said that all staff members have appropriate PPE to safely care for patients.

National Nurses United, the union that represents nurses at SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital, also drew attention to the issue of protective equipment for hospital workers. On Thursday the union submitted a letter to the director of the city health department.

Marchelle Vernell, a nurse who works in interventional radiology at the hospital, said she is concerned about the reuse of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vernell is also the union's chief nurse representative for the hospital.

"COVID is still the big unknown," Vernell said. "I think we're still learning every day."

She said the issue is not specific to St. Louis University Hospital but spans the entire medical community.

"Up until this condition, we were not reusing these masks," Vernell said. "It's industrywide... and it is because of the supply and demand."

Four members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen  Megan Green, Christine Ingrassia, Annie Rice and Cara Spencer  signed a letter to hospital leadership raising concerns about PPE.

"After speaking with representatives from National Nurses United, as well as our constituents, we are concerned about the safety of our frontline workers," they wrote. "Our workers have been assured that there is ample PPE available for them, yet we continue to hear concerns about PPE reuse that is leading to unsafe working conditions."

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Mumbai, May 8 : Raveena Tandon has shared an old video message from Rishi Kapoor where he can be seen wishing her father, veteran filmmaker Ravi Tandon, on the latter's birthday. Kapoor sent across the video just before he left for cancer treatment in New York.

Sharing the video on Instagram, Raveena wrote: "Just before his going to New York for treatment, he recorded this for papa, and then surprised him by being there with us on papas birthday. Love you will always be there at home and in our hearts forever Chintuuncle. we love you ." Rishi Kapoor had collaborated in many films with Ravi Tandon, as he recalls in the video. The late actor also thanked the filmmaker for being behind his association with actress Neetu Singh, who would later become his wife.

"Hi Raviji. First let me wish you a very very happy 80th birthday, God bless you...We have a relationship of over 42 years. I've known you since 1973. We worked first in Khel Khel Mein. Neetu and me both of us. After that we have done four films together -- Khel Khel Mein, Jhoota Kahin Ka, Rahi Badal Gaye, Aan Aur Shaan. We have had a very good synergy in our work relationship and I've really enjoyed working with you," the late actor says in the video.

"My association with Neetu was principally because of you. You worked in two very important films in both our lives. I really cherish those moments. Thank you so much Ravi ji that you have done so much for us." "You have a lovely wife in Veena ji, lovely kids Rajiv and Raveena. I wish you all happiness. God bless you, great health and have a great birthday. I think I am around right now. I have to reach your house. So either you see this earlier or later but I will be there. God bless, love you," Rishi Kapoor can be seen saying.

Rishi Kapoor breathed his last on April 30 after a two-year battle with leukemia. The 67-year-old actor was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai where he succumbed to his ailment.

-- Syndicated from IANS
Florida has some of the strongest laws in the nation protecting the publics right to view government records. Complete information from medical examiners on deaths has never before been kept secret. But the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has not been eager to release some coronavirus records. The state also initially refused to release information on nursing homes where outbreaks occurred.

Though large parts of the documents released this week were redacted, the text could nevertheless be extracted, copied and pasted into another file so that it could be read in full, The Times found. The spreadsheet did not include first or last names; each person was identified only as the decedent.

The counties listed show where the person died, not necessarily where he or she lived. The day with the most deaths was April 20, when 50 people died. The date of death often differed from the day in which the death was reported to the state emergency operations center, which received a peak of 84 reports on April 9.

The medical examiners count, which includes everybody in Florida who had a test confirming the presence of the virus, differs from the one maintained by the state Department of Health, which excludes tourists, seasonal residents and other nonresidents.

The probable causes of death, in each case linked to the coronavirus, are the same, over and over again: Pneumonia. Acute respiratory distress syndrome. Complications from Covid-19. A significant number of people had underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes or obesity.

Each persons story, though, is a little different, often in heartbreaking ways.

A 77-year-old man in Collier County died less than a month after his son and granddaughter visited from New Jersey, after which he and they had tested positive. A 59-year-old woman in Lake County fell ill after a family reunion in Tennessee that also sickened her sister. A 78-year-old man who worked at the port of Miami and his wife, also 78, were admitted to the hospital within 48 hours of each other and intubated. They died on the same day.

An 83-year-old man in Broward County was intubated and waiting for a consultation on whether he should be admitted to hospice care. But a decision could not be made in time because his son, who was his caregiver, had contracted the virus and been admitted to the same hospital.
The authorities at Silchar in Assams Barak Valleys Cachar district are on alert after a person, who returned on Wednesday from Rajasthans Ajmer, tested coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positive.

The district administration is worried about the fate of his 41 other fellow travellers, including eight children, who, too, came back with the patient from Ajmer by a bus.

The Covid-19 positive person is a notorious carjacker from Dhekiajuli in Sonitpur district and several police cases are registered against him, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday.

He is undergoing treatment at Silchar Medical College Hospital, the other passengers of the bus, its two drivers, and a conductor have been put under quarantine. Also, 11 areas in Cachar district have been declared as containment zones, the minister said.

The bus reached Silchar on Wednesday after the Ajmer district magistrate allowed it to travel, despite nationwide lockdown restrictions. All 42 passengers on board of the bus didnt follow any social distancing norms, Sarma said.

While other passengers were asked to be quarantined at home, swab samples of one of them were taken as a precautionary measure. His samples tested Covid-19 positive, he added.

The incident has led Assam government to revise its strategy regarding home quarantine for people returning to the state following relaxations allowed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

Earlier, only those who tested Covid-19 positive or showed symptoms were to be placed in a quarantine facility.

Now, all those returning from red zones in other parts of the country will be put under compulsory quarantine at a facility for at least three days even if they are asymptomatic and till the time the results of their swab samples tests are available, said Sarma.

The state government is also planning to introduce a daily quota system of how many people returning from other states would be allowed to enter Assam in the wake of the Ajmer incident.

So far, Assam Police has issued 375 passes allowing entry of 2,056 people returning to the state from other parts of the country. While permits of 3,420 other passengers are under process.

CHALLENGING PHASE

Sarma raised concerns about the challenging phase amid the easing of lockdown restrictions.

Weve entered a challenging phase, as people are coming back from other states and may turn out of the carriers of the viral infection. SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease, wont be lax because of the governments relaxations. I request people to be careful and not to step out of their homes unless absolutely necessary, Sarma said.

The state government will impose a fine of Rs 500 under the provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, from Friday against anyone found not wearing a mask in public places.

The government has spent Rs 60 crore in providing assistance of Rs 2,000 each for nearly two lakh migrant workers, who have been stranded outside the state because of the pandemic. Sarma pledged that the financial aid would continue for the next few weeks.

Similarly, the government has decided to give Rs 5,000 each to students, who are looking to come back home from western and southern parts of the country and Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000 from northern and eastern parts, respectively.

Those students interested to return can call at 18003453525 or email to assamstudenthelpdesk@gmail.com. Students will receive the cash only after they return to Assam.

Also, all the villagers in the states 25,000-odd villages have started undergoing health check-ups from Thursday, and their swab samples, if necessary, will be collected to conduct Covid-19 tests. The villagers health check-up regime is likely to be completed within a month, Sarma added.

CHANGE IN ACADEMIC SESSION?

The state government is considering introducing changes in the school calendar because of the impact of lockdown restrictions and pandemics aftershocks.

Though school session in Assam follow the calendar-year format, such as from January to December, the government may extend it till March for the current session like other parts of the country and the next session may begin in April.

This year were announcing summer break for schools from May 1 to May 31 because of the lockdown. Even if the lockdown is lifted after May 17, students dont have to come to school till the end of the month, Sarma, who also holds the education portfolio, said.

The minister announced that the secondary and higher secondary examination results would be announced in June and instead of hard copies digitised mark sheets would be made available for students online.

Students can take admissions in schools and colleges using these digital mark sheets. The admission process will also be conducted online. School and college authorities can verify the mark sheets from the official board website, he added.

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BOSTON

May 7, 2020

Barbara Anthony

Alaska

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Jim Stergios

Massachusetts

Florida

Nebraska

Tennessee

The study categorizes laws in nine states as Tier 2, which means they require price estimates when certain conditions are met.

New Hampshire and Washington are categorized as Tier 2A, which means they offer web tools that provide comprehensive price estimates even though the tools are not required by law.

and are categorized as Tier 2A, which means they offer web tools that provide comprehensive price estimates even though the tools are not required by law. About two thirds of the states  33 in all  fall into Tier 3, meaning they have no laws regarding personalized price estimates, although about half of these states offer some type of web tool that provides some more general, non-personalized, cost information.

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has caused massive shifts in state policies on telehealth and scope of practice in healthcare, a new Pioneer Institute study underscores that most of the 50 states continue to suffer from weak laws regarding price transparency. The study identified states that have laws that require carriers, providers or both to provide personalized cost information to consumers before obtaining healthcare services. Fully 33 states placed in the lowest of the three broad analytic tiers on the strength of their state healthcare transparency laws."Robust price transparency laws are clearly not widespread in the U.S.," said, a co-author of "Status of Healthcare Price Transparency Across the United States.", andplaced in the highest tier, which requires both providers and insurance carriers to supply price information that reflects, to the greatest degree possible, the amount a consumer would have to pay for a medical procedure."This study provides a snapshot of the statutory requirements in our 50 states. That's the baseline where the conversation on patient access to prices must start," said, executive director of Pioneer Institute. "While Massachusetts and five other states have, according to our analyses, the strongest legal requirements in the country, the competition is not steep. We have a long way to go."Underlaw, both providers and carriers are required to make price estimates available within two business days of a request received via email or phone. Carriers are required to provide a website and toll-free number that allow consumers to obtain real-time estimates and facilitate comparisons among care options. The carriers must not only show a consumer's out-of-pocket costs, but also the amount remaining on his or her deductible.Rounding out the six states with the strongest laws are, and, which require either providers or carriers to supply price information.The remaining states fall into Tiers 2, 2A and 3:

Massachusetts

$7,000

Jim Stergios

Massachusetts

Caterina DiBiase

University of Massachusetts in Amherst

September 2019

January 2020

Massachusetts

Lauren Corvese

Massachusetts

Northeastern University

Scott Haller

Northeastern University

Northeastern's

Barbara Anthony

Massachusetts

Josh Archambault

Washington, D.C.

Harvard University's

Kennedy School

Gordon College

Seher Chowdhury

Boston University School of Public Health

June 2019

Massachusetts

The authors offer states three main recommendations to improve healthcare price transparency. First, states should require or create incentives for making personalized cost estimates available in all non-emergent cases.A recentsurvey of insured workers found that while 70 percent wanted to know the out-of-pocket cost for any medical procedure before it was performed, most do not know how to access such information even though it is available. Given this under-utilization of so-called cost estimator tools, the authors recommend that states partner with employers, carriers, and providers to create methods to educate individuals about the tools and resources available to them.According to Anthony, "It's no surprise that patients want to know how much treatments will cost, given that health insurance policy deductibles can be more than."Finally, Pioneer calls for leveraging the value of cost estimator tools by requiring that the tools make it easy for consumers to not only access cost information, but to make it easy to compare prices among various providers. In addition, the report recommends that carriers and employers focus more on providing cash rewards to incent consumers to choose high value/lower cost providers."With the pandemic upending many long-term arrangements among the various industry players, now is the time to give patients the same kind of information they have in every other part of their lives," said. "The polling shows that, whilefares better on its statutes, the implementation of the law shows that patients want action and less talk."The study also describes recent efforts by the federal government to require more hospital and carrier price transparency. Readers will find the report heavily annotated and rich with references to state laws across the country as well as to numerous websites operated by various states.About the Authors, the primary author of this report, is graduating this Spring with a Masters Degree in Public Policy from thewhere she specialized in social justice and public health. She was a member of the accelerated masters degree cohort. Fromto, Caterina served as a Pioneer Research Assistant in Healthcare Policy working with Senior Fellows on various healthcare projects including healthcare price transparency and direct primary care inis Pioneer's Annual Fund Director. She joined Pioneer in 2015 as a co-op student, writing on education, healthcare, and transportation policy in. Lauren recently earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from, where she graduated summa cum laude.graduated fromwith a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. He started working at Pioneer Institute throughco-op program and was the Lovett C. Peters Fellow in Healthcare. He previously worked at the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General., lawyer, economist, and public policy expert, is a Senior Fellow in Healthcare Policy at Pioneer Institute. She was also a former Senior Fellow and Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Business and Government where she researched and wrote aboutmarket reform and healthcare cost containment efforts. She served as Massachusetts Undersecretary of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation from 2009 to 2015 and has worked at the intersection of federal and state commercial regulation and the business community for many years. Anthony's work has appeared in numerous state and national publicationsis a Senior Fellow at Pioneer Institute. Prior to joining Pioneer, Josh was selected as a Health Policy Fellow at the Heritage Foundation inIn the past, Josh served as a Legislative Director in the Massachusetts State Senate and as Senior Legislative Aide in the Governor's Office of Legislative Affairs. His work has appeared or been cited in numerous news outlets. He is the editor and coauthor of The Great Experiment: The States, The Feds, and Your Healthcare. Josh holds a Master's in Public Policy fromand a BA in Political Studies and Economics fromis graduating this Spring from the(BUSPH) with a Masters Degree in Public Health; her areas of specialization include Health Policy & law and Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She has been a Pioneer Research Assistant in Healthcare Policy since. She has worked extensively in the area of healthcare price transparency along with Pioneer's Senior Fellows.About Pioneer Pioneer Institute develops and communicates dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life inand beyond.Vision Success for Pioneer is when the citizens of our state and nation prosper and our society thrives because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and when our government is limited, accountable and transparent.Values Pioneer believes that America is at its best when our citizenry is well-educated, committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise, and both willing and able to test their beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas.SOURCE Pioneer Institute
CHICAGO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Anechoic Chamber Market by Type (Semi Anechoic chamber and Full Anechoic chamber), End-Use Application (Automotive, Military & Defense, IT & Telecom, Consumer Appliances and Electronics, Medical, and Others), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Anechoic Chamber Market is expected to register a CAGR of 5.4% and reach USD 1.5 billion by 2025; the global market size estimation is provided from 2017 to 2025. The primary reason responsible for the growth of the market is the standardization of electronic products globally, mandatory EMC testing of medical equipment, and increase in the brand proposition of the companies.

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Anechoic chamber market for semi anechoic chamber to grow at highest CAGR in 2020

The semi anechoic chamber market holds the largest share of about 80% of the total market size in the year 2020. The reason for this huge market demand is its unique characteristic that allows the user to constantly adjust for background noise. This allows the user to test the components faster as compared to other chambers. It makes the semi anechoic chamber perfect for immunity testing and keeping an eye on compliant emissions. This also allows the user to have more accurate testing and also is less risky of damages. The demand for semi anechoic chambers is expected to grow due to the unique characteristics it possess.

Market for IT & telecom application to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period

In the IT & Telecom sector, servers, blade servers, Ethernet switches, routers, photocopiers, fax machines, cables, and many other information technology equipment (ITE) comes under the category of electromagnetic compatibility. The growth of wireless mobile subscribers has completely outnumbered the number of wired subscribers. This unprecedented growth exponentially increases the number of equipment in the system, and the large concentration of the system over limited space further increases the chance for electromagnetic interference. Thus, the designers and manufacturers, through EMC/EMI/RF testing, assure the performance of IT & Telecom equipment, in terms of both hardware and software. Equipment testing is conducted during R&D, manufacturing, and certification stages. With EMC/EMI/RF testing, mobile device manufacturers can ensure that the new products adhere to global standards.

The implementation of 5G technology will also introduce new devices that can adapt to the latest 5G technology. The testing of the 5G transmission antennas through EMC/EMI/RF testing will help to assure that the antennas are working properly. There will be many 5G devices whose components would be needed to be tested by the anechoic chambers. The anechoic chamber also helps to determine the best position for positioning the 5G radio equipment and the antennas so that they get the best possible signals.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Anechoic Chamber Market"

44  Tables

33  Figures

104  Pages

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APAC to hold largest share of anechoic chamber market in 2020

The anechoic chamber market in APAC is projected to reach USD 589.7 million by 2025, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.85% during the forecast period. APAC holds the largest share that is about 40% of the anechoic chamber market e.

The growing demand for modern gadgets and latest medical innovations offers wide scope of opportunities for the anechoic chambers. Various aerospace companies are also investing in production in APAC region due to cheap labor services and also because of ease in foreign investments norms. All these factors are expected to fuel the growth of the anechoic chamber market in APAC region

Key players in the anechoic chamber market include TDK Corporation (Japan), ESCO (ETS) (US), MVG (France), Eckel Industries (USA), and Albatross Projects (Germany). TDK Corporation is an electronics company based in Tokyo, Japan.

Related Reports:

EMC Testing Market by Offering (Hardware & Software and services), End-Use Application (Consumer Appliances & Electronics, Automotive, Military & Aerospace, IT & Telecommunications, Medical, Industrial), and Geography - Global Forecast 2024.

Automotive TIC Market by Service Type (Testing, Inspection, Certification), Sourcing Type, Application (Vehicle Inspection, Electrical Systems, & Components), and Geography; Periodic Technical Inspection Market, by Region - Global Forecast to 2024.

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[May 08, 2020] EVERTEC Reports First Quarter 2020 Results

EVERTEC, Inc. (NYSE: EVTC) ("Evertec" or the "Company") today announced results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020. First Quarter 2020 Highlights Revenue grew 3% to $121.9 million

GAAP Net Income attributable to common shareholders was $22.2 million or $0.30 per diluted share

Adjusted EBITDA decreased 2% to $56.3 million

Adjusted earnings per common share was $0.46, a decrease of 8% Mac Schuessler, President and Chief Executive Officer stated, "First and foremost, we want to express our sympathies to those impacted by the pandemic and our gratitude to the essential workers on the front lines. At Evertec, we have learned from previous natural disasters to be resilient as well as to be focused on the safety of our team members and our customers. While we continue to monitor the pandemic's impact to our business, at this time, the depth and length of the impact is unclear, so we are suspending our annual guidance. We will continue our focus on our strategic initiatives that will build momentum for our growth strategy over the longer-term." First Quarter 2020 Results Revenue. Total revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 was $121.9 million, an increase of 3% compared with $118.8 million in the prior year. Revenue increase in the quarter reflected growth in the first two months of the quarter, partially offset by slowdown in transactions resulting from COVID-19 during March and the prior year recognition of $2.7 million in one-time revenue related to a completed project. Net Income attributable to common shareholders. For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, GAAP Net Income attributable to common shareholders was $22.2 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, a decrease of $4.4 million or $0.06 per diluted share as compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA. For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Adjusted EBITDA was $56.3 million, a decrease of 2% compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin (Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of total revenues) was 46.2%, a decrease of approximately 230 basis points from the prior year. The year over year decrease in margin primarily reflects the impact of lower transactional revenues primarily driven by COVID-19 as well as higher operational expenses. Adjusted Net Income. For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Adjusted Net Income was $33.5 million, a decrease of 10% compared with $37.1 million in the prior year. Adjusted earnings per common share was $0.46, a decrease of 8% compared to $0.50 in the prior year. Share Repurchase During the three months ended March 31, 2020, the Company repurchased a total of 336 thousand shares of its common stock at an average price of $21.73 per share for a total of $7.3 million. As of March 31, 2020, a total of approximately $23 million remained available for future use under the Company's share repurchase program. 2020 Outlook The Company is suspending its financial outlook for 2020 given the uncertainty around the duration of the pandemic and its impact on the economy. Earnings Conference Call and Audio Webcast The Company will host a conference call to discuss its first quarter 2020 financial results today at 10:00 a.m. ET. Hosting the call will be Mac Schuessler, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Joaquin Castrillo, Chief Financial Officer. The conference call can be accessed live over the phone by dialing (888) 338-7153 or for international callers by dialing (412) 317-5117. A replay will be available one hour after the end of the conference call and can be accessed by dialing (877) 344-7529 or (412) 317-0088 for international callers; the pin number is 10142331. The replay will be available through Friday, May 15, 2020. The call will be webcast live from the Company's website at www.evertecinc.com under the Investor Relations section or directly at http://ir.evertecinc.com. A supplemental slide presentation that accompanies this call and webcast can be found on the investor relations website at ir.evertecinc.com and will remain available after the call. About Evertec EVERTEC, Inc. (NYSE: EVTC) is a leading full-service transaction processing business in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Latin America, providing a broad range of merchant acquiring, payment processing and business solutions services. The Company manages a system of electronic payment networks that process more than two billion transactions annually and offers a comprehensive suite of services for core bank processing, cash processing and technology outsourcing. In addition, Evertec owns and operates the ATH network, one of the leading personal identification number ("PIN") debit networks in Latin America. Based in Puerto Rico, the Company operates in 26 Latin American countries and serves a diversified customer base of leading financial institutions, merchants, corporations and government agencies with "mission-critical" technology solutions. For more information, visit www.evertecinc.com. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information The non-GAAP measures referenced in this release material are supplemental measures of the Company's performance and are not required by, or presented in accordance with, accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America ("GAAP"). They are not measurements of the Company's financial performance under GAAP and should not be considered as alternatives to total revenue, net income or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP or as alternatives to cash flows from operating activities, as indicators of operating performance or as measures of the Company's liquidity. In addition to GAAP measures, management uses these non-GAAP measures to focus on the factors the Company believes are pertinent to the daily management of the Company's operations and believes that they are also frequently used by analysts, investors and other interested parties to evaluate companies in the industry. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure are included in the schedules to this release. These non-GAAP measures include EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings per common share and are defined below. EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as EBITDA further adjusted to exclude unusual items and other adjustments. This measure is reported to the chief operating decision maker for purposes of making decisions about allocating resources to the segments and assessing their performance. For this reason, Adjusted EBITDA, as it relates to the Company's segments, is presented in conformity with Accounting Standards Codification 280, Segment Reporting, and is excluded from the definition of non-GAAP financial measures under the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation G and Item 10(e) of Regulation S-K. The Company's presentation of Adjusted EBITDA is substantially consistent with the equivalent measurements that are contained in the secured credit facilities in testing EVERTEC Group's compliance with covenants therein such as the secured leverage ratio. Adjusted Net Income is defined as net income adjusted to exclude unusual items and other adjustments. Adjusted Earnings per common share is defined as Adjusted Net Income divided by diluted shares outstanding. The Company uses Adjusted Net Income to measure the Company's overall profitability because the Company believes it better reflects the comparable operating performance by excluding the impact of the non-cash amortization and depreciation that was created as a result of merger and acquisition activity. In addition, in evaluating EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings per common share, you should be aware that in the future the Company may incur expenses such as those excluded in calculating them. Further, the Company's presentation of these measures should not be construed as an inference that the Company's future operating results will not be affected by unusual or nonrecurring items. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of, and subject to the protection of, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of EVERTEC to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Statements preceded by, followed by, or that otherwise include the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "projects," "estimates," and "plans" and similar expressions of future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. Any statements that refer to expectations or other characterizations of future events, circumstances or results are forward-looking statements. Various factors that could cause actual future results and other future events to differ materially from those estimated by management include, but are not limited to: the Company's reliance on its relationship with Popular for a significant portion of revenue and to grow the Company's merchant acquiring business; the Company's ability to renew its client contracts on terms favorable to the Company, including the Company's Master Services Agreement (MSA) with Popular, and any significant concessions the Company may have to grant to Popular with respect to pricing or other key terms in anticipation of the negotiation of the extension of the MSA, both in respect of the current term and any extension of the MSA; a potential government shutdown; a continuation of the Government of Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis; the effectiveness of the Company's risk management procedures; dependence on the Company's processing systems, technology infrastructure, security systems and fraudulent-payment-detection systems, and the risk that the Company's systems may experience breakdowns or fail to prevent security breaches, confidential data theft or fraudulent transfers; our ability to develop, install and adopt new technology; impairments to the Company's amortizable intangible assets and goodwill; a decreased client base due to consolidations in the banking and financial-services industry; the credit risk of the Company's merchant clients, for which the Company may also be liable; a decline in the market for the Company's services due to increased competition, changes in consumer spending or payment preferences; the continuing market position of the ATH network; the Company's dependence on credit card associations and debit networks; regulatory limitations on the Company's activities, including the potential need to seek regulatory approval to consummate transactions, due to the Company's relationship with Popular and the Company's role as a service provider to financial institutions and the Company's potential inability to obtain such approval on a timely basis or at all; changes in the regulatory environment and changes in international, legal, tax, political, administrative or economic conditions; the Company's ability to comply with federal, state, and local regulatory requirements; the geographical concentration of the Company's business in Puerto Rico; operating an international business in multiple regions with potential political and economic instability; operating an international business in countries and with counterparties that increase the Company's compliance risks and puts the Company at risk of violating U.S. sanctions laws; the Company's ability to execute the Company's expansion and acquisition strategies; the Company's ability to protect the Company's intellectual property rights; the Company's ability to recruit and retain qualified personnel; evolving industry standards; the Company's high level of indebtedness and restrictions contained in the Company's debt agreements; the Company's ability to generate sufficient cash to service the Company's indebtedness and to generate future profits; the possibility of future catastrophic hurricanes affecting Puerto Rico and/or the Caribbean, as well as other potential natural disasters; the nature, timing and amount of any restatement; and the potential impact of COVID-19 on our revenues, net income and liquidity due to future disruptions in operations as well as the macroeconomic instability caused by the pandemic. Consideration should be given to the areas of risk described above, as well as those risks set forth under the headings "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the reports the Company files with the SEC from time to time, in connection with considering any forward-looking statements that may be made by the Company and its businesses generally. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements, to report events or to report the occurrence of unanticipated events unless the Company is required to do so by law.







EVERTEC, Inc.

Schedule 1: Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income and Comprehensive Income Three months ended March 31, 2020 2019 (Dollar amounts in thousands, except share data) Revenues $ 121,942 $ 118,836 Operating costs and expenses Cost of revenues, exclusive of depreciation and amortization 54,067 50,019 Selling, general and administrative expenses 17,317 15,139 Depreciation and amortization 17,795 16,273 Total operating costs and expenses 89,179 81,431 Income from operations 32,763 37,405 Non-operating income (expenses) Interest income 363 259 Interest expense (6,779 ) (7,551 ) Earnings of equity method investment 338 222 Other income, net 108 208 Total non-operating expenses (5,970 ) (6,862 ) Income before income taxes 26,793 30,543 Income tax expense 4,518 3,809 Net income 22,275 26,734 Less: Net income attributable to non-controlling interest 64 90 Net income attributable to EVERTEC, Inc.'s common stockholders 22,211 26,644 Other comprehensive income (loss), net of tax Foreign currency translation adjustments (8,305 ) 1,965 Loss on cash flow hedges (11,859 ) (4,055 ) Total comprehensive income attributable to EVERTEC, Inc.'s common stockholders $ 2,047 $ 24,554 Net income per common share: Basic $ 0.31 $ 0.37 Diluted $ 0.30 $ 0.36 Shares used in computing net income per common share: Basic 72,012,648 72,378,532 Diluted 73,293,005 73,770,066

EVERTEC, Inc.

Schedule 2: Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands) March 31, 2020 December 31, 2019 Assets Current Assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 103,521 $ 111,030 Restricted cash 21,583 20,091 Accounts receivable, net 95,305 106,812 Prepaid expenses and other assets 39,904 38,085 Total current assets 260,313 276,018 Investment in equity investee 12,568 12,288 Property and equipment, net 41,984 43,791 Operating lease right-of-use asset 28,356 29,979 Goodwill 394,498 399,487 Other intangible assets, net 229,787 241,937 Deferred tax asset 3,261 2,131 Net investment in leases 554 722 Other long-term assets 7,897 5,323 Total assets $ 979,218 $ 1,011,676 Liabilities and stockholders' equity Current Liabilities: Accrued liabilities $ 52,652 $ 58,160 Accounts payable 28,230 39,165 Unearned income 18,138 20,668 Income tax payable 9,190 6,298 Current portion of long-term debt 14,250 14,250 Current portion of operating lease liability 5,740 5,773 Total current liabilities 128,200 144,314 Long-term debt 490,844 510,947 Deferred tax liability 2,957 4,261 Unearned income - long term 32,037 28,437 Operating lease liability - long-term 22,869 24,679 Other long-term liabilities 39,627 27,415 Total liabilities 716,534 740,053 Stockholders' equity Preferred stock, par value $0.01; 2,000,000 shares authorized; none issued - - Common stock, par value $0.01; 206,000,000 shares authorized; 71,865,305 shares issued and outstanding at March 31, 2020 (December 31, 2019 - 72,000,261) 719 720 Additional paid-in capital - - Accumulated earnings 308,491 296,476 Accumulated other comprehensive loss, net of tax (50,173 ) (30,009 ) Total EVERTEC, Inc. stockholders' equity 259,037 267,187 Non-controlling interest 3,647 4,436 Total equity 262,684 271,623 Total liabilities and equity $ 979,218 $ 1,011,676 EVERTEC, Inc.

Schedule 3: Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows Three months ended March 31, 2020 2019 Cash flows from operating activities Net income $ 22,275 $ 26,734 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 17,795 16,273 Amortization of debt issue costs and accretion of discount 621 415 Operating lease amortization 1,173 1,472 Provision for doubtful accounts and sundry losses 104 815 Deferred tax benefit (1,080 ) (882 ) Share-based compensation 3,483 3,279 Loss on disposition of property and equipment and other intangibles 81 22 Earnings of equity method investment (338 ) (222 ) (Increase) decrease in assets: Accounts receivable, net 11,729 3,961 Prepaid expenses and other assets (1,836 ) (5,326 ) Other long-term assets (2,477 ) (2,558 ) Increase (decrease) in liabilities: Accrued liabilities and accounts payable (20,662 ) (18,339 ) Income tax payable 3,307 191 Unearned income 1,075 4,754 Operating lease liabilities (1,409 ) (1,281 ) Other long-term liabilities 84 31 Total adjustments 11,650 2,605 Net cash provided by operating activities 33,925 29,339 Cash flows from investing activities Additions to software (6,055 ) (8,917 ) Property and equipment acquired (3,357 ) (5,071 ) Proceeds from sales of property and equipment - 32 Net cash used in investing activities (9,412 ) (13,956 ) Cash flows from financing activities Statutory withholding taxes paid on share-based compensation (2,706 ) (5,928 ) Net decrease in short-term borrowings - 15,000 Repayment of short-term borrowings for purchase of equipment and software (792 ) (34 ) Dividends paid - (3,617 ) Repurchase of common stock (7,300 ) (17,486 ) Repayment of long-term debt (20,560 ) (3,563 ) Net cash used in financing activities (31,358 ) (15,628 ) Effect of foreign exchange rate on cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash 828 - Net decrease in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash (6,017 ) (245 ) Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at beginning of the period 131,121 86,746 Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at end of the period $ 125,104 $ 86,501 Reconciliation of cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash Cash and cash equivalents $ 103,521 $ 73,183 Restricted cash 21,583 13,318 Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash $ 125,104 $ 86,501 EVERTEC, Inc.

Schedule 4: Unaudited Segment Information Three months ended March 31, 2020 (In thousands) Payment

Services -

Puerto Rico & Caribbean Payment

Services -

Latin America Merchant

Acquiring, net Business

Solutions Corporate and Other (1) Total Revenues $ 29,887 $ 21,640 $ 25,121 $ 55,943 $ (10,649 ) $ 121,942 Operating costs and expenses 17,406 17,651 14,706 33,617 5,799 89,179 Depreciation and amortization 3,249 2,757 499 4,296 6,994 17,795 Non-operating income (expenses) 113 754 154 387 (962 ) 446 EBITDA 15,843 7,500 11,068 27,009 (10,416 ) 51,004 Compensation and benefits (2) 231 742 216 436 1,875 3,500 Transaction, refinancing and other fees (3) - - - - 1,786 1,786 Adjusted EBITDA $ 16,074 $ 8,242 $ 11,284 $ 27,445 $ (6,755 ) $ 56,290 Corporate and Other consists of corporate overhead, certain leveraged activities, other non-operating expenses and intersegment eliminations. Intersegment revenue eliminations predominantly reflect the $9.0 million processing fee from Payments Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean to Merchant Acquiring and intercompany software sale and developments of $1.6 million from Payment Services - Latin America to the Payment Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean. Corporate and Other was impacted by the intersegment elimination of revenue recognized in the Payment Services - Latin America segment and capitalized in the Payment Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean segment; excluding this impact, Corporate and Other Adjusted EBITDA would be $5.1 million. Primarily represents share-based compensation. Primarily represents fees and expenses associated with corporate transactions as defined in the 2018 Credit Agreement and the elimination of non-cash equity earnings from our 19.99% equity investment in Consorcio de Tarjetas Dominicanas S.A., net of cash dividends received. Three months ended March 31, 2019 (In thousands) Payment

Services -

Puerto Rico & Caribbean Payment

Services -

Latin America Merchant

Acquiring, net Business

Solutions Corporate and Other (1) Total Revenues $ 32,017 $ 20,831 $ 25,974 $ 51,364 $ (11,350 ) $ 118,836 Operating costs and expenses 14,215 17,573 14,718 32,910 2,015 81,431 Depreciation and amortization 2,643 2,196 468 3,854 7,112 16,273 Non-operating income (expenses) 581 2,634 21 186 (2,992 ) 430 EBITDA 21,026 8,088 11,745 22,494 (9,245 ) 54,108 Compensation and benefits (2) 237 166 220 554 2,262 3,439 Transaction, refinancing and other fees (3) - 2 - - 47 49 Adjusted EBITDA $ 21,263 $ 8,256 $ 11,965 $ 23,048 $ (6,936 ) $ 57,596 Corporate and Other consists of corporate overhead, certain leveraged activities, other non-operating expenses and intersegment eliminations. Intersegment revenue eliminations predominantly reflect the $9.2 million processing fee from Payments Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean to Merchant Acquiring and intercompany software sale and developments of $2.1 million from Payment Services - Latin America to Payment Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean. Corporate and Other was impacted by the intersegment elimination of revenue recognized in the Payment Services -Latin America segment and capitalized in the Payment Services - Puerto Rico & Caribbean segment; excluding this impact, Corporate and Other Adjusted EBITDA would be $4.8 million. Primarily represents share-based compensation, other compensation expense and severance payments. Primarily represents fees and expenses associated with corporate transactions as defined in the 2018 Credit Agreement and the elimination of non-cash equity earnings from our 19.99% equity investment in Consorcio de Tarjetas Dominicanas S.A., net of cash dividends received. EVERTEC, Inc.

Schedule 5: Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Operating Results Three months ended March 31, (Dollar amounts in thousands, except share data) 2020 2019 Net income $ 22,275 $ 26,734 Income tax expense 4,518 3,809 Interest expense, net 6,416 7,292 Depreciation and amortization 17,795 16,273 EBITDA 51,004 54,108 Equity income (1) (338 ) (222 ) Compensation and benefits (2) 3,500 3,439 Transaction, refinancing and other fees (3) 2,124 271 Adjusted EBITDA 56,290 57,596 Operating depreciation and amortization (4) (9,477 ) (7,965 ) Cash interest expense, net (5) (6,010 ) (7,132 ) Income tax expense (6) (7,178 ) (5,300 ) Non-controlling interest (7) (92 ) (112 ) Adjusted net income $ 33,533 $ 37,087 Net income per common share (GAAP): Diluted $ 0.30 $ 0.36 Adjusted Earnings per common share (Non-GAAP): Diluted $ 0.46 $ 0.50 Shares used in computing adjusted earnings per common share: Diluted 73,293,005 73,770,066 Represents the elimination of non-cash equity earnings from our 19.99% equity investment in Dominican Republic, Consorcio de Tarjetas Dominicanas S.A. ("CONTADO"), net of dividends received. Primarily represents share-based compensation and severance payments. Represents fees and expenses associated with corporate transactions as defined in the Credit Agreement, recorded as part of selling, general and administrative expenses. Represents operating depreciation and amortization expense, which excludes amounts generated as a result of merger and acquisition activity. Represents interest expense, less interest income, as they appear on our consolidated statements of income and comprehensive income, adjusted to exclude non-cash amortization of the debt issue costs, premium and accretion of discount. Represents income tax expense calculated on adjusted pre-tax income using the applicable GAAP tax rate, adjusted for certain discreet items. Represents the 35% non-controlling equity interest in Evertec Colombia, net of amortization for intangibles created as part of the purchase. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005213/en/

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LOS ANGELES - For Californians venturing outside, donning a mask will be as common as putting on a cap or sunglasses when the state begins gradually easing stay-at-home orders on Friday. But rules about face coverings vary from county to county, and it's unclear what enforcement might look like.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A street vendor wearing a face mask sells flowers Thursday, May 7, 2020, in Anaheim, Calif. Donning a mask will be as common as putting on a cap or sunglasses for Californians as the state begins gradually easing stay-at-home orders, but rules about face coverings vary from county to county and it's unclear what enforcement might look like. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

LOS ANGELES - For Californians venturing outside, donning a mask will be as common as putting on a cap or sunglasses when the state begins gradually easing stay-at-home orders on Friday. But rules about face coverings vary from county to county, and it's unclear what enforcement might look like.

Masks have been ubiquitous at essential businesses like grocery stores and medical clinics since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. On the sidewalks of dense cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, people have been wearing masks for weeks, giving wide berth to the small number of others whose faces aren't covered.

Now masks will be required for customers and employees at certain retailers reopening under new guidelines that also include contact-free transactions, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

At Sam's, a corner store near San Francisco's City Hall, multiple signs remind patrons to cover their faces, and the clerks have been known to kick out people who don't do so. Some customers simply lift their T-shirts over their nose and mouth while running in for a quick purchase.

Mayor London Breed said city residents must continue to wear face coverings and follow social distance requirements when waiting in line at newly opened businesses like florists or bookstores.

Dannie Holzer said she wears a cloth mask most of the time but took it off while eating her lunch at nearby Alamo Square Park, where she was able to keep the required six feet (1.8 metres) from others.

I wear it because I respect other people, and I dont know what immune deficiencies they may have, Holzer said. She got used to wearing masks because she rides public buses, where they are required, on her way to and from her job at a marijuana dispensary.

Holzer said she gets frustrated when sees people with their faces uncovered inside a store.

I usually think, Im doing this for your benefit, so it would be nice if you did the same,  Holzer said.

Health officials in most of the San Francisco Bay Area  including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Sonoma counties  have required residents to wear masks when they leave their homes. After previously only strongly urging facing coverings, officials in nearby Napa County on Thursday said they would mandate them.

Bay Area residents are generally amenable to new rules instituted during the COVID-19 crisis, and deputies have issued very few citations for non-compliance, said Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriffs Office.

Its really hard to write someone a ticket when they just lost their job, when they're living through a time of crisis, he said. But if its egregious, and youve talked to yourself into a ticket, then we have no choice.

Similarly in Los Angeles County, authorities hoped kindness and compassion would be enough to convince the tiny group of people who aren't donning masks, Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. She urged shop owners to politely refuse service to people without face coverings.

On trails around Los Angeles, county employees will be on hand to make sure hikers are wearing masks and maintaining appropriate distance, officials said.

To the south in Orange County, masks are recommended but not required. At a strip mall in the city of Westminster, a member of a grocery store cleaning crew had a mask dangling around her neck, not over her mouth and nose, as she offered a shopping cart to a man passing by on Thursday. He also had a mask dangling around his neck.

In Northern California, three counties with few confirmed COVID-19 cases allowed a variety of businesses to reopen earlier this week. Not all shoppers wore masks Wednesday at Yuba Sutter Mall, where about 18 of the roughly 50 stores were open.

Yuba-Sutter Health Officer Dr. Phuong Luu issued a public warning to businesses to make sure their employees and customers were practicing social distancing and wearing face coverings, as required by the local orders.

I understand that some of your customers may strongly object to a facial covering requirement, but the long-term safety of our community is at stake, Luu wrote.

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 national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing face coverings such as non-medical masks or even T-shirts and bandannas to cover the nose and mouth, because the infection can spread from an asymptomatic person simply by speaking.

A simple cloth mask is a way to contain respiratory secretions right at the source and not put other people at risk, the CDC said in an April statement. The mask traps the droplets before they spread into the environment.

At the park in San Francisco, Dannie Holzer said while non-mask-wearers frustrate her, she stops short of calling people out. I cant be the person who tells people what to do, she said.

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. The vast majority of people recover.

___

Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco and Amy Taxin in Westminster, California, contributed to this report.
(Photo : Pixabay)

Scientists believe they have a solution to why the North Magnetic Pole has been moving from Canada towards Siberia.

ALSO READ: Coronavirus Spreaders: Some People Believe Acquiring COVID-19 Will Give Them Immunity

The Magnetic North Pole (also called the North Dip Pole) is a part of Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada in which the northern lines of attraction input the Earth.

However, the magnetic pole suddenly started drifting rapidly faraway from North America in the direction of Siberia. The pole crossed the international date line in 2017 and forcing navigation structures to update earlier.

ALSO READ: Earth's Magnetic Poles May Flip, And The Effects Could Be Deadly

Tug of war

Scientists have not been sure why that is happening for years. But now, a research team from the University of Leeds came up with a solution for the mysterious shift.

The team explained that the North Magnetic Pole's position is controlled by two patches of the magnetic field. "They act as a tug of war effect controlling the location of the pole," Dr. Phil Livermore told BBC Radio 4's Today program.

Livermore said the Canadian patch has historically been winning the war, that's why the pole has been centered over Canada. "But in the last few decades, the Canadian patch has weakened, and the Siberian patch has strengthened slightly," he added.

He pointed out the war as the reason why the North Pole left its historic position over the Canadian Arctic and crossed over the International Date Line. Livermore added Northern Russia is also winning the 'tug of war.'

Researchers said there's also a timing issue. Livermore said the jet acceleration occurs in the 2000s, whereas the pole acceleration begins in the 1990s.

"Whether or not it will move back again in the future is anyone's guess," the Leeds scientist told BBC News.

A shift in molten movement

The changing strengths of the two patches have been explained by changes in the magnetic poles. Researchers argued there might be a reference to a westward-accelerating jet of molten material in the outer core. Now, they revised its assessment to align with a different go with the flow regime.

Livermore explained the jet is tied to northern latitudes, and the change in the flow in the outer core that's responsible for the difference in the position of the pole is actually further south.

Dr. Livermore and his colleagues attempted to track the North Magnetic Pole's course through satellites, which have measured the changing form of Earth's magnetic field over the last 20 years.

The team's latest model counseled the pole will maintain to move in the direction of Russia at 50-60 kilometers a year before it begins to slow. However, when it goes back to Canada remains unclear.

ALSO READ: Earth's Magnetic Pole Reversal: South Atlantic Anomaly Indicating Change, What Are The Consequences?

The Magnetic North Pole is one among Earth's three poles at the pinnacle of the planet, alongside the geographic pole and the geomagnetic pole.

Magnetic pole's movement has been so smooth that it convinced the US National Geophysical Data Centre and the British Geological Survey to update to the World Magnetic Model in 2019.

The model, which is an illustration of Earth's magnetic field throughout the globe, is used broadly in navigation structures and devices, inclusive of smartphones, to accurate for local compass errors.

The study by Livermore and his colleagues has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 UPDATE: Italian Researchers Claim That They Have the Vaccine that Can Kill the Coronavirus

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Panaji, May 8 : Factories in Goa have been allowed to extend their work shifts to 12 hours from the existing 8 hours, according to a government notification on Friday, citing lack of adequate labour as the cause for the extension.

"There are restrictions on movement of workers leading to shortage of workers thereby causing the factories to deal with an exceptional pressure of work. There is a need for relaxing certain provisions of The Factories Act, 1948 thereby extending the working hours for optimum utilization of the workers in the factories which have been allowed to operate during the shutdown," the notification issued by Chief Inspector of Factories and Boilers Vivek Marathe said.

The notification also said that the extension of the work shift would enable factories to overcome the handicap of labour shortage.

As part of the notification, factories may also extend working hours to sixty hours in a week and the changes would be effective up to July 31.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant as well as captains of industry and business, have urged migrant workers not to leave Goa for their home state despite the Covid-19 pandemic, even as more than 80,000 workers have registered with state government agencies seeking return home.

Sawant has also said that the exodus of workers, would severely impact several industrial sectors in Goa.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Kimco Realty Corp. (KIM-PG) revealed a profit for first quarter that declined from the same period last year. The company's profit came in at $83.76 million, or $0.19 per share. This compares with $101.63 million, or $0.24 per share, in last year's first quarter. Analysts had expected the company to earn $0.18 per share, according to figures compiled by Thomson Reuters. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. The company's revenue for the quarter fell 1.6% to $286.00 million from $290.63 million last year. Kimco Realty Corp. earnings at a glance: -Earnings (Q1): $83.76 Mln. vs. $101.63 Mln. last year. -EPS (Q1): $0.19 vs. $0.24 last year. -Analysts Estimate: $0.18 -Revenue (Q1): $286.00 Mln vs. $290.63 Mln last year. 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.
Should you really be using a public restroom right now?

Fantastic question, and Yahoo Life has the answer in a recent article.

Fact is, if you do have to venture out, you will, inevitably, have to go. And when you do, in public, well, the nearest restroom is really the only option.

So, how should you approach it?

Dr. Kathryn Boling, a primary care physician at Baltimores Mercy Medical Center, told Yahoo you should use extreme caution.

IF you touch something that someone else touches who has been infected, and then you touch your mouth, nose or eyes, youre at risk of getting infected with COVID-19, she said.

The article says you should wash your hands after using the bathroom, but if you have to use a public bathroom to brush your teeth or do something adjust contact lenses, it suggests washing hands before and after.

It also suggests men try to keep a distance at urinals.

How about when you go to wash your hands?

The article says to use a paper towel to turn the water on and off. And, always avoid those hand dryers because they suck in bacteria and then shoot it all over your hands.

Heres a tricky one. How do you get out of the bathroom? After all, everyone grabs that handle after doing their business, right?

Well, the story suggests using an elbow to push the door open or using a paper towel on the handle.

Another tip: if possible, wait until the bathroom empties out. Less folks in the bathroom at one time equals less contact. In the end, though, the article says if you gotta go, youve gotta go.

So, go.

Just be careful.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., Ltd. (Changan) achieved a double-digit year-on-year growth in April sales, following three consecutive months of downturn.



The automaker said its new vehicle sales in April jumped 32.03% from a year ago to 159,557 units. The sales volume of Changan's self-owned brand reached 119,435 units, leaping 37.5% compared the year-ago period.

In the same month, Changan sold 3,485 new vehicles to overseas markets, a year-over-year growth of 3.1%.

For the first four months, the automaker still posted a decrease of 18.45% from a year earlier as its first-quarter sales slumped due to the coronavirus spread.

Most of the subsidiaries achieved remarkable increase. Both Changan Ford and Changan Mazda recorded a year-on-year growth of over 35%. Besides, Hefei Changan was still the fastest-growing one.



(CS75 PLUS, photo source: Changan Automobile)



Changan stated there were four models whose April sales volume exceeded 10,000 units, namely, the CS75 series (20,113 units, +161.6%), the Eado (12,192 units, +87.1%), the CS35 series (10,330 units, +25.3%) and Oshan X7 (10,078 units).

For the first quarter of 2020, the company lifted itself out of the year-ago money-losing status, seeing its net profit attributable to shareholders surge 130.1% to RMB631.078 million.

However, excluding non-recurring gains and losses, Changan still suffered a net loss of RMB1.793 billion, versus the year-ago loss of RMB2.161 billion. The substantial variance may be partly due to the government subsidies of RMB57.408 million recorded into current gain/loss account.

During the same period, its revenue slid 27.76% year on year to RMB11.564 billion. The cash flow from operating activities stood at RMB4.155 billion, jumping 27.51% as a result of the significant decrease in cash paid for purchasing goods and receiving services.
IAG owns British Airways as well as Spanish airline Iberia and Irish carrier Aer Lingus

British Airways owner IAG said Thursday it plunged into the red in the first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic grounded planes, adding that pre-crisis passenger demand would not return until 2023.

The company suffered a huge net loss of 1.68 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in the three months to the end of March, when the global aviation sector began to be ravaged by the deadly COVID-19 outbreak.

That contrasted with profit after tax of 70 million euros in the first quarter of 2019, IAG said in a statement.

News of the sharp loss comes one week after IAG outlined plans to axe up to 12,000 BA staff, as it struggles to cope with evaporating demand for air travel.

IAG on Thursday added that group revenue slid 13 percent to 4.6 billion euros in the first quarter.

"The results for the quarter were significantly impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19, which has had a devastating impact on the global airline and travel sectors, with the spread of the virus worldwide, resulting in lockdowns and travel restrictions and advisories, particularly from late February 2020 onwards," the London-listed group said.

IAG, which flies also Spanish airline Iberia and Irish carrier Aer Lingus, slashed its passenger capacity by a staggering 94 percent from late March.

"Most of the loss in the quarter occurred in the last two weeks of March," said outgoing chief executive Willie Walsh, noting that IAG "had a strong balance sheet and liquidity position coming into this crisis".

"We are taking all appropriate actions to preserve cash, reduce and defer both capital spending and operating costs and secure additional financing," he said.

Walsh added that IAG was planning for a "meaningful return" to flight services in July "at the earliest"but cautioned that this was dependent on easing lockdowns and travel restrictions.

"We do not expect passenger demand to recover to the level of 2019 before 2023 at the earliest," he said.

"This means group-wide restructuring is essential in order to get through the crisis and preserve an adequate level of liquidity. We intend to come out of the crisis as a stronger group."

Most of its aircraft have been grounded apart from those being used for operating limited passenger, repatriation and cargo-only flights, the company said.

IAG added that Walsh would finally be replaced by Iberia boss Luis Gallego on September 24 after his start date had been put back because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Explore further British Airways set to cut up to 12,000 jobs

 2020 AFP
Over the past 5 years, with significant shareholder dilution along the way, Seanergy Maritime (SHIP) stock has declined by an incredible 99.70%.

As investment sage, Warren Buffet famously said, the time to pick up undervalued companies is while theres blood in the street, but is an investment in SHIP worth the risk?

It is, according to Maxim analyst Tate Sullivan. Sullivan reiterated a Buy rating on Seanergy shares, although reduced the price target from $0.50 to $0.40, due to the companys increase in shares outstanding following equity raises in the first quarter. Nonetheless, upside from current levels is a massive 150%. (To watch Sullivans track record, click here)

To boost its balance sheet, in Q1, Seanergy raised equity through four public offerings, all in all raising roughly $25 million. Sullivan believes the equity raises will be put to good use.

We believe most companies, including SHIP, demonstrated ongoing access to capital during the spread of COVID-19. We expect SHIP will use proceeds from this quarter's equity offerings to reduce debt, and as a result improve the company's ability to extend debt maturities, the analyst said.

Through a fleet of 10 Capesize vessels, Seanergy provides marine dry bulk transportation services and is the only pure-play Capesize ship-owner publicly listed in the US. The industry has taken a hit since the pandemics onset, but following a COVID-19 related near standstill at certain locations, factory and port activity in China increased dramatically in April, the result of which, the BCI (the Baltic Capesize Index) increased by over 370%. Sullivan believes that based on more iron ore exports from Brazil to China, the BCI will continue to rebound in 2020.

Alas, the renewed activity and the indexs rise have resulted in an increase to Sullivans 2020 and 2021 estimates for SHIP. The analyst increased 2020 EBITDA from $24.6 million to $25.3 million and 2021s estimates to $45 million (from $44.6 million).

Story continues

Looking at the consensus breakdown, only one other analyst has thrown an opinion into the mix. However, the rating was also bullish, making the Street consensus a Moderate Buy. With the average price target coming in at $0.77, the possible upside is a monumental 484%.

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.

More recent articles from Smarter Analyst:
A week after rejecting calls to collect race-based data on COVID-19, Ontario made a U-turn Wednesday and put the collection of disaggregated data into action.

Dr. David Williams, Ontarios chief medical officer of health, said the province would begin collecting data to identify which populations are at risk, a development that came thanks to the relentless efforts of health-equity experts and advocates.

In the eight weeks since the global pandemic hit the country, Canadians have traversed new distances in our awareness of our collective vulnerability and of our humanity. Look closer and COVID-19 is adding layers to the meaning of were in this together.

We are in this together is used as a feel-good morale-booster based on the premise that humans are united in a common cause against the same enemy and in the end, no matter our differences, we are here for each other. This premise breaks apart on inspection.

If theres anything the pandemic has exposed, its not just that social inequities exist, its not just that they deeply wound the marginalized but that they hurt us all. It shows us that when were this interconnected, this interdependent, the most privileged among us have a vested interest (if not a moral one) in making societies more equitable.

York University professor Carl James is best known for his role in gathering groundbreaking data on Black experiences in sectors ranging from education and jobs to interactions with police. He has been avidly following calls to collect race-based disaggregated data on COVID-19.

James argues that while Ontarios health data will reflect health outcomes for people of different backgrounds it should make us have a good look in the mirror about ourselves.

The mirror might help break down how we got to a place where some of us are more at risk from a deadly virus than others.

Lets begin with stereotypes. Stereotypes about dirty homes, uninterested parents, absentee fathers, etc., make educators unable to see certain students, but especially Black and Indigenous ones, as having real potential.

Data shows these are the children most expelled, suspended and streamed out of pathways to university.

What jobs theyre likely to get? said James. What jobs theyre likely to get might be service jobs. And if you look at right now and what happens to certain service jobs in terms of this crisis of COVID, its going to disproportionately impact people based on the education they get.

Even if they make it through college, stereotypes continue to lead to discrimination in the job market and access to housing.

Research shows racialized people are significantly more likely to live in poverty in Canada. The 2016 Census showed that one out of five people of colour are low-income compared to 12.2 per cent of white folks. The same census also showed that 80 per cent of Indigenous people living on reserves in Canada live in poverty  where overcrowding and lack of fresh water increases COVID-related health risks.

For those who get service jobs, what is their income?

Enter long-term-care facilities where we send our parents and grandparents to be taken care of if theyre too old, too sick to stay home. Who are the people who take care of them? Theyre often the people not counted as our equals.

They are women relegated to caretaking roles, adults who were once shunted out of the school system, immigrants whose qualifications are devalued and considered unworthy of real jobs, and undocumented migrants. It turns out asylum seekers who have no guarantee they will get to stay in Canada form a big portion of caregivers in Quebecs long-term-care homes.

We entrust our most precious relations to the care of workers we dont value enough to compensate adequately. They work in more than one facility. They live in cramped housing.

And our elders are dying. Journalist Nora Loreto who painstakingly compiled the data, found 85.9 per cent of Canadas roughly 4,400 deaths from COVID-19 have been in long-term-care homes.

Our relations are this badly hit because weve placed them in the care of people who are unnecessarily made vulnerable; in good times we looked at health care as a No. 1 budget line rather than a lifeline. We made decisions around profitability rather than safety and stability.

COVID-19 should be an invitation for us to ask serious questions about the economic and social situation, James says. Its not just health. Its education, its housing, its access to medical facilities, not having a doctor, and if you do, then (looking at) did the doctor pay attention to how race might be a factor in this persons life.

If we deal with COVID-19 with no significant understanding of undocumented immigrants  it still puts the population at risk.

Instead of rushing to reopen the economy, it might be worth contemplating these interconnections and reprioritizing the economy around care rather than corporations. That just might help us weather other global crises still to come.
US philanthropist Melinda Gates has strongly criticised the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19, giving it a "D-minus" and stressed the need for more testing and contact tracing to curb the spread of the disease in America, the worst-hit nation by the pandemic.

According to the Johns Hopkins University data, the US so far has reported more than 1.2 million COVID-19 cases and over 76,000 deaths.

Melinda, 55, who is the co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, expressed concern over the governors in 50 US states coming up with different homegrown state solutions, to deal with the health crisis, instead of a coordinated response from the top, a report in the US media publication Politico said on Thursday.

She gave the administration a D-minus grade, citing a lack of a coordinated national response to combat the deadly virus, the report said.

Asserting that more money is required for testing and vaccine development in the US and across the world, she said, You know, if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing.

We would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you'd be doing contact tracing. And we would be able to start thinking about slowly, slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways, but we have a lack of a coordinated effort. That's just the truth, across the United States, Melinda said during a POLITICO Women Rule interview.

She also slammed the US' lack of response on the international stage. What we're just beginning to see in Africa, you're going to see a lot more food insecurity there and a lot more health issues, she said.

And when you have that there, it also bounces back into Europe, into the United States. So far, more is needed for the international response, which the U.S. really has been lacking in its response completely on the international front, she said.

Meanwhile, White House Deputy Press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement on Thursday that President Donald Trump had taken an unprecedented approach to working with governors across the US to get states the resources they need, the report said.

The Foundation, established by Bill Gates and Melinda, has committed USD 250 million for work on COVID-19 globally.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on May 7, 2020.

President Donald Trump said Friday he's not to blame after the Labor Department reported that more than 20 million jobs had been slashed last month, when the U.S. economy buckled under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic.

"It's fully expected, there's no surprise," Trump said in a Fox News interview, which took place as the devastating jobs report came out.

"Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that," Trump said. "But what I can do is I'll bring it back."

The president's comments on the economy followed lengthy remarks celebrating the Justice Department's move a day earlier to drop its case against Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor.

Trump decried the "deep state" and attacked the government officials who pursued the "hoax" investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election.

"These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and horrible people. And hopefully they're going to pay a big price someday in the not-too-distant future," Trump said.
The Headmaster of Koforidua Senior High Technical School (SECTECH), Koforidua, Eastern Region, Mr. Samuel Prince Folley, has revealed that bedbugs infestation in the school sometimes compels many of his students to sleep in the schools dining hall.

He said with the high incidence of bug infestation, students found it extremely difficult to sleep, especially at night, adding that the situation was also having a toll on the academic work.

Mr. Gyamfi made the revelation during a fumigation and disinfection exercise in senior high schools (SHSs) in the Eastern Region on Thursday (May 08, 2020) by Zoomlion Ghana Limited.

The exercise formed part of efforts by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to rid SHSs in the country of bedbugs and to also help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic when students are called back.

About 14 SHSs were covered on the day, and these included Koforidua Senior High Technical School, Oyoko Methodist SHS, Universal SHS, Oti Boateng SHS, SDA SHS, Liberty Specialist Institute, Hyundai Koica Technical Institute, and Pope John SHS.

The rest were Ghana SHS, New Juaben SHS, Moses Accountancy SHS, New Juaben College of Commerce, School For Deaf, and Pentecost SHS.

Aside from the issue of bedbugs, Mr. Folley indicated that his school was also grappling with how to deal with rodents.

Against that backdrop, he commended GES and Zoomlion Ghana Limited for the initiative. He was upbeat that the exercise will help rid the school of bedbugs.

On post-COVID-19, the headmaster of SECTECH disclosed that the school has bought a number of Veronica Buckets, soaps and alcohol-based hand sanitisers.

He said these will be placed at vantage points to enable the students to use as part of measures to contain the spread of the virus. However, he admitted that it will be difficult for the students to observe the social/physical distancing protocol, attributing that to the high student population and the lack of adequate dormitories.

At the Pentecost Senior High School, the Headmaster, Mr. Peter Atta Gyamfi, described the exercise as timely, adding that it will help get rid of bedbugs from the school.

He, therefore, urged the GES to periodically ensure that the fumigation of SHSs is periodically done.

He stated that the coronavirus pandemic has affected students, particularly those in their final year. That notwithstanding, he was hopeful that things would return to normalcy for academic work to continue.

For his part, the Headmaster of Oyoko Methodist SHS, Mr. Frank Nkum Eyiah, indicated that his administration has put in place a plan that will adequately prepare, especially the final year students, for their examinations.

A similar package, he added, will be made available to cater to SHS 1 and SHS 2 students respectively, to help them catch up for what they have lost over the period.
Joe Biden fired off an attack ad against Donald Trump as the two campaigns traded barbs on Thursday in an escalation of the 2020 election season.

With Mr Trump's re-election team expected to unleash a $10m negative advertising blitz, Mr Biden's team put out a video of its own attacking the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The ad invoked Abraham Lincoln quotes contrasted with news clips of Mr Trump supporting Michigan lockdown protestors against images of coronavirus victims.

"More than 70,000 deaths. Over 1 million coronavirus cases. Over 33 million unemployment claims. Real presidents lead. Reality TV presidents don't," the ad says.

Mr Biden tweeted out the video after the Trump campaign spent the morning teasing its juggernaut "Death Star" campaign to be deployed across data, digital, TV, political surrogates and coalitions.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said on Twitter they would start "pressing FIRE for the first time" in the next few days, followed by video attacking Mr Biden's record on China.

"During America's crisis, Biden protected China's feelings. Or perhaps China's investments. Biden Stands up for China. While China tries to cripple America," the ad said.

Trump has personally approved the campaign, according to people familiar with the decision who spoke anonymously to Politico.

The outlet reported that Republicans have been polling lines of attack against Mr Biden, which will include his relationship with China, his son's dealings in Ukraine, the 2009 financial crisis, and his mental capacity.

"If the Trump campaign wants this to be a contrast election, they need to get about it," Karl Rove, the architect of George W Bush's campaigns, told Politico. "They must begin to lay out the lines of attack against Biden. Their effort needs to be focused, disciplined, phased, and with resources to help the messages breakthrough."

In the battle of negative ads, the Biden-tweeted attack on Mr Trump's coronavirus response had more than 500,000 views, almost 20,000 retweets and 50,000 likes.

The Trump campaign ad attacking Mr Biden's record on China, tweeted by campaign manager Mr Parscale (across two tweets) had about 280,000 views, 7,000 retweets and 14,000 likes.
North Korea condemned the South Friday for holding military drills, saying the situation was returning to before the diplomatic rapprochement of 2018, as leader Kim Jong Un -- whose health was the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks -- reached out to traditional ally Beijing. Kim sent Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic communication congratulating him for China's "success" in controlling the novel coronavirus epidemic, the state news agency KCNA reported. The nuclear-armed North has closed its borders to try to protect itself from the disease that first emerged in its giant neighbour, and insists it has not had any cases even as the virus has swept across the world. Kim told Xi he was as pleased with China's successes as his own, KCNA reported, adding he "sent militant greetings to every member of the Communist Party of China". Rumours swirled for weeks about Kim's health after he failed to appear at the April 15 celebrations for the birthday of his grandfather, the North's founder -- the most important day in the country's political calendar, until he reappeared at the weekend at a factory opening. Kim's temporary disappearance triggered a series of unconfirmed reports and fevered speculation over his condition, while the United States and South Korea insisted they had no information to believe the conjectures were true. China is the North's key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid. Pyongyang's nuclear talks with Washington have been largely at a standstill since Kim's summit with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi broke up without a deal more than a year ago. The North's relations with Seoul have since entered a deep freeze, despite Kim holding three summits with the South's President Moon Jae-in in 2018. Pyongyang lashed out at Seoul on Friday for holding air-sea military drills in the Yellow Sea this week. "Everything is now going back to the starting point before the north-south summit meeting in 2018," a defence ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by KCNA. The exercise "awakened us once again to the obvious fact that the enemies remain enemies all the time", he said, adding the situation "demands a necessary reaction from us".
The richest man in Europe has has lost an astonishing $30billion during the coronavirus pandemic - more than any other person in the world, as calculated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Frenchman Bernard Arnault is the chairman and CEO of the prestigious luxury empire LVMH Moet Hennessy and the third-richest billionaire worldwide, according to Forbes.

The 71-year-old father-of-five oversees a portfolio of 70 luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora, many of which have taken a colossal financial battering amid the coronavirus crisis.

The widespread economic devastation caused by the spread of the killer bug has seen LVMH shares plummet by 19% in a year, Bloomberg reported.

Father-of-five Bernard Arnault, pictured, oversees an portfolio of 70 luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora, many of which have taken a colossal financial battering amid the coronavirus crisis.

It means Arnault's net worth has plunged by a staggering $30billion. Bloomberg reported that this means he has lost more than any other individual in the world.

As of May 6, the businessman had lost as much money as Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon.com Inc has gained, the news site reported.

Arnault is currently worth $77billion according to the Index, which is updated daily.

The majority of Arnault's luxury good brand stores have been shuttered for more than a month, leading to billions in lost revenue, as lockdown measures to contain coronavirus plunge the global economy into its worst crisis since World War II.

Many of Arnault's flagships brands including Louis Vuitton - believed to have an astonishing profit margin as high as 45% - may no longer be seen as priority purchases for potential consumers.

Arnault is also due to pay out $16billion after striking a deal in November last year for the jewellery group Tiffany & Co, Bloomberg added, which is believed to be the largest luxury acquisition ever.

LVMH has strongly denied any suggestion it would walk away from the deal or haggle the price amid the current coronavirus crisis.

Many of LVMH's luxury stores, like Givenchy pictured above, have been shuttered for more than a month amid the coronavirus lockdown

Arnault is also due to cough up $16billion after striking a deal in November last year to acquire Tiffany & Co

The company is predicted to report its steepest-ever declines, with analysts expecting profit for the first half of the year to fall by half.

LVMH plans to slash its capital expenditure by up to 35%, which will postpone some store openings and renovations, Bloomberg said. Arnault and four other executives were also reported to forego their April and May salaries in light of the pandemic.

Despite this, both LVHM officials and industry experts who know Arnault well are confident the 'highly-successful risk taker' businessman will weather the storm.

Former LVMH chairman Pauline Brown told Bloomberg: 'You could divide the worlds top billionaires into highly successful risk managers and highly successful risk takers; Arnault is a highly successful risk taker.' Pictured above, a Louis Vuitton store, one of Arnault's flagship brands

Jean-Jacques Guiony, LVMH's chief financial officer, said: 'We are very much long-term oriented. In a crisis a lot of people say things will never be the same, but we are still confident.'

How Bernard Arnault made his billions The 71-year-old businessman said he would forego part of his salary in light of the pandemic Arnault was born in France into the world of business and began his lucrative luxury career in 1971, working for the family real estate company Ferret-Savinel. He was promoted to chairman in 1978, and remained in that role until 1984 when he was tasked with restructuring the Financiere Agache holding company. Within this role he strategised on developing leading luxury brands, acquiring Christian Dior as the spearhead of the new business. LVMH was formed in 1987 under the merger of Louis Vuitton and champagne producer Moet Hennessy. In 1989 Arnault became the majority shareholder of LVMH Moet Hennessy, a role he has held ever since. His prestigious portfolio includes fashion labels such as Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and FENTY, luxury wines and spirits and champagne and wine brands, and perfumes and cosmetics. LVHM spent $3.2billion in 2019 on luxury hospitality group Belmond. That same year the business struck a $16.2bn deal to acquire Tiffany & Co, believed to be the largest luxury acquisition ever. The company website says the LVHM model is 'based on a long-term vision' which 'stimulates creativity and excellence.' The company has around 163,000 employees and reported more than $58billion-worth of revenue in 2019. Advertisement

It is understood Arnault spends most of of his time in his ninth-floor office on Paris' Avenue Montaigne, plotting a business plan for when the market returns to growth.

He is also believed to have a huge cash pile to work with - reported by Bloomberg as around $9.72billion - meaning he has the financial flex to keep on expanding even amid the crisis.

Former LVMH chairman Pauline Brown told Bloomberg: 'You could divide the worlds top billionaires into highly successful risk managers and highly successful risk takers; Arnault is a highly successful risk taker.'

'When he feels momentum and long-term potential, he uses the resources he has to go after it aggressively.'

Arnault has taken advantage of economic downturns before, notably squeezing Prada Group SpA from its shareholding at his Fendi brand during the recession of the early 2000s.

She added though that the current coronavirus crisis will 'call for a very different approach across the portfolio'.

Although LVMH's core brands are 'tightly managed', she said 'there is this long tail of smaller brands that don't get the same scrutiny'.

Despite global uncertainty over the future of the luxury industry, especially after international tourism has been near wiped-out by coronavirus, LVHM still intends to reopen the Paris Samaritaine department as a duty-free shopping complex and hotel.

The $1billion project has seen construction resume as the company targets an opening early next year, Bloomberg said.

It is understood that the fate of the luxury industry will be largely dependent on China, where the market is made up of more than a third of luxury sales, the news site reported.

Guiony said that during April there had been 'very high growth rates' there across the LVHM portfolio's higher brands.

LVMH will now seek to relaunch much of its business globally as international lockdown measures begin to ease and many of the company's high-end stores look plan their reopenings.
This article is part of Privacy in the Pandemic, a Future Tense series.

Despite the famous French aversion to surveillance, the coronavirus pandemic has spurred France to integrate artificial intelligence tools into CCTV cameras in the Paris Metro. The new software, which is being trialed at the Chatelet-Les-Halles station in central Paris this week, will detect whether passengers are wearing face masks, Bloomberg reported. This is one of the ways that France, a country with one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, is preparing for easing restrictions on Monday.

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While this decision shows Frances willingness to use A.I. to help monitor peoples behavior, the new system isnt as invasive as it sounds. In fact, Frances embrace of the software charts a tentative path forward for greater surveillance amid the pandemic that is friendlier, if not exactly friendly, to Western notions of privacy.

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The system, created by French startup DatakaLab, identifies the number of riders who appear to have face maskswithout collecting and storing data on individual passengers, the company says. According to the Verge, the software works on location wherever its installed, so the data is never sent to the cloud or to DakataLabs offices. Instead, every 15 minutes it generates statistics that are then sent to the authorities, who only have access to a dashboard that displays the proportion of riders with masks.

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The goal is just to publish statistics of how many people are wearing masks every day, DatakaLab CEO Xavier Fischer told the Verge. We never sell for security purposes.  And that is a condition in all our sales contracts: You cant use this data for surveillance. The company has been adamant that it is not using facial recognition technology.

The A.I.-powered tool has already been used since late April in the resort city of Cannes, in the south of France, where its been installed in outdoor markets and busses. No image is stored or transmitted, ensuring that personal information is protected, DatakaLab said when it announced its collaboration with Cannes City Hall. Like Paris, Cannes plans to give free masks to all residents so the technology might help with distribution, assessing need, and understanding whether the governments messaging around masks is effective. As Cannes Mayor David Lisnard explained, it gives us mathematical analysis to meet peoples needs, the BBC reported.

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Notably, the system does not serve a punitive purpose. Although it is now mandatory to wear a mask on public transport in Franceand the country is considering fining individuals 135 euros (about $147) for going without themthe software will not be used to identify, rebuke, or fine people. Its a far cry from, say, the drones hovering around Wuhan, China, scolding residents who left their masks at home, or the surveillance cameras that Chinese authorities have been installing outsideand at times withinapartments.

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Although reassurances around privacy havent eliminated all worries about the introduction of A.I. to public surveillance, the system hasnt proved nearly as contentious as, for instance, contact tracing in France. CNIL, the French regulatory body in charge of data privacy, has raised concerns but says for now that the anonymization measures are enough of a guarantee to ensure individual privacy, Le Monde reported. And the Paris metro authority has said that the system will comply with Europes General Data Protection Regulation.

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France, like the U.S., has been navigating the fine line between individual rights and public safety since the start of the pandemic. And while many Westerners have looked to East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, and South Korea, for strategies to help contain COVID-19, theres still considerable skepticism over whether elements of their surveillance programs could be adapted to Western societies. As the debate over mass contact tracing in particular continues in Europe and the U.S., the introduction of face maskrecognition technology in France shows, at least, that there are new, less invasive forms of surveillance people are willing to tolerate as countries begin to navigate post-lockdown life.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
A father has been charged with murdering his two young children who had their throats cut at the Ilford family home.

Pavinya Nithiyakumar, aged 19 months, and Nigash Nithiyakumar, who was three years old, were fatally wounded at their house in Aldborough Road North in east London on April 26.

Their father, Nadarajah Nithiyakumar, 40, was rushed to hospital with knife wounds.

He was charged with murdering his daughter Pavinya and son Nigash on Friday after he was discharged on Thursday night.

Police Officers at the cordon in Ilford after two children were killed / NIGEL HOWARD 

Police said he appeared in custody at Thames Magistrates' Court on Friday.

Opening inquests into the children's deaths on Thursday, east London area coroner Graeme Irvine was told by an official the children had their throats cut on April 26.

Coroner's officer Jean Smyth said Nigash died in hospital in Whitechapel at 7.42pm the same day after being rushed there by ambulance, while Pavinya was pronounced dead at the scene.

Both children were identified by their mother, named locally as Nisa.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 01:23:31|Editor: huaxia

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MOSCOW, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump discussed issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and exchanged congratulations on the 75th anniversary of the World War II victory during a telephone conversation on Thursday, the Kremlin said in a statement.

"In discussing the coronavirus situation, a positive assessment was given to bilateral cooperation. It was agreed to further promote coordination in this direction," it said.

"In particular, the United States offered to send Russia medical equipment," it added.

The two leaders exchanged congratulations on the 75th anniversary of the World War II victory, stressing the significance of the alliance at that time, according to the Kremlin.

Putin and Trump agreed that the two countries can make progress on many current issues if they follow this tradition, including ensuring the strategic stability, combating terrorism, resolving regional conflicts and countering epidemics, the Kremlin said.

The two leaders also touched upon other pressing issues on the international agenda and reaffirmed the importance of maintaining bilateral dialogue and contacts in various fields, it added. Enditem
Saskatchewan's unemployment rate soared in April due to the COVID-19 economic shutdown but an economist says it's not likely to get much worse.

"It's a huge shock. It's a huge loss, something you'd literally expect to see during a war," said Joel Bruneau, head of the department of economics at the University of Saskatchewan.

"The good news is that we've probably bottomed out."

Unemployment hit 11.3 per cent in April, according to Statistics Canada. It was just 7.3 per cent in March, the month COVID-19 restrictions forced hundreds of businesses to close.

In one month, the province lost 40,000 full-time jobs and 13,000 part-time jobs.

Bruneau noted Saskatchewan was hit hard, but most other provinces were hit harder due to their larger tourism and service sectors.

In mid-March, the Saskatchewan government and others across Canada ordered the closure of schools, businesses and public events as the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed.

Saskatchewan's plan to restart the economy began this week, with dentist, physiotherapists and others allowed to open their doors. Flower shops, hair salons and other businesses are scheduled to be part of the second phase of openings later this month.

The opening date for restaurants and other services has not been determined.

Many businesses and medical offices say they'll open with reduced staffing or remain closed until they can source an adequate supply of protective gear.

Bruneau said the employment gains in the first two phases will not be significant but could be just enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising further.

He said there are other problems that won't be easily solved, even after it's safe to open all businesses.

The oil and gas industry has been battered by plummeting prices and oversupply that have rendered the product nearly worthless at times. Those declines began several years ago, he said.

"Those are long-term structural problems. I would not expect to see any short-term rebound," Bruneau said.
LEMOYNE, Pa., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that continues to shut down most in-person real estate activities for the vast majority of Pennsylvanians during the pandemic. Every other state in the country has recognized that real estate professionals provide a life-sustaining service and that housing is a vital part of people's lives as well as the economy.

"The governor's unreasonable restrictions have created a harmful situation for real estate professionals and consumers," said PAR President Bill Festa. "The shutdown restrictions have created a marketplace of chaos for consumers and Realtors. Consumers are reaching out to our members and the association, asking for advice on how they can buy, sell or rent a home during the state's incredibly restrictive shutdown. They're experiencing financial hardships and are essentially in limbo, because important in-person services are prohibited for most real estate transactions."

PAR encourages the state's General Assembly to pass House Bill 2412 (Polinchock) or Senate Bill 1135 (Boscola), both of which recognize real estate as a life-sustaining business and would allow real estate transactions to occur in every county of the commonwealth.

Festa noted that the state has issued inconsistent and arbitrary guidance with stricter requirements for buyers, sellers and real estate professionals. The state has given multiple inconsistent guidelines for the real estate industry that offer conflicting mandates, while other industries like construction and automobile sales, have been given detailed and coherent rules that are able to be followed.

"The numerous discrepancies in these state-issued guidelines have placed an onerous burden on consumers and the real estate professionals who work with them," Festa said. "It's ridiculous that in areas that have started to reopen, the state is requiring personal protective equipment for real estate business that exceeds what other industries are required to do and what is recommended by the CDC and World Health Organization."

The state has also limited real estate activities to only two people at a time in a property, while allowing contractors performing repairs or renovations in an occupied home can have four workers at the property, plus the residents.

"Guidelines for in-person real estate should be consistent with other professions and allow at least four people in a property, while practicing social distancing," Festa said. "The governor's office refuses to discuss how finding shelter is life-sustaining to consumers."

PAR also said the state has failed to recognize a large sector of the real estate industry, ignoring the commercial and property management portions when issuing its guidance.

"The association believes that where in-person real estate activities are allowed, all residential, commercial and rental transactions should be permitted and regulated in a similar manner," he added. "The Department of State has consistently issued guidance that completely ignores a sizable segment of the industry."

"Our members and the association hear heart-breaking stories from consumers because of their housing uncertainty and financial hardships," Festa added. "It's outrageous that a majority of Pennsylvanians continue to be restricted from purchasing a home where they want to live."

SOURCE Pennsylvania Association of Realtors

Related Links

http://www.parealtor.org


The Department of Defense needs technology experts to migrate its roughly 500 disparate cloud environments into a unified system to help the military work better and faster. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract -- which has been estimated to be worth $10 billion -- was ultimately awarded to Microsoft last October. But Amazon -- which was originally rumored to have won -- isnt taking its loss with grace. Over the past two days, the companies have been pulling at each others hair in an exchange of blog posts, both of which contain some strong wording.

Last fall, it seemed like Amazon had locked down the JEDI contract, but Donald Trump, who has been vocal about his vendetta against Amazons CEO, Jeff Bezos, suggested publicly that the decision had somehow been rigged. Two months later, the DoD seemingly reversed its decision and awarded the contract to Microsoft. Since then, Amazon has filed multiple complaints which have hindered Microsofts ability to work on the project, but have otherwise been fruitless.

On Tuesday, Amazon sent yet another complaint, but did so privately with the DoD. Its impossible for outsiders to know whats in the confidential filing, but yesterday, Frank X. Shaw, Microsofts Corporate Vice President of Communications, fired off a response on Microsofts official blog. If their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court, its likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time, Shaw wrote. The fiery post is suitably titled Bid high, lose, try again. Amazon continues to push for a JEDI re-do. Shaw said that Microsoft could make great improvements for the DoD, but only if Amazon gets out of the way. The VP dug in deeper, claiming, The only thing thats certain about Amazons new complaint is that it will force American warfighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need -- perpetuating Amazons record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs.

Drew Herdener, Amazons Vice President of Worldwide Communications responded in a blog post of his own today. It starts out level-headed: Since we filed our protest, weve been clear in our intent: we dont think the JEDI award was adjudicated fairly, we think political interference blatantly impacted the award decision, and were committed to ensuring the evaluation receives a fair, objective, and impartial review.

But then, things take a hard left turn. Herdener called Microsofts blog posts self-righteous and pontificating, and went on to state, Nobody knowledgeable and objective believes they have the better offering. And, this has been further underscored by their spotty operational performance during the COVID-19 crisis (and in 2020 YTD). Herdener even attacked the DoD: This could have been easily avoided if [the DoD] had chosen to be responsive in any of the multiple requests weve made in the last two weeks.

These incendiary blog posts make neither Microsoft nor Amazon look good -- this is the type of fighting thats usually reserved for reality TV stars. That said, a $10 billion payday is at stake, so its not surprising that both companies are willing to pull hair and poke eyes to win. Theres no telling when this issue will be resolved -- or when Microsoft will be able to continue its work on JEDI.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 20:18:35|Editor: huaxia

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DUBLIN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to have a significant impact on the Irish labor market in April, according to the country's Central Statistics Office (CSO).

In April, Ireland's unemployment rate reached 28.2 percent, up by 12.7 percentage points compared with the revised March unemployment rate of 15.5 percent, showed the CSO figures Friday.

The April unemployment rate was calculated by including those who were in receipt of the government's COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment, said the CSO, adding that a total of 602,107 people in the country were in receipt of such a payment at the last week of April.

The payment is an emergency plan introduced by the government on March 16 to support those who have lost their jobs due to the impact of the pandemic.

Under the plan, each qualified individual will get a weekly payment of 350 euros (nearly 380 U.S. dollars) from the government for an initial period of 12 weeks.

On Thursday, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, while addressing the lower house of the parliament, said that the payment will be extended beyond mid-June when it is supposed to end. Enditem
After the F.D.A. granted the emergency approval, Gilead Sciences said it would donate its existing supply of the drug: 1.5 million vials, enough to treat roughly 140,000 hospitalized patients.

Hospitals needing the drug were told to call AmerisourceBergen to find out if they were on a list of facilities that qualified. If so, the distributor shipped the drug. If not, the hospital was denied the drug.

That list apparently was not drawn up by AmerisourceBergen, which says on its website that hospitals the U.S. government deems most in need will receive priority in the distribution of donated remdesivir, adding that neither Gilead nor AmerisourceBergen are deciding which hospitals will receive remdesivir.

But it is not clear how federal officials came up with a list of hospitals most in need, or even what hospitals are on it. Criticism of the list and the rollout has been gathering steam in Washington.

The fact that many of the hospitals and areas with high rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths were left out of the initial distribution raises significant questions about FEMA and HHS decision making, Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, said in a letter on Friday to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator, Peter Gaynor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex M. Azar II.

The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said in a press briefing on Friday that Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, henceforth would take a lead role in federal oversight of remdesivir allocations.

Dr. Birx is going to be working in consulting as to where this drug should go, Ms. McEnany said.

She really has the best grasp as to how that should be distributed, Ms. McEnany added.
Rumble

Flossey is living a wonderful life on a beautiful farm in Millbrook, Ontario. It's what is knows an "ethical farm" where cows have space to roam and graze instead of being kept indoors for most of their lives. Flossey's farm has vast expanses of lush, green grass, rolling hills, ponds full of fresh water, and forested areas for shade. This is life as it should be for these gentle creatures. Dave is a farm hand who often helps out with some of the chores and animal care. He decided to take a break on this warm, summer day and he took a seat on the hill overlooking the pasture.
Even if it's not a huge purchase, we think it was good to see that Thomas Sanders, the Executive Chairman of the Board of Breaker Resources NL (ASX:BRB) recently shelled out AU$78k to buy stock, at AU$0.22 per share. Although the purchase is not a big one, increasing shareholding by only 1.6%, it can be interpreted as a good sign.

See our latest analysis for Breaker Resources

Breaker Resources Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Notably, that recent purchase by Thomas Sanders is the biggest insider purchase of Breaker Resources shares that we've seen in the last year. So it's clear an insider wanted to buy, at around the current price, which is AU$0.22. That means they have been optimistic about the company in the past, though they may have changed their mind. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. The good news for Breaker Resources share holders is that an insider was buying at near the current price. Thomas Sanders was the only individual insider to buy during the last year. Notably Thomas Sanders was also the biggest seller.

Thomas Sanders bought a total of 713.85k shares over the year at an average price of AU$0.27. You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!

ASX:BRB Recent Insider Trading May 7th 2020

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Insider Ownership of Breaker Resources

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. It appears that Breaker Resources insiders own 19% of the company, worth about AU$9.9m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.

Story continues

So What Do The Breaker Resources Insider Transactions Indicate?

The recent insider purchase is heartening. We also take confidence from the longer term picture of insider transactions. But we don't feel the same about the fact the company is making losses. When combined with notable insider ownership, these factors suggest Breaker Resources insiders are well aligned, and that they may think the share price is too low. In addition to knowing about insider transactions going on, it's beneficial to identify the risks facing Breaker Resources. Be aware that Breaker Resources is showing 5 warning signs in our investment analysis, and 2 of those are a bit concerning...

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

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

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.
Even as President Trump has said we have to get our country open again, much of corporate America is in no rush to return employees to their campuses and skyscrapers. The companies are racing not to be the first back, but the last.

An increasing number of them, which mostly have white-collar employees, have recently extended work-from-home policies far beyond the shelter-in-place timelines mandated by state and local authorities.

Google and Facebook employees were told Thursday that they could stay home until next year. Capital One informed 40,000 workers that they will be out through Labor Day and possibly longer. Amazon is saying October. Nationwide Insurance is moving more aggressively than other firms, shuttering five offices around the country and having its 4,000 employees telecommute permanently.

The moves reflect the reality that no one is sure how the coronavirus pandemic will evolve. While deaths from the virus in hot zones like New York City have come down, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere. Almost every day, there are at least 20,000 new cases in the U.S., bringing the countrys total to more than 1.2 million.
New Delhi, May 8 : With the battle against coronavirus looking long-drawn while the lockdown continues to severely cripple the economy, industry body CII has urged the government to immediately announce a stimulus package of Rs 15 lakh crore focusing on support to the poor and the industry, especially MSMEs.

"With economic activities being restricted for over 50 days now, the negative impact on the economy is expected to be even more significant than what we had earlier anticipated. This needs to be offset by a large fiscal stimulus so that jobs and livelihoods are protected. CII recommends the government to announce an immediate stimulus package of at Rs 15 lakh crore, which translates into 7.5 per cent of GDP," Vikram Kirloskar, President, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said.

The government imposed a lockdown to arrest the spread of the contagion but it has come at a huge economic cost. By the time the third phase of the lockdown ends, the country would have lost almost two months of output.

Giving the breakdown of its demand for a Rs 15 lakh crore stimulus, CII has said that this should include cash transfers amounting to Rs 2 lakh crore to JAM account holders, in addition to the Rs 1.7 lakh stimulus already announced.

"A key fall out of this economic slowdown would be the human cost in terms of loss of jobs and livelihoods, which need urgent government intervention," said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII.

It should be ensured that the migrant labourers are kept within the purview of the proposed cash transfers, he added.

Further, in order to provide enterprises the immediate support to pay salaries to its workers and avoid any job losses, CII has suggested a provision of Rs 2 lakh crore for additional working capital limits to be provided by banks, equivalent to April-June wage bill of the borrowers, backed by a Government guarantee, at 4-5 per cent interest.

To support the estimated 63 million MSMEs which have been battered by the pandemic, CII has suggested a credit protection scheme for MSMEs whereby 60-70 per cent of the loan should be guaranteed by the government, i.e. if the borrower defaults, the government should repay the bank upto the amount it has guaranteed, so the risk to the lender is limited. This will encourage the banks to lend to the ailing sector so that their working capital needs are met.

In addition, CII has suggested the creation of a fund or SPV with a corpus of Rs 1.4-1.6 lakh crore which will subscribe to NCDs/Bonds of corporates rated A and above. The fund can be seeded by the government contributing a corpus of Rs 10,000-20,000 crore, with further investments from banks and financial institutions. This will provide adequate liquidity to industry, particularly the stressed sectors such as aviation, tourism and hospitality.

In order to create a significant multiplier impact on boosting demand in rest of the sectors and enhancing long-term productivity, funding public infrastructure has been found to be a potent option. In this regard, CII has suggested an allocation of Rs 4 lakh crore be made on a public works programme that will create job opportunities. CII has also suggested an allocation of Rs 2 lakh crore to be earmarked for bailing out state-run electricity distribution companies that have been accumulating losses and burdening the state exchequer.

Further, to protect the financial sector for meeting the credit needs, as well as absorb some shocks from potential insolvencies, an allocation of Rs 2 lakh crore for bank recapitalisation is required. This will help public sector banks manage any surge in their NPAs, CII has said.

The industry body has also suggested that to finance the broad elements of the stimulus package, Rs 4 lakh crore support from the subscription of government paper by the RBI should come. A lower amount of Rs 2 lakh crore can be borrowed by the Government from the secondary market, so that bond yields remain moderate. Further, substantial reduction in expenditure of around Rs 4 lakh crores is possible by reducing some of the discretionary expenditure such as centrally sponsored schemes, CII suggested.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Searchlight Resources Inc. ("Searchlight" or the "Company") (TSXV:SCLT) is pleased to announce that it intends to complete a private placement of flow-through and non-flow-through units (the "Private Placement").

The Company intends to issue up to 17,200,000 units at a price of $0.025 per unit (the "Unit") for aggregate proceeds of up to $430,000. Each Unit will consist of one common share and one common share purchase warrant (the "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.05 per common share for a period of 3 years from the date of issue.

The Company also intends to issue up to 20,000,000 flow-through units at a price of $0.03 per unit (the "FT Units") for aggregate proceeds of up to $600,000. Each FT Unit will consist of one flow-through common share and one-half of one flow-through common share purchase warrant (the "FT Warrants"). Each full FT Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional flow-through common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.05 per common share for a period of 1 year from the date of issue.

The FT Shares will entitle the holder to receive the tax benefits applicable to flow-through shares, in accordance with provisions of the Income Tax Act (Canada).

Searchlight intends to use the proceeds of the Offering to fund exploration expenditures on its portfolio of mineral properties and for general working capital.

Closing of the proposed Offering is subject to a number of conditions, including receipt of all necessary corporate and regulatory approvals, including approval from the TSX Venture Exchange. Finders fees may be payable in connection with this private placement. All the securities issuable will be subject to a four-month hold period from the date of closing.

About Searchlight Resources Inc.

Searchlight Resources Inc. is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSX-V: SCLT). The corporate strategy of the company is:

to explore and develop opportunities in safe, low risk jurisdictions. The Company is focused on Saskatchewan, which the Fraser Institute ranks as the top jurisdiction in Canada for mining investment.

to acquire high quality projects, close to infrastructure, focusing on road access

to work closely with stakeholders, including First Nations, Metis, local and provincial governments and local contractors to advance mineral exploration and development in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

Searchlight Resources is focused primarily on two advanced high-grade gold projects

1) English Bay, targeting a high-grade gold deposit with open pit and underground potential located 10 kilometers north of LaRonge, Sask.

2) Bootleg Lake, an opportunity for multiple high-grade gold mines to feed a single centralized mill, located 5 kilometers from Flin Flon in Saskatchewan.

In addition, Searchlight continues to evaluate and systematically acquire quality mineral exploration projects throughout Saskatchewan and has a portfolio of gold, cobalt, copper, vanadium and specialty metal projects from grassroots stage to advanced exploration and NI43-101 resource development.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Stephen Wallace"

SEARCHLIGHT RESOURCES INC.

Stephen Wallace, President, CEO and Director

Contact:

Searchlight Resources Inc.

Investor Relations

(604) 331-9326

info@searchlightresources.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

SOURCE: Searchlight Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589087/Searchlight-Announces-Private-Placement-Financing
After this story was published it was brought to the attention of the News Advocate that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the age of the alleged victims involved, Denis Johnson's sentencing is being rescheduled. The news Advocate will update when a sentencing date and time is available.

MANISTEE  Less than a week before his 70th birthday, a former Manistee funeral manager was set to be sentenced on four felony contract conversion charges that have far-reaching financial impacts to a list of alleged victims dating back years.

Denis Johnson, 69, of Manistee, had been scheduled to be sentenced in Manistee Countys 19th Circuit Court Monday, however that date was rescheduled due to the pandemic.

Johnsons case was previously postponed from March 16 when city and county governmental buildings were in the process of being closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic precautions.

Johnson had pleaded guilty to the charges in January and then in return for the plea, he is expected to pay about $213,000 in restitution -- avoiding a prison sentence.

Johnson is the former manager of Johnson Funeral Home, P.C. 280 Water St.

According to his testimony in January, Johnson said, I received funds for a prepaid funeral account and failed to deposit it into a third-party funeral trust, and the money was used for operation of the facility, my funeral home.

He said the same was true with several other charges and alleged victims.

According to court records, Johnsons attorney said Johnson co-owned the property with his wife and she agreed to cooperate in putting a lien on it.

According to Johnsons plea transcript earlier this year, Johnson had been formally placed on a delay of sentence and it would be anticipated that the parties would stipulate to a lien regarding the proceeds of any sale of the piece of real estate Mr. Johnson has on River Street.

Bryant Osikowicz, attorney for the state of Michigan in the case said: ... in order to satisfy the restitution, Mr. Johnson is pursuing a sale of the building of the land where the funeral home was located, which hopefully will satisfy all claims against Mr. Johnson.

Johnsons attorney, Patrick Dougherty, said in the transcript that the lien would be accomplished before the original sentencing.

HISTORY OF THE CASE

Johnson's case caught the eye of Michigan's Attorney General office several years ago.

According to the attorney generals office earlier this year, Johnson pleaded guilty to each count as part of an agreement that he would pay restitution to between 60 and 70 alleged victims.

The restitution is also aimed at alleged victims who have complaints that passed the statute of limitations.

The earliest complaints against Johnson that were able to be prosecuted, were listed as starting in May 2014.

In 2017, the funeral home was ordered by the state to close.

The move came after the state had already summarily suspended the funeral homes mortuary science establishment license, its prepaid funeral and cemetery sales registration, and Johnsons individual mortuary science license, according to previous news releases.

Investigators had discovered that the funeral home continued to provide funeral services after its mortuary science licenses were suspended, and a second cease and desist order was issued in January 2017, requiring Johnson to cease and desist all mortuary science activities.

The states reasoning for the closure was that it had multiple violations of the Prepaid Funeral and Cemetery Sales Act (known as the Prepaid Act), the Occupational Code and did the following:

 Engaged in the practice of mortuary science after their licenses were suspended;

 Failed to escrow at least $223,118.33 for prepaid funeral goods or services related to 75 prepaid funeral contracts;

 Failed to deposit monies with an authorized escrow agent within 30 days of receipt;

 Performed fraud, deceit or dishonesty in the practice of mortuary science; and

 Was incompetent in the practice of mortuary science.

Johnson was arrested Sept. 18, 2019, on four felony funeral contract conversion charges.

Previously, Johnson said the building had been operating as a funeral home since 1932 and that he had been involved with the business starting in 1971.

Due to COVID-19 precautions, sentencings can be viewed live by visiting the Manistee County virtual courtroom linked here. The link will take viewers to a video streaming that can be viewed on the 19th Circuit Court Manistee Benzie YouTube channel.

Also see: Former funeral manager pleads guilty, agrees to more than $200,000 restitution
Ukraine hopes to finalise talks next week.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said on Friday Ukraine hoped to receive $5 billion of International Monetary Fund assistance in 2020-21 under a new programme.

The IMF has shifted its discussions with Ukraine to providing an 18-month Standby Arrangement instead of a more conditional three-year Extended Fund Facility to allow the government more room to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in the near term, Reuters said.

"The size of the aid for the years 2020-21, which is being discussed, is $5 billion," Marchenko said at a televised meeting of the parliament financial committee.

Ukraine hopes to finalise talks next week.

UNIAN memo. Ukraine and the IMF in December 2019 reached a staff-level agreement on a new three-year extended fund facility in the amount of $5.5 billion. The decision on the new program is yet to be approved by the IMF Executive Board, while no exact date has been scheduled to consider the Ukraine issue, since the country is yet to complete all prior actions for launching the new program.
Unauthorised crossings along the US southern border dropped by 50 per cent in April, according to federal enforcement statistics released on Thursday, as the Trump administration continued to use emergency public health authority to bypass normal immigration proceedings and summarily expel migrants.

Border authorities detained 16,789 migrants last month, the latest data show, down from 34,064 in March, the month when US Customs and Border Protection began carrying out expulsions under a 1940s-era provision of US law, Title 42.

CBP made 14,416 expulsions in April along the US southern border, with US agents quickly detaining, processing and returning migrants to Mexico in a matter of hours. As a result, the agency has been able to minimise the number of detainees held in US border stations. Such detentions have dropped from more than 3,000 per day to about 100, CBP officials said.

Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to deflect criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic by highlighting his administrations unprecedented immigration and border restrictions, including policies announced last month that tightened green card eligibility.

Mark Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, insisted once more during a call with reporters that the expulsions at the border should be regarded as public health measures, not a form of immigration policy.

What has not been realised, in the public forum, is the public health risk associated with illegal immigration, Morgan said, citing the cramped quarters and poor sanitary conditions to which many migrants are exposed while en route to the US border. The presidents proactive and aggressive containment and mitigation network of common-sense policies and initiatives with respect to Covid-19 has been both historic and effective to slow the spread of the disease.

Morgan said the emergency measures likely will remain in place even as the White House encourages states and businesses to reopen, arguing that the virus is still spreading in Mexico and Central America.

The threat we face from outside our borders, from this global infectious disease, highlights the need now more than ever before for border security, he said.

Though Trump administration officials have tried to emphasise the external threat of the virus, the United States continues to have the worst outbreak in the world, with more than 1.2 million confirmed cases and more than 75,000 deaths. The US cases are approximately 33 per cent of the worldwide total, and the deaths are more than 28 per cent of all virus-related fatalities across the globe. The United Kingdom has the second-highest death total, with just fewer than 31,000 deaths, and Italy is third, with just fewer than 30,000.

Among the countries that are the largest source of migrants to the US southern border, Mexico has reported 27,634 cases and 2,704 deaths; Honduras has reported 1,461 cases and 99 deaths; Guatemala has reported 798 cases and 21 deaths, and El Salvador has reported 695 cases and 15 deaths.

Mexican authorities have agreed to accept expelled foreign nationals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as well as their own citizens, and the four countries account for approximately 95 per cent of all illegal crossings, according to CBP figures cited by Morgan.

Single male adults from Mexico accounted for 68 per cent of border detentions, Morgan said. About 25 per cent of those expelled under the emergency measures are rearrested.

CBP encountered its first coronavirus-infected border crosser on 23 April, an Indian national detained in Californias El Centro sector, according to Morgan. The individual was handed over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation, he said. Border agents were able to minimize exposure to staff and other migrants because they have so much spare capacity in the holding cells of border stations as a result of the expulsion measures, Morgan said.

Fewer CBP employees are unnecessarily exposed to this deadly virus, he said. Fewer American citizens. Fewer US health-care workers, and fewer migrants themselves.

The CBP enforcement statistics for April were the second-lowest monthly tally since Trump took office, amounting to a 70 per cent reduction from April 2019, when border authorities detained 109,415 amid a record-breaking influx of Central American families and children seeking asylum.

The Trump administration embarked on a broad crackdown along the border last summer that had already curbed access to the US immigration system for asylum seekers, but the emergency health orders have gone a step further. The suspension of anti-trafficking laws has also allowed CBP to expel underage migrants, who are turned over to authorities in Mexico and Central America.

Morgan also said that his agency is accelerating construction of the presidents border wall, with 179 linear miles now complete and crews on track to finish 450 miles by the end of 2020.

The Washington Post
Controversial Pakistani cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi has been criticised for his recent comments claiming that beverages having less than 40 per cent of alcohol are "halal".

Qavi made the comments in an interview with an online portal when he was asked to respond to some fatwa allegedly issued by clerics in Saudi Arabia that beverages containing 40 per cent alcohol or less are halal (permissible).

I think the beverages with less than 40 per cent alcohol are halal Halal means you can drink it, he said.

He went on to say that in his view, alcohol derived from minerals, such as spirits, petrochemicals and other substances, ought to be halal.

I would say that alcohol derived from minerals, such as spirits, petrol and other substances, is 100 per cent halal, he said.

The cleric said that some members of the clergy in Pakistan often use paan (betel leaf) containing tobacco, which they consider as halal.

If a paan containing tobacco is consumed by our clerics is halal, then let me say that modern beverages are also halal, he said.

According to a report in Pakistan Today, Mufti Naeem, chief of Karachi's Jamia Binoria seminary, disagreed with Qavi's perspective and said that his comments about alcohol are wrong and in contradiction to every other sect's beliefs.

Even a single drop of alcohol will render impure an entire pot full of clean water, and all the ulema have unanimous view on this, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
" " Pancho Villa (center) with Generals Alvaro Obregon and John J. Pershing at Fort Bliss, Texas on Aug. 27, 1914. Immediately behind Pershing on the left is his aide Lt. George S. Patton. Wikimedia Commons

He's known around the world as a Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader, but there's a lot more to the mysterious Pancho Villa than many of us learned in school. Some have called him a modern-day hero and others consider him a bloodthirsty killer.

"His whole origin myth varies hugely depending on who is doing the talking," Paul Gillingham, associate professor of history and associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, says via email. "The Robin Hood version is that he is a poor sharecropper child who becomes an outlaw after defending his sister's honor against the local hacendado. The critical one is that he was a psychopathic career criminal. We don't have the information to know."

Despite the mystique that surrounds his legacy, what actually is known about the controversial figure who helped lead the Mexican Revolution and how did his efforts result in the end of Porfirio Diaz's reign and the creation of a new Mexican government? Here are nine facts you need to know about Pancho Villa.

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1. His Real Name Wasn't Pancho Villa

Born Doroteo Arango, on June 5, 1878, the Mexican native adopted the name Pancho Villa sometime around the turn of the century when he teamed up with bandits to become what some saw as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. "His name is taken from Saint Francis of Assisi and was given to him by his neighbors," John Mason Hart, Moores professor of history at the University of Houston and one of the nation's foremost scholars of Mexico, says via email. "It means defender of the village." He was known to his friends as La Cucaracha or "the cockroach."

2. His Life on the Run Started Early

Villa's father died when he was just 15 years old, leaving him to become the head of the household. When a man began harassing one of his sisters, Villa shot him and was arrested. He managed to escape imprisonment but began life as a bandit.

3. He Was a Born Fighter

Villa joined Francisco Madero's uprising against Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, and was made a colonel for his fighting skills and abilities as a leader. In 1912, another rebellion removed Madero from power and Villa narrowly escaped execution. During that time, he fled to the United States but later returned to Mexico and formed his own military force, Division del Norte (Division of the North). After forming Division del Norte, Villa teamed up with fellow revolutionaries Venustiano Carranza and Emiliano Zapata in an effort to overthrow Mexican president Victoriano Huerta, who had come into power following the fall of Madero. Tensions rose and over time and Villa and Carranza became his enemies.

4. He Had a Remarkably Loyal Following

"The most important discovery was the continuity between him and the people who chose to call themselves Villistas," Hart says. "They were the citizens of the pueblos of the north from Eastern Sonora to the Gulf of Mexico. They wanted the preservation of their pueblos which in many cases had more than 500 years of self-government, lands which they worshipped because of their spiritualism and adoration of heroic ancestors, places where Christ and the Virgin had been seen on their properties and which were therefore sacred."

Gillingham believes one of the most fascinating parts of Villa's legend is the number of people who loyally followed him. "Villa expressed very well what you might call the discontents of globalization version 1.1, i.e., an economic boom that favored very few, dispossessed very many, and left everyday people feeling that they had lost some form of freedom," he says.

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5. He Wasn't Any More Violent Than His Contemporaries

According to Alejandro Quintana, associate professor of history at St. John's University in Queens, New York, one majorly misreported fact about Villa is the ruthlessness of his character. "The level of his being a bloodthirsty criminal I believe is inaccurate," he says. "This view is also afflicted by politics that benefit by showing the violent face of Villa. Many other leaders (Carranza and Obregon, just to mention the most obvious ones), were as violent as he had ever been but never branded violent. Among all the revolutionaries, Villa is considered the most ruthless and bloodthirsty; executing his enemies without hesitation (while practically everybody did just that).

"There is ample evidence of heinous crimes committed by Villa. However, he was not a brute who only understood violence. The revolution forced everybody to act violently and Villa was great at speaking violence, especially when he was vulnerable. I interpret this to be a survival instinct. I believe that a person's true nature shows best when s/he is in power. Thus, Villa was among the most benevolent and merciful revolutionary leaders when he was in full control of a situation. After occupying a city, Villa generally controlled his armies to avoid looting, vendettas or even for getting drunk. For this, he managed to gain the approval of lower and middle classes wherever he ruled," says Quintana.

" " A still from the silent film "The Life of General Villa" by The Mutual Film Company, which contracted with Pancho Villa to produce a film about his life. Library of Congress

6. He Did Not Have a Formal Education

Quintana says there are many things about Villa's legacy that make him a fascinating subject, but one particularly striking detail is his lack of education and the role it played in his ultimate fall. "Villa had a tremendous instinct," Quintana says. "That allowed him to become the most powerful man in Mexico, successfully creating and leading the largest army in the country. In 1914 and 1915, he was the most popular, charismatic and powerful man in the country. Yet, in 1916, he was a man on the run. I believe education was a big part of his problem. As incredible as this may sound, Villa was a self-conscious man, always feeling intimidated by educated people. Besides, the lack of education limited his capacity to see the big picture and fail to grasp how to turn his regional power into a truly national movement."

Quintana says Jose Venustiano Carranza de la Garza, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution, who ultimately became president of Mexico, was the opposite. "He was in a much weaker situation, but his understanding of geopolitics allowed him to get the best out of his meager situation and defeat Villa," he says. Despite his lack of formal education, Villa surrounded himself with highly educated colleagues. "One of the more surprising facts is his warm relationships with bookish types like revolutionary president Francisco Madero, to whom he was extremely loyal, or Felipe Angeles  who deserves a film all to himself  his academic military adviser," Gillingham says.

7. His Feelings Toward Americans Were Complicated

In January 1916, Villa executed 17 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, and two months later attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing another 17 Americans, all in an effort to demonstrate that Carranza did not control northern Mexico. But according to Gillingham, one commonly misreported fact about Villa revolves around his personal feelings toward those in the United States. "He liked Americans perfectly well, and did a lot of business with them  until he briefly invaded the U.S. in 1916 in the Columbus Raid, at which point things went south," he says. "In the aftermath, the U.S. Bureau of Investigation  the FBI forerunner  sent two Japanese agents to poison his coffee. They did, but the poison didn't work."

8. He Had a Dream For a Different Kind of Mexico

"There is an aspect of Villa that is little known and that is his vision for a post-revolutionary Mexico," Quintana says. "He envisioned a new social order in which workers could organize in communes to be in charge of the economy, eliminating the need for the upper class. There would be no military, but workers would receive military training that would help them protect themselves and acquire the required discipline to succeed. This was not communism, but a utopian [way] of life in the frontier  the same way frontier military colonies organized at the time."

9. The Events of His Later Years Are Unclear

In 1920, Mexican leader Adolfo de la Huerta pardoned Villa for his actions as long as the revolutionary agreed to end his independent military activities. "He is misreported to have retired on a large hacienda," Hart says. "In fact, he lived with seventy companeros and their families in a collective building full of screaming kids and ate his meals with them in a common dining room." He was assassinated while driving in a car on June 20, 1923 at the rather young age of 45 and buried in the city cemetery in Parral, Chihuahua. While there are many theories about who killed him and it was clear that his assassination was an organized hit, Villa's killers were never brought to justice.

Now That's Interesting "One of the more lurid [facts about him] is that his skull was stolen from his grave in Parral and one rumor has it ended up with Yale's secret society Skull and Bones," Gillingham says. For many years, it was even rumored that Prescott Bush, father of George W. Bush, took the skull to display at the society's Connecticut headquarters.
As a number of states begin to reopen their economies, a clear majority of Americans believe they are moving too fast, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov coronavirus poll. Even residents of the reopened states agree.

Yet while the survey shows broad, continuing support for lockdown orders and skepticism about whether the time has come to lift them, a surprisingly large number of Americans seem reluctant to take the one step scientists say could actually bring the devastating coronavirus pandemic to an end.

Asked whether they plan to get vaccinated against COVID-19 if and when a vaccine arrives, a majority of Americans (55 percent) say yes.

The rest  a significant minority  say they wont get vaccinated (19 percent) or theyre not sure (26 percent).

If those results were to hold, tens or even hundreds of millions of unimmunized Americans could ultimately undermine any vaccines ability to stop the spread of the virus.

Given that other polls have shown 84 percent of Americans believe its either extremely or very important that parents vaccinate their children, its possible  even likely  that many holdouts will change their minds once a COVID-19 inoculation is shown to be safe and effective. Yet even that 84 percent number is down 10 points since 2001 due to a tenacious anti-vaccination movement that has made its presence felt at recent right-wing anti-lockdown protests, suggesting that efforts to sow doubts about an eventual COVID-19 vaccine might find a receptive audience.

Either way, the surveys seemingly contradictory results  caution about risking further spread coupled with skepticism about prevention  share a common source: fear. And that, more than anything else, is what the Yahoo News/YouGov poll found  that Americans are afraid.

Theyre afraid, first and foremost, of reopening. A full 59 percent say states such as Georgia, Florida, Minnesota and Texas are moving too fast to reopen, while only 33 percent say the pace is about right and 8 percent say its too slow. Among residents of states that have already reopened  which tend to be more Republican than the country as a whole  the results are much the same: 55 percent say their states are moving too fast, 37 percent say about right and 8 percent say too slow.

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Asked whether a series of places would be safe for you and your family to go back to  now, Americans are even more cautious. Parks and beaches seem safest  48 percent say yes  but even then, 36 percent say no and 16 percent say they are unsure. Substantial majorities say they would not feel safe at schools (63 percent), churches (59 percent), professional sporting events (74 percent), concerts (77 percent), bars (73 percent) or restaurants (54 percent). Retail stores get a narrow vote of confidence, 42 percent to 39. Until these fears subside, American life, and the economy, will not return to normal.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP, Getty Images (2)

Previous Yahoo News/YouGov tracking polls also found serious concerns about reopening, and those views havent changed. More than two-thirds of Americans remain more worried about lifting restrictions too quickly (69 percent) than too slowly (31 percent). More than three out of four (77 percent) still describe shelter-in-place orders as the only way to stop the spread of coronavirus, while just 23 percent say the cure is worse than the disease. A large majority (71 percent) still say the country should reopen only when public health officials are fully able to test and trace new cases and outbreaks, and not just as soon as possible to prevent further economic damage. And support for the protests against stay-at-home orders (21 percent) has not grown; it stood at 22 percent in the April 19 Yahoo News/YouGov survey.

What has grown is Americans awareness of the scale and scope and the stubborn persistence of the pandemic. More than half (54 percent) now believe total coronavirus fatalities will surpass 100,000, up from 38 percent in April. Fifty-eight percent currently predict that the pathogen will be a serious problem for at least another three months  up 20 points since March. Roughly half (51 percent) think a resurgence of infections would be very likely if the economy were to reopen today. When presented with the choice, three out of four (76 percent) say they would prefer another month of lockdown to an additional 25,000 deaths from the coronavirus. And just 13 percent say it would be safe to reopen the economy if there were 200,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths per day  post-lockdown numbers the U.S. could potentially reach by the end of May, according to an internal Trump administration document obtained Monday by the New York Times. More than two-thirds (69 percent) say it would not be safe to reopen under that scenario.

At the same time, Americans are also starting to acknowledge that reopening is inevitable  and struggling to adjust. With disapproval of the way President Trump has handled the pandemic at an all-time high (53 percent), the public appears to be losing trust in state governments as well; during the past two weeks, their approval ratings have fallen 12 percentage points, on net, from 59 percent positive, 36 percent negative, to 53 percent positive, 42 percent negative. Over the same period, the share of Americans who believe their own community is now ready to reopen has nearly doubled  yet it still stands at only 13 percent. Forty-six percent of Americans predict their community wont be ready to reopen until June 15 or later.

As a result, people are preparing to take matters into their own hands. The share of Americans who say they will voluntarily continue to practice social distancing even after official restrictions are lifted has climbed 6 points from late April to 73 percent (driven largely by a 15-point increase among Democrats, to 87 percent). Two weeks ago, nearly three-quarters of Americans said they would continue to stay 6 feet away from others whenever possible; that number is essentially unchanged. Yet the poll found significant increases in support for all other social distancing measures, with clear majorities now saying they will wear cloth masks in public (up 11 points to 61 percent); that restaurants should require waiters to wear masks and gloves (up 11 points to 58 percent); and that large events like concerts and conferences should be suspended (up 5 points to 59 percent).

Looking ahead to the fall, Americans have mixed feelings about whether to reopen schools, with 39 percent in favor, 30 percent opposed and 31 percent unsure. But when it comes to how they want to cast their ballots in Novembers election  the subject of some partisan dispute  Americans agree: 61 percent say they would rather vote by mail than in person.

_____

Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

Read more:
Press Statement

Charges NASS To Get Ready With Sanctions

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has berated the All Progressives

Congress (APC) for attempting to cover its complicity in the looting of

repatriated funds as well as defending the exposed current plot by its

leaders and the cabal in the Presidency to plunder the recently

repatriated $311 million.

The PDP however noted that it is not surprising that the APC is again

serving as the mouthpiece of corruption and sleaze, given that it holds

the medal in deceit, propaganda, concealment of fraud and as a sanctuary

of corrupt individuals, international scammers, certificate forgers and

looters of repatriated funds.

Instead of seeking to divert attention, the APC should face the issue

and respond to the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, who alerted the nation that

the APC administrations N500 billion Social Investment Programme is a

huge scam and that bulk of the money did not get to the designated poor;

a fraud for which the APC remains indicted.

Our party further challenges the APC to respond to the report of the US

Department of State, which exposed the plot by the APC administration to

divert $100 million of the repatriated fund to the Chairman of APC

Governors Forum, Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State.

No! The APC would not attempt to make the littlest of response because

its hands are heavily soiled with looted funds.

Moreover, it is on record that the APC has not been able to point to any

project executed by its administration despite the stream of repatriated

money channeled to it.

It is not for nothing that the APC has been riotous since our party

busted its fresh plot to loot the repatriated $311 million, and had

resorted to vituperations, insults, threats and unfounded accusations

against well-meaning Nigerians. It is because our insistence on

transparency and accountability in the handling of the funds has ended

their re-looting ploys.

Nigerians have continued to witness how the APC and officials in the

Buhari Presidency have been stuttering and stammering on national

television since the plot to steal the money was exposed.

We are already aware of their desperate plans to unleash heavily paid

hack writers and spin doctors to assist in diverting public attention

and blackmailing patriotic individuals and groups demanding for

accountability in the handling of the fund.

It is even more distressing that officials of the APC administration are

already compromising the sovereignty of our nation by attempting to

transfer the powers of appropriation of our national resources from our

National Assembly to foreign powers, just to conceal the plot to siphon

the money.

Such unpatriotic action is not only reprehensible but also completely

repugnant.

The power to appropriate our national resources is only vested on our

National Assembly and cannot be surrendered to any foreign power under

any guise.

It is on record that such national betrayal never happened under PDP

administrations where all funds, including repatriated funds were

transparently handled in compliance with our extant financial rules.

Our party therefore demands that the $311 million be immediately

directed to the Federation Account for proper appropriation in line with

our laws.

The PDP strongly charges the National Assembly to get ready to use its

legislative instruments against the APC-led government, should the

repatriated fund be dissipated in any manner other than as prescribed by

the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

Signed:

Kola Ologbondiyan

National Publicity Secretary
Reading-based retailer Boscovs is set to re-open stores in Erie and Selinsgrove this weekend, as the counties in which the stores are located enter the yellow phase of coronavirus mitigation.

The two stores at 5800 Peach St. in Millcreek Township, Erie County and at 1 Susquehanna Valley Mall in Monroe Township, Snyder County, will reopen Sunday, said CEO Jim Boscov.

Boscovs stores across Pennsylvania have been closed since March, when Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the closure of all non-life sustaining businesses. Retailers in 24 counties in the northwest and central part of the states are permitted to open for business during the yellow phase, which began on Friday in those counties.

The openings come with some changes.

Plexiglass shields have been placed in front of cash registers, the stores have had deep cleanings, there are markers on the floor to remind customers to maintain social distancing, and and there will be separate exits and entrances. A lot of sanitizing has been done throughout the stores and will take place after every transaction, Boscov said.

We wanted to make sure we had everything in place, he said.

READ MORE:

Boscov says that the play areas in the toy departments have been eliminated, the dressing rooms will be closed temporarily and returns will be taken solely to the courtesy desk. Those returns will stay off the sales floor for five days.

The most important thing is people stay safe and feel comfortable, he said.

A Lower Paxton Township police officer is the lone vehicle in the closed Boscov's store parking lot at 2:08 p.m., March 26, 2020, at the Colonial Park Mall. Views of the Capital region during the coronavirus pandemic. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

Boscovs stores in Lower Paxton Township, Camp Hill and North Lebanon Township are in the states red phase and will remain closed. The company has 26 stores in Pennsylvania and 24 stores in seven other states, according to the companys website.

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A man in a mask boards a bus on campus at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, on March 13, 2020. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)

Passenger Spits on Bus Driver After Being Told to Wear Mask

Miami-Dade County bus driver Miakeya Rolle says she hasnt had a good nights rest since a passenger intentionally spit on her.

On the afternoon of April 19, a homeless woman boarded Rolles bus and began coughing on passengers, according to a police report. Rolle told her she needed to wear a mask. The woman spat on Rolle and fled the bus.

Miami, like many transit systems, requires passengers to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rolle cleaned herself off with Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer as she waited for police to respond. She was later tested at a hospital. When she returned home, she undressed outside and threw her uniform in the garbage.

Rolle has yet to return to driving a bus.

Thats how I feed my family. But as of right now, I cant do it, said Rolle, who has tested negative for COVID-19. Ive never had anything like that happen to me. Im about to lose my mind.

Another Miami-Dade County transit bus driver, Denys Santos, was charged with aggravated assault on April 29 after chasing and swinging a metal pipe at a rider who removed his mask to talk on a cell phone, according to a Monroe County Sheriffs Office police report.

Bus drivers nationwide are facing new challenges as they try to protect passengers and themselves from a virus thats killed at least 135 transit workers nationwide, according to reports from the largest transit unions, the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union.

People ride a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus system during the outbreak of the CCP virus in New York City, New York on April 22, 2020. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Leaders of transit unions say protections for bus drivers are lacking. They want high-quality masks available more widely, and drivers to get help with new duties, such as enforcing mask requirements and making sure buses arent crowded. Some transit systems have put a cap on the number of passengers to promote social distancing. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for instance, buses are restricted to 10 passengers.

King County Metro, which operates in Seattle, Washington state, is generally limiting capacity to 12 riders on 40-foot buses, and 18 riders on 60-foot buses. Roanoke, Virginia, allows no more than nine passengers on buses. Pittsburgh caps its 35-foot buses at 10 people, and 40-foot buses at 15 riders.

John A. Costa, International President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said that fewer than half of his local unions in the United States and Canada have proper protective equipment.

Bus drivers face more risk than colleagues who operate trains or maintenance workers, because theyre in close contact with passengers. Many have no physical barrier between themselves and passengers. Some jurisdictions have tried temporary measures, such as hanging shower curtains, according to Costa. Bus drivers still must touch wheelchairs to help those riders board, exit, and secure their wheelchairs on board.

I wake up every morning and if I dont have a report of a fatality its like a good morning, John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, told CNN Business. Thats how crazy this is.

Governments and the private companies that operate some buses and trains know they must protect drivers and riders so that ridership eventually returns to levels before the pandemic.

Thierry Mallet, CEO of Transdev, which operates transit systems in 18 countries and has 82,000 employees, said many riders will shift to personal cars.

We have a key challenge, he said. We need to reclaim the trust and confidence of our passengers.

Transdev is considering offering hand sanitizer on all of its buses and trains, he said.

Transit operators run into practical and cultural hurdles as they take steps to protect workers and passengers. Buses used in U.S. transit systems generally arent designed to distance drivers from passengers. And some passengers refuse to wear masks.

European countries like France, Germany, and the Czech Republic are requiring masks nationwide as they prepare for a return to regular service and ridership.

Unions representing U.S. transit workers, including the Amalgamated Transit Union, Transport Workers Union of America and AFL-CIO, have called on the Federal Transit Administration to require that passengers wear masks nationwide. The administration has recommended transit agencies make policies regarding facial coverings to reduce the risk of COVID-19, but stopped short of a mandate. Federal law says that the secretary of the Department of Transportation may issue directives with respect to the safety of the public transportation system.

The Federal Transit Administration declined to comment for this story.

Some cities and states, including Massachusetts, Illinois, and Denver, have started requiring masks this month. Others, such as New York City, already had requirements.

Requiring masks isnt a panacea, and the requirements can be hard for drivers to enforce. Even worse, they may trigger a backlash or dangerous incidents.

Donna Schinkle, transit director of Chillicothe, Ohio, which introduced a mask requirement this week, said shes already heard criticism of her requirement.

Unlike most transit operators, Schinkle isnt overly concerned about people shying away from transit because of COVID-19 fears.

For the majority of folks in Southern Ohio, they just seem to think it really isnt a thing, she said. We have more of a struggle of trying to make them abide by the rules.

The-CNN-Wire

 &  2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
The Railways has ordered a comprehensive probe into the Aurangabad accident in which 16 migrants workers who were sleeping on the tracks were mowed down by a goods train early on Friday.

They were returning to Madhya Pradesh amid the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown.

What is being probed is the role of patrolmen who are tasked with keeping trespassers away from tracks and also alert the nearest station about any incident.

"Ram Kripal, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Central Circle, will hold an independent inquiry into today's labourers runover incident in Parbhani-Manmad section of Nanded Railway division of South Central Railway," the Railway Ministry announced.

While the railways does not treat these incidents as "railway accidents" and terms runover cases as "trespassing", there have been instances in the past where it has offered ex-gratia to the next of kin of a victim on sympathetic grounds.

In the 2017 Elphinstone bridge collapse incident in which 23 people were killed and 39 injured in Mumbai, the railways had given ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of those killed in the incident, Rs 1 lakh for those seriously injured and Rs 50,000 to people who suffered simple injuries.

The railways has not yet announced any ex gratia in the Aurangabad accident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All incoming baggage were disinfected, before handing them over to the people. Among those who landed, pregnant ladies, those above 75 years of age and children below the age of 10 will be sent to their homes where they will be quarantined for 14 days. Passengers having underlying health issues will be moved to the hospitals for further treatment. (Image: News18 Kerala)
It's safe to say the class of 2020 never expected their graduation plans to be affected by a global pandemic.

With schools and college campuses closed, sit-down restaurants and bars no longer an option, and stay-at-home mandates in place, many have been forced to cancel or change their initial graduation plans. But that doesn't mean you can't celebrate in other ways.

Here, you'll find a list of ideas to show your graduate just how proud you are of their accomplishments with a creative  and social distancing-friendly!  fete.

Throw a virtual celebration on Zoom with friends and family.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Zoom and other video conference platforms have been the go-to for everyone to communicate as they social distance. Graduation should be no different.

If you can't have all of their loved ones together in person, consider throwing a virtual celebration in honor of the graduate with as many friends and family members in attendance as you'd like!

Some people, like SUNY Albany master's graduate Megan Moroukian, have even gone so far as to invite their favorite celebrities to these Zoom gatherings. If you're lucky, you just might have a surprise visitor pop in to celebrate the big day.

"This gave me something to help ease the pain of not hearing my name called and walking across the stage to receive my diploma," says Moroukian, who was surprised by John Legend and Chrissy Teigen on a Zoom call with her friends. "I was dealing with a lot of thoughts and feelings about my special day turning into 'just another day' due to COVID-19. Now, I have this incredible silver lining."

Megan Moroukian Megan Moroukian's graduation Zoom

RELATED: Hoda Kotb Officiates Zoom Wedding for Couple Who Cancelled Their Nuptials Due to Coronavirus

Organize a drive-by parade.

Nothing lifts spirits quite like a parade of cars honking their horns for a graduate.

If you're set on seeing friends and family on the big day, but still want to keep your distance, consider organizing a parade of cheer through the neighborhood while your graduate proudly waves to them from the front lawn in their cap and gown.

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Bring the ceremony to you.

The parents of Lauren Baxter, a graduate from The Ohio State University, knew how much she was looking forward to celebrating her graduation on the field at Ohio Stadium.

When the in-person ceremony was postponed and replaced with a live-stream, Baxter's dad held a backyard brunch and spray-painted the school's red block "O" on their lawn so that it could mimic the one in the stadium on the 50-yard line.

"Even though I couldnt celebrate with my friends from school, I had so many people showing me love and support," Baxter says. "I appreciate all my family did to make sure the weekend was as special as it wouldve been before all of this happened."

Lauren Baxter Lauren Baxter in her backyard

Fellow Ohio State graduate Kristina Gee's family also got creative by building a stage in their backyard with plywood and 2x4's, which they covered with an Ohio State plastic tablecloth. They also decorated with Ohio State chairs, flags, and signs.

"I was not expecting any of this and it made the day very special," Gee tells PEOPLE. "Having this virtual celebration was not as I had imagined my graduation day to be, but it's not a day I will ever forget."

courtesy kristina gee Kristina Gee on the backyard stage her family built

Transform your home into a party spot.

Many graduates have been bummed that they won't be able to celebrate one last time at a beloved restaurant, bar, or pub near campus. If you can't go to the place, try transforming your home to resemble it as closely as possible.

This can include lights, decorations, recreated and personalized menus, and for some, even holding "wine tours", a.k.a. turning every room in your home into a different spot on the tour, complete with an array of wines to taste.

Visit a nearby college campus and "hold" your ceremony there.

Some graduates have used what's available to them to make the day special. In the case of University of Michigan graduate Sami Herzog, she wasn't able to receive her diploma in Ann Arbor  so her family got creative and traveled to the nearest college campus to hold a fake ceremony.

Standing outside one of the closed buildings at UCLA, Herzog wore her cap and gown, received her diploma, and celebrated with her immediate family, who recorded the entire moment.

"Although this wasnt the way I originally anticipated celebrating my graduation, our 'ceremony' was a special, intimate memory Ill cherish forever," Herzog tells PEOPLE.

RELATED: Student Goes Viral Asking Obama to Give 'National Commencement Speech' for Seniors Stranded by Coronavirus

Take photos on your front lawn.

To commemorate the big day, photos are a must. Even if you're not going to an "official" ceremony, dress up and have a photoshoot in your cap and gown outside your home.

Not only will it serve as a fun thing to do on graduation day, but it will also be something the graduate can look back on to remember this milestone forever.

Adopt a senior.

Many people around the country have jumped at the chance to celebrate their high school seniors  even if they don't have a senior themselves.

In towns like Candor, New York, community members have rallied around their local high school seniors by "adopting" one, or leaving care packages, cards, and other gifts in front of their homes as a sign of support.

Says Ashton Teribury, a senior at Candor Junior-Senior High School: "We had our senior year stripped from us in a way we never couldve expected, but to have the community supporting us and holding us up when we are dealing with so many emotions means the world to us. There are no words to fully describe the love we are all feeling."

Ashton Teribury and Jennah Kareem One of the care packages received by a student at Candor Junior-Senior High School

Paint the town with pride.

Many communities have also shown their support for the class of 2020 by decorating front doors, windows, and yards with pictures, signs, banners, and memorabilia from their high school years.

Local businesses have also been decorating their windows to pay homage to the class of 2020, while school administrators have dropped off custom signs congratulating each graduate.

Tricia Despres Taylor Despres outside her front door

Taylor Despres, a senior at Downers Grove South High School in Downers Grove, Illinois, tells PEOPLE the gesture is incredibly meaningful.

"It's such a hard time for everyone and we are all constantly thinking about the things we are missing out on," she says. "But being able to see the community doing all that they can to support us and guide us through this rough time  from the small details like the door being decorated to the school dropping off signs to every senior  it just gives us validation during this hard time."

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. PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMe to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, click here.
The lockdown challenge and how the poor need to cope with education

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: One of the sectors that has been worst hit by the nation-wide lockdown is the education sector. Exams have been postponed and in many cases results have been delayed.

While in the cities, many managements have ensured that learning continues online, the big challenge is for the poorest of poor and in the rural areas.

Dr Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist who is the pro-vice chancellor of the Jain University and Director of its Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Education tells OneIndia that it is now time for the government to spruce up connectivity in the rural areas so that online education can be imparted.

Use technology, enhance learning PM Modi advises education sector

COVID-19 has created both challenges and opportunities. The question is how do those people who are not economically well off access the resources and what happens to education. Education is about continuity and today it is not there due to the lockdown.

The lockdown is a necessity and not a choice and none of us wanted it. Due to this lockdown many of us were forced to re-invent ourselves.

Let me frank, we had made no effort to bring in online classes, but today it is a reality. A large part of India is not on social media, but a very high percentage is connected on the mobile.

Most of the platforms used by institutions do not need sophisticated technology. In the rural sector, the schools must encourage conducting classes using a simple mobile. I have dealt with several government schools and I am aware that it can be accessed. However the block remains in the mind and not in technology, Dr Shastri says.

I do concede that there are areas with poor connectivity. However, this is not an insurmountable challenge. The government has to expand the bandwidth in rural areas.

We need to prepare for both the face to face as well online form of education. My own experience has shown me that those who are silent in the normal class are more active online. Some these challenges are like a mask and I go back to my point that what is needed is an attitude change.

The impact of Covid-19 lockdown on children

Over time, we will be forced to go in for blended learning that is face to face and online classes. In the rural sector and among the poor the problem with regard to education is a temporary challenge. By July we will be back.

However, in the rural areas, the government must ensure that the bandwidth is expanded. Once the poor students come back to the classes, there has to be fast learning. In the lower classes, teachers have to link up with the parents to ensure that education is continued. In the case of uneducated parents, children should be encouraged into a system of peer learning.

In my experience, the government schools have taken to online classes and it has succeeded. Over a period of time, we must mentally shift to the new system and the government has to improve connectivity.

However at this moment, the poor have more serious challenges to deal with. They are now looking for survival and again for me, it depends on the level of education.

Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan says that on the digital front, Karnataka is very strong. This has been our strength and it has now come to use.

Probably a small percentage is affected, but we will cope with that. We will encourage self learning and how I see it is that academics will be on track in another two months.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said the "Russia hoax" made it very difficult for the leaders of the two countries to deal with each other.

Trump described the allegations from the opposition Democratic party that Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential elections to help him win the polls as the "Russia hoax". Investigations, however, have not been able to prove the allegations.

"The Russia hoax made it very hard for Russia and the United States to deal with each other," the president told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

On Thursday, Trump spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over the phone.

"They are a very important nation. We are the most powerful nation, they are a very powerful nation. Why would we not be dealing with each other?" he asked.

Trump's political opponents have been against the US having close ties with Russia.

"But the Russia hoax...dishonest hoax. Made it very difficult for our nation and their nation to deal. We discussed that," Trump said in response to a question.

"I said, 'You know, it is a very appropriate time.' Because things are falling out now and coming in line, showing what a hoax this whole investigation was. It was a total disgrace. And I would not be surprised if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks. This is just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle," he said.

According to the president, the US is also talking about arms control with Russia and will go forward with that.

"We are talking about it very seriously -- having arms control. They have many nuclear weapons and so do we. We are talking about arms control with Russia. They would like to do it. We would like to do it," he said.

Responding to a question, Trump said the US is helping various countries.

"As you know, Russia is having a hard time with COVID-19. They got hit like everybody else got hit. We had a long talk," he said.

"He (Putin) called me because we were partners, so to speak, for a very big, successful war. And it was very nice. He called to -- as a congratulatory call, as a call of celebration, because it was the 75th year," Trump said.

The president said he also suggested to Putin that if Russia needs ventilators, the US will love to send some to the country.

"We will do that at the appropriate time. We will send them some ventilators," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 21:00:37|Editor: huaxia

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WINDHOEK, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Namibian president on Friday called on African countries to collaborate on combating COVID-19.

Speaking in a virtual meeting from Namibia called by the African Union and involving several other African countries, President Hage Geingob said COVID-19 has become one of the biggest threats to humanity and needed to be tackled with collaboration from all world leaders.

"COVID-19 is a global pandemic and requires coordinated regional, Pan-African and global action. During this difficult period, Namibia recognizes how interdependent and how interconnected we are as neighbors," he said.

Geingob said cooperation and consultation is essential in finding lasting solutions against the pandemic.

Geingob added that Namibia will continue to keep ports and harbors open in order to facilitate the movement of goods to landlocked neighbors and beyond. Enditem
Vista Equity Partners will invest Rs 11,367 crore into Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore, Reliance Industries and Jio Platforms announced today. This investment will translate into a 2.32 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis, making Vista the largest investor in Jio Platforms behind Reliance Industries and Facebook.

RIL's Jio Platforms has scored a hat-trick in less than three weeks, raising Rs 60,596.37 crore from leading technology investors. Jio Platforms, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, comprises Jio's leading digital apps, digital ecosystems and Reliance Jio Infocomm under one umbrella. "Jio's vision is to enable a Digital India for 1.3 billion people and businesses throughout India, especially small merchants, micro-businesses and farmers. Jio has brought transformational changes in the Indian digital services space and propelled India on the path towards becoming a global technology leader and among the leading digital economies in the world," a company statement said.

ALSO READ: Silver Lake to invest Rs 5,655 cr in Jio Platforms at higher valuation than Facebook deal

Vista has more than $57 billion in cumulative capital commitments and its global network of companies collectively represent the 5th largest enterprise software company in the world, it added. Vista portfolio companies have a significant presence in India, with over 13,000 employees, the statement said.

"Like our other partners, Vista also shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. They believe in the transformative power of technology to be the key to an even better future for everyone. We are excited to leverage the professional expertise and multi-level support that Vista has been offering to its investments globally for the benefit of Jio," RIL Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani said.

ALSO READ: BT BUZZ: Don't be naive! Reliance Jio-Facebook deal is a partnership of unequals

Robert F Smith, founder and Chairman and CEO of Vista, said the company believed in the potential of the digital society that Jio was building for India. "Mukesh's vision as a global pioneer, alongside Jio's world-class leadership team, have built a platform to scale and advance the data revolution it started. We are thrilled to join Jio Platforms to deliver exponential growth in connectivity across India."

ALSO READ: BT Buzz: Mukesh Ambani, Mark Zuckerberg and the $700 billion kirana puzzle

On May, global tech investor Silver Lake decided to invest Rs 5,655.75 crore in Reliance Industries Jio Platforms. It represents 12.5 per cent premium to the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22. Before that, Facebook had bought a 9.99 per cent stake in Ambani's Jio Platforms for Rs 43,574 crore on April 22, making it the largest minority shareholder in the company.

Following the update, shares of Reliance Industries were quoting Rs 1550 apiece on BSE, rising 2.83% or 38 points.

ALSO READ: JioMart-WhatsApp grocery service to reinvent kiranas
Potential suppliers of personal protective equipment to the NHS have written an open letter to the government pleading to know if ministers want their assistance or not during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the document, the signatories say they can "spring into action and help get millions of pieces of PPE" into the health service.

But they express their frustration at the lack of response to their offers of cooperation, as hospitals across the UK struggle to ensure their staff have access to adequate PPE.

Many hospital trusts have reported severe shortages of items such as masks and gowns.

The number of deaths among health and care workers from coronavirus has now surpassed 100.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government has distributed more than a billion items of PPE. Millions of items have been flown to the UK from places like China and Turkey.

Professor Neil Mortensen, president-elect of the Royal College of Surgeons, told Sky News he is surprised the availability of PPE is still not adequate.

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He said a third of their surgeons and specialist dentists don't have enough PPE, especially eye protection and masks, and "do not feel properly protected".

The letter, addressed to Mr Hancock, reads: "We are a group of businesses and individual suppliers from around the UK who are desperate to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS. Between us, we can produce masses of pieces of PPE.

"Together, we can help save lives. But you're making this impossible.

"We've done what you asked us to do: we've contacted the government through the official procurement process you set out. None of us has had a definitive response. We don't know when we can expect one.

"We can't keep waiting. So if you don't want our PPE, you need to tell us now.

"Tell us you want us, so that we can spring into action and help get millions of pieces of PPE into the NHS. Or tell us you don't, so we can organise ourselves to deliver our PPE directly to the thousands of people across the UK who are pleading with us for it."

Story continues

It then lists a number of signatories who have all outlined what kind of PPE they can provide and the quantities.

Craig Morris, chief operating officer at Liquid Retail in Nottinghamshire, told Sky News they offered to supply masks, gowns, ventilators and visors in early March. He said he had some initial responses from the procurement team which then stopped when he enquired about filling in online forms.

He said he had signed the letter "because there has been an abject failure by the government to allow the resolution of the PPE issue".

"There is no shortage of PPE - it's simply the fact that their systems and processes have stopped them being able to buy it."

He said the handling of the PPE has been a failure: "This is a problem entirely of their own making and could have been solved. There needs to be an accounting because the lack of PPE and response is shameful and instead of telling lies they should admit the failure and replace those responsible."

He said Liquid Retail is now in the process of selling some of its PPE products to other countries.

Beata, from Safepol Workwear who also signed the letter, told Sky News she tried contacting NHS England a month ago and heard nothing until a woman from NHS Improvement phoned her to say "we have everything".

She said she gave up and now sells products to individual customers.

"It breaks my heart when I see orders from GPs, nurses or carers. I'm not able to donate but at the same time I feel awful that they have to pay for their PPE when it should be provided by the government."

She added that she had spoken to a care home branch manager who purchased masks for her staff with her own money.

The letter has been put together by Lucy Wathan who began her campaign with a Change.org petition calling for PPE for all frontline NHS staff.

The petition has now received over 800,000 signatures.

Ms Wathan's partner is a nurse and she has been upset by how frustrating the lack of key equipment has been for him and his colleagues.

She told Sky News: "After speaking to him, I had a look into PPE guidelines and the main thing I was struck by is that there were very clear guidelines published by the WHO in March, yet in the UK the PPE guidance was confusing, inconsistent and lacking in many areas.

She said she gathered the signatures for the letter because "many (firms) have repeatedly tried different methods of contact, online portal, email, Twitter... and had no response or simply a response saying that it was being looked into, so no definitive yes/no we would like your supplies, or not".

On Thursday Downing Street said 21 million items of personal protective equipment (PPE) were distributed to 196 health trusts and organisations on Tuesday.

Items included gloves, aprons, three types of masks, eye protectors and gowns.

Sky News is awaiting a response from the Department of Health and Social Care.
New Delhi: The death toll due to Covid-19 climbed to 1,886 and the number of cases surged to 56,342 in the country on Friday, recording an increase of 103 deaths and 3,390 cases in the last 24 hours, the Union Health Ministry said.

The number of active Covid-19 cases stood at 37,916. While 16,539 individuals have recovered, one patient has migrated, it said.

"Thus, around 29.35 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said. The total number of cases includes 111 foreign nationals.

The total of 103 deaths reported since Thursday morning include 43 in Maharashtra; 29 in Gujarat; eight in Madhya Pradesh; seven in West Bengal; five in Rajasthan; two each in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh; and one each in Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.

Of the total fresh cases reported, 78 per cent are from four states  Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. A further breakup reveals that 53 per cent of new cases are from the two states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. A staggering 36% of new cases are from Maharashtra alone. Out of the total deaths, 70% of deaths reported from Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 1,216 new Covid-19 cases, taking the count of positive cases in the state to 17,974, a health official told PTI. This is the second largest single-day figure of positive cases, the official said. The state also recorded the death of 43 more Covid-19 patients  24 of them in Mumbai  taking the state death tally to 694, he said.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus positive cases in Ahmedabad district of Gujarat soared to 4,991 on Thursday after 275 new cases were reported during the last 24 hours, officials said. These 4,991 cases in Ahmedabad district make up a significant chunk of the total 7,013 positive cases recorded in Gujarat so far.

(With inputs from PTI)
The five-year-old boy from Utah who was caught earlier this week by the police driving his parents' car may have found out that crime indeed, pays.

When an adult learned about how the boy, Adrian Zamarripa, stole the keys to the Dodge Journey, his family's car, he headed to California to buy a Lamborghini.

Then, after purchasing the luxury car, the adult decided to let the boy experience what it was like to be in his dream car, and have him "ride around the neighborhood.

A local businessman, Jeremy Neves said, he contacted the Zamarripa family after the kid's story went viral. He added, he was inspired "by the principles that the child displayed of success," knowing what he has wanted and was going after it.

Rewarded but Certainly Not Recommended

He may have rewarded the five-year-old with what was seemingly a "joyride," but the businessman insisted he does not agree with the action of Adrian.

Undeniably, Neves said, he is "not encouraging kids to go out" and take the car of their parents or family and do something else that is unlawful. More so, he elaborated he is not advocating the goy's action, too.

Clips of Adrian's joyride came out, as he sat on someone else's lap minus the seatbelt, and they drove around the block with Neves driving the luxury car. The obviously happy boy exclaimed, "This car's fast!"

According to the Utah Highway Patrol, it is not citing anyone for the motoring of Adrian on Monday. In addition, the authorities added they stopped the vehicle after they noticed it was "swerving on an interstate.

When asked by the police, Adrian said he was going to California to buy a Lamborghini as his mother refused to buy him one.

Meanwhile, Sidney, the boy's sister, explained to CNN that her brother had been grounded for the escapade, and his list of chores to do has gotten longer. When he learned about this, Neves sympathized with Adrian's "self-inflicted" trouble.

He said he thought it was indeed cool to say, his dreams are not as impossible as he believes they are. Not many people are quite happy about the reward, though.

Disapprovals on Twitter

Most, if not all, people who learned about the story of Adrian disapproved of the reward. One Twitter user sarcastically commented, a five-year-old boy stole a car, and he was being taken on a joyride in a luxury car and without the car seat.

Another post said, "I would normally say, as a child, he did not know better." However, as indicated in the post, the boy knew enough to go to the dealership and pull over when the police stopped him.

One more post couldn't help but say the incident was disgusting. The Twitter user also posted disappointment in some news sites for airing the occurrence, specifically the businessman facilitating the joyride.

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A "most wanted" gangster and his six associates have been arrested and a large consignment of sophisticated weapons seized from them by the Punjab Police, a senior police officer said on Friday.

Gangster Baljinder Singh alias Billa, who was wanted in more than 18 cases including that of murder, arms smuggling and drug peddling, had alleged links with the slain Pakistan-based Khalistan Liberation Force chief Harmeet Singh Happy and Germany-based Bagga of the Khalistan Zindabad Force, the police said.

Punjab Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta said the arrests were made in a joint operation by a team of Organised Crime Control Unit, Counter Intelligence Jalandhar Unit and the Kapurthala police on Thursday.

The seized consignment of weapons included three SIG Sauer pistols, used by members of the US Secret Service, the police said.

Besides Billa, the six arrested are Sukhjinder Singh, Mohit Sharma, Lovepreet Singh, Mangal Singh, Maninderjeet Singh and Lovepreet Singh alias Lovely.

All the accused have been kept separately as they are being tested for COVID-19 by a special team of doctors, Gupta said in a statement here.

The seized consignment of weapons included two 30 bore drum machine guns, three pistols (marked SIG Sauer made in Germany), two Glock pistols (made in Austria), two 30 bore pistols, one 32 bore pistol, one .315 bore rifle, 341 live cartridges and two drum magazines and 14 pistol magazines.

Rs 3 lakh in cash and one hundred Australian dollars were also recovered from them, said Gupta.

Terming it "one of the biggest caches of highly sophisticated weapons seized from a criminal gang", Gupta said the SIG Sauer pistols are in fact being used by members of the US Secret Service, which protects the highest elected leaders of the United States, especially the President of the United States.

The DGP said preliminary investigations suggested that most of the weapons recovered from Billa were smuggled from Pakistan in different consignments.

Police were also investigating the role of militants in the supply chain of illegal weapons.

Three vehicles were also seized from the criminals, he said.

The police also learnt that a part of consignment, consisting of AK-74 rifles, which was pushed into the Mamdot area of Ferozepur sector from across the border in September, 2019 by the Special Task Force Punjab, was also meant for the Billa criminal gang.

Police had inputs that Billa, along with his associates, was taking shelter in the Kapurthala area with the consignment of illegal arms.

Police teams laid siege around Dadwindi and Mothanwala areas of Sultanpur Lodhi Police station and made the arrests.

A case under relevant sections of the IPC, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Arms Act was registered.

Billa during preliminary investigations revealed that he was in contact with various Pakistan-based weapons and drugs smugglers and had already received many consignments of weapons and drugs from them, mostly in the Ferozepur area.

One of the Pakistan-based smugglers was allegedly working as courier on the Indo-Pak border for operatives of Khalistan Liberation Force based in Pakistan and India in the recent past, and had successfully pushed many weapon consignments into the Indian territory, the police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Count of known COVID-19 cases

Numbers updated at 4 p.m. May 8

Missouri: 449 deaths, 9,489 known cases. Local officials report 3,724 cases in St. Louis County and 1,408 in St. Louis. There were 655 reported cases in St. Charles County.

Illinois: 3,241 deaths, 73,760 confirmed cases. Cases include 648 in St. Clair County, 401 in Madison County and 79 in Monroe County, according to the state health department.

National: At least 1,279,546 people across the country have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, 76,706 patients with the virus have died.

Worldwide: There have been 3,767,744 cases worldwide, and 259,593 confirmed deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
Azerbaijani logistics company, ART Group Logistic LLC, is successfully developing new lines of activity, due to the current recession in the field of road transport, Head of the company Asif Abbaszade told local media.

The company is trying to maintain business processes at a stable level, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have completely or partially suspended their activities. Continuing to work online, our company's employees are trying to do everything possible to maintain contact with each of our clients, and also offer favorable conditions for the future projects so that our customers are satisfied, he said.

We are also planning to increase the number of employees and purchase a freight vehicle. Our company until today was engaged only in road transportation, but due to the COVID-19 situation we have already switched to container transportation working directly with trusted agents from China, the US and other countries, said Abbaszade.

At the moment, negotiations are underway on air transportation and soon we will open this direction. This work will be carried out only by professionals in this field of activity, Abbaszade added.

During the quarantine regime, the organization successfully concluded contracts with several companies that are mainly engaged in import of food products. Significant growth is observed in this sector, while activity regarding other types of cargo transportation has significantly decreased, the head of the company noted.

We hope that soon all areas of activity both in our country and abroad will get back on track, and the freight transport industry in the field of export and import of goods will contribute to the growth of the economies of countries around the world, Abbaszade stressed.
Hours after the US Justice Department decides to drop the criminal case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for his connection with Russian diplomat, US President Donad Trump slammed the newspapers that had won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of suspected Russia collusion in US Presidential elections of 2016.

While speaking to reporters at the White House Trump said, "They are not journalists. They are thieves. All of those journalists that we see with the Pulitzer Prize should be forced to give those prizes back because they were all wrong. You saw it today, more documents came out saying there was absolutely no collusion with Russia."

Trump called the Russia collusion story as false and alleged that since the story is false entirely the newspapers getting awards for it is a 'disgrace. "Pulitzer prizes should all be returned because you know what, they were given out falsely. It was fake news, they are all fake news. Those Pulitzer prizes should be given back immediately and the Pulitzer committee, or whoever gives the prizes, they are a disgrace unless they give those prizes back because they got Pulitzer prizes for what turned out to be false stories," he said.

He further called Flynn a 'great gentleman' and accused former US president Barack Obama's administration for targetting him. "He (Flynn) is a great gentleman, he was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they have done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid, a big price should be paid. There has never been anything like this in the history of our country," Trump said.

Flynn was suspected to be a national threat by US law enforcement who investigated him. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents about his connection with a Russian diplomat in 2017. A plea agreement was reached between Flynn and special counsel Robert Mueller`s office as Flynn vowed to cooperate in the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential polls.
Sara Ali Khan Opens Up About Ibrahims Plans To Become An Actor; Says Hes Enjoying Tik Tok
Twenty Massachusetts breweries have adopted an open beer recipe known as the All Together collaboration to show support for workers in the hospitality industry.

The collaboration, started by Other Half Brewing Co. in New York, is a worldwide effort to support hospitality industry professionals and has the backing of 749 breweries in 48 U.S. states and 51 different countries.

There is an inextricable link that binds together everyone in the hospitality industry, Other Half Brewing Co. wrote on the All Together website. Brewers, servers, bartenders, bussers, dishwashers, GMs, buyers, chefs, ownerswe are all in this together. In this industry, when one of us struggles, the rest of us pick them up. Its baked into who we are.

The beer recipe, they say, is simple and open for any brewer to use as well the name and can artwork.

Were inviting any brewer, from any corner of the planet to participate. The recipe is open source, the artwork is public, and the name is yours to use. The goal is to provide you with the tools to make the beer at the lowest possible cost," the site reads.

In return, Other Half Brewing Co. asks brewers to share a portion of proceeds from the sales of the All Together beer with hospitality workers in their community. The rest, the brewery says, should go to keeping you in business to weather this storm.

In Worcester, Greater Good Imperial Brewing Co. teamed up with Burgy Brews and Bay State Brewing Co. to produce their version of the All Together beer.

We knew it was going to be a good beer, we knew people would be involved and we jumped at the opportunity to get it," said J.T. Ethier beer and brand evangelist for Greater Good.

The beer was brewed at a contract facility in Williamsburg shared by Burgy Brews, Bay State Brewing Co. and Greater Good, which brews two of its beers own beers at the facility.

Since the beer debuted, Ethier estimates 90% of all sales include an All Together four-pack in the order.

Its something that hit home for us, said Ethier. Its the same case for a lot of breweries, not only helping out people in need, but helping out their friends and family.

Customers can order order the beer online from Greater Good or Bay State Brewing Co.

Wormtown Brewery is also set to release their All Together beer on Friday May 15.

We thought it was a great way to be a part of a larger effort to give back to those in need, said Wormtowns director of marketing Katrina Shabo. Giving back to our community is a huge part of Wormtowns DNA so we immediately jumped at this opportunity when it arose.

And while Greater Good says they stuck to the original recipe created by Other Half Brew Co, Wormtown says its brewers added a bit of their own touch to the beer.

We followed the recipe pretty closely but our brewers always like to add a slight touch of their own creativity to everything we produce, said Shabo. It would be interesting to hear what our consumers feel the differences are from each brewerys release they try.

Wormtown will also have its All Together" beer available for online purchase as well.

Both breweries, for now, have plans to sell just one batch of the beer.

Other Massachusetts breweries participating in the collaboration include Marlboroughs Lost Shoe Brewing Co., Norwoods Castle Island Brewing Co., Fitchburgs River Styx Brewing, Bostons Trillium Brewing and more.

A complete list of breweries participating worldwide can be found here.

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Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagicDespite efforts to make their relationship work, Princess Love has filed for divorce from her husband, Ray J, after four years.

The couple have two children together: 1-year-old Melody and a four-month-old baby boy, Epic.

The couple attempted to reconcile last month for Zeus Network's The Conversation: Ray J Aand Princess Love. But it looks like things didn't work out after all. TMZ reports the Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood star has called it quits, filing divorce papers on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

This isn't the first time Princess has threatened divorce, but it is the first time she's officially filed, declaring that the two have been living apart since their widely publicized fight in Las Vegas last November. Princess Love accused Ray of abandoning her and their daughter, leaving them stranded there. Princess was eight months pregnant at the time with their son Epic, and claimed she no longer wanted to be married and had stopped wearing her wedding ring.

The couple appeared on Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood season one in 2014 and wed in 2016. Fans remember their famous scene when Ray J pushed her into the pool.

Then again, Ray J was the latest guest on Complex at Home, documenting his daily schedule during the novel pandemic. Princess' voice is clearly heard in the background, although she isn't shown, as Ray spends time with the babies and cooks in the kitchen.

So, is the couple actually in trouble? Or is Princess just making a point that she can stand on her own? The Jasmine Brand reports Princess has established three new businesses and has re-enrolled in school since the quarantine began.

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Ten churches from across the state have asked a judge to rule that Gov. Kate Browns social distancing order infringes on their religious freedoms so their congregations can resume worship as desired.

If were risking our lives to go to church, if we survive great, said Salem-based attorney Ray D. Hacke, who filed a motion for a temporary restraining order Thursday. "If we die, then were going to heaven. If we want to take that risk, then its on us.''

Hacke filed a lawsuit the day before in Baker County Circuit Court on behalf of the nonprofit group Pacific Justice Institute, which takes on religious liberty cases. Its representing the churches and 21 individuals.

The suit was filed in Baker County for the symbolism, Hacke noted, a county that recorded its first positive case of COVID-19 on Wednesday.

The churches are in Baker City, Bend, Camas Valley, Klamath Falls, Lincoln City, Newberg, Portland, Roseburg and Salem.

They have so far respected the governors order banning gatherings of more than 25 people and discouraging Oregonians from being around more than 10 people at a time, according to Hacke.

But the churches no longer believe such an order is justified, the suit says.

Brown on Thursday modified the order, allowing social gatherings of up to 25 people with social distancing for counties with state-approved reopening plans.

But the churches said thats not sufficient.

If a congregation has 250 members, what are they going to do? Hold 10 services? Thats just not realistic, Hacke said. Its an infringement on religious liberty.

The churches are done having their rights trampled on with no end in sight, he said.

The governor believes churches and other faith-based organizations can still tend to the spiritual needs of their congregations without putting the health and safety of their entire communities at risk, said Liz Merah, Browns spokeswoman.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

We ask all Oregonians to follow the spirit of the Governors stay home order, which is to minimize gatherings outside the home as much as possible to limit the spread of COVID-19, Mereh said.

Dr. Dean Sidelinger, state epidemiologist, said of faith-based organizations at a news briefing Thursday, We appreciate them trying to maintain physical distancing and suggested that they could continue other activities, as many have done in the last two months, by holding virtual video conferences, live-streaming services or through creative drive-in ceremonies to help protect their parishioners.

The churches named as plaintiffs in the suit are: Elkhorn Baptist Church in Baker City, Calvary Chapel Newberg, Calvary Chapel Lincoln City, Calvary Chapel Southeast Portland, New Horizon Christian Fellowship in Klamath Falls, Camas Valley Christian Fellowship, Peoples Church in Salem, Prepare The Way religion nonprofit ministry in Bend, Bend Community Church, Covenant Grace Church in Roseburg.

Conservative activist Kevin Mannix, former legislator and gubernatorial candidate, on behalf of the nonprofit group Common Sense Oregon, also is expected to file a motion to intervene in support of the churches suit against the governor, Hacke said.

In a similar case brought in California, a federal judge ruled this week that state and local stay-at-home orders were a valid exercise of emergency police powers and didnt violate a churchs constitutional rights. The judge in that case noted that the U.S. Supreme Court more than 100 years ago upheld the governments right to exercise police powers to promote public safety during a public health crisis.

Oregonian/OregonLive staff writer Lizzy Acker contributed to this story.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:13:16|Editor: huaxia

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WUHAN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Wuhan, once hit hard by COVID-19, has seen its urban life gradually return to normal since its lockdown was lifted one month ago.

LIFE HEADING BACK TO NORMAL

Taking a subway early in the morning to a breakfast store about 7 km from home, Yang Jing gobbled a bowl of noodles with sliced beef and took away five fried stuffed buns.

"Life returns with my favorite breakfast," said the man in his 20s.

The 100-meter-long street Yang just visited was filled with breakfast vendors peddling all kinds of food with different flavors -- a typical sight in Wuhan, a city fussy about food.

Hubu Alley, a famous snack street that tourists usually mark on their itinerary, reopened for business from May. The aroma of sesame sauce emitted from Wuhan's signature hot dry noodles filled the alley again after over 100 days.

According to Liu Guoliang, president of the Wuhan Dining Industry Association, among the over 50,000 restaurants in the city, 13.3 percent have resumed eat-in service and 45.6 percent restarted takeout service. The daily number of food delivery orders has exceeded 100,000 in the city.

Meanwhile, traffic flow in the city returned to the same level as that before the epidemic, and all subways and buses have resumed operation.

Convenient public transportation has whetted citizens' willingness to go out. Setting up four tents, Zeng Lingling and her family enjoyed a picnic by the lakeside.

"After a long time at home, this is our first family trip. The blue sky, clear water, flowers and beautiful scenery remain the same, but our mentality has changed," said Zeng.

About 57,800 students in their final year from 121 high and vocational schools returned to campus on Wednesday in Wuhan.

At 7:30 a.m., Zong Zheng carried a box of books while walking into Wuhan No. 17 High School.

"I gained some weight at home, so I'm worried that my classmates might not be able to recognize me. I'll have my first exam of the semester on Friday, hopefully my grades won't drop too harshly," said Zong.

Chen Shufei, a senior student at Hubei Wuchang Experimental High School, changed the number of days left in the countdown to the national college entrance examination at the front of the classroom from 138 to 62.

When Chen began her winter holiday on Jan. 20, the 18-year-old did not expect it would be for so long.

"I'm both excited and nervous to be back on campus, and I hope I can re-adjust as soon as possible and enter my dream university," said Chen. She aspires to study at Wuhan University.

On May 20, another 73,000 students in their final year of junior high school in Wuhan will also return to campus to start their postponed new semester.

A COMEBACK AT "CHINA SPEED"

As Wuhan people's lives gradually come back to normal, the city is accelerating the resumption of work and production.

A labor skills competition was launched Friday at the Wuhan Optics Valley, one of the most economically active areas in Hubei and home to more than 100,000 tech companies, with some 300 migrant construction workers in safety helmets and reflective vests attending an oath-taking rally.

The valley saw the settlement of U.S. industrial conglomerate Honeywell's newly registered wholly owned subsidiary Huosheng Industrial Technology Co., Ltd. last month, as its headquarters for the company's mass-mid segment business in China.

It was the first Fortune 500 company to set up an independent legal entity in Wuhan since the epidemic outbreak.

The city held its first "cloud investment fair" on April 8, with 69 key projects worth a total of 245.1 billion yuan (about 34.6 billion U.S. dollars) signed. A hundred major projects started two days later.

As the main pillar industry in Hubei, the revival of the automotive industry is key to stabilizing the province's economy and promoting its development.

Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co., Ltd., a joint venture between China's Dongfeng Motor Corp. and Japan's Honda Motor Co., resumed production on March 11 and has so far restored its production capacity to the peak level of more than 3,000 vehicles per day, with one new car rolled off the production line every 50 seconds.

The automaker also announced in mid-April that its third factory had gone into operation in Wuhan, which will initially be capable of producing 120,000 cars a year and its annual capacity will reach 240,000 in the future.

The rebooting of the leading enterprise has spurred the whole industrial chain, driving more than 500 auto-parts suppliers back to work.

ANTI-VIRUS A NEW NORMAL

Though the emergency response level has been lowered in Wuhan, its anti-virus measures have remained. Nearly 20,000 community workers, over 50,000 volunteers and 50,000 officials and police officers were sent to prevent infection in over 1,400 residential communities across the city.

"Everyone, no matter how familiar, has to show me their pass card in or out," said a security guard at a community in Wuchang District. In addition to the pass, one has to take temperature, scan a QR code and register to pass the gate.

During rush hours, more community workers will be sent to take temperature and register residents and vehicles in and out.

Residents in Wuhan use automatic sterilizer to disinfect their packages taken from delivery lockers, and keep some distance at shop entrances while waiting for body temperature measurement and code scanning. Everybody behaves. Enditem
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday condoled the death of 14 migrant workers from the state in a train accident in Maharashtra and announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

At least 14 migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, who were sleeping on rail tracks, were mowed down by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra in the early hours of Friday.

Two other labourers were injured in the accident.

I have spoken to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and demanded a probe into the accident besides aid to their families, Chouhan said and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased labourers.

A team of officials will be dispatched to Aurangabad to take care of the injured migrants and make necessary arrangements for their treatment, he said.

I am also in touch with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to get updates about the treatment and other arrangement being made for them, he said.

The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh. They slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion, an official said.
The Supreme Court on Friday observed that states should consider indirect sale of liquor, either through online or home delivery mechanism to ensure social distancing norms are not violated.

The top court, however, refused to issue any order in this regard.

The observation came from a three-judge bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by one Guruswamy Nataraj objecting to across the counter sale of liquor.

The petiton argued that the government cannot meddle with human life by allowing crowds to gather outside liquor shops.

As the government took first steps to relax the Covid-19 lockdown to revive the economy, hundreds queued up at liquor stores in New Delhi and other cities.

Some stores in parts of Delhi had to be closed due to the large number of people gathered there.

The Delhi government even imposed a special tax of 70 per cent on retail liquor purchases to deter large gatherings but that did not stop people from coming out and heading towards the liquor shops.

It then introduced a token system which people can buy online. The move is aimed at stopping people from coming out and gather outside liquor shops.

The Uttar Pradesh government recently announced an increase in prices of all categories of liquor, including country liquor, to mop up additional revenue of Rs 2,350 crore.

A similar plea has also been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking direction to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi to start online sale of liquor to ensure social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The petitioner sought direction to the Delhi government to evolve a proper policy to start the online sale of liquor and deliver it to the consumers homes at a time when the entire machinery of the country is tirelessly working to contain the Covid-19 outbreak.

After the lockdown was extended till May 17, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued new guidelines allowing liquor shops to open.
The New York Times interviewed dozens of workers in Mr. Bidens office in the early 1990s and was unable to find anyone who remembered any kind of sexual misconduct against Ms. Reade or anyone else in the office. Five friends, former co-workers and family members have come forward to corroborate that Ms. Reade told them of an episode of either assault or harassment.

President Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women, weighed in on the situation Friday morning on Fox & Friends. Asked if he thought Ms. Reades accusation was false, he said: I dont know if its false or not. Joe is going to have to prove whatever he has to prove or she has to prove it but thats a battle he has to fight.

The court records from 1996 recap the tumultuous 14-month marriage of Ms. Reade and Mr. Dronen, who met while they were both young staffers on Capitol Hill in 1993. The couple later settled in Morro Bay, Calif., along with their young daughter.

In a filing denying many of the claims Ms. Reade made against him, Mr. Dronen cataloged her claims of having been victimized, first by her separated parents and up to her Senate experience  an account he said that she had first told him when they worked in Washington.

Petitioner told me that she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senators office and left her position, Mr. Dronen said, according to the document. I was sympathetic to her needs when she asked me for help, and assisted her financially, and allowed her to stay at my apartment with my roommate while she looked for work.

In an emailed statement sent to the The New York Times this week, Mr. Dronen said he wished Ms. Reade well, but declined to discuss details of their marriage. Tara and I ended our relationship over two decades ago under difficult circumstances. I am not interested in reliving that chapter of my life, the statement said.

The mention in the court complaint of Mr. Bidens chief of staff  and a purported agreement with Ms. Reade  appears to refer to Ted Kaufman, a longtime aide to Mr. Biden.
A total of 698 Indian nationals stranded in the Maldives due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions were evacuated on Friday from the scenic island nation on an Indian Navy warship.

India's High Commissioner in the Maldives, Sunjay Sudhir expressed his deep gratitude to the Indian Navy, the Government of Maldives and its agencies for extending complete cooperation for the success of the massive evacuation of Indian nationals.

An Indian Navy spokesman said there were a number of pregnant women and children among the evacuees who will travel to Kochi in Kerala.

The INS Jalashwa, the Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu'.

Sudhir said a second Navy ship INS Magar will leave for Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on Sunday with 200 Indians. He said the exercise will be repeated next week by the Indian Navy warships.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is part of the repatriation mission launched by the Indian Navy to bring Indian citizens home from foreign shores, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

Immigration procedures of the passengers were carried out in the Hulhumale' Ferry Terminal in Male City. "Fantastic job by the entire team of @VelanaAirport for the safe repatriation of Indian nationals!" the high commission tweeted.

The massive evacuation exercise is testimony to Maldives-India friendship, it said in another tweet.

Several Indians who are travelling by the warship lauded the evacuation plan launched by the government.

"It is a very great thing that the High Commission did for us and we did not have any issues till now. We got everything with proper guidelines, all the things done by the High Commission," Pradeep, who hails from Palakkad, said. He works in a resort in Male.

"Jamsheed from Kerala thanks Govt of India, Govt of Kerala & @indiannavy for this historic Operation to repatriate #Indian nationals from the #Maldives," the High Commission of India in Maldives tweeted.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff, it noted.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is conducting its biggest ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad, including from the US, the UAE and the UK.

The High Commission in Male on its Facebook page said, MVR 600 or an equivalent amount of USD 40 will be charged as the Evacuation Services Charge from each person listed for repatriation by INS Jalashwa.

"This amount would be collected at the service fee collection counter after completion of the Immigration process at the Velana International Airport. Kindly carry exact change to avoid delay/ inconvenience," the post said.

Meanwhile, all arrangements as per government guidelines are in place at Cochin Port to facilitate the arrival of those who are evacuated from Maldives via the sea route, officials in Kochi said.

Before arrival at Cochin, on board the vessel, the Navy will get the self e-declaration data filled by all passengers and also identify the passengers symptomatic of COVID-19.

The symptomatic passengers will be disembarked first, followed by other passengers (district wise) in batches of 50 persons, the Port Trust said.

Separate zone has been earmarked for the symptomatic patients.

The passengers disembarked will undergo further statutory verifications for clearances inside the Samudrika Cruise Terminal where Port Health Organisation will verify the self declaration forms, the Port Trust said.

All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on the Aarogya Setu app.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

On Thursday, two special flights from the UAE carrying a total of 363 Indian nationals, including nine infants, left for Kerala as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad.
Since its establishment in 1947, the Bulldog Battalion has equipped students with the skills needed to lead on and off the battlefield. Those who train with the Bulldog Battalion are among the nation's most regarded military officers who have blazed trails for others to follow.
Survivors of the Aurangabad train accident frantically raised alarm to alert their group members sleeping on tracks about a fast-approaching freight train, but it all went in vain as 16 of them were crushed to death at the crack of dawn on Friday.

IMAGE: Police personnel inspect the spot after a goods train ran over a group of migrant workers while they were sleeping on the tracks, in Aurangabad district, on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo

Chilling details emerged about the tragedy involving a group of migrant workers who were on their way to native places in Madhya Pradesh on foot from Maharashtra and had taken a break to rest on rail tracks out of sheer fatigue.

The accident left 16 migrant workers dead and one injured while three others survived. All of them were working in a steel manufacturing in Jalna, a district adjoining Aurangabad in central Maharashtra, and were heading home in the amidst of coronavirus-enforced lockdown, officials said.

"A group of 20 stranded labourers started walking from Jalna. They decided to take rest and most of them lied on rail tracks. Three of them were taking rest in a nearby plain area.

"After some time, these three saw a goods train coming and immediately raised the alarm but it went unheard," Superintendent of Police Mokshada Patil told PTI.

"I had a word with the survivors. They started walking from Jalna and tried to reach Bhusaval on earlier night which is around 30-40 km away from the place of the accident (near Karmad near Aurangabad)," Patil said.

"The three survivors, who were resting a little away, tried to wake up the people sleeping on the tracks by frantically shouting, but that provide futile as the train ran over them," the police officer said.

"This is an unfortunate incident. Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station," she added.

The survivors were identified as Inderlal Dhurve (20 district Mandla), Virendrasingh Gaur (27, district Umaria) and Shivman Singh Gaur (27, district Shahdol) and the injured Sajjan Singh (resident of Khajeri district).

A video clip from the scene of the tragedy showed the mutilated bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader and state minister Sandipan Bhumre and Member of Legislative Assembly Ambadas Danve visited the Government Medical College and Hospital in Aurangabad and met the injured.

Danve said, "The state government is making efforts to send migrant workers to their home states. People should have patience."

The deceased includeed Dhansingh Gond, Nirlesh Singh Gond, Buddharaj Singh Gond, Rabendra Singh Gond, Rajbohram Paras Singh, Dharmendra Singh Gond, Shreedayal Singh Suresh Singh Kaul, Santosh Napit, Brijesh Bheyadin (all from Shahdol district), Bigendra Singh, Pradeep Singh Gond, Nemshah singh Munim singh (all Umaria district).

One of the deceased was identified as Acchelal Singh, but his native district was not yet known, police officials said, adding another vicitm was yet to be identified.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk speaks to the media next to its Model S.

Electric carmaker Tesla has entered into an agreement for a working capital loan of up to 4 billion yuan ($565.51 million) with a lender from China for its Shanghai car plant, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.

The loan, which will be provided by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, will be used only for expenditures related to production at the Shanghai plant, the filing said.

The factory is Tesla's first car manufacturing site outside the United States and is the centerpiece of its ambitions to boost sales in the world's biggest auto market and to avoid higher import tariffs imposed on U.S.-made cars.

Tesla had suspended production at its San Francisco Bay Area plant due to the broader impact of the coronavirus, and was told by the local county health department on Friday that it "must not reopen" as local lockdown measures remain in effect.
2019 Big Brother Nigeria housemate, Tacha Akide and fellow ex-housemate, Mercy Eke may have buried their hatchets and become friends according to latest event.

The duo have signed an endorsement deal with the same digital company.

Shortly after Mercy announced her own deal, Tacha who is widely viewer as a rival to the latter took to her comment section to write: wherever women gather together, failure is impossible.

Read Also: My Number One Wish Is To Put A Wedding Ring On Tachas Finger, Says Nollywood Actor

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We hope their fans who have pitched their tents separately have seen this.

See screenshot below:
The Assam government has decided to increase the excise duty on Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) by 25 per cent, state Industry Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said after a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

This will generate an additional income of Rs 1,000 crore for the state to meet the unexpected financial burden and expenditure arising out of the COVID-19 crisis, he said.

Many states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi have already hiked liquor prices to give boost to their fledging revenue income.

The Cabinet also decided that the tea industry will start operation in full strength maintaining social distancing norms as against the 50 per cent work force deployed since April 13.

At meeting the Cabinet also decided to give nod to the Assam Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020, and repeal the Assam Agricultural Produce Marketing Act 1972.

It further decided that the government will release fund for salary of Assam Agriculture Marketing Board if required.

The cabinet introduced fixed term employment, increase in minimum numbers of workers for implementation of Factories Act from 10 to 20 (with power) and 20 to 40 (without power), increase in minimum number of workers for implementation of Contract labour Act from 20 to 50, besides increase in shift hours from 8 to 12 hours during COVID-19 period.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Minister Sarbananda



Sonowal on Friday invited companies to set up their units in Assam as the state has surplus power to cater to their electricity needs and also business friendly ambience.

Sonowal said this while chairing a meeting here to assess the impact of COVID-19 on government-run Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL), Assam Power Generation Corporation Limited (APGCL) and Assam Electricity Grid Corporation Limited (AEGCL).

Sonowal said though the state has been hit hard by the CoronaVirus pandemic, the unrelenting endeavour of the governments power companies has yielded power surplus of 350 megawatt.

The chief minister invited companies to invest in Assam and set up their units to explore the business-friendly ambience, including availability of energy.

The chief minister also hailed the role of every personnel of the power department and the power companies in maintaining their high standard of professionalism and providing uninterrupted power supply to the state which is battling coronavirus infection.

Sonowal said, "...COVID-19 has hit the state hard with its cascading effect on the life and livelihood of the people, any lapse on the part of the power department would have relegated the state governments astute management of the viral infection.

He asked the functionaries of the department to sustain their good performance in the coming days and lift the morale of all staff working at far-flung areas of the state.

Sonowal also took stock of the progress of ongoing power projects like 120 MW Lower Kopili Hydro Electric Project, 70 MW Amguri Solar Power Project, 20 MW Namrup Solar Power Project, 100 MW Namrup Replacement Power Project.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the worlds leading exhibition for refrigeration technology, Chillventa is the central, worldwide meeting place for the refrigeration, air-conditioning, ventilation and heat pump community. In her interview, Petra Wolf, member of the Management Board of NurnbergMesse, provides insights into the current situation of Chillventa and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on trade fairs. She describes how important it is, precisely now, to maintain an intensive dialog with customers and learn their opinions.

Ms. Wolf, you recently assumed responsibility for Chillventa as Member of the Management Board in these exceedingly difficult times. What challenges must you as a trade fair organiser and NurnbergMesse as a trade fair company confront?

Petra Wolf: The worldwide trade fair business is being buffeted by rough seas. I think this metaphor describes the situation very well. Nearly 2,400 exhibitions have been cancelled worldwide. In Germany alone, it has been necessary to cancel or postpone more than 469 exhibitions; for us at the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg, the number is around 20. This has never happened in the history of national and international exhibitions, nor to us in Nuremberg. On 15 April 2020, for example, the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry (AUMA, Ausstellungs- und Messe-Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft e.V.) reported that trade fair cancellations in Germany could lead to losses of EUR 9.3 billion for the overall economy. 76,000 jobs would be affected, EUR 1.5 billion in tax revenue lost. This is a heavy blow to the trade fair industry and to the economy in general, especially for those who are directly connected to this industry and depend on trade fairs, including stand construction companies, service partners of the trade fair companies, restauranteurs and hoteliers, to name only a few.

How do you assess the current situation of the trade fair industry?

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are confronted with major, unprecedented challenges, which are requiring us to make new and difficult decisions every day, and not only as trade fair organisers. We are currently experiencing great uncertainty and we are constantly hearing questions from many sectors about how, when, and whether events can be held. Here in Bavaria, large events have been banned until the end of August. As you can imagine, this is a matter of serious concern for us and our customers, especially when it comes to autumn events like Chillventa. Nevertheless, Chillventa continues to develop at a very good level. As of today, 4 May 2020, more than 800 exhibitors from around the world have committed to participate: That is the same level as at the same time in 2018. That is a great sign in these difficult times.

Do you see light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel?

We are unable to tell what will happen next, but we hope very much that we can hold trade fairs again in September. As industry and communication platforms, trade fairs in particular will be essential for quickly and sustainably reopening and growing the economy in the autumn. We quickly grasped the importance of talking with our customers and holding intensive discussions with them. We communicate closely with our highly dedicated Chillventa Advisory Board, as well as many Chillventa exhibitors, associations, and institutions. This gives us a nuanced sense of sentiment in the industry.

With whom else are you speaking?

Together with our Chillventa Advisory Board, we quickly agreed that it is essential to ask all our customers, including both exhibitors and visitors, for their opinions. The Exhibition Advisory Board is composed of exhibiting companies and institutions and is a representative cross section of the entire industry in all segments of Chillventa. (www.chillventa.de/partners). In addition, of course, we are in close communication with our subsidiaries in Brazil, China, India, Italy, North America and Austria, as well as our exceptionally large international network of more than 100 representatives around the world. This too gives us a very good and regular sense of what our exhibitors and trade visitors are thinking.

How will you go about doing this?

We will contact all registered exhibitors and visitors of Chillventa 2018 and ask them what they think. In the coming weeks, we will ask our customers to answer our questions about holding Chillventa. We would appreciate it if your readers would participate in the survey as well: www.ntgt.de/a/s.aspx?s=417065X80828929X41122. Together with the Chillventa Advisory Board, we have given thought to the question of how we think Chillventa can proceed. We will not hold an event against the wishes of the industry, but only with and for the community. The results will serve as a gauge for our decisions related to Chillventa, which we will make in consultation with our Advisory Board in the best interests of the refrigeration, air-conditioning, ventilation and heat pump community.

How can Chillventa be held in these times?

The Chillventa to be held in October 2020 will certainly be different from what we are accustomed to. The worldwide travel restrictions could possibly still be in effect in the autumn. In all probability, Chillventa will be considerably more national in terms of both exhibitors and visitors. Moreover, we will need to get used to keeping physical distance and wearing mouth-and-nose protection. In any case, we will heed and implement all recommendations of the government authorities, the WHO, and the Robert Koch Institute. We are in close communication with all relevant ministries and authorities and thus we will be able to react quickly.

In addition, we will implement an extensive safety and hygiene plan to protect all our guests at the exhibition. This plan covers a wide range of measures from mandatory facemasks to hand hygiene. Managing crowd density will also be an important aspect for maintaining sufficient distancing. We have already developed new concepts for this and will communicate them shortly. (www.chillventa.de/measures). Finally, it cannot be ruled out that Chillventa cannot be held this year due to official restrictions. We have also included this contingency in our considerations. For this case, we are already working on digital solutions for Chillventa and the Chillventa CONGRESS, although we do not think that a virtual trade fair is a substitute or alternative for face-to-face interactions.

About Petra Wolf

In her function as Member of the Management Board and head of Expo & Conference NurnbergMesse, Petra Wolf is responsible for the successful Chillventa as the leading international, refrigeration and air-conditioning exhibition. This also includes the worldwide refrigeration, air-conditioning, ventilation and heat pump community. In addition to Chillventa, other events include the European Heat Pump Summit, ACREX India, and REFCOLD INDIA. She is also responsible for the Building & Construction Cluster. This includes numerous leading international trade fairs and product families such as the combined trade fairs FENSTERBAU FRONTALE and HOLZ-HANDWERK, as well as Chillventa, European Heat Pump Summit, Stone+tec, GaLaBau, Feuertrutz, and eltec.
The Wire aired on HBO for five successful seasons. The show depicted the challenges of residents in Baltimore city engulfed in crime, poverty, and drugs  and the police departments struggle to contain widespread violence. The storylines on the show registered with viewers and it remains a favorite years after it went off the air. The majority of the content is due to co-writer, Ed Burns, and his experience working in law enforcement and in education.

The Wire cast and creators 2008 | Getty Images

Who is Ed Burns?

Prior to his work as a television writer, Burns worked in the public service sector of Baltimore for over two decades. After serving in the Vietnam War and then worked for the Baltimore Police Department.

David Simon, Creator/Executive Producer, Ed Burns and Robert Wisdom | Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic

He worked in several divisions, including homicide and narcotics, and was eventually promoted to detective. After retirement, Burns transitioned into teaching in the Baltimore public school system as a teacher of seventh and eighth-graders. He became inspired to teach after hearing of the need for quality education in the inner city.

Teaching was not difficult for Burns. Instead, hes been open about the emotional toll his students experiences had on him. His classroom was often filled with students from broken homes, students involved in street activity, and others who were behind academically.

Producer Ed Burns, actor Wendell Pierce, actor Chad Coleman and executive producer David Simon 2007 | Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images

His work in war, the police department, and as a teacher became the foundation for his work on The Wire.

The Wire was loosely based off of Ed Burnss work as a Baltimore detective

Burns used his time in public service as inspiration for a bulk of the content viewers loved on The Wire. Each season focused on a different element of Baltimore: homicide, narcotics, Baltimore public school system, and the Baltimore docs.

While co-writer David Simon was able to use his experience working as a writer for The Baltimore Sun newspaper to ensure the atmosphere of the city was as true to life as what he witnessed through his reporting, the meat of the storylines came from Burns.

Simon explained to Salon shortly after the shows premiere just how instrumental Burns was. He [Burns] did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a years time, into violent drug traffickers, he said. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department.

As they continued working on the show, they became increasingly frustrated with other corrupt institutions, including sexual assault that was running rampant in the Catholic Church and figured out ways to implement more stories about corrupt corporations and broken institutions overall.

It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show, he said.

As the show progressed and more settings aside from street life and drugs were introduced, Burns drew from his work as a teacher.

Burns told NPR in 2006 that the premise of using school-aged kids as central characters was to go back to when choices are made. According to Burns, middle school was the perfect place to start as its a testing ground for the street, He also wanted to show the harsh realities of what students face, saying:

I dont think an audience could handle going into a middle school in Baltimore for a week. This is the tragedy of their school experience. They spend time in class warring with the teacher. Theyre suspended. They go to time-out rooms, and then they hit the streets, and within five years, a lot of them are victims of murders or are committing murders, he says.

The Wire was critically acclaimed for its raw storytelling and stellar performances by the actors. Despite never winning any awards during its run, the show is considered one of the greatest television works of all time.
NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian Life) announced today that Deanna M. Mulligan will retire as Chief Executive Officer at year-end after a decade in the role, and will be succeeded by the company's President, Andrew J. McMahon.

The transition, approved by Guardian's Board of Directors, is consistent with the leadership succession plan announced last November.

"Deanna has been an exceptional leader and we are grateful for her enormous contributions to growing our business, shaping our culture, and honoring the values and heritage that have guided Guardian for 160 years," said Guardian Lead Director Deborah Duncan. "In Andrew, we have a dynamic leader with deep industry knowledge and digital innovation experience that are critical to accelerating our growth in a rapidly changing competitive environment."

Ms. Mulligan joined Guardian in 2008 to lead the company's Individual Life & Disability business. She was named President and Chief Operating Officer in November 2010 and appointed CEO in July 2011.

"I am honored to have led this remarkable company for the last 10 years and I am grateful to the Board for the opportunity," Ms. Mulligan said. "I look forward to working with Andrew in the coming months to position Guardian for future success."

Mr. McMahon joined Guardian in 2017 as Executive Vice President, Strategy and Customer Development. He was named President last November.

"I look forward to building on the strong foundation Deanna has created at Guardian over the last decade and am grateful for the confidence she and the Board have placed in me," Mr. McMahon said. "I am committed to making the Guardian of the future even stronger."

About Guardian

Every day, Guardian provides Americans the security they deserve through our insurance and wealth management products and services. Since our founding in 1860, our long-term view has helped our customers prepare for whatever life brings whether starting a family, planning for the future or taking care of employees. Today, we're a Fortune 250 mutual company and a leading provider of life, disability, dental, and other benefits for individuals, at the workplace and through government sponsored programs. The Guardian community of over 9,000 employees and our network of over 2,500 financial representatives is committed to serving with expertise when, where and how our clients need us. Our commitments rest on a strong financial foundation, which at year-end 2019 included $9.3 billion in capital and $1.7 billion in operating income. For more information, please visit guardianlife.com or follow us on Facebook , LinkedIn , Twitter and YouTube .

For media inquiries, please contact:

Gus Carlson: 203.979.5140

or

Derek Aney: 914.595.5151

Email: [email protected]

GUARDIAN and the Guardian Logo are registered trademarks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. Copyright 2020 The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, N.Y. 2020-100869 Exp 05/22.

SOURCE The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
President Donald Trump on Friday again denied the U.S. was behind a bungled coup operation in Venezuela, as he boasted if the U.S. were behind it it would have been an 'invasion.'

'I wouldnt send a small little group. No, no, no. It would be called an army,' Trump said.

Trump during an interview on Fox News ridiculed the idea he would rely on such a small operation, which undertook an apparent operation to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro that quickly fizzled.

'If we ever did anything with Venezuela, it wouldn't be that way. It would be slightly different. It would be called an invasion,' said President Trump Friday, once again denying any involvement in a botched coup operation in Venezuela

'I know nothing about it. I think the government has nothing to do with it at all, and I have to find out what happened,' Trump said.

'If we ever did anything with Venezuela, it wouldn't be that way. It would be slightly different. It would be called an invasion,' Trump continued.

'We have nothing to do with it,' Trump told Ainsley Earhardt during an extended call-in on 'Fox & Friends.' He told her: 'If I wanted to go into Venezuela I wouldn't make a secret about it. I'd go in and they would do nothing about it.'

Trump said the incursion 'was not a good attack,' carried out by a 'rogue group' that included Venezuelans and 'people from other countries.'

Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, an American citizen and three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, is seen in a video promoting his company, Silvercorp USA.

Luke Denman, 34, was arrested alongside fellow American Airan Berry, 41, six Venezuelan mercenaries as part of the foiled coup of Venezuela. He appeared on Venezuelan TV on Wednesday speaking about the failed attempt

Goudreau had associations with former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller (l)

Venezuelan authorities put the arrests on TV

Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, an American citizen and three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, is seen in photos from his company's Instagram page. He runs Silvercorp USA

US President Donald Trump listens to Director of Oval Office Operations Keith Schiller (L) as he prepares to leave after welcoming the Clemson Tigers, the 2016 NCAA Football National Champions, at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 12, 2017

'I saw the pictures on a beach. It wasn't led by General George Washington, obviously,' he said, referring to the first U.S. president, often considered a military genius. 'This was not a good attack.'

A former U.S. soldier captured in Venezuela has said he was contracted by a Florida security firm to seize control of Caracas' airport and bring in a plane to fly Maduro to the United States.

According to a document published by the Washington Post on Thursday, members of the country's opposition party negotiated a $213 million deal with the company, Silvercorp USA, to invade the country and overthrow Maduro.

The group's leader, former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, has claimed responsibility for masterminding the effort.

He has been pictured providing security for Trump at three of his campaign rallies.

Silvercorp's Instagram account shows Goudreau working at rallies in Pennsylvania in 2018 in Houston, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina.

It has also emerged that Goudreau struck on the idea of a coup after meeting with Trump's longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, who worked at the Trump Organization and then followed Trump to the White House before returning to private life.

In May, Goudreau went with Schiller to a Miami meeting with Lester Toledo, an aide to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Schiller also attended a March 2019 meeting at the University Club in Washington with Toledo, the Associated Press reported.

The White House says Schiller cut off all contact with Goudreau after the meeting.

Nevertheless, Schiller's involvement, even if tenuous and aborted, connects the botched operation to someone who has long been in Trump's inner circle.

Schiller traveled with Trump extensively before and during his presidential campaign, then followed Trump to the White House. As newly released transcripts reveal, Schiller accompanied Trump to the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 in Moscow.

Venezuela has charged two former US soldiers with terrorism and conspiracy for allegedly taking part in a failed bid to topple President Nicolas Maduro, the attorney general said on Friday.

Luke Alexander Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, were among 17 people captured by the Venezuelan military, which said it had thwarted an attempted invasion by mercenaries in the early hours of Sunday.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab said they had been charged with 'terrorism, conspiracy, illicit trafficking of weapons of war and (criminal) association,' and could face 25-30 years in prison.

Eight attackers were reportedly killed in the incident.

Saab said Venezuela had requested an international arrest warrant for the capture of former US army medic Jordan Goudreau, who allegedly organized and trained the mercenary force.

Maduro has accused Trump of being behind the alleged invasion  and Saab said Friday the Venezuelans involved would be tried for 'conspiracy with a foreign government.'

Venezuelas chief prosecutor ordered the arrest Friday of Goudreau and two opposition figures living in the U.S. for their purported role in the botched operation.

Venezuela, whose government the U.S. does not recognize, is also seeking Juan Jose Rendon and Sergio Vergara, two U.S.-based advisers to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

'They are living in impunity,' Saab said. 'In tranquility over there.'

U.S. law enforcement is investigating Goudreau, though it remains unclear if he will charged.
Have Sheriff Offices in North Carolina, possibly even Beaufort County's Sheriff Office, become too political in the discharging of their sworn constitutional duties?

No, the sheriff is a constitutional officer.

Yes, the Sheriff Office, on strong occasion, often reverts back to political patronage in the dispensation of their sworn constitutional duties.
Despite pledges from the big social media companies to remove dangerous coronavirus misinformation, from false causes to false cures, Silicon Valley and fact-checkers around the world are struggling to stem the flow of false claims about the pandemic. Get caught up on the morning's virus news here.
A Deputy Trade and Industry Minister, Carlos Ahenkorah said although the government would continue to welcome criticisms, they would however not accept the criticisms that were without alternative suggestions.

The evidence is a daily reality for us. When President Akufo-Addo was in opposition, he came up with the groundbreaking policies, including Free SHS, one village one dam, One district one factory and Planting for Food and Jobs. Mr. Mahama is also in opposition now, what groundbreaking policies has he been able to bring to the table? None, Carlos Ahenkorah said.

In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Friday, Mr Ahenkorah said the former President recently criticized the handling of COVID-19 pandemic and the economy and yet was unable to offer workable solutions.

He said since his defeat in the 2016 general election, the former President had not come up with extraordinary policies or programmes to show the people that they were wrong in voting him out.

He said Vice President Dr Mahamdu Bawumia's response to the former President's assertion on the economy was apt.

Responding to the former President, the Vice President said Mr. Mahama had no right to criticize the Government's handling of the Covid-19 relief when he was spending his time nit picking on everything that the Government did rather than helping with usable solutions.

The Vice President also compared Government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis to the former President's handling of Ghana's crippling electricity crisis and said the former President had no grounds to criticize at all.

There have been public responses to the effect that the Vice President went off kilter with his comparison of 'dum sor' with Covid-19 but Mr Ahenkorah said the response was spot on.

We have a crisis on our hands and the government is holding the bull by the horn, why is it that the ordinary people are not complaining, but the former President is complaining about the way the Government is handling the issue? As the people approve of the Government's response, Mr. Mahama's negative response marks him out clearly as a man who can never help Ghana.

Mr Ahenkorah dared the former President to come up with workable solutions to the crisis that would have been better than what the Government is providing in its response to Covid-19.

He should bring his solution because he is a potential leader, what would he have done in this situation. Bring it up and let us compare and contrast! Mr. Ahenkorah said.

---GNA
A specialist tax-return service are reporting calls from their education and visa partners, querying payments which have been mistakenly made to former international students and J1 working holiday makers from Ireland as part of the US CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act.

Taxback.com says the scheme is a stimulus package which aims to support workers in the US (earning less than $75,000 per year) with a one-time payment of $1,200. The Irish tax experts say that, with approximately 14,000 J1 visas issued to Irish people in 2018/2019 and approximately 1,000 visas issued to Irish students to study in the US in the same period, this issue is relatively widespread and could have further ramifications for those looking to travel to the US in the future.

Laura McHugh of Taxback.com explained the situation,

Our US nonresident tax service helps over 100,000 nonresidents a year with their tax returns, and is now fielding lots of questions from concerned J1-visa partners and schools regarding non-residents receiving President Trumps recent stimulus package for COVID-19.

In the last week people are finding funds in their US bank accounts and are questioning why they are there. While this has come to the attention of some former students and J1-ers, we are advising the thousands of others that could be affected to check their US bank account, which may now be dormant, to see if they have received this payment.

Taxback.com say the crux of the matter is twofold - the first of which relates to previous J1 visa holders who spent time in the US in 2018 or 2019.

It is not uncommon for Irish J1-visa holders who spent a summer in the US to mistakenly file their end of year return as a resident. Most of these people will have submitted the return themselves through a US tax preparation software such as TurboTax and may not have been fully informed of their nonresident status. The result now is that these people will have automatically received the CARES payment  although they really shouldnt have.

Anyone who finds themselves in this situation should act to rectify it in two ways  firstly, by sending an email to the IRS to flag receipt of the payment and by refunding the money to the IRS. Secondly these people should also amend their previous tax return to a nonresident return in order to avoid any future repercussions.

Taxback.com say the second tranche of people affected are the international students who had been studying in the US in 2018/2019 but who have since left the country.

According to Ms. McHugh, This ones a little bit trickier to resolve as its unclear as of yet what the position is and it might be some time before we will receive clarification from the IRS. While you may be entitled to this money, as per the stated eligibility requirements of the payment, the IRS has yet to confirm whether they intended to send money to tax filers who are no longer US residents or earning US sourced income.

Whether the IRS will look to recoup this money in the coming months remains to be seen, though there is precedence for this  a similar situation arose in 2010 when the IRS clawed back funds two years after the stimulus was received in 2008. Its likely now that the IRS could stipulate that it must be accounted for on a 2020 tax return. Alternatively, accepting the money could also likely affect any future US visa application you submit.

Who is entitled to receive the CARES payment?

It can be claimed by US citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes (individuals who can pass the Substantial Presence Test) who have a valid Social Security Number (SSN) and who have filed their 2018 tax return (in 2019), or their 2019 return (in 2020)

Nonresident aliens are not eligible to receive this stimulus

Taxback.com say anyone impacted by this need not worry  if they take corrective action now there wont be any long-term ramifications.

If you have received the funds in error, and/or if this brings to light that you submitted an incorrect resident tax return, dont panic but do set the record straight. Return the payment and make an amended tax return. The IRS receives thousands of amended returns each year and the process of filing and amended return is relatively straightforward, advised Ms McHugh.
Greg Lauries New Believers Bible hits 10 million in sales milestone

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A version of the Bible geared toward recent converts to Christianity recently achieved 10 million in sales.

Tyndale House Publishers announced Wednesday that the New Believers Bible had reached the milestone, being honored with a Diamond Award by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

The New Believers Bible was originally released in 1996 and uses the New Living Translation, with notes written by Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.

Tyndale House Bible Brand Director Dave Thornton told The Christian Post in an interview that he was thrilled at the success of the Bible version.

Were also delighted that new Christians are able to deepen their relationship with God through His Word in both print and digital form, as well as in Spanish and Portuguese, he said.

Thornton saw the sales as indicating that so many new Christians were taking their first steps of faith with the helpful direction of Pastor Greg Laurie, and the easy-to-understand text of the New Living Translation.

We expected it to be a very important Bible, with such helpful notes and direction for new believers from Greg Laurie, he continued.

Predicting total sales over time is a difficult thing, so I dont think we had that in view when it was first published in 1996.

A portion of the sales come from Lauries own Harvest ministry, which often sends copies of the New Believers Bible out to those who have reached them with an interest in converting.

For example, according to Thornton, in March and April the online services of Harvest reported around 35,000 people who indicated their desire to follow Jesus Christ.

Each one of those new believers are sent a New Believers New Testament from the Harvest ministry, he explained.

The New Believers Bible is not the first Tyndale product to receive the Diamond Award. Others include the NLT Bible, The Living Bible, and the book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell.

In an emailed statement in response to the news, Laurie spoke of releasing the most recent edition of the New Believers Bible earlier this year.

And not only does it include my original notes, but Ive added many new ones to help todays readers better understand the power of the incredible story of creation, the fall of mankind, and redemption through Jesus Christ found throughout its pages, he stated.

I could not be more grateful for the chance to introduce this Bible to a new generation  of new believers.
Russian aggression against Ukraine, which led to the illegal occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas, is already lasting longer than World War 2.

Russia is elevating Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's role to justify its aggression against Ukraine.

"We regret the elevation of the role of Stalin in Russia. It pursues the goal of rehabilitation of a totalitarian state with a single unblemished leader at its head," Kuleba told the United Nations Security Council High-level Arria Formula meeting "75 Years from the End of the Second World War on European Soil" held via video link on Friday, May 8.

"It serves to imitate a sense of regime flawlessness, create an image of an external enemy and justify Moscow's aggression against neighbors, like Ukraine and Georgia, and the hybrid war against many other countries," the top diplomat stressed.

For a short while, Kuleba noted, there was hope that with the UN establishment, the use of force against territorial integrity or political independence of any state would be unimaginable.

Read also"Pragmatic calculation": Foreign Minister Kuleba names three tactical tasks in issue of Crimea de-occupation

"Alas, for some, including one of the UN Security Council permanent members, this commitment does not mean too much. The Russian aggression against Ukraine, which led to the illegal occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas, is already lasting longer than the Second World War. It resulted in over 13 000 people killed and more than 27000 wounded at the very heart of Europe," the foreign minister stated.

"Disregard for the historical truth and manipulation of the legacy of the WWII bear a striking resemblance of what was happening in Europe in the 1930s of the past century," Kuleba said. "This is a lesson to be learned again."

UNIAN memo. In March 2014, after deploying its troops, Russia occupied the Ukrainian Crimea and began to destabilize Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The Russian Federation has been supplying "DPR" and "LPR" terrorists with weapons, also deploying mercenaries and regular troops to the warzone in Donetsk and Luhansk regions where hostilities have been ongoing since mid-April 2014.
BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German exports declined the most on record in March as foreign demand was dampened by coronavirus, or Covid-19, pandemic, official data showed Friday. Exports fell by seasonally adjusted 11.8 percent month-on-month, in contrast to February's 1.2 percent rise, Destatis reported. This was the strongest decline since the beginning of the time series in August 1990. Economists had forecast a monthly decrease of 5 percent in March. Likewise, imports dropped 5.1 percent on month, the largest fall since January 2009. Economists had forecast imports to drop 4 percent after easing1.5 percent in February. Consequently, the trade surplus declined to a seasonally adjusted EUR 12.8 billion from EUR 21.4 billion a month ago. On a yearly basis, exports and imports decreased 7.9 percent and 4.5 percent respectively. On an unadjusted basis, the trade surplus fell to EUR 17.4 billion from EUR 22.3 billion in the same period last year. The current account showed a surplus of EUR 24.4 billion versus EUR 30.9 billion last year. 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.
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators have officially approved the first saliva test for coronavirus to be taken from home, the test's distributor said Friday.

Rutgers University researchers received US government clearance for the first saliva test to help diagnose COVID-19, last month.

Its private sector partner, Vault Health, began selling the test to patients (with a prescription) to collect their own saliva test at home, under the supervision of a telemedicine health professional.

Vault Health initially said that under the Trump administration's expansion of telemedicine, their protocol fits the FDA's definition of the sample being collected under provider supervision, despite the agency's warning that it had not approved any tests to be taken outside of a healthcare setting.

But Friday, the FDA updated its emergency use authorization for the spit test to specify that it is now approved for Americans to collect their own samples at home.

Vault has 10,000 tests available to send out and says that its labs have the capacity to run about that many a day.

A spokesperson told DailyMail.com that the company is working to expand its lab capacity so that it could run 50,000 tests a day.

The FDA updated its emergency use authorization for Vault Health's saliva test for coronavirus to let people collect their own samples at home with telehealth supervision (file)

Allowing people to collect their own samples at home can help minimize their potential exposure to the virus, as well as the exposure of health care workers to it.

However, some experts have voiced concerns voiced concerns that at-home sample collection opens the door for contamination, potentially leading to false positive or false negative results.

It comes after the FDA gave emergency use authorization for another at-home collection kit, the Pixel, made by Abbott, which uses a lower nasal swab.

But the collection of saliva samples is worlds easier than gathering the previously required samples, which had to be taken from far up the nostril toward the back of throat.

Vault started selling and shipping the first kits to patients who received prescriptions for them last month - before the FDA explicitly approved it to do so.

The FDA authorized the test under its emergency powers to quickly clear new tests and therapies to fight the outbreak, the New Jersey university said Monday.

The test initially will be available through hospitals and clinics affiliated with the school. The announcement comes as communities across the US continue to struggle with testing to help track and contain the coronavirus.

The current approach to screening for COVID-19 requires health care workers to take a swab from a patient's nose or throat.

To lessen infection risks, many hospitals and clinics instruct staff to discard gloves and masks after close contact with anyone who may have the virus. And many institutions are struggling with shortages of basic medical supplies, including gloves, masks and swabs.

In clinic settings, patients taking the new saliva test are given a plastic tube into which they spit several times. They then hand the tube back to the health care worker for laboratory processing.

'This prevents health care professionals from having to actually be in the face of somebody that is symptomatic,' said Andrew Brooks, who directs the Rutgers lab that developed the test.

An infectious disease expert not involved with the new test said it would help overcome some of the patient discomfort and difficulties in taking swab samples.

'You want to be in all types of situations with all types of options so that we can have as much testing as possible in whatever form is suitable,' said Dr Amesh Adalja of Johns Hopkins University. Adalja noted that similar saliva tests have helped expand testing for HIV and other conditions.

Rutgers tested the accuracy of its method by taking both saliva and swab samples from 60 patients. The results from patients' saliva samples had a 100% match with results from the swabs.

Vault said it has 10,000 test kits ready to ship and can analyze as many a day in its labs

Rutgers developed the laboratory method for the test using saliva collection kits from Spectrum Solutions, a Utah company that provides similar devices for DNA-based ancestry testing services.

The Rutgers lab can currently process 10,000 patient samples per day, according to Brooks.

In its authorization letter to Rutgers, the FDA said the test should only be performed 'in a health care setting under the supervision of a trained health care provider.'

Rutgers's partner, Vault Health, a men's health start-up, went ahead and sent out the newly-approved saliva test to patients' homes after they receive a prescription to be tested from a telemedicine professional.

Its CEO, Jason Feldman, believed that the way his company is going about distributing sample collection kits for people to use at home doesn't conflict with the FDA's insistence on the setting and supervision required for the collection of a sample to be tested for coronavirus.

'What we're doing is managing the whole process very medically,' Feldman told DailyMail.com in an earlier interview.

'A doctor prescribes the test to you' - virtually - 'you don't open the kit until you meet with a practitioner and then you verify your ID and the bar code on the kit itself' - also virtually.

Feldman's said that anywhere you're having a telemedicine appointment is now a health care setting.

'This is fundamentally different from what is traditionally thought of as at-home collection because it's being supervised by a telehealth provider,' he says.

Effectively, Vault was banking on seeing 'health care setting' through the lens of the Trump administration's expansion of telehealth benefits and relaxation of some privacy laws to allow for this.

It may have been a risk at the time, but Friday's FDA decision suggests that the agency agrees with Vault's interpretation.

Feldman said that there are tens of thousands of collection kits ready to ship for $150 a piece. Each kit is intended to be used while on a video call with a provider, then shipped back to the lab at Rutgers within 48 hours, where several thousand tests an be analyzed each week.

He says that within a matter of 10 days, the company and its partners an wholly replace its stock of the sample collection kits.

'There's no reason that should limit or slow down the process' Feldman says.

'We do believe that we've designed this for the way that regulators would want it to be done.

'There's no mythology to it.'
Mayor William Peduto has released the following statement on Governor Tom Wolfs announcement that he is easing COVID-19 restrictions in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County:

I want to thank Governor Wolf for recognizing all that the greater Pittsburgh community has done to mitigate the spread of this pandemic, and allowing us to take initial steps toward reopening our city and our economy. But we are far from beating this  Pittsburgh residents, workers and visitors need to keep focusing on social distancing, not leaving home if they are sick, wearing masks, washing hands and generally just being smart about fighting this still-spreading disease.

We owe it to our citys heroic medical personnel and first responders to keep being vigilant, and we must do much more to test the greater population and to contact trace anyone who has tested positive for the virus. I have offered the assistance of the City of Pittsburgh to help implement these needed testing and tracing measures.

For more information from the Governors office on rules for communities in the yellow phase of reopening during the pandemic, see the guidelines on phasing at https://www.governor.pa.gov/process-to-reopen-pennsylvania/, and the guidelines for businesses https://www.governor.pa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200504-COVID-19-Business-Guidance.pdf.

For more information on the Citys response to COVID-19 and a data and operations timeline on City actions see the City of Pittsburghs coronavirus webpage at https://pittsburghpa.gov/mayor/covid-updates.
AleksandarNakic

Child care in the U.S. is becoming an almost indelible problem. Even before the pandemic, families struggled to find affordable child care. Now they scramble to find any care at all. "One of the most challenging aspects for parents these last few months was how quickly schools and daycare centers closed and therefore, how little time they had to plan," said Tim Allen, CEO of Care.com, a network of caregivers. Almost immediately, many parents became stopgap teachers and child-care providers, all the while juggling working from home. "This pandemic could have a catastrophic toll on America's child-care system," said Simon Workman, director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a policy organization in Washington, D.C.

The Center has new research estimating that the pandemic could permanently wipe out half the country's licensed child-care slots  about 4.5 million places. Particularly hard hit would be Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, which would lose more than 60% of their states' child-care supply. The implications for working families will be profound, according to Workman, especially for women, "who shoulder a disproportionate share of in-home family care-giving responsibilities."

'How are we going to make it back to normal?'

Yvonne Ruey Source: Yvonne Ruey

Caught between an office that hopes to reopen soon and her daughter's need for supervision, Yvonne Nguyen Ruey, 36, feels she may be asked to choose. Her daughter, a second-grader, still needs a lot of guidance with schoolwork. "I'm scared to lose my position but at the same time cannot just leave my daughter," Ruey said. Ruey, a dental hygienist in Los Angeles County, points out that she is in one of the highest-risk categories for contracting Covid-19. "If they decide to open, I have to say yes, I have to return," she said. "My husband is working at home in video production, but he's in meetings all day. "No way he can take time off and prepare food and snacks."

The office has been asking who's available, and Ruey, as well as other staffers who are parents, are anxious. The practice is asking for a stark available/not available status, and Ruey is afraid the dentist will choose the hygienists without young kids. "I feel as if I have to choose my daughter or work, and none of the camps or schools are open," she said. "How are we going to make it back to normal?"

Summertime blues?

This summer could look quite a bit different, Allen says. If camps and daycare centers stay closed or shelter-in-place guidelines remain in effect, online resources will flourish. "There is an endless array of summer programming to meet any interest, and teach everything from teamwork to problem solving," Allen said. "We're seeing camp and program directors getting super-creative." Some offerings Allen has seen include online summer camps for music and video production, forming rock bands or producing puppet shows with full props and sets.

Next in child care

vgajic

There's no one answer to the child-care conundrum. Allen anticipates that more families will turn to in-home care when parents return to their workplaces. In-home care has the advantage of mitigating some health concerns. "It controls the number of people with whom your child has contact," he said. "It allows a management of your and your child's environment, such as strict house rules on hand-washing and preventative measures such as wearing a mask." Beyond the specific amount to pay for child care, says Tarif Carson, a certified financial planner at Facet Wealth in Norristown, Pennsylvania, the top concerns are safety, logistics and overall finances. More from Invest in You:

Three ways to make an uncertain income more certain

If you think your job is on the chopping block, here's what to do

This simple financial plan makes it easier to get through tough times "The pandemic is here, but it's not going to last forever," Carson said. Take a broad look at all the factors in your situation, from your monthly budget to future plans. "If you were planning on going on vacation, maybe the savings you got back from [a canceled trip] could be earmarked to bring someone into the home [to help with child care]." Carson's 2-year-old daughter was in daycare, but the suspended payment for that service means cash is freed up for other purposes. Parents with some control over their work can try to create a more flexible time arrangement. Carson tweaked his schedule so that two days a week he works in the evenings and spends time with his daughter during the day.

Uncertain future

Jessica Prochniak, 35, is waiting to find out if her child's day care center will reopen. Source: Jessica Prochniak
As shelter in place in the Bay Area stretches on, more and more restaurants have entered the takeout and delivery game in an effort to stay afloat in a world where dine-in service feels like something from the distant past.

Even Michelin-starred restaurants like SingleThread in Healdsburg have gotten in on it, not only to keep staff employed but to serve the immediate community. Some restaurants have come up with new ways to package dishes, often in a family-style meal format. And others have been strategizing ways to forgo the often costly delivery fees charged by third-party services by having in-house staff do all the driving.

Each of the restaurants weve reviewed for this article has tackled the major logistical challenges of shelter in place in their own way, but theyve all come to terms with the fact that, for now, takeout and delivery are the lifeblood of their businesses.

From a diners point of view, its hard to understate the importance of switching dinner options up once in a while. (Are you really going to get pizza, again?) In a way, were living in the golden age of takeout, so weve been checking out a mix of new and classic spots , in the hope of introducing a bit of variety to your once-a-week splurge. Here are some of our favorites.

P.S. When possible, we highly recommend that you call restaurants directly for pickup or delivery (if available). This will ensure that the bulk of your money will be going straight to the restaurant, not to a third-party delivery broker.

Soleil Ho / The Chronicle

Gold Mirror

Old-school, red sauce Italian food is very well-suited to travel; anyone whos carried a tray of lasagna to a housewarming party could tell you that much. So Gold Mirror, the 50-year-old Sunset District institution, makes for an excellent takeout spot. The restaurant has been offering a truncated menu and curbside pickup since the beginning of shelter in place, so its system is well-developed: Cones block off a space in front of the restaurant for your car, and the person running out your food offers fresh disposable gloves that you can use to handle the bags and sign the check. Even in the absence of traditional dine-in service, small gestures like this go a long way toward making people feel cared for  which is the definition of service, right?

While the nightly specials are tempting, the a la carte Family Meal menu is where its at. Eggplant parmigiana ($15) is cooked low and slow until the layers of eggplant, marinara sauce, Parmesan and mozzarella together take on the consistency of a gooey vegetable pate. A hefty, saucy block of lasagna ($15), large enough to feed two with a salad, has the soothing powers of a weighted blanket. Pro tip: If you spend $100 or more, you get a free bottle of wine.

Soleil Ho

Gold Mirror. Pickup available 4-8:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. 800 Taraval St., San Francisco. 415-564-0401 or www.thegoldmirrorsf.com

Hina Yakitori/Torima

Soleil Ho / The Chronicle

It took a while for Hina to get back in action, but a month after shelter in place, the tasting menu-only yakitori spot in NoPa retooled its offerings into a bento box delivery service called Torima. Theres only one option  a yakitori bento ($25) with five skewers (various chicken bits and cherry tomato), sweet-and-savory ground chicken, short grain rice and radish pickles. You can flesh out your order with sweets from Oui Oui Macaron and your choice of sake or beer, and the order form has an option to pay out gratuity specifically to the Hina staff. The custom-designed, recyclable bento box has a cheerful yellow design and a handy compartment for disposable wooden chopsticks. Imagine a Happy Meal, but for adults working at home in their pajamas.

So hows the chicken? Though nothing can top the satisfaction of eating a piping-hot skewer just after it comes off the grill, that clean-tasting char that distinguishes chef Tommy Clearys approach to yakitori comes through in those skewers. This is an accessible opportunity to check out the notoriously hard-to-book restaurants brand of chicken cookery.

S.H.

Torima. Delivery available noon-3 p.m. and 5-7 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday. 808 Divisadero St., San Francisco. www.torima.com

Yarsa Nepalese Cuisine

Soleil Ho / The Chronicle

A New Years addition to the North Beach neighborhood, Yarsa Nepalese Cuisine only had a few months to get its sea legs before its dining room, like almost every other dining room in the world, became unusable. But to ignore this place would be a mistake. Like many Nepalese restaurants in the Bay Area, Yarsas menu is a hodgepodge of Nepalese and North Indian dishes, with a typical slant toward the latter, and its bright and full-flavored take on the genre will pull you out of your samey dinner rut.

Definitely get an order of the thin-skinned momos ($11-$12), ginger-flavored mixtures of vegetables and/or chicken folded into crescent shapes like Chinese jiaozi. The giant platter-size naan ($3-$4) are also a must, though transport does tend to steam the crisp off the flatbreads bottoms. Throw it onto a hot cast iron pan for a minute or so to bring it back to life. Pair the bread with the rich and creamy almond-cashew curry ($13), and youll be sopping up the sauce as if this were a plate of biscuits and gravy. Other highlights include the crisp and spicy fried cauliflower ($8) and sauteed okra and tomato ($13), which also works great stirred into the next mornings scrambled eggs.

S.H.

Yarsa Nepalese Cuisine. Takeout and delivery 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 4:30-9 p.m. daily. 1310 Grant Ave., San Francisco. 415-926-5082 or www.yarsanepalese.com

SingleThread

SingleThread

Healdsburgs famous combination inn/farm/restaurant is known for its hospitality, its in-room donabe service and a Michelin-lauded 11-course menu  not so much for its takeout options. As COVID-19 has put its $300 tasting menu dinners on hiatus for now, the 4-year-old restaurant offers a daily to-go menu of quality family meals at a relatively affordable price point ($75-$210 for four, depending on the day), made from the same farm produce and premium ingredients that form the backbone of its usual menu. That is, if Healdsburg is convenient enough for you to pick up dinner.

Each offering is different, a chance for chef Kyle Connaughton and his staff to mess around with various cuisines they love. One night might bring a set of dishes created in tribute to his mentor, Suzanne Goin, chef and owner of Los Angeles Lucques (which closed Wednesday after 21 years); another, packages of tempura, marinated fish and cut vegetables for a home-style temaki party. I bought SingleThreads homage to Kyoto-style home cooking and received seven beautifully prepared dishes, including a brothy stew made with luscious, tissue-thin pork belly; salmon cooked in cedar paper, redolent with a forest aroma; and adorable rice balls dyed pink by salted cherry blossoms. Note that there is an option for meal donations to Sonoma seniors and families available on Tock as well, if the spirit moves you.

S.H.

SingleThread. Takeout available by pre-order 5-7:30 p.m. daily; order online. 131 North St., Healdsburg. 707-723-4646 or www.singlethreadfarms.com

Mama Lamees

Janelle Bitker / The Chronicle

Mama Lamees serves some of the Bay Areas best chicken shawarma wraps and other Palestinian fare from a temporary La Cocina kiosk at the food hall in Emeryville. After shutting down for a few weeks, Mama Lamees reopened in April touting a communal feast available for two people ($45) or five people ($100). With those numbers, though, expect leftovers.

It starts with pita and mutabal, a smoky eggplant dip with tahini and lemon, followed by a warmly spiced red lentil soup. The entrees are where things start to feel crazy: Dajaj Muhammar, juicy chicken legs stained with sumac; Kofteh Bilbandoorah, grilled beef meatballs swimming in tomato sauce; and Mujaddarah, a staple of brown lentils, basmati rice and caramelized onions heightened with a cucumber-labneh sauce. Baklava  extra nutty and not too sweet  close s the meal. The only slight disappointment was the meatballs, which were a bit dry, but the dinner would have still felt special and celebratory without them. Note: You must order by noon Thursday for takeout or delivery Friday through Saturday, and delivery is handled in-house, which means all your money goes to Mama Lamees but also that delivery rates are higher .

 Janelle Bitker

Mama Lamees. Takeout and delivery 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday-Sunday. 5959 Shellmound St., Emeryville. 415-410-5976 or www.mamalamees.com

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

The Kebabery

Janelle Bitker / The Chronicle

The premise for the Kebaberys takeout operation is pure fun: Twice a week, owner Russell Moore lets loose in the kitchen, cooks whatever he feels like and boxes everything up for reheating at home. Moore is best known in the Bay Area for painstakingly tending to flames at Oakland wood-fired restaurant Camino, which closed in 2018. Now, at the fast-casual follow-up spot, hes making familiar sides like mashed red lentils plus new dishes like fried chicken.

A recent spring lamb stew ($15.75) tasted clean and light, with big, melty hunks of lamb to dip in a lemony yogurt sauce and salsa verde. The flatbreads ($6 for four) are typically the first thing to sell out. Follow the regulars lead and buy em early . Throw on some surprisingly good roasted carrots ($6), singed on the edges and tossed with caraway and preserved lemon. Oh, and whatever cookies ($8) that are available from Sesame a Tiny Bakery, which is slated to share space at the Kebaberys forthcoming Berkeley location, are worth the splurge. Keep an eye on the website the day before you intend to pick up food for the latest menu and to place your order online  youll also likely be tempted by the discounted wines and pantry goods.

 J.B.

The Kebabery. Takeout 5-6 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays. 4201 Market St., Oakland. 510-922-1601 or www.thekebabery.net

Delage

Janelle Bitker / The Chronicle

I wasnt sure how East Bay restaurateur Chikara Ono would be able to adapt his omakase-only, $70 dining experiences at Oaklands Delage into a takeout format. The answer was simple: Dont bother. Instead, Ono has continued buying high-quality fish to top rice bowls, priced at just $14.99 each. Go for the salmon ikura don, which features a dozen slices of barely seared salmon, bursts of salty salmon roe, pickled daikon and shiso. I feel lucky I snagged a chirashi bowl  a steal with multiple slices of five different fish plus tamago  shortly before it vanished from the menu. Good news: Ono said it might come back in the form of bara chirashi, where the fish is cubed instead of thinly sliced.

These bowls are currently available at the Berkeley Bowl West cafe, alongside some bento boxes and sushi rolls from Onos izakaya, B-Dama, but keep an eye on Onos other restaurants, too. Hes planning to turn the Delage space into a hub for selling Delage chef Mikoko Andos sous vide entrees and Utzutzu sushi chef Joji Nonakas extra-special versions of chirashi.

 J.B.

Delage at Berkeley Bowl West. Takeout and delivery 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. 920 Heinz Ave., Berkeley. 510-421-6023 or www.doordash.com/store/berkeley-bowl-west-berkeley-940227/

Mago

Janelle Bitker / The Chronicle

Before the coronavirus, Mago was the sort of restaurant where former AQ chef Mark Liberman would present charred cabbage alongside a salted strawberry foam, or deep-fried soft shell crabs with local stone fruit. In other words, it was pretty fancy. What I love about Mago during shelter-in-place is the way Liberman has amped up the accessibility factor. Every day, he makes a new family-style dinner that can feed at least two people for somewhere between $40 and $55, depending on the ingredients  and the meals feel bountiful.

I recently enjoyed grilled pork ribs slick with a kimchi-peach glaze  ideally tender-yet-toothsome  on top of charred asparagus. I adored the side of black beans sweetened with brown sugar, and the pasta salad balanced the plate out with a subtle saltiness from nori. The meal finished strong with a whole pint of roasted beet sorbet, generously heaped with berries. Since every days family meal is different  there is a choice of vegetarian or meaty family meal every day  I cant say for sure whether each one is as successful, but the ribs certainly made me want to find out.

 J.B.

Mago. Takeout and delivery 3-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 3762 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 510-344-7214 or www.magorestaurant.com

Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicles restaurant critic and Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle food reporter. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com and jbitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hooleil and @JanelleBitker
DUBAI, U.A.E, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Webb Fontaine, one of the leading providers of customs and trade solutions to governments worldwide, is inviting industry professionals to join their 'Digitalisation of Trade and Revenue in Disaster Environments' webinar on May 12th and on May 19th at 10am GMT. With a purpose of knowledge-sharing during this pandemic, the webinar will delve deep into key themes such as supply chain and revenue collection, in the current trade facilitation ecosystem.

Targeted at both public and private sector officials with a focus on disaster recovery in the face of COVID-19, this webinar will analyse 13 different governmental strategies aimed at minimising disruptions to essential supply chains and operations.

Moderated by Michel Zarnowiecki, Director of Institutional Reforms at Webb Fontaine and formerly Senior Regional Coordinator for Customs and Border Affairs at the World Bank, the webinar unites experts across the field to share real life examples and recommendations to ensure business continuity and secure contingency delivery.

Didier Reymond, CEO of Webb Fontaine, commented, "COVID-19 has become the most pressing challenge facing the international community and indeed the customs industry at this time. In the face of this challenge, Webb Fontaine's goal with this webinar series is to facilitate conversations where the best minds in the industry can share their knowledge and insights. We believe that we can achieve so much more together than alone."

The Digitalisation of Trade and Revenue in Disaster Environments webinar will be broadcast at 10am GMT in French on May 12th from the link here and in English on May 19th from the link here and will last 1.5 hours.

These idea-driven webinars form part of what is envisioned to be a larger ThinkTank series aimed at delivering impactful insights that stakeholders can use to deliver solid business strategies and share knowledge.

About Webb Fontaine:

Trusted?by governments globally, Webb Fontaine provides industry wide solutions?to?accelerate?trade development?and modernization. The company uses?unique?technology including Artificial Intelligence to?enable?countries to?emerge as?leaders?in the?future of trade.

Knowledge transfer?is at the core of Webb Fontaine; comprising of a team of experts who work across the world, empowering local communities and?governments.

As an industry leader with the largest R&D centers in the industry, Webb Fontaine is constantly developing international trade practices connecting countries, borders and people.
As the US begins reopening the economy, sending millions to potentially be exposed to COVID-19, a variety of state and municipal governments are announcing cuts to medical programs and education and furloughing workers to make up for major budget shortfalls. Most local governments have cited unexpected costs from the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of revenue from the lockdown as causes of their budget crises.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank focused on the impact of federal and state budget policies, most states will face budget shortfalls of roughly 10 percent for the current fiscal year that ends on June 30 for most states, and more than 25 percent for the 2021 fiscal year. Since they are required to balance the budget before the end of the fiscal year, some states will be arranging to cut billions of dollars within the next few weeks.

Maryland is projected to have a drop in revenue of as much as $2.8 billion while Arkansas is estimated to have $353 million less than expected. The think tank has also noted that next fiscal year Alaska and New Mexico could lose up to $815 million and $2 billion, respectively, because they rely heavily on oil-related industries, which have taken a major hit from the recent collapse in oil prices.

Most states and municipalities have agreed to overcome the budget shortfall either partially or completely through slashing social programs, instead of raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. The result puts vital programs on the chopping block as unemployment reaches as high as 20 percent.

While specifics of the cuts for many states have not yet been determined, a handful of both Democratic and Republican governors have already released plans to cut hundreds of millions from Medicaid alone. Ohio Republican governor Mike DeWine has announced $210 million in Medicaid cuts and Colorado Democratic governor Jared Polis has announced $183 million in cuts to the program. Georgia Republican governor Brian Kemp has called on all state agencies to make a 14 percent reduction across the board.

New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been hailed in some liberal circles for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has expressed a willingness to make $10.1 billion in cuts from the mid-year budget. The new budget could cut 20 to 30 percent of Medicaid funding.

Medicaidwhich provides health insurance to roughly 70 million low-income adults, children and disabledis partially funded by the federal government, and frequently experiences high enrollment during recessions. In the fiscal year of 2019, Medicaid made up just short of 20 percent of state budgets.

On April 21, the National Governors Association (NGA) sent a letter to leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the Senate requesting that Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP) be doubled to 12 percent. FMAP, which helps provide federal funding for state-administered programs like Medicaid, had been temporarily increased to 6.2 percent as a result of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The letter notes that the 2009 Recovery Act raised FMAP to 12 percent and encourages the federal government to help expand unemployment insurance, education programs and help states acquire medical equipment and COVID-19 tests.

Other states have targeted education programs to make up for the budget shortfall. California, which has a budget deficit of $54.3 billion, could cut $18 billion from schools and community colleges. Tennessee has decided to cut a $48 million literacy initiative program and a $250 million trust fund deposit for mental health programs in schools. Raises for teachers and other state employees have been cut from four to two percent for next year.

New Jersey Democratic governor Phil Murphy has announced a freeze of $920 million in appropriated 2020 fiscal year spending. The freeze would also stop $45 million in state aid to municipalities.

In a separate statement, the NGA and six other organizations representing the state and local governments called on Congress to immediately provide robust, flexible relief. The statement notes that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, better known as the CARES Act, did not provide a fund to offset budget shortfalls and does not provide relief for local governments with a population below 500,000.

The United States Conference of Mayors, which cosigned the statement, has noted that only 36 out of 19,000 cities, towns and villages have a population above 500,000. They have also noted that, Nearly 100% of cities with populations above 50,000 will see a revenue decline this year.

The conference recently requested $2 billion to reimburse states and localities for uncompensated care. For comparison, the CARES Act provided $454 billion for finance guaranteed loans to big corporations.

Municipalities of virtually every size have responded to the crisis with cuts and furloughs of workers:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is proposing a $370 million reduction with hiring freezes and layoffs of part-time and temporary employees.





Dayton, Ohio furloughed roughly a quarter of municipal employees, and announced that more furloughs are expected in the future.





Detroit, Michigan cut $348 million in a recently passed budget that primarily slashed the funding for parks and recreational activities.





Milwaukee, Wisconsin has announced plans to furlough 260 employees and cut hours for another 500.





Houston, Texas has announced the possibility of furloughing all employees, except those working for the police and fire departments, to overcome a $200 million budget deficit.

New York City Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio has announced the possibility of the city furloughing essential employees to help pay for the citys budget deficit. While New York has remained one of the global epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic, de Blasio announced on Wednesday that without a stimulus package from the federal government all options are on the table for addressing the deficit.

Last month Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on state governments to declare bankruptcy instead of receiving a bailout from the federal government. If a state declared bankruptcy it would then allow the government to tear up pension agreements with retired workers.

The introduction of massive cuts to social programs with seemingly unlimited resources turned over to Wall Street speaks to the complete irrationality of capitalism. As millions of workers across America are impacted by COVID-19 and driven into unemployment, programs that provide healthcare, education, and jobs are being destroyed.
Tiger King subject Joe Exotic is moving forward with a bid to secure a presidential pardon.

In a video released on Friday by TMZ, Exotics legal counsel announces that a team the size of Texas has been assembled to get him released from custody.

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in January this year to 22 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of murder-for-hire, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records, and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act.

His case returned to the forefront following the release of Netflixs seven-part series Tiger King on 20 March.

The clip published by TMZ features a large bus emblazoned with the words Team King and President Trump please pardon Joe Exotic.

Francisco Hernandez, an attorney in Texas, says he and others intend to prove Maldonado-Passages innocence.

A team the size of Texas has been assembled to handle the case of Joe Exotic, says Hernandez.

Eric Love, of Bedford, Texas, is introduced as Exotics executive manager and lead investigator.

Weve built an army of attorneys to assist in the appeal process and right this monumental injustice, says Love.

Trump has previously said he would be willing to take a look at Exotics case, though he admitted to knowing nothing about the situation.
When coronavirus cases started showing up in the Deep South in mid-March, Mississippi legislators quickly fled the state capitol in Jackson to ride out the coronavirus pandemic in the relative safety of their hometowns.

But they couldn't stay away when the federal money showed up.

Last week, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said he was prepared to start spending some of the nearly $2 billion that Congress and the White House sent to his state to respond to the pandemic. But on Friday, after legislative leaders ordered lawmakers to hustle back to the capitol, the Mississippi Senate and House of Representatives voted to strip Reeves of his power to spend federal money without their approval.

The governor responded angrily at a news conference Monday, calling the move "power politics at its worst."

"While they think they may be attacking me, and they are hurting me, I believe it is you, the people of Mississippi, that is being attacked," Reeves said during a news conference Monday.

Reeves' frustration is an example of the challenges that governors nationwide face as state legislators become more assertive in challenging executive authority as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. From Kansas to New Hampshire, state lawmakers are rushing to sponsor legislation, file court challenges and make public statements on what they see as gubernatorial overreach on matters ranging from the spending of federal dollars to whether their neighborhood hair salon or tavern should remain closed.

At stake is who will divvy up more than $100 billion in federal aid while also gaining the upper hand in election-year political battles that are testing leaders in both parties. In the longer term, the outcome of the fight between lawmakers and governors stands to reshape how state governments respond to disasters for decades into the future.

This week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit Republicans brought against Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, challenging his extension of a stay-at-home order; lawmakers in Michigan sued Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, for doing the same.

In Ohio, where Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has been widely praised for his leadership during the crisis, legislators in his own party are pushing to narrow his ability to act going forward.

"We have an epic abuse of power," said Rep. John Becker, a Republican who plans to sponsor a bill that would strip DeWine of his power to unilaterally mandate that stores and businesses close during an emergency. "The governor is making these decisions, along with unelected bureaucrats, when it should include the collective wisdom of the General Assembly that is elected by constituents from across the state."

In interviews, legislators acknowledge that polls show many governors are receiving high marks from the public over their response to the crisis. But legislators say the are now speaking up more forcefully because they are also being inundated with phone calls and emails from constituents who have become newly engaged in understanding the power of state government.

For decades, they say, the public often overlooked the influence of state lawmakers, whose roles were often muddled between the tense partisan policy debates in Washington and the hyperlocal decisions made by mayors and town councils.

But with governors now on the front lines of increasingly polarizing decisions about shutting down or reopening businesses amid the pandemic, the role of state legislators is also being elevated.

"You are seeing a lot of frustrations that one man for the last two months has been making unilateral decisions affecting the whole state," said Ryan Warner, a Republican state legislator in Pennsylvania, where the legislature has been challenging Gov. Tom Wolf's, a Democrat, decision to shut down most businesses.

Initially, the tensions between legislators and governors appeared to have a distinctly partisan undercurrent as GOP lawmakers pressed Democratic governors, many of whom took the swiftest action in closing their states as the virus began to spread. But the battles have grown bipartisan in recent days as more governors come under fire from lawmakers.

In New Hampshire, Democrats are challenging Republican Gov. Chris Sununu over his authority to spend federal dollars without legislative oversight.

Under the $2 trillion emergency spending bill that President Trump signed into law in late March, the federal government sent at least $1.25 billion to each state to help respond to the crisis while shoring up government finances. The law gives states considerable leeway in how to spend the money, but they are not supposed to use it to replace existing revenue sources.

When Sununu moved to send some of the money to local communities, however, the leaders of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and state Senate filed a lawsuit, arguing the governor should first have to consult with the legislative finance committee. A judge dismissed the suit, but lawmakers have filed an appeal, said House Speaker Steve Shurtleff, a Democrat.

"Our emergency powers give the governor broad authority, and we understand that," Shurtleff said in an interview. "But there is nothing in [the state constitution] that the governor also has the sole authority to both accept and spend money without legislative oversight."

The fight over who can spend the federal dollars has become especially bitter in Mississippi, where nearly 8,500 people have contracted the virus and almost 400 have died.

The fierce intraparty split enraged Reeves, who planned to operate under a decades-old state law that states the governor is tasked with managing and spending federal funds "for the purpose of emergency management."

Reeves argued that governors directly spent federal aid after Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill and during the 2008 economic crisis.

Legislative leaders, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the state Senate, countered that no one individual should have sole discretion over such a large amount of money.

But in his news conference, a visibly angry Reeves questioned how the legislature could quickly spend the money, in a way that saves lives and boosts the economy, when it's now readjourned until May 18.

"There is no time for 174 legislators to spend weeks and weeks, and months and months, arguing," said Reeves, who brought up the matter up with Vice President Mike Pence on a conference call this week.

In other states, lawmakers are directly challenging a governor's authority to order the mass closure of businesses for a pandemic that has so far killed more than 75,000 people nationwide and infected more than 1.2 million.

In Kansas, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly ran afoul of the state's legislative coordinating council after she expanded an early stay-at-home order to include church services. The council moved to revoke the order, with the state's Supreme Court ultimately ruling that the council had overstepped its authority. Two churches later sued the state over the order in federal court. Kelly's administration ultimately settled with those churches, allowing their in-person services to proceed.

Kelly then announced a three-phase plan that reopens most of the businesses in the state by May 18 but has nonetheless prompted criticism from Republicans and citizen protests. The state Senate president, Susan Wagle - a candidate in the hotly contested Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by a retiring Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican - said on Friday that Republicans must act to "rein in an out-of-control" governor and put forth her own plan to reopen businesses sooner.

State legislators decided this week that the legislature will return for one day only, on May 21, to address coronavirus concerns. That left the GOP scrambling to see if committees can prepare legislation for a full vote that day, which could impact the way the state spends $1.25 billion in federal aid. Among the issues the legislature is considering are access to low-interest loans, limiting business liability caused by the coronavirus and removing penalties on unpaid taxes.

Kelly's spokesman said in a statement Thursday that she has formed a bipartisan economic recovery task force for an "all-hands-on-deck" approach to pandemic recovery.

"Kansans want their leaders working together to pursue impactful, meaningful change," the statement said.

At times, the back-and-forth has descended into the absurd, with one Republican state representative demanding to know the license number of any hairdresser who cut or colored Kelly's hair since March 12, as the state's salons remain shuttered.

Kelly later told the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper her husband had trimmed it.

The power struggle within state capitols is occurring just as national Democratic groups hope their party can reclaim control of several legislative chambers in the November elections. Republicans have a majority control in 29 state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

As state battles over the coronavirus intensify, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has been targeting Republican lawmakers that it believes have been pushing to reopen the economy too quickly.

"State governments have an outsized impact on people's day-to-day lives and this crisis emphasized that fact in stark terms," said Jessica Post, executive director of the DLCC. "Trump made it clear the states are on their own. Democrats are filling the void in leadership while the GOP response has been a total nightmare."

But in many states, Republican lawmakers believe they have a now have a political advantage in challenging a governor's authority. The calls to their office from small business owners and others, they say, demonstrate that the public believes there needs to more scrutiny of how governors are making decisions and allocating resources.

Minnesota state Sen. Julie Rosen, a Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said she often hears from small business owners who are losing their livelihoods because of the state shutdown.

"We need to trust the general public more . . . Because it doesn't make sense you can still walk into a Walmart, but you still can't go get your watch fixed," she said.

In Illinois, the lawmakers who been challenging Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker can already point to some victories. The state has the nation's sixth-highest number of coronavirus cases, with about 70,000 residents testing positive. More than 3,000 residents have died.

After Pritzker, a Democrat, extended his state's stay-at-home order, one GOP state representative, Darren Bailey, won a temporary restraining order stating the governor's directive did not apply to him.

Now, Illinois state Sen. Dan McConchie, a Republican, is hoping to build off Bailey's court win by pushing for legislation that would require a governor to consult with the legislature before any emergency order can be extended past 30 days.

"Having this multitude of voices at the table is helpful in normal times, but absolutely critical during a state of emergency," McConchie said in an interview. "The alternative is what we have now, where there is virtually no oversight over the governor whatsoever unless you go to court."
PureFacts Financial Solutions, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of mission-critical wealthtech solutions, acquired VennScience, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based full-service Salesforce consultancy.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

This strategic acquisition extends PureFacts ability to provide meaningful insights and solutions to wealth firms in Boston and New York. As a combined entity, the two companies will offer a wider offering to meet the diverse challenges and enterprise-level needs of wealth management firms.

VennScience is a full-service Salesforce consultancy that helps companies execute their vision, drive efficiency, and maximize the benefits of cloud-based business applications. Led by Robert Madej, CEO, PureFacts provides wealth management solutions for the financial services industry in Canada, USA, UK, and the Caribbean. The company uses AI, big data, and their industry expertise to help firms realize value, increase productivity, reduce costs, and create an enhanced customer experience.

FinSMEs

08/05/2020
Aurangabad : /New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) At least 16 migrant labourers have died after a goods train ran over a group of workers asleep on the railway tracks early on Friday in Maharashtra's Aurangabad. The home-bound exhausted lot were run over between Jalna and Aurangabad, officials said.

A Railway Ministry official told IANS: "At least 14 people died on the spot and two were injured in the incident. The injured persons admitted in the hospital later succumbed to their injuries." The migrant workers were trying to return to their rural homes in Madhya Pradesh.

The official said that one person, who received minor injuries is being treated at Auranagabad Civil hospital. A senior railway official confirmed that the migrant group was run over by the goods train running in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway.

The incident happened around 5.22 a.m. when the migrants, who were on their way back to their homes fell asleep on the railway tracks.

Images from the scene of the accident showed the tracks strewn with footwear, food and other personal belongings of the workers.

According to the railway officials, the group of the migrants were hit by an empty petroleum tanker train, which was proceeding from Cherlapalli in Telangana to Paniwadi, near Manmad in Maharashtra.

"After passing Badnapur station, the locopilot saw some people on the tracks and tried to control it and sounded the horn also, but by the time he could do, it was too late," South Central spokesperson Ch. Rakesh told IANS.

"An enquiry has been ordered by the Commissioner, Railway Safety (South Central Circle)," he added.

A senior railway ministry official in Delhi said that those run over by train are labourers and residents of Madhya Pradesh's Umarya and Shahdol and worked in SRG Company in Maharashtra's Jalna.

He said, as per the statements of the survivors, the group had left Jalna on Thursday at 7 p.m. on foot initially on road upto Badnapore and later on the track towards Aurangabad.

"After walking for about 36 km, they became tired and sat on the track to take some rest and gradually fell asleep," he said, adding that 14 people sat on the track, two members adjacent to the track and three members away from track.

He said that senior officials of the Nanded division and the Government Rail Police (GRP) and local police had rushed to the accident site.

A senior railway ministry official in when asked about the fault, he said, "No one is allowed to sleep or sit on the railway tracks. It is trespassing." He said, the Railways keeps on making public awareness to not trespass railway properties.

Following the tragic incident, President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and several other senior leaders condoled the death of the migrants.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi slammed the Central government saying it should be ashamed for the way in which migrants are being treated.

"Saddened beyond words to learn about the loss of lives in the railway track accident near Aurangabad in Maharashtra. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families. Wishing speedy recovery to the injured," Kovind said in a tweet.

Naidu, in a tweet, said: "Deeply saddened to learn about the loss of lives in a train mishap in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. My heartfelt condolences to bereaved families." Modi also condoled the deaths on Twitter and said: "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided." The Railway Minister also tweeted: "Today, received a saddening news of labourers sleeping on railway tracks run over by a goods train at 5.22 a.m. in Nanded division between Karnad and Badnapur railway station. Relief work is on and an enquiry has been ordered. I pray for the those who lost their lives." "I am shocked at the news of the death of the labourers and brothers after being run over by a goods train. We should be ashamed of the treatment being given to our nation builders. My condolences to the families of those killed and pray for the early recovery of the injured," Rahul Gandhi tweeted, slamming the Central government.

Both Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray have announced ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh each for the kin of the deceased.

Amid the nationwide lockdown that has entered its third phase since coming into effect from March 24, thousands of migrant workers stranded in several cities have been on an unending toil to return to their native places on foot.

The interstate bus service, passenger, mail and express train services have been suspended since March 24.

The Railways has started running Shramik Special trains to transport the stranded migrants to their native places since May 1.

Till Thursday, Railways has run 201 Shramik Special trains and transported over 1.8 lakh migrant workers to their native places.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Billionaire Alisher Usmanov donates over $5 million to support citizens of Kazakhstan displaced after dam burst in Uzbekistan



Uzbekistan-born Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has transferred $5.202 million to Turkestan corporate social development fund for support of 30,420 citizens evacuated from their homes in Maktaaral district after flooding caused by Sardoba dam burst.



These funds will be transferred to 5,202 accounts of heads of affected families, Turkestan region administration said.

Earlier Usmanov donated $10 million to support the affected people and to liquidate consequences of the flooding in Syrdarya region, AKIpress reported.
The UK is showing no real sign of approaching Brexit trade talks with a plan to succeed during the coronavirus pandemic, the EUs trade commissioner has said.

Phil Hogan has suggested the UK government is planning to blame Covid-19 for the fallout from Brexit because it does not want negotiations to continue into 2021.

He also warned that the government's current approach needed to change to avoid an almighty blow to the UK economy later this year, which could spill over to other countries, such as Ireland.

Despite the urgency and enormity of the negotiating challenge, I am afraid we are only making very slow progress in the Brexit negotiations, Mr Hogan told the Irish broadcaster RTE.

There is no real sign that our British friends are approaching the negotiations with a plan to succeed.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so.

Brussels and the UK government are currently negotiating a trade agreement via video-conferencing, due to severe restrictions on movement introduced on both sides of the Channel to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Ministers have insisted the transition period will not be extended beyond 2020, despite unprecedented disruption to daily life due to the pandemic and officials on both sides admitting there has been little progress in the first two rounds of formal talks.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has called for an extension to the Brexit transition period until the end of 2022 due to the coronavirus crisis and urged Labour and other opposition parties to support them. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, claimed earlier this week that there was absolutely no need to extend the transition period.

Mr Hogan insisted that the EU was serious about a deal and said the UK needed to outline further details about what it wanted to achieve.

The trade commissioner added: I think that the United Kingdom politicians and government have certainly decided that Covid is going to be blamed for all the fallout from Brexit. My perception of it is they don't want to drag the negotiations out into 2021 because they can effectively blame Covid for everything.

Mr Hogan's warning came after Michel Barnier, the EUs chief negotiator, said the UK had failed to engage substantially with key issues in the talks held in April.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, said this week it was plain prudence to stick with the current timetable for negotiations despite the pandemic.

He told MPs that a full and constructive round of talks with the EU took place last month, with the next scheduled negotiations set to start in the week beginning 11 May.

Additional reporting by Press Association
As we enter into the blooming splendor of spring, there are several different ways that people recognize this time of new hope and growth in the wake of celebrating Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Judaism, festivals are ways to commemorate the time of spring and one festival in particular on the Jewish calendar is that of Shavuot, or what you may know it as Pentecost. Shavuot has been celebrated on the fiftieth day, or on the seventh week since Passover was celebrated.

It is clear while reading the Bible that festivals to celebrate new harvest was imperative to the arrival of spring, but what is Shavuot and how is it celebrated today? And since some people have desired to learn more about the traditions of Jewish heritage, what is it about Shavuot that makes it special? Lets start from the beginning to learn what Shavuot is and conclude with why it is still important to take part in today.

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What Is Shavuot?

The word Shavuot, Shavuos, means weeks, while Pentecost comes from the Greek word pentekoste, which means 50th and marks it being the fiftieth day, seven weeks (Omer), since the sheaf offering of the harvest for Passover. It originally began as a festival celebrating agriculture, especially because it is the start of the wheat harvest.

Pilgrim festivals, which is what Shavuot originated from, were festivals where male Israelites had to travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the Temple, which consisted of fresh offerings from their fields. The men would also recite prayers and read psalms that related to the festival being held. During the festival in ancient times, the gifts of two wheat loaves from the new harvest were given to the Holy Temple during Shavuot. This was named Yom ha-Bikkurim, or Day of the First Fruits.

This year, Shavuot 2021 will be celebrated from the evening of May 16th to the evening of May 18th. This two-day festival falls, for the Hebrew calendar, on Sivan 6-7, which is the Hebrew month equivalent to May and June. In Israel, Shavuot is only celebrated for one day. Shavuot is very special when it comes to the Torah, as Shavuot occurred 3,300 years ago when God gave the Torah to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai.

And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God, (Exod. 31:18, NKJV).

This historical moment is recognized during each Shavuot, celebrating the Torah as a gift from God that He continues to give each year.

How Does One Celebrate Shavuot?

The festival is open to all men, women, and children, as the first day of Shavuot has everyone attending the synagogue to hear the Ten Commandments read. People are also supposed to stay up all night the first night of Shavuot reading and learning from the Torah, known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot. The reason behind staying up the whole night reading the Torah is to show God the excitement and thankfulness in being given the Torah has not waned these past several thousand years.

Holiday candles are lighted by women and girls to recognize Shavuot both nights of the festival. Rest is especially noticed during the festival, as no work is allowed to be done during Shavuot. As for the menu options for Shavuot, it is treated like any other Jewish holiday but with the focus on dairy. Two meals are eaten each day of Shavuot: one meal is dairy, ranging from cheese blintzes and cakes to casseroles and quiches; the other meal is a traditional holiday meal. Dairy is important to have at this time, as it reflects the idea of the Torah as nourishing milk from God.

For the second day of Shavuot, a memorial service is held, the Yizkor memorial service, with a special memorial prayer said after the reading of the Torah for those who have passed away. Some Jewish communities will also read from the book of Ruth because King David is a descendent from the Moabite Ruth and, as we all know, are also descendants of Jesus.

Decorating homes and synagogues with greenery and flowers is another tradition during Shavuot. Although no exact explanation has been given for this custom, several beliefs have circulated on what the greenery represents: Baby Moses' basket, flowers in the desert, harvest and first fruits, and even fragrant speech from God. There is even a special greeting that is shared among those during Shavuot that denotes a holiday is happening. When greeting one another, each person is to say, Gut yom tov, which means Good, good day in Hebrew.

Little Known Facts about Shavuot

-Shavuot actually has four additional names for the same festival: Yom HaBikkurim  Day of First Fruits; Chag HaKatzir  The Harvest Festival; Atzeret  The Stoppage as a way of saying to rest and not work; and Zeman Matan Torah  Time of the Giving of Our Torah.

-When lighting the candles to celebrate Shavuot, a candle must not have been a created flame just to light the candle but can be lighted from a pre-existing flame, such as one from a candle lit before the holiday, one from a gas range, or a pilot flame.

-It is important to have children, even babies, hear the Ten Commandments being read, as the Jewish people promised God, when receiving the Torah, that their guarantors would be their children to cherish and celebrate the Torah from then on.

-The day, or days, Shavuot is celebrated to mark not only the day that Moses received the Torah from God but also the day King David died and the Baal Shem Tov, who started the Chassidic movement and passed away during Shavuot as well.

Why Is Shavuot Important to All Believers of God?

It is evident why Shavuot is important to Jewish people, as the Torah is how they live their lives every day in honor of God and in thanks for His trusting them with such worthy Scripture. Their traditions during Shavuot also remind them of what God gave to them and how it has impacted their lives in so many ways. However, we should see Shavuot as important to all those who believe in God, as this commemorates His love and guidance to His people in one of their most desperate hours. Writings of the Torah make up part of the Bible (such as the book of Exodus), which all Christians live by and believe come straight from God.

When Shavuot occurs each year, we should reflect and be thankful for what God has given us, especially His Word. It is another time we can step away from our busy, me-focused lives and reflect on the loving God who chose to come down to us and gave us life-changing literature we forever have in our lives. Shavuot demonstrates that we need to make time for God regularly, remembering what He gave to us not only through the Bible but through His son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. As we set aside these special times with God, we grow to know Him more personally and experience Him on a deeper level than we ever had before.

Photo credit: GettyImages/happy_lark

Blair Parke is a freelance writer for BibleStudyTools.com, and previously worked for eight years with Xulon Press. A graduate of Stetson University with a Bachelor's in Communications, Blair previously worked as a writer/editor for several local magazines in the Central Florida area, including Celebration Independent and Lake Magazine in Leesburg, Florida and currently freelances for the Southwest Orlando Bulletin.
YEREVAN.  Hraparak daily of Armenia writes: The [parliament] inquiry committee investigating the April [2016] events will host former Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan () on May 11, at 13:00.

After Karapetyan, the issue of inviting Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] President Bako Sahakyan is also being discussed.

Did Mr. Sahakyan receive an invitation? If he receives it, will he participate in the sitting? Yesterday we asked the [Karabakh] President's spokesperson Davit Babayan. He said he had no information about the invitation. "But the incumbent President has stated on one occasion that he will not refuse if he is called."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-07 22:46:52|Editor: huaxia

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A woman looks at an electronic screen showing the exchange rates at a currency exchange office in Istanbul, Turkey, May 7, 2020. The Turkish currency dropped to a record low against the U.S. dollar on Thursday amid economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. At 1 p.m. (1000 GMT), 1 dollar was traded at 7.26 Turkish liras, which lost 18 percent of value against the U.S. currency since the beginning of this year. (Photo by Osman Orsal/Xinhua)

ISTANBUL, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish currency dropped to a record low against the U.S. dollar on Thursday amid economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At 1 p.m. (1000 GMT), 1 dollar was traded at 7.26 Turkish liras, which lost 18 percent of value against the U.S. currency since the beginning of this year.

According to Baris Urkun, Ahlatci Investment research manager, there has been more than 3 percent depreciation in the lira since the beginning of May alone.

The lira has become the worst-performing currency among the developing countries after the Brazilian Real, Urkun was quoted as saying by Bloomberg HT, Turkey's online economy platform.

Meanwhile, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency said at a new regulation published in the Official Gazette on Thursday that it would penalize banks involved in manipulating and misleading transactions on investment instruments such as exchange rate, according to press reports.

The regulation contains comprehensive measures against those who express misleading statements on the fluctuation of the exchange rate on social media and other media platforms, the daily said.

The Turkish government had taken strong measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including shutting shopping malls, barbershops, restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Struggling against economic difficulties, many companies have reduced the number of personnel, while numerous day laborers lost wages due to lockdowns and travel restrictions. Enditem
At Madison Area Technical College, about 1,800 students graduate this spring. An online ceremony slated for May 21 includes pre-filmed speeches and a slideshow that includes students photos and future plans.

The 380 students in Edgewood Colleges Class of 2020 are invited to participate in the May 2021 ceremony. In the more immediate future, when the stay-at-home order is lifted or eased, graduates can arrange for a five-minute ceremony with family in the presidents office. No need to sit through long speeches, interim college President Mary Ellen Gevelinger pointed out in an email to students.

Even amid the coronavirus crisis, college leaders say students receiving their degrees deserve a celebration  if only to make up for the odd, abrupt way in which their college careers closed.
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Linkedin Tri Indah Oktavianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 12:53 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6b5a3e 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,haj,virus-corona,Jeddah,haj-pilgrimage,Religious-Affairs-Ministry,Saudi-Arabia Free

The Religious Affairs Ministry is still waiting for Saudi Arabia to announce its final decision on this years haj that will see millions of Muslims performing rituals in the holy city of Mecca, as the kingdom mulls a plan to put the annual tradition on hold amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministrys haj and umrah (minor haj) director general, Nizar Ali, said his office had been coordinating with the haj consul of the Indonesian Consulate General in Jeddah regarding this years haj, initially slated to be held from July 28 to Aug. 2.

There has yet to be a decision from Saudi Arabias Haj and Umrah Ministry on whether this years pilgrimage will take place, Nizar said on Wednesday.

He added that the government hoped the Saudi authorities would announce a final decision before the summer break on May 13.

If the decision was made after the summer break, it would leave us with not enough time to prepare for the pilgrimage.

Nizar asserted that preparations for the haj were continuing, with ministry officials holding manasik (pilgrimage rehearsals) virtually through videos disseminated through the ministrys official social media accounts.

Read also: Govt carries on with haj prep, claiming haj 'cancellation' a case of lost in translation

Media outlets and news agencies reported in April that Saudi Arabia had asked Muslims to postpone plans to perform the obligatory pilgrimage this year as the kingdom grapples with its COVID-19 outbreak. It has suspended umrah since March.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, 33,731 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been recorded in Saudi Arabia with 219 deaths as of Friday. The Saudi government has been ramping up testing after it eased a 24-hour curfew, except in hot spots including the Islamic holy city of Mecca.

While waiting for a decision from Saudi Arabia, the government has asked Indonesian pilgrims to pay their haj travel fees in full, which range from Rp 31.4 million (US$2,102) to Rp 72.3 million per pilgrim. The ministry has recorded that nearly 180,000 of around 210,000 pilgrims had paid for their scheduled journeys.

The first batch of Indonesian pilgrims was scheduled to depart on June 26.

Some 2.5 million faithful from around the world traveled to Saudi Arabia last year to participate in the pilgrimage.
Nearly 200 lunches were provided to nurses working at Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital on Friday, part of an effort to recognize National Nurses Week.

The effort was a collaboration of the owners of Western Oakland County ComForCare, CarePatrol, Visiting Nurses, and Anthology of Novi, a senior living community.

With everything going on in the pandemic, we wanted to make sure nurses and our frontline workers know that us as senior care professionals are here to support them, said Ziad Dally, owner of Western Oakland County ComForCare, at the drop off at the Commerce Township facility on Friday. We want to show we are here for them.

On Friday, Michigan saw another 680 cases of COVID-19 confirmed with 50 new deaths, pushing the states total to 46,326 cases.

In my industry, its been hard to see how our number one clients and patients are the ones most vulnerable, Dally said in a statement. With National Nurse Week starting yesterday, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the nurses of our community and recognize them for their continued hard work and dedication during this uncertain time.

These nurses are on the frontlines every day battling the global pandemic, and my goal with this lunch delivery is to show our endless gratitude for them and their service.
With no signs of the borders reopening anytime soon, we are all subject to whatever emergency orders the local governments deem appropriate. In some areas in the Caribbean, food is limited, with boaters understandably at the end of the priority list. Still, other islands have considered kicking out all foreign-flagged vessels. If Grenada makes the same decision, we would have to sail back to the U.S. Virgin Islands or the continental U.S., but that would mean weeks at sea with nowhere to stop, especially in the event of bad weather, and another two weeks of quarantine when we arrived. Luckily for us, things dont seem to be headed in that direction, and we are very appreciative.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Fri, May 8, 2020 14:08 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6bde23 2 Food South-Korea,France,chef,cooking,lockdown,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic Free

A young South Korean woman was proclaimed the best lockdown cook in France Thursday by the country's trendiest gastronomic guide.

Illustrator Saehan Park, 31, who lives in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, won a competition set up by Le Fooding guide to find the best home cook during the local confinement.

Unable to actually taste Park's brand of "Franco-Korean cuisine using locally sourced ingredients" because of the lockdown, the judges made their choice from the photos, videos and recipes she shared.

Hundreds of thousands of French people have spent a large slice of the country's near-eight week lockdown in their kitchens, later sharing their creations in often highly competitive gastronomic posts on social media.

Le Fooding's judges were impressed by how Park and her French partner sought out local meat, vegetables and beer for their menus, which also included homemade Korean banchan side dishes and kimchi.

Read also: Michelin chefs whip it up for Berlin's healthcare workers

The Alsace region of which Strasbourg is the capital is famous for its own take on pickled cabbage -- choucroute in French or sauerkraut in German.

The guide's founder Alexandre Cammas told AFP that Park made mouths water with her Korean mandu dumplings stuffed with octopus cooked with tomato, white wine and paprika, all usually found inside "tielle" savory tarts from the French Mediterranean port of Sete.

Park said that "our cooking is like us. I am Korean and Andre is French and so naturally our influences mix every day to make new Franco-Korean dishes."

"Because we concentrate more on treating ourselves than our figures, our cooking is extremely generous and tasty," she added.

Cammas said Park won because of her "spirit and sincerity. She is part of a generation who wants nothing to do with microwaves or powdered food" and instead eat seasonally when ingredients are at their best".
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 03:54:58|Editor: huaxia

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Croatian Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic (Front) speaks at a press conference in Zamunik, Croatia, on May 7, 2020. Croatian Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic offered to resign on Thursday after a military airplane crashed near the coastal city of Zadar, killing two members of the Croatian Air Force. (Marko Dimic/Pixsell via Xinhua)

ZAGREB, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Croatian Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic offered to resign on Thursday after a military airplane crashed near the coastal city of Zadar, killing two members of the Croatian Air Force.

Announcing his resignation during a press conference on Thursday evening, Krsticevic said that this is a great loss for the Croatian Air Force and he called for an investigation into the circumstances of the accident, as well as the training system and command line.

On Thursday afternoon, a small Zlin airplane crashed near the city of Zadar during a regular training flight, killing a flight instructor and a cadet onboard.

Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Robert Hranj, said at the press conference that the aircraft was in use since 2007 and that the flight instructor was very experienced. He noted that the 25-year-old cadet who died in the accident had already done a solo flight and the training had been going according to plan.

This was the second fatal accident for the Croatian Air Force this year. On Jan. 27, a Kiowa OH-58D military helicopter with two crew members on board crashed into the Adriatic Sea between Zablace and Zlarin in the Sibenik archipelago, killing both pilots.

Krsticevic has served as defense minister and deputy prime minister of Croatia since 2016. He is expected to discuss his resignation with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Friday, local media reported. Enditem
Two in five drivers are concerned about handling petrol pumps when lockdown lifts - and almost half of those who are most at risk from Covid-19 say they'll be fearful about contracting the virus when filling up their cars.

A huge 69 per cent of drivers polled by insurer Admiral believe that you can catch coronavirus from a petrol pump.

With such a vast number of people feeling unsafe about carrying out regular day to day tasks, it's unsurprising that people are taking extra precautions when filling up cars with almost half of drivers claiming they'll wear gloves at fuel station forecourts.

Refuelling fears: Two in five motorists polled by Admiral said they are concerned about catching Covid-19 from fuel pumps

For many around Britain, not going out in cars for weeks on end has left no need to head to a petrol station to refuel.

With road traffic volumes dropping by around 60 per cent until this week, a lack of demand for petrol and diesel has put many independent fuel retailers - especially smaller filling stations in rural areas - at risk of closure.

Some 100 have already been shut and another 900 are at risk, according to the Petrol Retailers Association.

That said, there are an estimated 7.1million key workers around the UK, who have been reliant on fuel stations to remain open during the last two months.

With fuel pumps being handled throughout the pandemic, there are concerns among the motoring community about the safety of return to petrol stations in the aftermath of lockdown.

In a poll of 1,400 motorists, 41 per cent said they are scared they will catch coronavirus from a petrol station when they get back behind the wheel more regularly.

That figure increases to 48 per cent of those deemed to be most at risk to the deadly virus.

With almost seven in 10 believing that you can catch Covid-19 from a fuel pump, many drivers said they will be taking extra precautions to shield themselves by wearing gloves and washing their hands after filling up.

Public Health England has stated that petrol pumps are no worse than other surfaces for harboring the virus, but recommends motorists wear gloves when filling up

Are fuel pumps a hotbed for spreading coronavirus?

Additional safeguarding while filling up has been recommended by Public Health England, even despite clarifying that motorists are at no greater risk of getting coronavirus from a pump than handling any other hard object.

PHE says: 'Petrol pumps are no worse than other surfaces, although we do recommend people use gloves and wash their hands after using them.'

Major fuel retailer Shell added: 'The UK Petroleum Industry Association, based on advice from PHE, have confirmed that they are not aware of any evidence that fuel nozzles or other forecourt features such as pay-at-pump keypads are any more or less prone to the spread of Covid-19 than any other hard surfaces.

'We encourage everyone to follow government guidance by washing hands thoroughly and maintaining social distancing.'

As well as providing gloves at filling stations, ensuring restroom facilities are available to customers to wash their hands and displaying signage to keep people two metres apart, retailers are recommending that drivers pay for fuel with a card or contactless payments in the store, rather than cash.

Shell has the additional facility of using its dedicated app - allowing you to choose a 'Pay at Pump' service from within your car using a smartphone so you don't even need to go into a store.

But while a quarter of people are scared to drive due to exposure to germs because of the outbreak, 14 per cent of those polled admitted they are still making non-essential journeys.

Men came out as the worst offenders with one in five saying they've driven when they shouldn't have, compared to only 8 per cent of women.

Admiral says that anxieties using petrol stations centre around the fact that many people are using the facilities throughout the day, and this has impacted drivers around the country.

When it comes to essential key workers, the findings reveal that one in five are scared they will catch coronavirus from their car.

Clare Egan, head of motor product at the insurer, said: 'For many, staying at home and avoiding unnecessary travel is the best way to stay safe, but of course for millions in the UK, this isn't an option.

'It's understandable that people would feel concerned when visiting a petrol station to fill up their car, especially as a key worker or someone taking care of vulnerable people, but following guidelines will reduce the risk to you and to others.'

She added: 'Now more than ever is a time to be aware of germs and hygiene within your vehicle, so cleaning the door handle, gear stick, steering wheel and handbrake with disinfectant wipes often, will also reduce the risk of coronavirus spread when using your car.'

Is this UK product the answer for filling up safely at forecourts? Devon-based company, GripHero, claims that over 2,000 forecourts across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia have signed up to use its free hand-protection dispensers at fuel pumps in the last month. The award-winning patented hand-protection device is the only dispenser in the world permitted to sit on fuel pump handles. It uses ATEX-Certified anti-static hand-protection material, which removes all chance of ignition caused by static. That means it can be fitted in the refueling zone. By ensuring that hand-protection is available at the precise point where it is needed - on the fuel pump handle - GripHero helps to ensure that motorists refuelling their vehicles do not come into contact with plastic and metal surfaces where Covid-19 could be passed from one driver to another. In addition to cutting waste - by dispensing just one item of hand-protection at a time - and preventing transmission of Covid-19 from driver to driver via the fuel pump handle, installing GripHero on each and every fuel pump handle ends the common occurrence of hand-protection shortages. Westmorland Ltd, the operator of multi-award-winning motorway service stations across the country, including Gloucester Services, is one of the groups that has adopted GripHero since the pandemic. It is using the dispensers across its network, including Tebay Services and Rheged Centre in Cumbria. Andy Smith, Group Fuels Manager for Westmorland Ltd explained: 'It is more important than ever before to protect our customers in the best way we possibly can. 'By offering GripHero, Westmorland Ltd is playing its part in the battle against coronavirus, and is dramatically reducing wastage that other glove dispensers produce.'

Petrol price are 'ironically' at a four-year low

Admiral's report was published as petrol prices sunk to a four-year low, according to the latest figures.

The average cost of a litre of unleaded at UK forecourts has now dipped to 1.08, according to Government data - the lowest it has been since April 2016.

The price collapse means filling a 55-litre family car is around 7 cheaper today than six weeks ago, around the time the lockdown was first put in place and oil prices collapsed.

Diesel has also fallen in price, sinking to an average of 1.15 per litre, which is the lowest level since October 2016.

These are the average fuel prices in the UK, according to RAC Fuel Watch on 5 May 2020

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said the timing of the price fall was 'ironic', given that it has come as 'many of us are only making a fraction of the trips we did before the lockdown'.

He added: 'Based on current wholesale prices, there's the possibility for even lower prices  but we can't see this happening unless lockdown restrictions are eased and fuel retailers start selling fuel in much greater volumes again.

'With so much fuel in storage needing to be used up, retailers shouldn't have too many reasons to put prices up as any surge in car use is unlikely to make much of a dent in supplies for some time.'
A rivalry between the Tesla Model S Performance and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S was inevitable even before the first all electric Porsche marked its debut. Part of the reason might also be the companys repeated efforts to beat the long reigning Model S in the EV segment during testing. Now that both of these cars are out, the rivalry seem to only intensify.

A recent competition between the two electric cars better helps in determining their capabilities. Though this is not the first time that the two EVs have faced each other, it is easy to say that this is the closest they have been, with the Model S in the race being the Performance variant complete with the Cheetah Stance update.

Tesla Model S (L), Porsche Taycan Turbo S (R)

The race was conducted by DragTimes host on just a regular public road instead of a drag strip citing the ongoing lockdown in the US. What makes the races fair is that four rounds of the run were conducted to nullify any single jump start that any of the cars may get.



In the first round, the Taycan Turbo S jumped the start, and left the Model S chasing it throughout. On the contrary, the second race went to the Tesla, with the Model S Performance seeing a similar jump this time. Both the races began from a standing start.

Following this, two more races were conducted wherein the electric cars had a rolling start from a speed of 20 mph (32 kmph). Similar results were obtained for both initially as with alternate jump starts, both the cars managed to get ahead of the other in the respective races. You can check out the races in the video below.

There is, however, an interesting observation to be made here. While the Tesla Model S Performance and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S were both quick off the mark and both managed to get a head start in the race, the Taycan almost every time beat the Model S Performance at higher speeds. This can be accredited to the cars two-speed gearbox that enables it to switch gears more efficiently.

The host of the video does note that ultimately the results of such a race are much dependent on the drivers of the two vehicles. Only deduction that can be made from an informal race of this sorts is that both the electric vehicles are as quick as vehicles come and can outright beat any petrol engine competition any day.

The rivalry, apart from the performance, does not really extend to other aspects. As Porsche R&D head Michael Steiner cleared recently, people at Porsche do not consider Tesla to be a direct rival." While one plays in volume market, the other is exclusively for luxury and performance and the respective price tags reflect that.
While international students are struggling to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic, the institutions that depend on them are also worried about their financial future.

Amrita Ramkumar, a business administration student at Douglas College who is originally from India, worked two part-time jobs to support herself before the pandemic. When she was laid off from one of them, meeting rent, food, and other expenses became a challenge.

Even though her parents have been trying to send her help financially, India is under lockdown and money transfers have slowed, making the process of transferring funds arduous.

"The whole process has definitely been a massive learning curve," said Ramkumar.

There are few financial supports available to international students, says Jade Ho, a PhD student in education at Simon Fraser University who is originally from Taiwan.

No help is available at the provincial level, she said. Federally, international students can apply to EI or CERB, but a lot of people find they are not eligible because they don't meet minimum income requirements or possess a social insurance number.

Meanwhile, teaching assistant positions, which have traditionally supplemented the income of postgraduate students, have been cut or reduced as classes transition to online learning.

Like other students, Ho says, international students  who typically pay three to four times as much tuition as domestic students  are questioning whether the transition to online learning is worth the same as an in-class experience.

"The quality is definitely going to be different and not as good ... but nothing is being said about tuition [costs]," Ho said.

Severe impact on universities

Universities themselves are also feeling the pressure as they look forward to the next few months.

International students contribute $6 billion in tuition fees across the country and make up a substantial amount of a university's revenue, says Paul Davidson, CEO of Universities Canada, a group that provides university presidents with a unified voice at a federal level.

Story continues

If international student enrolment drops due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the losses could be staggering, Davidson says. It could have a severe impact on the quality of education institutions offer and could have ripple effects into university towns that depend on the economic contributions of incoming students, he added.

International students are also an important part of the fabric of Canadian universities, Davidson says, adding to the diversity on campus and allowing for a greater variety of course offerings.

He said universities are working on scenario planning in anticipation of these changes like setting up emergency financial assistance, changing rules around off-campus work and contemplating arrangements for international students having to quarantine.

Nevertheless, there could be some major changes to university funding as a whole.

"If the federal contributions remain low we will need to find a new business model," Davidson said.

If you have a COVID-19-related story we should pursue that affects British Columbians, please email us at impact@cbc.ca
Citing the challenges faced due to labour shortage and the need for ensuring food safety amid the Covid-19 crisis, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider an MSP of Rs 2,902 per quintal for paddy along with Rs 100 per quintal as incentive bonus to check stubble burning.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Amarinder Singh said the state had already written to the Ministry of Agriculture recommending a minimum support price (MSP) for paddy at Rs 2,902 per quintal as calculated by the Punjab Agriculture University in Ludhiana, against last year's MSP of Rs 1,835 per quintal.

"Given the need to ensure food safety in the time of the present pandemic, it is imperative that farmers may be given the appropriate price signal by announcing a remunerative MSP for paddy," said Amarinder Singh, seeking the Prime Minister's personal consideration in this matter, as well as on the issue of incentive bonus.

The Chief Minister noted that Punjab was successfully moving in the service of the nation towards meeting its target of wheat procurement, notwithstanding the challenges imposed by the lockdown and the concerns of social distancing.

Post the wheat procurement, paddy transplantation in the state was scheduled to commence in mid-June, but it may require to be slightly advanced due to the shortage of labour in the state, he said.

Noting that "it is unlikely that we will see much seasonal labour coming from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for paddy transplantation due to Covid," Amarinder Singh expressed concern at the serious challenges this could pose for farming operations in the coming paddy season, besides leading to escalation in labour costs.

The Chief Minister underlined the importance of providing farmers a non-burning bonus of Rs 100 per quintal to defray their expenses in handling of paddy straw, thus preventing the burning of paddy stubble.

In this context, he also pointed to the Supreme Court directions asking the Centre and states to work out an incentive structure to overcome the problem of paddy stubble burning.

"This monetary incentive deserves to be announced ex-ante, i.e. along with the MSP, to allow farmers to prepare for its management and for the state to work towards proper implementation," said Amarinder Singh, adding that this bonus would also help incentivise the desired behaviour and encourage farmers to move to better and ecologically sustainable farm practices.
With Gujarat reporting a large number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities, medical experts from AIIMS, including its Director Dr Randeep Guleria, have rushed to Ahmedabad to provide expert guidance to doctors there on COVID-19 management.

Following directions from the Centre, Dr Guleria, who is a pulmonologist, and Dr Manish Soneja from the AIIMS department of medicine left for Ahmedabad on special Indian Air Force flight on Friday evening, official sources said.

With 390 more people testing positive for COVID-19 and 24 fatalities, the total number of cases in Gujarat climbed to 7,403 and the death toll reached 449 on Friday. Of the total coronavirus cases in the state, 5,260 have been reported from Ahmedabad district alone.

"They will visit the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital and SVP hospital on Saturday to provide expert guidance and advice to the doctors on treatment for coronavirus-infected patients there," a source said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday stressed the need for decentralisation of power to fight the coronavirus, and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold regular conversations with chief ministers and make them partners in dealing with the pandemic.

The current fight is too centralised and need to decentralise. I would request the Prime Minister to start talking with the chief ministers not as the boss but as a colleague as someone who is helping them, Gandhi told a news conference.

Forget about Congress-ruled states, BJP-ruled states or CPI(M)-ruled. They are all Indian chief ministers and should all be working together with the Prime Minister. If I was to advise the Prime Minister even though it is not my place definitely he should call to every chief minister in 1-2 days in a partnership type call, he said.

The Congress leader told reporters through video-conferencing that the government must start giving transparency to its actions by cooperating with the states and making them partners in decision-making.

He said the lockdown is not an on-off switch and it is a transition which requires cooperation of all  the Centre, chief ministers, district magistrates and the people of India.

We need to decentralise power in dealing with the virus. If we keep this fight only in the PMO, we will lose. The Prime Minister must devolve power. If we centralise, there will be a calamity. The Prime Minister has to trust chief ministers and the chief ministers in turn have to trust the district magistrates, he added.

This was Gandhis second press conference during the lockdown period. The former Congress chief had earlier addressed the media on April 16, when he insisted that the lockdown is not a solution to defeat Covid-19 but a pause button and stressed the need for having a comprehensive exit strategy in place to ensure that the coronavirus does not come back once the restrictions are lifted.

This time also, Gandhi called upon the government to tell the people what criteria it would use to open the lockdown or continue it post May 17.

He reiterated his demand for immediate direct cash transfer to 50% households in the country to enable the people to tide over the crisis triggered by the Covid-19.

Gandhi said the financial assistance is immediately needed because the Indian economy has stopped and the businesses have started collapsing.

There is a need to start businesses immediately otherwise there will be catastrophe and we might end up creating more problems. India is all about domestic consumption and we need to start the engine now. We are losing time. I believe there is a sense within the government that this might lead to large deficit and create problems externally. I would tell them stop worrying about that, he said.

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Pelosi

By Molly Ball

Holt. 345 pp. $27.99

---

In 1976, a very young California Gov. Jerry Brown swept into Maryland and won the state's presidential primary, somewhat to his own surprise. Everywhere he went, especially in Baltimore, the governor was greeted by improbably large, enthusiastic crowds of older, urban, ethnic types, organized by local Democratic groups. These working-class folks seemed puzzled by Brown's Jesuitical enviro-hipster act, but they cheered anyway, as instructed. After his victory, Governor Moonbeam - as he was then known - was asked about the machine support he'd received in Maryland. "In my father's house," Brown replied, deadpan, "there are many machines."

This particular machine was led by former Baltimore mayor Tom D'Alesandro, who was Nancy Pelosi's brother, and Baltimore County Executive Ted Venetoulis, who had been Pelosi's high school boyfriend. Both were proteges of Pelosi's father, the former mayor and congressman also known as Tom D'Alesandro - and her mother, Annunciata, who may have been the brains of the operation. This was the world that produced the first female speaker of the House in American history. It was a labor-intensive style of politics. You knew your constituents personally - and I mean all of them - and found out what they needed: a patronage job, help with an immigration lawyer, maybe some coal in winter. In return, they gave you their votes (sometimes you paid them for those). It was a world of relentless door-knocking, implacable loyalty and peremptory revenge against those who strayed. Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi was immersed in it, and she was a quick learner. "She has political skills that nobody else in Congress has," said her friend, the late representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania. "Don't think she's from San Francisco. She's from Baltimore."

The great strength of Molly Ball's "Pelosi" is the recognition that America's most successful female politician is, ironically, an urban machine anachronism. Ball's appreciation of Pelosi's ancient abilities makes this a smart, solid biography with a lesson: Despite our current fixation on political showmanship, politics works best in a complicated democracy like ours when its practitioners can navigate their way through the byzantine cloakrooms of power.

In Ball's account, Pelosi is as tough as bullets. She knows how to count votes, how to negotiate (both from a position of strength and from a position of weakness) and how to herd her tribe; she knows what can get passed, against the odds - like the Affordable Care Act - and what can't. She has the courage to tell her fellow female House members face to face, with tears in her eyes, that government-funded abortions have to be removed from the ACA for it to get through. These are lost skills in American politics, atrophied in the modern-day rush to preen and tweet. They are small-room, off-camera skills. Ball makes a convincing case that no woman could have made it to the top without them.

It didn't hurt, Ball argues, that before entering politics Pelosi had five children in six years and created order out of the ensuing chaos. She raised those children in San Francisco - her husband, Paul, is a financier and developer - and by all accounts, Pelosi loved being a mother. But the political itch was always there, the partisanship always fierce: Early on, she refused to buy a house she loved because it had been "made available" by a Republican who had joined the Nixon administration. And as the children became teenagers, Pelosi began holding house parties to fundraise for the local Democratic Party. She was a brilliant rainmaker, eventually a legendary one; her ability to raise money for fellow House members was a crucial weapon in her rise to the top.

Fundraising is the political equivalent of housework. It is dreary, humiliating and - as with Pelosi's other talents - it takes place almost entirely in private. Ball doesn't spend much time explaining just how she did it, which is a shame: Pelosi isn't the most transparent of subjects for a biography, and a better sense of how she succeeded in this mysterious realm might have helped to reveal more of who she is. We must assume that persistence had a lot to do with it, but was charm also involved? Was there horse-trading: favors for contributions from her Silicon Valley friends? Her ability to raise money certainly made her an attractive candidate for Congress in 1986; her ability to organize relentlessly made her a successful one. One of her mentors, the late congressman Phillip Burton, paid her his ultimate compliment: She was "operational." As opposed to ideological, or aspirational, or charismatic.

Pelosi was ideological, of course. She was the very definition of a "San Francisco liberal." She supported and defended her district's gay community with passion. She was feminist, antiwar, pro-environment, a furious opponent of trade with China because of that country's human rights abuses. Indeed, it was her partisanship that led to her greatest insight about politics in the 21st century: Bipartisanship was a crock. The Republicans weren't going to play. This became particularly apparent after Barack Obama became president. The passage of the Affordable Care Act was his and the speaker's signature achievement, but, Ball writes, "the key to Obama's triumph had not been his ability to reach across the aisle, but Pelosi's skill at holding her caucus together."

"Pelosi" isn't quite hagiography. Ball admits to admiring the speaker, but she is honest about her deficits: Pelosi is a clumsy public speaker, not much of a policy visionary and vengeful, often to a fault. She was on her way to losing her leadership position, a brittle, ill-tempered has-been - in 2014, she chased a Republican congressman across the floor of the House, shouting: "You are an insignificant person!" - when she was given the gift of Donald Trump as an adversary.

Trump was the perfect mark for a machine pol with Pelosi's talents: He was disorganized, thoughtless, uninformed, with no sense of small-room strategy or tactics. He was reality TV and she was reality. It was, and is, a metaphoric battle: Trump, the rear-guard, testosterone-addled bloviator and Pelosi - suddenly - the avatar of a feminist political future. Ball quotes Amy Klobuchar's famous observation: "If you think a woman can't beat Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day."

But she does it the old-fashioned way - counting the votes, twisting the arms, knowing when and how to cut a deal. "She's better organized than we were," her brother reported back to her father early on, watching Pelosi's first campaign for Congress. And "operational," too: If she has to call 70 of her colleagues in 24 hours to get a vote, she makes the calls.

Politics evolves, of course, but there are ways and means that endure and that are essential. Pelosi has proved that the same ceremonies that worked in the wards of Baltimore can be successful in Washington's corridors of power. Indeed, her style may point the way toward the new, pragmatic politics we'll need after the coronavirus pandemic. And in the end, wouldn't it be a lovely thing if Pelosi, mother of five and daughter of the machine, proved that the best path to power for women - and maybe even for a few thoughtful men - ran through the retail politics of the past?

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Klein is the author of seven books, including "Primary Colors" and, most recently, "Charlie Mike."
Zee News has received huge support of its viewers in the last 24 hours against the FIR in Kerala in which Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary has been named. Viewers of the world's top news show DNA encouraged our team for its fearless reporting and coverage for showing the truth about those indulging in jihad.

Our reports on jihad have become the biggest stories of 2020 which even the Zee News team had not imagined. But today it seems that even if someone says anything against jihad, then that person will be jailed. If you oppose those spreading terror you will be forced to face the court and police.

Democracy gives the option of dissent. But if the definition of jihad is different for you and me, does it mean that we lodge FIRs against each other, files court cases against each other?

If this is allowed to continue, then the country will have two groups - one which supports terrorists and calls them martyrs and the other which salutes the supreme sacrifice of soldiers who are protecting us. One group will work towards erecting memorials for terrorists and the other will want that they are denied proper last rites.

Since May 7, Zee News and DNA have received the support of crores of patriotic Indians. Your power is much, much greater than that of a handful of people. We assure all of you that we will always stand with truth and never let you down.

Several top names of India including ministers, political leaders and celebrities have come out on our support. Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, too, stated that any move to muzzle the media is not right and its independence should be respected.

Lodging FIRs has become a tool to harass and threaten journalists. But such acts can not deter those who raise issues of the voice of the public. Today DD News senior editor Ashok Shrivastav protested against the attack on media alone outside Delhi Press Club

The FIR against Sudhir Chaudhary alleges that ZeeNews programme on March 11, 2020, hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims. The FIR has been registered under IPC Section 295A.

But if the Indian Constitution's Article 19 gives the Right to Freedom of Expression to everyone, then how raising the issue of jihad hurts the religious sentiments of any section?

IPC Section 295A is being used as a tool to harass journalists who report the truth and several state government do not like such journalists.

Just like IPC 295A, there is another IPC Section 500 which is slapped against anyone accused of defamation. Both of these sections are used as a political tool. Even Madras High Court has made a similar observation.

In a case between a media house and a private company, Madras High Court judge Justice GR Swaminathan in his order stated that the section against defamation is being used by powerful leaders and companies as a weapon against journalists but the courts will protect their fundamental rights.

It is true that in our country, the law is used against those who speak the truth. Even experts say IPC Sections 295A and 500 are misused and it should stop. These are against freedom of expression.
When Jenny Rodriguez was growing up in Orange, her mother offered her some sage advice in Spanish.

Estudie mucho para sacar una beca. Lo necesitamos, Rodriguez, 20, recalled her mother saying, quite frequently.

The English translation is, Study hard so you can get a scholarship. We need it.

It is advice that Rodriguez took to heart.

While attending Orange High School, Rodriguez  the middle child of immigrants from Ecuador who graduated in the top 10 of her class in 2018  received a National Honor Society scholarship enabling her to enroll at American University in Washington, D.C.

Rodriguez recently learned she is receiving a second prestigious scholarship. She is among 21 winners of the 2020 Dream Award from Scholarship America and will receive $11,500 for her junior year and $12,500 for her senior year.

In conjunction with her prior scholarship and a grant from the university, Rodriguez said she will be graduating debt-free in 2022.

She is fulfilling her mothers wish.

I can focus on just my studies. My financial burden is lifted, Rodriguez told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday night.

The recipients, as described by Scholarship America, all have completed the first year of their college education, demonstrated financial need, and overcome obstacles through sheer determination.

In applying for the award, Rodriguez submitted an essay telling her story about growing up in Orange, which is home to 30,000 and where about a quarter of the citys residents live below the poverty line.

It was just based on my story, and the story of my parents, and the story of who I want to be in the future, said Rodriguez, who is majoring in political science, minoring in education and planning a career in education policy.

Her parents, Marco and Martha Rodriguez, separately immigrated from Ecuador in the late 1990s. They ended up living in the same apartment building in Orange. Thats how they met.

My dad lived on the third floor. My mom lived on the second floor, she said, adding that her family still lives in the same building.

Her father works in construction, and her mother runs a laundromat.

Reflecting on her time at Orange High School, Rodriguez said she was part of the National Honor Society, vice president of the student council, and played on the volleyball team.

She interned as an American University freshman at U.S. Sen. Cory Bookers office in Washington, and last summer with New Jersey Assemblywoman Britnee N. Timberlake, D-34th District.

Asked about her career goals, Rodriguez said she "interested in the urban education realm of public education, for grades K-12."

She said she wants to help develop "opportunities for students in urban schools ... finding ways to make education more equal, despite where theyre coming from and their background.

Rodriguez is back in Orange with her parents, sister and brother, and recently concluded her sophomore year. American University switched to online instruction in mid-March.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, a celebration had been planned in Washington by Scholarship America, which has distributed $4.3 billion in scholarships since being founded in 1958.

Instead, scholarship recipients were honored via an online ceremony Thursday.

Scholarship America posted two videos of Rodriguez being interviewed remotely by MSNBC news anchor Richard Lui.

2020 Dream Award Scholar Jenny Rodriguez w/ Richard Lui: Part 1 To celebrate Dreams to Success, 2020 #DreamAward student Jenny Rodriguez shares her story with journalist, MSNBC and NBC News anchor and Scholarship America supporter Richard Lui. In part one of their interview, Jenny shares her background, the challenges she's faced and what she has learned through her experiences in campaign offices. #studentsFirst #highered #DreamsToSuccess #StudentsDreamBig Posted by Scholarship America on Wednesday, May 6, 2020

In the second video, Rodriguez told Lui she was in her dorm at the university when she got the email notifying her that she had won the scholarship.

No one else was around.

I didnt know what to do with myself, because there was no one to tell, she said.

Then she picked up the phone, and told her mother what had happened.

Guess what? I won a scholarship. I think thats exactly what I said, Rodriguez told Lui, translating what she said to her mother into English.

It was a special moment, the culmination of her mothers dream.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobJenningsNJ
Dead clams are found mainly in Tam Hoa and Tam Hai communes, Nui Thanh District.  Photo tienphong.vn

QUANG NAM  Tens of tonnes of clams raised on Truong Giang River in central Quang Nam Province have died en masse, leaving many local households penniless.

Local farmers said death clams appeared on Truong Giang River in Tam Hoa and Tam Hai communes, Nui Thanh District.

Huynh Van Ba, an aquaculture farmer from Tam Hoa Commune, told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that he spent VN120 million to buy five tonnes of white clams from Thai Binh Province for breeding on 1ha of Truong Giang River.

He expected to harvest 10 tonnes of clams after two months of raising them if they grow well, earning VN300-400 million.

However, he found the clams died en masse for unknown reasons a few days ago.

I spent all my money to raise the clams but now they have died. I hope the authorities find out the cause of death soon and check if the water of Truong Giang River is safe or not, Ba said.

Nguyen Ngoc Linh, deputy head of Agriculture Division of Nui Thanh District said they collected samples for testing and were waiting for the results.  VNS
VANCOUVER, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Equinox Gold Corp. (TSX: EQX, NYSE American: EQX) ("Equinox Gold" or the "Company") reminds investors that the Company's annual general meeting of shareholders ("AGM") will be held on Friday, May 15, 2020 commencing at 1:30 pm Vancouver time. Shareholder votes must be received by 1:30 pm Vancouver time on May 14, 2020.

Equinox Gold will also announce its first quarter 2020 financial and operating results on May 15 during market hours and will discuss the results during the corporate update immediately following the AGM.

This year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Equinox Gold will hold its AGM in a virtual format via live audiocast. All interested investors are invited to participate in the AGM using the login details below and to submit questions during the live audiocast.

AGM commencing at 1:30 pm Vancouver time

Login: https://web.lumiagm.com/289444004 Password: equinox2020

Meeting materials and information regarding how to participate in the virtual meeting have been distributed to shareholders and are also available for download on Equinox Gold's website at www.equinoxgold.com.

Corporate Update

As in previous years, Equinox Gold will host a live conference call and webcast after the AGM commencing at 2:00 pm Vancouver time to discuss the Company's business strategy and objectives, first quarter results and activities underway at the Company's projects. All participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of Equinox Gold's Chairman, CEO and executive team. The webcast will be archived on Equinox Gold's website until August 15, 2020.

Corporate Update commencing at 2:00 pm Vancouver time Conference call Toll-free in U.S. and Canada: 1-800-319-4610 International callers: +1 604-638-5340



Webcast www.equinoxgold.com

SOURCE Equinox Gold Corp.
President Donald Trump enjoyed a close working relationship with Jennifer Hawkins when she was crowned Miss Universe 16 years ago.

And the commander in chief, who owned the beauty pageant from 1996 to 2015, unexpectedly brought up the now-36-year-old model during an interview with an expat New York Post reporter this week.

When the journalist, Ebony Bowden, disclosed that she was from Australia, Trump immediately asked her: 'How is your Miss Universe?'

Still on your mind? Donald Trump unexpectedly asked 'how is Jennifer Hawkins?' during an interview with an Australian journalist this week. Pictured together on July 28, 2004

As reported by The Australian, Bowden later explained in a TV interview: 'Obviously I have not lost my Australian accent and it's not one that you can easily shake.

'But at the end of the interview I told him that I was Australian, and that kind of came as a surprise to him. And he said, "How is your Miss Universe?" And I said, "Jennifer Hawkins?"

'And he said, "I always knew that she would go far. Some of them have it and some don't. But Jennifer has gone on to do great things and developed a few businesses and recently had a child, of course."'

Favourite: Trump, who owned the beauty pageant from 1996 to 2015, enjoyed a close working relationship with Jennifer when she was crowned Miss Universe 16 years ago. Pictured on June 1, 2004 in Quito, Ecuador

Bowden remarked that it was unusual Trump hadn't asked after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but instead 'wanted to know how our Miss Universe was'.

Jennifer won Miss Universe in 2004 at the age of 22, and spent a year living in New York City in a riverside apartment provided by the Miss Universe Organization.

She went on to have a successful modelling career and served as an ambassador for Myer department stores for 12 years between 2007 and 2019.

In addition, she owns a tanning range, Jbronze, and boutique tequila brand, Sesion.

She is married to property developer Jake Wall, with whom she shares a six-month-old daughter, and lives in a $20million home in Newport, Sydney.

Didn't miss a beat: When an expat New York Post reporter told Trump she was from Australia, the president asked: 'How is your Miss Universe?' Pictured on July 28, 2004 in New York City

Priorities! Ebony Bowden (left) thought it was unusual Trump hadn't asked after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but instead 'wanted to know how our Miss Universe was'

Trump and Jennifer briefly reunited on stage in 2011 at the National Achievers Congress in Sydney.

Footage of their exchange resurfaced five years later, in October 2016, when Trump was a presidential candidate and facing accusations of sexual misconduct.

He made a sexual joke about how Jennifer 'came tonight' and remarked how she was 'beautiful' but 'not very bright'.

Career: Jennifer won Miss Universe in 2004 at the age of 22, and spent a year living in New York City in an apartment provided by the Miss Universe Organization. She went on to have a stellar modelling career and was an ambassador for Myer department stores for 12 years

Happily ever after: She is married to property developer Jake Wall, with whom she shares a six-month-old daughter, and lives in a $20million home in Newport, Sydney

Trump also placed his hand around Jennifer's waist and pulled her in for a kiss, but she appeared to turn away to offer a cheek and position her arm between them.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the time, Jennifer said she had not seen the video.

But she still defended the controversial politician, saying: 'I have to say that Trump and his family have always been so respectful.'

When asked about the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against him, she added: 'I can only comment on what's happened to me personally, and he's always treated me with respect.'
The Oxford dictionary defines politician as "person engaged or interested in politics" and politics as "science and art of government; political affairs or life of principles etc". A politician is defined as one who is actively involved in politics or who holds or seek political office. Politicians play a central role in our lives. They are the concentrated voices of the people that make all efforts to improve their constituencies and people's welfare.

The former President and his party (NDC) have supported the Covid-19 fight and the restriction measures announced by the President. There is also a broad consensus about the methods adopted to battle the pandemic.

The former President has spoken extensively about the pandemic and made some suggestion to the government and Ghana's efforts to tackle it. Keeping aside his suggestions for now, the most important point that the former President made was that we need a united front to defeat the virus. It is the time to unite and fight a common enemy, the virus.

The former President's statement echoes the general tone adopted by all decent opposition leaders across the global political spectrum. The former President also thanked health workers and those providing services in these challenging times. The former President has also put together a Covid-19 rapid team to support the fight. There may be underlying differences in approach. But it is important to note that this is rare moment in our democracy, which is otherwise marked by constant arguments, rancour, squabble, battles, and bitter contestations. The gravity of the crisis is such that, notwithstanding the bards exchanged every day by parties communicators and social media warriors of differing persuasions on Facebook, Twitter etc, there is a spirit of cooperation that is unprecedented in recent times.

A fake politician, will after taken the oath of office with the holy books and lousy thanksgiving services, use their power as an end in itself, rather than for public good, making them indifferent to the progress of their citizens. So far, the former President has become the image of his creator. He gives high regard for morality, national cohesion, law abiding with no tendencies to primitive politics. Ghanaians trust in him has increased because of how he has carried himself in opposition and his good sense of characters and qualities composed of values, beliefs, traits and skills.

His integrity and technical skills to handle complex national issues, fiscal matters, policies, projects, ideas and initiative solutions to problems have won him more admirers. This supplemented cooperation coming from the former President is commendable, for it is only when the political class in a united manner takes on a challenge across federal units, that there can be a commonality in the action plan and the implementation of it. This has indeed happened. The former President and his party have supported the Covid-19 fight from public education to distribution of food, PPEs and other items.

But beyond that, the opposition's job is not to go along with each government measure or action. It has to, while being supportive, critique the government if it is falling short, in a careful and calibrated manner by remaining constructive, and not adversarial. This too, has happened. Despite experts consistently pointing to the need for greater testing as a way to identify the spread of the infection the government has been slow. But the opposition has been right in pointing to this gap and the former President was right in identifying the lack of testing kits and laboratories as a pressing need. This has pushed the government to do more.

The lack of PPEs for health workers has been a gap in Ghana's response. Here too, the opposition along with health experts and civil society organizations, have increased pressure, legitimately on the government to deliver.

The opposition has also played an important role in pointing the economic misery caused by the lockdown and other restriction measures The Former President has raised this issue consistently

The crisis is not just a test for the government. It is also a test for the opposition. So far, the opposition has done very well, by remaining supportive, yet giving constructive suggestions and feedbacks.

Democracy isn't war as they say. Though it can be shot through with unpleasant exchanges, it requires a high level of respect between opposing parties and politicians. This is why many Ghanaians including my own self vehemently criticized the Vice President, Dr. Bawumia over his response to the former President. I am not sure the Vice President is principled as we were made to believe. We heard him admit in 2016 that the former President had solved the perennial power crisis. His only problem was that; Ghanaians should not commend him for fixing the problem because he caused it. That is another inaccurate assertion. Our power crisis did not start under the Mahama administration. All administrations encountered same challenge especially, the Rawlings and Kufour administrations. Apart from the lack of enough generation, the West African pipeline problem also contributed to the problem so, to make a claim that it was internally generated is mind boggling.

The latest IMF figures published on their website also gives credence to what the former President said about the state of our economy. Fanatics, liars, tribal bigots can all have sincerely and deeply held principles, and they can make great sacrifices to advance those principles. Yet that doesn't make them worthy of admiration and respect.

After listening to the Vice President, I asked myself: so, does this man appreciate the legacies the former President handed over to him personally? He is now the government's ICT Chief. Has has been relegated to that position for reasons known to him and his boss. But the truth is: the information and Communication and Technology (ICT) sector, started seeing tremendous growth under the Mahama administration. The administration's strategic investment in the sector has led to the growing internet connectivity, availability of cheaper smartphone and rapid rise in social networking and we seen an increasing emergence of digital-savvy consumers.

The Mahama administration played a major role in promoting the ICT sector as the next growth engine for Ghana. The Communication Ministry under Dr. Edward Omane Boamah was helpful in enhancing the attractiveness of the ICT sector. The ICT sector is playing enormous role in the Covid-19 fight. That's is where you find the really admirable, really respect-worthy, opponent. There are people in politics who are promoting truly valuable ends. Or, at least, they are promoting ends we agree are valuable. The former President is one of such politicians. He might disagree with you, perhaps dramatically, on questions of everyday policy. But his disagreements are always grounded in a shared appreciation of the many and varied interest of the people affected by a policy.

Author: Andrews Krow
I know this is going to make me look weird, but the few times I got asked out through the years it didnt seem right to me, she said. A handful of first dates did not turn into second ones. I think as women we go through phases. Sometimes I would be, like, Nobody loves me, Im all alone. But most of the time I was cool with being alone. I thought, Im going to be productive.

Staying single had the benefit of nurturing a sense of adventure and of oneness with the world. After college, she went to Australia for a summer of church work. Later she traveled to the Philippines to teach English. Before she left for Madagascar in 2012, she visited Thailand to volunteer with the nonprofit Compassion International. Always, she kept in touch. I made really good relationships everywhere I went, and now I have extra families around the globe, she said.

Mr. Mwaituka, 29, didnt need to leave his Birmingham home to develop an appreciation for other cultures. His parents, Helen and Fred Mwaituka, and younger brothers, John and Jerry Mwaituka, arrived in the United States in 1995 from Tanzania, after years of unrest in that country. Since then, their home has been a refuge for visiting family members. Some have stayed weeks. Some for years, including a cousin who is now like a sister, Hellen Mathias. Growing up, it was always that way, Mr. Mwaituka said. Now I care for people from other places and people who need help by nature.

For a while, the aim of his helping instinct was spiritual. After graduating from Thompson High School in 2008, he went to Birmingham Metro Masters Commission, a local Bible college. But less than a year into a position as a youth pastor, he switched professional gears, taking jobs in sales and as an electrical apprentice. Since 2018, he has been a groundskeeper at a local apartment complex.

Before he met Ms. Gruber, he tried a few dating sites. I was on Christian Mingle, and then I tried Bumble, but nothing was happening, he said. He deleted both accounts after what he called a lot of false starts. Of course I had the desire to be in a relationship, but after a while I learned how to be on my own. Romantically, anyway.
Closed since the curfew was clamped on March 23, food businesses in the district have been allowed to resume home deliveries between 7am and 7pm without curfew passes from May 9.

However, no dine-in or takeaway services will be allowed in these establishments, including restaurants, eateries, ice-cream parlours, juice shops and sweet shops.

Restaurants were shortly given relaxation in the second week of April as well, but the permissions were rolled back on April 16 after a delivery boy was found Covid-19 positive in Delhi and 72 families were quarantined.

Deputy commissioner Pradeep Kumar Agrawal said no special pass will be required to open the establishments. But, only home delivery has been allowed. There will be no dine-in or takeaway services, he added.

The owners of these businesses will have to abide by all precautions while running the operations and delivering food, he said.

This includes checking the temperature of the employees and maintaining a record; frequent cleaning/disinfection of workplace; wearing of face mask, which should be changed daily; social distancing; hygienic packaging of food items; and frequent cleaning of delivery vehicle.

The administration has also directed the businesses to conform to zero contact delivery, which entails not touching any points at delivery location, including doorbells. All delivery boys need to wear gloves and masks.

Any violation will invite criminal proceedings under the relevant provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, and the Indian Penal Code.

CONCERNED OVER MIGRATION OF WORKERS, HOTEL BODY HAILS MOVE

Members of the Ludhiana Restaurants and Hotels Association, who had opposed the relaxation in April, have now hailed the move, while raising concerns over reverse migration of workers.

Association president Amarvir Singh said while restaurant owners were already reeling under losses due to the lockdown, migrants leaving for their home states had compounded their troubles.

How will the businesses run if there are no workers? The prolonged lockdown has also affected the restaurant industry, said Singh, adding that restaurants owners will comply with all guidelines.

Hailing the decision, Narinder Pal Singh Pappu, president of Halwai Association, Punjab, said reopening businesses will help retain workers, who were out of jobs and money.

CONGRESS DECRIES RELAXATION

Congress councillor Parvinder Lapran said the decision seemed to have been taken in haste even when Ludhiana was listed in red zones. Business owners should themselves think about the risks involved and avoid resuming their operations. Residents should also avoid ordering food, and take all precautions if they cannot help it, he added.
STOCKHOLM, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The EQT Foundation today announced the appointment of Cilia Holmes Indahl, currently CEO of Katapult Group, as Head of the EQT Foundation, effective August 2020. In her new role, Cilia will be responsible for developing and executing on the Foundation's strategic agenda.

The EQT Foundation was founded in June 2019 by a core group of Partners at EQT with the purpose of hosting and driving EQT's global philanthropic activities, and furthering the firm's ambitions of making a positive impact with everything it does. The EQT Foundation aligns its activities with EQT's vision of being the most reputable investor and owner. It has a mission of creating a more inclusive tomorrow and pushing the frontiers of societal impact as well as ensuring the successful long-term development of EQT and maintaining EQT's strong corporate culture and values. The EQT Foundation also has a right to appoint a member to the nomination committee of EQT AB according to the principles for appointing a nomination committee.

Cilia's experience from her previous role as Sustainability Director of Aker BioMarine and from the Norwegian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where she negotiated the Sustainable Development Goals, matches perfectly with the EQT Foundation's mission. Cilia has a genuine passion for driving long-lasting positive change and engaging others in making a difference.

Conni Jonsson, Chairperson of the EQT Foundation, said: "We are very happy that Cilia is joining the EQT Foundation. Our ambition is that the work and efforts we pursue through the EQT Foundation will inspire others to contribute to positive long-term change and, with Cilia onboard, we are confident that we will be able to drive our positive impact agenda further and become a change catalyst in the industry."

Christian Sinding, CEO and Managing Partner at EQT, continued: "The EQT Foundation shares the same objective as EQT, to make a positive impact with everything we do, and Cilia's energy, engagement and experience fit this in an exceptional manner. We want every investment EQT makes to contribute to a better and cleaner tomorrow, and we see the EQT Foundation as an important pillar in achieving this."

Cilia Holmes Indahl commented: "For me, driving the EQT Foundation is a dream job! With EQT's culture, values and impressive portfolio of great companies, there are so many opportunities to push the sustainability agenda forward. I look forward to exploring new ways of accelerating industry transformations, leveraging the thematic expertise from the entire EQT system and driving positive impact in close collaboration with all EQT colleagues."

In April, the EQT Foundation announced its first donation of EUR 1 million to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator (launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and Mastercard) as a response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Further information about the EQT Foundation's strategy, focus areas and initiatives will be communicated once Cilia has assumed her role.

About the EQT Foundation

EQT Foundation was founded in June 2019 by a company owned by a core group of Partners at EQT. It holds around one percent of the shares in EQT AB and will be a long-term shareholder. EQT Foundation is structurally independent from EQT. The purpose of EQT Foundation is to use the proceeds generated from the dividends it receives from EQT AB shares, as well as other assets and donations, for the furtherance of the mission of creating a more inclusive tomorrow and pushing the frontiers of societal impact. EQT Foundation is a foundation under Swedish law (Sw. stiftelse).

Contact

Nina Nornholm

Head of Communications

+46-708-550-356

EQT Press Office

press@eqtpartners.com

+46-8-506-55-334

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/eqt/r/cilia-holmes-indahl-appointed-head-of-eqt-foundation,c3107226

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(CNN)  When Flavio Ramos was wheeled into the hospital room, he was gasping for air and slipping in and out of consciousness. So it was his son, Arturo, who first noticed the bodies.

Two corpses laid unattended on the tile floor. By the next morning, the body count in the room rose to three. Flavio Ramos was dead.

More than a month later, his family still hasn't buried Flavio Ramos. They couldn't if they tried. Because soon after his death, Arturo Ramos says hospital authorities lost the body.

"We need a place to say, on Sunday let's go to put flowers on the tomb of my father," his heartbroken son said. "There is nothing, there is nothing you can do."

Flavio Ramos, 55, is yet another Covid-19 victim in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the site of one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks.

His death and disappearance illustrate how the healthcare system in Ecuador's second-largest city, roughly the size of Chicago, collapsed within a matter of weeks after the outbreak exploded in March.

Bodies in hospitals

Guayaquil was woefully unprepared to confront the coronavirus.

Last month, the port city of nearly three million gained global notoriety when videos surfaced showing dead bodies left in the city's streets after morgues and funeral homes were overwhelmed. Many families made the choice to put loved ones outdoors for fear of infection and because the smells were unbearable.

Three doctors in Guayaquil, each working at different hospitals, described similar scenarios during the months of March and April to CNN: Hospitals completely overwhelmed by a pandemic that descended rapidly on an unprepared healthcare system, leaving no chance to truly help people, let alone provide patients with basic levels of care. All spoke to CNN anonymously for fear of losing their jobs.

"People were terrified and scared," said one doctor about some of the worst days. "Really sick people were coming to the hospital, dying. You tended to one, did what you could do, then that person dies, and you move to the next, and that person dies, and on and on like that."

"At one point there were dozens of bodies between the hospital rooms and morgue that were waiting to be taken away," said the doctor. "There were no body bags left."

The rate of death far outpaced the capacity of city morgues and funeral homes. A second doctor told CNN that he usually saw three or four dead bodies lying on the floor each day at the hospital. "We had nowhere else to put them," he said.

In a video obtained by CNN, a family is seen pulling the body of a loved one from their car and laying it in a hospital parking lot, unsure what to do next.

No one would accept him

In January, Flavio Ramos celebrated his birthday, surrounded by family and friends.

During the last week of March, he started feeling sick. On the 31st, his breathing became so labored that 24-year-old Arturo Ramos had to take action.

He drove his father to the nearest hospital, expecting the gravely ill engineer to be quickly admitted and get the help he desperately needed. But when he arrived, hospital staff told him the facility was already full.

"The doctors said, 'There are no beds for patients,' and that was it," Ramos told CNN by video call from his home in Guayaquil. "If you stayed at the door they said they would call security to kick you out."

Undeterred, he tried again at another hospital, and another, and another. After four hours of driving, Ramos says his father was admitted at General Guasmo Sur Hospital. It was the 11th facility he'd tried.

Ramos recalled that his father spent his last hours in a room with two patients who had already died.

"Both bodies were on the floor," he said. "One was wrapped in a black bag, a garbage bag to be exact, and the other was just dead on the floor. No one was taking care of them."

Ramos stepped out of the hospital around 9:30 am on April 1 to grab some breakfast. He says he was gone for about 15 minutes. When he returned, his father was dead.

"No one was with him when he died," his son said. The hospital declined to comment on the case.

"If you keep her here, she will die."

Arturo Ramos told CNN the hospital was like a warzone. 38 year-old Ana Maria, who declined to give her last name, said the same thing about her experience.

She said she brought her 67-year-old mother to a local clinic because she was experiencing Covid-19 symptoms. A quick x-ray later and the attending physician said Ana Maria needed to get her mother to a hospital immediatelyshe had severe pneumonia, the doctor said, likely due to Covid-19.

By the time Ana Maria arrived at nearby Hospital Los Ceibos on March 26th looking for treatment, her mother's lips were turning shades of blue and she could barely walk. They waited inside for nearly 24 hours for a bed to open up.

But as she watched patients in adjoining rooms and nearby hallways, and heard the anguished screams of their loved ones, she had second thoughts about keeping her mother in the hospital.

She took decisive action after speaking to a nurse.

"She said, 'If you have the money to treat your mother at home, do it,'" Ana Maria recalled. "'If you keep her here, she will die.'"

She brought her mother home, hired a private nurse to treat her, and she survived. But the vast majority of people in Guayaquil don't have those financial means.

Before Ana Maria left the hospital, the daughter of another patient spoke to her in their hospital room. "She cried and said to me, 'Your mom will survive because you have the money. We don't have the money.'"

Top officials in President Lenin Moreno's cabinet have publicly apologized for the government's poor response to the pandemic, saying health officials were not ready for an outbreak with such a staggering death toll.

According to government data, 533 people died of Covid-19 in Guayaquil in March and April, combined. However, during that same time period, the government recorded at least 12,350 total deaths in the city -- far more than the 2,695 and 2,903 that died in the same period of 2018 and 2019, respectively.

In Guayaquil, the Covid-19 related death toll might well be over 9,000 deaths, according to three Ecuador-based epidemiologists who spoke to CNN.

Dr. Esteban Ortiz-Prado, an epidemiologist at the University of the Americas in Quito, Ecuador's capital city, said there was no way to know exactly how many of the excess deaths were directly or indirectly related to Covid-19, but that the pandemic was the only reasonable way to explain this year's sudden spike in the total death count. "For me, those are Covid [deaths] until proven otherwise," he said.

The government has admitted the actual death toll from the coronavirus is higher than the official count but said the true number will never be known due to its inability to test more people.

"We cannot say the government is lying," said Marco Coral, an infectious disease researcher also at the University of the Americas. "But what we can say is that the government did not do enough tests on the people," an irreplaceable part of any attempt to identify the true number of coronavirus cases and deaths.

Fortunately, the number of deaths in Guayaquil is dropping. Since the first week of April, when some of the highest daily death totals were recorded, the daily number of total deaths has fallen dramatically -- at least 69 total deaths were reported in the city on April 30, far below the peak seen earlier in the month.

Social distancing measures, now slowly being eased off in the country, appear to have worked.

But as the number of daily deaths goes down, attention turns to finding those who are already lost.

Losing the right to say goodbye

Amid the chaos of mounting bodies, disorganization has led to the misplacement and misidentification of those who have passed away.

Many families have been unable to say goodbye to their loved ones.

When Arturo Ramos returned to the hospital the day after his father died, authorities said they couldn't find his remains.

The only way he could try to locate him, officials said, was to go to the morgue and search through unidentified remains himself.

"[Inside the morgue] there were bodies stacked one on top of each other," said Ramos. "Going into that room, it's like hell."

He said the bodies in the room were separated by those who had already been identified and those that hadn't.

He went through body after body over the course of an hour looking for his father, accompanied by a hospital employee who, after they failed to find his dad, told him to come back the next day.

For the next four straight days, Ramos estimates he looked at roughly 250 corpses, both inside the morgue and in shipping containers that had been set up outside to handle the overflow.

Video of the containers on the grounds of General Guasmo Sur Hospital was given to CNN by the person who shot it. Bodies are seen in one container piled at least three high, decomposing inside different types of body bags.

Ramos said only part of the morgue and one of the shipping containers was refrigerated.

"I wasn't lucky," said Ramos. "I never found him."

The problem of missing remains is so widespread that the attorney general launched an investigation last month into the mismanagement of remains at hospital morgues.

CNN asked the government for exact figures on how many remains are missing, but as of publication, had not heard back.

A website has been set up where anyone can search for a missing loved one's name. If the government has news to share on the location of a body, it will show up in a pop-up window on the screen.

More than a month after Flavio Ramos' death, a search for his name launches a pop-up window that reads only: 'No Results Found.'

Ramos grieves for his father alone these days. He's separated from his family for their own safety.

Last week, he tested positive for the virus.

CNN Espanol's Ana Maria Canizares in Quito, Ecuador contributed to this report.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Where are the bodies? Missing remains mean no peace for grieving families in Ecuador"
Public sector banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 42,000 crore to the MSME sector and corporates since the start of the lockdown.

With the lockdown coming into effect from March 25, state-owned banks opened an additional line of credit of 10 per cent of the existing fund based on working capital limits, subject to a maximum of Rs 200 crore.

Till now, the banks have sanctioned Rs 27,426 crore worth loans to MSMEs under COVID-19 relief scheme to their existing borrowers, as per data collated by the government.

In addition, corporates with deep pockets have availed Rs 14,735 crore loan, nearly half of MSMEs'.

In terms of numbers, about 10 lakh MSMEs and 6,428 corporates have availed the benefit so far.

At the same time, many MSMEs and corporates have also availed the three-month moratorium offered by banks as per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said as many as 3.2 crore borrowers have taken advantage of the three-month moratorium scheme on repayment of loans announced by the Reserve Bank to help people tide over the problems created on account of disruption in business activities due to the lockdown.

"PSBs complemented RBI on loan moratorium. Their effective communication & proactive actions ensured that over 3.2 cr. a/c availed 3-month moratorium. Quick query redressals allayed customer concerns. Ensuring responsible banking amid #lockdown," she had tweeted.

She also said state-owned banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore to borrowers during March and April, and disbursement will start soon after the lockdown is lifted.

"During March-April 2020, PSBs sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh cr for more than 41.81 lakh accounts. These borrowers are from MSME, Retail, Agriculture & Corporate sectors, waiting for disbursal soon after #lockdown lifts. Economy poised to recover!," Sitharaman had said in another tweet.

She also said the banks sanctioned loans worth Rs 77,383 crore between March 1 and May 4 to provide sustained credit flow to non-banking finance companies and housing finance companies.

Besides, under Targeted Long Term Repo Operations (TLTROs), total financing of Rs 1.08 lakh crore was extended, "ensuring business stability and continuity going forward", she had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Investors are still uncertain just where the stock market is headed. Essentially, there are two competing opinions right now. One says that were just in a bear market rally, and that the worst is yet to come. The other thesis states that the current rally is real, and will mature into a new bull cycle as the economy restarts in the second half.

Writing from JPMorgan, Marko Kolanovic, the investment bank's quant analyst, holds fast to that optimistic view. Kolanovic believes that epidemiological data suggests we are past the worst of the coronavirus spread, justifying the lifting of social and business restrictions. And that will open up economic activity, which will then find stimulus from low Fed interest rates and increased government pump priming spending.

Kolanovic sees the stimulus policies as more important than Q1s weak earnings, writing, The combined suppression of the risk free rate and credit spreads by the Fed likely has a bigger positive impact on equity valuation, compared with the negative impact of the temporary earnings loss.

Kolanovic is not the only JPM analyst who sees potential in the stock markets. The firms equity analysts have been working overtime to find the stocks best positioned to lead a potential bull rally. Weve used the TipRanks database to pull up three of their stock picks, to find out why the JPM experts are tapping them for over 30% growth.

KAR Auction Services (KAR)

The first stock on our list belongs to a company in the second-hand vehicle market. KAR Auction Services operates a marketplace  both online and in the physical world  for used vehicles. The company sells to both individual and business buyers, people looking for a car to drive and garages looking to source parts for the shop floor. KAR sold over 3.7 million vehicles in 2019, bringing in $2.8 billion in auction revenue.

KAR shares have been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. The combination of economic shutdowns and social lockdowns have not just put a hold on car sales  they have simply reduced the need for vehicles.

Story continues

Q1 earnings showed a 6% reduction in revenue, to $645.5 million, and a collapse in net income to $2.8 million from $15.3 million in the year-ago quarter. As noted, these steep reductions are attributable to the effects of the pandemic response. KAR shares are still down 38% year-to-date, badly underperforming the broader markets.

However, JPMs analyst Ryan Brinkman believes the current downturn is the time to buy in to KAR shares. The low price offers an attractive point of entry, and the stock has a clear path forward when economic activity resumes. Brinkman writes, We believe that once stay-at-home orders are lifted and the situation moves from being one of a unique public health crisis to that of a more familiar economic downturn, aftermarket end-markets, including auctions, will earn their reputation for resiliency. People will drive again substantially similar to before, and volumes will return to salvage auctions.

Along with that optimistic assessment, Brinkman upgrades KAR from Neutral to Buy. His $19 price target suggests a strong 46% upside potential in the next 12 months. (To watch Brinkmans track record, click here)

Overall, KAR shares hold a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus, which breaks down into 4 Buy reviews and 3 Holds. While the analyst corps is somewhat divided, their average price target is in line with Brinkmans. (See KAR stock analysis at TipRanks)

J2 Global Communications (JCOM)

Next up is an internet communications company. J2 Global owns a diverse portfolio of 40+ online content brands, including IGN, Mashable, PCMag, BabyCenter, Everyday Health among others. In addition, J2 also runs a Cloud Service business, offering eFax and eVoice among other online services. The company boasts nearly $1.5 billion in annual revenue, and saw Q4 earnings rise to $2.19 per share.

The Q4 earnings were the highest in two years, and capped a full year of rising earnings. Q4 is typically J2s strongest quarter, while Q1 is typically the weakest, so the $1.35 estimate for Q1 earnings is less indicative of poor performance than one may think at first. On an important note, that Q1 estimate represents a modest increase of 1.5% year-over-year.

JCOM shares price performance has roughly mirrored the broader markets during the past three months. JCOM lost 35% in the initial slide, and has risen 21% from its trough.

Initiating coverage of the stock for JPM, Cory Carpenter set a Buy rating, with a $105 price target that indicates room for 32% upside growth. (To watch Carpenters track record, click here)

Supporting his stance, Carpenter notes the companys strong Cloud position, writing, We believe Cloud Services is well positioned to capitalize on growing security & privacy needs, with bundling & cross-sell potential, and we like that Digital Media monetizes through multiple rentsads, subs, & affiliate commerce.

Key drivers for Carpenter's bull thesis include: "1) Total growth strategy drives sustainable growth, with $1B+ capital to deploy [...] 2) Diversified portfolio of leading Cloud Services & Digital Media brands. [...] 3) Strong FCF generator with M&A flywheel. JCOM prioritizes FCF, not growth at all costs, which it largely redeploys into M&A. JCOMs 40% EBITDA margin is driven by Cloud Services ~50% margin and Digital Medias ~35% margin."

Carpenter is broadly in line with the rest of Wall Street, which has assigned JCOM more "buy" ratings than "holds" over the past three month -- and sees the stock growing about 26% over the next 12 months, to a target price of $101.30. (See J2 Global stock analysis on TipRanks)

Montage Resources Corporation (MR)

Last on our list is a small-cap hydrocarbon exploration and production company. Montage is based in the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, where it operates natural gas and crude oil drilling wells. Montage holds over 195,000 undeveloped core acres, and operates 325 actively producing horizontal wells. The value of the companys holdings is clear from its stock performance; in the last three months, while the markets have generally slid into a bear cycle, MR shares have gained 55%.

Even with the COVID-19 epidemic and the collapse of oil markets, MR was able to increase its net daily production during Q1, reaching 6610.7 MMcfe. This was above both company guidance and analyst estimates. Quarterly income of $62.7 million also beat the expectations. The company has curtailed some production in low-margin crude oil, to compensate for the soft oil market prices.

Analyst Arun Jayaram, reviewing MR for JPM, upgraded his stance on the shares from Neutral to Buy. His $8 price target implies a 43% upside growth potential for the coming year. (To watch Jayarams track record, click here)

Jayaram is clear on his reasons for upgrading this stock. He says of MR, We expect the market to largely look through negative estimate revision risk to 2020 forecasts to the emerging bullish natural gas narrative in 2021 Meanwhile, the companys FCF yield of 23% leads the peer group and is well above the peer group average of 10%...

The Strong Buy analyst consensus on MR shares is based on 5 recent reviews, including 4 Buys and a single Hold. The companys strong natural gas production is tangible asset, and its enviable free cash flow is attractive for investors. Shares are selling for $5.59, while the average price target of $6.22 suggests a modest upside of 1.6%. (See MR stock analysis at 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.
Advancement

How Fundraising Can Step Up to the COVID-19 Challenge

College and university advancement teams are evolving their strategies to help their institutions persist through uncertain times. Here are five examples to learn from.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to nearly every aspect of higher education, and advancement and alumni engagement are no exception. Not only are these mission-critical teams managing the shift to remote operations, digital communications and virtual events; they are doing so at a time when their work is more important than ever  to students with urgent financial needs, and institutions confronting an uncertain fiscal landscape moving forward.

In response, forward-thinking advancement leaders are evolving their strategies to rise to the challenges of this unprecedented era. They are targeting their focus on philanthropy that directly supports student well-being. They are forging more meaningful connections by listening to the concerns of alumni, donors and partners. And they are engaging in meaningful dialogue with supporters whose vast knowledge of industry, the arts and sciences, and government can support and amplify their institutions' efforts during this time.

The examples below are just a sample of the great work taking place across the higher education advancement sector  and they provide tangible strategies and tactics that teams can employ to lead through this uncharted territory.

1) Putting Students at the Center

Advancement teams can lead change and encourage giving by making students their call to action. For example, Emory University launched the "EmoryTogether" campaign, a $5 million fund to support students dealing with COVID-19-related disruption. EmoryTogether reinforces the institution's commitment to its students and their families by providing necessary support to continue their educational pursuits. Moreover, this initiative instills confidence in the incoming freshman class that its decision to join the Emory community is the right move, even in these uncertain times.

Emory's advancement team immediately focused its robust talent and expertise to build what is now one of the largest funds intentionally solicited and directed to address student challenges. Its bold leadership, agility and fortitude underscore the powerful role advancement will play in the collective success of institutions, students and the community as we navigate through these times.

2) Rallying Support Around Specific Issues of Urgent Need

Advancement teams are uniquely positioned to serve as a catalyst for action by creating strong partnerships aimed at driving a specific solution. For instance, Texas Tech University's "Red Raider Response" campaign, launched to support the safe return of students studying abroad, has raised more than $130K from 500-plus donors, as well as an additional $300K to support 200 nursing students in Abilene. This campaign aligns with the grit at the heart of the institution's core values  values Texas Tech alumni and donors share  and demonstrates the powerful impact of philanthropy.

Texas Tech has more than 100 students studying abroad, many in countries affected by COVID-19. With the Red Raider Response, the institution will be able to help their students begin the re-entry process and make their way back home. Not only have the institution's actions inspired incredible generosity, they've reminded us all that a clearly stated, specific goal goes a long way in mobilizing support.

3) Being Flexible

Successful advancement teams listen to their constituents  and act on what they learn. In so doing, they empower donors to create the meaningful change they want to see in their communities, in countless lives and throughout the world. Gonzaga University has demonstrated this point with remarkable flexibility and a strong commitment to donor-centered fundraising  most notably by shifting its annual Give Day to encourage donations for COVID-19 related activities.
Sixteen migrant workers were run over by a train in Aurangabad city of Maharashtra on Friday morning while they were trying to return to their rural homes in Madhya Pradesh.

They had been walking along the rail tracks and slept there due to exhaustion. They were mowed down by a goods train that was running between Jalna and Aurangabad at 5.15 am.

One person was also injured in the accident and has been taken to the civil hospital. Four of the survivors, who are in shock, are being counselled by the police, SP Mokshada Patil said.

The labourers, officials said, all worked at an iron factory in Jalna and were headed back to Madhya Pradesh amid the coronavirus lockdown.

Patil told News18 that the workers were walking from Jalna to Bhuvasal, a distance of nearly 170km, to catch a train to return home. They had stopped near the track to take rest after covering a distance of around 45 km.

The Railways said the driver honked to alert the sleeping migrants and tried to stop the train, but failed. An inquiry has been ordered into the accident.

"During early hours today after seeing some labourers on track, loco pilot of goods train tried to stop the train but eventually hit them between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Parbhani-Manmad section," the railways ministry said in a tweet.

Images from the scene of the accident showed the tracks were strewn with footwear and other personal belongings of the workers. Even the food they were carrying for their journey was seen on the tracks.

The survivors, who were resting nearby and not on the tracks, said they frantically raised alarm to alert their group members sleeping on tracks about the fast-approaching train, but their shouts went unheard.

"The three survivors, who were resting a little away, tried to wake up the people sleeping on the tracks by frantically shouting, but that provide futile as the train ran over them," the SP said.

"This is an unfortunate incident. Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station," she added.

The survivors were identified as Inderlal Dhurve (20 district Mandla), Virendrasingh Gaur (27, district Umaria) and Shivman Singh Gaur (27, district Shahdol) and the injured Sajjan Singh (resident of Khajeri district).

A video clip from the scene of the tragedy showed the mutilated bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader and state minister Sandipan Bhumre and Member of Legislative Assembly Ambadas Danve visited the Government Medical College and Hospital here and met the injured.

Danve said, "The state government is making efforts to send migrant workers to their home states. People should have patience."

The deceased includeed Dhansingh Gond, Nirlesh Singh Gond, Buddharaj Singh Gond, Rabendra Singh Gond, Rajbohram Paras Singh, Dharmendra Singh Gond, Shreedayal Singh Suresh Singh Kaul, Santosh Napit, Brijesh Bheyadin (all from Shahdol district), Bigendra Singh, Pradeep Singh Gond, Nemshah singh Munim singh (all Umaria district).

One of the deceased was identified as Acchelal Singh, but his native district was not yet known, police officials said, adding another vicitm was yet to be identified.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted he was extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided, he wrote.

Madhya Pradesh and the Maharashtra governments have announced Rs 5 lakh compensation each for the families of the deceased.
The US unemployment rate has risen to 14.7%, with 20.5 million jobs lost in April, as the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy.

The rise means the jobless rate is now worse than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Also Read: Trump Reveals Quantity Of Ventilators Hes Sending To Nigeria

Since the pandemic began, the US has suffered its worst growth numbers in a decade and the worst retail sales report on record.

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Just two months ago, the unemployment rate was at 3.5%, a 50-year low.

The United States is home to the worlds largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 75,000 fatalities and 1.2 million cases reported as of Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The report from the Labor Department showed declines in every sector of the economy.
Australia's most powerful bureaucrat when Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister has described a Chinese ambassador's threat to boycott Australian goods as a 'favour' and a 'wake-up call'.

Martin Parkinson, who last year retired as head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, said Chinese diplomat Cheng Jingye's ultimatum highlighted the bully tactics of Australia's biggest trading partner.

'I do think the Chinese ambassador has done us a favour,' he told the ABC's 7.30 program.

'He has now put front and centre before the Australian public the sorts of coercive behaviours that they are prepared to use if countries don't fall into line.

'That should come as a real wake-up call to the Australian community.'

The Chinese government has threatened to hurt Australia economically following calls from Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Foreign Minister Marise Payne for an independent inquiry into the causes of COVID-19.

Late last month, Mr Cheng told The Australian Financial Review, in a 40-minute interview, China could encourage its citizens to shun Australian exports from tourism to university education.

'The tourists may have second thoughts,' he said, in a transcript released by the Chinese embassy in Canberra.

'Maybe the parents of the students would also think whether this place, which they find is not so friendly, even hostile, is the best place to send their kids to.'

Martin Parkinson (pictured), who last year retired as head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, said Chinese diplomat Cheng Jingye's ultimatum highlighted the bully tactics of Australia's biggest trading partner

Mr Parkinson, who has served as a senior executive public servant under both Labor and Coalition governments, said Mr Morrison had made the right call in pushing for an inquiry into how coronavirus spread from Wuhan in China.

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

'It is absolutely right that we should have an inquiry into the lessons that we need to learn as nation states and as a global community so that we are better placed to deal with the pandemics as they emerge into the future,' he said.

Mr Parkinson, however, suggested Australia could have done with support from other nations beyond just the United States in pushing for the inquiry.

'The issue is really, did we do enough work to prepare for the statements that we made?,' he said.

'I can't judge that. I'm not aware of the extent to which we were trying to marshal support or the extent to which we were engaging with other countries in the region.'

So far, coronavirus has killed 97 people in Australia with 6,900 since late January, when an infected man from Wuhan flew to Melbourne via Guandong.
A Chinese community charity is sending 10,000 face masks to the elderly in a bid to promote an Asian food delivery service.

The Chinese Wealth Charity Foundation and EASI have announced they will be giving the masks to any customer who is aged 80 or over after a spate of coronavirus deaths in Sydney nursing homes.

The registered charity, founded late last year under the Beaver Foundation company name, is supplying protective equipment to EASI food home delivery customers - as Australian doctors worry about sourcing enough masks, gowns and visors.

A Chinese community charity is sending 10,000 face masks to the elderly in a bid to promote an Asian food delivery service. Pictured is a man in Sydney wearing a face mask

Director Leon Lu announced on Friday it would be supplying 10,000 Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved face masks to elderly customers who ordered Asian home delivered food through EASI.

The announcement was made through Kitty Lu, EASI's national accounts manager, who is no relation to Leon Lu.

'Many children of older Australians are organising food delivery to their parent's homes, be that fresh food or take away,' Kitty Lu said.

'If they can't check in on them, they want to make sure that they are at least eating well, but they're also concerned about protecting them if they go out for exercise or to the shop for milk.

'That's why EASI is teaming up with CWFC to give away over 10,000 TGA approved face masks nationally to any customer over 80 years of age.'

A spokesman for EASI said it had offered face masks to the Austin Hospital in Melbourne's north.

The registered charity, founded late last year under the Beaver Foundation company name, is supplying protective equipment to EASI food home delivery customers as Australian doctors worry about sourcing enough masks, gowns and visors.

'EASI has previously offered the masks for free to the Austin Hospital and is now offering these masks to those over 80 who are amongst the most vulnerable during the COVID-19 restrictions,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Friday.

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

'EASI is happy to provide its modest supply of masks to any hospital or medical group that may need them and encourage them to contact us.'

Early last month, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton banned the export of masks, hand sanitiser, gloves, gowns, goggles and visors, after Chinese businesses were caught air freighting them from Australia to China.

Customs can now seize the goods and add them to the national stockpile for healthcare workers to use, as long as they are not defective.

Trade publication Australian Doctor News had described the lack of PPE as a scandal, as medicos in March and April used garbage bags to make makeshift gowns.

The Australian Charities and Not-For profits Commission lists the Sydney-registered Chinese Wealth Charity Foundation, established in 2019, as an organisation that helps those aged 65 and over, the homeless and 'people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background'.
[May 07, 2020] Genpact Announces Change to a Virtual Meeting Format for 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders NEW YORK, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Genpact Limited (NYSE: G) announced today a change in the location of its 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Annual Meeting"). In the interest of the health and safety of our shareholders, employees, and communities, the Annual Meeting now will be conducted in a virtual meeting format due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The previously announced date and time of the Annual Meeting has not changed. Holders of record of our common shares at the close of business on March 27, 2020, the record date, can participate in the Annual Meeting via the virtual meeting website below. Shareholders will not be able to attend the Annual Meeting in person. Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Time: 12:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time

Virtual Location: www.meetingcenter.io/222622783

Password: G2020 There are two options to log in to the virtual meeting: join as a "Shareholder" or join as a "Guest." If you were a shareholder as of the close of business on March 27, 2020 and have your control number, you may join the meeting as a shareholder using the password above. Shareholders who join with their control number will be able to vote and ask questions during the Annual Meeting by following the instructions available on the meeting website during the meeting. For registered shareholders, the control number can be found on your proxy card or notice, or email you previously received. If you hold your shares through an intermediary, such as a bank or broker, you must register in advance to attend the Annual Meeting and participate as a shareholder. To register, you must submit proof of your proxy power (legal proxy) reflecting your Genpact shareholdings, along with your name and email address to our transfer agent, Computershare. To do this, you must forward the email from your broker, or attach an image of your legal proxy, to legalproxy@computershare.com. Requests for registration must be labeled as "Legal Proxy" and be received no later than 2:00 p.m., Eastern Time, on May 15, 2020. You will receive a confirmation email from Computershare of your registration. If you do not have a control number, you may still attend as a guest (non-shareholder) but will not have the option to vote your shares or ask questions during the virtual meeting. Whether or not shareholders plan to attend the virtual-only Annual Meeting, we urge shareholders to vote and submit their proxies in advance of the meeting by one of the methods described in the proxy materials. Please note that the Notice and the proxy card included with the previously posted or mailed proxy materials will not be updated to reflect the change from an in-person meeting to a virtual-only meeting, but these materials may still be used to vote shares in connection with the Annual Meeting. We expect to resume in-person annual general meetings of shareholders in 2021. About Genpact

Genpact (NYSE: G) is a global professional services firm that makes business transformation real. We drive digital-led innovation and digitally-enabled intelligent operations for our clients, guided by our experience running thousands of processes primarily for Global Fortune 500 companies. We think with design, dream in digital, and solve problems with data and analytics. Combining our expertise in end-to-end operations and our AI-based platform, Genpact Cora, we focus on the details  all 90,000+ of us. From New York to New Delhi and more than 30 countries in between, we connect every dot, reimagine every process, and reinvent companies' ways of working. We know that reimagining each step from start to finish creates better business outcomes. Whatever it is, we'll be there with you  accelerating digital transformation to create bold, lasting results  because transformation happens here . Contacts



Investors Roger Sachs, CFA

+1 (203) 808-6725

roger.sachs@genpact.com



Media Michael Schneider

+1 (217) 260-5041

michael.schneider@genpact.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genpact-announces-change-to-a-virtual-meeting-format-for-2020-annual-general-meeting-of-shareholders-301055231.html SOURCE Genpact

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Japan on Thursday approved Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19, making it the country's first officially authorized drug to tackle the coronavirus disease. Japan reached the decision just three days after the U.S. drugmaker filed for fast-track approval for the treatment.

"There has so far been no coronavirus medicine available here so it is a significant step for us to approve this drug," a Japanese health ministry official said at a press briefing. Remdesivir will be give to patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms, he added.

With no other approved treatments for COVID-19, interest in the drug is growing around the world. Administered by intravenous infusion, it was granted authorisation last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Gilead says the drug has improved outcomes for people suffering from the respiratory disease and has provided data suggesting it works better when given in the early stages of infection.

Japan, with just over 16,000 infections and under 800 deaths, has recorded fewer cases than other major industrialized nations. However, a steady rise in cases has put pressure on medical facilities in some parts of the country, and a drug that helps patients recover more quickly could help in freeing up hospital beds.

A trial performed by the U.S. Institutes of Health (NIH) showed the drug cut hospital stays by 31% compared with a placebo treatment, although it did not significantly improve survival. On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe extended a month-long state of emergency until the end of May in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Japan as yet does not know when it will get its first doses of remdesivir or how much, the health ministry official said. Gilead on Tuesday said it was in discussion with several companies, including generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan to produce remdesivir in large quantities. Remdesivir, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is designed to disable the ability by which some viruses make copies of themselves inside infected cells.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Maharashtra lockdown may extend to May-end, hints CM Thackeray; cases-17,974

Also read: Remdesivir gets USFDA emergency approval for Covid-19 treatment, here's all you need to know
A white man and his son who are accused of killing an unarmed black man in Georgia in February have been arrested after video of the incident sparked widespread outrage.

IMAGE: Ahmaud Arbery (Courtesy of Family)

Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced. Both men face charges of aggravated assault and murder.

Arbery, 25, was shot to death in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida, on Feb. 23 as he was running through the Satilla Shores neighborhood. His family says he was out jogging, while the McMichaels claimed that they thought he was a burglar.

Video released Tuesday by attorneys for Arbery's family appears to show an altercation between a group of men before what is alleged to be the fatal shooting.

Image: Travis McMichael (Georgia Bureau of Investigation)

According to a Glynn County police report, Gregory McMichael first spotted Arbery on foot "hauling ass" down Satilla Drive and immediately thought he was a burglar who had recently been targeting the neighborhood.

Gregory McMichael armed himself with a .357 Magnum, and his son grabbed a shotgun. They jumped into their pickup truck and chased Arbery. Police said a third man, identified as a neighbor, joined the chase and jumped into the McMichaels' truck.

The police report did not specify whether Arbery had a gun, but lawyers for the family say he was unarmed.

In the video, Arbery is seen running down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. Arbery runs around the vehicle. The video then shows Arbery and another man appearing to tussle as shots are fired.

Image: Gregory McMichael (Georgia Bureau of Investigation)

NBC News cannot verify what occurred before or after the events shown in the video.

George Barnhill, one of the prosecutors who first handled the case, defended the actions of the McMichaels and their neighbor in the truck. In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department obtained by NBC News, Barnhill wrote that the men had "solid first hand probable cause" to chase Arbery, a "burglary suspect," and stop him.

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Barnhill also said that after he watched the video of the incident, "given the fact Arbery initiated the fight" and grabbed the shotgun, he believed Travis McMichael "was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself" under Georgia law.

The office of Tom Durden  the district attorney in Liberty County, who is now handling the case  asked that the GBI begin an inquiry Tuesday, and the bureau's Kingsland Office began investigating Wednesday.

Arbery's death sparked nationwide outrage, with many activists, politicians and celebrities sharing a social media post urging people to contact the Liberty County prosecutors to demand that the McMichaels be charged.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called the video of the shooting "absolutely horrific" and said Georgians deserve answers.

"I have full confidence in Vic Reynolds and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation," Kemp said. "I know that they will be working around the clock to thoroughly and independently investigate Mr. Arbery's death to find the truth."

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"Black Panther" and "Creed" actor Michael B. Jordan shared the call to action Wednesday, saying on Instagram that the video made him sick to his stomach.

"Just because you may not experience racism, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and if you don't think anything is wrong with this video or try to defend this in any way, you are a part of the problem," Jordan said.

Joe Biden, the apparent Democratic presidential nominee, called Arbery's death a "grave injustice" during a virtual roundtable with African American lawmakers in Florida on Thursday.

"This family and the country deserves justice, and they deserve it now. They deserve a transparent investigation of this brutal murder," Biden said. "But our nation deserves it, as well. We need to reckon with this. This goes on. These vicious acts call to mind the darkest chapters of our history."

The McMichaels were to be booked at the Glynn County Jail. It was unclear whether they have retained an attorney.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 6, 2020  Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA, OTC: BVNRY) today announced that it has entered into an exclusive head of terms agreement with AdaptVac, a joint venture established by ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and NextGen Vaccines spun out of the University of Copenhagen, to license AdaptVacs proprietary capsid virus like particle (VLP) based SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccine. The parties seek to enter into the final license agreement within the next two months.

AdaptVac is a member of the international PREVENT-nCoV consortium that includes several European universities and earlier this year received an EU Horizon grant to rapidly advance AdaptVacs vaccine candidate against COVID-19 into the clinic. The members of the consortium hold preclinical and clinically validated experience from working with similar coronaviruses such as MERS and SARS, as well as malaria vaccines, using AdaptVacs capsid VLP technology and ExpreS2ions ExpreS2 technology. AdaptVacs technology has the potential to mimic a virus to the bodys immune system, giving the optimal stimulus to generate a fast, long-lasting immune response that offers a highly efficacious protection. Importantly, the production of the vaccine technology can be readily scaled to commercial quantities and AdaptVac is working with AGC Biologics for the manufacture and scale-up of the vaccine. Bavarian Nordic will support the consortium to achieve clinical proof of concept and takes responsibility for clinical development and global commercialization of the vaccine. Current plan is to initiate a clinical study later this year.

Paul Chaplin, President & CEO of Bavarian Nordic said: We have been interested in the capsid VLP technology for some time and are pleased to support and rapidly advance this highly promising vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. This technology should lead to a strong protective immune response, even in high risk populations to COVID-19 and together with its high scalability in production make this a winning combination in the fight against this pandemic. We are excited to join forces with Danish biotech companies AdaptVac and ExpreS2ion, as well as the University of Copenhagen and other members of the PREVENT-nCoV consortium in rapidly advancing this differentiated vaccine to the clinic and subsequently leading further development activities.

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AdaptVac and the PREVENT-nCoV consortium are delighted to have Bavarian Nordic join our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development efforts. Bavarian Nordic perfectly complements our pre-clinical and early stage clinical capabilities with their extensive late-clinical stage and market expertise. This partnership further validates our capsid VLP display platform as a break-through technology to combat infectious and chronic diseases. said Wian de Jongh, AdaptVacs CEO, Critically, Bavarian Nordics support ensures the vaccine can reach vulnerable populations in the shortest possible timeline.

Upon execution of a final license agreement, Bavarian Nordic will make an initial upfront payment to Adaptvac in addition to future development and sales milestones and royalties. This agreement has no impact on Bavarian Nordics financial guidance for 2020.

About AdaptVac

AdaptVac is a joint venture between ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and NextGen Vaccines, owned by the inventors of the novel proprietary and ground-breaking viral capsid-like virus particle (CLP) platform technology spun out from the University of Copenhagen. The Company aims to accelerate the development of highly efficient therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines within high value segments of oncology, infectious diseases and immunological disorders. Granting of the core patent in the U.S. has expanded AdaptVacs patent protection to include our entire pipeline of vaccines and immunotherapies in development. For more information visit: www.AdaptVac.com .

AdaptVac is a member of the PREVENT-nCoV consortium that earlier this year received an EU Horizon grant to rapidly advance AdaptVacs vaccine candidate against COVID-19 into the clinic. In addition to AdaptVac, the consortium members are ExpreS2ion, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Institute for Tropical Medicine (ITM) at University of Tubingen, The Department of Immunology and Microbiology (ISIM) at University of Copenhagen, and the Laboratory of Virology at Wageningen University.

About Bavarian Nordic

Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated biotechnology company focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of life-saving vaccines. We are a global leader in smallpox vaccines and have been a long-term supplier to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile of a non-replicating smallpox vaccine, which has been approved by the FDA under the trade name JYNNEOS, also for the protection against monkeypox. The vaccine is approved as a smallpox vaccine in Europe under the trade name IMVANEX and in Canada under the trade name IMVAMUNE. Our commercial product portfolio furthermore contains market-leading vaccines Rabipur/RabAvert against rabies and Encepur against tick-borne encephalitis. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates designed to save and improve lives by unlocking the power of the immune system, including an investigational Ebola vaccine, licensed to Janssen. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com .

Forward-looking statements

This announcement includes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of our control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning our plans, objectives, goals, future events, performance and/or other information that is not historical information. All such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances after the date made, except as required by law.

Contacts

Europe: Rolf Sass Srensen, Vice President Investor Relations, Tel: +45 61 77 47 43

US: Graham Morrell, Paddock Circle Advisors, graham@paddockcircle.com , Tel: +1 781 686 9600

Company Announcement no. 28 / 2020

Attachment
The agency traditionally had a bipartisan board that served as the organizations collective head and helped maintain the firewall. But a provision in a 2016 defense policy bill elevated the chief executive and put the board in an advisory role. The chief executive can make appointments at the networks with no checks on that power.

My question is: Does he understand what the mission of Voice of America is, which is truthful journalism? David B. Ensor, a recent director of V.O.A. who is now at George Washington University, said of Mr. Pack. There are some people on the right who think a propaganda channel would be more effective. They are wrong. I hope hes not one of them.

A Washington-based filmmaker, Mr. Pack has collaborated on movies with Mr. Bannon, a former head of Breitbart News, and produced and directed a documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. His nomination has been backed by a cadre of powerful conservative activists and groups, including the Heritage Foundation, former Senator Jim DeMint and Jerome Corsi, the political commentator and conspiracy theorist.

Mr. Bannon is a longtime critic of V.O.A., saying in 2018 that it was a rotten fish from top to bottom.

Its now totally controlled by the deep-state apparatus, he said.

Mr. Pack previously served as the director of Worldnet  now the television component of V.O.A.  under President George Bush, and worked at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a senior executive in its television production division.

In todays connected age, molding global public sentiment matters, Mr. Pack said at his confirmation hearing. As Lincoln would have counseled, we need to counter lies with the truth. We need to make clear to the world the ideals America strives to live up to.
Odisha saw a rise in the number of coronavirus positive cases as 26 people tested positive on Friday taking the states Covid-19 afflicted numbers to 245. 25 of these new cases have recently returned from Surat.

19 out of the 26 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are from Ganjam district, 5 of them are from Kendrapara district and the rest of them are from Bhadrak district, said the state health and family welfare department.

On Thursday, Odisha had recorded 34 new positive cases including 3 from capital Bhubaneswar.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

Of the 245 total cases in the state, 181 are active while 62 patients have recovered. Two patients have died due to Covid-19.

The state government has a new cause of worry as a 36-year-old delivery worker who worked for a Biryani takeaway joint in Patia is among the three who tested positive for Covid-19 in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.

The man had delivered food parcels in Surya Nagar area, where a person has been found to be infected.

The man had developed Covid-19 like symptoms a few days earlier after which he called up the state health helpline. His swab samples tested positive on Thursday. After the revelations of his positive results, health department officials started contact tracing exercise of all the people he had delivered biryani.

Click here for the latest updates from the coronavirus outbreak

In Bolangir, a 50-year-old man committed suicide by jumping into a well after his nephew tested positive for Covid-19. The body of Sukadev Bhoi of Likhiria village in Bolangir was recovered by police and fire personnel from a well in the village with a stone tied to his lungi.

Police said Bhoi was the uncle of one of the two youths from the village who had tested positive on May 1. They had returned from Tamil Nadu on March 17 and tested positive on April 28 after showing symptoms. Villagers alleged that Bhoi may have committed suicide over fear of getting infected.
Jean-Marc Fedida, Mr. Giscard dEstaings lawyer, said in an emailed statement that the former president had no recollection of the incident and was not aware of an official complaint against him. He said that he would consider legal action against a particularly undignified and offensive media attack.

Mr. Giscard dEstaing, who was Frances president from 1974 to 1981, has mostly receded from political life, though he remains active to at least a small degree. He is still a member of the countrys Constitutional Council, a top court that reviews the constitutionality of legislation, and of the Academie Francaise, the official guardians of the French language.

On Thursday, Ms. Stracke said in a televised interview with WDR that she had traveled to Paris in December 2018 to interview Mr. Giscard dEstaing about his friendship with Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, who died in 2015.

In recent years, Mr. Giscard dEstaing has spoken out occasionally to promote the vision of a more united and integrated Europe that he shared with Mr. Schmidt.

After the interview, she said, she and Mr. Giscard dEstaing posed for a group photo.

While we were taking the photo, the hand of Mr. Giscard dEstaing moved to my waist, and from there it continued toward the left buttock, where it remained, Ms. Stracke told WDR. I tried to remove this hand, I did not succeed, and I was surprised by how strong he was.
The Sony Xperia XZ1 series of devices was launched back in September 2017. Sony introduced two phones as part of that series, the Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact. Neither of those devices are set to get Android 10, and Xperia XZ1 users launched a petition to change that.

The Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact were launched with Android 8.0 Oreo. Sony did release an Android 9 Pie update for the two phones, but Android 10 is not coming.

Sony users opted to petition for the Xperia XZ1 Android 10 update

That made a lot of users angry, it seems. This Xperia XZ1 petition has been opened on change.org, as the vast majority of other petitions nowadays. The petition is aiming to collect 5,000 signatures, and it currently has 2,591 (at the time of writing this article).

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There is still a chance that this petition will reach its goal, but the chances are not that big. Why? Well, the petition was started six months ago, and in six months, it barely made it halfway.

Sony announced a list of devices that will get Android 10 at the end of last year, which is when this petition was started. Sony had a tendency to release two major flagship lineups per year, and that may be the reason why the Xperia XZ1 devices will not get the update.

The company has quite a few devices to update to Android 10. Even if you look at flagship-grade phones only, which Sony focuses on, the Xperia XZ1 lineup is nowhere near the top any longer.

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On one hand, Sonys decision is understandable, on the other, well its not. In terms of hardware, nothing is stopping Sony from updating these devices. Both devices are fueled by the Snapdragon 835, and have rather powerful specs across the board.

Android 10 can, of course, run on much, much weaker specification setups. So, that is definitely not the reason. The fact that Sony released many more flagship phones after these two devices is probably the main reason.

The reaction of users is completely understandable

The reaction of users is understandable, though. Theyve received only one major update since the two phones launched. Its completely normal to expect at least two major updates.

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Many Android smartphone manufacturers have similar issues. Their support for their devices is not great, well, when it comes to most of them, at least.

OnePlus, for example, is currently working on updating its OnePlus 5 and 5T smartphones to Android 10. Both devices have already received several beta updates, and will get a stable build soon.

Those two devices were also introduced back in 2017, and are also fueled by the Snapdragon 835. OnePlus has a tendency of releasing two flagship lineups per year as well, so is a good comparison for Sony, actually. Sony doesnt do that any longer, though, so thats worth noting. In any case, we doubt this petition will change anything, but if you do own the Xperia XZ1, and want the update, feel free to go and sign the petition.
In addition, the sector has seen a number of women founders and leaders, many with extensive backgrounds in STEM, who were driven to enter the agtech sector to create solutions to big picture problems in the food system, including food waste and food access. New Interest and Opportunities During the pandemic, some agtech startups have found that interest in their company has grown as farmers grasp for solutions. Mariana Vasconcelos is the cofounder and CEO at Agrosmart, a Brazilian company offering smart farming software that allows remote monitoring of agro-economic data for managerial automation.
A 40-year-old man has been charged with the murder of his two children in a stabbing attack in east London.

Nadarajah Nithiyakumar, 40, of Ilford was charged with the murder of his two children, Pavinya, 19 months, and three-year-old Nigish.

The toddler was pronounced dead at the scene at around 5.30pm on April 26, while Nigish was rushed to hospital by London Ambulance Service where he died a short time later.

Nadarajah Nithiyakumar, 40, of Ilford was charged with the murder of his two children, Pavinya, 19 months, left, and three-year-old Nigish, right.

The two children were found at their home in Aldborough Road North in Ilford, east London. Nithiyakumar has been charged with the murder of his two children

Nadarajah Nithiyakumar, top right, appeared in court today and was charged with the murder of his son Nigish, right, and daughter Pavinya, not pictured. Nithiyakumar's wife Nisa, left, is also in this photograph

Their father was arrested on April 29 at a London hospital while receiving treatment for injuries.

Nithiyakumar was discharged from hospital on Thursday and charged with the double murder earlier today.

He appeared at Thames Magistrates' Court.

An inquest into the children's deaths was opened at Walthamstow Coroner's Court yesterday.

Area coroner Graeme Irvine said: 'Pavinya died of injuries at the scene and was pronounced extinct at 17:53.

'Nigish died of injuries and was pronounced extinct at 19:42 at Royal London Hospital.

Mr Irvine said: 'I am satisfied after hearing about these very very sad deaths that an inquest is necessary.

'I'm not going to fix a time for the inquest as there is an ongoing criminal investigation into both of these deaths.

'Another hearing will take place on November 30, 2020.

'We will approach the senior investigation officer to provide an update to the ongoing criminal proceedings. These two inquests are now open.'
STURGIS, S.D. - A South Dakota teenager admitted Thursday that he fatally shot a Wyoming girl during an argument last fall.

The 17-year-old boy pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter for killing Shayna Ritthaler, a 16-year-old from Upton, Wyoming.

We got into an argument and then I shot her, the defendant said during his change-of-plea hearing n Meade County Court. I shot her in the head.

Asked by Judge Kevin Krull if he had any justification for killing Ritthaler, the teen replied, No. In court, the defendant referred to the victim as his girlfriend.

Both the prosecutor and the defence agreed to ask the judge to sentence the boy to 55 years in prison. Krull said he plans to follow that recommendation and that if he changes his mind, the defendant could withdraw his guilty plea.

The teen originally pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to alternate counts of first- and second-degree murder.

Under the proposed sentence, the defendant could seek parole after 27 years, when he is 44 years old. Sentencing is set for July 10.

The two had been chatting online for a while but met in person for the first time when he killed her, Meade County States Attorney Michele Bordewyk told the Rapid City Journal.

Ritthaler went missing Oct. 3 after being seen getting into a Jeep-like vehicle at a coffee shop in Moorcroft, Wyoming. She was found Oct. 7 in the basement of the home the boy shared with his mother east of Sturgis, near the Wyoming border.

Family members of both the defendant and the victim attended the hearing. Ritthalers family said they werent yet ready to speak.

In court, the teen said he understood he was giving up his right to argue that he was mentally incompetent at the time of the shooting and that his case should be transferred to juvenile court, where he could have been imprisoned only until the age of 21. He also said he understood he was giving up his right that the judge should suppress statements he made to law enforcement and block all evidence from a search of his phone and home. He also agreed with a special part of the plea deal that he is giving up his right to appeal.

Krull told the defendant that he cant have any contact with the Ritthaler family for the rest of his life and that he owed them more than $8,300 in restitution.

Bordewyk, the prosecutor, told the Journal that Ritthalers family approved of the plea deal. Defence lawyer Steven Titus said it was unlikely that the judge would have agreed to transfer the teen to juvenile court.

Bordewyk said the two met on an online chat and dating website and that they planned for Ritthaler to run away and live with the defendant. It was the defendant who picked up Ritthaler from the coffee shop, driving his mothers vehicle, the prosecutor said.

Bordewyk said its unclear how an argument between the pair escalated to the boy deciding to shoot Ritthaler. She said the teen used a handgun that belonged to his mother, who was not home at the time.

Titus, the defence attorney, said the shooting was not planned and that alcohol and drugs were involved.

The defendant is being held on a $1 million bond at juvenile jail in Rapid City.
After Being Delayed by White House for Almost a Year, Transcripts from House Intelligence Committee Russia Investigation Released

US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Transcripts Reaffirm Mueller's Findings That Russia Interfered to Hurt Clinton and Help Trump, the Campaign Invited and Made Full Use of Illicit Russian Help, and Trump Lied to Cover It Up White House Would Not Allow Release of All Transcripts for More Than a Year By Holding Up Declassification Process Until this Week

Washington, May 7, 2020

Washington, DC -- Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is making available to the public 57 transcripts, as well as additional material, from the Committee's investigation in 2017 and 2018 into Russia's interference campaign targeting the 2016 U.S. election.

Accompanying today's release, the Committee has sent a letter informing Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell that the Committee is releasing the transcripts with the redactions applied by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), now that the White House has abandoned its improper effort to interfere politically in the classification review. In the interest of transparency, the Committee is also making public correspondence between the Committee and the White House and ODNI related to the White House's effort to intercede in the classification review.

After releasing the transcripts, Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated:

"From 2017 to 2018, the House Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Despite the many barriers put in our way by the then-Republican Majority, and attempts by some key witnesses to lie to us and obstruct our investigation, the transcripts that we are releasing today show precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller also revealed: That the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump himself, invited illicit Russian help, made full use of that help, and then lied and obstructed the investigations in order to cover up this misconduct.

"Unfortunately, the President's misconduct did not end with his election in 2016 or his attempts to cover up that effort. Rather, in the course of his presidency, he continued to seek illicit foreign help in his campaign by coercing another nation, Ukraine, to smear his opponent. After making use of Russia's help with his first presidential campaign, President Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to help him in 2020 by withholding critical military aid to that country and a coveted head of state meeting.

"These acts ultimately led to the President's impeachment in the House of Representatives and the first bipartisan vote in the Senate in our history in support of a conviction of a President of the United States. The President's efforts to make use of the help of a foreign power to win an election, and then to extort yet another foreign power to try to win again, represent a grave threat to the health of our democracy now and in the future.

"The transcripts released today richly detail evidence of the Trump campaign's efforts to invite, make use of, and cover up Russia's help in the 2016 presidential election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller identified in his report similar, and even more extensive, evidence of improper links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government. A bipartisan Senate investigation also found that Russia sought to help the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016.

"While Special Counsel Mueller found insufficient evidence to prove the crime of criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, he refused to draw any conclusion on the issue of collusion  contrary to false representations made by Attorney General Bill Barr and others. There is ample evidence of the corrupt interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia, both direct and circumstantial, in the record:

In June of 2016, a Russian delegation offered dirt on Donald Trump's rivalpresidential candidate Hillary Clintonto the highest levels of the Trump campaign, and did so in writing. Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., accepted that offer, and then set up a secret meeting between the Russian delegation, himself, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to discuss that illicit help. When news of the meeting was about to break, Trump and his son drafted a false statement for the press together in order to cover up the true purpose of the meeting. This written offer of illegal help by the Russians and its acceptance by the President's campaign, and the secret meeting that followed, provide some of the most damning and direct evidence of the President's to make use of Russia's assistance in the election.





Throughout the summer of 2016, the Trump campaign and candidate Trump himself repeatedly sought damaging information on Clinton from Russia. In July of 2016, Trump publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton's emails, and  as the Special Counsel found  that night, Russian military intelligence officers did precisely that. Our transcripts show that numerous individuals affiliated with or working for the Trump campaign were in communication with individuals offering help to set up private backchannels with the Russian government.





Multiple witnesses sought to hide and cover up illicit activity related to Russia during the presidential campaign. One-time campaign advisor and close confidant to Trump, Roger Stone, has been sentenced to prison for lying to the Committee about his advanced knowledge of impending WikiLeaks releases of Clinton campaign information. Former personal attorney to Trump, Michael Cohen, was imprisoned in part on charges that he lied to the Committee about Trump's role in arranging a lucrative business deal in Russia during the course of his campaign and early presidency. The President's pursuit of Trump Tower Moscow  potentially the most lucrative deal of his life  while lying to the American people about his business interests in Russia, provided the most serious counterintelligence risk to the United States.





Another associate of Trump, Erik Prince, misled our Committee about his efforts to take part in a secret backchannel with a senior Russian government official while he was unofficially supporting the Trump campaign.





And the transcripts also show that during the transition period in late 2016, the incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn undertook efforts to undermine U.S. sanctions on Russia imposed by the previous administration over Russia's interference in the election on Trump's behalf. Flynn would later lie to the FBI about these efforts, and the President would try to pressure then-FBI Director Comey to shut down any investigation into Flynn. It would take the firing of then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the later appointment of an unscrupulous Attorney General, Bill Barr, for the President to achieve his aim of seeking dismissal of the case against Flynn, and only after Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI.

"Despite taking part in this investigation and hearing these facts first-hand, the transcripts reveal how House Republicans used witness interviews not to gain the facts, but to press President Trump's false narrative of 'no collusion, no obstruction.' It would be a pattern they would follow throughout the Russia investigation and into the President's subsequent Ukraine misconduct. To that end, House Republicans sought to use the Committee's Russia investigation to undermine the Intelligence Community's assessment that Russia sought to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. That assessment has been affirmed by this Committee's Democrats, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Counsel Mueller.

"These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests. Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the President released his hold on this damning information and evidence.

"Like the Ukraine investigation that would follow it, the investigation into the Trump campaign's effort to seek and utilize Russian help in 2016 and to obstruct justice, reveal a President who believes that he is above the law. But we are a country where the truth still matters and where right still matters. Our investigation into the Trump campaign, and the evidence we uncovered despite formidable obstruction, affirms that."

Background:

On September 17, 2018, the Committee voted unanimously to send all transcripts to the ODNI for a nonpartisan classification review by the Intelligence Community, and authorized the public release of the transcripts once the classification review was completed. In March of 2019, the Committee was informed that ODNI intended to share the Committee transcripts with the White House because the White House claimed the transcripts implicated "White House equities." In response, the Committee directed that the ODNI refrain from sharing the transcripts, which remain Committee property and were shared with the intelligence community only for the purpose of declassification. We urged that ODNI complete the classification review as requested and without any further delay.

In September 2019, the Committee again voted to release the transcripts. Nevertheless, the White House continued to insist on a prior review and the right to redact non-classified matters that it alleged would implicate their "equities." The Committee continued to reject this unprecedented interference in the classification review, and continues to reject the idea that the White House can exert some after the fact rationale to deprive Congress of the ability to release its own work product to the public.

Only this week, the Acting DNI finally informed the Committee that the White House was abandoning its hold. As of May 4, the ODNI reported that "the interagency review of the remaining ten transcripts has been completed," and that ODNI completed the redaction process begun 18 months ago. The Committee, after a review of the 53 transcripts which totaled tens of thousands of pages and to avoid any further delays, has allowed all of the redactions proposed by ODNI despite our concerns that the ODNI excessively over-redacted information that has since been declassified.

Redactions applied to the classified and sensitive transcripts released today were the work of the ODNI, not the Committee, and the Committee has accepted all IC-proposed redactions for now. The Committee previously applied limited redactions to all transcripts to protect personally identifiable information such as email addresses, phone numbers, or staff names.

The transcripts from the Committee's Russia investigation in 2017 and 2018 can be found here, as can additional transcripts of interviews taken by the Committee Democrats and additional materials.

###

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That last part grabbed the attention of attorneys for Mar-a-Lagos neighbors, who feared the appearance of rowdy booze cruises, loud boats and damage to precious underwater coquina rocks that they believe would be destroyed by dredging to deepen the channel and allow boats to pull up to the dock. The Palm Beach sheriff had weighed in to back the dock plan, citing similar security concerns. But the attorneys had seen nothing from either the Secret Service or the Coast Guard. A person familiar with the submission said the Secret Service and Coast Guard provided only oral endorsements. The Secret Service and Coast Guard declined to comment.
On Thursday, the province posted a detailed bulletin entitled "workplace guidance for business owners" on its COVID-19 website. Measured on its own merits, it's a solid collection of advice.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Thursday, the province posted a detailed bulletin entitled "workplace guidance for business owners" on its COVID-19 website. Measured on its own merits, it's a solid collection of advice.

The six-page document highlights the fundamentals of COVID-19 suppression -- hand hygiene, physical distancing and keeping sick people at home -- along with other health and safety procedures for any business allowed to re-open after nearly two months of inactivity.

The only problem with this bulletin is that it arrived on May 7, four days after thousands of Manitoba businesses re-opened in the first phase of Premier Brian Pallister's ambitious and expedited economic revival plan.

Pallister announced on April 29 that some previously shuttered businesses would be allowed to re-open on May 4. Stunned at the lack of advance warning, the premier's critics suggested he was moving too far, too fast.

Premier Brian Pallister announced on April 29 that some previously shuttered businesses would be allowed to re-open on May 4. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files)

The shock and awe of the announcement strongly suggested that Pallister, a man who attaches some form of superlative to almost every government decision and measure, was committed to matching pace with provinces like Saskatchewan, which had two weeks earlier announced the re-opening of parts of its economy on May 4.

If the timeline alone isn't enough to convince you that Pallister thinks he is in a race with the other premiers, then consider the fact that specific guidelines for business owners was issued days after some of those businesses opened.

Confusion among those business owners permitted to re-open is plainly evident. Many who were allowed to open have remained shut. Others are still operating in much more limited fashion than they are permitted. It's all the consequence of a government that approved the re-opening of business in an information vacuum.

In the previously posted but clearly incomplete guidelines for businesses, there were virtually no details on some of the most basic questions facing business owners. Chief among those questions is whether staff need to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and if so, what kind?

The newly posted guidelines are much clearer. PPE is not necessary but if it is used, it should be in conjunction with proper distancing and hand hygiene, not as a replacement for those controls. Gloves are not really recommended and do not eliminate the need for frequent hand washing.

If the timeline alone isn't enough to convince you that Pallister thinks he is in a race with the other premiers, then consider the fact that specific guidelines for business owners was issued days after some of those businesses opened.

Most importantly, your employees do not, in most instances, need to wear medical-grade masks. If physical distancing is not possible, non-medical masks are sufficient. This is consistent with what most provinces along with the federal government are telling re-opening businesses. No one wants a barista or a big-box store cashier wearing a N95 respirator because those are still desperately needed by health care workers.

As good as the new guidelines are, they may be late for some businesses.

This week, the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce launched an "Urgent Call for PPE Suppliers" to provide masks, gloves, plexiglass shields and sanitizing supplies to businesses preparing to re-open. After receiving numerous inquiries about where to source equipment like this, the chamber wants to establish a listing of local businesses that can either make or supply PPE.

It's an excellent idea but it may signal that -- in the information vacuum created by the Pallister government -- many businesses are unclear about what kinds of protective equipment they need to give to their employees. It further suggests that business owners, now that they are allowed to re-open, could trigger a second wave of panic buying and hoarding similar to what we saw at the outset of the pandemic.

Pallister clearly wanted to match pace with other provinces like Quebec and Saskatchewan that were re-opening businesses this week. However, a quick survey of the websites in those other provinces shows that they were providing detailed guidelines to businesses on things like PPE well in advance of any openings.

In other words, it's a terrible time to inadvertently trigger a wave of panic buying among business owners who may want the extra protection from a N95 mask but really don't need it.

There may still be business owners in those provinces who will insist on going above and beyond guidelines to provide employees with PPE, but at least their governments gave them a fighting chance to make informed decisions.

Dan Lett | Not for Attribution A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world that is sent every Tuesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The overarching concern here is that Manitoba is still suffering from a shortage of PPE, which means it definitely does not have the reserves to safeguard health care workers in the event that a second wave of COVID-19 crashes down upon us this fall.

That means it is the perfect time right now, while the total number of new infections has flattened and the number of hospitalized COVID-19 remains extremely low, to start building up the stockpile of PPE we need now and in the near future.

Building up a sufficient emergency stockpile will remain a challenge given that the global capacity to supply gloves, gowns and masks is still lagging well behind the demand. In other words, it's a terrible time to inadvertently trigger a wave of panic buying among business owners who may want the extra protection from a N95 mask but really don't need it.

Everyone wants the economy to reclaim as much pre-pandemic activity as possible. But wanting something like that, and overseeing it in a safe and measured fashion, are two very different things.

As the economic revival plan continues to unfold, the Pallister government would be well advised to consider this simple equation: guidelines before green lights.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
NEW DELHI  Sixteen migrant workers were crushed to death by a freight train in central India on Friday as they were traveling home, the latest casualties connected to Indias coronavirus lockdown and efforts to reopen the economy.

Just the day before, a disaster at a plastics factory that was reopening after a lockdown killed 11 people and sickened hundreds. Officials said that workers at a plant owned by the South Korean industrial giant LG had mishandled a valve on a styrene tank that sent a cloud of deadly vapor floating over the outskirts of Visakhapatnam, a city of several million people, that left people choking to death in the streets.

The moral of those stories for the Indian government, which imposed one of the worlds strictest lockdowns six weeks ago and is now trying to restart its economy, is that the changes brought by the coronavirus carry risks beyond infection.
IndiGo on Friday said it operated special domestic flights to take 197 Kenyan nationals to Mumbai for their repatriation flight to Nairobi.

On Thursday, the budget carrier airlifted 75 Kenyans from Delhi, 39 from Ahmedabad, 23 from Chennai, 28 from Bengaluru and 32 from Hyderabad to Mumbai, from where they were flown to Nairobi on a Kenyan Airways flight, it said in a press release.

"The IndiGo flight from Delhi-Ahmedabad-Mumbai transferred a total 114 passengers while the flight from Chennai-Bangalore-Hyderabad-Mumbai transferred 83 passengers to Mumbai, for their return flight," it stated.

India has been under a lockdown since March 25 to curb the coronavirus pandemic and all scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended for this period.

However, cargo flights, medical evacuation flights and special flights approved by aviation regulator DGCA have been allowed to operate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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After a week of quarantining himself on the first floor of his house, ER nurse Marcial Reyes was so short of breath from the coronavirus burrowing into his lungs that he made an emergency call.

He FaceTimed his wife upstairs. Rowena Reyes -- also a nurse -- ran downstairs and stopped mid-way when Marcial said he was driving himself to the hospital. She began to cry.

In the emergency room of the Kaiser Permanente medical center in Fontana, where the 46-year-old Reyes is normally a charge nurse, he became the patient.

His breath became so labored over the next several days that doctors hooked him up to a ventilator for 10 days.

Marcial Reyes had to be put into a medically-induced coma and intubated for 10 days. (Photo courtesy of Marcial Reyes)

Reyes' last thoughts before he was placed into a medically-induced coma were about leaving his wife and 5-year-old son on their own.

"We never even hugged one another when I went to the emergency department because I don't want to infect them," Reyes said.

CALIFORNIA HAS THE MOST FILIPINO NURSES OF ANY STATE

Reyes would later find out that both his wife and son also had contracted COVID-19. It's the nightmare scenario facing many Filipino nurses in California who, according to a 2016 survey, make up nearly 20 percent of the state's nursing ranks -- the highest anywhere in the country.

No other country has exported so many front-line health care workers to California and beyond as the Philippines. The reasons are various and steeped in colonialism and immigration policy.

It's not uncommon for many Filipino families to produce multiple healthcare workers, be they nurses or home caregivers, doctors, pharmacy technicians or phlebotomists.

Filipino nursing leaders in California say they're thankful that the state has so far escaped the surge in coronavirus cases that is devastating New York and New Jersey and hitting large concentrations of Filipino American healthcare workers there hard.

Yet through news reports, obituaries and social media, they know the pandemic has struck nurses and other healthcare workers in the community.

Marcial Reyes, a charge nurse in the emergency department of the Kaiser medical center in Fontana, seen here with fellow Filipino American nurses. (Photo courtesy of Marcial Reyes)

Unknown numbers have gotten sick and at least one Filipino nurse in L.A. succumbed to the virus.

Celia Marcos, a 61-year-old nurse at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, died April 17 -- two days after she was diagnosed. Her co-workers, who said she was not given adequate protective equipment by their employer, held a vigil for her outside the hospital Wednesday night. Her son plans to take her ashes back to the Philippines.

The pandemic is truly testing Filipino nurses, said Marlon Saria, a member of the Southern California chapter of the Philippine Nurses Association of America. But he added that nurses from the Philippines are uniquely prepared for disaster.

"We see about 20-plus typhoons a year," Saria said. "We have major earthquakes every other year. And yet we bounce back -- really fast."

Cris Escarrilla at the San Diego chapter of the association agreed, saying that nurses come to the U.S. focused on making a better life for themselves and their families.

"We don't really complain that much," Escarrilla said. "We are able to adapt and we just want to get things done."

FROM COLONY TO NURSE EXPORTER

The oldest of the Filipino nurses working today came after the U.S. liberalized its immigration laws in 1965.

But to understand how the Philippines became the top exporter of nurses to the U.S. means looking back more than a century, when it became a U.S. territory after the Spanish American War of 1898, said Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California Berkeley and author of Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History.

This Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center ad in a 1969 issue of the Philippine Journal of Nursing targets its former exchange visitor nurses from the Philippines for permanent employment. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Ceniza Choy)

During a period that lasted until the end of WWII, Americans took their system of educating nurses to the Philippines.

"What this training and English-language fluency did was to create preconditions that enabled the mass migration of Filipino nurses that we have been observing for 60 years now," Choy said.

California came to have its large concentration of Filipino nurses, Choy said, because many hospitals in the state recruited from the Philippines. The pioneers who arrived first then started to encourage family members and nursing classmates to come work with them.

Many worked in underserved areas to alleviate nursing shortages, such as in inner-city and public hospitals, and were critical during other health crises, like during the AIDS epidemic, Choy said.

"They're needed when they're useful," Choy said. "They're also needed when it's critical, when it's dangerous, when your life is on the line."

THE NEXT GEN

The first wave of Filipino nurses have helped cultivate a new crop of second and third- generation nurses, such as Angela Gatdula.

Members at a recent gathering of the Philippine Nurses Association of Southern California. (Photo courtesy of Philippine Nurses Association of Southern California) (Photo courtesy of Philippine Nurses Association of Southern California)z)

The 31-year-old Filipino American nurse, who was born in Panorama City, works in the medical-surgical unit of Providence Saint John in Santa Monica. She's one of seven cousins on her mom's side who became nurses.

"We joke around that we could probably start our own skilled nursing facility," Gatdula said.

Gatdula said her Filipino upbringing instilled a kindness that makes her a good nurse. But she said her American side really came out after she got sick with the coronavirus, waking up one morning with severe body aches and joint pain.

Even as she quarantined at home, Gatdula joined other nurses in publicly criticizing the hospital for having them treat COVID-19 patients in March while wearing surgical masks, rather than the more effective N95 respirators. Ten of her colleagues were suspended for refusing to care for those patients without the N95 masks.

Gatdula said some of her relatives worried about her coming forward, so her mother's reaction was especially heartening.

"I had my mom actually congratulate me for speaking up," Gatdula said, her voice wavering with emotion.

FROM NURSE TO PATIENT TO NURSE AGAIN



Gatdula has since recovered and is back at work. Recovery has been slower for ER nurse Marcial Reyes because he was in a coma on a ventilator.



Colleagues at the Kaiser medical center in Fontana sent encouragement to Marcial Reyes. (Photo courtesy of Marcial Reyes)

He needs to regain strength in his legs and he struggles to write. His wife and young son fared better, and have recovered without hospitalization.

In spite of his ordeal, Reyes can't wait to return to the patient station in the ER, and to reunite with colleagues who've supported him and his family with phone calls and meals through their ordeal.

It's been 14 years since he moved to the U.S. on a work visa to be a nurse, eight years since he became a U.S. citizen, and he said his job in his adopted country is really more of a vocation.

"I know I'm touching the lives of my patients every time I take care of them," Reyes said. "It's just amazing."

And now, he said, he understands his patients that much more.
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Black Iron Inc. ("Black Iron" or the "Company") (BKI.TO)(OTC PINK:BKIRF)(BIN.F), announces that it has closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement of units of the Company (the "Offering"). Pursuant to the Offering, the Company issued a total of 36,534,420 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of $1,826,721.

Interest to participate in the Offering was extremely strong and Black Iron management asks that investors who were unable to receive an allocation of the Offering, or their target allocation, purchase Black Iron shares in the market. The cornerstone investor in this Offering is United Kingdom-based RAB Capital who acquired a ~10% ownership position and is now a reporting insider of the Company. RAB Capital has a history of successful investing in development mining projects and intends to be a long-term supportive shareholder of Black Iron.

Philip Richards, Founder and Honorary President of RAB Capital, stated: "Black Iron offers a unique investment opportunity in a world-class iron ore development. We believe its low impurity and high-grade magnetite will be in strong demand from many global smelters. Experienced management and good local infrastructure should make the build process a successful near-term reality."

Certain insiders of the Company have subscribed for Units pursuant to the Offering (the "Insider Participation"). The Insider Participation is considered to be a "related party transaction" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101"). The Insider Participation is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101.

Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (each a "Common Share") and one-third of one common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant") entitling the holder to acquire a Common Share at a price of $0.06 for a period of three years from the date hereof.

Story continues

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering to advance the Company's Shymanivske project (the "Project"), including negotiations to secure essential land surface rights, discussions and negotiations on construction financing and for general working capital purposes.

The Company paid cash finder fees of $96,600 to certain finders and did not issue any finders warrants in connection with the Offering. The securities underlying the Units will be subject to a four-month hold period that expires on September 8, 2020. Closing of this Offering is subject to receipt of regulatory approval, including final Toronto Stock Exchange approval.

Lind Option Exercise

Lind Global Macro Fund LP ("Lind") has invested an additional CAD$415,000 less a 3.5% closing fee of $14,525, into Black Iron by exercising a portion of their CAD$1.25 million First Convertible Security Option ("First Option") pursuant to the previously announced convertible security funding agreement (the "Agreement") with Lind (see the Company's press release dated September 18, 2019 for further details).

Pursuant to the Agreement, the Company has issued to Lind a convertible security with a principal amount of CAD$415,000 (the "Convertible Security"). As part of this financing, Black Iron has issued to Lind 3,384,991 warrants exercisable for a term of 48 months at an exercise price of $0.0797 per share. The number of warrants issued is equal to 50% of the funded amount divided by the 20-day VWAP of Black Iron's shares as traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

This investment is in addition to the CAD$2.7 million principal amount previously invested by Lind and is being made under the same terms (please see the Company's press release dated September 27, 2019). Under the terms of the Agreement, the Convertible Security will be repaid by Black Iron through the issuance of common shares at pre-agreed conversion limits to Lind over a 24-month period. Lind will have the option to convert up to 1/20th of the face value of the Convertible Security per month at a price equal to 85% of Black Iron's five-day volume-weighted average share price ("VWAP") immediately prior to each time Lind notifies Black Iron of its intent to convert.

Black Iron has the option to buy-back the outstanding convertible securities in cash at any time with no penalty. If Black Iron exercises the buy back option, Lind will have the option to convert a maximum of 33% of the outstanding face value of the convertible securities amount into Black Iron shares.

"It is great to have the financial support from RAB Capital and Lind during this time of uncertainty as both are great firms to have as investors as they take a strong interest in the companies they invest into and are able to make follow on investments to support project development" stated Matt Simpson, CEO of Black Iron. Matt also added added "as is currently being stated by leaders of some of the world's largest countries, once people start returning to work, government economic stimulus packages are likely going to shift to focus on job creation largely through greater spending to repair and upgrade of ailing infrastructure. Infrastructure upgrades will entail a large consumption of steel and therefore iron ore. Black Iron's project is well-positioned to become a new supplier of iron ore given its low-cost position and close proximity to growing market demand."

Project Update

Despite Ukraine's borders currently being closed to help contain the spread of Covid19, Black Iron's management continue to have positive discussions with large investors to fund project construction and with Ukraine's government on land transfer which once concluded are transformative for the Company.

As an update on construction funding, there are potential offtake (steel mill and global trading house buyers of iron ore) and construction investors located in Asia and outside which are impacted differently. Groups located within Asia are now slowly starting to return to work as the number of coronavirus cases reported daily continues to decline and seems to be more under control. Progress with Asia based investors is currently gaining traction, particularly on the construction financing front. For groups located outside of Asia, discussions are progressing positively but are unlikely to conclude until impacted countries, including Ukraine, reopen their borders for travel so due diligence and commercial negotiations can be finalized.

On land transfer, Ukraine's President made some major changes to government Ministers on March 4, 2020 including the appointment of a new Prime Minister, Minister of Economy and Minister of Defence because he was upset at their rate of implementing economic reforms. Black Iron's file has since been transferred from the responsibility of Ukraine's Prime Minister directly to the President and meetings are currently ongoing on the terms and compensation for land transfer. Black Iron has senior personal located in Ukraine that are not impacted by the coronavirus and along with strong support from Canada's Embassy to Ukraine plus use of video conference technologies is able to progress discussions with various Ukraine government representatives.

About Black Iron

Black Iron is an iron ore exploration and development company, advancing its 100% owned Shymanivske project located in Kryviy Rih, Ukraine. The Shymanivske project contains a NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimated to be 646 Mt Measured and Indicated mineral resources, consisting of 355 Mt Measured mineral resources grading 32.0% total iron and 19.5% magnetic iron, and Indicated mineral resources of 290 Mt grading 31.1% total iron and 17.9% magnetic iron, using a cut-off grade of 10% magnetic iron. Additionally, the Shymanivske project contains 188 Mt of Inferred mineral resources grading 30.1% total iron and 18.4% magnetic iron. Full mineral resource details can be found in the NI 43-101 compliant technical report entitled "Preliminary Economic Assessment of the Re-scoped Shymanivske Iron Ore Deposit" effective November 21, 2017 (the "PEA" or "Preliminary Economic Assessment") under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Shymanivske project is surrounded by five other operating mines, including ArcelorMittal's iron ore complex. Please visit the Company's website at www.blackiron.com for more information.

The technical and scientific contents of this press release have been prepared under the supervision of and have been reviewed and approved by Matt Simpson, P.Eng, CEO of Black Iron, who is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

For more information, please contact:

Matt Simpson

Chief Executive Officer

Black Iron Inc.

Tel: +1 (416) 309-2138

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, opinions and estimates of the date such statements are made based on information available to them at that time. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's ability to develop the Shymanivske project, the use of proceeds of the Offering and the First Option, the Company's ability to issue subsequent convertible securities under the Agreement, the Company's ability to raise adequate capital, the Company's ability to secure the requisite land rights and the Company's future plans. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Company notes that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

SOURCE: Black Iron





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/588970/Black-Iron-Closes-Private-Placement-Announces-Lind-Option-Exercise-and-Project-Update




India on Friday began evacuating over 700 of its citizens by sea from the Maldives who were stranded in the scenic island due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions.

The INS Jalashwa, the Indian Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu', the High Commission of India in Maldives said.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is part of the repatriation mission launched by the Indian Navy to bring Indian citizens home from foreign shores, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

"It is a very great thing that the High Commission did for us and we did not have any issues till now. We got everything with proper guidelines, all the things done by the High Commission," Pradeep, who hails from Palakkad, said. He works in a resort in Male.

"Jamsheed from Kerala thanks Govt of India, Govt of Kerala & @indiannavy for this historic Operation to repatriate #Indian nationals from the #Maldives," the High Commission of India in Maldives tweeted.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff, it noted.

The INS Magar, an amphibious warfare vessel of the Indian Navy, will also join the repatriation mission in Male as part of the efforts to bring back around 1,000 stranded Indian nationals to the Kochi port in Kerala over the next few days.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is conducting its biggest ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad, including from the US, the UAE, the UK.

The High Commission in Male on its Facebook page said, MVR 600 or an equivalent amount of USD 40 will be charged as the Evacuation Services Charge from each person listed for repatriation by INS Jalashwa.

"This amount would be collected at the service fee collection counter after completion of the Immigration process at the Velana International Airport. Kindly carry exact change to avoid delay/ inconvenience," the post said.

Meanwhile, all arrangements as per government guidelines are in place at Cochin Port to facilitate the arrival of those who are evacuated from Maldives via the sea route, officials in Kochi said.

Before arrival at Cochin, on board the vessel, the Navy will get the self e-declaration data filled by all passengers and also identify the passengers symptomatic of COVID-19.

The symptomatic passengers will be disembarked first, followed by other passengers (district wise) in batches of 50 persons, the Port Trust said.

Separate zone has been earmarked for the symptomatic patients.

The passengers disembarked will undergo further statutory verifications for clearances inside the Samudrika Cruise Terminal where Port Health Organisation will verify the self declaration forms, the trust said.

All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on the Aarogya Setu app.

The passengers, once cleared by all statutory organisations, will be transported to different districts in buses (30 per bus) arranged by the Regional Transport Officer.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

On Thursday, two special flights from the UAE carrying a total of 363 Indian nationals, including nine infants, left for Kerala as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jair Renan Bolsonaro, son of Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, was banned from the Amazon-owned Twitch.tv after casting COVID-19 misinformation according to a recently published article.

Jair enjoys broadcasting one of the most popular video games today, League of Legends. He uses Twitch to live stream his game, and at present, he has 50,000 followers on the popular streaming service.

However, he was banned from Twitch recently due to the spreading of misinformation while streaming live. In regards to the current global health crisis, he said: "Go to the streets, OK? What pandemic? This is a media invention to lock you inside your home, so you'll think the world is crumbling. It's just a little flu, brother."

Before this, his father was censored by Twitter and Facebook for posting a video of him speaking out about how there is a need to balance addressing the pandemic with averting a prolonged economic slump.

You may also remember that his father was criticized many times due to the spreading of false information about the virus as well. One time, in particular, was a video recommending people to try an unproven treatment for COVID-19, which was later removed by Twitter and Facebook.

It was first reported that Jair Bolsonaro would have a lifetime ban, but Twitch clarified that the ban is just temporary, however, they did not explain as to how long it will last. As of today, his account is still unavailable.

In an email sent by Twitch to a news outlet, they said: "In line with our policies on hateful conduct, Renan Bolsonaro has been issued a temporary ban from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."

Twitch is the latest social media platform to demonstrate that they are serious about punishing people who spread fake news about COVID-19. This issue should be taken seriously because this is not your ordinary illness.

At present, it has already infected more than 3.9 million people around the globe and claimed the lives of more than 270,000. In Brazil alone, there are more than 135,000 cases, and a death toll of more than 9,000 according to worldometers.

Meanwhile, YouTube banned two doctors from Bakersfield, California, who suggested reopening the United States because of the expected low mortality rates.

Misinformation about COVID-19 has become rampant online as social media struggles to stop fake news. According to a report from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University published in April, vast misinformation about the virus is coming from influencers, politicians, and celebrities.

Different social media sites continue to ban personalities who are generating fake news about COVID-19. It can also be remembered that Google and other sites joined together to forego celebrating April Fool's Day, mostly due to the fact that some jokes or pranks would be related to COVID-19. It was to give respect to those who continue to battle the deadly virus and to honor those who serve to combat the virus.

Read a related article: Former Brazilian President Calls Bolsonaro a 'Troglodyte' for Lack of COVID-19 Response
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, over the weekend, insisted that even illegal immigrants deserve to receive their "fair share" of the state and federal stimulus funds since some of them are paying more in taxes than establishments or businesses "that have been bailed out."

Undocumented people, according to Ocasio-Cortez, are paying taxes. Therefore, these people who work for the public to make their everyday lives more convenient; those who deliver goods bought from the supermarket; and those who drive people from one destination to another; or those doing the laundry and cleaning homes-they all pay taxes.

The government official elaborated that these people are paying for the very reclamation funds that they are being deprived of on federal levels.

Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez said, they have to ensure these people are getting their fair share and they get included in the stimulus funds.

They Who Don't Pay Taxes

According to Ocasio-Cortez, businesses that do not pay any taxes are receiving the said benefits, while the so-called "illegal immigrants," the real taxpayers, don't get what they deserve.

In relation to the issue, AOC asked, if these big firms are not paying their taxes but they get the financial support from the government, then, why are the so-called "undocumented people," who pay more taxes than the others, being excluded?

Moreover, the New York Democrat praised California, too, for providing stimulus funds to illegal immigrants, saying, the recovery program of California is "leaps and bounds," better than what NY has done in aiding the undocumented individuals.

Specifically, California recognizes how crucial these illegals have been, Ocasio-Cortez said, in their economy, and they work very hard to pay it back.

The Representative is among the most vocal supporters of giving illegal immigrants funds from the very beginning.

Also, three House Democrats introduced a bill to give the payments to everyone with Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or ITIN, which would also include a lot of undocumented people.

20 Weeks to Complete Mailing Out of Stimulus Checks

Late last month, abc7 reported, approximately "nine million stimulus checks" have already been issued to qualified Californians as of mid-April. This was based on federal data.

According to officials, it might take around 20 weeks to complete the mailing of the checks, and this frustrates many people relying on that money.

Additionally, the IRS released last month, figures that show the number of people who had already received their stimulus checks as of the middle of April. Also, Californians have received almost $16 billion, averaging roughly $1,174 each person.

The nine million checks distributed, as reported earlier, only account for roughly 35 percent of the qualified Californians.

The said percentage is slightly below the countrywide 38-percent rate of the adult populace who received their stimulus checks. As a whole, more than 85 million incentives have already been distributed, with almost $158 billion in total.

Check these out!
By Shira Hanau

(JTA)The images were striking, the mayor had strong words and the backlash was swift.

On Tuesday night, hundreds of Orthodox Jews gathered for a rabbis funeral in Brooklyn, showing apparent disregard of public social distancing guidelines. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a tweet in which he addressed the Jewish community, saying the time for warnings has passed and announcing that the police would be arresting or issuing summonses to those who gather in large groups.

Jewish leaders and others said the mayor used language that singled out the entire Jewish community, which by and large has complied with social distancing guidelines.

On Wednesday, de Blasio stood by his warnings of police action against social distancing violators but expressed remorse over the tone of his tweets.

I regret if the way I said it in any way gave people the feeling of being treated the wrong way, he said.

Some are questioning whether the police could have done more to stop the public procession before the crowd grew into the hundreds or thousands.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday that members of his department were in contact with Hasidic community leaders to discuss what to expect at that location ahead of the funeral. That contact, he said, came within minutes of the rabbis death.

Asked for further detail on the plans made by the police with local community leaders, a spokeswoman declined to comment beyond Sheas remarks at the news conference.

In a statement distributed to reporters, Jacob Mertz, a spokesman for the congregation that organized the funeral, said organizers had the streets closed for the funeral to allow mourners to participate while following social distancing guidelines.

Unfortunately, this didnt pan out, and NYPD had to disperse the crowds, the statement said. We shall note that everyone followed the police officers orders and the vast majority wore masks. Yet, the confusion and chaos led to scenes of large crowds. We understand Mayor Bill de Blasios frustration and his speaking out against the gathering. As said, we thought that the procession will be in accordance with the rules, and we apologize that it turned out otherwise.

Mertz did not address whether the NYPD was involved in the street closures, but a City Hall spokeswoman told the New York Post on Wednesday that no permits were issued for the funeral.

David Greenfield, a former City Council member and CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, said in a tweet that the police wanted to work with the chasidic synagogue out of respect for their revered (and well-known) late Rabbi so they literally barricaded streets for this socially distant funeral.

The Chasidic synagogue wanted to honor their saintly rabbi so they came up with a misguided scheme for an outdoor socially distant public funeral. They were so convinced they could pull this off they coordinated with NYPD and even handed out masks.

One Twitter account called Satmar Headquarters, but not known to be affiliated with any official organ of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, said police had approved the funeral and helped coordinate the procession.

This Funeral was originally approved and actually organized by @NYPDnews 2 hours b4 it started, PD brought trucks with barriers/tower lights to close off Bedford Avenue and the surrounding area. Its the @NYCMayors Dept who originally approved it before deciding to take it back, the tweet said.

Videos posted to Twitter showed police telling mourners over a loudspeaker to move off the street and onto the sidewalk.

Everybody go home, it is finished, theres going to be traffic coming down the street, a police officer said in one video posted by Reuven Blau, a reporter for the local outlet The City.

Another video posted by Blau showed police barriers in the background, suggesting that officers had helped close off the street for the funeral.

The evening funeral, which was organized hastily in accordance with Jewish custom after Rabbi Chaim Mertz died on Tuesday afternoon, was publicized in a poster made by the rabbis synagogue, Tolath Yaakov.

The poster included a map of the funeral route on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg and advised mourners that anyone attending the funeral must wear a mask and stay 6 feet apart from others. The directive to wear masks was repeated by the Williamsburg Shomrim, a local patrol group run by Hasidic Jews, though videos from the scene clearly show some people without masks and within the proscribed 6 feet.

Everyone on the street should have a mask, a Shomrim member said in a video from before the funeral.
Health officials failed to implement lessons from a devastating care home scandal that could have saved lives during the coronavirus pandemic, it has been claimed.

Julieann McNally, who spearheaded a campaign for an investigation into the dangerous conditions at Dunmurry Manor care home, now renamed Oak Tree Manor, has said "little or no planning" was done for care homes ahead of the pandemic.

It comes after another dramatic week in which health officials said they don't know the true Covid-19 death toll in Northern Ireland's care homes, while the head of the Public Health Agency (PHA) backtracked on evidence she gave to the health committee last month over efforts to bring the spread of the virus under control.

Olive Macleod, the PHA's chief executive, appeared in front of the health committee this week and told MLAs she had incorrectly informed them 500 people had been recruited and were being trained to carry out contact tracing.

In an extraordinary admission after she was pressed on the matter by Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan, Ms Macleod said 500 people had not been recruited.

"I spoke out of turn, that is incorrect," she said.

Ms McNally, from Dunmurry Manor Support Group, said: "We feel that this is a worse scandal than RHI - nobody lost their lives or their jobs as a result of RHI.

"Hundreds have died in our care homes since this virus arrived. I'm sure that many of the deaths could have been prevented had proper processes and safeguards been put in place.

"We had an investigation into what happened at Cherry Tree Manor, we had the Commissioner for Older People investigate the conditions at Dunmurry Manor and make a series of recommendations, so it is appalling to see what is happening in our care homes now.

"Covid-19 is awful but it is only highlighting the failings in the system, long-standing failings that should have been addressed by now.

"We demand a public inquiry is set up to find out the truth and to determine if we have failed the most vulnerable in our society."

Ms McNally also criticised the decision to suspend inspections of care homes across Northern Ireland by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) - coming at a time when families have stopped visiting their loved ones in a bid to reduce the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that social workers and care managers are not routinely visiting care homes during the pandemic.

"It's like every last shred of regulation and oversight has been removed to make sure residents are safe," she said. "Who knows if there are homes with care being provided by very small numbers of staff due to sick leave or exhaustion? Who knows if cleaning duties are not being done because maybe they don't have the time or the staff? Who knows if abuse safeguarding cases are increasing in care homes because of all attention being diverted to Covid-19 matters?"

Latest figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) suggest that more than half of the people who have died from Covid-19 were care home residents.

The official figures, released on Friday, show that 516 people had died from Covid-19 by May 1 - 253 of them passed away in hospital, while 232 died in care homes.

However, given that care home residents are being transferred to hospital for treatment, a proportion of the hospital patients whose deaths have been reported by Nisra will have contracted Covid-19 in a care home.

A spokeswoman from the Department of Health said officials do not hold the number of care home residents who have been transferred to hospital and have died.

The statement was issued after health officials refused to respond to repeated efforts to uncover the extent of the spread of Covid-19 through care homes in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, speaking in Dungannon on Friday, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill called for universal testing.

She told the Belfast Telegraph: "No stone should be left unturned in supporting care homes right now, the staff and the residents.

"If you're sitting at home and one of your loved ones is in a care home, we can understand you're anxious, understand your fear. What we need to do is absolutely everything we can. I believe there should be universal testing. A regular programme of testing of all residents and staff to allow identification of the virus and allow a speedy reaction.

"As we work our way through this pandemic, the Executive as a whole needs to be very serious about the whole issue of care homes, and I believe that they are. There's a sense of a unity of purpose."
The field hospital constructed in the gymnasium at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne closed Tuesday without hosting a single patient with the coronavirus, according to the Cape Cod Times.

Work to build the temporary hospital with 94 beds began at the beginning of April with anticipation of a surge along the Cape. Fortunately, it never arrived.

We never got into our surge numbers, president and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare Michael Lauf told the newspaper.

The facility was open for about two weeks.

The health care provider closed the hospital after discussions with Gov. Charlie Baker, the report said.

The facility was a collaboration among Cape Cod Healthcare, state emergency officials and the Massachusetts National Guard.

It represented one of several field hospitals across the state including locations in Boston and Worcester.

Like others in the state, the facility was meant for patients that needed care but whose cases werent so severe that they needed attention at a hospital.

Lauf told the Cape Cod Times that protective measure sand social distancing really stopped what could have been a catastrophic event on the Cape."

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Hundreds of pastors send letter to Gov. Charlie Baker asking for churches to reopen

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Tonnes of rice delivered to sea gypsies in community barter deal

PHUKET: A total of 3.5 tonnes of rice was handed over five sea gypsy communities in Phuket and a further three tonnes of rice has been dispatched to be delivered by the Royal Thai Navy to sea gypsies on Koh Lipe in Satun province.

COVID-19economics

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 8 May 2020, 05:30PM

The rice was handed over at a ceremony yesterday (May 7). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The rice was handed over at a ceremony yesterday (May 7). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The rice was handed over at a ceremony yesterday (May 7). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The rice is from an exchange project by which sea gypsies trade dried fish that they have not been able to sell with hill tribe farmers who grow rice.

A nearly identical project, also organised by the national Chumchonthai Foundation (Community Foundation), nine tonnes of rice flown to Phuket by the Royal Thai Air Force landed on the island on April 20, in exchange for about a tonne of sun-dried fish provided by sea gypsies along the Andaman coast.

The rice handed over yesterday (May 7) was officiated with a ceremony held at Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command at Cape Panwa presided over by Vice Admiral Cherngchai Chomcherngpat of the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command together with Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana.

Present to gratefully receive the rice were representatives of five sea gypsy communities in Phuket: at Baan Laem Tukkae, Baan Rawai, Baan Sapam, Baan Hin Luk Diew and Baan Laem La.

Phuket Province thanks those involved for making the project a success, Governor Phakaphong said.

V/ Adm Cherngchai explained, The spread of the COVID-19 virus has caused problems for people, especifically sea gypsies.

In this regard, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation [DDPM] and the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command is [acting as] a center for donating rice and dried foods from various organisations.
In the last seven weeks, the NYPD has arrested and issued summonses for almost 400 people, mostly blacks and Latinos, for allegedly violating social distancing and other violations, newly released data shows.

Demographic data for social distancing enforcement by the NYPD between March 16 and May 5 was published on Friday after videos posted on social media last weekend raised questions over whether police are enforcing consistently in neighborhoods of different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.

The statistics showed that 374 summonses were issued for allegations likely to spread disease and to violate emergency measures. Of those who received the summonses, 193 are African American, 111 are Hispanic, 51 are white, 14 are Asian and three are American Indian.

PHOTO: A police officer distributes face masks in Domino Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, May 2, 2020. (Gary He/EPA via Shutterstock)

MORE: NYPD officer put on modified duty after violent social distancing violation arrest filmed

In Brooklyn, 206 summonses were issued including 121 from 12 alleged social gatherings. In the Bronx, 99 summonses were issued including 42 at five social gatherings.

PHOTO: People hang out in Central Park maintaining during the coronavirus pandemic as spring weather warmed up in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 2, 2020. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

"We have to make sure that we are impartial in how we enforce the law," Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Thursday during an internal question-and-answer session. "We have a couple videos that people think otherwise."

MORE: 'We need help': Inmates describe prison system unprepared for coronavirus

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said his office is "reviewing allegations of excessive force during recent Brooklyn arrests and will investigate these incidents to determine if disciplinary recommendations or criminal charges are warranted."

PHOTO: In this April 29, 2020 image from video, provided by Adegoke Atunbi, an unmasked New York City plains clothes police officer begins to wrestle a man to the ground while making an arrest in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Adegoke Atunbi/AP)

The NYPD insisted it does its work "evenly and fairly" though one official conceded some of what is depicted on the videos is troubling.

"We're not targeting any particular neighborhood," said Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North. Still, he conceded during a Thursday call with reporters "we had a tough weekend" and "none of these videos look great."

Story continues

The city also reported that 120 arrests were made during the same time period.

Gonzalez's office released an analysis on Thursday of the social distance-related arrests that were made in Brooklyn between March 17 and May 4.

PHOTO: In this April 29, 2020 image from video provided by Adegoke Atunbi, New York City police officers wrestle a man to the ground while making an arrest in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Adegoke Atunbi/AP)

The analysis, first reported by the New York Times, showed that of the 40 people arrested during that time period, 35 were African American, 4 were Hispanic and 1 was white. The arrests were made in neighborhoods -- Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cypress Hills and East New York -- which have large concentrations of blacks and Latinos.

"We do not accept disparity. Period," said Mayor Bill de Blasio at his daily press briefing on Friday, adding, "It's also important to note that some of the data that went out originally included arrests that were not actually related to social distancing, or summonses, that were related to other types of offenses. So that just needs to be clarified."

The more than three dozen arrests in the prosecutor's report were charged with obstructing governmental administration and other offenses.

PHOTO: People enjoy Central Park while maintaining social distancing norms, during the coronavirus pandemic, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 2, 2020. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Some of the arrests expected to result in desk appearance tickets while others were expected to be formally processed into central bookings, a law enforcement source said.

"Our office declined prosecution of all 40 as part of our COVID policy," according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office which has declined to prosecute low-level offenses that don't jeopardize public safety during the pandemic.

Statement from Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez regarding social distancing enforcement pic.twitter.com/VxO4Q8Hb7m  Eric Gonzalez (@BrooklynDA) May 6, 2020

In Queens, roughly 20 arrests related to alleged failure to comply with the city's social distancing mandate were made. Of those arrests, 16 were African American or Hispanic, two were Asian and two were white.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz told ABC News on Friday that her office will not prosecute social distancing arrests. "Nobody wants a health crisis to fuel a criminal justice crisis," said Katz, who contracted COVID 19, but has fully recovered.

"We respect the challenges that the men and women of the New York City Police Department face in policing during this pandemic and the dangers that they face every day in keeping our city safe," said Katz. "That being said, we are committed to nondiscriminatory and even-handed enforcement of all laws, not just social distancing laws. The health, safety and rights of all New Yorkers from every community are our priority."

PHOTO: Police officers patrol near a social distancing sign in front of Domino Park during the coronavirus pandemic in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, May 3, 2020. (Michael Nagle/Redux)

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is aware of six arrests where social distancing rules may have served as a predicate for the person to get stopped by the police. However, "as a matter of policy our office declines to prosecute arrests for social distancing and other violations of the recent emergency executive orders," a spokesman with Vance's office told ABC News.

Meanwhile, the Staten Island District Attorney's Office has arrested anyone related to social distancing, said Ryan Lavis, a spokesman for the office on Friday.

Maddrey said he is still reviewing the videos along with body camera and surveillance footage to determine what, if any, discipline is warranted.

Maddrey added that the NYPD is concerned the videos undermine the work officers have been doing as coronavirus has changed the priorities of policing.

"We've been giving out masks, we've helped create food banks, we've been part of giving out tablets so kids can do their school work, we've been assisting at funerals," Maddrey said.

Maddrey also agreed with critics that officers enforcing social distancing should themselves wear a mask.

"Our officers have a duty to the community to wear their masks as often as they can. We have to be fair and we should be wearing a mask as we address that."

"We will give more training to our officers, clearer protocols and make sure each of our neighborhoods are treated equally," de Blasio said on Friday. "That being said, we are going to use NYPD to keep people safe, specifically when fighting this pandemic."

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

NYPD arrested more people of color for social distancing and other charges, data shows originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Oslo (Norway), 6 May 2020  PCI Biotech (OSE: PCIB), a cancer focused biopharmaceutical company, today announces its interim first quarter 2020 results. Please find enclosed the report and presentation.



Highlights in the quarter

fimaChem

*The main priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic has been identification and implementation of potential mitigating actions for the RELEASE study progress, as well as identification and removal of unnecessary recruitment hurdles in the study protocol. PCI Biotech has not yet a complete picture of the consequences for the RELEASE study, but delays in patient recruitment and increased costs are expected

*Several new initiatives to recoup long-term recruitment projections are being implemented, including potential modifications to screening parameters and further expansion into new countries. These new initiatives are being implemented to accelerate patient inclusion when the current restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic are resolved, with the aim to reach interim analysis by Q2 2022. It is however currently not clear that the cash-position will suffice to reach interim read of the RELEASE trial, given the uncertainty surrounding long-term consequences of the unprecedented situation with the COVID-19 pandemic

*The majority of sites have halted or reduced patient screening and we are still awaiting enrolment of the first US patient. Site activations are delayed, but nonetheless 1 European and 3 US RELEASE study sites have opened since the Q4 2019 report. 34 of the 40 initially planned sites were open by end-April 2020

*Site preparations are ongoing for addition of Asian sites in 2020, to provide access to hospitals and KOLs in a region with higher prevalence of bile duct cancer and to enhance patient recruitment. So far progress has not been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and regulatory approval has been achieved in Taiwan

fimaVacc

*Two US patents granted in 2020 with broad coverage for the combination of fimaVacc with various cytokines and a new important class of adjuvants

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*A two-pronged development strategy is pursued, with Phase I results being used both in direct partnering efforts and planning for clinical proof of concept in a disease setting

Corporate

*The management team has been strengthened with appointment of CMO Dr Amir Snapir and CBO Mr Ludovic Robin

Per Walday, CEO of PCI Biotech, comments: The COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily changed the ways of working and the clinical trial environment dramatically, and our highest priority in this unprecedented situation is the safety of our patients, employees and collaborators. This pandemic will result in yet undeterminable delays and increased cost, but it is encouraging to witness the working spirit and the progress being achieved despite these unfortunate circumstances. Four RELEASE study sites have opened since the Q4 2019 report and regulatory/ethics approval has been granted in Taiwan. Two very important fimaVacc patents have also been granted in the US. We are very pleased to have strengthened the executive team with two very competent and experienced individuals: Dr Amir Snapir as CMO and Mr Ludovic Robin as CBO. We are now focusing our efforts to ensure that we are optimally prepared to accelerate development when the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

***

An online presentation in English will be held today, Wednesday 6 May 2020, at 08.30am CEST (local time). The presentation can be followed as a live webcast (access through link https://channel.royalcast.com/hegnarmedia/#!/hegnarmedia/20200506_3 ) or the companys website under Investors  Reports and presentations  Webcasts. It will be possible to post questions through the webcast console.

The interim report and the presentation will also be available on www.newsweb.no and on the company's webpage, www.pcibiotech.com from 07:00am (CEST) on 6 May 2020.

For further information, please contact:

Ronny Skuggedal, CFO

Email: rs@pcibiotech.no

Mobile: +47 9400 5757

About PCI Biotech

PCI Biotech is a biopharmaceutical late stage clinical development company focusing on development and commercialisation of novel therapies for the treatment of cancer through its innovative photochemical internalisation (PCI) technology platform. PCI is applied to three distinct anticancer paradigms: fimaChem (enhancement of chemotherapeutics for localised treatment of cancer), fimaVacc (T-cell induction technology for therapeutic vaccination), and fimaNAc (nucleic acid therapeutics delivery).

Photochemical internalisation induces triggered endosomal release that is used to unlock the true potential of a wide array of therapeutic modalities. The companys lead programme fimaChem consists of a pivotal study in bile duct cancer, an orphan indication with a high unmet need and without approved products. fimaVacc applies a unique mode of action to enhance the essential cytotoxic effect of therapeutic cancer vaccines, which works in synergy with several other state-of-the-art vaccination technologies. fimaNAc utilises the endosomal release to provide intracellular delivery of nucleic acids, such as mRNA and RNAi therapeutics, thereby addressing one of the major bottlenecks facing this emerging and promising field.

For further information, please visit: www.pcibiotech.com

Contact information: PCI Biotech Holding ASA, Ullernchausseen 64, N-0379 Oslo



Forward-looking statements

This announcement may contain forward-looking statements, which as such are not historical facts, but are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions. These assumptions are inherently subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors. Such risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in this announcement by such forward-looking statements. PCI Biotech disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

Attachments
The trial on the case of the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and others was adjourned on Friday.

This is the first meeting after a two-month break.

The lawyers of the ex-president submitted applications for release on personal guarantee, on bail, the cancellation of a preventive measure or the election of a bail.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation held a press conference on Friday to discuss its murder investigation of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was shot while jogging in Brunswick, Georgia. The bureau arrested a father and son on Thursday, charging them with Arbery's murder and aggravated assault.

Although the murder took place in February, the bureau only became involved late Tuesday evening, according to GBI Director Vic Reynolds.

Reynolds said Friday that "probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly."

"Please understand that although there was an investigation conducted by the Glynn County Police Department at the time of the incident over two months ago, the GBI was not a part of that investigation," the GBI said in a Thursday press release. "We are conducting an independent investigation and are two days into it."

ahmaud-arbery.jpg

On Wednesday, cellphone video showing Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, confront Arbery was released. It shows the final moments of Arbery's life while he was jogging through the Brunswick neighborhood in February. Travis shot Arbery with a shotgun twice, and the 25-year-old collapsed, and died.

"I can tell you that there's more than sufficient probable cause in this case for felony murder," Reynolds said Friday.

The director would not speak to police investigator's work prior to GBI's involvement, but said "in a perfect world" the bureau would have been asked to become involved in February.

At the rally to honor #AhmaudArbery outside the Glynn County Courthouse. It will begin at 10 pic.twitter.com/JY57kiPrIH

May 8, 2020

The GBI was brought into the high-profile case at the request of District Attorney Tom Durden, according to a Wednesday press release from the bureau. Durden, who will be prosecuting the case, said Friday he was asked to get involved on April 14.

He thanked the GBI for their involvement and fast response to "new developments" in the case. "We take what we're given, and we go from there and go back and look at what has been done, and then go ahead," he said.

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"As far as the GBI's involvement and so forth, I will say this: There were  and continue to be  some new developments in the case," Durden said, noting that he couldn't provide any more detail at this time.

According to the only witness in the police report, McMichael told investigators he thought Arbery was a burglary suspect and ordered him to stop. McMichael said Arbery "violently" attacked his son, and the two fought "over the shotgun" before Travis shot him twice. At the time, no charges were filed.

Georgia Chase Deadly Shooting

Gregory McMichael, left, and his son Travis McMichael, were charged on May 7, 2020 with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia. Glynn County Detention Center via AP

McMichael is a former law enforcement officer who used to work for the local district attorney. Due to conflicts of interest, the case is now on its third prosecutor, Durden. He reiterated his plan on Friday to have a grand jury bring charges, but said it "could perhaps go to trial." The case could be delayed for at least a month, as Georgia courts remain closed due to the coronavirus.

Reynolds noted there is no hate crime in Georgia. Durden said that "what some would say is an applicable law is, is an opinion. The law will come from the court."

Video of Arbery's death sparked condemnation across the country. Former Georgia congresswoman Stacey Abrams wrote on Twitter that Georgia NAACP "lifted up" Arbery and his family's struggle for action in the case. "We must not look away," she wrote.

LeBron James tweeted: "We're literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes! Can't even go for a damn jog man! Like WTF man are you kidding me?!?!?!?!?!? No man fr ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!! I'm sorry Ahmaud (Rest In Paradise) and my prayers and blessings sent to the... heavens above to your family."

Reynolds addressed the public's outrage on Friday, saying: "Regardless of the amount of social media, regardless of the amount of mainstream media attention, regardless of the emotion, regardless of supposed timeline, none of that matters to the GBI. It doesn't matter who the person is, it doesn't matter who the victim is, it doesn't matter who potential defendants are. All that matters is what the facts tell us."

"We applied the law to the facts in this case and came up pretty quickly with a solid belief that there is sufficient probable cause to charge the McMichaels with felony murder and aggravated assault," he said. "I can tell you that if we didn't believe it, we wouldn't have arrested them. If we believe it then we're going to put the bracelets on them, and that's exactly what we did."

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NEWTON, MA  For years now, the work of local artists has been displayed in local neighborhoods as part of the city's FenceArt project. But when Dr. Michael Henry, a Newton resident who serves as the medical director of the Dauten Family Center for Bipolar Treatment Innovation and director of somatic therapy at Massachusetts General Hospital recently visited an alternative care facility in Boston that was opened to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, he figured a little bit of art could go a long way in brightening the day of patients at the facility.

Henry worked in partnership with Newton Cultural Development Director Paula Gannon and Ellen Fisher, the director of the FenceArt project and co-director of Newton Open Studios, to have 20 fence banners that had previously hung around Newton delivered to Boston Hope as a means of providing some art therapy to coronavirus patients.

The banners were collected over a span of just two days and delivered to Dr. Louisa Sylvia, the associate Director of the Dauten Family Center and director of health and wellness for the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital's Home Base program.





As we know, art is a very helpful tool in therapy and well-being, Gannon said. The power of art and power of music in terms of human emotion and healing is so important. So to offer that at this time in a place like a makeshift hospital that has been opened up during this pandemic, theres no words for that.

The banners depict pieces of original art that are then printed onto pieces of canvas which can then be displayed on fences at five locations around Newton. The art project involves rotating the pieces of art  which are displayed in groups of four or five  from location to location from early spring until late fall.

A total of 13 local artists  Christie Allan-Piper, Sherry Autor, John Bryer, Howard Fineman, Lisa Goren, Grey Held, Deborah Hiatt, Dora Hsiung, Robert Hsiung, Amy Kaufman, Mary Beth Maisel and Gene Pogany  all donated to the hospital project.

Story continues

The banners have since been displayed at Boston Hope, where Gannon hopes patients will draw the same inspiration from original art works that local residents in Newton have since the FenceArt project began.

With the artists knowing they could help in some way and offer some sort of help at this time is just so comforting to them, Gannon said. And coming from a community where we can view those (banners) every day and for us to know as a community that this project that we hold near and dear is now in Boston and helping at this time makes us very happy and proud that we can help in a small way  a very small way  but it is something and were proud to be part of it.

This article originally appeared on the Newton Patch
YouTube to Ban Content That Contradicts WHO on COVID-19

The policy represents a betrayal of the pioneering platforms founding principles

YouTubers will be silenced if they dont agree with the United Nations on public health. As The Verdict reported:

YouTube will ban any content containing medical advice that contradicts World Health Organisation (WHO) coronavirus recommendations, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Wojcicki announced the policy on CNN on April 22. WHO is an agency of the U.N., charged with overseeing global public health. The Verdict report continued:

Wojcicki said that the Google-owned video streaming platform would be removing information that is problematic.

She told host Brian Stelter that this would include anything that is medically unsubstantiated.

So people saying, Take vitamin C; take turmeric, well cure you, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy, she said.

Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.

While the decision has been welcomed by many, some have accused the streaming giant of censorship.

To be clear, for U.S. YouTubers, this kind of censorship isnt a violation of their constitutional right of free speech. The First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship, and YouTube is a private platform. Were the U.S. government to force the private owners of YouTube to continue broadcasting certain videos against their will, that would be much more a violation of the First Amendment.

While YouTubes decision is not unconstitutional, it is unwise, exhibiting far too much deference to central authority in general and to WHO especially.

WHOs Track Record on the Issue

The World Health Organization is far from infallible. Its handling of information throughout the coronavirus emergency has been a long string of failures. As policy analyst Ross Marchand recently recounted on FEE, WHO failed to raise the alarm as the coronavirus rapidly spread through China during the crucial early period of the global crisis in January. Then, as Marchand wrote:

The global bureaucracy uncritically reported that Chinese authorities had seen no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on Jan. 14, just one day after acknowledging the first case outside of China (in Thailand).

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his political commitment and political leadership despite these repeated, reprehensible attempts to keep the world in the dark about the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump recently announced that the United States would cease its funding of WHO over its many coronavirus-related failures.

And it isnt just U.S. conservatives who have been critical. As FEEs Jon Miltimore wrote in March:

Our World in Data, an online publication based at the University of Oxford, announced that it had stopped relying on World Health Organization (WHO) data for its models, citing errors and other factors.

This raises an interesting question: Would YouTube censor Oxford if it posted a video on the coronavirus issue with recommendations based on data that contradicts WHOs?

As Miltimore wrote, Recent reports suggest US intelligence agencies relied heavily on WHO in its national assessment of the COVID-19 threat.

This is gravely concerning because bad information leads to bad policies. This is true not only for government policy (like mayors, governors, and heads of state deciding to largely shut down the economy in their jurisdiction), but for the policies of private decision-makers like doctors, business owners, and individuals making decisions about the health and overall lives of themselves and their families.

Indeed, WHOs misinformation early in the crisis squandered the most precious part of the worlds prep time, which likely crippled the publics responses and may have cost many lives.

YouTube risks compounding that tragedy by now insisting that the publics response to the coronavirus emergency conforms even more strictly with WHOs dubious pronouncements. Wojcicki wants to protect WHOs recommendations from contradiction. But WHOs recommendations are necessarily informed by WHOs information, which has proven to be extremely suspect. Sheltering untrustworthy pronouncements risks amplifying their dangerous influence.

Why Censorship Is Counterproductive

So, it is ironic that YouTube justifies this policy in the name of protecting the public from dangerous misinformation.

It is true that many videos contradicting official pronouncements are themselves full of medical quackery and other misleading falsehoods. But, censorship is the worst way to combat them.

For one, censorship can actually boost the perceived credibility of an untruth. Believers interpret it as validation: evidence that they are onto a truth that is feared by the powers-that-be. And they use that interpretation as a powerful selling point in their underground evangelism.

Censorship also insulates falsehoods from debunking, allowing them to circulate largely uncriticized in the dark corners of public discourse.

This makes censorship especially counterproductive because it is open-air debunking that is one of the most effective ways to counter misinformation and bad ideas. As Justice Louis Brandeis expressed in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, the ideal remedy for bad speech, is more speech, not enforced silence.

Again, YouTube has a right to set the terms of service of its own website. But the general principle applies here as well: The truth has a much better fighting chance with a proliferation of competing voices than with inquisitorial efforts to circumscribe discourse within a narrow orthodoxy.

A Systematic Problem

Moreover, WHOs track record of misinformation isnt exceptional among government organizations in its degree of error or in its disastrous impact. Governments and the experts they employ get things wrong and are frequently proven to be fundamentally wrong-headed on big questions.

Bad information leads to bad advice that leads to bad choices. The more we centralize decision-making and the management of actionable information, the wider the scope of the damage caused by any single error. But if we let a thousand errors bloom along with a thousand truths, any single error will be circumscribed in its damage and more likely to be corrected through experience and counter-argument.

Knowledge Problems

Champions of policies like YouTubes like to cast the issue in simplistic terms: as a black-and-white battle between respectable experts and wild-eyed crackpots. But the issue is more complex than that.

It is just as often a matter of overweening technocrats making pronouncements on matters that are way beyond them in complexity, that involve factors that fall way outside their domain of expertise, and that drastically impact the lives of millions or even billions. For example, a few dozen epidemiologists, with limited understanding of economics and a great many other relevant disciplines, holding sway over whole economies.

It is also a matter of dissenting experts being silenced along with the actual crackpots.

And, perhaps most fundamentally, it is a matter of weakening the individuals ability to discern between truth and falsehood, good advice and bad, by denying them the responsibility and practice of doing so in the first placeof turning self-reliant, free men and women into irresponsible wards to be led by the nose like dumb, deferential livestock by their expert caretakers.

That isnt where we are, but that is the direction that the rigid enforcement of centralized orthodoxies tends toward.

A Challenge

Lets choose a different direction. YouTube, do better. Trust your users more. Treat them like human beings with all the capacities for learning, growth, discourse, and cooperation that are the distinctive glories of being human.

After all, that is what made you great in the first place. Your very name is derived from your original faith in the individual. YouTube (a crowd-sourced, individual-driven, pluralistic platform) is what made the boob tube (centralized, institutionalized, and homogenizing broadcast television) largely obsolete. As such, you had a starring role in the internets democratization of information and learning.

Dont betray that legacy. Not now. Not when we need open platforms for the free flow of information and discourse more than ever.

Dan Sanchez is the director of content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in-chief of FEE.org, which first published this article.
The following speech was delivered by Thomas Scripps, a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party (Britain), to the 2020 International May Day Online Rally held by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International on May 2. Scripps has written extensively on the ongoing state persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Comrades and friends, at this May Day rally, we reaffirm the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals solidarity with imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Julian Assange, the heroic journalist, is facing the COVID-19 epidemic from behind the bars of a cell in Londons Belmarsh maximum security prison.

He is an innocent man, held on remand by the British state on behalf of the American government which is seeking his extradition to face life imprisonment or worse.

The speech by Thomas Scripps begins at 1:23:27 in the video.

In their eyes, Assange is guiltyguilty of exposing the brutal war crimes, torture, and diplomatic conspiracies carried out by imperialist governments and covered up by a slavish corporate media.

WikiLeaks lifted the veil on the barbarity of the ruling class in Afghanistan and Iraq. Assange inspired opposition to these crimes among workers and young people throughout the world.

This could not be tolerated by the warmongers in the White House, Downing Street, Canberra, and their allies. The decision was made to use any means necessary to destroy Assange, as a warning to those who might follow his example and to set a precedent for the dictatorial suppression of opposition.

Just as the coronavirus crisis encapsulates the economic, social, political and moral bankruptcy of the capitalist social order, the criminal treatment of Assange represents the assault on democratic rights made necessary by capitalisms descent into barbarism. Wars of colonial conquest and the imposition of savage austerity demand political repression.

For years, Assange was kept arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. His access to proper medical care was denied and his personal privacy invaded as a CIA-organised spying operation recorded confidential conversations with his legal representatives.

After being handed over to a British snatch squad by the Ecuadorian government in April last year, Assange was railroaded into a maximum-security prison, where he has consistently been denied access to his lawyers or to the materials necessary to prepare his defence.

This decade of persecution, in the opinion of medical experts and UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer, has amounted to psychological torture. The appalling damage done to Assanges health has rendered him especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease now sweeping through the UKs prisons. He has a chronic lung condition and his immune system is compromised.

Yet, in a truly Kafkaesque episode, when the British government announced plans to release low risk prisoners near the end of their sentence to ease overcrowding in prisons, the Ministry of Justice told the Australian Associated Press that Assange would not be considered for release because he was not serving a sentence!

On March 25, Assanges legal team made an appeal for his release on bail in light of the very real and potentially fatal threat posed to his life by the developing pandemicwhich experts warned would spread through the prison estate like wildfire. With the vindictiveness of a fascist court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused this request.

A month later, over 300 prisoners are known to be infected with coronavirus, with a massive 1,700 more suspected cases. Five prison staff have died and fifteen prisonersat least one of them at Belmarsh.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Assanges persecutors hope to see the COVID-19 disease do their dirty work for them and kill the most significant journalist of the twenty-first century.

All those political tendencies and individuals who refused to defend Assangeand who joined in the slander campaign against himhave blood on their hands. They have participated in a monstrous crime for which they will never be forgiven.

Assange struck a blow against world imperialism, for which he is widely regarded as a hero. The ICFI views him as a prisoner of the class war being waged by the ruling elite against the billions of people now fearing for their lives and livelihoods. His fate is bound up with the struggle for democratic rights, against war and for socialism. He can only be defended through the political mobilisation of the worlds working class.

Even amid the suffering of the pandemic, Assanges case must not and will not be forgotten. He has fought courageously for the publics right to know the truth about governments and their crimes. Today, the political representatives of the ruling classfrom Trump to Boris Johnsonin their response to the coronavirus, have reminded us that access to the truth is a life and death question. Indeed, it is a revolutionary question!

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties stand in the great internationalist traditions of May Day, which, from its origins in memory of the Haymarket martyrs in Chicago, has rallied workers to defend victims of state frame-ups and persecution everywhere. We stand in the tradition of international solidarity shown by the world working class for the Italian American labour martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti. And we say, Assange must live, and he must be free!

The threat to his life is serious and imminent. But this is not the time for despondency; it is the time for action. The political influence of the ICFI and the World Socialist Web Site is growing. We pledge here today to deepen our decade-long campaign to secure Assanges freedom and safety. As workers all over the world are forced to confront and defeat a murderous ruling class, the fight to free Assange will assume a central place in the struggle against capitalism and for socialism.
Professor Justice Sir Dennis Adjei, a Justice of the Court of Appeal, has suggested that the Judicial Service considers authorising the conduct of some trials through electronic platforms and internet based applications as a stop-gap measure to the fight of Covid-19.



Professor Justice Sir Dennis Adjei made the call when he delivered via Zoom, the maiden lecture of the 14-week long Law and Ethics Web Series, on the theme: "Covid-19, Legal Practice and its implications for Judicial Decision Making".



The lecture is being jointly organised by the African Centre on Law and Ethics (ACLE) and the African Centre of International Criminal Justice (ACICJ), both based at the GIMPA Faculty of Law.



Prof Justice Sir Adjei said "Doctors are working, Engineers are working, Lecturers are teaching online, so Judges too must deliver and the Courts must work.



In the phase of Covid-19, every institution must work but we must observe physical distancing and where you can use internet facility to achieve the purpose of your work, you must use it."



The Justice of the Court of Appeal said there were few laws on the statute books of Ghana that would have to be amended to accommodate his suggestion of online adjudication of court cases.



"We should look at Order 33 of CI 47, which requires the Court to provide for a place of trial. It could be amended to include any other electronic mode that the Court may determine and not a physical place as in the court room," he indicated.



"Order 36 of the High Court civil procedure rules, CI 47, which requires parties to attend trial in person and failure of which attracts sanctions could also be amended to make video link or any other digital means to amount to physical appearance".



The Law and Ethics Web Series is expected to be held every Wednesday at 1400 hours, which began May 6, this year, on the online meeting platform; Zoom.



There are pending presentations on May 13, May 20, May 27, June 3, June 10, June 17, June 24, July 1, July 8, July 15, July 22, July 29, and August 5, which will come on as scheduled.



Various speakers have been lined up for the series.



It is being coordinated by Dr Kwaku Agyeman-Budu, a Lecturer and Head of Law Centre at the GIMPA Faculty of Law.



The maiden session was moderated by Ms Diana Asonaba Dapaah, also a Lecturer at the GIMPA Faculty of Law, under the distinguished patronage of the Rector of GIMPA, Professor Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson.

Source: GNA









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NLC India on Friday said it has roped in former chairman of Central Electricity Authority A S Bakshi to investigate into the explosion incident that happened at its thermal plant in Neyveli on May 7.

Two regular workmen and six contract workers sustained injuries in the boiler explosion at the sixth unit of the Thermal Power Station(TPS)-II. The company has formed a committee to probe into the incident.

"The Management has also sought the services of A S Bakshi, Chairman (Retd), Central Electricity Authority (CEA), to investigate into the incident and give his findings," NLC India said in a statement.

The TPS-II is a 1,470 MW facility and has seven 210 MW units currently generating 450 MW power. The statement said that Unit V will be brought back into service on Friday itself.

"While Unit IV which was under annual scheduled maintenance will be lighted up today and synchronized within two days," it said. Unit VII is expected to be back in service within a week's time.

All the safety measures are being ensured before resuming the power generation from these units.

The injured workers are under special care and treatment at Kaveri Hospital, Tiruchirapalli, the company said. A team of doctors and officials from NLC India are closely coordinating and monitoring their treatment.

NLC India Chairman and Managing Director Rakesh Kumar along with the company's functional Directors R Vikraman and Shaji John interacted with the family members of the injured workmen and with the attending doctors at the hospital, through video conference from Neyveli, the company said.

He reassured them that the best possible treatment would be extended to the injured workmen and that their families would be fully taken care of.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Irrespective of the component supply constrain and nationwide lockdown due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in India, the Indian smartphone market grew 4 per cent year-on-year in Q1, 2020. The modest growth was on the back of good consumer demand before the onset of COVID-19 hit the market. However, in Q2 2020, it is anticipated that the COVID-19 impact will be at its peak for the smartphone industry.

"With no shipments in April, smartphone shipments will potentially decline by as much as 48 per cent QoQ. COVID-19 will lead to fundamental, and possibly, permanent behavioural changes in the way people shop, consume media and how they regard the brands they do business with. In a mobile-first nation, the importance of the mobile cannot be over-emphasised. That's why mobile brands need to go the extra mile to ensure business continuity, as well as safety of all stakeholders - retailers and consumers alike. The new O2O initiatives introduced by the likes of Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo and Oppo to cater to their customers is a welcome move. While these new strategies may seem transient, chances are that they will take permanence as we move ahead," says Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR.

ALSO READ: Xiaomi launches Mi 10, Mi Box, Wireless Earbuds

According to CMR's India Mobile Handset Market Review Report for Q1 2020, Xiaomi continued to dominate the smartphone space with 30 per cent market share, both in Q1 2020 and in Q1 2019. However, given the year-on-year growth, it registered a 3 per cent increase in the number of units. Vivo managed to topple Samsung for the second position by gaining 17 per cent share in Q1 2020, up from 12 per cent of Q1, 2019, registering a massive 45 per cent increase in units. Samsung dropped to third position with the share falling to 16 per cent in Q1, 2020 from 28 per cent last year with a 41 per cent decline in the units. Realme and Oppo, at number four and five, registered positive growth with the former registering 149 per cent unit growth and latter 82 per cent.

At the beginning of the year, COVID-19 was merely a supply-side challenge confined to China. Smartphone brands in India were able to tide over the initial wave of the crisis with enough inventory supplies. However, as COVID-19 cases in India crossed the 500-mark in late March, India went into a complete lockdown. "For smartphone brands, this has put both supply as well as demand in a state of uncertainty. Q2 2020 will be where the industry will face the brunt of the pandemic and test the resilience of smartphone brands," adds Prabhu.

ALSO READ: Coronavirus impact: Xiaomi says anti-China sentiment won't hit India business

"Faced with personal and economic uncertainties, consumer spending will remain muted for the better part of the year. Unless absolutely necessary, such as replacing a mobile phone, consumers may choose to conserve. However, we expect the market to recover lost ground in the run-up to the festive season," adds Anand Priya Singh, Analyst- Industry Intelligence Group, CMR.

Given the current situation, the best-case scenario suggests a decline of 11-12 per cent in overall smartphone shipments for 2020.
President Donald Trump opened up about his mother on Friday, saying she believed he could do no wrong, adding 'which is maybe why I ended up the way I ended up.'

Ahead of Mother's Day on Sunday, Trump paid tribute to his mother, Mary Anne Trump, who was born in Scotland, emigrated to the U.S. at 17, married Fred Trump in 1936, raised five children, and died in 2000.

'I had a great mom. I love my mom and she loved me,' Trump told the hosts of 'Fox & Friends' during a nearly hour-long interview, adding 'which is I must tell you, is probably not easy to do but she was so good to me. I couldn't do any wrong, which is a big problem, which is maybe why I ended up the way I ended up.'

Donald Trump had fond memories of his mom Mary Anne Trump ahead of Mother's Day; he's seen here with his dad Fred and mom Mary Anne in New York in 1992

President Trump with his mother in 1977; Mary Anne Trump died in 2000 before he became president but after he was a celebrity businessman

Mary Anne Trump was slight of build but had an elaborate hairstyle, described as a 'dynamic orange swirl.' President Trump said in the past he got 'my sense of showmanship from my mother.'

Trump's father Fred died a year before his mother. Both missed out on seeing Trump elected to the White House but did live to see him become a celebrity businessman.

The president, in a rare of introspection, talked about the qualities his parents had an instilled in himself.

'My mother was somebody that gave me a lot of confidence and she believed in me,' Trump, 73, noted. 'My father was the same. I mean, he was a strong guy but he was a good man, very good human being, very good person. And he always had confidence in me so. And in our family.'

Trump, who has been divorced twice and is the father of five children via three wives, also said he was at an advantage for having grown up in a two-parent household.

'I had really, really good parents and it's such an advantage in life. You know, you see so much with the single families and the children growing up without a mother or father or whatever it may be. It's a very tough situation for people - a very very tough situation,' he noted.

'If you're lucky - and there's a lot of luck involved - if you're lucky enough to have one great parent or ideally two great parents, what a tremendous advantage it is in life. It's just a tremendous thing,' he said.

In 2016, the U.S. Census found that a majority of America's children - 73.7 million or 69 per cent - live with two parents. The second most common arrangement was children living with a single mother, at 23 per cent.

Trump concluded his reflection on his family with: 'I miss my parents.'

Trump's parents met at a dance in the 1930s. Fred Trump started a construction business that would eventually be worth millions and some of that money went on to fund Donald Trump's start in the New York business world.

Trump was married to Ivana Trump from 1977 to 1992 and had children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka, and Eric (seen here in 2015)

Donald Trump with Ivana, Ivanka and Eric in 1998 at Mar-a-Lago

Trump was married to Marla Maples from 1993 to 1999 and they have daughter Tiffany (seen here in 1994)

Tiffany Trump, seen with mom Marla in 2019, is a student at Georgetown Law School

Trump married Melania Knauss in 2005 and they have 14-year-old Barron

Barron Trump was born in 2006 and is seen with his parents at FAO Schwartz in New York City in 2008

Trump himself has had three wives.

He was married to Ivana Trump from 1977 to 1992 and had children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.

He was married to Marla Maples from 1993 to 1999 and they have daughter Tiffany.

Ivana Trump and Marla Maples got solo custody of their children in their divorces.

Trump married Melania Knauss in 2005 and they have 14-year-old Barron.

Trump praised Melania's parenting skills during his 'Fox & Friends' interview.

'Melania has been a great mother to Barron. I will tell you that Barron is growing up, really beautifully and she's been a great mother to Barron,' he said.

Most of the children are involved in the Trump family business. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric run the Trump Organization while Ivanka Trump serves as an adviser to the president in the White House. Tiffany Trump attends Georgetown Law School and Barron Trump goes to school in the Washington D.C. area.

The president is headed to Camp David this weekend to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff but should return on Sunday in time to celebrate Mother's Day.

Donald Trump's mother WAS an immigrant chasing the American dream: Documents reveal penniless Scot purposely traveled to America for better life rather than overstaying vacation as the tycoon claims

A penniless, low-earning worker seeking America's promised lands is exactly the type of immigrant Donald Trump's campaign is seeking to control.

And yet it has been revealed that Trump's very own mother was one such migrant.

Less than ninety years ago, Mary Anne Trump nee Macleod arrived in New York from the desolate Scottish Isle of Lewis, with just $50 to her name, to pursue work as a 'domestic'.

Immigration documents seen by The National reveal that Mary Anne's true story was one of deliberate migration, and was not simply in America 'on holiday' as Trump purposes

It is not clear how the pair met, but Fred Trump, seven years her senior, was already an established builder and developer at that time and may have been introduced to Macleod by her sister, Catherine. Pictured: Mary Anne, Donald and Fred Trump in 1994

Contrary to Trump's well-told line, that his mother had traveled to America 'on holiday' and ended up never leaving, immigration documents seen by The National reveal that her true story was one of deliberate migration.

An uncomfortable truth perhaps, for the Republican's presumptive nominee whose campaign website declares: 'The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans  including immigrants themselves and their children  to earn a middle-class wage.'

Now, the mystery that has previously clouded the story of Trump's mother's migration to America is made clear.

But Macleod was not only leaving abject poverty in Scotland in search of a better life, she was also fleeing from a family scandal: The sister who first hosted her in New York, Mrs Catherine Reid, had given birth out of wedlock in her home country in 1920, according to the paper.

A devastating situation that forced Reid and three other sisters out of their hometown of Tong to America.

The youngest of ten children, Macleod was born to a fisherman and crofter father, Malcom Macleod, and mother Mary Macleod, nee Smith.

The youngest of ten children, Macleod was born to a fisherman and crofter father, Malcom Macleod, and mother Mary Macleod, nee Smith. Pictured: The census return from the Trump household in 1940

In January 1936, Mary Anne wed Fred at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York but her naturalization didn't come until some 12 years after she immigrated, and six years after she married. Pictured: Her certificate

Macleod's second language was English, which she learned at Tong school. Her immigration form indicates that she likely left there aged 14.

With three of her sisters having gone before her, and all married or working by the time Macleod was 17, the prospect of America must have seemed a glittering one.

Her future husband, Fred Trump, was himself the son of German immigrants, who had migrated when rules were less strict.

But she made the journey in 1930, six years after Congress passed laws restricting immigration.

Her twin-propeller liner set sail from Glasgow on May of that year and she arrived, nine days later, the day after she turned 18.

The passenger list on this journey makes her intentions clear. In the section asking 'whether alien intends to return to country whence he (sic) came', her answer is 'no'.

On those same documents she gives her occupation as 'domestic' - either servant or maid - a position she held for at least four years upon her arrival into America, according to the paper.

Macleod migrated legally and permanently and in the document declared she wished to be a citizen of America and would be staying permanently in the USA.

And as a May 1930 edition of her local paper The Stornoway Gazette writes: 'There is quite an exodus of young people, male and female, from this parish for Canada and the United States...

'They leave home with a determination to succeed and because of their courage, endurance and reliability they are generally successful.'

And successful she certainly was.

Macleod (right and center left) was not only leaving abject poverty in Scotland in search of a better life, she was also fleeing from a family scandal: He sister Catherine had fallen pregnant out of wedlock. Pictured left with her husband Fred and son Donald

Fred and Mary Anne Trump had five children, (pictured) though their second Fred Jr died aged 42, following a life blighted by alcoholism

It is not clear how the pair met, but Fred Trump, seven years her senior, was already an established builder and developer at that time and may have been introduced to Macleod by her sister, Catherine.

By April 1935, Macleod was a resident at the Trump family home on 175/24 Devonshire Road in Jamaica, the middle-class area of Long Island, Queens, according to the 1940 census.

In January 1936, they wed at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, officiated by the Rev Dr George Buttrick, after which a wedding reception was held for 25 guests at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.

Curiously, her naturalization didn't come until some 12 years after she immigrated, and six years after she married.

Though strange, it is not unusual for there to be a delay. Indeed Donald Trump's first wife Ivana did not become naturalized until 11 years after they wed.

Macleod's husband was on the make, and she was described as 'charming, vivacious and shrewd' - a perfect companion to Fred Trump, who at that time was building, selling or renting tens of thousands of houses across New York.

Trump's beloved mother (pictured right) died aged 88 at the Long Island Jewish Medical Centre in New Hyde Park in 2000, just over a year after her husband Fred died, aged 93. Left, Donald Trump with then wife Ivana Trump in 1987

A family affair: Trump's family - including his mother and father center - gather for his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993

Her role was one of homemaker, hostess and partner - and she became the definition of upwardly mobile. Once a domestic help herself, she was to oversaw a large family household with her very own maid - an Irish woman, named Jane Cassidy, herself a naturalized citizen.

She can now add mother of a potential future president of the United States to that list.

Fred and Mary Anne Trump had five children, though their second Fred Jr died aged 42, following a life blighted by alcoholism.

Donald Trump was a middle child. One sister Maryanne Barry, 79, is a much-respected federal judge, while his other sister, Elizabeth, worked in banking.

His younger brother, Robert, was born two years after Trump and was later president of their father's firm.

Trump's beloved mother died aged 88 at the Long Island Jewish Medical Centre in New Hyde Park in 2000, just over a year after her husband Fred died, aged 93.

Her death notice in the Stornoway Gazette reads: 'Peacefully in New York on 7th August, Mary Ann Trump, aged 88 years. Daughter of the late Malcolm and Mary Macleod, 5 Tong. Much missed.'
Australian governments are aggressively promoting COVIDSafe, a mobile phone application that will supposedly assist contact tracers in monitoring and containing the spread of the coronavirus, despite a raft of unanswered questions about its effectiveness and the privacy of those who download it.

The app is a central component of the back to work campaign being conducted by federal, state and territory leaders on behalf of the corporate and financial elite. Over the past weeks, they have claimed that the country has succeeded in flattening the curve of infections and that this justifies the rapid elimination of social distancing and lockdown measures.

At a meeting of the national cabinet today, governments are mapping a road out of the crisis. It will involve the easing of restrictions over the coming weeks, aimed above all at forcing workers back onto the job to ensure the resumed flow of corporate profits.

This campaign is unfolding amid ongoing community transmission of COVID-19 and indications that infections could rapidly spiral out of control. A cluster at a meatworks facility in Melbourne, for instance, has been linked to 71 cases, demonstrating the perils of compelling employees to work in factories and businesses where social distancing is impossible.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already acknowledged that the removal of lockdowns will result in a spike in infections. Governments have claimed, however, that they will be able to manage the spread of the coronavirus, with the assistance of COVIDSafe along with expanded testing. To underline the importance of the app, Morrison recently declared that his vision was for a COVIDSafe economy.

The application is premised on ongoing community transmission of the virus. It supposedly works by logging the details of all individuals who are in close proximity to someone who has downloaded the app for more than 15 minutes. Once testing reveals an infection, contact tracers will then scour the data captured by the application and seek to identify those who have also contracted the virus.

In other words, the application will only be of use after community transmission of the virus between people who do not live together.

Commentators have noted, however, that even if it works as it has been outlined, the app will not be able to identify infections of the highly contagious virus caused by fleeting contacts in public areas. Virologists, moreover, have documented the fact that COVID-19 can be spread through inanimate objects and have stated that it remains in the air longer than first thought.

An article by technology researchers at the prestigious Brookings Institution in the US last month was bluntly headlined: Contact-tracing apps are not a solution to the COVID-19 crisis. The researchers warned that such applications, which are being rolled-out in a number of countries, would likely be ineffective at best and disastrous at worst.

The researchers noted the likelihood of both false negatives, stemming from contacts with infected individuals that are not logged by the program, and false positives. As an example of the latter, they commented that automated technologies are incapable of making contextual assessments. A Bluetooth signal may be established between two phones that are separated by a porous wall, for instance, which would log a contact despite the impossibility of transmission.

The researchers wrote: The lure of automating the painstaking process of contact tracing is apparent. But to date, no one has demonstrated that its possible to do so reliably despite numerous concurrent attempts.

Hinting at the political calculations underlying the turn by governments to such programs, they perceptively stated: We worry that contact tracing apps will serve as vehicles for abuse and disinformation, while providing a false sense of security to justify reopening local and national economies well before it is safe to do so.

The functioning of the COVIDSafe app is shrouded in secrecy. Australian government ministers have given wildly conflicting estimates of the take-up rate required for it to be effective.

Some have provided a figure of 20 percent, while others have cited 40 percent. It has not been clear whether the officials have been referring to a proportion of the total population, the adult population or registered smartphone users. Other government representatives have called for people to upload COVIDSafe, apparently ignorant that mobile phone applications are, in fact, downloaded.

Despite it being hurriedly launched almost a fortnight ago, state health officials still do not have access to the data collected. Already, federal authorities have been compelled to admit that the app does not work effectively on iPhones, which account for an estimated 45 percent of the Australian smartphone market. The Bluetooth handshake that will result in a contact being logged will only work reliably on iPhones if users have the app open and in the foreground, something they are unlikely to do.

While it is entirely unclear that the app will do anything to assist contact tracing, there are legitimate grounds for suspecting that it will collect vast amounts of data on the population, amid a broader assault on privacy and democratic rights.

The federal government claimed when it launched the app that it would publicly-reveal those aspects of its source code that did not jeopardise the security of the program. It has failed to do so, meaning that the population is being encouraged to download an app without any opportunity of scrutinising how it functions.

The government has also claimed that the data will be stored encrypted and will only be accessible to state health officials.

Technology researchers have questioned the claims that the app will protect users privacy. Jim Mussared and other developers who have sought to reverse-engineer its source code have warned that the app does not work as has been claimed.

Mussared and the groups findings, as summarised by Gizmondo, included: Two flaws that lead to potential long-term (many day) tracking of devices; An additional flaw, which leads to limited long-term tracking as well as sharing information not stipulated in the apps privacy policy; Another flaw provides long-term tracking as well as exposure of the users name, in some cases; One issue allows for permanent tracking of an iPhone even when the app is uninstalled.

An article by two University of New South Wales academics in the Conversation on Wednesday documented the ways in which draft legislation that will govern the app contradicts the claims of the authorities.

Professor Graham Greenleaf and senior lecturer Katharine Kemp noted that ministers have claimed that COVIDSafe will only store the details of individuals who come within 1.5 metres of a user and are in proximity for more than 15 minutes. The legislation, however, indicates that the app collects andwith consent of a user who tests positiveuploads to the central data store, data about all other users who came within Bluetooth signal range even for a minute within the preceding 21 days.

The privacy concerns have been compounded by the governments decision to provide the contract for storage and management of the data to the giant US technology corporation Amazon. This week it was revealed that the company is being paid $700,000 for its services.

As some commentators have warned, under American legislation, the US government and its agencies can subpoena data from any US-registered company, regardless of where the information originates. The federal government response to the warnings about Amazon, which has close ties to the US intelligence agencies, has been a combination of intimidation and obfuscation.

On Monday, the government filed a formal complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over a story by Dylan Welch noting that the COVIDSafe data could be accessible to US law enforcement. The government branded the article as unnecessarily alarmist.

Its representatives, however, have taken contradictory positions on the key issue in Welchs story at Senate committee hearings into the app this week. Attorney-Generals Department deputy secretary Sarah Chidgey declared it was inconceivable that the data would be provided to a US government agency, but would not give a 100 percent guarantee that this would not take place.

In a cynical deflection, she stated: I can give a guarantee that it is a criminal offence under Australian law for the data to be provided to a third party. The US intelligence agencies, however, explicitly do not operate under the domestic laws of foreign countries.

Attempting to contain growing popular concern over the privacy provisions of the app, Labor Party representatives have called upon the government to be more transparent and to ensure that safeguards are built into it. Labor, though, has played a central role in the passage of many pieces of legislation directed against encryption, targeting whistleblowers and journalists and increasing the powers of the police and the intelligence agencies.

At the state and federal level, moreover, Labor, no less than the Liberal-National Party, is spearheading the dangerous back to work campaign that the app serves to legitimise.

Representatives of the Victorian state Labor government have told the media that the Melbourne meatworks cluster may not have spread as rapidly, if COVIDSafe had been operational and all workers had it on their phones. In reality, it was the government that covered up the infections for almost three weeks in a bid to ensure that businesses remained open.

The comments, however, are a warning that workers who do not download the app will be scapegoated for the spike in infections that will result from the pro-business policies of governments.
Sweeping changes to this years Leaving Cert will allow students the option of being assessed through a system of predictive grades instead of exams.

Q. Is the Leaving Cert cancelled or postponed?

A. Effectively its cancelled, and exams scheduled to start on July 29 are not happening. However, there will be a sitting at some point  November is the earliest date being mentioned  to accommodate students who really want to sit the written papers, including those who may not be happy with the predictive grades they are awarded.

Q. But a November Leaving Cert wont allow me to use results from the exam for college entry next autumn?

A. Thats right. If you decide to sit the exam, the results would come into play for college entry in 2021-22. However, if a student gets an improved CAO offer on foot of better grades in the exam, they will get a deferred college offer based on points for 2020-21 and will have it in the bag for 2021-22.

Q. Do I have to choose between calculated grades or the exam?

A. You can do both. Even if you are happy with the calculated grades in most subjects, but feel you could do better sitting the exam in one or more subjects, you can do that and combine the two sets of grades for CAO points purposes.

Q. I reckon Ill be happy with calculated grades. Am I finished with school?

A. In a word, yes. The work teachers and principals have to do now will be based on past performance, such as summer and Christmas exams and coursework and will also take account of how you rank against your peers.

Unlike at Junior Cert, where student assessment may continue up to the end of May, there will be no further assessment of Leaving Cert students. However, it might be a bit rash to bin the books just yet, as you may want to keep open the option of sitting the exam.

Q. Is there higher and ordinary levels in calculated grades?

A. Yes, and students are advised to stick with whatever they entered to do in the traditional exams.

Q. Will teachers be using my Junior Cycle results when they calculate my grades?

A. No. Junior Cycle results will not form part of how schools award marks to individual students. However, when all the schools  there are about 730  submit data, the Department of Education will be able to take account of the schools Junior Cycle results as a way of checking there is no wild variation.

Q. How can I be certain the process will be fair? I get on better with some teaches and I think it shows in my grades. I also get a feeling I have been marked down in English, to get me to work harder.

A. Teachers are professionals and their code of practice is underpinned by the values of integrity, trust, care and respect. They can be expected to exercise professional judgements in coming up with a percentage mark for each student. What they are being asked to do is estimate that they think you would get if you had sat the exam in the normal way in June.

So even if they used certain tactics to motivate you, they will balance everything out. The Department of Education is issuing guidance to teachers about how to approach the process.

Q. What is the principals role?

A. The principal has to sign off on the grades and will review the work done by teachers to ensure fair treatment of students and that a uniformity of standards is applied. It will include ensuring different teachers of the same subject are applying similar standards.

Q. What about the 100pc we were all given for the oral and practical components, when they were cancelled. Does that stand?

A. No, Thats gone for calculated grades, although teachers can make their own assessments for these components. The matter is under review in relation to the rescheduled exams.

Q. Can I appeal my calculated grades?

A. Yes and no. There is an appeals process but grounds will limited to ensuring schools entered correct data and it was correctly processed by the Department of Education. A student will not be able to challenge the grade awarded. A student still unhappy will have the chance to sit the rescheduled exams, whenever that is possible, taking account of public health advice.

Q. I studied music outside school. Can that be included in my calculated grades?

A. Calculated grades can be awarded for an extra exam subject a student has taken up outside school if there is sufficient evidence to make an judgment. Unfortunately, there are cases where students take on an extra subject and a professional teacher is not involved. This may be the case for some of the non-curricular languages.

Q. Is there a deadline for the submission of results by schools to the Department of Education?

A. Ideally, by the end of May and the department hopes to release grades as close as possible to the normal Leaving Cert results date, although it may be September.

Q. How will the Department of Education come up with the final grades for 61,000 students?

A. They call the process standardisation and it will involve algorithms to crunch the percentage marks and class ranking of individual students submitted by schools along with data held by the State Examinations Commission, such as Junior Cycle results. It will be sophisticated enough to take account of variations between schools.

A technical working group on this includes personnel from the Educational Research Centre and the State Examinations Commission, along with an expert on statistics from Canada.
Cyberattacks on Democratic Taiwan Set to Rise Ahead of President's Inauguration

2020-05-07 -- Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen approaches her second inauguration later this month amid malware attacks on two of the island's major petrochemical companies that are believed to have come from China.

Security officials on the democratic island, which China has threatened to annex by force, say recent malware attacks on state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp and privately owned Formosa Petrochemical Corp could have been timed as Tsai approaches the end of her first term as president, the island's Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

An initial investigation by Taiwan's National Security Bureau traced the attacks to IP addresses in China and Russia, the agency reported.

CPC was forced to temporarily halt its electronic payments system on Monday, disrupting a payment card system that motorists use to pay for fuel.

At Formosa Petrochemical, an employee's computer was infected with a virus, but no data was lost and company operations were not affected, the report said, adding that investigators from the ministry of justice are continuing to investigate the two attacks.

The CNA cited a security service source as saying that the attack could be a warm-up ahead of Tsai's second inauguration on May 20, and said more attacks could be in the offing.

Tsai was re-elected by a landslide last November amid growing threats from Beijing over possible military action to annex the island.

Tsai defeated China's preferred candidate in the poll, garnering more than 57 percent of the total vote after she vowed to defend the island's way of life against threats, infiltration, and saber rattling by China to win a second term in office.

She is now riding high in public opinion polls--with nearly 75 percent support--after her administration's deft handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

A recent telephone survey by the New Taiwan National Policy Think Tank from from April 25-28, showed that some 94.3 percent of respondents supported the Taiwan government's closure of incoming flights from the central city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged.

Widespread public support

Chen Li-Fu, assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Informatics at Taiwan's Aletheia University, said the government's testing and isolation of inbound passengers, its stepping up of mask manufacturing to meet public demand, and its investment in a coronavirus vaccine had won it widespread support at home.

"It's not only the pandemic [that contributed], but it is a crucial factor," Chen said. "If they get the pandemic right, people will pay much less attention to any other flaws."

A ministry of defense official told Wang Ting-yu, a lawmaker for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in the Legislative Yuan on Wednesday that the army had all of the information regarding the recent cyberattacks.

"The army doesn't analyze malware, and the usual method of attack is via mobile devices and social engineering," defense ministry undersecretary Tsao Jin-ping told Wang.

"The army will be strengthening our defenses in those two areas."

CPC confirmed the attack in a statement on its website.

"Security personnel immediately interrupted the network and conducted a blanket check after discovering the [hacker attack]," the statement said. "[We are] checking our records to confirm the source of the attack."

"CPC has recorded this incident as a benchmark for future security improvements, and ... will ntroduce a more stringent detection system to protect the rights and interests of our customers," it said.

'Stress-testing'

Wang Chih-sheng, secretary general of the China Asia-Pacific Elite Exchange Association, said he believes that China is "stress-testing" Taiwan ahead of the inauguration ceremony.

"Taiwan is and will continue to be the top target for the Chinese Communist Party's cyber-army, both in the medium and long term," Wang told RFA. "It's particularly easy for them to launch attacks on cybersecurity and via fake news."

Military expert Chyi Le-yee said there are still concerns that some attacks may have already deployed without anyone noticing.

"The worst thing is to be hacked without knowing it," Chyi told RFA. "The number of attacks on Taiwan has increased a lot recently, but most of them have been detected. Our focus is now on the undetected malware."

He said Chinese military hackers tend to focus on technology, aerospace, satellite, telecoms, and scientific research as targets, and often spend a long time gaining a foothold in a system before using access.

Reported by Chung Kuang-cheng for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Hwang Chun-mei for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Copyright  1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content May not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has admitted that he has not given much thought as to a date for the next General Elections.





General Elections were last held in December 2015 and it was highly anticipated that the elections would be contested before year end.





However, the COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted normal state and government operations, leaving citizens to speculate with respect to a date for the Elections.





Gonsalves said during a press briefing on April 30 that the government had to respect the constitution, but he had not given any real thought to an altered target (date) for elections.





He said that the only election-related matter that he has drawn to the attention of Governor General Dame Susan Dougan and Leader of the Opposition Dr Godwin Friday, was that of the appointment of the Elections and Boundaries Commission (ECB).





"Because under the constitution, if there is a new census, we have to have the Commission meet, Gonsalves explained.





The last census (report) was made available about eight years ago, the prime minister continued.





Under the constitution, the Governor General is to appoint the Chairperson of the ECB, following which the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition will advise on one member each.





"Electorally that is the only matter that I am addressing constitutionally. As to when elections will be held? Your guess is as good as mine, the Prime Minister said.




Andersen Global announces its entry into Ukraine via a Collaboration Agreement with a leading local firm Sayenko Kharenko, further expanding its global platform in Eastern Europe.

Founded in 2004, Sayenko Kharenko is one of the largest law firms in Ukraine with 17 Partners and more than 120 total professionals. The firm specializes in complex cross-border and local matters and provides services for a variety of industries including healthcare, pharmaceutical, agriculture, energy, retail and natural resources.

Our tax practice has been dynamically growing lately and collaborating with Andersen Global allows us to better address the evolving tax and business needs of our clients, as well as successfully handle any of their global needs, said Office Managing Director Nazar Chernyavsky. Arthur Andersen alumna and Partner of our tax practice Svitlana Musienko will assist us as we collaborate with Andersen Global. We appreciate the importance and impact of working with like-minded individuals around the globe with whom we share similar values.

The addition of Sayenko Kharenko brings new depth to our presence in Eastern Europe while allowing us to deliver additional services in the region, said Mark Vorsatz, Andersen Global Chairman and Andersen CEO. There is no question in our mind  they are the best practice in Ukraine. The firms demonstrated passion for stewardship and proven ability to provide clients with best-in-class solutions will allow them to integrate into our organization seamlessly.

Andersen Global is an international association of legally separate, independent member firms comprised of tax and legal professionals around the world. Established in 2013 by U.S. member firm Andersen Tax LLC, Andersen Global now has more than 5,000 professionals worldwide and a presence in over 168 locations through its member firms and collaborating firms.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507005002/en/
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP)  Georgia authorities arrested a white father and son Thursday and charged them with murder in the February shooting death of a black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood.

The charges came more than two months after Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on a residential street just outside the port city of Brunswick. National outrage over the case swelled this week after cellphone video that appeared to show the shooting.

Those close to Arbery celebrated the news but also expressed frustration at the long wait.

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This should have occurred the day it happened, said Akeem Baker, one of Arberys close friends in Brunswick. Theres no way without the video this would have occurred. Im just glad the lights shining very bright on this situation.

Gregory McMichael, 64, previously told police that he and his son chased after Arbery because they suspected him of being a burglar. Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she thinks her son, a former football player, was just jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood before he was killed on a Sunday afternoon.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the slain mans father, Marcus Arbery, said it was outrageous that it took so long for arrests to be made.

This is the first step to justice, Crump said in a statement. This murderous father and son duo took the law into their own hands. Its a travesty of justice that they enjoyed their freedom for 74 days after taking the life of a young black man who was simply jogging.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrests the day after it began its own investigation at the request of an outside prosecutor. The agency said in a news release that Gregory McMichael and his 34-year-old son, Travis McMichael, had both been jailed on charges of murder and aggravated assault.

The GBI news release said the McMichaels confronted Arbery with two firearms. During the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery. No other details were immediately released.

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It was not immediately known whether either of the McMichaels had an attorney who could comment on the charges.

Gregory McMichael served as an investigator for Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson. He retired last year. The connection caused Johnson to recuse herself from the case.

At a news conference before the arrests were announced Thursday, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters he was confident state investigators would find the truth.

Earlier this week, I watched the video depicting Mr. Arberys last moments alive, Kemp told a news conference in Atlanta. I can tell you its absolutely horrific, and Georgians deserve answers.

Gregory McMichael told police he suspected the runner was the same man filmed by a security camera committing a break-in. He and his grown son, Travis McMichael, grabbed guns and began a pursuit in the truck.

The video shows a black man running at a jogging pace on the left side of a road. A truck is parked in the road ahead of him. One of the white men is inside the pickups bed. The other is standing beside the open drivers side door.

The runner crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck. A gunshot sounds, and the video shows the runner grappling with a man in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle. A second shot can be heard, and the runner can be seen punching the man. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. The runner staggers a few feet and falls face down.

Brunswick defense attorney Alan Tucker identified himself Thursday as the person who shared the video with the radio station. In a statement, Tucker said he wasnt representing anyone involved in the case. He said he released the video because my community was being ripped apart by erroneous accusations and assumptions.

Tucker did not say how he obtained the video. He did not immediately respond to a phone message or an email.

The outcry over the killing reached the White House, where President Donald Trump offered condolences Thursday to Arberys family.

Its a very sad thing, Trump said in the Oval Office, but I will be given a full report this evening.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has called Arberys death a murder. During an online roundtable Thursday, Biden compared the video to seeing Arbery lynched before our very eyes.

The outside prosecutor overseeing the case, Tom Durden, had said Monday that he wanted a grand jury to decide whether charges are warranted. Georgia courts are still largely closed because of the coronavirus.
The Delhi government has released Rs 18.75 crore as grant-in-aid for payment of salaries to employees of 12 Delhi University (DU) colleges funded by it.

The grant-in-aid was released on Thursday and the government said it was only for payment of salaries.

The Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) said the grant released was "inadequate".

"DUTA will continue to pursue the matter. Meanwhile, grants should be put to use as quickly as the colleges receive them and salaries should be disbursed," it said.

There has been a standoff between the Delhi government and the DU adminstration over the issue of formation of governing bodies in colleges partially or fully funded by the former. The government had said that it would not release funds to colleges without governing bodies.

Last month, the DUTA had called for a day-long hunger strike to protest against the non-payment of salaries to employees of colleges funded by the Delhi government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China said Friday it supports a World Health Organization-led review into the global response to the coronavirus outbreak, but only "after the pandemic is over". The comments from foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying came as China faces increasing global pressure to allow an international investigation into the origins of the pandemic. The review should be conducted in an "open, transparent and inclusive manner" under the leadership of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Hua said at a press briefing. She added that it should be at an "appropriate time after the pandemic is over". But Hua did not say the review should probe the origins of the virus, despite growing calls led by the US and Australia for an international inquiry into the issue, which has become a key flashpoint in deteriorating tensions between Washington and Beijing. Instead, the review should "summarise the experience and deficiencies of the international response to the pandemic, strengthen the WHO's work, enhance the construction of countries? core public health capabilities, and provide suggestions to improve global preparedness against major infectious diseases," said Hua. She said China would cooperate with WHO efforts to trace the origin, but rejected US calls for an investigation, accusing it of "politicising the issue". Hua stressed that any inquiry should be based on the International Health Regulations, and be authorised by the World Health Assembly or Executive Committee -- the WHO's dual governing bodies. WHO epidemiologist Dr Maria van Kerkhove said Wednesday the agency is in talks with China to send a mission to investigate the animal source of the virus. Both US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have heavily criticised China's alleged lack of transparency, and have repeatedly pushed the theory that the virus emerged from a Wuhan maximum-security virology lab. The claim has become a key point of contention between China and the US, with Beijing accusing US Republican politicians of shifting the blame as an electioneering strategy. Most scientists believe the virus originated in animals before it was passed on to humans. Numerous countries including France, Germany and Britain have also urged greater transparency from China over its handling of the virus. China has strenuously denied accusations it concealed information relating to the initial outbreak, insisting it has always shared information with the WHO and other countries in a timely manner. China did not say the WHO probe should look at the origins of the pandemic, only the global response to it
Pets owners across the UK are abandoning their animals during lockdown after false claims suggested they could contract the virus from their beloved creatures.

As the nation continues to remain in lockdown, the RSPCA has received more than 1,600 reports of abandoned animals in the UK by owners who fear they could catch the virus themselves or who can no longer afford to look after their animals.

The shocking revelation comes just months after animal groups expressed their concerns that the Covid-19 crisis would leave animals at risk.

The RSPCA will now launch a campaign to help break the false claims and help owners with emergency pet-care plans should they be admitted to hospital.

Pets are being abandoned during the coronavirus lockdown after false claims began to emerge that the animals could pass the virus onto humans. Pictured: RSPCA worker examines an abandoned fox

Pictured: An RSPCA officer tries to capture an Egyptian Goose gosling that had been reported to have a broken wing in Crystal Palace Park

Owners will also be asked to display a message on their window alerting others that there is an animal inside their home should they be taken ill.

Among the cases the charity has so far seen are that of an underweight two-year-old poodle which was thrown over a 7ft fence in Ilford, East London, and a rabbit which was found dumped in a cardboard box in Liverpool.

The rabbit, who was unable to move his back legs and and had flystrike, a painful condition caused by flies laying eggs on an animal, had to be put to sleep.

The charity also reported two female cats had been discovered by a member of public next to a canal in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

In March Chris Laurence, chair of the Canine and Feline Sector Group, assured the public that there was no evidence that pets could contract coronavirus urged the public not to abandon their animals.

He said: 'We are concerned that rapidly changing and conflicting information was leaving pet owners confused and worried.

Pictured: An RSPCA officer collects a Terrier in London after its owner passed away

The RSPCA will launch a campaign to help break the false claims surrounding coronavirus and pets. Pictured: An RSPCA animal collection officer collects a Terrier

'Those of us who work with animals are concerned that this information could leave animals at risk as pets could end up abandoned by anxious families unsure if they pose a risk or how they can care for them in isolation.

'We have come together to reassure people that there is no evidence that pets can get sick from coronavirus so not to panic or worry. We have also written some clear and simple tips about how to continue to care for them through this crisis.

'Like many others, the animal welfare sector is facing huge strain, with reduced staffing, loss of volunteers and pressure on resources.

'We need to reassure owners with good advice so they can continue to look after their pets and this will help prevent rescue centres being overwhelmed at this challenging time.'

RSPCA inspector Chris McGread said: 'Although much of the country is on lockdown, sadly there are still thousands of animals who need our help, including abandoned pets.

An RSPCA officer arrives at South Godstone RSPCA Centre with a cat that had been rescuedin London

'Many people are finding their pets are a real source of comfort in these anxious times and thankfully cases of abandonment are slightly lower than usual but it's heartbreaking that some beautiful pets like Red are being dumped during this crisis.

'In most cases we don't know why pets are abandoned but it's really important to remind people that there is no evidence to suggest that Covid-19 can be passed from pets to people.

'There is lots of help and support out there for anyone else struggling to get animal food, with health or behavioural issues, exercising their pets or managing to keep children safe around pets. Please don't be afraid to ask for help.'
The U.S. Air Force is no longer working to hit former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's 80% mission-capable rate goal for its major operational aircraft fleet, according to the general nominated to be the next Air Force chief of staff.

In written responses provided to the Senate Armed Services committee, Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown said the goal, which assesses whether aircraft are able to perform their core functions, is no longer a benchmark for all units. The Air Force will allow commanders to set their own goals, he said.

"The Office of the Secretary of Defense determined the FY19 80-percent Mission Capable (MC) Rate initiative is not an FY20 requirement," Brown said, according to the published remarks.

"As a result, the Air Force returned to allowing Lead Commands to determine the required MC rates to meet readiness objectives. We continue to balance near term readiness recovery with investment long-term combat capability."

Related: Under the Wire, Navy Says it Has Met Mattis' Fighter Jet Readiness Deadline

In 2018, then-SecDef Mattis said the services must achieve a minimum level of 80% readiness for the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and F/A-18 Hornet fleets by the end of fiscal 2019. Only days before the Sept. 30 deadline, Air Force officials acknowledged that the service wouldn't meet the target.

Lt. Gen. Mark Kelly, deputy chief of staff for operations, told audiences at the 2019 Defense News Conference that only one aircraft platform would make the goal.

"The F-16 MC rate in our active-duty units is above 80%," Kelly said during a panel on Air Force prioritization.

But according to recently published statistics in Defense News, even the F-16 fell short.

In fiscal 2019, the F-16s MC rate was 73%, an increase from 70% from the year prior, Defense News said. By comparison, the F-22 decreased to 51% from 52%; the F-35A increased from 50% to 62%.

Letting go of the Defense Department's 80% standard may actually allow for units to apply their time and effort toward readiness in a more resourceful way, according to a longtime defense analyst in Washington, D.C.

"By letting the commands determine the desired mission-capable rate instead of DoD, it lets the commands move resources around to the missions they think are most likely to be needed, rather than trying to bring particular units up to 80% even if that's not the unit you're likely to need tomorrow," the analyst told Military.com.

The Army, for example, reports its unit's readiness to execute a variety of tasks using "mission-essential task lists" as opposed to whether a particular percentage of their tanks are capable of being driven, the analyst said.

Fighter units especially have a wide variety of missions, and their planes may be ready to execute some but not others.

"It seems that the Air Force is giving commanders the ability to say whether the whole unit can still accomplish the mission, even if particular pieces of equipment -- in this case fighters -- are below a certain mission-capable rate," the analyst said. "Measuring readiness is much more an art form than a science. Setting an arbitrary number, as Secretary Mattis did, gives a goal to shoot at. The question is what gets sacrificed in trying to meet that goal."

Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said dropping the goal may allow the service to fall farther behind on readiness.

"Letting commanders set their own readiness standards is like letting students grade their own papers. It will lead to inconsistency across the service and readiness metrics that are less credible to policymakers," Harrison said.

"The Air Force needs credible, objective, and quantifiable readiness metrics that measure the performance of units in realistic training rather than the amount of training and resources consumed or the subjective opinions of commanders who are themselves being graded."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214.

Read More: At State-Run Veterans Homes, A Tragedy Is Unfolding
'You and I are soldiers in coronavirus fight': Mahararashtra CM tells citizens

Maharashtra govt may deploy central forces to allow police force to rest: CM

No success yet in breaking coronavirus `chain': Uddhav Thackeray

PM Modi conveyed his condolences for loss of lives in Italy due to Covid-19

Mumbai's tally of Covid-19 patients grows to 11,967 with 748 new cases

15 more SRPF jawans of SPRF Group7 tested positive for Covid-19 in Pune's Daund

Karnataka allows clubs, bars, restaurants to sell liquor in takeaway form till May 17

Delhi's Covid-19 tally goes up to 6,318

'We may be talking about 95,000 deaths or more from Covid-19': Trump

HT File Photo

Coronavirus disease has not only become a health emergency that has left people locked inside but has also blocked economic growth for almost all countries of the planet. With close to 40 lakh infected around the world, Covid-19 infections continue to grow across nations as they look to gradually reopen.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

Russia overtook France and Germany to be the fifth worst-affected country. Brazil President Bolsonaros spokesman tests positive as the nation becomes a hotspot. In India, Maharashtra and Delhi record a huge spike as cases recorded reach 56,342 with 1,886 deaths nationwide.
Originally live streamed on May 7th, 2020 at 10am PST.

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Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Inc. RARE reported loss per share of $2.04 for the first quarter of 2020, which was wider than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of $1.60 as well as the year-ago loss of $1.82 per share.

For the first quarter, Ultragenyx reported $36.3 million in total revenues, almost double from $18.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenues, however, missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $38 million.

Shares of Ultragenyx have gained 55.1% this year so far compared with the industry's increase of 3.6%.

Ultragenyx markets two drugs, Crysvita and Mepsevii. While Crysvita is approved for the treatment of X-linked hypophosphatemia, an inherited disorder due to the excessive loss of phosphate, Mepsevii is approved to treat Mucopolysaccharidosis VII (MPS VII), also known as Sly syndrome.

Crysvita total revenues were $31.4 million, which included $27.2 million of collaboration revenues in the North American profit share territory ((U.S. and Canada), $1.6 million net product sales for the drug in other regions (Latin America, Turkey) and $2.6 million in non-cash royalty revenues related to the sales of Crysvita in the European territory. Ultragenyx sold its rights to Crysvita in the European territory to Royalty Pharma in December 2019. In Ultragenyx territories (North America, Latin America and Turkey), Crysvita revenues were $28.8 million.

The company saw continued strong demand for Crysvita in North America with more than 80% of patients receiving Crysvita through at-home nurse administration, which reduced the impact of COVID-19 related disruption. However, the company expects to face challenges for new patient starts for Crysvita.

Mepsevii product revenues were $2.6 million and UX007 revenues were $1.4 million. Though UX007 is not an approved product, the company recognizes sales from the candidate on a named patient basis. This is allowed in certain countries prior to the commercial approval of a product.

Story continues

The company said it has not seen any disruptions in supply/distribution of its medicines amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It said it has enough inventory and does not expect any shortages even if there is an interruption in the supply chain in future months.

Total operating costs in the quarter were $157.0 million, up 33.7% year over year.

2020 Guidance

The company maintained its previously issued guidance.

Ultragenyx expects Crysvita revenues from its territories between $125 million and $140 million, which excludes European territory revenues.

The company also expects a more than 20% reduction in net cash burn in 2020 compared with 2019.

Pipeline Updates

The company is also looking to expand the label of Crysvita, which has been developed for the treatment of tumor-induced osteomalacia (TIO). A supplemental biologics license application is under priority review with the FDA

An important pipeline candidate is UX007, which has been developed for the treatment of long-chain fatty acid oxidation disorders (LC-FAOD). A new drug application seeking approval of UX007 for LC-FAOD is under standard review with the FDA with a decision expected on Jul 31. Along with the earnings release, the company said the FDA reviews for Crysvita for TIO and UX007 for LC-FAOD are on track and the decisions are expected on the scheduled dates.

UX007 is also being evaluated in a phase III study in patients with glucose transporter type-1 deficiency syndrome (Glut1 DS), a brain energy deficiency, who are experiencing movement disorders.

The company also has some gene therapy candidates in its pipeline including DTX301, an adeno-associated virus 8 (AAV8), which is being evaluated in a phase I/II study for the treatment of patients with Ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency. The company plans to begin enrollment in a phase III study on DTX301 in the first half of 2021.

DTX401 is also an AAV8 gene-therapy candidate being evaluated in a phase I/II study for the treatment of patients with glycogen storage disease type Ia, (GSDIa). Enrollment is complete in the studys confirmatory cohort with data expected in the second quarter.

Zacks Rank

Ultragenyx is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock.

Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc Price and Consensus

Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc Price and Consensus

Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc price-consensus-chart | Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc Quote

Some better-ranked stocks in the biotech sector are Amgen AMGN, Amarin Corporation AMRN and Immunomedics IMMU, all carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Amgens earnings per share estimates for 2021 have increased from $16.91 to $17.01 over the past 30 days.

Amarins earnings per share estimates have moved up from 12 cents to 14 cents for 2020 and from 76 cents to 78 cents for 2021 in the past 30 days.

Immunomedics loss per share estimates have narrowed from $1.66 to $1.60 for 2020 and from $1.01 per share to 87 cents for 2021 in the past 30 days. The companys stock has surged 52.2% so far this year.

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The National Blood Service has appealed to Faith Based Organizations (FBO) to encourage their members through their online services to donate blood to replenish the dwindling national stock.



Mr Stephen Danso, Principal Blood Donor Coordinator at the National Blood Service who made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the Service could set up at the premises of their places of worship for members to donate



Mr Danso said the blood donation exercise would be done with the strict adherence to the COVID-19 protocols which include social distancing, wearing of masks, hand washing and use of alcohol based sanitizers.



He indicated that such an arrangement would help restock the blood bank which had been hit hard in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana explaining that due to the ban on social gatherings religious organizations and educational institutions that formed about 80 per cent of the donors were no longer organizing blood donation exercises.



He said even though the demand for blood for patients needing transfusion was high, the challenge was that the supply or donation of blood had become very low.



The Coordinator said to restock, the National Blood Service had identified some open public spaces including the forecourt of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Kasoa and Achimota in its Southern Area where they positioned their movable blood donation trailer to enable people to voluntarily donate.



In Tema, he noted, his outfit together with Maame Kwaaba Stevens, the brand ambassador for the Service got the blessings of Mr Felix Mensah Nii Anang-La, Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive to position the blood trailer at the Assembly premises every Tuesdays and Thursdays to enable residents of Tema, Ashaiman and their environs to volunteer to donate, adding that their known donors in the area were also contacted and scheduled to donate.



Mr Danso encouraged the public to donate blood devoid of the fear of contracting COVID-19 in the process as the Service was strictly following the protocols in the discharge of its responsibility.



He disclosed that on average his outfit collected between 10 and 50 pints of blood in Tema on the days they position their mobile service at the TMA forecourt.



Reminding the public on the factors to consider before donating blood, he stated that a donor must be aged between 17 and 60, have a weight of 50 kg and above adding that it was safe to give blood once every four months.



The blood donated, he stated was given to patients whose conditions could only be managed by blood and blood products as part of their treatment.



Some of such conditions included excessive bleeding during childbirth, children with marked destruction of blood cells from severe malaria, victims of road traffic accidents bleeding excessively from their wounds, those going for major surgeries and cancer patients.

Source: GNA









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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 20:46:43|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- With big-scale events still banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Austria is celebrating the landmark 75th anniversary of the end of World War II online.

For the first time since 2013, the Festival of Joy, a celebration of the liberation from the horrors of World War II, will not take place on Vienna's Heldenplatz, but only as a live stream and as a TV broadcast, according to the website of the event's organizer, the Austrian Mauthausen Committee.

The highlight of the ceremony will be a speech by contemporary witness Erika Kosnar, an 88-year-old woman with a Jewish background who survived the Nazi terror in Vienna.

What had happened in the concentration camps is still "an open wound in the history of Austria," said Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen in a video message marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen camp on Tuesday.

It is crucial that younger generations learn what happened back then and how it came about, and have "the civil courage" to act against injustice, he added.

According to the Mauthausen Memorial, at least 90,000 people perished in the notorious Nazi concentration camps, located 12 miles (roughly 19 km) east of Linz, from April 1938 until May 5, 1945. Enditem
Quintana Roo ranks among highest rates of incidences

Mexico City, Mexico  The Ministry of Health has reported 29,616 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico, which are dispersed between 1,339 municipalities, 30 more locations than those reported from the day before.

Health officials also reported 257 additional deaths. Although Mexico City tops the list of the most confirmed diagnoses, during the last weeks, municipalities of Tijuana, Baja California and Culiacan, Sinaloa have recorded the maximum number of deaths with 243 and 139, respectively.

In a press conference from the National Palace, Jose Luis Alomia, director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health explained that nationally, the rate of infections is 21.84 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Places with the highest rates of incidences include Mexico City (90 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), Baja California (60 cases per 100,000 inhabitants) and Quintana Roo (58 cases per 100,000 inhabitants).
CAPE TOWN, South Africa  South African Breweries, one of the worlds largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer as a result of the countrys ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on March 27 and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities. The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.

SAB told news station eNCA on Thursday that if its not able to move the beer, which amounts to about 130 million liters (34 million gallons), itll be forced to discard it at a loss of about $8 million. That loss would put 2,000 jobs at risk, SAB said.

It would also be frustrating news for millions of thirsty South African beer drinkers who are going without.

South Africa is one of just a handful of countries that have prohibited alcohol sales as part of its fight against the coronavirus. India and Thailand also had bans on alcohol sales, but recently lifted their restrictions. Panama and Sri Lanka still have bans in place.

The South African government has also banned the sales of cigarettes in the lockdown and has been criticized over its hard-line approach.

Prof. Salim Abdool Karim, one of the governments top health advisers in the COVID-19 pandemic, defended the alcohol ban at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday. He said alcohol is a significant contributing factor to violent crime and road accidents in South Africa and banning its sale has reduced pressure on medical services.

Representatives of the alcohol industry say the government should allow alcohol to be purchased for consumption at home only.
Yosemite National Park was closed to visitors in March. Now workers at the park who have been laid off are being told to leave. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

An estimated 90 shuttle bus drivers and Yosemite National Park transportation workers who were laid off after the park closed to visitors in March are now facing eviction.

The group of Yosemite Hospitality workers were told this week layoffs require them to leave Yosemite by May 21, the Fresno Bee reported Friday.

These are the first reported Yosemite evictions solely because of layoffs caused by the coronavirus pandemic and they come in spite of Gov. Gavin Newsom's order calling for a statewide moratorium on evictions through May 31, the newspaper reported.

It's unclear how the order pertains to federal lands, including national parks.

One unidentified Yosemite employee told the newspaper that leaders with Aramark  the Philadelphia-based company that owns Yosemite Hospitality  stressed that the company has the right to evict them because their housing is contingent on employment. Aramark employees in Yosemite pay about $100 a month to live in shared employee housing.

Among the evicted are people without family nearby, including former foster youths and some older, longtime Yosemite workers.

Aramark spokesman David Freireich did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The park, which had about 4.6 million visitors in 2019, has not announced how long its buses will sit idle, but employees said they were told they won't run again until January 2021. Aramark employs about 1,200 Yosemite Hospitality workers.

In Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to the south, employees of its concessionaire, Delaware North, were ordered to leave those parks at the end of March.

Ever since the National Park Service closed Yosemite on March 20, the park has been virtually empty, other than wildlife that has come of the shadows to wander amid the meadows and empty hiking trails, as The Times reported in early April.
Liberal candidates for preselection in the Eden-Monaro by-election are being vetted before the party officially announces their names after nominations closed on Friday.

The coalition is bidding to become the first federal government in 100 years to win a seat off the opposition at a byelection, after the resignation of Labor MP Mike Kelly.

Fiona Kotvojs came close to winning the marginal electorate at the last election. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance had announced he was going to run for Liberal preselection, before dramatically pulling out of the race 24 hours later. That reversal left the Liberal field open for at least three candidates to put their hand up for the spot.

Dr Fiona Kotvojs narrowly lost to Dr Kelly in 2019 and she has indicated she wants to run again, while former Navy seaman and Liberal staffer Dr Jeremy Nockles has also nominated, along with Yass farmer and National Farmers Federation economist Dr Pru Gordon.
Ukrops Homestyle Foods is looking at getting into the home delivery of its prepared food and bakery products.

The Henrico County-based company has started a limited test of delivering its products to homes in certain ZIP codes  mostly in the West End  and at the Westminster Canterbury Richmond senior living community.

If the results from the tests look promising, the company said it could expand the service to other parts of Richmond region.

We know that shifting needs of customers and the expectations have been changing for a while with many different delivery options, said Scott Aronson, president of Ukrops Homestyle Foods.

We have been looking at doing something like this for a while, but with the pandemic and with the change and needs of our customers, we wanted to accelerate this.

In March, the company started allowing a drive-thru pickup service of its food products at its offices on Maywill Street in Henrico as a way to help Richmond-area residents worried about going to the grocery store during the coronavirus pandemic to buy Ukrops food.

The home delivery is an extension of that service, he said.
Incident, which is being shared online, prompts accusations police officer in Manchester used disproportionate force.

London, United Kingdom  A UK policeman who tasered a father in front of his young child is facing accusations of using excessive force unnecessarily after the moment was caught on video and shared widely on social media.

In the video, two policemen can be seen at a petrol station in Manchester, northern England, arguing with the driver, 34-year-old Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara, outside a police car as his son stands by his legs, distressed and shouting Daddy!.

One of the officers releases the taser on Mombeyarara, who is Black.

The taser makes a bang and Mombeyarara falls to the ground.

His son shouts daddy! again, cries and stamps his feet in a traumatised manner.

The officer who fired the taser orders Mombeyarara to put your hands behind your back, now!, but he appears unable to do so.

The other officer then picks the crying child up and takes him away.

Tasers disable people by firing an electric charge into their bodies through needle-tipped darts.

According to the College of Policing, a professional body for policing in the UK, the usual reaction of someone who has been tasered is loss of some voluntary muscle control accompanied by involuntary muscle contractions.

During the discharge, the subject may not be able to respond to verbal commands during the discharge or could freeze on the spot.

https://twitter.com/essmurph/status/1258537649368739840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

In a statement on Friday, Greater Manchester Police said the incident took place on Wednesday before 11pm, local time.

Police officers observed a vehicle being driven unsafely at high speed on Chester Road, in Stretford, said the statement, adding they stopped Mombeyarara and arrested him.

Mombeyarara was charged with resisting arrest, speeding, not having car insurance, failing to stop when required, refusing a test and being unfit to drive through drink.

He was also charged with one count of unnecessary travel, which refers to violating current coronavirus lockdown measures in the UK, under which only essential travel is allowed.

He was remanded in custody and appeared before Manchester Magistrates Court on Friday.

According to Manchester Evening News, Mombeyarara pleaded guilty to several charges, but denied guilt in obstructing or resisting a constable in the execution of duty.

A hearing was adjourned until July 31, Mombeyarara was granted unconditional bail and an interim driving disqualification was imposed.

We have voluntarily referred this matter to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), to ensure transparency and independence in terms of reviewing the circumstances of the arrest, said Greater Manchester Police.

Superintendent Mark Kenny said: We are aware of public concern regarding this arrest and I want to reassure the public that this matter is being reviewed and treated seriously. In addition, we have voluntarily referred this matter to the IOPC.

The IOPC is a police watchdog, sponsored by the UK Home Office.

Andy Burnham, Manchester mayor and a politician with the opposition Labour Party, said: I was concerned about what I saw  It is not at all clear that the level of force used in this instance, particularly in front of a child, was proportionate or justified and that is why I have asked for an urgent and independent review to be carried out.

He added, however: From what I have been told, it would appear that the officers were right to apprehend the individual who was putting his child and others at risk by his actions.

Tasers should be last, not first resort

Deborah Coles, head of Inquest, a UK charity providing expertise on state-related deaths, wrote on Twitter that she had serious questions.

Greater Manchester Police must answer as to why a taser was discharged in a petrol station and with a young child present. Tasers should be a last not first resort. Reinforces concerns about disproportionate use of force against black people.

Aamer Anwar, a Scottish-based lawyer, tweeted: Force used must be reasonable, legitimate & proportionate  using a taser at a petrol pump, do they not realise the deadly danger of using it near flammable material? Doing it right in front of the mans toddler? A lot of questions.

Twitter user Michael Morgan said: This taser incident is yet another example of institutionally racist policing and disproportionate use of force.

Example, a British musician, said: This is disgraceful. Therell be so many people saying why didnt he cooperate? But how can two male police officers not deal with this WITHOUT a taser !!?? And the poor kid. Scarred for life. The cycle continues.
(Newser)  President Trump called into Fox & Friends Friday morning and weighed in on several subjects, including a predecessor in the White House. "I learned a lot from Richard Nixon," he said, per the Hill. Nixon may have had his famous Saturday Night Massacre of firings, but Trump says he's happy he didn't follow that model amid the Russia investigation. "I study history," he said. "And the firing of everybodyI shouldve in one way, but Im glad I didnt, because look at the way it turned out. Theyre all a bunch of crooks and they got caught."

Elaborating: "Of course there was one difference," Trump said. "Number one, he may have been guilty. And number two, he had tapes all over the place. I wasnt guilty. I did nothing wrong, and there are no tapes. But I wish there were tapes in my case." Trump has fired people, notably FBI director James Comey, though he said that was a "very good thing."

story continues below

Joe Biden: Asked about the Tara Reade allegations, Trump said, "I don't know if it's false or not," per Politico. "I mean, Joe is going to have to be able to prove whatever he has to prove, or she has to prove it, but thats a battle he has to fight, said Trump. "Ive had many false accusations made, I can tell you that. Many. And maybe it is a false accusation. Frankly, I hope it is for his sake."

Asked about the Tara Reade allegations, Trump said, "I don't know if it's false or not," per Politico. "I mean, Joe is going to have to be able to prove whatever he has to prove, or she has to prove it, but thats a battle he has to fight, said Trump. "Ive had many false accusations made, I can tell you that. Many. And maybe it is a false accusation. Frankly, I hope it is for his sake." Virus test: Trump has not yet been tested for coronavirus antibodies, though he said he would be. "I will do that," said the president, per NBC News. "Who knows, some people had it and they didn't even know they had it." On Thursday, reports emerged that one of the president's personal valets had tested positive for COVID-19. Trump is regularly tested to see whether he currently has the virus; the antibodies test would determine whether he already had it.

(Read more President Trump stories.)
New Delhi: As the number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases witness a spike, the borders around Delhi-NCR region have imposed stricter rules for the passage of people from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh border to Noida or Ghaziabad and even Haryana border to Gurgaon or Faridabad. Even residential complexes are scared to allow medical and health workers to return home from hospitals situated in Delhi for the fear that they may spread coronavirus.

Some societies and apartments have banned the entry of doctors and nurses on COVID-19 duty in hospitals, Neelpadam Kunj society in Ghaziabad recently issued a similar statement, the circular has since been withdrawn. The circular issued by the Apartment Owners Association, urged the residents who are doctors working in Delhi have been asked to make alternate living arrangements temporarily in Delhi to stop the spread of coronavirus.

This notice was based on a press note issued by Chief Medical Officer of Ghaziabad in which doctors working in Delhi have been asked not to return as they may spread coronavirus.

The doctors residing at Neelpadam Kunj society expressed their disappointment by this move undertaken by the resident association.

Taking note of the Ghaziabad circular, the AIIMS Resident Doctors Association wrote a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the Ghaziabad society circular.

The letter states the problems faced by the doctors and other medical staff residing in Delhi-NCR for accomodation and also during transportation. The letter said: "Various residential societies are issuing notice restricting entry of health care providers during this critical time while facing pandemic which has amplified the shortage of human resources in various parts of the country."

It also brought to notice the problems faced to acquire border passes while travelling from UP and Haryana towards Delhi. "Doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff involved in COVID19 duties are facing additional stress of applying for passes to commute from Ghaziabad, Noida and Haryana to the various government/private hospitals in Delhi", the letter claimed.

The letter further urged the government to take steps in this direction so that the health care workers are not discriminated against and the state governments can also ensure that they do not face any harassment and their commute to Delhi becomes easier. "Why can't Union Government issue an order to enable the healthcare workers to commute by displaying their hospital identity cards? We request you to kindly advise the state governments to stop ostracisation of the healthcare workers... We request you to please issue an order to enable hassle free transport and stay to serve the nation."

Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 cases in India is 52,952 and the death toll is 1,783 with 15,267 recovered cases.
Royal Brothers, Indias largest mobility solutions provider has taken an important step to help people stranded in various states to return to their homes across all their 25 + cities in8 states where Royal Brothers has a presence.

After Government of Indias allowance on movement of stranded people who are unaffected by coronavirus, across state borders, Royal Brothers has announced that its fleet of high-end quality motorbikes will be available as per their intercity travel feature at a concessional rate.With this feature, anyone can start their trip with Royal Brothers motorbike in one city and end it in another. The company will also deliver sanitised bikes and helmets to their start location at no extra charge. The bikes will be home delivered to the rider through contactless delivery within a radius of 10 kms from the selected pick-up location. While the rider needs to have his/ her basic documentation the vehicle insurance will be taken care of by the team. The rider can also reach out to the RB team for any additional assistance they want while planning their travel back home.

Speaking on the initiative, Abhishek Chandrashekar, Co-founder & CEO, Royal Brothers, says, As citizens of the country, it is imperative that each of us help the government and those in need with whatever resources available at our disposal. At Royal Brothers, we are happy to extend our fleet of high-end motorbikes to those from our community across the country, who are have been stranded and away from their loved ones since lockdown was implemented. Hope this effort helps them unite with their families once again!

The team has launched an online campaign that will be visible across Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin with posts that specifically reach out to the biking community for the initiative. Apart from running a sponsored awareness campaign about intercity travel, the team is also leveraging WhatsApp to run an awareness campaign that includes a message with a link to form for inter-city transport to those stranded and in need of a safe mode of transportation to get back home. To add to this the team will also be putting up creative Instagram stories that are short-lived on the offer and carousel posts with information that people are looking for and that they can help with.

The team is also running a social media awareness campaign for essential workers and professionals who need a private vehicle for commuting.

If you have any friends or relatives who are stranded and trying to get home?Give us a call at 9019595595 and let us know their location.
German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann, pictured, proposed an alliance with Mexico if the United States joined the war on the side of the allies. Mexico was told they would receive Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the event of an allied defeat. Experts in Room 40 of the Admiralty intercepted the telegram and it was later leaked to US newspapers

Tony Comer - who has worked for GCHQ for 36 years and has spent the last 10 as its historian - picks high-profile moments from its history.

The Zimmermann telegram:

In January 1917, GCHQ's predecessors in Room 40 of the Admiralty produced an intelligence report that contributed to the United States, which was still neutral at that point, entering the First World War on the Allied side.

The German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, proposed an alliance with Mexico: if the US joined the Allied side in the war and Mexico would ally itself with Germany, it would receive Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as prizes after the defeat of the Allies.

The message was intercepted by the UK and read on January 17, with its importance quickly realised.

A copy of the message between the German Embassies in Washington and Mexico City was shown to the US Embassy in London.

It was leaked to the US press and was front page in most US newspapers on March 1 1917.

Zimmermann publicly announced that the telegram was authentic, and in April the United States declared war on Germany.

Breaking the Enigma code:

The Enigma machine was invented by a German engineer Arthur Scherbius shortly after the First World War.

Dilly Knox, one of the former British First World War codebreakers, was convinced he could break the military version of the system and set up an Enigma Research Section, comprising himself and Tony Kendrick, later joined by Peter Twinn, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman: their success was built on a foundation of the success of Polish cryptanalysts before them.

They worked in the stable yard at Bletchley Park and that is where the first wartime Enigma messages were broken by the UK in January 1940 during the Second World War.

Details of those who worked at Bletchley Park have been preserved and used as an exhibit in GCHQ's head quarters

Code breakers at Bletchley Park used Enigma machines to crack German naval signals during the Second World War. This Enigman machine is located in GCHQ's headquarters building in Cheltenham

The forerunner for GCHQ sought volunteers during 1938 who could be recruited at the outbreak for war. They wanted people who were promising mathematicians and linguists - as well as those with code breaking experience from the First World War

Cuban Missile Crisis:

The Admiralty built a wireless telegraphy station at Scarborough in 1912.

From 1914 onwards it had responsibilities for Sigint, intelligence gathering by interception of signals, as well as its ordinary communications mission.

In 1962 the US learned that the Soviet Union was secretly shipping nuclear missiles on to the island of Cuba, just 90 miles from America.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, GCHQ was intercepting position reports from Russian ships such as the Kasimov, pictured, to determine whether the Soviets were planning to run the US blockade imposed by President John F Kennedy

The Soviet freighter Anosov, rear, being escorted by the USS Barry and a US Navy plane was one of the vessels seeking to run the blockade. GCHQ's station in Scarborough compiled position reports from Soviet vessels heading to Cuba. These reports showed the moment when the Russian ships turned around

The world was facing nuclear conflict after a Soviet missile base was spotted in Cuba by US Air Force intelligence flights

President John F Kennedy's advisers pushed for an immediate invasion of the island but Kennedy opted instead for a naval blockade on further shipping arriving.

Some Soviet ships were already on their way to the island.

The question was whether they would break through the blockade. If they did, the risk was a conflict which could escalate into nuclear war.

One of the missions of the Scarborough station was to intercept position reports of Soviet merchant shipping.

This meant that it could say exactly where these vessels were, when they stopped sailing towards Cuba and when they turned around and headed back to the Soviet Union.

Reports gradually showed more ships originally bound for Cuba alter their course to return to Soviet ports.

A key report from this series - which shows the first report of a ship changing course- has just been declassified.
With the statewide stay-at-home order lifted this week, some area restaurants have begun opening their doors to dine-in customers, while others are waiting to see what the coming weeks will hold in terms of the spread of COVID-19.

Missouris stay-at-home order expired Monday, allowing restaurants to open their dine-in areas to customers if they wish.

Some eateries have opened their doors back up and hope to start getting back to business as usual. Some restaurants are only partially opening up their dine-in areas and limiting the number of dine-in patrons allowed in their establishments at once.

Restaurant franchises seem to be proceeding with the most caution toward reopening their dine-in areas. Fast food franchises like McDonalds, Burger King, Culvers, KFC, and Taco Bell have not yet reopened for dine-in orders. One Taco Bell employee said the franchise plans to wait until every other fast food franchise opens back up before they will make the decision.

The dining rooms of other franchises that rely heavily on dine-in guests, such as Buffalo Wild Wings and Applebee's Grill, are now open.

As they open, nearly every local restaurant has been taking extra precautions to limit the chance of spreading the virus. A significant number of restaurants have limited the number of tables they will sit at one time, and some are still limiting their hours of operation.

Theres little doubt that restaurant owners are anxious to resume normal business. The closing of Missouris dining establishments has had a large impact on the states economy and the bottom lines of businesses throughout the state.

Although opening back up will likely increase sales revenue, many local restaurant owners like Chip Peterson, are taking steps to ensure that its done safely and properly. Peterson is a proprietor of Steak 'n Shake, CiCis Pizza, and Qdoba Mexican Grill  three popular Farmington restaurants.

Steak 'n Shake opened its dining area Monday, and Peterson said they are working toward opening their other two restaurants soon.

The thing with us is, health and safety absolutely come first, said Peterson. We just want to make sure weve got everything lined up perfectly for that.

We feel like we do [have everything lined up] at Steak 'n Shake, explained Peterson. Weve done a lot of work there, and were in the middle of doing that at CiCis.

Peterson said he believed Qdoba was prepared to open and they are just waiting on corporate approval. He said customers are still able to pick up orders through the drive-thru and even come into the restaurant and place orders until they resume normal operation with their dining room open once again.

Throughout the pandemic crisis, restaurants have had to adapt to the circumstances.

Catfish Kettle in Farmington installed a drive-thru window, and Restaurant Manager Helen Dickey said business has remained fairly good.

Fortunately for us, we put that drive-thru in pretty quick, said Dickey So, we have continued to do well thanks to our community that has really supported us.

The restaurant opened its dining area Monday. Dickey said they are doing everything they can to ensure they are in compliance with the guidelines set forth by the CDC and by the state and local government.

She said that they had spaced all the tables at least six feet apart, and they are not seating parties of 10 or more people. Staff members are protecting their patrons and themselves by wearing face masks and using a lot of hand sanitizers.

The restaurant also made the most of their dining room being closed for more than a month.

We painted and did a little updating while we were closed, she said. We cleaned everything really well.

We got new chairs, table cloths, and painted and it looks wonderful in there, said Dickey. Were excited to be back open and cant wait to see all of our guests  six feet apart, of course.

During the dining room downtime, the staff installed a new chalkboard so children can draw and play games. Dickey said children eat free on Tuesdays at the family-style restaurant, so they are always thinking of ways to make the atmosphere fun and enjoyable.

Time will likely be a factor for how area restaurants proceed with their planned phases to open fully. Dickey said she believes that as people begin to feel safer and as time passes, more and more will choose to dine-in at restaurants again.

Bobby Radford is a reporter for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at bradford@dailyjournalonline.com

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The Bombay high court on Friday rejected the plea for temporary bail by Hemant Bhatt, one of the accused in the multi-crore fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB), after noticing that the 66-year-old had tested positive for Covid-19.

Justice Bharati Dangre rejected Bhatts plea in view of the fact that a Covid-19 patient cannot be allowed to be freed on temporary bail. The judge said he will have to be treated at a government hospital.

Acting on Bhatts plea, Justice Dangre had on May 6 directed a public prosecutor to make a statement about the situation in connection with Covid-19 prevailing in Arthur Road jail.

His plea filed through advocate Kiran Padalkar, stated that the applicant is aged 66 years and a chronic heart patient who has undergone by-pass surgery and diagnosed with coronary artery disease and also suffering from hypertension.

Bhatt had sought interim bail in view of the Supreme Courts directive to states and union territories to decongest prisons in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar had, however, opposed the plea stating that pursuant to the directives of the apex court, a High Power Committee constituted by the state government has decided to grant temporary bail only to the prisoners charged with offences punishable with not more than 7 years imprisonment and Bhatts case was not covered under the apex court directives.

Justice Dangre, had however, noted the apprehension expressed by the accused because of his peculiar health condition and the health crisis being faced by the world, and directed the public prosecutor to make the statement on Friday.

Additional public prosecutor Shahaji Shinde, accordingly on Friday, informed the court that a number of inmates and some staff members of the Arthur Road jail have been found to be infected with coronavirus and Bhatt was among those inmates.

In a massive fraud allegedly perpetuated by fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi and his maternal uncle Mehul Choksi, CBI has also booked Bhatt and others under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. They are also booked by the enforcement directorate under relevant provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

According to information given by the Maharashtra home department, 77 inmates and 26 staff members of the Arthur Road jail have tested positive for the coronavirus infection.
The need for food assistance is growing in these difficult times, with Cathollic Charities reporting that the number of meals theyre distributing through a soup kitchen and food pantry in Bridgeport has doubled or tripled from about 150 meals a day last year to 300 or 450 a day recently amid the coronavirus crisis.

St. Mary Parish in Ridgefield is responding with a food drive Saturday, May 9, from 10 a.m. to noon in the St. Mary School parking lot.
As days go by, more and more people are receiving stimulus checks that were promised by the government as an aide for the coronavirus crisis, and it seems like the dead are included too. New guidance that was released by the Internal Revenue Service on May 6 orders federal stimulus payments sent to people who have died to be returned immediately.

Due to the agency's rush to get stimulus payments out as fast as possible, some of the money was sent to people who had died but had filed their taxes within the past two years. It also seems like they were given the priority instead of the millions of people who are still alive and waiting for their checks. The IRS has to cross-check with another federal agency to get a full list of the deceased.

Stimulus checks sent to dead people

When the news broke it, it was unclear whether the family of the deceased could keep the money, but the IRS now says that the full payment must be returned unless the deceased was married and filed tax returns jointly with a spouse who is still alive. If this guideline is applied, only the portion of the payment belonging to the deceased needs to be returned, according to the agency. If the couple received $2,400, half of it, or $1,200 needs to be sent back.

If a check was received, it should be mailed to the Treasury Department. If the check was cashed or if the payment was directly deposited into the bank account, the IRS is asking people to send a personal check or money order. All of the instructions on how to send the money back was posted online by the IRS.

Since April 11, the IRS has sent more than 122 million payments for a total of $207 billion. The IRS started by sending money to those who had already filed a 2018 or 2019 tax return. The agency also clarified on May 6 that other people who may have gotten a payment but are not eligible, including those who are incarcerated, must also return the stimulus payment.

Also Read: COVID-19 Cover-Up: Out of 20, Only 5 Deaths Listed by Nursing Home to Conceal Alarming Numbers

Eligibility is based on income, and it excludes those who are earning more than $99,000, head of household filers with one child who earns more than $136,500, and married couples without children earning more than $198,000.

Families who are earning more may still be eligible for stimulus payments if they have children. The phase-out limit depends on the number of children a couple has. For a family of four, the amount is completely phased out for those with incomes exceeding $218,000.

Those who can be claimed as a dependent for tax purposes are also ineligible for payments, like college students, as well as undocumented immigrants who do not have Social Security numbers. Stimulus payments are worth up to $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for couples, plus $500 per dependent.

Second rounds of stimulus checks

There is still no decision on whether there will be a second round of stimulus checks. There is nothing signed into law to send out a second stimulus check, but there have been debates all across America if the first check is enough to sustain the needs of an individual.

A coronavirus relief bill of $484 billion was signed on April 30, but it was aimed to help small businesses and it did not contain any provision for a second stimulus check for individuals.

Related Article: Hot Weather Dries Up COVID-19 Droplets, But Virus May Travel Farther in Windy Days

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Mayor Bill de Blasio has named 113 people to four sector-based advisory councils -- including seven with Staten Island ties -- who will aid in developing a plan for safely re-opening New York City.

De Blasio announced the creation of the councils Wednesday, stating that each would be composed of 20 to 40 people, including deputy mayors and agency heads.

The members of the Labor and Workforce, Small Business, Large Business, and Arts, Culture and Tourism sector advisory councils were announced Thursday.

The sector advisory councils on Faith, Construction and Real Estate, Non-Profits and Social Services, Public Health and Healthcare, Education and Vocational Training, and Surface Transportation will be announced in the coming days.

For us to have a strong restart and get to the recovery New Yorkers deserve we have to do this the smart way, de Blasio said.

The borough appointments are:

Labor and Workforce Sector Advisory Council  Pat Kane, Executive Director of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA); Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)

Small Business Sector Advisory Council  Cesar Claro, President and CEO of the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation (SIEDC); Linda Baran, President and CEO of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce; John DiFazio, DiFazio Industries

Arts, Culture and Tourism Sector Advisory Council  Janice Monger, President and CEO of the Staten Island Museum; Peter Ward, President of NY Hotel and Motel Trades Council

Additionally, former Staten Islander Marc Cannizzaro, President of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, was also named to the Labor and Workforce Sector Advisory Council.

FRONTLINE WORKERS NEED TO BE AT THE TABLE

Pat Kane told the Advance/SILive.com that reopening will not be possible without making sure frontline workers concerns are listened to.

We need to come out of this with a more just and equitable healthcare system, said Kane, who represents nurses statewide.

In general I think a safe reopening means survival for everyone. We have to fortify the frontlines to be prepared. We do expect another wave, she said.

Kane said the association would like to see a move to reusable N95 masks, a return to original infectious control procedures, and better guidelines for COVID-19 patients. NYSNA also wants to see enforceable and mandated protections instead of guidance that comes without accountability.

I absolutely do think we can do this safely. This isnt an attack on personal freedom, its whats necessary for survival, she said.

MAKING SURE STATEN ISLANDS SMALL BUSINESS, NONPROFIT NEEDS ARE MET

Cesar Claro said many of the boroughs small business concerns are the same as those of the other four boroughs, like specific guidance on what to do upon returning to work, when the payroll protection program money will be available and new regulations that will be implemented.

Each type of business brings its own concerns for reopening. For example, clothing stores are worried about returns, and restaurants need to know if they will be required to use disposable plates and utensils.

The bigger issue for Staten Island, and its more in the long-term, is when will our large-scale projects be able to come online because thats something that would really boost our economy, Claro said.

Clarification on when permits for construction will begin ties into that, he said.

We need large-scale projects for a boost, he said.

Claro has a list of about 30 concerns that he plans to bring to the advisory councils first meeting, which should take place in the next week.

Linda Baran said it would be nice to be able to tell the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce members what they can and cannot do while planning to reopen. There are concerns about providing PPE, capacity for restaurants and shifting schedules.

One size doesnt fit all, Baran said.

Janice Monger said she also has borough-wide as well as citywide concerns for nonprofits and other organizations related to arts, culture, and tourism.

I am incredibly honored to be thought of and represent this sector in this important process. Staten Islands voice is very important and our considerations are often different than other parts of the city, Monger said.

The boroughs landscape of being both suburban and urban makes it unique, she said, and she wants to make sure that its understood and that resources are committed.

Rest assured I will make sure our voice is heard, she said.

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NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE C hances are, you know the National Review Institute, but do you know its book club? We are reading Up from Liberalism, the 1959 book by William F. Buckley Jr. I wrote a little post about the club and the book here.

He was no fan of Harry S. Truman, WFB.

I sat in the spring of 1958 before the television screen and beheld Mr. Truman, with the zest he has for that kind of thing, cavorting from vulgarity to vulgarity, oversimplifying issues, distorting history, questioning motives, provoking base appetites.

Some lines later, WFB refers to Truman as the nations most conspicuous vulgarian.

Some lines after that, he takes on Trumans defenders and admirers, who likely share the political objectives of the Democratic Party. WFB says that the failure of these people to face up to the ex-presidents personal limitations amounts to an anarchy in the world of taste and judgment.

Theres more, of course  and even stronger.

 The foreword to Up from Liberalism was written by John Dos Passos, the famous novelist, essayist, and journalist. Something in the foreword reminded me of something else. (Something always reminds one of something else.) Do you mind if I quote from a piece I wrote earlier this year? Thanks for bearing with me.

That piece is called Speech for All: A conversation with Geoffrey R. Stone, the free-speech prof at Chicago. I will paste a few paragraphs toward the end:

Minority views are always vulnerable. Today, the Left is in the saddle  certainly on campus  lording it over others. (This is my view, apart from Stones.) But whoever is in the saddle, you have to beware of him. Ideally, liberal-democratic principles are in the saddle. Stone notes that a lot of students on the left felt they had to keep their mouths shut during the McCarthy era. He also notes that, if you supported the Vietnam War, you probably felt the same. At some point in our conversation, I tell him a story, a personal one. When I was in college, I had a dear professor, an older woman, with whom I felt I could talk. I told her about my interest in conservatism. And I quoted William Safire to her: I have to go down to the corner newsstand to buy a Hustler magazine, to have something respectable to hide my National Review in. She laughed and said, You know, when I was in college, we had to do that with our Nation magazines. (The Nation is on the left, as you know.) We understood each other.

Story continues

There is fashion on campus, as there is fashion in virtually all areas of life. Check out Dos Passos, writing in the late 1950s:

Forty years ago a young man in college spoke ill of businessmen at some hazard. Profits were a sacred word. Advocates of labor unions were jeeringly asked if they had ever met a payroll. The tenets of the free market economy were as much a divine institution as The Ten Commandments. . . . How different is the climate in the schools today! An apologist of the profit system often finds it hard to hold his job.

People tend to like diversity, toleration, and pluralism  in theory. But when it comes to practice, they may flinch (at best).

 Well, on to the coronavirus, the topic du jour  the topic of many jours. In a recent podcast with me, Mark Helprin noted that people used to speak of the plague years. That plural is ominous.

I was interested in this report by Peter Baker in the New York Times. Two things stuck out to me. In a way, by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad. So said President Trump. He meant that, the more you test, the more you find people with the virus, so a countrys numbers go up.

That is a very significant statement by the president, I believe.

For months now, I have been saying that I dont envy the deciders, as George W. Bush would say: the public officials who have to make decisions about locking down and opening up. Youre damned if you do, damned if you dont.

In the report I have cited, Governor Cuomo of New York is quoted as saying, Theres a cost of staying closed, no doubt  economic cost, personal cost. Theres also a cost of reopening quickly. Either option has a cost.

That is an attitude of maturity. Again, I dont envy these guys, strong as my opinions usually are.

 Speaking of Andrew Cuomo, have you seen Maria DeCotis, in a brief video shes made? You wont want to miss her: here. Ms. DeCotis is a comedian, actress, and writer in New York, originally from Fayetteville, Ga. (Website here.)

It always feels good to laugh, but it feels especially good in this time of pandemic, right?

 Do you find this funny?

Concast should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is nuts. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE

That is a tweet from our president, written on May 4. Some people think he is unfit for the office; some people think he is fit as a fiddle  a Stradivarius, even.

 Do you think this is funny? Trump called George Conway Moonface. (Conway is half Filipino.) I have heard Asian Americans  and Asians in general  called pan face. I dont think I had ever heard moon face. Anyway, it is perfectly possible to argue with George Conway  even slam him, hard  without calling him Moonface.

I would think. Then again, as my critics frequently tell me, I am a dinosaur.

 A few days ago, I noticed an eatery in New York: American Retro. I thought the name kind of applied to me . . .

 The estimable Eliot A. Cohen has written a piece called Were Discovering Our Character. He talks about his grandfather Sam, who grew up in a shtetl, came to America with nothing, and wound up owning a shoe factory.

There are not, and cannot be, quantitative measures of character, writes Eliot, but what Sam understood was that in the end, character dominated all else.

I think that is right.

 In big cities  smaller ones, too  begging is normal. Routine. Some people beg professionally, as a way of life. I have witnessed it over the years in New York. Lately, I have seen people beg who have never begged before. At least, it seems that way to me. They explain that their backs are up against the wall, in this straitened time.

Are they running scams? Frankly, I doubt it. Experience has taught me to be very, very cynical. But I really dont think they are  running scams.

I have offered anecdotal evidence, that dread thing, but there you are.

 My friend Dale Brott  chairman of our mag  forwarded a clever headline from the Akron Beacon Journal: Stores, kitchens guard their loins. The article has to do with tight supplies of beef and pork.

 My friend Kevin Williamson  NRs roving correspondent (although none of us is doing much roving at the moment)  forwarded this article, with the comment, One sympathizes. The headline of the article: A 5-year-old boy was pulled over in Utah on his way to California to try to buy a Lamborghini.

 Feel like a little music? Well, I have a New York Chronicle, published in the May New Criterion. The last concert I attended, in the flesh, was on March 6 at Carnegie Hall. From then on, it was Livestream City.

Say what you will about the modern world  and I have already conceded Im a dinosaur  these new technologies are really wonderful.

See you soon, my friends. Thanks for all.

If youd like to receive Impromptus by e-mail  links to new columns  write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.

More from National Review
A round 400,000 people in the UK could currently have coronavirus, according to a new official study, while experts say 20,000 more could be infected with the virus every day.

The survey, run by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department of Health, was launched to map the spread of the virus across the UK, after the Government dropped widespread contact tracing efforts in March.

Preliminary data from around 25,000 people taking part in the study shows that between 130,000 and 396,000 people across the UK may have the disease.

People taking part in the survey are given a test every week for the first five weeks to see if they currently have coronavirus.

A member of staff hands over a Covid-19 self test kit / PA

Scientists also test their blood to see if they have already had the virus and developed antibodies - which help fight off the disease.

The news comes after a leading UK scientist told MPs that 20,000 people could be falling ill with coronavirus every day - far higher than the official figure given of around 5,000.

Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told parliament's science and technology committee that the high number means Britain is not ready to come out of lockdown.

He added that the UK's coronavirus R number - which shows the rate at which coronavirus is passed on - was being pushed higher by the severe outbreak in care homes.

Covid-19 care home deaths have significantly increased / PA

Top ONS statistician Sir Ian Diamond said agreed with Professor Edmunds, telling the Government's daily coronavirus briefing that he was "very happy" with the estimate.

Professor Edmunds also said that the R number was between 0.75 and 1, which is the critical level at which someone who has the virus passes it on to one other person on average.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab / PA

The Government estimate is lower - between 0.5 and 0.9, according to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

But Mr Raab added: "We've definitely got a challenge in care homes."

He told the daily briefing: "The virus is not beaten yet, it remains deadly and infectious."

More than 30,000 people are confirmed to have died in the UK with coronavirus, although, as the new ONS figures show, the true number may be significantly higher as the Government remains unclear about the level of infection nationwide.
Today, on May 8, Ukraine celebrates the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation

President of Ukraine honors the memory of those killed in World War II Press service of Ukrainian President

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky arrived with a working trip in Luhansk region where he laid flowers at the Eternal Flame on the Russian-Ukrainian border in order to honor the memory of those killed in World War II. This was reported by the presidential press service.

"The head of state visited Milove settlement which is divided by the border between Ukraine and Russia. In Milove, the president visited the memorial complex Ukraine - to the liberators," the statement said.

Press service of Ukrainian President President of Ukraine honors the memory of those killed in World War II Press service of Ukrainian President President of Ukraine honors the memory of those killed in World War II

It is worth noting that today, on May 8, Ukraine celebrates the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. A memorable date always falls on May 8 - the anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945.

As we reported earlier, on April 11, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps at the Babi Yar Memorial Complex.

"On the International Day for the Release of Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps, a basket of flowers was installed from President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to the Babiy Yar Memorial Complex," the press service said.
The Trump administration reportedly shelved a document from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which would have provided detailed instructions for local authorities on appropriate measures to reopen a variety of businesses and institutions. The document is reportedly undergoing revisions, according to White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Deborah Birx, who appeared on CNN Thursday evening.

A leaked version of the report, headlined Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework, was given anonymously to the Associated Press by a federal official. A second official, from the CDC, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, informed the AP that the public health organizations infectious disease specialists were told that the document would never see the light of day.

This news has emerged as the pandemic continues to sweep across the globe. There are now 3.9 million cases internationally and more than 270,000 deaths. Even as physical distancing measures have to some extent mitigated the spread of the virus in certain areas of the US, the pandemic has in fact accelerated in rural areas, many of which are ill-equipped to deal with the health crisis.

David J. Sencer CDC Museum in Atlanta, GA (Wikimedia Commons)

The spread of the pandemic is being exacerbated as the back-to-work drive becomes increasingly hysterical. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has demanded that Americans sacrifice their lives by going back to work. US President Donald Trump indifferently noted Tuesday that as a result of his policies, Therell be more death.

The CDC report lays out step-by-step instructions for childcare programs, schools, churches, employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants, bars and mass transit agencies. As the agency notes, all of these are critical to the lives of large sections of the population as well as places people gather in large numbers.

It includes a variety of flow-charts and lists designed for state and local officials to use to determine whether or not these institutions should open and how they should operate during the pandemic. For example, it notes that sneeze guards should be placed between patrons and employees, and guidelines to ensure that only items and tools that can be easily sanitized are used.

The document also explicitly notes that vulnerable workers includes anyone with chronic lung disease, moderate to severe asthma, hypertension, severe heart conditions, weakened immunity, severe obesity, diabetes, liver disease, and chronic kidney disease that requires dialysis. Millions of people suffer one or more of these conditions, which makes explicit the dangers of the coronavirus as the pandemic continues to infect more and more people.

The document, however, also provides a variety of caveats that business can use to not provide a safe working environment for their employees. It notes multiple times that CDC recommendationsincluding providing personal protective equipment and extra sick leaveshould only be implemented where feasible and that employers should coordinate with local officials on whether or not they should reopen and with what level of safety precautions.

By introducing such flexibility, the CDC ultimately made its own document toothless. What exactly is feasible is never defined, which would allow companies to do essentially whatever they want in regard to reopening. Nowhere does it even imply that if companies cannot safely reopen, they simply should not do so in order to preserve workers lives.

Yet this report was unacceptable to Trump, even with these gaping loopholes. This is in line with other efforts by the Trump administration to prevent a coordinated, rational and scientific response to the coronavirus crisis. Any guidance released by the CDC is generally acted on at the national level, which conflicts with the presidents assertion in his own guidelines that the response should be dealt with at the state, county and local level.

It also comes in the wake of reports that Anthony Fauci, the governments top infectious disease specialist and a member of the Coronavirus Task Force, was prevented from testifying before Congress. Fauci has at times expressed opinions differing from that of the administration for dealing with the pandemic, at one point stating on television that a national shutdown was necessary. For the most part, however, he has lent his authority to the Trump administrations pandemic response.

At the same time, Trump is doing his best to dismantle even the nominal response of the federal government to the pandemic. He suggested on Tuesday that the Coronavirus Task Force would be disbanded, likely at the end of May, before walking this back the next day, claiming that it would continue on indefinitely. He made the point, however, that its focus would shift to opening up our country.

This is ultimately the primary focus of the United States government. The pandemic has provided an opportunity to funnel $80 billion per day from the treasury to Wall Street and the major corporations, under the guise of providing relief in response to the economic calamity caused by the pandemic.

There are no suggestions that such sums should be spent to provide relief for the tens of millions that have been thrown out of work. Nor is even a fraction of this amount being spent to research the pandemic or develop the necessary testing and contact tracing infrastructure to contain the disease.

Such sentiments are shared by Trumps co-thinkers internationally. The fascistic Jair Bolsonaro has attempted to downplay the dangers of the coronavirus by referring to it as the little flu. He fired the countrys health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta after a public disagreement over the governments response to the pandemic. And he has called Brazilians cowards for isolating themselves from the disease and demanded they go back to work.
HK needs central govt support

Global Times

By Yang Sheng Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/7 20:58:40

If US changes policy, its interests in city will be impacted: analysts

Under the combined impact of social unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is facing another tough year in 2020, with anti-government and separatist forces preparing to take more action in June to extend the turmoil.

Meanwhile, the US State Department is looking closely at the upcoming annual session of China's National People's Congress (NPC) to further interfere in China's domestic affairs in the special administrative region.

In order to bring the city back to the right track and start its economic recovery, Hong Kong deputies to the NPC said that their proposals for the NPC plenary session, which is scheduled to kick off on May 22 in Beijing, would focus on such issues as integration between the Chinese mainland and the HKSAR, public health affairs and policies for creating more opportunities for youth in Hong Kong.

The US State Department is delaying a report to the US Congress assessing "whether Hong Kong enjoys sufficient autonomy from China" to continue receiving special treatment from the US, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Pompeo told a news conference the delay was to allow the report "to account for any additional actions that Beijing may be contemplating in the run-up" to the NPC on May 22 "that would further undermine the people of Hong Kong's autonomy."

Chinese analysts said that no matter what policies or announcements the NPC plenary session issues about Hong Kong, interference from the US is unlikely to stop, and its support for separatists and troublemakers in Hong Kong will continue, so China needs to prepare its retaliation.

If Washington changes its policy toward Hong Kong, US interests in the city would also be impacted, they said.

The "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act," which is a serious interference in China's domestic affairs, approved by the US Congress and President Donald Trump last year, requires the US State Department to certify at least annually that the HKSAR retains "enough autonomy to justify the favorable US trading terms that have helped it maintain its position as a world financial center."

Chan Yung, a Hong Kong deputy to the NPC who will attend the plenary session, told the Global Times on Thursday that economic recovery and democratic elections in the HKSAR should be based on the basis of a secure public order.

"The police and the government of the HKSAR are responsible for the law enforcement against separatists and local anti-government forces, but when it goes to foreign forces, we surely need help from the central government as this is a diplomatic matter," said the deputy.

The State Council's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office on Wednesday denounced separatists, anti-government forces and the "burn with us" mentality in the HKSAR, calling them "the political viruses of Hong Kong society" and the enemy of the "one country, two systems" policy.

"Hong Kong will not enjoy a day of peace until violence is eradicated," the spokesperson said in a statement, noting that the central government will never sit idly by or allow destructive forces to act wantonly, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

During the May Day holidays, radicals renewed violence in Hong Kong by holding illegal assemblies, disrupting shops and throwing petrol bombs, which have laid bare the ill intentions of the violent forces and the behind-the-scene plotters, organizers and instigators aiming to drag Hong Kong into an abyss, the office spokesperson said.

Li Xiaobing, a Hong Kong studies expert at Nankai University in Tianjin, told the Global Times that these "political viruses" have seriously damaged the city, and even now they still have the capability to extend the turmoil into 2020 to further harm the city's economy, since the sponsorship and guidance provided by foreign forces still exist.

"These forces won't give up making trouble to let the whole city to burn with them; otherwise, they will lose everything and will be punished by the law, one by one," Li said.

According to Hong Kong-based media hk01.com, Hong Kong separatist forces are organizing a series of protests to be held in June to mark the first anniversary of the turmoil started in 2019 that was sparked by the Fugitive Offenders Amendment Bill.

Chan said Hong Kong police and the HKSAR government have enough authority under the Basic Law to handle those "political viruses" as long as they are determined to fight those evil forces, even though Article 23, or the national security law, is yet to be passed.

Li agreed, and he said that "we saw how much trouble that separatists and rioters in Hong Kong made last year, but Hong Kong police can handle it, and currently, the law enforcement by the police is strengthened to be more determined and effective"

Chan said compared with the novel coronavirus, the black-clad violent forces or "political viruses" might need more time to handle. Although some of their leaders and puppets controlled by foreign forces have been arrested, they are still capable of causing trouble, so any economic recovery for Hong Kong this year should be oriented toward integration with the mainland.

"We will suggest that the central government provide more convenient channels for Hong Kong youths to work in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," said Chan.

"Because compared with Hong Kong, these regions are more stable and secure, and offer more chances for young people with special skills. We also hope the communication and exchanges between the mainland and Hong Kong can return to normal as soon as possible, since the COVID-19 outbreak is now generally under control in China," Chan said.

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The Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike has ordered officials of the Local Government Task Force to identify hotels still in operation despite the lockdown order for demolition.

The state government had ordered a total lockdown in the state to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Governor Wike, while inaugurating the Rivers State COVID-19 Local Government Task Force at the Government House in Port Harcourt, gave them the order as well as beer parlours.

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He said, From tomorrow, move into any hotel that is operating, identify it and we will bring down the hotels.

I have the political will. Those people who disobey will face the consequences.

Read Also: Senior Police Officer Sabotaging Lockdown In Rivers  Wike

Nobody should come from outside to compound our problems and import this invisible killer. We will not accept that.

We should not allow what is happening to continue, we dont have the capacity to face it and there will be no support from any quarter, he said.

The Governor informed members of the Rivers State COVID-19 Local Governments Task Force that they will be on the payroll of the State Government.
The incidents of doctors being attacked in the line of COVID-19 duty across the country have gone up. The stigma has grown despite Prime Minister Narendra Modis appeal to treat all healthcare staff as COVID warriors. They have had to battle social discrimination, abuse, assaults and harassment along with the virus.

Now, the Ghaziabad municipal administration has appealed to residents welfare associations (RWAs) and local councillors to advise doctors and healthcare staff working in Delhi to stay there and not return home. Many RWAs and societies in Ghaziabad immediately started issuing notices to doctors and healthcare workers to find temporary arrangements in Delhi.

This is a discriminatory order, you cant shower us with flowers one day, throw stones another day and then send directions to our RWAs to not let us come back to our own homes. The government should help fight the stigma, not promote it. The RWAs or the councillors should not be given such powers for restricting doctors or healthcare workers, said Dr Srinivas, general secretary of Resident Doctor's Association (RDA), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

The AIIMS RDA wrote a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah requesting him to intervene in the matter. Various residential societies are issuing notices and restricting entry of healthcare providers during this critical time while facing pandemic, which has amplified the shortage of human resources in various parts of the country. Doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff involved in COVID19 duties are facing the additional stress of applying for passes to commute from Ghaziabad, Noida and Haryana to the various government/private hospitals in Delhi, the letter reads.

Calling it discriminatory, the Indian Medical Association has also objected the advisory from the Ghaziabad administration.

Ghaziabad the administration issued a clarification, saying, The order was not meant to be compulsory. The appeal was made keeping in mind the rising number of COVID cases, and on the suggestion of the surveillance team to restrict border movement.

But the damage is already done, it appears, as more and more RWAs are now issuing notices to doctors and HCWs to not come back to their homes.
When it comes to building a website, you need a domain name. It's what people will type into Google when they are searching for your farm and it should match the brand you want to emphasize and take control of on the internet. A domain name is not the website. It's more like an address you buy and use to point to your website.

For instance, I own donschindler.com and it points to my WordPress blog. Other farmers have their farm brand, such as DairyCarrie.com or TDFhonestfarming.com, while others choose to do their farm's name lowercase, like threemilecanyonfarms.com or mackinsondairy.com.

If you add "dairy" or "farm" to the name you select, it can help Google understand what your website will be about. Using only abbreviations does not help Google understand the domain very well, but you wont have to worry about people typing in the domain like they used to. Now, people just search to find a website and don't worry much about typing the domain name correctly into the browser.

It's pretty simple to buy a domain name. Just go to a provider, such as Google Domains, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Hover,or IONOS. They can range from $8 a year to more than $30, depending on the provider. I don't recommend one over the other, but be careful of add-ons that you don't need, like a private registrar or domain protection.

You may want to use your domain for your email address as well. Most domain providers have that system built in, but you'll have to set it up and pay their monthly or yearly fee.

Should you use a dot com?

It's up to you. Dot Com is a top-level domain and was meant for commercial businesses back in the day, which is why it was so popular. Now, there are many different top-level domains (TLDs) like .farm or .bio. It's up to you, but some of the more expensive TLD's don't do much for the domain itself. Being found in a search is more about the content on your website versus the domain name.

Once you have the domain name, the next step in building a website is selecting the web content management system. I'll walk you through selecting a system in another blog post.

Are you a dairy farmer who needs help getting started in social media and connecting with consumers? Your local and national dairy checkoff can help. Please reach out to them via dairy.org or contact me at don.schindler@dairy.org. If you would like to learn more about your national dairy checkoff, you can join our Facebook group or visit dairy.org.





The author is a Senior Vice President of Digital Initiatives at Dairy Management Inc.
A police officer was injured on Friday during clashes with miscreants, protesting the killing of terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen chief Riyaz Naikoo, in Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Fayaz Hussain sustained head injury during stone pelting by miscreants at Nasrullahpora locality in Budgam district, the officials said.

The miscreants pelted stones to protest the killing of Naikoo and his associate during an encounter with security forces in the Awantipora area of Pulwama district on Wednesday.

Police used batons and tear smoke shells to chase away the protesters, the officials said, adding there were no reports of any injuries among the protesters so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
skynews-county-lines-drug-dealer_4442718.jpg

Drug dealers are disguising themselves as joggers to keep their cover during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to an expert on gangs.

Professor Simon Harding, director of the National Centre for Gang Research (NCGR) at the University of West London, said "county lines" gangsters were dressing up as joggers so they could blend into the background on deserted streets and continue their drug dealing.

It legitimises your presence on the street to avoid police detection otherwise you might draw attention on empty streets, he said.

Professor Harding, who has just published a book on county lines gangs, said gangs were also using fake NHS ID badges to continue street dealing.

It gives the impression that you are a key worker so that you can move about unhindered and unchallenged with the NHS logo clearly visible, he said.

There had also been at least two cases of NHS staff being mugged for their NHS lanyards, he added.

many dealers were also "heeding government advice on social distancing", turning to social media, "drive-by sales" or letterbox drops to avoid infection.

Gangs were using social media more to communicate with members or threatening rivals rather than congregating on street corners.

Drugs were thrown from their cars after users dropped their money on the back seat to avoid personal contact or they were dropped off through letter boxes, with the money passed back through.

"On one hand they really are heeding Government advice on social distancing, but at the same time it is business as usual and as people were panic-buying food, dealers were running bulk deals and selling lockdown party packs," he said.

"Vehicles are being used more often to carry out deals arranged by phone, with products thrown from windows and money chucked on the back seat to keep items clean."

Professor Harding said the lockdown and travel restrictions are affecting the "county lines" gang model - which sees young and vulnerable people used as couriers to move drugs and cash between cities and smaller towns.

Story continues

The new tactics have also led to a reduction in so-called "cuckooing" - where gang members take over the home of a vulnerable person to cut, sort and deal drugs - because it is seen as too risky for health, he explained.

"Sending groups of young lads out to Southend-on-Sea by train to carry drugs is too risky now, so increasingly dealers are driving runners around, or hiring local people to do the job," said Prof Harding.

"Street gangs are being forced to find new tactics, such as shifting grooming and recruitment online to social media.This means young people can become ensnared in dangerous gang activity from their phones while their families have no idea and that is a worry.

They are very crafty. They are very adaptive. They have moved extremely quickly to make adaptations to their method of drug supply.

Last month, National Crime Agency (NCA) director general Lynn Owens said prices are rising with fewer drugs entering into the UK.

She said some drug dealers are trying to disguise themselves as key workers by wearing high visibility clothing or operating from supermarket car parks as they adapt to the coronavirus lockdown.

"They are having to find new ways of working and new networks," Ms Owens said. "Drug dealers moving illicit drugs are concerned about greater scrutiny as they recognise that with less people on the streets, they are more visible."

On April 14, UK Border Force officials found 14 kilos of cocaine stashed among two consignments of facemasks after stopping a Polish van driver near Calais.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday expressed grief over the death of migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh in a train accident in Aurangabad district and announced a financial aid of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

IMAGE: Police personnel inspect the spot after a goods train ran over a group of migrant workers while they were sleeping on the tracks, in Aurangabad district, on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo

At least 14 migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, who were sleeping on rail tracks, were crushed to death by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in the early hours of Friday.

Two other labourers were injured in the accident.

The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40 km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh. They slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion, an official said.

In a statement, Thackeray expressed grief over the tragedy and said the aid of Rs 5 lakh to each of the families of the deceased will be given from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

He said the cost of medical treatment of the injured would be borne by his government.

Thackeray said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places.

"Arrangements will be made soon. Labourers should not lose patience," he said.

After learning about the tragedy, Thackeray spoke to Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta and railway officials to get details about what happened.

These labourers were employed in a steel manufacturing plant in Jalna, a neighbouring district of Aurangabad in central Maharashtra.

Special Shramik trains are being operated from different parts of the state to ferry stranded migrant workers to their native places.

Thackeray appealed to migrant workers not to put their lives at risk and stay at shelter camps till travel arrangements are made for them.

'The state government is in constant touch with the Railway ministry . A train will start from Mumbai, too, soon. I appeal to workers not to put their lives at risk .

'Shelter camps for the stranded workers are being operated by district administration. Arrangements for food and medicine have been made in these camps.

'Don't leave the camps till you are informed about train schedule,' Thackeray said in the statement.

Death of migrants in train accident 'heart-wrenching': Pawar

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Friday termed the death of 14 migrant workers in the Aurangabad train accident as heart-wrenching and said the Centre must work closely in unison with state governments to ensure labourers reach their homes safely.

His party colleagues, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and Water Resources Minister Jayant Patil, also expressed shock over the deaths of migrant workers in the train accident.

Pawar said the issue of migrants walking back to their native places must be looked into seriously and all necessary steps be taken for their safe journeys.

'News of migrants losing their lives in the Aurangabad railway accident is heart-wrenching. Issue of migrants walking on foot to go back to their hometowns must be looked into seriously and all necessary steps must be taken for their safe travel,' Pawar tweeted.

'(The) central government must work closely in unison with the state governments to ensure that these migrants reach their homes safely. My Condolences to families of the deceased, may their souls rest in peace,' he added.

The former Union minister said contractors/employers should take care of workers from the unorganised sector if the latter are leaving towns fearing loss of jobs.

The state governments too should form flying squads to take care of their (workers) needs consistently. The Centre and state governments should come together and solve the problem immediately, he said on the micro-blogging site.

Deshmukh, in his message, said the entire state is part of the grief of the kin of the deceased workers.

The accidental deaths of 14 workers, who worked in Jalna, in Aurangabad at dawn on Friday is quite shocking for the entire Maharashtra. Entire Maharashtra is part of the grief of the family of the workers. Prayers to God for giving peace to the souls of the deceased and courage to their kin, Deshmukh tweeted.

Water Resources Minister Patil said the news of the tragedy has left him numb.

Worker brothers, the government is making all efforts (to help you) reach your villages. Please do not travel risking your lives, Patil urged on Twitter.

NCP MP Supriya Sule also expressed grief over the accident.

'Deeply Saddened to hear about the demise of 14 Migrant workers in Aurangabad early this morning in a Train Accident. My Heartfelt Condolences (sic),' the Parliamentarian said on the micro-blogging site.
TRENTON  Robin Vaughn is getting time to prepare a transcript to mount a defense against a censure for deriding openly gay Mayor Reed Gusciora as a pedophile and telling councilman Joe Harrison to suck the mayors dick.

The West Ward leader also claimed the transcript will help her with a cross-censure of Harrison for allegedly threatening her on Saturdays 54-minute coronavirus briefing.

On it, Vaughn, Gusciora and Harrison traded barbs with the West Ward official, but Vaughn has received most of the condemnation for her homophobic insults.

Several blue-chip Democrats and two gay-rights groups called for Vaughns resignation after hearing the tape. And some West Ward residents are considering a recall petition.

Council president Kathy McBride moved back the censure hearings to May 21.

Vaughn, who called for the release of the tape, wants her hearing held in executive session while Harrison wants his held publicly.

I have nothing to hide, Harrison said.

Moving forward with an executive session Thursday night could have violated the Open Public Meetings Act, McBride cautioned, because the public didnt have adequate notice of the closed-door session.

The Trentonian raised the OPMA issue with city officials earlier in the day.

McBride urged the legislative body to pump the breaks for fear of circumventing the law because a few members are out for blood and have ants in their pants.

The council voted Tuesday 5 to 2 not to censure Vaughn without first issuing her a Rice notice at the advice of law director John Morelli.

City clerk Dwayne Harris then issued Rice notices to the council members Thursday.

Vaughn, doubting the veracity of media reports of her comments on Saturdays coronavirus briefing, said she needed time to prepare a transcript to defend herself and proceed with her censure against Harrison.

I would like that time to get that necessary evidentiary document ready so that could be referenced during my complaint against Mr. Harrison, Vaughn said. That transcript should be available. I would need that to discuss the threats he made against me during his tirade.

Harrison contended any transcript prepared by Vaughn is worthless and pushed the council to hold the hearing.

I dont need any time. Im ready to go right now, he said.

The clerk noted that he did not make an official recording of the the call and wouldnt prepare a transcript based off an unofficial recording leaked to The Trentonian.

At-large councilman Jerell Blakeley asked what good a transcript would do to exonerate Vaughn.

I have no interest in having this exchange with you, the West Ward leader said.

Im sure you wouldnt, Blakeley said.

The issue is between Joseph Harrison and myself. Period, she responded.

Several residents excoriated Vaughn for her meltdown and at least one civic association, the Old Mill Hill Society, passed a resolution demanding Vaughns ouster.

Vaughn has apologized but some city leaders and residents said the mea culpa fell short of a genuine apology.

Apology not accepted. Resign, one resident said the meeting.

Vaughn elected not to address the governing body during civic comments.

Reading from a prepared statement when it was his turn, Blakeley called the national controversy the latest example of his colleague unwillingness to stand up against homophobia and anti-Semitism.

He was talking about McBrides Jew down comment during an executive session last year.

The councilman didnt give a pass to Gusciora or Harrison for their conduct on the call.

It was no ones finest hour, Blakeley said.

But he said it was a false equivalency to suggest being called an idiot was on par with unsubstantiated allegations of pedophilia.

Vaughn also attacked Harrisons mother as a whore and suggested his dad was an absentee deadbeat.

Blakeley accused fellow legislators of deflecting from Vaughns conduct by attacking him with insidious lies.

The at-large councilman was accused of assaulting South Ward councilman George Muschals wife and calling her white trash, and insulting vice president Marge Caldwell-Wilson as an old hag.

I want to let the people of Trenton know that better days are coming, Blakeley said.

Caldwell-Wilson said she did not condone any of city officials comments during the call, especially Vaughns.

She said its not the first time vitriol has been directed at city leaders. She detailed how she has also been on the receiving end of some of the hate.

She said hes has been called a racist, idiot, know-nothing and old hag, urging council to get a hold of their emotions.

Caldwell-Wilson took action against Vaughn for suggesting she was a criminal when a former associate siphoned off funds from her campaign account.

Its time to cease and desist with the name-calling and deal with the citys business in a professional manner, the vice president said.

Harrison said he felt bad for his and the mayors moms because they had to read Vaughns insults.

The pedophilia allegation led some people to flood Guscioras Twitter with hate comments.

The hate screeds were turned over to the State and Trenton Police, Gusciora said.

My stomach is still in knots, Harrison said. Peoples lives have been destroyed.

Harrison has threatened to take legal action against Vaughn.

Feeding into the deflection tactics, Muschal renewed allegations against Blakeley, suggesting the councilman thinks he lives in a glass house.

He didnt strike my wife. He didnt assault my wife, but he called her white trash in front of numerous people, Muschal said. So when he says Ms. Vaughn has problems, yes, she did have problems. But he has just as many problems that no one brought out.

We all have to do better, Muschal continued. Ive been in four different councils, and let me tell you, none of them were prizes. However, this seems to be the worst, the worst. Ive seen fistfights with the other councils. I seen it all with Tony Mack.  People who live in glass houses shouldnt throw stones. Your day is coming. Its all going to be brought out.

Is that a threat? Blakeley asked.

Sooner or later, your glass house is going to come apart, Muschal said.

Im looking forward to your retirement, Blakeley said.

At-large councilman Santiago Rodriguez called the bickering and infighting a waste of energy and said everyone on the call was wrong.

He refused to take sides.

I was not elected to condemn anybody. I am not a judge, he said.
RACINE COUNTY  Racine County, as of Thursday afternoon, is reporting a total of 625 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

That total is up from 582 on Wednesday. In addition, the Wisconsin National Guard has announced it has sent two teams to Racine County to help with COVID-19 testing.

A Guard team began a specimen collection mission at a medical facility in Sturtevant on Thursday. In addition, earlier this week on Monday, the National Guard collected 160 specimens at a food processing facility in Burlington. The release from the National Guard did not add any additional information about the locations.

The National Guard is helping throughout the state as needed with testing and support.

State numbers

The state reported 12 new deaths on Thursday, for a Wisconsin-wide total of 374 due to the coronavirus since it began tallying numbers, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. State numbers lag behind local numbers. The total number of coronavirus deaths in Racine County remained at 16 as of Thursday afternoon.

At the state level, the results of 5,523 new tests were released Thursday, with 314 coming back positive. That makes for 5.7% of the tests that day, marking a 5-day decline in the percentage of positive tests.

There have been 102,250 total tests given in the state, and 9,215 of them, or 9% have been positive.

In Racine Countys neighboring counties, DHS reported 610 confirmed cases in Kenosha County and 14 deaths; 226 in Walworth County and 9 deaths; 380 in Waukesha County and 22 deaths; and 3,573 cases in Milwaukee County.

There have been 212 deaths in Milwaukee County, the largest number in any of the states 72 counties.

Racine County has the fourth highest rate of cases in the state, the number out of 100,000 residents. Kenosha County, Brown County and Milwaukee County have higher rates.

In addition to the 625 confirmed Racine County cases, the county has 154 probable cases. Probable cases are symptomatic individuals who have not been tested but are presumed positive because they had direct contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, or whose COVID-19 test results were inconclusive.

State numbers for Racine County show out of 3,873 tests, 15% have come back positive as of Thursday.

Testing site online resource

Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday that the Department of Health Services has launched a new online resource that makes it easier for the public to access testing sites throughout the state. This searchable map provides Wisconsinites with testing site locations, contact information, hours of operation and guidance on how to schedule an appointment.

From Monday, May 11 through Friday, May 15, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Wisconsin residents or people who work in Wisconsin who are experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19 can come to a free, drive-thru clinic in Burlington. Drive-thru testing will be conducted at Burlington High School, 400 McCanna Parkway.

Racine Countys community test site will have the capacity to conduct 300 nasal swab tests each day.

Pets and COVID-19

There is still uncertainty surrounding pets and COVID-19, according to a Racine County press release issued earlier this week.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that people with COVID-19 isolate themselves from other people and animals, including pets, during their illness until more is known about how this virus affects animals.

When possible, have another member of your household care for your pets while you are sick. Avoid contact with your pet, including petting, snuggling, being kissed/licked and sharing food or bedding.

If you must care for your pet or be around animals while sick, wear a cloth face covering or face mask and wash your hands before and after you interact with them.

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.
The rules, announced just as Moscow was shaking off the last icy chill of a long winter, make no provision for exercise, except for pet-owners, who are allowed to walk their dogs within 100 yards of their homes.

In a country with a long history of legal nihilism, the mayors stay-at-home pleas were not expected to gain much traction. Russia is, after all, a land where, according to popular wisdom, the severity of the law is compensated by the laxity of its enforcement and when something is not allowed but is greatly desired it can be done.

Most Muscovites, however, have more or less obeyed. That the threat was real, and not just another propaganda exercise to keep protesters off the streets or to gin up fury at the West, became clear in late March. That is when President Vladimir V. Putin shelved a referendum on constitutional changes that would allow him to stay in power until 2036.

Russia at the time had reported only 658 infections but, Mr. Putin, broadcasting from his country retreat, said it was objectively impossible to stop the virus from spreading. It now has more than 187,000 cases, after reporting more than 10,000 new infections per day for six straight days.

A vast propaganda machine geared to trumpeting the triumphs of Mr. Putin has mostly shifted gears. On the street near my apartment, an illuminated panel that at this time of year usually has a poster celebrating victory in 1945 now features a picture of the head doctor at Moscows main hospital for coronavirus patients. Stay at home! warns the doctor, who has himself tested positive. This is the most dangerous place.
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Does your customer relationship management strategy have what it takes to reach Generation Y? Its estimated that by 2021, an additional US$394 billion in revenue could be gained from artificial intelligence adoption in CRM activities in the U.S.

As companies grow and technology evolves at a faster-than-ever pace, collecting, storing and providing data is becoming a bigger and bigger task. No customer  and certainly not your millennial customer  will wait around if youre not able to provide an answer or solution right away.

As we leave behind the information age and move into the experience age, information, systems and increasingly more businesses are driven by technological advancements  with things like AI, in-the-moment data sharing, and mobile connectivity. An intelligent CRM system is a no-brainer when deploying a dependable and up-to-date customer management strategy.

Previously, the idea of communication and customer experience simply was to make things accessible, but the experience age is all about creating an experience and building an emotional connection that makes an impact  all in the name of attracting new customers and retaining loyal ones.

In the wealth management and financial services industry, the rise of intergenerational wealth is considered by some experts as one of the top trends that will influence the paradigm shift in the wealth management industry in 2020.

In fact forecasts indicate that by 2030 millennials will hold five times as much wealth as they do now for a total of $20 trillion in assets globally, with baby boomers expected to pass down another $30 trillion in assets by 2050 in North America alone.

Millennials are Americas largest living adult generation, which means attracting and retaining Generation Y customers should be top of mind for any business. To attract and retain, businesses have to speak their language, and learn to communicate in the way they do  often this means through technology and social media.

While every business and industry has different needs, in the age of the customer, intelligent CRM is one way to offer exceptional customer service in a way that compliments the millennial customers expectation of an immersive and on-demand experience.

Proper integration of the right CRM system for your business, exceptional customer service and forward-looking digital features (think built-in AI capabilities!) are the key to attracting the next generation of customers who value instant communication and access to companies and brands above all else.

Following are four key ways investing in an intelligent CRM solution will help you earn the loyalty of this fast-growing, influential segment of customers, maximize your day-to-day productivity, and ultimately increase your profitability.

1. Personalization: Never Miss Another Milestone

As many as 68 percent of customers leave if they feel you dont care about them, based on one study. Thanks to increased automation, its easier than ever for millennials to leave one company for another at the click of a button.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Innovation is crucial to survival in this age, but its important to note that across many industries, this likely does not take as high of a priority as it should. For example, in the wealth management and financial services sector, only about 20 percent of client-facing interactions today are done digitally by industry professionals, recent research from Nucoro shows.

Only 55 percent of these same companies will be around in 10 years if they fail to innovate digitally with solutions like intelligent CRM, it suggests.

Integrated CRM pulls data from back-office systems and third-party applications, essentially doing all the heavy lifting for you so you never have to miss another milestone that could make or break your customers loyalty. Let it automatically prompt you with timely, appropriate reasons to call your clients, whether its a birthday, new job, or the birth of a new family member.

2. Use AI to Automate Tasks, Saving Time and Boosting Productivity

Digital literacy is needed now more than ever when it comes to companies and their clients. To maintain, strengthen and acquire new and existing client relationships, updated technology that integrates into existing customer management processes is a non-negotiable. That means artificial intelligence capabilities are merely the next step in the client retention and engagement process  especially where Generation Y is concerned.

On average, financial advisors spend only about 50 percent of their time in client-facing interactions, with the rest of their time spent on administrative and other tasks. Why not increase that face-to-face client time by integrating an intelligent CRM system that alleviates administrative burdens so you can spend time building relationships instead?

AI-powered CRM enables advisors to review their clients portfolios, recent transactions, interests, etc., with ease, and prior to any personal interactions. That helps deepen and strengthen the client-business relationship. Historically, these are all things that would be tracked offline  a manual, labor-intensive task that often fails to comply with heightened regulatory and fiduciary responsibilities.

In addition to the many perks of intelligent CRM systems mentioned above, built-in AI capabilities offer a variety of other benefits, chief among them the cost-effective and efficient ability to automate workflows and streamline client processes.

Some companies offer digital assistants that not only generate data-driven recommendations, but also present those recommendations and tasks in order of highest value based on industry best practices or company-established guidelines.

Combining vertical-specific industry best practices with a modern, service-oriented architecture means timely information and actionable insights are delivered directly to your fingertips  a key differentiator for any business looking to level-up on its customer service.

3. Be Part of the Social Media Conversation

We live in a social media world that infiltrates every part of our daily lives. Ninety percent of millennials use at least one social media platform, and roughly three-quarters of Facebook users and 60 percent of Instagram users visit these platforms twice a day, research shows.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Whats more, its not just millennials who use social media: The same study shows that roughly 69 percent of baby boomers are active on at least one social media platform  an increase from 51 percent just five years ago, making a social media presence for your brand non-negotiable.

Your intelligent CRM system knows your customers better than you ever will. Integrating intelligent CRM into your growth strategy allows you to streamline all your marketing initiatives and personal customer touchpoints easily, by centralizing all of your social media efforts into one accessible platform.

The rise of social media gives customers much more negotiating power than past generations, thanks to their ability to control the conversation not just with you but with their peers as well. While specific features may vary, based on the level of integration, social CRM capabilities generally speaking will allow you to stay informed about your customers personal milestones and highlights.

Youll never miss an opportunity to follow up and offer the best recommendations, identify brand mentions and customer trends, and gain insight into best practices and tips for engaging with a current or prospective client based on the analytics gathered.

Whats more, social CRM isnt just about following your customers and getting them to like your page and posts. Its about providing value  whether by resolving a customer complaint quickly online, or offering a discount to a new customer. Its an effective way to ensure youre always apart of the conversation!

4. Eliminate Costly Mistakes Through Automated Compliance, Best Practices

We are in the age of the millennial, but also the age of heightened regulatory reform. Organizations that fail to adopt systems that track all client communications and interactions will be at risk. The financial services industry, for instance, has been rocked in the past decade as much by scandal and turbulent markets as it has by the resulting culture of control, transparency requirements, and demand for high-level accountability.

Investing in modern, integrated CRM software with a centralized security model, flexible auditing capabilities, and a repository of client interactions and customer risk tolerance documents will ensure your business longevity if the need ever arises, without impeding your ability to serve and earn the trust of all your clients  millennials or otherwise.

Integrating the software with compliance systems in addition to third-party applications  including market news and other relevant data  provides unprecedented abilities to leverage best practices, from accurate and meaningful reporting capabilities to interdepartmental collaboration, with everything always pointing back to a focus on proactive customer service, revenue growth, and automation that increases productivity.

Its not just about meeting your customers needs anymore. Building relationships that are meaningful and that actually last is essential to your business long-term success. Whats even more important to consider is the power of influence loyal millennial customers could provide for your business.

Seventy-four percent of millennials believe they can affect the purchasing decisions of fellow millennials as well as those of older generations, including baby boomers, one study shows.

Millennials are much more likely to rate their experience with a service or product online, meaning people are going to hear about their experience with your brand whether you like it or not.

Utilizing antiquated technologies and customer service tools will undoubtedly drive away your most important segment of customers. With millennials expecting fast and accessible customer service any time of day, its crucial to your business success to recognize that and address it with the right tools.

Technology constantly evolves to meet consumer needs. As you can see, its nearly impossible to stay competitive in todays marketplace without innovating to meet these needs. Regardless of which CRM solution you end up choosing for your business, theres no reason that with proper integration, you cant adopt a client-centric business model tailored to millennials, baby boomers, and everyone in between  one that understands their needs, motivators and interests, while also fostering loyalty to your business and brand.

From alleviating administrative burdens to retaining top talent, to leveraging enterprise information to drive revenues, and automating regulatory compliance and best practices, intelligent CRM is a one-stop-shop for elevating your business in 2020.

By investing in a next-generation CRM solution that is built specifically to help your business effectively service and resonate with your clients  not to mention increase the time you are able to spend on activities that grow your business and revenues  you can rest knowing you are doing everything possible to propel your business to the next level. The only question now is, which CRM solution will you choose?
NEW YORK, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Mizsei's new Microbubble Showerhead is an Award-winning showerhead that feels fantastic, cleans deep, and saves over 6,800 gallons of water.

MIZSEI MFG CO., LTD.

MIZSEI MFGCO., LTD., one of Japan's most innovative showerhead companies, announced the launch of their crowdfunding on Indiegogo campaign for the newest innovation, the MIZSEI Microbubble Showerhead on May 5, 2020. The company was seeking to raise $10,000 USD to start producing the showerheads to distribute to the market and they were fully funded within an hour from their launch of the campaign. Currently, the campaign has been featured as one of the trending campaigns on Indiegogo.

The Microbubbles are created by hydrodynamic cavitation. First, the water flow is accelerated. Immediately after the pressure is regulated, the water generates high-energy cavitation bubbles. Finally, the bubbles collapse releasing intense energy upon contact.

The Microbubble Showerhead releases 920 million microbubbles per second on the skin creating a truly refreshing and rejuvenating shower experience. Additionally, the spray covers 60% more surface area in width. Mizsei's showerhead provides these perks, while efficiently consuming 30% less water compared to regular showerheads. Mizsei helps you water, carbon emissions, and money. In fact, you will save 6868 gallons of water and $200 on utility bills per year by switching to Mizsei Microbubble Showerhead.

The handle is engineered specifically to fit comfortably in your hand. It features a one-push water stop button and simple switching between mist and shower mode. This showerhead brings a spa-quality relaxation into your own home, as the atomized microbubble technology provides increased blood flow, muscle relaxation, and penetration of the pores by utilizing mist droplets 1/3 of the size of your pores. Mizsei Microbubble Showerhead will leave you a warming feeling and increased heat retention after showering.

Their showerheads are listed now for the starting price of $169 (Launch Special 32% off discount). They also offer 2 Pack VIP Special for $298 and 4 Pack VIP Special for $596. For further information, please go to the Indiegogo crowdfunding page.

Media Contact:

Kay Matsuura

Phone: 212-575-8081

Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE MIZSEI MFG CO., LTD.
Xiaomi could launch its latest MIUI 12 update for its global users on May 19.

Xiaomi could launch its latest MIUI 12 update for its global users on May 19. MIUI 12 was announced just weeks back with the Mi 10 Youth Edition in China and brings in a lot of visual and functional changes to how you use a Xiaomi phone.

MIUIs official Twitter handle posted a rather intriguing puzzle for Mi Fans to solve and asks them to remember this important day followed by the hashtag MIUI 12. Now, the puzzle is analytical in nature but it is easier if you know the mathematical order of operations or simply put, the BODMAS rule.

Mi fans can figure out the answer. How about you?

This is a very important message! If you get the answer, remember this important day. #MIUI #MIUI12 pic.twitter.com/3WVDJDTYCm  MIUI (@miuirom) May 7, 2020

Solving the puzzle, you get 19 as the important day, however, it could either be May 19 or June 19. We expect Xiaomi to announce the MIUI 12 global on May 19 given that it has actively started sharing teasers such as this puzzle in question. This could indicate an imminent announcement of the MIUI 12 for a global audience and as such May 19 could be the likely date for the launch.

MIUI comes with an updated Dark Mode 2.0, redesigned camera app, new always-on display themes, privacy options, new live wallpapers and more. Visually, the developers have opted for a flat and minimal design by grouping different UI elements.

The camera app has also been updated to support the customized layout of buttons and various modes while new multi-tasking features such as window mode, and PiP bring more functional options to the table.

MIUI 12 also features advanced health monitoring tools such as tracking a users sleep cycle with as close to 96 percent accuracy.

As for the Indian variant of the MIUI 12, we expect Xiaomi to release it sometime after the global launch. Nevertheless, the developers have already begun recruiting beta testers for MIUI 12 in India but currently only for Redmi K20 and K20 Pro.
In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, the indigenous tribes residing in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has another issue at hand: genocide. Brazil's far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the supporters of his government are dismantling rules that are protecting the reserves.

Fighting for Amazon

Environmental officials, environmentalists, and indigenous leaders fear that the coronavirus pandemic is being used by the government as a smokescreen for a new assault on the rainforest. They say a presidential decree awaiting congressional approval and new rules at the indigenous agency Funai effectively legalize land grabbing in protected forests and indigenous reserves.

According to Alessandra Munduruku, an indigenous leader from Para state, the indigenous people are not alone and that they have to fight against the virus, the loggers, and the wildcat miners. They do not know which is worse.

Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, is infamous for his racist remarks about indigenous people and a national argument in favor of developing the Amazon, which is popular among wildcat miners, farmers, land grabbers, and loggers. He said that Brazil's largest indigenous reserve, Yanomami, was too big and he attacked environment agencies for fining people for environmental crimes.

In December 2019, Bolsonaro issued a decree known as MP910 that allows farmers to squat up to 2,500 hectares within government-controlled reserves to legalize it. The previous law in 2017 allowed this for land squatted until 2011 and Bolsonaro's decree extended it until 2018.

Also Read: Gas Leak in Indian Chemical Plant Kills 11, Hundreds Still in Hospital

Critics of the decree called it the "land grabbers decree". Grabbing land on federal reserves by burning the dead trees, deforesting it, and putting cattle on it to consolidate possession is a practice in the Amazon. The decree has until May 19 to be approved by Congress and lawmakers from the agricultural lobby are pushing for a vote before then, even though the world is in the middle of the pandemic.

On April 22, Funai published a new rule to allow land grabbers on indigenous reserves to regularize their land, as long as the reserve has not completed the demarcation process. The demarcation process can take decades to complete and it requires presidential approval.

The Funai employees' association said that the new rule will turn Funai into a real-estate notary for land grabbers, squatters, and land developers in indigenous lands.

The National Council of Human Rights called for the rule to be revoked and noted that 237 indigenous reserves had yet to complete the demarcation process and another six were restricted use areas with reports of groups who have no immunity to diseases such as flu. Land grabbers could now claim the title if the rule is applied.

The defenders of land grabbers stated that they will help regularize the chaotic land ownership situation in the Amazon. It will allow the farmers to title land they squatted in the past and it lets them access credit and improves productivity, and it will reduce their need to expand further into the forest.

Environmentalists argued that the government has a project and that it is advancing over the forest, over indigenous peoples, to benefit those who want to cut the forest down.

Deforestation in Brazil

The deforestation in Brazil began in 2013, after more than 10 years of decline and a year after an overhaul of Brazil's forest code by former president Dilma Rousseff included an amnesty for people who deforested before 2008. Under President Bolsonaro, deforestation increased and reached 9,800 square kilometers in the year to July 2019.

Related Article: Azerbaijan Pit of Fire Never Stops Burning for 4,000 Years

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May 7, 2020

News

By Jim Garamone

Defense.gov

U.S.-British Arctic Exercise Shows U.S. Concern for Region

A U.S. and British exercise underway in the Barents Sea highlights the importance of the Arctic region in a time of climate change.

"Three Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyers  USS Donald Cook, USS Porter and USS Roosevelt  are supported by fast combat support ship USNS Supply and joined by the Royal Navy's HMS Kent to assert freedom of navigation and demonstrate seamless integration among allies," a U.S. Navy news release said.

This is the first U.S. exercise in the Barents Sea since the mid-1990s, Navy officials said.

Climate change is affecting every country on the globe, and the U.S. military must adapt to provide defense, officials said. Whether it is increasingly dangerous floods, longer-lasting droughts, more and more powerful hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones, service members must change to operate and win in these new environments, they added.

Climate change is particularly fast in the colder regions of the globe, with glaciers and ice caps melting at alarming levels. That change means new operational environments.

For centuries, explorers looked for the fabled Northwest Passage from Europe across the top of North America to the Pacific. The straits and islands and bays still bear the names of Hudson, Frobisher, Ellesmere and Cook. Many explorers died looking for the water passage, but the Arctic ice cap was too large. It wasn't until the early 20th century that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, navigated a small boat from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

But climate change has opened that possibility. The Arctic ice cap is shrinking, and there is the possibility that a route may open for at least part of the year. The Arctic region above Russia is seeing the same warming trend.

The first commercial ship to transit the Northwest Passage was the SS Manhattan in 1969. The ship  refitted with an icebreaker bow  was an oil tanker testing to see if the route would work for carrying Alaskan crude out of Point Barrow.

But ships without special fittings can now transit the passage. In 2016, the passenger liner Crystal Serenity sailed from Vancouver, British Columbia, to New York City using the route. It took 28 days.

In 2013, the first commercial bulk carrier transited the passage. The MS Nordic Orion carried a cargo of coking coal from Vancouver to the Finnish port of Pori.

All this presents new geostrategic challenges, said Navy Adm. James Foggo, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe and the commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy.

"The High North is attracting global interest, with abundant natural resources and opening maritime routes," Foggo said in an article in Defense One.

Russia  with its long coastline on the Arctic Ocean  is aggressively seeking to assert its preeminence in the region. The Russians recently unveiled a new icebreaker, the Ivan Papanin, that can carry Kalibr cruise missiles. "Who puts missiles on icebreakers?" Foggo asked.

Russia is also deploying surface ships and new hybrid Kilo-class submarines. "We're seeing the Russians deploy more submarines in the North Atlantic, and these subs are deploying for longer periods of time and with more lethal weapon systems," the admiral said.

The Soviets had outposts all along its Arctic coast. These were abandoned following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But Russia has returned to Soviet-era outposts and built new military facilities above the Arctic Circle.

Russia at least borders on the Arctic Ocean. China calls itself "a near-Arctic nation" and seeks to assert its rights in the region. The Chinese are calling for freedom of navigation in the Arctic, even as they try to suppress that right in the South China Sea.

There will be more deployments and more exercises in the High North, Foggo said. "The Russians are operating with state-of-the-art nuclear submarines," he said. "That said, we still have the competitive advantage. But they're good, and getting better."

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ISLE ROYALE, MI - When couples talk about how much they love the Great Lakes, most of them are probably thinking about their favorite beach spot, or someplace they love to stroll on the sand hand-in-hand. For Ron and Jackie Polomski, their favorite spots run a little deeper  and colder. Their happy places are under the surface of Lake Superior, outfitted in scuba gear and exploring the shipwrecks that surround Michigans Isle Royale.

The Munising area couple who met and fell in love at Michigan Technological University built an adventurous career  and a 44-year marriage  with the help of freshwater diving. For 15 years, they ran a charter dive business catering to those who sought the waters of the remote national park archipelago. They helped outfit adventurers who wanted to explore shipwrecks from the last couple centuries, vessels large and small who didnt escape the rocky teeth of the islands shoals and outcroppings. Isle Royale has at least 10 major shipwrecks documented and protected by the National Park Service. Some have mooring lines attached and are marked by buoys, and divers must register with the NPS before they head out to explore the waters.

With their charter business days behind them, the Polomskis now dive the Isle Royale area just for pleasure. They each have their favorite spots to explore, and say theyre always surprised to see new things when they drop below the surface and glide along a wreck site. Theyre also underwater photographers and have shared their photos with the National Park Services social media sites on many occasions. While the island park is currently closed through June 14, the couples pictures show clearly the sunken treasures that surround the rocky wilderness.

The Polomskis agreed to share some of their photos with MLive readers.

They started diving in 1977 and dove Isle Royale for the first time in 1982. We both actually fell in love with it, even though it was cold-water diving," Jackie Polomski said.

Just like they have their own favorite wrecks to dive, they also have their own reasons for loving their time underwater.

For Jackie, a medical technologist, the quiet is the allure. I love the isolation, she said. And the history and the preservation of the wrecks. Its like stepping into an underwater museum. Even after hundreds of dives, they say there are always new things to surprise them. Its why I have continued to dive, she said.

For Ron, an engineer, his fascination runs more to the technical side of things. I like to look at all the mechanical features of the vessels. Cold water means everything is so well preserved.

He got a firsthand glimpse at how lucky Great Lakes divers are when he went to Australia to work for a few years in the 80s. He was showing some of his Lake Superior shipwreck photos to diving aficionados there when he saw how surprised they were by how intact some of the old wrecks remained. They said theyd never seen things so well preserved, in such detail, he said.

After running a charter service from their boat, Superior Diver, from 1985 to 2000, the Polomskis say theyve amassed lots of great memories of Isle Royale, which sits about 60 miles north of the Upper Peninsula mainland. One of the common questions we hear when we attend talks on Isle Royale is What is your favorite thing about the island? Most reply the solitude, the isolation, the wildlife, its rugged beauty - things like that, Jackie Polomski said. That is certainly true, but Ron and I often find our favorite stories/memories of Isle Royale will almost always include other people. Those from our charters or those whom we have met during our travels around the island - so many wonderful people - divers and non-divers alike.

While Lake Superior remains their freshwater favorite, the Polomskis also have a few saltwater spots theyve loved diving. Australia and British Columbia rank high on the list.

Both say theyve seen some changes in Isle Royales shipwrecks in the more than 35 years theyve been exploring them.

The wrecks are deteriorating over the years, Ron Polomski said. He talked about the bow of one large ship that divers used to be able to swim into and wander its levels. Right now its all open. Its collapsed.

From what theyve seen, theft and pilfering of artifacts has not been a problem in recent years. Most divers are very good at adhering to the underwater adage: Take only pictures. Leave only bubbles.

Read on for details of some of Isle Royales best-known shipwrecks, and see the Polomskis photographs of their underwater resting places.

#FindYourPark! Jackie and Ron Polomski took their first dive in #IsleRoyale #NationalPark's waters in 1982. Just three... Posted by Isle Royale National Park on Friday, July 17, 2015

KAMLOOPS

The wheel of the Kamloops, a steamship that sank in Lake Superior near Isle Royale during a storm in 1927. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

The Kamloops, a 250-foot Canadian steamship, was just three years old when it disappeared near Isle Royale during a winter storm in 1927. And while bodies of some of its crew were found months later on the island, the wreck itself wasnt discovered until a half-century later, lying on its side at the bottom of an underwater cliff.

The wreck: Owned by the Canada Steamship Company, the Kamloops carried freight and made frequent stops delivering items to Canadian ports, largely between Montreal and Thunder Bay, Ontario, records show. On Dec. 5, 1927, the Kamloops was steaming across Lake Superior with a load of fencing wire, machine parts and other cargo when an early winter storm barreled across the biggest of the Great Lakes. She was last seen a day later, ice-covered and headed toward Isle Royale. All 22 crew members were lost. The shipwreck was found in August 1977 in 260 feet of water.

A box of old Lifesaver candies found on board the wreck of the steamship Kamloops, which sank in 1927 near Isle Royale. Photo used courtesy of R. J. Polomski

Divers highlights: Given its depth, this wreck is a technical dive. Ron Polomski said he likes exploring the Kamloops because there is so much merchandise on that ship. There are lots of interesting things to see during a dive, but he said he notices even more items once he gets back on land and starts going through his dive photos. The still-intact crate of Lifesavers was a cool thing to come across, he added.

Heartbreaking note found: A search for the Kamloops in mid-December 1927 near Isle Royale turned up no signs of those lost. The following spring, bodies of some of the Kamloops crew were found on the island, record show. In December 1928, a trapper found a note in a bottle in an Ontario river. It was from Alice Bettridge, 22, who was working aboard the Kamloops and survived its sinking, only to die a short time later after making it to the island. Her parents later confirmed the handwriting was hers, according to media reports. Her note said: I am the last one left alive, freezing and starving to death on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I just want mom and dad to know my fate.

A lifeboat belonging to the Kamloops shipwreck near Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski.

CHESTER A. CONGDON

The wreck and later sinking of this bulk steel freighter in 1918 was Lake Superiors first $1 million-dollar-loss, a landmark in Great Lakes maritime history. Built in 1907, it was owned by the Continental Steamship Company at the time of its demise. Its wreckage sits in an unusual position along an Isle Royale reef, and the wreck itself is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Details of the wreck: No lives were lost when this 532-foot ship ran aground near Isle Royale just hours after it departed from Thunder Bay, Ontario on Nov. 6, 1918. It was loaded with 380,000 bushels of wheat, records show. As the ship approached Isle Royale in foggy conditions, it ran aground on a rocky shoal. The captain sent a boat for help, and all the Congdons crew members were rescued. A salvage operation was able to get about a quarter of the cargo off the ship before a Nov. 8 storm broke the freighter into two pieces and sank them.

The rudder of the Chester A. Congdon, which broke up on a shoal in Lake Superior near Isle Royale in 1918. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

Unusual position: The reason the Congdon wreck sits in anywhere from 50 to 200 feet of water is because its bow section landed on the south side of the reef it wrecked on, while its stern is on the north side, and sits much deeper.

Divers note: While diving this wreck, the Polomskis said they are always surprised to find the delicate touches still intact, like this fluted-shade light fixture shown in the photo.

A fluted glass light is still visible inside the wreck of the Chester A. Congdon near Isle Royale. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

MONARCH

Reading the details of the Monarchs last day - heading out in a blinding snowstorm in December 1906 with a load of cargo and passengers - it doesnt seem to be a big surprise that the ship veered off course and ran aground on the north end of Isle Royale.

What seems amazing is the crews daring self-rescue and their survival while they waited for help. Its also a wreck thats become an interesting dive site, and not only because the Monarchs bathtub has become a fun photo op spot for divers. Cargo scattered around the site gives divers interesting things to check out.

A pitcher sits at the Monarch shipwreck in Lake Superior near Isle Royale. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

The wreck: Built in 1890 in Canada, the 240-foot Monarch was a package and passenger freighter that had a wooden hull heavily reinforced with iron. It also had 65 cabins for crew and the passengers it carried to and from Great Lakes ports. Its regular stops included Sarnia and Thunder Bay. The Monarchs end came on Dec. 6, 1906, shortly after it left Thunder Bay with a load of wheat, oats, salmon and other cargo. Weather conditions at the time were described as a blinding snowstorm.

The ship veered several miles south of its planned course and ran full-speed into a rocky area on the north side of Isle Royales Blake Point. According to accounts of the wreck and rescue, the first mates brother carried a line through the rough waves from the grounded freighter to the shore. One watchman died, but the rest of the crew and passengers used that line as an escape route. They salvaged enough food and other supplies from the wreck to survive four days, until a nearby lighthouse keeper, alerted by their beach signal fires, could start a rescue that led to two tug boats coming to pick up the survivors on Dec. 10. A few days later, the wreck broke into pieces.

The bilge pump at the Monarch wreck site. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

A bathtub lies among the wreckage of the Monarch in Lake Superior near Isle Royale. Photo courtesy of Ron and Jackie Polomski.

EMPEROR

When this 525-foot beauty was launched in 1910, records show it was the largest Canadian-built freighter ever constructed. Then came a string of mishaps until it sank in a deadly grounding on the north end of Isle Royale in 1947. A broken main shaft on its first trip on the Great Lakes meant a long tow to Detroit for repairs. That same year, the Emperor overrode its anchor in the Soo Locks, ripping open a hole so big it sank the ship. Problems continued over the next three decades, include a crewman who died in a fall and some groundings.

The wreck: Its last ill-fated voyage began on June 3, 1947, when it left Thunder Bay, Ontario loaded with more than 10,000 tons of iron ore. Early the next morning, the Emperor ran aground on the rocks at the northeast end of Isle Royale. It sank quickly. Twelve crew members died. Survivors were picked up by a nearby U.S. Coast Guard cutter.

The engine panel aboard the Emperor, a shipwreck in Lake Superior near Isle Royale. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

The Emperor is one of the most popular dive sites around Isle Royale. The wreck sits in 25 to more than 100 feet of water, with the bow sitting higher than the stern.

Jackie Polomski said she likes exploring this wreck. The Emperor is pretty intact, she said. She likes to dive the bow area, which is a shallower dive.

Milk still inside a glass container at the wreck site of the Emperor in Lake Superior near Isle Royale. Photo courtesy of R. J. Polomski

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For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.

Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Its early morning in Washington, DC and Madeleine Albright is considering her options in a barren new world. I have a choice of reading, knitting or cleaning drawers, deadpans the 82-year-old from the rambling Georgetown home shes lived in for 52 years. Ive put off cleaning the drawers so far, and am doing a lot of reading and still teaching virtually via Zoom, so Im getting by. But if this lasts for months I dont think even I will have enough dirty drawers to keep me busy. Our interview was set up in another time: a time when people whimsically travelled between continents, went to theatres, concerts, conferences and school  all while touching their own faces 23 times an hour. Neither one of us could have imagined then that we would be conducting it over the phone, with both of us semi-isolated in our homes, both of our countries in lockdown  and Albright grimly aware of how valid the title of my new book is turning out to be. Hell and Other Destinations was always going to be a great title for an extended memoir by Americas first female secretary of state (her first book, Madam Secretary, was published in 2003). And its a great read for anyone stuck at home. After all, this is a woman who served in Bill Clintons cabinet for two presidential terms from 1993 to 2001 (as US ambassador to the UN before becoming secretary of state) and was an active participant in some of the most dramatic events of our time, from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATOs humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. This is a woman whose most famous quote remains: Theres a special place in hell for women who dont help other women; a feminist activist who decided to write this book to prove that it is possible to have an afterlife. Because it took me a long time to find my voice, and Im not going to be quiet now. Former US president Bill Clinton made Madeleine Albright the first female secretary of state in 1997. Credit:Getty Images But its true that her title seems eerily prescient today, when the coronavirus pandemic has turned so many lives into a living hell, and our destination is still very much unknown. This is a war, Albright says in the clear, measured tones of someone who has clashed with presidents, prime ministers and dictators, and is used to assessing the accuracy of every word before speaking.

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A very different kind of war, but a war nonetheless. And I never imagined anything of this magnitude happening. Of course, over the years, I thought about the things that have affected countries across the board: terrorism, climate change and nuclear proliferation. Obviously I understood the spread of HIV/AIDS and things like Ebola. But this? No, she exhales deeply, I cant admit to thinking that something like this might ever happen. As a political scientist who was nagged by the same thought throughout her time in office and beyond  Was I doing enough?  it stands to reason that Albright has primarily been thinking about the role of government in dealing with the super-virus decimating our elderly and our economy. Its what I think about all the time anyway, because of the course I teach, she says in reference to the global statecraft course, American National Security Toolbox, she teaches at nearby Georgetown University. And, of course, old habits die hard. Even today, when I read about an international crisis, she admits in Hell and Other Destinations (out here in August), I reflexively insert my name in place of the current secretary of states and think about what I might do were I in his or her shoes. I was appalled by the way Trump started out on COVID-19. One needs leadership  no question. And the leader needs to take some responsibility. Madeleine Albright Plenty of former statesmen will be relieved to not be dealing with a crisis as vast and unknowable as that caused by COVID-19, but Albright has always been atypical. Asked how she wished to be remembered when she left office, the tireless public servant snapped back, I dont want to be remembered ... As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last. Having mulled over how best to spend her afterlife  whether to write, teach, travel, contribute further towards empowering women, start a business or campaign for political candidates  Albright decided shed do it all. And when I ask what she would be doing differently to the Trump Administration in terms of combatting and reacting to the spread of COVID-19, she doesnt have to think about it for a moment.

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Many things! First of all, Trumps initial reaction, which made very little of the coronavirus, was a huge mistake. And meant the US was too slow to react? Yes. I was appalled by the way Trump started out. One needs leadership  no question. And that leader needs to take some responsibility for what is going on, and not blame others. Loading If what Albright has heard and read was true and there was no consultation with allies before the travel ban was implemented against Europe, she goes on, that too was a mistake. Because for me, the question is: to what extent is the whole of government operating here? If I were secretary of state today, I would be working with the Defence Department, the intelligence community. Then you would need the Departments of Treasury and Commerce to be involved in terms of dealing with the many economic dislocations. The UK government was also too slow to react, she believes. Very much so. And I think that some of that is due to lack of information, but some of it is straight denial: This couldnt possibly be happening. Then, of course, a lot has to do with the mechanisms of any government, in terms of how you get the different parts of it to work together. But ultimately, its clear to me that both of us denied the virulence of this and blamed others, rather than trying to figure out what the issues really were and using that information to help us. Albright as a young girl with her father, Josef Korbel. She was born in Prague in 1937 but the family fled to the UK during the war. Credit:Getty Images A quenchless thirst for information is one of the first things to emerge about Albright. Then theres her wit. People are surprised that I have a sense of humour, she says  although I suspect its the acerbic nature of it that theyre surprised by. When, at a party, a socialite once told Albright how brave she thought she had been for not getting a facelift, I was tempted to comment on the courage she had shown in dealing with the results of hers. Another time, while listening to then national security adviser Sandy Bergers complaints that people talked about military force as if it were like having an orgasm, Albright  who was tired of debates in which every time a person favoured doing something, she was called bloodthirsty, and in which every advocate of restraint was called a wimp  declared, Enough with the ad hominem attacks. And besides, I have forgotten about orgasms.

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Albright was born in Prague in 1937 to parents Josef and Anna Korbel, who fled as Adolf Hitler pushed into Czechoslovakia in 1939. The Korbels moved to the UK and sought refuge in Londons Notting Hill before it was fancy. And because people keep asking me how what were living through compares to real war, Albright has been remembering the disorientation of those earliest years. Ive been thinking about when my parents came to England in 1939 without knowing anybody, how isolated they were and what it was like to hunker down like they did. We spent the whole Blitz in a green-painted cellar on Portobello Road. She gives a small laugh thats full of nostalgia. Its just interesting thinking about it now in terms of the sacrifices that people made and what a difference it was to have someone like Churchill making statements. Still today, we remember all the brilliant things that he said; its hard not to compare. After the war the Korbels moved to Denver, Colorado, where Albrights diplomat father taught political science, and Albright won a scholarship to the prestigious Wellesley College, where she studied political science (she would go on to earn an MA and a PhD at Columbia University). While at Wellesley, she met and married the newspaper heir Joseph Albright. And when, after 23 years of marriage and three daughters  twins Anne and Alice, now 59, and Katherine, 53  her husband announced one morning, This marriage is dead and Im in love with someone else, Albrights heartbreak was the making of her. If she wasnt going to be the perfect American wife and mother, Albright would be something without such a clear-cut mould to shatter. Albrights three daughters and other family members in attendance for her swearing-in ceremony as US secretary of state in 1997. Credit:Getty Images She was 39 when she got what she calls her first job job and started working her way up the ranks of the Democratic Party, advising presidential candidates such as Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, before being made secretary of state by Bill Clinton at 59.

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Asked whether she stands by the quote in her first memoir, stating that she would have given up any thought of a career if it would have made [her ex-husband] Joe change his mind, Albright pauses. Listen. I probably would not have had the job I had as secretary of state had I still been married. And thats partially because I would have tried to be more whatever-it-was-that-I-wasnt. But I loved being secretary of state, and being able to represent America as a refugee meant so much to me. I do regret my divorce, of course, but I have loved my life since then. We had no problems dealing with Ambassador Albright, so we wouldnt have any problems with Secretary Albright. Arab members of the UN on Albright's proposed appointment as US secretary of state She tells me how proud she is of her three girls now: Anne is a county circuit court judge, Alice is CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, and Katie is CEO of Safe & Sound, a child abuse-prevention centre. And I do give credit to their father. In the end, I think that things worked out pretty well. Bill Clinton may have had a weakness for women, but his quickness to appoint them within his cabinet was one of his greatest strengths. And, of course, Albright wasnt just a woman but the first woman. When my name came up, someone in the White House said, Theres no way a woman could do it because the Arab members couldnt deal with a female secretary of state. But then the Arab members at the UN got together to say, We had no problems dealing with Ambassador Albright, so we wouldnt have any problems with Secretary Albright.  Albright with the Akubra given to her by former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer during her visit to Australia in 1998. Credit:Robert Pearce Albrights bullishness in the face of petty and sometimes insufferable misogyny in office and beyond will make the reader laugh out loud. And actually, I had more problems with the men in our own government, she says, partially, I think, because they had known me too long. I had them to my house for dinner and passed their plates around. I had been a staffer and xeroxed and made a lot of coffee, so they must have thought, How did she get to be secretary of state? That feeling was evident, initially, in the way that I was put down when I was a cabinet member and would be arguing for doing something in Bosnia. Dont be so emotional, the men would say. And there were always ways of putting me down, but I learnt to argue in a way that didnt get that reaction from them.

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Karnataka recorded its biggest ever single-day spike of 48 new COVID-19 cases, including an infant, taking its total to 753 on Friday but the state government ruled out any link between the surge and relaxation in lockdown curbs.

The number of active cases stood at 346 with all but five of them were in isolation at designated hospitals and in stable condition. The five were undergoing treatment in the intensive care unit, a health department bulleting said.

"As of 5 PM on May 8, cumulatively 753 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state, it includes 30 deaths and 376 discharges," it said.

Ten people, who have recovered, were discharged on Friday.

"Not a good day as far as numbers are concerned, today being the day with highest number of positives," Minister Suresh Kumar, who is government spokesperson for COVID-19 related developments, told reporters.

However, ruling out any connection between spike in cases and relaxation in lockdown, he said fresh cases were coming from place and source where patients have already tested positive.

"...As of today we cannot find connection between lockdown and spike in cases, but it is definitely a caution that if quarantine measures are not followed properly, it will add to the tally," he said.

The 48 new cases include 14 from Davangere, 12 from Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada, 11 from Belagavi, seven from Bengaluru Urban, three from Chitradurga and one from Ballari.

At least 12 of them are children (below 18 years) including a five-month old girl.

Barring seven, including three with travel history to Ahmedabad, all others are contacts of patients already tested positive.

On the cost per patient for treatment, the Minister said according to a rough calculation shared by the Bangalore Medical College Rs 4.74 crore had been spent as of date which included capital expenditure of Rs 1.40 crore for purchase of equipment and construction of COVID-19 wards.

As the hospital treated 136 patients, it worked out the average cost at Rs 3.49 lakh, he said adding similar reports had been received from other COVID-19 hospitals also.

Bengaluru Urban with 168 cases continued to account for maximum number of coronavirus infections, followed by Mysuru (88) and Belagavi (83).

A total of 98,081 samples, including 4,546 on Friday, had been tested so far. Of them, 92,237 samples have reported negative with 4,481 on Friday.

Noting that it has come to government's notice that in some COVID-19 hospitals senior specialists, specialists and teaching faculties were not attending infected patients, Kumar said instructions had been given for preparing a duty roster and ensure they too took up the work on a rotation basis.

The Health department has issued a circular on making free lab services to the public under the National Free Diagnostic Services at all government health facilities.

Services which are not available in government labs can be taken from identified private labs, with appropriate procedures and payment approved by department in respective districts, it said.

Meanwhile, demanding that the COVID-19 be declared as national disaster, opposition parties in the state on Friday asked the government to bring pressure on the Centre to provide it Rs 50,000 crore special economic package to help those in distress due to lockdown induced by the pandemic.

Accusing the central government of not giving the state's share of PM CARES fund, a delegation led by Leader of the opposition in the assembly Siddaramaiah met Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and urged him to seek central assistance to take measures aimed at increasing the purchasing power of the people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Beijing, May 8 : China and the US on Friday pledged to continue implementing the first phase of their trade agreement which was signed on January 15, despite the recent tensions between the two countries over the origin of the novel coronavirus, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said.

China's Vice Premier Liu He, who is the head of the country's negotiating team, spoke with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to a statement from the Ministry.

The conversation between the representatives of the two countries over the phone came a few days after US President Donald Trump threatened to terminate the first phase of the agreement if China didn't buy the promised volume of American products, reports Efe news.

The two sides said they must strengthen macroeconomic and public health cooperation, strive to create an atmosphere and favourable conditions to implement the first phase of the trade agreement and promote positive results, according to the statement.

Both parties also agreed to maintain communication and coordination in this regard, it added.

The US and China signed a preliminary agreement on January 15 which, nonetheless, kept most of the tariffs imposed in the preceding months intact.

China pledged to boost its imports of US goods and services by $200 billion over the next two years in return for the US revoking some tariffs imposed on Chinese goods.

The imports to China include $32 billion in additional agricultural purchases, $52 billion in energy products and $78 billion in additional manufactured goods.

Meanwhile, the US agreed to reduce the tariff from 15 to 7.5 per cent on $120 billion worth of Chinese goods and cancel additional levies.

The agreement also opened the door for a second round of negotiations to address thornier issues including forced technology transfer, intellectual property, the expansion of trade, the establishment of dispute resolution mechanisms and the opening up of Chinese financial markets.

Although the agreement allowed both countries to enjoy a few months of apparent cordiality, the emergence of the coronavirus once again soured the relationship between the two powers.

In March, Trump began labeling the COVID-19 as "the China virus" and claimed that the pact was "secondary" to the pandemic.

Trump also called for a probe into China's handling of the coronavirus and threatened the Asian country with tariffs after claiming to have seen evidence that the virus originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, something Beijing denies.

The President again blamed the Chinese government for the coronavirus and said that Beijing could have stopped it but chose to let it spread around the world.

China's Ambassador to the UN Chen Xu said Thursday that this was not the time to launch the investigations called for by the US and dismissed claims that China hid information from the World Health Organization as "absurd and ridiculous" as well as threats that compensation will be demanded from the Asian country for damage caused to the global economy.
Judge Anna Danibekyan has left to decide on the motion to release Armenian ex-president Robert Kocharyan.

The decision will be made public on May 13 at 5:50 pm.

His attorney's submitted motions for a release of Kocharyan on a personal guarantee, on bail, the abolition of preventive measures, or the election of bail amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
overnight, the city of Darmstadt, as well as the districts of Darmstadt-Dieburg and the Main reported-Kinzig confirmed Corona cases. The Numbers are low. The new Falee but for the loss of white with a view to a loosening of the important Seven-day incidence. The within seven days of the occurring of new cases among 100,000 inhabitants.

Currently, only four counties have described the white vest, so a Zero on the Seven-day incidence of: Gieen, Lahn-Dill, Limburg-Weilburg, and bird mountain. All of Hesse in Central. In mid-June, had already stood apart in Darmstadt for ten counties for Zero. For six circuits, and Darmstadt, a 1 is now available to book. For this incidence, the value of 50 is the critical mark. The value is higher, it can limit the authorities loosening again.

Hersfeld-Rotenburg in the back of the table

The district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg with a view of the 7-day incidence since the days of the Hessen worst value on a 22. Here is a Corona onset is reflected among employees of Amazon in Bad Hersfeld. Next Kassel follows, there had been a Corona outbreak in a home.

access to all the exclusive F+articles. You will remain fully informed, for only  2.95 per week.

Now 30 days free of charge

For all of Hesse's test in disease control leading the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported on the Morning of 35 new infections. The day before there had been only three new cases. The increase is 0.3 percent. Since the beginning of March, the infections, the country add up to far on 10.613. You around 9800 patients are considered as cured. That's 100 more than on Monday. Most infections United to Frankfurt on. It is, in 1741, are in number, 56 have been reported within a week. Offenbach's only 179, 14 of them within the past seven days. The incidence value is below 10.

more good news: The RKI is not another case of death in the context of the pandemic become known. It remains at 501 Corona-Sacrifice. Therefore, the ratio of people who have recovered from deaths increased from 19.3 to 19,56.

students and teachers tested

Meanwhile, the school have been tested in a Frankfurter's total those girls and boys as well as teachers who have had contact with two positively tested students. Results are not available yet, to know how it was. For this Tuesday, the city has also announced the Tests in a primary school. This school remained closed on Monday.

With a view on the number of Convalescent but note the following limitation: such As the RKI and the F. A. Z. said, it will collect data on the number of Recovering not officially. The survey was also not provided for in the law. "However, one can assume that at least in the cases where the most information has been determined, had no severe symptoms, and were not admitted to hospital, the fact that you are at the latest to recover after 14 days", - stated in Berlin at the headquarters of the Institute. The RKI guess the number of Recovering only.

The RKI takes into account those cases, which were submitted on the day of 0.00. "For the presentation of new cases reported per day in the reporting date  the date on which the local health Department obtains knowledge about the case and him and electronically recorded," reads the website of the Institute. Between the notification by Doctors and laboratories to the health Department and the Transfer of the cases to the competent state authorities and the RKI for a few days could pass. In such cases, the speech is by Reporting delays.

Updated Date: 23 June 2020, 11:20
A lawsuit centered on child molestation by former priest David Holley named two Alamogordo Catholic parishes and several dioceses as defendants.

The suit, filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County, alleged the Servants of Paraclete, the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, Diocese of Worcester, Diocese of Las Cruces, the Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Jude Parish allowed Holley to prey on boys within the Alamogordo parishes during his time in New Mexico in the 1970s.

The suit was filed by John Doe and demanded a jury trial and restitution. The complaint alleged negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, vicarious liability, public nuisance and racketeering.

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Alamogordo offered no comment on the suit.

The suit places most of the blame on Holleys home diocese: the Diocese of Worcester in Massachusetts.

It gives a history of child sexual offenses that Holley was alleged to have perpetrated in Massachusetts prior to transfer to the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico.

The Servants of the Paraclete operated a rehabilitation center initially for priests with substance abuse issues before it admitted priests with psycho-sexual disorder, which was what Holley had, according to the complaint.

The home in which Holley lived was located across the street from a school in Alamogordo, and was owned by the Diocese of El Paso and the St. Jude and Immaculate Conception parishes, according to the complaint.

At the time, St. Jude Catholic Church was a mission parish under Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.

Alamogordo was a part of the Diocese of El Paso up until the Diocese of Las Cruces was established in 1982.

According to the complaint, Holley and another priest, Wilfred Diamond, who also lived in the house, showed the plaintiff and other boys pornography before what the complaint terms as sexual crimes were committed.

Other allegations are that Holley took pornographic photos of boys and sexually assaulted them weekly for about three years. The complaint does not indicate the number of victims beyond John Doe.

The authorities were not notified of the alleged abuse at the time, the complaint states. Holley died in 2008.

Plaintiff is only now discovering and realizing the nature of  Holleys abuse, the effect it had on him and the fact that he sustained severe psychological injury and a result of  Holleys childhood sexual abuse, the complaint states.

The complaint blames the defendants for not warning the community that pedophiles were in their midst.

The complaint also alleged that St. Jude Parish, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and the Diocese of El Paso committed fraud when funds collected during mass were used to pay for the priests house in Alamogordo.

Allegations include assault and battery as well as sexual assault and child pornography.

Damages to cover the alleged pain and suffering from Holleys acts as an agent of the named Catholic dioceses, full compensatory damages, three times the actual damages and court costs were requested in the suit.

No requested monetary amounts were listed.

No court dates for this case were set.
Oneida, N.Y.  The two farmworkers who had been hospitalized in the massive coronavirus cluster at Green Empire Farm have been released and are recovering at the hotels where they live.

The total number of infected farmworkers in the outbreak is 169, making it the largest virus cluster in Upstate New York, aside from New Rochelle. Dozens of workers remain quarantined at the Super 8, Days Inn and La Quinta hotels in Oneida and Verona.

They had been living there for months already while they planted and harvested in the sprawling greenhouse at the edge of the small city.

County and public health officials in Madison County said workers did not become infected with the virus while working at the farm. It was when migrant workers left the farm, on buses and in vans, and went back to the three local hotels where they were living four to a room, sleeping two to a bed, county officials said.

The migrant workers, more than half of the farms labor force, are employed by MAC Contracting out of Indiana. The farm labor company supplies workers for many of the farms owned by the Mastronardi produce company in Canada, which owns Green Empire.

The outbreak at Green Empire caught Gov. Andrew Cuomos attention after Madison County officials asked for state help to test all of the workers. An army of state and county workers tested 186 workers Saturday and 151 more on Tuesday.

The state is continuing to monitor the situation, said Jason Conwall, a spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The greenhouse farm was inspected by the state office of Agriculture and Markets after the testing to make sure it was complying with the governors orders about worker safety.

The state is in regular contact with local officials and providing assistance in handling the situation. We acted quickly upon learning of the COVID-19 cases among Empire Farms Greenhouse employees, with NYS DOH staff on site at the facility the next day testing workers, Conwall said.

Madison County officials were going back out to the farm today to see if the farm had made changes the county requested. They had asked the farm to rearrange the break room so workers could be more spaced out. They also asked MAC to change its transportation plan so fewer workers would be crammed into the buses and vans on their trips to and from work.

Do you work for Green Empire Farm in Oneida or know about the handling of its workforce? Reporter Marnie Eisenstadt would like to talk to you. Contact her anytime: email | twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246

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Movie theaters in Vietnam will reopen en masse on Saturday after the government has allowed non-essential businesses to operate again, given a slowing novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection rate.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said on Thursday that all non-essential services can resume operations, bar discos and karaoke parlors.

Cinemas fall into this non-essential category and have been closed since as far back as February, the Vietnam Film Distribution Association said in a document submitted to the government asking for help last month.

The Vietnamese government started relaxing its stringent social distancing measures on April 23 after COVID-19 transmission has significantly decelarated since early last month, with no community-transmitted cases having been recorded in the last three weeks.

Later on Thursday, several movie theater operators announced plans to reopen.

CGV cinemas will open again across the country on Saturday, said Nguyen Quoc Khanh, a media representative of the South Korean-owned cinema chain.

CGV Lang Son, located in the namesake province in northern Vietnam, is set to open on Friday after obtaining permission from local authorities.

The movie theater chain operator will show blockbusters to lure customers back, such as Hobbs & Shaw, Johnny English, The Invisible Man, The Dustwalker, and Honest Candidate.

The chain operator says it will adhere to temperature checks, face mask sporting, and physical distancing protocols to ensure safety for both staff and moviegoers.

The operator of BHD theaters told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that they will start showing films again on Saturday.

Some old blockbusters are expected to be on at BHD locations to stimulate demand after a long hiatus.

Lotte Cinema, another chain of movie theaters from South Korea, said they had got back to the business of exhibition in nothern Thai Binh Province since May 6.

The operator is stepping up safety measures to reopen other locations throughout the country.

Lotte Cinema is slated to screen Nang 3: Loi Hua Cua Cha, a successful Vietnamese movie popular with viewers before the social distancing period.

Galaxy Cinema owners say they are waiting for directions from authorities in nationwide provinces and cities following the governments permission to restart business.

Another movie theater chain, Beta Cineplex, will reopen some locations on Saturday and come back in full swing next week.

Vietnam has confirmed 288 COVID-19 patients to date, with 233 recoveries and no virus-caused death.

The country announced 17 new cases on Thursday, all imported and detected in a collective quarantine center.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A 4-year-old girl was rushed to the emergency room three times in one week for asthma attacks.

An elderly man, who'd been holed up in a top-floor apartment with no air conditioning during a heat wave, showed up at a hospital with a temperature of 106 degrees.

A 27-year-old man arrived in the ER with trouble breathingand learned he had end-stage kidney disease, linked to his time as a sugar cane farmer in the sweltering fields of El Salvador.

These patients, whose cases were recounted by doctors, all arrived at Boston-area hospitals in recent years. While the coronavirus pandemic is at the forefront of doctor-patient conversations these days, there's another factor continuing to shape patients' health: climate change.

Global warming is often associated with dramatic effects such as hurricanes, fires and floods, but patients' health issues represent the subtler ways that climate change is showing up in the exam room, according to the physicians who treated them.

Dr. Renee Salas, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she was working a night shift when the 4-year-old arrived the third time, struggling to breathe. The girl's mother felt helpless that she couldn't protect her daughter, whose condition was so severe that she had to be admitted to the hospital, Salas recalled.

She found time to talk with the patient's mother about the larger factors at play: The girl's asthma appeared to be triggered by a high pollen count that week. And pollen levels are rising in general because of higher levels of carbon dioxide, which she explained is linked to human-caused climate change.

Salas, a national expert on climate change and health, is a driving force behind an initiative to spur clinicians and hospitals to take a more active role in responding to climate change. The effort launched in Boston in February, and organizers aim to spread it to seven U.S. cities and Australia over the next year and a half.

Although there is scientific consensus on a mounting climate crisis, some people reject the idea that rising temperatures are linked to human activity. The controversy can make doctors hesitant to bring it up.

Even at the climate change discussion in Boston, one panelist suggested the topic may be too political for the exam room. Dr. Nicholas Hill, head of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Division at Tufts Medical Center of Medicine, recalled treating a "cute little old lady" in her 80s who likes Fox News, a favorite of climate change doubters. With someone like her, talking about climate change may hurt the doctor-patient relationship, he suggested. "How far do you go in advocating with patients?"

Doctors and nurses are well suited to influence public opinion because the public considers them "trusted messengers," said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, who co-organized the Boston event and co-directs the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard's school of public health. People have confidence they will provide reliable information when they make highly personal and even life-or-death decisions.

Bernstein and others are urging clinicians to exert their influence by contacting elected officials, serving as expert witnesses, attending public protests and reducing their hospital's carbon emissions. They're also encouraging them to raise the topic with patients.

Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonologist who researches air quality at Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center here, recognized that in a 20-minute clinic visit, doctors don't have much time to spare.

But "I think we should be talking to our patients about this," she said. "Just inserting that sentence, that one of the reasons your allergies are getting worse is that the allergy season is worse than it used to be, and that's because of climate change."

Salas, who has been a doctor for seven years, said she had little awareness of the topic until she heard climate change described as the "greatest public health emergency of our time" during a 2013 conference.

"I was dumbfounded about why I hadn't heard of this, climate change harming health," she said. "I clearly saw this is going to make my job harder" in emergency medicine.

Now, Salas said, she sees ample evidence of climate change in the exam room. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, for instance, a woman seeking refuge in Boston showed up with a bag of empty pill bottles and thrust it at Salas, asking for refills, she recalled. The patient hadn't had her medications replenished for weeks because of the storm, whose destructive power was likely intensified by climate change, according to scientists.

Climate change presents many threats across the country, Salas noted: Heat stress can exacerbate mental illness, prompt more aggression and violence, and hurt pregnancy outcomes. Air pollution worsens respiratory problems. High temperatures can weaken the effectiveness of medications such as albuterol inhalers and EpiPens.

The delivery of health care is also being disrupted. Disasters like Hurricane Maria have caused shortages in basic medical supplies. Last November, nearly 250 California hospitals lost power in planned outages to prevent wildfires. Natural disasters can interrupt the treatment of cancer, leading to earlier death.

Even a short heat wave can upend routine care: On a hot day last summer, for instance, power failed at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and firefighters had to move patients down from the top floor because it was too hot, Salas said.

Other effects of climate change vary by region. Salas and others urged clinicians to look out for unexpected conditions, such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus, that are spreading to new territory as temperatures rise.

In California, where wildfires have become a fact of life, researchers are scrambling to document the ways smoke inhalation is affecting patients' health, including higher rates of acute bronchitis, pneumonia, heart attacks, strokes, irregular heartbeats and premature births.

Researchers have shown that heavy exposure to wildfire smoke can change the DNA of immune cells, but they're uncertain whether that will have a long-term impact, said Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at Stanford University's center for allergy and asthma research.

"It causes a lot of anxiety," Prunicki said. "Everyone feels helpless because we simply don't knowwe're not able to give concrete facts back to the patient."

In Denver, Dr. Jay Lemery, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said he's seeing how people with chronic illnesses like diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease suffer more with extreme heat.

There's no medical code for "hottest day of the year," Lemery said, "but we see it; it's real. Those people are struggling in a way that they wouldn't" because of climbing temperatures, he said. "Climate change right now is a threat multiplierit makes bad things worse."

Lemery and Prunicki are among the doctors planning to organize events in their respective regions to educate peers about climate-related threats to patients' health, through the Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Initiative, the effort launched in Boston in February.

"There are so many really brilliant, smart clinicians who have no clue" about the link between climate change and human health, said Lemery, who has also written a textbook and started a fellowship on the topic.

Salas said she sometimes hears pushback that climate change is too political for the exam room. But despite misleading information from the fossil fuel industry, she said, the science is clear. Based on the evidence, 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.

Salas said that, as she sat with the distraught mother of the 4-year-old girl with asthma in Boston, her decision to broach the topic was easy.

"Of course I have to talk to her about climate change," Salas said, "because it's impairing her ability to care for her daughter."

Explore further Connecting the dots between climate change and healthcare

2020 Kaiser Health News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Fox News

It took President Donald Trump 22 minutes into his hour-long phone call with Fox & Friends on Friday morning to even mention the still-raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 75,000 Americans. But, as news broke that the lockdown caused record 14.7 percent unemployment rolled in while he was live on air, the subject became unavoidable.

His reaction to the news of unprecedented hardship across the nation? Sure, it sucks, but its not his fault. Its fully expected, he said when confronted with the alert that 20.5 million jobs had been lost in April, sending the unemployment rate up to 14.7 percent. Its no surprise... Even the Democrats are not blaming me for that.

Despite disowning any blame for the current state of the economy, Trump went on to boast at length about the strength of it before it was decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. We created the greatest economy in the history of the world, he said. We were blowing away China, we were blowing away everybody, we were the envy of the world and then they came in and they explained it and they said, Sir, you have to turn it off, we have to close the country.

Trump promised, Those jobs will all be back and theyll be back very soon and next year were going to have a phenomenal year. People are ready to go, weve got to get it open, people are ready to go.

The president repeatedly stressed how important he believes it is that the economy reopens as soon as possible, despite the fact that the pandemic is still raging. He described the virus as a much smarter enemy than his foes in the Democratic Party and said it was a very brilliant enemy and it happens to be invisible.

Trump appeared to suggest that he believes that the reluctance to reopen the economy in some states is just to cause harm to his chances in Novembers presidential election. He said, I will tell you: You look at some cases, some people think theyre doing it for politics. Here we go again. They think theyre doing it because it will hurt me in the election the longer it takes to open up, and I can see some of that.

Story continues

On his own brush with the deadly virus, following the news that one of his personal valets has tested positive, Trump confirmed the valet was in the Oval Office with him on Tuesday, the day he began exhibiting symptoms. The valet tested positive Wednesdaybut Trump said all of his recent tests have come back negative, and he will soon receive an antibody test to see if he has had the virus.

Elsewhere in the interview, Trump also raised eyebrows by going off on a riff about Richard Nixon, one day after his Department of Justice asked to drop charges against his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whom he fired and subsequently mused publicly about pardoning if he was convicted.

Trump said that he learned a lot from the disgraced former president about not firing people, though noted there was one big difference between him and Nixon.

No. 1, [Nixon] may have been guilty and No. 2 he had tapes all over the place, said Trump. I wasnt guilty, I did nothing wrong, and there are no tapes, but I wish there were tapes in my case. But I learned a lot from Richard Nixon.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the child was 5 years old and the death  possibly from the syndrome  was under investigation.

The governor also said there had been 73 reported cases of children in New York area who had been afflicted with the illness, which doctors have labeled pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. He said the states Department of Health was investigating other deaths as possible cases.

This would be really painful news and would open up an entirely different chapter, Mr. Cuomo said, because I cant tell you how many people I spoke to who took peace and solace in the fact that children were not getting infected.

In an advisory to health care providers, state health officials said most of the children who were thought to have the syndrome had also tested positive for the coronavirus or for antibodies to it.
LANSING, MI -- The first hearing in a lawsuit filed by the state Legislature against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is set to stream over the internet at 10 a.m. Friday, May 15.

While Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Diane Stephens is presiding, it wont be from a Lansing courtroom. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and a need for social distancing, the hearing is being conducted remotely using video conferencing. Details as to how the public may watch the hearing online are forthcoming, the court said.

The state House of Representatives and Senate sued Whitmer on May 6 over claims shes overstepped her authority.

The House and Senate declined to extend the coronavirus state of emergency last week. Whitmer later announced it would be extended from through May 28  citing a 1945 law allowing her to do so. On Thursday, Whitmer extended her stay-at-home order that limits the reasons residents are able to leave their homes, also until May 28. It was previously set to expire on May 15.

The Legislature is asking the Court of Claims to expedite a ruling in the case. The May 15 hearing will offer attorneys from both sides a chance to argue why that should or should not happen.

The Governor is acting pursuant to emergency powers that she does not have while eviscerating laws that she is charged to enforce, says the May 6 motion to expedite filed by the Troy-based Bush Seyferth law firm on behalf of both legislative bodies. "She has chosen to regulate every aspect of nearly 10 million lives with no consent or input from the peoples representatives, whose assistance the Governor publicly disdains.

No statute or constitutional provision empowers the Governor to declare a statewide, indefinite state of emergency and then rely on that declaration to exercise unfettered lawmaking authority.

Full motion to expedite ruling and exhibits:

The 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act allows governors to call for a state of emergency for as long as necessary, while the 1976 Emergency Management Act limits it to 28 days, but doesnt invalidate the prior law.

Whitmers interpretation of the 1945 law is unconstitutional, House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, said following the lawsuits filing.

The law in Michigan is very clear: Only the Legislature has the authority to extend a state of emergency, Chatfield said. We chose not to do that last week because we were given no real assurances of any substantial changes that would be made, and the administrations refusal to sit down and work together.

Whitmer first declared a state of emergency March 10, the day Michigans first COVID-19 cases were announced. The Legislature later approved an extension through the end of April.

Whitmer this week made moves to reopen portions of the economy, including the real estate and construction sectors, whose workers began returning to their jobs Thursday.

Whitmer said most manufacturing operations may resume Monday, May 11 and automakers may begin phasing in work on May 18.

We have to reengage like a dial, not a switch that goes on or off, the governor said Thursday. But a dial that we can turn, and we can turn the dial up, as long as everybody does their part.

We have to remember the threat of a second wave is very real.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Read more on MLive:

Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Coronavirus turns contact tracing into top priority for county governments

U.S. unemployment rate hits 14.7% amid coronavirus, topping recession levels

Michigans approach to reopening the economy: slow, steady and safe

A slow crawl back to normalcy ahead for Michigan bars and restaurants from coronavirus restrictions
Lawmakers did none of the hugging or hand-shaking that should have accompanied their goodwill visits with nursing home workers on Friday at some of Connecticuts hardest hit locations.

But like everywhere else where personal interactions have been sanitized by face masks and formal distancing, the lawmakers conveyed their appreciation to the workers in other ways with gifts, signs and waving hands.

Just by dedicating our day to getting outside and visiting our nursing homes all over the state we hope that these health workers know that they are more than essential, said state Sen. Marilyn Moore of Bridgeport, who led three dozen state Democratic lawmakers on a 15-facility tour. Theyre the backbones of our families.

The symbolic visits to nursing homes hit hardest by COVID-19 in cities like Danbury, Milford, Waterbury and Windsor follow more grim news about the disproportionate effect the coronavirus has had on the states frail and elderly.

The 1,600 confirmed and probable deaths linked to COVID-19 at Connecticut nursing homes by the state health departments last count on Wednesday represented 59 percent of the 2,700 total coronavirus deaths in Connecticut as of that day.

The purpose of Fridays goodwill tour was to recognize nursing home workers among the heroes in the war against coronavirus, particularly since they tend to be marginalized as low-earning minority workers.

Many of these are black and brown people who are the lowest paid in the health care system, Moore said. They are an afterthought - and this is how health disparities are created.

Despite cautionary tales early in the pandemic that the highly contagious respiratory virus could quickly devastate a nursing home like fire through dry grass, Connecticut has watched the coronavirus spread to 160 of its 215 nursing homes.

The COVID-19 deaths in some homes are as acute as anywhere in the country. East Hartfords Riverside Health and Rehabilitation Center has 29 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 18 probable coronavirus deaths for a total of 47, for example.

The state has reacted with investigations, inspections, surveys and testing, with the help of the National Guard and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among the hard-hit nursing homes on the lawmakers Friday tour were Saint John Paul II Center in Danbury, with 27 confirmed COVID deaths and three more fatalities that were probable COVID deaths; Waterburys Abbott Terrace Health Center with 31 confirmed and seven probable coronavirus deaths; and Windsors Kimberly Hall North, with 15 confirmed and 25 probable coronavirus deaths.

To care for that many people who youve lost we know is very traumatic, said State Sen. Julie Kushner of Danbury. We wanted to be there for them.

Leading Democrats have urged fellow Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont to give thousands of nursing home aids and other front-line workers the benefit of the doubt by decreeing that those who are sickened by the virus are presumed to have become infected on the job, and dont need to prove it for a workers compensation claim.

My colleagues and I are staunch supporters of the presumption for workers comp for health care workers, Kushner said. I absolutely think these workers should have hazard pay and housing if they dont want to go home for fear of infecting their families.

Workers appreciated the Friday morning goodwill visit, one nursing home executive said.

At Milfords Golden Hill Rehab Pavilion, where the state lists 17 confirmed COVID deaths and six probable COVID deaths, workers were grateful for the lawmakers support and recognition, said Executive Director Andrew Wildman.

We are always excited to receive attention from lawmakers as it hopefully sheds light on the funding that is desperately needed in long term care, Wildman said.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot reiterated on Friday that private schools should not strike off names of children from rolls if their parents are unable to deposit fees due to the ongoing lockdown.

Gehlot warned that state government will revoke recognition of any school which takes such a step.

The chief minister was reviewing issues related to school, higher and technical through a video conference.

He asked the department to find ways in which private schools can provide relief to students in fees and other charges.

The chief minister said a decision will be made regarding the examinations of Rajasthan Board of Secondary for Class 10 and 12 in consideration with the CBSE's schedule so that uniformity is maintained in both the board exams.

Similarly, in higher and technical education, examinations will be conducted when there is normalcy, the CM said.

Besides, Gehlot directed the education department to ensure proper arrangements for mid-day meal to children during summer break.

He also instructed officials to re-allocate the district and departments to the successful candidates of clerical grade II recruitment examination-2018.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Leo Varadkar has said he will have to leave out some of his Ministers who are prone to leaking in appointments to the next government.

It comes after criticism of Fine Gael leaks to the Irish Examiner in which Ministers said there was only a 50/50 chance of a government being formed with Fianna Fail and the Greens.

Micheal Martin has described the comments as unhelpful as the parties enter programme for government negotiations.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: "Once again I have to apologise for some of my leaky ministers. I will try and make sure that I have less leaky ministers next time if I have the opportunity to appoint ministers again.

"What's happened is that talks now begun at long last between Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Greens and are still open to Labour and the Social Democrats to join those talks and we are still keeping in touch with independents who might be willing to support a new government."

The Irish Examiner reported that talks had formally begun yesterday between the parties but that the likelihood of success in the discussions aimed at forming a government was put at less than 50:50 because of the internal wrangling within the Green Party.

Speaking about the meetings on Newstalks Pat Kenny show, Mr Varadkar said that any agreement with Fianna Fail would be on the basis of an equal partnership.

He said: "We have agreed with Fianna Fail that any government we take part in will be an equal partnership.

The key test for me and people in our party is can we come up with a programme for government thats in the interests of the country thats realistic and helps get us through this help crisis - get people back to work, businesses open again, and the economy humming again.

This is an unprecedented situation politically as well as in terms of the history of our country.

Theres always been a deal at the end, and that deal has always been ratified by the parties involved in the Dail - but things that we believed to always be true up until the last few weeks have turned out to be different.

If you go back over the history of our democracy, once talks start - at least up until now - there has always been a deal at the end. Fine Gael has entered these talks in good faith.

Earlier Micheal Martin said he does not know if a government can be formed by June.

The Fianna Fail leader also would not be drawn on who would be Taoiseach first.

He said: "I'm not going to go there, I think my own view is that before we get there at all we do need to agree a programme for government."

In response to a question about the governments response to Covid-19, Mr Varadkar said it was unlikely that the public would be asked to wear masks consistently when outside the home, but it could be a possible requirement in enclosed spaces such as public transport or shops.

Mr Varadkar said that the pandemic unemployment payment and wage subsidy scheme would continue beyond mid-June. While the schemes cant last forever, withdrawing them would have to be done in a gradual way.

You would do it as businesses have the opportunity to reopen and as people have the opportunity to get their jobs back. Bear in mind you lose the payment if you dont take your job back, if you are offered it.

In some cases that may not arise until August, so it will need to be extended beyond the middle of June.

Exact details of how the schemes will continue have not been worked out yet, he added, the Government will make their plans clear before the end of May.

- additional reporting from Vivienne Clarke
The Ameen Sangari company had been in existence for over four decades and is the only factory in the Cape Coast Metropolis employing a large number of people in the Area.

The Chamber has, therefore, called on the government to as a matter of urgency to provide the company with a stimulus package or other available financial support to address its production challenges and to revive the factory which has been the longest private firm in the Metropolis from collapse.

According to the Chamber, getting the company back on its feet was very critical especially during the period of COVID-19 where every country was concentrating on their local industries to revive their economies.

The Lebanese owned Company, which aside from soap and palm oil production, also processes teak into electricity had more than 540 workers in 2015 but had dwindled to a little over a 100 and us on the verge of collapse.

Nana Dr Appiagyei Dankwawoso I, President of the GNCCI who made the appeal, asked the government to expedite action and speed up other processes to revive the factory to save and also create jobs for more people of Cape Coast and its environs.

Leading a team from the GNCCI on an industrial tour at the instance of the Cape Coast Regional Chamber to some factories and industries in the Region, Nana Dankwawoso was highly impressed by the machines at the factory but expressed worry over their current state.

Keeping the machines idle for a long time, will depreciate their value and eventually become dilapidated, cautioned.

For me and my team, we are not happy about the state of Ameen Sangari today. Whatever it is, we are calling for a stimulus package and whatever financial support that exist to support this company, Nana Dankwawoso added.

There is the need to expedite action and speed up all other processes to bring back the company to life for Ghana to earn more foreign exchange on its produce.

Dr Fawad Sangari, Executive Director of Ameen Sangari said the company had to halt operations because it could not bear the cost of energy or compete in both the local and international markets any longer.

He said the oil palm factory of the company, when operating at its maximum level could produce about 50 tones of palm oil a day while its refinery could produce 30 tones per day.

He bemoaned lack of a ready market for its electric poles and said the company had in stock over 1,500 electric poles, but efforts to get the Ministry of Energy and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to buy had proved futile.

According to Dr Sangari, the factory could continue to operate if it is an electric pole that had a ready market and implored on the ECG and the Ministry of Energy to consider buying the electric poles which were more durable than imported ones.

The GNCCI team also visited the Central Oil Mills Limited, producers of crude palm oil and the Center of Awareness, producers of (COA-FS') manufacturing site at Wusorkrom where discussions on challenges and how they could be addressed were held.

---GNA
SPRINGFIELD  The state reported another 130 COVID-19-related deaths in the past 24 hours Friday to go along with 2,887 new confirmed cases out of 20,671 tests completed.

That marks the first time the state topped 20,000 tests completed in a 24-hour period, and the 14-percent positivity rate on those tests was the lowest recorded since March.

One of the contingencies for a region to move to the next phase of the states reopening plan is for it to have a positivity rate below 20 percent for 14 straight days.

There have been 399,714 tests conducted in the state thus far, yielding 73,760 total cases that have resulted in 3,241 deaths.

Illinois congressional delegation seeks extension of 2,000 National Guard troops to assist with pandemic through June A unified state congressional delegation Thursday asked Defense Secretary Mike Esper for a one-month extension of federally funded Illinois Na

We now have 244 public testing sites across the state, up from 177 on April 30, and 112 on April 24, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in his daily COVID-19 briefing in Chicago Friday. In building out these sites we've made it a priority to partner directly with existing trusted organizations to test people across Illinois, places like federally qualified health centers. We now partner with 96 of those statewide.

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said there were 4,750 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of midnight Friday, with 1,222 of them in intensive care unit beds and 727 of them on ventilators. All of those numbers were within the average of the past month.

Our earlier story ...

CHICAGO  Gov. J.B. Pritzker is holding a press conference and daily update on coronavirus in Illinois.

The Illinois Department of Public Health on Friday announced 2,887 new cases of coronavirus disease, including the following 130 additional deaths:

Boone County: 1 female 90

Cook County: 1 female 30s, 2 females 40s, 2 males 40s, 2 males 50s, 2 females 60s, 16 males 60s, 6 females 70s, 15 males 70s, 1 unknown 70s, 14 females 80s, 10 males 80s, 9 females 90s, 8 males 90s, 1 unknown 90

DuPage County: 1 male 50s, 1 female 70s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s

Grundy County: 1 male 70s

Jasper County: 1 male 90s

Kane County: 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 1 female 60s, 2 females 70s

Kankakee County: 1 male 70s

Lake County: 1 female 30s, 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 2 females 80

LaSalle County: 1 female 40s

Macon County: 1 female 50s

Madison County: 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s

McHenry County: 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s

Sangamon County: 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s

St. Clair County: 1 male 50s, 1 male 70s

Will County: 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 male 90s

Williamson County: 1 male 60s

IDPH is reporting a total of 73,760 cases, including 3,241 deaths, in 98 counties in Illinois. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have processed 20,671 specimens for a total of 399,714.

How Pritzker's plan to reopen Illinois would work

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An 80-km strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass at a height of 17,000 feet along the border with China in Uttarakhand with Dharchula was thrown open by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday.

The new road is expected to help pilgrims visiting Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet as it is around 90 kms from the Lipulekh pass.

After inaugurating the road through video-conferencing, Singh said pilgrims going to Kailash Mansarovar will now be able to complete their journey in one week instead of up to three weeks.

The road originates at Ghatiabagarh and ends at Lipulekh pass, the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar.

"With the completion of this crucial road link, the decades old dreams and aspirations of the local people and pilgrims have been fulfilled," the defence minister said.

He also expressed confidence that local trade and economic growth in the region would receive a boost with the operationalisation of the road.

Military officials said the road will also help in speedy movement of troops in the strategically key region bordering China.

Singh flagged off a caravan of nine vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji to mark the opening of the road.

The caravan included four small vehicles and some loaded vehicles of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Chief Engineer of Project Hirak, Vimal Goswami, said.

"After commissioning of the road, the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra from Lipulekh pass has become more convenient for pilgrims who can now return to India in one day after having the sacred darshan," he said.

With the inauguration of the strategically vital road, over 80-km of tough Himalayan terrain, between the Mangti camp near Tawaghat and Gunji in the Vyas valley, and the security posts on the Indian side of the border, has become accessible, the official said.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had announced last year that the road will be completed by April 2020.

"While 51-km long portions, beyond Bundi, were constructed much earlier, followed by a 23-km long portion from Tawaghat to Lakhanpur, the most tough portion between Lakhanpur to Bundi posed challenges and took much time," BRO officer Goswami said.

The construction of the road began in 2008 and was scheduled to be completed in 2013, but it got delayed due to the tough terrain in the portion between Nazang to Bundi village.

"The 15-km long most challenging portion of the road from Nazang to Bundi was outsourced in 2015 to a private company under technical guidance of BRO engineers, which completed the portion despite all odds before the set date by the minister last year," said the BRO officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Border Roads Organisation, which develops and maintains road network in Indias border areas, completed a key road in Uttarakhand which will cut travel time drastically.

The road was inaugurated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh through video conferencing. He also flagged off a caravan of nine vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji to indicate that both passengers and load can be sent by the new road stretch through mountainous terrain.

Here are the key things to know about the crucial road:

 The road has been built from Ghatibagar in Dharchula to Lipulekh near the border with China. It is also known as Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra Route. The road is 75 kilometre long.

 The road ends at the 17,000 feet high Lipulekh pass. From there, Mount Kailash is located around 97 km north of the pass in Tibet. The Lipulekh pass, close to the tri-junction of India-China-Nepal, is the lowest point in this section of the high Himalayas.

 The tough Himalayan terrain beginning from Mangti camp near Tawaghat to Gunji in Vyans valley, and Indian security posts situated near Indo-China border, are now accessible by a concrete road.

 Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari had announced last year that this road stretch would be completed by April 2020.

 The construction of this strategic road stretch began in 2008, and it was scheduled to complete in 2013 but got delayed due to the tough terrain between Nazang to Bundi village. The project was approved at a cost of 80.76 crore. In 2018, the Cabinet Committe on Security (CCS) approved a revised cost of 439.40 crore.

 Locals say it used to take them five days to reach their high altitude villages from Dharchula and vice versa. Now it will take just four hours to reach there. It will also help winter and summer migration of tribal people to upper Himalayan region.
Odisha on Friday reported the biggest single-day spike in coronavirus cases with 51 people testing positive for COVID-19, a majority of whom returned from Gujarat, taking the total tally in the state to 270, the health department said.

Of the fresh cases, 50 had returned from Surat in Gujarat while one came from Kerala. Forty-three of the new cases were reported from Ganjam whose tally has now climbed to 71, the highest in the state. Five were from Kendrapara and three from Bhadrak.

Another person, who tested positive in Bhubaneswar, is counted as a patient of Maharashtra. He is a truck driver from Mumbai who met with a road accident in Odisha, the government said in a statement.

The 42-year-old man was admitted at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, and later tested positive for COVID-19, it said.

The number of active cases in Odisha now stands at 205 with recovery of 63 patients. Two persons from Bhubaneswar have died of the infection while 298 people are in hospital isolation.

An official said three IAS officers were deployed for one month in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik home district Ganjam to assist the local administration in COVID-19 management.

Ganjam district, which reported its first case on May 2, saw its tally jump to 71 in a span of only seven days. The spike in the COVID-19 cases is mostly due to return of migrant workers from Gujarat.

Migrant workers from Odisha, who were stranded in Surat due to the lockdown, have been returning home en mass on buses and trains after the Centre allowed their movement.

Nearly three lakh Odia workers mostly from Ganjam district are engaged in diamond cutting, textiles and other works in Surat.

"All these people (who tested positive), barring one from Kerala, had returned from Surat and were in quarantine centres. They were symptomatic," the official said, adding the tally of Bhadrak district now stands at 24, while Kendrapara has a total eight cases.

The state health department had on Thursday conducted 2,460 COVID-19 tests. So far, Odisha has tested 52,974 samples, he said.

After Ganjam district, Jajpur reported the maximum 55 COVID-19 cases, followed by Bhubaneswar at 50, Balasore at 27, Bhadrak 24, Sundergarh 12, Kendrapara eight, Jagatsinghpur five and Mayurbhanj four.

Two cases each have been detected in Cuttack, Jharsuguda, Bolangir, Keonjhar and Kalahandi, and one each in Puri, Dhenkanal, Deogarh and Koraput districts.

With migrant workers returning to Odisha, the number of COVID-19 cases has gone up manifold. While the state reported first 50 cases in 27 days, the duration reduced to 15 days for the next 50 cases. It took six days for the tally to rise by another 50 and then five and two days respectively, the state's COVID-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police had to be called in after villagers in Siddharthnagars Mahua village objected to the entry of migrants who returned home in trucks from Mumbai with some of them even clashing with migrants and calling them corona carriers.

Mahua village head Narsingh informed the police as the villagers refused to budge from their stand that the migrants from Mumbai be quarantined for 14 days before being allowed to visit their homes in the village.

The village head said people were scared after 10 migrants who arrived in nearby Naugarh and Bansi villages had tested positive during their period in quarantine and had to be admitted in nearby Munderwa hospital.

The police however pacified the angry villagers of Mahua village by telling them that all the migrants were subjected to thermal scanning and showed no symptoms of having contracted the infectious coronavirus. These migrants would be quarantined in their homes in the village, the police said.

These arent isolated incidents. Nearly 3000 migrant workers who returned to Gorakhpur from Mumbai and Surat by Shramik Special trains run specifically to fetch the migrants were subjected to discrimination at times from their own family and some of them also reported instances of misbehavior.

Mohammad Ilyas, 33, who worked in dye making factory in Maharashtra returned home by Shramik Express on May 4.

After undergoing thermal screening and filling up details in prescribed form at the railway station he travelled on foot to his home in Gorakhnath where he was denied entry by his wife Shabana who called up the local corporator to get her husband screened for coronavirus infection.

Ilyas had to wait for hours outside and was allowed entry only after a team of doctors checked and cleared that he was free him of any infection.

In Qazipur Khurd village under Sahjanwa block of Gorakhpur, from where three positive cases have been reported so far, over 15 migrants have been quarantined. Their quarantine period would be over between May 8 to 12 and a group of villagers are keeping watch on them to ensure they complete their period in quarantine.

Armed with sticks, 5-6 men keep eye on the quarantine center (primary school) and if any one attempts to come out and roam outside the quarantine centre, these villagers chase them back, the villagers said.

The fear has gone up and so is the level of alertness. Villagers have blocked entry of outsiders to the village. If any outsider is spotted, the villagers inform the police, Maneesh Yadav of Rampur village in Sant Kabir Nagar said.

Rafat Hussain, the village head of Ramgarh village of Sidhdharthanagar, however said that in his village some migrants were allowed to directly visit their homes.

In our village 15 migrants arrived on May 4 from Maharashtra and were sent home directly after thermal screening and advised home quarantine. However many of them arent following the advisory and have started roaming around. I have already appealed to them to follow the guidelines on home quarantine but what can I do if they dont listen, Hussain said.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Officials said a ninth inmate from the sole federal prison in Ohio died Friday as the coronavirus spreads throughout the facility.

Michael Brookwalter, 56, visited the health staff at Federal Correctional Institution Elkton on April 6, and was moved to a hospital because he had a fever and wasnt getting enough oxygen. He tested positive for the coronavirus while hospitalized, according to a news release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

His condition declined while he was in the hospital and medical staff placed him on a ventilator on April 8. Federal Bureau of Prisons says Brookwalter, who was serving a prison sentence of more than 17 years for child sex crimes committed in Illinois, had pre-existing medical conditions that put him at an increased risk of severe illness associated with the coronavirus. He had been at Elkton since September 2018.

He is the ninth inmate since April 2 who has died at the low-security federal prison located in Columbiana County, about 100 miles southeast of Cleveland. The prison has seen more than 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus, though advocates worry thats an undercounted because of a lack of tests.

Ninety-seven inmates at the prison had the virus as of Thursday, as well as 12 staff members, according to the prisons bureau. Officials also said 40 inmates and 40 staff members had recovered.

The prison, which currently houses about 1,960 male inmates at its main facility and 406 at an adjacent lockup, has been a prime example for advocates who have urged county, state and federal officials to reduce the number of inmates. They say the inability to social distance, as well as a lack of quality health care, means the people inside are more at risk of contracting the virus.

A federal judge in Cleveland last month, who was critical of the lack of testing conducted by federal officials, ordered the prisons bureau to identify Elkton inmates who are at serious risk of the coronavirus so they can either be released or moved to another prison. The order came after the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sued.

Prison officials identified 837 inmates who are 65 years old or older or had certain pre-existing conditions. Brookwalter was not on that last, though two others who recently died were listed.

The prisons bureau has said it is looking at what it needs to do to comply with the judges order. It has also tried several times to halt the judges order but has not been successful.

The judge, James Gwin, denied a motion to stay the order on Friday, noting that the only recent change is that another inmate has died and more guards and inmates have become infected. The ACLU has said the prisons bureau has been slow to try to comply with Gwins order.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Azerbaijan's National Airlines Company (AZAL) performed two charter flights from Istanbul to Baku bringing back 212 Azerbaijani citizens, AZALs press service said on May 7.

Earlier this week, AZAL operated a charter flight from Moscow to Baku airlifting 169 Azerbaijani citizens.

It should be noted that AZAL carries out charter flights for the repatriation of the country citizens in accordance with the plan established by the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan.

All passengers bringing back the country have been placed in the quarantine.

So far, over 15,000 Azerbaijani citizens have been returned to the country at the state expense by special charter flights.

Due to the threat of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Cabinet of Ministers has completely suspended access to the country's territory by land and air effective in April 5, except for cargo transportation.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz






Tesla plans to reopen its sole U.S. car plant in Fremont, California, as soon as Friday, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing an email from the company to its staff.

The move comes a day after California allowed manufacturers in the state to reopen operations, shut due to coronavirus-led lockdowns, which drew an enthusiastic "Yeah!!" on Twitter from Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.

Musk, who recently became a father, has been criticizing the lockdown and stay-at-home orders calling them a "serious risk" to U.S. business, even tagging them "unconstitutional" and saying they would not hold up before the U.S. Supreme Court if challenged.

Musk said Tesla aims to restart its Fremont factory on Friday afternoon, according to the Bloomberg report.

Even though the lockdown in Alameda, the county in San Francisco Bay Area where Tesla's factory is located, is scheduled to last until the end of May. So according to a county order, the Fremont factory is not allowed to operate regularly.

California's order from Thursday does not supersede the county plan, Alameda Sheriff's Office spokesman Ray Kelly told Reuters on Thursday.

The Fremont plant shut its operations in mid-March after lockdowns were imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has infected over 3.8 million people globally.

Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
South African cryptocurrency exchange iCE3 Exchange has launched a new cryptocurrency debit card which can be used at many retailers across the country.

The iCE3 Crypto Debit Card allows cardholders to make payments at any merchant that accepts MasterCard or Visa.

Using the card, cryptocurrency owners can store their funds in the cryptocurrency of their choice, automatically converting their digital currency to South African rand when they make a payment with the card.

Many of our users want to buy goods and services with their crypto, said iCE3 CEO Gareth Grobler.

The Crypto Debit Card gives power to users who can now spend crypto at merchants countrywide.

Based on the performance of the Crypto Debit Card in South Africa, the exchange is looking to expand the offering to countries including Nigeria, Botswana, and beyond.

Delivered to your door

Customers who sign up for a Crypto Debit Card from iCE3 Exchange will have their new debit card delivered directly to their door by a courier for a once-off fee of R250.

One of the biggest attractions of the Crypto Debit Card is that all swipes and payments with the card are free  customers are only charged a small fee for cash withdrawal.

There is also a flat maintenance fee of only R10 per month, making the iCE3 Crypto Debit Card an attractively affordable way to spend your cryptocurrency in the real world.

Users can currently pre-register for their Crypto Debit Card from iCE3 Exchange, and the first batch of cards will be distributed from June 2020.

The first batch of cards will be delivered to AIC token holders, with all other pre-registered users receiving their cards during July 2020.

Registrants can also enter a giveaway where they stand a chance to win one of ten Crypto Debit Cards, which will be delivered to them for free.

To enter this giveaway, users can visit the iCE3 Exchange website and share the Crypto Debit Card launch post, earning more entries for sharing across multiple platforms.

iCE3 Exchange is a leading cryptocurrency exchange in South Africa, offering secure, reliable cryptocurrency trading and support for a multitude of digital tokens.

The platform offers a detailed and powerful exchange trading interface for serious traders, as well as a Quick Buy option for those looking to easily move their rand into cryptocurrency.

iCE3 Exchange supports the trading of South African rand for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dash, ZCash, Monero, AI Coin, and much more.
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran John MacKay survived World War II, having served in Burma, one of the most disease-ridden campaigns of the war in the Pacific. After service, he married the love of his life and settled in Westfield, Massachusetts, to raise five daughters and work as a high school guidance counselor.

But the 99-year-old is again in a fight for his life, this time in the contagious confines of the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a hotbed for the coronavirus in the state. He, along with 79 other residents, have been diagnosed with COVID-19, while another 81 veterans at the facility have died from the illness.

For the families of these veterans, the experience has been a nightmare -- an ongoing battle to get any news from the place their loved ones have lived for months or years.

Related: Nearly 70 Dead in 'Horrific' Outbreak at Veterans Home

"The communication is absolutely deplorable. We get these emails saying, 'Call the family number -- you can Zoom. You can Skype.' But you can't get an answer. It just rings and rings. The frustration level is absolutely terrible," said MacKay's daughter, Betsy Crupi. "People have dropped the ball."

Farther south, at the Paramus Veterans Memorial Home in New Jersey, Tom Mastropietro, an Army veteran who served in the Korean War, also was diagnosed with the coronavirus. He appeared to beat the devastating disease, eating breakfast and moving about unaided on April 11, his family was told.

But like much of the news related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the facts of Mastropietro's case were muddled. In the chaos at the home as the infection spread, a mix-up occurred: Mastropietro actually died that day, his identity swapped with another COVID-19 patient at the home who survived, according to a report on NorthJersey.com.

Army Air Corps veteran John MacKay has been diagnosed with COVID-19 at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home. He is to celebrate his 100th birthday in just days. Photo courtesy of Betsy Crupi

"I inquired about the coronavirus and was told there were no cases," Steve Mastropietro told the publication. "Looking back, I'm sure there were coronavirus cases, but no one had been tested."

Across the country, families of veterans living in state-run veterans nursing homes have received similar devastating news. But just how many veterans are affected in 157 facilities run by the states is unknown. Fewer than a dozen states publish detailed information about COVID-19 cases and deaths in long-term care facilities by individual homes. And neither the National Association of State Veterans Homes, an advocacy group, or the Department of Veterans Affairs track the data.

"State veterans homes are run by individual states, not the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. If you have questions about state veterans homes, we refer you to the individual states," VA spokeswoman Christina Noel said.

The devastation has been so great in some state veterans homes, a group of U.S. senators wrote the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday, calling for an investigation into the VA's oversight of them.

"Given the importance of state veterans homes in VA's overall portfolio for providing institutional care to veterans, and our ongoing concerns about VA's role monitoring states' operation of these facilities, we would like GAO to conduct a more detailed examination of VA's oversight of ... quality of care," wrote Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jon Tester of Montana and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

The Massachusetts home where MacKay lives has been the hardest hit among state-run veterans' facilities. But at least 230 other veterans have died in these homes in 16 states, according to a review of media reports and state databases.

Those numbers are not included in the VA's daily updates of COVID-19 infections and death data in its own facilities.

As of Wednesday, COVID-19 had killed 594 veterans in VA facilities and infected nearly 10,000 receiving care from the Veterans Health Administration. An additional 185 veterans have died, according to reports sent to the VA, but how many of those were in state-run homes has not been disclosed.

The senators want more clarity on the impact of COVID-19 on the veteran population. Warren has been calling for a coordinated effort to collect and publish the data.

While the VA is not directly responsible for state-run veterans homes, it pays 100% of the cost of care for veterans living in the homes who have service-connected medical conditions that require full-time care. The VA also is required to inspect the homes each year to ensure they meet department standards.

In July 2019, however, the GAO faulted the department for not adequately monitoring the contractor hired to run the inspections. The GAO also said the VA was not transparent with its assessments of the quality of care provided by state veterans homes. The office made several recommendations to the VA about oversight that included increased contract monitoring, and clarity and transparency on deficiencies found at the homes.

The senators asked the GAO to provide an update on the VA's response to the recommendations, saying failure to implement them may place veterans at risk.

"The recent deaths of veteran residents and other care challenges at state veterans homes during the COVID-19 public health emergency remind us that VA's implementation of these recommendations would contribute toward improved care quality at these facilities nationwide and better inform veterans and their families about the best care options," they wrote.

State veterans homes date to the aftermath of the Civil War, when they were created to house veterans injured and left homeless as a result of the conflict. In addition to nursing home care, many of the state homes provide housing for indigent veterans and adult day care programs.

Since the first COVID-19 outbreak at a nursing home killed 37 residents in Kirkland, Washington, long-term care facilities have borne the brunt of the illness, making up 18% of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S.

The first sign of the potential impact at a state-run veteran home came in mid-April, when a sixth veteran died at the Oregon Veterans Home from the disease. Another 15 tested positive.

This month, in New York, the Long Island State Veterans Home reported 53 deaths, while the St. Albans State Veterans Home in New York City recorded 33 deaths.

In New Jersey, 69 veterans have died at the home where Mastropietro lived, while an additional 54 veterans have died in two other state-run veterans homes.

And in Alabama, at least eight residents have died at the Bill Nichols State Veterans Home in Alexander City.

The GAO warned of shortcomings within both VA nursing home facilities and the state-run homes, citing 576 "deficiencies" at 126 VA homes between 2012 and 2017 and 192 deficiencies at 148 state veterans homes during the same time frame.

Those deficiencies included instances where patients were not adequately treated for bedsores, infection control was found lacking, immunization protocols for influenza and pneumonia were not followed or the facilities failed to adequately support residents with their hygiene, grooming or other activities of daily life.

"By not performing observational assessments of state veteran homes inspections, VA does not know whether, or to what extent, VA's contractor needs to improve its ability to identify [their] compliance with quality standards, which increases the possibility that quality concerns in some [homes] could go overlooked, potentially placing veterans at risk," the report noted.

Last month, the VA sent nurses and other employees to assist at the state-run homes in New Jersey, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

"We are providing, when the governors request it, we can go in and manage, clean and provide resources. In New Jersey, two of three homes are on the verge of failing. Same thing happened in Massachusetts. What I told the governors was, if they need us, call us," VA Secretary Robert Wilkie told Military.com on April 16.

Last month, the White House also announced it is requiring nursing homes to report any COVID-19 cases at their facilities to residents and families.

Crupi said that while she does not want the issue politicized, the response from the administration, the VA and the state of Massachusetts has come too late.

"To think that so many people died. Who is accountable? These veterans were on the front lines for their country yet no one has had their back," she said.

Neither the Holyoke home nor the Paramus home responded to a request for comment.

In mid-April, Mark Piterski, deputy commissioner with the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, gave a statement to NorthJersey.com.

We are devastated that this error occurred and we offer our most sincere apology for the mistake in the notification of their fathers passing, Piterski said.

Piterski, who oversaw the states three homes, where 103 veterans have died, resigned April 28.

John MacKay will turn 100 on May 15. His family, which planned his birthday party months ago, has decided they will travel to the Holyoke facility with posters and balloons to celebrate long distance. Whether he will make it or the family will be allowed to get close to the facility is uncertain; Massachusetts State Police have blocked all access to the campus, Crupi said.

She said it is not fair that her father, who as recently as February requested his favorite beverage, a seasonal Sam Adams, at a restaurant, should be alone.

"He's 99. He's lived that long because he's taken care of himself. He was turned away twice from a hospital when his oxygen levels dropped because of his age. Who are they to decide who lives and who dies?" she asked.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Read More: VA Gets COVID Relief Money to Combat Homelessness
Chennai, May 9 : Two special trains carrying migrant workers and others left for Bihar's Saharsa and Jharkhand's Hatia from Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore and Katpadi, respectively, on Friday night, a senior Southern Railway official said.

According to the official, the train to Saharsa left Coimbatore with 1,140 passengers. They boarded the train maintaining social distance after thermal screening was done.

Similarly, the other train from Katpadi to Hatia carried passengers who were patients and their care givers who had come for treatment at the Christian Medial College Hospital, Vellore and got stranded.

The passengers were registered and nominated by the Tamil Nadu government.

On Wednesday night a special train carrying 1,136 passengers had left Katpadi for Ranchi.

The passengers -- patients who had come for treatment at the Christian Medical College and their attendants -- were brought to Katpadi railway junction in 16 buses by the Vellore district administration.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, has a long and storied history of sending teams of medical professionals to far-flung areas of the world struck by epidemics, natural disasters, violence and other calamities.

Now, the international medical humanitarian organization has come to New Mexico tribal communities as part of an operation to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Tribal communities across the state have been hard hit by the illness caused by the new coronavirus, and the New Mexico Department of Health reports about 56% of COVID-19 cases are Native American. Native Americans make up about 11% of the states total population.

While the Navajo Nation, in northwestern New Mexico, has received a lot of attention for the staggering spike in cases, pueblos around the state, including San Felipe and Zia pueblos, have also experienced outbreaks.

As of Thursday evening, the DOH reported about 127 cases of COVID-19 in the ZIP code that contains San Felipe Pueblo, about 20 miles north of Albuquerque off Interstate 25. The pueblo has about 2,700 residents, according to census data. The ZIP code containing Zia Pueblo, northwest of Rio Rancho, had 99 cases in a population of less than 1,000, according to the DOH. The Navajo Nation, located in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, reported 2,654 cases and 85 deaths as of Wednesday night. Their population is about 156,000 in the three states.

Nico DAuterive, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, said a nine-person team of physicians, nurse-midwives, logisticians and a health promoter is now working in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. He said they are assessing ways they can support organizations and health care providers in several pueblos throughout the state.

Our team has been focusing on how infection prevention and control can be improved in various facilities and attempting to better understand the nuances of community and household transmission, DAuterive said.

Doctors Without Borders first began addressing COVID-19 in the United States in New York City in March by working with homeless populations, DAuterive said, and have since moved on to a handful of other communities throughout the country. He said the last U.S.-based operation followed Hurricane Sandy, which struck the East Coast in 2012.

In New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, DAuterive said they are still conducting assessments and it is too early to discuss any findings.

Daryl Candelaria, the tribal administrator of San Felipe Pueblo, said the pueblo had already taken decisive action in response to its outbreak and had partnered with Indian Health Services and Presbyterian Healthcare Services to conduct testing. They had also been working with the Pueblo of Pojoaque to isolate people who needed to be quarantined at the Buffalo Thunder Resort Casino. He said they are cautiously optimistic because right now they have 111 cases of people who have been classified as recovered.

Candelaria said the Doctors Without Borders team has helped sanitize tribal buildings and homes where families with COVID-19 live and are working on ways to get out training and messages to the community.

Candelaria said one of the biggest problems among Native communities, San Felipe Pueblo included, continues to be the way the virus has spread among relatives living in the same household.

That is a testament to our culture because we dont push out the young or the old, wed rather keep them in the home to care for them, Candelaria said. Unfortunately, that doesnt work with the current public health crisis that were going through. Its hard to self-isolate when you have eight to 10 people living within a household.

State Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, said after he heard about Doctors Without Borders coming to Zia and San Felipe pueblos, which are in his district, he wrote a letter to the governor urging her to set up an advisory council to help tribal communities.

Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the creation of a Navajo Nation rapid response team, which will be made up of medical professionals, state officials and tribal leaders. Lente said hes glad to see the rapid response team formed, and would like to see the same model applied to the pueblos and the Apache tribes.

Its been national news that the Navajo Nation spread and the death toll is rising at rates that are really alarming and I think attention needs to be brought there, Lente said. But at the same time attention needs to be brought to pueblos as well, especially in those two pueblos where cases have gotten out of hand.

He said moving forward he hopes to get a handle on how the pueblos are responding and where theyre struggling and where theyre having successes.

It seems to be that the pueblos have really worked hard to do things differently now and they have understood they are not immune to this virus, Lente said. That it is very much a reality within those communities that have it right now and so they have taken a step back and re-assessed how they can better plan to combat this virus.

He said he hopes Doctors Without Borders can be a valuable asset in advising the state and tribal governments along the way.

They had written letters to both the Zia Pueblo and the San Felipe Pueblo on their assessments of what they should be doing or could be doing differently or better, Lente said. So I included those to my letter to the governor as examples. From all accounts I see them now as a partner and I would hope they would want to continue to be a partner as we continue to move forward to try to beat this.

This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
Irrfan Khans loss has been considered personal by many. Days after the demise of the National Award-winning actor, friends and fans continue to share some precious memories.

A very old video of the Angrezi Medium actor has recently surfaced online. The clip is from the time when he was in National School of Drama, Delhi. In the teleplay titled 'Laal Ghaas Par Neele Ghode', Irrfan essayed the role of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. The following is a snippet that shows a very young Irrfan perform Lenin on stage for Prasanna Heggodus production at Ram Shri Centre.

The Doordarshan play, originally penned by Mikhail Shatrov with the title 'Blue Horses On Red Grass', was translated by Uday Prakash in Hindi.

For the casting, Irrfan was accompanied by his classmates Mita Vashisht and Sutapa Sikdar, who got married to Irrfan later.

Post Irrfans demise, his NSD batchmate and now actor Mita said, He had this shy mischief about him and used to relentlessly pull my leg and, since I had long hair, give my plaits a tug or two. There was a seriousness about him thats well known but he also had a sense of mischief which we see in his roles. We were classmates for three years, living together 247, travelling on an educational trip to Manipur, eating, brushing our teeth and fighting with each other, and it was almost like a blood relationship. A part of us has died, she was quoted by Indian Express as saying.

Also, the writer of Irrfans film, Paan Singh Tomar, Sanjay Chauhan, spoke about Irrfan. He said, I first met him at Shri Ram Centre; I was student of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Irrfan of National School of Drama (NSD). He would take his plays to another level. I remember a play Laal Ghaas Par Neele Ghode in which he enacted Lenin. The moment Irrfan came on stage one forgot how Lenin looked; he would transform into Lenin. If he loved a character, he would transcend the script (sic.)

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Boris Johnson's father admitted he prayed for his son's life when the Prime Minister was admitted into intensive care after struggling with coronavirus.

The PM tested positive for the virus in the last week of March and was rushed to intensive care on April 6 after his situation deteriorated.

Stanley Johnson, 79, gave an insight into his worries for his son, 55, during the time he was in hospital.

The PM, pictured here on April 29, was rushed into hospital during the first week in April after his condition worsened, with doctors preparing measures to announce his death to the public

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, he said: 'I was as worried as any father would be if their child was at death's door.

'I have to tell you, I said a prayer or two.'

'I didn't know about doctors making preparations about announcing his death, I only found that out later on.'

Since coming out of intensive care, the PM has become a father after his fiance Carri Symonds gave birth to a son, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas, in the final week of April.

Stanley's grandson was named after the PM's grandfather, who served in the Second World War and was given the Distinguished Flying Cross for surviving a difficult crash at RAF Chivenor in 1945.

The first of the child's middle names, Lawrie, is the name of Ms Symonds' grandfather, while his second middle name, Nicholas, is the name of the two NHS doctors who helped save the PM's life in intensive care.

Stanley also admitted that he was not told of his grandson's name before it was announced to the public, with the PM's father admitting he had to break lockdown rules in order to buy the Mail on Sunday which had his son's name in it.

Since coming out of hospital, Boris Johnson and fiance Carrie Symonds (pictured) welcomed a newborn son (right) to the world

Stanley's new grandson, named Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, is named after the PM's grandfather who served in the RAF during the Second World War

He added: 'I'm so very glad they didn't tell me [his name].

'I actually broke the lockdown rule. My car was on empty and I thought 'there's bound to be something in the paper' so I went to Wheddon Cross garage.

'I went down he back way and said 'I know I'm not really meant to be out here, it's not an essential journey but I think there's something in the paper today about my 14th grandchild.''

The PM will speak to the public on Sunday evening about his five-step plan to ease lockdown restrictions.

The PM's father (pictured on Good Morning Britain today) is currently residing in Exmoor, south west England during the coronavirus pandemic

The PM's father (left), who turns 80 in a few months, wants his son (right) to allow over-70s to go out more often despite their vulnerability to coronavirus

Stanley, who is currently residing in Exmoor, south west England confessed he does not know what his son is going to say but hopes that over-70s can be allowed to go out should they want to.

He said: 'I don't think over-70s should be in a special category. We shouldn't be discriminated against.'

'People say it's for our own good [but] some of the elderly can speak for themselves.

'We will still say pretty sheltered... [but] the elderly must not be discriminated against.'
Starting Monday, the restriction on houses of worship holding gatherings with more than 10 people will be lifted, clearing the way for in-person worship services to resume.

Each minister or rabbi or leader of that faith will make that decision of how to manage people, Gov. Kay Ivey said. Theres no restriction on the number of people as it has been.

The pastor of Alabamas largest church said todays announcement wont speed up their timetable for resuming public worship.

The Rev. Chris Hodges, founding pastor of the Birmingham-based Church of the Highlands with branch campuses in the states largest cities including Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Tuscaloosa and Auburn, said theres no rush to return. The church currently does live-streaming of its worship services and that will continue.

Were still formulating our plan but want to be patient since things are still changing on a day-to-day basis, Hodges said. The earliest we would go back would be May 31.

The Rev. Jay Wolf, pastor of the 6,000-member First Baptist Church of Montgomery, also said that congregation wont be back to having public worship this month. Were not all going to rush back to church on May 17, Wolf said. Its more like a dimmer switch where you turn it on gradually.

Wolf said the churchs livestream worship services have proven popular. More people see the services now than anytime in our whole history, he said.

The church has fed thousands through its outreach programs. The church doors have been closed but the ministry has been wide open, Wolf said.

The sanctuary of first Baptist Montgomery has a capacity of 1,800, but with social distancing that would be limited to 150 or fewer. Gov. Ivey is a member at First Baptist Montgomery.

She simply wants to do whats right, Wolf said of Ivey. You must protect lives and livelihood.

He urges churches to abide by the states rigorous guidelines for reopening.

What would be a tragedy would be to have the church be the source of an outbreak that sets us back and shuts down the economy again, Wolf said.

State health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said today the new order that goes into effect Monday, May 11, removes the 10-person limit on gatherings, but keeps guidelines to practice social distancing.

We want all gatherings to maintain six-foot distance between non-family groups or groups of people who dont live together, so you can minimize the risk of disease transmission, but theres no particular number associated with that, Harris said.

That includes worship services, funerals and weddings, those type of social gatherings that all of us miss and want to get back to, he said. Because we dont have a limit on the number of people, that certainly allows those.

Harris said religious congregations should take care of their sick and elderly members.

We just want you to think about protecting those people who are most vulnerable, those people who would be at highest risk for disease if they were to become infected, Harris said. Weve had a number of churches reach out to us and indicate that they were going to continue maybe separate services for senior citizens, for example. Many of them who have not previously done web-casting and online services are going to continue that. We think thats a terrific idea for keeping people safe.

Harris also noted that a church service that happened before state guidelines went into effect caused a serious outbreak of coronavirus.

I do think its important to remind people as weve mentioned before, the biggest single outbreak we have seen in Alabamas epidemic was associated with a church event, unfortunately, Harris said. It occurred really before health orders had been put into place when we were just beginning to realize the significance of what was going on. There were a couple of hundred cases and I think almost 50 deaths either directly or indirectly related to a church event.

Many churches in Alabama suspended public worship services for the weekend of March 15, with most joining in the suspension by the weekend of March 22.

By the weekend of May 18, many of them could re-start services with special provisions for social distancing.

We certainly want people to get back to their normal worship as soon as possible, and yet please remember to make that as safe as possible for those people who are at risk, Harris said.

Harris and Ivey advised religious leaders to consult the Alabama Department of Public Healths Guidelines for Places of Worship, which can be found on the departments web site.

I would encourage churches and other houses of worship to please, again, look at our web site for guidance we have suggested there for people to consider, Harris said.

The Rev. Joe Godfrey, executive director of Alabama Citizens Action Program and former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, said some large churches may need time to lay the groundwork for returning to worship with cleaning and disinfecting.

The 7,800-member Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Vestavia Hills had earlier this week announced a plan to restart in-person public worship on June 14. Its one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in Alabama, where Baptists are the largest denomination with more than a million members among the states 5 million population.

I would imagine smaller, more rural churches will open sooner than the larger churches, Godfrey said. They dont have the big crowds to worry about.

He also said some elderly and people with underlying health problems may be wise to stay away even after services resume.

My advice to churches is do what you feel you need to do, but be very careful, keep social distancing guidelines, Godfrey said. The virus is highly contagious.

Hodges said that churches need to keep in mind that ministry never stops. When people say, When are you going to reopen? I say, We never closed. We just arent gathering in physical locations on a Sunday. But we are doing more ministry to our congregation and helping more people in our state than ever before.
Washington  The Department of Defense has awarded Inficon of DeWitt a five-year contract worth up to $45 million to supply medical equipment to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Inficon won a competition among 115 companies for the contract through the Defense Logistics Agency, the Pentagon said.

Inficon had received a previous five-year contract from the Defense Department to supply a variety of health-related sensors and accessories to the Armed Forces. That contract expired April 20.

The new contract allows the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to order products on as-needed basis from Inficon.

One of the companys top-selling products has been its HAPSITE portable sensor that identifies chemical warfare agents and other toxic chemicals in less than 10 minutes.

Inficon, which is headquartered in Switzerland, has more than 1,100 employees worldwide and about 300 at its plant in DeWitt. The company reported a sales decline of 3.2% in the first quarter with $92.6 million in revenue.

Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Mark Weiner anytime by: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
South Africa: Businesses, individuals may now relocate premises

Citizens and businesses wishing to move premises during the COVID-19 lockdown can now do so.

This comes after Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, issued and gazetted a set of amendments of the directions to address, prevent and combat the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa.

The directives are known as the Directions on the once-off movement of persons and the transportation of goods for purposes of relocation.

The once off movement of premises commenced on Thursday, 7 May, and will conclude on 7 June 2020.

The directions allow individuals and business to move premises within, and across provincial, metropolitan or district boundaries during the period of Alert level 4.

The COGTA Ministry in a statement said citizens who were not able to move house previously during the lockdown, will now be allowed to move houses with goods.

This includes new lease agreements which were entered into before or during the lockdown period; or in instances where the property transfer occurred before the lockdown period. These directions are limited to a change in place of residence, including the transport of goods to a new place of residence, within the Republic, it said.

The Ministry said anyone who wishes to take advantage of this period to move, with their goods within, or across provincial, metropolitan or district boundaries, must obtain a permit from the station commander of a police station or a person designated by him or her.

All removals must be performed in compliance with COVID-19 regulations and the relevant directions issued by the Minister of Transport.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
When one of the co-owners of 225 Urban Smoke showed up to work last Thursday morning, he was "shocked" to see an empty storage room with no meat, produce or inventory. Samuel Ransom said all of the barbecue restaurant's food was stolen overnight.

Ransom said security cameras showed burglars broke into the restaurant located at 1015 Rittiman Road at around 2:30 a.m. and didn't leave until about two hours later. The thieves, who haven't been caught, wiped out the store, stealing cases of brisket, pork, chicken, wings, lettuce, milk, cheese and bread.

It is unclear how many people were involved, but Ransom said he believes "multiple people" were part of the crime. The restaurant owner added that all the food they lost is estimated to be worth between $12,000 and $15,000.

READ ALSO: San Antonio restaurant owner says he's received worldwide support for not reopening after CNN spot

"They took everything," Ransom said. "I was so shocked. We couldn't even open the next day ... we were running around like a circus trying to get bread and products to open up because we didn't want to let them win."

The barbecue business has kept its doors open for curbside and delivery since the coronavirus pandemic started. Since March, Ransom said it's been a struggle as he has laid off more than half of his staff.

Ransom and his partner Daniel Jimenez, who opened the location last June, created a GoFundMe account Saturday to help replace the items that were taken. As of Wednesday afternoon, the page has raised nearly $1,500 of its $15,00o goal.

"It's eye-opening and humbling to see people rally around us and help us during this time," he said. "People are coming in and ordering a ton of food and just showing us love. It lets you know that there are still good people out there."

Although restaurants are allowed to reopen at 25 percent of its capacity, 225 Urban Smoke has kept its dine-in area closed. The establishment is still selling its food for curbside and delivery.

The establishment is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. For ordering information, call 210-444-9956 or visit 225urbansmoketx.com.

Priscilla Aguirre is a general assignment reporter for MySA.com | priscilla.aguirre@express-news.net | @CillaAguirre
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Linkedin Paul Handley (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Fri, May 8, 2020 06:30 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd69e03d 2 World justice,Donald-Trump,US,aide,political-power,Russia,national-security,national-security-adviser Free

The US Justice Department withdrew its case against former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn Thursday, handing President Donald Trump a major political victory.

The department said in a filing Flynn's December 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI in an interview over his Russia contacts was moot because the lies were not significant.

It said the FBI's original probe of him had no "legitimate investigative basis."

The decision by the Justice Department, led by close Trump ally Attorney General Bill Barr, came as Flynn was fighting possible imprisonment, and after public statements by Trump that Flynn was the political victim of "filthy cops."

It sparked accusations that Barr was undermining longstanding department policies barring interference in cases involving political cronies.

"The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators," said Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

"And now a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice is going to let the president's crony simply walk away."

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe rejected the Justice Department's reasoning for dropping the case as "patently false" and "pure politics designed to please the president."

Flynn's secret talks with the Russian ambassador to Washington in December 2016, before Trump was inaugurated, was a cornerstone of the sprawling investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Moscow's meddling in the US election.

Even though Trump fired Flynn just 22 days into his administration, the president has always claimed the investigation was a political "witch hunt" and that Flynn, a former general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was a "good man."

The Justice Department filing Thursday gave support to Trump's claim, saying there were no grounds for the original investigation.

"The government has concluded that the interview of Mr Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr Flynn -- a no longer justifiably predicated investigation," it said.

Election year triumph for Trump

The department said the January 24, 2017 interview was not "conducted with a legitimate investigative basis, and therefore does not believe Mr Flynn's statements were material if untrue."

Trump, who is campaigning for reelection in November, said Thursday after the decision that Flynn was "an innocent man."

"He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they've done is a disgrace," Trump said.

Trump took aim at the FBI and Justice Department officials who launched the probe of Flynn in August 2016, at the height of the presidential election battle that led to Trump's upset victory.

"I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price, because they're dishonest crooked people. They're scum and I say it a lot. They're scum, they're human scum," he said.

Russian meddling

Flynn, a senior Trump campaign advisor at the time, became one of the targets of an FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the election and efforts to support Trump.

The former Pentagon intelligence chief had a number of contacts with Russia and had been paid tens of thousands of dollars the previous year to attend a banquet in Moscow for a Russian media giant, where he sat next to President Vladimir Putin.

The investigation focused on Flynn's calls with Russian envoy Sergey Kislyak that December, after Trump's victory.

In them Flynn allegedly sought to make political deals for the incoming administration that were contrary to the positions of the outgoing Barack Obama administration.

Weeks after the FBI interview, Trump fired him for having lied to Vice President Michael Pence about his Russian contacts.

But the episode snowballed into an even broader investigation, after Trump then removed FBI director James Comey for rejecting his overtures to drop the Flynn probe.

In the wake of that, the Justice Department named Mueller as a special prosecutor to pursue the Russia investigation further infuriating Trump, who has repeatedly rejected the notion that Moscow interfered in the 2016 race on his behalf.

Flynn was one of six people associated with the Trump campaign who either pleaded guilty or were convicted in the investigation, which also issued indictments against 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies.
Archaeology is the study of the past through the collection and investigation of monuments and artefacts.

The County of Cork has some incredible artefacts spanning many thousands of years located in museums throughout Cork, Ireland and further afield, and in terms of archaeological monuments, it is hard to believe that there are over 19,000 such sites in the County (close to 14% of all archaeological sites in Ireland).

Archaeological monument types are vast and varied - there are over 450 different classes/categories in Ireland - and the County of Cork contains many of these. Extensive volumes have been published on all known monuments in the County - the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork - and new reports are always being undertaken, for example, summary accounts of all archaeological excavations in Ireland since 1969 are available for anyone to view on www.excavations.ie, containing over 2,000 accounts from County Cork alone.

In recognition of the rich archaeology of County Cork, in 2020 Cork County Council is undertaking its 8th instalment in the Heritage of County Cork Publication Series - the Archaeological Heritage of County Cork, supported by the Heritage Council. While previous publications in the Series have touched on many more recent aspects of archaeology, this upcoming publication will pay particular attention to prehistoric monuments and those from some later periods that have not yet featured covering a range of eras from the Mesolithic; Neolithic and Bronze Age, to the Iron Age; Early Christian Age and elements of the Medieval and Post-Medieval periods.

Archaeological sites and monuments tell so much of Cork's history and heritage, ranging from Stone Circles and Megalithic Tombs to Ringforts and Holy Wells, and this publication sets out to convey how our archaeology is at the heart of community, particularly with regard to the identity of place.

One of the most important elements of this publication, if not the most important, is the input of local heritage enthusiasts and groups and to date Cork County Council's Heritage Unit has received some very nice submissions, containing accounts of different local archaeological sites, stories and photographs for use. Cork County Council would be delighted to receive many further submissions and these can be posted in or emailed (cork.heritage@corkcoco.ie) up until Friday 29th May 2020.

The publication will set out to reference as many submissions as possible and further information on how to get involved can also be obtained by phoning 021 4285905.

Your favourite Cork heritage sites

In addition to the upcoming Archaeological Heritage of County Cork publication, Volume Two of the Colourful Heritage of County Cork is also being undertaken in 2020, supported by the Heritage Council and through the Creative Ireland Programme.

Everyone with an interest in this upcoming publication is encouraged to recommend their favourite local heritage sites and characters for inclusion and, as formed part of Volume One, a number of drawings and sketches submitted by the public will feature in the book.

The County has some great budding artists, young and old, and Cork County Council's Heritage Unit is very much looking forward to the range of different drawings that will be submitted - all welcome up to and including 29th May 2020 by emailing cork.heritage@corkcoco.ie.

Storytelling competition

In addition to drawings skills, many people in the County of Cork have exceptional story telling skills, a fantastic tradition in itself. Story telling has been recognised by the Local Authority Waters Programme and a new national storytelling competition has just been launched: ''Stories from the Waterside' / 'Scealta O Thaobh An Uisce'.

Also supported by Inland Fisheries Ireland, Waterways Ireland, The Heritage Council and the Local Authority Heritage Officers Network, this competition is open to all with 4,000 in prizes to be won.

Entries are welcomed from across the Island of Ireland and may be submitted in either in English or Irish. Stories should be 600 words or less and only original and previously unpublished stories.

The closing date is 31st May 2020 and entries are encouraged online through the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO) website: http://watersandcommunities.ie/stories-from-the-waterside/. This website includes full details of how to enter the competition and the full Terms and Conditions. Given the number of rivers and waterways in Cork it is hoped that there will be a great selection of stories submitted from the County.

Oral History Network of Ireland

Storytelling is very much part of our Oral Heritage and Ireland is lucky to have in place for some time now - the Oral History Network of Ireland. For the past number of years an annual conference has been held by the Network but given the measures in place regarding Covid-19, this conference has now been postponed until 2021.

Notwithstanding this, the network is staying busy and on Friday 15th May, from 13:00 to 15:00, has organised on 'Oral History Basics' Online Training Workshop. This two-hour online workshop is specifically designed for beginners who are interested in learning more about oral history and its potential as a research methodology. It outlines some of the key issues to consider when using oral history and offers a preliminary introduction to project planning, ethical considerations, interview techniques and potential outputs.

The event will take place via Zoom and requires a nominal cost for participation.

For further information and to book a place visit www.oralhistorynetworkireland.ie. Later into the month of June it is planned to have in place an online panel session which will discuss Social Distancing and Oral History; another event to look forward to.

The Oral History Network is always looking for new members and for more information simply send an email to info@oralhistorynetworkireland.ie or visit their website.

Upcoming

On the mention of upcoming dates, Thursday May 14th is one to also take note of for all groups with an interest in culture, heritage and commemorations in the County of Cork; this being the closing date for applications under Cork County Council's County Cork Commemorations Grant Scheme 2020 and Creative Ireland County Cork Grant Scheme 2020.

For more information on either scheme email commemorations@corkcoco.ie or creativeireland@corkcoco.ie as appropriate or phone 021 4285905.

Many fantastic applications have already been submitted to date.
For weeks, passersby on Hixson Pike below Big Ridge have wondered what that restaurant is that has been under construction in the cleared lot across from Publix near Cassandra Smith Road.





People have even inquired on social media sites like Nextdoor.com





This week, a sign appeared there saying Now Hiring and is encouraging prospective job applicants to go to workatjacks.com , which means a Jacks Family Restaurant is scheduled to open.





The chain currently has a restaurant at 4209 Ringgold Road in East Ridge and its initial Chattanooga location at 3530 Cummings Highway in Lookout Valley, but this will be the first one located north of the river. The restaurant is a popular quick-service chain that has been moving into North Georgia and Chattanooga.The chain currently has a restaurant at 4209 Ringgold Road in East Ridge and its initial Chattanooga location at 3530 Cummings Highway in Lookout Valley, but this will be the first one located north of the river.





The restaurant specializes in quick-service, Southern-style breakfasts, hamburgers and sandwiches, sides, chicken, salads and desserts, including milkshakes. It was started in Homewood, Al., in 1960, by Jack Caddell as a walk-up hamburger stand, and its slogan is All About the South."





The eatery building is the first of several structures being developed at the site by Wolford Development headed by Clint Wolford. The general contractor for the project is Morgan Construction Company operated by Jeff Morgan.





The development is located where the Fireball Rogers family once had a home, an old country store-style building, and a barn on several acres on what was one of the last reminders of a once-rural Hixson in that part of town.




Ghana's famous dancing pallbearers have shared a heartwarming video thanking doctors around the world for their work fighting coronavirus.

The footage, shared online by lead pallbearer Benjamin Aidoo, shows the seven men dressed head-to-toe in white, complete with gloves and face masks.

One pallbearer, believed to be Aidoo, sits at the front wearing a red sash and sunglasses, as he addresses the camera.

He says: 'Hello everyone, we want to thank all the doctors in the world', before pausing as the pallbearers behind him break out in applause.

The troupe breaks out in applause as the six men thank doctors around the world

'You are working hard and taking care of everyone', he adds, before flashing a quick thumbs up.

As the 20-second clip draws to a close, the pallbearer points to the camera and chuckles: 'Now remember stay at home - or dance with us!'

The clip was shared to Aidoo's 51,000 Instagram followers and has since been viewed more than 61,000 times.

The troupe of pallbearers went viral back in 2017 after BBC Africa shared a video showing their flamboyant coffin-carrying dances.

They found fame when the footage was streamed all over the world - with the group's impressive choreography even included in a music video.

The pallbearers were filmed as they transformed the funeral process into performances, dropping to the floor and bouncing the coffin on their backs and legs to the beat of traditional, live music.

While they're known on the internet as the Ghana Dancing Pallbearers, their true name is the Nana Otafrija Pallbearing and Waiting Service.

Adoo previously told the BBC that the dancing routines were implemented to add more options for funeral services to clients.

He said: 'I decided to add choreography to it so if the client comes to us, we just ask them: "Do you want it solemn or do you want a bit more of a display? Or maybe you want some choreography on it?"

'They just ask, and we do it.'

The men have found a second-wave of fame amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Social media users have filmed their own versions of the the infamous dances to create dark-humoured memes - many of which have been shared by Aidoo himself online who praised the 'cool and creative videos'.

One such meme shows the pallbearers carrying a seemingly dead body on their shoulders as they dance to electronic music.

Another shows a woman coughing - an apparent nod to a key coronavirus their symptoms - before a group of men bounce a chair on their shoulders in lieu of a coffin.

Other meme videos from across the globe show delivery drivers bouncing food carriers on shoulders and in one, religious monuments are used in place of coffins.
About 300 migrant workers from



Bihar's Khagaria arrived here on Friday in a special train to work in rice mills in Telangana, the state government said.

State Civil Supplies Minister G Kamalakar, ruling TRS MLC and state's Rythu Samanvaya Samiti (farmers' coordination panel) Chairman Palla Rajeshwara Reddy and others welcomed the migrant workers at the Lingampalli railway station here.

This is the first time in the country during the ongoing lockdown that migrant workers have arrived in a state for work from their native state, Rajeshwara Reddy said.

"Everybody (migrant workers) want to go their own states. People started coming to Telangana for work," he told P T I.

According to an official release, Telangana faced shortage of workers due to the lockdown at a time when the state government is procuring paddy from farmers on a record scale.

The workers from Bihar are mostly hired in the about 2,000 rice mills in the state, it said.

The Bihari workers had gone to their home state for Holi festival and they could not return to Telangana due to the lockdown, it said.

This has led to shortage of workers in the paddy purchase centres, rice mills and others, resulting in problems in handing over 'custom milling rice' (CMR) to the Food Corporation of India (FCI), it said.

The matter was taken to the notice of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and as per his directives, state Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar had written a letter to the Bihar government, it said.

The officials of the civil supplies department spoke to the state rice millers association and prepared a list of workers who are willing to come to Telangana.

The list was sent to Bihar government.

Accordingly, about 300 workers arrived at the Lingampalli railway station here in a special train on Friday afternoon.

Their temperatures were recorded, it said.

The workers were provided food and sent to different places in state-run buses by following social distancing norms, the release said.

The state government has borne the costs for arranging the special train to transport the migrant workers from Bihar and provided food and other facilities to them, Reddy said.

The official release quoted civil supplies minister Kamalakar as saying that the migrant workers would be treated as "children of Telangana" as they have come to the state with trust that they would find work.

Chairman of civil supplies corporation Mareddy Srinivas Reddy said efforts are being made to get another five-six thousand workers, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) on Friday strongly condemned the suspension and dilution of key labour laws by some states, saying the "draconian measures" are aimed at depriving workers of their rights.

The union has sought immediate withdrawal of "draconian" decisions by the states.

Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have decided to stay labour laws for three years and also announced a series of changes to give a boost to investments hit by COVID-19.

Joining the league, Gujarat too eased some labour laws and also increased working hours from 8 to 12 hours.

"AITUC strongly condemns the move of some state governments to take away labour rights of workers and demands that black laws should be withdrawn," an AITUC statement said.

The union further said that it strongly opposes the decision of the Uttar Pradesh government to bring in a "draconian ordinance titled 'Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption for Certain Labour Laws Ordinance 2020' under the guise of need for facilitating economic activities".

It said that in one stroke 38 laws aremade defunct for 1,000 days (almost three years).

"The remaining are only section 5 of Payment of Wages Act, 1934, Construction Workers Act, 1996, Compensation Act, 1993 and Bonded Labour Act, 1976 which remain functional."



Those laws made defunct include Industrial Dispute Act, Act on Occupational Safety and Health, Contract labour act, grant Labour Act, Equal Remuneration Act etc, it added.

The union said that the Madhya Pradesh government has brought drastic changes in Factories Act, Contract Act and Industrial Dispute Act in a manner where the employers will be at will to hire and fire the labour.

It said that with the changes, the dispute raising will become non starter, the contractors will have no compulsion to obtain licence for supplying labour up to 49 persons and no inspection will be allowed without prior permissions.

All these changes mean that the workers are to be used as bonded labour without any rights for sheer exploitation in the interest of capital without any guarantee of wages, safety and healthcare, social security, it added.

The Gujarat government, it said, has blatantly taken illegal decision of increasing workinghours from 8 to 12 hours, but no payment for extra working hours, it said.

Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh governments have given clean chit in regard to raising working hours as per need of the employers, it added.

It is of the view that these draconian measures are not only to further the sheer exploitation of the workers without their rights for raising any dispute over proper wages, safety at work place and guaranteeof social security etc, but also to kill their soul.

"Indian working class is being pushed back into British Era and we the trade unions resolve to fight back with all our might," it added.

The AITUC has also demanded compensation from the Railways Minsitry to the tune of Rs 50 lakh each to families of deceased workers in the accident in Aurangabad in Maharashtra.

Similar compensation should be given to those workers who died of such accidents while walking to their homes in absence of any travel facilities due to lockdown, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 27-year-old woman with Ecstasy pills and a stolen handgun was arrested Friday morning during a drug raid in Wilson Borough, police report.

Amanda Michelle Butler was home just after 6 a.m. in an apartment at 2304 Hay St. when the Pennsylvania State Police Emergency Response Team and borough police served a search warrant based on evidence gathered in April indicating drug dealing, Meehan said.

The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Northampton County Drug Task Force assisted, Meehan said.

After a narcotics K9 hit on a nearby car, the vehicle that had been rented by Butler was impounded and another search warrant was received, Wilson police Chief Chris Meehan said. Detectives recovered 12 grams of heroin laced with fentanyl, Ecstasy, marijuana and drug paraphernalia, Meehan said. No one has been charged in that part of the ongoing investigation, he added.

The 73 Ecstasy/MDMA pills were in a clear plastic bag in the apartment, court papers say. About a half ounce of marijuana, a silver digital scale and a black 9mm Taurus PTIII G2 handgun were also found in the apartment, police said. The gun was stolen out of Emporia, Virginia, police said.

Since Butler has a previous felony conviction, she cant have a gun, police said.

Once she was read her rights, Butler admitted the pills and the gun were hers, police said in court papers.

Butler was arraigned at 10:45 a.m. before District Judge Richard Yetter III on charges of possession of a firearm when prohibited, receiving stolen property, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance (two counts) and possession of drug paraphernalia, records show.

Bail was set at $100,000, records show.

Her preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled for 9 a.m. May 18 in Yetters court in the borough.

Court papers did not list an attorney for Butler.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting lehighvalleylive.com with a voluntary subscription.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com.
Iraq's former spy chief Mustafa Kadhemi took office as prime minister Thursday facing a staggering economic crisis, a pandemic and the spectre of renewed protests after breaking months of political deadlock. Parliament approved the new government overnight after last-minute changes to the cabinet line-up, nearly a month after the ex-head of the National Intelligence Service (INIS) was nominated by President Barham Saleh. It was the third attempt to replace outgoing premier Adel Abdel Mahdi. The nomination of 53-year-old Kadhemi followed weeks of lobbying of deeply divided political parties, including those close to neighbouring Iran who had been wary of his ties to the United States. One hardline faction had accused Kadhemi of conspiring with Washington over the January drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis outside Baghdad airport. But on Thursday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted a congratulatory message to the new premier, saying: "Iran always stands with the Iraqi people and their choice of administration." Kadhemi appeared to have brought Iran-aligned factions on board, with endorsements from both Soleimani's successor as Quds Force chief Ismail Qaani, and from Mohammed Kawtharani, the pointman on Iraqi affairs for powerful Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hezbollah. Kadhemi had already received a call from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced a 120-day waiver extension on US sanctions to let Iraq buy gas from neighbouring Iran. The waiver is "a display of our desire to help provide the right conditions for success," the State Department said. - A partial government - Iraqi lawmakers, observing social distancing and wearing masks and gloves to curb the spread of the coronavirus, approved 15 ministers out of a prospective 22-seat cabinet. Seven ministries -- including the key oil and foreign affairs positions -- remain empty as political parties squabble over shares. Outgoing premier Abdel Mahdi, 77, resigned late last year following months of protests decrying rampant corruption, unemployment and a political class seen as beholden to neighbouring Iran. He became the first prime minister to step down since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, but stayed on as caretaker premier in the absence of a successor. Ministers who were approved included those for the sensitive portfolios of finance, interior, defence, health and electricity -- securing the majority that Kadhemi needed for his cabinet to be considered viable. The new government is meant to hold early elections seen as an opportunity for a political reset for the country, but it will also face urgent policy priorities. Iraq's economy is set to shrink by 9.7 percent this year and poverty rates may double, making it the country's worst annual performance since 2003, the World Bank has warned. The enormous deficit brought on by collapsing crude prices may force the cabinet to trim salaries for state workers, potentially sparking new anti-government rallies. Meanwhile the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 100 Iraqis, and the country's dilapidated health system is at risk of being overwhelmed by a spike in cases. - In-house trouble - Kadhemi will also have to resolve budget and oil disputes with the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, and lead a strategic dialogue with the United States in June over economic and military ties. In the phone call, Pompeo mentioned talks with Kadhemi and agreed on "working together to provide the Iraqi people the prosperity and security they deserve," the State Department said. The new premier has pledged to strike a balance between competing allies Washington and Tehran, which have been at deepening loggerheads since the US reimposed tough sanctions on Iran in 2018. The United States has also blamed Iran and its allies for a spate of rocket attacks on troops in Iraq that have killed US, British and Iraqi forces in recent months. Just hours before parliament's vote, a new rocket attack -- the first since late March -- hit a military complex outside the Baghdad airport where US troops are based. Iraq's parliament voted to oust all foreign forces, including some 5,200 US troops, after Soleimani's killing in January -- but the decision has yet to be implemented. And remnants of the Islamic State group have apparently stepped up attacks in recent weeks, two years after the country declared the jihadists defeated. In his overnight address to parliament, Kadhemi pledged to hold early elections and draft an emergency budget law. But Kadhemi's challenges are not just external, said Renad Mansour, a researcher at the London-based Chatham House think tank. "Kadhemi will try to retain some level of independence from the political blocs as prime minister, but the biggest spoiler could be holdovers from the Abdel Mahdi administration who will be wary of him," Mansour told AFP. "It will be increasingly difficult to do the kind of horse-trading required to reach consensus in Iraq given the level of fragmentation in the political scene," he said.
USC students line up for graduation in 2011. This year's ceremony will be virtual. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Mia Maloney had what every college senior wants: a cool paid internship in her field secured months before graduation.

The USC senior had accepted her dream role as a marketing intern at a record label in Nashville that represents some of her favorite artists.

Then it was gone.

Because of the uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, the company called her in March and rescinded its offer.

Worse yet, it wasn't even the first time this had happened to her. Two weeks earlier, a similar company had revoked Maloney's first internship offer for the same reason.

Its heartbreaking, she said. You cant blame them for making these tough decisions in such an unprecedented time, but its unfortunate to be on the receiving end of it.

Mia Maloney, a USC senior, is looking for a marketing job in the music industry. (Courtesy of Mia Maloney)

Now as Maloney, 21, finishes her final semester online in her childhood bedroom in the Bay Area town of Alamo, she's staring down the May 15 graduation date that heralds her entrance into this coronavirus-wrecked economy, for which her years of school did not prepare her.

U.S. unemployment soared to 14.7% in April, the highest since at least the 1940s. More than 33 million Americans have filed new applications for jobless benefits since President Trump declared COVID-19 a national emergency in March. State and local authorities issued stay-at-home orders hoping to stop the spread of the contagious disease. As nonessential businesses shut, many employers slashed their workforces, cutting hours and jobs.

This job market is tough even for the most experienced workers. For those trying to launch a new career, it's even more daunting.

Its the worst thing I have ever seen, said Jane Oates, who served as the Department of Labor's assistant secretary for employment and training in the Obama administration. They are about to enter the employment market at a time when absolutely nobody knows what to predict.

A poor economy can drastically affect new graduates.

Last decade, the Great Recession shrank the U.S. workforce by 8.8 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When the recession ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 20 to 24 was 10.8%, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data, higher even than the national rate of 9.5%. In April of this year, the jobless rate for college graduates that age surged higher still, to 17.2%.

Story continues

Those who do land jobs after graduating during a recession tend to start at lower salaries than their counterparts whose careers start in good economies. And they don't catch up quickly: For white men who graduated during the 1980s recession, lower wages persisted for a decade or more, according to research by Lisa B. Kahn, who is now an economics professor at the University of Rochester.

A recession can also slow graduates' career progression, making them take less prestigious jobs and wait longer for promotions, said Emily Bianchi, associate professor of organization and management at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. During the Great Recession, nearly half of college graduates in the early stages of their careers were underemployed, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

That financial ripple effect hurts other areas of graduates' lives too. Millennials, who came of age during the Great Recession, have struggled mightily to pay off student debt, buy homes and save for retirement.

Current college students and recent graduates also carry a large student debt load. And those listed as dependents on their parents' tax returns were disqualified from receiving the $1,200 federal stimulus checks announced in March.

Unlike the Great Recession, the pandemic struck abruptly, reversing years of economic progress in mere weeks. The uncertainty of how long the effects will last may complicate the prospects for new graduates.

It's hard to know how long this recovery will take, whether things are going to snap back into place or whether it's going to take a little bit longer, said Amanda Stansell, senior economic research analyst at the job-search website Glassdoor. That's going to have different ramifications for new grads finding a job, getting paid fairly, those sorts of things.

Imminent graduates face an uphill battle on two fronts, Oates said. There are fewer jobs available, creating more competition. And whenever jobs return, she said, companies will most likely rehire the talent they originally let go.

And there aren't obvious places to turn. As payrolls nationwide shrank by more than 20 million jobs last month, the losses cut across all industry sectors.

For job seekers right now, its trying to figure out not who the growth industries are, but who the industries are that are going to be able to come back with any vibrancy at all, said Oates, who now serves as president of WorkingNation, a nonprofit focusing on advocacy surrounding unemployment issues. Youre looking at industries that are completely reformatted.

Samantha Herrera Fuentes Davila, a senior at UC Santa Barbara, hopes to work at the United Nations someday. (Courtesy of Samantha Herrera Fuentes Davila)

Samantha Herrera Fuentes Davila, a senior at UC Santa Barbara, said she's been adjusting her approach. The 22-year-old sociology major is interested in public health and energy, and she dreams of working in administration for the United Nations.

But after seeing some friends' parents lose jobs at businesses that were deemed not essential during the pandemic, she broadened her search. She began looking for positions at companies whose services have seen a recent surge in demand, such as streaming video firms.

Im trying to be a lot smarter about it, she said. I don't know how necessary my interests are, and unless I work for one of those companies, I think I would probably be stuck at home not having a job.

Spencer Petty, a USC senior, said she is still processing how this will change her job-search strategy. The 22-year-old is seeking a career in sales and marketing and most recently completed an internship at KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles. She said she has applied for at least 25 positions  and the companies all either rejected her or havent responded.

Her parents and other mentors told her not to expect the perfect job right after graduation. The current economic situation makes that advice even more relevant, she said.

I've had these amazing internships and I've seen my dream jobs, Petty said. Now, Im trying to face reality that I'm not going to be there immediately. ... I need to take whatever is available and just get some experience under my belt.

Spencer Petty, left, poses with "Inside Edition's" Megan Alexander at the CMA Awards red carpet in 2018. (Courtesy of Spencer Petty)

Suzanne Alcantara, director of career development at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said she advised students in the Great Recession to expand their skill sets and professional networks. Those methods apply now, too, she said.

Maloney and Petty have both talked with USC alumni, and both spend time perfecting their LinkedIn profiles and resumes. Oates said those measures are prudent, and said students should also consider learning new skills, such as coding.

If you show a prospective employer that you didnt just sit around and waste time between your classes in this incredibly difficult time, but also added these credentials to your portfolio, youll be showing that you had the grit and resilience that you are looking for in an employee, she said.

While many notable companies, such as Disney and Yelp, have rescinded internship offers, 75% of employers in a survey administered by UCLA in March said they are still hiring. AT&T, IBM, Deloitte and Bank of America are some companies that confirmed to The Times that they will still honor internship and job offers.

Graduating in a recession can also produce good character traits, Bianchi said. Her research shows that such graduates are happier with their jobs, show more gratitude and are less narcissistic compared with graduates in a good economy. The negative things they endure early in their career make them more appreciative later on, she said.

When you first enter the workforce at a time when jobs are very scarce, when youve seen your friends have the rug pulled up from under them, when its hard to just find a job, those experiences tend to make people more grateful when they do land one.

Meanwhile, Maloney, Herrera Fuentes Davila and Petty are home with their parents, preparing for virtual graduation ceremonies that they'll have to celebrate far away from the friends and mentors with whom they bonded in college.

Theyre networking with anyone they can, applying anywhere they can imagine a fit.

All three say they're hopeful for the future. But they know things may be uncertain for a while. Its definitely a tough time to get your foot in the door, Maloney said.

For now, they wait.

For the record:

3:48 PM, May. 08, 2020: A previous version of this article said parents who claim college students as dependents get a $500 stimulus payout for each child, in lieu of the child receiving a $1,200 payout. The $500 payouts apply only when the dependents are younger than 17. Older dependents do not qualify for either payout.


Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the nation has been under lockdown in an effort to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. An unexpected consequence of the lockdown in West Bengal is that park rangers in Sundarbans have reported a jump in sightings of tigers. The Sundarbans which encompasses large tracts of land in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is the worlds largest mangrove forest, it is spread over 10,000 square kilometres (4,000 square miles) and is also home to the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger.

Substantial increase in sightings

According to reports, Sudhir Das, director of the Sundarbans tiger reserve has said that since the coronavirus lockdown went into effect, the sightings of tigers have gone up significantly. Das also reportedly added that during normal times the forest officials only manage to spot the big cats roughly twice a week but since the lockdown has ended tourist traffic and also grounded noisy motorboats, the officials have been seeing the big cats up to six times a week.

Read: Kareena Kapoor Shares Rare Picture Of 'Tigers' Rishi Kapoor And Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi

Read: 'Wonderful': Netizens Enthralled As Ambush Of Tigers Lazes On The Road At Satpura In Video

As per reports, the number of tigers at the Sundarbans mangrove forest, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, have gone up to 96 in the India part of the forest. The increase in the number of big cats was announced on May 6 by the West Bengal state forest department

According to reports, the forest official in their latest survey was able to identify 43 female tigers as well as 11 cubs through the use of 700 all-weather night-vision camera traps. India is home to 70 per cent of the worlds tiger population. According to a report last year, the government had announced that the tiger population in India had risen from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,967 in 2018.

The rise in tiger population in India in recent years has been credited to a strict ban on hunting of the big cats as well as several awareness drives. Despite the growth in tiger numbers, the increasing number of human-tiger conflicts caused by shrinking habitats has been a point of concern for conservationists.

(With Inputs from PTI) (Image Credit PTI)

Read: How Many Tigers Are Hidden Within This Picture? Observe Carefully And Try Finding Them All

Read: Sunderbans Tiger Count Increases To 96 From 88: Official
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 17:43:15|Editor: huaxia

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A house destroyed by rain-triggered flood is seen in Kigali, Rwanda, May 8, 2020. The death toll due to Wednesday night's heavy rains in different parts of Rwanda has reached 72, a government official said on Friday. (Photo by Cyril Ndegeya/Xinhua)

KIGALI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The death toll due to Wednesday night's heavy rains in different parts of Rwanda has reached 72, a government official said on Friday.

The government on Thursday said the downpour killed 65 people in Western and Northern provinces.

Dozens of people were left homeless, and most of them sought temporary shelters in schools and were offered bedding and foodstuff as the government embarked on relocating them to safer places, Olivier Kayumba, permanent secretary of the Ministry in charge of Emergency Management, told a live news program on Rwanda Television (RTV).

He said more than 90 houses and five bridges were destroyed while hectares of crops were submerged.

On Thursday, Minister of Local Government Anastase Shyaka told RTV that more than 8,000 people countrywide have been relocated from high-risk zones that are prone to landslides and flooding in the past three weeks.

The Rwanda Meteorology Agency in February forecast "above-normal" rainfall countrywide during the rainy season from March to May.

In a disaster update released on March 6, the ministry in charge of emergency management said 53 people were killed while 84 others were injured due to disasters triggered by heavy rains in different parts of Rwanda since January.

More than 850 houses, eight churches, 23 roads, 17 bridges were also destroyed, it said. Enditem
San Francisco, May 8 : Ride-hailing major Uber has reported a net loss of $2.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, even as its revenue reached $3.54 billion in Q1 2020 from $3.1 billion a year ago, a growth of 14 per cent.

The net loss in Q1 2020 includes stock-based compensation expense of $11 million in Q1 2019 and $277 million in Q1 2020 as well as pre-tax impairment write-downs of $2.1 billion, partially offset by a pre-tax gain on business divestiture of its Uber Eats India operations of $154 million, the company said on Thursday.

In Q1 2019, Uber's net loss was $1 billion, which includes $11 million in stock-based compensation expense.

Uber said its gross bookings in Q1 2020 grew to $15.8 billion, up 8 per cent year-over-year, or 10 per cent on a constant currency basis, with rides declining 3 per cnet and Eats growing 54 per cent year-over-year, respectively, on a constant currency basis.

Due to lower trip volumes and its current hiring freeze, Uber has announced a reduction of its customer support and recruiting teams by approximately 3,700 full-time employee roles.

Earlier this week, it announced a change to the geographic footprint of Uber Eats operations affecting eight markets.

"We will discontinue Uber Eats in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and Ukraine, and will transfer Uber Eats operations to our Careem subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates," the company said.

Uber on Thursday announced it is folding its JUMP e-bike and e-scooter business into Lime.

"Our customers will continue to have access to e-bikes and e-scooters in our apps. As part of the transaction, we made an additional convertible note investment of $85 million in Lime," Uber said.
The Executive Committee of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) suspended its Secretary Ashok Arora with immediate effect on Friday in a meeting held through online conference, an SCBA official said.

The suspension came a day after Arora had called an emergent general meeting (EGM) of the lawyers' body on May 11 to deliberate on agenda for removing senior advocate Dushyant Dave from the post of SCBA President.

The Executive Committee also cancelled the proposed EGM and decided to set up a a three member panel to look into the allegations against Arora, said SCBA Treasurer Meenesh Dubey.

He said the decision to suspend Arora was taken by majority of participating lawyers.

Arora, in a statement, said: On May 7, the President (Dave) claimed that no general body could remove him since he was elected by SCBA members for a year but today a few members took this illegal action to suspend the Secretary.

There is no provision in the SCBA Rules to suspend a duly elected secretary. It is all because of manipulation and unscrupulous designs of the President, Vice President...and a few others. It is clearly a vindictive action because I had convened an Emergent General Meeting on the requisition of four hundred ten SCBA members to consider the removal of the President,.

He said there is documentary evidence to show that "the President and his men/women in the EC intimidated me from time to time for which I reserve my right to initiate legal action. They suspended me on vague and baseless allegation. In fact their undemocratic action damaged the reputation of this prestigious Bar.

He said during his present tenure, the prestige of SCBA skyrocketed and the social justice committee spent about 300 hours to figure out how to rehabilitate the riot victims of northeast Delhi and without spending a single penny from SCBA funds, Rs 25 lakhs were contributed to rehabilitate about 46 families.

Even as Arora called the EGM, Dave had written to the bar members calling the move as illegal and improper saying he is an elected President of the lawyers' body and would continue to serve till his tenure ends.

Arora had said that the agenda of meeting will be to consider the resolutions signed by 410 members of SCBA, addressed to the secretary to condemn the unauthorised resolution dated February 25, purportedly passed by the executive committee and to immediately withdraw the same.

Differences appeared among the top office bearers in the SCBA over the stand taken by the lawyers' body on a 'resolution' concerning statements made by Justice Arun Mishra about Prime Minister Narendra Modi at International Judicial Conference-2020.

Shortly after Dave had issued the February 25 'resolution', allegedly signed by several members of the lawyers' body expressing anguish and concern over Justice Mishra's statements, Arora had claimed that "no resolution has been passed" as he did not sign the statement released to the media.

Arora had then said, "There was no executive council or general body meeting of the Association. The President has taken an arbitrary dictatorial and irresponsible stand. He cannot speak on behalf of SCBA without calling general body meeting or meeting of the executive council on such a serious issue".

Arora had said that all the communication to the media is to be sent through the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is General Secretary of the SCBA.

"It is not a resolution in the eyes of law because it was not signed by me," he said, adding that Dave has made available to media a circular which contained suggestions of only six to seven members.

The lawyers' body in its resolution had said, "The SCBA expresses its strong reservations on the statement and condemns the same strongly. The SCBA believes that the independence of the judiciary is the basic structure under the Constitution of India and that such independence be preserved in letter and spirit."



On February 22, Justice Mishra was all praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi while delivering the vote of thanks at the inaugural function of the International Judicial Conference 2020 - 'Judiciary and the Changing World' and termed him as an "internationally acclaimed visionary" and a "versatile genius, who thinks globally and acts locally".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Introduction

Agenda setting and policy formulation process in health policy are complex, intertwined, and do not follow a predetermined path (Koduah, van Dijk & Agyepong, 2015). Understanding the processes of health policy formulation is very key to ascertain why some policy issues remain and are sustained on the agenda-setting, whiles others are drop off. This is because putting and keeping policy issues on the agenda is an important component of policy-making decisions (Awenva et al., 2010).

Agenda setting is the problem-sorting stage in the process of policy (health policy), during which some issues attract policy makers attention while others stay ignored (Flisher et al, 2007). In the works of Awenva et al. (2010), they argue out that, how power and authority is practiced by those who hold it; is key in understanding health policy agenda-setting. Furthermore, the prominent agenda-setting process model theorizes that the policymakers attention is raised on issues with solutions, political engagement, and avenue for the opportunity.

Literature has revealed that, there is a broad range of explanations as to why some health issues make it on the agenda and others fail. According to Green-Pedersen and Wilkerson (2006), Koduah, van Dijk, and Agyepong (2015), some are systemic, emphasizing how institutions are structured to take benefit over others of some alternatives. Cognitive factors emphases how knowledge is processed at any specified moment by people or even organizations and this may/not restrict what will be resolved. In addition, role of external bodies or government views, and how they combine with political incentives, to move attention rapidly to maiden developments adds to why some policy issues drop off the agenda setting table.

History of HealthCare Financing Policy in Ghana

According to Anyinam (1989) cited in Alatinga and Williams (2014), formulation and development of modern health policy in Ghana took place under the rulership of Sir Gordon Guggisber, the then Governor of Gold Coast. His leadership also developed health policy which instituted free medical care for the European officials. Access to free medical and healthcare was later expanded to include 0.02% of the African population living in Ghana , and these category of people included people working in the civil and public service (Alatinga and Williams (2014).

In 1930 a proportional user-fee system was introduced in the Gold Coast for people seeking health care in public facilities, in line with the concept of financial accessibility. People working within the formal sector were charge lower user fees for assessing healthcare services within the public sector. However, people working in the informal sector where not directly considered in the proportional lower fee policy (Alatinga & Williams, 2014; Konotey-Ahulu et al., 1970)

It is also important to note that medical doctors were permitted to collect personal professional charges under the colonial health policy despite the reality that they worked in public health centers. According to Konotey-Ahulu et al. (1970), as at 1954, the medical policy required that patients assessing public hospitals for their health care needs to pay professional, dispensary, and drug fees. This requirement by the policy created financial burden on the side of the patients and impediment to access health care. Notwithstanding this, the poor in society were not exempted from paying fees to access healthcare in public facilities under the colonial medical policy.

In another development, the policy for free medical care to the very poor in society did not make it clear on the determination of who is poor and who is not. This gave the medical doctors and the Director of Medical Services the privilege to decide at their own discretion; who is poor and who is not poor. A report of a study conducted by Konotey-Ahulu et al. (1970) mentioned that practice continued till independence.

A study by Kooney (2007) noted that the first maiden policy direction by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was to abolish private medical practice by medical doctors within the public hospitals. As at the end of September 1st, 1958; the government under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah brought a complete stoppage to the payment of professional fees by patients in Ghana, irrespective of their nationality, in government hospitals.

This decision by the government brought a remarkable increase to healthcare service utilization; as this reduced financial barrier to healthcare services by patients (Konotey-Ahulu et al., 1970 cited in Alatinga & Williams, 2014). The free medical health care in public institutions as inherited from Colonial masters in piece and extended to all citizens in full was without the exemption of mental health care.

In the works of J.B Asare (2010) he mentioned that, there are several policies that have tried to address mental health care provision in Ghana since the Colonial Era through to independence in 1957 to current time. He affirmed that in 1994, a mental health policy was formulated and revised in 2000, and 2004 with the objective of providing facilities at all levels of health care to treat various forms of mental illness.

It is interesting to note that, none of the policies on mental health which was formulated since 1994, 2000 and 2004 did not mention the treatment of mental health care to be free. One could assume that since general health care was free, mental health care was inclusive. Nevertheless, free health care policy to all citizens introduced by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was in forced until 1966 when he was overthrown by the military rule led by Lt.General Ankrah (Konotey-Ahulu et al., 1970)

In the era of National Liberation Council, and under the leadership of Lt. General Ankrah, patients were charge lower fees for drugs, and payment of higher fees for those patients admitted into a VIP wards. The general public at that time punched and fired the government with their grievances but that could not cause any change (Alatinga & Williams, 2014).

In another development, there was a shift in the health care financing in Ghana, from lower fees paid by patient to outright free care under the tutelage of Dr. Kofi Busia. In the works of Konotey-Ahulu et al.(1970) as cited in, Alatinga & Williams (2014), the government of the day brought a complete halt to the payment of hospital fees in a press release titled  until further noticed in October, 16th 1969 (Konotey-Ahulu et al.,1970:19) following the public outcry on the reintroduction of hospital user fees by Lt. General Ankrah.

As days goes by, with emerging of new governments, both civilian and military rule, health sector financing went through a robust structuring depending on the ideology of the government of the day. It is worth noting, according to Arhin (2003), two years later, there was re-introduction of user fee policy through the Hospital Fee Act of 1971, hence requiring all patients accessing public health facilities to pay for their health care needs.

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This section describes the methodology used in this research. It comprises of study design, research approach, and study population, sampling procedure and sample size, an instrument for data collection, source of data, data processing and analysis, as well as ethical considerations.

Defechereux, T., Paolucci, F., Mirelman, A., Youngkong, S., Botten, G., Hagen, T. P., & Niessen, L. W. (2012). Health care priority setting in Norway a multicriteria decision analysis. BMC health services research, 12(1), 39.

Alatinga, K. A., & Williams, J. J. (2014). Development policy planning in Ghana: The case of health care provision. European Scientific Journal, 10(33).

Awenva, A. D., Read, U. M., Ofori-Attah, A. L., Doku, V. C. K., Akpalu, B., Osei, A. O., & Flisher, A. J. (2010). From mental health policy development in Ghana to implementation: What are the barriers?. African Journal of Psychiatry, 13(3).

Koduah, A., van Dijk, H., & Agyepong, I. A. (2015). The role of policy actors and contextual factors in policy agenda setting and formulation: maternal fee exemption policies in Ghana over four and a half decades. Health research policy and systems, 13(1), 27.

Green-Pedersen, C., & Wilkerson, J. (2006). How agenda-setting attributes shape politics: Basic dilemmas, problem attention and health politics developments in Denmark and the US. Journal of European Public Policy, 13(7), 1039-1052.

Flisher, A. J., Lund, C., Funk, M., Banda, M., Bhana, A., Doku, V., ... & Petersen, I. (2007). Mental health policy development and implementation in four African countries. Journal of health psychology, 12(3), 505-516.

World Health Organization. Department of Mental Health, Substance Abuse, World Health Organization, World health organisation. Department of mental health, substance abuse. Mental health, evidence, ... & Research Team. (2005). Mental health atlas 2005. World Health Organization.

Asare, J. B. (2010). Mental health profile of Ghana. International Psychiatry, 7(3), 67-68.
National trains are set to return to 70 per cent operation in just 10 days time but Transport for London still claim their limited services are at full capacity.

Rail and bus networks across Britain are bracing for a surge in passengers on Monday morning if Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives the green light for some people to get back into the office.

But TfL, who operate London's underground network, are 'running the maximum frequency' of services possible.

Fewer trains means commuters - including NHS staff and other vital workers - have been forced to cram into over-crowded carriages.

TfL said they 'are working with the Government' to figure out what social distancing measures can be put in place.

The London Underground was busy this morning with some passengers seated and some standing on a carriage at Bond Street station

It comes just days after London Mayor Sadiq Khan said it was too soon to ease the lockdown because so many TfL workers are off sick, adding: 'As it is, we are providing the maximum public transport we can with the staffing levels we have.'

Mr Khan claimed TfL needs four weeks to prepare for lockdown easing because it has furloughed 7,000 staff and a fifth of Tube workers have been in self-isolation.

A TfL spokesperson said they 'wouldn't be able to respond' to the proposed national increase in train operations.

They added: 'We are running the maximum frequency we can at the moment.

A passenger wearing a protective face mask walks along the platform Bond Street station

Under a two-metre social distancing rule on carriages and platforms, the Underground will only be able to accommodate 50,000 passengers boarding every 15 minutes - a massive reduction on the 320,000 people every 15 minutes during normal peak times

A graphic of how a London bus could look with 15 passengers spaced out for social distancing

Public transport usage on different modes has been increasing slightly over the past fortnight

'Our intention is to progressively build up service levels but it is clear life simply wont be returning to what it was before, and everyone who can work from home must continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

More drivers reported on roads than at the start of lockdown As lockdown frustration grows, more and more drivers are taking to the road. A total of 11 per cent more cars were spotted than during the second week of lockdown, RAC figures showed. RAC's head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes told the BBC: 'It perhaps is being driven by lockdown fatigue and boredom while the sunny spring weather might also be enticing drivers back into their vehicles. 'Additionally, some who are indoors might have chosen to carry out home maintenance and DIY, so have taken an opportunity to visit DIY stores that are now open.' Advertisement

'We are working with the Government to understand how the restrictions on travel may be lifted - including their expectations on social distancing.

'This will dictate how many people can be safely carried alongside extensive mitigating measures such as re-timing journeys to spread demand out of peak times and managing stations differently.

'When workplaces re-open there will be significant challenges in enabling those Londoners who cannot work from home to get to and from work while social distancing rules are still in place.

'We expect that there will be an enormous travel demand challenge that we will all need to overcome together, and planning is underway on how to meet that challenge and help London get moving again, safely and sustainably.'

Ministers and industry chiefs are urgently working to beef up capacity by May 18 to around two-thirds of the full timetable, sources told the BBC.

The six-feet government distancing rule poses a challenge to the proposals as, if maintained, it will slash carriage space by 90 per cent.

In London, congestion is gradually rising on roads despite lockdown continuing with more traffic reported as weeks go on

Congestion in Liverpool has slowly been creeping up. Congestion on Wednesday was 21 per cent, compared to 18 per cent the previous week

Apple mobility data based on requests within its Maps app showed driving, walking and usage of public transport in London are all continuing to rise

What are options being considered for the return to commuting on the Underground? Encouraging people to cycle to work

Asking commuters to wear face coverings

Strict queuing systems at stations

Asking employers to stagger shift stars

Increasing the price of rush hour fares

Buses carrying only 15 passengers instead of 85

Running Tube services at 20% of pre-crisis levels Advertisement

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: 'We are examining a range of options on how transport can respond to support the recovery in a timely way when the time comes and it is safe to do so.

'We continue to prepare for any scenario we might be asked to support'.

Union leaders stressed they want to make sure their members' safety is protected, with one saying lifting the lockdown was 'fraught with danger'.

Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union said: 'There is a headlong dash to lift the lockdown on our transport services for May 18 and it is fraught with danger for both passengers and staff alike.

'To maintain the Government's own social distancing guidance would mean huge logistical and staffing input to manage passenger flows onto trains and it is imperative that all staff involved in this process are properly protected.

In Manchester, a similar rise was seen, with congestion at 19 per cent yesterday compared to 17 per cent the previous week

In the Birmingham and Wolverhapton area, congestion was at 18 per cent yesterday compared to 16 per cent from the week before

'RMT will not compromise on the health, safety and livelihoods of our members and we will not agree to anything that fails to put the safety of staff and passengers first.

'If that means advising our members not to work under conditions that are unsafe and in breach of the government's own guidelines then that is exactly what we will do.'

Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers union Aslef said: 'We have worked with the Government and all stakeholders in the rail industry throughout this crisis to ensure that key workers get to work, and food and medical supplies are moved around the country.

TfL data shows the Tube could only carry 15% of rush hour passengers under social distancing

'We want to help Britain return to what we knew as normal before the pandemic, and have agreed with the Department for Transport that we will increase the number of services when and where it is safe for passengers and for staff.'

A Department for Transport spokesman said: 'We are examining a range of options on how transport can respond to support the recovery in a timely way when the time comes and it is safe to do so.

'We continue to prepare for any scenario we might be asked to support.'

As frustration at the restrictions grows, 11 per cent more drivers were reported on the road than in the second week of lockdown, RAC figures showed.

RAC's head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes told the BBC: 'It perhaps is being driven by lockdown fatigue and boredom while the sunny spring weather might also be enticing drivers back into their vehicles.

'Additionally, some who are indoors might have chosen to carry out home maintenance and DIY, so have taken an opportunity to visit DIY stores that are now open.'

Commuters walk along the platform at Stratford railway station in East London yesterday

The Prime Minister will spell out a road map to adjust the lockdown on Sunday in an address to the nation.

Number 10 has poured cold water on speculation of any significant lifting of curbs, but the 'stay at home' message is expected to be ditched.

Downing Street insiders today said the country would remain under lockdown until June.

But after dire forecasts from the Bank of England yesterday about Britain's flagging economy, it is likely ministers are sketching out a blueprint to fire up UK plc.

Passengers sit apart on a London Underground Jubilee line train in rush hour yesterday

Commuters try to maintain distance on a London Underground Jubilee line train yesterday

Part of this involves adopting a bulked out rail timetable to cope with more passengers.

Sources have previously mooted staggering passengers to prevent crammed carriages becoming hotbeds for infection.

There could also be further guidance on wearing masks while travelling after a survey by rail and road watchdog Transport Focus found 51 per cent of people would not be happy using trains and buses unless passengers were required to wear them.

An economic think tank also suggested that increasing peak-time ticket prices on London's Tube and buses could help manage passenger numbers.
The St John, Zambia volunteers from Kayosha before social distancing was enacted. Credit: University of Huddersfield

Researchers at the University of Huddersfield are harnessing the power of song to spread vital healthcare messagesincluding COVID-19 precautionsamong African women.

The projecttitled Life-Saving Lullabieshas earned major funding from Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It is focused on Zambia, but when it has proved its value it could spread to other African countries and then around the world, as a zero-cost way to create awareness of key health issues.

It works by encouraging volunteers to create lively lullabies in their local languages that they then perform to women who visit maternity clinics.

The songs are a memorable way to convey important information about birth and childcare, but the onset of coronavirus now means that songs are now being created that relay the importance of precautions, such as social distancing.

The Life Saving Lullabies project has been developed by the educationalist Dr. James Reid and the historian Professor Barry Doyle at the University of Huddersfield. They are collaborating with the design expert Professor David Swann, once a colleague at Huddersfield and now based at Sheffield Hallam University. The UK teamawarded 129,795 by the AHRCis working alongside St John Zambia, a leading healthcare provider in the African country.

Dr. Reid said that he and his colleagues had been "overwhelmed" by how volunteers and maternity clinics in Zambia responded to the project.

"These women are so talented. They have gone away and written songs and performed them to local women and it's having an effect," he said.

Life Saving Lullabies was the result of what Dr. Reid described as a "eureka moment" when he and his colleagues visited Zambia for a workshop session during 2019.

Originally, their aim was to investigate whether the Finnish baby boxa maternity package given to all new parents in Finland, contributing to very low levels of infant mortalitycould have a role in Sub-Saharan Africa.

But it was quickly realized that the cost of the baby boxes meant that they would not be a solution in Zambian villages.

Credit: University of Huddersfield

"Also, they are culturally inappropriate," said Dr. Reid. "We showed women photos and the first thing they saw was a baby-sized coffin. There is a very high rate of infant mortality, especially in rural areas of Zambia."

So the researchers investigated the possibility of incorporating verbal and pictorial healthcare messages into the chitenge, the colourful wrap that is worn by huge numbers of African women.

"But then it struck us that even though chitenge were ubiquitous, not everybody could afford them and we had to do something that was as close as possible to zero cost if the project was to gain traction and be sustainable," said Dr. Reid.

"We were at St John Zambia for a workshop talking to women volunteers about their own experience of motherhood. Then they started to sing and we looked at each other and went 'that's it'!"

Earlier, Dr. Reid had been to New York, where the famous venue Carnegie Hall is the base for a Lullaby Project, which uses especially composed songs to develop attachment and aid child development. Observing this scheme made him realise the potential of lullabies in Zambia, where it is common for women to sing to their children and as part of church worship.

Now, the project is underway and volunteers in Zambian clinics, after being told what information the Ministry of Health needs to impart, have been creating and performing songs. They can be seen and heard online and researchers will gauge their impact.

The AHRC funding runs until March, but the project could be extended and at the conclusion there will be a symposium in Zambia, and the possibility of spreading the scheme to other African countries.

"And beyond that, one of the really important things we want to do is bring the idea to the global north," said Dr. Reid.

"This would bring the baby box discussion full circle," he continued. "The boxes are really expensive. They are a really good idea in a particular context in places like Finland and perhaps the UK that can afford them. But there are other ways of doing things and singing might be a way of achieving a lot more for no cost."

Carnegie Hall in New York has now invited the Life Saving Lullabies team to take part in a two-day workshop in June as part of their review of its own Lullaby Project. There has also been received an invitation from Spanish organization Grandes Oyentes to take part in an online discussion on the impact of music and creative engagement on women's health as they plan to introduce a lullaby project in Spain.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak
The Haverford Township Police Department has cleared two officers who were filmed kicking and beating a man with a baton May 3, 2020. The case is being reviewed by the Delaware County District Attorney's Office. Read more

A video posted to Facebook this week showing two uniformed Haverford Township police officers wrestling, kicking, and repeatedly striking a man with a baton captured the tail end of a very violent arrest Sunday by officers who did not use excessive force, Police Chief John Viola said Friday.

The officers, whom he declined to name, have been cleared of wrongdoing by the department, Viola said. Both were wearing body cameras that have been turned over to the Delaware County District Attorneys Office, he said.

Marjorie McAboy, a spokesperson for the District Attorneys Office, declined to comment about the Facebook video  which was posted by a pedestrian  but said the officers body camera videos and the arrest are being reviewed by detectives and the deputy for special investigations.

One officer is a nine-year veteran and the other is a four-year veteran, Viola said.

The 1:20 p.m. clash on a Sunday in the empty Kohls department store parking lot on Township Line Road near West Chester Pike began as a medical call concerning a man sleeping in the lot, Viola said.

The man, whom he identified as Christopher Ricciuti, 30, was incoherent and became combative when awakened by the officers. Ricciuti later told officers that he was homeless and that he had ingested some type of seed, Viola said.

Ricciuti told the officers that he was going to walk to his parents home in Marple Township. After he failed a field sobriety test, the officers tried to place him in custody for his own safety, Viola said.

When they put one handcuff on, he became extremely violent, broke away from the officers, began fighting with the officers, and ran away with one handcuff on, Viola said.

They chased him and used a Taser on him twice with no effect on him whatsoever, the chief said.

"He continued to run toward Township Line Road, and one of the officers ran after him and finally tackled him in the driveway, the chief said. This is when the bystander video comes into play.

While the officers fought with Ricciuti, he grabbed one of the officers Tasers with two hands, which led the other officer to begin striking him with his baton, which Ricciuti grabbed, Viola said.

They were striking him, theres no doubt about. At that point they finally did get him under control, Viola said.

During much of the Facebook video, Ricciuti was lying on his back or seated on the ground shouting for help and for someone to call the police, while the officers repeatedly shouted at him to get on his stomach. One officer landed at least 17 baton strikes to Ricciutis back, legs, and feet.

Ricciuti declined medical assistance and was charged with disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, resisting arrest, and a felony count of disarming a police officer.

Online court records show that Ricciuti paid the required 10% of his $10,000 bail and was released from jail Friday. No lawyer was listed for him, and his next court date was not indicated.
The federal government's superannuation early access scheme will be frozen until Monday after it was revealed on Thursday federal police are investigating claims more than $100,000 was stolen from up to 150 super accounts by sophisticated criminals.

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar said the scheme would be paused "out of an abundance of caution" while the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Austrac and the Financial Crimes Taskforce investigated what was described in Senate hearings on Thursday as "sophisticated" organised or offshore crime cells targeting the early access scheme by acting as "intermediaries" in order to steal personal information such as dates of birth and tax file numbers.

Michael Sukkar said the federal government's superannuation early access scheme would be paused until Monday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"There's been one isolated incident where I think it's fair to say identity theft has been involved," Mr Sukkar said in a Friday morning Sky News interview. "That's being investigated by the AFP but I emphasise these are not compromises of the ATO's system, these are flat out fraud."

AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw said on Thursday his agency's cyber team was assisting in the investigation as there had been "an intrusion into a third party" as part of the fraud that stole approximately $120,000.
ROME (AP)  From the marbled halls of Italy to the wheat fields of Kansas, health authorities are increasingly warning that the question isnt whether a second wave of coronavirus infections and deaths will hit, but when  and how badly.

As more countries and U.S. states chaotically re-open for business  including some where infection rates are still rising  managing future cases is as important as preventing them.

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In India, which partly eased its virus lockdown this week, health authorities scrambled Wednesday to contain an outbreak at a massive market. Experts in hard-hit Italy, which just began easing some restrictions, warned lawmakers that a new wave of virus infections and deaths is coming. They urged intensified efforts to identify possible new victims, monitor their symptoms and trace their contacts.

Germany warned of a second and even a third wave, and threatened to re-impose virus restrictions if new cases cant be contained. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was meeting Wednesday with the country's 16 governors to discuss further loosening restrictions that have crippled Europe's largest economy.

There will be a second wave, but the problem is to which extent. Is it a small wave or a big wave? Its too early to say, said Olivier Schwartz, head of the virus and immunity unit at Frances Pasteur Institute.

Many areas are still struggling with the first wave of this pandemic. Brazil for the first time locked down a large city, the capital of Maranhao state. Across the ocean, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa has shot up 42% in the past week and infections are expected to surpass 50,000 on Wednesday.

An Associated Press analysis, meanwhile, found that U.S. infection rates outside the New York City area are in fact rising, notably in rural areas. It found New York's progress against the virus was overshadowing increasing infections elsewhere.

Make no mistakes: This virus is still circulating in our community, perhaps even more now than in previous weeks, said Linda Ochs, director of the Health Department in Shawnee County, Kansas.

The virus is known to have infected more than 3.6 million and killed more than 251,000 people, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins that all experts agree is an undercount due to limited testing, uneven victim criteria and deliberate concealment by some governments.

The U.S. has seen over 71,000 deaths amid its 1.2 million infections, and Europe has endured over 144,000 reported coronavirus deaths. Behind each of those vast numbers is a family in pain.

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Burying both parents at the same time? Its hard, said Desmond Tolbert, who lost his mother and father in rural southwest Georgia. Because they had the virus, he couldnt be with them when they died.

U.S. President Donald Trump, with his eye on being reelected in November, is pushing hard to ease state stay-at-home orders and resuscitate the U.S. economy, which has seen over 30 million workers lose their jobs in less than two months. Trump is expected to wind down the countrys coronavirus task force, possibly within weeks, despite concerns that states arent being careful enough as they reopen.

A century ago, the Spanish flu epidemics second wave was far deadlier than its first, in part because authorities allowed mass gatherings from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

As Italys lockdown eased this week, Dr. Silvio Brusaferro, president of the Superior Institute of Health, urged a huge investment of resources to train medical personnel to monitor possible new cases. He said tracing apps  which are being built by dozens of countries and companies and touted as a possible technological solution  arent enough to manage future waves of infection.

We are not out of the epidemic. We are still in it. I dont want people to think theres no more risk and we go back to normal, said Dr. Giovanni Rezza, the head of the institutes infectious disease department.

In Germany, authorities may reimpose restrictions on any county that reports 50 new cases for every 100,000 inhabitants within the past week.

Lothar Wieler, head of Germany's national disease control center, said scientists know with great certainty that there will be a second wave" of infections but said Germany is well-prepared to deal with it. The country has been hailed for testing widely and has suffered four times fewer deaths than Italy or Britain, which both have smaller populations.

Britain has begun recruiting 18,000 people to trace contacts of people infected. British officials acknowledge that they should have done more testing and tracing earlier and could learn from South Korea, which brought its outbreak under control by rigorously testing, tracing and isolating infected people.

South Africa, which has years of experience tracking HIV and other infections, is already testing and tracing widely. Turkey has an army of 5,800 teams of contact tracers who have tracked down and tested nearly half a million people linked to infected cases. Israel plans to conduct 100,000 antibody tests to determine how widespread the coronavirus outbreak has been and prevent a second wave.

India was concentrated on the immediate drama around the market in the southern city of Chennai, which is now tied to at least 1,000 virus cases. Another 7,000 people connected to the now-shuttered Koyambedu market are being traced and quarantined. Experts are worried about a health catastrophe in a country of 1.3 billion people with an already stressed medical system.

New confirmed daily infections in the U.S. exceed 20,000, and deaths per day are well over 1,000, according to the Johns Hopkins tally. And public health officials warn that the failure to lower the infection rate could lead to many more deaths  perhaps tens of thousands  as people venture out and businesses reopen.

The faster we reopen, the lower the economic cost  but the higher the human cost, because the more lives lost, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sai d. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making.

Trump acknowledged the toll but argued that keeping the U.S. economy closed carries deadly costs of its own, such as drug abuse and suicides.

Im not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon, he said during a visit to Arizona in which he did not don a face mask.

___

Charlton reported from Paris and Blake from Bangkok. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

___
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Mayor Bill de Blasio has tapped the citys public hospital system -- rather than the Department of Health (DOH) -- to oversee New York Citys expansive testing and tracing program in the next phase of limiting spread of the coronavirus.

The DOH has historically led contact tracing efforts for Ebola, the measles and other diseases, but the mayor said Friday, he chose the citys Health + Hospitals Corporation to lead the initiative because of its sheer operational and logistical size overseeing 11 public hospitals in the four boroughs and 70 clinics across the city.

Eleven hospitals, 70 clinics, the ability to do things on a vast scale, the ability to manage huge numbers of operational frontline personnel, [H+H] provide health care directly to people and so they understand what it means to put together a process thats going to be not just testing a lot of people and tracing a lot of people, but then ensuring people get to the hotels, get the health care they need, he told reporters during a press conference Friday.

Staten Island is the only borough without a public hospital and H+H operates just two community health clinics on the Island.

But the mayor vowed to work with everyone in the contact tracing initiative including private hospitals.

His spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein later clarified that contact tracers would reach out to people testing positive for the virus at private hospitals as well.

The question about the private hospitals were going to work with everyone, were going to have information on test results, were going to follow up with anybody and everybody, so the testing that well provide as a city is going to happen primarily through public buildings, but were, as I said going to start working with private entities as well, de Blasio said.

But the follow up on people, we dont care where we get the positive result from, were going to follow up with people no matter what and do the tracing work and then do the isolation work as needed, he continued. So ultimately, this will involve a much larger swath of the private healthcare work as well.

It's not a new system. Private hospitals report their cases. The City then reaches out to those people and begins tracing . It's the same thing that we did at the beginning of this crisis, just on a much larger scale.



Whether you're at a public or private hospital has 0 bearing  Freddi Goldstein (@FreddiGoldstein) May 8, 2020

HOW THE PROGRAM WILL WORK

The citys test and trace corps will ramp up testing across the city and plans to connect with anyone at public or private medical facilities who tests positive for the virus to trace all of their close contacts.

The team will isolate anyone who needs to be quarantined including people they came in contact with who need to be isolated in a hotel room.

As part of the test and trace initiative, the mayor said that by early June the city would have 2,500 public health foot soldiers in its test and trace corps and would add more moving forward.

He said testing would also quickly ramp up.

In recent weeks, the city has been running about 14,000 tests a day, but he said the test and trace team vowed to get the citys testing capacity up to 20,000 tests per day by May 25 using 33 community based testing sites across the city with the goal of running 50,000 tests per day.

May 25 is right around the corner, 20,000 tests per day, 33 testing sites but thats just the beginning, this team is preparing to get us to the level of 50,000 tests per day and the goal is to have that in place in the next few months, 50,000 per day, 300 plus community sites and that will be both public health sites and working with private providers as well, he said.

When you get to the level of 50,000 tests a day, 100,000 every two days, 1 million every 20 days, you can see we are starting to get into the kind of extraordinary levels we need and we want to keep building all the time, he said.

City-run testing has, so far, been slow to ramp up on Staten Island.

The city has only been conducting coronavirus testing at one of the two H+H locations sited on the borough, H+Hs Gotham Health Vanderbilt clinic in Clifton.

To date, City Hall said Friday the H+H clinic in Clifton has only conducted about 900 tests since it opened three weeks ago, despite the initial goal of the clinic to test up 2,400 tests a week.

SPEAKER JOHNSON VOWS HEARING ON MAYORS DECISION

The mayors decision to have H+H oversee the citys contract tracing initiative reportedly did not sit well with Health Department officials.

Several people familiar with the announcement told Politico that the Health Department was livid it was not granted full control over the initiative and saw the mayor handing the test and trace program to H+H as way of punishing the Health Department.

Following the mayor's announcement, Speaker Corey Johnson said the administration's plan to hand testing and tracing to the public hospital system "raises a lot of alarm bells" and would hold a hearing to investigate what happened.

"Contact tracing is a core function of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and has been for years. This is a distraction when we need to be focused on battling this virus. The New York City Council will hold a hearing to get to the bottom of this and chart the best path forward, Johnson said.

FOLLOW SYDNEY KASHIWAGI ON TWITTER.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***
Banks have handed out 5billion of 'bounce back' loans to Britain's smallest businesses in just three days.

Under the Government's Bounce Back Loan Scheme, which launched on Monday, major lenders have approved lifelines to almost 160,000 companies, according to numbers seen by the Mail.

That is an average of more than 53,000 per day.

Rethink: Chancellor Rishi Sunak was forced into a rethink after thousands of small businesses warned they would go bust without quick access to cash

The figures starkly demonstrate the reluctance of banks to lend under the original Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

CBILS launched on March 23, but has so far only seen 33,812 loans handed out  or just 768 per day.

And those CBILS loans to small and medium-sized businesses total around 5.5billion  not much more than the 'bounce back' scheme has covered in three days.

The lack of lending through CBILS sparked accusations that the banks were 'letting the country down' 12 years after being rescued in the last financial crisis.

As criticism mounted, and thousands of small businesses warned they would go bust without quick access to cash, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was forced to re-think the rescue scheme.

He brought in the BBLS to fill the gap at the smaller end of the business market, allowing firms to borrow between 2,000 and 50,000 at a lower cost and with no need to present complicated forecasts in their applications.

Welcoming the latest figures, Sunak said: 'Small businesses are vital to our economy and will play a key role in creating jobs and securing growth as we recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bounce Back loan scheme, which thousands of firms across the country are already benefiting from, will make sure they get the finance they need  helping them bounce back and protect jobs.'

'We'd have struggled big-time without the money' Bilal Majeed, the owner of fabric shop A&M Textiles, applied for cash under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) weeks ago. But he was still waiting to find out from his bank Santander if his application had been accepted when he heard about the bounce back loans. When the lockdown began in March, the 37-year-old father of two was forced to close his shop in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, so his income plummeted. He desperately needed to update his stock from winter fabrics to summer fabrics, but didn't have the cash flow to pay for it. He applied for a 30,000 loan under BBLS from his bank Santander on Monday and, 24 hours later, received a text saying it had been approved. He said: 'We would have struggled big-time without the money. Summertime is really busy for us  lots of people take up sewing and big household projects.' Added to that, his fabrics are also being used to make face masks for the public and scrubs for NHS workers. Now he has the money, Majeed also plans to launch an online shop so any customers who are reluctant to leave their homes even after the lockdown will be able to order. The businessman added: 'I don't think things will be back to normal for a year at least, so this should really help.'

Within hours of banks opening up their online 'bounce back' applications on Monday, they were swamped with hundreds of thousands of applications, showing the huge pent up demand which CBILS had failed to address.

The chasm between the success of the two schemes shows how desperate banks have been to avoid taking on extra risk as they support Britain's small businesses through the coronavirus pandemic.

Under BBLS, the Government has agreed to bear 100 per cent of any losses which the lenders suffer, compared to 80 per cent under CBILS.

This means banks can lend more freely under BBLS, knowing that they won't make a loss even if the borrower goes bust.

Former Treasury Committee member Lord Mann said: 'As before, the banks are letting the country down. The taxpayer bailed them out in 2008 and they should have led from the front in this crisis.

'As ever the banks are quick to look after themselves and slow to give British business a helping hand.'

Britain's 'big five' lenders  Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, Natwest owner RBS and Santander UK  are already expecting 6.9billion worth of loans to turn sour this year due to the pressures imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.

BBLS loans are also being approved more quickly than CBILS because the process involves running fewer checks on the business's viability. But it is now the sheer volume of applications which is slowing banks down.

Barclays' application portal crashed within hours of it opening on Monday, and some customers are still waiting for access.

And Natwest confirmed yesterday that some of its customers were being told to reapply because the details they entered were slightly different to those on their account  even if it was just a full stop or a hyphen missing.

The bank explained that this would not usually be an issue, but staff were so inundated with work that it was taking much longer to get round to individual problems than normal.
Washington

The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation.

The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn himself admitted as much, pleading guilty before asking to withdraw the plea, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as the special counsel investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Thursday's action was embraced by Trump, who has tweeted about the "outrageous" case and last week pronounced Flynn "exonerated." It could also energize supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as a cause.

But it will also add to Democratic complaints that Attorney General Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

"He was an innocent man," Trump declared of Flynn. He accused Obama administration officials of targeting Flynn and said, "I hope that a big price is going to be paid."

In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case "after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information." The documents were obtained by The Associated Press.

The department said it had concluded that Flynn's interview by the FBI was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn" and that the interview was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis."

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, formally recommended dropping it to Barr last week, the course of action vehemently and publicly recommended by Trump, who appointed Barr to head the Justice Department.

Barr has increasingly challenged the Russia investigation, saying in a television interview last month that it was started "without any basis." In February, he overruled a decision by prosecutors in the case of Roger Stone, another former Trump adviser, in favor of a more lenient sentence for the longtime Trump friend.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Jensen said in a statement: "Through the course of my review of General Flynn's case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed."

Shortly before the filing was submitted, Brandon Van Grack, a Mueller team member and veteran prosecutor on the case, withdrew from the prosecution, a possible sign that he disagreed with the decision.

The department's action comes amid an internal review into the handling of the case and an aggressive effort by Flynn's lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution. The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was improperly trapped into lying when agents interviewed him at the White House days after Trump's inauguration. Though none of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Trump last week pronounced him "exonerated."

The decision is the latest dramatic development in a years-old case full of twists and turns. In recent months, Flynn's attorneys have leveled a series of allegations about the FBI's actions and asked to withdraw his guilty plea. A judge has rejected most of the claims and not ruled on others, including the bid to revoke the plea.

Earlier this year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jensen of St. Louis to investigate the handling of Flynn's case.

As part of that process, the Justice Department gave Flynn's attorneys internal FBI correspondence, including one handwritten note from a senior FBI official that mapped out internal deliberations about the purpose of the Flynn interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" the official wrote.
When Illinois restaurants were ordered shuttered by Gov. Pritzker in mid-March, restaurant owners, chefs and workers braced for several weeks of zero income. When the order was extended through April, and then May, the industry pointed to June. But Pritzkers five-phase plan, announced Tuesday, set the earliest-possible day for reopening at June 26, and that date is by no means definite.
Employees may be allowed to carry over any unused annual leave into next year. (Getty)

Almost a quarter of employees in the UK are now being paid via the governments furlough scheme since it was introduced in April.

A total of 6.3 million workers had been temporarily laid off by 800,000 companies, with claims amounting to 8bn by 3 May, according to the latest data from HMRC. This equates to about 23% of the employed workforce.

Under the coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, workers who are furloughed have 80% of their wages paid by the government up to a limit of 2,500 per month. At the moment, wage subsidies are to remain in place until the end of June, but there is pressure from employers for the scheme to be extended.

Furloughing is designed to support businesses that have been badly hit by coronavirus. It means the government temporarily helps pay the wages of people, to help stop companies from making them permanently redundant. People who have been put on furlough should not undertake any work for their employer during this period, even though they are still employed. But what about taking annual leave?

Read more: UK vacancies vanish and starting salaries shrink at fastest rate since 2009

Guidance published by HMRC on calculating wage costs for claims under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme confirms that employees can take annual leave while furloughed. Employers must pay furloughed employees their normal rate of pay for a period of holiday, rather than any reduced amount they receive during the furlough.

Furloughed employees continue to accrue leave as per their employment contract, the guidance states.

The employer and employee can agree to vary holiday entitlement as part of the furlough agreement, however almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of statutory paid annual leave each year which they cannot go below.

The amount of holiday employees get each year is dependent on the type of contract they are on, with full time workers in the UK entitled to a minimum of 28 days paid holiday per year.

Story continues

Zero-hour contract workers also receive the same paid holiday entitlement, based on the average hours they have worked, while part-time workers holiday includes the number of days worked per week multiplied by 5.6.

Read more: How to cope with being furloughed

HMRC says: Working Time Regulations require holiday pay to be paid at the employees normal rate of pay or, where the rate of pay varies, calculated on the basis of the average pay received by the employee in the previous 52 working weeks. Therefore, if a furloughed employee takes holiday, the employer should pay their usual holiday pay in accordance with the Working Time Regulations.

However, its important to note that many employers that have furloughed employees will not be in a financial position to pay them in full during annual leave. These employers can also refuse any requests for annual leave during the furlough period by giving the required notice.

Carrying annual leave over to 2021

Employees may be allowed to carry over any unused annual leave into next year, although this decision is up to the employer. In March, the government introduced a new temporary law that enables workers to carry over up to four weeks paid holiday over a two year period.

The move was introduced to support workers who have been affected by coronavirus, such as those forced to self-isolate, or key workers who have had to cancel holidays so they can carry on working. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) states that furloughed workers are covered by the new law, but HMRC is yet to implement the scheme.

Previously booked holidays

If an employee no longer wants to take the time off they had previously booked, for example because their hotel cancelled the booking, their employer can insist they still take the time off, according to ACAS.

If the employee wants to change when they take this time off, they'll need to get agreement from their employer.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 23:53:40|Editor: huaxia

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DAMASCUS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. forces have created a new base in Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zour after bringing in military supplies, a war monitor reported on Friday.

The base was created in the al-Jazrat area in the western countryside of Deir al-Zour after "massive" supplies and reinforcement reached that area, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The UK-based watchdog group said 300 military shipments of the U.S. reached al-Jazrat over the past few days.

It said the U.S. forces are also expanding their base in the al-Omar oil field in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour.

The U.S. has several bases in Syria, mainly in northern and eastern regions where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are located.

The Syrian government has for long demanded the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Syria, branding them as forces of occupation.

However, the U.S. is consolidating its positions in Syria, mainly in areas where oil fields are located in eastern Syria. Enditem
Chennai: Officials were evacuating more people on Friday from the area around a chemical plant in the south of the country that leaked toxic gas, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds more.

There was confusion about whether the wider evacuation orders were sparked by a renewed leak at the LG Chem factory in Andhra Pradesh, or by the fear that rising temperatures at the plant could lead to another leak.

"The situation is tense," N. Surendra Anand, a fire officer in Visakhapatnam district, told Reuters, adding that people within a 5 kilometre (3.1 mile) radius were being moved out because of renewed emissions from the plant.

However, Seoul-based LG Chem said on Friday the decision to extend the evacuation area from 3.5 kms had been ordered as a precaution.

"There was not a second leak and LG Chem has asked the police to evacuate residents as a precautionary measure as there are concerns that tank temperatures would rise," South Korea's biggest petrochemical maker said in a statement. "We are taking necessary measures, including putting water into the tank."

LG Chem shares fell as much as 2.4% in early trade on Friday, before regaining some ground to be down 0.4% against the wider South Korea market's 1.1% gain. Its stocks lost nearly 2% on Thursday.

Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, said gas emissions had been fluctuating through the day and had largely subsided.

Police began urging people to move out of their houses and into waiting buses at around midnight, said local resident Sheikh Salim, who lives about 2.5 kms from the plant.

LG Chem and federal authorities in New Delhi said on Thursday that the leak at the plant, which makes polystyrene products used in manufacturing electric fan blades, cups and cutlery and containers for cosmetic products, had been contained.

Gas from styrene, a principal raw material at the plant, leaked during the early hours of Thursday, authorities said.

The factory, operated by LG Polymers, a unit of LG Chem, was in the process of reopening after a weeks-long lockdown imposed by Indian authorities to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, local officials and the company said.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said in a televised address on Thursday that the leak occurred because the styrene had been stored for a long period of time.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Ohio barbers, hairstylists and nail techs said theyre grateful to have clarity on a reopening date, and feel guidelines announced Thursday will help keep them and customers safe amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Barbershops, hair and nail salons, day spas and tanning salons can reopen May 15, Gov. Mike DeWine announced during Thursdays coronavirus briefing. Businesses will be required to follow a series of guidelines intended to limit the spread of COVID-19, such as limiting occupancy and mandating that employees wear face masks.

Greater Cleveland personal service employees said Thursday theyre thankful they can return to work, because many in the industry have been without a paycheck for nearly two months. But they also believe it was important to shut down so state officials could come up with a plan to keep everyone safe.

I want to be able to work, but I want to be healthy even more, said Waverly Willis, founder of the two Urban Kutz Barbershop locations in Cleveland.

Suzanne French, the owner of Style Associates Salon in North Olmsted, said businesses likely could have reopened a bit sooner, but the temporary shutdown was necessary to assuage safety concerns.

I think it was necessary to close until we got a handle on this virus, French said. Before we closed, we were all extremely stressed out, mostly with the unknowns.

The personal service industry guidelines largely mirror those for other Ohio businesses. Employees will be required to wear masks and keep their workspaces clean, and customers will be asked to wait outside until they can be seen.

Some who work in the industry said they plan to go above and beyond the guidelines. French, for example, said she plans to require customers to wear masks, and even practiced cutting her husbands hair while he wore a mask.

Corie Matyus, a nail tech at Alfredos International in Beachwood, said she ordered a protective barrier that will sit between herself and her clients. The plexiglass shield is 30 inches tall and has a space at the bottom for clients to put their hands through.

I think that if we now take a few extra steps to be proactive, it will only benefit us in the long run, Matyus said.

Rowena Yeager, who owns Studio Wish Salon in Twinsburg, has been meeting with her team via Zoom throughout the shutdown. She plans to keep her studio closed May 15 so employees can have a trial run, practicing on each other under the new guidelines. Studio Wish Salon also has custom face masks for employees.

Yeagers desire to go above and beyond the guidelines is rooted in personal experience. She shut her salon March 14, four days before the statewide order, after learning one of her clients tested positive for COVID-19. She ultimately tested negative herself, but the experience shook her.

Im ready to be back open, and I believe that what we need to do is be as safe as possible, and take a great deal of care for every single one of our employees and our guests," Yeager said.

Some business owners still have some concerns about the new guidelines, describing them as vague. And French said shes worried that it could be difficult to obtain cleaning supplies to regularly sanitize her salon, since theyre in short supply at stores. Shes planning to buy a gallon of hand sanitizer from Western Reserve Distillery, which has been manufacturing it during the pandemic.

We have enough [cleaning supplies] to get started," French said. "But do we have enough for as long as this will go on?

Another point of tension is the fact that many in the industry have been unable to obtain unemployment benefits since the shutdown began. Because many barbers, hairstylists and nail techs operate as independent contractors, they did not qualify for traditional unemployment benefits. After weeks of discussion about their status, the federal government finally announced last week that they can begin applying through the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.

Cosmetology and barber professionals have made significant sacrifices over the last two months to flatten the coronavirus (COVID-19) curve and help save lives across Ohio, Tony Fiore, the executive director of the Ohio Salon Association, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Willis said he understands the anxiety many business owners and workers feel as their bills pile up. But he thinks the temporary shutdown was important, and drove home the seriousness of the coronavirus threat.

Everybody was not on the same page, so I think we had to take that pause to make people take this thing seriously, he said.


Highlights:

Revenue and result in Q1 higher than in same period 2019

Cash position remains strong, credit facility as yet unused in 2020

Order book remains at a healthy level, at  2.0 billion

666 homes sold through April 2020 (479 in 2019), with 289 of these homes B2B sales

Impact Covid-19 limited to date



Ton Hillen, CEO Heijmans N.V

Heijmans revenue, result and cash position exceeded expectations in Q1 and that has laid a strong foundation for the 2020 full-year results. We made a strong start to the year on the back of a mild winter with high production levels. Our efforts to improve risk management and increase predictability are proving effective. Our current financial position and the composition of our order book mean we are in a solid position to weather challenging market conditions.

Thanks to the efforts of our people, the Covid-19 virus outbreak has had limited impact on the progress in projects. Safety of our people and our stakeholders, is always priority. In line with the Building safely together (Samen veilig bouwen) protocol, we have managed to get a lot of work done, while taking the one-and-a-half-metre society into account, and so far the financial damage has been limited.

We are disappointed with the specific measures the government has announced for the construction sector in the context of the nitrogen deposits. They are not enough. Our sector is disproportionately impacted by the demise of the Integrated Approach to Nitrogen (PAS), while the construction sector accounts for a minor portion of the nitrogen problem. The current measures could result in continued delays to the start of large Infra tenders. This will have a negative impact on the sector.

Despite the fact that we are facing challenges in the market, I remain confident. Thanks to the need to increase sustainability and the continued shortage of homes, there is continued high demand for Heijmans expertise and services.



Results per sector

Story continues

Heijmans Infra

The balanced composition of the current order book combined with the mild weather conditions resulted in good results at Infra in the first quarter of the year.

The Heijmans/Siemens Mobility combination won the contract for the renovations of the Piet Hein tunnel in Amsterdam. The contract from the Amsterdam municipality is worth around  70 million. The Piet Hein tunnel was opened in 1997 and is an important link in the Amsterdam road network. After 20 years of intensive use, with traffic of some 30,000 vehicles a day, the tunnel is ready for a thorough renovation.

The work on the Wilhelmina locks in Zaandam is progressing steadily. Heijmans successfully installed two bridge components in the past month. The project is on schedule for completion later this year.

The principals in the Zuidasdok project have decided on a different approach and the project is set to be divided up into smaller projects. Heijmans is pleased that we now have clarity on this project. The contract ( 140 million) will no longer be included in the order book. The principals will put out new tenders for the project and Heijmans can now decide whether to resubmit a bid for the new sub-projects.





Heijmans Building & Technology

Building & technology performed in line with expectations in Q1. The impact of the Covid-19 outbreak varies in this business unit. The residential building activities are largely organised on a local scale. Although we have to take specific measures for the one-and-a-half-metre society into account, especially in the final construction phase, we have been able to keep up with the planned production. This also applies to our Services activities. On the non-residential projects font, we are seeing projects affected by the closure of borders. We are seeing reduced availability of international employees and the delivery of materials has come under pressure in some instances. This is particularly noticeable in the construction of the new courthouse in Amsterdam (the NACH project), where some delays are to be expected.

The Central Government Building Agency (Rijksvastgoedbedrijf) and Heijmans signed an agreement in April for the renovation of the Binnenhof (the houses of parliament) in The Hague. This contract covers the buildings of the Upper House of Parliament and the Council of State. Heijmans is involved in this first phase as a consultant in the drawing up of a definitive plan for the renovations.

In line with our strategic theme Smarter, we had already launched a number of initiatives that are an excellent fit with the measures to be introduced for the one-and-a-half-metre society. Heijmans has noticed a growing demand for support for a healthy working and living climate. Ranging from our digital technologies for measuring use and occupancy - which simplify the monitoring of compliance with the measures - to climate technology in buildings and homes. Our data platform BeSense is a response to this growing demand.



Heijmans Property Development

Home sales were higher in the first quarter of 2020, compared with the same period of 2019, thanks to a single investment transaction involving 190 homes. Sales to private buyers remained at a comparable level to last year.

The commercial spaces at the Hart van Zuid swimming pool in Rotterdam were successfully sold in the first quarter, as were the retail units in the Plan Koningsoord shopping centre in Berkel Enschot. Thanks to this positive development, the new neighbourhood will now have a fully-fledged shopping centre.

In the Vertical project in Amsterdam-Sloterdijk, all the ground floor commercial units have been sold. Heijmans has started construction of the residential tower, which is expected to be completed in 2022.

For the Rotterdam municipality, we are developing 137 energy-efficient homes in the Hoogvliet area, with a value of  37 million. Realisation began in the first quarter. In Eindhoven, housing corporation Woonbedrijf has selected Heijmans as its partner for the new-build project in the Gestel neighbourhood, with 500 rental and owner-occupied homes and a value in excess of  100 million.



Outlook

The market developments currently make it impossible to provide a clear forecast at this time. The expected revenue for 2020 is largely in our portfolio. We will be able to realise this revenue if we can maintain current production levels.

In the coming year, our results will also depend on the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the moment, it is not clear how the virus will impact the spending of public and private sector principals, and consumer confidence. In addition, the government will have to take measures to limit the impact of the nitrogen issue, especially on the infra sector. We consider the measures the government announced last week as insufficient.

Heijmans has a strong financial foundation, partly thanks to the good performance in the first quarter and a - to date unused - committed credit facility of  121 million. The Netherlands continues to face the huge task of increasing sustainability and dealing with housing shortages. Demand for our activities remains high and this provides us with a solid foundation for the future.





About Heijmans

Heijmans is a listed company that combines activities related to property development, building & technology, roads and civil engineering in the areas living, working and connecting. Our constant focus on quality improvements, innovation and integrated solutions enables us to generate added value for our clients. Heijmans realises projects for private consumers, companies and public sector bodies, and together we are building the spatial contours of tomorrow. You will find additional information at our website: www.heijmans.nl.

For more information / not for publication:





Media

Marjolein Boer

Head of corporate communications

+31 73 543 52 17

marjoleinboer@heijmans.nl





Analysts

Guido Peters

Investor Relations

+ 31 73 543 52 17

gpeters@heijmans.nl





Attachment
Caribbean Premier League side Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR), owned by Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, on Friday pledged to distribute one thousand food packets to the needy who are struggling in Trinidad and Tobago due to the coronavirus-forced lockdown.

The TKR has involved their local icons Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Bravo, Lendl Simmons and Sunil Narine, who along with the team's support staff will be personally distributing the hampers to various areas of the island nation.

"@tkriders collaborated with HADCO Ltd. to 'Do the Knight thing' & distribute as many as 1k food hampers to the needy who are struggling because of the lockdown in Trinidad & Tobago. Proud of u my boys!," tweeted Shah Rukh, who is also the co-owner of IPL side Kolkata Knight Riders.

TKR has teamed up with HADCO Ltd, who have put the hampers together. In addition, they have added some items at no cost, and will deliver all the hampers to TKR for further distribution.

"We all know the challenge this health crisis has posed. The entire TKR family wants to contribute and play a small role in easing the pain felt by the people of Trinidad & Tobago," Director of TKR, Venky Mysore said in a statement.

"Our players and support staff have been fantastic, as has been HADCO. When we discussed this idea, they all spontaneously agreed to get involved with the initiative.

"Our players will personally deliver the hampers and hopefully this will put a smile on the faces of the people and ease the pain a little bit. This is a start and we will surely evaluate the needs on an ongoing basis and do whatever we can to contribute," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata



Banerjee on Friday expressed grief over the death of 14 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtra's Aurangabad.

She prayed for the speedy recovery of those injured in the mishap.

"I am struck by grief to hear of the horrific incident involving a goods train which ran over innocent migrants in #Aurangabad, Maharashtra. My deep condolences to the families of the deceased. May their souls rest in peace. Praying for the speedy recovery of those injured," Banerjee tweeted.

At least 14 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district on Friday morning. Two other labourers were injured in the accident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 7,000 Kelowna area residents have lost their jobs in the past two months, according to figures released today by Statistics Canada. The local unemployment rate is now 8.1 per cent, but that doesn't even include people who aren't looking for work because of grim job prospects.
In this Jan. 18, 2014 photo, an endangered female orca leaps from the water while breaching in Puget Sound west of Seattle, as seen from a federal research vessel that had been tracking the whales. The endangered southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea off the southern coast of British Columbia will see enhanced protections this year, the federal government says. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP -Elaine Thompson
Hub Security, a startup that offers military-grade cyber-security solutions for fintech, cloud, blockchain and data storage, announced it has closed a $5 million Series A funding round led by AXA Ventures, with participation from Jerusalem-based OurCrowd.

The company said the investment will be used to strengthen Hub Securitys team, expand its technology and offer enhanced products to fintech companies, focusing on enabling access to credit, corporate banking solutions, cross-border payments and providing ultra-secure banking solutions.

Hub Security offers a solution to growing security concerns related to cloud and enterprise organizations that are raising alarm bells across industries struggling to combat rising levels of cyber threats and attacks. There is consensus among security experts of the need for military-grade security solutions that can address the threat of data theft and exploitation  especially in the era of COVID-19.

We believe this round of funding is crucial to helping us continue our mission of providing military-grade level cyber-security solutions to top cloud, finance, and digital asset management providers, said Eyal Moshe, CEO of Tel Aviv, Israel-based Hub Security.

The company said it has an expanding portfolio of fintech, cloud and insurance clientele.

Hub Securitys end-to-end approach to the development and delivery of its hardware and software components ensures the highest level of security throughout the entire product lifecycle  something thats critical now more than ever in the era of COVID-19. We dont take for granted the trust weve seen from investors, especially in the current financial climate, Moshe continued.

As a growing number of industries turn to cloud and data storage solutions, there is an increasing demand for cyber-security solutions that can combat emerging threats, the company said.

Source: Hub Security

Topics Cyber InsurTech AXA XL Startups
Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. NUS released first-quarter 2020 results, with earnings and sales declining year over year. Reduced sales leaders, especially in Mainland China, hurt quarterly results. Also, Nu Skin continued to battle foreign currency headwinds. Nevertheless, both the top and the bottom line surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Nu Skin Enterprises Inc Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Nu Skin Enterprises Inc Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Nu Skin Enterprises Inc price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Nu Skin Enterprises Inc Quote





Q1 Highlights



Nu Skin delivered quarterly earnings of 36 cents a share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 24 cents. However, the bottom line tumbled 53% from earnings of 77 cents reported in the year-ago quarter.



Revenues of $518 million fell 17% year over year. Nevertheless, the metric surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $474 million. First-quarter revenues included a negative impact of 2% (or $14.3 million) from foreign currency fluctuations. Also, a reduced sales leader count due to declines across all regions hurt revenues.



Sales leaders were 49,551, down 22% year over year, with Mainland China accounting for majority of the decline. In fact, sales leaders deteriorated in all regions. Further, Nu Skins customer base fell 5% year over year to 1,130,947, with declines in all regions except Southeast Asia (up 5% year over year) and Mainland China (flat year over year).



Gross profit came in at $392.2 million, down 17.8% from the year-ago quarters figure. Gross margin contracted 80 basis points (bps) year over year to 75.7%. Nu Skins base business gross margin expanded 60 bps on a year-over-year basis to 78.1%.



Selling expenses amounted to $206 million, which accounted for 39.8% of revenues compared with 40% in the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, general and administrative expenses of $149.6 million accounted for 28.9% of revenues, up from 25.4% in the year-ago quarter.



Operating income came in at $36.6 million, while operating margin fell year over year from 11% to 7.1%.



Regional Results



Revenues declined across all regions from the prior-year quarters level. The highest drop was witnessed in Mainland China, where the metric fell 34%. Further, revenues fell 14% in the Americas/Pacific, 10% in South Korea, 4% in Southeast Asia, 12% in Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1% in Japan and 15% in EMEA.



Other Financial Details



Nu Skin ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $352.6 million, long-term debt of $327.2 million and stockholders' equity of $800.5 million. During the quarter, the company paid out dividends of $20.7 million.



In a separate press release, Nu Skin announced a dividend of 37.5 cents per share payable on Jun 10, to shareholders of record as of May 29.



Guidance



Nu Skin continues to focus on improving sales leaders through technological advancements. Moreover, the company has been witnessing improved trends in Mainland China region as restrictions related to contain the spread of coronavirus are being lifted gradually. Management expects this trend to continue in other markets globally. This along with global preview of its new beauty device, late in 2020, is likely to enable the company to return to growth by the year end.



Management expects 2020 revenues in the range of $2.17-$2.26 billion, including currency headwinds of 2-3%. In 2019, Nu Skins revenues amounted to $2.42 billion. Prior to this, the company had anticipated 2020 revenues of $2.17-$2.30 billion, including currency headwinds of 1-2%.



Further, 2020 earnings are projected in the range of $2.05-$2.35 per share, which indicates a decline from $3.10 delivered in the prior-year quarter. Earlier, Nu Skin had envisioned earnings in the range of $2.00-$2.40 per share. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2020 earnings is currently pegged at $2.03 per share.



For the second quarter, thecompany projects revenues in the band of $520-$550 million that includes adverse currency impacts of 3-4%. Earnings are anticipated between 42 cents and 52 cents. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter earnings is currently pegged at 42 cents per share.



Price Performance



Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have lost 48.2% in the past year compared with the industrys decline of 29.6%.

Story continues





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Amid majority of businesses under COVID-19 lockdown and people remaining in shelter-at-home mode, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Thursday took to twitter saying Economy is poised to recover.

Follow latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic here

Her optimism stemmed from the fact that public sector banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore to MSMEs retail, agriculture and corporate sectors. These loans are waiting for disbursal soon after the lockdown.

During March-April 2020, PSBs sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh cr for more than 41.81 lakh accounts. These borrowers are from MSME, Retail, Agriculture & Corporate sectors, waiting for disbursal soon after #lockdown lifts. Economy poised to recover!, the finance minister said in a series of tweets.

During March-April 2020, PSBs sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh cr for more than 41.81 lakh accounts. These borrowers are from MSME, Retail, Agriculture & Corporate sectors, waiting for disbursal soon after #lockdown lifts. Economy poised to recover! @FinMinIndia @DFS_India  NSitharamanOffice (@nsitharamanoffc) May 7, 2020

The minister, who is under attack for delaying a second tranche of fiscal stimulus, said the Reserve Bank of Indias effective communication and proactive actions had ensured that over 3.2 crore accounts availed the three-month moratorium.

"Quick query redressals allayed customer concerns. Ensuring responsible banking amid lockdown," she said.

For NBFCs and Housing Finance Companies, PSBs sanctioned Rs 77,383 crore between March 1 and May 4. Inclusive of targeted long term repo operations funds, there has been extended total financing of Rs 1.08 lakh crore which has ensured business stability and continuity, she said.

Finance Ministers remarks came in the midst of gloomy prognoses about Indias economy, with many an economist fearing extended lockdown could end the financial year 2020-21 with a 1% contraction in GDP.

On Wednesday, The Nikkei/IHS Markit Services Purchasing Managers Index, a private survey showed the countrys services sector, which contributes more than half to the GDP, suffered the worst contraction, dipping to 5.4 points in April as coronavirus halted economic activities.

A day earlier, the same survey reported a contraction in the countrys manufacturing activities.
When 57-year-old cancer survivor Sandra Rivera Del Valle started to feel sick last month, she faced an impossible choice: Risk her health or forgo her paycheck. Rivera Del Valle chose to stay home from her job as a plane cabin cleaner in Orlando for two weeks, unpaid, in quarantine. When she tried to come back to work, she was laid off. "If I do not get any money, I'll be on the street with my family," she told CNBC in Spanish through a translator. Essential workers across the country like Rivera Del Valle are struggling to get access to paid sick leave, even after a federal law required employers to provide the benefit for Covid-19 reasons. With unemployment skyrocketing, especially among Hispanics and African Americans, many are continuing to go to work even if they feel sick out of fear of losing their jobs. "At the end of the day we have workers, particularly these essential workers, who are going to work, some of them may be going to work not feeling their best, because they have to get a check," said Keshia Pollack Porter, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sandra Rivera Del Valle said she was laid off after taking sick time. Sandra Rivera Del Valle

Unemployment surging

Josefina Garcia, a janitor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said she was fired after she called out sick in April and is now struggling to find a new job. "Right now there's not enough options to work," she told CNBC through a translator. "I'm hoping that when the virus passes the situation will improve." Government data released Friday showed the unemployment rate among Hispanics and Latinos more than tripled from March to April to 18.9%. Employment in the services sector has been particularly hard-hit, with service jobs accounting for more than 17 million of the 20.5 million job losses in the month of April.

Dalia, who did not want to give her last name out of fear of losing her job, is a cleaner in Pennsylvania and a mother of two. She said employees like her have no choice but to go to work, even when they feel sick. "There are a lot of people who don't have work," she said. "Nothing is safe right now," she added.

Paid sick leave

Many workers who do choose to take sick days amid the coronavirus pandemic are giving up their paychecks during that time. Roughly 1 in 4 Americans does not have access to paid sick leave, according to 2019 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jackeline Bonett, a janitor in Miami, said she gave up her salary for 15 days as she stayed home in quarantine. She said she made the choice to protect her and her family's health.

Jackeline Bonett cleans office spaces in Miami. Jackeline Bonett
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  ABS-CBN's return to air now lies with the Supreme Court.

The high court on Friday confirmed receipt of ABS-CBN's petition that seeks to declare "null and void" the cease and desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission. The embattled network also pleaded for a temporary restraining order and/or writ of preliminary injunction "to prevent grave and irreparable injury" to the network and its employees, estimated to be around 11,000.

READ: ABS-CBN asks Supreme Court to stop shutdown order

"The Petition will be raffled to a Member-in-Charge on Monday, 11 May 2020, who will then make a recommendation for the consideration of the Court En Banc," the Supreme Court's Public Information Office said in a statement.

The 15-member court dominated by appointees of President Rodrigo Duterte holds en banc sessions online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

ABS-CBN's shutdown hogged international headlines as thousands of media workers lost their jobs while the world is battling COVID-19, which has infected more than 3.8 million people globally. It is also heavily criticized as an attack on press freedom, since Duterte had publicly threatened ABS-CBN over its refusal to carry his campaign commercials in 2016.

Duterte earlier accepted an apology from ABS-CBN. His spokesperson, Harry Roque said Duterte is "completely neutral" on ABS-CBN's franchise renewal, and the lawmakers should decide on it without worrying about what the President would feel.

Numerous bills are pending at the House of Representatives seeking to grant ABS-CBN a fresh 25-year franchise, but the issue is still not scheduled for hearing next week.

Instead, House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano blamed the National Telecommunications Commission for not giving the media giant provisional authority as earlier promised. Both the House and Senate asked NTC to do so pending the renewal of ABS-CBN's franchise.

CNN Philippines' Anjo Alimario contributed to this report.
The inmates that have tested positive are in one area together, with most showing no symptoms, he said. The three inmates showing some symptoms are medically isolated, he said. But, Reynolds said the challenge has been that a few inmates who were retested were still testing positive, he said.
The coronavirus pandemic has created an opening for the Islamic State (IS) and other armed groups to carry out more attacks on Syrian civilians, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said today.

"We are receiving more reports every day of targeted killings and bombings from one end of the country to the other, with many such attacks taking place in populated areas," Michelle Bachelet said in a news release. "The deteriorating situation is a ticking time-bomb that must not be ignored."

"Various parties to the conflict in Syria, including [IS], appear to view the global focus on the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to regroup and inflict violence on the population," she said.

The UN Human Rights Office has documented an uptick in civilian killings across Syria during the month of April, with at least at least 35 deaths due to attacks involving improvised explosive devices (IEDs), compared with seven the month prior. Since the beginning of March, the UN office recorded 33 IED attacks, 26 of which occured in residential areas and seven in markets.

A truck bombing in Afrin killed dozens, including at least 29 civilians, at a market in late April. The Kurdish YPG militia denied responsibility for the blast in the northern Syrian city, which was seized by Turkish troops and their allied rebel groups in March 2018.

Most of the recent attacks, the UN office said, took place in north and eastern Syria in areas under the control of Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian rebel groups or the rival Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

IS lost its final stronghold in the eastern Syria city of Baghouz in March 2019, but remnants of the group continue to pose a challenge for the SDF and the US-led military coalition. Last weekend, IS fighters temporarily took control of a large prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah in what marked the second such riot in a little over a month.

The group has been stepping up attacks and assassinations in Syrias eastern desert region, as well as in neighboring Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, reported that IS attacked a government military convoy in an area between Deir ez-Zor and Homs provinces Thursday, killing 11.

Earlier this week, the US-led military coalition and its SDF partners raided an IS cell in Deir ez-Zor, leading to the arrest of a militant.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, a cease-fire reached in March between Turkey, which supports the opposition, and Russia, which backs President Bashar al-Assad, is largely holding. Bachelet noted that sporadic clashes and ground strikes are continuing in the countrysides of western Aleppo and southern Idlib.

A renewed government offensive in December displaced roughly 1 million people in Idlib, most of them women and children. Some 300 civilians were killed in the region in the first two months of this year, most of them in Russian or regime airstrikes, according to the UN.
Milton, Fla.

Firefighters in the Florida Panhandle continued battling an erratic fire Thursday that had scorched thousands of acres of woods, razed dozens of homes and forced some 1,600 people to evacuate from their neighborhoods.

A stretch of Interstate 10, northern Florida's main transportation artery, remained closed in both directions near Pensacola because of smoke.

Gov. Ron DeSantis met with emergency officials at a church parking lot in Milton, in Santa Rosa County for an hour Thursday before returning to the state capital of Tallahassee.

The fire was feeding on stands of pines in forests strewn with dry needles.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said in a news conference Thursday that fire officials are working around the clock to contain the wildfires.

"The threat is far from over and there is no rain forecasted," Fried said. She asked residents to stay alert and "be ready for a wildfire impacting their neighborhood."

In Santa Rosa County, which is just east of Pensacola, a 2,000-acre fire resulted in 1,100 homes being evacuated Wednesday. Officials said a few of those residents, in areas south of Interstate 10 have been allowed to return to their homes.

Sgt. Rich Aloy, with the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office, was patrolling Wednesday when he and other deputies helped an older couple trapped by a burning power line. The possibly live wire blocked the two-lane, tree-lined road as smoke engulfed the area. Aloy said he and his deputies just happened upon the couple as they yelled for help.

"Right time, right place," Aloy said.

That fire began Monday when a prescribed burn by a private contractor got out of control, Fried said.

The conditions created a perfect storm for fire  low humidity and high winds.

"The weather is really what will make the difference," said Ludie Bond, a spokeswoman for the Florida Forest Service. "In Florida, when we're seeing the gusty winds, it's hurricane season, not necessarily fire season. So the recipe was just right for this fire to make a huge run."

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

On four different occasions, she said, the fire made a run for Interstate 10, the main traffic artery in northern Florida. Each time, it jumped the freeway and fanned westward by gusts reaching 40 mph.

Firefighters were expecting winds to shift and pick up on Friday.

Officials have confirmed 13 homes destroyed so far in the fire dubbed the Five Mile Swamp Fire.

In a place accustomed to hurricanes, officials said many residents were ready to flee when given the word  although scores of people stayed behind, water hoses in hand, to stand against the fire.

Crews from other areas of Florida are assisting firefighters who've been working long hours since Monday.

In neighboring Walton County, a 575-acre fire in Walton County prompted about 500 people to evacuate.
THE GOVERNMENT is working closely with the police to identify a suitable location for the reopening of a sub police station in Blue Hills.





Immigration minister Hon. Vaden Delroy Williams, who is also Member of Parliament for Wheeland, spoke of the new station in a statement on Monday (May 4).





"I believe that the presence of this station will provide a better sense of security and will deter criminal activity in the communities of Blue Hills and Wheeland, he said.





The ministers statement came following the tragic killing of 77-year-old Percy Williams in Blue Hills on Sunday  the eighth murder of the year and the fourth in Blue Hills.





"I had the pleasure of knowing Mr Williams personally while growing up in Blue Hills/Wheeland, the MP said. "Mr Williams was a well-respected man and loved by many.





"On behalf of my family and the community of Wheeland and by extension TCI, we offer our sincerest sympathies to his family and all other families affected by these awful crimes.





Percy Williams was the fourth person to be killed in Blue Hills this year.





Sheen Dean, 26, was shot dead on Bay Road in Blue Hills on March 10 - in an incident that left two others with serious injuries.





On April 13, Martin Barga, a 44-year old construction worker from the Dominican Republic, was tragically shot and killed on Millennium Highway in Blue Hills.





And on April 18 a murdered man, who is yet to be identified, was found at Blue Hills dump site after reports were made of shots being fired in the vicinity.





Williams said: "It aches my heart to learn of the senseless crimes that take place on this little island.





"Too often we learn of home invasions and robberies, and of families held against their will within their homes for hours at gun point, and held hostage by these culprits.





"These vicious acts can no longer be tolerated.





He stressed that the Government has made it a priority to assist the police force with funding for the training and equipment needed for the fulfilment of their duties.





In addition, his ministry, along with the police will carry out joint operations focusing on illegal migrants.





"In order for this to be most effective, we need the help of the residents of the communities, Williams stressed.





"Too often the public knows what is going on but refuse to assist law enforcement.





"I am asking you to please help us, to help you, your families and fellowmen, as we work together to clean this country of crime.





"Together we can change our communities and make living better for all.





Minister Williams thanked the Wheeland community for adhering to the curfew over the past six weeks.





He reminded of the night-time curfew that will remain in place from 8pm-5am each day until 5am on Monday, May 25.





"While we, the Government, have taken the decision to relax the curfew, I would like to encourage the general public to abide by the regulations and remain vigilant of their surroundings.





"I ask that we allow the police to do their job and assist where we can by supplying useful information. Lets work together and make these islands safe.




This is the case for the industry leader, Innovaflora, which has even recorded a significant surge in international sales. Sales director Jaime Borge assured, "For Mother's Day, we hope to dispatch three or four million flowers. We're off to a good start this year, with a 400% increase in sales in the United States, and 50% increase in Europe. In Japan, we continue to hold a 20% market share."

ProColombia president Flavia Santoro stated, "Preserved flowers are well positioned in the United States, Europe and Asia. We will continue to support this sector, which taps important commercial dates such as Mother's Day, for international buyers to get to know the quality, durability, and variety of Colombian flowers that bloom in our fields."

According to Colombia's Department of Statistics (DANE, as per the Spanish acronym), international sales of preserved flowers registered US $3.4 million in January and February of this yeara 41.2% increase compared to the same period in 2019. The top three buyers significantly increased purchases: 52.7% in the United States, 89.9% in Spain, and 89.9% in Japan.

Rosa Tech CEO Fabian Herrera stated, "We are focusing on e-commerce. Preserved flowers do not need a cold chain and can be shipped as dry cargo which makes them easier to transport."

Mario Botero, Eternity's International Sales Vice president stated: "We are evaluating a stronger e-commerce strategy. This is one of the most rapidly growing channels and is ideal for preserved flowers."

According to ProColombia's analysis of DANE figures, preserved flower exports closed 2019 with US $14.5 millionan increase of 2.1% compared to 2018with Spain, Japan, the United States, France, and Germany as main buyers. The United States purchases, rose from US $1.2 million to US $2.3 millionan increase of 86.3%. Last year, Bogota, Cundinamarca, and Antioquia were Colombia's top exporting departments.

SOURCE ProColombia
GLEN CARBON  Thousands of deaths of residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the nation paint a grim picture of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The recent death of Carolyn McBride, a registered nurse who worked at Eden Village Retirement Center in Glen Carbon, serves as a reminder that people who work in those facilities are equally at risk.

McBride, a 65-year-old Collinsville resident, died from COVID-19 on May 2 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis after being flown there from Anderson Hospital. She tested positive for the virus on April 24.

Were not 100 percent sure that she got it from her work, said McBrides daughter, Shalla McBride, who lives in Ava. She didnt have the symptoms until after one of their residents had it.

McBride initially experienced several of the typical symptoms of coronavirus, including a sore throat, a sore chest and coughing.

But her condition rapidly deteriorated.

Less than a week after her diagnosis, she started vomiting really bad and couldnt keep anything down, Shalla said. I called my sister on Thursday and told her to take her to the hospital and by Friday she was in a coma and she had cardiac arrest.

It took 16 minutes for her heart to start beating again and she didnt have oxygen for that time. She was on a ventilator and early Saturday morning, they called with the results from the CT scan and told us she had brain damage. An hour later, they did another CT scan because she was showing signs of brain swelling.

On May 2, Shalla McBride and her aunt were allowed to visit with Carolyn for about 30 minutes in the intensive care unit.

She had high blood pressure, but the COVID had affected her to the point where they had her on three different meds and they were pretty well maxed out, Shalla said. I had to make the decision to stop the medications and let her go. My mom always said she didnt want to be on a ventilator if she was going to have brain damage.

Carolyn McBride, a native of Chester, had two daughters, one son and five grandchildren, as well as one sister and two brothers.

Carolyn, who had worked at Eden Village for several years, graduated from nursing school in 1995 and had worked in some other long-term care facilities, including Four Fountains Convalescent Center in Belleville and University Nursing & Rehab Center in Edwardsville.

She was dedicated to her career as an RN working in long-term care and wanted to take care of people who couldnt take care of themselves, Shalla said. That inspired me and my sister to follow in the same line of work. I work at an assisted living facility in southern Illinois and my sister does home care.

The people who worked with her said she was an amazing nurse. She very rarely called in sick. She made the residents her top priority.

Carolyns dedication and love extended to her family as well.

She was the most amazing mom you could ever have, Shalla said. Even when we were dirt poor when we were kids, she always made sure we had everything we needed.

She pushed herself through nursing school raising three kids on her own after she got divorced. My dad was very involved in our lives, but he was on disability and she didnt want him to have to deal with that. She worked full-time while she went to college.

For Shalla McBride, her final vision of her mother in the intensive care unit made her more determined than ever to warn people about the destructive potential of COVID-19.

This is not something anyone should ever have to see, their mom and best friend hooked up to IVs and a ventilator, in a coma, unable to move or communicate, Shalla said. It is extremely heartbreaking and difficult.

We pray for all the families that are going through this. If we save even one life by simply wearing a mask, we should all be doing that.

A private graveside service for Carolyn McBride was held Friday at St. John Lutheran Cemetery in Chester. A celebration of life will be held at a later date.

The McBrides started a GoFundMe account at www.gofundme.com/f/mcbride-family-covid-assistance to support the family and others with COVID-19.

As of Friday afternoon, it had raised $930 of its goal of $15,000.
Subscriber content preview

Still, Asian giant hornets could become yet another massive problem for bees and the people who rely on them for a living.



By SETH BORENSTEIN

AP Science Writer

Insect experts say people should calm down about the big bug with the nickname murder hornet  unless you are a beekeeper or a honeybee.

The Asian giant hornets found in Washington state that grabbed headlines this week aren't big killers of humans, although it does happen on rare occasions. But the world's largest hornets do decapitate entire hives of honeybees, and that crucial food pollinator is already in big trouble.





. . .
Amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday refuted speculation that the state government is planning to deploy the Indian Army in Mumbai to handle the situation. He asked the people not to fall prey to such rumours. The financial capital of the country has become a major coronavirus hotspot.

In a live webcast, he said that an additional police force may be sought from the Central government if needed so that the state police force gets some respite. The chief minister said the government might ask for additional manpower from the Centre, if needed, to enable the police personnel to take rest in a phased manner.

"This doesn't mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the Army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the-clock, some have fallen sick and a few of them have succumbed to the virus. They need rest. If any such decision is taken further, the public will be informed," Thackeray said.

The Maharashtra government is making all necessary preparations to deal with the coronavirus COVID-19 infection. The state government has requested the infrastructure of military hospitals, railways and port trusts to stay prepared for help, said CM Thackeray.

He also admitted that while the spread of the virus has been contained, the state has not succeeded in breaking the chain of infection yet.

The total number of positive cases has increased to 19,063 in Maharashtra. During the last 24 hours, 1089 new cases have been reported in Maharashtra and 37 deaths. The total death toll now stands at 731. In Maharashtra today, 169 patients were discharged after recovery. So far, 3470 patients have been recovered and discharged in Maharashtra.



The number of positive patients in Mumbai has increased to 12,142. There have been 25 deaths from during the last 24 hours. The total deaths in Mumbai stand at 462 so far.

Speaking on the Aurangabad train mishap CM Thackeray said, "It really breaks my heart. These labourers were going home, and this accident happened. I request all the labourers to stay where they are and not to panic."

To the migrant workers, he said, "Were serving and taking care of five lakh labourers every day. Weve started sending all the labourers to their native places. Were sending everyone to their native places, the reason its taking time is because we dont want to create havoc. Modes of transportation are trains and buses. Dont believe in the rumours and dont forward false messages."

Lauding the corona warriors CM Thackeray said, "I really respect the doctors, cleaners, nurses, and especially the police department. Policemen are getting ill after providing their services and theyre on their toes for 24 hours and also theyre out there for us. Please respect them. No doctors and police should be harmed, if anyone caught doing that, strict actions will be taken. I request all the doctors--homoeopathic and Ayurvedic doctors to come ahead and lets fight this disease together and we shall win. We all are together and lets fight this out with all courage."

Speaking on the tests he said, "I wont say were leading in the testing process but weve tested almost 2.5 lakh people in Maharashtra of which 1 lakh are in Mumbai. The ones whove symptoms, Id request them to please visit and take a test and dont fear that process. Go ahead and do the test as it will be better for society."

Asking people to follow protocols he said, "The more were careless the further lockdown will be extended. I request you all to not go out, adopt social distancing, wear masks and keep washing your hands."

Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that the Mumbai Police is competent enough and all the rumours of Army being called in are false. "Mumbai Police is competent to handle any kind of emergent situation in light of the pandemic or otherwise," Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh underlined. He added, "All these rumours of the Army being called in to handle the situation in Mumbai are false and agenda-driven."

Deshmukh requested citizens not to trust rumours being shared on social media platforms. "Mumbai police has always been internationally respected for its high professional standards," he reminded. He added, "The police have often been at the frontlines in our battle against COVID-19, ensuring law and order is maintained even in high-contagion areas and no one should create unnecessary questions about their commitment drive or work."
The alleged Iranian link to the attack was first reported by Fox News. Spokesmen for the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces would neither confirm nor deny the report. An Iranian official denied that his country was involved in the attack. The Iranian government does not engage in cyberwarfare, said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Irans Mission to the United Nations in New York.
In a major breakthrough, the Punjab Police have arrested most wanted gangster and drug smuggler Baljinder Singh Billa Mandiala and his six accomplices from Kapurthala district with a large consignment of highly sophisticated weapons smuggled from Pakistan.

Billa Mandiala had close links with the now dead Pakistan-based Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harmeet Singh Happy.

The police also recovered Rs 3 lakh drug money from the gang that reportedly smuggled consignments from Pakistan at different times through several modes, including drones.

Director general of police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta said the arrests were made in a joint operation by the Organised Crime Control Unit (OCCU) team from Chandigarh, counter-intelligence Jalandhar unit and Kapurthala police on Thursday evening. The accused were nabbed in Dadwindi and Mothanwala area under Sultanpur Lodhi police station.

Billa, who hails from Mandiala village of Gurdaspur, has been a notorious drug smuggler, but it has now emerged that he had been involved in supply of arms for past few years.

During preliminary investigations, Billa Mandiala has revealed that he was in contact with various Pakistan-based weapon and drug smugglers, including Mirza and Ahmdeen, and had already received many consignments of weapons and drugs from them, mostly in the Ferozepur area.

Mirza was allegedly working as courier on Indo-Pak border for operatives of KLF.

Others arrested in the operation included Sukhjinder Singh from Kamoke village of Amritsar, Kapurthala-based Mohit Sharma, Lovepreet Singh, Mangal Singh, Maninderjeet Singh Happy and Lovepreet Lovely of Amarkot village in Tarn Taran.

Billa Mandiala was wanted in more than 18 criminal cases, including those of murder, attempt to murder and smuggling of weapons/drugs.

All the accused have been kept separately as they are being tested for Covid-19 by a special team of doctors, police said.

THE RECOVERY

The DGP said the police have recovered highly sophisticated arms and ammunition smuggled from Pakistan, from the accused.

These include two 30-bore drum machine guns, three pistols (Sig Sauer made in Germany), two Glock pistols (made in Austria), two 30 bore pistols, one 32 bore pistol, one .315 bore rifle and 341 live cartridges. Besides, over Rs 3 lakh and 100 Australian dollars were recovered from them.

Terming it as one of the biggest caches of highly sophisticated weapons from a criminal gang, Gupta said Sig Suaer pistols are used by members of US Secret Service.

The police are investigating the role of militants in the supply chain of illegal weapons from Pakistan.

A case has been registered against all the accused under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Arms Act at police station Sultanpur Lodhi, Kapurthala.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak,



the iconic Rabindra Setu, popularly known as the Howrah Bridge that connects Kolkata and its twin city Howrah, was illuminated by the Kolkata Port Trust on the occasion of the 159th birth anniversary of poet Rabidranath Tagore.

The bridge which was almost deserted because of the ongoing lockdown was lit up by colourful LED lights in the evening, KoPT officials said.

They said the illumination is a symbolic 'Message of Hope, in these troubled times to the citizens of this great metropolis and beyond.

White light washed the bridge to honour the front line Covid-19 warriors, followed alternately by red, orange and green signalling the zones that identify the intensity of coronavirus spread, they said.

All this while, instrumental pieces of Tagore song was played at the nearby Millennium Park, the officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Georgia's government has decided to summon Georgian Ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze for consultations in Tbilisi after the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as chairman of Ukraine's Executive Committee on Reforms, Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani has said.

"Reducing the level of the position initially proposed to Saakashvili and his appointment as chairman of the executive committee of the National Reform Council is a sign of the skeptical attitude of the Ukrainian political system, including the parliamentary majority, to him. At the same time, in our opinion, the position of Georgia as a strategic partner of Ukraine was taken into account. Nevertheless, the appointment of a person, convicted and wanted by the Georgian judicial system, as a strategic partner raises questions, and therefore it was decided to summon Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to Ukraine, Mr. Teimuraz Sharashenidze, for consultations in Tbilisi," Georgia's First Channel quoted Zalkaliani as saying.

According to him, this is a step taken in diplomatic practice, which in this case indicates that certain problems have arisen in relations and it is necessary to consult with the ambassador to plan further steps.

"Despite this sad decision [on Saakashvili's appointment], of course, as the next step, we do not consider the severance of diplomatic relations or strategic partnership between the two countries, which does not correspond to the friendly spirit of the two countries, our common aspirations and goals. With the participation of the ambassador, among other issues, it is necessary to determine what needs to be done for the current situation not to adversely affect bilateral relations, cooperation in various international organizations and, most importantly, joint efforts on European and Euro-Atlantic integration," Zalkaliani said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Saakashvili chairman of the Executive Committee on Reforms on May 7.

On April 22, Servant of the People MP Oleksandr Kachura said that Saakashvili was being considered as a candidate for deputy prime minister for reform.

Saakashvili said that President Volodymyr Zelensky had invited him to become deputy prime minister for reform and that he had already talked to the prime minister about it.

However, it emerged later that Saakashvili was being considered as a candidate for a post at the National Reform Council.

The National Reform Council was established in August 2014 as a special advisory body to the president of Ukraine on strategic planning, coordination of positions on the introduction of a unified state policy of reforms in Ukraine and their implementation. The personal composition of the National Reform Council is approved by the president.

op
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the Centre needs to bring transparency in its efforts to combat the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic before lifting the nationwide lockdown, which is set to end on May 17.

The former Congress president said that the nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus is not like an on-off switch and stressed on the need to bring a physiological change in the minds of the people before lifting the lockdown.

In a video conference with mediapersons, the Congress MP from Kerala`s Wayanad, said, "We have been having internal discussions on the suggestions that we would be giving to the government."

Rahul said the country is beginning to run into a little bit of a problem. "There is a strong feeling that we need to immediately release packages to the MSMEs, give money in the hands of the poor, and have a strategy for the migrants besides preparing for the opening of the lockdown," he said.

Rahul Gandhi also urged the Central government to show bring some "transparency" in its actions. "We need to understand that when they lift the lockdown, what would be the criteria for it, what are the boxes they want to tick before actually initiating the process. It is important that the government tells the people about these criteria," the Congress leader said.

"We simply cannot continue without providing support to the people who are suffering due to the lockdown," he added. The Congress leader further said that the lockdown is not only switching on a key, but it also requires several things to happen, it needs a psychological change.

The Gandhi scion warned that the COVID-19 disease is currently very dangerous for the elderly, and people with ailments like diabetes, cardiac problem, and lung disease.

"We need to bring a psychological change in the minds of the people. If the government wants to open up, it has to turn this fear into a sense of confidence. Otherwise, people will start going out the moment the lockdown is lifted," he said.

"We need a strategy to open up the lockdown. A massive transition is required... it requires coordination between the states, the Central government, district magistrates, and many others. That is the challenge the government faces," he said.

Replying to a question about the state of migrants who are being forced to walk hundreds of kilometers, the Congress leader said, "Start putting money directly into accounts of 50 per cent of India`s poor households, it is going to cost Rs 65,000 crores, it will transform the way people are thinking about the current situation. We have to understand when you are on daily wages you do not have a choice, we have to give them a choice."

"We are in an emergency and the idea of injecting a sum of Rs 7,500 directly into the hands of poor is critical and it is not such a big price. Secondly, the idea that we can simply let our job creators drown is not feasible, we have to protect them," he added.

He added that 100 days of guaranteed wage employment under MGNREGA should be doubled to 200 days to provide more relief and avenues to earn. He said that a strategy needs to be devised to open the lockdown placed to curb the spread of coronavirus and added that transparency is needed in the Central government`s actions in this regard.

This was the second interaction of the Congress leader with the media in the last month amid the nationwide lockdown.
Growing up in a family of self-proclaimed cantankerous lefties meant it has always been passed down as the unforgivable undermining of a visionary in full flight. The Eleventh, a hit podcast series from the ABC presented by investigative journalist Alex Mann, tells it differently.

I was born two decades later, but that doesnt mean it wasnt a significant event in my childhood.

I didnt make it to the lawns outside old parliament house on November 11, 1975, to protest Gough Whitlams dismissal.

Here is the dismissal as a tale of sex, drama and intrigue that is more like a John le Carre spy novel than a slice of political history. When Governor-General John Kerr ended a political stalemate by dismissing the entire Whitlam Government, a great deal more was happening behind the draped curtains of Yarralumla than met the Australian eye.

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With a deep dive into the archives, and interviews with key players, old events are re-interpreted and re-imagined. We are introduced to players such as shady CIA chief James Jesus Angleton, American defence employee Christopher Boyce, and an overzealous Prince Charles.

Together they create a thesis that hints at CIA interference, or an intervention from the Crown, or both, or possibly neither. Given the blatant plot holes, unbelievable characters and unconvincing motivations, it would be totally ridiculous  if it werent true.

Today, as we grapple with a very different crisis, a pandemic that has temporarily brought the state into our lives in ways well known to people living under authoritarian regimes, its clear how seldom most Australians think about their democracy. This podcast reminds us that our countrys greatest political crisis was quick and bloodless  and that should never be taken for granted.
Farmers received up to 123m in social-welfare payments last year.

Nearly 6,000 people were paid almost 69m under Farm Assist, which is capped at 203 a week.

Farm Assist is a means-tested payment for low-income farmers, paid by the Department of Social Protection.

The Rural Social Scheme is a different payment made to farmers and fishermen - with a minimum weekly amount of 225.50.

Last year, nearly 3,200 fishermen and farmers got this payment, totalling nearly 55m.

9,200 people were paid the money under the Farm Assist or Rural Social Schemes

The highest amount of farmers were in Donegal, at 1,045, followed by Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork and Monaghan.

The total amounts across the two schemes are almost identical to the previous year.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Women have a good chance of having a second child with the help of fertility treatment after the birth of their first child born this way, according to the first study to investigate this, published today (Friday) in Human Reproduction, one of the world's leading reproductive medicine journals.

Researchers in Australia calculated that after a woman successfully achieved a live birth using in vitro fertilisation (IVF), also known as assisted reproductive technology (ART), the chances of a second ART baby were between 51% and 88% after six cycles of treatment. These calculations depended on whether or not previously frozen embryos were used or fresh embryos from a new ovarian stimulation cycle, and on assumptions made about the likely success rate for women who discontinued treatment.

The chances of a second ART baby decreased with increased maternal age. Compared to women younger than 30 years, the likelihood of women aged 35-39 having a second ART-conceived baby reduced by 22% if they recommenced treatment with a frozen embryo from a previous cycle and by 50% if they recommenced treatment with a new cycle and a fresh embryo. Factors that improved their chances of a successful second pregnancy included requiring only one cycle and a single embryo transfer to achieve a first live birth, and where infertility was caused by factors affecting the male partner.

Although many parents would like more than one child, there has been no published report on the chances of achieving a second ART-conceived baby after a first ART child until now. The researchers hope that this information can be used to counsel patients.

Professor Georgina Chambers, director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), looked at data from 35,290 women who received ART treatment between 2009 and 2013 in Australia and New Zealand and had a live baby during this time. These women were followed for a further two years to 2015, providing between two and seven years of follow-up data, and live births up to October 2016 were included.

"We calculated two measures: what is a woman's chance of achieving a second live birth in a particular cycle of treatment if previous cycles have failed, for instance in cycle three if the first two cycles have failed; and what is the overall, or cumulative, chance of a woman achieving a live birth after a particular number of cycles, including all the previous cycles. For example, what is the overall chance of a woman having a baby after up to three cycles," said Prof Chambers.

A cycle includes the stimulation of the ovaries to mature multiple eggs, the collection of eggs for fertilisation in the laboratory to create embryos, and then all embryo transfer procedures that use the embryos from the egg retrieval procedure. This can include fresh embryo transfers and frozen embryo transfers.

Prof Chambers and her colleagues calculated estimates of cumulative live birth rates (CLBR) for women who were trying for a second ART baby that took account not only of the women who continued treatment, but also those who discontinued treatment. The conservative CLBR assumed that women who dropped out would have no chance of achieving a second live birth if they had continued treatment. The optimal CLBR assumed these women would have the same chance of a live birth in a particular cycle as women who had continued treatment. The range between the conservative and optimal estimates gives a realistic idea of success rates.

Just over 43% (15,325) of the 35,290 women, with an average (median) age of 36, returned for treatment to conceive a second child by December 2015.

Among these women, 73% used a frozen embryo from the egg retrieval cycle that had resulted in their first child, and for them the CLBR ranged from 61% (conservative estimate) to 88% (optimal estimate) after six cycles. Among the women who had a new stimulation cycle and used a fresh embryo, the CLBR ranged from 51% to 70%.

"Overall, 43% of women who recommence treatment with one of the frozen embryos from a previous stimulation cycle will have a baby after their first embryo transfer procedure. Between 61% and 88% of these women will have a baby after six cycles," said Prof Chambers. "Among those who recommence treatment with a new stimulation cycle and a fresh embryo transfer, 31% will have a baby after their first cycle and between 51% and 70% after six cycles."

Although success rates declined with female age, the researchers found that after three cycles of treatment, the conservative and optimal CLBRs in women aged 40 to 44 years were 38% and 55% respectively in those that started with a frozen embryo, and 20% and 25% in those recommencing with a new stimulated cycle and fresh embryos.

Prof Chambers said: "Couples can be reassured by these figures. Our findings also underline the fact that ART treatment should be considered as a course of treatment, rather than just one single cycle of treatment: if couples don't achieve a pregnancy in the first cycle, it could very well happen in the next. However, it would be best not to wait too long, especially if a new stimulation cycle is needed."

Co-author, Dr. Devora Leiberman, a fertility clinician at City Fertility, Sydney, added: "These results can be used to counsel patients, but it is important to note that these are population estimates and every couple is different. Our analysis does not take account of all individual factors that affect a woman's chance of ART success, including duration of infertility, and body mass index. Whether ART treatment should be commenced or continued should ultimately be a decision for the fertility clinician and patient, taking into account all medical and non-medical factors. But this study provides the range of results that could be expected."

Another limitation is that in Australia and New Zealand, couples are funded to have treatment for infertility with no restrictions on the number of cycles or on the mothers' age, numbers of previous children and factors such as body max index and smoking. Therefore, the findings may not be generalisable to other countries with less supportive funding provision for ART.

Dr. Christos Venetis, a fertility clinician and clinical academic from the research team at the University of New South Wales, concluded: "As the restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of non-urgent ART services are gradually being lifted in many countries, including Australia and New Zealand, many people are considering expanding their family through ART. This study can provide reassurance that, in most cases, the chance of them having a second baby through ART is quite favourable."

Explore further Women now have clearer statistics on whether IVF is likely to work

More information: Repon C Paul et al, Cumulative live birth rates for women returning to ART treatment for a second ART-conceived child, Human Reproduction (2020). Journal information: Human Reproduction Repon C Paul et al, Cumulative live birth rates for women returning to ART treatment for a second ART-conceived child,(2020). DOI: 10.1093/humrep/deaa030
Fair trade regulator CCI has dismissed a complaint of alleged unfair business practices against Kerala Agro Machinery Corporation Ltd (KAMCO).

The complaint was filed by Andhra Pradesh based Venkateswara Agencies which deals in agricultural machineries.

KAMCO was established in 1973 for manufacturing agricultural machinery and became a separate Government of Kerala undertaking in 1986.

Venkateswara has been the authorised dealer for KAMCO since 2006 for supplying products of KAMCO to West Godavari, East Godavari, Krishna, Srikakulam and Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh.

Initially the agreement was for one year, but continued till 2018.

Venkateswara alleged that KAMCO gave authorized dealerships to other dealers for Guntur, Vijayawada and Srikakulam, in spite of the fact that it continued to hold the authorised dealership.

However, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said that "the Commission is of the view that no competition concern is involved in the appointing of new dealers in the areas where the informant has dealership."



Informant refers to Venkateswara Agencies.

In fact appointment of more dealers in an area would tend to improve intra-brand competition and ensure wider choice to consumers unless it is shown that an exclusive agreement has certain pro-competitive effects, it added.

Venkateswara further alleged that KAMCO stopped issuing new stock of products in an arbitrary manner as a result of which the informant incurred debt to the tune of Rs 5 crore in order to buy new stock from other unauthorised dealers in the market at high rate.

Considering the information on this allegation, CCI noted that KAMCO had supplied machineries and spare parts in November and December 2016 and KAMCO denied that the informant had suffered huge loss due to non-supply of new stock.

CCI said there is neither any exclusionary abuse nor it "prima facie" appears to be a case of such conduct as the agreement between the informant and KAMCO expressly mentions that new dealers may be appointed in the interest of sales of products.

Accordingly, CCI closed the case noting that "it does not appear that KAMCO has indulged in any abusive conduct, so as to warrant any investigation into the same.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the immediate wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, thousands of National Guard members in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia were called to active duty in support of their state's defense and recovery, sacrificing the federal drilling points they would have earned toward their retirement as they completed the state mission.

It was an extraordinary situation, and Congress ultimately intervened, crafting a narrow exemption that allowed state activation in these instances to count toward a Guard member's retirement.

Now, as the nation contends with another extraordinary event in the form of the novel coronavirus pandemic, some are once again looking to Congress to step in and provide relief to Guard and Reserve members whose careers might be at risk due to circumstances outside their control.

Related: The Latest on the Military's COVID-19 Response

Social distancing measures to limit the spread of the virus have forced Guard and Reserve units to suspend, postpone or reconfigure regular drill periods -- training opportunities worth points many need to earn a "good year" toward retirement. And while officials with the military services and the National Guard Bureau say they're working to find other ways to accomplish training, there's no holistic waiver or adjustment that accounts for disruption due to the pandemic.

The Navy, for example, moved in mid-March to postpone drill weekends for most reservists, a suspension that has now been extended through the end of May. While units were directed to work with members to reschedule and to grant liberal waivers, there was no guarantee that reservists would be able to make up requirements. The Marine Corps also moved to suspend Reserve drilling indefinitely, while the Army postponed Battle Assemblies. The Air Force enforced a stop-movement order, but encouraged commanders to find creative ways to make up time.

Susan Lukas, legislative director of the Reserve Officers Association, said that some Guard and Reserve members are more at risk of losing out than others -- those nearing retirement, for example, or who mark the end of their contract year in spring, leaving little room to reschedule missed drill periods.

To earn a "good year" that counts for retirement, members must earn at least 50 points -- 35 on top of the 15 they are credited for membership. Each day of active service, drill period attendance and funeral honors duty is worth one point each; a typical drill weekend is worth four points total. Guard and Reserve members need 20 "good years" to be eligible for retirement.

Lukas said her organization is proposing a law that would grant constructive credit for this year for drilling members of the Guard and Reserve, making up the difference in career points they need, up to 50. It's a better option, she said, than a Defense Department waiver or allowance, because service members would not be obligated to keep their own records or make their case to the military accounting system.

"Twenty years from now, when [the Defense Finance Accounting Service] is reconciling [members'] record to make sure they have 20 years, who's going to remember that this year was a waiver year?" Lukas said. "The members would then have to do an appeal. I just saw a waiver as a bureaucratic nightmare for the member when it comes time for them to retire."

Frank Yoakum, executive director of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, said the idea that drill periods and battle assemblies can just be replaced by virtual sessions and video chats doesn't take into account the many military jobs that are hands-on. Making up drill periods virtually, he said, is at best an extremely temporary solution.

"I get [using] Zoom ... but there's really only so much you can do at home for certain jobs," he said. "If you're talking about an infantry unit or an artillery unit and their job is to go out and fire artillery pieces or to perform weapons maintenance or perform maintenance on wheeled vehicles, you can't really do that virtually. That's not why you joined the Guard."

He added that many Guard members remain on state active duty, where they are supporting pandemic response, but not accruing retirement points. As of late April, according to a Military Times report, roughly 80% of Guard members were on federally funded Title 32 orders; but nearly 8,000 guardsmen continued to support state response only, with lesser benefits and no retirement credit.

"Maybe if your retirement year just started in March, you've got time to make up this year," Yoakum said, noting that each service member is on a different calendar based on when their initial contract began. "But if it started in January or February  you might be worried."

And it's not just about retirement, he added.

"In the Army regulations, there are penalties for not getting a good retirement year," he said. "If you don't get a good year one year, they could throw you out of the military for unsatisfactory participation. I would hope that somebody in DoD or the Army ... would take a look at that."

At least one military service has already expressed interest in finding a legislative solution for the problem.

Air Force Reserve policy teams are working with the Defense Department "on potential legislative relief for those Reserve members who may not achieve enough points for a 'good year' due to COVID-19 restrictions," Bo Joyner, an Air Force Reserve Command spokesman, told Military.com in a statement. "As this becomes available, that information will be disseminated to our Citizen Airmen."

Joyner added that the Air Force is also encouraging Reserve commanders to group their Unit Training Assembly drill periods into "super UTAs" later in the year and maximize telework and virtual training to reduce the impact of suspended drill periods.

The Navy has announced a number of mitigating measures for reservists, including a liberal telework policy and extended deadline to support participation waivers.

"In order to help ensure our Reservists maintain readiness and get credit towards their 'good year,' we are making it significantly easier to telework," Navy Reserve Forces Deputy Commander Rear Adm. John Schommer said in a statement. "Our intent is to provide maximum flexibility for our Selected Reserve (SELRES) Sailors and set them up for success during these challenging times."

Marine Corps Reserve officials also said they are turning to telework wherever possible to help reservists stay current on career points.

"With regard to annual training, we, along with the other military reserve forces, are working closely with the Department of Defense to assess impacts and determine options to unforeseen challenges," Marine Forces Reserve spokesman Capt. Markian Sich said.

Army officials, who released a lengthy "Frequently Asked Questions" document regarding pandemic-related concerns, are leaning heavily on "Virtual Battle Assemblies" to take the place of all in-person drill periods. For job specialties that don't lend themselves to virtual training, an official told Military.com that unit commanders have discretion on how to structure training and currency requirements.

A Defense Department spokeswoman, Jessica Maxwell, declined to comment on any legislative proposals that might be under consideration to help Guard and Reserve members. She referred Military.com to documents published by the DoD that emphasize telework options for drill periods.

"We are doing everything within the confines of statute to remedy this issue for our Service members," she said. "We are unaware of a situation that is not covered by the policy flexibilities discussed in the previously provided documents."

April Cunningham, a spokesperson for the National Guard Bureau, also highlighted the flexibility being provided to commanders to reschedule drill, make it virtual or authorize an alternative place of duty for Guard members.

"The flexibility is intended to provide alternative ways to fulfill unit assemblies at the same location in order to acquire drill credit or points for retirement," she said. "Additionally, individual members can always work with their Commanders for approval of limited equivalent training, when they cannot meet the requirements of the scheduled training plan (including re-scheduled, alternate location plans) due to personal issues."

For Guard and Reserve members, the good news is that there is some time to build in a legislative fix for anyone who can't use one of the options provided to earn their "good year."

Yoakum said constructive credit can be approved retroactively by Congress -- and that it's a step that can be taken after the most pressing pandemic response issues have been addressed.

"I think they've got a good six to nine months to work on this, really," he said.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.

Read more: The Marines Wanted a University to Study Co-ed Boot Camp. No One Applied
Late last month, about 60 agents from some of New Yorks top brokerages gathered in a virtual conference room for what was billed as the first open house of its kind for real estate agents. One by one, presenters shared pictures and videos of eight listings in Chelsea, with varying degrees of candor.

It does look onto a brick wall, said one agent.

We just reduced the price, said another.

The gallery of muted agents looked on. One chewed a sandwich and yelled at someone offscreen; another sat stone-faced in front of a virtual jungle background. One wore a suit and tie, while another splayed out on a couch in sweats.

I feel like Im inside an acid trip, an agent wrote in a private text.

Six weeks after New York State issued its stay-at-home order to combat the coronavirus, agents, consumers and developers are finding their way through an unrecognizable home-buying market, devising new and unfamiliar methods to push deals along against long odds. Some are proving more successful than others.

It was already going to be a challenging spring in Manhattan, where prices are down about 20 percent from the peak in 2016 amid a glut of luxury condos. But as sellers pitch million-dollar apartments over FaceTime and buyers grapple with purchasing a home theyve never set foot in, sales and listings are evaporating during what is supposed to be the peak of spring buying season.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey's car exports to China increased by 0.8 percent from January through March 2020 compared to the same period of 2019 and amounted to $11 million, the Turkish Ministry of Trade told Trend on April 29.

The export of cars from Turkey to China in March 2020 decreased by 56.5 percent compared to March 2019 and reached $4.7 million, the ministry said.

The export of cars from Turkey to the world markets from January through March 2020 decreased by 10 percent compared to the same period of 2019 and reached $6.9 billion.

The export of cars from Turkey makes up 16.3 percent of the country's total export of goods from January through March 2020.

Turkey exported cars worth $2.06 billion in March 2020 which is by 28.5 percent less than in March 2019.

The export of cars from Turkey in March 2020 accounted for 15.4 percent of Turkey's total export.

Turkey's export of cars from March 2019 through March 2020 amounted to $29.8 billion.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The New York Times 1619 Project has been hammered so effectively by scholars that to keep attacking it may seem like piling on. However, the Times has just been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its drive-by attack on America. Thus, I think another wave of criticism is justified.

In this post, I took on the Projects ludicrous claim, ultimately abandoned, that the American Revolution was, in significant part, the result of a desire to preserve slavery in America. I cited two important historians of the period for the view that Great Britain, far from causing Americans to fear in the pre-revolutionary period that it would attack slavery in the colonies, had been an obstacle to limiting slavery in America  something many Americans, including leaders of the revolutionary movement, wanted to do and did, to some degree, once independence was declared.

In this post, I want to call attention to three additional recent strong attacks on the 1619 Project. The first is by Dan McLaughlin of National Review. McLaughlin relies on some of the historical record of the Revolution discussed in my post, but goes deeper into that history and extends his analysis past the revolutionary period.

He concludes:

[N]othing full of as many shoddy errors and untruths, and subject to such withering scholarly rebuttal, as the 1619 Project would be awarded an accolade such as a Pulitzer if its politics were of the right rather than of the left. Nor, for that matter, would the Times devote such effort to defending an assertion as outlandish as Hannah-Joness view of the American Revolution unless it had strong ideological and institutional reasons to be wedded to the argument. Maybe this deserves a prize, but not one for honest history.

The second article is by George Will. In the paper edition of the Washington Post, its called A Pulitzer for twisting history.

Will shreds several of the Projects fake history claims  not just about the reasons why colonists rebelled, but also about Abraham Lincolns views on civil rights and the role of whites in the civil rights movement.

Will correctly states that the projects purpose is to displace the nations actual 1776 founding, thereby draining from Americas story the moral majesty of the first modern nations Enlightenment precepts proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and implemented by the Constitution. But, as Will points out, there was nothing distinctive about the U.S. permitting slavery. Slavery was a worldwide institution.

What distinguished the U.S. from the rest of the world was its experiment in self-government. And what distinguished it even more was a founding document that began with a proclamation that could only be understood, and was in fact understood, as irreconcilable with slavery.

C. Adam Seagrave picks up this theme in an article for RealClear PublicAffairs  the third piece I want to highlight. If anything, Seagrave gives too much credence to claims of the 1619 Project, it seems to me.

But Seagrave stresses a crucial point raised by Lincoln. In a speech about the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln said, The assertion that all men are created equal was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain.

The point is key because, as Seagrave explains:

This idea of equality in natural human rights did not, in other words, even support the general interests of the American colonists in their argument for independence at the time. While the related ideas of government by consent and the right of revolution did clearly support the cause of American political independence, these could have been derived from narrower, more conservative, starting points than human equality. There was, for example, the long-standing rights of Englishmen argument that had been widely used by the American colonists throughout the 1760s and early 1770s. But this was not the argument that the colonists used in 1776. Just as the argument of 1776 could not conceivably support the interests of slaveholders, so it was not well tailored to the material interests of the American colonists in their conflict with Great Britain. If the ideas of 1776 were neither a mere feature of the historical moment, nor supportive of the concrete, material interests of those who held them, why were they held to be self-evident at all? The shocking answer is that they were held simply because they were believed to be truths. And this distinguishes them in a crucial way from most of the other traditions that were held at the time, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia, or class distinctions. . . . The ideas of 1776, by contrast, were justified by the force of a logic that defied the needs of the immediate moment and the concrete interests of those who enunciated them. As much as any human ideas could, they leaped off their page in history.

(Emphasis added)

Therefore:
The past few years have seen an increase in colleges and universities bypassing gatekeeping aptitude tests that purport to measure the likelihood of student success. Even before COVID-19, a growing number of colleges and universities were becoming disenchanted with assessment instruments that were economically biased against low-income and first-generation college students. Now the SAT and ACT may be heading for their last roundup.

As a student, I fared poorly on these exams, but it did not stop me from pursuing higher education. I finished my masters and doctoral degrees against a backdrop of aptitude tests that argued failure was looming ahead. Like most first-generation students, I didnt know how to study until I took my first college success course at the community college.

Im not alone in the belief that SATs and ACTs do more harm than good. A 2014 TIME opinion piece by Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, a small liberal-arts college in New York state, was headlined College President: SAT is Part Hoax, Part Fraud.

There is more and more resistance to pressuring students and parents into paying money to take a senseless exam that claims to be objective when, in fact, the only persistent statistical result from the SAT is the correlation between high income and high test scores. The richer one is, the better one does on the SAT, Botstein wrote.

Unfortunately, the SAT does play a role in perpetuating both economic and educational inequality. Many students see low scores and believe they are not academically worthy. Its a false prophecy because poor scores indicate poor preparation, poor study skills and oftentimes poor districts with revolving doors of underprepared, first-time faculty teaching to the test.

Not only that, but countless hours spent preparing for standardized testing deadens and inhibits the love of reading. North Carolina and California have already begun using multiple measures for placement. This policy establishes a hierarchy of measures that colleges will use to determine recent high school graduates readiness for college-level courses.

Although both College Board and ACT Inc. argue their tests are predictive of college success, there is growing research linking success to family income and race, not to mention parents educational level.

The nonprofit National Center for Fair and Open Testing recently procured and analyzed SAT scores for the Class of 2019. Its findings indicate the gaps between demographic groups grew larger from a year earlier, with the average scores of students from historically disenfranchised groups falling further behind students from more privileged families.

Even John Katzman, founder of The Princeton Review, put it bluntly: Since tests will inevitably steer how teachers teach, we should only administer tests that encourage passion and excellence in learning. Its not too late to rethink how we test students and to create an accountability system that is, itself, accountable. Breaking up with the SAT and the ACT might feel like ending a bad relationship: unthinkable, then painful, until finally you cant remember why you stayed for as long as you did.

Ive mentored hundreds of students whose marginal scores and academic preparation were dismal but who succeeded with a little push, learning successful study habits, and having a network of support and mentoring. The data-driven Catch the Next Inc., a college-preparatory program that I work with as a consultant, encourages passion, carino and excellence in learning.

Perhaps its time to rethink how we evaluate students and how much emphasis we place on standardized testing programs that grew out of a dark period of the early 20th century.

Stacy Ybarra is a higher education advocate and an adjunct faculty member of San Antonio College.
The companys seven core values are at the heart of our employee engagement and team achievementsand we will continue to embrace those values to drive our future success. commented CampusLogic CEO Gregg Scoresby.

CampusLogic, higher educations leading student financial success platform, today announced that it has been named to Inc. magazines annual list of the Best Workplaces for 2020. Hitting newsstands May 12 in the May/June 2020 issue, and as part of a prominent Inc.com feature, the list is the result of a wide-ranging and comprehensive measurement of American companies that have created exceptional workplaces through vibrant cultures, deep employee engagement, and stellar benefits.

The companys competitive compensation, quarterly bonus plan, flexible schedules, robust intern program, four weeks PTO, 401K matching, paid maternity and paternity leave, and monthly company events inspire the team to work hard and love what they do. Additional perks include student loan reimbursement, professional development support, and wellness reimbursement. CampusLogic has also made every employee an owner in the company.

Collecting data from more than 3,000 submissions, Inc. singled out 389 finalists for this years list. Each nominated company took part in an employee survey, conducted by Quantum Workplace, on topics including trust, management effectiveness, perks, and confidence in the future. Inc. gathered, analyzed, and audited the data. All employers were then ranked using a composite score of survey results. This year, 73.5 percent of surveyed employees were engaged by their work.

The strongest engagement scores came from companies that prioritize the most human elements of work. These companies are leading the way in employee recognition, performance management, and diversity. It is a different playbook from a decade ago, when too many firms used the same template: free food, open work environments, and artifacts of fun.

It is an honor to be ranked among other leading companies on Inc. magazines Best Workplaces for 2020 list. Our scores are derived from employee feedback, making it exceptionally meaningful, commented CEO Gregg Scoresby. The companys seven core values are at the heart of our employee engagement and team achievementsand we will continue to embrace those values to drive our future success.

Building a great corporate culture comes only from strong leadership, says Inc. magazine editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk. The companies on Inc.s Best Workplaces list are setting an example that the whole country can learn from, especially now, when company culture is more important to the workforce than ever.

While researching the finalists, Inc. and Quantum saw distinct themes:



100 percent provide health insurance.

50 percent allow employees to bring pets to work.

62 percent take employees to offsite retreats to relax and recharge.

20 percent offer paid sabbaticals to reward length of service.

About CampusLogic

CampusLogic helps schools change lives by delivering the firstand onlystudent financial success platform that incorporates a net price calculator, complete scholarship management, personalized digital communications, simplified financial aid verification, 24x7 multilingual virtual advising, tuition and scholarship crowdfunding, and integrated data visualizations. Over 500 schools across the country use CampusLogic to provide their students with an easy, mobile, and personalized experience to simplify the financial success journey, resulting in increased enrollment, better informed borrowing, and improved retention. CampusLogic annually hosts EmpowerED, a conference dedicated to providing student financial success professionals with access to industry trends, best practices, and networking opportunities with like-minded colleagues. For more information, visit campuslogic.com.

About Inc. Media

The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

About Quantum Workplace

Quantum Workplace, based in Omaha, Nebraska, is an HR technology company that serves organizations through employee-engagement surveys, action-planning tools, exit surveys, peer-to-peer recognition, performance evaluations, goal tracking, and leadership assessment. For more information, visit QuantumWorkplace.com.

Media Contact

Allison Duquette

Chief Revenue Officer, CampusLogic

Allison.duquette@campuslogic.com
- Vice Ganda received a heartbreaking text message from his mom Rosario Viceral on Wednesday morning, May 6, a day after ABS-CBN stopped its broadcast operations

- He then shared the message on Twitter and expressed what his mothers words made him feel

- Rosario told Vice Ganda that she didnt have a good sleep on May 5, the night when ABS-CBN officially signed off

- The actor and comedian said that, Lalong nadurog ang puso ko, after he read the message

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

Vice Ganda shared on social media the heartbreaking message of his mother Rosario Viceral on Wednesday morning, May 6, a day after ABS-CBN ceased its broadcast operations.

According to the actor and comedian, his mothers text message made him even more emotional about the giant networks shutdown.

On his Twitter account, Vice Ganda posted the message that reads, "Good morning anak. I didn't sleep good last night about the sudden closing of ABS. I stayed until the sign off and I feel so sad even if I know that it won't be long anak it's just my heart goes with the small workers in this time of hardship."

I want to hug you anak with all my heart. And miss you so much," Rosario added.

In the same tweet, the Kapamilya star expressed what his mothers message made him feel.

Ito ang text na bumungad sakin ngayong tanghali. Lalong nadurog ang puso ko. At alam kong di lang ang Nanay ko ang Nanay na malungkot ngayon. Kundi lahat ng Nanay na naapektuhan ng pagpapasara ng ABS-CBN," he wrote.

He also added, "Mahigpit na yakap sa ating mga Nanay."

PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

In a previous report by KAMI, Vice Ganda is one of the celebrities who reacted to Billy Crawford and Coleen Garcia's pregnancy announcement on May 1, Labor Day.

Vice Ganda is a popular actor, comedian, television host, and recording artist in the Philippines. He starred in many blockbuster movies including Praybeyt Benjamin.

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!

In this new episode, we explain to you the symptoms of COVID-19 that everyone should be aware of amid the pandemic. Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Local churches continue to offer services to their congregants via alternative service options. Some have announced plans to allow congregants back into the buildings within the next few weeks. Others are sticking with the online service route.

Here's a list of where and when they're hosting services:
St. Louis designer Daphne Benzaquen always knew she wanted to be her own boss. In 2016, she founded .daph, a fashion-driven company that reflects her unique talents, Peruvian heritage, worldview and values.

She hadnt planned to pursue a career in fashion. My dads a doctor, and he has his own practice. I grew up watching him make decisions about his work and his life. I was inspired to pursue his path. After I started pre-med in college, I found out it was just not right for me.

Shift and drive  Benzaquen realized owning a business would give her the freedom to make her own decisions as well. She added a minor in business at Miami University and graduated with a bachelors degree in science/management and organization.

On her return to St. Louis she took a job with an international insurance agency and started the MBA program at Washington University. During my second year, I took an entrepreneurial course to see if it was time to start my own business, she says.
Patrick McGowan, from Collins Avenue in Dublin waves to Sergeant John OReilly, of Community Policing in Finglas (Brian Lawless/PA)

The gardai response to coronavirus could change the face of community policing following an increased presence in local areas.

Gardai have been at the forefront in helping local communities cope with the unprecedented circumstances and lockdown laws across Ireland.

Units nationwide have been delivering medication, food and other services to the homes of vulnerable people and the elderly who are cocooning.

This is bringing us right back into the heart of the community to show that we are there to assist them Sgt John O'Reilly

For the thousands of people who are following Government advice and not leaving their homes over coronavirus fears, the service has been a lifeline.

Sergeant John OReilly, of community policing in Finglas in Dublin, said the frontline initiative has strengthened the relationship between gardai and the public.

There is huge benefit to be gained from this, were very much community-based and this is bringing us right back into the heart of the community to show that we are there to assist them, he said.

Expand Close Sergeant John OReilly, of Community Policing in Finglas, collects prescriptions for members of the public (Brian Lawless/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Sergeant John OReilly, of Community Policing in Finglas, collects prescriptions for members of the public (Brian Lawless/PA)

It doesnt always have to involve a criminal nature. The feedback that were getting from the community and the people were visiting on a daily basis is extremely positive.

As a result of that, this is something that will continue to run and I believe it should be a national team for the organisation.

Its vitally important that we maintain our links with the community, and this is without a doubt improving our relationships and strengthening our bonds with the community that we serve.

With the help of community representatives and Dublin City Council, gardai in Finglas were able to identify the vulnerable and elderly people living locally.

Officers collect groceries, meals and prescriptions every day and deliver them to the homes of those who are isolated.

Expand Close Artwork by children of members of An Garda hang on the wall of Finglas Garda station (Brian Lawless/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Artwork by children of members of An Garda hang on the wall of Finglas Garda station (Brian Lawless/PA)

On some occasions, officers have also been taking elderly peoples dogs for walks.

Sgt OReilly added: Its been very positive and Im very thankful for being in the community office. We have a different role within the organisation and thats to be the face of it and to be there as a support mechanism for the community and perhaps being able to spend a bit more time with them than other units might be able to.

Its really about interacting with the people and to engage with them, its not about police work all the time, its about helping them and how we can make their life easier during this horrific time.

On a personal level, I find it tough to see how this is affecting people, particularly those who are living on their own.

To try and combat that we are trying to interact with the most vulnerable on a daily basis and stay with them as long as we possibly can. Whether that just be for a conversation, its really about raising peoples spirits and showing that we are there to support them, and anything that might make their life easier, we have no problem following through on that.

The biggest benefit that I have seen is bringing a smile to someones face.

Expand Close Patrick McGowan, from Collins Avenue in Dublin, has a chat with Sgt OReilly (Brian Lawless/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Patrick McGowan, from Collins Avenue in Dublin, has a chat with Sgt OReilly (Brian Lawless/PA)

Gladys Akognon is one of many people using the service.

Ms Akognons young daughter Grace suffers from respiratory issues meaning they cannot leave their home to collect vital medication.

Its very scary for me to go out because I dont know what I am bringing back into the house, she said.

One of my friends in Finglas used to collect medication for us but at the moment she cant it so this service is great because it means I dont have to look for someone to mind Grace.

Im so happy with it. It takes away that concern that I have as cocooning is very tough.

With Government plans to ease restrictions from May 18, gardai say they can see some members of the public becoming frustrated over the continuing lockdown measures.

However, Sgt OReilly said that most of the public continue to be supportive, particularly at Covid-19 checkpoints.

The vast majority of people are adhering to the guidelines, but there is a selected few that are persistent on taking chances, he added.

Anybody who has breached the regulations and if they decide to not adhere to the advice, unfortunately, then we left no other option but to act on that.
BATAVIA  Batavia Patch wants to share the achievements of local high school graduates by putting them in the spotlight over the next few weeks. Due to the coronavirus, in-person instruction has canceled the rest of the 2019-2020 school year in Illinois. We know these wonderful seniors are missing out on some of the last moments of the school year.

We hope that this will give the community a way to share their pride in our Class of 2020 high school graduates. You can find the form here if you'd like to add your graduate. Patch will be updating this form until May 31.

Here are few more of the Batavia Class of 2020 high school graduates:

Fiona Garrity, Batavia High School

Will be attending Luther College to pursue a nursing degree.

Message from Fionas family: Fiona, we love you and are so proud of you! There are so many exciting things in store! Oh the places youll go.

Alexis Whelpley, Batavia High School

Will be attending Iowa State University.

Message from Alexis family: We are SO proud of all your accomplishments! We cant wait to see you shine as you enter this exciting next chapter in your life! We love you so much, Alexis! Congratulations!

Allyson Campagna, Batavia High School

Will be attending the University of Nebraska to study interior design.

Message from Allysons family: So proud of Allyson and the amazing person she has become. No challenge has ever gotten in her way.

Margaret Gosselin, Batavia High School

Will be attending DePaul University.

Tyne Haverkate, Batavia High School

Tyne is a member of the Illinois National Guard and will be attending Southern Illinois University to study aviation.

Message from Tynes family: We are so proud of you, Tyne! We cant wait to see what your future holds! We Love You! Love, Dad, Mom, Reagan and Jack

Joseph Krella, Batavia High School

Courtesy of Kathy Santelli Photography

Message from Josephs family: Mom and Dad are so proud of all your accomplishments! Get ready to make a difference in the world!

Josephine Marie Adams, Batavia High School

Story continues

Will be attending the University of Washington.

Message from Josephines family: Godspeed Josie! We love you!

Kate Schoenfelder, Batavia High School

Will be attending the University of Nebraska.

Message from Kates family: Congratulations Kate! We could not be more proud of your hard work and look forward to what you do next!

Jolie Hedger, Batavia High School

Will be attending ISU.

Message from Jolies family: We are so proud of everything you have accomplished. On to your next adventure. Love, Mom Dad Sedona Aliaa

Ethan Heck, Batavia High School

Will be attending Marian University.

Message from Ethans family: Congratulations, Ethan! We love you and are so proud of you! Mom and Dad

Katelyn Wankat, Batavia High School

Will be attending Waubonsee Community College/Illinois State University to study graphic art/design.

Message from Katelyns family: Katelyn, we are so proud of you and all you have accomplished. Congratulations on being accepted into the WCC Quick Path program, you will be awesome. We cant wait to see what the future holds for you, we know you will do great things.

Anna Jensen, Batavia High School

Will be attending the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

Message from Annas family: We are so proud of you! You are a strong and caring young woman. College awaits - you got this!

Chloe Valentino, Batavia High School

Will be attending the University of Michigans Ross School of Business.

Message from Chloes family: We are so proud of your determination, drive and compassion. Keep on being you! Love, mom and dad.

Madison Schilling, Batavia High School

Will be attending the College of DuPage to study psychology and human services.

Message from Madisons family: Congratulations Maddy! We are so proud of you. Cant wait to see what the future holds for you. Love you lots!

Emma Wheatley, Batavia High School

Will be attending Ohio University to study nursing.

Message from Emmas family: Congratulations!! We are so proud of all your hard work and determination. We love your passion for everything you set forth to do! We know you will do great things!

This article originally appeared on the Batavia Patch
World War II veterans and their wives as well as labor veterans who served on the home front during the war were decorated with the anniversary medal On the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 at an official ceremony in Ashgabat. Representatives of ministries and departments, socio-political organizations, cadets of the military school and military institute, military personnel of the Armed Forces of Turkmenistan attended the ceremony.

Chairman of the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan Ata Serdarov addressed the WWII veterans with words of congratulation. He assured them that socio-political organizations would do everything to ensure that the memory of the military and labor feats of the defenders of the Fatherland lives on, and connection of generations remains strong. He emphasized that patriotic education will remain a priority for political parties and public associations of Turkmenistan.

 TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2022
Credit: Megan Murrell

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is highly infectious. Curiously, in many patients, it triggers poor immune responses, which prolongs illness. This helps the virus spread widely, exacerbating the global pandemic. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Minnesota identified the biochemical mechanism that may explain how the virus infects people efficiently while evading their immune responses.

This study, led by Fang Li, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, examined the mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 enters cells. Specifically, the team of scientists investigated how the virus "unlocks" human cells using a surface spike protein as the "key." They made three important findings:

the tip of the viral key binds strongly to human cells;

the tip of the viral key is often hidden; and

when new virus particles are made, the viral key is already pre-activated by a human enzyme.

"Typically when a virus develops mechanisms to evade immune responses, it loses its potency to infect people," said Li. "However, SARS-CoV-2 maintains its infectivity using two mechanisms. First, during its limited exposure time, the tip of the viral key grabs a receptor protein on human cells quickly and firmly. Second, the pre-activation of the viral key allows the virus to more effectively infect human cells."

Li says that recognizing the evasiveness of SARS-CoV-2 is important for designing antibody drugs and vaccines. Antibody drugs would need to overpower the tip of the hidden viral key by latching onto it very quickly and tightly during its limited exposure time. Alternatively, drugs can target other parts of the viral key that are more exposed.

Li recommends that successful antiviral strategies will need to consider both the potency of the virus and its evasiveness.

Explore further How the novel coronavirus binds to human cells
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce the lockdown exit strategy on Sunday

The government of the United Kingdom is preparing to lift some of its COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

The next few days will be critical to see how people follow the social distancing rules during a public holiday.

Al Jazeeras Laurence Lee travelled to Whitstable, where some are worried about tourists disobeying the rules.
Spanish police have arrested a Moroccan man suspected of planning a terror attack in the name of so-called Islamic State during Spains coronavirus crisis.

Spains Civil Guard said the arrest carried out in Barcelona was aided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Moroccos state security forces.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 18:26:07|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Amid the further containment of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), China is powering ahead in returning to work and resuming business and production. The following are the latest facts and figures:

-- China's consumer market has shown signs of accelerated recovery during the five-day May Day holiday that ended Tuesday amid further containment of COVID-19, the Ministry of Commerce said Friday.

Online sales of physical commodities surged 36.3 percent year on year during the period as the COVID-19 epidemic spurred fast growth of online consumption, according to Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan.

E-commerce livestreaming sessions doubled during the holiday while the number of goods promoted via livestreaming increased 4.7 times compared with the same period last year.

Generally, the rapid recovery from the COVID-19 impact reveals China's huge market advantages and massive potential for domestic demand, Wang said.

-- With regular epidemic control measures in place, the tourism market during the five-day May Day holiday basically recovered to 50 percent of the level for the same period last year, Wang Xiaofeng, an official with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, said at a press conference Friday.

China received a total of 115 million domestic tourists during the holiday, generating a revenue of 47.56 billion yuan (about 6.72 billion U.S. dollars), he said.

No epidemic outbreaks occurred at tourist attractions during the holiday, and no major safety accidents related to holiday travel or major complaints were reported, according to the ministry.

-- China's major automakers have finally seen sales rebound after negative growth for 21 consecutive months, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said.

Some 2 million vehicles were sold in April, up 39.8 percent month on month and 0.9 percent year on year, according to an estimate from the association.

The figure brought the total sales in the first four months of this year to 5.67 million, down 32.1 percent year on year.

The auto sales growth is expected to continue in May and June, according to industry analysts.

-- Shanghai is expected to invest a total of around 270 billion yuan in its first batch of 48 major "new infrastructure" projects in the next three years, local authorities said Thursday.

The metropolis plans to set up 34,000 new 5G base stations and 100,000 smart charging piles for electric vehicles in the next three years, according to a three-year action plan from 2020 to 2022 issued by the municipal government.

More than 100 unmanned factories, unmanned production lines and unmanned workshops are projected to be built in Shanghai during the period, bringing 150,000 enterprises to the cloud platform. The city will also accelerate the construction of photonic scientific facilities, according to the plan. Enditem
With as many as 748 persons



testing coronavirus positive in Mumbai on Friday, the number of COVID-19 patients in the city jumped to 11,967, while the death toll reached 462 as 25 more persons succumbed to the infection, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.

As 154 patients were discharged from hospitals on Friday, the number of recovered patients also grew to 2,589, it said in a release.

As many as 462 new suspected COVID-19 patients were admitted to various hospitals in the city, the BMC said.

The civic body said that of the 748 new positive cases reported in Mumbai on Friday, 206 had tested positive at various private labs between May 4 and 6.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government on Friday said it will pay for train travel of migrant workers stranded in the national capital to their native places as most of the states are yet to respond to its communication on this matter.

According to current guidelines, the Central government and the home state of the migrant workers are bearing the cost of the travel, a Delhi government statement said.

The Delhi government has already reached out to the respective states with the list of migrant workers stranded in the national capital, the statement said.

"Most of these states are yet to respond on the matter of bearing the travel costs of these stranded people. The Delhi government has taken the decision to bear the cost to avoid any further inconvenience to stranded workers," the statement added.

A special train carrying nearly 1,200 migrant labourers departed from New Delhi Railway station to Muzaffarpur in Bihar on Friday.

The Delhi government ensured safe travel, social distancing, food and water for all the passengers, the statement said.

"The train carrying 1,200 migrant labourers left for Muzaffarpur, Bihar today. The Arvind Kejriwal government will bear their full travel cost," tweeted Cabinet Minister Gopal Rai.

The Delhi government arranged several buses to bring these workers from shelters across Delhi. Teams of doctors were appointed to screen them and after thorough checkup, medical certificate was issued to each one of them, the statement said.

To ensure social distancing, the Delhi government permitted only 12 people on a bus while taking the migrant workers to the railway station. Thermal screening of the passengers was also done before boarding the bus, it added.

The Delhi government also appointed civil defence volunteers at each of these buses. The volunteers distributed masks to every passenger and instructed them to ensure social distancing. The volunteers also asked them to wash their hands from time to time, it said.

Earlier this week, apolitical slugfest had ensued over the 'homecoming' of migrants after the Congress accused the government of charging money from stranded workers and offered to pay for their travel to native places, drawing a sharp retort from the BJP which said the railways was already bearing 85 per cent of the travel cost and charging only 15 per cent from the state governments.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Export of drugs used for COVID-19 treatment to be resumed

Vancomycin 500 mg is among 37 medicines that are allowed to resume exports by the Drug Administration of Vietnam.  Photo bidiphar.com

The Drug Administration of Vietnam (DAV) under the Ministry of Health (MoH) has decided to allow enterprises to export drugs used to treat COVID-19 after a month-long suspension.

The disease situation has improved so the export of the drugs can be resumed, it said.

Earlier, on April 16, the DAV issued a document requesting enterprises engaged in manufacturing and exporting of medicines to suspend the export of 37 items to ensure there would be enough for domestic use.

The drugs were considered by the MoH as necessary for isolation and treatment of COVID-19.

They include antibiotics, fluids, dialysis solutions and antipyretic namely Immunoglobulin 5 per cent, Vancomycin 500 mg, ceftriaxone, levotloxacin 250mg/50 ml, and ceftazidime.

COVID-19 testing machine price jacked up by three times in Hanoi: public security ministry

Conducting COVID-19 tests using RT-PCR technology.

Seven officials from Ha Nois Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and related companies confessed to the police they had jacked up the price of the COVID-19 testing machines by a factor of three, the Ministry of Public Security has said.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Luong Tam Quang said the defendants had promised to return the money.

On April 22, the police detained and launched criminal proceedings against Nguyen Nhat Cam, director of Ha Noi CDC and six others for jacking up prices of Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) machines used in testing the new coronavirus.

Initial investigation showed the defendants had colluded with companies to jack up the prices of a COVID-19 testing equipment bidding package by three times, Quang told media at a Government press meeting this week.

After the case at Ha Noi CDC was revealed to the public, the police department for corruption, economic crimes and smuggling discovered abnormal signs in purchasing testing equipment in some other localities.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc ordered the health ministry and local peoples committees to inspect the purchase of medical equipment and medicine for the pandemic, especially bidding packages of testing machines, ventilators, chemicals and face masks.

Media reported each RT-PCR machine costs VN2.3 billion (US$100,000). Ha Noi CDC purchased them at prices of up to VN7 billion ($304,000).

RoK calls for policy coordination among East Asian nations to minimise COVID-19 economic impact

The Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Korea (RoK) on May 7 urged East Asian nations to step up policy coordination to minimise the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, reported Yonhap news agency.

Han Kyeong-ho, a senior ministry official who is a co-chairman of the Public Expenditure Management Network in Asia (PEMNA), made the remarks during a videoconference with senior economic officials from 14 nations in the region.

Han said fiscal policy has played a key role for the RoK to navigate the economic slowdown triggered by the pandemic.

He added that nations in the region must boost policy coordination to revive economic growth.

PEMNA has 14 members, including 10 from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, along with the RoK, China, Timor Leste and Mongolia./.

Southeast Asia: Laos has no new COVID-19 case for 25 consecutive days



A COVID-19 patient in Laos receives treatment

Laos Health Ministry said the country had not recorded any new case of COVID-19 for 25 days in a row as of late May 6, with the total cases remaining at 19 with 10 having recovered.

Despite the optimistic outcomes, Lao authorities remain cautious and continue to keep strict prevention measures in place, with special attention paid to those who enter the country. All people entering Laos, including Lao citizens, have to be tested for coronavirus and quarantined for 14 days.

On May 7 afternoon, the Vietnamese Embassy in Laos announced that a large number of Vietnamese citizens had registered with the embassy and Lao diplomatic agencies to return to Vietnam after the Lao Government agreed to allow foreign citizens to exit via border gates.

During three days from May 4 to 6, around 1,600 Vietnamese citizens returned to Vietnam through international border gates on the Vietnam-Laos border.

Meanwhile, Thailand continued to report only few new COVID-19 cases, with three confirmed on May 7 and no new death. The country had a total 2,992 infections and 55 deaths.

Thailand has mapped out a timetable for phase two of relaxing restrictions measures which were imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Spokesman of the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) Taweesilp Visanuyothin said the second phase for easing of restrictions would begin on May 17 if the number of new cases does not increase. The Thai Government has planned four phases for easing of restrictions over two months.

The spokesman also said all Thais returning from overseas must be quarantined for 14 days. Since April 4, Thailand has repatriated 4,637 citizens from 27 countries, and is preparing to bring 7,000 more citizens home.

Meanwhile, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines recorded many more new infections on May 7.

Malaysia confirmed 39 new cases, bringing the total to 6,467 but the number of fatalities remained at 107 with no new death.

The number of cases in Indonesia rose to 12,776 and fatalities to 930 with 338 new infections and 35 new deaths.

The Philippines had 339 more cases and 27 new deaths, taking the total number of cases to 10,343 and fatalities to 685./.

One more patient with COVID-19 recovers in central Ha Tinh Province

Medical workers conduct COVID-19 tests.  Photo baohatinh.vn

Another Vietnamese patient with COVID-19 has recovered and was released from the Cau Treo International Border Gates General Hospital in central Ha Tinh Province on Thursday afternoon.

The recovered man has brought the countrys total patients being given the all-clear to 233, making up 85.6 per cent of total COVID-19 confirmed cases in Viet Nam.

The 26-year-old man, Patient 265, returned to Viet Nam from Thailand through Cha Lo border gate in Quang Binh Province. On April 12, the patient tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 when he was in isolation at a facility in Thach Ha District, Ha Tinh Province. Then he was sent to the Cau Treo International Border Gates General Hospital for isolation and treatment on April 13.

During treatment, the patients two latest tests were negative for SARS-CoV-2 on May 5 and 6. Currently, the patient has no fever, no cough, no breathing difficulties and is in a stable condition.

He is also the last patient out of a total of four patients so far treated at the hospital. The patient will continue to be isolated and monitored for the next 14 days, according to the Sub-Committee for Treatment of the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

As of Thursday afternoon, Viet Nam still reported no new COVID-19 infection case in the community over the past 21 days. The number of patients with the novel coronavirus stands at 271 and no fatalities have been reported.

Vietnam donates face masks to associations in France

Vietnamese Embassy in France presents over 15,000 face masks to both Vietnamese and French associations (Source: VNA)



The Vietnamese Embassy in France on May 7 presented over 15,000 face masks to both Vietnamese and French associations as the country continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.

The face masks were sent to the Overseas Vietnamese Association, the Vietnamese Students Association, the France-Vietnam Friendship Association, the France-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians Groups in the French Senate and National Assembly, the Communist Party of France and the City Halls of Paris, Montreuil and Choisy le Roi.

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep said the French friends were touched by Vietnams gifts.

Stephanie Do, President of the France-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians Group in the National Assembly, expressed her gratitude for the timely support.

She pledged to distribute the face masks to elderly locals.

France is one of the Western European nations hardest hit by the disease. As of May 7, it had reported 137,779 confirmed cases and 25,987 fatalities./.

Vietnam records no new COVID-19 cases on May 8 morning

As of May 8 morning, 233 out of the 288 patients in Vietnam have recovered.

Vietnam recorded no new cases of COVID-19 on May 8 morning, marking 22 consecutive days without a single infection in the community.

The announcement from the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control came the day after 17 passengers returning to Vietnam on a flight from overseas tested positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

The total number of people in Vietnam who have been infected remains at 288 with zero fatalities.

All of the new patients reported on May 7 evening are Vietnamese nationals returning from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on a Vietnam Airlines flight. They include a new born baby.

All 17 are being treated and in stable conditions at the General Hospital in southern Bac Lieu province.

There were 297 people on board the flight which landed at the Can Tho International Airport on May 3.

All the passengers along with cabin crew were immediately taken in quarantine after landing.

As of May 8 morning, 233 out of a total of 288 patients in Vietnam have recovered.

The remainders have been treated at health establishments nationwide, of whom 14 tested negative for the virus once and seven tested negative twice or more./.

ASEAN military medical forces discuss COVID-19 fight

At the event (Photo: qdnd.vn)

The ASEAN Centre of Military Medicine (ACMM) held a teleconference in Hanoi on May 7 to discuss a joint drill on COVID-19 prevention and control mechanisms.

The event was presided over by Director of the General Department of Logisticss Military Medical Department Maj. Gen. Nguyen Xuan Kien, who is also head of the ACMM Board of Directors.

Participants shared the view that the complicated developments of the pandemic around the world and in ASEAN member states require their medical forces to exert efforts to contain it.

They agreed on scenarios and activities for the drill to review ASEAN military medical forces experience in coping with the pandemic. They also looked into the building of an action plan to improve their readiness based on the World Health Organisations advice.

Delegates also discussed ways to enhance cooperation in scientific research and expertise sharing, thus determining collaboration mechanisms between ASEAN military medical forces and other organisations in the field./.
The judge in the case of the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and others, Anna Danibekyan, urged the parties to observe correctness.

Resuming the meeting after a short break, the judge reminded the parties of the responsibility for incorrect behavior and offensive statements.
Thailand's Health Minister says the government has agreed to remove China and South Korea from its official list of countries at high-risk for COVID-19 infections because their daily case counts have dropped to the single-digit level.

Anutin Charnvirakul said Friday that the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration has approved the action but he did not know when it would be implemented.

The measure would become official upon its publication in the Royal Gazette.

The move, when implemented, would appear to exempt people arriving from China and South Korea from a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon their arrival in Thailand.

But it would not mean a sudden influx of visitors, as Thai aviation authorities have banned incoming commercial passenger flights through May 31.

Thailand announced eight new confirmed COVID-19 cases Friday, bringing the total to 3,000 including 55 deaths. Nearly 3,000 patients have recovered.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
FORT MYERS, Fla., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 21st Century Oncology, the largest integrated cancer care network in the nation, has completed the joint venture partnership with Landmark Cancer Center. This joint venture will increase patient access and advanced academic-level clinical care to cancer patients throughout the central United States. This partnership will add 12 radiation oncologists, 7 medical oncologists, 2 radiologists and a fellowship-trained breast surgeon to its growing team of experts.

Through the partnership, 21st Century Oncology will bring its best practices, quality oversight and expertise in cancer care to these new markets. Both organizations will continue to focus on achieving best possible outcomes for patients, supporting doctors and teams and expanding in each of our markets.

"We are happy to bring this transaction to close and focus on the benefits of this exciting combination with partners who are very much aligned with our core values and growth strategies' said Chief Executive Officer Kim Commins-Tzoumakas. At 21st Century Oncology, we are focused on bringing world-class care, with the latest research, technology and expertise, to patients in their own neighborhoods and communities each day. I have no doubt that the addition of the Landmark team will only help us to achieve that goal."

The joint venture will add Landmark's 12 cancer centers and five medical oncology offices across four states to 21st Century Oncology's 123 radiation oncology treatment centers and 170 clinical offices in 15 states. What's more, this transaction will add Landmark, and the central U.S., to the combination announced late last year between GenesisCare and 21st Century Oncology, expected to close soon.

Together, this partnership creates a global network of over 200 radiation oncology treatment centers and 170 clinical offices.

"21st Century Oncology shares our vision and core values and we could not be more excited to partner with this world class team" said Landmark's founder and Chief Executive Officer Jon Tryggestad.

21st Century Oncology

U.S. contact: Annelise Przywara, Pushing the Envelope, Inc.

(239) 221-2858 | [email protected]

About 21st Century Oncology:

21st Century Oncology is the largest integrated cancer care network in the U.S. Operating as one integrated team in the crusade against cancer, the company carries out its mission with the mindset of "fighting for patients like an army and caring for them like a family." 21st Century Oncology employs or is affiliated with nearly 900 physicians in the United States, including radiation oncologists and other cancer-related specialists such as urologists, medical oncologists, hematologists, gynecologic oncologists, surgeons and pathologists, to deliver the most advanced, integrated and compassionate cancer care in personal and convenient settings. Headquartered in Fort Myers, FL, 21st Century Oncology operates 293 locations, including 124 radiation oncology centers located in 15 U.S. states. For more information, please visit 21co.com

SOURCE 21st Century Oncology

Related Links

http://www.21co.com


Search online for attributes of small business owners and you find driven, independent, and resilient  a word dating back to the 17th century, from the Latin resilire, meaning to recoil or rebound.

In normal times these traits help Hamilton entrepreneurs weather the vicissitudes of their risk-reward calling.

But these are times of a historic pandemic where they have been forced to shut doors, layoff workers, see sales slow to a trickle, or go out of business entirely  such as PlayVille, a playground-themed program for kids that had just opened in January.

The difference with COVID-19, in contrast to typical economic downturns, is small business owners across the board are suffering, which is a rallying point of sorts according to those who spoke with The Spectator.

The willingness of owners to take a loss and adapt to changes of fortune is being challenged like never before, as though fate demands to know just how deep is that well of resilire.

I would sell a kidney on the black market before I closed this restaurant, says Harrison Hennick, owner of Nique on Vine Street just off James Street North.

No, packing it in is not part of Hennicks plan. And yet he says that even during good times, running a restaurant means the fear of closing your business always hovers.

You teeter on the brink of failure, he says, one bad week or month or unpredictable expense perpetually around the corner.

Its a scary business.

But theres regular scary and pandemic-level scary.

Pre-COVID-19, Hennick and business partner Gaby Gwyn-Newman had been recording weekly sales of about $35,000 to $40,000.

And now, with their doors closed to customers and business restricted to takeout, sales are down 80 per cent to about $4,000 a week. In addition to other overhead expenses, they pay $9,000 a month in rent.

Hennick and Gwyn-Newman met years ago, working in a Toronto restaurant where she was a bartender and he was the chef. They discovered they shared a dream of running their own place and moved to Hamilton four years ago to launch Nique. They both live in the North End, in the Beasley neighbourhood.

The dream was going well enough that they recently decided to open a second restaurant, called Martello (Italian for hammer), at Barton and James streets.

But just as opening night approached, with staff hired and inventory purchased, the Ontario-wide pandemic shutdown was announced.

The present is a battle, and the future unpredictable at best. When the provincial government allows restaurants to reopen, will servers be required to wear masks and will tables need to be spaced apart, altering Niques hip and cosy open-concept environment?

If new distancing rules meant having to reduce seating capacity by 50 per cent  which has happened in Shanghai, they have heard  Nique would fall from 80 seats to 40. The pair wonder if landlords would reduce their rent accordingly.

Hennick talks of Nique  his high school nickname  like it is more than a business. He likens it to nurturing a child.

I make less money now than I did at 21, but you do these things because you love them. You have to love it or youd go nuts.

Owning a business was a different kind of calling for Jacquie Crossley. It represented a metaphorical lifeline  the real lifeline was the IV tube pumping her body with vitamins and nutrients.

Five years ago, at 25, she was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called JAK2 that causes blood clotting.

She had been a competitive dancer and dance teacher. As she started to bounce back from the disease, she decided to start a dance studio to give her a positive focus on the future.

Her family nickname is Jac. She named her business Studio12 as an amalgam of what she thought of as her pre- and post-diagnosis life: Jac1 and Jac2.

Studio12 opened in August 2017 and grew to more than 100 dancers combined in the recreational and competitive programs, while also offering yoga classes and hosting birthday parties. She employs 12 staff members.

COVID-19 jeopardized Crossleys bottom line and also her life, with her compromised immune system.

The financial hit has been considerable, she says, and will likely deepen from the ripple effect on families from the long-term impact of the economic shutdown.

Dance is expensive, and some customers may not be in a position to support this kind of extracurricular activity, she said.

Studio12 has given discounts to customers and been hosting online classes, and continues to pay instructors.

The online communication has been a positive for Crossley in more ways than one, given her vulnerability to the virus.

She suggests closing is not in the cards: customers have mostly responded positively to the online program, and she believes many will invest even more in Studio12 when the provincial economy opens up.

She sounds relentlessly positive even with all the looming question marks.

But having battled a rare disease  when she was diagnosed, she was the only known person 25 or under in North America that had it  her bar for fear is perhaps higher than most.

I hadnt thought of it that way, she says. But that makes sense. Ive always been an optimistic person. I view (the pandemic) as something that will pass, and maybe thats attributable to having gone through something terrible and coming out better on the other side.

She turned 30 in April. She still has to do the nutrient IV infusions: three times a week, eight hours a session, and twice a week for four hours each for hydration.

On the Studio12 website you find its motto. Crossley came across the phrase one day and it stuck with her, three words that speak volumes: Decide to Rise.

It might be overstating it to say the COVID-19 tsunami hammering businesses is simply the latest challenge for Ronn Mattai.

Then again, the man knows of battles, comebacks and scars.

In the early 2000s, when Mattai owned a restaurant downtown, he was attacked and slashed in the face with a broken glass, the wound required 200 stitches to close.

He sold the business, left Hamilton, and later returned to open a new restaurant in 2015: Mattson & Co. on Locke Street. (The name was inspired by a business his father owned in New York City, called Mattson Trading Company.)

Business was humming when the city started a massive reconstruction project last year on Locke Street that brought commerce at his end of the street to a thudding halt for months.

The pandemic has been similarly devastating, with business down 60 to 70 per cent in April.

But Mattai says the construction impact was even worse, driving sales down 80 per cent  $50,000 weeks dropped to $5,000  even as restaurants elsewhere in the city were thriving. And there was no financial assistance, in contrast to COVID-19 where the federal government has stepped in.

Currently, his takeout and delivery service has offered a measure of hope.

There are people who are saying, You can only cook at home so much, I need a good takeout meal, with the Mattson experience: they might want to get dressed up, use the fine china, put on some jazz as if you were in the restaurant on a Saturday night.

Back in mid-March, when the restaurant shut down completely, things looked bleak. He had just received delivery of $5,000 worth of food inventory. He turned around and gave it all to Mission Services and YWCA.

He had 20 staff when the business was at its peak, then had to reduce to 12 after the reconstruction and is now down to five, including himself.

But he says he has a favourable rent arrangement and a long-term lease. Hes philosophical about the future, suggesting a reset might ultimately be good for Mattson & Co., as a chance to get smaller and tighter, be more flexible and able to adapt.

Thats everything in this business. If you always want to stay the same, you fail.

At the same time, he admits the losses, layoffs and new normal make him sad.

No one wants to come to a restaurant feeling fear, he says, with servers wearing masks. Hes not sure hell be willing to do that, its too far removed from the communal experience he loves.

But hes not about to throw in the towel, either.

I have to remain strong for staff and the community. This is my investment. This is it. It has to work.

Loss and hope: Businesses hit a wall and start climbing

What: One Duke restaurant, near Duke Street and James Street South

Who: Owners Tyler Misiak and Nathan Ehler

Backstory: Misiak opened in September 2016, and last year partnered with Ehler, who runs two Tim Hortons franchises in town, as part of a restructuring. They were poised to open a second location, called Dukes Pub Pasta and Pizziera on Barton Street East at Victoria Avenue North; all that was left was a final food inspection, but those plans have been put on hold because of the pandemic.

Personal: Misiak is from Brantford and Ehler from Hamilton. Misiaks father, Zig, runs their marketing.

COVID impact: Sales were down at One Duke in April by 76 per cent. Zig told The Spectator they had to layoff 30 employees across both locations. They have operated a takeout and delivery service from One Duke  90 per cent takeout  carrying some new menu items from the Barton Street location. Every Tuesday, they serve complimentary food to essential front-line workers, from police to HSR drivers and bank tellers.

Quotable: Tyler Misiak: We are grateful to be open, but we had a lot of momentum going into opening the new location, we were firing on all cylinders, ready to go, and this put an immediate stop to it ... Its like running full speed and hitting a glass wall and asking, how do we climb out?

What: Hub of the Hammer event planning, located at 12 Duke St.

Who: Owner Matthew Surina

Backstory: In the mid-2000s, Surina worked as a local standup comedian when he decided to parlay his connections into his own event planning business, opening in July 2016. The first couple of years were slow, but started to ramp-up, planning private and public events at bars and beer festivals, with crowds from 30 people to 2,000. The business has had its ups and downs, but he said its rewarding, building his brand, encouraging people to check out all corners of Hamilton.

Personal: Surina took advertising at Mohawk College, then radio broadcasting, before performing at an open mic night at a comedy club on the Mountain. He lives downtown with his fiancee, Mallory, who works as an office manager at a law firm.

COVID impact: He has been doing online work to promote businesses, and planning online trivia nights, but with bars closed and large gatherings of people forbidden perhaps for months to come, his business has been crippled.

Quotable: Surina: It would sting more if it was just me, but everyone is in the same boat, and working together. Hamilton is great for supporting each other ... Its a matter of waiting it out and hoping for the best.

What: Cavalier Barbershop and Salon

Who: Owners Maria, Joseph and Jody Ann Finelli

Backstory: The family business has been operating for more than four decades in Stoney Creek. Marias father came to Hamilton from Italy in 1958, started work as a barber and later opened a hair salon. Cavalier had been located in Eastgate Square Mall before moving to a 7,000-square-foot building at Fruitland Road and Highway 8 in 2013, and has evolved into a spa and clothing store.

Personal: The Finellis have family living in Italy, but all have stayed healthy in that COVID-ravaged country; just the other day they were allowed to walk outside for the first time ... for 10 minutes.

COVID impact: Soon after the shutdown, Marias daughters, Nicole Guerriero and Danielle Homiak, suggested they launch home hair and nail products: the Nail Bestie and Root Rescue Kits. They mix hair colours on-site and package them  Cavalier is also a salon product distribution centre. Selling kits has kept the family busy, after having laid off 11 staffers, but sales have dropped dramatically. On any given day they might make $200 selling the kits, whereas one lucrative day and evening at the salon would gross about $7,000.

Quotable: Maria: The whole pandemic has been jaw-dropping. Like how do you even write a chapter like this into the history of your life? How do you tell your grandchildren that one day everyone just stopped working? Its unbelievable.
The coronavirus pandemic has added an emotional dimension to the battle over Gov. J.B. Pritzkers proposal for a graduated-rate state income tax, as increasing economic anxieties are added to a long-standing mistrust of Illinois handling of tax dollars.

Theres no ballot amendment in the country thats ever taken a state from a flat tax to a graduated tax, said Quentin Fulks, chairman of Vote Yes for Fairness and Pritzkers former deputy campaign manager. And so we were already facing that kind of uphill battle. I wont say that (the pandemic) made it harder. It definitely didnt make it easier."

The campaigns over the proposed state constitutional amendment going before voters on Nov. 3 havent gone dormant during the economic shutdown. But strategists are trying to navigate a world of stay-at-home orders and social distancing that have effectively eliminated door-to-door canvassing and rallies.

The basic arguments on both sides, largely drawn along partisan lines, remain the same as they did before the pandemic.

Proponents say it is unfair for people to pay the same income tax rate regardless of how much they earn and instead should pay their fair share. Opponents contend Illinois is already a high tax state with a history of fiscal management problems and theres no guarantee that the higher rates wouldnt eventually be extended to middle-income families.

But those arguments are now set against soaring unemployment and shuttered businesses. The pandemic also has blown a crater in the state budget, and Pritzker says that only increases the need to change the income tax system. Opponents say the states worsening financial condition opens the door for lawmakers to extend the reach of the tax beyond the very highest earners to raise even more revenue.

The graduated-rate tax proposal had been Pritzkers signature issue as governor -- until the pandemic struck. The proposed amendment, placed on the Nov. 3 ballot by Democratic lawmakers without any GOP support, would replace the current 4.95% personal flat rate income tax with a tax that increases as income rises.

Democrats have already approved a law, taking effect Jan. 1 if voters approve the proposed constitutional amendment, that would levy varying rates on incomes up to $250,000, where it would reach the current 4.95%.

Above $250,000 in income the rates would increase before reaching a maximum of 7.99% for single filers with an income of $750,000 and joint filers making $1 million. At the top bracket, the higher rate applies to all income earned.

To amend the constitution, the proposal will need the backing of 60% of those voting on the question or a simple majority of all votes cast in the election.

Pritzker has said that under the proposal 97% of Illinois residents would pay the same or less than they do now in income taxes. It was to have raised $1.4 billion in the first six months of 2021 and $3.6 billion for a full year. But with the crash of the economy and Illinois tax revenues, the half-year forecast has already been lowered to $1.2 billion.

In mid-April, Pritzker projected a $2.7 billion shortfall for the budget year that ends June 30 and a $6.2 billion hole for the new budget year that starts July 1. Absent voter approval of the constitutional amendment, the shortfall for the next budget year jumps to $7.4 billion, he said.

The governor is attempting to use those numbers to bolster his argument for a graduated income tax.

There is nothing new or changed or different about the effect of the graduated income tax during this moment than there was four or five months ago, before we knew about this pandemic, other than that I think its needed perhaps now more than ever, Pritzker said at a recent coronavirus news briefing.

We very much need to alleviate some of the burden on the working class and middle class and people who are striving to get to the middle class and to also pay for the services that the state has and needs to provide -- as well as to deal with the structural deficit that already existed in this state, not to mention now the shortfall that will exist as a result of the attack of the coronavirus, he said.

But opponents, led by Republicans and pro-business groups, have gone so far as to urge the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to use its authority to withdraw the proposed amendment from the ballot. They contend the time is not right to move forward with a major tax change with significant effects on businesses hurt by the pandemic.

As for Pritzkers comment that the graduated-rate tax is needed now more than ever, Jason Heffley, executive director of Ideas Illinois, which opposes the change, countered: Taxes are already too high in Illinois and now is the worst time to push a massive tax hike when small businesses and working families are hurting.

Opponents say the state budget shortfall created by the pandemic raises the potential that graduated rates would be raised, or income brackets lowered, to scoop up more money from lower-income taxpayers. Their arguments could play to those concerned about the personal costs of any changes to state tax policy.

Fulks counters that if the proposed amendment doesnt pass, then all Illinoisans, not just the wealthy, will likely face an income-tax increase through the flat tax.

Undoubtedly, (the graduated tax) is going to bring in additional revenue that were going to need to fund things like social services that a number of people who most likely got hit the hardest during the pandemic depend on, Fulks said.

We were never going to try to sell this as a fix-all Band-Aid for the economy. This is about changing the trajectory of the state and putting us on a path towards fiscal sustainability, he said.

Vote Yes for Fairness, funded with $5 million from the wealthy Pritzker, spent $610,000 in the first three months of this year, largely on payroll and organization. The Vote Yes for Fair Tax committee, backed by organized labor, had nearly $400,000 available on April 1 and has raised another $73,000 in cash and other help since.

The opposition groups have not yet shown any funding to fuel their efforts in financial reports filed with the State Board of Elections. But they are expected to heavily tap the business community and its political allies for funding.

David Merriman, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said a graduated tax will raise a significant amount of income and were certainly going to need that income at this point. In part, he said the income from wealthier taxpayers will pay for services for people with more moderate or lower income (who) are probably going to be hurt worse than those of us who are more fortunate.

As for concerns of higher income taxpayers moving out of state to avoid the higher rates if they are imposed, Merriman said there was no evidence to suggest that theres going to be a massive whooshing sound of people leaving given the experience in high tax-rate states like California, New York and New Jersey.

Merriman also said data from the last 20 years have not shown efforts of rate-creep in those states with an existing graduated tax seeking to capture more taxpayers and more revenue at lower income levels. Instead, he said, any income tax increases have been quite rare and that most changes have been to cut taxes.

Even before the pandemic, Illinois faced massive financial problems, including its worst-in-the-nation $138 billion unfunded public employee pension liability.

Merriman said additional revenues from a graduated tax could help the state but he offered one caution.

The wealthy dont have enough money -- theres just not enough money out there (from them) to totally bail us out, he said.

Selfies: The face masks of Central Illinois

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The African Development Bank (AfDB) is ready to be a partner in coordinated international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and can offer expertise on the ground in Africa, an emerging and critical battleground in defeating the worldwide crisis.

This was the top-line message by Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala, Acting Senior Vice President of the Bank during a United Nations Global Compact virtual panel titled 'Global Cooperation for Crisis Response' to discuss strategies and recommendations for mounting a global response.

In her opening statement, the acting SVP drove home the imperative for close cooperation at every level.

No country is exempt or immune from the health and economic consequences which are unraveling. COVID-19 affects us all whether we are in a developed or developing countries, she said

Tshabalala was joined on the panel by Dr. David Nabarro, Special Envoy on COVID-19 for the Director-General of the World Health Organization; Ellen Dorsey, Executive Director of Wallace Global Fund, a philanthropic organization; and Paul Polman, Co-Founder & Chair of IMAGINE Foundation, which advocates for the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Dan Thomas, Communications Chief at UN Global Compact moderated the virtual meeting.

Panelists stressed that humanity will need to accommodate itself to a new normal in which the virus is here to stay and what all of us are going to have to do is live with the virus as an ever-present threat in our lives and in our communities, as Envoy Nabarro stated.

Polman advised the audience to take the dual approach of being physically distanced but also socially more connected going forward.

One theme that surfaced during the panel, as well as in the recent African Development Institute's virtual forum, is the extent to which the pandemic has exposed high levels of inequality across and within the world's countries.

Evidence for this came from the observation that industrialized countries have spent $10 trillion in economic stimulus while many developing economies cannot mount such a response.

Polman urged, let us start to think about not restarting the global economy but redesigning the global economy.

Dorsey pointed out that while the pandemic represents a crisis of unprecedented scale, other challenges must continue to be faced. It also provides an opportunity to reset.

Intersecting crises require systemic not merely palliative responses. If ever there was a moment in which we are shaken out of our complacency and called to act with audacious intent and collaboration, its now.

Addressing the issues of resilience, Polman pointed out that societies built on multi-stakeholder models tend to do better in these sorts of crises. 

Members of the panel observed that Africa seemed less hard-hit than other regions by the health impacts of the pandemic, to which SVP Tshabalala responded, from an economic point of view, we may be worst affected economically.

She went on to point to estimates that Africa will require $110-$150 billion in stimulus to provide social and economic relief to its economies in the wake of the pandemic.

The Bank has been in the forefront of helping Africa, which is scrambling to protect its economies, health systems, and livelihoods of its people. The primary channel for the Bank's intervention is its Covid-19 Response Facility, a $10 billion facility that will provide cost-effective and targeted emergency budget support through a fast-tracked approval process to provide immediate relief to countries to address the crisis, additional resources for public health interventions, social protection programmes and to protect their economies at a time of global volatility and uncertainty.

The UN Global Compact is a voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles and to take steps to support UN goals. The UN Global Compact in March issued an appeal for all companies to take collective action to stem the outbreak through implementing Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. Businesses are also being called upon to stand together to facilitate business continuity for a fast recovery. The panel was one it's Special Academy series.
Johannesburg, May 6, (People's Daily Online) -- Dr. Zamani Saul, Premier of The Northern Cape Province Government in South Africa, has expressed his thanks to Chinese company Longyuan Mulilo Wind Project for its donations to help fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

Longyuan Mulilo Wind Project has made great contributions in assisting the local government and health department in the fight against COVID-19 through donations including food parcels, water tanks, portable toilets, personal protective equipment and cash.

Dr. Zamani Saul said, Today, we received a generous contribution from Longyuan Mulilo Wind Project to boost our fight against COVID-19. We appeal to the private sector in the province to join the battle.

According to local newspaper Die Echo, Longyuan Mulilo Wind Project donated 20 Atlas Ribbed portable toilets and seven Jojo Tanks to local communities on April 17. The newspaper said, Well done, team! Together we can overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longyuan Mulilo is also busy working with Emthanjeni and Renosterberg Local Municipality to prepare 1,000 food parcels which will be distributed to local residents in desperate need of help.

In addition, Longyuan Mulilo has also leased a previously purchased professional medical mobile bus to the district health department for free, together with experienced doctors and nurses, to help carry out COVID epidemic screening. From late March till late April, the mobile bus screened 2,654 people, especially in remote and rural areas, where governments are short of resources and equipment.
Three truck drivers from Jharkhand who had come to Odishas Dhenkanal district to pick up ethanol spirit from a sugar mill just before the lockdown was announced in March, died under mysterious circumstances on Friday morning.

Dhenkanal police said one of the three brothers, Hariram Bharati, Rudaal Bharati and Dilip Bharati was found dead on Friday morning near the trucks, while the other two died on the way to hospitals.

The three had a meal of fish and green banana which they had cooked under the trucks. After eating, one of them complained of uneasiness and nausea. He died while being taken to the Dhenkanal district headquarters hospital. Another driver, too, died on the way to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. The third was found dead near the truck where he had his meal, said Gyanaranjan Samal, inspector of Dhenkanal town police station.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

The inspector ruled out excessive consumption of hooch or other liquor and said he suspected food poisoning to be the cause of death, since all three had complained of uneasy stomachs after eating.

There was no smell of alcohol on their mouths. Another driver who cooked his meal a little distance away was fine. We suspect there was something wrong with the food consumed by these men. The post-mortem will make the cause of death clear, he said.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

The three brothers were unable to pick up the ethanol which was meant for a brewery in Khurda district, and were stranded in Dhenkanal, waiting for the lockdown to end and the local excise office to reopen.

On Thursday, the office had opened and they managed to complete the necessary paperwork for picking up the ethanol in the coming week.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A Texas-based political committee funded by a giant oil company is making a splash in several New Mexico legislative primary races.

With the June 2 primary election less than a month away, the group, called New Mexico Strong, has been sending out mailers and launching TV ads that depict Democratic incumbents alongside Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

But a Lujan Grisham spokeswoman said this week the governor has not endorsed the candidates  or given her approval for her image to be used in the political ads.

No, the governor was not asked and did not consent to the images (shown in the campaign material), Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett told the Journal. She is focused on the public health emergency at hand.

And opponents of the lawmakers displayed in the campaign ads say the mailers are disingenuous because some of the incumbents have opposed certain measures pushed by Lujan Grisham  including the repeal of a long-dormant 1969 abortion ban and a red-flag gun law.

New Mexico Strongs funding for this years election cycle comes primarily from a $350,000 contribution from Chevron Corp. in mid-February, according to state campaign finance reports.

The group functions as an independent expenditure committee  or super PAC  that is not required to abide by New Mexicos campaign contribution limits, but cannot coordinate directly with candidates.

Sen. Gabriel Ramos, D-Silver City, one of the incumbents featured in the mailers, said he was surprised when the flyers came out. But he said the mailers accurately reflect his voting record on issues like early childhood education funding.

Unfortunately, these are being sent out by PACs and we dont have any control over them, Ramos told the Journal. Im concentrating on my campaign.

However, Siah Correa Hemphill, his opponent in the Senate District 28 primary race, said the mailers show that Ramos is the corporate-backed candidate.

My plan is to go to Santa Fe and fight for the kids in my classroom, not Chevron, Correa Hemphill told the Journal.

In all, progressive Democrats are challenging more moderate incumbents in this years primary election in at least five Senate districts around New Mexico.

The closely-watched primary races could play a role in determining how legislation dealing with abortion, marijuana legalization and other issues fare over the next four years, Roundhouse insiders say.

In recent days, New Mexico Strong has sent out mailers backing several of those incumbents, including Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen of Las Cruces, Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee Chairman Clemente Sanchez of Grants and Ramos, who was appointed to the Senate by Lujan Grisham in 2019.

The political committee issued a statement late Thursday saying it had not intended to imply endorsements by Lujan Grisham.

Rather, the PAC said its intent was to highlight how the incumbents views aligned with the governors on issues such as rebuilding the economy, fighting for working families and ensuring health care access for those with pre-existing conditions.

In addition, Sean Comey, a senior adviser for Chevron, said the California-based companys contributions were made in accordance with state and federal law.

We make political contributions to support the election of candidates who believe, like we do, in the value of responsible oil and natural gas development, Comey told the Journal.

Skyrocketing oil production in southeast New Mexico made the state the nations third-highest oil producer last year and boosted state revenue levels to record highs. But oil prices have plummeted in recent months, prompting some producers to cap their wells.

Before prices crashed, Chevron  and other oil companies  had made hefty campaign contributions to political committees and some of the senators who are seeking reelection.

What this demonstrates is theyre doubling down on their money, said Carrie Hamblen of Las Cruces, who is one of two Democrats running against Papen in Senate District 38.

Meanwhile, this isnt New Mexico Strongs first foray into state politics.

The super PAC, which was created in December 2017 and is based in Austin, Texas, was also active in New Mexicos 2018 election cycle.

The PAC got more than $2 million from Chevron Corp. that year, and used some of the money on TV and online ads targeting Democrat Stephanie Garcia Richard in the states land commissioner race.

Despite the barrage, Garcia Richard went on to defeat Republican Pat Lyons in the general election by 8 percentage points.
While no one can say for sure, Whitfield County's Rep. Kasey Carpenter remains optimistic that the worst may be over.

To me, the most important number we can look at is our positive test ratio, he said. How many tests are we giving and how many are positive? Youve seen that any time a community is over 35 percent positive, its an issue.

He pointed to rates that were once as high as 40 to 50 percent in New York and New Jersey but points out that Georgia has seen a steady decline in that ratio over the past few weeks.

It was 26 percent at one point, Rep.

Carpenter said. Now its 14 and its continued to decline every week, so thats the important part. Thats why Whitfield County has been so good. Between the hospital and the health department, were testing at 5 or 6 percent positive, so you know were in a heck of a lot better shape than even the state at this point. But if those numbers start growing exponentially, then weve got a problem.

Whitfield Commission Chair Lynn Laughter praised Rep. Carpenter for his positive outlook. I love that youre positive and that youre encouraging people and what you believe is going to be continued relaxation (of guidelines), she said. I really hope that happens, but bottom line, none of us really know for sure whats going to happen on this.

In the meantime, she urges residents to continue practicing social distancing, washing their hands frequently, exercising, avoiding information overload, helping others when possible, connecting with family and friends, and reaching out to people who might feel isolated through texts, calls, Facetime, or Zoom. She said 16 of her family members gathered on Zoom over the weekend to talk to her 92-year-old mother.

Commissioner Laughter also reminded residents that they can check on free COVID-19 testing by calling the Whitfield County Health Department at 888-881-1474. Drive-through tests are being expanded locally to seven days a week, Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to noon, and Sunday 1 to 4 p.m.

The next County Connect show will be next Thursday at 5 p.m. You can watch all the shows online on the countys website.

Questions for the county commissioners can be sent by e-mail to Commissioner Laughter at llaughter@whitfieldcountyga. com , Harold Brooker at hbrooker@whitfieldcountyga.com , Roger Crossen at rcrossen@whitfieldcountyga.com , Greg Jones at gjones@whitfieldcountyga.com, or Barry Robbins at brobbins@whitfieldcountyga.com . You can also call the county offices at 706-275-7500.

Commissioner Laughter pointed out that county administrative buildings re-opened to the public on April 27, with social distancing and other safety measures in practice.
(Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @gsarquis) JetBlue's Planned Honorary Flyover For Frontliners Around Ground Zero Are Slammed By Newyorkers: Looks Like 9/11 They Say (Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @JetBlue) JetBlue's Planned Honorary Flyover For Frontliners Around Ground Zero Are Slammed By Newyorkers: Looks Like 9/11 They Say

Many New Yorkers, including US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, slammed the airline JetBlue's planned flyover above ground zero to honor coronavirus.

JetBlue is planning to fly three passenger planes above New York City at low altitude on Thursday evening, May 7. The flight was meant to honor healthcare workers and first responders who are fighting the ongoing pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus.

According to Business Insider's latest report, news of the aircraft display did not please New Yorkers. The flight of JetBlue comes a week after the federal government staged a military flyover over America's largest city. According to Gothamist's previous report, the military flyover inspired the New Yorkers.

The US Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron known as Blue Angels, and the US Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron known as the Thunderbirds also did a flyover over New York City as promised, including other parts of the tri-state area. The American flights flew last Tuesday, May 5, in honor of essential workers and frontline COVID-19 responders.

The flights showed patriotic display which lasted for about half an hour, said the report. The flyover began near George Washington Bridge, then flew over Hudson River, Manhattan, Newark, Brooklyn, and Queens Long Island.

JetBlue's planned honorary flyover for frontliners around ground zero was slammed by New Yorkers: Looks like 9/11 they say

Unlike the US flyovers, however, New Yorkers were unhappy with JetBlue's planned low-altitude flight. According to Business Insider, the flyover's path is where some of the backlashes stemmed. JetBlue's aircraft will depart from John F. Kennedy International Airport, and then will fly around the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and then go back down to Manhattan.

The passenger planes will fly around the old World Trade Center, a complex of seven buildings in lower Manhattan, which were destroyed by a terrorist attacked on September 11, 2001. The terrorists hijacked two Boeing767s and crashed the planes into the two largest towers of the World Trade Center; 2,763 people died because of the attack.

The planned JetBlue flights made some people ask on social media as to why would JetBlue fly passenger planes around New York at such a low altitude since the terrorist attack are still very much alive in the minds of many New Yorkers. Amanda Mull, a New York-based illustrator, described the flights as "frivolous, tone-deaf, and savagely useless" in a Twitter post.

that they can't think of anything to do to "honor" new york besides repeatedly sending us low-flying planes is, like, incredible absurdist performance art  Amanda Mull (@amandamull) May 7, 2020

For some New Yorkers, the flyover does not appear to give substantive help to the first responders and health workers. It was also reported that essential workers have expressed their frustration with being called "heroes" instead of being provided a pay raise since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Its not our job to make visible the work of writers and artists, but were necessary literary infrastructure. Without SPD, many presses wouldnt have the resources or ability to get books into not only bookstores, but libraries, universities and major retailers, Low said. Its one of those cases where the Poetry Foundation and SPD are part of the same ecosystem, but without the ability to get books into the hands of readers, authors wont necessarily have the attention and the careers they want to have.
Guwahati, May 8 : A 16-year-old girl tested positive for Covid-19 in Guwahati on Thursday night a day after her death, Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.

With the girl's death, Assam's death toll due to coronavirus has risen to two as a 65-years-old man from Hailakandi district (in southern Assam) died at the Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) on April 10.

While briefing the media, Sarma said had the girl been detected for corona before her death, she could have been given better medical treatment. The girl, who was a grand-daughter of a cleaner of the Dr. B. Barooah Cancer Institute, had been staying in the residential complex of the institute. The authority has declared the complex as a containment zone.

After the girl's death, certain services would remain shut till May 10 at the Dr. B. Barooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati city.

The Minister said a doctor, who is also a postgraduate student at Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), was tested COVID-19 positive on Thursday night. "We have to now screen everyone who came in contact with the PG student and sanitize the entire GMCH premises. We have to close the hospital for new patients for the next few days", he added.

After a few days' break, twelve more coronavirus positive cases were reported in Assam during the past three days, taking the total number of positive cases in the state to 56. As many as 21 of them are active cases. Eight of the new cases are from Cachar district of southern Assam, bordering Tripura and Mizoram, while four tested positive in Guwahati.

Sarma said all the eight persons in Cachar took a bus from Rajasthan in which a large number of other people travelled too. The minister said that 45 people returned from Rajasthan's Ajmer Sharif without informing the state government and five of them tested positive on Wednesday and Thursday after arrival at Silchar.

The Minister accused the Ajmer district administration of not ensuring social distancing norms when it allowed 45 pilgrims of the state, including eight children, to travel in one small bus.

"To keep social distancing, buses are allowed to carry only 50 per cent of the total seating capacity. Swab samples of all the 45 people are being tested," Sarma said.

Out of the state's total cases, 34 have recovered and two have died.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Ten automatic weapons and 150 cartridges were seized in Sultanpur Lodhi, police said on Friday. Police have booked six people in the case.

The accused are Baljinder Singh of Gurdaspur, Sukhwinder Singh of Amritsar, Lovepreet Singh of Mothawal village, Mohit Sharma of Sultanpur Lodhi, Mangal Singh of Saropwal village and Maninder Singh of Bharoya village.

A joint operation was carried out by the Kapurthala police and the organised crime control unit (OCCU) on Thursday night. The team was led by additional inspector general (AIG) Harkamalpreet Singh Khakh and OCCU deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Bikramjit Singh.

Police said the gangs kingpin had links across the border and was conspiring to disturb the law and order in the state.

A case under Sections 384 (extortion), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged), 473 (forgery and counterfeiting), 489 (tampering with property mark with intent to cause injury) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Arms Act was registered against the accused at Sultanpur Lodhi police station.

Kapurthala Senior superintendent of police Satinder Singh said that accused had committed robberies and were running an extortion business. They have oversees links and had the latest weapons, he said.

It is unclear how many people were arrested in the operation.
Thursday, May 7, 2020 at 8:52PM

As you may or may not know, Steve Carell partnered with The Office's Greg Daniels to create a new Netflix show called Space Force. The show is a parody of the US government's real-life Space Force. And now, we get a look at the comedic gold we're going to expect from the show as Carell's character Mark Naird tries to lead the new military branch

We catch a glimpse of the star-studded cast, which includes Lisa Kudrow, Jon Malkovich, Jane Lynch, and Ben Schwartz, among many others. You have to watch it 'til the end to watch a very tense rendition of The Beach Boys' Kokomo. Space Force is dropping on Netflix on May 29.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  ABS-CBN should not have been closed, veteran journalist Korina Sanchez-Roxas said, with all eyes now on lawmakers to set things right.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source, the TV host and former Kapamilya news anchor said that the media giant's shutdown should be taken seriously by members of Congress and the public, adding that this could be a make or break for their careers.

"If they believe that this is but a moment in their careers as politicians and (for) all the good men of the Duterte administration... If they believe that this is a glitch, a hiccup or just a moment in their lives, then they are deluding themselves," she said in an interview Friday.

"I happen to believe that what they do now and the choices that they make will define them. This moment in history will be in esteemed journals, it will be online forever. This is also what will define their children and their families will carry (this) forever. Do the right thing and stand for something that they believe in," the 55-year-old broadcaster added.

ABS-CBN stopped its TV and radio broadcasts on Tuesday night, hours after the National Telecommunications Commission issued a cease and desist order to the network as its franchise expired Monday. The order came as a shock, as the regulator committed to the House of Representatives in March that it will issue a provisional authority to keep the network on air.

"Its really a big historic event that ABS-CBN had gone... I am at a loss, I am baffled  Im not very surprised, Im just baffled how this could happen," she said.

RELATED: ABS-CBN asks Supreme Court to stop shutdown order

Blame has been placed on the House of Representatives, which is mandated to start all discussions involving legislative franchises. The chamber has sat on proposals granting another 25 years for the Lopez-owned network's continued operations.

Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano  an ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, who earlier vowed to ensure the network's franchise will not be renewed  insisted as the license was nearing expiration that they had to attend to more pressing issues. Cayetano pointed to the relief for displaced families due to the Taal volcano eruption and later, the COVID-19 pandemic.

RELATED: There will be a reckoning: Cayetano blames SolGen, NTC for ABS-CBN closure

Sanchez-Roxas has been with ABS-CBN for over 30 years, but has since taken a backseat and is now hosting a lifestyle show airing Sunday nights. But that didn't stop her from defending the embattled network.

"The closure of ABS-CBN is a big deal and these are the defining moments in history when it could not be gray Its right or wrong, and you cant be quiet," she said.

That same rage about the ABS-CBN's shutdown pushed Korina to unleash the beast and fight back netizens who think the network deserved to be taken off the air.

Her savage replies to Instagram commenters went viral on social media, which saw her shut down critics with the now-iconic "Please leave. Bruha ka" remark.

"Theyre beginning to call me Daenerys, the mother of dragons. That could also mean they want to burn me at the stake, right?," she said with a chuckle, referring to the iconic 'Game of Thrones' queen.

"Yan talaga ang job description ko for 25 years  my mandate really was to slay, sister."

She went on to explain that it's really in her character to fight back, but that she has since mellowed out as she raises her twins Pepe and Pilar.

Did she ever get irked or pikon towards online bashers? "Hindi, naaaliw ako [No, I am amused]," the 'Rated K' host said, adding that she's simply giving these netizens a taste of their own medicine.
Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey hit out at Taoiseach Leo Vardkar after a row in the Dail over Sinn Fein ministers delivering food packages to vulnerable and old people.

Mr Varadkar rebuked Sinn Fein for delivering food parcels and posting pictures on Facebook during a debate on the Covid-19 unemployment payment on Thursday.

Mr Varadkar said he would be ashamed to boast about giving out food parcels. He said his government provides funding for food banks.

What we do not do is post on Facebook pictures of our ministers visiting them and handing out food to the poor, he added.

Ms Hargey, speaking on Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster, said that the Taoiseach was "clearly playing politics" and that his comments were "ill-judged".

"I think he is rattled from the last election and the success of the Sinn Fein vote there," the communities minister said.

"I think this is part of his continued pursuit of excluding Sinn Fein from government formation and I think it has to be put into context of government formation talks are going on at the moment.

"What Leo doesn't add, because he shares the same politics as the Tories, is ten years of Tory austerity and the impact that has had on our health service in responding to this pandemic."

They are working class people who are acting in solidarity in the midst of a global pandemic and I make no apologies for that. Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey

Ms Hargey said that she was "very proud" as communities minister to be involved in giving out more than 18,000 food parcels to those in need during the pandemic in Northern Ireland.

"They need it because they are self-isolating," she said. "Leo referred to those people as poor, I refer to those people, and I was out in my local community this week, they are my community, they are my neighbours, they are my friends.

"They are working class people who are acting in solidarity in the midst of a global pandemic and I make no apologies for that.

"I think those comments were ill-judged, I think he was playing politics with it and I think he needs to reflect on what he has said in terms of playing politics at this time."

In the Dail, the Taoiseach and Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald clashed over the 350 per week Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment.

Do not blame it on the Tories and do not blame it on London. If it was not for their money, it would be even worse. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

Mr Varadkar responded to Ms McDonald by highlighting that payments for the unemployed are far lower in Northern Ireland where Sinn Fein is in power.

He suggested the rates were so low that Sinn Fein ministers were forced to deliver food parcels.

Sinn Fein ministers on their Facebook site promote the fact that they hand out food parcels to the poor, reminiscent to me of Donald Trump handing out toilet roll after the hurricane hit the islands in the Caribbean, he said.

I would be ashamed to do something like that. Do not blame it on the Tories and do not blame it on London. If it was not for their money, it would be even worse, he added.

However, in response, Sinn Fein highlighted pictures on Twitter showing Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy delivering meals on wheels to his constituents. Mr Murphy retweeted the images to his own Twitter account.

Ms McDonald said she was very proud of the community work her members do across the country.

It is not just in the North that people are running meals on wheels and bringing packages and parcels to help people who are struggling, she said.
MasterChef viewers were recently offered a glimpse inside Melissa Leong's home life with her husband, tattooed bar owner Joe Jones.

And the 40-year-old food writer revealed in a resurfaced interview with Vogue Australia how the couple had eloped in America in 2017.

She explained that Joe had asked her over dinner how 'eloping worked' and if they needed to get engaged first.

'We just went with it': MasterChef judge Melissa Leong has revealed the very rock 'n' roll way she and her bartender husband, Joe Jones, eloped in the U.S. three years ago

'The all-knowing dice decided that our already planned trip to the U.S. in three-ish months would be it, so we just went with it,' she said.

Melissa and Joe married in a '60s rock 'n' roll-themed ceremony at the Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert on February 20, 2017.

She wore a pale blue vintage dress with an embroidered neckline and sleeves, while her husband wore a dapper tailored suit.

Not wasting time! In a resurfaced interview with Vogue Australia, Melissa said she and Joe (right) had made the spontaneous decision to get married while planning their trip to America

'I think eloping is a pretty rock 'n' roll way to say "I do!"': Melissa and Joe married in a '60s-themed ceremony at the Joshua Tree National Park in California on February 20, 2017

'Joe and I share a common aesthetic for all things vintage and a bit rock 'n' roll,' she explained.

'And I think eloping is a pretty rock 'n' roll way to say "I do!"'

Three years later, the couple welcomed additional members to their family: two cats named Ghost and Ghoul.

Fur babies: Three years later, the couple welcomed additional members to their family: two cats named Ghost and Ghoul

Melissa recently revealed that she and Joe were mixing things up in the kitchen and cooking Italian food for dinner during the COVID-19 pandemic.

'Like everyone else, this iso life usually involves multi-step dishes that take some time to prepare,' she told The Daily Telegraph.

'We don't often have the opportunity to cook time-consuming things like that, so now's the time.'
'Does it mean that till the COVID-19 fight is over, the governor should be non-functional, in sleep mode, and fiddling in the Raj Bhavan while the state is burning?'

IMAGE: West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar greets West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Photograph: Shyamal Maitra / ANI Photo.

The Trinamool Congress government has mostly been at odds with Jagdeep Dhankhar, West Bengal's governor, since he assumed charge nine months ago.

"While the entire nation was fighting COVID-19, the West Bengal chief minister was fighting the Centre and the governor," Dhankhar tells Ishita Ayan Dutt.

Your tenure started with a war of words which has now boiled down to a war of letters. What is at the heart of this constant run-in?

I am privileged to be governor of West Bengal, and the first one in that position to be born in independent India.

Coming here has been enlightening -- the rich culture, human resource; everything about Bengal is glorious and unparalleled.

There are also several worrisome situations not in sync with the rich historical background.

I could never imagine that people could be denied, for so long, the essential elements of democracy and Constitutional working.

Politicisation of the bureaucracy is antithetical to democratic governance which is apparent here.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the bureaucracy have failed to act appropriately qua the governor, both in form and substance.

In times of an unprecedented crisis like this, there is a need to act in togetherness and in concert with the Centre.

Federalism in sublimity needs to be the working model.

What is the mess that you are referring to?

I don't wish to carry the baggage of the past, what the state ministers have said about me. So, let me get to the present situation.

Our farmers are in a mess.

About 7 million farmers would have received Rs 7,000 crore from the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, but are being deprived for no fault of theirs.

I had raised this issue with the chief minister, as also in the public domain.

The state only had to share data and it would not have had to contribute even a rupee.

I solicited an interaction with Mamata Banerjee amid the most challenging COVID-19 stress scenario. Even otherwise, she is Constitutionally obligated to brief me.

I was stunned by her three-line response that the government was fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

This, in a sense, eclipsed the Constitutional position of the governor.

Does it mean that till the COVID-19 fight is over, the governor should be non-functional, in sleep mode, and fiddling in the Raj Bhavan while the state is burning? Such a situation cannot be countenanced.

Then the letters followed.

While the entire nation was fighting COVID-19, the West Bengal chief minister was fighting the Centre and the governor.

Do your concerns stem from the issues raised by IMCT?

The IMCTs (inter-ministerial central teams) were received well in all states except West Bengal. It has catalysed affirmative action and, to some extent, things are falling in place.

The lapses and apathy in the COVID-19 combat have been so monumental that now a strategy is taking shape -- to take the exit route by shifting the burden onto the central government and shielding the CM by constituting committees.

This is no time for political moves, but the time to be on the front foot, so that the untold miseries that people are suffering get mitigated.

The COVID-19 combat cannot be left midway by the leader.

Data sharing by the state is being virtually ridiculed, both nationally and globally.

If data is shared effectively, people will automatically become serious.

You had once offered to mediate between the Centre and the state. Will you take up the issue of Rs 50,000 crore in dues that the state has been asking for?

I am keen to take up any issue concerning the state with the central government.

Surprisingly, no such issue has ever been flagged to me except once, and that too upon my persistent solicitation. However, I am still ready to lend any assistance.

The extended lockdown has left industry worried. What are your thoughts on lifting of the lockdown?

The prime minister is concerned and affirmatively engaged in this direction. His focus is that both Jaan and Jahan have to be attended in harmony. I gather that in a calibrated manner, it is being done.

The COVID-19 management by the Centre is being done largely under the Disaster Management Act. Is there a conflict with the spirit of federalism and is that going to be the 'new normal'?

The Disaster Management Act is not new. Such mechanisms are adopted in other countries too. It is a statute that empowers everyone to be on the front foot in times of disaster.

There is a central unified command, so that things can be implemented seamlessly.

I am deeply concerned at the 'stand-alone' attitude of Mamata Banerjee.
The Railroad Commission of Texas and oil producers associations are warning oil firms in the state that people have been visiting oil sites claiming, falsely, to be inspectors of the Railroad Commission, the oil regulatory body in Texas.

Nefarious activity in the oil patch is on the rise, including an increase in oil and equipment theft, Ed Lonanecker, president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO), told Houston Chronicles Sergio Chapa.

TIPRO, the Railroad Commission, and the Texas Oil & Gas Association have all issued warnings to oil firms to beware of people claiming to be inspectorsa felony under Texas law which carries a jail sentence of six months to two years plus a fine of US$10,000.

According to TIPRO, there was at least one case in which a person falsely claiming to be an inspector told an oil firm in the Permian to immediately halt operations until further notice.

We arent speculating about who is impersonating an inspector but this is illegal activity and we wanted to make sure our members were aware, TXOGA Communications manager Haley Emerson told Houston Chronicle.

Earlier this week, the Railroad Commission of Texas voted against the idea of pro-rationing production in Texas, after Ryan Sitton, the Commissioner who first floated the idea failed to convince his two co-commissioners of the need for mandatory cuts.

On Tuesday, Commission chairman Wayne Christian voted against the pro-ration, as he had said he would do. Christian presented a motion to dismiss Pioneer and Parsley Energys verified complaint to determine reasonable market demand for oil in the State of Texas. The motion passed 2-1.

This motion ensures Texas companies, rather than the government, can decide for themselves what level of production cuts make sense for them to make while they weather the storm of market instability, Christian said.

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, welcomed the decision, saying: We are pleased that the Railroad Commission will not be pursuing proration because that approach would have made matters worse.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A preliminary federal report into the fatal Houston Police Department helicopter crash offered little insight into why the aircraft went down on May 2, killing the flight tactical officer and injuring the pilot.

The report, released Thursday evening by the National Transportation Safety Board, details the account of a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter crew who contacted George Bush Intercontinental Airport for permission to enter the airspace near where the HPD pilot was flying. A member of the DPS crew then asked if the flight controller was still in contact with the police helicopter.

The controller said "radar contact" was lost and the DPS crew told them "there was an indication that the helicopter had impacted terrain."

DPS spokesman Lt. Craig Cummings said the helicopter crew was refueling when a dispatcher told them of a possible crash at a Greenspoint apartment complex. They took off to survey what they could from above as dozens of police officers rushed to free the trapped HPD crew on the ground.

In response to the crash, Chief Art Acevedo ordered that the HPD helicopter fleet be grounded. Since then, DPS has been helping HPD patrol by air, Cummings said.

The report also cites witness video of the crash that showed the aircraft uncontrollably spinning as it plunged to the ground at 17050 Imperial Valley Drive.

NTSB officials said earlier this week that possible data from an infrared camera was recovered from the wreckage. Investigators will examine the data to see if it will offer any clues into what happened. The aircraft was not equipped with a so-called black box device that would have recorded cockpit audio or other flight data. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, such devices are not required in helicopters.

Police have said they were investigating whether gunfire that erupted around the same time was a factor in the crash. Local and federal officials have not yet found evidence of hostile action.

The helicopter was manned by tactical flight officer Jason Knox and pilot Chase Cormier. Knox was killed and his funeral is scheduled for Saturday morning.

Cormier survived and remains hospitalized.

A representative from the aircrafts Arizona-based manufacturer, MD Helicopters Inc., as well as those from Rolls Royce and Boeing Helicopters is helping with the crash probe, the report states.

The completed version of the NTSB report can take up to two years, according to government officials.

nicole.hensley@chron.com
The Geographic Information Systems (GIS), department of the Dubai Municipality has completed 3D photography of all the landmarks and buildings in the emirate in record time and transferred the images to its main database through a smart systems as part of its project to provide accurate and high-quality GIS data.



The 3D photography process, completed in April, was conducted using the Dubai Municipality's Geospatial Scanning Vehicle, an integrated solution for collecting geospatial data, said the statement from the civic body.



The solution, which features equipment mounted on a cars roof was used to conduct a field survey and capture high-quality 3D data on landmarks of the emirate, it stated.



Equipment used for the survey included a high-resolution laser scanner, satellite positioning devices and a set of 360-degree panoramic cameras. The data, captured while the car travels at a speed of 80 km per hour, is processed to produce an integrated digital model, it added.



Director-General Dawoud Al Hajri said the project was part of the implementation of Dubais smart transformation plan under the directives of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council.



The geospatial survey system enables high levels of accuracy, speed and safety in data collection operations in all areas, including congested areas.



The solution efficiently produces 3D models and captures accurate data on all kinds of landmarks, including diverse government assets, whether they are open cultivated areas, parks, squares, playgrounds, underground tunnels, infrastructure installations, event sites and vast interiors of buildings such as airports, exhibitions and more, he stated.



According to him, the system's output outperforms other systems used for the panoramic imaging of landmarks, with its laser devices that produce dense clouds of coordinates (Point Cloud), which shape the landmarks geometrically with a precision of 5 cm.



This enables the production of 3D models of all the landmarks covered and its conversion into accurate data. Compared to this, parallel panoramic photography only provides a general view.



The systems features also include the extraction of data on landmarks and assets using Geospatial Artificial Intelligence that can be used at any time and any place as needed, said Al Hajri.



The Dubai Municipality is the first government department in Dubai to deploy such a system, which is a critical element of the Dubai Digital Twin Model for infrastructure enhancement, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Megachurch pastors headline National Day of Prayer livestream event Lineup includes Jack Graham, Greg Laurie, Franklin Graham, Mike Pompeo and others

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Texas megachurch Pastor Jack Graham and the website Pray.com will host an online-only National Day of Prayer event Thursday night featuring U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, members of Congress and prominent pastors.

Known as the Providing Hope through a Live Prayer Event, the event will be streamed on social media at 6 p.m. Central time.

Notable speakers for the event include Pompeo, the Rev. Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Tebow, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference President Samuel Rodriguez and Georgia Pastor Jentezen Franklin.

Other participants include South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, evangelical author and disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada as well as pastors Paula White-Cain, Greg Laurie, David Jeremiah, Tony Evans, Robert Morris of Gateway Church in Texas and Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas.

Rodriguez stressed in a statement emailed to The Christian Post that even in a time of national uncertainty, prayer changes everything.

In the midst of this pandemic, our nation prays [to remind] ourselves that while we are grateful for Uncle Sam, there is nothing like our Heavenly Father. Prayer is the bridge between Heaven and Earth, Rodriguez, the pastor of New Season Church in Sacramento, California, stated.

In addition to the prominent speakers, the online event will also feature music from notable contemporary Christian musicians Matthew West, Stephen Curtis Chapman and Michael Neale.

Franklin, pastor the Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia, explained in a statement to CP that he believed the United States needs people of action right now to help combat this deadly virus.

But we cant cast aside the power and comfort that comes from being people of prayer as well. I believe in a God that is active and listening to the cries of his people, added Franklin. I am praying for our healthcare workers, for endless amounts of wisdom and energy for them. I am praying for miraculous healing for those with the virus, and for a hedge of protection against the virus for those of us who are fortunate to be healthy.

The National Day of Prayer was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, taking place every year on the first Thursday of May.

The day of observance is generally observed with large gatherings across the United States. But due to shutdown orders to curb the spread of COVID-19, gatherings have been canceled or moved online.

This year, the theme for the National Day of Prayer is Pray Gods Glory Across the Earth. The theme is inspired by Habakkuk 2:14. The Bible verse states: For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
LIVE Updates | File image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation

On May 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) virtual summit for the first time since assuming office in 2014. Calling the COVID-19 the most serious crisis humanity has faced in decades and underlining the need for NAM to help promote global solidarity, Modi argued that NAM has often been the worlds moral voice and in order to retain this role, NAM must remain inclusive.

Arguing that COVID-19 has shown limitations of the existing international system, he made a case for a new template of globalisation, based on fairness, equality, and humanity as well as international institutions more representative of todays world in the post-COVID era. Making a veiled reference to Pakistan, he flagged the issues of terrorism and fake news, calling them deadly viruses at a time when the world is busy fighting coronavirus.

Modi had skipped the two NAM summits during his term so far in 2016 and 2019, making this his first participation in the groupings summitry. This has generated some curious reactions about how Modi might now be recognising the relevance of NAM, and its importance for India. This is, however, a serious misreading of why Modi decided to address the virtual NAM summit.

NAMs contemporary irrelevance has nothing to do with Modis lack of interest in NAM. The grouping is increasingly irrelevant because the world has changed dramatically from the time it was conceived. Modi may have ideological reasons for shunning previous NAM summits, but if we know anything about him, it is that his natural inclination is towards pragmatism when it comes to foreign policy.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic started revealing its true scale and scope, Modi has tried to position India carefully as a nation that can speak of global concerns with the widest possible range of stakeholders. The first platform he used was SAARC, a grouping which he has tried to marginalise over the last six years. Just because he used the SAARC platform to reach out to Indias neighbours doesnt mean that he or his government has had change of heart with regard to the utility or lack thereof of the regional grouping.

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

At a time of grave worldwide crisis, Modi has effectively used all the instruments and platforms available to India to make a case that instead of nations becoming more and more inward looking, global engagement should be the norm. This is also an attempt to fill the leadership vacuum in the global order when both China and the United States have exposed their vulnerabilities. India has shown that a nation with limited capabilities can also emerge as a leader by outlining the concerns of like-minded countries and working with them to build capacities in smaller states.

Indian diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic has been pro-active and has tried to shape the global discourse. Towards this, existing platforms, such as NAM and SAARC, have been used by Modi in the same way in which he has used newer groupings such as the G-20.

In his address at the NAM summit, Modi showcased Indias efforts towards global co-operation by underlining the supply of critical drugs and medical devices to 123 countries, including 59 NAM members. At the regional level, India was the first nation to propose setting up of a $10 million SAARC COVID-19 emergency fund to help combat the pandemic in the region.

It must be disappointing for those who hold an ideological predisposition that a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government should have nothing to do with NAM. However, clearly for Modi any and every platform that helps in projecting Indias leadership capabilities at a time of a dire global crisis is to be used pragmatically.

This doesnt mean that non-alignment is back. In fact, for a nation like India this is an infantile debate to have. Given Indias current security predicament, India cannot afford to be non-aligned in the traditional sense of the term as it will have to build partnerships with like-minded countries to build its capacities.

Indias security rationale and its leadership ability means that India will always need its own voice to project itself on the global stage. Despite Indias growing engagement with the US, New Delhi has shown that it is quite capable of standing up to Washington where its core interests are concerned.

There was a time for non-alignment. New Delhi has been there and done that. Now Indian aspirations demand much more from its leadership. In his own way, Modi is responding to that. International institutions rarely disappear. NAM will also continue with its mothballed existence. Modi has nothing to lose by using it instrumentally if it serves Indias immediate needs. To construe this as Modis embrace of a now redundant philosophy of global engagement would be a big fallacy.
The Pro Moldova opposition party is calling on lawmakers from other parties to create an anti-government bloc within the Moldovan parliament, the party's leader and a former parliament speaker, Andrian Candu, said on Friday

CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2020) The Pro Moldova opposition party is calling on lawmakers from other parties to create an anti-government bloc within the Moldovan parliament, the party's leader and a former parliament speaker, Andrian Candu, said on Friday.

"We, the Pro Moldova team, are calling on parliamentary groups and factions from the opposition, as well as lawmakers who care about the future of this country, to join the creation of an anti-government bloc. Together we can remove the anti-popular government," Candu wrote on his Facebook page.

According to the politician, the current government of Prime Minister Ion Chicu is failing to manage the crisis in the health care system, as the number of COVID-19 cases among medical personnel in Moldova is higher than in other European countries.

Candu also noted that the government has adopted unconstitutional acts, including a 200 million Euros ($217 million) loan agreement with Russia, annulled by the Constitutional Court on the initiative of the opposition.

"Recognizing that the Chicu government has crossed all the red lines and is unable to ensure the functioning of the country, this government should immediately leave .

.. We call for unity and the creation of the union of solidarity instead of the current parliamentary majority," Candu said.

In the meantime, following Candu's statement, four Moldovan lawmakers decided to leave the ranks of the Democratic Party and withdraw from the ruling coalition it created with the Socialist Party, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

"I studied a statement made by Andrian Candu, a former colleague and leader of Pro Moldova, to consolidate the parliamentary opposition on a single platform of national solidarity. I believe that this is a healthy initiative in the context of the crisis that Moldova is experiencing, especially in health care. It is imperative that we join our efforts for the benefit of the society," Elena Bacalu, a former member of the Democratic Party wrote on her Facebook page, noting that she was joining the Pro Moldova party.

Moldovan President Igor Dodon said later in the day that the members' withdrawal from the ruling coalition could lead to snap parliamentary elections.
School students who are confined to homes and finding it difficult to keep up with their studies have a ray of hope as the HRD ministry is planning to beam 12 Direct to Home (DTH) channels on televisions, with each dedicated to one class each.

The ministry is pursuing a one class, one channel plan. The department of school education and literacy may anchor these 12 channels with appropriate content for every class. The expertise of agencies like the NCERT and the CBSE may be used to develop content and run these channels, said a senior government official.

While a lot of schools have started taking online classes, this has been accompanied by the constant question of not everyone having proper access to the digital world. Even those, who are lucky to be connected, have expressed concerns over the effects that long hours children spending online may have.

Internet cannot reach everyone. Therefore, the HRD ministry is exploring radio and television as well. One of the major initiatives is to start 12 DTH channels, each dedicated to one class from standard one to twelve. Appropriate content, in different languages will be beamed to homes which own TVs. These channels will be free, said the official.

Some of the educational institutions have been using the DTH mode to disseminate education and it is these existing channels which will be repackaged to meet one of the sore needs of the young population. Some of the existing DTH channels have been allocated to the school education segment to run these proposed channels, the official added.

Another official said that a DTH channel catering to higher education sector is also on the cards. It is likely that the All India Council for Higher Education (AICTE) may work in this regard.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reviewed the education sector and the focus was on leveraging technology to ensure that even those in the remotest parts are reached.

Last month, in an interview to HT, HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had said that to address the digital divide, his ministry had tied up with Information & Broadcasting ministry to air Swayam Prabha channels on their DTH platform, Tata Sky, and Airtel DTH. Earlier, Swayam channels were be available on DD-DTH, Dish TV and Jio TV App.

Now a student anywhere in India can request the DTH service provider for these channels without any extra cost as these are free-to-air channels. Swayam Prabha is a group of 32 DTH channels providing high quality educational curriculum based course contents covering diverse disciplines, the minister had said.

We are also trying to explore the option of All India Radio to transact the curriculum to students so that we can reach the last person in the queue, the HRD minister had said. The ministry is also exploring the idea of using community radio centres to reach the unreached
JetBlue has faced backlash after conducting a three-plane flyover of New York City to salute healthcare workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Red, white and blue planes belonging to the airline flew low over The Big Apple on Thursday evening - a week after the Navy's Blue Angels and the Air Force's Thunderbirds performed a similar salute to essential workers.

The three jets took off from John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, and spent the next 60 minutes flying at a low altitude of 2,000 feet across New York's five boroughs.

However, the flyover left many less-than-impressed - including New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,.

'Nothing like a corporate PR campaign that burns jet fuel at low altitudes over vulnerable communities dying from a respiratory virus that compounds on our preexisting and disproportionate exposure to air pollution to show healthcare workers we care,' she wrote on Twitter.

Red, white and blue JetBlue planes flew low over The Big Apple on Thursday evening - a week after the Navy's Blue Angels and the Air Force's Thunderbirds performed a similar salute to essential workers.

JetBlue's red FDNY aircraft was one of the three planes that took to the skies for the 60 minute salute

JetBlue's blue NYPD plane is picture flying low near a building over New York City Thursday

The three jets took off from John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, and spent the next 60 minutes flying at a low altitude of 2,000 feet across New York's five boroughs

'Other best ways to thank our healthcare and frontline workers is to support PPE production, fully funding our healthcare system, produce mass testing and contact tracing, and forgive student loan debt which is especially crushing in medical fields,' Ocasio-Cortez additionally posted.

Many others expressed similar sentiments on Twitter.

One wrote: 'A gesture that shows no significant effect whatsoever, other than wasting fuel and making people scared flying planes over low altitude'.

Another bluntly wrote: 'This is perhaps the dumbest thing that is taking place in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic'.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led criticism of the flyover on Twitter Thursday night

Meanwhile, others claimed that low-flying planes over the skies of New York would trigger residents who remember the horrors of September 11, 2001.

'JetBlue marketing made a real bad call,' one claimed.

'1) No one likes the sound of planes. 2) The gesture has nothing to do with anything (how about showing up at hospitals with gift baskets or free flights for workers so they can vacay later?). 3) You're mimicking a horrific NY/US disaster'.

JetBlue's president and CEO, Joanna Geraghty, said the flyover was a part of the company's 'mission of inspiring humanity' which isnow 'stronger than ever'.

The airline has flown more than 1,400 medical professionals during the coronavirus pandemic, and has helped transport desperately needed supplies.

Others appeared delighted by JetBlue's tribute.

Some critics claimed low-flying planes would trigger bad memories of September 11, 2001

'Appreciate the effort to show support JetBlue. The haters, as usual, gonna hate,' one wrote.

The NYPD and the FDNY also tweeted out their thanks to JetBlue for the salute.

The NYC Fire Wire - an organization which records the news and history of the FDNY - shared a shot that showed one firefighter watching the sunset salute from the top of his truck.

Several other citizens were seen stopping to look at the low-flying planes as they moved across the city which has been battered by the COVID-19 outbreak.

More than 178,000 NYC residents have tested positive to coronavirus, and upwards of 19,000 have died.
Voices, opinions, and experiences from the local community and experts should be taken seriously for any policy making process.

It needs science-led solutions to fully protect the future of water and life in the Lower Mekong region, domestic and international experts have said in addressing challenges for the delta in the long run.

The inclusion of local knowledge and climate experience in climate change adaptation responds to the Paris Agreement, as it promotes informed decision-making and connection between climate policy and local needs. Photo: MEF

Voices, opinions, and experiences from the local community and experts should be taken seriously and harmoniously combined with world scientific knowledge to form the basis for developing adaptive policies.

Therefore, combining local experience and scientific advancements will make it effective for all adaptation options, according to an international online symposium on Impacts of Mekong Hydropower Dams and Climate Change in the Lower Mekong Delta held on April 27 by the Mekong Environment Forum (MEF) that is founded by Nguyen Minh Quang, a Can Tho University geopolitics scholar-practitioner and American senior writer/researcher James Borton.

At the virtual forum with more than 50 participants from Australia, France, Thailand, Vietnam, the US, the Netherlands, and the UK, the discussion reinforced that Vietnam is most exposed to climate change due to its downstream and coastal positioning.

Vietnamese and international experts of academics and research scientists understand that the pulse of life matters in the delta since it is the nations food basket. Further, the fertile delta is at a crossroads since food security needs are rising as the delta sinks each and every year.

Co-founders of MEF: Nguyen Minh Quang, Can Tho University geopolitics scholar-practitioner, and American senior writer/researcher James Borton. Photo: MEF

The Mekong Delta, faces dire water challenges since the food security and livelihoods for more than 60 million people, related to rice and shrimp farming are threatened by rising sea levels, droughts, hydropower development, industrialization, and storm surge potential, said James Borton, co-founder of MEF, a non-profit forum dedicated to solutions deemed necessary for the progress and climate-smart evolution of the Lower Mekong peoples and ecosystems.

Experts like Brian Eyler from the Stimson Center in Washington DC, and Professor John Furlow, deputy director of Columbia Universitys International Institute for Climate and Society, also acknowledged that climate change and upstream dams are contributing to the Mekong Deltas coastal collapse.

Panelists like Dr. Pham Xuan Phu from An Giang University and Ms. Ashley Hollenbeck reinforced the need for community-based adaptation, emphasizing that: (1) The traditional top-down model for mitigating climate change no longer works; (2) Climate adaptation has received greater political and academic attention; and (3) Enhanced education and outreach are needed at the commune level with clear tasks and responsibilities plus investment on building capacity.

The MEF discourse on climate change and hydropower development also highlighted the value of sharing scientific information if the Mekong Delta is to find a way forward. Furthermore, independent consultant, Pham Manh Tuan, and Ms. Nguy Thi Khanh, director of GreenID, emphasized the need for local governments to ensure grass roots participation in decision-making about policy development in the region.

In addition, Dr. Philip Minderhoud, an expert on subsidence in the Mekong, also reflected on the need for community-led responses and for the government to steer policies in a sustainable direction, saying The keys to solutions are to highlight and focus on the combination of smart, local solutions focused on decreasing environmental overexploitation in groundwater, elevation and sediment.

The forum concluded that a combination of small-scale solutions can add up to more sustainable transformation overall, and successfully highlighted that international scientific cooperation offers the Mekong Delta region adaptive capabilities to lessen the hardships of droughts and floods on farmers and fishers. Hanoitimes

Linh Pham

Mekong River Commission: Water levels back to normal averages The Mekong River Commission (MRC) said on April 30 that water levels along the vast majority of the lower Mekong basin have now returned to normal long-term averages but are still lower than those during the 2018 and 2019 dry season.
Previously worn N95 protective masks, saved for possible recycling in the future, sit in baskets in the Intensive Care Unit of MedStar St. Mary's Hospital April 8, 2020 in Leonardtown, Maryland. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

FDA Bans 65 Chinese Mask Makers for Failing to Meet Filtration Standards

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked approval for more than 60 N95-type mask manufacturers in China to export to the United States, after testing found that many of their products did not meet quality standards.

The agency on May 7 cut the number of authorized manufacturers in China to 14 from around 80. Previously, on April 3, it had authorized the import of China-made masks that hadnt been tested to counter shortages in personal protective equipment. One condition of that policy, however, was that the masks be tested by independent labs. Millions of masks had been imported since then.

Testing by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that many of the masks did not meet the filtration standardthat is, they should filter out 95 percent of particles that are 0.3 microns or larger, according to the FDA.

Certain masks from China may not provide consistent and adequate respiratory protection to health care personnel exposed to COVID-19, the FDA said in a Thursday letter to healthcare providers.

The agency said it is also increasing checks on masks imported from China and will subject shipments to random testing, Bloomberg reported.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that NIOSH tested 67 types of imported N95- and KN95-style masks and found that 60 percent did not block out 95 percent of particles. In one case, a mask marked as KN95a Chinese standard similar to N95blocked out less than 15 percent of particles. Another brand, which was packaged with an FDA authorized logo, filtered out only 35 percent of particles, the report said.

The decision comes amid rising backlash over shoddy Chinese-manufactured medical equipment during the pandemic. A growing list of countries, from Finland to the Netherlands, have recalled or sent back faulty masks, test kits, and protective suits.

In April, Missouri recalled thousands of KN95 masks from China that had been distributed to first responders, after testing found that that they did not meet standards.

Federal authorities are also working to stem the influx of counterfeit masks, with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement teaming up with American firms including 3M, Amazon, and Pfizer to identify low-quality medical gear entering into the country, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A new Radio Farda video documentary released this week, suggests that Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raeesi is most certainly being groomed as the Islamic Republic's next Supreme Leader.

The documentary which is in Persian is titled: From Executioner to Supreme Leader.

The video does not have a narrator and tells its story through comments made by a selected handful of authoritative political activists and human rights lawyers and presents strong evidence to support its hypothesis about Raeesi's future.

Most of the story about the prospects for Raeesi's future is told by Paris-based Iranian political activist Mohammad Javad Akbarain, while, political activist and former political prisoner Iraj Mesdaghi, Amnesty International Iran Desk officer Raha Bahraini and prominent international human rights lawyer Abdolkarim Lahiji provide background about Raeesi's damning career as a thug.

Akbarain affirms that there are many reasons to believe that some people are grooming Raeesi as the Islamic Republic's next leader. The evidence starts from a banner on Supreme Leader Khamenei's website that presents Raeesi as the symbol of the Islamic Revolution's "second step" or second phase, an idea Khamenei brought forward on the 40th anniversary of the revolution in 2019.

Other evidence presented by Akbarain and Mesdaghi includes the fact that Raeesi (Raisi) has started to teach advanced divinity classes at the seminary; a practice that signals a cleric's promotion to the rank of ayatollah. Interestingly, Khamenei's son Mojtaba, who is said to be another contestant for the post of Supreme Leader, also started teaching similar course since 2017.

A major document, and probably the most important document proving the case, is a picture that shows Raeesi sitting in a chair preaching to a group of military and civilian officials including former Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in 2017. The setting in the picture is strikingly similar to that of Khamenei's meeting with his aides.

The next proof of Raeesi's ambitions or his handlers' grooming attempts is his presence in numerous ceremonies including inaugurating or visiting projects that have nothing to do with his position as the head of the Judiciary.

And finally, the last piece of evidence is Raeesi being positioned next to Khamenei during the funeral of Qassem Soleimani. The body language of the two men is also telling the same story of introducing the next leader.

In the meantime, a large part of the documentary is dedicated to Raeesi's track record as a man who was appointed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Prosecutor of Hamadan and Karaj simultaneously at the age of 19.

The highlight of his career is acting as a member of the death committee that ordered the murder of thousands of political prisoners in Iran in 1988, and summary trial and execution of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) members who had attacked Iran form their base in Iraq in the same year.

Subsequently, he became the deputy judiciary chief under Mahmud Shahroudi and Sadeq Amoli Larijani. Critics including President Hassan Rouhani have charged that while he was in the best position to fight financial corruption in, he did not do so, and instead accused others of corruption when he was a candidate for presidency in 2017.

At the end of the documentary, Akbarain says that despite all that has been done to put Raeesi forward as the next leader of the Islamic Republic, he is not likely to win the position because the situation has changed since the time he started his ascendance in the 1980s. Now the a significant segment of the population has turned its back to the Islamic Republic and modern media has brought the past of many regime insiders into the limelight.

But the most important reason why Raeesi has far less chance to become the next leader, says Akbarain, is that in the initial plan a charismatic military man was to pledge allegiance to Raeesi and push him to the throne, but the plan did not work as charismatic general, Qassem Soleimani was killed in January.

Nonetheless, Akbarain concludes that when Khamenei was appointed leader in 1989, there was still hope in the future of the Islamic Republic. Akbarain asked: "With the Islamic Republic' bad record in all these years, the question is: Will there be a future for it at all?"
Government has chided the Minority in Parliament of making baseless claims about the states management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a press conference addressed by the Deputy Information Minister, Pius Hadzide, the government said the Minority had lowered the bar on public discourse by making serious and unsubstantiated allegations.

The Minority side of Parliament slammed the government for selling false hope in its management of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

It maintained that Ghana was still in a precarious situation despite the state saying Ghana may have reached its peak for infections and claimed that the government was manipulating data on the virus' spread in Ghana amongst others.

In addition, the Minority claimed that on two separate occasions in April, the number of confirmed cases under routine surveillance was revised downwards without any explanation.

Responding to these queries, Mr. Hadzide said Ghanas approach to fighting COVID-19 was one of the best in the continent.

It is pathetic that even upon hindsight, the Minority is still unable to offer any pragmatic alternatives but mainly rehashes those same lame queries that Mr. Mahama has asked during his political broadcast on Facebook.

He added that the Minority was exhibiting deep levels of unawareness in its assessment of the governments management of the pandemic.

On the claims about a lack of transparency, Mr. Hadzide said the government had showcased enough good faith to earn the publics trust.

His Excellency the President has led from the front and continues the address the nation honestly and regularly. Our health experts have also been enabled to offer regular updates and briefings. The claim therefore from the NDC about a certain lack of transparency is mind-boggling, he added.

---citinewsroom
Introduction

Economic and political relations between China and Africa go back to the 14th century, during Chinas Ming Dynasty, with the voyages of Admiral Zheng He in East Africa (See Anning and Vhumbunu, 2018, Anning 2019). In December 2019, an outbreak of unknown cause pneumonia occurred in Wuhan, China's Hubei province. Since Jan. 3, China has been regularly informing the WHO, relevant countries and regions and China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan on the pneumonia outbreak. Due to the alarming levels of spread and its severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11th March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have spread to Africa on 14 February 2020. According to BBC News, the first confirmed case in the sub-Saharan African region was recorded in Nigeria, with most of the identified imported cases arriving from Europe and the United States rather than from China. This article (with a focus on selected West African countries, ie Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Benin) addresses West African economies standing with China in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the measures taken following the shining example set by China in its ability to curtail the spread of the virus while minimizing overall mortality rates. The strategies have been modified to fit geographical considerations. Finally, the expected outcome of these adopted and modified strategies are outlined in the concluding section.

The West African Regions Stand with China in the Fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic

There is no doubt that China has shown great competence and expertise in controlling the spread of coronavirus. During Chinas attempt to curtail its spread, several short term strategies spanning into long term effects were adopted. Notable among the several strategies was the commissioning of emergency hospital facilities in Wuhan to treat infected persons, total economic lockdown, mass mobilization and masks and checks despite the effect these measures could have on trade, investment and overall GDP. The World Health Organizations leader believes that China's battle with the coronavirus offers a beacon of hope, but others question whether other countries, especially Western African democracies, will or can afford to pursue China's strategy, given that there is a particular struggle for economic development in this region.

However, experts have been worried about COVID-19 spreading to Africa, and particularly West Africa, as many of the healthcare systems on the continent are inadequate, lack equipment, funding, have insufficient training of healthcare workers, and inefficient data transmission. It was feared that the pandemic could be difficult to keep under control in Africa, and could cause huge economic problems if it spread widely (see Maclean, 2020 and NPR.org.). There is a very low supply of ventilators in the region, with even basic supplies like soap and water subjected to shortages.

Source: News sources and state health department websites in Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Benin

The table above shows the data related to coronavirus since it was first recorded in the West African region. In Ghana, the first two cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on 12 March 2020, when two people returned from Norway and Turkey, while Nigeria, Togo and Benins cases were first confirmed on 27th February 2020, 6th March 2020 and 16th March 2020 respectively.

Control Measures Adopted by Selected Countries in West Africa

In Ghana, following the first confirmed cases, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu Addo called for public awareness about the pandemic among Ghanaian nationals. Nine days later, Ghana saw an increase in the recorded cases of infected persons to 214 cases. This resulted in the imposition of strict restrictions on movement, where residents of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and Kasoa and the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area and its contiguous districts were told to stay at home for two weeks, in order to give the economy an opportunity to stave off the pandemic. According to Ghana Health Service (GHS) statistics on COVID-19 in Ghana, as at 26th April 2020, there were 1,550 confirmed cases in Ghana. The number included 11 victims who had succumbed and 155 people who had recovered. To this effect, the government of Ghana enforced the active wearing of face masks as part of efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19. Also, considering the current hardship in the Ghanaian economy, the government of Ghana directed the Ghana Water Company Ltd and the Electricity Company of Ghana to ensure the stable supply of water and electricity during this period. In addition, there will be no disconnection of electricity supply, while the water bills for all Ghanaians will be absorbed for the next three months, i.e. April, May and June. All water tankers, publicly and privately-owned, are also going to be mobilized to ensure the supply of water to all vulnerable communities. Furthermore, the government of Ghana, in collaboration with the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Business & Trade Associations and selected Commercial and Rural Banks, prepared to roll out a soft loan scheme of up to six hundred million cedis (GH600 million), which will have a one-year moratorium and two-year repayment period for micro, small and medium scale businesses. All borders have also been closed while all social gatherings of more than 25 people including all schools (both private and public institutions from preschool to universities) markets and club halls, churches, mosques and funerals were banned until further notice.

In Nigeria, the Federal government instructed institutions to shut down for 30 days as a lockdown measure to limit the spread of COVID-19. It has also banned public gatherings. The state government of Lagos further asked schools to close and banned public gatherings of more than 50 people, particularly religious gatherings (see Oyeleke, Sodiq, 30 April 2020). However, unlike Ghana, in the case of Nigeria, there was no order from the government to shut down markets and club halls. Several schools in Nigeria have shut down, following the directives of the federal government at Abuja. This led the management of one of the most populated schools in Nigeria, the Federal Polytechnic Nekede, Owerri to declare an emergency holiday serving as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, stating that the emergency holiday will last for 30 days.

The Togolese government declared a three-month state of emergency to curtail the spread of the virus. In addition to this, a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am local time was imposed, unlike what was experienced in Ghana and Nigeria. Again, Togo also responded by suspending flights from Italy, Germany, France and Spain. Other international events are cancelled, and the borders remain closed. Restrictions were imposed on Lome, Tsevie, Kpalime and Sokode but there is no national lockdown (UNDP Togo, April 2020; IPPF, 24 March 2020). To cushion the citizens against the restrictions put in place by the government, $650 million has been set aside as part of the National Solidarity and Economic Recovery Fund. The measures that have been set up also include a National Response plan. In partnership with development agencies, the response plan to COVID-19 aims to reduce the pandemics socio-economic impact and to halt transmission of COVID-19 further. The World Bank has approved $8.1 million to assist Togos efforts to further boost the fight against the disease. According to the World Bank (April 29, 2020), The Covid-19 Emergency Response Project will allow Togo to strengthen surveillance, early detection and confirmation of cases, which is in line with the Regional Disease Surveillance System Enhancement (REDISSE) project.

Benins efforts in the fight against the pandemic have not been any different to those of the rest of the West African countries. Since the time Benin confirmed a case on March 17, 2020, several measures, such as enhanced screening and quarantine of individuals travelling into the country have been put in place. The borders of Benin remain closed. In addition to the measures taken, one interesting measure is the use of social media and other digital platforms as a source of education on preventive measures and information dissemination (WHO International, 2020). The authorities in Benin did set up a barrier around the 10 most affected cities and banned travel in and out of them. Social distancing and bans on social gatherings of more than 10 people are in force. The wearing of face masks in public has been made mandatory, while school remains closed until the middle of May. These mitigation and preventive measures have cost the economy about 0.1% of GDP, which amounts to $17 million. Benins policy has set out to accommodate the demand for loan rescheduling by firms and also to postpone renewable debt. Electronic payments are being promoted, and reference rates are being lowered to be close to the monetary policy rates.

Conclusion

In this global crisis, African economies are not being left out in the struggle alongside China to combat the pandemic. This period has seen many policy responses from different nations, economic blocs and development agencies. Chief among them are measures taken to halt the spread of the virus - social distancing, sanitary practices, schools being shut down and fiscal and monetary policy actions. These measures, especially fiscal injections, have proved to be a source of stability in this era of global negative shocks to output and productivity. Though African economies are still struggling to overcome and conquer the COVID-19 pandemic, commendation is in order for the efforts that have been made so far.

References

COVID-19 Impact: What we know so far -Togo. Retrieved on 24th March 2020 https://www.ippf.org/blogs/covid-19-impact-what-we-know-so-far-togo

Policy Response to Covid-19 Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19/Policy-Responses-to-COVID-19 on 30th April 2020

Enabling and Accelerating the National Response to the impact of COVID-19 Retrieved on 30th March, 2020 from s://www.undp.org/content/dam/rba/docs/COVID-19-CO-Response/undp-rba-covid-togo-apr2020.pdf

"African Countries Respond to the Spread of COVID-19 NPR.org. Retrieved 23 March 2020

Corona virus, (COVID-19) Gouvernement de la Republique du Benin (in French). Retrieved 27 April 2020

COVID-19 Updates, Ghana Ghana health service.org. Retrieved 26 April 2020

NCDC COVID-19 Page. Nigerian Centre for Disease Control. Retrieved on 26 March 2020.

Nigeria confirms first corona virus case BBC News, 28 February 2020. Retrieved 24 March 2020

Benin goes on digital offensive against COVID-19 Afro.who.int/news. Retrieved on 23rd March 2020

Anning, L. (2019). Chinas ECM Model in Sustainable Management of Rivers: Drawing Lessons for the Zambezi River Basin from the Case of Mekong River. Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations, 5(1), 363-VI.

Anning, L., & Vhumbunu, C. H. (2018). Promoting production capacity cooperation and industrialization through energy infrastructure development: The case of China-Ghana partnership. Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal, 4(3), 1061-1103.

Maclean, Ruth (17 March 2020). Africa Braces for Coronavirus, but Slowly. The New York Times. Retrieved 25 March 2020.

Oyeleke, Sodiq (29 April 2020). Updated: Nigeria records 195 COVID-19 cases, total now 1532 The Punch Newspaper. Retrieved on 29 April 2020

Oyeleke, Sodiq (30 April 2020). Breaking: Nigeria records 196 new COVID-19 cases, total now 1728 The Punch Newspaper. Retrieved on 30 April 2020

About the author

Lucy Anning (Ph.D) is a lecturer at the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT), Accra, Ghana and an associate researcher with the Ghana China Friendship Association (GHACHIFA) and a member of the Center for West African Studies of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).

Emmanuel Agyapong Wiafe is a researcher and academic with about 8 years of research experience in the field of economics and as a lecturer for the past 6 years. He is a member of the Center for West African Studies of UESTC. He currently lectures at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration at the Department of Economics.
SANTA FE, N.M., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Falling Colors Foundation, the charitable arm of the Santa Fe-based Falling Colors Technology group, has donated $180,000 to support small Santa Fe businesses through Covid-19, offering three monthly grants of $300 to 200 businesses. The program received its first application on April 8 and reached capacity on April 23, with dozens now waitlisted.

Directors of the Foundation said they wanted to do what they could to help sustain local businesses through the crisis. "The response we've gotten from the community shows the importance of this initiative," said Mindy Hale, COO. "We wanted to target businesses small enough that the three $300 payments would make a difference to their ability to survive the crisis and to keep their staff employed."

Grant recipients have been grateful for the assistance and the speed with which it was delivered. "Thank you so much! Every little bit helps and this will go straight to my one staff," said Ben Crosky, owner of Tender Fire, a Santa Fe-based food truck.

"You are the reason I will reopen when the all-clear is given," said Harold Cheek, owner of DC Knits, LLC.

"I so deeply appreciate it. This is the first money that came in for me! Nothing from the government yet," said Waltraud Baron, a local massage therapist.

In keeping with the Foundation's mission of developing technology-based solutions to problems facing New Mexico, fund recipients use Falling Colors' online portal to provide details about the nature of their business, the impact of Covid-19, and related information before submitting a request for payment. The Falling Colors team worked overtime to modify existing infrastructure to accommodate hundreds of applications, establish data points, and start delivering funds quickly. "We were proud to be able to assist the community in this way," said Pamela Koster, CEO. "We see a lot of people hurting and it's great to be able to help."

Additional private donations have allowed Falling Colors Foundation to expand the program from 200 to 203 recipients so far, and directors hope that additional donations will allow further expansion. To make a tax-deductible contribution to the fund, visit https://fallingcolors.com/foundation .

SOURCE Falling Colors Technology, Inc.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has shed a spotlight on Americas age-old tension between federal and state governments. Our country was founded on the concept of state sovereignty with a federal government whose authority was limited to certain specifically enumerated powers. While those powers may have gradually expanded over the centuries, each Governor must still assess and determine how their state will react to crises. Crisis management requires a balancing act of addressing both the current public health crisis and the economic uncertainty clouding our future.

Historically, Pennsylvania has favored an open path for businesses and innovation to flourish. Not so long ago, this was showcased by the development of energy production and an energy transportation capacity that made Pennsylvania an especially strong player in the American economy. But if Pennsylvania is to make a swift economic recovery, it cannot hinder business development or increase the burden on this critical part of the tax base.

Unfortunately, Governor Wolfs proposed severance tax on the natural gas industry has the potential to cripple our recovery. This is the sixth time in six years the Governor has pushed this insufferable tax.Now offered as a remedy for growing state debt, it was previously floated to fund infrastructure projects. The severance tax seems to be Governor Wolfs cure-all for whatever the crisis of the moment is.

In regard to the COVID-19crisis, the recovery must start with an acceptance of reality. It will undoubtedly take years to recover from the economic damage caused by the pandemic, no matter the magnitude of federal stimulus or lending. With that in mind, our economic recovery policy needs to be viewed through a long-term lens, and decisions that might make us feel better in the short-term but have negative long-term consequences should be avoided.

First, small businesses and family owned operations will continue to be important drivers of our economy. Governor Wolf was right to quickly rollout a request for disaster declaration status for all counties from the federal Small Business Association (SBA) and to encourage the General Assembly to improve funding for the Pennsylvania Small Business First Fund.

Second, large scale operations and capital expenditures such as infrastructure and energy projects must be provided the certainty of continuity. The natural gas industry alone has been a driver of over 300,000 jobs and nearly $50 billion in economic activity while saving households and commercial users over $30 billion in energy costs from 2006 to 2016.

An additional tax on the energy industry runs counter to the objective of economic recovery. In fact, the state already administers a severance tax on natural gas, but disguises it under a different name. As Natural Gas Now editor Tom Shepstone notedYes, the existing impact fee is a severance tax. Lets not forget that when the cries begin to rise once more for a severance tax on the false basis that Pennsylvania has never had one It was called an impact fee for no other reason than our Governor at the time didnt want to be known as a fellow who raised taxes.

Now is not the time for Gov. Wolf raise taxes on an industry that already shoulders a hefty tax burden and contributes strongly to the states economy. The strength of Pennsylvanias natural gas industry has already suffered egregiously during the ongoing crisis.Double taxation will never provide a fair business environment, nor will it give companies the confidence to resume hiring or start new projects.For an industry already on its knees, Gov. Wolfs severance tax will further hamper a critical sector of the economy.

There is little doubt that the COVID recovery will be slow. By no means can a switch be turned and full economic demand and operations resume. Likewise, by no means can Pennsylvania make a recovery by needlessly punishing key sectors of the economy in the form of a natural gas severance tax.

Colin Hanna is former County Commissioner in Chester County and the President of Let Freedom Ring.
KITCHENER  Grand River Hospital received a $4.6-million donation from Waterloo-based Equitable Life of Canada to buy a new MRI machine and help with the local COVID-19 response.

The bulk of the donation to the Kitchener hospitals foundation  $4.5 million  is earmarked for the MRI scanner. The remaining $100,000 will go toward the Region Ready campaign, which is supporting all three of Waterloo Regions hospitals.

In addition to ensuring that our hospitals are well equipped to respond to COVID-19 demands, Equitable Life has also made a significant contribution to health care that will benefit Waterloo Region residents for years to come, Grand Rivers president and chief executive officer Ron Gagnon said in a release.

Equitables contribution to the MRI machine is among the top five donations ever received by the foundation. The hospitals current machine was installed in 2003 and the donation toward a new one will allow the hospital to improve imaging services.

The advanced technology of medical imaging plays a vital role in quickly and accurately diagnosing very urgent medical conditions, and this saves lives, said Equitables president and chief executive Ronald Beettam. We expect this will have a lasting impact on improving the quality of life in Waterloo Region.
A MAN is in hospital following what has been described as a hammer attack on Limericks northside.

Two people are being detained at Henry Street garda station after they were arrested in relation to the incident, which took place in Thomondgate at around 6.30pm this evening.

The man, aged in his 40s, sustained head injuries during the assault and was taken to University Hospital Limerick where his injuries arent believed to be life threatening.

Sources have indicated that the man was attacked with a hammer, with the scene of the crime still sealed off late this Friday night. Its understood a technical examination took place a short time ago.

Gardai confirmed a man and a woman, both in their 30s were arrested a short time later and are currently being held under section four of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984.

Local Sinn Fein councillor John Costelloe (pictured below at the scene) says residents in the close-knit community are appalled.

This is a very quiet area. Ive spoken to residents and they are shocked by the whole situation, and are praying the man makes a full recovery, he said, Everyone looks after each other here. There is a great community spirit, and this is the last thing we want at this particular time.

Investigations are ongoing.

Henry Street garda station can be contacted at 061-212400.
Northeastern University announced plans Friday to reopen its campuses for the fall semester and return to on-site instruction.

In a letter to the campus community, college president Joseph E. Aoun said that classroom instruction should be the norm, and that campus officials are devising plans about how to proceed safely with new protocols and procedures.

Those policies include face masks, staggered business hours, increased disinfection and cleaning, use of the SafeZone app to check into campus buildings and large-scale deployment of testing and contact tracing," Aoun said. The college shifted to online learning in early March.

It is our intention to reopen our campuses this fall and offer on-site instruction and a residential experience for our students, Aoun said. This is a highly complex endeavor; in fact, even more complicated than the move to remote learning and working we accomplished in March.

Even before the beginning of the semester, administrators are planning for a gradual reopening of research labs and administrative offices. Faculty and staff members whose work is best conducted on campus may be returned before others. Aoun said efforts to reopen the Boston campus could began later this month.

Over timeand in accordance with public health guidancewe will steadily and carefully return faculty and staff to campus, while maintaining low density and adopting strict protocols to reduce the risk of infection, Aoun said.

Coronavirus in Mass.: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Related Content:
The 450 images, documents and objects on display are part of the collection of the same name preserved by the museum. They were donated to Vietnam by people and particularly women around the world during the countrys resistance war for national salvation against the US. The exhibits convey a message that peace is created from the heart, regardless of nationality and skin colour, lets join hands and look towards peace.

The exhibits show that Vietnam was a of great concern to people all over the world more than 50 years ago. The US war encountered strong opposition from peace-lovers worldwide. Even in the US, many organisations and individuals flocked to the streets to protest, asking for and end to the war.

In particular, many American wives and mothers whose husbands, children and relatives were forced to be involved in the war, fought ceaselessly to bring their relatives home, alive and in one piece.

In California, the US, 15,000 people took part in marches against the war on October 15, 1965. In July 1965, women in Melbourne city, Australia opposed their governments call-up for young men to join the war as mercenaries for the US army. In July 1969, in Marseille city, France, women held a meeting to inform the public about the resistance war of Vietnamese people.

In addition, people in many countries across the globe including the US, Germany, France, Japan, China and Australia positively participated in demonstrations to voice their opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam war. They hosted meetings and marches to protest against the war, issued publications, posters and handouts, and donated money to support Vietnam. All this was done in the hope that peace would be re-established in Vietnam.

There are many touching stories hidden behind the documents and objects, including a letter full of tears and torment sent to families of Vietnamese soldiers by a US mother. The letter was attached with an earring set that her son, a US naval soldier who served in Vietnam during the war, presented to her on his homecoming day.

Upon learning that the earrings were made from wedding rings he collected from fallen Vietnamese soldiers, the mother was heartbroken and in anguish and tried to return the earrings to Vietnam. She appealed for forgiveness and peace for her heart. She hoped this act could help ease the pain of the war and bring peace to everyone.

The donated objects are vivid illustrations of the good sentiment and kind actions of people worldwide towards Vietnam, which can be seen through albums and dolls made by the hands of German, French and Japanese people in order to raise funds for Vietnam.

Director of the Vietnam Womens Museum, Nguyen Hai Van said that the documents and pictures told stories of people in different languages, all calling for an end to the war in Vietnam and conveying high hopes for peace in the country.

By naming the collection Hearts for Peace, the organiser wanted to appreciate and recognise the contributions and sentiments shared by international friends to Vietnam, she added.

However, the collection is not exhibited at the museum as scheduled due to fear of the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead, it has been updated and introduced to the public through the museums Facebook page and website to provide viewers with a look back at a historical period during which the world joined hands to bring peace to Vietnam. The world needs to continue standing together and joining hands, now more than ever, to overcome the epidemic like it once did to overcome war.

Selected photos and objects as part of the collection:

In July 1965, women in Melbourne city, Australia opposed their governments call-up for young men to join the war as mercenaries for the US army





Japanese women donate money to support the Vietnamese people





A UK newspaper ran an article to protest the USs bombing in Vietnam





France sent aid packages to Vietnam during the anti-US war





An earring set and a letter begging for forgiveness sent by Cecilia MGoto, the mother of a US naval soldier
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen



Patnaik and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday expressed gratitude to millions of Red Cross volunteers on the occasion of World Red Cross Day and hailed their role in the fight against COVID-19.

Union Minister of State for MSME, Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries Pratap Sarangi also lauded their role, saying all should draw inspiration from the Red Cross volunteers.

Taking to Twitter, the Odisha chief minister urged people to take a pledge to "do their bit" to protect human lives.

"Millions of volunteers around the world are working round the clock and making umpteen sacrifices to fight the #COVID19 pandemic. On #WorldRedCrossDay, let us all pledge to do our bit as a compassionate society during this difficult time to protect human lives. #CovidSangramee," Patnaik tweeted.

Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan also commended the Red Cross volunteers for rendering selfless service in fighting Covid-19.

"On #WorldRedCrossDay, my deepest gratitude to all the emergency workers, healthcare professionals and millions of volunteers of the @ICRC who are rendering selfless service in saving lives and combating the #Covid 19 disease," the petroleum and steel minister tweeted.

"World Red Cross Day is the reminder that it is the duty of each one of us to remember all those who gave all their lives in the services of the needy. Let us take inspiration from those helping hands and do out a little bit for the society. #WorldRedCrossday#StayHomeStaySafe," Sarangi wrote on Twitter.

Patnaik also put forward a message on Twitter on the occasion of World Thalassemia Day and appealed to all to donate blood.

"Adequate blood at blood banks is necessary for patients suffering from many ailments. On #WorldThalassemiaDay, appeal all to donate blood maintaining #COVID19 lockdown & social distancing norms to strengthen this essential link in the healthcare chain," Patnaik said.

World Red Cross Day is observed on May 8 every year to acknowledge the principles and work of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement which aims at providing aid and assistance to everyone in need without discrimination.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing many of our societys inequities and injustices, and a loud and growing minority want to make sure we do not address them.

Rugged individualism and conservative capitalism require winners and losers by definition. The self-sufficient survive, the needy suffer for their weakness. Some people succeed economically, while the rest become wage slaves. The cream allegedly rises to the top.

While some might deny it, this Darwinian philosophy underlies the demonstrations against stay-at-home orders and public health closures. Why should healthy individuals sacrifice their freedom and income to protect someone else? What right does government have to manage their risk?

These arguments are gaining political ground despite polls showing most Americans think the nation is reopening too quickly. Yet there is consistency in the case for allowing more people to die.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Abbotts decision to resume business is reasonable given Texas tragic limitations

President Donald Trump compares COVID-19 to the flu, a mostly preventable illness that kills about 30,000 Americans every year. Drug overdoses kill about 70,000 people a year, while heart disease and diabetes also kill tens of thousands more.

Every premature death costs the nation, on average, $10 million in economic losses, based on the formula used by the federal government. We know that providing universal health care would pay for itself by keeping workers healthier and preventing death.

Despite this financial logic, a vocal minority believes providing for the poor is abhorrent to American individualism and capitalism. They denounce plans to redistribute wealth for the common good and elect representatives who are content to let people die.

Gun deaths are another example. Last year, 39,492 people died from gunfire, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. We know restrictions on gun sales would reduce the toll and save the economy billions of dollars.

While polls consistently show most Americans support stricter gun laws, a vocal minority opposes them. They win elections, so we tolerate three mass shootings a week in America.

More than 38,000 people die, and 4.4 million are injured in American road accidents annually, according to the National Safety Council. Pedestrian fatalities have skyrocketed in recent years. Stricter traffic laws and more public transportation would lower those numbers.

A vocal minority, though, opposes reduced speed limits, red-light cameras and more trains, all of which save lives. Therefore, we do little to slow the carnage.

We are a deeply divided nation between those who prioritize the individual and those who emphasize society. About 40 percent believe the other side is the enemy, while 20 percent are persuadable or dont pay attention.

Rather than bring us together, COVID-19 has divided us even more, demanding that we choose between collective suffering or individual deaths. Our response is no longer based on science or economics, but sadly, on politics.

President Donald Trump stopped giving daily COVID-19 briefings on April 23 after his polling numbers began dropping. The Coronavirus Task Force will no longer focus on prevention but on restarting the economy, he said, because thats what his supporters want.

Gov. Greg Abbotts decision to allow Texas businesses to quickly reopen  despite earlier promises to wait and rely on medical data  proves the GOP is held hostage to a libertarian minority, which is very good at amplifying itself.

Cybersecurity experts have traced the online movement Reopen America to a well-known conservative gun-rights activist in Iowa. According to investigative reporter Brian Krebbs and the security company DomainTools, the campaign against COVID-19 restrictions is not coming from the grassroots, but is Astroturf, manufactured outrage financed by unidentified groups.

Aaron Dorr is behind at least 150 websites that include the word reopen and launched them after Trump called on armed supporters to liberate states from COVID-19 restrictions, the experts found. All of them link to the same right-wing propaganda.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Government saved billionaires from COVID-19, workers should come next

Dorr and his brothers have attracted 200,000 followers to their Facebook groups, which spread disinformation about COVID-19 and organize protests where men with guns garner widespread media coverage. He told the Des Moines Register he is proud of his work.

Generating spectacle and turning out the vote is how a vocal minority comes to dominate our political discourse and convince politicians to disregard public health. They cost the Texas economy billions in losses from preventable deaths and illnesses.

History proves that healthy populations drive economic growth and create wealth. So the choice is not between commerce and illness, but whether we act collectively or individually. If we only prioritized the economy, we would do more, not less, to reduce deaths of all kinds.

Public polling shows that most Americans prioritize saving lives. But polls do not count for much; only elections bring real change. Luckily, we have one coming up.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
The Gautam BUdh Nagar district administration Friday picked up from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi 35 persons who were evacuated from Singapore by the central government.

These persons are from Uttar Pradesh and were taken to the community health centre in Noidas Bhangel for a health check-up as per the Covid-19 protocol and thereafter shifted to a paid quarantine facility in Greater Noida. They have been screened for symptoms at the airport and their details were noted before being handed over to the officials of Gautam Budh Nagar.

Of the 35, six are from Gautam Budh Nagar and the remaining are from Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Agra, Deoria, Lucknow and Deoria. All are currently in 14-day quarantine at the Savoy Suites at Pari Chowk which has been developed into a paid quarantine facility by the district administration. At the end of the quarantine period, they will be tested again, said Anwar Sheikh, district development officer, GB Nagar.

The Gautam Budh Nagar health department also identified 12 new Covid-19 cases on Friday afternoon, taking the total number of cases from the district to 214.

Multiple officials, who did not wish to be named, said they were in the process of identifying the source of infection from over half the total cases. With the death of a 60-year-old on Friday, the district suffered its first fatality due to the virus.

Among the new cases are four from slums of Sector 9. They include an 18-year-old and 30-year-old woman, and a 50-year-old and 26-year-old man. The district administration is conducting medical camps in the slums of sectors 5, 8, 9 and 10. Around 38 people have been found positive for the infection from the slums of these sectors till date.

One elderly couple aging 59-year-old woman and 60-year-old man from sector 19 were also found positive for the coronavirus. The couple was symptomatic after which they got themselves checked.

A 42-year-old woman from sector 150 was also identified and she contracted the infection from her father-in-law. A 20-year-old man from Jalvayu Vihar in PI 3 area of Greater Noida was also found positive, and he got infected through a known person who was earlier found positive.

A 25-year-old factory worker from Greater Noidas Yakubpur village was also found COVID-19 positive after his employer got him checked following few symptoms. A 42-year-old man from the CHI 2 area of Greater Noida was also tested and found positive for Covid-19 in Delhi.

In another development, 10 patients were discharged after completing the Covid-19 treatment successfully. Eight patients were discharged from the Super Speciality Paediatric Hospital & Post Graduate Teaching Institute in sector 30 and two from the Government Institute of Medical Sciences.

By Friday night, the health department collected a total of 3898 samples. A total of 214 cases have come out positive while 118 patients have been discharged. Currently, there are 95 active Covid-19 cases in the district. Around 332 persons are under institutional quarantine.
[May 08, 2020] The Global Smart Toys Market is expected to grow from USD 7,395.47 Million in 2018 to USD 20,984.68 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.06%

NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05871422/?utm_source=PRN







The positioning of the Global Smart Toys Market vendors in FPNV Positioning Matrix are determined by 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) and placed into four quadrants (F: Forefront, P: Pathfinders, N: Niche, and V: Vital).



The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Smart Toys Market including are LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., Reach Robotics, Seebo Interactive LTD, Spin Master Ltd., WowWee Group Limited, Hasbro, KONAMI, LEGO, and PLAYMOBIL.



On the basis of Type, the Global Smart Toys Market is studied across Educational Robots, Interactive Games, and Robots.



On the basis of Control Type, the Global Smart Toys Market is studied across Wired and Wireless.



On the basis of Distribution, the Global Smart Toys Market is studied across Online Market, Retail/Stationary Shops, and Specilaty Toy Shops.



On the basis of End User, the Global Smart Toys Market is studied across Pre-Schoolers, School Going, and Toddlers.



For the detailed coverage of the study, the market has been geographically divided into the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The report provides details of qualitative and quantitative insights about the major countries in the region and taps the major regional developments in detail.



In the report, we have covered two proprietary models, the FPNV Positioning Matrix and Competitive Strategic Window. The FPNV Positioning Matrix analyses the competitive market place for the players in terms of product satisfaction and business strategy they adopt to sustain in the maket. 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 acquisitions strategies, geography expansion, research & development, new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth.







Research Methodology:

Our market forecasting is based on a market model derived from market connectivity, dynamics, and identified influential factors around which assumptions about the market are made. These assumptions are enlightened by fact-bases, put by primary and secondary research instruments, regressive analysis and an extensive connect with industry people. Market forecasting derived from in-depth understanding attained from future market spending patterns provides quantified insight to support your decision-making process. The interview is recorded, and the information gathered in put on the drawing board with the information collected through secondary research.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:

1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on sulfuric acid offered by the key players in the Global Smart Toys Market

2. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments in the Global Smart Toys Market

3. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets for the Global Smart Toys Market

4. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new products launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Global Smart Toys Market

5. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players in the Global Smart Toys Market





The report answers questions such as:

1. What is the market size of Smart Toys market in the Global?

2. What are the factors that affect the growth in the Global Smart Toys Market over the forecast period?

3. What is the competitive position in the Global Smart Toys Market?

4. Which are the best product areas to be invested in over the forecast period in the Global Smart Toys Market?

5. What are the opportunities in the Global Smart Toys Market?

6. What are the modes of entering the Global Smart Toys Market?



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05871422/?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.



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The Congress on Thursday accused the Uttar Pradesh government of not providing the list of migrant workers, who have returned back to the state, so that the party could pay the rail fare charged from them while returning to their homes from different parts of the country.

Addressing media persons through video conferencing, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president Ajay Kumar Lallu and Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhna Mishra said their party wanted to pay migrant labourers the rail fare charged from them and had requested the government to provide a list of such labourers who had returned from other states. However, there was no response from the state government, they alleged.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in a tweet posted two letters sent by her partys Rae Bareli and Amethi district unit presidents asking their respective district administration to provide a list of migrant labourers. She also posted two mobile numbers urging residents of the two cities to provide a photocopy of their rail ticket to enable the party pay them the rail fare.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has announced that party is ready to pay the rail fare to every migrant labourer. Migrant labourers have been left alone in the countrys fight against Covid-19, said Lallu and Mishra.

They said charging rail fare from the migrants was a shameful act and alleged that the state government also did not provide permission to their party workers to make arrangements for providing refreshments to migrant labourers on their way back.
The Beacon Award for Excellence  a significant milestone on the path to exceptional patient care and healthy work environments  recognizes unit caregivers who successfully improve patient outcomes and align practices with AACN's six Healthy Work Environment Standards. Units that achieve this three-year, three-level award with a gold, silver or bronze designation meet national criteria consistent with Magnet Recognition, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the National Quality Healthcare Award.

"We are honored to receive the silver Beacon Award from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, recognizing the excellent care by the staff of our intensive care unit for our most critically ill patients," says Lori J. Morgan, MD, MBA, President and CEO, Huntington Hospital. "Our critical care nurses, physicians and employees are extremely dedicated caregivers. Every day, they continue to deliver exceptionally safe and compassionate care to patients on their unit with kindness and dignity, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic."

AACN President Megan Brunson, MSN, RN, CNL, CCRN-CSC, applauds the commitment of the caregivers the critical care unit at Huntington Hospital for working together to meet and exceed the high standards set forth by the Beacon Award for Excellence. These dedicated healthcare professionals join other members of our exceptional community of nurses, who set the standard for optimal patient care.

"Receiving a Beacon Award for Excellence demonstrates a team's commitment to providing safe, patient-centered and evidence-based care to patients and families. Creating healthy and supportive work environments empowers nurses and other team members to make their optimal contribution," Brunson explained. "Achieving this award is such an honor and brings such joy to those who have worked so hard to achieve excellence in patient care and positive patient outcomes," Brunson added.

The silver-level Beacon Award for Excellence earned by Huntington Hospital's critical care unit signifies an effective approach to policies, procedures and processes that includes engagement of staff and key stakeholders. The unit has evaluation and improvement strategies in place and good performance measures when compared to relevant benchmarks. Huntington Hospital's critical care unit earned its silver award by meeting the following evidence-based Beacon Award for Excellence criteria:

Leadership Structures and Systems

Appropriate Staffing and Staff Engagement

Effective Communication, Knowledge Management and Learning and Development

Evidence-Based Practice and Processes

Outcome Measurement

The other Beacon Award designations are gold and bronze. Gold-level awardees demonstrate an effective and systematic approach to policies, procedures and processes that includes engagement of staff and key stakeholders; fact-based evaluation strategies for continuous process improvement; and performance measures that meet or exceed relevant benchmarks. Recipients who earn a bronze-level award are beginning the journey to excellence, which includes developing systematic policies, processes and procedures; identifying opportunities for staff participation; and recognizing the need to develop cycles of evaluation and improvement.

AACN honors Huntington Hospital's critical care unit and other Beacon Award for Excellence recipients with announcements in AACN Bold Voices, the monthly award-winning member magazine distributed to more than 100,000 acute and critical care nurses nationwide. AACN also honors awardees at the National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, the world's largest educational conference and trade show for nurses who care for acutely and critically ill patients and their families.

About the Beacon Award for Excellence: Established in 2003, the Beacon Award for Excellence offers a road map to help guide exceptional care through improved outcomes and greater overall patient satisfaction. U.S. and Canadian units where patients receive their principal nursing care after hospital admission qualify for this excellence award. Units that receive the Beacon Award for Excellence meet criteria in six categories: leadership structures and systems; appropriate staffing and staff engagement; effective communication, knowledge management, and learning and development; evidence-based practice and processes; and outcome measurement. To learn more, visit www.aacn.org/beacon or call 800-899-2226.

About the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses: Founded in 1969 and based in Aliso Viejo, California, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is the largest specialty nursing organization in the world. AACN represents the interests of more than half a million acute and critical care nurses and includes more than 200 chapters in the United States. The organization's vision is to create a healthcare system driven by the needs of patients and their families in which acute and critical care nurses make their optimal contribution. To learn more about AACN, visit www.aacn.org, connect with the organization on Facebook at www.facebook.com/aacnface or follow AACN on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aacnme.

About Huntington Hospital

Huntington Hospital, www.huntingtonhospital.org, is a 619-bed not-for-profit hospital in Pasadena, California. We are named among the top hospitals in California and nationally ranked in two specialties by U.S. News and World Report. Learn more about us on Facebook www.facebook.com/huntingtonmemorialhospital and on Twitter @huntingtonnews.

SOURCE Huntington Hospital

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Swapping life in the Cayman Islands for lockdown in Lougshinny are Jordan Grimes and his wife, Darcie.

A Skerries native and his wife have left their Caribbean home behind to return to the small Fingal town following an outbreak of COVID-19 on Grand Cayman, but as he tells The Fingal Independent, it's great to be back on home soil.

Twenty-six-year-old Jordan Grimes and wife Darcie have lived in Grand Cayman the past five years, but after harsh government restrictions over the coronavirus, decided to come back home to Fingal.

Last week we reported on their efforts to get back home and find a place to live out their Irish lockdown and this week we are happy to report, the couple are now staying in a house in Lougshinny and delighted to be home.

Jordan, just off an evacuation flight from Grand Cayman last week, explains how good it is to be back home and of the generosity of one gentleman from Loughshinny.

Jordan says: 'I'm really glad to be back. It's a little bit of a change from the forty degrees or thirty-five degree weather to twelve degrees now. We're staying in Loughshinny, there's a gentleman letting us use his house to quarantine for a couple of weeks, so I'm very thankful to him.

'We put an ad in Skerries Connected asking if there was anyone with a vacant space that they would be able to give to us to use for quarantine for two weeks, and he said he had a place there for us. It's only up the road from my family home, so I have relatives and friends around who are dropping groceries up and stuff, so we've had all that done.'

Because both of Jordan's parents have pre-existing health conditions, he explains, the couple were not able to stay with them until they remained in isolation for two weeks.

He says: 'We'll move in with my parents if all's good and they don't have any health issues over the next few days, so hopefully after the fourteen days. My parents are doing well anyway, my whole family are and nobody's been affected health-wise, which is great.

'After that, we'll see what we can do and keep an eye out to see if we can find work. If not, we have a little bit of savings to keep us going, and of course not having to pay rent will be a big help.'

Jordan, although facing two weeks of isolation in Loughshinny, already has plans for Skerries:

'First thing on the agenda once we're out of our quarantine is I'm looking forward to getting out around Skerries Harbour, just going for a nice walk around there and jumping into the Irish Sea.'

Skerries Harbour may not be quite as warm as the Caribbean sea, he says, but at least it's home.
This is the luxury hotel where Thailands king is holed up during the coronavirus lockdown with an entourage of 20 concubines.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn  also known as Rama X  is said to still be isolating at the posh German hotel which reportedly has a specially built pleasure room for him and his harem.

The four-star Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in the resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen has been given special permission to stay open because the party was classed as a single household amid the pandemic.

Rama X, 67, who has been the king of Thailand since 2016, and his entourage currently occupy the hotels entire fourth floor, reports Bild.



The concubines have been dubbed his s.e.x soldiers as he reportedly enjoys playing a kind of military role-play with them.

The king last year broke up with his mistress, Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi of the Royal Guard, and stripped her of her military ranks as he accused her of being disloyal.

Speaking on TV, Bild reporter Max Boddeker said the kings diplomatic immunity means he is untouchable.

He said: We found out that he and his 20 concubines are still living in the hotel.

Not only that, but hes got it organised with military discipline and calls them the SAS, like the British military elite force.

They are numbered from S001 to S020 or whatever, and they all get a military rank such as major.

And they also get an honorary title of Sirivajirabhakdi, which means The Beautiful One Who Will Be Faithful to the King.

He claims a pleasure room has been set up for the exclusive use of the king and his concubines, which the reporter dubbed as his playthings.

Pictures show the luxurious furnishings inside the hotel, which says on its website that it is not taking bookings due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The king has reportedly decked out his private floor at the resort with treasures and antiques from Bangkok.

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Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir

By Rebecca Solnit

Viking. 243 pp. $26

---

In 2008, Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay titled "Men Explain Things to Me," a biting critique of a condescending male behavior that drowns out and belittles women's voices, that went viral. The term it inspired - "mansplaining" - became not only a part of everyday conversation, but an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. Solnit captured the anger and frustration of millions of women and quickly became a major feminist voice - speaking out on #MeToo, climate change and the power of collective organizing.

Solnit's memoir "Recollections of My Nonexistence" promises a more intimate look at her life. Here she tells us how she found her way as a writer, about her life in 1980s San Francisco and her shift from chronicling the trajectories of men forgotten by the art world to analyzing the tensions over the environmental and gender issues that define our times.

Solnit writes vividly of her influences, from the thick atmosphere of gendered violence and discrimination to the open landscapes of the American West, where she house-sits in New Mexico, researches and hikes alone. She captures her tiny "alabaster" studio so vividly that you can close your eyes and be there, running a hand along the haunch of the velvet sofa that "left droppings of ancient horsehair stuffing on the floor like an incontinent pet," peeling back the tacky vinyl kitchen siding to reveal layers of wallpaper like layers of the neighborhood's history or writing at her treasured desk. With Solnit as a guide, you can hear her neighbors tell tales of Texas and Oklahoma, walk past the varied shades of devotion in a community dotted by churches and sift through the archives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Readers are offered snippets of a life - often in rich tones - but do we come away with a better sense of who is Rebecca Solnit, the person? Not really.

As its title suggests, "Recollections of my Nonexistence" toys with the confessional form, letting us in only so far. Solnit writes of trying to both "appear and disappear" - acts, she confesses, that are "often odds with each other." The book's cover echoes this theme: a snapshot of Solnit pressed up against a wall, bracing herself with elegantly gloved hands. She wears one of her favorite outfits, a 1940s pencil skirt and a men's waistcoat belted and worn backward. The clothes may speak to confidence and transformation, but her pose is all about concealment.

So it is in the book: There is a sense of reserve that feels deliberate even as it is unsatisfying. Solnit obeys the conventions of the memoir genre sparingly. For example, when she moves into her apartment on San Francisco's Lyon Street at 19, she is the only white person in her building. Rather than delving deeply into the implications of her presence, Solnit reflects beautifully on the intricacies of the neighborhood at large, writing one of the most vivid sections of the book. Yet when she moves years later, she leaves a gentrified, white middle-class area that bears little resemblance to the Lyon Street of 1981, she has little to say about it.

Solnit tells us how her voice developed - by listening to and reading stories in the news about violence against women, depicted in the arts and in personal stories told by friends. "I am a woman who during my youth thought it likely that I would be raped and maybe also murdered and all my life have lived in a world where women were raped and murdered by strangers for being women and by men they knew for asserting their rights or just being women and where those rapes and murders were lasciviously lingered on in art," Solnit writes. Reading this, it's difficult to fathom a way out of such darkness. What possible hope can remain within a society that passively allows violent female erasure?

Yet throughout "Recollections of My Nonexistence," Solnit emphasizes the need to find poetry in survival. Describing a delicate Victorian writing desk gifted by a friend, she imbues the object with a strong sense of her intellectual life and credibility as a writer. She meditates on the words she wrote sitting at this desktop - the emails to friends, the 20 books and countless essays - before revealing its darker history. "A year or so before she gave me the desk, my friend was stabbed 15 times by an ex-boyfriend to punish her for leaving him," Solnit writes. It's a somber turn, yet rather than lingering solely on despair, Solnit pivots toward hope: "Someone tried to silence her. Then she gave me a platform for my voice."

Perhaps it's not surprising that the iconoclastic Solnit would, in her memoir, renounce the trappings of memoir itself. Solnit seems to see her own experience as part of a more sweeping experience of being a woman in the world. Writing about her own fear of rape, for example, she says, "I tell all of this not because I think my story is exceptional, but because it is ordinary; half the earth is paved over with women's fear and pain, or rather with the denial of them, and until the stories that lie underneath see sunlight, this will not change." Her book then, might be read less as memoir than as manifesto - a voice raised in hope against gender violence. It's a call we should listen to.

---

Sarazen is a freelance writer based in Paris.
Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency says Friday prayers are resuming in mosques in 146 cities with minimal risk conditions for spreading the coronavirus after being banned for more than two months.

The report said prayer gatherings will continue to be banned in major cities, including all provincial capitals, for now.

Iran is battling the worst outbreak in the Middle East while under heavy U.S. sanctions. Officials said Thursday the death toll from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, rose to nearly 6,500 among more than 100,000 confirmed cases.

There are currently no plans to reopen the country's religious shrines, including the most important Shiite holy site in the country, the Imam Reza Shrine in the northeastern city of Mashahd.

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Courtesy of NetflixSpike Lee's upcoming Vietnam vet drama, Da 5 Bloods, will officially hit Netflix next month.

In an Instagram post, Lee shared the release date along with an image of film's poster.

"Here Iz Da Teaser Poster For Da 5 BLOODS," he wrote. "The New Spike Lee Joint Will Drop Globally On NETFLIX-Friday June 12th. Please Check It Out. PEACE And LOVE."

The film, starring Chadwick Boseman, centers on Vietnam veterans who go back to the jungle to "find their lost innocence and put their broken selves back together."

It also stars Paul Walter Hauser, Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors.

As previously reported, the upcoming feature is co-written by Lee and marks the Oscar winner's first directing job for Netflix.

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
The Licensed Vintners Association has said it is alarming and concerning to hear that there is very little prospect of pubs reopening in June.

They are now calling for an urgent meeting with the Government to discuss the future of the industry following the comments by the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan.

Earlier this week pubs outlined a number of proposals which would allow them to open in June rather than the Government's suggested date in August.

Bars are currently scheduled to open in the fifth and final phase of the blueprint, on August 10.

Cafes and restaurants are set to start welcoming back customers in the third phase, on June 29.

The Licensed Vintners Association (LVA) and the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI) want pubs to open at the same time as cafes and restaurants.

However, Dr Holohan said he does not see any pubs opening in June, telling RTEs Sean ORourke show that the sector should prepare to open on the date laid out in the Governments roadmap.

He added it is due to the difficulty in adhering to restrictions necessary to maintain physical distancing.

Donal O'Keefe, Chief Executive of the VFI, is disappointed to hear Dr Holohan shoot down their plans.

Mr O'Keefe said: "Well, we note Dr Holohan's comments, we now need, as a matter of extreme urgency, our meeting with Government to discuss the future of the pub trade.

"It's alarming, it's very concerning and we certainly need to discuss how we need to take the trade forward and Government support for our members and the future of the business in Ireland."

Mr O'Keefe said some bars will struggle to reopen after missing out on business for up to 5 months.

He said: "The longer the closure extends the worse it's going to be. If it turns out pubs are not allowed to open until August 10 then that is essentially a 5-month lockdown.

"We closed on March 15. In that scenario, there will be lots of pubs around the country that will simply not reopen.

"It is important for the future viability of the sector that a support plan is put in place to allow pubs to reopen and to trade and to grow again."
The company also agreed to conduct regular risk assessment and software code reviews to detect vulnerabilities.

Sweet Farm co-founder Nate Salpeter uses his iPhone to speak to a group during a Zoom meeting on May 1, 2020 in Half Moon Bay, California. The number of daily video meetings on Zoom skyrocketed from 10 million in January to more than 300 million at the end of April. (Photo | AFP)

New York: New York states top prosecutor on Thursday announced that the company Zoom would improve security measures, after flaws were detected as the video conferencing platform soared in popularity amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The agreement wraps an investigation launched in March by New York Attorney General Letitia James into vulnerabilities in the California-based companys software.

In a statement, James said Zoom would institute new security measures for the millions of users using the platform, including enhanced privacy controls.

The company also agreed to conduct regular risk assessment and software code reviews to detect vulnerabilities.

The number of daily video meetings on Zoom skyrocketed from 10 million in January to more than 300 million at the end of April.

But a Zoom-bombing phenomenon sparked warnings about lax security, as virtual intruders interrupted religious ceremonies, remote classes and other Zoom gatherings.

In some cases, pornographic images popped up.

James said Zoom would take steps to prevent those breaches as well as end its user data-sharing partnership with Facebook.

The platform is to improve privacy controls for free accountsusers avoid a monthly fee for meetings 40 minutes and underalong with education accounts for K-12 students.

All hosts will now be able to control access to conferences with a required password for those attempting to access a meeting.

Our lives have inexorably changed over the past two months, and while Zoom has provided an invaluable service, it unacceptably did so without critical security protections, James said in the statement.

This agreement puts protections in place so that Zoom users have control over their privacy and security.
KYODO NEWS - May 8, 2020 - 14:35 | World, All, Coronavirus

South Korea reported the discovery of a cluster of novel coronavirus infections in Seoul on Friday, just days after the government relaxed its social distancing guidelines.

The 13-person cluster has been linked to a man who earlier tested positive for the coronavirus after visiting dance clubs in Seoul's popular Itaewon neighborhood last Saturday.

The man's infection, which was announced Thursday, was the first case of community transmission reported by the country in four days.

According to the Health and Welfare Ministry, 13 more infections were discovered while the government was tracking down the people with whom he had had close contact. All but one had visited at least one of the clubs.

Vice health minister Kim Gang Lip, during his press briefing on Friday, indicated that more cases could be found as an estimated 1,500 people had visited the clubs at around the same time.

He urged those who recently visited the venues to stay at home and look out for symptoms of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

South Korea on Wednesday officially began transitioning from strict social distancing to more relaxed "distancing in daily life," following a steady decline in the number of new infection cases.

The cluster case arose during a April 30 to May 5 holiday week, ahead of which the government had repeatedly warned the public not to ease up on social distancing to prevent the virus from spreading.

Earlier Friday, health authorities said separately that they had confirmed 12 new virus cases the previous day, 11 of which were imported from overseas.

The nation's death toll from the pandemic stands at 256, while 9,484 people were sent home after making a full recovery, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought Wells College's financial issues to the point where its fall semester may be in jeopardy.

College President Jonathan Gibralter this week sent a letter to the college community warning that if students cannot return to campus this fall, the historic college in Aurora would have to shut down.

Every academic institution in the state, under orders from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is continuing distance learning for the rest of the academic year but decisions about fall classes have not been made.

"If New York State continues its mandate that our campus remain closed through all or part of the fall semester, Wells simply will not receive enough revenue to continue operations," Gibralter said in the letter. "A substantial amount of the Colleges operating budget comes from room and board revenue, so without enough students participating in our residential life, the College cannot afford to reopen."

Gibralter said in an interview with The Citizen Thursday that he felt people should be informed of what the college is facing.

"It was important to me to that people understand that this is a very serious situation and that I really feel that people need to honestly know that we have a plan to reopen, but we just don't know what the state's going to tell us and when," Gibralter said.

If the college, which was founded in 1868, can open campus doors again in the fall, plans include social distancing, COVID-19 testing, pre-testing "before students get back," retesting them when they come to campus and taking the temperature of students, faculty and staff every day, Gibralter said. A combination of distance education and in-person education would be implemented so "perhaps some of our students can maybe stay home while others return," he added.

Various revenue sources are "up in the air," the letter said, amid the virus. The college's proposed business degree completion program with Monroe Community College has been delayed indefinitely. The program needed to be approved by the state Department of Education, but the department "cannot act on our proposal or any others at this time," the letter said.

Another revenue source affected by the virus this year was Wells' study abroad program in Florence, Italy. The college mandated that the 173 students in the program return home following the Italian government extending its previous order in March for all college institutions to be shut down due to the county's high amount of COVID-19 cases. Gibralter previously said the program generates about 18% of the college's operating budget. Every student in this year's program came from different colleges.

Gibralter noted the college has made several efforts to move forward. The college received a $1.8 million grant from the federal government through the Paycheck Protection Program and around $623,000 through the CARES Act.

He also added in the letter he has been in touch with U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Rep. John Katko, state Sen. Pam Helming, and Assemblymen Gary Finch. Gibralter said he contacted Cuomo "to ensure he understands the economic impact of Wells College on the community." As of last fall, the college had 185 employees.

Wells College's coronavirus-related challenges have also complicated its efforts to to secure re-accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which placed the school on probation in June 2019. The commission said Wells was not meeting its "Planning, Resources, and Institutional Improvement" standard nor its standard financial documentation, funding sources and financial development. In order for its accreditation to be renewed, the college was granted two years to fully comply with the requirements.

Gibralter's letter this week said the college's plan for financial sustainability was presented to the commission in December. The plan was accepted and the commission gave Wells time "to bring our plan to fruition." The college's work to further handle the commission's requirements was stopped temporarily due to the virus. Campus was shuttered in March, with distance learning enacted for students. Due to the pandemic, Gibralter requested an extension of submitting the next monitoring report from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, which the commission approved. Gibralter previously said Wells had been working on ways to improve its long-term stability.

On Thursday, Gibralter said he is inspired by the support of alumni despite the difficult circumstances and that he wants people to be able to return to campus.

"I just want to get back to my campus and be present with our students and our community. This is hard on everybody, but Wells is about community, Wells is about people being together and I want to get back together with our community," he said.

Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.

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Drivers on a busy street were given a shock when a patient attached to a stretcher was propelled out the back of an ambulance.

Dashcam footage shows cars slowing down and pulling over to allow the emergency vehicle through which is carrying a man who has been involved in a motorcycle crash nearby.

But as the ambulance passes by the back door flies open and the patient falls out the back onto a busy road in Bangkok, Thailand.

A man strapped to a stretcher was propelled out of an ambulance when the door flew open on a busy street in Bangkok, Thailand

Quickly realising he has lost his patient, the ambulance driver runs into the road and is helped by shocked motorcyclists to get the stretcher, which begins rolling along the road, back in the white van.

They bundle it into the ambulance and the driver quickly speeds off again as if nothing happened.

When he arrived at hospital doctors treated the man and luckily they found he did not have any addition injuries from the unexpected fall.

Theerawut Khampimabutr, head of the Poh Teck Tung voluntary foundation operating the ambulance, apologised for the incident which took place on Tuesday afternoon and said that the team had been disciplined.

Thailand's health service relies on volunteer groups connected to private hospitals to carry the burden of responding to emergency calls.

Mr Khampimabutr said: 'The careless paramedics had not cross-checked the equipment was secure before they started the ambulance's engine.

The ambulance driver quickly realises he has lost his patient and runs into the road to get the stretcher back in the white van

Despite the unexpected fall the man, who was in the ambulance after being involved in a motorcycle accident, did not have any additional injuries

'Moreover, at that time many rescuers were involved with other cases which left only two people attending this accident when normally we would have at least three.'

The spokesman for the rescue foundation apologised to the patient and promised to take full responsibility for the blunder.

Assistant manager Aran Tohtuad said: 'On behalf of the foundation I wanted to apologised for our volunteer's carelessness which caused harm to patient. We will take care of him throughout his treatment.

'We have already summoned the volunteer for the investigation and will decide on his punishment after suspending him for three to six months.'
Not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in the United States of America, Canada, Australia or Japan

This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or issue or the solicitation of an offer to buy, subscribe for or otherwise acquire any new ordinary shares of Mainstay Medical International plc in any jurisdiction

Terms used and not otherwise defined in this announcement have the meaning given to such terms in the circular published by Mainstay Medical International plc on 14 April 2020

Regulatory News:

On 7 April 2020, Mainstay Medical International plc (the "Company" or "Mainstay") announced that it intended to establish a new Irish holding company for the Mainstay group (the "Mainstay Group"), Mainstay Medical Holdings plc ("Mainstay Holdings") and to delist Mainstay's ordinary shares from Euronext Paris and the Euronext Growth market operated by Euronext Dublin (the "Delisting"). It is intended that this new corporate structure will be a corporate reorganization implemented by means of a scheme of arrangement under Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the Companies Act 2014 (the "Scheme", and, together with the Delisting, the "Reorganization

Mainstay is pleased to announce that today, 8 May 2020, two meetings of Mainstay shareholders were held in connection with the Reorganization and related matters. The first meeting was a meeting, convened by the Mainstay directors, of shareholders of Mainstay (the "Scheme Meeting") to approve the Scheme. The second meeting was an extraordinary general meeting of Mainstay shareholders (the "EGM") to approve certain matters related to the Reorganization.

At these meetings, all resolutions were duly passed. The results of the voting on each of the resolutions are available in the Additional Information section of this announcement.

The date of the hearing by the High Court of Ireland to sanction the Scheme will be announced in due course.

After the Reorganization, if sanctioned by the High Court, the Mainstay Holdings shares will not be admitted to trading on any regulated market or multilateral trading facility, and Mainstay Holdings will not be required to comply with the detailed disclosure requirements of the Transparency (Directive 2004/109/EC) Regulations 2007 (SI No. 277 of 2007), the Euronext Growth Markets Rule Book and the listing rules of Euronext Paris. However, from and after the Reorganization, Mainstay Holdings intends to provide to its shareholders unaudited half-year consolidated financial statements of the Mainstay Group, in addition to its annual audited consolidated financial statements. Shortly after Mainstay Holdings provides these financial statements to shareholders, it intends to hold a conference call with its shareholders to discuss its financial performance and to provide company updates.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Scheme Meeting

The resolution proposed at the Scheme Meeting held today was duly passed.

The results of the voting on the resolution are as follows:

Resolution: To approve the Scheme.

Present (in person or by proxy) and voting Votes for Resolution Votes against the Resolution Votes Withheld No. of Shareholders Ordinary Shares Represented No. of Shareholders Ordinary Shares Represented No. of Shareholders Ordinary Shares Represented No. of Shareholders Ordinary Shares Represented No. No. No. No. No. No. Total 22 10,756,829 21 95.5 10,749,904 99.94 1 4.5 6,925 0.06 0 N/a 0 N/a

The total number of Scheme Shares (i.e. issued Mainstay ordinary shares at the record time for entitlement to vote at the Scheme Meeting) was 13,424,004.

Extraordinary General Meeting

The resolution proposed at the Extraordinary General Meeting held today was duly passed.

The results of the voting on the resolution are as follows:

Resolution Votes for Votes against Votes withheld To authorise the Directors to carry the Scheme and Delisting into effect and to amend the Articles of Association of the Company by the insertion of a new Article relating to the Scheme of Arrangement 10,247,953 99.93 6,925 0.07 0

The total number of Mainstay ordinary shares in issue at the record time for the entitlement to vote at the EGM was 13,424,004.

Note regarding withheld votes

The "Vote Withheld" option is provided to enable abstention on any particular resolution. However, it should be noted that a "Vote Withheld" is not a vote in law and is not counted in the calculation of the proportion of the votes "For" and "Against" a resolution.

About Mainstay

Mainstay is a medical device company focused on commercializing an innovative implantable restorative neurostimulation system, ReActiv8, for people with disabling Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP). The Company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It has subsidiaries operating in Ireland, the United States, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, and is listed on the regulated market of Euronext Paris (MSTY.PA) and Euronext Growth operated by Euronext Dublin (MSTY.IE).

About Chronic Low Back Pain

One of the root causes of CLBP is impaired control by the nervous system of the muscles that dynamically stabilize the spine. ReActiv8 is designed to electrically stimulate the nerves responsible for contracting these muscles to improve dynamic spine stability, allowing the body to recover from CLBP.

People with CLBP usually have a greatly reduced quality of life and score significantly higher on scales for pain, disability, depression, anxiety and sleep disorders. Their pain and disability can persist despite the best available medical treatments, and only a small percentage of cases result from an identified pathological condition or anatomical defect that may be correctable with spine surgery. Their ability to work or be productive is seriously affected by the condition and the resulting days lost from work, disability benefits and health resource utilization put a significant burden on individuals, families, communities, industry and governments.

Further information can be found at www.mainstay-medical.com

CAUTION in the United States, ReActiv8 is limited by federal law to investigational use only.

Forward looking statements

This announcement includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, forward looking statements. These forward looking statements can be identified by the use of forward looking terminology, including the terms "anticipates", "believes", "estimates", "expects", "intends", "may", "plans", "projects", "should", "will", or "explore" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy, plans, objectives, goals, future events or intentions. These forward looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts. They appear throughout this announcement and include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Company's intentions, beliefs or current expectations concerning, among other things, the establishment of a new holding company of the Mainstay Group and the delisting of the Company's ordinary shares from Euronext Paris and the Euronext Growth market of Euronext Dublin.

By their nature, forward looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to future events and circumstances. Forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and the actual results of the Company's operations, the development of its main product, and the markets and the industry in which the Company operates may differ materially from those described in, or suggested by, the forward looking statements contained in this announcement. In addition, even if the Company's results of operations, financial position and growth, and the development of its main product and the markets and the industry in which the Company operates are consistent with the forward looking statements contained in this announcement, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods. A number of factors could cause results and developments of the Company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements, including, without limitation, court approval of the scheme of arrangement, the outcome of the Company's interactions with the FDA on a PMA application for ReActiv8 and the successful launch and commercialization of ReActiv8. As a result, investors should not rely on such forward-looking statements in making their investment decisions. No representation or warranty is made as to the achievement or reasonableness of, and no reliance should be placed on, such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements herein speak only at the date of this announcement. None of Mainstay, the Mainstay Board, Mainstay Holdings or the Mainstay Holdings Board assume any obligation to update or correct the information contained in this announcement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent legally required. Nothing contained in this announcement shall be deemed to be a forecast, projection or estimate of the future financial performance of the Mainstay Group except where expressly stated.

Important Notices

The information contained in this announcement is for background purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. No reliance may be placed for any purpose on the information contained in this announcement or its accuracy, fairness or completeness.

The contents of this announcement are not to be construed as legal, financial or tax advice. Each prospective investor should consult his own legal adviser, financial adviser or tax adviser for legal, financial or tax advice, respectively.

Disclaimers

This announcement and the information it contains does not constitute and shall not be considered as constituting a public offer, an offer to subscribe or an intention to solicit the interest of the public for a public offering of Mainstay's securities in Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, the United States or any other jurisdiction. This announcement does not comprise a prospectus or a prospectus equivalent document.

With respect to Member States of the European Economic Area, no action has been taken or will be taken to permit a public offering of the securities referred to in this announcement which would require the publication of a prospectus in any Member State. There will be no offer to the public of Mainstay Holdings Shares in any Member State of the European Economic Area and no prospectus or other offering document has been or will be prepared in connection with the issue of Mainstay Holdings Shares.

J&E Davy, trading as Davy, which is authorised and regulated in Ireland by the Central Bank of Ireland, is acting exclusively for the Company and Mainstay Holdings and no one else in connection with the Reorganization and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company and Mainstay Holdings for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for providing any advice in relation to the Reorganization or any matter referred to herein.

The release, publication or distribution of this announcement and the documents referred to herein in jurisdictions other than Ireland, France and the United Kingdom may be restricted by law and therefore persons into whose possession any of this announcement and the documents referred to herein come should inform themselves about, and observe, any applicable restrictions or requirements. Any failure to comply with such restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Mainstay and Mainstay Holdings disclaim any responsibility or liability for the violation of such requirements by any person.

Notice to investors in the United States

The Reorganization relates to the shares of an Irish company (a "foreign private issuer" as defined under Rule 3b-4 under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act")) and is proposed to be made by means of a scheme of arrangement provided for under, and governed by, Irish law (the "Scheme"). Neither the proxy solicitation rules nor the tender offer rules under the Exchange Act will apply to the Scheme. Accordingly, the Mainstay Holdings Shares to be issued pursuant to the Scheme have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act") or under the relevant securities laws of any State or territory or other jurisdiction of the United States, and are expected to be offered in the United States in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act provided by section 3(a)(10) thereof and exemptions provided under the laws of the States of the United States in which eligible Scheme Shareholders may reside.

For the purpose of qualifying for the exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act provided by section 3(a)(10) thereof with respect to the Mainstay Holdings Shares issued pursuant to the Scheme, Mainstay will advise the Court that its sanctioning of the Scheme will be relied upon by Mainstay Holdings as an approval of the Scheme, following a hearing on its fairness to Scheme Shareholders at which hearing all Scheme Shareholders are entitled to attend in person or through counsel to support or oppose the sanctioning of the Scheme and with respect to which notification has been given to all such Scheme Shareholders.

The Mainstay Holdings Shares to be issued under or in connection with the Scheme to a Scheme Shareholder who is neither an affiliate, for the purpose of the Securities Act, of Mainstay or Mainstay Holdings on or prior to the time the Scheme becomes effective nor an affiliate of Mainstay Holdings at the time the Scheme becomes effective (the "Scheme Effective Time") would not be "restricted securities" under the Securities Act. Scheme Shareholders who are affiliates of Mainstay or Mainstay Holdings on or prior to the Scheme Effective Time or affiliates of Mainstay Holdings after the Scheme Effective Time may, under Rule 145(d) under the Securities Act, be subject to timing, manner of sale and volume restrictions on the sale of Mainstay Holdings Shares received in connection with the Scheme. For the purpose of the Securities Act, an affiliate of either Mainstay or Mainstay Holdings is any person who directly or indirectly through one or more intermediaries controls, or is controlled by, or is under common control with Mainstay or Mainstay Holdings respectively. Whether a person is an affiliate of either Mainstay or Mainstay Holdings for the purpose of the Securities Act depends on the circumstances. Persons who believe that they may be affiliates of either Mainstay or, after the Scheme Effective Time, Mainstay Holdings should consult their own legal advisers prior to any sale of the Mainstay Holdings Shares received upon the implementation of the Scheme.

The Scheme is subject to the disclosure requirements and practices applicable in Ireland to schemes of arrangement, which differ from the disclosure and other requirements of U.S. securities laws.

Mainstay and Mainstay Holdings are both incorporated under the laws of Ireland. Some or all of the officers and directors of Mainstay and Mainstay Holdings may be residents of countries other than the United States. It may not be possible to sue Mainstay and Mainstay Holdings in a non-U.S. court for violations of U.S. securities laws. It may be difficult to compel Mainstay, Mainstay Holdings and their respective affiliates to subject themselves to the jurisdiction and judgment of a U.S. court. It may not be possible to enforce in Ireland a judgment of a U.S. court in respect of violations of U.S. securities law.

None of the securities referred to in this announcement have been approved or disapproved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any state securities commission in the United States or any other U.S. regulatory authority, nor have such authorities passed upon or determined the adequacy or accuracy of the information contained in this announcement. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offence in the United States.

There will be no public offer of securities in the United States.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005220/en/

Contacts:

PR and IR Enquiries:



LifeSci Advisors, LLC

Brian Ritchie

Tel: 1 (212) 915-2578

Email: britchie@lifesciadvisors.com



FTI Consulting (for Ireland)

Jonathan Neilan or Patrick Berkery

Tel.: +353 1 765 0886

Email: mainstay@fticonsulting.com



Euronext Advisers:

Davy

Fergal Meegan or Barry Murphy

Tel: +353 1 679 6363

Email: fergal.meegan@davy.ie or barry.murphy2@davy.ie
AccuWeather forecasters are warning chances of snow and other wintry weather to break out across portions of the eastern United States, just after a winter storm spent the weekend making a mess of places from the Tennessee Valley through the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard into New England.
Georgia is recalling its ambassador in Kyiv for consultations following the appointment of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of chairman of the Ukrainian president's Executive Committee on Reforms, Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani told reporters on Friday.

"This is routine practice in diplomatic relations that indicates the emergency of certain problems in bilateral relations. Therefore, consultations with the ambassador are needed to determine future steps," Zalkaliani said.

Despite this decision made by Ukraine, "Georgia is not considering the possibility of breaking off diplomatic relations or reviewing the strategic partnership," the minister said.
A member of the intensive care team treats Covid-19 patients at Craigavon Area Hospital in Co Armagh (Niall Carson/PA)

Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill visiting 'NI Scrubs' at their production factory in Dungannon. Pic Pacemaker

Stormonts deputy first minister has called for universal testing across all care homes in Northern Ireland.

Michelle ONeill said there should be a regular programme of testing for all residents and staff in residential homes.

She was speaking after new figures showed that almost half of all Covid-19-related deaths were in care homes.

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Up until May 1, a total of 516 deaths involving Covid19 were reported. Of these, 253 took place in hospital, while 232 were in care homes, four were in hospices and 27 were at residential addresses or other locations.

The 236 deaths in care homes and hospices involved 66 separate establishments.

Ms ONeill said the figures demonstrate that Northern Ireland is on a knifes edge.

Behind all those figures are families whove lost a loved one and we need to realise that as it drives home the message why were asking people to continue doing what were doing for the next three weeks, she said.

It demonstrates further to me that were making a difference, the things that people are doing are making a difference.

By and large, people have been absolutely first class in responding and following the public health message by staying at home, and only going out whenever they have to.

We need people to keep on doing that because we still have this battle on our hands, and ultimately its always about saving lives, and the more and more we move around, the more and more diseases spread.

She said that the figures also expose the serious battle within care homes.

It means that no stone must be left unturned in supporting care homes right now and supporting the staff and supporting the residents.

If youre sitting at home and one of your loved ones is in the care home, you can understand your anxiousness, you can understand your fear.

We need to make sure that absolutely everything that needs to be done to support care homes right now is done, and I think theres a further step thats required in terms of care homes, and I believe that should be universal testing.

There should be a regular programme of testing for all residents and staff and our care homes right now.

I think that would help to be able to identify the virus and actually allow speedy action to be taken.
The Indian government has started the first phase of repatriation of Indians stranded abroad due to COVID-19 lockdowns. About 64 special flights will bring back 15,000 citizens over the next week or so.

The flights will be operated from May 7 to 14 under the "Vande Bharat Mission". Indian citizens living in the following countries will be evacuated - Bahrain, UAE, Malaysia, USA, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Singapore, UK, Oman, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

These flights will also carry foreigners currently stranded in India and Indians settled in other countries back home on its way to these countries.

Elaborate arrangements have been made at various airports across India including the installation of thermal temperature scanning systems for passengers arriving from abroad.

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

Week 1 flight plan (Source: Ministry of Civil Aviation)

Check the repatriation flight schedule

The first two flights landed in India on May 7, carrying 363 passengers from the UAE:

Abu Dhabi to Kochi - 177 passengers plus 4 infants reached Cochin from Abu Dhabi.

Dubai to Kozhikode - 177 passengers plus 5 infants reached Kozhikode from Dubai.

The state governments will now arrange for their mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Following are the updates as of May 9:

-Kuala Lumpur-Trichy flight departs with 177 passengers ETA 2200hrs.

-IX 442 Muscat to Kochi with 177 passengers and 4 infants - yet to land

-Evacuation flight AI-130 for Mumbai took off from London today with 329 Indians on board.

Apart from the flight from London there are two other flights landing in Mumbai from Singapore and Manila. Here are the details:

Flight from Singapore to Mumbai AI-343 carrying 243 passengers to land around 1230 on May 10.

Flight from Manila to Mumbai AI-1387 carrying 241 passengers to land around 2300 on May 10.

-AI 988 Kuwait-Hyderabad flight with 160 passengers on board took off

-IX396 Kuwait-Cochin with 177 passengers. ETA : 2138LT

-IX184 Sharjah to Lucknow, with 182 passengers and 2 infants ETA: 2105LT

- Doha to Cochin (Arrival at Cochin: 0140 hrs on May 10)

All Indians who return will be quarantined for 14 days.

Flight AI381 brought back Indian stuck in Singapore amid coronavirus lockdown at Delhi airport on May 8 morning. (Image: AP)

Follow our full coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here
Democrats sure know how to talk. They espouse lofty goals, heartfelt sympathy, and strident vows to instill fairness for all Americans. They promise to fulfill every aspiration and repair all grievances. Democrats unselfconsciously paint themselves as the good guys and Republicans as rapacious villains.

However, when Democrats act, its counter to their good words. Heres a few examples.

They profess support for the working class but act to harm their livelihoods.

When outsourcing became the rage, the working class needed a powerful advocate. Democrats abandoned them. Instead of championing industrial union members, they dropped them like hot potatoes to advocate for unionized government employees. Secondly, the livelihoods of the middle class fell when Democrats encouraged illegal immigration. The one-two punch devastated the American working class.

They say theyre fighting voter suppression but rig the system to steal elections.

Democrats push every change, making registration and voting easier, fight every check against voter fraud, support every change that opens a new path to fraud, push to legalize vote harvesting, and fight the cleansing of voter rolls. Democrat controlled states and cities provides sanctuary, benefits, and driver licenses to illegals. They talk a good game, but in truth, Democrats act against the principle of fair elections.

They profess support for the downtrodden but act to harm their futures.

Democrats have controlled many major cities and a few states for decades. These bastions of progressivism are stark examples of how they govern. Most Americans who are deprived of hope reside in these districts. Words are not putting food on the table, keeping their children safe, or providing the tools for a better future. Words are all they get.

They preach social justice but act inconsistent with the goal.

Equal opportunity for all? Not really. Democrats rip away support if anyone speaks contrary to the party line. They talk big in support of LGBQ and womens issues but import intolerant cultures who do them harm. Democrats ruthlessly pursue Republicans accused of sexual crimes but stubbornly cover for accused Democrats. They promise affordable higher education but direct government money to college administrations who keep raising tuition. Social justice is not really about people. Its a misanthropic tool to gather up political power.

They claim concern for Wuhan virus deaths but act to increase death count.

Democrats say they want fewer Wuhan virus deaths, but New York, California, and New Jersey made it illegal to turn away or test nursing home returnees, knowing full well that over a third of virus deaths occur in nursing homes. They say theyre horrified at the death count but provide financial incentives for doctors to attribute every death to the virus. Additionally, the national lockdown has increased the risk for every other terminal ailment through non-diagnosis, non-treatment, and delayed surgeries.

They say nobody is above the law but constructed a dual justice system.

Democrats holler incessantly that no one is above the law, but shield elected Democrats, illegal aliens, and convicted criminals from the law. They release prisoners back into society while arresting Americans for protesting overzealous government officials. They coddle illegals and give them rights and benefits American citizens dont enjoy. Elected Democrat officials are never indicted despite endless attempts to overturn the last election, congressional corruption everyone can see, and grievous violations of our national security laws. Democrats clamor for equal justice, but their actions built a two-tiered justice system. One for them and another for the rest of us.

They tout democracy but act totalitarian

Democrats invoke the Framers, the Bible, and altruistic intentions to prove their democratic bona fides. Not only do they portray themselves as the true champions of democracy, but Republicans opponents are Nazis, fascists, murders, racists, and haters of every imaginable hue. Yet their actions speak otherwise. They cheer the police state tactics of the FBI, see nothing amiss in federal agencies working on their behalf, and ignore the wishes of the populace that go against their doctrines. Nothing exposes leadership style more than a crisis. Republican governors impose sensible restraints for the shortest time possible. Democrat governors impose draconian measures beyond CDC guidelines and extend them indefinitely.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Put your money where your mouth is. Your word is your bond. All these axioms are foreign to Democrats. Instead they believe perception is reality. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting its boots on. Principles are malleable to the moment. And a suckers born every minute.

Fortunately for the United States of America, the public is catching on. Perhaps the greatest gift that President Trump has bestowed upon this great nation is to expose Democrat Party leaders for who they really are. Its not a pretty sight.
Shortly after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, two former Special Forces soldiers saw a business opportunity that married their past experience with a present danger.

The plan: to place former military veterans like themselves in schools to combat the mass shooters of tomorrow.

"Cops were there, but they didn't do anything, because they weren't trained to act," said Drew White, an ex-Green Beret. "Special operators are trained to move forward and end a threat."

His former comrade Jordan Goudreau ran with the idea and launched Silvercorp USA. Its motto: protecting our most precious assets.

That was early 2018. The plan never got off the ground, according to White. And now, two years later, Goudreau is at the center of a foiled plot to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In a video posted from an undisclosed location, Goudreau claimed responsibility for the failed raid that Venezuelan authorities say resulted in the deaths of eight people and the arrests of several others, including two ex-Green Berets.

"I'm just at a loss for words, honestly," White told NBC News. "It's mind-blowing to me."

Goudreau, 43, did not return repeated requests for comment. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. had no "direct involvement" in the armed incursion last weekend but will use "every tool" available to secure the return of the captured Americans.

Much of how the plot came together remains murky, but a portrait has emerged of Goudreau, a decorated U.S. commando who has boasted about having protected President Donald Trump and has attended at least one Trump rally wearing an earpiece and scanning the crowd as if he were a security guard.

Image: Jordan Goudreau (Silvercorp)

Born in Canada, Goudreau graduated from the University of Calgary with a computer science degree and went on to enlist in the Canadian army, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He later served in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces medical sergeant and indirect fire infantryman from 2001 to 2016, an Army spokesperson said. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining a reputation as a fearsome warrior with an expert shot.

Story continues

"The best of the best," White said. "He was exceptional."

Goudreau has said that after he left the military, he did private security work in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Then came the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which 14 students and three staff members were killed.

"I saw Parkland, and I was like, 'Well, nobody's really tackling this, so I want to fix this,'" Goudreau said in an interview with The Washington Post in November 2018.

Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics

Speaking at a school safety expo in Florida, where he was among about 100 vendors hoping to land business, Goudreau said he wanted to secretly embed former Special Forces operators in schools.

"He's a cool shop teacher," Goudreau told The Post before role-playing a potential conversation with a student. "'Hey, what's up, fellas.' I go sit down with a kid who's alone, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I just try to see whether there's any problems."

"The beauty of it is it's all for the price of a Netflix subscription," added Goudreau, who said he wanted to charge individual parents  not the schools  $8.99 each.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, on Oct. 26, 2018, the Florida-based Goudreau attended a Trump rally in Charlotte, N.C., according to a review of video and still images from the event. Goudreau is seen wearing a black suit and tie, with an earpiece, walking around Bojangles' Coliseum with his eyes fixed on the crowd.

An Instagram photo uploaded to the Silvercorp USA page shows him at the rally standing next to a man wearing a lanyard around his neck with the word "security" printed across it.

"Protecting our Greatest Assets," read the caption of the post, which has since been removed.

A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency "does not use contract security organizations or personnel to conduct protective operations."

"This individual is neither an employee nor a contractor of the U.S. Secret Service. It is common for organizations that host events to contract with companies and individuals to assist in managing attendance and attendees."

A spokesman for President Donald Trump's campaign said it "never hired Mr. Goudreau, his company Silvercorp USA, or any of his other companies."

A spokesperson for Bojangles' Coliseum said it didn't contract with Goudreau or Silvercorp for the rally.

White, the former partner, said he and Goudreau drifted apart after the company failed to secure a single school contract.

The pair had met a decade earlier when they were serving together in Germany. Goudreau went on to become the best man at White's wedding, he said.

"I was all in on school security," White said. "He said there were other things he wanted to do, and I just wasn't into anything outside the borders of the U.S."

According to White, Goudreau had signaled that he was interested in following the path of a private security company like the one formerly known as Blackwater, which gained infamy for its operatives' deadly tactics while doing security work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"He wanted to take contracts more like Blackwater," White said, before referring to the company's new name, Academi.

The Silvercorp website says it operates in more than 50 countries and has advised some of the "most prolific units on the planet," including Delta Force, Israel's Duvdevan, Germany's KSK and Britain's SAS.

White said that he didn't know whether any of that was true and that he had remained largely in the dark over Goudreau's activities throughout much of 2019.

Goudreau's social media accounts offer some clues to his professional dealings.

The first indication of any connection to Venezuela came in February 2019, when he worked security at a concert along the Colombian border that was held in support of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader recognized as Venezuela's interim president by the U.S. and several other countries. The "Venezuela Live Aid" event was organized by the British billionaire Richard Branson.

"Controlling chaos on the Venezuela border where a dictator looks on with apprehension," Goudreau wrote in a photo posted to his Instagram account showing him standing on the concert stage.

In August, Goudreau got in touch with White about a plan to help secure oil fields in Venezuela.

White said he set up a meeting with some potential investors, but Goudreau ultimately presented a very different operation: a plot to oust Maduro by force.

The idea seemed half-baked, and it rubbed everyone the wrong way, including White.

"The assumption was that it would just go away," he added. "It never seemed actionable. It never seemed like anything real."

But on Sunday, Goudreau and a former Venezuelan army captain appeared in a video identifying themselves as the organizers of an effort to invade Venezuela.

"A daring amphibious raid was launched from the border of Colombia deep into the heart of Caracas," Goudreau said. "Our units have been activated in the south, west and east of Venezuela."

Hablan los que saben. pic.twitter.com/hR7N2yKi1J  Factores de Poder (@FactoresdePoder) May 3, 2020

In a similarly curious move, Goudreau tweeted about the mission late Sunday and tagged the president. "Strikeforce incursion into Venezuela. 60 Venezuelan, 2 American ex Green Beret @realDonaldTrump," it read.

The overthrow plot was foiled, Maduro announced Monday. Eight people were killed while trying to make landfall, and several others were arrested, including Americans Luke Denman and Aidan Berry, Venezuelan authorities said.

In an interview with an exiled Venezuelan journalist, Goudreau said the operation was initially supported by Guaido.

"They said they were going to finance it," Goudreau said, referring to Guaido and his team. "But in the end they didn't."

Goudreau claimed that he was left to seek donations to support his men, whom he described as "60 Venezuelans who were hungry, still training, thinking about liberation, and they went and did it."

Guaido has denied any involvement in the raid.

Image: Venezuelan soldiers (Reuters TV / Reuters)

Trump said Friday that the U.S. government had no role in the failed incursion.

"This was a rogue group that went in there, a lot of Venezuelans," Trump said in a interview with "Fox & Friends." "I think people from other countries also. It was a group of people that went in and I saw their pictures on a beach and it wasn't led by General George Washington obviously."

Goudreau has stopped giving interviews, and his whereabouts are unknown. He's now being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible arms trafficking, according to The Associated Press, which was first to reveal details of the plot.

According to an extensive Washington Post account of the failed incursion, Goudreau had pitched Guaido representatives a self-funded plan to take out Maduro in exchange for a nearly $213 million payout. The relationship soured, but Goudreau still set the operation in motion, The Post reported, even after Guaido's team had considered it dead.

In an interview with NBC News, Ephraim Mattos, a former Navy SEAL who runs a nonprofit humanitarian aid group in war zones and provided medical training to some of Goudreau's men, said he was shocked and horrified to learn that the operation went forward in such helter-skelter fashion.

"It's so beyond stupid, the plan that they put together, that it's hard to fathom that Goudreau allowed it to go forward," Mattos told NBC News. "I feel horribly for the Venezuelan guys who followed him and got involved. These are really good guys."

Mattos works with Venezuelan exiles who smuggle food and medical supplies into the country. One of them told him about a group of other Venezuelan defectors who were living in Colombia and were interested in getting tactical medical training.

Mattos arrived in early September to find about 20 ill-equipped men living in a five-bedroom house with little food and no running water. They told him about an imminent plan to oust Maduro. That came as a shock to Mattos, whose understanding was that these former soldiers and policemen were hoping to take back their country at some point in the future.

Mattos wanted to know who was in charge. They gave a name he had never heard before: Jordan Goudreau. Mattos said the Venezuelans described him as a Delta Force member and Trump bodyguard who had the backing of the U.S. government.

Mattos was immediately skeptical. He looked up Goudreau's website and realized that he was, in fact, a civilian contractor. After running a two-week training course, Mattos returned home to the U.S. feeling apprehensive about their plans and concerned that they were being misled.

"It was unacceptable that they thought he was a representative of the U.S. government, because he should know better as a Special Forces guy to make it extremely clear who he is and what he represents," Mattos said.

Mattos later tried to get in touch with Goudreau to "try to talk some sense into him," but after a brief introductory exchange via Instagram  which was viewed by NBC News  Goudreau didn't respond to a follow-up message.

Mattos stayed in touch with the Venezuelans and became convinced that nothing was going to happen despite their repeated claims that weapons and U.S. reinforcements were on the way.

Now that two Americans are among the captured, Mattos said he believes Goudreau should turn himself into the Venezuelan government in exchange for their return. "There's a good chance that those guys are going to rot in prison because of what he did, and he wasn't even with them," Mattos said.

White said he, too, was stunned to learn that Goudreau had moved forward with the plan. He's also worried about the fate of Denman and Berry, both of whom he served alongside.

As for the idea to stock American schools with former Special Forces operators? "I still believe in the cause," White said.
Coinstar, the coin counting kiosk maker hosting 3,500 Coinme bitcoin ATMs, is looking to double its cash-for-bitcoin capable supermarket machines.

The doubling would happen within a year, Vice President of Product Michael Jack told CoinDesk. He said Coinme bitcoin ATM growth both on a per location and overall basis, has been very strong.

The company already has plans to plug Coinmes exchange API into more kiosks, though Jack did not specify how soon this would happen. Coinstar has a global fleet of nearly 20,000 kiosks, according to its website.

Related: Tradeshift Proposes Plan to Protect Denmarks Supply Chains From COVID-19 Crisis

The deliberations come as Coinme lays claim to a veritable accomplishment of the COVID-19 era: Its bringing in new customers, even while other businesses flounder. Coinme CEO Neil Bergquist told CoinDesk that 40% of transactions since late February are by first-timers.

One reason for the surge may be the placement of Coinme bitcoin ATMs almost exclusively in supermarkets and pharmacies, just about the only brick-and-mortar establishments that remained open to consumer foot traffic through COVID-19 lockdowns.

Read more: Bitcoin ATMs Expand Despite Shelter-in-Place Rules

That twist of fate let Coinme provide uninterrupted access to customers, Bergquist said.

Related: As Pandemic Decimates Startups, Privacy Industry Holds Strong

As panicking shoppers flocked to grocery stores in mid-March on lockdown supply runs, some were apparently also bulking up on crypto: Bitcoin transaction volume at Coinme kiosks is up 40% since late February.

Coinme also saw a slight uptick in $1,200 transactions  the same dollar amount as coronavirus stimulus checks sent to Americans by the Treasury Dept.  although were not seeing a strong correlation, Bergquist said.

The recent increase in sales certainly helped remove any concerns around company performance and durability during the pandemic, Bergquist said.

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Cash injection

The news immediately follows Coinmes Thursday announcement that it had raised $10 million in Series A funding from Coinstar, Blockchain.com Ventures, Hard Yaka, Nima Capital and Pantera Capital, who led the ongoing round with $5.5 million. Pantera now controls a seat on the Coinme board of directors.

Even before the spike, Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit said his VC firm likes Coinmes boots on the ground business model. He said it appeals to consumers curious about bitcoin and who are certainly familiar with the concept of ATMs but perhaps not ready to open an account with an online exchange.

People arent there yet in terms of education, people arent there in terms of technology, he said. This is the way to get the mainstream user, the general public, the folks that are going to grocery stores to buy bitcoin.

Bergquist said Coinme would use the cash to expand its business in Latin America. Because it builds an exchange API rather than an actual machines, Coinme can plug bitcoin buying into just about any compatible device: kiosks, ATMs, [Point of Sale], and merchants in Latin American countries, Bergquist said.

They want to be the backend, they want to be the pipes to make money move around the world in a much more seamless way, said Veradittakit.



CORRECTION (8 May 15:17 UTC): A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Michael Jack was President of Product Management and that Coinstar would roll out new machines that feature Coinme. Coinstar is updating its existing fleet.

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BOSTON, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Akshaya Patra Foundation held its Boston Virtual Gala on Sunday, May 3, to raise funds for feeding migrant families in India. The organization has served 40 million meals to migrant workers since India's lockdown began and feeds 1.8 million Indian children every day during the school year. Over 1,000 businesses, non-profits, government officials, and philanthropic leaders from around the world attended and supported the organization's dual mission of addressing childhood hunger and promoting education for underserved children in India.

Rawal presented a beautiful poem by prominent Indian Hindi and Urdu poet Nida Fazli that portrayed the simple joys of a child going to school each morning.

The gala keynote speaker Prof. Ashish Jha from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, a much sought-after global expert on COVID-19, spoke about the short- and long-term implications of COVID-19 and how the world can mitigate some of those devastating effects. Prof. Jha pointed to the underestimation of people infected and deaths globally, noting that the pandemic will continue until the world has a vaccine, estimated to be in about 12-18 months, or develops herd immunity. Prof. Jha spoke eloquently about the power everyone has in creating a future that will help children and families in India and urged attendees to support Akshaya Patra as it continues to meet two essential needs for children: food and education.

Prof. Kash Rangan, who teaches social enterprise and business at Harvard Business School and is a long-time supporter of Akshaya Patra, shared his views on the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as the invisible pandemics that afflict humans globally. These pandemics have a ripple effect and cause devastation to basic needs. Organizations like Akshaya Patra are working hard to meet those basic needs, particularly food needs. Prof. Rangan stressed the necessity for humanity to collaborate in uncertain times and empower Akshaya Patra to scale up to serving five million meals every day.

The gala also showcased Paresh Rawal, a celebrated Indian actor who is a proud supporter of Akshaya Patra, with a surprise visit from his wife Swaroop Sampat. Rawal presented a beautiful poem by prominent Indian Hindi and Urdu poet Nida Fazli that portrayed the simple joys of a child going to school each morning.

The Bollywood-themed evening celebrated the beneficiaries, chapter teams, and volunteers who continue to work to alleviate classroom hunger. The evening was made possible by sponsors and supporters who donated their time and funds to help the cause and can be found online. Additionally, donors are graciously matching donations up to $150,000 for COVID-19 relief and alleviating classroom hunger. Further information can be found on the website.

Established in 2000, Akshaya Patra is the largest NGO-run school meal program in the world, according to Time Magazine, and serves 1.8 million children daily in over 19,257 schools through 55 kitchens in 12 states and two Union Territories in India. It costs only $20 to feed a child for an entire school year.

Contact: Ankita Narula, [email protected]

Related Images

actor-paresh-rawal-surprised.png

Actor Paresh Rawal Surprised Attendees

Rawal presented a beautiful poem by prominent Indian Hindi and Urdu poet Nida Fazli that portrayed the simple joys of a child going to school each morning.

Related Links

Akshaya Patra Foundation USA

SOURCE Akshaya Patra Foundation USA

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https://foodforeducation.org


THE Department of Health (DOH) is keeping a close eye on the increasing number of Covid-19 cases in Cebu.

Edsel Salvana, head of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) Technical Advisory Group said they have noticed a clustering of cases in Cebu.

We are also seeing outbreaks in Cebu. What has been causing the recent increase in the number of cases (nationwide) are those in Cebu, said Salvana.

DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire cited the improving testing capacity in the province as among the reasons for the increase in cases.

The testing capacity of Cebu has increased tremendously. When testing started at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, its capacity was just 90 tests per day. Now, they are doing an average of 550 to 600 tests per day. So they have already increased their capacity, said Vergeire.

As of 4 p.m. Friday, May 8, the DOH reported 120 additional patients who have contracted the novel coronavirus, or Sars-CoV-2, which causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

This brought the total infections in the country to 10,463.

Eleven additional mortalities were also recorded, bringing the death toll to 696, while 116 patients have recovered bringing the number of recoveries to 1,734.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia reported three more Covid-19 cases in the province on Friday.

Of the new cases, two are from Talisay, while one is from Madridejos, Bantayan Island.

One of Talisays two new cases, a 39-year-old man from Sitio Pagatpat, Barangay Dumlog, died before his test result could be released.

Talisay City Mayor Gerald Anthony Samsam Gullas Jr. said the mans only contacts were his wife and two sons who are now considered Persons Under Monitoring (PUMs).

Gullas said the PUMs are under home quarantine and are asymptomatic. They will be made to undergo a swab test.

Talisays second new case is a 61-year-old woman who lives in a subdivision in Barangay Cansojong.

She took a swab test in Cebu Doctors Hospital where she was admitted.

Story continues

Gullas said they had contacted her family members who will be made to take a swab test.

Gullas said upon investigation, it was learned that the patients family sold fish at the Pasil Fishport.

The fishport, located in Cebu City, is within close proximity to Barangay Suba where a community outbreak of Covid-19 has been reported.

The third new recorded case in the province is a woman from Barangay Pili, Madridejos who recently gave birth.

Garcia said the asymptomatic patient is now quarantined at the newly-opened Covid-19 Center at the old Sacred Heart School campus along General Maxilom Ave., Cebu City.

Cebu province now has a total of 39 Covid-19 cases, excluding those from the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu which have started implementing a mass rapid antibody test program. (ANV, JCT, Jove T. Moya with HDT/SunStar Philippines)
The latest Kmart gadget Australian shoppers are going crazy for is the $49 Toaster and Egg Cooker - which sold out in minutes after its first release.

The two-in-one appliance operates as a regular toaster but has a built-in egg attachment on the side to allow for quick and easy cooking.

The device features multiple functions that allows the user to cook toast and eggs simultaneously or separately if desired.

The unique design also provides the option to cook eggs in three different ways: boiled, poached or sunny-side up.

The toaster itself also includes a variable browning control setting consisting of five different levels, similarly to a normal toaster.

The latest gadget Australian shoppers are going crazy for is the $49 Toaster and Egg Cooker - which sold out in minutes across selected stores after its first release (pictured)

The product is a copy-cat design of Tefal's popular Toast 'n' Egg maker, which retails for $79 though is currently unavailable to purchase (pictured)

Functions of the new Kmart Toaster and Egg Cooker Egg function Toast function Egg and toast function Cancel button Toaster browning settings Advertisement

The product is a copy-cat design of Tefal's popular Toast 'n' Egg maker, which retails for $79 though is currently unavailable to purchase.

Due to the product's popularity, Kmart stores have restocked the appliance for customers to purchase both in store and online.

On Facebook food enthusiasts discussed whether the product is worth buying and whether the functionality operates well.

On the Foodie Mumma Ren Facebook community page, one woman said: 'I have had one before they are great - not getting a frypan dirty for one egg.'

'I have one and love it,' another added, a third said: 'This could be a game changer.'
ROADRUNNERS YOU

SHOULD KNOW



MAY 8, 2020  Like many communities, San Antonio has faced troubling times in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Charitable organizations such as the San Antonio Food Bank now face food shortages that hinder its mission to feed those in the local community who need it most.

After seeing reports of 10,000 people waiting at the food distribution center, one thoughtful Roadrunner decided to take action. Ambika Mathur, vice provost and dean of The Graduate School, and her husband donated $20,000 to the food bank to help operations continue during this time.

Our San Antonio community is a wonderful one, and now is the time to support those in need, said Mathur. My husband and I were inspired by UTSAs mission of community engagement to take action. As a community leader, it is crucial for the UTSA family to lend support to the Greater San Antonio area.

Our San Antonio community is a wonderful one, and now is the time to support those in need.

Mathur, who came to UTSA in 2019, is no stranger to community involvement and support. During her time at Wayne State University, where she served as dean of the Graduate School, she developed numerous programs to prepare students and postdoctoral trainees, including those who are underrepresented in their respective disciplines.

One noted program created by Mathur was the Postdoctoral to Faculty Transition Fellowship program, which prepared scholars for tenure-track faculty appointments at various institutions.

In addition, Mathur and her husband established the Ambika Mathur, Ph.D., and Deepak Kamat, M.D., Ph.D., Endowed Scholarship to support doctoral students in the Wayne State University Graduate School. This endowment helps ensure that the graduate program represents a wide range of students from varying economic, cultural, ethnic and intellectual perspectives.

Mathurs dedication to providing students with advanced career training to prepare them for organizational and community leadership lends itself to philanthropic leadership. This ethos echoes UTSAs mission and values, focusing on an emphasis of community engagement and building an environment of integrity.

Learn more about Ambika Mathur.

Explore The Graduate School at UTSA.

At this time our community must band together to get back on track, Mathur added. I challenge every Roadrunner to contribute what they can to help feed our local citizens who are struggling. It is so important for us to unite and provide whatever assistance we can.

To participate in Mathurs challenge, visit the San Antonio Food Bank online to make a donation or discover other ways to get involved.
There was confusion on Friday over the Covid-19 death numbers in the Capital, with doctors from at least two centres designated to fight the deadly pathogen suggesting more people succumbed to the disease than was being reflected in the daily bulletins put out by the state government.

It was not immediately clear if such a discrepancy existed, and if it did, what was behind it -- poor data collection, tabulation, accounting, or simply a delay between a death and its announcement. The Delhi government denied any underreporting, but some officials indicated that there is a lag between when deaths take place and when they are reported.

The possible discrepancy in numbers was first highlighted in a news report on Friday in The National Herald, the Congress partys paper.

On Thursday, the Delhi governments daily bulletin put the total deaths caused by Covid-19 at 66. Of these, 53 were listed from 10 Covid-19 hospitals -- it gave a table for the number of deaths at each of these -- and the remaining 13 deaths were reported from other hospitals.

But the number of deaths at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) did not appear to match what the Thursday bulletin listed. According to the bulletin, two people died of Covid-19 at AIIMS (Delhi and Jhajjar). When the hospitals medical superintendent was asked for a status check of the facility, he indicated that the statistics were different. There are 417 patients with Covid-19 admitted to the two centres right now, but since we opened up our centres for Covid-19 patients, we have treated a total of 707 people. And 14 people have died so far at both the centres, Dr DK Sharma said on Friday afternoon.

That suggested discrepancy of 12 between the two death numbers.

Over at Lok Nayak hospital -- the largest of the dedicated Covid-19 facilities in the Capital -- two doctors working in the Covid ward said on condition of anonymity on Friday that over 40 people have died in the hospital, which admits only patients afflicted with the coronavirus diseases, over the past few weeks. When contacted, the hospitals medical director declined to give a definitive figure. We are reviewing and reanalysing our death data. I will be able to comment on it only after a couple of days, Dr JC Passey told HT.

The Delhi bulletin on Thursday put the total deaths at Lok Nayak hospital as five.

Death numbers are critical in analysing the spread of the disease and its impact. With only 66 listed deaths out of 5,980 infections in the Capital until Thursday, the fatality rate in Delhi of 1.1% is among the best in the country. With 1,931 (32%) patients now cured, the recovery rate is also more than almost three percentage points better than the national average.

Any anomaly in the numbers, however, could severely hamper the citys fight against Covid-19 because all projections on infrastructure required to fight the disease going forward are based on these calculations.

When asked about the discrepancy, Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said the hospitals have now been asked to submit their reports in a timely manner. There is no question of hiding any data. If the Delhi government had to hide data, it would not have also released yesterdays (Thursday) number of fresh Covid-19 cases which was an all-time high at 448. We would have told there were only 48 new cases, but we did not. Once the reports come, the hospitals have to inform the government immediately, Jain told reporters on Friday.

The minister also said that the Delhi government has ordered all testing labs to give results within 24 hours of collecting the samples so that there can be better accounting. Orders were issued on Wednesday that all tests results will have to come in 24 hours. For any result which comes beyond 48 hours, penal action will be taken. This decision was taken because some labs are taking 10-15 days to release the results of samples, Jain said.

Delhis secretary (health and family welfare) Padmini Singhla said it was not true that Covid-19 deaths in Delhi were being underreported. We have a dedicated death audit committee which audits every death. After ascertaining the causes of deaths, the committee accordingly gives its daily reports, she said.

According to a senior government official, who asked not to be named, the problem could be a delay in logging. All Covid-19 deaths in Delhi are vetted by a three-member death audit committee, which was set up on April 20 to examine the reported deaths from government and private hospitals.

The death audit committee goes through the patient case sheets, investigations, and death summary to include the death in the Covid-19 toll. The committee can report the cases as soon as all the relevant documents are received and this may take a while. Like for example, the one death reported yesterday was of a patient from May 1. So, yes, there is a lag but it is not deliberate underreporting, said a member of the death review committee on condition of anonymity.

Whatever the reason, experts said the need for quick and correct data could not be stressed enough.

It is shocking but not surprising. After all, there have been instances like cholera being reported as diarrhoea or chikungunya deaths not being reported at all. The problem is when the data is hidden deliberately; incompetence is still excusable. If it is deliberate, then we are in the same category as China. Using the death data to suggest the lockdown must be lifted is not correct either. The lockdown was put in place to flatten the curve, not to reduce the death rate. A low death rate is not an accurate measure of flattening of the curve, because it also depends on who got the infection. Low infection rate reflects the successful flattening of curve, said Dr Jacob John, professor emeritus and former head of department of virology at Christian Medical College, Vellore.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week, his first trip in about seven weeks as the coronavirus pandemic grounded the nation's top diplomat along with the rest of the world.

It will be a quick, controlled visit  with Pompeo's interactions limited to individuals who have been tested for the virus or screened for symptoms, a top State Department physician said in a briefing with reporters on Friday.

"This is a tightly controlled movement in a highly screened environment that we feel is very, very safe," said William Walters, the State Department's deputy chief medical officer for operations. He said everyone traveling with Pompeo will be tested a day or so before getting on the plane, and anyone he interacts with on the ground in Israel will be screened.

"The secretarys physician will be on hand at all times" and masks will be used in accordance with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendations, Walters said. He said Pompeo will hold his meetings and get right back on the plane to return to the U.S.

Pompeo plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Benny Gantz, a centrist rival, who is working to form an emergency coalition government with the conservative Netanyahu and is now speaker of the country's Parliament.

Israel has started to loosen its coronavirus restrictions in recent days amid a decline in new infections. The government has also launched a massive effort to test Israelis for antibodies to COVID-19, to measure what percentage of the population has been exposed to the virus and thus how vulnerable the country is to a second wave.

Overall, Israel has suffered a lower death rate than many other nations. The country of approximately 9 million people has reported 16,314 infections and 238 deaths to date, according to data from the World Health Organization.

But the situation is more worrisome in the West Bank, where many Palestinians live in overcrowded conditions and the health care system is weak. The United Nations relief agency for Palestine refugees has issued a global appeal for $93 million to address the situation, but the Trump administration cut off funding to that U.N. agency in 2018.

Story continues

The Trump administration has provided $5 million in international disaster assistance funds to another group doing COVID-19 response in the West Bank. Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker was non-committal when asked about the possibility of additional assistance for the Palestinians.

Pompeo's visit is likely to focus less on COVID-19 than on Israel's controversial plans to annex parts of the West Bank, land it seized in a 1967 war but that is claimed by the Palestinians. Palestinians view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, a position shared by many other countries and world leaders.

In a reversal of longstanding U.S. policy, the Trump administration said last year that it no longer considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law.

And President Donald Trump's much-touted peace plan  crafted by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser, and unveiled in January  recognizes Israeli sovereignty over major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Netanyahu has used the shifts in U.S. policy to move ahead with annexation plans this summer, even though they are deeply controversial among the Israel public and could end prospects for a two-state solution to the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to his residence in Jerusalem on March 21, 2019.

Asked about Netanyahu's plans during an April 22 press briefing, Pompeo said: "Thats an Israeli decision, and we will work closely with them to share with them our views of this in a private setting."

Pompeo's visit to Israel will be the first such diplomatic mission since Israel closed its borders in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to local Israeli media reports.

During a press briefing on Wednesday, Pompeo sounded eager to resume his busy global travel schedule.

"Itll start off smaller, but were hoping to get back at it, just like were hoping that we can get the economy back open not only here in the United States but all across the world as well," he told reporters.

Walters would not say if the Pompeo's trip required a special exemption from Israel's stay-at-home restrictions. But he said the visit had been coordinated with the Israeli government.

Pompeo's last international trip was at the end of March, when he traveled to Afghanistan amid concerns the US-negotiated peace deal with the Taliban was in jeopardy.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Mike Pompeo resumes diplomatic travel with trip to Israel
The Religious Sisters of Charity nuns are to transfer ownership of lands at St Vincents Hospital campus in Dublin which will allow for a new National Maternity Hospital to be built.

It follows controversy over plans to build the new hospital on church grounds due to fears over religious interference in womens health.

The nuns stepped down from the board of St Vincents Hospital Group in 2017 and agreed to hand over the lands pending the decision of the Holy See in the Vatican.

The order confirmed on Friday that it has received approval from the Holy See to transfer the ownership of the site worth 200 million euro.

In a statement, the Sisters of Charity said they hope that the transfer can now be concluded without undue delays.

Expand Close St Vincents University Hospital in south Dublin (Niall Carson/PA) PA / Facebook

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They said: Today marks the final movement towards completion of all legal, financial and regulatory matters involved in the transfer of the Sisters 186-year involvement in the hospital.

Health Minister Simon Harris thanked the Religious Sisters of Charity for an extraordinary contribution to gift the lands for the benefit of the Irish public.

He said: Since St Vincents Hospital first opened on St Stephens Green in 1835 with 12 patients, the Sisters have overseen the care of many millions of people. St Vincents University Hospital on Elm Park is now an academic teaching hospital of international renown and stands testament to the Sisters.

Todays announcement by the Sisters will remove any remaining concerns that a religious influence might be brought to bear on the governance of the new National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park.

In a statement, the National Maternity Hospital said the hospital that will now be built at the St Vincents Hospital campus at Elm Park will be a world-class facility.

It added: It is the most significant infrastructural development in the area of womens health since the foundation of the state. The enabling works for the project are close to completion and we look forward to the main build commencing without delay.

The National Maternity Hospital is hugely appreciative of the role played by the Sisters of Charity in healthcare in Ireland over two centuries, culminating in the release of these hugely valuable healthcare assets.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the case against General Michael Flynn. In the accompanying 20-page legal brief, the DOJ documented facts establishing that, even as the FBI and DOJ were relentlessly prosecuting Flynn, conniving with his attorneys, and forcing him into a guilty plea, they always knew they had no case against him. These facts, though, haven't stopped leftists from demanding that Judge Sullivan deny the motion.

Because the DOJ finally, reluctantly, produced illegally withheld exculpatory evidence, we have the rough outlines of what the FBI and DOJ did to Flynn. We know from the FBI's own documents that on or before January 4, 2017, the FBI decided to close its investigation into Flynn because there was no evidence that he had connived with Russia against American interests. Peter Strzok, however, worked with the "7th Floor" (i.e., FBI leadership) to keep the case alive. The FBI leadership team then strategized how to force Flynn to lie and how to avoid giving him legal notice that lying to the FBI is a criminal act that could lead to prosecution.

Still, despite this knowledge, it wasn't certain that Attorney General Barr's Department of Justice would act. It was a wonderful surprise when the Department of Justice filed its Government's Motion To Dismiss The Criminal Information Against the Defendant Michael T. Flynn (which you can view here). It's too long a document to allow for a full analysis in this post (you'll find that in other posts), but here's the general outline:

The DOJ moved to dismiss the entire case because prosecuting Flynn would not advance justice. The legal ground for the withdrawal was that Flynn's statement to the FBI, even it was false, was not material  and materiality is an essential element of the alleged offense.

What's fascinating is the statement of facts. The DOJ stitches together the past week's revelations. It explains to the court that the FBI opened the case because (1) Flynn was one of Trump's foreign policy advisers, (2) he had a publicly documented connection with Russian-affiliated entities, and (3) he had traveled to Russia once. (All legal activities.)

It took just four months for the FBI to conclude that Flynn had not done anything wrong. On January 4, the FBI issued a Closing Communication explaining that, without "derogatory" information, the case should close. However, the FBI's leadership, with Peter Strzok's help, moved quickly to keep the case open. The justification was that Flynn, as Trump's incoming national security adviser, had talked on the phone with thenRussian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The FBI had a transcript of the call, though, and knew that Flynn had said nothing wrong.

After Comey advised the DOJ's leadership about the call, senior officials at both the DOJ and the FBI urged him to let the incoming Trump administration know about the FBI's concerns. Comey relentlessly refused to talk to the Trump team, frustrating other officials. Instead, as Comey himself boasted, on January 24, 2017, just four days after Trump's inauguration, Comey took advantage of the White House's disorder to get to Flynn. Instead of going through White House counsel, which might have prevented the Flynn interview or warned Flynn about his rights, Comey had his agents contact Flynn directly to talk about the call with Kislyak.

Flynn readily agreed to the interview. He knew he had nothing to fear or hide because, as he said, "you [the FBI] listen to everything they [the Russians] say." During the interview, Flynn was relaxed and open. The agents failed to warn him that lying to them was a crime, but by the end of the interview, they didn't believe that Flynn had been lying, even though his memory was inaccurate in places. (The agents had the transcript, of course, which they never showed to Flynn.) Nevertheless, with Comey's pushing, Mueller's special counsel's office charged Flynn with a single count of making false statements.

It's a sordid tale in which out-of-control FBI management and vindictive special counsel are determined to destroy General Flynn. Trump's reaction was swift and on point: "They're scum, and I say it a lot. They're scum. They're human scum. This should never have happened in this country."

TRUMP ON DOJ DROPPING FLYNN CASE:



"What the Obama administration did, is unprecedented."



"I hope a lot of people will pay a big price because they are dishonest, crooked people."



"They're scum. They're human scum." pic.twitter.com/C4wN7tfcQp  Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 7, 2020

While people interested in the rule of law and justice rejoiced about the news, leftists were horrified. The fact that Mueller admitted that there was no Russian collusion has not affected their belief that collusion existed. Likewise, they're unimpressed with the FBI's documents and testimony revealing a conspiracy.

CNN legal and national security analyst Susan Hennessey set the tone for the left:

This moment represents the full collapse of an apolitical Justice Department. An astonishing assault on the rule of law and in a functional DOJ it would prompt mass resignation. https://t.co/SBa8Ubl5NN  Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) May 7, 2020

Anti-Trumpers followed her lead in lockstep, hoping Judge Sullivan would be their savior:

Flynn is guilty & should have been charged w treason. All the Deep State theories about @FBI cant erase the facts that Flynn contacted  on behalf of T to assure Vlad sanctions would be lifted. Hopefully Judge Sullivan can put things right. Yates warned T too. https://t.co/ZbQoM4gjBu  Principessa Sandra (@bobswife64) May 8, 2020

Under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a government motion to dismiss an indictmenteven after a guilty plearequires leave of court.https://t.co/V9V6GxHZ9f



That leave may well be forthcoming, but its up to Judge Sullivan, not DOJand is not automatic. pic.twitter.com/rTZwShgIpT  Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) May 7, 2020

Judge Sullivan aint having none of this Barr crap. Hope he roasts them. Get yur popcorn ready. Flynn  John Forchione (@johnforchione) May 8, 2020

I hope Judge Sullivan has good security. He is the only federal justice member standing between Trump's dictatorship & the rule of law. Being serious. Trump's mob are dangerous. This is how tyrants take over. They use the chaos to destroy institutions. #resist  No WAYNE (@NoWAYNE3) May 8, 2020

General Flynn, meanwhile, had a much better response:
Myanmar & COVID-19 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to Host Homemade Cloth Mask Contest to Curb COVID-19 Spread in Myanmar

State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi sews her own cloth mask at home. / Daw Aung San Suu Kyi / Facebook

YANGONState Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will hold an online homemade cloth face mask-making contest, according to an announcement on her Facebook account on Thursday. The move is an apparent attempt to increase awareness of the importance of wearing masks when going outdoors to curb the spread of the coronavirus, after the governments initial appeals went largely unheeded.

The country detected its first COVID-19 case in late March. As of Thursday evening, Myanmar had 176 cases with six deaths. The government has been encouraging people to stay home as much as they can while urging them to wear face masks when they go out. Prior to the contest announcement, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said on Facebook that one of the most effective ways to prevent infection was to properly use a face mask. I am thinking about holding a mask-making contest to encourage people to use them, she said at the time.

Her announcement comes amid concerns that the Myanmar public is not sufficiently responding to the governments request that the public wear face masks, partly out of ignorance and partly due to the prohibitive cost of surgical masks for the poor. The price of such masks has risen nearly 10-fold due to the outbreak. Medical experts say that even though a face mask cant offer 100 percent protection from infection, it can offer some protection while preventing infected people from transmitting it to others.

The need to boost face mask wearing appears to have prompted the State Counselors announcement of a homemade cloth mask contest.

Within nine hours, her post received over 200,000 reactions and over 30,000 shares with a lot of positive comments.

In her post, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said, It is okay to use sewing machines or make it by hand but it must be self-made by the contestant.

Contestants can use their favorite colors and designs but have to sew the cloth face mask according to the instructions provided by the Ministry of Health and Sports.

According to the instructions, the cloth used must be cotton or linen and the mask must have two layers, each a different color. The mask must fit the wearer properly.

The contest will be held over three days starting on May 13.

This coming May 13, I will upload my own photo of myself wearing a cloth mask, sewn by myself. Then, contestants can start commenting and posting their photos under my post until May 15, she wrote.

The three masks whose photos receive the most likes will be selected as the winners.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ended her post by inviting everyone to participate in the contest.

On April 9, the State Counselor posted photos showing her sewing her own cloth mask. Many people were inspired to start making their own at home and to start using masks. However, some people still do not wear masks when going outside.

Hope more people are wearing masks when they go outside by making this kind of campaign. Wearing a mask is not for style and its nothing to be ashamed of, one person wrote in a comment under Daw Aung San Suu Kyis post.

Another comment said, Our country is still not used to wearing masks when going outside. So, this kind of campaign to spread awareness by using social media is needed.

Some people continue to question the extent to which a cloth mask can actually keep you safe, however.

Theres no exact answer for how the virus is transmitted between people. Some say cloth masks cant protect you from the virus but wearing one is better than nothing, said Dr Naing Oo Khin, project manager (access to health) at Alliance Myanmars sub-office in Mohnyin Township, Kachin State.

He supported Daw Aung San Suu Kyis cloth mask contest and thanked her for considering the basic needs of people and encouraging them with her activities.

As you know, surgical mask prices are expensive for those who have low incomes and this kind of knowledgethat they can sew their own masks at homeis needed, but it has to be sewn correctly, he told The Irrawaddy.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyis post didnt mention what prizes would be offered to the winners.

You may also like these stories:

Military, Govt and Private Medics Staff Makeshift COVID-19 Hospital in Myanmar

Health Certificates Required to Enter Mandalay Religious Sites as Myanmar Struggles With COVID-19

Myanmar Pastors Face Prosecution for Defying Ban on Religious Gatherings Amid COVID-19
A Colombian national under U.S. sanctions for his ties to Nicolas Maduro is helping the regime in Venezuela with a gold-for-oil products scheme with Iran, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing seven sources with knowledge of the matter.

According to some of the sources, Alex Nain Saab Moran  sanctioned by the U.S. for orchestrating a corruption network in Venezuela from which Maduros regime has profited  has recently traveled to Irans capital Tehran with executives of Venezuelas state oil firm PDVSA as part of a deal in which Iran is sending gasoline additives and parts for refineries in exchange for gold from Venezuela.

A Miami-based lawyer for Saab, Maria Dominguez, denied any participation of her client in any such events in a message to Bloomberg.

Last July, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Alex Saab over a corruption scheme that has enabled Maduro and his regime to profit from food imports and distribution in Venezuela, at the expense of starving Venezuelan people in the horrific economic crisis.

Alex Saab engaged with Maduro insiders to run a wide scale corruption network they callously used to exploit Venezuelas starving population. Treasury is targeting those behind Maduros sophisticated corruption schemes, as well as the global network of shell companies that profit from the former regimes military-controlled food distribution program, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in July.

Last week, U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said that Maduros regime in Venezuela is paying Iran in gold for help with Venezuelas crumbling oil industry.

Those planes that are coming in from Iran that are bringing things for the oil industry are returning with the payments for those things: gold, Abrams said in conversation at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

In April alone, Venezuela loaded 9 tons of gold, worth around US$500 million, on airplanes for Iran, in exchange for Iranian help for repairing Venezuelas crumbling refineries, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg last week.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The US is working to temporarily ban the issuance of some work-based visas like H-1B, popular among highly-skilled Indian IT professionals, as well as students visas and work authorisation that accompanies them, amidst the high level of unemployment due to the coronavirus, according to a media report on Friday.

The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers from countries like India and China in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

Nearly 500,000 migrant workers are employed in the US in the H-1B status.

"The president's immigration advisers are drawing up plans for a coming executive order, expected this month, that would ban the issuance of some new temporary, work-based visas," The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

"The order is expected to focus on visa categories including H-1B, designed for highly skilled workers, and H-2B, for seasonal migrant workers, as well as student visas and the work authorization that accompanies them, it said.

More than 33 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last two months due to the coronavirus pandemic that has brought the US economy to a standstill.

The IMF and the World Bank have projected a negative growth rate for the country.

White House officials say that the US economy is likely to grow at negative 15 to 20 per cent in the second quarter.

The monthly jobs report on Friday said that the unemployment rate in the US for the month of April rose to 14.7 per cent.

This is the highest rate and the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series, seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

As such, the Trump administration, having temporarily closed borders and curtailed immigration in response to the coronavirus pandemic, is moving to expand those restrictions while the president's advisers push to leave them in place for months or even years to come, according to several people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Last month, President Donald Trump had signed an executive order temporarily barring new immigrants for 60 days, including family members of US citizens.

The coming changes, the administration has suggested, will build on this April action, the journal said.

Given the high level of unemployment and joblessness, according to the daily, senior administration officials are operating on the assumption that the public, during the pandemic, will be willing to accept new limits on immigration.

Though the scope of the order hasn't yet been decided, administration officials said it could range from suspensions of entire visa categories to the creation of incentives to hire Americans in industries hardest-hit by layoffs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Wall Street Journal report came a day after a group of four Republican Senators in a letter urged Trump to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and some of its categories, including the H-1B visa, for at least the next year or until unemployment figures return to normal levels in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Legendary musical producer, Samklef has stated that indigenous rapper, Eedris Abdulkarim deserves to be celebrated for his role in exposing Nigerian artists.

According to the Mo lo wo noni crooner, the popular rapper paid the price so that Nigerian artistes can be respected and paid well locally.

Read Also: Success Is The Impact You Have Made On Peoples Lives, Says Samklef

Samklef made this known via a tweet he sent out on his official Twitter handle on Thursday.

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He wrote, Lets not forget this great man (legend ) paid the price so that Nigeria artiste can be respected and paid well locally.
Photo credit: SAUL LOEB - Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

The Artemis Accords seek to make plans for nations to mine the moon.

This follows an April executive order where President Donald Trump laid out a moon-mining goal.

Is the U.S. seeking to use moon rules the way it uses eminent domain in U.S. territory?

President Donald Trump and his administration are moving ahead with plans to mine the moon for valuable regolith. The new Artemis Accords, linked ideologically with NASAs Artemis program, are a U.S.-led international agreement about using the moon for materials.

Reuters reports the Artemis Accords are meant to help cement both Americas plans to put a station on the moon and the role space travel will play in international diplomacy in the near and far futures. This isnt just an agreement about miningits a proposed strategy for establishing neutral zones the administration says will prevent diplomatic and commercial disagreements.

The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around NASAs plan to put humans and space stations on the moon within the next decade, and comes as the civilian space agency plays a growing role in implementing American foreign policy.

The U.S. hasnt yet shared the Artemis Accords with its like-minded lunar-mining international allies, including Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and European countries, Reuters reports. (Russia wont be involved as an early partner; the Pentagon increasingly views Moscow as hostile for making 'threatening' satellite maneuvers toward U.S. spy satellites in Earth orbit, sources told Reuters.)

The overall mindset of mining and occupying the moon may seem like a contradiction to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that the U.S. and most other countries have signed. The U.S. has tried to get ahead of that criticism by claiming, basically like tenants for thousands of years, that the country isnt planning to damage or take ownership of the underlying structure.

The idea is if you are going to be coming near someones operations, and theyve declared safety zones around it, then you need to reach out to them in advance, consult and figure out how you can do that safely for everyone, an anonymous source told Reuters. This isnt some territorial claim.

Story continues

How do you mine the moon without losing the Outer Space Treaty equivalent of your security deposit? It does seem like digging enormous holes in order to extract materials is a form of land occupation. But within the U.S., eminent domain already allows the government to take private property and convert it into public use, Cornell Law School explains on its website, in a process also called condemnation.

Indeed, if the U.S. can pull off extreme land usage without the international legal implication of true ownership, thats a real lunar hat trick. Since no one can own the moon according to the treaty, no one specific owner country can contest usage. By presenting the Artemis Accord ahead of time, the government can try to shore up a grey area it wants to stay in. And thats not inherently a good or bad thingits just one strategy for approaching an issue the world will have to grapple with as technology continues to develop.

Before now, the U.S. has primarily issued policies that apply to U.S. citizens and companies only. If the moon follows policies that exist for Antarctica, nations could divide the moon into different territorial claims. Kim Stanley Robinsons 2018 novel Red Moon posits a multi-owner moon where Chinese and American bases must coexist, if uneasily.

Indeed, neutral zones do seem like the forerunners to territory claims. But well see in about 10 or 20 years.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced many people to put their lives into perspective. Just a few weeks ago, we were going about our lives in an era with the highest ever standard of living in history. Things were so good in America we had hypothetical crises.

Both during and after her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton often spoke about the likelihood of President Trump starting a nuclear war if elected. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was warning that the world would end in 12 years if climate change isnt addressed. She even went as far to say, This is the war  this is our World War II.

Now, unfortunately, we dont have to imagine what a real crisis looks like.

The coronavirus crisis presents unprecedented challenges to our public health system, devastating our economy, and completely halting our way of being. This outbreak has forced America to put its manufactured crises aside. Our society has fallen back on its most basic functions that are often taken for granted and, hopefully, gained a new appreciation for them.

Energy has always played an indispensable role in our lives, but its come under the spotlight as it helps fuel our coronavirus relief efforts. This industry is powering ventilators and other vital hospital supplies; fueling the vehicles that deliver those health care supplies and the goods of businesses trying to stay afloat; and allowing the simple necessities of turning on your lights and TV.

It has never been more important that America has energy.

Recently AOC made the mistake of a rookie politician: she was too honest. In a now deleted tweet, she rejoiced at the collapse of the energy industry saying you absolutely love to see it. Millions losing their jobs would argue otherwisebut that isnt her point. AOC thinks the end of the fossil fuel industry will hasten some green future.

The inadequacy of green technology (and it is completely undable to power our nation) is the subject for another article. But imagine this: what if, in addition to the coronavirus crisis, our electric grid was failing? What if our gas lines were as severe as our food lines? What if on top of death from the virus there was a spike in deaths from extreme cold or heat? AOC would be the first to summon people to the hallowed halls of Congress for the all important hearing. There would be admonitions and accusations and lots and lots of haughty sanctimony.

But that didnt happen because energy workers are still doing their job. And weve barely even noticed. Sure, when theres no flour at the market it makes the news. Imagine families in the dark and cold.

Sometimes we dont notice how good life is until theres a disruption.

In the face of a real crisis, stripped of our usual level of comfort, society has subconsciously embraced the truth that we need fossil fuels. Activists no longer have the time to seek out problems and make unproven accusations, or the emotional bandwidth to spin those baseless problems into a crisis. Like the rest of us, they only want an energy supply that will power Americas hospitals and enable employees to continue working from home.

Americans have united around efforts to produce as much personal protective equipment (PPE) as possible and any kind of medicine that may be able to keep us healthy. Its no longer a concern where these products come from or how they are made. There are no protests over the fact that fossil fuels are the foundation for 80% to 90% of the pharmaceuticals we use, or that many of the surgical masks and PPE being created are made from them as well. The usual calls for renewable energy have also fallen silent  theres no denying the need for fossil fuels, which generates 63% of Americas electricity, when lives immediately depend on it.

Its hard to imagine what America would do in response to the coronavirus without the power supplied by our energy industry. But, if the calls of many on the left to ban fossil fuels came to fruition, thats the reality we would currently be facing. Fortunately, President Trump has spent his time in office encouraging the natural gas and oil industry.

When America returns to normalcy and its usual level of comfort, its important that we maintain our current level of appreciation for the energy industry. Right now, whether everyone is aware of it or not, we are united in cheering for its success. Not only does the industry provide millions of jobs, billions in revenue, and geopolitical leverage, but it is now helping fuel our response to a global pandemic. Hopefully, as a culture, we remember this contribution and dont return to using the natural gas and oil industry as a substitute threat to society when we lack a real, common enemy.

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 22:09:16|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- German exports fell by 11.8 percent within a month to a total of 108.9 billion euros (117.9 billion U.S. dollars) in March, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Friday.

It was the "strongest month-on-month decline after calendar and seasonal adjustment since the beginning of the time series in August 1990," Destatis noted.

Compared to last year, exports declined by 7.9 percent while imports were down 4.5 percent year-on-year, amounting to 91.6 billion euros, according to Destatis.

"It is striking that imports were relatively resilient," Axel Lindner, deputy head of the department of macroeconomics at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), told Xinhua.

German exports to third countries within the European Union (EU) fell by 11 percent while imports from those countries decreased by 8 percent year-on-year. Destatis noted that the coronavirus pandemic had caused a "strong decrease in trade with the EU."

For the entire first quarter, German exports fell by 3.3 percent to 324.9 billion euros year-on-year and total imports fell by 2.9 percent to 273.1 billion euros.

"In Germany, restrictions by the government have affected production and daily life to a lesser extent than in the other large euro area countries such as France, Italy and Spain," said Lindner, adding that the contraction of exports was mainly due to a "slump of external demand." Enditem
Early Voting in Belarus Presidential Election to Be Held on August 4-8 - CEC

MINSK, May 8 (Sputnik) The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Belarus said on Friday that the early voting in the country's presidential election would take place from August 4-8, while results should be ready by August 19.

The head of the commission, Lidia Yermoshina, invited the lawmakers at their extraordinary session earlier in the day to choose August 9 as the date of the vote. The Belarusian lower house supported this offer and scheduled the presidential election for August 9. The commission posted on its website a schedule of events to prepare for the election.

"Organization of early voting [that will take place] from August 4 to August 8, 2020 inclusively," the schedule said.
Social stigma and low testing are the key reasons for the high mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in West Bengal, where the disease, like elsewhere in the country, is still an urban phenomenon, experts say.

The state's TMC government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under- reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

As of May 7, the state has reported 1,548 COVID-19 cases and 151 deaths of people infected with the deadly virus.

However, the state's public health authorities have attributed only 79 fatalities to the contagion and the rest to concurrent illnesses called comorbidities in medical jargon.

The centre recently rapped the state government over its COVID-19 management which, it said, was characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent, the highest in the country.

West Bengal, which had tested just about 4,400 samples by April 18 at a rate of 400 samples per day, is now testing more than 2,500 samples a day. The aggregate now stands at more than 30,000, according to state officials.

Experts in the field say given the fact that most cases were reported from Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas, the disease is still an urban phenomenon" but will spread to rural areas also sooner or later.

According to public health experts and medical practitioners in the frontline of the fight against the disease, not just the low number of tests but the social stigma and ostracism faced by patients and their families are acting as a deterrent to effective tackling of the pandemic.

Social stigma is a major issue in identifying a COVID patient. Since the spurt in the number of cases, people have stopped coming to hospital fearing social stigma and public shaming in their locality and instead prefer to stay home. And when they do turn up, its too late, professor and senior surgeon at SSKM hospital Diptendra Sarkar told PTI.

"The stigma associated with this disease needs to be addressed so that more people come forward for tests, he said.

Manas Gumta, a senior surgeon and general secretary of Association of Health Service Doctors, shared Sarkar's view and said it is the responsibility of the state government to chalk out a roadmap to remove the social slur associated with the disease.

"The government needs to engage social groups and NGOs to address the problem of social stigma. It is indeed a reason behind fewer people coming forward for tests," he said.

Gumta said the number of tests being performed now are still less than what has been recommended by ICMR. The numbers need to be increased substantially and also the testing facilities, he said.

While decoding the arithmetic behind the higher mortality rate, he said the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients in most countries was 2-3 per cent, but in Bengal it was so high due to fewer tests being conducted since the onset of the disease.

For example, if you test 20 people and 10 are found positive while two of those who test positive pass away then your mortality rate is 20 per cent. But, if you test 50 people and 40 are found positive and two of them die, your mortality rate is 5 per cent.

"So the answer to decreasing the mortality rate lies in conducting more tests, random tests of asymptomatic patients and ramping up life support infrastructure at hospitals, he said.

West Bengal, despite the increase in the number of tests, lags far behind states like Maharashtra and Gujarat where the number of tests has crossed two lakh and one lakh respectively.

In most of the death cases, the patients arrived when it was too late. But if intensive and critical care facilities can be ramped up, many lives can be saved. We are a bit late but we are trying to catch up with other states in terms of testing and treatment, said another senior doctor of a COVID hospital who did not wish to be named.

West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay had recently attributed the low tests and high mortality rate to initial lack of testing laboratories. Only one COVID-19 testing laboratory was functioning in the initial days of the outbreak of the disease.

Today, we have 16 testing laboratories and a few others are in the pipeline. The more testing you do, the more people you treat and then the mortality rate will also be low.

"The mortality rate appeared high not because Bengal was failing but because (adequate) infrastructural facilities were not present, Bandopadhyay said.

The West Bengal government had alleged last month that the COVID-19 testing kits supplied by the Centre were far less in number as compared to other states and many were defective.

Meanwhile, some experts feel that though the disease has so far been limited to urban areas, it will spread to rural Bengal in the coming months.

It is true that the contagion is still an urban phenomenon but in months to come it will spread to other rural areas. In urban areas, the intensity of the spread is high because of high population density which is not the case in rural areas, senior doctor and internal medicine specialist Rahul Jain said.

Out of the 23 districts of the state seven predominantly rural districts have not reported a single COVID-19 case so far, according to state government data.

At least 80 per cent of the cases have been reported from the four red zones districts of Howrah, North 24 Parganas, East Medinipur and Kolkata, with the state capital having the highest number of containment zones and cases.

South 24 Parganas and Hooghly districts have also reported quite a few cases.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Global Hotels Will Lose Just 2 Percent of Supply Permanently Because of Coronavirus: Report

A hotels recovery path from the coronavirus downturn in travel will hedge partially on which country the property is located.

Many hotels around the world are temporarily closed due to travel restrictions and shelter-in-place orders aimed at halting the spread of coronavirus. But countries like China are beginning to relax restrictions, and travel demand is beginning a long road to recovery. A Bernstein research report from late April estimates only 2 percent of the global hotel supply will permanently shut down due to the coronavirus crisis. Recovery is possible for the remaining supply through government assistance or lenient lenders.

In Europe, where you see more hotels closed at the moment, its more the lenders and landlords that need to play ball, Bernstein Senior Analyst Richard Clarke said. In the U.S., to stay open and operational, its banked more on government support.

Get the Latest on Coronavirus and the Travel Industry on Skifts Liveblog

As of April 27, IHG had 10 percent of its U.S. portfolio temporarily closed compared to 50 percent of its Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia (excluding China) portfolio closed. About 16 percent of the U.S. hotel supply had suspended operations at the end of the first quarter due to declines in revenue per room and occupancy, according to CBRE. Clarke thinks that number should be higher.

I think the government support, especially for small business owners, is absolutely fundamental, he added. I think theyre only able to stay open because theyre able to pass a substantial cost on to the government.

Hoteliers able to access funds through the Paycheck Protection Program under the $2 trillion coronavirus relief fund are in a better position to weather the downturn in travel. Branded hotels that typically need between a 30 and 40 percent occupancy rate to break even on operational costs and debt service obligations could lower the breakeven threshold to between 6 and 15 percent with PPP funds that largely cover payroll expenses, according to the Bernstein report. There are still industry calls for further government relief due to a limited number of operators being able to access the funds.

Story continues

When European hoteliers reopen properties, they might need to rely on flexibility from lenders to relax payment schedules on mortgages until occupancy and revenue per room return to levels high enough to satisfy operational costs and debt service obligations. In the U.S., operators taking government funds have no choice but to keep the lights on no matter how many people are checking in.

To qualify for PPP, you have to employ people and pay them, CBRE Director of Research Information Services Robert Mandelbaum said. Thats sustaining some operations that would have otherwise closed.

A Significant (and Optimistic) Bounce Back

While PPP loans help hoteliers keep properties open in the U.S., government assistance programs elsewhere in the world still offer a boost to the travel industry.

The UK government granted retail and hospitality companies a 12-month business rates, a commercial property tax, holiday and access to about $407 million in loans. France offered some corporate income tax deferrals. Chinese cities are offering travel vouchers and subsidizing hotels to offer special room rates, according to a Horwath HTL report.

Citing STR data on 2021 supply forecasts, Bernstein estimates 2 percent of all hotels will permanently close as a result of the crisis. The figure may seem low given how the hotel industry hit single-digit occupancy rates in many markets and averaged a 2 percent loss in March  with April performance expected to fare even worse. But central government and lender assistance and flexibility around the world is expected to keep supply largely intact into recovery.

After the 2008 financial crisis, there was a net closure of around 1 percent of UK hotels, Clarke said. The group of primarily independent operators decided it wasnt worth waiting for a recovery while bigger brands rode out the downturn. This time around, the all-encompassing drag on the economy will likely keep properties afloat since there arent better opportunities readily available.

From an owners point of view, if theres no good alternative use for a property, lenders will generally support them because banks in general dont want to have to take over all these hotels, Clarke said. Especially when property prices are low and there are no alternative uses going around, theyll try to support the hotelier. Even in an extreme case, the lender will take over and keep it open. Its much more valuable as an open entity than a closed shell on the side of a highway.

Subscribe to Skift newsletters for essential news about the business of travel.
The Lagos State Ministry of Health, LSMOH, has dismissed reports making the rounds on the social media that the state health commissioner, Prof. Akin Abayomi has tested positive to COVID-19.

In a press statement signed by the Ministrys Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Tunbosun Ogunbanwo, the state government described the reports as fake news while urging the public to disregard the report.

We hereby urge the public to disregard this absolute falsehood and fabricated report in its entirety. This is the handwork of mischief makers who are out to create unnecessary panic and fear amongst the populace.

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Read Also: How I Was Treated Of COVID-19: Kano Professor

Prof Akin Abayomi is hale and hearty, in good health and has continued in his capacity as the Deputy Incident Commander of the #COVID19Lagos Intervention to coordinate activities and response in order to break the chain of transmission of the infection in Lagos.

The Ministry further implored citizens to rely only on the official and verified communication channels of the @followlasg and @LSMOH for #COVID19Lagos related news and information.

 Lets take responsibility by sharing only confirmed and verified reports, Ogunbanwo stated via Twitter.
By Online Desk

The nationwide tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases neared 60,000 on Saturday and the death toll topped the 1,90-mark after hundreds more tested positive for the deadly virus infection in several states, while worries mounted globally about re-emergence of the outbreak after reopening of locked down economies.

Adding to the concerns, the fresh cases included at least two foreign returnees who had reached Kerala on May 7 in two separate first-day flights -- one from Dubai and another from Abu Dhabi -- under a massive ongoing evacuation plan of the central government to bring back stranded Indians abroad.

While large numbers of cases continued to get detected in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Delhi, among other places, experts have warned the numbers may rise further in the coming days due to the ongoing movement of lakhs of migrant workers being facilitated by trains and buses to help them reach their native places and because of a large number of Indians stranded abroad, along with expatriates, being brought back in special flights.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the testing capacity for COVID-19 has been ramped up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of over 15 lakh tests have been conducted so far across hundreds of government and private labs.
Crude oil futures jumped to Rs 1,858 per barrel on May 8 as participants increased their long positions. Prices rose after Saudi Arabia raised crude oil prices for June delivery and US data showed weekly crude oil stockpiles rose less than expected.

The decline in dollar index and positive equity indices supported the positive trade in crude oil for the day, said Tapan Patel- Senior Analyst (Commodities), HDFC Securities. He added that rise in China oil imports also supported prices.

Investors and traders are weighing oversupply worries as storage spaces are filling fast globally. The output cut from OPEC+ nations and lifting of the lockdown in several nations may limit the downside in oil prices.

Crude oil prices traded steady on May 7 as Nymex WTI Crude oil traded near $24 on mixed global cues. Crude oil futures prices on the Multi Commodity Exchange for May gained more than 2 percent to Rs 1,846 per barrel in afternoon trade.

In the futures market, crude oil for May delivery touched an intraday high of Rs 1,906 and an intraday low of Rs 1,807 per barrel on MCX. So far in the current series, black gold has touched a low of Rs 796 and a high of Rs 3,905.

Crude oil for May delivery rose Rs 24, or 1.31 percent, to Rs 1,858 per barrel at 14:59 hours IST on a business turnover of 7,183 lots. The same for June delivery was up Rs 2, or 0.10 percent, to Rs 1,975 per barrel on a business volume of 1,050 lots.

The value of May and June contracts traded so far is Rs 1,152.83 crore and Rs 24.61 crore, respectively.

Patel expect oil prices to face resistance near $27 and support at $22. "MCX May Crude Oil futures has support at Rs 1,700 and resistance at Rs 1,950."

West Texas Intermediate crude gained 3.57 percent at $24.39 per barrel, while Brent crude, the London-based international benchmark, rose 2.14 percent to $30.09 per barrel.
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On Thursday, Gov. Kate Brown unveiled a detailed plan to begin slowly reopening Oregon.

As of May 14, Brown added four types of businesses that may reopen as long as they follow social distancing and safety guidelines in place for other retailers that have operated through the stay-home order. The new businesses are furniture stores, art galleries, jewelry shops and boutiques.

The governor also outlined how Oregons 36 counties can work toward the first step in reopening. County officials can apply to enter into Phase 1, showing they have achieved a number of requirements including declining levels of COVID-19 hospital admissions over a 14-day period; minimum levels of testing and contact tracing capacity; and adequate hospital surge capacity, quarantine facilities and personal protection equipment.

Counties may receive approval as early as May 15. Once they do, certain businesses within the county  including restaurants and bars, outdoor recreation and personal service providers -- can open if they meet safety requirements.

Here are the highlights from Thursdays announcement:

So were open for business, right? Not quite yet. County officials can apply to enter into Phase 1, showing they have achieved a number of requirements including declining levels of COVID-19 hospital admissions over a 14-day period; minimum levels of testing and contact tracing capacity; and adequate hospital surge capacity, quarantine facilities and personal protection equipment. If counties are approved by the state, some businesses will be able to reopen. If businesses open before theyre allowed, penalties remain a possibility.

Its not time to visit grandma: The governor continued to ask Oregonians to stay home if possible, especially if they are sick. And people age 60 and over who at risk for severe complications from COVID-19 should stay home even if they feel fine. The governor encouraged people to wear face masks when out in public and to keep six feet of distance between themselves and people outside of their household.

Large gatherings still banned: While Phase 1 will allow a variety of businesses to operate with modifications, it will not open the door to big events until there is a novel coronavirus vaccination. Brown said events including festivals, fairs, concerts and games with audiences must be canceled  or significantly modified  through the month of September.

Church services remain limited: Brown has allowed  though discouraged -- gatherings of fewer than 25 people as long as they stay six feet apart. That guideline remains the same, and now some churches are making plans to reopen, notably the Archdiocese of Portland that will offer masses for small groups of parishioners starting this weekend.

Still no word on schools: Brown said she is still meeting with education officials and did not offer specific guidance Thursday about how the order will affect summer school or classes in the fall. State officials have said they will offer guidance soon for other childcare facilities and summer programs, including daytime and overnight camps.

Can we travel? No. Brown encouraged Oregonians to stay close to home. Her new guidance asks people to continue avoiding overnight and non-essential trips, including recreational day trips to destinations outside of their community.

MORE ON OREGON REOPENING:

Guidance on: retail | restaurants and bars | salons and personal services | outdoor recreation | sporting events | large gatherings, including concerts and festivals
A man with a history of drug activity is behind bars Friday after deputies say they found a stash of narcotics with an estimated street value of $12,000 inside his home.

Mark K. Kirk, 58, of Catlettsburg is now in the Boyd County Detention Center.

After a number of complaints from neighbors, on May 7 deputies executed a search warrant at Kirks home at 3620 Park Street in Catlettsburg.

Inside they found 40 grams of heroin, 50 grams of Crystal Methamphetamine, $5,300 in cash, digital scales, drugs packaging materials, drug ledgers as well as a loaded handgun.

Kirk was arrested for trafficking heroin and methamphetamine. Deputies say he was also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Keep checking the WSAZ app for the latest information.
studioportosabbia/iStockBy ERIC MOLLO, ABC News



(NEW YORK)  Spring is a busy time of year for the floral industry with proms, weddings, and other ceremonies and events, all of which lead to huge demand for florists and flower shops.



Small flower businesses have been dealt a blow with cancellations as a result of the coronavirus, but with Mother's Day weekend here, demand is once again blooming. Those businesses are experimenting with new ways to make money while working with a limited staff.



Luke Franco operates Tiny Hearts Farm with his wife Jenny Elliot in Copake, New York. He tells ABC News' "Perspective" podcast that within seven-to-ten days, he and his wife had to furlough their small staff and did not know how to continue operating.



"Everything started to fall like dominoes. We did a big plant sale and we had to cancel that. We did some sort of open air markets that were just canceled outright. I don't know how to say... it was pretty unnerving. At the time, we went through a little bit of a dark period where we just said, "Oh my God!"



Luke says his farm is adjusting to meet consumer demand:



"We were able to pivot pretty fast and were able to open up an online Dahlia tube shop. We've been able to do curbside pickup off the farm and also there's been a lot of interest in our CSA, which is basically a subscription-based service where customers pay for a certain number of weeks of flowers upfront, and then as the harvests begin to come in, they pick up once a week."



Marek Fortineaux owns Leo's Metropolitan Florist in Chicago, which was closed for a month. He tells ABC customers won't be allowed inside the shop this weekend, but they will get flowers to all those consumers with online and phone orders, curbside pickup, and delivery:



"It's a lot of uncertainty. We can't take them [mothers] out to eat. This year, you know, we can't go to church with them. This is the best way to say, you know, I love you."



Kate Penn is the CEO of the Society of American Florists, and she told ABC that farmers and florists are taking precautions to make sure their bouquets are safe to deliver to friends and family.



"They're making sure that designers have their own sets of tools and that they aren't sharing their tools. They're not connecting with the person who's receiving the flowers. They're calling them ahead. They're saying, 'I'm coming by and leaving these on your doorstep.'"



The increase in sales this Mother's Day weekend isn't the only thing keeping these businesses running, according to Franco:



"The community support that we've seen has really been something that's helped us get through it. And we're feeling very confident together with the community that we can get through this storm."



Luke says he's hopeful that farms like Tiny Hearts, flower shops like Leo's Metropolitan, and others will not only satisfy customers on Mother's Day, but can provide a source of comfort and happiness as the country battles COVID-19.

"The one surprising thing that I noticed is how many people have told us specifically how dependent they are on getting flowers from us every week. I basically have gotten phone calls and customers in tears just telling me like, 'Oh my god, you guys sold out and this is making such a difference. Like, I really enjoyed having your flowers and can you do anything for me?' That was impactful for me and just sort of brought some meaning to what we're doing."



Listen to the rest of this past weeks highlights from Perspective here.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
T he Red Arrows soared through London's skies this morning to mark the 75th anniversary VE Day.

The spectacular flypast saw the famous red jets speed just 100 feet above Westminster and Buckingham Palace.

Meanwhile, RAF Typhoons roared over Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast to lift the nation's spirits.

It commemorates 75 years since Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8 1945.

VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures 1 /118 VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures Veteran Lou Myers, 93 looks up at the Cenotaph before taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Duchess of Cornwall lays flowers after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall observe the two-minute silence at Balmoral War Memorial Getty Images Local residents celebrate outside their homes in Altrincham Getty Images A window in Altrincham marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day Getty Images Boris Johnson observes the two-minute silence at Downing Street Getty Images Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames during a flypast in central London PA Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Britain's Prince of Wales and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall walk to take part in a two minute silence AP A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA A woman wears a Union flag apron as she takes part in celebrations Getty Images Jan Sleightholm, 61 from Redcar poses for a photograph as she wears a self-made poppy design dress during celebrations Getty Images A veteran makes his way to the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images A lady lays a wreath at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images Members of the public take part in the two-minute silence at the Carshalton Ponds War Memorial in Wallington Getty Images David Fryer, Chairman Royal British Legion Thorner and Scarcroft Branch in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial via REUTERS The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London via REUTERS Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA Graham and Sue Gillson stand in the street outside their home in Hampshire as they take part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Residents in West Yorkshire observe the two-minute silence PA Second World War veteran Bernard Morgan, 96, poses as he takes part in the two-minute silence Getty Images People observe the two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images The Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a parade with their first world war guns and observe the two-minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence PA Sergeant David Beveridge prepares to fire a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA Railway staff at Waverley Station in Edinburgh observe two-minute silence Getty Images Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA People observe a two-minute silence in St James Park, London REUTERS A police officer observes two minutes of silence on the Mall AP Officers and soldiers of Household Division observe social distancing as they take part in a 2 minute silence and wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade AFP via Getty Images An ambulance worker at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA Members of the public applaud at the Cenotaph after taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Veteran Lou Myers, 93 bows his head at the Cenotaph as he takes part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA People observe two minutes of silence as they stand in Whitehall AP Members of the public in Windsor take part in two minutes of silence to honour the service Getty Images People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA A Royal British Legion standard bearer lowers his standard in respect during a two minute silence in Redcar, North Yorkshire PA People applaud as a WWII veteran walks past after two minutes of silence was observed in Whitehall AP Members of the public applaude after two minutes of silence Getty Images Senior officers and soldiers of the Household Division salute before a two minute silence to mark VE Day at Horse Guards in London REUTERS The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast in central London PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast to mark VE Day PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horse Guards PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over London AP Traffic on the Mall as people wait for the Red Arrows AP The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace PA The Red Arrows fly over Westminster AFP via Getty Images Cyclists watch as Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AP The Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Red Arrows fly over London AP The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS A man watches the Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS The Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, waiting for the Red Arrows to pass over London AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace in London during a flypast in central London PA A policeman stands in front of 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary AFP via Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach PA A tribute in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Royal Navy of sailors, soldiers and Royal Marines aboard support ship RFA Argus patrolling the Caribbean spell out 75 on the flight deck to mark the 75th anniversar PA A couple on a Vespa scooter carry a Union flag as they drive past the Cenotaph AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson prepares to light a candle at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior AP Pageantmaster of VE Day 75 Bruno Peek and his dog Wilson, as he decorates his house in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk PA Two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly over the cliffs of Dover Getty Images The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Pipe major Andy Reid of The Scots Guards plays his pipes on the cliffs of Dover, Kent, as two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly overhead PA Children at Breadsall Primary School in Derby during a VE Day lunch party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Boris Johnson speaking on VE Day in a video message @BorisJohnson / Twitter The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA A display by the Ministry of Defence and the British Legion on the Lights in Piccadilly Circus in central London to thank Second World War Veterans PA The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party PA A policeman walks past 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day AFP via Getty Images PA PA

In a touching message for the "greatest generation" World War Two veterans, Boris Johnson said "our gratitude will be eternal".

The PM, who has written to veterans, said: "75 years on, we are a free people because of everything they did."

A wreath-laying service was led by Prince Charles at 11am while the country stood silent for the fallen, before the Queen addresses Britain from Windsor Castle tonight.

General Nick Carter, Chief of the Defence Staff, urged Brits to "spare a thought" for the elderly this morning and follow social distancing rules.

It came as police forces feared that the annual day of celebration could bring people onto the streets.

The stunning flypast will help lift the nation's spirits / PA

The Prime Minister said the fight against coronavirus "demands the same spirit of national endeavour".

"And that means we can't hold the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past. But all of us, who were born since 1945, are acutely conscious that we owe everything we most value to the generation who won the Second World War.

"Today we celebrate their achievement, we remember their sacrifice and we take pride in being their compatriots."

Onlookers admired the scene across the capital / PA

Hero veteran Captain Tom Moore, who raised 32 million for NHS workers on the frontline of the crisis, remembered the official surrender of the Nazis as a "very, very happy day".

He added: "It was a very important day and everyone concerned was absolutely very pleased that this was the end ... the bombing of London, the bombing of other cities ... had come to an end.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer mentioned the national treasure in his tribute, adding: "We owe a huge debt to Tom's generation and we must do everything we can to show them the same commitment that they showed our country in its darkest hour."

Veterans and families across Britain will be holding celebrations at home after a raft of large-scale events were cancelled amid the social distancing curbs.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav



Thackeray on Friday refuted speculation about the Army being called in in Mumbai which has become a major coronavirus hotspot.

In a live webcast, he said additional manpower may be sought from the Union government if needed so that the state police force gets some respite.

Asking people not to believe rumours, the chief minister said the government might ask for additional manpowerfrom the Centre, if needed, to enable the police personnel to take rest in a phased manner.

"This doesn't mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the Army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the- clock, some have fallen sick and a few of them have succumbed to the virus. They need rest," Thackeray said.

He also admitted that while the spread of the virus has been contained, the state has not succeeded in breaking the chain of infection yet.

Whether the lockdown will be extended or not after May 17 will depend on how far people maintain discipline and follow rules, he said.

"We have to come out of the lockdown one day or the other. We can't be living permanently like this. But to come out of this sooner, you need to follow rules and maintain discipline of social distancing and use face mask," Thackeray said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:42:40|Editor: huaxia

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LHASA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Police in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region arrested eight people on suspicion of illegally killing endangered animals, local police said on Friday.

Police received a report in mid-March that dead bodies of Tibetan antelopes were found in the Gerze County of Ali Prefecture, and local people requested an investigation from the public security organ.

Local police immediately launched the investigation and busted the criminal gang. A total of eight suspects were detained, and 89 pieces of whole or fragmented Tibetan antelope sheepskins were seized.

Tibetan antelopes are mostly found in Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The species is under first-class state protection in China. Enditem
People suffering from mental illness cannot be denied equal opportunity to have a dignified life, the Delhi High Court Friday held while directing the authorities to declare as selected a person, suffering from bipolar disorder, to the Delhi Judicial Service without any further delay.

A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Sanjeev Narula set aside the May 21, 2019 notice/result published by the Delhi High Court Registrar General rejecting the candidature of a person forDelhi Judicial Services-2018 under the category of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) on account of his mental disability not being found to be permanent in nature.

The bench allowed the man's petition challenging his rejection and directed the authorities to declare the petitioner as selected to the Delhi Judicial Service without any further delay since he is the only qualified candidate in the 'mental illness' category.

Upon his appointment, the petitioner would retain his notional seniority along with his other batchmates and he would be deemed to have joined his post along with his other batchmates, though he would not be entitled to any back wages. It goes without saying that the respondent (high court administration) shall issue necessary orders regarding the petitioner's Induction training for judicial officers, the bench said, in its 50-page judgement.

The bench said from the counter affidavit filed by the high court administration, it appeared the reason for rejection of the man's candidature was not that his mental illness is not of permanent nature, but because the authorities are of the opinion that the medical condition of Bipolar Affective Disorder (BPAD) makes him incapable of rendering service as a judicial officer.

Once the posts are advertised and seats are reserved for, inter alia, persons with mental illness, it is not open to the respondent to deny the petitioner reservation under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, merely on the basis of an opinion or belief entertained by it that the petitioner would not be able to discharge his duties as a Judicial Officer due to his mental illness. This is a call that the Parliament has taken.

The Law provides reservation, inter alia, to persons with the enlisted benchmark disabilities which include 'autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability and mental illness', it said.

The bench said it appeared that a person suffering from such a mental illness can lead a normal life, while being under treatment, though he may face ups and downs from time to time.

It appears that the Parliament granted reservation, inter alia, to PwD who suffer from mental illness (which does not include retardation), so that such persons get an opportunity to lead a normal life with encouragement and dignity. Merely because they may need medication and treatment throughout their lives, or may suffer setbacks from time to time, cannot be a reason to deny them equal opportunity to assimilate in society, make their contribution and have a life of dignity, the bench said.

It added that such persons have a fully developed mind like any normal human being and they may suffer from substantial disorder of thinking, mood, perception or memory that may grossly impair judgment, behaviour and capacity to recognise reality or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life, but with medication and treatment such manifestations can be kept at bay.

The mere apprehension of the authorities that this candidate may not be able to handle the responsibility and stress which a judicial officer faces, cannot be a reason to declare him medically unfit or to say that he is not entitled to claim reservation, the bench said.

It further said there is no medical opinion placed on record to come to the conclusion that a person, who is suffering from BPAD and is under remission, would not be able to discharge his responsibilities as a judicial officer.

It said the intent and object of the RPwD Act is to protect and preserve the rights of disabled persons and employment is an essential aspect of utmost importance.

The law has to be read liberally, keeping in mind that it is a beneficial and social welfare legislation which has to be given effect to in order to protect the rights of the PwD and not to defeat their rights, it said.

In November 2018, the high court administration had issued notice inviting online applications from eligible candidates for filling up 147 vacancies for DJS 2018. Out of 147 vacancies, 6 seats were reserved for PwD.

Out of these 6 seats, 2 seats were reserved for persons having autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, mental illness and multiple disabilities as mentioned under the RPwD Act including deaf-blindness



The petitioner candidate said he was called for an interview by the Interview Board, comprising judges of the high court and other members and later when final results were published, his candidature was rejected as his disability was not found to be permanent as per the disability certificate submitted by him.

The disability certificate issued by the Department of Psychiatry, AIIMS, certified the petitioner of having the disability, that is, mental illness BPAD to the extent of 45 per cent and stated that his condition was 'currently in remission' and his condition was 'likely to improve'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It is a sad fact of history that wars are much easier to start than they are to end.

Today, 75 years ago, Nazi Germany surrendered, bringing an end to the European fighting in World War II. It would take three months and a couple of nuclear bombs to end the war in the Pacific, but Europe was free.

Three million American troops were in Europe when the war there ended. The first Victory in Europe Day was celebrated as vigorously in the United States and Canada as it was throughout Europe, (Russia, which was still fighting the Germans the next day, celebrates the end of the war on May 9).

Reading 1945 news reports, it is hard to believe that the war in Europe lasted as long as it did. As early as September of 1944, three months after the Normandy Invasion, the term V-E Day was already being used by the Allies. After they finally prevailed in the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 194445, in which 19,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, the end seemed inevitable.

Every newspaper edition brought news of the Allies moving closer to Germany and then to Berlin itself. Thousands were dying every day. Surrender, though, is a bitter pill no country swallows until there is no other choice.
G7 Ambassadors thank Rooden for his service in Ukraine, stress importance for Ukraine to finalize new IMF program

The Ambassadors of the G7 countries in Ukraine expressed gratitude to former head of the IMF Mission in Ukraine Ron van Rooden for his three years of service in this position and expressed hope for a productive working relationship with the new leadership of the Mission under Ivanna Vladkova-Hollar.

"The G7 Ambassadors extend our sincere thanks and best wishes to Ron van Rooden for three years of honorable service and friendship to Ukraine as IMF Mission chief. We look forward to developing a close and productive working relationship with new Mission Chief Ivanna Vladkova-Hollar," the U.S. Presidency of the G7 Ambassadors' Support Group in Kyiv said on its official Twitter page on Friday.

"Finalizing a new IMF program is crucial for Ukraine's macro-economic stability and the future of reforms," the message reads.

As reported, former head of the IMF mission in Moldova Vladkova-Hollar has taken the lead of the Mission in Ukraine, replacing Rooden in this post.
Hyderabad, May 8 : At a time when migrant workers stranded across the country are scrambling to return to their home states amid the nationwide lockdown, a train with 300 migrants from Bihar reached Telangana on Friday.

The Shramik special train carrying migrants working in the rice mills of Telangana reached Lingampalli station on the outskirts of Hyderabad from Khagaria in Bihar.

Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Gangula Kamlakar, Civil Supplies Corporation Chairman M. Srinivas Reddy and other officials welcomed the workers on their arrival with flowers.

The Health Department personnel screened the migrants for any symptoms of Covid-19. Thereafter, the workers were sent to the districts where they wanted to work.

Officials said the workers were provided water, food packets, face masks and sanitisers and were also briefed on the precautions to be taken to protect themselves from Covid-19.

The workers were sent to various districts in specially arranges buses. The officials ensured that the workers follow social distancing during the journey.

Kamalakar said more workers from different states would be reaching Telangana to work in rice mills.

He said the effective steps taken by the state government for containing the spread of Covid-19, huge employment opportunities, higher wages, and measures taken by the government for the welfare of migrants were attracting them to Telangana.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao had said on May 5 that trains carrying migrant workers to Bihar will return with 20,000 to 25,000 workers from the eastern state, who were working in rice mills in Telangana.

Last month, Rao had urged the Bihar government to send back migrant workers to Telangana. More than 90 per cent of the workers employed in Telengana rice mills were Bihari migrants.

"These workers, who load and unload rice from trucks, had gone to Bihar for Holi and were left stuck there due to the lockdown," the Chief Minister had said.

Rao had even stated that if necessary he would talk to the Centre to arrange a few special trains to bring back the Bihari migrant workers.

The Chief Minister said as Telangana was procuring record 1.05 crore tonnes of paddy from farmers at designated procurement centres in villages in view of the lockdown, the task can't be completed without the labourers from Bihar, who load and unload the crop from trucks.
The arrests of black and Hispanic residents, with several of the actions filmed and posted online, occurred on the same balmy days that other photographs circulated showing police officers handing out masks to mostly white visitors at parks in Lower Manhattan, Williamsburg and Long Island City. Video captured crowds of sunbathers, many without masks, sitting close together at a park on a Manhattan pier, uninterrupted by the police.

On Thursday night, the Brooklyn district attorneys office became the first prosecutors office in the city to release statistics on social-distancing enforcement. In the borough, the police arrested 40 people for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4, the district attorneys office said.

Of those arrested, 35 people were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.

More than a third of the arrests were made in the predominantly black neighborhood of Brownsville. No arrests were made in the largely white Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.

[Travel from New York City seeded the wave of U.S. outbreaks.]

N.Y.C. may limit entry to parks to reduce crowds.

New York City may limit entry to some parks to prevent them from becoming too crowded as the weather warms and adhering to social-distancing rules becomes more of a challenge, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday.
Eleven more people were infected with coronavirus on Friday in Chandigarh, taking the total cases to 146 in the Union territory.

Among the fresh cases, nine were residents of Bapu Dham Colony which is the worst affected area of the city that had been declared as a containment zone.

The other two cases were a 20-year-old woman residing in Maloya and a 35-year-old woman living in Sector-30, as per the medical bulletin.

Twenty-one coronavirus patients have so far been discharged from hospital after they were fully cured of the virus, as per the bulletin.

A total of 1,913 samples have been tested so far out of which 1,748 samples are negative while the reports of 18 samples are awaited, the bulletin stated.

Chandigarh has reported one death due to COVID-19 so far.

A total of 124 cases are active in the city, according to the bulletin.

In a government release here, UT Chandigarh Administrator V P Singh Badnore said the administration must focus on affected pockets like Bapu Dham Colony and Sector 30-B with intensive screening and testing to be done in these areas.

Health Secretary Arun Kumar Gupta said 85 of the active cases were from Bapu Dham Colony alone.

UT Adviser Manoj Parida said around 700 persons from Union territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir were being sent home on buses.

Parida further stated that nearly 5,000 people, mostly non-resident Indians and city residents were expected to return by air from abroad.

They will be quarantined for 14 days in local hotels, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Trump threatens new tariffs on China in retaliation for coronavirus FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump holds coronavirus response meeting with New Jersey Governor Murphy at the White House in Washington

By Jeff Mason, Matt Spetalnick and Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday his hard-fought trade deal with China was now of secondary importance to the coronavirus pandemic and he threatened new tariffs on Beijing, as his administration crafted retaliatory measures over the outbreak.

Trump's sharpened rhetoric against China reflected his growing frustration with Beijing over the pandemic, which has cost tens of thousands of lives in the United States alone, sparked an economic contraction and threatened his chances of re-election in November.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a range of options against China were under discussion, but cautioned that efforts were in the early stages. Recommendations have not yet reached the level of Trumps top national security team or the president, one official told Reuters.

"There is a discussion as to how hard to hit China and how to calibrate it properly," one of the sources said as Washington walks a tightrope in its ties with Beijing while it imports personal protection equipment (PPE) from there and is wary of harming a sensitive trade deal.

Trump made clear, however, that his concerns about China's role in the origin and spread of the coronavirus were taking priority for now over his efforts to build on an initial trade agreement with Beijing that long dominated his dealings with the world's second-largest economy.

"We signed a trade deal where they're supposed to buy, and they've been buying a lot, actually. But that now becomes secondary to what took place with the virus," Trump told reporters. "The virus situation is just not acceptable."

The Washington Post, citing two people with knowledge of internal discussions, reported on Thursday that some officials had discussed the idea of canceling some of the massive U.S. debt held by China as a way to strike at Beijing for perceived shortfalls in its candidness on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Story continues

Trump's top economic adviser denied the report. "The full faith and credit of U.S. debt obligations is sacrosanct. Period. Full stop," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Reuters.

Asked whether he would consider having the United States stop payment of its debt obligations as a way to punish Beijing, Trump said: "Well, I can do it differently. I can do the same thing, but even for more money, just by putting on tariffs. So, I don't have to do that."

WAR OF WORDS

Seeking to quell a damaging trade war, Trump signed a first phase of a multibillion-dollar trade deal with China in January that cut some U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for Chinese pledges to purchase more American farm, energy and manufactured goods and address some U.S. complaints about intellectual property practices.

Tariffs of up to 25% remain on some $370 billion worth of Chinese goods imports annually.

Trump has touted his tough stance on China trade as a key differentiator from Democratic challengers in the presidential race. Keeping tariffs in place on Chinese goods allows him to say he is maintaining leverage over China for a Phase 2 trade deal.

Speaking to reporters, Trump declined to say whether he held Chinese President Xi Jinping responsible for what he feels is misinformation from China when the virus emerged from Wuhan, China, and quickly spread around the world.

A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an informal truce in the war of words that Trump and Xi essentially agreed to in a phone call in late March appeared to be over.

Washington and Beijing have traded increasingly bitter recriminations over the origin of the virus and the response to it.

Trump and his top aides, while stepping up their anti-China rhetoric, have stopped short of directly criticizing Xi, whom the U.S. president has repeatedly called his friend.

Some of Trump's domestic critics say that although China performed poorly at the start of the outbreak, he now appears to be trying to use Beijing to help deflect from the shortcomings of his own response.

While saying China should ultimately be held to account, Daniel Russel, who served as the State Departments top Asia adviser until early in Trumps term, said in a tweet: "You would be hard pressed to find a political leader in Asia or Europe who does not believe this anti-China push by the Trump administration is an entirely a political move."

Among the other ideas under consideration for retaliation against China are sanctions, new non-tariff trade restrictions and a possible effort to lift Chinas sovereign immunity, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Lifting sovereign immunity could allow the U.S. government and American citizens to file lawsuits seeking damages from Beijing in U.S. courts.

The options are being discussed, informally for now, across government agencies including the State Department, White House National Security Council, Treasury Department and Pentagon, two of the sources said.

The strongest pressure for action is coming from the National Security Council, including deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, while Treasury officials are advising caution, the sources said.

Conversations are at a very preliminary stage and significant action is not considered imminent, the sources said. When asked, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly said Washington's priority at the moment is to fight the virus but that the time to hold China accountable would come.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Matt Spetalnick, Jeff Mason, David Brunnstrom, Andrea Shalal and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
Haryana former director general of police Hans Raj Swan has passed away at the age of 89, a state police department spokesperson said on Friday.

Swan, a retired IPS officer who also served in undivided Punjab in various capacities, breathed his last at Panchkula on Thursday, the spokesperson said.

Haryana DGP Manoj Yadava expressed grief over the demise of Swan.

In a message issued here on Friday, Yadava conveyed his heartfelt condolences to the members of bereaved family and prayed for peace to the soul.

Haryana IPS Officers Association has also condoled the demise of Swan.

The last rites were performed at Manimajra cremation ground here on Friday where DGP Yadava, CID Chief Anil Kumar Rao and many other senior officers of the Haryana Police were also present, the spokesperson said.

A 1957-batch IPS officer, Swan had joined in the erstwhile undivided Punjab cadre.

"He served Haryana Police with passion and dedication in various capacities. He remained DGP Haryana twice from July 6, 1986 to November 3, 1986 and June 23, 1987 to June 21, 1988," the spokesperson said.

Swan superannuated in 1988.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An international team of scientists led by the University of Adelaide's Davies Research Centre has shown that it is possible to disentangle the DNA sequences of the chromosomes inherited from the mother and the father, to create true diploid genomes from a single individual.

In a report published in Nature Communications, and funded by the Davies Research Centre over the past 15 years, the researchers have shown that genomes of two important modern-day cattle breeds, Angus (Bos taurus taurus) and Brahman (Bos taurus indicus), can be completely decoded from a single hybrid individual carrying the genetics of both breeds, using an innovative genome assembly strategy.

Although demonstrated in cattle, the approach is applicable to other species including humans.

Dr Lloyd Low, from the University of Adelaide's School of Animal and Veterinary Science, says the technique, called trio binning, gives the true genome sequence of each chromosome in an individual.

Obtaining a full genome from an organism that inherits half the chromosomes from the mother and the other half from the father is difficult due to the high similarity between the parental chromosomes.

"Back in 2018 we were able to demonstrate that with this method it was possible to identify large sections of the DNA from the parents. Now in 2020 we have used the same concept to create the sequence of full chromosomes," Lloyd said.

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Professor John Williams added: "Disentangling maternal and paternal genomes is very difficult, but we have now been able to do this and create the best genome assemblies available for any livestock, and arguably any species."

"These high quality genome sequences will make it easier to more accurately study the genetics of cattle to improve production and welfare traits."

Brahman and Angus cattle subspecies were domesticated separately thousands of years ago and have been subjected to very different selection pressures since then; pest and humid environments in the case of the Brahman cattle and beef production in Angus cattle. These different characteristics and histories are reflected in their genomes, which makes them ideal test subjects.

Indian breeds such as Brahman cattle are better able to regulate body temperature and are routinely crossed with European breeds such as Angus to produce cattle that are better adapted to tropical climates.

Considering the large differences in production and adaptation traits between taurine and indicine cattle, comparing the genomes helps us understand how the animals adapt to their environment, which is of substantial scientific and economic interest.

Professor Stefan Hiendleder said high-quality genomes of both cattle subspecies were needed to decipher the differences between taurine and indicine cattle.

"This technology will ultimately lead to breeding cattle which are more productive in harsh environments and also better suited from an animal welfare perspective," he said.

"Comparison between the Brahman and Angus revealed an indicus-specific extra copy of fatty acid enzyme which may be important for the regulation of the metabolism related to heat tolerance."

The research is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide Davies Research Centre, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A 10-foot tiger shark fitted with a satellite tracker has stunned researchers by proving the species is capable of crossing entire oceans.

The nonprofit OCEARCH, which documented the trek, says the female shark named Sereia made a 4,000-mile transoceanic journey from Africa, across the Indian Ocean, to within 800 miles of Indonesia's coast.

In doing so, she showed "the range tiger sharks are capable of covering," OCEARCH said.

Researchers with the Biopixel Oceans Foundation and the Oceanographic Research Institute are behind the discovery, and they're trying to figure out why the shark made the trip. Where is it going?

"This shark moving across the Indian Ocean puts the question of connectivity into a much larger scale, especially if she does make it all the way to Indonesia or Australia," Biopixel Oceans Foundation scientist Adam Barnett said in a release.

"An interesting aspect of this large-scale movement is understanding not just where this shark is moving to, but why."

Sereia was tagged off Mozambique in November 2018 and tracked crossing the Indian Ocean last month, according to OCEARCH spokesman John Kanaly. That is the longest tiger shark migration ever recorded, he said in a release.

Ryan Daly of the Oceanographic Research Institute in South Africa says the discovery is "incredibly important," in part because it "opens up a whole new line of questioning," according to the release.

OCEARCH is best known for tracking great white sharks along the East Coast of the United States. The agency hopes to find out where they mate and give birth.

It has never tracked a shark crossing the Atlantic completely, but some have come close. A great white shark named Lydia was tracked crossing the Mid Atlantic Ridge, a trip that took her 2,200 miles east of the North Carolina coast, OCEARCH says.

Sharks tracked by OCEARCH have proven the species is capable of traveling from Nova Scotia to the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico.

Explore further Experts puzzled as 10-foot great white shark stays a month in one spot off East Coast

2020 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Brazil is facing 'economic collapse' due to its coronavirus lockdown - opposed by President Bolsonaro - the economy minister has warned.

Paulo Guedes cautioned yesterday that business leaders are telling him there is a danger production may seize up, leading to food shortages.

Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy, is the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the region.

But far-right President Jair Bolsonaro opposes stay-at-home measures to slow the virus, saying they are unnecessarily damaging the economy.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (centre) and economy minister Paulo Guedes (right) speak to the press yesterday after a meeting with the Brazilian Supreme Court of Justice in Brasilia

'Within about 30 days, there may start to be shortages on store shelves and production may become disorganized, leading to a system of economic collapse, of social disorder,' Guedes said.

'This is a serious alert.'

Bolsonaro, who has compared the new coronavirus to a 'little flu,' said he understood 'the virus problem' and believed that 'we must save lives.'

'But there is a problem that's worrying us more and more... and that's the issue of jobs, of the stalled economy,' Bolsonaro added.

Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic, with more than 135,000 cases and 9,146 deaths. Pictured: funeral workers carry a coffin in Manaus, Brazil yesterday

'Fighting the virus shouldn't do more damage than the virus itself.'

Bolsonaro regularly flouts social distancing measures, hitting the streets in Brasilia and working the crowd in close quarters at rallies of his supporters.

Bolsonaro and Guedes made the comments after paying an unscheduled visit to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Dias Toffoli.

The court recently decided that state and local authorities have the right to determine what social distancing measures to take to contain the spread of the virus, ruling against Bolsonaro's government, which wants to lift many of the regulations.

Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic, with more than 135,000 cases and 9,146 deaths.

Commuters wear face masks on the subway amid the spread of the new coronavirus in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Those figures have been climbing at an alarming rate. Experts say under-testing means the real numbers are likely far higher.

Hospitals are nearly out of intensive care beds in the hardest-hit areas, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon region, which has had to turn to refrigerator trucks and mass graves to cope with the number of dead.

Because of the pandemic, Brazil - which was just coming out of a massive recession in 2015 and 2016 - is facing an economic contraction of 5.3 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund forecasts.

Bolsonaro won the election in 2018 and promised to jump-start the economy with austerity cuts, privatizations and fiscal reforms.

The pandemic now threatens to derail that project, battering the economy and forcing the government to undertake massive stimulus spending.
By Azernews





By Akbar Mammadov

Representatives of relevant agencies in the field of transport and foreign affairs of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Romania have held discussions on transport and logistics, the Ministy of Transport, Communications and High Technologies reported on May 7.

The video conference, supported by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, focused on expanding cooperation in the implementation of relevant projects in transport and logistics.

As the Azerbaijani side, The Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy, the State Customs Committee, Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC, Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, the State Motor Transport Service under the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Representatives of the Maritime Agency and Baku International Sea Trade Port CJSC attended the meeting.

At the same time, the sides also touched upon the improvement of the normative regulatory base in the aforementioned area.

It should be noted that the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Turkmenistan signed a joint declaration The international transport route Caspian Sea - Black Sea, in Bucharest on March 4, 2019.

The Black Sea and Caspian Sea play an important role in the promotion of the cargo transportation route as a competitive link connecting Europe and Asia. The Black Sea-Caspian Sea international transport route, connecting Central Asia with Europe via the two seas, is the shortest and the most cost-effective route out of available transport networks.

The first meeting of the quadripartite working group on the Caspian-Black Sea international transport route between Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Romania was held in Bucharest, 27 June, 2019.








My name is Devin Jacaruso. I am a local climate organizer, and an early childhood educator. To everyone who believes that climate change is a serious threat for generations to come, the current Montana Public Service Commission Democratic primary should be an incredibly important race.

The PSC is the regulatory body that keeps monopolies like Northwestern Energy in check, and Daniel Carlino is the only candidate who can be trusted to stand up for everyday Montanans by lowering utility rates, stopping the climate crisis and increasing transparency in the PSC. While Carlino's opponent has previously run as a Republican, and even represented Northwestern Energy as a lawyer in a case against the people of Montana, Carlino has been a fighter for everyday people his entire life. While his opposition refuses to stand against fracking in Montana, Carlino is a fierce advocate for climate justice.

Finally, while Carlino promises regular office hours to meet with Montanans and hear their concerns, his opponent wont even pledge to stop taking money from the fossil fuel industry, the very industry she must regulate.

Overall, Daniel Carlino is an incredibly trustworthy candidate who will fight relentlessly for everyday Montanans, both now, and for generations to come.

Devin Jacaruso,

Missoula

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The Supreme Court, in its recent judgment in the case of Nafed vs Alimenta SA, refused to enforce a foreign arbitral award in a case dealing with groundnut export in the 1980s.

In dealing with an old case when India was a closed economy, it seems to have unintentionally pushed our law back by a few decades, given that it goes against the grain of settled principles previously enunciated by the Supreme Court on enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. The facts of each of the cases dealt with by the apex court would differ, but the legal principles seem to be at variance with each ...

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard.
Dead to Me Where Have You Been Season 2 Episode 2 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * *  Previous Next  Photo: Netflix/B)NETFLIX

Lets get right into it: Is it clever or cheap to bring James Marsden back to Dead to Me via a twin plotline? Marsdens smarmy tone was perfect for season one, giving Jen and Judy a perfect shared enemy and balancing their energy in terms of tone. So it makes sense that the writers wouldnt want to give him up. Did they know when they left his body floating in the pool at the end of season one that they were going to resurrect him with a storytelling trick straight out of the heyday of Dynasty and Dallas? Look, Marsden is a perpetually underrated actor, and always a welcome presence, but for at least this one episode it feels a little cheap to bring him back in the form of Ben, Steves semi-identical twin. Only time will tell if that feeling fades. The truth is that its probably both cheap and clever.

To be fair, giving Steve an identical twin does more than just bring James Marsden back into this great ensemble. It creates another opportunity for Judy Hale to do what she so often does: flirt with danger. Remember, Judy is the one who sought out Jen in the first place, befriending her under circumstances that really led to all of this drama. She has a habit of keeping people around who could destroy her life, and she will almost certainly do exactly that with Ben, and not only because he seems like a much better version of someone she recently loved. Judys guilt forced her to try to make Jens life better  it seems very possible that the same dynamic could lead her to try and make sure that Ben is happy, too.

Despite Jens encouragement to not try and influence the investigation into Steves disappearance, Judy does exactly that, telling Ben that his brother may have run off to Mexico, as he often spoke of doing when they were together. Oh, and the FBI is looking into the case because Judy recently told them that Steve Wood just happened to be a money launderer for the Greek mafia. Can Judy convince everyone that Steve either ran off to escape prosecution, or the criminals he worked for took care of him themselves? At least for now, it seems like a very plausible story. They have evidence that Steve was a bad man who worked for worse men. People like that end up disappeared.

While Judy deals with her latest swirl of lies, Lorna (Valerie Mahaffey) returns to annoy the mother of her grandchildren. Jen realizes that she could end up going to jail for murder any day now and does not want the boys to end up in the custody of the awful Lorna. So who should take guardianship if Jen goes to jail or goes on the run? There arent a lot of choices for poor Jen.

The big Ben reveal aside, Where Have You Been is really an episode about the walls closing in on Jen Harding. She becomes increasingly convinced, especially after seeing Ben, that her days are numbered, even asking Christopher (Max Jenkins) to help her get in touch with an attorney. The fact that Christophers brother is a criminal attorney feels like something thats going to return to the plot soon, especially as Detective Perez (Diana Maria Riva) resurfaces this episode, still investigating both Teds death and now Steves disappearance. Maybe Judy and Jen can just share a cell.

It doesnt help that Judy shares a tender moment with Ben and that leads to a confession. Tenderness always leads to confessions for Judy Hale  she doesnt need Bad Cop, just two Good ones. And so she tells Ben that she turned in Steve for money laundering. Ben already knows too much.

After dealing with the frustration around delivering a restraining order to Jen only to discover that Judy is living with her again, Perez goes to see Nick (Brandon Scott), who does not look good. She tries to woo him back to the investigation, but hes not having it, handing over the file he has on the case before going back to the couch to wait for his tacos.

The episode culminates in a return of Dad Bird, the bird that young Henry (Luke Roessler) thinks is the reincarnated version of his father. At first, Dad Bird is just missing, but hes found in the garage, flapping against the ceiling. The minute most viewers see that freezer in the garage, even before Jen advises Ben not to stand on it to get the bird, its clear where Steves body is. The final scenes confirm the suspicion that theres a Steve-sicle in the Harding garage, as Jen learns that Dad Bird is actually a momma.

Extra Counseling

 Perezs speech about how people who drown think they can handle the water until its too late is a good one for summing up Dead to Me. Every decision that Judy makes is one that she thinks is going to make things better, but the water keeps rising. Was inviting Ben back into her life the choice that drowns her?

 Did anyone notice that the file Nick hands to Perez just appeared to be on the couch next to him, while hes watching TV and waiting for his tacos? He didnt exactly have to dig it out. And he didnt know Perez was coming. Its a subtle little nod to the fact that Nick is still thinking about the weirdness that came into his life with Judy Hale. We havent seen the last of him.

 Christophers smooshy dog named Adele may be the smooshiest dog in TV history.

 You have to love that they knew Steve was missing because he missed a nightly call with his mother. Listen, I love my mother, but dont trust a grown man who calls his mom literally every single night. That just doesnt seem healthy.

 Is Ben different enough from Steve? Sure, he says frig instead of swearing, but is anyone else worried that hes got a secret too? Isnt that one of the themes of this show? Everyone has a secret. So whats Bens?

 Finally, Ben seems to genuinely like Judy and recognize that Steve was kind of an asshole. Is it possible that he could discover Judys role in the death of his brother and still cover for her in the end? This is a show about forgiveness, in that Jen had to forgive Judy for her role in Teds death. What if season two becomes about Ben forgiving her too?

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In the past decade, the digital transformation has reshaped how credit unions are expected to interact and communicate with their borrowers. This is due in large part to advances in Fintech and evolving consumer expectations. As your member base shifts to a larger number of millennials and their younger Gen Z counterparts, traditional forms of communication will likely fall on deaf ears. According to Pew Research, 93% of Millennials in the U.S. own a smartphone, so one can conclude that the best way to reach and market to this demographic is digitally and electronically.;

This is not just a trend among younger Americans. The fact is, members of all age groups are busier than ever with demanding work, personal, and social schedules. For better or for worse, busier schedules and advanced technology has shifted the way that Americans communicate and interact with their lenders.

Meet Shifting Consumer Expectations

Back in the day, if a member needed to apply for a loan, make a payment, or resolve account issues, visiting or calling their credit union was the standard way of getting these tasks accomplished.

These days, members can simply visit an ATM or log in to their home banking portal to pay their loans and conduct other transactions. Most modern banking can all be done onlinein some cases, from a smartphone. The reason why its so critical for lenders to know, understand, and accept this shift in consumer behavior is because it affects the way that you successfully gain new account holders and communicate with existing members.
The latest:

President Donald Trump said Friday hes in no rush to negotiate another financial rescue bill, even as the government reported that more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs last month due to economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus.

The presidents low-key approach came as the Labor Department reported the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression and as Democrats prepared to unveil what Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer calls a Rooseveltian-style aid package to shore up the economy and address the health crisis.

The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7%.

Some congressional conservatives, meanwhile, who set aside long-held opposition to deficits to pass more than $2 trillion in relief so far, have expressed reservations about another massive spending package.

Weve kind of paused as far as formal negotiations go, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council told reporters Friday. He said the administration wanted to let the last round of recovery funding kick in before committing to hundreds of billions or more in additional spending. Lets have a look at what the latest round produces, give it a month or so to evaluate that.

Kudlow added that talks were in a lull and that administration officials and legislators would regroup in the next several weeks.

Still, White House aides are drawing up a wish-list for a future spending bill, including a payroll tax cut, liability protection for businesses that reopen and potentially billions in infrastructure spending.

Kudlow added that the White House was also considering allowing businesses to immediately expense the costs of modifiying their facilities to accommodate public safety measures necessary to reopen. The notion was brought up on a call with House members advising the White House on reopening plans Thursday evening and drew bipartisan support.

Were in no rush, were in no rush, Trump told reporters Friday during an event with House Republicans. He called on Democratic-controlled House to return to Washington, adding, We want to see what they have.

The emerging Democratic bill is expected to include eye-popping sums, centered on nearly $1 trillion that states and cities are seeking to prevent mass layoffs as governments reel from the one-two punch of skyrocketing costs from the pandemic and dismal tax receipts in the shuttered economy.

The package being compiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi  the fifth from Congress in a matter of weeks  draws on requests from governors for $500 billion, and from cities and counties for up to $300 billion to prevent widespread layoffs of police, fire and other frontline workers during the pandemic.





Tensions grow as reopenings bring changes

With nearly all states partially reopened this week, backlash and frustrations are growing as Americans struggle with ways to combat the deadly coronavirus.

More than 40 states are opening some doors to revive crushed economies as the nation digs itself out of a pandemic that has killed nearly 76,000 people and infected more than 1.2 million.

Vulnerable communities such as nursing homes and prisons are getting hit the hardest, and experts say the tolls will grow. Researchers predicted that the relaxed social distancing will lead to 134,000 coronavirus deaths nationwide by August, nearly double their previous prediction.

After weeks of stay-at-home orders to maintain social distancing, protesters took to the streets to demand states reopen to restart the economy. Even mandates to wear masks to stop the spread of the virus have become a flashpoint, leading to one alleged killing and accusations of government overreach.

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States are not ready to reopen, experts warn

Health experts are warning that states have not met the federal guidelines for reopening, including aggressive testing and tracing, and a downward trajectory of documented cases in a 14-day period. Reopening risks setting off another wave of the pandemic and its effects will not be immediately known.

"It will be at least two to three weeks before we see an increase in the number of infections because it takes time for individuals to infect others and for them to display symptoms," said data scientist Youyang Gu, whose coronavirus projection model is cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



Lifting measures prematurely could lead to a rebound of the virus, putting the U.S. in the "same boat that we were a few weeks ago," when the number of infections skyrocketed daily, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force.

Calls to wear masks become a flashpoint

To slow the predicted spread of the virus, some cities are asking people to wear masks in public places. But those guidelines have been met with resistance, leading to confrontations.

In Michigan, two incidents involving masks made headlines nationwide. In one, a man shot dead a Family Dollar security guard who told a woman to wear a face mask, officials said. Police also arrested a man who allegedly wiped his nose on the sleeve of a Dollar Tree employee who asked him to wear a mask to shop.

Hundred of miles away, the city of Stillwater, Oklahoma, revoked an order requiring residents to wear face coverings inside buildings after workers received threats.

Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist and author of "The Psychology of Pandemics," said people tend to rebel when they're told what to do, even when the measures are to protect them.

"People value their freedoms," he said. "They may become distressed or indignant or morally outraged when people are trying to encroach on their freedoms."





Virus takes deadly toll on the black community

America has an inequality problem and the coronavirus crisis is making it worse.

The pandemic is leaving few people untouched, but the toll is far more deadly for African Americans, who are dying at higher numbers.

African Americans make up 13.4% of the American population. But counties with higher black populations account for more than half of all coronavirus cases and almost 60% of deaths, according to a new study.

Disparities, including access to health care, are likely to blame, researchers concluded.

"Structural factors including health care access, density of households, unemployment, pervasive discrimination and others drive these disparities," researchers said. "Social conditions, structural racism, and other factors elevate risk for COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths in black communities."

The study involved scientists from Emory and Johns Hopkins universities, the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Georgetown University.

Of the more than 3,100 counties researchers studied coronavirus cases from late January to mid-April, they found deaths were higher in disproportionally black rural and small metro counties.

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The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.
A fifth of Britons would consider deliberately getting infected with coronavirus if the government introduces 'immunity certificates', it was revealed today.

Some 19 per cent might try to catch the potentially deadly disease if it meant they were able to return to 'normal life'.

The shocking finding, revealed in a poll for MailOnline by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, comes as scientists race to produce an antibody test that can show who has had the virus, and emerged with a degree of immunity.

Ministers have been discussing introducing a system of mass screening that could free such people from lockdown, allowing them to return to work and see family, safe in the knowledge they are not fueling the outbreak.

However, the government's own experts have warned that there could be significant social consequences from the regime.

Some 19 per cent might try to catch the potentially deadly disease if it meant they were able to return to 'normal life', according to a poll for MailOnline by Redfield and Wilton Strategies

Documents disclosed earlier this week revealed they fear employers could shun workers who have not had coronavirus, prompting people to actively try to catch the disease or obtain fake test results on the blackmarkets.

The concerns will be fueled by the results of the poll, carried out online on Wednesday as part of the Global Health and Governance Opinion project.

Some 69 per cent said they would support a system of 'immunity certificates' if effective tests are produced, with just 16 per cent opposed.

Just under a third thought the policy would reward those who had flouted the social distancing rules during lockdown, but 41 per cent said it would not.

While 71 per cent said they would not deliberately try to catch the disease, a fifth insisted they would consider it, with another 10 per cent saying they were not sure.

A mass-produced antibody test which is accurate enough to be rolled out at a national level is yet to be identified by any country in the world.

But the UK government is hoping for a breakthrough in the near future with the tests viewed as one of the keys to getting Britain back to work.

Scientists believe those who have recovered from coronavirus get some level of resistance to the disease, but how much and how long it lasts has yet to be shown for certain. Total immunity has already been ruled out.

Secret documents prepared by the independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) last month outlined the potential drawbacks of introducing widespread antibody testing and so-called 'immunity certificates'.

SPI-B, a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), warned on April 13 that such a regime could have devastating unintended consequences.

The experts warned that 'some employers may discriminate on the basis of antibody status'.

That could include not allowing people who have tested negative to return to work or only hiring people who are antibody positive.

The group said that could prompt people to try to cheat the system or to try to catch coronavirus.

The experts wrote: 'If a test result is a requirement for a resumption of work, a range of strategies to 'game' the system may arise.

'These include people deliberately seeking out infection or attempting to purchase a fake test result, commercial organisations selling unapproved tests, or approved tests becoming available through private organisations at prices that make them unavailable to most.'

Meanwhile, those workers who have not had coronavirus could be too afraid to go outside, reducing their social contact to unhealthy levels, and some could simply refuse to return to work.

The group said: 'It is possible that people told they have not yet had the virus may feel more vulnerable and wish to avoid specific activities at work that pose a risk to their health, or seek to avoid attendance at work entirely.'

Boris Johnson (pictured taking part in the Clap for Carers last night) has described the antibody test as a potential game changer for lockdown

The group also expressed major concerns that positive tests could drastically alter people's behaviour.

Those who have tested positive for antibodies may wrongly 'believe they have no chance of becoming infected with COVID-19 in the future'.

That means that if they developed the key symptoms of a cough or fever they may not think they need to self-isolate, increasing the risk of infecting others.

People who test positive could also stop washing their hands, the scientists said, which would also boost transmission.

The SPI-B group also raised concerns about the accuracy of the tests and the potential for people to be given a false sense of protection.

For example, if five per cent of tests were actually incorrect then thousands of workers could wrongly believe they are safe from the disease.

This would have particularly bad consequences if people with positive antibody tests decided to volunteer for high coronavirus exposure jobs, the group said.

'Some testing 'Antibody Positive' may actively volunteer to take on activities at work with high exposure to COVID-19,' the experts said.

'This might include customer-facing roles or tasks within health or social care that involve greater contact with COVID-19 patients.

'This would be particularly problematic if the test result was incorrect.'
Long a global outlier in terms of numbers, now even Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has tested positive for COVID-19.

According to the TASS news agency, he informed Vladimir Putin of his coronavirus test results during a video conference.

"The government will continue to work as usual," he said.

"I plan to be in active contact by phone and video on all major issues. As the interim, I propose the candidacy of [First Deputy Prime Minister] Andrei Removich Belousov."

It comes as the number of cases in Russia passes the grim milestone of 100,000. In the virus's global rankings, the largest country on earth is now the eighth most infected, with more cases than China and Iran.

But it still ranks low in terms of mortality, with just over 1,000 deaths.

Given the Kremlin's reputation for mendacity, it requires some faith to take that death toll at face value.

That would point to a remarkable efficacy both of testing and treatment that anecdotal evidence from inside Russian hospitals, especially in the regions outside Moscow, would suggest is not the case.

Take the city of Ufa, 840 miles east of Moscow. Medics from the main hospital there made a video appeal to Mr Putin this week demanding a full investigation into how their hospital was able to become a regional ground zero for COVID-19 .

They say they believe the local authorities knew in March they had a problem but that they failed to act on lab test results.

"We do not believe the data from labs controlled by the (regional) authorities," they say.

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On 6 April their hospital was put under a two-week quarantine. Medical staff were sealed in with what they say was insufficient protective gear and nowhere to sleep, with many of them continuing to work when sick.

It is a similar story in other Russian regions. Hospital departments or entire hospitals shut down to prevent the virus from escaping, with those inside terrified they are trapped in a human incubator.

Story continues

"We are all mothers, we want to leave here alive," say a group of patients in a video plea from a hospital in the northern Komi republic.

Another video from the main infectious diseases clinic in the southern city of Maykop shows the dire state of infection control in some Russian regions.

Pots brimming with faeces sit beneath hospital beds, waiting to be emptied. There is no toilet seat in the bathroom. The bed linen does not look clean.

"The floor is from Stalin's time. It hasn't been washed since then," says a voice from behind the camera.

It is a very different picture from the glossy new units Moscow's Mayor Sergey Sobyanin flashes on his Twitter feed.

Moscow has scrambled to increase its hospital bed capacity, currently at around 20,000, with 7,000 more in the offing as the virus continues to spread despite more than a month in lockdown.

It is still the epicentre of the outbreak but your chances of high-quality medical care are undoubtedly best in the capital.

But even here, the clamour for PPE is loud. Exhausted hospital staff are in desperate need of reinforcements. First year medical students are being drafted in to help and there are suggestions it is not voluntary.

"We all have a choice, it's not compulsory, though for the older students it's hard for them to refuse," says one first year student from Moscow's Sechenov University.

A sixth-year student from the same university put it more bluntly, saying: "We were told by the heads that we're not forced to work in the red zone, but I don't know how it'll be in reality. You can't refuse this."

Mr Putin told the nation on Wednesday that the peak was yet to come and that the traditional May holiday period would all be under lockdown.

It's not the terminology he uses, he still prefers to call these "non-working days", as though he doesn't want to be seen to be the one inflicting a tough self-isolation regime on his people.

But a positive result for COVID-19 at the very top of government deals a blow to Mr Putin's attempts to portray the situation as under control.

He has already had to postpone two projects he holds dear - a vote on constitutional amendments which would have paved the way for him to stay as president beyond 2024, and the 75th anniversary of the Soviet defeat over Nazi Germany, which should have taken place on 9 May.

The catastrophic collapse in the oil price too is eating away at Russia's rainy day reserves and will leave him in an increasingly precarious situation economically. For a while during this pandemic, Mr Putin was sitting pretty.

That time is over.
Express News Service

KOCHI: Relief was palpable as the first batch of expatriates from the UAE boarded special flights to reach Kerala's Kochi on Thursday - the first day of India's evacuation of citizens stranded abroad.

From elderly parents forced to spend an extended vacation in Dubai to pregnant women faced with the challenge of finding medical help, many Keralites flew back to the safety of home.

ALSO READ | First flight carrying stranded Indians from Abu Dhabi lands at Kochi

Dubai-settled interior designer Abhilash M never thought his parents would get permission to board the flight on Thursday.

The news lifted the spirits of his elderly parents, who were supposed to reach their village in Malappuram on April 22 after a three-month vacation.

The lockdown hit them hard as Abhilash's father, Chandran Nair, 75, is a cardiac patient and had stocked medicines only for three months.

The Tirur-based elderly couple had flown to Dubai on January 26.

The extended days in Dubai were stressful. From April 1, we were trying to procure medicines, some of which were not available here. We tried to find substitutes. However, some medicines could not be replaced, Abhilash said over the phone. Hence, he desperately wrote to the Indian Consulate General in Dubai explaining his father's situation.

"We were asked to register on Consulate's website. Initially, only my mother's name, Meenakshikutty, 70, figured on the list. After repeated queries, my father too found a place, he said.

At 6.30 pm (IST) as Chandran and Meenakshikutty boarded the Kozhikode-bound Air India Express flight, Abhilash heaved a sigh of relief. Like Abhilash, Somi Jose felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders as his wife Sneha Thomas' flight took off on Thursday evening. Sneha, who worked as a nurse in Abu Dhabi, is 35 weeks pregnant.

"We had no backup," said Somi over phone. "And if anything (untoward) had happened, it would have been tough for us to manage," he said.

Somi said Sneha continued to work till March-end. "But as she entered the seventh month of pregnancy, she stopped working," said Somi.

"She was given a complete health check-up even on Thursday morning and was deemed fit by the doctors. Only if the 'fit-for-travel' sticker was affixed on the passport would the passenger be allowed to check-in."

Passengers of the first #VandeBharatMission flight from Abu Dhabi in #UAE come out of Kochi airport in #Kerala, late on Thursday. The Air India Express flight had 181 passengers on board. @airindiain@DrSJaishankar@MOS_MEA@NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/ZWqfDsdSbP  Sovi Vidyadharan (@sovividyadharan) May 7, 2020

During the flight, everyone was wearing masks and gloves. Most of the passengers were elderly, children, and pregnant women.

The cabin crew also used PPEs.

However, there was no extra space between the seats.

"After landing at Karipur airport, health department officials advised us to inform them if we develop any symptom during home quarantine and not to go to the hospital directly," Chandran Nair told The New Indian Express.
As Gov. Gregg Abbott announced that salons would be allowed to reopen Friday, May 8, hair salons share new protocols they have set in place.

Floyd's Barbershop will open their barbershops with additional safety measures as Houston locations will open Thursday, May 14.

GLAMPING SPOTS NOW OPEN: Want a Texas vacation this summer? These glamping spots are reserving now

As we open up our shops, we are working diligently to be sure clients know that not only their hair but their safety is in good hands when visiting Floyds, said Jamie Repenning, Floyds Barbershop President.

Sports Clips, with locations around the country, have enhanced their protocols with a Sport Clips Clean Certified program.

We have re-opening policies in place to ensure we provide a safe, clean environment for our stylists and clients. Were gearing up for a big reopening day and encourage all clients to use our online check in system on the Sport Clips website or through the mobile app," said Joe Klimek & Bill Vandrick, Sport Clips Area Developers.

Visible Changes will be opening some of their salons starting Friday, May 8 that include: Almeda, First Colony, and Memorial City.

Some of the updated procedures you can expect on your next visit as stated on a press release include:

Reservations Only; No walk-in for the immediate future

When you arrive for your appointment you will need to call and let them know beforehand

Face masks will be required for all guests

Staff will be required to wear face masks and shields throughout your service.

Houston inventor, Donald Wardsworth recently created the "Deflector Shield," for salon safety.

"The idea came from recognizing the need for hair stylist, nail tech etc to be protected from accidental coughing or sneezing while servicing their clients," said Wardsworth.

The Deflector Shields are fabricated from 1/8"- 1/4" clear cell cast acrylic, and currently range from $145-$175. You can contact Wardsworth at Inspireddesignsandconcepts@gmail.com for more information.

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But it has another virtue: giving people who test negative the confidence to mingle with others who also test negative. Even if routine dental visits were allowed, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer explained in an interview with The New Yorker, I dont want to go back to the dentists office in New York City until I know that he can show me a recent negative test, and he doesnt want me to come into his office until I can show him that Ive got a recent negative test. As soon as both can get tested, they can proceed without much worry.
The dining room at Souplantation seemed terrifically democratic and welcoming, observes Times editorial page editor Sewell Chan. (Kari Rene Hall / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles food scene is renowned for its richness and diversity. So when I moved here from New York in September 2018, I hoped to eventually find my way around the region through its cuisines, inspired by the example of the beloved critic Jonathan Gold, who had died two months earlier.

Instead I discovered Souplantation.

This soup-and-salad restaurant chain  with its no-nonsense buffet-style offerings and family-friendly seating  sustained me on many nights when I was too tired to cook. The wonton chicken salad was my standby. I relished the soups  the bacon bits in the Yankee clam chowder, the robust minestrone, the sweet and tart French onion soup.

A native New Yorker, I was unfamiliar with Souplantation, and only today, upon learning of its closing, am I learning of its origins. The first Souplantation opened in San Diego in 1978, founded by a surfer; the chain expanded in the mid-1980s, after it was acquired by two young entrepreneurs. It weathered an E. coli outbreak and a bankruptcy filing, growing to 97 locations and 4,400 employees at the time of its closure this week due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Every couple of years somebody has this same great idea of a soup and salad restaurant chain, only nothing very exciting ever comes of it," a Los Angeles Times writer remarked in 1988 after visiting the Pasadena branch.

Last year Los Angeles magazine called the chain "an institution for seniors, immigrants and hipsters" and its customers a "cult"  intended as praise.

The magazine called the food "aggressively mediocre" but marveled: "Even as L.A. becomes more widely known as one of the best food cities in the country, 70,000 residents from all walks of life still flock here weekly to gorge on comfort food classics like cornbread, baked potatoes, and chicken noodle soup."

To explain my attraction to Souplantation: I am the opposite of a foodie. I don't like to cook  even in a pandemic. Like many journalists, I tend to eat on the go; food is sustenance. In normal times, I grab every weekday lunch either at a tiny Los Angeles Times cafe or at the DirecTV corporate cafeteria across the street from our newsroom in El Segundo.

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But it wasn't just the simple food and the fresh ingredients. Like Souplantation, I was born during the Carter administration and achieved consciousness during the Reagan years. For my working-class immigrant family in the New York City borough of Queens, dining out meant a meal at a family-style restaurant, say Arthur Treacher's, a Red Lobster or a Sizzler.

Even now, I wince a little at these memories. These chain restaurants are hardly sophisticated, and neither are customers like my parents, who worked as a taxicab driver and a secretary. In 1998, after I graduated from college, the first in my family to do so, my parents and I went to Las Vegas  still the only time I've been  so that we could sample the bountiful buffets. (My mom played the slots; I've never gambled a penny.)

Souplantation was less striking for its feint at healthfulness  who knows whether those calorie counts on its website were entirely accurate  than for its egalitarianism. Its dining rooms truly were a democratic space, packed with toddlers, adolescents, harried parents, the elderly  everyone, in short, other than the 20- to 30-somethings who typically define tastes in a late-capitalist society.

At Souplantation, there was no greeter or server (though other staff members, from cashiers to cleaners, were extremely friendly).

You grabbed a plastic tray and immediately got in the salad line. Then came the soups and the soft drinks. If you were really famished, you could grab a baked potato or a soft-serve ice cream. You were as likely to bump into a high chair as a wheelchair. I have eaten far more memorable meals in Los Angeles  Shiki Beverly Hills when Morihiro Onodera still ran the kitchen, David Chang's Majordomo, Walter and Margarita Manzke's Republique  but none of them in so open and welcome a setting.

The article in Los Angeles magazine mentions embarrassment three times in accounting for Souplantation's odd popularity.

Count me embarrassed too, but also deeply sad.

It feels odd to mourn the death of a chain restaurant when so much is at stake. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost; the fabric of our society has been torn; and nothing  our democracy, our health, our jobs  feels secure.

Much as I have missed going to the theater and visiting museums, I had been looking forward most to the reopening of sit-down restaurants, newly reminded of my gratitude for the simplest of pleasures.

The first place I hoped to eat at was Souplantation.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 10:35 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6ab424 1 People Paladia-Petty-Sukarsaatmadja,face-shield,face-shield-frame,COVID-19,#COVID19,coronavirus,#coronavirus,New-Jersey Free

It was late March when the United States government declared a national emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic, causing numerous companies to implement work-from-home policies.

Indonesia-born Paladia Petty Sukarsaatmadja, 38, is among the employees who has to work from her home in New Jersey, which ranks second for the most COVID-19 cases among all US states after New York.

As of Thursday, New Jersey had a total of 131,890 cases with 8,549 fatalities, according to The Guardian.

Since the policy was introduced, Petty and her Mexico-born husband have followed news about a shortage of protective gear (APD) for medical personnel.

Our neighbor, who happens to be a nurse in a hospital in New Jersey, confirmed the news and told us that anything that people can give to help them would be very useful, Petty told The Jakarta Post via email. Were moved to help them as theyre the front-liners against COVID-19.

During their research, the couple discovered information about protective gear designs from organizations worldwide; designs that have been approved by the National Institute of Health, including one for face shields made using a 3D printer.

Using a design from Swedish manufacturer 3DVerkstan, they began to produce face shield frames utilizing their 3D printer at home.

A face shield design by 3dVerkstan. (3dverkstan.se/File)

Weve had the printer for one year and we usually use it to print kids toys and to further learn about its technology as my husband and I have engineering backgrounds, said Petty, who works as a quality assurance engineer at the Panasonic Corporation of North America. At first we were only able to make around eight frames a day, but after optimizing our printers settings, were [now] able to make around 20 frames daily.

Read also: Why wear face masks in public? Here's what the research shows

The process of producing face shields consists of two phases: first, printing out the frames or visors and, second, attaching a transparent plastic sheet to the frames. Each frame is made of a polylactic acid (PLA) plastic filament, while the plastic sheet is made of acrylic.

After creating the frames, Petty then sends them to volunteers who attach the plastic sheets to the frames.

When asked about the challenges they faced, Petty said that their 3D printer would sometimes not work properly, so they often had to order new spare parts, which meant halting the production process.

Moreover, as each volunteer is unable to meet directly due to social distancing, all of the logistical processes have to be done online and it requires intensive communication and teamwork, Petty said, adding that she felt grateful for their colleagues, friends and neighbors who had helped them throughout the process.

They have produced at least 470 face shields and donated them to hospitals, first aid units, police stations and nursing homes in New Jersey.

Their face shield production is currently ongoing and they hope to donate the products to hospitals and first responders, such as ambulance and first aid personnel and police officers.

Meet Petty, an engineer @PanasonicUSA. Shes created over 400 face shields for local hospitals in NJ to help keep medical professionals safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. #NationalVolunteerWeek #PanasonicCares pic.twitter.com/So3fcdjicI  Panasonic Foundation (@PanasonicFDN) April 24, 2020

Having lived in New Jersey for around 10 years, Petty said it was quite a challenge to juggle her work with helping her 8-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter with their homework.

They practice social distancing by staying at home and they wash their hands regularly and disinfect each package that arrives at their door as almost all of their primary needs are purchased online from retailer Instacart.

We also need to monitor the app to get a delivery slot as it has been difficult to get. Rolled tissue paper, hand sanitizer and disinfectant products are hard to find online and at physical stores, said Petty, who graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in West Java.

Entering their eighth week of physical distancing, the couple have implemented a schedule and to-do list for their children to set their napping, play and lunch times. On the weekends, we hold home theater entertainment where they have to help their parents clean the house to get an entrance ticket to the theater."

Petty began her career at Panasonic Corp of North America in 2019. She became interested in the electronics industry company while studying and working in Japan for six years. (kes)
The minister expressed his confidence at a conference on May 8, which gathered seafood firms from eight coastal provinces in the Mekong Delta.

He said that aside from the coronavirus outbreak, Vietnams shrimp farming sector is facing other challenges such as drought, saltwater intrusion and disease affecting shrimp, but noted that there are also many opportunities for the industry in 2020.

Minister Cuong emphasised the soon-to-be-ratified EU-Vietnam free trade agreement, which will significantly slash tariffs on Vietnamese farming produce, including shrimp.

He stated that EU countries are currently focusing on containing Covid-19 but there are good prospects for Vietnams shrimp industry when the outbreak is brought under control.

Vietnam plans to raise shrimp in 730,000 hectares of brackish water this year, with an estimated output of 830,000 tonnes and a projected export revenue of US$3.5 billion.

As of the end of April, the total shrimp farming area of coastal provinces had reached 480,000 hectares, of which Asian tiger shrimp accounted for more than 95%, with the rest dedicated to white-leg shrimp.

Vietnam exported nearly US$600 million worth of shrimp in the first quarter of 2020.
Jakarta's provincial government began monitoring and tracking potential cases of coronavirus in January, more than a month before Indonesia belatedly reported its first case of infection on March 2.

Anies Baswedan, the Governor of Indonesia's capital, has contradicted national government claims the country is "flattening the curve" of infections and declared the number of cases is "way higher" than official figures indicate.

Anies Baswedan, Governor of Jakarta: "This is the time in which policymakers need to trust science". Credit:Dadang Kusuma Wira Saputra

In his pugnacious criticism of Indonesia's slow response to the pandemic, the US-educated Anies resembles New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: both men have acted rapidly to contain the virus, both have had to contend with presidents who have acted with less urgency, and both have won praise for their work trying to save lives in densely populated cities. Jakarta has a population of about 10 million, while New York City has 8.3 million.

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Anies revealed that on January 6, after hearing about the first cases of a new virus in Wuhan, "we already started to have meetings with all hospitals in Jakarta, informing them about [what] at that time we called 'pneumonia Wuhan'  there was no COVID yet".
Washington, May 8 : The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has applied for the dismissal of the case against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's envoy to America.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 amid threats from prosecutors to indict his son on a separate matter, reports Efe news.

Last year, however, the one-time director of the Defense Intelligence Agency hired a new team of lawyers who embarked on an effort to get Flynn's conviction overturned.

"He was an innocent man," Trump said on Thursday in the Oval Office after learning of the DoJ's decision.

"He is a great gentleman. He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they've done is a disgrace, and I hope a big price is going to be paid." The charges against Flynn were part of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian efforts to aid Trump during the 2016 election and of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the real estate mogul's presidential campaign.

Mueller said in his report, issued in April 2019, that he found no evidence that Trump or his associates colluded with Russian officials.

But the President remains bitter about what he has always called a "witch hunt" and on Thursday he blasted the FBI officials involved in the Flynn prosecution case as "scum".

In a letter to the federal district judge presiding over the case, the DoJ said that the FBI interview of Flynn that led to the charges was an attempt to revive "a no longer justifiably predicated investigation." FBI officials questioned Flynn in early January 2017 - before Trump's inauguration - about several telephone conversations he had with Sergey Kislyak, the then Russian Ambassador to the US.

"After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant's supplemental pleadings, the Government has concluded that the interview of Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Flynn," the DoJ said.

Moreover, the DoJ noted, the interview came after an FBI document that recommended closing the investigation of Flynn due to the "absence of any derogatory information".

"The government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Flynn's statements were material even if untrue.

"Moreover, we not believe that the government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt," the DoJ said in its court filing.

The FBI's case against Flynn was based on discrepancies between his answers in the interview and the transcripts of his conversations with Kislyak.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Cofounders Ivo and Valeri Valtchev

Phos

UK fintech startup Phos has revealed how it locked in more than $1 million in investment in Bulgaria  just as a state of emergency was declared.

CEO Brad Hyett was forced to catch one of the last planes out of Sofia as he rushed to get home to his family in London.

We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck Phos used to bring investors on board.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The CEO of Phos, a UK fintech startup that turns Android phones into payment terminals, managed to pin down $1 million in venture capital in Bulgaria  just as a state of emergency was declared.

Founded in 2018, Phos has offices in London and Bulgaria, and was backed by New Vision 3, an early-stage venture capital firm, alongside a string of unnamed angel investors.

The company's software offers a new method of payment acceptance via smartphones, turning any Android device into a payments terminal, and eliminating the need for additional hardware and cutting related costs.

Speaking to Business Insider, cofounder Ivo Gueorguiev described how the firm's CEO Brad Hyett was forced to catch the last flight out of Sofia to get back to his family in London  just as Bulgaria set course for a nationwide lockdown.

"We signed the documents on the day the state of emergency was announced," Gueorguiev said.

"Clearly, these were challenging circumstances, but our investors were fully supportive. And we managed to close this on time, as expected, despite everything going on in the world."

The firm, which has raised almost $3 million in fundraising to date, said it would use the new investments to make new hires and expand its services' capabilities.

We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to bring investors on board:

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Read the original article on Business Insider


The United States economy lost 20.5 million jobs last month. That represents the sharpest increase in the number of jobless Americans since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It is the strongest evidence yet of how much damage the novel coronavirus is causing the worlds biggest economy.

The U.S. Labor Department released its monthly employment report Friday. It shows Aprils unemployment rate rising to 14.7 percent from a historically low 4.4 percent a month earlier. That sets a record for the highest jobless rate since World War II. The old record was 10.8 percent in November of 1982.

The new unemployment report strengthens economists expectations of a slow recovery from the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The report provides evidence of the economic damage resulting from new public safety measures. Many states and local governments announced stay-at-home orders in March to slow the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

The weak economic conditions could hurt President Donald Trumps efforts to win a second term in office. The U.S. presidential elections will take place six months from now.

Trump has said he wants to reopen the economy although the number of COVID-19 infections continues to rise.

Our economy is on life support now, said Erica Groshen, a former commissioner of the Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics. We will be testing the waters in the next few months to see if it can emerge safely, she added.

Groshen now works for the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.



Europes economic health

Separately, a new survey shows how much the conoravirus pandemic is affecting European economies. It shows that business activity across the continent shrunk last month.

The new survey numbers come from IHS Markits final Composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for the euro zone. The index is said to be a good sign of the economic health of European Union countries.

The PMI for April 2020 fell to 13.6 percent, compared to 29.7 percent in March. The Reuters news agency says that represents the lowest reading since the very first survey in 1998.

Germanys service industry recorded its weakest performance ever. It reduced overall private sector activity in Europes largest economy to historically low levels.

French service providers saw a collapse in business activity because of a nationwide lockdown. New public health measures have forced all but non-essential businesses, like supermarkets and drug stores, to close.**

Italys service industry shrank last month at its fastest rate in more than 22 years.

Other studies have shown business activity across Asia and the Americas also ground to a halt last month.

Im John Russell.

The Reuters news agency reported on this story. George Grow adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

**Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story accidentally left out the word "but."

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

pandemic  n. when a disease affects a large area and affects a large number of people

emerge  v. to become known; to rise from; to come into being

survey  n. questioning a group of people to gather information or their opinions

sector  n. an economic or political subdivision of a society or country

lockdown  n. an emergency measure in which people are temporarily prevented from entering or leaving a restricted area because of a danger or health threat

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In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, September's Tokyo Game Show 2020 has been cancelled, organizers announced Thursday.

It's the latest major cancellation of a game industry event--the annual TGS typically hosts hundreds of thousands of attendees. The show was scheduled to take place September 24-27, indicating in-person game industry events will be dealing with the effects of COVID-19 late into the year.

TGS organizers CESA and Nikkei said an online event is planned to take the place of the physical event. More information is coming later this month.

In a statement, TGS management said, "Due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) on a global scale and the situation remains unpredictable in Japan as well, the organizer and the co-organizers have reached this decision after a long consideration to place the utmost priority on the health and safety of visitors, exhibitors and stakeholders. We ask for your kind understanding and cooperation."

Nearly all in-person game events are currently on hold or pivoting to digital versions, including E3, Gamescom, (the Gamasutra-affiliated) Game Developers Conference, Oculus Connect, QuakeCon, and more.
A resident in mask and suit in April in Wuhan in China, where the coronavirus originated. - Ng Han Guan /AP

The European Union agreed to Chinese censorship of a public letter by its ambassadors that removed any mention of the fact the coronavirus pandemic originated in China, it has emerged.

The EUs foreign affairs service agreed to cut out a reference to the outbreak of the coronavirus in China as a reason for a cancelled EU-China summit in the letter, which was published in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) excised the reference after coming under pressure from Chinas foreign ministry.

Two weeks ago, the EEAS was forced to deny it had bowed to Beijing by watering down language in a report accusing China of a campaign of disinformation about the virus. It was revealed EU officials softened some of the language condemning China after repeated calls by Chinese officials.

It is of course regrettable to see that the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited, said Nicolas Chapuis, the EUs ambassador to China, who co-signed the opinion piece with the 27 ambassadors to China of the blocs member states.

The senior diplomats wrote the letter to celebrate 45 years of diplomatic relations between Beijing and the EU.

Diplomats in Brussels and politicians in Europe were dismayed at the latest decision but officials insisted that the letter would not have been published unless the cut was made.

Norbert Rottgen, the head of the German parliaments foreign affairs committee, said he was shocked not once but twice.

First the EU ambassadors generously adopt Chinese narratives and then on top of that the EU representation accepts Chinese censorship of the joint op-ed. Speaking with one voice is important but it has to reflect our shared European values and interests, he said.

A spokesman for the EEAS said, The EU delegation was informed that publication could only take place with agreement of [the] Chinese ministry of foreign affairs.

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The EU delegation made known its concerns. The EU continues to advocate a free press. On this specific case the EU delegation decided to proceed with publication with considerable reluctance because it considered it important to communicate the key messages.

China is attempting to block EU moves in the World Health Organisation to push for an investigation into the pandemic over language that states it started in China.

The US also supports the UN resolution on the probe into the origin and spread of coronavirus when the World Health Assembly convenes later this month.

Beijing accused the USA of trying to shift blame over the coronavirus on Thursday, after President Donald Trump said the pandemic was a worse "attack" than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

Tension between the world's two biggest economies has reached fever pitch in recent days as they have exchanged barbed comments on each other's handling of the virus.

Mr Trump has claimed the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, while Chinese diplomats have floated the idea it was planted there by US military.

The president said the coronavirus pandemic "should never have happened" on Wednesday

"Could have been stopped at the source. Could have been stopped in China," he said.

"We urge the US side to stop shifting the blame to China and turn to facts," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a press briefing.

"They might say the pandemic is comparable to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, but the enemy facing the US is the novel coronavirus," she said.

China said for the first time Thursday that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained in the US and France, as it faces repeated US claims that the coronavirus pandemic originated there.

The lab's French ties have previously sparked concern in France. The Institut Merieux, Alain Merieux's firm, has strenuously denied taking part in the lab's design, construction and management.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also denied that there was any evidence linking the Wuhan P4 lab to Covid-19.
A total of 698 Indian nationals stranded in the Maldives due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions were evacuated on Friday from the scenic island nation on an Indian Navy warship.

"Op #SamudraSetu. #INSJalashwa set sail from #Male, #Maldives tonight bringing back 698 of our citizens," the spokesperson of the Indian Navy tweeted.

"Bon Voyage! #INSJalashwa departs from Male port for Kochi with 698 Indian nationals on board," the Indian High Commission in Maldives tweeted.

India's high commissioner in the Maldives, Sunjay Sudhir earlier expressed his deep gratitude to the Indian Navy, the Government of Maldives and its agencies for extending complete cooperation for the success of the massive evacuation of Indian nationals.

An Indian Navy spokesman said there were a number of pregnant women and children among the evacuees who will travel to Kochi in Kerala.

The INS Jalashwa, the Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu' (Sea Bridge).

Sudhir said a second Navy ship INS Magar will leave for Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on Sunday with 200 Indians. He said the exercise will be repeated next week by the Indian Navy warships.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is part of the repatriation mission launched by the Indian Navy to bring Indian citizens home from foreign shores, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

Immigration procedures of the passengers were carried out in the Hulhumale' Ferry Terminal in Male City. "Fantastic job by the entire team of @VelanaAirport for the safe repatriation of Indian nationals!" the high commission tweeted.

The massive evacuation exercise is testimony to Maldives-India friendship, it said in another tweet.

Several Indians who are travelling by the warship lauded the evacuation plan launched by the government.

"It is a very great thing that the High Commission did for us and we did not have any issues till now. We got everything with proper guidelines, all the things done by the High Commission," Pradeep, who hails from Palakkad, said. He works in a resort in Male.

"Jamsheed from Kerala thanks Govt of India, Govt of Kerala & @indiannavy for this historic Operation to repatriate #Indian nationals from the #Maldives," the High Commission of India in Maldives tweeted.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff, it noted.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is conducting its biggest ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad, including from the US, the UAE and the UK.

The high commission in Male on its Facebook page said, MVR 600 or an equivalent amount of USD 40 will be charged as the Evacuation Services Charge from each person listed for repatriation by INS Jalashwa.

"This amount would be collected at the service fee collection counter after completion of the Immigration process at the Velana International Airport. Kindly carry exact change to avoid delay/ inconvenience," the post said.

Meanwhile, all arrangements as per government guidelines are in place at Cochin Port to facilitate the arrival of those who are evacuated from Maldives via the sea route, officials in Kochi said.

Before arrival at Cochin, on board the vessel, the Navy will get the self e-declaration data filled by all passengers and also identify the passengers symptomatic of COVID-19.

The symptomatic passengers will be disembarked first, followed by other passengers (district wise) in batches of 50 persons, the Port Trust said.

Separate zone has been earmarked for the symptomatic patients.

The passengers disembarked will undergo further statutory verifications for clearances inside the Samudrika Cruise Terminal where Port Health Organisation will verify the self declaration forms, the Port Trust said.

All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on the Aarogya Setu app.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

On Thursday, two special flights from the UAE carrying a total of 363 Indian nationals, including nine infants, left for Kerala as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad.
Civic Center, Mid-Market, Tenderloin, Union Square

Ellis between Larkin and Polk streets is a "priority" according the new Tenderloin response plan | Photos: Carrie Sisto/Hoodline

Conflict over the city's handling of health and safety issues in the Tenderloin continued to evolve yesterday, as the San Francisco Human Rights commission released a plan for the neighborhood.

Representatives from UC Hastings College of Law, which filed a lawsuit against the city on Monday, say the plan doesn't do enough to address their concerns.

The 32-page, block-by-block Tenderloin Neighborhood Plan for COVID-19 is the product of input from community members and neighborhood organizations, in a process conducted by HRC in the last two weeks of April.

The plan divides the Tenderloin by block, and prioritizes specific blocks based on the magnitude of the existing encampments and direness of current conditions, based on HRCs various assessments and discussions with community stakeholders.

"Priority"blocks as identified in the Tenderloin Neighborhood Plan for COVID-19 | Image via HRC

These blocks present unique challenges to the community and represent an opportunity for bold, multi-sectoral action to improve the health and safety of those in the area, the plan states.

But UC Hastings Director of Operations Rhiannon Bailard expressed concerns that the plan's proposed actions are more likely to exacerbate existing issues than resolve them.

In response to HRC's request for comments on the plan, provided to Hoodline by email, Bailard wrote: After doing a detailed review of the draft plan, it appears that the actions proposed are intended to sanction the continuation of tents and encampments on the sidewalks by providing resources and services on those same sidewalks and, possibly, adjacent streets.



The plan identifies the Fulton Mall as a priority site for safe camping, but limits its capacity to 50 tents. Recent counts suggest the location currently houses 90 tents, and if it is deemed to exceed capacity, individuals not accommodated on Fulton Mall will likely move to the streets of the Tenderloin unless there are alternative shelter options provided, Bailard wrote.

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Fulton Mall encampment, enclosed by barricades and with one port-a-potty

Tents are already blocking business's doorways, "literally keeping owners from opening their essential business," according to Tenderloin Merchants Association president Aref Egaali.

"The entire sidewalk is [already] unsafe to walk upon and it is impossible to practice social distancing," he said.

Bailard wrote that the plan's proposal to shut down multiple streets to vehicle traffic, opening them for use by pedestrians and cyclists, suggests the plan intends to "[release] the sidewalks to unhoused individuals, rather than clearing them for use by all residents, businesses, and visitors in the neighborhood."

[B]y closing streets and permitting encampments on the sidewalks," she wrote, "particularly without a strategic action plan for enforcement of drug laws, the drug dealing epidemic will get immediately worse, not better.

While the plan includes a line item about drug dealers among the neighborhoods safety and wellness hazards, Deborah Mallgrave, partner with Greenberg Gross LLP, who is representing UC Hastings in the ongoing lawsuit, said it includes no specific action items to reduce their presence on Tenderloin sidewalks and street corners.

Max Barnes, interim public information officer on homelessness for the Emergency Operations Center, said SFPD is working to address drug-related crime in the neighborhood.

SFPD is focused on curbing the criminal activity around drug dealing in the neighborhood and will continue to do so as the Tenderloin Plan is carried out, he said.

Another outstanding concern is the lack of clear timelines in the plan. Bailard wrote that at the very least, UC Hastings would like to see a clear timeline for provision of safe alternative camping sites, given the limitations set for the Fulton Street mall location.

Encampments in Hemlock Alley between Larkin and Polk streets

Barnes said implementation of the plan will be iterative and dynamic as we seek to directly address the public health crisis on our streets.

District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney did not respond to requests for comment on the plan by press time.

If you want to be involved in discussing and improving the plan going forward, you can contact HRC-Roundtable@sfgov.org.
The Associated Press

As Europe and the U.S. loosen their lockdowns against the coronavirus, health experts are expressing growing dread over what they say is an all-but-certain second wave of deaths and infections that could force governments to clamp back down.

Were risking a backslide that will be intolerable, said Dr Ian Lipkin of Columbia Universitys Center for Infection and Immunity.

Elsewhere around the world, German authorities began drawing up plans in case of a resurgence of the virus. Experts in Italy urged intensified efforts to identify new victims and trace their contacts. And France, which hasnt yet eased its lockdown, has already worked up a reconfinement plan in the event of a new wave.

There will be a second wave, but the problem is to which extent. Is it a small wave or a big wave? Its too early to say, said Olivier Schwartz, head of the virus unit at Frances Pasteur Institute.

In the U.S., with about half of the states easing their shutdowns to get their economies restarted and cellphone data showing that people are becoming restless and increasingly leaving home, public health authorities are worried.

Many states have not put in place the robust testing that experts believe is necessary to detect and contain new outbreaks. And many governors have pressed ahead before their states met one of the key benchmarks in the Trump administrations guidelines for reopening -- a 14-day downward trajectory in new illnesses and infections.

If we relax these measures without having the proper public health safeguards in place, we can expect many more cases and, unfortunately, more deaths, said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

Cases have continued to rise steadily in places such as Iowa and Missouri since the governors began reopening, while new infections have yo-yoed in Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.

Lipkin said he is most worried about two things: the reopening of bars, where people crowd together and lose their inhibitions, and large gatherings such as sporting events, concerts and plays. Preventing outbreaks will require aggressive contact tracing powered by armies of public health workers hundreds of thousands of people strong, which the U.S. doesnt yet have, Lipkin said.

Worldwide the virus has infected more than 3.6 million people and killed over a quarter-million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University that experts agree understates the dimensions of the disaster because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.

The U.S. has recorded over 70,000 deaths and 1.2 million confirmed infections, while Europe has reported over 140,000 dead.

This week, the researchers behind a widely cited model from the University of Washington nearly doubled their projection of deaths in the U.S. to about 134,000 through early August, in large part because of the easing of state stay-at-home restrictions. Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. exceed 20,000, and deaths per day are running well over 1,000.

In hard-hit New York City, which has managed to bring down deaths dramatically even as confirmed infections continue to rise around the rest of the country, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that some states may be reopening too quickly.

My message to the rest of the country is learning from how much effort, how much discipline it took to finally bring these numbers down and follow the same path until youre sure that its being beaten back, he said on CNN, or else if this thing boomerangs, youre putting off any kind of restart or recovery a hell of a lot longer.

A century ago, the Spanish flu epidemics second wave was far deadlier than its first, in part because authorities allowed mass gatherings from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

Its clear to me that we are in a critical moment of this fight. We risk complacency and accepting the preventable deaths of 2,000 Americans each day, epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers, a professor at Johns Hopkins, told a House subcommittee in Washington.

President Donald Trump, who has pressed hard to ease the restrictions that have throttled the economy and thrown more than 30 million Americans out of work, pulled back Wednesday on White House plans revealed a day earlier to wind down the coronavirus task force.

He tweeted that the task force will continue meeting indefinitely with a focus on SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN.

....produced in the thousands, and we have many to spare. We are helping other countries which are desperate for them. Likewise, after having been left little, we are now doing more testing than all other countries combined, and with superior tests. Face masks & shields,....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2020

....to it, as appropriate. The Task Force will also be very focused on Vaccines & Therapeutics. Thank you!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2020

Underscoring those economic concerns, the European Union predicted the worst recession in its quarter-century history. And the U.S. unemployment rate for April, which comes out Friday, is expected to hit a staggering 16 percent, a level last seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Governors continue to face demands, even lawsuits, to reopen. In Michigan, where armed demonstrators entered the Capitol last week, the Republican-led Legislature sued Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, asking a judge to declare invalid her stay-at-home order, which runs at least through May 15.

In hard-hit Italy, which has begun easing restrictions, Dr Silvio Brusaferro, president of the Superior Institute of Health, urged a huge investment of resources to train medical personnel to monitor possible new cases of the virus, which has killed about 30,000 people nationwide.

He said that contact-tracing apps  which are being built by dozens of countries and companies  arent enough to manage future waves of infection.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after meeting with the countrys 16 governors that restaurants and other businesses will be allowed to reopen in coming weeks but that regional authorities will have to draw up a restriction concept for any county that reports 50 new cases for every 100,000 inhabitants within a week.

Britain, with over 30,000 dead, the second-highest death toll in the world behind the U.S., plans to extend its lockdown but has begun recruiting 18,000 people to trace contacts of those infected.

On Thursday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern outlined a plan for further relaxation of its lockdown rules, under which the country would reopen bars, retail stores and hair salons beginning next week and once again allow domestic travel.

In other developments, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 5,000 coronavirus illnesses and at least 88 deaths have been reported among inmates in American jails and prisons. An additional 2,800 cases and 15 deaths were reported among guards and other staffer members.

A 57-year-old immigration detainee at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego died Wednesday from complications related to the coronavirus, authorities said, marking the first reported death from the virus among about 30,000 people in U.S. immigration custody. Otay Mesa has been a hotbed for the spread of the coronavirus.
Four mine workers are still fighting for their lives on ventilators after an underground blast inside a coal mine, while a fifth is steadily improving.

The men, who all have extensive burns, are recovering in a Brisbane hospital after they were transferred from the Grosvenor Coal Mine at Moranbah in central Queensland on Thursday.

They were part of the longwell 'A' crew working underground when the blast rang out on Wednesday afternoon. The mining union believes a gas ignition along a coalface is to blame.

Colleagues from the 'B' team launched a GoFundMe appeal yesterday to support the long recovery ahead, and have already secured $82,000.

'This accident has shocked us all, and this is the least we can do to assist their families,' the fundraiser read.

Four mine workers are fighting for life and a fifth is in a stable condition after an underground blast at a Queensland coal mine on Wednesday afternoon. The men were rushed to Brisbane for treatment

Four of the victims remain on ventilators in a critical condition after the explosion burned the majority of their torsos and airways.

A 44-year-old man has been gradually improving since the explosion and is now in a stable position, a spokeswoman from Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital said.

The transfer from central Queensland to Brisbane was a complex medical evacuation which involved five planes.

Four of the men, aged 43, 45 and two aged 51, were placed in induced comas to travel, The Courier Mail reported.

All five are now receiving specialist care in the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

Senior medical officer Dr Deborah Simmons, who was on the scene at the time of the explosion and has been credited with saving their lives, said the men all remained calm during the aftermath.

The workers, who all have extensive burns, were flown to Brisbane overnight in a complex medical evacuation involving five planes. Four of the men reportedly had to be placed into induced comas to travel

'They were just talking about the fact that they were in pain,' she said.

But she insisted it was the nursing staff at the local hospital - which has a capacity for two emergency patients at a time - that kept the men alive.

'It was this small rural hospital that has a two-bed emergency department that managed four patients that needed to be intubated and ventilated for three hours and had them ready for the retrieval teams to pick up,' she said. 'They are the ones that saved those people's lives.'

The men's colleagues said they will require extensive medical care well into the future, and thanked the community for digging deep to fund the treatment.

Mine operator Anglo American evacuated the worksite (pictured), and all other employees have been accounted for

'It really shows how much the mining community can band together when the chips are down,' fundraiser organiser Robin Buchanan wrote.

Mine operator Anglo American evacuated the worksite, and ensured all other employees were accounted for following the explosion.

'Five people have been injured and transported to hospital. All of the injured people's families have been contacted,' a statement from the mining company read.

Stephen Smyth, who is the mining and energy president of the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, said the explosion could have been catastrophic.

There were hundreds of miners working in the region before the explosion took place.

Queensland Mines Minister Anthony Lynham says four mine inspectors had already been on site to begin preliminary investigations.
Washington, May 8 : Melinda Gates, an American philanthropist and wife of billionaire Bill Gates, gave the US administration a "D-minus" for the lack of national coordination in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We need leadership at the national level. We lost two months almost now in terms of our national response," Xinhua news agency quoted Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as saying to the Politico news outlet on Thursday.

"In terms of our national response, we have governors who are stepping up. Luckily. But now we have 50 different homegrown state solutions instead of a national response," Melinda Gates said.

"If we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you'd be doing contact tracing.

"And we would be able to start thinking about slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways. But we have a lack of a coordinated effort. That's just the truth, across the US.

"We should be putting far more money into testing and tracing ... to where we can quarantine in the US," she added.

Pointing to a huge need at the global level "for a vaccine, for medicines, for testing", Melinda Gates said "more is needed for the international response, which the US really has been lacking in its response completely on the international front".

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to support endeavours in combating COVID-19 globally.

It has been cooperating with national governments and international agencies such as the World Health Organization and the Unicef in the battle against the virus.

The US currently accounts for the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world.

As of Friday, there were 1,256,972 cases in the country, while the death toll stood at 75,670, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The accident took place at 5.20 this morning. The migrants were returning to their villages, travelling over 800 km. Exhausted, they fell sleep on the tracks. Due to the lockdown, migrants are without aid in the cities. Transport is also blocked.

Aurangabad (AsiaNews) - At least 17 migrant workers were killed and five others were injured by a freight train that hit them along the tracks in Aurangabad (Maharashtra). The accident happened this morning around 5.20am. The injured were hospitalized in Aurangabad hospital.

Police revealed that the 17 killed were migrants from Shahdol and Umaria (Madhya Pradesh) districts. The migrants were returning to Madhya Pradesh on foot, following the railway, for a route of over 800 km. Due to the lockdown that has lasted in the country since March 24, millions of migrant workers have been stuck in the big cities without work, without pay and without food. This is why they wish to return to their villages of origin. The almost total blockade of transport - due to the quarantine - forced many of them to face the return home on foot.

The group of killed migrants was walking from Jalna to Bhusawal. According to the police, they left Jalna at 7 p.m. yesterday evening. After walking for 36 km, exhausted, they started to rest and then to sleep on the tracks, thinking that since there was a block, no train would pass.

Instead this morning, a freight train, carrying empty tanks, arrived and hit the migrants. According to the railway authorities, the train driver tried to brake, but it was of no use.
The apex body of resident welfare associations in Delhi on Friday urged Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to reconsider the decision to convert 78 hotels in Karol Bagh into quarantine facilities for stranded Indians returning from abroad.

United Resident Welfare Association Joint Action (URJA) President Atul Goyal in a letter to Baijal and Kejriwal said though the residents of the area "support the decision to bring back our own citizens, yet we are concerned about our own safety and avoidable exposure to the risk of contracting the virus.

Quarantine centres for such passengers include hotels in Aerocity and containment centers at Manesar, Narela etc. In case the number is insufficient, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority may include other four and five star properties in and around non-residential areas before converting small hotels and guest houses into quarantine facilities, he suggested.

Karol Bagh is a predominantly residential area and these 78 hotels have been functioning despite objections and protests from the residents, he said.

It is understood that a substantial number of these hotels are functioning without valid licenses in gross violation of rules and regulations, the URJA president said.

The very fact these hotels are now being converted into quarantine facilities indirectly legitimises operation of these premises as hotels with or without valid approval, licenses etc, Goyal said.

These hotels becoming quarantine facilities with hundreds of guests will definitely increase the risk of the residents contracting the virus, the URJA said.

The administrative support is scattered and it will be difficult to provide security and kitchen facilities at multiple small centres. Also, it will invite unnecessary movement of traffic within the area, it said.

It is once requested to reconsider the decision in the larger interest of residents of Karol Bagh as well as the administration itself which is already tackling the consequences of negligent citizens who add to the government's problems and strained resources, the letter read.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the labour wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has criticised the move by the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Uttar Pradesh (UP) governments to amend their labour laws, alleging that the hurriedly made decisions would strip workers of job security amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak across the country.

In a bid to woo investors to their respective states and make a desperate bid to emerge as an alternative manufacturing hub to China amid the Covid-19 crisis, both MP and UP announced a raft of changes to their labour laws this week.

While MP has allowed longer working hours and a 1,000-day labour law holiday for new investors, UP has also brought in Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020, exempting companies from complying with several labour norms for the next three years.

The BMS, which claims the affiliation of over 6,000 labour unions, said it would urge the Centre to prevail upon the state governments to roll back their labour-unfriendly decisions.

This is the worst time to make amendments to the labour laws. These changes will make the workers more vulnerable to job losses, especially at a time when the country should be joining hands to rebuild their lives and the economy hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, said CK Saji Narayana, president, BMS.

He said the heart-wrenching reports of stranded migrant labourers across states, who have been forced to sleep on railway tracks and walk back for hundreds of kilometres to their native places due to the nationwide lockdown restrictions, are growing evidence of workers being treated badly by both their employers and the government.

The BMS chief demanded a universal safety law for workers. There is a need to reinforce safety provisions and more so after the Visakhapatnam gas plant tragedy on Thursday. For instance, MPs amended law has done away with the need of even installing a fire extinguisher if an industrial unit employs less than 50 people, he said.

Earlier, HT had reported that various state governments are amending labour laws to attract new investments.

In April, the BJP has submitted a report to the Union government, recommending revisiting the labour and land acquisition laws in a bid to woo investors.

A BJP functionary from UP said the state is in talks with several companies, who are considering moving their production base from China to India. He, however, refused to divulge the names of companies with whom talks have been initiated.

Its important to pitch India as an investment destination because it guarantees investment, jobs and allows rebuilding the economy, the functionary said, adding that the workers rights and interests would be safeguarded and not compromised.

Narayanan, however, disagreed with such claims. He cited that India couldnt overnight dispense with its laws amid a rush to emerge as an alternative to China as a manufacturing hub.

This rush to become an investment destination is akin to a viral outbreak. The rule of law is fundamental to a civilised society. We cannot allow jungle raj, and turn the labour sector into a veritable conflict zone, he warned.

He debunked the BJPs report to the Centre pitching for labour law reforms on the grounds that they impede investments and escalate costs. India cannot do away with labour protection norms just because it wants to compete with China, Narayan said.

Earlier this week, Prof Biswajit Dhar of the Jawahar Lal Nehru University had told HT that changing labour laws amid the pandemic would not solve the governments problems.

He suggested that the government must focus on moving forward by adopting an employment policy that creates more jobs and better social security for workers.

On Thursday, MP chief minister Shivaraj Singh Chouhan defended the state governments decision to amend its labour laws. Industrial reforms were long-awaited. We plan to increase job opportunities for the people by wooing investors to the state. MP is blessed with ample resources such as water, land, forests and skilled youth power. This is the right time to amend the rules as per new requirements and to simplify them to attract industries that are willing to shift from other places, he said.

Amended labour laws would facilitate the establishment of new industries, create new job opportunities and workers interests would also be safeguarded, he added.

In UP, Siddharth Nath Singh, cabinet minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME), investment and export promotion, khadi and village industries said on Thursday after holding a meeting with Satoshi Suzuki, ambassador of Japan to India, that the state is geared up to attract and receive Japanese investments moving out of China and made a pointed reference to the new labour reforms.

The Japanese representatives have appreciated the Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020, said a person, who was privy to the discussions in the meeting.

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STOCKHOLM, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of MAG Interactive has resolved to offer the holders of warrants of series 2017/2020:1 to repurchase their warrants. The offer only concerns the settlement of the warrants and does not entail any changes to the terms of the warrants or the program. The offer is made conditional upon that the warrant holders reinvest the consideration in shares in MAG Interactive through the exercise of the warrants held.

In June 2017, the Board of Directors resolved, with authorization from the General Meeting, to adopt a three-year warrant plan for employees in the company. In total, 324,871 warrants were issued which can be exercised to subscribe for new shares during the period April 1 - June 30, 2020. As of today, the number of outstanding warrants in the program amount to 293,062.

The Board of Directors has resolved that the company shall make an offer to repurchase warrants of the series 2017/2020:1 at market terms (valued on the basis of Black and Scholes and adjusted with respect to the remaining time at the time of subscription). The offer of repurchase refers to the number of warrants that need to be repurchased in order for the consideration of the repurchases to cover the financing of the exercise of the remaining warrants.

The objective for making the offer is to facilitate for the warrant holders of series 2017/2020:1 to exercise their warrants without the requirement to finance the exercise of the warrants themselves.

The offer does not entail any additional tax costs nor transaction fees for the company and it does not entail a further administrative burden for the company. In addition, the repurchase of part of the warrants in series 2017/2020:1 decreases the warrants dilutive effect compared to if the warrants had been exercised.

If all warrant holders of series 2017/2020:1 were to fully accept the offer, the consideration for the offer, based on the current share price of SEK 20,37, would amount to SEK 1.2 million.

For additional information, please contact:

Magnus Wiklander

CFO

+46-(0)70-511-51-99

magnus.wiklander@maginteractive.se

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tove.bengtsson@maginteractive.se

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/mag-interactive/r/mag-offers-to-repurchase-warrants,c3106829
Washington will soon make a final decision as to whether the US will continue to provide funds for the work of the World Health Organization (WHO), US President Donald Trump told Fox News.

"They are like a puppet for China, everything China does is OK...they got $38 million from China, they get $450 million from us," he said. "What World Health got away with is unbelievable."
The World Congress of Ukrainian Youth Organizations (SKUMO) has launched a fundraising campaign to provide Ukrainian healthcare workers with personal protective equipment in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Congress of Ukrainian Youth Organizations (SKUMO) is also trying to make its modest contribution in helping Ukrainian health care workers and to purchase critical and always deficient personal protective equipment. After all, no one knows how long the virus will spread and how long medicine will fight it, Chairman of the Congress Dmitri Lecarcev stated.

Thus, SKUMO appeal for help from a number of indifferent Ukrainians around the world to provide the most needy Ukrainian healthcare facilities with the means to protect their employees.

With the funds raised, we plan to purchase and deliver as many protective suits as possible for medical workers of Chernivtsi region (the most affected region in Ukraine) and medical institutions of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine in the area of operation of the joint forces in Eastern Ukraine, reads the statement.

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GREENWICH  The reopening of Greenwich Point has gone well so far with a lot of positive feedback, First Selectman Fred Camillo said Friday.

The praise came one day after the popular seaside park opened its gate to visitors after a six-week closure due to the spread of the coronavirus.

There were very few issues, Camillo said. Some people forgot their beach cards, so there was some leniency there. It all went very well. And weve even had some suggestions, so Ive passed them along. Overall, it was terrific.

There are still restrictions in place at Greenwich Point and Byram Park: Visitors are not allowed in the water, and playgrounds, picnics and restrooms all remain off limits. But the parks are once again open to runners, walkers and bicyclists. Visitors must wear masks and show a park pass or state-issued ID to gain entry.

On Thursday, 751 cars went to Greenwich Point with 1,226 people in those vehicles, Town Director of Parks and Recreation Joseph Siciliano said. An additional 346 people walked into the Point.

At Byram Beach, there were 251 cars with 253 people in them, Siciliano said, with no additional walkers.

At Greenwich Point, the limit is 500 cars at one time. At Byram Park, the limit is 150 cars. Visitors are asked to stay no longer than two hours so others can access the parks.

Greenwich Point and Byram Park are from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the entry gate closing at both at 4 p.m.

On Friday, Camillo also announced more changes for parks. Cos Cob Park, which reopened to walkers earlier this week, will extend its hours to 3:30 p.m. daily.

We plan to keep extending to allow us to ease into the openings to make sure everything runs smoothly, Camillo said.

Staff from the Parks and Recreation Department and Greenwich Police Department will continue to monitor the parks.

Additional expanded hours and more reopenings will be announced early next week, he said.

Suggestions included opening some of the ingresses and egresses at Greenwich Point to give walkers some shortcuts, Camillo said. Another suggestion was for police to patrol the park on a bicycle instead of a car.

The best ideas come from the people, and well certainly listen, Camillo said.

Signs will be put up around in the park areas reminding visitors about the mask guidelines and other regulations.

On Thursday, the town further expanded access to its marinas and now allows residents to take their boats onto the water. Camillo reminded residents not to congregate in large groups at the marina or go out with 10 people on a boat.

A kayaker, Camillo said he was eager to get back on the water.

On Friday, the town reported that nine more residents have been diagnosed with the coronavirus since Wednesday, bringing the total to 719.

As of Friday, there were 56 patients at Greenwich Hospital who have been diagnosed with coronavirus, which is consistent with Wednesdays report and represents a large reduction from the peak of 114 hospitalized cases three weeks ago.

Additionally, Greenwich Hospital has discharged 428 coronavirus patients to continue their recoveries at home, which is up from the 417 that were reported on Monday.

The state Department of Public Health said as of Thursday, 42 Greenwich residents have died after being diagnosed with the coronavirus.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Vice-Chancellor John McCardell announced the appointment of the Rev. Canon James F. Turrell, Ph.D., as dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South. Turrell is the current Norma and Olan Mills professor of divinity, professor of liturgy, associate dean for academic affairs and sub-dean of the Chapel of the Apostles. He will assume his new duties on July 1.I am delighted that Jim Turrell has accepted this appointment, said Vice-Chancellor McCardell. Not only is he well acquainted with the School of Theology and its mission, but he is also a respected scholar and participant in the life of the wider Church. I know that the Sewanee family will join me in welcoming Jim to his new duties with great enthusiasm.For the past 17 years, Rev.Turrell has taught liturgy and the history of worship at the School of Theology and has served 11 years as associate dean for academic affairs. During his tenure, he led the School though a successful Association of Theological Schools re-accreditation in 2015, reorganized and streamlined academic policies, programs and procedures, and recently revised the core curriculum to increase and enhance contextual education. His work with the wider Church includes membership in the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music since 2015 and in the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops since 2013.From my perspective as a member of the faculty, an administrator and a participant in the wider work of The Episcopal Church, the School of Theology is well positioned to thrive, stated Rev. Turrell. As an Episcopal seminary that is also embedded in a larger university, a unique commitment and accountability to both the Church and the academy distinguish the School, making it more than the sum of its parts. I am thrilled to accept this appointment as we look to the future.Rev. Turrell studied history as an undergraduate at Yale (B.A., 1991) before pursuing a divinity degree there (M.Div., 1996). He was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) in 1996. After parish work, he studied history at Vanderbilt University (Ph.D., 2002), focusing on religion in early modern Britain.Rebecca Abts Wright, professor of Old Testament, senior faculty member and search committee member, has worked with Rev. Turrell as a fellow teacher and during his service as the academic dean. The faculty has seen Jims academic life in the classroom and publications, his patient and pastoral character tending to administrative details and his depth of skill and love for liturgy. We trust his leadership in this time of pandemic change and look forward to what he will bring to the School when we emerge into whatever will be our new normal. Jim is a person for whom esteemed colleague is more than a polite title; it is a statement of our shared reality.The Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, dean of the School of Theology since 2012, will step down from that position on June 30; however, he will return after a sabbatical period and resume teaching. He expressed that he couldn't be more pleased that the University has chosen Rev. Turrell to be the next dean. As fellow scholars in the field of liturgy, I have known Jim for many years and I can vouch for his commitment to theological education and to the Church. Working alongside him during the last eight years, I can attest to the fact that he is eminently qualified to carry forward the mission of the School of Theology. I look forward to working with him as a member of the faculty in the years to come."
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

Russias Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant has produced 700 oxygen cylinders for Kazakhstans lung ventilators producer, Trend reports with reference to plants parent company - Chelpipe Group.

The Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant has completed an order for cylinders for mechanical ventilation devices, which are needed to provide hospitals and ambulances with oxygen, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company said.

The order for the cylinders was sent on behalf of Kazakhstans Vice Minister of Industry and Infrastructural Development Talgat Zhanzhumenov.

Cylinders with oxygen valves are manufactured in accordance with the special requirements of the client for the cleanliness of the inner surface. Additional operations are included in the manufacturing process, the company said.

Chelpipe Group is one of the largest pipe manufacturers globally and second largest pipe producer in Russia with a diversified client base.

Chelpipe Group operates steel products facilities and companies such as Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant, Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant, a warehouse facility selling the Group's steel pipes in Russia; META, a scrap procurement and processing company; SOT, ETERNO and MSA (Czech Republic); trunkline equipment manufacturers; and Rimera, a provider of oilfield services.

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The Queen has addressed the nation to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, saying the love and care people have shown in the Coronavirus crisis shows we are still a nation those who fought for our freedom would recognise.

In a powerful speech  broadcast at 9pm to mark the exact moment 75 years earlier when her father George V told his people war in Europe was over  Her Majesty paid a moving tribute to the wartime generation who risked all and how we should and will always remember them.

Speaking from Windsor Castle, the 94-year-old monarch, said: Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish.

Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps.

VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures 1 /118 VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures Veteran Lou Myers, 93 looks up at the Cenotaph before taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Duchess of Cornwall lays flowers after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall observe the two-minute silence at Balmoral War Memorial Getty Images Local residents celebrate outside their homes in Altrincham Getty Images A window in Altrincham marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day Getty Images Boris Johnson observes the two-minute silence at Downing Street Getty Images Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames during a flypast in central London PA Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Britain's Prince of Wales and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall walk to take part in a two minute silence AP A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA A woman wears a Union flag apron as she takes part in celebrations Getty Images Jan Sleightholm, 61 from Redcar poses for a photograph as she wears a self-made poppy design dress during celebrations Getty Images A veteran makes his way to the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images A lady lays a wreath at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images Members of the public take part in the two-minute silence at the Carshalton Ponds War Memorial in Wallington Getty Images David Fryer, Chairman Royal British Legion Thorner and Scarcroft Branch in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial via REUTERS The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London via REUTERS Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA Graham and Sue Gillson stand in the street outside their home in Hampshire as they take part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Residents in West Yorkshire observe the two-minute silence PA Second World War veteran Bernard Morgan, 96, poses as he takes part in the two-minute silence Getty Images People observe the two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images The Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a parade with their first world war guns and observe the two-minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence PA Sergeant David Beveridge prepares to fire a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA Railway staff at Waverley Station in Edinburgh observe two-minute silence Getty Images Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA People observe a two-minute silence in St James Park, London REUTERS A police officer observes two minutes of silence on the Mall AP Officers and soldiers of Household Division observe social distancing as they take part in a 2 minute silence and wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade AFP via Getty Images An ambulance worker at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA Members of the public applaud at the Cenotaph after taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Veteran Lou Myers, 93 bows his head at the Cenotaph as he takes part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA People observe two minutes of silence as they stand in Whitehall AP Members of the public in Windsor take part in two minutes of silence to honour the service Getty Images People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA A Royal British Legion standard bearer lowers his standard in respect during a two minute silence in Redcar, North Yorkshire PA People applaud as a WWII veteran walks past after two minutes of silence was observed in Whitehall AP Members of the public applaude after two minutes of silence Getty Images Senior officers and soldiers of the Household Division salute before a two minute silence to mark VE Day at Horse Guards in London REUTERS The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast in central London PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast to mark VE Day PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horse Guards PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over London AP Traffic on the Mall as people wait for the Red Arrows AP The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace PA The Red Arrows fly over Westminster AFP via Getty Images Cyclists watch as Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AP The Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Red Arrows fly over London AP The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS A man watches the Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS The Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, waiting for the Red Arrows to pass over London AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace in London during a flypast in central London PA A policeman stands in front of 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary AFP via Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach PA A tribute in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Royal Navy of sailors, soldiers and Royal Marines aboard support ship RFA Argus patrolling the Caribbean spell out 75 on the flight deck to mark the 75th anniversar PA A couple on a Vespa scooter carry a Union flag as they drive past the Cenotaph AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson prepares to light a candle at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior AP Pageantmaster of VE Day 75 Bruno Peek and his dog Wilson, as he decorates his house in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk PA Two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly over the cliffs of Dover Getty Images The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Pipe major Andy Reid of The Scots Guards plays his pipes on the cliffs of Dover, Kent, as two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly overhead PA Children at Breadsall Primary School in Derby during a VE Day lunch party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Boris Johnson speaking on VE Day in a video message @BorisJohnson / Twitter The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA A display by the Ministry of Defence and the British Legion on the Lights in Piccadilly Circus in central London to thank Second World War Veterans PA The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party PA A policeman walks past 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day AFP via Getty Images PA PA

But our streets are not empty; they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other. And when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire.

Reflecting on the celebrations the Queen, who was a Junior Commander in Auxiliary Territorial Services, added: I speak to you today at the same hour as my father did, exactly 75 years ago.

His message then was a salute to the men and women at home and abroad who had sacrificed so much in pursuit of what he rightly called a great deliverance.

The war had been a total war; it had affected everyone, and no one was immune from its impact. Whether it be the men and women called up to serve; families separated from each other; or people asked to take up new roles and skills to support the war effort, all had a part to play.

At the start, the outlook seemed bleak, the end distant, the outcome uncertain. But we kept faith that the cause was right - and this belief, as my father noted in his broadcast, carried us through.

Red Arrows fly over London to mark VE Day 75th anniversary

Never give up, never despair - that was the message of VE Day. I vividly remember the jubilant scenes my sister and I witnessed with our parents and Winston Churchill from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

The sense of joy in the crowds who gathered outside and across the country was profound, though while we celebrated the victory in Europe, we knew there would be further sacrifice. It was not until August that fighting in the Far East ceased and the war finally ended.

Remembering the fallen and those who lost loved one in the Allies struggle against the Nazis and the other Axis powers, she said: Many people laid down their lives in that terrible conflict. They fought so we could live in peace, at home and abroad. They died so we could live as free people in a world of free nations.

They risked all so our families and neighbourhoods could be safe. We should and will remember them, she said with a photograph of his father King George VI in his Admiral of the Fleet uniform with RAF Wings.

Her Majesty continued: As I now reflect on my fathers words and the joyous celebrations, which some of us experienced first-hand, I am thankful for the strength and courage that the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and all our allies displayed.

Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures 1 /66 Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures VE Day, 1945 Crowds celebrate in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Joyce Digney (nee Brookes) and Cynthia Covello (nee Lowe) who were famously photographed celebrating VE Day with two sailors in a fountains at Trafalgar Square, PA Evening Standard VE Day front page Evening Standard VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill joins the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace Rex Features VE Day, 1945 An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A victory street party near Clapham Common Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table in Brockely Getty Images VE Day, 1945 An American soldier in London reads the news of the German surrender at the end of World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A van load of beer passes through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds swarm in Trafalgar Square to rejoice Rex Features A group of London girls wave flags in front of the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) giving the 'V for Victory' salute as his car passes through crowds during a VE Day parade in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London PA VE Day, 1945 Men fixing the loudspeakers in Trafalgar Square before the King's VE Day speech Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Passing the crowds outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. A father takes his child on a tour of London's West End in unorthodox style Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Jubilant crowds at Piccadilly Circus celebrating victory in Europe Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers hitching a ride on a lorry in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations at Downing Street, London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill leaves 10 Downing Street by the back entrance to avoid the large crowds awaiting his appearance Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers blowing party trumpets in Piccadilly Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Crowds in Piccadilly Circus climb lampposts and Eros Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 Sir Winston Churchill leaves the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Crowds cheering Churchill as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, and made an official announcement that the war in Europe was over Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) crosses Parliament Square in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 A victory tea party at Amber Road, Finsbury Park in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Mansion House PA Prime Minister Winston Churchill watching a march celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day PA Sir Winston Churchill (centre in centre blacony) addresses a huge crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Health, Whitehall, London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmers Green, North London waves a newspaper containing the news of Germany's surrender in World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Some of the huge crowds who were in Whitehall, London, to hear Churchill's speech on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Evening News vans in Carmelite Street decorated to celebrate VE Day Associated Newspapers Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Cromwell tanks of the British Army, in a victory procession pass through Admiralty Arch Getty Images Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War PA Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs PA The Flying Scotsman locomotive leaves Paddington Station in 1965 at the head of a special train to commemorate the 20th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA St Paul's Cathedral floodlit during victory celebrations in London at the end of the war in Europe Getty Images

The wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didnt happen again. The greatest tribute to their sacrifice is that countries who were once sworn enemies are now friends, working side by side for the peace, health and prosperity of us all.

Before the Queen spoke, audio of Big Ben chimes and an announcer saying This is London. His Majesty King George VI - from BBC Radio archive - played over video of crowds outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day from British Pathe.

Film of George VI making his VE Day speech was played with him saying: Let us remember the men of all the services and the women in all of the services who have laid down their lives. We have come to the end of our tribulation and they are not with us at the moment of our rejoicing.
[May 07, 2020] Rasmussen College Launches First Campus-Based Medical Assisting Diploma Competency-Based Education (CBE) Program

Rasmussen College, a regionally accredited private college, today announced the launch of its new campus-based Medical Assisting Diploma competency-based education (CBE) program at its Kansas City/Overland Park campus. The program, which is the first of its kind, is designed to increase access to flexible and affordable educational opportunities and ensure students demonstrate mastery of every skill employers' value in this critical field. This helps ensure optimal workforce preparedness. Scheduling and pricing are the most common barriers students face when pursuing an education. Rasmussen College is working to remove those barriers by offering students innovative solutions. Competency-based education is a game-changing approach to studying that is more flexible than traditional campus-based or online courses. The learning model challenges the status quo by giving students choices-from scheduling their lab times, following their own pace and managing their schedule, to taking their time with challenging material. Rasmussen College is a CBE industry-leader with several online program offerings. The Medical Assisting Diploma CBE program is the first to include on-campuslabs that are offered at convenient times giving students the flexibility they need. This subscription-based pricing model is ideal for students motivated to move quickly and maximize savings on their education. Students can finish in three terms for $10,500 or in four terms for $14,000, in addition to book fees. Enrollment in the Medical Assisting Diploma CBE program is underway with classes beginning in July.



"We are excited to bring our Kansas students the first-ever campus-based Medical Assisting Diploma CBE program," said Brooks Doherty, assistant vice president of Academic Innovation at Rasmussen College. "Students will have the freedom to fit school into their lives and gain the skills and confidence needed to enter the healthcare field. The flexibility and competitive, affordable pricing will benefit them as they strive to achieve their academic dreams." High Demand for Medical Assistants in the Kansas City Metro

According to labor analytics firm Burning Glass, Medical Assistant jobs are projected to grow 17.2 percent in the Kansas City metro over the next decade. Students enrolled in the College's new Medical Assisting Diploma CBE program will learn critical, direct patient care skills that will equip them to perform in-house clinical lab testing and lab specimen collection, record vitals and administer immunizations and first aid. Students will also learn office skills that equip them to assist physicians with patient care in a variety of office procedures, support clinic management and perform patient data entry and charting. A Medical Assisting Diploma from Rasmussen College can be earned in as few as 9 to 12 months with eight start dates per year, making it accessible to working adults. Students can sit for the RMA exam and earn their medical assisting certification upon completing the program. Rasmussen College includes the cost for students' first attempt at the exam in tuition and fees. "As a career-focused college, Rasmussen College sees the future need in the Kansas City metropolitan area for qualified Medical Assistants," said Jay Buchholz, campus director, Overland Park. "We are committed to working to be part of the solution to help support the community healthcare needs." To learn more about the Medical Assisting Diploma competency-based education program now available at the Rasmussen College Kansas City/Overland Park campus, visit https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/health-sciences/medical-assisting/. ABOUT RASMUSSEN COLLEGE: Rasmussen College is a private college regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is dedicated to meeting the evolving needs of our diverse communities through in-demand, flexible, accessible and affordable educational programs. A pioneer in career-focused education since 1900, the College leads advancements in innovations such as employer-led and expert-designed curriculum and comprehensive student support services to help working adults advance their educations. Additionally, Rasmussen College is a nationwide leader in competency-based education. Rasmussen College offers undergraduate and graduate programs online and across its 23 Midwest and Florida campuses. The College encourages its students, faculty and staff to strive for academic excellence, community enrichment and service to the public good. For more information about Rasmussen College, please visit rasmussen.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006238/en/

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When the Austrian Grand Prix takes place on July 5th, the drivers have not raced outside the virtual world for more than seven months. Christian Horner expects that this accumulated energy will have to come out in a certain way. Something that can lead to a boisterous first race.

This is probably the longest time all the drivers have been out of a seat, Horner says in an interview with The Guardian. That could be healthy in a way. If we begin again in July, they will all be rusty as hell and there will be some incidents.



Horner does have more time for his family now, but he says he misses racing and all the activities around it too. The team boss of Red Bull Racing was once a driver himself (he made it to Formula 3000) and he says he hasn't been on a circuit for that long since he was 12 years old.

You remain itching to get going, says a frustrated Horner. The competitor within craves to get going, to get racing. It is unnatural for drivers and team members to be sitting on their hands when we would usually be racing.


MIAMI -- The cruise industry has taken a beating during the coronavirus crisis -- on-board outbreaks, refusal of port access and now no clear idea of when ships can sail once again.

While the passengers have headed home, the journey drags on for tens of thousands of crew members who are stranded at sea aboard their vessels, with no end in sight.

Many are no longer being paid because their contracts ended; some have no internet access; tensions are flaring; and some have even filed suit against their employers.

"We are prisoners. I need help. We need help," said Caio Saldanha, a Brazilian DJ who works on the Celebrity Infinity, which is in limbo somewhere between Florida and the Bahamas.

"We need to fight to go home," the 31-year-old musician told AFP.

Saldanha shares a cabin with his 29-year-old girlfriend Jessica Furlan, who hosted on-board activities for passengers.

On March 13, U.S. authorities issued a no-sail order as the virus crisis ramped up.

Ships with passengers offloaded them -- some more easily than others.

But most crew members were required to remain on board. And now they're stuck.

There are more than 100 ships carrying over 70,000 crew in or near U.S. territorial waters or ports, the U.S. Coast Guard says.

"We are desperate to get home," said Furlan, who noted that they spent three weeks confined to their cabin, and then stopped getting paid on April 24.

Holland America Line's MS Koningsdam -- seen here in Rotterdam in May 2016, on the eve of its dedication ceremony -- is now off the US West Coast, with 1,100 crew from eight different ships. Photo: AFP

No free Internet for some crew

Those who keep the ships running -- sailors, cleaners and cooks, for example -- are still getting paid, but anyone whose job was to entertain passengers is out of luck.

Other employees had completed their contracts, so they are not getting paid, either.

The cruise lines provide room and board, but crew must pay for anything else -- even toothpaste and soap. Some have to pay for WiFi.

"We do not have free Internet -- from one point of view, I do understand, but from the human point of view, I cannot," said Verica Brcic, who manages the spa on the Maasdam, operated by Carnival subsidiary Holland America.

Brcic was transferred on March 29 to the Koningsdam, which is meandering along the U.S. West Coast with 1,100 personnel from eight different ships.

"Humans need to stay in contact" with family and get news from home, said the 55-year-old, who is from Serbia.

Brcic has no idea when she might get home. She hasn't been on dry land since early March.

A 52-year-old musician who works for Princess Cruises (also a Carnival subsidiary) says he too has to pay for WiFi.

He also says there is not enough food to go around.

"I feel like I'm in forced confinement," said the musician, who asked not to be named, or for AFP to even say which ship he works on, for fear that his employer would retaliate.

Caio Saldanha (L) and Jessica Furlan, both from Brazil, are currently on board the Celebrity Infinity, with no news about when they can leave. Photo: AFP

'Roller-coaster of emotions'

The major cruise lines stand accused of failing to do enough to get their staff home, ostensibly to save money on pricey charter flights -- a claim the companies deny.

Royal Caribbean says the issue stems from the fine print of their agreement with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That agreement says cruise companies are liable -- in both criminal and civil court -- if the crew fails to follow the rules of disembarkation to the letter.

"We are happy to do all the things they requested, but the criminal penalties gave us [and our lawyers] pause," Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said in a May 3 letter to crew seen by AFP.

Bayley then wrote that Royal Caribbean would sign anyway, because "the importance of getting you home is so great."

Lauren Carrick, a British dancer on the Infinity who shares a cabin with her boyfriend, wants to know why the process is taking so long for Royal Caribbean, which owns Celebrity Cruises.

"It's just a roller-coaster of emotions," the 29-year-old Carrick told AFP.

"It's really tiring and exhausting. At nighttime, I can't sleep. My mind is constantly going to like, 'When am I going to get home?'"

But not everyone is in a huge rush. Some crew members feel safer at sea and fear that all the publicity is going to hurt the companies that pay their bills.

"It is complex and very frustrating for those of us that love our jobs," said a 42-year-old South African food and beverage manager for Carnival.

He said keeping the crew on board was costing more than the charter flights would, and that it was simply "very difficult to repatriate certain people to certain destinations."

"That fault cannot lie with the cruise lines -- it lies with bodies like the CDC," he said on condition of anonymity.

Lauren Carrick (L), a 29-year-old British dancer, and her fiance Joe Harrison -- seen here in San Juan, Puerto Rico -- are aboard the Celebrity Infinity, and also want to get home. Photo: AFP

It's complicated

Bayley says that of its 25,000 employees on board ships, more than 1,000 of them say they want to stay.

For those who want to get home, he says, it's complicated.

"Our crew come to us from more than 60 countries. Each country has rules and regulations for who can travel home, and how, and when," Bayley wrote in his letter.

Some countries are not even accepting their own nationals, he said.

Carnival is making "strong progress" in getting its employees home "via air charters and our own ships," spokesman Roger Frizzell told AFP.

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) told AFP that so far, there have been a total of 2,789 confirmed cases of COVID-19 onboard 33 cruise ships, among passengers and crew.

Last month, employees of Celebrity Cruises filed a class action lawsuit accusing the company of negligence.

This week, the family of an Indonesian crew member filed a wrongful death suit against Royal Caribbean.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Friday said if a parent is unable to deposit the fees due to the financial situation, then private schools should not debar any student. If a school does this, the state government can revoke its recognition.

He said that the education department should also examine how private schools can provide relief to the students in fees and other charges, ensuring that the operation of those schools is also not affected.

Reviewing the issues related to school education, higher and technical education through video conference, he said the remaining examinations of Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education for Class X and XII will be postponed for the time being. Later, the decision will be taken as per the decision taken by CBSE, ensuring that the uniformity is maintained in both the board exams. Similarly, in higher and technical education, examinations can be conducted only if the conditions are normal.

During the UPA government, the Right to Education was brought to provide quality education in the private schools to the children of the poor class. In the last few years, according to the spirit of this law, the children of needy families could not get its benefits, he said.

Gehlot directed the officials to ensure effective compliance of RTE with transparency. The income limit of parents should be increased from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh. He emphasized that through RTE, children should get an opportunity to study in big private schools.

The CM directed the education department to ensure proper arrangements for a mid-day meals to children during summer break. He said that due to lockdown, it is not possible to provide cooked food to children. Looking to which dry ration materials should be provided to parents in a transparent manner.

He directed to re-allocate the district and departments in the clerical grade-II recruitment examination-2018 through a new process. He asked all departments to provide the list of selected candidates according to their desire on a merit basis. After that, the concerned department should allot the district to them on the basis of merit and counseling.

He directed the Chief Secretary that in the future, the first appointment in all the recruitments should be given by all departments on the basis of merit and counseling.

The Chief Minister said that a large number of schools were closed in the name of integration during the last government. Unused buildings of such schools can be used to reopen schools as well as panchayats, sub-centers, and community centers when needed.
The patriarchs and heads of the Churches of Jerusalem are observing "with concern" the unilateral plans that block "any peaceful agreement". Criticism of world powers and international inertia. The "internal disputes" to the Palestinians are also targeted. Meanwhile, Israel announces thousands of new homes in the occupied territories.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - The annexation plans promoted by "factions linked to the Israeli right" raise "serious and catastrophic issues". This is what the patriarchs and heads of the Churches of Jerusalem write in a message, according to which doubts are multiplying on the feasibility "of any peaceful agreement" that could put an end to the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Christian leaders are observing with "concern" the unilateral plans, the inertia of world powers (primarily the United States and Russia) and international bodies including the UN, and too many "internal disputes" between Palestinians inside and outside the PLO.

Attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank have multiplied in recent weeks, with the aim of expropriating further land. Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities have announced a plan to build thousands of new homes for settlers in the occupied territories, in the context of Washington's growing support for annexation projects.

For interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the goal is to start the process by July 1 with the declaration of sovereignty over settlements and the Jordan valley. And in these days it has given the green light to 7 thousand new homes in Efrat, while on the political front we are working with American diplomacy on the project wanted by Trump with the controversial "Agreement of the century".

Here is the message from the leaders of the Churches of Jerusalem:

As a result of the stagnation of the Peace Process in the Middle East between the Israelis and Palestinians, an array of plans for Israel to unilaterally annex West Bank land, backed mainly by right-wing factions, raises serious and catastrophic questions about the feasibility of any peaceful agreement to end the decades long conflict, one that continues to cost many innocent lives as part of a vicious cycle of human tragedy and injustice.

The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of the Holy Land Churches views such unilateral annexation plans with the utmost concern and calls upon the State of Israel to refrain from such unilateral moves, which would bring about the loss of any remaining hope for the success of the peace process.

The Council also calls upon the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the European Union, and the United Nations to respond to these unilateral annexation plans with a time-delimited and phased Peace Initiative in line with International Law and United Nations resolutions on the matter, in order to guarantee a comprehensive, just, and long-lasting peace in this part of the world that is considered Holy by the three Abrahamic Faiths.

We also call upon the Palestinian Liberation Organization, as the sole legitimate Representative of the Palestinian people, to resolve its internal disputesas well as any conflicts with other factions that are not under its umbrellain order to present a unified front dedicated to achieving peace and the building of a viable State that is founded upon pluralism and democratic values.

+Patriarch Theophilos III, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate

+Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarchate

+Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Apostolic Administrator, Latin Patriarchate

+Fr. Francesco Patton, ofm, Custos of the Holy Land

+Archbishop Anba Antonious, Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem

+Vicar General Father Gabriel Daho, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate

+Archbishop Aba Embakob, Ethiopian Orthodox Patriarchate

+Archbishop Yaser AL-Ayash, Greek-Melkite-Catholic Patriarchate

+Archbishop Mosa El-Hage, Maronite Patriarchal Exarchate

+Archbishop Suheil Dawani, Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East

+Bishop Ibrahim Sani Azar, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land

+Father Ephram Samaan, Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate

+Rt Rev. Joseph Nerses Zabarian, Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate
Pakistan has said that water discharge in Chenab river has come down significantly, a claim that has been termed by India as "baseless narrative".

In a letter to Indian Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Saxena sent on Wednesday, his Pakistani counterpart Syed Mohammed Meher Ali Shah stated that the discharge at Marala Headworks on Chenab, which flows into Pakistan from the Indian side, has unexpectedly reduced to 18,700 cusecs from 31,853 cusecs.

He also asked Saxena to look into the situation and apprise him.

The Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters termed the claim as "another baseless narrative" by Pakistan and said the matter has been examined.

"The discharges at Akhnoor and Sidhra which are the last gauge and discharge sites on Chenab and Tawi rivers respectively in India have been found consistent and show no significant variation during the stated period," Saxena told PTI on Friday.

He added the same response has been conveyed to Pakistan advising it to get the matter examined instead.

The Permanent Indus Commission, formed under the Indus Waters Treaty was signed between India and Pakistan in 1960. Indus commissioners of both the countries act as representatives of the respective governments for the treaty matters.

The treaty provides for both the commissioners to meet at least once every year, alternately in India and Pakistan.

It specifies that the waters of three eastern rivers namely Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, have been allocated exclusively to India.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, India's share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 per cent. India uses 93-94 per cent of water.

The western rivers, namely Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, are allocated to Pakistan with India given some rights like agriculture, navigation, domestic use and also the unrestricted rights to develop hydroelectric power projects within the specified parameters of design and operations.

In March, the annual meeting between Indus Commissioners was postponed after New Delhi proposed deferment of consultations due to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown.

The Indus Commissioners are supposed to hold meeting by March 31 every year, according to the Indus Waters Treaty.
P lans to ramp up rail services have been brought forward by a week and will start from next Monday, a union is claiming.

Services were expected to be increased gradually from May 18 as part of an easing of the economic lockdown.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said it had discovered that the plans had been brought forward to start on Monday May 11.

Officials said the industry had been told to be ready to begin a last-minute mobilisation to accommodate an increase in passenger numbers from Monday in reaction to the Prime Minister's address on Sunday.

The RMT said the move overrules a planning document sent to the unions on Thursday by the Rail Industry Coronavirus Forum, a rail industry and trade union body established to put in place arrangements to protect passengers and workers.

The document said services would be increased in phases, with a "stepped" increase from May 18, said the RMT.

General secretary Mick Cash said: "We have it on good authority that the rail network has been put on notice to begin a last-minute mobilisation to accommodate an increase in passenger numbers from Monday.

"This is earlier than expected and completely contradicts assurances sent to us only yesterday that the rail industry had only put in place services and arrangements to protect passengers and workers from a 'not high' increase in passenger numbers at a later date.

"To overrule the rail industry like this is a complete breach in faith of the trade union and rail industry discussions.

"It is also a high-risk strategy and RMT is deeply concerned that rushed political considerations could well override the safety issues for staff and passengers alike.

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

"RMT will not compromise on the health, safety and livelihoods of our members and we will not agree to anything that fails to put the safety of staff and passengers first. If that means advising our members not to work under conditions that are unsafe and in breach of the Government's and industry's own guidelines then that is exactly what we will do."

A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We are examining a range of options on how transport can respond to support the recovery in a timely way when the time comes and it is safe to do so. We continue to prepare for any scenario."

A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators and Network Rail, said: "When Government decides the time is right, the railway will respond to support the nation during the next phase of the coronavirus response, as it has done throughout the lockdown.

"Our priority will continue to be the safety of our staff and passengers and we will work closely with Government and unions to run trains safely while supporting the economy and the public's health."

Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers union Aslef, said: "We have worked with the Government and all stakeholders in the rail industry throughout this crisis to ensure that key workers get to work, and food and medical supplies are moved around the country.

"We want to help Britain return to what we knew as normal before the pandemic, and have agreed with the Department for Transport that we will increase the number of services when and where it is safe for passengers and for staff."
Homelessness charity, Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH), has said its teams saw the highest number of rough sleepers on Dublin's streets last night amid concerns they cannot access beds because of a lack of social distancing.

ICHH said 105 people were helped by their teams and "once again the sense of uncertainty among homeless people is palpable".

They said that a major problem for the homeless is the lack of basic cleaning facilities to shower and keep up hand hygiene as per HSE guidelines.

There are fewer toilet facilities for them to use to keep clean since the closure of the day services, coffee shops, fast food restaurants and libraries due to the pandemic.

ICHH also said its teams have many times in the last two weeks been unable to get a bed for a user through the freephone system.

They said: "This makes no sense when we have over 1,000 extra beds made available through Covid-19.

"670 of these are single en suite units sourced via hotels, Airbnb short term lets and others and the question needs to be asked as to how many of these are currently occupied and are some being paid for but sitting empty while people on the street cant access a bed for the night."

Speaking this morning ICHH CEO Anthony Flynn reiterated the higher numbers of people who are rough sleeping.

He said: "We have heard of increased numbers in terms of bed availability but accessing those beds and new registrations are a huge issue and many of those who are rough sleeping are doing so because of lack of social distancing within homeless services facilities.

Many are sleeping in rooms with non family members which goes against the advice of the Chief Medical Officer.

"We must now test everyone that is being accommodated in homeless emergency accommodations across the country alongside on site staff.
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Linkedin Melissa Marschke, Jean-Francois Rousseau, Laura Schoenberger and Michael Hoffmann (The Jakarta Post) -  Fri, May 8, 2020 14:50 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6c269f 3 Opinion The-Conversation,sand,sand-mining,natural-resources,environment,environmental-damage,Cambodia,China,Nepal,erosion Free

Next to water, sand is our most consumed natural resource. The global demand for sand and gravel stands between 40 billion and 50 billion tonnes annually, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and its scarcity is an emerging global crisis.

The world may run out of sand if we do not start paying attention to sand as a resource that needs research, management and governance.

The demand for sand is only expected to rise. Sand is also needed to manufacture medical-grade glass vials, which are used to hold vaccines. The industry already faced shortages even before researchers began developing a coronavirus vaccine. And conflicts over sand are emerging in Florida and other seemingly sand-rich areas.

But urbanization and its need for concrete, land infill, asphalt and glass is fuelling sand exploitation the most. The global urban population, expected to grow to 5.2 billion by 2030 from 4.4 billion today, will sustain the global construction boom, where sand is the key ingredient for concrete.

As sand markets boom, entrepreneurs, organized crime and other groups have emerged to cash in, often using cheap labor and driving widespread habitat destruction and coastal, riverbank and delta erosion.

Violent economies, precarious work

Work conditions for sand miners vary starkly. In Cambodia and southwest China, highly mechanized sand mines offer little local employment. In Nepal, labor-intensive sand mines may employ hundreds of people. And, in Myanmar, households living along rivers may be involved in informal river sand collection.

Sand mining can be dangerous. Miners may drown as they harvest sand by hand underwater, and hundreds of sand miners, grassroots activists, journalists, police officers, government officials and others have been killed in clashes over sand.

A diverse set of players including organized crime are involved in the sand mining industry. Roving bandits hunt for sand deposits to dredge, and operations may be hidden from port authorities using high-tech GPS spoofing devices. Local mafia-like structures  in India and likely in at least 70 countries  control entire sand mines and districts.

We know these sites are characterized by violence, secrecy and a lack of trust, but sands shadow economy remains largely unknown. This limits our understanding of the financial flows that fuel sand mining, the barriers to trade regulation and sand governance, and the criminal aspects of sand operations.

Carbon emissions, land loss

Unsustainable or illegal sand extraction from marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems has led to serious sustainability challenges, including carbon emissions and land loss. These environmental impacts will likely be further compounded: data on sand extraction are incomplete, with global sand imports exceeding global exports.

The case of sand exports from Cambodia illustrates this. Singapore imported 80.2 million tonnes of sand from Cambodia between 2007 and 2016, representing a third of the city-states sand imports. Yet, most of this trade is absent in Cambodias official trade logs  Cambodia registered only 2.77 million tonnes of sand exports to Singapore, disguising how important this commodity is to the countrys development.

Infrastructure demands for housing and development fuels the concrete sector, which now contributes eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is a serious issue from a carbon emissions perspective. That means sand, by way of concrete, is tied to our climate futures  and vice versa, as the recent interest in mining the sand emerging from Greenlands melting ice sheet demonstrates.

Scientists have also confirmed riverbank instability from sand mining in the Mekong, Yangtze and other large rivers. Sand dredging impacts river flow, erosion levels and aquatic habitats.

In Myanmar, river-bed farmers are losing their land as sand mining intensifies. Across the Mekong Delta, people are struggling to find fish, which are affected by the noise of sand dredging, as homes and roads further crumble into rivers.

Mobilizing a sand agenda

An important starting point for mobilizing a sand agenda is the 2019 UNEP sand governance report, focusing on accountability and transparency in sand value chains. Global sand governance is critical.

Changing how we build our cities is another part of how we face the sand and climate crises. We need to ask ourselves why we have been so seduced by concrete. If we do not change our habits, and encourage the development of green concrete and alternative building materials or innovations such as using bacterial species in bio-concrete, the world built from sand may be pulled down by its own weight.

To further mobilize a sand agenda, researchers and campaigners could focus on narratives that draw on the climate crisis or other ecological dimensions, such as directing attention to how sand dredging is linked to landslides and poorer water quality, or how sand infill leads to the loss of wetland habitat.

Others could unpack labor regimes, advocate for better working conditions, or explore the involvement of political groups in financing sand extraction. We need to delve deeper into how the sand mining sector relies on cheap labor, fast-moving money, some of it illicit, and criminal activities.

This sand agenda, through the consideration of working conditions and ecological dimensions, enables us to imagine a global future that is greener and more just.

***

Melissa Marschke and Jean-Francois Rousseau are Assistant Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, LUniversite dOttawa/University of Ottawa. Laura Schoenberger is Postdoctoral research fellow, School of International Development and Global Studies, LUniversite dOttawa/University of Ottawa. Michael Hoffmann is Research officer, Centre for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies (ZIRS), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

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.
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Tents placed on a parking lot at the West Los Angeles VA's Care Treatment Rehabilitation Service program, in Brentwood. (Matt Tinoco/LAist)

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The coronavirus pandemic is exposing deep rifts in American society, underscoring the flaws in how our society has dealt with massive social problems, especially homelessness.

One vision of how Los Angeles could, in the future, treat its homeless residents can be found today at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration campus, in Brentwood.

Inside the fence on the VA's verdant campus, staged on a parking lot off San Vicente Boulevard, is a government-facilitated campground that's home to about 30 people. It was set up at the beginning of April for homeless veterans who were showing up at the VA in need of a place to ride out the pandemic.

The residents are provided tents, drinking water, three meals a day, porta-potties, and electrical outlets to charge their phones. The site has on-site security and health care as well as access to case management, substance abuse counseling and mental health support.

Lisa Thompkins, a former medic in the U.S. Air Force, is one of the only women at the camp. She had been staying at the Salvation Army's Bell Shelter, but she was forced to leave when the congregate shelter reduced its capacity to minimize the spread of COVID-19.

"There was some issues with social distancing and face mask-wearing, and I found myself all of a sudden without a place to go," Thompkins said.

Lisa Thompkins has been at the West L.A. VA's CTRS site for about one month. (Matt Tinoco/LAist)

As a vet, she was able to turn to the VA for resources.

"Within a couple hours, I was here with the tent, a sleeping bag and a trunk for all of my worldly belongings -- my mats and jackets and all that kind of stuff," she said. "I'm sober today and I'm happy today and I'm walking in peace today. I have this motto that I go by all the time: I was given this life because I'm strong enough to live it. And I ride on that every single day."

Thompkins is grateful for the campsite. She said she has struggled with homelessness for nearly two decades as she dealt with a combination of post traumatic stress and alcohol abuse.

"This place is awesome. I wish they had done this a long time ago," she said.

GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED CAMPSITE

This is what is known as a government-sanctioned or "safe" campsite, a seldom-used option among the tools state and local governments have to manage homelessness.

California has a handful of such sites, from San Diego to Sacramento, but the strategy has never been broadly adopted. In Southern California, one of the largest examples came approximately a decade ago in the city of Ontario, which moved approximately 200 people indoors over the course of several years.

The idea is to provide a designated location with services that address homeless people's most basic needs -- food, water and safety.

Officially, the VA camp is the"Care Treatment Rehabilitation Service" program, or "CTRS" in federal acronym speak. It's a first-come, first-served, low-barrier-to-entry program that aims to provide up to 50 veterans access to supportive services.

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Dr. Anjani Reddy, the clinical director of the V.A. of Greater Los Angeles' homeless program, says each client receives a high level of personal attention.

"One of the reasons that this is so far working is that we are engaging every day, all day, clinically," Reddy said. "We have a physician on site every day. We have social workers on site every day. And so we're really collaborating across this clinical spectrum."

While the ideal would be to move people into stable housing as soon as possible, that can take years under normal circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even harder. The camp is a place where those experiencing homelessness can stay during the interim.

"We continue to move them towards stable housing but we recognize that that's limited right now, and it may be limited more in the future," Reddy said. "We are committed to keeping the site open during the duration of the pandemic."

Lisa Thompkins says the CTRS is head and shoulders above life on the street. She doesn't have to go looking for food and water and she can get regular medical care.

"When you're outside, you don't really take your meds as prescribed, or you don't even go in to get checked for it in the first place," Thompkins said. "There are a lot of people out there that are sleeping on sidewalks or on grass in a park or in makeshift tents or whatever they can find who don't have one clue about what is really the underlying issue."

It's also what Thompkins called a "wet environment," meaning you don't have to be totally clean of drugs and alcohol to live on site. Thompkins described it as a "harm reduction" environment, where clients have access to resources to help break the cycle of addiction.

"So if you want help, this is a really, really healthy place to be able to ask for it and get it," she said.

COULD SANCTIONED CAMPS BE A WAY FORWARD?

For some, opening public land for sanctioned camping is a no-brainer. When I'm talking to people who live outside, it's not uncommon for me to hear the question: Why can't they just open up all these vacant lots and let us camp on them?

Although the occasional safe campsite might spring, they're typically local occurrences with dedicated leadership -- like the VA's urgent need to provide place for veterans during the pandemic.

For others, safe camping sites are a public policy pariah. Homeless service providers, advocates for the homeless and local politicians often balk at the idea. Sanctioned camps can be difficult to manage and can seem like a city is just giving up.

Although residents of sanctioned campsites have access to food, water and trash pickup, they're still homeless and living outside in tents that lack indoor plumbing and electricity.

Many politicians consider them non-starters for fear of angry neighbors and lawsuits and some advocates think sanctioned campsites take the focus off providing permanent housing.

PROVIDING REFUGE

At the same time, the urgency of the growing homelessness crisis, and the particular vulnerability of homeless people to the coronavirus, has people in high places pushing for the government to open its public land. One of them is Dr. Jonathan Sherin, who directs the L.A. County Department of Mental Health.

"We talk a lot about individuals needing a roof over their head or, you know, a space in a shelter. And what I would say is that actually they need refuge in whatever form we can provide it," said Sherin.

Sherin has a loose definition of "refuge" and points to the campsite at the VA as an example. He points out that the costs of not providing refuge are enormous. While homeless people accrue ever more physical and emotional trauma on the street, distinct from the staggering toll of human suffering, their health bills inevitably end up becoming the responsibility of taxpayers.

"When we let people languish in the street, we are subjecting them to predictable, ongoing trauma. That trauma fuels illness, including mental illness and addiction, so that I'm generating more customers. Other health departments are generating more customers," said Sherin.

Sherin doesn't consider offering refuge as giving up as so much an acceptance that the existing "solutions" for homelessness are neither fast enough nor available at the scale Southern California needs.

SANCTIONED CAMPS BY CONSENT DECREE?

Another vocal supporter of sanctioned camps is Federal Judge David Carter. He's presiding over a court case that has unfolded on a similar timeline to the coronavirus pandemic. It could have massive implications for everyone in Los Angeles.

Both the city and county of Los Angeles are moving toward settling the lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of property owners who say the government has handled mass homelessness with negligence. It's possible a settlement could result in a judicial consent decree, an agreement where a judge supervises ongoing progress made toward the terms of the settlement. Settlement proposals are due in court this week.

It's likely a settlement would follow the path of several Orange County cities who have brokered a peace with advocates for the homeless.

The settlements are part of a consent decree managed by Carter's court. They require cities to build more and better shelter options for at least 60% of the people living on the streets before enforcing anti-camping laws in their jurisdiction. (It's one of the first attempts at compromise following a landmark 2019 case that said homeless people could not be prosecuted for sleeping in public spaces if shelter options aren't available.)

Los Angeles officials have hinted that the 60% goal would be mimicked in the city. But the scale of homelessness here means there's no obvious answer to the question: How do we shelter 60% of L.A.'s homeless?

35,000+ BEDS

We would need 35,000 beds to house 60% of Los Angeles County's homeless population. That's far more than the number of shelter and other housing options the city has produced over the last several years.

An order from Judge Carter's Court on May 2 said that, while the eventual goal should be to provide transitional and permanent housing for homeless residents, "that goal appears unattainable in the short term." Carter wrote:

"It appears, moving forward, that the most viable option is to use public property for the creation of a safe and healthy living environment for the homeless population currently living without shelter."

Alongside opening hotels and recreation centers to homeless residents, that same order also discussed the potential for "the relocation of homeless persons to publicly owned or controlled locations designated for use as temporary and/or permanent living location."

In court, Judge Carter has given presentations on UN camps used to house displaced Syrian refugees.

INTENTIONAL INTERIM COMMUNITIES

When Dr. Sherin was called to Judge Carter's court in April, he outlined a vision for "intentional interim communities," where residents have access to food, water, and bathrooms, but also advanced physical and mental health services, social workers, and legal assistance.

"That is something that you contrast with waiting while people deteriorate for a $500,000 or $600,000 unit with long term services," said Sherin.

As for where such refuge could potentially be provided, a map created last year by L.A. City Controller Ron Galperin's office highlights more than 14,000 government-owned properties in the city of Los Angeles. More than half are owned by the city itself.

Meanwhile, the West L.A. VA is poised to open a second parking lot in the same area to house a few more veterans.

As for Lisa Thompkins, she is still far from getting into somewhere that has internal plumbing but she has a modicum of stability for the time being.

"It's not ideal, no. But I'm making it work. I've got my pink comforter in here, and I got my unicorn squishmellow for a pillow. I even have a doorbell," Thompkins said as she demonstrated a little chime.

She said she has never been so well hydrated in her life.
San Francisco, May 8 : Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are finding it difficult to remove a coronavirus conspiracy video called Plandemic that has spread faster that the virus and can still be accessed on these platforms.

The 26-minute video features a famous vaccine conspiracist who defy the advice of medical experts like saying that "sheltering in place harms consumers' immune systems and that masks can make people sicker".

"The video tries to argue that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines," reports CNBC.

The video features Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent years.

The video on Facebook received more than 1.7 million views as of Thursday and been shared more than 140,000 times.

One of the YouTube videos had received more than 1 million views before it was removed, according to the MIT Technology Review.

According to Twitter, "tweets by Mikovits apparently don't violate the platform's rules around COVID-19 misinformation, but it has marked the video's URL as "unsafe" and blocked the related hashtags.

A Facebook spokeswoman earlier said the video "is eligible for fact-checkers to review and rate." Later, the spokeswoman said that "Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we're removing the video". However, it was still streaming on the platform till late Thursday.

In the video, Mikovits accuses Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of suppressing treatments like hydroxychloroquine - falsely touted by President Donald Trump as a wonder drug to cure coronavirus.
This article is from Thrillist

Credit: Courtesy of Sagamore Spirit

The collision of whiskey and beer is well-worn territory at this point. However, when it's done well, it's a beautiful collision. Beer lovers will line up to pay $20+ a bottle for beers that have spent time getting to know a whiskey barrel.



More often than not, that's the direction the relationship goes. You're getting a beer that's been getting friendly with a whiskey barrel. You'll less frequently find the roles reversed. Well, gird your liquor cabinet, because Sagamore Spirit has a new release that reverses the roles. The award-winning distillery is issuing a new rye whiskey that's been sitting in barrels that first aged Sagamore Spirit rye and then Sierra Nevada's red ale. Sierra Nevada released the red ale from those barrels last year. The barrels have been dancing back and forth between a couple of delicious liquids, last holding this new release that blends a six-year-old and four-year-old straight rye whiskey.



The 90-proof Sagamore Spirit Brewer's Select Rye Ale Barrel Finish is the first release in a new series that will marry the tastes of whiskey and beer. The series of beer barrel-finished spirits is called Brewer's Select and each release will start with the distillery's Maryland-style rye.



"Like us, the team at Sierra Nevada believes in doing things differently, and doing things right. We learned last year just how well our approachable Maryland-style rye complemented their red ale, and now theyre returning the favor," Brian Treacy, President of Sagamore Spirit, said in a statement. "Its the first time weve finished our whiskey in beer barrels that we originally owned, and the result was well worth the wait."



Sagamore, which just grabbed two Double Gold awards at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, is calling this new release "a one of a kind rye," with "rich cocoa on the nose" and "notes of creamy caramel and hazelnut." However, it'll run you $69.99 a bottle. That's about $64 more than the plastic jugs of whiskey you bought in college, but with all the money you've saved not going to the bar, maybe it's time to splurge.



Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email and subscribe here for our YouTube channel to get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.




Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday rejected speculation about the Indian Army being deployed in Mumbai, which has become a coronavirus hotspot with a staggering 12,142 Covid-19 positive cases.

There have been rumours since a few days that the Army will be deployed in Mumbai; and all shops will be shut. Till now whatever I have done, I have taken you all in confidence and done it. The Army will not be deployed. You and I are the soldiers in the fight against coronavirus, Thackeray said in his online address to the people.

He said additional security manpower may be sought from the Union government if needed so that the Mumbai Police personnel get some respite from dealing with the crisis.

ALSO READ | Covid-19 hotspots in Maharashtra could see lockdown extension: Report

In the live webcast, the Maharashtra chief minister appealed to people not to believe in fake news and said that he may ask the Centre for additional Central forces so that the state police force may get some respite and be allowed to work in phases.

This does not mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the Army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the- clock, some have fallen sick also and a few of them have succumbed to the infection. They need rest, Thackeray said.

ALSO READ | Covid-19 state tally: Maharashtra inches towards 18,000-mark; Dadra Nagar Haveli reports first case

The chief minister also admitted that while the spread of the coronavirus has been contained, Maharashtra has not yet managed to break the chain of infection..

On whether the lockdown will be extended in the state after May 17, he said the decision would depend on how far people maintain discipline and follow social distancing guidelines.
Rick Bright is a household name these days. At least in some households.

Hes former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the scientist who last month was booted from his job by the president.

Bright  a virus whistle-blower, as the New York Times put it this week  filed a formal complaint claiming he was removed after standing up to pressure from Administration officials who wanted him to direct contracts to influential people, including friends of Jared Kushner. His complaint claims he was punished for prioritizing science and safety over political expediency, that he paid the price for his skepticism of hydroxychloroquine, the drug pushed by the president.

You can imagine the eye of the hurricane hes in. President Trump this week wrote him off as a disgruntled employee.

But those who knew Bright as a student at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he earned his bachelors degree in biology in 1997, believe in him to their core.

Nancy Grisham Anderson, an AUM Distinguished Fellow who taught Bright a quarter century ago, remembers him vividly, and describes him with glowing terms like brilliant, and charming.

She taught him writing. It wasnt a course in his major, but he is seared in her memory. In part because they were both involved in the honor society Omicron Delta Kappa, but mainly because he was different.

Anderson tells the story as though it was last week. It was a Friday, during exam season, and she decided to give her advanced expository writing class a take-home exam question in the form of an essay. Students were to turn it in the following Monday.

There was a banquet that Friday night, which Anderson attended and over which Bright would preside. When she arrived, the young man  he was a little older than most students because he had served in the military  rushed to her, thrilled, even as he was preparing to speak. He wanted to talk about the essay.

He couldnt get his mind off it, he told her, and he thanked her for it.

I will never forget how excited he was on a Friday night at a banquet, she said. He said it was the essay he had always wanted to write.

The assignment, Anderson said, was to write objectively about a time when you took a stand on principle.

She remembers that essay despite all the years. It was clear, and insightful, and original, like all of his writing. But it was also highly personal, about his life growing up in the Midwest, so she does not feel comfortable sharing it.

But it spoke loudly of the Rick Bright she knew then, and it speaks loudly of the man she sees now.

He is the same person taking the same stand, she said. He is one of the most remarkable students I ever taught.

Bright went on to get a masters and doctorate from Emory University, and worked across the world researching influenza and pandemics. He came back to AUM to see friends and mentors, especially Dr. Jeff Barksdale.

Bright told the AUM alumni magazine he wanted to make vaccines for the world, even if he could make more money in the private sector.

Its so important to teach companies and countries to make their own vaccines, he told the magazine before the coronavirus emerged. It assures access. In a pandemic, the supplies are so limited, and the largest countries are buying most of the supplies. It is still highly likely that a bird flu pandemic could start in southeast Asia. If they have the ability to produce the vaccine there, we have a better chance of stopping it before it spreads.

Bright always looked ahead, Anderson said.

He sat across the table from her at a dinner several years ago and told her, Its not if we are going to have a pandemic, but when.

She remembers him as a man of principle and courage. She hopes the world can see that man, too.

John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register, Birmingham Magazine and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
At least 22 migrant labourers, who had returned from Telangana, ran away from a quarantine centre in Maoist-affected Dantewada district of Chhattisgarhs Bastar region on Thursday night.

Dantewada District Collector Topeshwar Verma told Hindustan Times that the agricultural labourers were quarantined about 12 km from their native village Nahadi, which is situated in core Maoist area of the district.

They reached Aranpur on Thursday and all of them were medically examined by the health team. Subsequently, they were kept in quarantine facility in a police station from where they escaped on Thursday night, said the Collector.

The officer said that total 47 migrant labourers came back from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to Dantewada and were kept at a quarantine facility in Aranpur police station area before allowing them to go their native villages.

No symptom of coronavirus was found in these labourers, said the collector.

We have informed sarpanch and secretary of the concerned village panchayat but till now they have not reached to their village. It is presently not possible for administration and police to reach Nahadi village because it is core area of Maoists, said the Collector.

No case of Covid-19 was reported from Bastar division which comprises seven districts - Bastar, Kanker, Kondagaon, Narayanpur, Dantewada, Sukma and Bijapur.

Total 59 cases have been reported in Chhattisgarh till now in which 38 recovered and discharged from hospital.

Two patients of Covid-19, including one nursing officer of a quarantine centre, were discharged from AIIMS in state capital Raipur on Thursday after they tested negative in the second consecutive test.

The nursing officer is 35-year-old while another patient, who hails from Surajpur, is 25.

Presently, AIIMS has 21 active Covid-19 positive patients and all are in stable condition.
ST. JOSEPH, MI  An additional $1.7 million has been secured for COVID-19 testing in Southwest Michigan, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton announced yesterday.

The St. Joseph Republican stated in a news release that the funds would be spread across four community health centers in the 6th Congressional District.

Among the recipients is Family Health Center in Kalamazoo, which has been coordinating a rolling, drive-thru test site that began April 17 and has been testing hundreds of Kalamazoo County residents per week. Family Health Center is receiving an additional $584,749 in federal funding for its efforts, according to Uptons release.

Other recipients of funds include Intercare Community Health Network in Bangor ($737,464), Lakeland Immediate Care Center in Cassopolis ($288,079) and Covered Bridge Healthcare of St. Joseph County, Inc. in Centreville ($133,444).

The money allocated to the four centers is part of $583 million in funds the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded to 1,385 health centers spread across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and eight U.S. territories, according to the departments website.

The May funding comes in addition to prior allocations to the region announced in March and April, Uptons office states. This months funding is a result of the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act passed in April.

In our ongoing fight against the coronavirus, we know we need to be able to test more folks so we can better identify cases and provide effective treatments more quickly," Upton said in a statement.

"Community health centers are on the front lines, and this funding will allow them to help better protect the health and safety of all Southwest Michigan.

For those looking to get tested in the region, they should contact their local participating health center directly.

The next Family Health Center testing date in Kalamazoo County is scheduled for May 14 at Kalamazoo Central High School, where, according to center officials, upward of 500 tests will be available.

Individuals who are hoping to get tested in Kalamazoo County must first call the Family Health Center at 269-488-0804 to undergo a pre-test evaluation and assessment to determine whether it is appropriate for them to be tested, said center president and CEO Denise Crawford.

The testing is free and open to all community members, regardless of whether they have been Family Health Center patients in the past or have a primary medical provider. If someone desires to be tested but does not have access to a car for the drive-thru testing, they can call the center and request a curbside test and walk to either Family Health Center location, Crawford said.

In addition to funds for more testing, Uptons office announced Friday that FEMA will be delivering two shipments of personal protective equipment to local nursing homes.

More than 30 nursing homes across Southwest Michigan will receive more than 90,000 gloves, masks, gowns and eye protection in their efforts to protect their residents and their staff, the congressmans office announced.

Some of our states more vulnerable residents live in nursing homes, so its critical we do all we can to better protect both the residents and the staff caring for them," Upton said. "We will continue to coordinate on federal, state, and local efforts to secure more PPE for our front line workers.

FEMA is expected to deliver nearly 1.4 million total medical supplies to nursing homes across the state of Michigan. Each facility will receive an allotment of all four items based on the staff size of the facility, Uptons office announced.

Michigans 6th Congressional District consists of all of Berrien, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, and Van Buren counties, and most of Allegan County.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

The Powering Positivity campaign by MLive Media Group highlights how Michiganders are supporting one another during the coronavirus pandemic. It is sponsored by The MediLodge Group.

More coronavirus coverage on MLive:

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Whitmer extends Michigan stay-at-home order until May 28, manufacturing reopens Monday

Kalamazoo library wants your stories and photos to document pandemics impact
Australia Joins Exclusive First Movers COVID Response Group

Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined an exclusive meeting with a small group of world leaders whose countries responded quickly and successfully to the CCP virus outbreak and are now looking to restart their economies and get back to a level of normality.

Austrias Chancellor Sebastian Kurz hosted the video conference, called First Movers COVID Group.

The meeting was also attended by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Discussions were held on the need to reopen schools, how to localise virus clusters, the importance of contact tracing and rapid testing, scientific research, and economic regeneration.

None of us know what happens when we open up our economies and open up the schools and especially the young kids who cannot practice any separation and theyll infect one another. We have to be ready for an accordion effect, said Netanyahu.

Consultation agreements were made between the groups with Israel leading on database issues. Greece would lead consultation on tourism and aviation, and Denmark will lead the reopening of schools.

The other leaders said they were aware of the quick uptake of Australias COVIDSafe contact tracing app.

Morrison has frequently hailed the work of Singapore and borrowed its idea of a mobile phone app to more effectively allow health detectives to trace the contacts of people who have the virus.

According to World-O-Meter figures, Australia has the second-lowest number of CCP virus cases in the group with 6,901 cases, behind Greece with 2,678 cases. Singapore has the highest number of cases with 20,939, and 20 deaths.

Austria was one of the standout countries in dealing with the virus. The European nation was one of the first to go into lockdown on March 14. They started lifting restrictions on April 6, going against World Health Organisation recommendations.

Morrison has been lobbying global leaders to support a motion that will be tabled at the World Health Assembly on May 18 that will call for an investigation into the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus. It is hoped the investigation will help to better enable speedy response to future potential pandemics.

The eight nations representatives will meet again next week. The May 7 meeting occurred less than 24 hours before a significant national cabinet meeting between Australias premiers and chief ministers during which the lifting of restrictions was discussed.
A sign hangs on the window of a restaurant advertising the establishment is still open for pickups and deliveries during a statewide stay-at-home order in an effort to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus, Friday, March 27, 2020, in Englewood, Colo. 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.
Photo: Nura Sheidaee

If you think your neighbourhood does it up proper for the 7 o'clock cheer, it might be hard to beat the nightly "Patio Dance Party" in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant district.

Launched in April, Patio Dance Party - and its companion Instagram account - extends the nightly tradition of making some noise at 7 p.m. in support of essential workers during the COVID-19 crisis.

On a patio above 7th and Main Street, the dance party is officiated by a DJ who accepts requests via Instagram DM. It is the era of social distancing, after all.

The dance parties have been bringing neighbours together, from a safe distance, who are on the sidewalks and their own patios dancing when the party kicks off at 7:02 p.m. nightly, rain or shine.

One of the neighbours is photographer Nura Sheidaee, who says the Patio Dance Party crew have "brought the energy, the love, and the endless array of fabulous outfits."

"They have made the nights less lonely," attests the Aussie expat. "They have truly connected the neighbourhood, and have helped me pick up my camera again and focus on all the positivity that I am so grateful to have happening right outside my balcony."
CAMBRIDGE  The Muslim call to prayer will be heard echoing from the Islamic Centre of Cambridge after council passed a temporary noise exemption bylaw at a special council meeting Thursday.

The temporary move will allow the mosque to broadcast the call to prayer, also known as adhan, through a loudspeaker twice a day during the month of Ramadan, which ends on May 24.

Right now they cant do their call to prayer within the mosque, said Coun. Jan Liggett who brought forward the motion following a request from the local Muslim community. That is because Muslims, like other faith groups, are not congregating in places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims and praying at a mosque is an important part of this month of fasting and reflection.

The Cambridge Muslim Society and Islamic Centre had requested to broadcast the call to prayer twice a day for five minutes at a time. It will occur at noon and 30 minutes before sunset each day until Ramadan ends.

We do recognize this decision will come with complaints from our residents, however we also want to remind our community that it is temporary. It is about kindness during this time which for all of us is a difficult time, Liggett said.

Bylaw officers will work with the mosque to determine an acceptable volume to broadcast the call to prayer.

Liggett said historically, churches would ring church bells as a call to prayer, and this is no different.

Coun. Nicholas Ermeta said the city should consult with other religions to see if this is something they would also like to do and pushed for a deferral that was later voted down by council.

The one thing that bothers me here. What other prayers are half-hour prior to sunset ... when trying to get kids to bed, Coun. Mike Devine said.

Last week, Mississauga city council allowed the local Muslim community to broadcast the call to prayer for the remainder of the month of Ramadan. The decision was met with backlash from the community.
Pretending to be a construction company almost worked for a New York woman who surrendered herself to police on Thursday, accused of trying to defraud Franklin County, Pa. of $1.5 million.

Katherine Yvonne Gonzalez, 55, is accused of claiming to be a representative of Lobar, Incorporated, a company that is working on the $67.8 million courthouse renovation project in Franklin County, police said.

On Dec. 19, 2019, the Franklin County Controllers Office received an email from an address that had Lobars name in it requesting a change in the direct deposit payee account, Chambersburg police said. Police later confirmed the email address was not associated with the company.

The Franklin County Controllers Office sent a form to Gonzalez, who they believed was a Lobar representative, who then returned the form on Dec. 23, 2019, with banking information for a TD Bank account, police said.

The form did include additional employer information for Lobar that police say was an attempt to legitimize the administrative procedure.

Franklin County Courthouse Photo by Becky Metrick

A copy of a voided TD Bank check with Lobar, Inc printed on the upper left corner was also provided with a routing number and account number for the new deposit, police said.

All of these communications came from the same email address with the same IP address that had sent the request on Dec. 19, 2019.

On Feb. 20, police said Franklin County made a payment of $1,570,638.33 to the TD Bank account. The money was deposited into the account on Feb. 24, but TD Bank marked the transaction as suspicious and put a hold on the funds on March 3.

Representatives with TD Bank contacted the issuing bank which started an investigation and was able to confirm that the people who have received the money had no association with Lobar, police said.

On March 17, a search warrant was issued to TD Bank regarding this case, and investigators learned the fraudulent account was made by Gonzalez and her 19-year-old son. The bank confirmed that Gonzalez, who lived in New York City, made three withdrawals from the account.

The payment was reversed and on April 15 police learned that not all the funds put into the fraudulent account were recovered. Police said three transactions totaling $243,000 were made before a hold was put on the account.

The checks were in the amount of $75,000, $80,000 and $88,000, police said. The checks for $80,000 and $75,000 were deposited into other accounts belonging to Digital Federal Credit Union. A stop payment was made on the $88,000 check, and the balance of the money is being returned to Franklin County.

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Police are further investigating accounts with the DFCU that have balances of $56,500 and $47,832.28 that are believed to be involved in the case, police said.

Those assets were frozen and are in the process of being returned to Franklin County.

After a warrant was issued for Gonzales on April 30, she surrendered herself to the New York City Police Departments 47th Precinct on Thursday, police said.

Others are being investigated in connection with the case, police said.

Gonzales is being charged with felony theft by deception, receiving stolen property, police said.

The New York City Police Department assisted Chambersburg police with the investigation.

Read more on PennLive:
Former Senate staffer who alleged ex-vice president assaulted her in 1993 says shell take a polygraph if he also would.

Tara Reade, who has accused United States presidential hopeful Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, said she wanted the politician to be held accountable and called on him to drop out of the race for the White House.

Reade said in March Biden, the Democratic Partys presumptive presidential nominee, sexually assaulted her in a Capitol Hill corridor 27 years ago when she was a 29-year-old aide in the then-Senators Office. Biden, a former US vice president, denies the accusation.

Joe Biden, please step forward and be held accountable. You should not be running on character for the president of the United States, Reade said in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.

You want him to withdraw? asked Kelly in the clip released on Thursday.





I wish he would, but he wont, Reade said, adding: I think its a little late for an apology.

Pressed by a Florida television station about Reades comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

The truth is what matters, the 77-year-old told Bay News 9. In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false.

The interview came as new written evidence from the 1990s emerged showing Reade  who has not produced the complaint she apparently filed with a congressional personnel office in 1993  had told her ex-husband that she was sexually harassed while working for Biden.

The 1996 court document, obtained by the San Luis Obispo Tribune, does not say Biden committed the harassment, nor does it mention Reades more recent and serious allegations of sexual assault.

Reades then-husband, Theodore Dronen, wrote in the court declaration that Reade had told him about a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in US Senator Joe Bidens office.

Trump donor representing Reade

Separately, The Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday that Reade was being represented by Douglas Wigdor, a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trumps 2016 Republican campaign.

Wigdor told AP news agency he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trumps presumptive opponent in the November election.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, the firm said in a statement.

Wigdor has been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, according to AP news agency. He has not donated to either Trumps or Bidens 2020 campaign.

Reade, 56, has said for weeks she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her.

In March, she alleged that Biden pinned her against a wall, put his hands down my skirt and violated her.

Reades public account evolved over time. In early 2019, she was among multiple women who accused Biden not of assault but of touching them inappropriately, or in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.

She has since presented a more serious claim of assault.

Bidens deputy campaign manager released a statement on Thursday challenging some of Reades assertions.

More and more inconsistencies keep emerging, Kate Bedingfield said, according to The Washington Post.





Women  must be able to come forward and share their stories without fear of retribution or harm, she said.

At the same time, we can never sacrifice the truth. And the truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity.

Reade said she would absolutely speak under oath about what happened.

Asked if she would take a polygraph test, she said such requests would set a poor precedent for survivors of violence.

I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, Reade said. But I am not a criminal.

Reade in the past has publicly expressed support for Bernie Sanders, the progressive candidate who quit the Democratic nomination race in April and endorsed Biden.
So how exactly do you return a stimulus check that was sent to a dead person?

It's a question that's been on the minds of way too many grieving families who saw stimulus money just show up in April for loved ones who died in 2018 or 2019, including wives, husbands, fathers, and mothers.

Jerry Maziar's mother-in-law Muriel Lesselbaum lived to age 100. Maziar remembers her as a special, wonderful person, quite a character, who was pleasant even after her memory declined in her later years. She died Oct. 13, just a month after celebrating that 100th birthday.

In April, the Internal Revenue Service sent her a $1,200 stimulus check  marked deceased  in care of her daughter Judy Maziar.

"Which was the appropriate amount had she been alive," said Maziar, 78, who lives in Atlanta.

For weeks, Maziar wondered what to do.

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The couple had seriously thought of cashing the check and donating the money to a local food bank.

They've been inspired to send $50 or $100 here and there to food banks during the coronavirus pandemic after they were pleasantly surprised one morning during a trip to Kroger when an anonymous donor  who later was revealed to be Atlanta media mogul Tyler Perry  picked up the grocery bills during the senior shopping hour.

They know plenty of people need food right now. The seven-week tally on Thursday hit 33.5 million unemployment claims across the country.

Now, instead of paying it forward, they'll be sending it back.

Fortunately, the couple didn't cash that stimulus check because they had a nagging feeling that the IRS might come calling. They knew they couldn't be the only people seeing checks for the deceased  and they weren't.

On May 6, the Internal Revenue Service addressed the issue and added Question No. 41 to its ever growing list of questions and answers regarding Economic Impact Payments. "What should I do to return an Economic Impact Payment?"

Story continues

The Economic Impact Payments represent serious money. The amounts are up to $1,200 for individuals, and up to $2,400 for married couples. An extra $500 is added per dependent child ages 16 and younger.

So while it might be tempting for some to keep the money sent to the deceased, the Treasury Department doesn't want you to do that.

What is the IRS telling you to do?

Here's what the IRS said people need to do if they must return an Economic Impact Payment, such as one issued to a deceased person.

If the payment was a paper check:

Write "Void" in the endorsement section on the back of the check.

Mail the voided Treasury check immediately to the appropriate IRS location listed below.

Don't staple, bend, or paper clip the check.

Include a note stating the reason for returning the check.

And if you cashed that paper check already, or you received the stimulus money via direct deposit, the IRS said you should:

Submit a personal check, money order, etc., immediately to the appropriate IRS location listed at IRS.gov.

Write on the check/money order made payable to U.S. Treasury and write 2020EIP, and the taxpayer identification number (Social Security number, or individual taxpayer identification number) of the recipient of the check.

Include a brief explanation of the reason for returning the EIP.

On May 6, the Treasury Department advised that people who received a stimulus payment for someone who died before the payment was received should return the money.

Should you return the stimulus money?

While there remains some debate on whether the money must actually be returned based on the details of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act itself, several tax preparers maintain that it may be best for taxpayers to simply follow IRS instructions.

"If payments are not returned, the IRS may try to bring a test case to see if a court will support their position, hoping that will bring in more payment returns," said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

The IRS could try to charge you interest and penalties at some point if you do not return the money.

Luscombe said the IRS may also try to offset the claim against any tax refund that you might be due on a 2020 or even a 2019 tax return, especially if the stimulus money went into a joint account.

"In short, it will likely create a very complicated situation if people do not voluntarily return the payments," Luscombe said.

Ken Milani, professor of accountancy at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, said his advice is that taxpayers "do the right thing," with a tip of the hat to Spike Lee.

"Given the cash flow shortfall of the U.S. Treasury and the obvious ethical implications of a person who is dead receiving a stimulus payment, my take on the situation is that the money should be returned to the U.S. Treasury," Milani said.

Also, he said, taxpayers should realize that this would be "low-hanging fruit" for the IRS to go after.

Some say it's only the right thing to do

Susan Hiltz of Macomb Township, Michigan, couldn't believe it when two stimulus payments popped up at once in her bank account on April 15  and then she received another stimulus check in the mail shortly after that.

Susan Hiltz, of Macomb Township, and her mother Arlene Hiltz are photographed on a cruise to the Bahamas in 2016. Her mother passed away in 2018 but received a stimulus check in 2020. Hiltz was trying to figure out how to return the money.

Only one payment of $1,200 was really hers. The other $2,400 she knew was clearly a mistake.

Her mother, Arlene Hiltz, who died at age 82 in May 2018, received a $1,200 payment last month via direct deposit because she was on Hiltz's account.

Her aunt Mary Ann Osmialowski, who was her mother's only sister and died at age 79 in April 2018, received a check of $1,200. The check was sent to Hiltz, who handled her aunt's estate.

How could two people who died two years ago be getting stimulus payments? Both had been on Social Security so it seemed to Hiltz that it should have been easy enough for the government to know they had died. The paper check even had an abbreviated indication that the check was for someone who was dead.

Hiltz marked the check "Void" and sent it back immediately to the address on the envelope. She didn't wait until the IRS spelled out where some of those checks should go.

She tried to search for answers on what to do with the other $1,200 that showed up via direct deposit.

She was upset at the haphazard way the payments were made to the dead and what she views an ineptness on the part of the federal government in rushing out payments during the coronavirus crisis.

She still felt the money had to be returned, though, even if it was someone else's mistake.

While the situation created extra work for her  and brought up sad memories of when both sisters were in hospice care at once  she felt that finding some way to return $2,400 to the federal government was the only right thing to do, especially during the economic fallout related to the coronavirus pandemic.

"There are people who are in dire need of that money and small businesses that aren't getting it," Hiltz told me in a phone interview Thursday.

"There are people who live in our state and our country who really need it right now."

Contact Susan Tompor: 313-222-8876 or stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @tompor. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: IRS tells people how to send back stimulus cash sent to the deceased
Around 250 Indian students and tourists stranded in the UK due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown for nearly two months are preparing to board the first repatriation flight from London to Mumbai on Saturday.

The flight marks the first of seven Air India routes organised by the Indian government from London's Heathrow Airport to six Indian cities over the next week Mumbai (Saturday and Tuesday), Bengaluru (Sunday), Hyderabad (Monday), Ahmedabad (Wednesday), Chennai (Thursday) and New Delhi (Friday) in the first phase of the UK-India segment of the 'Operation Vande Bharat- A homecoming'.

This is the biggest-ever repatriation operation anywhere in the world at any time. Flights will be scheduled until the last Indian has been flown back home, no one will be left behind, said Kuldeep Shekhawat, the President of the Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP) diaspora group who is helping with the coordination efforts.

The flight schedule in subsequent phases from the UK will depend on demand and if there are enough passengers, direct flights will be organised to other Indian cities which have an international airport, he said.

The first Air India flight will arrive at London's Heathrow Airport with double the required crew members on board, half of whom will stay behind for further schedules.

Passengers will be tested for temperature, one of the symptoms of COVID-19, before boarding and only those showing no symptoms would be able to make the journey.

I am a first-year student in the UK so my whole family was really worried back in India. As soon as I got the email from the High Commission, I told my dad who was speechless. I am delighted to be going back, said Vedant Anil Sharma, International Business Management student at Royal Agricultural University in south-west England, who is on the first flight back to Mumbai on Saturday.

Sharma is among thousands of Indian students desperate to go back to their loved ones in India and has been supported through the lockdown by student groups such as the National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU).

We are supporting the High Commission in helping to prioritise the most vulnerable cases, said NISAU UK Chair Sanam Arora.

We are concerned that many students have fallen through the safety net in Britain; as many of them have lost their jobs and consequently have been struggling with living expenses so for them while we are working with community organisations to offer them support, a more sustainable and institutional response has been sought by us, she said.

The group has also been flagged concerns from some students already facing financial constraints over the affordability of tickets on the non-commercial special flights, which have a flat rate for all cities with an Economy class ticket priced at 539 pounds, Business class at 1,493 pounds and First Class at 3,339 pounds.

While social distancing will not be imposed inflight, passengers will have access to personal protective gear such as masks and gloves.

On landing in India, they will have a choice of venues organised by respective state governments for their 14-day quarantine period including a range of hotels on offer based on individual affordability.

The schedule is being coordinated by the Indian High Commission in London, with payments made directly to Air India by confirmed passengers. The first set of seven flights to India will prioritise Indian passport holders on vulnerability and health grounds.

The Indian High Commission advisory said, Stranded Indian nationals are being contacted by Air India. Kindly complete booking formalities quickly otherwise seats will be offered to the next stranded Indian in the waiting list. Only Indian passport holders can travel.

People calling from Air India will be identifiable by three steps. All shortlisted passengers will get emails from the High Commission explaining these steps, it added.

The Air India flights landing at London Heathrow will also be bringing back some expatriates and UK visa holders wanting to fly back to the UK.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- Thanks to the work of the coronavirus -- that dastardly little good-for-nothing -- high school seniors throughout the United States are being robbed of some great final-month-of-school joys.

Yes, thanks to the virus, were getting things like virtual graduations. In my day, a virtual graduation meant you got straight Ds for grades because you studied virtually -- as in almost every day.

There are no proms in 2020 or, in some cases, proms are being delayed for months. Why, back when I was going to school, no prom just meant I couldnt get a date -- you see, there was no virus needed to spoil my dreams.

Anyway, getting to the point, the Beachwood High School Class of 2020, the school district and the city made sure those students were recognized for the 12 years of schooling they put in by holding a parade Thursday night (May 7).

Students in cars with their families drove a route throughout the city that took them to the parking lots of each of Beachwoods schools. In those lots, waiting, were school staff and community members, honking horns and cheering for them.

At the parades first and last stop, Beachwoods Board of Education greeted the seniors with a massive banner. The Beachwood Police Department, and specifically officer C.J. Piro, led the parade as it twisted through city streets, while the Beachwood Fire Department and its trucks also lent some grandeur to the event.

We are so thankful to Principal Paul Chase, Assistant Principal Ryan Patti, Director of Facilities and Grounds Brian Koss, and Officer Piro for planning the parade to support our graduating seniors, Superintendent Robert Hardis said at the parades conclusion.

"Thanks also to Beachwoods Mayor Martin Horwitz, who supported this event completely.

Beachwood High School senior Matt Keyerleber waves while taking part in the parade. (Photo Courtesy of Beachwood City Schools)

We are incredibly proud of them, Hardis said of the 132 students that make up the BHS Class of 2020, and wish they could enjoy the milestone events at the end of high school that they deserve. We hope the enthusiasm and spirit of this parade made up for some of what theyve lost.

Cheryl Isaacson, who was a parade spectator with her husband, Councilman Alec Isaacson, called the evening awesome. She gave this account of the proceedings:

My family watched at Hilltop School, Isaacson said. "The sound of the sirens from the police motorcycles, ambulance and fire trucks leading the parade started the procession with excitement. Cars were parked in the Hilltop parking lot. Everyone stayed in their cars, popped out of sun roofs, sat in open trunks, all physically distant.

"As the seniors and their families drove around the perimeter of the lot, people cheered, horns honked, seniors smiled. Many of the kids were standing with their bodies popped out of sun roofs, in convertibles, or just enjoying the view from the car.

"I am told that people were out in force at each of the schools, the mall (Beachwood Place), in their driveways along the route, and along Richmond Road, with the parade ending at the high school. Mayor Horwitz and his wife were at the end of the parade; no other council members were in the parade. Alec and I watched with many other families and teachers at Hilltop.

The feeling of celebration and community was palpable. Doing something positive for the seniors, when so many traditions have been canceled for them, was wonderful. Seeing them so happy as they rode around was amazing.

It definitely was a great night for community spirit in Beachwood.

Ah yes, it all reminds me of the smiles teachers displayed when I left high school for the last time, But for some odd reason -- and maybe its just me -- I dont think my teachers were expressing quite the same sentiments as those at the parade.

Quite a postponement: Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood had planned to honor Cantor Sarah Sager June 28. The coronavirus, which, as we see above, is spoiling just about everything, has made the temple postpone the celebration of Sagers work.

Thus, the temple has booked a date for June 13, 2021, at Executive Caterers at Landerhaven, when it will celebrate Sager.

Beachwood's Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple had to postpone a recognition event for Cantor Sarah Sager more than a year, until June 2021. (Jeff Piorkowski, special to cleveland.com)

We are blessed that Cantor Sager will be continuing in a new, part-time role as Cantor Laureate and feel that it will still be timely and important to include as many people as possible in celebrating Cantor Sager at a true gala event she deserves after 40 years of full-time devoted service to our synagogue, said Fairmount Temple Board President Todd Silverman, writing in the temples online update.

Five new temple board members: Temple Emanu El, 4545 Brainard Road in Orange, is installing five new Board of Trustees members. Joining the board are Cleveland Heights resident Seth Alson; Keith Belkin, of Pepper Pike; Mitchell Cronig, of Shaker Heights; Fredrick Lurie, of University Heights; and Nancy Hrman, of Solon.

The five were installed via an online Zoom conference meeting May 8.

Deepening our congregants bonds of connection with each other is the main goal of my presidency, temple President David Sperling said in a news release. During these times, that goal is more important than ever. I thank our departing board members for helping me focus on that mission, and I know our incoming board members will help guide our efforts to fulfilling that mission, as well.

News from Cedarville: Congratulations to Shaker Heights April Chapman, who recently graduated, in an online ceremony, with a doctor of pharmacy degree from Ohios Cedarville University.

Helping the helpers: Park Synagogue, of Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike, raised $60,000 in 10 hours from nearly 350 donors to support healthcare workers and provide food staples for people in need during the COVID-19 crisis.

The synagogue held a virtual event, The Park Telethon: 10 Hours of Making a Difference, on April 19. Senior Rabbi Joshua Skoff stated in a news release: We had announced beforehand the funds raised from the telethon would be multi-purpose.

"One part would go towards PPE and provide protection for those who are protecting our most vulnerable. The second part would be helping the food bank and others who can no longer rely on typical donations to provide food for those who are in need.

Park congregants and guests presented on different topics throughout the day virtually on Zoom. Topics ranged from sharing updates about the present and future of COVID-19, to exercise classes, cooking demonstrations and magic, as well as the importance of wearing masks and helping parents deal with the anxieties their children may be facing.

Park distributed donations to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, Koinonia Homes Inc., Menorah Park, Montefiore and Paralyzed Veterans of America, Buckeye Chapter.

We are all in this together, and we wanted to do something to give back to our community during this challenging time," Park President Susan Ratner said in the same release. "It is our hope that these gifts will make a difference in helping take care of our most vulnerable community members.

Theyre in the Obama doc: The Womens Guild Book Club of East View United Church of Christ is pleased to be featured in a documentary about Michelle Obamas book tour for her memoir, Becoming. The film began airing on Netflix on Wednesday (May 6).

The former First Lady made a surprise visit March 17, 2019, to East View, 15615 Chagrin Blvd. in Shaker Heights, to participate in a discussion of her New York Times bestseller. She also stayed for the church service. Her visit was filmed for the documentary.

Because of the COVID-19 quarantine, members of the church met via Zoom for a virtual viewing of the documentary on Wednesday (May 6). Shirley Reeder is the Womens Guild president. Happy viewing!

Remote lectures: CWRU Siegal Lifelong Learning has some remote lectures coming up.

Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Confederate, Expatriate, Jewish Sculptor, will be held from noon to 1 p.m. May 15 with speaker Samantha Baskind, professor of art history at Cleveland State University. Cost is $5 for members, $10 for non-members.

The Roots of Jewish Humor will be held from 7 to 8 p.m. May 20 with Joshua Lambert, academic director at the Yiddish Book Center. This one is free and open to the community, but registration is required.

How to Build a Pyramid: Analyzing the Great Pyramid Builders of Egypt, will be held from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Thursdays, May 21 through June 25. The instructor for this series will be Meghan Strong, adjunct assistant professor of classics at Case Western Reserve University and research associate at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Member cost is $61, and for non-members, its $72.

And, Secrecy, Shame, and Scaffolds: Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter will be held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Thursdays, May 28 through June 18. You will learn in this series from Angela Fasick, instructor of lifelong learning. The cost is $64 for members; $79 for non-members.

To learn more or to register for any of these lectures, visit case.edu/lifelonglearning or call 216-368-2091.

Showing you care with bagels: The City of University Heights has let us know that Bialys Bagels owners Sarah and Rachel Gross are matching contributions from customers to donate bagels to local hospital staffs.

Recently, Bialys customers purchased 187 dozen bagels to be donated. With Bialys match, it made for 374 dozen bagels to be donated. On the morning of May 6, Sarah and Rachel delivered their first round of 69 dozen bagels to Hillcrest Hospital, leaving 305 dozen yet to be made and donated.

CH-UH masks: The City of University Heights has also informed us that Rube Adler Sporting Goods of Solon is making masks that include local logos, including those of the City of University Heights and the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District. Protect your neighbors and show civic pride by ordering masks. Mix and match four masks for $8 each. Click here for the details.

One more note from University Heights: If you live in University Heights -- or anywhere, I suppose -- the city is promoting the free use of photos from its environs as backgrounds for Zoom conferencing meetings.

In his May 7 COVID-19 update, Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan included an item that reads: "Have you been spending a lot of time lately in Zoom meetings? Perhaps youve run out of clever Zoom backgrounds.

Feel free to use our new University Heights Zoom backgrounds for your next meeting, including the University Heights Library. Show your pride in your favorite place to live, work and raise a family. Click here to be redirected to our Facebook page, where many photos are available for you to use.

If there is an item would would like to see included in Press Run, send me an email, at least 12 days prior to an event, at jeff.piorkowski@att.net.

Read more from the Sun Press.
KYODO NEWS - May 8, 2020 - 17:09 | Coronavirus, Japan, All

Of Japan's 47 prefectures, 27 have decided to relax stay-at-home requests issued in response to the spread of the novel coronavirus, a senior government official said Friday.

As of Thursday, 24 prefectures, including Shizuoka, Nara and Nagasaki, have already eased some constraints on social and economic activities, while Tochigi, Nagano and Shiga have said they will do so over the coming days, economic revitalization minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said at a press conference.

Their decisions came after the government revised its basic policy on COVID-19 measures on Monday, at the same time that it extended a nationwide state of emergency until the end of this month.

Related coverage:

Tokyo Game Show may be held online this year amid coronavirus spread

Follow the leader: How COVID-19 might unlock Japan's giving potential

South Korea finds infection cluster in Seoul after relaxing curbs

Nonetheless, the 27 do not include 13 prefectures with a relatively high number of new cases, including Tokyo, Osaka and Hokkaido, which have been designated by the central government as requiring "special caution."

Also, seven prefectures that are not among the 13, including Hiroshima, Ehime and Okinawa, said they will continue to keep stay-at-home requests in place for the time being.

In any case, those that have already eased or plan to reduce the constraints are still calling on residents to refrain from making nonessential travel, crossing prefectural borders, and visiting nightclubs or similar to lower the risk of group transmissions.

When the state of emergency was extended, the government -- acknowledging public fatigue and the leveling-off of the epidemic -- decided to allow certain public facilities, including parks, libraries and museums, to reopen even in the 13 prefectures on condition that sufficient preventive steps against the virus are taken.

Like many other countries, however, Japan still faces a tough challenge to resume economic activities and stem the spread of the disease at the same time.

"We don't know when and where infections will increase," Nishimura said. "We will make sure measures against the virus are thoroughly in place as we pick up the pace of economic activities."
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and a major opposition party traded bitter accusations after lawmakers representing them brawled on the Armenian parliament floor on Friday.

The brawl erupted in the presence of Pashinian and his ministers as Edmon Marukian, the leader of the Bright Armenia Party (LHK), lambasted pro-government deputies for their angry reactions to opposition criticism of the government.

Marukian was heckled by some of those deputies affiliated with Pashinians My Step bloc and shouted back at them during his speech. One of them, Sasun Mikaelian, then punched him before other lawmakers from My Step and the LHK joined in the resulting fistfight or shoved and chased each other in the chamber.

The session of the National Assembly resumed several minutes later after speaker Ararat Mirzoyan managed to stop the fight with the help of other deputies and Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian.

I will speak up no matter how much you hit me, Marukian declared when he again took the floor.

Who was it that sneaked up and struck me in the back? he asked, sparking another shouting match with Mikaelian and other My Step deputies.

The session again descended into chaos, with Mirzoyan deciding to interrupt it. It resumed later in the day. Marukian again addressed the parliament before he and other LHK deputies walked out of the chamber in protest

The incident must have consequences, political consequences, said the opposition leader. What happened is not so much our problem as the revolution leaders problem. We will now leave this auditorium and, depending on political evaluations and consequences, we will draw conclusions  and decide how we will be working in this parliament in the future.

Speaking in the parliament shortly after the walkout, Pashinian deplored the violence but effectively blamed it on the LHK. He said that his political allies should not have succumbed to what he described as a LHK provocation aimed at discrediting the government.

The incident, which is condemnable, happened over there, Pashinian said, pointing to an area between the parliament rostrum and the first row of seats. Why was the person giving the speech standing there? Why did [Marukian] walk off the rostrum and swiftly move towards Sasun Mikaelian? For engaging in a political dialogue?

Pashinian said he told Marukian at a meeting Thursday that he has grounds to suspect that you and your activities are an integral part of a plan to use psychological, moral and ultimately physical violence against members of his political team. The prime minister went on brand Marukians party as parliamentary servants of former Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian.

A close Pashinian associate, deputy speaker Alen Simonian, likewise accused the LHK of deliberately provoking a violent response from Mikaelian. He dismissed calls for Mikaelian to resign from the parliament.

Simonian and Marukian traded serious insults on the parliament floor last week. The opposition leader was enraged by Simonians sexist comments about a female LHK parliamentarian. The vice-speaker apologized to the lawmaker, Ani Samsonian, afterwards.

Pashinian and Marukian are former political allies who used to co-head the Yelk bloc that was in opposition to Armenias former leadership. The bloc fell apart after Marukian and his party refused to join mass protests launched by Pashinian in April 2018 against then Sarkisians attempt to extend his decade-long rule.

The LHK is one of the two opposition parties represented in the current Armenian parliament. It holds 17 seats in the 132-member parliament.
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As Christians, we cannot give our undying allegiance to anyone except Jesus. For everyone else, we must call balls and strikes, or else we lose credibility as bearers of the light and stewards of the Gospel. For every elected official, including the President, that means praising them when they do good and criticizing when they do wrong.

During the 2016 GOP primary, Donald Trump was the very last Republican I wanted to see elected.

I was one of a handful of conservative leaders around the country who chose to openly and publicly oppose him in the primary. I wrote CNN articles, was interviewed on several radio and television shows, and I sounded the alarm about his personal history and seeming lack of moral compass.

My main reason for opposing Trump was because, based on his past actions and words, I believed he would ultimately govern like a center left-leaning Republican.

I thought he would support abortion rights.

I thought he would pick his Palm Beach lawyer buddies and Bar insiders for the federal and Supreme Court.

I thought he would ignore the real threat to religious liberty that exists due to the advancement of the radical LGBT policy agenda.

I thought his past statements on moral issues, coupled with his personal history, meant he would surely become the typical, moderate, New York establishment, Republican president.

Well, I was wrong.

And I was wrong about almost every one of my concerns about how he would govern on policy and appointments.

After watching him pick Mike Pence for vice president and release a list of Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation approved judicial candidates for the US Supreme Court, I was amazed and stunned! These were game changers for me.

Since his election, on issues of most concern to conservative Christians, the President, and those surrounding him, have been surprisingly strong.

We all wish he would use restraint on Twitter and in his rhetoric, show humility, and be more charitable towards those with whom he disagrees. We would all love to have a kinder, more respectable, and family-friendly president who is still fiercely committed to principle.

But politics has only one true bottom line  policy.

Policy determines whether human beings live or die. Policy determines whether free speech and religious liberty will be protected or trampled under the demands of liberal activists. Policy affects whether Dad has a job or is applying for welfare. Policy directly affects the people sitting around your dinner table.

Some Christians say, Oh, but I what about his potty mouth? What about his lack of collegiality? What about, what about, what about?

Well to those people, I would respectfully say, what about the 62 million unborn human beings slaughtered in their mothers wombs in America?

What about the baby girls who are poisoned by digoxin injected with a needle into their heart or burned to death by poison saline solutions?

What about the baby boys who are ripped limb by limb with forceps and a curette blade or sucked into a vacuum?

Does anyone think for one moment that when the famous British parliamentarian William Wilberforce, during his 20-year fight to end the slave trade, that he was concerned about aligning himself with members of Parliament who had a foul mouth and a checkered past? No! Wilberforce was committed to ending the evil slave trade and would hold hands, work with, and help elect any politician who could help join his great campaign for the sanctity and dignity of human life.

I understand Christians who are uncomfortable with or despise Trumps style. But I urge you not to surrender the strategic influence of your vote on some long shot, third-party candidate.

I respect conservative #NeverTrumpers, but their reasoning is flawed because they are not being good stewards of something precious  their vote. This is especially true if you are living in a purple state like Florida where the margins of victory are and will continue to be razor thin.

We should rightly judge men based on their real actions and words, not based upon perceived motives or the state of their hearts. In 2016, I opposed Donald Trump based on his past actions and words. In 2020, I will support Donald Trump based on his actions and words on public policy since becoming president.

In Scripture, we see many times God using imperfect men to accomplish good things. President Trump is far from perfect, but hes accomplishing unprecedentedly good things in terms of policy and appointments  and for this reason, President Trump deserves our support.
Houston restaurants were allowed to reopen for in-dining on May 1 in accordance with Gov. Greg Abbott's guidelines.

While some were able to reopen the first day of limited service, others waited.

Restaurants that reopened last week: Dine-in at these Houston-area restaurants

This week, several more restaurants are following suit. See below for additional restaurants reopening for in-dining.
In everyday life, matter behaves in a predictable, expected way. If you throw a ball, you assume it will travel in a certain direction and have a predictable recoil. What's more, forces exerted on one object would not have an impact on another, independent object.

But in quantum mechanics - the physics of the tiny - the rules are completely different. In one, two, and three-particle systems, actions that happen in one spot can strongly influence atoms far away. Scientists don't yet have a full understanding of this but, by analyzing the behavior of these systems and more complex ones, they are hoping to find insights.

Researchers from the Quantum Systems Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), alongside collaborators at University College Dublin and Durham University, simulated one of these systems, which revealed quantum states - ways that particles arrange themselves in isolated systems - that were unexpected. Their results, published in New Journal of Physics, could have applications for quantum technologies.

"If you throw a stone off a boat, the stone goes one way and the boat goes the other," explained Professor Thomas Busch, who leads the Unit. "In quantum mechanics, we can have much stronger correlations at much greater distances. It's like if you put on one red sock and one green sock, then someone in Antarctica, who you've never met, would have to do the same. And our work has found new states with these very strong correlations, which can be controlled very well."

Experimenting with two atoms

When scientists research macroscopic systems, they tend to look at many particles - say 10 to the 23 atoms. Because there are so many, they can't follow every atom and must make assumptions. To avoid this, the researchers in this study used another option.

"We simulated a system with just two atoms," said first author Ayaka Usui, a Ph.D. student in the Unit. "This provided a building block of the larger system, but we could control everything and see exactly what was happening. And, to further control this system, we considered super-cold atoms."

At room temperature, particles move around very quickly. The warmer it is, the faster they move. By using laser cooling, these atoms can be slowed and cooled down until they reach almost zero velocity and are thus super-cold. This made it much easier for Ayaka and colleagues to describe them in their simulations.

In a system like this, the simplest thing the particles can do is collide with each other. This forces them to move around and change direction, but particles also have something called spin. The spin of a particle is either pointing up or down and further influences how it moves - an effect called spin-orbit coupling. When the researchers simulated a system with two super-cold atoms that were spin-orbit coupled, these new states, with their very strong correlations, were revealed.

"We have the systems with two-particles where you get these states and the ones with 10 to the 23 where you don't," said Dr. Thomas Fogarty, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Unit. "Somewhere along this long chain of adding particles, these new states go away."

Engineering further insights

"Alongside the new states, we've discovered the formulas that describe this system exactly," said Ayaka. "So now, we can engineer it."

By finding these formulas, the researchers have control over the system and they now plan on changing the parameters to look at the system's dynamics.

"We're going to split the system, so we have two of them," said Ayaka. "We can use the strong correlations to help us measure the system. If we find one atom in one of the systems, we know the other one is also in that one, without measuring it, because they are tightly correlated."

Although this research is just concentrating on a small aspect of what quantum mechanics can do, it has numerous applications, said Professor Busch.

"Quantum technologies need these correlations," he explained. "These new states have the strongest non-classical correlations that we know, and we can engineer them. With this research, we could build more powerful computers. We could create measurement devices that measure tiny differences in gravity or electric pulses in the brain. There're so many applications to work towards."

###

Alongside Ayaka Usui, Dr. Fogarty, and Professor Busch, this research involved Dr. Steve Campbell from University College Dublin and Professor Simon Gardiner from Durham University.
Ottawa, May 7 (Canadian-Media): A $4 billion deal reached by Canada with its provinces and territories to boost low-wage essential workers' pay was announced May 7 by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, media reports said.

According to the agreement, the federal government would contribute $3 billion while the rest would be contributed by the provinces.

Plans to cost-share wage top-ups by provinces and territories, have either been confirmed or are in the process of being confirmed, said Trudeau.

Trudeau added that each province or territory will decide which workers are eligible for support.

Some provinces have already moved ahead. Saskatchewan government, for example, had recently announced an increase of $400 per month for 16 weeks for employees making less than $2,500 a month while working with vulnerable people. This includes people working in long-term care homes, daycares, and shelters.

Ontario announced an increase of a $4-per-hour for front-line workers at long-term care homes, retirement homes, emergency shelters, supportive housing, group homes, correctional institutions, and youth justice facilities, including those providing home and community care and some hospital staff.

Quebec had taken a step forward even before Trudeau's initial offer by announcing an increase of $4-per-hour in pay for essential workers in private long-term care homes and a $24.28-per-hour salary to attract new workers to fill in as attendants at the facilities.

A large number of Canada's pandemic deaths had been caused by residents in Canada's long-term care facilities and has brought into spotlight health and personal care workers' typically lower salaries.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)

Image: Justin Trudeau: Official site
Drug major Dr Reddy's Laboratories on Friday said the US health regulator has closed inspection of its manufacturing facility in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh.

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) had issued a warning letter to the facility in November, 2015, after inspecting it in 2014.

"We have received the establishment inspection report from the USFDA, for the Srikakulam facility, indicating closure of the audit and the inspection classification of this facility," Dr Reddy's Laboratories said in a regulatory filing.

With this, all facilities under warning letter are now determined as voluntary action indicated', the drug major said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Federal regulators have slapped the troubled New Jersey nursing home where 17 bodies were discovered on Easter Sunday in a makeshift morgue with $220,235 in fines and penalties, finding failures in infection control practices in a facility where COVID-17 has so far claimed at least 66 lives.

Andover Subacute Rehabilitation Center in Sussex County was also cited by U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for lapses in patient care, amid the deadly outbreak.

CMS, however, made no reference or discussion to the bodies being temporarily stored on site, after a surge in deaths overwhelmed administrators over the holiday weekend.

New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Thursday that a National Guard deployment will bring 22 soldiers to the nursing home as soon as Friday to help provide care. New admissions have been barred by the state and the facility was ordered last month to retain a new infection control specialist and other key personnel.

Andover Subacute consists of two separate buildings. Andover I is a smaller, low-rise facility, where 13 people have died from the coronavirus. Andover II, a larger two-story complex, is set up for dementia and Alzheimer patients and those with mental health issues. To date, 53 people have died there. The CMS enforcement action was focused on Andover II.

The owners must now submit a so-called Plan of Correction for the deficiencies cited by CMS inspectors within ten calendar days.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist., who has been pushing to get the National Guard into Andover Subacute as well as the states VA nursing homes, had pressed early for an investigation into the situation at Andover in the days immediately after the Easter incident.

I am absolutely disgusted and heartbroken for the residents, staff, and families about the conditions this CMS inspection has uncovered, Gottheimer said. The loss of life and the circumstances that so many of the residents faced are a complete tragedy.

Carol Novrit, administrator of the Sussex County Department of Health and Human Services told NJ Advance Media that the CMS report confirmed the countys suspicions about conditions in the facility, calling them deplorable.

The report underscores that the facility really requires assistance and the state now has seen fit to provide the intervention and resources,Novrit said.

CMS inspectors went to the facility on April 21, after the first reports of more than a dozen bodies being stored unclaimed made national headlines. According to a letter sent to administrators, the survey found the facility was not in substantial compliance.

An inspection report, which has yet to be publicly released, noted failures in proper infection control practices that had the potential to affect all residents in the facility through the development and transmission of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

But the survey, according to the congressmans office, found patients with elevated temperatures and no documented clinical assessment or follow-up from medical staff. A patient under investigation COVID-19 was also found to have been being placed in a room with a resident who was asymptomatic. After the patients test came back positive, the resident was only then moved to a different room.

One staff member was observed with a face mask positioned below both her nose and mouth, down below her chin, in close proximity to eight other staff members, as she loudly called out assignments and instructions.

Multiple instances of insufficient protective equipment usage was also cited.

Sussex County Freeholder Anthony Fasano said what the inspection uncovered was horrifying and inexcusable.

The conditions that many of our residents face in this facility were completely outrageous and unsurprisingly non-compliant with federal regulations, according to this report, he said. My prayers are with the residents, staff and families who have been impacted by this terrible crisis.

According to current county data, the Andover Subacute II facility currently has 133 residents and 54 staff members who have tested positive for COVID-19.

In a statement, Chaim Mutty Scheinbaum, 37, the CEO of Alliance Healthcare of Lakewood, which owns the facility, said Andover Subacute I and Andover Subacute II were separately licensed long-term care facilities with separate patient populations, but both have implemented similar protocols to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Federal regulators with CMS have been conducting a nationwide review of long-term care facilities to review their infection control protocols. The review of Andover Subacute I concluded that the facility was in compliance with applicable guidelines. CMS noted areas of improvement for Andover Subacute II, but determined that the facilitys remediation plan was acceptable as fatalities continue to drop at the facility, Scheinbaum said. We look forward to continuing our cooperative relationship with CMS and the New Jersey Department of Health as we, and nursing home patients and staff across the country, continue to battle this deadly virus.

In addition to Andover, Scheinbaum owns nursing homes in Pennsauken and Cinnaminson in New Jersey, and two other nursing homes in Pennsylvania, those records show. In its last inspection by CMS, Andover II was rated just one out of five stars, or much below average. Andover I ranked slightly better, with three out of five stars, or average.

Last year Andover Subacute received $22.3 million in state Medicaid funding. With a daily Medicaid rate of $206.83 at Andover I, and $192.56 at Andover II, the nursing home this year to date has so far received $7.9 million in Medicaid payments, according to the state Department of Human Services.

Gottheimer this week introduced legislation with Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., to codify federal requirements that nursing homes report communicable diseases, infections, and potential outbreaks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and that residents and their families be kept informed of infections inside the facilities. The rules would also require facilities have a crisis plan in place to manage an outbreak and a stockpile of personal protective equipment on hand.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com.
Texas' Republican governor and top law enforcement officer on Wednesday came to the defense of a Dallas hair salon owner who was jailed for keeping her business open in defiance of the governor's restrictions meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Shelley Luther was booked in the Dallas County jail on Tuesday following a video hearing during which she refused to apologize for repeatedly flouting the order, leading the judge to find her in contempt of court and sentence her to a week behind bars.

Luther was cited last month for keeping her salon open despite state and local directives that kept nonessential businesses closed, but she continued to defy the order and tore up a cease and desist letter in front of TV cameras.

"I couldn't feed my family, and my stylists couldn't feed their families," Luther testified Tuesday, saying she had applied for a federal loan but didn't receive it until Sunday.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moye said during the hearing that he would consider levying a fine instead of jail time if Luther would apologize and not reopen until she was allowed to do so, but Luther refused.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:36:25|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday dropped the criminal case against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his contacts with Russia during Trump's presidential transition period.

The criminal charges led to Flynn's ouster by Trump in February 2017 and became part of the U.S. investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Muller into Moscow's alleged meddling to help Trump win the presidency in 2016.

"After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information...the government has concluded that (Flynn's interview by the FBI in January 2017) was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn," the Justice Department said in a court document.

The department said it was "not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn's statements were material even if untrue."

The department's move will all but certain end Flynn's prosecution.

In remarks to reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Trump called Flynn "an even greater warrior," while bashing FBI officials as "dishonest, crooked people" and "scum."

However, the dropping of charges against Flynn immediately infuriated the Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Attorney General Bill Barr's "politicization of justice knows no bounds," adding that the Justice Department that Barr leads "is dropping the case to continue to cover up for the President."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that the dismissal "does not exonerate" Flynn, and that the decision marked "the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history."

Having pleaded guilty to his lying to the FBI about his conversations with then Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, Flynn withdrew his guilty plea earlier this year, alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Enditem
"Patient 162," a 63-year-old Covid-19 patient treated at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, is overjoyed after recovering from the disease, May 8, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Chi Le.

Eight Covid-19 patients in Hanoi and the south-central province of Binh Thuan, including two relapses, have recovered.

The recovered cases have brought the national count of active infections down to 47, the Health Ministry said Friday.

Seven of recovered patients, Patients 130, 162, 209, 212, 226, 243 and 260 - four women and three men, were treated at Hanois National Hospital for Tropical Diseases. "Patient 36," was treated at the Binh Thuan Traditional Medicine Hospital.

"Patient 162" is a 63-year-old woman who took care of her mother-in-law at Hanois Bach Mai Hospital, a major outbreak site, since March 17. Both were later confirmed infected with the novel coronavirus and treated at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Binh Thuan. The mother-in-law was discharged three days ago.

"When I knew that we both tested positive for the virus, I was so scared. For first few days I neither coughed nor had a fever, but I was feverish a couple days later," the daughter-in-law said.

During her treatment, doctors found that the lungs of "Patient 162" were damaged and her blood oxygen level was low. However, she eventually recovered after testing negative for the virus five times in a row.

"Im feeling very happy right now, because Im alive."

Among the eight, "Patient 130" and "Patient 36" were relapsed cases.

"Patient 130" is a 30-year-old man in Saigon who flew from Spain to Hanoi via Russia on March 22. He was first confirmed positive on March 24 and declared recovered on March 30. But he was found to be relapsed April 4, before being announced recovered again Friday.

"Patient 36" is a 64-year-old woman in Binh Thuan who is a helper for a local businesswoman who was infected with the coronavirus. She was first confirmed positive on March 11 and discharged April 10. She was found to be relapsed on April 24, before her recovery was announced Friday.

Vietnam recorded no new Covid-19 cases Friday evening, keeping the national tally at 288, of these 47 are active cases.

The country's latest infections are 17 Vietnamese citizens repatriated from the UAE. There has been no community transmission for 22 days now.
China accuses Pompeo of 'betraying Christianity with lies;' evangelical leaders respond

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Evangelical leaders have voiced support for Mike Pompeo after a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Chinese Communist Party accused the secretary of state of betraying Christianity with lies due to his suggestion that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, commented on the hypocrisy of Chinas attempt to pass judgment on Pompeos religious beliefs given its own restrictions on religious groups.

"What audacity for a regime that persecuted Christians so viciously to try and use the Bible to cover for their own lies, Rodriguez said in a statement to CP.

There is no bigotry like communist bigotry. China thinks that they can shutter churches, disappear pastors, and create an ever-present state of war with religion and then dole out advice to Christians. Well, here's some advice to the Communists: get your own house in order. This propaganda only demonstrates one thing: whatever Pompeo is doing is working, exactly as intended."

On Sunday, Pompeo asserted in an interview with ABC that there's "significant evidence" the novel coronavirus first infected a human in a biomedical laboratory in Wuhan, China  the epicenter of the outbreak.

When asked if China intentionally released that virus or if it was an accident in the lab, Pompeo replied: "I can't answer your question about that because the Chinese Communist Party has refused to cooperate with world health experts."

In response, China's state-owned Global Times newspaper argued in an editorial Monday that Pompeo, an outspoken Christian, is betraying Christianity by spreading lies or misleading the public regarding Chinas involvement in the COVID-19 outbreak.

[H]is lying for political purposes is contrary to his label as a so-called devout Christians, reads the editorial. It is widely known that Christian doctrine opposes lying - it's a sin. A false witness shall not go unpunished. And he that utters lies shall perish. From the Ten Commandments, the ninth says, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Citing Pompeos groundless accusations, the editorial claims the former CIA director has brought shame to the evangelical Christians in the US, misusing their trust in the Republican party.

He is no doubt a degenerate politician and despicable from the perspective of religion."

Rev. Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader and president of The Congress of Christian Leaders, said the CCP-affiliated attack is the clearest sign yet that China knows their game is up and they are getting desperate.

Actually, the CCP ought to be thanking God that Secretary Pompeo is as good a Christian as he is because theres a lot more the United States could do to hold them accountable tomorrow, Moore told The Christian Post.

Other pastors also came to Pompeo's defense.

Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, said that having personally met Pompeo, he believes the secretary of states faith is genuine and real.

Perhaps the Chinese government became angry with secretary Pompeo long ago because of his devoted efforts around the world to promote religious freedom, and to speak up for those being persecuted, especially within China, he said.

Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, applauded Pompeo for the natural and transparent way he lives and communicates his faith strengthens his ability as a national and world leader.

Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors, said Pompeo believes and practices his faith, adding that the attack from Chinese media will not cause him to back down one inch.

Last week, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released a report recommending that the U.S. government again designate China as a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act.

USCIRF warned that "the state of religious freedom in China has continued to deteriorate" over the last year, with authorities using facial recognition and artificial intelligence to monitor religious minority groups.

The report cited Chinas continued persecution of Christians as well as the imprisonment of an estimated 900,000 to 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzstans, and other Muslims held in more than 1,300 concentration camps in Xinjiang.

[China] cannot be compared to any other country in the world not only because of its inexcusable actions, but because of the way it aids and abets similar actions by other countries all around the world, said Moore.

Meanwhile, the international order, in pursuit of self-interest, continues to let China play by its own rules, and especially at the United Nations. This is absolutely inexcusable, and those nations around the world who ignore Chinas malevolence may eventually find themselves subservient to it. It is past time for our world bodies, and our liberal democracies, to demand more from China.
By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy likely lost a staggering 22 million jobs in April, in what would be the steepest plunge in payrolls since the Great Depression and the starkest sign yet of how the novel coronavirus pandemic is battering the world's biggest economy.

A report that is closely watched in any given month but especially so now with non-essential businesses in mandatory shutdowns nationwide to contain the coronavirus, the Labor Department's monthly employment report on Friday is also expected to show the jobless rate surging to at least 16% last month. That would shatter the post-World War Two record of 10.8% touched in November 1982.

The numbers will likely strengthen analysts' expectations of a slow recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic. It would add to a pile of bleak data on consumer spending, business investment, trade, productivity and the housing market in underscoring the devastation unleashed by lockdowns imposed by states and local governments in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

The economic crisis spells trouble for President Donald Trump's bid for a second term in the White House in November's election. After the Trump administration was criticized for its initial reaction to the pandemic, Trump is eager to reopen the economy, despite a continued rise in COVID-19 infections and dire projections of deaths.

"Our economy is on life support now," said Erica Groshen, a former commissioner of the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. "We will be testing the waters in the next few months to see if it can emerge safely from our policy-induced coma," added Groshen, who is now a senior extension faculty member at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

The historic dive in April nonfarm payrolls predicted in a Reuters survey anticipates job losses in nearly all sectors of the economy, with larger layoffs in the leisure and hospitality industry - mainly restaurants and bars. It would follow the shedding of 701,000 jobs in March, which ended a record streak of employment gains dating to October 2010.

Estimates in the survey ranged to as much as a loss of 35 million. Forecasts for April's unemployment rate, which was at 4.4% in March, were as high as 22%.

Story continues

There is great uncertainty surrounding last month's estimates because of the nature and speed of the job losses.

A total of 26.5 million people had filed claims for jobless benefits and 16.2 million were on unemployment rolls through the week of April 12, when the government canvassed establishments and households for payrolls and the unemployment rate.

Eligibility for unemployment benefits has been greatly expanded to include contractors and gig workers among others, overwhelming local employment offices with applications and leading to backlogs. Economists believe the numbers of people applying for unemployment aid and those continuing to receive benefits are understated.

Meanwhile, some people might be filing more than one claim, and workers whose hours have been cut because of COVID-19 can also seek unemployment benefits.

GREAT UNCERTAINTY

Some workers who have filed claims have likely since found employment, with companies like Walmart and Amazon hiring workers to meet huge demand in online shopping. Truck drivers are also in demand, while supermarkets, pharmacies and courier companies need workers.

According to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the employment report, a person has to be looking for work and available to do it to be considered unemployed.

"This means many workers who lose their job as a result of the virus will be counted as dropping out of the labor force instead of as unemployed because they are unable to search for work due to the lockdown, or because they are not available to work because they are, for example, caring for children whose school has closed," said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Labor Department.

Furloughed workers and others who expect to return to their jobs within 6 months are counted as unemployed on temporary layoff.

A drop in the labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one, could blunt some of the anticipated surge in the unemployment rate in April.

To get a clearer picture, economists will focus on a broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

April could, however, mark the trough in job losses as more small businesses access their portion of an almost $3 trillion fiscal package, which made provisions for them to get loans that could be partially forgiven if they were used for employee salaries. The Federal Reserve has also thrown businesses credit lifelines and many states are also partially reopening.

Still, economists do not expected a quick rebound in the labor market.

"Given the expected shift in consumer behavior reflecting insecurities regarding health, wealth, income, and employment, many of these firms will not reopen or, if they do reopen, hire fewer people," said Steve Blitz, chief economist at TS Lombard in New York. "This is one reason why we see the underlying recession extending through the third quarter."

Economists say the economy entered recession in late March, when nearly the whole country went into COVID-19 lockdowns.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the private research institute regarded as the arbiter of U.S. recessions, does not define a recession as two consecutive quarters of decline in real gross domestic product, as is the rule of thumb in many countries. Instead, it looks for a drop in activity, spread across the economy and lasting more than a few months.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
WATERLOO, Ontario  Belgians are being told that they need to increase their consumption of frites. Across Britain, farmers have dumped millions of pints of milk down the drain instead of churning it into butter. In Iran, millions of baby chickens  which may have one day been bound for barbecues  have been buried alive. In India, farmers are feeding strawberries to cattle rather than sending them to markets.

Is this what an efficient global food system looks like?

According to the economists, politicians and corporations that have pushed for increasingly interconnected food supply chains over the past 50 years, efficient is what its supposed to be: Each country specializes in what its best at  potatoes in Belgium, beef in Canada, cocoa in Ghana  and puts it on the global market. Producers and processors within countries specialize, too, as a way to minimize costs. As a result, at least in theory, prices stay low, the world gets fed and everyone wins.

The coronavirus has revealed that there are serious weaknesses with relying too much on this approach. Improving efficiency can certainly be a good thing, especially if consumers benefit from cost savings and access to more diverse foods. But the changes in recent years have undermined other important goals, like the ability to adapt during a crisis. When new barriers prevent food from reaching its markets, or demand suddenly drops  both of which are happening now  the system falls apart.

The current breakdown is the product of multiple disruptions that the food system is ill-equipped to handle: lockdowns, closed borders, trade restrictions and the virus itself. Any one of these would have caused problems in the worlds complex and specialized food supply chains. All of them happening at the same time is wreaking havoc.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- City Councilman Joe Borelli penned a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio calling for the firing of Steven Banks, the commissioner of the citys Department of Homeless Services.

Borelli (R-South Shore) co-signed the letter with Queens Councilmen Robert Holden and Eric Ulrich on Monday.

While there is plenty of evidence of Commissioner Banks missteps during his tenure, the most damning fact is that the NYC homeless population has continued to rise to all-time highs since you appointed him, the councilmen wrote in the letter. Rather than focusing on preventing homelessness and creating more affordable housing, Commissioner Banks has used the Right to Shelter Law as an excuse to build dozens of massive warehouse-like shelters that only perpetuate the cycle by creating environments that the homeless do not want to enter.

The three councilmen argued that Banks failures are especially visible now due to a combination of cuts in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Gov. Andrew Cuomos decision to shut down New York City subway system from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. every day in order to allow the MTA to clean and disinfect its entire system.

It is abundantly clear that Commissioner Banks was unprepared to handle the current crisis our citys homeless population is facing, the councilmen wrote. Years of mismanagement, incompetence and excuses have led us to this present situation where a complete lack of transparency from the DHS is fueling public outcry and an absence of safety for everyone involved.

45 Photos of the pandemic in NYC: Our lives changed forever

On Tuesday, de Blasio vowed he would dismantle homeless encampments that have been developing around the five boroughs during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, calling them absolutely unacceptable.

For decades, encampments were tolerated in New York City," he said. "People would see them in different places and, somehow, they were allowed to exist. I found it absolutely unacceptable and I said to the NYPD, to Social Services, to Sanitation Department, I said, if we see any encampment developed anywhere in New York City, were taking it down period.

One of these encampment is currently outside Richmond County Bank Ballpark in St. George -- home of the Staten Island Yankees.

Its about time the rubber met the road on de Blasio, Commissioner Banks, and their backwards homelessness policies," said Borelli. "Theyve had six years and chose to fight every community, rather than make progress.
Computers, mobile phones and all other electronic devices contain thousands of transistors, linked together by thin films of metal. Scientists at Linkoping University, Sweden, have developed a method that can use the electrons in a plasma to produce these films.

The processors used in today's computers and phones consist of billions of tiny transistors connected by thin metallic films. Scientists at Linkoping University, LiU, have now shown that it is possible to create thin films of metals by allowing the free electrons in a plasma take an active role. A plasma forms when energy is supplied that tears away electrons from the atoms and molecules in a gas, to produce an ionised gas. In our everyday life, plasmas are used in fluorescent lamps and in plasma displays. The method developed by the LiU researchers using plasma electrons to produce metallic films is described in an article in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology.

"We can see several exciting areas of application, such as the manufacture of processors and similar components. With our method it is no longer necessary to move the substrate on which the transistors are created backwards and forwards between the vacuum chamber and a water bath, which happens around 15 times per processor," says Henrik Pedersen, professor of inorganic chemistry in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linkoping University.

A common method of creating thin films is to introduce molecular vapours containing the atoms that are required for the film into a vacuum chamber. There they react with each other and the surface on which the thin film is to be formed. This well-established method is known as chemical vapour deposition (CVD). In order to produce films of pure metal by CVD, a volatile precursor molecule is required that contains the metal of interest. When the precursor molecules have become absorbed onto the surface, surface chemical reactions involving another molecule are required to create a metal film. These reactions require molecules that readily donate electrons to the metal ions in the precursor molecules, such that they are reduced to metal atoms, in what is known as a "reduction reaction." The LiU scientists instead turned their attention to plasmas.

"We reasoned that what the surface chemistry reactions needed was free electrons, and these are available in a plasma. We started to experiment with allowing the precursor molecules and the metal ions to land on a surface and then attract electrons from a plasma to the surface," says Henrik Pedersen.

Researchers in inorganic chemistry and in plasma physics at IFM have collaborated and demonstrated that it is possible to create thin metallic films on a surface using the free electrons in an argon plasma discharge for the reduction reactions. In order to attract the negatively charged electrons to the surface, they applied a positive potential across it.

The study describes work with non-noble metals such as iron, cobalt and nickel, which are difficult to reduce to metal. Traditional CVD has been compelled to use powerful molecular reducing agents in these cases. Such reducing agents are difficult to manufacture, manage and control, since their tendency to donate electrons to other molecules makes them very reactive and unstable. At the same time, the molecules must be sufficiently stable to be vaporised and introduced in gaseous form into the vacuum chamber in which the metallic films are being deposited.

"What may make the method using plasma electrons better is that it removes the need to develop and manage unstable reducing agents. The development of CVD of non-noble metals is hampered due to a lack of suitable molecular reducing agents that function sufficiently well," says Henrik Pedersen.

The scientists are now continuing with measurements that will help them understand and be able to demonstrate how the chemical reactions take place on the surface where the metallic film forms. They are also investigating the optimal properties of the plasma. They would also like to test different precursor molecules to find ways of making the metallic films purer.

The research has obtained financial support from the Swedish Research Council, and has been carried out in collaboration with Daniel Lundin, guest professor at IFM.
US in no position to comment on Iran nuclear deal: Foreign Ministry

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 07 May 2020 3:38 PM

On the anniversary of the US' unilateral departure from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, the Iranian Foreign Ministry says Washington has through its withdrawal forfeited all rights to address the issues concerning the landmark deal.

The ministry tweeted the comments on Thursday (May 07), the day on which the United States opted out of participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) two years ago.

"The US despises the JCPOA, has quit it, violates it, and punishes all those who commit to the deal," the Ministry wrote.

US President Donald Trump has called the JCPOA "the worst deal ever." He took Washington out of it in a highly publicized move that the White House has confirmed in writing. Washington then brought Iran back under the sanctions that the agreement had lifted.

The United States has also been trying to scare other countries of the world, including the JCPOA's remaining signatories, into toeing its sanction line by quitting their business ties with the Islamic Republic.

Washington's efforts come while the JCPOA has been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in the form of Resolution 2231.

Despite no longer being a party to the contract, Washington recently attempted to extend an embargo on the sales of conventional weapons to Iran that is set to expire under the JCPOA this October.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo first announced the intention and Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told reporters last week, "We are operating under the assumption that we will be able to renew the arms embargo."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, however, reminded that as a result of all its malicious measures, "the US is in no position whatsoever to address issues related to the JCPOA," marking the tweet with "the US' non-commitment" hashtag.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday warned the United States that Iran would not accept any violation of the UN Security Council resolution that mandates the lifting of the arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, saying the country was absolutely entitled to the ban's cancellation.

"The United States and other countries should know that Iran will not accept violation of Resolution 2231 under any circumstances," he told a cabinet session in Tehran, adding, "Under the resolution, it is Iran's absolute right to be soon relieved of the ban."

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Attorney General Barr sat down with Catherine Herridge for an interview yesterday following the filing of the governments motion to dismiss the Flynn case. CBS News has chopped the interview into bite-size bits, but it has published the transcript here. Highly recommended.

At the time of the FBI interview of Flynn on January 24, 2017, the FBI had no bona fide counterintelligence investigation of Flynn open. Barr explains:

On the very day they prepared the final papers, the seventh floor, that is the directors office and the deputy directors office up there, sent down word they should keep that open. So that they could try to go and question Flynn about this call he had with the Russian ambassador. Let me say that, at that point, he was the designated national security adviser for President-Elect Trump, and was part of the transition, which is recognized by the government and funded by the government as an important function to bring in a new administration. And it is very typical, very common for the national security team of the incoming president to communicate with foreign leaders. And that call, there was nothing wrong with it whatever. In fact, it was laudable. He and it was nothing inconsistent with the Obama administrations policies. And it was in U.S. interests. He was saying to the Russians, you know, Dont escalate. And they asked him if he remembered saying that, and he said he didnt remember that.

What about the Russian disinformation peddled to the FBI by the Clinton campaign in the Steele dossier? Barr criticizes the sainted Robert Mueller, whose office nailed Flynns hide to the wall. Muellers charter included the potential of Russian influence [on the election]. But I think it was ignored and there was mounting indications that this could very well have been happening and no one really stopped to look at it.

There is more to come. [W]ere in the middle of looking at all of this. John Durhams investigation, and U.S. Attorney Jensen, Im gonna ask him to do some more work on different items as well. And Im gonna wait till all the evidence is, and I get their recommendations as to what they found and how serious it is.

Then what? [I]f we were to find wrongdoing, in the sense of any criminal act, you know, obviously we would, we would follow through on that. But, again, you know, just because something may even stink to high heaven and be, you know, appear everyone to be bad we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced that theres a violation of a criminal statute. And that we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The same standard applies to everybody.

It is absolutely clear from reading the exhibits to the DOJs Motion to Dismiss in U.S. v. Flynn that Comey was the brilliant, incredibly devious mastermind behind the Logan Act Hoax. He ran circles around DOJs leadership in two administrations, as well as the newbies in the WH.  Solomon L. Wisenberg (@WisenbergSol) May 8, 2020

I embedded the governments motion to dismiss the Flynn case yesterday without exhibits. The whole thing, including exhibits, is must reading. Sol Wisenberg comments on it in the tweet above. I have embedded it below via the FOX News upload to Scribd.

Doc 198 Govt Motion to Dism by Fox News on Scribd
Venezuela has charged two former US soldiers with terrorism and conspiracy for allegedly taking part in a failed bid to topple President Nicolas Maduro, the attorney general said on Friday. Luke Alexander Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, were among 17 people captured by the Venezuelan military, which said it had thwarted an attempted invasion by mercenaries in the early hours of Sunday. Attorney General Tarek William Saab said they had been charged with "terrorism, conspiracy, illicit trafficking of weapons of war and (criminal) association," and could face 25-30 years in prison. Eight attackers were reportedly killed in the incident. Saab said Venezuela had requested an international arrest warrant for the capture of former US army medic Jordan Goudreau, who allegedly organized and trained the mercenary force. Maduro has accused President Donald Trump of being behind the alleged invasion -- and Saab said Friday the Venezuelans involved would be tried for "conspiracy with a foreign government." Trump has roundly rejected the accusation, telling Fox News on Friday: "If I wanted to go into Venezuela I wouldn't make a secret about it." "I'd go in and they would do nothing about it. They would roll over. I wouldn't send a small little group. No, no, no. It would be called an army," he said. "It would be called an invasion." Venezuela said on Monday it had arrested the two former US special forces soldiers and on Wednesday Maduro, who showed the pair's passports on state television, said they would be tried. The US army has confirmed they were former members of the Green Berets who were deployed to Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US government would "use every tool that we have available to try to get them back." - Bay of Pigs 'remake' - Maduro described the raid as a "remake" of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when Cuban exiles covertly financed and directed by the US government attempted to overthrow then Cuba leader Fidel Castro. Announcing the arrests, Saab said Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is backed in his challenge to Maduro's authority by the United States and more than 50 other countries, was behind the mission. Saab accused Guaido of signing a $212 million contract with "hired mercenaries" using funds seized by the US from the state oil company PDVSA. On Friday the attorney general said arrest warrants had also been requested for US-based Venezuelans Juan Jose Rendon and Sergio Vergara. Rendon, an advisor to Guaido, admitted in an interview with CNN that he had signed a contract with Silvercorp USA, a private security firm founded by Goudreau. The Iraq and Afghanistan veteran admitted the existence of the operation in a video and claimed Silvercorp was contracted by Venezuela's opposition. In the video, Goudreau showed what he claimed was a contract signed by Guaido, whose press team denied the allegation. He also told The Washington Post that he hired Denman and Berry as "supervisors" and had known them for years. Rendon told CNN the contract was "exploratory" and that no green light was given to an operation in Venezuela. He also denied Guaido was involved. Despite the Venezuela regime's accusations against Guaido, he has not been charged with anything. Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro had vowed two Americans would face trial for allegedly being part of a mercenary force that tried to invade the South American country
Notorious serial killer Samuel Little terrorized women throughout the United States for almost 40 years. He abducted and strangled them to death before dumping their lifeless bodies in remote locations across the country.

Little's capture

Little's luck ran out when in 2012, a DNA hit linked him to multiple unsolved homicides in Los Angeles, California and that was when he was finally captured by authorities and put behind bars.

Little was given three life sentences for the murders of Audrey Nelson, Guadalupe Apodaca, and Carol Alford, all who were killed in the late 1980s. However, local police departments believe that Little had committed more murders over the years.

In 2018, the detectives from the Texas Ranger Division reached out to Little and offered him a deal. If Little confessed to one of their cold cases, he won't be given the death penalty and he will be relocated to a county jail in Texas.

Little agreed to the deal, and in his confessions with law enforcement that lasted for 650 hours, he admitted to 93 murders including the killings of Mary Jo Peyton, Melinda Rose LaPree and Melissa Thomas, whose cases are all included in the "Catching A Serial Killer: Sam Little" documentary that can be streamed on Oxygen.

Also Read: Suspect in Utah Murder-Suicide Posts Graphic Video on Snapchat Before Killing Himself

How he chose his victims

Little bragged about how he killed women and remained undetected for years during one of his interview sessions. He laughed as he told investigators that authorities did not know who the hell was doing it. He said he would go back to the same city sometimes and kill another victim.

Little also revealed how he profiled his victims. He targeted vulnerable young women who lived on the streets or those who worked as sex workers and drug users.

Little admitted that he did not kill those who he knows will be missed or those with family members that may seek justice for the murder of their loved one. He said he never went to neighborhoods and abducted young teenage girls like the other serial killers.

Although Little did not know the names of most of his victims, he asked the Rangers for art supplies so that he could draw portraits of the women that he killed in hopes of identifying them. The FBI seeks the help of the public to match the remaining unconfirmed victims.

According to a former prosecutor and investigative journalist Beth Karas, not only does Little remember the faces, but he also remembers little things about the women that he killed. She said that he told authorities that one victim had a limp and one had a teenage daughter. He can also picture the crime scenes and his victims in photographic detail.

Little described how his obsession with strangulation began in childhood during one of his conversations with law enforcement. He said that as a child, he got attracted to the neck, he also said that he became sexually aroused by looking at women's necks and later in life he choked women during intercourse.

Little's first killing was on New Year's Eve in 1970. He killed Mary Brosley in North Miami Beach, Florida and he said that he knew he was going to choke her and that he had a strong desire to have intercourse with her and kill her after.

Rick Bell, the chief of special investigations with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, said that one of the things that they wanted to ask him was whether or not when he's engaged in the act of killing if it was about the sex or if it was about the killing. They ended up asking him the question and Little confessed that it was both. In Little's mind, sex and murder are intertwined.

Since his confessions, Little has pleaded guilty to killing five women in Ohio and Texas, thus resulting in additional life sentences, according to Cleveland's The Plain Dealer newspaper.

Related articles: Rotting Body of Missing Woman Discovered in Refrigerator Near Boyfriend's Apartment

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
New Delhi, May 8 : Chinese smartphone brand Realme on Friday confirmed it is resuming operations with 25 per cent of its production capacity, and looks forward to bring back close to 2,000 employees at its Greater Noida facility.

Madhav Sheth, Vice President, realme and CEO, Realme India said the company has received required permission to reopen the factory in Greater Noida.

"As realme believes in ensuring its employees' utmost safety, the company will arrange transportation facilities to pick up all outstation employees and arrange accommodation. We will ensure employees to go through blood tests before they resume work at the factory," Sheth told IANS.

Following the government directives of social distancing, realme will also ensure that the employees maintain distance at the workstations and common area, while working in plants with adequate safety measures and sanitization, he added.

South Korean giant Samsung, OPPO and Vivo have also started limited operations at their respective plants in Noida-Greater Noida area.

OPPO said it will restart manufacturing operations with 30 per cent workforce, with around 3,000 employees working in rotation out of more than 10,000-strong staff at the facility. The company has also commenced sales of its devices for consumers in the permitted zones through Amazon and Flipkart.

Vivo also confirmed it has got approval to resume production at its production facility with about 30 per cent of its workforce capacity.

With this, the Noida-Greater Noida smartphone manufacturing belt has begun to see movement as India observes lockdown 3.0 with some relaxation.
KELOWNA, British Columbia, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allied Corp. ("Allied" or the "Company") (OTCQB: ALID), an international medical cannabis company focused on creating and providing targeted cannabinoid health solutions to address todays medical issues is pleased to announce the appointment of Jim Smeeding, RPh, MBA, to the Companys Board of Directors. In addition to this, Mr. Smeeding will also work within the management team and fulfil the role of Vice President of Pharmaceuticals.



Jim Smeeding is a Registered Pharmacist (RPh) from the State University of New York, and also holds a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Texas (with an emphasis in pharmaceutical marketing, organizational strategies and pharma sales management). He is the Executive Vice President of CP Pharmaceutical International: a division of CP Global Health (Hong Kong and Texas).

Some of Mr. Smeedings past experience has included working as the Executive Director of the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy (NASP), a founder of the Center for Pharmacoeconomic Studies at the University of Texas College of Pharmacy and a founder and President of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

Within Mr. Smeedings specialty pharmacy consultancy practice, Project Rx, Mr. Smeeding has offered management services to hospitals and pharmaceutical companies throughout the US. Mr. Smeeding has also been active in other Cannabis Based Medicines (CBM) research as a founder of CannaPharma Rx and has authored more than 85 peer-reviewed publications and has given hundreds of presentations.

Mr. Smeeding has worked with many major pharmaceutical companies and is one of the founding partners and president of Indication Biosciences; an early stage drug discovery company that is examining the use of CBD with statin agents to safely lower lipid anomalies. Mr. Smeeding also was the Executive VP and founder of Engaged Media; a technology driven patient engagement solution used in multiple pharmaceutical co-pay programs that was acquired in May of 2018.

As President of the National Payer Roundtable, Mr. Smeeding is in regular contact with the Chief Medical Officers and Chief Pharmacy Officers of national and regional health insurers, as well as, pharmaceutical executives.

"As a seasoned entrepreneur working with companies and organizations focused on cannabis-based medicines, we are delighted that Jim is bringing his pharmaceutical insight and commercial expertise to our board as we continue to make progress with our pharmaceutical product development. We look forward to Jim's expert leadership in guiding our objectives to bring Allieds pharma products towards commercialization, said Calum Hughes, CEO of Allied. "Jim is a very highly regarded and experienced medical cannabis and pharmaceutical expert. His network within the Pharma industry will present many advantages to Allied regarding research and development, commercialization and licensing of our pharma products.

For more information on Allied Corp., visit www.allied.health

About Allied Corp.

Allied Corp. is an international medical cannabis production company with a mission to address todays medical issues by researching, creating and producing targeted cannabinoid health solutions. Allied Corp. uses an evidence-informed scientific approach to make this mission possible, through cutting-edge pharmaceutical research and development, innovative plant-based production and unique development of therapeutic products.

Investor Relations:

ir@allied.health

1-877-255-4337

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws in Canada or forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, forward-looking information). Forward-looking information may relate to the Companys future outlook and anticipated events, plans or results, and may include information regarding the Companys objectives, goals, strategies, future revenue or performance and capital expenditures, and other information that is not historical information. Forward-looking information can often be identified by the use of terminology such as believe, anticipate, plan, expect, pending, in process, intend, estimate, project, may, will, should, would, could, can, the negatives thereof, variations thereon and similar expressions. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is based on the Companys opinions, estimates and assumptions in light of managements experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that management currently believes are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Forward looking statements in this press release include the following: that Allied is leveraging the conditions in its Colombia grow operation and future Kelowna location to support its Research and Development efforts; that Allied is making important strides forward to position itself as a leader in the medical cannabis space, that Allied intends to make a series of proposed trademark and other intellectual property protection filings, as part of the Companys Intellectual Property and Pharma Development (IP&PD) Strategy, statements respecting the joint development, manufacturing, and introduction of TACTICAL RELIEF branded products, and the use of proceeds from the offering of convertible notes.

There can be no assurance that the underlying opinions, estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information in this release include: the Companys exposure to legal and regulatory risk; the effect of the legalization of adult-use cannabis in Canada and Colombia on the medical cannabis industry is unknown and may significantly and negatively affect the Companys medical cannabis business; that the medical benefits, viability, safety, efficacy, dosing and social acceptance of cannabis are not as currently expected; that adverse changes or developments affecting the Companys main or planned facilities may have an adverse effect on the Company; that the medical cannabis industry and market may not continue to exist or develop as anticipated or the Company may not be able to succeed in this market; risks related to completion of the greenhouse construction in Colombia, risks related to market competition; risks related to the proposed adult-use cannabis industry and market in Canada and Colombia including the Companys ability to enter into or compete in such markets; that the Company has a limited operating history and a history of net losses and that it may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; risks related to the Companys current or proposed international operations; risks related to future third party strategic alliances or the expansion of currently existing relationships with third parties; that the Company may not be able to successfully identify and execute future acquisitions or dispositions or successfully manage the impacts of such transactions on its operations; risks inherent to the operation of an agricultural business; that the Company may be unable to attract, develop and retain key personnel; risks resulting from significant interruptions to the Companys access to certain key inputs such as raw materials, electricity, water and other utilities; that the Company may be unable to transport its cannabis products to patients in a safe and efficient manner; risks related to recalls of the Companys cannabis products or product liability or regulatory claims or actions involving the Companys cannabis products; risks related to the Companys reliance on pharmaceutical distributors; that the Company, or the cannabis industry more generally, may receive unfavourable publicity or become subject to negative consumer or investor perception; that certain events or developments in the cannabis industry more generally may impact the Companys reputation or its relationships with customers or suppliers; that the Company may not be able to obtain adequate insurance coverage in respect of the risks that it faces, that the premiums for such insurance may not continue to be commercially justifiable or that there may be coverage limitations and other exclusions which may result in such insurance not being sufficient; that the Company may become subject to liability arising from fraudulent or illegal activity by its employees, contractors, consultants and others; that the Company may experience breaches of security at its facilities or losses as a result of the theft of its products; risks related to the Companys information technology systems; that the Company may be unable to sustain its revenue growth and development; that the Company may be unable to expand its operations quickly enough to meet demand or manage its operations beyond their current scale; that the Company may be unable to secure adequate or reliable sources of necessary funding; risks related to, or associated with, the Companys exposure to reporting requirements; risks related to conflicts of interest; risks related to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; risks related to the Companys potential exposure to greater-than-anticipated tax liabilities; risks related to the protection and enforcement of the Companys intellectual property rights, or the intellectual property that it licenses from others; that the Company may become subject to allegations that it or its licensors are in violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties; that the Company may not realize the full benefit of the clinical trials or studies that it participates in; that the Company may not realize the full benefit of its licenses if the licensed material has less market appeal than expected and the licenses may not be profitable; as well as any other risks that may be further described in and the risk factors discussed in the Company's continuous disclosure including its Management's Discussion and Analysis sections in its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and Current Reports on Form 8-K filed under the Company's profile at www.sec.gov.

Although management has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information in this presentation, there may be other risk factors not presently known to the Company or that the Company presently believes are not material that could also cause actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking information in this presentation. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers and viewers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date made. The forward-looking information contained in this release represents the Companys expectations as of the date of this release or the date indicated, regardless of the time of delivery of the presentation. The Company disclaims any intention, obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws.




In a joint statement released on Tuesday, Morrison and Ardern agreed to commence work on easing travel restrictions between the two countries. Loading Such a relaxation would be mutually beneficial, they said, assisting our trade and economic recovery, kick-starting the tourism and transport industries, allowing sporting contacts, and reuniting people with loved ones. The case for easing restrictions is strong  1.4 million tourists travel both ways between the countries every year. Australians represent New Zealands biggest single tourism market (about 30 per cent) and New Zealanders are about 15 per cent of ours, the second biggest after China. New Zealand is our sixth largest two-way trading partner, accounting for about 3.4 per cent of two-way trade  about $16 billion in exports and $14 billion in imports. There are about 650,000 Kiwis living in Australia who are cut off from their families back home.

But what would a trans-Tasman bubble look like? This week the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF) created an expert panel, the Trans-Tasman Safe Border Group, to answer the question. It will include repesentatives from Border Force, health authorities, quarantine authorities, airlines and airports. The expert panel meets for the first time on Tuesday and will spend three to four weeks nutting out protocols to enable safe travel between the two countries, which it will pass on to both governments. Australia and New Zealand have both managed the coronavirus outbreak quite similarly and both want to re-open, says forum chair Ann Sherry.

We have with New Zealand the longest free trade agreement in our history. We have trust and understand each other in a broad context. Loading Trust and co-operation are the essential ingredients of any easing of restrictions, not least because travellers wont book flights until theyre confident they wont catch the virus in transit. Tourists may face pre-travel health checks, on-arrival health checks including airport temperature readings, and social distancing on flights could be achieved through a checkerboard seating pattern, where no passenger has anyone directly in front of or behind them. Touchless immigration checks could be done electronically, without any forms or documents.

Some of the things that will be done will be about public confidence, says Sherry. While temperature testing is an imperfect way of knowing if people are unwell, its at least a screen. Margy Osmond, head of the Tourism and Transport Forum, is a member of the expert panel advising on the Australian tourism sector. She says she, too, hears the siren call of the luxury lodge in the New Zealand wilderness. The expert panel will examine the kind of technology we might use, to how airports are set up on either side, whose responsibility is it for a particular type of testing, and where do the costs lie, Osmond says. Apart from the obvious impact on tourism, Osmond says the drastic reduction in passenger trans-Tasman flights has had a huge impact on trade.

Freight capacity has dropped hugely from a national perspective, she says. Loading People forget that the belly of a passenger jet is usually filled with a lot of high-end trade product. The first flight route to be re-established between the two countries will probably be Sydney-Auckland, with others to follow if that proceeds smoothly. Once things have opened across the Tasman, we can start incrementally thinking about other places we can fly people in and out of, says Sherry.

A safe travel zone could be expanded to include parts of Asia where the virus is under control, such as Singapore, and virus-free Pacific nations such as Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tonga. Liberal MP for Wentworth Dave Sharma this week argued in The Australian that we should eventually expand to a trans-Pacific bubble to assist the suffering economies of those countries, and to help Australia meet labour market shortages caused by the coronavirus hit to immigration. We do have a unique obligation to this part of the world, says Jonathan Pryke, the director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute. Some Pacific countries economies have been decimated but they have no corona cases. They will want to get in on [the bubble]. When might the bubble be operational? No one will commit to a timetable.

Osmond says it will be many months before borders open. Greg Lowe, the New Zealand co-chair of the ANZLF, says an optimistic time frame might be a short number of months. The proviso would be that the virus continued to be at a low level of occurrence. The underlying natural trust we have with each other greatly assists in the dialogue." Once travel is possible, no one can say how expensive it will be. It's a good question, says Sherry.

I have heard mixed views on this, and I know the competition regulators are watching this carefully. The cost of flights could go either way - airlines offering cheap fares to rustle up business (this week Qantas flagged offering $19 Sydney-Melbourne Jetstar flights), or airlines and tourism operators passing on inevitable higher costs to consumers. Jeannie Crawford, the owner of the Fork and Tap gastro-pub in Arrowtown, about 10 kilometres out of Queenstown, gasps in delight at the thought of Australian tourists returning. Oh, she says. It would be huge. It would be so good right now.
The official reserves the post of company's executive director for transformation

Otto Waterlander, Chief Executive Officer of Naftogaz Open source

The Supervisory Board of Naftogaz-Ukraine appointed Otto Waterlander to the post of Chief Executive Officer, as the press service of Naftogaz reports.

Waterlander currently also retains the post of executive director for the transformation of Naftogaz.

Otto Waterlander has intensified and actualy restarted the transformation process of the Naftogaz Group for the time that he joined our team. He has proved that global corporate solutions and standards can and should work in a Ukrainian state-owned company. Therefore, we expect that with new Ottos authority will help Naftogaz become a partner for the shareholder and business, who is a true lawmaker of new work standards, said Andriy Kobolev, Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz-Ukraine.

Otto Waterlander will be responsible for operational and transformation processes at Naftogaz to introduce a new operating model and divisional management structure, implement cross-functional processes and develop process databases.

It is worth noting that prior to joining Naftogaz Ukraine, Waterlander took part in managing the oil and gas sector at the international level, and worked in various positions in the Netherlands and Venezuela.

As we reported before, Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy company, continues to charge Poland the price of gas it supplies despite a decision by the Stockholm court.
New Delhi, May 8 : Google on Friday revealed that recipe-related searches hit a new record high in India during April as people stayed home and aimed to break the monotony in the kitchen.

While 'dalgona coffee recipe at home' spiked 5,000 per cent, searches for 'chicken momo recipe' grew 4,350 per cent and searches for "mango icecream recipe" saw 3,250 per cent rise.

According to the company, the most searched recipes on Google were cake, samosa, jalebi, momos, dhokla, panipuri, dosa, paneer and chocolate cake.

The report also showed that coronavirus (COVID-19) was the third most searched topic in India during April (behind film and meaning - both consistently highly searched topics in the country).

Search interest for coronavirus grew more than 10 per cent over April -- 3,000 per cent from January when the topic first began trending.

The state with the highest search interest over April is Meghalaya, followed by Tripura and Goa.

Top trending searches include: Coronavirus tips spiked over 5000 per cent, coronavirus prevention spiked 2,300 per cent Search interest in lockdown saw a sharp spike on 11 April to reach its second-highest peak, with 'new guidelines for lockdown' and 'how to get e pass in lockdown' both spiking more than 5,000 per cent over the month.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The Haryana government said on Friday a three-member SIT, which will be headed by a senior IAS officer, has been constituted to investigate the huge stock of liquor going missing from two godowns in Sonipat, and the alleged sale of illicit liquor in the state.

With several bootlegging incidents being reported during the lockdown when liquor vends were closed, the SIT will also probe sale of illicit liquor in the state during the period, Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij said.

Liquor vends in Haryana were closed from March 27 after the lockdown was announced, but have now reopened from May 6 after the state government decided to open the vends.

He said a senior IAS officer -- either Ashok Khemka, Sanjeev Kaushal or T C Gupta -- will head the SIT while IPS officer Subhash Yadav and Additional Excise Commissioner Vijay Singh will also be its members and jointly investigate the matter.

The scope of the SIT, which was earlier to probe the case of seized liquor going missing from the godowns in Sonipat, will now also investigate the sale of illicit liquor, Vij said, according to an official statement.

A huge stock of liquor had gone missing from two godowns in Sonipat district and this could not have happened without the connivance of officials, Vij had said on Thursday.

As liquor of other states has been found from the godowns, one can only guess that this place had become den of smuggling, Vij said.

On May 6, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had directed all Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of Police to constitute district-level teams to check liquor smuggling across the inter-state borders.

He had asked them that these teams should be headed by a Magistrate and comprise of officers of police and the Excise and Taxation Department.

Besides checking smuggling of illegal liquor across the inter-state borders, these committees will also work to prevent any supply of non-duty-paid liquor from the distilleries to the vends.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CLEVELAND, Ohio  On Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced plans to reopen restaurants, bars, hair and nail salons and barber shops. More news will come Monday when DeWine said he will address the reopening of daycares as well. However, one industry still left with uncertainty is fitness.

After seeing bars, restaurants and other personal services businesses get their reopening dates and guidance, we are pretty frustrated because the governor still has not made any specific mention of gyms, says Ryan McFadyen, owner of Ohio Strength gym in Columbus.

People are going to be allowed to sit up to 10 people at a single table at restaurants, get their hair cut with someone inches away from them or get their nails done with person to person contact. Yet, we have many small gym operations that can setup much more significant social distancing policies than those [businesses] and we have not even been considered yet.

Gyms, along with several other businesses, have been closed since DeWine issued an order closing all nonessential businesses in mid-March. Ohios stay-at-home order, which is now called Stay Safe Ohio, is set to expire on May 29. However, DeWine has begun reopening businesses such as offices, dentists and veterinarians with safety guidelines in place.

Retail shops will begin opening May 12 with restrictions. Hair salons and barbershops on May 15, while restaurants and bars can begin outside dining on May 15 and indoor dining May 21. However, DeWine has yet to provide word on if and when gyms may reopen.

Thursdays press conference didnt sit well with many gym owners, personal trainers and health enthusiast on social media. The Ohio Independent Fitness Operators Associations is calling for fitness enthusiasts to contact Gov. DeWine, with the goal is to get 1 million emails in support of gym openings sent out.

One of the biggest frustrations for gym owners like McFadyen is a lack communication. Ohios Personal Services Advisory Group focuses on best practices for reopening hair salons, day spas, nail salons, barber shops, massage therapy locations and tanning facilities, with no mention of gyms or health clubs.

Weve been trying to get in touch with all of our various local, state and federal representatives at all levels of government and in public health to share with them our industry recommendations for how we can reopen safely and sustainably, says McFadyen.

Our greatest frustrations have been in our inability to have those conversations with the decision makers. The governor emphasized over the last two weeks how they were creating the working groups for bars, restaurants, barbers, salons and other personal services. Our natural response was, Where is our working group? We havent heard from any gym owners that anyone is aware of a gym working group at this point.

Yet, once gyms do reopen, they may face uphill battle. A recent survey of 1,005 adults conducted by the Washington Post showed that 78 percent of Americans do not support the reopening of health clubs. The survey was conducted between April 28 and May 3.

An online survey conducted during a similar timeframe by RunRepeat showed that 47 percent of American gym members do not plan to return to their fitness centers when they reopen.

Though, McFadyen is quick to point out that fitness could be a valuable asset in combating the COVID-19 outbreak.

We look at the fact that after age, obesity is the second leading risk factor for people that have serious issues with Covid-19, he says. Fitness can help reduce the severity of many of the underlying health conditions that contribute to worse outcomes with Covid-19. Not to mention the positive impact that it can have on mental health during these challenging times.

There may be hope on the way. Nearby Kentucky has set dates for the reopening of several businesses including restaurants, movie theaters and campgrounds. Gyms were included in phase two of that plan. Perhaps Ohio could be next.
One Wednesday in early March, Abra Morawiec realized something seismic was happening at her farm stand. The month had been pretty quiet at the Feisty Acres table in the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan. But that day, at the very start of social distancing, she had sold out of everything by 2 p.m.

I had to go home three hours early, Ms. Morawiec said. After wondering whether her small farm on the North Fork of Long Island would survive the pandemic, this was good news.

But the boom for Feisty Acres has coincided with a virtual collapse at large-scale operations like Crescent Duck Farm, also based on Long Island. In operation for more than a century, Crescent produces a million ducks a year  about 4 percent of the industry total  and was the supplier of choice for fine-dining restaurants in New York, including Jean-Georges and the River Cafe. Those restaurants are closed now, and Crescent has been forced to lay off 80 percent of its workers.
Chinenye Iwuoha, a presenter with Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Pacesetter FM, Umuahia, Abia State, who was abducted on Monday night has regained her freedom.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Jane Agbede, confirmed the release of the journalist to newsmen in Umuahia on Thursday.

Agbede said Iwuoha was released unconditionally on Wednesday night by her captors, following heavy pressure from the police.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Iwuoha was kidnapped by armed bandits while returning from work.

It was learnt that the suspects accosted the official Toyota Hikux van conveying home the victim and General Manager of the station, Uche Ndukwu.

The suspects reportedly shot several times at the driver, Kingsley Onyeokuche, before taking Iwuoha away to unknown destination, while the GM and another occupant of the vehicle escaped unhurt.

The yet-to-be identified kidnap suspects were said to have demanded N20 million ransom before they would release her.

Meanwhile, Onyeokuche, who was reportedly rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, where the bullets were extracted, was said to be responding to treatment.
The Union environment ministry received LG Polymers India Private Limiteds application for environmental clearance for its Visakhapatnam plant only last month and the factory was operating without it, two officials aware of the matter said on Friday, a day after a toxic gas leak from the unit left 11 people dead.

This polymer plant is a very old project (dating back to) when the EIA [environmental impact assessment] notification was not applicable. Subsequently, they did get relevant permissions from the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board. They didnt come to us but applied to the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority [SEIAA] for an environmental clearance in 2018. There was confusion whether they will be assessed by the state or by the environment ministry. So only last month, their application for the EC [environmental clearance] was forwarded by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority to us and it will be considered in due course, said Geeta Menon, joint secretary, environment ministry.

She added the company had expanded the unit, which required it to seek the clearance. Based on that notification the company applied to SEIAA, Andhra Pradesh, but the project was not appraised. The file has come to us now. We will have to look into what violations have taken place and how long they have been operating without a valid EC, added Menon.

LG did not respond to queries from Hindustan Times sent on Thursday, and again on Friday.

The ministry issued a notification in March 2017 allowing the environmental appraisal of projects, which had started work or expanded beyond their capacity. Projects were allowed to apply for such post-facto clearances for six months from the notification date.

Environmental clearance involves the assessment of a project on the environment and people around it.

Officials said the unit was established much before EIA norms of 2006 came into force,and it may not have applied for the clearance. There was no law for environment clearance process then. It appears that they may not have taken the EC. But these issues are still being investigated, said CK Mishra, secretary, environment ministry.

The ministrys website says the plant violated norms by undertaking manufacturing without the clearance. A notarised affidavit by LG Polymers India Private Limited on the ministrys website admits the plant was functioning in violation of the EIA notification as it did not have an environment clearance for manufacturing polystyrene.

According to the document dated May 8, 2019, the plant obtained consent for establishment in 2001 and consent for operation in 2002 from the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB). Subsequently, minor expansions of the facility were undertaken with APPCBs permission, the affidavit says.

In all, those minor expansions entailed six enhancements in the plants capacity; for expandable polystyrene from 45 to 102 TPD and for polystyrene from 235 to 313 TPD between 2004 and 2017.

The affidavit says when the company applied for the clearance for the capacity expansion to the environment ministry, it was found the unit was operating without a valid environmental clearance and in violation as per the applicable statute.

Petrochemical based processing units are required to undergo the EIA as they fall under the red or a highly polluting category.

As on this date our industry does not have a valid environmental clearance substantiating the produced quantityhowever we are continuing our operations with valid consent from the State Pollution Control Board, the affidavit says. It refers to a 2017 Supreme Court judgement mandating 100% penalty for illegal operations in violation of various statutes including the Environment Protection Act. The affidavit says that the company is aware that the environmental appraisal of the project will be subject to a bank guarantee equivalent to the sum needed for the redemption management plan and natural and community resource augmentation plans.

The unit was established in Vishakapatnam in 1965 by M/S Hindustan Polymers Limited, which was amalgamated with Mc Dowell and Company in 1982, according to the affidavit.

Kanchi Kohli, a legal researcher at the Centre for Policy Research, said a perusal of the documents reveals the project was still under environmental appraisal or a post-facto approval when the accident happened. This is not merely a legal problem. It poses serious life, health and livelihood risks for people and can cause irreversible environmental damage.

Kohli said the project was in operation even as its application was pending under a violations category, which means its social and environmental impacts were never assessed. This brings to light a systemic problem of the environment clearance process as thousands of projects have now come before the environment ministry disclosing that they were operating without approval. Such a system, which was earlier justified as a one-time amnesty, is now proposed as a routine exercise as part of the proposed EIA 2020 amendments. This defeats the idea of precautionary principles and prior environment clearance.
Bret Stephens on the politics of the pandemic

The Times Opinion columnist joined us yesterday for a wide-ranging DealBook Debrief call about the pandemics economic, geographic and political fault lines. Listen to the full recording here. Some highlights:

 Trump expected to ride to re-election on the strength of a very robust economy.

Despite what looks like a deep recession, Bret thinks that the presidents re-election chances are good, based on his formidable advantage in fund-raising and the power of incumbency.

That said, if the economy fails to recover quickly, a second Trump term would be radically different from the first. History might remember that it was left to the Trump administration to fulfill Bernie Sanders agenda of completely socializing the economy, Bret said. If Trump gets a second term, we may be inevitably forced to move toward a Medicare-for-all system as a majority of the population  or a huge number of people  are left without health benefits.

 Heres a governor who really knows what hes doing.

As much as I can find fault with the decisions that Andrew Cuomo has made, Bret said of New Yorks governor, his performance during the pandemic has been praiseworthy. He has seized the national stage in a way that few other governors have with a combination of almost fatherly authority and a sense of empathy. That is, at least in terms of presentation, if not in terms of policy, what leadership looks like.

 Its not just simply life versus money.

An ideological split on attitudes toward risk underlies disagreements about when and how to reopen the economy. A lot of conservatives would say that I ought to be free to take risks with my health because other things matter to me as much as my health does, Bret said. Of course the liberal answer is youre not just taking risks with your health, but also with other peoples health.

Its unfortunate that people have begun speaking about this in terms of lives versus the economy, as if the word economy doesnt contain within it real questions of public health and not just livelihood, but life itself, he added.
Johnny Vegas has been delivering food parcels to vulnerable neighbours and NHS staff in his hometown of St Helens.

The comedian, 49, has teamed up with local charities to ensure the needy residents are getting their essentials during the coronavirus lockdown.

The actor was spotted by the Eccleston Arms in the Merseyside town picking up the boxes and carrying them to nearby homes on Friday.

Charitable: Johnny Vegas was pictured delivering food parcels to vulnerable residents in St Helens on Friday

Wearing gloves and a flat cap, the local hero also donned a maroon St Helens rugby league hoodie bearing an NHS badge.

He was also spotted chatting to other charity workers who were wearing masks and gloves to stop the spread of the virus.

The scheme in the area is also being supported by Johnny's unlikely friend, the Hollywood actor Russell Crowe.

Helping out: The comedian, 49, delivered the food and essentials to both NHS workers and elderly and vulnerable neighbours

Friendly: Vegas was collecting the parcels from the Merseyside pub the Eccleston Arms before delivering them to residents

Neighbourly: Vegas was spotted chatting to another charitable volunteer wearing a mask, gloves and a Union Flag hat for VE Day

Doing his bit: The funnyman had the heavy boxes hanging from a rope tied around his neck as he ferried the essentials

Local hero: Vegas is working with the Steve Prescott Foundation and the Blackbrook rugby league to deliver the goods

The Gladiator star shared a video on Twitter relaying a message from Vegas asking for people who need assistance to call a helpline.

It led to many confused Twitter followers wondering how the pair were on personal terms with each other.

Russell said: 'G'day folks, how are you doing? This is a message on behalf of my old mate Johnny Vegas.

Moment's rest: During a quick break from the heavy lifting, Vegas had a look at his phone while wearing the protective gloves

Drop off: The PG Tips funnyman was dropping off the boxes of essentials on the doorsteps of the needy

Coronavirus etiquette: Vegas was practising good social distancing by knocking on the doors and retreating

Local cause: Wearing gloves and a flat cap, Vegas also wore a maroon St Helens rugby league hoodie bearing an NHS badge

Local lad: Vegas was born and raised in Merseyside town St Helens, and is desperate to help its residents out during a time of national crisis

Armed with supplies: The Merseyside comedian was delivering a range of essentials including food

'If you're in the St Helens area and you're having trouble getting food deliveries from your local supermarket, if you're NHS staff, a key worker, elderly, isolating, vulnerable, call this number - O1744 881881.

'The Steve Prescott Foundation and the Blackbrook rugby league team have set up a delivery service and they can help you out, they can pick up your shopping, they can maybe even pick up your medicine.

'One of the delivery workers is going be Johnny Vegas though, so expect to lose every second or third biscuit."

Support: Russell Crowe revealed his unlikely friendship with Vegas when he said the comedian will be delivering food and medicine to people in need

He finished with an impression of Vegas.

The post prompted a wave of responses from fans, with one commenting: 'I'm about 10 minutes from St. Helens right now, I want to meet Johnny Vegas (as long at the PG Tips monkey is with him).'

Referring to Hollywood star Crowe's surprising friendship with Vegas, another added: 'Russell Crowe doing a PSA for Johnny Vegas about food delivery in St Helens UK, will remain one of the best and most surreal #lockdown moments. What a champ!'

Surprised: The post prompted a wave of responses from fans,with many admitting they were taken aback by Crowe's unexpected friendship with Vegas

Evidently on the same page, a third added: 'Since when have Russell Crowe and Johnny Vegas been mates.'

While a fourth quipped: 'If Johnny Vegas is really your mate how come you didn't give him a role in Master and Commander?'

The Steve Prescott Foundation raises funds for the Christie Cancer Hospital, Try Assist Fund & SPF Special Causes Fund.
In Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, as many as 22 labourers, who had returned from Andhra Pradesh, escaped from a COVID-19 quarantine centre, as per reports.

The labourers escaped from a quarantine facility in Dantewada late on Thursday evening and a search was launched to trace them, Dantewada superintendent of police Abhishek Pallava told PTI.

Representational Image/PTI

In total, 47 migrant labourers, who had travelled to their home districts from the neighbouring state, were quarantined at a facility in Aranpur police station area, Pallava said.



Of these, 22 labourers, who hail from Nahadi village, fled from the centre, he added.

"They were examined for primary coronavirus symptoms on Thursday and all of them were found to be asymptomatic," Pallava said.

Representational Image/PTI

The district administration has informed the sarpanch and secretary of the concerned village panchayat, Pallava said, adding that the police have launched a manhunt to track them down.

So far, no case of COVID-19 has been reported from the Bastar division, which comprises Bastar, Kanker, Sukma Kondagaon, Narayanpur, Dantewada and Bijapur districts.

Chhattisgarh has so far reported 59 COVID-19 cases, of which 38 patients recovered from the infection, while 21 are undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Raipur.

Meanwhile, India registered over 3,000 new coronavirus cases for the second day as the total number of coronavirus cases in the country surged past 55,000. The total number of coronavirus cases in India stood at 56,342, according to ministry of health and family welfare.

PTI

Maharashtra confirmed over 1,200 fresh coronavirus cases on Thursday, for the second consecutive day. Delhi witnessed the biggest spike in daily COVID-19 count as 448 new cases were added in last 24 hours.



The death toll in India climbed to 1,886 with over 100 people succumbed to death in the last 24 hours. Maharashtra also recorded highest single-day death toll  43 people passed away in the state on Thursday due to coronavirus disease.
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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (C) gestures as he chats with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (R) as U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (L) looks on after posing for a "family photo" at the Xijiao Conference Centre in Shanghai on July 31, 2019.

Top officials from the U.S. and China held a phone call late Thursday Eastern time to discuss trade matters including the "phase one" deal that was signed in January.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also spoke to Chinese Vice Premier Liu He about the economic and public health issues, according to the government from both sides.

The call came as investors globally raised concerns over increasing tensions between the U.S. and China  two of the largest economies in the world.

The two countries were embroiled in a trade war for the last two years and added significant amounts of tariffs on each other's products  before tensions took a pause when they signed the phase one agreement. But relations between the two appeared to worsen again in recent weeks, with Washington and Beijing disputing over a variety of issues, including the origin of the coronavirus.

The coronavirus pandemic also raised questions about whether China could fulfill its obligations in the phase one deal, which include purchasing an additional $200 billion of U.S. goods over two years. Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would "terminate" the agreement if Beijing failed to meet those obligations.

But during the Thursday call, both sides "agreed that in spite of the current global health emergency, both countries fully expect to meet their obligations under the agreement in a timely manner," according to the Office of the U.S.Trade Representative. A statement by China's Ministry of Commerce also said both countries are working toward implementing what's outlined in the trade deal.

The two countries also agreed to maintain communication, said both statements.

 CNBC's Tucker Higgins and Yelena Dzahanova contributed to this report.
Tottenham Hotspur forward, Son Heung-min is set to return to the UK next week after coming out on top of the class during his marine training.

The 27-year-old Tottenham Hotspur attacker undertook his three week training on the south Korean island of Jeju with the 9th Brigade of the Marine Corps.

Also Read: Tottenham Forward, Son Heung-Min Begins Military Training

The Tottenham Hotspur striker was named one of the top five recruits in his unit as he finished three weeks of compulsory military training in South Korea on Friday.

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All able-bodied South Korean men are obliged to serve in the military for nearly two years, making up the bulk of Seouls 600,000-strong forces  who face off against North Koreas army of 1.3 million.

Son was in the South Korean team that earned an exemption by winning gold at the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (L) and California Senator Kamala Harris chat during the fifth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by MSNBC and The Washington Post at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia on November 20, 2019.

Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey introduced a bill Friday to give most Americans $2,000 a month during the coronavirus pandemic, as historic job losses leave millions scrambling to cover bills.

The legislation would provide a direct payment to people who make up to $120,000 throughout the crisis and for three months after it. Married couples filing jointly would receive $4,000, and parents would get $2,000 per child for up to three children. The plan would be retroactive to March.

Harris, D-Calif., Sanders, I-Vt., and Markey, D-Mass., released the plan on the day the government jobs report for April showed the wreckage left by business closures designed to slow Covid-19 infections. The U.S. lost a record 20.5 million jobs for the month as the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7%  the highest level since the Great Depression.

The bill would try to iron out what critics called issues with the $1,200 direct payments to individuals included in the $2 trillion stimulus package passed in March. The senators said it would ensure "every U.S. resident" gets money, even if they have not filed a recent tax return or do not have a Social Security number. It would also bar debt collectors from taking the relief money, and deliver payments to homeless and foster youth.

The proposal, which likely carries a hefty price tag, is unlikely to gain much traction in a Republican-held Senate growing increasingly wary of spending taxpayer money to blunt the health and economic damage created by the outbreak. Even so, it sets a marker for debate as Congress considers how next to offer relief to Americans devastated by the pandemic.

In six 2020 battleground states  Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  31% of likely voters said they could afford food, housing and other essential items for less than a month if they lost their source of income, according to a CNBC/Change Research poll released this week. Among people who make less than $50,000, 47% said they could cover their cost of living for less than a month if they lost their income.

The same survey found 74% of respondents approved of continuing direct payments until the country can safely resume economic activity.

Congress in the coming weeks will mull how best to support individuals and the economy as businesses in most of the country remain closed to respond to the public health crisis. As they look to the next rescue bill, Democratic congressional leaders have pushed for at least one more round of direct payments to Americans.

Asked Thursday if Americans should expect more money than the initial $1,200, President Donald Trump said "there is talk about something happening and we'll see what  what's going on."

He added that "the greatest thing that could happen" is to "get our country open again and get it going again and have people have these great jobs again."

Governors such as Republican Brian Kemp of Georgia have faced backlash for moving to reopen certain businesses even as Covid-19 infections rise.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is the third sponsor of the bill.

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India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

India to expand Vande Bharat Mission, 2nd phase to begin from May 15

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 08: India will expand from next week its mega mission to evacuate stranded Indians from abroad by including countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Germany, Spain and Thailand.

Stranded Indians in central Asia as well as in various European countries will be brought back home under the second phase of the 'Vande Bharat Mission' beginning May 15.

A total 64 flights carrying approximately 15,000 returnees from 12 countries are expected to land at 14 airports across India from May 7 to 15 as part of phase one of the mission.

Reports said Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa set sail on Friday afternoon from Male to Kochi with approximately 700 returnees on board.
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Linkedin Anne-Marie Trevelyan (The Jakarta Post) London  Fri, May 8, 2020 10:03 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6a6aae 3 Opinion #COVID19,pandemic,solidarity,coronavirus,drugs,antiviral Free

Right now, the fast global spread of coronavirus means no one is safe from this pandemic until we are all safe.



In many countries, people have made enormous personal sacrifices to slow the spread of this virus. But only one thing will stop this pandemic in its tracks: a vaccine.



We are all contributing to the war on this disease in different ways. The United Kingdom has stepped up to become the biggest donor to the international fund to develop a coronavirus vaccine, which will save lives and livelihoods around the world, including in our two countries.



Our scientists at the University of Oxford have begun human trials and are partnering with another British success story, AstraZeneca  one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies  to make sure we are ready to manufacture a workable vaccine at scale.



The global sense of community among nations is remarkable as we work together towards this common goal to find a cure. The only way we will succeed is by bringing together our resources, science and expertise to prevent a second wave of infection.



As such, the UK was very proud to cohost on May 4 the Coronavirus Global Response International Pledging Conference with Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Norway, Italy, Saudi Arabia and the European Commission.



This is a pledging event aiming to raise US$8 billion from governments and global organizations for the research and development of vaccines, treatments and tests to help end the coronavirus pandemic and prevent future waves of infection.



The UK has pledged significant support to achieve this aim, including the worlds largest donation to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations fund to develop a coronavirus vaccine.



The more countries, businesses and global organizations pull together to pool their expertise, the faster our scientists will succeed in finding a vaccine, accessible and affordable for all.



The international momentum to find a vaccine is growing.



Now our nations must work together to build on this by making sure when we do find a vaccine, it will reach the people who need it.



This weeks pledging event to help find a vaccine is only the beginning. On June 4 the UK will play virtual host to the Global Vaccine Summit focused on raising funds to help Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. I am delighted the Indonesian government is attending.



To kick off the international investment push, last week I announced new UK funding for Gavi to vaccinate up to 75 million children in the worlds poorest countries. We have pledged funding equivalent to 330 million pounds ($41 million) a year for the next five years.



Gavis work is integral to stopping diseases spreading globally and protecting countries like yours and mine from future pandemics.



Gavi has a superb track record delivering life-saving vaccinations, and pledges to the Alliance will help support their work in 68 different countries. Once a coronavirus vaccine is developed, Gavi will also play an integral role to ensure global distribution.



The UK and Indonesia can work together to get this right because the only way for us to defeat this global disease is through global cooperation.



The UK is not only giving its support to the pledging conference today, we are calling on our international partners to do the same. We need everyone to pull together and work together.



Ministerial colleagues, whether in the UK or in your own country, were standing together at May 4 pledging initiative. We are urging other countries to step up and make their contributions to overcome this crisis for our common good.



As our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said at the conference: The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a competition between countries, but the most urgent shared endeavor of our lifetimes. We are in this together and together we will win.

***

United Kingdom International Development secretary

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
At the same time Vice President Mike Pence was in Iowa on Friday to discuss the nations food supply security, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack called on the administration to take more measures to protect workers in food processing plants.

Loebsack also questioned the decisions to reopen the economy being made by the Trump administration and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

I dont think were ready for that yet, quite honestly, the Iowa City Democrat said.

Ready will be when adequate protections are in place for the people processing Americas food, Loebsack said.

Workers are showing up on the job, but they fear for their families, they fear for themselves, they fear for everybody, Loebsack said. They dont know if theyre going to catch this thing or not. But theyre there.

Of particular concern are workers in food processing, such as those in meatpacking plants in Iowa where more than 1,600 cases of COVID-19 have been reported.

I really believe that we should not open the plants if we do not ensure worker safety, Loebsack said.

He called for President Donald Trump to use the Defense Production Act, which the president invoked to keep meatpacking plants open, to ensure an adequate supply of personal protective equipment for packing plant workers.

If Pence and the president are concerned about the nations food supply, then they need to keep those workers safe and, therefore, keep those processing plants running to avoid meat shortages at the grocery store, Loebsack said.

We cant have those plants running if workers are not protected. Its that simple, he said. Its not just the workers, its the families, its the community at large.

With unemployment at 14.7 percent  probably higher, Loebsack said, Congress should extend federal coronavirus-related unemployment benefits of $600 a week beyond their current July end date.

Hes also pleased that the last relief package fixed a Small Business Administration Economic Injury Disaster Loan program to allow farmers to apply for assistance.
New York, May 8 : NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have teamed up with the Juno spacecraft to probe the mightiest storms on the giant planet Jupiter.

The images, part of a multi-year joint programme, revealed that lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid.

The new observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud colour variations.

Three years of imaging observations using the international Gemini Observatory have probed deep into Jupiter's cloud tops. The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet.

"The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule," said Michael Wong of University of California, Berkeley.

"We used a very powerful technique called lucky imaging," added Wong.

With lucky imaging, a large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used. The result in this case is some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground.

According to Wong, "These images rival the view from space." Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere.

This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover.

The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Geminiand Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones.

The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight not unlike the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth.

Because the Hubble and Gemini observations are so important for interpreting Juno data, Wong and his colleagues are making all of the processed data easily accessible to other researchers through the Mikulski Archives for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
Global lubricants market is forecasted to recover in 2021 after negative impact to COVID-19. The global lubricants market is expected to witness a downfall in 2020 with a negative growth of 0. 95% and market is expected to rebound and witness recovery in 2021.

New York, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "COVID-19 Impact on Lubricants Market by Product type, End-use Industry and Region - Global Forecast to 2021" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891553/?utm_source=GNW

The decline in the market is primarily due to the spread of COVID-19 across the globe, impacting the functioning of key end-use industries using lubricants. Almost, the entire world has been under lockdown in different period to prevent the spread of the virus, leading to suspension of industrial and transportation activities.

Engine oil to be the most affected product type segment in the global lubricants market.



Engine oil is the largest and most affected product type segment in the lubricants market.It is expected to witness a negative impact due to lockdown, as demand from the passenger vehicle segment is at an all-time low.



The demand is relatively low in the commercial segment as well.OEMs have also halted production, which has further decreased the demand for engine oil.



Due to nationwide lockdown, Germany, the US, China, India, and France have witnessed a downfall in traffic and very little to no automotive movement.



Transportation is the largest and most affected end-use industry segment in the global lubricants market.

Currently, all heavy transport is suspended at least for a month.However, due to a few of the necessary goods still being produced and transported, such as food products, metal and mining, and healthcare products, commercial fleets are operating at very low output.



This will have a huge impact on the commercial vehicle segment.In 2020, the market is expected to fall, as per industry experts.



After the lockdown is over, the market will grow as the industry will have to finish supply laggards and pending orders. Especially when all the important industries will resume production, the supply chain industry is expected to get boom from the start.



The automotive industry has been under crisis since 2019 due to the worldwide downfall of automotive sales.With changing regulations and policies, the consumer trend has declined; for example, India has shifted from BS4 to BS6 norms for automotive engines.



As per industry experts, the market was expected to increase; however, amidst the pandemic, the sales have declined, and due to the lockdown, personal vehicles are not utilized. This will lead to low oil change requirements.



North America and APAC are expected to be the most affected region for lubricants market due to COVID-19

The APAC and North American lubricants markets are adversely affected by COVID-19 and expected to witness a decline in the market in 2020.The market is also expected to witness recovery in 2021.



Although Europe is one of the major hotspots for COVID-19, it is expected to witness lesser impacts than North America and APAC because of their large number of manufacturing industries and vehicles on road.Governments in different countries are imposing lockdown to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, which has made industries, such as cement production, automotive manufacturing, chemical, and oil & gas, suspend their operations.



It is affecting the demand for lubricants.

Countries such as China, the US, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, and Spain have witnessed a severe impact of the pandemic with a high number of positive cases and deaths. Lubricant manufacturers in each of the countries are taking adequate measures to overcome the situation.

 By Company Type: Tier 1 - 69%, Tier 2 - 23%, and Tier 3 - 8%

 By Designation: C-Level - 23%, Director Level - 37%, and Others - 40%

 By Region: North America - 32%, Europe - 21%, APAC - 28%, South America - 12%, Middle East & Africa - 7%,



The key players profiled in the lubricants market report include as Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands), ExxonMobil (US), BP PLC (UK), Chevron Corporation (US), Total S.A. (France), PetroChina Company Limited (China), Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd. (Japan), Sinopec Limited (China), Fuchs Petrolub AG (Germany), Valvoline (US), LUKOIL (Russia), Petronas (Malaysia), Gazprom Neft (Russia), and Pertamina (Indonesia), among others.



Research Coverage

This report segments the lubricants market based on product type, end-use industry, and region, and provides estimations for the overall market size across various regions.A detailed analysis of key industry players has been conducted to provide insights into their business overviews, products & services, key strategies associated with the market for lubricants.



Furthermore, impacts on end-use industries and necessary measures taken by respective end-use industries are also elaborated separately in the report.



Reasons to Buy this Report

This research report is focused on estimating the impact of COVID-19 on global lubricants market.The most important content of the report includes disruption in respective end-use industries, measures taken by end-use industries, and impact on lubricant blenders.



In each company profile, impact of COVID-19 on its respective business and steps taken by manufacturers to sustain their position in the market are analyzed.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:

 Industry impact: impact of COVID-19 on end-use industries of lubricants

 Market Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets  the report analyzes the markets for lubricants across regions

 Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped regions, and recent developments in the global lubricants market

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891553/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________

CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001
LONDON  Now that the first waves of infections and deaths have peaked and lockdowns are being lifted, scientists around the world have begun to skirmish over which countries have pursued the best strategies to protect their people. One of the most contentious confrontations has been between leading infectious disease specialists in Sweden and Britain, who each claim their approach is right.
- A Chinese professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the US, Bing Liu, has been killed

- According to the university, Liu who was a research assistant professor was researching on Covid-19 before he was killed

- Investigations revealed Liu was killed by an unidentified man who also killed himself afterwards

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A Chinese professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Bing Liu, who was researching the new coronavirus pandemic has been killed in the United States.

CNN reports that the University of Pittsburgh said Liu who was a research assistant professor was on the verge of making "very significant findings" on Covid-19 before his death.

Legit.ng gathers that Professor Liu was found in his house on Saturday, May 2, with gunshot wounds.

Bing Liu: Professor researching COVID-19 killed in US. Photo credit: University of Pittsburgh

Source: UGC

According to investigations, a yet-to-be-identified second man, who was found dead in his car, was believed to have shot and killed Liu in his home before returning to his car and taking his own life too.

The police believed the two dead men knew each other but said there was nothing to indicate that Liu was targeted due to being Chinese.

The university said it was "deeply saddened by the tragic death of Bing Liu, a prolific researcher" and condoled with his family, friends and colleagues.

"Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications," his colleagues at the university said.

Members of the university's School of Medicine describe the deceased as an outstanding researcher and mentor.

They have also pledged to complete his research "in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that President Donald Trump claimed he had seen evidence that gave him a "high degree of confidence" the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The US president who made the allegation on Thursday, April 30, however, declined to provide details to substantiate his claim.

Trump's claim contradicted a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In another report, President Trump on Tuesday, April 28, called President Muhammadu Buhari to express solidarity with Nigeria over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister of information, Lai Mohammed, at a briefing in Abuja said the US president promised to send across ventilators to Nigeria.

A presidential aide, Tolu Ogulesi also disclosed that the conversation between both leaders focused on Nigerias COVID-19 response.

He said the telephone call occurred at the request of President Trump.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better.

Coronavirus: Nigerians take advantage of every situation | Legit TV

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Florence Nightingale transformed chaotic, unclean hospitals and revolutionised nursing, but its as a carer that she is most fondly remembered.

She helped save lives during a cholera epidemic in London in 1854, and brought comfort to those in need during the Crimean War later that year.

What a comfort it was to see her pass even, wrote one soldier.

She would speak to one, and nod and smile to many more, but she couldnt do it to all. We lay there by our hundreds, but we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads on the pillow again, content.

Weekend magazine collated a selection of objects of significance in the life of Florence Nightingale, in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of her birth. Pictured: An engraving of Florence done during her lifetime

On the 200th anniversary of her birth, on 12 May 1820, Florences achievements resonate with us more than ever. As our doctors and nurses fight the coronavirus pandemic, its wholly appropriate that new field hospitals around the country have been named NHS Nightingale Hospitals.

Born to a middle-class family, Florence felt she had a vocation for a profession that was looked down upon.

She had to fight to make her mark as a nurse and a healthcare reformer, designing hospitals, training staff and working for the sick poor.

She accomplished all this despite spending her later decades as an invalid after contracting Crimean Fever, now known as brucellosis.

She died in 1910, aged 90. Here we celebrate her life in objects over two weeks, starting with the popular image of her as The Lady With The Lamp..

LAMP SHE WOULD HAVE USED Artists used to mistakenly picture Florence carrying a bare candle or an oil lamp as she walked about tending to the sick in the former Turkish army barracks at Scutari, used by the British as a hospital in the Crimean War. It was how she was depicted on the back of the old 10 note (left), and also how she appears in the 1915 statue of her in Waterloo Place in London. But in fact she used one of these (right), a Turkish lantern or fanoos. The waxed concertina lantern is extremely practical. It can be folded up and stored in a pocket when its not being used. Then with a candle inside, it can be carried easily, stood up on its own or hung on a wall

HER LITTLE BOX OF TRICKS Florence took this medicine chest (pictured) to the Crimea. Most of the medicines in it were for treating gastric complaints, and many were highly toxic if used inappropriately. Paregoric Elixir had painkilling properties but was largely used as an anti-diarrhoea remedy, while Aromatic Confection was seen as a tonic that could also purge the system of trapped wind. Essence of Ginger, Citric Acid, Powdered Rhubarb and Carbonate of Magnesia and Soda were used to relieve flatulence and spasms of the stomach and bowels. She also carried quinine for malaria, and Carbonate of Potassium for fever. The chest also has a tiny set of scales and measures, and a beaker for measuring liquids

CARER TO LONDON'S GENTLEWOMEN This photograph of Florence, aged 33 (pictured), was taken in 1853 while she was the Superintendent of the Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness in Upper Harley Street in London. It was a small hospital for gentlewomen, of good family, well educated but who were of limited income, which seemed to mean mainly governesses. Her father also gave her a generous allowance of 500 a year, equivalent to an income of 64,000 today. As so often in pictures of her, Florence is shown averting her eyes. After a year in the job she was bored, and when a cholera epidemic hit London in 1854 she rushed to volunteer at Londons Middlesex Hospital. More than 500 lives were lost in ten days, many of them prostitutes working around Oxford Street. Her move to the Crimea came shortly afterwards

THE HOSPITAL THAT KILLED ITS PATIENTS The huge Scutari Hospital building in Turkey (pictured) may have looked magnificent from the outside, but inside it was chaotic and filthy. It had been built above an open sewer, which meant that most of the soldiers deaths in hospital came from disease: 19,000 British troops died of illness (mainly infectious diseases), 4,000 from wounds. Florence arrived there to find the hospital overcrowded, appallingly underequipped medically, and lacking the basics such as food and bedding. Many of the doctors resented her at first, but she worked tirelessly to organise the hospital, fought for supplies to be sent by the government, and used her own money and funds sent by the public to buy scrubbing brushes and buckets, blankets, bedpans and even operating tables. Nevertheless when she left, she felt she had failed the soldiers, writing, My poor men, lying in your Crimean graves. When Florence left Scutari for England on 28 July 1856, she rejected offers from the Royal Navy to travel home on a warship and instead travelled incognito as Miss Smith. She then took the train to Derbyshire and walked to her family home, Lea Hurst, arriving late on 7 August, 1856, opening the door and collapsing from fatigue

THE FIRST NURSES' UNIFORM Florence Nightingales nurses at Scutari Hospital wore the first known example of a nursing uniform (pictured). Over a grey woollen dress the women wore a white apron and a sash embroidered with Scutari Hospital in red. Florence was keen to ensure that patients and doctors recognised her nurses and treated them with respect

FLORENCE, TOP OF THE NURSES' LIST This register (pictured) records the names of the 229 women who served as nurses at British military hospitals during the Crimean War, and it starts with Florence Nightingales name. Before they arrived, journalists were reporting dire conditions, saying that the British had not sufficient surgeons... no dressers and nurses... and not even linen to make bandages for the wounded. Comparisons were made with the French, whose army had Sisters of Charity nurses with them. The entries on the Register make note of which hospitals nurses were sent to, while the Remarks column includes information on whether they could cope or were sent home. Eleven of Florences nurses died of illness while working in the Crimea

DICKENS WAS A FRIEND INDEED Charles Dickens helped foster the image of a nurse as a dissolute woman with the character Mrs Gamp in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, serialised from 1843-4. Florence had to fight against this idea, but went on to become Dickenss friend. During the Crimean War, he helped pay for new laundry equipment at Scutari Hospital, and later visited Florence at her London home as they shared an interest in social reform. Florence gave this copy of his book Oliver Twist (pictured) to her servant Mary Coleman in 1894

ATHENA HER ADORED OWL Florence rescued this owl (pictured) in 1850 when she visited the Acropolis in Athens. She decided to keep her as a pet, and named her Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom. She became Florences constant companion, and liked to sit on her shoulder or in her pocket. Athena had daily sand baths, but she was a mischievous bird  even eating Florences pet cicada Plato after it had died. Florence heard that Athena had died in 1854 just as she was preparing to depart for her new life in Turkey during the Crimean War. Devastated, she requested that the birds body be preserved, and wrote of her: Poor little beastie, it was odd how much I loved you. A portrait of Florence with Athena was drawn by her sister Parthenope and became a popular image during the Crimean War after it appeared in The Illustrated Times. Parthenope, a year older than Florence, also went on to marry one of the several suitors (at least three) Florence rejected, the politician Sir Harry Verney

Many of Florences treasures are at the Florence Nightingale Museum London, which has struggled due to the coronavirus lockdown.

To help, visit the GoFundMe page or visit the museum at florence-nightingale.co.uk.
 Flash

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday said that between 83,000 to 190,000 people in Africa could die of COVID-19 while an additional 29 to 44 million are likely to contract the disease if containment measures fail to work.

A new study conducted by WHO regional office for Africa shed light on the likely COVID-19 fatalities in the continent during the first year of the pandemic based on prediction modeling that factored demographics, social and environmental factors as well as existing disease burden.

"While COVID-19 likely won't spread exponentially in Africa as it has done elsewhere in the world, it likely will smoulder transmission hotspots," said Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa.

"COVID-19 could become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region. We need to test, trace, isolate and treat," she added.

The WHO study reveals that a lower rate of COVID-19 transmission in Africa points to a likelihood of a prolonged outbreak while small countries in the continent alongside hotspots like South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon were at a higher risk if they failed to invest in robust containment measures.

The study proposed upgrading of primary healthcare infrastructure across Africa to enhance its capacity to cope with emergency care for COVID-19 patients.

Moeti said that robust mitigation measures are key to averting widespread transmission of the disease that could overwhelm already fragile health systems in Africa.
They said Charles waited beyond the three-year statute of limitations to sue even though he had been paid over $100,000 and after Seinfeld said in 2012 that the show was his idea.
[May 08, 2020] The European Equity Fund, Inc. and The New Germany Fund, Inc. Declare Distributions

The European Equity Fund, Inc. (NYSE: EEA) and The New Germany Fund, Inc. (NYSE: GF) (each, a "Fund," and, collectively, the "Funds") announced today that its Board of Directors declared the distributions set forth below. Each Fund's total distributions will be paid in stock except that any stockholder of record as of May 18, 2020 may elect to receive such distribution in cash. Details for the Funds' distributions are as follows:







Declaration- 5/8/2020 Ex-Date- 5/15/2020 Record- 5/18/2020 Payable- 6/26/2020

Fund Ticker Net Investment Income per Share Short-Term Capital Gains per Share Long-Term Capital Gains per Share Total Distribution per Share The European Equity Fund, Inc. EEA $0.0581 $0.0000 $0.0657 $0.1238 The New Germany Fund, Inc. GF $0.0030 $0.0000 $0.3375 $0.3405 For more information on each Fund, including the most recent month-end performance, visit www.dwsfunds.com or call (800) 349-4281. Important Information Investing in foreign securities, particularly those of emerging markets, presents certain risks, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, and market risks. Any fund that concentrates in a particular segment of the market will generally be more volatile than a fund that invests more broadly. The shares of most closed-end funds, including the Funds, are not continuously offered. Once issued, shares of closed-end funds are bought and sold in the open market through a stock exchange. Shares of closed-end funds frequently trade at a discount to net asset value. The price of a fund's shares is determined by a number of factors, several of which are beyond the control of the fund. Therefore, a fund cannot predict whether its shares will trade at, below, or above net asset value. Investments in funds involve risk. Additional risks of the Funds are associated with international investing, such as currency fluctuations, political and economic changes, market risks, government regulations and differences in liquidity, which may increase the volatility of your investment. Foreign security markets generally exhibit greater price volatility and are less liquid than the US market. Additionally, the Funds focus their investments in certain geographical regions, thereby increasing their vulnerability to developments in that region and potentially subjecting the Funds' shares to greater price volatility. Some funds have more risk than others. These include funds, such as the Funds, that allow exposure to or otherwise concentrate investments in certain sectors, geographic regions, security types, market capitalization, or foreign securities (e.g., political or economic instability, which can be accentuated in emerging market countries). The European Union, the United States and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to Russian military and other actions in recent years. These sanctions have adversely affected Russian individuals, issuers and the Russian economy. Russia, in turn, has imposed sanctions targeting Western individuals, businesses and products. The various sanctions have adversely affected, and may continue to adversely affect, not only the Russian economy, but also the economies of many countries in Europe, including countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The continuation of current sanctions or the imposition of additional sanctions may materially adversely affect the value of the Funds' portfolios. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the laws of such state or jurisdiction. War, terrorism, economic uncertainty, trade disputes, public health crises (including the recent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus) and related geopolitical events could lead to increased market volatility, disruption to US and world economies and markets and may have significant adverse effects on the Funds and their investments. NOT FDIC/ NCUA INSURED * MAY LOSE VALUE * NO BANK GUARANTEE

NOT A DEPOSIT * NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY The brand DWS represents DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA and any of its subsidiaries such as DWS Distributors, Inc. which offers investment products or DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc. and RREEF America L.L.C. which offer advisory services. (R-075707-1) (05/20) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005460/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A board displays the Brazilian Real-U.S. dollar and other exchange rates, following the spread of the coronavirus, in Sao Paulo

By Carolina Mandl and Marcela Ayres

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil is running short of hard currency needed to pay funds aimed at helping people impoverished by the coronavirus crisis, according to two sources and a document reviewed by Reuters, the latest blow to the country's troubled stimulus programme.

Cash is vital in Brazil, where almost a third of the population is unbanked, lacking access to credit and debit cards. The country's state-controlled mint on Monday asked workers to ramp up production of paper money starting this month, putting in for overtime as needed, according to a document reviewed by Reuters.

The letter added that the additional banknotes are needed for the aid, which some 60 million people are expected to seek.

The programme to pay 600 reais ($102.90) a month to those lacking regular work contracts has already had a troubled rollout as crowds seeking the funds have formed at many branches of state bank Caixa Economica Federal, risking contagion amid the pandemic.

Some people who lack bank accounts have even camped out overnight at branches to get their hands on the cash.

The stumbles in the programme passed by the Brazilian congress come amid rising criticism that the far-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro has failed to take dramatic enough action to stimulate an economy which according to some forecasts could shrink by double digits this year.

About 30% of Brazil's population is unbanked, a greater percentage than in China and even India, according to the World Bank.

The government started to pay an initial installment under the programme at the beginning of April, but delayed the second, scheduled for the end of last month. A new schedule is likely to be released in coming days.

One of the sources directly blamed the hard currency shortage for the delay in the second installment, while another said it could not yet be paid because the first was still in progress, while confirming that there was a currency shortage.

Story continues

'SAFE INVENTORY'

Economic Policy Secretary Adolfo Sachsida said there was a "technical issue with the payment sources" for the funds but denied there was any issue around currency shortages.

"If, by any chance there's a lack of cash, a lack of physical notes, we'll find a way to correct that," he said.

Brazil's central bank, which oversees money supply, confirmed it has been in talks with the mint to raise output, moving a bigger chunk of its annual banknote production into the coming weeks, according to a statement sent to Reuters.

The amount of hard currency in circulation has already spiked 23% year-on-year to 291.2 billion reais, but much of the additional paper money is being hoarded by individuals and businesses because of worries about the crisis and because with much of the economy shuttered there are fewer places to spend cash, the regulator said.

"The inquiries aim at building a safe inventory and offseting potential outcomes of money hoarding," the central bank said.

The talks are aimed at increasing the mint's weekly money production by 40%, according to union leader Aluizio da Silva Junior, adding that the union has yet to sign off on the request.

The central bank said it was unaware of any delays in aid payments. The Social Assistance Ministry, responsible for the emergency funds, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Caixa Economica Federal, the bank in charge of payments, declined to comment on the matter.

The number of people seeking the emergency fund has surprised government's officials, who were expecting to pay 98 billion reais to 54 million Brazilians. Recent calculations, though, updated the number to 124 billion reais and 60 million people - equivalent to Italy's population.

Caixa Economica estimates that nearly 30 million digital accounts will be opened by unbanked people as a consequence of the emergency payment, a legacy expected to help people when the pandemic is over.

(Reporting by Carolina Mandl, in Sao Paulo, and Marcela Ayres, in Brasilia, Additional reporting by Jamie McGeever in Brasilia; Editing by Christian Plumb and David Gregorio)
Global Medical REIT Inc. (NYSE:GMRE)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call

, 9:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings. And welcome to Global Medical REIT's first-quarter 2020 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Please note, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Evelyn Infurna.

Thank you. You may begin.

Evelyn Infurna -- Investor Relations Contact

Thank you operator. Good morning everyone and welcome to the Global Medical REIT, first-quarter conference call. On the call today we have Jeff Busch, chief executive officer; Bob Kiernan, chief financial officer; and Alfonzo Leon, chief investment officer. Please note the use of forward-looking statements by the company on this conference call.

Statements made on this call may include statements which are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking including statements relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on our and our tenants businesses. The company intends these forward-looking statements to be covered by Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is making this statement for the purpose of complying with those Safe Harbor provisions. Furthermore, actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements and will be affected by a variety of risks and factors that are beyond the company's control including without limitation those contained in the company's 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 and its other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The company assumes no obligation to publicly updated any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Additionally, on this conference call the company may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as funds from operations and adjusted funds from operations. You can find a tabular reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most currently comparable GAAP numbers in the company's earnings release and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional information may be found on the investor relations page of the company's website at www.globalmedicalreit.com. Please keep in mind that we are doing this call remotely given the circumstances, so bear with us if we have any technical difficulties.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Busch, chief executive officer of Global Medical REIT.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you Evelyn, and welcome to our first-quarter 2020 conference call. Joining me today are Bob Kiernan our chief financial officer; and Alfonzo Leon, our chief investment officer. On behalf of our commpany, I would like to recognize our healthcare and essential workers for their dedication during this challenging time and to extend well wishes for the health and safety of all GMRE stakeholders. At the time our fourth-quarter call in early March, the frequency of headlines featuring the spread of the coronavirus were accelerating.

Within only a few days after the call we recognize that it was likely just a matter of time before the virus would be a disruptive factor in running our day-to-day operations and that we needed to implement our business continuity and contingency plans. As a precautionary measure, we began test work-from-home protocols to ensure that our systems were capable of hands-on remote work load. Our shelter-in-place and social distancing directives were implemented by local authorities. We were confident that the team could function seamlessly in safe remote locations to ensure business continuity.

Additionally, we began to limit travel of our acquisition team to keep them safe and to comply with non-essential travel recommendation. By mid-March various states and that CMS recommended limiting medical services to emergency or urgent services in order to conserve healthcare resources such as PTE and to limit the spread of the virus. This development obviously affected our tenants business as many of our tenants relay on elective procedures for a large part of their business. Since healthcare is critical infrastructure and our tenants primarily perform non-discretionary medical services, we expect them to quickly rebound with substantial pent-up demand.

In early April we shifted our focus from growing our business to assisting our tenants during this unprecedented time in the healthcare industry. As a result of our efforts, we collected 96% of our April rents and 76% of our May rent as of yesterday. At the same time, we were working with tenants who are under financial distress and we entered into a rent-deferral agreement with certain tenants whom we believe need short term relief to weather this pandemic. These agreements provide near term rent relief with full repayment of deferred rents by the end of 2020 in most cases.

Bob will provide more details on the rent deferrals. The situation around COVID-19 is still unfolding and it is difficult to assess the ultimate potential impact on our operations. But we believe the work we've completed to-date will minimize the COVID-19 pandemic effect on our portfolio and our company. Relative to our acquisition activity, I am very pleased with the $87 million of acquisitions we completed to-date in 2020, and the additional $45 million that we have under contract.

Looking ahead, given the uncertainty associated with the acquisition environment and the physical nature of many diligent paths, we will be measured in our approach to acquisition growth. As always, we will prioritize the satisfactory completion of our due-diligence process over the desire to grow the company's balance sheet. To reiterate, in these uncertain times our focus remains on our employees, tenants and minimizing the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on our business. We believe that GMRE is well positioned to withstand the challenges of the current environment and that we are well positioned to execute on our business plans as the country begins the reopening process.

Prior to turning the call over to Bob, I'd like to provide a brief update on the company's internalization process. The special committee met with the board on March 3 and recommended that the company pursue an internalization transaction with our advisor. The board agreed with the recommendation and since then the special committee has been negotiating terms with the advisor. If an agreement is reached, it will be approved by the board and potentially by the stockholders.

At this time we cannot provide an update on the timing or if a transaction will be completed. Unfortunately given the nature of the situation, there's a little more than we could share on this call. Bob will now discuss our results in more detail.

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jeff. Last night after the market closed, GMRE reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020, via our press release and simultaneous posting of our supplemental earnings package on our website. Total revenue for the quarter increased by 42.4% year over year to approximately $22 million reflecting the growth of our investment portfolio through our accretive acquisition strategy, as well as same-store portfolio contractual rental increases. Our same-store portfolio contractual rent increased $295,000 during the first quarter of 2020 or 2.3% compared to the first quarter of 2019.

Total expenses during the quarter grew to a somewhat similar pace as our revenue to $19 million. Depreciation and amortization expenses, as well as interest expense remain large components of our total expenses for each period as we continue to actively acquire properties. G&A expense for the first quarter of 2020 was $1.8 million, up 14.5% compared to $1.6 million in the year-ago period. The quarterly increase was primarily due to an increase in non-cash LTIP compensation expense.

LTIP compensation expense was $922,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2020 compared to $771,000 for the same period in 2019. The increase in our cash G&A was primarily a function of our increased size. In addition to these G&A expenses, note also that we recognized approximately $0.5 million of costs during the first quarter in connection with internalization. Depreciation and interest expense continued to be our two largest expense line items in the first quarter driven by our acquisition activity.

Depreciation expense was $5.8 million in the first quarter of 2020 compared to $3.9 million in the prior-year quarter. Interest expense was approximately $4.4 million in the quarter, up 8.8% from the year-ago period due to higher average borrowings due to finance or acquisitions. Our average borrowing costs for the first quarter of 2020 was 3.81% compared to 3.87% in the prior quarter and 4.67% in the first quarter of 2019. The sequential quarterly decrease in our borrowing costs was largely driven by the reduction in LIBOR since the end of 2019.

Net income attributable to common stockholders for the first quarter of 2020 was $1.3 million compared to net income of $528,000 in the first quarter of 2019, due to the benefit of our accretive acquisition activity over the last 12 months. Our FFO for the first quarter of 2020 was $0.19 per share in unit, up $0.002 as compared to the prior-year quarter. Our AFFO for the first quarter of 2020 was $0.20 per share in unit, up $0.003 as compared to the prior-year quarter. Moving on to the balance sheet.

As of March 31, 2020 our growth investment and real-estate was approximately $975 million, an increase of $69 million or 8% from year-end 2019. Turning to the liability side of our balance sheet, our total debt was $464 million as of the end of the quarter, up from $386 million at the end of 2019 reflecting the growth of our portfolio. We finished the quarter with total liquidity including cash and availability on our credit facility of $81.9 million. I would now like to talk about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic thus far in our financial performance.

As Jeff mentioned earlier, for the month of April we collected 96% of rent and we are progressing well in our May rent collections at 76% so far this month. Although we are pleased with our April and May rent collections to-date, we expect that the next few months will be difficult for a number of our tenants, as many have seen significant reductions in elective procedures and patient volumes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With that backdrop, we expect to enter into or expect to enter into rent deferral agreements with certain tenants to differ an aggregate of $2 million of rent that we ordinarily would collect over the next few months. These are tenants that we have determined have a need for short term rent relief due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their operation.

Our rent deferrals pertain primarily to the May, June and July rental periods and the repayment periods are primarily over the periods of July through December of this year. In addition to rent deferral agreements, we have also entered into or expect to enter into other agreements with certain tenants, whereby we have either agreed to short term rent reduction in exchange for extended lease terms or two, agreed to apply certain deposits or committed tenant improvement funds toward rent, the net effect of which is immaterial to our financial results. Looking ahead to the remainder of the second quarter and the rest of 2020, because of the uncertainty of the pandemic including the lack of clarity on reopening and its longer term impact, we're unable to give you specific outlook for the rest of the year. With that noted, we believe that the collection rate that we achieved to-date and the results of our engagement with tenants over the past six weeks positions us well to navigate these uncertainties.

I will now turn the call over to Alfonzo, who will review the investment landscape and our investment activity.

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

Thank you Bob. We've had a strong start to 2020 with the acquisition of approximately $68 million, comprised of four properties at a weighted average cap rate of 8.3% in the quarter, followed by an additional acquisition for $19.3 million subsequent to quarter end, bringing our total capital deployment to-date to approximately $87 million. Overall, our portfolio metrics have changed reflecting the addition of our recent acquisitions. Our properties are well diversified and now number 115 buildings in 29 states.

Our 3.1 million square foot portfolio is 99.7% leased at a weighted average per square foot rental rate of approximately $24.50, with a weighted average lease term of 8.4 years and average rent escalations of 2.1% per year. But first, for a $9.1 million is a 34,000 square foot MOB leased to Columbia St. Mary's Hospital, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ascension. The property is located in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee.

The location is one of Columbia's busiest in the area and houses an array of specialists including a surgical suite primarily use for endoscopy and pain procedures. On March 20, we acquired a four building 95,000 square foot MOB portfolio in Grand Rapids, Michigan for approximately $22.5 million. The Grand Rapids MSA is a 2.5-hour drive from Chicago with a population of just over 1 million people. The portfolio includes two surgery centers and is anchored by Bue Sky Vision, the larger ophthalmology, optometry practice in the area.

After the quarter ended we acquired a 100,000 square MOB for $19.3 million in Dumfries, Virginia, a rapidly growing metro submarket of Washington DC. The property is 100% leased of Spectrum Healthcare Resources which operates the property at the Dumfries Health Center via a long term federal government contract to provide outpatient clinical services in support of the nearby Fort Belvoir Community Hospital. We are currently under contract to acquire three additional properties for approximately $45 million. As has been our practice in the past, as we identify problems as one or more of these properties or the operator of the properties during our due diligence review, we may not close the transaction on a timely basis or we may terminate the purchase agreement and not close the transaction.

During our last call, I mentioned that our acquisition goal for 2020 was between $180 million and $220 million. Although we have made substantial progress toward our 2020 acquisition goals, the COVID-19 pandemic has added new challenges to the acquisition process. Given the current environment, it is uncertain whether we will be able to achieve our 2020 acquisition goals until the acquisition environment normalizes. In the meantime, we remain engaged and informed, so that we can resume our acquisition strategy at the appropriate time.

With that, we will be happy to take your questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions]. Our first question comes from Alex Kubicek with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

Good morning everyone. We were wondering if you could provide a little more information on just the profile of tenants that have yet to pay May rents types. Whether they are come to you kind of asking for relief, just kind of how are those discussions going?

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Bob, why don't you answer that.

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Sure. I don't think there's really anything unusual or unique about our collections so far this month, as I'm speaking to the May collections. In fact you know we're now  the number this morning it 79% of May rent being collected as of this morning.

So there is  I don't think there's anything really unusual or noteworthy about the collection so far, anything noteworthy really about the tenants not collected yet. With 96 tenants there is a flow to the process and I think you know what we're seeing right now and where we in the process is just really reflective of that flow.

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

And then could you give us a comparable number, that 79% today. What did that number look like after the first week of April? Just kind of curious where that's trended.

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

I think it would be about the same. I don't really  again, I don't think there's really anything noteworthy about, the morning of May 7 being right around 80% of collections. I can add maybe you know based on the deferral that we've noted. You know over the next couple months, our total collections will probably end up in the higher 80s in terms of percentages.

So if you think about the deferrals that we talked about and kind of coming in over the next couple of months including May, you know we're going to end up likely in that high 80s in terms of the total percentage, so  and for the quarter probably in that kind of 90% type range.

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

That's really helpful, thanks for the color. And then kind of looking, turning to acquisitions. I was wondering if we could get a little more color on those three properties you have under contracts. Was these contracts signed pre or post COVID? I'm just kind of wondering if you know if that came up and affected anything along the way in negotiations.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Alfonzo, why don't you answer that.

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

Sure. So we had a really good start to our acquisitions in 2020. So these contracts were entered into prior to the month of March. And the second part of the question, what was it?

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

Just kind of how  if COVID came up in those negotiations and kind of just wondering how that might change the negotiation landscape in the near term.

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

So no, not in these deals. They didn't come up, because by the time we were, our diligence period had expired we were already in March, and they didn't come up in these deals, in terms of negotiation and COVID discussions and impact. Going forward, I mean it's  you know COVID is definitely going to be part of our discussions with sellers and really it's going to be case-by-case as it always has been and it's something that we're going to be really focused on going forward as well.

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

That's helpful, and then one quick follow-up for you Alfonzo. You guys have always kind of talked about being on site, meeting with doctors, seeing the asset with yourself. Obviously near term your guys have now pulled back a little bit, but just wondering kind of what your thoughts are and how underwriting  what the underwriting looks like in the next you know call it three to six months, and just kind of how your team is thinking about approaching opportunities on a go-forward.

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

Well yeah, that's correct. I mean visiting the property is a big part of our analysis and we've always been very holistic about our diligence. I mean a big part of it is having extensive discussions with our tenants and understanding what their business model is, what the trends have been, what the recruitment, physician recruitment strategy is like. What is their main source of revenue and really getting an understanding of all that.

I mean what's going to be added to that discussion is how are you responding to COVID and how is that going to impact your business? I mean it's  so from that perspective our diligence process is not going to change, but it's going to be lengthier. The fact that the month of April, you are all working from home. You know it makes it really hard to go visit the property, and in many states there are still stay-at-home mandates which is going to continue and making it hard to go visit properties. And as states start reopening, that's something that's going to make it easier to go see properties, but undoubtedly these restrictions have an impact on our process to look for properties for sure.

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

That's really helpful color. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Your next question comes from Bryan Maher with B. Riley. Please proceed with your question.

Bryan Maher -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Hi, good morning. I don't know if this is better for Jeff or Bob, but when you think about the deferrals that you're granting, you know maybe on a scale of one to 10, what is your level of comfort that those deferrals in full will ultimately be paid?

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

I'll answer this. We see and the industry is seeing a substantial back up in the procedures that our tenants tend to perform. So when they came out and said you know to stop anything that's not urgent, our procedures are mostly non-discretionary. So for example, we have eye-centers that people stopped going in for cataracts and other type of surgeries and they were booked out like two to three months in advance, and now in Texas and Oklahoma and Florida where we have a lot of our facilities, they were opened during emergencies, now they are expanding back with the reopening.

So one of the first areas that's going to see the rebound that's coming right away is medical and a lot of people even in New York are talking, we got to take care of our patients, because a lot of pent-up demand just came. So that's one of the things we considered. When we went into this, our coverage ratios which was a very key element of our underwriting were very high which meant our facilities were making money. So we expect them to be making money again, just they got caught to a minimal level for the month of March and the month of April.

Now they are starting in May to start accelerating. So we became comfortable and we brought it through a committee and we had to see their financials. One of them we brought to the board and each one of us, we evaluated their financials, their potential to pay back, so we're expecting them to pay back. You know obviously it's a difficult time and you can't project, but of all the industries out there, we're going to be the first ones to really reopen in mass, because it was sort of shut down and told to sit on your hands, while there was a lot of urgent - I wouldn't call it urgent, they defined it, but there's a lot of non-discretionary procedures and surgeries and others that needed to happen, that had been pushed back, and naturally over time there's more.

So if you're closed for six weeks, you got six weeks more and if your book of appointments was for three months out, now you got those six weeks that you didn't. So we expect our places to have the cash flow to pay us back.

Bryan Maher -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

OK. And then following-up on the comments related to the $2 million in deferrals, but I think you also said that you expect it to toughen out there over the next couple of months in order of magnitude, but that's more  you know deferrals would be immaterial. I just want to make sure I get this right, that you currently expect about $2 million in deferrals, but you wouldn't expect $2 million to become $4 million or $6 million or $8 million, is that correct?

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Bob, would you answer it.

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, sure Brian. I mean we're actively engaged with all of our tenants. I mean this has really been you know a very thorough process over the last six weeks and this is, where we are today. I mean could it increase? You know of course to certain  there's uncertainty you know as to how things are going to progress, but from a magnitude perspective based on the work that we've done so far, I don't think the magnitude would be to a large degree, at least based on what we know, you know what we know today.

Bryan Maher -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Great. And then just last for me, maybe for Alfonzo. When it comes to acquisitions and we did note all of the comments that you made thus far on the due diligence and the potential for slowing and not potentially reaching your goals for the year. But are you seeing any change in the type of deal you're being shown, the type of assets or the cap rates of those that you're being shown as we sit here today.

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

Yes, so in the month of April it's definitely slowed and I think a lot of discussions with folks continuously throughout the month of April to try to stay ahead of the curve and stay in touch with everyone. I would say it's too soon to know really. I mean what everybody went through in April was unprecedented and it's not clear yet, how this will evolve. I mean there's a lot of cross currents and you know just right now it's hard to really predict and know how things are going to play out over the next  the rest of the year.

Bryan Maher -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Alright, thanks. That's all for me.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our next question comes from the Gaurav Mehta with National Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Gaurav Mehta -- National Securities Corp. -- Analyst

Good morning. First question that I have is on the funding market. Maybe you know talk about what you guys are seeing in the debt markets as far as CNBS loans and maybe comment on the funding for the assets that you have under contract.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Bob, why don't you answer.

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So as you know we noted in the release as of April 30, we have about $70 million of cash and capacity under our credit facility and based on the current market conditions, we're comfortable with where we are today, but are looking at different approaches to increasing our debt capacity. We'd consider increasing the credit facility, as well as you know new stand-alone debt. No debt as part of the acquisition that we closed in April; we assumed a $12 million CMBS.

So we took a small step in this direction, but it's still an ongoing process. So we're comfortable with where we are today, but again as a look ahead, we'll continue to evaluate and pursue opportunities to just increase flexibility.

Gaurav Mehta -- National Securities Corp. -- Analyst

OK, and the second question that I have is on the common dividends. Maybe provide some more color on how you're viewing your common dividends in the current climate of economic uncertainty given your payout is almost 100% as of 1Q '20.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Yes I'll answer that. We have a very good liquidity position. We have a very good collection rate and we don't  I don't see any issues right now, but this always goes up to the board and the board has to decide on the dividend, but as of now we are in very good position.

Gaurav Mehta -- National Securities Corp. -- Analyst

OK, great, that's all I had.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

We've reached the end of the question-and-answer session. At this time I'd like to turn the call back over to Jeff Busch for closing comments.

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

I like that thank everybody for participating in this conference call. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 41 minutes

Call participants:

Evelyn Infurna -- Investor Relations Contact

Jeff Busch -- Chief Executive Officer

Bob Kiernan -- Chief Financial Officer

Alfonzo Leon -- Chief Investment Officer

Alex Kubicek -- Baird -- Analyst

Bryan Maher -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Gaurav Mehta -- National Securities Corp. -- Analyst

More GMRE analysis

All earnings call transcripts
New Delhi: Scientists have reportedly identified forces behind shifting of the Earths north magnetic pole from Canada to Russia.

The north magnetic pole, a point which has crept unpredictably from the coast of northern Canada a century ago to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, moving towards Russia.

The wandering pole is driven by unpredictable changes in liquid iron deep inside the Earth.

Now a team of researchers believe theyve identified the forces that are causing the shift, which has implications for everyday navigation and mapping systems, among other things.

Researchers say that two competing magnetized patch one beneath Canada, other under Siberia along the outer core are pulling at the magnetic north pole.

The rapid shifts in the Earths north magnetic pole have been recently forcing researchers to make an unprecedented early update to a model that helps navigation by ships, planes and submarines in the Arctic.

Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, had last year told Reuters that moving pole affected navigation, mainly in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada.

Its become increasingly clear in recent years that Earths magnetic north pole has been moving towards Russia at rather fast clip.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said necessary amendments should be made in the state governments policies to boost industry, attract investment and create more jobs in Uttar Pradesh.

Yogi Adityanath was viewing a presentation about Industrial and Employment Promotion Policy 2017, UP Warehousing and Logistics Policy, UP Electronics Manufacturing Policy 2017 and UP Electronics Policy 2020. He also viewed a presentation about job scenario and stressed on providing jobs to migrant labourers in various sectors, including in 90 lakh micro, small and medium enterprises in UP.

He said problems of investors should be resolved expeditiously. The chief minister said UP could be a potential destination for investment in the changed world scenario. He also said the UP Warehousing Logistics Policy 2018 should be amended to bring down limit for land needed for logistics parks.

Earlier, he held a video conference with Buddhist monks and conveyed his good wishes to them on Buddha Purnima. He expressed confidence that Buddhist monks would take message of Lord Buddha to people and prepare them in the fight against Covid-19.
NLC India said today that it is taking measures on a war footing to operationalise the boiler units at its facility in Neyveli, after an accident occurred in one of the boilers on Thursday evening. The company has asked an expert to investigate the mishap, even as two of the eight workmen who sustained injuries are under special care in a tertiary care hospital.

The company today said that in order to meet power requirement at this critical time, action is being taken on a war footing to ensure that all units, other than the affected Unit 6, are operationalised at the earliest. The ...
Health authorities in Japan reported 95 more coronavirus infections nationwide, including 23 cases in Tokyo, on Thursday.

The accumulated number of nationwide cases stand at 15,574.

The tally includes people tested at airport quarantine stations upon return from abroad, health ministry officials involved in the quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, crew members on the Costa Atlantica cruise ship in Nagasaki. It also includes people who returned from China on government-chartered planes.

When 712 cases from the Diamond Princess are included, the total number stands at 16,286.

Thirteen new deaths caused by the virus in Japan were confirmed on Thursday, which brings to 590 the total number of fatalities. When 13 deaths from the Diamond Princess are included, the total fatalities are 603.

By prefecture, Tokyo tops the list with 4,771 infections, followed by Osaka with 1,706, Kanagawa with 1,141, Saitama with 932, Hokkaido with 928, Chiba with 867, Hyogo with 680, and Fukuoka with 651.

There were also 309 people who were found infected at airport quarantines and who were crew members of the Costa Atlantica cruise ship, and 14 people who returned to Japan from China on government-chartered planes.

Health ministry officials say 304 people remained in serious condition as of Thursday, including four from the Diamond Princess, while 5,797 had recovered and left hospital.
By Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Storay Karimi

KABUL/HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Iranian border guards killed 45 Afghan migrant workers trying to cross into Iran this month by forcing them into a raging mountain torrent at gunpoint, according to two Afghan lawmakers investigating the deaths.

The incident has triggered a diplomatic crisis between the neighbours, who share trade, economic and cultural ties. Iran has denied that such an event took place on its soil.

Afghan authorities said on Thursday they had recovered 12 bodies in the past two days from the Harirud River, which forms much of the northern, mountainous section of Afghanistan's border with Iran, taking the confirmed death toll to 17.

Afghan officials and survivors say the incident took place on May 1.

Habiburrahman Pidram, a lawmaker from the westerly Herat province who spoke with survivors, said a group of 57 men trying to enter Iran from Herat had been detained by Iranian border guards.

"These workers were kept in custody by Iranian forces and, after 24 hours, the Afghan workers were brought to the bank of the river, beaten and ordered to jump in the river to go back to Afghanistan," he said.

Those who could swim then jumped into the deep, fast-flowing mountain torrent, while the others were beaten up and threatened with being shot before jumping or being pushed in, said Pidram, part of a 16-strong team appointed to investigate by President Ashraf Ghani's government.

"Of 57 workers who were forced into the river by Iranian security forces, only 12 managed to survive," Pidram said, meaning 45 must have died. Five bodies were pulled out by a shepherd, downriver in Turkmenistan, to the north, he added.

Lawmaker Abdul Satar Hussaini, who is also investigating the incident, said some of the dead workers had come from his province, Farah, which adjoins Herat.

2.5 MILLION MIGRANTS

Abdul Ghani Noori, the governor of Herat's Gulran district, opposite the Iranian bank where the incident is alleged to have taken place, said 17 bodies had been found so far.

Story continues

He said preliminary investigations had shown that the migrants had been forced into the river at gunpoint in an area called Zulfiqar on the Iranian side.

On May 2, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi issued a statement saying only that the incident in question had taken place on Afghan soil.

"Border guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran denied the occurrence of any events related to this on the soil of our country," he said.

The Iranian embassy and consular office in Afghanistan said on Thursday that they could not add to the ministry's statement, and the ministry could not be reached for further comment.

Iran says about 2.5 million Afghan migrants, both legal and undocumented, mostly from Herat, are in Iran after failing to find work in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

U.N. officials say Iran's coronavirus epidemic has caused more than 150,000 Afghans to return home, some of them deported.

Dozens of Herat residents have staged protests against Iran in defiance of a pandemic lockdown, some smashing the windows of Iranian trucks.

The United States has condemned the river incident and encouraged the Afghan authorities to undertake a full investigation.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday said that Iran had agreed to a joint investigation to determine the facts and the identity of the perpetrators.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Rupam Jain; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Australia has avoided the 'missing deaths' phenomenon seen in other coronavirus-stricken countries, with an analysis showing COVID-19 has not significantly increased the nation's overall death rate.

There are fears in the UK, Italy and Spain that overwhelmed healthcare systems may have recorded thousands of people who died of coronavirus as dying from other causes, often because people who died were not tested for COVID-19 after death.

That means the true COVID-19 death toll is vastly understated.

Reports in the US have suggested the country has more than 63,000 'missing' COVID-19 deaths. But preliminary findings from an analysis of state and territory data commissioned by The Age suggests that is not the case locally.
Bhopal: People running around disoriented, some trying to help family members, many collapsing on pavements and roads. As images of hundreds of locals frantically attempting to escape a styrene gas leak in Visakhapatnam flooded television and digital media on Thursday, they brought back chilling memories of similar scenes from the night of December 2-3, 1984 in Bhopal where thousands died and lakhs were injured within hours of being exposed to a methyl isocyanate (MiC) outburst from a Union Carbide pesticide plant.

Authorities said 11 people died and 1,000 were exposed to the gas leaked from an LG Polymers unit in Visakhapatnam.

Rachna Dhingra, from Bhopal Group for Information and Action, who is fighting for social and legal justice of the 1984 tragedy victims told News18 that scenes from Thursday's incident were reminiscent of those from 36 years ago. The cause also seems the samecompromised safety systems at industrial units. Like the case was with Union Carbide, its again vindicated that corporates could kill with ease, defying laws, said Dhingra, hinting at UC dodging criminal liability of the 1984 incident.

Close 3,800 people were killed and over 5,70,000 injured in the Bhopal disaster, according to government data, though unofficial figures are far higher.

Most residents were fast asleep during both incidents, as the leak in Bhopal occurred around midnight and the one in Visakhapatnam took place close to 2.30am.

Such units using hazardous chemicals should be at distance from habitation, use alarms and adhere to all safety parameters, which were allegedly violated by the company in Visakhapatnam, added Dhingra, maintaining that similar things had happened in Bhopal.

Former scientist at Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB) Gunwant Joshi said styrene is much less toxic than MiC. Unless in high concentration and exposed in close confinement, styrene cant be fatal, he said.

Following the Bhopal tragedy, safety norms, requirement of protective equipment while dealing with hazardous chemicals and audits by industry departments have come into force across the country, and unless there is a failure of equipment or human error, industrial disasters are unlikely, the scientist said.

After the 1984 incident, the Environment Protection Act was implemented to regulate industrial activities, disaster management rules were formulated. Eventually the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was established through a legislation in 2005, which is also helping in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic, said Joshi.

Hazardous chemical use has a certain protocol to be followed which was also there at UC but wasnt adhered to due to lack of statutory guidelines then, he added.

Gautam Kothari, president of Pithampur Industries Association in Madhya Pradesh, told News18 that while environment and disaster management laws were introduced post the 1984 tragedy, several companies in connivance with government officials tweak these regulations, leading to mishaps.

"Since 1992-93, I have been backing self-certification for industrial safety norms so that the unit concerned could be held responsible for mishaps and punished with stringent norms," added Kothari.

The 1984 gas leak was attributed to maintenance failure. Investigators suspect a similar cause in Visakhapatnam, according to reports. Though less toxic than MiC, styrene affects the central nervous system, throat, skin, eyes and other parts of the body. Most of these symptoms were found in the 1984 victims.

Madhya Pradesh has an industrial health and safety department that regulates functioning of industries and also carries out safety audits. An emergency response unit has also been started by the MPPCB which offers technical expertise in cases of industrial disasters.

Among key initiatives post the 1984 incident in Bhopal, an institute was established in the city which offers training and awareness programmes in disaster management and related subjects for officials and executives of government departments, public and private sector undertakings and others, in a bid to make them aware of the potential hazards, ways to control them and equip them to conceive and prepare emergency plans and execute them effectively in case of crises arising due to natural disasters or disasters caused as a result of human activities.
HNX - 5/8/2020 4:07:00 PM

Pursuant to the Document No. 151/PC-TPHN dated 29th April 2020 of HuuNghi Food Joint Stock Company regarding the cancellation of the shareholder list for attending 2020 Annual General Meeting, Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD) would like to announce as follows:

Cancelling the shareholder list for holding 2020 Annual General Meeting on the record date of 21th April 2020

Reason for cancellation: Due to the complicated developments of the Covid  19 pandemic, the company decided to change the meeting date of 2020 Annual General Meeting
The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) today announced that Ellen Flaherty, PhD, APRN, AGSF, an assistant professor at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine and director of the Dartmouth Centers for Health & Aging, will deliver the society's prestigious Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture. Following the cancellation of the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the AGS announced that Dr. Flaherty would deliver her talk, Leveraging the Potential of Interprofessional Teams in Primary Care Practice, at the AGS 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21) in Chicago, Ill. (May 12-15, 2021).

"Across her career, Dr. Flaherty has established herself not only as a champion for geriatrics but also for the diverse roles that all health professionals play in coordinated care," said Sunny Linnebur, PharmD, FCCP, FASCP, BCPS, BCGP, AGS board chair. "Ellen is a model AGS leader-- passionate, thoughtful, and funny--and her lecture is sure to help us model the way toward a bright future for geriatrics."

Indeed, Dr. Flaherty herself is no stranger to the growing power and prominence of interprofessional collaboration. In 2016, she assumed responsibilities as AGS president--the second nurse member to hold the position in the society's 77-year history. Dr. Flaherty now serves as a co-principal investigator for both the Northern New England Geriatric Education Center (NNEGEC)--part of the federally sponsored Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP)--and The John A. Hartford Foundation GWEP Coordinating Center administered by the AGS.

Powered by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the GWEP is the principal federal mechanism for supporting local solutions to the shortage of geriatrics health professionals across the U.S. NNEGEC in particular is helping to improve health and quality of life for older adults in New Hampshire and Vermont, with a focus on training different health professionals to collaborate as an outlet for serving more patients. The GWEP Coordinating Center works to share insights gleaned not just in New England but also among all the country's GWEPs, expanding the scope of a program with local roots but national reach.

Both efforts have interprofessional expertise at their cores--which is no surprise since Dr. Flaherty has spent much of her career advancing the art and science of collaboration in care. Before joining Dartmouth, for example, Dr. Flaherty spent nearly 30 years working to advance clinical practice at the New York University (NYU) College of Nursing/Hartford Institute in New York.

At NYU, Dr. Flaherty directed the Adult/Geriatric Nurse Practitioner program and championed the NYU World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center. Through the center, Dr. Flaherty served as a member of the WHO Task Force on Aging and traveled throughout Central and South America to help embed geriatric content into nursing programs globally.

An AGS member since 1998, Dr. Flaherty earned her doctoral degree in nursing from NYU and her master's in nursing from Stony Brooke University in N.Y. She has published numerous peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has been a lead editor for the AGS's Geriatric Nursing Review Syllabus.

Edward Henderson, MD, namesake of the Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture, was a beloved and respected geriatrician who served the AGS in several capacities, most notably as President, Vice President, and Executive Director. For more than two decades, Dr. Henderson's devoted efforts on behalf of the AGS made him an international authority in human aging and geriatric medicine. The Edward Henderson Award is one of several honors conferred by the AGS. The 2020 award recipients--who will be honored at #AGS21 next year--include more than 20 healthcare leaders representing the depth and breadth of disciplines championing care for older adults. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.

###

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for more than 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.

About the Edward Henderson Award and the Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture

The late Edward Henderson, MD, was a renowned geriatrics researcher and physician and an instrumental leader for the AGS. The Edward Henderson Award is conferred upon a distinguished clinician, educator, or researcher who also delivers the Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture on a topic related to the body of his or her work at the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting.

About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting

The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. Following the cancellation of the 2020 gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 3,000 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene next year from May 13-15 (pre-conference program on May 12), in Chicago, Ill., to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.
By PTI

MALE: A total of 698 Indian nationals stranded in the Maldives due to the COVID-19 linked international travel restrictions were evacuated on Friday from the scenic island nation on an Indian Navy warship.

"Op #SamudraSetu.#INSJalashwa set sail from #Male, #Maldives tonight bringing back 698 of our citizens," the spokesperson of the Indian Navy tweeted.

"Bon Voyage! #INSJalashwa departs from Male port for Kochi with 698 Indian nationals on board," the Indian High Commission in Maldives tweeted.

Breaking: #SamudraSetu.

INS Jalashwa set sail from #Male, #Maldives bringing back 698 of our citizens back to India. There are 595 Male and 103 Female. Of the ladies 19 are pregnant. @indiannavy@NewIndianXpress@TheMornStandard pic.twitter.com/KTiI72rvgF  Mayank (@scribesoldier) May 8, 2020

India's High Commissioner in the Maldives, Sunjay Sudhir earlier expressed his deep gratitude to the Indian Navy, the Government of Maldives and its agencies for extending complete cooperation for the success of the massive evacuation of Indian nationals.

An Indian Navy spokesman said there were a number of pregnant women and children among the evacuees who will travel to Kochi in Kerala.

The INS Jalashwa, the Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu'.

Sudhir said a second Navy ship INS Magar will leave for Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu on Sunday with 200 Indians.

He said the exercise will be repeated next week by the Indian Navy warships.

The first Naval ship from Male is expected to arrive at the Cochin Port on May 10, Port Trust officials in Kochi said.

The INS Jalashwa is part of the repatriation mission launched by the Indian Navy to bring Indian citizens home from foreign shores, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

Immigration procedures of the passengers were carried out in the Hulhumale' Ferry Terminal in Male City.

"Fantastic job by the entire team of @VelanaAirport for the safe repatriation of Indian nationals!" the high commission tweeted.

The massive evacuation exercise is testimony to Maldives-India friendship, it said in another tweet.

Several Indians who are travelling by the warship lauded the evacuation plan launched by the government.

"It is a very great thing that the High Commission did for us and we did not have any issues till now. We got everything with proper guidelines, all the things done by the High Commission," Pradeep, who hails from Palakkad, said.

He works in a resort in Male.

"Jamsheed from Kerala thanks Govt of India, Govt of Kerala & @indiannavy for this historic Operation to repatriate #Indian nationals from the #Maldives," the High Commission of India in the Maldives tweeted.

The INS Jalashwa is properly equipped with relief materials, COVID-19 protection gear along with medical and administrative support staff, it noted.

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is conducting its biggest-ever repatriation exercise named Vande Bharat Mission to bring back stranded Indians from abroad, including from the US, the UAE and the UK.

The High Commission in Male on its Facebook page said MVR 600 or an equivalent amount of USD 40 will be charged as the Evacuation Services Charge from each person listed for repatriation by INS Jalashwa.

"This amount would be collected at the service fee collection counter after completion of the Immigration process at the Velana International Airport. Kindly carry exact change to avoid delay/ inconvenience," the post said.

Meanwhile, all arrangements as per government guidelines are in place at Cochin Port to facilitate the arrival of those who are evacuated from the Maldives via the sea route, officials in Kochi said.

Before arrival at Cochin, onboard the vessel, the Navy will get the self e-declaration data filled by all passengers and also identify the passengers symptomatic of COVID-19.

The symptomatic passengers will be disembarked first, followed by other passengers (district wise) in batches of 50 persons, the Port Trust said.

The separate zone has been earmarked for symptomatic patients.

The passengers disembarked will undergo further statutory verifications for clearances inside the Samudrika Cruise Terminal where Port Health Organisation will verify the self-declaration forms, the Port Trust said.

All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on the Aarogya Setu app.

On Monday, the Indian government announced plans to begin phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7.

On Thursday, two special flights from the UAE carrying a total of 363 Indian nationals, including nine infants, left for Kerala as India began its biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back its citizens stranded abroad.
A 30-year-old Bronx man has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend whose decomposed body was found in his apartment by police while officers were investigating a domestic violence complaint by his other lover last month.

Anthony Portis, 30, was brought up on charges including murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon on Thursday, according to the New York Daily News.

Portis was due to be arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court.

Police arrived at his apartment in The Bronx on April 11 to interview an alleged victim of domestic violence, only to discover the badly decomposed body of Dominique Ben-David.

The death of Ben-David, 21, has been ruled a homicide.

Portis was arrested on April 10 and charged with harassment, aggravated harassment and assault with intent to cause physical injury stemming from an alleged attack on his estranged girlfriend in early March.

Dominique Ben-David, 21 (left), was found dead inside an apartment in The Bronx a day after her boyfriend, Anthony Portis (right), 30, was arrested for beating up his estranged girlfriend

Ben-David's body was found in an advanced state of decomposition inside the apartment in this building on East 187th Street in The Bronx on April 11

The unnamed 25-year-old woman was said to have suffered facial injuries, including a broken nose, after allegedly being punched, kicked and bitten by Portis inside the apartment in The Bronx that she shared with him, their young child and Ben-David.

According to neighbors, the unusual living arrangement between the man and two women lasted about six months.

They recalled hearing screaming and the sounds of shattering dishes and crashing furniture coming from the unit.

A day after Portis' arrest, police arrived at the residence in the 600 block of East 187th Street with the intent to interview the alleged victim of the domestic assault.

Instead, they found the rotting body of Ben-David inside.

Due to the advanced stage of decomposition, the medical examiner has been unable to determine the cause of death.

Neighbors told homicide detectives that Portis' estranged girlfriend had moved out of the apartment and into a shelter with their child to get away from him.

A couple of weeks after the domestic violence incident, neighbors noticed foul odor wafting from Portis' apartment, which all at once fell silent, with no one entering or exiting the unit.

Portis on Thursday was arrested and charged in connection to Ben-David's death, which was ruled a homicide last week

Prophetic: In December, Ben-David, posting under a different user name on Facebook, shared this chilling message about her relationship

Social media posts on Ben-David's Facebook page, where she used a different name, suggest that the young woman had been in a toxic relationship with Portis, whom she identified as her husband.

In a chillingly prescient status update dated December 12, 2019, Ben-David wrote: 'Waiting for hopeful signs.. Idk how s*** is gonna fix itself. I want it to. This past ride was crazy. I still want him. Still want to feel him under my skin...I long for this danger wildman and this love will definitely be the death of me...I can't stop going back for more.'

Portis' Facebook page displays a cover photo bearing an equally prophetic message: 'You all realize I am going to snap one day...right?'

According to neighbors, Portis shared an apartment with Ben-David, his estranged girlfriend and their young child for six months

Portis and Ben-David were arrest in February 2019, accused of burglarizing her mother's home and robbing her of cash and jewelry

In February 2019, both Portis and Ben-David were arrested on counts of burglary and robbery targeting the woman's own mother.

During the April 25, 2018, incident, the couple allegedly entered Shana Ben-David's apartment in Queens, threatened the woman and got away with jewelry and $200 in cash.

Dominique allegedly told her mother her boyfriend had a gun and threatened to strike her.

Portis was ultimately convicted of the robbery. He is currently in jail awaiting sentencing in that case, which has been set for May 21.

Meanwhile, a friend of Ben-David's has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help her mother pay for funeral expenses, which described the 21-year-old woman as a beautiful, kind soul' and an 'angel.'
The Eddy Julie Season 1 Episode 2 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * *  Previous Next  Photo: Netflix/Lou Faulon / Netflix

Its now clear The Eddy wasnt fooling around with its episode titles. The series premiered with Elliot, an episode focusing on the series central character, but also one that had to introduce the rest of the world of the series. This follow-up, Julie, changes the focus to Elliots daughter, whose visit from New York quickly takes a turn for the dramatic. Julies not in every scene, but almost every moment is about her. In some ways, the set-up mirrors the structure of the music at the heart of the show. Elliot, the bandleader, introduces the themes. Now its time for a series of solos. The whole band matters in each but, here at least, Julie matters most of all.

To keep the analogy going, her solo turn feels both frantic and sad, a melancholy cry for help that mounts in intensity. It begins uneventfully enough, with Julie playfully (but also a bit aggressively) waking up her father by bleating her clarinet. (Hey, at least shes taking an interest in the instrument again.) Its her first day at the international school, and shes none too excited about joining the other expats in what her new Irish acquaintance Beatrice calls an island of mediocrity in the center of the greatest city on Earth. She seems like an appropriately jaded friend for Julie, but Julies having none of it, blowing off Beatrices attempts to befriend her until its too late.

Shes not off to a great start. I dont want what happened in New York to repeat itself, her mother Alison (Melissa George, making her first appearance on the show) tells her. But they seem to have different accounts of what happened in New York. Later, shell tell Sim (Adil Dehbi)  the Eddy worker about her age who she briefly met rehearsing with his band in a garage in the previous episode  about New York. By her account, she had a stepfather who wanted to sleep with her so she stripped naked in his bed to force the issue to the surface. That seems a little off. She also alludes to having a problem shed gotten over. That problem may be an addiction to cocaine, which this episode makes clear she hasnt really gotten over. But, as with her stepfather issues, who knows? Its not clear how committed she is to telling the truth.

Were obviously not getting all of Julies backstory (or Elliots), but its becoming clearer by degrees. Also obvious: Julie likes Sim, flirting with him, following him around as he sells sandwiches, and meeting his grandmother, who takes a liking to her and caps the visit with some amazing singing. Sim likes her too. But he doesnt like the way she comes onto him in the office of The Eddy, a place hes not supposed to be. And though he may be attracted to her, hes not going do anything about it while shes drunk and demanding he have sex with her so she feels normal. It seems like normal is tough for her to feel.

As Julie, Amandla Stenbergs terrific. The character could be a familiar troubled teen, but Stenberg conveys her complexity, and suggests the difficult past that inspires her behavior. And, like Holland as her father, shes not afraid to make Julie unlikable. She cares little about the emotions of others and makes increasingly horrible choices, from dropping out of school on day one to disappearing to look for coke in a dangerous part of town. And when Sim comes to her rescue  after earning Elliots ire when Elliot mistakenly believes Sims led her astray  she lays some pretty racist assumptions on him by suggesting hes a drug dealer. Shes not always sympathetic, but shes also clearly a girl in pain. As the episode ends, she cries and picks up the clarinet again, not to annoy her father but to express herself. Shes her fathers daughter, whether shes happy about that or not.

Elsewhere, Elliots not having a great week, and its not entirely Julies fault. He keeps seeing the same guy everywhere in Paris, to the point he believes hes being followed, presumably by Farids killers. And that loss is hurting him, a lot, a pain he takes out on the Eddy Band as they rehearse a number they can never play to his satisfaction. The pace is wrong and Maja, by his assessment, needs to sing higher, even though the request seems to be out of her range. Nobodys having fun and musics supposed to be fun, one member complains, but Elliots not hearing it. The last time I checked, he says, Im the bandleader.

They seem to hate him for it. Except they clearly dont. When Julie disappears, all the members but Kat the indie rock-looking drummer (who has parental duties elsewhere) join the search for her, all disagreements having been forgotten. Even Maja puts her hostility to Elliot on hold. They dont find Julie, but they try their best. So does Elliot, even taking the clubs financial records to the police  evidence he was reluctant to disclose for fear of what it might mean for The Eddy. His hope is that his newfound spirit of cooperation will earn their help in the search for Julie, whom he suspects might have been abducted by the criminals who took out Farid, but no dice. They suspect hes involved in the murder himself and, honestly, the evidence looks pretty bad. We know Elliot had nothing to do with Farids death. He loved Farid. But they have no way of knowing that. So Elliot ends the episode in jail as the murder plot, which has largely been relegated to the background, comes to the fore.

Blue Notes

 This is Chazelles final episode as director, so its apt that it has a variation on Whiplashs famous not-my-tempo scene. Where some of the strength of that movie came from its ambiguity, and the sense that maybe the abuse was necessary to sculpt a great drummer, here Elliot mostly comes off as a jerk. Hes demanding the Eddy Band implement ideas that not only make them uncomfortable but dont seem to work.
The Darjeeling Tea Association on



Friday said the planters in the hills of West Bengal have lost an estimated production of 1.5 million kg due to the lockdown, resulting in a revenue loss of Rs 200 crore.

The planters' body has already written to the Tea Board, seeking its intervention to release fund from "the sanctioned onetime revival package" for the Darjeeling tea industry for the setback that it had suffered due to unprecedented closure in 2017.

The planters also urged immediate disbursement of the pending subsidies on a priority basis.

Due to the suspension of work for 20 days during its peak period in the wake of the lockdown, the industry has estimated first flush production loss of 95 per cent, the planters said, adding that 10 per cent of second flush output is also expected to be washed out.

They said the industry is export dependent and 70 per cent of its annual revenue comes from overseas markets.

"The loss of production and revenue of the Darjeeling tea industry is estimated at 1.5 million kg and Rs 200 crore respectively in the current season," the letter said.

The planters pointed out that Germany, Japan, the US and the UK, major importers of Darjeeling tea, have been affected due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Even in the domestic market, the industry is "under threat from cheap Nepal tea" which is often sold as Darjeeling variety.

The planters' body alleged that such illicit practice is rampant due to non-enforcement of IPR.

Earlier, the board has sought suggestions from the DTA for interventions required to bring the industry on the recovery path.

Unlike the tea industry of other origin, the planters in the hills of West Bengal have been reeling under "severe crisis" due to the prolonged closure in 2017, the DTA said in its letter.

The association also said that credit ratings of the Darjeeling tea industry have already been downgraded by banks and financial institutions since 2017.

DTA has also sought 50 per cent air freight subsidy for exports, enhancement of orthodox subsidy and launch of promotional campaign.

The association has also urged the Tea Board to facilitate the industry to get the assistance from the government for payment of Rs 1,000 per worker per week in lieu of wages and salaries for three months.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
8 Mile, Daybreakers, Machete Kills.

Period dramas, real life spycraft thrills, epic stadium tours and freestyle rap battles all feature today as TopFilmTip brings you the best films on UK TV for Friday, 8 May.

Some films may require a Sky subscription.

With their husband/father away, a household of sisters and their mother unsteadily unite in wholesome period piece Little Women (1994) 11:15am Sony Movies

Remarkably true act of cunning is meticulously executed as the allies fool an entire army with one dead body in The Man Who Never Was 1:00pm BBC Two

Wise cowboy mends bodies and souls of broken family with delicate emotional coaxing and painful personal sacrifice in The Horse Whisperer 12:30pm Sony Movies

Kevin Costner with a Sioux Indian tribe in a scene from the film 'Dances with Wolves', 1990. (Photo by Tig Productions/Getty Images)

Accidentally heroic, monologuing journal junky frontiersman befriends Sioux in sweeping ballad of mutual respect Dances With Wolves 4:55pm Sony Movies

Lost in New York, timid hound and rehoused stray survive sewers, maniacal bunny and each other to make it home to their owner in family fun The Secret Life of Pets 5:25pm ITV2

Read more: Films released early on streaming

Loss, love and life shatter in visually magnificent sensory explosion of Pink Floyds cathartic concept album tour Roger Waters: The Wall 9:00pm Sky Arts

Ambitious man aspires toward morally vacant millionaire, discovers sushi, garish interior design and error of his ways Wall Street 9:00pm Sony Movies

Railroaded into cyber criminal crew, criminal betrays his crew of criminals in traffic-raining submarine jumper Fast & Furious 8 9:00pm ITV2

Spaghetti vomiting white trash rabbit overcomes adversity, infidelity, mum and crooked Freeworld in Eminem's bar-spitting freestyle rap-battler 8 Mile 10:00pm ITV4

Self-loathing vampire cop joins human resistance, in feral sub-side shooting, blood riot-inducing dystopian sci-fi horror Daybreakers 11:25pm Film 4

Mexican motor-scooter foils space supremacist in clone-cleavering, face flaming, brothel-battling preposterousness Machete Kills 1:15am Film 4

Everything new on streaming in May:

Story continues

Netflix UK: Mays new releases

NOW TV: Mays new releases

Amazon Prime Video UK: May's new releases

Disney+ UK: May's new releases
Chinese authorities on Thursday urged efforts to summarize and promote effective practices in regular epidemic prevention and control.

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 more efforts to promote the production resumption of enterprises, the resumption of consumer-oriented service industries and the reopening of schools as well as to improve nucleic acid testing capabilities.

Targeted measures should be taken to enable more consumer-oriented service facilities to resume operations and drive up household consumption, according to the meeting.

Given that middle and primary schools in many provinces have resumed classes and students in some universities have started to return to campus, the meeting noted the importance of epidemic prevention and control in schools.

Universities should make detailed plans for epidemic prevention and control and ensure the supply of goods and materials for fighting COVID-19, according to the meeting.

It also urged improving nucleic acid testing capabilities, particularly expanding the production capacities for fast-testing equipment without the use of laboratories.

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.
GALLUP, N.M. - Like clockwork, payday arrives and tens of thousands of people from the Navajo reservation and other rural stretches along the New Mexico-Arizona border flood into Gallup, a freewheeling desert oasis of just 22,000 that can quickly quadruple in size with all the visitors.

Not now.

As the modern-day trading post reels under a coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 1,450 people and killed at least three dozen in the city and surrounding rural county  overrunning a patchwork health care system  Gallup has gone into extreme lockdown. Barricades are manned by state police and the National Guard, keeping out anyone who doesnt live there or face an emergency.

That has sent thousands of people scrambling for options other than the citys coin-operated bulk water station and monthly shopping runs to Walmart and Tractor Supply Co. Up to one-third of homes on remote stretches of the Navajo Nation lack full plumbing, and grocery stores are mostly tiny and limited.

The roads into Gallup may open up Friday evening, but the rules allowing only essential shopping will remain, and the reservation has its own lockdown that prevents people from leaving on evenings and weekends. Navajo police patrol for people breaking the rules.

On Thursday, hundreds of cars idled at a roadblock in hopes of entering town, just before the lockdown was extended for three more days under the state Riot Control Act.

The effectiveness of the lockdown, enacted by the governor and endorsed by Gallups fledgling mayor, is up for debate. Infections are still mounting in town, with about 240 confirmed cases within one ZIP code, and more than 2,650 across the Navajo Nation that extends into portions of Arizona and Utah. If the Navajo Nation were its own state, itd have the second highest per capita rate of positive coronavirus cases in the country, behind only New York.

The dividing line traced by roadblocks also is tugging on sensitivities about birthrights and inequities, as Native American visitors worry about the social stigma of being locked out because of the contagion.

The outbreak on the huge Navajo reservation, the nations largest with 175,000 people, has made people in Gallup nervous. Many see hints of the racism that has divided people in the town for centuries.

They targeted the people around here. Theyre going to be coming to Gallup to shop, so they put a stop to that, said Johnnie Henry, adding that two of his relatives from the Navajo Nation were apparently infected with COVID-19 while working at a Gallup hospital. We kind of look at each other and say, are we the ones bringing it? No, its all over.

Theres a lot of people who want to go back into Gallup, but theyre afraid that theyre going to call us names ... say that we are the carriers, Henry said.

In Gallup, the streets are empty, with downtown thoroughfares largely free of cars. The lockdown idled pawn shops, halted informal jewelry sales by walking vendors, and thinned out crowds at grocery stores and Walmart.

The lockdown has been awesome, you dont have to worry about any crowds, Andrew Sandoval, a delivery worker for Home Depot, said as he ducked into a grocery store to buy his wife a cup of coffee.

At Gallups main hospital, Rehoboth McKinley Christian, the battle against the virus has taken a toll, with 32 infections among employees. The hospitals sole pulmonologist left Wednesday without a replacement, and patients with serious respiratory conditions are being flown to Albuquerque, Chief Medical Officer Val Wangler said.

For most, 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 trajectory of the pandemic could hinge on Gallups homeless population  many who left the Navajo Nation and struggle with alcoholism.

Infections raced through a detox centre in early April. Now, free room and board are offered at four local motels  including the famous El Rancho hotel visited by legendary actor John Wayne and President Ronald Reagan  to about 140 homeless patients who are quarantined. They are tested repeatedly before being cleared with a certification card that can let them back into shelters.

Beyond Gallup, New Mexicos stay-at-home restrictions expire May 15, and theres uncertainty about whats next.

Im so confused. What is going to really work if this doesnt? state Sen. George Munoz of Gallup said of the community lockdown. He has taken to buying giant pallets of bottled water for indigenous communities with campaign funds. I dont know the answer.

At a motel, Dr. Caleb Lauber opens a conversation with a coronavirus-positive patient in the Navajo language before administering a nasal swab test to see if the infection persists.

Theres more than one benefit from doing this, he said. It allows us the opportunity to ensure that the community is protected.

But the program is financially unsustainable, Lauber said.

South of Gallup in Zuni Pueblo, a tribal community of 800 residents set amid red rock mesas, Lt. Gov. Carleton Bowekaty supports extending the Gallup lockdown, noting that it keeps more pueblo members safely at home. He said the tribe has stockpiled food and water to help support members who have to quarantine after being exposed to the virus.

He said a COVID-19 outbreak in the pueblo is far from contained, with about 55 confirmed infections and two deaths amid intensive testing, evening curfews and a daytime roadblock aimed at discouraging nonessential travel.

An end to the Gallup lockdown would likely mean stricter restrictions in the pueblo, where Bowekaty says tribal members are struggling with social distancing in ceremonial life, including burials.

Thoughts have turned to preserving oral traditions that might be lost with more coronavirus casualties.

How do we capture their knowledge if they pass on? he asked.

___

Associated Press data editor Meghan Hoyer contributed to this report.

___

This story has corrected the spelling of President Ronald Reagans last name.
Donald Trump has denied the US was behind a failed coup attempt in Venezuela, saying he would send an entire army if he wanted to invade the country.

Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro says the president is the direct chief of the invasion, and aired an American ex-special forces soldier on state television apparently confessing to the plot.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday, Mr Trump said he wouldnt make a secret about it if he wanted to go into Venezuela.

Id go in, Id go in and they would do nothing about it, they would roll over. I wouldnt send a small little group -- it would be called an army, Mr Trump said.

I dont know too much about it. This was a rogue group that went in there, a lot of Venezuelans, I think people from other countries also.

Luke Denman and Airan Berry were two of 13 people arrested by Venezuelan authorities about 40 miles west of Caracas airport, by the coastal town of Chuao.

In the video aired on Venezuelan TV, Mr Denman said Mr Trump was in command of the operation to help Venezuelans take back control of their country.

Securing the sector, establishing outer security, communicating with the tower, bringing in planes, one of which includes one to put Maduro on and take him back to the United States, he said of his role in the operation.

The two Americans had been contracted by Florida security firm Silvercorp USA to seize control of Caracas airport and fly Mr Maduro to the US, where there is a $15m reward for information leading to his arrest.

I saw their pictures on a beach. It wasnt led by General George Washington, obviously, this was not a good attack. I think they were caught before they ever hit land but I know nothing about it, I say that the government has nothing to do with it at all, Mr Trump said.

I have to find out what happened, but if we ever did anything with Venezuela, it wouldnt be that way, it would be a slightly different, it would be called an invasion.

Mr Trumps comments reflect those of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said the US would use every tool it has to free the Americans.

If we had been involved, Mr Pompeo said of any mission in the troubled South American country, it would have gone much differently.

The US department of justice charged Mr Maduro and other members of his government in March with drug trafficking, weapons offences and narco-terrorism.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 8, 2020) - TransCanna Holdings Inc. (CSE: TCAN) (FSE: TH8) ("TransCanna" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company's financial results for the quarter ending February 29, 2020 and to additionally report record monthly revenue for the months of March and April, 2020..

Monthly revenue results for the quarter were CAD $972,048 with COGS of CAD$642,280.

Quarter two of 2020 has started strong with record revenue for March and April 2020, surpassing. internal targets. The Company recorded revenue of $1,201,636 CAD in March (using a $1.40 dollar conversion), and $2,052,148 CAD in April. Cost of goods in March and April, together were $2,939,701 CAD. The April revenue result gives the Company its yearly run rate of $24,625,776 CAD for the year through operations solely run out of the TransCanna test facility.

"We are really pleased with our financial performance overall," says Bob Blink, TransCanna CEO. "Costs strategically invested in our distribution and wholesale division somewhat impacted our margins for March and April, but we fully expect these numbers to continue improving in the short term for a few reasons, including being deemed an essential service in California by local officials."

While revenue for January and February was lower than in prior months, it is typical for Cannabis growers to experience a slight lull during such time of year due to standard growing and harvest schedules. Harvest of the Company's plants was not undertaken until March, when higher internal product standards were met. Additionally, expenditures to upgrade the Company's 10,000 square foot Jerusalem Court Facility by building extra rooms weren't actualized through increased production until March, when these rooms came back online after being shut to complete the upgrades.

Now in its second quarter of 2020, TransCanna has been focused on building out its distribution and wholesale business in order to execute on its strategic plan once its new 200,000 square foot facility in Modesto, California, begins operations. It is anticipated that this facility will materially increase TransCanna's output.

"This record financial performance is highly supportive of our concept," says Blink. "Achieving record breaking results like we've seen using our ten thousand square foot facility only points to the tremendous success we can anticipate once our larger, Daly Street Facility comes online."

Blink adds that the Company is in the last stages of awaiting final state licensing approvals for the new facility, and that expansions to its business operations will commence immediately upon approval as the Company has already planned for and executed the upscaling of that facility.

"We are well diversified and, as we await these approvals, our Lyfted Farms Jerusalem Court property continues to outperform," says Blink. "Taken in its entirety, our financial results are nothing short of impressive. The management team dealt with the significant challenges of these unprecedented times to deliver this very notable success that acts as a foundation for continued growth."

The Company is also pleased to announce that it has issued 3,600,000 units ("Units") at a price of $0.50 per Unit for gross proceeds of CDN$1,800,000 pursuant to a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement").

Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (a "Share") and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one Share at a price of $0.75 per Share until May 8, 2022. If the closing trading price of the Shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE"), or such other stock exchange or quotation system on which the Shares are then listed or quoted, is equal to or greater than C$1.25 for a period of 20 consecutive trading days, the Company will have the right to accelerate the expiry of the Warrants, in which event the expiry date of the Warrants will be the date which is 30 days following the dissemination of a press release by the Company announcing the Accelerated Expiry Date.

The Private Placement was priced in the context of the market based on a price reservation made by the Company with the CSE. The Private Placement is subject to the approval of the CSE and the securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four-month hold period under securities laws. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Private Placement for working capital purposes.

No finders' fees were paid pursuant to the Private Placement.

About TransCanna Holdings Inc.

TransCanna Holdings Inc. is a California based, Canadian listed company building Cannabis-focused brands for the California lifestyle, through its wholly-owned California subsidiaries.

For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.transcanna.com or email the Company at info@transcanna.com.

Corporate Communications:

Glenn Little (Glenn.L@TransCanna.com)

604-349-3011

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.

Forward-Looking Statements

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This release includes certain statements and information that may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws or forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect the expectations or beliefs regarding future events of management of the Company. Generally, forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "intends" or "anticipates", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "would" or "occur". This information and these statements, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements", are not historical facts, are made as of the date of this news release and include without limitation, statements regarding discussions of future plans, estimates and forecasts and statements as to management's expectations and intentions with respect to, among other things: commencement of operations of the Company's 200,000 square foot Modesto, California operations; the increase of the Company's output; the receipt of licensing approvals for the Company's facilities; and expansions to and growth of the Company's business operations.

These forward-looking statements involve numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things: the receipt of necessary regulatory approval and licensing approvals; market uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic; potential negative consumer, investor or public perception of a party's respective current brand or company; changes in consumer preferences and product trends; general market trends; and political, legal and regulatory uncertainty relating to cannabis products generally.

In making the forward looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, that:; the inability to commence operations of the Company's 200,000 square foot Modesto, California operations; the inability of the Company to increase its output; the inability of the Company to receive the necessary licensing approvals for its facilities; and the inability of the Company to achieve its anticipated expansion and growth of its business operations.

Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, forward-looking information or financial out-look that are incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. We seek safe harbor.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55605
Former NCP MP Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil and three others figure in the list of BJP candidates for the 21 May Maharashtra Legislative Council poll

Mumbai: Former NCP MP Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil and three others figure in the list of BJP

candidates for the 21 May Maharashtra Legislative Council poll. The list was released from Delhi on Friday, a state

BJP functionary said.

Senior state BJP leaders Eknath Khadse and Pankaja Munde don't find a place in the list, which instead has lesser-known faces like Gopichand Padalkar, Praveen Datke and Ajit Gopchhade. Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil who joined the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is the son of former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Vijaysinh Mohite Patil.

While Ranjitsinh joined the BJP officially, his father hasn't done so formally. Padalkar who joined the BJP ahead of last year's Assembly polls, had unsuccessfully contested against Ajit Pawar from Baramati. Pawar had retained his seat with a margin of over six lakh votes.

The Council election is being held for nine seats, for which the electoral college is the 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

The quota for a winning candidate is 29 votes. The election assumes importance Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is among the candidates. While Pankaja Munde lost the 2019 Assembly election from Parli to estranged cousin and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde, Khadse who was denied Assembly poll ticket by his party, had recently declared that he would like to contest the 21 May poll.

BJP has 105 MLAs and the party has claimed support of 11 members of smaller parties and independents. It needs 116 first preference votes to get its four candidates elected. Talks are still on among the three ruling MVA alliance partners with the Congress adamant on fielding a second candidate. If the allies contest more than five seats, there would be an election.

During the trust vote in the Assembly, the MVA had secured support of 169 MLAs, while four MLAs (CPM 1, MNS 1,

AIMIM 2) had abstained. The biennial elections are being held to fill in seats which fell vacant after Council members retired on 24 April.
A former party boy dubbed the 'Australian Tiger King with no hair' has bought two Sumatran tigers from notorious big cat collector Joe Exotic.

Sam Barnett, the 30-year-old son of former Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett, is in the midst of planning a zoo that will house up to 42 exotic species in Kununurra, in far north of the state.

Unlike the Netflix star's wildlife park that was open to visitors, Mr Barnett is planning to start a breeding facility that is completely closed to the public.

The two tigers will arrive in June and go into quarantine for two months while Mr Barnett awaits approval of the Department of Agriculture for his dream animal park.

Sam Barnett, 30, has ordered two Sumatran tigers from Joe Exotic for a breeding facility he is planning to start in Western Australia

'A friend called me the Australian Tiger King with no hair,' Mr Barnett told 7 News.

Mr Barnett said he didn't know the tigers were coming from Exotic at the time he ordered them.

'You have exotic animals agents so through that channel we've ended up with two of Joe Exotic's animals.'

The 30-year-old's free range wildlife sanctuary will spread across 350 hectares, the Courier Mail reported.

Mr Barnett, who owns a property investment company said he was ready to move on to the next step of his life.

'I look at my 20s as kind of like a decade long party to be honest but I think that's over now,' he said.

The aspiring zoo owner's father, Colin Barnett, had wanted to make a similar zoo but plans fell through after he lost the election in 2017.

Sam Barnett previously found himself in hot water with the law when he was handed a restraining order over an incident with his ex-girlfriend Samantha Shvetsova in 2016.

In March that year, Mr Barnett also pleaded guilty to willful property damage after damaging a laptop and phone during a fight with his then girlfriend Melissa Garbin at a Gold Coast hotel.

The 30-year-old is hoping to have up to 42 exotic species in a free range wildlife sanctuary that will be closed to the public

Sam Barnett previously found himself in hot water with the law when he was handed a restraining order over an incident with his ex-girlfriend Samantha Shvetsova (pictured together) in 2016

But Mr Barnett is now hoping he can leave his past behind and achieve his dream zoo - along with the tigers previously owned by the now incarcerated Joe Exotic.

The 57-year-old rose to fame with the recent Netflix documentary 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness'.

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January this year for hiring a hitman to murder Big Cat Rescue owner Carole Baskin and violating the Endangered Species Act.

Exotic ran the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park which housed more than 100 tigers along with chimpanzees, panthers and other exotic species.
FRANKLIN, Tenn., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Franklin criminal defense attorney, Legal Powers, PLLC is honored to have been recognized as one of the 20 Best DUI Lawyers servicing the Nashville area. This recognition was presented by Expertise.com and announced after evaluating 217 DUI attorneys in the local area.

About Legal Powers

Legal Powers, PLLC

Legal Powers is Franklin-based criminal defense and DUI law firm founded by Ben Powers. The law firm represents individuals that have been charged with a crime, DUI or are facing criminal investigation, no matter how big or small. The firm serves Williamson County and Davidson County.

"We are excited to be chosen by Expertise.com as one of Nashville's top DUI attorneys. We know that no matter the case type, it is always important for us to first understand his clients' goals, motivations, and their story  in addition to the laws that surround and govern their case. Each case is as unique as the people involved in it. We never forget that our clients are more than a docket number, an incident report, or a case number," said attorney Ben Powers.

Legal Powers has an established record of taking on tough cases throughout Williamson County and Davidson County, and securing the best possible results for clients. Their compassionate representation and results have made Legal Powers amongst the highest rated defense lawyers in Franklin, TN.

With years of experience in defense cases, the firm has the expertise to handle any criminal defense matter, including: assault and battery, drug crime, domestic violence, federal crime, drug trafficking, white collar crime, sex crime, grand theft, firearm offenses, and of course driving under the influence.

DUI & Criminal Defense in Franklin, TN

While the firm has recently moved to Franklin, TN, they are still offering criminal defense representation throughout Davidson County, and remain among the top DUI lawyers in the area. You can find their new office at:

Legal Powers, PLLC

1224 B Columbia Ave Suite 200

Franklin, TN 37064

(615) 762-8775

Legal Powers has successfully represented numerous individuals facing charges, and under criminal investigation, in Williamson County and Davidson County. Through these experiences Legal Powers has developed a defensive skill set that is tailored to representing individuals facing charges in Franklin, Nashville and the surrounding cities.

To speak with Franklin criminal defense attorney, Ben Powers, call (615) 762-877 for a 100% free initial consultation. You can also visit the website at https://legalpowers.com/franklin-criminal-defense-attorney.

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Attorney Ben Powers

SOURCE Legal Powers, PLLC

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Staffing issues persist among private and voluntary nursing homes according to a new Nursing Home Ireland (NHI) survey.

Testing results are not returned to nursing homes for a number of days while sufficient access to personal protective equipment (PPE) continues to be a problem.

Recently introduced Health Service Exective (HSE) policies say facemasks should be worn when in close contact with a nursing home resident.

The main results according to the survey include:

40% of nursing homes said they do not have sufficient supply of Facemasks.

45% of the nursing homes responding to the survey said they waited five days or more for testing results to be returned. 25% were awaiting the results of tests undertaken.

Small numbers of HSE staff deployed to care homes. Respondents said 40 nurses from the HSE were redeployed along with 26 healthcare assistants and 13 other staff.

Persistent staff unavailability. Respondents said 306 senior and general nursing staff were not available due to Covid-19. 606 Healthcare Assistants were unavailable along 240 workers from other disciplines, totalling 1,152 staff.

233 private and voluntary nursing homes participated in the survey of 460 operating across Ireland according to NHI.

Speaking about the results, Tadhg Daly, NHI CEO said: Nursing homes remain under immense pressure in managing Covid-19. Pressures continue to be applied across staffing, PPE and testing."

Mr Daly acknowledged the support recently introduced from the Government "late in the day" and said, "this has made an impact."

However, he said "seismic challenges persist" and the sector continues to work with the HSE and the Department of Health along with the Minister for Health to address them.

NHI said nearly half of private and voluntary nursing homes in Ireland completed the survey.
European leaders held muted commemorations Friday to mark the end of World War II on the continent, as coronavirus lockdowns kept crowds from celebrating VE Day. Across the ocean, Americans awaited what is expected to be the worst set of unemployment figures since record-keeping began in 1948.

The European celebrations came in stark contrast to the way millions of its citizens spilled onto the streets 75 years ago, waving flags, flashing victory signs and dancing in joy because the carnage on their continent had ended.

Street parties this year were banned in Britain. In France, President Emmanuel Macron laid a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe monument at the top of a largely deserted Champs-Elysees Avenue since the country is still under a strict lockdown until Monday.

A day earlier, Macron spoke to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who had to cancel his own huge Victory Day parade that had been planned for Saturday in Moscow.

Macron said the pandemic makes the construction of peace and stability on the continent and in the rest of the world more necessary than ever, according to a statement.

With nearly 26,000 confirmed virus deaths, France is among the world's top five hardest-hit nations in the pandemic. Britain, with over 30,000 confirmed deaths, is second only to the US, which has seen nearly 76,000 people killed by the virus. Russia has reported only 1,625 virus deaths, but infections are jumping by over 10,000 each day. Experts believe all those figures especially the Russian death toll understate the true impact of the coronavirus.

In Germany, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the parliament and top court laid wreaths at the memorial to victims of war and violence in Berlin.

The corona pandemic is forcing us to commemorate alone apart from those who are important to us and to whom we are grateful, Steinmeier said. He urged Germans to think, feel and act as Europeans amid the coronavirus crisis.

As European nations and US states plot tentative, chaotic and often completely different road maps out of their lockdowns while still attempting to avoid a second wave of infections, China and South Korea highlighted the risks of easing such measures. Both Asian nations on Friday reported more coronavirus cases after relaxing restrictions.

South Korea's 13 new infections were its first increase higher than 10 in five days. A dozen were linked to a 29-year-old who managed to visit three nightclubs in Seoul last weekend.

A drop of ink in clear water spreads swiftly, Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said, urging vigilance to guard the country's hard-won gains. Anyone can become that drop of ink that spreads COVID-19. South Korea's top infectious disease expert said the country could possibly push back its plans to reopen schools if infections surge again over the upcoming weekend after a weeks-long decline.

In China, where the new coronavirus first emerged late last year, authorities reported 17 new virus cases, including 16 people not showing any symptoms. No new deaths have been reported for more than three weeks.

Health experts say every nation will see some type of second wave of infections after their lockdowns ease. Yet the economic impact of the measures on the world's largest economy will be on full display Friday when the U.S. government reports the unemployment rate for April.

The rate could reach 16% or more, according to economists surveyed by the data provider FactSet. Some 33 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits since the virus hit and experts say 21 million jobs may have been lost for good. That would mean that nearly all the U.S. job growth in the 11 years since the Great Recession ended had been wiped out in one month.

And even those figures won't capture all the workers who have seen their hours or pay cut in the United States. Around the world, millions of day laborers in Asia are going hungry as their jobs vanish, tourism workers in Africa have seen whole sections of their fragile economies vanish and unemployment in the 19-country eurozone is expected to surpass 10% in the coming months. The U.K. economy is forecast to shrink by the most since 1706.

On the anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender to Allied forces in Europe in 1945, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the coronavirus pandemic is unleashing a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering.

He appealed for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally. The U.N. chief warned that anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 3.8 million people and killed nearly 270,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University based on official data. But limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments undoubtedly mean the true scale of the pandemic is much greater.

In Iran, which is battling the worst outbreak in the Mideast while still under heavy U.S. sanctions, Friday prayers were resuming in mosques in 146 cities after being banned for more than two months, the country's semi-official Tasnim agency reported. Prayer gatherings will still be banned in major cities, including all provincial capitals, it reported.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When 99-year-old Belfast nursing home resident Ethel Sinclair tested positive for Covid-19 in early April, her family immediately feared the worst.

But not only has she beaten the virus, she is also celebrating her 100th birthday next week - a day her family thought she might not live to see.

Wednesday will be the big day for Ethel, having been born on May 13, 1920.

Her grand-daughter Ashleigh Fox said she must be made of strong stuff.

"She just keeps on going. It doesn't look like anything can beat her," she said.

"We were all worried when we got the news last month that she had tested positive in the nursing home, but she's been through a lot these past couple of years and it seems this virus wasn't going to beat her either."

Ethel, born Margaret Ethel McFadden with two sisters and two brothers, has always stuck by what she knows best - Belfast life.

"She's now living at Bradley Manor off the Crumlin Road. She knows what she likes and she likes it there," Ashleigh explained.

Ethel, who grew up on Silvio Street, just off Crumlin Road, believes there's no big secret to her longevity beyond simply enjoying life.

"I love a cup of tea and cream buns. Chocolate eclairs are my favourite," she said.

"I still think of myself as a 20-year-old who loves dancing.

"Although my hearing has gone a little these days, I can still give a good scolding when I need to."

Having lived through the Second World War, the Belfast blitz and the Troubles, Ethel has endured hard times during her 100 years.

"Her mother died when she was just six years old. After marrying and having two children, my father Samuel and his sister Lorraine, she lost her husband Jim to cancer 40 years ago, but she kept on going," Ashleigh told this newspaper.

"She suffered a bad fall when she was 97. She spent several months in hospital with a broken hip and wrist and contracted MRSA while when was in there, but we're all delighted to still have her with us as she reaches 100 years.

"Contracting coronavirus was a big concern for us, but thankfully, though she tested positive, her symptoms turned out to be quite mild.

"Throughout it she was determined to stay in her home. She wasn't for going to hospital and wanted to be where she felt safe and secure.

"The care the staff at Bradley Manor gave her helped her stay where she wanted to be.

"We just can't thank them enough for all that they have done these past few weeks. Coronavirus still knocked her back a good bit and, given her age, the recovery is slow, but we all take it in turns to FaceTime her every day.

"She might not be up to date with technology, but the staff in Bradley Manor have been fantastic in helping her.

"She loves nothing more than seeing her great-grandchildren. All the family have been there for her in whatever way we can.

"None of us have actually seen her since the home closed to visitors in the middle of March.

"While we did have plans to celebrate her birthday at Belfast Castle and let her look down over the city she loves so much, we've obviously had to put any big family gatherings on hold until the situation changes.

"But we have been in touch with Bradley Manor and we're all hoping to be there in the car park next week to see her on her birthday.

"Though she's in bed most of the time recovering, the staff are hoping to get her down to reception and wheel her to the door so she can see all of us."

Birthday cards can be sent to Ethel, addressed Bradley Manor, 420 Crumlin Road, BT14 7GE
People could be forced to join lengthy queues to use the lifts in offices when people head back to their workplaces.

Safe Work Australia recommended workers keep a 1.5 metre distance between each other in elevators in a guideline the government agency published on Tuesday.

Design firm Futurespace managing director Angela Ferguson said elevators could be filled with as many as 10 people at peak hour during pre COVID-19.

But that size could be drastically cut down to as few as two people under the new recommendation.

'It's huge, significant change, much like 9/11 was for the way we travelled,' she told Australian Financial Review.

Elevator capacities in office buildings could be limited to as few as two people as tough social distancing restrictions threaten to put further strain on the workforce

Design firm Futurespace managing director Angela Ferguson said elevators could be filled with as many as 10 people at peak hour during pre COVID-19 (pictured, workers packed onto an elevator in an office building will be a thing of the past under social distancing restrictions)

Ms Ferguson warned at such a limited elevator capacity, only 10 per cent of the building's occupants could be efficiently 'moved' over a day.

Richard Fennell of JLL, who manages more than 500 office buildings and shopping centres in the country, said workers could be forced to wait their turn in lobbies.

'I'm going to have to put in place a queueing channel,' he said.

'I'll put marks on the floor 1.5 metres apart with 'Stand here' and I'll put a guy in the lift lobby and he will be the only person that will press the button.'

The designated usher will point to workers waiting in the lobby to tell them it's their turn to catch the lift.

He will ask the worker which level of the office building they wish to travel to and push the button for them.

Mr Fennell went on to say a security guard could be placed on every level to send the elevator back down once it emptied.

Safe Work Australia has also recommended one worker to have their own four square metre space in the office.

Mills Group managing director Daniel Green said workers may even expect the kind of protection rolled out at supermarkets, when giants like Woolworths and Aldi, installed screens to safeguard their workers.

'The feeling of protection a plastic screen gives someone when the person opposite them is coughing, perhaps violently, whether they're at a checkout or in an open-plan office, is something that I think people will come to expect,' Mr Green said.

Under the recommendations, workplaces will also need to bring in effective hygiene and disinfectant protocols.

Office outfitter Unispace global design director Simon Pole suggested hygiene stations and temperature screenings could become commonplace.

Ms Ferguson warned at such a limited elevator capacity, only 10 per cent of the building's occupants could be efficiently 'moved' over a day (stock image)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 23:56:12|Editor: huaxia

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DAR ES SALAAM, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian health authorities said on Friday the government will resume giving updates on COVID-19 new cases after it completes technical upgrading of the national health laboratory.

Ummy Mwalimu, the Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, made the assurance shortly after she had inaugurated a health call center at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

"We have about seven days since we last gave an update of COVID-19 cases because we are upgrading our national health laboratory," a statement by the ministry quoted Mwalimu as saying.

The statement said Mwalimu assured the public that the updates on the viral disease will start to be released in the coming few days after the upgrading of the laboratory is completed.

She urged the public to continue observing preventive and protective guidelines against the pandemic, according to the statement. Enditem
Television presenter Martin Kimathi is in mourning following the death of his father earlier this week.

The Teen Republik presenter broke the sad news on Wednesday, May 6, revealing that his father succumbed to cardiac arrest on Tuesday.

He also announced he will be taking a break from social media to grieve his dad.

Hi guys. Yesterday my dad passed on as a result of cardiac arrest. Ill be taking a break off social media to grieve however my management @moonsun_pictures will take over my social media as we continue to give you amazing content. I love you all and God bless?, he wrote on Instagram.

This comes barely three years after the model lost his mother.

Hi guys. On Wednesday 9:30am my mom succumbed to death after undergoing two surgeries at Aga Khan hospital. This is the worst pain Ive felt my whole entire life! To everyone who has sent their condolences or shown support directly or indirectly THANK YOU. Stay blessed, Kimathi announced in 2017.

Kimathis fans joined public figures in sending condolence messages to the bereaved presenter and his family.

Citizen TV presenter Wills Raburu said: I am so sorry my brother.

Jamal Gaddafi wrote: Pole bro..Mungu amlaze mzee wetu pema peponi ??

Pole sana @martinkimathi_ ????????, said Serah Teshna.

Djbashkenya added:  ? Pole sana bro. My condolences ?? Prayers up! Tuko na wewe bro, always 
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Vintage railway posters have been redesigned to encourage tourists to delay visits to holiday destinations.

York's National Railway Museum (NRM) has published the set of 10 images covering scenic locations such as Cornwall, the Norfolk Broads and the Yorkshire coast.

The posters were originally used by railway companies to entice passengers to travel to beauty spots by train, but they have been redesigned with slogans such as 'no swimming today', 'visit when this is all over' and 'one day soon, but not today'.

On the posters, NRM director Judith McNicol said: 'At a time of widespread travel restrictions, we hope that recreating a selection of the most popular travel posters will enable people to enjoy some of their favourite holiday destinations while celebrating the style and glamour of these works of art.

'This is also a way for us to show our support for the nation's keyworkers, including many of the 115,000 railway workers who are continuing to keep things running during this time. While we can't visit these destinations this bank holiday, we hope that these reimagined posters might raise a smile and give people something to look forward to once the lockdown is lifted.'

The NRM, which temporarily closed to the public on March 17, has a collection of 10,700 posters and other railway artwork dating from 1804 to the present day.

The redesigns come despite Boris Johnson potentially preparing to begin loosening draconian lockdown rules on Monday, but Downing Street have come under severe criticism for their 'mixed messages' regarding the slackening of the rules.

Police are also bracing for restless Britons to breach lockdown as warm weather sweeps across the nation over the bank holiday weekend.

 Slide me  York's National Railway Museum (NRM) has published the set of 10 images covering scenic locations such as New Brighton & Wallasey

 Slide me  Vintage railway posters have been redesigned to encourage tourists to delay visits to holiday destinations

 Slide me  The posters were originally used by railway companies to entice passengers to travel to beauty spots by train

 Slide me  The NRM, which temporarily closed to the public on March 17, has a collection of 10,700 posters

 Slide me  The museum also possesses other railway artwork dating from 1804 to the present day

 Slide me  There are as many as 115,000 railway workers who are continuing to keep things running during this time

 Slide me  But they have all been redesigned amid the coronavirus lockdown with slogans such as 'visit when this is all over'
JetBlue is facing criticism after announcing plans to have three passenger planes fly over New York City at a low altitude in honour of healthcare workers.

The airline says its 'I love NY, NYPD and FDNY' planes will join the daily #ClapBecauseWeCare tribute on Thursday with a flyover salute for our hometown healthcare heroes and first responders.

So, keep your eyes up, and keep a healthy distance from others while watching, the airline said on Twitter.

According to the New York Police Department, the planes will be flying at an altitude of approximately 2,000ft as they pass over Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

On social media, news of the upcoming tribute was met with backlash from New Yorkers, who questioned whether the airline realised that the low altitude of the planes over New York City could be triggering for those who witnessed the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, when two Boeing 767s crashed into the World Trade Center towers.

The tribute will reportedly see the planes circle Ground Zero as they fly over lower Manhattan, the location of the terrorist attack.

Um. Why? Low-flying passenger aircraft in New York? REALLY?!? May I direct you to any write up/video of 9/11 to explain what a terrible idea this is? one person tweeted. Please, @JetBlue, just figure out how much this is going to cost and donate the money to buying PPE for our medical heroes.

Another wrote: Flying passenger jets low over New York City is max tone-deaf.

Journalist Kristin Chirico directed her concern at the airline, writing: Hi, this is going to be traumatising, insensitive, and wasteful, please do not do this, you still have time to stop.

Additional criticism over the planned tribute stemmed from the cost of the fuel required to fly the planes, as well as the environmental impact of the unnecessary travel.

Why are you wasting fuel? This doesnt help anyone, one person tweeted, while another said: Please stop. This is a waste of money in a time when so many folks don't have enough.

According to Business Insider, an Airbus A320, the planes set to be used for the tribute, burn about 3,000 pounds of fuel per hour while cruising.

However, according to the airline, the flyover is being operated at no cost to JetBlue.

The airline thanks its partners at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, JetBlue Air Line Pilots Association, CarbonFund.org and a fuel provider, JetBlue said in a 6 May statement.

In the same statement, the company noted that it had flown more than 1,400 medical professionals to New York City and other destinations to help in relief efforts and has also donated cots, blankets and amenity kits to Mount Sinai hospitals throughout New York City in an effort to help keep healthcare workers rested between shifts.

The aviation-themed tribute to healthcare professionals working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City comes after the US Air Forces Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, and the US Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, performed formation flights over the tri-state area last month.

The Independent has contacted JetBlue for comment.
Ukraine has perfect relations with Georgia, and Georgia's reaction to the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of head of the Executive Committee of Ukraine's National Reform Council is wrong, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

"I can assure you that we have perfect relations with Georgia and the Georgian people. No matter what, we will not recall our ambassador [in Tbilisi] to Ukraine for consultations. Because relations between our countries will outlive any national administration of any country. I believe that Georgia is making a mistake. I also think that every party will realize after consultations that the personnel policy of every country is the business of that country and its citizens," Zelensky said at a press briefing in the Luhansk region on Friday. The press briefing was aired by the Nash television channel.

Saakashvili's appointment is the decision of the Ukrainian administration and an internal affair of Ukraine, he said. "Mr. Saakashvili is a Ukrainian citizen, he has a Ukrainian passport, and I am the president of Ukraine, who has appointed him head of the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian President's Reform Council. That's it," Zelensky said.

Saakashvili was appointed head of the Executive Committee of Ukraine's National Reform Council on Thursday. Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said on May 8 that Tbilisi would recall its ambassador in Kyiv for consultations in connection with Saakashvili's appointment.
A 24-year-old man in Nuevo Laredo has tested positive for COVID-19, adding the cases to 57 in the border city, according to the Tamaulipas Secretariat of Health.

Let's not let our guard down. Let's continue applying sanitary measures to avoid contagion. Prevention is everyones job, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Enrique Rivas Cuellar said.

City officials have recorded nine suspected cases, 25 recovered and six deaths. Meanwhile, Tamaulipas has 713 positive cases and 34 deaths.

Tamaulipas Health Secretary Dr. Gloria Molina Gamboa asked people suffering from diabetes, hypertension, morbid obesity, kidney failure, lupus, cancer and heart and respiratory diseases to stay home and take extreme hygiene measures to decrease the probability of infection.

Adults older than 60 years old, people who have received an organ transplant, pregnant women and those who are in charge of caring for their children younger than 12 years old must also remain in social confinement, she said.

She recommended keeping a healthy distance in case of having contact with people outside the family, washing hands with soap and water 10 to 20 times a day, sneezing or coughing in the inner corner of the arm and not greeting with a kiss on the cheek, shaking hands or hugging.

Casa Del Migrante

The 15 immigrants who had tested positive while they were at Casa Del Migrante Nazareth have recovered, according to Rivas Cuellar.

Rivas Cuellar added that the immigrants tested negative when they underwent a second test after they had recovered. The mayor added that the immigrants are awaiting to be returned to their places of origin.

We received (on Tuesday night) the notification from the (Tamaulipas) Secretariat of Health, where we were informed of the excellent news that the 15 migrants  had turned out to be negative for the virus after treatment that health authorities indicated, Rivas Cuellar said.

Each immigrant, on behalf of the municipal government, will be given a certificate specifying the good state of health of each one and an identification card issued by municipal health officials.

Rivas Cuellar highlighted that Nuevo Laredo is one of the cities statewide with the lowest number of infections due to the restrictions in place and the peoples compliance. The Sister City ranked fifth in positive cases as of Thursday evening.

We are in the midst of a crisis. Many people have not yet understood the problems that the world is experiencing, he said. Thanks to the fact that most of the citizens have complied with these restrictions with the closing of businesses, today Nuevo Laredo is one of the municipalities that does not occupy the first places in number of infected. To date there are 57 positive cases.
The Aam Aadmi Party national executive member Preeti Sharma Menon on Friday approached the Mumbai Police against a man who she said posted a sleazy comment directed at her on micro blogging site Twitter.

Mumbai-based Sharma demanded that a case be filed against the person whose Twitter handle is @pokershash. The account was deactivated immediately after reactions started coming in, criticising his comment.

The AAP executive member has been speaking about issues related to the migrants who have been trying to return to their hometowns. Her post, which led to her being abused on Twitter, related to the death of 16 migrant workers who were killed on a rail track in Aurangabad on Friday.

Why are these migrants still walking? Doesnt @PiyushGoyal have a train to run them over with?#ShameOnBJP https://t.co/QCjgp8yy9A  Preeti Sharma Menon (@PreetiSMenon) May 8, 2020

The abuse against Sharma led to widespread outrage on social media. The Twitter user reportedly resorted to an abusive comment while suggesting means to Sharma for protecting the migrants from running over.

I have already made an online complaint to Mumbai police but have not yet got any reply from them. I am also sending a written complaint and mail to Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh, home minister Anil Deshmukh and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray with details about the person, Sharma said.

I have gathered some information about the person who tweeted about me, his name is Shashank Singh and he is from Kolkata but I am not sure. His business partner lives in Bangalore. He runs an online website known as facthunt.in. I am sending his entire details to Mumbai police so they could verify it, added Menon.

Some Twitter users pointed out that the account was followed by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And here is one more lowlife followed by @narendramodi. Why should killing migrants be enough for them when they can abuse women too?? Sharma tweeted.

Sharma filed an online complaint demanding action under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 375, 505, 507 for rape, criminal intimidation and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Sixteen migrant labourers were crushed to death early on Friday by a goods train in Maharashtra after they fell asleep on the tracks. The accident happened between Jalna and Aurangabad in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.
The BJP on Friday asserted that the prime minister has been consulting state chief ministers and subject experts in dealing with COVID-19 as it asked Rahul Gandhi to act with "wisdom and practicality" and "fight the biggest calamity in human history under the able guidance" of Narendra Modi.

Taking a swipe at Gandhi after he asked the prime minister to devolve power and make chief ministers partners in fighting the pandemic, BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Sudhanshu Trivedi said the "ever youthful Congress leader who is about to complete a half century now at least should have some wisdom and practicality".

Trivedi said the Modi government has been very much receptive to suggestions from the opposition but it should be constructive and added that it is very typical and characteristic of Gandhi to speak before media without studying facts.

The government has already announced a relief package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore and has also ensured money in the hands of the poor through direct benefit transfer to help them tide over difficulties during the coronavirus crisis, he said, responding to Gandhi's demands of a special package and cash transfer to the poor.

Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has also praised the direct money transfer, he said.

In his recent conversation with the Congress leader, Banerjee had noted that the issues facing migrants should be handled by local authorities, Trivedi said.

He added "It's not time to create controversy directly or indirectly. Instead it is time for cooperation and he should try to fight the biggest calamity in the human history under the able guidance of our prime minister."



The BJP leader invoked former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's poem "Aao milkar diya jalayein" to seek the former Congress president's cooperation, likening the pandemic to a case of the sun being eclipsed at noon.

Gandhi would have got a better grip on the situation if he had discussed it with his senior party leaders and chief ministers, he said.

India is the only country where there are attacks on health and security personnel for which the government had to bring an ordinance to tackle such crimes, he said, adding that there is an effort to commualise the issue, with international agencies being approached to criticise the central government.

Trivedi was apparently referring to the allegations that right-wing activists have targeted Muslims for the spread of coronavirus.

International bodies, he said, have supported the government's measures in combating the coronavirus.

He noted that before the lockdown was extended beyond April 14 by Modi, states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Odisha and Telangana had already done it. All of them are opposition-rules states, he added.

Earlier at a press conference, Gandhi said the fight against COVID-19 cannot be just from the PMO and asked the prime minister to devolve power and make the states partner in decision-making.

Gandhi said there will be a "calamity" if the fight against coronavirus is centralised. He also asked the government to adopt transparency in its actions to tackle coronavirus and work together with states.

His remarks came after complaints by Congress-ruled states that they were being pushed into fiscal distress in the absence of the Centre providing them resources to fight the pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Damascus, May 8 : The Islamic State (IS) carried out an attack in a desert region in eastern Syria, killing 11 Syrian soldiers and pro-government fighters, a war monitor reported.

The IS attack took place in an area between the towns of Sukhnah and Shoula between the central province of Homs and the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

It said the death toll could likely rise due to the critically wounded cases.

The attack is the latest in a series of offensives carried out by the sleeper cells of the IS group in the Syrian desert.

The Britain-based watchdog group said 515 government soldiers and pro-government fighters have been killed in similar attacks since March 2019.

The group also said that over the past hours the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and its patron of the US-led coalition carried out several operations against IS in Deir al-Zour, leaving several IS members killed.
Ushering in a new era in undertaking Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra and border area connectivity, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday inaugurated the road link from Uttarakhand's Dharchula to Lipulekh at China Border. Singh also flagged off a convoy of vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji through video conferencing.

Singh said with the completion of this road link, the yatra could be completed in one week compared to 2-3 weeks it took earlier. The road originates from Ghatiabagarh and terminates at Lipulekh Pass, the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar. In this 80 kilometre road, the altitude rises from 6,000 to 17,060 feet.

With the completion of this project, the arduous trek through treacherous high-altitude terrain can now be avoided by the pilgrims of Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra. At present, the travel to Kailash-Mansarovar takes around two to three weeks through Sikkim or Nepal routes. Lipulekh route had a trek of 90 Km through high altitude terrain and the elderly yartris faced a lot of difficulties.

The other two roadways via Sikkim and Nepal are along. They entailed approximately 20 per cent of land journeys on Indian roads and 80 per cent of land journeys in China. With the opening of Ghatiabgarh-Lipulekh road, this ratio has been reversed. Now pilgrims to Manasarovar will traverse 84 per cent land journeys on Indian Roads and only 16 per cent land Journeys in China. This is truly historic, commented Singh.

Speaking on the occasion, he said the Central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have a special vision for the development of remote areas. Singh said with the completion of this crucial road link, the decades-old dreams and aspirations of local people and pilgrims have been fulfilled. He expressed confidence that local trade and economic growth in the region would receive a boost with the operationalisation of this roadway.

While congratulating the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) engineers and personnel whose dedication made this achievement possible, Singh mourned the loss of lives during the construction of this road. He praised the contribution of BRO personnel who live in far off places, and away from their families, that too in difficult times of coronavirus COVID-19.

According to Director General of BRO Lt Gen Harpal Singh, the construction of this road was hampered due to multiple problems. Constant snowfall, steep rise in altitude and extremely low temperatures restricted the working season to five months. Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra took place in the working season from June to October and it coincided with the move of locals and their logistics as well as the movement of traders (for trade with China) thus further reducing the daily hours for construction.

In addition, there were numerous flash floods and cloud bursts over the last few years which led to extensive damages. In the initial 20 kilometres, the mountains have hard rock and are near vertical due to which BRO has lost many lives and 25 equipment were also badly damaged due to falling into Kali River.

Despite all odds, in the last two years, BRO could increase its output by 20 times by creating multiple working points and inducting modern technology equipment. Helicopters were also extensively used to induct hundreds of tons of stores/equipment into this sector.

The event was attended by Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane, Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar, Lok Sabha MP from Almora (Uttarakhand) Ajay Tamta and senior officials of Ministry of Defence and BRO.
The first truckloads of prepacked food boxes from Feed Ontario has arrived in Hamilton, and will be distributed to food banks, hot meal programs and those unable to leave their homes.

Its such a Herculean effort, said Joanne Santucci, the executive director of Hamilton Food Share, an organization that procures and distributes food in the city.

A total of 28,000 food hampers will be sent to Hamilton in waves and distributed by Hamilton Food Share, which recently launched a delivery program for housebound individuals.

Were very grateful because as the pandemic continues and as the isolation and the distancing continues, this allows us to have a very short visit and hand off groceries very quickly in the new environment, she said.

Feed Ontario, which has a network of 130 food banks, announced Wednesday the launch of its COVID-19 Emergency Food Box Program to help Ontarios food banks continue to support their communities while minimizing exposure to COVID-19, a press release stated. Feed Ontarios goal is to produce 450,000 hampers in total, distributing them to partners across the province. The initiative is funded by the provincial government.

As COVID-19 continues to impact our communities, people are relying more heavily on food banks to help make ends meet, Carolyn Stewart, the executive director of Feed Ontario, said in the release. But COVID-19 has also increased challenges for food banks, making it harder to acquire food locally and reducing the number of volunteers able to safely help distribute food.

The hampers will come packed with a weeks worth of groceries, including household staples like cereal, pasta, tuna, canned fruit and juice. Local agencies will then have the opportunity to add fresh produce, meat and dairy products to the boxes prior to delivery.

Food hampers arriving in Hamilton will be temporarily stored in Stoney Creek at ED Modular, a division of construction giant EllisDon, which has donated nearly 10,000 square feet of warehouse space.

We love to help the communities that we work and build in, said Xavier Toby, the director of ED Modular, in a press release. Donating our space to support Hamiltons food banks was an easy decision as every little bit counts during these tough times.
An agitated mob pelted stones



at policemen who were enforcing lockdown in Shahpur area of Ahmedabad city on Friday evening, a senior official said.

Shahpur, a minority community-dominated area, is in 'Red Zone' as several coronavirus cases have been found in the locality.

While a police inspector was injured in the stone-pelting, 15 persons were detained by police.

Police lobbed 30 teargas shells to disperse the mob, said Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Patel.

"A police team visited Shahpur after learning that locals were coming out in large numbers despite lockdown. When policeasked them to stay indoors, people got angry and started throwing stones," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A former sex worker who used Aldi shopping bags to conceal the dead body of a father allegedly killed by her boyfriend has been jailed for five years.

Kate Lloyd, 39, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder at the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on Thursday.

She was sentenced to five years in jail but will be eligible for parole in July 2022.

Lloyd and her boyfriend Khanh Xuan Pham, 38, were arrested and charged after father-of-two Goran Stevanovic, 40, was found dead in a Sadleir unit in Sydney's south-west in January last year.

Stevanovic was missing for six days before police discovered his dismembered and decomposing body left in the shower of a unit where Lloyd's boyfriend lived.

Former sex worker Kate Lloyd (left), 39, used Aldi shopping bags to help conceal the dead body of father-of-two Goran Stevanovic (right), 40, in January last year. She was sentenced to five years behind bars on Friday

Lloyd was asleep in Pham's unit when Stevanovic came to buy methamphetamine from her boyfriend, the court heard, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Pham allegedly stabbed Stevanovic in the back and the father yelled out 'what have you done?' Judge Gina O'Rourke told the court.

Stevanovic tried to escape the unit but tripped and fell near the entrance before Pham allegedly stabbed him in the chest, causing the knife's blade to snap off.

Lloyd then used Aldi shopping bags to help pick up Stevanovic's body and move it to the shower after Pham allegedly woke her up by calling for help. The couple also allegedly cleaned up the blood with a bucket and broom.

In the days following Stevanovic's death, Lloyd and Pham used the father's car to drive to a methadone clinic.

Pham allegedly cut limbs off of Stevanovic's body and left it to rot in the shower for four days.

Lloyd's boyfriend Khanh Xuan Pham (pictured), 38, allegedly stabbed Stevanovic to death and dismembered his body before leaving it to rot

Pham's mother eventually discovered the corpse 'in an advanced state of decomposition' and called police.

The couple were arrested at Lloyd's Warwick Farm unit on January 13, 2019, 10 hours after Mr Stevanovic's body was found at Pham's unit in nearby Sadleir.

Pham was charged with murder while Lloyd was charged with accessory after the fact to murder.

Chief Superintendent Adam Whyte described the alleged murder as 'brutal' at a police press conference at the time, saying officers used welfare services to cope with the trauma.

'I have never called the police, I have always hated the police,' Lloyd said in court on Thursday, explaining why she did not call authorities.

Lloyd also explained she 'could not dog' her boyfriend but expressed remorse for Stevanovic's death.

Stevanovic's dismembered body was discovered in 'an advanced state of decomposition' in Pham's apartment. Police arrested Lloyd and Pham at her Warwick Farm unit on January 13 last year

Judge O'Rourke said Stevanovic's family were completely heartbroken by his alleged murder and that his two children were fatherless during her sentencing of Lloyd.

Lloyd was sentenced to five years and three months behind bars with a non-parole period of three years and six months.

Since she has already served time, she will be eligible for parole in July 2022.

Lloyd's boyfriend Pham has been charged with murder but is yet to enter a plea.
Trump said Sunday that he could terminate the deal if China did not meet its obligations to increase its purchases of U.S. goods this year by $76.7 billion over the 2017 level. But Chinese imports from the United States have declined in recent months amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has wreaked havoc on economies worldwide, raising doubts about whether Beijing could meet its targets.
Myanmar Election Official Says Nation Will Go to Polls This Year Despite COVID-19
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav



Thackerayon Friday expressed grief over the death of migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh in a train accident in Aurangabad district and announced a financial aid of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

At least 14 migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, who were sleeping on rail tracks, were crushed to death by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in the early hours of Friday.

Two other labourers were injured in the accident.

The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh. They slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion, an official said.

In a statement, Thackerayexpressed grief over the tragedy and said the aid of Rs 5 lakh to each of the families of the deceased will be given from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

He said the cost of medical treatment of the injured would be borne by his government.

Thackeray said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places.

"Arrangements will be made soon. Labourers should not lose patience," he said.

After learning about the tragedy, Thackeray spoke to Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta and railway officials to get details about what happened.

These labourers were employed in a steel manufacturing plant in Jalna, a neighbouring district of Aurangabad in central Maharashtra.

Special shramik trains are being operated from different parts of the state to ferry stranded migrant workers to their native places.

Thackeray appealed to migrant workers not to put their lives at risk and stay at shelter camps till travel arrangements are made for them.

"The state government is in constant touch with the Railway ministry . A train will start from Mumbai, too, soon. I appeal to workers not to put their lives at risk.

"Shelter camps for the stranded workers are being operated by district administration. Arrangements for food and medicine have been made in these camps.

"Don't leave the camps till you are informed about train schedule," Thackeray said in the statement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The simple truth is that no one really knows how the coronavirus pandemic will upend public education in New York  or even what the education funding reality looks like one month after the state budget was approved.

Tax revenues will likely continue to plummet. State budget cuts of historic proportions could happen. The federal government may or may not provide billions in additional stimulus money. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a new effort to reimagine education. Increasing taxes remains a possibility. Despite so much being up in the air, the fiscal picture will become more clear in the coming weeks, even if all this uncertainty takes longer to resolve.

On May 15, the Cuomo administration is expected to detail those deep cuts the governor outlined at the beginning of the month. State lawmakers would then have 10 days to make any legislative changes. Voters will cast exclusively absentee ballots on June 9 to approve local school budgets. If any budgets get rejected, there would be limited time to reconsider those plans since the new fiscal year for schools begins on July 1. Our dilemma is that there is more uncertainty than ever before about how any of this will turn out, said Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium. The new fiscal year is July 1. Were cutting it kind of close.

Big changes are in store for New York public schools whether or not the federal government provides billions in new funding this year. The governor is looking to change the education system as local leaders struggle to balance public health concerns with fiscal realities.

Schools have to maintain social distancing in cramped facilities. They have to figure out how teachers, staff and students are going to get personal protective equipment. Do students need an extra mask after lunch? Distance learning requires new equipment and brings its own logistical challenges. Everything we do about social distancing really amounts to making my schools less efficient, said one suburban school superintendent, on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. Were going to have less money to work with and more costs to deal with.

Localities statewide face $8.2 billion in cuts moving forward compared to the recently approved state budget, according to a budget update released last month by the state Budget Division. The economic damage of the pandemic has caused a 12.4% reduction in tax receipts over the past couple months, and another report said the state could face $243 billion in damages over the next few years. What this will mean for public schools in the coming months will be detailed by the Cuomo administration sometime around May 15 after state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli releases his own update on the states fiscal position.

The state Legislature will have 10 days to counter any cuts proposed by the governor. While some lawmakers want to raise taxes on the ultrawealthy, it remains to be seen how much they would try to overcome resistance from the governor. His popularity has skyrocketed during the pandemic and some lawmakers may think twice before pushing for tax increases of any type during a reelection year.

Some downstate incumbents might lean left to fend off progressive challenges in the June 23 Democratic primary, especially in the Assembly where Speaker Carl Heastie has previously backed tax increases. The political incentives, however, run the other way in the state Senate where suburban swing districts on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley could determine whether or not Democrats win a supermajority in November.

School districts have little time to prepare their budgets that are slated to go before voters on June 9. It remains to be seen whether superintendents will ask voters, many of whom have economic difficulties of their own, to approve property taxes above the statewide cap. Were all trying to balance the needs of our communities against the realities of the economy, the suburban superintendent said.

Legislative leaders said they are holding out hope that federal aid will limit the need for confrontation with the governor. Our first order of business is fighting for this federal aid with the governor, said state Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Shelley Mayer. Without the money, these conversations are almost too dreadful to happen. The governor, state legislative leaders and the entire New York congressional delegation  Republicans and Democrats  are part of a national effort to secure hundreds of billions in new funding for states and local governments. But despite the bipartisan support of the push, key GOP leaders stand in the way.

President Donald Trump and top Republicans have floated several conditions that are anathema to Democrats, from changing sanctuary city policies to shielding private businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made any deal contingent on the inclusion of aid for states, but one of her top deputies, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said May 6 that the chamber will likely not return to Washington, D.C., until a deal is struck.

Even if the federal government comes through with billions of dollars in additional state aid, public schools might only get a piece of it. While the state budget held funding levels officially flat for schools, New York City schools lost $716.9 million in state funding as soon as the city received that same amount of money from the federal government. New York City alone faces an additional $500 million funding cut moving forward. The big takeaway is that high-poverty districts are getting disproportionately impacted by the COVID crisis, Drew Atchison of the American Institutes for Research, told Chalkbeat New York.

State lawmakers and activists have argued for years that the governor is not abiding by a legal requirement to fund a sound basic education for students across the state. The governor has his own way of defining a progressive approach to public education, which just so happens to increase his own power over public education. While the pandemic interrupted his efforts to change education funding earlier this year, he is eying a new opportunity to make his mark on the issue.

The governor appointed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to lead an effort to reimagine how technology could revolutionize an education system that is still modeled on the traditional teacher-student dynamic in a physical classroom. Lets start talking about really revolutionizing education, Cuomo said at one of his recent daily briefings. Its about time. Organized labor, education activists and others have expressed suspicions about the idea of listening to a billionaire philanthropist, considering his private sector tendencies.

Legislative leaders told City & State that they are willing to hear the governor out so long as stakeholders like parents, teachers and local officials are looped in. Im concerned, but (Im) hopeful that all concerned parties will be joined together, said Assembly Education Committee Chairman Michael Benedetto. Well see. That same conclusion applies to the issue of education at large.

If we want to reimagine education, lets start with addressing the need for social workers, mental health counselors, school nurses, enriching arts courses, advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts across the state, New York State United Teachers President Andrew Pallotta said in a statement. Lets recognize educators as the experts they are. In other words, any attempts to disrupt the status quo could inflame longtime political conflicts in state politics.

It all gets very complicated when the local, state and federal governments operate on their own schedules when it comes to funding public schools. The governor and state lawmakers have to begin figuring things out in the second half of May. Local school budgets are being determined the following month. Plans at all levels can be interrupted at any time by the whims of the president and the spread of the coronavirus.

How will the politics surrounding school budgets play out? Experts agree on one thing. Pick your crystal ball, said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of Hofstra Universitys National Center for Suburban Studies. Any analyst who makes predictions has better than a 50-50 chance of looking like an idiot.
Shia LaBeouf has been keeping up his exercise routine as he self-isolates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 33-year-old Transformers actor was seen going on a jog in a blue T-shirt and gray shorts when in the Pasadena neighborhood of Southern California during a heatwave on Friday. He also had on his wedding band from Mia Goth after the two got back together this year.

This comes after the star has been cast in Olivia Wilde's new movie Don't Worry Darling with Florence Pugh and Chris Pine.

Running man: Shia LaBeouf has been keeping up his exercise routine as he self-isolates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 33-year-old Transformers actor was seen going on a jog in a blue T-shirt and gray shorts when in the Pasadena neighborhood of Southern California on Friday

Shia did not opt for the regular running suit that stars favor.

Instead he seemed to put his own twist on exercise gear as he had on a blue T-shirt that looked like it may have been picked up while on vacation and he added gray shorts that appeared to have been cut at home.

White socks and black sneakers rounded out his unfussy look while he added mirrored sunglasses.

He ran in a residential neighborhood with very wide streets.

No adidas: Shia did not opt for the regular running suit that stars favor. Instead he seemed to put his own twist on exercise gear as he had on a blue T-shirt that looked like it may have been picked up while on vacation

His new movie is a psychological thriller 'set in an isolated, utopian community in the 1950s California desert,' according to an April report from Variety.

Shia has been on lockdown in his new $5.475million Pasadena home with wife Goth, 26, amid COVID-19.

The fury actor recently reconciled with estranged wife Goth following the pair's split in 2018.

The Honeyboy actor and Mia were spotted kissing late last month and then stepped out into the public eye donning their wedding bands.

Reconciled: Shia recently reconciled with estranged wife Mia Goth in late March following the pair's split in 2018; the pair pictured in 2014

Rumblings regarding their reconciliation began in January, when Shia was photographed wearing his wedding ring on the red carpet at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

The pair's lengthy and complex relationship began in 2012 when they met on the set of the Lars von Trier film Nymphomaniac.

Shia wed the 26-year-old British actress on October 10 of 2016 in Las Vegas.

He confirmed the marriage during an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show a few weeks later, but Clark County of Nevada claimed the duo had a commitment ceremony and were not legally wed.
Illustration of a quantum radar prototype. Credit:  IST Austria/Philip Krantz

Physicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have invented a new radar prototype that uses quantum entanglement as a method of object detection. This successful integration of quantum mechanics into devices could significantly impact the biomedical and security industries. The research is published in the journal Science Advances.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon whereby two particles remain interconnected, sharing physical traits regardless of how far apart they are from one another. Now, scientists from the research group of Professor Johannes Fink at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) along with collaborators Stefano Pirandola from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of York, UK, and David Vitali from the University of Camerino, Italyhave demonstrated a new type of detection technology called microwave quantum illumination that utilizes entangled microwave photons as a method of detection. The prototype, which is also known as a quantum radar, is able to detect objects in noisy thermal environments where classical radar systems often fail. The technology has potential applications for ultra-low power biomedical imaging and security scanners.

Using quantum entanglement as a new form of detection

The working principles behind the device are simple: Instead of using conventional microwaves, the researchers entangle two groups of photons, which are called the signal and idler photons. The signal photons are sent out towards the object of interest, whilst the idler photons are measured in relative isolation, free from interference and noise. When the signal photons are reflected back, true entanglement between the signal and idler photons is lost, but a small amount of correlation survives, creating a signature or pattern that describes the existence or the absence of the target objectirrespective of the noise within the environment.

"What we have demonstrated is a proof of concept for the microwave quantum radar," says lead author Shabir Barzanjeh, whose previous research helped advance the theoretical notion behind quantum enhanced radar technology. "Using entanglement generated at a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero (-273.14 C), we have been able to detect low reflectivity objects at room-temperature."

Quantum technology can outperform classical low-power radar

While quantum entanglement in itself is fragile in nature, the device has a few advantages over conventional classical radars. For instance, at low power levels, conventional radar systems typically suffer from poor sensitivity as they have trouble distinguishing the radiation reflected by the object from naturally occurring background radiation noise. Quantum illumination offers a solution to this problem as the similarities between the signal and idler photonsgenerated by quantum entanglementmakes it more effective to distinguish the signal photons (received from the object of interest) from the noise generated within the environment.

Barzanjeh, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, says, "The main message behind our research is that quantum radar or quantum microwave illumination is not only possible in theory, but also in practice. When benchmarked against classical low-power detectors in the same conditions, we see that at very low-signal photon numbers, quantum-enhanced detection can be superior."

Throughout history, basic science has been one of the key drivers of innovation, paradigm shift and technological breakthrough. While still a proof of concept, the group's research has effectively demonstrated a new method of detection that, in some cases, may be superior to classical radar.

"Throughout history, proofs of concept, such as the one we have demonstrated here, have often served as prominent milestones toward future technological advancements. It will be interesting to see the future implications of this research, particularly for short-range microwave sensors," says Barzanjeh.

Last author and group leader Professor Johannes Fink says, "This scientific result was only possible by bringing together theoretical and experimental physicists that are driven by the curiosity of how quantum mechanics can help to push the fundamental limits of sensing. But to show an advantage in practical situations, we will also need the help of experienced electrical engineers, and there still remains a lot of work to be done in order to make our result applicable to real-world detection tasks."

Explore further Building a bridge to the quantum world

More information: "Microwave quantum illumination using a digital receiver" Science Advances (2020). Journal information: Science Advances "Microwave quantum illumination using a digital receiver"(2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb0451
Captain America and the Avengers face off with the Eternals ahead of Marvel's Judgment Day

Eternals #10 teases first shot in war between Avengers and the Eternals
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In our COVID-19 world, countless people are grieving after losing a loved one to the virus. Millions are grappling with the loss of their job and the loneliness of physical isolation, not to mention the myriad other disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Mental health experts say we're experiencing a collective trauma, and they're starting to sound the alarm about a far-reaching psychological crisis.

"Our pandemic -- the mental health pandemic -- is mounting," said Dr. Jonathan Sherin, director of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health. "It will grow and it will fester and will far outlast the public health pandemic."

Calls for information and referrals to the Department of Mental Health were up more than 20% in March and April compared with the same months last year. Call volume was already up year-over-year for January and February, but the increase has become more marked since the coronavirus took hold in California and stay-at-home orders were enacted.

"That should be 200%," Sherin said. "There's a lot of people with a lot of needs and we expect that number to grow significantly."

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A USC tracking survey of more than 1,000 people in L.A. County found nearly half are dealing with symptoms of anxiety or depression. That's up from 36% in March.

"What we're experiencing right now is a persistent, chronic, ubiquitous threat that doesn't really have an off switch," said Professor Steven Siegel, chair of USC's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. "That's not a system that we are well evolved for, to live under."

At the same time the virus is causing some people to seek psychiatric help for the first time, the state's prisons and jails are releasing thousands of inmates, many of whom have existing serious mental illness.

Michelle Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California, estimates one-third of people being released from jails qualify for treatment for a serious mental illness or substance abuse disorder.

"We are really concerned that in parallel with the public health emergency we have an emerging and significantly larger behavioral health crisis brewing across the state," Cabrera said.

PROGRESS, AND THEN 'HIT BY A MACK TRUCK'

At the same time experts, advocates and officials are expecting a surge in need for services, an already under-funded mental health system is bracing for funding cuts.

Because the state's mental health safety net is supported in part by taxes -- sales taxes, vehicle license taxes and the millionaires tax -- it's expected to take a big funding hit because of the reeling economy.

Sherin sees a potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, just a few months after a strong economy was fueling more investment in mental health.

"It's very tough to have made so much progress and then to basically get hit by a mack truck," he said.

State Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), chairman of the Select Committee on Mental Health, worries the state won't have the money to deal with the mental health costs arising from the pandemic.

There hasn't been a coordinated response yet to this challenge, he said. "We have no plan."

Beall believes the failure to deal with the mental health challenge will lead to a spike in homelessness and emergency room visits.

"We should look at it as a public health crisis within a crisis," he said.

HOW TO ASK FOR HELP IF YOU (OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW) NEEDS IT:
Juan Figueroa, The Dallas Morning News / Staff Photographer

Remember how Texas was going to go slow in reopening businesses? Well that's over. Gov. Abbott this week said hair salons can open ahead of schedule after conservatives were outraged over the case of one salon owner who was briefly jailed in Dallas for contempt of court.

That's after Abbott earlier said people could be jailed for violating his orders. Join the conversation featuring Scott Braddock, editor of The Quorum Report and Houston Chronicle political writer Jeremy Wallace.
Today, the United Kingdom and all of its constituent parts, including Northern Ireland, will fall silent as we as a nation come together to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Second World War generation, here in Northern Ireland and across the UK, who served in combat and on the home front.

It was a truly extraordinary period in our history and we will reflect and remember today, three-quarters of a century later, in a distinctly different manner to how we otherwise envisaged.

Whilst there will be a national moment of remembrance, there will be no public gatherings, street parties or parades; rather we will mark VE 75 in our homes, virtually and on our doorsteps, due to the coronavirus outbreak.

However, it is important that we come together to mark this historic occasion in our own extraordinary modern-day circumstances.

Indeed, the freedoms we enjoy today, and until very recently took for granted, are because of the heroic actions of those who sacrificed so much on our behalf

This week, I have had the great pleasure of speaking with a number of Northern Ireland veterans about their personal experiences of serving on the front line and at home.

It was immensely humbling to hear their wartime stories, and also gratifying to personally thank them for their bravery and selflessness.

Among them was 96-year-old Ada, who as a teenager joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) starting as a shorthand typist, before moving onto Supply and Transport where she was responsible for dispatch riders and transport.

She said of her service that she felt like she was doing something worthwhile to help the war effort and that it was important work.

As the eldest of four children she spent VE Day caring for her mother and, sadly, paying tribute to her boyfriend who was killed in action on D-Day. Ada was a normal person doing remarkable things like thousands of others from Northern Ireland at that time, both at home and on the front line.

Indeed, the role of the Province at a seminal period in European and world history cannot be underestimated.

Whether it was as a military base for Allied Forces in preparation for the Normandy landings or helping to avert disaster during the Battle of the Atlantic; Northern Ireland's contribution to the war effort was vital.

Yet it also suffered. Belfast was hit by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz, with approximately 1,000 people killed and 100,000 left homeless, because of its shipyard and central role as an engine of wartime production.

A number of our highest ranking service personnel had Ulster connections, including some of Britain's greatest generals like Sir John Dill, and Field Marshal Alan Brooke, both Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the war.

They along with an estimated 38,000 people who volunteered locally, from across all communities, played their part in defeating fascism, restoring liberty for generations to come.

We also rightly recognise those from the Republic of Ireland who volunteered for the British Armed Forces.

A significant number lost their lives on the battlefields and we will never forget their immeasurable contribution to ultimately achieving the landmark we commemorate today.

In these difficult times, acts of remembrance are even more poignant and I am sure that you will want to join me to remember, and give thanks to those from Northern Ireland and further afield, who gave so much to secure peace, freedom and prosperity in Europe.

We thank them all for their service and sacrifice.

Brandon Lewis CBE is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Andhra Pradesh Police took to twitter to dismiss reports of a second leak at the Vizag chemical plant. "Reports of a second leak at LG Polymers premises are false. Maintenance team was repairing the system and some vapour was let out. There is NO second leak," stated the police.

The clarification came after news reports stated that a second leak has occurred at LG Polymers, hours after a styrene gas leak resulted in the death of 11 people and hospitalisation of hundreds. The nearby residential areas and settlements were evacuated.

Reports of a second leak at #LGPolymers premises are false. Maintenance team was repairing the system and some vapour was let out. There is NO second leak. - AP Police (@APPOLICE100) May 7, 2020

The reports stated that a little after midnight on Friday, gas fumes started leaking again at the chemical factory in Visakhapatnam. Reports mentioned that officials asked evacuees to stay away from their homes for a couple of hours.

News agency ANI quoted Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner RK Meena stating that people living beyond a radius of 2 km of the chemical plant need not evacuate. He asked people not to panic.

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Human rights commission sends notice to Andhra govt, Centre

Visakhapatnam Fire Officer Surendra Anand told the news agency around midnight on Friday that gas was still leaking. He said that gas vapours were emitting causing uneasiness in people living around the plant. Anand added that people in a five-kilometre radius were being evacuated.

The government has additionally sent teams from Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) and National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to manage the crisis at the Vizag plant site. The teams will ensure the safety of the local residents and will secure the plant.

Air India also flew a special flight to ferry PTBC (para-tertiary butyl catechol) from Gujarat to Visakhapatnam to neutralise the gas leak.

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Govt asks factories set to reopen to strictly follow safety norms

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Govt sends CBRN, NEERI experts to ensure safety of people, secure site
There are so many sources of news and information about coronavirus, but which ones should you trust to help you stay safe, protect the NHS and save lives?

Coronavirus fraud and misinformation are barriers to the nation continuing the progress it has made toward coming to terms with, and beating, the virus.

We take a look at how you can protect yourself, your friends and your family from being tricked into believing news and information that is not true, or becoming a victim of fraud.

THE VAST majority of the people across the UK have taken the official advice to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.

People are hungry for accurate information about how to protect themselves, but following the official advice and ignoring the swirling mass of uninformed conjecture, opinion and speculation is not always easy.

However, there are ways to identify who to trust, and who to ignore.

Similarly, there are ways to identify the small but persistent group of unscrupulous individuals who have decided that they want to use the pandemic to try to make financial gain through fraud.

There have been a lot of examples of false information and attempts at fraud.

For example, holding your breath for 10 seconds is not a test for coronavirus, gargling water for 15 seconds is not a cure and phone masts cannot cause coronavirus.

There have also been comments and suggestions from people claiming to be medical experts who are simply not.

Fraudsters will use any opportunity - including the current pandemic - to try to trick people out of their money.

There have been examples of fake texts claiming to be sent from the Government alerting people they have received a fine for breaking social distancing rules. Some people and even businesses have been tricked into paying for protective face masks and hand sanitizers from companies that dont exist.

There have also been messages from criminals sending messages to trick people into thinking they are getting genuine offers of financial support from the government.

At the same time hackers are stepping up attempts to access peoples networks and steal their log in details and passwords.

However, if you take sensible precautions, you can quickly spot signs of fraud and identify the facts from the fiction.

Sharing the right information could save lives.

How you can spot false information

Expand Close FALSE FACTS: Check the facts about coronavirus on official websites / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp FALSE FACTS: Check the facts about coronavirus on official websites

When it is shared, false information can take on a life of its own and have some serious consequences.

It can lead to health scares, false accusations and potentially damaging hoax stories. Recently there has been a lot of this kind of false information about coronavirus.

Its not always easy to spot, so use this checklist to cut through the chatter.

Source

Rely on official sources for medical and safety information. Check the facts about coronavirus on official websites.

Headline

Headlines dont always tell the full story. Always read to the end before you share articles about coronavirus.

Analyse

Analyse the facts. If something sounds unbelievable, it very well might be. Independent fact-checking services are correcting false information about coronavirus every day.

Retouched

Watch out for misleading pictures and videos in stories about coronavirus. They might be edited, or show an unrelated place or event.

Errors

Look out for mistakes. Errors might mean the information is false. Official guidance about coronavirus will have been carefully checked.

Verified sources

You can visit the following websites for verified, trusted sources of information that will help you stay safe.

Visit the NHS website at www.nhs.uk

You can also get information via the Public Health England website at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england

For other information regarding the coronavirus restrictions on travel and much more, visit the Government website at www.gov.uk/coronavirus

Journalists are trained to ask right questions

Regional news sites such as this one employ fully qualified journalists who are trained to ask the right questions and share accurate information in a simple and understandable way.

They are at the forefront of providing trusted news and helping you stay safe.

The best source of trusted local news from, and about, your community is through this website and its newspaper.

You can find all the local coronavirus news, updates and information on the website and via our social media channels.

Checklist to help fight cyber fraud

The Government has a checklist to help people protect themselves from cyber fraud:

Take a breath - a moment - before you part with money or personal information. It sounds simple, but this alone could end up preventing fraud from taking place.

Ensure you are using the latest software, apps and operating systems on your phones, tablets and laptops and update them regularly.

And if you get an unexpected or suspicious email or text message, dont click on the attachment or message.

Dont be afraid to challenge messages and messengers. Its okay to refuse or ignore requests for your money or details if you are suspicious - only criminals will try to rush or panic you.

The police and banks will never ask you to withdraw money or transfer it to a different account. Neither will they ask you to reveal your full banking password or PIN.

You can check that requests are genuine by using a known number or email address to contact organisations directly. And if you think you have fallen victim to a scam, then contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud.

You can report suspicious texts by forwarding the original message to 7726, which spells SPAM on your keypad.

Share caution

Be careful what you share, because things are not always what they seem online.

Protect yourself and your family from misinformation and fraud by taking care when online, and use the website sharechecklist.gov.uk
A teenage Princess Elizabeth danced in jubilation on VE Day after slipping into the crowds unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace.

The future Queen, then just 19, and her sister Princess Margaret, 14, joined thousands of revellers as they gathered in front of the royal residence on May 8 1945.

The princesses did the hokey cokey and the Lambeth Walk, and took part in chants of "We want the King" at the Palace railings.

VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London, marking the end of the war in Europe / PA

They also danced the conga through the Ritz Hotel in nearby Piccadilly.

Three-quarters of a century later, Elizabeth, now the Queen and the nation's longest-reigning monarch, will address the nation to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

As part of the official celebrations in 1945, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made eight appearances on the Palace balcony in ten hours - on one occasion accompanied by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Elizabeth and Margaret themselves appeared six times with their parents throughout the day and evening.

Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe / PA

In an unprecedented and spontaneous breach of royal protocol, they also hurried out of the Palace after dinner to join the crowds, accompanied by a group of Guards officers, who were friends of the princesses.

It was Margaret's idea and the King and Queen agreed to the excursion, with the monarch writing in his diary that day of his daughters' lack of social life: "Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet."

Under the cover of darkness, the royal teenagers went unnoticed in the throng.

Jean Woodroffe, one of the Queen's first ladies in waiting, once recalled how Elizabeth delightedly joined in the celebrations.

"What was amusing is that we went into the Ritz Hotel through one door and out of the other door, the other end, doing the conga," Ms Woodroffe told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme in 2006.

"The extraordinary thing was that nobody seemed to take much notice.

Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War / PA

"Then we stood outside Buckingham Palace with the crowd and we all shouted 'We want the King' with everybody else until the King and Queen came out onto the balcony."

Elizabeth, who in February 1945 at the age of 18 had undertaken National Service in the Auxiliary Transport Service, wore her ATS uniform on the day.

She had been registered as No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor and took a driving and vehicle maintenance course at Aldershot, qualifying as a driver.

The Queen, years later, described how she was terrified of being recognised on the streets, "so I pulled my uniform cap well down over my eyes".

She added: "I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, and all of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief."

Margaret described the war years as "black and gloomy", but said VE Day came as a "wonderful sunburst of glory".

The Royal Family had led by example and lifted morale during the conflict.

On the outbreak of hostilities, it had been suggested that Queen Elizabeth and her daughters should be evacuated to the safety of Canada or the United States.

King George VI and the Queen Mother standing amid the bomb damage at Buckingham Palace / PA

But to this she declared: "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave."

Elizabeth and Margaret moved to Windsor Castle during the war, just as the Queen has done amid the coronavirus pandemic.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, slept at Windsor, but won praise for spending their days at Buckingham Palace during the Blitz.

After German bombs fell at the palace, Queen Elizabeth said: "I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the east end in the face."

The east end of London was just one of the badly-hit areas the royal couple visited during the war to show support.

Additional reporting by Press Association
As microplastics continue to fill the world's oceans and rivers, one mysterious yet resourceful insect is using the pollutants to build shelters for itself.

A new study from the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany has revealed how caddis flies use the growing volume of microplastics in their surroundings as a construction material.

Caddis flies are tiny insects that typically live in riverbeds, ponds or streams, and build artificial shells around their bodies by arranging sand particles in complex webs of silk that they spin.

Small water-dwelling insects called caddis flies have been observed building long artificial shells for themselves using microplastics collected from riverbeds

According to the researchers, caddis flies will readily substitute microplastic particles for sand granules to create these long protective shells, which they add to in segments as they mature.

While it may seem like a clever adaptation, the team discovered caddis fly structures made with microplastics are actually weaker than those made with sand particles.

These weaker shells are easier for predators to break through and fall apart more readily when shifts in water currents or large ripples sweep through the environment.

According to the team, this was likely due to the fact that the plastic particles are lighter and softer than sand particles, which makes them more susceptible to external manipulation.

Microplastics also expose the caddis flies to toxic chemicals as they draw fresh water in through their shells as part of their respiration process.

Caddis flies typically build these shells with small but hard particles of sand and a sticky silk webbing that's much more stable than the shells made from microplastics

Caddis flies are an important part of river ecosystems, helping to keep riverbeds from overgrowing with grasses, while providing a food source for other animals, like bats, spiders, and frogs

'They are creating water flow inside the case so the water passes their gills,' the University of Koblenz-Landau's Sonja Ehlers told Wired.

'And so if there's plastic incorporated, then of course those leachates could also reach the gills maybe and do some harm.'

While caddis flies are small they're not insignificant. They play an important role in river ecosystems by feeding on plants and grasses on riverbeds, which keep them from becoming overgrown.

They're also important prey for a number of other animals, including bats, frogs, and spiders, who might be exposed to toxic plastic material after eating caddis flies.

The researchers believed the plastic shells in part because the micriplastic particles are lighter and more flexible than sand particles, which makes them easier to pull apart and stretch in water currents, tearing holes in the underlying silk that holds them together

Caddis flies continue to add to their shells in segments as they grow from larvae to mature insects, something which microplastics make easier to see with different colored plastic particles

Microplastics have become a growing environmental concern as more plastic waste ends up in the world's oceans and rivers each year.

A recent study found there are nearly 2 million pieces of microplastic debris every 10 square feet of ocean in the world.

Scientists also recently discovered microplastics in Antarctic sea ice for the first time ever, giving an indication of how far plastic waste from the western world travels after its thrown away.
Over four decades ago, Thomas Gilbert was sent to prison after a jury convicted him of murdering a tourist during a robbery in North Miami Beach. Another prison inmate, a few years later, sent prosecutors a letter confessing that he, not Gilbert, was the actual killer.

Police detectives launched a second investigation, but ultimately prosecutors decided there wasnt enough evidence to free Gilbert and charge the other man.

Gilbert remains in prison serving a life term, and now the Innocence Project of Florida is reviving the case, asking a judge to grant a new trial. The Innocence Project this week filed a motion saying the second police investigation, as well as an interview last year with another man believed to be involved in the robbery, raises serious concerns about the validity of Mr. Gilberts convictions.

The Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office said it has reviewed the motion and that prosecutors are in the process of preparing a response for the court. No hearing date has been set.

The Innocence Project of Florida is a well-known nonprofit organization that works to free people wrongly convicted of crimes. It brought the case to prosecutors earlier this year. The State Attorneys Office said it has been reviewing the case through its Justice Project.

Gilbert is now 67 years old, imprisoned at Jackson Correctional Institution in the Florida Panhandle. Some of the key witnesses have now died, including Allen Hicks, the former inmate who at one point claimed to be the real killer, as well as the surviving victim who identified Gilbert as one of the robbers during his trial.

Gilbert has tasted freedom before.

He was released on parole in the early 1990s  it was not unusual in Florida at the time for people convicted of murder to serve less than two decades behind bars. But he picked up two more arrests: a drug possession in Bay County, and a burglary in Georgia. Gilbert has been back in prison since 1993, and lost several appeals, records show. (He was also convicted in the early 1980s of roughing up a prison guard during a cell search.)

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The murder happened on Oct. 25, 1973. The case was not high-profile at the time, eliciting only a short write-up by legendary Miami Herald crime writer Edna Buchanan.

William Willits, 58, and his wife, Eleanor, were staying at the Ocean Shore Motel in North Miami Beach. The were returning from picking up a pizza when two robbers approached them in the motel breezeway. One of the men took a wedding ring from Eleanor, then the pair tried to force the couple to take them to their room.

In the confusion, a gunshot ran out and William Willits was mortally wounded. The robbers also took off with a white-gold chain, a tan purse, the slain mans wallet, a pocket watch and American Express travelers check. A Miami Herald story from 1973 described the couple as grandparents from Chesapeake, Virginia.

A Miami Herald article from 1977 detailing the murder of William Willits at a North Miami Beach motel.

A few days after the killing, North Miami Beach police arrested Gilbert and a man named William Watson for an unrelated but similar robbery.

In an interview with police, Gilbert said he thought hed been in a pool hall on the night of the murder. Watson, who was wearing a chain similar to one stolen in the robbery, refused to speak to police.

The evidence against Watson was always solid. Eleanor Willits identified him through a photo lineup, and his fingerprint was found on the pizza box  one of the robbers had thrown it at the couple.

The chief evidence against Gilbert was Eleanor Willits identification of him as the second robber, which the Innocence Project now says was mistaken. A jury convicted Gilbert of second-degree murder in 1974 after a three-day trial. He was sentenced to life. Watson was also sentenced after a separate trial.

The case took a twist when in 1977, Hicks  who was in prison alongside Gilbert but on an unrelated crime  wrote a letter to the case prosecutor confessing to his involvement, according to the motion filed by Innocence Project lawyers Seth Miller and Krista Dolan.

The state was piqued enough that it launched another investigation into Hicks, who allegedly also confessed to several other inmates and also to one of Gilberts post-trial lawyers. During that 1977 investigation, a detective took Hicks to the motel, and he pointed out many details of the crime, including where the shooting happened, according to a police report.

But whether Hicks would have testified back then remains unclear. He gave a sworn statement to police. In talking with Gilberts former defense lawyer, in a tape-recorded statement, Hicks hedged on whether hed done the crime, said hed confessed under duress and possibly there is another Allen Hicks who is involved and not he, according to a police report.

Gilberts former lawyer, Thomas Daniel, also told police that Hicks said he felt pressured into a con or a rough deal and that it was not uncommon for inmates to come forward and confess to anothers crimes, even if it wasnt always true.

Watson, when interviewed by police and a prosecutor, eventually admitted that Hicks was his partner that night, according to the 1977 police report. But he refused to testify to clear Gilberts name, saying he would never fully incriminate himself not much matter how much time has passed, the police report said.

Watson has since died in prison.

The 1977 state investigation also led to interviews with many witnesses who were unknown to police and prosecutors at the time of the trial, including a man named Bill Hearns, who allegedly gave the gun to Hicks and Watson prior to the murder, according to the Innocence Project. But in 1977, even when offered immunity by state prosecutors to testify, Hearns denied even knowing Watson or Hicks.

The Dade County State Attorneys Office ultimately decided there was not enough evidence to charge Hicks and release Gilbert. Hicks too has since died.

Decades later, in January 2019, Hearns changed his story, according to the Innocence Project. He told a project investigator that while in the Dade County Jail, Watson admitted that he and Hicks had robbed and murdered a man in Miami Beach in 1973 or 1974. Hicks, he allegedly claimed, also confessed to him while behind bars.

Hearns admitted that while he did not know Thomas Gilbert, he knew that Gilbert was innocent, the motion said.

Hearns, however, has yet to tell his story to police or prosecutors.
Graduating seniors are receiving their caps and gowns but, because of social distancing restrictions, wont get the chance to share some of the words of wisdom students often share on their mortarboards. The Journal-Courier is inviting students to share them with readers. Photos can be sent to jjceditor@myjournalcourier.com.
JACKSON, MI  Like in its neighboring counties, Jackson County has seen its fair share of COVID-19 news this week.

But, aside from the increasing number of positive COVID-19 cases being confirmed throughout the week, there were other stories reported about the Jackson County community.

From the newest generation of Jacksons falcons being hatched and in need of names to a group of teens being injures in a rollover crash in Springport Township, a lot has been going on in the Jackson area.

Here are some you might have missed this week.

Its time to name Jacksons new peregrine falcons, and we need your help

There are five new fluffy peregrine falcon chicks in downtown Jackson, and they need names.

Jackson County and Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials are allowing MLive/Jackson Citizen Patriot readers to nominate and vote on names for the falcons.

4 teens injured in rollover crash, charges sought against teen driver

Charges are being sought against an unlicensed teen driver accused of recklessly driving a pickup truck that left the roadway and overturned Wednesday evening in Springport Township.

The driver and three teen passengers were injured in the crash, police said.

EPA gives Jackson County $300,000 to assess brownfields, including site with PFAS

The Environmental Protection Agency this week gave Jackson County money to assess potentially hazardous sites.

The $300,000 Brownfields Assessment Grant will be used to conduct environmental surveys of 16 sites in Jackson County. The money will also be used to encourage community engagement and resuse planning activities, said U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, in a news release.

Brownfields are properties that potentially have hazardous materials, pollutants or contaminants on site, which makes redeveloping the land more difficult.

Jackson leaders couldnt honor fallen law enforcement officers in person, so they made a video

The annual Jackson Law Enforcement Memorial was supposed to happen on Wednesday, May 6.

But due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, officials had to rethink their approach. A video solved the problem.

$200,000 grant creates fund for Jackson County small businesses in need during coronavirus outbreak

Stemming from a gift of the Consumers Energy Foundation, a $200,000 grant program has been created to help small businesses in Jackson County struggling to survive during the coronavirus outbreak.

As part of the Consumers Energy Foundations $1.8 million gift to organizations throughout Michigan, the charity announced Wednesday, May 6, it gifted $200,000 to the Jackson Community Foundation and the Enterprise Group of Jackson to create grants for small businesses affected by the pandemic.

Appeal denied for man convicted of killing teens trespassing on property

A Springport man sent to prison for killing two teens trespassing on his property during an apparent crime spree wont get a new trial.

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Thursday, April 30, the conviction of Tracy Lawrence who was found guilty of the murder of Hunter Lentz and Matthew McMillen, both 18. The pair were shot and killed on June 8, 2016 on his property off Town Road in Springport Township.

Lawrence, 57, was sentenced, Sept. 19, 2018, to serve 19 to 40 years on two counts of second-degree murder and one count of felony firearms, more than two years after the pairs deaths.

Jackson consolidates, reduces bus routes due to coronavirus pandemic

Bus routes in Jackson have been condensed and reduced during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Jackson Area Transportation Authority started the changes Monday, May 4 and they run through May 30.

Jackson College recognizes employees with outstanding faculty awards

Jackson College employees may not be on campus right now, but that didnt stop four of them from receiving annual outstanding faculty awards.

The 2020 Outstanding Awards were presented virtually to Tom McMillen-Oakley, Vincent Maltese, Kelly Crum and Jonathan Ponagai.

Man wanted on felony warrants, questioning in homicide case, arrested

A Jackson man wanted on several felony warrants, as well as questioning in a homicide case outside Jackson County, was arrested Tuesday evening after being spotted by a patrolling deputy.

Police declined to specify what homicide case he was wanted for questioning in, as it is an ongoing investigation, but stated it was a homicide outside of Jackson County.

Employee furloughs save Jackson County $200,000

Furloughed employees will save Jackson County about $200,000 in May.

The Jackson County Board of Commissioners approved furloughs at its virtual meeting April 21. The furloughs will run at least until May 31.

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak have resulted in revenue losses of about $500,000 through April 30, per county documents. County officials expect the losses to continue as long as the states stay-at-home order is in effect.

Jackson woman talks baby supplies with Kelly Ripa, Ryan Seacrest on live television

A Jackson woman whos collected and donated thousands of baby supplies appeared on Live with Kelly and Ryan on Monday, May 4.

Salena Taylor discussed the donations her organization, Partial to Girls, has made to Jackson County families.

Partial to Girls has donated more than 80,000 diapers and thousands of cans of baby formula. Taylor said she started with 20 cans of baby formula in her living room when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
South Africa: President Ramaphosa grants parole of sentenced offenders

President Cyril Ramaphosa has authorised the placement on parole of selected categories of sentenced offenders as a measure to combat the spread of COVID-19 in correctional facilities, which are considered high-risk areas of infection.

In a statement issued by the Presidency on Friday, the President has taken this step in response to a call by the United Nations to all countries to reduce prison populations so that social distancing and self-isolation conditions can be observed during this period.

In South Africa, as in many other countries, correctional facilities have witnessed outbreaks of Coronavirus infections among inmates and personnel. A number of countries across the world have already heeded the call by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and have released a number of offenders in detention, the Presidency said.

The President has taken this decision in terms of Section 82(1)(a) of the Correctional Services Act of 1998 which empowers the President to authorise at any time the placement on correctional supervision or parole of any sentenced prisoner, subject to conditions that may be recommended by the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board.

The Presidency said that the decision taken by the President to combat the spread of COVID-19 in correctional centres could relieve the countrys correctional services facilities of just under 19 000 inmates out of a population of 155 000.

Parole applies to low-risk inmates

The Presidency noted that the parole dispensation will apply to low-risk inmates who have passed their minimum detention period or will approach this period in the coming five years.

This dispensation excludes inmates sentenced to life imprisonment or serving terms for specified other serious crimes, including sexual offences, murder and attempted murder, gender based violence and child abuse.

Inmates that will be affected by this decision will be placed on parole instead of having their sentences remitted. They will therefore continue to serve their sentence under Community Corrections until they reach their respective sentence expiry dates, the Presidency explained.

It also warned that offenders may be arrested and ultimately reincarcerated if they violate their release conditions.

The placement of qualifying sentenced offenders will take place over a 10-week period and will commence as soon as all Parole Board processes have been finalised, and all relevant rehabilitation and pre-release programmes are attended.

Justice Minister, Ronald Lamola will in due course provide more details on the parole placement programme in a public briefing, the Presidency said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

Trend:

Our experience in the fight against coronavirus in Azerbaijan is the most progressive and humane, said Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev while making a speech at the opening of the first modular hospital complex in Baku, Trend reports.

We are marking the opening of a new hospital of a modular type. This is a very significant event. The opening of any hospital is a significant event. If we consider the fact that more than 700 healthcare facilities have been built or refurbished in our country over the past 16 years, it is easy to imagine the scope of what has been done. We believe that the already existing hospitals, especially the modern ones, will provide our needs for many years. However, the coronavirus pandemic certainly dictates its own rules, so the construction of new hospitals is inevitable. Of course, the construction of hospitals takes a lot of time  design work, the technical side, the choice of location. I believe that by giving preference to new technologies, we made the right choice, of course  we ensured the construction of modular hospitals which can be quickly assembled, disassembled and moved to another place. I recently informed the public about this, and today we are celebrating the opening of such a hospital, said President Ilham Aliyev.

The head of state noted that in a matter of one month, a hospital with 200 beds has been commissioned.

Of course, this hospital and the hospitals that will be built in the future will play a major role in the fight against coronavirus. There are plans to build 10 such hospitals in various regions of our country. Of course, the increase in the number of beds plays a special role in the fight against coronavirus for each country. Currently, we see the experience of some developed countries. We see that due to the lack of beds, patients cannot receive treatment in a timely manner there. Many people infected with coronavirus are not hospitalized at all and stay at home. Of course, it is impossible to treat them and monitor their condition at home. I believe that our experience in the fight against coronavirus in Azerbaijan is the most progressive and humane because all our patients are placed in hospitals where doctors take care of them day and night, said President Ilham Aliyev.

The head of state noted that the construction of new hospitals, of course, is designed for the future because the hospitals available now provide for our needs.

More than 20 state hospitals, including the newest and most modern Yeni klinika hospital with 575 beds, have been made available for the treatment of coronavirus patients. Patients undergo treatment there now. This is the right step for the future because no-one knows how long the pandemic will last. No-one knows its further stages. Therefore, we must be fully prepared, said President Ilham Aliyev.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:11:45|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, May 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad met with Pakistani army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday about the Afghan peace process, the Pakistan military said in a short statement.

Bajwa reiterated that supports towards the peace process is a manifestation of a goodwill towards the cause, the statement by the Inter-Services Public Relation said, adding that the U.S. official appreciated Pakistan's continuous efforts for peace and stability in the region.

Khalilzad arrived in Pakistan on Friday after he met the Taliban political representatives in Qatar on Wednesday and his visit to India on Thursday.

Pakistan said on Thursday that the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement has value in terms of its symbolism and substance for Afghanistan, the region and beyond.

It is Khalilzad's second visit to Pakistan in nearly three weeks amid a stalemate in the peace process. Enditem
Simon Institute to host former U.N. and Swedish diplomat in virtual talk next week

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Former United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson will participate in a virtual discussion next week hosted by Southern Illinois University Carbondales Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.

Eliasson will join the virtual conversation from Stockholm, Sweden and share his insights on Swedens response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the response to the crisis by other European nations and the international community. The online event begins at 10 a.m. Thursday, May 14.

The free event is open to the public but registration is required and closes when the event starts.

Continuing series of conversations

The discussion with Eliasson is part of the Institutes series called Understanding Our New World with historians, political analysts, and state and national leaders discussing how the pandemic is reshaping the world.

The Institute will host conversations with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at 10 a.m. June 4 and with former U.S. deputy secretary of state and U.S. Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns at 1 p.m., June 18. Burns is now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Diplomatic career spans more than five decades

An internationally respected diplomat, Eliasson served as Swedens Ambassador to the United Nations and later as his countrys Ambassador to the United States. He is an experienced mediator and has worked to resolve conflicts between Iran and Iraq and in Darfur, Sudan. Eliasson was elected President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 60 th session in 2005-2006. He served as U.N. Deputy Secretary-General from 2012 to 2017 and has been the chairman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute since 2017.

Ambassador Jan Eliasson is one of the most respected diplomats in the world, John T. Shaw, Institute director said. He has held positions at the highest level of Swedish and international diplomacy and has been consistently successful. The ambassador has a deep understanding of the United States and of the United Nations. Its difficult to imagine anyone who is better equipped to assess how the international community has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Registration open for Eliassons conversation

Registration for the free ZOOM meeting is available in advance. After completing registration, participants will receive an email confirmation with information about joining the meeting, along with the meeting ID and password.

Participants have an opportunity when they register to submit a question to Eliasson by email at paulsimoninstitute@siu.edu or by including it in the Questions and Comments section on the registration form.
* Coronavirus pandemic brings upheaval to food supply chains

* Farms seek buyers online to avoid destroying crops

* Without migrants, farmers hire furloughed factory workers

* Pasta, flour makers work overtime to keep shops supplied

By Gus Trompiz, Sybille de La Hamaide and Christopher Walljasper

PARIS/CHICAGO, May 7 (Reuters) - From Europe to Asia and across the Americas, farmers and others in the global food supply chain are innovating to keep the world fed when populations are told to stay home, street markets are closed and labourers cannot travel to work in the fields.

Didier Lenoble has gone online to sell vegetables grown on his farm near Paris as the usual street stalls he supplies are temporarily shut because of the coronavirus crisis.

"It's a whole new business," said Lenoble, whose family-run farm has been selling to customers via a new website.

Elsewhere, an Indian farming cooperative is delivering direct to city dwellers as a lockdown closed its usual distribution channels and a Mexican supplier to U.S. berry giant Driscoll's has hired furloughed factory workers to pick produce.

The coronavirus pandemic has put a huge strain on the complex chains that usually bring food to people's tables, forcing suppliers to adjust their normal routines to cope with snags to harvesting, transport and distribution.

The crisis has exposed the world's reliance on international trade and on a vast number of seasonal workers who usually travel from farm to farm, often crossing borders, to help gather in produce as it ripens.

Parts of the chain are creaking. The closure of processing plants due to coronavirus outbreaks has threatened U.S. meat supply, while some farmers have left crops to wither in the fields as labourers cannot reach them.

But many farms and firms are adapting quickly.

Lenoble's website has helped him restore sales volumes to about half their normal level, saving part of his lettuce and radish crop from being destroyed.

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Rungis wholesale centre south of Paris, Europe's biggest food market, launched an online service that made 250 home deliveries a month ago and now makes 6,500 a week in and around the French capital.

'ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN'

India's Sahyadri Farms, a cooperative in the western state of Maharashtra that processes fruit and vegetables for export, now makes daily deliveries to 3,000 urban consumers, who order online, after a nationwide lockdown disrupted supply chains and left some farmers feeding their crops to cattle.

"As we are eliminating middlemen in the distribution chain, both farmers and consumers are happy," said Sahyadri Chairman Vilas Shinde.

In the United States, restaurant owners and suppliers are taking a new approach. Chicago-based restaurant Park and Field sells grocery and meal boxes to households, while Gunthorp Farms in Lagrange, Indiana is selling chicken that was once bound for high-end Chicago restaurants direct to consumers.

For some suppliers, the challenge has been keeping up with demand for staples such as eggs, flour and pasta, which have flown off supermarket shelves as people stock up to eat at home.

Pasta and flour makers in North America and Europe are running some production lines round the clock and have reduced their ranges to maximise volumes.

Other suppliers are turning to new pools of workers.

U.S. berry distributor Driscoll's has taken on laid-off restaurant and hotel employees at its U.S. distribution warehouses to work as forklift drivers and quality assurance inspectors, the firm's president, Soren Bjorn, said.

Green Gold Farms in Mexico, a supplier to Driscoll's, has hired factory workers like Omar Cortes Arteaga, who was furloughed from an automotive plant. He works at Green Gold's berry farm in Jalisco state, where labourers wear masks and have temperature checks before going into the fields.

"The job is helping me with my bills," said the maintenance technician. "Here I do chores, carry pots, prune plants."

NEW RECRUITS

Finding seasonal workers is a priority in Europe, where spring harvests are at risk because the usually vast armies of migrant labourers cannot leave home.

Spanish asparagus grower Jaime Urbina cannot turn to an eastern European workforce as he usually does. "They are stuck in their countries because the borders are closed," he said.

Spain, the European Union's biggest fruit and vegetable exporter, has responded by allowing the unemployed to take farm jobs while keeping welfare payments, and has extended work permits for those migrants already in the country.

France has mobilised 15,000 French workers idled by the crisis so far to help offset a potential shortfall of 200,000 foreign labourers this spring.

"It's positive for farming because these are profiles that are not usually drawn towards seasonal work," said Jean-Baptiste Vervy, head of Wizifarm, a start-up behind a job-matching website that took off in the lockdown with government backing.

But he said some farmers were frustrated that the new recruits lacked skills or had quickly quit.

Poland, meanwhile, is struggling without Ukrainian seasonal labourers and the Russian Agriculture Ministry said prisoners might help out on farms in the absence of Central Asian workers.

Germany, Britain and Ireland are allowing companies to bring in trained workers from Romania and other European Union states on charter flights with quarantine measures.

U.S. President Donald Trump has exempted such migrants from a temporary curb on immigration during the crisis.

Elsewhere, Nigeria's federal government is making identity cards so farm workers can move freely during a national lockdown after many were stopped by police.

Iraq's Agriculture Ministry said farm workers were exempted from curfew measures and farmers were allowed to move harvesting machinery around the country.

To keep transport links running smoothly, Brazilian toll-road operator CCR SA has distributed more than 1,000 food and hygiene kits a day to truck drivers as service outlets are closed.

In Kenya, Rubi Ranch has been sending avocados to Europe by ship due to limited air freight capacity, as airlines have grounded aircraft and cut off the company's usual supply route.

(Reporting by Gus Trompiz, Sybille de La Hamaide and Lucien Libert in Paris, Christopher Walljasper and Tom Polansek in Chicago, Anthony Esposito in Zapotlan el Grande, Mexico, Ana Mano in Sao Paulo, Nigel Hunt in London, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Sonya Dowsett and Juan Medina in Madrid, Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw, Polina Devitt in Moscow, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty, Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai, Maha El Dahan in Dubai, Libby George in Lagos, Duncan Miriri in Nairobi; Writing by Gus Trompiz; Editing by Veronica Brown and Edmund Blair)
Gov. Polis announced the launch of a new new map of community-based, coronavirus testing sites in Colorado during a press conference on Monday.
They dont get the attention national and state politicians get, but the 12 people on the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners have a big say on how local government runs and how much it costs residents who live here.

Six of the council's 12 seats are on the ballot this year, and only person  District 12 Commissioner Dan Callahan  is unopposed in the primary or general election.

Longtime District 3 Commissioner John Morgan is not running again and two are seeking that seat  Hattie Thatcher and Mike Maesar. District 8 Commissioner Brendan McDonough is running for chief executive this year, and two are seeking his seat  John Riordan and Norma Duffy.

District 6 Commissioner Jim Fisher is running for a third four-year term and is being challenged by Mary Booth. But in all of those races, both candidates will advance past the June 2 primary to the general election in November.

But two races have three candidates each, and in those, only the top-two vote-getters on June 2 will advance to November.

In a largely rural District 5, incumbent Dan Olsen faces Justin Fortune and Brian Wilkins.

In District 4, Commissioner John Sorich is seeking his third consecutive term and fifth overall. He served from 2000 to 2008 and did not run again that year. Terry Schultz won in 2008 and Sorich defeated him in 2012, getting 51 percent of the vote.

He beat Schultz again in 2016 with 55 percent of the vote. Schultz is running again this year, as is Matt Moore, a professional engineer who used to oversee the countys metro sewer and storm-water system.

The district covers a section of northeast Butte from Shields Avenue and Farrell Street to the north and east, Texas and Carolina avenues to the west and Marcia and Hecla streets to the south.

Here is a look at the candidates in District 4:

Matt Moore

Moore, a professional engineer who is a manufacturing manager at Headframe Spirits, is making his first bid for public office and says everybody should be running for something.

People need to get involved and now that Im no longer employed by the county, I can get involved, Moore said.

Moore, 39, took on many projects within the countys Public Works Department and oversaw the county sewer and storm-water system for four years, including treatment, construction, maintenance and permitting. He took the Headframe Spirits job in late 2018.

His time with the county is a reason hes running.

I realized how critically important these local positions are to what dollars get spent where in our community, he said. Its not the federal government, its not the state government, it is the local government that directs considerable funds to the things that impact us directly.

Those include health services, roads, water, sewer and fire and police protection, he said.

Moore says county government provides services and residents deserve to know in detail how each department is spending public dollars, down to how many potholes it is filling. They used to do that at Public Works, he said.

It is critically important and I dont see that happening very well, Moore said.

Moore said the council should wield more of its true authority sometimes to hold the chief executive accountable, including weighing in on his or her choices for department heads.

And the countys hiring practices should ensure the most qualified candidates get the jobs.

We cant seem to get past cronyism and it has got to stop, he said.

In District 4, Moore said more resources are needed to address atrocious storm-water problems and make other infrastructure improvements.

He was sad to see the long-vacant Greeley School torn down this year by a local environmental firm that owned it, but he would like to see the space used for new affordable housing. Thats important throughout Butte but especially in District 4, he said.

You have a lot of low-income residents living here so affordable housing would be beneficial, Moore said.

Terry Schultz

Schultz hopes a third run against Sorich is a charm and he can win back the seat he held from 2008 to 2012.

I think the people can see that if we keep doing things the same way, we cant expect different results, said Schultz, 65, who used to operate Unique Cleaners on Main Street but is retired now.

Schultz said when he was a commissioner, he helped secure a federal grant to study the district and make recommendations to restore its neighborhoods. They included storm-water and air-quality improvements and new sidewalks and curbing.

None have been made, Schultz said.

Not only is that a disservice to the people who live in the district, it lowers the appeal for anybody who would want to move in, he said. I would target those things that are doable immediately and get them into the county budget.

Schultz said he would look for state and federal dollars to help make more improvements over the long haul.

Schultz said he's concerned about the local tax burden and county officials using catch phrases such as bonding and fees instead of taxing.

You can call it whatever you want but if your tax bill goes from $100 to $130, that is a tax increase, he said.

Local taxes are getting so high, seniors on fixed incomes  and there are many of them in the district  cant afford to stay in their own homes, he said.

Voters approved a $7.2 million bond to fund most of Buttes new water park, but Schultz said county officials helped sell a project that went far beyond what many people wanted initially  a plain old pool.

The money would have been better spent on fire trucks, sidewalks and other things beneficial year-round, he said, instead of a shiny object that we can only use 60 days out of the year.

Schultz said money from the new, higher road maintenance fees should be spent on the districts they came from, vacant buildings like the Greeley School should be repurposed instead of getting torn down and the district needs more green spaces for kids to play.

John Sorich

Sorich says his approach as a commissioner is seeking compromise, not confrontation, because it pays off more.

I believe we need to work as a team to get things done and I believe I have worked as a team member with the rest of the commissioners and the executive staff, he said. I believe we get more done with honey than with vinegar.

Sorich, 57, said public safety has always been a top priority of his and noted that commissioners allotted nearly $1.5 million last year to provide new portable radios for police and firefighters and to make other communication upgrades vital to their jobs.

As both a commissioner and resident, Sorich got a Racetrack neighborhood watch program that now has 165 members.

The county will likely face new budget challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Sorich said Butte-Silver Bow has been a leader in keeping its residents safe. Still, he said, local government should do what it can to help local businesses survive.

Sorich says he wants to see the consent decree mine pollution cleanup plan move forward. There has been considerable public comment, he said, the countys Superfund team is very knowledgeable and intelligent and numerous engineers and professionals back the plan.

Concerns have been raised in the district about air quality, and Montana Resources and state officials have been monitoring and studying the situation. New findings were expected soon, he said.

Sorich says he has been doing a lot of walking in the neighborhood lately.

One thing I have seen is that I think we can do better as citizens in cleaning up our own properties and taking ownership of the neighborhood, he said.

But he planned to explore ways of tapping into the community service program overseen by the Butte City Court for work cleaning up side streets and vacant lots.

He also said there are many great things about Butte and local officials need to talk about them more.

We have great people, we have good employees at Butte-Silver Bow, we have outdoor recreation and a trail system, we have affordable housing," Sorich said. And I believe we have a lot of good things on the horizon.

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While the deadly coronavirus has affected nearly 212 countries and territories globally, Europes wealthiest man, Bernard Arnault, who is the owner of Louis Vuitton (LVMH), has lost more money than anyone in the world. According to an international media outlet, Arnaults wealth has plunged as the LVMH shares are down 19 per cent this year. His worth has reportedly shrunk by more than $30 million.

Arnault has been fighting to keep a blockbuster acquisition and a couple of pharaonic real estate projects on track. He has also been holding video calls with deputies as they prepare to reopen factories and boutiques in a virus-shaken world. While speaking to an international media outlet, Mario Ortelli, founding partner of Ortelli & Co. in London, said that the tycoon has been putting himself in a position to keep taking share once the market gets back to growth.

READ: California Crews Battle Wildfire And Coroanvirus

According to the media outlet, Arnaults flagship Louis Vuitton brand is estimated by analysts to have a profit margin as high as 45 per cent. Whether people buy a Fendi bag or Bulgari watch, Arnaults wealth is still, however, being fuelled. Although with majority of countries under lockdown and strict social distancing his fashion boutiques around the world have been shut for more than a month now, leading to billions in missed revenue in his most profitable division.

Perfect storm

Amid the ongoing crisis, Arnault is reportedly on the hook to pay $16 billion for Tiffany & Co. in what was billed as the luxury industrys biggest-ever acquisition. Louis Vuitton has also pushed back at any suggestion that it would walk away from the deal or renegotiate the price after the US jewellers business similarly stalled. Ortelli reportedly said that the COVID-19 outbreak is a perfect storm for luxury. He added that the pandemic has led to the contraction in GDP along with an increase in uncertainty.

READ: Indian-origin Doctors Die Due To COVID-19 In New Jersey, Governor Offers Condolences

Even though Arnaults worth has shrunk drastically, the LVMH is reportedly still sticking to its plan to reopen the Samaritaine department store in Paris as a duty-free shopping hub and luxury hotel. The construction has also resumed with the $1 billion dollar project. Furthermore, the company also plans to build a Cheval Blanc luxury hotel on Los Angeles Rodeo Drive. As per reports, LVMH is close to hitting its steepest-ever decline and it is also expected that Arnault could make deep cuts.

(Image: @jysinvestments/Twitter)

READ: From Baroda To White House: Human Trafficking Survivor's Journey Leaves People Teary-eyed

READ: UK Plans modest Change To Covid-19 Lockdown Rules

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The hot tub market is expected to grow by USD 739.54 million during 2020-2024. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact can be expected to be significant in the first quarter but gradually lessen in subsequent quarters with a limited impact on the full-year economic growth, according to the latest market research report by Technavio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005011/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Hot Tub Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Request challenges and opportunities that influence COVID-19 pandemic Request a free sample report of the hot tub market

Vendors in the market are focusing on integrating new and technologically advanced features in bath tubs to attract customers. The introduction of innovative products is also crucial for vendors to gain an advantage over their competitors. For example, some of the new products launched in the market have built-in wireless technologies that provide alerts about the maintenance of the spa and other related equipment through a smartphone app. Similarly, some vendors are furnishing their products with energy-efficient features that enable users to monitor and control temperature levels. Such product innovations are attracting consumer interest, which is driving the growth of the global hot tub market.

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=IRTNTR43040

As per Technavio, the availability of customization in hot tubs will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other significant trends and market drivers that will influence market growth over 2020-2024.

Hot Tub Market: Availability of Customization in Hot Tubs

The rising demand for custom-made hot tubs has encouraged several vendors to offer customization in terms of design, shape, and size or other features based on customer requirements. For example, specialty lighting, waterfalls, built-in illuminated jets, infinity edges, drink holders, seating configurations, acrylic or glass sides, and type of tile are some of the customization options offered by vendors to attract customers. This growing trend will have a positive impact on the global hot tub market during the forecast period.

"Advent of multifunctional hot tubs and the growing tourism and hospitality industry will further boost market growth during the forecast period", says a senior analyst at Technavio.

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Hot Tub Market: Segmentation Analysis

This market research report segments the hot tub market by product (above-ground hot tubs, portable hot tubs, and in-ground hot tubs), end-user (residential users and commercial users), distribution channel (offline and online), and geography (Europe, North America, APAC, South America, and MEA).

The Europe region led the hot tub market in 2019, followed by North America, APAC, South America, and MEA respectively. During the forecast period, Europe is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to the rise in the working population and an increase in consumer expenditure in the region.

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report

Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

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/20200508005011/en/

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YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. The air parade dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War will kick off from Gyumri at 11:00, according to preliminary arrangements, press secretary of the Defense Ministry of Armenia Shushan Stepanyan told ARMENPRESS.

Its scheduled for 11:00, but it depends on weather conditions. The air parade will kick off from Gyumri. It will be aired Live on Public TV, she said.

The airplanes of the Russian military base will also participate in the air parade.

Reporting by Karen Khachatryan, Editing and translating by Tigran Sirekanyan
The report was supposed to come out last Friday, but then the White House told the C.D.C. scientists that the guidance would never see the light of day. [imitating Trump] No, because its damaging to me politically. Plus, if you want to fight coronavirus, we all know that light of day has to go inside of you.  STEPHEN COLBERT

Thats right  the C.D.C. wrote a plan for safely reopening the economy and the Trump administration covered it up. Basically, they did to the C.D.C. plan what Dr. Fauci does to his face during Trumps briefings. [as Trump] Oh, thats a good idea, Fauci. I didnt know you could use your hand as a mask. Jared  Jared, get me a patent for hand masks. That way the next time Fauci does it, hell have to pay me.  SETH MEYERS

Now, we know what the guidelines would have been, because they were leaked to reporters, and they do contain some helpful advice, like restaurants and bars should install sneeze guards at cash registers and avoid having buffets. [as Trump] Kill the C.D.C. guidelines. I must save our nations beautiful buffets. Ill always be there for you, room-temperature macaroni salad.  STEPHEN COLBERT

Its just another part of the presidents long-running campaign, The Less You Know.  STEPHEN COLBERT
In this April 16 photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room as Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, listens. Read more

WASHINGTON  One day after President Trump complained that the amount of coronavirus testing happening nationwide makes the United States "look bad," Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said such efforts are essential and should be stepped up.

Birx's comments came Thursday evening in an answer to a pointed question from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who wanted to know if she agreed with Trump's take on testing.

Though the president continues to take credit for U.S. testing, in recent days, he has expressed skepticism about the need for so much of it. On Tuesday, he did both in the same breath.

Trump said that while the U.S. has "the greatest testing in the world" and "the most testing in the world," he didn't think "you need that kind of testing or that much testing." The next day, Trump took his remarks a step further, telling reporters at the White House, "In a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."

While Birx didn't answer directly when asked Thursday if testing looks bad, she wholeheartedly endorsed the need for it.

"I've been very encouraged about two parts of the testing," Birx said during a CNN town hall. "One, the dramatic increase in the number of tests we're doing per week. We hope this week to get close or over 8 million, we're going up."

So far, about 2.5% of all Americans have been tested, Birx said, adding that the number is increasing by half a percent every week. Testing and contact tracing, she said, has proven to be critical to helping local leaders identify cases and contain the spread of the virus within their borders.

Birx also stressed the importance of "being proactive about testing," namely monitoring places such as prisons, long-term-care facilities and inner-city communities, and not just focusing on people showing symptoms.

I really want to emphasize over and over again, that this asymptomatic spread is key, she said. We have to be able to find it.

Her response marked another example of conflict between the top scientists and public health experts within the Trump administration and the president.

In recent months, Trump repeatedly touted the use of antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential game-changing coronavirus treatments, despite science and the scientists saying the opposite.

Following weeks of pushback and after a study found that the drugs could be harmful to patients, Trump has now scaled back his promotion of the medicines.

Meanwhile, Trump and some of his allies also keep suggesting the coronavirus was cooked up in a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak originated. The nation's top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, among others, have said there's no scientific proof of that and that there's evidence to the contrary.

Cooper, who was joined by CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, opened Thursday's interview with Birx by asking her about why guidelines on reopening the country from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not yet been released, despite being in the works for weeks.

Earlier in the day, the Associated Press and CNN reported that the White House had shelved the recommendations  a move that would further limit the CDCs public role during a pivotal moment in the countrys coronavirus response as more than half the states are now reopening or in the process of lifting restrictions.

In response to Cooper, Birx stressed that administration officials are "in deep partnership" with the CDC on a number of different guidelines, including those related to reopening the country.

"No one has stopped those guidelines. We're still in editing," Birx said with a smile. "I just got my edits back from the CDC late yesterday. I'm working on them as soon as I get off of this discussion. We are in constant work with the CDC and really value their partnership."

Birx later applauded the CDC for "how proactive they have been in working with the White House and really ensuring that the best science is put forward" in official recommendations.

"Is that what guides the edits, science?" Cooper pressed. "Because it seems like, from some of the comments coming out about these guidelines, that it's also political beliefs, religious beliefs. . . . Is it scientists who are making the edits?"

"I like to believe that I'm a scientist and I've been working with the CDC on the edits," Birx responded. She noted that the changes are more about simplifying the guidelines so that they can be understood by both the public and health officials.

Then, the conversation turned to another delicate subject: the practice of wearing masks at the White House, in light of news that a valet, whose job potentially puts him in close daily contact with Trump, had tested positive for the novel virus.

Trump has made it clear that he is not a fan of wearing a mask himself and was spotted this week barefaced during a tour of a mask-making facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Similarly, Vice President Mike Pence recently weathered criticism for not using a face covering while visiting the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

"All of us are very nervous every day. None of us want to be the one to ever bring coronavirus into the White House," Birx said. "Most of us don't do anything but go to work and come home. If we go out at all, even to take a walk, I can assure you we do wear masks in public."

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

When Gupta asked Birx if she would tell people to start wearing masks around Trump given how easily transmittable the virus is, the doctor artfully dodged the question.

"Certainly there are people who wear masks on the White House complex," she said, before shifting to discuss the effort being made by officials to maintain social distancing in their daily interactions.

Im very scrupulous and I know all of the meetings we have are very much focused on social distancing, she continued. We all are very concerned about protecting others as well as ensuring that we dont become positive ourselves.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 05:57:03

RMB Capital Filed a Petition for Provisional Disposition at Tokyo District Court to Release the Shareholders Book of Sanyo Shokai

Masakazu Hosomizu

RMB Capital

japan@rmbcap.com

RMB Capital (RMB), a Chicago-based independent investment advisory firm, is a long-term shareholder of Sanyo Shokai Ltd. (8011 JP, Sanyo) and owns more than 6% of the firms total outstanding shares.

RMB has been requesting inspection and copying of the shareholders book of Sanyo to discuss our proposals being put forward at the annual shareholders meeting scheduled in May with other Sanyo shareholders. However, Sanyo has been unfairly refusing to disclose the book without any legal basis. As a result of this action, RMB filed a petition for provisional disposition at Tokyo District Court to release the shareholders book of Sanyo.

We are disappointed with Sanyos management, who is not complying with regulations and continues to damage the lawful rights of shareholders, which are clearly protected by the Corporate Act. This is additional evidence that Sanyos management is not just ill-equipped to provide good corporate governance, but also lacks a law-abiding spirit that should be fundamental to any business. RMB believes Sanyos management needs to be completely upgraded to turn around the business.

Please refer to Sanyo Shokai Activism for RMBs past press releases.

About RMB Capital

Headquartered in Chicago, RMB Capital is an independent investment advisory firm that serves high-net-worth individuals and families as well as institutional investors. Its businesses include wealth management, family office services, asset management, and retirement plan consulting. Its asset management business specializes in long-term, concentrated, active investing strategies with coverage that spans the market-cap spectrum and the globe. To learn more about RMB, visit https://rmbcapital.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006
Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have become embroiled in a row over their ministers delivering food packages to vulnerable and old people.

During a debate in the Dail on the Covid-19 unemployment payment, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar criticised Sinn Fein for delivering food parcels and posting pictures on Facebook.

Mr Varadkar said he would be "ashamed" to "boast" about giving out food parcels.

He said the Government provides funding for food banks. "What we do not do is post on Facebook pictures of our ministers visiting them and handing out food to the poor," he added.

Vacuous

In response, Sinn Fein highlighted pictures on Twitter showing Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy delivering meals on wheels to his constituents yesterday afternoon. Mr Murphy retweeted the images to his own Twitter account.

Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane said the tweet of Mr Murphy showed how "vacuous" the Taoiseach's attack was.

"There are many people from across the island involved in helping out the elderly and vulnerable at this time. Those people should be commended," he said.

"Instead, the Taoiseach chose to attack Sinn Fein for the very action his own minister is engaged in."

The Taoiseach's spokesperson said that if Sinn Fein "really cared about the less well off and unemployed" it would match the unemployment welfare rates in the North to those paid in the South.

In the Dail, the Taoiseach and Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald clashed over the 350-per-week Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment.

In response to Ms McDonald's questions, Mr Varadkar said it is "not affordable for it to last forever".

He said it will have to be extended beyond mid-June but added that decisions on whether it will stay at 350 and for how long have yet to be made.

Mr Varadkar said payments for the unemployed are far lower in the North where Sinn Fein is in power.

He suggested the rates were so low in the North that Sinn Fein ministers were forced to deliver food parcels.

"Sinn Fein ministers on their Facebook site promote the fact that they hand out food parcels to the poor, reminiscent to me of Donald Trump handing out toilet roll after the hurricane hit the islands in the Caribbean," he said.

"I would be ashamed to do something like that."

He told Ms McDonald not to blame it on London, adding: "If it was not for their money, it would be even worse."

Ms McDonald said she was "very proud" of the community work her members do.

"It is not just in the North that people are running meals on wheels and bringing packages and parcels to help people who are struggling," she said.
Malawi's top court on Friday rejected President Peter Mutharika's bid to overturn a landmark ruling quashing his controversial re-election, paving the way for a rerun in July.

Mutharika had garnered just 38.5 percent of the annulled May 21 vote to win a second term but the Constitutional Court nullified the results, citing "grave" and "widespread" irregularities, including the use of correction fluid on ballot papers.

Both Mutharika and Malawi's national poll body (MEC) had appealed the ruling and Mutharika had accused the court of bias.

Mutharika's re-election had spawned widespread protests for months and the military had to intervene as confrontations between police and protesters turned violent.

"We have listened to the petitions by the two parties and we dismiss both the appeals in their entirety," said Supreme Court Justice Frank Kapanda.

In his appeal, Mutharika said the judges had "erred in law".

"We find that the first appellant (Mutharika) was not duly elected to the office of the president," said Kapanda, one of seven judges who read out the ruling in the capital Lilongwe.

"The conduct of the electoral commission left a lot to be desired," Kapanda said. "There was a lack of seriousness and incompetence."

Justice Lovemore Chikopa condemned the use Tippex to alter results as an "unlawful and gross irregularity".

The Malawi Electoral Commission reacted cagily to the latest ruling.

"We respect the ruling of the Supreme Court," said MEC spokesman Sangwani Mwafulirwa. "We will study it and advise a way forward."

The election rerun is scheduled for July 2.

Three candidates including Mutharika filed their nomination papers this week.

'Democracy has won'

"Democracy has won, the people of Malawi have won," said vice president Saulos Chilima, who is running under the banner of main opposition candidate Lazarus Chakwera.

The president's spokesman did not immediately reply to AFP requests for comment.

It is the first time a presidential election has been challenged on legal grounds in Malawi since the southern African country's independence from Britain in 1964.

The Malawi Congress Party of Chakwera -- who came a close second in May with 35 percent of votes -- joined forces with Chilima's United Transformation Movement to maximise their chances of unseating the president in July.

The Supreme Court also upheld a Constitutional Court ruling requiring a more than 50 percent majority to secure victory.

Mutharika has so far refused to pass the electoral law amendments.

"Some of the grounds for appeal were not just fictious but purely unprofessional, disrespectful and distasteful," said Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda.
WILLMAR, Minn., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jennie-O Turkey Store, Inc., announced today that it has reopened its Melrose facility, in Melrose, Minn., following a voluntary pause due to impact of COVID-19 in the area. The company restarted phased operations today with a core group of team members and plans to ramp up production over the next few days.

Steve Lykken, president of Jennie-O Turkey Store said, "We remain committed to our industry-leading efforts to maintain and enhance safety protections for our team members and this community. We are glad to be reopening this facility and are working on our plans for reopening our other facility in Willmar, Minnesota. We have put the safety of our staff first throughout this pandemic and will continue to do so. Now that we have reopened our Melrose Plant, our team is turning its attention and efforts to our new awareness initiative called KEEP COVID OUT! This campaign reinforces the preventative measures throughout our facility and the efforts of our team members to keep COVID-19 outside of our building and out of our communities. COVID-19 affects all of us and we must work together to stop its spread, both at the workplace and outside of work. As a leading employer in the area, and one with our core priority on the health and safety of our employees, we are certainly eager to get back to doing what we love and that's making great food."

Jennie-O Turkey Store is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE:HRL).

SOURCE Jennie-O Turkey Store
Most migrants move from villages to cities to do menial work. (Image: Shome Basu)

Vidyanand Thakur, a migrant labourer from Bihar, desperately wants to go back to his village as he has exhausted all his resources. (Image: Shome Basu)

Uttar Pradesh police stopped a group of construction workers who were walking back to their village. Their employer was contacted and arrangements were made for their return to their accommodation. (Image: Shome Basu)

Most of the migrant workers are slum dwellers who left cities owing to the shortage of basic facilities. (Image: Shome Basu)

Suraj, a bricklayer, was unable to find work due to the lockdown. Here he waits for cops' permission to return to Sagar, his native place, in Madhya Pradesh. (Image: Shome Basu)

These stranded workers from Bihar are clueless about special trains and the UP administration is not letting them move via highways. They are struggling without food or money. (Image: Shome Basu)

Stranded workers wait for information on special trains to Bihar, at Anand Vihar railway station in New Delhi. (Image: Shome Basu)

Shambu, a migrant labourer, had bought a new pressure cooker for his wife a few days before the lockdown. He is from Bihar and desperately wants to go back to his village. (Image: Shome Basu)

Narain, a painter, is willing to walk back to his home town in Bihar, around 800 km away from Delhi. (Image: Shome Basu)

A distressed mother and her child wait for transport to reach their village. (Image: Shome Basu)

Migrants contract labourers of Supertech, a construction firm in Delhi, have decided to return to Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, as they are out of ration and money and their supervisor has abandoned them. (Image: Shome Basu)

For these migrant workers, the future remains uncertain. (Image: Shome Basu)

Daily wagers and contract workers bear the maximum brunt of the lockdown imposed to check the coronavirus spread. (Image: Shome Basu)

Many state governments have set up dedicated portals and helplines to identify stranded people. (Image: Shome Basu)

Mohammed Arif has filled up the form to return to his hometown. But the district administration has no information about trains from Anand Vihar in New Delhi. (Image: Shome Basu)

Hari Narayan Thakur, a mason from Bihar, is also desperately waiting to go back to his village to meet his family. (Image: Shome Basu)

A young migrant from Bihar wearing fake Nike snickers takes a break as he walks to reach his village during the lockdown, on the outskirts of Delhi. (Image: Shome Basu)

Many children had to walk for days on an empty stomach. (Image: Shome Basu)

Dinesh, a labourer from MP, is penniless but believes that his villagers would help him and his family survive. (Image: Shome Basu)
As Americans debate how to reopen our society in the wake of COVID-19, we seem to be breaking down into three groups: first, those who believe the virus isn't particularly serious and desperately want to reopen everything as soon as possible (a small minority of Americans, by polling data); second, those who believe the virus is extraordinarily serious and want everything to remain closed as long as possible (a significant minority of Americans); and third, those who believe the virus is extraordinarily serious, that the economic damage brought about by COVID-19 is extraordinarily serious and that we will have to reopen in considered fashion (the vast majority of Americans).While politicians on either side of the debate hope to position their opponents as advocates of either group 1 or group 2, the reality is that the honest debate is happening within group 3.So, what does a considered coronavirus reopening strategy look like?That question rests on a deeper question: What assumptions are we making?Obviously, we all want to reduce deaths to the lowest possible number. But what assumptions are baked into our policy recommendations? Are we assuming a vaccine will come along in three, six, 12 or 18 months? Are we assuming herd immunity conferred at 60% of the population, or 80%? Are we assuming therapeutic measures that would reduce the infection fatality rates by 20, 30 or 100%, and within what period of time?We also want to reduce economic harm to the lowest possible level. Again, we must ask what assumptions are baked into our policy recommendations. Are we assuming that a 75% reduction in restaurant seating will save 50% of restaurants? Are we assuming that shoppers will continue to socially distance six months from now? Are we assuming that the government will be able to shoulder trillions more in debt despite an underlying decrease in international appetite for such debt?The question of assumptions is key to our policymaking. That's because if we assume the worst - no therapeutics that seriously knock down the infection fatality rate, no vaccines for 18 months or more and an economy that simply cannot function at one-quarter or even half of normal capacity - then we are forced to a simple conclusion: In the absence of any significant change to the status quo, we must pursue a strategy of so-called controlled avalanche.That strategy has been coined by Israeli scientists, who suggest that the best strategy for reducing deaths while achieving herd immunity would be to tranche populations and then expose the least-vulnerable populations to COVID-19 in order to let them develop antibodies - in essence, performing with public health the same function ski resorts perform when they create small avalanches in order to avoid a major avalanche. The simple fact is that 40% to 50%, at low estimate, of all deaths in the European Union from COVID-19 have occurred at nursing homes; the same is true in California. Had the authorities properly protected nursing homes, the infection fatality rate across the industrialized world could be half of the current rate.It is also true that the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 ranges widely by age: As of late April, of the 37,308 deaths recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 1,036 were people under the age of 45, and just 51 were below the age of 25. Even among younger populations, the vast majority of deaths were people with underlying conditions.Israeli scientists suggest that protecting the elderly and the vulnerable and then allowing herd immunity to develop among the least vulnerable would radically reduce overall mortality (by over 40%), reduce the maximum number of people in need for ICUs (by over 60%) and decrease the time required to allow freedom to low-risk populations by months.This is obviously not a foolproof strategy - there is no foolproof strategy. But it may be a better strategy than simply hoping for the best while watching the world economy implode, even as we know that our deepest hopes for a deus ex machina may go unrewarded.
An at-home childcare plan for frontline workers has been branded "unworkable" after a major insurer warned it will not cover Covid-19 claims.

Childcare providers have been told Allianz will not pay up if there are any claims relating to the virus as a result of a Government scheme to provide care in the homes of essential workers.

Insurance broker Arachas said in a letter it was advised the Government was "not in a position to provide a State indemnity" for the scheme.

The scheme aims to benefit 5,000 families, at a cost of 4.7m a week. Providers have been invited to volunteer to take part and registration began yesterday. It will be rolled out from May 18 and parents would pay 90 a week per family.

Arachas told childcare providers it is a Government-led initiative in response to a national crisis. It said that, along with Allianz, it had consistently expressed its views "that there is an onus on the State to provide a State indemnity in respect of this exposure".

It said Allianz confirmed there was a "material change in risk" in terms of the heightened exposure to Covid-19 claims if providers participated in the outreach scheme.

The insurance broker said Allianz would have no option but to apply a Covid-19 exclusion "in connection with this new activity".

"It is our duty as your insurance adviser to highlight to you that under the current framework outlined by your insurer, Allianz, and by the Government departments, that you will not have insurance cover for any claim relating to Covid-19," it said.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs said in a statement that Allianz's decision not to provide coverage for Covid-19-related claims was a commercial matter for it as an underwriter.

"The department understands that the insurability of Covid-19-related claims is an issue which has been raised in a number of sectors," it said. "The department advises childcare providers to contact their insurance broker if they wish to apply to the department to deliver outreach childcare under the scheme."

Labour spokesperson on children, Sean Sherlock, said the insurance issue needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency, ten days out from when the scheme is due to begin.

Otherwise, this scheme is unworkable, he said.

Chairperson of the Association of Childhood Professionals Ireland Marian Quinn said she welcomed the scheme but insurance was one of the biggest issues that had to be ironed out.

She said she had been contacted by members who were concerned about what their liability will be. Ms Quinn said there were concerns it would be difficult to get sufficient staff, who will be paid 15 an hour, to volunteer.

It comes as a new study has revealed how many essential workers "have substantial childcare responsibilities", with no way of accessing childcare during lockdown.

The study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) examined the family structure and childcare responsibilities of essential employees.

The closure of schools and creches, it found, may present significant challenges for employees who are trying to balance work and family responsibilities

The study found 52pc of essential workers have children, with around two-thirds with a child aged 14 or younger. It identified seven categories of workers considered to be essential employees based on Irish Labour Force Survey data.

These categories are health professionals, health associate professionals and other health employees as well as those in the armed forces and defence and public administration, retail sales workers and transport operatives

Of those almost 70pc are female. Many essential workers are concentrated in lower-paid occupations, like retail and health employees who are not considered professionals.
A flurry of recent announcements from Poland, Vietnam, South Africa and Thailand underlines the continuing growth of data centres and cloud services in diverse locations around the world.

Microsoft has announced plans to invest $1 billion in cloud computing in Poland. It will open a data centre region in the country, and enter into a seven-year partnership with domestic cloud provider Chmura Krajowa to help sell Azure and other Microsoft enterprise services. A large-scale training and upskilling programme is also planned.

In Vietnam, local telecommunication and internet service provider FPT Telecom has begun construction of a new data centre in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 9, a technology and business development park. It will be the countrys biggest data centre, the company says.

The new facility is expected to cover 10,000 square metres, provide enough space for around 3,600 racks and meet LEED and Uptime Tier III standards.

FPT is developing its own cloud platform, which, the company says, will allow domestic businesses to operate without the need to send data abroad. It adds that the new data centre is key to achieving the necessary infrastructural capacity to run a cloud platform.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, a major hub for data centres on the African continent, Africa Data Centres move to acquire the Samrand data centre, formerly used by Standard Bank, in Johannesburg, has been ratified by the countrys Competition Tribunal. Africa Data Centres has said it will open the facility to the market, on an open-access basis.

Finally, in Thailand, local news reports indicate that Thailands cabinet has approved close to $150 million funding to finance the deployment of a cloud service for use by government agencies.

The Government Data Centre and Cloud (GDCC) service will be used as a central cloud system to ensure the safety of government data, and will also serve as a backup in the event of disasters. The government says it expects to save significant sums from reduced spending on public cloud services. However, it is not yet clear where the service will be hosted.
An insurer that failed to pay a claim within 60 days cannot be considered the prevailing party even if a claimant is eventually awarded less than the carriers settlement offer, a divided Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled.

The 6-3 opinion marks a hard-fought victory for the plaintiffs bar, which argued insurers were trying to use the states attorney fee statute for insurance claims as both a sword and a shield.

The legal dispute between convenience store owner Hamilton and Northfield Insurance Co. initially was decided in favor of the insurer at the trial court and on appeal, but then a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed itself and asked Oklahomas high court to interpret a statute that had flummoxed all of the federal judges assigned to the case so far.

The Oklahoma Supreme Courts decision, handed down May 5, answered the 10th Circuits certified question, which in short was whether the insurer was a prevailing party because the jurys $10,652 award to Hamilton was less than the $45,000 it had offered to settle the case.

Tim Hummel, an Oklahoma City attorney who filed an amicus brief on Hamiltons behalf, said that it was clear to him all along that Oklahoma statutes Section 3629 would not allow an insurer to recoup its attorney fees when it failed to pay the claim within 60 days.

The insurance companies are billion-dollar companies and theyve got smart lawyers, Hummel said. They can make it sound like zero is more than $10,000.

Hummel said the state legislature passed the attorney fee statute to encourage insurers to quickly settle valid claims. If they dont pay in 60 days, the court can award attorney fees in addition to actual damages.

The statute also allows insurers to recover their attorney fees if the policyholder refuses a reasonable settlement offer and takes the carrier to court. But does the statute that requires the prevailing party to pay apply when the claim isnt timely paid?

That is the question that launched Billy Hamiltons claim for repairs to a leaky roof on his convenience store in Council Hills, Okla. on its long voyage through state and federal courts.

Hamilton filed a lawsuit in December 2015 after Northfield refused to pay the claim, alleging bad faith and breach of contract. Northfield removed the case to federal court.

In June 2017, his attorney  Kris Ted Ledford of Owasso, Okla.  demanded the insurer make a serious settlement offer, saying he had invested $12,000 in hard costs so far. Northfield offered $45,000. Ledford refused and took the case to trial.

A district court judge granted summary judgment to Northfield on the bad-faith claim and instructed the jury to award no more than the cost of repairing the roof of Hamiltons store. The jury awarded exactly that: $10,652.

Hamilton asked the court to award attorney fees and costs, but the district court ruled that the insurer, not the policyholder, had prevailed. He appealed to the 10th Circuit. Initially, an appellate panel affirmed the trial court, but reversed itself after Ledford asked for en banc reconsideration from all of the circuit judges.

Ledford argued that accepting Northfields argument that it could be deemed the prevailing part after failing to pay the claim within 60 days would allow insurers to use Section 3629 as both a shield and a sword.

As a result, citizens who are financially unable to afford paying attorneys on an hourly rate basis will be deprived of judicial access, he argued in his petition for en banc reconsideration. The economics of insurance litigation will prevent attorneys from handling insurance disputes on a contingency fee basis unless they involve six figure actual damages. Insurers will handle the vast majority of insurance claims knowing their decisions will go unchallenged.

After reconsidering its initial decision, the 10th Circuit panel decided that it could not resolve the case until the Oklahoma Supreme Court answered two questions:

In determining which is the prevailing party under 36 O.S.  3629(B), should a court consider settlement offers made by the insurer outside the sixty- (formerly, ninety-) day window for making such offers pursuant to the statute? In determining which is the prevailing party under 36 O.S.  3629(B), should a court add to the verdict costs and attorney fees incurred up until the offer of settlement for comparison with a settlement offer that contemplated costs and fees?

The Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed with Ledfords assertion that the fee-shifting requirement of Section 3629 does not contemplate claims that are paid after the 60-day deadline has expired. The statute speaks about settling insurance claims, not lawsuits, the court said.

Quite plainly, the statute never discusses an offer to settle a lawsuit initiated beyond that period  the whole purpose of the statute is to avoid litigation by creating fee-shifting disincentives if the insureds claim is not speedily resolved, Supreme Court Justice Noma Gurich wrote for the majority.

Justices James R. Winchester, John Kane IV and Dustin Rowe dissented, but no dissenting opinion was attached to the ruling.

The case is Hamilton V. Northfield Insurance Co.

Topics Carriers Oklahoma
Syrian President Bashar Assad, left, and Rami Makhlouf. (European Pressphoto Agency, Associated Press)

In the pecking order of figures close to Syrias government leaders, Rami Makhlouf operated at the top.

Arguably the country's richest businessman with an estimated fortune worth billions of dollars and first cousin to President Bashar Assad, Makhlouf moved as the ultimate insider.

That may be over.

The normally media-shy Makhlouf last week posted Facebook videos showing him accusing figures close to the president of Mafia-style shakedowns against his many business interests, from oil to telecommunications.

In a 15-minute video, Makhlouf appeared sitting before a stack of logs in what seemed to be a basement and peppered his comments with quotes from the Quran. He plaintively addressed Assad as Mr. President, telling him hes tired of the staff around his cousin putting me always in the circle of accusations  that Im the bad guy.

He objected to millions of dollars in taxes and licensing fees but said he would pay. Then, in another 10-minute video, he complained about government officials arresting some of his employees.

The airing of grievances has cracked open the workings of an opaque government and the inner circle that controls it.

At the heart of the matter, U.S. officials say, is Syrias dire economic situation: In recent months, the government has staggered under crushing U.S. sanctions. A dollar crunch in neighboring Lebanon trapped an estimated $30 billion deposited there by Syrian merchants who rely on Beiruts banking system to conduct business abroad; it accelerated the free fall of the Syrian pound to unprecedented levels. The coronavirus outbreak has further paralyzed an economy that is already on life support.

"We put a lot of significance into this," James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, said in a news briefing Thursday.

Makhlouf's behavior comes with Assad acknowledged as the victor of Syria's nine-year civil war, but with few of its spoils: The Syrian pound has in the last few months tumbled to a rate 27 times less than its value before the conflict, and sanctions and international opprobrium have choked reconstruction efforts. There's little hope that Russia and Iran  Assads top allies, both facing sanctions and now the economic devastation of the coronavirus  can do much to help.

Story continues

The economic pressure has spurred a widescale anti-corruption drive by the government to bring funds into the country, along with a crackdown on tax evasion. Cellphone operator MTN has said it would comply and pay taxes.

Analysts and former officials say the circumstances appear to have pushed Assad to claw back billions of dollars that loyalist cadres had squirreled away even before the war. Makhlouf would be a prime target.

The 50-year-old Makhlouf has his hand in a dizzying array of industries  telecommunications, banking, airlines, tourism, newspapers, radio and television stations, real estate, oil and gas, agricultural goods, duty-free shops, and elevator equipment. Washington sanctioned him in 2008 for using "intimidation" and his ties to Assad to "obtain improper business advantages," and described him in U.S. embassy cables as "Syria's poster boy for corruption."

Many observers dispute the extent of his control over the economy, but there's little doubt he exists at the nexus of family loyalties and sectarian considerations that have defined Syria's patronage networks during the almost five decades of Assad family rule, said several Syrian businessmen and former government officials with ministries as well as the president's office.

The Makhloufs were connected to then-President Hafez Assad when he married Anisa, aunt to Rami Makhlouf. With Syria's economy increasingly opening to private enterprise, Hafez Assad, Bashar Assad's father, offered the family exclusive access to business opportunities, including duty-free shops. That continued  and expanded  after Hafez Assad's death in 2000, with Makhlouf getting monopolies on hotels, tobacco and Syriatel, the country's first and now largest cellphone company.

People like him, they think of Syria as a farm. Nothing was done in Syria without him. It was impossible to get any business done, said Ribal Assad, a son of Hafez Assad's brother, Rifaat, who was forced to flee with his family to Europe after a failed coup attempt in 1984.

In his May 1 video, Makhlouf said that Syriatel, the crown jewel of Makhloufs businesses, has been ordered to pay taxes and licensing fees exceeding $180 million. Syriatel, according to public records, made 221 billion Syrian pounds, roughly $170 million, in revenue last year, according to its public records. He insists the tax amount isnt fair and would cut into the companys charitable works, which he says constitute some 70% of its profits.

I wont embarrass you, and I wont be a burden on you, he says to Assad. He says hell pay the money but pointedly adds that Assad himself should make sure the money is distributed to the countrys poor and not to the pockets of officials.

In the second video he uploaded two days later, his tone is more defiant, after news that authorities had arrested a number of Syriatel managers.

Security services have started arresting our employees. Did anyone expect security services to come to the companies of Rami Makhlouf, who was their biggest supporter? he asks, warning Assad of inevitable divine punishment.

Mr. President, security services are starting to encroach on peoples freedoms. These are your people. These are loyalists. They were with you and are with you.

Authorities were undeterred, and continue to demand Syriatel make payments; the company missed a deadline set for Tuesday to agree on a payment schedule.

The fracas has shaken many Syrians regardless of their political leanings: Many point out Makhlouf had little complaint of what he calls security services inhumane treatment when he employed them to frighten business rivals unwilling to give him a share. Others deride his begging for tax forgiveness when his sons, who live in the United Arab Emirates, regularly splash their Instagram accounts with pictures of what they call a #bosslife lifestyle with the requisite fleet of luxury cars nearby.

The government has yet to take further action, but the spat appears to confirm a schism within the countrys ruling elite.

Bashar [Assad], when he wanted to reward someone, give someone a percentage of a deal, get certain goods for the country, he would tell Makhlouf to do it, said a former Syrian government official who requested his name be withheld for fear of reprisals from authorities. Everything was done through Rami; he was a corridor through which you had to pass.

Early in the 2011 anti-government uprisings, demonstrators would cry Rami harami, meaning thief, and spoke of him as the Assads' piggy bank. The attention forced his rebranding into a philanthropist. He established a charitable company under Syriatel that would plow profits into sponsoring medical care and even salaries for pro-government fighters. It also doled out money and assistance to thousands of Syrians  a point even his detractors acknowledge.

Though he had ostensibly left business, Makhlouf retained immense clout and amassed more through the various militias he sponsored. But the conflict brought the emergence of new rivals to Makhlouf, many of them businessmen-cum-warlords less tainted by association with the sanctions-ridden Assad government, said Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report, an economic magazine, in a phone interview Wednesday.

You now see a lot of other people, none of them close to the size of Rami in terms of business but who filled roles he couldnt fill, do international transactions he could not do, he said.

Moves by the Syrian government to cut down Makhloufs power had been in play since last year. First his militias were demobilized, reportedly under Russias insistence; then came reports his charitable organization would be taken over by organizations linked to Assads wife, Asma, and that portions of Syriatel would be given to the Martyrs Fund, a financial entity controlled by the Syrian army.

Then in December, Syrian customs officials seized Makhloufs assets, accusing him of smuggling in products through outside companies, including Abar Petroleum, a company based in the Lebanese capital, Beirut; they conducted another round of seizures in April. The case is ongoing.

"Rami Makhlouf is no challenge to Assad unless both Russia and Iran got behind him. I do not see that as possible," Jeffrey said. "Again, its very hard to assess where this is going. Were just watching it carefully."
Credit: Dreamstime

Contact tracing is a pillar of public health, and when done quicklyand correctlyit saves lives.

Yale students who might have otherwise learned about this classic public health intervention in textbooks or lectures, are actively engaged in it, working the phones each day to assist the city of New Haven and the Yale community in the struggle against a deadly pandemic that has claimed more than 2,700 lives in Connecticut alone, making it one of the hardest hit states in the country.

Directed by Yale School of Public Health Professor Linda Niccolai and Tyler Shelby, an M.D./Ph.D. student, Yale's contact tracing program launched within days after the virus arrived in Connecticut. Students from across the Yale schools of public health, medicine and nursing responded to the call for volunteers and have been working ever since.

Contact tracing is public health 101 and it is helping to "flatten the curve" and slow the rate of new infections.

"We have interviewed hundreds of people with COVID-19 and notified hundreds and hundreds of their contacts," Niccolai said. "There is no telling how many lives have been saved due to the commitment and the efforts of our volunteers."

Emily Peterson, an M.P.H. student, stepped forward because she wanted to offer the skills and knowledge that she learned in her academic training at the Yale School of Public Health.

"In a sense, contact tracing is the investigative and mystery-solving side of public health," Peterson said. "By piecing together the 'puzzle' of a disease's spread, we, as public health practitioners, can figure out how a disease [started] and affected a community."

Contact tracing is labor-intensive and often emotionally draining. It requires phones calls (lots of them), strong interviewing skills, diplomacy and the ability to ask the right questions. Volunteers also need to stay abreast of the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about symptoms and recommendations to self-isolate.

It is difficult, repetitive and often tense work that involves talking with a stranger about a deadly disease. But it is also essential to slowing and eventually stopping the disease.

During contact tracing, a running list is developed of all the people a sick person had contact with in the days before their condition was diagnosed. Volunteers then start calling all of the people on this list, one at a time. Sometimes there are just a few people to contact. Other times there are dozens. Some of the people at the other end of the line are helpful and grateful for the information. Othersnot so much.

The students have the delicate responsibility of informing the person that they are speaking with that they might be at heightened risk for COVID-19 because of their recent contact with a sick person. They then ask if the individual is displaying symptoms and, if so, what people they have come into contact with recently. Importantly, the contacted individuals are then provided guidance to self-isolate for 14 days to prevent transmission to others in case they have been infected.

A call, which can last upward of 30 minutes and often involves a range of intense emotions, ends with a list of recommended steps to take if the person is beginning to feel ill.

It's by tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection if they have symptoms, and then linking them to medical care if needed that public health aims to reduce infections in the general population. The technique has been widely used for other diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and HIV.

Given how transmissible the novel coronavirus is, Niccolai and her team realized early on that there were going to be too many cases and too many contacts for local health departments to do proper contact tracing and notification. The Yale network now has well over 200 volunteers working on behalf of the city and the university. They have been at it for more than eight weeks, and there is no end in sight, Niccolai said.

Other municipalities in Connecticut and beyond are turning to contact tracing as they grapple with stemming the spread of the disease within their own jurisdictions. Some of them have turned to the Yale model and reached out for advice on how to implement something similar, Niccolai said.

Another Yale School of Public Health student volunteer, Tyler Caruthers, was drawn to volunteer out of a desire to help others. She couldn't bear passively sheltering at home while the New Haven community remained at risk.

"Volunteering for contact tracing is a small way to help out the community, even if it is from my living room in Florida," she said. "This effort is not unique to Yale. People from across sectors, including the city of New Haven and the state of Connecticut, have joined forces to help stunt the spread of the virus."
Subscribe to the Wake Up, cleveland.coms free morning newsletter, delivered to your inbox weekdays at 5:30 a.m.

Today's Wake Up newsletter is longer than usual because it includes every coronavirus story from the last 24 hours. Read it and you're up to date on the crisis.

Weather

A chilly, damp weekend is ahead and theres a chance of snow. Today will be cloudy with a chance of rain showers and highs in the mid-40s. There is a chance of snow showers Saturday and wind gusts will top 30 mph. Highs again will be in the mid-40s. Temps could reach the 50s Sunday, but there again is a chance of rain showers. Read more.

The headlines

Opening days: Hair salons, barber shops, day spas and nail salons will open May 15, reports cleveland.coms Laura Hancock. Restaurants and bars can reopen their establishments to patrons, outside on May 15 and inside May 21.

Case increase: As Ohio reopens businesses, Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday that coronavirus cases will increase. He urged Ohioans to continue practicing social distancing as they frequent restaurants, bars and salons. Cleveland.coms Mary Kilpatrick reports that the transmission rates likely will increase.

Subtext: Cleveland.com has started a new, free Subtext account to send coronavirus updates. Every day, the team covering the coronavirus will send three to four updates about the progress of the virus -- confirmed cases of the virus, major cancellations, the latest medical advice, relevant scientific information and more. You can even text us back. Go to https://joinsubtext.com/ohiocoronavirus and enter your phone number. Fill out the form below. Or send a text to 216-279-7784. Did we mention its free?

This Week in the CLE: Is Gov. Mike DeWine missing a beat in his promised transparency over the coronavirus crisis? His administration wont release documents from business-reopening working groups, a move cleveland.com editors are discussing on This Week in the CLE, the daily half-hour news podcast.

Salon rules: Salons and barbershops will have to abide by certain health guidelines, including social distancing and strict sanitization regimens when they reopen, reports cleveland.coms Seth Richardson. More than one person per customer wont be allowed into businesses at a time, people will likely have to wait for their appointments in their cars or outside the building, and you wont see magazines.

Restaurant rules: When restaurants and bars begin to reopen May 15, theyll look different, report cleveland.coms Anne Nickoloff and Marc Bona. Floor plans will comply with social-distancing guidelines, congregations of people will be banned, auxiliary areas for billiards or dancing will be closed, salad bars and buffets can only be served by staff, and self-service common-area items such as table tents, vases, lemons, straws, stir sticks and condiments will be removed.

Republican rebuke: Gov. Mike DeWine issued an uncharacteristically strong rebuke to his fellow Republicans in the state legislature on Thursday, promising to veto any bill that reduces his health departments authority to react to the coronavirus pandemic or other emergencies. Were in the middle of a crisis, trying to bring the economy back, trying to protect Ohios citizens, DeWine said, according to cleveland.coms Andrew Tobias. "We have a budget were trying to balance. So many, many things we have to do. I guess I just dont quite understand it.

Ohio's 1,271 coronavirus deaths are spread across 64 of the state's 88 counties.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

New numbers: Ohio has at least 22,131 coronavirus cases, including at least 1,271 deaths, reports cleveland.coms Laura Hancock. That includes 999 probable infections and 118 probable deaths.

Cleveland numbers: Forty-one new cases of COVID-19 coronavirus have been confirmed in the city, cleveland.coms Robert Higgs reports. The new cases push the total number of Cleveland residents who have been infected to 879. No new deaths were reported.

Trends: Ohios death total on Thursday increased 3.8% from 1,225 the day before, while the case total was up 2.6% from 21,576, reports cleveland.coms Rich Exner.

Daycare: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday he will address reopening daycare facilities during Mondays news briefing, reports cleveland.coms Mary Kilpatrick. Childcare has been largely closed since March  except those that obtained a special pandemic license to care for children whose parents work to provide health, safety and other essential services.

Juvenile detention: The first youth held at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center tested positive Thursday for the coronavirus, according to cleveland.coms Adam Ferrise. The Cuyahoga County Board of Health is conducting contact-tracing to see if anyone came into close contact with the youth who tested positive.

Town hall: Mayor Frank Jackson sought Thursday to provide reassurance, answers and cautious advice as the city and Ohio prepares to reopen their economies after more than a month of people staying at home. Joined by U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, the pair took questions from residents for about an hour in a telephone town hall, cleveland.coms Robert Higgs reports.

Herd immunity: As summer nears and people look for a way out, they may wonder, wouldnt it be better just to get the coronavirus now and get it over with? Cleveland.coms Eric Heisig spoke to experts who had two big reasons to oppose the idea: You could die, and you could overwhelm the health-care system.

Unemployment: The number of unemployment claims filed in Ohio during the coronavirus crisis exceeds the combined total filed over the past three years, reports cleveland.coms Evan MacDonald. More than 1.1 million Ohio residents have filed for unemployment in the past seven weeks, including more than 61,000 during the week ending May 2, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Monarch Center: Current and former employees of the Monarch Center for Autism in Shaker Heights, which is part of the Bellefaire Jewish Childrens Bureau, said they fear the organizations administration has not taken enough precautions to ensure the clients safety during the coronavirus pandemic. Seven employees expressed concerns to cleveland.coms Eric Heisig about both their safety and the safety of the children for whom they care.

Virus mutation: Researchers at a California lab analyzed global coronavirus data and found that a mutation to the virus spike protein now seems to be dominant over the older strain. Cleveland.coms Emily Bamforth reports that researchers unsure that whether vaccines are being developed based on the spikes structure and function would work on the newer strain.

School children leave Luis Munoz Marin School in Cleveland on March 13, 2020, to start their extended spring break due to the coronavirus epidemic. David Petkiewicz

Back to school: A recent study examining children as transmitters of the coronavirus raises questions about Ohio Gov. Mike DeWines announcement this week that the states schools might reopen part-time in August. Cleveland.coms Peter Krouse reports the study out of Germany looked at concentrations of the virus in the respiratory tract of various age groups and found that the viral load in children and adults to be similar. The researchers conclude that schools should be cautious about unlimited reopening.

Gun sales: During the coronavirus pandemic, gun dealers in Northeast Ohio say business is so busy theyve had trouble maintaining inventory. Cleveland.coms Sabrina Eaton reports that according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics, Ohio gun dealers ran 114,086 background checks this March, more than double the 63,156 that were conducted in February. In April, Ohio gun dealers conducted 68,812 background checks.

Jim Jordan: Champaign County GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who argued that a panel the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is creating to oversee the coronavirus crisis is actually a Democratic plot to discredit President Donald Trump, was appointed to the new panel on Thursday, reports cleveland.coms Sabrina Eaton.

New trial: Isiah Andrews, 82, walked out of prison Wednesday afternoon for the first time in 45 years after being granted a new trial in the 1974 slaying of his wife. Andrews has long maintained his innocence in the slaying and now awaits a new trial, reports cleveland.coms Cory Shaffer.

University of Akron: The University of Akron has released a proposed reorganization that eliminates six of its 11 colleges to offset anticipated losses of about $65 million attributed to the coronavirus crisis. Cleveland.coms Robin Goist reports the university will retain five newly formed colleges: the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business Administration, the School of Law, the College of Engineering and Technology, and Health and Human Services, though their names might change.

PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is accusing the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of violating federal policy by mistreating laboratory mice, and the group wants the National Institutes of Health to investigate. Cleveland.coms Mary Kilpatrick reports PETA argues the mice at the Clinic suffered as a result of neglect, incompetence, and a culture of disregard for their welfare.

Cleveland Water: The Cleveland Water Department ranked last among 10 large Midwest water departments in a J.D. Power & Associates survey of customer satisfaction. Cleveland.coms Peter Krouse reports the U.S. Water Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study measures 33 attributes across six factors, which are quality and reliability, price, conservation, billing and payment, communications, and customer service.

Home sales: The cleveland.com database of recent Cuyahoga County home sales and other property transfers has been updated with April 2020 transactions. Search the database to find home sales in your neighborhood and across the county for last month and for each year going back to 2007.

Testing: Rite Aid has expanded testing at its 71 drive-up, self-swab coronavirus testing locations across the country, including in Parma and near Akron, to include adults who are not experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, reports cleveland.coms Robin Goist. Participants need to be at least 18 years old, provide government-issued identification and register online at riteaid.com.

First concert: The United States may get a taste of what concerts will look like in the coronavirus age with a concert May 15 in Arkansas. Country-rock artist Travis McCready will headline the Live Nation show, where the number of available seats is limited and there will be other safety measures, cleveland.coms Troy Smith reports.

26 Hercs over America

Hercs Over America: For the second time this week, the 910th Airlift Wing out of the Youngstown Air Reserved Station flew two of its C-130H Hercules aircraft over the skies of Northeast Ohio and Northwest Pennsylvania on Thursday morning to honor frontline workers at nearly 20 hospitals. Cleveland.coms David Petkiewicz has photos.

Mothers Day: Whether youre looking to honor mom or for new ways to spend another socially distant weekend, cleveland.coms Joey Morona has 15 ideas for you.

Mustard Seed: As Ohio has begun reopening the state from coronavirus closures, and stances on face coverings have flip-flopped by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, cleveland.com has been contacting supermarkets, big box retailers, drug stores and assorted stores around Northeast Ohio to obtain their latest face covering policy for customers. The latest to require a mask is Mustard Seed Market.

Tiny House: When Asha Mevlana isnt on tour with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, she hosts neighborhood concerts from her compact custom home. See the tiny house in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in an episode of Unique Spaces from cleveland.coms sister site, Architectural Digest.

Free meal: Nestle provided drinks and bags of food for the frontline workers Thursday in a free drive-thru-style meal. Cleveland.coms Joshua Gunter has photos of the operation, prepared by Nestle chefs.

Other headlines

Coronavirus reopenings, delays and restrictions for Friday, May 8, 2020 Read more

Major Akron Art Museum donor says museum should replace Director Mark Masuoka following accusations of racism, sexism and bullying by managers Read more

Cleveland homicide suspect arrested more than a year after shooting killed woman, injured daughter at West Side apartments Read more

Elyria woman dies in stabbing; suspect in custody Read more

Violence suspected in death of man found in backyard of Cleveland home, police say Read more

Airbnb party host in Clevelands Ohio City cited with violating Ohios stay-at-home order Read more

Dollar stores in Akron again targeted in smash-and-grab cigarette thefts Read more

Resident at OhioGuidestone in Berea beaten by other residents, hospitalized Read more

Chagrin Falls High School graduation ceremony moved to July 10-12 Read more

Highland Heights cancels Memorial Day events; mayor looks to aid small businesses Read more

Mulcahy: Orange managing OK despite financial impact of coronavirus Read more

Essential workers needing pandemic child care turn to YMCA of Greater Cleveland Read more

Lakewood projects more than $1 million coronavirus-related revenue loss in April Read more

Lakewood City School District leaders say Gov. Mike DeWines budget cuts were higher than anticipated Read more

Parma City Schools superintendent says district can weather state budget cuts Read more

Brook Park experienced big income tax loss in April due to pandemic impact Read more

Temporary closure of Middleburg Heights Recreation Center enables natatorium upgrades to start Read more

Brunswick Historical Society sets opening day for farmers markets Read more

Independence Schools trying to salvage end-of-year activities Read more

Berea City Schools music education program earns national award for 20th time Read more
More Brits turning to prayer during coronavirus lockdown: survey

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More people are now praying in the U.K. following the government's widespread lockdown orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey released by the charity Tearfund reveals.

According to a Savanta ComRes poll of over 2,100 U.K. adults surveyed April 24-27, some 44% of respondents said they pray. And one in 20 people reported starting the habit of prayer for the first time during the lockdown.

The survey, commissioned by Tearfund, also found that one in five respondents had asked someone else to "say a prayer" since the social distancing measures were implemented. And one in five said "they have read a religious text during lockdown."

"It is encouraging to see the number of people in the U.K. praying during such a challenging time, said Ruth Valerio, global advocacy and influencing director at Tearfund in a statement. "Our experience at Tearfund is that prayer and practical action go hand in hand, and are both crucial ways of responding. With COVID-19 rates continuing to rise around the world, we are calling more people to pray and take action."

More than half of those surveyed (53%) said they prayed for family members, and 27% said they prayed for those working on the front lines. One in five (20%) said they specifically prayed for someone who had contracted COVID-19. Approximately one-sixth of those who prayed said say they have prayed for other countries dealing with the coronavirus.

"Among those who pray, two thirds (66%) say they agree that God hears their prayers and over half (56%) say they agree that prayer changes the world. Half of those who pray (51%) agree that theyve witnessed answers to their own prayers and over two fifths (43%) agree that their prayer changes the lives of people living in poverty in developing countries," the survey noted.

The survey also found that 45% of respondents said they pray because they "believe in God," and "a third (33%) believe that prayer makes a difference." Others, some 26%, said they pray during a crisis, and 24% said they pray "to gain comfort or to feel less lonely."

Some 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had prayed about the U.K. government's response to the new coronavirus, which was more than any other age group surveyed. And men were more likely than women to have "watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown."

The U.K. Sunday Times reported Wednesday that Britain now has the highest reported death rate of all European nations, with a death toll of 29,427 compared to Italy's reported death toll of 29,315 as of Tuesday night.

"[F]igures from the Office for National Statistics showed 29,710 deaths involving COVID-19 had been registered in England and Wales up to May 2. Those figures are based on death certificates, and include deaths where a doctor is confident the virus was involved, but no test was carried out. The equivalent numbers for Scotland were 2,272 registered up to April 26, and in Northern Ireland 393 registered up to April 29. That would give a total of 32,375 across the U.K.," The U.K. Sunday Times reports.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among the most prominent, visible people to be afflicted with the sickness, nearly dying from it last month as he was hospitalized and put into intensive care but was not intubated, NBC reported.

Johnson, who called his experience "a tough old moment" reportedly came so close to dying that doctors were making preparations to announce his death.
A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and file a case for compensation of USD 600 billion from China alleging that the coronavirus pandemic was "deliberately created" by it.

The plea claimed there was strong evidence that coronavirus or COVID-19, which has "destroyed" the Indian economy and killed hundreds of it citizens, originated from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The petition, filed by Madurai resident K K Ramesh, has alleged that COVID-19 has been "deliberately created by China as biological weapon against India".

"Petitioner states COVID-19 pandemic was designed by China to be a very effective and catastrophic biological warfare weapon to kill mass population in India," said the plea, drawn by advocate C R Jaya Sukin.

It underlined that coronavirus spread in India, other countries and continents but not in other cities of China despite originating in nearby Wuhan.

The plea said that since individuals cannot approach the ICJ, the Centre should be directed to file a case there in this regard.

As per the latest data available on the website of the Health Ministry, over 56,000 positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported in India with 1,886 deaths due to the virus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rep. Joo Ho-young of the main opposition United Future Party speaks after being elected as the party's new floor leader at the National Assembly in Seoul, Friday. The four-term lawmaker who won an Assembly seat for Daegu's Suseong-A constituency in the April 15 general election, beat Kwon Young-se, a former three-term lawmaker. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-geun
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday that the government needs to tell the people about its strategy to open up the country as well as the economy after the Covid-19 lockdown ends on May 17.

The government now has to give a little bit of transparency on its actions. We need to understand, when they open, what is the criteria for that, what are the boxes they want ticked off before they actually start to open, Gandhi said in a digital press briefing.

The lockdown is not a key, that you switch it on and its gone. It requires number of things to happen. It requires a psychological change. The government needs to understand that its not an on-off switch, he added.

The former Congress president also talked about the coronavirus disease Covid-19, which has triggered the nationwide lockdown. He said that barring a few categories of people, the disease is not dangerous.

The disease is dangerious for a few categories of people. It is dangerous for old people, for those who have diabetes, hypertension etc. But other than that, it is not a dangerous disease. So we have to make a psychological change in the mind of the people. Currently, people are very scared. The government, if it wants to open up, will have to turn this fear into a sense of confidence, said Gandhi.

He added that opening up has to be a transition. You need to have a strategy.

Gandhi has been holding discussions with public intellectuals through video conferencing where he has been talking about Covid-19 and what India needs to do going forward. Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee were his first two guests.

Two days ago, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had asked the central government to spell out its strategy whether it will lift or continue with the nationwide lockdown on May 17.

What after May 17? What criteria is the government using to judge how long the lockdown will continue? she had said in her opening remarks at a video-conferencing of partys chief ministers and senior leaders.

Addressing the meeting, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, We need to know, as Soniaji said, what will happen after the lockdown 3.0? Soniaji has already pointed out. CMs need to deliberate and ask as to what is the strategy of Govt of India to get the country out of lockdown?

The party had recently announced that it will pay for the train travel of stranded migrant workers, a move that triggered a slugfest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Opposition party accused the government of being insensitive to the plight of stranded migrant workers while the BJP claimed that railways was bearing 85% of the fare cost, and state governments had to pay 15%, thus allowing migrants to go back home free of cost.




The United Nations and partners yesterday launched an updated Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP) in New York, seeking US$6,7 billion with Zimbabwes immediate share being US$84,9 million to respond to both the immediate public health crisis and the secondary impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on vulnerable people.





The total of US$6,7 billion is required to protect millions of lives and stem the spread of coronavirus in a large swathe of fragile countries.





Launching the updated GHRP, UN humanitarian chief Mr Mark Lowcock called for swift and determined action to avoid the most destabilising effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.





The revised GHRP includes nine additional vulnerable countries: Benin, Djibouti, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zimbabwe.





Included in the plan are programmes to respond to the growth in food insecurity.





April 2, 2020, the UN Resident Coordinator in Zimbabwe Ms Maria Ribeiro said: This additional appeal is part of the GHRP which will contribute to Zimbabwes national response on Covid-19, particularly addressing the most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, women, people with disabilities, people living with HIV, refugees, migrants, and those affected by drought and food insecurity. Noting that the request was in addition to the US$715 million appeal for the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) launched onApril 2, 2020, the UN Resident Coordinator in Zimbabwe Ms Maria Ribeiro said: This additional appeal is part of the GHRP which will contribute to Zimbabwes national response on Covid-19, particularly addressing the most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, women, people with disabilities, people living with HIV, refugees, migrants, and those affected by drought and food insecurity.





The Covid-19 addendum to the HRP seeks to mobilise emergency funding for UN agencies and NGOs to provide support to the public health emergency response to contain the spread of the Covid-19, through health programming, risk communication and community engagement, infection control and prevention, and provision of water supply and increased hygiene and sanitation intervention.




An earthquake shook Irans capital early on May 8, killing at least one person and causing some residents fearful of aftershocks to leave their homes for the safety of the streets.

The U.S. Geological Survey said that the shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit at 00:48 am local time near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometers east of Tehran.

Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on Twitter that the earthquake claimed the life of one person and injured seven others.

Jahanpour called on people to "keep calm" and to follow safety guidelines.

Mount Damavand, a volcano standing at more than 5,600 meters, is the highest peak in Iran.

Iran sits on top of major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity.

A 7.3-magnitude quake in the western province of Kermanshah killed 620 people in November 2017.

In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake destroyed the ancient mud-brick city of Bam in Irans southeast, killing at least 31,000 people.

Iran's deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 others, and left half a million homeless in the countrys north.

Based on reporting by AFP and dpa
Over a thousand people have been forced to evacuate their homes as wildfires rage across 2,900 acres in the Florida Panhandle.

The fires tearing through Santa Rosa and Walton counties have scorched thousands of acres of woods, razed dozens of structures, including homes, and have so far forced some 1,600 people to evacuate from their neighborhoods.

Firefighters continued battling the erratic fire deep into the night Thursday. With only 35% of the fire contained, it could be days before it can be brought under control, officials said.

The foundations of a house are all that remains in the aftermath of the Five Mile Swamp Fire that is still burning near Milton, Florida, on Thursday

The charred foundations of a house and car are pictured near Milton on Thursday. Authorities say firefighters in the Florida Panhandle are battling wildfires that have forced some 1,600 people to evacuate from their homes

Firefighters and other first responders gather at a command post on U.S. Highway 98 in Walton County, Florida on Thursday morning

The 2,000-acre (809-hectare) fire in Santa Rosa County, located just east of Pensacola, prompted the evacuation of 1,100 homes Wednesday.

Officials said a few of those residents, in areas south of Interstate 10, have been allowed to return to their homes, although others have been told to stay away. There have been no reports of injuries or deaths.

Officials said 13 homes were destroyed so far in the fire dubbed the Five Mile Swamp Fire. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, some evacuees were sent to nearby hotels to avoid potential problems with crowding.

A stretch of Interstate 10, northern Florida's main transportation artery, remained closed in both directions near Pensacola because of smoke.

Gov. Ron DeSantis met with emergency officials at a church parking lot in Milton for an hour Thursday before returning to the state capital of Tallahassee, located about 180 miles (290 kilometers) east.

The fire was feeding on stands of pines in forests strewn with dry needles.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said in a news conference Thursday afternoon that fire officials are working around the clock to contain the wildfires.

Wildfires raging in the Florida Panhandle have forced nearly 1,600 people to evacuate from their homes, authorities said. Smoke and flames are seen on Wednesday in Santa Rosa County

The more than 575-acre fire, dubbed the Mussett Bayou Wildfire, is seen raging in Walton County on Wednesday

'The threat is far from over and there is no rain forecasted,' Fried said. She asked residents to stay alert and 'be ready for a wildfire impacting their neighborhood.'

Sgt. Rich Aloy, with the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office, was patrolling Wednesday when he and other deputies rescued an older couple trapped by a burning power line. The possibly live wire blocked the two-lane, tree-lined road as smoke engulfed the area. Aloy said he and his deputies just happened upon the couple as they yelled for help.

'Right time, right place,' Aloy said.

The Santa Rosa County fire began Monday when a prescribed burn by a private contractor got out of control, Fried said. The conditions created a perfect storm for fire  low humidity and high winds.

Flames consume trees along I-10 as the Five Mile Swamp Fire burns in Milton, Florida, on Wednesday

Mitchell Lamb (left) and his aunt, Peggy Smith-Lamb, evacuate as their home is threatened by a wildfire in Milton, Florida

'In Florida, when we're seeing the gusty winds, it's hurricane season, not necessarily fire season. So the recipe was just right for this fire to make a huge run,' said Ludie Bond, a spokeswoman for the Florida Forest Service.

On four different occasions, she said, the fire made a run for busy Interstate 10. Each time, it jumped the highway and pushed westward by gusts reaching 40 mph (64 kph).

Firefighters were expecting winds to shift and pick up on Friday, adding to the fire's erratic behavior.

In a place accustomed to hurricanes, officials said many residents were ready to flee when given the word  although scores of people stayed behind, water hoses in hand, to stand against the fire.

Florida firefighters are battling the wildfires that have spread across three counties of the Florida Panhandle (depicted above)

Crews from other areas of Florida, including Jacksonville, are assisting firefighters who've been working long hours since Monday.

In neighboring Walton County, a 575-acre (233-hectare) fire in Walton County prompted about 500 people to evacuate. Authorities there said multiple structures were lost in the fire, which was 65% contained Thursday morning. Fried said about 33 structures have been damaged so far.

Felder felt fortunate to escape.

'It came close. Lots of trees burned. The home got singed. The barn behind the house was destroyed,' he said.

Emergency vehicles are seen stopped along a highway due to a large wildfire in Milton, Florida, on Wednesday

A sheriff's vehicle travels along US Highway 98 in Walton County, Florida, past a hotspot of a raging wildfire on Wednesday night

At the time, his neighborhood was still under voluntary evacuation.

'I knew there was a fire, but it still looked far away,' he said. 'But when it got dark, I didn't know where the fire was. Suddenly it was there.'

When he knew danger was approaching, he ran back into the house to retrieve his cat, Bowser. He heard his landlord hollering for him to head to the pond. He put his cat, shoes and phone in an aluminum boat, and he and his landlord waded into neck-deep water.

'I was afraid, but the panic set in afterward,' he said. 'I had never been through anything like this.'
Aviles and her husband, Luis Avalos, 38, sell spices, a wide range of specialty peppers and Mexican snacks under the name El Picosito. The couple, who has four children, set up a small shop on the corner of 26th Street and Whipple Avenue in Little Village when the Swap-O-Rama in the Back of the Yards neighborhood closed. They opted to sell on the streets of Little Village because the area is known for its vendors and as a predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American neighborhood. They thought theyd have good clientele, Avalos said.
[Cai Meng/China Daily]

By Alex McMammedly

The state of New York in the US has been hit the worst with the coronavirus. Based on latest numbers for the whole country over 1 million people have been infected and over 70,000 have died thus far. It doesn't look like that it is over yet as new infections and deaths are reported every day.

This is not surprising because the US government has been busy with organizing a regime change in Iran and Venezuela and focused on blaming China for the pandemic. Instead of focusing on fighting and containing the virus from spreading and killing people.

I read world news every morning while drinking my morning coffee with melted dark chocolate and hot milk. Some days I read it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The whole planet seems consumed with the coronavirus and this is what the news is all about, no matter what time of the day you read it.

The virus continues to infect and kill people all around the globe. Some governments have reacted to the pandemic very quickly and took drastic measures to contain the virus from spreading any further than it could.

But others took their time with their decision-making and missed their golden opportunity in containing the spread of the virus among the population.

It seems the entire world is fighting the virus in solidarity, apart from the US. The US government is blaming other countries, namely China, for the spread of the virus. And over the past week it has intensified the virus blame game. The US government has been trying hard to divert the attention of its citizens toward China rather than admitting its mismanagement of the situation. It is a dangerous path to take as it could create racial confrontation and racism toward Chinese Americans in the US and Asians in general.

I have watched and read online news of how US President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo blame China for the pandemic and accuse China of "not being transparent with their data", "not informing the world earlier about the virus" and saying "it could have been contained in Wuhan".

Pompeo has contradicted himself during the White House news briefing by saying that "there is a significant amount of evidence" that the new coronavirus has been developed in a Wuhan laboratory, while also saying that "he has no reason to believe that the intelligence services have got it wrong" when they say that "there is no evidence to prove that the new virus is manmade".

When I listen to Trump and Pompeo speaking, I remember a very good expression: "a wise man wants to speak because he has something to say, a fool wants to speak because he just has to say something".

It is hard to predict the US government's intentions on blaming China for the pandemic. But it isn't hard to guess the real reason behind it. Trump spoke against China's rapid economic development even before he became president of the US. He has intensified his China rhetoric tenfold after becoming president.

He initiated his infamous "trade war" with China and I believe that this virus blame game is a continuation of that "trade war". It is a different tactic but with the same aim and objective, which is to bring down China to its knees by any means. As indeed it was done to the former Soviet Union in the late 80s and early 90s.

There are several reasons for the US government blaming China for the coronavirus pandemic, and they have absolutely nothing to do with the virus at all.

The first reason is fear.

It is the fear of losing influence, (political and otherwise) over some countries in the Asia-Pacific in particular and around the world in general. It is fear of losing influence over countries which have looked up and turned to US governments for financial, economic, military and political support. It is the fear that these countries will turn to China for above-mentioned support, which many countries all around the world have already done.

The second reason is economic.

China's economy has been growing no less than 7 percent year-on-year since 2000. The Chinese government has, over the years, managed to lift millions of its citizens out of poverty. With the Belt and Road initiative the Chinese government has been investing billions of dollars overseas, building not walls, but bridges, schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure in the countries that are part of the project. It is this reason that the US government is playing the pandemic blame game.

The third reason is political.

Many countries around the world turn away from the US government and turn toward the Chinese government for political and diplomatic support, which irritates some people in the Pentagon and the White House. Hence the pandemic blame game by the US and its proxy allies UK and Australia. The aims and the objectives of these countries' governments are to tarnish the political reputation of the Chinese government around the world, and this pandemic provides the perfect opportunity for them to do just that.

The fourth reason is the fear of not getting elected for a second term or the fear of losing the presidential election in November.

Trump and his government know that they handled the pandemic very badly. There are over 30 million people unemployed in US. There are families who have no income and are struggling to put food on the table to feed their children. There are over 1 million people infected with the virus and over 70,000 who have died. Therefore Trump and his government know that all the shortcomings and mismanagement of the virus outbreak in the US will be remembered by the people when they go to the polls to elect their next president in November this year.

Trump is using the COVID-19 pandemic blame game to divert people's attention from himself and from the terrible situation with the virus in his country to China.

The fifth reason is ideological supremacy -- Western capitalism versus Eastern socialism.

The coronavirus has spread to almost every country in the planet. People around the world watch and follow the response of their respective governments in handling and managing the outbreak in their respective countries.

That is to say that respect to the Chinese government has increased a thousandfold around the world for the way it handled the outbreak and the way it did it. I know it, I witnessed it, I saw it and I was part of it.

It is true that there were some shortcomings at the beginning of the virus outbreak. But this was rectified by the central government and a new team of experts was dispatched to Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus outbreak.

The respect to the Chinese people has also increased greatly around the world for coming together as one nation and fighting the virus outbreak united in their mind and action, as all for one and one for all.

It was not a matter of saving the economy, jobs and businesses, as it is the case in the US and in some European countries. But it was a matter of saving people's lives. There was only one choice for the Chinese government which was to save as many lives of its citizens as possible and to contain the virus outbreak as quickly as possible. There was no hiding a political or economic agenda behind these decisions, as it is the case in the US and in some European countries. The Chinese government's message to its citizens was pure and simple, and simple and clear.

There are millions out there in the world who believe and are convinced that (after watching in their TV sets and reading online news about how the Chinese government and people handled and managed the virus outbreak) that socialism is about the government looking after people's health and well-being. Capitalism on the other hand is about the government looking after big corporations' business interests and profits.

Millions of people all around the world have been convinced and are ready to embrace socialism as the most effective system of governance. The Western capitalist governments, the US government in particular, do see the ideological shift among the ordinary people toward socialism and they do not like it. In fact, it scares them.

But it is too little, too late, because this pandemic has shown and proved to people all around the world that a socialist system of government looks after its citizens, whereas the capitalist system looks after a corporation's business interests and profits.

The author is a UK citizen living in China. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not represent the views of China Daily and China Military Online.
A nurse who stole 100,000 which was raised for her terminally-ill son before his death and gambled it away has been allowed back to work during the coronavirus crisis.

Stacey Worsley used betting websites to spend the huge sum of money after it was donated by generous well-wishers for her gravely ill son, six year old Toby Nye.

Now, a review hearing has decided the pandemic is 'second only to war' in its seriousness and she should be allowed to work as a registered nurse.

The original Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC] tribunal heard Worsley gambled the money - meant for Toby's neuroblastoma treatment as it wasn't on the NHS - over a period of 15 months.

A disgraced nurse who stole and gambled away 100,000 which was raised for her terminally-ill son before his death is to be allowed to return to work

The latest hearing has decided it is in the public interest for Worsley, who has been working as a clinical support worker, to return to her role as a nurse during the pandemic.

The panel said: 'COVID-19 is such an unique event, second only perhaps to a war, that it is possible for a case such as yours, where you are working 'on the frontline', to be viewed as exceptional.'

A senior sister at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust told the tribunal: 'Currently with the Covid 19 pandemic Stacey has been moved into the Emergency Department and with her skills and qualifications would be better working as a Band 5 qualified nurse rather than a CSW.

'Stacey sees the other qualified nurses working under large amounts of pressure in a busy clinical setting and feels helpless.'

The money was meant for her six-year-old son Toby Nye's neuroblastoma treatment as it wasn't on the NHS before he tragically passed away

The panel decided that in this case, 'the pandemic has changed fundamental parts of life' and Worsley could return to work immediately.

More than 100,000 was raised by Leeds United players, fans and members of the public through a crowdfunding website before Worsley's son tragically passed away.

Worsley, from Osmondthorpe in Leeds, has previously been photographed with her son and Prince Harry at a fundraising event.

Worsley, in her 30s, told the original NMC tribunal her offending took place 'at a time of despair' and it was heard this was an 'extraordinary and tragic set of circumstances'.

And following the fraud, Worsley was taken to Leeds Crown Court last summer and given a two-year jail term suspended for two years

But now a review hearing has decided Worsley should be allowed to work as a registered nurse amid the coronavirus pandemic

The NMC panel said: 'It was a significant fraud amounting to a 100,000.

'The period of gambling was approximately 15 months, between January 2017 and March 2018.

'Through your dishonesty, you clearly breached a fundamental tenet of the nursing profession and breached the trust of the donors.'

The NMC panel suspended Worsley for 12 months after it determined Worsley has 'displayed genuine and deep remorse' and ruled that striking her off would be 'disproportionate and overly punitive'.

It was also heard the money was paid back and that Worsley has the backing of her employer and is keen to continue training to become and emergency nurse practitioner.

Worsley was taken to Leeds Crown Court last summer in relation to her offending and admitted dishonestly making false representation to make gain.

She was given a two-year jail term suspended for two years.

The news comes with Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly planning to keep lockdown restrictions until at least June with the having exceeded the 30,000 mark.

The number of deaths in the UK currently stands at 30,615, with 152 of those relating to NHS health and social care workers who have died after contracting Covid-19.

The figures also demonstrate that the UK is now officially the worst hit in Europe after surpassing Italy - who have recorded 29,958 - on Wednesday.

And with deaths still on the rise, Mr Johnson is set to announce only a 'small and modest' easing of restrictions in his address to the nation on Sunday evening.

The Prime Minister told the cabinet he will proceed with 'maximum caution' when it comes to lifting restrictions, after experts warned that outbreaks in care homes and hospitals make significant easing far too dangerous.

Mr Johnson is set to address the nation at 7pm on Sunday and is expected to announce that people will be allowed unlimited exercise from Monday, while private prayer in places of worship is also to be permitted.
The gowns shipped to the United Kingdom from Turkey that reportedly failed to meet safety standards were provided by a private Turkish company and not the government, according to a Turkish official who said the equipment sent by Ankara was safe to use.

Hundreds of thousands of personal protective equipment (PPE) items, including 400,000 gowns, arrived in the UK on April 22, three days later than scheduled.

However, it was only on Thursday when officials said the gowns did not meet the required standards, a claim refuted by Turkish officials.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said the gowns were not of the quality that we feel is good enough for our front-line staff treating coronavirus patients, adding that the government decided not to use them.

The UK government, quoted by the national media, said the National Health Service (NHS) was in talks to acquire new gowns and looking into getting a refund from the supplier.

On Friday, a Turkish government official told Al Jazeera the UK ordered PPE items from a private Turkish company and not the government.

When that company failed to fulfill the entire order, USHAS [a government agency] provided the rest to prevent a shortage in the UK, the official said.

What seems to be defective or below-par products are limited to the equipment supplied by the private seller rather than the government of Turkey. The Turkish government authorised this sale despite an export ban, out of solidarity with the UK authorities.

Turkeys export ban on PPE was lifted in early May.

No problem with supplies

In a press release on Thursday, the Turkish health ministry said UK authorities were contacted over the issue after the story appeared in the British media.

The NHS officials sent a written confirmation to us that there is no problem concerning these products, the press release said.

The email was shared with a number of media outlets, including Al Jazeera.

The British ambassador to Turkey, Dominick Chilcott, also rejected the stories in the UK media, saying reports of 400,000 items of PPE sent from Turkey are unusable are untrue.

A small number of gowns from a private supplier have failed tests. But more gowns from that supplier have passed tests and are suitable for use in the NHS, Chilcott tweeted late on Thursday.

The #UK government remains very grateful to the #Turkish government for its support of the UKs requirements for PPE, he added.

Stories in the UK media that 400K items of PPE sent from Turkey are unusable are untrue. A small number of gowns from a private supplier have failed tests. But more gowns from that supplier have passed tests and are suitable for use in the NHS.  Dominick Chilcott (@DChilcottFCDO) May 7, 2020

The #UK government remains very grateful to the #Turkish government for its support of the UKs requirements for PPE.  Dominick Chilcott (@DChilcottFCDO) May 7, 2020

Turkey has sent medical aid to at least 57 countries since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Turkish health ministry, the government also donated 100,000 certified overalls, 100,000 surgical masks and 50,000 N95 masks to the UK on April 7 without any issues.

200505095917325

Amid huge global demand, the UK has struggled to maintain a constant supply of PPE items. It recently surpassed Italy in the coronavirus death toll, becoming Europes worst-hit and the worlds second worst-hit country.

More than 30,500 people have died in the UK from the new coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnsons government has also been heavily criticised over its response to the pandemic, in particular, the start of a lockdown in the country and PPE shortages.

Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. High 76F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Windy with increasing clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 32F. Winds N at 20 to 30 mph.
When the Soviet Union put the first man into space in 1961, the shock to Americas self-confidence was electric. If China should be first to produce a successful vaccine against the coronavirus, US prestige is likely to suffer a similar blow.

President Donald Trump is putting everything hes got into a research effort dubbed Operation Warp Speed, which pulls together pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military. So is China, which has a head start at a time the two countries are already engaged in a fight for dominance impacting everything from trade to the roll-out of 5G communications networks.

The stakes in finding a vaccine against the coronavirus couldnt be higher. In just a few months the disease has claimed more than a quarter of a million lives and shattered economies worldwide.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

While many leaders are talking about global collaboration, history suggests that national interests will dominate  the government that can immunize its workforce first stands to gain not just economic advantage, but the validation of its technological prowess and international influence. If that government is in Beijing, the impact could be as dramatic as Yuri Gagarins trip into orbit almost 60 years ago.

When its tense like it is now between the US and China, every single thing gets distorted by the geopolitics, said David Fidler, a specialist in cyber security and global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. Should Beijing produce the first vaccine, the US will worry that China would weaponize the vaccine in geopolitical terms, he said.

Both the US and China have played down talk of competition, with Chinese officials in particular stressing the common nature of the threat from Covid-19. No vaccine has ever been made on the kinds of schedules being targeted, counted in months rather than years. Scientists familiar with the process warn it isnt certain that one can be developed at all, let alone by the end of the year. So the risk of disappointment is high.

Click here for the latest updates from the coronavirus outbreak

In a recent town hall on Fox News, Trump said the US was working with both Britain and Australia on vaccine projects, and wasnt focused on who got there first. I really dont care, he said. If its another country, Ill take my hat off to them. We have to come up with a vaccine.

Health Secretary Alex Azar said this week that the US expects to be able to start manufacturing the drugs itself, whoever makes the scientific breakthrough.

Still, in the first months of the pandemic, signs of geopolitical rivalry have been there for all to see, and trust lacking even among allies.

The state government in Berlin accused the US of modern piracy, for allegedly snatching away shipments of Chinese protective gear earmarked for Germany, a claim denied by the US The Europeans are bringing in new rules to protect their pharmaceutical firms from foreign acquisitions. China has irritated western governments with highly publicized airlifts of medical aid to selected countries and suggestions its success in containing the virus is proof of a superior political system.

The US is signalling that its own efforts are focused on protecting the American people first. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday described the US vaccine program as aiming to develop a vaccine for the people of the United States. The administration is targeting 300 million doses  enough to inoculate most of the country  by January.

Chinas research process is for now more advanced, with a total of 508 volunteers joining a second phase trial for a potential vaccine that the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences is developing with a Tianjin-based company, CanSino Biologics. Results from the trial could be known as soon as this month.

Russia has at least four vaccine projects underway, including at Novosibirsk Vector, a laboratory that once worked on Soviet bio-weapons programs, according to Sergei Netesov, a former executive at the lab who now teaches at Novosibirsk State University. The goal, he says, is for Russia to make sure its own population has protection without being dependent on its rivals.

Others are in the mix, too, with the UK saying that if a promising Oxford University project is successful, Britons will be at the front to the line.

To be sure, France and Germany are leading the charge for a more cooperative approach, securing pledges of 7.4 billion euro ($8 billion) at a virtual Group of Twenty fund raiser on May 4. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, meanwhile, has said it will build manufacturing capacity to make as many seven vaccines available, even before they exist, an unprecedented effort to ensure wide and rapid availability.

This pandemic is a global challenge and we will therefore also only be able to overcome it globally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the G-20 video conference. We are ready to go new ways.

But past experience isnt encouraging. During the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, governments also issued joint declarations committing themselves to collaboration in the development and distribution of vaccines. Nevertheless, as soon as they were available, countries that could afford to bought up doses and hoarded them, to ensure their populations would get inoculated first.

The US snubbed Mondays G-20 vaccine initiative, objecting to the involvement of the World Health Organization, while officials in both Washington and Beijing have indulged in conspiracy theories and blame games to accuse the other of responsibility for the virus. Trump has blamed the WHO for failing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and halted US funding to the organization. China is emerging first from its lockdown to reboot its economy, while the US and Europe are still struggling to contain the virus and piling on vast sums of national debt to cushion the economic impact, risking long periods of slow growth ahead.

Even the G-20 leadership of Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron is in part designed to compensate for the failure of the European Unions collective response to the coronavirus so far, according to Stefan Lehne, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, a Brussels-based think tank. Perceived German and EU failures to help Italy early in the crisis caused resentment and opened a diplomatic window for China and Russia, both of which sent high profile shipments of medical aid to Italy.

Bill Gates said this is like a world war and we are all on the same side, says Lehne. This is not so evident.
- Major General Mwathethe took the reins of power at the Defences Forces in April 2015

- His five-year term elapsed last month and President Uhuru Kenyatta effectively appointed Robert Kibochi to replace him

- Until his elevation, Kibochi was the Vice of Chief of Defence Forces

General Samson Mwathethe has officially handed over the military command to the new Chief of Defence Forces Robert Kibochi.

Kibochi was appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta to replace Mwathethe at the helm of the country's military rank after the latter's five-year term expired.

READ ALSO: Kariobangi chaos: Smoke, tears as residents barricade roads in protest against forceful evictions

General Samson Mwathethe has officially handed over command to new Chief of Defence Forces Robert Kibochi. Photo: KDF.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: 9 gorgeous photos of Maria actress Mama Sailas proving she is a devoted mom

In a function held at the Kenya Army headquarters Nairobi on Friday, May 8, Mwathethe bid farewell the Kenya Army Personnel and handed over the command to Kibochi.

The outgoing general arrived at the venue at 9am and was received by the Commander Lieutenant General Walter Koipaton.

"The outgoing Chief of the Defence Forces General Samson Mwathethe has arrived at the Kenya Army Headquarters to bid farewell the Kenya Army Personnel. Today he will also hand over to CDF designate Gen Robert Kibochi," Kenya Defence Forces tweeted.

Kibochi is the immediate former Vice of Chief of Defence Forces and was elevated to the highest rank on Thursday, April 30.

His predecessor took the reins of power at the Defences Forces in April 2015.

New Chief of Defence Forces Robert Kibochi. Photo: KDF.

Source: UGC

Uhuru commended Mwathethe for the exemplary work he did during his tenure as the country's military general.

"During your tenure, we detected and expunge early enough a number of plans by those who do not mean well for our country, in good time," he said in a statement released by State House on Thursday, April 30.

Mwathethe used the occasion to launch a book, War for Peace, which details the story of Kenya military's quest to restore peace in Somalia.

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.

A Poor Kenyan Has No Rights: Couple who lost a hand in a Chinese company and got fired Follow up | Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Accusations: Nicolas Maduro said Juan Guaido was behind a military raid designed to oust him. Photo: Miraflores Palace presidential press office via AP

A former US soldier captured in Venezuela said he had been contracted by a Florida security firm to seize control of Caracas's airport and bring in a plane to fly President Nicolas Maduro to the United States.

Venezuelan authorities on Monday arrested the man, Luke Denman, along with fellow US citizen Airan Berry and 11 others, in what Mr Maduro called a failed plot co-ordinated with Washington to oust him. During questioning broadcast on state television, Mr Denman said the firm, Silvercorp USA, had signed a contract with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to seek Mr Maduro's removal.

A Guaido adviser told CNN he had signed an exploratory agreement, but it had never been finalised and the opposition did not support the attempted incursion.

US President Donald Trump has denied involvement.

A senior Trump administration official said Mr Maduro's accusations of a US role "are not credible" and the administration remained focused on "achieving a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela".

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US government would use "every tool" to secure the Americans' return, if they were being held in Venezuela.

In the video, Mr Denman (34) answered questions from a person off-camera speaking in English. Mr Denman, who looked calm and wore a grey T-shirt, said his mission was to secure the airport and establish outer security. He did not give details on how his group planned to get Mr Maduro on a plane. It was unclear when or where the video was made, and where Mr Denman and Mr Berry are being held.

In March, the US Department of Justice charged Mr Maduro and a dozen other current and former Venezuelan officials with "narco-terrorism" and the Trump administration offered a $15m (13.8m) reward for information leading to his arrest.
Thanks to the communitys generous contributions, Jewish Family Services of Greater Orlando collected $18,742 and 4,930 lbs. of food in this years Restock Challenge. With every $1 and pound of food matched $0.50 by The Weiner Family and The Winter Park Wealth Group, JFS surpassed their $10,000 match goal and therefore raised a grand total of $28,742.

Although due to COVID-19 JFS could no longer collect food donations two weeks into the drive, donors stepped up to the challenge by giving monetary donations. These donations made a big impact as they could allow JFS to buy $6 worth of food for every $1 at Second Harvest Food Bank. That means that $28,742 actually translates to an impact of $172,452 worth of food purchasing power.

JFS Orlando would like to give a special thanks to their match sponsors, The Weiner Family and The Winter Park Wealth Group, as well as their community partners.

Aldi at Aloma Square Shopping Center

barre3 Winter Park

Certified Financial Group, Inc.

Congregation Ohev Shalom

Congregation of Reform Judaism

Einstein Bros. Bagels

Shoppes of Maitland

The Fresh Market on N. Mills Ave

FreshPoint Central Florida

Harry Levine Insurance

Holy Cross Young Adults

Jewish Academy of Orlando

MAGAL

Personal Mini Storage

Publix Super Market at Maitland Place

The Rosen JCC: Jewish Community Center of Southwest Orlando

The Roth Family Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando

Schwam-Wilcox & Associates

Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation

Sprouts Farmers Market at Winter Park Corners

Temple Israel

Temple Shir Shalom

The Tribe

Your support is already going a long way in helping the Central Florida community, especially during these difficult times.
New Delhi: Indian nationals stranded abroad arrive from Signapore outside Le Meridien hotel where they will be kept in quarantine, in New Delhi on May 8, 2020. (Photo: Bidesh Manna/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Hotel staff sanitise the baggages of Indian nationals stranded abroad arrive from Signapore outside Le Meridien hotel where they will be kept in quarantine, in New Delhi on May 8, 2020. (Photo: Bidesh Manna/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Hotel staff sanitise the baggages of Indian nationals stranded abroad arrive from Signapore outside Le Meridien hotel where they will be kept in quarantine, in New Delhi on May 8, 2020. (Photo: Bidesh Manna/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 8 : As the first batch of Indian evacuees from foreign shores landed in Delhi amid tight medical supervision on Friday, the Le Meridien in the heart of the national capital is one of the many hotels where some of them will be quarantined for the next 14 days.

The premier hotel located in Lutyens' Delhi has made special arrangements for welcoming the guests with an Indian touch.

'Namaste', the symbol of Indian hospitality, has been put on signboards to give the guests a homely feeling, while arrangements have also been made to offer them authentic Indian food to make them feel at home.

Speaking to IANS, Rajeev Anand, Food and Beverages Manager at the hotel, said, "The food menu is varying. We've been really careful in crafting the menu and have concentrated on the local cuisine as we are sure that the guests are looking forward to homely taste." Elaborating on the special arrangements made to welcome the guests, Anand said, "We feel honoured that we are able to provide solace to the guests. The 'Namaste' signage has been put out to welcome the guests." When IANS reached the hotel, the staff could be seen working hard to welcome the guests and ensure that best services are provided to them.

"We wanted to give the guests a floral welcome, but unfortunately the supply of flowers is not available. So we are just putting a note saying 'welcome home'. We have also drafted a small letter for the guests, which we will share with them over phone and email, keeping in mind the social distancing norms.

"We have also prepared a small daily menu, 'what's cooking today', which will be sent to them via WhatsApp everyday so that they know what they are going to be served," said Meera Bhatia, Vice President and General Manager, Le Meridien Hotel.

"Now that the government is bringing people back to India, our hotel staff are all ready to welcome the guests for a stay at the hotel," Bhatia said, adding that she was expecting 20 to 25 people to check-in on Friday.

While speaking about the reopening of the hotel, she said that they never closed it as there were some standard guests who couldn't leave the country.

Bhatia also elaborated on the arrangements that have been made to welcome the guests amid the pandemic situation. "We have made extensive hospitality arrangements for the guests right from the check-in point. From baggage sanitisation to X-Ray screening, all the SOPs are in place. However, the services will still remain limited," she said.

Anand said special equipment, including PPE kits, will be given to the staff who will look after the guests under quarantine.

"They are coming back after a lot of hardship. When you are abroad, you always remember home. Now since the government has taken the initiative to bring them back, we feel honoured and proud to contribute," he said.

On being asked about the financial strain in the hospitality sector, Anand maintained that "we will sail through".

He said that there have been past instances of pandemics or riots when the sector was equally hard hit, but it came out bravely. Something that he is certain will happen this time around too.
Israel's president on Thursday tasked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming a unity government Thursday, signalling the probable end of more than a year of political deadlock, a government statement said. "A letter assigning the task of forming a government to Benjamin Netanyahu was just sent to the prime minister's office," it said. "The office of the speaker of the Knesset (parliament) was also informed." The veteran premier now has 14 days to seal the details of the coalition accord and sign his partners up to ground rules spelling out policy. Failure would mean a fourth election, a presidential spokesman told AFP, after three inconclusive polls within a year. Earlier Thursday, Knesset members voted for the deal between Israel's longest-serving leader and his erstwhile rival Benny Gantz, then called on President Reuven Rivlin to mandate Netanyahu to form the government. The accord will see the rightwing premier share power with Gantz, a centrist former military chief. The two men plan to swear in their new administration on May 13, with Netanyahu remaining leader for 18 months before handing over to Gantz. While each man is in power, the other will serve as alternate PM, a newly created position. Representatives of Netanyahu's Likud party and Gantz's Blue and White presented Rivlin's office with a signed request, from 72 of the country's 120 MPs, that Netanyahu be mandated to form a government. It was delivered hours ahead of a midnight (2100 GMT Thursday) deadline. The proposed government had been challenged in the high court, with opponents arguing Netanyahu was ineligible due to corruption indictments. But the court ruled on Wednesday evening that there was "no legal reason to prevent the formation of a government" led by Netanyahu. It added that the allegations against Netanyahu could be addressed in his trial, due to begin on May 24. Netanyahu has been written off by pundits and rivals many times since taking power in 2009, but has invariably found ways to remain in the hot seat. As well as rebuilding an economy shaken by the coronavirus, the new government will also decide on the possible annexation of large parts of the West Bank, a move from which successive governments have refrained since Israel occupied the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967. - Lost year - Israel has been without a stable government since December 2018, after successive elections left Gantz's centrist Blue and White and Netanyahu's Likud near neck-and-neck. Netanyahu has remained in a caretaker role throughout. In January, he was charged with accepting improper gifts and illegally trading favours in exchange for positive media coverage. He denies wrongdoing, but if the trial goes ahead as planned he will become the first serving Israeli leader to be tried. Gantz's critics, including many former allies, accused him of betraying his voters after campaigning for cleaner politics and pledging not to serve under an indicted prime minister. "Never have so few cheated so many voters for such miserable reasons," former Gantz ally Yair Lapid, poised to become opposition leader, tweeted Thursday. But Gantz has defended his decision, citing the need for political stability as the country faces the economic damage wrought by a coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 16,000 people. Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, said Gantz and Netanyahu had "zero trust" in one another. "This is probably the main characteristic of this political agreement," he told journalists. "Therefore a new regime was created whereby we have two prime ministers, both with veto power." - West Bank annexations? - In its first months the government will focus on the COVID-19 response. The country took rapid measures to lock down and has succeeded in limiting the death toll so far to just over 200, in a population of some nine million. In recent days it has started easing the measures and allowing some businesses to partially reopen. From July 1, the government can also decide whether to follow through with the annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. President Donald Trump has given Washington's blessing for the move, which the United Nations says violates international law. Israel could also annex the Jordan Valley, another region Trump says he is ready to recognise as part of its sovereign territory. Either move is liable to trigger Palestinian unrest across the West Bank as well as in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians see the West Bank as the mainstay of their future state and the United Nations has warned that annexation would seriously damage any hopes for lasting peace. Plesner said if Democratic candidate Joe Biden were to beat Trump in November's election he would likely oppose annexation, taking the idea "off the table". As such, he added, the government will have a "short window of opportunity between July and the US elections in November."
Danish shopping malls will be allowed to open again on Monday as the Nordic country enters its second phase of reopening after the coronavirus lockdown, the government said on Thursday.

Smaller stores have already reopened but the entire retail sector, including shopping malls, will be allowed to reopen from May 11, and restaurants and cafes one week later.

The result of negotiations with neighbouring countries about border controls and travel bans will be announced by June 1, the government said.

SOURCE: REUTERS
The world's first coronavirus vaccine that can neutralize coronavirus has been discovered by Italian Scientists, or so they claimed. The researchers from pharmaceutical firm Takis Biotech believe that antibodies created by mice can help prevent humans from getting the coronavirus. Experts say that human trials could begin in the autumn.

The race for the coronavirus vaccine

The alleged discovery of Italian scientists came right after UK's Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, warned the public that a vaccine for the virus may never be found to stop its spread, which has now claimed more than 258,000 and has infected more than 3.5 million people lives around the world.

The chief executive of Takis Biotech, Luigi Aurisicchio said that as far as they know, they were the first in the world so far to have demonstrated neutralization of the coronavirus by a vaccine. The company is one of the numerous companies around the world who are working tirelessly to find a vaccine that can save lives.

Mr. Aurisicchio told Italian news agency Ansa that finding a vaccine for COVID-19 is not a competition. He called for experts to join forces and combine their skills to win against the virus.

The Italian researchers injected mice with cloned genetic code, and they said they saw encouraging results. Five vaccine candidates led to a very strong antibody response after 14 days and two showed a particularly strong response, the scientists claim.

Also Read: Coronavirus Has Mutated: Experts Fear New Strain is More Contagious and Deadly

So far, the tests have been carried out at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Disease, but the company needs the support of the Italian government and international partners to carry out clinical trials.

On May 6, Mr. Hancock warned that people would have to find a way to live with the virus because there is no guarantee a vaccine will be found. He told Sky News: "If a vaccine can't be found then we have to learn to find a way to live with this virus so that means getting the numbers down and holding them down through, for instance, mass-scale testing and then tracing the virus through a combination of technology and human contact tracers."

Oxford University is currently conducting tests on humans and has previously stated that a successful vaccine could be produced this year.

What will happen if a vaccine is never developed?

The worst-case possibility is that no vaccine will ever be developed. If this happens, societies may need to learn to live with it. Cities would slowly open and some lockdowns will be lifted. People will gain their freedom back but on a short leash. If experts' recommendations are followed, testing and physical tracing will become part of our lives.

There could be treatments developed in the future, but outbreaks of the disease could happen yearly and the death toll worldwide would continue to rise. Most experts remain confident that a vaccine for the virus will eventually be discovered and developed, in part because unlike previous diseases, the coronavirus does not mutate at a rapid pace.

Many experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, suggest that a vaccine could be developed in 12 to 18 months. If a vaccine is developed, and if it does happen within the timeframe suggested, it would be a feat that has never been achieved before.

Related Article: Hot Weather Dries Up COVID-19 Droplets, But Virus May Travel Farther in Windy Days

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South Africa recently came out of a strict five-week lockdown aimed at battling the spread of the coronavirus.

The strict level 5 lockdown regulations prohibited any movement of people except for essential requirements.

Most businesses were required to close, the sale of alcohol and cigarettes were banned, and no outside exercise was allowed.

Before this strict lockdown, rules related to the national state of disaster imposed some restrictions on businesses and citizens, too.

Gatherings of more than 100 people were prohibited, international travel was restricted, schools were closed, and the sale of alcohol after 18:00 was banned.

The effect of these restrictions is clearly visible in the number of new coronavirus cases in South Africa.

To accurately interpret the COVID-19 statistics in South Africa, however, the nature of the disease should be taken into account.

Adjusted dates to assess the impact of the regulations

The incubation period for COVID-19, which is the time between becoming infected and showing symptoms, is 5-6 days on average. It can, however, be up to 14 days.

This is partly what makes the virus so difficult to contain. An infected person can be contagious for a long time before they know they have the virus.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit South Africa, most COVID-19 tests were conducted reactively, based on people who had symptoms.

Professor Salim Abdool Karim, who chairs the Minister of Healths COVID-19 advisory committee, said understanding this long incubation period is crucial.

He said to understand the coronavirus case numbers people are seeing today, they have to look back at what was happening in South Africa two weeks before.

This is because when someone tests positive for the coronavirus, it reflects an infection from two weeks ago.

Patients only start experiencing symptoms after the incubation period, at which point they go to a doctor, clinic, or hospital.

From there, the patient needs to receive a laboratory test, and only if the results come back positive is the patient considered an active coronavirus case.

MyBroadband used Karims suggested two-week shift to interpret the impact of the governments current interventions.

The table below provides an overview of the two-week date shift for important periods over the past two months.

Two-Week Date Adjustment Period to assess Date of Infection Date of Results Before the State of Disaster 5 March  14 March 19 March  28 March State of Disaster 15 March  26 March 29 March  9 April Lockdown 27 March  16 April 10 April  30 April Lockdown Extension 17 April  30 April 1 May  14 May

The impact of the interventions on coronavirus case numbers

A day after the national lockdown kicked in, the confirmed coronavirus case numbers in South Africa plummeted.

In the week before the lockdown, there was an average of 111 new cases per day and this was rapidly increasing.

In the week after the lockdown, the average number of daily cases decreased to 76.

Very few people expected this. Even Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the low number of infections took them by surprise.

He said at the start of April they expected the total number of confirmed cases to have reached between 4,000 and 5,000 by around 2 April. Instead, it was sitting under 1,500 cases.

The lower-than-expected infections after the lockdown kicked in, Karim explained, was a result of the restrictions related to the state of disaster two weeks earlier.

These interventions broke the trend of the previous week, over which the number of daily coronavirus cases increased from 38 cases on 21 March to 243 cases on 27 March.

The lockdown served to restrain the spread of the virus. Although the number of new cases increased during the lockdown, it was mainly a result of more tests being conducted.

An interesting observation, illustrated in the chart below, is how effective the state of disaster interventions were.

Using the date of infection  rather than the reporting date  shows there was an average of 135 new cases per day in the week before the state of disaster.

During the state of disaster, there was only an average of 62 cases per day. It therefore effectively broke the rapid increase in infections.

It was highly effective in stopping the rapid increase of new coronavirus cases in South Africa without significantly disrupting business activity.

The chart below shows the growth and slowdown in daily coronavirus cases based on the interventions implemented by the government.

The dates have been adjusted to the show the date of infection  two weeks earlier  rather than the reporting date.

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases is closely related to the number of tests conducted, that chart is also provided below.

The third chart then shows the number of COVID-19 deaths, which are also related to the number of coronavirus cases.

The dates for the last two charts have also been adjusted by two weeks to show the date of infection.

Percentage of positive tests

The number of coronavirus cases is closely related to the number of tests which are conducted, and who is tested.

Karim said that until 6 April, all tests were done on people who showed symptoms and who visited doctors rooms or hospitals.

This changed when community health workers were sent into the field to find people to test.

Through community testing, the number of daily tests has significantly increased  which has resulted in an equivalent increase in confirmed cases.

Between 6 March and 6 April, an average of 1,800 COVID-19 tests were conducted per day. This increased to 7,550 per day between 7 April and 7 May.

This increase in daily tests means the percentage of positive tests are a better measure of the growth of the outbreak, rather than merely looking at daily tests.

If we look at that rate, which is about 2.7% of tests, we have seen little difference in the proportion of positive tests over the last five weeks, Karim told News24.

But well now most likely start to see a slow, but consistent increase in that rate because of the relaxing of the lockdown regulations.

The chart below shows the percentage of positive tests based on the adjusted dates to reflect the date of infection.

The worst is yet to come

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently warned that South Africa must brace itself for an increase of COVID-19 infections as restrictions are lifted.

He said the level 5 lockdown had done a great deal to slow the wave of infections that was meant to go up exponentially. This will now change, however.

Karim echoed Ramaphosas views, saying we can expect to see a slow and steady increase in the number of COVID-19 cases over the next 8-10 weeks.

Projections are that around July, there will be an inflection or a sharp increase in cases that will likely peak in late August or early September, said Karim.

He said this gives people two to three months to get back to their lives and get children back to school.

When the July inflection happens, we could expect to see alert levels go up again and high lockdown levels would be an option, said Karim.

This, he explained, is because the government has a risk-adjusted approach to lockdown levels.

The state adjusts its approach according to the disease burden  how many cases we have and the threat of transmission that the cases pose  and the capacity of our health services to cope with the cases.

Now read: What to expect from level 3 lockdown rules
The Bible abounds with examples of Jesus healing the diseased and the sick. Sometimes He cleansed them of illness with the barest utterance of a word, while other times He knelt with His hands upon their prone bodies, drawing the sickness out and restoring them to full health. As followers of Jesus, Christians have a clear directive: to obey the Golden Rule, doing to others as you would like them to do to you (Matthew 7:12), and to love your neighbors as yourself (John 13:34). That means helping others even at tremendous health risksomething Christians are doing today in this pandemic and have done in pandemics and other great disasters throughout history.

Todays COVID-19 pandemic is understandably frightening for many Christians, as the airborne disease spreads quickly and has a high mortality rate. Still, the risk isnt stopping many Christians from remaining on the front lines, providing healthcare, delivering food and medicine, and checking on friends, neighbors, the elderly, and the infirm. While they take precautions, wearing masks, gloves, and other protective shields to render aid, they know the right response is not one of fear but of careserving others above self. But the coronavirus is not the only illness Christians have responded to throughout history. From the Antonine Plague to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, followers of Jesus have earned a reputation of mercy and compassion.

How Did Early Christians Respond to the Antonine Plague?

Early Christians stepped up to offer care as early as the 2nd century when the Antonine Plague killed roughly a quarter of the Roman Empire. According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, the Antonine Plague was a ghastly illness much like smallpox. Roman troops came into contact with it during their invasions east and brought it back as they returned home, effectively killing off an estimated 60-70 million people and leading to the decline of the Roman Empire. At first, Roman leaders persecuted Christians, insisting the epidemic was divine punishment because Christians didnt pay homage to pagan gods. But this treatment backfired, as people began to develop positive feelings toward Christians and, soon, Christianity. For while many pagans fled to protect their own lives, Christians heeded a responsibility to care for the sick, providing food, water, and other assistance. Their help both fostered goodwill and laid the groundwork for the rise of Christianity. Also, their emphasis on an afterlife brought meaning and hope to a people in crisis.

Did Christians Help in the Plague of Cyprian?

A hundred years later, Christians played even more dramatic a role in tending to victims of the Plague of Cyprian. Named after a Tunisian bishop who preached heartily on the devastating effects of the illness, this plague caused such atrocious death that St. Cyprian and others believed it signaled the end of the world. Again, Christians did all they could to help those ill with the plague, sacrificing their own lives to care for the sick and caring as fervently for non-Christians as for Christians. Not only did the plague further cement the decline of the Roman Empire, but the response of Christians and the benevolence they inspired also helped spread Christianitys growth, even more explosively than before.

How Did Christians Respond to the Bubonic Plague or Black Death?

During the Middle Ages, Christians reacted in a number of different ways as the bubonic plague, and its worst epidemic, the Black Death, ravaged Europe and Asia courtesy of both rats and close quarters. Marked by terrifying black boils filled with blood and pus, the Black Death is thought to have wiped out a third of the population in Europe in just five years. Trade ships brought it to Europe from the Near and Far East in the mid-14th century, and its rapid rate of infection caused widespread hysteria. The panic caused a range of reactions. Some Christians avoided each other, closing up shops, abandoning work, and fleeing cities seeking safety; many priests refused to perform last rites for the dying.

Others saw the plague as a divine punishment and began to walk the streets barefoot in sackcloth crying out for Gods forgiveness. Flagellants took this a step further, marching in mass groups beating themselves with leather whips or iron spikes, and soon attacking churches. A few turned their wrath toward people of other faiths as though they caused the epidemic. Still, there were great pockets of Christians who, as in other plagues, sacrificed their own lives to care for the ill, doing all they could to live out Christs command to serve in love. Eventually, the Black Death ran its course, though it emerged repeatedly throughout the centuries.

In one significant example of Christian leadership, Martin Luther, who began the Protestant Reformation, refused to flee in the 1500s when the bubonic plague hit Wittenberg, Germany. Luther wrote a highly influential tract, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague, reminding Christians of Jesuss words in Matthew 25:41-46 (I was sick and you did not visit me) and urging them to remain bound together in care and love. As he wrote, we must do all we can to care for one another even at the expense of our own lives. Luthers words served as a rallying cry for Christiansand an example of how we are to love our neighbors.

Did Faith Play a Role in Early American Plagues?

As European settlers turned their sights on early America, it wasnt long before they brought illness along with goods for trade. Smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera ravaged early settlements, quickly infecting Native Americans and devastating towns and villages with sickness and death. Vaccines, improved hygiene, and other medicine helped improve survival rates, and Christian missionaries were influential in reaching Native and other people with needed medicine. Often, survival from illness led to Christian conversion.

How Did Christians Serve Others in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic?

The first recorded outbreak of the 1918 influenza pandemic, often called by its misnomer, the Spanish flu, was in March 1918 in Kansas, when a young private reported to an Army hospital complaining of flu symptoms. The next day, more than 100 other soldiers were complaining of the same symptoms. The disease spread quickly, both on American soil and abroad, as U.S. soldiers traveled from America to battlefields overseas in Europe. Their overcrowded quarters, combined with poor sanitation and limited health services, led to a rapid spread of the pandemic. Over the next few years, the pandemic claimed more than 50 million lives, according to the World Health Organizationmore than double the total number of deaths in World War 1, at 20 millionand infected about a third of the worlds population.

Much like todays response to COVID-19, many communities reacted with public closures of schools, businesses, church services, and other gatherings. Instead of worshipping in large crowds, many Christians took to meeting in private homes, much like the apostles did in the early days of the church. As in earlier pandemics, Christians were frequently first-responders when it came to caring for the sick, eschewing their own health and safety to tend to others. They served in hospitals and visited the ill in homes, sitting and praying with them for hours. Others pitched in to help by digging graves, cleaning, or cooking meals.

Their message of Christian love and hopeparticularly the emphasis on fear not and the truth that eternal life awaits those who believe in Christ Jesusbuoyed up both Christian and non-Christian alike, much like it is doing today.

What Does the Bible Say about Helping the Sick?

The Bible is filled with examples and directives about helping those who are ill, infirm, or unable to care for themselves. Here are some favorites:

When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. - Matthew 25:38-40

Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one anothers feet. - John 13:14

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. - Philippians 2:3-4

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. - Matthew 7:12

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. - John 13:34

At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. - Luke 4:40

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. - Matthew 4:23

When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. - Matthew 8:16

Take comfort in knowing that God has been with His people from the very beginning through struggle and strife; He is near to His children and He cares for us. Take your troubles to the Lord, for He is present and aware, and find rest in His grace and peace.

Photo credit: GettyImages/Nobilior

Jessica Brodie is an award-winning Christian novelist, journalist, editor, blogger, and writing coach and the recipient of the 2018 American Christian Fiction Writers Genesis Award for her novel, The Memory Garden. She is also the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism. Learn more about her fiction and read her faith blog at jessicabrodie.com. She has a weekly YouTube devotional, too. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and more. Shes also produced a free eBook, A God-Centered Life: 10 Faith-Based Practices When Youre Feeling Anxious, Grumpy, or Stressed.
Spurred on by job losses and hunger, countries are moving to ease lockdowns even when daily cases remain high.

After enduring weeks of coronavirus lockdowns, more than 100 million travellers in China flocked to key tourist sites this week, while businesses including barbershops, nail salons and shopping malls reopened in parts of the United States.

Families separated by strict physical-distancing rules in Italy reunited for the first time in two months, and Spaniards rushed out of their homes to exercise after being cooped up for seven weeks.

In Germany, churches, museums and some schools opened their doors, while in Nigeria, the cities of Abuja and Lagos came to life after a month-long shutdown; the streets once again clogged with cars and minibuses.

With the new coronavirus exacting an economic toll unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s  wiping out millions of jobs and raising the spectre of unrest and hunger  governments around the world are trying to chart a way out of prolonged lockdowns and beginning to phase out restrictions. But without a vaccine or widespread testing to identify and stamp out new clusters, health experts warn some leaders are taking a gamble that could result in a new surge of infections and deaths.

We are in uncharted territory, said Dr Annelise Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Governments are having to strike a balance between this virus and the negative impacts of lockdowns on societies, including economic downturns, societal strife and mental health concerns  No one is totally ready to lift lockdowns.





Indeed, researchers at the UKs Oxford University, in a note published on May 1, say no countries fully meet the World Health Organizations (WHO) criteria to safely ease shutdowns.

Key among the agencys six guidelines is controlling transmission to the level of sporadic or clusters of cases. That translates to less than 50 cases a day and sustained decrease in rates of infections. Second is bolstering health sector capacity to contain future outbreaks, through widespread testing, rapid and effective contact tracing, as well as adequate infrastructure to support extended isolation and quarantine for positive cases and their contacts.

The Oxford study says only a handful of countries and territories come close to meeting the WHO measures. They include Taiwan and South Korea, which did not impose nationwide shutdowns but controlled the virus transmission with early and rapid test, trace and quarantine campaigns.

Also ranked high on these two measures is China, which imposed a strict lockdown, deployed an army of contract tracers and utilised mass surveillance to contain its outbreak. And despite suffering a historic economic slump, authorities in Beijing only began lifting lockdown measures after daily infections fell and stayed for weeks at about 100 cases. That was in late March. In recent days, Chinas cases have fallen to single digits, most of them involving travellers from overseas.

But many hard-hit nations in Europe  including Spain, Italy and France  are moving to gradually reopen their economies despite continuing to record more than a 1,000 daily cases. The figures, however, mark a significant drop from peaks of between 4,000 and 7,000 daily cases in these countries.

Germany, notable in Europe for keeping deaths low, said its aim is to keep the rate of infections below a replacement rate of one-for-one, so that cases fall over time and do not overwhelm the healthcare system.

The number of infections in Germany remained in the hundreds this week, but health authorities say the countrys outbreak is manageable as the reproduction rate is 0.71, meaning 100 infected people pass the virus on to 71 others.





In Europe, the governments and the people have decided containment is not possible. We mitigate, we keep it under control, but we cannot totally contain it, said Wilder-Smith. The intent is now to live in a compromised situation, where you live with this virus and try to find a balance between the economic standstill and the cases and deaths.

She added: Theres no right and wrong, its about what you want. China said we want containment, and Europe said we want to find a balance between the virus and the economic downturn.

The United States is taking a different path.

Concerned by record job losses and egged on by US President Donald Trump, about half the countrys 50 states have begun to lift restrictions despite rising infections.

With more than a million confirmed cases, the US is the worst-hit country in the world. Some 75,000 people have already died and one model by Trumps administration is projecting a rapid rise in daily infections and the doubling of deaths to 3,000 by June 1.

Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, said easing curbs in some states while the US remained in the grip of the pandemic was a risk and a gamble as epidemics dont know borders.

A major Achilles heel for many states in the US is the availability of sufficient testing capability, she said. Another challenge is the urgent need for a large cadre of health workers poised to do the hard work of going out into communities to expand testing, do case and contract tracing.

The US has so far conducted 7.5 million tests in total, but a Harvard University study estimates five million tests a day by June and 20 million a day by July would be necessary for a return to normal life. The Johns Hopkins University estimates the US needs to add an extra 100,000 contact tracers nationwide to keep the virus in check.





Dr Hadi Halazun, assistant professor of cardiology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, blamed the USs shortfall partly on the lack of guidance and coordination at the national level.

I dont see any leadership, he said. There has been very little federal guidance or a unified national strategy There is a lack of awareness in many big cities. For people in places where the pandemic hasnt struck as hard, its difficult to fathom what doctors are seeing inside the hospitals here in New York City.

Meanwhile Iran, one of the hardest-hit countries in the Middle East, faces a wholly different calculus.

It began lifting lockdown measures in late April despite continuing to record more than 1,000 cases on a daily basis. President Hassan Rouhani on April 22 called reopening the economy, already struggling under US-imposed sanctions, a necessity for the country.

For Iranian leaders, keeping the lockdown in place risks protests such as those seen in November last year when tens of thousands took to the streets over economic hardship. The demonstrations posed the biggest challenge to the countrys rulers in decades, but were swiftly quelled.

There is fear that an economic meltdown in the wake of the coronavirus crisis could result in renewed protests. Bread revolts, basically, by the lower classes who are disproportionately affected, said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

In parts of Africa, officials and experts say the rising spectre of starvation is making prolonged lockdowns untenable.

In Nigeria, where millions live on daily wages, the lockdowns in Lagos and Abuja have left many without money to buy food. The pandemic has also caused the price of oil, Nigerias main export, to plunge, adding to the countrys financial woes.

President Muhammadu Buhari, announcing the phased and gradual opening of the key states, said: No country can afford the full impact of a sustained lockdown, while awaiting the development of vaccines.

Since easing restrictions this week, Nigeria has seen a surge in cases. Experts say the true spread of the virus is not known, as the country of 200 million has conducted fewer than 20,000 tests in total.

South Africa, which won praise from the WHO for its strict lockdown, is also beginning to ease restrictions as economic hardship worsens. There was looting in some areas during the shutdown, as well as violent protests over undelivered food aid.

Infections and deaths remain comparatively low on the continent, with a total of 50,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths. But the WHO said on Thursday as many as 190,000 could die on the African continent in the coming 12 months without containment measures.

COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus, could become a fixture in our lives for the next several years unless a proactive approach is taken by many governments in the region, said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO chief for Africa.

But with lockdowns unsustainable, African countries need to come up with other strategies, wrote Salma Abdalla and Sandro Galea at the Council on Foreign Relations.

African governments and donors need to further invest in rapid testing, contact tracing and isolation. This can help isolate those with the disease quickly, limiting its spread, they said. A second proposal suggested targeted physical-distancing guidelines aimed at protecting those who are at high risk, such as those more than 70 years of age.

The United States and Europe have failed at implementing testing widely, but time here is on Africas side, they said.
FILE PHOTO: The view of Tesla Inc's U.S. vehicle factory in Freemont, California

By Tina Bellon and Nathan Frandino

(Reuters) - Tesla Inc "must not reopen" its vehicle factory in the San Francisco Bay area as local lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus remain in effect, the local county health department said on Friday.

The comments came after Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, told employees Thursday evening that limited production would restart at the factory in Fremont, Tesla's only U.S. vehicle factory, on Friday afternoon.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday afternoon said that manufacturers in the state would be allowed to reopen. But Alameda County, where the factory is located, is scheduled to remain shut until the end of May.

A spokeswoman for the Alameda County Public Health Department in a statement referred to the county's coronavirus lockdown order that only permits essential businesses to reopen.

"Tesla has been informed that they do not meet those criteria and must not reopen," the spokeswoman said.

Earlier on Friday, Erica Pan, a health officer for the county, said the department has had many discussions with the company and recommended that Tesla wait at least another week to monitor infection rates and discuss safe ways to resume production.

Pan, speaking during a virtual townhall with the mayor of the city of Alameda, called Tesla a "very hot topic."

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vehicle manufacturing operations are not allowed to operate regularly, according to the Alameda County order.

Musk has been bluntly criticizing the lockdown and stay-at-home orders, calling them a "serious risk" to U.S. business and tagging them "unconstitutional," saying they would not hold up before the U.S. Supreme Court if challenged.

Tesla, in an internal mail seen by Reuters, had said that starting Friday, limited operation would resume at the Fremont factory with 30% of normal headcount per shift.

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"Our Gigafactories in Nevada and New York have also begun limited operations as approved by their respective states," the mail said.

However, Musk said employees who feel uncomfortable coming back to work were not obligated to do so.

Tesla had sparred with officials in California in March Tesla over whether it had to halt production at the Fremont factory under lockdown orders that allowed only essential businesses to continue to operate. It ended the stand-off in mid-March and said it would suspend production.

The lockdown order was imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has infected over 3.8 million people globally.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York and Nathan Frandino in San Francisco; additional reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)
The federal government will delay implementing a suite of recommendations from the banking royal commission by six months, saying it will help banks focus on supporting the economy through the coronavirus shock.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Friday announced that the measures it planned to introduce by July would now by pushed back until the end of the year. Likewise, measures planned for introduction by the end of December will now be implemented by July next year.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the deferral would let banks focus on supporting their customers in the pandemic. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"The deferral will enable the financial services industry to focus their efforts on planning for the recovery and supporting their customers and their staff during this unprecedented time," Mr Frydenberg said.

"This announcement today balances the need to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission with the need to ensure our financial institutions are in a position to devote their resources to responding to the significant challenges posed by the coronavirus."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:39:15|Editor: huaxia

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NEW DELHI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The flights bringing back stranded Indians from abroad have begun to arrive in India, officials said Friday.

On Friday an Air India flight from Singapore landed at Delhi international airport, India's Foreign Minister S Jaishankar wrote on twitter.

On Thursday night two special Air India flights carrying over 360 stranded Indian nationals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) landed in Kerala.

Authorities said adequate arrangements have been made to ensure the safety of the returnees.

On Tuesday the Indian government announced an evacuation plan saying it would operate 64 flights to repatriate stranded Indians from abroad.

A government spokesman maintained only asymptomatic passengers would be allowed to travel and Standard Operating Protocol (SOP) will be strictly adhered to while bringing back the citizens from abroad.

Currently, a ban is in force on domestic and international flight operations. However, international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) are exempted from the restrictions.

A nationwide lockdown imposed on March 25 is underway in India to contain the pandemic. It is likely to end on May 17. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 23:25:38|Editor: huaxia

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RAMALLAH, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Friday that measures will be taken against Israel and the United States if Israeli plan of annexing West Bank is implemented.

Abbas' warning was made in a meeting he chaired at his office in the city of Ramallah for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

"As soon as Israel announces that it adopts the annexation plan, we will take the proper measures, which will not be against Israel alone, but also against America," said Abbas.

Abbas didn't say what are the measures that will be taken, but he renewed his rejection of the U.S. peace plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also known as "The Deal of the Century." Enditem
Several pro-democracy lawmakers on Friday attempted to stop Lee from chairing a meeting of the committee, accusing her of abusing her power. Both sides engaged in a shouting match that descended into physical altercations, according to live-streamed videos of the proceedings. Security guards moved to expel several pro-democracy lawmakers, while one, Andrew Wan, was carried away on a stretcher after falling and injuring himself.
It is no exaggeration to say that there is now no guaranteed safe place in Trinidad and Tobago.

We have moved from the stage of being prisoners in our homes behind metal bars to being afraid to enjoy the beautiful outdoors and even to sleep, for fear that if crime comes knocking we may have no recourse but to cower and beg for our lives. The society is being overpowered by the force of the criminal will with insufficient resources to resist and break that power.
The Woodlands Farmers Market has a tentative reopening date scheduled after two months of closure due to the COVID-19 novel coronavius pandemic.

Market officials are hoping to reopen the popular Saturday market on May 23 as long as nothing unexpected arises before that weekend.

Jennifer Robinson, chairperson of the Farmers Market Committee, said significant changes will be a part of the new market when it does open.

COVID-19 UPDATES: Montgomery County coronavirus testing sites open this week

The Woodlands Farmers Market has a tentative opening date of Saturday, May 23. We encourage customers to check the website, Facebook page or newsletter for definite details in the week prior to May 23, Robinson said in a email. We are committed to confirming an official opening date as soon as possible through all of our social media channels. In order to keep customers, vendors and volunteers safe, the Market Committee has closely examined best practices from farmers markets and farmers market associations from across the United States.

The market began in 2008 and is one of the most visited in Montgomery County, with fresh produce vendors, artisans and others selling their wares. Many of the prepared food stands offer samples, which will be prohibited under new guidelines. Other major changes include a ban on any pets, including dogs, as well as the prohibition on consumption of any food or beverage on the site. There is normally a coffee trailer at each market offering up cappucinos and other caffeinated drinks, that will now not be allowed.

Virgina Hill, a member of the Grogans Mill Village Association board said the market has many positive benefits to the community, including being a nonprofit providing support to the Interfaith organization, elementary schools and offering scholarships to our graduating Seniors.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: At Houston farmers market, folks seek sense of normalcy  and ways to help

During this COVID crisis, they used (farmers market) money to feed families in need, giving out certificates to be used at local restaurants also needing support, Hill said in an email.

In a press release from the GMVA, Bruce Cunningham, one of the markets founders, stated, We are anxious to reopen. Our vendors and clients have been anxiously waiting but the market will not be the same as it was just yet. We will be opening under guidelines to provide a safe environment for everyone.

The market closed due to the coronavirus restrictions on March 14, with a planned reopening date in early April. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and restrictions became more intense, the market committee decided to close through the first week of May.

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The reopening decision has been discussed at weekly market committee meetings, Robinson noted, with a goal of opening the market as soon as is possible. Because the market staff and vendors are volunteers, there had been concerns of the ability to have enough staff at the event to control customers and CDC guidelines.

Robinson said in light of that guidance, the market will be implementing a series of prudent best practices, which she added may be subject to change.

The new guidelines and practices include the following:

Anyone not feeling well is asked to please stay home and when possible, send a friend to do shopping

Crowd numbers will be monitored and limited if necessary

An adjusted market layout will be in place to allow for more space and social distancing between vendors and customers

No food or drink consumption on site, including sampling

Signage showing market requirements for visitors and vendors, per applicable CDC guidelines

No food preparation; No pets allowed

The market encouragez customers to leave children at home, if possible, and to send only one person from the household

Pre-ordering from vendors is encouraged as is the use credit cards instead of cash when possible

Vendors will be required to sanitize their display area and also are required to wear masks

No music or food trucks to prevent close proximity gathering; and no touching of products unless the person buys it.

The market is normally hosted each Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon in the parking lot of the Grogans Mill shopping center parking lot. To enter, customers are recommended to turn south from Grogans Mill Road onto South Millbend Drive. An alternate entrance is the now-altered and disabled traffic signal north of South Millbend Drive. That entrance can now only be accessed by drivers traveling south on Grogans Mill Road.

jeff.forward@chron.com
A group of Chinese nationals stranded in Nepal due to the coronavirus restrictions clashed with the police in an effort to reach the Prime Ministers Office in Kathmandu. Nepal police said 45 of them had been arrested.

Four police personnel, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police, Haribahadur Basnet, were injured in the clash when the protestors entered a prohibited zone, Superintendent of Nepal Police, Somendra Singh Rathore, told ANI over phone.

Like India, Nepal suspended international flights on March 22 as part of precautionary measures against the spread of the coronavirus. The restrictions will continue till this month-end.

The protesters, stranded in the country because of flight restrictions, said they had run out of money and didnt have the means to stay in the country any longer. Their embassy, they said according to reports reaching here, wasnt helping them.

While several countries, including the US, the UK, Australia and France have chartered evacuation flights for their citizens in Nepal, no official flights have been made to rescue stranded Chinese nationals.

The protest - some of them held placards such as I want to go home! - turned violent when the police stopped them entering a prohibited zone of Singha Darbar that also houses the Prime Ministers Office.

They may face charges of protesting in the restricted zone and violating the lockdown under existing laws, police spokeswoman Kiran Bajracharya told AFP.

Police said they made an effort to persuade the Chinese nationals to turn back and not violate the restrictions hadnt helped.

Nepal has reported just over 100 cases and has among the lowest number of coronavirus infections. On Friday, according to Nepals health ministry, three fresh cases were reported in the country.

The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 102 in Nepal with three more tested positive on Friday. Two men aged 16 and 22 from Kapilvastu and a 16 year old man from Nepalgunj have tested positive for COVID  19, the health ministry said in a statement.

Nepal on Friday reported three new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total infections in the country to over 100, the health ministry said.
"No matter the type of disaster, YMCA employees and our SERVPRO family share a similar passion for helping people." - Jennifer Lolli-Hall, SERVPRO Co-owner

Though official programs and activities at the Downtown Frederick YMCA are on hold due to COVID-19, the center has pivoted its services to support first responders and essential workers. Knowing first-hand the challenges of being an essential business, SERVPRO of Frederick County recently delivered lunch to say thank you to the YMCA employees.

"The staff at the YMCA is providing daycare for essential workers, housing to families, delivering meals, and still running their community market of affordable fruits and vegetables. Because of them, first responders can keep us safe, doctors and nurses can get us well, resources are available for housing, and we all can have food on our table," said SERVPRO Co-owner Jennifer Lolli-Hall.

When COVID-19 began to spread, the YMCA, as a national organization, looked for a way to continue their mission, even though they had to close their door to visitors. Because of school-related closures, and the need for essential workers, they saw a critical need for childcare. When the economy began to take a turn, housing demand for at-risk populations and food insecurity increased rapidly.

"No matter the type of disaster, YMCA employees and our SERVPRO family share a similar passion for helping people," said Lolli-Hall. Their 'Stay With Us' campaign provides a valuable lesson about adapting and collaborating to help where there is a need. Though our staff supports the YMCA year-round, we wanted to do something special to thank them for continuing to serve the residents and businesses of Frederick County during this difficult time."

In business since 1990, SERVPRO of Frederick County is locally owned and operated by Jennifer Lolli-Hall and Art Hall. Jennifer, a licensed realtor, has experience in environmental recovery, including odor removal, bed bug eradication, and air purification. Art has worked more than three decades in the building trades and general contracting field. He heads up reconstruction helping the franchise provide a seamless "one-stop" service from mitigation through rebuilding. Highly trained in property damage restoration, SERVPRO employees meet the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification standards and best practices in the cleaning and restoration industry. SERVPRO of Frederick County provides emergency services 24 hours a day, 7 days a weekincluding all holidays.

Founded in 1858, the YMCA is one of the largest nonprofits in Frederick County. Each year, they serve over 12,000 members and have over 30,000 program participants partnering with community organizations to help strengthen and enrich the development of individuals and families in the county.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE D uring the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech raising alarm about Donald Trumps association with the alt-right. In Clintons telling, conspiracy theories and rank bigotry from the dark, far reaches of the Internet fueled Trumps rise. But if Clinton correctly identified a new political movement growing on the fringes of the Web, she misidentified Breitbart and Alex Jones as its ringleaders. In the strange world of 4chan and weird Twitter, the anonymous posters who took credit for memeing Trump to the presidency call the shots.

Since 2016, academics and journalists have offered alternatives to Clintons simplistic characterization of these online communities. Its no easy task: Cloaked in layers of irony and self-reference, they elude conventional analysis. The operating principle in the hodgepodge of gamers, anime fans, and reactionary ideologues that makes up the online far right is a love of chaos, as Angela Nagle points out in her book Kill All Normies. Some espouse explicitly racist and misogynistic views, others want to lash out at political correctness and identity politics, and others still do it just to get a rise out of people.

Alex Lee Moyers documentary TFW No GF is the latest attempt to explore the dark, far reaches of the internet. The film, featured in the 2020 SXSW lineup and released on Amazon Prime Video in late April, follows five members of the nebulous, overlapping subcultures labeled at various times incels (involuntary celibates), NEETs (not in employment, education or training), edgelords, Pepes, and the alt-right. Moyer borrows the lo-fi aesthetics of her subjects: The movie is a pastiche of memes, archival material, and heavily edited footage set to the music of John Maus and Ariel Pink. But while Moyers visual sensibilities evince an appreciation for her subjects, her film raises questions as to whether the online world these men inhabit offers them anything constructive  or whether it simply reproduces the dynamics that drove them to seek virtual refuge in the first place.

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The confessional narratives of TFW No GF  translated from Internet slang, it means that feeling when [you have] no girlfriend  contrast with the brash and irreverent online personas of its subjects. Against a backdrop of bleak, postindustrial locales  its almost like nobodys here, says one subject of his Washington exurb  the protagonists discuss their alienation, social maladjustment, and inability to attract women. They grew up in broken homes and see no entry point into conventional life. Instead of the white picket fence, theyve exiled themselves to their childhood bedrooms.

Critics have called TFW No GF a film about incels, but its more a collage of various online subcultures. Sex, the be-all and end-all of the online manosphere, is an afterthought to the films protagonists. These characters seem to harbor little of the incel rage that has fueled mass shootings and online harassment campaigns. Theyre mostly just depressed, and turn to the Internet as a substitute for community.

But there have always been lonely men. If TFW No GF simply documented depression, it wouldnt be especially interesting. Gogol and Dostoevsky explored male disaffection before Moyers, and offered conclusions more incisive than these guys are not happy besides. The film momentarily moves beyond misery-wallowing 30 minutes in, when a man known on Twitter as Kantbot appears on the screen. Contrasting with the industrial debris and cluttered bedrooms that form most of the films backdrop, Kantbots world  Riverside Park, a Manhattan rooftop, and a Columbia Universityadjacent bookstore  is sophisticated. He intermittently exhales cigarette smoke while expounding on German idealist philosophy. His urbanity and erudition, if an obvious put-on, set him apart from his fellow travelers: One of these edgelords is not like the others.

Kantbot first gained online notoriety from a viral clip in which he claimed that Donald Trump will complete the system of German idealism to a crowd of anti-Trump protesters in Manhattan. Such trolling has gained him a sizable audience and made him something of an online celebrity. And with his appearance, the film begins to explore the intellectual underpinnings of the online far right. Kantbot says his project is to solve the problem of modernity: the devolution of pure reason into nihilism, hedonism, and solipsism. He sees his tweets as aphorisms in the style of the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling. Kantbots relevance to the film stems not only from his fanbase of likeminded young men but also from his ostensible aim to provide an alternative to the disappointments of contemporary life. He is the bard to the rabble of online sh**posters.

Those edgelords who have attempted to fashion an intellectual project out of their alienation seem to have the most to say about the peculiar contours of online discourse. A more thorough sociology of Internet subcultures would have spent more time exploring these contours, through Kantbot and other pseudonymous intellectuals.

But Moyers ambitions are different. Though TFW No GF flirts with a phenomenology of edgelordism, it prioritizes the personal experiences of its subjects. And while it documents the alienation and resentment that has led some self-described incels to glorify or perpetrate murderous acts, most of the characters extricate themselves from edgelordism by the end of the film. One finds a girlfriend online, another takes to weightlifting and reading philosophy. A meme reading, Were all gonna make it marks a break from the fatalism of the films early acts. Perhaps Jordan Petersons brand of self-help has more to offer young men than posting threats against women on Twitter. Or perhaps these men were never so damaged in the first place, but merely engaged in transgressive online discourse as a distraction.

Once again, Kantbot is the exception  he remains extremely online, ending the film in much the same position as when it started, except with 40,000 Twitter followers and a popular podcast. Like other self-styled gurus, Kantbot subsists on the attention of his thousands of anonymous fans, who spend more time vying for a retweet than emancipating themselves.

Thus has the attempt to create an unbounded intellectual space devolved into a replica of ordinary social spheres, with different codes and values but with the same competition for attention. The success of the online Rights minor celebrities depends on a substratum of young men languishing. Vying with the ringleaders ideas might be fruitful, but fetishizing them is not. If there is a hopeful lesson from TFW No GF, its that their followers are starting to realize that.

More from National Review
Some Nebraska schools closed by the pandemic should be able to open in the fall on their scheduled calendar start dates, Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt said Thursday.

Speaking at a press conference with Gov. Pete Ricketts, Blomstedt said opening dates would depend on local health conditions.

I do think that there will be areas of the state that will be able to keep pretty much their regular calendar intact, and I think thats what folks are interested in, he said. But we are also asking schools to be very thoughtful about digital and remote learning as we continue down that path.

He said schools can use summer to help figure out the best practices and policies that would work in the fall, including how to use technology to address learning gaps and continue learning in a disruption.

To assist districts in planning and preparing for a restart, he said, the Nebraska Department of Education has created a website, launchne.com.
Italian pawn shops have seen a 30 per cent increase in customers since lockdown in the coronavirus-ravaged country was eased earlier this week.

Affide pawn shop, one of the largest pledge lenders in the country, said it has had to extend its opening hours after seeing a 30 per cent increase in customers since Italy lifted some of its lockdown measures on Monday.

People from all walks of life were queuing outside the company's flagship store in Rome, looking to swap their prized family jewellery for some much needed cash, Il Piccolo reported.

Luciana, 73, a retired grandmother, said she had come to the store with the family gold to help her son, offering two necklaces and a pair of pearl earrings, with the hopes she could drum up enough money so he could pay maintenance costs for his daughter.

People queue at UBI Banca (UBI Bank) in Milan during phase two of the coronavirus emergency after the country loosened some of its lockdown measures earlier this week

Volunteers of the Quarticciolo District Committee in Rome before the start of a flashmob against the economic crisis, which took place today in Rome

Owners of commercial activities, tourism operators, workers in the hospitality sector, and holders of VAT numbers gather for a flashmob protest asking for an immediate re-opening of the activities on Monday in Venice, Italy

His February salary has yet to surface and she said it doesn't seem to be coming any time soon, she added.

The 73-year-old is just able to cover her rent with her pension with a little left over to help her daughter, who is also in financial distress.

Giuseppe, 67, who was queuing outside a shop in Naples today told La Repubblica: 'I pawn a necklace otherwise I won't eat.'

'The government won't help,' he added.

A worker from the Genoese branch of Carige pawnshops said they were receiving calls from concerned citizens, asking them how the loans work and how much they can lend.

Another woman, who chose to remain anonymous, took a pendant that she said she held 'very dear' to another pawnshop, the Monte della Pieta in Rome, where she queued with dozens of others to get an estimate for her valuables.

People walk along the popular Navigli area, in Milan, Italy today. Milan's mayor on Friday threatened to shut down the popular Navigli zone of restaurants bordering canals after seeing photographs of groups of people sitting in groups without masks

A man in his thirties accompanied by his mother told Corriere: 'I haven't been working for two months.'

'I was employed in a bar that only reopened a few days ago.

'You [Mother] promised a chain, a memory of my father.

'I don't know where I'm going to end up.'

Another couple had come to the store in Rome to offer the jewellery from their daughter's communion.

'We don't even have our faiths anymore,' the husband said.

Pawnshops were closed across Italy during the country's nationwide lockdown, but their recent openings have seen customers surging to offer up the little they have.

Owners of commercial activities, tourism operators, workers in the hospitality sector, and holders of VAT numbers gather for a flashmob protest asking for an immediate re-opening of the activities on Monday in Venice, Italy

Italy has been battered by the pandemic, both on a human and economic scale, and today became the third country in the world to record 30,000 deaths from the virus.

According to European Union estimates released Wednesday, Italy's public debt will hit almost 160 per cent of GDP this year and its economy will shrink by close to a tenth.

Despite the dreary forecasts, the country has been getting used to its 'new normal' with people pictured yesterday enjoying the outdoors after strict coronavirus lockdown measures were eased.

Laws which had forbidden Italians from leaving their houses without permits and restricted shopping to supermarkets were eased on Monday, allowing for people to travel within their regions and for markets to reopen.

Women wearing face masks roller skate along the Navigli canals in Milan today after the country loosened its nationwide lockdown earlier this week

A vendor wears a protective face masks as he picks olives at a food stall at San Marco street market in Milan yesterday

Milan is a ticking Covid-19 'bomb' now people are free to move about after lockdown, an expert has warned. Pictured: a food market in Milan yesterday

Italians were pictured taking advantage of their hard-won freedoms on Thursday while socially distancing after Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte warned measures will come back if infections spike.

Families were pictured soaking up some sun on a near-deserted beach south of Rome, while markets in the Italian capital, Sicily and the hot-spot city of Milan all welcomed back customers.

In a further easing of measures, Conte announced that public Masses will restart from May 18 having been banned as part of his initial coronavirus lockdown measures on March 10.

Church services have been added to the list of activities that will be permitted from May 18 after Guiseppe Conte struck a deal with Italy's top bishops to allow Masses to resume (pictured, two nuns at a market in Rome yesterday)

An overview of the historic fish market of Catania, in Sicily, on its first day of reopening on Thursday after it was shut down due to the spread of coronavirus

Today, the country's death toll rose above 30,000 after the reporting of 243 new fatalities compared with a daily tally of 274 the day before.

Italy's total death toll from COVID-19 since its outbreak came to light on 21 February now stands at 30,201, the Civil Protection Agency said. Only the United States and Britain have seen more deaths from the virus.

The daily number of new infections fell slightly to 1,327 from 1,401 yesterday, taking the total of confirmed cases since the epidemic began to 217,185, the third highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain.

People registered as currently carrying the illness in Italy fell to 87,961 from 89,624 the day before.

There were 1,168 people in intensive care on Friday against 1,311 on Thursday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 99,023 were declared recovered against 96,276 a day earlier.

The agency said 1.609 million people had been tested for the virus against 1.564 million the day before, out of a population of around 60 million.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 19:07:27|Editor: huaxia

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A man receives a bag of rice for his family in Dakar, Senegal, on May 7, 2020. Some kindhearted Senegalese distributed rice, butter and traditional dates to families in need during the COVID-19 pandemic on Thursday. (Photo by Eddy Peters/Xinhua)

DAKAR, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Senegal's Ministry of Health and Social Action on Friday reported 59 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the confirmed total to 1,551 in the country.

A total of 872 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours, and 59 turned positive, including 52 follow-up contact cases and seven community-transmission cases, Director-General of Public Health Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye told a daily briefing on the pandemic.

She said seven patients remain in intensive care units of two hospitals in Dakar and that 49 more patients tested negative were declared cured.

Senegal has since March 20 suspended all international flights till at least May 31.

Last Saturday, President Macky Sall extended the country's state of emergency and curfew to June 2.

To contain the spread of the pandemic, Senegalese health authorities have strengthened the search for asymptomatic cases for isolation.

Ndiaye, the director-general of health, announced on Thursday the start of treatment in isolation centers for people under 50 years who test positive for COVID-19, suffer from no chronic illness and present no symptoms of coronavirus disease.

All those who meet the criteria will be put into a dedicated isolation center and their health status will be monitored by medical staff; those infected patients who don't meet the criteria will be still treated in medical centers or hospitals.

Among the 1,551 confirmed cases in the country, 1,318 are follow-up contact cases, 86 are imported cases and 147 are community transmission cases.

Senegal has reported 13 deaths and 611 recoveries since March 2.
Hong Kong: Christopher Hui visits registry

Secretary for Financial Services & the Treasury Christopher Hui today visited the Companies Registry (CR) to inspect its operation.

Mr Hui visited the New Companies Section, the Public Search Section and the Document Management Section at the registry and spoke with staff there to learn about their work conditions and the services that they provide.

He said: The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to Hong Kong's overall economy.

To help enterprises cope with their operating pressure amid the economic downturn, the Financial Secretary announced in the 2020-21 Budget the waiver of registration fees for annual returns, except for late delivery, charged by the CR for two years.

And with a view to encouraging the wider use of the CR's electronic services, we also propose to reduce the fees payable in relation to the incorporation of companies, including registration of non-Hong Kong companies, through electronic means by 10%."

The Companies (Fees) (Amendment) Regulation 2020 gazetted today will be tabled at the Legislative Council for negative vetting on May 13 for the waiver and reduction to take effect from October 1.

The waiver of registration fees for annual returns will benefit about 1.4 million companies.

Mr Hui added that he was pleased that the CR has been providing electronic services for filing of documents and company searches.

He appealed to the department to adopt wider use of technology, adding that a business-friendly environment is needed more than ever in the process of economic recovery.

Mr Hui also expressed gratitude to CR staff for their dedication in providing public services amid the pandemic.

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Its almost impossible to digest the fact that people are finding it hard to understand the relevance of social distancing as everyday we read about a spike in the new Coronavirus cases. If you do not understand the repercussions, heres fictional show which might explain it to you. So, Shah Rukh Khan just dropped the trailer of his new series Betaal that features Viineet Kumar, Aahana Kumra, Suchitra Pillai, Jitendra Joshi, Manjiri Pupala, and Syna Anand. The trailer is getting attention for the treatment of the horror story as its infused with zombie factor and folklore.

Heres the official synopsis of Betaal:

A remote village becomes the theatre of a breathless battle when a two-century-old Betaal, a British Indian Army officer, and his battalion of zombie redcoats are unleashed. With Indian police pitted against the undead army, hapless villagers are trapped in a horrific, edge-of-your-seat conflict.

After seeing the trailer, we thought it does show us the future if we dont contain the virus and fail to understand that social distancing is the need of the hour. MensXP shows you 5 scenes from the trailer that will show you the dark future.

1. So, at the beginning of the trailer, you would see how the villagers are dreaded of the unseen future and the outsiders who have come to attack their village in forms of zombies. Its said very clearly that this curse will destroy everyone. Similarly, if we dont adhere to the guidelines of our government and continue flouting social distancing, Coronavirus is no less than a curse that will take away our lives.

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2. Theres one scene wherein Viineet Kumar is trying to unravel the mystery of the Betaal mountain which has infected people and they will first have to sanitize the disturbed area. Well, if we are unable to control the pandemic, we wont have any cure left but just to keep sanitizing our surroundings and even ourselves for that matter.

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3. Next up, there is a scene wherein the concerned authority from the village is trying to reach out to army officers and seek their help. When you compare this to our real life scenario right now, the governments will keep claiming that they will fix the problem and in their battle, we will lose our sanity.

 Netflix

4. Betaal cant be more accurate than this. There is a scene wherein they talk about infected bodies and how it can affect others and if they are not dealt with, no one would survive. Well, in the current situations, if you ignore the symptoms of COVID 19, you might affect the others who are with you and keep their lives at risk.

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5. Last but not the least, in the trailer, its how these zombies have formed their army. Cut to the reality, if you have become carriers, you will land up taking down the ones who are prone to contracting the virus because of their low immunity.

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if you have seen the trailer and understood what we tried to convey, understand the meaning of social distancing, and help the world win the battle against this deadly virus. The trailer has raised expectations and its dropping on 24th May.
Garvin Matthews, first time novelist, is contented with his choice of media through which he shares his feelings and observations.

Garvin Matthews is a storyteller with deep roots in the Campden Park community. He considers himself to have been academically unqualified before he became a novelist.





More than 11 years ago, he immigrated to the United Kingdom in search of better socio-economic conditions. He enlisted in the British Armed Forces, did a four-year stint, and today the 38 year-old Bishops College Kingstown alumnus hold a University degree in Business Management/Travel/Tourism.





Finding the inspiration





"It was a struggle at first, going back to school with hardly any qualifications, but I started reading more and more, Matthews told THE VINCENTIAN Newspaper/Asbert News Network recently.





"During my studies, I started to enjoy something I never did before, and thats reading. And the love for writing followed. I could have read properly, not confidently, but writing properly was a struggle, he disclosed.





Nothing of his past seemed to lead to this, but today Matthews is a self-published novelist, his first book entitled The Moment I Found You.





The two-year-long labour of love that resulted in the book, was inspired by his mothers "struggle bringing us up, even as my father was battling his own demons. Through her struggles, she still emerged out of a dire situation to find love.





"It was also inspired by my ex-girlfriend, who is British born of Jamaican descent. She had a very horrible childhood, with an abusive mother and step fathers. Some of this book was also inspired by my own struggles in life, but put in a fictional form.





The central characters and focus





Matthews book is about a girl named Samantha. "She is convinced her father is still alive and not dead as her mother proclaimed. Finding him will be difficult as she has no idea who he is. At age ten, she meets a special boy, Darren. During all the abuse, he is there for her. Unexpectedly, she finds out shell have to face it all  on her own  when Darren leaves Wolverhampton and moves to London.





"Samantha is forced to move out, but a loving grandmother will come in to pick up where Darren left off. Little do they know, their paths are destined to cross again and this special friendship will change their future, the soldier turned author explained.





The novel also borrows real life spatial settings as it is based in England, between Wolverhampton and London.





According to Matthews, it delves into such poignant issues as child abuse, domestic abuse, child neglect and dysfunctional families, while exploring relationships and skin colour insecurities.





Contented with his choice





While managing his time between his job as a TESCO customer service assistant and his familial obligations with his daughter Parris and current girlfriend Una, Matthews was able to amass some sales in the intervening weeks since the novel was first published on April 10, 2020.





"Ive had great response from the English and black community so far. I have sold 50 copies in two weeks, even though I am doing all the marketing on my own.





The young Vincentian writer is grateful for the six months novel writing course by publishers Faber and Faber where he honed his skills, and the practical guidance and support of his "classmates and tutor who published several books as well as the editorial oversight supplied by his longtime friend Alicia Allotey.





He is contented with his chosen form of expression. "Although I love music, my heart wasnt in that field. I enjoyed telling stories. I am not really good at telling them verbally, but I realised I was better at writing them down on paper. And I wanted to tell a story that will inspire people.





Theophilus Pompey, Matthews father, is dead. But he is happy that his mother Violet DuPont,who still lives in St. Vincent, and siblings Lindel Matthews and Marsha Alves, are still able to enjoy this milestone.





"I feel very proud of him because I know he was trying with this book. He wrote one already and I guess he cancelled that one and he tried again with this one. Im so happy for him, and I think he could make it far with it. Nothing beats a trial, Mrs. Dupont said in praise of her first born.





The Moment I found You is available on Amazon in paperback and kindle versions. And its also available on iBooks.





Keep up to date with the celebrated young author via his social media handles @garvin1236 on Twitter, @GarvinMatthewsAuthor on Facebook and on www.GarvinMatthews.com.




Venezuelan prosecutor requests extradition of US military veteran and two Venezuelans accused of involvement in plot.

President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated that the United States government was not behind a bungled incursion into Venezuela this week, allegedly to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, saying in a Fox News channel interview that he would not rely on a small group for such an operation.

I know nothing about it. I think the government has nothing to do with it at all, and I have to find out what happened, Trump said. If we ever did anything with Venezuela, it wouldnt be that way. It would be slightly different. It would be called an invasion.

Trump said the incursion was not a good attack, carried out by a rogue group that included Venezuelans and people from other countries.

I saw the pictures on a beach. It wasnt led by General George Washington, obviously, he said, referring to the first US president, often considered a military genius.

A former US soldier captured in Venezuela has said he was contracted by a Florida security firm to seize control of Caracass airport and bring in a plane to fly Maduro to the US. According to a document published by the Washington Post on Thursday, members of the countrys opposition parties negotiated a $213m deal with the company, Silvercorp USA, to invade the country and overthrow Maduro.





Venezuelas chief prosecutor Tarek Saab said on Friday his office had requested detention and extradition orders of US military veteran Jordan Goudreau and two Venezuelans accused of involvement.

Saab accused Goudreau and the two opposition Venezuelan politicians, Miami-based political strategist Juan Rendon and exiled legislator Sergio Vergara, of being involved in the design, financing and execution of the plan to invade and overthrow Maduro.

Goudreau, chief executive of the Florida-based security company Silvercorp USA, has claimed responsibility for the plan, which left eight people dead and more than a dozen in custody, including two US citizens accompanying the dissident Venezuelan security forces.

Rendon has said that while he negotiated an agreement with Silvercorp late last year, he cut ties with Goudreau in November and that Goudreau went forward with the failed operation on his own. Vergara did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State legislators decided this week that the legislature will return for one day only, on May 21, to address coronavirus concerns. That left the GOP scrambling to see if committees can prepare legislation for a full vote that day, which could affect the way the state spends $1.25 billion in federal aid. Among the issues the legislature is considering are access to low-interest loans, limiting business liability caused by the coronavirus and removing penalties on unpaid taxes.
TV icon Betty White has had an illustrious career in television and film that has unbelievably spanned more than 80 years, and she's showing no signs of stopping now.

The Emmy-winning Golden Girls star, who turned a whopping 98 years young this past January, has signed on for a yet-to-be titled Christmas movie for Lifetime's Its a Wonderful Lifetime slate.

As reported by TVLine, White will play the sassy drill sergeant of a yuletide bootcamp of sorts who 'helps whip would-be Santas into shape, spreading the true meaning of Christmas and leading everyone to wonder: Is she secretly Mrs. Claus?' according to the official description.

More to come: Betty White, who turned a whopping 98 years young this past January, has signed on for a yet-to-be titled Christmas movie for Lifetime; seen here in 2012

Looking over White's prolific catalogue, it's unsurprising that this new project isn't the TV legend's first time appearing in a Christmas-related title.

In 2003, she starred opposite Tony Danza in TV movie Stealing Christmas, and five years prior to that she portrayed Mrs. Claus in another made-for-television movie, Noddy: Anything Can Happen at Christmas.

And these don't include the Christmas episodes of Betty's two most celebrated sitcoms, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Golden Girls.

Additionally, White was a guest actor in many other TV series, such as Bob starring Bob Newhart, which also welcomed the actress for a Christmas episode.

Xmas pro: Looking over White's prolific catalogue, it's unsurprising that this new project isn't the TV legend's first time appearing in a Christmas-related title; seen here at the Hollywood Christmas Parade in 1995

Betty was 51 years old when she began her run as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore show, which ran from 1973 to 1977.

Her role won the actress her first two Primetime Emmys.

Her third Emmy came thanks to the role for which she is most known, the blissfully clueless Rose Nylund on the classic sitcom Golden Girls opposite Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan.

Classic: Betty was 51 years old when she began her run as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore show, a role which won the actress her first two Primetime Emmys; seen here in 1974

Timeless: Her third Emmy came thanks to the role for which she is most known, the blissfully clueless Rose Nylund on Golden Girls opposite Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan

Much more recently, Betty has enjoyed her status as something of a viral sensation, with countless tweets and social media posts voicing public concern in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the best messages read, 'I swear to God Almighty, if #BettyWhite gets Corona'd, Imma lose my mind. Protect America's grandma at all costs!'

Betty's Christmas movie is one of over 50 original movies premiering on Lifetime this year, with other projects attracting such names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Kelly Rowland, Melissa Joan Hart and Mario Lopez, according to Deadline.

Much more recently: Betty has enjoyed her status as a viral sensation, with countless tweets and social media posts voicing public concern in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic
This article is part of Privacy in the Pandemic, a Future Tense series.

In her 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff gave a name to what she defines as a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales. More disturbingly, she argues that the tech giants that now dominate the global economy are no longer satisfied with using their surveillance capabilities to collect what she calls our behavioral surplus and predict our behavior, and will soon be able to shape and control it.

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The theory-heavy 600-page tome by a Harvard Business School professor emerita hit a surprising nerve (and earned an eyebrow-raising endorsement from Barack Obama, not exactly a typical surveillance critic). Today, it couldnt feel more timely. Thanks to coronavirus-era social isolation, more and more human interaction is moving online, mediated by data-hungry tech companies. Whats more, Google and Apple are working to develop a contact tracing app that public health departments may use to monitor the virus as stay-at-home orders lift, raising familiar privacy concerns and public skepticism.

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I recently spoke with Zuboff by phone to find out what she makes of the current moment, and found her in a surprisingly upbeat mood about the post-COVID-19 future of privacy and democracy. The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Joshua Keating: So, I actually read Surveillance Capitalism shortly before all this started.

Shoshana Zuboff: Oh really?

Yeah, so youve been in my brain a little bit as all this has been going on. One part I keep thinking about is when you discuss how the emergence of these data collectionbased business models of the big tech companies coincided with the emergence of the post-9/11 security state to produce what you call surveillance capitalism. So, my question for right now is: Do you think the coronavirus will have a similar catalyzing effect?

Thats what the tech companies are hoping for. But things are very different now than they were 20 years ago. Therefore, I dont think that theyre going to get their wish. Thats my short answer.

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Whats your long answer?

Theres no question that in 2001, we experienced trauma that changed our politics over the next 20 years. Before then, the main conversation in Washington was about comprehensive federal privacy legislation. How far should it go? How deep should it be? Then [after 9/11] it only took 12 to 24 hours and that entire conversation on Capitol Hill and Congress shifted from privacy concerns to total information awareness. It shifted from How do we control these whippersnappers in Silicon Valley? to How do we harness them and give them free rein to develop these surveillance capabilities?

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Google in 2001 had a revenue line of about $86 million and now has a market capitalization thats plus or minus $1 trillion. How does that happen in 16 years? It happened because of this fundamentally illegitimate economic logic that begins with taking something that doesnt belong to them, claiming it as proprietary, and making a fortune on it.

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This spectacular growth would not have been possible had it not been for their freedom from law. The lack of law allowed them to develop systems that were engineered to keep populations of users in the dark.

We now have a digital economy dominated by an economic logic that essentially steals peoples private experience for translation into data for marketing, for manufacture, for sales. We thought we were driving into the digital century toward full-throttle democratization and free access to knowledge. Instead, weve ended up with a feudal societal pattern based on these tremendous asymmetries, and instead of our having access to all kinds of proprietary knowledge, its turned out that proprietary knowledge has complete access to us.

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"This spectacular growth would not have been possible had it not been for their freedom from law."

So, are we in a similar situation today? Are the big tech companies going to use this to increase their reach and market share?

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Well, already in the past weeks there have been stories about how the tech lobbyists are intentionally using the pandemic panic. For example, one thing that the lobbyists have been trying to do is get California legislators to agree to put the brakes on implementing new privacy laws in California and push that back to 2021. They are trying again to re-create this situation of surveillance exceptionalism. Theres another report where Googles former CEO Eric Schmidt is cornered to saying that thanks to the pandemic, people are going to be grateful to Big Tech.

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They have a vested interest in portraying the pandemic as an exception, just as the 9/11 attacks were portrayed as an exception. So, all concerns about surveillance, about privacy, should be set aside in favor of these companies being able to expand their role and somehow ride to the rescue. This is the fairy tale that theyre spinning, and of course when people feel scared fairy tales are very soothing.

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Heres where I differ from the fairy tale: Our circumstances are fundamentally different than they were in 2001. In 2001, nobody had any idea what these companies were or what they were up to. Now, the same companies are the largest, most powerful corporations in the history of business, and they are indeed empires.

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But if they are empires now, then why wouldnt they be able to use this moment to generate even more growth? So much human activity has been forced from the physical world to the internet in the last two months. And were being told that our salvation will be these track and trace apps that will finally let us leave our houses and return to normal. So why isnt this an enormous opportunity for them?

It is an enormous opportunity. Theres no question about that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Now we know that they dont have our best interests at heart. That theyve been using their knowledge, and their computational capabilities, and their cornering of the data science labor force not to solve the worlds problems, not to solve world hunger, not to solve planetary catastrophe, not to cure 100 different kinds of cancer. Theyve been using it to predict our behavior and sell those predictions to people who can benefit from knowing what were going to do.

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Certainly, in the last two years there has been a sea change in public attitudes that hasnt yet overwhelmed the system, but it could. Were not necessarily locked into this deterministic narrative that too many pundits are hocking and the tech companies are salivating overthat post-COVID were going to have comprehensive biosurveillance of all of society. People are worried. People are asking questions.

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Yes, sure, were all concerned about privacy. But how can we take steps to protect our privacy if we have to choose between surveillance and indefinite lockdown?

Thats the bottom line here, Josh: Is the digital century going to be compatible with democracy? Some people may think that its necessary to accept a Google-Apple contact tracing app. But most people regard the tracking as acceptable only in a very narrow range.

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What I want to say to people is, if you feel mistrustful of this, if you feel fearful of this, cherish that fear because that fear is your own. Its a signal of your own awareness of danger. Theres an uncontrolled power here that is trying to expand.

Do you think its possible to do wide-scale contact tracing responsibly?

People in the public health field dont blink when they refer to their surveillance systems because for them its obvious: If youve got an infectious disease, youre going to try to contain it and eliminate it. And to do that you have to know where it is. For them, the word surveillance has very different connotations.

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Public health administrations have been doing contact tracing with varied, increasing degrees of sophistication and tools for over a century. And I havent seen many examples of the public being suspicious or mistrustful of or rebelling against or being afraid of the ministrations of the public health officials who have come to talk to them in the course of this contact tracing. Why is that? My answer to that is because first of all these are professionals who are bound to scientific and professional cards, norms, standards, statutes. Second of all, these are public sector operations. They have no other interest other than to serve the public interest and ultimately exist under the rule of law and under democratic governments because they are public operations. There is no secondary game. Theres no larger amassing of private data for the purposes of manipulation and control. Theres nothing but solving the problem, getting the disease contained and getting it eliminated. Thats it.

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So is there hope for those who are concerned about privacy and our rights to our own behavioral surplus?

This has to be grasped in a historical context. Right now, we are marching into the digital century naked. But this has happened before. Imagine we were standing on the precipice of the third decade of the 20th century and trying to predict the future. We would look around, we would see a court system that decides every economic dispute based on property rights of ownership. Wed be looking at a world in which the right to join a union or strike was not protected in law, where people were set upon and beat up and sometimes murdered when they tried to do those things. It would be a world where factories could continue to employ child labor, where there was no balance of power between workers and employers, no social safety net for welfare, for health care.

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More than likely, we would be predicting a future world in which there was a small group of families who own these massive monopolistic behemoths of industrial capitalism and a population of industrial serfs who have few rights and are sentenced to labor without any protection.

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In fact, that is not how the 20th century turned out. It didnt turn out that way because that third decade ended up being a period of intensely fruitful institutional development, where all kinds of new institutions were finally invented along with the legislative and regulatory frameworks to support them, to make industrialization flip to democracy.

So the message that Im dedicating myself to right now is that this next decade really is critical. You could say that COVID and this state of exception will set us back, but I have to confess I see it very differently. I see it as highlighting, in starkest terms, our failing and our vulnerability. This is exactly the motivation that we need to come together to understand, that we as users are not just some anonymous, unwashed, passive audience. Users are the new political force in the same way that workers and consumers were a political force in the 20th century. And on this political force will come the movements we need if democracy is going to survive in this century.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Washington, May 8 : A woman who accuses Democratic White House candidate Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her 27 years ago has called on him to quit the presidential race.

In an interview, Tara Reade urged Biden to "please step forward and be held accountable".

She added: "You should not be running on character for the president of the United States." Biden, who is set to challenge President Donald Trump in November, has denied Reade's accusation, the BBC reported.

Reade, now 56, worked as a staff assistant to Biden from 1992-93 when he was a senator for the US state of Delaware.

She has said that in 1993 he forced her against a wall and put his hands under her shirt and skirt, penetrating her with a finger, after she delivered him his gym bag.

"I remember him saying, first, as he was doing it 'Do you want to go somewhere else?' and then him saying to me, when I pulled away... he said 'Come on man, I heard you liked me,'" Reade told podcast host Katie Halper in March.

"That phrase stayed with me." In a clip from the interview released on Thursday, Reade was asked by host Megyn Kelly if she wanted Biden to withdraw from the race.

"I wish he would, but he won't, but I wish he would," she said. "That's how I feel emotionally." Reade offered to take a lie detector test about her claim, on condition that Mr Biden do so also.

"I will take one if Joe Biden takes one," she said.

Reade continued: "His campaign is taking this position that they want all women to be able to speak safely. I have not experienced that." She said that she had received a death threat after Biden supporters accused her without evidence of being a Russian agent.

"It's been stunning how - some of his surrogates with the blue checks [verified identities] - you know, his surrogates have been saying really horrible things about me and to me on social media," said Reade.

"He hasn't himself, but there is a measure of hypocrisy with the campaign saying it's been safe - it's not been safe.

"All of my social media has been hacked, all of my personal information has been dragged through.

"Every person that maybe has a gripe against me, maybe an ex-boyfriend or an ex-landlord or whatever it is has been able to have a platform rather than me." Biden campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield said in a statement after the interview aired that Ms Reade's story contained "inconsistencies".

"Women must receive the benefit of the doubt," said the statement. "They must be able to come forward and share their stories without fear of retribution or harm - and we all have a responsibility to ensure that.

"At the same time, we can never sacrifice the truth. And the truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity." Biden, who is the Democratic party's presumptive presidential nominee, broke his silence on the matter a week ago, appearing on a morning television show to brand the allegations "false".

A court document from 1996 shows Reade's ex-husband describing "a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in US Senator Joe Biden's office", according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The file obtained by the California newspaper appears to be the only document from the time that might describe Ms Reade's allegation.

Theodore Dronen, her then-husband, penned the court memo during a divorce battle.

Dronen wrote that his wife had told him she "eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator's office and left her position," the Tribune reported.

"It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on [Reade], and that she is still sensitive and effected [sic] by it today," he continued.

Reade's brother, a former neighbour and a former colleague have all said they heard her describe the accusation against her boss after the alleged incident. And her mother appears to have called a CNN show about the claim back in 1993.

High-powered Manhattan lawyer Douglas Wigdor said in a statement that he is representing Reade. He has represented alleged sexual assault victims of jailed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Some Republicans are seizing on the Reade accusation to portray Democrats as hypocrites who only defend women when claims of wrongdoing are aimed at conservatives.

Trump himself has faced a barrage of sexual misconduct allegations, which he also denies. He once boasted of grabbing women by the genitals.

However, the Democrats have much more strongly championed the #MeToo movement, which backs women who make accusations of sexual assault and calls for their stories to be heard.

Women are a core constituency for the party, traditionally giving more votes to Democratic candidates than Republicans.

Some liberal women have said they believe Tara Reade but will vote for Biden anyway because they view Trump as much worse.

November's presidential election will be the first of the #MeToo era, and Biden has framed it as a "battle for the soul of America".
A British woman whose flight was diverted to Portugal when she went into labour 10 weeks early is finally home after getting trapped in coronavirus lockdown with her newborn son for seven weeks.

Lauren McLean gave birth to Oscar in the most traumatic circumstances at the beginning of March and her ordeal only ended when they flew back home to Birmingham at the end of April.

The 28-year-old had gone into early labour on a Ryanair flight home from Tenerife and was told her baby would not survive if she gave birth in mid-air.

The aircraft diverted to Faro in the Algarve where she delivered her 3lb 70z boy in hospital, but then faced weeks of seeing him just once a day due to strict Covid-19 quarantine.

In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, she said: 'It has been quite a journey and of course I was terrified that Oscar would not make it.

The 28-year-old went into early labour on a Ryanair flight home from Tenerife and was told her baby would not survive if she gave birth in mid-air. The aircraft diverted to Faro in the Algarve where she delivered her 3lb 70z boy in hospital

Lauren McLean, 28, whose flight was diverted to Portugal when she went into labour 10 weeks early is finally home after getting trapped in coronavirus lockdown with her newborn son for seven weeks (above in neonatal care)

Lauren then faced weeks of seeing him just once a day due to strict Covid-19 quarantine and they finally flew back to Birmingham at the end of April via air ambulance (above). She told MailOnline: 'It has been quite a journey and I was terrified that Oscar would not make it'

'Before all this happened my boyfriend and I liked the name Oscar, but we thought it was very appropriate given his dramatic arrival which was really like something out of a Hollywood film.

Lauren, a service representative for Volvo, was on the last day of her holiday with boyfriend Jake Ward, her mum Adie and sister and brother in law when she began to feel unwell.

At just 30 weeks into her pregnancy she had been safe to fly to Tenerife for a weeks holiday before the birth of her first child.

The day before she was due to fly home on March 5 she felt unwell and a hotel doctor said she was most likely suffering from a water infection.

He gave her the all clear to fly, but an hour into the flight home Lauren said she began to have contractions.

I went to the toilet and could feel my babys head emerging. I knew it was serious and my mum was inside the cubicle with me and knew we had to do something, she said.

I really thought I was going to have the baby on the plane.

A call by the flight crew over the PA system for a doctor to come forward failed, but Angela Chamberlain, a midwife who was on board, volunteered to help.

Lauren said: Angela did a brief examination and told me if the baby was born on the flight he would die. She was fantastic and I cant thank her enough.

The crew got oxygen but the mask would have been too big to fit over a premature baby.

Lauren, a service representative for Volvo, was on the last day of her holiday with boyfriend Jake Ward, her mum Adie and sister and brother in law when she began to feel unwell. At just 30 weeks into her pregnancy she had been safe to fly to Tenerife for a weeks holiday

The doctor gave her the all clear to fly, but an hour into the flight home Lauren said she began to have contractions. I really thought I was going to have the baby on the plane. A call by the flight crew for a doctor failed but a midwife who was on board volunteered to help

The midwife was fantastic and told me whatever I did I should not push as the baby could not be born.

I was terrified and every time I had a contraction took really big deep breaths. I just knew that I could not give birth as I did not want to lose my son.

Lauren lay on black bin liners at the back of the Boeing 737 jet while the pilot diverted to Faro for an emergency landing.

It was about 45 minutes until we landed but the longest 45 minutes in my life as I dared not push. I did not want my baby to die.

The Ryanair crew had radioed ahead and an ambulance was waiting at the foot of the steps on the runway.

Lauren was rushed to Faro hospital where just minutes after arriving she gave birth.

Jake and my mum couldnt come in the ambulance, but just as Oscar popped out they burst through the doors. It was something like out of a film.

I only had to give two small pushes and Oscar was there. He was very early and we are just so happy that we were given such care on the flight and at the hospital.'

As her son was so small he was taken to a neo natal unit for premature babies, while Lauren had to undergo an operation to remove the placenta.

Oscars arrival coincided with a lockdown being imposed in Portugal to stop the spread of coronavirus.

She was only allowed to visit her son once a day during the six weeks he was kept in hospital.

The midwife told me whatever I did I should not push as the baby could not be born.' Lauren lay at the back of the Boeing 737 jet while the pilot diverted to Faro for an emergency landing. It was the longest 45 minutes in my life as I dared not push. I did not want my baby to die

As her son was so small he was taken to a neo natal unit for premature babies. Oscars arrival coincided with a lockdown being imposed in Portugal to stop the spread of coronavirus. She was only allowed to visit her son once a day during the six weeks he was kept in hospital

Her mum and boyfriend Jake, a bricklayer, also stayed on in Portugal as all three rented an Airbnb flat.

Due to the lockdown only one of us was allowed to visit the hospital between the hours of 9am and 2pm. Oscar did very well in the hospital and was looked after so well.

He put on weight and the only scary moment was when he got a slight infection, but we were told it was nothing to do with coronavirus.

Doctors told Lauren and Jake their son was strong enough to travel on April 22 when he tipped the scales at 6lbs.

Their holiday insurance company paid for an air ambulance and the family travelled back to Birmingham with a doctor and nurse on the flight to monitor Oscar.

Doctors told Lauren and Jake their son was strong enough to travel on April 22 when he tipped the scales at 6lbs. Oscar has continued to thrive back home in Birmingham and now weighs 8lbs. His due date was meant to be this Saturday

Oscar has continued to thrive back home in Birmingham and now weighs 8lbs. His due date was meant to be this Saturday.

Due to the lockdown conditions he has yet to meet many members of his family.

My dad and Jakes parents havent been able to hold Oscar yet.

They have to come to the window to see him so we are hoping the lockdown ends very soon.

He has had quite a start to his life and will be a story we will tell him when he is older.
JAMMU: Hundreds of workers at the Chenab Textile Mills (CTM) in Jammu and Kashmir Kathua district resorted to violence over non-payment of full wages during which several people, including cops, were injured. According to the Zee Media sources, hundreds of workers came out of CTM and held protests on Friday against the failure of the management to pay full wages to them.

Their protest soon turned violent and they clashed with the police which was called to control the situation.

Infuriated with police presence, the workers broke furniture, windows, and other material and ransacked offices at the mill complex, the police said.

The protesters then rushed to the highway and blocked it and shouted slogans. Police asked them to disperse to allow the movement of traffic, but workers turned violent and clashed with police, which resorted to a mild lathi-charge.

In the clashes and subsequent lathi-charge by the police, several workers and cops were injured. Over two dozen persons have been detained for damaging police vehicles and other items, the police said.

Sharing more information about the incident, SSP Kathua Shailendra Kumar said, "Six to seven thousand workers are working at CTM. Their problem is related to payment. They feel payment given to them by management is insufficient. They have misunderstood that (other) staff have been given full payment and they were given very less amount."

Second, they want to return to their villages, the SSP said. "We have talked to them and will sit with CTM management to address the issues," he said. On their part, the workers alleged that they were given only Rs 2,000 as monthly wage.

"Neither the management is paying us full wages, nor they are allowing us to go back to our homes in various states," a worker said.
"Given the current challenging times we're facing, we want to share these inspiring stories of some really amazing people and their mission to make the world a better place," said Wendy Watkins, vice president of corporate communications at Hormel Foods. "These films are portraits of people who have had remarkable life journeys and flourished despite ordinary expectations  those who give back to their communities, reach across borders and see beyond disabilities. From bringing a town together around autism awareness to the simple act of U.S. military veterans making life-long friendships over a meal, the first-ever Hormel Film Festival will premiere six films that will touch your heart at a time where we could all use some inspiration and hope."

The films will premiere live on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/hormelfoodscorp) at 12 p.m. CT, every day during the week, followed by a live discussion between the filmmakers and some of the films' subjects. Hormel Foods collaborates with expert writers and filmmakers to capture the stories of inspired people who connect with the company. The films premiering in the Hormel Film Festival were made by award-winning filmmakers and documentarians Scott Balcerek and David Munro, produced by EMMY winner Garrett Law of Attention Span Media, and led by the corporate communications team and the award-winning film team at Hormel Foods including Michael Yaremchuk, Rene Lazaro and Gene Lifka.

The event will also spotlight nonprofit organizations, each with a unique connection to the stories and the subjects of the films. Supported causes will include advocacy for the deaf and hard of hearing community, support for those with autism, business development for women, military and veterans, and hunger-relief efforts.

View the whole schedule and learn more about these amazing stories at www.HormelFilmFestival.com .

Summary of the films:

Autism Friendly Austin, with bonus film Jackson the Superhero

Two stories about two inspiring individuals who have shown their communities that autism is not an obstacle. Samuel Ehert knows personally that even a small town can be difficult to navigate for someone with autism. As a tour guide at the SPAM Museum, Samuel is part of a larger project to make Austin, Minnesota, an autism-friendly community. Plus, get to know Jackson, a young man from Louisville, Kentucky, with a special superpower and a mom who is his biggest fan and advocate.

Cooperation Beyond Words

Abdullahi Moallin came to America after losing his hearing during the civil war in Somalia. At Jennie-O Turkey Store in Faribault, Minnesota, he found opportunity and community  and he paved the way for others like him to follow. Discover an amazing team that is as unique as their ability to communicate and create a culture of togetherness.

There's Something About Grace

Working to make the world, and her home country, a better place. As a child, Grace Umutesi narrowly escaped the racial genocide that swept over her home country of Rwanda. This is a story of serendipity and hope  of a journey that brought Grace across the world to find a mentor in Justin Gold, the founder of Justin's. Now at the end of her internship at Justin's, Grace is determined to pursue her dream of bringing the entrepreneurial knowledge she acquired at Justin's back to her home country.

Chuck Baker's Table of Honor

Skydiving at 100 years old? Flying dangerous missions during World War II? Meet a down-to-Earth group of American veterans who gather every week at a small restaurant in Northern California. Representing all five branches of the military, these veterans like to joke that the main thing they have in common is SPAM, but their shared experience of personal sacrifice and sense of honor suggests a deeper bond.

The 5th Grader who Fed Putnam County, West Virginia

At only 11-years-old when the film was made, Elise Simokat decided she wasn't going to be a passive witness to the poverty in her West Virginia community. She created the Box-to-Belly Challenge and, with support from donations from Kroger and Hormel Foods, helped hundreds of her classmates and beyond. "I'm just one person. I can't change the world," says Elise. "But I'm not the only one doing this. Together, we can do anything. The sky's the limit."

Hormel Foods will cap the week with a special Friday evening viewing of its collection of films for its 20,000 team members and their families and friends. The collection will include a new series featuring special and inspiring stories of its team members from Hormel Foods called Everyone Has a Story.

ABOUT HORMEL FOODS  INSPIRED PEOPLE. INSPIRED FOOD.

Hormel Foods Corporation, based in Austin, Minn., is a global branded food company with over $9 billion in annual revenue across more than 80 countries worldwide. Its brands include SKIPPY, SPAM, Hormel Natural Choice, Applegate, Justin's, Wholly, Hormel Black Label, Columbus and more than 30 other beloved brands. The company is a member of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, was named on the "Global 2000 World's Best Employers" list by Forbes magazine for three straight years, is one of Fortune magazine's most admired companies, has appeared on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's "The 100 Best Corporate Citizens" list for the 11th year in a row, and has received numerous other awards and accolades for its corporate responsibility and community service efforts. The company lives by its purpose statement  Inspired People. Inspired Food.  to bring some of the world's most trusted and iconic brands to tables across the globe. For more information, visit www.hormelfoods.com and http://csr.hormelfoods.com/.



About the filmmakers:

V. Scott Balcerek is a filmmaker with Attention Span who produced and edited More Than A Game, a feature documentary about LeBron James, which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He also directed RePlay, a Gatorade branded doc series featuring Eli and Peyton Manning, that received eight Gold Lions at Cannes. Prior, Balcerek was the senior visual effects editor for George Lucas' Star Wars films Episodes I and II, as well as Ang Lee's The Hulk and Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm. He spent more than 20 years shooting his most recent film and directorial debut, Satan & Adam (Mountainfilm 2018).

David Munro is a writer and filmmaker with Attention Span, based in the Bay Area. His feature films include Stand Up Planet, a Gates Foundation documentary hosted by Hasan Minhaj (The Daily Show) and Full Grown Men, an independent comedy that won the Sundance Channel Audience Award. David's short films have screened worldwide from Sundance to Berlin leading Filmmaker Magazine to name him one of "25 New Indie Faces."

Contact: Media Relations

Hormel Foods

507-434-6352

[email protected]

SOURCE Hormel Foods Corporation

Related Links

http://www.hormel.com


After three years of not doing much on Taiwan, the Trump administration is now mildly upping its engagement with the Taiwanese government and pressing the WHO to allow Taiwan to attend (as an observer) the World Health Assembly being held virtually later this month. But theres so much more that could and should be done.
Princess Charlotte's 'fabuously disgusting' homework has been revealed as popular children's story Spider Sandwiches by the British author Claire Freedman.

Kate Middleton, 38, appeared on ITV's This Morning yesterday and joked that Prince George, 6, was 'jealous' of his five-year-old sister Princess Charlotte's homework and 'would rather make spider sandwiches'.

The Daily Mail's Rebecca English went on to reveal the cover of the book on Twitter writing: 'The Duchess of Cambridge was referring to this fabulously disgusting childrens book.'

The book, which is described online as a 'silly, funny, gloopy, gunky picture book', follows a monster who loves messy mealtimes and feasts on creepy crawlies.

Princess Charlotte, five, has been enjoying the 'fabulously disgusting' story of Spider Sandwiches by British author Claire Freedman

Kate made the admission while appearing on the morning programme yesterday to launch the new project 'Hold Still.

For her interview, Kate wore a stunning yellow bracelet-sleeve silk dress by British brand Raey, featuring a pink and green tree print. The dress is currently on sale on Matches Fashion for 148, reduced from 495.

Kate wore her brunette locks in loose waves around her shoulders and opted for her signature natural make-up, with brown eyeshadow and a nude lip.

Speaking to Holly on how she is coping in these strangest of times, the Duchess responded: 'Fine, thank you. It's extraordinary. I'm sure you're experiencing the same yourselves and your families and things. We're stuck into homeschooling again. They're unprecedented times really. But no we're fine, thank you for asking.'

The Duchess of Cambridge revealed in an interview yesterday how Prince George was envious of his young sibling's spider sandwiches projects

And talking about homeschooling, Kate revealed: 'George gets very upset because he just wants to do all of Charlotte's projects. Spider sandwiches are far cooler than literacy work'.

The book, which was written by British children's author Claire Freedman and illustrated by Sue Hendra, was released in October 2013.

It's not the first time that the Duchess has spoken about the challenges of homeschooling.

Earlier this month, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge revealed how they home schooled their children during the Easter holidays without telling them.

Royal editor Rebecca English revealed the picture book on Twitter, calling the monster story 'fabulously disgusting'

Speaking in a BBC interview in April, Prince William and Kate said it had been 'challenging' to teach their three children - who they said had 'got such stamina', although it 'hasn't been all hardcore'.

The Duchess, who is believed to be leading the homeschooling efforts at Anmer Hall, also talked about how the couple had kept a strict regime while home schooling their children Prince George, six, Princess Charlotte, five, and Prince Louis, two.

Kate said of home schooling: 'Don't tell the children, we've actually kept it going through the holidays. I feel very mean.

'The children have got such stamina, I don't know how. Honestly, you get to the end of the day and you write down the list of all the things that you've done in that day.'

It's not the only glimpse into a royal bookcase that fans have received this week, after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shared a video reading aloud children's book Duck! Rabbit to their son Archie

It's not the only glimpse into a royal bookcase that fans have received this week.

The revelation about Princess Charlotte and Prince George's favourite homework books comes days after Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 38, shared a video of their son Archie enjoying a children's story.

Prince Harry and Meghan released a video showing the duchess reading Duck! Rabbit! to Archie earlier this week for Save the Children's Save With Stories campaign.

It was revealed yesterday that the couple received the storybook along with 99 others, from their close friend and media mogul Oprah Winfrey.
Air India employee unions have moved the Bombay High Court against the airline's decision to slash allowances, which form a major part of the salary, by ten percent because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic

Mumbai: Air India employee unions have moved the Bombay High Court against the airline's decision to slash allowances, which form a major part of the salary, by ten percent because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Air India Aircraft Engineers Association, All India Service Engineers Association and Indian Pilots Guild filed a writ petition in the high court earlier this week against the national carrier and its subsidiary Air India Engineering Services Ltd.

The petition, filed through advocates Jane Cox and Karishma Rao, said that on 20 March, Air India announced 10 percent deduction for three months from the allowance package of all employees except the cabin crew on account of the impact of coronavirus outbreak.

The plea pointed out that on the same day the Union government issued an advisory asking all private and public firms not to reduce salaries or sack employees due to the pandemic.

"On 29 March, the home secretary issued an advisory under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, directing that all employers pay wages to their employees without making any deductions for the period their establishments remain closed on account of the lockdown," said advocate Jane Cox.

The deduction announced by Air India was therefore not only illegal under industrial laws but it also violated the Union government's order, the petition said, demanding that the pay cut be declared as illegal.

It also urged the court to direct Air India not to make any further deductions, and reimburse the amount deducted for March pending final disposal of the case.

The petitioners had also written to the Ministry of Civil Aviation protesting against the deduction but they were to receive any response, the plea said.

"The management has called a skeletal staff on duty on some days each week and has directed all employees to stay at home and remain available on phone in case of any emergency. We are all willing to resume work but are unable to do so because of the pandemic," the petition further said.

The deduction of wages for March was "especially unjust" as most employees worked from 1 March to 24 March, which was prior to national lockdown coming into effect, it said.

Allowances form 50 to 70 percent of salaries of petitioners while remaining amount includes basic pay and other components, the petition said.

The court is likely to hear the matter next week.
The Australian government realised that something was badly wrong with the World Health Organisation, or WHO, around this time. The Geneva-based UN organisation kept insisting that there was no cause for countries to ban travel from China. Many nations, Britain and Canada among them, were trusting enough to take its advice. Australia wasn't the first to shut down arrivals from China. The US and Singapore had done it a day earlier. Taiwan had barred tourists from China's mainland earlier still, on January 26. Australian officials since have reflected privately that, if Canberra had been watching China as closely as Taiwan does  and with as much scepticism of its official announcements  Australia would have acted at the same time. Taiwan is the standout global success story in managing COVID-19 to date. It's an island with roughly the same population as Australia but only six deaths. Australia's death toll is approaching 100. Taiwan's restrictions on movement weren't much more drastic than Australia's but it moved sooner.

Taiwan also was smart enough to put no faith in the WHO. Indeed, Beijing has barred Taiwan from membership of the WHO. Which, in this case, hasn't done Taiwan any harm whatsoever. Canberra announced other border closures in short order  Iran, Italy, South Korea. But then it paused before finally banning all foreign arrivals after March 19. Was it a mistake to wait so long? Should Australia have followed its China ban with a global ban sooner? Loading Says Hunt: "The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee [the politician-free group comprising Murphy and the chief medical officers of all state and territories] was not recommending any more border closures. "We were putting the question to them every few days on border closures. It was very active questioning from the national security committee of cabinet. We drove the questioning and we accepted the medical advice. We indicated readiness and willingness for them to keep this under constant, active consideration."

After Taiwan, with its fatality rate of 0.3 people per one million of population, the places with the lowest credible death rates are Hong Kong with 0.5, Singapore with 3, Australia and New Zealand at 4, and South Korea and Japan at 5. Amid that group lies China, with an official reporting a rate of 3, but with questions over the credibility of its figures. How does this compare with the developed nations suffering a less happy epidemic experience? To date, Canada has reported 117 deaths per one million population, the US 232, Sweden 301, France 398, Britain 451 and Italy 495. One national Australian foible is that we generally aren't terribly comfortable with admitting our own successes. As the country now moves from a national mobilisation to stop the virus to the next phase of learning to live with it, Australia can take a moment to take note of its success. True, there was some luck. As one senior official put it: "If we'd had one more Ruby Princess, if we'd waited one more week to start imposing restrictions, the story here would be very different."

Hunt himself doesn't concede any near miss, though he does admit that the official projection of as many as 150,000 dead Australians "did concentrate the minds of the national security committee". But even critics of the Morrison government are reluctant to criticise Hunt. While Labor was harsh on Morrison for announcing a ban on big gatherings yet saying he would go to the footy nonetheless, it hasn't faulted his health minister. The federal president of the Australian Medical Association, Tony Bartone, says that Hunt "has done exceptionally well". Hunt is not one of the more colourful members of Parliament. Which, for dealing with a pandemic, is probably a good thing. His earnest, straightforward delivery and broadly optimistic tone was just what the doctor ordered. But it takes more than good public presentation to defeat a virus. Hunt says that "the rest of the world is repeatedly asking, 'What has Australia done and how did you get there?" His answer is three decisions and a two-part plan. Loading The three critical decisions: the move to close to border to China, the commitment to the primacy of health advice over other factors, and the Morrison innovation of bringing the premiers and chief ministers together to form a national cabinet.

And the two-part plan that he and his state and federal colleagues drew up? Containment on one hand, and capacity-building on the other. The containment part is well-known  border closures, quarantine, widespread testing, effective tracing, social distancing. But it was, says Hunt, the capacity building that was "the thing that Australia did best". How so? Quietly, during February, the federal government set up two taskforces. A taskforce in the Health Department was responsible for procuring essential medical equipment. Another in the Industry Department took up the task of increasing production of equipment. And it was done quietly, he says, because the whole world would soon be desperately trying to grab all available supplies. The government put a special premium on one item in particular  ventilators. The government's own projections showed that Australia's hospitals with their 2200 ventilator-equipped ICU beds would be overwhelmed around Anzac Day. Loading "What was the single thing Scott Morrison was most determined about?" Hunt poses. "Never, ever to have to be forced to allocate, to have to choose which people to put on life support." And, obversely, which people would be left to die. It was not unimaginable. It was the daily reality in Spain and Italy. "He was very determined we would never get to that situation."

The government set a target of 7500 ventilators. Medical authorities worked out that they could double the initial 2200 by repurposing anaesthetic machinery and bringing out all available spares. Then, by a great stroke of national fortune, an innovative Australian start-up created by Peter Farrell in 1989 just happens to be a global leader in making respiratory equipment. ResMed stepped forward and agreed to make 5500 ventilators. Delivered early. And, gratefully, not needed, but now part of the national stockpile. There was much more, too. Hunt struck a deal with the 650 private hospitals that the federal government would guarantee their viability if they agreed to bring their systems into the national epidemic response. Hunt did another deal with the states and territories to deliver an urgent $2.4 billion in extra health funding. And a 10-year plan to introduce telehealth services was instead delivered in 10 days. Hunt is too prudent to announce "mission accomplished". He points out that "it only takes one asymptomatic case to pass it on and you have a Cedar Meats or a north-west Tasmania", a sudden flare-up. But he does allow himself to observe that "if you could choose one place in the world to be" in the pandemic, "it'd be Australia".
Maki Mae is Chinese/Japanese-American and trained at Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Conservatory. The artist sings in 13 languages and won international competitions for violin and opera. The Mother's Day Concert will feature modern and traditional classics such as Ave Maria, You Raise Me Up, and other beautiful music for all ages.

Asian Hall of Fame celebrities will air their public service announcement during the concert. The video supports the Asian Hall of Fame Medical Response Fund to deliver PPE to COVID-19 front line workers. Stars in the PSA include Olympic medalists, Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan, and other influencers. The Medical Response Fund also hopes to deliver a message of service and solidarity to reverse Asia phobia.

The foundation released their anti-hate letter during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and joined the Racism Is Contagious movement. The free concert is on Sunday, May 10 at 3:00 p.m. PST and the concert link is on the Asian Hall of Fame website at https://www.asianhalloffame.org/. Guests who are inspired to contribute are recognized on the Asian Hall of Fame online donor wall, and gifts start at $5.

Media Contact:

Maki Hsieh, CEO

[email protected]

SOURCE Asian Hall of Fame

Related Links

https://www.asianhalloffame.org


German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen as they pose for a family photo at the start of the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium July 11, 2018.

A German intelligence report casts doubts on U.S. allegations that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory and says the accusations are an attempt to divert attention from U.S. failure to rein in the disease, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was "a significant amount of evidence" that the coronavirus had emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusion that it was not man-made.

Spiegel said Germany's BND spy agency had asked members of the U.S.-led "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance for evidence to support the accusation. None of the alliance's members, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, wanted to support Pompeo's claim, it said.

An intelligence report prepared for German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer concluded that the U.S. accusations were a deliberate attempt to divert public attention away from President Donald Trump's "own failures".

A German government spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Trump has said he has evidence the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab, but he has declined to elaborate.

U.S. deaths from the coronavirus exceeded 75,000 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with mixed messages from the White House and state governments on how to slow the rate of infection.

Deaths in the United States, the epicenter of the pandemic, have averaged 2,000 a day since mid-April.
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Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms scores hat-trick; bags Rs 11,367 cr investment from Vista after FB, Silver Lake

Vista Equity Partners will invest Rs 11,367 crore into Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore, Reliance Industries and Jio Platforms announced today. This investment will translate into a 2.32 per cent equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis, making Vista the largest investor in Jio Platforms behind Reliance Industries and Facebook.

UP allows industry to hire and fire! Suspends all labour laws, except three

Uttar Pradesh government has promulgated an ordinance that suspends most of the labour laws for a period of three years. In its latest meeting, the state cabinet approved this ordinance in order to revive economic activities in the state that have been hit hard due to the coronavirus-mandated lockdown.

'Debt monetisation should not constrain govt spending,' says Raghuram Rajan

Debt monetisation or printing of notes should not be a constraint on government spending today, says Raghuram Rajan, former Governor of RBI. In a post titled "Monetisation: Neither Game Changer nor Catastrophe in Abnormal Times", Rajan says the government should be concerned about protecting the health of the economy and should spend what is needed.

Coronavirus: Planning to buy liquor in Delhi? Get a token first





Vizag gas leak: Gujarat to send chemical used as neutraliser to Vishakhapatnam

A specialised chemical called PTBC, made only in Vapi town of Gujarat, will be sent to Visakhapatnam on an urgent basis to help in neutralising the effects of gas leak at a polymer plant there, a Gujarat government official said on Thursday. A major leak from a chemical plant of LG Polymers near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the wee hours of Thursday impacted villages within a 5-km radius, leaving eight people dead and scores of citizens complaining of breathlessness, nausea and other problems.

China either made terrible mistake or probably it was incompetence: Trump on coronavirus pandemic

The spread of the deadly coronavirus across the globe from China was either a terrible mistake on the part of the Chinese or probably it was incompetence, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday. "It (coronavirus) could have been stopped at the point. It could have been stopped right at the source. It would have been easy to do, but something happened. Something happened," he told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

India to roll out COVID-19 app for Reliance's JioPhone in bid to widen use

Last month, India launched the Aarogya Setu app which alerts users who may have come in contact with people who later test positive for COVID-19. The app, which has been downloaded more than 83 million times so far, was initially available to India's roughly 500 million smartphone users on Google's Android and Apple devices, but not to around 400 million users of more basic feature phones. Within a week, a version of the app will be rolled out to more than 100 million users of the $9 JioPhone - a cheap, internet-enabled feature phone that runs on a mobile operating system named KaiOS.

Coronavirus India Live Updates: Maharashtra lockdown may extend to May-end, hints CM Thackeray; cases-17,974






"King of Queens," step aside: It's time for Pete Davidson to step up as "The King of Staten Island"!

"Saturday Night Live" cast member Davidson is taking a star turn in the new dramedy loosely based on his own life and directed by Judd Apatow. But don't expect it to be all laughs  there are definitely some funny bits, but the story really revolves around Davidson (as Scott Carlin) trying to come to terms with the death of his firefighter father, even as he chases after a dream of being a tattoo artist.

(Warning: The trailer contains strong language.)

In real life, Davidson's father lost his life at the Marriott World Trade Center hotel on September 11, 2001; the hotel was destroyed when the Twin Towers fell. His mother, Amy Davidson, told The New York Times in 2015, "It was sad how sad he was growing up."

"It was overwhelming," he told the Times.

The film riffs on what Davidson (who grew up on Staten Island) went through, with the trailer showing him struggling over finding his path in life, sparring with his mom's new beau (who's also a firefighter), learning wisdom from a veteran firefighter played by Steve Buscemi (a former firefighter himself who returned to the force on 9/11) and finding love.

Pete Davidson plays Scott Carlin in the new dramedy

The film was co-written by Apatow, Davidson and former "SNL" writer Dave Sirus, and features Marisa Tomei as Davidson's mom, plus Maude Apatow and Pamela Adlon ("Better Things"). It was set to open in theaters in June, but the release was shelved because of the coronavirus pandemic. So Universal (which is also owned by NBC's parent company, Comcast) has decided to release it on video on demand on June 12.

Looks like this will be a moving tribute to all kinds of heroes: fathers and firefighters alike.
OLYMPIA, WA  Washington's leading behavioral health experts are bracing for the long-term emotional fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

Based on historical patterns and Washington's current needs, the state expects somewhere between 2 and 3 million residents will experience some adverse effects related to the health crisis, including symptoms of depression, heightened stress and anxiety.

Two of the state's leading experts in disaster psychology and mental health studied the behavioral patterns recorded in the wake of other large-scale disasters, including 9/11, to anticipate the mental toll of the virus in Washington.

Researchers said this crisis is likely to affect people differently than other disasters, with stronger impacts related to social isolation and economic disruption, and a smaller likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder.



Typically, researchers said, earlier stages of a disaster can provide for some emotional highs, including feelings of heroism and community cohesion, as everyone rises to meet a common challenge. Right now, Washington is moving past that "honeymoon phase," and rates of depression are expected to increase over the next 3-6 months.

(Department of Health)

During the summer months, health experts anticipate more "acting out," including heightened aggression, substance abuse, potential violence and illegal behavior. Others may react by "acting in," which includes feelings of hopelessness, withdrawals from social interactions and voluntary isolation.



"These are very, very normal responses to a highly abnormal situation," said Dr. Kira Mauseth, a senior instructor of psychology at Seattle University.

From a clinical perspective, researchers said, acts of anger or aggression are almost always the result of an underlying fear, and listening to one another's concerns can help us learn what is underneath the anger.

(Department of Health)

Heading into the fall months will bring another period of concern, as grief associated with the pandemic will likely add to seasonal triggers associated with changing weather and the approaching holidays.



Story continues

Dr. Keri Waterland, a director for the Washington State Health Care Authority, said ending the stigma around behavioral health and letting each other know it's okay to ask for help are essential tools.

"The acknowledgment is that it's okay not to feel okay," Waterland said. "It's normal to feel exactly what you are feeling in this time."

Aside from seeking clinical help, Waterland said it's important to stay in contact with friends and loved ones and build a team of support.

Don't miss the latest coronavirus updates from health and government officials in Washington. Sign up for Patch news alerts and newsletters for what you need to know daily.

Federal funding for mental health programs in Washington



Washington received $4 million in federal funding for increased behavioral health needs related to the pandemic, according to the health authority. The first grant will help launch the "Washington Listens" program, which will relieve other crisis networks by providing a support line and 120 counselors to assist those in need of help.

The second grant will increase substance abuse and mental health treatment for those who are either uninsured or underinsured.

The state is also working to boost telehealth options across the state and examining ways to connect people who lack access to technology to receive treatment.

Learn more about mental health services available in Washington here.

This article originally appeared on the Seattle Patch
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday vetoed a sweeping plan to overhaul public schools that proponents said would fix generations of inequity, saying the coronavirus pandemic made the costly education proposal "irresponsible" to enact.

"The economic fallout from this pandemic simply makes it impossible to fund any new programs, impose any new tax hikes, nor adopt any legislation having any significant fiscal impact, regardless of the merits of the legislation," Hogan, a Republican, wrote in a veto message as he struck down 22 bills that carried a price tag. Among them was a $580 million disbursement to the state's historically black colleges and universities, key to settling a long-running lawsuit over inequitable funding.

Hogan warned weeks ago that high unemployment and widespread economic pain made it unlikely he would approve any legislation that forced the state to spend more money. Maryland has already spent as much as $2 billion on the pandemic and seen losses so large that the state could lose 15 percent of its annual revenue by the end of June.

The $4 billion annual price tag for the education plan, known as Kirwan, made it a prime target of his veto pen.

The Democratic-controlled legislature approved the plan in mid-March by a margin large enough to override his veto, before the spread of the virus forced it to abbreviate the annual lawmaking session.

The legislature also passed several new taxes to help pay for the plan, including a tax on digital downloads such as Netflix and video games, a corporate tax change intended to bring in tens of millions each year, a new tax on vaping products and a doubled tax on cigarettes. It also passed a first-in-the-nation proposal to tax the targeted digital advertising on giant online platforms such as Facebook and Google.

The governor vetoed each of them.

"With our state in the midst of a global pandemic and economic crash, and just beginning on our road to recovery, it would be unconscionable to raise taxes and fees now," Hogan wrote.

Democrats who lead the General Assembly - and who worked for years to craft the education overhaul - condemned the governor's decision as shortsighted.

"While we are in the midst of a public health and economic crisis of an extraordinary magnitude, stopping progress on education and school construction puts us even further behind," House Speaker Adrienne Jones, D-Baltimore County, said in a statement minutes after the veto was issued. "We know that there are students across this State that are losing millions of hours of learning. The result of this shortsighted action is Maryland will continue to graduate students that are not ready for the real world."

Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, added, "He chose to foreclose hope, leaving Maryland families and historically black colleges and universities with an open question for the future."

Even before the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the state's economy, Hogan was an outspoken critic of the plan and its eventual $4 billion annual price tag.

Democratic lawmakers said the state's public education system needed an overhaul because of generations of disparities and conditions that left the state's once vaunted school system slipping into mediocrity.

The bill set in place a 10-year plan to expand prekindergarten; increase funding to schools with a high percentage of poor, special-education or limited-English students; raise teacher pay and increase standards; and add programs to ensure that students are prepared for college and careers.

Its goals were ambitious - ensuring that every child is prepared for college or work by the end of the 10th grade (no later than the end of the 12th grade); raising student performance to among the best in the world; and eliminating achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and income.

It was the first major overhaul on education policy by a state since Massachusetts - regarded as the nation's gold standard on public education - approved legislation nearly three decades ago.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved with a decades-long court case over the disparities in Maryland, urged the legislature to override the governor, saying the veto "means that tens of thousands of children will continue to attend substandard schools that do not meet the state's constitutional guarantee of a 'thorough and efficient' education."

The General Assembly can reverse Hogan's veto with a three-fifths majority and has opened each of its recent legislative sessions by overriding some of his decisions.

If lawmakers do not reverse Hogan's decision on Kirwan, Thursday's veto also ends a separate program that would have spent an unprecedented $2.2 billion on school construction over the next five years. Hogan had heralded that initiative as a way to complete every school construction project in the state. But in an effort to dissuade Hogan from vetoing the education overhaul, lawmakers made the school construction bill contingent on Kirwan taking effect.

Thursday's veto also creates uncertainty for a 13-year lawsuit over whether Maryland systematically gave fewer resources to historically black colleges.

A coalition of college graduates filed the case in 2006, alleging that the state caused damage to the HBCUs' enrollment by letting other state colleges duplicate programs that once attracted a diverse student body to the historically black institutions. Hogan and his predecessors have been at odds with the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland over the legal battle for years. The funding under the bill is almost three times as much as Hogan's "final offer" made last year to settle the suit, a sum plaintiffs and black lawmakers considered insufficient to fix the disparity.

"We are frustrated and disappointed that our work was responded to with the Governor's veto," Del. Darryl Barnes, D-Prince George's, the head of the Legislative Black Caucus, said in a statement. "Allowing the bill to become law would have leveled the playing field for our HBCUs."

Hogan also vetoed bills aimed at reducing violent crime in Baltimore, saying the legislature should have enacted his proposals instead.

The measures he vetoed included one that required background checks for some private sales of rifles and shotguns. It was initially proposed after a gunman killed five employees of the Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper with a legally purchased, pump-action shotgun. Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, D-Howard, tweeted that she was "beyond disappointed" that the bill was one of seven crime-related bills Hogan vetoed.

Several measures with significant price tags survived the governor's veto pen, including a $424 million project to eventually rebuild the Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore, home of the Preakness Stakes. Another bill creates a $1.4 million annual program to let people go on payment plans to pay fines on suspended driver's licenses.

The governor also allowed hundreds of bills to become law without his signature, including a measure that broadens the state's hate-crime law, a bill that makes it illegal for landlords to discriminate against renters based on income, and legislation that bans discrimination against black hairstyles.
The second Shramik Special train from the Ambala cantonment railway station left for Bihars Bhagalpur on Friday evening carrying as many as 1,316 migrants from various districts of Haryana.

The train carried around 85 passengers from Ambala, 173 from Jhajjar, 20 from Karnal, 102 from Narnaul, 12 from Sonepat, 196 from Kurukshetra, 121 from Bhiwani / Tosham, 76 from Rohtak, 404 from Jind, 50 from Charkhi Dadri, 37 from Panipat, 8 from Gurugram, 3 from Yamunanagar, 2 from Faridabad, 3 from Mewat and 24 from Hisar.

Nodal officer Satinder Siwach said, Among those sent were migrant labourers from Khagaria, Munger, West Champaran, Begusarai and Bhagalpur districts. They were brought to the cantonment station from across Haryana using roadways buses.

Besides, travel tickets, the migrants were also provided food packets, sanitisers, water bottles, and masks, said the officer while adding, We followed the same protocol, which was followed on Thursday when the first train carrying 1,188 migrants departed from the station for Bihars Katihar.
Philbert Chambers was loving, adventurous and a true police officer, says his fiancee Shevonne Williams.





Chambers, Acting Sergeant in the Royal SVG Police Force attached to the Questelles Police State, was killed in the line of duty on Sunday 26th April, when an exchange of gunfire erupted after a party of police officers of which he was part, attempted to execute a search warrant at the residence of Gleason Lewis, at Campden Park. Lewis was also killed and another police officer, PC Verrol Sam, wounded in the exchange.





The officers death was a sad climax to their 3-year-old relationship, one that she would forever cherish, Williams told THE VINCENTIAN.





She recalled that when the relationship started, Chambers was living in Barrouallie, but as the relationship developed, he began spending more time at her home in Campden Park.





The relationship, Williams admitted, was rocky at first, and she even lost some friends because of it.





"Everybody in the community started calling me Informer. I lost friends, family stop talking to me, but Chambers never one day show he going to leave. It dont matter he never one day say I going leave, said Williams.





She became more animated as she admitted: "I use to party, I use to drink .. Since I met this man I change my whole life around. . When I really realize that I am with a police officer and when I see the kind of work the man doing, the kind of respect that people have for the man, I had to adjust myself to suit. I give up everything. I lost friends and family members. And he never turn his back on me, said Williams on the sacrifices she made to keep the relationship going.





"Chambers is a true, true police. Chambers give everybody their equal rights and justice. My little home here became like a police station, everybody coming to make complaints and he dont run nobody. He would put on his clothes and he would go out to talk to people with their complaints or he would make a call and send them to the station. When coming to his job he put that first, Williams said of her fiances commitment to his profession.





The two made plans to be married, but, according to Williams, she kept putting it off, advising him to put his house in order so that they could move in "when they tied the knot.





The mother of one also noted that Chambers, even though he was not the biological father of her 11-year-old daughter, played a fathers role to her, and they developed such a strong bond that, "Everything for him is Ariel (her daughter), Williams shared with a smile.





But then she became solemn again, saying, "I am going to miss everything about him, I cant stop crying. If I could say something to him now I would say I want him to be mine forever.





Chambers was 30 years old at the time of his death. He would have turned 31 on May 30.

He served as a police officer for 11 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 14:06:53|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- China's consumer market has shown signs of accelerated recovery during the five-day May Day holiday that ended Tuesday amid further containment of COVID-19, the Ministry of Commerce said Friday.

Online sales of physical commodities surged 36.3 percent year on year during the period as the COVID-19 epidemic spurred fast growth of online consumption, according to Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan.

Also increasing are sales of consumer durables such as automobiles and home appliances that were restrained in the early stage of the epidemic, Wang said.

During the holiday, major automobile companies in municipalities of Shanghai and Chongqing as well as Zhejiang Province monitored by the ministry saw their sales expand 49.6 percent, 28.5 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.

As the country's consumption was hammered by COVID-19, livestreaming has become a popular choice for businesses to promote their products, according to Wang.

E-commerce livestreaming sessions doubled during the holiday while the quantity of goods promoted via livestreaming increased 4.7 times compared with the same period last year. Enditem
The Pentagon will protect funding for its key strategic priorities, even if it means deeper cuts to older, so-called "legacy systems," according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to shuffle Washington priorities, with the U.S. government committed to upwards of $3 trillion in unanticipated spending to deal with the pandemic. It is too soon to know what the implications of all of that spending will be on the fiscal 2022 United States budget, but Esper conceded it is a concern.

"We recognize the fact that Congress has generously put $3 trillion into the economy in the past couple months and that puts a tremendous load onto ... the national debt and that puts a strain on the economy," Esper said May 5 during a press conference. "We're aware of those things and taking them into planning consideration as well."

A potential budget squeeze could get worse

In February, the White House kicked off fiscal 2022 budget negotiations when it submitted to Congress a $705 billion Pentagon funding request. After years of growth, the Pentagon spending plan was down slightly year over year, and even before the pandemic, defense leaders were forced to make sacrifices.

As submitted, the budget prioritized modernizing the nuclear triad, the nation's strategic deterrent, including $4 billion for General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) and Huntington Ingalls (NYSE:HII) to advance the Columbia-class submarine. There is also $2.8 billion earmarked for Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) for the B-21 bomber.

Modernization was a theme throughout the budget, with the Pentagon for example prioritizing $60 billion worth of Army helicopter competitions to be fought between Textron (NYSE:TXT) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) at the expense of the Army overhauling its ground vehicle fleet.

If Congress comes back to the Pentagon this summer saying further cuts are needed, Esper said the department will take the same approach again.

"We are not going to risk the strategic deterrent," Esper said. "Frankly, my inclination is not to risk any of the modernization programs, it's to go back and pull out more of the legacy programs."

Who are the potential losers?

Esper's comments were broad, and there probably a lot of platforms that could be at risk for cutbacks in a tightened budget. Indeed, in his comments the Secretary said "I could pick dozens out from all branches of the service" when referencing legacy programs that could be at risk.

Before he was Defense Secretary Esper ran the Army and took a similar approach in that role. That has been difficult on Oshkosh (NYSE:OSK), maker of the Army's workhorse Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTVs). The Pentagon reduced its request for JLTVs from 5,900 in fiscal 2019 to 4,090 in fiscal 2020. The news was not much better this year, with the request coming in at 4,247 vehicles for fiscal 2021. That's about $1.37 billion in spending, down from $1.928 billion in fiscal 2019.

The JLTV is a good example of what to look for in the cuts: It is an impressive vehicle designed specifically to address the shortcomings Humvees were found to have while operating in the desert. But with the Pentagon now more focused on so-called great-power competition against China and Russia instead of on the Middle East, the Army no longer seems likely to spend anything close to the $28 billion originally envisioned over 20 years to buy 49,000 vehicles.

Other legacy platforms that potentially could take hits are the U.S. Air Force's venerable A-10 Thunderbolt II, which has long been on the short-list for elimination. Northrop Grumman and Boeing (NYSE:BA) last summer won contracts to keep the plane flying through 2030, but the so-called Warthog could be in the crosshairs again in the event of a downturn.

So too could some of the older Lockheed Martin-made (NYSE:LMT) transport planes and some of the bombers the B-21 will eventually replace, costing the defense supply chain opportunities to sell spare parts.

Expect something to give

It is premature to speculate about what the final implications for the Pentagon fiscal 2022 budget will be, but it seems near certain pandemic-related spending constraints will factor into what already figured to be a tumultuous election-year budgeting process.

There will be sacrifices made. It is just too soon to tell if it means entire programs wiped out, or just Congress not going through its usual process of padding the budget with a few extra Lockheed Martin F-35s or other popular platforms.

There is still going to be plenty of money to go around for the overall industrial base, but there could be individual companies that find it hard to meet forecasted earnings in the quarters to come if a program decision goes the wrong way in the months to come. Investors in the entire defense sector should be monitoring the upcoming budget negotiations closely.
Press Release

8 May 2020

About IHG

IHG Hotels & Resorts [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is a global hospitality company, with a purpose to provide True Hospitality for Good.

With a family of 17 hotel brands and IHG Rewards, one of the world"s largest hotel loyalty programmes, IHG has over 6,000 open hotels in more than 100 countries, and a further 1,800 in the development pipeline.

InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Group"s holding company and is incorporated and registered in England and Wales. Approximately 350,000 people work across IHG"s hotels and corporate offices globally.

Visit us online for more about our hotels and reservations and IHG Rewards. For our latest news, visit our Newsroom and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: The COVID-19 lockdown will leave behind memories galore to be told to posterity. Destiny has handed out one such experience to Mohammad Imtiyaz, a band master who, along with 10 of his baratis (members of the marriage party), has been stuck at his brides house in Begusarai for the last 45 days. The vidai of the bride and groom has not been possible due to the lockdown.

Mehboob Khan of Kareemnagar village of Chuabepur area in Kanpur district had settled the marriage of his son Mohammad Imtiyaz with Mohammad Hamids niece Khushbu Khatoon of Fatehpur village in Begusarai district of Bihar. Imtiyaz left for Begusarai along with his parents and 10 baratis on March 20 and the marriage was solemnised with all the rituals the following day.

As Imtiyaz and his barat were readying to leave Begusarai for Kanpur taking the bride along, they got stuck in the Janata curfew on March 22 followed by a nationwide lockdown.

Consequently, left with no choice, the baratis decided to stay put at the brides place till the lockdown was lifted. Now the entire barat along with the bride and the groom is stuck at Begusarai under three consecutive spells of lockdown.

Initially, the family of Khushbu hosted the guests for a few days but when their ration went out of stock, the grooms father managed food and other essentials from his pocket. With his money getting exhausted too, villagers came to their rescue. Now the baratis are surviving on two meals provided by the local representatives of Begusarai as they had come forward to help both the families in distress.

Meanwhile back in Kanpur, Imtiyaz's cousin Saghir claims that they had no idea about the lockdown and the doom it was going to spell for them. "Imtiyazs father had taken Rs 20,000 along but it is finished now. We talk to the groom and other members of family on a daily basis over the phone. We have come to know that all the money from the bride and groom's sides has been exhausted and they are waiting for the lockdown to end and get permission to move out, says Saghir claiming that the wait seems unending.

The situation here at Imtiyaz's home is not good either. Money and resources have dried up. There is no one in the family to bring even the ration, he says. Relatives of neighbours who were part of the barat come daily to inquire about he return of the barat, adds Saghir, who is the first cousin of Imtiyaz.

He says that he has informed the Lekhpal who had visited the village recently and urged him to ensure the return of Imtiyaz and others soon.
MEXICO CITY - Three sisters who worked in Mexicos government hospital system were found murdered by strangling, authorities in the northern border state of Coahuila announced Friday, stirring new alarm in a country where attacks on health care workers have occurred across the nation amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Two of the sisters were nurses for the Mexican Social Security Institute and the third was a hospital administrator, but there was no immediate evidence the attack was related to their work. The state prosecutor told local media the motive might have been robbery.

State police said the bodies were found in a house in the city of Torreon. The Social Security Institute said they were killed Thursday.

The National Union of Social Security Employees called the killings outrageous and incomprehensible.

In other parts of Mexico, nurses have had been hit, kicked off public transport or had cleaning fluids poured on them amid fears they might spread the coronavirus. Mexican health authorities have denounced the attacks and urged medical personnel not to wear uniforms or scrubs on the street to avoid being targeted.

Meanwhile, the mayor of the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Mayor Armando Cabada said he had no symptoms, but Javier Corral, the governor of Chihuahua state, said he was self-isolating as a precaution because he had contact with Cabada.

At least three of Mexicos 31 state governors have tested positive for the virus.

Ciudad Juarez has been hit hard by the coronavirus, with about two-thirds of the states confirmed cases and 104 of its 125 deaths.

While federal authorities had predicted Mexicos caseload would peak sometime around Friday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that case numbers might not plateau for another 12 days before any possible descent.

We are at the phase of the highest contagion, we are at the peak, and according to the information we are getting, this could continue until the 20th of this month, Lopez Obrador said. The projection is that from that date, the number of cases would start to fall.

Mexico has almost 30,000 confirmed cases, though officials have estimated the real number may be eight times higher. The country has seen almost 3,000 deaths.

But there have been reports by several media outlets, including The Associated Press, suggesting that many coronavirus deaths go uncounted in official figures because of Mexicos extremely low testing rate.

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell acknowledged that the deaths of people with COVID cannot always be documented, but said suspected deaths would be reviewed later and perhaps added to official statistics if warranted.

He said many patients arrive at hospitals in such serious condition that timely laboratory tests are not possible. Even though postmortem tests can be conducted, he acknowledged that is seldom done in Mexico.

So we have people who unfortunately lost their lives, and who have had clinical conditions that suggest COVID but who are not registered because they do not have a laboratory test, Lopez-Gatell said.
Since announcing theyll reopen their salon today, Valerie Glenn and Billie Hartless have been deluged with calls and emails.

The siblings, who own Sisters Boutique Salon at 2321 Lockhill Selma Road, said they are completely booked today and Saturday. And Monday slots are filling up quickly.

We expected it, Glenn said. They are totally excited.

When the business reopens, their stylists will use only two of the eight dryers at a time and will provide hand sanitizer to customers, who must wear masks. Theres roughly 2,500 square feet of space, making spreading out easier.

The sisters have told stylists to stay home if theyre not comfortable returning. Several will not be back for a few weeks.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that beauty salons and barber shops can begin reopening today. Its the second wave of his Open Texas plan to reinvigorate the states economy. Retail stores, movie theaters, restaurants and malls were allowed to open last week at limited capacity.

Gyms and nonessential manufacturers can reopen May 18.

We had a long talk about Abbotts rules, and we decided to go ahead and reopen, Hartless said. Thats based on feedback from customers who trust us and are eager to get their hair done. They know were going to take the right steps to make sure we have a safe environment.

The salon was closed for more than a month, and the loss of revenue was tough. A small business loan the sisters received through programs set up under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act helped cover rent, insurance and utilities.

We were probably going to be OK for another 30 days, but after that we would have faced some choices, Hartless said.

Sylvia Picos cellphone was out of battery when Abbott made his latest reopening announcement. When she turned the phone back on, the owner of PURE Beauty Bliss Salon was inundated with messages from clients. And the calls for appointments havent stopped.

Its overwhelming, Pico said. I have mixed emotions. At first I thought, Oh my gosh, were not ready. Then I thought, Finally, we can reopen.

After a Zoom meeting with staff, she decided to stick with reopening May 18, the date initially anticipated for another wave of reopenings by Abbott. Until then, preparations are underway to prepare the salon. Magazines, cushions and a couch have been removed from the waiting area, and Pico is stocking up on Lysol and bleach wipes.

If we cant wipe it down, its not going to be in here, she said.

Once open, occupancy at Pure Bliss at 20322 Huebner Road will be limited to four stylists and one assistant, about half of the usual number, and they will be wearing masks. Only two shampoo bowls will be used at a time.

When clients arrive, theyll see a sign on the door directing them to text their stylist, who will let them know when the work station has been sanitized and they can come inside. Theyll receive an invoice afterward for contactless payment.

Were working hard and putting a lot of thought into this, Pico said.

Salons and barber shops reopening today must keep at least 6 feet  the social-distancing standard  between operating work stations. A task force set up by Abbott to help with reopening Texas commerce posted checklists for businesses online.

Its recommended protocols include screening employees and contractors for signs of infection, wearing masks, starting with less complex and time-consuming services, using contactless payment methods and sanitizing between customers.

In San Antonio, some stylists and salon owners are waiting to go back in business. Others are taking it slow, restarting with one-on-one appointments and heavy sanitization.

Alix Mane, owner of the Oxygen Room and Beauty Bar at 1100 Broadway, said stylists and cosmetologists are prepared to take these safety measures, particularly when it comes to sanitization.

Weve always been extremely careful, she said. Weve been trained for this.

When the business reopens today, staffers will be wearing masks and smocks, which will be washed daily. The number of people allowed inside will be limited. Instead of sitting in a waiting area, clients will wait outside or in their cars to receive a text when they can come inside.

Theyll also be asked to wash their hands and wear masks, and stylists have been directed to clean and disinfect equipment when theyre not serving customers.

Before reopening, the salon had been offering touch-up kits for curbside pickup, which will continue through May, and posting beauty tips and tricks on social media. Mane also has posted information on the salons safety measures.

Theres a lot of joy and a lot of fear, Mane said. This is all unprecedented.

At Urban City Barbershop at the Shops at Rivercenter, barbers will be wearing gloves, disposable aprons and either face shields or masks today. The shop will operate by appointment only, with limited hours. The chairs already are spaced out.

We want to slow things down, be supersafe and make sure everyone feels comfortable, owner and store manager Juan Gonzalez said.

Booking opened at 9 a.m. Thursday. By 11 a.m., the shop was 95 percent booked for today. Saturday was quickly filling up, too.

Tuyet Nguyen and Tuan Do, a couple who own Vinpearl Nails and Lashes at 20079 Stone Oak Parkway, were at the salon until 11 p.m. Wednesday installing guards around work stations and preparing to reopen.

The phone hasnt stopped ringing since Abbotts announcement. Vinpearl is fully booked until Monday, Nguyen said.

The couple will offer customers free masks and ask them to wait outside. They are operating with about 12 technicians, half the usual number.

Nguyen said shes both eager and nervous about reopening, and wonders how customers will adjust to the new routine. She often hugs clients when they walk in, but this weekend shell be smiling and waving instead.

Its very exciting to get back to work, Nguyen said. But I still worry, and thats why Im taking all of these precautions.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
A makeshift memorial in Douglasville, Georgia, February 7, 2015. At least seven people were shot in the community west of Atlanta on Saturday in an attach that left five people dead, local media reports.

REUTERS/John Amis

The lawyer representing Marcus Arbery, the father of Ahmaud Arbery who was killed while jogging in February in Georgia, told Insider on Wednesday he wanted the perpetrators arrested immediately.

Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested on Thursday, local outlets reported.

They were charged with murder and aggravated assault.

Ben Crump, who also worked on the Trayvon Martin case, said if it was a black father and son who killed a white jogger, they would have been arrested at the scene.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, the father and son who were involved in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault.

Only a day prior, Ben Crump the lawyer representing Ahmaud's father Marcus Arbery spoke to Insider and called for their swift arrest, citing a video of the killing that was leaked earlier this week.

"We have every right to expect an arrest immediately based on the ocular proof presented in that video of his execution," Crump said.

The video shows a truck driving by Arbery jogging. The truck stops, and one man gets out to confront Arbery. There is then an altercation, and shots ring out. Arbery then falls to the ground. According to the Guardian, by the time police arrived, Arbery was already dead.

Arbery, whose family said was just out for a run, was unarmed. The McMichaels had a shotgun and a .357 magnum.

"You look on that video, and it's like it was a hunting party," Crump said.

The video sparked outrage, and figures including former Vice President Joe Biden and Lakes star LeBron James expressed concern over the incident.

Crump, an attorney who also worked on the Trayvon Martin case in 2012, told Insider, that had the roles been reversed, and Ahmaud and Marcus Arbery had followed and killed a jogger, they would have been arrested on the spot.

Story continues

The arrests happened more than two months after Arbery was shot and killed.

Gregory, the elder McMichael, was the only one mentioned on the police report, and he told police that he thought Arbery was a burglar potentially tied to a string of recent break-ins and followed him. However, The Brunswick News, reported that just one burglary was reported in the area between the start of the year and the day of the killing. It was a gun stolen from Travis McMichael's unlocked pickup truck on January 1.

Gregory told police that they pulled up alongside Arbery after shouting, "Stop, stop. We want to talk to you," according to The New York Times. Video shows that Travis was out of the truck with the shotgun for 10 seconds before Arbery jogged by and the scuffle broke out.

Two prosecutors have recused themselves from the case, citing conflicts of interest, as Business Insider's Anthony Fisher pointed out.

In his letter recusing himself, Waycross judicial circuit District Attorney George Barnhill sent a letter to Glynn County Police Department Captain Tom Jump laying out reasons "that he did not believe there was evidence of a crime, noting that Gregory McMichael and his son had been legally carrying their weapons under Georgia law." He called the shooting "within the scope of Georgia's citizen's arrest statute and that Travis McMichael, who held the shotgun, had acted out of self-defense."

Crump disagrees, and prior to the arrests, he said he believed the McMichaels ties to the police department may have contributed to the lack of arrests, saying, "It raises a hint of impropriety."

"When we believe if this was any other citizen, especially a citizen of color, they would have been arrested because you have an unarmed man in a jogging attack," Crump said. "He doesn't have any burglary outfit or burglary tools or anything like that. I mean, he's jogging and this guy kills them, and they just take his word for it."

Additionally, Barnhill named the person who shot the video of Arbery's death in his letter, who Crump believes should be considered an accomplice in the killing of Arbery.

Crump also dismissed the idea that the coronavirus pandemic played a role in the delayed arrest.

"I honestly don't think there was any reason they could not have been arrested the day that they killed him, and so, this was done before America shut down because of the coronavirus," Crump said. "Now, the coronavirus, you know is an issue now, but they had ample opportunity to arrest these individuals and give them their due process to the law."

"And so what we really have to ask ourselves is, 'is the coronavirus been used as a convenient excuse by law enforcement officials?'" Crump continued.

Crump responded in a tweet after news of the arrest broke: "It took 74 days but Ahmaud Arbery's killers have finally been arrested! This murderous father and son duo took the law into their own hands."

In addition to the arrests, the George Bureau of Investigations announced on Thursday that they are investigating the leak of the video of the shooting.

Read the original article on Insider
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 00:09:23|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz dismissed the COVID-19 "blame game" on Friday, saying that it does not make any sense, according to local media.

"I would never ask Italy to apologize that Italian tourists had brought the virus to Austria. An international 'blame game' is not sensible," said Kurz, quoted by the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard.

"No place is responsible for a worldwide pandemic," said the chancellor when responding to a question of whether Austria needs to apologize to other countries because of Ischgl, a popular Austrian ski resort where hundreds of tourists from across Europe are believed to have been infected with the coronavirus. Enditem
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Previously requiring extensive manual research of hundreds of interactions, supply chain professionals can now instantly assess who, what, when and where is potentially impacted. The result is a simplified means to detect direct and indirect exposure to coronavirus and determine low to high-risk scenarios for warehouse products and people.

The Korber Business Area Supply Chain is part of the international technology group Korber. This consists of Aberle, Aberle Software, Cirrus Logistics, Cohesio Group, Consoveyo, DMLogic, HighJump, inconso, Otimis, Langhammer, Riantics and Voiteq. Korber is home to more than 2,300 professionals and nearly 100 strategic partners across the globe dedicated to advancing supply chains. With 30+ years of experience, Korber already has proven success with thousands of companies worldwide.

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A 54-year-old man is to face trial accused of killing his infant grandson who allegedly suffered a fatal injury while he was babysitting.

Baby Sean Wang, who was 10 months old, died at Temple Street Childrens Hospital in Dublin on August 15, 2019, where he had been in intensive care for two days.

His grandfather Chan Cheng Wang, a Chinese national with an address at Melville Rise, Finglas, Dublin 11, was arrested this morning for the purpose of being charged with manslaughter.

He was then brought before Judge Gerard Jones at Dublin District Court.

Detective Garda Siobhan Tolan told the court the accused made no reply to the charge after caution.

The accused, who was wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and a face-mask, listened to the proceedings with the help of an interpreter. He did not address the court.

Defence solicitor Tracy Horan told Judge Jones her client had been questioned earlier and she had not been made aware the case was coming before the court today. A bail application would have been made if it were known in advance.

There were Garda objections to bail.

At this stage there was consent to a remand in custody but the accused will apply for bail on the next date, his solicitor said.

Detective Garda Tolan said the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has directed trial on indictment in the circuit court, and the accused could be sent forward for sentence on a signed plea.

The deceased, Sean Wang, was 10 months old and the grandson of the accused.

Detective Garda Wang said the baby boy was in the care of his grandfather at his home in Finglas. It was alleged the accused had been the sole guardian of the child when the child was left with him.

The babys parents were out with friends at the time.

It was alleged at 00.38 on the morning of August 13, 2019, baby Sean arrived at Temple Street Childrens Hospital in cardiac arrest.

He was accompanied by his parents.

Medical staff performed CPR 40 times after which a heartbeat was detected.

He was transferred to the intensive care unit where he lost his fight for life two days later, Detective Garda Tolan said.

Garda were notified and an investigation was led by the incident room at Finglas station.

Judge Jones remanded Mr Wang in custody to appear at Cloverhill District Court on Wednesday for a bail application.

Legal aid was granted after the court heard he was not working. His solicitor said her client had never been in custody before and has lived at the same address.

Mr Wang has not yet indicated how he will plead and a book of evidence has yet to be completed by the DPP for his trial.
Myan Mode, a garment factory on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, produces mens jackets, womens blazers and coats for Western fashion companies like Mango and Zara. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it has seen a decrease in orders from international retailers.

That was why it let go almost half of its 1,274 workers in late March, the factorys managing director said in response to protesters who arrived at the factorys doors to denounce the dismissals.

Three fired sewing operators, however, said the factory was taking an opportunity to punish workers engaged in union activity. In an interview, the operators  Maung Moe, Ye Yint and Ohnmar Myint  said that of the 571 who had been dismissed, 520 had belonged to the factorys union, one of 20 that make up the Federation of Garment Workers Myanmar. About 700 workers who did not belong to the union kept their jobs, they said.

Myan Modes South Korean-based owner did not respond to requests for comment, and did not provide details about the firings.
Vice President Mike Pence's spokesperson Katie Miller, who also serves as a spokesperson for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, tested positive for the disease, a day after a valet to President Donald Trump was reported to have it.

Miller is married to Stephen Miller, an adviser to President Trump who works in the West Wing near the Oval Office.

Trump confirmed Miller was the staffer who tested positive during an event with Republican lawmakers at the White House.

'She's wonderful young woman,' Trump said. 'Katie tested very good for a long period of time and then - all of a sudden - today she tested positive. She hasn't come into contact with me but spent some time with the vice president.'

Pence was tested Friday and was negative. Trump, the vice president and most White House staff - which would include Miller's husband Stephen - are now tested on a daily basis, a change in policy made this week.

Miller was a constant presence in the White House press room when President Trump, the vice president and members of the coronavirus task force - including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx - briefed the media on the administration's work combating the disease.

Katie Miller speaks with reporters as Vice President Mike Pence delivered supplies to a nursing home in Northern Virginia on Thursday

Katie Miller is married to White House senior adviser Stephen Miller; the two are seen at the September 2019 state dinner for the Australian prime minister

Katie Miller, then going by her maiden name of Katie Waldman, joined Pence's office in September of 2019

Katie Miller on Thursday listens as CMS Administrator Seema Verma speaks during an event at a Northern Virginia nursing home

She was last seen with Pence on Thursday, when the vice president delivered personal protective equipment to a nursing home in Northern Virginia.

Miller spoke to reporters while Pence carried boxes to the Woodbine Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center.

She told NBC News on Friday she's asymptomatic.

Trump said he wasn't worried about the risk of infection despite the virus moving closer to the Oval Office.

'I'm not worried,' he said. 'We're taking very strong precautions of the White House.'

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called the White House the 'safest place that you can come to.'

He said additional safety protocols have been put place over the last 48 hours but declined to detail them.

'I don't want to get into all the procedures that we've embarked on but I can tell you that this  it's probably the safest place that you can come to,' he said.

Staff are checked daily, give symptom histories and all work spaces get regular, deep cleanings, according to deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere.

'The President's physician and White House Operations continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy at all times. In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, every staff member in close proximity to the president and vice president is being tested daily for COVID-19 as well as any guests,' Deere said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

Pence was not at the White House as he spent Friday in Iowa, talking to people about the food supply. His flight to Des Moines was delayed nearly an hour that morning. Reporters traveling with the vice president reported several staffers exited the plane before it ultimately took off.

Miller tested positive on Friday after testing negative on Thursday, according to a senior administration official. Pence was tested Friday morning and was negative.

She was not on the vice president's flight but had possibly been in contact with six people scheduled to fly. They were removed from the plane.

A senior administration official said the six were tested later Friday and the results were negative.

The official declined to say Miller's level of contact with Pence but said Trump had not been in contact with her recently.

'I'm not going to get into the level of contact the vice president had. The president has not had contact with this person recently,' the official said.

Katie Miller with Vice President Mike Pence and his chief of staff Marc Short on Capitol Hill in December

Miller worked closely with the coronavirus task force and helped prepare for this March briefing

Stephen and Katie Miller at their February wedding at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. It was attended by President Trump and Vice President Pence

Vice President Pence's plane was delayed from taking off Friday morning while staffers who may have had contact with the infected person exited the plane

Vice President Pence practiced social distancing when he landed in Iowa and was greeted by Governor Kim Reynolds

Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows called the White House one of the 'safest' places

'This morning we had someone on the vice president's staff test positive and so out of abundance of caution we went back and looked into all the person's contacts most recently,' a senior administration official said.

'That's why we asked some of our staff to deplane. Nobody else was exhibiting any symptoms or having any feeling of sickness. We asked them to go get tested and to go home out of an abundance of caution,' the official added.

Only 10 members of Pence's staff are tested daily and not every single person out of the hundreds who work in the Old Executive Office building, across the street from the White House complex.

Miller is the second person inside the White House complex to test positive this week. In March another Pence staffer tested positive but that person did not have regular contact with the vice president.

After the first positive test this week, the White House shored up some of its protocols to protect the nation's top leadership from the virus.

Trump, Pence, and most White House staff are now tested daily.

But few staffers wear face masks and social distancing in the small, crowded West Wing office space is virtually impossible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a face mask if socially distancing is not possible.

'We have put in place the guidelines that are experts have put forward to keep this building,' White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at Friday's briefing. 'As America reopen safely, the White House is continuing to operate safely.'

'I can just tell you taken every single precaution to protect the president,' she added, noting that they 'clean the facility. We social distance, we kept people six feet away from one another. We've done every single thing that Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci have asked us to do. I can assure the American people that their commander in chief is protected.'

A few staff members were seen wearing masks Friday when President Trump and first lady Melania Trump went to the World War II Memorial but most were not wearing face covering.

Neither Trump nor the first lady wore one and McEnany did not wear one during her briefing. All the members of the White House press corp at the briefing wore masks.

'This president is readily tested. He will make the decision as to whether he will wear a mask or not,' McEnany said. 'I can tell you, those veterans are protected. They made the choice to come here, because they have chosen to put their nation first and wanted to be with their commander in chief on this momentous day. It was their choice to come here, and I can tell you that the president always puts the safety of our veterans first and the American people first.'

And Trump was asked during an interview on 'Fox & Friends' Friday morning whether those who serve him food would now cover their faces.

'They've already started,' he said. He noted later Friday that the official White House photographer at his event with Republican lawmakers was wearing a mask.

'The testing protocol is a strong regime and as it gets close to the president, they will wear a mask in those closer proximities,' Meadows said.

Neither President Trump nor first lady Melania Trump wore masks Friday morning when they met with veterans at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C.

President Trump and Melania Trump kept their distance when they spoke to the veterans

White House National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien stands next to a staffer wearing a face mask during the visit to the World War II Memorial

Members of the White House press corp wore masks during Friday's briefing

The positive tests have raised questions about the White House's policy on trying to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus inside the complex, which includes the West Wing offices where the president works, the Old Executive Office building where many aides are located, the East Wing offices of the first lady, and the Executive Mansion where the first family lives.

Temperatures are checked at the White House gate before anyone is let inside and any one meeting with the president is given a rapid-result coronavirus test.

But social distancing doesn't always take place at White House events where the president has been seen seated at his desk in the Oval Office with officials and lawmakers crowded around him. Officials said this is permitted because everyone is tested before meeting with Trump.

Additionally, the president has said he won't quarantine after close contact with his valet, who tested positive.

Early guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommended a 14-day self-quarantine if a person came into contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, which has infected more than 1.2 million Americans and caused more than 74,000 deaths.

But Trump said he would not be quarantined because he is 'essential.'

'Mike was just saying the word essential. Essential workers and as you know essential workers are immune,' the president said, referring to a conversation with the vice president, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Vice President Pence said 'essential' workers were exempt from quarantining.

'But with regard to essential workers the president referred to, we've always had an exception,' Pence noted.

'We've asked them to continue to go to work by every countermeasures including testing to make sure they're not contracting the disease. In an effort that they would come into contact with the president will be testing every day, and keeping the essential work moving forward in our national response is the priority going forward,' Pence noted on Thursday.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said proper protocols were in place to protect the president from infection

Reporters in the press room wore masks during Kayleigh McEnany's Friday briefing

President Trump said he would not self-quarantine after contact with a staffer who tested positive for the coronavirus

The White House uses the Abbott Labs test, which provide results in about 15 minutes

Questions were raised about the safety of the nation's leadership and the first family after a presidential valet tested positive.

The valet was part of the White House Military Office, an elite group of officers and enlisted men who are assigned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The valet is not being identified but his duties included serving the president his meals - Trump likes hamburgers and steak - and accompanying the president on trips. In other words the valet was believed to have regular contact with Trump.

'There is no one closer to the president physically, outside of his family, than the valets,' Kate Andersen Brower author of 'The Residence' - a book about the White House staff - told DailyMail.com.

Pence came under fire for not wearing a mask last week when he traveled to the Mayo Clinic.

He originally said he didn't need to wear one because he is regularly tested for the virus but later said he should have worn one.

Pence later wore one during a visit to a factory in Ohio but did wear during his Iowa visit.

First Lady Melania Trump has been much more strict with the areas of the White House she oversees, including the residence and the East Wing, and requires staff to wear masks.

'She has implemented very strong rules in both the residence and the East Wing,' Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's chief of staff, told DailyMail.com on Thursday.

'Staff was cut back in the residence, and East Wing staff are teleworking unless vital to come in for meetings or events. Masks are worn and social distancing has been strictly enforced,' she noted.

Melania Trump has been much more strict with the areas of the White House she oversees, including the residence and the East Wing, and requires staff to wear masks

Melania Trump, who is tested regularly for the coronavirus, has advocated for people to wear face masks, shooting a video urging people to don one and was pictured wearing one herself.

The president has not been photographed wearing a mask although he said he wore backstage during a visit to the Honeywell factory in Arizona on Tuesday, which switched to making surgical masks to help battle the coronavirus pandemic.

When it comes to coronavirus testing, the White House uses the Abbott Labs test to detect the coronavirus, which provides results in about 15 minutes. It involves swabbing a person's nostrils and waiting on the result.
W hen the lockdown hit, Happity co-founder and CEO Sara Tateno didnt have to worry about shifting her team to working from home because theyve been doing it since the company started.

Weve been using Zoom for years so we were very familiar with it, she laughs. Ive never wanted to work from an office. Thats to do with being a parent, being a woman and realising that its not necessary to have an office these days.

Her major concern, however, was helping all the small businesses that use Happitys platform pivot to a new online world. Tateno launched the start-up in 2017 with her co-founder Emily Tredget as a platform for parents of young children to find local classes, whether thats learning Spanish, doing yoga or Mozart for babies. Given that so much of Happitys offering relies on IRL contact, the team had to pivot its offering almost overnight to facilitate live-streamed classes to help the thousands of class providers, and parents, that rely on its platform.

Luckily, the team was able to launch the new Happity@Home service in just five days. Classes are offered via Zoom, with Happity integrating its booking system with the video conferencing platform so its easy for parents to access. Parents get the class URL before it starts to minimise interference and it seems to be going well. People from the US are even booking classes on platform.

London-based Cat Bateman who runs Little Folk Nursery Rhymes said: Its a really worrying time for small businesses such as mine as obviously we have to keep all our customers safe but no customers means no business. I love how Happity is really putting their parents and class providers first.

This no-nonsense attitude to keeping Happity moving in a new format is what helped the business get started in the first place. A former strategy consultant, Tateno took voluntary redundancy whilst pregnant with her second child back in 2015. I was really fed up with people saying how I was going to put my feet up and be a stay at home mum and the assumptions around what that meant. This spurred me on to do the opposite, she says.

Parents can search and book online toddler classes on Happity's app / Happity

The opposite included an idea around creating a tech platform for mums, something that would help her find a support network in a new area of London, as well as find things to do with her then-three-year-old daughter. There were lots of localised HTML pages, like Wix websites offering classes in local areas. But there was nobody who was doing it as a proper dynamic app where you could stick in a postcode, get results and book. Because a lot of women dont have those skills or the network to access those skills.

Tateno signed up for the Google Campus for Mums programme, and took her 10-day-old son to the first day of the incubator at the Shoreditch space. After working through her idea at Google, she met June Angelides, a VC who set up a Mums in Tech programme during her own maternity leave. We were on this journey together at that time, and our kids are the same age. It was through her programme that I learned about Makers Academy and then went off there and learned to code.

Armed with her new tech knowledge, Tateno met Tredget on the Ignite accelerator where Happity really started to take shape. After suffering with postnatal depression, Tredget wanted to create something that would connect mums to one another and get them out of the house, whilst Tateno was focused on making local classes more accessible for people to attend. We both had each other's halves, she says,

In the first month, Happity had 2,500 users and its grown from just covering a few areas of London to the whole of the UK, with 1,000 class providers on the platform. This year, the company was focused on re-launching the website, including getting into the iOS App Store for the first time but thats all put on hold as attention is focused on Happity@Home. Its a difficult balance to make sure what weve developed has longevity in it. Everything were doing, were looking at it and saying, how does this apply in real life, after the lockdown?

Running a start-up is tricky on its own, let alone when youre home-schooling. Tateno and her husband work in shifts when it comes to childcare. One of us is working from early in the morning, and then the other works later at night. Then we have to worry about where our food is coming from next and running the household. Its taking its toll.

Happity's co-founders: Emily Tredget and Sara Tateno / Happity

Some of the platforms class providers were hesitant to make the switch to digital at first but as the lockdown has continued, more are coming over. Parents have also been in touch to say how much the platform has helped them and their mental health. A survey of Happity@Home users found that 63 per cent reported it had a positive impact for them as the classes are helping them to maintain a daily routine and giving them a reason to get dressed in the morning.

The week beginning May 18, Happity is encouraging parents to make a 1 charitable donation when they book a live class, which will go to the PANDAS Foundation which supports families dealing with pre and postnatal depression.

Whilst the UK government is expected to launch the measures to get the UK moving again this weekend, Tateno thinks online classes will continue for some time. There will still be a demand for it, she says. People may have mobility issues, or might want to try something out online before going in-person.

"And, sometimes, its just really hard to get out of the house with young children.

Happity
On Friday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City Health + Hospitals, the citys public hospital system, will be leading the citys new contact tracing program, with some assistance from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

De Blasios decision not to have the health department oversee this initiative, however, has struck some as odd and indicative of the mayors contentious relationship with the department. On Friday afternoon, city and state legislators wrote a letter condemning his decision to put the citys public hospital system in charge instead of the health department, which has 150 years of contact tracing experience.

New York City has the best health department in the nation, and possibly the world. The Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has vast experience in infectious disease outbreaks and contact tracing. The move to strip it of the leadership of this critical program defies explanation and raises many practical concerns, the lawmakers wrote.

They also wrote that the health department has conducted contact tracing in many outbreaks and epidemics, from tuberculosis and venereal diseases in the 1930s, to more recently HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Hepatitis, and, thus far, COVID-19.

I am truly perplexed by @NYCMayor decision to not assign @nycHealthy to lead the Contact Tracing program despite its vast experience in dealing with public health crises like this one. My statement with @MarkLevineNYC, @CarlinaRivera & @DickGottfried pic.twitter.com/B4nwgDgLox  Gustavo Rivera (@NYSenatorRivera) May 8, 2020

De Blasio has also created city coronavirus task forces, none of which are being led by city health officials. The mayor notably put his wife, first lady Chirlane McCray, in charge of one task force despite her not having a medical background. Like President Donald Trump, de Blasio frequently puts politics ahead of the advice of medical experts, regardless of the effect it may have on city residents.

During the onset of the citys COVID-19 outbreak, he based many of his decisions on his personal and political interests, particularly when it came to following the advice of the citys health department. De Blasio ignored its proposals to combat the virus in early March, and refused to anonymize nasal swab tests so they could be used to estimate the viruss spread. It wasnt until top city health department officials  Bureau of Communicable Disease Assistant Commissioner Dr. Marcelle Layton and Deputy Health Commissioner Dr. Demetre Daskalakis  threatened to resign that de Blasio agreed to close the citys schools, restaurants, bars and gyms.

The mayor has been butting heads with the department since he took office, when he lifted restrictions on the Hasidic Jewish circumcision ritual in 2015, despite numerous herpes infections that occurred because of it. That same year, amid a Legionnaires disease outbreak in the Bronx, he asked health officials to perform unnecessary tasks to make himself look good. And as recently as a measles outbreak that began in 2018, he failed to make measles vaccinations mandatory, which resulted in hundreds of cases of the illness.

Its not unusual for politicians and public health officials to clash, but de Blasios detestation of the citys health department is uniquely intense. Theres always a bit of a split between the political appointees, whose jobs are to make a mayor look good, and public health professionals, who sometimes have to make unpopular recommendations, a former head of the health department told The New Yorker. But, with the de Blasio people, that antagonism is 10 times worse. They are so much more impossible to work with than other administrations.

However, those who have worked with de Blasio have also recounted that the mayor tends to be dubious of all public health officials recommendations and has belabored them for hours. He certainly has no trust in his field of expert commissioners and high-ranking agency officials, a former City Hall official told Politico. If an expert at an agency says to him, Mayor this is whats happening, instead of granting that some truth and acting on it, he will laboriously poke and prod at that opinion for hours.

As recently as March 11, the mayor questioned the guidance of the World Health Organization, shortly after it had declared the coronavirus to be a global pandemic. I think we can say at this point in time, were looking at all the guidance, but with a bit of a trust but verify worldview, de Blasio said during a press conference.

While de Blasio was running for mayor in 2013, he promised the citys ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that he would overturn the citys metzitzah bpeh ritual requirements, a practice that involves a mohel sucking blood from a babys penis right after it has been circumcised. In 2012, the health department mandated that any parent who wanted their child to take part in the ritual must sign a consent form that acknowledged the risks involved. The order came after a baby who underwent the ritual contracted herpes and died in 2011.

During his first term as mayor, de Blasio delivered on his promise to lift these restrictions and asked that any cases of herpes be self-reported in 2015. But in 2017, it was revealed that six new herpes infections had been tied to the controversial ritual, which resulted in criticism of de Blasio, who has often been accused of being especially lenient when it comes to the citys Hasidic Jewish community. Its also worth noting that de Blasio represented much of Brooklyn's Hasidic community when he was a member of the City Council.

The city then threatened to tighten the restrictions if the Hasidic community failed to follow its lax guidelines for the circumcision ritual. Given how protective families are of mohels and the practice of metzitzah, working with families and the community when there is a new case of neonatal herpes continues to be our better option, the health department said in 2017. That said, our main priority is to protect the health of babies, if the community is not living up to the deal announced in 2015, well go back to the drawing board and start over.

In October 2018, measles broke out in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Hasidic community after anti-vaccination literature had been plastered and shared throughout the community. Many felt de Blasio was, again, giving the Hasidim liberties he wouldnt give others by allowing them to opt out of vaccinations for religious reasons, despite there being nothing included in the Talmud about avoiding vaccination.

It wasnt until April, after 250 measles cases had been identified, that the mayor declared a public health emergency and called for mandatory measles vaccinations for people in Williamsburg. The mayor should have gone out sooner and gave the push to say people should be vaccinated without coming out and saying were going to do penalties and to strong-arm anyone, City Councilman Chaim Deutsch told Politico in April 2019. You need to be diplomatic in the way you come out. You cant come out with force all of a sudden. You need to come out and say, Listen, we need you to work with us. This is an epidemic now in the city, and its getting worse and worse.

The health department also said something should have been done sooner to combat anti-vaccination sentiments. Our missed opportunity is not being louder earlier about the anti-vax sentiment, Daskalakis told Politico at the time.

In 2015, the city faced a Legionnaires' disease outbreak that killed at least 12 people and infected at least 130 in the Bronx. While de Blasio was receiving praise for his handling of the situation in the media, the health department was dealing with his politically driven and unnecessary inspection of water cooling towers in the Bronx. The mayor made health officials inspect the towers for traces of the disease, even though the source of the outbreak, a Bronx hotel, had already been identified. The preponderance of medical and scientific information available now points to one of the original five sites as the source of this outbreak, with the Opera House Hotel as the most likely source of the outbreak, a city official told The New York Times in 2015, as investigations into the outbreak were still underway.

Officials felt the move was calculated, meant to signify to the press that the mayor had done everything he could to contain the outbreak. De Blasio also tried to get then-Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health Daniel Kass fired, after he refused to follow de Blasios pointless direction. But Mary Bassett, then the commissioner of the citys health department, refused. Dan Kass is one of the best environmental health experts in the country, Bassett told The New Yorker. New York has one of the best health departments in the United States, possibly the world. Wed all be better off if we were listening really closely to them right now.
Multiwavelength observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini Observatory combined with close-up views from NASAs Juno spacecraft reveal that lightning strikes and huge storm systems that create them in Jupiters atmosphere are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid; the observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.

Jupiters constant storms are gigantic compared to those on Earth, with thunderheads reaching 64 km (40 miles) from base to top and powerful lightning flashes up to three times more energetic than Earths largest superbolts.

Every 53 days, Juno races low over Jupiters storm systems detecting radio signals from lightning bolts known as sferics (short for atmospherics) and whistlers (so-called because of the whistle-like tone they cause on radio receivers), which can then be used to map lightning even on the day side of the planet or from deep clouds where flashes are not otherwise visible.

Coinciding with each pass, Hubble and Gemini watch from afar, capturing high-resolution global views of the planet that are key to interpreting Junos close-up observations.

Junos microwave radiometer probes deep into the planets atmosphere by detecting high-frequency radio waves that can penetrate through the thick cloud layers, said Dr. Amy Simon, a researcher at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

The data from Hubble and Gemini can tell us how thick the clouds are and how deep we are seeing into the clouds.

By mapping lightning flashes detected by Juno onto optical images captured of the planet by Hubble and thermal infrared images captured at the same time by Gemini, Dr. Simon and colleagues were able to show that lightning outbreaks are associated with a three-way combination of cloud structures:

(i) deep clouds made of water;

(ii) large convective towers caused by upwelling of moist air  essentially Jovian thunderheads;

(iii) and clear regions presumably caused by downwelling of drier air outside the convective towers.

The data from Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) show the height of the thick clouds in the convective towers, as well as the depth of deep water clouds.

The data from Geminis Near-Infrared Imager (NIRI) clearly reveal the clearings in the high-level clouds where it is possible to get a glimpse down to the deep water clouds.

We think that lightning is common in a type of turbulent area known as folded filamentary regions, which suggests that moist convection is occurring in them, said Dr. Michael Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

These cyclonic vortices could be internal energy smokestacks, helping release internal energy through convection. It doesnt happen everywhere, but something about these cyclones seems to facilitate convection.

With Hubble and Gemini observing Jupiter more frequently during the Juno mission, the astronomers were also able to study short-term changes and short-lived features like those in the Great Red Spot.

Images from Juno as well as previous missions to Jupiter revealed dark features within the Great Red Spot that appear, disappear and change shape over time.

It was not clear from individual images whether these are caused by some mysterious dark-colored material within the high cloud layer, or if they are instead holes in the high clouds  windows into a deeper, darker layer below.

Now, with the ability to compare visible-light images from Hubble with thermal infrared images from Gemini captured within hours of each other, it is possible to answer the question.

Regions that are dark in visible light are very bright in infrared, indicating that they are, in fact, holes in the cloud layer.

In cloud-free regions, heat from Jupiters interior that is emitted in the form of infrared light  otherwise blocked by high-level clouds  is free to escape into space and therefore appears bright in Gemini images.

The results were published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

_____

Michael H. Wong et al. 2020. High-resolution UV/Optical/IR Imaging of Jupiter in 20162019. ApJS 247, 58; doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab775f

This article is based on press-releases provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.
The Minority Leader Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, MP for Tamale South is demanding an independent audit and full disclosure of monies spent in the distribution of food during the three week Covid-19 partial lockdown by Government.

"Claims by NADMO of spending GHS2 million a day on feeding an opaque number of Ghanaians during the lockdown would not be allowed to pass. May we serve notice that we shall insist on full transparency and a thorough audit of all funds received."

He made this known during a press conference in Parliament dubbed, "Ghanas Worsening Covid-19 Situation and National response to the Pandemic."

According to the Minority Leader, the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the health of citizens and the health of the economy. Therefore, concerned with the development, they presented a memorandum containing far-reaching suggestions on managing the pandemic intended for it to be discussed on the floor of the House but unfortunately this was not possible.

He added that former President John Mahama set up a technical advisory team to support the national effort even as he offered assistance by way of well-reasoned suggestions including donations of critically needed supplies to health care personnel all over the country and food supplies to vulnerable groups, playing their part as responsible citizens.

Mr. Iddrisu illustrated by saying, In Ghana, more than 3,000 of our compatriots have contracted the virus thus far with 18 precious lives lost. Our condolences to bereaved families and medical fraternity on the loss of Prof. Jacob Plange-Rhule, Rector of the College of Physicians and Surgeons."

He continued, "every life lost is one life too many. And so we consider as irresponsible, a statement by the Presidents Adviser on Health dismissing the number of lives lost as insignificant. The dead have families who deserve empathy. Let me add that Ghanas death toll may be low to some people but there may be things we are not seeing and recording. 

The party noted the devastating impact of the Covid-19 on the economy from massive job losses, closure of businesses, and what they describe as a historic fall in GDP growth.

The party sighted the latest update by the Ghana Health Service of 3,091 confirmed cases describing it as staggering, the second-highest in West Africa after Nigeria which has reported 3, 145 cases though there may be a disparity when we compare Ghanas population to that of Nigeria.

Read full statement below:

PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE NDC MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT ON GHANA'S WORSENING COVID-19 SITUATION AND THE NATIONAL RESPONSE - ADDRESSED BY THE HON. MINORITY LEADER, HARUNA IDDRISU.

The Minority in Ghana's Parliament is grateful to you for honouring our invitation to this press engagement.

We are thankful to all Ghanaians including civil society organizations, faith based groups, volunteers and other governance partners for the continuous support, feedback, expert inputs and solidarity as we work together in the collective progress of our country.

Let me begin by paying tribute and salute our frontline health care workers who are risking their lives every day, every hour and every minute to keep us all safe and reduce the adverse impact of the deadly COVID-19 which has so far infected 3,091 persons, over 2,000 more since President Akufo-Addo lifted the lockdown.

It is our frontline health care workers who are the real heroes of this defining moment in the history of humankind.

We salute journalists, security personnel, utility workers and all volunteers on the frontlines and assure them of our heartfelt appreciation and that of the constituents we represent.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our nation and the world is confronted with the greatest challenge of our lifetime.

The novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the health of our citizens and the health of the economy. Concerned with this development, we in the Minority presented a memorandum containing far reaching suggestions on managing the pandemic. We intended it for discussion on the floor of the House but it was not to be. Our Flag bearer, Former President John Mahama set up a technical advisory team to support the national effort even as he himself offered assistance by way of well-reasoned suggestions as well as donations of critically needed supplies to health care personnel all over the country and food supplies to vulnerable groups. We continue to play our part as responsible citizens.

In Ghana, more than 3,000 of our compatriots have contracted the virus thus far with 18 precious lives lost. Our condolences to bereaved families and the family and medical fraternity on the loss of Prof. Jacob Plange-Rhule, Rector of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Every life lost is one life too many. And so we consider as irresponsible, a statement by the Presidents Adviser on Health dismissing the number of lives lost as insignificant. The dead have families who deserve empathy. Let me add that Ghanas death toll may be low to some people but there may be things we are not seeing and recording.

The impact of COVID-19 on our economy has been most devastating - from massive job losses, closure of businesses to a historic fall in GDP growth.

This certainly cannot be the time for old-fashioned excessive partisan politics and infantile name calling as Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia sought to do earlier this week.

This is the time to focus every attention on this national crisis that threatens the very foundations of our society

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The latest update - a staggering 3,091 confirmed cases, the second highest in West Africa after Nigeria which has reported 3,145 cases though we should be more worried when we compare our population to that of Nigeria. This troubling development should serve as a wakeup call that the time for wishful thinking is over. To quote Former President Mahama, Hope is a comfort, but it is not a strategy. Governments response so far has been rather slow, based on loose interpretations of the science, and often detached from the facts on the ground.

Couldnt we have locked down earlier?

Couldnt we have closed our borders earlier?

Couldnt we have started massive public education in local languages earlier?

Couldnt we have developed our humanitarian response plan earlier?

We should have had a comprehensive strategic plan in place earlier. A document we have requested without success, making us wonder if there's one.

We lost the opportunity to do all of these and many more because President Akufo-Addo did not prioritize. He was touring in Europe even though the alarm bells of the coming pandemic were ringing. Then, shortly upon his return we had the first two cases of the virus infection. One of them had actually been with the President during his happy travel to Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The sharp rise in the number of cases reported by authorities in the last two weeks is deeply worrying. The attempt to downplay this fact is unacceptable. Ghanaians expect the professionals entrusted with responsibility for managing the crisis to be forthright and refrain from interpreting data that is not grounded in the science of the pandemic. And here, I refer to a recent statement by a member of the National Response Team that we have peaked in terms of the number of infected persons.

Misuse of such terms without empirical basis appear to be designed to fit into a certain narrative ahead of the Presidents next broadcast. It appears to be part of a strategy to create an atmosphere of normalcy in the lead to the next presidential broadcast and as for the reason, your guess is as good as mine. Evidently, President Akufo-Addo seems more interested in his re-election than in the safety and life of Ghanaians. That fact keeps unfolding.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Many professionals have observed that the data being published by the Ghana Health Service does not lend itself to meaningful analysis in the form it is presented. The absence of several key data points that would allow independent researchers to understand the rate of spread and the demographics of the pandemic have not been made public. And there continue to be legitimate concerns about some of the data that actually is available.

On two separate occasions in April, the number of confirmed cases under routine surveillance was revised downwards without any explanation whatsoever. And the test positivity rate for travelers under mandatory quarantine literally doubled after the last update. No explanation was offered for that either. This lack of transparency only serves to undermine public trust in governments commitment to this fight, and that directly affects our likelihood of successfully avoiding a worsening situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not normal times and reality must guide our next steps. We are well past the time for parochial thinking. Egotism, willful ignorance and empty rhetoric will not save us. The cheap stunts designed to bolster a faltering narrative will not save us. Blatant falsehoods told to garnish the image of this administration in the face of the foreign press will not save us. What these will do, instead, is consolidate a false sense of security in the Ghanaian public that will obscure our view of the danger we face. Indeed, false claims about low prices of local foodstuff on the market, plantain included is part of the grand scheme to create a false sense of security. Without an appreciation for the plain reality of our situation, the preventive measures will not be taken seriously. And if they are not taken seriously, we will lose this fight and we will pay a heavy price for it.

If government persists in this course, posterity will judge this administration as the most self-indulgent administration that ever had the privilege of the peoples mandate. And should any section of our society aid and abet this abdication of the most fundamental responsibility of government - the protection of the people and preservation of the Republic for the generations behind us - then we will rightly share in that infamy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Right from the word go, governments response to the crisis revealed a lack of foresight and a fundamental denial of the nature of the foe we face in COVID-19.

As already alluded to, this manifested itself in the failure of government to prioritize planning and preparations for COVID-19 during the many weeks after the declaration of a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation on January 30, 2020. They sat idly by - failing to provide the initial GHS35 million needed for our preparedness plan despite seeing the havoc it was wreaking all over the world - and made almost no provisions for the eventuality of an outbreak in Ghana, relying instead on false hopes around climate and genetics. The WHO country assessment which followed at the time vindicates our position.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Government put in place inadequate structures which did not aid us to enhance our surveillance and detect cases here more rapidly by expanding our testing capacity. They failed to recognize the seriousness of the threat and left our borders open even at the time they refused to evacuate our students in Wuhan; and they left the borders open far beyond what was possibly reasonable under the circumstances, and even when nations all over the world were closing theirs.

Government failed to anticipate the devastating effects that a COVID-19 outbreak would have on our social life and our economy, and were grossly unprepared to soften the blow for the most vulnerable people and households in our nation when a lockdown became necessary. The inept, partisan and disastrous manner Government distributed food relief only exacerbated the risk.

And to conceal that failure, to shirk responsibility for its consequences, they prematurely lifted the restrictions on movement against the advice of some of the most respected authorities on public health in Ghana.

Government's financial response has exposed what was hitherto touted as a robust economy as Government virtually had no reserves to confront the pandemic. But for the World Bank, the IMF and the Stabilisation Fund left behind by former President John Mahama God knows where this economy buoyed by propaganda steroids would have left us.

At every point in its response, Government has been playing catch up. The reactionary policymaking that this has occasioned has left our containment efforts lagging behind the threat. Even now, when it is clear that we have ongoing local transmission in almost every region of this country, this government continues to downplay its extent and consequences.

The fact is we have almost no idea about the true scale of the problem because nearly three months into the pandemic we are still trying to formulate a testing strategy that allows us to estimate the general prevalence of COVID-19 on a timely basis.

We are well beyond the point in this crisis where our testing should have been broadened in recognition of the outward spread of the virus from the hotspots. News about new facilities is welcome, but long overdue. And those delays have certainly come at a cost.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The scientists at Noguchi and all our testing facilities deserve this nations thanks for the commitment they have shown in this national effort so far. But government must honour that hard work by being sincere about the data and what it really means. Government is selling false hope of a situation under control and using its management of information as a cover for this farce. That insults the intelligence of the Ghanaian people and makes a mockery of the seriousness of the situation. Candour and consistency must be the order of the day.

Testing, tracing, monitoring and isolation where necessary must be the daily routine.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

What President Akufo-Addo and his government must understand is that their apparent choice to face this pandemic as more a PR exercise rather than a real crisis management effort will ultimately be exposed. You cannot outsmart the science, and you cannot outrun reality. But we in the Minority have absolutely no desire to witness such a failure because the cost will be counted in Ghanaian lives and livelihoods.

If the containment strategy government has wed itself to unravels any further the brunt of this burden will fall on the frontline health care workers. Their courage and competence are going to be the last defense for many of our countrymen who will face the worst of this disease. And yet, despite the Presidents lofty rhetoric and grand assurances, the healthcare system remains so unbelievably unprepared for the battle that has already begun.

Our health care workers cannot face the weeks ahead unequipped and unprotected. They cannot provide the needed care to the critically ill if they continue to lack adequate PPEs and even basic supplies such as hand sanitizers. And they should not have to pay for these things out of their own pockets, let alone go begging for them from the public. This is unpardonable. And government mocks their commitment in insisting that the very real dangers they face - the dangers to their families too - are well under control and nothing to be concerned about.

In this respect, the recent pronouncements of the Health Minister to the effect that some health care workers are engaged in selling PPEs for personal profit without providing any scintilla of evidence is an utter insult to our heroes who are sacrificing so much. We roundly condemn the Minister's irresponsible utterances. We dare him to provide specific evidence and stop denigrating all health workers.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority is deeply worried about how science has been relegated to the background by the President. Instead, the President now appears to be relying on Signs and Wonders forgetting the old adage that Heaven helps those who help themselves.

The President took a terrible gamble with our lives when he lifted the lockdown at a time our case count was increasing.

That decision has led to the situation where since the removal of the lockdown, confirmed cases have more than doubled and deaths have more than tripled. His quagmire: the economy/politics versus health.

We have also in the process seen hotspots emerge virtually in all parts of Ghana since the lifting of the lockdown.

President Akufo-Addo must take responsibility for this unfortunate turn of events,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority has duly taken note that following the President's reversal of the partial lockdown and our worsening case count, the reputable Ghana Medical Association has publicly called for a different approach in containing and limiting the spread of COVID-19. We are in full support of this call. President Akufo-Addo should be led by sound epidemiological data and not political calculations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority's demand for a new policy approach based on Science is borne out of the need to preserve human lives and protect our health system.

Ghana's case count is now amongst the most infected countries in Africa. This has frightening prospects which demands an urgent change in strategy. As the science dictates, this cannot be the time for further easing of restrictions. We expect a more proactive policy response. We should be fighting the virus ahead of it and not from behind.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is absolutely troubling and shocking that in the face of such a pandemic, our Government chooses to supply PPEs to officials of the Electoral Commission when doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers are crying for PPEs.

It is equally shocking that Government officials are publicly justifying the irresponsible conduct of the Electoral Commission in defying the restrictions imposed by the President even in the face of a court injunction secured by our colleague, Hon. Sam George.

All these come at a time the EC's plan to begin its infamous and life-threatening registration in June this year has been exposed after a presentation the EC made to ECOWAS leaked. It is worth noting that the EC's timetable as presented to ECOWAS remains unknown to Parliament and opposition political parties.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority is concerned about the plight of Ghanaians who appear stranded in other jurisdictions following the closure of our borders. It is our considered view that just as our Government is able to open our airports despite the closures for foreign nationals to be evacuated out of Ghana, Government should do same by providing a narrow opportunity under strict evacuation protocols of screening, testing and quarantine in order to rescue our fellow compatriots.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority urges Government to ensure a high level of accountability with the funds and donations they have thus far received in the fight against COVID-19. Claims by NADMO of spending GHS2 million a day on feeding an opaque number of Ghanaians during the lockdown would not be allowed to pass. May we serve notice that we shall insist on full transparency and a thorough audit of all funds received.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On the basis of the evidence available, evidence based on the science and driven by sound epidemiological data, the Minority wishes to advise President Akufo-Addo to tread cautiously and not take decisions to ease restrictions just to satisfy narrow political ends. This is a time for health care professionals, civil society, religious leaders and traditional rulers to be adults in the room offering guidance and fearless advice for the sake of the country.

Nothing can be more important than the value which we must place on human lives.

Let us all return to the table of science and be guided by same.

I commend all Ghanaians for the difficult sacrifices we have all been willing to bear for our collective protection.

Please it is important that we all continue to adhere strictly to the hygiene and social distancing protocols.

In that regard, Government should make provision for the vulnerable in our society by providing them with free face masks. We disagree with the Health Minister when we assumes every Ghanaian can afford and that every Ghanaian knows where to find the appropriate face mask to purchase. Some MPs have been able to support the vulnerable with free face masks and we believe Government has no excuse to abdicate.

Let us soldier on. With sincerity towards scientific data and genuine solidarity for all our compatriots, COVID-19 shall be defeated.

Thank you very much. We shall now take your questions.
As India's biggest repatriation exercise 'Vande Bharat' Mission kick-started on Thursday, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has arranged around 3,343 rooms in 88 hotels to quarantine evacuees. According to a statement by the BMC, the 88 hotels include all categories- 2-star, 3-star, 4-star, 5-star, apart from apartment hotels and OYOs.

Reportedly, out of the total 64 evacuation flights under the Mission, seven flights will be landing in Mumbai carrying around 1,900 passengers. The statement further added that the passengers will come from Bangladesh, Philippines, Singapore, Britain, Malaysia, and the United States.

'Vande Bharat' Mission

In a major relief for Indians stranded abroad, the Centre on Monday announced that their travel will be arranged via aircraft and naval ships in a phased manner. The Ministry of Home Affairs also issued the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the movement of the returnees. The mission will go on for 7 days and will rescue stranded Indians from over 11 countries in 64 Air India flights carrying over 14,800 people. The flights will take off for 12 countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Maldives, Singapore and the US.

Read: Delhi: Hundreds of hotels booked for evacuees as India embarks on COVID-19 repatriation

SOP for returning to India

According to the SOP, those wishing to return to India must register themselves with the Indian Missions in the country where they are stranded, along with necessary details as prescribed by the Ministry of External Affairs. They will have to travel to India by non-scheduled commercial flights that'll be arranged by the Civil Aviation Ministry (MoCA) and naval ships to be arranged by the Department of Military Affairs (DMA). Only those crew/staff, who have tested negative for COVID-19, will be allowed to operate the flight/ship.

Read: MEA commences preparations to rescue Indians stranded abroad under 'Vande Bharat' mission

As per the MHA, priority will be given to compelling cases in distress including migrant workers/labourers who have been laid off, short term visa holders faced with the expiry of visa, persons with medical emergencies/ pregnant women/ elderly, those required to return to India due to death of family member and students. The cost of travel, as specified by the MoCA and DMA will be borne by such travellers.

Read: BJP slams Kerala CM's criticism of Vande Bharat Mission; assures pre-boarding COVID tests

Read: Delhi government issues guidelines for handling of passengers under Vande Bharat Mission

(With ANI Inputs)
Oleksii Liskonih/iStockBy CONOR FINNEGAN and JOSH MARGOLIN



(WASHINGTON) -- Secretary of State Pompeo is leaning even harder into his attacks on the Chinese government over the novel coronavirus pandemic -- even as he further walks back his claim that the U.S. has "enormous evidence" a biomedical laboratory in Wuhan, China, is responsible for the outbreak.



The change comes as an intelligence official says there is no signals or human intelligence backing up the idea, while lawmakers press the administration to turn over any evidence.



The U.S. intelligence community is investigating whether or not the virus originated in a lab, but it "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement last week.



While Pompeo has said he doesn't doubt the intelligence community assessment, he has boosted the unproven theory the first human infection came from an accidental or intentional release at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He first told ABC News' "This Week" Sunday that there was "enormous evidence" supporting that unproven theory, before shifting slightly Wednesday to say there's "significant" evidence, but the U.S. doesn't have "certainty" yet.



But in interviews Thursday, Pompeo shifted again, telling a conservative talk radio host, "There's evidence that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the lab, but that could be wrong."



"We've seen evidence that it came from the lab. That may not be the case," he said in a second talk radio interview.



Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, a China hawk from Arkansas who has also boosted the lab theory, told Fox News this week that the evidence is "circumstantial," but "points directly to the labs." Asked about what kind of evidence the U.S. government has, Pompeo told CNBC Thursday, "One man's direct is another man's circumstantial."



U.S. intelligence officials have been more careful, including the ODNI statement, which made clear the virus's natural origins.



An intelligence official briefed on the situation told ABC News that there is so far no signals or human intelligence backing up the speculation that the lab was the culprit. It also doesn't appear any person or neighborhood connected to the lab became sick at the start of the outbreak, the official said.



"Sometimes political figures use the general term 'intelligence' to include raw reports that are not finished, analyzed intelligence. Raw intelligence is rarely conclusive on a specific topic. Picking one raw report to support a position can be misleading," said Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official under President Donald Trump and CIA paramilitary operations officer. "The intelligence community would not rely on one report for an assessment on an issue as complex as this. Their assessment would include intelligence from multiple sources and be peer-reviewed."



Reports from the closest U.S. allies have also cast doubt on Pompeo's statement. Known as the "Five Eyes," the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand cooperate and share signals intelligence, which intercepts signals like communications or radar.



"There's nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source," Australia's conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the Wuhan lab last Friday. Days later, the Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the theory around the lab's role is "mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering," citing Australian intelligence officials.



"The fact that Australia came out so strongly that they do not believe the line that it all originated in a lab is significant," said Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor, because they're part of the "Five Eyes," "generally see all our intel" and are "well-known for the capabilities in China."



Members of Congress have pressed the Trump administration to provide evidence showing the lab's responsibility. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a letter Thursday he'd been requesting a briefing by the department for a month now on "what intelligence, if any, the U.S. government has regarding the origins of the virus."



The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, wouldn't back Pompeo's statement either, telling reporters Tuesday, "I don't think we know, except we know it was in China."



Instead of providing details of the "enormous evidence," Pompeo pivoted questions Thursday to demand transparency from China, saying the Chinese government's lack of transparency has halted any efforts to find out how that first transmission took place.



China still has not provided samples of the virus to other countries, instead having its scientists share the virus's genome online in January. It also shut down and sterilized the wet market in Wuhan, where live and freshly killed animals are sold and the virus might have originated, one month before World Health Organization scientists, including two Americans, were given access to the country. While some of those scientists traveled to Wuhan, neither American did.



Critics say brow-beating the Chinese government is not an effective way to get them to open up and provide WHO or other outsiders access to the Wuhan lab, the market or other possible sites. But Pompeo dismissed that again Thursday, telling one host, "We're not raising the rhetoric. We're simply trying to protect the world from a global pandemic by sharing what we know."



He went further on The Steve Gruber Show, setting up U.S.-Chinese relations as a generational challenge between different values systems and agreed with Gruber that China is "the most dangerous adversary for the United States and for all Western governments."



"The whole world can now see that this regime, this authoritarian regime, is just different than we are," said the top U.S. diplomat. "We can see the challenge this presents to our kids and grandkids, and we're determined. We're going to do the right things by building up our military. We're going to do the right things diplomatically."



"In the end, the Chinese Communist Party will have to decide: Do they really want to participate as a member of civilized society, the nations that work toward better outcomes for people all across the world, or are they going to do what we've seen?" he added.



This isn't the first time Pompeo has cast relations with China as a sort of clash of civilizations. He gave a major address last October when he said the Chinese Communist Party is "truly hostile to the United States and our values."



But he has escalated that argument and started to hammer it more often, especially in interviews with conservative media -- 28 of which he's done in the last three weeks -- and near weekly press conferences since March.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
DALLAS, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Prominent Dallas trial lawyer and co-founder of the trial firm Lyons & Simmons, LLP Michael Lyons has once again been recognized on D Magazine's peer-nominated listing of The Best Lawyers in Dallas.

Selected to the 2020 listing based upon his work on behalf of plaintiffs in personal injury, products liability and medical malpractice litigation, this is the seventh time Mr. Lyons has been honored as one of Dallas' leading lawyers. He is among an even more select group of attorneys to have been recognized by D Magazine for both personal injury and business litigation.

"Dallas is home to some of the finest trial lawyers anywhere in the country," said Mr. Lyons. "It is truly an honor to once again be mentioned with this incredible group of lawyers."

Mr. Lyons' inclusion on the Best Lawyers in Dallas is the latest in a series of prestigious honors over the past few months for attorneys at Lyons & Simmons, a Dallas-based trial firm focused on representing clients in personal injury, wrongful death, and complex business dispute cases in Texas and throughout the United States.

Earlier this year, firm co-founder Chris Simmons was recognized among the top 100 attorneys under the age of 40 for 2020 by Texas Rising Stars. It was his fourth consecutive selection to the list of the state's top 100 young attorneys regardless of practice focus. Associate Stephen Higdon earned his second selection to the Texas Rising Stars listing of the state's top young personal injury attorneys. Mr. Simmons has earned the same distinction each of the past seven years.

Mr. Simmons and Mr. Higdon also earned recognition on D Magazine's 2020 listing of the Best Lawyers Under 40 in Dallas. Additionally, Mr. Lyons and Mr. Simmons recently were recognized in the elite Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers guide for 2020.

"Our sights are set on results for our clients rather than accolades or awards," said Mr. Simmons. "However, professional recognitions are an indication we are getting the job done in the right way for our clients."

About Lyons & Simmons LLP

Dallas-based Lyons & Simmons, LLP is a trial boutique representing clients in wrongful death, personal injury, products liability and complex "bet-the-company" business litigation matters across the country. To learn more, visit http://www.Lyons-Simmons.com.

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commision (EFCC) said the Supreme Court judgement that nullified the the trial and conviction of former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu was a technical ambush and an unfortunate development.

KanyiDaily recalls that Justice Mohammed Idris of a Federal High Court in Lagos had on December 5, 2019, sentenced Orji Kalu to 12 years imprisonment for N7.2 billion fraud and money laundering.

Kalu was convicted on all the 39 counts preferred against him by the EFCC, alongside a former Abia State Commissioner for Finance, Jones Udeogo, and his company, Slok Nig. Ltd.

However, in a unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour on Friday, the apex court nullified the entire trial on the grounds that the constitution does not permit a judge elevated to a higher court to return to a lower court to conclude a part-heard case.

Reacting to the verdict, the EFCC in a statement on Friday vowed to prepare a fresh and immediate trial of the case, saying this is because its evidences against Mr Kalu and the others were overwhelming.

The attention of the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has been drawn to the judgment of the Supreme Court nullifying the trial of a former governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu , his firm, Slok Nigeria Limited and Jones Udeogu, a former Director of Finance and Account of Abia State Government and ordering their fresh trial at the lower court. The apex court based its verdict on the grounds that Justice Mohammed Idris, who convicted Kalu and others had been elevated to the Court of Appeal before the judgment and returned to the lower court to deliver the judgment which it considered as illegal, it said. The EFCC considers the judgment of the apex court as quite unfortunate . It is a technical ambush against the trial of the former governor. The Commission is prepared for a fresh and immediate trial of the case because its evidences against Kalu and others are overwhelming. The corruption charges against Kalu still subsist because the Supreme Court did not acquit him of them. The entire prosecutorial machinery of the EFCC would be launched in a fresh trial where justice is bound to be served in due course.

Meanwhile, Orji Uzor Kalu has reacted to his victory at the supreme court, saying the five months he spent in prison had taught him invaluable lessons about the countrys justice system.
An Atlanta mother was nearing her due date in March when she contracted coronavirus and fell gravely ill  but now she and her twin daughters are happy and healthy at home.

Monique Cook was eight months along when she began experiencing symptoms, and rushed to the hospital where she was told she'd undergo an emergency C-section.

The mother-of-four soon fell into a coma, she told the Today show this week, and woke up five days later to learn she had already delivered her babies.

Special delivery: Monique Cook gave birth to twin girls while in the hospital with coronavirus

Babies: Though her twin daughters, August Sky and Angel Renee, were born on March 24, it would be a while before she could see them in person and hold them

Sweet: She is now home and healthy with her husband and four children

Trouble: Monique was eight months pregnant when she started experiencing coronavirus symptoms and rushed to the hospital

Monique said the twins are her 'love babies,' conceived after her husband Andrew came home from being stationed in Afghanistan.

The couple was eagerly awaiting their arrival when, at eight months pregnant, Monique started experiencing coronavirus symptoms.

'I was at home and started feeling shortness of breath. I couldn't breath,' she said. 'My contractions started coming two minutes apart. knew something was wrong.'

Her doctor told her to go straight to the hospital, where they tried to help Monique breath and got her a coronavirus test.

They then sent her to labor and delivery, telling her that she was going to get an emergency C-section.

'I was at home and started feeling shortness of breath. I couldn't breath,' she said. 'My contractions started coming two minutes apart. knew something was wrong'

Welcome, little girls! Doctors performed an emergency C-section, but she remained in a coma for several days

Love: When she woke up, she was kept in isolation and unable to see the twins, so her husband sent her pictures

'The anesthesiologist came. He said, "Count back from ten. I counted back from ten  I said, "ten," [and] everything just went black.'

Though the delivery went quickly, Monique remained unconscious until five days later  and woke up in an entirely different hospital.

'I remember slowly waking up. I looked down and I have no big stomach, no babies... I remember asking, "Where are my babies?" That's when the young nurse said, "Oh, your babies, they're fine," she recalled.

But though her twin daughters, August Sky and Angel Renee, were born on March 24, it would be a while before she could see them in person and hold them.

Monique remained isolated in the hospital for 11 days, then had to finish out her 14-day quarantine after being discharged before she could meet the twins.

Where did they go? When she woke up from her coma, she was surprised to see that her big belly was gone

Safe: She remained in isolation at the hospital for 11 days and completed a two-week quarantine before meeting her newborns

'The moment that I got to hold them was great,' said Monique, who has two older daughters. 'It just was like, my family is complete'

In that time, her husband Andrew sent pictures of the newborns to her nurses, who showed Monique while she recovered.

Finally, she got to go home to her family, including older daughters Isis, 17, and Winter, 4  and she held her babies for the first time.

'The moment that I got to hold them was great,' she said. 'It just was like, my family is complete.'

Having such major things happen to her at the same time left her 'mostly in shock,' she said, but she is incredibly grateful to the healthcare workers who took care of her.

'For somebody to fight for me that hard? It's meant for me to be here. I just want to tell them thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much, because they were my family that whole 11 days ... Without them, I wouldn't be here,' she said.

Monique was also treated to a surprise from the Today show: a six-month supply of Pampers diapers for her twins.
President Donald Trump says the US economy losing a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April - the steepest plunge since the 1930s Great Depression - was 'fully expected'.

The Labor Department's closely watched monthly employment report released on Friday showed the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7 percent last month.

'It's fully expected, there's no surprise,' Trump told Fox & Friends just moments after the report was released.

'Somebody said: "Oh, look at this". Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that. What I can do is I can bring it back. Those jobs will all be back, and they'll be back very soon. And next year we'll have a phenomenal year.'

Despite the unemployment figures showing the starkest sign yet of how coronavirus is battering the world's biggest economy, Trump repeated prior statements that the US has the 'best economy in the world'.

The latest employment report indicated that the vast majority of April's job losses - roughly 90 percent - are considered temporary, a result of businesses that were forced to suddenly close but hope to reopen and recall their laid-off workers.

The jump in the unemployment rate, however, didn't capture the full devastation wrought by the business shutdowns.

The Labor Department said millions of Americans were classified as employed in April even though their employers have closed down. These people should have been classified as on temporary layoff and therefore unemployed.

If they had been counted correctly, the unemployment rate would have been nearly 20 percent.

It also doesn't include the millions who applied for jobless aid in the final week of April because the government collected data prior to those figures being released.

The largest monthly job loss prior to April was about 2 million in September 1945 after WWII. In March 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, 800,000 jobs were lost

'It's totally expected, there's no surprise, President Trump said Friday when asked about April unemployment figures showing total unemployment has jumped to 14.7 per cent

Larry Kudlow, the White House's national economic council director, suggested employment figures could get worse as the pandemic wears on.

'I don't know if it's as bad as it gets,' Kudlow told Fox Business Network's Varney & Co on Friday. 'I don't think this pandemic contraction has yet fully run its course.

'This is a number full of heartbreak and hardship. There's no way to get around it.'

Kudlow said Trump had done everything he can to provide a 'rescue cushion' as a result of statewide stay-at-home orders that have brought the economy to a near standstill.

But he added that there was no way to tell if unemployment numbers would decline even further in the next few months.

'My model's no better than anybody else's model. Regarding the next month or two, which are really going to transition into the reopening of the economy, who's to say the numbers will not get worse,' he said.

The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the US economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s where the jobless rate reached 25 percent.

Nearly all the job growth achieved during the 11-year recovery from the Great Recession has now been lost in just one month.

The largest monthly job loss prior to April was about 2 million in September 1945 after WWII. In March 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, 800,000 jobs were lost.

The collapse of the job market has occurred with stunning speed. As recently as February, the unemployment rate was a five-decade low of 3.5 percent. In March, the unemployment rate was just 4.4 percent with 870,000 jobs lost.

That March figure, however, did not account for the millions of jobs lost in the final two weeks of that month when the coronavirus pandemic forced states to go into lockdown.

The US economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April - the steepest plunge since the 1930s Great Depression and the starkest sign yet of how coronavirus is battering the world's biggest economy

The Labor Department's closely watched monthly employment report released on Friday showed the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7 percent last month

The latest 14.7 percent rate comes a day after the Labor Department's report into weekly unemployment benefit claims showed nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for aid in the week ending May 2.

At least 33.5 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the seven weeks since the coronavirus began forcing millions of companies to close their doors, bringing the US economy to a near standstill.

The latest weekly claims data had no impact on the government's April jobs report because it falls outside the period during which the government surveyed establishments and households for its monthly report.

The bleak numbers strengthen analysts' expectations of a slow recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic, adding to a pile of dismal data on consumer spending, business investment, trade, productivity and the housing market.

The unemployment report underscores the devastation unleashed by lockdowns imposed by states in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The government's report noted that many people who lost jobs in April but didn't look for another one weren't even counted in the unemployment rate. Their exit helped drive down the proportion of working-age Americans who were employed in April: It's now just 51.3 percent, the lowest proportion on record.

In addition to the millions of newly unemployed, 5.1 million others had their hours reduced in April, according to the report. That trend, too, means less income and less spending, perpetuating the economic downturn.

A measure of what's called underemployment - which counts the unemployed plus full-time workers who were reduced to part-time work - reached a record high of 22.8 percent.

Leisure and hospitality industries were hardest hit with 7.7 million job losses in April, according to the report.

Employment declined in education and health industries by 2.5 million. Professional and business services shed 2.1 million lobs and retail jobs declined by 2.1 million.

The unemployment rate at least tripled for every major education category. But that still left the rate for those with college degrees in the single digits, at 8.4 percent. By contrast, more than 21 percent of those without a high school degree were jobless

Blacks and whites each saw a rise of about 10 percentage points in the unemployment rate but the unemployment rate among Latinos jumped nearly 13 percent, possibly reflecting the steep job losses in the hospitality industry

The wave of layoffs beginning in mid-March and continuing last month has widened some of the disparities in the US labor force.

Blacks and whites each saw a rise of about 10 percentage points in the unemployment rate but the unemployment rate among Latinos jumped nearly 13 percent, possibly reflecting the steep job losses in the hospitality industry.

The unemployment rate at least tripled for every major education category. But that still left the rate for those with college degrees in the single digits, at 8.4 percent. By contrast, more than 21 percent of those without a high school degree were jobless.

Men and women had about equal unemployment rates going into the pandemic. The initial rounds of layoffs hit women slightly harder, possibly reflecting the deeper hit in the service industries.

For the United States, a key question is where the job market goes from here. Applications for unemployment aid, while high, have declined for five straight weeks, a sign that the worst of the layoffs has passed. Still, few economists expect a rapid turnaround.

A paper by economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve estimates that under an optimistic scenario that assumes shutdowns are lifted quickly, the unemployment rate could fall back to about 4% by mid-2021.

But if shutdowns recur and hiring revives more slowly, the jobless rate could remain in double-digits until the end of 2021, the San Francisco Fed economists predict.

Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, is tracking real-time data on the economy, including consumer spending, small business hiring and job postings.

Chetty noted the economy's health will hinge on when the viral outbreak has subsided enough that most Americans will feel comfortable returning to restaurants, bars, movie theaters and shops.

The data suggests that many small businesses are holding on in hopes that spending and the economy will rebound soon, he said. Small business payrolls have fallen sharply but have leveled off in recent weeks. Job postings haven't dropped nearly as much as total jobs have but it's unclear how much longer those trends will persist.

'There's only so long you can hold out,' Chetty said.

There were 3.2 million new claims for unemployment benefits filed in the week ending May 2, according to a Labor Department report released on Thursday
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Linkedin Alya Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 20:12 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6db1be 1 National YouTube,prank,Bandung-Police,vlogger,West-Java,LGBT-in-Indonesia,Transwomen Free

Vlogger Ferdian Paleka has been arrested after posting a YouTube video of him and his friend apparently pulling a "prank" on transwomen by giving them fake staple food donations in the form of boxes containing garbage.

Ferdian, whose video met a chorus of condemnation from members of the public, was apprehended by the West Java police on the Tangerang-Merak toll road on Friday.

West Java Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Saptono Erlangga said that after a four-day manhunt and monitoring Ferdians father, the police learned that the father planned to pick up Ferdian and his cocreator friend, identified only as A, at Merak Port in Banten, upon returning from his hideout in Palembang, South Sumatra.

His father, H, and his uncle, J, picked them up at the port. We then followed them and managed to arrest them on the toll road, Saptono said on Friday as quoted by kompas.com.

He added that the police would also question both Ferdian's father and uncle.

Last week, the vlogger uploaded a video in which he and his friend Tubagus Fahddinar claimed they were going to give out "aid packages" in the form of instant noodle boxes that actually contained bricks and garbage for people whom they called bencong, a pejorative Indonesian term for transwomen, in West Java's provincial capital of Bandung.

We want to survey whether or not the bencong are on the streets in this fasting month [] If we encounter them, well give them the packages. But if theyre not around, that means the city is safe from them, Ferdian said in the video.

The video appeared to show Ferdian and his friend handing over the fake donations while laughing at several transwomen they met on the streets.

Many viewers, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights activists, took to social media to express their anger and called on the public to report Ferdians video to YouTube. Some internet users also said that Ferdian had previously posted videos with content that degraded women and sex workers.

YouTube has since removed the video for violating YouTubes policy on harassment and bullying. However, Ferdian seemed to express no remorse as his next prank was to upload a fake apology in his Instagram stories. He even jokingly wrote he would turn himself in if he got 30,000 more followers first.

Read also: Group of men allegedly burn transgender woman to death, escape murder charges

On Sunday night, angry neighbors protested outside Ferdians home in Baleendah subdistrict in Bandung. The police were also present but Ferdian was not at the location.

The next morning, Ferdians friend Tubagus handed himself over to the Bandung Police. Four transwomen who fell victim to the prank also reported Ferdian and his friends to the Bandung Police on Monday, accompanied by representatives of transgender community Srikandi Pasundan.

We decided to report [the incident] to the police to create a deterrent effect for the perpetrator so that such things will not occur again in the future, said one of the victims, Sani, 39, as quoted by Kompas TV.

Another victim named Dini, 56, said she was delighted when she received the aid but was saddened and angered on discovering that the boxes that she and Sani had received contained a brick and rotten bean sprouts, respectively.

[We were] treated like trash. We hoped to get noodles but it turned out they were [a brick and garbage]. I feel hurt and humiliated," she said.

Dini added that she was aware that she was still going out despite the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) to prevent the spread of COVID-19. "Im just struggling to put food on my table. Thats why I was initially happy [about getting the box], it turned out it was an insult, she said.

Head of the Bandung Police Criminal Investigation Department Adj. Sr. Comr. Galih Indragiri alleged Ferdian had violated Article 45 of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law on defamation, as well as Article 36 of the same law, which carries a maximum punishment of 12 years imprisonment and a fine of Rp 12 billion (US$ 804,000).

Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Andreas Harsono lauded the solidarity and support shown by Indonesian citizens, which helped to bring the case to the police amid concerns that "transwomen have often been discriminated against" in society.

Last year, Barcelona YouTuber Kangshua Ren played a similar nasty prank by recording himself offering an Oreo cookie filled with toothpaste to a homeless man who was subsequently sick, the New York Times reported.

Ren was later sentenced to a 15-month prison and paid $22,300 compensation to his victim.
Indonesian government calling on Beijing to respond to accusations Indonesian nationals were worked to death on board Chinese fishing vessels.

Indonesias government is calling on Beijing to respond to accusations that fishermen were worked to death on board Chinese vessels.

At least three Indonesian men allegedly died on ships between December and March.

Some of their coworkers say they were physically abused and forced to work for days without rest.

Al Jazeeras Jessica Washington reports from Jakarta, Indonesia.
[May 08, 2020] Phoenix New Media to Announce First Quarter 2020 Financial Results on Monday, May 11, 2020

BEIJING, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Phoenix New Media Limited ("Phoenix New Media", "ifeng" or the "Company") (NYSE: FENG), a leading new media company in China, today announced that it will report its 2020 first quarter financial results on Monday, May 11, 2020 after the market closes. The earnings release will be available on ifeng's investor relations website at http://ir.ifeng.com. Following the earnings release, ifeng's management team will hold a conference call on Monday, May 11, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time (or Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. Beijing/Hong Kong time) to discuss the financial results and operating performance. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, operator assisted conference calls are not available at the moment. All participants must preregister online prior to the call to receive the dial-in numbers. Preregistration may require a few minutes to complete. Conference Call Preregistration Participants can register for the conference call by navigating to http://apac.directeventreg.com/registration/event/9874898. Once preregistration has been complete, participants will receive dial-in numbers, Direct Event Passcode, and registrant ID by email. Please dial in 10 minutes prior to the call, using the participant dial-in numbers, Direct Event Passcode and unique registrant ID which would be provided upon registering. You will be automatically linked to the live call after completion of this process. A replay of the call will be available through May 19, 2020 by dialing the following numbers:







International: +61 2 8199 0299 Mainland China: 4006322162 Hong Kong: +852 30512780 United States: +1 646 254 3697 Conference ID: 9874898

A live and archived webcast of the conference call will also be available on the Company's investor relations website at http://ir.ifeng.com. About Phoenix New Media Limited Phoenix New Media Limited (NYSE: FENG) is a leading new media company providing premium content on an integrated Internet platform, including PC and mobile, in China. Having originated from a leading global Chinese language TV network based in Hong Kong, Phoenix TV, the Company enables consumers to access professional news and other quality information and share user-generated content on the Internet through their PCs and mobile devices. Phoenix New Media's platform includes its PC channel, consisting of ifeng.com website, which comprises interest-based verticals and interactive services; its mobile channel, consisting of mobile news applications, mobile video application, digital reading applications and mobile Internet website; and its operations with the telecom operators that provides mobile value-added services. For investor and media inquiries please contact Phoenix New Media Limited

Qing Liu

Email: [email protected] ICR, Inc.

Jack Wang

Tel: +1 (646) 405-4883

Email: [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phoenix-new-media-to-announce-first-quarter-2020-financial-results-on-monday-may-11-2020-301055654.html SOURCE Phoenix New Media Limited

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Chairwoman of the Vietnamese National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and her Lao counterpart Pany Yathotou discussed the fight against COVID-19 in the two countries,

cooperation among ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) member parliaments in response to the pandemic, and the construction progress of the NA House of Laos during their phone talks on May 7.

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (centre)

Briefing Pany on the COVID-19 fight in Vietnam, Ngan said that as of the morning of May 7, Vietnam had recorded now new infections in the community for 21 days and had successfully treated 232 patients, or 86 percent of the total.

With 271 cases in a population of nearly 100 million, the infection rate in Vietnam is among the worlds lowest, she said, adding that the country has basically pushed back the pandemic.

For her part, Pany said Vietnams experience in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is an invaluable lesson for all countries and Laos in particular.

As of the morning of May 7, Laos had reported 19 infections, eight of whom have fully recovered, and zero fatalities.

The Lao Government is gradually easing social distancing measures by allowing students to return to school, she said.

The Lao leader thanked the Vietnamese Party, State, and people for providing timely support to Laos in its fight against COVID-19.

As Chair of the 41st AIPA General Assembly, Ngan called on the ASEAN Community to uphold a sense of solidarity and offer mutual support to each other to cope with the pandemic.

In a cohesive and responsive spirit, she affirmed that the Vietnamese legislature will do everything it can and partner with AIPA member parliaments to ensure its success as AIPA Chair in 2020 for the sake of peace, safety, and prosperity in each nation.

The top Lao lawmaker expressed her support for the sharing of experience between AIPA member parliaments in the fight against COVID-19, as Ngan wrote in a letter sent to the heads of AIPA member parliaments on March 30.

She believed that the Vietnamese NA will successfully organise the 41st AIPA General Assembly in the coming time.

The Vietnamese leader took the occasion to invite Pany to attend a meeting of ASEAN-AIPA leaders at the 36th ASEAN Summit scheduled for late June in the central city of Da Nang. The Lao leader accepted the invitation with pleasure.

Regarding the construction of the NA House - a gift from the Vietnamese Party, State and people to Laos - both sides agreed to allow an additional 100 highly-skilled workers from Vietnam to take part in completing the work, with equipment to be imported and the remaining interior design to be completed shortly.

They expressed their determination to complete the project in December 2020 or early January 2021 to celebrate the 11th National Congress of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party.

The two leaders also pledged to continue discussing issues of mutual concern via phone talks at an appropriate time in the near future./.VNA
When 89-year-old Richard Mims was just a boy in the 1930s, he remembers playing a game he called Executive in the abandoned offices of the Santee River Cypress Lumber Co. in Ferguson near his hometown of Eutawville, South Carolina. Mims father Franklin and several of his nephews were among the last employees who worked in the mill town, which existed from 1890 to 1940. The business itself operated there for a quarter century or so from the early 1890s to the late 1910s. Ferguson is now underwater at the bottom of Lake Marion. When the lumber operations shut down, the company abandoned the offices and left all of their corporate records sitting in desk drawers at their headquarters, ripe for a young boys imagination. Mims father continued as manager of the property on which the mill was located. Before they built the dam to create Lake Marion, my father would go over to the site of the old Ferguson mill, where he had an office, Mims says. As a little boy starting about age 4 or 5, he took me with him during the summers  probably to get out of mothers hair. Because there was nobody there but him, he liked the company. Thats how I had access to play with all the receipts and papers. Experiences become an oral history South Carolina Honors College graduate Caldwell Loftis oral history shares the memories Richard Mims has of growing up near the drowned town of Ferguson, South Carolina. It will be transcribed and included with a collection of other items related to the town held at South Caroliniana Library. Mims memories of growing up near the drowned town of Ferguson are the source for an oral history that South Carolina Honors College graduate Caldwell Loftis presented as his senior thesis in April. The two were connected by history professor Jessica Elfenbein who is working on a community study of the town of Ferguson from 1890 to 1940. The study covers the towns creation out of the swamps, its existence as a mill town, its abandonment and finally its flooding by state-owned utility company Santee-Cooper to create Lake Marion. The mill and the town were built on a large swath of property, parts of which eventually would become Congaree National Park and Francis Beidler Forest near Harleyville, South Carolina. Mr. Mims is a very interesting man with a lot of stories to tell, Loftis says. I wanted to get a sense of what it was like living there and his personal experiences of growing up in the area. Mims and Loftis also share a connection through the University of South Carolina. Loftis is a 2020 graduate who majored in biochemistry and molecular biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and has been accepted to medical school. Mims graduated in 1959 with an education degree and worked for the university for 30-plus years, holding more than 20 positions ranging from bookstore assistant manager to assistant dean of the College of Applied Professional Sciences. He retired as professor emeritus in interdisciplinary studies in 1993. Although the Ferguson mill closed before Mims was born, he remembers exploring the abandoned property with his father, an avid hunter and fisherman and assistant to the South Carolina agent for the mills Chicago owners. As far as we know, Mr. Mims is the last living person who personally experienced Ferguson, South Carolina, and he has this really fine memory of Ferguson as a little boy before it was flooded, Elfenbein says.
Employees of the laboratory of invertebrate macroecology and biogeography at St. Petersburg University assessed the diversity of freshwater mollusks in the northern polar region based on previously published data and their own research. According to their estimations, there are 104 species of these invertebrates living in waters north of the polar circle. The research results were published in the Hydrobiologia.

The scientists' list of species reflects all the relevant data available, including those the team received for the first time. It is noted that the previous list was published in Sweden in 1887 and is quite outdated.

According to the results of the research, less than two percent of the global fauna of freshwater mollusks have managed to reach the Arctic. Due to the specific nature of the northern polar region, the number of different species of snails and bivalves is small. Having analyzed the biology and ecology of the Arctic mollusks, the scientists suggested which biological traits helped these invertebrates reach the polar region and survive there.

"First of all, they include hermaphroditism, thanks to which a single mollusk can mate with any member of the population when the number of mollusks is limited. (Moreover, many species of Arctic mollusks are self-fertile.) Another useful trait is that they can travel by air, for example with birds. In addition, mollusks' short life cycle helps them to multiply rapidly and form viable populations in northern waters. They also have the ability to remain viable while frozen in ice. It looks like the combination of these traits acts as an entry ticket' to the Arctic for mollusks, allowing them through the invisible filter created by their environment," said Maxim Vinarsky, head of the SPBU laboratory of invertebrate macroecology and biogeography.

The genetic and biogeographic analysis showed that there were no endemic species in the Arctic circumpolar zone. It turns out that all the freshwater mollusks came from lower latitudes. Back in 2017, SPBU Professor Maxim Vinarsky and Ivan Nekhayev, a senior research fellow at the Applied Ecology Department, received the same results in Greenland, and now this conclusion can be applied to the entire Arctic region. The scientists believe that the absence of endemics in the circumpolar region is connected with the young geological age of the area, which lost its ice cover relatively recently.

The biologists also compared the diversity of species in separate Arctic subregions: the European polar region, the extreme north of Siberia, Beringia and North America. It turns out that Siberia was the most diverse region, with 57 out of the 104 described species living there. The poorest fauna was in North America, which has only 39 species of freshwater mollusks. Such a difference cannot be explained by the fact that mollusks are under-researched in North America because they have been studied for more than 200 years.

The scientists also studied the Arctic and Subarctic geothermal ecosystems, which they believe could have served as a potential shelter for mollusks during ice ages. Unlike most water bodies in the northern polar region, where the thermal regime is mostly determined by seasonal temperature changes, geothermal springs have stably high (over 20 degrees Celsius) water temperature all year round. Most freshwater snails and bivalves cannot survive in such extreme conditions, but the biologists found that at least five Pulmonata species (gastropods with lung) were capable of overcoming the thermal shock after settling in geothermal springs and forming stable populations there.

Although the Arctic biota is very vulnerable to global changes and human interference in general, only three mollusks on the list have received international conservation status: Margaritifera margaritifera (freshwater pearl mussel), Euglesa hinzi and Valvata mergella. Most Arctic species are widely spread and mass forms, but according to the SPBU biologists, this does not mean there is no need to protect them. In addition to the negative impact of the intense economic development of the Arctic resulting in the degradation of freshwater ecosystem, global climate changes also pose a threat.

"Due to the warming, animal species that used to live in milder conditions are coming to the Arctic region. Today we can conclude that at least three species of snails and bivalves can expand their habitats northward amid global climate change. This could have an unpredictable impact on autochthonous ecosystems, such as ousting local mollusks. It is possible that foci of parasitic diseases, for which many freshwater mollusks can serve as intermediary hosts, will also move north. Right now foreign mollusk species have a minimal influence on the Arctic freshwater ecosystems, but the situation could change in the next decades," Maxim Vinarsky stressed.
Vistas investment is at an 12.5 percent premium over the Facebook deal announced in April

US-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners will pick up a 2.32 percent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore.

US-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners to pick up 2.3% stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 cr. Vista deal is at 12.5% premium over @Facebook deal announced in April. pic.twitter.com/pexBmwuwQm  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) May 8, 2020

Vista runs the worlds largest exclusively tech-focused fund.

This is the third high-profile investment in the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) unit in as many weeks.

With this, Jio Platforms has now raised Rs 60,596.37 crore from leading technology investors in less than three weeks.

Commenting on the transaction with Vista, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, said, I am delighted to welcome Vista, one of the worlds marquee tech investors globally as a valued partner. Like our other partners, Vista also shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians.

"They believe in the transformative power of technology to be the key to an even better future for everyone. In Robert and Brian, whose family hails from Gujarat, I found two outstanding global technology leaders who believe in India and the transformative potential of a digital Indian society. We are excited to leverage the professional expertise and multi-level support that Vista has been offering to its investments globally for the benefit of Jio.

Vistas investment is at a 12.5 percent premium over the Facebook deal announced in April. The investment by Silver Lake Partners in Jio was also at a similar premium to the Facebook deal.

The latest round of investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore. The price is the same as the one paid by US private equity firm Silver Lake for a 1.15 percent stake in Jio Platforms a few days back.

Vista has a track record of investing in cutting edge tech companies in their early stage. Each of its investments have been profitable in its history of 10 years. This is Vistas first sizable investment in India.

Vistas investment showcases Jio as the next-generation software and platform company. This also is an endorsement of Jios tech capabilities and the potential of the business model even in this COVID-19 world and beyond.

(Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd which publishes Firstpost)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 21:30:28|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

- - - -

KIEV -- A total of 14,195 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 361 deaths were reported in Ukraine on Friday, while 2,706 patients have recovered, the country's Health Ministry said.

All together, 504 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and a record number of 310 patients have recovered in the past 24 hours in Ukraine. As of Friday, 977 children and 2,758 health workers have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

- - - -

BERLIN -- New infections with COVID-19 in Germany remained under peak times as the number of cases increased by 1,209 within one day to 167,300, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Friday.

This week, between 680 and 1,300 new daily cases were reported to the RKI. At the height of the pandemic in Germany, more than 6,000 new infections were recorded by RKI in a single day.

- - - -

CHICAGO -- A Chinese company on Thursday donated 250,000 face masks and 30,000 face shields to the central U.S. city of Chicago to assist its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City of Chicago hosted a brief ceremony at the downtown United Center to receive the donated anti-coronavirus supplies.

Attending the ceremony were Deputy Mayor Samir Mayekar and Ni Pin, president of the donor company Wanxiang America Corporation, a Chicago-based U.S. branch of the Wanxiang Group, a Chinese automotive components manufacturer.

- - - -

MOSCOW -- Russia has tallied 10,699 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, raising its total number of infections to 187,859, its coronavirus response center said in a statement Friday.

Single-day increases have been over 10,000 for six consecutive days, the center's data showed.

- - - -

DAKAR -- Senegal's Ministry of Health and Social Action on Friday reported 59 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the confirmed total to 1,551 in the country.

A total of 872 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours, and 59 turned positive, including 52 follow-up contact cases and seven community-transmission cases, Director-General of Public Health Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye told a daily briefing on the pandemic.

- - - -

BEIJING -- Over 84,200 students in their final year of junior high school in Beijing will resume class starting from Monday, May 11 as the COVID-19 epidemic is under control, the municipal education commission said Friday.

Over 13,200 teachers will also return to classrooms, said Li Yi, spokesperson of the commission.

- - - -

KAMPALA -- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged people to wear face masks in public places all the time as the East African country strives to contain the spread of COVID-19.

In a video clip issued by State House on Friday, Museveni said it seems that some people do not understand the value of a face mask, thinking it merely as decoration. Enditem
The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio has denied allegation of N40 billion fraud in the Niger Delta Developm...





The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio has denied allegation of N40 billion fraud in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), an agency supervised by his ministry.





Reacting in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja on Friday, by Anietie Ekong, Chief Press Secretary to the Minister, he insisted that there was no corruption in the agency.





He considered the prompting of Senators to investigate the allegation as an attack on the Interim Management Committee (IMC) set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to manage NDDCs affairs.





Blowing hot, the minister described as unfortunate that such Phantom allegation could be discussed on the floor of Nigerian Senate.





The statement said: The attention of the Honourable Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio has been drawn to sensational headlines about an alleged N40 billion corruption in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).





We wish to state categorically that under the supervision of Senator Akpabio, there has been no corruption in the NDDC.





It is obvious that there have been an upsurge in attacks on the Commission, the Interim Management Committee and the Honourable Minister through spurious and unsubstantiated allegations since the commencement of forensic audit of the Commission.





Unfortunately, these phantom allegations have found their ways into the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly.





In response to the campaign of calumny, the Commission had explained that the Interim Management Committee has only approved the total payment of Eighteen Billion Naira (N18, 000,000, 000) for contractual claims.





The payments to contractors are all payments for contracts awarded by previous administrations, especially the payment for contracts below N50 million. The present management has not awarded any single contract. So where is the bogey N40 billion coming from?





It is instructive that the Commission under the supervision of Senator Akpabio has devised a strategy by which only duly verified and inspected contracts with photo and video evidences are recommended and approved for payments. The Interim Management Committee has been very prudent in managing the affairs of the interventionist agency.





The interest of Senator Akpabio has been to ensure that the NDDC completes its headquarters building started since the days of the defunct Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), the contract of which was awarded with the approval of the Federal Executive Council many years before Senator Akpabio became the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs.





Following the recent Presidential approval, the NDDC is also providing intervention support to complement efforts of the Federal and State governments against further spread of COVID-19 in the nine states of the Niger Delta.





Senator Akpabio is upbeat about the plan to probe the NDDC as he has no skeleton in his cupboard. In fact, he will welcome a public hearing beamed live for all Nigerians to see.





The probe of the Commission along with the ongoing forensic audit will expose those who have used their exalted positions over the years to fleece the NDDC through fully paid contracts which were never executed and other forms of contact racketeering.





While we await the probe if carried through, we find it extremely insulting for Senator Akpabios name to be dragged into what is obviously a smear campaign.





The general public should not be misled by spurious claims. The NDDC under the supervision of Senator Akpabio will not be distracted, neither will the ongoing forensic audit of the Commission be derailed through blackmail and intimidation.





The Minister will remain focused on the mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari to reposition the Commission for sustainable development of the Niger Delta region.




Deep in the Amazon, indigenous groups march proudly thundering the ground with their stomps, hand-in-hand, to stand against attacks on their people and tribal land.

They've experienced an attack on multiple fronts: first fires were lit to clear the land for cattle ranchers, illegal mining and Brazil's president has steamrolled his anti-environmental and indigenous policies into law.

Now the threat of the coronavirus brings the fear that death could strike these isolated tribes too.

Indigenous human rights defender Elcio Manchineri says the government isn't including indigenous people in their plan:

" There is no policy (health policy) by the states to combat this disease (COVID-19) within indigenous territories and when it exists (health policy), as is the case in Brazil, institutions refuse to provide this service."

Instead indigenous groups from nine countries in the Amazon basin rallied together on Wednesday (May 6) and called for donations to protect the 3 million people of the rainforest.

The virus has already infected nearly 200 of the 600 tribes. And over 30 people have been killed.

In Peru's province of Loreto that covers vast areas of the Amazon, hospitals are crammed with patients in corridors, outside and doctors are struggling to deliver essentials like oxygen.

"We are living in a terrible situation, a desperate situation, where we have to see people die everyday, where we cannot deliver the necessary supplies."

A fund has been established - aiming to raise $3 million in the next two weeks that will be managed by the NGO Rainforest Foundations US, that works to protect jungles.

The foundation's director Suzanne Pelletier: "This pandemic is not only a humanitarian emergency, it is also an environmental emergency. Indigenous people across the Amazon are the last line of defense against forest destruction and our best hope of mitigating climate change."

The Amazon populations severely lack access to healthcare, the funds will be wired directly to grantees' accounts.

The risk of ethnocide was raised on Sunday by dozens of international artists and scientists in a letter to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro urging him to protect Brazil's indigenous population.
By PTI

HYDERABAD: TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday requested the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to allow him to travel by flight from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam to help people affected due to the gas leak from a chemical plant.

The request comes at a time when all domestic and international flights, except cargo and those engaged in essential and emergency services, are suspended due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown.

The former Andhra Pradesh chief minister said a "great misfortune" has befallen the people of Visakhapatnam due to styrene gas leakage from LG Polymers.

Naidu said he is obliged to visit the district as a former chief minister and as the leader of the opposition in the state assembly.

The gas leak has left at least six people dead and scores of people are hospitalised.

Rescue operations are underway.

"I request you to grant me permission for air travel from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam to Hyderabad by flight no VT-VKR," Naidu said in a letter to the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, P K Mishra.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief said the plane is currently in Mumbai and sought permission to allow it to fly from Mumbai to Hyderabad and then to Visakhapatnam, and back to Hyderabad and Mumbai.

"I am obliged to visit Visakhapatnam in order to monitor the post-disaster activities and console the affected people," Naidu said.
Bust out the sunblock! We're going to dive into a home with the most epic pool we've ever seena Texas lake house with a million-dollar pool. The home with its own private water park splashed its way to the top of the most popular homes this week on realtor.com.

And it's a sight to behold: The lazy river features islands, a pair of hammocks swinging in the breeze, and a waterfall at the center of it all. All of the aquatic elements blend together to create an elaborate water park unlike any we've ever seen. Who doesn't need an oasis these days?

And it wasn't the only jaw-dropping house on this week's list. There's a brand-new, custom-built masterpiece in Virginia inspired by an art gallery, a contemporary oceanfront estate in Rhode Island, and a recently completed Beverly Hills, CA, mansion with an underground gallery for displaying your multimillion-dollar car collection.

These properties are a departure from the historic homes that usually comprise the lion's share of the top 10. We applaud your determination in finding click-worthy properties from every era.

In the meantime, we'll dream of floating on a raft while soaking up some rays. We'll even hold your drink while you scroll on. That's what friends are for!

Price: $410,000

Why it's here: Well-maintained and filled with the perfect mix of throwback details and modern upgrades, this brick Tudor from 1927 truly delivers. Refinished hardwood floors run throughout the five-bedroom home, and the newly remodeled kitchen is a chef's dream. The bathrooms feature vintage tile, and the home is filled with other period details, including arched doorways and wrought-iron detailing. Other highlights include a sun porch and a cedar closet in the attic.

Drexel Hill, PA realtor.com



Price: $165,000

Why it's here: The red bricks have turned blue! Built in 1937, this blue-hued beauty called the Lion's Den is adorned with custom wood shutters. The three-bedroom home was recently given a chic, top-to-bottom remodel with a sleek new kitchen, new bathrooms, and flooring. Sitting just a few feet from the water, the home offers plenty of room for outdoor entertaining.

Jacksonville, FL realtor.com



Price: $173,000

Why it's here: Built in 1922, this adorable three-bedroom bungalow has charm to spare. The home is move-in ready with hardwood floors and a lovely office space off the living room. Outside, there's a patio for relaxing and a large side yard with room for the kids to play.

Cloquet, MN realtor.com



Price: $19,950,000

Why it's here: Perched on a corner lot in a guard-gated community, this brand-new home is outfitted with the finest finishes. Measuring 12,000 square feet, the mansion comes with its own fitness studio, theater, bar, and underground car gallery with parking for six vehicles. Outside, there's a pool, spa, entertaining and lounging areas, and a pool house with kitchenette.

Beverly Hills, CA realtor.com



Price: $144,900

Why it's here: Built in 2010 and sitting on more than 4 acres, this three-bedroom "barndominium" has been recently remodeled. Whip up something delicious in the home's gorgeous, well-appointed kitchen or just sit back on the front porch and take in all the fresh country air. There's even a small shop you can use for work or play.

Harrison, AR realtor.com



Price: $209,900

Why it's here: Picture-perfect from the street and just blocks from the historic downtown, this home was built in 1940. The three-bedroom abode has been lovingly maintained as well as updated in all the right places. A new kitchen, bathrooms, hardwood floors, built-in shelves, and a screened porch combine to make this a truly special gem.

Harrisonville, MO realtor.com



Price: $935,000

Why it's here: Custom-built in the gated community of Wendy Acres, this five-bedroom modern farmhouse was completed in 2018. It's loaded with luxe amenities, including a gunite pool with fountain and waterfall, backyard playground, and outdoor kitchen. The five-bedroom home boasts walls of windows and an open floor plan. The 5-acre property includes a 1,000-square-foot apartment and a 1,000-square-foot workshop.

Longview, TX realtor.com



Price: $1,095,000

Why it's here: Virginia is for mod lovers! This ultramodern take on an English manor was completed this year and sits in one of Richmond's historic neighborhoods. Inspired by the clean lines of a museum, this unique home has an elegant, minimalist kitchen; a "floating bridge" mezzanine office; polished concrete flooring; and even a hidden passage to the master suite. Guests will stop in their tracks when they see the glass entry vestibule, floating staircase, and Malm wood-burning fireplace.

Richmond, VA realtor.com



Price: $16,750,000

Why it's here: Built in 2016 on 2 oceanfront acres, this contemporary mansion named Sea Grace features 180-degree views of the Atlantic and New England coast. The five-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot residence was inspired by French manors and packs in all sorts of upscale upgrades. You can sit out on the terrace or by the infinity pool and soak in the spectacular ocean views, or retreat inside for elegant living on the grandest scale.

Narragansett, RI realtor.com



Price: $2,390,000

Why it's here: Built in 2009, this lakefront home outside Houston features a far-out surprise: an elaborate water park estimated to have cost about $1 million to build. The highlight is the 225-foot-long lazy river, designed for maximum floating fun. Framed by palm trees, the 180,000-gallon saltwater pool is fully decked out with rock bridges, slides, and a beach-entry lagoon. There are also two islands, an oversize hot tub, waterfalls, and a fire pit. Built by noted pool builder Brad Stephens, the finished product was featured on HGTV's "Cool Pools."

Away from the water park, there's also a boathouse and a warehouse with living quarters. The three-bedroom main house measures 4,500 square feet, making it an ideal space for gathering friends and family to soak up the summer sun.

Livingston, TX realtor.com

The post Texas Mansion With $1M Lazy River Floats to Top of This Week's Most Popular Homes appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Ahh, the Staten Island Zoo is dear to every childs heart on Staten Island, a place where memories are made and where Groundhog Day has been celebrated for many years.

In the 1800s, three military leaders lived nearby, on opposite sides of Clove Road: Colonel Edward Harden, Colonel Richard Penn Smith and Major Clarence Barrett. The Staten Island Zoo, also called Barrett Park, is connected to them.

The zoo was built on Hardens former property. Harden fought in the SpanishAmerican War and moved to 614 Broadway on Staten Island in 1908 with his wife, Julia Harden. Their home was later known as the Harden Mansion. When Julia Harden died, she willed the land to the city.

However, there were three conditions:

That it be named for her brother-in-law, Civil War Major Clarence Barrett

That it not be used for a playground

That her husband, Colonel Harden, be allowed to live in the house as long as he lived

Julia Harden died in 1930 and the property was transferred to the city of New York. The zoo opened on June 10, 1936.

The site is officially called Barrett Park in city planning records. In about 1960, the Staten Island Zoo became the accepted name for the site.

The history of the zoo parking lot is interesting. This plot of land across from the zoo on the corner of Clove Road and Martling Avenue was originally the property of Smith, a U.S. Civil War colonel who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. Smiths large home and plot of land was purchased by the Actors Fund and became a large retreat for actors, with 50 bedrooms and views of Martling Pond.

In the late 1920s, the retreat was closed, and the estate was ultimately split between the Staten Island Zoological Society, for use as a parking lot, and by Saint Peters Cemetery, for use as additional burial sites.

Originally, the zoo was known for its reptiles, in particular the collection of snakes housed in the zoos serpentarium. Today, the zoos collection of rattlesnakes is still regarded as among the most comprehensive in North America.

View the short video above and youll see vintage images of the beginning of the zoo, its early collections of animals, and former directors with big smiles.

If you have any visuals to share, please send them to my email at jsomma@siadvance.com. Vintage photos and video clips are welcome! Also, please let me know if there are any places you'd like to see highlighted in an upcoming installment of "Flashback Staten Island."

A playlist of past Staten Island flashbacks is available on YouTube.
The niece of one of the residents at the centre of one of the countrys deadliest Covid-19 clusters wants a full inquiry into what happened.

Tereza Kieran says no member of her family and none of his friends visited her uncle Aodh Kieran for nearly two months before he contracted Covid-19 at Dundalks Dealgan House.

The 72-year-old is believed to have been the first resident to test positive there. He subsequently died on Apr 9 and many more of the 23 residents who died in Apr also succumbed to the virus.

Local Sinn Fein TD Ruairi O Murchu, has called in the Dail for a full investigation into how the spread started and why it spread to so many residents so quickly: A number of relatives of those who have tragically died at the home want a full investigation into what happened. We also also have to make sure that there exists the best conditions to maintain best practice.

The situation in Dundalk is the latest in a series of shocking death tolls in the countrys nursing homes and other community residential settings. And by the end of April, there were Covid-19 clusters in more than 210 of the countrys 540 private and HSE-run nursing homes.

As of Thurs, May 7, more than 840 people had died in nursing homes and other residential settings  these deaths account for more than 60% of the total 1,403 number who have died of Covid-19 in Ireland.

The worst affected residential care setting is St Marys Hospital in Dublins Phoenix Park where 24 have died from Covid-19. And at least 10 people have also died at Corks Clonakilty Community Hospital since Apr 1.

Blame is a wonderfully easy thing to bandy about at times like this. One way or another, we need to find out why this happened on the scale it did and in finding that out, make sure it doesnt happen again," said Ms Kieran.

Eoin Farrelly, managing director of Dealgan House Nursing Home, said: Dealgan House Nursing Home offers our sincere sympathies to the families and friends of those who have died due to Covid 19. Those 23 residents who tragically died since April 1  many of which were Covid-related  were people whom we got to know and love while caring for them, some over many years. All of us are heartbroken at their death and their familys loss.

Nursing Home Ireland (NHI) have released the findings of a survey undertaken by 233 private and voluntary nursing homes.

It has found that 306 senior and general nursing staff and 606 healthcare assistants are among 1,152 staff not currently available for work due to Covid-19. It also found that despite this, the deployment of HSE staff to nursing homes continues to amount to small numbers with only around 40 HSE nurses being deployed and 26 healthcare assistants as well as 13 other staff.

The survey also found that 40% of nursing homes said they do not have sufficient supply of face masks, despite recently introduced HSE policy that face masks should be worn when in close contact with a resident.

Tadhg Daly, NHI CEO said: Nursing homes remain under immense pressure in managing Covid-19. Pressures continue to be applied across staffing, PPE and testing. Seismic challenges persist. With approximately half of private and voluntary nursing homes completing the survey, the indication is 2,000+ staff are unavailable due to Covid-19. Missing such a significant staffing complement places a huge strain upon the sector.

Fianna Fail Health spokesman, Stephen Donnelly, who first raised the issue of nursing home clusters in the Dail early last month, said: What has happened at Dealgan House is a tragedy for all concerned. Its important that a short review is done to see what lessons can be learned and applied quickly in our fight against Covid-19. A more thorough review into Dealgan House and other long-term care facilities must also be considered.

"It's no way to say goodbye to someone"

Aodh Kieran: the first victim of Covid-19 in Dundalk's Dealgan House.

If saying goodbye to her beloved uncle wasnt bizarre enough, watching his cremation later flipped the experience into something like a snuff movie for Tereza Kieran.

She says the death and the funeral of Aodh Kieran - who died alone in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda - is something she is still struggling to come to terms with.

The only way she could say goodbye to him was over a phone held to his ear by a nurse dressed head to toe in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

And she could only watch his cremation on a live video feed.

Its no way to say goodbye to someone, she said.

Aodh was the first of many residents at Dundalks Dealgan House nursing home to be tested positive and subsequently die.

The 72-year-old, who had Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), started to fall ill at the home on March 27.

By March 31, he had been rushed to hospital weak with fever and breathing difficulties.

The first of two tests for Covid-19 came back as a negative.

But doctors were so alarmed about his symptoms, they decided it was a false negative, warned the home about this and then they tested him again.

That test came back positive.

Aodh, who never regained consciousness after he entered intensive care, was also placed on a ventilator, where he remained until his death on April 9.

Before it was switched off, Tereza - who has been in isolation for the past nine or so weeks due to an underlying health condition - was called by a nurse.

Dressed in full PPE, they picked up a phone and held it in their gloved hand to his ear.

They were lovely, Tereza recalled. They told me they were talking to him, even though he was unconscious and heavily sedated and they kept a diary for us of his progression.

They do that for families who cant be there.

On the day they were going to turn off his life support, they took a phone into him, called me and put the phone to his ear as he lay there.

They also held his hand as I spoke to him.

Tereza Kieran: "It didnt seem real and it still doesnt seem real."

I just said, Look, you have put up a good fight and its now time to go and be with your mam and dad. You dont need to fight any more, just be happy. And I told him I loved him very much."

She added: It was heartbreaking to be in that situation.

I grew up with him and I have been very close to him all my life and to not be able to hold him or to say good-bye to him is just surreal.

Doctors later told her he went very quickly after life support was turned off.

It was very emotional because I couldnt get up to see him. she said. And it was also emotional because it had been so long since I had seen him.

But it has also been bizarre. The service for him afterwards was online, via video. It was really weird. It didnt seem real and it still doesnt seem real.

In Ireland, we are very big on funerals because of the closure element and I dont feel there has been any closure.

I dont feel like hes gone. It was just so surreal watching his service and cremation on TV. Its like how I imagine watching a snuff movie must be like. Or a horror movie. It didnt feel right.

She believes there needs to be an inquiry.

After all, we have to accept this is a highly infectious virus that we have never had to deal with before.

But someone has to be accountable, and I dont know who that is."
Walter Dallas was friends with James Baldwin, August Wilson, and Denzel Washington.

He had the deep connections that could bring those powerful stars of literature, playwriting, and acting to work with him at Philadelphias New Freedom Theatre on North Broad Street.

Yet during the 25 years he directed and taught in Philadelphia, he scarcely mentioned the big names he knew, Philadelphia actor Joliet Harris said.

He didnt lord that over our heads, she said. It didnt matter who he knew, where he had traveled, or what he had done. In that moment, he was there about Freedom Theatre.

He put just as much energy into drawing out the potential of unknown actors as he had when working with better-known talents like Viola Davis, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, or Clarice Taylor.

Mr. Dallas, 73, a giant in American theater, the heartbeat of Philadelphia theater, and a guiding force in African American theater, died Sunday, May 3, of pancreatic cancer in Atlanta, his hometown.

He was educated at Morehouse College, where he studied music and theology, and at the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a masters in fine arts. He also studied theology at Harvard University Divinity School.

Mr. Dallas had been working with New York theaters such as the Negro Ensemble Company, the Lincoln Center Theater, and the New Federal Theatre when the University of the Arts asked him to create and lead its new School of Theatre in 1983.

What he could bring out of actors was stunning, said Barbara Silzle, executive director of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, who met Mr. Dallas when both worked at UArts.

He was a brilliant director, an amazing communicator with actors and people," she said. "He had a way of having us all know ourselves better and be braver in our work, our life, and our relationships.

While teaching and directing at UArts, Mr. Dallas also directed plays at the Freedom Theatre, where he created its production of Langston Hughes Black Nativity.

He also worked with the Philadelphia Drama Guild, directing plays by August Wilson and Zora Neale Hurston at the Zellerbach Theater at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1992, after almost 10 years at UArts, Mr. Dallas became artistic director at Freedom Theatre after the death of founder John E. Allen Jr.

In 2008, he left the Freedom to teach and direct at the University of Maryland. He won numerous awards and worked internationally.

In 2017, Mr. Dallas won the Audelco Best Director Award in New York for Autumn, a play by Richard Wesley. In 2016, he won its National Achievement Award for Excellence in Black Theater.

He had a small, uncredited role as Denzel Washingtons father in the 1993 film Philadelphia.

Mr. Dallas moved back to Atlanta a few years ago, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, friends said.

Ozzie Jones, a Philadelphia-area director and playwright, was one of those unknown artists Mr. Dallas bolstered when he hired him at Freedom Theatre, right out of college.

Every major opportunity Ive been given in my life has been given by men and women like Walter Dallas, said Jones, now director of the Shipley School Middle School Performing Arts program.

.

To be brutally honest," Jones said, one of the things weighing on my heart about his passing is the reality that if you are a black man in theater, if there arent people like Walter Dallas [to open doors] it can be hard.

Kash Goins, an African American actor and director in Philadelphia, said Mr. Dallas gave him the confidence to work in the theater at age 26, after hed completed college with a business degree.

He was my artistic mentor, a great supporter, and a wealth of inspiration, said Goins, founder of the production company GoKash OnStage.

Hes the person I attribute most of my theater education to, and hes the reason I found the confidence to be a professional theater-maker," Goins said.

Goins attended a performance of Black Nativity and decided to take acting lessons at Freedom Theatre.

Goins took one acting class, which Mr. Dallas observed. Later, his teacher told him Mr. Dallas wants to work with you."

That was more than just the launchpad, the light where we can point to. That statement [from Mr. Dallas] was driving fuel that serves me to this day, he said.

There are similar testimonials all over Facebook.

The theater world has lost a giant. One of the kindest and most generous of men. A director, a playwright, a mentor, a teacher," wrote Paula Cizmar, a writer.

Walter was the heartbeat of Philadelphia theatre, wrote Owen Brown Jr., who taught at Freedom Theatre.

From the first instruction he gave me on stage, I knew I was in the presence of a genius, wrote Jos Duncan, a Philadelphia filmmaker.

Mr. Dallas is survived by his husband, Paul Siler, and other relatives and friends. No information was available about burial.
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The cannabis market has shown rapid growth in the past few years owing to rapid demand increase for cannabis and related products. Market Research Future, who specializes in market reports related to the consumer and retail sector among others, recently published a report on this market. Expansion of the North America cannabis market is estimated with a CAGR of 33% in forecast period from 2016 to 2021. Medical uses of cannabis are one of the major uses that have driven the demand for the market especially in North America. Legalization of cannabis in many of the North American countries has led to creation of further demand and enhanced the growth potential of the market. Furthermore, introduction of different cannabis included products has led to expansion of the market size significantly. Utilization of cannabis to treat various medical ailments has been beneficial to the progress of the sector. The north america cannabis market report is categorized on the following basis: Based on Derivatives: Industrial Hemp and Marijuana/Flowers, Other Concentrates/Products which include Keif, Hash, Hash Oil Etc. Based on Applications type: Based on applications the market is segmented into applications of marijuana into medicinal applications, recreational applications and others and applications of hemp into food and baby care, clothing & textile among others North America Cannabis Market Regional Analysis Cannabis market in North America was over USD 3.5 billion in 2015. This industry was mainly operating in the black market; however, with developments in the medical applications of the derivatives such as marijuana and hemp this market experienced significant growth over the past few years. Presently, the cannabis market is not a bare collaboration of the growers or producers of marijuana and hemp; it is rather a conglomerate of science and technology. The U.S. being the largest market in the region was valued over USD 3 billion and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR over 30% between 2016 and 2021. North America Cannabis Market Competitive Analysis A trend of volume-driven growth has been witnessed in the market of late with the development of different varieties of product types. The sector is undergoing considerable transformation which has accelerated the growth pace of the sector. The industry players in the segment are efficiently utilizing their primary resources to initiate long lasting growth changes. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be harnessed by ensuring ongoing process improvements and maintaining financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Conversely, with companies aiming to capture a considerable share of the market segment as early as possible, experimentation with various advantage points is being seriously considered and implemented. Access Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cannabis-market-950 North America Cannabis Market Updates: Jan 2018 Tokyo Smoke merged with DOJA Cannabis Company Ltd., a Kelowna B.C.-based licensed producer, to create a new company, Hiku Brands Company Ltd., which was listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange recently. Tokyo Smoke of TS Brandco Holdings Inc had been attempting previously to manoeuvre into carefully cultivating a cannabis-centered lifestyle brand leading up to recreational legalization in the country. Jan 2018 Canopy Ventures, the new investment arm of a Boulder-based cannabis accelerator is raising a new pool of cash to help early stage companies that have survived their startup pains grow to the next level. They are launching a $50 million venture fund that will focus on tech-based cannabis companies. The accelerator, since inception in 2015, has invested seed-stage capital in 73 companies, several of which have gone through its accelerator program. This new fund will help finance more mature, so-called growth stage companies. Jan 2018 MedReleaf Corp announced recently that it has entered into an arrangement with Canaccord Genuity Corp. and GMP Securities L.P. to buy, on a bought deal basis 3,800,000 units of the company at a price of $26.50 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of $100.7 million. MedReleaf plans on using the net proceeds to fund the acquisition and/or construction of further cannabis production and manufacturing facilities in Canada as well as in other jurisdictions with federal legal markets.
[May 08, 2020] ITRI Unveils Taiwan's First Medical Grade Ventilator Prototype

Taipei, TAIWAN, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The COVID-19 outbreak is raging throughout the world, with the number of confirmed cases globally having exceeded 3.66 million and the number of deaths at 250,000 as of May 7. Foreign demand for ventilators has increased by a factor of 5-10 times in comparison with the past. In response, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and the industrial community have come together in an effort to develop a ventilator. The result has been the completion of a prototype in just 17 days. The ventilator was unveiled today during an online press conference, demonstrating Taiwan's success in using its scientific and technological capabilities to aid in countering the epidemic. This is also boosting opportunities for Taiwan industry in the high-end medical equipment sector, and is demonstrating the power of "Taiwan Helps."

Department of Industrial Technology Director-General Ta-Sheng Lo remarked that the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has been preparing for three stages in epidemic prevention since the outbreak occurred. The first stage was to prepare protective equipment, including masks and protective clothing. Taiwan created a "national face mask team," which is yielding daily output of 17 million masks, as well as a "national protective garments and textiles team," which is providing the PPE to ensure the health of medical personnel. The second stage has been to establish a capacity to detect the virus. Academic Sinica, the National Health Research Institutes, the Ministry of National Defense's Institute of Preventive Medicine, and other institutions have been working together to develop rapid testing technology. ITRI also in a short period unveiled a nucleic acid molecular detection system, which is able to, in just one hour, detect individuals who are still in the preliminary phase of infection, thus helping to prevent the spread of the outbreak. Now, the nation is entering the third stage, in which it is working to strengthen medical care capacities. In the face of the worldwide ventilator shortage, Taiwan has now developed its first ventilator prototype, highlighting its ability to produce high-end medical equipment on its own. This is enabling Taiwan to take advantage of its strengths and become a link in the global ventilator supply chain. ITRI Presdent Edwin Liu commented that in the past, Taiwan relied on imports for the ventilators needed in urgent and critical care. With the support of the MOEA, ITRI has been instrumental in creating Taiwan's first ventilator prototype in just 17 days, and this is significant on four fronts, he said, namely: the early deployment of epidemic prevention resources; boosting opportunities for Taiwan industry in the high-end medical equipment market; establishing an ability in Taiwan to calibrate and verify quality ventilators; and highlighting Taiwan's ability to assist the world in its ventilator needs, demonstrating the "Taiwan Helps" spirit.



At the end of March, U.S. ventilator giant Medtronic shared the basic design specifications of its PB 560 portable ventilator, following which ITRI coordinated resources needed to produce a ventilator, including mechanisms, electronic controls, firmware, software, and data system integration, and it successfully sourced more than 500 key components, which demonstrates the outstanding flexibility and strengths of Taiwan's supply chain. ITRI Vice President and General Director of Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories Chii-Wann Lin stated that since the beginning of the outbreak, ITRI has emphasized the integration of technologies from various disciplines. This has resulted in a series of technologies and applications, such as rapid virus screening, body temperature detection/monitoring, and home care management. ITRI has also been in the lead in responding to the demand for ventilators required in critical care. It leverages its abilities by integrating software and hardware teams, while inviting key industries to participate in various projects. Over the past five years, it has honed its experience in rapid trial production, which has proven crucial in developing Taiwan's first medical grade ventilator prototype.

According to Dr. Lin, ITRI has seized upon three factors to this end. The first key is software: The team successfully interpreted the software program and functions of the Medtronic prototype. The second key is system components: The team actively sought out components from the up-, mid-, and downstream industrial chain, including microprocessors, sensors, fan motors, blowers, and masks, and even is producing some items on its own via 3D printing. The third key is system validation: To domestically produce the key components of the ventilator is the first step. Then the prototype will need to pass software and hardware testing, calibration and validation. ITRI hopes that these efforts can successfully transform an open source design into a real product. Trial production of the prototype yielding 10 ventilators is expected by the end of October for conformity certification. Meanwhile, ITRI expects to recruit even more manufacturers into the production process, and it has set a goal of producing 100 ventilators by the end of next June. ITRI has been demonstrating how technology R&D is protecting Taiwan, along with Taiwan's commitment to working side by side with the rest of the world in fighting the pandemic. About ITRI

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the worlds leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. It focuses on the fields of Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment. Over the years, ITRI has incubated over 280 innovative companies, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote opportunities for international cooperation around the world. For more information, please visit https://www.itri.org/eng . A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b0482369-9ca5-4887-aa35-c21e69e194a7 Media Contact Chloe Chen Office of Marketing Communications, ITRI +886-3-5918167 [email protected]

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By Akbar Mammadov

The Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan has issued a statement on the 28th anniversary of the occupation of Shusha.

"28 years have passed since the occupation of Shusha, one of the cultural centers of Azerbaijan. We do not lose hope and believe that we will definitely return to Shusha and rebuild our destroyed city".

On behalf of more than the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, numbering more than 80,000 people, including on behalf of more than 30,000 representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Shusha region, Ganjaliyev called on the world community to put an end to the aggression by Armenia against the Azerbaijani people and to support the just position of Azerbaijan to give an objective legal assessment to the occupation.

"We declare that a fair solution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is possible only after the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories and the return of the ethnic cleansed Azerbaijanis to their native lands. We, as the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, are ready to peacefully coexist with the Armenian community of the region within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. Only in this case, a sustainable and fair peace can be ensured in the region", the statement concluded.

It should be noted that Armenian armed forces occupied Shusha on 8 may, 1992. As a result of the occupation, 195 civilians were killed and 165 were injured. 114 Azerbaijanis captured by Armenians and detained in Shusha prison were later killed with special cruelty, 58 residents of the city are still missing. Before Shusha was occupied, about 25,000 people lived there, of which more than 24,000 people of Shusha have been become internally displaced persons and settled in 58 regions of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
President Donald Trump said Friday that he is willing to provide Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic opponent, with a rapid COVID-19 testing system so Biden can return to the campaign trail.

Trump, who this week made his first trip out of Washington in more than a month, relies on a federal supply of coronavirus tests so that he can maintain a more traditional schedule, while Biden has been isolating at home for nearly two months.

In a telephone interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said he would be willing to provide the former vice president with the same coronavirus tests he uses.

Yes, 100%. I'd love to see him get out of the basement so he can speak," Trump said, needling Biden for holding virtual campaign events and media interviews from a studio in his home.

He added, that if Biden's team asked for them, We would have it to them today." Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and anyone they come into close contact with are now being tested daily for COVID-19 after one of the president's valets tested positive for the virus this week. The availability of the tests has allowed Trump and Pence to resume a travel schedule and to host business leaders, medical professionals and lawmakers for meetings.

The stockpile of the rapid testing machines, which provide individual results in 5 to 15 minutes is largely controlled by the federal government. Trump on Tuesday personally delivered boxes of test kits to the Navajo Nation, flying them on Air Force One on his trip to Phoenix.

Responding to concerns raised last week by Dr Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the US Congress, that his office did not have the capacity to test all lawmakers returning to Washington, Trump directed that Congress be provided with three of the testing machines.

But in a rare joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Mitch McConnell rejected Trump's offer, directing the test kits to first responders and others on the front lines of fighting the spread of the virus.

There was no immediate response to Trump's offer from the Biden campaign.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shared new details about her plan to send Michigan back to work, but questions still remain unanswered about how the states economy will reopen.

The governors MI Safe Start Plan seeks to incrementally reopen nine types of workplaces across eight regions of the state, starting with low-risk jobs and adding additional businesses over time. Whitmers plan also charts six phases of Michigans progress toward beating COVID-19, setting targets based on transmission rates, access to testing and hospital capacity.

Whitmers Thursday press conference provided the crucial details about her plan and status of Michigans recovery but also left some key questions unanswered. The governors full MI Safe Start Plan is available online.

Michigans approach to reopening the economy: slow, steady and safe

Here are some things we still dont know about the plan to reopen Michigan.

SOURCE: Michigan Executive Office of the Governor

When does the regional approach start?

The MI Safe Start Plan calls for evaluating eight individual regions based on worker travel routes and the proximity of health care facilities.

The health risk of each region will be determined by tracking the trend of positive COVID-19 cases, the capacity of nearby hospitals and the success of contact tracing efforts. Whitmer said some regions will receive approval to bring back workplaces faster than others, based on their progress toward beating the coronavirus.

So far, that hasnt happened; workplaces authorized to come back can open statewide.

This is because the entire state is in the same stage of recovery, Whitmer said Thursday. Right now, all eight regions in Michigan are in the flattening stage, the third of six recovery phases.

A slow crawl back to normalcy ahead for Michigan bars and restaurants from coronavirus restrictions

Whitmer says regions will be treated separately when they pass the next response stage.

As we look to the next phases there certainly could be regional differences, Whitmer said. Thats why we wanted to share the thought process. It is not written in stone, but this is the cadence of ideal regions and ideal next steps.

When do we go from flattening to improving?'

The states Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun struck a cautiously optimistic tone about Michigans journey to flattening the curve in public statements during the last two weeks. Khaldun had more good news to share Thursday: the rate of tests that come back positive for COVID-19 is declining.

Since this outbreak started about one in five of every person who is tested has tested positive for the virus, but in recent weeks that has actually dropped to one in 10, Khaldun said.

Thursday, she highlighted the declining number of cases in Southeast Michigan, the hardest-hit region of the state, and West Michigan, where a recent spike in cases worried public health officials. Khaldun said the average number of cases during the last seven days is down 15%.

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Still, Khaldun said Michigan is still experiencing outbreaks across the state. Theres still more progress to be made before we move into the next stage, the governor concluded.

Michigan is in Phase 3 of 6 in coronavirus response and recovery, governor says

Moving into the next stage allows a number of restrictions to be lifted, including allowing offices to open, and giving a green light to let residents hold small gatherings. So how does Michigan go from flattening to improving?

According to the MI Safe Start Plan, the next phase occurs when the number of new cases and deaths has fallen for a period of time, but overall case levels are still high.

When in the improving phase, most new outbreaks are quickly identified, traced, and contained due to robust testing infrastructure, rapid contact tracing and adequate capacity in the states health systems.

Michigans daily coronavirus death toll climbs to 93, highest in 5 days

"New transmission can take some time to become visible, and we need to understand any impact of previous re-engagement activities on new disease spread before evaluating a transition to the next stage, the plan states. As we move into later phases, or if our progress stalls out, it may take longer to move from one phase to another.

The six phases of the pandemic include:

UNCONTROLLED GROWTH: The increasing number of new cases every day, overwhelming our health systems.

PERSISTENT SPREAD: We continue to see high case levels with concern about health system capacity.

FLATTENING: The epidemic is no longer increasing and the health systems capacity is sufficient for current needs.

IMPROVING: Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are clearly declining.

CONTAINING: Continued case and death rate improvements, with outbreaks quickly contained.

POST-PANDEMIC: Community spread not expected to return.

SOURCE: Michigan Executive Office of the Governor

Does the governors office have specific benchmarks?

You may have noticed the governors plan lacks specific targets for the number of cases and deaths. Whitmer has repeatedly pledged to base her decisions on the best science and public health data available, but the plans benchmarks remain unclear to the public.

For example, the fifth phase of recovery -- containing -- is defined by a continued decrease of cases and deaths where community spread is less common. The plan includes no figures that clearly define when that is happening.

The auto manufacturer says it will take extensive worker safety precautions in reopening its plants as the coronavirus pandemic abates.AP

How long will authorized workplaces need to get started?

Reopening also wont be as easy as setting a date and opening the doors. Industries allowed to open under Whitmers revised orders are required to create a response plan and implement new infection control measures  such as screening employees for infection, revised physical layouts and staggered work shifts to ensure social distancing.

Whitmer authorized manufacturing facilities to get back to work on May 11 under new health and safety measures to protect their workers from infection. It could take businesses more time to adapt to the new standards required to operate safely.

The states Big Three automakers -- Ford Motor Co., Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and General Motors -- are planning a phased restart beginning May 18. Whitmer said the auto manufacturers will start with 25% capacity and ramp up from there.

Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Sandy Baruah said smaller parts manufacturers are poised to reopen next week in order to supply larger facilities, but plants will likely come back online at different times.

I think its going to vary widely by company, Baruah said. I dont think theres going to be just kind of one rule I think its going to depend on how they prepared during this downtime. I think its also going to depend on their ability to bring their employees back. Have they been keeping in touch with their employees, have they made all the necessary safety provisions, has there been any change in their contract statuses?"

Whitmers order carries a wide set of safety measures that must be followed. Manufacturers are required to conduct a daily screening of individuals entering the facility, suspend all non-essential in-person visits, train workers on best practices, provide adequate personal protective equipment, reduce employee interaction where possible, stagger shift schedules and mealtimes, and implement comprehensive disinfection routines.

Two major segments of Michigans economy returned Thursday when construction and real estate employees went back to work. Whitmer authorized those jobs to come back through an executive order signed the previous week.

Delta grounds crew unload boxes of PPE from a Delta 757 plane at Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids on Friday, April 10, 2020. (Anntaninna Biondo | MLive.com)Anntaninna Biondo | MLive.com

How will the state enforce new safety standards?

Violating any of the requirements under Whitmers executive order is punishable by a misdemeanor, but the governor did not provide details on how businesses will be held accountable for following safety requirements.

The Michigan Attorney Generals Office is ultimately responsible, but the office has passed responsibility for enforcing Whitmers stay-at-home orders to local police. That has resulted in reports of lax enforcement of the governors social distancing guidelines in some areas of the state.

Whitmer didnt say whether local police are expected to make sure businesses are staying compliant, but Baruah said that looks to be the plan.

The latest that I have heard regarding enforcement is that the attorney generals office is going to, at least for the time being, give wide latitude to local and county law enforcement, Baruah said. The Attorney Generals Office, nor the governors office frankly, doesnt have the capacity to monitor facilities opening up in various parts of the state.

University of Michigan healthcare worker activist and supporters participate in a socially distanced rally to call for hospitals nationwide to focus on prioritizing workers and patients outside of Rogel Cancer Center: University of Michigan in Ann Arbor Wednesday April, 15, 2020. Nicole Hester/Mlive.com

How will businesses get required masks?

Advisers helping Whitmer craft the economic reopening process made it clear that workplaces will look quite different when they come back.

Masks will be ubiquitous in almost every workplace in Michigan. Gloves and face shields will be in widespread use as well, said DTE Energy Chairman Gerry Anderson, co-chair of Michigans Economic Recovery Council.

Its not clear what role the state will play in supplying businesses with tests or personal protection equipment. Access to both PPE was hard to come by during the early stages of the relief effort, but a steady supply has come from FEMA and local manufacturers have begun to produce PPE to meet the rising demand.

Michigan residents are also required to wear face coverings while in an enclosed public space. Masks must cover a persons nose and mouth, but can be made out of homemade materials like scarves, bandanas, or other fabrics.

Will workplaces be liable for new outbreaks?

The governor promised that workers who dont feel safe returning to work will be protected from retaliation. Business leaders would like similar protections for employers who could face lawsuits from customers and employees who contract COVID-19.

If companies are following the rules and are implementing the rules faithfully and in good faith, there needs to be liability protections for that employer, Baruah said.

Andy Johnson, vice president of government and corporate affairs at the Grand Rapids Regional Chamber of Commerce, said there needs to be reasonable liability protections" for businesses that comply with the governors hygiene standards.

"I think the last thing wed want to see is a crippling surge of lawsuits, Johnson said. I think one thing this whole crisis is pointing out is the importance of business, they truly are the engines driving these tax resources that our local, state and federal governments rely on. We need to make sure theres a sound climate for them to operate again while living and working with the virus being out there.

Lisa Cook, an economics professor at Michigan State University, said it will take time for employees to feel comfortable going back to places that were previously deemed unsafe. The best way businesses can limit liability is to err on the side of caution, she said.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Read more on MLive:

Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Coronavirus turns contact tracing into top priority for county governments

U.S. unemployment rate hits 14.7% amid coronavirus, topping recession levels

Michigans approach to reopening the economy: slow, steady and safe

A slow crawl back to normalcy ahead for Michigan bars and restaurants from coronavirus restrictions
Justin Trudeaus big business Liberal government announced a $77 million subsidy for meat processing firms this week. Presented as necessary to fund personal protective equipment and improve workplace safety, the Liberals cash handout to Cargill, JBS, and other highly-profitable companies underscores the governments support for their ruthless exploitation of their low-paid, precariously employed workforces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The announcement came as the health and safety crisis within Canadas meatpacking industry escalated this week. A third plant in Alberta has now recorded an outbreak of COVID-19 infections. Thirty-six workers out of a 440 person workforce at a Harmony Beef facility, just north of Calgary in Balzac, Alberta have now tested positive for the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, at the Cargill plant in Chambly, Quebec, which employs 500 workers, at least 30 cases have been recorded. An additional 80 workers deemed to have been in close contact with the infected workers have been sent home, meaning more than one-fifth of the workforce is currently off work.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The outbreak at the Harmony Beef facility has given rise to renewed calls to close the plant. The slaughterhouse was closed for four days beginning March 27, after Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors withdrew their services after an initial infection was recorded among the meatpacking workers. Alberta government health and safety officials, who declined to enter the plant, then conducted a virtual video inspection, and gave the go-ahead for production to restart March 31.

A similar virtual check at the giant Cargill plant in High River, Alberta gave it a clean bill of health last month, only to see infections skyrocket in the following days. Workers at that plant were forced back to work Monday after a two week shutdown, despite 935 infections out of a 2,000 person labour force having been recorded, alongside one death and seven hospitalizations. Yesterday, it emerged that the father of a Cargill meatpacker has died from COVID-19, marking the second death in connection with the outbreak.

The continuing rise of positive cases inside the Harmony plant has occurred despite daily temperature checks, the distribution of face masks, the installation of plexiglass work station dividers, and the implementation of social distancing measures where possible.

This phenomenon is not unique to the Harmony workplace. In the United States, where several meatpacking plants were temporarily closed last month, spikes in infection rates have already been recorded after the plants re-opened. Many infections are passed by asymptomatic individuals, negating the effect of temperature-taking protocols as the roll-out of more extensive virus-testing equipment continues to lag dramatically across the continent. Additionally, the nature of the slaughter- and assembly-line work processes, involving close quarter interactions amongst hundreds of individuals, provides ample room for virus transmissions to continue.

The same day that the new infection figures were released at Harmony, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an initial $252 million bailout package for beef and hog farmers and meat processing corporations. The coronavirus outbreaks in the meatpacking industry have caused a 40 percent reduction in beef and pork production over the past month. Although farmers, overstocked with livestock, have been forced to sell their animals for a loss, consumer prices for beef and pork products at the grocery store chains have increased by as much as 40 percent, even as millions of Canadian workers face mounting financial insecurity.

In addition to the $77 million handout to the meatpacking firms, $125 million will go to aid beef and pork producers, and a paltry $50 million has been set aside to buy agricultural products for distribution to the countrys food banks, which have seen a dramatic increase in demand due to the pandemics economic fallout.

These pathetic measures will not even come close to resolving the looming food crisis. As millions of workers and their families struggle to get by on the federal governments minuscule $2,000 per month Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the ruling elite is continuing its strategy of providing rations to workers and hundreds of billions in bailouts to the corporations and investors.

Along with the Trudeau government and its multi-million dollar subsidy to ensure the ongoing ruthless exploitation of meatpackers, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union is playing a pivotal role in forcing workers to risk their lives on the job. The union has issued a series of statements condemning the life-threatening conditions in which workers are being compelled to work, but it is adamantly opposed to organizing any job action to oppose them.

The UFCW has left the meatpackerslargely vulnerable immigrant workers, many of whom are on precarious Temporary Foreign Worker permitsto face the virus alone. As reluctant and terrified workers at the Cargill plant in Alberta were being forced back to work on Monday, local union president Thomas Hesse assured the corporation and the Alberta government that production would restart. We are looking at legal options, said Hesse. We are not asking for a work stoppage. A work stoppage would not be legal.

In other words, the UFCW, like the entire union bureaucracy, values and prioritizes the legal monstrosity that is Canadas labour relations systema system that has helped enforce one round of attacks after another on all sections of workers over the past 40 yearsover the lives of its members and their families.

The UFCWs reliance on the labour and health and safety boards of Alberta, which are controlled by the pro-big business, hard-right United Conservative Party government of Jason Kenney, is a flagrant abdication of its responsibility to protect the well-being of the workers it purports to represent. The union bureaucrats overriding concern is demonstrating to the employers and the state that they are responsible partners who will enforce capitalist laws and contracts.

Similarly, the Syndicat Agriculture Union, which organizes federal meat inspectors, has refused to organize any job action to shut down processing facilities that it publicly denounces as unsafe, and has urged the government to order closed until health concerns are addressed. Without on-site inspectors, meat processing facilities are not allowed to operate.

For his part, Prime Minister Trudeau, whose government oversees meat inspections, washed his hands of any responsibility, by declaring the health crisis in the plants to be a strictly provincial matter.

Left to their own devices and without a political leadership, workers in the industrywho are deemed essential and not covered by provincial government lockdown ordersare increasingly recording their fear of virus infection and opposition to unsafe working conditions by absenting themselves from work. Last month, absenteeism rates by meatpackers at JBS in Brooks, Alberta reached levels that threatened the closure of the facility. Up to 1,000 absences were recorded in a single day. Management, in an attempt to keep one shift going, offered a temporary $4 per hour shift premium for the low-paid workforce, but that had little impact on the terrified workers. As of this writing, 769 workers have been infected, plus another 500 in the town of 15,000. There have been four deaths.

Meatpackers must demand that the plants be shut down so that comprehensive safety measures can be taken to protect them from the virus. They must intervene with their own independent program and form their own rank-and-file committees separate from the rotten unions to protect their lives and livelihoods. This is a program that begins with social needs, not what the corporate bosses claim they can afford.

This program should include the rollout of mass testing, contact tracing and quarantining to contain the virus; the shutting down of all nonessential industries with full pay for all workers affected; the provision of masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment to medical staff and all other essential workers; and the investment of billions in the health care system to provide the best possible care to those infected by the virus.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued the first emergency use authorization for a coronavirus test use the gene-editing tool CRISPR.

The team, which include scientists from several institutions, says the test can detect if a patient has coronavirus in about an hour.

It works by using a molecule to search for the virus's genes in a sample. If it finds the virus, the molecule is activated and it releases a detectable signal that 'glows'.

What's more, officials says the test detected coronavirus 100 percent of the time, meaning it produced no false negatives.

Despite only being authorized for emergency use, this is the first time the FDA is allowing a CRISPR tool to be used in patients.

The FDA issued emergency use authorization for a retooling of the CRISPR gene-editing technology a coronavirus test. Pictured: Nurse Latasha Ivey administers a nasal test at a coronavirus testing center on the Alabama State University campus in Montgomery, May 6

It uses a molecule that can find viral RNA instead of human DNA, in nose and throat samples, and glows when it's been found. Pictured: Dr Jose Gilberto Montoya taking nasal swab samples as part of his study to develop an antibody coronavirus test in Palo Alto, California, April 29

A sous-vide water bath incubating samples at 138 degrees because the samples need to be kept at a specific temperature

The test was developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Ragon Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is being marketed by Sherlock Biosciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

CRISPR has drawn excitement for its potential to correct genetic diseases, as well as alarm, after a Chinese scientists revealed last year that he had gene-edited a pair of twins in the womb.

The technology is comprised of remarkable capabilities: it can find particular genes along a strand of DNA, then snip out the faulty piece and finally replace it with a corrected version of the gene.

One of the leaders of the research team, Dr Feng Zhang is a molecular biologist who is a co-inventor of the gene-editing technology.

'CRISPR is ready and has come of age,' Rahul Dhanda, Sherlock's president and CEO, told Forbes.

'Not only are we validating and first to prove Crispr's capabilities of any therapeutic or diagnostic company, but it's also addressing one of the greatest healthcare issues to emerge in our lifetime.'

Dhanda said the company has been focusing on the technology to treat chronic and infectious diseases, but switched the entire company's focus to coronavirus as the pandemic grew.

'I told everyone who worked for Sherlock that we are going to be a COVID-19 company until we have a solution that can make a difference,' he told Forbes.

The first step of Sherlock's test requires a health professional taking a nasal or throat swab sample from a patient.

Then researchers make several copies of the sample's genetic material and keep it at a specific temperature.

Next. a CRISPR molecule called Cas13, is added to the copies.

If the molecule finds any RNA sequences, it breaks them off into little pieces that glow due to a fluorescent indicator.

Sherlock said in 2,000 tests it ran before the FDA granted emergency use authorization, there were no false negatives. Pictured, left to right: Sherlock Biosciences cofounders Omar Abudayyeh, Jonathan Gootenberg, Rahul Dhanda, Jim Collins and Pardis Sabeti

The team is also working on another test using CRISPR but that would offer a way to screen for the virus at home without sending a sample to a lab. It displays negative (left) or positive (right) results on paper strips similar to a pregnancy test

In the nearly 2,000 tests Sherlock ran before the FDA issued authorization, the technology positively identified the virus 100 percent of the time.

That means there wee no false negatives.

Sherlock says it is working with a partner to scale up production and will reveal plans to distribute its kits in the next few weeks.

The team is also working on another test using CRISPR but that would offer a way to screen for the virus at home without sending a sample to a lab.

All of the agents that react to the sample can do so in one test tube, then a paper dipstick shows the results, similar to how a pregnancy test displays results.

In theory, a person could put their own sample in a tube, where it would mix with the CRISPR enzyme and reagent, react, and turn either the positive or negative stripe on the paper strip darker.

In early tests, it reacts with saliva also, which would make the test even easier to perform in the comfort of home without risking exposure.

In lab experiments, the CRISPR test proved 97 percent sensitive - meaning it only failed to identify coronavirus in samples where the virus was present - and 100 percent specific, meaning it never mistakes something else for coronavirus.

That puts it on par with the other available diagnostics for coronavirus.

'The ability to test for COVID-19 at home, or even in pharmacies or places of employment, could be a game-changer for getting people safely back to work and into their communities,' Dr Feng Zhang told STAT News.

'Creating a point-of-care tool is a critically important goal to allow timely decisions for protecting patients and those around them.'
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - May 7, 2020) - Cuda Oil and Gas Inc. (TSXV: CUDA) ("Cuda" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an Agreement with the Company's institutional lender (the "Lender") to extend the expiration of its 1st and 2nd Loan Facilities (the "Facilities") with an aggregate principal amount of $43.6 million, from June 26, 2020 and March 31, 2020, respectively, to July 31, 2020. In connection with the extension of the Facilities, interest on the 2nd Loan Facility, with a principal amount of $8.3 million, was increased by 725 basis points. There was no change to interest on the 1st Loan Facility . In addition to the extension, the Company also received an unsecured promissory note from an outside party in the amount of $100,000.

Glenn Dawson, President and Chief Execuitve Officer of Cuda, stated: "In spite of unprecedented volatility in commodity prices which has lead to severe financial duress throughout the energy industry worldwide, the extension of both the 1st and 2nd Loan Facilities and the establishment of a new unsecured promissory note speaks to our Lenders' confidence in our asset in the Powder River Basin and our progress to advance the miscible gas-flood program. Progress on the development of the asset continues to exceed expectations and production at the asset remains economic at $15/bbl WTI. We look forward to updating our stakeholders on field-level results of the program shortly."

KES 7 Capital Inc. ("KES 7") acted as financial advisor to the Company. Subject to the approval of the TSX-V, the Company is to issue warrants as commission for advisory services rendered based on a fee of $25,000 calculated using the Black Scholes Model with the strike price on the day of signing of the Agreement to extend the Loan Facilities.

About Cuda Oil and Gas Inc.

Cuda Oil and Gas Inc. is engaged in the business of exploring for, developing and producing oil and natural gas, and acquiring oil in Wyoming and Alberta properties. The Cuda management team has worked closely together for over 20 years in both private and public company environments and has an established track record of delivering strong shareholder returns. Cuda will continue to implement its proven strategy of exploring, acquiring, and exploiting with a long-term focus on large, light oil resource- based assets across North America including significant operational experience in the United States. The Cuda management team brings a full spectrum of geotechnical, engineering, negotiating and financial experience to its investment decisions.

Story continues

For further information please contact:

Glenn Dawson

President and Chief Executive Officer

Cuda Oil and Gas Inc.

(403) 454-0862

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties and are based on forecasts of future operational or financial results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. In particular, this news release includes forward-looking information relating to the Company's Credit Facility and use of proceeds there, from exploration and development activities, and activity levels in the Company's core areas. Risk factors that could prevent forward-looking statements from being realized include market conditions, third party and regulatory approvals, ongoing permitting requirements, the actual results of current exploration and development activities, operational risks, risks associated with drilling and completions, uncertainty of geological and technical data, conclusions of economic evaluations and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined as well as future oil and gas prices. Although Cuda has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention and has no obligation or responsibility, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55530
Kozhikode: An Air Indian repatriation flight from Dubai with 182 Indian nationals onboard landed in Kozhikode, Kerala on Thursday (May 8, 2020) night. The flight took off from Dubai International Airport evacuating Indians stranded in the city due to coronavirus lockdown.

"The flight from Dubai to Kozhikode had a total of 182 passengers onboard - 177 adults and 5 children," said Kerala's Department of Information and Public Relations. The evacuated citizens will be sent to the Institutional Quarantine facilities set up by the district administrations in their respective districts, Kerala government officials said.

Pregnant women, people needing immediate treatment, those returning to attend ceremonies connected to the death of a close relative, aged people needing continuous assistance and children under 10 years will be permitted to go to their houses, where they will be under strict home quarantine (self-isolation) for 14 days, officials said.

Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri took to Twitter and gave the confirmation of both the Air India flights successfully completing the evacuation process on Thursday. Puri said, ''Mission Vande Bharat begins. First two flights bring home Indian citizens from the UAE.177 passengers plus 4 infants reach Cochin from Abu Dhabi. 177 passengers plus 5 infants reach Kozhikode from Dubai. State govt will now arrange for their mandatory 14-day quarantine.''

Mission Vande Bharat begins. First two flights bring home Indian citizens from the UAE. 177 passengers plus 4 infants reach Cochin from Abu Dhabi.

177 passengers plus 5 infants reach Kozhikode from Dubai. State govt will now arrange for their mandatory 14 day quarantine. pic.twitter.com/sVteZkd2Tj  Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 7, 2020

The flight landed at Kozhikode International Airport on Thursday. The repatriation was carried out under India's massive evacuation effort named 'Vande Bharat Mission'.

Earlier, the first repatriation Air India Express flight with 181 passengers from Abu Dhabi landed at Cochin International Airport.

India has commenced the massive evacuation operation beginning today. Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad amid the COVID-19-induced lockdown.

Starting from 7 May, 64 flights will take off for 12 countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Maldives, Singapore, and the US.
The return of silk masks

Most of the cloth masks on the market are made from familiar materials such as cotton. Why did you come up with the idea of making silk masks that are thin, soft, and of high quality?

The idea of making silk masks was not mine but my 8-year-old daughters. She has been dreaming of becoming a fashion designer for the past three years, so she is always interested in fabrics such as silks. I have also sent my children to the silk weaving village in Ha Tay to visit the weaving factory, where they met the famous silk weaver Phan Thi Thuan, listening to his explanations about the process of incubating silk weaving and the benefits of the material to the skin. So, when medical masks became scarce and people were encouraged to use cloth masks, she came up with the idea of using silk as a material for masks.

People often think that masks are only used when they are at polluted places, and then throw them away. Therefore, the material used to make masks will usually be disposable items such as the ones for medical masks or other popular materials such as cotton. But the COVID-19 pandemic caused people to wear masks all the time when going out and going to work. Common materials have disadvantages such as with regards to temperature and hard surfaces that can cause skin damage. So, her idea is indeed very interesting.

For the first time, I looked at my daughter as a future fashion designer instead of thinking it was just a wish that children usually forget over time. So, my two children and I discussed and divided the work, and then we started sewing masks for everyone in the house, relatives, and friends. She gave the masks a name by combining her and her grandmothers name because her grandmother also had the dream of becoming a fashion designer.

According to your assessment, what made silk masks more special than other types of cloth masks on the market?

Silk is made from silkworm cocoons that contain a variety of skin-friendly amino acids and proteins so it does not irritate but moisturises and softens the skin. Silk also has natural antimicrobial properties and regulates the temperature so it feels cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Silk has long been known as the most expensive and luxurious material. Throughout the world and in Vietnam, silk represents elegance. In the past, silk was only affordable for the aristocracy. Today, silk has fortunately also become available for many other people.

From which traditional silk weaving village are you sourcing your material and why did you choose it?

Between bags of materials and modern motifs, my daughter and I chose silk with traditional patterns, woven by the Nha Xa handicraft village in Ha Nam province. This village is famous for its traditional weaving method which gives the masks a very unique feel. Some of my friends who are fashion designers or models are very interested in my Nha Xa silk masks. For me, my work means to do something together with my loved ones and bond with my family. You could say, each of us did one stitch according to ones own strength. The seams are not perfect as we are not professionals but we just hope when people hold or wear it, they will feel positive energy. Though foreigners usually do not like wearing masks, they seem to like our silk masks.

Do you plan to expand your operations instead of working on a small scale?

With quite a lot of orders, we are receiving a lot of help from friends. In a particular case, we also received the help of a famous nanoscientist from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. When we offered 10 homemade silk masks to support the frontline doctors against the pandemic, she was the buyer. She really liked the idea of a pretty silk mask with traditional village patterns so she decided to help me upgrade my masks by using antibacterial silver nanotechnology. She impregnated and fixed silver nanoparticles onto a pad and put it on a silk mask, thereby making the mask much stronger and durable. With her support, we have improved our masks from two to three layers, with additional space to add nanosilver pads or activated carbon pads according to the users liking.

In your opinion, how does your business support Vietnams traditional silk production?

Modern life with the popularity of social networks makes everything hasty and urgent. The internet quickly connects us with every one thing but sometimes alienates us from ourselves, our roots, and our cultural identity. The silk masks are not only beautiful and good for the skin but also help people to experience the traditional silk material and contribute to the prosperity and renown of Vietnamese silk villages. Not only do the artisans get more jobs, but young people who have been living in the city for a long time can return to work in their homeland.

If my daughter still wants to become a fashion designer in the future, I will guide her towards Vietnamese silk. She has now gathered a group of little friends with similar fashion design interests. The children will plan a separate silk road to explore the Vietnamese silk world. My job is to contact artisans in silk weaving villages in Ha Nam, Ha Tay, Thai Binh, Lam Dong, and others, where the children can speak to the artisans directly. For me, the most important thing is to accompany my daughters dream and witness her growth.
Curious just how far your dollar goes in San Antonio?

We've rounded up the latest places for rent via rental sites Zumper and Apartment Guide to get a sense of what to expect when it comes to hunting down apartment rentals in San Antonio if you've got up to $1,500/month earmarked for your rent.

Take a look at the listings, below. (Note: Prices and availability are subject to change.)

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

21626 Stonewall Parkway (Friedrich Wilderness Park)

Listed at $1,415/month, this 935-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment is located at 21626 Stonewall Parkway.

In the unit, you can anticipate a dishwasher and hardwood flooring. Amenities offered in the building include secured entry and garage parking. Good news for pet lovers: The rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly. Look out for a $400 pet deposit.

Per Walk Score ratings, the area around this address isn't very walkable, has minimal bike infrastructure and doesn't offer many public transit options.

(Take a look at the complete listing here.)

17239 Shavano Ranch

Next, there's this three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment located at 17239 Shavano Ranch. It's listed for $1,423/month for its 1,352 square feet.

The building features secured entry and a swimming pool. In the apartment, expect to find a dishwasher, a walk-in closet and a mix of hardwood floors and carpeting. Pet lovers are in luck: The rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly. Future tenants needn't worry about a leasing fee.

Per Walk Score ratings, this location isn't very walkable, isn't particularly bikeable and has some transit options.

(Take a gander at the complete listing here.)

7343 Azalea Square

Then, there's this 1,765-square-foot three-bedroom, two-bathroom residence at 7343 Azalea Square that's going for $1,425/month.

Expect to find in-unit laundry, a dishwasher and a renovated kitchen in the residence. The building offers garage parking and outdoor space. Pet owners, rejoice: The rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly. There isn't a leasing fee associated with this rental.

According to Walk Score, the surrounding area is car-dependent, is somewhat bikeable and offers limited transit options.

(See the full listing here.)

8511 Tesoro Hills

Finally, check out this 1,539-square-foot three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom abode that's located at 8511 Tesoro Hills. It's listed for $1,475/month.

When it comes to building amenities, anticipate garage parking. In the unit, you can expect hardwood flooring and a dishwasher. Good news for pet lovers: The property is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly.

According to Walk Score's assessment, the area around this address is car-dependent, is somewhat bikeable and has some transit options.

(Check out the complete listing here.)

Working with a tight budget? Here are the cheapest rentals recently listed in San Antonio.

This story was created automatically using local real estate data from Zumper and Apartment Guide, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Additionally, get free local real estate marketing ideas and tools for agents, brokers and more.

Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Complicated Kansas City Reopen Almost Explained

REOPEN KC: When and how parts of the Kansas City metro area will reopen Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said their stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 outbreak will end May 3. Many Kansas City metro area cities and counties are on board with the move to reopen businesses and institutions.In Missouri, local health authorities may enforce more restrictive public health requirements for businesses or individuals.

More Medical Protest

Truman Medical workers demand more PPE, COVID-19 testing KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) - On Thursday, local hospital workers were demanding hazard pay as they work on the frontlines of this pandemic. Among the list of things they want from Truman Medical Center are more PPE and COVID-19 testing for all hospital workers.

Prez Trump Contradicts CDC

Trump administration rejects CDC guidance on reopening US amid coronavirus The Trump administration will not implement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 17-page draft recommendation for reopening America, a senior CDC official confirmed to CNN Thursday.

Reopen How-To . . .

The Dos and Don'ts of Reopening Many Americans now can eat at restaurants, go shopping, and get a haircut. But should they? Editor's Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. The month of May marks a new phase of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

COVID-19 Competition Contd

As US-China rivalry heightens, the pandemic could tilt global power in Beijing's favor The coronavirus pandemic will fuel the already-bad rivalry between the U.S. and China, and could even tilt the balance of global power in Beijing's favor, analysts say. Tensions have already flared on a few fronts since the pandemic started. Washington and Beijing are sniping at one another about the true extent and origin of the coronavirus outbreak.

Pandemic STD Risk Reboot

Coronavirus found in men's semen (CNN) The new coronavirus can persist in men's semen even after they have begun to recover, a finding that raises the possibility the virus could be sexually transmitted, Chinese researchers said Thursday. A team at Shangqiu Municipal Hospital tested 38 male patients treated there at the height of the pandemic in China, in January and February.

Local New Rules Again

KC is "soft opening"-what does that mean and why have the rules already changed? Photo by Jim Nimmo We're in The New New Normal. What does that look like? Most non-essential business operations that are open to the public, such as retail stores and personal care services, can resume in-person operations, operating under what the mayor described as "a 10/10/10 rule."

Our nightly glimpse at the local impact of the pandemic in Kansas City and throughout the Heartland . . .More local links and a big picture perspective after the jump . . .Developing . . .
Sudhir Suryawanshi By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: A 21-year-old woman from Nalasapora died on Thursday in Konkan while she walked on foot almost 230 km on foot in scorching heat with her family members to reach their home at Ratnagiri, Maharashtra during the lockdown.

Tragically, Sonali Budare died a few kilometres away from her native place in Ratnagiri.

Bundare's death is not an isolated incident, as scores of migrants are struggling to reach their home on feet under scorching heat.

The migrants are losing all hopes of arrangement of special train to take them to faraway in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh. They are forming groups and marching towards their native places, said former Congress leader Kripashankar Singh.

He claimed in Mumbai alone, three lakh migrants are desperate to reach their homes in Uttar Pradesh. The list of migrants is huge while very few are able to get the train. On the other hand, Covid cases in Mumbai, particularly in slum pockets, are rising every day. Fearing death in congested contaminated areas, they are forming the 10 to 20 peoples group and marching on foot, Singh said.

I have written everyone to address this migrants issue but my demands are falling on deaf ear. The central and the state government should step in and resolve this crisis.

On Wednesday, several videos had gone viral where migrants are seen marching away from Mumbai to reach homes in Uttar Pradesh.

The Maharashtra government issued an order on Thurs-day that migrants do not need to obtain an individual medical certificate for a travel pass.

The health screening will be done while boarding the train at the railway stations.
(Newser)  A new work by the elusive street artist Banksy, honoring health workers, has been unveiled at a British hospital. The framed picture, titled "Game Changer," depicts a young boy sitting on the floor playing with a nurse superhero toy. Batman and Spiderman action figure toys lie in a wastepaper basket next to the boy. The nurse figure, complete with a cape and a face mask, wears an apron featuring a red crossthe only spot of color in the black-and-white work. The piece was placed on display Wednesday in a corridor at Southampton General Hospital in southern England, the AP reports. The artist left a note for hospital workers, saying: "Thanks for all youre doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if (it's) only black and white."

story continues below

Health officials said it was a "massive boost to morale" for everyone at the hospital, which has seen at least two members of staff die after contracting the new coronavirus. "It will be really valued by everyone in the hospital as people get a moment in their busy lives to pause, reflect and appreciate this piece of art, said Paula Head, chief executive of University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. The artworkwhich Artnet.com called "surprisingly earnest"will be auctioned later to raise money for national health charities, a spokeswoman for Banksy said. In April, per Sky News, a face mask was painted onto "The Girl with the Pierced Eardrum," a Banksy mural in Bristol, England.

(Read more Banksy stories.)
How do we know that was Flynns intention? Because he said so in his Nov. 30, 2017, guilty plea admitting he had made false statements about his conversations with Kislyak. The statement of the offense that accompanied the agreement states that on Dec. 29, 2016, after discussions with another transition team official, Flynn called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.
US House Intel Releases Trove of Transcripts From Russia Probe

Sputnik News

21:41 GMT 07.05.2020(updated 22:40 GMT 07.05.2020)

The US House Intelligence Committee released a trove of documents related to its investigations of US President Donald Trump potentially having sought help winning elections from outside the US. The tranche includes 57 witness transcripts from the Russiagate and Ukraine scandal probes.

The documents were released following requests by House Republicans, with release of the Russiagate documents having been previously approved by a 2018 vote, as well as redactions by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"The transcripts released today richly detail evidence of the Trump campaign's efforts to invite, make use of, and cover up Russia's help in the 2016 presidential election," House Intelligence Committee chairperson Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a Thursday news release accompanying the documents.

"These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests. Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the President released his hold on this damning information and evidence," Schiff continued.

"Like the Ukraine investigation that would follow it, the investigation into the Trump campaign's effort to seek and utilize Russian help in 2016 and to obstruct justice, reveal a President who believes that he is above the law. But we are a country where the truth still matters and where right still matters. Our investigation into the Trump campaign, and the evidence we uncovered despite formidable obstruction, affirms that."

Some of those whose committee interviews were released include former Trump adviser Steve Bannon; former Directors of National Intelligence James Clapper and Dan Coats; Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen; former Trump campaign manager in 2015 and 2016 Corey Lewandowski; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Counselor to the President John Podesta; Blackwater USA founder Eric Prince; former US Ambassadors to the United Nations Samantha Power and Susan Rice; former Trump adviser Roger Stone; Trump's eldest son and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, Donald Trump Jr.; and numerous others. One name is redacted.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller's April 2019 report on the Russian collusion investigation found no evidence to support the accusation that Trump's 2016 election campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the election, but did claim to find evidence of Russian attempts to influence the election, such as through buying ads on social media. Russia has denied all accusations of attempted interference.

Trump was also accused of having solicited help from the Ukrainian government in the summer of 2019 by asking the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open an investigation into former US Vice President Joe Biden, who has since become the presumptive Democratic Party nominee to challenge Trump in the November 2020 election. The probe would have investigated Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and the latter's involvement with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings. The elder Biden pressured Kiev to end a probe into the company in 2016, while Hunter Biden sat on the company's board.

Trump was impeached in December 2019 for abuse of power as well as impeding the House of Representatives' investigation of this affair, and he was acquitted in the January 2020 trial of both charges by the Senate.

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'We'd Like to Do It': Trump Says US, Russia Looking Into Moving Ahead on Arms Control Deal

Sputnik News

19:41 GMT 07.05.2020(updated 20:00 GMT 07.05.2020)

Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, US President Donald Trump indicated the two countries are ready to discuss arms control agreements.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday he and Putin were both interested in discussion new arms control agreements.

"We are talking about arms control with Russia and we will go forward with that and we are talking about it very seriously," Trump said. "They'd like to do it and we'd like to do it."

Earlier in the day, the White House released a statement about their phone call, saying, "President Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race."

This mirrors what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month after the latter indicated a willingness to discuss extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires next year. The agreement limits the number of different types of nuclear weapons the US and Russia may construct.

While the US and Russia each control thousands of nuclear weapons, China is believed to have just 300 - enough only to deter attack, according to Beijing.

No mention was made, however, of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty abandoned by the United States last year amid claims Russia had broken the agreement. Since the treaty officially lapsed in August 2019, the US has pushed ahead with a series of missiles with ranges that would violate the INF Treaty were it still in effect.

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Its that time of year when peoples thoughts turn toward to firing up the grill.

But social-distancing rules in place across Illinois have put a damper on the typical beer-and-burgers cookouts with friends.

Now the COVID-19 pandemic just might make the burgers  and other meats, too  disappear.

Some shoppers in the Jacksonville area said they have noticed fewer beef and pork products in grocery store cases and higher prices for what is available. A few fast-food restaurants have even posted signs warning customers their favorite menu items might not be available.

Some large national grocery chains, including Kroger, Costco and Hy-Vee, are limiting the amount of chicken, pork and beef that can be purchased at one time.

Hardest hit has been pork processing, with production down an estimated 50%. Slowdowns in the beef industry have cut production by about 25%, according to analysts.

At the heart of the problem is the spread of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants, some of which have been forced to shut down and others that have had to slow production to reduce the spread. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 4,913 meat and poultry plant workers had been diagnosed with the coronavirus as of last week.

The stoppages and slowdowns have fed into some supply chains.

Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson said in a blog post that, as a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.

Todd Penegor, CEO of fast-food giant Wendys, told investors a challenging tightness in supply availability could last several more weeks.

McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski tweeted last week that, While we are not immune to the immediate pressures threatening our global community, we came into this situation better positioned than almost anyone in our industry and we believe that we will strengthen our competitive advantages following the crisis.

Jones Meat & Locker in Jacksonville has seen no sign of a meat shortage, owner Terry Jones said, noting that he has seen some increases in meat prices.

The store also has seen an increase in sales as customers stock up.

Because of the scares, people are buying a lot more, Jones said.
New Delhi, May 8 : Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday said if doctors and scientists are saying that COVID-19 cases will reach its peak in June, it might happen, adding patterns of other countries are also similar.

While speaking to the media, Jain was commenting on AIIMS-Delhi Director Randeep Guleria's prediction that India's COVID-19 cases are increasing, and it is likely that peak can come in June and July.

"All these predictions are made by doctors and scientists. Earlier also, cases were predicted, but the cases are lesser than what was predicted, possibly because of the lockdown. If they say that COVID-19 cases will reach their peak in June, it might happen, patterns of other countries are also similar." Jain said there is no question of hiding any data by the Delhi government -- be it of the common man or of health workers -- because if someone tests positive, it should not be hidden.

"Once the reports come, the hospitals have to inform the government whether they are health workers or common people. Across the world, we are witnessing that the frontline workers are more vulnerable to this infection but in Delhi, the situation is better." The Health Minister also said the Delhi government has ordered all test reports should be given within 24 hours, otherwise, the labs cannot conduct testing.

"If due to any reason, there is a delay, action will be taken against them after 48 hours. This has happened as some labs were taking 10-15 days for testing of samples." He said construction work has been allowed in Delhi, and it will take time to start again at sites where bigger constructions were on. "For construction workers, the employers should make their stay arrangements at their respective sites." Jain said there are 5,980 COVID-19 cases in Delhi.

"The total number of patients that have recovered in the state now stands at 1,931. Among those undergoing treatment, 87 people are in ICU and 13 are on ventilators," said Jain.

He informed that people from Tablighi Jamaat are being released on orders, while foreigners related to Jamaat will be handled by the Ministry of External Affairs.

"A COVID-19 care centre with nearly 400 beds will start in the next 2-3 days at Burari." On slow working of the e-token site for alcohol, Jain said the government has launched the e-token service for liquors from Thursday and there are some issues with the site which are being worked out.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Patients often do not take social media into consideration when looking for a dermatologist, according to a survey from researchers at the George Washington University. The survey was published recently in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.

As of 2019, 79% of Americans have a social media presence on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Many dermatologists consider social media to be a useful tool for building their practices and recruiting patients. However, limited data exists about whether a provider's social media presence is a driver in attracting new patients to their practice.

A rapidly growing number of dermatologists are advocating for the value of social media to promote their practices. Only one other survey has been conducted on patient perception of social media. There hasn't been enough to show us how effective social media is as a marketing tool for dermatologists." Adam Friedman, MD, Study Senior Author and Interim Chair, Department of Dermatology, GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences

The GW research team distributed a 10-question online survey to a diverse patient population to evaluate their perceptions of social media and what aspects of a dermatologist's site are the most helpful.

Only 25% of respondents aged 18-30 years old thought social media was extremely or very important, suggesting that leaning on social media may not be the best way to grow a practice.

The results also indicated that respondents who did utilize social media for these purposes were interested in seeing patient education, viewing patient reviews, as well as dermatologists' experience levels rather than personal information.

"While patients overall may not rely on social media to select a dermatologist nor be interested in nonmedical content, many of our respondents did express interest in educational content written by their dermatologists on social media," Friedman said.

"Practitioners should still count social media as a tool in building their practices and engaging their current patients, however, it should be one of many methods that they rely on to recruit new patients."

The authors say that further research needs to be done to determine whether social media is an effective educational tool for dermatologists.
(Bloomberg) -- Gympass built one of Latin Americas fastest-growing tech companies by making it easier for corporate employees to work out.

The eight-year-old Sao Paulo startup signed contracts with around 2,000 companies, which gave their workers access to some 53,000 gyms in 14 countries, including the U.S. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and almost all gyms closed. The companys business model was upended nearly overnight.

It was a code red, something so important that everything else is put on hold until its solved, said Leandro Caldeira, the companys chief executive officer for Latin America. We focused everything on building a platform so that the gyms could provide online classes.

Investors poured a record $4.6 billion of venture capital into Latin American startups in 2019, according to LAVCA, the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America. Now, with economies shut down and governments imposing quarantines, the companies, guided by their investors, are trying to survive by cutting expenditures, slashing salaries and jobs and, in some cases, changing their business models.

Gympass -- which last year became a tech unicorn valued at $1.2 billion when it raised $300 million in an investment round led by SoftBank Group Corp. -- launched its online program in two weeks. Through the platform, members can access some 50,000 classes as well as health apps, like web-based therapy. Thats helped limit the number of cancellations, Caldeira said.

Across the region, investors are telling their companies to take quick action to preserve funds, said Julie Ruvolo, director of venture capital at LAVCA. Right now, cash is king, she said. The question now is really how quickly companies will pivot and respond.

One of the regions largest homegrown venture investors, Buenos Aires-based Kaszek Ventures, began sounding the alarm in early March, telling its portfolio of about 40 companies to switch to war mode. The company, which itself last year raised $600 million for new investments, has seen revenue for the firms in which it has stakes fall by as much as 30%, said Hernan Kazah, Kaszeks co-founder and managing partner.

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While some startups wont survive the crisis, many firms are flush with cash thanks to the amounts they raised last year, he said. To survive, you have to be more frugal than anything and defend cash, Kazah said. Not everyone will make it, but hopefully most will and well end up producing great companies.

Startups in some of the hardest-hit sectors are moving to adjust to the new reality.

Urbvan normally shuttles commuters around Mexico Citys traffic-clogged streets with a fleet of wifi-equipped vans. That all changed when the world started working from home. The company is now focusing on delivering food and medical equipment, and providing transportation to workers at hospitals and other essential industries, said Joao Albino, the co-founder.

At first, we went from operating 300 vans down to 20, he said. With this change, the recovery has been like a V. Were up to around 200 vans now.

In Colombia, the startup Ayenda became the countrys largest lodging chain by working with small, budget hotels to spruce up their properties, re-brand them and give them an online presence. Nearly all of its 140 locations have closed temporarily, forcing the company to cut costs and ponder new business models.

One idea is already in the works: The company is launching a food business, using the kitchens of some of those hotels, said Andres Sarrazola, the chief executive officer.

Were in the hospitality industry, the eye of the hurricane, so weve had to focus on limiting losses, he said. After taking those steps, the company can survive for 20 months, using the nearly $9 million it raised last year, Sarrazola said.

For Gympass, the addition of online content has already helped bring in some new subscribers, and, most importantly, helped it preserve cash, Caldeira said.

We will definitely survive and after this crisis well be much stronger than before, he said.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

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In late February, several weeks before the coronavirus outbreak shut down American cities and rose to the level of a national crisis, Kerri Rawson began to feel sick. I was hit out of nowhere with what feels like the flu at first, says Rawson, who also has asthma and takes cardiac medication for high-blood pressure. Youre fine, and then all of a sudden you have a fever below 100F and chest congestion.

Rawson is a 41-year-old writer and mother of two in Florida. (You may recognize her name from her 2019 memoir, about growing up as the daughter of a serial killer.) Her fever lasted for 11 days, during which time her children also developed above-normal temperatures. Her sons fever rose to 102F but tapered off in a few days; her daughter, however, developed a barking cough that Rawson had never heard before. A doctor diagnosed the 11-year-old with bronchitis.

Thats when my first conversation about COVID-19 started, Rawson says. On March 6, still struggling with fever and chest congestion, she asked her family doctor whether she might have contracted the coronavirus. He was skeptical. (There were, at that point, fewer than 10 reported cases in Florida.) He asked me questions about traveling and contact, Rawson says. He said, Our hands are basically tied by the CDC [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. We cant test. Call the state health department, call the local one. Rawson did so, but was told they were only administering tests to those who had traveled internationally, had contact with someone who had, or were in critical condition, none of which described her.

Over the following week, Rawsons condition worsened. Her blood pressure rose, her heart rate was up, and she began to have shortness of breath. Rawson saw a family doctor. I just sort of collapsed on her table, she says, and told the doctor she was worried it might be COVID-19.

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The doctor sent her to the emergency room. I was basically in hypertensive crisis by the time I got to the ER, Rawson says. She was admitted to a hospital in Altamonte Springs, FL, and placed in a room on an observation floor with a sign on the door requiring nurses to take precautions like mandatory gloves and surgical masks. Doctors tested her for everything under the sun, she says, but not COVID-19.

Courtesy of Kerri Rawson | Kerri Rawson

It had now been nearly two weeks since Rawson first noticed any symptoms, and she still had not been tested for the virusa sadly common tale during the early weeks of the pandemic, when U.S. officials overwhelmingly failed to make widespread testing available to sick Americans. Floridas pandemic response, in particular, was compromised by meager funding to state and county health agencies and cuts to research funding, according to a Tampa Bay Times investigation, as well as Governor Ron DeSantiss slowness to issue a stay-at-home order.

On March 12, Rawson received a CT scan. When doctors saw the results, they freaked out, she says. She was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia. Most concerningly, the scan of Rawsons lungs revealed ground-glass opacitiesabnormalities in the lungs that show up as grayish patches, resembling ground glassthat are common among COVID-19 patients. When they saw the ground-glass look in the lobes, they contacted infectious disease, and thats when everything hit the fan, Rawson says. Friday morning, the nurse comes barreling in, tosses all my stuff on my bed. They throw a sheet over me. They put me in the hallway, they wipe down my bed, put a mask on me, and rush me through a couple floors up to the zero-air containment room.

Finally, on March 13, after being moved to an isolation room on a progressive care floor and prescribed two different antibiotics, Rawson received the nasal and throat swab test for COVID-19. Six hours later, the test came back negative.

Rawson believes it was a false negative, and that the test was not administered correctly. I ended up having a really bad nosebleed and my swabs were covered in blood, Rawson says. [A nurse] in the ER said that could have even affected the test. (Weve reached out to the hospital, AdventHealth Altamonte Springs, for comment in response to Rawsons claims in this article. The hospital has not provided an on-the-record comment.)

Soon she was kicked out of the isolation room and moved back to the observation floor. They ended up having to evict me at like 1:00 a.m. because they needed it for someone else, she says. And the night nurse didnt really want to be around the COVID [patients]. She wasnt really having any of it. I had to, like, push my dumb IV pole around and collect all my stuff when I was really sick. Rawson was told the room was needed for another suspected COVID-19 patient.

On March 14, she went home, where she spent a week battling a difficult recovery from pneumonia, including suffering from neurological issues and sleep deprivationit was horrible, Rawson says. She wound up back in the ER a week later when her fever returned. By mid-April, she still had not fully recovered.

Reason to be skeptical of test results

Rawsons experience with the virusassuming this was indeed COVID-19was extreme, but her testing experience is not uncommon. The nasal swab diagnostic test, which involves amplifying small traces of DNA using a laboratory technique known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, is far from infallible. One preprint article from China estimates the false-negative rate to be as high as 30%.

In practice, that figure would mean that if you tested 100 people who all had COVID-19, 30 of them would still get a negative result, says Dr. Catherine Carver, a PhD student in Population Health Sciences at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh.

This would also mean that thousands of Americans have received test results telling them that they do not have the virus when in fact they do. This is a significant problem because it could create false reassurance for the people getting the false negative result that they are well and wont infect other people, says Carver.

In early April, a Yale physician grew alarmed and wrote a New York Times op-ed urging patients who have coronavirus symptoms but test negative to assume they are positive. Citing anecdotal evidence from fellow doctors, he noted that such situations are uncomfortably common.

So far, there is little reliable research into overall COVID-19 test performance. But its dangerous to place too much faith in the tests verdict, says Dr. Colin West, a physician and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Testing is still going to be a very important part of managing this pandemic, West says. But we need to understand that the tests arent perfect. No test is perfect. And if theres a certain percentage of false negative results that we may expect, we need to be cautious and not celebrate too soon if we get a test result that comes back negative.

West is the co-author of a recent article in Mayo Clinic Proceedings warning against over-reliance on COVID-19 testing. Even if the test is 90% accurate, the paper states, the magnitude of risk from false test results will be substantial as the number of people tested grows. (Suppose 5 million people are tested; that could mean 500,000 false results.)

That doesnt mean testing isnt a crucial element of the nations pandemic responseor that the administrations failure on this front is anything less of an outrage. On a population level, mass-distributed tests will be essential to mitigating the crisis. It does, however, mean that patients and care providers alike need to resist the temptation to regard test results as gospel.

There are several reasons the test may deliver inaccurate results. The first is that a nasopharyngeal swab is simply not easy to perform. Doing it properly requires sending the swab fairly deep back into the nasopharynx, West says. There has been concern that, in some cases, the swabs are not getting back as deep as they need to go. The nose is being swabbed instead of getting to the back of the throat.

Another possibility is thatdepending on timinga patient who has the virus may not have it in sufficient quantities for the sample to render a positive test result. It turns out that the viral load and the performance of the PCR tests actually drops after a number of days of symptoms, says West. So if you wait too long, you might get a false negative. But if you do it too early, you might get a false negative as well because there isnt enough viral material.

While ramping up public testing has been a priority, experts say there also needs to be more research into test reliability. Doctors and patients need to know how much faith to have in these tests, so they can make the right decisions about patient care or safely going back to work, says Dr. Carver, who is the co-author of a recent paper arguing that there is not yet enough data to accurately assess COVID-19 test accuracy.

Emotionally, a negative test result can also cause more stress and uncertainty for suspected coronavirus patients. It has been absolute hell, says Eva, a Los Angeles-based music producer who tested negative twice after getting sick in mid-March, and who prefers to keep her last name confidential for privacy reasons. Ive had two doctors tell me I probably dont have COVID, and some say I probably did have it. Ive been going crazy calling doctor friends and asking for help, thinking I have cancer or a blood clot or something.

Turned away from the doctor

Meanwhile, Kerri Rawson still doesnt know for sure if she had COVID-19.

What she does know is that the possible false negative has made it more difficult for her to receive the medical care she needed.

On March 22, Rawson returned to the emergency room with cardiac issues. By then, the outbreak had risen to the level of a national emergency. The hospital now had a more intense protocol for patients displaying symptoms, Rawson says: If you flagged for possible COVID, they didnt put you through triage. They basically sent you back to a zero-air room and triaged you there. (This type of isolation room had its own air system that wasnt attached to the greater hospital, Rawson explains.)

Rawson was tested for the virus a second time. Around then, Rawson says, a nurse told her that the hospital staff had been retrained on how to administer the swabs since her last test. They told me they had been having a ton of false negatives like two weeks before, when I was in there, Rawson says. And now theyre supposed to swab up and hold for three seconds, which they werent doing before.

According to Rawsons account, the nurse said patients were previously being tested on one floor, receiving a negative result, then being tested on a different floor with a positive result. Rawson also heard that the hospital had instituted a new policy: If someone was tested due to COVID-19 symptoms and the test came back negative, they would be tested again 24 hours later.

Rawson was told to expect the results of her second test in two weeks. Its been more than a month. She never received them.

That became a problem when her family doctor advised her to follow up with a pulmonologist, given her asthma condition. She tried to make an appointment. I mentioned I had been in the hospital with what doctors were saying was highly clinically significant for COVID, Rawson says. The office demanded proof that Rawson had either never had COVID-19, or no longer had it. She suggested a virtual appointment, but the office had a policy against arranging telemedicine appointments with new patients. I basically have to find a new pulmonologist if I need one, she says. Unless she could provide a second negative test result, they were outright refusing to see me.

Rawson plans to see if her doctor can order her an antibody test, which is meant to reveal whether the patient has built immunity to the virus. (Such tests may also not be entirely reliable.) She has felt vindicated by reporting from the Palm Beach Post suggesting that COVID-19 may have infected hundreds of Florida residents as early as January or February, long before the state acknowledged its first presumed cases. Meanwhile, the states attempts to control the outbreak have been stymied by a massive testing backlog, which could include Rawsons second test.

By late April, Rawson had mostly recovered, but still felt some fatigue. Her lungs remained weak. She could barely make it up a flight of stairs without stopping to catch her breath. She has no idea if she will ever receive the results of her second swab.

Im assuming they sent it off, she says. I have no record that they sent it off.
Top Hizbul terrorists body disposed off quietly

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: The body of top Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Riyaz Naikoo was buried quietly. The body was not handed over to the family in a bid to avoid glorifying him and also to prevent large crowds from gathering.

The body was buried off in an undisclosed location. This has been a norm for sometime in the Valley as funerals of terrorists had started gathering huge crowds. Moreover, the funerals had started becoming glorification events.

Eliminating Naikoo: How the math went wrong for this dreaded terrorist

Naikoo was killed in an encounter with security forces on Wednesday. He had been on the run for the past 8 years and on several occasions given the forces the slip.

The problem that the security agencies have faced in the past is the crowding at terrorist funerals. During those times, it caused a security problem and today there is an added problem of coronavirus, which requires social distancing.

Jammu and Kashmir too has been hit by the pandemic and the administration has been advising social distancing.

It was only recently following the killing of a terrorist in Sopore that large crowds turned up at his funeral. However, the security forces have now shifted their strategy and have successfully ensured quiet funerals for these terrorists.

Last month, the authorities managed to bury four terrorists quietly at Ganderbal.

The importance of eliminating Kashmirs dreaded terrorist Riyaz Naikoo

They were killed in a gunfight in Shopian in South Kashmir. On April 17, two terrorists were killed in an encounter at Shopian. The two who were killed were quietly buried at Baramulla in north Kashmir the same day after all formalities were completed.

In both these cases, the police said that the terrorists were not identified. However, in the Shopian case, the families claimed that the two terrorists were their sons. They have now approached the District Magistrate demanding that the bodies are handed over.

This is a clear message that the forces and the authorities are sending out to ensure that these terrorists are not buried in the presence of large crowds. Large crowds gathering especially in a situation like this is nothing but a nightmare. First and foremost it is a security issue and secondly, all efforts being made by the administration to curb the spread of the pandemic will be lost, an official informed OneIndia.

Top Hizbul terrorist, Riyaz Naikoo killed

In the previous funerals, crowds had gathered in Kulgam. The police had a tough time in controlling the crowds. Following this, an FIR was filed and 100 persons were arrested.

In recent times bodies of only five terrorists have been handed over to the families. The families have to undertake that the funerals will be held quietly and if found violating the same, stringent action would follow.
TikTok's London office is based out of a WeWork building in Holborn called Aviation House. WeWork

TikTok, the wildly popular social media app that has become a go-to app for young people, has quietly made London its main hub in Europe, according to analysis of LinkedIn, the company's careers page, and sources with knowledge of the matter. For anyone that's been living in a bubble, TikTok is a video app where people can share short clips of up to 15 seconds. It's full of people doing lip syncs, dances, tricks and various other things that have the potential to go viral. Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok has been downloaded over 2 billion times, according to app monitoring firm Sensor Tower. The company's biggest office is in Los Angeles, but London has quietly emerged as a close second. Europe is full of cities that have gained a reputation as global tech hubs but London is the only city on the continent where TikTok is currently recruiting engineers to build new features for its app. It's a gentle nod to the caliber of the city's tech talent.

"They are on a big hiring spree," said a London tech worker who was approached by a TikTok recruiter and wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussions. The salaries on offer at TikTok are already tempting staff away from companies like Google and Facebook, according to analysis on LinkedIn. CNBC contacted TikTok but the company declined to comment.

Chinese roots

The TikTok app is the international version of ByteDance's local app Douyin. In 2017, ByteDance bought a rival U.S. app called Musical.ly for around $1 billion and eventually merged it with TikTok. To support the app's booming popularity, which has been turbocharged by the coronavirus lockdowns, TikTok has set up offices of varying sizes in 41 countries, according to its website. In Europe, TikTok also has offices in Paris, Berlin and Dublin. TikTok does not disclose how many people it employs but LinkedIn suggests it has 2,948 employees worldwide. This is likely to be slightly higher than the actual number. It is currently recruiting for another 824 jobs worldwide, according to its official careers site. Of those roles, 117 are in London, which is more than any other city. TikTok's careers website shows that the company is currently searching for a lead machine-learning engineer to oversee trust and safety, as well as an iOS engineer, a software engineer, a lead solutions engineer, and a solutions engineer. TikTok is also recruiting a product manager in London to oversee Europe.

Competitive salaries

TikTok is willing to pay the lead machine-learning engineer an annual basic salary of 200,000 ($246,000), according to a tech worker who claims they were approached for the role. The source, who also wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussions, said they were told the lead machine-learning engineer will manage a team of around 10 staff. Of the other roles being advertised, 110 are in Mountain View (where Google is headquartered), 91 are in Los Angeles, 61 are in New York, and 60 are in Singapore.

The offices in Singapore, Dublin, and Mountain View are known as what TikTok calls trust and safety hubs, and this is where armies of moderators review the videos posted on TikTok's platform. They also house policy people who engage with governments and other workers who deal with law enforcement requests. London is a global city with world class universities nearby such as Imperial College London, University College London, Oxford, and Cambridge. U.S. tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter have already set up large glitzy offices with thousands of people in the city. Inside the workers are kept happy with free canteens, gyms, and yoga lessons.

Alex Zhu, CEO of TikTok John Phillips | Getty Images

TikTok has recruited a number of staff from these firms, according to LinkedIn analysis. In December, Google veteran Theo Bertram left the search giant and joined TikTok as director of government relations and public policy for Europe. Elsewhere, Ross Baron left his recruitment lead role at Facebook last March to become TikTok's head of recruiting for Western Europe. There are several other examples of people leaving Silicon Valley firms to join TikTok in London. TikTok's decision to make London its main hub in Europe is a vote of confidence in the U.K. capital and a sign that large international tech companies haven't been put off by Brexit. Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates, told CNBC that London is "uniquely placed to serve rapidly scaling companies like TikTok." "The city is home to some of the world's best digital talent, a body of unrivaled academic and research institutions, and a government that has set its agenda as wholly supportive of innovation and growth in the U.K.'s tech ecosystem," he said.

Security threat
Like so much else in U.S. politics, the response to the coronavirus has broken down along partisan lines. As news of the coronavirus outbreak spread, President Trump, several prominent Fox News hosts, and other conservative elites downplayed the risks, while the leading Democratic presidential candidates and their advisers expressed alarm. In several states, conservative protesters have urged governors to relax stay-at-home orders, while Democrats lead 16 of the 19 states (plus D.C.) that are keeping such orders in place.

Citizens seem to have followed these cues. Although majorities still support social distancing measures, Republicans have been less likely to believe that the virus would disrupt their lives or infect them or their loved ones. They have been far more likely than Democrats to trust Trump to handle the crisis, and far less likely to report washing their hands more often, avoiding gatherings, or self-isolating.

Those differences have shown up in other data as well. Smartphone location data have suggested that areas with more Republicans engage in less social distancing, even after controlling for other factors such as state-level policies, population density, and local coronavirus cases and deaths. In states that have issued stay-at-home orders, residents in Republican counties have been staying home less than those in Democratic counties.

These findings shouldn't be surprising. Political scientists have known for a long time that partisan cues have a huge influence on public opinion - especially when it comes to novel issues like the coronavirus pandemic. Once a threat has become politicized, voters often look to their preferred political party or leader for guidance.

As more people fall ill, the partisan gap has closed - but Republicans are still much less likely to support public health measures and more likely to approve of opening businesses. Drawing on original survey data, Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, and Thomas Pepinsky find that even with the coronavirus crisis, "[p]artisanship is a more consistent predictor of behaviors, attitudes, and preferences than anything else that we measure." If it's to work effectively, they conclude, "public health messaging must deliberately transcend political cleavages."

- - -

In a new paper, we argue that religious figures can transcend these political cleavages, and, perhaps counterintuitively, encourage the public to accept scientific realities. We studied the influence of Pope Francis on the issue of climate change, another scientific issue that's especially polarized along partisan lines. Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to believe global warming is caused by human behavior or to support climate change mitigation policies.

In June 2015, Francis became the first pope to dedicate an encyclical to the environment. Encyclicals are rare letters, or teachings, distributed from the pope to the Roman Catholic Church's clergy and parishioners. This encyclical, titled "Laudato Si," or "Praised Be to You," declared that climate change "represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day." In this, Francis wrote, "There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced."

The encyclical had two primary goals. On the one hand, it sought to convince people of the scientific consensus on the reality of climate change. But it also sought to persuade Catholics to see protecting the environment as a religious and moral duty.

The encyclical succeeded on both these fronts. We analyzed data from a survey conducted on the same respondents before and after the encyclical's release. Compared with non-Catholics, American Catholics who regularly attended church became disproportionately more likely to express confidence in the scientific evidence for global warming and more convinced that climate change was a religious issue. Respondents who became more convinced of the science also became more likely to support political action to respond to climate change.

Of course, not all religious leaders have come out in favor of fighting climate change. But our findings suggest that religious leaders can influence public attitudes - even on highly polarized political issues.

- - -

These findings suggest that religious figures, when they choose, can help close partisan divides and reinforce scientific and public health messaging. During the pandemic, religious leaders could encourage followers to comply with social distancing to prevent the virus's spread and amplify public health messages about best practices.

So far, religious authorities' coronavirus messages have been mixed. The Roman Catholic Church suspended church services in Italy "in coordination with the measures launched by the Italian authorities." Pope Francis urged governments to put people ahead of the economy to prevent a "viral genocide," before praying to an empty St. Peter's Square in March. In Saudi Arabia, authorities closed the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina; in other Muslim-majority countries, religious leaders suspended Friday prayers. Across the world, synagogues have been closed; the "Torah obligation to protect the sanctity of life transcends all other considerations," Britain's chief rabbi reminded the country's Jews.

But other religious leaders have responded very differently. In ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel, where reporting suggests the virus is spreading as much as four to eight times faster than elsewhere in the country, some religious leaders held large Passover gatherings, in violation of emergency coronavirus regulations. In the United Kingdom, some conservative Muslim scholars have rejected the closure of mosques, while in Florida and Louisiana, pastors have defied state orders and repeatedly held large church services. Churches in California, Kentucky, and Michigan have filed lawsuits against the governors of their states, claiming that the lockdown impinges on religious liberty.

Containing coronavirus will require collective, unified action. In a country as polarized as the United States, that seems unlikely. Given their potential influence, religious leaders may wish to choose their words carefully.

- - -

Schonfeld is a PhD candidate in politics at Princeton University.

Sam Winter-Levy (@SamWinterLevy) is a PhD candidate in politics at Princeton University.

For other analysis and commentary from The Monkey Cage, an independent blog anchored by political scientists from universities around the country, see www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has proposed UAH 2.4 billion of refinancing loans for the period from one year to five years to banks at a debut tender held on Friday, May 8, NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii has said.

"Today the first tender was held, where banks received UAH 2.4 billion for different terms from one year to five years. This is the first tender and we will hold it every month," he said during a speech at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada committee on finance on Friday.
Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested on Thursday for the deadly shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced. They have been charged with murder and aggravated assault.

On Feb. 23, Arbery was jogging through a a Glynn County neighborhood when the armed McMichaels pursued him in a pickup truck. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the father and son confronted Arbery with "two firearms" and "during the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery." Video of the shooting was posted online this week.

Gregory McMichael claimed during an interview with police that they chased Arbery because they thought he was behind a string of burglaries in the neighborhood. No evidence has been presented showing Arbery was involved in any burglaries.

Gregory McMichael, now retired, was an investigator for Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who recused herself from the case. The case has received national attention, in part because the McMichaels are white and Arbery black, and an earlier prosecutor had advised no charges in the case. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it would open an investigation into the shooting after the video became public.

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New Delhi: The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra is set to become easier and smoother for pilgrims with the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) completing a key road in Uttarakhand that will cut the travel time for the pilgrimage as people will no longer have to undertake a gruelling trek for it, the defence ministry said on Friday.

Hundreds of pilgrims travel to the 6,638-metre Mount Kailash near Mansarovar Lake in the Tibet Autonomous Region annually in summer with the belief that circumambulating the holy mountain brings good fortune.

The BRO has built the 80-km road from Dharchula to Lipulekh (the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar) at an altitude ranging from 6000 feet to 17,060 feet to create the shortest route for the Yatra, the ministry said in a statement.

Now, people can drive up to Lipulekh in vehicles. They will no longer have to trek for five to six days, said a government official. The new road is an extension of the Pithoragarh-Tawaghat-Ghatiabagarh road.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh said the new road link will allow pilgrims to complete the Yatra in just one week compared to two to three weeks it took earlier. He inaugurated the road through video conferencing.

While combating Covid-19 pandemic, the BRO in Uttarakhand has connected Kailash Mansarovar route to Lipulekh pass at a ht of 17,060 ft; thus providing connectivity to border villages and security forces, the minister said on Twitter.

The arduous trek through treacherous high-altitude terrain can now be avoided. At present, the travel to Kailash-Mansarovar takes around two to three weeks through Sikkim or Nepal routes. The Lipulekh route had a trek of 90 km and the elderly yartris faced a lot of difficulties, the statement said.

The routes through Sikkim and Nepal require the pilgrims to cover 20% of their journey on Indian roads and 80% on Chinese roads. With the opening of the new road, this ratio has been reversed. Now pilgrims will traverse 84% land journey on Indian roads and only 16% in China, the defence ministry said.

Singh said with the crucial road link had fulfilled the decades-old dreams and aspirations of local people and pilgrims.

BRO chief Lt Gen Harpal Singh said the construction of the road was a challenging task due to constant snowfall, high altitude, and extremely low temperatures -- factors that restricted the annual working season to five months.

One of the biggest challenges for the BRO was to arrange a large labour force to carry out the construction of key roads and tunnels in far-flung areas as Covid-19 sweeps through the country, as reported by Hindustan Times on April 28.

The BROs peak working season extends from May to November. Migrant workers are a key part of the BROs workforce involved in building strategic roads, along the countrys northern border with China, scattered across Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh.

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As demand evaporates amid a global shutdown of bars and restaurants, AB InBev and rivals Heineken and Carlsberg are racing to find ways to cut costs to reduce the effect on profit. So far, AB InBevs more expensive products are suffering less, but longer-term, as the pain from a pandemic-induced recession spreads from blue-collar to white-collar workers that could also harm the collection of niche premium labels that AB InBev has built up in past years.
- President Magufuli had sent out a delegation to Madagascar to fetch the consignment of the CVO medicine

- The COVID-19 Organics or simply CVO was made from Artemisia annua plant (sweet wormwood) which has anti-malarial properties

- The WHO cautioned countries against adopting a product that had not been through clinical tests for safety and efficacy

Tanzania has become the latest country to receive a consignment of Madagascar's coronavirus herbal concoction.

A plane carrying consignment of the tonic landed in Dar es Salaam on the afternoon of Friday, May 8, as the East African nation struggled with soaring COVID-19 cases.

READ ALSO: Nairobi woman charged with murder after stabbing lover 11 times over dirty dishes

A consignment of CVO medicine that Tanzania received from Madagascar. Photo: Tanzania Government Spokesperson.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Coronavirus: 14 more people test positive for deadly disease

President John Pombe Magufuli had sent out a delegation led by Foreign Affairs minister Palamagamba Kabudi to Madagascar to fetch the consignment.

The developments were confirmed by the government spokesperson, Hassan Abbasi, via Twitter later in the day.

"Today, Tanzania has received a donation of drugs which can be used to contain coronavirus from Madagascar," he tweeted.

READ ALSO: Mombasa: Coronavirus patient who escaped after testing positive is dead

Tanzania officials observing non-contact greeting when they received COVID-19 medicine from Madagascar. Photo: Tanzania Government Spokesperson.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Spika Lusaka amuondoa Seneta Ledama kwenye kamati ya uhasibu

COVID-19 Organics or simply CVO was made from Artemisia annua plant (sweet wormwood) which has anti-malarial properties.

The drug was developed by Malagasy Institute of Applied Research and was yet to be approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The WHO on Thursday, May 7, cautioned countries against adopting a product that had not been through clinical tests for safety and efficacy.

"We are advising the government of Madagascar to take this product through a clinical trial and we are prepared to collaborate with them," said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO's regional director.

At least, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Guinea Bissau have so far received their dose.

By Thursday, May 7, the island had not recorded any death out of over 220 confirmed coronavirus cases.

The latest coronavirus update in Tanzania was last released on Thursday, April 28, when the country recorded 196 cases in a single day to put the national tally at 480.

Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu told journalists the updates will resume after improvement at the national laboratory.

Ummy previously suspended the laboratory director and quality manager following Magufuli's complaints that the test results were not accurate.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Kenyans come through for elderly couple kicked out by landlady over rent arrears | Tuko TV.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Amid coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, a Hindu priest invited by US President Donald Trump recited a Vedic prayer at the White House on the occasion of National Day of Prayer Service. The event took place on May 7. The priest Harish Brahmbhatt thanking the US President said that in "troubled times of COVID-19, social distancing, and the lockdown, its not unusual for people to feel anxious or not at peace".

The peace prayer does not seek worldly riches, success, fame, nor is it a prayer for any desire for heaven, he stated. It is a beautiful Hindu prayer for peace and is derived from the Yajurveda, he added.

"Thank you, Mr President. In these troubled times of COVID-19, social distancing, and the lockdown, its not unusual for people to feel anxious or not at peace. The Shanti Paath, or the peace prayer, is a prayer that does not seek worldly riches, success, fame, nor is it a prayer for any desire for heaven. It is a beautiful Hindu prayer for peace  Shanti. Its a Vedic prayer derived from the Yajurveda," said Brahmbhatt.

He narrated, "And the prayer goes: Om Dyau Shanti Rantariksha Gwam, ShantiPrithvi Shanti Rapah, Shanti Roshadhayah Shanti Vanas Patayah, Shanti Vishwed Devah Shanti Brahma, Sarvag Wam, Shanti Shanti Reva Shanti Sa Ma Shanti Redhi, Om Shanti Shanti Shanti."

"The prayer translates into: Onto the heavens, be peace. Onto the sky and Earth, be peace. Peace be onto the water. Onto the herbs and trees, be peace. Onto all the crops, be peace. Onto Brahma and onto all, be peace. And may we realize that peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Thank you," he translated. Trump thanked him for reciting the verse.

Trump had said, "On this National Day of Prayer, America is engaged in a fierce battle against a very terrible disease. Throughout our history, in times of challenge, our people have always called upon the gift of faith, the blessing of belief, the power of prayer, and the eternal glory of God."

"I ask all Americans to join their voices and their hearts in the spiritual union as we ask our Lord in Heaven for strength and solace, for courage and comfort, for hope and healing, for recovery and for renewal. In recent days and weeks, our country has endured a grave hardship. We pray for every family stricken with grief and devastated with a tragic loss. We pray for the doctors, the nurses, and first responders waging war against the invisible enemy. We pray for the scientists and researchers, who pioneer treatments, that they find therapies and vaccines and that they find them soon. We pray for the frontline workers keeping our nation fed, nourished, and safe and secure. May God watch over them all," he added.

"Were also profoundly grateful to be joined by many faith leaders who are helping to care for our neighbours in their hour of need. Thank you all for providing meals to families, medical supplies to hospitals, and for providing spiritual strength and encouragement to your communities. Youre very important people, very respected people, and very much loved people," he further said.

"In every part of our country, we have seen the Grace of God through the love and devotion of our fellow citizens. As Scripture assures us, The Lord your God is not [in] your midst, a mighty one who will save. And I think its  I think its so true. Think of that: The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. We have been reminded once again that God has blessed our land with heroes of faith," he further added.
State investigators arrest father, son in shooting of unarmed Black man killed on viral video that sparked outrage.

Investigators in the US state of Georgia said they have quickly concluded that there is sufficient evidence to file murder charges against two men accused of shooting an unarmed African American man in the coastal city of Brunswick in February.

At a Friday morning news conference, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vic Reynolds, said his agency was asked to get involved in the case of Ahmaud Arberys death on Tuesday evening and that his team hit the ground running pretty hard Wednesday morning.

Probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly, Reynolds said. Im very comfortable in telling you theres more than sufficient probable cause in charging felony murder.

Two men, father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael, were arrested on Thursday evening and charged with felony murder and aggravated assault in connection with the case.

A video of the killing that circulated widely earlier this week has prompted a national cry for justice across the political spectrum, with everyone from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to President Donald Trump chiming in on the case.





In an interview on Fox News Channel on Friday morning, Trump called the video very disturbing.

I looked at a picture of that young man, Trump said of Arbery. That looks like a really good young guy, and its a very disturbing situation to me. And I just, my heart goes out to the parents, and the family, and the friends.

Trump said he trusted Georgias Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to see that justice is served.

Arberys friends and family celebrated news of the McMichaels arrests but expressed frustration at the long wait.

This should have occurred the day it happened, Akeem Baker, one of Arberys close friends in Brunswick, told the Associated Press news agency. Theres no way without the video this would have occurred. Im just glad the lights shining very bright on this situation.

A cross with flowers and a letter A sits at the entrance to the Satilla Shores neighbourhood where Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Brunswick, Georgia [Sean Rayford/Getty Images/AFP]

The GBIs Reynolds said Friday that his agencys determination of adequate probable cause for an arrest was made by 5pm on Thursday and the McMichaels were arrested later that evening. He added that the investigation was ongoing and that further arrests are possible.

Were investigating everyone involved in the case, including the individual who shot the video, Reynolds said.

Arbery, 25, was running in the predominately white neighbourhood of Satilla Shores, just outside the port city of Brunswick, Georgia on February 23.

The McMichaels told police they thought he was responsible for a series of burglaries in the area and pursued him. The McMichaels confronted Arbery with two firearms. During the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery, the GBI said in a press release

Though Arbery was killed in February, no charges were filed until the GBI arrested the McMichaels, prompting nationwide questions about the investigation into the killing.

Aberys mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said in a television appearance on Thursday morning: I think no arrests have been made because of the title he carried as a retired police officer, referring to Gregory McMichaels previous roles as a law enforcement officer and investigator in the Glynn County district attorneys office. He retired last year.

The case saw two district attorneys, including the one for which Gregory worked, recuse themselves.

The men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery must be held accountable and there must justice for Ahmaud's family. There is no doubt in my mind that Ahmaud would be alive today if he were white.  Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 6, 2020

A special prosecutor assigned to the case, Tom Durden, said he plans to present it to a grand jury, but the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could delay that until June, or later.

Reynolds declined to answer why previous investigations by Georgia law enforcement did not result in charges being filed.

Arberys death caused a massive outcry for justice on social and mainstream media throughout the week, with celebrities, activists and high profile politicians expressing concern.

Im absolutely devastated and horrified by the senseless, cold blooded, racially motivated killing of Ahmaud Arbery. #JusticeForAhmaud  Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 7, 2020

Biden called Arberys death a murder during an online roundtable meeting on Thursday, saying that watching the video was like seeing Arbery lynched before our very eyes.

Reynolds said the states investigation would not be swayed by political pressure or media attention.

None of that matters to the GBI, he said, adding that the GBIs goal is to apply the law to the facts.
A 17-year-old boy from South Dakota has admitted to fatally shooting his 16-year-old out-of-state girlfriend during an argument last fall.

Michael Gavin Campbell pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter on Thursday for killing Shayna Ritthaler, from Upton, Wyoming.

'We got into an argument and then I shot her,' the defendant said during his change-of-plea hearing at Meade County Court. 'I shot her in the head.'

Campbell faces 55 years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

Michael Gavin Campbell, 17 (left), pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter for killing Shayna Ritthaler (right), a 16-year-old from Upton, Wyoming on Thursday

Ritthaler's body was found on October 7 in the basement of the home Campbell shared with his mother after the pair met on an online dating site.

Asked by Judge Kevin Krull if he had any justification for killing Ritthaler, the teen replied, 'No.' In court, the defendant referred to the victim as his girlfriend.

Both the prosecutor and the defense agreed to ask the judge to sentence the boy to 55 years in prison. Krull said he plans to follow that recommendation and that if he changes his mind, the defendant could withdraw his guilty plea.

The teen originally pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to alternate counts of first- and second-degree murder.

Under the proposed sentence, the defendant could seek parole after 27 years, when he is 44 years old. Sentencing is set for July 10.

Campbell and Ritthaler had been chatting online for a while but met in person for the first time when he killed her, Meade County State's Attorney Michele Bordewyk told the Rapid City Journal.

Ritthaler went missing October 3 after being seen getting into a Jeep-like vehicle at a coffee shop in Moorcroft, South Dakota.

Her body was found on October 7 in the basement of the home her boyfriend shared with his mother east of Sturgis, near the Wyoming border.

Campbell is pictured arriving at Meade County Court on Thursday. 'We got into an argument and then I shot her,' the defendant said during his change-of-plea hearing

The teenager's body was found when deputies and agents from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation executed a search warrant on the request of the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office, which was working with investigators in Wyoming.

Acting Meade County states attorney Michele Bordewyk said Campbell lived at the home in Blucksberg with his mother and that he had recently moved there from Brookings.

Family members of both the defendant and the victim attended Thursday's hearing. Ritthaler's family said they weren't yet ready to speak.

Ahead of Thursday's hearing, MinDee Ritthaler, Shayna's mother, who now lives in Florida, wrote on Facebook: 'This waiting game is torture. Being 2 hours ahead means the wait is even longer. I want this day to be done (with good results). Then maybe we can truly begin the healing process...'

Earlier this week, before the plea deal was announced, Ritthaler shared on social media how she broke down in tears after almost dialing her dead daughter's phone number by mistake.

'[May 4] makes 7 months since that pos stole my butterfly and made her an Angel,' the grieving mother wrote.

In court, Campbell said he understood he was giving up his right to argue that he was mentally incompetent at the time of the shooting and that his case should be transferred to juvenile court, where he could have been imprisoned only until the age of 21.

He also said he understood he was giving up his right that the judge should suppress statements he made to law enforcement and block all evidence from a search of his phone and home. He agreed with a special part of the plea deal that he is giving up his right to appeal.

Krull told the defendant that he can't have any contact with the Ritthaler family for the rest of his life and that he owed them more than $8,300 in restitution.

Ritthaler (left and right) was reported missing in Moorcroft, South Dakota, on October 3. Her body was found in Campbell's basement in Blucksberg, Wyoming

Bordewyk, the prosecutor, told the Journal that Ritthaler's family approved of the plea deal. Defense lawyer Steven Titus said it was unlikely that the judge would have agreed to transfer the teen to juvenile court.

Bordewyk said the two met on an online chat and dating website and that they planned for Ritthaler to run away and live with the defendant. It was the defendant who picked up Ritthaler from the coffee shop, driving his mother's vehicle, the prosecutor said.

Bordewyk said it's unclear how an argument between the pair escalated to the boy deciding to shoot Ritthaler. She said the teen used a handgun that belonged to his mother, who was not home at the time.

Titus, the defense attorney, said the shooting was not planned and that alcohol and drugs were involved.

The defendant is being held on a $1million bond at juvenile jail in Rapid City. He will appear again in court on July 10 for formal sentencing.
If coronavirus wasn't causing enough problems for the already ailing healthcare system in Africa, many of the countries in the region are now facing floods after heavy rains killing more than 250 people already.

Reuters

According to BBC, East Africa is witnessing incessant rains leading to many people having to flee their homes and also leading to loss of lives.



Kenya has been the hardest hit with the government recording 194 deaths. In Rwanda, 55 people have died and floods have killed 16 in Somalia. In Uganda high water levels have trapped an estimated 200 patients inside a hospital.

Reuters

The major downpours in recent weeks has had devastating effects for the local populations that were already fearing the worse due to the coronavirus pandemic.



In Kenya, floods and landslides have killed nearly 200 people in the past month, while Uganda's Lake Victoria has overflown, submerging houses, a hospital and bridges and displacing thousands.

Vanguard

Four teenagers drowned in Kenya on Thursday after a river burst its banks, a day after the government announced 194 people had been killed due to floods and landslides since the rainy season began in April, and large areas of farmland and water infrastructure destroyed.



The East African countries have already been dealing with the coronavirus crisis, and now the floods have thrown life completely off the rails. For the governments, the job has become a lot harder as another calamity mounts.
With spring practice over the Oregonian/OregonLive is reviewing Oregons depth chart position by position. The 10th of a 25-part series looks at the right tackles.

Just as Alex Forsyth being a new starter on Oregons offensive line is set in stone, so too is Steven Jones. Perhaps even more so given Jones experience the past two years.

Jones appeared at right guard in four games last season and played five games, mostly at left tackle, in 2018.

Now the redshirt-sophomore is going to be in a starting role and given his build and Oregons depth on the interior of the line, seems destined to end up at right tackle.

The depth behind Jones is somewhat less clear at this point since George Moore is seeking an additional year of eligibility.

Post-spring depth chart:

Steven Jones: 6-foot-7, 349 pounds, redshirt-sophomore

George Moore: 6-foot-6, 310 pounds, senior (seeking additional year of eligibility)

Jonah Tauanuu: 6-foot-5, 305 pounds, redshirt-freshman

Chris Randazzo: 6-foot-6, 348 pounds, redshirt-sophomore

Mario Cristobals take:

Steven Jones continues to show that hes going to be one of the better offensive linemen in our opinion not only in the Pac-12 but around the country.

Starter:

Jones is going to be a cornerstone of Oregons front. With Penei Sewell on the left side and Jones on the right, thats a lot of bulk to protect the edges and brute force to pave the way for B and C gap runs.

All that said, Jones has still played just nine games and will face significant competition, particularly from Ohio State, as teams try to scheme around 1-on-1 matchups with Sewell.

Backup:

Moore was the backup right tackle in the spring and should he be granted a sixth year of eligibility, will undoubtedly be with the second team, perhaps as the No. 3 overall tackle. He could also be incorporated as a sixth lineman in heavy personnel packages.

Oregon post-spring depth chart analysis: QB | RB | X | Z | Slot/F | TE | LT | LG | C | RG | RT | Specialists | DE | DT | NT | Stud | WLB | MLB | SLB | BCB | BS | FS | FCB | Nickel | Dime

Next wave:

Things get less clear further down the depth chart on the right side in particular.

Jonah Tauanuu is the backup left tackle and could be the No. 3 tackle regardless of whether Moore gets an additional year or not.

Chris Randazzo is the No. 2 right guard but has practiced at tackle before.

Summer arrivals:

Look for Jaylan Jeffers to end up on the right side. Hes got the size and given the staggering of classes, would be a long-term answer at right tackle after Jones, possibly in 2022. Faaope Laloulu should end up at tackle, though which side is undetermined. Marcus Harper will likely be on the interior and given T.J. Bass is at left guard and Jonathan Denis is at center, right guard appears most likely.
WASHINGTON  Federal approval of the drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19 does not mean everyone will have access to it. It is in short supply in Connecticut and other hot spots struggling with the coronavirus.

Who will ultimately have access to remdesivir, or any of the dozens of other drugs in trials aimed at finding effective treatments for COVID-19, is a question being raised by doctors and lawmakers, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District. They are concerned about both access and affordability.

In a perfect world remdesivir would be available to everyone who meets the prescribing qualifications, but theres very likely to be a shortage, said Alison Bateman-House, a professor of medical ethics New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine.

In the case of remdesivir, currently the only drug known to curb - but not cure - the assault of coronavirus on a human body, the federal government is setting guidelines as to who can be treated and which hospitals will have access to the drug outside of continuing research trials.

About two dozen hospitals are believed to have been chosen to receive the drug so far. But it is unclear why some medical centers were chosen to receive the coveted drug while others werent  and who is making decisions about the drugs distribution.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response did not return repeated requests for information about the drugs distribution.

Last week the FDA set guidelines allowing remdesivir to be given to patients with COVID-19 only if they are severely ill  with blood oxygen levels at 94% or lower, or otherwise requiring supplemental oxygen.

I have fears, given the personal protection equipment and ventilator differential being distributed in accordance with political calculations, that this will happen with remdesivir, too, Bateman-House said.

Only days before, on April 29, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced that a National Institute of Health trial showed remdesivir treatment led to faster recovery in hospital patients with COVID-19, compared with placebo treatment.

Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo, a NIAID press release said.

The FDA authorized emergency use of the drug on May 1.

But the supply of the drug, produced by Gilead Sciences Inc., is limited, given remdesivir is a complex intravenous medication and its maker must provide enough of it to support the clinical trials being conducted at nearly 200 sites across the globe. The antiviral drug, a medicine first developed to treat Ebola with disappointing results, is still considered experimental.

The Yale New Haven Health System has 50 patients on remdesivir because it is one of dozens of sites conducting the ongoing clinical trial of the drug. But the health system, the largest in Connecticut, was advised Wednesday it would not receive any remdesivir to be used on patients outside those involved in the trial.

It was very disappointing to hear. Its not good news for us, said Leeann Miller, vice president and chief pharmacy officer at Yale New Haven Health. We have absolutely no information as to how the decision was made.

University of Connecticut Health was about to begin a trial of remdesivir when it was stopped. So it never received any vials of the drug for the trial. UConn Health does not know if it is on the list of those who will be able to use the drug on patients with COVID-19.

We dont know if we are going to get it or not, said hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Walker. The hope is we do.

On Monday, UConn Health received a letter from Gilead that said that since the FDA had issued emergency use authorization, or EUA, for remdesivir, the drug company would not be activating additional clinical trial sites.

The U.S. government will coordinate the distribution of remdesivir to hospitals, Gilead said. While Gilead does not have any control over the hospitals that will receive remdesivir under the EUA, we have provided to the government a list of all hospitals that were selected to participate in our expanded access protocol.

Gilead also said if a hospital is on the list to receive the drug, it would be contacted by the exclusive distributor of the antiviral, AmerisourceBergen. Neither Gilead or AmerisourceBergen responded to requests for information.

Scrambling for remdesivir

One of Bateman-Houses duties at NYU is the monitoring drug trials to make sure they are conducted safely and that the data is not compromised.

She said Gilead was able to win approval of emergency use for remdesivir at an incredibly rapid pace, compared to the glacial pace of approval of other drugs approved for emergency purposes by the FDA.

Since everybody is going to be scrambling to get remdesivir, Bateman-House said, medical professionals should target its use at those likely to benefit most. That would be patients in the latter stages of the disease who show signs they would not be getting better any time soon, she said.

Lydia Dugdale, director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University, said the drug, while no magic bullet and no cure for COVID-19, has shown to be effective in speeding recovery in very ill patients. At this point the drug will likely continue to be prioritized for the sickest patients, which, as it happens, disproportionately represent racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, Dugdale said.

How much will it cost?

Others are not as optimistic, and concerned remdesivir will carry a high price tag when it is available to all on the market.

Gileads history of sky high drug pricing is drawing increasing scrutiny from Congress about how much it will charge for remdesivir and who will get access. The drug maker suffered a spate of bad publicity in 2015 for charging $84,000 for a hepatitis C drug, and is under pressure from Wall Street investors to recoup their $1 billion investment in remdesivir.

Calculating the cost of development and trials, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review says the drug could cost from a few hundred dollars to $4,500 for a 10-day course of treatment. But Wall Street analysts say the drug prices should be higher.

An unaffordable drug is completely ineffective, DeLauro and Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar last week in a letter raising questions about remdesivir.

The Democrats asked Azar to release information about the extent of taxpayer investment in remdesivir, government ownership of any remdesivir patents, and any federal efforts to scale up production. They said substantial taxpayer investments in COVID-19 pharmaceutical research must be recognized.

The lawmakers said that, before the coronavirus pandemic, NIH spent nearly $700 million on coronavirus research and since the virus appeared in the United States, Congress has appropriated over $6.5 billion for the research and development of therapeutics and vaccines.

Remdesivirs preliminary clinical trial data is encouraging, and those who fall ill from COVID-19 deserve to be able to access it, DeLauro said. A full accounting of our federal investment will help prevent price gouging, so I encourage Secretary Azar to follow through on our request as expeditiously as possible.

Azar, however, has not responded to the Democratic lawmakers.

Unfortunately, this is one of several letters I have sent to [the Department of Health and Human Services] during this pandemic that has gone unanswered, DeLauro said. Congressional oversight is critical to holding the administration accountable to the needs of the American people, she said,  especially since I chair the Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the specific agencies and programs outlined.

The Trump administration needs to be responsive to our requests, DeLauro said.

Dugdale, however, said all drugs have taxpayer investment.

Most drug development is funded, at least in part, by the federal government in its early stage, Dugdale said. On this point, remdesivir is no different.
As part of our #LockdownLessons series, Bizcommunity is reaching out to South Africa's top industry players to share their experience of the current Covid-19 crisis, how their organisations are navigating these unusual times, where the challenges and opportunities lie, and their industry outlook for the near future.

Duncan Luke, CEO of The Social Collective

What was your initial response to the crisis/lockdown and has your experience of it been different to what you expected?

Comment on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on your organisation or economy as a whole.

How is your organisation responding to the crisis?

Comment on the challenges and opportunities.

How has the lockdown affected your staff? / What temporary HR policies have you put in place regarding remote working, health & safety, etc.?

How are you navigating physical distancing while keeping your team close-knit and aligned?

Have you had to change the way you operate?

Any trends youve seen emerge as a result of the crisis?

What do you predict the next six months will be like?

Your key message to those in the sector?

We chatted to Duncan Luke, CEO of The Social Collective, to get his take.The Social Collective acted quickly and enforced work from home for employees. We have been sensitive to our clients' changing needs during this time.We sense that the slow-down effects will only be felt a few months from now. That said, we are seeing budgets grow thin, and spending is being directed to what is truly valuable.With an increase in donations during the current pandemic, we have built and are promoting a donation tax calculator to help inform individuals of the net cost and tax rules of donating during this time - considering donation schemes like the Solidarity Fund gaining support. We have also launched several monitoring and reporting tools to assist companies internally with managing the compliance and reporting needed for Covid-19 regulations.The world is changing ever so quickly due to this global pandemic. One hundred years ago, the Spanish Flu created an enabling environment for the ideals behind capitalism to thrive and, perhaps now we are at the beginning of the end of capitalism as we have come to know it. Employees are spending more time with their loved ones, connecting with friends via video calls and our spending patterns have changed. To some extent, a deeper assessment of our values has been forced upon us. In his book,, Thomas Piketty proposes the idea that an economic system generally takes one hundred years to fully form and become ready to evolve. Perhaps the current circumstances prove that Piketty is correct.Digital opportunities are all around us, however, before we look for solutions, we need to have the unique skill of being able to understand client problems.There are no quick profits in a pandemic. A challenge is that there are most likely no quick profits or sustainable money to be made in the next three months. It is time to pause, think and unpack what is valuable to us.There is a major threat to most companies, and some will not make it. We will lose innovations and entrepreneurial bravery, with client spending slowing dramatically with a 10% (at least) turndown in our economy expected.Mental health issues and challenges have come into the spotlight. Remote working requires a more open and personal check-in before we dive into the pressures of the day. We are finding ourselves in our clients' and colleagues' personal spaces with children joining calls, while video calls are being taken from bed in the colder winter mornings.We connect online and find that humour is important. A fifteen minute check-in at the start of each working day is critical during this period - we have to talk about priorities and respond quickly to what is unfolding for the day.No, we have been implementing various types of work since we started eight years ago. The shift has come in our mode of meetings, with more focus on visual presentations for our clients.Context is everything. We need to keep our presentations engaging. Distractions from home are just a glance away from the 13-inch screen in front of you. You just have to peer to the left or right and you are in your personal space. There is no denying the reality that our colleagues, too, have personal lives.Sustainable business strategy. With unemployment expected to reach as high as 50% and businesses unable to pay bills, it is a time to be creative in products, solutions, pricing which offers more value and an overall more sustainable business strategy. Few short-term solutions are going to cut it when the state dictates what is possible during a global pandemic. More humble solutions are emerging which are aiming for purpose before profits.A roadmap for giving and understanding of solidarity. Our government is taking strides in serving the people and encouraging people to do the same. Individuals are thinking about what is important to them when it comes to giving their resources. Let this set the tone for the future, in building long-term giving relationships.Purpose-led leadership will emerge. Purpose defines who we are and how we work. Crisis needs strong leadership - individuals who take advantage of this situation will be filtered out as we lay the foundation for meaningful and purposeful work.Digital does not provide all the answers. It is time for critical thinking and to re-assess the way we design and solve problems in our organisations. Digital is finally a building block and not just the end solution.
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As nearly six years of conflict came to an end in Europe, millions of Britons took the streets of London to celebrate with street parties, music and dancing into the night among the famous landmarks of the capital.

That was May 8, 1945. The day before, Prime Minister Winston Churchill has declared it would be a public holiday following the official surrender of Germany to Allied Forces in World War Two.

Civilians, after half a decade of rationing and restrictions were swift to descend on the capital. Red, white and blue bunting could be purchased without the need for coupons, while beer supplies in London were swiftly reinforced.

The huge crowds, having travelled in from far-flung places by bus and car, began gathering in Trafalgar Square and worked their way along the Mall towards Buckingham Palace.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, alongside Churchill, took to the balcony of the Palace to wave to the jubilant crowds. This would be the first of eight separate appearances on the balcony made by the monarchy.

Below, among the teeming crowds, Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth were allowed to roam free and unrecognised as they joined in the parties.

The future Queen recalled: 'We stood outside and shouted, 'We want the King' I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.'

Churchill, in his address to the nation, was positive but wary in his remarks: 'We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead.'

Other London landmarks were also the scene of national rejoicing - Canada Gate, Parliament Square and St Paul's Cathedral can all be seen to be swamped by British residents from across the country.

By midnight, more than 50,000 people were gathered in Piccadilly Circus while pubs and dancehalls were granted longer licensing to prolong the revelry. Gramaphones and barrel organs were wheeled out into the streets to provide the music as people danced long into the night.

Now, 75 years on from that day, the capital stands largely silent.

Public celebrations and gatherings have been banned as the country fights the coronavirus pandemic with a nationwide lockdown.

The great monuments that, three-quarters of a century ago were the backdrop of celebrations, are now eerily quiet and almost deserted.

Here's how they looked then and now...

 Slide me  Left: Fleet Street is largely silent during the 2020 lockdown. Right: Soldiers and civilians link arms to dance in the street

 Slide me  Left: Trafalgar Square has no visitors around its monument today in 2020. Right: The famous monument is adorned with celebratory messages to celebrate VE Day in 1945

 Slide me  Left: An empty Trafalgar Square in central London. Right: Crowds pack the street in 1945 on Victory in Europe Day

 Slide me  The difference is stark between Canada ate in 2020 (left) and the celebrations occurring 75 years ago in 1945

 Slide me  Parliament Square appears drastically different 45 years apart with it almost deserted in 2020 amid nationwide lockdown

 Slide me  The contrast between Buckingham Palace today and 75 years ago is stark with large gatherings currently banned

 Slide me  Parliament Square was the centre of many of the celebrations in London in 1945 but stands empty today

 Slide me  Left: Piccadilly Circus has little passing traffic during VE Day 2020. Right: People climb up the advertising boards in 1945
People who lost their jobs wait in line to file for unemployment at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, Ark., on April 6, 2020. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

Senators Propose $2,000 Checks For Duration of Virus Crisis

Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) announced a draft bill Friday that would provide monthly relief checks to American families of up to $2,000.

The bill, called the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act (pdf), proposes to give individuals $2,000 and married couples who file taxes jointly $4,000 per month. The size of the check would gradually phase out starting at $150,000 in the case of a head of household, at $200,000 in the case of a joint return, and at $100,000 in the case of taxpayers not falling into either of those two categories.

It also proposes to give an additional $2,000 for each dependent child up to a maximum of three.

Congress has a responsibility to make sure that every working-class household in America receives a $2,000 emergency payment a month for each family member, Sanders said in a statement, as cited by Politico.

Harris said the bill seeks to address the situation that relief aid passed by Congress so far is not nearly enough to meet the needs of this historic crisis, referring to the economic fallout caused by the CCP virus outbreak.

Markey called the proposed direct relief to American families the most direct and efficient mechanism for delivering economic relief to those most vulnerable.

Other features of the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act include provisions that would block debt collectors from seizing relief payments from people in debt.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 27.

The day Trump signed the bill into law, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called it the largest economic relief package in history for hardworking Americans and businesses that, through no fault of their own, have been adversely impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.

Delivering over $2 trillion in economic relief, the package includes direct economic assistance for American workers, families, and small businesses.

Harris, in a statement cited by CNN, said the CARES stimulus package was an important step but insufficient to meet the needs of families hit by the outbreak.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused millions to struggle to pay the bills or feed their families, Harris said.

The new draft bill may face opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate, as historically, few GOP lawmakers have supported continued monthly payments.
For example, they may have clients that ask for special considerations like higher limits, said Jim Bechter, Senior Vice President  AE/CP at Tokio Marine HCC  Cyber & Professional Lines Group, and one of the experts featured in the webinar. Were in a position to not only offer a solid base professional liability policy, but to provide additional services, like expert contract reviews to help them reduce their risk.

In the upcoming webinar, the experts will discuss the importance of a properly written contract and how it can help architects and engineers manage delays and cost overruns  two issues that come up often with construction projects.

Another question that Bechter and his Tokio Marine HCC colleague Steve Hansen will answer during the webinar is how premiums are calculated.

Premium for this coverage takes into consideration their past revenue and previous projects as well as the professional discipline, be it architecture, civil engineering, structural engineering, mechanical engineering or electrical engineering, explained Bechter.

Each of those disciplines has a rate thats adjusted based on the project type and the services being provided for the specific project, he said, adding that another critical factor in the premium calculation is the A&E firms claims history and the degree of risk management they apply to their practice.

The Tokio Marine HCC experts will also delve into the variety of supplemental coverages such as cyber liability to help address a risk thats growing in severity. A typical architects and engineers policy will provide for third party coverage for privacy breaches involving project-specific or other information that could fall into the hands of cyber criminals. But with the increasing cyber exposures facing this sector, more A&E firms should look to expanding their coverage.

In addition to the architects and engineers liability coverage, the webinar will also address contractors risks. As design-build projects have become more common, contractors are being called upon to not only build the project but also to arrange for the design of the project, increasing their overall liability.

Innovative Solutions for Architects, Engineers, Contractors and Design Professionals broadcasts on May 14 at 12pm PST. To learn more about the webinar and to register, click here.
One more person died due to a gas leakage at a chemical factory in Andhra Pradeshs Visakhapatnam on Friday, taking the toll in the accident to 12.

The leakage of styrene gas at LG Polymers on Thursday also left over 20 people critically ill and temporarily dislocated hundreds who had to be shifted away from the villages surrounding the plant.

Visakhapatnam city police commissioner R K Meena said the situation in the chemical plant was completely under control. Residents of five villages have been evacuated to safer places, and there was no need for people in other villages and residential colonies to be shifted, he said. There is nothing to worry for the people of Visakhapatnam, Meena added.

State authorities and officials from LG Polymers said they were investigating what caused the leak of styrene gas, which is toxic and injurious to human health, but a preliminary situation report by district officials said the trigger was a malfunction in equipment, which caused the temperature to rise and the organic compound styrene  normally a liquid  to vaporise.

The people who died on Thursday were identified as: Appala Narsamma (45), Kundana Sriya (6), A Chandramouli (19), Ch Ganga Raju (48), B Narayanamma (35), N Greeshma (9), Meka Krishna Murthy (72), P Varalaxmi (38), N Nani (40), P Shankar Rao (40) and V Nukaraju (60). The twelfth person who was declared dead at Kothavalasa primary health centre was Gangadhara Chowdary (32). All of them belonged to Venkatapuram and Gopalapatnam villages, the police commissioner said.

According to Andhra Medical College principal Dr Sudhakar, 193 people, including 47 children, are undergoing treatment at state-run King George Hospital, and another 100 are being treated at different hospitals in the city.

Those in the KGH are all out of danger. They would be discharged later in the day after they recover completely and after ensuring that the situation in their villages has become normal, he said.

Panic gripped several villages near the LG Polymers plant at R R Venkatapuram on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam late on Thursday night over reports of fresh fumes with pungent smell emanating from the factory. People descended on streets and tried to leave their villages. The situation was quickly brought under control. The police made announcements on loudspeakers, asking them not to panic and return to their homes.

In a tweet, industries minister Mekapati Gautam Reddy appealed to people not to believe in rumours, but to go only by official announcements.

Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports about the Vizag incident. The commission also issued a notice to the Andhra Pradesh chief secretary, calling for a detailed report in the matter, including on areas such as status of the rescue operation, treatment provided to the affected people, and relief provided by the state authorities to the affected families.

A notice has also been issued to the director general of police, seeking information on the registration of first information reports (FIRs) within four weeks and the status of the investigation.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Srinivasa Rao Apparasu Srinivasa Rao is Senior Assistant Editor based out of Hyderabad covering developments in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana . He has over three decades of reporting experience. ...view detail
More than 6,000 Lao migrant workers held in camps in quarantine after returning from Thailand have now gone home, with smaller numbers still crossing the border each day and unknown numbers still stranded in Thailand, Lao sources said this week.

The 6,000 recently clearing quarantine were the latest batch of some 20,000 who have crossed into Savannakhet province out of a total of 27,000 who have returned from Thailand and gone through quarantine since April.

Around 100, most of them recent arrivals, are now left in the Savannakhet camps observing a 14-day quarantine, an official from the province told RFAs Lao Service, adding that the 6,000 who have left the camps will continue to be monitored at home to ensure they are in good health.

We have a system to follow up with them in their home villages, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Around two or three people are still coming in every day, though, and we are taking some in from Champassak province as well, the official said.

Over 3,000 Lao workers returning from Thailand to Champassak have meanwhile also cleared quarantine and been sent home, subject to continued monitoring in their villages, an official in the province told RFA.

They have all gone home now, the official said.

We still have three camps open for those still coming in from Thailand, he said. The gates are officially closed, but the border guards are allowing them to come in if they go straight into quarantine.

The camps that are open now are in the Pakse and Pathom Phone districts, with the rest all closed. We will use hospitals and guest houses for new arrivals because our schools are now open again, the official added.

In Kham Mouane province, more than 7,000 Lao workers have also returned from Thailand, an official in the province told RFA, adding, Almost all have already returned home, with only a few left behind [in quarantine].

More than 2,000 migrant workers have also returned to Salavan province, with almost all now allowed to go home again, according to authorities in the province.

No one is left in the camps, one official said. And if the border gates are opened again, we will house them in guest houses and temples. If workers coming back have small shelters in their rice fields, they can also go into quarantine over there, he added.

All Lao provinces are now prepared to welcome workers coming back from foreign countries, with around 83 camps open nationwide, and village authorities are prepared to care for and monitor the health of those who have returned, Lao sources said.



Written and translated by Sidney Khotpanya for RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - As more parts of the Kansas City community start to slowly reopen next Monday, area library systems are announcing similar phased approaches. The Johnson County Library said Friday that it plans to reestablish service to patrons. On May 18, patrons will be able to drop off materials at the Blue Valley (9000 W.
The Jagraon police on Friday booked a Bathinda woman on the complaint of her father-in-law for not taking her husband to Canada and duping them of 22.34 lakh .

According to complainant Inderjit Singh of Agwad Lopo village, Jagraon, his son Jatinder Singh married Manpreet Kaur, 28, of Kothey Guru Ka, Bathinda, in 2017.

While he had agreed to bear all expenses for her student visa and stay in Canada, she was to take her husband abroad with her.

Inderjit alleged that he spent 22.34 lakh on various expenses, including Kaurs college fees, since 2017.

But she did not take his son along and also showed herself unmarried in her documents.

Inderjit had filed a complaint in this regard in November last year and the police booked the woman on Friday.

Assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Davinder Kumar said that the FIR was lodged following a detailed investigation. The police will arrest the woman as soon as she returns from Canada. A case under Sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the woman, he added.
Harry F. Miller recalls exactly where he was on May 8, 1945.

Miller and the rest of the 740th Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army had just helped secure a dominant victory in the Ruhr Pocket Battle that decimated the Wehrmacht. After a two-week rest in Dusseldorf, they crossed the Elbe River and then raced north to the town of Schwerin, a strategic outpost tucked in the northeastern corner of Germany.

Though at the time they couldnt figure out why, they had been sent to help British forces. Their presence, Miller learned years later, effectively clamped the Soviet Army from invading Denmark.

Within days, word reached camp that Adolf Hitler died by suicide. World War II would soon be over.

Miller served as a tank crewman in the Assault Gun Platoon. He remembered standing next to the castle that guards the western shores of Lake Schwerin, gazing out across the water. On the eastern shore were Soviet forces, awaiting orders, idling by as the war waned. Some American soldiers rowed boats across and traded wristwatches for vodka.

Miller said he just stood there and scanned the other shore.

Thats how we spent the last day of the war, Miller told USA TODAY.

A World War II vet died from coronavirus. A century ago, his twin brother died in another pandemic

Seventy-five years later, Miller and other vets would have been saluted Friday in public festivities in what could be one of the last benchmark anniversaries of V-E (Victory in Europe) Day. But the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the U.S. has sidelined those plans.

Commemorations, including one scheduled at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., have either been postponed or adapted into virtual events.

For the humble veterans, well-rooted in sacrifice, celebrations aren't what matters. It is their stories they want preserved, lessons that resonate during this extraordinary time.

Harry F. Miller, a member of the 740th Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army , poses in his military uniform during deployment in World War II.

I still get watery eyes whenever I think of these young guys that are still 19 years old, Miller, 91, said as he fought back tears. There are cemeteries all over this country full of them, and in Europe. That to me is what the remembrance of World War II is. Its not the parades and things like that here. Its the cemeteries.

Story continues

I hope they dont get too complacent with the country being pushed to get back to normal again that they forget about the 75th year. In the 76th year, will they still remember us? In the 77th year? Will people forget this?

Millers story is just one.

Coronavirus stories: WWII veteran serenades his wife through window

96-year-old WWII veteran is running coast-to-coast again. This time to raise money to sail a restored ship

That was a really close call

Frank Cohn was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1925.

Now 94 years old, Cohn recalled when a business partner of his fathers was taken to Gestapo headquarters and questioned. Cohn said they found his fathers friend dead on the sidewalk after he either jumped or was pushed from a fourth-floor window.

Cohns father then left for the U.S., seeking to start legal immigration processes. His father wasn't successful, but Cohn said it was for the best; it wouldve taken around five years. His father remained in America, looking for alternatives. Then, later, the Gestapo knocked on his childhood homes door in Breslau, looking for his father.

Immediately, the vision in my head was of my fathers business friend having been killed by the Gestapo when they took him to the headquarters, Cohn told USA TODAY. It made you feel inferior because people looked down on you just because you had the label Jew. That was the kind of thing that crept on you very slowly, even at a young age.

Frank Cohn, a member of an intelligence unit called T-Force, 12th Army Group, poses in his military uniform during deployment in World War II.

Cohns mother wrote his father and told him not to return. Eventually, she obtained a visitors visa. They escaped in 1938, when Cohn was 13.

That was a really close call, Cohn said. Because if my mother hadnt done what she did  we walked out of the house leaving everything behind  by 1941, I wouldve been dead.

One month after he turned 18, in September 1943, Cohn was drafted. Even though he wasn't a citizen, the Allied Forces needed all the troops they could find. But since he was a foreigner, Cohn couldve declined service.

That never entered my mind, he said. It was my obligation, no question about that.

He was sworn in as a citizen and enlisted. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge and Rhineland campaigns. He was assigned to an intelligence unit called T-Force, 12th Army Group, and fought against a people that  just years before  had been his countrymen.

That was never a problem because I had absolutely no loyalty to Germany, Cohn said. None. They made me stateless. But even before that, I regarded myself as American. Because America had that one substance of taking care of immigrants and integrating them into society as Americans. I really didnt feel strange at all. As a kid I felt much stranger in Germany because I was earmarked as a Jew and I was not allowed to do many things. We were in segregation. While here, I was immediately accepted.

One minute at a time, believe me

Ewing H. Miller was a B-24 heavy bomber pilot, assigned to the 15th Air Force, 449th Bomb Group of the 719 Squadron, otherwise known as The Flying Horsemen.

He flew out of a base at Grottaglie, Italy. Miller went by Wing and flew more than 20 missions as either a pilot or co-pilot.

In February 1945, gliding over Vienna, his plane  Sleepy Time Gal  took fire that struck the aircraft's bomb bay. Miller was the only survivor. After his parachute deployed and as he drifted down the sky, the Luftwaffe was waiting.

I landed on frozen soil in my chute, Miller said. I had a hurt left leg. I looked up and I saw this soldier with a rifle on me, yelling at me. I knew then that that .45 of mine was no match for that rifle. That was the first decision. Put your hands up and get rid of your gun. They were many like that.

Ewing H. Miller, a B-24 heavy bomber pilot assigned to the 15th Air Force, 449th Bomb Group of the 719 Squadron, poses in his military uniform during his deployment in World War II.

Miller was locked away in solitary confinement. To pass the time, he said he exercised and tried to recite books he had read. Eventually, he was transferred to a Luftwaffe camp, where he joined other prisoners of war.

It was different there, he said. It was more about maintaining yourself, keeping as clean as possible. That was hard to do when youre flicking fleas all day long.

He spent the remainder of the war in captivity until Gen. George S. Patton rode through in a Jeep and personally liberated the camp where Miller was detained.

It was dealing with things over which you had no control and accepting it, Miller said. Thinking about the long discussions with others about the food you were going to have when you got out. Mundane things to keep your mind occupied because you had nothing else that you could count on.

After the war, Miller, who is now 96, earned degrees in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and was eventually enlisted by the U.S. Air Force to redesign 20 air bases in England.

Lessons from the war ring true today

Each of the three veterans compared the isolation and contracting economy of the coronavirus to their childhood experiences during the Great Depression.

And though they all acknowledged that World War II was unique in its global devastation, they thought lessons about pulling together as a collective whole during the war could be applied today in efforts to stem the virus.

It was a time when all America was involved, Ewing Miller said. My navigator was from the East Coast, Princeton. My bombardier was Greek Orthodox. The top gunner was Jewish. The chief engineer was Polish from Wisconsin, I believe. The waist gunners were Hispanic.

"It didnt matter where you came from, how long youd been here  we were Americans. We had a compatibility with one another. Weve lost that, and I hope we regain it. This schism of our nation is really regrettable. It couldnt happen at a worse time for us.

Cohn said he never really thought of it as a sacrifice, reflecting back to when he was drafted.

It was an obligation, but you wanted to have that obligation, Cohn said. It was a part of the way we looked at life in the United States, in our country, and we had to defend it. There was really no alternative. It had to be defended.

Despite the circumstances, the vets will still be recognized Friday.

The Friends of the National World War II Memorial, a nonprofit dedicated to honor and preserve the memory of World War II, had been planning for four years to commemorate the 75th anniversary of V-E Day. Now, the group will host an all-day online commemoration through its Facebook page Friday starting at 9 a.m. It will be free to stream.

Obviously it was disappointing not to be at the (World War II Memorial), and it presented great challenges. But it actually presented greater opportunities because we are able to tell the story in a more comprehensive way and share it with a greater and potentially younger audience, said Holly Rotondi, executive director of Friends.

I just think these stories offer some really powerful lessons that transcend time.

The experience wont quite be the same, but all three veterans said they would be watching. Harry Miller will tune in from his iPad; Cohn will also watch. Ewing Miller said hed supplement the experience with a Zoom party and would pour himself a Scotch.

We were just happier than the devil when it was over, Harry Miller said. Its not something that I will forget for a long time.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: VE Day 75th anniversary: WWII veterans share lessons of sacrifice
The Queen has delivered a poignant message to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day  praising the nations response to the coronavirus outbreak that has filled empty streets with love and care.

As she remembered Britains Second World War sacrifices and the joyous celebrations that followed the end of fighting in Europe, the head of state paid tribute to the positive qualities of todays generation.

Here is Her Majestys address in full:

We have come to the end of our tribulation and they are not with us at the moment of our rejoicing.

The Queens address: I speak to you today at the same hour as my father did, exactly 75 years ago.

His message then was a salute to the men and women at home and abroad who had sacrificed so much in pursuit of what he rightly called a great deliverance.

The war had been a total war; it had affected everyone, and no one was immune from its impact.

Whether it be the men and women called up to serve; families separated from each other; or people asked to take up new roles and skills to support the war effort, all had a part to play.

At the start, the outlook seemed bleak, the end distant, the outcome uncertain.

But we kept faith that the cause was right - and this belief, as my father noted in his broadcast, carried us through.

Never give up, never despair - that was the message of VE Day.

Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures 1 /66 Victory in Europe: VE Day - In pictures VE Day, 1945 Crowds celebrate in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Joyce Digney (nee Brookes) and Cynthia Covello (nee Lowe) who were famously photographed celebrating VE Day with two sailors in a fountains at Trafalgar Square, PA Evening Standard VE Day front page Evening Standard VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill joins the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace Rex Features VE Day, 1945 An RAF officer, two members of the Women's Royal Airforce and a civilian celebrate the news of victory in London's Whitehall Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) driving through Trafalgar Square in a service vehicle during the VE Day celebrations Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A victory street party near Clapham Common Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Children sit down to a victory party at a V-shaped table in Brockely Getty Images VE Day, 1945 An American soldier in London reads the news of the German surrender at the end of World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A van load of beer passes through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds swarm in Trafalgar Square to rejoice Rex Features A group of London girls wave flags in front of the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) giving the 'V for Victory' salute as his car passes through crowds during a VE Day parade in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE (Victory in Europe) Day celebrations in the East End of London PA VE Day, 1945 Men fixing the loudspeakers in Trafalgar Square before the King's VE Day speech Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Passing the crowds outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day. A father takes his child on a tour of London's West End in unorthodox style Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer's Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Jubilant crowds at Piccadilly Circus celebrating victory in Europe Getty Images VE Day, 1945 A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square Getty Images VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers hitching a ride on a lorry in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations at Downing Street, London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Winston Churchill leaves 10 Downing Street by the back entrance to avoid the large crowds awaiting his appearance Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds gather at Trafalgar Square celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 VE Day revellers blowing party trumpets in Piccadilly Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Crowds in Piccadilly Circus climb lampposts and Eros Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 Sir Winston Churchill leaves the Houses of Parliament in London on victory day celebrations marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Crowds cheering Churchill as he appeared on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, and made an official announcement that the war in Europe was over Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Whitehall, London, celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Canadian sailors resting in the park during celebrations in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) crosses Parliament Square in London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Trafalgar Square PA VE Day, 1945 A victory tea party at Amber Road, Finsbury Park in London Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, standing in a tank, leaving Regent's Park with other service chiefs at the head of a mechanised column on its triumphal drive around London celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London PA VE Day, 1945 Huge crowds at Mansion House PA Prime Minister Winston Churchill watching a march celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day PA Sir Winston Churchill (centre in centre blacony) addresses a huge crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Health, Whitehall, London on VE Day Getty Images VE Day, 1945 British men, women and children in the street celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA VE Day, 1945 Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmers Green, North London waves a newspaper containing the news of Germany's surrender in World War II Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Some of the huge crowds who were in Whitehall, London, to hear Churchill's speech on VE Day. Getty Images VE Day, 1945 Evening News vans in Carmelite Street decorated to celebrate VE Day Associated Newspapers Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus Associated Newspapers VE Day, 1945 Cromwell tanks of the British Army, in a victory procession pass through Admiralty Arch Getty Images Princess Elizabeth at the wheel of an army vehicle while serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War PA Bank of England staff on fire-watch looking out over Threadneedle Street. For the Bank of England VE-Day brought to an end an extraordinary effort to protect its crucial work. Adhering to the wartime spirit of 'business as usual', as many as 1,000 staff at a time in Threadneedle Street had been working two or three days in a row, sleeping overnight in the vast vaults. Those still in London would do a full day's work and then go up on the roof of the building to watch for fires started by falling bombs PA The Flying Scotsman locomotive leaves Paddington Station in 1965 at the head of a special train to commemorate the 20th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe PA St Paul's Cathedral floodlit during victory celebrations in London at the end of the war in Europe Getty Images

I vividly remember the jubilant scenes my sister and I witnessed with our parents and Winston Churchill from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

The sense of joy in the crowds who gathered outside and across the country was profound, though while we celebrated the victory in Europe, we knew there would be further sacrifice.

It was not until August that fighting in the Far East ceased and the war finally ended.

Many people laid down their lives in that terrible conflict.

They fought so we could live in peace, at home and abroad.

They died so we could live as free people in a world of free nations.

They risked all so our families and neighbourhoods could be safe.

We should and will remember them.

As I now reflect on my fathers words and the joyous celebrations, which some of us experienced first-hand, I am thankful for the strength and courage that the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and all our allies displayed.

The wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didnt happen again.

VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures 1 /118 VE Day 75th Anniversary - In pictures Veteran Lou Myers, 93 looks up at the Cenotaph before taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Duchess of Cornwall lays flowers after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, lays a wreath after the two-minute silence Getty Images Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall observe the two-minute silence at Balmoral War Memorial Getty Images Local residents celebrate outside their homes in Altrincham Getty Images A window in Altrincham marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day Getty Images Boris Johnson observes the two-minute silence at Downing Street Getty Images Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames during a flypast in central London PA Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Britain's Prince of Wales and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall walk to take part in a two minute silence AP A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA A woman wears a Union flag apron as she takes part in celebrations Getty Images Jan Sleightholm, 61 from Redcar poses for a photograph as she wears a self-made poppy design dress during celebrations Getty Images A veteran makes his way to the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images A lady lays a wreath at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty Images Members of the public take part in the two-minute silence at the Carshalton Ponds War Memorial in Wallington Getty Images David Fryer, Chairman Royal British Legion Thorner and Scarcroft Branch in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial via REUTERS The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows fly over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London via REUTERS Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA Graham and Sue Gillson stand in the street outside their home in Hampshire as they take part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Residents in West Yorkshire observe the two-minute silence PA Second World War veteran Bernard Morgan, 96, poses as he takes part in the two-minute silence Getty Images People observe the two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen outside Number 10 Downing Street Getty Images The Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a parade with their first world war guns and observe the two-minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence PA Sergeant David Beveridge prepares to fire a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle PA Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA Railway staff at Waverley Station in Edinburgh observe two-minute silence Getty Images Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA People observe a two-minute silence in St James Park, London REUTERS A police officer observes two minutes of silence on the Mall AP Officers and soldiers of Household Division observe social distancing as they take part in a 2 minute silence and wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade AFP via Getty Images An ambulance worker at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA Members of the public applaud at the Cenotaph after taking part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Veteran Lou Myers, 93 bows his head at the Cenotaph as he takes part in a two-minute silence AFP via Getty Images Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA People observe two minutes of silence as they stand in Whitehall AP Members of the public in Windsor take part in two minutes of silence to honour the service Getty Images People observe a two-minute silence in Trafalgar Square PA A Royal British Legion standard bearer lowers his standard in respect during a two minute silence in Redcar, North Yorkshire PA People applaud as a WWII veteran walks past after two minutes of silence was observed in Whitehall AP Members of the public applaude after two minutes of silence Getty Images Senior officers and soldiers of the Household Division salute before a two minute silence to mark VE Day at Horse Guards in London REUTERS The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast in central London PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horseguards Parade PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over St James' Park during a flypast to mark VE Day PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye on the bank of the River Thames PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the Horse Guards PA The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over London AP Traffic on the Mall as people wait for the Red Arrows AP The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace PA The Red Arrows fly over Westminster AFP via Getty Images Cyclists watch as Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AP The Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over the London Eye PA The Red Arrows fly over London AP The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team Red Arrows fly past Buckingham Palace REUTERS A man watches the Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS The Red Arrows fly past Horse Guards REUTERS Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, waiting for the Red Arrows to pass over London AFP via Getty Images The Royal Air Force Red Arrows pass over Buckingham Palace in London during a flypast in central London PA A policeman stands in front of 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary AFP via Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Union Jacks hang outside the closed 'The Two Brewers' Pub in Windsor Getty Images Piper Louise Marshall plays at dawn along Edinburgh's Portobello Beach PA A tribute in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Royal Navy of sailors, soldiers and Royal Marines aboard support ship RFA Argus patrolling the Caribbean spell out 75 on the flight deck to mark the 75th anniversar PA A couple on a Vespa scooter carry a Union flag as they drive past the Cenotaph AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson prepares to light a candle at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior AP Pageantmaster of VE Day 75 Bruno Peek and his dog Wilson, as he decorates his house in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk PA Two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly over the cliffs of Dover Getty Images The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Pipe major Andy Reid of The Scots Guards plays his pipes on the cliffs of Dover, Kent, as two Spitfires from the Battle of Britain memorial flight fly overhead PA Children at Breadsall Primary School in Derby during a VE Day lunch party to mark the 75th anniversary PA Boris Johnson speaking on VE Day in a video message @BorisJohnson / Twitter The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party to mark the 75th anniversary PA A display by the Ministry of Defence and the British Legion on the Lights in Piccadilly Circus in central London to thank Second World War Veterans PA The residents of Cambrian Road in Chester dress up in 1945 clothing and have a social distancing tea party PA A policeman walks past 10 Downing street as bunting covers the facade to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day AFP via Getty Images PA PA

The greatest tribute to their sacrifice is that countries who were once sworn enemies are now friends, working side by side for the peace, health and prosperity of us all.

Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish.

Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps.

But our streets are not empty; they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other.

And when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire.

I send my warmest good wishes to you all.
This is the 11th story in our ongoing series marking the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. Stories appear in a collection on TDN.com as they appear in print and online.

Scientists pioneered volcano forecasting at Mount St. Helens, though they cant yet predict exactly how volcanoes will erupt or project when eruptions will occur months or years in advance.

But emerging technologies and decades of experience may someday make those possible. Volcanologists ability to track volcanoes and foretell their future already has improved by light-years in the four decades since the big blow at St. Helens.

When scientists tracked the rumbling volcano in the two months before its May 18, 1980 eruption, they beamed lasers from the Timberline parking lot on the north flank toward mirrors placed around the volcano. By measuring how long the light beams took to return, scientists got a rough idea of how the mountain was bulging and shifting. Using this and other techniques, they successfully predicted the dome building eruptions at the mountain from 1980 to 1986.

Now, they use a swarm of GPS sensors to create a constantly-updating three-dimensional map of the volcanos movement.

Lots and lots of data is the key to how volcano science has improved over the years, said Vancouver-based U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Michael Poland. That GPS data from the mountain removed ambiguity from the grounds movements, and scientists went from taking measurements once a month, and some cases only once a year, to getting updates 24/7.

Right now in volcanology, were sort of like the weather forecasters of many, many decades ago, Poland said. Where might we be when we understand the physics better?

He mused that one day it might even be possible to detect earthquakes from space: Its totally impossible (now). But thats the kind of thing that I could imagine 20 years from now, some smart people get together and figure out.

Poland, 44, and his mentor, recently retired USGS geologist Daniel Dzurisin, recently talked to TDN about the evolution of volcanic studies and some of the new technologies that will lead to better forecasting and understanding of volcanic hazards.

The most interesting planet

Dzurisin, 68, retired from the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver in January as one of only two scientists still on staff whod worked at the mountain since its 1980 eruptive cycle.

In college and graduate school, he wrote papers on planets like Mercury and Mars, and thought he might be one of the first astronauts to land on the Red Planet. But the Earth proved compelling too. His first post-grad school assignment was at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, where from 1977 through 1981 he studied the trembling summit of Hawaiis Kilauea volcano. Dzurisin knew then that volcanoes would be his future.

I discovered the only planet I was ever going to get to, and maybe the most interesting one, was Earth, Dzurisin said. And to me, maybe the most interesting thing going on here was volcanism.

As a 4-year-old child, Polands interest in volcanoes was sparked when Mount St. Helens erupted. He grew up near Mount Shasta in Northern California and relished chances to see lava rock while camping in the mountains. Hed considered a career as a detective, and he naturally turned to sleuthing the mysteries of the geologic past and the challenge of predicting volcanic eruptions.

While studying geology at UC Davis, he wrote to Dzurisin for a lead on field work. Dzurisin pointed him to a mystery at the Medicine Lake Volcano in Northern California: Researchers knew the volcano was sinking, but they didnt know why.

Youre in this beautiful place, youre asking a question that no one knows the answer to, Poland said. Theres no story until you go out there, collect all the bits and pieces and put them together.

Poland did a survey in 1996 and learned that the volcano wasnt just sinking. It was slowly being drawn inward, like a black hole was sucking it down.

Poland didnt find a conclusive explanation  but he was hooked anyway: Its beautiful, but I feel an affinity for the place. I feel like its where I started.

Dzurisin hired Poland after he received his doctorate from Arizona State University. Poland worked at the CVO for three years, spent 10 in Hawaii and came back to Vancouver in 2015. In that time, hes worked using satellites to create highly-detailed topographical maps at Mount St. Helens, Kilauea, the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanoes around the world. He is also the scientist-in-Charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

Im not starting in the same part of the tack that Dan started in, Poland said. Im starting well down, because of all the race hes already run. And the people that are coming up now are going to be starting way ahead of where I started.

The high school physics problem

Polands recently been researching how extremely small variations in gravity can reveal secrets of whats under the earth. A small increase in the tug of gravity could, for instance, indicate that molten rock or water is flowing into cracks underneath a volcano.

In the last decade, a handful of surveys at Mount St. Helens has revealed that gravity appeared to increase slightly as the mountain recovered from its 2004-08 eruptive period, and has mostly plateaued since then, Poland said.

There seemed to be something moving in a few kilometres beneath the surface of the mountain, Poland said, but scientists dont yet know exactly what it was.

The gravity measurements, which typically use highly sensitive springs, are still uncertain, and Poland is hopeful that more precise, consistent and affordable instruments will be developed in the next few years. Currently, one gravity meter can cost tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

But theres a new generation of equipment that doesnt use springs, Poland said. This is incredibly cool: Theyre atomic, in that rather than measuring the spring and how it gets pulled or relaxed, this thing throws a whole bunch of atoms into the air, and measures how they fall.

The new measurements help scientists paint a better picture of volcanoes, Poland said, because theyre making fewer and fewer assumptions.

When we draw these cartoons (of volcanoes), theyre all the same, Poland said. A triangle with a straw that goes down to a red balloon. Thats preposterous. Thats not how it looks. There are pockets of gas and crystals. Its mushy in some places and solid in other places.

Its a bit like the high school physics problem, he continued. Youre trying to solve some question, and theyll say, ignore friction, or ignore gravity. Well, its easy to solve when you ignore things that are real, (but) those real things have real consequences.

Mount St. Helens is a visceral reminder.

Predicting the next one

Given their rudimentary technology and assumptions about the volcano, its infamous May 18 lateral blast surprised most scientists studying it at the time. The building pressure forced the north face of the mountain to fail in a massive landslide, uncorking the mountain and blasting the landscape for dozens of miles north with scorching gasses and hellish winds.

Geologists had crawled all around the mountain for years prior to the eruption, but they never found evidence that it had previously generated lateral explosions, Dzurisin said. Still, in the weeks immediately preceding May 18, Penn State geologist Barry Voight had raised the possibility that the bulging volcano could erupt laterally.

In 1980, a lateral blast was recognized as a possibility, Dzurisin said. But if you look at all of the volcanoes around the world, its actually much more common than has ever been realized.  I think our model about how volcanoes grow has fundamentally changed.

But the lack of public discussion about that possibility showed why scientists need to be do more than just research. Dzurisin said its important for scientists to communicate with public officials and first responders and ensure that the public knows what to do in an emergency.

Thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars have already been saved by advancements made since the 1980 eruption, he said: After all, we are public servants.

Scientists took lessons from Mount St. Helens back to mountains like Shasta  and what do you know, Poland said, Mount Shasta was discovered to have endured one of the largest landslides on Earth in the last couple of million years about 300,000 years ago. Geologists recognized the features after witnessing the large landslide at Mount St. Helens.

A new frontier for volcanologists is machine learning, Poland said. Computer programs can process the new mountains of data faster than humans ever could and can be taught to look for patterns that humans wouldnt pick out.

What if there is something beginning (at Mount St. Helens), so subtle ... we could never detect it? By allowing the computers to look at all the data ... it might pull out things that wed miss.

Dzurisin said he anticipates eruption prediction will get better. The success of predicting the eruptions of the early 1980s and 2004-08 event opened the door to other dreams, Dzurisin said.

Scientists began to think, Well gosh, maybe prediction is not impossible. We need to look at that. "

That raises the big question: Will scientists ever be able to precisely forecast the time and scale of the next disastrous eruption at Mount St. Helens or elsewhere?

Maybe, they say.

We can start taking bite size chunks out of this problem, Poland said. Maybe, once an eruption does start, can we predict where lava is going to go? ... I see us as nibbling away at the edges of this thing ... getting closer and closer to the candy center.

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Ukrainian President Names Saakashvili To Head Reform Council

May 07, 2020

KYIV -- Ukraine's president has named former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to head the executive committee of Ukraine's National Reform Council.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued an order with the appointment on May 7.

The council was created in 2014 to carry out strategic planning and coordinate reforms.

Saakashvili, 52, served as Georgia's president from 2004 until 2013. In January 2018, a Georgian court convicted him in absentia of covering up evidence in the case of the killing of a Georgian banker and sentenced him to three years in prison. In June 2018, another court convicted him of abuse of power and sentenced him to six years in prison.

Saakashvili has denied all the accusations and says the charges are politically motivated.

In 2015-2016, Saakashvili served as governor of Ukraine's Odesa region. When he resigned, he accused Zelenskiy's predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, of corruption. Poroshenko, in turn, stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.

As one of his first acts as president last year, Zelenskiy restored Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship, facilitating Saakshvili's return to Ukraine.

Last month, Saakashvili said he had been offered the post of deputy prime minister in charge of reform. But it was unclear if parliament would confirm him.

Georgia called the possible appointment "unacceptable" in view of Saakashvili's convictions there and threatened to withdraw its ambassador to Kyiv for consultations.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-president- names-saakashvili-to-head-reform -council/30599789.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.

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Yesterday, the Oversight Board released to the public its first 20 members. The announcement immediately resulted in some criticisms for its insufficiency of Trump-supporting figures in the team.



The Birth of Facebook's Oversight Board

Facebook recently issued the list of the first 20 members of its Oversight BoardFacebook's partially independent committee that has the authority to make decisions on the fate of banned contents on the social media platform.

This Oversight Board is being referred to by many as Facebook Supreme Court. The idea of establishing this Facebook committee was brought by Noah Feldman, a law professor from Harvard. Feldman was one of 'expert witnesses' of the Democrats during the impeachment trials.



No Trump Supporters on the Board?

According to an article, it was noticed that there were no Trump-supporting experts among the announced members of the Oversight Board. And it was announced that the former editor-in-chief of The Guardian was included in the Oversight Board, resulting in conservatives releasing criticisms. The news publication company is known for expressing far-left opinions.

According to a tweet by Brendan Carr, Facebook launched its Oversight Board and told everyone that it was established to take down controversial Facebook posts. Carr called it Facebook's new 'speech police.'





Facebook now has an Oversight Board empowered to take down posts.



Gotta be non-partisan people, right? Nope!



1 is Pam Karlan: testified to impeach Meet your new speech police!Facebook now has an Oversight Board empowered to take down posts.Gotta be non-partisan people, right? Nope!1 is Pam Karlan: testified to impeach @POTUS , "baron" Trump line, Obama DOJ, & NYT calls "full-throated, unapologetic liberal torchbearer." pic.twitter.com/9o28lcY7bR May 6, 2020



However, in the last part of his post, Carr said that the board members of the new Facebook committee are not non-partisan people while pointing out one of the members of the board, Pamela Karlan, who was reported to have testified to President Donald Trump's impeachment trials.

According to Carr, the decision of Facebook weakens its claim that Facebook posts will not be filtered for partisan political basis. In a letter written in 2016 by Karlan, she expressed her responsibility to challenge the current president of the United States of America in the court of the opinion of the public. Karlan also stated that the president should be held to account, Carr added.

According to Damian Green MP from the committee on culture, media, and sport in the House of Commons, the Oversight Board of Facebook had primarily failed to give confidence in its political balance.



Who is Brendan Carr?

Since 2017, Carr had been serving the country as an FCC Commissioner. He attained the role after being nominated by President Donald Trump. He was formerly an aide to Ajit Pai, the current chairman of the FCC.



Check these out:



The Powers of the Oversight Board

As the announcement of the 20 members of Facebook's Oversight Board, their powers were also released. Facebook has granted the Oversight Board the authority to decide the fate of banned content by determining whether the ban should be reversed or remain as banned content. They are also given the responsibility to monitor censorship of content on social media platforms.
Senate Republicans are beginning to sour on Christopher Wray.

Theyre not ready to push for the FBI directors firing as some of President Donald Trumps most fervent allies have demanded, but theyre looking for speedier action on Trumps desires to clean up the Justice Department.



Im not calling on [Trump] to make a change, but I think the FBI needs to show more energy in terms of solving some of these internal problems, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a brief interview. They need to up their game.

Graham, a close Trump ally, made his comments before DOJs stunning reversal Thursday to drop the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russias then-ambassador to the U.S.

And Flynns newfound freedom from legal jeopardy could deliver Wray some breathing room.

The harshest attacks have come from conservative media figures close to Trump, who accused Wray of covering up evidence that would exonerate Flynn. In recent days, the Justice Department released documents including a handwritten note that Flynns allies suggested was proof that the government was trying to trick him into lying. Another showed that the FBI initially intended to drop its investigation into Flynn well before the January 2017 interview.

FILE - In this Sept. 10, 2019 file photo, Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, leaves the federal court following a status conference in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

In court documents explaining its decision to drop the case, the Justice Department cited a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.

But even apart from the Flynn saga, a series of interviews with GOP senators underscored the frustration with the FBIs broader handling of the Russia investigation and the agencys responsiveness to their oversight requests.



Still, they also want Wray to stay put for now  with many of them privately saying they want no part of a tough confirmation fight to replace him in an election year. Most importantly, they say, many of the alleged abuses in the Russia investigation occurred well before Wrays tenure.

Story continues

I wouldnt ask for him to go right now, said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has feuded with Justice Department leaders in recent years over access to documents. I want him to take some action. Hes responsible for it. Hes responsible for getting things changed. [But] I dont want to say hes responsible for a lot of the stuff that happened before he was there.

Grassley suggested that Wrays job status will depend on whether he takes punitive measures against FBI officials who allegedly behaved improperly.

I expect very dramatic action that proves that they know something was badly wrong over the last five or six years, Grassley said. And around this town, the only thing that you send a signal is one of two things: either somebody gets fired or they get prosecuted.

Flynns case has been a rallying cry for conservatives and allies of the president who believe the Justice Department was weaponized against Trump and has consistently sought to undermine him and his associates.

And in the days leading up to the decision to drop the case against Flynn, several of Trumps most vocal boosters in the conservative media world were unrelenting in their criticisms of Wray, arguing that the Flynn revelations reflect a pattern of abuse that the current FBI leadership has failed to address. They also whacked Wray for not turning over the Flynn documents sooner.

Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Wray, in a sign he still has some strong backing on the Hill. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Wray is the right man to clean up what was broken at the FBI. And Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) called Wray very capable.





Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, walks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, during a break in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

But other Republicans said they arent satisfied with Wrays progress so far.

Im highly concerned about his lack of, really, reform within the FBI and certainly not turning over the type of documents I think he shouldve turned over to Congress a long time ago, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said. So Im very disappointed in his performance.

There are a lot of questions that have to be asked on exactly where in the hierarchy of the FBI the buck stops, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, warned. So Ive not formed a formal opinion, but I think there are some questions, based on the answers, that could lead me in that direction.

Republican senators supported the initial Russia investigations, including special counsel Robert Muellers probe, but have since soured on the predicates for those investigations, including the surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page, whose Russia ties drew scrutiny from the intelligence community.

Some of the presidents closest allies want Wray to hold accountable officials who they think treated Trump and his presidential campaign unfairly in 2016.

Ill reserve judgment on whether he ought to be fired, but I think he needs to do more to get rid of the people who perpetrated this on the president, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Wray to lead the agency by a vote of 92 to 5, with all Republicans voting in favor. But many of those same Republicans have grown concerned that Wray is not being transparent with Congress, specifically on how the FBI is implementing reforms in the aftermath of a blistering inspector general report that found widespread abuses of the surveillance courts.

I think hes been a little derelict in not being more accommodating to help get to the bottom of what many of us are concerned with, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said. I think he needs to be more energetic and more responsive. And I think if hes not, theres going to be increasing pressure for him to maybe move on down the road. I wouldnt be calling for it myself. But I think he puts himself in a spot where hes vulnerable.

Trump himself is growing increasingly frustrated with Wray, but he has said privately that he does not want to be accused of having a constitutional crisis on his hands, and is letting Attorney General William Barr take the lead on handling Wray, according to a person close to the White House.

Trump has never liked Wray, the person said, adding that keeping his job isnt in the cards for him.

In an interview last Friday with conservative commentator Dan Bongino, the president said that what Flynn faced was a disgrace, adding: One way or the other hes innocent. Trump did not answer questions about the fate of the FBI director and whether he should be trusted to enact reforms.

Instead, the president praised Barr and said he is looking into the matter.

Ill tell you what, youre going to see what a good job hes doing, Trump said. I dont get involved, I say Bill, you have to do whats right. I can get involved in theory  I am the chief law enforcement, but I think its better if I dont.

The president has rarely voiced his concerns with Wray publicly. But last year, he lashed out at Wray after the FBI director backed up the Justice Department inspector generals conclusion that the FBIs Russia probe was appropriately launched. At the time, Senate Republicans raced to defend Wray from the presidents attacks.

Wrays penchant to sometimes buck the president has rubbed Trumps allies the wrong way, in particular when it comes to election interference and the origins of the Russia investigation.

I think his attitude, his very dismissive attitude, when hes been up before the Judiciary Committee addressing that situation is of deep concern to me, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of that panel. So I would just say that I have a lot of concerns.

The FBI seemed to acknowledge the pressure Wray is under earlier this week when an agency spokesman released a rare statement seeking to distance Wray from the Flynn controversy, placing the blame on prior FBI leadership.

Director Wray remains firmly committed to addressing the failures under prior FBI leadership while maintaining the foundational principles of rigor, objectivity, accountability, and ownership in fulfilling the Bureaus mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution, the spokesman said.

House Republicans have gone even further than their counterparts in the Senate. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Wray earlier this week in which he suggested that the FBI director was shielding the agencys alleged misconduct in the Flynn case.

Even more concerning, we continue to learn these new details from litigation and investigations  not from you, Jordan wrote. It is well past time that you show the leadership necessary to bring the FBI past the abuses of the Obama-Biden era.

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.


The number of UK firms going bust fell last month thanks to Government life support measures but companies may face greater risks as the economy emerges from coronavirus, according to a report (PA)

The number of UK firms going bust tumbled by a third last month thanks to Government life-support measures but companies may face greater risks as the economy emerges from coronavirus, according to a report.

A study by KPMG of notices in The Gazette showed 61 companies fell into administration during April, down from 91 a year earlier.

It also marks a 55% tumble on the month before, with 135 firms going into administration in March.

The old adage that more companies fail coming out of a recession than fail going into it will be front of mind for many executives who now are trying to forward plan their exit from lockdown Blair Nimmo, KPMG

The steep drop comes after the Government launched its mammoth job retention scheme that has seen millions of people furloughed on 80% pay, as well as a raft of loan and finance support schemes.

KPMG said the Government action has given firms the headroom needed to survive the initial hit of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.

But it warned that companies will need to tackle an even bigger hurdle over the recovery phase when the Government weens the economy off its support.

It comes after the Bank of England warned the UK economy was set to plunge by 14% this year in the biggest annual fall on record, with the recovery expected to take more than a year after lockdown begins to lift.

Blair Nimmo, head of restructuring at KPMG, said: Comfort can be taken from the fact that we havent yet seen the deluge of companies falling into administration that many predicted, as the breadth and depth of support measures available, coupled with a supportive lending community, have given organisations vital breathing space in these early days of the crisis.

However, the old adage that more companies fail coming out of a recession than fail going into it will be front of mind for many executives who now are trying to forward plan their exit from lockdown, he added.

KPMG cautioned businesses against scaling back up too much and too soon amid uncertainties over consumer confidence and the costs of implementing social distancing.

This will come at a time when the Governments job retention scheme is set to come to an end and as business interruption loans need to be paid back.

Mr Nimmo said: While recognising that things will not go back to the way they were overnight, and that a phased approach will undoubtedly be necessary, businesses will nevertheless need to take care not to fall into the classic trap of scaling up too quickly.

KPMG urged companies to embed their cost-saving gains across day-to-day operations to bolster their financial strength, while also considering possible asset sales.

Its report predicts that companies in the non-food retail, casual dining, and travel and tourism sectors, as well real estate agents, will be the most vulnerable to the economic crisis.

Firms in the telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and food and drink sectors are best positioned to withstand the downturn, it added.
All In On NDI

Many people have gone all in on NDI. But how they use it can be very different from how you might want to use it.

Page 1 of 3 next 

Networked video is the next wave in production. IP video is part of the ATSC 3.0 specification for broadcast delivery, so there will be no escaping the migration away from video signals to data packets anywhere in the broadcast chain.

Network Device Interface (NDI), developed by NewTek, is a standard that enables the use of high-quality, low-latency video on existing and standard IP networks. With NDI, video becomes data that can be shared over a network using off-the-shelf computer networking hardware. In the short run, this doesnt change much, because you can run an Ethernet cable to each camera or converter box just as youd run an SDI cable. But NDI enables much more.

It could be as simple as running just one cable to the front of a conference room where a switch connects it to six different devices, as opposed to having to run six SDI cables. It could be as complex as leveraging your existing network and deploying dozens of cameras across multiple campuses, all of which feed back to a central production center. This means no one needs to cart all of that gear around anymore. It also means you can call up any camera, any audio source, or any mixing device to produce any number of programs at the same time.

Moreover, this capability extends to the internet itself. A producer could leverage a graphics artist in another city and cameras from around the world in a live show that would otherwise require a dozen outside broadcasting trucks, expensive satellite time, and a wide range of experts in each aspect of the production chain to help make it come together.

Case Study Lessons

Leveraging NDI today can start as simply as adding some on-camera converters to cameras you already have. Software-based video mixers have quickly moved to incorporate NDI, so your TriCaster, vMix, Wirecast, OBS, Livestream, etc., are all ready to add NDI sources into the mix. There are also numerous converters available from the likes of BirdDog, NewTek, Magewell (Figure 1, below), and Kiloview. If you need a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera head, these have had NDI-enabled models available for some time already. These NDI heads also accept Power over Ethernet (PoE), so with one cable, you can have power, video, audio, camera control, and additional capability. For instance, BirdDog has software to offer crew communications (coms) across the NDI backbone as well.

Figure 1. Magewell Pro Convert NDI to HDMI

I was tasked with putting together a forward-looking solution for GM Financials in-house video production team (Figure 2, below). We settled on the TriCaster as the mixer because it has a similar operational look and feel to the hardware video mixers they already use. We picked the new 4K TriCaster Mini, which offers four built-in PoE ports, as well as two other Ethernet ports for networking. Each port is its own network interface card (NIC), so theres no communication between them. While the TriCaster itself can see all of the connected devices, youre not able to utilize the built-in PoE ports for, say, a BirdDog coms system to each camera.

Figure 2. Components of the NDI-driven rig I built for GM Financial

Realizing this brought to light one key aspect of NDI that you might not expect: It is as liberated, and as limited, as any network device and network infrastructure you have in place. As a result, you need to become a lot more knowledgeable about networking, IP setup, DHCP, or manual addressing. For the traditional plug-and-play video pro, this is a whole other world, so moving to NDI has a bit of a learning curve. That said, the advantages far outweigh the additional understanding required.

For this kit, we bought three of Panasonics AG-CX350 camcorders (Figure 3, below). These are the first camcorders to offer built-in NDI capability (with an additional license purchase and activation). As networked camcorders, theres a lot they can do, and NDI is just one networked feature, so theyre not set up to do NDI out of the box. You have to adjust several in-camera networking settings before you even attempt to activate the NDI on the camera. Again, its not as simple as plugging in an SDI cable and getting video out.

Figure 3. The Panasonic AG-CX350

Additionally, in a corporate setting, youll have the further hurdle of a locked-down networking environment. This affected us as soon as we turned on our TriCaster Mini. We had to register the license in order to be able to use the TriCaster at all. To do that required an internet connection. We couldnt just plug the TriCaster into the GM Financial Ethernet network because it was not an approved device. For security and protection of all of the devices within the company, unknown devices get nothing. I know other companies that had to send their TriCaster to the IT department to have the corporate software installed on the machine so they could plug into the corporate network for internet connectivity. This corporate software can have an adverse effect on the performance of the tools.



We managed to get ours activated by using a smartphone USB tethered to a new router we purchased, which then shared the connection to the TriCaster and to the other connected devices. This is key, because getting the NDI license for the Panasonic cameras also requires an unrestricted connection to the internet.



Youll need a computer with NDI Tools and NDI Studio Monitor to access the Panasonic over your own local area network (LAN). Then, when you click the Register button, it will take you to the NewTek online store, where you can purchase the NDI license. Next, in NDI Studio Monitor, you navigate to the window for the CX350 and enter the activation code there. It will again reach across the internet to reverify everything. Now your camera is activated and able to deliver NDI video without an internet connection.

The takeaway is that you should be prepared to spend some time setting things up initially with any of the new network-reliant tools. Have a direct connection to the outside internet in order to get your gear set up to work within your intranet.
State Bank of India has closed



down a section of the Local Head Office (LHO) here after an employee tested positive for COVID-19, a senior official said on Friday.

The employee is associated with the Liability Centralised Processing Centre located at the 'E' wing of the LHO.

The SBI official said the employee was not attending office for the last 8-10 days and was later found to have contracted the deadly virus.

"Since then, we have sanitised the entire building and the section has been closed till May 11," he said, adding, other departments are functional.

The employee is being treated at a private hospital.

"As a responsible organisation, we will have to look into the welfare of all employees and follow the protocol in such challenging circumstances," the official said.

He said another SBI staff, who had travelled to a foreign country, also tested positive, but has recovered now following treatment at a government hospital.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sweeping changes to this years Leaving Cert will allow students the option of being assessed through a system of predictive grades instead of exams.

However, it is understood that candidates who want to sit the traditional exams  and they have a legal right to do so - will also be facilitated.

However, that special sitting of the Leaving Cert wont take place in time for college entry this year, so CAO applicants will rely on predictive grades as a basis for selection for a college place.

Predictive grades will be based on teachers professional assessments of their pupils and will include measures such as performance in house exams.

Account may also be taken of how individual students rank in comparison with their classmates while a schools overall performance profile will also be considered to ensure their results are broadly in line of what would be expected.

Data from all schools will be collated nationally and students will be awarded grades and, from those grades, students who have applied to the CAO for college entry can convert them into points, as usual.

Expand Close Broadening discussion: Childrens watchdog Niall Muldoon outlined a range of concerns. Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins / Facebook

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Whatsapp Broadening discussion: Childrens watchdog Niall Muldoon outlined a range of concerns. Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins

Based on a student survey published this week, 79pc of sixth years now support such an option, suggesting that a significant majority of the 61,000 candidates would take this route.

The radical departure from the norm comes against the backdrop of the challenge of conducting exams for 61,000 students while social distancing protocols and other public health restrictions are in place.

Even rescheduling the exams from early June to July 29, as initially proposed in response to the Covid-19 threat, offers no guarantee that they could go ahead safely.

The ongoing uncertainty has driven up student stress levels and forced the move this week to open up discussions on other options, including predictive grading.

The Cabinet was being briefed on the alternative arrangements today and an announcement is expected around lunchtime.

Read More

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar acknowledged in the Dail yesterday that the uncertainty over the Leaving Cert was causing "enormous stress" and said he wanted to bring conclusion to the issue this week, which suggests an announcement will be made after the meeting.

He was responding to Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin who said "the position regarding the Leaving Cert is unacceptable".

Mr Martin asked why had "members of Government talked about starting dates for examinations without any detail on how that can be accomplished?"

The expected plans will be a radical departure from the norm. It comes against the backdrop of the challenge of conducting exams for 61,000 students while social distancing protocols and other public health restrictions are in place.

Even rescheduling from early June to July 29, as initially proposed in response to the Covid-19 threat, offers no guarantee that a written examination could go ahead safely.

The ongoing uncertainty has driven up student stress levels and forced the move this week to open up discussions on other options, including predictive grading.

Surveys by the Irish Second-Level Students' Union (ISSU) show a big jump in support among sixth years for cancellation of the exams and the use of predictive grading. It was up to 79pc this week, compared with 58pc a month ago.

Intensive discussions on the alternative arrangements continued yesterday, with a major focus on developing a system of predictive grading, which would win the trust of students. Achieving fairness is paramount, with inconsistencies between schools in terms of measuring student performance. Account would also have to be taken of the varying socioeconomic circumstances of different school communities and how that affects pupil attainment.

It is understood one approach under active consideration would involve a mix of student grades in a selection of house exams along with their overall ranking against their peers in the same school.

The ISSU told Education Minister Joe McHugh this week that a predictive grading system must ensure fairness and equity.

Children's Ombudsman Dr Niall Muldoon joined the Leaving Cert debate yesterday to welcome the broadening of discussions to include options such as predictive grades, rather than an exclusive focus on exams on July 29.

He met Mr McHugh on Wednesday evening to outline a range of concerns arising from the nationwide closure of schools on March 12 and the delayed start to the Leaving Cert, which had been relayed to him by students and parents. These include student mental health, students with special educational needs, the impact of the digital divide and a lack of consistency in what schools are offering since they closed.

The extra two months that students would face before the rescheduled exams on July 29 has been a major source of worry.

Dr Muldoon said parents told him of the pressure felt by students who, for two years, had been working towards a fixed end point in June and now that pressure was sustained for two more months.
These are unprecedented times  but even so, comparisons are being made to the Second World War in terms of the magnitude of the crisis that coronavirus represents. Some of this rhetoric is unhelpful but, as we bunker down into our homes and the government gets on a war footing, there is little doubt that the challenge to our liberty, leisure time and sense of wellbeing is real.

With early reports that book sales are soaring while bookshops and warehouses close down and publishers reassess their lists, what can the reading patterns of an earlier generation tell us about getting through a crisis and staying at home?

The restrictions at the beginning of the Second World War affected all aspects of day-to-day life. But it was the blackout that topped most peoples list of grievances  above shortages of food and fuel, the evacuation, and lack of news and public services. Households were reprimanded and fined for showing chinks of light through windows, car lights were dimmed, and walking around, even along familiar streets, late at night became treacherous.

With the widespread limitations to free movement, the book trade was quick off the mark. Books were promoted by libraries and book clubs as the very thing to fight boredom and fill blacked-out evenings at home or in shelters with pleasure and forgetfulness. Books may become more necessary than gas masks, the Book Society, Britains first celebrity book club, advised.

Recommended What to read to stay sane during the coronavirus pandemic

Ive been researching the choices and recommendations of the Book Society for the past few years. The club was set up in 1929 and ran until the 1960s, shipping carefully selected books out to thousands of readers each month. It was modelled on the success of the American Book of the Month club (which launched in 1926) and aimed to boost book sales at a time when buying books wasnt common. It irritated some critics and booksellers who accused it of dumbing down and giving an unfair advantage to some books over others  but was hugely popular with readers.

The Book Society was run by a selection committee of literary celebrities  the likes of JB Priestley, Sylvia Lynd, George Gordon, Edmund Blunden and Cecil Day-Lewis  chaired by bestselling novelist Hugh Walpole. Selections were not meant to be the best of anything, but had to be worthwhile and deserving of peoples time and hard-earned cash.

Guaranteeing tens of thousands of extra sales, the club had a huge impact on the mid-20th-century book trade, with publishers desperate to get the increased sales and global reach of what publisher Harold Raymond called the Book Society bun.

The Book Society guided readers through the confusion of appeasement and the run-up to the Second World War with a marked increase in recommendations of political non-fiction examining contemporary geopolitics. The classic novel of appeasement was Elizabeth Bowens The Death of the Heart (Book Society Choice in October 1938) in which a sense of malaise and inevitability of future war haunts the characters desperate actions.

When Britain finally declared war against Germany in September 1939, the Book Society judges were divided. Some were relieved that, as George Gordon put it, an intolerable situation has at last acquired the awful explicitness of war. But others were devastated, especially Edmund Blunden who was still traumatised from fighting in the First World War.

As todays readers prepare to batten down the hatches with Hilary Mantels 900-page latest book, it is sobering to reflect on how an imaginative connection with the past has long helped readers find relief from the madness of the present

The judges advised members that when they became weary of news, people will turn to books as the best comfort, as had happened in the First World War with the increase in reading and library membership. Publishers and booksellers faced huge challenges during the Second World War, including paper shortages, problems in distribution, a vanishing workforce, and bomb damage to offices and warehouses. But there were more readers  and from a wider social class  at the end of it. Demand consistently outstripped supply as consumer expenditure on books more than doubled between 1938 and 1945.

Throughout the Second World War, the Book Society varied its lists between books that offered some insight on the strangeness of contemporary life and works of fiction  especially historical fiction  that took readers minds off it.

Titles in the first group include comic novels by the likes of EM Delafield and Evelyn Waugh, as well as forgotten bestsellers like Ethel Vances Escape (1939) (an unlikely thriller set in a concentration camp) and Reaching for the Stars (1939), American journalist Nora Walns inside account of life in Nazi Germany.

More topical non-fiction became a priority as the devastation of the Blitz kicked in. Winged Words: Our Airmen Speak for Themselves (1941) and Into Battle: Winston Churchills War Speeches (1941) were especially popular.

Historical fiction was consistently in demand. Half the clubs choices in 1941 were long novels with historical settings. As todays readers prepare to batten down the hatches with Hilary Mantels 900-page latest book, it is sobering to reflect on how an imaginative connection with the past has long helped readers find relief from the madness of the present.

The other failsafes in the Second World War were the classics. As books already in print became scarce, the Book Society reissued new editions of Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, and Tolstoys War and Peace and Anna Karenina. These were books that Walpole said he believed he could sit down with even through an air raid.

Indeed, Neilsen BookScan has reported a rise in sales of classic fiction as the coronavirus crisis deepens  including War and Peace  as readers use this unfamiliar time to knuckle down to the heavyweights.

You can also join a War and Peace reading group online if you want a bit of company. After the homeschooling, working from home, and everything else. Here goes.

Nicola Wilson is an associate professor in book and publishing studies at the University of Reading. This article first appeared on The Conversation
Technavio has been monitoring the oil control lotion market and it is poised to grow by USD 3.83 billion during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of almost 6% 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/20200507005714/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Oil Control Lotion 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 moderately fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Arbonne International LLC, Beiersdorf AG, e.l.f. Beauty Inc., Johnson Johnson Services Inc., KOSE Corp., L'Oreal SA, Shiseido Co. Ltd., The Estee Lauder Companies Inc., The Hain Celestial Group Inc., and Unilever Group are some of the major market participants. The demand of oil control lotions 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.

Demand of oil control lotions has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Oil Control Lotion Market 2019-2023: Segmentation

Oil Control Lotion Market is segmented as below:

Distribution Channel Online Offline

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=IRTNTR32099

Oil Control Lotion 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 oil control lotion market report covers the following areas:

Oil Control Lotion Market Size

Oil Control Lotion Market Trends

Oil Control Lotion Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies increasing demand for grooming cosmetics for men as one of the prime reasons driving the oil control lotion market growth during the next few years.

Oil Control Lotion Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the oil control lotion market, including some of the vendors such as Arbonne International LLC, Beiersdorf AG, e.l.f. Beauty Inc., Johnson Johnson Services Inc., KOSE Corp., L'Oreal SA, Shiseido Co. Ltd., The Estee Lauder Companies Inc., The Hain Celestial Group Inc., and Unilever Group. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the oil control lotion market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Oil Control Lotion Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023

Detailed information on factors that will assist oil control lotion market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the oil control lotion market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the oil control lotion market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of oil control lotion 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

APAC Market size and forecast 2018-2023

North America 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: DECISION FRAMEWORK

PART 10: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES

Market drivers

Market challenges

PART 11: MARKET TRENDS

Technological advances

Growing preference for DIY oil control lotions

Increasing demand for grooming cosmetics for men

PART 12: VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Overview

Landscape disruption

Competitive scenario

PART 13: VENDOR ANALYSIS

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Arbonne International LLC

Beiersdorf AG

e.l.f. Beauty Inc.

Johnson Johnson Services Inc.

KOSE Corp.

L'Oreal SA

Shiseido Co. Ltd.

The Estee Lauder Companies Inc.

The Hain Celestial Group Inc.

Unilever Group

PART 14: APPENDIX

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

Definition of market positioning of vendors

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/20200507005714/en/

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Website: www.technavio.com/
(JNS)The Trump administration will not be sending U.S. coronavirus assistance to the Gaza Strip due to concerns that funds could fall into the hands of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.

The Trump administration is not supporting assistance to Gaza, a senior administration official with knowledge of the decision told The New York Post. There is a Hamas government in Gaza. They have indicated no interest in engaging with us, no interest in peace with Israel, and in fact, they continuedespite having coronavirus cases in Gazato fire rockets at the Israelis on a regular basis.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman announced on April 16 that the United States would give $5 million to the Palestinians to help them deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Im very pleased the USA is providing $5M for Palestinian hospitals and households to meet immediate, life-saving needs in combating COVID-19. The USA, as the worlds top humanitarian aid donor, is committed to assisting the Palestinian people, & others worldwide, in this crisis, tweeted Friedman.

The relief would come from international-disaster assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the U.S. State Department. The funds would go to Palestinians through a contractor in the West Bank.

The Trump administration has defunded almost all U.S. assistance to the Palestinians since the enactment of the Taylor Force Act in 2018 due to the Palestinian Authoritys pay to slay program of rewarding terrorists and their families.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 9)  For Mother's Day, some moms may have enough time to be with their families amid the COVID-19 quarantine but there are others whose work beckons them to the frontlines.

Dr. Thania Salazar-Fajardo is a cardiologist at St. Luke's Medical Center. Although she said days have been easier at the hospital, Fajardo recalled the struggle at the beginning of the pandemic when she was required to undergo self-quarantine, which she had to explain to her three-year-old daughter.

"We were on quarantine so that was the time we explained to her that there would be less hugging, no kissing, nothing near her face and she would be asked to even wear her mask," Fajardo told CNN Philippines' Not Politics As Usual on Friday.

With her line of work, she said preventive measures like social distancing are also practiced at home.

"The process of disinfecting or decontaminating at home is really tedious and we even wear masks and practice social distancing," Fajardo added. "She knows we can only kiss her on the foot, on her tummy, that's about it."

Fajardo's daily routine consists of online meetings, seeing patients at the hospital and undergoing decontamination. Upon arriving home, she continues to talk to her patients online and read updates on COVID-19.

"[There are] less emotions now. You just really have to be more logical about this and then eventually COVID will pass and you get to go back to your norm," she said.

PCol Portia Manalad, a police official and mother of three, faces a similar situation.

Manalad admitted that as the Philippine National Police chief of the Directorate for Logistics Division, being away from her family was no longer new to her after having been assigned to different places. She was recently sent to Cotabato City, far from her children residing in Metro Manila.

"For almost three months, I was not able to go home," she shared to CNN Philippines.

But her wait would still have to stretch for another 14 days since she is required to undergo self-quarantine. However, she said she was glad that her kids  21-year-old Tricia, 19-year-old Jonah and 16-year-old Third  understood the situation and supported her as she went through isolation.

"They were the ones na nagsabi sa akin (who told me) I can go home and they prepared the house and a room for me...because they are much aware na pagkagaling ka sa malayo (when you've come from somewhere far) you have to self-quarantine and natuwa naman po ako kasi (I was glad because) at least they are aware and mayroon sila sinusunod na (they are following) protocols," she said.

As for Natalia Moran  a chef for several restaurants in Boracay and Manila such as The Sunny Side Cafe, Spicebird Grill and PizzaExpress  she chose to be active during the pandemic. Moran volunteered to provide meals to other frontliners to become an example to her nine-year-old son, Rafa.

"I couldn't just stay put. I wanted to help in anyway that I could," she shared in an online interview. "I think at a pretty young age it's good to instill these values because we can't just think of ourselves all the time."

Moran said her son helps her with cooking and preparing the meals.

"He helps out by counting the boxes, putting labels on the food packs and then sometimes he ties the boxes and helps bring them out," she described.

Moran makes around 100 to 400 meals per day, three days a week and sends them to Makati Medical Center, Veterans Memorial Medical Center, Cardinal Santos Medical Center, Philippine General Hospital and San Juan Medical Center.

Rafa also spoke to CNN Philippines during the interview.

Asked what he thought of his mother, Rafa answered "She is a hero to me."

All three mothers received Mother's Day messages from their loved ones.

Watch here:
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

By now, Americans are familiar with the rule: Stay six feet away from other people for your best chance of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Even as Texas begins to reopen more businesses, social distancing is still being emphasized. But some officials' guidelines for how much space to keep between yourself and others has varied.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended at least a six-foot gap. The World Health Organization has recommended half that distanceand only when people are coughing or sneezing.

However, other health experts have said even more space may be needed in some situations.

So how much social distancing is enough? Here's what you need to know.

Where does the six-foot rule come from?

Health experts have said the recommendation for six feet of social distancing comes from studies of diseases in the 1930s and 1940s, mainly the work of William F. Wells, who studied tuberculosis.

COVID-19 is believed to be spread mainly through large respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze. The droplets typically travel three to six feet.

Health experts say that because the droplets are larger and can usually be seen with the naked eye, gravity will cause them to fall to the ground within that distance.

Why are some health experts concerned about the six-foot rule?

There are questions about whether the virus can be transmitted through microscopic droplets, called aerosols, which linger in the air.

Health experts have pointed to studies and incidents that suggest there's a risk the virus can linger. One study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested COVID-19 can live in the air as long as three hours in the right conditions.

Experts also expressed concerned about aerosol transmission After about 60 choir members gathered for a practice in Mount Vernon, Wash., and dozens of them contracted the virus,.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in late March found that droplets that were produced when someone coughs or sneezes can travel up to 27 feet. The study wasn't conducted on the COVID-19 virus specifically, and droplets survive and fall at different rates depending on their size and factors such as temperature, humidity and air currents.

The study could have implications for the novel coronavirus, but there's still a lot that isn't known about the disease, such as how much of the virus survives in smaller particles and how much of a living virus it takes to make someone sick, health experts say. Even if the virus lingers in respiratory droplets in the air, health experts still can't say whether the droplets hold enough of the virus to cause concern.

"The question is not how far the germs can travel, but how far can they travel before they're no longer a threat," Dr. Paul Pottinger, an infectious disease professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine told U.S. TODAY. "The smaller the germ particles, the lower the risk that they might infect somebody who would breathe them in or get them stuck in their nose or their mouth."

What about social distancing when you exercise?

Because of the varying theories about aerosol transmission, questions have been raised about safe social distances outdoors.

Some experts say the risk of transmission outside is low because air flow dilutes any air expelled air. Generally, health experts say you're safer engaging in outdoor activities than indoor ones, where air flow can be restricted, people are close together and frequently touched items are abundant.

"Usually there's a lot more social distancing outside," Dr. Kevin Winthrop, a professor of infectious diseases in epidemiology and public health at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, told National Public Radio. "And environmental factors like wind and UV (radiation, which degrades most viruses) make it less likely you're going to come in contact with viral particles."

But one recent study found that when people walk briskly or run, their bodies creates wakes of air that can carry respiratory droplets up to 15 feet.

The study hasn't been peer-reviewed or published, and it has significant limitations. For example, it didn't focus on the risk of infection or the COVID-19 virus specifically.

"The results look reasonable," Linsey Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech who studies air flow, told The New York Times. "Common sense and this study suggest that if someone is walking or running, we need to allow for more space around them."

Other health experts say allowing more space makes sense because people breathe heavier and harder when they're exercising.

"The mnemonic I like to use is double your distance," Dr. Ben Levine, a professor of Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told NPR. "The greater volume and rate of breathing that occurs during exercise has the risk of spreading droplets farther ... I think it's reasonable (to increase social distancing) based on the known changes in breathing during exercise."

So, is six feet enough?

Many health experts say six feet of distance is a good minimum to aim for, based on what is known about the virus's main method of transmission.

Health experts also recommend taking personal factors into account, such as how vulnerable an individual is and how well air is flowing.

"Everything is about probability," Dr. Harvey Fineberg, the head of the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, told The New York Times. "Three feet is better than nothing. Six feet is better than three feet. At that point, the larger drops have pretty much fallen down. Maybe if you're out of spitting range, that could be even safer, but six feet is a pretty good number."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

2020 The Dallas Morning News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(Repeats story published late on Thursday)

* Sweden has eschewed lockdown, bucking trend

* Its death toll is worse than Nordic neighbours

* However it is behind likes of Britain and France

* Economy to fare better than euro area - JP Morgan

* WHO says Sweden's way could be a 'future model'

By Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM, April 30 (Reuters) - Per Arne Fredin has been at the sharp end of Sweden's policy to buck the norm and avoid a COVID-19 lockdown - a decision that has been hailed as both visionary and irresponsible by public figures around the world.

As a 70-year-old with a heart condition, he was in a danger group for the novel coronavirus. He feared the worst when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 in February, but pulled through after 12 agonising days in bed at home to the west of Stockholm.

Fredin is also the owner of a trucking business, which too has survived the pandemic thus far - which he attributed in large part to the government's decision not to institute a lockdown, in contrast to its Nordic neighbours, most of Europe and much of the world.

He has been able to retain his 80 workers at his firm, Grodinge Transport. His fleet of 65 trucks has mostly made up the business lost from collapsing aviation-related work thanks to increased demand for deliveries of food and medical supplies.

"It's meant a tremendous deal for us that the Swedish government has acted the way it has. One of my drivers sent a picture from an autobahn in Germany and it was completely empty, ghost-like," he said.

"I have most of my life behind me," he added. "There will come a day after this, and we have to think about those that need to carry on living."

PUBLIC TRUST AND PROTESTS

Sweden has kept most schools, restaurants and businesses open, and relied primarily on voluntary measures to fight the virus. Swedes have been asked to keep social distance, work from home where possible, and avoid travel.

"I feel confident in the overall strategy. One reason that we have chosen this strategy, and where we have supported the agencies, is that all measures have to be sustainable over time," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said last week.

Story continues

Some Swedish scientist have however accused the government of running a dangerous experiment with people's lives and urged it to implement lockdowns like those in neighbouring countries.

The chosen path may seem extreme, but debates about the balance between public and economic health - or if the two can be separated - are taking place around the globe as countries calculate how best to extricate themselves from shutdowns.

The death tolls so far offer little clarity, however.

The outbreak has killed almost 2,600 people in Sweden. While that is far more relative to the size of the population than in Denmark, Norway and Finland, where authorities have taken a stricter approach, it is lower than in Britain, France and Spain where there have also been lockdowns.

While it is unclear why Sweden's death rate has been lower than some countries, one reason could be that the population is more spread out - more than half of homes are single-person households, easily the highest proportion in the EU, according to 2016 figures from the bloc's stats office.

Another factor that has been cited is that Swedes' trust in government ranks high internationally. They were second in the European Union, after the Netherlands, in a survey published by the European Commission in 2017, with 72% trusting their government, compared to the EU average of 40%.

This could mean a coronavirus containment strategy that relies on voluntary measures might not be effective elsewhere.

In some countries, including Germany and the United States, there have been protests against lockdown measures.

SO HOW IS ECONOMY HOLDING UP?

Regardless of domestic decisions, the global slump will batter Sweden's export-dependent economy, which the government expects to contract 7% this year.

JP Morgan has forecast Sweden's economy will contract less than the euro area, with a 2.4% contraction in the first quarter of this year and a 13.7% percent contraction in the second.

That compares with projections of a 4% and 17.3% contraction for the euro area; 3.1% and 16.6% for Germany; and 4% and 21.4% for France, according to the bank's report published on Friday.

Sweden's strategy appears to have softened the blow for some sectors.

"The actions that the Swedish government has taken are good and it perhaps makes the performance of Sweden's economy less bad than other economies," said Jens Henriksson, CEO of Swedbank , Sweden's biggest mortgage lender.

"And that is good for the banking system."

Statistics from rival SEB showed card transactions made through the bank fell by 28% in Sweden in the week of April 6, much less than the 70% in Finland and the 66% in Denmark.

Similarly, while central bank data showed daily restaurant turnover tumbled 70% in Sweden in the month through April 22, that compared with near-100% falls in Germany and Britain.

'WE'RE NOT AT END OF JOURNEY'

Sweden's tactics have not focused on stopping the disease, which is seen as unrealistic by its health agency, but to slow it enough that the healthcare system can cope, while keeping society and the economy running as much as possible.

The strategy received cautious backing from the World Health Organization on Wednesday.

"If we are to reach a 'new normal', in many ways Sweden represents a future model," said Mike Ryan, the WHO's top emergencies expert.

But he also pointed to Swedes' faith in authorities, adding: "What it has done differently is that it really, really has trusted its own communities to implement that physical distancing."

Sweden could reap a longer-term benefit if "herd immunity" is achieved faster there than elsewhere. However this concept, where enough people have been infected to effectively stop the virus spreading, is untested for the new disease.

The Swedish health agency's modelling suggests about 25% of people in the Stockholm region have had or will contract the disease, levels at which it has said partial herd immunity could help slow the outbreak.

By contrast, in neighbouring Finland, health authorities have been concerned the coronavirus has spread too slowly, leaving the country well short of their peak of infections.

COVID-19 survivor Fredin is mindful of the effect of a shutdown on the economy as well as long-term public health.

"I think the government has done a very mature and good job," he said. "We're not at the end of this journey and I think other countries will have to pay a heavy price further down the line." (Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Additional reporting by Colm Fulton, Anna Ringstrom and Johannes Hellstrom in Stockholm, and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Pravin Char)
Denis Goldberg, one of two surviving political activists convicted in the so-called Rivonia Trial, which put Nelson Mandela and seven others in prison for many years and proved a turning-point in South Africas long struggle against apartheid, died on April 29 in Cape Town. He was 87.

His family, in confirming the death, said he had been treated for lung cancer.

Mr. Goldbergs career, first in the armed resistance movement and later in the post-apartheid era, encapsulated much of his countrys modern history, from the racial nuances of the struggle against white minority rule to the reluctant acknowledgment of  and disillusion with  the corruption that became a byword in early 21st-century South Africa.

At the trial, which lasted from 1963 to 1964, many of those accused of sabotage were expecting the death sentence. Indeed, in a celebrated address from the dock, Mr. Mandela said his ideal of a democratic and free South Africa was, if needs be, an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

When Judge Quartus de Wet pronounced life sentences on eight defendants, Mr. Goldbergs mother, Annie Goldberg, who was in the public gallery, did not hear what he said.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday urged the Indian Red Cross Society tocome forward to spread awareness among people so that COVID-19 patients and health professional treating them are not stigmatised.

Attending the centenary celebrations of the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) on the occasion of the 'World Red Cross Day', Vardhan lauded the institution for sending mobile blood collection vans at the doorstep of regular donors at this point of time, a health ministry statement said.

"The IRCS is doing yeoman service to the mankind by providing the facility of mobile blood collection, pick and drop facility through mobile van etc and setting a benchmark for other voluntary organisations by providing blood to terminally ill patients, thalassaemics as well as patients suffering from other blood disorders during these difficult times," he said.

He also appealed to voluntary organisations, NGOs and people at large to come forward to promote voluntary blood donation to maintain ample blood stocks to meet any eventuality.

He asked people to donate blood at least once in a year on their birthday or marriage anniversary to make the occasion special for not only themselves but for the people who need blood, according to the statement.

At the event, Vardhan alsoflagged off a vehicle carrying relief material to Haryana.

"I really value Indian Red Cross fraternity having given a great contribution in our fight against COVID-19 where they have provided equipment, sanitizers, food, PPE kits and N95 masks etc to several hospitals in India," he was quoted as saying in the health ministry statement.

Outlining the silver lining in the COVID-19 crisis, he said, "This situation has also given us good things. It's an advent of a new era and world order. We are promoting personal hygiene like never before, attending meetings through videoconferencing as well as using other digital technology to save on costs while taking full care of our families.

"It has highlighted the value of a clean and clear environment, earth, water and air; nature has taken over the planet world over, like never before," he underlined.

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,886 and the number of cases climbed to 56,342 on Friday registering an increase of 103 deaths and 3,390 cases in the last 24 hours since Thursday morning,according to the Union health ministry.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by different states and union territories till 9.00 PM showed that 59,100 people have tested positive and 1,904 died across the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada (Comprehensive) this week donated 10,000 sunscreen packets to the Cashman Isolation-Quarantine Complex (ISO-Q), a joint project of the city of Las Vegas and Clark County to safely house and treat the valleys homeless population who have contracted the coronavirus. The sunscreen packets will be used by staff, volunteers and patients at the ISO-Q, a partially outdoor facility.

Comprehensive, which has provided free sunscreen through a number of community partnerships over the past few years, is committed to preserving the health and well-being of the Las Vegas community through a proactive approach to mitigate sun exposure and prevent unnecessary skin conditions, including melanoma and skin cancer.

We can think of no better recipient of these sunscreen packets than those being treated at the ISO-Q, along with those who are working tirelessly to care for them, said Comprehensives chief executive officer, Jon Bilstein. Skin protection, while easy with proper use of sunscreen, is often out of reach of many. We appreciate the Mayors Fund for Las Vegas LIFE reaching out to Comprehensive to give us this opportunity to help.

The donation, secured through the Mayors Fund for Las Vegas LIFE, is the result of the organizations efforts to coordinate and secure donations of cash and essential items needed to combat the coronavirus in our community. To date, the Mayors Fund for Las Vegas LIFE has secured many sizable and impactful donations of essential and critical items from numerous corporate and individual donors for use at the ISO-Q. Among these donations are blankets, towels, and sheets by the thousands; soap, toothpaste and other personal hygiene items by the scores; pallets of water by the hundreds; Personal Protective Equipment such as gloves, masks and gowns; medical equipment and supplies; and hundreds of hot meals and coffee delivered almost daily.
Freight Forwarders in Takoradi on today, Thursday, May 7 picketed at the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority offices in Takoradi to demand the suspension of UNIPASS which they say has been problematic to their business.

According to the members, although they raised several challenges with the UNIPAS throughout the training and piloting of the system a month ago in Takoradi, the problems were not addressed leading to its suspension after it was extended to Tema.

Henderson McCarthy-Freight Forwarder/Importer, Takoradi

Speaking to Citi News in Takoradi, a Freight Forwarder who is also an importer, Henderson McCarthy government to bring back GCNet to Takoradi just as it has been done in Tema until the UNIPASS challenges are fixed.

All we are saying is that if I have a machine that I'm working with and it takes me ten minutes to do a job and you bring me a new one and a better machine in this 21st Century but this machine is going to take me three hours to do same job, then what are we talking about? Are you taking me back or into the future? The government has to take a look at this. We the importers and the clearing agents in Takoradi are not happy. It is taking us long to clear, it is taking us more time and more cost.

And if you happen to clear a vehicle on this UNIPASS, you get to the licensing office and it is not even in their system. Our call on government is for government to suspend this UNIPASS system and then they should better it up and come back. Let's use the GCNet because the government needs revenue and let's give government the revenue. Before they extended the UNIPASS to Tema, we had reported every problem happening here in Takoradi. So Tema stood on those grounds and said no we don't want it but in fortunately for us in Takoradi because of the quantum of goods coming here, they didn't listen to us.

Paul Ato Benson who is an Executive Member of the Takoradi District of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders said the problem goes beyond importers to shipping lines.

Paul Ato Benson-Executive Member, Takoradi District, GIFF

It has really affected us in the sense that even the shipping lines and other stakeholders are having a lot of challenges. We felt it was just an ordinary glitch but now we have noticed that it is taking a seed that is really worrying us.

For instance if you want to even send your declaration or CCVR which was previously taking us some short time, now it can even take more than three weeks and they are still having it in their system.

The Chairman of the Takoradi District of GIFF, Derick Prince Abodjan-Chairman, while associating leadership with all the concerns expressed said once they have worked with a similar IT system [GCNet] that they are used to, It is appropriate to go back to it for say three months with Tema until all issues are solved.

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Business Insider

Couples shouldn't reschedule their weddings for spring 2021, as the pandemic won't be over.

Obradovic/Getty Images

Countless engaged couples have had to postpone their weddings because of the coronavirus, and many are setting their new wedding dates for the second half of 2020 or the spring of 2021.

But research indicates the pandemic won't be over by then, so couples could be forced to postpone again.

Couples who choose to go through with a big wedding before there's a vaccine for the coronavirus could also be putting themselves and their guests at risk.

It's best to wait to plan your wedding until there's a vaccine for the coronavirus, but there are still ways you can celebrate your marriage in the meantime.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Although the celebration itself is fun, planning a wedding is mostly exhausting.

Engaged couples are consumed by their weddings in the weeks, months, and years leading up to them, with almost every free moment taken up by decisions about cakes, invitations, and first dance songs as the big day inches closer.

It all feels worth it once the wedding day you've dreamed about for so long finally comes. The cake tastings, dance practices, and dress fittings finally end, and you get to start anew with the love of your life by your side.

Countless couples were within arm's reach of that happily ever after, but then the coronavirus hit. Now, they're left scrambling to cancel or postpone their weddings as a result of the pandemic.

The majority of couples who had to postpone their spring 2020 weddings are rescheduling for later this year or the spring of 2021

As the coronavirus spread, couples with weddings in the spring and summer of 2020 hastily postponed their weddings.

It's much more common for couples to postpone their event rather than cancel, with 96% of The Knot's couples rescheduling their weddings rather than calling the whole day off.

"About 52% are postponing to later this year in 2020, and about 33% are postponing to 2021," Kristen Maxwell Cooper, The Knot's editor-in-chief, told Insider.

Story continues

Zola is seeing similar statistics, according to Emily Forrest, Zola's director of communications. "About a quarter of postponements are set for the spring of 2021," Forrest told Insider. "The rest of the postponements are for the fall of this year."

Daniela Grafman, the chief amazement officer at Vision Event Co., said more and more of her clients are postponing to 2021.

"Our first postponements from weddings that were supposed to happen in March, April, and May started to move to the fall of 2020," she said.

Grafman told Insider the event planning company then experienced a "second wave of postponements," with couples looking to the following year as a safe time to set their new wedding dates.

Research indicates it's not a good idea to set a wedding for the spring of 2021, as big weddings won't be safe until there's a coronavirus vaccine

The existence of a vaccine doesn't make public gatherings automatically safe.

VK Studio/Shutterstock

The average timeline for the development of a vaccine is 12 to 18 months, assuming everything goes according to plan.

Experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Melinda Gates predict a vaccine could be ready in 18 months, while Severin Schwan, the CEO of one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, believes there won't be a vaccine before the end of 2021.

Scientists are optimistic about the timeline for the coronavirus vaccine, but there's no way to know for sure that its development will go according to plan, as Dr. Cheryl Healton, the dean of the School of Public Health at New York University, pointed out.

"When HIV/AIDS landed in 1981, everyone was saying we would have a vaccine within a year, or within three years," Healton told Insider. "Now it's thirty years later, and we still have no vaccine."

Healton said it's more likely the coronavirus vaccine will be developed as hoped, but problems are still a possibility.

Some parts of our lives will start to go back to normal before there's a vaccine, but large events won't be one of them.

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University recently published a Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience, which aims to provide a blueprint for how the economy might reopen amid the virus, focusing on making testing widely available.

The Roadmap suggests a timeline for loosening social-distancing guidelines, but it notes that "limits on public gatherings of larger sizes will remain," even as these guidelines become less strict.

Dr. Josh Sharfstein, the vice dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement at Johns Hopkins University, made clear that large gatherings, like weddings, won't be safe while the virus is still actively spreading.

"Social distancing will be required while there is a continued spread of the virus," he said. "The level of distancing may depend on the amount of spread."

"It's really hard to predict spring 2021," Sharfstein added.

Even if a vaccine is developed earlier than expected, it will still be months before it's universally available

The University of Oxford is currently the furthest along in its development of a coronavirus vaccine, as the team there could know if its vaccine will be effective in humans as early as June after the drug was successfully tested on monkeys.

But Cheryl Healton noted that even if the Oxford vaccine proves to be effective, it will be a long time before it's available to everyone.

Healton says "you could start ramping up production in the summer and fall," but then it all comes down to who will receive the vaccine first. She predicts the highest priority recipients would likely be first responders, the immunocompromised, and people who live in nursing homes, but there's no way to know for sure who those people would be until the time comes.

According to Healton, the coronavirus vaccine will probably be as easy to access as the flu vaccine at some point. You'll be able to walk into a pharmacy and get a quick shot, or even get one at work.

But the bottom line is that it will be months before the average person can easily access a vaccine that has been safely tested.

"I think that the epidemic pattern of the Spanish flu is a quite likely scenario for this," Healton said of the coronavirus. "And if that happens, there'll be two or three more major resurgences. Unless this vaccine works and is able to be pushed out with a rapidity that defies what we've previously seen."

There's no way to plan for when the coronavirus vaccine will be as accessible as the flu vaccine, which is particularly problematic for engaged couples because weddings are all about planning. Every detail, from the flowers to the song you walk in to, has to be scheduled in advance, and in a time when planning is impossible, it seems like organized weddings are off the table.

That's why it's in couples' best interest to put their weddings on hold until the pandemic is over.

You can still get married during the next year, it just might not be in the way that you planned

Traditional weddings can't happen over the next year, but that doesn't mean ceremonies and celebrations can't happen in any capacity.

Zoom weddings are already becoming a common solution for people, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo announcing ceremonies that take place via video call would be legal in the state of New York amid the pandemic. New York is currently the only state that has made these ceremonies legally binding, but other states could follow suit in the coming months.

Simply Eloped, an elopement planning company, is offering its services to help couples put together virtual weddings that still feel fun and meaningful.

"I think you'd be shocked at how much joy is still there," Janessa White, the co-founder of Simply Eloped, said of virtual ceremonies.

A group attends a virtual wedding arranged by Simply Eloped.

Simply Eloped

The Knot, on the other hand, is seeing couples embrace the "minimony," which is a ceremony with 10 or fewer guests, including the officiant, that typically takes place on a couple's original wedding date. They can happen in backyards, and photographers can even attend if they're keeping a safe distance.

Cooper said most couples who plan "minimonies" still intend to have a larger celebration at some point. "It's not replacing the wedding," Cooper said of the events. "It's just a moment to really celebrate the original date."

White is likewise anticipating there will be an increase in elopements in the coming year as shelter-in-place orders are lifted, as Simply Eloped's events typically have less than 10 people at them and happen outside, which makes them a safer choice than the traditional wedding right now.

If they decide it's necessary, couples who still plan to get married in spring 2021 can take precautions to protect themselves and their guests

If you intend to keep your wedding plans for the spring of 2021 despite the unpredictable nature of the coronavirus, it's a good idea to try to get wording into your contracts with vendors that protect you financially in the event you have to postpone.

In Cooper's opinion, it's a good idea to sit down with your vendors and be "very honest and transparent about what you're trying to protect and what they're trying to protect." From there, you can come up with some verbiage that feels comfortable on both sides.

Grafman also encouraged couples to remember vendors are on their side.

"Couples should understand that vendors and venues aren't out to get them," she said. "No one's out to penalize them by any means. We want to do whatever we can to make sure they can have their celebration and everything we deserve."

"I would say another thing that couples could really look into is wedding insurance," Cooper added of strategies couples can take. "Most wedding insurance plans haven't traditionally covered something like the coronavirus, but obviously, you can always look into wedding insurance and work with your provider to create a plan around something like this."

And in terms of physically making the wedding safe, think about health concerns every step of the way. For instance, it's safer to have an outdoor ceremony because it makes it easier for guests to adhere to social-distancing guidelines, and limiting your guest list helps as well.

Likewise, traditional aspects of weddings, like buffets or greeting lines, aren't a good idea until there's a vaccine. Your wedding planner and vendors can help you adjust your wedding to fit the new normal.

Even though it feels impossible, try to look for the silver linings

Although postponing your wedding for over a year can feel disheartening, there are still things to look forward to.

Cooper noted that the additional time to plan can help ensure you have the wedding of your dreams.

"If there are things that they can do relating to the wedding that bring them joy, like adding favors you weren't going to have because you just didn't have time to put those together, go ahead and do those," Cooper said. "It'll start to bring additional excitement to the wedding day."

Forrest gave similar advice: "There are plenty of tasks that can be done from home and that are really fun, like creating an inspiration board of dresses and balloons, taking virtual tours of venues, ordering samples of invitations, or creating a dream registry with a glass of wine in hand."

"I also think it is important to prioritize time together, even if you're working from home next to your partner," Forrest said.

White also advised couples to really focus on what they love about their partner during this time.

"I would just encourage couples to find creative ways to celebrate your love on a daily basis. Not just on your wedding day," she added. "I do think that love is a choice and especially now, I think we rely on our partners more than ever."

For instance, Paris Ritchie and Harry Darling, an Oregon-based couple who postponed their nuptials to next year, have found solace in each other as they rescheduled their wedding.

"Harry has been a major comfort," Ritchie said. "To know that we made this decision as a team was very important."

Harry Darling and Paris Ritchie want to celebrate with their friends and family.

Paris Ritchie and Harry Darling

The couple told Insider they're trying to keep an open mind about their 2021 date, particularly because they want to start a family soon.

"If June 2021 isn't going to work, we may just get legally married at the courthouse and then throw a party once it's safe," they said. "We aren't so occupied with the glitz and glam of a wedding, but more of having that event with all our loved ones in the same room."

Angelica Viera and Alex Nuanez Jr. are approaching their long-awaited wedding day with the same mindset.

The couple was legally married in a small ceremony in 2017, but they always planned on celebrating with their family and friends.

The spring of 2020 seemed like the perfect time until the coronavirus hit.

Angelica Viera and Alex Nuanez Jr. had to postpone their wedding to May 2021.

Angelica Viera

"We finally just decided it's best, and probably safest, to push it out an entire year," Viera told Insider of their decision to set their new date for May 2021.

Despite all the changes they've already made, Viera and Nuanez know it's difficult to predict how the virus might impact them a year from now, and they're willing to alter their plans yet again if necessary.

"If next May doesn't work, we're just having it in our backyard and we'll livestream it," Viera said, as the couple is also looking to have children soon.

The bottom line is that couples like Viera and Nuanez and Ritchie and Darling will be able to have their weddings. They'll just have to wait until a vaccine is widely available and the coronavirus has become a memory rather than an ever-present threat.

And whether you postpone to next year, two years from now, or five years from now, try to remember that when weddings are able to happen again, people are probably going to be more excited than ever to attend.

Grafman argues weddings are going to be even more exciting when they can happen again because people will be so excited to see each other. "I believe with all my heart that we're going to need weddings more than anything," she said.

As White puts it: "People aren't ever going to stop getting married."

Read the original article on Insider
RTE's renowned broadcaster Sean O'Rourke is hanging up the headphones on his illustrious career today.

But he has promised that there's "a fair bit left in the tank" as he moves on to the next phase of his life, having started with RTE in 1982.

The mid-morning news-show anchor (64) is already in talks with RTE about doing some more work after his retirement and, separately, he has been approached to write a book.

"The possibility has been raised, but I don't know. I'll have to think about that," he said.

He will turn 65 in two weeks' time and while he must retire from the company as an RTE employee, this is not the last we have seen of the popular Portlaoise man.

"I do expect to broadcast again, I am still working on some plans with RTE but obviously it's something we have to talk a bit more about," he told the Irish Independent.

"One of the things is, I feel good. I think there's a fair bit left in the tank.

"My father died when he was 65, but he was a smoker from the time he was 17 until the time he was about 62 - and obviously a lot of damage was done. So please God, I will live a bit longer than that and make a contribution in some shape or form."

Asked for his opinion on the existing retirement age, which has been a bone of contention for some RTE workers, he said: "I'd like flexibility to be brought about. I think there's probably a happy medium between allowing people to stay a bit longer if they want and forcing them out.

"One of the things I've been pretty clear about is that even if I could have stayed until I was 70, in RTE, that didn't mean I had the right to present the 'Today' show.

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"Who presents what show is a matter for the director- general, who's the editor-in-chief, and if he or she can't decide who presents what show then what kind of editor-in-chief are they?"

With names like Miriam O'Callaghan and Claire Byrne rumoured to be in the mix to replace him, he pointed out that he was "anything but the favourite" when he landed the job seven years ago.

"There are several people who I would expect to be interested and could be considered for the job," he said.

He also insisted that he is not "irreplaceable", having taken over the show seven years ago when Pat Kenny left for Newstalk.

"No, I'm not. I'm the walking, talking, living proof that nobody is irreplaceable because look, we were supposed to lose 100,000 listeners and we didn't. We actually put on a few," he said.

"I was just fortunate I was with a great bunch of people who are delivering really good news items for a presenter to work with."

A father of six, his plan to celebrate his milestone birthday was to head off with his wife Caroline in a second-hand motorhome that they bought for their future travel adventures. But a staycation is now on the cards.

"We had hoped that we would be heading off. We had planned on going to Spain in it, taking a ferry to Bilbao next week, so that's that plan gone by the wayside. We'll get around Ireland a bit I'm sure before the summer is out."

However, he has no regrets about how his time with RTE has panned out, as he leaves the high-profile slot on a high with 320,000 listeners.

"I'm quite happy and relaxed about it; it's been a great spin and I've enjoyed it all hugely.

"Success was not guaranteed when we started. But I think we succeeded well beyond what anyone would have predicted," he said.
Movie producer Ola Michael has revealed to Graphic Showbiz that late Kumawood actor Bishop Bernard Nyarko was so mad at the movie industry and didnt want to have anything to do with it.



Bishop Bernard Nyarko died on Saturday, May 2 the Ridge Hospital in Accra after a battle with colon cancer, and according to Ola Michael, in conversations they had the actor complained of hypocrites in the movie industry.



Bishop Nyarko was someone who was so passionate about the movie industry but before his demise, he never wanted to have anything to do with the movie industry.



"Anytime we spoke and I raised something about the movie industry he got so angry and told me he didnt want to have that conversation. He never told me why but I remember him always saying there are a lot of hypocrites in the movie industry, he said.



Ola Michael, who is the former PRO of the Film Producers Association of Ghana (FIPAG), said he was sure someone in the movie industry must have made Bishop Nyarko angry.



From the way he spoke bitterly about the movie industry I am so sure someone got him so angry that he never wanted to have anything to do with it.



"If you knew Bishop Nyarko well he was someone who was so passionate about the movie industry and wanted to solve every issue concerning the industry and to hate it all of a sudden is something else. The late Bishop Nyarko never left the movie industry peacefully, he said.



Being a close friend, Ola Michael said he was going to find out what got Bishop Bernard Nyarko out of the movie industry.



I am going to find out who and what got Bishop Nyarko out of the movie industry. Although he never told me what made him go out of an industry he loved so much, I know something led to it that and I will definitely find out what it is, he said.



Talking about his friend, Ola Michael described Bishop Bernard Nyarko as a lovely man who was so kind and always full of advice.



He was always telling me to take my prayers seriously and always gave me advice on a lot of issues. I am going to miss how he was so knowledgeable about the word of God and how he always wanted to see everything done right, he said.



A private one-week observation will be held for Bishop Bernard Nyarko in Accra and Kumasi on Saturday, May 9.

Source: Graphic Showbiz









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Liberty and Telefonica agree $38 billion UK tie-up to take on BT FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the Telefonica headquarters in Madrid

By Paul Sandle and Isla Binnie

LONDON/MADRID (Reuters) - Liberty Global <LBTYA.O> and Telefonica <TEF.MC> have agreed to merge their British businesses in a $38 billion (30.69 billion pounds)deal that will create a powerhouse in mobile and broadband to take on market leader BT <BT.L>.

In the biggest shake-up of the British telecoms market for five years, the deal will bring together the biggest cable TV provider in Liberty's Virgin Media with Telefonica's O2, the second-largest mobile operator.

The tie-up mirrors a succession of European deals struck by Liberty's billionaire founder John Malone to create one-stop shops for mobile and broadband. The Telefonica deal will allow the debt-laden Spanish company to extract cash while remaining in Britain, having tried and failed to sell O2 in 2016.

It will also force rivals Vodafone <VOD.L>, Comcast's <CMCSA.O> Sky, Three UK <0001.HK> and TalkTalk <TALK.L> to examine whether they need to have the full set of fixed and mobile assets to keep up.

"It's not a secret any more, when 5G meets 1 gig broadband we know magic can happen for customers," Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries told reporters on a conference call, referring to superfast internet speeds in both mobile and broadband.

Telefonica CEO Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete said the two businesses would be "much stronger together".

Under the terms of the deal, one of the biggest since the coronavirus pandemic upended the world economy, the parent companies will have equal ownership of the combined entity. They expect to achieve 6.2 billion pounds ($7.7 billion) in total operating benefits, equivalent to 540 million pounds a year by the fifth full year after closing.

The deal values O2 at 12.7 billion pounds and Virgin Media at 18.7 billion pounds, giving a combined value of 31.4 billion pounds including debt.

Liberty will pay Telefonica 2.5 billion pounds to equalise ownership. After recapitalisations, the Spanish group expects to receive further proceeds of 5.7 billion pounds. Liberty will receive 1.4 billion pounds, the companies said.

Story continues

HEAVY INVESTMENT

The newly formed entity will invest 10 billion pounds in the UK market over five years.

That will help it to keep up with former British monopoly BT, which on Thursday announced it was spending 12 billion pounds to upgrade its legacy copper network to faster full-fibre connections, targeting 20 million premises by the mid-to-late 2020s.

The new group will also hope to capture a bigger share of the business sector, competing with BT and Vodafone just as the coronavirus pandemic forces companies to cut spending.

It could further hurt Vodafone, the world's second-biggest mobile operator, which has struggled in its home UK market and had signed a deal to provide mobile services to Virgin from next year.

Shares in BT, which announced separately that it was suspending its dividend until 2021/22, fell as much as 12% to an 11-year low of 101.1 pence before retracing some losses.

Telefonica's share rose 3.5% at the market open but turned negative as investors digested news of the deal and of falling quarterly profit and an option for shareholders to receive part of their 0.40 euros dividend in stock.

Alvarez-Pallete, who has responded to concerns over low profit growth and high debt with a plan to focus on more profitable markets including Britain, told a virtual news conference he had not expected the market to reward Thursday's announcement immediately.

"We are convinced that with both these actions - signing this deal and the dividend policy we have proposed - our company gets stronger," he said.

Including O2, Telefonica's UK business has about 34.5 mobile connections and generated 14.7% of group sales last year.

Vodafone shares dipped 1% in morning trade before edging into positive territory in the afternoon.

NEW WORLD

"Personally, I think the industry needs consolidation so it's a sensible move. It follows our strategy," BT CEO Philip Jansen told reporters, noting how Britain's largest fixed-line provider bought its biggest mobile network, EE, in a deal that closed in early 2016.

Liberty's Fries said the merger talks with Telefonica started before the coronavirus outbreak swept the world.

CCS Insight analyst Kester Mann said the O2 brand had strong customer loyalty so should be kept if any others were to be cut.

Virgin Media, bought by Malone in 2013, was formed from a combination of Britain's cable assets and Virgin Mobile, the pioneering virtual mobile network, in 2007. It licenses Richard Branson's Virgin brand and has about 6 million cable customers and 3.3 million mobile customers.

The 79-year-old Malone has built his empire over more than 40 years of dealmaking in the cable and pay-TV industry, funded largely through debt.

Liberty is one of Europe's largest TV and broadband companies, with operations in six countries under the consumer brands of Virgin Media, Telenet and UPC. Malone sold his networks in Germany and central Europe to Vodafone last year as part of the wave of deals to combine mobile with fixed-line operations.

Analysts expect this deal, which involves predominantly mobile and fixed-line operators rather than two mobile firms, to be approved by regulators, as occurred with BT's purchase of EE.

Liberty was advised by J.P. Morgan and LionTree while Citigroup acted as financial adviser to Telefonica.

(Additional reporting by Juby Babu and Pamela Barbaglia; Writing by Kate Holton; Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman)
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds

By John Kaag

Princeton. 210 pp. $22.99

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Conceived well before the coronavirus hijacked our lives, "Sick Souls, Healthy Minds" offers us a lifeline at this moment. Many of us, forced a state of suspended animation, now have time to think. As we tell each other what to watch, what to cook, what to read and what exercises to do, John Kaag invites us to ask, together with America's greatest philosopher, William James, what makes life worth living.

When we can leave our cocoons, browsers are likely to find Kaag's book in the self-help section of their local bookstore. Yet readers lured by its subtitle, "How William James Can Save Your Life," will soon find themselves wrestling with philosophy, psychology and religious studies, though not in scholars' bone-dry prose. Instead Kaag, a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and a twice-divorced, self-described social misfit, lets readers into his own attempts to stave off depression when he felt the walls of his life closing in.

The book opens with the grisly scene that greeted Kaag one winter morning in 2014. Harvard student Steven Rose had committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the university's 15-story William James Hall just before Kaag passed by on his way to Widener Library. Rose's death forced Kaag to ask himself hard questions: Why do some people choose to end their lives? How can we avoid that fate ourselves? "Sick Souls, Healthy Minds" offers his answers.

Throughout the book, Kaag connects painful experiences from his own life to James's physical, psychological and emotional ordeals, and shows how James came to understand and overcome what ailed him. And James had his troubles: a brush with suicide in his 20s, persistent health problems, the back-to-back deaths of his father and an infant son, and nagging doubts about the value of his professional work. Yet he repeatedly climbed out of the despair that afflicts "sick souls" by unsnarling the philosophical issues beneath the problems he faced.

In the late 19th century, influential philosophers and scientists argued that all human behavior is determined. Drawing on positivist philosophy and Darwinian biology, such thinkers insisted, as some 21st-century neurophysiologists and evolutionary psychologists do, that free will is nothing but an illusion. If so, what's the point of living? James dealt with his own existential anxiety by pointing to the most basic experience of choice we all know, the decision to focus our attention on one thing - say, this review - rather than another. He also decided to act accordingly: He declared that affirming free will was his first deliberate act of freedom. James lost his father and his son Herman in 1885, while he was working on his landmark "Principles of Psychology." Coping with the interiority of his personal pain helped him see immediate experience in a novel way. Neither philosophy nor psychology can penetrate or explain the ineffable stuff of human consciousness, James argued - and Kaag agrees - because individuals' inner lives will always elude students of physiology or behavior.

James pioneered the idea that consciousness is a continuous stream in which past, present and future blur together in the kaleidoscope of immediate experience. He also explored the paradox of habits, indispensable to healthy living yet sometimes a threat to the unexpected moments that make experience vivid and meaningful. Life is "an alternation of flights and perchings," James wrote. It is in the transitions, where life can "grow by its edges," not in the comfortable routines that enmesh us, that we find what Kaag calls the meaning and value of "enduring goods [both] moral and aesthetic." James argued that value judgments result from individual choices; they are rooted in personal and collective experience rather than unchanging principles of reason.

James's critics for a century have misunderstood his philosophical pragmatism as authorization for whatever is expedient or as simple relativism. Instead it reflected James's understanding that in domains such as ethics, social and political life, and religious faith, we can never attain certainty. We are doomed - and we are free - to play our part in an extended process of trial and error, endlessly verifying and falsifying claims about truth. When there are no fixed answers, we can test our hypotheses only by acting on them with our lives and assessing the "practical consequences." Those consequences must be judged not for oneself alone, or for the moment, but more generally and over the long haul. For just that reason James, never a churchgoer himself, refused to rule out the possibility of religious belief. He respected people who searched for something beyond the everyday, whether in nature or drugs or mystical experiences, that spoke to them about the deeper meanings of life.

I have been teaching James's ideas for 40 years in courses on American intellectual history. Students almost always report that the most important text for them is James's "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," which Kaag prizes for the same reasons my students do. The essay alerts us to the special significance that all people attach to their inner lives, precious beyond measure and inaccessible to anyone else. The "zest" we feel for our passions often blinds us to the special significance other people attach to their own immediate experience. James proposed a novel way to think about community, not as a collection of like-minded people but instead as a constellation of unique individuals, each enjoying one-of-a-kind inner awareness that we should not just tolerate but treasure.

James would have liked this book. Kaag ties James's ideas directly to the challenges and puzzles of his own life - and his readers' lives. How should we deal with isolation or rejection? How do we fall in - and out of - love? How should we raise our children? How do we escape the numbing throb of our daily routines to savor life's possibilities? James's students, including such notables as Theodore Roosevelt (whose bluster he loathed), Gertrude Stein, W.E.B. Du Bois, Walter Lippmann, T.S. Eliot and Alain Locke (all of whom he loved), revered him because he addressed the meaning of life. Although many academics avoid that topic in their classrooms, everyone should take time to think about it, especially now. James's ideas have rippled through the past century more powerfully than those of any other American thinker. Kaag's little book reminds us why.

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Kloppenberg, the Charles Warren professor of American history at Harvard and the author of "Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought," is writing a book about the philosophy of pragmatism, from William James to Barack Obama.
Instead of tables, restaurants are delivering food to diners cars.

Consider it the new normal in dining out.

Since Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the shutdown of non-essential businesses nearly two months ago to COVID-19, the restaurant industry has taken a blow as dining rooms close and owners resort to takeout and delivery models. Overnight a switch flipped, placing one of the most highly-employed industries in limbo.

Now as owners navigate new ways of serving guests, layoff employees and apply for financial assistance, they are gazing into a crystal ball clouded with uncertainty.

The long-term damage, they say, is uncertain.

"Its devastating. The industry is decimated, said John Longstreet, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association.

In fact, he said nearly 1,000 restaurants out of 26,000 operating in Pennsylvania have permanently closed due to he virus. The industry is hemorrhaging jobs and revenue.

Sales alone at Pennsylvanias establishments in the first 10 days of April dropped by 82 percent, with losses projected at more than $1.8 billion by the end of the month, according to the association.

Pennsylvanias hospitality industry employs more than 700,000 people, and about 96 percent of the states restaurants have reported layoffs and furloughs since the beginning of the pandemic. Nationally, the National Restaurant Association estimates 8 million restaurant employees have been laid off.

The association also reports the industry lost $30 billion in March and was projected to lose $50 billion by the end of April. Overall, restaurant losses could top $240 billion by the end of the year, assuming restaurants gradually start to reopen by June.

I think we are all worried. Its a mild feeling of helplessness because you want everyone safe and healthy, but you wish your business was up and running again, said Donny Brown, owner of Black n Bleu Restaurant in Hampden Township.

READ MORE:

Early on as the new coronavirus swept into central Pennsylvania, Brown shut the restaurant so employees could tend to families and stay safe. It gave him time to redesign the business website for online ordering and stock up on takeout supplies.

Recently, he reopened and converted the dining room into a to-go facility stacked with containers, napkins and plastic silverware. Drivers call in or order online, drive up to the restaurant for pickups.

So far, Brown said the takeout model is working with exception to a few issues, mostly customers flooding the restaurant with orders during the same two-hour window over dinner. Still, he said business is down compared to pre-pandemic days when Black n Bleus dining room buzzed with activity.

At the start of 2020, the restaurant forecast looked bright.

Diners packed craft breweries, restaurants and neighborhood bars. A pipeline of new establishments was on the cusp of opening. Nationwide, restaurant sales grew 2.3 percent in January, the best posted by the industry in four years, according to Nations Restaurant News.

Things were terrific. We were on record pace, Brown said, adding the months from November to early February were among the best in the restaurants 10-year run.

At Tavern on the Hill in East Pennsboro Township, owner Laki Daskalaki is taking a similar approach and preparing to open on Mothers Day weekend for the first time since March.

Last year, the fine dining restaurant served more than 575 diners on the biggest dining out day of the year. This year, Daskalaki said hell be lucky to sell a few dozen to-go meals.

What you do is you try and cope with the situation, Daskalaki said. You have to change how you do business in order to just survive, to keep your doors open.

Never before have restaurants had to turn to such drastic and creative measures. They are offering dining specials and slimmed down menus, advertising on social media and connecting with delivery platforms such as GrubHub or DoorDash.

Stocks on 2nd in Harrisburg advertises virtual Saturday night cooking classes. The Vegetable Hunter, the Harrisburg areas only 100 percent vegan restaurant, is giving away beer with certain weekend orders.

Several restaurants are donating to feed health care workers through sites such as Grub for Scrubs.

Other initiatives designed to help the industry include CarryOutPA.com, an effort launched by the state to encourage Pennsylvanians to support local restaurants. Also, in the near future, restaurants could temporarily sell 64-ounce cocktails to go under a bill awaiting a Senate vote.

The measure is intended to be a lifeline to the hard-hit restaurant and tavern industry.

Anything helps as very few independent restaurant owners sit on extra cash reserves, Longstreet noted, adding in order to survive they need to be aggressive and act quickly about generating revenue. Its going to be difficult for those who cant figure it out, he added.

The coronavirus has taken a toll on some restaurants. In central Pa., Isaacs Restaurant & Deli in Hummelstown is permanently closing May 10 due to the coronavirus.

CEO and President Mike Weaver told PennLive under normal circumstances they would have left the restaurant open, but now with a closed dining room there has been a 70 percent reduction in sales.

Once you have reduced seating requirement restrictions [when dining rooms reopen] youll still have a significant loss in sales. For us its not enough to justify keeping it open, Weaver said.

More restaurants will likely join Isaacs. Longstreet said he has heard extreme quotes as high as 90 percent of restaurants nationwide are projected to close. Realistically, he said he wouldnt be surprised if about 30 percent dont reopen.

Some dining segments are taking a bigger hit than others but the entire industry is being gutted.

The National Restaurant Association said operators of quick service restaurants reported an average sales decline of 57 percent during the first 10 days of April. Meanwhile, fast casual sales were down 64 percent on average, while operators in the coffee and snack segment reported an average sales decline of 73 percent.

Fine dining sales have dropped off by as much as 90 percent.

One segment faring well as people shelter at home? Pizza delivery. Dominos reported same store sales climbed 7.1% compared with last year from March 23-April 19.

But for most establishments, Longstreet said navigating the crisis compares to flying 35,000 feet in the air inside an airplane plane that is not fully built. While he said Wolf is doing the right thing and protecting residents, the difficulties rest in how the guidance changes almost weekly, if not daily.

The Wolf administration announced a phased COVID-19 reopening plan for the state. Beginning Friday, 24 counties in northcentral and northwestern Pennsylvania will be lifted from the stay-at-home order and enter the yellow phase. Even in those counties, restaurants will still be limited to takeout and delivery.

Under the plan, restaurants would not be allowed to resume dining room service until a region or county reaches the final green phase.

Even then, how restaurants will be allowed to reopen has yet to be announced.

To cover lost business restaurant owners are taking out personal loans to make payroll, and waiting on state and federal loans. In April, the restaurant industry called on Congress to enact a Blueprint for Recovery targeted on providing relief in the form of $240 billion to authorize a temporary emergency $240 billion restaurant recovery fund.

Its still not likely to be enough. About 60% of restaurant owners nationwide say the federal relief programs, including the CARES Act, which allocated nearly $350 billion in relief for small businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program, wont be enough to keep employees on payroll, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Ressler's Bagel and Deli at 5252 Simpson Ferry Rd., in the Windsor Park shopping center in Lower Allen Township. April 29, 2020. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

Joe Ressler, owner of Resslers Bagel & Deli in Lower Allen Township said hes waiting on assistance from the Paycheck Protection Program to cover rent, utilities and payroll. In the meantime, hes watching spending by cutting back on items such potato chips and drinks and using the money for other expenses.

Resslers has operated for 26 years and along with takeout and sit-down service, it caters business lunches and other events. Those have all but disappeared due to the pandemic as business is down by about 50 percent, he said.

Me and my wife have talked about it. If this going on for a few months, I dont know how we will survive. Its tough for a small business, whether youve been in business a month, a year or decade, Ressler said.

Giuseppe Aiello, owner of Joes Original Pizza at the Pennsboro Commons shopping center in East Pennsboro Township, fears a similar outcome. For the time being, hes the only business open at the plaza where Planet Fitness, a dentist office and chiropractor are temporarily closed.

Mindy Lauver and Giuseppe Aiello at Joe's Original Italian Pizza Enola at 334 E. Penn Dr. in the Pennsboro Commons shopping center in East Pennsboro Township. April 29, 2020. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

He has laid off three employees and stopped delivery out of fear of getting sick because he has a heart condition. Unfortunately, Aiello said he doesnt qualify for government help because he has only owned the shop for eight months.

Its a very bad situation for me, for my family, for the people who work here for me, Aiello said.

What makes it harder is the pandemic arrived when most in the industry were doing well. Finding enough help and increased competition as more restaurants opened were the biggest problems.

I wasnt getting rich. I paid my bills with no trouble. Now, I have to watch the pennies, Aiello added.

About 74 percent of restaurant operators surveyed in April by the National Restaurant Association estimate their sales volume in six months will be lower than the same period from last year.

When this started, Longstreet said nobody imagined anything like this ever happening.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel on how they come back, he said.

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Bhopal, May 8 : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced ex-gratia aid of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the migrant workers from the state who were crushed to death by a goods train while reportedly sleeping on the tracks in Maharashtra's Auranbagabad on Friday morning.

Minister Meena Singh and some officials have been rushed to Aurangabad by a special plane to facilitate treatment of the survivors. Chouhan said the dead, who hailed from the state's Shahdol, would be cremated near the accident site.

He said he had spoken with his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray as also with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.

Maharashtra government also announced a similar relief for the families of the deceased and urged migrants to not risk their lives. hackeray also said he is in talks with the government for more trains to ferry those stranded.

The Railways has ordered an enquiry.

The workers were employed in a steel factory in Aurangabad district and lost jobs when the country went into a strict lockdown on March 25 and most public transportation was halted.

Survivors said their group had moved from the road to the tracks. "After walking for about 36 kms, they were exhausted and sat on and near the track for taking some rest and gradually got into deep sleep," sources in the Railway Ministry said. Fourteen people on the track were killed on the spot and two died in a hospital, the ministry said. Two were injured. Three others who were sitting away from the track escaped unhurt, it said.

The empty train was heading from Cherlapally Station near Hyderabad to Panewadi Station near Manmad in Nashik.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was anguished by the loss of lives in the accident and promised assistance to hundreds of thousands of workers stranded across the country.

Former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh sought an impartial probe into the tragic incident. He demanded to know if the Madhya Pradesh government had registered these workers and if it had made any arrangement to bring them home.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
"Oil is dead," says Elizabeth May.

No, oil is not dead. But it does have an expiry date.

Even Stephen Harper acknowledged that when, as prime minister in 2015, he joined other Group of Seven leaders in a pledge to stop burning fossil fuels by the end of the century.

"We emphasize that deep cuts in global greenhouse-gas emissions are required with a decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of this century," said the leaders of the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada in a communique.

Of course, this was an aspirational target, not a binding agreement.

And it's not as if any of us today have a "to do" list set up for the year 2100. It's a bit far off, to say the least.

But the world is headed in that direction.

So, when May, parliamentary leader of the federal Green Party, proclaimed on Tuesday that "oil is dead," she was correct in a philosophical sense. But not in a practical, real world sense.

Yes, oil has been driven to record low prices by a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Saudi oil-production fight but that doesn't mean the industry is no longer viable.

And it doesn't mean demand won't bounce back after the crisis is over.

When the world starts turning again it will again be a squeaky wheel demanding its grease.

Oil will be important for decades

Even though renewables are the fastest growing sources of energy worldwide, the use of fossil fuels is still expected to grow over the next 30 years. It's just that the pace of growth for oil is slowing. As University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach pointed out in a series of tweets this week using information from International Energy Outlook, demand is expected to be more modest than anticipated. Projections that had the consumption of fossil-fuel liquids hitting 120 million barrels a day in 2040 now say that won't happen until 2050.

Of course, Premier Jason Kenney is worried that some Alberta producers won't be around to see the recovery.

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"Our best intelligence is that we will be dealing with a low price environment for probably 12 to 18 months," Kenney said last week. He is pressing Ottawa for up to $30 billion in emergency loans for the province's beleaguered industry to keep it afloat.

I suppose you could say oil is not dead but it needs to be on life support for a year or so.

If nothing else, May's comment gives Kenney a political pinata to bash. For an Alberta premier, there is nothing like having an enemy outside the gates to help rally support within.

That used to be Prime Minister Trudeau. But since the pandemic hit, Kenney has been praising Trudeau when overtly happy with the prime minister and biting his tongue when unhappy with the prime minister. I suppose that's what happens when you're asking somebody for $30 billion.

But Kenney wasn't lacking for enemies this week.

Kenney returns fire from Quebec

While May was planning oil's funeral, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet declared Alberta's "tar sands" are "condemned" and said the federal government should be supporting renewable energy projects, not the Trans Mountain pipeline that will pump more oilsands bitumen to the West Coast for shipment offshore.

Kenney immediately took to the ramparts to return fire.

"It's deeply regrettable that we would see national political leaders piling on Albertans and energy workers at a time of great trial for us," Kenney said Thursday. He pointed to the federal tax money collected from Alberta over the years that eventually became transfer payments to Quebec. "Please stop kicking us when we're down," he added.

Kenney should realize by now that when it comes to oil he has no allies in Quebec's current political leadership. And he should realize that while it was easy for him as opposition leader to attack Alberta's NDP government for failing to get Quebec onside, he's failing just as badly.

The day after Kenney won the 2019 provincial election, Quebec Premier Francois Legault shot down Kenney's idea of reviving Energy East, saying, "There's no social acceptability for an additional oil pipeline."

Everybody in this conversation speaks French but Kenney is talking "money" while Legault and Blanchet are talking "environment." This has been a growing problem for Alberta since Ralph Klein as premier two decades ago threw open the door to unfettered expansion of the oilsands while ignoring the realities of human-made climate change.

Targeted by environmentalists, Alberta became known as the home of "dirty" oil  a term used by Premier Legault himself to describe the oilsands.

Canadians such as Legault and Blanchet are not keen to have the oilsands on federally funded life support. It's easy to see why that makes Kenney's head explode, alongside a lot of Albertans.

Ironically, Kenney's biggest ally right now is his biggest nemesis: Trudeau.

"We need to support Albertans and other people working in the energy sector through this incredibly difficult time," said Trudeau on Thursday, rejecting May's oil-is-dead comment. "Not just because that's what we do as Canadians, but because we need their capacity to innovate and figure out how we're going to move forward toward our greater green goals."

The future might be green. But a purely green future is still decades and decades away.

For now, it's green mixed with black.

Oil might have an expiry date but it is not dead.
by Biju Veticad

According to Nobel laureate Abhijit Banarjee, a stimulus package large enough to increase spending and boost demand is needed. The revival of the economy will come from putting money in people's hands and the revival of demand. The Church in India is also very concerned about society and has done its part in collaboration with the authorities to reach out to the poor.

Cochin (AsiaNews) - Redefining the business strategy in the post covid era is the need of the hour, according to a group of experts who participated in a Business Webinar on 6th May from the different corners in India.

The webinar was conducted by the most circulated daily in India  Malayala Manorama, with the participation of entrepreneurs, bankers, economists, investment experts. The event was organized to analyze the current scenario of small and medium scale industries (MSME) in India and to identify the novel plans for reinforcing those industrial sectors who are mostly affected due to the lockdown.

Recently The Reserve bank of India had issued guidelines to the banks for supporting small and medium scale industries. Unfortunately, not even the entrepreneurs of small size industries are aware of those guidelines and the Industry department of the state has to disseminate the facilities created by the banks, said the moderator of the webinar Mr. Muhammad Hanish, Secretary of Kerala State Industry.

According to Mr. T S Chandran, an investment trainer Kerala is one of the most vulnerable state in depending all other states and countries for the raw materials as well as the guest workers in production sector. Due to the scarsity of both imported raw materials and the personnel, the industrial sector in the state has to redefine its conventional policy by adopting other measures to resurge from the fall of the industry.

Mr. Kochausep Chittilappaly, the founder of V-Guard Industries, major electrical appliances manufacturing company proposes that banks shall not limit with moratorium for a short term period, but even the interest rebate has to applied for the industrialists during lockdown period.

The people must have money in hand to vibrate the economy of the country. India, the country of haves and have nots, creates an abyss between the rich and the poor. Covid lockdown will affect mostly the poor and the middle class families. India needs, suggested two days back Nobel laureate Abhijit Banarjee in an interview, large enough stimulus package to increase spending and revive demand to face covid challenge. From putting money in peoples hands to reviving demand will move the economy.

Indias covid package was just limited to 1% of GDP whereas US has gone for 10% of GDP, Japan and the Europe have also adopted bigger measures to revive its economy.. According to Banerjee, giving money in the hands of everybody, so that they can buy in stores or they they buy consumer goods, thus spending is the easiest way to move the economy. Because then the MSME people get money and they spend it.

In the webinar session, MSME President in Kerala, informed that more than then thousand small scale industry unit have been closed since more than 40 days and it will be difficult for many of these companies to reopen after the lockdown. At the same time, the Goverment has warned all employers to pay the salary to all the employees in spite of stopped activities. The central government in the initial packages have not offered anything to the small and medium scale industries.

"Government of India, Prime Minister's Office and the department of economic affairs are already working on a package which includes not only MSME but also the industry. All sectors of the Indian industry will be assisted in the upcoming comprehensive package. said Giridhar Aramane, secretary in the ministry of road transport and Highways. The whole industry has its eye on the upcoming package from the finance minister Nirmala Sitharam.

Church in India also is very much concern about the society and has been doing its part in cooperation with authorities to reach out to the poor. Card. Oswald Gracias, President of Catholic Bishops Conference of India, has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, extending the support of Catholic Church in India in different spheres of Covid affected society. The cardinal urged churches not to terminate any staff and ensure that salaries are paid, even if they do not work during the emergency. Across India various catholic parishes initiated the projects to reach the people, distributing small amount of money, to survive during lock down period
The Sinn Fein TD for Fingal, Louise O'Reilly, has said the Minister for Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine must ensure that any State or European Union funding is used to protect inshore fishing community during the COVID-19 crisis.

Deputy O'Reilly said: 'The inshore fishing community has been particularly affected by the COVID19 crisis and the damage the crisis has had on fish sales and consumption.

'We have a significant number of inshore fishing vessels across north county Dublin, in Balbriggan and Skerries in particular, and they contribute significantly to our communities and the economy - they have been hugely affected by the current crisis.

'To counter the damaging effect of COVID-19 on the fishing community across Europe the European Union has proposed financial supports aimed at helping fishermen mitigate the impacts of the crisis.

'It is important that the government and the Minister for Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed TD, delivers this funding in a fair and effective manner.

'We cannot have a situation, which is often the case where it comes to fishing, where the big super-trawlers and the corporate fishing industry get all the funds - the Minister must ensure that the inshore fishing community get a significant amount of this funding.

'I have written to the Minister to ask that he guarantees that any funding be used to help small inshore fishers through funding a temporary cessation of fishing effort and not used solely for the benefit of larger vessels through storage aid.

'The best way to protect our small inshore fishing community is through funding a temporary cessation of fishing so that stocks can replenish and that these fishers can survive and be in a position to return to work once the crisis lifts.

'Too often the inshore fishers of Balbriggan and Skerries and other ports have been left behind and the corporate fishing industry protected - this cannot be the case this time. Fair distribution of funding to inshore fishers is the only answer.'
ALPHARETTA, Ga., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Neenah, Inc. (NYSE: NP) today reported first quarter 2020 results.

First Quarter Highlights/Events

Net sales of $233.6 million decreased 3 percent compared with $239.7 million in the prior year. Technical Products segment sales increased 2 percent while Fine Paper and Packaging revenues declined 8 percent.

decreased 3 percent compared with in the prior year. Technical Products segment sales increased 2 percent while Fine Paper and Packaging revenues declined 8 percent. Operating income of $23.6 million ( $27.1 million adjusted) increased $6.2 million ( $9.7 million adjusted) compared to the prior year. Adjusting items in 2020 consisted of COVID-19 costs, restructuring and other non-routine costs and acquisition-related expenses. There were no adjusting items in 2019.

( adjusted) increased ( adjusted) compared to the prior year. Adjusting items in 2020 consisted of COVID-19 costs, restructuring and other non-routine costs and acquisition-related expenses. There were no adjusting items in 2019. GAAP earnings per diluted common share (E.P.S.) of $0.97 compared with earnings of $0.69 per share in 2019. On an adjusted basis, 2020 quarterly E.P.S. of $1.12 increased from $0.69 in the prior year period.

compared with earnings of per share in 2019. On an adjusted basis, 2020 quarterly E.P.S. of increased from in the prior year period. Cash generated from operations of $14.2 million increased from $3.0 million in the first quarter of 2019 due to lower working capital requirements and increased earnings.

increased from in the first quarter of 2019 due to lower working capital requirements and increased earnings. Global liquidity as of March 31, 2020 was $195 million , comprised of $78 million of cash on hand and available borrowing capacity of $117 million on existing credit facilities.

was , comprised of of cash on hand and available borrowing capacity of on existing credit facilities. Quarterly cash dividends paid of $0.47 per share increased 4 percent from $0.45 per share in the prior year.

per share increased 4 percent from per share in the prior year. John O'Donnell announced his retirement as CEO effective May 21 , Julie Schertell , COO, named as successor.

announced his retirement as CEO effective , , COO, named as successor. Multiple actions were initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to keep employees safe and maintain financial strength.

Began commercial production of face mask media from filtration operations in Germany .

Adjusted earnings is a non-GAAP measure used to enhance understanding and comparability of year-on-year results. Details on adjusting items and a reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures are included later in this release.

"Our first quarter results were strong, with volume-driven growth in Technical Products and continued improvements in margins and profits across both segments. As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated, our focus quickly turned to ensuring the health and safety of our employees and taking actions to mitigate the financial impact from the coronavirus and maintain our strong liquidity position", said Julie Schertell, Chief Operating Officer. "Our crisis management team developed and executed rapid response plans that included multiple new operating protocols to safeguard employees, such as enhanced sanitation, increased personal protective equipment and remote working arrangements. In addition, we implemented financial measures such as strict spending controls, reduced capital expenditures, footprint optimization, enhanced working capital efficiencies, and suspended share buyback and acquisition activities. Our market reputation and competitive standing coupled with our strong financial position should serve us well, and I'm confident we'll emerge from this crisis well-positioned to accelerate our strategies to increase our profitable growth rate in a capital efficient manner, and provide our shareholders an attractive return, including a meaningful dividend."

Quarterly Consolidated Results

Income Statement

Consolidated net sales of $233.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 decreased 3 percent compared with $239.7 million in the first quarter of 2019. The decline in revenues resulted from lower volumes in the Fine Paper and Packaging segment, including impacts from the change from a major distributor, lower net selling prices in both segments and unfavorable currency translation effects. These items were only partly offset by increased volumes in Technical Products. On a constant currency basis, net sales declined 2 percent compared with the prior year.

Selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense of $26.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased from $25.3 million in the prior year. Costs in 2020 included a higher provision for uncollectible accounts receivable and incremental legal expenses.

Operating income of $23.6 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased $6.2 million compared to $17.4 million in 2019. The increase was primarily due to lower input costs in both segments, and higher sales volumes and improved manufacturing cost efficiencies in Technical Products. These items were only partly offset by lower net selling prices, higher SG&A expense and lower volume in Fine Paper and Packaging. Excluding $3.5 million of adjustments for 2020, adjusted operating income in 2020 of $27.1 million increased $9.7 million from the prior year. Adjusting items included costs for a special payment to our mill operators due to COVID-19 conditions, costs for a terminated acquisition, and other restructuring and non-routine costs.

Net interest expense of $2.9 million in the first quarter of 2020 declined compared with $3.2 million in the first quarter of 2019 as a result of lower average debt levels in 2020.

The effective income tax rate was 21 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and 17 percent in the first quarter of 2019. The rate for the three months ended March 31, 2019 was favorably impacted by a reduction to the reserve for uncertain tax positions following completion of a German tax audit.

Cash Flow and Balance Sheet Items

Cash provided from operations of $14.2 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased significantly compared with $3.0 million in the first quarter of 2019. The increase resulted primarily from lower working capital requirements and higher earnings.

Capital spending of $4.8 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased $0.5 million compared with $4.3 million in the prior year due to the timing of certain projects. Capital spending in 2020 is projected to be approximately half of the normal expected range of 2 to 4 percent of sales.

Cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2020 were $77.5 million and compared to $9.0 million as of December 31, 2019. Debt as of March 31, 2020 of $271.9 million increased $71.1 million from $200.8 million as of December 31, 2019. Cash on hand was augmented through borrowings against existing Global Revolving Credit Facilities as a precautionary measure to protect against any potential disruption in the banking system.

Quarterly Segment Results

Technical Products quarterly net sales of $142.2 million in 2019 increased 2 percent from $140.0 million in the prior year, and were up 3 percent on a constant currency basis. The revenue increase resulted primarily from higher volumes in the performance materials and filtration businesses, partly offset by lower selling prices, a lower-priced mix and unfavorable foreign currency effects.

Operating income of $16.2 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased $4.9 million compared with prior year income of $11.3 million. Excluding adjusting items of $0.8 million in 2020, adjusted operating income of $17.0 million increased $5.7 million from $11.3 million in 2019. Operating income increased as a result of lower input costs, higher sales volumes and improved manufacturing costs, which more than offset lower net selling prices and $1.3 million of higher SG&A expense due to increased provisions for uncollectible accounts and legal costs.

Fine Paper and Packaging quarterly net sales of $91.4 million in 2020 decreased 8 percent, from $99.7 million in the prior year. The decline was primarily due to lower commercial print volume, reflecting unusually weak market conditions and the impact of a change in the relationship with a major distributor, along with lower selling prices and a less favorable sales mix. These items were only partly offset by sales growth in both premium packaging and the consumer channel.

Operating income of $14.8 million in the first quarter of 2020 increased $2.9 million from $11.9 million in the prior year. Excluding $1.4 million of adjusting items in 2020, adjusted operating income of $16.2 million increased $4.3 million from $11.9 million in the prior year as a result of lower input costs and other cost improvements, partly offset by lower sales volumes and lower net selling prices.

Unallocated Corporate costs in the first quarter of 2019 of $7.4 million increased $1.6 million from the prior year period. Excluding 2020 adjustments of $1.3 million primarily related to acquisition and due diligence costs, adjusted unallocated corporate expenses increased $0.3 million.

Impact of COVID-19

Along with virtually all other companies, Neenah is dealing with the outbreak and pandemic of the novel coronavirus, known as "COVID-19". While it is currently too early to estimate the longer term impact, as a result of significantly reduced global economic activity and resulting customer demand, the Company expects the pandemic to have a material adverse impact on its business and financial results, including sales, earnings and cash flows in upcoming quarters. Similar to expectations for gross domestic product, the most significant impact of COVID-19 on customer demand is expected in the second quarter, but it had already begun to impact demand in March, especially in our fine paper and packaging business.

Neenah has been designated as an "essential business" by global governments and all facilities are operating. In addition, the Company has not had any significant disruptions to the supply chain or workforce and are actively managing these areas to support the well-being of employees and business continuity.

Actions taken include:

New operating protocols, enhanced sanitation and cleaning, social distancing, restricted plant access, increased personal protective equipment, and temperature checks at mill facilities

Remote working arrangements for all salaried employees

Reductions in discretionary spending in areas like maintenance, advertising and other SG&A expenses

Significant decrease in capital spending

Wage increase deferral and hiring freeze

Idling a fine paper machine in Wisconsin and consolidating production onto other assets

and consolidating production onto other assets Temporarily deferring acquisitions

Suspending purchases under the 2020 Stock Purchase Plan

Utilizing government-sponsored tax payment deferrals

Decreasing discretionary pension contributions

Close management of working capital and monitoring of suppliers

Increasing cash on balance sheet by almost $70 million by utilizing available revolving credit facility capacity

by utilizing available revolving credit facility capacity Beginning commercial production of face mask media from filtration operations in Germany

The Company has developed various scenario plans and thresholds for additional actions, if warranted based upon conditions, and will continue to monitor the progress of the pandemic and its potential impact on the business. Based on current management expectations, the strong balance sheet and liquidity position, along with actions taken to date, provide Neenah with the necessary capital to address the COVID-19 pandemic for the foreseeable future.

Reconciliation to GAAP Measures

The Company will report adjustments to GAAP figures when they are believed to improve the comparability and understanding of results. In assessing COVID-19 impacts, only costs which were unusual, incremental and directly attributable to mitigating the effects COVID-19 on operations were excluded.

A reconciliation of adjusted income measures to comparable GAAP measures is provided below:











First Quarter Continuing Operations ($ Millions, except share and per share data) 2020

2019 GAAP Operating Income $ 23.6

$17.4 COVID-19 costs 1.1

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 1.0

- Acquisition and due diligence costs 1.0

- 2016-19 indirect tax costs 0.4

- Adjusted Operating Income $ 27.1

$ 17.4







GAAP Income $ 16.4

$ 11.8 COVID-19 costs 0.8

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 0.7

- Acquisition and due diligence costs 0.8

- 2016-19 indirect tax costs 0.3

- Adjusted Income $ 19.0

$ 11.8







GAAP Earnings per Diluted Common Share $ 0.97

$ 0.69 COVID-19 costs 0.05

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 0.04

- Acquisition and due diligence costs 0.04

- 2016-19 indirect tax costs 0.02

- Adjusted Earnings per Share $ 1.12

$ 0.69







Diluted Shares (in thousands) 16,850

16,921

Conference Call

A conference call and webcast to discuss first quarter earnings and other matters of interest will be held as noted below. To participate actively in the call, parties should use the telephone dial-in numbers.

Date: Monday, May 11, 2020

Time: 11:00 AM (EDT)

Dial-In #: (877) 444-2208 Toll Free or (412) 317-5236 International

To be joined into: Neenah Call

Interested parties are invited to listen to the call live via webcast by visiting www.neenah.com and clicking on Investor Relations. Supplemental Information can be found on the Company's web site under the Investor Relations - Presentations & Events section. An archive of the webcast will be available on the Company's web site until June 8, 2020.

A replay of the call will be available until May 18, 2020 and can be accessed as follows:

Dial-In #: (877) 344-7529 Toll Free or (412) 317-0088 International

Replay Access Code: 10143127

About Neenah

Neenah is a leading global specialty materials company focused on premium niche markets that value performance and image. Key products and markets include advanced filtration media, specialized performance substrates used for digital transfer, tape and abrasive backings, labels and other products, and premium printing and packaging papers. The Company is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and its products are sold worldwide from manufacturing operations in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. Additional information can be found at the Company's web site, www.neenah.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking" statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act"), Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"), the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "PSLRA"), or in releases made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), all as may be amended from time to time. Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the PSLRA and caution is given to investors that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees or indicative of future performance. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the Company's control and could cause actual results to materially differ from such statements. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not necessarily limited to, those set forth under the captions "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and/or "Risk Factors" of the latest Form 10-K filed with the SEC as periodically updated by subsequently filed Form 10-Qs (these securities filings can be located at www.neenah.com). Unless specifically required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect new events or circumstances. These cautionary statements are being made pursuant to the Securities Act, the Exchange Act and the PSLRA with the intention of obtaining the benefits of the "safe harbor" provisions of such laws.

Contact: Neenah, Inc.

Bill McCarthy

Vice President  Investor Relations

678-518-3278

NEENAH, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS

(In millions, except share and per share data)

(Unaudited)













Three Months Ended March 31,



2020

2019 Net sales

$ 233.6

$ 239.7 Cost of products sold

179.6

196.0 Gross Profit

54.0

43.7 Selling, general and administrative expenses

26.6

25.3 COVID-19 costs

1.1

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs

1.4

- Acquisition and due diligence costs

1.0

- Other expense - net

0.3

1.0 Operating Income

23.6

17.4 Interest expense - net

2.9

3.2 Income from continuing operations before income taxes

20.7

14.2 Provision for income taxes

4.3

2.4 Net income

$ 16.4

$ 11.8









Earnings Per Common Share







Basic

$ 0.97

$ 0.70 Diluted

$ 0.97

$ 0.69









Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding (in thousands)







Basic

16,817

16,862 Diluted

16,850

16,921

NEENAH, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES

BUSINESS SEGMENT DATA

(In millions)

(Unaudited)









Three Months Ended March 31,

2020

2019 Net Sales:





Technical Products $ 142.2

$ 140.0 Fine Paper and Packaging 91.4

99.7 Consolidated $ 233.6

$ 239.7







Operating Income:





Technical Products $ 16.2

$ 11.3 Fine Paper and Packaging 14.8

11.9 Unallocated Corporate Costs (7.4)

(5.8) Consolidated $ 23.6

$ 17.4

RECONCILIATION OF SEGMENT OPERATING INCOME

(In millions)

(Unaudited)







Three Months Ended March 31,

2020

2019 Technical Products





GAAP Operating Income $ 16.2

$ 11.3 COVID-19 costs 0.6

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 0.2

- Adjusted Operating Income 17.0

11.3







Fine Paper and Packaging





GAAP Operating Income 14.8

11.9 COVID-19 costs 0.5

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 0.5

- 2016-19 indirect tax costs 0.4

- Adjusted Operating Income 16.2

11.9







Unallocated Corporate Costs





GAAP Operating Loss (7.4)

(5.8) Restructuring and other non-routine costs 0.3

- Acquisition and due diligence costs 1.0

- Adjusted Operating Loss (6.1)

(5.8)







Consolidated





GAAP Operating Income 23.6

17.4 COVID-19 costs 1.1

- Restructuring and other non-routine costs 1.0

- Acquisition and due diligence costs 1.0

- 2016-19 indirect tax costs 0.4

- Adjusted Operating Income $ 27.1

$ 17.4

NEENAH, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES

SELECTED BALANCE SHEET DATA

(In millions)

(Unaudited)

















March 31, 2020

December 31, 2019 ASSETS





Current Assets





Cash and cash equivalents $ 77.5

$ 9.0 Accounts receivable - net 118.6

102.6 Inventories 131.4

122.8 Prepaid and other current assets 16.5

18.3 Total Current Assets 344.0

252.7 Property, Plant and Equipment - net 374.5

380.6 Lease Right-of-Use Assets 21.8

13.9 Deferred Income Taxes 11.6

13.4 Goodwill and Other Intangibles - net 147.5

149.8 Other Noncurrent Assets 16.9

17.4 Total Assets $ 916.3

$ 827.8







LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY





Current Liabilities





Debt payable within one year $ 3.3

$ 2.6 Lease liabilities payable within one year 2.7

1.9 Accounts payable 57.8

48.9 Accrued expenses 48.0

47.0 Total Current Liabilities 111.8

100.4 Long-term Debt 268.6

198.2 Noncurrent Lease Liabilities 20.2

13.0 Noncurrent Employee Benefits 89.8

93.1 Deferred Income Taxes 12.0

12.9 Other Noncurrent Obligations 4.1

3.9 Total Liabilities 506.5

421.5 Stockholders' Equity 409.8

406.3 Total Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity $ 916.3

$ 827.8

NEENAH, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES

SELECTED CASH FLOW DATA

(In millions)

(Unaudited)













Three Months Ended March 31,

2020

2019 Operating Activities





Net income $ 16.4

$ 11.8 Depreciation and amortization 8.6

8.8 Stock-based compensation 1.5

1.9 Deferred income tax provision 1.1

0.5 Provision for uncollectible accounts receivable 1.0

- Non-cash effects of changes in liabilities for uncertain income tax positions -

(0.4) Increase in working capital (13.7)

(20.9) Pension and other postretirement benefits (0.4)

1.5 Other (0.3)

(0.2) Net cash provided by operating activities 14.2

3.0







Investing Activities





Capital expenditures (4.8)

(4.3) Purchase of marketable securities -

(0.2) Other (0.1)

(0.2) Cash used in investing activities (4.9)

(4.7)







Financing Activities





Long-term borrowings 88.7

62.9 Repayments of long-term debt (17.0)

(55.5) Debt issuance costs (0.5)

(0.2) Cash dividends paid (8.0)

(7.6) Shares purchased (3.8)

(0.3) Cash provided by (used in) financing activities 59.4

(0.7)







Effect of exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents (0.2)

0.1 Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 68.5

(2.3) Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of the year 9.0

9.9 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 77.5

$ 7.6

SOURCE Neenah, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.neenah.com


Kathy Reeder Dunn was a music teacher in the Susquehanna Twp. School District.

Dunn, 72, of Dauphin, died April 30.

She was a 1965 graduate of Cumberland Valley High School and received two bachelors degrees from Messiah College.

At Susquehanna Twp., her family said that many of her students called her mom.

At the senior high level, she taught music classes, directed Broadway plays, chaperoned chorus trips, guided students to County, District, Regional, All State and All Eastern Choral Festivals, directed High School Chorus and special ensembles. She finished her career at the elementary schools in Susquehanna Township teaching and directing music.

Dunn sand with the Harrisburg Choral Society, was a member of the Beta Theta Retired Teachers Society, PMEA, NMEA, PSEA, NEA, a volunteer at Holy Spirit Hospital leading a "Health and Wellness" program for second-graders, and sang with her sisters in the "The Reeder Sisters" trio.

Dunn was a Miss Greater Harrisburg and first runner-up in the 1967 Miss Pennsylvania Scholarship Pageant winning the preliminary talent award for performing Gian Menotti's Opera "The Telephone."

Over the years she performed with Allenberry Playhouse, the Harrisburg Opera Company, and the Harrisburg Community Theater.

She was known throughout the area as an accomplished vocalist and performer. As a woman of great faith, Kathy used her musical and theological talents at Zion Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, and recently at Zion Lutheran Church in Dauphin. In both churches, Kathy served as soloist, choir director, Sunday school teacher, and served on the Altar Guild.

She enjoyed reading, old movies, camping, traveling to Europe, family trips to Cancun, and was the No. 1 spectator at her grandchildren's music and sporting events.

Surviving are her husband, James Dunn; her daughter Dena, wife of Michael Lavender of Camp Hill, and her son Drew Dunn and his wife, Stevie, of New Cumberland; grandchildren, Bailey, Riley, Conley and Jaren Dunn, and Ashley, Michael Jr. and Amanda Lavender; and her twin sisters, Eddie, wife of Edward Adams and Marty, wife of Robert W. Morris II.

From her guest book:

Mrs. Dunn was my favorite teacher in high school. She nurtured the goodness and creativity in all of us, and inspired us to work together to harmonize, a lesson that can apply to every endeavor in life. We were truly blessed to have known her.

-- Renee Rosenberg

Kathy Dunn was one of the greatest influences of my life. Her classroom was not just a place of learning, it was a refuge for me. Her love and care kept me going at a time when there were days I didnt want to. Sending so much love to Jim, Dena and Drew. Your mom changed lives and I only hope I can live up to and pass on all she gave to me.

-- Stephen Fox

STSD music department lost one of its best. Kathy inspired students and faculty alike. She will be remembered for her high energy and will be sorely missed.

-- Mark Kothe

She was an inspiration to me as a music teacher, and to generations of music students at STSD.

-- The Nyces, Annville

Mrs. Dunn was my choral director in high school. She was an amazing teacher. I loved being in her classes and her chorus.

-- Deborah Pletz

She was such a bright light during my years at STHS. I love singing and never felt adequate enough to audition for solos but she encouraged me to try out for the special choirs, because she had more faith in me than I had in myself. She was a delightful woman, and will surely be missed.

-- Joy Bechtel

To read more obituaries, click here.

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Man sentenced for death of woman who was set on fire

Anthony Harris Moore

A 33-year-old Hendersonville man was sentenced to almost 23 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of dousing the victim with gasoline, District Attorney Greg Newman announced. The victim, who was set on fire, was treated in a burn unit until she died six months after the attack.

Anthony Harrison Moore, of 116 Adeles Way, pleaded guilty in the Henderson County Superior Court to second-degree murder. Moore was charged with dousing gasoline onto Teresa Ann Praytor Stallings during an argument on Dec. 7, 2017, and igniting her with a cigarette lighter. Stallings was transported by helicopter to the burn unit at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, where she was treated until her death six months later on June 7, 2018. Moore was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Peter Knight to a prison term of 272 months, or 22 years, eight months. He will be eligible for parole after serving 18 years.

Henderson County Sheriffs deputies and EMS personnel were dispatched to 293 Boxwood Branch Lane in December 2017 on a 911 call requesting help for a burn victim. The caller, a friend of both Ms. Stallings and the defendant, said that she saw the defendant pour something on Stallings as Stallings was attempting to leave in her car. The defendant and victim had been in a volatile relationship for many months. The couple had been arguing and the caller said that Stallings lit herself on fire using a cigarette lighter. EMS workers found Ms. Stallings responsive and talking at the scene. She was intubated before being flown to Wake Medical. She sustained burns to over 53 percent of her body from her knees to her head.

Moore was indicted for first-degree murder and could have potentially faced the death penalty, Newman said. I had two issues of concern, however, with the evidence. The first is that the defendant is overheard on the 911 call asking Ms. Stallings why she lit the lighter. While the defendant admitted to dousing Ms. Stallings with gasoline, there is a dispute about who ignited the gas. The third party witness that called 911 also suggested Stallings ignited herself. The defendant said she was suicidal and they had been arguing about her leaving the relationship.

Second, Ms. Stallings gave a statement to a sheriffs detective at the hospital, but this statement would not be admissible at a trial," he added. "Hearsay evidence is inadmissible unless a legally recognized exception exists, and in this case no exception applies. So, the plea to second degree murder by Moore is a good resolution given these challenges with our evidence."

Ms. Stallings suffered for six long months and this incident has been difficult for her family, many of whom have met with me and were in court with us at the plea hearing. The Sheriffs Department and Henderson County EMS did a great job in this case, which presented difficult circumstances. Our community is fortunate to have the benefit of their service, Newman concluded.
The Duchess of Cambridge has been flying the flag for British brands by opting for High Street stalwarts and independent labels for her virtual visits during the coronavirus pandemic.

And now stylists have revealed how Kate Middleton's, 38, lockdown wardrobe is not only impeccably stylish and practical, but as a way of showing her dedication to her royal duties.

Yesterday, Kate selected a 495 pretty yellow silk dress from Raey for an interview with This Morning as she launched a photography project Hold Still.

Speaking to FEMAIL, stylist Susie Hasler, who runs Styled By Susie said the move was particularly poignant because of the strain on the industry amid the pandemic.

Stylist Susie Hasler, who runs Styled by Susie, told FEMAIL how Kate Middleton, 38, has been flying the flag for British brads on virtual calls

Susie revealed: 'Kate flying the flag for British brands on her virtual calls throughout lockdown is incredibly significant.

'At a time when our clothing industry is being hit hard - with stores such as Warehouse and Oasis collapsing - the Duchess is showing her support for our country and economy.'

Susie said that Kate had a clear message with her outfit choices during the lockdown, saying: 'By choosing to wear outfits from home-made brands, she is supporting, and putting her weight behind, an industry which is currently struggling.

'The message is that if these brands are good enough for the future queen to wear, it's time for everyone else to follow suit and champion British-made too.'

The stylist said the Duchess has taken to wearing 'relatable' clothing from High Street stalwarts and independent labels during lockdown (pictured, wearing a dress from Ghost)

Meanwhile Susie went on to say the clothing was particularly 'relatable', with the Duchess tending to opt for pieces that fitted into her busy schedule as a working mother.

She explained: 'It's showing that solidarity towards British brands, and she's wearing styles that are relatable - the type of clothes mums and women up and down the country can wear.'

The Duchess launched the community photography project Hold Still with the National portrait Gallery today, with the campaign designed to catch the 'spirit, mood, hopes and fears' of the nation.

The mother-of-three, who is currently isolating with her husband Prince William, 37, and their children, George, six, Charlotte, five, and Louis, two, in Anmer Hall in Norfolk, selected a pretty yellow floral dress from Raey and opted for her usual glamorous bouncy blow dry to speak about the project in an interview with This Morning today.

Meanwhile the royal has also been supported labels local to her, including family friend Tabitha Webb's brand (pictured, in a jumper by the company)

While it marks the first time the Duchess has worn the brand, their flagship store is in Notting Hill, just a stone's throw from her London home of Kensington Palace.

And when the royal spent time on a virtual visit to a maternity ward in Kingston, she opted for two British brands.

The mother-of-three supported a family friend Tabitha Webb by opting for a 70s inspired chevron jumper by her brand as she chatted with midwives and new mothers on the virtual call last week.

The royal selected a jazzy baby blue 275 jumper by British designer Tabitha Ward as she took part in the video call.

Susie revealed how Kate was opting for British brands to lend support to struggling industries amid the coronavirus pandemic

The Duchess opted for the pretty floral wrap dress for the virtual visit, which is described online as 'boho luxe' in style

The royal has showcased Tabitha's designs on several occasions, most recently in January during her Five Questions survey, with the designer a close friend of her sister Pippa, 36.

Meanwhile in another clip of the call, she elected a 120 baby blue wrap dress from quintessentially British brand Boden as she took part in the video call.

At the end of the month, she opted for a blue 129 floral dress from British high street stalwart Ghost as she stepped out of her home at Anmer Hall for Clap for Carers.

She wore the Anouk Dress, which features fabric-covered buttons all the way down and romantic ruffles along the collar and hem, for the occasion.

Other items the Duchess has worn during the coronavirus lockdown have included her emerald green jumper from independent clothing brand Really Wild

And on the one occasion Kate opted for a none-British brand, wearing a mustard yellow top from Zara, she selected pair of Catherine Zoraida earrings

The brand have now revealed how all online proceeds from sales of the now sold-out dress will go to NHS charities in order to help in the fight against coronavirus.

Days earlier, she donned independent brand Really Wild's Long Crewneck Jumper in emerald green as she and Prince William chaired a virtual roundtable with a mental health charity.

Her first virtual visit, which saw Kate speaking to school children in Burnley over Zoom alongside her husband Prince William, 37, was the only engagement in which she hasn't worn a British designer.

Instead, the royal opted for a relaxed, mustard yellow top from Zara which comes with a pricetag of 30.

On her final royal engagement ahead of lockdown, the Duchess opted for a blush pink suit from Marks and Spencer

However she maintained her commitment to British brands by selecting jewellery from designer Catherine Zoraida.

The royal opted for gold fern leaf earrings from the British brand, which come with a pricetag of 165.

On her final royal engagement at the end of March ahead of Boris Johnson's lockdown announcement, Kate opted for a blush pink Marks and Spencer suit.

The mother-of-three stepped out in a blush blazer and matching trousers from Marks & Spencer to meet NHS staff at call centre in Croydon, south-west London, on 23rd March.
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Linkedin Dave Cook (The Jakarta Post) -  Fri, May 8, 2020 13:43 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6bb474 3 Lifestyle The-Conversation,workplace,COVID-19,work-from-home,pandemic,lockdown Free

We are experiencing the biggest remote work experiment in history  but many are beginning to imagine life after lockdown. Amid unprecedented global job losses, concerns about transport infrastructure and the continuing need for workplace social distancing, governments are launching back-to-work plans.

Meanwhile, the latest US research reveals that 74 percent of businesses want some workers to permanently work remotely and business leaders are actively shedding leased office space  hinting that not everyone will go back to the office.

Here are five key trends that will shape the future of how we work.

1. Commuting will change forever

We might miss the social interaction of the office, but most dont miss commuting. This was one of the key findings in my four-year remote work study.

Before lockdown, US commute times reached record levels and most UK workers spent more than a year of their lives travelling to and from work. People tell me that a hybrid strategy of working from home two days a week, is one ideal scenario.

Those eager to go back to the office will have to wait. Many will need to work from home for weeks or months to come. The situation is fluid, but governments are drawing up plans for workers to stagger working times, so public transport is not overwhelmed.

The genie is out of the bottle, and commuting is not going back to how it was.

2. Bad email etiquette wont be tolerated

Workplace communication is rapidly transforming and email is a case in point. More than ever, creating a clear separation between work and leisure time is vital.

Research repeatedly shows that sending out-of-hours emails is not only bad etiquette  but creates a coercive work culture that requires people to be available 24/7. Social scientists argue this turns us into worker/smartphone hybrids and causes stress and burnout. Expecting quick answers to email is increasingly seen as bullying.

Many now realise that colleagues might need to work flexibly due to caring responsibilities. Lockdown has encouraged a new acceptance of flexibility. But this shouldnt extend to having a culture that expects people to be available all the time.

3. Video calls will be limited

Zoom calls will remain part of our lives  but we will change and adapt how we use them. Research shows that video calls are more draining and tiring than in-person meetings.

While video calls are appropriate for some meetings, we dont need to use them for all our communication. Research suggests many are shifting back to phone calls  which as one manager explained to me feels more spontaneous and flows better.

4. More co-working spaces will emerge

Workers forced to continue working from cramped living spaces are desperate for alternatives. When lockdown lifts they will turn to the cafes and co-working spaces that are still in business. Before COVID-19 hit, co-working spaces were projected to increase more than 40 percent worldwide.

The paradox of remote working is that people crave the flexibility but know that being around others boosts productivity. My research shows that over time remote workers crave the physical closeness that comes with just being alongside other people. Its exactly why in 2017 IBM pulled many employees back into the office, despite having previously published a 2014 white paper in support of remote working.

Local co-working spaces, as opposed to big investor-funded brands such as WeWork, will do well. Independent co-working spaces in some areas were thriving before COVID-19 - they may become more mainstream if they survive lockdown.

5. Could we become part-time digital nomads?

Digital nomads are extreme remote workers that post Instagram stories from exotic locations. Right now, that lifestyle seems unrelatable, impossible and to many unethical.

Nonetheless, many decently paid workers in New York, London and Paris are stuck in uncomfortably small flats, dreaming of escape from lockdown. As a housing manager recently confided to me: London living without nightlife and culture, isnt fun. Everyone wants to escape to somewhere outdoorsy when allowed. Im not sure I approve but its understandable.

For now, remote working from different locations is not allowed. But the allure of relocating to a picturesque location remains  and Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB, is banking on it. He sees COVID-19 as a business opportunity and told Bloomberg: People are realizing they can work remote  thats a huge opportunity.

Not all will agree  it could cause long-term sustainability issues  and many will not have this privilege. But when lockdown fully lifts, whos to say more people will not work remotely from different parts of the world, beyond their living rooms.

***

Dave Cook is PhD Researcher, Anthropology, UCL.

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.
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At least one killed and 50 others injured, some allegedly hit by pellets in eyes, in clashes over Riyaz Naikoos death.

Anti-India protests and clashes have continued for a third day on Friday in Indian-administered Kashmir following the killing of a top rebel leader by government forces.

The Hizbul Mujahideen groups commander Riyaz Naikoo and three other rebels were killed in a gunfight with Indian troops on Wednesday in southern Kashmirs Pulwama district, leading to massive clashes in several places.

Naikoo, 35, was the chief of operations of Hizbul Mujahideen, the disputed regions largest rebel group, which has spearheaded an armed rebellion against the Indian rule.

The clashes continued on Friday as anti-India protesters threw stones at the government forces, who fired shotgun pellets and tear gas to quell the spiralling protests.

At least one man has been killed and 50 others injured in the three days of clashes, residents and medics said. Most of the injured were treated locally.

Medic: People hit with pellets in eyes

However, at least a dozen people with bullet and pellet injuries were taken to a hospital in Srinagar, the regions main city, for treatment, a doctor said on condition of anonymity because medics have been barred from briefing the news media.

She said most of the injured had been hit by pellet guns in one or both eyes.

Residents said government forces swooped into Naikoos native village on Thursday and accused them of vandalising a tent that villagers had set up for mourning his death, triggering large protests and clashes.

Authorities did not hand over the bodies of the slain rebels to their families under a new government policy designed to thwart large-scale funerals that have become a rallying point for anti-India protests.

Instead, police buried the bodies in a mountainous graveyard about 100km (62 miles) from the village.

Authorities have shut down mobile phone and internet services since Wednesday, a common Indian tactic in the region when such protests erupt.

They also imposed a near-total information blackout and refused to brief media about the situation.

Hindu-majority India imposed similar measures in 2019 when it revoked the predominantly Muslim regions semi-autonomous status and statehood and imposed direct federal rule.

At that time, it launched a months-long total communication blackout and an unprecedented military crackdown in the strife-torn region.





Indian security officials and some members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party called Naikoos death a major victory against the rebels.

He was Hizbul Mujahideens top commander for almost eight years and shot into prominence during a 2016 public uprising following the killing of the groups charismatic leader, Burhan Wani.

After Wanis death, Naikoo helped give new life to the rebellion in Indian-administered Kashmir, with security officials saying he was the most wanted Kashmiri rebel.

India has stepped up its counterinsurgency operations across the region in recent months during the coronavirus lockdown.

The rebels have also continued their attacks on the government forces and alleged informants.

India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the region in its entirety.

Rebels have been fighting Indian control since 1989. About 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.

Most Kashmiris deeply resent Indian rule and support the rebels call for the territory to be united, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
The National Judicial Council on Thursday released guidelines for court proceedings to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

The guidelines issued by the NJC committee headed by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour are contained in a statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES by the councils Director of information, Soji Oye.

The NJC had at its first virtual meeting held on April 22 and 23 set up a 10-member committee led by Mr Rhodes-Vivour to develop a practical strategy for how courts would continue to function during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Tanko Muhammad, directed all courts to stop sitting pending the issuance of the NJCs guidelines for the reopening of courts.

Guidelines

With the title, The National Judicial Council Guidelines for Court Sittings and Related Matters in the COVID-19 period,  Mr Oye said the CJN, in a corresponding circular with Reference Number NJC/CIR/HOC/II/660, urged all heads of federal and state courts to abide by the guidelines in the formulation of their rules and directives.

Heads of court shall have the primary responsibility of ensuring compliance of judicial officers, over whom they superintend, with the provisions of this guideline.

Heads of courts shall liaise with relevant security agencies to ensure that entrances to court premises are well manned by security personnel and entry into the premises are regulated in a manner that guarantees and enforces the minimum two-meter (six feet) distance between persons as it relates to all entrants into the premises.

The courts shall ensure that all security personnel who work in the court premises and in particular the security personnel who man the entrance(s) to the court premises are well informed on COVID-19 including, in particular, the methods of its spread, its basic symptoms, how to prevent its spread, etc, it said.

The guidelines added that heads of courts should ensure that all security personnel including those attached to judicial officers and courtrooms should be well-kitted and supplied with disposable gloves, facemasks, and hand sanitisers.

It also listed guidelines that should apply with regard to admission of persons into the court premises.

Security personnel at the entrance of the court premises shall be equipped with temperature monitors for testing and determining the temperature of each visitor to the court premises.

They should be trained in the use of the temperature monitors, and visitors must be shown their temperature readings on the monitors before their admission into the court premises.

Every person wishing to go into the court premises, without exception, shall be subjected to the temperature monitor reading for the determination of his or her body temperature, it said.

It is also in the guideline that anyone who refuses to submit himself or herself for the temperature testing should politely not be allowed into the court premises and advised to leave the entrance immediately.

Heads of courts should procure advice of health experts on the temperature levels that warrant concern and be indicative of a person with fever (high-temperature threshold).

The security personnel at the court entrance(s) must be trained in that regard.

The guidelines added that any of the court visitor whose temperature reads high or who is coughing during the entry protocol should not be allowed into the court premises.

Any visitor to the court premises, who has a high temperature, based on the temperature monitor reading at the entrance to the court or who is coughing while going through the entry protocols, should be politely advised to seek immediate medical assistance and refused entry into the court premises.

Security personnel at the court premises shall further ensure that only persons with facemasks are allowed entry into the court premises, without exception.

It said that judicial officers and legal counsel must be exemplary in that regard and must ensure that their support personnel would comply strictly with the requirement.

At no time and in no circumstance should anyone, while within the court premises, including inside courtrooms, offices and the chambers of judicial officers, not wear a facemask.

It further stated that visitors coming into the court premises must maintain social and physical distance and avoid congregations or assembly of more than 10 persons within the court premises, excluding courtrooms.

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It also said that court-related businesses that could be transacted without physical visits to the court premises should be transacted through available alternative channels.

Each court premises must have pasted on or flashing from their respective notice boards the dos and donts by visitors to the premises vis-a-vis COVID-19. Those notices and the notice boards must be placed at strategic and visible locations within the court premises and at the entrances thereto.

The courts must ensure the availability of hand sanitizers in bottles and/or dispensers, liberally mounted and placed in strategic and easily noticeable and accessible locations within the court premises for the use of all visitors and court personnel.

The court premises including courtrooms, registries, offices and the chambers of judicial officers should be periodically disinfected in such frequencies as the Heads of Courts may determine.
Sinn Fein Health spokesperson Louise O'Reilly has said it is utterly baffling how only 54 health workers who volunteered out of around 73,000 people through 'Be On Call for Ireland', have been put to work in the health service, despite nursing homes and residential care facilities crying out for help for weeks now.

Deputy O'Reilly said: 'A significant number of healthcare workers in the thousands answered the call to help in the fight against COVID-19 and signed up to help through 'Be On Call for Ireland'.

'However, only 54 health workers have been placed in jobs.

'This is in spite of the fact that nursing homes and residential care facilities crying out for additional staff for weeks now to help them fight COVID-19 and ensure their capacity to continue to deliver care safely.

'The government and the HSE made promises that they would release staff to the nursing home sector and residential care facilities, however, the numbers released has been derisory.

'It is estimated that nursing homes and residential care facilities could need an additional 2,000 staff including healthcare assistants, nurses, doctors, and consultant geriatricians to help them deliver medical care and safe lives from COVID19.

'It beggars' belief that with tens of thousands of health staff applying to work through 'Be On Call for Ireland' and in the face of the crisis still gripping our nursing homes and residential care facilities, that these staff would not be fast-tracked to get them into the service.'
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After being celebrated for their courage and compassion in the first wave of the coronavirus, Oregon healthcare workers are suddenly getting pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs.

Legacy Health notified employees last week that it will require nearly 6,000 of them to take temporary pay cuts or 10-15-day furloughs or both. Other hospitals, big and small, have instituted similar cuts just weeks after the first wave of COVID-19 began to taper off.

Last month, for example, Oregon Health & Science University announced pay cuts and other cost reductions. Providence Health & Services and PeaceHealth have also cut costs and didnt rule out more.

In early April, Oregon hospital executives predicted they would likely have to cut more than 1,100 positions this spring, according to a survey conducted by the hospital trade association.

Three weeks ago they were putting up signs, Youre the hero, they even threw us a parade, said Eric Quinn, a CT scan technician at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver. And now, its more like, Youre done. Go home. We dont need you anymore.

Quinns employer, PeaceHealth, has frozen salaries and put hiring on hold. It is encouraging qualifying employees to take sabbaticals and early retirement.

The COVID effect has hit even a second wave of employees in related industries. Moda Health, the large, Portland-based health insurer, put about 100 employees on indefinite furlough in recent weeks.

Most of Modas furloughed employees worked in a dental claims call center. With the dental business largely shut down under the stay-at-home order they didnt have much to do, Moda spokesman Jonathan Nicholas said.

At the heart of the hospitals financial problems is the ban on elective surgeries. Between the ban and people generally avoiding hospitals for fear of the virus, some hospital departments have seen revenue plummet 40%-70%.

The overwhelming COVID-19 surge health authorities warned about never materialized in Oregon. But in some Portland hospitals there were several frenzied weeks of COVID-19 activity, which seemed to justify the temporary hold on other surgeries.

In many rural hospitals, its been a far different story. Take the case of Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay. With more than 1,100 people on the payroll, it is the largest employer in Coos County, said Kelli Dion, Bay Areas chief quality officer.

Everyone at Bay Area knew that eliminating elective surgeries would be hard on the institutions financial health. When management asked for volunteers to go on furlough, 73 people raised their hand.

Gary Salcedo, a longtime nurse at the hospital, was one of them. He could afford it, he figured, and it would be good for the rest of the hospital and his fellow-nurses. Like Salcedo, most are members of the Oregon Nurses Association.

Anticipation built for COVID-19 to finally arrive in the area. And it did. At least 25 inmates at the Shutter Creek Correctional Institute in nearby North Bend tested positive.

But none of the inmates were sick enough to need hospitalization. In fact, Bay Area has not had a single confirmed COVID-19 patient in its hospital.

Its been a bit surreal to be honest with you, Dion said. Weve had some COVID-19 rule-outs. But not a single COVID-positive. Were a little isolated and insulated out here.

Salcedo is relieved that his hospital wasnt overwhelmed. But he also feels hes taken a bullet for the team for no good reason. What was the point of shutting down elective surgeries if the hospital didnt get a single COVID-19 patient?

Early on, the feeling was, were going to get the surge, its going to happen, he said. With that not really happening, it does kind of put things in a little more frustrating light for staff who stayed home.

The end of elective surgeries took a toll on Bay Areas finances. In response, it has cut the pay of managers and executives. It is also flexing all of its employees -- a practice intended to match the workforce with that days daily needs. Flexing is unpopular with many workers as they could be sent home unpaid.

Back in Portland, Legacy Health informed employees it will temporarily reduce some employees pay and require furloughs as well.

As you know, we have experienced a significant decrease in patient volumes (between 40%-70%), said Dr. Brian Young, president of Legacy Medical Group, in a memo obtained by The Oregonian. These reductions are very much in line with what other medical groups and organizations are facing locally and across the nation.

According to Legacy documents, doctors and other providers will take some of the biggest cuts. Effective April 26, Legacy suspended all compensation plans to all providers. Instead, they were put on salary for May, June and July with an across-the-board 15% pay reduction from last year. Legacy intends for this to be a temporary, 90-day cut.

The hospital chain is also requiring its providers take 15 days off, unpaid, between now and September. Other workers will be required to take 10 days off by July.

The cost-cutting strategies will impact more than 5,200 employees.

The local health care community is bracing for what Providence, the big kahuna of local hospital operators, will do.

So far, most employees have been left largely untouched. In a written statement, Providence said it will also leave certain vacant positions unfilled and will reduce the use of temporary workers and eliminate business travel while considering further steps.

Providence had cut executive compensation 10%-50%. The salary of Lisa Vance, named CEO of Providences Oregon operation in 2018, is not yet public. Rod Hochman, head of Providences entire seven-state system, received total compensation of $10 million last year.

Until COVID-19, most large Oregon health systems were thriving.

Legacy, which like most of its major competitors is a non-profit, took in $2.2 billion in revenue in 2019. Revenue exceeded expenses by $103 million. Legacy operates three hospitals in the Portland area.

Providences Oregon operation generated $5.2 billion in revenue in 2019, up more than $100 million from the prior year. Revenue exceeded expenses by $412.6 million.

Organized labor is seeking protection for health care workers from Oregon political leaders. The Oregon Nurses Association and other unions are demanding that Gov. Kate Brown make any financial assistance to hospitals contingent on the industrys agreement to some worker protection.

The downsizing is tremendously short-sighted, said nurses association organizer Kevin Mealy. COVID-19 is not over. It could return in waves, particularly if the social-distancing requirements are eased.

Its like the Twilight Zone, Mealy said. Were sitting here watching hospitals tell nurses and other health care workers theyre not needed during a pandemic.

Plus, personal protective equipment is still in short supply. Surgeons and nurses repairing knees and replacing hips will use some protective gear potentially needed by their peers treating COVID-19 patients.

On Thursday, the American Federation of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents workers at OHSU, staged an event with U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, calling on the federal government to include worker protection in its expected aid package to state and local government.

The cost-cutting promises to contribute to an already daunting economic slowdown stemming from the virus. Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians have lost their jobs or are suffering pay cuts of their own. Demonstrators have taken to the street to protest the stay-at-home orders, issued by Brown and most other governors.

Few in the healthcare industry question Browns strategy, not even the ban on elective surgeries.

Based on what we knew at the time, the governor made the right decisions, said Becky Hultberg, CEO of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. Were also very happy shes made the decision to allow us to restart. Were ready to get back to work.
08.05.2020 LISTEN

This is a three-part article, the first being on the history and evolution of FinTechs. The second on cryptocurrencies and the third and final part will be on fintech lending/transactions and financial industry regulations, particularly in Ghana. Financial technology, often shortened to fintech is the merger of finance and information technology or tech as the name implies.

In recent years Fintech has gained a lot of traction and generated buzz, especially within the tech industry. The marriage of finance and tech is by no means a recent development. Financial firms have historically provided capital to fund technological advancements and in turn incorporating these new technologies into their businesses.

Perhaps, one of the earliest collaborations of finance and tech happened in the mid-1800s with the introduction of the telegraph. This opened the gates of fintech and about 10 years after the first transcontinental telegraph, Western Union introduced money transfers. In 1976 Barclays introduced the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).

Historically, the financial industry has been the largest purchaser of information technology. Even today, the amount that large financial firms spend on information technology is staggering with JPMorgan spending $9.9billion on technology in 2016 alone. And the budget of Bank of America for Global Technology and Operations, a whopping $16billion for 2018. The application of finance to technology and vice versa is nothing new.

But why the hype in the past few years?

This arises from who is applying the technology. Currently and over the past few years, many fintechs are non-banks. The rapid growth of the internet coupled with the ubiquitous use of smartphones has lowered the barriers for non-banks to provide financial services. In 2019, there were 5.11 billion mobile users worldwide, with 4.39 billion internet users, a 9% increase from 2018. In Ghana, as at the third quarter of 2019, mobile internet users were 10.7 million.

In addition to the rapid growth of the internet, the banking sector crisis spurred modern fintechs. In the United States, due to the economic crisis in 2008, over 9 million workers lost their jobs, many of whom were in the banking sector. Many of these people found their way to burgeoning Fintech Companies. Also, tech-savvy college graduates, confronted with the lack of job opportunities decided to start their own fintechs. In Ghana, the banking sector crisis starting in 2017 saw the rapid decline of trust in traditional banks by Ghanaians. With more trust in fintechs such as Mobile Money.

A study conducted by the research firm StrategyOne of thousands of participants across 25 countries showed that consumers distrust the banking industry more than any other industry. With the trust in banks and financial institutions worldwide declining, consumers are willing to engage in startups who offer competitive advantage. Many blame the banks and central banks for contributing to the crises. When central banks bailed out banks in the United States, individuals who lost jobs as a result wondered where their bailout was. This gave birth to the rise of crypto currencies like bitcoin, Ether, XRP Litecoin.

Lee Reiners, CFA, the executive director of Duke Universitys Global Finance Markets Center offers two definitions as a result of the history of fintechs. First, the term refers to businesses who are using technology to operate outside of traditional financial services business models to change how financial services are offered.

Second, fintech includes firms that use technology to improve the competitive advantage of traditional financial services firms by providing faster and more convenient products and services to their customers.

The first part of the definition refers to those non-bank technology companies that have entered into the financial services space like mobile money, Expresspay etc., while the second part of the definition applies to legacy financial institutions who are deploying and developing innovative new technologies, for instance Ecobank pay. This definition also implies that fintech covers the entire range of products and services that have historically been provided by financial services firms

FinTechs And Regulations.

One of the major problems faced by fintechs are regulatory issues. In 2015, PayPal agreed to pay $7.7m to the office of Foreign Assets Control in the USA for processing illegal transactions.

Bitcoin has been plagued with various legal issues. In 2014, founder of bitcoin, BitInstant plead guilty to operating unlicensed money transmitting business. He/she transmitted money through SilkRoad, a black-market website for drug trafficking

When fintechs get it wrong, in the extreme cases, they run out of business

Even though regulatory agencies and policies are not yet at par with fintechs, fintechs are forcing regulatory agencies to change and make policy changes to suit them, however, there are still regulatory challenges that need to be addressed. Regulations built for the pre digital era banking will simply not cut it for fintechs. But the question is how should regulations respond?

That depends on the country. There will not be a one size fits all in all countries.

In the UK, regulators are tasked with promoting competition. In the USA, the challenges usually come from the fragmented regulatory structure, with multiple agencies responsible for these, the regulatory structure is complex, with state and federal regulations. This is no different in Ghana. With multiple agencies and laws needed to be complied with. For instance, fintechs instead of registering as banks will have to deal with not only financial regulators, but money lending agencies, national communications agencies, consumer protection agencies, data regulatory agencies etc., depending on their business models. Most of these regulations were designed before the type of products fintechs now typically offer were available. The emergence of new payment streams and acceptance of these has prompted Ghana to enact a Payment system and services act in 2019 (Act 987) to provide the legal and regulatory framework for some fintechs. We would take a deeper dive into this in a later article to determine the scope of this new law.

The cost of researching regulations compliance can be particularly difficult for fintech firms that begin as technology startups. Also, obtaining state licenses to enable interstates transfers and operations may be a big hurdle.

However, there is the argument to be made that incorporating legal issues from the inception of a fintech startup, even though may have financial consequences, eventually saves time, money and headaches.

Fintechs face several challenges traditional banks may not encounter. fintechs often have to contend with multiple agencies with authority over consumer protection and fair lending and the use of nontraditional data to assess creditworthiness.

Fintechs are also slightly different from other Tech companies when it comes to regulations. Tech companies like Uber and Airbnb did not need to register with a transport union/agency or hospitality industry before operating.

Why hasnt something like this happened in the banking industry. Not because people prefer their traditional financial firms, in any case trust has been lost giving the banking sector crisis.

The real reason is the banking industry is fundamentally different from any other industry and has a higher regulation. The traditional approach of tech companies like Uber and Airbnb to ask for forgiveness rather than permission does not work in the financial industry.

The idealism of fintechs has given way to more pragmatic ideals; to partner with or be acquired by a traditional financial institution. VCs are cashing in on their investments when fintechs are acquired by a traditional financial institution. This isnt very easy though.

Biggest challenge of working together, traditional financial institutions, are concerned with IT security, the banking sector is tightly regulated and cannot adopt the happy go lucky attitude of fintechs, where regulations are now popping up slowly. Banks are expected to keep data of consumers safe, thus banks will naturally be cautious working with fintech companies because of possible risks posed by third parties. On the side of the fintechs, the management and culture of hierarchical structure of traditional finance institutions greatly contrasts the freewheeling culture of fintech startups

The perfect bank fintech partnership will be beneficial in that it will offer a greater consumer choice, better consumer experience, lower costs by using new technologies, access to customers, financial resource and regulatory expertise

In the early years of fintechs, there was optimism that the fintech industry will transform the banking industry, the way amazon transformed retail or uber transformed the transportation industry. This optimism led to the rise of investments and pouring of money into the fintech industry.

This has led many to argue that the fintech industry is going through the hype cycle, a term coined by the consulting firm Gartner, to reflect the maturity and adoption of new technologies. The hype cycle is a visual representation of the fact that we tend to overestimate the effect of new technology in the short run,and underestimate the effect in the long run. Thus, according to hype cycle terminology, 2015 may have been the peak of inflated expectations for the fintech industry. While it is hard to say with certainty where we are currently at in the hype cycle, it is fair to assume that in the long run fintechs would prove to be a disruptive force in all aspects of finance.

Credits

https://www.coursera.org/learn/fintechlawandpolicy

Lee Reiners, CFA, Executive Director, Global Financial Markets Center

Duke University School of Law

Fintech Law and Policy: The Critical Legal and Regulatory Challenges Confronting Fintech Firms and The Policy Debates That Are Occurring Across The Country, Lee Reiners.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Hype cycle provided by Gartner, Inc

Data reports, Statista

NCA, GSMA Ghana

BOG reports

https://www.businessghana.com/site/news/general/159800

The Uk Department For International Development (Dfid)

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/jpm-big-banks-spend-billions-on-tech-but-theyre-still-laggards/

https://jpmorganchaseco.gcs-web.com/static-files/d588069b-8415-47ce-bc81-1cdc840a794e

https://thefinancialbrand.com/22896/edelman-banking-financial-services-consumer-trust-study/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/28/bitcoin-executive-resigns-money-laundering-silk-road-charlie-shrem

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/jpm-big-banks-spend-billions-on-tech-but-theyre-still-laggards/
Eddie Zhi The companys quarantined workforce and their families are anxious and wondering whether management has been upfront with them. The Victorian government is also under pressure to explain why health authorities did not do more to act on the first positive result for a Cedar Meats worker back on April 2, and why it failed to directly contact the company when more infections were confirmed on April 24. Why didnt the Health Department advise the boss of the company to [put] health measures in place? Obviously no action because it led to 45 cases, asked the mother of one infected worker earlier in the week. WeChat Posts On April 9, 35 tonnes of Cedar Meats mutton were loaded onto the Chinese aircraft at Sydney Airport. For all the fanfare and media coverage surrounding the arrival of Chinese personal protective gear, there was little fuss about the Australian produce going back to China.

Cedar Meats did not go out of its way to highlight its involvement with the Chinese consortium in any major Australian media. But it did post a link to the shipment on the Cedar Meats page on popular Chinese social media platform WeChat. Cedar Meats owner Tony Kairouz (left) and colleagues celebrating in Melbourne in October 2019. The photos were posted on the company's WeChat account. Credit: The link included a statement from Cedar Meats general manager Tony Kairouz, who told the companys Chinese audience of their shipment, describing it as a humanitarian act. We are concerned about the world climate and anything we can do to help we are doing, he said. We made a loss on the consignment as our contribution to the humanitarian efforts to provide them [China] with some meat. Cedar Meats is among a select group of Australian meat businesses with a licence to export to China. It is not known how much was paid for the mutton or how much the Australian government knew about the shipment. The federal Agriculture Department declined to comment on the matter.

Loading But what is known is that Zhi was working with former PLA officer-turned-businessman Kuang Yuangping to source the mutton for Wuhan. Kuang, who made headlines in March for his involvement in the export of Australian medical and protective equipment to Wuhan, was linked to the Cedar Meats deal through his seven-week-old company, Australia Olon Food Services. As for its dealings with Zhi, Cedar Meats on Friday acknowledged it had recently bought face masks from him. But that was the first and only time it had done so. Cedar Meats does not take OH&S advice from Mr Zhi, the company said. Cedar Meats also firmly ruled out any staff travel to China as a potential explanation for its COVID-19 outbreak. No one from Cedar Meats has travelled to China since May 2019, the company said.

Loading Nevertheless, the Cedar Meats WeChat page makes clear the company enjoys strong relations with its Chinese customers. The companys WeChat page also features photos of Kairouz and other senior staff dining and smoking cigars with Chinese customers in Melbourne last October. It even features a photograph of a novelty T-shirt about vegetarians, describing the word as the ancient tribal name for the village idiot who cant hunt, fish or light fires. In a high-risk place

Victorias Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton this week described Cedar Meats, and all abattoirs, as places of high risk for COVID-19 transmission. Meatworks, which are essential businesses for obvious reasons, have proven to be fertile ground for coronavirus infections in the United States and Canada. But so far in Australia, the Brooklyn abattoir remains the only food processing site affected. Kairouz said this week he was hopeful Cedar Meats would be back to normal business when a two-week quarantine period ends later this month and extensive cleaning has been done. The virus outbreak has put a spotlight on Cedar Meats and the broader meatworks industry in Australia. It has revealed a strong reliance on labour hire companies to provide workers to perform some of the most unglamorous jobs in Australia.

Loading The involvement of a labour hire company in the Cedar Meats case has added an extra layer of confusion in tracing who knew what and when in relation to its COVID-19 cluster. As The Age revealed on Friday, Victorian health authorities failed to tell Cedar Meats on April 24 and April 26 that it had workers who had returned positive tests. Instead of talking to Cedar Meats management, health officials told Labour Solutions Australia that a worker it supplied to the abattoir had COVID-19. It was left to the labour hire firm to inform Cedar Meats about the positive tests and the company has since admitted the message was confused. Cedar Meats was not directly contacted by health officials until April 27, when more positive results were returned. Further confirmed cases were reported on April 29 and workers were finally told that they had been unknowingly working in a coronavirus hotspot for a week on May 1.

It would spread so easy at that place, a former Cedar Meats employee told The Age. You work in a line. Theres maybe a metre between you and the next person. You all eat together in a small room with maybe three microwaves. You all use the same toilets. Premier Daniel Andrews has defended the performance of the Health Department in handling the outbreak, but the opposition has called for an inquiry, declaring it "Victorias Ruby Princess moment". Whatever the case, the Cedar Meats experience will shape future contact-tracing efforts and communication strategies. As for the Cedar Meats workers wondering if they will develop symptoms or have passed the virus on to their partners and children, they are far from impressed with the performance of management and the government.
Days after the caretaker of a shelter in central Delhis Jhandewalan was infected with Covid-19, four occupants from the shelter too tested positive for the disease on Friday morning.

Shelter number-14 serves over 50 people and they share common toilets and other facilities. Since the caretaker was tested, the shelter management decided to test those that showed symptoms. With the new cases, the rest will likely be quarantined.

According to Prabhas Chaudhary, supervisor of a cluster of nine such shelters in the area, said that the report has come positive for actually five occupants but because of a spelling mistake, authorities were not able to identify the other patient. Nine persons with symptoms like fever and sore throat were tested on May 5 by a team of district health officials in a mobile van, five of who tested positive on Friday. All of them are aged between 30 and 45 years. We have requested authorities to reconfirm the status of the fifth person, said Chaudhary.

While the test results came at in at around 11am, it was only until 4.30pm that the patients were taken to the isolation facility in Karol Bagh.

Chaudhary added that the shelter served 56 people, but only 20 slept here. The rest would be here for most part of the day. They would be served food and the other facilities, but would go sleep somewhere else during the night on their carts, he said.

The cluster of nine shelters together house over 500 homeless people.

The caretaker had tested positive on May 4. He was then shifted to AIIMS Jhajjar quarantine facility.

Nidhi Srivastava, district magistrate (Central) said that only four persons in the shelter tested positive in the report that came on Friday morning. We plan to move the occupants above 50 years old and those having ailments like tuberculosis to isolation facilities. The rest will be quarantined in the shelter itself, said Srivastava.

She added that occupants of other shelters with symptoms were now being screened.

Sunil Kumar Aledia, a social activist who works for the homeless in the city, said that he will be writing to all district magistrates screen occupants in all the shelters under their jurisdiction. So many people have complained of fever and other symptoms here but the screening started only after the caretaker tested positive. So many people are housed in these shelters. Just because they are poor doesnt mean they are denied of their right to life and dignity. The government must understand the seriousness of the issue, said Aledia.

At least 3725 persons are housed across the 223 regular shelter homes of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB). Besides the Delhi government has converted 256 school buildings into temporary shelter homes to house thousands of migrants, who were stranded during the ongoing lockdown.

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Idky but starting this week, all the hosts have a fake set background in their homes. They previously sat somewhere neutral and had nothing of any consequence within the camera angle. Lol. Shrugs.More behind the cutThe good news is the WH is now holding press conferences again, after more than a year of not doing so. The bad news is that the new racist liar press secretary said shed never lie, then immediately lied. Oh wait, none of that is good news. When the press called out her hypocritical past comments, she provided a buffet of word salad without ever answering the question. Valet to T45 tested positive, so its ok for all of WH to be tested, but doesnt matter for average Americans to be tested. One could argue the importance of roles but only to a certain degree, because citizens matter. Other countries are testing everyone en masse. They hired a propagandist because thats her only talent. Theres been 1000% increase in suicide hotline calls, plus stats on unemployment. If we dont have a plan for testing, tracing, treatment, it will be a catastrophe.Plays another clip where press secretary doesnt know about how tests and contagions work. More discussion on other countries who are testing at much higher rates per million people. Despite difference in population, the magnitude is still greater than US. The GOP used to complain about Obamacare death panels (that never existed) but now they dont care who gets sick and dies because tests arent needed.Whoopi gives the background, panel rages. Sunny talks about her track star son, he jogs all the time, it hit home to her. All the DA are recusing from case because they know the men involved. A citizens arrest doesnt warrant the vigilantism for an unarmed jogger. As a prosecutor, Sunny never -didnt get- an indictment, so what is their problem. Biden can call it out but T45 hasnt even addressed it. Feels its despicable. Joy calls out the vigilantism as well. Meghan thinks there have already been wake up calls, feels he was stalked and hunted. Citizens shouldnt be in the business of arresting and shooting people on speculation. Feels like its getting worse and more egregious. Whoopi thinks T45 should say something, asks what would happen if it were two black men hunting and shooting an unarmed white man. Equates it back to T45 not thinking Americans need testing. He has no respect for American people.Whoopi gives background, says it went viral due to her appearance. Meghan talks about the reaction to her weight, still perpetuates that you have to be thin to be valuable. It doesnt matter her talent, she must look perfect. Worries what the reaction will be when-if people see her pregnant or after she has the baby and hasnt lost the weight and that she expects backlash even more than she gets now [about her size]. Joy thinks its nothing new, compares to Barbra Streisand who is also brilliantly talented but she was mocked for her looks, where Frank Sinatra got a pass for his fake hair. Sunny thought she looked great before. People notice the change, but its a shame that shes so scrutinized. Whoopi says look in the mirror before you comment on other people.She went on her day off to counter protest at the AZ Capital, stood silently and featured in viral photo. Talks about being an advocate, healthcare workers still self isolating, wanting to provide a voice for her colleagues and those sick. LL said they didnt hesitate to walk right in their face and yell at them about their grievances. They werent peaceful, they were coughing the -fake virus-, accused of being hired by the govt, taunted them to check on a supposedly ill person then when they checked, they were laughed at. People openly had firearms. Explains what she would want others to know about what theyre facing. Nurses are scared for states to reopen. Wearing masks, social distancing, washing hands should be a priority. No matter their political beliefs, if they showed up in their ICU, then theyd be cared for with open arms. Meghan talks about AZ specifically. LL talks about what she wants to see, what people should still take seriously, what it takes (and how many staff it takes) to treat the medically paralyzed. Theyve never treated people with virus as sick as this.Click here to learn more about CORE Covid19 Sean Penn non profit organization CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) has been working to set up testing centers across US (and globe) in absence of T45 admin doing anything for US. Sunny talks about SP setting up his organization in 2010 after earthquake decimated Haiti. SP thinks on federal level is that DPA (Defense Production Act) should be more robust to produce PPE and test kits. What concerns him the most is that there is info overload out there. Talks about combining forces with local govts. Able to test 1000s every day. Joy asks more about the active-shooter metaphor. SP explains the analogy that the virus is the active-shooter, and its disproportionately impacting poc, the elderly, and indigenous people. He doesnt discount peoples right to make a living but it shouldnt be at the expense of those ill, dying, healthcare workers, the science. Theres too much distraction [to keep people focused on the real culprit]. Revisits press secretary remarks. Whoopi asks about the states where theyre focusing. SP gives details, thinks CA had extraordinary leadership on this topic. CORE was able to replace people like firefighters, so they could get back to their normal job, and let this org handle testing process. Mentions other places who turned their business into PPE manufacturing. Feels even in the best of situations, the govt cant handle it all, so thats where CORE comes in as a supplement.Source links are below each video or section
Jacksonville Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 A Jacksonville man was arrested Wednesday after police said someone pointed a gun out a car window at a passing motorist.

David J. Beal, 25, of 609 E. Independence Ave. was arrested at 5:22 p.m. Wednesday on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and aggravated assault. He is accused of pointing a weapon at a car with a couple inside at Hoagland Boulevard and South Diamond Street, according to a police report.

ACCIDENTS

 Corey T. Grinkey, 29, of Jacksonville was cited on charges of operating an uninsured vehicle and violation of classifications after he lost control of his motorcycle at 5:37 p.m. Wednesday in the 800 block of North Main Street. He was thrown from the cycle and suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to a police report.

 Dylan M. Pagel, 21, of Jacksonville was cited on a charge of improper lane use after his pickup truck hit a utility pole at West Walnut and North West streets at 6:12 p.m. Wednesday.

THEFTS, BURGLARIES

 Prescription medication was stolen from a residence in the 500 block of Northwood Lane about 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to a report filed at 12:01 p.m. Wednesday.

OTHER REPORTS

 Police were called at 2:55 p.m. Wednesday about someone lying on the ground in the 1000 block of North West Street.

It was determined the man was intoxicated and had fallen asleep. He was taken home.

Compiled by David C.L. Bauer
May 7, 2020  Ottawa  National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces

Canadians can trust that, in times of need, their Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will be there for them. This is especially true right now, as people from coast to coast to coast come together to face the unprecedented challenges caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the CAF is no exception. As active members of our communities, we are proud to be there for our federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous partners when needed.

Caring for elders and vulnerable people in Long Term Care Facilities

As part of the response underway to help Canadians in the context of COVID19, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have been supporting civilian authorities in Quebec since April 20, 2020, and in Ontario since April 28, 2020, as agreed between the provincial and federal governments.

Members deployed in Long Term Care Facilities (LTCFs, or CHSLD in Quebec) are working collaboratively with their provincial partners and with medical staff in the homes to maintain staffing levels and help with infection control and prevention. They are providing assistance with the day-to-day operations, helping with the coordination and provision of medical care, and providing general support at the identified facilities.

Quebec

In Quebec, on April 20th, the Canada Armed Forces were deployed in the originally requested five long-term care facilities following a request for assistance. Following this initial deployment, CAF scaled up to 13 long-term care facilities.

And as of today, the 7th of May, the CAF will have over 1020 personnel committed to the support of 20 long-term care facilities in Quebec. Of this number, over 670 medical and support personnel are contributing inside the facilities, while nearly 350 individuals are providing essential day-to-day support, such as delivering personal protective equipment and other needed supplies, maintaining liaison with the Province, as well as planning to refine operations to better support the patients of the long-term care facilities.

Additional CAF members will be deployed in the coming days to support Quebecs most vulnerable residents. We expect to have approximately 1350 CAF members dedicated to this task in support of up to 25 facilities when the deployment is complete.

As requested by Quebec, the Canadian Armed Forces are currently serving in:

Grace Dart Extended Care Centre (Montreal)

CHSLD Vigi Reine-Elizabeth (Montreal)

Residence Berthiaume-Du Tremblay (Montreal)

CHSLD Vigi Mont-Royal (Ville Mont-Royal)

CHSLD Floralies-De-Lasalle (Lasalle)

Centre dhebergement de Saint-Laurent (Saint-Laurent)

CHSLD Argyle (Saint-Lambert)

CHSLD Benjamin-Victor-Rousselot (Montreal)

Manoir de Verdun (Montreal)

Centre dhebergement Yvon-Brunet (Montreal)

CHSLD Hopital Sainte-Anne (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue)

CHSLD Valeo (Saint-Lambert)

CHSLD Villa Val des Arbres (Laval)

CHSLD Auclair

CHSLD de la Rive

CHSLD Eloria-Lepage (Montreal)

Centre d'Hebergement Jean-De-La-Lande (Montreal)

Centre dHebergement Saint-Andrew (Montreal)

CHSLD Denis-Benjamin Viger (L'ile-Bizard)

Le Bellagio (Longueuil)

These task-tailored teams have been generated by the CAF from military bases across the country. Before being integrated, members have undergone instruction in how to integrate with health services staff, they have been trained on the use of medical-grade personal protective equipment, and they have also received a mandatory long-term care facility orientation facilitated by Quebec.

Ontario

Last week, the CAF has started to assist in five Long Term Care Facilities (LTCFs) across the Greater Toronto Area. This was in response to a Request for Assistance from the Province of Ontario.

While the exact number of deployed personnel fluctuates, the CAF is employing approximately 265 medical and support personnel.

As requested by Ontario, CAF members are now serving in:

Orchard Villa (Pickering),

Altamont Care Community (Scarborough),

Eatonville (Etobicoke),

Hawthorne Place (North York), and

Holland Christian Homes Grace Manor (Brampton)

Conditions at these LTCFs and others across the country are being monitored by the provinces and CAF support may be reassessed as required. The CAFs support to these LTCFs is intended as an interim measure to help Ontario and Quebec get through a critical situation over the short term.

Canadian Rangers and the CAFs presence in remote areas

The Canadian Rangers are active members of their communities and they are proud to help out during these difficult times. As a result of COVID-19, approximately 1,200 Rangers are employed throughout many communities across Canada.

In Quebec, the Canadian Rangers have deployed to Nunavik, Cote-Nord and Basse-Cote-Nord to support these remote communities in their fight against COVID-19. Our Canadian Rangers are making a difference stop and slow the spread of COVID-19, preparing triage points to facilitate the work of healthcare personnel, as well as providing humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations,.

In Northern Saskatchewan, the Canadian Rangers are providing logistical support including wellness checks, transportation and distribution of local supplies to community members. They are also assisting in staffing municipal/community-operated command posts and emergency centres, gathering data and statistics on the COVID-19 relief efforts, and supporting community food security through hunting, gathering and fishing. Some are also assisting community elders by cutting and delivering firewood, hauling and refilling water, and delivering medications and groceries.

In British Columbias Haida Gwaii archipelago, in Yukon, in the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut, the Canadian Rangers are providing logistical support including wellness checks; gathering data and statistics on the current state of the community relative to the COVID-19 relief efforts; and delivering critical goods to people in need including groceries and prescription medications.

The work the Rangers are doing on a daily basis provides valuable information to the Government about the on the ground situation in Northern, Indigenous and remote communities across the country.
(CNN)  A woman has been arrested on suspicion of shooting a fast-food worker and injuring others after they told her to leave a McDonald's restaurant in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, police said.

Gloricia Woody had entered the restaurant that evening despite the dining area being closed because of coronavirus restrictions, according to police.

When employees asked her to leave, she refused and got into a scuffle with one of them, police said. Employees eventually forced her outside, but she re-entered the restaurant with a handgun and fired about three rounds, police said.

One worker was shot in the arm, and two others were struck by shrapnel. A fourth worker  the person who was in the initial scuffle  suffered a head injury, though it wasn't immediately clear how, according to police.

Three were taken to a hospital; none of the injures was life-threatening, police said.

Woody, 32, was arrested later Wednesday, Oklahoma City police Capt. Larry Withrow said.

Woody was being held Wednesday night on preliminary charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, according to Oklahoma County jail records.

CNN's attempts to find an attorney for Woody weren't immediately successful. An initial court appearance has not been scheduled, a county court representative said Thursday morning.

Earlier, police said there were two suspects, citing preliminary information they received. That information changed as the investigation progressed, they said.

The incident is one of a number reported across the country that authorities said were related to restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the virus. In Michigan, a Family Dollar store security guard was shot after telling a customer to wear a face mask  a mandate in place by the state for all retail stores.

Also in Michigan, a man wiped his nose on a Dollar Tree worker's shirt after the employee told him he needed to wear a mask.

In Southern California, a customer wore what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood during a trip to the grocery store  and repeatedly ignored staff requests to remove it.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Customer shot a McDonald's employee after being told to leave due to coronavirus restrictions, police say"
Alexander Carlisle and Peter Beck are vying for a five-year seat on the Planning Board.

Beck, Carlisle Contend for Williamstown Planning Board Spot

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  It is a local election season like none we have seen before, and the town's two candidates in the only contested election on the ballot are missing out on opportunities to see the voters and make their case.

"This is pretty low on the pecking order of problems during the pandemic, but I wish I could be out there meeting people in the town," Planning Board candidate Peter Beck said. "It's hard not being at the dump, not being on Spring Street, not being out there meeting people as they go about their days.

"I think of town planning as a collaboration between the Planning Board and the town."

Beck is challenging incumbent Alexander Carlisle for a five-year seat on the five-member board.

Election day is Tuesday, June 23, rescheduled from its usual mid-May date as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also in a nod to the pandemic, the town is strongly urging residents to apply for mail-in ballots that can be returned before election day in order to cut down on the crowds that Tuesday and protect poll workers.

The town's chapter of the League of Women Voters will hold a virtual candidates forum for Beck and Carlisle on Wednesday, May 13.

Carlisle was elected in May 2018 to fill the last two years of an unexpired term. In that time, the self-employed art conservationist has earned a reputation for going his own way and taking principled stands that sometimes leave him in a minority of one on the board.

"I think I add a bit of diversity to the board that isn't necessarily there," Carlisle said. "I'm not afraid to voice my opinion, speak my mind and take a contrarian point of view if I feel it's the right one for the town.

"I don't have any kind of personal agenda. The right thing is a moving target. It all depends on the issue before the board."

Although not professing an agenda, per se, Carlisle does have a priority item for the coming year on the board.

"I'd like to see the lighting bylaw proposal advance," he said. "I completed the work of Ann McCallum, who started it four years ago. I presented my version in May. I'd like to see it reviewed in the coming year. It probably wouldn't come before the town for a vote until town meeting next year.

"The board has spent a few years wrestling with different issues. This was a year when we wanted to get a few more minor issues set. I accepted that [the lighting bylaw] was going to be sidelined because it was going to be a more difficult issue. Once we started reviewing it, I think it wasn't as difficult as other people thought it would be."

Building on the work of McCallum, Carlisle drafted a bylaw that seeks to reduce light pollution while maintaining public safety.

While tabling that idea, the current Planning Board has advanced three zoning bylaw amendments to the annual town meeting -- currently on a date to be announced.

Both Carlisle and Beck talked about the tendency of Planning Boards to be dominated by the issue of the moment rather than looking at the kind of long-term planning concerns each wants to see get full attention.

"Some years there are issues, single issues that become the focus of conversation," Beck said. "To run for Planning Board then means to have a strong opinion on that issue. That's really important when that happens, but I think those kinds of years can take the oxygen out of the room for bigger issues.

"I'm grateful this year is less one of those years when a single issue dominates the conversation. It allows us to have conversations about what planning means and what it can mean."

Beck has thought a lot about the role of the Planning Board. The associate director of the Buxton School is a history teacher who emphasizes civics with his students. He also earned a degree from Yale Law School, where he worked on housing issues and community development with legal aid societies in New Haven, Conn., and Burlington, Vt.

"I've seen from multiple angles how planning and housing affordability affects local communities," Beck said.

This is actually his second stint in Williamstown. In 2016, he and his wife, also a teacher, left town to pursue graduate school. They returned at the start of the current school year to raise their two children, ages 1 and 3.

"When I moved to town, I read the Planning Board minutes and went through the [Geographic Information System] maps," Beck said. "I don't know how many people move to town who are not developers and, for fun, read through the zoning ordinance."

He also has read through the town's Master Plan, drafted in 2002 and due for an update. The Master Plan is the work of the Planning Board, but more than likely the next iteration won't be drafted just by the five members of the board; the 02 document was the work of a 20-member Master Plan Steering Committee.

Beck said the next Master Plan is an opportunity to do the kind of long-range planning that he hopes to accomplish as a member of the board.

"The opportunity the Master Plan gives you is to have a really important conversation without feeling that the stakes are so high," Beck said. "You can put aside the shortest term interest and have an eyes-open conversation about what you want the town to look like in 10 years or 20 years.

"It's harder to have a conversation about what you want to happen six months from now. It's easier to have that conversation about something we all care about: What's best for Williamstown 10 years from now, 20 years from now."

Carlisle had his own take on forward-thinking planning when he proposed last year that the town hold an architectural planning competition, inviting architects to help the town "to envision new ideas and possibilities for housing, offices, storefronts, parking, walking paths, etc."

The idea failed to gain support from either the Planning Board or Select Board, and Carlisle said he likely won't be the one to revive it. But he still thinks it has merits.

"It was a unique idea, but it was not well received," he said. "It was very much outside the box, but all the effort that has been made over the last 10 years to create housing inside the box hasn't worked."

His intention was to gather broad concepts that could work in Williamstown's downtown while maintaining the character of a small New England town. The goal was to find the kinds of ideas that would make downtown living more desirable to both young professionals and older residents

"There are hundreds of small communities around the country that are trying to solve the very same sort of problems and these competitions go on to provide data and solutions of value to firms for future contracts," he wrote in his original proposal.

"It doesn't really bother me that it didn't happen," Carlisle said this week. "Sometimes ideas have a way of slipping into the mist and someone rediscovers them. If that happens 10 years down the line, that's fine.

"We have to keep generating ideas and possibilities and shop them around. We're not going to move forward unless we do that. The Planning Board has a number of duties, but if your title is Planning Board,' it kind of suggests where you should be."

Carlisle said that in addition being asked to "put out fires" and deal with immediate issues that come up, the Planning Board has three main areas of work: altering or recommending for removal obsolete bylaws that still are on the books; adapting the town's bylaws to new issues that come up, like the technology attendant with the coming 5G technological shift; and adapting existing bylaws to accommodate changes in use.

"A specific example of that is the short-term rental market, which we have been keeping tabs on," Carlisle said. "We have been hesitant to create a bylaw to create any regulation yet. There are quite a few lawsuits in Massachusetts about short-term rental regulation."

Beck, meanwhile, has specific thoughts on the process that should be used for updating the Master Plan.

"Look at the towns you love, look at the communities you love, look regionally at what people are doing," he said. "Plagiarism is OK in developing your town code or your town Master Plan. Experience is the best teacher, but it also can be the most expensive one. We don't need to make the mistakes other towns have made.

"We need to take advantage of all the learning, all the tools that towns and planners have come up with to see what would work for Williamstown and not rely exclusively on planning tools and techniques that are 70 years or at least 30 years old."

That last part refers to the core of the town's zoning bylaw, which was born in the 1950s and revised four decades later, and its emphasis on single-use zoning.

"Maybe you can come up with some form-based [zoning] tools," Beck said. "That requires some ground work, input, community-wide conversations. Imagine you're moving to something like form-based codes where what matters is what that building looks like in Williamstown.  Maybe 10 years from now you want more mixed use development that still looks like our small town. That means you need to have that conversation today."

Beck stressed that the Planning Board's conversations should pull in as many stake-holders as possible and said he plans to be a participant no matter what happens on June 23.

"I really hope that my engagement with the Master Plan is from the perspective of the Planning Board," he said. "But there is no world in which -- whether I'm on the Planning Board or not -- I'm not an engaged member of the community who remains involved wherever I can.

"Engagement with the community, trying to be part of shaping the town where you want to live and the town I want my kids to live in is essential."

Carlisle agreed about the importance of the Planning Board's work  even if doing that work sometimes makes one the target of derision.

"Any time I've run into someone who was a current or former member of a Planning Board anywhere in the country, they've agreed on one thing: It's a thankless job," Carlisle said. "It doesn't matter how much good you think you're doing, someone is going to attack you.

"I'm willing to accept that because the Planning Board is an important piece of town government."
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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 06:00 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd69c8a5 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-Indonesian-patients,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,Central-Java,Brebes,Tegal,Tablighi-Jamaat Free

The Central Java administration has formed a team to track down approximately 1,500 Central Java residents who attended a mass religious gathering in Gowa, South Sulawesi, following the emergence of a COVID-19 cluster in Brebes regency.

On Wednesday, 16 residents of Brebes who had, in March, attended an international tabligh (Islamic mass gathering) in Gowa regency, South Sulawesi, tested positive for COVID-19.

Several other cities and regencies in Central Java have reported that people who had participated in the gathering had contracted the virus.

Im afraid there will be a new COVID-19 cluster from the attendees of the Gowa gathering, Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo said on Thursday.

He called on residents who had attended the gathering to report to authorities for testing.

Please help us by reporting to authorities. Dont be afraid; we wont scold you. Instead, we will treat you  if you are confirmed positive for the coronavirus  to protect your families and others from transmission [of the virus], Ganjar said.

Ganjar has also asked the Tegal city administration to create its own special team because of the citys proximity to Brebes.

He asked the community group Jogo Tonggo (neighbors looking after each other) to report if they found any of the gatherings attendees in their records.

As of Thursday, Central Java had confirmed 904 cases of COVID-19 and 64 deaths. (aly)
NORTHFIELD, N.H. (AP)  Its one of the many cruelties of the pandemic: Many people hospitalized with COVID-19 are cut off from loved ones who are not allowed to visit them, for fear of the disease spreading.

Kaya Suner came up with a solution.

The 19-year-old Rhode Island man figured out a way to recycle used smartphones and tablets, getting them into the hands of patients suffering from the virus so they can communicate with friends and family. And the idea has taken off.

Kaya, youre 19, but youre a superstar, youre a hero, said Gov. Gina Raimondo at a mid-April news conference, after her own son donated an iPad to the cause.

The project was born of Suners desire to help. The Providence resident considered sewing protective masks, but his parents, both emergency room physicians, inspired him to do more.

He was having an online chat with his mother  they are living apart because as a doctor she is at higher risk of contracting the disease  and she mentioned a critical need for ways for patients dealing with loneliness and isolation, many of them elderly, to stay in touch with loved ones.

Theres no way for these sick patients to communicate with their loved ones due to the visitation ban in hospitals, and its really unfortunate that thats whats going on, and its really horrible, he said.

So he and a friend sought donations of used smartphones and tablets to give to those patients.

What started as a simple Facebook plea developed into covidconnectors.org, a website where people can donate gently used devices with video capability. The website makes donating easy, even offering step-by-step instructions.

Amazon has stepped up, donating more than 500 devices.

The phones and tablets have been used for everything from celebrating birthdays and meeting new grandchildren to saying final goodbyes, Suner said.

One family member said that they had someone in the hospital who wanted their last rites read and we were able to get an iPad to them and they had their last rites read to them, which is just like ... its very touching, he said.

The program has been so successful that the needs of Rhode Islands hospitals have been met, and it is now collecting devices for Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, and Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, New Hampshire. Suner hopes to expand into New York soon.

Suner, who plans to attend American University in the fall, is concerned that with some states starting to reopen, people will think there is no need for donations. That couldnt be further from the truth.

This is still a really, really large issue inside of hospitals, he said.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 22:54:25|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's attempt to join the World Health Organization (WHO) is political manipulation under the pretext of combating the COVID-19 pandemic and will not succeed, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Friday.

She said Taiwan's claim that the WHO should escape from China's control and allow Taiwan to fully participate in the fight against the epidemic was intended to confuse the public opinion.

It is known to all that in October 1971, the 26th session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, specifying that the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legitimate government that represents China. The resolution had resolved the issue of China's representation in the United Nations on political, legal and procedural grounds, fully reflecting the one-China principle that the UN has been upholding, Hua said.

The one-China principle and the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory have been universally recognized in the international community. The United Nations has reiterated many times that it insists on handling the Taiwan issue in accordance with Resolution 2758, Hua said, adding that as a specialized agency of the UN, the WHO should abide by the resolutions of the UN General Assembly.

She said Resolution 25.1 of the World Health Assembly (WHA) reiterated Resolution 2758, which confirmed China's representation in the WHO.

Taiwan's claims exposed the intentions of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities to use the current epidemic to seek "Taiwan independence", she said.

"Its attempt to join the WHO and participate in the WHA was political manipulation instead of seeking the health and welfare of the people in Taiwan, and it will never succeed," Hua said. Enditem
Ive worked at McDonalds for over 10 years. Im that face that you see that serves you your hash browns for breakfast, maybe a quarter pounder for lunch, and even gave you a McFlurry to top off your dinner menu. So I ask you, if I caught the coronavirus, would you want me making your next meal? There are 500,000 McDonalds workers, just like me, that have to go to work, whether sick or well, because we have no paid sick leave. I currently make $11.50. I live paycheck to paycheck. A sick day for me is lost wages. Id literally have to be damn near on my deathbed to take a full-blown sick day. A missed check is the difference between me having a roof over me and my familys head versus us being homeless. Welcome to McDonalds. May I take your order? McDonalds is one of the largest employers in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of McDonalds workers that touch millions of customers food each day. There is nothing so clean as my burger machine! The C.D.C. found that 20 percent of food service workers go to work even exhibiting the signs of vomiting or diarrhea. And I should know, Im one of those workers. Last week, I was under the weather. I was sick to the point where I had to leave the grill to go to the restroom, and I wound up vomiting. I could have been sent home with paid sick leave, and not have to worry about coming to work sick, because I dont have to worry about how my bills are going to get covered for the days that I missed. Hello, McFamily. Last week, McDonalds did roll out a coronavirus plan, stating that anybody thats quarantined will be paid. Protecting the well-being of our people and our customers is our number one priority. But you guys, dont be fooled. Thats only for corporate-owned McDonalds. But 95% of McDonalds are franchise stores, including my store. So that does not benefit us whatsoever. Today, the Senate is taking up coronavirus legislation. This week, the government passed a law that enables people that have the coronavirus to get paid time off. ... two weeks of paid sick leave. The bill does have an exemption for businesses with 500 employees ... ... depending on how you look at it, it only covers about 20 percent of workers. Republicans made it so that doesnt apply to big businesses, such as McDonalds. And listen closely. Thats only with the coronavirus. What about the flu? What about the next outbreak? What then? McDonalds has the power to make it so anybody in a McDonalds uniform that wears the McDonalds logo, like I do, could be provided with paid sick leave, especially during this critical time. Companies can change this. Since this coronavirus pandemic, Olive Garden has given their employees paid sick leave not just during this time, but for good. So we know that McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys, Subway they can all do it as well. But they just have chosen not to. McDonalds could provide paid sick leave for hundreds of thousands of its workers right now, here today. Well, with that being said, off to work I go. Yall have a blessed day.
The ban was a law, yes. But it quickly became a social norm here and in the majority of states and big cities where similar bans are in effect. Bars and restaurants dont have to hire additional security to oust those who dare smoke, and police dont have to come in and threaten violators with arrest. Enforcement comes from social pressure  the hairy eyeball, portentous fake cough and occasional scolding remark from other customers, and the gentle reminders from employees. Conformity became not about politics but about health and common decency.
Various pictures of Stephen Clements down the years were part of the tribute.

Various pictures of Stephen Clements down the years were part of the tribute.

Family and friends of Stephen Clements shared their most cherished memories of the late radio presenter on Thursday night during an online memorial event.

'An Evening For Stephen' was streamed live on the Stephen Clements Foundation's website.

The much-loved BBC Radio Ulster star and father-of-two died suddenly on January 6.

His family and friends aim to keep his memory alive through the recently launched foundation, which will serve as a vehicle to drive money to the many charities close to Stephen's heart.

The three trustees behind the charity include Stephen's brother Gavin, his former Q Radio sidekick Cate Conway and his friend Gareth Murphy.

The tribute show was presented by U105 broadcaster Ms Conway, who shared the airwaves with Stephen for almost five years on their highly successful Q Radio breakfast show.

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The audience got to enjoy some of the Carrickfergus man's best work and heard from those who knew and loved him, including his cousin Wendy Davis, actor James Nesbitt, former Ulster and Ireland winger Tommy Bowe and the Belfast Giants' former star Adam Keefe.

Opening the tribute show, Ms Conway said: "On the 6th of January Stephen Clements left us and it feels a bit like the world has unravelled ever since.

"I have had so many messages from people saying what would Stephen make of the current situation and 'I really miss Stephen's sense of humour, Stephen would have kept us all going through this'.

"While we had always wanted to have a physical memorial event for Stephen, it just wasn't possible with lockdown but this seems like the right way to do it.

"We thought it would be nice if we could all spend a bit of time together talking about Stephen, sharing some stories about him and sharing some of his work and just remembering just how amazing he was."

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Whatsapp Various pictures of Stephen Clements down the years were part of the tribute.

Stephen's brother Gavin looked back on Stephen's early life and early career and said he was and always will be his hero.

"From those very early days he has just been and he was everything to me," he told the audience. "I looked up to him all the time. He was just my superhero.

"That continued the rest of my life. When we moved to Carrickfergus he went to Carrick Grammar School and, although I didn't have the grades that he had, it was a given that I would follow him to Carrick Grammar School."

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Whatsapp Various pictures of Stephen Clements down the years were part of the tribute.

TV presenter Eamonn Holmes added: "I know a thing or two about partnerships in broadcasting and it's not easy, it doesn't always work. But when it does, as with him and Cate, it is absolutely magic knowing who does what, when they do it and things that just happen spontaneously.

"It's a beautiful, beautiful, chemistry and the refore from his point of view, he knew he had to be good, he knew he had to inquire and he knew he had to get better. He also knew the other aspect to him, which was Cate, and it was very, very funny.

"That's a skill in itself, knowing when to give, when to take and when to bring someone else in."
Actor Kartik Aaryan said playing two characters in one movie would seem scary, but his transition from Veer to Raghu in Love Aaj Kal was smooth because of the film's director, Imtiaz Ali. The actor feels Ali brings out great performances from actors in his movies.

Kartik took to Instagram and shared a still from Love Aaj Kal, and also a picture of himself along with Ali. Alongside the image he wrote: "When you first dream of being in films, you act in front of the mirror and nail it every time, and the world of movies seems magical.Then you get a movie. You see the camera and are unnerved. It's bigger than the suitcase you brought to Mumbai. The bright lights seem to be scolding you for not landing on a one inch tape mark and wasting everyones time."

He continued, "The first few years become about trying not to look nervous.Then you get an Imtiaz Ali movie. The moment he narrates the story, you are pulled into a dream. I don't even remember seeing the camera on his set, he'd always be standing wherever I looked after cut. He was never at the monitor, he was by my side. The lights on Imtiaz Ali's set help you find those tape marks."

Kartik claimed he never experienced the kind of love and appreciation that he got for his performance in Love Aaj Kal. "And that too from some of my favourite filmmakers and people I most respect in the industry. How ironic that the making of this film felt most effortless. It would scare me to think of doing two characters in one movie. And here, I didn't even realise how smoothly I was being transitioned between #Veer and #Raghu," he wrote.

"For an actor, there is no better environment than being In front of that mirror. Imtiaz Ali takes you there. This is the reason why so many great actors' greatest performances have been in Imtiaz Ali films," Kartik added. The actor then praised Ali and called him a "magician".

"Imtiaz Ali director nahi hain, jadugar hain (Imtiaz Ali is not a director but a magician)! Thank you sir for giving me the best performance of my career yet. @imtiazaliofficial #LoveAajKal," he wrote.

Also read: Kartik Aaryan is asked what the best thing about being single is. He says, I wouldnt know

Love Aaj Kal, co-starring Sara Ali Khan released on Valentine's Day this year. It traced love stories of two different eras -- the first is set in the late 1980s-early nineties, and unfolds between Raghu and Leena. The other love story, set in the present time, happens between Veer and Zoe.The film is a retelling of Ali's own 2009 film, also titled Love Aaj Kal, which starred Deepika Padukone and Saif Ali Khan. Love Aaj Kal 2020 fared below expectations at the box-office and was also critically panned.

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Doctors and nurses confer in the Intensive Care Unit of MedStar St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown, Maryland, on April 8, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Nurse Charged With Stealing Dead CCP Virus Patients Credit Card

A nurse in Staten Island, New York, is accused of stealing the credit card of a patient dying from the CCP virus and using it to purchase groceries, authorities said.

Danielle Conti, 43, who worked at Staten Island University Hospital, is facing several charges including grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and petit larceny, officials said. They said she used a dying patients credit card to purchase groceries and gas, ABC7 reported.

Officials said she obtained the credit card while working in the hospital.

The victim, who was identified as 70-year-old widower Anthony Catapano, later died from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus with origins in mainland China, officials told the New York Daily News.

I cant believe a person could do something like that to someone fighting for his life, said Tara Catapano, the daughter of the deceased victim. This is a nurse who took an oath to treat, protect, and save patients. Its disgusting  Never in a million years did I expect any of this to happen.

Medical personnel move a deceased patient to a refrigerated truck serving as makeshift morgues at Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York City, on April 9, 2020. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)

Catapano then asked: How would she feel if somebody did this to her parents when they were gravely ill? I hope she gets what she deserves, and loses her license and her job.

A spokesman for Staten Island University Hospital told the New York Post that Conti was suspended.

Danielle Conti has been temporarily suspended and faces termination in response to the felony charges, the spokesman said. We are working closely with the law-enforcement authorities and the hospital is conducting its own investigation.
The High Court has refused to remove a liquidator to an Irish company whose main asset is a valuable development property in Warsaw, Poland.

The Dominar Group was voluntarily wound up in 2008, and liquidator Liam Dowdall was appointed following what the court heard was a catastrophic deterioration in the relationship" between shareholders.

Those shareholders, each holding 50%, are businessman Michael Curneen and Irish firm, Print & Display Ltd (P&D), a company of businessman Jim Conway.

Today, Mr Justice Mark Sanfey refused P&D's application to remove Mr Dowdall as liquidator and replace him. He said while Mr Dowdall's conduct has on occasion fallen short of ideal he had been "generally effective and honest."

The judge, outlining the background, said Dominar was a holding company for a Polish subsidiary, P&D Polska, which is involved in printing in Polish and European markets and managed by Mr Curneen.

In 2007, Mr Conway's P&D firm brought High Court shareholder oppression proceedings alleging the valuable development site in Warsaw, owned by the group's P&D Polska subsidiary, had been transferred without the Irish P&D's knowledge to another Polish firm called Grosbeak, which was controlled by Mr Curneen.

Those proceedings were settled in 2008 with an agreement that a liquidator would be appointed to Dominar to realise its assets including the sale of P&D Polska and the Warsaw property.

P&D Polska was eventually sold to Mr Curneen at what Mr Conway said was an undervalue but which was denied by the liquidator.

Efforts to sell the Warsaw site were dogged by difficulties in subsequent years, the court heard. These included what are known as "restitution claims" by people who owned, or whose families owned, private property which was nationalised by Communist governments following the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe in 1945 at the end of World War II.

A further problem was that a Polish firm which leased the site had allegedly left "a mountain" of rubble and soil on it which was costly to clear.

On the appointment of the liquidator, a declaration of solvency showed the company had investments of 3,820,988, including the Warsaw site. After deduction of liabilities and other matters, the estimated surplus was 631,316, making it solvent.

Mr Conway's P&D was not happy with the way the liquidator was realising the assets and from 2013 there followed a number of exchanges of correspondence and angry company annual meetings.

P&D brought proceedings in 2018 seeking Mr Dowdall's removal.

It centred on his conduct of the liquidation in relation to the preservation and sale of the assets. The complaint also centred on attempts to resolve a compensation claim which had been brought in Poland against the Warsaw public authority in relation to the existence of the restitution claims before the Warsaw development property was purchased.

Mr Dowdall, supported by Mr Curneen who was a notice party, denied the claims and argued, among other things, his removal and replacement would lead to a further prolonging of the liquidation.

Mr Justice Sanfey held that "good cause" had not been shown for his removal.

He was satisfied Mr Dowdall will conduct the remainder of matters in the liquidation - primarily the removal of material from the site and the distribution of net sale proceeds to shareholders - in a prompt and orderly fashion.

To remove him would be to permit a replacement liquidator to investigate Mr Dowdall's conduct, at very considerable cost and prolonging the liquidation.

He also must have regard to the impact removal would have on the reputation of Mr Dowdall in circumstances where the P&D side properly confirmed there had been no dishonesty on his part.

Mr Dowdall gave his evidence honestly although his recall over the decision not to appeal an adverse Polish court finding in relation to the restitution claims was "somewhat confused and unsatisfactory," he said.

Whether there was a separate cause of action in relation to Mr Dowdall's conduct was entirely a matter for P&D, he said.
The Centres decision to ask television channels to include weather reports and forecasts for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas signals a significant shift in Indias strategy on Imran Khans Pakistan, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times on Friday.

The move was conceived by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval some time back, a top government official said.

The formal proposal, crafted a little over three months back, went out from Deputy National Security Adviser (Strategic Affairs) Rajinder Khannas office on 3 February to the secretaries of foreign and home ministries apart from chiefs of Indias two lead intelligence agencies: Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.

Their formal approvals came last week.

At one of the early discussions that were held to finetune the proposal, the official recalled how Doval had spoken of the multiple messages that this one move would send.

Doordarshan News has included towns of territories occupied by Pakistan in its daily weather bulletins (DD News/Screengrab)

The central point, the official said, is that this is my area and I am asserting my sovereignty by taking all the steps.

This week, the government told public broadcaster Doordarshan to include weather forecasts of Mirpur and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit in the Northern Areas that are described by Pakistan as Gilgit Baltistan. Some private news channels have already told the government that they will also make changes to their weather bulletins.

Doordarshan was also told to use weather maps that include the entire territory of Jammu and Kashmir that would serve as a daily, and public reiteration of Indias stand.

Doordarshan News has started putting out weather reports for three Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and Gilgit as part of its weather report in different parts of the country (DD News/Screengrab)

A second senior government official said the move marked a shift in Indias approach that had been perceived to be hesitant to go all out to hammer the message to Pakistan, its allies and the world that Islamabad was in illegal occupation of over 86,000 square km of Jammu and Kashmir.

This changes.

For one, the assertion of sovereignty becomes particularly important because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that passes through the Northern Areas or, the expansive Gilgit-Baltistan region that is almost twice the size of Kerala.

When China floated the Belt and Road Initiative a few years ago, it had expected India to be part of the project though it passes through the Northern Areas under Pakistani control. When India protested, Beijing told New Delhi to still join in because this would not affect the status of Kashmir as a dispute between the two countries.

The daily weather map reinforces Indias message on the entire territory of J&K, every day, the official said.

The daily weather forecast, and the map of India on the television screens, also underlines Indias strong views on the occupied territory but also the fact that Pakistan was making material changes to the region and exploiting the population of this region.

In many ways, the official said, the map of India on the television screens also spotlights the plight of the people living in these areas whose rights are violated by Islamabad on a daily basis.

There is another constituency that India hopes to message: the political establishment in the United Kingdom to ask them to not take sides.

A large proportion of the Pakistani expatriate population in the United Kingdom is from Mirpur who have close links with Labour Party leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn who had gone to the extent of passing a resolution to seek international intervention after India scrapped Jammu and Kashmirs special status.

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The Ector County Health Department website reported four new positive cases on Thursday, making the total 94. There are three probable cases at this time. ECHD reported that 63 people have recovered. There have been 1,422 tests taken, with 1,253 negative results and 75 pending results. ECHD has contacted 1,131 people during contact tracing.

The drive-thru at the Ector County Coliseum received six positive cases. Of the 70 tests done, 46 are negative and 18 are pending. In Ector County, 212 people have called the triage center for testing. County Commissioner Eddy Shelton said during a Zoom press conference on Thursday that the health department will not be allowing semi-public pools to reopen, including apartment and hotel pools, for the 2020 season.
Mr. Browns successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), is asking the state Supreme Court to uphold the law. Some California public-employee unions are dead-set against even these common-sense proposals, but at oral argument, a lawyer for the state, Rei Onishi, reminded the court of the vital interests on the other side. Public services are being cut across California, some jurisdictions have already announced layoffs and furloughs of public employees and many counties and cities are struggling to pay for their pension liabilities, he said. The question presented by this case is whether on top of legitimate pension liability, should taxpayers along with their children and even grandchildren, be forced to also shoulder the burden of financing abusive practices to artificially and unlawfully inflate pensions. Its the right question, and Californias justices can set a national example by delivering the right answer: a resounding no.
Aired today but recorded earlier, some hosts drop for some segmentsMore behind the cutAs of this weekend, 43 or so states are in some version of reopening but 40% of Americans say they plan to avoid public spaces as long as possible. Joy thinks shell have to stay put until at least November when T45 leaves office [except that would technically be January 2021], references testing fiasco again from yesterday. Meghan feels like its a game of whackamole. Lists all the contradictions and moving goalposts. We should expect culture change in every way, just like after 911. 16% arent sure if theyll ever feel comfortable again. Sunny agrees with Meghan, things will forever change, but well adapt. She wont shake hands anymore, and will wear a mask on airplanes.Senate was called back in to session. They were summoned back to Washington, even though the House didnt return due to virus concerns. The only reason the Senate came back was to vote on more judges and appointees because McConnell is doing nothing from a legislative standpoint. Just carrying T45 water to appear reopened and get more trash people into lifelong judicial positions. CB talks about the level of incompetence for judges put forward, while they should be focusing on the pandemic crisis and bipartisan bills. WH shelved detailed CDC guidelines for how states should reopen. CB feels we should be listening to medical scientists and CDC should be leading the way because in 1918 the second wave was worse than the first. Using militaristic terms is misplaced but is being positioned like Hunger Games. All of this is a failure of leadership. 911, Hurricane Sandy, we saw partisanship put aside to get through the initial crisis, but all T45 wants is to trigger partisan animosity. His ratings continue to go down, which is unprecedented during a national crisis. Meghan talks about CB Chief of Staff who is doing double duty as an EMS volunteer. CB talks about him rising to the challenge, because NJ Governor recalled retired folks from those fields to supplement the existing workforce of first responders, firefighters, EMS, etc.Joy asks about Biden addressing allegations. CB says we need to listen to women and then investigate the claims, agrees with Biden premise. Asking Senate to open archives was the right thing. CB is still with Biden. Sunny mentions CB wrote op-ed addressing impact of virus on poc, quotes some excerpts. CB says were a nation who has normalized tragic injustice, lists examples and stats. Whoopi reminds indigenous people also impacted.Promoting, plays clip. His perfect quarantine partner is his dog Otis. Theres no relationship better than that with a doggie. Leslie Jordan IG fan-fave loves DM, plays IG story. Started the DM Fan Club. DM says they didtogether, loves working with him, and will be working with him again. Sunny asks about Hollywood, based in the 40s but fictionally more inclusive. DM gives details. Joy thanks him for doing the reading ofwith Annabella Sciorra, they talk about that. Hopes to do the play for real at some point. DM talks more about his classic Hollywood references to his character on Hollywood. DM daughter is also on the show, her debut, hes proud.In honor of Mothers Day (US and some other countries) this Sunday, Lincoln Hospital one of most impacted in nation. Honoring the moms working there. Head Nurse Eva Calo and her colleagues represent the care workers at the hospital. EC mother got sick with virus and passed away. Talks about how shes trying to get through all that while still doing her job. Elsie Lecour talks about how she coordinates communication between patients and their loved ones since they cant visit directly. Surprise to 150 of them working the front lines. Jimmy Buffett is the surprise (?) for a hospital in the Bronx. JB on Fridays has a large fanbase so they have once per week zoom meet and greets to boost morale. Also has new album out. JB says they cant go to work either and they cant tour but they have Margaritaville TV so on Weds and Sats they play. But, spoiler alert, his real reason for being there, on behalf of Margaritaville charity, 150 are going to get a first class dream vacation when its all over. 4 nights 5 days at Charisma Resorts at location of their choice. And theyre donating another 150 more vacations to other frontline workers, nominations through their site. Plays out clip to Margaritaville.Source links are below each video or section
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MBABANE  While grappling with the effects of feeding their families following the lack of business for the past two months, tenants at the Commercial Centre Building in Mbabane have been given statements of due rental arrears.



The tenants, mainly hairdressers and barbershop owners plying their trade at the normally busy building in the capital city, were handed statements of outstanding rent despite being out of business since the country embarked on a partial lockdown on March 27.



Their frustration mainly emanates from the fact that they were not listed as part of the sectors that were added by government on Wednesday when the partial lockdown was eased.



Cash



They said they were quite pressed for cash and were struggling to make ends meet.

We dont want to be pushed to resort to other measures, they said.



Hairstylists, barbers, nail technicians and other entrepreneurs in the beauty industry, have been deprived of their income since the emergence of the deadly coronavirus pandemic in the country. As such, they have not been able to pay rent for their working spaces.



Most of the letters that each office received at the building reflected money owed for April and May 2020.

Commercial Centre Building in Mbabane is owned by EMPROP.

Some tenants have arrear rentals from as little as E500 to over E6 000.



These figures are inclusive of an electricity bill for April and some for April and May.

Yesterday, some of the hairdressers and barbers were found outside the building, with a cloud of confusion on how to handle their situation.



I currently owe two months rent and to be honest, they have not yet intimidated us to pay - they just keep sending statements. Our rent is due today (yesterday) and we are in sixes and sevens on how we will raise money for the rent, said a hairdresser, who is a mother to one.



When this journalist arrived near the building, the hairdresser was sitting alone, outside the building, and it seemed as if she was in deep thought.



When asked how much she made, she said she coined about E500 on a busy day and about E200 on a normal day. This money was enough for me to pay the office and home rent and feed my child, she said.



Clueless



When asked if she knew her fate if she did not fork out rent, she said she was clueless what decision would be made.

Sometimes, the hairdressers idle around the building to get one customer per week who will make a house call.

There is no business at all. The worst part is that we have never been considered in any of the reviews of the partial lockdown, she said.



Another hairstylist, who preferred to remain anonymous, was deeply saddened by the fact that it was her birthday yesterday and she could not even spoil herself.



Birthday



There is no money coming in - none at all. I cannot even afford a decent meal on my birthday, how much more the thousands of Emalangeni being demanded from us. Besides the rent here at our workplace, we cannot feed our children at home. I have two sons and we are already going hungry, she said. She said she just hoped their landlord did not lock them out.



Like her peers, the single mother of two used to make E500 a day and now, she goes a week without making even a cent.

Another group of barbers and hairstylists, who were also idling with the hope of finding a solution to make ends meet, said they would really be infuriated if they would be locked out.



We understand that the property owner needs to make money at the end of the day but these circumstances are different. We did not bring this to ourselves as we have been given clear orders by government not to operate, they said.



We need money and we are not making it. It is not our fault that we cannot pay rent, they said.

They pleaded with government to negotiate with their landlord on their behalf to defer payments or make discounts for them.



Opened



The only hope we have is in government to mediate in this situation. Most sectors will be partly opened for business and we have been closed from the beginning in March. This road has been nothing but hell for us in this sector, they said.

They also requested government to review their shutdown and create innovative strategies in which they could work.
08.05.2020 LISTEN

In view of recent events associated with COVID-19 such as restrictions on movement across the world, Access Bank is using this period to engage its customers, particularly women in its W Webinar Series on a range of topics to help them navigate this process for their businesses, lifestyle, and family.

Currently in its second season, the W Webinar Series is an initiative organised through virtual platforms/calls for female customers across all countries of presence within the Bank.

The next session will be anchored by Renee Q. Boateng, CEO of ReneeQ and Personal Branding Expert on the topic Post Covid-19, the New Normal and will address key issues associated with the way we managed our businesses, career, lifestyle, family among others.

Speaking on the need to engage customers to remodel their businesses to stay profitable, the Managing Director of Access Bank Ghana, Olumide Olatunji, indicated, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way life will be lived and as such businesses must be supported to acknowledge and address these concerns, particularly how businesses operate going forward.

He added, We are now in a new normal and critical decisions need to be made to address businesses model changes, lifestyle and how we practically live. For us, at Access Bank we want to be digitally-led so it is important we embark on this journey with our customers to ensure they stay relevant in these times.

The series is open to all customers and the general public irrespective of ones location. Other topics addressed previously include Making your career foolproof  optimizing productivity, Structuring your home for business and career effectiveness, and Redesigning your business model for resilience. The series in its first edition has recorded over 2,300 live participants and a reach of more than 134,000 from 15 countries worldwide.

Access Bank has continuously led the fight and joined hands with other relevant stakeholders to provide relief to its employees, customers, and communities within which it operates. Within the last few weeks, the Bank has activated its business continuity measures, whiles leveraging its over 1,300 staff to anchor a behavioural change and preventive education campaign to protect lives and promote the use of its digital offerings by customers.

Some of the measures implemented by the bank also include; waivers on all interbank transfers, upward review of limits for transactions on digital products, reliefs to business customers severely affected by the pandemic, donations to the vulnerable in the community including an ambulance to the UPSA to support emergency cases in the community.
He was spotted looking for dolphins while out on his speed boat last month.

And Brody Jenner was back on the water on Thursday, as he showed off his skills on an Electric Hydrofoil Surfboard in Malibu during lockdown.

The Hills star, 36, showcased his muscular physique as he went shirtless in a pair of blue striped swimming shorts while out at sea on the motorised board.

Impressive! Brody Jenner was back on the water on Thursday, as he showed off his skills on an Electric Hydrofoil Surfboard in Malibu during lockdown

Brody was barefoot and accessorised his beach look with an orange cap, which he wore backwards to keep his hair off his face.

Coronavirus restrictions in the county state that all of the beaches in Malibu are currently closed to the public, however if you are a resident you are allowed access.

Late last month, the son of Caitlyn Jenner fired up his Insta Stories and treated his more than three million followers to an inside view of his escapades.

He gazed out over the water to see 'dolphins just kicking it' nearby including one 'just rolling around on the surface chilling.

Beach boy: The Hills star, 36, showcased his muscular physique as he went shirtless in a pair of blue striped swimming shorts while out at sea on the motorised board

The reality star then uploaded a video of himself dancing on the boat as the 2019 song Woah by Lil Baby played.

While filming over the water Brody caught sight of his hunky shirtless pal Tom Dolezel paddle-boarding his way toward the boat.

'Look who's coming out, 9:30 in the morning the guy's on a mission to come hang with the boys,' Brody crowed.

Hanging out: Late last month, the son of Caitlyn Jenner fired up his Insta Stories and treated his more than three million followers to an inside view of his escapades

Privileged view: The son of Caitlyn Jenner fired up his Insta Stories and treated his more than three million followers to an inside view of his escapades

Spot the fin: He gazed out over the water to see 'dolphins just kicking it' nearby including one 'just rolling around on the surface chilling'

'Yeah, Tom. Malibu Tom on fire. Ladies, this is your future real estate lawyer  Team Tom, Malibu Tom, the legend. Look at him. Look how yoked he is too. Flex, Tom, flex!'

Tom danced a little on his paddle-board in time to the music playing on the boat and Brody joked: 'Whoa, this guy, settle down in the gym, brah!'

Another solo video followed in which Brody, modelling a sweater to ward off the chill, shook a leg to Right Foot Up, Left Foot Slide by Drake.

Shaking a leg: Brody then uploaded a video of himself dancing on the boat as the 2019 song Woah by Lil Baby played

Here comes company: While filming over the water Brody caught sight of his hunky shirtless pal Tom Dolezel paddle-boarding his way toward the boat

Brody hit the headlines last year when he broke up with blonde bombshell Kaitlynn Carter a year after their Indonesian wedding.

Kaitlynn went on to have a whirlwind summer romance with Miley Cyrus, who had herself newly split from her husband of less than a year Liam Hemsworth.

Meanwhile Brody ran around for two months with steroid icon Jose Canseco's daughter Josie, who has modeled for Playboy magazine just like her mother Jessica.

Love life: Brody hit the headlines last year when he broke up with blonde bombshell Kaitlynn Carter a year after their Indonesian wedding
Syracuse, N.Y.  Mayor Ben Walsh is reaching out directly to the top brass in Congress to ask for relief to cities like Syracuse.

Walsh sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Friday asking them to approve federal aid to to local governments that are being financially crushed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 have dealt our city a severe blow, Walsh wrote. ...With urgency and respect, I ask for timely action on federal relief to state and local governments."

Syracuse and Onondaga County were left out of Congresss recent $500 billion stimulus package.

Walsh has spent weeks lobbying for a new round of funding that would include smaller cities.

Walsh already has the support of the local Congressional delegation. He said hes spoken with U.S. Rep. John Katko who agrees Syracuse needs relief. And the two U.S. Senators from New York  Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand  have co-sponsored a bill in the Senate called the Direct Support for Communities Act, which would provide funds to local governments.

From the beginning, our federal delegation has been rock solid in that support, Walsh said during a press briefing at City Hall on Friday.

Walsh said hes cautiously optimistic that a bill will pass. Theres general agreement in Washington that local governments need help. But the details, like how much help and when it comes, are still being negotiated.

In the meantime, Syracuse has started to make cuts to save money. Walsh furloughed 104 employees last week and froze all non-essential spending. He cut a planned class of new cops in next years budget and scrapped an ambitious sidewalk takeover plan. The Common Council slashed police overtime for next year and called on the city to sell $3 million worth of real estate next year to generate more income.

Walsh said the city needs federal funding as soon as possible.

Until the vote is done, Ill continue having a little trouble sleeping at night, he said.

Already, the coronavirus pandemic has cost the city a projected $30 million in lost revenue. Thats mostly from a huge decline in state sales tax.

Walsh said the city will dip into its rainy day fund (commonly called the reserve fund) to cover some of the losses, but that fund needs to be protected for future downturns. Theres about $50 million in reserves right now.

The city will need to use more than $8 million of that to plug a newfound deficit in the current years budget. Until the pandemic, the city was on track to end the year with a small surplus. Now, it will run a deficit of more than the $8 million initially projected. Walsh wasnt sure exactly how high that deficit will go.

And the city is planning on using another $9 million from reserves to balance next years budget.

Those two tabs alone would use up one-third of the reserve fund. If Gov. Andrew Cuomo cuts state aid to cities, like hes discussed, the city would be facing an additional $14 million hole in next years budget. Using the reserves to plug that hole would leave the city in an extremely precarious position. So deep cuts would likely be necessary instead.

Were easily at $30 million in revenue loss, he said. You could add another $14-$15 million on top of that with a state cut. Thats a lot of money. Theres no way we could make up for those deficits without decreasing staffing levels.

Federal aid could avoid those cuts, and reduce the already significant reliance on reserves.

Syracuses economic recovery would also be delayed without help, Walsh said, and human needs will grow.

Read Walshs letter to Congressional leaders below or click here to view it.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Onondaga Co. warns of possible coronavirus exposure at 8 places last weekend

Onondaga Co. coronavirus: Hospitalizations at record levels, up 45% in one week; 5 more deaths

Inside Green Empire Farm: Upstate NYs biggest coronavirus outbreak slams migrant workers

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com
"For Sale By Owner" and "Closed Due to Virus" signs are displayed in the window of a store in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich. Read more

WASHINGTON- An emergency disaster lending program for small businesses has been so overwhelmed by demand that it has significantly limited the size of loans it issues, while blocking nearly all new applications from small businesses, according to people familiar with the situation.

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is a longstanding Small Business Administration program that's separate from the new Paycheck Protection Program, which has challenges of its own.

Congress gave the disaster loan program more than $50 billion in new funding in recent relief bills to offer quick-turnaround loans to businesses slammed by the coronavirus pandemic. But by many accounts, it is failing spectacularly. After initially telling businesses that individual disaster loans could be as high as $2 million, SBA has now imposed a $150,000 limit without publicly announcing the change, said a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Additionally, the agency has faced a backlog of millions of applications for the disaster loan program for the past several weeks, several SBA officials have said.

The SBA has been so overwhelmed by demand that it is now allowing only agricultural interests to submit applications, as it works through an enormous backlog. Key Republican senators had been pushing hard for farmers and agriculture companies to be able to tap the program, and they are now being prioritized over other prospective borrowers.

Agency officials have said the holdup is because of a lack of funding and an unprecedented crush of applications.

"At this time, only agricultural business applications will be accepted due to limitations in funding availability and the unprecedented submission of applications already received," according to a statement on the SBA's website.

SBA public affairs employees declined to comment on the new loan limit, and did not include it in a Monday news release about the program. James Rivera, who runs the program as associate administrator at the Office of Disaster Assistance, did not respond to a request for an interview.

The disaster loans program is different from the $669 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which is run by private banks and regulated by the SBA. While the PPP is focused narrowly on keeping small businesses from laying off employees and encouraging them to rehire workers, the disaster loans are meant as an economic lifeline to help small businesses survive the crisis. It is a preferred option for some of the smallest businesses because the loan size does not depend on the number of employees.

It is unclear how many of the loan applications have been processed under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, however. Although the SBA has released the total amount of loan funding approved under the Paycheck Protection Program, SBA public affairs staff members have not responded to requests for information about the total number of disaster loans that have been approved. The SBA has yet to release loan-specific data about either program.

The Economic Injury Disaster Loans program, known as EIDL, is a long-standing SBA program that is accustomed to dealing with geographically contained disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes or forest fires. It was part of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and the forest fires that swept the U.S. West Coast last year.

The SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance, which oversees the disaster loan program, has occasionally been criticized for moving too slowly.

A 2014 study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the agency took an average of 38 days to process its economic injury loans after Hurricane Sandy, far overshooting its 21-day goal.

The SBA has also been criticized for failing to implement certain components of a 2008 law meant to improve the organization's readiness following Hurricane Katrina. That law, called the Small Business Disaster Response and Loan Improvements Act of 2008, directed the SBA to set up a program that could offer $25,000 bridge loans in under 36 hours.

The SBA did not implement that program or two others required under the law, according to the GAO. Agency officials told the GAO and members of Congress that they declined to do so because lenders were not interested, although the GAO countered that the SBA did not conduct "a formal documented evaluation of lenders' feedback."

The GAO also noted in its 2014 report that SBA's readiness was partially affected by problems with the E-Tran computer system which private lenders use to verify loan applications with the SBA. In its report, the GAO said SBA was working on a new system called SBA One.

Although it is unclear whether SBA One was ever completed, the older E-Tran system is still being used. It has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, interfering with the SBA's coronavirus response.

In its 2014 report, the GAO said the SBA's failure to learn from past disasters could hurt its readiness for future ones. The warning about the agency's inability to face a future crush of applications during a disaster was prescient.

"Without taking its experience with early application submissions after Hurricane Sandy into account in its disaster planning documents and analyzing the potential risk early submissions may pose for timely disaster response, SBA may be unprepared for a large volume of applications to be submitted quickly following future disasters, which may result in delays in loan funds for disaster victims," the GAO wrote in its report.

The coronavirus presents a crisis that bears little resemblance to the natural disasters SBA has responded to in the past. The virus has shut down businesses in all 50 states at once and prompted more than 33 million job losses in nearly every industry.

Although the Paycheck Protection Program received significantly more funding from Congress, the disaster loan program is seen as a crucial component of the Trump administration's coronavirus response.

Lawmakers gave it new tools and new funding under the $2.2 trillion Cares Act economic stimulus bill, hoping it could serve as a short-term bridge while businesses wait for the larger Paycheck Protection Program loans. It was expanded on March 12 to include businesses affected by the coronavirus, weeks before the Paycheck Protection Program got started on April 3.

However it was quickly overwhelmed by an unprecedented crush of applications in late March and early April as the economic crisis deepened. It received several million applications in the first few days it was activated, an SBA official told business owners in a recent webinar.

The program ran out of funding last month, prompting Congress to divert more resources to it. In late April Congress allocated an additional $50 billion for the loans, alongside $320 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, $75 billion for hospitals and healthcare workers, and $25 billion for coronavirus testing programs.

The SBA's failure to release detailed information on the disaster loans has prompting harsh criticism from members of Congress.

In a Wednesday letter addressed to SBA administrator Jovita Carranza, 103 members of Congress criticized the Small Business Administration for failing to communicate effectively. They urged the SBA to inform small businesses about where they stand in the application cue and also provide daily updates to Congress.

"Many small businesses have been without meaningful information from the SBA for weeks," the lawmakers wrote.

In a separate letter, a bipartisan group of lawmakers criticized asked for more information on a data breach that exposed nearly 8,000 businesses' information online.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been closely involved in the small business lending programs as the leader of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, cheered the decision to provide loans to small businesses moving forward. The Florida Republican also promised close oversight of the program.

I will continue to oversee congressional oversight efforts to ensure the agency is expeditiously processing EIDL grants and loans, Rubio wrote in a May 5 press release. It is imperative that those small businesses who have already submitted paperwork receive this assistance quickly.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 17:13:36|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were off to a good start on Friday, with the benchmark DAX index rising by 123.17 points, or 1.14 percent, opening at 10,882.44 points.

The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was German technology giant Siemens, increasing by 5.06 percent, followed by financial service provider Wirecard with 4.01 percent and carmaker Daimler with 2.18 percent.

On Friday, Siemens announced that revenues in the first quarter of 2020 were "nearly level" with the same quarter a year ago at 14.2 billion euros (15.4 billion U.S. dollars). However, adjusted EBITA (Earnings Before Interest and Tax) fell by 18 percent to 1.6 billion euros, as "all industrial businesses showing effects from the COVID-19 pandemic."

Shares of MTU fell by 1.05 percent. The German aircraft engine manufacturer was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Friday, followed by Germany's largest airline Lufthansa with losses of 0.74 percent.

On Friday, the German Federal Statistical Office announced that exports of German companies in March decreased by 7.9 percent year-on-year to 108.9 billion euros while imports decreased by 4.5 percent to 91.6 billion euros.

The yield on German 10-year bonds went down 0.009 percentage points to minus 0.560 percent, and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.0832 U.S. dollars, decreasing slightly by 0.02 percent on Friday morning. Enditem
For the second time in one week, COVID-19 patients in Gombe state have hit the streets to demand better welfare. Recall that some ...





For the second time in one week, COVID-19 patients in Gombe state have hit the streets to demand better welfare.





Recall that some of the patients at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, and Kwadon Isolation Centre in Yamaltu Deba local government area of the state took to the streets, on Tuesday, alleging poor treatment.





While health officials succeeded in pacifying the patients at the hospital, those at the isolation centre went wild. They mixed with villagers who reportedly protested along with them.





The aggrieved patients blocked a major highway in the state, making it difficult for motorists to move for at least 30 minutes.

Some of them were said to have fled the isolation centre while others returned there at the end of the protest.





A resident, who craved anonymity, disclosed on Friday that the action of the government triggered the fresh protest.





After the protest of Tuesday, the government was very embarrassed so they paid more attention to those at Kwandon Isolation Centre, neglecting the ones at the hospital, the resident said.





They probably felt the officials at the hospital could calm the patients there. But when the ones at the teaching hospital heard that things were better at the other place, they felt government did not care about them because they did not go into the streets.





So, they also demonstrated today, making the people to panic until security operatives succeeded in dispersing them.





TheCable also reports that a hospital source revealed that some of the patients had fled to their homes.





This claim could not be independently verified.





Ahmed Gana, commissioner for health, neither responded to calls not text messages as of the time of filing this report.





The presidential task force on COVID-19 had promised to look into the situation at Gombe and some other places were patients complained of poor welfare.





There are currently 109 COVID-19 patients in Gombe.
Gandhi said there will be a "calamity" if the fight against coronavirus is centralised.

New Delhi: Holding that the fight against COVID-19 cannot be just from the PMO, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday asked the prime minister to devolve power and make the states partner in decision-making.

Gandhi said there will be a "calamity" if the fight against coronavirus is centralised.

Addressing a press conference through video conference, he also asked the government to adopt transparency in its actions to tackle coronavirus and work together with states.

His remarks came after complaints by Congress-ruled states that they were being pushed into fiscal distress in the absence of the Centre providing them resources to fight the pandemic.

Gandhi also called upon the government to immediately put money into the hands of the poor and provide a financial package to the industry to help revive the economy.

He said the lockdown is not an on/off switch, but is a transition which requires cooperation of all - Centre, states, district magistrates and the people of India.

"We need to decentralise power in dealing with the virus. If we keep this fight in PMO, we will lose.

The PM must devolve power. If we centralise, there will be a calamity. PM has to trust chief ministers and chief ministers have to trust district magistrates," he said.

Gandhi also asked the government to tell the people what criteria it would use to open the lockdown or continue it post May 17, as the transition out of it is a serious challenge before the country.

He said the government needs to work on a psychological change and if it has to open lockdown, it has to convert people's fear of the disease into confidence, as it is not deadly for most of them.

Noting that the country is facing an emergency situation, the Congress leader said the idea of injecting immediately a sum of Rs 7500 directly into the hands of poor is critical. He also called for providing a financial package soon to protect the industry which provides jobs.

"We have to protect the job creators and have to build a wall for them to protect jobs and wages of workers. We have to give them financial support," Gandhi said.

The former Congress president said the economic package is being delayed as the government feels India could be downgraded by international agencies.

"We need to start our domestic economy soon, the more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," he noted.
Calling the coronavirus the "Chinese virus" can be investigated as hate speech in the city of San Antonio, Texas.

The San Antonio City Council voted 11-0 Thursday to classify terms like "Chinese virus" and "Kung Fu Virus" as hate speech, and encouraged residents to report "any such antisemitic, discriminatory or racist incidents to the proper authorities for investigation."

The resolution was introduced by the city's mayor, Ron Nirenberg, as a response to increased aggression aimed at Asians and Jewish people in the city, stating "the safety and well-being of all community members, including the Asian and Jewish communities, and in combating hate crimes targeting Asians, Jews and Pacific Islanders."

According to Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, a local Chinese restaurant had been the site of several racist incidents rooted in coronavirus fears.

"It's been in operation for almost 90 years. They have been the victims of hate speech and hate crimes, with vandalism and that sort of thing on their property," Ms Gonzales said.

Senator Ted Cruz tweeted his disapproval of the resolution.

"This is NUTS. SA City Council behaving like a lefty college faculty lounge, triggered by Chick-fil-A & the words "Wuhan virus." If they want to investigate someone, start with NYT & CNN who both repeatedly (and rightly) referred to it as 'the Chinese coronavirus,'" Mr Cruz said.

President Donald Trump has been criticised for using the phrase "Wuhan virus," which he argued was not racist.

"It's not racist at all, it comes from China, that's why," Mr Trump said, responding to a journalist asking why he used the term.

Despite his insistence the labelling is simply categorical, Mr Trump and his officials have frequently attempted to paint the US - and the world at large - as victims of China.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been especially vocal when pushing the blame for the pandemic onto China.

During a virtual G8 summit last month, Mr Pompeo held up the meeting when other delegates refused his demands to call the virus the "Wuhan virus." Later in the summit, Mr Pompeo warned other delegates that China was trying to downplay its role in the pandemic by giving medical supplies to hard-hit countries.

More recently, Mr Pompeo has been appearing on conservative media shows spreading the conspiracy theory that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan. Mr Pompeo has yet to provide evidence for his claims.

Before joining Mr Trump's administration, Mr Pompeo was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
TOKYO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Yanagiya Honten Co., Ltd. has launched "YANAGIYA 1615 100th Anniversary Pomade," a limited 100th anniversary edition of "YANAGIYA Pomade," which has been sold since 1920. It went on sale from April 29, 2020, at stores of BEAMS JAPAN, a retail chain of Beams Co., Ltd. (located in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo).

(Logo: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/img/202004289485-O4-1GX4XTo5)

(Image1: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/img/202004289485-O1-RxIvdf4s)YANAGIYA

Pomade, launched in 1920, has been long loved as a Japanese hairstyling item, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In commemoration of its 100th anniversary, the company released "YANAGIYA 1615 100th Anniversary Pomade" in a limited quantity.

(Image2: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/img/202004289485-O2-BNx92eW3)

(Image3: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/img/202004289485-O3-8OFhk0TZ)

The ingredients contained in this product are mainly plant-derived ingredients such as "mokuro" (Japanese wax), which has been used for hairstyling and polishing, as well as natural castor oil, traditionally used for hairdressing. These plant ingredients contribute to strong adhesiveness for effective styling of men's hard and thick hair, such as side-parted and combed-back.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary, the limited edition adopts an original aluminum container that gives a sense of ownership. While keeping the traditional houndstooth design that has been used since the middle of the Showa era (1950s), it gives a stylish impression that can easily adapt to modern times.

The "YANAGIYA 1615 100th Anniversary Pomade," an anniversary limited edition of the company's long-seller item that has been loved for generations in Japan for hairdressing, is exclusively available at BEAMS JAPAN, a shop for testing sales that conveys Japan to the world.

Special website for "YANAGIYA 1615 100th Anniversary Pomade":

https://www.pomade.jp/

*Japanese text only

Click here for product details:

http://products.yanagiya-cosme.co.jp/category/C_700/4903018119398.html?__lang=en

Product Features

100th anniversary limited edition of a long-seller

Excellent hairstyling ability for men's hard hair

Hairstyle kept all day long

Hairdressing agent made with traditional plant-derived ingredients

Limited edition only available at BEAMS JAPAN stores

stores Made in Japan

Product overview

Product name: YANAGIYA 1615 100th Anniversary Pomade

Price: JPY1,500 (excluding tax)

(excluding tax) Volume: 80g

Product size: W75 x H24 x D75mm

Release date / locations

Friday, April 29, 2020

Exclusively sold at BEAMS JAPAN , BEAMS JAPAN SHIBUYA, BEAMS JAPAN KYOTO , and BEAMS Official Online Shop

YANAGIYA Pomade

A hairdressing agent made from plant-derived ingredients such as natural castor oil and mokuro (Japanese wax). Since its launch in 1920, it has been widely used by Japanese people and has become a staple product that played a part in the hairstyling culture in modern Japanese history, for example, combed-back and "regent" (slicked sideways) hairstyles.

Official website: https://www.yanagiya-cosme.co.jp/eng/index.html

SOURCE Yanagiya Honten Co., Ltd.
How is our community and county seen from a regional perspective? I spoke with two regional leaders and asked what they thought about us and their comments were glowing. Tom Chulick is President and CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association that represents the business community across 15 counties in Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri, with the City of St. Louis in the center.

Dr. Ronda Sauget is Executive Director and CEO of the Southwestern Illinois Leadership Council, serving nine Illinois counties, which includes Madison, St. Clair, Macoupin, Clinton, Monroe, Jersey, Bond, Washington and Calhoun.

Chulick mentioned AllianceSTL, an independent economic development subsidiary of the RCGA that focuses on economic development promotion of the St. Louis region. It coordinates visits by area leaders to other cities, such as Chicago, Atlanta, the state of Texas and the west coast to educate business site selectors about the assets in the region including Gateway Commerce Center, North Point, World Wide Technologies and SIUE. In terms of the specific assets of the Madison County area, he noted the strong workforce, highly educated and relatively short commute time, mobility and quality-of-life assets, such as schools, arts and housing.

He specifically paid the Madison County Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler a compliment, saying, Kurt has kept Madison County connected to the regional chamber. Noting they have a solid relationship, Chulick said Prenzler has made it clear that Madison County is open for business.

Adding that, Madison County is recognized as a major player in the RCGA and regionally. He said AllianceSTL has worked closely with Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois, as well as the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois.

Sauget echoed Chulicks accolades specifically noting the tremendous value of Edwardsville/Glen Carbons excellent quality of life, schools, recreational trails and logistics as part of the mix in promoting the region.

She mentioned that the Leadership Council has devoted a lot of attention to marketing and attracting international business interest in the area. She has plans to visit Japan to meet with the Japanese Consul General, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The Leadership Council will be debuting a new website and a new video about Southwestern Illinois which will be an important part of the organizations international and national marketing efforts.

Jim Grandone is a long-time resident of Edwardsville. He was the architect of the East CountyIf You Only Knew marketing campaign promoting Metro East to businesses in St. Louis in the 1990s. Grandone holds a BA in political science from the University of Illinois at Springfield and was a Coro Fellow and serves on a variety of boards. He lives in Leclaire with his wife, Mary
L ondoners who lived through World War II have hailed the heroes behind the emergency food operation helping people in the capital get through the current crisis.

As the nation celebrates VE Day, some of those old enough to remember the end of the war have spoken about their gratitude at receiving food packages as they remain completely shielded at home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Peter Lavelle Maurice, 76, has been isolating alone and getting regular food parcels from Living Way Ministries  a local church supplied by our Food for London Now campaign partner The Felix Project.

I grew up at a time at the end of the war when there was a lot of poverty and I didnt have an easy time of it growing up  sometimes I had to fend for myself to get food, said the Colindale resident.

Mr Maurice, a former nurse at the Royal Free Hospital, added: I didnt think Id ever see anything like that again. Im not worried for myself, but it is sad to see the struggles people are going through.

It looks like the biggest crisis weve faced since the war. But we just have to get through it as best we can. I think a sense of humour keeps you going. Things seem to work out when we all help each other out. Im really impressed by what the charities are doing for others.

Army veteran Allan Carter, a 79-year-old unable to leave his home in High Barnet, is also relying on food packages from The Felix Project and some damn good neighbours.

The former corporal in the Queens Rifles  who served his country in the Queens Rifles for almost three decades and was stationed in Gibraltar, Germany and Northern Ireland  is also amazed by the parallels between the 1940s and the current hunger crisis.

I still remember rationing during the war and the little stamps my mum used to put on the books, he said.

My mum and dad struggled to get enough for me and my brother and sister to eat. I didnt think wed have to go through anything like that again in this country  I feel really bad that people are finding it so hard.

Mr Carter said he was most looking forward to visiting the grave of his wife, who died 22 years ago, when the lockdown is eased.

I do miss my missus, he said. I go up there to the cemetery and tell her everything thats been going on.

Hopefully we can get through it like we got through the war, and get back to normal at some point. Some of the people making sure everyone gets enough to eat should get a medal after all this. Theyre heroes too.
An aerobatics team of the Royal Air Force joined a series of events on Friday to mark Victory in Europe Day (VE Day)  May 8, 1945  when fighting against Nazi Germany in Europe came to an end in World War II that involved millions of soldiers from colonial India.

It was on this day 75 years ago that Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced on the radio at 3 pm that the war in Europe had come to an end, following Germanys surrender on the previous day. A two-minute silence was observed across the UK on Friday morning.

As the royal family and the Prime Minister Boris Johnson led tributes while maintaining social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic, many recalled the contribution of Indians, such as iconic spy Noor Inayat Khan and the erstwhile Womens Royal Indian Naval Service (WRINS).

The Wrins, as they were known, mostly included Indian women. It was formed in 1942, and went on to become an intrinsic part of the British defence forces. They were assigned specialist tasks, such as top secret decoding, clerical duties, training in gunnery tactics.

Johnson said: Seventy-five years ago today, the people of this country celebrated victory against Hitlers aggression. This country triumphed thanks to the heroism of countless ordinary people, and because of this, hundreds of millions of people now live in peace and freedom today.

Today we must celebrate their achievement, and we remember their sacrifice. We are a free people because of everything our veterans did - we offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered.

At 3 pm on Friday, extracts from Churchills victory speech were scheduled to be broadcast across television and radio to recreate the moment the end of the war was announced. Queen Elizabeth, who was a witness to the events 75 years ago, was due to address the nation at 9 pm.

Over 2 million soldiers from the colonial Indian army joined the World War II, besides financial and other contribution from the colony. The soldiers saw action in various theatres of conflict in Europe as well as in south Asia; 89,000 of them died.

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Citing public health concerns over millions of Californians showing up at voting locations this fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered ballots to be mailed to the state's 20.6 million voters for the November election while insisting there will need to also be new rules for anyone who participates in person.

The decision makes California the first state in the nation to temporarily shift to all-mail voting as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic  prompted, Newsom said, by the likelihood that public health conditions will not have improved to a level at which millions of people could show up on a single day to cast a ballot.

"There's a lot of excitement around this November's election in terms of making sure that you can conduct yourself in a safe way, and make sure your health is protected," Newsom said during a midday event.

The decision to radically rethink the November election comes after a series of urgent requests and proposals made by lawmakers and local elections officials alike. Since the beginning of the coronavirus, health concerns have been raised in several states that have conducted in-person voting with turnout in November expected to be high.

"People are not going to want to go to an in-person voting site," said Joseph Holland, the registrar of voters in Santa Barbara County and president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Elections Officials. "If you send voters a ballot in the mail, theyre more likely to vote than if they have to go to a polling place to vote."

Local officials, who plan for elections months in advance, are eager to begin making preparations for November. The change to mailing every voter a ballot also will include a significant public education effort, especially for those voters who may not realize the documents that arrive are an actual ballot and not sample materials.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, the state's chief elections officer, praised Newsom's decision.

Story continues

"It's great for public health, it's great for voting rights, it's gonna be great for participation," he said.

California currently has a patchwork system for voting in person, one that varies by county. While the majority of local governments offer traditional polling places on election day, 14 counties already mail a ballot to every voter under provisions of a 2016 law that swaps new vote centers for traditional neighborhood polling places. L.A. County, the only place allowed to enact that system without mailing all voters a ballot this year, is already poised to do so for November after the March primary saw widespread problems, including long lines at in-person vote centers that are now being investigated by auditors.

The change in Los Angeles will add 2 million voters to the ranks of Californians who participate from home or another location. While elections officials expect that private companies hired to print ballots will be able to meet the demand, they and election advocates remain concerned about the increased cost. California has often imposed new election mandates  extra days for ballots to arrive in the mail, postage-paid envelopes, additional steps to verify signatures or unsigned absentee envelopes  without providing funding.

"Elections have been an unfunded mandate and this is going to be an even bigger expense for counties," said Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation.

Legislators had introduced bills to require ballots mailed to all voters prior to Newsom's action on Friday. His decision to impose the change by executive order expedites the effort by state and local officials. But his directive leaves a key question unanswered: What provisions will be made for voters who still want or need to vote in person?

Advocates for disabled voters and communities of color say the state will need to maintain a robust set of options for those who want to vote in person in the days leading up to the election as well as on election day.

"Reductions to in-person voting raise very real concerns for disenfranchisement, particularly for communities that already face barriers to voting, such as voters with limited-English proficiency, voters with disabilities, and voters who are underrepresented and rely on in-person voting at higher rates, Latino, and young voters," Raul Macias, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, wrote in a letter to Newsom last month.

Newsom's executive order doesn't lay out a specific set of rules for in-person voting, but urges state officials to craft a plan by the end of this month.

Holland said it's important for counties to have as much flexibility as possible, given the possibility that new outbreaks in coronavirus cases could develop in the final weeks leading up to the election. "We really dont need the Legislature telling us theres a strict formula, when we may not be able to meet it," he said.

Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Palo Alto), who wrote a recently introduced bill to mail a ballot to every voter, said state officials should work closely to address those concerns. But he said he's "not comfortable" with too loose of a statewide standard.

"I think that we can create a plan for the November election to provide flexibility," Berman said. "Counties, though, will need to show us that they tried their best to achieve it" before considering case-by-case issues.

Newsom said Friday that in-person voting options will remain an important part of the November election.

"We still want to have the appropriate number of physical sites for people to vote as well," he said.

Five states have permanent all-mail elections. While California's change would only be for November, the state is relatively well prepared to implement Newsom's directive. California has had generous rules for absentee voting since 2002, allowing voters to opt for permanent voting by mail regardless of the reason.

Remote voting was a key component of the March statewide primary, during which 72% of all ballots were cast by mail  a record high. But a number of counties had much lower absentee voting records, meaning the change will take considerable work to implement.

The cost of mailing everyone a ballot could also be daunting, and locals have often complained that the state has expanded access to voting while not providing sufficient funds for the counties to do the work. And because voter turnout is traditionally higher in general elections, a temporary shift to all-mail voting could create significant new challenges in funding and logistics.

Alexander said that expanding absentee voting should include a robust effort to encourage voters not to rely on putting their ballots in the mail. She said a leading reason a ballot isn't counted is that it arrives at a local elections office with a postmark after election day.

"The best way to return them is a [local] drop-off box or in person. Its not by mail," she said.
Thomas Hughes, the administrative director of a new board that will have oversight of Facebook and Instagram, having the final say over whether content should or should not be allowed. ( The Hill  May 6, 2020)
In Hampton, New Brunswick, Rick Weddell said it was a no-brainer that he and his girlfriend would link up with her identical twin sisters family. Its not that he doesnt love his siblings, he said. But when it comes to the twin dynamic, Ive never seen anything like this before in my life.
Pastor Robert Jeffress launches 40-day anti-coronavirus prayer campaign

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Texas megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress has launched a 40-day prayer campaign and is urging Christians to join him daily to pray for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

Known as the 4:01 Challenge, the observance calls on people to pray at 4:01 p.m. every day for the next 40 days, starting Thursday, which is the 69th annual National Day of Prayer.

The time of day was inspired by Psalm 4:1, which reads: Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.

In a message posted on the Pathway to Victory website, Jeffress said he was inspired to launch the challenge when talking with his daughter, Julia Jeffress Sadler.

Recently, she asked, Dad, why arent Christians praying more about the coronavirus? That question hit me right between the eyes! Julia is right, Jeffress wrote.

The most powerful thing you and I can do to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic  and its devastating effects  is to ask for Gods miraculous intervention in our country.

Jeffress also noted that as a thank you for those who sign up to participate, he promised to provide a free chapter download of his latest book.

First Baptist Dallas will be reopening for in-person services on May 31 and released a detailed plan last month for its members to review.

In recent times, many prominent Christian leaders and ecclesiastical bodies have launched prayer campaigns in addition to charity efforts in response to COVID-19.

For example, in March, Pope Francis called on Christians from all denominations to join him in reciting the Lords Prayer on a given time in response to the pandemic.

Let us stay united. I invite all Christians to direct their voices together toward Heaven, reciting the Our Father tomorrow, 25 March, at noon, the pontiff tweeted at the time.

The Vatican's post also included a short video of Francis giving a prayer with English subtitles, calling on people to pray together for the sick, for the people who are suffering.

I thank all Christians, all the men and women of goodwill who pray at this moment in unison, whichever religious tradition they belong to, Francis said in the video.

Research has indicated participation and interest in the practice of prayer has increased since the new coronavirus became a pandemic and governments imposed lockdown orders.

Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, executive director of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture, released a preliminary draft of a paper in late March titled In Crisis, We Pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Bentzen analyzed internet searches for prayer in 75 countries and reported that search intensity for prayer doubles for every 80,000 new registered cases of COVID-19.

In times of crisis, humans have a tendency to turn to religion for stress relief and explanation. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is no exception, read the Abstract. I document that Google searches on prayer has skyrocketed during the month of March 2020 when the COVID-19 went global.
Sonakshi Sinha on Friday said she has extended her support to celebrity shout-out platform Tring to raise money for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits for the frontline healthcare workers in India.

Sonakshi has collaborated with Manish Mundra of Dhrishyam Films, photographer-producer Atul Kasbekar and Tring for the initiative.

In a statement, the 32-year-old actor urged her fans to come forward to help the healthcare staff.

"Our doctors, nurses, and all the health care professionals are putting their lives in danger to protect us and take care of all the patients. I don't think there is anything nobler than putting your life at risk to save others.

"Unfortunately, hospitals are facing a shortage of PPE kits which is putting the lives of all our medical staff at risk. Through his campaign, I am urging all my fans to come forward and donate PPE kits which will be directly reaching the hospitals that require them. It is the need of the hour and I hope we all can come together and fight this war," Sonakshi said.

For every donation made through Tring, Sonakshi will be recognising the support of every donor by sending a personal message.

The "Dabangg 3" actor will be sending a thank you message on Facebook to those, who contribute between 25 to 100 kits.

People who donate between 100 to 200 PPE kits will receive a special video message from the actor, while those sending over 200 kits will get a chance to interact with Sonakshi via a video call.

Earlier, Vidya Balan had donated 1,000 PPE kits to the frontline healthcare staff across India in collaboration with Tring. The actor had also helped the platform raise money for 1,000 additional gears.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Arnott's has released its secret recipe for its iconic Iced VoVo biscuits.

Australian home bakers will be able to make the classic delectable treat in their own kitchen - but with a special Mother's Day twist.

The treasured biscuit has been a family favourite since 1906, and it's topped with pink fondant, a strip of jammy raspberry filling and a sprinkling of desiccated coconut.

Scroll down for recipe

Australian home bakers will be able to recreate Arnott's Iced VoVo biscuit but with a twist

Arnott's Iced VoVo hearts recipe Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 18 mins Makes: 36 INGREDIENTS Biscuit 180 g unsalted butter softened

75 g (1/2 cup) soft icing sugar

1/2 tsp salt

300 g (2 cups) plain flour Extra baking items Heart shaped cutter (optional)

Piping bag and nozzle (optional) Royal icing 1 large egg white

200 g (1 cups) icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp glucose syrup

1-2 drops pillar box red colouring

 cup raspberry jam

 cup desiccated coconut METHOD Using a 6cm heart shaped cutter, cut out biscuits, transfer to baking sheets. Bake for 16-18 minutes or when biscuits start to turn golden. Leave on the tray to cool Fill your piping bag 1/3 full of icing. Don't overfill your bag. Fill another piping bag with raspberry jam Pipe a jam strip down the centre of the heart biscuit and pipe pink icing around the edges before filling in the remainder of the heart with icing Sprinkle with coconut. Place iced biscuits in a single layer of an airtight container to set overnight 1. Pre-heat fan-forced oven to 160C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. 2. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, icing sugar, and salt for two minutes or until pale and creamy. Sift the flour into the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. 3. Place half the mixture between baking paper and roll out to approx. 5mm thickness. Using a 6cm heart shaped cutter, cut out biscuits, transfer to baking sheets. Repeat rolling and cutting heart shapes with remaining mixture, rerolling scrap dough to make more hearts. 4. Bake for 16-18 minutes or when biscuits start to turn golden. Leave on the tray to cool. ICING 1. Place egg white in a clean mixing bowl and mix on low speed with the whisk attachment until the whites begin to break up. Gradually add the icing sugar, vanilla and glucose, whisking until combined and glossy. If the mixture is too stiff add a teaspoon of water to loosen it up but ensure it isn't too runny as it will slide off the biscuit. It should form a smooth surface. Add your colour and stir until combined. Cover surface of icing with cling wrap until ready to use to prevent the icing going hard. 2. Place a small round tip (we used a No. 2 nozzle) and fill your piping bag 1/3 full of icing. Don't overfill your bag. Fill another piping bag with raspberry jam. 3. Pipe a jam strip down the centre of the heart biscuit and pipe pink icing around the edges before filling in the remainder of the heart with icing. 4. Sprinkle with coconut. Place iced biscuits in a single layer of an airtight container to set overnight. TIPS Be very light handed when adding your colour to ensure a soft pink colour

If you don't have a piping bag, you can use a snap lock bag and snip the corner off

Biscuits can be made into any shape, including the traditional rectangle Advertisement

Arnott's chef Vanessa Horton has adapted the recipe for home bakers so Aussies can create decadent Iced VoVo inspired biscuits in the shape of a love heart - a perfectly delicious homemade gift for any mum.

'Arnott's Iced VoVo holds a special place in many Australians' hearts which led us to this unique twist for Mother's Day,' Ms Horton said.

'We hope this recipe inspires people to bake for (or with) the mum in their life this weekend, whether it's in person or over a virtual video chat.'

The treats can be made in less than 30 minutes to prepare and bake in the oven.

The recipe consists of unsalted butter, icing sugar, salt, plain flour, egg, vanilla extract, glucose syrup, red food colouring, raspberry jam and desiccated coconut.

The treasured biscuit has been a family favourite since 1906, and it's topped with pink fondant, a strip of jammy raspberry filling and a sprinkling of coconut

To encourage Australians to stay at home, put on their aprons and bake together, Arnott's will be sharing some of its secret biscuit recipes to the public every week.

The 'Arnott's Big Recipe Release' will see Australia's largest (and oldest) baker unveil the recipe - complete with instructions, until social distancing regulations are lifted.

'We know how important our biscuits are to Australians, both locally and living abroad, in helping them come together with family and friends and feeling connected,' Ms Horton said.

'That's why I've personally adapted and tested each of the "secret" recipes we're revealing to the public, so they can find new ways to come together and share a biscuit, in this time of need.'

The decision to release the recipes comes in response to the social distancing regulations fuelling a 300 per cent spike in baking-related searches.

The report found the average Aussie household has stockpiled enough flour to last 65 days, and the volume of sugar purchases have increased by 65 per cent.
Michigan College Access Network (MCAN) and partners launched a college advising hotline today to answer questions Michigan high school students have about attending college. The hotline was initiated as a result of the current global health crisis, aiming to fill the gaps created from the governors statewide school closure order issued in March.

The hotline is available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and is staffed by nearly 100 college advisers connected to MCANs AdviseMI program and MSUs College Advising Corps. To scale its ability to serve as many students as possible, MCAN is partnering with the Detroit Regional Chamber and the Detroit College Access Network on this initiative.

The hotline can be reached by calling 810-373-5385. Students will have the option of calling or texting the hotline. After business hours, students can text or leave a voicemail and messages will be responded to the next business day. The hours of the hotline will be adjusted as necessary to best serve students and their needs.

The college advisers staffing the hotline will complement the work of school counselors throughout the state and provide advising services to districts where school counselors dont exist. K-12 staff are working hard to move to virtual education and provide needed accommodations to all students. The hotline will provide an added layer of support to schools, students and families. All advisers are well-trained and most are volunteering a year of national service with AmeriCorps.

We are excited to launch this hotline today to support students and families needing college advising due to the school closure for COVID-19, stated Ryan Fewins-Bliss, executive director of MCAN. While trained and passionate school counselors remain the gold standard of college advising, we know they are being called to innovate, problem solve and mobilize like never before. We are proud to provide this free service as part of MCANs response to the coronavirus crisis.

While the hotline will be available to all high school students in Michigan, special outreach is being done to reach students traditionally disenfranchised by the education system  students of color, first-generation college-going students and low-income students.

"Our students have benefited greatly from having a dedicated near-peer college adviser, stated Cherice Redwine-Fergerson, school counselor at Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn. I am elated that students around the state will also have access to a college adviser through this hotline!"

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The UK is an 'outlier' for not having border controls to stop the spread of coronavirus, an expert advising Nicola Sturgeon said today.

Professor Devi Sridhar pointed out most countries had imposed rules on arrivals such as a 14-day quarantine to avoid fuelling the deadly disease.

Ministers have so far held off tough curbs on inflows into the UK, despite complaints that many people are walking straight through passport control at airports without even temperature checks.

They have claimed that such restrictions would have limited impact when the outbreak is already raging in the country, and would have merely hampered millions of Britons trying to return home from abroad.

However, other countries across Europe, as well as the US and China, have taken a different stance.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said at the weekend he is 'actively looking' at quarantining people entering the UK once the situation subsides.

Prof Sridhar suggested that although a 'decentralised approach' might be better for lockdown rues, the whole UK should be taking tougher action to control its borders.

Air travel was the main driver behind the spread of coronavirus, according to a study in Brazil which comes as the UK's government policy of not screening arriving passengers comes under scrutiny (travellers arrive at Heathrow in London)

Professor Devi Sridhar (pictured on ITV's Good Morning Britain earlier this week) said most countries had imposed rules on arrivals such as a 14-day quarantine to avoid fuelling the deadly disease

Professor Sridhar signalled a hard line on maintaining lockdown - after Nicola Sturgeon (pictured at VE Day commemorations in Edinburgh today) warned the PM yesterday that dropping the 'stay at home' guidance could be a 'catastrophe'

Air travel was the 'main driver behind coronavirus spread' Air travel was the main driver behind the spread of coronavirus, according to a study which adds more weight to the theory that closing borders helps avert major crises. Brazilian researchers found the nations hit hardest by the killer disease were ones which had busy airports accepting thousands of international flights. It may explain why the US and the UK - which have the first and third highest air travel globally - have also suffered the most COVID-19 deaths with 74,600 and 30,615, respectively. China, which has the second busiest airports, grounded all its flights from the virus' epicentre in Hubei province on January 23, within weeks of the first diagnosed case. The US did not lockdown its airports until late March, while Britain's borders remain open to this day and officials still aren't routinely testing or quarantining travellers. Damning figures show the UK quarantined just 273 out of 18.1million people who arrived in the UK in the three months before the lockdown was imposed. Researchers from the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, who did the study, say screening and isolating travellers may have been 'a cheap solution for humanity'. Advertisement

'The UK is one of the very few countries in the world, it is an outlier, to actually have no checks at borders for anyone coming in,' she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'Most countries have 14 day quarantines and that is something that has to be agreed across the UK.'

Professor Sridhar also signalled a hard line on maintaining lockdown - after Ms Sturgeon warned the PM yesterday that dropping the 'stay at home' guidance could be a 'catastrophe'.

Dismissed the prospect even of restrictions on outdoor activities being eased, she although there was evidence transmission was much less likely outside, 'I think we need to have actual confirmation of that through multiple studies before easing measures'.

She also gave a striking warning a bout how far the UK has to go before a significant loosening is safe.

'If over 10 per cent of people are testing positive you do have a major problem,' she told the BBC.

'You really want to be around two per cent to be on the safe side... Right now in the UK we are around 12 per cent going off yesterday's figures.'

Prof Sridhar said: 'The goal right now needs to be to ensure we use the lockdown time to get in place a package of interventions.'

She also dismissed the idea that care homes and hospitals could be isolated, as that is where the disease is spreading, while the rest of society gets up and running.

'It's not that simple. As we're seeing through the failed strategies to shield the vulnerable, you can't isolate care homes and hospitals from the wider community,' she said.

'We are all integrated in the same place. What we need to have is surveillance systems in place.. we just don't have that yet.'

Quarantining foreign visitors on their arrival in the UK was a measure being looked at now that the domestic infection rate is decreasing, Downing Street has suggested.

'This has been put to ministers in the past and they have said it is an issue we are looking at,' said the PM's spokesman.

'I think ministers have said the issue of looking to ensure, as we really drive down transmission in the UK, that we are enable to ensure the virus is not being brought into the country from overseas is one they are actively considering.'

Researchers from the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador scoured records of 7,834 airports using online flight databases to identify more than 67,600 transport routes in 65 countries (shown)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:20:30|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Crowds rallied Wednesday night and Thursday on the streets of Indianapolis, capital city of the northern U.S. state of Indiana, protesting police killing of two men and a pregnant woman in three separate incidents in merely hours apart, local media reported.

The protests occurred after Indianapolis police shot and killed a man after a car and foot chase in an incident Wednesday night on the city's north side.

The Indianapolis Police Department said the man shot at an officer, who returned fire.

A live video about the incident reportedly appeared on social media and civil rights groups had called for a thorough investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday night, dozens of people gathered near the shooting scene, demanding justice, according to local media.

The second shooting incident took place about eight hours later, as police officers approached an apartment complex to probe a burglary in-progress complex early Thursday. Police said that an armed man shot at four responding officers, who returned fire and killed him.

The third incident involved an Indianapolis police officer who struck and killed a pregnant woman walking on an expressway ramp late Wednesday.

Indianapolis police chief Randal Taylor said it was a "tragedy."

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police has pledged "thorough and transparent" investigations into the incidents. Enditem
The Delhi High Court Friday said the order of Haryana authorities preventing and obstructing the movement of doctors, nurses, court staff and trucks to and from Delhi to Sonepat prima facie infringes right to freedom of movement even when the entire national capital and Sonipat are not coronavirus containment zones.

A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sanjeev Narula, which conducted the hearing through video conferencing, said it was of prima facie view that the action of the District Magistrate, Sonipat, restricting the movement, is contrary to the orders and letters issued by the Union Home Secretary on lockdown guidelines.

The court issued notice to the Centre and Haryana government on a petition challenging the order of Sonipat authorities on restriction activities.

Petitioner O P Gupta submitted that a number of Delhi residents have to travel to Sonipat for essential work and similar is the situation for Sonipat residents. He said the District Magistrate of Sonipat has imposed blanket cross border transit restrictions between the two cities and granted exemptions to only a few categories of government officials and for movement of goods not destined for there.

He added that even doctors, nurses and court officials who either reside in Sonipat or work there are being prevented from entering or leaving the city.

As per the April 30 order of the district magistrate, accommodation arrangements for persons working in Sonipat but residents of Delhi or UP shall have to be made by the concerned management at Sonipat so as to preclude any daily cross-border transit.

The order further states that those persons who are working in Delhi or UP but are residents of Sonipat shall pursue similar accommodation arrangement with their concerned management in areas of their work so as to preclude any daily cross-border transit.

The bench said prima facie it was of the view that the April 30 order of Sonipat district magistrate prevents and obstructs the movement of trucks from Delhi to Sonipat as well as movement of doctors, nurses and court officials.

Accordingly, this court is of the prima facie view that the order dated April 30, 2020 by the District Magistrate, Sonipat, constitutes an infringement of Articles 19(1)(d) (freedom of movement) and 301 (freedom of trade and commerce) of the Constitution especially when the entire National Capital and Sonipat are not containment zones.

This court is also in prima facie agreement with the submission of the petitioner that the action of the District Magistrate, Sonipat, is contrary to the orders/ letters dated April 15, 30 and May 1 issued by the Union Home Secretary, the bench said.

The bench referred to an order of the Kerala High Court which has held, No doubt, restrictions may be imposed in times of a national emergency such as the present, but when the guidelines issued by the Central Government under the Disaster Management Act itself permits travel for urgent medical treatment, then the said guidelines have necessarily to be enforced by the Central Government through the removal of the blockades that prevent such travel.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Just a few miles from Disney World, Harris Rosen's hotel empire is mostly closed because of the COVID pandemic.

One crucial condition for reopening will be testing any of his 4,000 employees who show potential signs of having the disease, he said.

Since March, the company has tested more than 500 workers at its employee health clinic and its impromptu drive-thru site in Orlando, Florida. Sixteen were confirmed cases of COVID-19.

When Rosen Hotels & Resorts, which comprises eight hotels with nearly 7,000 rooms in the Orlando area, reopens later this spring or summer, it plans to have employees regularly fill out a questionnaire about their health and travel history. All employees will get their temperature taken when they arrive, and those with fevers above 99F will not be allowed on the worksite. Rosen is still working out details of its strategy, but it also plans to give workers with a fever and other COVID-19 symptoms a diagnostic test for the virus.

The Rosen chain is ahead of many businesses still weighing options for reopening. That's partly because since 1991 it has provided medical care to workers through its employee health clinic.

"Companies are asking what is necessary to reopen businesses safely, and they see testing as one of the key things," said Stephen Ezeji-Okoye, chief medical officer of Crossover Health, which manages worksite health clinics.

Across the U.S., and across industries, companies have closed their worksites for the past month or so, or operated at significantly reduced capacity. Meat-processing plants in the Midwest have been closed because tight workspaces helped spur outbreaks, nursing homes across the country have seen deaths among staff members needed to care for ailing residents, and flight attendants report increasing cases of the disease.

Now, as half of the states begin the delicate task of lifting stay-at-home orders and allowing businesses to reopen, Rosen is one of many employers being thrust into the debate about how to keep employees and customers safe.

Some employers say testing and screening can help reduce disease transmissions and workers' fears.

"Employers are tremendously interested in testing because they want to make sure their workplaces are as safe as possible," said Dr. Jeff Levin-Scherz, a national co-leader of Willis Towers Watson, a consulting firm. "Testing needs to be a component of a way to reduce the risk, but it's not the entire strategy."

Yet COVID-19 testing has vexed health officials and politicians since March. Federal and state leaders have bickered over whether supplies of tests are adequate.

Rosen Hotels & Resorts, however, says it does not anticipate any problems securing test kits. While there are still parts of the country with a paucity of testing, central Florida is not one of them. The Orlando area has at least two dozen testing sites, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a meeting at the White House last week, "Our ability to test exceeds the current demand."

For many companies, however, moving toward a testing program is much less certain.

"It's a difficult time for employers trying their best to protect employees," said Dr. Mohannad Kusti, corporate medical director of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. The company hopes to decide this month whether to start testing its roughly 18,000 employees at locations in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Alabama and other states.

Kusti said testing isn't perfect but could add to the arsenal of weapons against the virus, which include requiring workers to wear gloves and face masks and increasing social distancing when applicable.

The company has hesitated to start testing partly because of a lack of tests and concerns over accuracy, he said.

In Nevada, Wynn Resorts, which owns two large hotels in Las Vegas, is partnering with University Medical Center of Southern Nevada to provide free testing to all its Las Vegas employees, either at the workplace or a hospital-designated site.

"This will ensure that Wynn employees that would like to be tested will have access to reliable and accurate COVID-19 testing well in advance and leading up to the opening of the resort," Wynn said in a statement.

Uncharted waters

Employers with on-site health clinics are best positioned to test because they likely have access to the supplies and the providers needed to administer them, said Mike Thompson, CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions.

For example, earlier this year Microsoft began a testing program for workers at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Intel Corp. said it is looking into the issue but has not decided how to proceed. Amazon said it is setting up a system of labs to begin testing its workers across the country.

"Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in a recent shareholder letter.

San Francisco recently partnered with a private genomics testing company, Color, to provide COVID-19 testing to any city employees, contractors and other "essential" workers with symptoms of the disease.

"The reality is we are all in uncharted waters," said Color CEO Othman Laraki. Employers want to offer testing to help their workers and customers they serve feel more secure, he said.

About one-third of employers surveyed by the Pacific Business Group on Health in April said they are testing employees at or near the workplace or considering it.

Some experts, however, question whether such efforts will make a difference.

Dr. Jamal Hakim, chief operating officer at Orlando Health, a large hospital system in the Florida city, said he doesn't see employer testing as a panacea. A more effective strategy, he suggested, would be making sure that employees stay home if they have any COVID symptoms, such as fever and dry cough, and that they wash hands often and don't touch their face.

"Those behavior modifications will dwarf testing in terms of importance going forward," Hakim said.

Part of the challenge with testing is someone newly infected may not show a positive result for several days. Someone can also get infected following the test. It also takes at least a day to get results back, giving the virus more time to spread unchecked.

New EEOC guidance

Employers are generally not allowed to inquire about workers' medical conditions. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces workplace civil rights laws, issued new rules in April permitting employers to test for COVID-19 as a condition of entering the workplace. The one caveat is that employers must test all employees, or, if only certain employees are selected for testing, the employer must have a reasonable reason for doing so  such as testing employees who exhibit persistent coughs or other symptoms associated with the disease.

Despite the drawbacks of testing, many major employers are moving forward in an effort to keep workers safe.

St. Louis-based Watlow, a global manufacturer of thermal products with 1,600 U.S. employees, this month began testing workers who believe they may have been exposed to people with COVID-19, as well as workers who are traveling to its Mexico plant, to see if they have the virus or previously had it and now have antibodies for the disease. In addition, the temperatures of all employees are taken when they arrive for work, and anyone above 99.2F is sent home. Employees wear masks on the job, and barriers were installed between some workstations to promote social distancing.

As of May 6, Watlow has tested fewer than a dozen people at its onsite health clinic, said Sheryl Hicks, vice president of human resources. The company is weighing whether it can or should test everyone.

"We are learning as we go," Hicks said. "There is a cost to these things, but if it gives us more information to keep people safe or provide a safer environment for folks, then that is not necessarily a bad thing."
The Matthews Asia Small Companies Fund (Trades, Portfolio), part of San Francisco-based investment firm Matthews International Capital Management, disclosed 20 new positions in its first-quarter portfolio, which was released earlier this month.





Managed by Tiffany Hsiao and Beini Zhou, the fund invests in smaller companies across Asia, with the exception of Japan, that are capable of sustainable growth based on several fundamental characteristics. Its primary goal is long-term capital appreciation.

Based on these criteria, the fund's top five buys for the quarter were InnoCare Pharma Ltd. (HKSE:09969), AfreecaTV Co. (XKRX:067160), JOYY Inc. (WBO:JOYY), Zai Lab Ltd. (NASDAQ:ZLAB) and Hangzhou Onechance Tech Corp. (SZSE:300792).

InnoCare Pharma

The fund invested in 1.85 million shares of InnoCare Pharma, allocating 2.18% of the equity portfolio to the stake. The stock traded for an average price of 10.41 Hong Kong dollars ($1.34) per share during the quarter.

The Chinese clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which went public in March, has an HK$18.83 billion market cap; its shares were trading around HK$14.48 on Friday.

The price chart shows the stock has gained approximately 40% since its initial public offering.

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GuruFocus rated InnoCare's profitability 3 out of 10 on the back of a cash-debt ratio of 1.99, which is at a historical high for the company despite underperforming nearly 70% of other companies in its industry.

The company is also being weighed down by negative margins and returns.

The Small Companies Fund holds 0.14% of InnoCare's outstanding shares.

AfreecaTV

Matthews picked up 50,587 shares of AfreecaTV, dedicating 1.74% of the equity portfolio to the holding. Shares traded for an average price of 56,240.8 won ($46.10) during the quarter.

The South Korean video streaming service has a market cap of 643.92 billion won; its shares closed at 59,200 won on Thursday with a price-earnings ratio of 19.33, a price-book ratio of 5.61 and a price-sales ratio of 3.95.

Story continues

The Peter Lynch chart shows the stock is trading above its fair value, suggesting it is overpriced. The GuruFocus valuation rank of 4 out of 10 also supports this assessment.

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AfreecaTV's financial strength was rated 8 out of 10 by GuruFocus on the back of a high cash-debt ratio and a comfortable level of interest coverage. The high Altman Z-Score of 6.05 also indicates the company is in good standing and not at risk of going bankrupt.

The company's profitability scored a 9 out of 10 rating, driven by an expanding operating margin, strong returns that outperform a majority of industry peers and a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 5, which implies operations are stable. It also has a business predictability rank of one out of five stars. According to GuruFocus, companies with this rank typically return an average of 1.1% per annum over a 10-year period.

The fund holds 0.46% of the AfreecaTV's outstanding shares.

JOYY

The Asia Small Companies Fund established a 37,600-share position in JOYY, giving it 1.61% space in the equity portfolio. The stock traded for an average per-share price of 52.62 euros ($57.16) each during the quarter.

The Chinese social media company has a market cap of 3.98 billion euros; its Wiener Borse-listed shares closed at 50.5 euros on Thursday with a price-earnings ratio of 7.62, a price-book ratio of 0.92 and a price-sales ratio of 1.15.

According to the Peter Lynch chart, the stock is undervalued.

c7f043bff5a6cec240630677b6f4613b.png

GuruFocus rated JOYY's financial strength 7 out of 10 despite having low interest coverage and, at 2.85, the Altman Z-Score indicates it is under some pressure since its Sloan ratio suggests it has poor earnings quality and assets are building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing. The return on invested capital is also below the weighted average cost of capital, which implies it has become less efficient.

The company's profitability scored an 8 out of 10 rating. Even though its margins are in decline, JOYY is supported by returns that outperform a majority of competitors and a one-star business predictability rank. It also has a low Piotroski F-Score of 2, which suggests operating conditions are in poor shape.

The fund holds 0.05% of JOYY's outstanding shares.

Zai Lab

The fund purchased a 35,700-share holding of Zai Lab, expanding the equity portfolio by 1.48%. The stock traded for an average price of $52.10 per share during the quarter.

The biopharmaceutical company, which is based in both the U.S. and China, has a $4.9 billion market cap; its shares were trading around $66.14 on Friday with a price-book ratio of 15.11 and a price-sales ratio of 332.83.

Based on the price-sales chart, the stock appears to be overvalued since it is trading near a three-year high.

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Boosted by comfortable interest coverage and a robust Altman Z-Score of 45.31, Zai Lab's financial strength was rated 5 out of 10 by GuruFocus.

The company's profitability did not fare as well, scoring a 1 out of 10 rating on the back of negative margins and returns that underperform a majority of industry peers.

Of the gurus invested in Zai Lab, Ron Baron (Trades, Portfolio) has the largest stake with 2.95% of outstanding shares. Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio)' Renaissance Technologies also has a position in the stock.

Hangzhou Onechance Tech

The Asia Small Companies Fund bought 47,325 shares of Hangzhou Onechance Tech, impacting the equity portfolio by 1.21%. During the quarter, shares traded for an average price of 215.02 yuan ($30.40) each.

The Chinese company, which provides electronic commerce services like merchandise control, marketing promotions, customer service, warehouse logistics and platform distribution, has a market cap of 23.61 billion yuan; its shares were trading around 290.18 yuan on Friday with a price-earnings ratio of 91.08, a price-book ratio of 18.85 and a price-sales ratio of 15.44.

The Peter Lynch chart suggests the stock is overvalued.

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On the back of no long-term debt and adequate interest coverage, Hangzhou Onechance's financial strength was rated out of 10 by GuruFocus.

The company's profitability scored a 5 out of 10 rating on the back of margins and returns that outperform a majority of competitors.

The fund holds 0.06% of Hangzhou Onechance's outstanding shares.

Additional trades and portfolio performance

During the quarter, Matthews also established positions in several other companies, including Longchen Paper & Packaging Co. Ltd. (TPE:1909), Win Semiconductors Corp. (ROCO:3105), Accton Technology Corp. (TPE:2345), Koh Young Technology Inc. (XKRX:098460) and Airtac International Group (TPE:1590).

Over 40% of the Asia Small Companies Fund's $124 million equity portfolio, which is composed of 76 stocks, is invested in the technology and health care sectors.

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According to its fact sheet, the fund returned 17.38% in 2019, outperforming the MSCI All Country Asia ex. Japan Small Cap Index's 7.58% return.

Disclosure: No positions.

Read more here:

Bestinfond Adds 3 Stocks to Portfolio in 1st Quarter

Matthews Japan Fund Picks Up 6 Stocks

Mario Cibelli Blots Stake in Cosmetics Company e.l.f. Beauty







Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Sign up for a free 7-day trial here.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






Men and women who have been infected by the new coronavirus may be barred from joining the U.S. military, according to a Pentagon official.

A defense official detailed the interim guidance on Wednesday. The new recommendation allows the military to examine an applicant's history with the disease during the initial screening process. Anyone who has been hospitalized due to the pandemic is immediately disqualified. Those who still wish to serve would need a service waiver to be considered.

The guidance would remain until more is known about the intensity of the damage that the virus does to a patient's lungs.



Screening Process

Officials will first take the applicant's temperature and ask questions about symptoms and potential contact. Should an applicant fail the screening, they will not be tested. They are, however, allowed to return after two weeks if they are symptom-free.

Applicants who were diagnosed positive with COVID-19 will be asked to wait for 28 days to report to one of the 65 Military Entrance Processing Stations across the nation. Upon return, applicants will be marked as "permanently disqualifying."

Recruits can apply for waivers to allow them to continue serving the military. Still, without any guidance for exception dealing with COVID-19, a review authority cannot grant a waiver.

There is still minimal research on the global pandemicits effects, the likelihood of flare-ups, and possible immunity. The military medical professionals are likely trying to focus on these factors when assessing survivors who wish to apply for service.



Final Decision

According to Army General Mark Milley, Pentagon is still weighing its options on recruiting applicants with COVID-19 history. He revealed that the latest version of the internal memowhich suggests that only hospitalized applicants be disqualifiedis still a draft and is expected to undergo revisions.

He also said that the chief and the secretary of defense have yet to review the proposed guidance. Doctors will thoroughly review the medical standards of recruits and how the virus affects the volunteers while consulting for the final version of the recommendation.

"The memo got out there by accident," Milley said. "It has not been approved." The finalized version is expected to come out in the coming weeks.

The U.S. military excludes recruits with active human immunodeficiency virus cases and eye conditions caused by the herpes virus. Applicants with a history of respiratory illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, and pulmonary diseases are also medically disqualified from serving in the military.



Coronavirus Clusters

The move comes following discoveries of coronavirus clusters at the Army and Marine Corps entry training sites in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and Marine Corps Recruit in San Diego.

In Fort Jackson, the Army uncovered a cluster of 50 COVID-19 cases from one training battalion. According to Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, most of the infected trainees showed no symptoms of the virus.

The South Carolina training site has four testing devices and runs over 750 tests each day.

In San Diego, California, a Marine official reported near four dozen recruits to be positive for the pandemic. As with the cases in Fort Jackson, the infected trainees were mostly asymptomatic and they are currently in isolation.



Catch up on the latest news. Read more here:
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he had signed an executive order to mail ballots to the states 20.6 million registered voters, citing potential health risks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Theres a lot of excitement around this Novembers election in terms of making sure that you can conduct yourself in a safe way, and make sure your health is protected, Newsom said Friday. In March, the state allowed ballots to be mailed in for its primary, which saw a record-high of 72 percent of all ballots that were cast by mail.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who heads the states elections, commended the move Its great for public health, its great for voting rights, its going to be great for participation, he said. California already allows for generous absentee voting, passing a 2002 decision which gives voters the option to request permanent voting by mail, regardless of the reason.

While Newsoms decision applies only to the November election, it could set a precedent for other Democratic states, with voting by mail quickly becoming a partisan issue. It comes after the states lawmakers and local officials requested the measure, saying coronavirus will severely hamper voting efforts, a complaint echoed by prominent Democrats.

Why should we be saying to people, Stand in line for hours, when we dont even want you leaving the house? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in April. But President Trump has repeatedly slammed calls for mail-in voting, saying last month that it lets people cheat and involves a lot of dishonesty.

Newsom said that his order would still allow an appropriate number of in-person voting sites, saying that some voters, including those that are disabled, require technological help to cast a ballot.

More from National Review
More tagged or ringed migratory birds return to roosting and feeding sites in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai than any other region in India.

Bird ringing is done by clipping a bird with a small metal ring to study and understand the routes they use to fly, their migration patterns and resting sites.

Of 10,803 individuals of migratory shore-birds across 46 species ringed in the Mumbai region between 2014 and 2020 (majorly from 2018 onwards) with a recapture rate - recording a ringed bird from the same spot where it was tagged - of 4.6% (497 birds), according to Maharashtras nodal agency for bird ringing studies, the Bombay Natural History Society that released data ahead of the 15th World Migratory Bird Day on Saturday. The high rate of birds flocking back show that inter-tidal mudflats in the Mumbai region provide essential feeding grounds for thousands of migratory birds and need to be protected, said researchers.

The recapture rate is significantly higher than otherwise recorded for bird ringing studies in India. The high recapture data is attributed to very high site fidelity for these migratory birds and intensive efforts of bird ringing over a long period, said Deepak Apte, director, BNHS.

More recent data from November 2019 to January 2020 showed 3,453 birds ringed by BNHS across wetlands near Bhandup pumping station in Mumbai, the Thane creek and TS Chanakya wetlands in Navi Mumbai. Of these, 3,415 were small waders and 38 flamingos with 160 recaptures during the exercise. Most of these winged visitors descend to Mumbai after spending the summer in Arctic Russia, said BNHS.

This kind of data repository is not available along the west coast for any location so far, including the Gujarat, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala coast, which witnesses the highest bird numbers, said Apte.

According to BNHS, a shore-bird ringed on the west coast of India carries a metal ring in one leg and two-coloured flags (one with alphanumeric engraving and another blank) in the other leg. The position of ring and flag also changes according to the year they are tagged. The left leg carries the metal ring during the odd year and right leg carries coloured flags and vice-versa for even year.

BNHS also collated 376 resighting records (tagged birds spotted rather than checked for details like alphanumeric engraving) from birders and wildlife photographers. Mark-recapture studies with migratory shorebirds have always proven to give low recapture rate and hence resighting records are also considered as recapture, said Rahul Khot, assistant director, BNHS. Interestingly, 80% of the recaptures recorded by us were from the sites where the birds were tagged. For example, a bird ringed in 2014 at Panje wetland in Uran was recaptured in 2018 in Panje even after four years.

Apart from the Lesser and Greater flamingos, birds ringed by BNHS include a large number of waders such as Little Stint, Curlew sandpiper, Lesser Sandplover, Common Redshank, and Black-tailed Godwit whereas rare species included Red-necked Phalarope, Spotted Redshank, and Bar-tailed Godwit.

Independent experts concurred with BNHS findings. The global recapture rate is around 2-3%, and this indicates that these Mumbai wetlands need to be conserved. However, we must try to understand how the migratory birds use these mudflats, whether they are becoming their winter homes permanently or these are stopover points for their final destination, said Dr Asad Rahmani, member, Wetlands International South Asia and former director, BNHS.

Sunjoy Monga, ornithologist said, The findings are accurate. A sizeable ringed population of birds frequenting key wetland sites annually makes it a clear case for protection of these wetlands.

World Migratory Bird Day

In 2006, the United Nations decided to celebrate the second weekend of May every year as World Migratory Bird Day in order to raise awareness about the migratory birds and their linkages between different regions across the globe. Every year a unique theme is chosen. This years theme is Birds connect our World, which was chosen to highlight the importance of conserving and restoring the ecological connectivity and integrity of ecosystems that support the natural cycles essential for the survival and well-being of migratory birds. During their annual cycle, flyways are used by birds for breeding, stopover, and wintering zones. Globally, nine migratory flyways have been identified under the Convention of Migratory Species (CMS). CAF is one of them covering migratory bird routes across 30 countries with maximum routes passing through India.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE MIGRATORY BIRDS

The highest flyer: Bar-headed Geese travel every year from their breeding grounds in China and Mongolia to India and while doing so they cross the Himalayas, flying above 29,000 feet. No other bird is able to do so.

The longest non-stop flyer: Bar-tailed Godwits are able to fly non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand during which they cover a staggering 11,000 km within six days. Before embarking on this journey around 55% of their body weight is stored as fats to power this tiring journey.

The all-time record holder: Arctic terns travel from the North Pole to South Pole and back. Studies indicate that on an average they travel up to 70,900 km annually. In their lifetime they would complete the distance equivalent to going to the Moon and back three times.

(Source: Siddhesh Surve, assistant director (capacity building), Maharashtra Mangrove Foundation)

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Hollywood actress and Save the Children ambassador Jennifer Garner showed her support to Meghan Markle through a sweet note.

The "Miracles from Heaven" actress took to Instagram and reposted Duchess Meghan's video of her reading the book "Duck! Rabbit!" to her one-year-old son, Archie Harrison.

Garner also wrote a heartfelt message and thanked the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for choosing the charity Save the Children -- a foundation which aims to support children through health care, better education, economic opportunities, and emergency aid.

"Dear Meghan and Harry, Thank you for sharing your gorgeous son with the world and allowing us to join you in celebrating his first birthday," she wrote.

"We are humbled and grateful that you chose @savewithstories to mark this special day and in so doing - have raised the visibility of @savethechildren's work in the US and UK and have helped feed and educate children in desperate need of both."

The "Daredevil" actress also shared how baby Archie's adorable video "lifts all of us up" amid the devastating health crisis.

Archie's First Birthday In Sunny Los Angeles

The video of Meghan and Prince Harry's son was originally posted by @savethestories, just in time for his special day.

The young Sussex, who just turned one on May 6, celebrated his first big milestone amid the lockdown in their secluded Malibu mansion.

While his birthday was certainly more low-key than his parents' original plan, it was reported that the couple treated baby Archie to his first-ever "smash cake."

The sweet video of Duchess Meghan and baby Archie gained positive response from the public, especially from the longtime Sussex supporters.

With this, an online campaign dubbed as #ArchieDay was launched by Meghan and Prince Harry's fans to support the former royal's charities.

The movement has raised more than $40,000, which will be used for COVID-19 relief efforts.

Unlike Jennifer

However, not everyone was impressed by the Sussexes' recent charity campaign.

New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin took to social media her dislike of the ex-royals.

The "Something Borrowed" writer and a self-described royal watcher, posted a series of Instagram stories as she wrote: "Happy birthday, Archie. Go away, Megan," while linking the clip of Meghan and Archie.

"Holy 'me first.' This is the Megan show. Why didn't she film and let Harry read? And why didn't she take the moment, in the end, to say 'he said, daddy!' Because that would make it about Harry for a split second, God forbid," Giffin added.

She also criticized how the family cries for privacy and yet they chose to upload the video with their son on social media.

Aside from this, she also called the 38-year-old Duchess "unmaternal" and "phony" for "poorly" portraying the role of a mother.

After being lashed out by the public, she turned her IG account to private and released a statement saying that she was "truly sorry for the negative impact" of her remarks to the Sussex family.

READ MORE: Royal Revelation: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's L.A. Mansion -- EXPOSED!
County officials also read more than half of the 60 comments residents submitted by email and phone ahead of the meeting. Nearly all of them were opposed.

I do take a little bit of satisfaction in county staff reading emails about how inept and unethical they were. But it left a lot to be desired from inflection and being able to read the room, said Rod Morgan, a local resident opposed to the project.

While the property has been zoned for industrial use for three decades, Wegmans sought to amend special zoning conditions the county adopted in 1995 to protect the surrounding residential community.

In exchange for some allowances, such as taller building heights and light poles, Wegmans offered to create larger buffers between the property and surrounding roads and a requirement for its trucks to use only Sliding Hill Road. It also offered to help pay for road improvements in the area.

Supervisors who voted for the new proffers said they think it will help protect the community better than the current zoning conditions.

After the vote, Supervisor W. Canova Peterson sought to clarify that the county did not choose the location for the project.
A group of nine Senators led by Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren penned an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos this week, seeking more information about recent employee firings. The statement cites the terminations of four employees who were vocally critical of the companys policies pertaining to both COVID-19 and climate change.

Cosigned by Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal and Tammy Baldwin, the letter notes:

Given the clear public history of these four workers advocacy on behalf of health and safety conditions for workers in Amazon warehouses preceding their terminations, and Amazons vague public statements regarding violations of internal policies, we are seeking additional information to understand exactly what those internal policies are.

It poses nine questions, asking Bezos and Amazon to respond by May 20. The senators single out the firings of Christian Smalls, Bashir Mohamed, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, all of whom have been publicly critical of the companys handling of COVID-19. A number of the above have stated publicly that they believe their terminations were directly linked to the whistleblowing  something Amazon has strongly denied.

We support every employees right to criticize their employers working conditions, the company said in a statement offered to TechCrunch at the time, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies.

Amazon lost another employee when VP Tim Bray publicly left the company on May 1, and workers across the country were striking over working conditions.

[R]emaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised, Bray wrote. So I resigned. The victims werent abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls. Im sure its a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

Story continues

The letter echoes Bray's concerns about inequality at the company, asking, "Do Amazon tech workers, Amazon warehouse workers, and Amazon executives have the same discipline and termination policies?"

This isnt the first time the senators have pushed back against Amazon. Sanders helped lead the push for a $15 minimum wage at the company, while Warren noted her desire to break up the company (along with Google and Facebook) during her 2020 presidential bid.

For its part, Amazon has been very conscious of the messaging around its coronavirus response in recent weeks. It played a prominent role in both Bezoss annual shareholder letter and the companys earnings report. Earlier this week, another warehouse employee died after testing positive for the virus. As of mid-April, workers in at least 74 Amazon warehouses had tested positive.

Weve reached out to the company for comment on the letter.
Defense cost-sharing should be mutually acceptable



Washington is again ramping up pressure on Seoul to shoulder a greater financial burden for the upkeep of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. This U.S. move is nothing new. But its unilateral and excessive demands are still a cause for concern for the host country.



President Donald Trump has renewed his pressure tactics by claiming that Seoul has agreed to pay "substantial money" for the stationing of U.S. troops in Korea. He made the remark to reporters Thursday during a White House meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He added, "We're spending all of this money. It costs us a lot of money  And if we're going to defend countries, they should also respect us by making a contribution."



What he said is wrong. South Korea has not yet reached any agreement with the U.S. on a defense cost-sharing formula. The country has continued to pay a fair share of the total costs. However, Trump was only trying to force Seoul to accept his irrational demand. So we can hardly understand why he has become undiplomatic and un-American in putting forward such a demand. How can the leader of a country make the case for a nonexistent agreement with another country?



His comment came as no surprise, though, given that he has made similar remarks before. Last week he told Reuters that Seoul agreed to pay more for the U.S. troop presence without saying how much. All this shows is that Trump is valuing U.S. financial gains over the Seoul-Washington alliance. His narrow-minded and selfish attitude will only undermine the traditionally strong ties between the countries.



More worrisome is that a senior U.S. official has asked South Korea to pay $1.3 billion a year for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops on the peninsula. He told the South's semi-official Yonhap News Agency that the U.S. request is its "final offer" and "quite reasonable." He even argued that the amount is far lower than Trump's original request of $5 billion. He also implied that Korea has done nothing while the U.S. has pared down the sum greatly. What nonsense!



Trump initially demanded that Seoul pay $5 billion this year, well over five times higher than last year's agreed payment of about $900 million. Then he recently rejected South Korea's offer to increase its contribution by 13 percent year-on-year, further stalemating the cost-sharing negotiations known as the Special Measures Agreement (SMA).



It is difficult for the Moon Jae-in administration to accommodate the new U.S. request for $1.3 billion. The government should not yield to the mounting U.S. pressure which will become more intense in the run-up to the November presidential election.



We urge the Trump administration to drop its unilateral and irrational demands and seek a compromise for mutually acceptable terms in defense cost-sharing negotiations. He had better put more value on the alliance and friendly relations between Seoul and Washington. Only then can the two countries narrow their differences and reach an agreement.




Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:16:57|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Some rumors claim that ultraviolet (UV) light and vitamin C can be used as medical treatments for COVID-19.

The fact is, experts have not found enough scientific evidence that the two can help people fight off the novel coronavirus.

"We would like to inform the public that there are no protocols to advise or permit the safe use of UV light directly on the human body at the wavelengths and exposures proven to efficiently kill viruses such as SARS-CoV-2," said a joint statement by industry groups the International Ultraviolet Association and RadTech North America.

Scientists believe that UV light is quite dangerous if used directly on human bodies.

"UV radiation can cause skin irritation and damage your eyes," said the World Health Organization.

"It is not safe to use UV sanitizers on your body," warned the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

"For years, we've used UV on air and surfaces and on hospital rooms, with no humans in the room," Jim Malley, a UV light expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire, told USA Today. "We protect ourselves in the laboratory with face shields and gloves to keep the UV away from our eyes and our skin."

Besides, experts remained skeptical about the UV blood irradiation (UBI), which involves withdrawing a measure of blood and exposes it to UV light.

The UBI is "an invasive treatment where lots of things might go badly wrong," wrote Edzard Ernest, professor emeritus at the University of Exeter, in April, adding that robust clinical trials on the UBI "are missing completely."

As for vitamin C, many scientists have suggested there is less evidence that it grants immunity against the virus, or alleviates symptoms for COVID-19 patients given a high dose.

William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. state of Tennessee, told The New York Times no evidence suggests that vitamin C supplements can help prevent COVID-19.

"If there's going to be an advantage, it's going to be very modest," he said.

Also, no results are yet available for the clinical trial launched on Feb. 11 by researchers from Zhongnan Hospital of China's Wuhan University to test the efficacy and safety of vitamin C infusions for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

According to media reports in April, Charles Mok, a 56-year-old Michigan doctor who claimed in multiple videos that vitamin C infusions supposedly reduce the severity of symptoms and the duration of illness, as well as boost the immunity of those who have a high risk for contracting COVID-19, has been charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Enditem
Amid a continuing rise in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19, the Union Health Ministry on Friday said people should "learn to live with the virus" while the nationwide tally of confirmed infections was seen fast approaching 60,000 and the death toll crossed 1,900.

The ministry also reeled off various datasets, including those showing a rising number of infection-free districts and an increasing recovery rate, to suggest success of the government's strategy in the COVID-19 fight, even as it sought "a behavioural change" and everyone's support in this massive challenge.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, however, admitted there has been no success yet in breaking the virus chain and said his government may seek deployment of central forces, if needed, to allow police to take rest in phases.

The state, which already tops the nationwide tally, reported 1,089 new cases of confirmed infection and 37 more fatalities on Friday. It now has 19,063 positive cases while the death toll has risen to 731, a health department official said.

Mumbai alone saw its tally of COVID-19 patients growing to 11,967 with 748 new cases, while its death toll has reached 462 with 25 more fatalities. The state's Health Minister Rajesh Tope said Mumbai should see a sharp decline in cases in the next 15-20 days.

Large numbers of new cases were also reported from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, while Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha also recorded higher tallies. Kerala and Himachal Pradesh reported only one fresh positive case each.

Concerns over the huge economic cost of the COVID-19 fight and the ongoing lockdown also appeared growing with Moody's Investors Service projecting India's economic growth at zero per cent for the current fiscal. It also said that a high government debt, weak social and physical infrastructure, and a fragile financial sector face further pressures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to experts, industrial and other business establishments may face a huge labour shortage once they resume operations after the lockdown, which has been in place since March 25 and is scheduled to continue till May 17. Lakhs of migrant workers have either left for their native places or are in the process of doing so, including by trains and buses arranged by central and state governments.

There are also worries that the virus spread may grow further in newer areas following these movements, while a large number of Indians stranded abroad have also begun returning home in special flights.

During a press briefing on the COVID-19 situation, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said, "As we talk of relaxations to the lockdown and of migrant workers returning back to their respective homes, there is a big challenge in front of us that we also have to learn to live with the virus."



"And when we are talking about learning to live with the virus then it is very important that the guidelines that are there on saving oneself from the virus are adopted in the community as a behavioural change," he said.

It is a big challenge and the government needs the community support for it, Agarwal added.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had also recently said the people will have to be ready to live with the novel coronavirus and that time has come to re-open the city.

Agarwal said there has been a reduction in the doubling time of COVID-19 cases in the country from 12 days till two days ago to 10 now because of the spike in cases at some places, but asserted that the peak of the disease can be avoided if the prescribed do's and don'ts are followed.

According to the daily morning update from the ministry, a total of 3,390 COVID-19 cases and 103 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours till Friday 8 AM, taking the total number of cases to 56,342 and death toll to 1,886.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by different states and union territories till 9 PM showed that at least 59,100 have tested positive so far across the country while 1,904 have died. This marks an increase of over 6,000 cases and nearly 100 deaths since Thursday morning.

Close to 17,000 COVID-19 patients have also recovered so far, giving a recovery rate of more than 29 per cent. The worldwide recovery rate has been hovering around 33 per cent for the past few days.

Since its outbreak in China last December, more than 38.6 lakh people have been found to be infected with this virus, while over 2.7 lakh have lost their lives. Nearly 13 lakh people have recovered so far, including about 2 lakh in the US.

In India, big urban centres across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi have been reporting large numbers of positive cases.

While rising numbers were reported from Mumbai, Nashik, Thane and Aurangabad, among other places, in Maharashtra on Friday as well, Tamil Nadu saw its tally rising by 600 to cross the 6,000-mark while its death toll also rose to 40.

On the outskirts of the national capital, Noida reported its first death while its tally of confirmed cases rose to 214.

Gujarat reported 390 new cases, taking its tally to 7,403, while the death toll also rose to 449 with 24 more patients dying in the last 24 hours.

Giving the district-wise situation of coronavirus cases, Agarwal said there are 216 districts in which no COVID-19 case has been reported till date.

On May 1, the ministry had divided 733 districts in the country into three zones -- 130 in red, 284 in orange and 319 in green.

Agarwal said 42 districts have had no fresh cases in the last 28 days while 29 districts have reported no new case in the last 21 days. Also, 36 districts have not registered any fresh cases in the last 14 days and 46 districts have had no fresh cases in the last seven days, he said.

In Kerala, which reported one solitary case during the day, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the state has flattened the COVID-19 curve.

He also said the state needed to be careful to avoid another wave of the deadly virus but asserted it was ready to fight it in such an event.

Among other people, several paramilitary personnel have also contracted the virus and one CISF official posted in Kolkata succumbed to COVID-19 on Friday. The number of active cases of the infection in the five paramilitary is more than 530, while thousands have been placed under preventive or clinical quarantine, officials said.

A total of five paramilitary personnel have died so far of COVID-19, two each from BSF and CISF and one from the CRPF.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday through video-conferencing inaugurated the strategically important Ghatiabagar-Lipulekh motor road that connects the last Indian post on the Indo-China border in Uttarakhand's Vyas valley.

Singh flagged off a caravan of nine vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji to mark the opening of the 75.54-km road.

The caravan included four small vehicles and some loaded vehicles of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Chief Engineer of Project Hirak, Vimal Goswami, said.

"After commissioning of the road, the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra from Lipulekh pass has become more convenient for pilgrims who can now return to India in one day after having the sacred darshan," he said.

With the inauguration of the strategically vital road, over 80-km of tough Himalayan terrain, between the Mangti camp near Tawaghat and Gunji in the Vyas valley, and the security posts on the Indian side of the border, have become accessible.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had announced last year that the road will be completed by April 2020.

"While 51-km long portions, beyond Bundi, were constructed much earlier, followed by a 23-km long portion from Tawaghat to Lakhanpur, the most tough portion between Lakhanpur to Bundi posed challenges and took much time," BRO officer Goswami said.

The construction of the road began in 2008 and was scheduled to be completed in 2013, but it got delayed due to the tough terrain in the portion between Nazang to Bundi village.

"The 15-km long most challenging portion of the road from Nazang to Bundi was outsourced in 2015 to a private company under technical guidance of BRO engineers, which completed the portion despite all odds before the set date by the minister last year," said the BRO officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brothers Scott and Chris Evans Sibling Dynamic, Explained

The Thing About Siblings: A Look at Life While Growing Up as An Evans

Sibling relationships can be unpredictable.

With so many contributing factors as to how the dynamic can shift over time  age, gender, sexuality, and so forth  the best case is to start by honing in on earlier moments in life, looking at key moments during adolescence that might hint at the possibility of a strong bond, or conversely, something with not much meaning.

But whats to come after that? How much do your siblings impact your life as you continue into adulthood? If you find yourself on similar career paths, is conflict inevitable?

To understand this a little better, we took a closer look at the relationship between Chris Evans (as in, Captain America Chris Evans) and his brother, Scott Evans.

RELATED: Know Who You Are Before You Get Into a Relationship, Says Freddie Prinze Jr.

Boys Will Be Boys

Upon speaking with Scott, almost immediately, he notes their brotherly bond is more unique than what might be expected from most siblings.

At the end of a school day, it's like, why would I invite a friend over when I have built in friends here? he says. My brother and I always say we were each other's first friend, first and best friend. [And] I still remember where things start to separate, where he starts to make real friends and I'm like, Oh, we're not going to hang out forever all the time? But then it translated into our adult life. There's always some bumps in the road, but we just have always stayed super close  probably annoyingly close.

Same could be said of his feelings towards their sisters Carly and Shanna, crediting both them and Chris as the ones who schooled him on all those essential life lessons throughout his teen years.

Scott Evans

They taught me everything in terms of when I went to high school ... I think the first time I drank was with them, stuff like that, says Scott. I learned about sex from them. Just everything that older siblings should be teaching you, that's who I went to with my questions. I think my older sister bought me booze before I was 21. You know, breaking rules, but it's what a sibling is supposed to do.

Scotts experiences are in alignment with what clinical psychologist Joshua Klapow, Ph.D. believes will occur when there are age gaps in play as siblings start to define their roles growing up.

Siblings very close in age (less than 2 years apart) are often compatible in a friend-to-friend manner, explains Klapow. Siblings far apart in age (over five years) often have a parent-child relationship that can be fruitful. Siblings a few years apart can be challenging as the younger often see the older as having privileges that they deserve  this is where competition and entitlement typically comes into play.

Being just two years (and three months) apart from Chris is something Scott particularly reveled in growing up, calling their closeness in age the greatest. With a link as unique as theirs, theres a shared internal storage facility of memories, easily accessible with something as simple as a text.

It's just, it's nice to have those nostalgic moments built in for life, he explains. It's not just me that experienced them. I got to experience them with somebody else, which is now, we basically share a brain.

Veering Off Course

And as they grew older, although he didnt necessarily feel like he had anything to prove as he matured, something psychotherapist Dr. Gary Brown believes might be true within a younger-older sibling relationship, Scott does consider his decisions post-high school, compared to his brothers, to be a bit different for one very specific reason.

When I was 17, 18, the path in my brain wasn't necessarily, Oh, do I follow his path? The path I wanted to explore and follow myself is not one he was taking because I like boys, he says.

I graduated high school early, and I moved to New York before I even knew I was going to college or anything. I need to go do this on my own, and sort of come out of the closet in my own time. Going to college was a very necessary step in order to have my formative years, which for everybody kind of happens in their teens, but for gay men that don't necessarily come out until later in life, it kind of happens a little later.

But in the case of two brothers close in age, with one straight and one gay, how much does a specific factor like sexual orientation influence the relationship? Will that ultimately strengthen their brotherly bond or cause them to lose out on an opportunity to bond?

Siblings can be really important sources of support for sexual minority youth during the coming out process, says Sarah Killoren, Ph.D., associate professor at University of Missouri. A sibling is usually the first family member to know about their brothers or sisters sexual identity and are often a supportive presence when youth come out to their parents. Some research shows that disclosure of sexual orientation can lead to more closeness in the sibling relationship.

Scott saved coming out to Chris for last by almost a full year, not because he was fearful the relationship would be damaged, but more so that he thought being gay was somehow letting his brother down.

Looking back now is so ridiculous, and it sucks that our minds are conditioned to think that way growing up, not by any fault of anybody else, just how society is and how you grow up, he says. You didn't see yourself in movies or on TV, and it just felt wrong. It just was not as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. If anything it brought us closer because now we're not competing for anything if we go to bars together.

Headed to Hollywood

Sexuality aside, there is a common thread that ties most of the Evans children together into their adult years: a passion for the arts. While one might assume Scott was eager to join his brother on the big screen, he credits his mother, who grew up as a dancer, as the one who truly got him falling head over heels for the craft.

Thats not to say Chris didnt have any influence, of course, with Scott referring to his brothers journey as a success story thats unmatched by a lot of the percentage of actors in Hollywood.

But with any two people close in age with similar aspirations, are those goals driven by trying to be equals, jealousy, or is it something else entirely?

Conflict and competition are not guaranteed. Siblings who share similar interests may be more likely to spend time together and create a strong bond, says Killoren. When younger siblings have similar interests and follow in the same career path as their older siblings, it is usually because younger siblings admire their older siblings and want to be like them. Also, in terms of careers, older siblings are in a great position to give their younger siblings advice when younger siblings are starting their careers.

When speaking with Scott, its as if he and Killoren were in the same room, echoing her sentiments by noting there was less of a rivalry and more of a want to emulate throughout his relationship with his brother.

There are things he teaches me everyday or things I teach him everyday, he says. We still will check in with each other and we're there for each other. There's no time for any sense of rivalry or competitive spirit. We're in different categories. I don't think we'll ever be going into the same spot as they were in the biz  but it's the complete opposite of a rivalry. It's more of just support and love.

An Unbreakable Brotherly Bond

That support and love is clearly unmatched, as evidenced by just about every interview theyve done together, or by mere seconds of the at-home videos on social media that showcase Chris buzzing away at Scotts head. Being able to feel a connection thatll carry on for life isnt always the case for siblings, but for Scott, just when he felt the relationship with his brother couldnt get any better, it did.

Dont worry @itskatelambert, my brother helped me even it out. ? pic.twitter.com/a2s2vaEQ9a  Scott Evans (@thescottevans) March 24, 2020

Were always covering new ground. Every Christmas, we're drinking wine and beer all day, and then by the end of the night, we discovered new things about each other and we're crying and we're bonding, he explains. It's like there's never something we're not learning about each other, and there's never a fear of telling each other stuff. These are the people that you want to share your good news with, these are the people you want to share your sad days with.

Klapow points out that like any other relationship, the ability to change is always present. As the years go by, theres the possibility that relationships will shift in various directions as each individual gains life experience and evolves in their own way.

There is almost a pre-adulthood and post-adulthood relationship dynamic  each defining a very different relationship quality, he adds. Change is possible, but each interaction over time sets the stage for interactions later in life. [And] gay versus straight matters only in so much as the heterosexual brother embraces his brother as an equal and as a brother. The relationship there is critical for the overall compatibility.

Some arent as lucky to develop such a strong connection to their siblings, but as you can tell, the Evans siblings  especially Scott and Chris, in particular  are an inseparable pair in it for the long haul.

You reach a point where it's like, OK, this has got to be a solidified bond, says Scott. Some friends you're like, We're going to be best friends forever, [but] then they end. But with Chris, this is going to be a best friendship ... for forever.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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German flagship carrier Lufthansa said it would start flying 80 more of its aircraft again in June, including to serve tourism destinations after the company grounded much of its vast fleet due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The group, which includes Swiss International Air Lines and Austrian Airlines, said it was responding to growing customer demand following the easing of restrictions in Germany and other countries.
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A rtists are continuing to rally together to find ways to raise money for the NHS.

DrawFor, a not-for-profit social enterprise, has this week started recruiting artists for its #DrawForNHS campaign. Its Instagram feed is full of striking limited-edition prints, which are being sold at affordable prices to support NHS Charities Together. The limited edition prints will be available to purchase through the website at 20 each from Friday.

DrawFor founder Sam Sutaria said: We launched the #DrawForNHS campaign to try and spread a little colour and creativity in the community during this difficult time. The response weve seen so far has been amazing.

DrawFor is asking artists, designers and illustrators to contribute to the campaigns debut series, which will showcase the wide-ranging talent of emerging and independent artists. The first release is set to feature original prints from cult artists including Caterina Bianchini, Arthur Rambo and Alva Skog.

Artists are encouraged to sign up via the social enterprises website, DrawFor.org.
Napa Countys updated COVID-19 shelter-at-home order has a cloth face mask requirement and allowances for more retail businesses and outdoor activities.

The countys previous order strongly recommended people wear cloth face coverings in public places. The revised order requires Napans as of Saturday to wear coverings in businesses and workplaces when interacting with any person and six feet of physical distancing cannot be accomplished.

That language might seem to leave wiggle room. Dr. Karen Relucio, county public health officer, and county Board of Supervisors Chair Diane Dillon gave their interpretations on Thursdays Napa County Facebook Live show.

Face coverings are going to be required if you go in indoor spaces, Relucio said. Especially if you cannot physically distance from someone. For example, if you go to grocery stores or you do some essential activities indoors, the customers must wear face coverings when they go into a store.

Dillon said as more businesses open, more people will be out-and-about.

Its why Dr. Relucio in her new order mandates having a cloth mask whenever one goes into a building such as a grocery store, pharmacy or whatever, Dillon said.

Only a few non-essential stores seemed to be open Friday morning in Napa, less than 24 hours after the state issued its new guidelines. What Napa Countys new shopping world is like under COVID-19 restrictions should become clearer in coming days.

Dana Voshall of Napa on Friday stood outside BevMo! near Jefferson Street wearing a cloth face covering. He agreed that face coverings should be a requirement.

It should be until all of this is over with, Voshall said. Why not? Why not be safe?

Face coverings are not required when doing such things as hiking, biking and running. Children under age 2 are not to wear coverings and coverings are not recommended for children under age 6, the order said.

Violations of the countys latest order are punishable by fines or jail or both, the order states.

The reason for face coverings is to prevent asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 from the wearer to others. Some Napans have criticized the county for not earlier joining other counties in requiring face coverings.

California is allowing counties to permit lower-risk retail such as sporting goods stores, clothing stores and books stores to reopen with curbside pickup. Napa Countys revised shelter-at-home order takes the state up on the offer.

It does not mean a return to normal, state Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Mark Ghaly said at a Thursday press conference. We know COVID-19 is still spreading.

Customers could see such things as hand sanitizer outside the door of stores and staff with gloves and masks delivering goods to cars, he said.

But whether customers in any instances might be able to enter these retail stores, as they do grocery stores and other essential businesses that never closed, remained unclear Friday morning.

A state website gives guidance for lower-risk retail stores that includes such actions as closing in-store bars and bulk bins and providing separate entrances and exits. Some locations should be pickup and delivery only, when possible, it said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday appeared at a Sacramento florist and talked about businesses having curbside pickup. He said restrictions would mean businesses would be surviving rather than thriving.

The guidance also mentions stores having a written, worksite-specific COVID-19 prevention plan, performing a comprehensive risk assessment of all work areas and designating a person to implement the plan.

Dillon on Napa County Facebook Live gave her idea of how Napa County retail might look. She described a St. Helena paint store that as an essential business allows customers to order and pay by phone and then pick up their merchandise at a table outside the store.

We really need to put our local workers back to work, Dillon said. We want our sales tax dollars spent here.

That said, she and Relucio stressed safety.

Just because there is some loosening of the governors stay-at-home order doesnt mean there isnt the risk of COVID-19, Relucio said. COVID-19 is here to stay for awhile.

Newsom during a Thursday press conference encouraged businesses to post a checklist to make customers feel more confident. Items include having COVID-19 training for workers, cleaning-and-disinfecting protocols and physical distancing policies.

Furniture 4 Less on Main Street in Napa on Friday morning had its open sign lighted and its front doors open. Owner Luis Salem showed a list of permitted retail businesses under the new state rules issued and one is furnishings.

It looks OK, he said, wearing a mask inside the store.

No customer was in the store at the time. Salem said maintaining physical distancing shouldnt be a problem.

We usually get one customer every two to three hours, he said.

He has been waiting for the chance to reopen.

Absolutely ... I have my house payment, Salem said.

Craig Smith of the Downtown Napa Association on Friday morning addressed the changes to the state and county shelter-at-home orders that allow for more retail.

Thats certainly a move in the direction of getting back open and will be helpful with Mother Days weekend, he said. But its tough. If you put yourself in a shoppers position ... How do you buy and then pick up at the curb? It will work with some items.

The revised county outdoor activity list allows the reopening of public and homeowners association swimming pools and tennis courts. In both cases, users must practice physical distancing.

Editors Note: Because of the health implications of the COVID-19 virus, this article is being made available free to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. If youd like to join us in supporting the mission of local journalism, please visit napavalleyregister.com/members/join/.

You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com.

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A 30-year-old man was thrashed by a Delhi Police constable for allegedly "hugging people" in Southwest Delhi's Sagarpur area, following which the policeman was suspended, officials said on Friday.

The entire incident, which took place on Wednesday, was captured on a video which has gone viral on social media.

In the video, a policeman is seen thrashing the man with a stick.

The locals along with the constable are also seen hitting the man, when he tries to walk away.

When a passerby asks why the man is being thrashed, someone says the man was hugging people in the park, according to the video.

The victim has been identified as Imran, a resident of Sagarpur in southwest Delhi.

According to the family members, Imran had gone to a mosque after which he went to his elder sister's house, who also lived in the same locality.

The incident took place when Imran was returning home from her place.

"When Imran was returning home, he saw the police near the park. He got scared and started running as he thought he was violating the lockdown.

"The policeman followed him and started thrashing him. They alleged that he had coronavirus. People also joined the policeman in hitting him. Imran does not have coronavirus, but even if he did, the police should have taken him to a hospital for treatment and informed us," one of Imran's family members said.

Police said they have identified the constable.

"The policeman, who is seen in the video, has been identified. He is a constable posted at Sagarpur police station. He has been suspended and a departmental enquiry against him is underway," a senior police officer said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BRIDGEPORT  Just before noon Thursday, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz looked over the line of cars stretching through the Bass Pro Shops parking lot and the two lines of volunteers filling the opposite sides of trunks with needed food.

It was overwhelming, she said.

The cars didnt stop coming, said Bysiewicz, who spent an hour loading five-pound bags of apples into trunks. My grandparents used to talk about the soup lines during the Great Depression. What Ive been seeing is our equivalent of the 1930s.

Local food pantries are seeing a run on their supplies like never before. Grocery chains and their distributors, which are often the biggest donors to local food banks, are dealing with their own supply shortages.

Add to this the 440,000 Connecticut residents without weekly paychecks because of the coronavirus shutdowns and waiting for their unemployment benefits.

Thats equivalent of nearly three years of filings, Bysiewicz said.

So events like Thursdays, where Connecticut Food Bank volunteers and staff efficiently worked to deliver nearly 32 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, bread, canned and packaged soups and more, have been especially needed by the thousand or so families who attended, officials said. The give-away ran from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

I had a chance to thank those for coming, Bysiewicz said. I could see the smiles of appreciation on their faces... People are grateful that someone is trying to help them. They are going through all kinds of stresses during this pandemic.

I saw the lines. I was unbelievable, said John Vazzano, owner of the Vazzys restaurants.

On Thursday, he was involved in his own distribution of 700 free meals to nurses and doctors at Bridgeport Hospital, St. Vincents Medical Center, Milford Hospital and Griffin Hospital in Derby.

Its tough out there, Vazzano said.  I have people coming to our restaurants asking if theres anything left over. People need food and they dont have the money.

The spike in need caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is being felt across all six counties, said Paul Shipman, senior director of marketing, communications and government relations at the Connecticut Food Bank. We are buying food at a pace we never saw before.

He said the normal course of donations to the food back comes from growers, grocers and distributors. But the shift from dining out to cooking at home and the impact the pandemic has had in terms of infections, shutdowns and consumer purchases has led to the Food Bank having to purchase items, he said.

Many of our partner agencies are being overwhelmed and its important we make every effort to provide as much relief as we can, he said.

On Friday, Stop and Shop announced it plans to donate 16 tons of food worth about $55,000 to the Connecticut Food Bank warehouse, 2 Research Parkway in Wallingford. The food includes rice, canned vegetables, tomato sauce, shelf stable milk, cereal, soups, pasta meals, peanut butter, beans, potatoes and macaroni and cheese. The food will be distributed to 117 local food pantries in Fairfield County serving families in need.

Stop and Shop is proud of our long history of supporting the Connecticut Food Bank in their mission to serve those facing food insecurity, said Rudy DiPietro, Stop and Shops vice president of operations. We are honored to make this emergency relief contribution which will assist the Connecticut Food Bank in providing food to so many families that suddenly find themselves in need.

Bysiewicz said Guidas Dairy has donated thousands of gallons of milk for distribution to needy families in the past few weeks.

Our farmers and dairies are donating, not dumping, their surplus, the lieutenant governor said.

She also reminded people who are newly unemployed that they can apply for SNAP benefits by contacting their local or the state Social Service office.

No one should feel embarrassed about doing so, she said.

Future Connecticut Food Bank Mobile Pantry food distributions are posted at http://www.ctfoodbank.org/mobilepantry.

Bysiewicz said she saw volunteers maintaining social distancing and wearing masks and gloves.

Dan Gomez, Connecticut Food Bank CEO, noted that Connecticut Food Bank is doing everything possible to ensure the safety of our volunteers.

Anyone interested in making a financial donation may mail it to Connecticut Food Bank, 2 Research Parkway, Wallingford, Ct. 06492.
The teaser for HBOs horror drama, Lovecraft Country, has ignited fan frenzy on Twitter, and with good reason. The imagery in the trailer is stunning and the creative minds behind the show have legit Hollywood cred. Co-executive producers Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams are experts when it comes to bringing fantastical material to life. And based on Peeles recent tweet about Lovecraft Country showrunner, Misha Green, the media maven has what it takes to make the show a hit. Heres how it all played out on Twitter.

Jordan Peele | Brad Barket/Getty Images for Fast Company

Lovecraft Country combines horror with historical fiction

According to HBO.com, Lovecraft Country is a historical drama that centers around characters living during Americas violent Jim Crow era. But in a twist, the protagonists must combat both the figurative monster of racism and literal supernatural terrors that go bump in the night.

Co-executive producers Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams bring know-how to the show

'Lovecraft Country' Trailer: Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams Bring Supernatural Terror to HBO https://t.co/7F0wrnEtaG pic.twitter.com/Et4aWile1D  Peter Sciretta (@slashfilm) May 1, 2020

With horror and sci-fi gurus Peele and Abrams as co-executive producers behind Lovecraft Country, the show has the potential to exceed all expectations.

Peele gave audiences a serious case of the creeps with his feature films, Get Out and Us, as well as TVs The Twilight Zone reboot. The filmmaker is also the producer behind the upcoming horror sequel, Candyman. Abrams has been the creative force behind such television programs as Alias, Lost, and Fringe, as well as films including Star Trek and Super 8, just to name a few.

Jordan Peele called showrunner, Misha Green, a genius

Peele co-created Lovecraft Country alongside Green, and he has recently expressed his confidence in her abilities as the showrunner. In a recent tweet, Peele wrote, Follow Misha Green, please. Shes a genius, and she made Lovecraft Country.

Shes a QUEEN! replied Robin Thede, creator of HBOs A Black Lady Sketch Show.

Another fan noted, Just so everyone is clear, the showrunner of Lovecraft Country is a Black woman, Misha Green, who was also behind Underground.

Green created Underground, which only aired for two seasons, but was met with critical acclaim. Astute viewers will note that Green has tapped the Underground leading lady, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, again. Smollett-Bell will star in Lovecraft Country alongside Michael Kenneth Williams, Courtney B. Vance, and Jonathan Majors.

Fans are pumped for Lovecraft Country

I am ready for Lovecraft Country. Please bring it to me soon, tweeted screenwriter Arash Amel.

That sentiment echoes throughout the Twitter-verse. Since the first trailer dropped, fans have been in a tizzy, and theyve been tweeting all about it. Even A-list celebrities like Regina King joined the conversation in anticipation of the show.

Green took to Twitter and empathized with eager fans in a comment by comparing their excitement to her feelings about HBOs Game of Thrones. In a tweet, she wrote:

Love reading everyones comments and excitement for the show. I wish we could drop it sooner too, but worlds and monsters take a grip to finish. And my greedy a** didnt want to wait the whole season to see dragons.

Read more: Watchmen Star Regina King Cant Wait for HBOs Lovecraft Country (And Neither Can Fans)
WhatsApp has become the main



communication tool for a police station in Akola in Maharashtra in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak as a large number of the 90 villages under its jurisdiction are tribal-dominated, and many are nestled in the Satpura mountain range and difficult to reach.

A WhatsApp group comprising the sarpanch of villages, the police patil, gram sevak, important functionaries and health workers is now the driving force behind the efforts to ensure COVID-19 does not spread to these hamlets, said Inspector Dnyanoba Phad of Akot Rural police station, some 50 kilometres from the district headquarters.

"Every important message on the outbreak, state and Central government announcements, pleas to adhere to social distancing and lockdown norms are being disseminated through this WhatsApp group," Phad told PTI on Friday.

"It is having the desired impact as the recipients and subsequently the villagers know the source of information is authentic. All 90 villages, even those in the Satpura range, in our police station limits are connected to this group. Even complaints about lockdown violations are relayed on this group by alert citizens quickly," he added.

Savra village police patil Shilpa Sapakal was all praise for the group and said it kept even far-flung villages in Akot connected to the authorities in these distressing times.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Democrats lined up Thursday to condemn attorney general Bill Barr over the decision to try to drop the case against Mike Flynn.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described dropping the prosecution of the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as Donald Trump's 'cronies' being 'taken care of.'

And House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler said the evidence against Flynn was 'overwhelming' and that he would question Barr on the move at a committee hearing.

The stunning turn of events came on a day of drama in the Justice Department which first saw the career prosecutor in charge of the case quit - then minutes later the revelation that the department would now ask a federal judge to acquit Flynn.

Flynn, who remains a convicted felon with the threat of jail hanging over him unless the judge agrees to the request, was described by Donald Trump at the White House as a 'great warrior.'

On CBS Evening News, Barr claimed he had not acted in line with the president's wishes but 'the law, as I see it.'

Cleared if a judge agrees: Mike Flynn was told by the Department of Justice that it is no longer supporting his prosecution. He already pleaded guilty; a federal judge will now decide if he should be cleared

Celebration: The former three-star general marked the Justice Department move by posting a video of his grandson reciting the pledge of allegiance

Democrats however slammed the move.

'President Trump doesnt care about you. He doesnt care about your health. He doesnt care about your family. He doesn't care about testing. He just cares that his cronies are taken care of,' Schumer tweeted.

Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment of Donald Trump, said that Flynn was not exonerated by the move and added: 'But it does incriminate Bill Barr. In the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history.'

Nadler tweeted: 'Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case.'

And Rep. Eric Swalwell said: 'The decision to overrule the special counsel is without precedent and warrants an immediate explanation.'

In contrast Trump's most fanatical Republican defenders celebrated.

Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: 'Flynn case dropped! Justice for the General. Now its time to hold someone accountable.'

And Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who is a member of the committee told Fox Business Network demanded 'prosecutions' for 'these people' although he named nobody.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the Russia probe. He also admitted to failing to register as a foreign agent due to his lucrative work for the Turkish government while serving as a campaign advisor to the Trump campaign.

Trump said of Flynn, whom he fired and who cooperated with Mueller's investigators while facing prosecution: 'I'm very happy for General Flynn. He was a great warrior and he still is a great warrior. In my book, he's an even greater warrior.'

The move is a sudden reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller's prosecutors pressed the case against Flynn, which had attracted special interest from Trump since the beginning. He asked former FBI director James Comey about letting the case go, Comey testified in Congress.

According to Comey's notes, Trump also said of his national security advisor: 'The guy has serious judgment issues.'

The move, which must still be approved by the judge overseeing the case, comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview.

President Trump said Thursday that Flynn was an 'innocent man'

Flynn cooperated extensively with Robert Mueller's investigators before his sentencing

Michael Flynn, former U.S. national security adviser, center, arrives at federal court in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. President Donald Trump offered public well wishes to Flynn, hours before his former national security adviser was set to be sentenced for lying to investigators about his contacts during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador

Robert Mueller's team retraced Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, and what he told Trump officials about them

A U.S. attorney picked by Attorney General William Barr spoke to him about the change in posture, which Barr agreed with

Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as he investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case 'after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.'

The documents were obtained by The Associated Press.

The Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn's interview by the FBI was 'untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn' and that the interview on January 24, 2017 was 'conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.'

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, recommended the move to Attorney General William Barr last week and formalized the recommendation in a document this week.

'Through the course of my review of General Flynn's case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,' Jensen said in a statement.

'I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.'

But the lead career prosecutor on Thursday abruptly withdrew from handling the case.

Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack did not provide an explanation for why he was withdrawing from the case in a court filing.

Van Grack also on Thursday withdrew from handling other cases for the Justice Department, according to court filings. A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Van Grack's departure comes less than three months after Attorney General William Barr said he was appointing Jensen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the Justice Department's handling of the case.

Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia's ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office, marking one of the first cases to emerge from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Flynn's defense team, led by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, had frequently attacked Van Grack's integrity as part of a broader effort to convince a judge that the FBI framed and entrapped Flynn.

That pressure increased last week, after partially redacted documents turned over to Flynn's defense and then made public in the court record showed more about the FBI's thinking ahead of its interview with Flynn.

The decision is certain to be embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the case and last week pronounced Flynn 'exonerated,' and energize supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as something of a cause celebre.

But it may also add to Democratic concerns that Attorney General William Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months has sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

'This is outrageous!' fumed House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler on Twitter. 'Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case.'

Tweeted former FBI director James Comey: 'The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.'

Although the prosecutor did not reveal his reasons for withdrawing, the case echoed developments in the Roger Stone case in February. Four federal prosecutors took themselves off the case after Barr and the Justice Department to lower a prison sentence of up to nine years.

Barr is also saying a broader look at the origins of the Russia probe and alleged FBI misconduct.

According to the Mueller report, Flynn had multiple contacts with Russia's then-ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition, when the Obama administration was still steering foreign policy.

They communicated on the explosive topic of U.S. sanctions but in place over election interference and the invasion of Crimea.

'On December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him that Flynns request had been received at the highest levels and Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to the request,' according to the report.

Flynn after public denied having discussed sanctions with Kislyak. According to the Mueller report, 'Flynn repeated that claim to Vice President-Elect Michael Pence and to incoming press secretary Sean Spicer.'

It was his lie to Pence that Trump and the White House cited as the reason Trump fired him after just weeks on the job. The false statements 'alarmed senior DOJ officials, who were aware that the statements were not true.'

'Those officials were concerned that Flynn had lied to his colleagueswho in turn had unwittingly misled the American publiccreating a compromise situation for Flynn because the Department of Justice assessed that the Russian government could prove Flynn lied,' according to the report.

FBI documents related to the investigation of Michael Flynn reveal that the bureau was planning to close a probe in early 2017 of whether he was a Russian asset due to a lack of 'derogatory' evidence.

Documents unsealed late last month show FBI officials discussed whether to get Flynn 'to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired' during a bureau interview with the former Trump national security advisor about Kislyak.

A January 4, 2017 FBI memo described an FBI look at Flynn to see if he was 'wittingly or unwittingly' involved in activity on behalf of Russia. It noted pubic reporting on Flynn's trip to Russia where he attended a dinner with Vladimir Putin.

The FBI reached out to another agency whose name was blacked out, and it found 'no derogatory information' on Flynn. An additional agency also turned up no derogatory information.

Barr's approval is just the latest time when the loyalist has acted to facilitate Trump's moves against the Russia probe and its fallout. He infuriated Democrats by issuing his own letter summarizing the Mueller report after obtaining it, while Trump described it as a complete exoneration. Barr tapped a career U.S. attorney to look at FBI conduct. And although he urged Trump to stop commenting publicly on the Flynn case, the department's actions provided a result in line with what the president wanted.

Barr defended the move on Flynn in an interview with CBS to air Thursday night. 'I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There's only one standard of justice. And I believe that ... justice in this case requires dismissing the charges against Gen. Flynn,' he said.
If theres one thing that unites us, its the ability to pass the buck. Its never our fault, and theres always someone else to accuse. As Charlie Campbell writes in Scapegoat: In the beginning there was blame. Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and weve been hard at it ever since. It is our original sin, this refusal to accept responsibility for our actions.

Pointing fingers at other countries, cultures, and communities, then, is as old as the Himalayas. The digital age has only amplified this tendency. Tweets, posts and comments dealing with pseudo-science, conspiracy theories and dark rumours drown out realistic assessments. In Campbells words, there might not be a cure, but theres always a culprit.

Societies need scapegoats in order to feel better about themselves. The Americans hounded so-called witches in Salem, the French prosecuted Albert Dreyfus, and the Russians held Rasputin responsible for the state of the nation. At times, such practices become ritualised, part of hoary tradition, with whipping boys, cleansing rituals and purification ceremonies.

Take for instance the concept of the sin-eater that was observed in many cultures. Such a person was called upon to consume a symbolic meal at a funeral, typically of bread. This practice would enable him to absorb the misdeeds of the deceased, and thus safeguard the entire community.

Few works of fiction have captured the smug self-satisfaction of scapegoating  and the attendant horrors -- better than Shirley Jacksons much-anthologised and dissected short story, The Lottery. Over the years, its been adapted for stage, TV, opera, and ballet, and even featured in an episode of The Simpsons. However, after it was first published in an issue of the New Yorker in 1948, the magazine was flooded by angry letters and subscription cancellation requests  the most mail it had ever received in response to a short story.

Bewilderment, speculation and abuse

Many readers called it outrageous, gruesome, or utterly pointless. Jackson herself was later to recall that the letters contained three main themes: bewilderment, speculation, and plain old-fashioned abuse. Such is the consistency of trolls.

Ruth Franklin, Jacksons biographer, has written that The Lottery takes the classic theme of mans inhumanity to man and gives it an additional twist: the randomness inherent in brutality. It contains no unnecessary dramatics and flourishes. Jackson makes the tale unfold in a simple, unfussy manner and this goes a long way to enhance its startling impact.

The story is set in a nondescript New England village on a clear summer morning when the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.Schoolchildren play while stuffing stones into their pockets  an ominous foreshadowing  while men speak of planting and rain, tractors and taxes, and women exchange bits of gossip as they go to join their husbands.

The residents are gathering in the public square for a lottery that is to be conducted by an individual of the type who is perfectly ordinary and perfectly familiar. Round-faced and jovial, he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold.

It becomes clear that the lottery is an annual event, perhaps a harvesting tradition, and a ritual cherished by the village. When one character mentions that some other communities have abandoned the practice, she is told by an old-timer that there has always been a lottery. Those thinking of giving it up are just a pack of young fools.

The assembled families start to draw slips from a shabby black box. Missing people are accounted for, and those who draw blanks heave sighs of relief. Slowly and alarmingly, the purpose of the draw becomes evident. Its the victimisation at the heart of an utterly ordinary situation which makes The Lottery so unnerving, and which caused its first readers to react the way they did.

In a disconcertingly apt comment, the novelist AM Homes remarked that Jacksons characters are trapped by the petty prejudices of people who make themselves feel good by thinking they are somehow better than us all. Its a trait thats hardly confined to characters in fiction.

Jackson went on to compose many other spooky, well-regarded stories and novels, especially The Haunting of Hill House, a cryptic Gothic fantasy. She once said that she wrote because of a fascination for the uncontrolled, unobserved wickedness of human behaviour.

With The Lottery, such behaviour is enshrined in a form of tradition, in following the herd, and in a blindness to consequences. In this way, Jackson unpicked a seam of human conduct that has stayed scarily relevant, especially in our pandemic-stricken times.

As Jonathan Lethem once put it, she wrote about the mundane evils hidden in everyday life and about the warring and subsuming of selves in a family, a community and sometimes even in a single mind. In such a lottery, there are no winners.

Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.
ANN ARBOR, MI  Like in its neighboring counties, Washtenaw County has seen its fair share of COVID-19 news this week.

But, aside from the increasing number of positive COVID-19 cases being confirmed throughout the week, there were other stories reported about the Washtenaw County community.

From the Ann Arbor Art Fair being cancelled due to COVID-19 outbreak concerns to Michigan Medicine announcing it is furloughing 1,400 hospital employees, a lot has been going on in the Ann Arbor area.

Here are some you might have missed this week.

Ann Arbor Art Fair canceled due to coronavirus

The Ann Arbor Art Fair will not go on.

Organizers announced that the annual festival, which attracted about 400,000 attendees, is canceled due to the coronavirus. The art fair would have been the 61st annual event and was expected to run from Thursday, July 16 to Sunday, July 19, according to the festival website. In March, organizers expected to move forward with the event, while keeping an eye on the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michigan Medicine to furlough 1,400 employees, delay construction on new hospital

Citing significant financial losses from the lack of elective procedures and other suspensions of hospital services during the coronavirus crisis, Michigan Medicine will furlough or lay off 1,400 employees, it announced Tuesday.

University and hospital officials project a loss of $230 million in the 2019-2020 fiscal year and expect the losses to continue, they said in a May 5 news release.

New cross-examination rule in campus sexual assault cases reflects past court rulings against University of Michigan

When colleges across the country begin holding live hearings with cross-examination in campus sexual assault cases as a result of new federal Title IX rules delivered Wednesday, theyll closely reflect court rulings that have gone against the University of Michigan in recent years.

Under the new policy announced by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on May 6, cross-examination is allowed under a live hearing model, which is in step with a 2018 ruling from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that UM could not punish a student for sexual misconduct without providing an opportunity to directly question the accuser.

Ypsilanti approves funding for rent, mortgage relief for residents impacted by coronavirus outbreak

Anticipating long-term impacts the coronavirus outbreak could have on residents ability to pay their mortgages and rent, officials in Ypsilanti plan to allocate funds to support those in need of relief.

Ypsilantis City Council on Tuesday, May 5 voted to direct its city manager to develop plans for allocating $75,000 to Washtenaw Countys Barrier Busters program for rent, mortgage and utility relief.

Ann Arbor City Council approves $250,000 for emergency sheltering amid COVID-19

The city of Ann Arbor will contribute up to $250,000 toward sheltering the countys homeless population amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

City Council unanimously approved appropriating the funding from its Community Development budget to cover costs incurred by the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County in March and April.

Capacity constraints caused by the need to maintain safe social distancing inside Ann Arbors Delonis Center have necessitated the funding of hotel rooms and congregate sites for the countys homeless population.

University of Michigan provost cautiously optimistic for in-person fall semester

University of Michigan Interim Provost Susan Collins has charged seven university committees with planning fall academic activities, maintaining she is cautiously optimistic the university will be able to deliver as much in-person instruction as possible.

In a letter to the university on April 1, Collins shared that UM has formed six topic-focused committees and one coordinating committee to develop campus guidelines for the fall semester, working with both Student Life and the committees President Mark Schlissel appointed to consider public health and medical concerns.

Tire tracks tarnish $15,000 worth of wet concrete in Ann Arbor area road construction

Police are looking for a suspect that left several feet of tire tracks in recently poured concrete on an Ann Arbor area road construction project.

Construction workers discovered the damage Wednesday morning, May 6 in the area of Wagner and Ann Arbor-Saline roads in Lodi Township southwest of Ann Arbor.

The damage is estimated at more than $15,000.

Police seek suspected gunman in Ypsilanti Township liquor store shooting

A gunman remained at large Tuesday after a weekend shooting outside an Ypsilanti Township party store left one man injured.

The male suspect and the 26-year-old male victim from Van Buren Township were involved in an altercation, along with several other individuals, in the strip mall parking lot, police said. The fight escalated and the shooter pulled out a handgun and fired multiple rounds at the victim, hitting him twice, police said.

Ypsilanti area farmers take online approach to sell fresh, local produce

The Ypsi Area Online Market website launched May 1, allowing customers to purchase fresh, local foods online. Customers can place orders online, and drive to a pickup location to collect food items.

The second round of ordering opens May 7 and ends May 10. Food options include dairy products, fruits, vegetables, meats, coffee, and pre-made food items.

Washtenaw County board allocates nearly $10M in crisis funding

Nearly $10 million in federal grants and county funds will be paid out to agencies and organizations in Washtenaw County to support various services during the coronavirus crisis.

The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners allocated the funds Wednesday.

Changes may be coming to Ann Arbor streets to allow safer social distancing

Ann Arbor officials are giving serious consideration to reconfiguring streets to allow pedestrians and cyclists to practice safer social distancing.

City Council voted 11-0 Monday night, May 4, to direct city staff to take several actions, including implementing pilot lane or street reconfigurations on some residential streets as soon as possible based on resident requests.

Scio Township sells ancestral farm as part of land preservation plan

A nine-month plan to buy, protect and sell farmland in Scio Township has come to fruition after officials found a private partner and sold the land, the township announced Wednesday.

Scio Townships Land Preservation Program bought a 160-acre historic farm for $2.3 million in July 2019 to prevent the agricultural parcel from becoming another spot for Ann Arbor suburban sprawl. The goal was to buy it before developers swoop in, then sell it to private owners under protections from development and make it eligible for grants and conservation easements, leaders said in August 2019.

Ypsilanti Township Board votes no confidence in clerk

Elected officials in Ypsilanti Township declared they had no confidence in the township clerk Tuesday night after allegations of collusion and discrepancies on election filings.

The Board of Trustees voted 5-2 in the formal condemnation of Clerk Karen Lovejoy Roe. She and Trustee Heather Jarrell Roe voted against it.

Lovejoy Roes colleagues alleged last month that the clerk had colluded with Jarrell Roe, her daughter-in-law, to keep the clerk position in the family. Lovejoy Roe has been involved in Ypsilanti Township politics in various roles since 1988.

Ann Arbor bus system gets $20.7M in federal funding

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (TheRide) is receiving $20.7 million in federal aid amid the coronavirus crisis.

The funding stems from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and will go toward operating bus routes in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, announced. Since the outbreak began, TheRide reduced routes and the number of passengers per ride, waived fares, and laid off 42 employees.

Fear, uncertainty surround downtown Ann Arbors potentially years-long recovery from pandemic

As local leaders look ahead to Ann Arbors recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, one measure of economic health is parking revenue.

Parking fees collected by the Downtown Development Authority plummeted in March as the outbreak hit, businesses closed, University of Michigan shut down, students fled and downtown became a ghost town.

The DDA is bracing for the possibility that things may not return to normal for a while, and there may be a years-long climb back to a vibrant downtown environment.
Photo credit: ESO/L. Calcada

From Popular Mechanics

Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced the discovery of the closest known black hole to Earth.

The black hole is 1,000 light-years away and can be found at the center of a star system in the Telescopium constellation.

There could be millions of other black holes spread across the galaxy that astronomers haven't yet observed.

Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Eartha cool 1,000 light-years away from our planet, hiding in the constellation Telescopium. The cosmic marvel in question belongs to a two-star system called HR 6819. Astronomers believe there may be a lot more of these elusive celestial objects hiding in plain sight.

"There must be hundreds of millions of black holes out there, but we know about only very few," lead study author Thomas Rivinius, of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), told NPR. "Knowing what to look for should put us in a better position to find them."

Rivinius and his colleagues published their study in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In 2004, researchers trained the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile on HR 6819. The star system is home to two stars orbiting each other: an outer (Be) star, and an inner star. But four months of observations revealed the star system might not be an ordinary binary star system. Instead, astronomers found nearly every 40 days, the inner star seemed to be orbiting something at a very high velocity.

By their calculations, that object had to be massiveabout four times the mass of the sun and roughly the same size as the inner star. So they started narrowing down their options. A star with the same mass as the object at the center of the inner star's orbit would be easily visible with telescopes. The likely culprit? A stellar-mass black hole.

But if the black hole is so closeastronomically speakingthen why has it eluded discovery for so long?



Story continues

Black holes, often the remnants of dead stars that have gone supernova, are super dense and gobble up nearby stars and gobs of gas and dust. Their gravitational pull is so strong, not even light can escape their grasp. That means they're notoriously difficult to spot.

But sometimes there are telltale signs that black holes may be lurking. When some black holes messily devour nearby material, there's clear evidence of the feast in the form of radiation that can be picked up by telescopes. In some cases, black holes can influence the orbits of nearby objects, alerting astronomers to their presence.

This newly discovered cosmic wonder has unseated the previous record holder for "closest known black hole," a seemingly invisible object 3,000 light-years from Earth, tucked away in a star system in the Monoceros constellation.

For perspective, other black holes that you might be familiar with are much more distant, like Sagittarius A*, the one at the center of our galaxy that sits 25,000 light-years away. Meanwhile, the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, of which we have a stunning image, is about 55 million light-years from Earth.

We know there are more black holes like the one at the center of HR 6819 out there. Some researchers believe there could be as many as 100 million black holes spread across the Milky Way alone. Now it's just up to astronomers to find them.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 05:33:43|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A 5.1-magnitude earthquake hit Damavand town, 69 km to the east of Iran's capital Tehran, at 00:48 local time Friday (2018 GMT Thursday), according to Iran's Seismological Center.

The epicenter of the earthquake, at the depth of 7 km, is 35.777 degrees north latitude and 52.045 degrees east longitude, the center said.

The tremor caused alarm among some residents in Tehran, who rushed out of their houses in panic.

The swarm of cars on the streets resulted in heavy traffic in the populated areas of the capital.

Also, the speed of internet in Tehran dropped due to an increase in the use of social networks.

The quake was felt in the provinces of Alborz, Qom, Qazvin and Mazandaran in the neighbourhood of Tehran, Iran's Red Crescent Society was quoted by official IRNA news agency as saying.

Five assessment teams of the country's emergency organization have been dispatched to the quake-hit regions, Tasnim news agency reported.

Saeed Taheri, chief of Red Crescent Society of Damavand town, advised local residents to leave their houses and find a safe shelter, Tasnim reported.

No immediate reports are available about the possible casualties or injuries. Enditem
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wanted to restart production at the company's U.S. car plant in Fremont, California, on Friday afternoon after weeks of "minimum basic operations" required after Covid-19 health orders. But local authorities now say the company is not cleared to reopen.

Erica Pan, interim health officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department, said on an online town hall meeting on Friday that even though California had relaxed Covid-19 restrictions at the state level, that legally, "If there are local orders, whichever is stricter prevails."

She added that currently, Alameda County -- where the Fremont car factory is based -- is "still a little bit stricter," than the state in its approach to protecting public health amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

"We have not given the green light. We have been working with them looking at some of their safety plans. But no, we have not said that it is appropriate to move forward." Pan said when asked about Tesla specifically.

Tesla resisted and debated local authorities when they first implemented Covid-19 restrictions in March. The company wound down to minimum basic operations there on March 24. Tesla called some workers back to production shifts there in later April, too, but rescinded those plans facing health orders again.

Just after that, Musk slammed the health orders, calling them "fascist," in a swear-laden earnings call.

Alameda County has a shelter-in-place order effective through May 31, according to the county public health department website. Pan said she expected to know more in another week or two about whether the county could allow manufacturers, including Tesla, to reopen their factories.

A public information officer for Alameda County Public Health Department offered more details in a statement:

"We have informed Tesla of all of the conditions that must exist for phasing in the safe reopening of various sectors of the economy and the community. All businesses within the County must comply with the May 4th Health Officer Order and if a business does not meet the limited criteria stated in that Order to reopen, then they are out of compliance.

"Tesla has been informed that they do not meet those criteria and must not reopen. We welcome Tesla's proactive work on a reopening plan so that once they fit the criteria to reopen, they can do so in a way that protects their employees and the community at large."

A spokesperson for the Fremont Police Department said it had not been in touch with Tesla regarding any possible violation.

"Businesses are not required to contact the police department regarding specific plans or business operations, so we have not been in contact with Tesla." She added, "Our legal counsel is also reaching out to gain further clarity around some of the language in the most recent FAQ document," from the county.

CNBC reached out to Tesla, and the company's human resources leader, Valerie Workman, to ask how plans for U.S. employees and vehicle production may now change. They were not immediately available to comment.
He said the aggrieved patients held the health workers  two medical doctors and one nurse hostage while they were going round the wards for routine checks.
Mike Pence at a General Motors plant visit: (Reuters)

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has apologised to Mike Pence for implying that he delivered empty boxes of protective medical equipment to a nursing home, but still criticised the vice president for a "staged publicity stunt."

The controversy arose following a visit by Mr Pence to the Woodbine Rehabilitation and Healthcare Centre in Alexandria, Virginia, to deliver protective medical equipment on behalf of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.

After being filmed unloading several boxes of protective gear from a van, the vice president is told by a staff member that the rest of the boxes in the vehicle were empty.

Mr Pence responded: "Well can I carry the empty ones, just for the camera?"

The vice president appeared to be joking, and did not actually deliver any empty boxes.

But the clip was picked up by Mr Kimmel in a segment on his show.

"Mike Pence pretending to carry empty boxes of PPE into a hospital is the perfect metaphor for who he is, and what he's doing. A big box of nothing, delivering another box of nothing," Mr Kimmel said.

Mr Kimmel was accused by a member of Mr Pence's campaign staff of selectively editing the clip used on his show.

"This is absolute garbage spread by @JimmyKimmel," tweeted Jon Thompson, Mr Pence's campaign communications director. "Pence is clearly joking about empty boxes & if Kimmel showed the full clip from CSPAN, not the one he selectively edited, you see and hear it."

Mr Kimmel later issued something of an apology on Twitter.

"It would appear that @vp was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt. The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth," he wrote.

The Trump administration has faced criticism for its response to the coronavirus pandemic. In the early months of the outbreak, medical staff on the frontlines of treating the disease faced severe shortages of protective equipment.

Story continues

On Thursday, Donald Trump contradicted a nurse who said that supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, has been "sporadic" across the US and inside the community health centre where she works.

Sophia Thomas, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, told the president that she has reused her N95 mask for a few weeks before bringing a new one to the White House, which hosted the presidents signing of a proclamation recognising National Nurses Day during the coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether she is seeing an adequate supply of protective gear, she said it has been sporadic and that her colleagues have reported pockets of areas where PPE is not ideal.

Mr Trump responded: Sporadic for you, but not sporadic for a lot of other people....Because Ive heard the opposite.

The US now has the highest number of deaths from the virus anywhere in the world. More than 75,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 so far, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Read more

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The dirty truth about washing your hands

Listen to the latest episode of The Independent Coronavirus Podcast
Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, has accused the states Deputy Commissioner of Police, DCP Adamu Abubakar of sabotaging the...





Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, has accused the states Deputy Commissioner of Police, DCP Adamu Abubakar of sabotaging the lockdown in the state.





Wike in an interview on Thursday, alleged that the police was issuing illegal letters to companies it collected money from.





He said the Deputy Commissioner of Police released people he arrested because he had collected money from their companies.





According to him the approvals issued by the police or any other authorities outside the office of the Rivers State Governor were illegal.





It is unfortunate to see the level of sabotage that we get from the police, particularly, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Operations, Rivers State Police Command.





The Deputy Commissioner of Police will sign approvals for companies because he wants to collect money. I am the Governor of this state and there cannot be two governors.





The Deputy Commissioner of Police has no powers to issue approvals when the State Government has locked down the state. After the State Security Council met and agreed on the lockdown, the Deputy Commissioner of Police went ahead to issue illegal letters to companies to operate. I have never seen that in my life.





Governor Wike further stated that the state security council will hold an emergency meeting on the alleged illegal activities of the Deputy Commissioner of Police Operations.





He assured Rivers people that the lockdown will be lifted as soon as the objective is achieved.




Ireland's unemployment rate hit 28.2% in April when accounting for all Covid-19 payments.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) the standard rate would be 5.4%.

The CSO said the figures demonstrate the pandemic has continued to have "a significant impact on the labour market during April."

In the last week of April, 602,107 people were in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment.

425,204 people were benefitting from the Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme.

Separately the regular unemployment figure for April 2020 is 216,900, an increase of 7,500 from March.

Edel Flannery, a senior CSO statistician said the approach taken toward the figures differentiates between regular unemployment statistics and the Covid-19 payments.

She said: "As it would not be statistically beneficial or valid to break the current Live Register series to try and capture these temporary measures, it has been decided to compile the Live Register data for April 2020 in the traditional way and provide separate details of COVID-19 payments."

More than half of those in receipt of a welfare payment are aged 15 to 24, according to the CSO.

KBC Bank Chief Economist Austin Hughes said the figures show the impact the Covid-19 crisis is having on the economy.

He said: "It's quite an extraordinary turnaround. It's not a surprise, but the scale of it is really stark when we see it.

"It implies that we probably are looking at numbers of work now that are at their lowest level in 20 years.

"It gives a very clear view of how devasting the economic impact of Covid-19 has been on the Irish economy."
Researchers would Mitto polled consumers to see how they felt their favorite brands have handled the COVID-19 pandemic thus far.

The crisis has been a challenging time for all businesses around the world, and marketers are required to be mindful of how, where and how frequently they engage with their customers, said Andrea Giacomini, CEO of Mitto. Fortunately, marketers have more technologies than ever before at their disposal to better understand the pulse of their customers and, as our survey showed, they have generally been quite successful with their communication approaches during such a complex period. As we move out of this crisis, brands and their marketers must not underestimate the value of building strong customer relationships during normal times that get tested during tough times.A A A

Mitto researchers found that 73% of consumers agree that the increase in emails from their brands was appropriate during the initial weeks of pandemic and most (77%) say that the emails theyve gotten thus far have made them feel as if their favored brands cared about them. But, now that many countries are returning to business as usual, nearly half of shoppers say theyre ready for non-COVID related communications to hit their inbox.

Just over 40% say they are ready to start getting non-Covid emails now not at a future date. As to what theyd like to hear, some old favorites are still at the top of the list: discounts and coupons.

Meanwhile, Fast researchers have found that despite many businesses and restaurants reopening, many consumers are leery of going back to business as usual. In their new poll more than three-quarters (89%) of those surveyed said they are concerns about shopping in physical stores, and the worry is crossing demographic lines.

According to the Fast data concerns about proximity to other people while shopping is a concern for more than 75% all adults. The data is also crossing regional lines with more than 85% of consumers from the Northeast, though the South and Midwest and into the West concerned about in-person shopping and the risks to their health. In addition to being too close to other people in-store, fears about overall store cleanliness is the leading worry for people as the world returns to pre-pandemic status.

More data from the Fast report can be accessed here.

As to where consumers will look to find new products and services, data out from Sprout Social indicates social will be a big attention getter. Their recent study found that 89% of consumers will buy from brands they follow on social media and that most (75%) plan to increase spending with brands that they can follow online.

While social media is a powerful channel for brand awareness, its also a proven business accelerator. In fact, a strong brand presence on social media can drive consumers to purchase and give brands a leg up over their closest competitors, said Jamie Gilpin, CMO at Sprout Social. This is especially true in todays environment. Brands who fail to stand out on social or lack the ability to analyze social data are missing a big business opportunity, which can be crucial for future success.

They key, of course, is to find the right messaging mix and to be timely. According to the Sprout data 79% of consumers expect a response from brands on social within 24 hours of contacting them.

More data from Sprout Socials 2020 Index can be found here.
Davontae Sanford pleaded guilty to the murder of four people when he was 14, but those convictions in Wayne County were thrown out because of police misconduct.

He was paid $408,000 for his time in prison. However, he's also seeking $27,000 for 198 days spent in a detention center for teens before pleading guilty.

People accused of murder can be held in jail without bond for months or years while awaiting trial, the Associated Press reports.

The Michigan Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday the which could provide more money to people who are wrongly convicted of crimes.

The Associated Press reports that a person who is exonerated gets $50,000 for every year spent in prison. But lower courts have declined to count time served in jail or juvenile detention before trials, saying the law doesnt mention it.

This is not as if we're trying to be misers here," said Chris Allen of the attorney general's office. We believe were only entitled to pay what the statute permits. That's essentially our argument.

Sanfords attorney, Julie Hurwitz, noted that people convicted of crimes get credit on their sentences for time served in pretrial detention. So it makes sense, she added, that the same time should be eligible for compensation.
US Extends Iran Sanctions Waiver For New Iraqi Government, Pledges Support

Radio Farda May 07, 2020

Iraq has succeeded forming a government after months of instability, and the United States welcomed the move by extending a waiver on Iran sanctions to ease pressure on the new leader.

In a phone call with the new Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhemi, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated him on taking office and discussed "working together to provide the Iraqi people the prosperity and security they deserve," the State Department said.

The appointment of a new government in Iraq was a complicated affair as the the United States and Iran both have close relations with the country, with Tehran controlling thousands of armed militias and many Shiite groups.

Pompeo said that United States would not enforce sanctions on Iraq buying electricity and natural gas from Iran for 120 days "as a display of our desire to help provide the right conditions for success," a statement said.

Later, Pompeo also congratulated the new prime minister in a tweet, saying, "now comes the urgent, hard work of implementing the reforms demanded by the Iraqi people", a reference to months of protests in many cities demanding government efficiency, accountability and reduction of Iran's influence.

Kadhemi took over Thursday Baghdad time after winning parliamentary approval for his cabinet line-up -- the third attempt to replace Adel Abdel Mahdi, who resigned last year in the face of nationwide demonstrations against corruption.

Iraqi politicians have the delicate task of balancing relations with Washington and neighboring Iran, which has deep economic and religious ties with Iraq but is under sweeping sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.

Recognizing Iraq's fragility, the Trump administration has given Iraq a series of waivers on U.S. sanctions to let it keep buying gas from Iran.

The latest had been announced last week and was to run for only 30 days.

With reporting by AFP

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/us-extends-iran- sanctions-waiver-for-new-iraqi-government -pledges-support/30598537.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.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 04:51:50|Editor: huaxia

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A customer buys face masks at a supermarket in Istanbul, Turkey, May 8, 2020. Supermarkets, pharmacies, and online platforms across Turkey started selling surgical facial masks on Friday after the Turkish government lifted the ban on their sales amid COVID-19 outbreak. (Photo by Osman Orsal/Xinhua)

ISTANBUL, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Supermarkets, pharmacies, and online platforms across Turkey started selling surgical facial masks on Friday after the Turkish government lifted the ban on their sales amid COVID-19 outbreak.

The trade ministry made it clear that the selling price of a single mask would be a maximum of 1 lira (0.14 U.S. dollar).

The Metro supermarkets in Turkey said at a press release that the company would not add any profit to the prices in line with its policy against price speculations.

A box of 50 masks is sold at 45.9 liras at the Metro supermarkets, while the price of a box of masks with the same quality was determined as 50 liras in Migros markets.

Wearing masks in crowded places, including public transport, groceries and workplaces, are mandatory in Turkey.

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a series of steps to gradually ease COVID-19 restrictions and declared that barbershops and shopping malls would reopen on May 11.
An additional 42 patients have recovered from coronavirus infection in Lagos State and have been discharged from the states isolation facilities, an official has said.

The patients comprise 20 females and 22 males. This brings the recoveries in the state to 448.

Giving the update on Friday, the Lagos State Ministry of Health said the patients tested negative to COVID-19 twice.

42 more COVID-19 Lagos patients; 20 females & 22 males; all Nigerians have been discharged from our Isolation facilities at Onikan, Eti-Osa (LandMark) & Lekki to reunite with the society.

The patients; 2 from Onikan, 32 from Eti-Osa (LandMark) & 8 from Lekki Isolation Centres have fully recovered & tested negative twice consecutively to COVID-19.

With this, the number of patients successfully managed & discharged in Lagos has risen to 448, the ministry wrote.

As of Friday, Lagos has 1,507 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 1,008 active cases, 448 discharged cases, two evacuated cases, 16 transferred cases and 33 deaths.

While Lagos has 1,008 active cases,PREMIUM TIMES reported how less than half of that number are in its isolation and treatment facilities. The state government said many of the people who tested positive are on the run from authorities.

Lagos residents are encouraged to call the ministry on 08000CORONA for all COVID-19 related complaints.
Vista Equity Partners, a US-based private equity firm that runs the worlds largest exclusively tech-focused fund, will pick up a 2.32 percent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore, making it the third high-profile investment in the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) unit in as many weeks and underlining its status as a next-generation software and platform company.

This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore. Vistas investment, which makes the largest investor in Jio Platforms behind RIL and Facebook, is at a 12.5 percent premium over the deal with the social media network announced in April.

Jio Platforms has now raised Rs 60,596.37 crore from leading technology investors in less than three weeks, RIL said in a statement on May 8.

Vista has a track record of investing in cutting edge tech companies in their early stage. Each of its investments has been profitable in its history of 10 years. This is the PE giants first sizeable investment in India.

Validation for Jios tech-enterprise prowess

The latest investment reaffirms Jio as a strong tech-enterprise focused on one of the most exciting and large markets in the world and emphasises the quality of management. Vistas investment showcases Jio as the next-generation software and platform company. It also is an endorsement of Jios tech capabilities and the potential of the business model even in this COVID-19 world and beyond.

The investment reaffirms Jios continuing attraction among global investors for its deep understanding of the Indian markets, the rapid digitisation opportunity post-COVID and its capabilities to bring cutting-edge technologies and tools such as AI, Blockchain, AR/VR and Big Data into play for all Indians.

In April, Facebook bought a 9.9 percent stake in Jio for Rs 43,574 crore. This was the social media powerhouses biggest investment since its $22 billion buyout of WhatsApp in 2014. On May 4, American private equity giant Silver Lake Partners purchased 1 percent of Jio Platforms for Rs 5,655.75 crore.

Commenting on the transaction with Vista, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Ltd, said he was delighted to welcome Vista, one of the worlds marquee tech investors globally as a valued partner. Like our other partners, Vista also shares with us the same vision of continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. They believe in the transformative power of technology to be the key to an even better future for everyone.

Commenting on the investment, Robert F Smith, founder, chairman and CEO of Vista, said, We believe in the potential of the Digital Society that Jio is building for India. Mukeshs vision as a global pioneer, alongside Jios world-class leadership team, have built a platform to scale and advance the data revolution it started. We are thrilled to join Jio Platforms to deliver exponential growth in connectivity across India, providing modern consumer, small business and enterprise software to fuel the future of one of the worlds fastest growing digital economies.

Diverse marquee investors are becoming long-term shareholders of Jio Platforms because of a unique set of technologies and platforms under one entity. There are no similar opportunities available anywhere else globally.

What do we know about Vista Equity Partners?

Vista Equity Partners is an investment firm that exclusively invests in tech and software companies, including enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, credit, public equity, and permanent capital strategies. With more than $52 billion in capital commitments, it is now the worlds largest tech focused Fund. This includes a $16-billion tech fund raised by it in 2019  the largest ever single tech fund raise by an independent private equity firm, Vista acts as a value-added investor with a long-term perspective and contributes professional expertise and multi-level support towards companies to realize their full potential.

The firm was founded in 2000 by American businessman and investor Robert F Smith and Brian Sheth. Its portfolio constitutes more than 60 enterprise software, data and technology enabled companies across the world. Some of its top investments include Solera, Tibco and Inflobox.

Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisor to Reliance Industries and AZB & Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell acted as legal counsels. Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co served as legal counsels to Vista.

: [Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.]
OSLO, Norway, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The annual general meeting of Elkem ASA was held on 8 May 2020 in Oslo.

All proposals on the agenda were adopted, cf. the notice of the annual general meeting that was sent to the Oslo Stock Exchange on 15 April 2020.

The annual general meeting approved the board's proposal to distribute a dividend of NOK 0.60 per share for 2019. The dividend will be paid to shareholders as of 8 May 2020. The share will be traded ex-dividend from 11 May 2019. The dividend will be paid on 19 May 2020.

The minutes of the annual general meeting is attached and available on www.elkem.com.

This information is subject of the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

About Elkem ASA

Founded in 1904, Elkem is one of the world's leading suppliers of silicon-based advanced materials with operations throughout the value chain from quartz to specialty silicones, as well as attractive market positions in specialty ferrosilicon alloys and carbon materials. Elkem is a publicly listed company on the Oslo Stock Exchange (ticker code: ELK) and is headquartered in Oslo. The company has more than 6,370 employees with 29 production sites and an extensive network of sales offices worldwide. In 2019 Elkem had revenues of NOK 22.7 billion. To learn more, please visit www.elkem.com

For further information:

Odd-Geir Lyngstad

VP Finance & Investor Relations

Tel: +47-976-72-806

Email: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/elkem/r/elkem-asa---minutes-from-the-annual-general-meeting-2020,c3107360

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/16930/3107360/1244446.pdf Release https://mb.cision.com/Public/16930/3107360/9ad87ba891dba6ca.pdf Protokoll fra GF - Engelsk - 2020 05 08 signert https://mb.cision.com/Public/16930/3107360/997e25e3e0ded8f5.pdf Protokoll fra GF - Norsk - 2020 05 08 signert

SOURCE Elkem
After weeks of staying at home, parts of Europe are tentatively opening up again, with the first phase of lifting lockdowns to start in several countries on Monday.

- Italy -

In Italy some construction workers and workers in factories making industrial machinery, cars and luxury goods returned to work on April 27.

Starting Monday parks will open, with social distancing measures in place. People will be allowed to visit their relatives, in limited number.

Restaurants will open for takeout and their full reopening will begin on June 1, along with beauty salons and hairdressers.

All retail shops will open on May 18, along with museums and libraries.

Italy's schools remain closed until September.

Spaniards have filled the streets of the country to do exercise after seven weeks of confinement to their homes to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured people exercising in Barcelona

- Spain -

Spain on April 26 began lifting one of the world's tightest lockdowns, allowing children outside accompanied by one parent.

Since May 2 Spaniards have been allowed out for exercise and to take walks under strict conditions.

From Monday, some small shops including hairdressers can receive customers individually by appointment. Bars and restaurants can sell take-away.

Wearing masks will be mandatory on public transport.

In some of the small Balearic and Canary Islands, most shops, museums and the outdoor areas of bars and restaurants will reopen with limited capacity, as will hotels with conditions.

This begins nationwide on May 11, with cinemas and theatres due to reopen two weeks after that.

Schools remain closed until September.

Spaniards must limit their movements to within their province until lockdown is fully lifted.

Medical staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) as they prepare to take samples to test for the coronavirus at the Flor Ferenc Hospital of Kistarcsa, Hungary

- Germany -

Germany on April 20 allowed some smaller shops to reopen.

Some schools will reopen on May 4.

Hairdresser will open again. Places of worship, museums, memorials, zoos, playgrounds can also reopen, or have already done so.

Cultural centres, bars, restaurants, playgrounds and sports stadiums remain closed.

Large gatherings are banned until at least August 31.

Wearing masks is obligatory on public transport and in shops.

- Austria -

Vienna has already authorised the reopening of certain non-essential businesses.

Large food shops, hairdressers and outdoor sports facilities (tennis, golf) reopened this weekend.

Travel restrictions have been lifted, gatherings of up to 10 people are allowed, with social distancing measures.

Restaurants are expected to reopen in mid-May.

Wearing masks is obligatory on public transport and in shops.

- Belgium -

Employees at businesses not open to the public will begin to return to their offices as of Monday, with the wearing of masks obligatory on public transport.

A barrel organ player wearing a protective face mask while busking on Market Square during the coronavirus pandemic today in the Old Town of Warsaw, Poland

Most shops will reopen from May 11, provided they respect social distancing measures.

Some schools will reopen on May 18, with a maximum of 10 pupils per class.

Restaurants will being reopening from June 8 at the earliest.

- Portugal -

Some small shops will be allowed to reopen on Monday as will hairdressers and car dealers.

Wearing face masks will be mandatory on public transport.

Senior schools, museums, bars, restaurants and art galleries will open their doors once more from May 18. Cinemas will do so on June 1, with rules on social distancing.

Long-distance learning will remain the norm for primary and middle schools through to the end of the year.

- Slovenia -

Outdoor spaces of cafes and restaurant will reopen Monday, as will hairdressers, museums, libraries and professional sports training.

Wearing masks will be obligatory in enclosed public places, public transport and shops.

- Hungary -

Apart from in Budapest, outdoor spaces at cafes and restaurants will reopen Monday, along with beaches and public baths. Professional sports training will start again.

Wearing masks will be obligatory in public transport and shops.

A priest wearing a protective face mask gives the host to a faithful during the communion, as part of the rituals of the Sunday mass at the Saint Anthony Padovanski church in Zagreb today

- Poland -

Hotels, shopping centres, some cultural centres including libraries and certain museums will all open on Monday.

As of Wednesday, creches and children's playgrounds will be allowed to open but the local authorities in charge of them have said that the majority will remain closed.

- Croatia -

Some shops, museums, libraries and public transport reopened last week.

Religious gatherings have been allowed since Saturday.

On Monday, businesses involving close contact with customers such as hairdressers are allowed to open again.

On May 11, outdoor spaces at bars and restaurants will reopen and gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed. Children's playgrounds and kindergartens will reopen on a voluntary basis.

- Serbia -

On Monday cafes and restaurants will reopen with social distancing measures in place. Public transport, inner-city trains and buses travelling long distances will also open with the wearing of masks mandatory.

Shopping centres will reopen on May 8 and children's playgrounds on May 11.

Serbia's curfew will remain in place.

- Greece -

Nearly 10 percent of shuttered businesses will be allowed to reopen Monday, including hairdressers and beauty salons, libraries, electronic goods shops, sports shops and garden centres.

On May 11 all other shops will be allowed to reopen apart from shopping centres, which can open again on June 1.

- Nordic countries -

In Iceland, universities, museums and hairdressers will reopen on Monday.

Denmark and Norway, which have only imposed partial confinement measures, have been among the first European countries to ease them.

Danish children became the first to go back to school on April 15.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.  Universal Electronics Inc. (UEIC) on Thursday reported first-quarter net income of $5.8 million, after reporting a loss in the same period a year earlier.

On a per-share basis, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company said it had profit of 41 cents. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs and stock option expense, were 81 cents per share.

The remote control maker posted revenue of $151.8 million in the period.

For the current quarter ending in July, Universal Electronics expects its per-share earnings to range from 84 cents to 94 cents.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $150 million to $160 million for the fiscal second quarter.

Universal Electronics shares have decreased 23% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $40.16, a decrease of slightly more than 9% in the last 12 months.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on UEIC at https://www.zacks.com/ap/UEIC
: All the chemical tanks in LG Polymers near Visakhapatnam where a gas breach left 11 dead, are safe following 60 per cent of the styrene vapour polymerising so far, District Collector V Vinay Chand said on Friday.

As many as 11 were killed and 1,000 affected following a gas leak from the plant near Visakhapatnam in the wee hours of Thursday.

.A day after the styrene vapour leak from the LG Polymers plant at RR Venkatapuram, the Andhra Pradesh government said the situation in the region was now "safe" and there was no need for panic as experts in the field were engaged in neutralising the gas leak impact.

The company also issued a statement saying the situation at the plant was now under control and there was no further leak of the styrene vapour.

"All necessary measures like using added water are being taken to keep the temperature under control," it said.

In a report submitted to Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy during a video conference earlier, the Collector had said it might take 18-24 hours for the remaining vapour to polymerise, a process to bring down the temperature below 20 degree Celsius where styrene remains in its original liquid form, and turn safe.

"We have taken all measures to plug the leak completely and experts are closely monitoring the situation. The situation is now fully under control," the Collector added.

Over 400 people, including children, undergoing treatment in various hospitals here were out of danger and recovering from the effects of the vapour leak, sources said.

Deputy Chief Minister (Health) A K K Srinivas, Industries Minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy, Agriculture Minister K Kanna Babu and others visited the LG plant and also the King George Hospital and consoled the victims.

Talking to reporters, the Deputy CM said 305 people, including 52 children, were undergoing treatment in the KGH and another 121 in private hospitals.

"All of them are out of danger.Nobody is on ventilator support, " he said.

In all 554 people suffered from the vapour leak and 128 of them left for relief camps after preliminary treatment.

The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation opened 17 relief camps in the city, where about 15,000 people evacuated from five villages in the plant vicinity were being provided safe shelter.

"The police, local youths, NDRF, SDRF and revenue department personnel did an exemplary job in shifting the people to safety after the vapour leak.

We appreciate and thank all of them," Srinivas said.

The Deputy CM asked people not to return to their villages till the medical and health officials advised.

"We have opened medical camps at the relief centres and people could avail of the services if necessary," he added.

Industries Minister Goutham Reddy said concerted efforts were being made by experts in the field to neutralize styrene and the process might take 48 hours.

"The regular operation of the plant has not started and it was only under regular maintenance.

The accident occurred due to some lapse in following the prescribed protocols," the minister pointed out.

He, however, asserted that stern action would be initiated against those responsible for the leak.

"I told the South Korean Ambassador clearly that they should act in a responsible manner and take all steps as they do when such a mishap occurs in the USA or Europe," the minister said.

The state government identified 86 such industrial units and they would be allowed to restart their operations only after a safety audit.

"The system has failed somewhere.We are now reworking our system to ensure such hazardous situations do not arise.

We are taking all precautionary measures," the Industries minister added.

Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney, who was camping in Visakhapatnam overseeing the relief measures, said the situation was totally under control and that all tanks in the unit were safe.

Responding to this, the Chief Minister directed the officials to speak to the engineers and explore steps to utilise the raw material and chemicals in the plant fully.

"Also, take steps to remove the chemicals from the plant to another place," he said.

Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney issued an order appointing a high-level probe into the causes behind the gas leak and suggest measures to improve the protocol for industrial safety of similar types of plants.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As we stare down the Covid-19 pandemic, the crisis has put the trend towards an energy transition at risk. While some fear that the transition may be left flat, others are optimistic that it will get supercharged by this cataclysm.

India moved to the forefront of the global energy transition with a target of 175-gigawatt (GW) renewable energy (RE) capacity by 2022. This is likely to undergo an upgrade to 450 GW by 2030. Simultaneously, policy interventions are being planned to push electric vehicles, energy storage, smart grids and other modern energy technologies and practices. Will the pandemic-induced economic contraction topple Indias energy transition priorities?

First, disruptions in the global supply chain for clean energy technologies is a key impediment. A long-haul to restoration will not only cause delays but also increase component costs by eliminating global manufacturing surplus. India, with modest 3 GW manufacturing capacity, depends on Chinese manufacturers for about 80% of our solar cells and modules.

Chinese manufacturers and Indias ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) are hopeful of a speedy revival. The ministry has offered a blanket extension of the lockdown period plus 30 days to ongoing projects and is making efforts to ease the movement of materials. Besides, MNRE has sought land sites suitable for RE manufacturing and export services hubs.

Second, the downtrend in fossil fuel prices and demand shrinks the cost advantage RE has gained in recent years. Crude oil prices have declined, even gone negative for one memorable day, while coal prices are also under pressure. For example, Indias kerosene subsidy bill came down to zero in March and the LPG subsidy cost (exluding the three free refills being provided to Ujjwala consumers during the lockdown) reduced to nearly zero in May. The coal ministry has removed surcharges, quantity restrictions, and advance payment requirements to maintain demand, and may even cut prices.

The government continues its protective impulse on coal  seeking to maintain production, substituting coal import and promote sales  likely because workers, some poorer states, and key sectors like railways are heavily dependent on the coal economy. By contrast, the Centre seized the moment with the oil price drop to increase the excise duty on petrol and diesel to boost tax revenues. Will the net effect governments use of tax and subsidy instruments benefit fossils or work to keep RE cost competitive?

Third, global capital has been increasingly enthusiastic about an energy transition but the pandemic may open alternative investment opportunities. Indias RE development has largely been financed by foreign and private capital that may shrink if the pandemic worsens. Domestic public capital, constrained by lock-ins to non-performing energy assets, have limited capability to finance energy transition. Will the RE transition suffer for want of financing?

Fourth, the decline in electricity demand will likely shrink the space for new RE. Distribution utilities are struggling to keep up with surplus power purchase contracts. In the wake of the lockdown, a few states attempted to invoke force majeure clause and stop withdrawal from RE plants. However, the Centre mandated must-run status and regular payments for RE in order to keep it going. Further, India signalled its continued support for RE by completing tenders for 2 GW of solar power even amid the lockdown. The government could go even further by retiring old and polluting coal plants to create space for RE.

The Centres efforts to protect RE are important signals in favour of sustaining the energy transition. Further, a draft bill to amend the Electricity Act, notified amid the lockdown, may add additional safeguards, such as provisions for a national RE policy, stricter compliance mechanism for renewable purchase obligation, and an Electricity Contract Enforcement Authority that may protect RE and other generators from threats of reneging. Beyond these prompt signals, India needs a strategic approach to sustain the transition to a 21st century energy future. Here are three key steps in that direction:

First, while firm national targets are essential, the centralised approach to enforcement in the proposed amendment is misplaced. It is crucial to engage with political economic opportunities and constraints in the states and let the states chart their transition pathways. While the Centre should focus on creating incentives, the states must step up to tap them and unwind the chronic lock-ins. For example, the transition offers opportunities to manage the rising burden of recurring tariff subsidy on the states through one-time support to clean energy infrastructure for the poor.

Second, in planning the post-Covid-19 recovery, energy transition could be a catalytic force for rebooting the economy while redirecting energy in the direction of more resilience. For example, we need more health infrastructure, to manage the health emergency, that can be energy resilient through decentralised clean energy.

Finally, the pandemic is exacerbating the weaknesses in Indias electricity system, thus causing tensions in the transition. Both fossil and RE systems will need stimulus to sustain the impacts. It is not a question of which technology to support, but a choice between different configurations of technology, politics and institutions. Our focus should not be on restoring the pre-Covid configuration and underlying low-level equilibrium in electricity. Rather, we must use this critical juncture to push for positive reforms and overdue structural changes to build a resilient electricity future.

Ashwini K Swain is a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

Thew views expressed are personal
Magnolia Earl of Ross, Calif., was named the 2020 Gerber spokesbaby today.

Magnolia was named the winner of Gerbers 10th annual photo search.

What a way to celebrate her first birthday, which is tomorrow, May 9.

Magnolias mother, Courtney Earl, said, Magnolia has brought so much joy to everyone she meets. Her personality is beyond happy and joyful.

On May 9th, 2019 we received a call from the Adoption Agency that there was an expectant mom that was in labor and wanted to talk to us! We pulled off the highway, got a chance to connect with her amazing birth parents, and a few hours later, this sweet baby girl was born. Adoption is incredibly special to our familys story. Winning Photo Search is an opportunity to tell Magnolias story and shed light on all the beautiful and different ways families are made.

Magnolia has two older sisters, Whitney, 12, and Charlotte, 8, who also is adopted.

Mom told Gerber that the girls love to play together - especially splashing in the kiddie pool and dancing to the Baby Shark song.

Our Gerber family of farmers, factory workers, employees and customers are all united in our pursuit to do everything and anything for baby. We believe every baby is a Gerber baby and standing behind our babies has never mattered more than it does now, said Bill Partyka, President and CEO, Gerber.

At a time when we are yearning for connection and unity, Magnolia and her family remind us of the many things that bring us together: our desire to love and be loved, our need to find belonging, and our recognition that family goes way beyond biology.

Gerbers logo features the original Gerber baby, Ann Turner Cook. In 2010 the company launched Photo Search. Parents submit photos of their children.

Magnolia will be featured on Gerbers social media channels and in marketing campaigns. Her family will receive $25,000, $1,000 worth of Gerber clothing, $1,000 from Walmart and phones with a year of free service from Verizon.

And, in case you were wondering, Magnolias favorite Gerber foods are Sweet Potato Purees and Teether Wheels.

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Jason Hargrove, a 50-year-old Detroit bus driver, died from COVID-19 after being turned away from care multiple times while visibly cyanotic. Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in Brooklyn, was sent home several times until she was ill enough from the disease to require intubation and ventilation. She has since died. While there are many reasons for these and other racialized disparities in the current pandemic (which have been clearly expounded elsewhere), stories continue to emerge that highlight the importance of physician bias in COVID-19 outcomes.

I became a physician because I was interested in health equity. The current COVID-19 pandemic is illuminating U.S. American racial health disparities more dramatically than any other crisis in recent memory, and has thrust this phenomenon into the national spotlight, in a flurry of attention that is long overdue. From Chicago to New York to Milwaukee, major metropolitan areas are reporting deaths of Black and Latinx patients at rates disproportionate to their representation in the populations of these cities. At the same time, cases of COVID-19 are occurring at higher rates in Native communities across the nation. Like many of the other disease processes we treat, the risk for COVID-19 starts long before a patient reaches our office or emergency room.

Yet numerous studies and countless non-COVID-19-related anecdotes have highlighted the role of physician bias in health care, which is only amplified under stressful conditions. While the biases students bring to medical school are largely unchecked during their four years with us, most curricula tackle health disparities superficially, if at all. We memorize which diseases are more prevalent in which racial groups, but without nuanced attention to the structural and historical reasons for these differences. Racial categories largely function as buzzwords for particular diseases (which students dutifully memorize for standardized tests), despite the fact that race is not a meaningful biological category. Although the sociological roots of health disparities are well understood, we continue to erroneously teach medical students that race  and not racism, both institutional and interpersonal  is the most important factor in racial health disparities.

The Institute of Medicine and many professional medical societies have long called for greater attention to health disparities. However this awareness has not yet trickled down to medical education in a systematic way. Medical students are expected to complete four semesters of chemistry and two of physics as undergraduates, but sociology or history courses are generally not required. When they arrive in our lecture halls, we mostly fail to teach students the sociological context that frames our patients lives long before they come into our care. To expect that students emerge from their training with a comprehensive understanding of the origins of their patients disease processes should not be a tall order.

This is not an indictment of my extraordinary colleagues who have risen to the challenge this crisis has presented. Rather, its an indication that we need to equip future generations of physicians with the tools to better understand and address racial and other health disparities  not only for future acute health crises but also for the ongoing, chronic crises of disproportionate morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, autoimmune diseases, and mental illness. All medical students should have a basic understanding of critical race and gender theories, either through undergraduate sociology courses or during medical school as embedded threads in our curricula. To separate science from social context is to tell only half the story of illness. Many of us in medicine deeply feel that it is our duty to share our unique knowledge with decision-makers for the sake of public health, and that this knowledge has as much to do with biochemistry as it does the daily realities of our patients lives. How can we be strong advocates for change without background knowledge of the systems that create health disparities in the first place?

In the aftermath of COVID-19, as we rethink the systems that gave rise to this inequitable health crisis  both within and outside of medicine  we also should rethink medical education. We may need to consider strategies and partners that are foreign to us  such as using narrative medicine and reflective writing, or inviting historians and sociologists into our medical lecture halls. As educators, we will need to humbly admit that many of us lack the knowledge to enact these changes on our own, but we can collaborate with our numerous colleagues in the humanities who have built entire careers around researching and describing the sociological origins of disease and health. We will need to include not only cultural competency/humility but also structural competency/humility as a core competency. We must deeply examine the biases we  students and teachers alike  bring to clinical encounters. Our future patients deserve physicians who understand them holistically and are prepared to address their own biases; in fact, their lives may depend on it. The COVID pandemic could not illustrate this more clearly.

Irene P. Mathieu is a pediatrician who blogs at maladi kache pa gen remed. She can be reached on Twitter @gumbo_amando.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
On Friday afternoon, the rapper and Instagram star 6ix9ine released a new song, Gooba  the first new music he has put out since a federal judge in April allowed him to finish the remaining months of his two-year sentence for racketeering and other charges in home confinement.

The song is classic 6ix9ine: spitfire verses filled with boasts about himself and taunts to his detractors. In the music video, the tattooed Brooklyn rapper  who had a meteoric rise presenting himself as a hardened criminal  appeared in candy-colored braids, surrounded by scantily clad dancers who were doused in paint as they twerked. A shrewd self-marketer, he immediately told his fans on Twitter how to buy the clothes he wore.

But the real performance was on Instagram Live.

Shortly after the song was released, 6ix9ine fired up his Instagram account for a livestreamed rant that lasted about 13 minutes and was seen by as many as two million people. 6ix9ine (also known as Tekashi69) has been watched closely by the rap world since he avoided a long sentence  he had faced as much as 37 years  by cooperating with prosecutors against his former gang mates in the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.
YEREVAN.  The second president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, has contact with about 70 people during the week. Kocharyan said this at Fridays trial in court, answering Judge Anna Danibekyan's question about the conditions in his penitentiary and whether there are other people in his prison cell.

"The [prison] employees work one day and are off for three days," said Robert Kocharyan. "Nobody knows what they are doing outside of the work day. Ninety percent [of them] are young; this means that at least 50 percent of them will be asymptomatic, even if they become infected [with COVID-19]. On my own wish, I am alone in the cell now. But there are contacts with the staff; it is impossible otherwise. It is impossible to keep a distance while moving about in the [prison] building.

Robert Kocharyan also noted that the food is brought to him packaged, but no one can say who works there, who prepares it, and who delivers that food. "The staff tries to follow the [health safety] requirements; they wear masks and gloves," he added. "But there are no conditions, there is no ventilation. People come from outside and bring food three times a day. It is even pointless to discuss how the necessary requirements can be met. "

Hayk Alumyan, one of Kocharyan's attorneys, added that they also petitioned to the Human Rights Defender with this issue.

"The President is now at Izmirlian Medical Center," he added. "But, according to the rules, there must be an officer with him in the hospital room. They are constantly being substituted, and it turns out that the patient is forced to have contact with a large number of people all the time.
An art auction through Christies is poised to give San Antonios Center for Refugee Services a welcome infusion of cash.

A banner by artist Carrie Mae Weems that was featured in Word on the Street, a big-buzz exhibit at Artpace last year, is being sold through the famed auction house. Every dime of the sale of the banner, which reads, Change requires 2020 vision, will go to the center.

Word on the Street originated in New York and was pulled together by House of Trees, an art collective that includes San Antonio-based artist Jennifer Khoshbin and her siblings, Amy and Noah. The collective engaged seamstresses they found through the refugee centers sewing circle to fabricate the banners, which were inspired by signs carried in the 2017 Womens March.

Weems piece, which was sewn by seamstress Fereshteh Kasraei, is expected to be sold for between $20,000 and $30,000, according to a press release from Chrisies. The online auction runs through May 15 at christies.com.

It is the third banner from the exhibit to be auctioned off to raise money for the center, said Jennifer Khoshbin. The first two brought in around $20,000, she said. They were sold as part of an annual auction for the Watermill Center in New York, which Noah Khoshbin serves as curator.

This is the first time one has been sold through Christies, which is waiving its usual fees so that all of the proceeds will go to the center.

On ExpressNews.com: Artpaces spring exhibit deals with religion, immigration and other issues

Its like a gift from God, said Margaret Costantino, executive director of the center. This woman is so powerful with her art, Jennifer Khoshbin, and her heart is as big as the sky.

We had no idea she would be so generous when we started working with her a few years ago. I thought the banner idea was a great idea. That it led to all this money flowing into our center was something that we never expected.

Khoshbin said it was important to her and her siblings to contribute to the center, particularly when so many are struggling because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Were just hoping that it hasnt put too many people that rely on that center in harms way, she said. Were really hoping this comes through so we can give a another push for these people that are part of our community.

The refugee center has severely reduced its operating hours as part of the effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. The main thrust of its work right now is providing diapers to families with young children, a service on which it collaborates with the Texas Diaper Bank.

On ExpressNews.com: Witte and Briscoe museums slated to reopen at the end of May

The center will use some of the money it receives from the auction for an emergency fund to help people with utility bills and partial rent payments that they may be struggling to make because of lost income.

We dont know how extensive the need is, Costantino said.

The essay about the piece written for the auction notes that when the banner was created in 2017, it referenced this years presidential election, but it has taken on some different meanings since.

The empowering text originally referenced the potential for intersectional change in Americas 2020 Presidential Election year, however in the midst of COVID-19 and potential border closings, Weems handcrafted felt banner has predicted a sociocultural change in 2020 beyond borders, one we are all simultaneously experiencing on a global scale, the essay reads. Weems critically reminds us to stay focused on our vision for empathy and community-building and that ultimately, Change is possible.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN

Deborah Martin is an arts writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Deborah, become a subscriber. dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN
New Delhi, May 8 : ITC Hotels has launched a first-of-its-kind initiative on health, hygiene and safety with NABH accreditation and DNV-GL Business Assurance certification to ensure stringent clinical levels of hygiene.

ITC Hotels today announced the launch of its "WeAssure" initiative, in a first for the hospitality industry, the guests of ITC Hotels will be reassured by an accreditation by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) - the leading standards organisation for sanitation, hygiene, safety and infection control practices, said a company statement.

ITC Hotels is also partnering with DNV GL Business Assurance, one of the world's leading certification bodies, to ensure stringent clinical levels of hygiene and safety. These assurance certifications will stand testimony to the rigorous hygiene protocol being put in place to ensure the safety of guests and associates at ITC Hotels, across India.

"We are committed to delivering world-class luxury experiences that address the most important needs of wellbeing and safety through responsible practices that are immensely relevant in the unprecedented circumstances we face today. 'WeAssure' is a unique programme designed in collaboration with medical professionals and disinfection experts to further enhance the existing hygiene & cleaning protocols. The stringent program specifications reassure guests of visibly stringent cleanliness and disinfection processes which benchmark clinically hygienic standards, offering guests' unparalleled comfort with peace of mind" stated Nakul Anand, Executive Director-ITC Ltd.

The accreditation by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) will enhance existing procedures and controls in the area of sanitation, hygiene, safety and infection control thereby conforming to hospital level hygiene standards.

DNV GL Business Assurance, a body that helps businesses assure the performance of their organization is evaluating a model, built around the three pillars of - Health, Hygiene and Safety. This will help ITC Hotels achieve higher levels of maturity around all facets of operations.

'WeAssure' is a holistic programme that addresses all facets of hotel operations. From revised protocols for back of the house activity at the receiving store, back offices, laundry to the public areas with heightened sanitization measures for guest luggage, elevators to room service.
An RAF veteran who was captured by the Japanese during the Second World War described the horrific conditions endured by British Prisoners of War in the Far East.

Bob Morrell, of Brighton, signed up to the RAF in 1938 at the age of 21 and served a brief stint in Scotland before being stationed in Java, Indonesia.

In early 1943, while seconded to the US Air Force, he was captured by Japanese troops and was one of 2,000 British servicemen sent on 'hell ships' to the tiny island of Haruku (Haroekoe), east of Ambon, and forced to build a landing strip.

Speaking on Radio 4's The Reunion in an episode re-broadcast this morning to mark VE Day, Mr Morrell, who died last year aged 98, recalled the vile conditions in which he and other POWs were kept.

Bob Morrell, pictured, signed up to the RAF in 1938 at the age of 21 and served a brief stint in Scotland before being stationed in Java, Indonesia. He was taken prisoner in May 1943

'If you can imagine the hold of a ship and then there's a ladder going down into the hold,' he explained. 'Then there was a Japanese man saying "head", "foot", "head", "foot" and they literally put us in just like sardines.

'Now you're in this stinking heat, it's dark, and you know if anything happened, none of you would get out. I believe there was 2,000 of us.'

The ship landed on Haruku just as the monsoon season was starting, which increased the rate illnesses like dysentery spread.

The Japanese captors treated the prisoners horrifically, subjecting them to brutal beatings, intense work, starvation, disease and searing heat.

Mr Morrell and his comrades were forced to build an airstrip in 12-hour shifts, often on no food.

RAF servicemen freed from a Singapore POW camp in September 1945. Mr Morrell told how 600 of the 2,000 prisoners at his camp died while he was there

'As your health deteriorates and you've got to work, all you can do it focus on the work,' he said. 'Get through that. The mind is literally blank.'

He was also put on 'coffin duty' and made to carry the bodies of his fallen comrades up a hill to a cemetery. Of the 2,000 POWs island, 600 died.

'You've got to carry them up to cemetery and sometimes you'd curse those men,' he admitted. 'All I know is it was another job on top of another job.'

You've got to carry them up to cemetery and sometimes you'd curse those men. All I know is it was another job on top of another job

After the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and V-J Day, the POWs undertook the arduous journey back to Britain.

Mr Morrell described how he was left with fresh anxiety over whether he would make it back. Once he did, he retreated into himself after discovering his family did not want to hear about his wartime experience.

'They didn't really want to hear it,' he said. 'It was horrible. I shut down, clamped down and I started having black outs and such like.

'When I had nightmares and you went to the doctor, it was "lump of sugar and a doctor". Until I was 80 and I went to [the charity} Combat Stress. First thing they said to me was "open up" and "let it out".'

Mr Morrell had a son, Mark, and settled on the south coast. He spent his final years at Worthing's Care for Veterans home before his death in November last year aged 98.

His funeral was attended by family, friends and representatives from the RAF and the Royal British Legion.
Republicans Introduce Bill to Rename Street Outside Chinese Embassy in Honor of Whistle-Blower Doctor

A few Republicans Representatives have introduced legislation to rename the street outside of the Chinese Embassy in Washington in honor of the Wuhan doctor who died after trying to warn the world about the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney introduced a bill in the House this week to rename the street Li Wenliang Plaza and was joined by 14 of her Republican House Colleagues.

GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tn.), introduced a twin bill in the Senate to support the change.

The Chinese Government attempted to silence Dr. Li Wenliang who, at great personal risk, warned about the danger of coronavirus, the Wyoming lawmaker said in a statement.

Li has been lauded as a brave whistleblower by both Americans and Chinese citizens for warning a group of doctors in China about how contagious the virus is. Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, was among the first people to publicize information about the outbreak in Wuhan.

Seven SARS-like cases from the Huanan seafood market have been confirmed, Li wrote on Dec. 30, 2019, on Chinese social media app WeChat in a chat group with hundreds of his former medical school classmates, attaching a screenshot of a diagnosis report. Li revealed the information a day before Wuhans health officials acknowledged that there was a mysterious viral pneumonia outbreak.

Despite Lis reminder to not spread it externally, screenshots of the conversation showing his full name proliferated on the internet very quickly. On Jan. 3, police reprimanded him along with seven other medical professionals for spreading rumors online. The police statement said he had violated the law.

Days later, Li contracted the virus while operating on an asymptomatic patient for glaucoma, and died on Feb. 7.

While the Chinese Communist Party caused the virus to be spread around the globe, resulting in death and economic devastation, brave medical professionals like Dr. Li spoke truth to the regime, added Cheney.

There are many brave Chinese citizens who told the truth about the pandemic and, like doctor Li, paid a high price for speaking out against the CCPs lies, such as the doctor who gave the information to Li.

The emergency surgeon who this month revealed that she was the whistle provider who gave a diagnosis report of the virus to Li has since disappeared.

Doctor Ai Fen, the head of Emergency at Wuhan Central Hospital, has been missing for days, according to a March 31 report by Australias 60 Minutes. Her disappearance comes just two weeks after she said authorities had prevented her and her colleagues from warning the world about the CCP virus.

She has now disappeared, her whereabouts unknown, the flagship investigative show reported, amid fears the doctor could have been detained for speaking out.

Before her alleged disappearance, Ai said police didnt go after her, but that she received an unprecedented, very harsh admonition from her superiors.

Many, many times, I thought how nice it would be if we could turn back the clock, she told Chinese magazine Portrait, adding that she regretted not telling more doctors about the danger.

If I knew what it would be like today, no matter if I got criticized or not, I would have spread it all around, she said. Someone has to stand up and tell the truth.  There has to be different voices in this world, right?

Cheney in her statement said that she hoped the renaming of the street would serve as a constant reminder to the world and to the Chinese Government that truth and freedom will prevail, said Cheney.

Cathy He and Eva Fu contributed to this report
The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google's API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants' approach after all.

As we've reported before coronavirus contacts tracing apps are a new technology which aims to repurpose smartphones' Bluetooth signals and device proximity to try to estimate individuals' infection risk.

The UK's forthcoming app, called NHS COVID-19, has faced controversy because it's being designed to use a centralized app architecture. This means developers are having to come up with workarounds for platform limitations on background access to Bluetooth as the Apple-Google cross-platform API only works with decentralized systems.

The choice of a centralized app architecture has also raised concerns about the impact of such an unprecedented state data grab on citizens' privacy and human rights, and the risk of state 'mission creep'.

The UK also looks increasingly isolated in its choice in Europe after the German government opted to switch to a decentralized model, joining several other European countries that have said they will opt for a p2p approach, including Estonia, Ireland and Switzerland.

In the region, France remains the other major backer of a centralized system for its forthcoming coronavirus contacts tracing app, StopCovid.

Apple and Google, meanwhile, are collaborating on a so-called "exposure notification" API for national coronavirus contacts tracing apps. The API is slated to launch this month and is designed to remove restrictions that could interfere with how contact events are logged. However it's only available for apps that don't hold users' personal data on central servers and prohibits location tracking, with the pair emphasizing that their system is designed to put privacy at the core.

Story continues

Yesterday the FT reported that NHSX, the digital transformation branch of UK's National Health Service, has awarded a 3.8M contract to the London office of Zuhlke Engineering, a Switzerland-based IT development firm which was involved in developing the initial version of the NHS COVID-19 app.

The contract includes a requirement to investigate the complexity, performance and feasibility of implementing native Apple and Google contact tracing APIs within the existing proximity mobile application and platform, per the newspaper's report.

The work is also described as a two week timeboxed technical spike, which the FT suggests means it's still at a preliminary phase -- thought it also notes the contract includes a deadline of mid-May.

The contracted work was due to begin yesterday, per the report.

We've reached out to Zuhlke for comment. Its website describes the company as "a strong solutions partner" that's focused on projects related to digital product delivery; cloud migration; scaling digital platforms; and the Internet of Things.

We also put questions arising from the FT report to NHSX.

At the time of writing the unit had not responded but yesterday a spokesperson told the newspaper: We've been working with Apple and Google throughout the app's development and it's quite right and normal to continue to refine the app.

The specific technical issue that appears to be causing concern relates to a workaround the developers have devised to try to circumvent platform limitations on Bluetooth that's intended to wake up phones when the app itself is not being actively used in order that the proximity handshakes can still be carried out (and contacts events properly logged).

Thing is, if any of the devices fail to wake up and emit their identifiers so other nearby devices can log their presence there will be gaps in the data. Which, in plainer language, means the app might miss some close encounters between users -- and therefore fail to notify some people of potential infection risk.

Recent reports have suggested the NHSX workaround has a particular problem with iPhones not being able to wake up other iPhones. And while Google's Android OS is the more dominant platform in the UK (running on circa ~60% of smartphones, per Kantar) there will still be plenty of instances of two or more iPhone users passing near each other. So if their apps fail to wake up they won't exchange data and those encounters won't be logged.

On this, the FT quotes one person familiar with the NHS testing process who told it the app was able to work in the background in most cases, except when two iPhones were locked and left unused for around 30 minutes, and without any Android devices coming within 60m of the devices. The source also told it that bringing an Android device running the app close to the iPhone would wake up its Bluetooth connection.

Clearly, the government having to tell everyone in the UK to use an Android smartphone not an iPhone wouldn't be a particularly palatable political message.

This is effectively a form of Android Herd Immunity: for the good of Britain, vaccinate your friends by giving them Androids!  Michael Veale (@mikarv) May 5, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

One source with information about the NHSX testing process told us the unit has this week been asking IT suppliers for facilities or input on testing environments with "50-100 Bluetooth devices of mixed origin", to help with challenges in testing the Bluetooth exchanges -- which raises questions about how extensively this core functionality has been tested up to now. (Again, we've put questions to the NHSX about testing and will update this report with any response.)

Work on planning and developing the NHS COVID-19 app began March 7, according to evidence given to a UK parliamentary committee by the NHSX CEO's, Matthew Gould, last month.

Gould has also previously suggested that the app could be "technically" ready to launch in as little as two or three weeks time from now. While a limited geographical trial of the app kicked off this week in the Isle of Wight. Prior to that, an alpha version of the app was tested at an RAF base involving staff carrying out simulations of people going shopping, per a BBC report last month.

Gould faced questions over the choice of centralized vs decentralized app architecture from the human rights committee earlier this week. He suggested then that the government is not "locked" to the choice -- telling the committee: "We are constantly reassessing which approach is the right one  and if it becomes clear that the balance of advantage lies in a different approach then we will take that different approach. Were not irredeemably wedded to one approach; if we need to shift then we will Its a very pragmatic decision about what approach is likely to get the results that we need to get.

However it's unclear how quickly such a major change to app architecture could be implemented, given centralized vs decentralized systems work in very different ways.

Additionally, such a big shift -- more than two months into the NHSX's project -- seems, at such a late stage, as if it would be more closely characterized as a rebuild, rather than a little finessing (as suggested by the NHSX spokesperson's remark to the FT vis-a-vis 'refining' the app).

In related news today, Reuters reports that Colombia has pulled its own coronavirus contacts tracing app after experiencing glitches and inaccuracies. The app had used alternative technology to power contacts logging via Bluetooth and wi-fi. A government official told the news agency it aims to rebuild the system and may now use the Apple-Google API.

Australia has also reported Bluetooth related problems with its national coronavirus app. And has also been reported to be moving towards adopting the Apple-Google API.

While, Singapore, the first country to launch a Bluetooth app for coronavirus contacts tracing, was also the first to run into technical hitches related to platform limits on background access -- likely contributing to low download rates for the app (reportedly below 20%).
Because Tara Reade challenges a Democrat, the media have been doing their utmost to undercut her allegation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. What's helped is that Reade's story has changed over the years, morphing from describing Joe's usual grabby behavior to describing a brutal sexual assault.

These changes, coupled with the fact that Reade recently praised Biden and seems to be a Bernie-supporter, have led many people to conclude that she's lying. Even the fact that several people are stating today that Reade told them in the 1990s about the assault has not changed this suspicion. On Thursday, though, Reade's version of events got a big boost when a San Luis Obispo newspaper went rooting through court files from Reade's 1996 divorce.

The divorce can't have been a very civil affair, for Reade sought a restraining order against Theodore Dronen, her then-husband. In response to the request for the restraining order, Dronen filed a declaration in which he stated under oath that Reade had told him about being sexually harassed in 1993 while working for Joe Biden (although she did not identify Biden as the harasser) and about being traumatized by the event:

I met Petitioner in the spring of 1993 while working in Washington, D.C. At the early stages of our dating, Petitioner felt comfortable confiding in me as we both worked for Member of Congress, and we shared many other common interests. On several occasions Petitioner related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office. Petitioner told me that she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator's office and left her position. I was sympathetic to her needs when she asked me for help, and assisted her financially, and allowed her to stay at my apartment with my roommate while she looked for work. It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on Petitioner, and that she is still sensitive and effected [sic] by it today.

That is pretty damning. What's especially interesting is Dronen's statement that Reade had been genuinely traumatized by what happened. For most people today, the phrase "sexual harassment" implies irritating, off-putting, and sexist behavior, such as remarks about a woman's looks or clothes, sitting too close at meetings, staring at a woman's breasts, etc. Women hate those things, and they have no place at work, but they're not traumatizing.

If Reade was as traumatized as Dronen says, that implies that something more significant happened than Biden breathing down her neck or staring at her breasts. Her level of anguish is consistent with an actual sexual assault, such as the one she's now describing. It's easy to imagine that, back in 1993, Reade had a binary view of things: in her mind, there was rape, and there was sexual harassment. The idea that a man pushing her against a wall and using his fingers to penetrate her was a criminal assault that fell short of actual rape may not have occurred to her.

As for Reade's slowly revealing the story and her continued respect for Biden, that may be normal, at least according to expert testimony in the Harvey Weinstein rape trial:

A forensic psychiatrist, Barbara Ziv, testified for the prosecution that it is common for victims of a sexual assault to not report the crime to law enforcement and to remain in contact with their attacker. In some cases, Dr. Ziv said, victims worry that their assaulter might ruin their reputation or job. Sometimes the victim maintains a relationship with the perpetrator because they have a connection to the person. "Those women do not always leave," Dr. Ziv said. "In fact, they frequently do not leave and they stay for a long period of time, and they may think about it but they don't do it."

In previews of her interview with Megyn Kelly, Reade said she's willing to swear under oath that she's speaking the truth and will even take a lie-detector test if Biden takes one, too:

MK EXCLUSIVE: Will Tara Reade go under oath or take a polygraph? pic.twitter.com/aBXohhg14n  Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 7, 2020

I know of two women who don't want Reade to go anywhere near a lie-detector machine or a Bible for oath-swearing. At Twitchy, a post details Dianne Feinstein's about-face on the #MeToo movement, which is ironic, given that Feinstein was the first to learn of Christine Blasey Ford's squirrely allegations against Kavanaugh and that Feinstein brought Ford's claims before the Senate. The other person who shows up in the Twitchy post is Amy Klobuchar, who some say has the inside track to be Biden's running mate, and who has abandoned completely any allegiance to the #MeToo, #BelieveAllWomen moment.

If hypocrisy is a winner in politics, the Democrats have achieved total victory.
More than 100 British travellers stranded in isolated parts of Nepal when the coronavirus outbreak struck have been rescued by the Gurkhas. (Picture: PA)

More than 100 British travellers stranded in isolated parts of Nepal when the coronavirus outbreak struck have been rescued by the Gurkhas.

Soldiers from the British Gurkhas Nepal network, based in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Dharan, tackled river crossings and landslides as well as navigating treacherous roads to rescue people, the Foreign Office (FCO) said.

The soldiers, along with UK embassy staff and drivers, travelled more than 4,000 miles through the Himalayas to reach tourists stuck in mountainous towns, villages and national parks, as part of a three-week rescue mission.

Soldiers tackled river crossings and treacherous roads to rescue 108 British nationals. (Picture: PA)

The coronavirus pandemic has severely reduced transport routes in Nepal, the Foreign Office said, leaving tourists stranded in remote places.

In total 109 British people, along with 28 foreign nationals, were helped so they could reach charter flights to get home amidst strict lockdown measures.

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Sergeant Prakash Gurung, of 29 Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, was among those who helped in the rescue effort, navigating treacherous roads to rescue a British solo traveller from Manang in north-west Nepal, before driving nine and a half hours back to Kathmandu to catch a UK charter flight.

Helping people in dire situations gives me a sense of satisfaction, said Sgt Gurung. The gratitude people expressed in messages has encouraged me to do more of this sort of work.

British ambassador to Nepal Nicola Pollitt said: Getting British nationals home in such an unprecedented time is a huge challenge around the world, but in a country like Nepal, with such extreme conditions, it would have been impossible to get everyone back without the close collaboration of the embassy and British Gurkhas Nepal.

We have been able to reunite more than 700 British travellers with their families in the UK, and that would not have been possible without the tireless work of our embassy and Gurkha team.

Story continues

Lt Col Peter Wettenhall, Deputy Commander of the British Gurkhas Nepal, added: It is both fitting and in keeping with the role of the armed forces that when called on for assistance that we do our very best to support those in need.

We are delighted that we were able to assist the British Embassy, British nationals and our soldiers and families in Nepal through this trying time.

Coronavirus: what happened today
Guest Column COVID-19 and the Unfinished Agenda of Funding Disease Control in SE Asia

A medic at a makeshift COVID-19 hospital in Yangon. / Htet Wai / The Irrawaddy

This story first appeared in New Mandala.

In the last few months, we have seen a growing number of philanthropists and private foundations pledge their resources to control the COVID-19 pandemic and ameliorate its impacts. From Jack Ma to Bill and Melinda Gates, from Dato Sri Tahir to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires have acted to provide assistance.

Among the choir of praise for the generosity of the planets richest and their foundations, some have voiced critical remarks. Such amounts, no matter how staggering, are tiny when compared to the givers fortunes; less wealthy individuals donate greater proportions of their incomes; donations are a fraction of public funding and official development aid (ODA); much of philanthropists wealth is based on the exploitation of loopholes in the same economic system that is creating unprecedented inequities (as highlighted by this very pandemic); commitments do not necessarily results in actual donations or may just shift funds away from other programs; and taxes would be a more effective and fair method than reliance on gratuities out of accumulated wealth to fund social safety nets and public health.

Public discussion would also benefit from closer scrutiny of the effectiveness and strategic value of the approaches proposed. As we think about long-term responses beyond the immediate crisis, we may want to look back to now-forgotten initiatives. There is a history of strategic engagement with the prevention and control of emerging viruses, especially in East and Southeast Asia, from which we may learn about programs strengths and shortcomings.

International foundations identified the risks associated with zoonotic infections quite early. In 1999, the Rockefeller Foundation began work in Southeast Asiaand later in eastern and southern Africato monitor the emergence of new infectious diseases with pandemic potential. At the time, global preoccupation focused on HIV/AIDS, with attention to more familiar infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, malaria and dengue concentrated in particular locations. Yet, experts and practitioners on the ground became concerned about the likelihood of new zoonotic outbreaks with transnational health and economic impacts disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable. It was argued that China and its surroundings could become a hotspot, owing to rapid market integration, increasing density and mobility of human and animal populations, wild animal trade and commercialization of livestock.

Responding to these concerns, the newly established regional office of the Rockefeller Foundation launched the Cross-Border Health (CBH) component of its Learning Across Boundaries in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) program, integrating the surveillance work with grant-making on regional dynamics and their transnational ramifications.

CBH granted an average of US$2 million (2.78 billion kyats) annually to GMS partners to build contextual knowledge and regional intervention capacity on transnational flows of diseases. It also funded advocacy of public health policies that would take into account gender and other societal structures. It stressed the needs of the less privileged, particularly migrants and ethnic minorities in mountainous border areas where infectious diseases are rife. Learning from the HIV epidemic, civil society groups were considered key stakeholders in building community resilience and it was stressed that mitigating fear and discrimination toward persons infected with, or affected by, infectious disease was crucial to control transmission.

CBHs centerpiece was the establishment of an inter-governmental disease-control mechanism named Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Consortium (MBDS) in time to play an important trust-building role in the control of the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak in 2003. Eventually, other funders joined forces in supporting MBDS and fostering inclusive health policies.

The SARS and H5N1 epidemics and their spread from China to Southeast Asia triggered a flurry of donor-supported initiatives in the region. The Asian Development Bank allocated a sizable amount of resources in grant and loan funds to the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to enhance health system responses to major public health threats. Significant resources were also invested by bilateral donorssuch as AusAID (now defunct) and USAidto strengthen animal health surveillance and routine detection in people, as well as tackling the socioeconomic drivers of zoonotic diseases.

Over time, foundations and other grant-making institutions consistently supported collaborative transdisciplinary knowledge and institutional capacity building. In 2006, the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC) launched the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (APEIR), involving leading government, non-government and academic institutes in Southeast Asia and China. The network undertook policy-relevant research on emerging infectious diseases from an eco-health perspective, including on the thriving wildlife trade and its health, socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Once it was recognized that wildlife has multiple functions and can be a source of protein for the poor, regulatory measures were argued for, rather than abstract bansa finding that counters current frantic calls for the abolishment of wet markets, even those with no wild game.

Ten years after SARS and H5N1, this concentration of resources and approaches was recognized as having contributed to better preparedness and progress in achieving the core capacities required to detect and respond to emerging infectious diseases. The emergence of a shared concept of One Health (implying transdisciplinary collaboration between professionals in promoting human, animal and environmental health) was seen as significant progress towards a more comprehensive approach to zoonotic diseases. There was optimism that countries could work together to fill the missing gaps through closer cooperation.

Gradually, however, funding initiatives declined in value and intensity due to internal and external factors. A leadership transition at the Rockefeller Foundation led to the premature ending of the renamed Disease Surveillance Networks (DSN) Initiative and IDRCs APEIR was impacted by the closing of the regional office in Singapore. Some donors decided, sometimes hastily, that the desired goals had been achieved. More generally, there was a reduction of international aid and, above all, a retrenchment from the social sector in favor of economic, infrastructure and technological investments. Some data suggests that, aside from a spike in funding for Ebola responses, health aid remained largely flat between 2010 and 2016 and declined thereafter.

This decline was even stronger in Southeast Asia, now regarded as ready to graduate from aid (growing inequities, persistent vulnerabilities and unresolved development challenges notwithstanding). Some foundations left the area and those who stayed embraced a more technocratic agenda less responsive to sociocultural and institutional contexts and less supportive of local organizations, especially civil society groups. Program interaction with China was also reduced, owing to polarized views, more restrictive rules for overseas foundations and the significant growth of Chinese foundations.

Priority-setting favored mother and child health, reproductive health, and the three high-priority communicable diseases (HIV, malaria and tuberculosis). There was a novel emphasis on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) due to their rise in Southeast Asia, and concern about the related increase in health expenditures led to a focus on Universal Health Care (UHC). Much-needed investments in health financing schemes, however, too often came at the cost of former programs to strengthen health services. The privatization and marketization of health carepursued by governments and donors alikeweakened interest in public health provision.

With regards to infectious diseases, funding in the region became more narrowly targeted to malaria and to a lesser extent dengue fever and tuberculosis. Other sanitary emergencies caught global attention, from H1N1 in the US to the Ebola outbreak in Africa. As the impact of SARS and H5N1 had been contained, attention to Asia lessened. Experts had warned that the capacity to predict and identify biological threats remained essential, even if the memory of SARS was fading. They were largely ignored.

COVID-19 comes thus in the midst of an unfinished agenda and makes the promising investments of the early 2000s look like a missed opportunity. Despite the popularity of conspiracy theories, the emergence of a new virus in China linked to wild game is not a total surprise. For international philanthropy and aid (as for governments and other stakeholders), it may be worth reflecting on why we were unprepared.

Learning from the past to plan a better future after COVID-19, health and health care ought to have greater relevance in international aid. While donor funding is a small part of global spending on health, it is still an important supplement to government and private resources in low and lower-middle income countries such as the majority of those in Southeast Asia. A return to higher levels is needed. An open discussion should begin on the efficiency of concentrating resources in a vertical approach for a particular disease rather than adopting a broad-based horizontal approach that builds the systems capacity to deal with a wider range of health problems and their underlying causes. As strong national health systems that act for the common (and not private) good have proven essential during the current crisis, governments and donors should invest in them without further delay.

Foundations and semi-public grant-making organizations provide comparatively small financial resources. Past experiences have shown, however, their capacity to be responsive to local needs, directly support home-grown initiatives and organizations to address them, invest in critical issues, and use their convening power to maximize impact. They have dared to try untested approaches and propose alternative visions. The question is whether today they are still positioned to provide strategic, bold and socially engaged funding as they used to in the 1990s and early 2000s.

During that period, foundations programs linked medical interventions to issues of equity, rights, socioeconomic justice and governance systems and supported civil society groups to ensure more balanced and rights-based decisions. This integrated and transformative funding approach is extremely relevant today when COVID-19 is highlighting the urgency to address the profound divides and fragility of vulnerable groups and to ensure civic space while promoting health safety. After the shrinking of direct funding to civil society in the last decade, a U-turn in donor practices is needed to stop the ongoing financial undermining of the third sector.

Past programs also remind us that if geographical and disciplinary boundaries are to be overcome, we need to invest in building the capacity to do so. COVID-19 has shown that the trust fostered by previous programs has waned and countries will have to regain it in order to coordinate COVID-19 containment strategies and their repeal, and the sharing of expertise and resources. Future research and action require further changes in the sectoral allocation of funds and the recognition that applied science is intrinsically related to sociocultural and political processes. As governments and donors race to find better treatment, a vaccine and technological data-science tools, we should recall that to contain this and future epidemics and address their root causes and impacts, funding social interventions is equally important. Doing so, philanthropy can seize the opportunity not only to overcome the COVID-19 crisis, but also to contribute to a more eco-sustainable and just future.

Dr Rosalia Sciortino is associate professor at the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Mahidol University, visiting professor in the Master in International Development Studies (MAIDS) program at Chulalongkorn University, and founder and director of SEA Junction. Formerly, she served as regional director for the International Development Research Center (IDRC) in Singapore and for the Rockefeller Foundation in Bangkok, as senior adviser for AusAID (now DFAT), and as program officer in the Ford Foundations offices for Indonesia and the Philippines.

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COVID-19 Under Control If Myanmar Keeps Current Measures: Health Minister
The report detailed that, for the week ending May 2, there were 47 incidents where gardai exercised powers under the Health Act - bringing the total to 139. Two of these incidents were at the direction of a health professional.

From April 8 to May 2, there were 1,172 crime incidents which represented suspected offences disclosed or uncovered as a result of Covid-19 policing.

Gardai carried out 13,302 checkpoints from April 20 to April 26, of which 38% were carried out in Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR).

An examination of four sample checkpoints in each region of the country found that, of the 13,324 vehicles counted passing through these checkpoints, only 21 (0.16%) were turned back.

For the week ending May 2, anti-spit hoods were used in 13 incidents bringing the total uses to date to 293.

At a public meeting with the Policing Authority last week, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said the new powers were being used on very rare occasions and that it had been stressed to gardai to use their discretion and common sense when dealing with the public.

Meanwhile, the Garda response to coronavirus could change the face of community policing following an increased presence in local areas during the lockdown.

Units nationwide have been delivering medication, food and other services to the homes of vulnerable people and the elderly who are cocooning.

Patrick McGowan, from Collins Avenue in Dublin, thanks Sergeant John O'Reilly, of Community Policing in Finglas, after receiving his prescription medicine.

Sergeant John OReilly, of community policing in Finglas in Dublin, said the frontline initiative has strengthened the relationship between gardai and the public: "There is huge benefit to be gained from this, were very much community-based and this is bringing us right back into the heart of the community to show that we are there to assist them.

"It doesnt always have to involve a criminal nature. The feedback that were getting from the community and the people were visiting on a daily basis is extremely positive.

Its vitally important that we maintain our links with the community, and this is without a doubt improving our relationships and strengthening our bonds with the community that we serve."

With the help of community representatives and Dublin City Council, gardai in Finglas were able to identify the vulnerable and elderly people living locally.

Officers collect groceries, meals and prescriptions every day and deliver them to the homes of those who are isolated.

On some occasions, officers have also been taking elderly peoples' dogs for walks.
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By Ben Christopher | CalMatters

Ever since the end of the Great Recession, Rancho Cucamonga has been on a tear.

New retailers and restaurants have sprung up to serve the residents of its gated 'burbs. The city's population has swelled with Angelenos in search of cheaper housing. And at last count, its unemployment rate sat at just 4%. The city earned an upgraded credit rating earlier this year.

But now that shopping and dining have been deemed non-essential activities, the good times are gone, said Rancho Mayor Dennis Michael.

"Since we recovered from the Great Recession, we generated about $9 million in new sales tax revenue," he said. "We've lost all of that gain. We're basically starting from square one."

For local governments still sporting the budgetary scars of the last "once in a generation" recession, this downturn is at once familiar -- forcing elected leaders to cut, furlough and delay -- and entirely new. Never before in state history has so much economic activity ground to a halt so quickly.

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"When we came through the Great Recession we were able to use reserves to have a softer landing over a period of years," said Michael. "This is worse than the Great Recession because everything happened all at once."

Rancho has it better than most cities. It has healthy reserves, low debts and a relatively wealthy population.

In San Pablo, a city just north of Richmond in the Bay Area with a median income a little over half of Rancho Cucamonga's, City Manager Matt Rodriguez "is bracing for a 'Worse Case Budget Scenario,'" he said in an email.

San Pablo relies on the local casino run by the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians for 60% of its discretionary funds. Since state and county officials declared shelter-in-place orders in mid-March, the city has been hemorrhaging $2.3 million every month, said Rodriguez. That's about 5% of the city's annual general fund every 30 days.

City managers aren't known for their colorful language, but municipal leaders across the state are now facing economic conditions that seem to define hyperbole.

"Staff estimates that the Covid-19 pandemic will devastate the City's General Fund," wrote Monterey's City Manager Hans Uslar last month. The city then voted to axe up to 84 jobs.

Down the coast in Anaheim, home to Disneyland, Mayor Harry Sidhu offered a sober reminder to his colleagues on the council last month: The Magic Kingdom and its ancillary hotels and shops provide half of the city's jobs and half of the city government's revenue.

"As to when Disneyland Resort will open, I don't know. I don't believe anyone knows," he said.

And in Yountville, the town of roughly 3,000 in the heart of the Napa Valley wine country, the decline in hotel and sales tax revenue has resulted "in about a 74 percent loss in revenue," said Mayor John Dunbar, who is also president of the League of California Cities, in a live-streamed discussion with CalMatters.

That's 3 out of 4 of the city's expected tax dollars now gone.

"Yes, unfortunately you heard me correctly," he added.

Cities without much fiscal wiggle room heading into the pandemic will do particularly poorly, said Bill Statler, a municipal finance consultant who spent decades working for the city of San Luis Obispo.

"The roots of fiscal trouble are in the good times," he said. "If you have strong revenues during the good times, build reserves, pay down unfunded liabilities, invest in capital projects, then when the inevitable bad times come, you'll have more resilience and flexibility."

Still, in ways that highlight just how unusual the current economic downturn is, there are clear exceptions.

With a strong tourism and hospitality sector, "I would have used Santa Monica as a poster child for how some cities have really good financial DNA," said Statler.

Last month, Santa Monica's city manager was pushed out of his job after his proposed budget cuts elicited massive public outcry. Now the city is considering laying off 337 workers.

If there is any type of California city best suited to weather the current recession, it's bedroom communities.

"Those cities that are highly reliant on property taxes and not sales -- it's not to say that they won't suffer, but their treasuries won't get depleted immediately," said Michael Pagano, dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

That's because while sales taxes and tourism-dependent revenue sources like hotel taxes are paid into local coffers with each transaction, property taxes are paid twice a year. Property tax revenues tend to be stable from year to year too, because California law assesses residential or commercial buildings based on purchase price rather than current market value.

"For cities that rely on sales," said Pagano, "it's not like a downturn that we've ever experienced before. This is just an immediate shutting off of the spigot."

The divide between municipalities that rely heavily on property values versus those that do not is a Tale of Two Cities. According to a CalMatters analysis of municipal tax revenue data from 2018, the cities that rely most on property taxes are Mountain View, Pleasanton, Newport Beach and San Clemente -- all wealthy.

Cities that are dependent on sales and hotel taxes are more of a mixed bag, with some well-to-do tourism destinations, but also many working- and middle-class towns with below-average incomes or cooler housing markets: South Gate, Hemet, Merced, Redding.

And for cities hoping for a helping hand, very few have been extended.

The state, for one, has its own financial troubles. Gov. Gavin Newsom's Finance Department is now projecting a $54.3 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year. That's twice the size of the state's "rainy day" reserve fund.

"I'm going to do everything I can to work with these cities and counties," Newsom said at a press conference last week before the deficit projection was announced. "But I can assure you this: We are not going to be in a position, even as the nation's fifth-largest economy, to provide for the needs of all the cities and the counties without federal support."

The federal government has already directed $150 billion to cash-strapped state and local governments through the CARES Act, the financial relief bill signed into law last month. About $9.5 billion of that went directly to the state government, with another $5.8 billion for cities or counties -- though only to those with populations of more than 500,000.

Even for the lucky six California cities that qualify for the help, the funding comes with strings attached, said San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who was also in the CalMatters live-streamed conversation.

"It has to be COVID-related, it's not supposed to be used for revenue replacement," he said. It's not entirely clear how those guidelines will be enforced, but the intent is clear: the funding is not to be used to plug budgetary holes. While city leaders "try to get clarity" from the federal government, said Faulconer, San Diego is projecting a $300 million deficit.

Though Democrats in Washington are clamoring for more federal assistance to state and local governments, Republicans remain divided. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky likened providing additional aid to a "bail out" for state and local governments and their underfunded pension systems. McConnell has since softened his rhetoric.

Another possible benefactor for desperate cities: the voters.

The California constitution generally requires cities, counties and school districts to receive voter approval to raise taxes or borrow. And while the state electorate has historically been inclined to back most revenue-raisers, it may be feeling less generous this year.

In the March 3 primary, only 40% of local fiscal measures -- bonds and taxes -- were approved by voters, according to an analysis by Michael Coleman, who maintains the California Local Government Finance Almanac. That's compared to a 77% passage rate in 2018 and 81% in 2016.

There were many more measures on the ballot this year overall -- including a record-breaking $15 billion school construction bond -- which may have given voters sticker shock. A recent change in state law governing how ballot measures are described could have also turned some voters off. The coronavirus pandemic was only beginning to register as a national concern on Election Day, but that too could have diminished the public's appetite for new costs.

(Chava Sanchez/LAist)

Whatever the reasons, said Coleman, it does not bode well for cities hoping to patch up their budgets via the ballot box this November.

"I think we're going to continue to have this malaise about what's going on in the economy, about job security, about how the world is changing. That's the sort of psyche that causes people to wonder if this is the right time for a tax increase," he said.

Many in local government -- and the campaign staff they hire -- are hoping that local budget cuts will have the opposite effect.

In a conference call this morning, San Francisco Mayor London Breed championed a statewide ballot measure by framing it as a conflict between necessary government services during a pandemic and commercial property owners.

"Any local official will have a tough time explaining to their constituents why in the midst of this crisis they didn't support closing corporate tax loopholes," she said.

Sometimes known as the "split roll" initiative, the measure would change the way that many commercial properties are assessed, resulting in much higher property taxes on some businesses and much higher tax revenue for cities, counties and school districts.

Industry groups and low tax advocates argue -- and will likely continue to argue until November -- that now is precisely the wrong time to raise taxes on businesses.

Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies, a consulting firm that helps to pass local bond and tax measures in California, said he's optimistic that "most voters don't want to see their community services be completely gutted." Despite the economic climate, if a local government is thinking of going to voters for money this November, "they shouldn't just automatically rule it out," he said.

Not many have yet, said Curtis Below, a partner at the Oakland polling outfit FM3 Research.

"There have been a few more clients who said they want to sit out the cycle, but the vast majority still want to explore this year," he said. "A lot of our clients are going full steam ahead."

But both Dunbar of Yountville and Faulconer of San Diego are skeptical that the funds that could be raised at the ballot box would be even remotely enough to fit the pandemic's fiscal bill.

"We're not going to be able to tax our way out of this recession," said Faulconer.

This story was originally published by CalMatters.
08.05.2020 LISTEN

PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE NDC MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT ON GHANA'S WORSENING COVID-19 SITUATION AND THE NATIONAL RESPONSE - ADDRESSED BY THE HON. MINORITY LEADER, HARUNA IDDRISU.

The Minority in Ghana's Parliament is grateful to you for honouring our invitation to this press engagement.

We are thankful to all Ghanaians including civil society organizations, faith based groups, volunteers and other governance partners for the continuous support, feedback, expert inputs and solidarity as we work together in the collective progress of our country.

Let me begin by paying tribute and salute our frontline health care workers who are risking their lives every day, every hour and every minute to keep us all safe and reduce the adverse impact of the deadly COVID-19 which has so far infected 3,091 persons, over 2,000 more since President Akufo-Addo lifted the lockdown.

It is our frontline health care workers who are the real heroes of this defining moment in the history of humankind.

We salute journalists, security personnel, utility workers and all volunteers on the frontlines and assure them of our heartfelt appreciation and that of the constituents we represent.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our nation and the world is confronted with the greatest challenge of our lifetime.

The novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the health of our citizens and the health of the economy. Concerned with this development, we in the Minority presented a memorandum containing far reaching suggestions on managing the pandemic. We intended it for discussion on the floor of the House but it was not to be. Our Flag bearer, Former President John Mahama set up a technical advisory team to support the national effort even as he himself offered assistance by way of well-reasoned suggestions as well as donations of critically needed supplies to health care personnel all over the country and food supplies to vulnerable groups. We continue to play our part as responsible citizens.

In Ghana, more than 3,000 of our compatriots have contracted the virus thus far with 18 precious lives lost. Our condolences to bereaved families and the family and medical fraternity on the loss of Prof. Jacob Plange-Rhule, Rector of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Every life lost is one life too many. And so we consider as irresponsible, a statement by the Presidents Adviser on Health dismissing the number of lives lost as insignificant. The dead have families who deserve empathy. Let me add that Ghanas death toll may be low to some people but there may be things we are not seeing and recording.

The impact of COVID-19 on our economy has been most devastating - from massive job losses, closure of businesses to a historic fall in GDP growth.

This certainly cannot be the time for old-fashioned excessive partisan politics and infantile name calling as Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia sought to do earlier this week.

This is the time to focus every attention on this national crisis that threatens the very foundations of our society

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The latest update - a staggering 3,091 confirmed cases, the second highest in West Africa after Nigeria which has reported 3,145 cases though we should be more worried when we compare our population to that of Nigeria. This troubling development should serve as a wakeup call that the time for wishful thinking is over. To quote Former President Mahama, Hope is a comfort, but it is not a strategy. Governments response so far has been rather slow, based on loose interpretations of the science, and often detached from the facts on the ground.

Couldnt we have locked down earlier?

Couldnt we have closed our borders earlier?

Couldnt we have started massive public education in local languages earlier?

Couldnt we have developed our humanitarian response plan earlier?

We should have had a comprehensive strategic plan in place earlier. A document we have requested without success, making us wonder if there's one.

We lost the opportunity to do all of these and many more because President Akufo-Addo did not prioritize. He was touring in Europe even though the alarm bells of the coming pandemic were ringing. Then, shortly upon his return we had the first two cases of the virus infection. One of them had actually been with the President during his happy travel to Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The sharp rise in the number of cases reported by authorities in the last two weeks is deeply worrying. The attempt to downplay this fact is unacceptable. Ghanaians expect the professionals entrusted with responsibility for managing the crisis to be forthright and refrain from interpreting data that is not grounded in the science of the pandemic. And here, I refer to a recent statement by a member of the National Response Team that we have peaked in terms of the number of infected persons.

Misuse of such terms without empirical basis appear to be designed to fit into a certain narrative ahead of the Presidents next broadcast. It appears to be part of a strategy to create an atmosphere of normalcy in the lead to the next presidential broadcast and as for the reason, your guess is as good as mine. Evidently, President Akufo-Addo seems more interested in his re-election than in the safety and life of Ghanaians. That fact keeps unfolding.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Many professionals have observed that the data being published by the Ghana Health Service does not lend itself to meaningful analysis in the form it is presented. The absence of several key data points that would allow independent researchers to understand the rate of spread and the demographics of the pandemic have not been made public. And there continue to be legitimate concerns about some of the data that actually is available.

On two separate occasions in April, the number of confirmed cases under routine surveillance was revised downwards without any explanation whatsoever. And the test positivity rate for travelers under mandatory quarantine literally doubled after the last update. No explanation was offered for that either. This lack of transparency only serves to undermine public trust in governments commitment to this fight, and that directly affects our likelihood of successfully avoiding a worsening situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not normal times and reality must guide our next steps. We are well past the time for parochial thinking. Egotism, willful ignorance and empty rhetoric will not save us. The cheap stunts designed to bolster a faltering narrative will not save us. Blatant falsehoods told to garnish the image of this administration in the face of the foreign press will not save us. What these will do, instead, is consolidate a false sense of security in the Ghanaian public that will obscure our view of the danger we face. Indeed, false claims about low prices of local foodstuff on the market, plantain included is part of the grand scheme to create a false sense of security. Without an appreciation for the plain reality of our situation, the preventive measures will not be taken seriously. And if they are not taken seriously, we will lose this fight and we will pay a heavy price for it.

If government persists in this course, posterity will judge this administration as the most self-indulgent administration that ever had the privilege of the peoples mandate. And should any section of our society aid and abet this abdication of the most fundamental responsibility of government - the protection of the people and preservation of the Republic for the generations behind us - then we will rightly share in that infamy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Right from the word go, governments response to the crisis revealed a lack of foresight and a fundamental denial of the nature of the foe we face in COVID-19.

As already alluded to, this manifested itself in the failure of government to prioritize planning and preparations for COVID-19 during the many weeks after the declaration of a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation on January 30, 2020. They sat idly by - failing to provide the initial GHS35 million needed for our preparedness plan despite seeing the havoc it was wreaking all over the world - and made almost no provisions for the eventuality of an outbreak in Ghana, relying instead on false hopes around climate and genetics. The WHO country assessment which followed at the time vindicates our position.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Government put in place inadequate structures which did not aid us to enhance our surveillance and detect cases here more rapidly by expanding our testing capacity. They failed to recognize the seriousness of the threat and left our borders open even at the time they refused to evacuate our students in Wuhan; and they left the borders open far beyond what was possibly reasonable under the circumstances, and even when nations all over the world were closing theirs.

Government failed to anticipate the devastating effects that a COVID-19 outbreak would have on our social life and our economy, and were grossly unprepared to soften the blow for the most vulnerable people and households in our nation when a lockdown became necessary. The inept, partisan and disastrous manner Government distributed food relief only exacerbated the risk.

And to conceal that failure, to shirk responsibility for its consequences, they prematurely lifted the restrictions on movement against the advice of some of the most respected authorities on public health in Ghana.

Government's financial response has exposed what was hitherto touted as a robust economy as Government virtually had no reserves to confront the pandemic. But for the World Bank, the IMF and the Stabilisation Fund left behind by former President John Mahama God knows where this economy buoyed by propaganda steroids would have left us.

At every point in its response, Government has been playing catch up. The reactionary policymaking that this has occasioned has left our containment efforts lagging behind the threat. Even now, when it is clear that we have ongoing local transmission in almost every region of this country, this government continues to downplay its extent and consequences.

The fact is we have almost no idea about the true scale of the problem because nearly three months into the pandemic we are still trying to formulate a testing strategy that allows us to estimate the general prevalence of COVID-19 on a timely basis.

We are well beyond the point in this crisis where our testing should have been broadened in recognition of the outward spread of the virus from the hotspots. News about new facilities is welcome, but long overdue. And those delays have certainly come at a cost.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The scientists at Noguchi and all our testing facilities deserve this nations thanks for the commitment they have shown in this national effort so far. But government must honour that hard work by being sincere about the data and what it really means. Government is selling false hope of a situation under control and using its management of information as a cover for this farce. That insults the intelligence of the Ghanaian people and makes a mockery of the seriousness of the situation. Candour and consistency must be the order of the day.

Testing, tracing, monitoring and isolation where necessary must be the daily routine.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

What President Akufo-Addo and his government must understand is that their apparent choice to face this pandemic as more a PR exercise rather than a real crisis management effort will ultimately be exposed. You cannot outsmart the science, and you cannot outrun reality. But we in the Minority have absolutely no desire to witness such a failure because the cost will be counted in Ghanaian lives and livelihoods.

If the containment strategy government has wed itself to unravels any further the brunt of this burden will fall on the frontline health care workers. Their courage and competence are going to be the last defense for many of our countrymen who will face the worst of this disease. And yet, despite the Presidents lofty rhetoric and grand assurances, the healthcare system remains so unbelievably unprepared for the battle that has already begun.

Our health care workers cannot face the weeks ahead unequipped and unprotected. They cannot provide the needed care to the critically ill if they continue to lack adequate PPEs and even basic supplies such as hand sanitizers. And they should not have to pay for these things out of their own pockets, let alone go begging for them from the public. This is unpardonable. And government mocks their commitment in insisting that the very real dangers they face - the dangers to their families too - are well under control and nothing to be concerned about.

In this respect, the recent pronouncements of the Health Minister to the effect that some health care workers are engaged in selling PPEs for personal profit without providing any scintilla of evidence is an utter insult to our heroes who are sacrificing so much. We roundly condemn the Minister's irresponsible utterances. We dare him to provide specific evidence and stop denigrating all health workers.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority is deeply worried about how science has been relegated to the background by the President. Instead, the President now appears to be relying on Signs and Wonders forgetting the old adage that Heaven helps those who help themselves.

The President took a terrible gamble with our lives when he lifted the lockdown at a time our case count was increasing.

That decision has led to the situation where since the removal of the lockdown, confirmed cases have more than doubled and deaths have more than tripled. His quagmire: the economy/politics versus health.

We have also in the process seen hotspots emerge virtually in all parts of Ghana since the lifting of the lockdown.

President Akufo-Addo must take responsibility for this unfortunate turn of events,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority has duly taken note that following the President's reversal of the partial lockdown and our worsening case count, the reputable Ghana Medical Association has publicly called for a different approach in containing and limiting the spread of COVID-19. We are in full support of this call. President Akufo-Addo should be led by sound epidemiological data and not political calculations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority's demand for a new policy approach based on Science is borne out of the need to preserve human lives and protect our health system.

Ghana's case count is now amongst the most infected countries in Africa. This has frightening prospects which demands an urgent change in strategy. As the science dictates, this cannot be the time for further easing of restrictions. We expect a more proactive policy response. We should be fighting the virus ahead of it and not from behind.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is absolutely troubling and shocking that in the face of such a pandemic, our Government chooses to supply PPEs to officials of the Electoral Commission when doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers are crying for PPEs.

It is equally shocking that Government officials are publicly justifying the irresponsible conduct of the Electoral Commission in defying the restrictions imposed by the President even in the face of a court injunction secured by our colleague, Hon. Sam George.

All these come at a time the EC's plan to begin its infamous and life-threatening registration in June this year has been exposed after a presentation the EC made to ECOWAS leaked. It is worth noting that the EC's timetable as presented to ECOWAS remains unknown to Parliament and opposition political parties.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority is concerned about the plight of Ghanaians who appear stranded in other jurisdictions following the closure of our borders. It is our considered view that just as our Government is able to open our airports despite the closures for foreign nationals to be evacuated out of Ghana, Government should do same by providing a narrow opportunity under strict evacuation protocols of screening, testing and quarantine in order to rescue our fellow compatriots.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Minority urges Government to ensure a high level of accountability with the funds and donations they have thus far received in the fight against COVID-19. Claims by NADMO of spending GHS2 million a day on feeding an opaque number of Ghanaians during the lockdown would not be allowed to pass. May we serve notice that we shall insist on full transparency and a thorough audit of all funds received.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On the basis of the evidence available, evidence based on the science and driven by sound epidemiological data, the Minority wishes to advise President Akufo-Addo to tread cautiously and not take decisions to ease restrictions just to satisfy narrow political ends. This is a time for health care professionals, civil society, religious leaders and traditional rulers to be adults in the room offering guidance and fearless advice for the sake of the country.

Nothing can be more important than the value which we must place on human lives.

Let us all return to the table of science and be guided by same.

I commend all Ghanaians for the difficult sacrifices we have all been willing to bear for our collective protection.

Please it is important that we all continue to adhere strictly to the hygiene and social distancing protocols.

In that regard, Government should make provision for the vulnerable in our society by providing them with free face masks. We disagree with the Health Minister when we assumes every Ghanaian can afford and that every Ghanaian knows where to find the appropriate face mask to purchase. Some MPs have been able to support the vulnerable with free face masks and we believe Government has no excuse to abdicate.

Let us soldier on. With sincerity towards scientific data and genuine solidarity for all our compatriots, COVID-19 shall be defeated.

Thank you very much. We shall now take your questions.
The Indian Red Cross Society



(IRCS) Nagaland state branch on Friday observed Red Cross Day by distributing masks and pamphlets on COVID-19 to the people.

In the state capital, the Red Cross volunteers distributed pamphlets which had information on COVID-19 preventive measures and the Dos and Donts.

Speaking at a brief function held at Old MLA junction here, Deputy Commissioner Kohima, Gregory Thejawelie Sote called upon the members of the Red Cross Society to render their best during this difficult time.

"We are already under lockdown for a long period and life is out of normalcy, while we are in a very difficult time," he said, while asking all to help in the fight against COVID-19 in our own way.

The DC lauded the Red Cross Society for distributing masks and also sensitizing the people on the importance of hand washing, wearing of masks and other hygiene practices.

General Secretary of IRCS Nagaland State Branch, Dr Neiphi Kire said IRCS Nagaland has started an effort to address the corona virus pandemic in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The High Court has thrown out a Hong Kong residents challenge to his quarantine status, dismissing his application for a writ of habeas corpus over his mandatory isolation at a government-run facility.

Accountant Syed Agha Raza Shah, who tested negative for Covid-19 upon his return, was sent to the Chun Yeung Estate in Fo Tan for a 14-day stay after returning from Pakistan via Qatar with about 200 other Hong Kong residents on April 29.

On Thursday, he applied for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his detention and listing Hong Kongs director of health as the respondent.

Some residents recently back from Pakistan complained the lunchboxes arranged by the government were of poor quality or violated their religious beliefs. Photo: Handout

A source close to the case said Shah, who had travelled to his native country to visit family, bought a ticket back after being told by his wife in Hong Kong that he would be allowed to home quarantine if initial tests returned negative.

Shahs lawyers on Friday questioned why Pakistanis had been selectively sent to quarantine centres when returnees from countries with higher numbers of infections had been allowed to isolate at home.

Counsel Benjamin Chan Kui-pang said his client was totally astonished when he saw that passengers returning from the United States and United Kingdom were advised to observe home quarantine while those from Pakistan were subjected to the most stringent form of isolation.

Chan argued officials have failed to provide sufficient public health justification for the measure, adding it presented an acute problem for his Muslim client, who had been served food containing not only pork but cockroaches.

But the judge questioned if the complaints had been brought to the correct forum as the court was concerned only with the legality of detention.

Chow also noted that a disparate application of measures did not, in and of itself, indicate the measures were wrong. The mere fact that someone else should be sent doesnt mean a person who has been sent should not be, he said.

Story continues

Government counsel Liesl Lai noted the applicant did not challenge the legality of his quarantine order, or the Compulsory Quarantine of Persons Arriving at Hong Kong from Foreign Places Regulation from which it was derived.

She also dismissed allegations of discrimination, saying authorities were concerned about the risk of infection among returnees from Pakistan because of the countrys low testing capacity and the fact it had recorded 60 per cent of its new cases in the previous two weeks.

Figures provided by the department revealed Pakistan has tested 710 people per million residents, while the United States and the United Kingdom have tested between 10,000 and 15,000 per million. Hong Kong has a testing capacity of 20,000 per million.

Official statistics also showed six of 699 returnees from Pakistan have tested positive for coronavirus since April 29, while there was just one case among the 601 from the US in the same period. There have been no new cases among the 727 returned from the UK since April 27.

More than 30 nationalities have been quarantined at the estate, the court heard.

Nationality and race has never been a factor, Lai said. Our concern is the place theyve come from and the situation in Hong Kong.

Lai further argued that the conditions at the quarantine centre were not as bad as to amount to an infringement of rights, as two food suppliers had been replaced in the wake of complaints and Halal food as well as vegetarian options were provided to the applicant.

Last month, the government announced plans to fly home some 2,000 residents stranded in Pakistan. Six have tested positive after returning. The city had 1,044 confirmed cases as of Friday morning.

The Post previously reported that those returning on government-chartered flights were told they would be subjected to compulsory quarantine arrangements at Chun Yeung Estate, while people who flew back on their own only learned about the arrangement upon landing.

Some returnees in government quarantine have complained of poor food and basic facilities, and at one point threatened to go on a hunger strike.

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This article Coronavirus: Hong Kongs High Court tosses Pakistan returnees challenge to mandatory quarantine at government facility first appeared on South China Morning Post

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New Delhi: A day after issuing the disputed notice that asked the residents who are doctors working in Delhi hospitals to make temporary living arrangements, the Ghaziabad society has withdrwan the circiular.

Issuing another notice, the Apartment Owners Association of Neelpadam Kunj claimed that the earlier notice was issued by 'mistake' and that it withdrawn on the same day, i.e on May 7.

This circular was based on a press note issued by Ghaziabad Chief Medical Officer which advised doctors working in Delhi hospitals to not return as they may spread coronavirus.

The doctors residing at Neelpadam Kunj society expressed their disappointment by this move undertaken by the resident association.

Meanwhile, the AIIMS Resident Doctors Association has written a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the matter. The letter states the problems faced by the healthcare workers to acquire border passes while travelling from UP and Haryana towards Delhi. It aslo mentions the discrimination they are facing at their places of accomodation.

Some societies and apartments have banned the entry of doctors and nurses on COVID-19 duty in hospitals as they fear contractiong the COIVD-19 infection.
Public sector banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 42,000 crore to the MSME sector and corporates since the start of the lockdown

New Delhi: Public sector banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 42,000 crore to the MSME sector and corporates since the start of the lockdown.

With the lockdown coming into effect from 25 March, state-owned banks opened an additional line of credit of 10 percent of the existing fund based on working capital limits, subject to a maximum of Rs 200 crore.

Till now, the banks have sanctioned Rs 27,426 crore worth loans to MSMEs under COVID-19 relief scheme to their existing borrowers, as per data collated by the government.

In addition, corporates with deep pockets have availed Rs 14,735 crore loan, nearly half of MSMEs.

In terms of numbers, about 10 lakh MSMEs and 6,428 corporates have availed the benefit so far.

At the same time, many MSMEs and corporates have also availed the three-month moratorium offered by banks as per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines.

Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said as many as 3.2 crore borrowers have taken advantage of the three-month moratorium scheme on repayment of loans announced by the Reserve Bank to help people tide over the problems created on account of disruption in business activities due to the lockdown.

"PSBs complemented RBI on loan moratorium. Their effective communication & proactive actions ensured that over 3.2 cr. a/c availed 3-month moratorium. Quick query redressals allayed customer concerns. Ensuring responsible banking amid #lockdown," she had tweeted.

She also said state-owned banks have sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore to borrowers during March and April, and disbursement will start soon after the lockdown is lifted.

"During March-April 2020, PSBs sanctioned loans worth Rs 5.66 lakh cr for more than 41.81 lakh accounts. These borrowers are from MSME, Retail, Agriculture & Corporate sectors, waiting for disbursal soon after #lockdown lifts. Economy poised to recover!," Sitharaman had said in another tweet.

She also said the banks sanctioned loans worth Rs 77,383 crore between 1 March and 4 May to provide sustained credit flow to non-banking finance companies and housing finance companies.

Besides, under Targeted Long Term Repo Operations (TLTROs), total financing of Rs 1.08 lakh crore was extended, "ensuring business stability and continuity going forward", she had said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 20:27:54|Editor: huaxia

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Staff members rehearse for students' returning at the junior high school department of Beijing Chenjinglun High School in Beijing, capital of China, May 8, 2020. Students in their final year of junior high schools will return to school on May 11 in Beijing. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will provide Pacific island nations new rapid diagnostic COVID-19 kits in a joint initiative with the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States and New Zealand, the Australian foreign minister said on Friday.

The first kits arrived in Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Nauru and supplies will reach a further nine Pacific island countries in the next two weeks, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement.

The equipment was procured and delivered with support from Australia, Payne added.

Many Pacific Island countries have not had in-country capacity to test for the novel coronavirus which emerged from China late last year, and have had to send specimens overseas, including to Australia.

The kits will allow the WHO to work with Pacific health departments to achieve faster and more effective testing, with results expected in less than an hour, the Australian government said.

The whole Pacific Island region has relatively few cases of COVID-19. People have been urged to stay home with some countries imposing fines of thousands of dollars and imprisonment for breaching the tough restrictions.

Australia is the largest aid donor to the Pacific islands and has sought to step up its engagement out of concern it risks being overshadowed by Chinese aid and financial support.

Australia and New Zealand are considering opening their borders to each other, creating what they call a trans-Tasman "bubble", as they look to restart their economies after getting the virus under control.

There is speculation the move could be extended to include Pacific Island nations.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Online sale of liquor recently



allowed by the West Bengal government will help both customers and shops, an association of licensees said on Friday.

Licensees will co-operate with the state government in the initiative which will help reduction of footfalls at stores which is required for maintaining social distancing, it said.

"It is a good move on the part of the government to allow online sales and subsequent home delivery of liquor at the doorsteps of customers", assistant general secretary of West Bengal Foreign, OFF, ON, CS Shops and Hotel Owners Association Sushmita Mukherjee said.

The government permitted online sales of liquor through the e-retail portal of the West Bengal State Beverages Corporation (BEVCO) website while the licensees will facilitate home delivery. Licensees are opposed to the idea initially.

"Nearly all the shops in red, green and orange zones carried out sales smoothly across the state during the day," she said.

The government restricted sales of liquor in containment areas identified by it.

Mukherjee said although some shops went dry in the beginning, they have now lifted stock from BEVCO to keep the outlets open during the stipulated hours from 12 noon to 7 pm.

"The BEVCO has sufficient stock to maintain supplies to liquor shops in the coming days," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hospitals may have broken the law by sending patients with Covid-19 back to care homes without telling their managers they had the virus.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has been told that several hospitals returned people despite suspecting  or even knowing  they were infected.

Tragically, these patients triggered outbreaks in the homes, claiming the lives of other vulnerable residents. Staff at the care homes would have not realised they had the virus so may not have been wearing adequate protective clothing or taken other infection control precautions.

The CQC is investigating several cases after being informed by care home managers that hospitals discharged patients into their premises without telling them they had the disease.

Kate Terroni, the watchdogs chief inspector of adult social care, said: We have heard of a few incidents where this has happened and it has resulted in infections spreading to other residents in the care home.

Hospitals may have broken the law by sending patients with Covid-19 back to care homes without telling their managers they had the virus.

In cases where it looks like the information wasnt disclosed by the hospital, we are looking at whether the hospital breached their regulations and whether we can take action. Its an issue we take really seriously.

The CQC enforces a series of regulations, enshrined in law, that health and adult social care services in England must comply with. Breaching some of these rules is a criminal offence and the watchdog can bring prosecutions.

The CQC is also investigating whether care home residents have died from noncoronavirus conditions due to a lack of visits from GPs.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the current death rate in care homes is four times higher than the five year average, and only a third are directly linked to the virus.

The watchdogs warnings come after Boris Johnson admitted he deeply regretted the situation in care homes, which experts say have become the new epicentre of the virus.

Latest ONS figures show care home deaths increased by 36 per cent in a week  as hospital deaths started to fall. There have been 5,890 coronavirus deaths registered in care homes in England and Wales so far, including 2,794 in the week to April 24, the most recent figures available.

They are likely to be an underestimate as GPs do not always record coronavirus on death certificates, especially if residents have not been tested. The CQC would not disclose the names nor the locations of those hospitals accused of failing to inform care home staff that patients had coronavirus.

But last month whistleblowers in Manchester said they knew of patients being discharged from hospitals into homes after testing positive without doctors or nurses disclosing their condition.

Its really important for other residents of the care home, its really important for social care staff, that they have the information to keep people safe and knowing whether someone has Covid or not is a key bit of information.

We know that it led to the spread of infection within the [particular] home. Were working to understand what the impact was.

Hospitals could particularly be in breach of the watchdogs Regulation 9, which requires providers to ensure patients receive appropriate person-centred care and treatment that is based on an assessment of their needs and preferences.

Failure to comply is not a crime, but the CQC can use its civil powers to bring enforcement action and impose conditions on the provider, or suspend or cancel their registration.

Hospitals have been under pressure to free up beds since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in anticipation of a surge of very sick patients.

They were given specific guidance from NHS England on March 7 to urgently make available 15,000 beds nationally by discharging anyone who was medically fit to leave.

Some experts are concerned this led to hospitals sending patients into care homes without testing them for the virus, even if staff suspected they had symptoms. The Department of Health issued separate guidance on April 2 that negative tests were not required before discharging people into a care home.

This document was signed jointly by the CQC, the NHS and Public Health England. Miss Terroni, who has worked in social care for 20 years, said some care providers have a quarter of staff off sick.

Others are still struggling to source personal protective equipment (PPE), with some managers paying ten times the usual cost as suppliers put up prices.

Some providers are telling us they dont have enough PPE and where that happens we are escalating it to get that resolved as soon as possible, she said.

She warned that some homes fear they will go out of business due to soaring PPE bills and the cost of agency staff to cover sickness.

Miss Terroni stressed that the CQC has done a huge amount to help homes source PPE, access tests and help care workers get priority online delivery slots at supermarkets so they can obtain enough food for residents.

While vulnerable groups and NHS employees get these slots already, social care workers are excluded.

Care home outbreaks 'leaking' out to public

Coronavirus outbreaks in care homes are now leaking back into the community and driving the epidemic, Government advisers have said.

Experts say widespread cases in care homes are pushing up the UKs average transmission rate and are providing one of the biggest barriers to lifting the lockdown.

The stark warning highlights how the failure to protect Britains care homes from the virus has not only cost the lives of thousands of elderly residents, but has also had devastating consequences for the entire population.

Senior officials warned yesterday that levels of coronavirus infection are likely to be at least five times higher among hospital and care home staff than in the wider population.

They are particularly worried about healthcare workers picking up the disease and spreading it among the wider community or to other patients. Ministers have been told they need to get on top of this urgently before the lockdown can be lifted.

Scientific advisers are calling for basic steps to be taken to reduce the spread of the virus from care homes. This could include banning carers from visiting multiple care facilities and making sure cases are properly isolated.

Care home bosses have accused the Government of neglecting elderly residents and failing to produce an adequate strategy to prevent the virus taking hold. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that more than a quarter of coronavirus deaths in England and Wales have occurred in care homes.

Latest estimates from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) put the R value  showing the average number of new cases resulting from one infected person  at between 0.5 and 0.9. Sir Ian Diamond, head of the ONS, said on Thursday that the R number has probably gone up in the past fortnight, adding: That is driven by the epidemic in care homes.

Another leading official said yesterday that the failure to get the virus under control in care settings means that the virus is leaking back into the community.

They added: We are particularly worried about people who work in health and caresettings getting infected then going home and driving parts of the wider community epidemic.

Initial data from a sampling survey by the ONS suggests that around 200,000 people  0.3 per cent of the population  are infected with the virus. Experts say that this is significantly lower than at the peak of the epidemic, but add that it shows there are still likely to be around 20,000 new cases a day.

Meanwhile, survey results from blood tests which detect antibodies, showing whether people have had the virus, suggest that around 4 per cent of the population has been infected with coronavirus at some point.

Is lack of GP visits costing more lives?

Care home residents may be dying from conditions unrelated to coronavirus due to a lack of GP visits, the care watchdogs chief inspector has warned.

Kate Terroni said she was very concerned about a huge rise in non-Covid related deaths, which may have resulted from residents not getting the medical attention they need.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show the weekly number of deaths in homes is nearly four times higher than the five-year average  but only around a third are Covid-related.

The Care Quality Commission, along with the ONS and NHS England, is investigating why these residents may have died. Ms Terroni said some care homes had reported the cover from GPs had been reduced since the start of the outbreak.

She said: An obvious explanation is that people who would normally be dying in hospital are dying in care homes. However, were also concerned that in some cases people may not be getting the medical attention they need.

GPs would normally visit homes if a resident is unwell and some carry out routine check-ups once or twice a month. But Care England, the leading representative body for homes, has claimed some family doctors have refused to attend homes since the outbreak started.

One explanation is that GPs are overworked trying to assess patients with coronavirus, while others might have been diverted to look after patients with complex health needs who were discharged from hospital earlier than normal as part of an NHS drive to free up beds.

The ONS figures show there were 7,911 deaths in homes for the week to April 24, compared to a fiveyear average of just 2,070 for that week.

Only 2,794 of those deaths were Covid-related, though this is likely to be an underestimate as not all patients were tested.

200 key health care workers have died

At least 200 frontline health workers are thought to have lost their lives to coronavirus. The tragic milestone came as the countrys overall death toll yesterday passed 31,000.

NHS staff and care workers have cited a lack of personal protective equipment and failures on testing as the biggest factors leading to the figures.

Among the dead are at least seven nurses and care workers who were in their 20s  including Mary Agyapong, 28, who was heavily pregnant  and at least eight NHS hospital consultants.

The toll includes nurses, doctors, paramedics and care home workers as well as in-house hospital pharmacists, porters, cleaners and patient drivers.

On Thursday, the Office for National Statistics revealed that black men and women are almost twice as likely to die from coronavirus than white people in England and Wales.

People from Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities also have a significantly higher risk of dying. The vast majority of frontline health workers who have died are from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) background.

Yesterday, more than 70 leading British Bame figures, along with the GMB union, called for an independent public inquiry into the disproportionate amount of BAME deaths.

Commenting on the toll, Dame Donna Kinnair, of the Royal College of Nursing, called on the Government to publish full, accurate reports of all health and care worker victims, adding: We cannot wait for the data to catch up while people are dying.

The 200 milestone was revealed by nurse-run website Nursing Notes. Meanwhile the Daily Mail has independently confirmed the deaths of 185 frontline health and care workers.
It doesnt take long to learn youre not the only one getting the notes. As soon as you decently can, you mention your Helen note to a colleague, dropping it into the conversation casually, an afterthought, really  by the way, did I mention?  only to have them rain on your parade by telling you, just as casually, that they, too, have had Helen notes at different times. Oh. You have to choose whether to feel disappointed or privileged.

They are thrilling to receive. A message from Helen Garner! She liked something you wrote. Praised something you didnt even know youd done. Could it be youre not the hopeless mug you thought you were? Your pathetic neediness gorges on these words from a writer you so admire youd touch the hem of her garment if you got the chance; the garment, in this case, likely to be a pair of practical blue cotton trousers, hovering above a pair of no-nonsense mary janes.

Helen Garner has a commendable habit of sending notes to people. She shoots them off, written in her distinctive looping hand on lovely, starchy notepaper, or more often these days by email in bookish fonts, to writers whose pieces she has enjoyed. She might send nice notes to gardeners or brain surgeons or her favourite delicatessen as well, for all I know. Im only aware of those to grateful novelists and journalists.

Privileged, always. Sorry to gush but getting a note from Helen Garner is like getting the nod from the pope, even if this literary pope is a little too bounteous with her blessings for your liking. You notice, quietly, that even this brief document contains at least one dazzling sentence and a phrase or two more original, and often funnier, than anything youre ever likely to cook up. She would never write rain on your parade, for example. I defy anyone to find a cliche in her work. (Ive tried, even leafing through the early stuff, hoping to comfort myself she was fallible and hasnt always been this good. Nada.)

The notes, like her work, say a lot about Garner. One, that she is generous and encouraging to other writers, including journalists. Two, that she knows the power of being Helen Garner and uses it for good. Three, that she likes to be liked. Four  and this is based more on her books than her notes  she can live with not being liked. Shes not even sure how much she likes herself at times, or ought to.

A young Garner: she has been willing to lay herself out on the page like a lab rat for dissection. Credit:Ponch Hawkes

I think thats why shes so willing to lay herself out on the page like a lab rat ready for dissection. Shes as curious to poke around her own dark and messy guts, with lacerating frankness, as she is to untangle her subjects. Insecurities; sneaking vanities; prejudices; humiliations by husbands and lovers; small, mean moments; shameful thoughts; jealousies  all float to the surface as the scalpel works away relentlessly. She doesnt dwell on them. Theyre just noted in passing. Her. Us.

Its why we feel we know more about Helen Garner  our slight, bicycle-wheeling grande dame of literature  than we know about most writers. She is so present in all her books, fiction and non-fiction. She doesnt so much stride about  like a male author of equal standing might, the noble hero  as ferret about: sharp-eyed, purse-lipped, sardonic, very Melbourne, a small grim figure with a notebook and a cold, hunting down meaning for us in pain, grief, love, friendship, laughter, betrayal, frailty, or just shoes.
Homeowners are spending tens of thousands of dollars having methamphetamine residue removed from their homes - or risk suffering serious health issues.

Glenn Morgan, 61, founded Airborne Biohazard Control to check homes for mould and methamphetamine residue after 23 years in the Queensland Police force.

Mr Morgan told Daily Mail Australia meth contamination was something all homebuyers needed to be aware of because removal can cost up to $60,000.

Homebuyers can be blindsided by the discovery of meth residue as homes may need to be stripped bare and removal (file image pictured) costs can reach $60,000

He operates around the Sunshine Coast and noted most people discovered residue when they were renovating or moving homes.

'It can affect residents quite seriously and they can lose everything.

'The removal cost can run into thousands, between $15,000 or three or four times that, depending on the size of the house and the amount of contamination,' Mr Morgan said.

The household tester explained that methamphetamine residue 'clings to everything and stays there forever.'

Mr Morgan said: 'It's a crystal so, once you smoke it, it turns into vapour and then reforms as crystals.'

'Everything has to go, the oven, dishwasher, microwave, all the air conditioners, all your carpets and in some cases all the walls have to go.'

Mr Morgan also noted the meth residue could seriously impact the health of residents.

He said clients had reported feeling wired, rashes, loss of appetite, inability to sleep, lack of focus, dry eyes, headaches, acne and more.

Health problems from meth contamination (pictured) can include rashes and loss of appetite

Mr Morgan said meth contamination posed the biggest health threat to pets and children.

'They live lower to the ground than we do and live by touch and feel, so they're always within that carpet and always touching the walls,' he said.

Mr Morgan said individuals in the property market were becoming more aware of the importance of testing for drug contamination.

'The switched on investor will definitely do the pre-purchase checks. You've now got people moving into rentals that will say 'I'll rent the place but just make sure it's healthy.''

'There's stigma towards people who have bought a house that was infected but really if you have trouble with your smoke alarm you fix it, if you have trouble with contamination you fix it.

'And once you've fixed it you've created the basis for a nice healthy home,' Mr Morgan said.
ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Findit, Inc. a Nevada Corporation (OTC PINK:FDIT) owner of Findit.com, a full service social networking management platform which provides online marketing services, offers customized marketing campaigns to general contractors to help improve overall indexing in search engines and on social media.

Findit has been successful in working with roofing companies, general contractors, pool companies, flooring companies, and other types of companies that perform these types of services for homeowners and commercial businesses. The strategy that Findit performs for these general contractors is to create location pages on their website that cater to the areas that they service along with service pages that outline the services that these companies perform. The reason Findit does this is, is because the content we create typically matches up to what a customer would search in Google to find the results that they're looking for.

Findit also creates content on a daily basis that links back to these location pages and service pages to ensure that Google has relevant content that it can index to create more search results for your business. With more search results being created, you have the opportunity to increase the number of times you show up in search engines when a potential customer is looking for a service that you perform in the area that they live in.

Here is a site that we created location pages for. Select Floors offers flooring installation services across Greater Atlanta. Visit Select Floors locations page to see all of the areas that they provide flooring services in. Here is a link to a specific flooring service in a specific area, Virginia Highlands Luxury Vinyl Tile. If you do a search in Google for this area and this service, you will see that Select Floors has the top three positions in Google, including displaying in the map.

In addition to content creation done on Findit and pages added to your website, Findit also offers video production and social media campaigns. To set up your online marketing campaign with Findit call 404-443-3224. You can visit onlinemarketinggeneralcontractors.com and get an idea of the services that we provide and the industries that we've had success in.

Here is a video that we produced for one of our clients, American Craftsman Renovations. They offer residential renovations, restorations, and remodeling services in Savannah and recently begin targeting home improvements, handyman repairs and custom woodworking services across Greater Savannah.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AAkJAdhtag

Findit marketing campaigns are not industry specific. We offer these services to other types of industries and businesses including but not limited to: attorneys, travel nursing companies, student loan debt relief companies, e-commerce businesses that sell jewelry online, as well as private labeling companies.

Peter Tosto of Findit stated, "We provide online marketing for your general contracting business, your roofing company, your pool business, your flooring company, and for plumbers and electricians. Marketing for HVAC repairs and installation is critical now more than ever because there's going to be opportunities in the market that we've never seen before. The reason for this is because many of your competitors are probably not going to be able to stay in business, so the competition is possibly going to be less but you still want to be able to show up on top of search results."

Right now, many people are holding back on their spending and we understand that at Findit, but if you're really looking towards the future, the more content that you can create now while others are not creating content, the more likely you're going to be showing up at the top of search engines and it's much harder after you're showing up there to get pushed off of page one. Contact us today at 404-443-3224 to set up your online marketing campaign with us.

About Findit, Inc.

Findit.com which is a Social Media Content Management Platform that provides an interactive search engine for all content posted in Findit to appear in Findit search. The site is an open platform that provides access to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines access to its content posted to Findit so it can be indexed in these search engines as well. Findit provides Members the ability to post, share and manage their content. Once they have posted in Findit, we ensure the content gets indexed in Findit Search results. Findit provides an option for anyone to submit URLs that they want indexed in Findit search result, along with posting status updates through Findit Right Now. Status Updates posted in Findit can be crawled by outside search engines which can result in additional organic indexing. All posts on Findit can be shared to other social and bookmarking sites by members and non-members. Findit provides Real Estate Agents the ability to create their own Findit Site where they can pull in their listing and others through their IDX account. Findit, Inc., is focused on the development of monetized Internet-based web products that can provide an increase in brand awareness of our members. Findit, Inc., trades under the stock symbol FDIT on the OTCPinksheets.

Safe Harbor:

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), including statements regarding potential sales, the success of the company's business, as well as statements that include the word believe or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Findit, Inc. to differ materially from those implied or expressed.

CONTACT:

Clark St. Amant

404-443-3224

SOURCE: Findit, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589029/Findit-Inc-Offers-Online-Marketing-Services-to-General-Contractors
More than 9,000 Catholic churches in the US have received loans from the relief fund Congress created to help small businesses devastated by the coronavirus crisis, an expert claims.

The federal government has doled out more than $550billion in loans to millions of businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) since it opened in early April.

The program came under intense scrutiny following revelations that many major corporations received massive cash infusions in the first two weeks while tens of thousands of small firms were left out in the cold.

New data suggests Catholic churches have found it easier to secure the coveted PPP loans than other small businesses.

Between 12,000 and 13,000 of the nation's 17,000 Catholic churches - more than 70 percent - have applied for loans, according to Pat Markey, executive director of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, an association of finance officers from Catholic dioceses.

Markey estimated that around 75 percent of those churches had their applications approved - roughly 6,000 in the first round and 3,000 in the second round.

More than 9,000 Catholic churches in the US have received loans from the relief fund Congress created to help small businesses devastated by the coronavirus crisis (file photo)

While most people likely don't like of religious institutions as small businesses, Congress made a point of including them in the PPP guidelines.

Markey noted that many houses of worship are facing challenges with keeping employees on the payroll amid coronavirus shutdowns.

'The PPP isn't about the federal government assisting houses of worship or churches,' he told CBS News.

'PPP is about keeping people on payrolls and a large segment of our society is the not for profit world. And a large segment of that society are churches and houses of worship. And they have people on payrolls too.

'So, if what this is about is keeping people on payrolls, then we all should have availability to do that.'

Data suggests that Catholic churches have been more likely to apply for federal funding than other denominations.

A new survey by LifeWay Research found that 40 percent of Protestant churches in the US have applied for PPP loans and 59 percent of those were successful.

'There are a variety of motives churches have had for applying or not applying for government assistance,' Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research., said in a press release about the survey. 'As the window of opportunity closes, the majority have chosen not to apply.'

The survey found that larger churches were more likely to apply for aid than smaller ones. Half of the pastors at churches that average 200 or more attendees said their church applied for a loan, compared to only a third of churches with fewer than 50 attendees.

A sign urging people to stay safe amid the coronavirus pandemic is seen outside a Catholic church in Wheeling, Illinois

About one-fourth of the nation's 4,000 Jewish synagogues had applied for PPP loans as of April 21, according to a representative for The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).

Among those who applied, about 573 said they were approved for loans totaling $276million while nearly 391 organizations reported that they were still waiting for a response.

JFNA noted that there were only 1,200 responses to the survey, so they believe the actual number of applications and approvals could be higher.

The prospect of religious institutions applying to federal funding has stirred debate particularly in the Christian community, where some believe churches should leave the money for businesses.

'It's quite possible that if most churches take advantage of PPP loans, it could easily capture one third of the entire $350 billion allocation,' Jon Costas, a former Republican mayor of Valparaiso, Indiana, wrote in Christianity Today last month.

'There are socio-economic and social justice issues here that must be considered by suburban churches who may drain grant money away from those who need it more.

'I believe the decision to apply for and receive PPP funds is one of the most important issues the church will face in this decade. It will set a precedent for the future and may, in time, hinder the mission of the church when the strings attached to government funds are not consistent with Scripture.'

Markey disagrees with that reasoning, emphasizing that houses of worship have workers to support just as traditional small businesses do.

'Our message to our membership was: If you need this funding to keep your people employed, you don't have any other resources, then absolutely you should apply,' he said.

'If instead you don't need it, if there are other ways that you can meet those demands then don't apply because there are other small businesses out there that need those funds. And since we see that not all parishes applied, we think our membership followed that advice. '
Hong Kong, May 8 : For the first time in more than a month, Hong Kong residents on Friday were able to go to gyms, beauty parlours, bars, restaurants, and other public venues which were closed to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

With local transmission of the virus levelling off over the past two weeks, city officials have allowed a partial reopening of eight types of business, but with conditions, reports the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper.

Restrictions on the number of people that can sit together at a restaurant, or meet in public, have also been relaxed, with the limit doubled to eight.

But saunas, karaoke lounges, party rooms and nightclubs must remain closed for at least another two weeks.

The relaxation of the measures was announced by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday.

However, Lam warned that there could be a resurgence of the COVID-19 spread and called on Hong Kong residents to stay alert.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong recorded no new COVID-19 cases on Friday, a day after the city detected four imported cases in residents returning from Pakistan, with the tally standing at 1,044, said the SCMP report.

It marked the 12th time in the past 19 days that no additional infections had been recorded.

It was also the 19th straight day of no locally transmitted cases.
MIRA LOMA, Calif., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Del Real Foods, a leading Hispanic refrigerated foods company, today announced the appointment of Manuel Martinez as its new Chief Financial Officer. Del Real is owned by a private fund affiliated with Palladium Equity Partners, LLC ("Palladium") in partnership with the Cardenas family, the company's founders.

Mr. Martinez most recently served as CFO of Nellson Nutraceutical, a leading provider of formulated nutrition solutions, including nutritional bars and functional powders, and as EVP and CFO of Windsor Quality, a leading marketer and manufacturer of ethnic frozen meals and snacks. Mr. Martinez earned his BS degree in Business Administration and his MBA from the University of California, and began his career in accounting.

"Manuel is a food veteran with decades of experience leading finance organizations and building companies into market leaders. We are excited about the drive and strategic thinking he will bring to Del Real as we continue to grow our business," said Mike Axelrod, the company's Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Martinez added: "I am passionate about Del Real's mission of delighting customers with authentic Mexican food that can be enjoyed in the comfort of their homes, and am looking forward to joining Mike and his great team as the business enters its next phase of development and growth."

About Del Real Foods

Del Real Foods, based in Mira Loma, California, is a manufacturer of branded and private label heat-and-serve authentic Mexican cuisine products including meats (like carnitas, barbacoa and al pastor), prepared specialty items (like tamales and pupusas), fresh salsas and side dishes. The company sells its products to the club, retail, foodservice and wholesale distributor channels. For more information on Del Real, please visit http://delrealfoods.com.

About Palladium Equity Partners, LLC

Palladium is a middle market private equity firm with nearly $3 billion of assets under management. The firm seeks to acquire and grow companies in partnership with founders and experienced management teams by providing capital, strategic guidance and operational oversight. Since its founding in 1997, Palladium has made 35 platform investments and over 135 add-on acquisitions. A private equity fund affiliated with Palladium Equity Partners, LLC has been invested in Del Real Foods since October 2016. For more information on Palladium Equity Partners, please visit www.palladiumequity.com.

Media Contact: Todd Fogarty

Kekst CNC

212-521-4854

[email protected]

SOURCE Del Real Foods

Related Links

http://delrealfoods.com


Highlights Google Lens has introduced a new feature that would allow users to copy handwritten texts from phone to computer.

Google is rolling out the new feature today for its Android and iOS users.

To avail the feature, you should have the updated Google Lens app or the Google App on iOS

Google Lens has introduced a new feature that would allow users to copy handwritten texts from phone to computer. Google is rolling out the new feature today for its Android and iOS users. But there is a catch if you have bad writing you might never get to use the feature as it only works if the handwriting is neat and readable.

To avail the feature, you should have the updated Google Lens app or the Google App on iOS, where the Google Lens is available on the search bar. Android users can also use Google Chrome to access Lens. You should be logged to your Google accounts on all the devices. For instance, if you are connecting your phone to the computer, to transfer the handwritten notes, both your phone and computer should have you logged in.

Here is how you can copy handwritten texts to computer

 For instance, if you have a few notes written on a piece of paper, just open Google Lens and point the camera at your handwritten text.

When the camera detects the text, highlight in on your phone screen and select the option "copy to computer" to paste it on another signed-in device with Chrome.

This is the easiest way to copy something from your phone to a laptop without having to type the entire thing.

This could be a really useful tool for college students as it is the easiest way for them to convert their handwritten notes into well-informed pieces using the Google Lens. For working professionals, who take notes during meetings can also use this tool to send the minutes of the meetings without having to type the entire thing again. However, having neat and readable handwriting is very important for people who want to use this tool. If your handwriting is bad, even Google will not be able to copy your stuff without typos.

Apart from the text to computer feature, Google Lens got another feature that would allow users to learn new words and how to pronounce them. You can highlight the words that are difficult to pronounce using the Lens and tap the Listen button to hear the pronunciation. Google Lens has Spanish, Chinese, and more than 100 other languages in store.

Another important feature that Google rolled out will allow users to learn new phases. If you come across a word that you don't understand, Google Lens can help you understand it. With in-line Google Search results, you can also select phrases that you understand to learn more. Google Lens is available in the Google app for iPhone users and the Google Lens app for Android users.
A five-year-old boy has become the first child in New York to 'appear to die' from a rare inflammatory condition believed to be linked to the novel coronavirus.

Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at a Friday press briefing that the boy passed away in New York City on Thursday night.

Officials at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital, where the child - who had tested positive for the virus - was being treated, confirmed the death but didn't release any other information.

Cuomo said health authorities are investigating 73 similar cases reported across New York, where children have exhibited symptoms to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome.

The rising number of cases is challenging previous beliefs that children are less susceptible to complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

A five-year-old boy from New York died on Thursday at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital from what appears to be a rare, inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus (file image)

Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference on Friday (pictured) that parents can linger 'tale solace' in believing their children won't be affected

'While rare, we are seeing some cases where children affected with the COVID virus can become ill with symptoms similar to the Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome that literally causes inflammation in their blood vessels,' Cuomo said.

'So this is every parent's nightmare, right? That your child may actually be affected by this virus?'

Efforts are underway to collect information on the disorder, dubbed 'Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Potentially Associated with COVID-19.'

On Wednesday, the New York State Department of Health issued an alert, calling on hospitals to immediately report any cases to the department.

Cases of rare, life-threatening inflammatory illnesses in children associated with exposure to COVID-19 were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain.

WHAT IS AN INFLAMMATORY SYNDROME? Children are being admitted in what has been described as a 'multi-system inflammatory state.' This refers to the over-production of cytokines, known as a cytokine storm - the overreaction of the body's immune system. In a storm, the proteins start to attack healthy tissue, which can cause blood vessels to leak and lead to low blood pressure Doctors say this also happens with Ebola, causing the body to go into shock. It has also been noted in older COVID-19 patients. WHAT SYMPTOMS DOES IT CAUSE? The cases share overlapping features of toxic shock syndrome and atypical Kawasaki disease. Two of the most common symptoms of Kawasaki disease include a rash and a fever. TSS also causes a rash, dizziness and diarrhea. Advertisement

However, doctors across the US - such as in California, New York and New Jersey - are starting to report clusters of kids with the disorder, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.

According to New York's health department, the majority of kids with the syndrome for either COVID-19 or COVID-19 antibodies.

Cuomo said the news was evidence that parents can no longer 'take solace' in the knowledge that their children are safe from the virus.

'This would be really painful news and would open up an entirely different chapter because I can't tell you how many people I spoke to who took peace and solace in the fact that children were not getting infected,' Cuomo said.

'We thought that children might be vehicles of transmission, but we didn't think children would suffer from it.'

In a separate case, physicians in Westchester County, north of New York City, reported on Friday the death of a child who had contracted the virus.

According to Dr Michael Gewitz, of Maria Fareri Children's Hospital in Valhalla, where the child was being treated, he or she suffered neurological complications from the syndrome. Officials are waiting to see if underlying conditions played a role in the child's death.

Health authorities are investigating 73 similar cases reported across New York. The disorder can be fatal, attacking multiple organs, impairing heart function and weakening arteries. Pictured: Jayden Hardowar, eight, of New York (left), and Juliet Daly, 12, of Louisiana (right), both landed in the hospital after experiencing the syndrome

Hospitals in New York are now reporting any cases to the state's health department and the CDC is compiling a patient registry. Pictured: A medical worker transports a patient at Mount Sinai in New York, April 1

This emerging syndrome, which may occur days to weeks after a COVID-19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.

Scientists are still trying to determine whether the syndrome is linked with the new coronavirus as not all children have tested positive for the virus.

The syndrome shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease, which is associated with fever, skin rashes, swelling of glands, and, in the most severe cases, inflammation of arteries of the heart.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and other groups to gather data to better understand and characterize the syndrome, according to an emailed statement.

The aim is to develop a case definition that would allow the CDC to track the cases and advise doctors on how to care for these patients.

Not every child that has developed the condition has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but enough have for doctors to believe the conditions are linked.

For most children, COVID-19 is mild, and children are far less likely to be hospitalized with the disease than adults, according to the CDC.

'Children seem to laugh off COVID-19 most of the time,' said Dr Jane Newburger, a pediatric cardiologist at Harvard's Boston Children's Hospital.

'But rarely, a child will develop this hyper-inflammatory state.'

Newburger said there appears to be a spectrum of illnesses, with some children coming in 'very sick, even in shock.' Most have a fever and impaired function in one or more organs.

Some children get sick very fast and need to be in a pediatric intensive care unit, while others can be cared for in a regular hospital ward, she said.
They have inseparable since they debuted their romance last year following his split with his wife, Nadia Bartel.

And Lauren Mand continued to gush all over her former AFL star boyfriend Jimmy Bartel on Friday.

The Melbourne-based office worker, 31, shared a photo of the sportsman doing a charity walk.

'One of the many reasons I love you': Jimmy Bartel's girlfriend Lauren Mand has shared a photo of the former AFL star on Friday as he walked 100,000 steps to raise money for a kids' charity. She wrote on the image that she was 'so incredibly proud' of her man

'So incredibly proud of my man. Out walking 100,000 steps today to raise money for @veryspecialkids,' Lauren raved in the Instagram post.

'This is just one of the many reasons I love you. Continuously doing things to help others,' she added.

Last week, Jimmy shared a photo of himself out on a walk and encouraged fans to take part in the fundraiser despite the COVID-19 restrictions, by going out and doing their allotted 30 mins of exercise over 24 days.

Lauren's appreciation post about Jimmy comes after his estranged wife Nadia spoke candidly to Stellar magazine about her split from her husband and adjusting to life as a single mother.

Loved up: She also wrote that his charitable act was 'just one of the many reasons I love you. Continuously doing things to help others.' (Pictured: Jimmy and Lauren on their recent holiday in Japan)

Doing his part: Last week, Jimmy shared a photo of himself out on a walk and encouraged fans to take part in the fundraiser, despite the COVID-19 restrictions, by going out and doing their allotted 30 mins of exercise over 24 days

'This is never what I thought would happen. Every day is tough,' she admitted.

She added that she was trolled by fans following the breakup and that left her in a dark place.

'I was at the hardest point in my life and then to have articles written that weren't true, and to have hundreds of hate [comments] on Instagram and the continual pounding... it was difficult,' she said.

'Every day is tough': Lauren's appreciation post about Jimmy comes after his estranged wife Nadia candidly recently spoke about her split from the former AFL star and adjusting to life as a single mother (Pictured: Lauren with her sons Aston, four, and Henley, one)

Nadia and Jimmy announced their separation on August 15 last year, but it's believed they actually broke up two months earlier.

The former couple married in February 2014 in a lavish ceremony on the Bellarine Peninsula. The couple share two young sons, Aston, four, and Henley, one.

Jimmy was first romantically linked to Lauren just days after his split from Nadia was made public.
The case of Ellen Greenberg's death will be featured on Oxygen network's "Accident, Suicide or Murder" Saturday. Read more

The case of a Philadelphia schoolteacher whose death by 20 stab wounds was ruled a homicide  then changed to suicide  will be featured on the second-season premiere of Oxygen networks Accident, Suicide or Murder at 6 p.m. Saturday.

First detailed in a March 2019 report by The Inquirer, the case of Ellen Greenberg has confounded forensic experts and veteran investigators for years.

On Jan. 26, 2011, Greenberg, 27, was discovered by her fiance on the kitchen floor of their locked Manayunk apartment with a 10-inch kitchen knife lodged in her chest.

Philadelphia police said they treated Greenbergs death as a suicide at the scene, chiefly because the door was locked and her fiance had stayed onsite. But after the autopsy the next day, the Philadelphia Medical Examiners Office  which discovered 20 stab wounds to Greenbergs body, including 10 to the back of her neck  ruled the case a homicide.

Authorities publicly disputed the medical examiners findings, and within months, the office changed its official ruling on Greenbergs death from homicide to suicide  with no explanation to her parents, Joshua and Sandra Greenberg of Harrisburg.

Left in the dark, the Greenbergs gathered their own team of experts, who have questioned the medical examiners findings and the police investigation. When one of the attorneys the Greenbergs hired to try to get them answers  Larry Krasner  became Philadelphias district attorney in 2018, they asked his office to reopen their daughters case.

Citing a conflict of interest, Krasner recused himself and referred the case to the Pennsylvania Attorney Generals Office. After inquiries from The Inquirer in 2019, that office announced it had closed its investigation. The agency said it found evidence on Ellen Greenbergs phone and computer that supported the suicide ruling, even though reports from the 2011 investigation said nothing indicative of suicide was found on her computer.

Right-to-Know requests by The Inquirer to view the files in Greenbergs closed case were denied by the Philadelphia Police Department, the District Attorneys Office, and the state Attorney Generals Office.

In October, the Greenbergs attorney, Joseph Podraza Jr., filed a civil lawsuit on their behalf against the Philadelphia Medical Examiners Office and the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, to get the manner of Greenbergs death changed from suicide to undetermined or back to homicide.

Over the objection of the defendants, in January a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge ruled that the Greenbergs case could move forward. The case is on hold due to court closures related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Since The Inquirer article, the Greenberg case has been featured on a variety of shows, websites, and podcasts, including the websites of 48 Hours and People magazine. In December, the Greenbergs and their private criminal investigator, Tom Brennan, appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about the case.

Brennan, a retired 25-year state police veteran and former chief of Dauphin County detectives, who is working on the case free, said he and the Greenbergs agreed to participate in Accident, Suicide or Murder to keep this case in the public eye until such time there is justice for Ellen. He added, Its because of the article in The Inquirer that we are at the point where we are.

Betsy Rott, executive producer of Accident, Suicide or Murder, said in a statement that the Greenbergs determination to find justice for their daughter made the story profoundly compelling.

When we were searching for cases to cover for Season 2, we came across Ellens story and the details were so disturbing and heartbreaking that it immediately grabbed our attention, Rott said.

Brennan said he hopes officials with the local and state agencies involved with the investigations into Greenbergs death watch the program Saturday.

What Ellens parents, Josh and Sandee, have gone through, in my more than 45 years in this business, I have never experienced anything like this, he said.
The pandemic has led to the rediscovery of religion and enhanced Islamic-Christian collaboration. Physical distancing, social media, the Internet and television have become the tools of a form of new evangelisation. Three activities have been proposed for the month of May aimed at boosting participation and ecumenism. Some US,000 have been raised and two tonnes of food collected for Bethlehem. Muslims have also joined the initiative.

Reneh (AsiaNews)  Many positive elements will emerge from the crisis and the difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this according to Fr Raed Abu Sahlieh, parish priest at the Saint Joseph the Worker parish in Reneh (Reineh), Galilee, three kilometres from Nazareth.

Speaking to AsiaNews, he said that the first good thing to come out of this crisis is the "the desire and thirst for God", as well as a "renewed sense of spirituality" and a "greater search for the Church. Even people who usually did not attend [church services] now complain about the closure of places of worship.

An atmosphere of "generosity and solidarity seems to prevail among people, even among Christians of different confessions as well as Muslims, he explained. I hope this can continue in the future.

Now daily life is different as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, which did not hit Israel and Palestine as badly as Europe and the United States. When we lost our normal life, people began to appreciate health, the freedom of going out, working, doing simple things like going to a restaurant or travelling. Families rediscovered the role of the home Church.

"At the community level, Fr Raed said, we increased the use of the media and boosted evangelisation on new social messaging platforms like Facebook, Zoom,[*] and WhatsApp. We made the most of them and turned them into tools to keep ties alive.

His diocese covers three countries: Palestine, Israel and Jordan. Since travel from one area to the other was no longer possible, "as priests of the patriarchate we promoted online meetings, with Fathers studying in Rome, or in the United States. We realised that instead of travelling we can use these tools to their full potential in the future, once the pandemic is over.

Fr Raed Abu Sahlieh was born on 25 June 1965 in Zababdeh, Palestine. He entered the minor seminary of the Latin Patriarchate in 1977, and was ordained priest in 1990. In 2013 he was appointed secretary of Caritas Jerusalem, becoming its general director the following year.

On 15 August 2017, he came to Saint Joseph the Worker parish in Reneh, a village of about 20,000 people, including 3,000 Christians divided in Latins, Greek-Melkites, Anglicans and Orthodox.

"To strengthen evangelisation, he said half-jokingly, I developed a small mobile TV since the start of the coronavirus outbreak that I bring with me when I visit people, thanks to which I can show Masses, rosaries, services.

For the month of May, which is dedicated to Our Lady, the parish is undertaking three activities. The first is the recitation of the Rosary with one family at a time, a brief meditation and a Mass with a small group of people, up to 20 today.

The second activity is family visits to seniors and the sick, with the priest and nuns distributing the communion to everyone in the family, carried live on social media, so family members abroad can follow, Fr Raed said.

The third and last activity, on Fridays, involved inviting a priest from a different Christian community to say the Rosary with me. Tomorrow the Anglican pastor will come; next week it will be the Greek Melkite pastor; last will be the Orthodox, all this in a spirit of ecumenism.

Solidarity goes beyond Christian communities, and embraces Muslims as well. The city has handed out boxes with food to more than a thousand families, including 300 Christians, without discrimination. We at the parish have contributed more than US,400. Our scout group worked hard to deliver the parcels to Christian and Muslim families.

We also held a day of solidarity with Bethlehem, which has been on a lockdown since 25 February. As it depends on tourism and pilgrimages, it is facing hard times. In one day, we raised US,000 and collected 13 tonnes of food. Several Muslim families in Reneh also joined with enthusiasm ... At the end of the day, I was truly amazed by such a lively and supportive community.

The authorities shut down all activities in March. Schools closed on 13 March, but the Christian school (founded in 1878) continues to operate with the remote education. We have 1,150 pupils of different ages.

Recently, some have gone back to the classroom, especially those who had to take an exam. For the rest, we are providing remote education programmes, which have been enough of a success, even among the younger students, that they received the congratulations of the Education Ministry.

During this period of closure and distancing, we have used technology and our pastoral creativity to help the community fully experience Easter celebrations. These initiatives continue even now. Every evening at 6 pm I ring the bells and recite the Angelus and offer a brief reflection with the loud speaker, ending with a blessing. Muslims also listen and participate.

On 22 April, at the start of Ramadan, I sent greetings from the church bell tower and Muslims thanked me, sending me numerous invitations to an Iftar dinner to mark the end of the daily fast.

Until today, I have not been able to accept any invitation because of travel restrictions, but I join them in fasting, every Friday. Tomorrow, for the first time, I will be able accept an invitation and I will visit a Muslim friend.

[*] A video-conferencing app.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk informed employees in an overnight email that some work would resume at the companys shuttered Fremont factory Friday afternoon, according to internal emails obtained by The Chronicle.

The Chronicle previously reported a small group of workers were at the plant earlier this week preparing for a reopening in a possible violation of state and county shelter-in-place restrictions.

Production lines did not appear to be running yet and will likely start up next week, according to a Tesla employee familiar with the changes who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation.

Work at the plant officially stopped in late March after the Palo Alto company spent nearly a week defying Alameda Countys shelter-in-place orders, which were implemented March 17. Working conditions at the plant deteriorated before the shutdown as employees stayed home for fear of the virus and some staffers were shifted between departments to assemble electric cars, performing manual labor in tight quarters while not everyone wore masks.

Musk sent the email at midnight Thursday informing employees of the companys decision to reopen, which he said was based on Gov. Gavin Newsoms announcement Thursday lifting restrictions on manufacturing and other activities  even though preparation started at the plant before changes announced by the governor.

Musk said in the email that he planned to work on the car production line himself, but workers who arent comfortable returning do not have to.

The companys outspoken CEO previously railed against business restrictions put in place to fight the coronavirus, calling the stay-at-home orders fascist during a recent call with investors and demanding the U.S. economy reopen in a since-deleted Twitter post.

The company has apparently discussed its plan to reopen with Alameda County officials, according to another email, which was sent by Tesla human resources executive Valerie Capers Workman.

Those discussions did not satisfy local officials. Alameda County said in a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times that Tesla must not reopen and that the company did not meet the criteria to resume manufacturing.

Workman said the company is instituting mandatory safety protocols, presumably to guard against the virus, and almost a third of normal staff would be back to work. Employees who do not follow these measures will be sent home on unpaid leave, according to the email.

Sick employees will be allowed to stay home using paid time off or unpaid leave without being penalized, Workman said.

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 crucial 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

The Chronicle previously reported that increased safety measures had been put in place at the plant in an attempt to prevent the roughly 10,000 workers there from infecting each other with the coronavirus.

Safety improvements include full body thermal scanners to check for elevated temperatures at all entrances, according to the source, who said the scanners have also been installed near external parking lots where company buses shuttle workers to and from the plant from far-flung parts of the Bay Area.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Employees are also given masks at entrances that they will be allowed to wear for no more than two shifts, and hand sanitizer stations now dot the facility more than before.

Social distancing is also marked on the floor of production lines to ensure workers stay far enough apart to avoid transmitting the virus. Fewer workers will also be on the lines, which will move more slowly. That will allow for more social distancing and require more time for one worker to perform two tasks previously done by multiple workers.

Some workers who must be closer to one another at some points will also be issued plastic face shields, and common tools will be cleaned before each shift with an alcohol solution, the source said.

Front and side partitions for individual seats in the large break rooms have also been installed, according to the Tesla employee. Breaks will also be staggered by time, and common food items like cereal dispensers are gone, the source said. Buffet-style food options will be replaced with packaged food for sanitary purposes.

The companys factories in New York and Nevada will also begin a return to production, Workmans email said.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the company plans to temporarily shutter its electric car-manufacturing plant outside of Shanghai.

Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice
The very last German military message intercepted by Bletchley Park code breakers has been published for the first time.

GCHQ, the successor of the Bletchley Park team, revealed the final intercept to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe on Friday.

Although it had been clear for some time the wear was nearing an end, the UK continued monitoring German communications until the very end to ensure there would be no final stand by the defeated Nazi forces.

On 7 May 1945, one day before Germanys final surrender, the last vestiges of one air force signals network monitored at Bletchley Park had retreated to the small seaside town of Cuxhaven, near Hamburg, on Germanys North Sea coast.

As the Allied forces closed in, a last statement was broadcast at 7.35am and picked up almost 500 miles away by code breakers working in the grounds of their Buckinghamshire country manor house.

VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Show all 34 1 /34 VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a fly past over the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE Day) in Britain MOD/Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A restored Second World War amphibious DUKW vehicle drives through Helpston near Peterborough PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations WWII veteran Bernard Morgan, aged 96, poses as he takes part in the VE day two minute silence outside his home and alongside neighbours on the street in Crewe Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a flypast over London MOD/AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Maayan Gamzo-Letova and Liron Gamzo-Letova at their home in Thorner, West Yorkshire PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Graham looks on as his wife Sue Gillson untangles a flag on their roof on their home in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Members of the public take part in a 2 minute silence at the cenotaph in Liverpool AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The British Royal Air Force Red Arrows conduct a fly past over London MOD/Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A veteran and army personnel at The Cenotaph in Westminster after a two minute silence on the 75th Anniversary of VE Day in London Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Officers and soldiers of Household Division take part in a 2 minute silence at Horse Guards Parade, St James's Park in central London AFP via Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Ralph Harvey, 89, sits on a mobility scooter as he joins in his street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations VE Day bunting seen outside a house on the 75th Anniversary of Victory Day in Greenwich, London EPA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Prince of Wales pauses after laying a wreath at the Balmoral War Memorial, in Scotland Clarence House/AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Residents in Thorner, West Yorkshire, during a day of events to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Veteran flag bearers gather at the Naval War Memorial in Plymouth Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations British RAF veteran George Sutherland, 98, right, gives the thumbs up to people who came out to cheer him on during his VE Day charity walk to raise funds for Talbot House in Poperinge, Belgium. Sutherland walked from the Lijssenthoek war cemetery to Talbot house to raise money for the club which is currently closed due to coronavirus lockdown regulations. The club, founded in 1915 was a place for British soldiers to rest during both the First and Second World Wars AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations The Royal Air Force Red Arrows flying past the Runnymede Memorial in Egham, Surrey MoD/PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A Bugler plays the Last Post as the Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery carry out a socially distanced parade of 20 soldiers with their first world war Guns to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day with a 2 minute silence in Woolwich Getty Images VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations REUTERS VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Royal British Legion standard bearer Richard Hignett lowers the standard during the two minutes' silence outside his home in Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Sergeant David Beveridge fires a Gun Salute from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, to mark the start of the two-minute silence PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations British RAF veteran George Sutherland, 98, holds up a photo of himself as a World War II aircraft mechanic AP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A wreath-laying service to coincide with the nationwide 2 minute silence, held in Westminster Hall, House of Parliament in central London UK Parliament/AFP VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Prime Minister Boris Johnson observes a two-minute silence in Downing Street The Sun/PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Scottish Minister Nicola Sturgeon observes a two-minute silence alongside (left to right) British Army Corporal Fiona Williamson-Jones, Royal Navy Lieutenant Donovan Davy, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture Fiona Hyslop, Chief Constable Iain Livingstone QPM, British Army Warrant Officer Class 1 Edinburgh Garrison Sergeant-Major Scott McFadden and RAF Flying Officer Luke Hilton outside St Andrew's House in Edinburgh PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Sheila Daphne, 68, waves to a friend as she joins in her street's celebrations in Duncan Avenue, Redcar PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Lou Myers, 92, at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall, London PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A man takes a picture of the Commando Memorial on the 75th Anniversary of VE Day in Lochaber, Scotland Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Railway staff at Waverley Station mark the 75th anniversary of VE day with a two-minute silence in Edinburgh Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Members of ambulance services watch as officers and soldiers of Household Division take part in a 2 minute silence and watch the wreath-laying ceremony at Horse Guards Parade, St James's Park AFP via Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Weaths placed at the foot of St Saviour's War Memorial in Borough High Street Getty VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations People ride on a scooter in front of Guards Memorial in St James's Park Reuters VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations Michelle Martin, 58 (centre), her daughter Emma Martin, 37 (left) and their tenant Sara Vottero, 33 (right), observe a nationwide two minute silence outside their home in Bermondsey, London PA VE Day 75th anniversary celebrations A wreath at Waverley Station Getty

British troops entered Cuxhaven at 1400 on 6 May  from now on all radio traffic will cease  wishing you all the best. Lt Kunkel, it read.

Soon after a second message was sent: Closing down for ever  all the best  goodbye.

GCHQ historian Tony Comer said the transcripts provide "a small insight into the real people behind the machinery of war".

He added: While most of the UK was preparing to celebrate the war ending, and the last of the German military communicators surrendered, Bletchley staff  like today's GCHQ workers  carried on working to help keep the country safe.

The network which GCHQ analysts had broken into was nicknamed the Brown Network and at its height in 1944 spanned from the Baltic coast all the way down to Vienna.

It was used by the Nazis to co-ordinate experimental new weaponry they were developing even in the dying days of the war.

The Brown Network was particularly involved in electronics, helping develop new methods of guiding bombers towards their targets during the Blitz and, later, the V1 flying bombs and V2 missiles.

It was using its own dedicated cryptographic key through the famous Enigma machines, which Germany used to encode its communications, but Bletchley Park had managed to break this in 1940 and could eavesdrop in on what the Brown Network's operators were saying to each other.

By May 1945 the network had shrunk to a remnant in Denmark and Germanys North Sea coast, and when stations did send out messages almost nobody was answering. Mr Cromer said some of these final intercepts showed the operators asking if anyone had any cigarettes left.

On 7 May only one station was left, in Cuxhaven, and one day before the end of the war in Europe it sent out one last, final message before closing down and surrendering to the nearby British forces. The war would be over just 24 hours later.
Comedian Kevin Hart is now a free man after a California federal judge dismissed the $60 million lawsuits against him for allegedly leaking a sex tape.

Or isn't he?

Montia Sabbag sued the "Jumanji" actor, along with his friend, Jonathan Todd "JT" Jackson who reportedly filmed their sexual rendezvous secretly, and later released it for the public to see.

The two men reportedly teamed up to record the encounter in 2017 in Cosmopolitan Hotel Las Vegas suite without her knowledge, something that Kevin has repeatedly denied.

Back in February, Kevin Hart moved to have the suit against him dismissed, claiming he hadn't filed his legal papers properly. He alleged that the plaintiff that served him the documents just threw them onto his driveway, as per the PH Inquirer.

In a statement released by Ray Dudgeon, the actor's security guard, Montia Sabbag, "drove by Hart's home and threw a summons and complaint out of a car window in the sight of."

He alleged that the papers landed several yards from him, and he had not been given the authorization to accept the served legal documents.

In Kevin Hart's legal documents, there are attached pictures of papers that show papers scattered around the ground and a gray Ford Sedan nearby.

Kevin Hart Cased Dismissed?

But now, a federal judge tossed the case because of one technicality - Sabbag filed it in the wrong jurisdiction.

However, she has been allowed to refile in local civil courts as the case was dismissed without prejudice, as reported by Page Six. Sabbag has since amended and refiled the complaint.

Sabbag is free to sue Kevin Hart and JT Jackson in a California local civil court as she and the two men live in that state.

Sabbag sought damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and invasion of privacy and claimed she should be paid a whopping $60 million.

According to Sabbag, Jackson was seeking publicity for his upcoming comedy tour; that's why there was a sex tape involved, and the scandal would only make him famous.

How Kevin Hart's Wife Found Out

Though the entire lawsuit wasn't easy for Kevin Hart, as he discussed the whole ordeal in his Netflix docuseries, describing the moment as the lowest moment of his life.

His wife, Eniko Parrish, revealed that she found out about the sexual encounter via an Instagram direct message.

She revealed, "I don't know who it was, sent me an edited video of Kevin and another woman. I was pregnant at the time. I was about seven, eight months pregnant."

Eniko continued, "I was having breakfast, I opened my phone, and I immediately just lost it."

Since everybody found out about it, Hart continues to deny setting up the tape and has issued a public apology to his wife via Instagram, saying he wasn't going to "allow a person to have a financial gain off of my mistakes and in this particular situation that was what was attempted. I said I'd rather fess up to my mistakes."

Jackson was later charged with extortion to which Montia Sabbag said was relieved.

"This whole process has been crazy, and my name has been dragged through the mud. I just feel really happy and fortunate that this has all come to light."

READ MORE: BOOTY-FULL Kesha Applies Butt Masks to Make Her Feel 'Happy' While in Quarantine
The Bombay High Court on Friday



rejected temporary bail to Hemant Bhatt, an accused in the multi-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, after noting that the 66-year-old has tested positive for novel coronavirus at Arthur Road jail in central Mumbai.

Justice Bharati Dangre rejected Bhatt's plea after the prosecution told the court that a COVID-19 patient cannot be allowed to be freed on temporary bail.

The court said jail authorities shall provide all medical facilities to Bhatt.

Bhatt had, last month, approached HC seeking temporary bail on the ground that he is a senior citizen with chronic heart ailment and, hence, there was a risk of being infected with coronavirus.

The court had on May 6, while hearing Bhatt's application, directed the police to inform the court about the situation at Arthur Road prison.

Additional public prosecutor Shahaji Shinde, on Friday, informed the court that a number of inmates at Arthur Road prison and some staff members had tested positive for coronavirus, and Bhatt was one of them.

Bhatt, an authorised signatory in diamond businessman and fugitive economic offender Nirav Modi's company, has been booked by CBI on charges of cheating and fraud in connection with the PNB scam.

He is also facing money laundering charges initiated by Enforcement Directorate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the Congress and Samajwadi Party attacking the Uttar Pradesh government for exempting industries in the state from some labour laws for the next three years, Labour Minister Swami Prasad Maurya on Friday accused the opposition of showing their anti-workers face and shedding crocodile for them.

Those who are shedding crocodile tears for workers perhaps do not know that this ordinance will not only pave way for bringing investments but would also open employment opportunities at a time when large number of migrant labourers are returning home and have to be provided jobs in the state, Swami Prasad Maurya said.

The state Cabinet chaired by the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath earlier this week had given its nod to 'Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020' to exempt factories, business establishments and industries from the purview of all, except three labour laws and one provision of another law for three years.

Earlier in the day, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at the UP government for its decision to exempt the industry from labour laws.

In a tweet, Priyanka Gandhi said, The changes made in the labour laws by the UP government should be cancelled immediately. You are not ready to help the labourers. You are not giving any protective cover to their families. Now you are making laws to crush their rights. The labourers are makers of the country, not your hostage.

In another tweet, Akhilesh Yadav said, The BJP government in UP, through an ordinance, has exempted industry from labour laws, which saved workers from exploitation, for three years. This is highly objectionable and inhuman. This anti-poor BJP government which could not patronise labourers should immediately resign."



Dismissing the two opposition leaders' refrain, Maurya asserted, They need to first read the ordinance and then make these comments. |



Their comments show they do not want the welfare of workers and their employment in the state itself, he added.

This ordinance has been brought because the chief minister has decided to bring migrant workers back home from other states and taken a resolve to provide them employment as per their skill, Maurya said.

By opposing this ordinance they are opposing those migrants for whom a process for generating employment through investment is going on even during the lockdown, Maurya said.

While opening the doors of investment , we have taken full care of workers' interest, Maurya said, adding the ordinance has been brought to bring new investments, reopen the closed units, for generating more and more employment and for adjusting as many migrants as possible.

An official spokesperson had on Thursday said the government has given its approval to an ordinance exempting businesses from labour laws to revive the economy and boost investments following the coronavirus outbreak.

This step has been taken because businesses and economic activities have come to a halt more or less due to the national lockdown, the spokesman had said.

There is a need to give impetus to industrial and economic activities and create more investment opportunities besides bring the existing industry back on track, he had said.

The state Cabinet had given its nod to 'Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020' to exempt factories, business establishments and industries from the purview of all, but three labour laws and one provision of another legislation for three years.

Some labour laws, however, would continue to prevail, he had said, adding that labour laws provisions related to the women and child will continue to exist along with the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, the section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 and the Workmen Compensation Act, 1923 .

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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The picture painted is grim: The coronavirus is having an increasingly disproportionate impact on the poor and communities of color in Los Angeles County.

A new report from the county's public health department offers the most detail to date, and also clarifies earlier reported data that seemed to suggest Latinos have been less affected by COVID-19 relative to their population size than in other parts of the state and country.

Instead, health officials now say that once adjusted for age, Latinos make up close to half (46%) of all COVID-19 cases in the county, and suffer the third highest death rate when adjusted for age, not far below African Americans. Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander residents have been the hardest hit by the coronavirus, although their actual numbers of cases and deaths are small because they make up a small percentage of L.A. County's overall population, just 0.4%.

People who live in high-poverty areas of L.A. have died at a rate three times higher than those who live in the wealthiest areas, the analysis found.

Even as the toll is far less severe in wealthier areas, testing for COVID-19 remains much higher in those communities -- a trend that has held since the early days of the pandemic.

The data comes with a roadmap for addressing the disparate effects of the disease on poor and non-white communities, starting with making testing "ubiquitous" and expanding options beyond mobile test sites, which generally require people to sign up online.

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"We know that COVID is a terrible public health problem for all of us, but it is hitting some communities harder than others. We need to work in a very collaborative way with members of the community," said Paul Simon, author of the report and chief science officer for the county public health department.

LATINO SHARE OF POSITIVE CASES GROWS

While cases of COVID-19 among Latinos initially appeared low in the county, experts cautioned that their share was likely to increase. And it has.

A month ago, on April 7, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which covers most of L.A. County (Long Beach and Pasadena have their own health departments) reported that Latinos accounted for 28% of COVID-19 deaths thus far. On April 29, Latinos' share of deaths had increased to 38%, according to public health officials.

That percentage remains steady today, at 38%, despite the fact that Latinos account for 49% of county residents.

But when looked at as the number of deaths per 100,000 people in the population -- as in the county's new report -- the data paints a different picture. The report also adjusts for differences in the distribution of ages, called the "age-adjusted rate," in L.A.'s diverse communities (for example, Latinos make up a larger percentage of young Angelenos than older Angelenos). It found:

3 deaths per 100,000 American Indian or Alaska Native residents

6 deaths per 100,000 white residents

8 deaths per 100,000 Asian residents

10 deaths per 100,000 Latino residents

13 deaths per 100,000 African American residents

71 deaths per 100,000 Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander residents

County demographers also looked at the race and ethnicity of a little more than half of the people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the county (this data was missing for 45% of cases and excludes Pasadena and Long Beach cases). They also adjusted for differences in age distribution, and found:



50 cases per 100,000 American Indian or Alaska Native residents

73 cases per 100,000 Asian residents

78 cases per 100,000 white residents

102 cases per 100,000 African American residents

114 cases per 100,000 Latino residents

840 cases per 100,000 Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander residents

The report also shows that Latinos have had a relatively low share of confirmed COVID-19 cases among people over age 65 but the highest percentage of cases among people under 18 years of age. "Although small, this percentage was almost twice as high as the percent of cases under age 18 among whites and African Americans and three times higher than among Asians," according to the report.

Statewide, Latinos make up 76% of confirmed COVID-19 cases among people under 18 years old (Latinos make up 48% of California's under-18 population).

MOVING FORWARD

The report also includes a roadmap for addressing disparities in testing and access to treatment for COVID-19. Among the recommendations:

Make testing available in medical and non-medical settings in communities hardest hit by the pandemic, and expand beyond sites that require online registration

Make sure highly impacted communities have the latest information on treatment and ensuring access to participation in clinical trials

Work with community partners to ensure there are housing options for people who test positive for COVID-19 and live in crowded conditions

Work with trusted community leaders and ethnic media to communicate public health messages

Alyssa Jeong Perry contributed to this report.

READ THE FULL REPORT:
OneSavings Bank Plc (LON:OSB), operating in the financial services industry based in United Kingdom, received a lot of attention from a substantial price increase on the LSE over the last few months. As a stock with high coverage by analysts, you could assume any recent changes in the companys outlook is already priced into the stock. But what if there is still an opportunity to buy? Lets examine OneSavings Banks valuation and outlook in more detail to determine if theres still a bargain opportunity.

See our latest analysis for OneSavings Bank

Is OneSavings Bank still cheap?

The share price seems sensible at the moment according to my price multiple model, where I compare the company's price-to-earnings ratio to the industry average. Ive used the price-to-earnings ratio in this instance because theres not enough visibility to forecast its cash flows. The stocks ratio of 4.82x is currently trading slightly below its industry peers ratio of 6.43x, which means if you buy OneSavings Bank today, youd be paying a decent price for it. And if you believe OneSavings Bank should be trading in this range, then there isnt much room for the share price to grow beyond the levels of other industry peers over the long-term. Furthermore, it seems like OneSavings Banks share price is quite stable, which means there may be less chances to buy low in the future now that its priced similarly to industry peers. This is because the stock is less volatile than the wider market given its low beta.

What kind of growth will OneSavings Bank generate?

LSE:OSB Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by a double-digit 20% over the next couple of years, the outlook is positive for OneSavings Bank. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? OSBs optimistic future growth appears to have been factored into the current share price, with shares trading around industry price multiples. However, there are also other important factors which we havent considered today, such as the track record of its management team. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at OSB? Will you have enough conviction to buy should the price fluctuate below the industry PE ratio?

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping tabs on OSB, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around industry price multiples. However, the optimistic forecast is encouraging for OSB, which means its worth further examining other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on OneSavings Bank. You can find everything you need to know about OneSavings Bank in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in OneSavings Bank, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

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.
A farmworker adjusts the flow of irrigation in a carrot field in the Imperial Valley. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A substantial majority of California voters support work protections for farmworkers  including undocumented immigrants  such as paid sick leave, medical benefits and replacement wages if they contract the coronavirus, a new statewide poll finds.

Some 80% of state voters support employers providing full replacement wages to farmworkers to stay home when sick with COVID-19, while 79% back equitable pay for such workers regardless of legal or guest worker status, according to a survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies released Friday.

Just over seven in 10 believe that undocumented and legal workers should have equitable medical and paid sick leave should they catch the virus, with support heaviest among voters in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area. More than nine in 10 voters support providing hand-washing stations, personal protective equipment and work conditions that enable farmworkers to practice social distancing.

"We have come a long way since 1994 and Prop. 187," said Victor Narro, project director for the UCLA Labor Center, who was not involved with the survey, referring to a 1994 California initiative to deny state services such as public education and healthcare to people in the country illegally. "I think this just highlights that."

More than one-third of the countrys vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California. Stay-at-home orders in California exempt farmworkers as essential employees. But many are undocumented, lack health insurance and dont qualify for unemployment insurance or federal coronavirus relief, placing the states estimated farm workforce of 420,000 in a vulnerable position.

Views on workers' rights vary by region, amount of trust in the federal government and overall attitudes toward immigrants, the poll found.

Support for medical and paid sick leave benefits for undocumented farmworkers was among lowest in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. A quarter of Central Valley voters opposed the idea that employers should provide equitable medical and paid sick leave to all farmworkers, despite the integral role that the region's agricultural industry plays in the state.

Story continues

"The Central Valley area, you have a lot of cities and locations where there's a conservative, anti-immigrant view," Narro said. "I think that gets mingled into the issues of what farmworkers should be entitled to and what services they are entitled to in the midst of this crisis."

The poll reveals the strong impact that partisanship, and views of President Trump, have on how people perceive the pandemic.

Some 56% of all respondents strongly agreed that, as designated essential workers, farmworkers should receive full replacement wages from their employers to stay home when sick with COVID-19. But just 30% of Republicans in the state support paying full wages to sick farmworkers, compared with 73% of Democrats.

"It's a real partisan divide there," said Dowell Myers, a demographer at USC. "Democrats see more of a cooperative organization to society and Republicans see it more as an individual struggle, and that if you have fallen down it is not because the system has conspired against you."

Among voters who believe Trump is "completely responsible" for the pandemic and the shortage of tests and medical supplies, 71% strongly agree that undocumented farmworkers should receive the same medical and paid sick leave benefits as documented farmworkers if they fall sick with COVID-19, compared to 17% of voters who disagree that Trump is responsible.

The UC Berkeley poll was conducted by email in English and Spanish among 8,800 registered voters statewide, an unusually large sample that allows detailed analysis of subgroups. The results have an estimated margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction.

Because the poll tallied only registered voters, it may not completely capture the full extent of views on rights that workers should have amid the outbreak. Although about 82% of eligible California adults are registered to vote, those who are not registered are, on average, younger and poorer.

"It leaves out a big part of the general immigrant population in areas like L.A. and the Central Valley," Narro said. "This may explain the numbers in the Central Valley, where voters tend to have more conservative impressions regarding immigration."

Voters' views on immigration do indeed have an impact on their perspectives on farmworker protection, the poll found. Nearly 80% of voters who believe that immigrants make the United States a better place to live support the view that employers should provide PPE and allow for social distancing, compared to 54% of voters who think immigrants make the U.S. a worse place to live.

Undocumented farmworkers have been marginalized for decades, said Paul Ong, a UCLA professor and expert on the labor market status of minorities and immigrants, not only through depressed wages, but also by being denied the safety net of programs such as unemployment insurance.

Still, he said, the survey shows that most California voters understand that farmworkers are critical in times of crisis.

"They do hard work, they do a great service to society," he said. "And at this time, they're taking huge risk by continuing to work so that the food chain is not broken."
The beginning of 2020 looked promising for the evolution of Sino-European relations. Discussions about an Investment Agreement were expected to intensify  in spite of thorny issues. And three important events, the China-EU annual summit, the China-CEEC meeting, and the special Leipzig talks under the German presidency of the EU hopefully could create new impetus.



However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic put all such plans on hold. The agenda switched to largely focus on how the pandemic could be better fought in a united way.

Europe helped China by offering medical assistance in February. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged this contribution considering "friends in need are friends indeed."

In March and April, it was China's turn to provide aid to several European countries including, for example, Serbia, Switzerland and the U.K. According to data from the China State Railway Group, the number of China-Europe freight trains reached a record monthly high in April, carrying massive quantities of medical supplies.

On the whole, Sino-European relations have been marked by a spirit of solidarity amid crisis. Some tensions occasionally have been inflamed at the level of public communication; however. One could say this is normal in a phase of high anxiety and frustration.

Fortunately, leading European politicians did not follow the path of American policy-makers and avoided social-stigma as well as unnecessary condemnations against China. Subsequently, the image of Europe in China remains positive.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, has concentrated on the day-to-day battle against the virus to protect her country instead of looking for excuses. Moreover, Germany and China have also discussed practical options of collaboration in difficult times.

Even the recent interview of French President Emmanuel Macron in the Financial Times was very careful and reflected his general approach vis-a-vis China and Russia that deems cooperation a necessary prerequisite for further progress.

The commitment of various politicians to defend EU interests, and publicly talk about them, is completely different from joining the anti-China chorus  without reason.

China and the EU do not agree on all fronts. That is why they have sought to negotiate to find mutually-acceptable solutions. For its part, the EU asks for better access being offered to European companies in the Chinese market and Beijing continues its opening-up and reform process gradually satisfying some of these demands.

A recent article authored by EU High Representative Joseph Borell and published simultaneously in various parts of the bloc certainly elaborated on the European position in a clear way.

China also has concerns that are often ignored in Europe, for example the nature of the screening mechanism in regard to foreign investment. A comprehensive analysis of the state-of-play in Sino-European relations should include all aspects in the debate.

Chinese companies have invested in Europe in the absence of Western liquidity and with a need for more privatization. Demonization tactics do not solve problems a posteriori.

China and the EU are making efforts to better understand each other. What matters is to learn by differences through dialogue and build a joint future at all levels.

The author participated a few days ago in a virtual 17+1 research conference organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. During the meeting participants from China and Central and Eastern European countries shared experiences and discussed prospects.

For those preferring to see the glass as half-full and not half-empty, the ongoing pandemic showcases opportunities for greater synergy. Both sides believe in multilateralism and regard the role of the WHO as critical.

It is not the first time they have moved forward together in that regard. The same happened after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Beijing and Brussels have certainly charted a good way forward.

No one knows when the COVID-19 nightmare will end. If there is a good thing within the tragedy, this is the general admission that international cooperation needs to be strengthened. The responsibility of China and the EU becomes higher than ever.

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.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.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS

BJP-ruled UP and MP governments have proposed to suspend most labour laws for three years to promote investments in the states

RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) says Yogi government move on labour laws violates ILO convention

BMS to hold a meeting of central office bearers to discuss protest strategy

The ordinance in UP seeks to put on hold all labour laws pertaining to labour unions, working conditions, work disputes, and other issues

Central government is also planning labour law reforms on similar lines, warns TMC Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen

RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) plans to stage protests after Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh governments abolished labour laws to revive industries amid coronavirus outbreak. BMS has said the state governments' move violate the principles of International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention. BMS will hold an emergency meeting of its central leadership to chart out a protest strategy.

BMS General Secretary Virjesh Upadhyay told BusinessToday.In that the meeting could be held Friday evening or on Saturday. Upadhyay said BMS does not approve of the state governments' decision and will work on an action plan to oppose the move. "There is already very poor enforcement of labour laws In India, and even those are being suspended and withdrawn. This is very inappropriate and we can't endorse it," Upadhyay said.

Also read: Country needs to know when lockdown will be lifted; it's not on, off switch: Rahul tells govt

He said that a meeting of BMS's national office bearers has been called to discuss the decisions taken by state governments in UP, MP and Gujarat. On the possible impact of the decisions to put labour laws in abeyance, the BMS leader said it may have "notional impact" given that enforcement is very poor in the country. He said that job market was volatile and people were forced to resign and leave on the same day.

Uttar Pradesh cabinet on Thursday approved the 'Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020' to relieve factories and establishments from most labour laws, barring four, for a period of three years. The ordinance puts on hold all labour laws pertaining to labour unions, working conditions, work disputes, and other issues.

Once the ordinance gets all necessary approvals, only the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, Workmen Compensation Act, 1923, Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and Section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 (the right to receive timely wages), will be in force in the state. The MP government also plans to substantially relax labour laws. It has proposed raising the labour strength criteria for registration to 50 from 10 now for units run on power by amending the Factory Act. It has sent recommendations to the central government.

Also read: UP allows industry to hire and fire! Suspends all labour laws, except three

"With a view to inviting new industries and investors in the next 1,000 days in the state, all the provisions except Section 25 of the Industrial Disputes Act have been relaxed. Now industry owners will be able to select workers as per their convenience," an official statement said. "In industries where less than 100 labourers work, exemptions have been given from the provisions of Madhya Pradesh Industrial Employment (Permanent Order) Act. Now most of our MSME industries will be able to hire labourers as per their requirement to increase their productivity," it added.

Both UP and MP governments said that the decisions were aimed at giving a fillip to industry and creating more jobs. But BMS says that the argument put forward by state governments that suspending labour laws will create more jobs is not correct. Meanwhile, the Modi government at centre is also working on major labour law reforms. But the road to reforms may not be easy. Opposition leaders and trade unions are set to aggressively oppose the government on this sensitive issue.

TMC Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen told BusinessToday.In that she had received a communication from a parliamentary panel on labour for suggestions on amending the labour law. "Regarding the labour law amendment, they (House panel Chairman) have sent their proposal through mail and they expected me to give my opinion. I have denied (to give my opinion)," the TMC leader said.

Asked about the nature of proposed amendments, Dola Sen said that they all were on the lines of what Yogi Adityanath government had done in UP. Sen added she plans to plans to oppose the move and take on Modi government after nationwide lockdown is lifted.

Also read: Lockdown 3.0: After UP, MP, other states relax labour laws to pump up industrial activity
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 04:10:03

TUV Rheinland Provides Local Certification for Sigfox Monarch

Phoenix Chen, TUV Rheinland Greater China,

Tel.: +862028391243

E-mail: phoenix.chen@tuv.com



Sally Chang, TUV Rheinland Greater China,

Tel.: +886 221721169

E-mail: sally.chang@tuv.com

There has been an explosion in sensor and transmission technologies due to Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology. Sigfox, developed in France, has become a star wireless transmission technology and network application. Key features include use of unlicensed spectrum and ultra narrow band technology, long range with low power consumption, and low cost. Sigfox is being used to create and implement IoT applications with kilometer-transmission ranges. With a range of up to 50 km and excellent signal penetration, it offers the greatest coverage for the minimum amount of power among all IoT wireless transmission technologies available today. TUV Rheinland Taiwan is the only laboratory in the Asia-Pacific and Greater China region to be accredited for certification of Sigfox Monarch functionality. One-stop certification for the global Sigfox network means time and effort saved from not having to go through separate certification processes for each country or region.

Sigfox Monarch technology will replace high-cost GPS and GNSS satellite positioning equipment. Global roaming will be realized through automatic connections to local Sigfox spectrum in all related regions (RC1~RC7) worldwide for seamless integration with global Sigfox networking and geographic positioning services. Sigfox Monarch technology has very low power consumption, making it suitable for remote surveillance and logistics tracking management. Sigfox sensor applications are widely utilized, from manufacturing industry supply chains to freight, aviation, and track maintenance, from smart home applications (power meters, water meters, gas gauges) to the conservation program for white rhinoceroses by World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), making it one of the most successful IoT technologies. Applications of Sigfox mobile location services should continue to expand in the future.

In response to the rapid development of the global network, TUV Rheinland's IoT lab has become the only Sigfox Verified lab in the Asia-Pacific region. The lab offers the full range of testing capabilities, from the communication protocols of radio-frequency hardware to the transmission performance of antenna products. The first Sigfox Verified Monarch testing case in Asia was also completed in 2019. Manufacturers now no longer need to travel all the way to Europe to complete Sigfox Verified Monarch testing. TUV Rheinland can help vendors complete localized, one-stop Sigfox Ready, Sigfox Verified, and wireless certification testing for countries around the world, thereby seizing the initiative in the global IoT market.

About TUV Rheinland

TUV Rheinland stands for safety and quality in almost all areas of business and life. Founded almost 150 years ago, the company is one of the worlds leading testing service providers with more than 20,000 employees and annual revenues of 2 billion euros. TUV Rheinlands highly qualified experts test technical systems and products around the world, support innovations in technology and business, train people in numerous professions and certify management systems according to international standards. In doing so, the independent experts generate trust in products as well as processes across global value-adding chains and the flow of commodities. Since 2006, TUV Rheinland has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact to promote sustainability and combat corruption. Website: www.tuv.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507006

TUV Rheinland Provides Local Certification for Sigfox Monarch
A newly unearthed court document revealed Thursday that Joe Biden's accuser Tara Reade informed her then-husband in 1996 that she was sexually harassed in the former senator's Capitol Hill office.

'On several occasions Petitioner related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office,' Theodore Dronen wrote of his wife in the court declaration, according to the filing obtained by the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

'Petitioner told me that she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator's office and left her position,' he continued, never saying the name of who she said sexually harassed her or expanding on any alleged incidents.

Dronen's declaration, which was filed in a San Luis Obispo Superior Court, came as he was contesting a restraining order Reade was filing against him days after he filed for divorce.

This appears to be the only written evidence to corroborate Reade's allegations against Biden.

'It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on the Petitioner (Reade), and that she is still sensitive and effected (sic) by it today,' Dronen wrote.

Tara Reade told her ex-husband that she was experiencing 'sexual harassment in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office,' according to a newly revealed 1996 court document

Several people have revealed that Reade shared accounts of Biden sexually assaulting her in his Senate office in the early 1990s, including a former neighbor who came forward last week regarding similar conversations she said she had with Reade in 1995.

None of the handful of individuals, however, have been able to provide hard evidence.

News of the new information about the sexual harassment during her time in Biden's Delaware Senate Office came right before her interview with Megyn Kelly Thursday where she called for Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

In Reade's first major on-camera interview she shared new details about the alleged incident.

For the first time in the telling of her story to news organizations, Reade told Kelly that Biden 'said something vulgar' to her during the alleged assault, which Read said occurred when she was working for Biden in the U.S. Senate in 1993.

'He said I want to f*** you,' Reade told the former Fox News and NBC News anchor.

Since March, Reade has told reporters that Biden pushed her up against a wall in a Capitol Hill hallway, told her that he 'heard' that she liked him, and proceeded to stick his hand down her skirt and penetrate her with his fingers.

When she froze up and indicated that she wasn't interested, she consistently quoted him saying to her that she meant 'nothing' to him.

Reade (left) sat down in her first major interview with journalist Megyn Kelly (right), sharing that she hoped Joe Biden would drop out of the presidential race because he shouldn't be 'running on character'

In the telling with Kelly, she added the four-letter expletive.

'And he said it low. And I was pushing away and I remember my knee hurting because our knees, because he had opened my legs with his knee and our kneecaps clashed, so I felt this sharp pain,' Reade said. 'His fingers were inside of my private area, my vagina,' the ex-staffer added.

In every telling of the story, Reade said Biden told her she 'was nothing' before walking away. 'I think that's the hardest thing,' she told Kelly. 'Those words stayed with me my whole life.'

'I remember small things,' the accuser continued. 'I remember trying to put my shoe back on because I came out of my shoe and I remember my knee hurting and I remember the smell.'

She told Kelly that she wanted to say 'stop.' 'I thought it, I don't know if I said it,' she said.

She also said she wanted Biden to end his presidential run and face the music.

'I want to say you and I were there, Joe Biden, please step forward and be held accountable, you should not be running on character for president of the United States,' Reade told Kelly, who had asked what her message was for Biden.

Kelly followed up by asking Reade if she wanted Biden to withdraw from the presidential contest.

'I wish he would,' Reade answered. 'But he won't, but I wish he would, that's how I feel emotionally,' Reade said. She previously wrote on social media that Americans should support Bernie Sanders, Biden's former Democratic primary rival.

She then told Kelly that an apology now wouldn't be sufficient. 'I think it's a little late,' Reade said.

Reade revealed to Kelly that she had taken her complaint to both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris' presidential campaigns when they were still active.

'I tried to reach out to them,' Reade said. 'I didn't get a response.'

She said she chose Harris because as a Californian, the ex-2020 candidate is her senator.

Reade also told Kelly that she would testify under oath and be cross examined, but she'd only take a polygraph test if the former vice president took one first.

'I'm not a criminal,' Reade said. 'Joe Biden should take the polygraph. What kind of precedent does that set for survivors of violence? Does that mean we're presumed guilty? And we all have to take polygraphs.'

'So I will take one if Joe Biden takes one, but I am not a criminal,' Reade added.

Megyn Kelly, who currently works for herself and has been producing her own content and posting it on YouTube, was among the Fox News employees who accused the network's late CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment

Joe Biden denied Reade's accusations in his own sit-down interview, last Friday with MSNBC's 'Morning Joe'

Reade, who said she was sexually assaulted by the presumptive Democratic nominee as a 29-year-old Senate staffer in 1993, told The New York Times that major broadcast networks hadn't asked her to do a televised interview

Kelly, formerly of Fox News Channel and NBC News, had announced earlier Thursday on Twitter that she had nabbed the first major sit-down with Reade, who previously complained about the big networks not giving her TV time.

'Her story & some tough Q's in a riveting exchange,' Kelly wrote. 'A ton of news coming ... ,' she said and included a photo of both she and Reade.

Since leaving NBC News in January 2019, Kelly has worked for herself, posting interviews to her YouTube channel, and then promoting them on social media platforms.

The first clip of the interview, which Kelly posted on Twitter late Thursday afternoon, began with Reade telling the former Fox anchor about harassment she's endured at the hands of so-called Biden 'surrogates.'

'It's been stunning, actually, how the - some of his surrogates, with the blue checks, that are his surrogates, have been saying really horrible things about me and to me on social media,' Reade said.

'He hasn't himself, but, there's a measure of hypocrisy with the campaign saying it's safe,' she continued.

'It's not been safe,' Reade said. 'All my social media has been hacked. All my personal information has been dragged through. Every person that maybe has, you know, a gripe against me, an ex-boyfriend or an ex-landlord, whatever it is, has been able to have a platform rather than me.'

Late last month, Reade told The New York Times' media critic Ben Smith that no major networks had offered to put her on TV.

'They're just doing stories. No anchors, no nothing like that,' she said.

At the time, Smith reported, Reade was in talks with Fox News Channel about doing an on-camera interview, with 'Fox News Sunday' with Chris Wallace looking to be the venue.

Reade told The Times that she backed out due to getting death threats. A Fox News source told DailyMail.com that the network was en route to the interview and Reade canceled for security concerns.

She brought the death threats up again Thursday in her sit-down with Kelly.

'I got a death threat from that because they thought I was being a traitor to America,' Reade said, pointing to some postings that branded her a Russian agent.

'And his campaign is taking this position that they want all women to be able to speak safely, I have not experienced that,' she added.

Reade previously did an on-camera interview with Hill.TV, but when discussing media coverage with The Times, she was referencing major network television, saying she had hoped for a sit-down with someone like Gayle King, the host of 'CBS This Morning.'

Reade has accused Biden of sticking his hand down her skirt and digitally penatrating her in a Congressional hallway when she worked for him as an aide in 1993.

The allegations evolved from what Reade had told reporters in 2019 when a number of women came out and said Biden had touched them inappropriately, though not in a sexual way.

Reade had previously claimed that Biden liked her legs and wanted her to waittress at a Capitol Hill cocktail party while she was on staff. Reade also complained that he was touchy-feely, putting his hands on her shoulders, neck and hair.

'This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power,' she had told Vox reporter Laura McGann, who wrote about Reade's changing story in an essay Thursday.

Reade first told her sex assault story to journalist Katie Halper for her 'Katie Halper Show' podcast on March 25.

'None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we can't prove,' McGann wrote.

While a neighbor of Reade's recalls the ex-Senate staffer talking about an incident with Biden in the mid-90s, according to reporting from Business Insider, so far no official documentation has been produced. Reade has also said that the sex assault charges weren't included in any Senate complaint she said she made.

Biden denied the allegations on-camera last Friday on 'Morning Joe,' which was his first television appearance pushing back on Reade's story.

'I'm saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,' Biden said.

Kelly was among the women at Fox News Channel who accused the late Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.

Since leaving NBC News, Kelly's video report on how real life Fox News employees responded to the movie 'Bombshell,' a film where she's portrayed by Charlize Theron, was her most widely viewed piece of content, receiving 1.5 million hits on YouTube.
The consolidated central government balance, which is derived by subtracting total fiscal spending from earnings, has resulted in a staggering W45 trillion deficit in the first quarter (US$1=W1,226). The fiscal deficit grows even further to W55 trillion if losses from the National Pension Service and state employment insurance programs are included. Both are at record levels, swelling by W28 trillion and W30 trillion from the same period of last year. The consolidated deficit for the quarter is already four times higher than the entire deficit for last year (W12 trillion). The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has just started to become visible, but the government has already shouldered an unprecedented loss.

The deficit is the result of declining tax earnings and skyrocketing spending. Last year, corporate profits halved, so tax revenues shrank by almost W7 trillion and the national purse was reduced by W1.5 trillion to W120 trillion in the first quarter. But government spending mushroomed by W26.5 trillion to W165 trillion. The government created 740,000 part-time sinecures for the elderly, paid living allowances for low-income households ahead of schedule before the Lunar New Year holiday and expanded childcare payments and welfare for the elderly. And still the latest fiscal debt reflects only one month's impact of the coronavirus epidemic, namely March. If the government spends all three supplementary budgets as planned, the deficit will reach uncharted levels.

The first and second supplementary budgets of W24 trillion plus the third supplementary budget of W30 trillion will cause the consolidated deficit to swell to W79 trillion, or to W119 trillion if losses from the NPS and employment insurance are included. That means it will account for a staggering six percent of Korea's GDP, double the three percent the EU views as risky. During the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, the consolidated balance was almost always in the black, while the cumulative surplus rose to W115 trillion over a 10-year period. How can that have shifted to a W91 trillion deficit in just two years?

The fiscal deficit translates into sovereign debt. If the government spends an additional W60 trillion this year on top of the allocated budget of W512 trillion, W100 trillion in deficit-financing bonds will have to be issued. The government debt as of the end of March reflecting the first supplementary budget stands at W731 trillion, up W32 trillion from a year ago. Divide that by households, and the debt burden shouldered by every Korean home rises to W1.47 million. Even if the government hands out W1 million in coronavirus aid money to each four-person household as planned, they still end up owing more money than they are given.

The ruling party claims that boosting the sovereign debt ratio to 60 percent will be no problem. But global ratings agencies have already started re-evaluating Korea's creditworthiness. Fitch warned that Korea's rating could be affected it its fiscal debt ratio rises to 46 percent by 2023. But it is already expected to rise to 50 percent by the end of this year. If our country's credit rating is slashed, a chain reaction will follow. The Moon Jae-in administration's wanton welfare spending has made W100 trillion sound like peanuts. By the time it finally realizes that everything comes at a cost, it may be too late.


Will Trumps contraceptives mandate exemption for Little Sisters survive a Supreme Court challenge?

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An attorney with a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases is confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of religious freedom protections for the Little Sisters of the Poor.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over telephone regarding a lawsuit the Little Sisters of the Poor leveled against Pennsylvania.

At issue was Pennsylvanias litigation against the Trump administration over a new federal rule that broadened religious and moral exemptions to groups opposed to the Department of Health and Human Services contraceptives mandate.

Diana Verm, senior counsel at Becket Law, which helped represent the Little Sisters and who listened to the oral arguments, told The Christian Post that she thought the oral arguments went very well.

You could hear the justices seeking a way to resolve this longstanding dispute. I do think that at the end of the day that they will rule in favor of the Little Sisters and I think the big question that we are asking now is how they will do that, Verm said.

Verm felt that one of the strongest arguments in favor of the nuns was that there was no way to get rid of the exemptions the government has offered the Little Sisters without getting rid of the exemptions that the former administration offered to churches.

All along, since the very beginning of the contraceptive mandate, theres been an exemption for churches and some religious orders, but not for the Little Sisters of the Poor, she said.

No one had an argument, none of the justices and none of the counsels for Pennsylvania had a good argument for why that exemption shouldnt apply to the Little Sisters.

In 2017, the Trump administration decided that the religious exemption to the HHS mandate on contraceptive services would be broadened to better accommodate groups like the Little Sisters.

Pennsylvania and California sued the federal government over the new broader exemption, with Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Virginia joining California's litigation.

In November 2017, the Little Sisters filed a motion to intervene on the litigation, arguing that the states were threatening the nuns' religious liberty.

"The Little Sisters cannot stand idly by while Pennsylvania threatens their ministry by trying to snatch away the protections the Sisters have fought so long to keep," read the motion in the Pennsylvania lawsuit.

[Pennsylvanias] lawsuit seeks to deprive the Little Sisters of the protections provided by the Constitution, federal civil rights laws, and the new regulations 

Last July, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit unanimously ruled to uphold a lower court decision enjoining the new rules nationwide.

Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz, who authored the opinion of the panel, argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not apply to the case and that the accommodation process for those seeking an exemption to the mandate was sufficient.

RFRA does not require the broad exemption embodied in the Final Rule nor to make voluntary a notice of the employers decision not to provide such coverage to avoid burdening those beliefs, Shwartz wrote.

 the status quo prior to the new Rule, with the Accommodation, did not infringe on the religious exercise of covered employers, nor is there a basis to conclude the Accommodation process infringes on the religious exercise of any employer.

In January, the Supreme Court announced that they were taking up two cases regarding the broadened religious exemption, Trump v. Pennsylvania and Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania.

It is disappointing to think that as we enter a new decade we must still defend our ministry in court, said Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, a mother provincial of the Little Sisters, in a statement in January.

We are grateful the Supreme Court has decided to weigh in, and hopeful that the justices will reinforce their previous decision and allow us to focus on our lifelong work of serving the elderly poor once and for all.

The nuns previously went before the Supreme Court to be exempted from the HHS mandate, with the high court deciding in 2016 to vacate two lower court rulings against them.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  Marco Polo Davao has announced that they will indefinitely stop operations starting June 15, due to the ill-effects brought about by the coronavirus pandemic to the hospitality industry.

Marco Polo Davao will cease hotel operations by June 15," Pearl Peralta-Maclang, hotel sales and marketing director, told CNN Philippines. "The business decision is brought about by the ill-effects of the pandemic and the uncertainties of the future of the industry."

Davao's City's lone five-star hotel posted the announcement on its official Facebook page, thanking supporters, business partners, and the community.

The priority is to take care of the associates while the company can," Peralta-Maclang said. "The associates have been the core and stewards in building Marco Polo Davao.

Many employees reportedly expressed hope that the hotel will be back in operations when the pandemic is over.

The hospitality industry is one of the hardest-hit sectors around the globe since the pandemic erupted.

In the Philippines alone, hotels were prohibited to accept new bookings by the national government beginning March.

The travel industry was also severely affected due to the cancellation of domestic and international flights early this year.

It is also said to be suffering its worst downturn since the 9/11 attack, according to a report by CNN International.

RELATED: The travel industry is suffering its worst shock since 9/11 because of coronavirus
In like Flynn. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Justice Department dropped all charges against Michael Flynn Thursday, saying that it did not believe it could prove the former White House national security adviser was guilty of making false statements to the FBI  despite the fact that in December 2017, Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI.

Flynns case took a long and winding road through the justice system. But the former intelligence officials guilt, and the reasons why the DOJ is suddenly uninterested in proving it, both appear straightforward.

Shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election. One day after those sanctions became public, Flynn spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, encouraging Moscow not to retaliate. That call eventually became public knowledge. But the incoming Trump administration denied that Flynn had discussed sanctions during his conversation with Kislyak. U.S. intelligence officials knew this was untrue. This struck the FBI as concerning and potentially relevant to its ongoing investigation into Russian interference. So they interviewed Flynn, who proceeded to make a false statement to the FBI about what he had discussed with the Russian ambassador.

Several months and one special counsels appointment later, Flynn pleaded guilty to this crime and agreed to cooperate with Robert Muellers probe. This reportedly baffled Donald Trumps then-lawyer John Dowd, who had told Flynns counsel that he could expect a full pardon if he contested the allegations against him and lost.

Flynn later decided that he had received poor counsel and withdrew his guilty plea. Last summer, he fired his attorneys and replaced them with Sidney Powell, a conservative commentator whod authored a book-length indictment of the Mueller investigation titled Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. Last week, Powell and his team argued that recently disclosed FBI emails and notes demonstrated that Flynn had been trapped into lying, and proved that the interview itself had lacked any legitimate basis. If were seen as playing games, WH will be furious, one page of these notes reads. Protect our institution by not playing games. It is not clear how these documents prove that the FBI had no legitimate reason to interview a member of the Trump campaign who had lied about his contacts with a Russian official as part of an investigation into potentially illicit cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Nevertheless, Bill Barrs Justice Department found Powells case persuasive. Last week, Brandon Van Grack, a prosecutor from Muellers team who had been assigned to Flynns case, withdrew as the governments counsel. Meanwhile, Jeff Jensen, a U.S. Attorney whom Barr had appointed to review the departments handling of Flynn, recommended that it drop all charges. On Thursday, this position was made public in an official filing, in which the federal government declared that the FBIs interview of Flynn had been untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBIs counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn, and was therefore conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.

Moreover, we do not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt, the filing claimed.

In sum: The arc of Michael Flynns case was long, but it bent toward the debasement of justice.
President Trump appointed Kayleigh McEnany to be his fourth press secretary last month. McEnany, previously Trump's campaign spokeswoman and before that a conservative cable news regular, was not always on Team Trump, as CNN discovered when digging through the cable news vaults for a highlight reel broadcast Thursday.

Trump "doesn't deserve" to be near the top of the GOP polls, McEnany told Fox Business in the summer of 2015. "Look, the GOP doesn't need to be turning away voters and isolating them, we need to be bringing them into the tent. Donald Trump is the last person who's going to do that." Trump's comments about Mexicans were "very inartful and very inappropriate," she told CNN. "I think the mainstream Republican does not want to send the illegal immigrant back to Mexico. ... That's not the American way, we're not going to ship people across the border. There has to be some path to citizenship." She even suggested Trump's comment was "racist."

McEnany certainly isn't the first Trump skeptic who has since publicly changed their mind  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), recent White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for example, made scathing comments about Trump's unfitness for office during the 2016 campaign. But it is interesting to remember how far the Republican Party has shifted over the past four years.

By October 2015, McEnany had changed her tone and said calling Trump a sexist and a racist was helping him among people sick of political correctness. But her problem was never that he was too conservative, the clips suggest. "Hey, I don't want to claim this guy," she laughed on CNN in June 2015. "Donald Trump, if we're going to be honest, is a progressive. ... This is not a true Republican candidate, and the fact that he's being portrayed as such in media is troublesome and not accurate."

At least McEnany is consistent about blaming the media.

More stories from theweek.com

7 scathing cartoons about America's rush to reopen

Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame is running for Congress, and her launch video looks like a spy movie trailer

The U.S. reportedly didn't take up a January offer that would have led to the production of 1.7 million masks per week


YouTube

Millions of Americans have been exposed to Plandemic, a 22-minute conspiracy theory documentary about the coronavirus that racked up millions of views on Facebook and YouTube before it was banned from both sites.

In the video, controversial scientist Dr. Judy Mikovits, a close associate of anti-vaccine activists, weaves an elaborate tale alleging a government conspiracy to create the coronavirus, with Anthony Fauci as a kind of murderous puppetmaster behind it all. Along the way, she claims that masks activate the virus, and that she was imprisoned as part of a cover-up.

Plandemic has already become a major success for its creator, New-Age producer Mikki Willis.

The video has been endorsed by actress Kirstie Allie, popular Southern comedian Darren Knight, and MMA stars Tito Ortiz and Alex Reid. The hashtag #Plandemic became a trending topic on Twitter, as people praised the videoor complained of friends and relatives who had been duped by it. As of Thursday, Mikovitss book slamming Fauci, Plague of Corruption, was the #1 book on the Amazon bestseller charts.

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks

Anti-Vaxxers and Lockdown Protesters Form an Unholy Alliance

But experts say the allegations Mikovits lays out in the interview with Willis dont stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

Shes basically latched onto the anti-Fauci stuff, and came up with this story that sounds really dubious, said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a COVID-19 grifter.

That hasnt stopped Plandemic from becoming a social media hit, embraced by QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine groups and various conservative activists. Versions of Plandemic were among the top social media results for search terms like Fauci and COVID-19 on Wednesday and Thursday, with three versions of the video engaged with more than 8.4 million times on Facebook alone, according to social media analytics site BuzzSumo.

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YouTube banned the video on Wednesday, saying in a statement to The Daily Beast that it violated the sites rules on COVID-19. On Thursday, Facebook followed suit and banned Plandemic over Mikovitss claim that masks somehow spread the virus.

Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we're removing the video, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

Mikovits and Willis didnt respond to requests for comment.

The initial minutes of Plandemic are devoted to bolstering Mikovitss scientific bona fides, calling her one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation. But the article that Plandemic claims cemented Mikovitss reputationa blockbuster article in Sciencein fact was a hotly disputed study that was eventually retracted by the journal.

Whenever you hear Mikovits mentioned, shes described as a great scientist, or one of the most promising scientists of her generation, Gorski told The Daily Beast. Well, thats a bit of an exaggeration.

In 2009, Mikovits, the research director at Nevadas Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Diseasea job she picked up after a stint bartending at a yacht clubpublished a paper in Science claiming that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was caused by the retrovirus XMRV. The claim initially offered hope for sufferers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the cause or causes of which remain unclear.

But the research quickly fell apart, and Science retracted the article in 2011. Scientists now believe Mikovitss supposed findings were just the results of contamination in her lab.

What she thought she had found was actually contamination of samples, said Dr. Ivan Oransky, a co-founder of science research blog Retraction Watch. She found that there was a virus present in samples taken from mice with this condition, but it just happened to be that the virus was there. It didnt prove anything.

Rather than accept the retraction, Mikovits began to portray the failure of her research as proof that the medical establishment was engaged in a conspiracy against her.

If you look at her trajectory, its this kind of trajectory that we have seen at Retraction Watch, when someone tries to flip the script, Oransky said. No, its not that my research was flawed, and that I was wrong, its this big conspiracy theory again.

By then, however, Mikovits had a bigger problem: a criminal charge.

In Plandemic, her November 2011 arrest is portrayed as punishment from the powers-that-be for pursuing potentially damning research about viruses. Its accompanied by videos of a SWAT team raiding a house thats presented as footage of Mikovitss arrest. But the news footage company that actually shot the footage has denounced Plandemic, saying the video is actually from an unrelated SWAT raid.

What did they charge you with? Willis asks in the video.

Nothing, Mikovits says.

In fact, however, Mikovits was charged with theft after notebooks and other materials disappeared from the Whittemore Peterson Institute after she left. The charges were eventually dropped, after the institutes wealthy backer was charged with making illegal contributions to a federal official. At the time, a prosecutor complained that case against Mikovitss former employer created witness issues.

Since the arrest and retraction of her paper, Mikovits has drifted closer to anti-vaccine circles. While she claims in Plandemic that she isnt herself against vaccines, Mikovits has co-authored two books with anti-vaccine blogger Kent Heckenlively. Her most recent book also features a foreword from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading promoter of the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.

Shes joining up with all of these other conspiracy theorists, and taking part in various online forums and just sowing these seeds of doubt about the safety of vaccines, said Amy Pisani, the executive director of pro-vaccine group Vaccinate Your Family.

After her arrest and high-profile retraction, Mikovits started up a years-long, one-sided feud with Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading figure in the Trump administrations coronavirus response.

In a 2014 book, Mikovits claims Fauci threatened to have her arrested if she tried to participate in a National Institutes of Health study to validate her retracted study. In Plandemic, she claims that Fauci berated her in 1984 in an attempt to steal HIV research.

He started screaming at me and said Give us the paper right now or youll be fired for insubordination! Mikovits says in the video.

Retraction Watchs Oransky, who has followed Mikovitss career for nearly a decade, says he hasnt seen any proof besides Mikovitss own allegations that her claims against Fauci are true.

There doesnt seem to be any evidence of what she says about him interfering with her work is true, Oransky said.

In Plandemic, Mikovits goes a step further, claiming that the coronavirus was somehow cooked up in collusion between United States government labs and Chinese researchers. A narrator voice-over suggests Fauci was somehow involved in the scheme.

A Health and Human Services spokesman who represents Fauci declined to comment to The Daily Beast. But in 2018, Fauci addressed Mikovitss claims in an email to debunking website Snopes, denying her accusations and saying he had found no proof of the supposed email where he threatened to have her arrested.

I have no idea what she is talking about, Fauci wrote.

Still, Mikovitss grudge against Fauci has been embraced in the coronavirus era by Trump fans and coronavirus truthers, who reject the doctors dire pronouncements about the virus.

The beauty of that one is theres almost zero way of disproving it, Gorski said.

Mikovits makes other bizarre claims that are barely remarked upon in the documentary. She says that lockdown orders closing beaches have cut people off from healing microbes in the ocean.

She claims that AIDS activist and playwright Larry Kramer called Fauci the Bernie Madoff of sciencea quote The Daily Beast could find no other record of. After a contentious relationship during the HIV epidemic, Fauci and Kramer are now friends.

At one point, Mikovits claims that she taught Ebola cells in a U.S. Army laboratory at Fort Detrick how to infect human cells in 1999, effectively saying that she weaponized the disease against humans.

Ebola couldnt infect human cells until we took them in the laboratories and taught them, Mikovits.

If accurate, that would mean that Mikovits is partially responsible for 11,300 deaths from the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak alone. But her claim doesnt make any sense, because the first recorded cases of human Ebola infection were recorded 23 years earlier, in 1976. The Daily Beast was not able to verify that Mikovits worked at the laboratory.

And she makes the bizarre argument that wearing a mask somehow makes a person more susceptible to the virus.

Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus, Mikovits said. Youre getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions.

Plandemic throws out so many false claims in its 22 minutes that its difficult for a lay viewer to keep track of whats true, according to Gorski.

You just shoot so much misinformation out there that it blasts you back, Gorski said.

Willis has a history of his own that suggests he isnt rigorously committed to scientific accuracy in his films.

Hes produced a series of New Age documentaries, including one starring former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson and another about psychedelic drugs. But in one of his latest documentary projects, Be Brave: The True Story of Daniel Northcott, he posits that Northcott, a deceased filmmaker, contracted leukemia because he stole a cursed bone from a Mayan gravesite.

No one will ever know if that object held a curse, a narrator intones in a trailer for the film.

After going viral in 2015 for a video in which he defended his son for playing with a doll, Willis has turned to posting edgier family-themed videos on Facebook like 5 YEAR OLD CRACKS EPSTEIN CASE! (share if you care), in which Williss 5-year-old son says that wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.

Plandemic has even been denounced by two doctors who are cited in the film as experts. Bakersfield, California urgent care doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi have become stars on Fox News for their claims that the virus is less lethal than the common colddata that is itself easily disproven.

But even Erickson and Massihi want nothing to do with Plandemic, which extensively uses footage of them criticizing the scientific consensus on coronavirus. In a statement posted on Instagram, the doctors distance themselves from the viral video.

The creator of this film never asked to use our footage and has skewed our study and interviews to fit their agenda, which we do not agree with, nor appreciate, they write. We are not interested in being associated with the conspiracy theory against the current administration.

Despite the numerous factual errors in Plandemic and Mikovitss own spotty track record as a researcher, the video has turned the doctor into a star among coronavirus skepticsand members of the public who have been fooled by the slickly produced footage.

It pays to be a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist, Gorski said. Before she glommed onto COVID-19, she was a second- or third-string anti-vaccine crank. And now look!

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Vietnam rejects Chinas unilateral decision to ban fishing in the South China Sea from May 1 to August 16, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said in a statement posted on the governments website.

Vietnam has sovereignty over its waters as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Hang said. Vietnam asks China not to further complicate the situation in the South China Sea, she said.

The Vietnam Fisheries Society earlier this week asked the government to take strong action against Chinas fishing ban.

Vietnam in April charged a Chinese marine surveillance ship with sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat near the contested Paracel Islands.
Japan will look into additional steps to cushion the economic blow from the coronavirus pandemic, its economy minister said on Friday, signalling that more stimulus measures could be forthcoming as the country sinks into deep recession.

Japan compiled a record $1.1tn (1tn) economic stimulus package in April that focused on cash payouts to households and loans to small businesses hurt by the pandemic.

Ruling coalition lawmakers are ramping up calls for more assistance, as the government's decision on Monday to extend a state of emergency through May heightens the chance of more bankruptcies and job losses.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday the government will look into ways to offer rent relief for businesses and help university students who lost part-time jobs pay tuition.

"We're moving quickly to scrutinise what further steps are necessary, in consultation with the prime minister and close coordination with the ruling coalition," Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will present a proposal to Abe including a plan for the government to cover two-thirds of the rent for small businesses hit by the pandemic for up to six months, the Nikkei newspaper said.

The sticking point will be on how to pay for the plan. Some lawmakers are demanding the government compile a second supplementary budget, following one that was put together to partly fund the $1.1tn package.

Finance Minister Taro Aso, however, said any additional spending should first be covered by YEN 1.5tn (13bn) worth of reserves set aside under the first supplementary budget.

"We don't know yet how big any new spending package would be," Aso told a briefing on Friday. "We're not at a stage to say when and how much" the government will need to spend, he added.

The economy likely shrank for a second straight quarter in the first three months of this year, a Reuters poll showed, meeting the technical definition of a recession as the pandemic crushed consumption and business activity.

Gross domestic product (GDP) data on May 18 is likely to show the world's third-largest economy contracted an annualised 4.6pc in January-March, the poll of 14 analysts showed on Friday. Many believe the slump will be even deeper in the current quarter.

Japan has reported over 16,000 coronavirus cases and 603 deaths.
By Trend

Azerbaijan is amending the Law on Tourism in connection with the issuance of e-visas to tourists.

The issue was discussed at the meeting of the Azerbaijani parliament, Trend reports on May 8.

In accordance with the current legislation, the application for the issuance of an e-visa is considered no later than within 3 days, and in case of an application for obtaining visa expediently - no later than within 3 hours. If there is no reason for refusal of issuing a visa, then the visa is issued and sent to the email address of the applicant.

The information is also sent to the applicants email in case of refusal of issuing a visa.

In accordance with the new amendment, the application for obtaining a single or multiple-entry e-visa is considered within 3 business days at the latest; in case of applying for obtaining a single-entry e-visa expediently - within no more than 3 hours; and when applying for a single-entry e-visa at the Azerbaijani international airports - in real-time regime.

If there is no reason for refusal of issuing a visa, then it is issued in the manner prescribed by the corresponding executive body.

The amendments to the law proceed from the requirements of the Regulation on the ASAN Visa system, approved upon the Azerbaijani presidents decree dated October 20, 2016.

Following the discussions, the amendment was put to the vote and was adopted in the second reading.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
(Natural News) Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Americans are now dealing with unemployment and food insecurity. At the same time, businesses are struggling to stay afloat and meet the ever-changing demand of consumers across the country.

Coronavirus and the new normal

The pandemic has forced businesses throughout America to adjust to the new normal.

Sherry Bonanno, executive director of the Hollywood Food Coalition, explained that the organization had to adapt their practices to effectively help those in need.

The pandemic has caused significant changes in California, where over one-third of Americas vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown. Adding to the pandemic is the states currently existing issues of hunger and homelessness.

To address these concerns, food producers, distributors, retailers and advocates are continuously trying to come up with new ways to sustain the nations food supply and their own bottom lines, at the same time minimizing food waste and want.

Farmers and wasted produce

On March 16, Gov. Gavin Newsom implored restaurants to close. This then resulted in huge losses for the foodservice industry that supplied restaurants and bars, along with schools, hotels, production studios and catering services.

While worried consumers rushed to grocery stores to stockpile food and retail demand skyrocketed, the business wasnt enough to meet all the lost demand from restaurants.

Scott Grabau, president and chief executive of Tanimura & Antle, a Salinas-based lettuce producer, said that the pandemic has flipped his business upside-down.

Tanimura & Antle grows year-round in California and Arizona but has recently had to stop harvesting entire fields. Grabau is considering planting more iceberg and romaine lettuce, two vegetables that are more popular among shoppers, and less of the boutique leaves offered to chefs.

Meanwhile, Cathy Burns, CEO of the Produce Marketing Association that represents produce companies, explained that crops planted months before based on pre-pandemic demand went to waste because of a lack of buyers. Produce worth billions of dollars had to be tilled back into the soil.

To reduce food waste in your own kitchen, categorize vegetables into groups: Use now, later and latest. Store hardier ingredients towards the back of the fridge and more fragile ingredients near the front.

If you have enough vegetables for at least one week, you can manage the ingredients better. Pay attention to each vegetables internal clock, so you can cook with them before they go bad.

Truckers with uncertain futures

According to Zach England, the chief operating officer of C.R. England, a Utah-based company that transports produce and meat in refrigerated trucks throughout California and other states, his company experienced the pandemics seesaw effect.

At least 4,000 of Englands 6,000 drivers haul food routinely. The demand for their services skyrocketed during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic when grocers had to work double-time to restock shelves, but the demand has settled down. (Related: Coronavirus infections at meat plants are already leading to grocery shortages.)

Greg Dubuque, president of the California Trucking Association and owner of Liberty Linehaul West in Montebello, shared that trucking companies continue operating in the hopes that the situation will improve soon.

Grocers and employee safety

During the first weeks of the coronavirus shutdown, shoppers quickly emptied store shelves. Grocers raced to restock, even as inventory was coming in from suppliers. Worried consumers were purchasing four to eight weeks worth of food at a time.

These last few weeks, Kroger and other grocers continue to keep stores stocked, even though dozens of workers have become ill. Unions protest that they report are management failures to ensure their workplace safety.

Food banks and hungry citizens

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a significant decrease in the supply of free food to food banks. At the same time, millions of Californians have become unemployed due to the pandemic, with a lot of families going hungry.

During the first three weeks of April, over 265,000 Americans applied for government food assistance under the CalFresh program. The California Department of Social Services, which administers the program, reported that the figure is more than twice the number of applicants during the same period in 2019.

On the other hand, grocery stores are selling more of their stock and donating less food. While restaurants and other businesses that closed had lots of supplies to give to food banks when the shutdown first began, the supply has now petered out.

Advocates work twice as hard to keep food banks operating

Bonanno from the Hollywood Food Coalition is constantly working on a new model that will allow clients to receive their food outside in a to-go bag.

Bonanno is also at a loss since her normal supply chains were cleaned out. Pre-coronavirus times, her group often received food from the movie studios, where one day of production on a film or television set results in enough leftover meals for hundreds of people.

But now, all the studios have closed and caterers, restaurants and groceries are providing the Hollywood Food Coalition with fewer resources.

Hope for the future

Throughout the American food system, citizens from all walks of life have expressed their fears and concerns. Despite this great need, experts remain hopeful about reducing food waste.

Chris Tang, a supply chain expert and professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, noted that countries and organizations around the globe are trying to think of efficient ways to rebalance the supply and demand. Tang added that efforts must be made to prevent food waste and get the food to those in need.

Currently, producers and those on the front lines of poverty and hunger are collaborating to address this issue. Tang expressed hope that the government and the private sector will work harder to connect the two.

He suggested that California, which has tech hubs and plenty of farms, could pave the way for possible solutions. With a new, nationwide online platform, theres a chance that those who have access to food can quickly offer aid to those in need.

Sources include:

News.Yahoo.com

LoHud.com
The European Union ambassador to Beijing has allowed the Chinese foreign ministry to censor a joint opinion piece penned by EU ambassadors to remove a reference to the coronavirus originating in China.



The EU said on Friday that the decision by its ambassador Nicolas Chapuis to allow the change to the article in the English-language state-run China Daily newspaper was a "mistake."



Chinas foreign ministry had said the article could only appear in the paper if the reference to the coronavirus originating in China was removed, according to the EUs External Action Service.



It said Chapuis had been reluctant to agree to the cut, but did so because he was under "time pressure," and gave the go-ahead without checking first with member states.



"There was no consultation of headquarters, and there was no consultation either of member states prior to the decision," spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said.



"The decision was not the right one to take," she said, adding that Chapuis did inform the EU after the decision was made.



The China Daily's editorial team removed a phrase in the article referring to the outbreak of the coronavirus being "in China" and also to "its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months."



The opinion piece was posted in full on the official website of the EU's China delegation.



External Action Service head Josep Borrell was last week forced to deny that his agency had bowed to pressure from China and watered down a report critical of the countrys role in promoting disinformation about the coronavirus.



EU lawmakers demanded to know who exactly had exerted the pressure on EU officials, and how.



'Strong regrets'



The EU delegation in China said on Friday that it "strongly regrets" that the article was edited, and that it had objected "in no uncertain terms" to the foreign ministry in Beijing.



Lee Cheng-hsiu, a senior assistant research fellow in the national security division of Taiwan's National Policy Foundation, said the pressure on the EU is in keeping with the Chinese Communist Party's current efforts to boost its political influence around the world, and in particular to push its own narrative on the coronavirus pandemic that plays down or questions the virus' origins in the central province of Hubei.



"China has been under a lot of pressure from a lot of countries, especially the U.S., France, the U.K., and even the EU and New Zealand, to thoroughly investigate the source of the coronavirus," Lee said.



"So of course they are going to want to do everything they can to play down China's role in this article," he said.



"China has a major propaganda drive under way, hoping on the one hand to rebuild friendly ties with a number of countries, and on the other, to push its own propaganda internationally," Lee said. "But there is a lack of mutual trust, because China has repeatedly covered up, denied or delayed notification of the extent of the epidemic."



"This made it harder for other countries to get the epidemic under control, so they blame the Chinese Communist Party," he said.



Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Monday that while China was the first country to report cases of the coronavirus, that didn't mean that the virus originated there.



And Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese delegation to the EU, called last week for an end to "fake news," saying China had suffered as a result of it during the pandemic.



Political risk management consultant Ross Feingold said the EU's revision of the China Daily article was a minor diplomatic victory for Beijing.



He said EU lawmakers and officials are still in the process of reevaluating their opinions of China in the wake of the pandemic, and that Chinese officials had made good use of this time-lag.



Reported by Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Cai Ling for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
New Delhi [India], May 8 (ANI): Supreme Court on Friday extended till August 31 the tenure of Allahabad trial court Judge SK Yadav, who is hearing the Babri Masjid demolition case, and directed him to complete the trial and deliver the judgement in the case by that time.



The apex court extended the tenure of the judge after considering an application filed by Judge Yadav seeking an extension of his tenure to complete the trial in the case filed by CBI related to demolition of Babri Masjid in which former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is an accused.

The top court disposed of the application and directed Judge SK Yadav to complete the trial and deliver the judgement in the case by August 31, 2020. (ANI)


The father of Georgia shooting victim Ahmaud Arbery said Friday of his son's death, "He didn't deserve to go out like that."

"He just loved people. He's the kind of young man that if he had a dollar, and you asked him for that $1, he would give it to you," the father, Marcus Arbery Sr., told MSNBC. "His heart was just bigger than life."

Ahmaud Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday, was shot to death on Feb. 23 in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida, after being chased by father and son Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis, 34, in their pickup truck.

Ahmaud Arbery. (Courtesy of Family)

Arbery's family said he was out jogging, while the McMichaels said they thought he was a burglar, according to the Glynn County police report. The McMichaels armed themselves because they believed Arbery might have a gun, the police report said.

The police report did not specifically say whether Arbery was armed, but a lawyer for the family said the victim did not have a weapon.

The McMichaels claimed Travis shot Arbery in self-defense after Arbery attacked him and grabbed his gun.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday that the McMichaels were arrested on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.

Before Thursday's action, Arbery's family had publicly expressed frustration that no arrests had been made.

His father said the family would have celebrated his son's 26th birthday Friday with a cookout.

"Hanging around with friends ... and try to put some meat on the grill," the senior Arbery said of the birthday party that won't take place. "He'd try to keep everybody happy."

The father added that he is trying to maintain his composure for the sake of his family.

"It's hurtful," he said. "I just got to be strong for the rest of my family. I got to be strong for my two children. I just got to be strong for their mama, too."
Ryanair has asked the Taoiseach to reverse "unjustified parking charges" charged on aircraft that have been grounded at Dublin Airport due to the Covid-19 travel bans.

The airline accused Dublin Airport of "profiteering" from the Covid-19 crisis at the expense of airlines.

A Dublin Airport spokesperson said that the claims "have no basis in fact".

Ryanair said many EU airports have waived parking charges during the pandemic and called on the government to intervene if Dublin Airport does not do so.

"It is wrong that state-owned Dublin Airport should be allowed profiteer from customers whose aircraft have been grounded by Government travel bans," said Ryanair DAC CEO, Eddie Wilson.

"We call on the Irish Government to ensure that these charges are cancelled for all airlines.

Responding this afternoon to the claims made by Ryanair, Dublin Airport said it has taken a range of actions to support and assist their airline customers.

"Dublin Airport is giving a 93% discount on parking charges for narrow-bodied aircraft such as those operated by Ryanair," a Dublin Airport spokesperson said.

"Those aircraft are parked in a safe and secure location offering Ryanair staff ready access to their planes when required.

"Dublin Airport has also introduced a 50% reduction in runway movement charges for all cargo flights."

New pricing charges for Summer 2020 mean any Ryanair passenger flights that are still operating will incur charges 23% lower than those applicable last year, according to the airport.

The Dublin Airport spokesperson added: "Unlike airlines, airports do not receive any financial benefit from forward booking revenues."
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Tesoro Resources (ASX:TSO) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

View our latest analysis for Tesoro Resources

When Might Tesoro Resources Run Out Of Money?

A cash runway is defined as the length of time it would take a company to run out of money if it kept spending at its current rate of cash burn. In December 2019, Tesoro Resources had AU$91k in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through AU$1.6m. Therefore, from December 2019 it seems to us it had less than two months of cash runway. It's extremely surprising to us that the company has allowed its cash runway to get that short! The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

ASX:TSO Historical Debt May 7th 2020

How Is Tesoro Resources's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Tesoro Resources didn't record any revenue over the last year, indicating that it's an early stage company still developing its business. So while we can't look to sales to understand growth, we can look at how the cash burn is changing to understand how expenditure is trending over time. Cash burn was pretty flat over the last year, which suggests that management are holding spending steady while the business advances its strategy. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Tesoro Resources due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.

Story continues

How Hard Would It Be For Tesoro Resources To Raise More Cash For Growth?

Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Tesoro Resources to raise more cash in the future. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to drive growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.

Tesoro Resources has a market capitalisation of AU$19m and burnt through AU$1.6m last year, which is 8.4% of the company's market value. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.

Is Tesoro Resources's Cash Burn A Worry?

On this analysis of Tesoro Resources's cash burn, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap was reassuring, while its cash runway has us a bit worried. After looking at that range of measures, we think shareholders should be extremely attentive to how the company is using its cash, as the cash burn makes us uncomfortable. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 5 warning signs for Tesoro Resources (1 is a bit unpleasant!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.

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.



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US government figures released today show mass unemployment in April unlike anything seen since the Great Depression, as the official unemployment rate hit 14.7 percent. According to the Department of Labor, 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, a number far larger than anything ever previously recorded.

Looked at another way, the number of jobs lost so far is equal to the total combined workforce of 25 US states. It is over 38 times worse than the 533,000 jobs lost in November 2008 at the time of the last economic crash.

The reality is even worse, since the official jobs figures for April are based on the state of the economy in the middle of the month. According to a report in Forbes Thursday, The country is now at 40.6 million unemployed, or 24.9% of the work force. That matches the annual worst year of the Great Depression without considering how many have been unable to file.

Hundreds of people wait in line for bags of groceries at a food pantry at St. Mary's Church in Waltham, Mass., Thursday, May 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The economic catastrophe is being compounded by the continued refusal of the US government to marshal aid for the unemployed. After handing out trillions to the banks, the ruling class, spearheaded by the Trump administration, is seeking to use social distress as a weapon in its campaign to break down public opposition to the reopening of the economy even as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Many workers, already struggling in the low wage economy and living paycheck to paycheck, have been left essentially penniless as overburdened and antiquated state unemployment systems have failed to pay out timely benefits.

Meanwhile, a shocking report by the Hamilton Project found that 20 percent of households and over 40 percent of US mothers with children under the age of 13 are experiencing food insecurity.

The death toll in the US is set to exceed 75,000 as the pandemic spreads into more rural areas of the country, many beset by poverty, with older populations and lacking adequate health care infrastructure. A number of states set to relax or eliminate social distancing measures are in precisely those areas where new cases are rising fastest, such as Mississippi, Nebraska and Georgia.

Last week there were an additional 3.2 million new applications for unemployment assistance, bringing to 33 million the number of people who have filed since the outbreak of the pandemic.

These numbers are a serious underestimation. The Economic Policy Institute reported that it found that for every 100 workers able to successfully apply for unemployment benefits, there are another 37 that had tried to file but could not get through the system.

The economic meltdown triggered by the pandemic is metastasizing into a prolonged recession or depression as corporations utilize the crisis to implement permanent layoffs and restructuring. Major manufacturers, including Boeing, GE Aircraft and US Steel have already announced mass job cuts.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released its job cuts report on Thursday showing that US employers announced 671,129 job cuts in April compared to 222,288 in March. The April total is 1,577 percent higher than the 40,024 announced job cuts in April 2019.

The most job cuts in April were announced in New York, at 84,738. Florida had 71,138, Texas 70,318, Minnesota 57,192 and California 55,077.

This week United Airlines said it plans to eliminate 30 percent of its managerial jobs when government restrictions related to the bailout end, probably in October. This will result in the elimination of 3,500 jobs. In addition, the airline will require mangers and administrative workers to take 20 days off without pay between mid-May and the end of September. Earlier this week, United announced plans to lay off more than one third of its pilots, 4,457 positions, by October 1. Other airlines are likely to follow.

On Thursday, department store chain Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy. It had temporarily closed all 43 stores in March due to the pandemic. Earlier this week, retailer J. Crew also filed for bankruptcy. Other retail chains such as Lord & Taylor and J.C. Penney are considered vulnerable.

On Tuesday, bed and breakfast network Airbnb said it would lay off a quarter of its 7,500-person global workforce as demand for short-term home rentals plummeted. On Wednesday, ride service Uber announced that it would lay off 3,700 workers worldwide, or 14 percent of its total workforce, mostly customer support and recruiting jobs.

Projections for US auto sales have been lowered from 16 million to just 11 or 12 million, pointing to a likely massive downsizing in the car industry, with a wide-ranging impact on supplier industries.

Small businesses, which account for half of all US employment, are being especially hard hit. Thousands of small businesses, largely shut out of receiving federal stimulus money and already struggling, will likely never reopen.

Companies are also using the pandemic to institute pay cuts. Workers at Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, California, who treat COVID-19 patents, are protesting an effective pay cut of 24 percent. Employees will be forced to take 12 furlough days over a 10-week period. Many of the workers earn between $55,000 and $65,000 a year.

States and localities continue to stagger due to lost tax revenues. The University of Georgia system voted Thursday to require all faculty and staff to be furloughed or take pay cuts due to budget shortfalls. Employees will be required to take either four or eight uncompensated furlough days depending on their pay grade.

There has been an unprecedented increase in hunger and food insecurity across the United States as tens of millions lose their livelihoods. Food lines are now common. On Wednesday residents in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York waited outside a local food pantry in a line extending half a mile.

In the state of Hawaii, cars lined up for more than a mile outside Aloha Stadium to receive 50 pounds of free food. Organizers estimated that 100 tons of food were distributed to 4,000 households.

Most of direct food aid comes from private donations, with state and local governments chipping in pathetically inadequate amounts.

The report released by the Hamilton Project this week found that rates of food insecurity in April 2020 were significantly higher than at any point for which there is data between 2001 to 2018, including the 2008-2009 economic crash.

After a near unanimous vote to enact a multi-trillion-dollar corporate bailout, Congress is bogged down in squabbling over a pathetic 15 percent increase in food stamp aid. The proposed increase, being blocked by Republicans, would provide an average increase of only about $35 a month to the typical household eligible for the program.

Ever tightening restrictions to the program enacted by Republican and Democratic administrations have forced millions out of the program even as need has risen.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a sharp light on the irrationality of the accumulation of private wealth as the motive principle of society. Instead of prioritizing the fight against the pandemic and alleviating human suffering, countless billions are squandered on propping up Wall Street and massive funding of the war machine.
(TNS)  National and local Latino organizations are concerned about low participation of Hispanics in the 2020 census, citing their worries over privacy, novel coronavirus implications and confusion over a identity question in the survey.Based on our research and surveys, we know that most Latinos are concerned about the privacy and security of the data that they provide to the Census Bureau, said Lizette Escobedo, director of the National Census Program with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, known as NALEO.Such concerns are still lingering, particularly among families with mixed immigration status amid a failed attempt from the current administration to introduce a question related to citizenship.People need to understand that there is not a question regarding citizenship in the census form, said Escobedo, who moderated an online townhall this week where several Latino leaders addressed concerns among Hispanics.We know that many people do not trust the federal government and are afraid to give out their personal information, said Andrea Senteno, a counsel with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She said MALDEF is partnering with 250 organizations and leaders nationwide that have pledged to monitor, prevent and block any potential breach of census data confidentiality.In Harris County and Texas, where the participation rate of 52 percent is below the national average, local leaders are struggling to motivate Hispanics to participate. The national average is 57 percent.The census ranks Texas as No. 40 among all states in the level of participation. Houston is last among the top five cities in the state by population with a 48 percent rate, with areas heavily populated by Latinos showing lower percentages.Genesis Sanchez, NALEOs census campaign manager for Texas, said many immigrants are also aggravated and distrustful because they did not receive stimulus checks or any other relief during the pandemic.We find its harder now to convince people that its really important for them to be counted in the census, said Sanchez, adding that social distancing imposed by the pandemic has already hampered efforts to mobilize Hispanics. There is a tension there, where people say, why should I participate if the government is not looking out for me.We are sharing the message that by participating in the census they are helping the government to assist their communities, she added. But the pandemic response is a clear example in which the government didnt.The group continues to emphasize the need to be counted, because the census determines how much money communities will receive for services, including education.Latino leaders also point to issues with a question in the the census about identity.It is now more complicated than before, said Arturo Vargas, director of NALEO. People have to answer in three steps about ethnicity, race, and country of origin. Answering the question about identity has always been complex for Hispanics, who can be of any race, and the new format didnt make it easier.As the Census Bureau resumes some counting this week, a coalition of civil rights organizations sent a joint letter to Congress demanding oversight of changes to guarantee the participation of hard-to-count communities. The organizations are NALEO, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.Vargas recognized that COVID 19 has forced the bureau to adjust their schedules, such as delaying the deadline for the count until Oct. 31, as they announced this week. But the letter expressed concerns that changes could jeopardize proper counts.
| By Alex Likowski

One New York Times writer called the situation another opportunistic infection, flourishing in the conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, victims of domestic violence and abuse are in lockdown with their abusers, often so fearful of coronavirus infection they avoid medical treatment for injuries. And others, vulnerable to abuse, are finding it difficult to access support services whose staff may be in lockdown at home themselves.

On May 7, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) Interim President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, discussed these issues on his weekly online talk program, Virtual Face to Face with Dr. Bruce Jarrell, with two prominent thought leaders: Ambassador Susan Esserman, JD, founder and director of the University of Maryland Support, Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment (SAFE) Center at the University of Maryland School of Public Health; and Leigh Goodmark, JD, the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and co-director of the Clinical Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Susan Esserman, Bruce Jarrell, and Leigh Goodmark converse on Virtual Face to Face with Dr. Bruce Jarrell.

We're seeing three different types of effects of the COVID crisis on human trafficking victims, Esserman explained. Traffickers are taking advantage of the COVID crisis to further control their clients and to entrap new clients. There are devastating effects on our clients because they are among the most vulnerable of our population. And the support network of school counselors, teachers, child protective services, and other service providers are not available face to face.

The SAFE Center is a project of the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State. Formed in 2016, it provides survivor-centered and trauma-informed services that empower trafficking survivors to heal and reclaim their lives. The SAFE Center also aims to prevent trafficking and better serve survivors through research and policy advocacy.

Jarrell noted that the SAFE Center is located in central Prince Georges County, the hardest hit by the coronavirus. Your center is right there smack in the middle of Prince Georges County, so if theres an effect, youre gonna be the first to see it in that location, he said. "Do you have any particularly telling stories of an individual that you've dealt with recently?

What this crisis is doing is starkly exposing holes in our safety net, Esserman noted. Some of our clients are facing extreme risk as essential employees going to work in low-income jobs with little protection. One of our clients is afraid not to go to work even though he is sick with the COVID because hes so desperate for income and hes afraid to lose his job. A number of our clients have lost their jobs and are desperately seeking shelter and food, which we are providing.

Questions from the audience covered a wide range of issues, from the impact of changes to reporting of sexual assault and harassment under Title IX, to overcoming the bystander effect in ones neighborhood, to the disappearance of many face-to-face resources.

One questioner, who preferred to remain anonymous, asked, I help in the school system and that makes me sad because those students or staff who had support and a safe place in school  from abuse of all kinds, violence, neglect, and such  what should now be their support network, especially when they cant get to a phone or call 911, they cant leave the house due to a stay-at-home order? What do they do?

Goodmark agreed that the problem is significant and widespread. It makes me think a lot about the capacity of communities and about our role as an anchor institution in our community to help to provide some of those services in a different kind of way. I do wonder if there is a way for some of our students through their clinical placements and other kinds of things to provide an outlet for people who need to talk but arent at the point where a mandated report would be necessary, she said. Im hopeful that we'll be able to develop new resources like that because right now, there really isnt a great option, particularly for kids who arent being seen by anybody but their families right now. If those families are dangerous places, theres not much we can do, to be perfectly honest.

Esserman agreed. The problems aren't new  housing, food security, access to employment, counseling, and more. But a prolonged lockdown has brought new challenges. One that we havent been dealing with is the digital divide. We may be at this distancing for some time going forward. What we do is face to face. Most of our services, almost all of our services, are face to face, so weve transitioned to remote services, but many of our clients dont have the connectivity to access this.

Watch the entire Virtual Face to Face with Dr. Bruce Jarrell in the video below.
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According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research the global contact lenses market is anticipated to reach USD 18.9 billion by 2026. Once of the key factor driving the contact lenses market is to enhance aesthetic appearance by using them as fashion accessory particularly, by the youth population. Also, constant development in technology of product materials and given a boost to colored or decorative contact lenses, which is further anticipated to influence the demand. Moreover, the rising incidences of visual imparities such as myopia, presbyopia, hyperopia and astigmatism is propelling the market growth. The World Health Organization, in 2015, estimated that approximately 1.9 billion people across the globe have been affected by myopia and the number is anticipated to be more than 2 billion by 2020. Thus, the demand for contact lenses during the forecast period will experience a growth.

The contact lenses manufacturers and vendors are appealed by the high profit margins offered by the contact lenses thus, boosting its manufacturing as well as enhancing the network of distribution. Also, advancements in technology in form of material will provide new opportunities to the manufacturers with time. By type segment, the Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) Lenses was valued over USD 800 million in 2017 owing to factors including, sharp vision, high oxygen permeability, cost-effectiveness in the long run, and durability.

Get More Information Download Sample Copy @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/contact-lenses-market/request-for-sample

The contact lenses market by usage type is segmented into Corrective, Therapeutic, Cosmetic, Prosthetic, and Lifestyle-oriented. The corrective lenses usage segment is currently growing at a CAGR of more than 6.2%. The demand is attributed to its various applications. Whereas, cosmetic lenses segment is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. On the basis of design, the hybrid lens segment is anticipated to experience a noteworthy growth as it is a combination of both soft lenses and rigid gas permeable lenses. Thus, it provides comfort of soft lenses coupled with the visual clarity offered by rigid gas permeable lenses. The growth of hybrid lenses segment is expected to propel with the increased demand from people with keratoconus and astigmatism conditions.

The North America market holds the largest share owing to presence of better eye care treatment facilities as increasing elderly population. Although, the Asia Pacific market is expected to bolster with a high CAGR attributed to the increased awareness regarding contact lenses among the population as well as their increasing ability for healthcare spending.

Else place an Inquire before Purchase Contact Lenses Market Share | Size | Industry Trend Analysis Report https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/contact-lenses-market/inquire-before-buying

The key strategies adopted by the market players include long-term partnerships among the other players in supply chain particularly, distributors and suppliers with an aim to increase their geographical footprint. For instance, in 2016, Vision Direct Group Ltd. was acquired by Essilor International S.A. for the enhancement of its online retailing business presence. Major industry players include Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Abbott Medical Optics, Inc., Bausch + Lomb, Incorporated, Carl Zeiss AG, CooperVision, Inc., Contamac U.S., Inc., Hoya Corporation, Essilor International S.A., Medennium and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. among others.

About Polaris Market Research

Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for 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
By ANI

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has condoled the deaths of migrant labourers who were mowed down by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad on Friday morning.

"I am shocked at the news of migrant labourers being crushed to death by a goods train. We should be ashamed at the treatment meted out to the builders of our nation. My condolences to the families of those killed and I pray for the early recovery of the injured," Gandhi tweeted (translated from Hindi).

At least 14 migrant labourers were killed, and several others were injured, when a goods train ran over them between Jalna and Aurangabad in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.

All these migrants were working in the private company in Jalna and they were back to their native to Chattisgarh. They wanted to go Bhusawal to catch the train to their native. Absence of any public transport, they were walking along with the railway track. @NewIndianXpress  Sudhir Suryawanshi (@ss_suryawanshi) May 8, 2020

The migrant labourers, who had been walking for several kilometres, were sleeping on the rail tracks when the mishap occurred, the railway officials said.

They were native of Madhya Pradesh working in SRG Company, Jalna in Maharashtra.
The latest:

Many governors across the U.S. are disregarding or creatively interpreting White House guidelines in easing their states' lockdowns and letting businesses reopen, an Associated Press analysis found.

The AP determined that 17 states do not appear to meet one of the key benchmarks set by the White House for loosening up  a 14-day downward trajectory in new cases or infection rates. And yet many of those states have begun to reopen or are about to do so, including Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah.

Because of the broad way in which the nonbinding guidelines are written, other states, including Georgia, have technically managed to meet the criteria and reopen despite not seeing a steady decline in cases and deaths.

Asked at the White House on Thursday about states that are reopening without meeting some of the federal government's benchmarks, President Donald Trump said: The governors have great power as to that, given by us. We want them to do that. We rely on them. We trust them. And hopefully they are making the right decisions.

The White House has not been specific about how states should calculate the 14-day downward trajectory. Depending on how you calculate it, a state might pass or fail. The AP analyzed counts of tests and confirmed cases compiled by Johns Hopkins University and looked at the numbers using a rolling seven-day average to account for day-to-day variability in test reporting.



Many governors are focusing on the criteria that call for a reduction in the percentage of positive tests for COVID-19.

The push to reopen across the country comes amid pressure from businesses that are collapsing by the day and workers who have been thrown out of a job.

1 in 5 US workers has filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March



Nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the business shutdowns caused by the viral outbreak deepened the worst U.S. economic catastrophe in decades.



Roughly 33.5 million Americans, about 1 in 5 U.S. workers, have now filed for jobless aid in the seven weeks since the coronavirus began forcing millions of companies to close their doors and slash their workforces. That is the equivalent of one in five Americans who had been employed back in February, when the unemployment rate had reached a 50-year low of just 3.5%.

On Friday, the government will issue the April jobs report, and its likely to be the worst since modern record-keeping began after World War II. The unemployment rate is forecast to reach at least 16%, the highest rate since the Great Depression, and economists estimate that 21 million jobs were lost last month. If so, it would mean that nearly all the job growth in the 11 years since the Great Recession ended has vanished in a single month.

Even those stunning figures wont fully capture the magnitude of the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on the job market. Many people who are still employed have had their hours reduced. Others have suffered pay cuts. Some who lost jobs in April and didnt look for a new one in light of their bleak prospects wont even be counted as unemployed. A broader measure  the proportion of adults with jobs  could hit a record low.

In one state, half of all cases are in prisons and nursing homes

In Arkansas, almost half of all of the state's cases are in prisons and nursing homes.

More than 1,000 inmates have tested positive for the virus, according to Dr. Nate Smith, the Director of the Arkansas Department of Health, and 876 of them are in a single correctional facility.

A total of 261 nursing home residents and 148 staff members have also been infected, with at least 32 deaths in the state connected to the facilities.

Arkansas has reported a total of 3,611 cases and 87 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

And in Ohio, people behind bars make up 20% of the state's total infections.

More than 4,300 inmates have tested positive for the virus in total, according to data from the state's department of corrections. Ohio has recorded at least 21,576 cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

More than 2,100 Ohio inmates are currently positive  1,353 of whom are housed in a single facility, according to the corrections department data. At least 40 inmates have died.

More than 480 staff members are also positive and two have died.

"The reason that you are seeing numbers out of our prisons, that are much, much higher than other places is because we made a decision to go test everybody. And when we've got a hotspot we move in and we've surged testing in," Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said late last month.

80% of New Hampshire deaths in nursing homes

New Hampshire Health Commissioner Lori Shibinette said Wednesday that while the state has begun seeing its community transmission, illness rates and hospitalizations start to level out or decline, the trend has not been the same in long-term care facilities.

"Based on our numbers in long-term care to date, we took some very aggressive action early on, and I think at this point it's time to take further steps to address some of the long-term care testing issues," Shibinette said. "To date, we have tested over 1,000 nursing home residents across the state, which is a great number. We want to test more."

About 111 people have died in New Hampshire  78% of whom were people associated with long-term care facility outbreaks, Shibinette said.

"I'm upset," said Andrew Delisle, whose mom died in one of the state's nursing homes, he told WMUR.

"Do I think it could've been prevented? Probably. Would it have been inevitable? The way things have spread and the way things are going on, it may have. I think there's going to be a lot of soul searching."

Shibinette said the state was rolling out a new plan for long-term care facilities in which, every week, the state will randomly select about 10% of its facilities and ask for swabs from 10% of the residents. The state's goal is to offer testing to all long-term care and nursing home staff members every seven to 10 days.

In Louisiana, more than 30% of the state's deaths come from nursing home residents.

On Monday, the Louisiana Department of Health reported that 688 nursing home residents had died and an additional 50 deaths were reported among residents of other adult residential facilities.

Louisiana has recorded 30,399 cases and 2,167 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.





The Associated Press contributed to this report.
London, May 8 : Over 80 per cent of people are not planning to conceive during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, perhaps putting to rest suggestions that the lockdown could lead to a rise in birth numbers, say researchers.

The main reasons that led people to this decision included worries related to future economic difficulties (58 per cent) and any potential consequences on pregnancy (58 per cent) due to the disease.

Looking at parenthood desires during the ongoing pandemic crisis in Italy, a team of experts, led by the University of Florence, carried out 1,482 online interviews.

Their results, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology, show that some 1,214 (81.9 per cent) did not intend to conceive during the pandemic crisis.

Moreover, of the 268 participants who were planning to have a child before the pandemic, over one-third (37.3 per cent) then abandoned the intention.

The questionnaire, carried out in the third week of the lockdown in Italy, surveyed 944 women (63.7 per cent) and 538 men (36.3 per cent) aged between 18-46 years, and in a stable heterosexual relationship for at least twelve months.

"In our study sample, the majority of participants gave significantly higher total scores to their mental wellbeing before the pandemic, while lowest scores were reported in the answers referred to the COVID-19 period," said study author Elisabetta Micelli.

"We aimed to evaluate if pandemic-related concerns and worries are affecting the desire for parenthood in couples who were already planning to have a child or if quarantine is encouraging reproductive desire," Micelli added.

The researchers found that the main reasons that led people to not wanting to conceive included worries related to future economic difficulties and consequences on pregnancy.

Nevertheless, despite most people not wanting to conceive during the pandemic, 60 per cent of the 268 correspondents already planning to conceive have carried on in their quest - with the experts suggesting that the fear of infertility potentially occurring in the future, outweighs the worries of the consequences of COVID-19 infection.

Additionally, some 140 (11.5 per cent) people, in fact, revealed a new desire for parenthood during the quarantine. Specifically, the wish was mainly expressed by women.

The study also measured people's reported levels of sexual activity. 712 respondents (66.3 per cent) who did not experience the desire for parenting before the pandemic, nor during, reported no reduction in sexual intercourses - with no significant differences among genders.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The Supreme Court on Friday extended by three months the time for completion of the trial in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case involving BJP veterans LK Advani, MM Joshi and Uma Bharti and said the judgment should be delivered by August 31.

The court asked special judge SK Yadav to control the proceedings in accordance with law so that inordinate delay that is beyond the time-frame is no longer breached. It indicated to the special judge to avail the facilities of video conferencing to complete recording of evidences and hearing of applications that are filed during the course of trial proceedings.

A bench of Justices RF Nariman and Surya Kant, hearing the matter through video conferencing, passed the orders on receiving a letter from the special judge seeking extension of time granted to him for completing the trial in the politically sensitive case.

"Having taken the letter dated May 6, 2020, into consideration, we extend the period to complete evidence and deliver judgment till August 31, 2020. We are cognizant of the fact that Shri Yadav is making all efforts in order that the trial reaches a just conclusion. However, given the original time frame and the extended time frame, the effort must now be to complete the proceedings and deliver judgment latest by August 31, 2020," the bench said in its order.

On July 19 last year, the top court had asked the special judge to deliver the verdict within nine months, which was to end this April.

The bench on Friday said despite nine months having expired from the aforesaid date (July 19), "we still find, on a perusal of the letter dated May 6, 2020, written by Shri Yadav, Special Judge that even the evidence is not yet completed".

It said, "We may indicate that video conferencing facilities are available and should be used by Shri Yadav in order to complete all evidence as well as applications that may be filed in that behalf. It is up to Shri Yadav to control the proceedings in accordance with law so that inordinate delay that is beyond the time frame that we now give is no longer breached."

The top court had on July 19 last year also extended the tenure of the special judge at Lucknow till the completion of the trial and the delivery of verdict in the case.

Besides Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharti, the accused against whom conspiracy charge was invoked in the case by the Supreme Court on April 19, 2017, include former Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh, BJP MP Vinay Katiar and Sadhvi Ritambara.

Three other high-profile accused Giriraj Kishore, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal and Vishnu Hari Dalmia died during trial and the proceedings against them have been abated.

Kalyan Singh, during whose tenure as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh the disputed structure was razed, was put on trial in September last year after his tenure as Governor came to an end.

The top court said last July that recording of evidence in the politically sensitive case should be completed within six months and the judgement in the case should be ready and delivered maximum within a period of nine months.

Exercising its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the top court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pass appropriate orders in consultation with the Allahabad High Court within four weeks to extend the tenure of the special judge, who was set to retire on September 30 last year.

The special judge had written a letter on May 25, last year to the apex court, seeking extension of two-year deadline for completion of the case and informed the court that he was set to superannuate on September 30, 2019.

On April 19, 2017, the top court had ordered day-to-day trial in the high profile case and directed the special judge to conclude it in two years' time.

While dubbing the demolition of the disputed structure as a "crime" which shook the "secular fabric of the Constitution", it had allowed the CBI's plea on restoration of criminal conspiracy charge against the VVIP accused.

The court had come down heavily on the CBI for the delay of over 25 years in the trial.

Issuing a slew of directions, it had said, "The proceedings (against Advani and others) in the court of the Special Judicial Magistrate at Raebareli will stand transferred to the Court of Additional Sessions Judge (Ayodhya Matters) at Lucknow."

"The court of sessions will frame additional charges under Section 120-B (conspiracy) and the other provisions of the penal code mentioned in the joint charge sheet filed by the CBI against Champat Rai Bansal, Satish Pradhan, Dharam Das, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Mahamadleshwar Jagdish Muni, Ram Bilas Vadanti, Vaikunth Lal Sharma and Satish Chandra Nagar," it had said.

The court had termed the Allahabad High Court's February 12, 2001 verdict dropping conspiracy charge against Advani and others as "erroneous".

Before the 2017 verdict of the apex court, there were two sets of cases relating to the demolition of the disputed structure on December 6, 1992 going on at Lucknow and Raebareli.

The trial of first case involving unnamed 'Karsevaks' was going on in a Lucknow court, while the second set of cases relating to the eight VVIPs were going on in a Raebareli court.
The body of Ali Ajami, an Iranian human rights activist, was discovered in McGovern Lake at Hermann Park, Houston, Texas, on Wednesday. The cause of death remains unknown.

Houston Police on Wednesday started an investigation into the death of a deceased male found in a pond at Hermann Park but said no other information was available yet.

Iranian social media users have reported that the body belonged to thirty-seven-year-old Iranian human rights activist Ali Ajami.

According to local media, Houston police are waiting for an autopsy of the body of the well-dressed male that was discovered by a member of public in the pond. The man may have been in the water for some time, police who are treating the case as a homicide said.

Ali Ajami who was a student of law at Tehran University was arrested in 2009 in his home village in Sabzever in eastern Iran in the aftermath of a disputed election that reinstated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president.

A Revolutionary Court sentenced Mr. Ajami to two years in prison on charges of collusion and propaganda against the Islamic Republic and acting against national security.

Mr. Ajami was the editor of a left-leaning student publication before his arrest and imprisonment and was consequently expelled from the university only months before his graduation.

Sometime after being freed from prison Mr. Ajami left the country for Turkey and from there, to the United States where he remained and worked as a journalist and human rights activist until his death.

Mr. Ajami was an editor of the Iranian Human Rights News Agency (HRANA) which monitors human rights in Iran.
Coquitlam, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 8, 2020) - Greenbriar Capital Corp. (TSXV: GRB) (OTC: GEBRF) ("Greenbriar") Greenbriar is pleased to announce the following statement from our legal counsel in Washington, DC. Luis Baco, JD, LLM, states:

"Greenbriar Capital Corp ("Greenbriar") is pleased to announce that significant progress has been achieved in the past weeks towards reaching a final agreement with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) on the revised PPOA for the Montalva Solar Project to be built in the municipalities of Guanica and Lajas, Puerto Rico. PREPA informed its Governing Board on April 30 that it has attained substantial progress on 7 of the 19 remaining amended and restated renewable energy PPOAs, and that they expect to reach a final agreement on these projects on or before the Board's self-imposed deadline of May 15 (which constitutes a COVID-19 triggered 15-day extension from the original April 30 deadline). Greenbriar has been informed by PREPA that Montalva is one of these projects, and the expectation on both sides is that a final resolution on the few remaining commercial issues should be achieved within the next week to ten days. Once built, the 80MW to 160MW AC Montalva solar project will be the largest solar energy facility in the Caribbean region and greatly assist PREPA and the Government of Puerto Rico accomplish its very aggressive policy objective to achieve 40% power generation from renewable sources by 2025.

About Greenbriar Capital Corp:

Greenbriar is a leading developer of renewable energy and sustainable real estate. With long-term, high impact, contracted sales agreements in key project locations and led by a successful, industry-recognized operating and development team, Greenbriar targets deep valued assets directed at accretive shareholder value. Greenbriar and its advisors have closed over $180 Billion in renewable energy projects since 2003.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Jeff Ciachurski"

Jeffrey J. Ciachurski

Chief Executive Officer and Director

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this release. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This press release may contain forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute "forward-looking statements" and include any information that addresses activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including the Company's strategy, plans or future financial or operating performance and other statements that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55578
The biggest political scandal in American history finally is unwinding as documents are declassified and prosecutors and grand juries do their work. Lies that have been told by James Comey, Adam Schiff, James Clapper, and others are being exposed, and the entire corrupt attempt to drive from office the duly elected president of the United States is being revealed as seditious.

The Democrats' response is to double down and rely on the brute force of their media dominance to peddle a lie that, if repeated often enough, will be accepted as truth. As the OSS (the CIA's predecessor in WWII) described Hitler's use of the Big Lie Strategy:

[N]ever leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Yesterday's extraordinary Justice Department Motion to Dismiss charges against General Michael Flynn was the product of an independent review carried out by an experienced U.S. attorney and professional career staff and contains 20 pages of legal argument. But it is being dismissed as something the A.G. corruptly dictated.

Adam Schiff is claiming, "This dismissal does not exonerate him. But it does incriminate Bill Barr." Elizabeth Warren, whose fraudulent claim of Native American heritage got her tenure at Harvard, is demanding Barr's resignation:

William Barr is not the Presidents lawyer  he is the countrys lawyer. His political interference is blatantly corrupt and he should resign.  Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 7, 2020

Trump-hating cable channels MSNBC and CNN were full of talking heads yesterday following the motion to dismiss characterizing it as corrupt:

The release of the first tranche of testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, after acting DNI Ric Grenell redacted and declassified it and forced Adam Schiff's hand by threatening to release it himself, already has exposed lies that have been eagerly disseminated by the Dems and their media lapdogs. One such example shows that under oath, former DNI James Clapper admitted there was no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia.

NEW: former DNI James Clapper says : "I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/ conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election." -- in transcript of interview with House Intel during its Russia probe.  Brooke Singman (@BrookeSingman) May 7, 2020

Yet, as a paid contributor to CNN, he claimed that Vladimir Putin treats Trump as an "asset":

Former Obama Defense Department senior official Evelyn Farkas admitted under oath to lying to MSNBC.

This is just the beginning. Late yesterday, Ric Grenell had delivered a "satchel" of documents to the Department of Justice, presumably just declassified documents,perhaps testimony from the House Intelligence Committee.

BREAKING: Acting DNI Richard Grenell Delivers SECOND SET OF DOCUMENTS to DOJ in a Satchel -- MAY BE RELEASED TOMORROW (VIDEO) https://t.co/jshIPgU9vC via @gatewaypundit  Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) May 8, 2020

This scandal is unfolding as the presidential election gears up. For now, the pandemic panic still dominates the news, and members of the public inclined to hate President Trump will swallow the Big Lie and won't bother to read the Motion to Dismiss, much less the tens of thousands of pages of House Intelligence Committee hearings being released (first tranche here). But when the Durham investigation reveals its results, probably with some indictments, they will not be able to get away with it.

Graphic credit: YouTube screen grab from Fox News (cropped).
Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have become embroiled in a row over their ministers delivering food packages to vulnerable and old people.

In the Dail, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar criticised Sinn Fein for delivering food parcels and posting pictures on Facebook during a debate on the Covid-19 unemployment payment.

Mr Varadkar said he would be "ashamed" to "boast" about giving out food parcels. He said the Government provided funding for food banks.

"What we do not do is post on Facebook pictures of our ministers visiting them and handing out food to the poor," he added.

However, in response, Sinn Fein highlighted pictures on Twitter showing Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy delivering meals on wheels to his constituents yesterday. Mr Murphy retweeted the images with his own account.

Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane said it showed how "vacuous" the Taoiseach's attack was, adding: "There are many people from across the island involved in helping out the elderly and vulnerable at this time. Those people should be commended.

"Instead, the Taoiseach chose to attack Sinn Fein for the very action his own minister is engaged in."

The Taoiseach's spokesperson said if Sinn Fein "really cared about the less well off and unemployed" it would match the unemployment welfare rates in the North to those paid in the Republic.

In the Dail, the Taoiseach and Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald clashed over the 350-per-week Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment.

In response to Ms McDonald's questions, he said it was "not affordable for it to last forever".

He said it would have to be extended beyond mid-June but said decisions on whether it would stay at 350 and for how long had yet to be made.

Mr Varadkar highlighted how payments for the unemployed were far lower in the North where Sinn Fein is in power.

And he said: "Sinn Fein ministers on Facebook site promote the fact that they hand out food parcels to the poor, reminiscent to me of Donald Trump handing out toilet roll after the hurricane hit the islands in the Caribbean."

He added: "I would be ashamed to do something like that." He told Ms McDonald not to blame it on London, adding: "If it was not for their money, it would be even worse."

Ms McDonald said she was "very proud" of the community work of Sinn Fein members.
The external fund manager backed by Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger, Li Lu, makes no bones about it when he says 'The biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital. When we think about how risky a company is, we always like to look at its use of debt, since debt overload can lead to ruin. As with many other companies Henan Jinma Energy Company Limited (HKG:6885) makes use of debt. But is this debt a concern to shareholders?

Why Does Debt Bring Risk?

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. 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 Henan Jinma Energy

What Is Henan Jinma Energy's Debt?

The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at December 2019 Henan Jinma Energy had debt of CN1.04b, up from CN833.6m in one year. But on the other hand it also has CN2.63b in cash, leading to a CN1.58b net cash position.

SEHK:6885 Historical Debt May 8th 2020

How Healthy Is Henan Jinma Energy's Balance Sheet?

We can see from the most recent balance sheet that Henan Jinma Energy had liabilities of CN1.68b falling due within a year, and liabilities of CN413.6m due beyond that. On the other hand, it had cash of CN2.63b and CN181.7m worth of receivables due within a year. So it actually has CN712.1m more liquid assets than total liabilities.

This excess liquidity is a great indication that Henan Jinma Energy's balance sheet is just as strong as racists are weak. On this basis we think its balance sheet is strong like a sleek panther or even a proud lion. Simply put, the fact that Henan Jinma Energy has more cash than debt is arguably a good indication that it can manage its debt safely.

Story continues

In fact Henan Jinma Energy's saving grace is its low debt levels, because its EBIT has tanked 28% in the last twelve months. When it comes to paying off debt, falling earnings are no more useful than sugary sodas are for your health. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But it is Henan Jinma Energy's earnings that will influence how the balance sheet holds up in the future. So if you're keen to discover more about its earnings, it might be worth checking out this graph of its long term earnings trend.

Finally, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. Henan Jinma Energy 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. Looking at the most recent three years, Henan Jinma Energy recorded free cash flow of 37% of its EBIT, which is weaker than we'd expect. That weak cash conversion makes it more difficult to handle indebtedness.

Summing up

While it is always sensible to investigate a company's debt, in this case Henan Jinma Energy has CN1.58b in net cash and a decent-looking balance sheet. So we don't have any problem with Henan Jinma Energy's use of debt. 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. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Henan Jinma Energy you should know about.

If, after all that, you're more interested in a fast growing company with a rock-solid balance sheet, then check out our list of net cash growth stocks without delay.

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.
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medical coronavirus flu virus nyc street face mask gloves covid19 stores shut down closed restaurants social distancing delivery cox 14

Crystal Cox/Business Insider

Some people are claiming they're "exempt" from mask wearing due to medical conditions they won't disclose, according to one doctor on Twitter.

Doctors say that even people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease should wear masks in public, and that there are ways to make the practice safer and more comfortable.

Other arguments against wearing masks have been more about politics and choice than health conditions.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Face masks are currently recommended, if not required, in many public settings throughout the US in order to can help protect wearers from contracting or spreading the novel coronavirus.

That's because they work. A recent study out of the UK, for example, showed that mandates to wear masks could be enough to contain an outbreak without a lockdown.

Case reports have illustrated their effectiveness too, with two infected (and masked) hairstylists able to do their jobs on 140 masked customers without spreading the illness.

But some people are saying they're "exempt" from mandates requiring mask wearing in public because they have a medical condition that makes the practice risky, according to Dr. Alan Hawxby, a transplant surgeon at the Oklahoma University Medical Center, who posted about the phenomenon on Twitter.

These so-called "anti-maskers" say they're not required to disclose what that condition is, thanks to privacy laws like HIPAA.

Some claim that the Americans With Disabilities Act protects them from disclosing their "medical condition."

Story continues

But doctors say various conditions don't excuse people from wearing masks, but rather emphasize the importance of wearing one correctly.

Masks can come with uncomfortable side effects, but most rumors about why aren't scientifically valid

It's true that wearing a mask can be annoying and uncomfortable, and for some people, the experience is beyond bothersome. As one Twitter user with asthma wrote in response to Hawxby's post, the condition makes it "extremely hard to breathe when wearing the mask" and can cause him to "hyperventilate and almost pass out."

There have also been reports of medical professionals suffering serious skin damage after wearing the masks for long periods, causing the sweat and friction to damage the skin and open up the possibility of infection.

Unsubstantiated rumors have also circulated online, saying that continuous mask wearing can cause hypercapnia, a condition caused when too much carbon dioxide enters the blood and can lead to symptoms ranging from fatigue and headaches to seizures and coma, Reuters reported.

Others have said they can't breathe while wearing a mask and promoted medically invalid claims that the strips of fabric limit wearers' oxygen intake. A doctor recently debunked this idea by measuring her heart rate and oxygen levels while wearing four differnet masks for five minutes each, finding no change in her ability to breathe normally and bring oxygen into her body.

"Though maybe inconvenient for some, you can still breathe," she wrote. "As a physician, I urge you and ask you to please wear a mask to protect yourself and those who cannot safely wear a mask (many of my patients because they are under 2 years old)."

If you do have a condition that makes mask-wearing especially cumbersome, there are ways to cope

Health experts say the solution isn't forgoing masks altogether, but wearing ones better suited to the individual.

For people with asthma or COPD, for example, the arthritis organization CreakyJoints recommends staying home as much as possible; picking times when it's least hot, humid, and polluted when you do go out; practice; and choose one that's comfortable, like a cloth mask made with a moisture-wicking and breathable fabric.

The right mask fit is critical for healthcare workers, too, both for safety and comfort, Christopher R. Friese, a professor of nursing at the University of Michigan who was on a National Academy of Medicine panel on respiratory protection, told Business Insider.

He said medical professionals and first responders should undergo a "fit test" which doesn't only lead them to a mask that makes an appropriate seal on their faces, but also involves being screened for conditions like asthma, allergies, and claustrophobia that could make wearing certain types problematic.

"There are times when we recommend one product over another because someone has health conditions, or if the fit is better," Friese said. "In this pandemic, I fear that many settings are forgoing fit testing and that upfront screening for contraindications, which puts healthcare workers and first responders at risk."

A protester holds up a sign protesting wearing a mask at the Texas State Capital building on April 18, 2020 in Austin, Texas.

Sergio Flores/Getty Images

Past movements have advocated against mask wearing for other reasons

In 2013, a Missouri nurse chose not to get the flu vaccine and so her hospital required her to wear a face mask to protect patients. She refused, saying the mask was a "scarlet letter," and arguing that masks are ineffective. She was fired.

In 2015, The Ontario Nurses Association used a similar argument to rally against mask wearing requirements for those who didn't get vaccinated.

Among the lay public during coronavirus, people have refused to wear masks for various reasons, ranging from fears of racial profiling to beliefs that the government should not dictate what citizens do or do not wear.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The spread of COVID-19 has fundamentally shaken economies, and people are beginning to question existing economic models; this pandemic has really thrown up the existing levels of both injustice and inequality worldwide. So bolder ideas are needed including some, that previously, were pushed aside.

At UNDP, were saying that, if there isnt a minimum income floor to fall back on when this kind of massive shock hits, people literally have no options. Without the means to sustain themselves, they are far more likely to succumb to hunger or other diseases well before COVID-19 gets to them.

Millions and millions of people are now out of a job. A huge proportion of people work in the informal sector, without a contract, insurance, or any kind of job security. Added to this are displaced persons, refugees, and undocumented people who were never part of any formal system to begin with.

It is so essential to bring back a conversation about universal basic income, and to make it a central part of the fiscal stimulus packages that countries are planning for.

We are getting much more response from governments in the Asia Pacific region than weve had in the past. For the first time there's also much more data tracking the most vulnerable. We're asking very specific questions of the type of social security packages that cover people today, and we're finding that, in Asia Pacific, about 60 percent of people do not have any form of social protection at all, and certainly cannot afford some of the options that are out there.

The money invested in making sure that people do have some kind of safety net, is much cheaper than the huge investments that are now needed to bail out entire economies, or pay for fossil fuel subsidies.

But what about the cost? The majority of countries in Asia Pacific either carry high domestic debt or high external debt, and we don't want to see a growing debt burden, because that's just going to cause more problems for generations down the line.

But in most countries in this region, the tax to GDP ratio is very low, and most public money comes from regressive, indirect taxes. In other words, it is mainly the poor who are being disproportionately taxed, and this must change.

Fiscal termites eat into a countrys tax revenue in countries allow for tax havens and tax breaks and massive fossil fuel subsidies. This is a heavy drain on public resources. On top of that, developing countries lose over a trillion dollars each year on illicit financial flows, and this is without even counting domestic corruption and inefficiency.

We must stop this financial bleeding. Fixing any part would free up enough money to pay for universal basic income. Its is not forever but given the social and economic hits by COVID-19, it is needed right now.

One of the main reasons that coronaviruses jump from animals to humans so fast, is that we havent taken care of our environment. We've destroyed so much natural habitat that the disease transmission from animals to humans seem unavoidable.

So it was encouraging that the Republic of Korea, which successfully ran elections during the pandemic, saw the winning party run on a promise of a low carbon economy, and zero emissions by 2050. The overwhelming support for this platform shows that voters are starting to connect the dots. They're not just seeing this as an economic and health crisis, but also recognize that it is linked to the climate and environmental crisis.

That is why we insist on the importance of economic, social, and environmental sustainability, and the need to bring people and planet together, and invest in both.

This is not just some out-of-reach dream. The cost of living with fossil fuels, and with diseases such as COVID-19, is far more expensive, not just in the long-term, but even in the short-term.

Universal basic income is not the solution to the regions economic problems, but it will save people from falling off the edge. There was a growing job crisis in the Asia Pacific region, even before the pandemic, because so many jobs are vulnerable to changes in supply chains, market fluctuations and automation.

Many countries in Asia, with a few exceptions, have a very youthful, growing, population, so more and more people are entering the job market. Their education levels are improving, and theyre ready to contribute. But that job market is not expanding rapidly enough. And they must be offered greener, safer jobs this time around.

The closer integration of the worlds economies is bringing new problems. Bangladesh had very few cases of COVID-19 a couple of months back, but more than one million people in the garment industry were laid off because when Chinese manufacturing halted at the start of the pandemic, the supply chain broke and essential parts such as buttons and zips could not be shipped. The laid-off workers have a cash cushion of a weeks wages, at best, and no social protection. In many places, they are now on the streets. The government is looking at ways to support the laid-off labour force.

Another example is countries that are heavily reliant on tourism, such as the Maldives, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. These economies were severely affected when tourist travel stopped. Economic diversification for socioeconomic and strategic reasons is a must, going forward.

This crisis poses several questions concerning the resilience of economies. For example, how much should you grow and produce locally to stay secure? While remaining globally interconnected, were learning the hard way that global supply chains are only as strong as their weakest link; when that link breaks, entire economies can collapse.
By Delana Isles

THE BRUTAL killing of 77-year-old Percy Williams on Sunday (May 3), while the territory was under curfew and enhanced security measures, has left the territory reeling.





Some called for Police Commissioner Trevor Botting to resign as Williams murder brought the total to eight during the first five months of 2020.





Two other murders were committed while residents remained under a 24-hour lockdown.





Martin Barga, a 44-year old construction worker from the Dominican Republic, was shot and killed in Blue Hills on April 13.





The second man was found at the dumpsite on April 18 after residents reported hearing several gunshots. To date he remains unidentified.





Commissioner of Police Trevor Botting, who has since come under fire from some prominent residents, expressed the condolences of his entire team to the Williams family.





"The scourge of violent crime is damaging the Turks and Caicos Islands and causing misery to families and communities. Many will see this as a policing issue alone. It is not, he said.





The commissioner added that crime is an issue affecting all, and all must all play a part in making the TCI safe.





"I am urging the law-abiding communities of the Turks and Caicos to work with us to ensure that these criminals are speedily brought to justice.





But according to prominent businessmen Crayton Higgs and attorney Mark Fulford, the police are the only ones failing at fighting crime.





Higgs lays the blame squarely at the commissioner, while stating that the Turks and Caicos Islands has paid enough for the incompetent leadership of the police force.





He urged residents to join him in calling for Bottings resignation.





"Enough lives and property have been lost and I ask for all fellow Turks and Caicos Islanders to join and demand the removal and replacement of the police commissioner. Enough is enough.





The businessman believes that while the TCI is not the only Caribbean island that has crime, it is the only one with an incompetent police commissioner.





Attorney Mark Fulford questioned how there could have been three murders in Blue Hills - none of them solved to date - during a time when the territory was under enhanced security measures.





"How can a third murder be allowed to take place during curfew in this same community?





"Shouldnt the commissioner of police ensure that areas known for burglary and conflict have a constant police presence? Fulford questioned.





He stated that this should have been done, particularly when the last few reports of burglaries were concentrated in the Blue Hills area, where Williams was murdered.





"There can be no justifiable explanation for the cruel and senseless murders that took place during this recent spate of burglaries committed during curfew, he said.





"If you are unable to do your job, then it may be time for we the people to take to the streets and demand a change.





"We need competent persons who are equipped to put down this uprising of unwarranted and unacceptable crimes against us all, the lawyer added.





Local economist Dr Gilbert Morris said: "We cannot continue to embalm the best of our people in a vale of worsening excuses, nor seek Gods face for guidance hes granted to us already.





"Action is necessary as a demand: as I am one who rejects utterly the notion that these little islands strung across the Caribbean Sea from Grand Bahama to West Caicos should prove so routinely unsafe, so gripped in guttural violence as the sullen broken images in our content-less claim to paradise.





A murdered man, who is yet to be identified, was found at Blue Hills dump site on April 18 after reports were made of shots being fired in the vicinity.





On April 13, Martin Barga, a 44-year old construction worker from the Dominican Republic, was tragically shot and killed on Millennium Highway in Blue Hills.





On March 18, Acyjeune Brunorlien, 57, was shot dead during a home invasion in Five Cays, making it the third murder in just over a week.





Godly Petiote, 21, died in hospital on March 12 after he was shot several times on International Drive in Providenciales.





Sheen Dean, 26, was shot dead on Bay Road in Blue Hills on March 10 - in an incident that left two others with serious injuries.





Twenty-two-year-old Horace Wignal Junior, known as DJ Spookie, died from gunshot wounds on January 21 following a home invasion in Long Bay, Providenciales, earlier that month.





The first murder of the year was that of a 29-year-old who died in Providenciales from gunshot wounds on January 17.





In 2019 the TCI recorded a total of 13 murders across the territory.




The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Wyoming rose by four on Thursday.

The new cases all come from Fremont County.

No new probable cases were reported.

Seven new confirmed coronavirus recoveries were also announced, alongside five probable recoveries.

Probable cases are defined by officials as close contacts of lab-confirmed cases with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

A patient is considered fully recovered when there is resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and there is improvement in respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, shortness of breath) for 72 hours AND at least 7 days have passed since symptoms first appeared, according to the Wyoming Department of Health.

There are now 635 cases  483 confirmed and 152 probable  and 428 recoveries  302 confirmed and 126 probable  recorded in the state, as well as seven deaths.

More than 62 percent of confirmed patients have fully recovered, a number that grows to 67.4 percent when factoring in probable figures.

Officials caution that the reported numbers are low, even with the addition of probable cases. Natrona County health officer Dr. Mark Dowell has called the data falsely low.

On April 2, the Wyoming Department of Health began restricting testing to six priority categories; potential patients who dont fall in one of those categories had to be tested by private laboratories. However, the department announced April 23 that it would be able to resume testing patients outside of those six categories, although priority patients samples remain at the front of the line.

Patients have tested positive for coronavirus in 21 of Wyomings 23 counties. Only Platte and Weston counties are without confirmed cases. Wyoming has the lowest recorded number of coronavirus deaths of any state. Alaska has the second fewest deaths related to the virus, with 10, according to the New York Times and state health departments.

More than 12 percent of Wyomings cases required a hospital stay. In 17.6 percent of the cases, health officials dont know if the patient was hospitalized.

The virus has disproportionately affected people of color throughout the United States, a trend that is also reflected in Wyomings data. Just over 51 percent of confirmed patients in Wyoming are white, 27.3 percent are American Indian, 13.3 percent are Hispanic, 1 percent are Asian, and 1.7 percent are black. The racial identities of 8.1 percent of confirmed cases in Wyoming are not known, and 3.1 percent of confirmed cases identified as other races. According to 2019 census estimates, Wyomings population is 83.8 percent white (not Hispanic/Latino), 10.1 percent Hispanic/Latino, 2.7 percent American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.3 percent black, 1.1 percent Asian and 2.2 percent two or more races.

In 47 percent of the cases, the patient came in contact with a known case. In another 13 percent of the cases, the patient had traveled either domestically or internationally. Community spread has been attributed to 15.5 percent of the cases. In 11.8 percent of Wyomings cases, health officials dont how the person was exposed to the virus, and 15.9 percent of cases are pending investigation.

Wyoming has more cases per 100,000 people (109) than seven states, a number that was once as high as 20, according to the Times, which includes probable counts where they exist.







Cases in Wyoming by county (probable in parentheses)

Albany: 8

Big Horn: 2 (1)

Campbell: 16 (9)

Carbon: 5

Converse: 14 (9)

Crook: 5

Fremont: 159 (9)

Goshen: 3 (1)

Hot Springs: 1 (2)

Johnson: 11 (4)

Laramie: 109 (54)

Lincoln: 7 (3)

Natrona: 38 (10)

Niobrara: 1 (1)

Park: 1

Platte: 0

Sheridan: 12 (4)

Sublette: 1 (2)

Sweetwater: 12 (7)

Teton: 67 (31)

Uinta: 6 (2)

Washakie: 5 (3)

Weston: 0







Deaths in Wyoming by county

Fremont: 4

Johnson: 1

Laramie: 1

Teton: 1







Rate of spread

This graph shows the rate at which confirmed and probable cases in Wyoming have been announced, as well as the number of patients who have fully recovered.

Keep in mind, however, that state and medical officials say the true number of COVID-19 cases is surely higher than the official numbers due to testing limitations.







Testing statistics

The Wyoming Department of Health has published the following data:

As of Thursday, there have been 12,968 tests performed for COVID-19 in Wyoming, an increase of 399 tests from Wednesday.

Wyoming Public Health Laboratory: 5,842

Commercial labs: 7,126

CDC: 1







National cases

There have been more than 1.2 million cases nationally, with about 75,000 deaths, according to the New York Times running count.







Know the symptoms

COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is a respiratory illness. Its symptoms include cough, fever and shortness of breath. Symptoms appear within two weeks. If you have contact with a person who has COVID-19, you should self-isolate for 14 days.







Follow the Wyoming Health Departments tips

Stay home when sick and avoid contact with other people unless you need medical attention.

Follow advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on what to do if you think you may be sick.

Follow current public health orders.

Follow commonsense steps such as washing your hands often and well, covering your coughs and sneezes, and cleaning and disinfecting.

Nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other healthcare facilities should closely follow guidelines for infection control and prevention.

Older people and those with health conditions that mean they have a higher chance of getting seriously ill should avoid close-contact situations.
Trump Vetoes Congressional Resolution To Restrict War With Iran

Radio Farda May 07, 2020

U.S President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed a congressional resolution restricting his powers to unilaterally take military action against Iran.

Calling the bipartisan bill an "insulting resolution" Trump said it was part of a Democratic strategy to win the November 3 election by dividing the Republican Party. "The few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands," Trump said in a statement published on the website of the White House.

The U.S. President alleged that the S.J. Resolution 68 was based on misunderstandings of facts and law.

"Contrary to the resolution, the United States is not engaged in the use of force against Iran," he said in the statement while defending the "decisive action" taken by him in January to eliminate Iran's Qods (Quds) Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. He maintained that the elimination of Soleimani was "fully authorized by law, including by the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 and Article II of the Constitution".

President Trump also said the resolution " greatly harmed the President's ability to protect the United States, its allies, and its partners," and added: "The resolution implies that the President's constitutional authority to use military force is limited to defense of the United States and its forces against imminent attack" which he said is incorrect.

"We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognizes that the President must be able to anticipate our adversaries' next moves and take swift and decisive action in response. That's what I did!", he wrote in his statement.

The Senate, where Trump's fellow Republicans hold a 53-to 47-seat majority, is expected to hold a veto-override vote as soon as Thursday.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted 228-175 on January 30 to approve two measures that would put limits to Trump's ability to go to war with Iran including measures to block funding for any use of offensive military force in or against Iran without congressional approval.

The United States is seeking to extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran as a member of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran which President Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018.

Iranian officials have yet not made any comments on Trump's veto of the resolution.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/trump-vetoes- congressional-resolution-to-restrict -war-with-iran-/30598907.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.

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Russell Brand on the spike in google searches for 'prayer': People are looking for a 'sacred experience'

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Google searches for the word prayer increased massively over the past few weeks amid the worldwide pandemic and controversial comedian Russell Brand, who's best known for his vulgarity, offered his thoughts on why.

"I found out that everyone's googling prayer, Brand said in an Instagram video post, titled Why the h*** are people suddenly googling prayer?

People want to know how to pray all of a sudden. There was a time not that long ago when we thought that prayer and religion was redundant that mankind could answer all of our questions through technology.

Brand said that now everyone is looking for a sacred experience. He then went on to define the meaning of the word sacred as holy, divine, the presence of God.

What I think that means is the presence of the limitless that is always, by its nature, present in the limited bandwidth of our physical sense-based experience here on Earth, which on some level we know is not enough," he said.

In March, it was discovered by Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and executive director of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture that In Crisis, We Pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In a draft released by Bentzen, she found that prayer intensity rose in countries that have only recently been hit by the pandemic themselves.

"Daily data on Google searches for 95 countries demonstrates that the COVID-19 crisis has increased Google searches for prayer (relative to all Google searches) to the highest level ever recorded," she wrote. "The level of prayer search shares in March 2020 was more than 50% higher than the average during February 2020."

Brand noted that the world has now been forced into a monastic corner, except for those of us that are frontline workers.

"The fact that people are googling prayer suggests to me that we need to find a way to pray together, he added. Now you might not want to pray because you say, 'Hey man, I don't like religion, it's trying to tell me how to think.' It ain't trying to tell you how to think, it's just giving you some suggestions.

Brand, who became famous for his insults and wild behavior, challenged people to think about why they were googling prayer.

"Think about why are you looking to prayer? What are you looking for? Is it you feel trapped in your home at the moment? Do you feel afraid? You feel afraid for loved ones? he inquired.

"My conception, a prayer to the limitless, to the oneness from which all phenomena.

In 2018, Brand said he discovered that Jesus Christ is the solution to the world's problems. Following his divorce from pop star Katy Perry after being married for 14 months, Brand began the process of changing his life around. He wed actress Laura Gallacher in 2017 and has since been sharing a more positive message on his platforms.

Brand ended the video on prayer by showing people how he prays.

"This is how I pray: I go what do I really want, what am I trying to get to? Firstly, I acknowledge that what I really want, may not matter. So I go, 'God, try and make me of maximum use, try and liberate me from the limited view of myself as a vessel for primal desires and wants, just an object for economic systems that would seek to control me. Show me, God, how I can be useful in other people's lives. Show me the way of kindness, compassion and simplicity. Please help me to have faith that even though I don't know how things are going to be alright, that they will be alright.

Brand told those who are googling help me God that the real answer is within themselves.

Although thought to have been a newly converted Christian after his recovery from drug and alcohol and his 2017 book, titled Recovery: Freedom from our Addictions, Brand shared in 2019 that he is a Perennial and embraces all religions.
A growing number of church leaders are urging Gov. Charlie Baker to allow in-person religious services be held again in Massachusetts.

The letter, signed by more than 250 pastors, refers to church as essential and asks Baker to allow churches to reopen during the first phases of Massachusetts reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, it asks a clergy member be added to states Reopening Advisory Board.

The reopening of our churches must be in the first phase," the letter said. "It is upsetting that, unlike roughly half the states across our nation, churches in Massachusetts were not deemed essential at the outset, but this must come to an end.

The letter states Massachusetts has more than 8,000 churches, so the 250 signatures is a small fraction of clergy in the state.

On Thursday, 36 religious leaders in Worcester wrote a letter to the editor in the Telegram and Gazette, applauding the work of local leaders.

We write to state unequivocally that any public health-informed prohibition of in-person worship gatherings is not a violation of our freedom to exercise our religious beliefs," the letter to the editor said. "We believe such directives are aligned with the core tenets of our faith to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The dozens of pastors supporting the citys leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic comes as Kristopher Casey, pastor of Adams Square Baptist Church in Worcester, continues to defy Bakers order. Casey conducted service for the third time Wednesday. He was issued a $500 fine.

On Thursday a criminal complaint was filed in Worcester District Court the church held the third service.

We continue to monitor the situation and were following the measures that are outlined in the governors order as to actions that can be taken for each successive violation, Augustus said. We are following that scrupulously and that action was taken today in response to the violation last night.

Prior to the complaint, Casey told MassLive he planned to continue conducting services at the church.

To me its not about the money, Casey said. "$300, $500, $5,000, $10,000, $50-$100,000, its not about the money. Its about Jesus. Its about God.

In the letter sent to Baker, the religious leaders said they can and will follow guidelines when churches reopen. It said partitioners include doctors and nursers, whom theyve listened to.

Loving our neighbors is part of who we are as a church," the letter to the governor said. "We are capable of following the guidelines for social distancing recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, just as other businesses Massachusetts has deemed essential.
* A program at Griffin Health designed to reduce instances of delirium in older patients recently received The Person-Centered Care Innovation Award. Awarded by Planetree International, the Person-Centered Care Innovation Award recognizes ideas and initiatives that have fundamentally improved the experience of care for patients, families, staff, and communities. Griffins Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) prevents cognitive and functional decline in older hospitalized patients by helping them stay oriented to their surroundings, meeting their needs for nutrition, hydration and sleep, and by keeping them mobile within the limitations of their physical condition.

* During the 2020 Kick Off Breakfast for the Prayer Shawl Ministry at Wesley Village in January, members agreed to help the homeless animals caught in the Australian Wildfires. Kelly Coppola, the Activities Director at Crosby Commons at Wesley Village, learned of the need for animal nests and blankets from fellow staff members Terry Moffat and Lisamarie Grailich. Coppola brought the idea to coordinators Barbara Quinn and MaryAnn Griffiths, who went to work on finding the patterns, yarn and hooks to start the project. They shared the supplies along with the information about the project at the breakfast meeting.
Boris Johnson's hardline coronavirus lockdown message has 'effectively terrorised' the UK population into believing they will die if they catch coronavirus, one of the government's experts has said.

Professor Robert Dingwall suggested Britain had 'completely lost sight' of the true nature of the disease because 'mostly it isn't' killing people.

His comments illustrate the potential problems facing the Prime Minister as he prepares to set out his lockdown exit plan in an address to the nation on Sunday night.

Polling published yesterday showed almost two thirds of the population are worried about the effects of lifting the draconian curbs too early.

Some experts are concerned that so-called 'coronaphobia' could prove a major barrier to getting the nation back up and running.

Boris Johnson, pictured during a visit to Westminster Abbey yesterday, will set out his lockdown exit plan on Sunday

Professor Robert Dingwall said the government's coronavirus message had 'effectively terrorised the population into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you'

Prof Dingwall from Nottingham University sits on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), which feeds into the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

He told The Telegraph: 'We have this very strong message which has effectively terrorised the population into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you. And mostly it isn't.

'Eighty per cent of the people who get this infection will never need to go near a hospital. The ones who do go to hospital because they are quite seriously ill most of them will come out alive - even those who go into intensive care.'

Prof Dingwall said the UK had 'completely lost sight of that' because of an 'obsession' with the death toll and international comparisons.

He added: 'All of that helps to create this climate of fear and I am not surprised in a sense that the Government might take a rather cautious approach to try to unlock the lockdown - simply because they would really be nervous that if they pushed it too quickly it would be like giving a party and nobody came.'

An exclusive poll for MailOnline yesterday suggested the public fears the virus far more than immediate economic meltdown.

It revealed 62 per cent are more worried about the effects of the draconian curbs ending too early, while 38 per cent said their main concern is the havoc they are wreaking on the economy now.

Around seven in 10 believe bus and train drivers, teachers, and medical staff should have the right to refuse to go back to work, even if the government says it is safe.

Some 60 per cent said the state should keep covering a proportion of people's wages even if in theory they should be able to resume their jobs.

Exclusive research for MailOnline shows 62 per cent are more worried about the effects of the draconian curbs ending too early, while 38 per cent say their main concern is the havoc they are wreaking on the economy now

More than three quarters of people said they would be behind bus drivers who made the 'personal decision' to stay off because of safety fears, with just 16 per cent saying they would not support them

Nearly half say they could even support strike action if people are ordered to get back to work.

Prof Dingwall also questioned the wisdom of the Government's two metre social distancing rule as he said he had been told by a public health expert it had been chosen because 'we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was'.

'Personally I think we could quite safely go to 1.5 metres which seems to be an internationally acceptable standard, inside and outside,' he said.
Temperature is rising, the heat is already on. Its getting hotter and hotter in the city. Although we can change a few things in our lives to combat climate change in the long run, but right now we need some shade and places to cool down.
After confusion about payment of fees for private schools across the state, the education department has now released a government resolution(GR) listing out guidelines for the same.

In the GR, the department has asked schools to allow parents to make partial payments of fees for 2019-20 and 2020-21 considering the current situation. Schools have also been asked to stay all fee hikes and have in fact been advised to reduce fees in cases where the expenditure has gone down due to the lockdown. The GR is applicable for all schools under the state irrespective of the board they are affiliated with.

Parent Teacher Associations of the schools can be told about the status of spending and fees can be cut down with their consent. Similarly, parents should be allowed to pay fees online and schools should not insist on physical payments, read the GR. It is a good move considering that most schools are saving a lot on electricity and other maintenance related work due to school closure. The question however is whether these schools would be honest enough to accept it and reduce fees, said a parent from a Dadar based school.

On March 30, the education department had issued a circular to all the schools asking them to not insist for payments from parents. After the circular however, several schools told their teachers that they could not pay them their dues as parents had not paid fees. With many teachers writing to the department to come up with a solution, it has now decided to allow schools to collect partial payments.
Hawley Proposes Withdrawing U.S. from WTO, Says It 'Enabled the Rise of China' | National Review Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) is introducing a bill to remove the United States from the World Trade Organization, saying that the intergovernmental group "enabled the rise of China" at the expense of American industry. "The coronavirus pandemic has exposed deep, long-standing flaws in our global economic system that demand reform.

The latest power move from the most prolific of all MAGA supporters offers rare partnership with the Prez in his trade fight whilst most Republicans politely ignore the debate that doesn't always resonate with voters who love their cheap junk as much as anybody else . . . Read more:
The US Justice Department withdrew its case against former White House national security advisor Thursday, handing President Donald Trump a major political victory.

In a nearly unheard-of reversal, the department said in a filing that Flynn's December 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI in an interview over his Russia contacts was moot because the lies were insignificant.

It also said the FBI's original probe of him  part of the sweeping counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election  had no "legitimate investigative basis."

The decision by close Trump ally Attorney General Bill Barr effectively reversed 18 months of work by the department and FBI under Barr's predecessors.

It also added fuel to Trump's allegation over the past three-plus years that the Russia investigation was a political "witch hunt."

"He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they've done is a disgrace," Trump said Thursday.

He took aim at the FBI and Justice Department officials behind the original investigation.

"I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price, because they're dishonest crooked people. They're scum and I say it a lot. They're scum, they're human scum," he said.

'Duty to Dismiss'

The move came as Flynn, the former Pentagon intelligence chief and a retired three-star general, was fighting possible imprisonment, and minutes after the case's lead prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, withdrew in apparent disagreement with Barr.

"Our duty we think, is to dismiss the case," Barr told CBS News.

"A crime cannot be established here. They did not have a basis for the counterintelligence investigation against Flynn."

Current and former officials associated with the investigation voiced outrage and accused Barr of doing Trump's bidding.

"The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators," said Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

"And now a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice is going to let the president's crony simply walk away."

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who oversaw the Russia investigation, said Barr's argument is "patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised."

"Today's move by the Justice Department has nothing to do with the facts or the law  it is pure politics designed to please the president," he said.

Snowballing Investigation

The case against Flynn was a cornerstone of the sprawling 22-month investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Moscow's meddling in the US election.

Flynn drew attention for a number of contacts with Russia, including being paid tens of thousands of dollars the previous year to attend a banquet in Moscow for Russian media giant RT, where he sat next to President Vladimir Putin.

The probe ultimately focused on his secret talks in December 2016, before Trump was inaugurated, with Russian envoy to Washington Sergey Kislyak.

In multiple phone calls wiretapped by FBI spy hunters, Flynn allegedly sought to cut political deals with Moscow for the incoming administration, deals which undermined the positions of the government of then-president Barack Obama.

The Russia meddling investigation snowballed after Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017 for rejecting his overtures to drop the Flynn probe, drawing allegations of obstruction of justice.

The Justice Department then named Mueller as a special prosecutor to pursue the investigation into numerous contacts between Trump's campaign and the Russians, which fuelled suspicions of collusion.

That however further infuriated Trump, who all but declared war on the department, the FBI and the intelligence community which supported the probe.

Guilty in Plea Deal

In December 2017 Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to investigators, in a deal in which he avoided other charges including illegally lobbying for Turkey.

But late last year, facing sentencing, he switched lawyers and moved to withdraw his plea.

Trump meanwhile began speaking in his defense, calling the people who investigated Flynn "dirty, filthy cops."

Flynn was one of six people associated with the Trump campaign who were ultimately convicted or pleaded guilty in the Mueller investigation.

Mueller also issued indictments against 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies.

Mueller's final report in March 2019 offered evidence of improper collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and detailed multiple incidences of Trump's alleged obstruction of the investigation.

But Barr, who Trump named attorney general in 2018 during the investigation, declared there was nothing in the report supporting legal action against the president.
Cain International, the privately-held real estate investment firm operating in Europe and the United States, has signed an agreement with Oberoi Group for the operation of 23 serviced residences at 17-22 South Audley Street in London's Mayfair.

The deal marks Oberoi Group's debut in Europe.

The Oberoi Group was established in 1934 and owns and operates 33 five-star hotels and luxury resorts across India, Indonesia, Morocco, Mauritius, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Due for completion in 2022, the branded residences at South Audley Street will offer exceptional living at the heart of one of the most attractive and sought-after locations in prime central London.

The partnership with Oberoi is one element of the next chapter for 17-22 South Audley Street, which Cain International acquired in 2016. Constructed in 1845, but rebuilt to designs by architect Ernest George, who designed Southwark Bridge, the 48, 000 sq ft Grade II* property is also set to house a small restaurant and refurbished retail space.

This partnership is the latest addition to Cain Internationals growing portfolio of luxury hospitality investments and loans across its target markets of the UK, Europe and the US. This includes industry-leading partners such as Six Senses, Waldorf Astoria, Hilton, Raffles Hotel & Residences, Aman Hotel & Residences, Rosewood Hotels and Soho House.

"With a reputation for exceptional service and guest experience, Oberoi is widely regarded as one of the very best in the hospitality industry. We are excited to be forging this new partnership, that will see one of the world's most authoritative brands on high-end service coming to Europe, and choosing London as the location for its debut," said Jonathan Goldstein, Chief Executive of Cain International.

PRS Oberoi, Executive Chairman of Oberoi Group, also expressed his delight at the deal.

"We are excited to bring The Oberoi brand to London in partnership with Cain International. The iconic building in the heart of Mayfair is a perfect complement to an Oberoi branded property. We look forward to bringing Oberoi's distinct culture of personalized service and commitment to excellence in serving our guests on their next visit to London," he said.
No one should have to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote.

Yet state officials want Texans to do just that. In what can only be understood as another example of voter suppression, theyre senselessly opposing expansion of absentee voting during the coronavirus outbreak.

Last month, a state district judge agreed with the Texas Democratic Party and civil rights groups that fear of exposure to the novel coronavirus is valid reason for Texans to vote by mail during the pandemic. That didnt stop Attorney General Ken Paxton sending a letter May 1 threatening criminal charges against election officials who followed the judges ruling.

Paxton, claiming that the courts decision is stayed during appeal  and even if it were effective, would have no bearing outside Travis County  reargued his case for why he opposes the change.

Mail ballots based on disability are specifically reserved for those who are legitimately ill and cannot vote in-person without assistance or jeopardizing their health, he said in a statement. The integrity of our democratic election process must be maintained, and law established by our Legislature must be followed consistently.

But Paxtons own letter concedes that the disability provision that qualifies Texans to vote by mail covers those whose health is put at risk by voting in person.

The law is clear, Harris County Special Assistant Attorney Douglas Ray told the editorial board, adding the judge made the right call. The provision allowing those who are disabled to vote by mail makes anyone whose condition would pose a threat to their own health, or that of others, eligible to request an absentee ballot, Ray said.

Without a widely available vaccine, we are all in a condition that merits voting by mail.

Paxtons letter appears to be more about politics than the law, Ray told the board.

What theyre trying to do is encourage confusion so people will not exercise their voting rights, he said. And in threatening prosecution they are very close to intimidation.Texas has a long history of voter suppression. As recently as last year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made Senate Bill 9 a priority. It would have made it harder for some marginalized populations to cast a ballot and criminalized even honest mistakes on registration forms. The bill mercifully died in the House,pairing nicely with a botched voter purge by then-Texas Secretary of State David Whitley.

While Paxton argues voters shouldnt fear COVID-19, some in his party certainly seem afraid of voters. In a case of saying the quiet part out loud, President Donald Trump revealed why. Speaking on Fox & Friends on March 30, Trump talked about efforts by Democrats to include funding for absentee and vote-by-mail options in the initial economic stimulus bill.

The things they had in there were crazy, the president said. They had things, levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again.

Even if true, thatd be a terrible reason to maintain barriers to voting. But its not even real. Nationwide studies have shown that voting by mail does not favor one party over another. In Harris County, absentee ballots have been traditionally used more by GOP voters, including those who voted straight-ticket Republican, officials said.

Pressure by Paxton has not kept Harris County from preparing for an increase in absentee ballots, which are cast by mail. Last week, Commissioners Court approved up to $12 million to cover the costs of voting by mail, including printing, postage, staff, and additional scanning equipment.

Thats good for Harris County and for voters in other large counties that are taking similar measures  but what about the rest of the state? If county clerks must wait for the courts to decide, those decisions may be too late to leave time to adequately plan for increased vote-by-mail, leading to an Election Day disaster.

So far, state officials have sent mixed messages. Paxton has vowed to crack down, Secretary of State Ruth Hughs has remained noncommittal and Gov. Greg Abbott has stayed on the sidelines.

Voting is a fundamental right. To set up a system that hinders that right is inherently flawed.
State Of Happiness is the title of the new Saturday night BBC Four drama series set in the Norwegian city of Stavanger, hit by sudden wealth when North Sea oil was discovered in the early 1970s.

The tale of investors in Shell in 2020 could be named State Of Discontent.

A global oil glut has compelled the company to cut its quarterly dividend by 66 per cent, a move that leaves millions of investors as well as savers in pensions and equity income funds suddenly poorer.

Global glut: The Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out one-third of the world's demand for oil

The reduction has been portrayed as a tragedy, since Shell had maintained payouts since the 1940s and was last year the most open-handed member of the FTSE 100.

But a more reasoned reassessment is now taking place about the role that Shell and BP should play in portfolios.

Ben van Beurden, Shell's chief executive, says that 'the world has fundamentally changed over the last few months'.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out one third of global demand for oil and even van Beurden cannot see when it will recover.

Such is the shortage of storage for the oversupply that the US oil price temporarily turned negative last month  people were paying to have it taken off their hands.

Is this scenario the dress rehearsal for the post-oil era, as the world shifts towards alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power which can now be more economically produced? Or does the increase in the oil price this week hint at a plot twist?

For governments, tackling the economic damage wrought by coronavirus may be a higher priority than combating climate change. And the pandemic may prolong the need for oil and petrochemicals.

Despite the wish to eliminate single-use plastics, more throwaway plastic-based personal protective equipment will be required to get people back to work.

When commuting, people may prefer cars to public transport  especially if petrol is cheap.

Some will swap to a Tesla or another cool electric vehicle, but the favourite US suburban ride still seems set to be the gas-guzzling SUV.

This would support the belief that, even on the most pessimistic forecasts, oil has still got another 40 years.

Meanwhile, BP and Shell  which are both committed to the net-zero emission goal  are already diversifying into more renewable energy sources.

They should see off competition in their core business from smaller players, as the exploration of new wells becomes less viable.

Current state of play: BP shares currently yield 10 per cent

This could boost the oil price and, in fact, Goldman Sachs is now forecasting that West Texas Intermediate may reach $51 in 2021, against $24 at present.

Some analysts contend that the dividend cut has ensured Shell's viability, and suspect BP might follow its rival's example.

BP shares currently yield 10 per cent. The continuation of such liberality is not guaranteed, but the slimlining of this business may still offer rewards to investors.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, says Shell has saved $10billion by the dividend cut which, together with its other cost-cutting measures, will build a $30billion war chest.

Hunter deplores the outpouring of emotion over the payout: 'This is good corporate housekeeping. Shell is still a strong investment proposition.'

Shell shares yield 3.5 per cent, which may not match BP's bounty, but is generous compared with most other FTSE 100 shares, as dividends shrink.

The cut in the Shell dividend leaves the long-suffering holders of equity income funds with yet another grievance, since these open-ended funds are heavily reliant on the oil majors: 55 of the 84 funds have a large stake in Shell, while 51 hold BP.

But since these funds  which are supposed to be a defensive play  fared badly in the stock market rout, there seems little option but to sit tight and hope that the managers can remedy the issue of the over-concentration of their holdings.

For those who now see Shell more as an opportunity for long-term growth than a source of income, JO Hambro UK Dynamic and Temple Bar investment trust are among the best buys.

Another option is a different version of an equity income fund such as FP Octopus Multi-Cap Income.

Chris McVey, its manager, says: 'We avoided the big income payers and have gone instead for relatively small companies with good balance sheets and sustainable earnings.'

These include Strix, world leader in kettle safety controls. This represents a bet on something that will not change in an uncertain future.

We will be putting on the kettle for a cup of tea no matter what. And BP and Shell are almost sure to have a part in this, either supplying a form of energy  or the plastic bits of the kettle.
Disney+ just announced, to the delight of fans of the National Treasure films starring Nicolas Cage, that the on-demand streaming service is developing a series based on the hugely popular films.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and actors Nicolas Cage and Diane Kruger promoting National Treasure, 2004 | Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

The announcement was made by the projects producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, who had also teased in Jan. 2020 a third National Treasure movie, which he confirmed this week is still in the works.

Nicolas Cage on the classic film

The 2004 movie, now a classic, has a fervent fan following, clearly seen in the box-office success of its sequel and the clamoring from fans for information on the third upcoming film.

The National Treasure franchise introduces Nicolas Cage as cryptologist Benjamin Franklin Gates in the first film, National Treasure, as well as in its follow-up, National Treasure: Book of Secrets in 2007.

Nicolas Cage promoting National Treasure 2004 | SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

The films are beloved by families, as they immerse young fans in history with the first film surrounding a treasure map on the back side of the Declaration of Independence and the sequel centered on finding pages missing from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Actor Nicolas Cage, speaking at a press conference in 2007 about the sequel, explained why he chose to return for another go-round.

You may be aware that Ive not done a sequel before, he said, and the reason being that, generally speaking, I never like to repeat myself. . . When they first presented the idea of Civil War, Confederate gold, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination, right off the bat, for me, personally, that was more interesting, historically.

Nicolas Cage promoting National Treasure 2004 | Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

Cage revealed what exactly got him to sign on to the second film.

Then, [the writers of the film] said, We have to ratchet it up from stealing the Declaration of Independence, he explained, so we thought you should kidnap the President of the United States. And then, I said, Woah, hold on, new rules. How is Ben Gates going to kidnap the President of the United States? And, I got nervous. Then, I started thinking about it, and I started laughing, and I realized that that was the joy of it  that it was funny and it was absurd.

Nicolas Cage on a third National Treasure

When asked, while promoting the films sequel, if he thought he would go for a third National Treasure, Cage wasnt at all cagey. He thought it would be a great idea and envisioned how it would look.

With National Treasure, I believe that it should become more and more International Treasure, he continued in the film press conference. I was very happy to see that we went to London, England and Paris, France, but Id like to see the movie go wider still. Id like to go into Africa, Egypt, Asia, and keep going.

Nicolas Cage | SHAUN CURRY/AFP via Getty Images

Cage went on to imagine what his character, Ben might encounter in a third film.

My hope is that Ben is recruited, he concluded, and he gets a dossier from these other countries about their history, and has to download it and learn it, and then try to go on these hunts on their behalf. That would be a lot of fun for me.

Disney+ is growing the National Treasure franchise

And now this week, Disney+ has announced that a series, with a younger cast, will be transforming the beloved films on the streaming service.

In a conversation with Collider in May 2020, the series producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, revealed that both the series and the third film are in progress.

Were certainly working on one [National Treasure] for streaming and were working on one for the big screen, he said. Hopefully, theyll both come together and well bring you another National Treasure, but theyre both very active.The one for Disney+ is a much younger cast. Its the same concept but a young cast. The one for theatrical would be the same cast.

Bruckheimer provided details on the status of each project.

The film version is being written right now, he revealed. The television version is in process. We have a pilot script done and an outline of the future episodes.

National Treasure is a true national treasure that is giving its fans a trove to look forward to.
BRESLAU  Pork processor Conestoga Meats has confirmed 44 employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

In a statement to The Record Friday morning, the company said the number of cases includes employees currently self-isolating as well as workers who have recovered and returned to work.

Its a significant jump from the seven confirmed cases the company first reported more than two weeks ago. The plant was closed last week to give the producer time to implement more protective measures for its approximately 1,000 employees.

Processing resumed on Monday.

During the week of closure, activities were centred on enhancing processes, procedures and facilities to provide maximum safety during the pandemic, as our first priority is keeping our employees safe while they are in the workplace, the companys statement said.

All positive cases are reviewed by Region of Waterloo Public Health with Conestoga providing detailed case and contact tracing information.

Waterloo Regions acting medical officer of health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang confirmed the 44 cases during a public briefing Friday, adding we are very comfortable with the fact that they have reopened.

The 44 cases at Conestoga Meats represents about five per cent of the regions 897 total confirmed cases.

The plant is a farmer-owned co-operative with more than 150 paid members. It processes about 37,000 pigs every week and is one of two federally licensed pig abattoirs in the province.

The company said it has introduced a number of protective measures for employees, including:

Eye, nose and mouth coverings for every position inside the plant.

More than 150 dividers have been installed on the plant floor, and additional break rooms areas have been provided to help support physical distancing.

Plexiglas table dividers have been installed in all lunch rooms.

Additional oversight to ensure control procedures and personal protective equipment is being used properly.

Thermal imaging equipment to assist in temperature screening.

Communications regarding changes have been provided to the employee group in eight different languages, the company said. Employees who are ill are contacted frequently by company staff.

Last week, The Record reported Conestoga Meats struggled to secure personal protective equipment at the onset of the global pandemic.

Face masks and hand sanitizer were difficult to source as the materials were being diverted to front-line health workers, and face shields were altered by drilling holes at the top to prevent them from fogging up.

The Ministry of Labour has investigated three complaints related to COVID-19 at the plant in recent months.

On March 24, the ministry received one complaint related to a lack of personal protective equipment. Two more complaints were received on April 22, including physical distancing inside the plant.

All three complaints were investigated via telephone and no orders or requirements were issued by the ministry.

Conestoga Meats says it implemented a $2 per hour premium on March 23, and bumped it to $4 when processing resumed on Monday.

This extra premium is recognition of the important work that our team is doing feeding the people of Ontario and keeping the Ontario farm and livestock sector in operation, the company said.

Pork producers across Ontario have been side-swiped by plant shutdowns at facilities like Conestoga Meats.

Several large processors in Quebec have had to suspend operations due to COVID-19 outbreaks, along with several beef processors in Alberta and most recently at a Maple Lodge Farms meat plant in Brampton.

Food scientists and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency say there have been no reported cases of food or food packaging being associated with the transmission of COVID-19.

With files from Johanna Weidner
WASHINGTON  President Trump said on Thursday that the White House staff would be tested every day for the coronavirus after a military aide who has had contact with him was found to have the virus.

Asked by reporters about the aide, whom a senior administration official described as a personal valet to the president, Mr. Trump downplayed the matter. Ive had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman, he said. But he added that he and other officials and staff members at the White House would be tested more frequently.

A White House spokesman said that Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had both tested negative for the virus since their exposure to the military aide and were in great health. But the episode raised new questions about how well-protected Mr. Trump and other top officials are as they work at the White House, typically without wearing masks.

The military aides illness was first reported by CNN on the day before eight World War II veterans  each older than 95, an age group at high statistical risk for serious illness from the virus  are scheduled to take part in a photo-op at the White House and an event at the World War II Memorial nearby to celebrate the 75th anniversary on Friday of the German surrender, known as V-E Day.
Hyderabad, May 8 : At a time when migrant workers from various parts of the country are returning to their home states due to ongoing nation-wide lockdown, a train with about 250 migrants from Bihar reached Telangana on Friday.

Sharmik Special carrying the workers who were working in rice mills of Telangana reached Lingampalli station on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

According to East Central Railway (ECR), the train departed from Khagaria in Bihar at 3.45 a.m. on Thursday. ECR officials said the train was operated at the request of the state government.

They made the clarification after Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Kumar Jha tweeted to the railway minister, wanting to know under whose order the train was being run.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao had said on May 5 that the trains carrying migrant workers to Bihar will come back with 20,000 to 25,000 workers from Bihar who were working in rice mills in Telangana.

Last month, Rao had urged the Bihar government to send back the workers to Telangana. More than 90 Aper cent of the workers in rice mills were Bihari migrants. "These workers, who load and unload the rice trucks, had gone to Bihar for Holi and are stranded there due toAthe lockdown," the chief minister had said.

Rao had even stated that if necessary he would talk to the Centre to arrange a few special trains to bring back the Bihari migrant workers.

The chief minister said as Telangana was procuring record 1.05 crore tonnes of paddy from farmers at designated procurement centres in villages in view of the lockdown, the task can't be completed without the labourers Bihar, who load and unload the trucks.
ANYONE with concerns about their own or others human rights can contact the Human Rights Commission any time, day or night.





The body has in place an "always available culture, according to administrative secretary Giselle Ambrister.





"The role of the Human Rights Commission is incredibly important in times like these.





"We are appealing to our clients, for non-critical matters, to email the Human Rights Commission.





"Or telephone the office - provisions are made for calls to be answered 24 hours a day, if situations become extremely urgent, through our always available culture.





"This includes having in place proper contingency plans to ensure service continuity for you, our clients and communities, during this time.





The Human Rights Commission email address is [email protected] and the phone number is 941-5343.




ORANGE COUNTY, Calif., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today former State Senator Janet Nguyen joined with Images Luxury Nail Lounge, National Asian American Coalition, Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California, Vietnamese Community in Los Angeles, Coalition Against Communist and Agents, Vietnamese American Voters Foundation, Assembly of the Republic of Vietnam Association Veteran Association of the Western States, Vietnamese Community of South Bay, and Vietnamese Veterans and Government Workers of Republic of Vietnam in condemning Governor Gavin Newsom for comments he made during his daily Statewide press conference where he stated the community spread of COVID-19 began in a nail salon.

"I'm demanding the Governor apologize for his comments that disproportionately affect Vietnamese-American community. With his reckless comments the Governor has put a target on the back of Vietnamese-Americans," said former Senator Janet Nguyen. "The Governor's comments will cause fear and panic-devastating businesses that have already been severely impacted by State Shelter-in-Place orders."

"I am very disappointed by the Governor's statement," said Faith Bautista, CEO of National Asian American Coalition. "We should be working together to bring back jobs and build our economy instead of using the nail salons as a scapegoat as the spread of the coronavirus."

In California, 80% of all nail salon owners and nail technicians are Vietnamese-Americans. During this pandemic, Vietnamese-Americans, and especially within the nail salon industry across the nation, have voluntarily donated tens of thousands of face masks, shields, sanitizer and food to hospitals, medical clinics, cities, first responders, etc. across the nation.

"Our businesses and employees have been devastated since the shutdown," said Loann Quach, "General Manager of Images Luxury Nail Lounge. Our business has always had the highest sanitation standards in place, but the Governor's comments yesterday will scare people into thinking our business isn't safe and nothing can be further from the truth."

"For many Vietnamese-Americans owning and working in nail salons is not just a job or a business it is a trade that has been passed on from generation to generation. This is the soul of who they are and the Governor is degrading that," said former Senator Janet Nguyen. "It is hard enough to recover from the shutdown, it will now be harder given the Governor's comment blaming nail salons as the spread of COVID-19. He basically just shut down the nail salon industry in the state."

For more information please visit www.JanetForAssembly.com .

Contact: Andrew Levesque

[email protected]

SOURCE Images Luxury Nail Lounge
Mayor Joe Hogsett has asked federal law enforcement to monitor Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department investigations into two fatal police shootings.

In a statement, Hogsett said he has reached out to the United States Attorneys Office and Federal Bureau of Investigations.

While I continue to have confidence in Chief Randal Taylor and IMPDs ability to carry out fair and thorough investigations, it is clear to me that more must be done to provide community confidence in the outcome of those processes, Hogsett said.

In a separate statement, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said he has filed a motion requesting a special prosecutor for the police shooting of 21-year-old Dreasjon Reed, who was killed May 6 following a police chase.

We believe it is important that an independent prosecutor enter the process now to ensure that they can provide an outside review throughout the investigation, Mears said.

The second fatal police shooting happened in the early morning hours of May 7.

IMPD Chief Randal Taylor said during a briefing that it appeared to be an ambush on police because the 911 call that took police to the residence appeared to come from the shooters phone.

The shooter, identified by coroners as 19-year-old McHale Rose, opened fire on police shortly after they arrived. Four officers returned fire, killing him on the scene.

Taylor said it wasnt clear if it was related to Reeds death just hours before.

Two people hold a Black Lives Matter flag at the corner of Michigan Road and 62nd Street on May 7. (Photo/Tyler Fenwick)
Shameless opportunists are buying up supplies of personal protective equipment and hiking prices by as much as 10,000 times, a Mail investigation has found.

Care homes and NHS trusts have seen their costs pushed up by millions of pounds as they desperately seek out fresh sources of the vital safety kit.

Today we reveal how UK-based middlemen, some of whom never supplied PPE before the pandemic, have increased prices massively to cash in on the demand for gowns, masks and coveralls.

In one example, disposable gowns which once cost 2p are being sold online for 2 a time  a rise of almost 10,000 per cent. The scandal shows just how vital the Mail Force charity has become  with its commitment to supplying care homes and hospitals with kit free of charge and sourced directly from the manufacturers.

Shameless opportunists are buying up supplies of personal protective equipment and hiking prices by as much as 10,000 times, a Mail investigation has found.

Care UK, one of Britains largest care providers, said it had spent an extra 2million buying PPE from private companies.

A spokesman said: We have been inundated with enquiries from suppliers that we have never heard of before trying to sell us PPE  with prices ranging from reasonable to extortionate. Weve incurred almost 2million of extra costs as a result.

The Mails investigations team contacted three UK-based suppliers after care home bosses told us they had been targeted by cowboys charging criminal mark-ups. One of the three, a London-based IT supplies firm which has moved into supplying PPE, was blunt about being opportunistic.

A manager at the company, which has revenues of 64million, said it had bought hundreds of thousands of masks at the beginning of the outbreak which it was shipping to Britain via Holland.

He told us: This is an opportunistic situation. Were not really a face mask or glove distributor, but in this case we made an exception.

We sell IT equipment most of the time, but now there is this crisis so there was an insane demand and we decided to do a couple of substantial purchases of masks. We had liquid cash that meant we could buy them at the beginning.

The Mail was quoted a price of 68p per type IIR fluid-repellent surgical mask, a mark-up of 353 per cent on the average December price of 15p, and a pair of disposable gloves for 18p, a 200 per cent increase on December's 6p price.

Netherlands is one of the exceptions in Europe [where you dont need a permit to export] and we have 400,000 masks there, the IT manager said.

Hospitals up and down the country have been left in desperately short supply of PPE

Another supplier  a luxury lifestyle concierge firm based in west London  told us: Whatever our clients want, well get it  whether thats PPE or 25 chihuahuas.

The company, which usually supplies its wealthy clients with staff for their yachts and private jets, promises on its website that customers can avoid waiting lists.

It brokers prices on behalf of a UK distributor, and quoted FFP2 filtering masks for 2.80, a 124 per cent mark-up on the average December price of 1.25, and hand sanitiser for 1.10 a bottle, 242 per cent up on December.

The PPE items came with a minimum spend of 2,800 from the IT firm and 1,320 via the concierge firm. Our undercover reporter was sent safety standard certificates which showed many of the PPE items were made in China and Turkey.

However, there is no way of knowing if they are genuine. The Mail also spoke to a medical supplies firm in Yorkshire. It told us: With face masks, we used to sell them for as low as 2.50 a box, now they are 45.

Type IIR surgical masks cost 90p, up 500 per cent on the 15p December average. The firm admitted prices were exorbitantly high but blamed it on hikes further down the line. Mark Ellison, owner of Temple Grove care home near Uckfield, East Sussex, said: Some of the mark-ups are criminal.

Theres a huge swathe of pop-up suppliers taking orders from people at as much as ten or 20 times the cost. They then order the stock from China but there is no guarantee it will arrive and if it does it takes around four weeks.

There are thousands of these cowboys and theyre not being held responsible. Its the wild west out there trying to find legitimate suppliers.

Karl Silvester, who runs Awarding Care, which assists 170 adults in the West Midlands, said he may be forced to close due to price hikes.

With his usual supplier having limited itself to the NHS, Mr Silvester contacted a number of firms but found plastic aprons, which were typically 2p an item, had been hiked to 2  an increase of 9,900 per cent.

Shortly after lockdown was announced on March 23, Boris Johnson warned those caught hiking prices would be fined, stating in his press conference two days later: I do not want to see people profiteering, people exploiting peoples need at a critical time. So far, not a single supplier has been fined.

... but it's joy for veterans who join VE Day party - thanks to your generosity

In blazing sunshine, these veterans celebrated the anniversary of VE Day yesterday with a party they feared would never take place.

After weeks of being confined to their rooms in a home, they sang wartime songs and drank bubbly.

They were able to mark the poignant occasion after their carers received vital protective kit from Mail Force  equipment that allowed staff to safely put on a socially distanced party for 20 residents in the homes dining hall  renamed Victory Street for the day.

Veterans drank Spitfire beer and enjoyed special picnic hampers filled with the type of sandwiches and treats served on streets across Britain on VE Day in 1945. Wearing newsprint hats, they toasted the Queen and sang Vera Lynns wartime hit Well Meet Again.

The veterans, who live at the Blind Veterans UK home near Brighton, also went out to hear a Spitfire flypast organised by the Daily Mail roar over three times at 1.15pm.

Jim Hooper, 98, a former staff sergeant in the Glider Pilot Regiment who fought at Arnhem, said: I thought we would have to mark VE Day in our rooms. Everyone really has gone to a great deal of effort to make sure we could celebrate.

Staff at the care home for former servicemen and women who have lost their sight had three gowns left when Mail Force arrived with bodysuits and masks a week ago.

Without this PPE, carers would not have been able to move safely between the isolated residents who have Covid-19 and those who were allowed out of their rooms for yesterdays party.

Jacqueline Ede, rehab services manager, said: The extra PPE supplied by Mail Force has given our staff the confidence to be able to put on todays party safely.

Residents also heard a message from the charitys boss Nick Caplin, who said the Mail did a magnificent piece in their Monday newspaper on the spirit of our veterans.

One reader gives 100,000, as donations set to top 2million

One Daily Mail reader has donated an astonishing 100,000 to a new fund to buy protective kit for NHS and care staff.

Moved by the challenges facing our health workers, the anonymous reader decided to make the generous pledge yesterday.

It means that you have now donated at least 1.7million to Mail Force  a separate charity which is leading a campaign to make sure there is enough personal protective equipment (PPE) on the front line.

That astonishing total is expected to surge past the 2million mark because there are another 4,000 of your letters which are yet to be opened. More volunteers have been drafted in to keep up with the staggering number of cheques you have sent.

The Mail Force Charity has so far opened 17,000 envelopes, containing donations which amount to almost 900,000

HERE'S HOW TO DONATE Mail Force Charity has been launched with one aim to help support NHS staff, volunteers and care workers fight back against Covid-1 in the UK. Mail Force is a separate charity established and supported by the Daily Mail and General Trust. The money raised will fund essential equipment required by the NHS and care workers. This equipment is vital in protecting the heroic staff whilst they perform their fantastic work in helping the UK overcome this pandemic. If we raise more money than is needed for vital Covid-1 equipment, we will apply all funds to support the work of the NHS in other ways. Click the button below to make a donation: DONATE NOW If the button is not visible, click here Advertisement

So far an incredible 37,000 of you have donated to the charity, which was set up by the Mail and its partners almost two weeks ago. The Mail Force Charity has so far opened 17,000 envelopes, containing donations which amount to almost 900,000.

More than 16,000 of you have pledged 685,000 using the online fundraising page, bringing the overall total from readers to at least 1.7million, including the 100,000 anonymously donated yesterday.

The astonishing donations from readers, combined with philanthropists and corporate partners, has helped the fund grow to 6.4million in total.

Many of the cheques came with heartfelt letters expressing gratitude to the key workers. Ann Davey, from Plymouth, Devon, wrote: I am so thrilled you have taken on supplying PPE to our hospitals that I immediately wanted to contribute. Thank you for this initiative.

Many of you wrote to say you had donated money you had saved because your usual activities have been curtailed during lockdown. Joan Harris, from Wigan in Greater Manchester, wrote: Both my husband and I are pensioners and we often treat ourselves to tea and cakes at our local cafe.

Because we cant do this, we are donating the money we have saved to this wonderful charity. The campaign has been backed by leading figures in British industry, as well as a host of household names.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and two former prime ministers  Sir John Major and Gordon Brown  have offered their support to the charity drive, along with Sir Cliff Richard and Sir Michael Caine.

Thanks to the generous public support for Mail Force, plans are under way for the charity to bring further airlifts of PPE to Britain.

Click HERE to find out how you can still donate.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 14:48:21|Editor: huaxia

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SYDNEY, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Many Australians could still be jobless by next Christmas, the country's central bank warned in a dire economic outlook on Friday, as the impact of COVID-19 continued to be felt around the world.

In a Quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) predicted that unemployment would remain as high as 9 percent by the end of this year, and that the economy would contract by 6 percent.

According to the report, the RBA expects Australia's economy to contract by 10 percent over the first half of 2020, marking the country's first recession in nearly three decades, before beginning to recover in the second half of this year.

"In many other economies, the most intense phase of the contraction is likely to occur in the June quarter," the report said.

"Gradual recoveries should follow in the second half of the year, supported by the easing of restrictions and the significant expansion in both fiscal and monetary policies."

Like many countries, Australia initiated strict lockdown and social distancing measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, with the number of confirmed cases relatively stable at over 6,800, the Australian government on Friday released a three-step plan to ease the restrictions in coming months.

A slower recovery in retail spending was expected, reflecting an expected hesitance by consumers to venture out, as well as a 17 percent slump in housing investment over the same period, which wasn't expected to return to positive territory until mid 2021.

The report pointed to China as being in a more advanced stage of recovery which has been impacted by the virus early than other countries -- noting that the country's economy experienced a bounce in industrial production and fixed asset investment spending. Enditem
NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Friday



termed the death of 14 migrant workers in the Aurangabad train accident as heart-wrenching and said the Centre must work closely in unison with state governments to ensure labourers reach their homes safely.

His party colleagues, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and Water Resources Minister Jayant Patil, also expressed shock over the deaths of migrant workers in the train accident which took place in the early hours of Friday near Karmad in Aurangabad district.

These workers, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, were walking to their villages and slept off on the rail tracks out of exhaustion when they were run over by a goods train, an official said.

He said all of them were employed in a steel manufacturing plant in Jalna, a district adjoining Aurangabad in central Maharashtra.

Pawar said the issue of migrants walking back to their native places must be looked into seriously and all necessary steps be taken for their safe journeys.

of migrants losing their lives in the Aurangabad railway accident is heart-wrenching. Issue of migrants walking on foot to go back to their hometowns must be looked into seriously and all necessary steps must be taken for their safe travel, Pawar tweeted.

Central Government must work closely in unison with the state governments to ensure that these migrants reach their homes safely. My Condolences to families of the deceased, may their souls rest in peace, he added.

The former Union minister said contractors/employers should take care of workers from the unorganised sector if the latter are leaving towns fearing loss of jobs.

The state governments too should form flying squads to take care of their (workers) needs consistently. The Centre and state governments should come together and solve the problem immediately, he said on the micro-blogging site.

Deshmukh, in his message, said the entire state is part of the grief of the kin of the deceased workers.

The accidental deaths of 14 workers, who worked in Jalna, in Aurangabad at dawn on Friday is quite shocking for the entire Maharashtra.

Entire Maharashtra is part of the grief of the family of the workers. Prayers to God for giving peace to the souls of the deceased and courage to their kin, Deshmukh tweeted.

Water Resources Minister Patil said the of the tragedy has left him numb.

Worker brothers, the government is making all efforts (to help you) reach your villages. Please do not travel risking your lives, Patil urged on Twitter.

NCP MP Supriya Sule also expressed grief over the accident.

Deeply Saddened to hear about the demise of 14 Migrant workers in Aurangabad early this morning in a Train Accident. My Heartfelt Condolences, the Parliamentarian said on the micro-blogging site.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Look at the bright side of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas being forced to wipe out its live events in the 2020 coronavirus crisis: There is an early start to the stimulating Ideas portion of the schedule. Of course, it is being presented online this spring, but what isnt?

The meaty Ideas events get rolling Tuesday, May 12, and continue through Friday, June 26, with a worthy theme of Democracy: We the People.

While you cant see them in person, you can attend them safely via computer, and the presentations are interactive as they bring together vital thinkers and doers to address and engage with national and international issues through the microcosm of the culturally rich, diverse and complex communities of New Haven, according to an A&I release.

Not that the topic of democracy wasnt compelling (and under fire) before, but it has gained importance during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has laid bare government and medical shortcomings and further imperiled at-risk demographics.

On the schedule in the first several events are 2012 Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, NEA Big Read author Stephanie Burt and writer Anand Giridharadas.

While much of A&Is prep work for the June festival was spoiled, a series of public forums months ago around the concept of democracy laid the groundwork for this years Ideas programming  evolving due to the current moment of crisis and change. And New Haven is ideally suited to explore big topics due to its diverse demographics.

The United States was founded on both freedom and slavery, human rights and genocide, said festival Co-Directors Liz Fisher and Tom Griggs in the release. Our country is still coping with the contradictions of its founding, while grappling with very real and intractable issues in the present.

We believe that connection is more important than ever as we experience this unprecedented situation together. The festivals Ideas programming invites our New Haven community to consider some of the most important questions facing our nation: How do we celebrate our shared humanity, even with those with whom we vehemently disagree? How do we engage with the promise of democracy and the American Dream? Who does it serve and who is left out? How can we pursue a just, joyful, and liberated society?

Heres a partial list of upcoming Ideas events, which are free and being livestreamed on artidea.org, YouTube.com/artsideasct and Facebook.com/artidea.

On Tuesday, May 12, at 7 p.m., a panel of artists/activists will explore Songwriting as Radical Imagination; An Activist Songbook Discussion. Key among them will be Activist Songbook composer Byron Au Yong and lyricist Aaron Jafferis as a panel of New Haven activists and nationally recognized organizers including Kit Yan & Melissa Li, co-creators of Interstate, discuss how music can be a tool to effect change at every level of our democracy.

On Wednesday, May 13, at 7 p.m., Stephanie Burt in Conversation will serve as kick-off for the annual NEA Big Read with poet Burt in conversation about her book Advice From The Lights (Graywolf Press, 2017). Burt is also a literary critic and professor whose other collections of poems include Belmont and Parallel Play. (Each year, the New Haven Free Public Library curates a collection of books, movies, music, and other media that reflect the diversity of Arts & Ideas programming, including titles relating to this years NEA Big Read book by Burt.)

On May 19 at 7 p.m., the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Time Editor-at-Large Anand Giridharadas, will be featured in the discussion Wealth in Our Democracy. In his book, Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also suggests an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. Giridharadas others books include The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nations Remaking.

And on May 26 at 7 p.m. will be the Ideas event Cultivating Hope: The Role of Artists in Democracy, in which 2012 Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco is joined by Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse and Founder of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC and New Haven native Katy Rubin, who reflect on their roles as mediators and responders during times of great social challenge.

Other events will be online in June, including the first of several in the Constitution Cafe Series, starting June 3 at 5 p.m. with The Role of Government During Pandemic.
Shelling from rebel forces in Libya hit near the Turkish and Italian embassies late last night, Reuters reported. The embattled Tripoli government continues to hold on to the capital amid the rebel offensive and support for both sides from regional rivals in the region.

Libyan strongman Gen. Khalifa Hifters Libyan National Army (LNA) controls most of eastern Libya and made a renewed effort to take Tripoli in March. Hifter receives support from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia. Their opponent, the Government of National Accord (GNA), is recognized by the United Nations and receives support from Turkey. However, it only controls Tripoli and some other parts in the northwest. Libya has been in a state of conflict since the successful NATO-backed armed rebellion against longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

At the European Commission daily press briefing Friday, EU foreign policy spokesman Peter Stano said at least nine people have been killed in various attacks in Tripoli in the past two days.

The embassies are in a central district of Tripoli and the targeting of this area could be an expansion of Hifters offensive. A missile also struck next to the Turkish Embassy and shells hit Tripolis port, prompting the UN to cancel a mission to help rescued migrants at sea, according to Reuters.

Italy strongly condemned the shelling, which it said targeted civilians and killed two near the ambassadors house.

Italy strongly condemns yet another attack by Haftar forces against civilians which also hit the area around the Italian Ambassador's residence causing at least two deaths, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a tweet. These attacks are unacceptable and denote contempt for international law and human life.

Shelling near the Turkish Embassy is significant because of Turkeys prominent role in supporting the GNA. Turkey, a NATO member active in Syria, provides considerable military support to the government, which has helped it stave off Hifters recent push to take the capital. The GNAs use of Turkish drones, for example, has helped it achieve recent success on the battlefield.
From Kenya to Argentina, untold millions who were already struggling to get by on the economic margins have had their lives made even harder by pandemic lockdowns, layoffs and the loss of a chance to earn from a hard day's work.

More than four out of five people in the global labor force of 3.3 billion have been hit by full or partial workplace closures, according to the International Labor Organization, which says 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.

The toll for families is hunger and poverty that are either newfound or even more grinding than before. Hunkering down at home to ride out the crisis isn't an option for many, because securing the next meal means hustling to find a way to sell, clean, drive or otherwise work, despite the risk.

How the world's poor get through this pandemic will help determine how quickly the global economy recovers and how much aid is needed to keep countries afloat.

In Kenya, Judith Andeka has seen tough times before.

The 33-year-old mother of five lost her husband two years ago and was left to make ends meet on just $2.50 to $4 a day from washing clothes in Nairobi's Kibera, one of the world's biggest slums.

But things were never as tough as they are now. Neighbors aren't going to work because of restrictions on movement, so they can't afford her services. Even if they could, they don't want her handling their laundry due to virus concerns.

I haven't had a good day for the last two weeks, Andeka said. She's been forced to send all five kids to live with relatives who are slightly better off: I had no choice, because how do you tell a 2-year-old you have no food to give them?



In Argentina, Rosemary Pez Carabajal pushed a coffee cart on the streets of Argentina's capital, until the lockdown forced her to stop.

Pez Carabajal, her blacksmith husband who's also out of work and their two children rent a single room in a two-story brick building for the equivalent of $119 a month.

Now the cart sits idle in the hall, and the home is stacked with textbooks as the couple try to home-school their lone school-age child, a 7-year-old son.

They are dipping into meager savings and relying on a one-time government aid voucher worth about $150. For now, their landlord is not collecting rent.

Pez Carabajal worries her small business may not survive even after restrictions are eased.

People are going to have doubts about buying because the disease is transmitted by grabbing things, she said.

The coronavirus came at a time of already painful recession in Argentina, with more than a third of its 44 million residents in poverty, according to figures from late 2019. Some 3 million have requested food aid in recent weeks, adding to the 8 million getting such assistance before the pandemic.

In Cairo, the sprawling and bustling metropolis of some 20 million people, the ahwa, or coffee shop, was among the first casualties of a shutdown order for many Egyptian businesses.

No longer were they allowed to offer sheesha, the hookah waterpipe so popular in the Middle East. Before long they were closed altogether.

That cost Hany Hassan his job. He hadn't been making much $5 a day but it was enough to feed his family.

We are financially ruined, said the 40-year-old father of four. Unable to find work in a relatively pricey Cairo he could no longer afford, he moved back to family in his hometown of Mallawi, about 190 miles (300 kilometers) to the south.

But his chances for work there are even dimmer. Chronic back pain means he can't do the manual labor jobs many people work in the provinces.

Jobless for over a month, he goes out daily looking for work but comes back empty-handed every night. To keep afloat, he's borrowed money.

Before the pandemic, one in three Egyptians or roughly 33 million people were living on about $1.45 per day, and around 6% were in extreme poverty, or living on less than a dollar a day, according to the country's official statistics agency.

The government has created an emergency fund for vulnerable people, offering the equivalent of around $32 a month.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The move was of great significance, reflecting Vietnams solidarity and willingness to share Frances difficulties in the joint battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

These medical supplies were gifts from the State Committee on Overseas Vietnamese Affairs, the Hanoi Peoples Committee, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, the Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) and the Vina Mask Company to the France-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians' Groups at the Senate (upper house) and the National Assembly (lower house) of the French parliament, the French Communist Party, the France-Vietnam Friendship Association, the Ile-de-France region, the Association of Vietnamese People in France (AVPF), the Vietnamese Students Association in France, and the cities of Paris, Choisy-le-Roi and Montreuil.

Representatives of the French Communist Party receive the gift from Vietnam.



The masks were transported by Vietnam Airlines to France on May 5, on a flight which was aimed at bringing Vietnamese citizens in special circumstances home.

According to Vietnamese Ambassador to France Nguyen Thiep, French friends were very touched by the spirit of solidarity and mutual affection of the Vietnamese people.

LHumanite newspaper, the organ of the French Communist Party, expressed emotion at Vietnams first aid to France, affirming that the move would bring the two nations closer together.

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep hands over medical masks to Stephanie Do, chairwoman of the France-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians' Group at the French National Assembly (lower house).



Stephanie Do, chairwoman of the France-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarians' Group at the French National Assembly, voiced her gratitude for Vietnams timely assistance to the French people. She stated that the made-in-Vietnam masks would soon be delivered to elderly people in French localities.

Chairman of the AVPF Vuong Huu Nhan said that medical masks are scarce in France at present, adding that, over recent times, the association has been striving to seek for supply sources to distribute to its elderly people or the infected. Assistance from the Vietnamese Embassy holds a significant and practical meaning, contributing to easing the worries of overseas Vietnamese, because masks will be compulsory in many public venues after France loosens lockdown measures.

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep presents masks to the Vietnamese Students' Association in France.



France is one of the Western countries heavily affected by COVID-19. As of May 7, the number of cases confirmed by testing was 137,779 and the number of deaths reached 25,987. It is expected that from May 11, socio-economic activities in France will gradually be resumed, following eight weeks of national lockdown. As planned, the Vietnamese Embassy will continue to present medical masks to the French people next week.
Nepal police on Friday arrested 45 Chinese nationals stranded in the country because of coronavirus restrictions after a protest turned violent, authorities said.

Holding placards such as "I want to go home!" they attempted to push towards a prohibited zone near the prime minister's office in Kathmandu.

Some police as well as demonstrators were injured after police used batons to stop them and the protesters threw stones.

"They may face charges of protesting in the restricted zone and violating the lockdown under existing laws," police spokeswoman Kiran Bajracharya told AFP. Nepal suspended international flights on March 22 as part of precautionary measures against the spread of the coronavirus, and remain so until at least May 31.

While several countries, including the US, the UK, Australia and France have chartered evacuation flights for their citizens in Nepal, no official flights have been made to rescue stranded Chinese nationals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
File photo

According to PREMIUM TIMES, officials of Bauchi State government are on the trail of two COVID-19 patients who escaped the isolation center to unknown locations some days ago, government sources have said.

It was gathered that an unnamed 25-year-old man, who was admitted at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital isolation after he tested positive to the COVID-19 virus suddenly disappeared.

In the same vein, a 12-year-old Almaniri child, who tested positive to the new coronavirus after he was repatriated from Kano, also found his way out of the camp where he and over 400 others were placed in isolation.

This development was confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES by Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Rilwan Mohammed.

Mr Mohammed, however, clarified that while the almajiris teenager has been traced and returned to the centre, officials including security personnel are still on the trail of the other escapee.



Yes, there were cases of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 who ran away from the isolation centres where they were being treated and managed.

One is a 12-year-old almajiri that was brought back to Bauchi from Kano State and he tested positive, he said.

Adding that the boy ran away from the Isolation Center and went back to Dass town (in Dass Local Government Area) where he is originally from.

We were informed about it and we, in turn, told the Emir of Dass about it and his location was confirmed immediately. So, one of our Directors led a team who used an ambulance and went and brought him back. He ran three days ago (Tuesday) and we brought him back that same day.

The PHCDA Executive Director confirmed that intelligence gathered by security officials confirmed that the 25 years old COVID-19 patient ran to a village in Darazo local government.

The other patient ran to Konkiyel village. He also ran away from the Isolation Center. He was positive and was on treatment at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital here in Bauchi.

He is 25 years old and he ran away and went back to Darazo. We have not yet gotten him and we gave the Police and the SSS Personal Protective Gears, they know where he is and they will go and bring him back.

Since March 24, when the Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, became the index case, the state has recorded 102 confirmed cases out of which six, including the governor, have been discharged.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Endeavour Silver Corp. (NYSE: EXK; TSX: EDR) released its financial results today for the three months ended March 31, 2020. The Company operates three silver-gold mines in Mexico: the Guanacevi mine in Durango state, the Bolanitos mine in Guanajuato state and the El Compas mine in Zacatecas state.

Bradford Cooke, Endeavour CEO, commented, We are gratified to see that our operational performance improved significantly in the First Quarter, compared to both Q1 and Q4, 2019, in-line with our guidance prior to the government mandated suspension of mining operations. Notably, consolidated cash cost declined 37% year on year, reflecting the success of our operational turn-around and transition to higher grade orebodies at Guanacevi. All-in sustaining cost fell 5%, reflecting the elevated sustaining capex we invested to achieve a similar turn-around at Bolanitos over the next three months.

Almost half of our net loss was due to the 25% devaluation of the Mexican peso, which devalued our receivables and caused a deferred income tax expense. Other extraordinary items included elevated care and maintenance costs at El Cubo which will decline going forward, and high mine depletion due to short reserve lives. Since the Mexican government has decreed that suspended businesses located in municipalities with low or no COVID-19 cases can start up again May 18, and each of our three mines are located in such municipalities, we are looking forward to putting our mines back into production in May.

2020 First Quarter Highlights

Revenue : Total $21.9 million from the sale of 665,500 oz of silver and 7,454 oz gold at average realized prices of $15.33 per oz silver and $1,633 per oz gold.





Cash Flow : Negative $5.0 million cash flow from operations before working capital changes as the Company accumulated finished goods, invested in exploration activities and incurred a significant foreign exchange expense from the depreciation of the Mexican peso.



Net Income : Loss $15.9 million ($0.11 per share) due to reduced sales, increased depreciation and depletion related to current short reserve lives and significant foreign exchange expense as the depreciation of the Mexican peso impacts the value of VAT receivables and other working capital accounts. EBITDA(1) was negative $6.7 million.



Balance Sheet : Cash position $15.0 million and working capital $27.2 million. Only term liabilities are equipment loans of $11.5 million to upgrade mobile fleet.



Metal Production: Produced 857,659 oz silver and 8,476 oz gold, in line with guidance prior to government mandated suspension of mining operations, for 1.5 million oz silver equivalent (AgEq) at an 80:1 silver:gold ratio (January) or 1.8 million oz AgEq at 110:1 ratio (current).

Story continues

Operating Costs: Cash cost(1) $7.85 per oz payable silver and all-in sustaining cost (AISC)(1) $18.38 per oz payable silver, both net of gold credits. Cash cost was substantially lower than Q1, 2019 due to reduced operating costs at Guanacevi, partly offset by increased operating costs at El Compas and the suspension of El Cubo. AISC was slightly lower than Q1, 2019 a result of lower operating costs partly offset by, increased exploration costs and elevated capital expenditures at Guanacevi and Bolanitos.

Guanacevi Outperformed Plan: Operating costs declined and productivity improved with rising production, tonnes and grades due to the operational turnaround and transition to mining the new, higher-grade El Curso, Milache and SCS orebodies.

Advanced Terronera Project : Conducting a final PFS optimization in-house working with an independent engineering firm to achieve enhanced economics.



Continued Exploration Success: Positive exploration drill results at Guanacevi and Bolanitos

(1) Mine operating cash flow, cash costs and all-in sustaining costs are non-IFRS measures. Please refer to the definitions in the Companys Management Discussion & Analysis.

Financial Overview

In Q1 2020, revenue decreased 22% to $21.9 million as a result of 18% lower silver equivalent production year on year due the suspension of operations at the El Cubo mine and the accumulation of metal inventory partly offset by higher gold prices compared to 2019. As a result of the lower production, mine operating cash flows, operating cash flows and EBITDA all decreased compared to Q1, 2019. The Company recognized a loss of $15.9 million compared to a loss of $13.3 million in Q1, 2019.

Cost of sales for Q1, 2020 was $24.8 million, a decrease of 27% over the cost of sales of $33.8 million for the same period of 2019. The 27% decrease was primarily related to the 20% decrease in tonnes processed, carrying larger finished goods inventory and implementing cost cutting and efficiency measures in 2019. The goals of the 2019 remedial actions were to reduce operating costs and generate free cash flow at current metal prices. Management notes that these actions have had a very positive impact on Guanacevi mine operating performance and a similar turn around is underway but not yet finished at Bolanitos. Management continued to invest in long term viability of the mines with additional equipment purchases, accelerated mine development and increased site exploration.

The Company recognized a foreign exchange loss of $4.9 million in Q1, 2020 compared to a foreign exchange loss of $0.4 million in Q1, 2019 due to the depreciation of the Mexican Peso which resulted in lower valuations of peso denominated tax receivables and cash balances. The Mexican Peso depreciated more than 25% due to the global COVID crisis.

Financial Results (Consolidated Statement of Operations Appended Below)

For the period ended March 31, 2020, the Company generated net revenue totaling $21.9 million (Q1, 2019 - $28.0 million). During the period, the Company sold 665,500 silver oz sold and 7,454 oz gold at realized prices of $15.33 and $1,633 per oz respectively, compared to sales of 1,069,385 oz silver and 9,559 oz gold at realized prices of $15.50 and $1,315 per oz respectively in the same period of 2019. The Company increased its finished goods silver and gold inventory to 279,320 silver oz and 1,452 gold oz, respectively at March 31, 2020 compared to 95,028 oz silver and 587 oz gold held at December 31, 2019.

After cost of sales of $24.8 million (Q1, 2019 - $33.8 million), mine operating losses amounted to a $2.9 million (Q1, 2019  loss of $5.8 million) from mining and milling operations in Mexico.

Excluding depreciation and depletion of $6.0 million (Q1, 2019 - $7.1 million), stock-based compensation of $0.1 million (Q1, 2019- $0.1 million) and the inventory write off of $1.1 million (Q1, 2019- $3.2 million) mine operating cash flow before taxes was $4.3 million in Q1, 2020 (Q1, 2019  $4.6 million). Operating losses were $8.6 million (Q1, 2019  loss of $12.2 million) after exploration expenditures of $2.4 million (Q1, 2019  $2.3 million), general and administrative expense of $2.0 million (Q1, 2019  $3.0 million) and El Cubo care and maintenance costs of $1.3 million. Net loss amounted to $15.9 million (loss of $0.11 per share) compared to a net loss of $13.3 million (loss of $0.10 per share) in Q1, 2019.

Current income tax expense decreased to $0.3 million (Q1 2019  $0.7 million), while a deferred income tax expense of $1.8 million was recognized due to depreciation the Mexican peso against the US dollar reducing the value of recognized loss carry forwards (Q1 2019  recovery of $0.4 million).

Direct production costs per tonne in Q1, 2020 decreased 4% compared with Q1, 2019 due to improved operating cost at Guanacevi, offset by the higher cost of El Compas and the suspension of El Cubo.

Consolidated cash costs per oz, net of by-product credits (a non-IFRS measure and a standard of the Silver Institute) decreased to $7.85 primarily due to lower operating costs per tonne, higher gold grade and the higher realized gold price compared to the same period in 2019. All-in sustaining costs (also a non-IFRS measure) compared to Q1, 2019, decreased 5% to $18.38 per oz in Q1, 2020. This decrease in allin sustaining costs was a result of lower operating costs partly offset by increased exploration at each operation and increased capital expenditures at Guanacevi and Bolanitos.

The Condensed Consolidated Interim Financial Statements and Managements Discussion & Analysis can be viewed on the Companys website at www.edrsilver.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov. All amounts are reported in US$.

Conference Call

A conference call to discuss these results will be held today, Friday, May 8 at 10am PDT (1pm EDT). To participate in the conference call, please dial the numbers below. No pass-code is necessary.

Toll-free in Canada and the US: 1-800-319-4610

Local Vancouver: 604-638-5340

Outside of Canada and the US: +-604-638-5340

A replay of the conference call will be available by dialing 1-800-319-6413 in Canada and the US (toll-free) or +604-638-9010 outside of Canada and the US. The required pass-code is 4368#. The replay will also be available on the Companys website at www.edrsilver.com.

About Endeavour Silver  Endeavour Silver Corp. is a mid-tier precious metals mining company that owns and operates three high-grade, underground, silver-gold mines in Mexico. Endeavour is currently advancing the Terronera mine project towards a development decision and exploring its portfolio of exploration and development projects in Mexico and Chile to facilitate its goal to become a premier senior silver producer. Our philosophy of corporate social integrity creates value for all stakeholders.

SOURCE Endeavour Silver Corp.



Contact Information:

Galina Meleger, Director Investor Relations

Toll free: (877) 685-9775

Tel: (604) 640-4804

Email: gmeleger@edrsilver.com

Website: www.edrsilver.com

Follow Endeavour Silver on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States private securities litigation reform act of 1995 and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forwardlooking statements and information herein include but are not limited to statements regarding Endeavours anticipated performance in 2020 including changes in mining operations and production levels, the timing and results of various activities and the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on operations. The Company does not intend to and does not assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements or information, other than as required by applicable law.

Forward-looking statements or information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, production levels, performance or achievements of Endeavour and its operations to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such factors include but are not limited to the ultimate impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on operations and results, changes in production and costs guidance, national and local governments, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada and Mexico; financial risks due to precious metals prices, operating or technical difficulties in mineral exploration, development and mining activities; risks and hazards of mineral exploration, development and mining; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, risks in obtaining necessary licenses and permits, and challenges to the Companys title to properties; as well as those factors described in the section risk factors contained in the Companys most recent form 40F/Annual Information Form filed with the S.E.C. and Canadian securities regulatory authorities.

Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to: the continued operation of the Companys mining operations, no material adverse change in the market price of commodities, mining operations will operate and the mining products will be completed in accordance with managements expectations and achieve their stated production outcomes, and such other assumptions and factors as set out herein. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or information, there may be other factors that cause results to be materially different from those anticipated, described, estimated, assessed or intended. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements or information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.





ENDEAVOUR SILVER CORP.

COMPARATIVE HIGHLIGHTS

Q1 2020 Highlights Three Months Ended March 31 2020 2019 % Change Production Silver ounces produced 857,659 1,071,355 (20%) Gold ounces produced 8,476 10,055 (16%) Payable silver ounces produced 849,791 1,050,215 (19%) Payable gold ounces produced 8,320 9,809 (15%) Silver equivalent ounces produced 1,535,739 1,875,755 (18%) Cash costs per silver ounce 7.85 12.55 (37%) Total production costs per ounce 16.35 20.12 (19%) All-in sustaining costs per ounce 18.38 19.37 (5%) Processed tonnes 199,327 246,519 (19%) Direct production costs per tonne 101.63 105.84 (4%) Silver co-product cash costs 11.51 13.56 (15%) Gold co-product cash costs 1,226 1,150 7% Financial Revenue ($ millions) 21.9 28.0 (22%) Silver ounces sold 665,500 1,069,385 (38%) Gold ounces sold 7,454 9,559 (22%) Realized silver price per ounce 15.33 15.50 (1%) Realized gold price per ounce 1,633 1,315 24%) Net earnings (loss) ($ millions) (15.9 ) (13.3 ) (20%) Mine operating earnings ($ millions) (2.9 ) (5.8 ) 50% Mine operating cash flow ($ millions) 4.3 4.6 (8%) Operating cash flow before working capital changes (5.0 ) (2.1 ) (133%) Earnings before ITDA ($ millions) (6.7 ) (4.6 ) (46%) Working capital ($ millions) 27.2 46.8 (42%) Shareholders Earnings (loss) per share  basic (0.11 ) (0.10 ) (10%) Operating cash flow before working capital changes per share (0.04 ) (0.02 ) (100%) Weighted average shares outstanding 141,810,208 131,395,790 8%

The above highlights are key measures used by management, however they should not be the sole measures used in determining the performance of the Companys operations. The related definitions and reconciliations are contained in the Management Discussion and Analysis.





ENDEAVOUR SILVER CORP.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

(expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars)

Three months ended March 31, March 31, 2020 2019 Operating activities Net earnings (loss) for the period $ (15,926 ) $ (13,278 ) Items not affecting cash: Share-based compensation 745 999 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,268 7,227 Deferred income tax expense (recovery) 1,864 (350 ) Unrealized foreign exchange loss (gain) 654 (4 ) Finance costs 311 92 Write down of inventory to net realizable value 1,042 3,212 Loss on asset disposal 78 - Unrealized loss (gain) on other investments (7 ) (28 ) Net changes in non-cash working capital 2,622 (6,704 ) Cash from (used in) operating activities (2,349 ) (8,834 ) Investing activities Proceeds on disposal of property, plant and equipment 27 - Mineral property, plant and equipment expenditures (5,512 ) (3,923 ) Intangible asset expenditures - (203 ) Cash used in investing activities (5,485 ) (4,126 ) Financing activities Repayment of loans payable (772 ) (100 ) Repayment of lease liabilities (43 ) (71 ) Interest paid (218 ) (21 ) Public equity offerings 1,485 1,572 Exercise of options 12 - Share issuance costs (74 ) (65 ) Cash from financing activities 390 1,315 Effect of exchange rate change on cash and cash equivalents (934 ) 45 Decrease in cash and cash equivalents (7,444 ) (11,645 ) Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of the year 23,368 33,376 Cash and cash equivalents, end of the period $ 14,990 $ 21,776

This statement should be read in conjunction with the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the period ended March 31, 2020 and the related notes contained therein.





ENDEAVOUR SILVER CORP.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS)

(expressed in thousands of US dollars, except for shares and per share amounts)

Three months ended March 31, March 31, 2020 2019 Revenue $ 21,927 $ 28,021 Cost of sales: Direct costs 16,800 23,072 Royalties 857 317 Share-based payments 91 55 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,023 7,116 Write down of inventory to net realizable value 1,042 3,212 24,813 33,772 Mine operating earnings (loss) (2,886 ) (5,751 ) Expenses: Exploration 2,382 2,333 General and administrative 2,005 3,042 Severance costs - 1,100 Care and maintenance costs 1,345 - 5,732 6,475 Operating earnings (loss) (8,618 ) (12,226 ) Finance costs 310 92 Other income (expense): Foreign exchange (4,917 ) (403 ) Investment and other 49 (209 ) (4,868 ) (612 ) Earnings (loss) before income taxes (13,796 ) (12,930 ) Income tax expense (recovery): Current income tax expense 266 698 Deferred income tax expense (recovery) 1,864 (350 ) 2,130 348 Net loss and comprehensive loss for the period (15,926 ) (13,278 ) Basic and diluted earnings (loss) per share based on net earnings $ (0.11 ) $ (0.10 ) Basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding 141,810,208 131,395,790

This statement should be read in conjunction with the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the period ended March 31, 2020 and the related notes contained therein.





ENDEAVOUR SILVER CORP.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION

(expressed in thousands of US dollars)

March 31, December 31, 2020 2019 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 14,990 $ 23,368 Other investments 76 69 Account and other receivables 14,225 18,572 Income tax receivable 3,328 4,378 Inventories 13,072 13,589 Prepaid expenses 5,051 3,302 Total current assets 50,742 63,278 Non-current deposits 593 606 Non-current IVA receivable 1,080 2,048 Deferred income tax asset 5,354 7,136 Intangible assets 853 975 Right-of-use leased assets 1,243 1,337 Mineral properties, plant and equipment 90,399 88,333 Total assets $ 150,264 $ 163,713 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY Current liabilities Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 18,392 $ 19,775 Income taxes payable 1,062 1,947 Loans payable 3,946 2,958 Lease liabilities 160 164 Total current liabilities 23,560 24,844 Loans payable 7,598 5,917 Lease liabilities 938 1,074 Provision for reclamation and rehabilitation 8,496 8,403 Deferred income tax liability 656 682 Total liabilities 41,248 40,920 Shareholders' equity Common shares, unlimited shares authorized, no par value, issued and outstanding 142,614,304 shares (Dec 31, 2019 - 141,668,178 shares) 483,580 482,170 Contributed surplus 12,221 11,482 Retained earnings (deficit) (386,785 ) (370,859 ) Total shareholders' equity 109,016 122,793 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 150,264 $ 163,713

This statement should be read in conjunction with the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the period ended March 31, 2020 and the related notes contained therein.
COVID-19: What you should do when you get a call from 1921

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: A telephonic survey on COVID-19 is being undertaken. You will receive a call on your mobile from the number 1921 and the Ministry of Health Affairs says that you should participate in the survey with your information.

It may be recalled that recently the government while catering to those did not have smartphones and cannot download the Aarogya Setu app implemented IVRS services.

Dial 1921 to access Aarogya Setu if you have a landline or no smart phone

For including the citizens with feature phones and landline under the protection of Aarogya Setu, the "Aarogya Setu Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS)" has been implemented. This service is available across the country. This is a toll-free service, where citizens are asked to give a missed call to the number 1921 and they will get a call back requesting for inputs regarding their health.

The questions asked are aligned with Aarogya Setu App, and based on the responses given, citizens will also get an SMS indicating their health status and also will get further alerts for their health moving forward.

The service is implemented in 11 regional languages similar to the mobile application. The input provided by the citizen will be made part of Aarogya Setu database and information is processed to send alerts to the citizen on the action to be taken to ensure their safety.

Aarogya Setu Mobile App is developed by the Ministry of Electronics and IT. It enables people to assess themselves the risk of their catching the Corona Virus infection. It will calculate this based on their interaction with others, using cutting edge Bluetooth technology, algorithms and artificial intelligence. All the citizens are urged to download the mobile application. This is designed to keep a user informed, in case she/he crosses paths with someone who has tested positive.

Get Aarogya Setu from Google, Apple App Store: Pak collecting data via fake links

The user, upon installation of Aarogya Setu, is asked to answer a number of questions. In case some of the answers suggest COVID-19 symptoms, the information will be sent to a Government server. The data will then help the Government take timely steps and initiate the isolation procedure if necessary and it also alerts if someone comes in close proximity with a person tested positive. The app is available on both Google Play (for Android phones) and iOS app store (for iphones). It is available in 11 languages-10 Indian languages and English.
LUDZIDZINI  His Majesty King Mswati III has called upon emaSwati to fumigate their homes.

He said traditionally this was known as kuchela, which was practised in the entire continent.



The King said as government was slowly easing the partial lockdown, all work spaces should be fumigated or disinfected if not kept well sanitised.



Fumigation is something we are used to in Africa, especially in Eswatini, all homes do it. Kute likhaya lelingacheli, he said.

He said if people did not have the latest equipment or machinery to fumigate, there was always a bucket and a broom that could be used. He said when people visited, each space should be fumigated and that the same process be repeated once they had exited the building. He said traditionally, this was also done to remove all evil spirits.



Kufuna uhle ukhokha yonkhe lemoya lemibi lebonakala kutsi iphathamisa live lonkhe, he said in vernacular.



Tissues



He said even door handles were not to be touched in places frequented by people, adding that they must provide tissues at the entrances.



He said there were chances that the virus could land on the frequently touched surfaces such as the door handles and elevators. He said people must not use their hands to touch frequently used surfaces because they could find themselves touching their mouths with the same hands which had been in contact with the virus which could be very dangerous.



On a similar note, the King was asked if there were any local plants or herbs which could be used in Eswatini just like Madagascar had claimed to have come up with a concoction which could fight the coronavirus. It has been discovered that a similar plant is available in Eswatini called umhlonyane. The King said there was nothing wrong with taking the traditional route because many medicines were made from plants.



It is important that when there is such a pandemic or war, you take all you can which could be of assistance to fight it, said the King.



Concoctions



He said in Eswatini the people were used to timbita or concoctions made of herbs.

He said they used plants and encouraged those who had knowledge of using the shrubs and plants to conduct their own research on its use.



The King said even the herbal teas that were used in modern ways came from plants and, therefore, there could be research conducted.



They use the plants but they modify them and colour them but it is still natural plants, he said.

The King said Madagascar had also found something and Eswatini could not sit back and watch but conduct the necessary research.
LOS ANGELES, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Childcare for the healthcare workers and hospital staff on the frontlines is an urgent problem. Jess Zaino, Founder and CEO of Ahmni Co. and Co-Founder of The Jane Club sprang into action to create a childcare solution at no cost to these essential workers. "This is something our community can do to help support our heroic First Responders and their families to ensure their childcare needs are met," said Zaino from her home in Los Angeles where she is a single mother to a five-year old.

Though being at home with their children is what most working parents are experiencing right now, school and daycare closures have complicated shift work for healthcare workers, particularly for low-income families who must scramble to find who will take care of their children. Jess Zaino, a former Television Producer, mobilized the Hollywood community with a GoFundMe campaign to provide a solution.

Working with Peerspace, a marketplace for event bookings, an available studio close to a local LA hospital was secured to create a free, temporary childcare center, compliant with the Department of Social Services daycare guidelines including social distance play and hazard pay for essential childcare workers. Child Care Coordinators at LA hospitals hit hardest by the pandemic are helping connect their essential workers with the community-funded resource.

Local businesses such as The Honest Company, Mesh Kids Co., and Babyquip provided their services and action-minded Hollywood parents Rachel Bloom, Daphne Oz and American Dad co-creator Mike Barker also jumped in to help. A micro-grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and support from The Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation strengthened the community effort.

For more information and to donate, please visit: http://ahmni.co

Ahmni Co. is a holistic childcare solution for corporate America. Creating the future workplace today with on-premises infant care and adjacent wellness space so new parent employees can return back to work gently with their baby. This employer-sponsored wellness benefit is more important than ever in a pandemic and post-pandemic world - shifting the workplace landscape in support of the "new normal".

Press Contact:

Paulette Kam

310-871-3841

[email protected]

SOURCE Ahmni Co.

Related Links

http://www.ahmni.co


Paris, France (PANA) - Top artists from across Africa and throughout the African Diaspora have joined forces with the UN cultural agency, UNESCO, to save lives and counter misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

Some 112 new coronavirus cases and one death were confirmed in Kazakhstan as of 9:30 (GMT +6) on May 8, 2020, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Healthcare Ministry.

New coronavirus cases were reported in countrys Akmola region (3 cases), Atyrau region (16 cases), Zhambyl region (2 cases), Karaganda region (3 cases), Kostanay region (2 cases), Kyzylorda region (2 cases), Mangystau region (4 cases), Turkestan region (1 case), Almaty city (72 cases) and Nur-Sultan city (7 cases).

The lethal case was reported in countrys Pavlodar region. The patient, born 1963, was admitted to the hospital on Apr. 23, 2020.

The total number of coronavirus cases confirmed in Kazakhstan since the virus was first confirmed in the country amounted to 4,690 cases. This includes 1,518 people who recovered from the coronavirus, and 31 patients who passed away.

Distribution of overall coronavirus cases in Kazakhstans regions:

Total infected Total recovered Total deaths Nur-Sultan city 905 347 3 Almaty city 1 501 331 9 Shymkent city 224 90 5 Akmola region 106 89 4 Aktobe region 172 34 Almaty region 176 45 Atyrau region 256 84 East Kazakhstan region 32 11 1 Zhambyl region 171 55 1 West Kazakhstan region 217 65 Karaganda region 180 83 3 Kostanay region 61 18 1 Kyzylorda region 225 148 Mangystau region 109 12 1 Pavlodar region 152 20 2 North Kazakhstan region 34 28 Turkestan region 169 58 1 TOTAL 4 690 1 518 31

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 World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019.

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Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
Maxar Technologies Inc. MAXR is scheduled to report first-quarter 2020 results on May 11, after the closing bell. In the last reported quarter, the company posted a negative earnings surprise of 26%.



The Westminster, CO-based company is expected to have recorded lower aggregate revenues on a year-over-year basis. The apprehension is stemming from expectations of a net decline in revenues at the Space Infrastructure segment resulting from a reduced volume in the geostationary satellite manufacturing business.



Lets discuss the factors that are likely to get reflected in the upcoming quarterly announcement.



Factors at Play



During the quarter under review, the Defence Geographic Agency of The Netherlands Ministry of Defence subscribed to Maxars cloud-based geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) platform, SecureWatch. Maxar was chosen by NASA to perform an in-space assembly demonstration using a lightweight robotic arm. The arm, named SPIDER (Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot), will be integrated with the spacecraft bus Maxar is building for NASAs Restore-L project. The companys quarterly performance is expected to have benefited from these developments.



Maxar was selected by Intelsat to manufacture Intelsat 40e, a geostationary communications satellite scheduled to launch in 2022. Maxar will integrate NASAs Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) payload with the Intelsat 40e satellite. The company finalized a contract (valued at $5 million) with NASA to deliver a robotic arm called Sample Acquisition, Morphology Filtering and Probing of Lunar Regolith (SAMPLR). Vulcan renewed its SecureWatch subscription with a multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement. Vulcan uses Maxars platform for maritime domain awareness to detect illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing for law enforcement. The companys first-quarter results are expected to reflect the impact of these factors.



In spite of these positives, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter total revenues is pegged at $420 million that indicates a decline of 16.7% from the year-ago quarters reported figure. The consensus mark for adjusted loss per share is pegged at 69 cents, which calls for an improvement of 30.3% from the prior-year quarters recorded figure.



What Our Model Says



Our proven model doesnt conclusively predict an earnings beat for Maxar this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. But thats not the case here. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Earnings ESP: Maxars Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is 0.00% as both are pegged at a loss of 69 cents.



Maxar Technologies Ltd Price and EPS Surprise

Story continues

Maxar Technologies Ltd Price and EPS Surprise

Maxar Technologies Ltd price-eps-surprise | Maxar Technologies Ltd Quote

Zacks Rank: Maxar currently carries a Zacks Rank #3.



Stocks to Consider



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The Supreme Court Friday extended by three months the time for completion of trial in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case involving BJP veterans L K Advani, M M Joshi and Uma Bharti and said that judgement should be delivered by August 31.

The top court asked special judge S K Yadav to control the proceedings in accordance with law so that inordinate delay that is beyond the time-frame is no longer breached.

It indicated to the special judge to avail the facilities of video conferencing to complete recording of evidences and hearing of applications that are filed during the course of trial proceedings.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and Surya Kant, hearing the matter through video conferencing, passed the orders on receiving a letter from the special judge seeking extension of time granted to him for completing the trial in the politically sensitive case.

Having taken the letter dated May 6, 2020, into consideration, we extend the period to complete evidence and deliver judgment till August 31, 2020. We are cognizant of the fact that Shri Yadav is making all efforts in order that the trial reaches a just conclusion. However, given the original time frame and the extended time frame, the effort must now be to complete the proceedings and deliver judgment latest by August 31, 2020, the bench said in its order.

On July 19 last year the top court had asked the special judge to deliver the verdict within nine months, which was to end this April.

The bench on Friday said that despite nine months having expired from the aforesaid date (July 19), we still find, on a perusal of the letter dated May 6, 2020, written by Shri Yadav, Special Judge that even the evidence is not yet completed.

It said, We may indicate that video conferencing facilities are available and should be used by Shri Yadav in order to complete all evidence as well as applications that may be filed in that behalf. It is up to Shri Yadav to control the proceedings in accordance with law so that inordinate delay that is beyond the time frame that we now give is no longer breached.

The top court had on July 19 last year also extended the tenure of the special judge at Lucknow till the completion of the trial and the delivery of verdict in the case.

Besides Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharti, the accused against whom conspiracy charge was invoked in the case by the Supreme Court on April 19, 2017, include former Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh, BJP MP Vinay Katiar and Sadhvi Ritambara.

Three other high-profile accused Giriraj Kishore, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal and Vishnu Hari Dalmia died during trial and the proceedings against them have been abated.

Kalyan Singh, during whose tenure as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh the disputed structure was razed, was put on trial in September last year after his tenure as Governor came to an end.

The top said last July that recording of evidence in the politically sensitive case should be completed within six months and the judgement in the case should be ready and delivered maximum within a period of nine months.

Exercising its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the top court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pass appropriate orders in consultation with the Allahabad High Court within four weeks to extend the tenure of the special judge, who was set to retire on September 30 last year.

The special judge had written a letter on May 25, last year to the apex court, seeking extension of two-year deadline for completion of the case and informed the court that he was set to superannuate on September 30, 2019.

On April 19, 2017, the top court had ordered day-to-day trial in the high profile case and directed the special judge to conclude it in two years' time.

While dubbing demolition of the disputed structure as a "crime" which shook the "secular fabric of the Constitution", it had allowed the CBI's plea on restoration of criminal conspiracy charge against the VVIP accused.

The court had come down heavily on the CBI for the delay of over 25 years in the trial.

Issuing a slew of directions, it had said, "The proceedings (against Advani and others) in the court of the Special Judicial Magistrate at Raebareli will stand transferred to the Court of Additional Sessions Judge (Ayodhya Matters) at Lucknow."



"The court of sessions will frame additional charges under Section 120-B (conspiracy) and the other provisions of the penal code mentioned in the joint charge sheet filed by the CBI against Champat Rai Bansal, Satish Pradhan, Dharam Das, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Mahamadleshwar Jagdish Muni, Ram Bilas Vadanti, Vaikunth Lal Sharma and Satish Chandra Nagar," the apex court had said.

The court had termed the Allahabad High Court's February 12, 2001 verdict dropping conspiracy charge against Advani and others as "erroneous".

Before the 2017 verdict of the apex court, there were two sets of cases relating to the demolition of the disputed structure on December 6, 1992 going on at Lucknow and Raebareli.

The trial of first case involving unnamed 'Karsevaks' was going on in a Lucknow court, while the second set of cases relating to the eight VVIPs were going on in a Raebareli court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The former Green Beret behind a failed military incursion in Venezuela failed to join the plot to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro because his boat broke down and coronavirus travel restrictions left him trapped in Florida.

Jordan Goudreau, 43, was rescued by naval authorities from Curacao on March 28 when the 41-foot fiberglass boat owned by his company Silvercorp USA broke down at sea. He was forced to return to Florida, where he is living, and prevented from rejoining his troops.

The unfortunate event is just one of many missteps made in the lead-up to the failed coup by Goudreau and Silvercorp, who a former U.S. Army paratrooper has now dubbed 'the gang that can't shoot straight'.

Goudreau has found himself under federal investigation for weapons smuggling after identifying himself Sunday as the ringleader of the mission and can now also add plagiarism to his list of infractions.

Large passages copied straight from the Department of Homeland Security, inspirational speaker Tony Robbins, and online educational website MasterClass were found on the Silvercorp website, according to an Associated Press report.

Jordan Goudreau, 43, who identified himself as the ringleader in a failed coup in Venezuela did not take part in the foiled plan as it went into action as his boat broke down at sea on March 28 and he was forced to return and remain in the United States because of coronavirus travel restrictions. His company has been branded 'the gang that can't shoot straight'

An Associated Press investigation found that last year Goudreau helped train a team of Venezuelan military deserters in Colombia to carry out a raid and traveled back to the training camps or to pick up new recruits on several occasions over the past few months.

In December, Silvercorp bought a 41-foot fiberglass boat, Florida vessel registration records show, and proceeded in February to obtain a license to install maritime navigation equipment.

On his application to the Federal Communications Commission, Goudreau said the boat would travel to foreign ports.

The boat next appeared in Jamaica, where Goudreau had gathered with a few of his special forces buddies looking to participate in the raid, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke with AP.

But as they were readying their assault, the boat broke down at sea on March 28 and an emergency position-indicating radio beacon was activated, alerting naval authorities on the island of Curacao.

Goudreau was rescued but returned to the United States unable to get back Colombia to carry out his own plot.

Sean McFate, a former U.S. Army paratrooper who worked as a private military contractor, said Goudreau's behavior should raise serious concerns about the lack of enforcement of U.S. laws requiring Americans who conduct private military training abroad to obtain U.S. government licensing.

'Charlatans and amateurs have always haunted the mercenary business,' said McFate, who is the author of The New Rules of War on the foreign policy implications of privatized warfare.

'But Goudreau finds the new bottom. Silvercorp is literally "the gang that cant shoot straight".'

Eight men were arrested Monday - including two U.S. citizens - as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro cut off a plot to overthrow him. The coup plan seemed doomed from the outset and was hit by setbacks such as the absence of its leader Jordan Goudreau, who was trapped in Florida because of coronavirus travel restrictions. Thirteen were arrested in total

The former Green Beret is currently under federal investigation for arms trafficking after members of the U.S. Congress asked the State Department about its knowledge of Goudreau's plans and raised concerns that he possibly violated arms trafficking rules.

Any U.S. company supplying weapons or military equipment, as well as military training and advice, to foreign persons to seek State Department approval.

And plagiarism has been added to his list of crimes.

The website for Goudreau's Silvercorp USA appears to have lifted entire passages from the website of the Department of Homeland Security and as well as one run by a crisis management firm.

There are also pages found on the website, without active hyperlinks, with wording nearly identical to online texts from Tony Robbins, a more-established competitor in the private security industry, and the fine print of online educational website MasterClass.

'When a crisis arises, the first thing people often look for is a leader: the person who knows how to solve the problem and will take the necessary steps to do so,' reads the homepage of SilvercorpUSA.com, which features images of Goudreau firing machine guns in battle, running shirtless up a pyramid and flying on a private jet.

Silvercorp USA webpage (top) shows a complete paragraph at top left that is lifted from Tucker-Hall (bottom), a Florida-based PR firm that specializes in crisis management

Except for the substituted word Silvercorp, the five-sentence blurb is identical to a passage on the website of Tucker/Hall, a Jacksonville, Florida-based PR firm that specializes in crisis management.

A section of the website promoting his firm's expertise on 'Natural Disaster Mitigation' lifts three sentences verbatim from the Homeland Security website.

Goudreau's apparent intellectual property theft was first detected by an anonymous social media sleuth who published his findings under the handle @Z3dster on Twitter.

'That #SilvercorpUSA site is special,' the person wrote.

'If anyone was doing business with him, this should've raised some serious red flags,' @Z3dster said in an interview on what he said was a burner phone, after first being reached via a direct message on Twitter.

He declined to provide his real name or location but said he is a system administrator with a degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Z3dster achieved renown in 2017 for discovering former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort may have used the online password 'Bond007.'

Goudreau hung up when contacted by phone by AP on Thursday.

David Volk, whose Melbourne, Florida-based law firm represented Goudreau in his past dealings with Guaido aides in Miami, declined to comment or even confirm whether he represents the special forces veteran with three Bronze Stars.

'Please stop contacting our office,' Volk said in a response to an AP e-mail.

An image from Silvercorp USA, the Florida-based company owned by former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, which is at the center of the failed coup launched Sunday in Venezuela

Befitting Goudreau's own James Bond-like aura, he had a gmail account ending with '007' that Z3dster found. A friend of Goudreau confirmed that the account belongs to the ex-Green Beret.

A photo icon associated with that account matches one of a U.S. combat soldier peering through a long-lens camera in mountainous terrain that has appeared on Silvercorp's website, according to Z3dster.

The friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said he believes Goudreau designed the website himself. The domain was registered in February 2018 by a former business partner.

A copy of the site was downloaded by AP on April 12, indicating the plagiarized passages existed before Goudreau was at the center of a major U.S. foreign policy crisis.

In one sloppy mistake on the Silvercorp website, Goudreau appears to have even copied the small print of MasterClass, leaving a trail of 37 citations of the popular educational website in the privacy terms of his website. The link to the privacy terms was not active.

'Anyone embarking on a personal journey toward higher achievement and deeper fulfillment needs a strong core, a foundation on which to build their new life,' reads a sentence on the 'Ask Jordan' section of the Silvercorp website that is identical to an 'Ask Tony' on Robbins' website.

The section remains on the Silvercorp website but is no longer active.

Goudreau has been placed at the center of a plot hatched with a rebellious former Venezuelan Army General, Cliver Alcala, to secretly train dozens of Venezuelan military deserters in secret camps in Colombia to carry out a swift operation against Maduro.

He has said he was hired last year by opposition leader Juan Guaido, something the U.S.-backed Venezuelan lawmaker has denied.

The failed military incursion, which aimed to capture socialist leader Maduro, resulted in the detention in Venezuela of two of his former special forces colleagues: Airan Berry, 41, and Luke Denman, 34.

Eleven Venezuelans were also arrested as President Maduro revealed that they had knowledge of the raid plans after infiltrating the group in Colombia and were waiting to capture them.

The attack was foiled as the group attempted to enter Venezuela on fishing boats. Locals alerted authorities and they were arrested.

Venezuelan Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Tuesday the alleged plot was hindered by rivalries among the participants and logistical problems, including a shortage of fuel for their boats.

He presented more details of the plot that he said resembled a 'Hollywood script' fueled by the 'white supremacist' ideas of its alleged American organizers.

The Trump administration has denied any responsibility for the armed raid.

'They thought that because we're black, because we're Indians, that they were going to easily control us,' said Rodriguez, showing images of what he said were boats and training camps inside Colombia from where the insurrection was organized.
She had checked the mail, her email and her voice mail: No word from Albany in more than a month.

Between negotiations with the phone company and a furniture-rental company, Ms. Josephs tried every avenue she could think of to draw attention to her plight. She called the State Department of Labor at all hours, posted pleas on Facebook and Twitter, and even tweeted daily at the governor himself.

Im just praying this can be resolved, she said in an interview. My back is against the wall.

Ms. Josephs, who had worked in the Manhattan office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was part of the first wave of unemployment claimants who overwhelmed the Department of Labor in mid-March.

Since then, the state has received more than 1.6 million claims, including many from gig workers and other independent contractors who normally would not qualify for benefits.

Mr. Cuomo said on Monday that the good news is even if theres a delay on the website, it doesnt cost you any money. Everybody who filed a legitimate claim would receive all of their benefits dating back to when they first applied, he said.

But people like Ms. Josephs have been through an emotional wringer. She said the stress of having no income for two months had caused her migraines and led to very dark thoughts.
Zoom is one of the very few tech companies to have benefited from the COVID-19. Its rise in popularity has been followed by scrutiny over security and privacy concerns. In the companys latest blog post, its CEO Eric Yuan has confirmed the acquisition of Keybase, which specializes in building secure messaging and encryption. He also mentioned Zoom will soon offer end-to-end encryption.

An investigation by The Intercept found Zoom was not using end-to-end encryption and all the call data was being sent back to the company. With this acquisition, Zoom will finally be able to offer end-to-end encrypted meetings for its users. This new end-to-end encryption technology is great for hosts who prioritize privacy over compatibility. It will also be limited only to paying customers.

End-to-end encryption will be a paid feature

The end-to-end encryption will not support phone bridges, cloud recording, or non-Zoom conference rooms. However, Zoom Rooms and Zoom Phone participants can still attend if explicitly allowed by the host. Even the encryption keys will be controlled solely by the host. The company also says it will provide better security than other end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms.

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To remain transparent and open, Zoom is planning to publish a detailed draft cryptographic design on May 22nd. Zoom currently uses AES-GCM to encrypt audio and video content between its 300 million daily meeting participants. Back in December 2019, this number was just 10 million.

Zoom will never decrypt calls for lawful intercept purposes.

Zoom also confirmed it will not provide decryption for lawful intercept purposes. Apart from offering end-to-end encryption, Zoom also has to offer better security. In March, Zooms iOS app was found to be sending user analytics data to Facebook. Even a class action lawsuit was filed in a California court against the company. There have been several incidents where hackers were able to break into meetings.

Along with the scrutiny from the government, Zoom has also had to deal with competition from tech giants like Google and Microsoft. Google Meet, the video conferencing platform from Google, was recently made available free to everyone. It is now even integrated into Gmail, making it easy to access for all of its 1.5 billion-plus user base.

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After the recent Zoom 5.0 update, the company stopped routing meetings made outside of China to Chinese servers. The paid users also get option to choose the location of the server to route their meetings. In the coming days, the company will be adding even more feature to address the privacy concerns.
Venezuelas chief prosecutor has ordered the arrest of a former US soldier and two opposition figures living in the US for their alleged role in a botched operation aimed at removing Nicolas Maduro from power.

Tarek William Saab said Venezuela will seek the capture of Jordan Goudreau, a military veteran who has claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as Juan Jose Rendon and Sergio Vergara, two US-based advisers to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

They are living in impunity, Mr Saab said. In tranquillity over there.

US law enforcement is investigating Goudreau, though it remains unclear if he will charged.

A video of American Airon Berry was shown on Venezuelan TV (Venezuelas Ministry of Communication press office via AP)

President Donald Trump does not recognise Mr Maduros government, making it highly unlikely that his administration would accept any extradition request.

The Trump administration has denied all responsibility for the armed raid, which resulted in the arrests of two Americans, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, who were purportedly hired by Goudreaus private firm to participate in the failed assault.

In an interview with Fox News Channel on Friday, Mr Trump said he didnt know too much about the attack and again denied any US government involvement.

It wasnt led by General George Washington, obviously, he said. This was not a good attack.

Venezuelan authorities have been insisting that Trumps government was behind the plot, with Mr Saab noting Friday that the US had previously offered a 15 million dollar bounty for Mr Maduros arrest, which he said opened the door for such attacks.

That gives a green light for an incursion into our territory, he said.

Denman and Berry are both former US special forces soldiers who served in Iraq. In video statements aired on Venezuelas state television, both said they had been hired by Goudreau to train rebel troops in Colombia and target Mr Maduro. Goudreau has said they were part of his operation.

Story continues

Rendon has acknowledged giving Goudreau 50,000 dollars to cover some expenses and said that he and Vergara signed an agreement with the three-time Bronze Star recipient.

Meanwhile, Goudreau has presented what said is an audio recording made on a hidden mobile phone in which Mr Guaido can be heard briefly greeting the combat veteran via video conference.

The opposition leader recognised by the US and about 60 other nations as Venezuelas rightful president has denied any involvement in the operation.

Saab said Venezuela is issuing 22 new arrest orders and did not mention Guaido among them.
Chan Mi and Mi Soo are on the watch for Chief Taek in his activities in the company. They are convinced that they might find good evidence proving he is "Michael." Chan Mi had lunch together with CEO Yoon. He enjoyed her company and even gave her a cute toy for her welcome gift.

One of Chief Taek agents found Chan Mi's file. It shows her real age, real name, and background experience.

Mi Soon is after to check Taek's office while he takes his lunch. Chan Mi sent a message to her right away that Taek is on his way to his office. Mi Soon had a problem as her pin got stuck in one of the drawers. She hurriedly took it out and brought the garbage bag on her way out.

Chief Yoon stood still thinking of flashback memories with Chan Mi during their university years. She became his tutor back in the old days.

Im Ye Eun is assigned to see Woo-won for renewing his new contract. He wanted only to discuss and meet Ye-eun, and he forced his assistant to pack four bags for his scheduled trip. Woo-won is not aware that his assistant is doing an illegal transaction and takes the chip with him and goes into hiding. As he quit his job, he switched the tracked watch from Woo-won and quit his job after.

Mi Soon and Chan Mi entered the wine bar to anticipate and cover Chief Taek's transaction that night. Chan Mi gets her luck as the guards allow her. Mi Soon did not get the permission. She switched to become a kitchen assistant instead and use the back door to get inside the bar. Chan Mi visited the technical room and observed their videos around the bar.

Woo-won did not renew his contract and asked Ye-eun to leave his place. Ye-eun felt devastated, knowing that her career as a PR Assistant is over. The director asked her to come back to the office with the signed contract - if it's not met, she will be fired. She needed to get back inside Woo-won's house as team leader Dong asked her to hack his video. She made her entry at the back of the house. As she secretly operated her laptop, the dog came and took one of her daughter's toys. She ran to recover and met Woo-won in the basement.

A stranger came in to find Woo-won's assistant. He followed the tracker that was installed in Woo-won's watch. Ye-eun saw the stranger as he kidnapped and took Woo-won. She tried to hide, but the stranger caught her and abducted her as well.

Ye-eun managed to activate code blue with her tracker to warn team leader Dong. They followed Ye-eun through her tracker. Mi Soon and Chan Mi got the video from the bar. It showed Chief Taek talking with Woo-won's manager. All of them got inside the van and were on their way to save Ye-eun.

As ladies made their way to rescue Ye-eun and Woo-won, they met with an accident. Team leader Dong got shot by the stranger. Chief Taek sent the stranger to abduct Woo-won and Ye-eun. The shot crossed through his heart and everyone looked shocked, seeing Dong covered in blood.
These days, people are desperate for good news. Cheerful stories about animals reclaiming their territoryelephants roaming free in China, dolphins swimming through the canals in Venicehave gone viral. And then comes Natasha Daly, a reporter and editor for National Geographic, who diligently points out that many of the freewheeling fauna reports are false. She doesnt like to disappoint people. But she hates to see fake news about animals.

Daly, who is thirty-four, with deep auburn hair and thick-rimmed glasses, started writing for National Geographic almost five years ago. Shes carved out a beat as a watchdog for animal welfare, exploitation, and conservation. I really gravitated toward the idea that animals cant tell their own stories, she said recently. In many ways, its up to us as journalists to find them and pull them out and tell them for them. One of the highlights of her career was a yearlong investigation into how exotic-wildlife tourismelephant sanctuaries in Thailand or circus bears in Russiainvolves animal abuse.

Daly started covering the coronavirus back in January, when it was thought that the disease had originated from a wildlife market. Soon, she wrote one of the earliest reports on the biggest animal story of the pandemic: Nadia, a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York, tested positive for COVID-19. Then, two weeks later, she was scoping out a database run by the US Department of Agriculture and spotted another infection, this time of a New Yorkbased lion. She called her source at the zoo. For two hours, she didnt hear back; then she received a press release stating that seven more big cats had tested positive. To me, it was just a huge shock, Daly said, because it was a lack of transparency on the part of the zoo, and also the government, when this is crucial public information that a new speciesthree lionshad tested positive, and four other tigers.

She began noticing return-of-the-wild stories a couple weeks after stay-at-home orders were put in place. I thought, This is weird, because I could tell pretty quickly they were fake, she said. She started with Burano, a small Italian island in the Venice area, where viral tweets claimed that swans had suddenly appeared. But that was nothing new, nothing related to the pandemic, Daly pointed out; swans have always been around those parts. Many National Geographic readers thanked Daly for correcting the record. Others felt betrayed. Someone said to me, Its basically like you just told us theres no Santa Claus. Someone else was like, You must be really fun to hang out with at parties. 

I get it. People really want some happy news to believe.

Undeterred, Daly turned next to supposed sightings of a tea party of drunken elephants in China, which she debunked by reading translated versions of Chinese news reports proving that the story was made up. Then there was a rumor about Vladimir Putin setting lions free to roam the streets of Russia, as a way to keep people inside. I mean, that was so obviously fake, and most people knew it was fake, she said. But some people didnt.

When she saw a video of Sandra, an orangutan in Florida, washing her hands, supposedly mimicking her coronavirus-cautious caretaker, Daly called the sanctuary where Sandra lives. The owners, who had seen their video spread under false pretenses and pulled it from YouTube, thanked Daly for asking. The clip was months old, they said, predating any known coronavirus presence in the United States. The sanctuary owner she interviewed was appreciative of the fact that my request wasnt for licensing the video, Daly said. She laughed. I was just interested in actually telling the real story.

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Daly has debunked claims about a new and glorious presence of ducks in the fountains in Rome (they are there, but they always were), peacocks in India (again, they live there), dolphins swimming through Venice (the photos in question were actually taken in Sardinia), deer on an Indian highway (its Japan, and the photo is years old). Millions have read Dalys reports. The mixed reactions continue pouring in. I get it, she said. People really want some happy news to believe.

Daly, however, has never felt disappointed that a happy animal story isnt true. Mostly, she feels a responsibility as a journalist to tell the truth: Whether its something really high-stakes that affects peoples livelihood, or if its something thats pretty low-stakes, like animals not really in a place where a post is saying they are. Besides, false stories can have adverse effects on conservation efforts, she explained. Conservationists say that, actually, weve changed ecosystems on earth to the point where they cant recover without our assistance and help, she said. So to have that sort of mindset that we just need to do nothing, it almost undermines the really real and important work that conservationists do.

At least some good news can be believed: there really are goats wandering through Wales and orcas in parts of Canada where theyre typically rare. Daly wants to highlight these stories, too. I always want to empower readers to come away from it feeling like theres actually something they can do in their own lives to protect animals. But for now, as she shelters from the pandemic in Washington, DC, with her husband and three rabbits, shes happy to have instilled some healthy skepticism. The humans in her life understand, she said. Im constantly getting texts from my friends and family with social media posts they see about animals, like, Is this real? I dont want to fall for this. 

ICYMI: Inside the Black Vault

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Savannah Jacobson is a contributor to CJR.
The Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois-Indiana (SEIU HCII) and the Illinois Association of Health Care Facilities (IAHCF) blocked a strike of nearly 10,000 nursing home workers across the state late Wednesday night. Nursing home workers, including certified nursing assistants (CNAs) and support staff at 64 facilities across Illinois, were set to go on strike today.

In what can only be described as a cowardly act of betrayal, the SEIU kowtowed to the corporate interests of the long-term care facility managers and the shareholders and private equity firms that own them by pushing through a concessions contract that gave the IAHCF everything it wanted and leaves nursing home workers in poverty and working under life-threatening conditions in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nursing home workers voted to go on strike on April 25 by a majority of roughly 60 percent, five days before the old contract expired. The workers have demanded personal protective equipment (PPE), safety protocols, hazard pay, an increase in base pay, paid time off for COVID-related illness, increased staffing, health insurance and transparency about COVID-19 cases in the nursing homes, which account for 44 percent of COVID-19 related deaths in the state of Illinois.

That thousands of workers essential to the functioning of society were ready to sacrifice everything to fight for their right to higher wages and safe working conditions only underscores the brutality of the conditions faced by health care workers in a system subordinated to the interests of private profit.

While it tried to posture as a militant union that fights for the workers, the SEIU was actively working to hide the details of the negotiations behind closed doors with the nursing home management companies. At stake were issues of life or death for the rank and file.

A home health care worker in Illinois and member of the SEIU spoke to the World Socialist Web Site and denounced its betrayals of the workers it supposedly represents.

This union is very disappointing, the worker said. Im sure their office union people are getting paid better than us out in the field. Without us out in the field [and] in our cars, they would not have the jobs they do behind closed doors! I started with them July 2016 at $10.05 per hour; now Im paid $13.15 per hour. Im working 120 hours every two weeks, plus the union took away our overtime this year.

The health insurance is crap. Even though its free, it only covers 80 percent of costs. All they are offering is 15 days off paid if we get sick with this virus. This union is so reckless and very cheap. They want to give us PPE only and no hazard pay!

The worker supported the call to unite the working class in a struggle for the basic rights of higher wages and adequate health and safety during the pandemic. We all should be treated equally, it goes for all working Americans, I think. [We should] work with each other, not against each other. We all should fight for whats right. no matter what essential job we are in.

The latest betrayal is par for the course for the SEIU, which over decades has sabotaged one struggle after another. In 2017, after 19 months of working without a contract, Illinois nursing home workers were betrayed by the SEIU, which pushed through a concessions agreement, blocking a strike against the nursing home companies. The agreement continued the regime of poverty wages, with a pitiful $3-per-hour raise over three years for the majority of workers, whose wages had been frozen in several previous years at an average of $11 per hour.

On the SEIU Healthcare IL & IN Facebook page, home care and childcare workers denounced the union for isolating them from the nursing home workers and negotiating separate contracts, pitting one section of workers against the other. In January of this year, the SEIU also worked with Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker to push through a poverty wage contract for 30,000 home health care assistants and childcare workers in Illinois.

On Tuesday, Crains Chicago Business reported in an article frozen behind a paywall that the IAHCF, which represents the business interests of the long-term care management companies in the state, had proposed a pathetic $2-per-hour base wage raise plus an additional $2 per hour in bonus pay for the remainder of the pandemic in an attempt to push through a contract and block a strike.

The SEIU reportedly rejected this offer, according to a representative of the IAHCF. However, no updates on the bargaining had been published on the unions website or Facebook page until Thursday, when it announced that the sellout deal had been reached.

On its official news page, the union made clear that it sided with the interests of the nursing homes management and proudly declared its betrayal of the rank-and-file workers in a post headlined HISTORIC STRIKE AVERTED AS NURSING HOME WORKERS WIN TENTATIVE AGREEMENT PROVIDING FOR ESSENTIAL RESOURCES FOR THE PANDEMIC AND BEYOND.

The concessions contract announced by the union in this victory include poverty baseline wages of barely above $15 an hour for all workers; an unspecified rate of hazard pay for all workers for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis; an unspecified number of additional fully paid sick days for COVID-19-related testing, illness or quarantine for duration of the crisis; and vague, unenforceable provisions ensuring that employees are not required to work without adequate PPE as determined by regulatory agencies for the duration of the crisis.

These contract provisions are essentially no different than what the nursing home management offered earlier in the week.

The SEIU collaborated with the pseudo-left Poor Peoples Campaign ahead of the official strike date. This was done to diffuse political anger among nursing home workers toward the capitalist system and class-based social inequality in an attempt to channel it behind operatives of the Democratic Party.

The opportunist organization denies the need for a political struggle based in the working class against the capitalist system, and promotes the dead end of identity politics and nationalism, and the idealistic call for moral revival instead of a demand to expropriate the wealth of the capitalist class to be placed under the control of the working class and used to meet the needs of society.

It is now critical that nursing home workers reject the opportunist pro-corporate politics of the unions and their allies in the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left and take the necessary steps to bring the fight for their wages and livelihoods under their control. They must reject the phony sellout deal, which no worker has seen in full, that the SEIU and corporations are attempting to use to force them back into the nursing homes where they face increased risk of COVID-19 infection and death.

Health care workers, including nursing home workers, have immense support for their struggles among the working class, not just in the US but internationally. Many sections of workers supported the strike vote when it was announced. The nursing home workers must learn from the lessons of autoworkers, call center, Amazon and grocery workers and others around the world who have taken their struggles into their own hands and coordinated independent walkouts in opposition to corrupt unions like the SEIU.

We call on nursing home workers in Illinois to form independent rank-and-file committees, including strike committees and safety committees to demand adequate protective equipment and staffing levels, substantial wage increases and hazard pay, and a massive infusion of resources, not into the bank accounts of the nursing home companies and investors but toward meeting the needs of the elderly and the workers who care for them. The Socialist Equality Party and World Socialist Web Site will do everything it can to provide political support to workers who wish to build these committees.

In opposition to the efforts of the SEIU to isolate and pit workers against each other, these committees must reach out to other groups of health care workers and other sections of the working class, including manufacturing workers, meatpacking workers, teachers, retail and logistics workers across the state, country and the world, in order to carry the struggle forward and nationalize the health care industry in every country.

A solution to the pandemic and the economic crisis faced by the working class worldwide requires an international solution that can only be solved by putting an end to the capitalist system, which subordinates all life on earth to private profit, and replacing it with a scientifically planned system of socialism, in which the means of production are democratically controlled by the working class to meet the needs of society.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The first flight which took off on Thursday to bring back expatriates from Abu Dhabi has Malayali presence. The co-pilot and three of the cabin crew members are from the state. Co-pilot Rizwin Nasar is a native of Chullikkal in Kochi. It is a privilege and honour bestowed upon our team to be the first ones to fly out to bring back our countrymen from Abu Dhabi, said Rizwin.

Anjana Johny, Riyanka Santhosh and Deepak Menon, part of the crew, agreed with Rizwin. Though they understood that the mission was rife with risks and challenges, they said they are fully prepared. We have been given training for the mission by doctors of Ernakulam Government Medical College, said Deepak.

We are not afraid, said Anjana.

We are glad to be the ones who have been entrusted with such a big endeavour. We will bring our Malayali brethren back home, she said. Riyanka said though the family members are afraid, they know the importance of their mission. They are aware we will complete the mission successfully. We will be carrying out mission Vande Bharat as one, she said.
Final designs for a disputed two-tower development at the western gateway to Perth's CBD have been revealed after multiple revisions, but still face a court challenge from neighbour Woodside.

The new design, which City of Perth officers have recommended the Perth Local Development Assessment Panel approve at its May 14 meeting, is a $140 million two-tower development with ground-floor public spaces including an art gallery fronting Mounts Bay Road.

Artist's render of the proposed two towers beside the already completed tower occupied by Woodside. Credit:AAIG

The City of Perths design advisory committee last year criticised the designs, saying the buildings were not similar enough to really homogenise the design, nor different enough to create a meaningful composition.

It also expressed concern with the lack of activation and landscaping that might invite pedestrians from Spring Street through to the elevated podium plaza to engage with the public spaces.
<! UK returnees. Photo: The Nation >

The first batch of Nigerians evacuated from the United Kingdom have landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

The flight landed around 1:30pm.

The Chairman, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa disclosed this on Friday on her twitter handle.

She said the passengers would be proceeding to Abuja where they would be on 14-day compulsory isolation.

First evacuation from the UK has landed in Lagos. The passengers will be proceeding to Abuja where they will be on 14-day compulsory isolation, she said.

Dabiri-Erewa, however, did not disclosed the number of people who arrived Lagos from UK.
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Mayor Tyer: Pittsfield Making Progress Against Virus But Threat Remains

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Mayor Linda Tyer on Friday asked residents not to be lulled by the number of novel coronavirus cases and to stay the course.

Tyer, during her weekly COVID-19 update on Pittsfield Community Television, said although there have been no new cases in three days, residents need to remain vigilant.

"We have made incredible progress in slowing the spread of the virus but COVID-19 continues to be a serious threat to our health and that point cant be understated," the mayor said.

She pointed out that Berkshire County saw seven new cases during that period of time.

Pittsfield's numbers recently have remained fairly flat. Since the first two cases were reported on March 9, the city's total number of cases jumped to 96 one month later. In comparison, the past month has seen about 42 new cases. Five Pittsfielders have died but 108 have recovered.

The mayor also asked residents continue to adhere to the mask order even if they feel fine. She said an estimated 45 percent of infections come from presymptomatic carriers.

"That means you can feel healthy and have no signs of illness and still carry the virus posing harm to someone," she said. "Where a mask ... it is a small action that can have a big impact."

Tyer said much of the future is still unknown and Pittsfield is still awaiting word from the governor's reopening advisory board. The board, organized a couple of weeks ago with representatives from a wide range of fields, has been taking testimony from businesses and organizations on their needs and capabilities for opening safely.

"We are all getting restless and concerned about the economy ... many people are out of work and these are difficult times and we will reopen using the governor's recommendation," she said.

She clarified that May 18 is not a reopening date but only a day to take another look at the situation with input from the governor's board. Gov. Charlie Baker had extended his stay-home order to May 18, when the board is expected to produce a report for a phased reopening.

Even when the city reopens, residents will still have to take preventive measures and adapt to the "new normal," she said.

On the education front, Pittsfield Public Schools is also awaiting input from the state to inform graduation plans and it is developing a plan to empty lockers, for which information will be forthcoming.

Looking back, Tyer said nearly 2,000 Chromebooks were safely handed out this week to students learning from home.

She said those who still need a Chromebook can visit the district's website. This must be done before Sunday.

Tyer also urged residents to answer calls from the state's Community Tracer Program. The program is using testing and tracing to help track and contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"Please take the call," she said. "It will be a conversation that will provide critical information to support your health and those around you."

She said calls will show a prefix of 833857 or show on the caller ID as MA COVID Team.

Tyer also acknowledged the "groundswell" of kindness to come out of the pandemic and thanked volunteers, businesses, and organizations for stepping up to do their part to support the community.

"Everyone in their own way is finding a way to pitch in," she said. "It doesn't have to be elaborate it just means doing your part and we are almost there so please stay the course."

Tyer concluded by wishing a happy Mothers' Day this Sunday.

"May your day be filled with love, laughter, and cherished moments," she said. "At a safe distance of course."
YEREVAN -- Armenian parliamentarians from opposing parties exchanged blows amid a disagreement over the governments economic response to the coronavirus crisis.

During a debate on May 8, Edmon Marukian, the leader of the Bright Armenia opposition faction, accused the ruling My Step faction loyal to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of failing to help ordinary citizens amid the economic shutdown.

The opposition has called for larger cash payments to citizens.

Marukian's criticism triggered angry remarks from My Step lawmakers, including Sasun Mikaelian. Displeased by what he heard, Marukian stepped down from the podium midway through his speech and approached Mikaelian, who stood up from this seat. The two threw punches at each other before it was broken up by other members of parliament.

No matter how hard you hit me, I will continue to speak up, Marukian stated once he returned to the podium.

"The [2018] revolution took place also to establish a culture of debate here in this parliament, he said, referring to the events that brought Pashinian to power two years ago.

Parliament Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan, seeking to cool the tension in the chamber, soon interrupted Marukians speech to announce a break.

Pashinian later condemned the fistfight, but blamed the opposition lawmaker for picking the quarrel. Pashinian said Marukians decision to step down from the podium indicated he was intent on fighting.

Having watched the video of the incident, I cannot but describe what happened as a miserable provocation, said Pashinian.

However, Pashinian also lamented that his party members give in to provocations.

COVID-19 Spread

Armenia has more than 3,000 registered cases of COVID-19 and 43 deaths. The government has imposed a nationwide lockdown.

The nations economy is dependent on international tourism and remittances from citizens working abroad. The spread of the coronavirus has decimated leisure travel as countries seal their borders and put many migrant laborers out of work.

The Armenian government has passed over a dozen measures to support domestic businesses and individuals impacted by the pandemic.

The assistance includes, among other things, government-subsidized bank loans to businesses and individual entrepreneurs; small one-time payments to socially vulnerable groups; and partial subsidies for utility and other bills.



Mikaelian wasnt the only member of My Step that expressed anger with Marukian during the May 8 debate.

Babken Tunian accused the Bright Armenia leader of handing out his mobile phone number to citizens displeased with the governments economic response to the coronavirus.

Tunian said he was inundated with phone calls.

Marukian said Tunian gave out his own number to the public after he cast doubt over the number of people dissatisfied with the government.

When we say that people call us and ask questions [about government assistance], you arrogantly accuse us of telling lies, you claim that no one calls us, Marukian said.
Seventy-five years ago, on May 8, 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced on radio that Nazi Germanys forces had surrendered, and that the flags of freedom fly all over Europe.

Victory in Europe Day celebrates the acceptance of Nazi Germans unconditional surrender of its armed forces, marking the end of World War II in Europe.

Massive celebrations erupted around the world.

But not in Harrisburg.

The Patriot reported that people in Harrisburg responded to the news with solemn joy.

People in Harrisburg heard the news of Germanys surrender yesterday with a solemn joy, obviously mindful that war for our Nation will not be over until hostilities cease with victory over the Japanese in the Pacific.

Unlike residents of some metropolitan areas who, according to reports, expressed their feelings with unrestrained jubilation and merriment, delight at the announcement of the enemys unconditional surrender was tempered here with sad memories for those men who gave their lives to make the victory possible and a reaffirmation by the people of the American pledge to continue their efforts with renewed vigor until victory is complete.

The story went on to say that at various steel plants in the area officials reported that men turned from their tasks for only a minute to express their feelings and then returned to their jobs with new determination.

Absenteeism, which some anticipate might be high for the afternoon change in shifts, was negligible, with only the number persons away from their jobs because of illness and like reasons, it was reported.

It was a different Harrisburg on May 7, 1945, from the city which on Nov. 11, 1918, danced in the streets and indulged in wild merrymaking.

Presupposing that the scheduled radio address of President Truman for 9 oclock this morning will officially proclaim V-E Day, city church and school officials last night reviewed final plans to observe the day.

Looking north from 44th Street, New York's Times Square is packed Monday, May 7, 1945, with crowds celebrating the news of Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons)AP

Those plans included worship services and prayer in churches and serious programs in the schools.

Programs and special services during the day will be keynoted by their serious vein, with no parade or any other hilarious activity arranged to lend a carnival spirit to the great occasion.

President Truman also warned Americans that the war was not over.

He said, "We can repay the debt which we owe to our God, to our dead, and to our children, only by work, by ceaseless devotion to the responsibilities which lie ahead of us. If I could give you a single watchword for the coming months, that word is work, work, and more work. We must work to finish the war. Our victory is only half over."

Now, we have got another little release here, which doesnt go into the speech, but it informs the Japanese what they can expect. We are going to be in a position where we can turn the greatest war machine in the history of the world loose on the Japanese; and I am informed by the Chiefs of Staff, by the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Navy, that Japan is going to have a terrible time from now on. This release here, I will read it.

"The Japanese people have felt the weight of our land, air, and naval attacks. So long as their leaders and the armed forces continue the war, the striking power and intensity of our blows will steadily increase, and will bring utter destruction to Japan's industrial war production, to its shipping, and to everything that supports its military activity.

"The longer the war lasts, the greater will be the suffering and hardships which the people of Japan will undergo-all in vain. Our blows will not cease until the Japanese military and naval forces lay down their arms in unconditional surrender.

"Just what does the unconditional surrender of the armed forces mean for the Japanese people?

"It means the end of the war.

"It means the termination of the influence of the military leaders who brought Japan to the present brink of disaster.

"It means provision for the return of soldiers and sailors to their families, their farms, and their jobs.

"And it means not prolonging the present agony and suffering of the Japanese in the vain hope of victory.

"Unconditional surrender does not mean the extermination or enslavement of the Japanese people."

"The West is free but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese. When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally, then only will our fighting job be done.

We must work to bind up the wounds of a suffering world - to build an abiding peace, a peace rooted in justice and in law."

On Aug. 14, 1945, Japan surrendered. That surrender was accepted in September by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, ending World War II.

President Harry S. Truman sits in front of the microphone holding his speech to the nation announcing the Allied armies won an unconditional surrender from German forces on all fronts. (AP Photo) EDS: This is a 1945 file photo.AP

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The Resistance Front, the brand-new terror group that has rushed to take responsibility for major terror attacks and firefights in Jammu and Kashmir over the past few weeks, is being controlled by three top handlers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, an intelligence report submitted to national security planners in New Delhi has said.

The TRF was launched late last year after Parliament scrapped Jammu and Kashmirs special status and divided the state into two centrally-administered union territories, Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Terror from Pak gets a makeover

The exercise is designed to give terror in Kashmir an indigenious face to ward off international pressure, particularly from the anti-terror financing watchdog FATF, over Pakistan sponsoring Islamist terror groups and what New Delhi describes as its jihadi terror factories.

This objective, a security official said, reflected the choice of names for the Inter Services Intelligences recent terror initiatives such as The Resistance Front or the low-key JK Pir Panjal Peace Forum. These names dont have a religious label but suggest that it is a homebred.

THE NAME GAME The Resistance Front was launched to give terror in Kashmir an indigenous face TRF was conceived to ward off international pressure on Pakistan from FATF Three top handlers of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan control the TRF Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists form the core of the TRF TRF has claimed responsibility of most major firefights with security forces Officials say this is a facade, to help the terror group gain space in the public mind

The intelligence report said the Lashkar leaders formed the core of the TRF.

TRF is being controlled from Pakistan by top three Lashkar handlers: Sajad Jatt for South Kashmir, Khalid for Central Kashmir and Hanzala Adnan for North Kashmir, the intelligence report accessed by Hindustan Times said.

At this point of time, security officials said, the effort appeared to be to project the TRF as a formidable group to attract local recruits. Like when five terrorists and an equal number of army soldiers were killed in the Keran sector in early April, the TRFs social media managers in Pakistan claimed responsibility.

Also Read: From a Twitter handle, the story of Pakistans new terror group for Kashmir

The group even claimed responsibility for the gunfight in Handwara this weekend that cost security forces five lives including that of an army colonel. One of the two terrorists killed in the operation was later identified by the police as Lashkar commander Haider, a Pakistani national. The other was a local terrorist, a resident of Handwara.

Haider, a Pakistani national who was a top Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist (right) was killed in the Handwara encounter that cost the lives of five security personnel including Colonel Ashutosh Sharma. Maaz (left) was killed in an encounter with the J&K police in 2018 (Jammu and Kashmir Police)

Almost every TRF terrorist, arrested or killed, has been listed in our records under the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jammu and Kashmir Inspector General of Police Vijay Kumar said. Lately, TRF had expanded their net and were also inducting Hizbul terrorists, he said.

The idea is to show the world that what Kashmir has is local militancy, said Kumar

Also Watch : Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naikoo eliminated: All the key details

Imran Khan wades in

As Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday tweeted a swipe at India accusing New Delhi of trying to find a pretext for a false flag operation targeting Pakistan - it was seen to be a response to reports of Pakistans attempt to infiltrate terrorists - Khan underlined the claim that Kashmirs troubles were home-grown.

The Indigenous Kashmiri resistance against Indian Occupation is a direct consequence of Indias oppression & brutalisation of Kashmiris, he tweeted.

Khan had last week brought in former director general of the Pak militarys Inter-Services Public Relations Lt Gen (retired) Asim Saleem Bajwa as his new special assistant to lead his media team.

Pakistans Foreign Ministry spokesperson followed up on Imran Khans tweet on Thursday with a detailed statement that elaborated Khans point.

India must realise that it cannot break the will of the Kashmiri people and suppress their indigenous resistance movement through the use of force... We also categorically reject, once again, the baseless Indian allegations of infiltration, spokesperson Aisha Farooqui said.

It was the second time this week that she was using the phrase.

The first was two days after the TRF claimed to be involved in the May 3 Handwara encounter involving the Lashkar commander, Haider. Attributing this indigenous Kashmiri resistance to any alleged infiltration is a travesty, she had tweeted on May 5.

How Lashkar hand-holds TRF in Kashmir

Back in Kashmir, intelligence officials said the Lashkar-e-Taibas old guard was focussing on getting TRF new recruits from the Kashmir valley.

In north Kashmir, officials said LeT terrorists such as Mehrajdduin Halwal were consolidating the TRFs base on the ground. Its social media handles, which are being fed content traced back to locations in Pakistan, have been campaigning aggressively. The earliest version of its social media handles too had been traced to internet protocol addresses in Pakistan.

We have now got this account on social media platform Telegram blocked, Kashmir Police chief Vijay Kumar said, suggesting this is why the group had not put out any updates about the encounter that led to the killing of Hizbul Mujahideens boss in Kashmir Riyaz Naikoo.

For now, security officials expect the TRF to carry out grenade attacks, mostly using its overground workers or fresh recruits rather than risk its trained hands. A grenade attack, lobbed in Srinagars Hari Singh High Street in October last year was one of its first terror attacks. The group had, however, lost dozens of grenades when some of its overground workers ferrying AK-47 and grenades were caught by the police in March and are believed to be looking to replenish their supplies.

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Love Hemp online sales increase by 39% month on month during global pandemic

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Codebase Ventures Inc. ("Codebase" or the "Company") (CSE:CODE)(FSE:C5B)(OTCQB:BKLLF), an investment company, is pleased to provide an update regarding its investment in World High Life whose wholly owned subsidiary, Love Hemp, has achieved record sales since January.

World High Life PLC, the AQSE (LIFE) and OTCQB (WRHLF) listed investment company recently provided an update on the progress of its wholly owned subsidiary, Love Hemp, during the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Love Hemp's leadership have continued to focus on the growth of the brand, seeing opportunities to achieve stronger online sales, building on the existing platform to reach more customers directly and expand its offerings to meet consumer demand.

"There's no question that the challenges now facing businesses across the world are unique," said Mr. Tony Calamita, Love Hemp Founder. "Whilst bricks and mortar stores have either closed or experienced less foot traffic and reduced hours, it has highlighted the need for us to have a robust online presence in order to keep people engaged with our brands and products."

Love Hemp Highlights

(www.love-hemp.com)

Despite current challenges, the brand has emphasized its online (e-commerce) business, which has gone from strength to strength and experienced a 39% increase in online sales month on month since January 2020

The brand has secured a number of notable listings with leading retailers including Boots, to complement its existing distribution through Ocado, Holland and Barrett and Sainsbury's

Love Hemp was awarded 'Best CBD Oil in the UK' by the Evening Standard in August 2019. Love Hemp also won The Beauty Shortlist Award 2020

The brand is now the best-selling CBD brand in Alliance Healthcare, the UK's largest distributor to pharmacies and independent retailers

New product development is at the heart of the business, with Love Hemp Immune launching in April 2020, more than six-months ahead of schedule, highlighting the brand's ability to be flexible and agile, whilst responding to consumer needs in the current circumstances

New product development work in process ranges from confectionery to drinks, oils and sprays.

The brand renewal work carried out with our external marketing partners will be live in-store and online in September/October 2020

The brand is in negotiations with the UK's largest retailers for multiple new product listings for September 2020

CBDOilsUK Highlights

https://www.cbdoilsuk.com/

As consumer interest for CBD grows, Love Hemp is focused on building a trusted, global, CBD e-tailer focused on targeting different consumer needs

The business is focused on adding a number of new brands to its portfolio, with 3 brands expected to launch within the next two months

To support growing sales and serving consumer needs, CBDOilsUK will launch a renewed web presence

LH Botanicals Highlights

https://lhbotanicals.com/

LH Botanicals is committed to fully supporting both its customers and employees through this challenging time. As such, LH as increased production capacity with the acquisition of new capsule and bath bomb machines

Future plans for the business include a diversification of the product portfolio to meet customer needs and establish new footholds in consumer markets for CBD products

Tony Calamita commented, "We have expanded our online offerings and are committed to continuing to provide the best experience for our customers, so they continue to purchase and engage with us in an efficient way, with minimal disruption. Fortunately, consumer demand for our products is growing and we have adapted, thanks to a great team effort. To grow the business under new circumstances, we are expanding our e-commerce presence and education marketing, which will be the foundations of our model going forward."

About Codebase Ventures Inc.

Codebase Ventures Inc. is an investment company, led by technology and business experts who invest early in great ideas in sectors that have significant upside, including the cannabis sector. We operate from the understanding that technology is always evolving, bringing early opportunities for strategic investments that can deliver the exponential returns to our shareholders. We seek out and empower the innovators who are building tomorrow's standards with platforms, protocols and innovations - not just products. We invest early, support those founders, take their ideas to market and work tirelessly to help them realize their vision.

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.

For further information, please contact:

George Tsafalas - Ivy Lu

Investor Relations

Telephone: Toll-Free (877) 806-CODE (2633) or 1 (778) 806-5150

E-mail: IR@codebase.ventures

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co-operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. A number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company including, but not limited to, the successful development of a transdermal patch, the successful results of trials, other competing products, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions and dependence upon regulatory approvals. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by securities laws.

SOURCE: Codebase Ventures Inc.

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The Supreme Court Friday stayed the order of the Orissa High Court which had asked the state government to ensure that all migrants, who are in the queue to enter Odisha, should be tested negative for COVID-19 before boarding the conveyance.

The high court, in its interim order passed yesterday, had suggested that the state should ensure that only those tested negative for COVID-19 are allowed to return.

A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan stayed the high court order which was challenged by the Centre.

The apex court issued notice to the concerned parties on the appeal which was mentioned by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.

The high court, by way of the impugned order, has without hearing the Union of India, has passed an interim order mandating the COVID-19 testing of every migrant before boarding the conveyance," the plea filed in the top court said, adding that the order may have a "cascading effect" on migrants of other states as well.

It claimed that the order, "apart from being unworkable", failed to notice the standard operating procedure already being followed by the Centre and the state governments.

"It is humbly submitted that impugned order clearly impinges upon the executive domain and creates an unreasonable and impossible to perform pre-condition on part of the governments and the migrants workers who wish to travel back to their native places," it said, adding, the high court order ignores the nature of pandemic and the "delicate handling of the situation by the executive, after consideration of all possible factors."



The appeal said that the Centre, in conjunction with the state governments, is taking all possible precautions at the stage of boarding, during travel, after de-boarding and subsequent quarantine.

The Centre has told the apex court that after completion of a strict 40 day lockdown, in which no inter-state travel of any kind was permitted, a decision was taken that migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other persons stranded at different places would be allowed to travel back to their native places.

It said the Centre, in conjunction with the state governments, has taken all possible precautionary steps to make sure that travel of migrants does not result in the spread of COVID-19.

The appeal, which sought setting aside of the high court order, said that 'Shramik special' trains have been started and till now, a total of 162 trains have originated.

Social activist Narayan Chandra Jena had written a letter to the Orissa High Court on May 1 seeking judicial intervention for ensuring that coronavirus infected migrant workers are not allowed to enter the state by the state government. The letter was later converted into a PIL on May 4.

Following the high court's order, three trains, which were to bring stranded people to Odisha from Surat in Gujarat, were cancelled yesterday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is something about the charismatic energy it takes to make contact with all of those people during a live performance, Cracknell says. The work to transfer it to an audiobook was about holding on to the same meaning and same pictures and same ideas, but really taking it to a much smaller and more personal place, in terms of performance. I really enjoyed trying to help him shrink it but keep the same essential ideas alive.
For the third consecutive day, Brazil registered more than 600 deaths in 24 hours, with a total of 9,188 victims since the COVID-19 outbreak hit the country.

More than 135,000 cases were confirmed, and the Health Ministry is monitoring more than 70,000 suspected cases.

Outside health units and hospitals, relatives of the patients are desperately looking for information about their loved ones.

Grazielen Dos Santos asked for help from the Public Defender office to obtain information about her brother, Guilherme, who was hospitalized in an Urgent Care Unit on Monday night after having problems breathing.

Guilherme (31) who was in good health and had no pre-existing illness, had COVID-19 symptoms in the previous days and got worse on Monday when the family decided to take him to a hospital near his house.

According to Dos Santos, the hospital was overcrowded so they went to the Urgent Care Unit where he was hospitalized.

On Thursday, the health unit informed Dos Santos that it will release information about the patients three times a week.

With relatives banned from entering health units to avoid the virus, complaints about lack of information about the hospitalized patients have increased, and some like Dos Santos have requested help from the Public Defender office.

Brazil has registered the highest number of victims and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Latin America.

In six days the number of victims jumped from 6,000 to more than 9,000 and confirmed cases from 83,000 on 1 May to more than 135,000 on 7 May, according to information released by the Health Ministry.

Experts and some health authorities said the number is much higher, but it's not possible to know due to the lack of tests.

The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
An 80-km strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass at a height of 17,000 feet along the border with China in Uttarakhand with Dharchula was thrown open by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday.

IMAGE: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh dedicates to the nation via video conference an 80-km long crucial road from Ghatiabgarh to Lipulekh, vastly reducing travel time to Kailash-Manasarovar yatra, in New Delhi, on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo

The new road is expected to help pilgrims visiting Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet as it is around 90 km from the Lipulekh pass.

After inaugurating the road through video-conferencing, Singh said pilgrims going to Kailash Mansarovar will now be able to complete their journey in one week instead of up to three weeks.

The road originates at Ghatiabagarh and ends at Lipulekh pass, the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar.

"With the completion of this crucial road link, the decades old dreams and aspirations of the local people and pilgrims have been fulfilled," the defence minister said.

He also expressed confidence that local trade and economic growth in the region would receive a boost with the operationalisation of the road.

Military officials said the road will also help in speedy movement of troops in the strategically key region bordering China.

Singh flagged off a caravan of nine vehicles from Pithoragarh to Gunji to mark the opening of the road.

The caravan included four small vehicles and some loaded vehicles of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Chief Engineer of Project Hirak, Vimal Goswami, said.

"After commissioning of the road, the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra from Lipulekh pass has become more convenient for pilgrims who can now return to India in one day after having the sacred darshan," he said.

With the inauguration of the strategically vital road, over 80-km of tough Himalayan terrain, between the Mangti camp near Tawaghat and Gunji in the Vyas valley, and the security posts on the Indian side of the border, has become accessible, the official said.

Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had announced last year that the road will be completed by April 2020.

"While 51-km long portions, beyond Bundi, were constructed much earlier, followed by a 23-km long portion from Tawaghat to Lakhanpur, the most tough portion between Lakhanpur to Bundi posed challenges and took much time," BRO officer Goswami said.

The construction of the road began in 2008 and was scheduled to be completed in 2013, but it got delayed due to the tough terrain in the portion between Nazang to Bundi village.

"The 15-km long most challenging portion of the road from Nazang to Bundi was outsourced in 2015 to a private company under technical guidance of BRO engineers, which completed the portion despite all odds before the set date by the minister last year," said the BRO officer.
The Tamil Nadu voter may not be in the mood to test new talent, not when the state and the people are going through unprecedented and unanticipated crises, of which coronavirus is only the first.

All of it boils down to an election between the ruling AIADMK and the Opposition DMK next year, with small-timers, had-been parties and promised parties left on the sidelines, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

IMAGE: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. Photograph: Courtesy, Edappadi K Palaswami on Twitter.

With the worldwide Covid pandemic taking its own course and time in Tamil Nadu, the state government and Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam may have lost the early bird advantage they enjoyed in terms of seeking to tackle the evil before most counterparts across the country even realised the threat that was already assuming gigantic proportions.

However, the silver lining, purely in political terms, is that the weeks-long Covid crisis has put EPS, more than even his government and party, at the centre of the states assembly election due in May next year.

The possibility of the elections being held on time will depend a lot on how fast governments, both at the Centre and states across the country, bring the pandemic to its knees.

Already speculation is beginning to do the rounds about the Centre considering the option of imposing Presidents rule in states that are to face assembly polls over the next one year, and have the same after society, if not the economy, has stabilised.

The political side of such speculation is that the BJP ruling the Centre would seek to exploit the Presidents rule to embarrass predecessor governments in states like Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal, and those other states where assembly polls may become due in the coming months.

In the case of Tamil Nadu, grist to the mill has been provided by the Centre reportedly directing the state government to hold back further action on the Rs 1,800-crore BharatNet tender, pending further probe into a complaint by Arappor Iyakkam, an NGO fighting for a corruption-free administration in Tamil Nadu.

The Opposition DMK had flagged the issue weeks ago. The DMK had also alleged a possible scam in the emergency procurement of Covid test-kits from China, which was later cancelled.

As the main Opposition party, the DMK can be expected to revive its current campaign once the Covid threat fades and the election mood picks up.

The DMK was on the top after a near-sweep against the AIADMK-BJP alliance in last years Lok Sabha polls. Both the party and the states media were already in poll mode for next years assembly elections when Covid struck. But EPSs early handling of the emerging situation may have become a cause for the rival partys concern.

However, the past week might have changed at least the voter mood to remain open to future suggestions, complaints and campaigns, as much from the DMK and other parties as by the ruling AIADMK. They all can be expected to flag issue after issue, complaint after complaint, as and when the situation improved, and the government too is forced to think of convening the mandatory assembly sessions whenever they become due.

While the government medical teams across the state, and their private practitioner counterparts in some cases, have been doing a wonderful job almost from day one, risking their own lives, the inability of the state government to provide adequate protection gears has left a bad taste.

Added to that is the unplanned clamp-downs, where many people saw the state government following the Centres directive to the t, without seeming to have any say in the matter, as may have been perceived by the bureaucracy, industry and labour interests in Tamil Nadu.

Within the government and the ruling party, EPS has seemingly used the Covid crisis to shore up his public image as much as being seen as doing enough and more within his governments limited capacity, to do more to fight and fend off the deadly virus. The local media has highlighted how Health Minister C Vijayabaskar was allegedly sidelined in briefing the media about the Covid crisis on a daily basis, and the job handed over to a civil servant.

Even without it all, EPS has been shoring up symbols of power as his AIADMK cadres understand it and Tamil Nadu has known under his mentor, late chief minister Jayalalithaa, almost from the day he patched up with estranged predecessor O Panneerselvam, or OPS, purportedly at the instance of the ruling BJP at the Centre, in 2017.

Though OPS is the designated deputy chief minister and AIADMK coordinator (EPS is the joint coordinator), most, if not all decisions in both the government and the party are taken almost exclusively by EPS.

In terms of symbolism, EPS follows the Jayalalithaa format of official meetings, where he seats himself at the head of a large office table, with officials sitting across him, as used to be the case in Jayalalithaas time.

Ministers, if any, are seated in a long row with their backs to the wall, often at a distance from the CMs earshot.

If the discussion is between the CM and his ministerial colleagues, the officials are seated like a set of temple idols, in the long row of chairs.

There is a major difference between Jayalalithaa and EPS in terms of his current stage in their respective careers as chief minister. Jayalalithaa would often meet the media at the time and occasion of her choosing. EPS, until he began facing embarrassing questions on Covid management, was addressing news conferences almost on a daily basis.

This gave him the kind of exposure, if not outright acceptance, of the Jayalalithaa kind. In this era of television news channels and social media, that is saying a lot.

EPS, however, has stuck to Jayas other habit, borne out of political confidence than electoral arrogance. All government news releases stand in his name (where the message is deemed positive, be it on Covid or otherwise). Like Jayalalithaa, and much less like MGR and Karunanidhi, the releases are in first-person singular, I. Thus, for an EPS news statement to claim that I have decided/directed is more common than statements like, the Government has directed or the Cabinet has decided

Independent of EPSs popularity ratings, whether good or bad for the AIADMK one year from now, the Covid crisis may have put paid to politico-electoral ambitions of actor-politicians, including superstar Rajinikanth with a non-starter of a political party.

After seeing, feeling and living with the Covid crisis, voters across the country, especially in states going to the polls in the next few months to a year, are bound to reflect deeply on the kind of leaders and governments they need to elect for the next five years.

IMAGE: Opposition leader M K Stalin. Photograph: Courtesy, MK Stalin on Twitter.

Given the complexity of the health, social, societal, political and economic issues facing governments and individuals, voters in Tamil Nadu, too, would be looking around for parties with politico-administrative experience and leaders with a certain expertise, starting with their inherent ability at delegating powers to ministers and officials.

In this particular department, OPS fared better when it came to delegating powers to his ministerial colleagues, and giving them freedom and responsibility to address the media, and also represent the state governments case in television talk-shows and interviews.

At the height of the Vardah cyclone that hit state capital Chennai, he also designated work and responsibility to the bureaucracy and gave them the required freedom to deliver on their own assessments and recommendations.

This was also the style that DMK president M K Stalin, also the partys chief ministerial aspirant, followed both as local administrations minister and later as deputy chief minister (2006-11) under his late father M Karunanidhi. The latter, as also his rivals MGR and Jayalalithaa, either did it themselves even for their less competent ministerial colleagues or let the bureaucracy take over and take direct instructions from the big boss, short-circuiting the ministers so very completely.

Despite all these internal and inherent vagaries of the existing political system, this is what the Tamil Nadu voter has got used to and seems to be comfortable with. They may not be in a mood to test new talent, not when the state and the people are going through unprecedented and unanticipated crises, of which Covid is only the first.

All of it boils down to an election between the ruling AIADMK and the Opposition DMK, with small-timers, had-been parties and promised parties left on the sidelines.

The other option is for them to join the alliance floated by the two majors, and/or hope to fight another day, in another election.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is Distinguished Fellow and Head-Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation.
-- First Quarter Net Sales rise 12.3 percent to $1.06 billion --

-- First Quarter Net Income increases 6.6 percent to $278.8 million --

-- First Quarter Net Income per diluted share increases 8.2 percent to $0.52 per share --

CORONA, Calif., May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- May 7, 2020  Monster Beverage Corporation (MNST) today reported financial results for the three-months ended March 31, 2020 and provided an update on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 Pandemic

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Companys top priority has been the health, safety and well-being of its employees. Early in March 2020, the Company implemented global travel restrictions and work-from-home policies for employees who are able to work remotely. For those employees who are unable to work remotely, safety precautions have been instituted, which were developed and adopted in line with guidance from public health authorities and professional consultants. The Company is incredibly proud of the teamwork exhibited by its employees, co-packers and bottlers/distributors around the world who are ensuring the integrity of its supply chain. The Companys flavor manufacturing facilities, its co-packers, warehouses and shipment facilities, are all operating. Certain of the Companys bottlers/distributors have implemented modifications to their call points and service levels, but generally the Companys products remain available to consumers. In limited countries, which are smaller markets for the Company, the operations of its bottlers/distributors have been more affected.



The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Companys net and gross sales for the 2020 first quarter was not material. The Companys April sales were materially adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, however bottler/distributor sales of the Companys products to retail in the United States were markedly less adversely impacted. Since mid-March 2020, the Company has seen a shift in consumer channel preferences and package configurations, including an increase in at-home consumption and a decrease in immediate consumption. To date, the Companys sales in the second quarter have been adversely affected as a result of a decrease in foot traffic in the convenience and gas channel (which is the Companys largest channel) and food service on-premise, while the Companys e-commerce, club store, mass merchandiser, and grocery and related business remain stable.



Currently, the Company does not foresee a material impact on the ability of its co-packers to manufacture and its bottlers/distributors to distribute its products as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the Company is not experiencing raw material or finished product shortages in its supply chain.



As of March 31, 2020, the Company had $701.8 million in cash and cash equivalents, $233.5 million in short-term investments and $13.9 million in long-term investments. Based on currently available information, the Company does not expect the COVID-19 pandemic to have a material impact on its liquidity.

Story continues

First Quarter Results

Net sales for the 2020 first quarter increased 12.3 percent to $1.06 billion from $946.0 million in the same period last year. Gross sales for the 2020 first quarter increased 13.4 percent to $1.24 billion from $1.09 billion in the same period last year. Net changes in foreign currency exchange rates had an unfavorable impact on net and gross sales for the 2020 first quarter of $10.4 million and $11.2 million, respectively.



Net sales for the Companys Monster Energy Drinks segment, which primarily includes the Companys Monster Energy drinks and Reign Total Body Fuel high performance energy drinks, increased 14.0 percent to $992.5 million for the 2020 first quarter, from $870.4 million for the 2019 first quarter. Net changes in foreign currency exchange rates had an unfavorable impact on net sales for the Monster Energy Drinks segment of approximately $10.0 million for the 2020 first quarter.



Net sales for the Companys Strategic Brands segment, which primarily includes the various energy drink brands acquired from The Coca-Cola Company, as well as the Companys affordable energy brands, decreased 8.2 percent to $64.5 million for the 2020 first quarter, from $70.3 million in the 2019 first quarter. Net changes in foreign currency exchange rates had an unfavorable impact on net sales for the Strategic Brands segment of $0.4 million for the 2020 first quarter.



Net sales for the Companys Other segment, which includes certain products of American Fruits and Flavors, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, sold to independent third party customers (the AFF Third-Party Products), were $5.1 million for the 2020 first quarter, compared with $5.3 million in the 2019 first quarter.

Net sales to customers outside the United States increased 25.6 percent to $356.8 million in the 2020 first quarter, from $284.1 million in the 2019 first quarter. Such sales were approximately 33.6 percent of total net sales in the 2020 first quarter, compared with 30.0 percent in the 2019 first quarter.



Gross profit, as a percentage of net sales, for the 2020 first quarter was 60.0 percent, compared with 60.6 percent in the 2019 first quarter.



Operating expenses for the 2020 first quarter were $272.2 million, compared with $262.1 million in the 2019 first quarter. Operating expenses included distributor termination expenses of $0.04 million for the 2020 first quarter, compared with $10.7 million in the 2019 first quarter.



Distribution costs as a percentage of net sales were 3.7 percent for the 2020 first quarter, compared with 3.8 percent in the 2019 first quarter.



Selling expenses as a percentage of net sales for the 2020 first quarter were 10.3 percent, compared with 11.0 percent in the 2019 first quarter.



General and administrative expenses for the 2020 first quarter were $124.1 million, or 11.7 percent of net sales, compared with $122.1 million, or 12.9 percent of net sales, for the 2019 first quarter. Stock-based compensation (a non-cash item) was $17.1 million for the first quarter of 2020, compared with $15.3 million in the 2019 first quarter.



Operating income for the 2020 first quarter increased to $365.0 million from $311.5 million in the 2019 first quarter.



The effective tax rate for the 2020 first quarter was 23.8 percent, compared with 16.8 percent in the 2019 first quarter. The increase in the effective tax rate for the 2020 first quarter was primarily attributable to a decrease in the equity compensation deduction.



Net income for the 2020 first quarter increased 6.6 percent to $278.8 million from $261.5 million in the 2019 first quarter. Net income per diluted share for the 2020 first quarter increased 8.2 percent to $0.52 from $0.48 in the first quarter of 2019.



Rodney C. Sacks, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said: Growth from our Monster Energy brand energy drinks internationally, as well as from our Reign Total Body Fuel high performance energy drinks, contributed to record gross and net sales for the 2020 first quarter.



During the 2020 first quarter in the United States, we launched a number of new exciting products, including a line of Reign Inferno Thermogenic Fuel, two new energy drinks in the Monster Ultra line, a line of Java Monster 300, and a line of Monster Hydro Super Sport, as well as NOS Turbo. Internationally, we added various Monster Energy brand energy drinks, and Reign Total Body Fuel high performance energy drinks to our portfolio in certain countries. Monster Energy Dragon Tea was launched in Brazil in the first quarter and in China in April 2020. Burn Dark Energy was launched in Russia, a new Nalu energy tea line was launched in Belgium, and Mother Epic Swell was launched nationally in Australia after a limited launch last year.



We also launched Predator, our affordable energy brand, in additional international markets during the first quarter, including in Mexico, with plans for further launches of Predator this year.



In January 2020, we launched our Monster Energy brand energy drinks in Israel, with further country launches and transitions planned for later this year.



Our thoughts and prayers are with all who have been impacted by this terrible virus, Sacks added.

Share Repurchase Program

During the 2020 first quarter, the Company purchased approximately 10.5 million shares of its common stock at an average purchase price of $55.22 per share, for a total amount of $579.3 million (excluding broker commissions).



As of May 7, 2020, approximately $441.5 million remained available for repurchase under the previously authorized repurchase program.

Investor Conference Call

The Company will host an investor conference call today, May 7, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time). The conference call will be open to all interested investors through an audio web broadcast via the internet at www.monsterbevcorp.com in the Events & Presentations section. For those who are not able to listen to the broadcast, the call will be archived for approximately one year on the website.

Monster Beverage Corporation

Based in Corona, California, Monster Beverage Corporation is a holding company and conducts no operating business except through its consolidated subsidiaries. The Companys subsidiaries develop and market energy drinks, including Monster Energy energy drinks, Monster Energy Ultra energy drinks, Monster MAXX maximum strength energy drinks, Java Monster non-carbonated coffee + energy drinks, Espresso Monster non-carbonated espresso + energy drinks, Caffe Monster non-carbonated energy coffee drinks, Monster Rehab non-carbonated tea + energy drinks, Muscle Monster non-carbonated energy shakes, Monster Hydro non-carbonated refreshment + energy drinks, Monster HydroSport Super Fuel non-carbonated advanced hydration + energy drinks, Monster Dragon Tea non-carbonated energy teas, Reign Total Body Fuel high performance energy drinks, Reign Inferno thermogenic fuel high performance energy drinks, NOS energy drinks, Full Throttle energy drinks, Burn energy drinks, Samurai energy drinks, Relentless energy drinks, Mother energy drinks, Play and Power Play (stylized) energy drinks, BU energy drinks, Nalu energy drinks, BPM energy drinks, Gladiator energy drinks, Ultra Energy energy drinks, Live+ energy drinks and Predator energy drinks. For more information, visit www.monsterbevcorp.com.

Note Regarding Use of Non-GAAP Measures



Gross sales is used internally by management as an indicator of and to monitor operating performance, including sales performance of particular products, salesperson performance, product growth or declines and overall Company performance. The use of gross sales allows evaluation of sales performance before the effect of any promotional items, which can mask certain performance issues. We therefore believe that the presentation of gross sales provides a useful measure of our operating performance. Gross sales is not a measure that is recognized under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (GAAP) and should not be considered as an alternative to net sales, which is determined in accordance with GAAP, and should not be used alone as an indicator of operating performance in place of net sales. Additionally, gross sales may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies, as gross sales has been defined by our internal reporting practices. In addition, gross sales may not be realized in the form of cash receipts as promotional payments and allowances may be deducted from payments received from certain customers.

The following table reconciles the non-GAAP financial measure of gross sales with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure of net sales (in thousands):

Three-Months Ended

March 31, 2020 2019 Gross sales, net of discounts and returns $ 1,236,060 $ 1,090,426 Less: Promotional and other allowances 173,963 144,435 Net Sales $ 1,062,097 $ 945,991





Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made in this announcement may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws, as amended, regarding the expectations of management with respect to our future operating results and other future events including revenues and profitability. The Company cautions that these statements are based on managements current knowledge and expectations and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of the control of the Company, that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from the statements made herein. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the following: the direct and indirect impacts of the human and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as measures being taken by governments, and as a result businesses (including the Company and its suppliers, bottlers/distributors, co-packers and other service providers), and the public at large to limit the COVID-19 pandemic; the global slowing of growth and/or decline in sales of energy drinks including the convenience and gas channel (which is our largest channel), resulting from deteriorating economic conditions and financial uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic; our ability to recognize benefits from The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) transaction; our extensive commercial arrangements with TCCC and, as a result, our future performances substantial dependence on the success of our relationship with TCCC; the impact of TCCC bottlers/distributors distributing Coca-Cola brand energy drinks; the impact on our business of trademark and trade dress infringement proceedings brought against us relating to our Reign Total Body Fuel high performance energy drinks; exposure to significant liabilities due to litigation, legal or regulatory proceedings; intellectual property injunctions; our ability to introduce and increase sales of both existing and new products, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our innovation plans; our ability to implement the share repurchase programs; unanticipated litigation concerning the Companys products; the current uncertainty and volatility in the national and global economy; changes in consumer preferences; adverse publicity surrounding obesity and health concerns related to our products, water usage, environmental impact, human rights and labor and workplace laws; changes in demand due to both domestic and international economic conditions; activities and strategies of competitors, including the introduction of new products and competitive pricing and/or marketing of similar products; actual performance of the parties under the new distribution agreements; potential disruptions arising out of the transition of certain territories to new distributors; changes in sales levels by existing distributors; unanticipated costs incurred in connection with the termination of existing distribution agreements or the transition to new distributors; changes in the price and/or availability of raw materials; other supply issues, including the availability of products and/or suitable production facilities including limitations on co-packing availability and retort production; product distribution and placement decisions by retailers; the effects of retailer consolidation on our business and our ability to successfully adapt to the rapidly changing retail landscape; our ability to successfully adapt to the changing landscape of advertising, marketing, promotional, sponsorship and endorsement opportunities created by the COVID-19 pandemic; changes in governmental regulation; the imposition of new and/or increased excise sales and/or other taxes on our products; criticism of energy drinks and/or the energy drink market generally; our ability to satisfy all criteria set forth in any U.S. model energy drink guidelines; the impact of proposals to limit or restrict the sale of energy drinks to minors and/or persons below a specified age and/or restrict the venues and/or the size of containers in which energy drinks can be sold; or political, legislative or other governmental actions or events, including the outcome of any state attorney general, government and/or quasi-government agency inquiries, in one or more regions in which we operate. For a more detailed discussion of these and other risks that could affect our operating results, see the Companys reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. The Companys actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACTS: Rodney C. Sacks Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (951) 739-6200 Hilton H. Schlosberg Vice Chairman (951) 739-6200 Roger S. Pondel / Judy Lin Sfetcu PondelWilkinson Inc. (310) 279-5980



MONSTER BEVERAGE CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND OTHER INFORMATION

FOR THE THREE-MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2020 AND 2019

(In Thousands, Except Per Share Amounts) (Unaudited)

Three-Months Ended March 31, 2020 2019 Net sales $ 1,062,097 $ 945,991 Cost of sales 424,901 372,459 Gross profit 637,196 573,532 Gross profit as a percentage of net sales 60.0 % 60.6 % Operating expenses 272,208 262,071 Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales 25.6 % 27.7 % Operating income, 364,988 311,461 Operating income as a percentage of net sales 34.4 % 32.9 % Interest and other income, net 872 2,742 Income before provision for income taxes, 365,860 314,203 Provision for income taxes 87,025 52,718 Income taxes as a percentage of income before taxes 23.8 % 16.8 % Net income, $ 278,835 $ 261,485 Net income as a percentage of net sales 26.3 % 27.6 % Net income per common share: Basic $ 0.52 $ 0.48 Diluted $ 0.52 $ 0.48 Weighted average number of shares of common stock and common stock equivalents: Basic 536,061 542,768 Diluted 540,518 548,273 Case sales (in thousands) (in 192-ounce case equivalents) 115,599 101,284 Average net sales per case3 $ 9.14 $ 9.29 Includes $10.6 million and $14.2 million for the three-months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, related to the recognition of deferred revenue. Includes $0.04 million and $10.7 million for the three-months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, related to distributor termination costs. 3Excludes Other segment net sales of $5.1 million and $5.3 million for the three-months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, comprised of net sales of the AFF Third-Party Products to independent third-party customers, as these sales do not have unit case equivalents.





MONSTER BEVERAGE CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

AS OF MARCH 31, 2020 AND DECEMBER 31, 2019

(In Thousands, Except Par Value) (Unaudited)
Oh, governor.

You were supposed to be the grown up.

While Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was out singing Live and Let Die to unsuspecting 70-somethings during this global pandemic, Gov. Greg Abbott was the one statewide leader at least giving lip service to doctors and data and common sense.

Alas, when leadership got hard, the leader got to backtracking.

Lets be clear about something: Shelley Luther, the Dallas-area salon owner-turned-folk hero, wound up in jail this week because of her very public, very theatrical refusal to follow Abbotts very own order.

Abbotts executive order, which preempted local orders, delayed the reopening of salons as part of a phased-in approach to restart the Texas economy responsibly.

And like Abbotts other orders issued during this outbreak, it specified stiff consequences for noncompliance: A fine not to exceed $1,000, up to 180 days in jail, or both.

So why, as soon as Luthers case got widespread attention, did he begin to condemn local authorities who enforced it?

Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen, Abbott said in a statement.

Allow it? Technically, he ordered it. Even Northeast Tarrant Tea Party leader Julie White McCarty saw through Abbotts hypocrisy: Governor Abbott gave orders putting severe limitations in place, she wrote on Facebook. Governor Abbott is now condemning the enforcement as if hes innocent.

Reasonable minds can disagree over whether Luther deserved to go to jail, especially when were trying to reduce jail populations to stop coronavirus spread.

Many of us can empathize with Luthers frustration at the arbitrariness of declaring some businesses essential and others seemingly expendable. Shes a working mother and I understand her desire to provide for her family. While COVID-19 can be brutal, loss of livelihood - even for a month - presents its own kind of hell.

But Luther held court for days in front of TV cameras. She didnt just violate an order to close her salon - she tore it up. When a veteran, 65-year-old Dallas judge gave her an easy out if shed just apologize and follow the law, she scoffed in defiance. So, he did what judges do: found her in contempt in court.

She could have taken the deal and gone home to her kids and waited until she could open legally on Friday.

Clearly, Luther and her legions of admirers had turned her into a cause. Thats why she went to jail  to draw attention to what she believes is a violation of her rights. And thats the point of civil disobedience. While others have advanced noble causes such as suffrage and equality, Luther did it to defend her right to work even if doing so puts her workers, neighbors and customers at risk amid a deadly pandemic.

But hey, if she wants to be the hero, a rebel with a cause, the patron saint of social distancing scofflaws, she cant play the victim, too.

Nor can Abbott play her defender. When it came to his emergency order, Abbott promptly retreated by removing jail time as a punishment for its violation. He made the tweak retroactive and claimed thats why Luther was released, though in reality that took the intervention not of the governor, but of the Texas Supreme Court .

Abbott was so busy taking credit for her release, he forgot to take responsibility for his role in putting Luther in jail in the first place. He went on Fox News and deftly squirmed out of a question from Sean Hannity, who asked why salons following safety protocols couldnt be allowed to reopen.

Texas would be opening them soon, Abbott said  before steering the conversation to one of his favorite punching bags, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, a Democrat.

Hannity tried to return to Luthers jailing: Thats not the Texas I know, he said.

Abbott agreed, it was so outrageous, then quickly deflected again, this time pointing the finger at Houston and a policy by first-term County Judge Lina Hidalgo, another Democrat.

In Houston, they were issuing fines and potential jail time for anybody who refused to wear a mask, Abbott told Hannity. Wearing a mask is the best practice, however, no one should forfeit their liberty and be sent to jail for not wearing a mask.

No one faced jail time as a result of Hidalgos order to mask up - and Abbott knows that. Even the fine was largely symbolic.

Abbotts performance here is so disappointing after weeks of showing the caution and maturity Texas needed.

Meanwhile, Judge Eric Moye up in Dallas is reportedly getting death threats. His sin? Enforcing Abbotts law after Luther refused his offer of leniency.

Sounds like the law and order Abbott and others in his base always say they support.

But maybe thats just lip service, as well.

Falkenberg is the editor of opinion, a columnist, and a member of the editorial board.

Lisa.Falkenberg@chron.com @chronfalkenberg
The pandemic, oddly enough, has saved many lives by ending mass shootings in our schools, churches, malls, and theaters by causing them to close.

It also has exposed the Presidents weakness in leadership (and science.) His inaction in alerting our nation sooner to the virus has caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands of innocent Americans  which is a thousand times worse than him shooting someone on 5th Avenue.
After a brief stop with the As, Jason Hammel is headed back to the Cubs on a two-year deal with a club option for a third season, the team announced. Hammels contract is reportedly worth $20MM, and the club option is valued at $10MM.

Hammel will earn an even $9MM in each of the guaranteed years, and his option comes with a $2MM buyout. However, the option becomes mutual if Hammel reaches 200 innings in 2016 or if he is traded.

Hammel signed a one-year deal with the Cubs last February, then enjoyed a strong half-season in Chicago before heading to Oakland in the Jeff Samardzija deal. Now, the Octagon client will return to the place where he re-launched his career.

Hammel significantly improved his strikeout rate (8.1 K/9, to go with a 3.47 ERA and 2.2 BB/9) in 2014 following a down season with the Orioles, and he pitched 176 1/3 innings, his highest total since 2010. The 32-year-old seems therefore likely to land a much more significant deal this time around than the $6MM he got from the Cubs in 2014. In October, MLBTRs Jeff Todd predicted Hammel would get three years and $30MM. This offseason, Hammel had been connected to the Marlins, Royals and Astros, along with the Cubs and other teams.

This winters market for free agent starting pitching had been at a near-standstill (with A.J. Burnett, who was only interested in signing with the Pirates, being the only significant signee so far), and it appeared that many second-tier free agents might wait for a top pitcher like Jon Lester to sign to see how their own markets would develop. It appears, however, that Hammel and his agent Alan Nero might be on the verge of getting a deal they like anyway.

The Cubs were, of course, widely known to be looking for top pitching this offseason. Signing Hammel would help them stabilize the middle of their rotation, but presumably would not preclude them from continuing to pursue an ace like Lester.

The reported terms make for an attractive price for Chicago. MLBTRs Jeff Todd predicted before the offseason that Hammel would land a deal matching Scott Feldmans three-year, $30MM guarantee, noting that Hammel had a better case but more difficult market setting than did Feldman last year. The Cubs appear to have taken advantage of that fact to add Hammel without promising a third year.

For the rest of the supply side of the market, this deal sets a fairly low target. But it also removes a competitor from the field and perhaps keeps more overall money in play, and in that respect the contract should only benefit the large group of mid-tier starters who remain available.

Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com first reported that a deal was near on Twitter. Joel Sherman of the New York Post tweeted that the deal was done. Chris Cotillo of SB Nation (via Twitter), Jon Morosi of FOX Sports (links to Twitter), and Heyman (via Twitter) reported the financial terms.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Guy Fieri has helped get more than $21.5 million to restaurant staffers put out of work amid the ongoing near-national shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The celebrity chef and restaurateur, 52, told TMZ on Thursday that he said he felt he had to do something as the COVID-19 pandemic has put restaurant workers out of work nationwide.

Fieri said he joined forces with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation to put together Restaurant Employee Relief Fund and help his 'brothers and sisters in the restaurant business' whose incomes have dried up, as restaurants have had to close their doors and downsize to takeout amid the effort to flatten the curve.

Stand-up guy: Celeb chef Guy Fieri, 52, has helped get $21.5 million to restaurant staffers put out of work amid the ongoing near-national shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. He was snapped in LA last year

'I started sending out personal video invitations to all the heavy hitters CEOs that are involved in the restaurant business and said, "Listen, Pepsi, Coke, Uber eats, all of you, we need to raise some money."'

The Food Network personality told TMZ that more than $21.5 million has been raised, and more than 40,000 restaurant employees 'all over the country' have been approved for $500 grants to help with the financial crunch brought about by the shutdown.

'We are going to continue as long as the money comes in, we're going to continue to give these grants,' Fieri said.

The culinary expert encouraged people to continue to support local eateries, particularly smaller mom and pop establishments.

Forging ahead: The Food Network personality said more than $20 million has been raised, and restaurant employees 'all over the country' have received $500 grants to help

Tough times: A Sydney, Australia restaurant was seen vacant Saturday as countries around the world have shuttered eateries to quell the spread of the virus

'A lot of these folks are the ones that are open now, available for take out or delivery - which, by the way, they need your takeout, they need your delivery, so if they're available please go give them some business, help them pay the electricity and the insurance.'

Fieri said that he's optimistic the restaurant industry will boom once the country is up and running again.

'Just looking and listening and hearing what's going on, I think people are going to be fired up, gung-ho and ready to get out there and visit the restaurants a lot more than they were prior to the pandemic.'

New normal: A couple was seen Tuesday eating in a Topeka, Kansas restaurant with new social distancing guidelines in place
Loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland have issued threats against journalists working for two Belfast-based newspapers, the owners have said.

A number of reporters working for the Sunday Life and Sunday World were visited by police officers in the early hours of Friday morning with warnings of imminent attacks by the South East Antrim UDA  a breakaway UDA group.

At least one journalist was told of a planned under-car booby trap attack and the warnings also said journalists at the two Sunday titles  both owned by Independent News and Media (INM)  were at risk of attack.

The development comes just weeks after the first anniversary of the New IRA murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Londonderry.

The PSNI is taking the threat seriously and officers have been in contact with the journalists.

It is understood the threats emanate from the breakaway South East Antrim UDA.

Police have confirmed they are in receipt of information that indicates a planned and co-ordinated campaign of intimidation.

This is a vile attempt to intimidate editors, journalists and publishers. . Seamus Dooley

Peter Vandermeersch, publisher at INM, said: We will, of course, work with the police to ensure our staffs safety.

Threats against journalists should not be tolerated in any free society.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and an important element in that victory was ensuring freedom of speech for subsequent generations.

It is depressing that thugs still believe they can silence the press through intimidation.

The Sunday World and Sunday Life will continue to publish stories that shed light in dark corners.

The loyalist terror gang continues to be involved in criminality and has been linked to several murders in recent years.

The gang has murdered three people in the past three years.

Members of the South East Antrim UDA have been linked to the murder of Glenn Quinn, 47, in January who was found in his flat in Carrickfergus.

It is understood the threat has been linked to the papers coverage of the murders and paramilitary activities.

Seamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, said: This is a vile attempt to intimidate editors, journalists and publishers.

It is the latest in a series of threats in Northern Ireland against journalists but is all the more sinister because it is a blanket threat against two newspapers, titles which have served the people of Northern Ireland fearlessly and often in the face of threats.

The NUJ, and through us the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), extends support and solidarity to all journalists employed by the group, for whom this is a distressing time.

In a week in which we marked World Press Freedom Day this is a grim reminder of the threats faced by many journalists across the globe by those who have reason to fear a free, independent and questioning press.

This threat should be lifted immediately and unequivocally by the South East Antrim UDA. We appeal to anyone who may be in a position to influence these people to immediately intervene.

While these paramilitaries are trying to intimidate journalists and their families, key workers  including journalists  are making huge sacrifices for their communities.

Key workers are working long hours to save lives, treat the sick, keep people informed, stock shelves and maintain supply chains. The PSNI should not have to deal with such threats at this time.

The NUJ will continue to support any journalist who faces threats. The officers of the NUJs Belfast and district branch and the wider membership of the NUJ in the UK and Ireland stand united in solidarity.

In 2001 Sunday World reporter Martin OHagan was murdered by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) paramilitaries.

The loyalist group targeted the journalist as he walked home with his wife. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.
A two hour search took place last night off the coast of Sandymount Strand in Dublin following reports of a person in the water.

Volunteers from Dun Laoghaire RNLI were involved in multi-agency search, which it says transpired to be a false alarm with good intent.

The Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 116 from Dublin, Dun Laoghaire Coast Guard unit, the Irish Air Corps and the Gardai were also tasked.

Weather conditions at sea were good making visibility ideal for searching.

No evidence was found, and the Coast Guard stood down the operation at 12am.

Speaking following the call out, Dun Laoghaire RNLI Helm Alan Keville, said: We are always here to respond to any situation that may arise at sea and this one was no different.

"The report to the Irish Coast Guard by a member of the public was most definitely made in good faith we would like to commend them for doing the right thing."

He said the Dun Laoghaire RNLI wanted to "make sure no life was at risk as fast-moving tides and sandbanks have been a problem in this area in the past."
To the Editor:

Re U.S. Drops Pursuit of Flynn, in Move Backed by Trump (front page, May 8):

I am a recently retired prosecutor from the Southern District of New York, having served proudly there for 20 years. I am both enraged and profoundly saddened by the recent action of the Justice Department to undermine its own prosecutors in its case against Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty twice to lying to F.B.I. investigators.

This is a blatantly political move, both to divert our attention away from this administrations pathetically inadequate response to the virus and to rile up the presidents political base. Heres what I expect to happen: The motion to dismiss the charges will be denied, as the judge has already ruled that those charges are warranted. Then Mr. Trump will pardon Mr. Flynn, citing his own Justice Departments conclusion that there is no evidence of his guilt.

We are so close to becoming a banana republic, it is scary to say the least. My beloved Justice Department has become a political weapon of this president, with the consent of a politically lock step Republican Senate. I weep for our future.

Laurie Korenbaum

Brooklyn

The writer is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School.

To the Editor:

It is no surprise that William Barrs Justice Department has dropped its criminal case against Michael Flynn. Donald Trump has lately ramped up his contention that Mr. Flynn was wrongfully charged and is a victim of another scam perpetrated against Mr. Trump and his allies and associates. Mr. Trump conveniently ignores that he had to fire Mr. Flynn because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the F.B.I. And that Mr. Flynn, under oath, pleaded guilty twice.
MIAMI, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Toast Distillers, Inc.'s award-winning Toast Vodka, the world's first vodka made with unflavored coconut water, announces an exciting expansion into Canada, a new international market for the brand. Beginning in May, the ultra-premium 100% corn-based, gluten-free, non-GMO, and six-times distilled vodka, which has become a brand favorite in Miami's South Beach and Florida retailers, will specifically add distribution in the province region of Ontario. Renowned Toronto-based wholesaler and retailer, Halpern Enterprises, will execute the distribution.

Toast Distillers, Inc. Toast Distillers, Inc.

"Our goal has always been to expand our international footprint to accommodate the consumers' increasing love for Toast vodka, our ultra-premium vodka," says Dieuveny "DJ" Jean Louis, founder and CEO of Toast Distillers. "With their impressive sales force and deep penetration, Halpern Enterprises was a clear choice as a partner and we look forward to continued growth within Canada."

Toast Vodka has seen an immense increase in brand recognition over recent years. In 2016, Toast Vodka served as the official vodka of the Louis Vuitton America's Cup world series with Goslings Rum bringing the brand in as a partner in 2017 to launch in the Bermuda market, also leading into the America's Cup finals. Toast currently maintains a presence in seven states, including Florida, California, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia with plans for further expansion in addition to Canada.

"Halpern Enterprises is constantly on the lookout for new, unique brands that are top quality to bring to Ontario, which is what we found in Toast Vodka," says Colin Halpern, Vice President of Halpern Enterprises. "We are excited to work with Mr. Louis and his team to introduce this ultra-premium brand to the Canadian market."

Aside from the company's international expansion, a subsidiary of Toast Distillers, The Miami Distilling Company, most recently announced the production and shipment of hand sanitizer to meet the growing local and national demand in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

For a list of LCBO stores to purchase Toast Vodka, please visit LCBO.com and Toastvodka.com .

About Halpern Enterprises

Halpern Enterprises has been in the business of importing fine wines and spirits into Canada for over 65 years, making it one of the oldest companies of its kind in the market. Founded by Harold Halpern, a pharmacist by education, Halpern Enterprises started small but quickly developed strong relationships with select European and New World wine producers. The second-generation Halperns have helped grow the company to over 175 wineries and distilleries from all around the world.

About Toast Distillers

Toast Distillers, Inc. ("Toast") is a Miami-based spirits conglomerate, known best for its ultra-premium vodka, Toast. The company includes The Miami Distilling Company, where the company produces all of its products. Toast Distillers specializes in developing brands internally as well as facilitating the branding and distribution needs of other specialty spirits companies. The company's products include a full range of ultra-premium to midline and well-line spirits products for vodka, rum, gin, tequila and whiskey. For more information, email [email protected] or visit

www.toastdistillers.com or www.toastvodka.com.

Media Contact:

Duree Ross, Duree & Company

[email protected] / 954-723-9350

SOURCE Toast Distillers, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.toastvodka.com


Founded in the mid-19th century, New Hope United Methodist Church had been operating on a razor-thin budget for years. Even after renovating the sanctuary recently, Sunday attendance was low, with $300 in the collection plate on a good week. But the churchs small, bustling food bank served 50 people a week in the low-income Starlight neighborhood of Atlanta. Others came to the church for Bible study and a free meal on Thursday nights, where a volunteer made sure everyone went home with an extra plate.

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But the pandemic accelerated New Hopes struggles. More than half its meager weekly donations came through cash in the Sunday offering basket, and the congregation has not met in person since mid-March. To raise extra money, pastor Abby Norman had recently started renting out the historic church building for documentaries and other film projects, including rap and country music video shoots. (Norman said she mostly stayed out of it but did ask the artists to email her the lyrics first.) The pandemic killed those gigs, too. Last week, Norman told her congregation that the churchand the food bankwould have to close. We were so close, Norman said. Its not just that were losing a church that worships Jesus on Sunday. Its generations worth of knowledge about how to care for a community.

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Temporary church closings have meant spiritual losses for many Christians. Zoom is no substitute for the fellowship of weekly gatherings and the ritual of communal worship. But for churches as institutions, with buildings to maintain and staff to pay, the pandemic has also prompted a financial crisis. About 40 percent of Protestant pastors say giving has declined since earlier this year, according to an April survey conducted by LifeWay Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Just 9 percent said giving has increased. This will push some churches over the edge, said Scott McConnell, LifeWay Researchs executive director. Its definitely an existential threat.

The unexpected dry season is especially acute for smaller churches and those serving low-income communities. Small churches in particular tend to depend on weekly donations gathered by passing an offering plate on Sunday mornings. They are less likely to have the technology set up to receive donations digitally, and they often serve older populations who are not comfortable giving that way anyway. Half of Protestant churches have only enough cash on hand to cover expenses for 15 weeks at most, according to a 2017 LifeWay survey. Churches that stopped meeting on Sunday, March 15, have now forgone in-person giving for eight weeks and counting. Some churches are cautiously making plans to reopen, but for others there is no end in sight. (On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence will meet with religious leaders in Iowa to discuss reopening religious services.)

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The vast majority of large churches had already implemented online and app-based giving before the crisis; many of them also livestreamed their weekly services with slick production values, requiring relatively few adjustments to current restrictions. Large churches do not necessarily have more weeks worth of cash reserves on hand, but with larger budgets, they have more wiggle room to trim their spending.

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Small churches have no such capacity to maneuver. In Seattle, pastor Harvey Drake of Emerald City Bible Fellowship has seen donations decline by about one-third over the course of the pandemic. His church attracted about 50 people on a typical Sunday and was facing a $50,000 deficit this year even before the pandemic hit. So far, the church has been able to keep paying its part-time pastor and three other part-time church employees, and continues to help neighborhood families with groceries and utility bills. But the future is uncertain. When we dont meet, we dont tend to receive offerings, Drake said. In his experience, older churchgoers are the most consistent donors, and the least likely to be comfortable giving online.

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Ill be damned if we get to the other end of this pandemic and only white churches survive, or only wealthy churches survive."  Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches

Many pastors were encouraged when churches and other houses of worship were included in the Paycheck Protection Program administered by the Small Business Administration. The program is primarily intended to cover payroll costs, and it is an unprecedented opportunity for churches to receive direct financial relief from the federal government. CBS News reported Friday that 9,000 Catholic parishes have received PPP loans already. But early reports suggest that black churches and those serving low-income populations have had trouble accessing the program. If youve got a big church that has a CFO or a full-time bookkeeper, it will be easier for you, said Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. The program was also set up where it prioritizes places that have salaried employees. They are plenty of churches who dont. Everett said she has heard anecdotal reports from smaller churches that have so far had trouble accessing PPP funds. Her organization is now conducting a survey of churches in the state to gather information on who is benefiting from the program. A recent LifeWay survey found that larger Protestant churches have so far been likelier to apply for the program; only a third of churches that average fewer than 50 attendees have applied.

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Some nonprofits have stepped forward to try to provide aid of their own to struggling congregations. The Churches Helping Churches Challenge, an initiative from the Christian nonprofit And Campaign, is asking larger financially stable churches to make donations to smaller at-risk churches. The fund has raised $445,000 so far and distributed $3,000 grants to 126 churches, including Emerald City Bible Fellowship. The program is pitching itself to donors as an opportunity to help heal racial and socioeconomic divides in the Church. The Bible says there are situations where you should be showing your love, rather than just saying it, said Justin Giboney, president of the And Campaign. It starts a conversation, to be able to say that at a time when minority churches and minority communities were hit hard, we found white evangelical churches and larger churches that were willing to help.

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The Massachusetts Council of Churches launched a similar fundraising initiative last week for black churches and those serving immigrant and homeless populations in the state. For Everett, its a matter of meeting the overwhelming needs of churches that provide not just Sunday morning spirituality but after-school programs, food pantries, opportunities for the elderly to socialize, and other vital services. Ill be damned if we get to the other end of this pandemic and only white churches survive, or only wealthy churches survive, she said. Well have a lot of to answer to in front of Jesus if thats the case.
Even women convicted of child abuse mourn their children. No matter the crime, the process of writing provides an outlet, a therapy, during the separation.

I would say it is at the core of their pain and shame, Stackable said. When they begin to write letters to their children, and they write back, the cycle of healing accelerates.

At the onset of the current pandemic, Poetic Justice volunteers quickly mobilized to leave packets at prisons and jails for the women to continue their work.

This distance learning included eight weeks of writing prompts, such as describing a place where love was felt or what provokes awe.

It included inspirational coloring sheets and other materials like meditative breathing techniques.

We try to pick positive, affirming things for them, Stackable said. I hope what they get out of this is that we care and havent forgotten them; that they are human beings and have unimaginable worth.

There was a worry about how the pandemic would affect the program participants. Prisons have been a hotbed for the COVID-19 virus in other states.
Serious doubt has been cast over planned pay increases for 300,000 public servants later this year.

Several Fine Gael ministers have said it would not be credible to consider it because of the impact of Covid-19 crisis on the Irish economy which has swung into recession.

As government formation talks commence today, members of the government have expressed strong concern over the ability of the next government to be able to stick to the commitment to not increase taxes, cut welfare rates and to enter a new public sector pay deal given the collapse in the public finances.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, current Cabinet ministers have expressed concern about the credibility to maintain promises made by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Paschal Donohoe.

There is serious concern being expressed by colleagues about our ability to meet a new pay deal when we have a likely 30 billion hole in the public finances, as well as not introducing tax increases or welfare cuts, said one minister.

Yes, public servants have done great work over the past few weeks, but they have been paid. Look at the small businesses, the private sector workers who have lost their job. We need to defend them, another minister said.

It is clear that a divergence of opinion exists between the parties as senior Fianna Fail sources have insisted the public service be looked after in terms of a pay deal, given the effort to address the crisis over the past two months.

What message would that send if we delayed or axed the new deal after the huge effort the public service have made during this crisis. I cant see us allowing that, said a senior Fianna Fail source.

The current deal, known as the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA) runs from 2018 to October and has a cost of 877 million.

It has emerged that initial talks between government and union leaders have taken place before the onset of the pandemic about what a new deal would look like, but nothing since then.

Senior union sources have said they have heard suggestions that the last round of pay increases due in October might not be paid, but any suggestion of such a scenario would go down very badly.

We expect the deal to be honoured and honoured in full. As for a new deal, we stand ready to negotiate, said one union leader.

Meanwhile, writing in todays Irish Examiner, Tanaiste Simon Coveney has said the first job in the talks between Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Greens will be to establish trust.

Our first job will be to build trust. Without strong relationships governments dont come together. In the next few weeks we will attempt to produce a program for government, with our negotiating partners, than can deliver on all of the challenges above, and more, he said.

Other parties and independents may choose to join the process too. Id welcome that, but from today this process moves ahead as time is short, he said.

Ireland needs a government with authority and a strong majority to give the political leadership demanded by our current emergency.

The challenges that face the next administration are vast, but they are surmountable.

Rebuilding our society and economy after the trauma of coronavirus, a fundamental shift in pace and ambition on climate action and delivering more for our citizens on health and housing are just a few of the major issues awaiting attention, he added.
The coronavirus outbreak has prompted the cancellation of all summer recreation activities in Madison Heights, the city announced this week.

The cancellation is through Labor Day and it impacts all of the citys events and recreation programs.

After much consideration, we have decided to cancel all recreation programs and special events for the summer because the registration periods, planning, and social distancing requirements make it unfeasible to host these events this year, Madison Heights Mayor Brian Hartwell said in a release. This will include all summer recreation programming as well as the Memorial Day Parade, Festival in the Park, and summer camps.

City leaders recognize this is a difficult decision and encourage people to stay connected virtually.

But they did not want people to wait for events that may not occur.

This is a painful decision to make, as we cherish the community involvement that the citys programming provides to our residents, City Manager Melissa Marsh said in a release announcing the decision. We understand that our residents will be disappointed by this decision, and that it will have far-reaching impact on our neighbors,

The city said that as of Thursday, it had confirmed 204 cases and 28 deaths among its residents from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Nearby communities have seen more severe outbreaks, including Oak Park and Southfield.

The four zip codes that include Troy have seen 395 cases as of Thursday, and Oak Park had 488 cases while the four zip codes for Southfield and Lathrup Village had a total of 1,498 cases and 176 deaths, according to the Oakland County government. Royal Oaks three zip codes had 488 cases and 46 deaths.

Also this week, Ferndale and Berkley cancelled summer events within their cities.

The goal in Madison Heights is to prevent further spread of the disease throughout the city.

For participants who have already paid for any summer programs, refunds will be provided, the city said.

Some communities have cancelled events on a weekly or monthly basis, but in Madison Heights, the leadership wanted to allow families to fully plan their summer months.

With the collective health and safety of the entire community as our top priorities, it was deemed better to halt programming for a little while longer instead of dramatically altering every offering to meet distancing and sanitizing recommendations, the city said.

In the Downriver area, another city  Riverview  also cancelled all of its spring and summer events, including The Wall That Heals, a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Also, this week saw the announcement that the Oakland County waterparks, including Red Oaks in Madison Heights, would not open this summer.

New events or information about updated events will be sent out it becomes available.

Madison Heights residents are part of a tight-knit community and will remain so long after COVID-19 is gone, Mayor Hartwell said. The city looks forward to a return to a more connected life once the COVID pandemic is under control. Our program-rich offerings will return once we are certain the most vulnerable of us are protected, and we believe a vigorous approach now will lead to renewed freedoms later.
BROOKLYN, Ohio -- Due to the economic slowdown related to COVID-19, Gov. Mike DeWine has announced he is cutting 3.7 percent -- which equates to $300.4 million -- in funding to Ohios public K-12 schools through the end of the fiscal year (June 30).

For the Brooklyn City School District, the total reduction is $216,174, or an adjusted per-pupil reduction of $184.

I fully expected it to happen, said Superintendent Mark G. Gleichauf, who earlier this week announced his resignation to take over as the new leader of Lakewood Local Schools in Licking County.

We had begun to hear from the governor, as well as the legislators, that state revenues were down and they were going to start to cut.

So far, the state is continuing with its Student Wellness and Success funding. Brooklyn received $266,925 for this school year and is budgeted for $384,371 in 2020-2021.

The Wellness dollars were put into the budget last year, Gleichauf said. We do have those funds. Weve been trying to conserve those, as well, because the governor allowed us to use those over a number of years, but I am concerned.

The governor could say we cant afford to do the student Wellness dollars in the second year of the budget. That would be a big hit for us as a school district.

In addition, Brooklyn City Schools expects to receive $350,000 from the CARES Act, a federal program giving states coronavirus-related education funding.

With the CARES Act, Brooklyn is in line to receive about $350,000, Gleichauf said. Thats just probably going to make up for the budget shortfall for this year.

Something else at play is curriculum for the 2020-2021 school year, as many districts are planning blended-learning contingencies with instruction at buildings one or two days a week, followed by remote learning.

Every one of us in public districts are very concerned, particularly going into a year with such great uncertainties of what our instructional model is going to need, Gleichauf said. Were preparing multiple scenarios for opening the school in the fall.

"What were doing right now as an administrative group is determining what are going to be our needs in these different models. I think the (CARES Act) dollars are going to be used to help us create that instructional plan.

The superintendent stressed that it was premature to discuss any type of staffing cuts for next school year.

Right now, were just looking at material goods -- whether its technology, infrastructure, software, Gleichauf said. Were in a different distance learning model. Certainly, staffing is something we also have to take a look at, not knowing what the governor has in line for us.

Im nervous about next year. I suspect theres going to be additional cuts, but what comes with that are the great uncertainties.

Read more news from the Parma Sun Post.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 07:14:14|Editor: huaxia

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SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. ride-hailing company Uber Technologies on Thursday announced its first-quarter financial results of 2020, with 3.54 billion U.S. dollars of revenue and 1.7 dollars of loss per share.

The company's revenue counted 14 percent growth year over year, or 16 percent on a constant currency basis. Its net loss reached 2.9 billion U.S. dollars, which included 277 million dollars in stock-based compensation expense and pre-tax impairment write-downs of 2.1 billion dollars.

Uber's gross bookings grew to 15.8 billion U.S. dollars, up 8 percent year over year, or 10 percent on a constant currency basis, with Rides business declining 3 percent and Eats growing 54 percent year over year, respectively, on a constant currency basis, according to its financial report.

Uber's Rides adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) delivered 581 million U.S. dollars in profit, up 389 million dollars year over year, and down 161 million dollars quarter over quarter, and 23.5 percent margin as a percentage of ANR (Adjusted Net Revenue), the financial report said.

"While our Rides business has been hit hard by the ongoing pandemic, we have taken quick action to preserve the strength of our balance sheet, focus additional resources on Uber Eats, and prepare us for any recovery scenario," said Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO. "Along with the surge in food delivery, we are encouraged by the early signs we are seeing in markets that are beginning to open back up."

The company's unrestricted cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments were 9 billion U.S. dollars. "Our ample liquidity provides us with substantial flexibility to navigate the current crisis," said Nelson Chai, Uber's CFO.

"We have recently exited eight unprofitable Eats markets, significantly reduced the size of our customer support and recruiting teams, and merged our JUMP unit into Lime... We are continuing to look at all levers to ensure our core Rides and Eats businesses emerge from this crisis stronger than ever," he added. Enditem
Aisha Sultan Aisha Sultan is home and family editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Aisha Sultan Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

When she was about to give birth, Melissa Andrzejewski was reminded of death.

She found out she was pregnant a few weeks before her father found out his pancreatic cancer had spread and he only had a few months to live. After he died in October, she told her family and friends she would need them more than ever during her labor and delivery.

I can get through this as long as all of you are with me in the hospital, she said. Thats what her family does. There were 15 people in the waiting room a year and a half ago when her first baby, Holly, was born. Her sister ordered pizza for everyone while they waited.

Back then, her father was in the hospital with complications of his chemotherapy. He met his granddaughter after he was released, when Holly was 2 weeks old.

Andrzejewski, 28, is an operating room nurse in Troy, Missouri. She kept working at the hospital through her second pregnancy. When she was 37 weeks, a nurse friend of hers from the hospital where she was scheduled to deliver texted her a screenshot of the revised visitation policy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

No visitors would be allowed when she would give birth. The fact that the waiting room would be empty hit her hard.
Valerie Pecresse, a French presidential hopeful from the Republican party, who had the egregious audacity to illegally visit the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on December 22, 2021, is now allegedly "infuriated" at the French government's "deafening silence" at Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's remarks that she would not have been permitted to leave the country, had Baku been informed about her illegal trip.
Struggling hospitality venues across the state wondering when they can open their doors for on-premise trade remain in the dark despite the unveiling of a three-step roadmap by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday morning.

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Under the National Cabinet's framework, which ultimately can be tweaked by individual states and territories, cafes and restaurants can open and seat up to 10 patrons at one time if the 4-square-metre average density rule is adhered to.

Step two would allow them to seat 20 patrons; that number would increase to 100 customers in cafes and restaurants in step three.

Pubs, nightclubs, licensed and registered clubs and gaming venues, such as Crown Perth, would remain closed during step one and step two, while step three would allow some of these venues to hold 100 patrons, with consideration given to large bar areas and gaming rooms.
Face masks are delivered across dividing lines in Ireland and Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates sends medical supplies to rival Iran, and China and Japan exchange rare warm words.

The coronavirus pandemic may have exacerbated global tensions, especially between the United States and China. But in some cases it has also sparked cooperation between longtime rivals.

In one ray of light amid the gloom, Northern Ireland's unionist Orange Order last month secured a shipment of personal protective equipment for distribution both north and south of the border with the Republic of Ireland.

That was highly unusual as unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, are usually wary of cross-border cooperation, seeing it as a gateway to Irish unification.

But the Belfast executive, which includes unionists, also signed a non-binding deal with Dublin to beef up cooperation.

"We face a common challenge," said Northern Ireland's health minister Robin Swann, from the hardline Democratic Unionist Party.

"Facing that challenge will test us as never before."

His comment echoed the words of Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, who argued in March that "both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems (requiring) global cooperation".

Writing in the Financial Times, Harari warned that "a collective paralysis has gripped the international community" as the world faces a choice between "nationalist isolation and global solidarity".

- Reaching across borders -

Calls by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in March for a "global ceasefire" also appear to have fallen on deaf ears, with fighting continuing in battlefields from Libya to Yemen.

Yet in some cases, the need to fight the virus has trumped old rivalries.

On the divided island of Cyprus, the government last month sent 4,000 items of protective equipment and 2,000 chloroquine tablets across the UN-guarded ceasefire line to help the breakaway north.

It was a rare act of goodwill between the EU member and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Ankara.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, but last month the Republic of Cyprus sent medical aid to help the breakaway north fight the novel coronavirus /  AFP/File

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded the northern third of the island in response to a Greek-backed coup.

But the delivery, nearly three years after peace talks collapsed, came under fire from nationalist politicians.

Prime minister Ersin Tatar accused TRNC president Mustafa Akinci of breaking customs regulations and argued that "if we need something, we request it from Turkey".

The health minister in the north, Ali Pilli, begged to differ, telling news channel BRT TV that "no matter where (the aid) comes from, we accept it".

- Generosity and pragmatism -

Earlier in the year, as the COVID-19 illness ravaged China, Japanese businesses and the government donated thousands of protective garments.

Chinese social media users hailed the gifts, and Beijing's foreign ministry said it was "extremely touched" -- a far cry from the bitterness often overshadowing their relations since before World War II.

As in other cases, this generosity may have been partly motivated by pragmatism.

As regional expert Victor Teo told AFP, "it is definitely in Japan's national interest that the health threat remains contained."

Broader geopolitical trends may also have played a role. Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, pointed out that China was "always more solicitous to Japan" when tensions rise with Washington.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly called for a global ceasefire to allow war-torn nations to combat the coronavirus pandemic /  Other/AFP/File

The pandemic has also inspired unusual gestures in the Middle East.

The United Arab Emirates evoked the virus as part of its outreach to the president of war-torn Syria, Bashar al-Assad, for years shunned by Arab governments.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan called Assad late last month for the first time since Syria's civil war began in 2011, pledging his country's "willingness to help the Syrian people".

No aid deliveries to Syria have yet been reported.

But the UAE did dispatch a military plane in March carrying UN medical experts and aid to Assad's ally Iran -- despite the fact the Emirates are allied with Washington against Tehran.

- 'In the firing line too' -

The help for Iran, hit by the Middle East's deadliest outbreak, was all the more remarkable as it followed heightened tensions in the Gulf.

Recent months saw attacks on shipping, the downing of a US drone and the American killing of a top Iranian commander that had sparked fears of regional war.

But senior Emirati aid official Sultan Mohammed al-Shamsi said that "aid should reach all people regardless of their background."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif thanked the UAE, calling the pandemic a "global issue that requires the combined will of all countries to be defeated".

Michael Stephens, of the RUSI think tank in London, noted that "aid diplomacy is a big thing in the Islamic world".

But he also pointed at self-interest. Despite their disagreements, the UAE and neighbouring Iran have close trading links, and tens of thousands of Iranians live in Dubai.

"I think the deliveries were pragmatic more than anything else -- if your neighbours get the virus, you're in the firing line too," he said.

Moreover, he added, "anything that lowers tensions is a good thing."
A wind farm in Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province, is seen in this 2018 photo. Korea is exploring ways for its own "Green New Deal," a project to transform the country's coal-centered industry into a renewable-energy based economy while creating jobs, in an effort to battle the post-coronavirus economic crisis. Yonhap



Gov't gains momentum for policy support after ruling party's sweeping victory in general election



By Jung Da-min



Korea has become an exemplary model for the international community concerning its COVID-19 containment efforts.



The attention is now on whether it can also overcome the post-pandemic economic crisis.



As an economic revival drive, the government and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) have turned to a new concept dubbed "Green New Deal," which combines former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's economic approach of initiating public work projects, financial reforms and regulations with modern ideas such as the transition to renewable energy and resource efficiency.



"If there comes a global crisis which is a hundred or a thousand times bigger than the crisis of COVID-19, that would be the climate crisis," Rep. Kim Sung-whan, who heads the DPK's taskforce team to push forward the Korea-appropriated "New Deal," said during a forum titled "Post-Coronavirus Era and Green New Deal" at the National Assembly, Wednesday. Kim co-hosted the event together with Greenpeace East Asia Seoul and Energy Transition Forum Korea.



Over 100 people attended the forum, including lawmakers and leaders of environmental civil organizations. The DPK's lawmaker-elect Lee Nak-yon, former prime minister to President Moon Jae-in, also attended the forum.



"When Korea was undergoing a foreign exchange crisis in the late 1990s during the presidency of Kim Dae-jung, we dealt with it through financial investment and easing of regulations, which laid the foundation stone for the country to become an IT powerhouse, through development of popular culture which was the start of the global K-wave, and through social welfare systems like the National Health Insurance Service for all people which helped the country deal with the coronavirus now," Lee said.



The former prime minister said Korea needs another financial investment and easing of regulations to foster new industries under the name of Green New Deal, as the country must deal with environmental issues while preventing job losses.





Lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and renewable energy experts pose for a photo during a forum titled "Post-Coronavirus Era and Green New Deal" at the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday. Rep. Kim Sung-whan, front row third from right, who heads the DPK's taskforce team to push forward the Korea-appropriated "New Deal," co-hosted the event together with Greenpeace East Asia Seoul and Energy Transition Forum Korea. Courtesy of Energy Transition Forum Korea



What differentiates the Green New Deal from traditional ideas of environmental protection policies is that it views that the fundamental cause of the climate crisis lies not with greenhouse gases but with the characteristics of capitalism which seeks indefinite production and consumption.



The problem here is that capitalism grows out of the sacrifices of disadvantaged social groups and communities.



The Green New Deal policy is about changing the fundamental mechanism of the coal-centered traditional industry into a renewable energy-centered industry while creating jobs and providing social safety nets to socially vulnerable groups.



In fact, while the U.S. and European countries have actively been adopting such an idea using the term "Green New Deal" and "European Green Deal," respectively, Korea has been left relatively behind until recently.



Korea ranked 58th out of a total of 61 countries in the Climate Change Performance Index 2020, published in December by international environmental organizations New Climate Institute, Germanwatch and the Climate Action Network (CAN), as one of the "bottom three performers" who "fail to make any progress in the greenhouse gas emissions" along with Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.



After criticism mounted within the country among experts that the government was not taking the issue seriously, the DPK adopted the Green New Deal policies as one of its election pledges just a month ahead of the April 15 general election.



And following the sweeping victory of the ruling bloc, the DPK and its satellite party Civil Together have now secured the momentum to push ahead with the policies. They have put two of their lawmakers-elect who have been engaged in civic environmental movements to the front. They are Lee So-young of the DPK, a lawyer-turned-politician who was a former member of the National Council on Climate and Air Quality (NCCA), and YangYi Won-young of Civil Together, who was a former secretary general of the Energy Transition Forum Korea.



The two attended the forum to talk about how the next 21st National Assembly could proceed with Korea's own Green New Deal policies and carry out necessary tasks, such as defining the concept and goals of the Green New Deal, and institutionalizing needed legal systems and securing finances to support the policies.





Participants of the "Post-Coronavirus Era and Green New Deal" forum discuss how Korea can explore ways for its own "Green New Deal," at a seminar room in the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday. Korea Times photo by Jung Da-min
Somewhere in inner-city Detroit, a seventh grader, whose school is closed due to the ongoing pandemic, stares blankly at her science worksheets. Reading at the third-grade level, she does not understand the assignment and without a home internet connection, she cannot reach her teacher for help. Instead, she settles into the couch and flicks on cartoons.

That student  like all American children  deserves a full and quality education. Like many others, she is not getting one and the problem predates the schools shutdown due to COVID-19.

Fortunately, a Detroit schoolchild like her went to court and argued she not only deserves an education that enables her to attain literacy, she has a right to one. A federal appeals court agreed.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision late last month in Gary B. v. Whitmer represents a watershed moment in American education and, if it stands, could transform American society for generations to come.

The decision sets the stage for parents, students, teachers, and advocates in the Sixth Circuits states and potentially beyond to fight back against policy makers and leaders who fail to provide proper resources for learning. Failing to provide the education children need to attain literacy could no longer just be against commonsense, it could be against the law.

The Court ruled that the US Constitution guarantees a fundamental right to the facilities, teaching, and educational materials that enable students to attain the literacy needed to participate in democracy. The ruling that a basic minimum education is both deeply rooted in our nations history and traditions and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty is a precedent that will reverberate through legislatures and classrooms alike.

The implications for our society and democracy could not be more profound and for millions of under-resourced students, like the plaintiffs in Detroit, the decision could prove life-changing, particularly because literacy as a guiding principle is supported by thought leaders on the left and the right.

With two-thirds of high school drop-outs not voting in the 2016 election, guaranteeing each child the fundamental right to the education that they need to participate in our democracy is essential for good government. Students need access to the courses, facilities and teachers that provide the analytical and reasoning skills that they will need to comprehend candidates complex legal and policy proposals, ballot initiatives, and the fiscal impacts of those political decisions.

All citizens must demand that schools offer learning opportunities that equip students to engage effectively with their government. A federal right to education provides one the best ways to achieve this. Our national interest in an educated citizenry requires that the federal government safeguard our ability to select, on an informed basis, political leaders responsive to we the people rather than we the affluent.

Todays pandemic-induced educational gaps are shocking. In wealthier schools, more than half of teachers report interacting with students at least once a day. In contrast, in poorer schools, only a third of teachers directly interact with their students on a daily basis. Despite widespread school closures, only two-thirds of students in high-poverty school districts are participating in virtual learning compared to 88% of students in wealthier districts.

But educational opportunity gaps are longstanding and deep-seated, often falling along the lines of race, class and neighborhood. Sadly, they are widening as many under-resourced districts have effectively stopped educating their students for the school year.

The dismal conditions that characterize Detroit schools  unqualified teachers, outdated or nonexistent textbooks, and facilities infested with vermin and malfunctioning heating and air conditioning  are emblematic of what many poor and minority children experience. Most states neglect educational equity. When the lions share of educational funding and resources are distributed, these children are left behind.

State courts have been largely ineffective in holding states accountable for decades of educational neglect when schoolchildren and their families have sued them in state court. Despite some modest funding gains and improvements, state funding decisions too often tinker at the margins of reshaping educational opportunities in ways that would work for all children, rather than only for the children of the privileged and powerful.

States, who are increasingly being sued in federal court for failing to deliver an adequate education, should take heed. A federal judge in Rhode Island, is reviewing a similar lawsuit to the Gary B. case that alleges that children there are being denied an education that prepares them to engage in political and civic life. In Connecticut, schoolchildren and parents, trapped in failing schools, allege that their constitutional rights have been violated. After Gary B. v. Whitmer, Michigan must now defend Detroit schools shocking conditions at trial if they refuse to settle the litigation.

Our democracy is the true winner if parents and schoolchildren begin to demand a right to a basic education. Fuller and fairer participation in our great American democracy fulfills our republics promise to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.

With a right to education in hand, the power dynamic between the powerful interests and the disenfranchised, powerless, and poor can be restructured. The latter now possess a legal right to demand equity and proper resources.

The decision empowers parents and advocates in the states covered by the ruling to compel state legislatures and school boards to provide effective teachers, sound facilities, and up-to-date course materials. Citizens also must demand that states and districts close the opportunity gaps for poor and minority schoolchildren and equip all children to fully participate in our democracy.

A constitutional right to education is a long-time coming, but could not come too soon for the well-being of Americas school children and the fulfillment of our democratic ideals.
In accordance with Executive Order 2020-72 issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, City of Midland senior living communities Washington Woods and Riverside Place will remain closed to non-essential visitors through Sunday, May 31.

Essential care providers who assist with medical care and activities of daily living such as bathing, laundry, cleaning, and cooking are permitted access to buildings. All staff and caregivers are required to wear a facial covering when indoors and must practice proper social distancing guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Essential care needs should be performed by phone or via electronic methods if possible.
REGINAQuestions about access to supplies are emerging as health officials and community leaders work to contain spread of COVID-19 in Saskatchewans far north.

The region has seen a spike in cases in and around the remote Dene village of La Loche, a community of 2,800 about 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

Leonard Montgrand, the regional representative of Metis Nation-Saskatchewan, lives in the community. He said its getting scary because infrastructure isnt set up to respond to the crisis.

We are losing control, he said.

We need to get that infrastructure set up. We need to get things in place.

One of two grocery stores in the village recently closed after an employee tested positive for COVID-19. The company that owns the store said in a statement it will try to reopen as soon as possible.

For us, a day without both grocery stores operating is difficult, said Georgina Jolibois, a former member of Parliament for the region.

She said people will have limited access to fruits and vegetables, as the one store that remains open is already busy. Surgical and cloth masks were quickly scooped up and getting cleaning supplies has always been tough.

Some physicians and medical students in the province have launched a GoFundMe campaign to get cleaning supplies and non-perishable food to La Loche. It had raised more than $10,000 as of Friday afternoon.

La Loche Mayor Robert St. Pierre said residents are OK for now. He expects the closed grocery store will be up and running again in a day or two.

Council has also requested the province close down the villages liquor store to prevent people from leaving their homes and gathering, he said.

Inhibitions are not really there when you start drinking.

For the safety of the community, at least for this week or next week, to contain this virus, those are the measures that we have to do.

Twelve of 13 new cases announced Friday by the province are in and around La Loche. A Facebook group providing community updates said there are 112 active cases in the village and 17 in the nearby Clearwater River Dene Nation.

Of Saskatchewans 544 total cases, 179 are from the far north. Two elders from La Loche have also died from the illness.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said Friday the La Loche outbreak is one of the worst in Canada, in terms of numbers happening in a vulnerable Indigenous community with a number of First Nations reserves around it.

This is really a combination of factors that make it very alarming.

Much of the transmission in the community is happening through young people, added Montgrand.

He said the village is developing an alcohol monitoring program for residents and setting up a homeless shelter.

Ashton Lemaigre, who moved back home to La Loche after finishing a university degree, said people addicted to drugs and alcohol are having a harder time with physical distancing.

Theres a lot of people who I know that are doing a lot of drug activities that are still out, even though we have security and we have curfews.

Opposition NDP Leader Ryan Meili said the Saskatchewan Party government should have seen the risk the virus posed for La Loche and been more prepared.

Premier Scott Moe said there have been supply shortages to the community but they are very short-term. The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said 300 more cleaning kits were to arrive in La Loche on Friday.

Conservation officers and Mounties are manning checkpoints to restrict non-essential travel in the region.

La Loche is also exempt from participating in the first phase of the provinces reopening plan, which lifted public health restrictions on medical services this week. Retail shops and hair salons are to open later this month.

Moe said the government worked closely with northern leaders to decide on the travel restriction. But they were not unanimous in how it should be restricted.

Ric Richardson, mayor of Green Lake, a village of 500 people south of La Loche, said travel in the area wasnt restricted until the end of April. The leaders asked for it to be blocked back in March.

To say that were becoming frustrated is an understatement, he said Friday.
Friday, May 8, 2020

Johanna Hoffman, a member of our Emerging Fellows program detects the effect of climate change on global institutions. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the APF or its other members.

Climate change increases stress on governmental structures, intensifying vulnerabilities present within. The more taxing a situation turns, the more difficult collaboration and communication often become, creating a vicious cycle that brings cultural and political tensions to the fore. Its the rare event when one country is effectively able to coordinate with another during times of crisis. Take the current coronavirus pandemic and its wide reaching economic impacts. The international economy is reeling as a result of the virus spread, yet there remains little consultation between governments, with plans for stimulus cropping up incrementally and separately across the globe.

As climate change progresses, the scale, scope and speed of difficulty will deepen around the world, testing the strength of international institutions to greater degrees. Indeed, climate issues are already showing both how difficult negotiation between countries is, and how insufficient our existing international institutions are to addressing issues of serious concern. When it comes to climate change, the authoritative limits of organizations like the United Nations or the World Bank are progressively highlighted and undermined. All international agreements made since the first COP (Conference of Parties) Climate Change Convention in 1995 have been non-binding, with participating countries left to follow its recommendations via voluntary interpretation. Many global leaders, such as the United States, have pulled out of agreements entirely.

Our international institutions, from the World Health Organization to the International Monetary Fund, retain only the power to recommend, pressure or sanction. They do not enforce. In times of strife, following recommendations that have less directly calculable benefit, such as recommendations from the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement that participating countries support sustainable development and enhance adaptive capacity, can become political liabilities. Making moves towards measures that require longer periods of time to show results is all to often a harder move to sell.

Again, the coronavirus crisis currently gripping the planet is a useful reference to assess where our international systems might be heading. While not directly caused by climate issues, coronavirus and its devastations are imprints of what is likely to come. As climate change brings warmer temperatures and glacial melt, researchers anticipate that new infectious diseases will arise, to which modern humans have little to no immunity. Coronavirus has shown that sequestering such diseases can be near impossible. In our modern world of global supply chains and constant travel, what affects one part of the globe affects us all.

Sadly, our existing international bodies are not up to the task of managing such outbreaks. In the early days of coronavirus reach, the World Health Organization sent out warnings, letting governments know that the virus required serious preventative measures. Some countries, like Singapore and South Korea, places where more recent outbreaks of SARS and MERS have left lasting impacts, took the recommendations to heart. Others, like the United States, Brazil and Italy, did not. The WHO has no authority to manage how international governments follow its recommendations, creating conditions where diseases and infections that might have been effectively regulated with cross governmental coordination go on rampant, causing widespread loss of life, economic fallout and social decay.

Researchers are certain that climate change will bring more and stranger viruses than we have experienced in living memory. With the conditions of scarcity, uncertainty and fear that come with such pandemics, many leaders may well work to strengthen their respective states and reinforce feelings of nationalism. Governments across the board could enact emergency restrictions and policies to navigate the mounting crises, restrictions that, when those crises abate, leaders may not readily relinquish. Such concentration of power often leads to diminished reliance on international governance and a weakened belief in the power of multilateral cooperation.

As the diseases, conflicts and extreme weather events that come with climate change increase, the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of current global institutions will continue to show. The amount and frequency of refugee movements will only spike, bringing more conflict and spurring greater demands on existing resources, challenging the ability of global institutions to manage and guide the flows. Only direct support, coordinated reimagining and international investment, can prevent the already present cracks in our institutions from breaking.

 Johanna Hoffman
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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Two cruise lines said Wednesday they are canceling the remaining sailings they had planned for Alaska this summer, citing travel and other restrictions linked to coronavirus concerns.

Princess Cruises and Holland America Line had previously announced sharply reduced plans for voyages to and tours in Alaska.





. . .
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26 Hercs over America

Cleveland reports 41 new cases of COVID-19 coronavirus among city residents (cleveland.com)

First youth tests positive for coronavirus in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center, memo says (cleveland.com)

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson focuses on health, reassurance and cautious advice in coronavirus telephone town hall (cleveland.com)

Cleveland Water last in J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey of 10 large Midwest departments (cleveland.com)

At Bellefaire JCB, some employees say autistic kids who live on site put at risk of coronavirus (cleveland.com)

Cleveland man released from prison after winning new trial in wifes 1974 slaying that he says he didnt commit (cleveland.com)

PETA accuses Cleveland Clinic of abusing lab mice after undercover investigation (cleveland.com)

National Weather Service issues freeze warning for all of Northeast Ohio through Saturday morning (cleveland.com)

See Hercs Over America aircraft fly over Cleveland skies Thursday honoring frontline workers (photos) (cleveland.com)

Local news East

15 Nestle provides free drive-thru meals to frontline workers, May 7, 2020

Nestle provides free drive-thru meals to frontline workers in coronavirus pandemic (photos) (cleveland.com)

Chagrin Falls High School graduation ceremony moved to July 10-12 (cleveland.com)

Highland Heights cancels Memorial Day events; mayor looks to aid small businesses (cleveland.com)

Mulcahy: Orange managing OK despite financial impact of coronavirus (cleveland.com)

Local news West

Essential workers needing pandemic child care turn to YMCA of Greater Cleveland (cleveland.com)

Lakewood projects more than $1 million coronavirus-related revenue loss in April (cleveland.com)

Lakewood City School District leaders say Gov. Mike DeWines budget cuts were higher than anticipated (cleveland.com)

Parma City Schools superintendent says district can weather state budget cuts (cleveland.com)

Brook Park experienced big income tax loss in April due to pandemic impact (cleveland.com)

Temporary closure of Middleburg Heights Recreation Center enables natatorium upgrades to start (cleveland.com)

Brunswick Historical Society sets opening day for farmers markets (cleveland.com)

Independence Schools trying to salvage end-of-year activities (cleveland.com)

Berea City Schools music education program earns national award for 20th time (cleveland.com)

Akron / Canton area

Major Akron Art Museum donor says museum should replace Director Mark Masuoka following accusations of racism, sexism and bullying by managers (cleveland.com)

Rite Aid expands free coronavirus testing to all adults at drive-up locations, including Parma and Akron (cleveland.com)

University of Akron releases plan for shifting from 11 colleges to five (cleveland.com)

State

Rep. Jim Jordan to serve on coronavirus oversight committee he argued against creating (cleveland.com)
A group of seven Kenyans has moved to court to seek damages from the government for being held in mandatory quarantine.

The plaintiffs arrived in Kenya on diverse dates between March 23 and March 25, 2020 and were taken to designated quarantine facilities, court papers show.

They arrived from various countries: Malawi, United States, Australia, U.K, Singapore, and Pakistan.

The seven, who include a minor, claim their rights were violated when they were placed in mandatory quarantine. They argue that the decision by government to implement mandatory quarantine is arbitrary and unreasonable.

Placing a person under quarantine limits their right to liberty, freedom of movement, privacy and economic livelihood, they added.

The petitioners claim that the manner in which the government is implementing mandatory quarantine does not comply with the States constitutional duties.

They also state that it is the governments responsibility during this Covid-19 pandemic to promote, observe and protect the rights of citizens.

Each of the seven is seeking damages for the costs they paid in the duration they were in mandatory quarantine. The lowest is seeking Sh6,785 while the highest wants Sh112,000.
The Madhya Pradesh government has



sought 25 additional trains from the Railways to bring back migrant labourers of the state from other parts of the country, a senior official said on Friday.

As of Thursday, around 1.05 lakh migrants have been brought back from other states, the official claimed.

The state government on Thursday sent a requisition to the Railways, seeking 25 more trains, additional chief secretary and state control room in-charge ICP Keshari said.

A Shramik Special train with 1,100 migrants from Delhi reached Chattarpur on Friday, while a train carrying 1,239 labourers arrived at Sagar from Rewari in Haryana and 1,200 migrants reached Gwalior from Delhi.

At least three more special trains were scheduled to reach Madhya Pradesh on Friday, Keshari said, adding that the state government has managed to bring back 1.05 lakh workers so far.

As many as 4,000 workers had returned from Gujarat on Thursday alone, while 4,000 to 5,000 people were reaching the state's borders on foot every day, the official said.

Migrants were expected to reach the state by at least two trains each from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and one from Kozhikode in Kerala, he added.

The government has sent back nearly 50,000 workers stranded in Madhya Pradesh to their home states in the last 10 days, Keshari said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The passing of one of Britain's most colourful aristocrats last month has cast a pall of sorrow across the Longleat estate, where those in mourning for the late Marquess of Bath include the grieving mistresses he left behind.

Lord Bath, who died of coronavirus aged 87, was nicknamed 'the Loins of Longleat' and became notorious for his polygamous love life and free-for-all attitude to women and sex.

But spare a thought for the lovers who tussled over his affections for decades. For without their wealthy benefactor, what is to become of the bevy of women  at one stage there were said to be 75 of them  whom he fondly called his 'wifelets'?

This week, amid whispers that the last of the Marquess's multitudinous mistresses are set to be evicted from his 10,000-acre Wiltshire estate, the Mail can reveal that the rivalry between them is as fierce as ever.

For while Lord Bath  Alexander, as they knew him  is no longer around to be fought over, there are still bitter disagreements as to which of them was his favourite and who may be remembered in his will.

TheMarquess of Bath and Miss Mariella Antonella at a reception in London on 15th January 1998

Longleat House, Somerset, England. One of the finest country estates in the country

'I'm the one who had the long relationship, the emotional relationship, the sexual relationship,' insists 55- year-old Amanda Doyle, speaking exclusively to the Mail from the grace-and-favour cottage on the Longleat Estate where she has lived since 2004. She became wifelet number 69 after meeting Lord Bath at a Tommy Hilfiger launch party 23 years ago.

She adds: 'We were twin souls, two peas in a pod. He was my life.' Meanwhile, wifelet number 68, the formidably named Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma  has told this newspaper she was the 'favoured mistress' and the only one to see Lord Bath towards the end of his life.

'I knew Lord Bath probably better than anybody in the world,' the 60- year-old told me on the phone this week, also speaking from a cottage on the Longleat estate. She claims to have been Lord Bath's girlfriend since 1998, when she spotted him swallowing a whole mackerel at a swanky London party.

'I spent most of my time at Longleat with him,' she says. 'I was always with him, in London or the South of France.' But what of the other wifelets? 'I have no connection with them,' she says dismissively.

'This is how it has always been. They have issues and I was busy just being with Alexander.' By the time Lord Bath died on April 4 there were only three remaining 'wifelets of Bath' at Longleat  former music producer Amanda, exmodel and nurse Trudi and another long-term girlfriend, Mariella Antonella, who had been transcribing Lord Bath's copious handwritten diaries. Mariella declined to speak about him this week.

In recent years, the aristocrat's relationships with all three women had become largely platonic. Towards the end of his life he was confined to an upstairs apartment accessible only by a door code, unable to get out of bed without help or to walk without sticks, and tended to by agency carers who visited each day.

Of his heyday as a hotblooded lover, the only reminders were the erotic Kama Sutra murals he painted on the Elizabethan walls at Longleat, and the 'Bluebeard's Gallery' of 75 or so numbered portraits of his concubines, fashioned from oil paint and sawdust and hung in numerical order up the walls of a spiral staircase.

Lord Bath and Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma at Andy and Patti Wong's Chinese New Year Party

Once, Eton and Oxford-educated Alexander Thynn had been one of the nation's most flamboyant lotharios. He lived surrounded by a harem of mistresses for half a century and his weekend parties at Longleat were legendary  as were the catfights between those women 'lucky' enough to be invited to them.

For while married father-of-three Lord Bath espoused a philosophy of polygyny (a man having more than one wife)  at one time he planned to fill Longleat's 130 rooms with a harmonious commune of women, along with the 100 children he hoped they would bear him  the reality was rather more prosaic.

'There was a lot of jealousy and backbiting,' admits Amanda. 'There were so many women falling at his feet, thinking they could get something, and a lot of jealousy towards me because he loved me.

'A few would stay with him in the house but I was the one in his bed. I never saw them as a threat, even if he wanted to have a liaison with them for five minutes. Alexander rarely slept with a woman more than once.

'I had no reason to be jealous because he loved me dearly and I loved him dearly. And there's nothing anyone can do to change that.' Ask her about Trudi, though, and she says that while she wishes her love rival 'all the best', she is 'bitter because he lost interest in her straight away'.

She adds: 'He slept with her once. She was a good friend and he enjoyed having her to accompany him to various events.' The two women have a history of falling out with each other. In 2011, during lunch in Lord Bath's private rooms, the pair even came to blows  an incident Amanda later described as 'a catfight between two ladies'.

Wiltshire police were called to the 440-yearold estate over the drama, although no further action was taken. At the time, Amanda claimed she had been undergoing years of IVF to have a baby with Lord Bath, which had made Trudi jealous.

A disgruntled Trudi told me this week: 'There was never a fight as such. I was attacked from behind.' And when I put the allegation to Trudi that her relationship with Lord Bath was not sexual and that she slept with him only once, she laughed dismissively and said: 'I'm not going to make any comment.'

The subject of children certainly seems to have been a contentious one for the two women. When Amanda became pregnant in 2008  she later miscarried the child  Trudi found out she had been outmanoeuvred by her younger rival via a snippet in a newspaper diary column.

Even worse, the pregnancy had been the result of IVF paid for by Lord Bath. She said at the time: 'He didn't say sorry, even though I was upset. I have not asked him to leave his wife. I haven't objected to him going out with other women. I haven't relied on him for money and I have kept my dignity and independence.

I still love Alexander dearly, but what about me?' As for Amanda, she claims she and Lord Bath froze 22 embryos in total and that she suffered multiple miscarriages, including one she says happened in his bed.

'Alexander wanted me to have as many children as was medically possible,' she says. 'I was eager to have a child as well. I was in love with him. We believed we were going to have children and we would have developed our lives together with our children. But it didn't happen.

'We probably would have been married but unfortunately he needed that nugget. He was a bit like Henry the Eighth in that way.' Another of Lord Bath's wifelets did indeed give birth to a child  a daughter, born in 1999  whose identity has never been revealed. Lord Bath's authorised biographer, Nesta Wyn Ellis, witnessed spats between the wifelets at first hand while staying with him at Longleat and at his villa in the South of France.

'There were an awful lot of catfights,' she says. 'The jealousy was terrible. They all thought they were going to become Mrs Longleat and take over from Lady Bath  but that was never going to happen.

'The wifelets were just girlfriends. Some of them came and went. A lot were trying to get money out of him, which was hopeless because he didn't have much ready cash of his own. 'Those that established themselves got cottages but they had to be special friends. There was a bit of a waiting list.

They had to keep asking and most of them paid rent.' According to Wyn Ellis, insecurities from Lord Bath's childhood meant he enjoyed being fought over by the wifelets, though he used his partial deafness to ignore the worst of the squabbling. 'From his teenage years he was always afraid of being rejected by women,' she says.

Music producer Amanda Doyle, 38, is hoping to fall pregnant any day now through IVF

'The wifelets were a substitute for his mother. He wanted them all living around him. There was safety in numbers.' As a child, he was a reluctant witness to several of his mother's extramarital affairs, which took place while his father Henry, the 6th Marquess, was away fighting in North Africa during World War II.

He compared himself unfavourably with his mother's much younger war hero live-in lover and, when his father returned home, told him of her numerous infidelities. 'His mother was a bit randy,' says Wyn Ellis.

'He'd met men in dressing gowns coming out of her room.' His parents divorced in 1953, though he would have preferred them to stay married, and his experiences left him with a belief that conventional married life was imperfect.

This was fuelled by his own disappointing early romances. His first love, Davina Gibbs number 1 in his Bluebeard ' s gallery of portraits  left him broken-hearted and went on to marry a field marshal.

Their romance began in 1951, and while Lord Bath enjoyed cultivating a reputation as a lusty lover, the 74 or so women who followed came into his life in dribs and drabs over the course of half a century.

Writer Shirley Conran  wifelet number 19  was among them. He dated her briefly in 1969, the same year he married his girlfriend of ten years, Anna Gael. The others included Bond girl Sylvana Henriques and Jo Jo Laine, ex-wife of Moody Blues and Wings guitarist Denny Laine.

'Monogamy was never going to work for me,' he said in the 2015 BBC documentary All Change At Longleat. Yet the most enduring of his relationships was with his longsuffering Hungarian wife, 76-yearold Anna Gael. The couple married in 1969 and had two children  50- year-old Lenka and son and heir Ceawlin, 45, who became the 8th Marquess after his father's death.

Lord Bath's wife spent much of their married life living apart from him in Paris with her own lover, returning only for occasional weekends. During the last few weeks of his life, though, the Marchioness had spent more time at Longleat, preferring to be in lockdown there.

Amanda says the return of Longleat's long-serving chatelaine made it hard to get through to Alexander on the phone during his final days. She last spoke to him at the end of March, when she says he had begun to sound weak. A friend notified her of his death at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

Only time will tell whether the three remaining wifelets will be able to stay living in estate cottages that are said to be in a poor state of repair. A source at Longleat told the Mail this week that the properties were 'entailed' to Lord Bath during his lifetime and should now revert to the family trust.

'The wifelets will eventually be kicked out,' says the source. 'Once he had six wifelets living here but by the end it had dwindled to three.' Longleat is in the hands of Lord Bath's son Ceawlin and his wife Emma, a contestant on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing last year. Ceawlin never approved of his father's unconventional love life or the presence of his wifelets at the family home.

When he took over running the estate six years ago, he fell out with his father after removing some of the latter's erotic murals. It seems likely that in time the wifelets portraits will be removed.

Yet Amanda remains confident about her future, claiming her cottage was given to her by Lord Bath and that the matter is in the hands of lawyers. She says Trudi, on the other hand, will not be allowed to stay: 'She's not allowed to inherit that cottage because it's part of the working estate. He told me that.' She expects to be remembered by Lord Bath in his will. '

Alexander shall look after the woman he loved,' she says.
Minibus operators (not necessarily the one pictured) have been urged to get registered with VINTAS and to adhere to the conditions of the Stimulus Package. (Editors Note: The minibus pictured is not being singled out as being delinquent)

Members of the Vincentian Transportation Association (VINTAS) are said to be satisfied with the revised subsidy allocated to them under the Governments COVID-19 Stimulus Package.





Vice President (Ag) Royron Adams told THE VINCENTIAN that the organization was pleased with the progress thus far.





Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves had announced on April 30 that the subsidy as referenced was adjusted from EC$250 to EC$450 for vehicles licensed for 18 passengers, and EC$550 for those carrying 26 passengers, for a period of two months.





But Adams reported that at a May 5 meeting between VINTAS and Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, the subsidy was further adjusted to read: EC$500 for mini-buses licensed for 18 passengers and EC$600 for those licensed for 26.





"So that is good news for us. We moved from $250 to a 100 percent increase in subsidy, Adams told THE VINCENTIAN.





The Minister of Finance had earlier explained that the initial increase was decided upon after it was determined that there were far fewer than the purported 1,400 mini-buses in operation in the country.





According to Minister Gonsalves, the government decided to use the number of mini-buses that were already registered to be sanitized, i.e. 400.





However, Adams informed that VINTAS was able to convince the government to accept its research that "there was a number closer to 600 rather than 1,400.





Adams took the opportunity to explain that VINTAS never opted to demand significant support from the government, especially with other sectors having been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.





Instead, he said, VINTAS wanted to ensure that the $700,000 allocated to mini-bus operators got to those who were qualified to receive it.





"We believe that the government made a good decision to double the subsidy to our sector while still being able to support other needy sectors such as vendors, he said.





Gas prices





As for petrol prices, Adams reported that VINTAS was pleased with the recent reduction, and anticipated a further reduction at the pump.





He referenced the Prime Minister as saying that there would be a 50 cent reduction on gasoline and a 30 cent reduction in diesel, to follow the $1 decrease enacted earlier.





Sanitisation, passengers and masks





Going forward, Adams identified some areas that needed some attention.





He said feedback from the police and the relevant government officers indicated that there was still a reluctance on the part of members to have their buses sanitized.





"Failure to do that, the police have two options  they can direct you to sanitizeor they can pull your bus off the road for the rest of the day; so I encourage the buses to get sanitized, Adams told THE VINCENTAN.





He reminded his members that the recommended number of times (for sanitization) was a minimum of four times a day for mini-buses plying short routes, and two to three times for those with longer routes.





He also expressed some concern about the shortcoming with respect to adherence to the 9-passemger restriction, expressing the view that operators ought to respect the publics right to good health and the need to safeguard their own as well.





The VINTAS Vice President (Ag) admitted he understood why some were guilty of the practice.

The reality is that 9 is not economical, he reasoned, and in appealing to all mini-bus operators to adhere to the restriction, he reminded them that the measure was a temporary one.





And as it related to the wearing of masks, Adams said that VINTAS recommended that persons use masks when using public transportation, especially since there was no way to effectively achieve social distancing.





He further advised the travelling public to have the exact fare, whenever possible, in order to avoid unnecessary and prolonged exposure to money that could be contaminated.




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Linkedin Apriza Pinandita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 18:22 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d77fd 1 World exploitation,Indonesian-sailors,Chinese-fishing-vessel,sailor,Foreign-Ministry,South-Korea,Seoul,Busan,human-rights Free

The Indonesian government has repatriated 14 Indonesian crewmen of a Chinese fishing vessel from South Korea on Friday after video footage raised concern about working conditions on the vessel.

The Indonesian sailors departed from Seouls Incheon International Airport on a Garuda Indonesia flight on Friday morning and were scheduled to arrive in Jakarta at 3:50 p.m.

Indonesian Ambassador to South Korea Umar Hadi said the returning crewmen had worked aboard the Long Xin 629 before they eventually disembarked in the port city of Busan from other ships on April 23.

The 14 sailors were registered as working on the Long Xin 629. However, South Korean authorities found them aboard the Long Xin 605 and Tian Yu 8, which had landed at Busan. Therefore, authorities declared them undocumented passengers.

They stayed at a hotel in Busan to comply with South Koreas COVID-19 quarantine regulation, Umar said in a statement from Seoul on Friday.

Pagi ini (8/5) KBRI Seoul dan Garuda Indonesia memfasilitasi kepulangan 14 ABK WNI ke tanah air. Para ABK dilepas di pintu pesawat oleh Sek I Protkons KBRI Seoul Puji Basuki dan Station Manager Garuda Indonesia-Seoul Andi Ichsan Tahir. @Kemlu_RI @UmarHad73314840 @sofia_sudarma pic.twitter.com/EenMJuL3i7  KBRI Seoul (@IdEmbassy_Seoul) May 8, 2020

Public concern about the working conditions aboard the vessel emerged after footage allegedly showing Chinese sailors throwing the body of a dead Indonesian crew member overboard went viral. The video has raised allegations of human exploitation, causing outcry over poor working conditions.

Read also: Indonesian sailors deaths on Chinese fishing vessel raise questions about working conditions

During a press briefing on Thursday, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said the 14 sailors were among 46 Indonesian crewmen who had worked on four Chinese vessels, namely Long Xin 629 (15 sailors), Long Xin 605 (eight), Long Xin 606 (20) and Tian Yu 8 (three) for the past few months.

The minister said two ships -- Long Xin 605 and Tian Yu 8 -- were detained upon docking in Busan for carrying unregistered crewmen, some of whom were Indonesians. The crew members were allowed to disembark the ship as they were considered as passengers.

Health authorities later put them in a 14-day quarantine in Busan, according to the COVID-19 health protocol, while their ships continued to sail to China.

Retno confirmed that four sailors working on the fishing vessels had died, including three who had died aboard the ships in December last year and in late March.

Investigations are underway to determine whether the Indonesian sailors were treated well or exploited while they were on board.

Ambassador Umar said the Korean Coast Guard had questioned the 14 sailors prior to their departure for Indonesia. We will follow up [with the Korean authorities] on concerns raised by the sailors.

The ministrys director for citizen protection, Judha Nugraha, said on Friday that the 14 repatriated sailors would be brought to the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department after landing in Jakarta to be probed about their treatment on the fishing vessels.

[The investigation will establish] whether their rights were met [while theyre working aboard the ships], the director said.
Etta Henry, an impassioned artist, activist, and poet who grew up in a French Victorian four-generation house in Detroit, Michigan, has completed her new book Naturaleza: an intriguing story of destiny.

Author Henry writes about her main character: Hi I am Jodhaa Mae Miller, or I was before this experience came to unravel. You see, before I was relieved from my old life, I was a mere shell of somebody and full of confusion. I lived a simple life of what I thought was practical and normal for any sixteen-year-old girl. I was one of the top ten students at my high school. I had two of the greatest friends on earth; I was quite involved in my school and played many roles. I was president of my green club and the new student welcoming committee, a member of the senior class outreach organization, I ran cross country, and I was a Greek/Latin tutor in my spare time. Ah  yeah, my life was normal; I guess you can say that I went through the motions pretty well. I was young to be a senior in high school, but I am told a lot of smart people are. I couldnt wait for college. I was on the waiting list for three of the top schools in the world; well, at least I think so anyway.

Published by Page Publishing, Etta Henrys new book is a unique story featuring characters to cheer for as they struggle in a world they dont belong in. Here is a story for the gifted outsiders.

Readers who wish to experience this captivating work can purchase Naturaleza 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.

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Page Publishing is a traditional full-service publishing house that handles all of 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 bogged down with complicated business issues like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and the like. Its roster of authors can leave behind these tedious, complex, and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
WASHINGTON - The White House rapidly increased coronavirus testing for those around President Donald Trump and took other emergency measures Thursday after a staffer whose job potentially put him in close daily contact with the president had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The possible exposure marks the president's closest known contact with an infected person since the early days of the U.S. response to the pandemic and raises the possibility of the virus spreading in the West Wing.

In a statement, the White House acknowledged the positive test result for a member of the U.S. military who works on the White House campus and added that both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have since tested negative.

The infected staffer is one of Trump's personal valets, the military staff who sometimes serve meals and look after personal needs of the president. That would mean the president, Secret Service personnel and senior members of the White House staff could have had close or prolonged contact with the aide before the illness was diagnosed.

"I've had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman," Trump said when asked about the valet.

"Know who he is, good person, but I've had very little contact, Mike has had very little contact with him. Mike tested, and I was tested, we were both tested," Trump said, referring to Pence.

The president said testing of White House staff will now be done daily, rather than about once per workweek. Trump has recently touted the rising number of tests now belatedly being done in the United States, but has also routinely played down the importance of testing as a metric for how quickly the country can safely return to normal.

Trump was frustrated when told of the positive test, but many in his inner circle were also frustrated and began discussing Thursday how they could protect the president, according to aides, who along with other current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of internal deliberations over coronavirus testing. However, the president likes to meet with many people and is itching to travel more, these aides said.

Trump said he and Pence had tested negative on Wednesday, which was also the day the valet showed symptoms of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and had again tested negative on Thursday.

A test now might not register positive even if the president or vice president had contracted the virus. Reasons include the limitations of the rapid test used and that if they were infected, they might not yet have a large quantity of virus in the nose or back of the throat where a swab is used to collect a sample.

The valet's positive test set off a scramble at the White House to test all staff and intensify protections around Trump, three people with knowledge of the response said Thursday.

Staffers held a series of meetings and discussions Thursday on what else could be done to protect the president, including broader use of face masks. One person familiar with those discussions said wider use of masks among staffers close to Trump is expected but will remain optional.

Relatively few staffers who interact frequently with the president wear masks. One who did, National Security Council deputy Matthew Pottinger, drew snickers from his colleagues, according to aides.

Trump has never worn a face mask in public during the pandemic and has said that to do so while performing his official duties would be unseemly. He was criticized by some Democrats for touring a mask production line on Tuesday while not wearing a mask.

"The president's physician and White House Operations continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, first family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy at all times," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement Thursday.

Deere said that "in addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces" occurs, and that "every staff member in proximity to the president and vice president is being tested daily for covid-19 as well as any guests."

Two people familiar with the White House plans said the White House medical unit launched an aggressive testing schedule Thursday for many on the White House campus who are expected to come in contact with portions of the White House where Trump might be.

A raft of Secret Service agents were being tested, including members of the president's and vice president's detail, these people said. Also, they said, tests are being given to many uniformed division officers who take turns standing guard at posts inside the White House.

"They are demanding testing for everyone who comes into the president's breathing space," said one person briefed on the plans.

Another large group of staff will undergo testing Friday, and the medical unit is discussing recommendations for who should routinely wear masks, according to a former administration official familiar with the discussions.

Deere disputed the White House was expanding the universe of staff members who get tested for the virus.

Trump said Thursday that his valets do usually wear masks, although it is not clear whether the affected aide did so.

Junior staffers often wear masks, but senior-level officials who meet with Trump have generally not worn them, three White House officials said.

Several former White House personnel said they have asked previous colleagues still working at the White House why staff on the grounds, and especially those in proximity to Trump, were not automatically following a protocol of wearing masks and being regularly tested before this point.

"The president sees it as a sign of weakness to wear masks and so people just haven't been doing it," one current employee responded, according to a person familiar with that conversation.

Another former security official said that in the wake of the H1N1 avian bird flu outbreak in 2009, the White House developed a strategy for mask-wearing and regular testing in certain conditions to protect the president.

"It's not like they don't know how to do this," the former official said. "I fear politics is influencing these decisions. More than 70,000 Americans have died. Are you going to wait until it's 100,000?"

Sen. Lindsey Graham. R-S.C., a Trump confidant who spoke to the president on Wednesday night, said Trump did not mention any concerns about his personal situation or the employee who tested positive.

Another adviser who spoke to Trump earlier this week also said he did not voice any personal concerns.

The potential exposure comes as Trump is beginning to shift his emphasis from public health protections to ways the country can drop some of the limitations in place to slow the spread of the deadly virus.

The virus, to which people have no natural immunity, has killed more than 75,000 Americans as of Thursday. There is not yet a vaccine or a proven treatment available.

Trump has said he wants to see states move swiftly but safely to reopen schools, businesses and public spaces. He has begun leaving the White House after weeks of semi-lockdown, traveling last weekend to the presidential retreat at Camp David and on Tuesday to tour the Honeywell factory making medical masks in Arizona.

Reporters, governors and others who interact with Trump at the White House are either given temperature checks or rapid tests before coming near him. Staffers were receiving the rapid tests made by Abbott Labs about every five days.

That is a level of testing that is not available to the general public and only rarely outside a medical or first-responder setting.

Asked by a reporter Thursday how it was possible that someone who tested positive for covid-19 could be so close to him, Trump said both that he is relying on testing and that the testing is not always reliable.

"Well, I think probably that has to do with the fact that we all believe in tests, we have the best tests in the world, but they were tested, I believe they're tested on a weekly basis," Trump said, referring to White House staff.

" . . . But they do the tests and it just shows you the fallacy - what I've been saying, testing is not a perfect art. No matter what you do, testing is not a perfect art."

The rapid Abbott ID NOW test can return a result in 5 to 13 minutes, but there have been concerns about the accuracy of the results. Some medical centers have found that the rate of false negatives - people who test negative but are actually positive - are too great for the tests to be useful.

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said Thursday that the Abbott ID Now machine has "about a 15 percent false negative rate."

"If you're in a circumstance where you really, really don't want to miss a diagnosis of somebody who's already carrying the virus, you'd like to have something that has a higher sensitivity than that. And I know they're working on how to make that happen," Collins said, according to CNN.

"It's certainly one of the most exciting things we've got right now, but we think we could even do better," Collins said in testimony before the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee.

Collins said there are about 18,000 of the machines in use.

Abbott said in a statement that Collins was referring to a study that occurred before instructions on how to transport swabs were changed, to address the problem.

"So we test once a week. Now we're going to go testing once a day, but even when you test once a day, somebody could - something happens where they catch something," Trump said Thursday.

He seemed to shrug off the risks of both the virus itself and the reliance on imperfect testing, saying as he has several times recently that the pandemic makes all Americans "warriors."

"It's a little bit strange but it's one of those things. As I said, you know, I said yesterday, governor, all people are warriors in this country," Trump said as he sat in the Oval Office with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, the latest in a string of governors invited to the White House to discuss their plans to reopen portions of their economies.

"Right now, we're all warriors. You're warriors, we're warriors, you could be with somebody, everything's fine and then something happens to the other person and all of a sudden, test positive," he said.

Trump is concerned that the high unemployment and other economic shock waves from the pandemic will spoil his reelection chances, and is encouraging the lifting of health restrictions over the advice of his White House coronavirus task force.

More than 40 states are engaged in or plan some kind of reopening, although none yet meet the federal government's core recommendation of a two-week decline in reported virus cases.

Shortly after Trump's meeting with the Texas governor, his reelection campaign issued a statement praising Trump's coronavirus leadership and hailing jobs created in Texas under Trump "before the economy was artificially interrupted."

"There is no doubt that the economy led by the president defied all expectations and projections - he truly is the 'Jobs President' and is best suited to restore our economy," the statement said.

- - -

The Washington Post's Carolyn Y. Johnson contributed to this report.
Rainbow stickers installed on TfW trains in tribute to all key workers

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 8th, 2020

Transport for Wales has revealed its first batch of trains to have rainbow stickers as a tribute to all those fellow key workers helping in the fight against coronavirus.

The rainbow has been used as a symbol of thanks to all key workers that are assisting the country at this difficult time and will now be seen on the side of TfW trains.

Ken Skates, Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales said: From the lighting of bridges and castles to colourful drawing appearing in windows across our nation, rainbows have most definitely become a visual thank you to our heroes in the NHS and our key workers, who are working tirelessly to save lives and keep vital public services running.

I hope seeing them now on the trains we have endeavoured to keep running during these difficult times will lift everyones spirits, not least those on the front line in the fight against Covid-19.

Transport for Wales will fit 100 stickers in total, six trains were fitted at Canton and over the weekend the stickers will be sent to depots in Machynlleth and Chester.

James Price, Transport for Wales CEO said: Id like to thank all key workers, including those representing TfW, who are truly dedicated and supporting the country in the fight against Covid19.

Across the whole of our network weve seen a collaborative team approach and its great to fit these stickers to our trains and show support to those on the frontline.
Andy Yates is a successful serial entrepreneur and helps and supports a portfolio of growth companies. He is a regular contributor to This is Money and teamed up with us to run the Great British Entrepreneur Challenge.

He shares his tips for small businesses to adapt, innovate and come through the coronavirus crisis - and what some of the firms he is working with are doing.

Oomph Wellness has transformed its business to provide virtual activities for care home residents and remote training and support for care home staff

Let's make no bones about it. Most British business are on their knees. Entrepreneurs are normally an optimistic bunch  which is after all what drives so many of them to be entrepreneurs in the first place.

But the coronavirus crisis, and the inevitable hammer blow to the economy, has dented the glass half full attitude for even the most hardy of business owners.

I support a number of great growth businesses and entrepreneurs, and have seen the whole range of emotions and acute pain this crisis has caused for them.

Tips: Serial entrepreneur Andy Yates

It has been heart breaking to see loyal and hard-working staff losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

To see successful businesses they have worked on for so many years have their very survival threatened overnight. But now, after the initial shock and awe, the fight back has begun.

Across the UK entrepreneurs are looking at ways to bounce back in face of unparalled adversity.

So what personal lessons and tips have I learned first-hand from the companies I help that could also help the UK's proud army of entrepreneurs?

Pivot quickly - change your products and services to meet the new normal

The economy and consumer behaviour is likely to be impacted for some time. But change can bring opportunity  if you act quickly. One of the businesses I help, Wildgoose, is doing just that. It is a well established team building company that uses interactive apps and technology to get colleagues together.

Last year it ran thousands of events and saw strong growth in its US business and global network of licensees that use its technology to run events right around the world. It was a British success story, exporting market leading services around the world.

Jonny Edser, chief executive of team building company Wildgoose, which has created a range of virtual experiences to keep colleagues connected, motivated and inspired

In March, its business ground to a halt overnight as the world went into lockdown. But after almost two decades of inspiring and motivating teams as work, Wildgoose turned its business model on its head in two days.

It created a range of virtual experiences to keep colleagues connected, motivated and inspired - all without leaving the comfort and safety of home. The virtual work social, the virtual away day, daily challenges and energisers, the weekly kick off  remote team building was born.

Quick thinking and decisive action has enabled Wildgoose to build a new business pipeline of over 150,000 in new business in weeks and it has run virtual events for hundreds of people at a time.

Based on this success it is now planning to create a suite of online staff engagement tools that any business can use to help connect teams and colleagues.

Survival tip: Adapting quickly in difficult times will be the key to getting out of this crisis for so many businesses.

Get resourceful  use what you have in new ways

Oomph Wellness specialises in improving the quality of life for older adults by providing award winning activities in care homes and a fleet of mini-buses providing out and about trips to give unforgettable experiences to residents.

Oomph Wellness chief executive Ben Allen

You can just imagine how hard the business has been hit by coronavirus, given the devastating impact it has had on the care sector. Faced with this perfect storm, Oomph has come up with some innovative ways to try and weather the dark clouds.

It has transformed its business to provide virtual activities for residents and remote training and support for fantastic care home staff. It has also offered its mini-buses to help get vital key workers across care homes and the NHS where they need to be.

Oomph faces a tough battle ahead, but it is doing everything it can to keep helping care home residents and staff.

Survival tip: By using key resources in different ways, businesses can give themselves a chance of turning a major negative into a big positive.

Create new products to meet new demand

If you can identify the growth opportunities the new economy brings, you can develop new products, services and business models to meet new needs.

Let's take New Wave Learning as an example. The business already provided innovative online learning and development programmes for major corporates through an interactive mobile app combined with face to face sessions to make learning count.

New Wave Learning moved quickly to develop new learning products to help leaders and managers get through this crisis

Faced with the lockdown, it quickly adapted its product successfully to work 100 per cent virtually, with bite sized learning hosted by experts - but still with human interaction, learning and collaboration at its core. In doing so it stole a march on competitors who were scrambling to just replicate traditional classroom learning online.

New Wave Learning also moved quickly to develop new learning products to help leaders and managers get through this crisis, and beyond, with their teams  communicating change, keeping up morale, energising staff and helping with mental health issues in difficult times for all of us. The result is some major client wins including a global law firm and insurance giant.

Survival tip: With the world of work likely to change for the foreseeable future, businesses that help companies through this transformation can grasp new opportunities.

These are just a few of the businesses challenges and solutions I am living and breathing every day at the moment. I am backing Britain's entrepreneurs to fight back.

I believe if businesses can adapt and change quickly, not only can they live to fight another day, they can emerge from this crisis stronger than ever before.
It has not been smooth sailing for Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa over the past nine months since he assumed power

It has not been smooth sailing for Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa over the past nine months since he assumed power. Initially, it was the uncertainty of a minority government, later the pressure from his own party legislators for cabinet berths, followed by floods in several districts. Just when he thought he would settle down to administer after presenting his tailor-made budget, the coronavirus pandemic struck.

During the 44 days of the lockdown period so far, the 78-year old faced some embarrassing moments when some of his cabinet colleagues tried to upstage each other in their respective bids to handle the COVID-19 situation. The crisis has also taught Yediyurappa to become tech savvy and for a person who used to pull slips of paper from his pocket to prompt him on issues, the chief minister is now comfortable video-conferencing with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state government officials.

While the handling of migrant labourers  in terms of arranging transport for them  led to confusion, a course-correction was embarked upon after the Congress applied pressure. Yediyurappa's Rs 1,610-crore package for the unorganised sectors on Wednesday was also appreciated in all quarters. In an interview, he said, "COVID-19 has taught a lesson not only to the elected representatives, but to all mankind that no one is bigger than God and nature."

Edited excerpts of the interview follow:

While presenting the 2020-2021 budget, you had admitted that the state was facing the worst financial crisis ever as the GST received from the Centre for 2019-2020 was low. How has COVID-19 impacted the state's fiscal position?

Obviously, Karnataka is going through a financial crisis, which is a global phenomenon. Decrease in GST devolution is only one of the factors. We have been pursuing this matter with the Union government and hope to get some relief. But due to the pandemic, the situation is no better now. But we are making all efforts to mobilise funds and trying to reduce unnecessary expenditure. Resuming economic activities would provide a fresh lease of life, I believe.

Is there any plan to merge some of the departments such as minor irrigation with water resources and backward classes with social welfare to cut wasteful expenditure?

Yes, as part of bringing reforms and enhance efficiency in governance, we are looking at various possibilities. A cabinet sub-committee headed by Revenue Minister R Ashoka will examine this subject and submit its report soon. We will take necessary steps once the report is received.

Why was there so much chaos in transporting migrants with the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) charging double to ferry them, especially when other states have sent special buses and arranged for trains to bring back daily wagers?

We are facing a crisis that has never occurred before. Although on the first day, we reduced the fare, free bus services were available for migrants till 7 May. On 3 May alone, 951 KSRTC buses were provided. Till 7 May, 1,00,500 migrants have travelled to their hometowns in 3,350 buses buses from Bengaluru. Free food and drinking water has been provided to all passengers and standard operating procedures (SOP) are being followed to prevent the spread of the disease.

Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda has urged you to announce a special package for the farmers on the lines of the support that is being given to milk producers? Would you consider it?

My government is monitoring the situation on all fronts. This was the reason we were able to announce a special package of Rs 1,610 crore for all sections of society including farmers. My government is a pro-farmer one and is aware of the farmers' situation. During the lockdown, [my government] has taken all necessary steps to ensure that all farming activities including markets are unaffected. The Centre has released first instalment of PM-KISAN aid of Rs 2,000 to the farmers. The state government has also decided to release its first instalment. Flower, fruit and vegetable growers, MSMEs, badly-hit workers in unorganised sectors like barbers, washermen, autorickshaw and taxi drivers, and weavers will benefit from the special package.

Even as the state government is doing its best to help ease people's lives in the lockdown period, some BJP leaders have been misusing the situation. Food grain released by the Government of India is being repacked and rebranded by some of the BJP leaders and the Congress has exposed this with documentary evidence. Why has no action been taken so far against those who have been named in the scam?

The Congress leaders have no issues on which to criticise us and the government which has done a commendable work to tackle COVID-19 and provide succour to the affected people. The Congress leaders are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Officers, at my behest, visited the spot (KPCC president DK Shivakumar and his brother, Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha MP DK Suresh had alleged  with video proof  that BJP leaders were rebranding food grain released by the Centre for aanganwadi children and pregnant women with their own names and the BJP symbol).

In Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has promised jobs to all migrants. Will you also give similar assurances?

My priority has always been job creation and at this time, we will definitely take all possible measures for the well-being of every citizen in this state. In fact, I have appealed to all local and other migrant labourers to stay back on at their places of work [in Karnataka]. I want to clarify that we have looked after the migrants well. Not a single person from the state has complained of starvation. This itself indicates how the Karnataka government is treating migrant labourers.

What are the lessons from COVID-19?

This has been a testing time for all of us. As Modi rightly put it, we need to focus on jaan and jahaan (life and livelihood). But we can achieve anything we desire, if we go together. We have never come across such a crisis in modern history. This disease has taught a lesson not only to the elected representatives, but to all mankind, that no one is bigger than God and nature.

You have faced many challenges in your political career: Where does handling COVID-19 rank in that list?

Obviously this is one of the biggest challenges I have faced. But, strong will, concern for the people and support and cooperation from all stakeholders have helped me immensely to take on this challenge.

Karnataka was noticed at the national level for keeping the number of COVID-19 positive cases and deaths under control, how was the situation managed?

Karnataka was the first state in the country to think of a lockdown and it strictly adhered to lockdown measures, surveillance, vigilance and followed all the guidelines of the Central government as well as the instructions given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Screening of foreign travellers, quarantining of the primary and secondary contacts, appropriate usage of technology and an increase in the number of tests helped us to contain COVID-19.

The state made necessary arrangements for early admission of cases and was prepared to manage critical cases to curb deaths. I must admit that the entire government machinery with support from the people of Karnataka has been fighting this pandemic. Hence, the state is in a better position in the absolute number of cases, compared to larger states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and rest of the southern states.

How different is Lockdown 3.0 for Karnataka with some relaxations shown in green and orange zones? Additionally, how is the government handling this since there will be movement of people in some of the zones?

The first two lockdowns meant complete shutdowns, except for essential services. The state government has decided to allow inter-state and inter-district movement of people and also to begin economic activities as permitted in the guidelines issued by the Centre. Directions have been given to undertake economic activities and resume industrial operations after 4 May as per the Union government's guidelines. We have already permitted the reopening of industries in green zones. But all these activities are being taken up with appropriate preventive measures.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Delegation of Azerbaijan to the OSCE PA has made a statement on the 28th anniversary of occupation of Shusha by Armenia, Azerbaijan's Embassy to Austria published on its website on May 7.

The Azerbaijani delegation stressed that the statement of the Armenian delegation speaks volumes about how far this country is from engaging in a constructive dialogue for peace with Azerbaijan.

"What the Armenian side describes as so-called liberation of Shusha has been qualified by the UN Security Council as the unlawful use of force and occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan", the statement said.

It should be noted that the Armenian delegation called the occupation of Azerbaijan's Shusha city "liberation of Shusha" in its statement referring to the statement of Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Vienna on "the 75th Anniversary of the end of World War II and 28th anniversary of occupation of Shusha by Armenia".

The Azerbaijani delegation also recalled that the UN Security Council in its resolutions condemned the occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan and reaffirmed respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the inviolability of its internationally recognized borders, as well as these resolutions confirmed that the Nagorno-Karabakh region is part of Azerbaijan, and demanded immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian occupying forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

"The short memory of Armenian representative extends also to the fact that it was exactly the attack and occupation of the Azerbaijani town of Shusha in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan that elicited first Presidential Statement by the UN Security Council, in which the Council, recalled, inter alia, the commitment of Armenia to uphold the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations, in particular the principles relating to the peaceful settlement of disputes and the non-use of force, thus indicating direct involvement of Armenia in the conflict", the statement reads.

"Armenia must implement these resolutions of the UN Security Council. Azerbaijan reserves the right to restore its territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Charter", the Azerbaijani delegation noted.

The delegation also emphasized that instead of repeating its allegations, Armenia should rather reflect upon the topic of todays Permanent Council and to draw two important lessons from the past: "The first being that the past proved at a very high price that constructing historical narratives around political goals to sustain territorial claims on its neighbours and to camouflage its annexationist aspirations is a very dangerous exercise, which can lead to nothing, but to more conflict and instability, causing more sufferings to the Armenian people", the statement reads.

The Azerbaijani delegation also made a statement on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The Azerbaijani delegation highlighted the fact that the international legal order emerged out of the World War II puts a firm prohibition on unlawful use of force for the acquisition and occupation of territory, which shall never be recognized as legal.

"This fundamental principle is at the core of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act and the foundation of this Organization. So, Armenia must understand that there can be no peace until this country refers to the unlawful occupation of territories of Azerbaijan as liberation of territories. Its policy will never produce the political outcome that it desires. Rather than sticking to its narrative, it should reconsider its unconstructive position in negotiation", the statement said.

Regarding the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Azerbaijani delegation also condemned glorification of Nazism, including building a monument by Armenia to Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh.

"First, building a monument in Armenia to Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh was condemned not only by Azerbaijan, but many others. Holocaust scholar and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi war criminals to trial", the statement reads.

It should be noted that earlier on the same day, reminding Azerbaijan's contribution to the fight against Nazism and fascism during the WWII, as well as noting that Azerbaijan became one of the few shelters for Jews fleeing from the horrors of Holocaust, Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Vienna had condemned building a monument by Armenia to Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh.

"We regret that we couldnt join the joint statement delivered by the Ambassador of the Russian Federation on behalf of a group of participating States due to the fact that the Delegation of Armenia refused to accept inclusion of a paragraph on combating glorification of Nazism. However, there is nothing surprising in this, given the fact that a monument to a Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh was erected in Armenia and this countrys high-level officials consider him as a national hero", the ambassador said.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Police cases can often get complicated, with the officials using tracking devices, GPS, phone calls and various other ways to know the whereabouts of a suspect. But can you ever imagine a fart helping the police find someone?

This may sound unbelievable but something similar happened close to Nottinghamshire in the UK. A suspect, who was on the run and was trying to hide himself in the bushes, was caught by cops all because of his loud fart.

While the identity of the wanted man has not been revealed yet, he has been arrested and taken to Mansfield Custody. The suspect reportedly was absconding since May 7. He is wanted in two cases, the police officials said.

The West Bassetlaw Police informed about the arrest on its Facebook page. Wanted man almost gone with the wind: A trump gave away a wanted mans hiding place after a foot chase through some woods in the early hours of the morning, the post read.

The Facebook post also quoted PC Fenton, one of the officers who was investigating the case. I was almost out of wind running but luckily the suspect still had some. I heard him letting rip and followed the noises to a bush, he said.

The funny incident has left netizens laughing out loud. Almost everyone found it just too funny.

There were many hilarious comments on the police departments post. Brilliant. Oh my goodness this wont be forgotten any time soon. Windy woo, wrote a social media user.

Another user came up with a pun and said, Police have a nose for these things.
(Natural News) David Icke has been de-platformed by YouTube and Facebook for promoting his theories about the coronavirus, according to The Guardian. His theories  which pretend there is no coronavirus  are absurd and wildly misinformed, but thats beside the point. Facebook and YouTube have de-platformed David Icke, essentially claiming his lack of obedience to the W.H.O. is a danger to the public.

While I strongly disagree with David Ickes pandemic denialism  which I have publicly criticized  I strongly agree with his right to speak.

More importantly, if Google and Facebook can ban David Icke today for not bowing down to the WHO, they can ban YOU tomorrow for having divergent ideas that arent condoned by the corrupt, fraudulent establishment.

As John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute explains:

In the long run, this safety control (the censorship and shadowbanning of anyone who challenges a mainstream narrative) will be far worse than merely allowing people to think for themselves.

Journalist Matt Taibbi gets its: The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.

These internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns about COVID-19, a virus whose source and behavior continue to elude medical officials. Theyre laying the groundwork now, with Icke as an easy target, to preempt any dangerous ideas that might challenge the power elites stranglehold over our lives.

This is how freedom dies

Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is safe and accepted by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

The real danger to our society isnt David Icke. Its Google. YouTube. Facebook. And Twitter.

In fact, this incident underscores my repeated call for President Trump to arrest the CEOs of Google, Twitter and Facebook and charge them with crimes against the United States of America for violating the First Amendment rights of countless millions of people.

Googles evil censorship and de-platforming of independent voices is a grave danger to our society and isnt compatible with a free country. America can never be free as long as Google and other techno-fascist platforms of extreme censorship continue to exist.

And if President Trump and the DOJ wont take action against Google and the evil tech giants, its going to come down to We the People peacefully assembling by the millions, marching to occupy the data centers of the tech giants and peacefully disassembling their infrastructure of tyranny. One motherboard at a time, if necessary.

Google must be dismantled. Twitter must be ended. Facebook must be vanquished from our world. For humanity to be set free, the techno fascists must be permanently abolished. And those criminal-minded, power-hungry techno-fascists who ran them should be charged and prosecuted for heinous crimes against humanity. Public tribunals should be held so that these malicious criminals are held to answer for their crimes against us all.

For the real enemies of humanity arent people like David Icke, nor even myself (Ive also been permanently banned everywhere for using laboratory science to document the presence of mercury in vaccines, among other things). The real danger to humanity is the tech giants themselves.

I would much rather live in a world of David Ickes than a world full of Zuckerbergs or Dorseys. Icke may not yet have his facts straight on the coronavirus, but hes not an evil, villainous enemy of humanity like Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai.

David Icke doesnt want to lock you down and control your mind. His goal is to free your mind and provoke you to start questioning everything. While his conclusions may be wrong on the coronavirus, his process of creative thinking and cognitive liberty is essential for human freedom to prosper.

Its time to take down the evil. As I said yesterday, End the LOCKDOWNS and Launch the TAKEDOWNS.

And Sir David Icke, you are welcome to post on my video platform any time youd like, even if we disagree on the nature and causes of covid-19.
Private physicians' offices across the country have had to furlough core staff, often with decades of service to their businesses, because of the coronavirus-induced, government-mandated shutdown. Doctors who own these small business ventures, many of whom were on the front lines in the battle against AIDS back when it was 100% lethal, have been forced to sit on their hands at home for this pandemic. Surgery centers, frequently the lifeline between economic solvency and bankruptcy for both private surgeons and hospitals, are lying dormant, their fixed costs still accruing.

Promised federal bailout money is not going to come close to repairing the long-term damage done by this medieval "fix" recommended by "the scientific experts." Those advising our leaders have provided a great excuse for the forces seeking to justify government-run health care and expand the power of an unchecked, totalitarian federal bureaucracy. Medical practices, like many small businesses across the country, are being killed off for the cause of "saving just one more life." What they have done is unconscionable, poorly justified, and quite frankly, un-American.

History will not be kind to the CDC when the dust settles from this crisis. The Communicable Disease Center exists to help us with situations just like COVID-19, pandemics being its purview. It could be argued that having the nation prepared with accurate means of testing for novel viruses and being equipped with an adequate number of masks and ventilators would be an obvious first purpose for the agency. Yet in the past couple of years, the agency has spent well over a billion and a half dollars for things like chronic disease prevention, health promotion, environmental health, and injury prevention.

While many would ask, "What is wrong with studying these important issues?," there are existing agencies in the federal government that already have allotted money to investigate these problems. The CDC is seen to have lost its focus. The agency did not get in front of COVID-19 in such a way that would be expected in the twenty-first century, its primary recommendation being that we distance ourselves from each other. Even more damagingly, quarantining at home for months at a time delays "herd immunity," weakens the immune system, and increases other medical problems such as obesity, alcoholism, and depression. It may also just postpone our exposure to COVID-19 until later this year.

The CDC should have used the money spent on inappropriate and duplicative studies to re-stock masks and ventilators that had been used up in the 2009 H1N1 "Swine Flu" pandemic. Or it could have prepared a forward-looking means by which it could test for a novel virus and make it available for quick distribution to the States. While it is the responsibility of each state and not really the federal government to have an adequate supply of ventilators, the CDC knew of each state's shortfalls ahead of time and could have made allowances.

Completely paralyzing the economy, forcing possibly 3540 million people out of work, and printing many trillions of dollars that we don't really have is a boneheaded way to deal with a pandemic. Politicians using law enforcement to keep us off beaches and out of parks and not allowing people with second homes away from the city to travel are just plain wrong. Governor Cuomo of New York said something like "if it just saves one life," we should be shutting down the economy "as long as it takes." In addition to being stunning that a late-term abortion proponent such as the governor could utter those words, Cuomo's declaration shows a profound lack of common sense, connection with reality, and economic knowledge. It is an idea that is not suited to the year 2020.

We average 35,000 deaths in the United States from influenza yearly, with some outliers like the winter of 201718, in which over 60,000 deaths were recorded. In the medical community, pneumonia is darkly referred to as "the old people's friend," as it often kills the elderly and frail. It is a fact of life. We cannot shut down the world for each virus, "novel" or not.

Looking back, it is obvious that we should have been prepared with accurate and adequate testing for the virus, quarantined the sick, protected the elderly, and allowed America to work. It is interesting that if we weren't having such a great economy pre-virus, we may never have thought this disastrous option was feasible. We "flattened the curve" of the viral impact on America, swapping it for a whole lot of financial trouble. In addition, we are allowing a corruptible, inefficient government to administrate this calamity, a government that is ill prepared for the billions of dollars of fraud that will ensue.

The future of small businesses, especially doctors' practices that have managed to stay somewhat independent, is threatened by this quarantine. As with all big-government interventions, big business and friends of the bureaucracy will ultimately do well. Small business, the greatest employer and lifeblood of America, will suffer. Many doctors will give up and join hospital corporations. Many will take early retirement. Those who do reopen will have had to suffer many hardships. One predictable outcome is that doctors who are hoping to re-open their small businesses are finding that many of their former employees are all too happy to remain on the current generous unemployment option afforded by the bailout.

As a final thought, what would Dr. Fauci have recommended if he had the power he wields today and the AIDS epidemic was just starting? Would he be quarantining homosexuals and IV drug abusers? Would the left and the media be on board? Would he be judged as barbarous and ridiculous? Would doctors be asked to not go to work?
Union Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri has said domestic flight operations are likely to resume by May 15.

"We are planning to start domestic flight operations even before May 15. My effort will be to try and move in the direction of starting it very soon," Puri told Outlook in an interview.

Commercial flight operations remain suspended since March 25, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given the clarion call for a nationwide lockdown in order to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Throwing light on the evacuation process of Indian citizens stranded abroad, Puri had earlier said: "We are open to the idea of involving private carriers if the situation arises."

We are not going to go ahead with the evacuation plan until respective states are ready with the quarantine plan. The Centre can only provide service to the people of picking and dropping them to their respective places. Rest, the states have to take care of the logistics, he had added while elucidating on the role of the state government.

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

When asked about resuming operations of the aviation industry after the lockdown lifts, Puri had said that the government will navigate the way-forward depending on how the situation evolves.

"We will have to open aviation sector in a gradual and calibrated manner. We can only plan for flights between two green zones. It will be difficult to resume services between red zones," Puri had stated.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
The aviation sector can only recover in 2021 according to an official from the Ministry of Transport.

More flights organised after social distancing rules were relaxed

Tran Bao Ngoc, head of the Transportation Department under the Ministry of Transport said that the aviation was the hardest-hit. Local airlines have nearly stopped all domestic and foreign flights. After social distancing rules are relaxed, they can also operate cargo and repatriation flights on international routes. The number of domestic flights has also been kept to a minimum.



Since April 1, the number of passengers only account for 1-2% of the pre-outbreak days and most planes are grounded.



Vietnam Airlines are among the worst-affected firms. Its revenue in the first quarter dropped by 26%. The revenue and profits of the Airports Corporation of Vietnam dropped by 24% and Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation saw a 60% drop of revenue compared to the same period last year.



"The situation is worse than predicted. In 2020, there will be about 43 million passengers, 46% lower than last year," Ngoc said.



Dinh Viet Thang, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam said, "It's likely than only in mid-2021 that the domestic market will recover to the same that it was in 2019. For the international market, it will be able to recover at the end of 2021."



From April 30 to May 1, the airlines served 150,000 passengers and operated flights at all domestic airports. Three of the most important routes are Hanoi-HCM City, Hanoi-Danang and HCM City-Danang. 70-80% of the seats on main flight routes were used. This numbers are 60-70% on other routes.



Since the Reunification Holiday until now, six airlines in Vietnam have served 230,000 passengers. Thang said the industry is recovering very quickly and the domestic reaction is positive in the new normal.



The Ministry of Transport has asked the Transportation Department and the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam to research to reopen some international routes and priority will be given to experts or businessmen with projects in Vietnam. Dtinews

Aviation authority proposes increasing domestic flights The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) has asked the Ministry of Transport to increase domestic flights and remove social distancing on aircraft.
Denying job extension to a pregnant woman amounts to penalising her for embracing motherhood, observed the Delhi High Court which quashed the decision of a Delhi University college to terminate the ad-hoc appointment of assistant professor, who requested grant of maternity leave with other benefits.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Asha Menon set aside the order of a single judge which had dismissed the woman's plea against Aurobindo College (Evening), where she had been working for five years.

The high court allowed the appeal of the woman who was employed on ad-hoc basis as the assistant professor in the English Department and imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on the college, to be paid to the teacher within four weeks.

It also directed the authorities to forthwith appoint the woman to the post of assistant professor in the English Department on an ad-hoc basis till the vacant posts are filled up through regular appointment.

The appointment letter shall be sent by email by the authorities within one week and the woman shall report for duty immediately on the lockdown being eased or lifted or through e-mail, it said.

The high court also said that an act of an administrative authority has to be pervaded by fairness and can never smack of arbitrariness or whimsicality.

The counsel for DU and the college submitted that ad-hoc teachers were not entitled to maternity leave as the rules do not provide for it and there is no vested right in them to claim extension of tenure.

The bench, without commenting on the rule position regarding her entitlement to maternity leave, which is the subject matter of a pending writ petition, declined to accept it as a legitimate ground for denying extension of tenure to the woman.

Such a justification offered by the respondents (college and university) for declining to grant an extension to the appellant/petitioner (woman) as she had highlighted her need for leave due to her pregnancy and confinement would tantamount to penalising a woman for electing to become a mother while still employed and thus pushing her into a choice less situation as motherhood would be equated with loss of employment.

This is violative of the basic principle of equality in the eyes of law. It would also tantamount to depriving her of the protection assured under Article 21 of the Constitution of her right to employment and protection of her reproductive rights as a woman. Such a consequence is therefore absolutely unacceptable and goes against the very grain of the equality principles enshrined in Articles 14 and 16, the high court said.

It noted that the woman was working in the college for five years and was granted repeated extensions with a break in service, as found necessary by the authorities, to maintain her appointment as ad-hoc in nature.

The court also noted that there has been no complaint regarding her work performance and her proficiency and ability did not form the basis of the authorities' decision to decline extension of her services despite the necessity which is reflected from the fact that they are continuing with the other ad-hoc assistant professors in the English Department and also guest lecturers.

The woman, in her plea, said she was expecting her first child in February last year and had in January requested the authorities for maternity leave from January 14, 2019 to May 24, 2019, and other eligible benefits under the Maternity Benefit Act.

Despite various requests, she did not receive any response from them and on February 3, 2019, she was blessed with a premature child, the plea said, adding that she was given only 18 days salary after which she approached the court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The man who filmed the white ex-cop gun down Ahmaud Arbery may also face arrest in connection to the unarmed black jogger's murder, authorities have said.

At a press conference Friday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Vic Reynolds said William 'Roddie' Bryan could be arrested for his part in the murder after he watched and shot the footage of the attack.

It is not yet clear what Bryan, a neighbor of the McMichaels, could be charged with.

This comes after Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were pictured Thursday being arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the shooting death of Arbery, 25, in Brunswick, Georgia, back in February.

'Is there anyone else going to be charged in this case?' Reynolds said the community was asking him.

'I tell you that this is an active, ongoing case and investigation. If the facts take [officers] to make another arrest then they will do that.'

Ahmaud Arbery and his mother Wanda Cooper Jones. Bryan may also face arrest for his part in the murder after he watched and shot the footage of the attack, authorities said

When pressed if this means Bryan will face charges over Arbery's death, Reynolds would not rule it out.

'Don't know yet  we'll go wherever the evidence takes us. If there is probable cause for arrest, we'll do it. If there isn't, we won't,' he said, adding that Bryan's video of the fatal confrontation, which took place on February 23, was a key piece of evidence.

Authorities are 'investigating everyone involved in the case including the individual who shot that video,' he added.

Ben Crump, an attorney for the victim's family, called for Bryan's arrest for aiding and abetting the McMichaels in Arbery's murder.

'This is William "Roddie" Bryan  who we believe may have been the third person in pursuit of #AhmaudArbery. If he chased down Ahmaud and filmed his execution, he should be arrested and charged with aiding and abetting them in committing this crime of murder. #RunWithMaud,' Crump wrote in a Twitter post Thursday.

A memo from one of the former district attorneys on the case said Bryan had joined in the pursuit of the innocent jogger.

Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill said in the memo, obtained by USA Today, that all three men were in 'hot pursuit of a burglary suspect'.

Bryan lives just a few houses away from the McMichaels, close to where the killing took place.

Reynolds downplayed any racial motive behind the attack of the white men on the young black male during Friday's press conference

He said: 'There is no hate crime in Georgia. There isn't. It is one of four or five states that doesn't have one'.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the GBI for comment about Bryan's involvement and any potential charges he faces.

As the GBI ramps up its investigation, protesters angered by Arbery's death gathered outside the courthouse in Brunswick Friday - what would have been the victim's 26th birthday.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Vic Reynolds (pictured center) said authorities are 'investigating everyone involved in the case including the individual who shot that video'

A crowd of several hundred people, most wearing masks, sang 'Happy Birthday' in his honor outside the Glynn County Courthouse.

Many expressed frustrations at the long wait before any arrests were made, and fears that the justice system will fail them.

President Donald Trump broke his silence over the killing that has shaken America, calling the video showing Arbery's murder 'disturbing'.

'I looked at a picture of that young man. He was in a tuxedo  I will say that that looks like a really good young guy,' Trump said on Fox & Friends Friday.

'My heart goes out to the parents and the families and friends,' he added while stating that he believed Georgia governor Brian Kemp would investigate the matter 'strongly'.

Exclusive photos show the moment Gregory McMichael (pictured) and his son Travis McMichael were arrested at their home in Brunswick, Georgia, on Thursday

An officer with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is seen leading 34-year-old Travis McMichael out of the home in handcuffs

Gregory, 64, and Travis, 34, are pictured in their mugshots. It has also emerged that Gregory, who worked as an investigator in the Brunswick DA's office, helped prosecute Arbery in the past

'[Brian Kemp] is going to do what's right. It's a heartbreaking thing. That was very rough, rough stuff.

'Justice getting done is the thing that solves the [racial problem]. Again, it is in the hands of the governor and I'm sure he'll do the right thing. It could be something that we didn't see on tape. If you saw, things went off tape and then back on tape.'

It has also emerged that Gregory, who worked as an investigator in the Brunswick DA's office, helped prosecute Arbery in the past, Barnhill revealed.

Gregory and Travis have been charged with murder and aggravated assault for the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery (pictured)

In a letter to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr recusing himself from the case, Barnhill said his son and Gregory 'both helped with the previous prosecution of (Ahmaud) Arbery'.

Gregory, who retired from the DA's office in 2019, had not mentioned his involvement in the case to police.

Arbery was shot dead while out jogging on February 23 by the McMichaels.

The killers evaded prosecution for more than two months, after the father and son team initially claimed they thought Arbery was a burglar after a spate of thefts in the area, and that he attacked them when they tried to make a citizen's arrest.

People react during a rally Friday morning outside the courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, to protest the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man what would have been his 26th birthday

Protesters gathered for a march through Brunswick on Tuesday - the same day shocking footage of Arbery's death went viral

But shocking cellphone footage - taken by Bryan - was leaked this week, showing the two men chasing and gunning down the victim in the street.

The video showed the men 'ambushing' Arbery as he tried to run past their pickup truck.

In the harrowing footage, Arbery is seen running at a jogging pace on the left side of a road.

A truck is parked in the road ahead of him. Gregory is inside the pickup's bed, while Travis is standing beside the open driver's side door.

Arbery crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck.

Arbery can be seen stumbling to the ground as the clip comes to a close

Shocking cellphone video captured the moment the McMichaels confronted Arbery in the street. In the footage Travis is seen engaging in a physical fight with Arbery before shooting him with a shotgun

A gunshot sounds, and the video shows Arbery grappling with Travis in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle.

A second shot can be heard, and Arbery can be seen punching Travis. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. Arbery staggers a few feet and falls face down.

The leak of the video sparked outrage across the nation with LeBron James, Justin Bieber and Kendall Jenner all leading cries for the McMichaels to be charged with murder.

The GBI took over the investigation on Tuesday after the video emerged and the McMichaels were finally arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault Thursday.

lan Tucker, a criminal defense lawyer in Brunswick, said he had obtained the video from Bryan and released it online to promote 'absolute transparency'.
...and now New York wants to hear them!

RESEARCHERS at the University of Huddersfield are harnessing the power of song to spread vital healthcare messages - including Covid-19 precautions - among African women thanks to major funding from Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The project - titled Life-Saving Lullabies - has been awarded 129,795 by the AHRC and is primarily focussed on Zambia but, when it has proved its value, it could spread to other African countries and then around the world, as a zero-cost way to create awareness of key health issues.

It works by encouraging volunteers to create lively lullabies in their local languages that they then perform to women who visit maternity clinics.

The songs are a memorable way to convey important information about birth and childcare, but the onset of coronavirus now means that songs are now being created that relay the importance of precautions, such as social distancing.

The Life Saving Lullabies project has been developed by the educationalist Dr James Reid and his University of Huddersfield colleague, Professor Barry Doyle. They are collaborating with the design expert Professor David Swann, once a colleague at Huddersfield, now based at Sheffield Hallam University. The UK team is working alongside St John Zambia, a leading healthcare provider in the African country.

Dr Reid said that he and his colleagues had been "overwhelmed" by how volunteers and maternity clinics in Zambia responded to the project.

"These women are so talented. They have gone away and written songs and performed them to local women and it's having an effect," he said.

Life Saving Lullabies was the result of what Dr Reid described as a "eureka moment" when he and his colleagues visited Zambia for a workshop session during 2019.

Originally, their aim was to investigate whether the Finnish baby box - a maternity package given to all new parents in Finland, contributing to very low levels of infant mortality - could have a role in Sub-Saharan Africa.

But it was quickly realised that the cost of the baby boxes meant that they would not be a solution in Zambian villages.

"Also, they are culturally inappropriate," said Dr Reid. "We showed women photos and the first thing they saw was a baby-sized coffin. There is a very high rate of infant mortality, especially in rural areas of Zambia."

So the researchers investigated the possibility of incorporating verbal and pictorial healthcare messages into the chitenge, the colourful wrap that is worn by huge numbers of African women.

"But then it struck us that even though chitenge were ubiquitous, not everybody could afford them and we had to do something that was as close as possible to zero cost if the project was to gain traction and be sustainable," said Dr Reid.

"We were at St John Zambia for a workshop talking to women volunteers about their own experience of motherhood. Then they started to sing and we looked at each other and went 'that's it'!"

Earlier, Dr Reid had been to New York, where the famous venue Carnegie Hall is the base for a Lullaby Project, which uses especially composed songs to develop attachment and aid child development. Observing this scheme made him realise the potential of lullabies in Zambia, where it is common for women to sing to their children and as part of church worship.

Now, the project is underway and volunteers in Zambian clinics, after being told what information the Ministry of Health needs to impart, have been creating and performing songs. They can be seen and heard online and researchers will gauge their impact.

The AHRC funding runs until March, but the project could be extended and at the conclusion there will be a symposium in Zambia, and the possibility of spreading the scheme to other African countries.

"And beyond that, one of the really important things we want to do is bring the idea to the global north," said Dr Reid.

"This would bring the baby box discussion full circle," he continued. "The boxes are really expensive. They are a really good idea in a particular context in places like Finland and perhaps the UK that can afford them. But there are other ways of doing things and singing might be a way of achieving a lot more for no cost."

Carnegie Hall in New York has now invited the Life Saving Lullabies team to take part in a two-day workshop in June as part of their review of its own Lullaby Project. There has also been received an invitation from Spanish organisation Grandes Oyentes to take part in an online discussion on the impact of music and creative engagement on women's health as they plan to introduce a lullaby project in Spain.

###
The occupant administration of the city obliged public transport drivers and leaders of enterprises to put holiday stickers on their vehicles

Stalin's portrait in Sevastopol krymr.com

A portrait of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin with writing "It's our victory" appeared in the centre of occupied Sevastopol (Crimea). Installations with WWII dates and an anti-tank hedgehog emerged in the city as well, Krym.Realii news agency reported.

The installations appeared on central squares of the city - next to Matrosskiy club at Ushakov Square, and at Lazarev square.

Local Communist activists hoisted a banner with the mentioned portrait and the writing on it along a local highway.

The occupant administration of the city obliged public transport drivers and leaders of enterprises to put holiday stickers on their vehicles.

According to previous media reports, there will be a number of solemn events in Sevastopol - in spite of the coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, military parade with ships and aircraft is about to take place.

Earlier, Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reported there would be no events in the Ukrainian capital on May 9. However, the police say an event timed to the Victory Day is scheduled; the venue would be the Eternal Glory Park in Kyiv.
Zurich Insurance Group has announced the appointments of Ralph Brand as global head of casualty, financial lines and cyber, and Chris Waterman as global head of property, marine and technical lines. Zurich said the appointments simplified its underwriting function by aligning the shorter-tail first-party coverages and the longer-tail third-party liability coverages.

The insurance industry continues to evolve, and having the ability to provide customers with tailor-made solutions and advice is critical for our future success, said Sierra Signorelli, commercial insurance chief underwriting officer for Zurich. This new setup will enable us to combine our expertise and resources across business lines and make better and more efficient underwriting decisions for our customers.
US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad discussed the Afghanistan peace process with Pakistan Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday.

In a statement, the Pakistan Army Khalilzad met the COAS in Rawalpindi. "During the meeting, issues of mutual interest and overall regional security, including Afghanistan reconciliation process were discussed," according to the Army.

General Bajwa reiterated support for the peace process. Khalilzad appreciated Pakistan's continuous efforts for stability in the region, according to the statement.

The US and Taliban representatives signed a historic peace deal in Doha on February 29.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top US and Chinese trade representatives played down deep differences over the economic wreckage of the coronavirus pandemic and said they would press ahead with implementing their Phase 1 trade deal after an overnight phone call.

US President Donald Trump, critical of Chinas early handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan in late 2019, told Fox News Channel on Friday that he was very torn about whether to end the trade deal.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer discussed the deal with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the phone call. The US officials said in a joint statement that both sides agreed the obligations would be met.

Chinas Commerce Ministry said the two sides agreed to improve the atmosphere for implementation of the trade deal, which calls for Beijing to boost its purchases of American farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion over two years compared to a 2017 baseline.

While China has made some purchases, some observers say these are running far behind the pace needed to meet the first-year goal of a $77 billion increase as Chinas economy is just now beginning to recover from shutdowns imposed during the pandemic.

On the call, the two sides agreed that in spite of the current global health emergency, both countries fully expect to meet their obligations under the agreement in a timely manner, Lighthizer and Mnuchin said in their statement.

FEELING DIFFERENTLY

Trump and other top officials have blamed China for the deaths of hundreds of thousands from the outbreak and have threatened punitive action, including possible tariffs and shifting supply chains away from China.

Trump has said he would terminate the trade deal if China fails to meet its purchase commitments. He said on Wednesday that he would know within a week or two whether that was possible.

The US statement suggested that more time may be needed and that the two sides would continue calls on a regular basis.

Calling into Fox News Channel just before the Labor Department announced that 20.5 million non-farm jobs were lost during April amid coronavirus business closures, Trump said the overnight phone call indicated that the deal moves along.

But he said that while he was initially very excited about the trade deal, the pandemic had changed his views about it.

Look, I feel differently than I did. I was the most - I was very tough with China. They have to buy $250 billion worth of product, et cetera, et cetera, Trump said.

Asked if he was breaking up the Phase 1 trade deal, Trump said: Im very - Im very torn as to - I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth.

The US-China Business Council, which represents US companies doing business in China, said it was too soon to assess Chinas compliance with the trade deal, given that it only took effect on Feb. 15 as a global health crisis was unfolding.

It would be extremely destabilizing if the president pulled out of the agreement without giving the Chinese a chance to meet their commitments, USCBC president Craig Allen said in a statement. So far, China seems to be operating in good faith and has sought no modifications to its purchase commitments despite its ability to request them.

A clause in the agreement allows for either party to seek consultations in the event a natural disaster or other unforeseen circumstances prevent compliance. The clause has not been invoked.
The Dodgers have officially signed a four-year contract with Brandon McCarthy, as FOX Sports Ken Rosenthal first reported (Twitter link). The four-year deal will pay McCarthy $48MM, Rosenthal tweets. McCarthy receives a $6MM signing bonus, $11MM per year in 2015-16, and $10MM annually in the final two years of the deal, Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times tweets.

The contract also gives the Dodgers a conditional club option for 2019, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com tweets. If he has spent more than 179 days on the DL due to a specific injury, McCarthy would be subject to a $5MM club option. If he has missed between 119-179 days, it would be a $8MM club option.

A four-year guarantee wouldve seemed like a fantasy for McCarthy as recently as last summer when he had a 5.01 ERA through 18 starts with Arizona. Advanced metrics revealed that McCarthy pitched much better than his ERA indicated, however, and he ended the year on a dominant run after being traded to the Yankees. In 90 1/3 IP in New York, McCarthy posted a 2.89 ERA, 6.31 K/BB rate and 8.2 K/9.

MLBTRs Steve Adams projected McCarthy would receive a three-year deal this winter, though a four-year deal wasnt out of the question given the amount of interest the veteran righty was likely to generate. The wait for Jon Lester to sign likely held up McCarthys market, as only the Royals and Yankees had been linked to him, and New York was hesitant to give McCarthy even a three-year contract given his injury history. Needless to say, the fourth year was a nice get for McCarthy and agent Ryan Ware.

If the deal is finalized, McCarthy joins Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Hyun-jin Ryu in what should be a very strong top four in the Dodgers rotation, with lefty Brett Anderson now reportedly also on board to fill the fifth slot. Los Angeles had been linked to high-profile aces like Cole Hamels or James Shields, and though you can never say never with the Dodgers, McCarthys signing could mean the team is done with its rotation shopping this winter.

There is no denying the risk that the Dodgers are taking on with this deal. While any long-term pitching contract comes with it, McCarthy has a particularly spotty injury history. And while the conditional club option included in the deal offers some measure of protection, it is not as clear cut a benefit as was the John Lackey option. Then, of course, there is the fact that McCarthy greatly improved his stock with a strong second half and will need to maintain it for a full season. All of that is not to say, of course, that McCarthy is not capable of meeting and exceeding the value of the deal; the price tag obviously reflects his ceiling.

ESPN.coms Jerry Crasnick reported on Twitter that the deal was completed.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The recorded accounts of the second lynching of an Afro-American male in the city of Chattanooga in 1885 vary.

One version states that on September 7, 1885, Williams shot a white street car driver, Polk Mitchell, because he tried to enforce Chattanoogas segregated seating ordinance that required all black males to sit in the back of the vehicle. This account claims that when Williams refused to comply and move to the segregated section, an argument ensued and Williams shot Mitchell and fled the scene. He was later caught and put in the Hamilton County Jail. He was forcibly removed from his cell by a lynch mob and was hung from the rafters of the third floor of the jail, one day after his arrest.

Another account goes into greater detail as to the parties and events that led to the lynching. Charlie Williams was a roofer who was highly regarded by the local builders who used his services. Before becoming a street car driver, Polk Mitchell had been a member of the Chattanooga Police Department and became the assistant police chief to Chief James A. Allen after he moved from Nashville.

Chief Allen had gotten crossways with the citys mayor who had called for his resignation. The crux of the dispute was a campaign to raise money by issuing tickets by the police department that were supposed to be filed in the city court so that the City of Chattanooga could collect the fines and keep the money. However, Chief Allen preferred that the cases be lodged in the county courts thus depriving the city of significant revenue.

Another aspect of the scandal with the police department was the loose policing of the approximately 100 prostitutes in an unofficial red-light district that just happened to be near the police headquarters. Chief Allen would periodically raid the brothels to placate the general public but as soon as the prostitutes paid their fines they were allowed to go back in business. Mitchell was eventually fired as a police officer because he was seen kissing his wifes cousin who happened to be a prostitute on a public street in downtown Chattanooga.

During his tenure as a police officer it was alleged that Mitchell had beaten Charlie Williams and this unforgotten incident was what sparked the confrontation between the two on September 6, 1885, when Mitchell had gone back to his old job driving a mule drawn street car. When Mitchell stopped to pick up a passenger it was Charlie Williams who confronted the former police officer about the beating he had given him. An oral confrontation took place but ended with Williams being put off the trolley but not before the black roofer swore that he would get even with you you son of a b _ _ _ _ and went home and got a pistol.

At a stop called the Lookout Switch, Williams again confronted Mitchell and this time it went beyond talk. A fight took place and the trolley driver was shot three times with one bullet piercing his heart. Williams fled the scene but was apprehended in a corn patch on the side of Chattanooga Creek. A crowd of over 500 angry citizens gathered and followed the police to the Hamilton County Jail. With the crowd getting more boisterous, Sheriff S.C. Pyott tried unsuccessfully to contact the governor in Nashville for armed troops. As a result, the sheriff called out two local militias to assist them, but they primarily consisted of young boys and were not allowed to load their rifles with bullets.

Sheriff Pyott initially was able to calm the crowd but eventually they returned to the jail. In the meantime, a hurriedly impaneled coroners inquest was held and ruled that Mitchell met his death from pistol shots fired by Charlie Williams. The militia came to the jail and the sheriff ordered them to form a single line in front of the jail gate with fixed bayonets but no ammunition in their rifles. Knowing they would not be shot the mob rushed the jail and eventually found Williams in the last cell on the second floor.

After some difficulty they finally broke through the steel bars and grabbed Williams. He was taken to the third floor where his hands and feet were tied and a rope thrown across an iron beam. The noose was made from mosquito netting and initially broke in the mob's attempt to hang Williams. Eventually a rope was found and Williams was pulled up about eight inches off the floor and strangled to death.

After he died the body remained suspended for about 30y minutes in order that everyone could pass by and view the dead body before Williams brother came by and the body was released to him and Charlies mother and father at about 1 a.m.

Another coroners jury was set up and their finding was that Williams met his death at the hands of an unknown mob. At 1:30 a.m., an hour and a half after the mob broke in and hung Charlie Williams a telegram arrived from the governors office authorizing an armed militia to defend the jail.

* * *

Jerry Summers

(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading on Friday:

Tesla  Tesla stock jumped 4.8% in midday trading after CEO Elon Musk told employees in an e-mail that the electric car maker would try to restart production at its U.S. plant in Fremont, California, on Friday afternoon. A separate email from Tesla HR chief Valerie Capers Workman said the Fremont facility would be bringing back around 30% of employees normally working. Tesla's stock is up more than 10% from its close on May 1, the day Musk tweeted that he thought the company's stock was overvalued.

MGM Resorts  Shares of MGM Resorts gained more than 1% as investors piled onto expectations of the economy reopening. The casino operator took a massive hit as the coronavirus forced global economies into a shutdown. However, the stock has jumped more than 28% this quarter.

L Brands  Shares of the retailer jumped more than 9% as the so-called "reopen trade" stocks continue to rally. Gap was among the other retailers on the move, gaining more than 6%, as optimism around states reopening their economies lifted the group.

Walt Disney Co.  Disney rose in midday trading as investors grew optimistic about efforts to reopen portions of the U.S. economy. The company announced that it sold out all tickets for the reopening of Shanghai Disneyland on Monday though the Chinese government had asked Disney to cap attendance at 30% of capacity. The stock gained 2.3%.

EOG Resources  Shares of the energy company rose 4.3% on Friday after it reported first-quarter results and said that it has more than 4,500 net drilling locations that can generate "strong rates of return" even if West Texas Intermediate crude prices are below $30 per barrel. Mizuho said in a note to clients that EOG was the "AAPL of oil" and is "at the leading edge of global oil companies." The company's first-quarter earnings per share did miss Wall Street estimates, according to FactSet.

Uber Technologies  Better-than-expected revenues in the first quarter of the calendar year pushed the ride-hailing company's stock 6.2% higher Friday afternoon. Uber also said it saw a 5% drop in ridership during the quarter, but orders placed on its Uber Eats service jumped 52%. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joined CNBC Friday morning, when he outlined his vision for a new way to provide health-care benefits for contract workers.

Airlines  Stock of United, American, Delta, Southwest and JetBlue all rallied Friday afternoon as broader Wall Street rallied on the so-called "reopen trade." Airlines, which have seen an unprecedented decline in revenues amid the Covid-19 outbreak, tend to rebound as investors grow more confident both in state efforts to reopen commerce and persistent decline in the number of new coronavirus cases. United gained 5.8%, Delta added 3.1%, American rose 3.5%, Southwest advanced 4.2% and JetBlue popped 9%. Aircraft maker Boeing gained 2.8%.

 CNBC's Pippa Stevens, Fred Imbert and Jesse Pound contributed reporting.

Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and live business day programming from around the world.
Chinese instant messaging app, WeChat, is using its international users to train their algorithms and implement even more robust censorship in China. WeChat is owned by Chinese tech company Tencent. This shocking revelation comes as part of the research by the University of Torontos Citizen Lab. The instant messaging app that has more than 1.15 billion users around the world.

The Citizen Lab researchers found that messages sent and received by foreign accounts are analyzed by WeChats algorithms to see whether they may be politically sensitive. However, these messages are not censored. However, if one such message is sent by or to a Chinese account holder, WeChat will censor that message. This includes images and documents.

The way this works is that any account registered for WeChat with a Chinese phone number, has to adhere to WeChats terms of serviceand they have to follow the national regulations in terms of what can be shared on web platforms, and what cannot be. That is true, say the researchers, even if an account originally registered with a Chinese phone number, switches to an international number.

Have you also read?

Noodles & Pandas: Chinese Social Media Users Are Talking About Coronavirus in Secret Lingo

Our results show that on each day of testing, if a sensitive document is first sent from a non-China-registered account to non-China-registered accounts, before sending it to a China-registered account, they are censored in real time when sent to a China-registered account. This finding shows that documents sent even entirely among non-China-registered accounts undergo content surveillance and that these documents are used to build-up the censorship system to which China-registered accounts are subjected, say the researchers.

Chinas cyber laws are rather broadly defined. In the new set of guidelines that went live in March, in the midst of the measures to contain the Coronavirus, or COVID-19 outbreak. Among the long list of dos and donts released by the Cyberspace Administration of China in the Regulations on the Ecological Governance of Network Information Content, one guideline that truly stands out is the one that reads spreading rumors and disturbing the economic and social order under Article 6 which headlines Producers of online information content may not produce, copy or publish illegal information containing the following contents.

In China, WeChat is considered a super-app, and offers multiple layers of functionality including instant messaging, social network on the lines of Facebook, mobile payments, news and access to other apps and platforms. In a way, it really cannot be ignored by Chinese citizens.

The researchers do say that any surveillance on non-China accounts on WhatsApp is undetectable to users. At no point is any message censored or altered, except that Tencent is potentially using the messages, images and documents shared by these users to understand what can be censored and training the algorithms that are then applied for users in China or registered with a Chinese phone number.

Incidentally, Tencents privacy policy documents for China and the rest of the world, does not indicate that non-China accounts will be under surveillance. Overall, we found, first, that neither the China nor international public policy documents made clear to users that non-China accounts could have their content surveilled and the resulting hashes used to censor content for China-registered accounts. Second, we found it was plausible that the international policy documents could permit content surveillance of international users communications, but the company did not respond to these questions. Third, we found that it was unclear on what basis the hashes of international users communications could be shared with WeChat China, and the company did not respond to these questions, says the research.

Citizen Labs results come after a series of tests done between November 2019 to January 2020, to understand how WeChat may be censoring content.

Have you also read?

WeChat is Censoring Coronavirus Keywords, Because China Doesnt Like Bad Press?

In March, Citizen Lab had also revealed that WeChat was actively blocking any messages which had specific keywords or a combination of keywords around the Coronavirus, or COVID. These included discussions of central leaders responses to the outbreak, critical and neutral references to government policies on handling the epidemic, responses to the outbreak in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau, speculative and factual information on the disease, references to Dr. Li Wenliang, and collective action. They also discovered that references to President Xi Jinping as well as other central government and Party leaders including Premier Li Keqiang, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, and the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China as a collective agency are high on censorship priority.
At-risk children have been ignored by the government's roadmap to reopen the county, according to Barnardos.

It says 1,720 families sought its help in the first four weeks of restrictions, ranging from practical to emotional support.

The organisation says that included 3,000 hot meals, 1,264 food parcels and also baby supplies and shopping vouchers.

Barnardos' chief executive Suzanne Connolly says not enough is being done to help children at risk of neglect and abuse during the current crisis.

She says: "Children living in those circumstances really need the services, they really need the schools, they need the creches.

"One of the things we are disappointed in, there wasn't consideration given to reopening schools sooner in the context of thinking about social distancing."

Meanwhile, the Irish Guide Dogs for the blind says there are 35 clients waiting on a new guide dog after pairing procedures stopped due to Covid-19.

On Guide Dog Day, the organisation says it has to change how it trains dogs and introduces them to their new users.

CEO of the organisation Patrick Burke says dogs are still available but there is a backlog in the pairing process.

He says: "We are working on ways of continuing to train dogs but it will take a longer time.

"We will continue to train dogs and match them our vision-impaired clients and the families of children."
The Pentagon has expressed opposition to the deployment of a new 5G cellular network

The Trump administration is divided over the deployment of a new 5G cellular network, with the Pentagon, NASA and others at odds with other government agencies.

The five-member Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in late April to approve the deployment of a 5G cellular network by Ligado Networks.

Opponents of the plan argue that it would use spectrum that could potentially disrupt frequencies used for commercial and military Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.

The FCC decision has received the backing of Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But Pentagon chief Mark Esper, NASA, the Commerce Department, Department of Homeland Security and major airlines have voiced their opposition.

On Wednesday, top Pentagon officials pleaded their case before a Senate committee.

"There are too many unknowns, and the risks are too great to allow the proposed Ligado system to proceed in light of the operational impact to GPS," said Dana Deasy, the top advisor to the defense secretary for information technology.

Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, also voiced his opposition to the project by Ligado, a Virginia company formerly known as LightSquared.

"I do not think it is a good idea to place at risk the GPS signals that enable our national and economic security for the benefit of one company and its investors," Inhofe said.

"After extensive testing and analysis, experts at almost every federal agency tell us that Ligado's plan will interfere with GPS systems," he said. "Interfering with GPS will hurt the entire American economy."

Inhofe said he had raised the question with President Donald Trump and that the FCC decision had been made "without cluing the president in on any of this."

Deasy said the Pentagon would lodge an appeal in a bid to have the FCC reverse its decision.

Explore further Amazon sues Pentagon over $10B contract awarded to Microsoft

 2020 AFP
A goods train ran over a group of migrant workers who fell asleep on the rail tracks on Friday killing 16 of them in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, in a tragedy that highlighted the plight of thousands of labourers hit by coronavirus lockdown walking long distances back to their native states.

Aurangabad District police chief Mokshada Patil told PTI that three of the four survivors from the group of 20 men returning to their home state of Madhya Pradesh tried in vain to wake up their colleagues who had slept on the track after a overnight walk from Jalna, around 40 km from the site of the accident.

The Railways announced a comprehensive probe into the accident which occurred at 5.15 am near Karmad, around 30 km from Aurangabad city.

As reports of anxious migrant workers demanding transport facility to return to their home state came from several parts of the country, several states pressed for deployment of more Shramik Special' trains to ferry lakhs of labourers.

A video clip from the accident scene in Karmad that has gone viral showed the bodies of workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around. Pieces of roti were found strewn near the tracks.

The victims, aged between 20 and 35 years, hailed from Umaria and Shahdol districts of MP and were working in a steel factory in Jalna, police said.

In a statement, the South Central railway said the train driver had seen the sleeping men and had even tried to alert them up by honking but failed to save their lives.

The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the lockdown and desperate to go to their native places, left Jalna on Thursday night and were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape the attention of police.

The workers, who were headed to Bhusawal in MP, came till Karmad and fell asleep on the rail tracks due to exhaustion when they were run over by the goods train coming from the Jalna side, an official at the Karmad police station said.

Three of the four survivors were sleeping some distance away from the rail tracks, he said.

"I had a word with the survivors. They started walking from Jalna on Thursday night and tried to reach Bhusaval, Mokshada Patil told PTI. Bhusawal is about 180 km from the accident site.

" Out of the 20 people, 16 died, one is injured and three are with us. A case will be registered at the Karmad police station,"she said



Jalna SP S Chaitanya said the migrant labourers had left without informing their employer or the local administration.

Hours after the accident, the Railways took to social media, urging people not to squat, walk or indulge in any activity on the tracks.

Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety Shailesh Pathak also wrote to the Railway Board Chairman, calling for abundant caution and requesting him to issue instructions to ensure that such accidents do not recur.

Due to the lack of congestion on their routes, the average speed of freight trains have increased by 66 per cent during the lockdown.

Despite the railways running migrant special trains since May 1 and ferrying almost three lakh migrants since then in more than 251 trains, many of them have started their journey home on foot or bicycle, as they apparently could not wait for their turn any longer due to lack of food and employment.

According to a report by SaveLIFE Foundation, about 140 lives were lost in over 600 road accidents over the course of the two phases of the nationwide lockdown between March 25 and May 3.

Of this count, 30 per cent of the victims were migrant workers returning to their homes, it said.

Terming the death of migrants as "painful", Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar urged the labourers to have patience and not undertake risky journeys to their home states.

Pawar, who is also the state's Finance Minister, said the state government was working on a war footing to send migrant workers to their native states and this was being done with the cooperation from the Centre and other state governments.

The MP government sought 25 additional trains from the Railways to bring back migrant labourers of the state from other parts of the country, a senior official said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked officials to reach out to their counterparts in other states for better coordination in bringing the migrants home and urged the workers to not walk or cycle to the state as this could endanger their health and security.

Flouting lockdown norms, nearly 2,000 migrant workers gathered at a government office in the Gota area in Ahmedabad hoping they will somehow find a way to reach their native places, police said.

The gathering, which started since the morning, was apparently triggered by a rumour about a bus reaching outside the government office to ferry migrants to railway station.

In Karnataka, over 700 migrant workers belonging to northern states staged a protest in front of the central railway station in Mangaluru demanding that arrangements be made for them to return to home towns.

The crowding of workers at the railway station is learnt to be prompted by a social media post which went viral giving false information that free special trains have been arranged for workers, sources said.

Hundreds of migrant labourers at a construction work site in Bengaluru claimed they are being kept confined at the place and appealed to the government to send them back to their native places.

In a related incident, at least 22 migrant labourers, who had returned from Andhra Pradesh, escaped from a COVID-19 quarantine centre in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, police said.

The labourers escaped from a quarantine facility in Dantewada late on Thursday evening and a search was launched to trace them, Dantewada superintendent of police Abhishek Pallava told PTI.

The Noida Police also busted an illegal bus service for duping people on the pretext of being a free transportation service of the Bihar government for migrant workers stranded in the Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) due to the lockdown, an official said.

Two men were arrested and two privately-operated buses impounded during the police action around 1.30 am on a Noida-Greater Noida road, the official said.

The accused had stationed the two buses bearing banners that read 'Free bus service for migrant labourers by Bihar government'.

"The passengers told the officials they got onto the bus thinking it was a free service but were being charged Rs 3,000 per passenger," the police said.

The National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) also issued notices to the Maharashtra Chief Secretary and the District Magistrate of Aurangabad over the accident involving the migrant workers.

The accident sparked attacks against the Centre from the Congress which alleged the policy of providing buses and trains to transport migrant workers was poorly designed, coordinated and implemented.

After announcements of buses and trains, why are thousands still forced to walk back to their villages?" asked senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

"The tragedy that happened this morning could have been avoided if governments had gone to the rescue of the migrant workers in time,said another Congress leader P Chidambaram.

BSP supremo Mayawati said the death of the migrant labourers was a result of the "insensitive attitude" of the Centre and the Maharashtra government and demanded better arrangements be made for workers returning home.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 8, 2020  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Procter & Gamble PG, Exxon Mobil XOM, Adobe Systems ADBE, Comcast CMCSA and Las Vegas Sands LVS.

Here are highlights from Thursdays Analyst Blog:

Top Stock Reports for Procter & Gamble, ExxonMobil & Adobe

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil and Adobe Systems. These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of todays research reports here >>>

Procter & Gambles shares have outperformed the Zacks Soap and Cleaning Materials industry over the past year (+7.1% vs. -2.2%). The Zacks analyst believes that companys efforts to make its cleaning and personal care products during the current pandemic have helped bolster sales. It has witnessed an increased demand for hand soaps, detergents and surface cleaning products, in particular.

The companys solid third-quarter fiscal 2020 earnings mark the continuation of its positive surprise trend. Further, earnings and sales improved year over year in the reported quarter on gains from significant sales increase, related fixed cost leverage and ongoing productivity efforts.

Further, it delivered adjusted free cash flow productivity of 113% in the fiscal third quarter. However, currency fluctuations remain concerning. Due to stronger headwind from foreign exchange rates, the company lowered its all-in sales view for fiscal 2020.

Shares of Exxon Mobil have lost 36.8% over the past six months against the Zacks Integrated International Oil industrys fall of 39.9%. The Zacks analyst believes that with no near-term recovery in demand in the horizon, owing to coronavirus pandemic, the firms refining business is not expected to improve anytime soon.

Story continues

Notably, the company estimates gross recoverable resource of more than 8 billion oil-equivalent barrels from offshore Guyana discoveries. The energy giants first-quarter 2020 results were better than expected, thanks to growth in production from the prolific Permian & Guyana oil resources. This was partially offset by lower industry refining margin and decline in commodity prices.

ExxonMobils bellwether status in the energy space, optimal integrated capital structure that has historically produced industry-leading returns and managements track record of capex discipline across the commodity price cycle makes it a relatively lower-risk energy sector play.

Adobes shares have lost 0.6% over the past three months against the Zacks Software industrys fall of 5.8%. The Zacks analyst remains optimistic about Adobes market position, compelling product lines, continued innovation, solid adoption of Creative Cloud and Adobe marketing cloud.

Adobe is benefiting from strong demand for its creative products. The companys Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud products are driving the top-line growth. Further, rising subscription revenues and solid momentum across the mobile apps are major positives.

Additionally, growth in emerging markets, robust online video creation demand and improving average revenue per user are tailwinds. However, the company has given weak guidance for the current quarter due to coronavirus scare which might delay enterprises booking decisions, reduce marketing spending and hurt consulting service implementations.

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Comcast and Las Vegas Sands.

5 Stocks Set to Double

Each was hand-picked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2020. Each comes from a different sector and has unique qualities and catalysts that could fuel exceptional growth.

Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >>

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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/performancefor information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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[May 08, 2020] Mackenzie Investments Virtually Opens the Market

TORONTO, May 8, 2020 /CNW/ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVJmtoIm91k Michael Cooke, Head of ETFs, Mackenzie Investments joined Robert Peterman, Vice President of Global Business Development, TSX and TSX Venture Exchange, to celebrate the 4 year annivrsary of Mackenzie Investments ETFs and to open the market.



Founded in 1967, Mackenzie Investments is a holistic asset-management partner for thousands of Canadian financial advisors and the investors they support. This event recognized many of the milestones Mackenzie Investments has achieved these past four years, including over 30 Exchange Traded Funds. For more information, please visit: www.mackenzieinvestments.com/ For Market Openings: Media may pick up a feed from the TOC (television operations centre) for all market open ceremonies. The feed is named TSX Transmit 1 (SD-SDI) and is produced at the TMX Broadcast Centre and sent live to the TOC. To pick up the feed via the Dejero network, please contact [email protected]. The client feature video will begin playing on the TMX media wall at approximately 9:27 a.m. ET and the markets will open with the sound of a siren at 9:30 a.m. ET

Date: Friday, May 8, 2020

Time: 9:00am - 9:30am

Place: Virtually Broadcast SOURCE TMX Group Limited

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
In a step to prevent smuggling of liquor during the lockdown, Maharashtra government has sealed its borders with the neighbouring states and deployed adequate manpower at a dozen checkposts, an official said on Friday (May 8, 2020).

This step is taken by the excise department as the possibilities of liquor smuggling by inter-state organised syndicates has increased in the state.

The excise department has deployed its flying squads and vigilance teams in districts located along the borders with neighbouring states considering the threat from such syndicates.

To keep a check on such activity Maharashtra police have increased vigil on 12 checkposts and sealed borders with adjoining states, said, official.

The excise department along with the local police will strictly look into the matter as the state witnesses higher demand for liquor.

In last 50 days, at least 2,100 persons have been arrested so far in such cases and liquor worth Rs 12.03 crore has been seized.

Since the lockdown came into force, 4,800 cases registered and 425 vehicles seized in connection with liquor smuggling & illegal liquor transport in Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra has the highest number of coronavirus cases in India with the number rising to 17974.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 8 : Kerala Chief Secretary Tom Jose informed that the Civil Aviation department officials on Friday applauded the state for its perfect handling of the two aircrafts that came last night into two state airports.

"The secretary congratulated Kerala for its neat and clean handling of the two aircrafts. Everything went according to our plans and it has been appreciated also. I spoke to Air India CMD today and he said apart from the already announced two flights for the day, there might be another two more and it will be known during the day. Even though the schedules are there, there might be changes," said Jose.

According to the original plan of scheme, Friday, the first flight from Bahrain with 177 passengers will land at Kochi around 11.30 p.m. and another one will come from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia with 162 passengers to the Kozhikode airport at 8.30 p.m.

All these air evacuation is being done under India's "Vande Bharat Mission" and as announced these are 64 ferry services which will be operated from May 7-13 and is billed as one of the biggest air evacuation missions by any country.

Last night around 10.05 p.m., the first flight landed at Kochi from Abu Dhabi with 177 passengers.

As per the accepted protocol all the pregnant ladies, four kids and those above 75 years were send to their homes for 14 day quarantine.

All the others have been quarantined in their home districts. They were taken in state transport buses in state run corona care centres and will be there for a week, after which all those who are negative will be asked to remain in isolation at their homes for another week.

Five of those who arrived after showing symptoms of fever were moved to the government hospital in Kochi and kept under close watch.

State Agriculture Minister V.S. Sunilkumar, who is overseeing the operations on Friday, told the media that this was done as a matter of abundant caution and all of them are fine, according to the latest medical reports.

The second flight that landed on Thursday was at Kozhikode and it came from Dubai with 182 passengers, including five kids.

The same protocols are being followed across all the four airports.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Dr. Bernard Kahn is one of the 36 percent who call themselves native Floridians. Born in Orlando in 1951, Bernie has lived and worked in the Orlando area his entire life and has seen the growth of Orlando first hand.

His family came from Germany. His grandfather, Richard Kahn, was a man of "means," who held multiple doctorates in economics, history and law. Around 1934, when he spoke out against the Nazi regime, he was arrested and thrown into prison. In prison he faked a heart attack, managing to escape from the ambulance that was transporting him to the hospital. From there he made his way to Czechoslovakia where he obtained a plane ticket to Argentina. Once he established himself, he sent passage for his entire family on a freighter that stopped in Baltimore, Maryland. Richard Kahn flew from Argentina to Baltimore where he was reunited with his family. Bernie's father, Wolf Kahn, was 14 years old when he got off the boat with his mother to rejoin his father. On the boat were his two uncles, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

"My grandfather was quite a prolific man," said Bernie. "He was renown in the field of economics and he went to work for the United States government for the Department of Interior. He pretty much was responsible for the North Atlantic Fishing treaty, which is still in place today."

Bernie's mother, Tybell, was a Wittenstein. They have been in the Orlando area since the early 1900s. The family fled southern Russia, (the Minsk area), to Spain where they made their way to Argentina. They were prolific farmers in the old country and established a farm in Argentina until they had successive years of drought.

"I remember one relative tell me that the lack of water was caused by sabotage, which is why they came to the United States," Bernie said.

Ending up in Pittsburgh, they met a neighbor in the apartment across the hall, the Shader family. They were farmers from Minsk also, and together the Wittensteins and Shaders fled the city in hopes of finding land that they could homestead down south. They ultimately came to Sanford by boat and took the train to Orlando where they managed to acquire land to establish their dairy farm. This was around the year 1912. Not only did they raise dairy cows but they planted orange trees in a grove that went from the western shores of Lake Silver to Orange Blossom Trail. Bernie's brother-in-law, Ben Shader, had a farm on the other side of OBT where WKMG television station is located. They eventually opened a business called College Park Dairy.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Bernie's father, Wolf, enlisted into the Army/Airforce at age 18. At that time the Army/Airforce was a combined entity, which didn't separate until 1947 after the National Security Act had passed. The act restructured the United States military to a form that still stands today.

Wolf did his basic training in Miami and then was stationed in the Army/Airforce base that is now Baldwin Park. Because Wolf spoke fluent German, he became a counter espionage officer, where he would be introduced to the German submariner prisoners who were being held in Leesburg, Florida. He was passed off as a captured German submariner and would mingle with the prisoners where he would extract intelligence from the POWs.

"In 1943 my father went to USO party where he met Tybell (Tybe) Wittenstien and as they say the rest is history," Bernie shared.

"My mother went to Florida State University where she studied nutrition. She did her residency in her field in Philadelphia and when she returned home to Orlando she went to work for Orange Memorial Hospital as their first nutritionist."

Wolf was an artist. One of his first jobs after the war was for Sears Roebuck in downtown Orlando. He then went to work for Ferelli's Jewelery store and began applying his creativity to jewelry designs. He eventually purchased a jewelry store, which became Wolf's Jewelry on Church Street.

"They moved to Pine Street where my father operated a very successful business that eventually got into the engraving industry and trophies. He acquired Martin Marietta as an account where he engraved devices that are now somewhere in space."

In 1969, Wolf's business hooked up with Disney and when they opened the park in 1971 Wolf became the jeweler for Disney. His main office moved to the Contemporary Hotel called "Kingdom Jewels." He had a jewelry store in Hawaiian Village and then later in downtown Disney. Eventually Wolf opened two more stores, one was on their ship, the Queen Elizabeth, and another opened at Disney in Anaheim, California.

"Anything that came through Disney that related to precious stones and metals, my father was involved in. The executives at Disney held him in high regard and he was included on many of their projects. He represented Disney in their negotiations in the Orient and France.

"I had a free pass to Disney growing up and I enjoyed many afternoons and evening with friends at the park."

Bernie graduated from Edgewater High School and went to Florida State University in Tallahassee where he received his undergraduate degree in micro-biology/predentistry. He then attended Emory University in Atlanta, where he graduated from dental school.

He met his first wife through friends at Camp Bluestar, N.C., and had two sons, Aaron and Philliip. About two years after his divorce, he met Valarie Cadwallader, to whom he was married for 32 years. Valarie passed away recently.

"Out of dental school I had an associate-ship with Howard Oser. I went out on my own about a year later. My first solo practice was in downtown Orlando on Magnolia Avenue for approximately five years until I purchased the building I'm now in, which I opened in 1985 called Dental Associates of Maitland. My practice is located across from the Jewish Community Center, and is geared toward facial pain, therapy and restoration."

Tybie and Wolf Kahn

Bernie has been active in the American Dental Association since 1977 as well as serving in many positions with the Florida Dental Association and the Central District Dental Association. He's actively involved in the Dental Society of Greater Orlando serving as past president among many other roles within these organizations.

Bernie also has been active with the Alpha Omega International Dental Fraternity and has held many positions over the years. Today he's on the foundation board and was an International Board member.

"Living as long as one has in the Orlando area, I have seen the growth and development that came with Disney. My grandparents founded Ohev Shalom and my parents Temple Israel. The Jewish community today is spread out and is more diverse today than it was then."

He continued, "I'm amazed at the amount of Israelis that are living in the area, and I appreciate the contributions they've made to Orlando Jewish culture."
Former FBI Director James Comey (C) talks to reporters following a closed House Judiciary Committee meeting to hear his testimony, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 7, 2018. (Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcripts Contradict Comeys Claim That DNC Denied FBI Access to Servers

An attorney who represented the Democratic National Committee in connection to the hacking of its servers and the private cybersecurity expert who led the response to the breach both contradicted the testimony to Congress given by then-FBI Director James Comey, who claimed that the FBI sought and was denied access to DNCs physical servers.

Michael Sussman, an attorney with Perkins Coie, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that the FBI declined to access the DNC premises when offered to do so during a meeting which included cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in mid-June of 2016, according to a newly declassified transcript (pdf).

During the meeting, the chief executive officer of the DNC, Amy Dacey, relayed to the FBI that the bureau could have access to anything they needed, according to Sussman.

And I recall offering, or asking or offering to the FBI to come on premises, and they were not interested in coming on premises at the time, Sussman said, later adding that Perkins Coie would have preferred the FBI to access the servers because this would have saved the DNC the money needed to address the hacking.

Sussman also said the FBI never requested access to DNCs physical servers.

The DNC contacted CrowdStrike on April 30, 2016, to handle an intrusion into its servers. Upon Sussmans recommendation, Perkins Coie contracted CrowdStrike to assess and remedy the breach for the DNC.

Shawn Henry, the president of CrowdStrike Services, coordinated the cybersecurity firms work with the DNC, Perkins Coie, and the FBI. Henry told the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that he was not aware of the FBI ever asking or being denied any information or access to the DNC servers, according to a transcript (pdf) newly declassified on May 7 alongside Sussmans deposition. Henry also said he was not aware of the FBI asking the DNC for data.

The newly declassified testimonies by Sussman and Henry contradict what then-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on January 10, 2017. Comey claimed the FBI made multiple requests to the DNC but were denied access.

Were you given access to do forensics on those servers? Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked.

We were not. A highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there, Comey answered.

But is that typically the way the FBI would prefer to do the forensics or would your forensics unit rather field the servers and do the forensics themselves? Burr asked.

Wed always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if thats possible, Comey answered.

Do you know why you were denied access to those servers? Burr asked.

I dont know for sure, Comey answered.

Was there one request or multiple requests? Burr asked.

Multiple requests at different levels and ultimately it was agreed to it was the private company would share with us what they saw, Comey answered.

According to the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI eventually obtained images of the DNC servers and copies of relevant network traffic logs. The report does not specify when the bureau obtained the images. Sussman told lawmakers in December 2017 that the DNC provided images of the servers taken by CrowdStrike to the FBI.

Mueller investigated allegations but did not find sufficient evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel charged a group of alleged Russian intelligence operatives with the hacking of the DNC servers and the release of thousands of emails allegedly stolen from the servers.

Sussman, CrowdStrike, the DNC, and the attorneys for James Comey did not respond to requests for comment.
Friday, May 8, marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day, Nazi Germanys surrender to the Allies during WWII.

The late Francis Frank Brownback (1920-2001) was among the hundreds of Helena-area veterans that were serving in the European Theater of Operations on that date in 1945.

Brownback was born in Harrison, Montana, in 1920. He enlisted in the Army on March 2, 1942. After completing basic training at Ft. Lewis, Washington, he was assigned to the 195th Field Artillery Battalion, and then to Fort Ord, California, where they learned to operate the new ultra-powerful 8-inch howitzers.

Subsequent training took place at Fort Benning, Georgia; the Desert Training Center, California; and Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. After promotion, Frank became an instructor, training new recruits.

The 195th disembarked from New York City for England on Feb. 11, 1944. The battalion then proceeded to Camp Hursley, near Winchester.

Goerings Luftwaffe regularly bombed nearby Southampton, and the Americans were anxious to retaliate. More than 2 million Allies were massed on the British Isles for the great attack. There were 16 million tons of arms, munitions and equipment ready for use along with 4,000 ships and landing craft and 11,000 planes.

At 3 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Brownback deployed from Portland, England, in a landing craft, sailing across the English Channel for Normandy. The 24-year-old Montanan and five other GIs were transporting an eight-inch howitzer mounted on a Sherman tank as part of the massive Allied Invasion.

In the cold darkness during the D-Day crossing, Brownback came to a conclusion. "I made up mind that I was not going to die, because I had an Irish girlfriend named Lucy back home that I wanted to marry," Frank told this reporter in a 2000 interview at his home in East Helena.

Just after daylight, Brownbacks landing craft hit the coast of France with the rest of the assault.

"The channel was extremely rough that morning," he remembered. Their 50-foot craft was piloted by an Englishman, and when they approached Omaha Beach, the vessel lurched to the side. "We couldnt unload our howitzer because we were beached sideways. We were right in the thick of it, and couldnt fire back."

The big cannon was so heavy, it took them three days to get it off of the craft. "We sure cleared a path once we opened up, though. Plus the craters from those 200-pound shells made pretty good foxholes for our guys," he said.

Sgt. Brownback earned the respect of his men in Service Battery during the campaigns through his actions. And they fondly nicknamed him "Buck," as the highest ranking enlisted man in the outfit.

After they crossed over to Belgium, and then into the Ardennes Forest in December 1944, the 195th engaged in what Frank referred to as some of the most intense fighting they were involved in.

"We suffered heavy in the Battle of the Bulge," he recalled.

In sub-freezing temperatures, the artillerymen proved their mettle by hauling the big guns through snow-clogged mountainous roads, and delivering murderously accurate fire upon the Nazis.

It was after the Bulge that Brownback met in person one of the most illustrious military leaders in U.S. history.

Gen. George Pattons tanks of the 3rd Army had run completely out of gas. So Frank, as part of what was known as the "Redball Express," helped load a 71/2-ton Mack truck with gas cans, and drove 12 non-stop hours to deliver the fuel.

Frank said he pulled in to the sight of Patton, sitting on his tank, legs crossed, with his pearl-handled pistols on both hips.

So Patton looks straight at me and yells Where the hell have you been! Frank recounted. I said We been bustin our rears. And he said, Well, keep it up."

Pattons outfit quickly gassed up his tanks and took off.

Next were victories at the Rhine and the Ruhr Rivers (at Buir they set a record, firing 882 rounds in 24 hours), the securing of the Remagen Bridge, and mop-up at Lennep.

The 195th celebrated V-E Day in Tuechern, Germany on May 8, 1945.

After his discharge, Frank returned to Montana and blacksmithed in his own machine shop in Harrison. He then worked for the Highway Department and Montana Power before hiring on with Asarco in 1972, where he retired after 12 years at the Smelter.

In his East Helena home, Brownback kept a number of priceless World War II artifacts  including binoculars and a photo album he confiscated from a German officer he captured single-handedly at Normandy.

Among his decorations were five battle stars.

"Im not a hero," the 80-year old Brownback stated in 2000. "I just did my job, like everybody else. And when I visualize all the bodies floating in the water at Omaha Beach (3,394 American GIs died that first day), Im reminded of what a terrible thing war is."

And what happened to the Irish gal that was his inspiration for surviving the war? Well, Frank and Lucy were married  with four children  for 55-years before his passing in 2001.

Editor's note: Most of this article first appeared in the Independent Record in 2000.

Curt Synness, a Navy veteran, can be reached at 406-594-2878 or email curt52synness@gmail.com. Hes also on Twitter: @curtsynness_IR

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Dustin Zeher, CBI, Horizon Business Brokers Principal Broker and Founder, was presented with the Outstanding Producer Award by the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) for exceptional achievement in 2019 as part of its Member Excellence Awards Program. This marks the second consecutive year that Dustin Zeher has been recognized by the IBBA as part of its annual awards program.

Its an honor to receive this award from the IBBA and Im delighted that we have been able to do so for the second year in a row. This recognition is a testament to the level of service and expertise we strive to provide to clients and is a credit to the efforts of the entire Horizon team, said Zeher.

This years honorees have proven themselves to be outstanding business brokers and its a privilege to recognize their accomplishments, said IBBA Board Chair and Chief Governance Officer Barry J. Berkowitz. Its with great honor that we recognize and honor their high standards of skill and excellence which the IBBA strongly promotes.

About Horizon Business Brokers

Horizon Business Brokers was founded by Dustin Zeher in 2006 to connect potential buyers and sellers of businesses. Over the years the firm has steadily grown with offices in DC, Maryland, and Virginia to better serve clients across the entire Mid-Atlantic region.

About the International Business Brokers Association

The IBBA is the worlds premier organization operating exclusively for professionals and firms engaged in business brokerage. The IBBA provides business brokers with education, conferences, professional designations and networking opportunities. The IBBA also strives to create professional relationships with successful business transaction advisors to increase the value of the IBBA to its members and to be a leader in the exchange of business referrals.
NEW YORK  A U.S. cryptocurrency investor on Thursday sued a suburban New York high school senior, accusing the 18-year-old of being the mastermind and ringleader of a cybercrime scheme that defrauded him out of millions of dollars in digital currencies.

The plaintiff, Michael Terpin, accused Ellis Pinsky, of Irvington, New York, and his alleged co-conspirators of stealing $23.8 million of cryptocurrency in January 2018, when the defendant was 15, and is seeking triple damages of $71.4 million.

On the surface, Pinsky is an All American Boy,' Terpin said in a complaint filed in federal court in White Plains, New York. The tables are now turned.

Pinsky could not immediately be reached for comment. Calls to a phone number for him obtained through court records and a public records search were not answered. It was unclear whether Pinsky has a lawyer.

Cryptocurrency crime is a growing problem, with losses soaring to $4.52 billion last year from $1.74 billion in 2018, according to cybersecurity company CipherTrace.

In his complaint, Terpin said Pinsky and his gang of digital bandits would steal from victims after gaining control of their smartphones through SIM swaps, and that Pinsky bragged to friends that he would never get caught.

Terpin accused Pinsky and his alleged co-conspirators, none identified by name in the complaint, of violating federal laws against racketeering and computer fraud.

Terpin in May 2019 won a $75.8 million civil judgment in a related case in a California state court against Nicholas Truglia, an alleged Pinsky associate who has faced criminal hacking charges in California and New York.

Terpin said the New York charges relate to the $23.8 million theft. Terpin is also suing his carrier AT&T Mobility in Los Angeles for $240 million, court records show. A judge is considering AT&Ts bid to dismiss that case, the records show.

SIM swapping occurs when a hacker tricks a mobile phone carrier into transferring a targets phone number from a registered SIM card, the small plastic chip connecting a phone to a cellular network, to a SIM card he or she possesses. This can be done with help from someone at the carrier, or by stating information about the target obtained from social media and other accounts.
Immigration officials at the Hamile border post in the Upper West Region have expressed deep worry that community members along the border assist foreigners to illegally enter the country.

Ghana closed its borders in March 2020 in a bid to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.

But since the border closure, more foreign nationals continue to be arrested in the Northern part of the country using unapproved routes to enter Ghana.

Others are being processed to be repatriated.

The Nandom Municipal Commander of the Ghana Immigration Service, Lawrence Ashiara, says in spite of efforts to enforce the ban, some individuals continue to smuggle Burkinabe nationals into the country.

Addressing a meeting of chiefs and queen mothers at Nandom, he said:

It is unfortunate that our own people are agents for VIP and OA. They hide the passengers in their rooms and buy the tickets for them, when the bus gets to some [vantage points], they pick them and when they get to the barrier, immigration officers have to drop them and carry them back to Hamile and repatriate them. This is the modus operandi of our own people in the communities.

The meeting was organized by the centre for indigenous knowledge and organizational development with support from the Nandom municipal COVID task-force to raise awareness on COVID-19 and to solicit the support of traditional leaders in the fight against the pandemic.

Latest arrest

Last Tuesday, four Burkina Faso nationals were arrested by Immigration officials at Babile in the Upper West Region for illegally entering Ghana.

Their ages range between 22 and 39.

The four were arrested on board a Hyundai Grace H300 mini bus with registration number AS 3289-11, en route to Wa.

Investigations showed that their migration was for economic purposes.

They were screened at the checkpoint and sent to Hamile Immigration Control for repatriation to their home country.

President Nana Akufo Addo has already promised to deal with foreigners who enter Ghana and nationals who aid them illegally.

He warned that not only will persons who enter our country illegally be strictly dealt with, but so will Ghanaians who facilitate their entry.

These are unpatriotic acts and must stop. We cannot continue to allow a few persons, who are motivated by their own selfish, money-making interests, to endanger the lives of the rest of the population.

The President had earlier closed the country's borders indefinitely as part of measures to fight the Coronavirus.

---citinewsroom
Jerry Seinfeld has emerged victorious in an appellate court case over who created his hit Netflix program, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

On Wednesday, Judge Alison J. Nathan of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Manhattan, ruled that the 66-year-old comedian was the creator of the show, amid claims from writer/director Christian Charles that he'd pitched the comedy icon on the concept of the show in 2001.

Charles initially filed suit against Seinfeld in 2018, claiming he'd had a working relationship with the famed comic for two decades.

Happy day: Jerry Seinfeld has emerged victorious in an appellate court case over who created his Netflix program Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, as an appellate judge ruled in his favor

He said they had collaborated on projects ranging from commercials for American Express to the 2002 doc Comedian, which he directed.

Charles said that he'd made the pitch about the show concept to Seinfeld while they were making the doc in November 2001. Charles said the concept - initially titled Two Stupid Guys In A Stupid Car Driving To A Stupid Town - was based on the idea of a pair of friends chatting while driving.

Seinfeld wasn't interested at the time, Charles said, but followed up on the idea during a 2011 meeting in the Hamptons.

After Charles asked for $150,000 for each county of copyright infringement in the lawsuit, Seinfeld's legal team said he didn't do so until Netflix coughed up $750,000 for the rights to each episode in 2017, violating the three-year statute of limitations.

Kings of comedy: Seinfeld has welcomed a who's who of comics, including Jamie Foxx

Counter: Lawyers for the comedian argued that the statute of limitations had expired on the claim

The judge's ruling noted that Charles had waited too long to sue, saying that since he 'was on notice that his ownership claim had been repudiated since at least 2012, his infringement claim is time-barred.'

The program was initially on the Crackle platform (via Sony Pictures Television) prior to Seinfeld selling the show to Netflix three years ago.

In 11 seasons and 84 episodes of the show, Seinfeld hosted a who's who of comedy greats in his passenger's seat, such as including Eddie Murphy, Jay Leno, Bill Maher, David Letterman, Chris Rock and the late Jerry Lewis.
Spirit Airlines Finds Even Cheap Fares Cant Help Fill Airplanes

When travelers buy fewer plane tickets, Spirit Airlines typically lowers its prices, offering unbeatable deals  like $19 per one-way ticket  to get customers off the couch and onto its airplanes. Its the key piece of the low-cost-carrier playbook, and it almost always works.

The strategy even proved useful for Spirit in early March, as many travelers, fearful of Covid-19, rushed to cancel flights on other carriers. For the right price, Spirit briefly proved consumers would jump at bargain fares.

Then it stopped  even for Spirit. By the end of March, Spirit was having as much trouble filing its airplanes as any other carrier.

As events throughout the nation were canceled, theme parks closed, and travel bans implemented, load factors dropped precipitously, CEO Ted Christie said Thursday on the airlines first quarter earnings call.

Not surprisingly, Spirit lost $74.6 million in the first quarter, with revenues falling by about 10 percent. It is now flying 95 percent less capacity than expected, and burning through about $4 million per day. Revenue is effectively zero, factoring in refunds.

Get the Latest on Coronavirus and the Travel Industry on Skifts Liveblog

This month, Spirit is flying 95 percent capacity less than expected. With demand increasingly slightly, it plans to add a little more flying next month, with capacity expected to fall by only 90 percent, compared to what was planned.

Load factors are climbing a little bit, but business is far from stabilized.

Yields were very low as we bottomed out, Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein said. Theyre still low. We have had the opportunity to begin to test some higher fare levels, which again, for us, are still very low stimulative levels, but definitely off the bottoms of where we were.

When Will it Get Better?

Spirit executives predicted demand will come back a bit this summer, but said they did know when recovery will begin in earnest. They said they do not expect summer demand to look anything like 2019, when airlines flew full planes at strong yields.

Story continues

Given uncertainty of when demand levels will begin to recover, we are taking a conservative view, Klein said.

Like other low-cost-carriers, including JetBlue Airways, Spirit is optimistic it will win in any recovery scenario, as consumers trade-down to save money. Spirit expects the first group of returning travelers will be passengers visiting friends and relatives, historically a strong segment for the airline. Conventional wisdom suggests business demand will return last, not a problem for Spirit, since it is a leisure airline.

But even the real leisure recovery is not imminent, executives said, noting many customers remain apprehensive about flying, despite the airline industrys attempts to improve onboard safety.

Its going to take some time, Klein said. And as things like states and beaches and attractions and other kinds of venues start to open up, we do expect well start to see some more confidence overall in the economy, which will lead to just overall confidence in traveling.

Domestic travel may come back first, Klein said, but the airline also expects recovery in some international destinations popular among travelers visiting friends and relatives. Spirit has a strong route network in the Caribbean and Latin America, and said it intends to resume all of its international routes, eventually.

Smaller Airline?

Several competitors have said they plan to emerge from the crisis as smaller carriers, but Spirit executives said its too soon to know if they will downsize the company.

Amongst the range of outcomes would be that were maybe not growing as much or perhaps, a little smaller for a period of time, and that means well have to make some decisions about rightsizing the airline at that point, Christie said.

Still, Christie said the airline may find new growth opportunities if it can withstand the worst of the crisis. In recent years, major airport gate and terminal space has been tight, but that may not be a problem in 2021.

We believe there are plenty of new market opportunities to support our growth, once demand begins to recover, including, perhaps, some opportunities in constrained markets that didnt exist before, Christie said.

Subscribe to Skift newsletters for essential news about the business of travel.
By Nate Raymond BOSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday ordered Massachusetts authorities to allow gun shops to reopen after the governor deemed them non-essential businesses that needed to close to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston ruled that the restrictions ordered by Republican Governor Charlie Baker in response to the pandemic imposed an 'improper burden' on the constitutional rights of citizens seeking to possess firearms.

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday ordered Massachusetts authorities to allow gun shops to reopen after the governor deemed them non-essential businesses that needed to close to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston ruled that the restrictions ordered by Republican Governor Charlie Baker in response to the pandemic imposed an "improper burden" on the constitutional rights of citizens seeking to possess firearms.

Baker imposed the restrictions through executive orders issued beginning in mid-March that, like those adopted in other states, forced the closure of an array of brick-and-mortar businesses in response to the public health emergency.

Several would-be gun purchasers, retailers and gun rights advocacy groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation, sued, arguing the orders amounted to an unconstitutional ban on acquiring firearms and ammunition for self-defense purposes.

Woodlock, during a hearing held remotely by videoconference because of the pandemic, said he understood that "this is a small corner of a large issue that the governor is grappling with and undoubtedly has not been at focus of his attention."

"But that individuals who have rights under the Constitution find those rights burdened and without explanation means that they have a day in court," he said.

He cited a major gun-rights ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 holding that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment guaranteed an individual's right to own guns for self-defense inside the home.

Woodlock said he would direct the state to allow firearms retailers to re-open by noon on Saturday under a series of restrictions meant to promote cleanliness and social distancing.

A lawyer for the state indicated it may appeal. Baker's spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is one of several nationally seeking to keep gun shops open amid the pandemic after states began directing the closure of businesses to reduce infections.

While many states have begun lifting those restrictions, Baker, a Republican in a state where voters in the last eight presidential elections chose Democrats, recently extended the closure of non-essential businesses by two weeks to May 18.

Nationally, Massachusetts has the third-highest number of cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, with 72,025 confirmed as of Wednesday, the state's Department of Public Health said. At least 4,420 people there have died.

The state's lawyers argued the crisis justified temporarily closing gun retailers and that residents could still buy guns through other means, like private sales.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Popular collaboration and chat app Slack will soon be getting a modern new UI for Android, based on recent reports. The update is bringing a new bottom-bar navigation UI, quicker access to recently used portions of the UI, and gestures.

The biggest change here is the new bottom-bar navigation. Thats now comprised of a Home, DMs, Mentions, and You tab. Each is fairly straightforward, with the Home tab being selected by default. That houses channels and direct messages users are already actively a part of. Theres also a new compose button on the bottom-right-hand side.

The DMs and Mentions tabs each offer direct access to direct messages and a list of messages where a given user has been mentioned.

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Finally, the You tab lists out the users name, profile picture, online status, and a box to enter a new status. Just below that are a toggle to set the status as away and an option for Do Not Disturb settings. Saved items, profile viewing, notifications, and preferences settings are found there too.

From the Home tab, users can also swipe to the right to open a sidebar with similar options to the You tab. Thats also where the Channel Browser, team switcher, help, invites, and people menus are now found. A swipe to the left now serves as a quick access action for getting to the users most recent message or Channel.

What else is new with Slack?

Now, Slack has long been heralded as one of the best apps around for what it does. Thats as a productivity-focused chatting app with built-in collaborative tools. Over the past several months, the company has continuously built on that base too, adding new features to set itself apart from others on the market.

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One of the most prominent of those recent changes falls directly in line with the new UI. Thats because the purpose of the changes here is obviously to make the app more user-friendly. Especially since more users than ever are working from home and more businesses are looking for ways to increase productivity.

In early April, Slack released an update to Android that allows with Microsoft Teams and other voice calling apps. Slack users simply need to have a Zoom, RingCentral, Dialpad, or Cisco Jabber  Cisco Webex was already supported  account linked. Then they can make calls from Slack without having to leave the app. More directly, thats without having to go through any number of other clicks or taps.

The modern UI update for Slack should arrive for everybody soon but heres how to get it now

The redesign here is arriving as part of a beta variant of the application. That means users will need to go to the apps page on the Google Play Store and scroll down. At the bottom of the page, theres a link to sign up for the beta. After joining, users will need to wait a few minutes for the beta version to become available. Afterward, theres a slight wait period before the app updates on the server-side as well.

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The appearance of the new modern UI in a beta version of Slack does have implications though. Namely, this update should arrive on the stable channel of the app sooner than later. So users shouldnt need to update to the beta track for long if they want a cleaner, more useful interface. Once it arrives, this could easily help it secure a position among the best Android apps.
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As shore towns begin the slow process of reopening during the coronavirus pandemic, the mayor of Avalon has vowed that his community wont charge for beach tags until full access to the sand and ocean is restored.

Limited access to the beach will be permitted starting Friday, with only walking, running, fishing and surfing allowed. Swimming and stationary activities  sitting on chairs and blankets  is forbidden for now in an effort to encourage social distancing.

Given these limitations, Mayor Martin L. Pagliughi sees no justification for requiring beach tags at this point. Typically, towns start charging for beach access around Memorial Day weekend.

There is no reason to have a beach tag while these restrictions are in place, Pagliughi declared in a letter posted on the towns Facebook page. He plans to sign an executive order on the fee waiver, which also extends pre-season pricing for tags from May 31 to June 30.

If the access restrictions remain in place all summer, money for tags already purchased will be refunded or credited toward the 2021 season, the mayor indicated.

Pagliughi and Stone Harbor Mayor Judith Davies-Dunhour issued a joint letter Monday announcing beaches in the neighboring towns closed to slow the spread of the virus would reopen Friday as part of the slow process to return to normal.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

In the letter issued Thursday, Pagliughi cautioned that if social distancing requirements arent followed, the beach could be closed again.

Avalons beach tag booth remains closed until further notice, he said, but tags can be purchased via the Viply app or by sending payment via the mail. Instructions on all of this can be found in the mayors letter and on the towns website at avalonboro.net.

All Avalon special events slated for May, including the Memorial Day parade and ceremony, are canceled.

Other towns along the shore are taking similar steps at their beaches, with many barring swimming and hanging out, while allowing walking and running.

Towns with boardwalks are beginning to reopen those, too, after social distancing concerns led to many boardwalk closures as spring temperatures brought out crowds.

Gov. Phil Murphy announced this week that hes extending the states public health emergency declaration for another 30 days as New Jersey tried to get a handle on a virus that continues to kill hundreds daily.

The state has reported more than 133,000 COVID-19 cases and 8,801 deaths, as of Thursday.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
On behalf of Little Colorado Medical Center, we offer the following in comment upon the Cronkite News article that ran on April 23, 2020:

Although LCMC appreciates the advocacy and concern of many regarding the impact of COVID19 on Northern Arizona hospitals, the article included a number of serious inaccuracies that wed like to rectify.

LCMC provides our patients comprehensive Obstetrics and Delivery care. LCMC physicians, in collaboration with staff physicians from Winslow Indian Healthcare Center, provide modern, comprehensive OB care, including caesarian deliveries, comprehensive anesthesia support, etc. LCMC has modern labor and delivery beds and does not perform deliveries on stretchers.

At no point in the outbreak has LCMC reached its maximum capacity or had to engage in a case by case decision of whom to let in. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, LCMC has continued to provide daily care in its Emergency Department, Medical Surgical floor, and the LCMC Physicians Office.

LCMC is not subject to the most limited resources relative to other regional rural hospitals. Although LCMC is experiencing the financial impact from COVID like all hospitals across America, it has not initiated furloughs, layoffs, or other equivalent cost cutting measures like so many hospitals have been forced to do. Through the good work of the LCMC care teams, administrative team and Board of Directors, LCMC is financially stable.

Additionally, LCMC has already taken and continues to take measures to ensure its continued stability, including receiving assistance from the federal CARES Act designed to offset financial losses for hospitals from the COVID pandemic. LCMC will continue our financial vigilance to ensure we can continue to serve our communities.

LCMC is very well served by a regional group of Emergency Department physicians and caregivers. Like many rural hospitals of comparable size and volumes, LCMCs ED is always staffed with a qualified caregiver. During busy times, the ED physician is supported with a qualified mid-level provider.

LCMC has fabricated no creativemakeshift surgical masks or face shields out of folders or other material. Throughout the pandemic, LCMC has had a reasonable inventory of face shields, goggles, N95 masks and is closely monitoring its surgical mask inventory. LCMCs surgical mask inventory is sufficient to allow it to request approval from the Arizona Department of Health Services to resume elective surgeries. LCMC has received and appreciates donations of cloth masks from local community groups, which have been distributed to limited groups. Those cloth masks are not used by any caregiver in any patient care setting.

Also, LCMC appreciates the donations of surgical masks it has received from regional healthcare organizations. Those and other sources have allowed LCMC to maintain a safe level of supplies and personal protective equipment throughout the pandemic.

LCMC has modified its care units and acquired equipment to ensure proper and safe negative-pressure ventilation. LCMC has had ample funds to ensure all units are safe and properly ventilated. Additionally, LCMC is not experiencing a shortage of ventilators.

LCMC partners with several community and regional ground and air medical transport services. Like many hospitals, it neither owns an ambulance nor has plans to acquire one.

It is true that Navajo and Coconino counties have been seriously stricken by COVID 19. All hospitals across northern Arizona have borne a serious and difficult burden; each would welcome their communities support and appreciation. LCMC continues, however, to deliver safe and high-quality care due to the remarkable expertise and devotion of its physicians, nurses, caregivers and support teams, as it has since its opening in 1954. LCMC will endure through these difficult days and continue to fulfill its mission of delivering quality medical care to the people we serve.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide an accurate picture of current healthcare delivery in Winslow.

Thomas Greenwood, M.D., LCMC Chief of Staff

Frank Armao, M.D., WIHCC Chief Medical Officer

John J. Dempsey, LCMC President

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KYODO NEWS - May 8, 2020 - 16:14 | World, All

A 91-year-old South Korean woman who was forced to work in the Japanese military's wartime brothels has criticized weekly protest rallies in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, saying they preach hatred to young participants.

Lee Yong Soo's accusation, made at a press conference on Thursday, marks a rare moment of dissent among veteran participants in the rallies that have been held 1,438 times every Wednesday since January 1992.

Together with a civic group that has organized the rallies and supported the so-called comfort women, Lee has spent years demanding an apology and compensation from the Japanese government.

Related coverage:

South Korea court rejects wartime labor claims from 54 plaintiffs

South Korea court takes pass on judging comfort women deal with Japan

The dispute over comfort women -- a euphemism used in referring to those recruited mostly from Asian countries to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II -- has been one of the major issues that have strained ties between Japan and South Korea.

At Thursday's press conference in the southeastern city of Daegu, the nonagenarian accused the group, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, of not using in a transparent manner donations collected from the public.

Lee also said she will no longer attend the weekly rallies, which draw many students from middle school through university, among other participants, and that the gatherings should end.

"The rallies only teach young students hatred," she said, adding that young generations of South Koreans and Japanese should interact more and become friendly to each other.

She also criticized Yoon Mi Hyang, former head of the group, for becoming a lawmaker after successfully running in the April 15 general election as a ruling party-affiliated candidate.

Her pointed criticism of Yoon may suggest some internal division within the group after the 55-year-old activist sought to enter politics.

On Friday, Yoon wrote on her social media account that all the donations collected by the group were subjected to thorough oversight and were used properly. She also emphasized the importance of the weekly rallies.

The civic group separately released a statement on Friday saying it was regrettable that there was some misunderstanding between the group and former comfort women.

"We will use this as a chance to look back on our movements during the past 30 years where we tried our best to be together with the victims as family and colleagues," the group said, pledging to work harder to help settle the comfort women issue with Japan and restore the women's rights and honor.
Latinos coronavirus burden At San Francisco General Hospital, more than 80% of the first patients admitted for COVID-19 were Latino, nearly three times the rate the hospital usually sees.

Latinos coronavirus burden At San Francisco General Hospital, more than 80% of the first patients admitted for COVID-19 were Latino, nearly three times the rate the hospital usually sees.

As people came into San Francisco General Hospital with chest pain, dry coughs and fevers  telltale signs of the new coronavirus  Dr. Vivek Jain noticed an unsettling pattern: The vast majority of people so sick that they needed to be hospitalized were Latino.

Jain, an infectious disease specialist who is part of the team directing the hospitals COVID-19 response, was prepared to see an influx of low-income Latino patients, many of whom continued to work essential jobs and had been pushed into crowded homes due to the citys high cost of living.

But the numbers were even more stark than he had imagined.

Of the first 103 people admitted to S.F. General for the disease, more than 80% were Latino. Normally, about 30% of those at the hospital and its associated clinics are Latino. One third of the patients required intensive care treatment, a serious intervention that can lead to long recoveries.

In times of infectious diseases, were always braced for the possibility that theyre going to have a disproportionate impact on our most marginalized and vulnerable communities, Jain said. That being said, we have been surprised at the degree of disproportionality.

Gloria Buenrostro on her sewing machine makes a mask at her home on Saturday, May 2, 2020, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Volunteers at Ayudando Latinos A Soar (ALAS) are making and providing masks for free to farm workers, housecleaners and other essential workers amid the coronavirus pandemic. less Gloria Buenrostro on her sewing machine makes a mask at her home on Saturday, May 2, 2020, in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Volunteers at Ayudando Latinos A Soar (ALAS) are making and providing masks for free to farm ... more Photo: Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 2 Caption Close The numbers are stark: Latino, black communities are hardest hit in Bay Area by coronavirus 1 / 2 Back to Gallery

While the Bay Area has received praise for its aggressive response to the coronavirus pandemic, instituting potentially lifesaving shelter-in-place policies early and avoiding a flood of people in hospitals, it has not escaped glaring racial disparities in whos getting sick and dying from COVID-19  a problem mirrored in cities across the country.

A Chronicle review of state and county data found that Latino and black people are disproportionately testing positive for, and dying of, the coronavirus in three of the regions largest counties, magnifying inequities that predate the health crisis. Addressing the disparities will be crucial in slowing the spread of the virus, experts said, especially as social restrictions are loosened.

As of May 5, of the 1,375 coronavirus cases in San Francisco where a race had been determined, 45% were Latino, compared to 15% of the population, according to public health and census data.

In Alameda County, 43% of cases with a known race were Latino, compared with 22% of the population. And in Santa Clara County, Latino people made up 45% of cases with a listed race and 25% of the population.

In a recent study in a small slice of the Mission District, 95% of the people who tested positive for the coronavirus were Latino, even though the group made up just 44% of those screened. The overwhelming majority of people who tested positive were unable to work from home or made less than $50,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the death rate for black residents in the three Bay Area counties combined  10.7 deaths per 100,000 people  was roughly twice as high as any other race. State public health figures show similar disparities in the proportion of black adults dying from the virus throughout California, as well as alarming rates for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

Overall, Latinos are not dying from COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates in California, but the population is younger than other races and ethnicities, which has skewed the data.

When California health officials examined the impact of the coronavirus on just adults, they found a troubling trend. About 70% of people between 18 and 49 who have died of COVID-19 were Latino, compared to 43% of the population. More than half of the people between 50 and 64 who have died from the disease were Latino, compared to 32% of the population. There were similar, though not as drastic, differences in Latinos 65 and older who have died.

When any group is marginalized to the point where their living conditions or work conditions make it difficult to get the medical attention they need or to protect themselves from this virus, thats everyones problem, said Norma Garcia, director of policy and advocacy at the Mission Economic Development Agency, which works to strengthen low- and moderate-income Latino families in San Francisco.

Health experts and epidemiologists believe the racial imbalance is driven by more than just a higher prevalence of preexisting health conditions among black and Latino people, or socioeconomic factors that can force people to work high-risk jobs that provide little protective gear.

Structural barriers, including policies that may lessen immigrants odds of gaining legal residency if they access public services, have also fueled the unequal spread of the virus, as well as a mistrust of health care providers due to past and current mistreatment, public health officials said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ripped a Band-Aid off of the structural inequities that exist within our society, said Dr. Stephen Lockhart, chief medical officer at Sutter Health. We must address these disparities right away, because the cost of not addressing them is measured in human life.

Some Bay Area cities have begun funneling tests, housing assistance and other aid to hard-hit communities, and grassroots efforts have sprung up to provide masks and protective gear to at-risk families and workers.

Directing resources to places where the virus is most prevalent  whether its nursing homes, neighborhoods or jails  offers protection to everyone, said Dr. Mahasin Mujahid, an associate professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeleys School of Public Health.

For infectious disease, thats the only way you can think about it, Mujahid said. Were going to have to change our priorities and say that these high-risk populations deserve more. Its really a difficult conversation, and I dont envy the people who have to make those kinds of decisions, but thats the reality.

After developing a fever and losing his appetite last month, Carmen Gonzalez Puga was diagnosed with COVID-19  grim news for the 88-year-old diabetic and his family.

They dont know where he was infected with the virus but suspect it may have happened in the San Jose home he shared with nine other people, the family said. After he was diagnosed, Gonzalez Puga moved in with one of his daughters  while quarantining himself from the rest of the family.

He has since recovered, but being apart from her father as he battled the deadly illness was the most trying aspect of his diagnosis, said Francisca Gonzalez, who did not see her father for weeks while he was ill.

I almost fell into a depression in having to close the doors on my family, said Gonzalez, 55. It hurt a lot. He needed the help of his kids.

God was always with us  my dad is OK now, Gonzalez added. But its sad to know that theres people in other places who are no longer here.

Even relatively minor cases of COVID-19 can ripple through families and households, leading to painful separations and fears of infecting loved ones  along with financial impacts such as lost wages.

In Santa Clara County and other parts of the Bay Area where Latino people have particularly high rates of infection, advocates and health care leaders are trying to tamp down the spread of the virus among high-risk populations.

Joaquin Jimenez spends up to seven days a week canvassing communities along the coast of San Mateo County, offering Latino residents everything from food assistance to masks, which he always has on hand.

The longtime organizer and outreach worker with Ayudando Latinos a Sonar, or ALAS, goes to malls, grocery stores and farmworker housing complexes in an effort to reach even the most marginalized people. He gives out his personal cell phone number  and his phone rings often.

Were exposed to it a lot more, Jimenez said. Latinos are still out there working. Were talking about auto shops, grocery stores, some restaurants, landscaping, farmworkers.

As the economic strains of the shutdown mount, people across the Bay Area have started to ask ALAS not just about protective gear but also financial assistance, said Dr. Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, the groups founder and an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco.

Our families were already at a stress-breaking point before, with the high cost of living in the Bay Area, said Arriaga, a licensed clinical social worker. Now you have COVID-19, which has broken what was already stressful. This goes way back.

In San Francisco, the median income for black households in 2018 was about $31,000, for Latino households it was $76,000, and for white households it was $153,000. Meanwhile, the city has some of the highest rents in the country, forcing some people to live in packed homes where the virus can spread more easily.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that about half of the Latinos surveyed in the country either have taken a pay cut or lost their job due to the pandemic, or they live with someone who has. That compares to about a third of all adults in the country.

Dr. Jain, at San Francisco General Hospital, said what most accelerates the spread of the coronavirus among the citys Latino community are high-density living arrangements and economic pressures that force people to keep working.

Jain has seen some families in which both parents have developed symptoms of the coronavirus, but only the sickest person received medical care so the other could continue to run the household.

These are very difficult situations that are playing out for people, he said.

Esperanza Macias, director of policy and communication at Instituto Familiar de la Raza, a community organization in San Franciscos Mission District, said there has been a flood of requests from clients for food, diapers, baby formula and other essential items. Many have come from undocumented residents who do not qualify for federal aid or stimulus funds, which has given them a much thinner safety net.

Some have told Instituto staff theyre worried to go to the hospital since it might draw the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers  a trend that predates the health crisis.

Immigrants chances of gaining a green card or visa can also be hurt if they receive public benefits  or if the government believes they are likely to do so in the future  which could deter some from seeking medical care, Macias said. The government has said immigrants who seek treatment or preventive services for COVID-19 will not be negatively impacted under the policy, known as public charge.

Theres a lot of panic and fear and anxiety right now, both because of the pandemic and because people are wondering, How am I going to pay rent, how am I going to put food on the table, Macias said.

Many public health experts and politicians say that pinpointing the people and places most impacted by the coronavirus will be particularly important as the state gradually reopens society, so health officials can target medical and financial resources to the places that need it most.

In Oakland, high-risk individuals  including those who are homeless, were recently incarcerated, work in the community or have pre-existing health conditions  can be tested for free. On Wednesday, a walk-up testing site opened at the Roots Community Health Center, which has a clinic that mostly serves uninsured and low-income residents in East Oakland  a community with especially high rates of confirmed coronavirus cases.

Were utilizing a trusted messenger, an organization that has been doing great health access work in our most vulnerable populations, said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. We need to not just stop overt discrimination, we need to proactively correct for it.

In East San Jose, a largely Latino and Vietnamese neighborhood hit hard by the pandemic, local officials are expanding outreach efforts and culturally relevant messaging to help stop the spread of the virus. Camille Llanes-Fontanilla, executive director of the nonprofit SOMOS Mayfair, said that could be as simple as advising Latinos  who are generally very family-oriented  to stop visiting relatives outside of their household.

Culturally, our connection to family runs deep  deeper than the potential risk of acquiring an illness for some, she said. There was one message that captured this essence and conveyed that, Im separating myself from you because I care about you so deeply. Because I love you, I have to stay away for a while.

And in San Francisco, Supervisor Hillary Ronen said the city plans to tap into its Give2SF fund to provide people who have tested positive for the coronavirus guaranteed pay and somewhere to self-isolate if theyre unable to at home, along with other resources. The free testing study that took place in the Mission may soon expand to Bayview-Hunters Point, she added.

What we hope is that by highlighting how big the disparity is with the Latino community, that we will be able to shift policy and resources and prioritize neighborhoods that are hardest hit, said Jon Jacobo, a member of San Franciscos Latino Task Force for COVID-19. Some people may not prioritize those with the least, but if theyre taken care of, you can rest assured that youre taken care of.

Dr. Amani Allen, an associate professor at UC Berkeleys School of Public Health, said the state still needs more data to understand whats driving the racial inequities with the coronavirus, including information on education, employment status, occupation and income level.

What we tend to see is the most socially vulnerable groups being the most heavily impacted, Allen said. As horrible as the coronavirus is, when it ends, if we dont fix the societal issues were going to see this exact same pattern with every passing epidemic.

Joaquin Palomino and Tatiana Sanchez are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jpalomino@sfchronicle.com, tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoaquinPalomino, @TatianaYSanchez
EDWARDSVILLE  As the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Madison County long-term care facilities continues to grow, doctors and healthcare officials continue to search for solutions.

The latest update, released on May 1 by the Illinois Department of Public Health on its website at https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/long-term-care-facility-outbreaks-covid-19, lists 90 reported cases and 15 deaths at Edwardsville Care Center and 20 reported cases and one death at Eden Village.

Those numbers are a significant jump from the April 24 update, which listed 54 reported cases and 12 deaths at Edwardsville Care Center and 11 cases with no deaths at Eden Village. The numbers are likely to jump again in the next report, which should be released on Friday.

Preventing a COVID-19 outbreak at a nursing home, and slowing an outbreak, can be particularly challenging, according to Dr. Loren Hughes, a family physician from Edwardsville and a former healthcare executive.

Hughes notes that a perfect storm of circumstances leads to a high risk of COVID-19 for both nursing home residents and workers.

One of the nations underlying problems is that nursing homes and other long-term care facilities traditionally have difficulties with staffing and generally operate with just enough help to fill their schedules. Healthcare workers feel loyalty to the places they work, so even when an employee is not feeling well, they often feel obligated to come to work, Hughes said. Before we received guidance regarding PPE (personal protection equipment), I think people were already exposed and they didnt even know it.

Hughes believes that the wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths in long-term care facilities across the nation is proof that social distancing works.

You have neighborhoods in Edwardsville that are made up of longtime friends and retirees with similar co-morbidities to nursing home residents who are not dying. I feel it is because they are primarily staying in their homes and distancing from each other, Hughes said. In nursing home settings, you have multiple at-risk residents living in adjacent rooms, sharing dining halls and physical therapy areas.

Residential nursing facilities are the perfect breeding ground for communicable infections to spread rapidly. This was especially true early on when as a nation, we were not fully prepared with PPE and lacked national guidance on proper hygiene. We got behind the 8-ball.

As protests across the nation have shown, the wearing of masks in public during the pandemic is not a universally accepted concept.

And while nursing home residents may have different reasons for not wearing a mask, they could be endangering themselves and the people around them.

Trying to gain compliance out of someone who medically may not be 100 percent aware is another issue, Hughes said. There are a lot of patients who dont have the understanding it takes to properly wear a mask. Many patients are confused, they pull masks off and they sometimes dont know what you are trying to tell them.

Some nursing homes physically are not set up for easy isolation of infected patients. There are many recommendations from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the IDPH about how you should isolate people, minimize their movement in the facility, and the need for dedicated staff to deal with only COVID patients. That is not always easy for facilities to do.

Once nursing home patients do test positive for coronavirus, Hughes noted the importance of keeping them separated from the non-infected population as quickly as possible.

If you know you have positive cases, you want to make sure you keep those patients isolated, either in physical groups of rooms or where you have two patients in a room that have both tested positive, Hughes said. Isolation rooms would hopefully be on the same end of the building so you dont have to move them or staff up and down hallways.

During mealtimes for these infected patients, you want to make sure you take every precaution possible. They should eat in their room with the door closed. If youre doing respiratory breathing treatments and other high-risk procedures, staff need to wear N95 masks and eye protection.

While numerous measures are in place to ensure the safety of nursing home workers, the high-risk environment presents a unique set of challenges.

Sometimes, even following regulations to the letter isnt enough to protect those workers.

Workers, even though they are wearing the proper PPE, always have a risk of something not going right., Hughes said. Handoffs and transfers are the time when mistakes often happen. When staff is changing shifts or rounding room to room, there is still a slight chance for contamination even though you may be following every guideline perfectly.

While long-term facilities have closed their doors to visitors, the emotional toll on patients and their families can be heavy.

Anyone who is not essential is not allowed in. This is difficult when you could get a phone call that says your mom just tested positive for COVID-19. Your first impulse would be to go over and see her, Hughes said.

Youre getting all your information by phone and you are not able to visualize the situation. It may feel sketchy and you may have questions that are not being answered to your satisfaction. The communication with families is so much more difficult when youre doing it remotely instead of in person.

The emotional toll can also be strong on the nursing home workers.

In addition to worrying about their safety, they may feel helpless as the patients they care for get sick and sometimes die from coronavirus.

Most staff members look at those residents like family and they consider some residents as close to them as their moms and dads or their aunts and uncles, Hughes said. When they lose a patient to something like an infection, they mourn, but they dont have time to mourn now.

The staff in these nursing homes feed these residents daily, they bath them, talk with them, and take care of them in every way. The family members of the residents get to know the facility staff too. I cant imagine how tough it must be on the long-term care staff to lose multiple residents like some of these facilities have.
By Akbar Mammadov

Azerbaijan has the right to regain control of its Armenian-occupied territories and the only way to achieve the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is through restorations of Azerbaijans territorial integrity, the Foreign Ministry stated in its official website on May 8.

The ministry made the statement on the 28th anniversary of the occupation of Shusha city in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region on 8 May, 1992.

"The achievement of that objective [restoration of Azerbaijans territorial integrity] is a must, not a compromise. Azerbaijan considers no political solution to the conflict beyond this framework and participates in the settlement process on the basis of this understanding.

"If the negotiations fail to bring as an outcome the ending occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, Azerbaijan retains its inherent rights under the UN Charter to ensure the restoration of its sovereignty and territorial integrity within the internationally recognized borders", the statement reads.

The ministry reminded that after ethnically cleansing Azerbaijanis in Shusha and occupying the city, Armenia is destroying the historical and cultural heritage of Azerbaijan and gradually changes the cultural image of the city.

Thus, thousands of people have been illegally resettled in Shusha. The Yukhary Govheraga (Juma) Mosque, built by the order of Govharaga, the daughter of Karabakh ruler Ibrahim Khan, is "restored" by the Armenians and presented as a Persian one. All these clearly demonstrate the intentions of the occupiers to shadow the fact that Shusha is a prominent Azerbaijani city".

The Ministry stressed that the Armenia has to understand that all these attempts have no prospects and that the occupation is temporary.

"The Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan. This region has always been and will remain an inalienable part of Azerbaijan", the statement reads.

"According to the position of all international organizations and states, in particular, the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, Nagorno-Karabakh recognized as an integral part of Azerbaijan and immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of occupying forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is demanded", the ministry added.

The Foreign Ministry highlighted the fact that Azerbaijan is the most interested party in the negotiated settlement of the conflict and ensuring lasting peace in the region.

Furthermore, the ministry emphasized that the objective of the ongoing negotiations process on the settlement of the conflict is to ensure the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent districts of Azerbaijan, the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders and the return of IDPs to their homes.

It should be noted that Armenian armed forces occupied Shusha on 8 may, 1992. As a result of the occupation, 195 civilians were killed and 165 were injured. 114 Azerbaijanis captured by Armenians and detained in Shusha prison were later killed with special cruelty, 58 residents of the city are still missing. Before Shusha was occupied, about 25,000 people lived there, of which more than 24,000 people of Shusha have been become internally displaced persons and settled in 58 regions of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Groups efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

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Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Philips India is investing around Rs 300 crore in the expansion of its manufacturing facilities and has plans to hire around 1,000 people as part of that initiative, a top company official said.

The company is expanding its manufacturing facility at Chakan near Pune as part of its Make-in-India initiative.

Philips has already started to ship out its Affiniti range of ultrasound machines from there and has also planned to roll out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) components from the expanded facility.

Philips, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary in India, has started manufacturing ofI consoles, Magnetic Resonance Imaging etc. It is also exportingI components to various markets.

We are talking about an investment of Rs 250-300 crore and also we are talking about a thousand new employees that we are hiring. They are very sophisticated engineers, with different types of skills that we are looking at hiring, Philips Indian Subcontinent Vice-Chairman & Managing Director Daniel Mazon told PTI.

Make in India is a strategic initiative for Philips, which is becoming stronger from this investment in the expansion of the manufacturing capacity.

We are dealing with the short term challenges that we have, but we believe in the long term also. We are making significant investments, Mazon added.

On being asked about the time frame, he said this is going to take 2 to 3 years.

The ultrasound (Affiniti), we have inaugurated and started shipping to customers. InI, we are finalising that. We are continuing to expand the factory, we are doing construction, he added.

Sharing more details, Mazon said that ultrasound machines would be for the domestic market only.

Ultrasound machines - we will not be exporting. We are making them in India for India right now. We are exportingI components to the world," he said.

The company is working with the local industry and is developing an ecosystem for that.

There are so many components on anI. We are starting with the components and then that is also shipped to other parts of the world So India is a very important industrial footprint for theI components for now. We are walking with the local industry, developing the ecosystem and being part of makingIs in India. It's quite exciting, he said.

The company has already started construction of the building and other infrastructure, required fromI.

And right now we do not have our facility operating at full capacity because we are really working only with the critical things.

"But depending on when we can open that factory to start operating as planned; it could be this year or it could be pushed to the next. It all really depends on when our employees can come back to work and continue operations there, he said.

Besides, Chakan, Philips will also expand its operation at Bengaluru, where it is setting up a new campus, which would be ready in the next three years.

But also at the same time we have big plans for the future and that is not just in the Chakan factory in Pune. The same thing we are doing in our Bengaluru facility. We have our digital footprint over there, Mazon said.

"The new campus that we are building near the airport in Bengaluru and which we will be inaugurating by 2023 will be able to house 5,000 employees," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Friday rejected India's move to begin broadcasting weather reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), terming it as a "legally void" action to change the status of the region.

State-owned broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio from Friday began broadcasting weather reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in PoK in their prime-time bulletins.

Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement that like the so-called political maps issued last year by India, this move is also legally void, contrary to reality, and in violation of the relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions.

India in November last released fresh maps showing PoK as part of the newly created Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, while Gilgit-Baltistan is in the UT of Ladakh following the bifurcation.

The Ministry of Home Affairs released the new map of India depicting the two UTs with PoK 'capital' Muzaffarabad within the geographical boundary of the country.

This is another mischievous Indian action in support of a spurious claim and further evidence of India's irresponsible behaviour, it said.

The FO also said that no illegal and unilateral steps by India can change the status of Jammu and Kashmir.

Such moves by the Government of India cannot prejudice the inalienable right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people, it said.

Pakistan would urge India not to make baseless assertions and to abstain from misleading the world community through unfounded claims, according to the statement.

The move by the state-owned broadcasters comes after the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Regional Meteorological Centre started including cities under PoK in its forecasts, a departure from its earlier format.

The IMD has started including Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad, which are parts of PoK, under the Jammu and Kashmir meteorological sub-division since May 5.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O n Thursday, Dominic Raab, Britains foreign secretary, announced that Britain is ready for its next phase of the lockdowns. Raab said the prime minister will lay out the plans to ease up restrictions this weekend. This comes after Britain reached the highest death toll in Europe. At this point, many Brits will be wondering whether the lockdowns were worth it. Personally, I dont know. I suspect that neither do you. And  Im beginning to think  that neither do they. They, the politicians, the decision-makers, the officials, the scientists; the people we pay taxes to get us out of tight spots. If the models of the recently disgraced Neil Ferguson are anything to go by, then the U.K. lockdown has saved tens of thousands of lives. But if were to listen to Swedens leading epidemiologist, Johan Giesecke, instead, then these efforts have been futile. Thats a rather large margin of error.

When it was first announced, genuine critics of the lockdown, those who accepted that COVID-19 was a real and serious threat but disagreed that mandatory lockdowns were the correct response, were disregarded as nuts and right-wingers. Peter Hitchens was accused of killing people with this rhetoric. But then some heavyweights came into the fight. People such as the Oxford epidemiologists and Giesecke (the Swedish scientist) and, in the non-science camp, Jonathan Sumption, a widely respected former U.K. Supreme Court justice and historian, nicknamed the brain of Britain, who did the rounds in the Times, the BBC, and the Mail on Sunday, making the authoritative anti-lockdown case. Sumption said it all boils down to one question: Is it worth it? In other words, is the threat of coronavirus worth forcibly confining healthy people to their homes? He said that every citizen is entitled to ask himself this question; indeed, that he ought to ask it. And that he had done so and reached the answer, no.

Sumption considers the response to crisis as being disproportionate to the threat posed. He argued that the threat of COVID-19 was clearly real but exaggerated. He argued that we ought to maintain a sense of perspective, do away with our irrational horror of death, and remember that this is not the greatest crisis in our history or even the greatest public health crisis in our history. Why, then, he asked, did it warrant the greatest interference with personal liberty in our history?

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Whether he is right or not, it is true that the British governments response was rushed and political. Sumption argued that it had responded in a blind panic following the delivery of Imperial College Londons Professor Neil Fergusons statistical projections after which it had legislated the lockdown on the hoof in a late-night press conference. Ferguson, who has since stepped back from his advisory role (after breaking his own lockdown rules in order to conduct an affair with a married woman), was not the only person warning the government, of course. Nevertheless, Sumption argued that those politicians in charge had become trapped by their own decisions and were, thereafter, merely trying to avoid criticism by sheltering behind the scientists.

When the nightly ritual of clapping for the National Health Service began, it did seem that something fundamental had shifted in the publics thinking, almost overnight. Sumption put his finger on it: Suddenly, it is our duty to save the NHS, not the other way around. And in locking in everyone, not just the infected, we began to mimic the approach of the authoritarian Chinese. Indeed, one of the reasons that Sweden, a socially democratic country, refused to pursue this approach was that it believed it philosophically incompatible with the countrys liberal values. A society in which the Government can confine most of the population without controversy is not one in which civilized people would want to live, writes Sumption. Guidance is fine. Voluntary self-isolation is fine, and strongly advisable for the more vulnerable. Most of them will do it by choice. But coercion is not fine. There is no moral or principled justification for it.

The argument most commonly waged against Sumptions position is that, writ large, it would cause mass death. That might be true, but the evidence is far from certain. The U.K.s COVID-19 death rate, for instance, is almost double that of Sweden, despite its more-aggressive measures. Besides, Sumptions point that life is about more than avoiding death still holds. To say that life is priceless and nothing else counts is just empty rhetoric, he wrote, citing the example of going to war in 1939 because lives were worth losing for liberty, and driving cars because lives are worth losing for convenience. Of course, neither war nor road-traffic accidents are contagious. But the fact remains that, for most people who contract the virus, the threat is not existential. What is more existential is poverty. Already the chancellor of Britain has proposed 330 billion ($389 billion) of state guarantees for bank loans to firms, equivalent to 15 percent of GDP, in addition to 20 billion ($25 billion) of grants and tax reliefs for the leisure industry and small businesses.

It is impossible to know for sure what would have or could have been if the government had responded differently. Nevertheless, as Brits enter the next stage of lockdown, they should continue to scrutinize their governments actions.

More from National Review
Irans Chabahar port is playing a key role in Indias efforts to provide humanitarian aid and medical supplies to Afghanistan amid the Covid-19 crisis, people familiar with developments said on Friday.

Chabahar port continues to be operational and this is our conduit for assistance to Afghanistan, one of the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.

India has made a commitment to supply 75,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan, of which 5000 tonnes was shipped via Chabahar last month, while another 10,000 tonnes was despatched to the Iranian port on Thursday, the people said.

Chabahar port is very much in use and it is coming in very handy when we are dealing with humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan, the person said, adding India is now looking at the possibility of supplying more items needed by Afghanistan, such as tea and sugar, via the Iranian port.

The Iranian port, for whose development a tripartite agreement has been signed by New Delhi, Kabul and Tehran, was granted a waiver from US sanctions in view of its importance for Afghanistan.

Indias played constructive role in Afghanistan and its support for efforts for peace, reconciliation and development had figured in discussions in New Delhi on Thursday between Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, and external affairs minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

The US sides expectation was that India would continue to play a positive role and India has to be a part of the process to effectively contribute to the process, the person said.

India clearly conveyed its concerns regarding a recent surge in terrorist violence in Afghanistan and the role played by Pakistan-based terror sanctuaries during the meetings with Khalilzad.

Khalilzads short visit to India amid the Covid-19 crisis highlighted the level of urgency regarding the situation in Afghanistan and the discussions took in the gamut of developments in the war-torn country, including internal developments, the impact of the US-Taliban agreement and efforts aimed reconciliation between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah, the people said.

The Indian side highlighted the threat posed to Afghanistan by terrorism and the increase in attacks by the Taliban on security forces, as well as concerns about the impact of the violence on the Afghan constitutional set-up and on minorities such as Hindus and Sikhs, the people added.

At the same time, India and Iran have cooperated to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, the people said. A total of 1,142 Indians, including pilgrims from Kashmir and Ladakh and students, were repatriated from Iran while more than 1,000 Iranians have been flown back from India. The Iranian side helped arranged treatment for some 300 Indians who tested positive for Covid-19, while India has provided medical assistance and medicines.
To Rhea Shahane, a first-year law student at the University of Texas, and Isabella Fanucci, a graduating senior at UT, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos new Title IX ruling, issued Wednesday, felt like a slap in the face.

DeVos changes to Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex within education, has changed the way colleges are required to investigate sexual misconduct while bolstering the rights of those accused.

Its basically taking away all this work that survivors and advocates have done to get people to be more comfortable in coming forward with their stories and experiences and reporting what theyve gone through  and everything that has been done to reduce the stigma of experience sexual violence and harassment, said Shahane, who along with Fanucci, has worked worked for years with the student organization Not On Our Campus.

The group provides guidance and resources on responding to sexual violence, teaches and supports survivors through investigations, and hosts consent campaigns and events around red zones, or peak times when sexual assault occurs on campus.

The new ruling, which goes into effect Aug. 14, also narrows the definition of sexual harassment and requires colleges to investigate claims only if theyre reported to certain officials.

Students will be allowed to question or cross-examine one another through representatives during live hearings, and universities will be responsible solely for allegations that happen on campus or within school-sanctioned fraternities and sororities.

DeVos also clarified for the first time that dating violence, stalking and domestic violence must be addressed under Title IX, and she added new language ordering schools to provide special support for victims regardless of whether they file a formal complaint.

On its website, the Department of Education says the new policies hold schools accountable for failure to respond equitably and promptly to sexual misconduct incidents and ensures a more reliable adjudication process that is fair to all students. But some students and lawyers say that the new law will instead silence survivors and undo decades of progress.

The Title IX process is not perfect but at the same time, you have to keep both parties in mind, Fannucci said, adding These people had their consent and autonomy stripped from them  and youre putting them on trial.

Jim Dunnam, one of the attorneys who represents 15 victims in Baylor Universitys ongoing infamous sexual assault case said the new ruling functions to intimidate and re-victimize the women.

It is hard enough to come forward. But those cross examining dont even have to be attorneys so you can have very inappropriate questioning beyond what is required, Dunnam said in a text message.

Kaya Epstein, a first-year student at UT and a member of schools student-led Coalition Against Sexual Misconduct said disgust was her first reaction when she heard about the ruling.

It really puts the burden on survivors. They should not have to have representation to prove their story. They shouldnt be rejected from telling their story because their story occurred off-campus. UT is going to have to take major steps to fulfill their promises they already gave students.

The Coalition Against Misconduct, a group that has demanded accountability, transparency, and adequate action from the UT administration in response to sexual misconduct allegations against faculty, released a written statement Wednesday, calling on UT officials to uphold previous Title IX standards that students have pushed for and to use discretion when applying the new rules.

UT Austin should hold itself to a higher standard in protecting its students and employees, the group wrote.

The group has requested that the university still investigate off-campus sexual harassment and sexual assault cases, despite the DeVos policy requiring colleges to only investigate sanctioned groups and properties. The group reasons that students are the responsibility of the university and violence committed by students against other students should be handled by Title IX, regardless of location.

The requirement of representation at future hearings will pose a barrier to justice for survivors with less monetary resources than the accused, the group wrote. Although DeVos claims these provisions are in the interest of due process and First Amendment rights, it can more adequately be described as favoring the abuser and avoiding the accountability of institutions.

All of the work of the coalition, our whole goal is to make UT safer for survivors and to make UT a place where survivors are comfortable to come forward, Epstein said, and that when you commit harm against someone, there will be consequences against your actions.

DeVos ruling has also acquired critics around the country.

More than 30 higher education associations, including the American Association of State College and Universities, sent a letter to urge DeVos to delay the publication of the final rule, stating that colleges and universities should not be asked to divert precious resources away from more critical efforts in order to implement regulations unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mildred Garcia, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, also expressed concerns about implementing new regulatory language in the middle of August at a time when all of our campuses are working and teaching remotely.

It is insensitive and unrealistic by the department, Garcia said in a written statement, adding that requiring cross-examination is likely to discourage the reproting of campus sexual misconduct incidents by forcing the victim to relive the event.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
PayPal is one of the worlds most secure and flexible methods of payment for individuals who prefer online transactions to handle physical cash. With this account, you can easily send or receive funds from different people in any corner of the world by a click of a button. Due to its reliability, many freelancers, as well as other online workers, are switching to transact via this platform.

Image: canva.com (modified by author)

Source: Original

Other than receiving or sending funds, you can also do your cashless online shopping much swifter as the platform gives you an added layer of security for all your personal as well financial information. Below is what you need to know about opening a PayPal account, deleting, funding, verifying, and linking it to your bank.

Guide to creating a PayPal account

Joining this platform is free. There are two different types of PayPal accounts in the country. Each is suited for different kinds of uses. They include:

Personal: The best for doing online shopping, sending and receiving payments, as well as the protection of the buyer.

The best for doing online shopping, sending and receiving payments, as well as the protection of the buyer. Business: The best suited for sending and receiving payments under a business name, monitoring fraud and seller protection.

READ ALSO: BulSU portal grades, sign up, login, activate

PayPal registration requirements

To successfully enrol into this platform, you will need:

A credit/debit card

Email address

Your mobile number

Personal details/business details

A browser

Active internet connection

A mobile phone, tablet, laptop or a desktop

How to create PayPal account for personal use

Use the following PayPal sign up steps to open your free personal account today:

Connect to the internet: Use your mobile data, hotspot, LAN connection, or private Wi-Fi. Open your browser: On a mobile phone, navigate to your application list, search for the app in question then tap on its icon. On a PC, double-click on its logo. Go to the PayPal Philippines website. Select Personal Account: This is the first option in the window. Tap the Next button. Indicate how you plan to use the account: You can either be an online shopper, individual seller, freelancer or all of the above. Provide your basic information: Type in your email address, which should be valid, first name, middle name, and last name. Create a secure password and confirm it. Tap on the Next button. Complete your profile: Enter your date of birth, nationality, your ID number, address, zip code, and mobile phone. Activate one touch: This is a new feature introduced to enable you to stay logged in your browser. Agree to the terms.

Image: paypal.com

Source: UGC

How to make PayPal account for your business

If you are a seller, use the following steps to enrol into this platform:

Go to the PayPal sign up page: Connect to the internet, open your browser and key in the address. Select the account type: Since you are a seller, tap on the business account. Click on the Next button. Indicate your primary PayPal use: This could be either receiving payments for goods and services offered or sending payments to your suppliers. Select where you intend to receive payments: It can be via your website, email, link, invoicing, Upwork, or even eBay. Specify your estimated monthly sales volume: If you are not sure, indicate so and tap on the Next button. Enter your email address: You will be using the email to login, so make sure it is valid and click on the Continue option. Choose a strong password: It should contain characters, numbers, lower- and upper-case letters. Enter your business details: Make sure you enter the correct names, phone number, address, and your preferred primary currency. Agree to the terms: Tap on the Agree and Continue option. Describe your business: This could be either individual/sole proprietorship, sole proprietor, corporation, partnership, private corporation, public corporation, a non-profit organization, or government entity. Specify the products you sell and a business URL if available. Provide your details: This includes your date of birth, nationality, ID number, and home address. Confirm your email: This enables you to get valuable information concerning your account security. Confirm your mobile phone: If you forget your password, you can recover it if you have a verified number.

How to verify PayPal Account

You need to acquire a credit or a debit card. You can also apply for a Payoneer card, which you can also use to verify your account. Your bank has a minimum balance of $2.00. This amount will be transferred to your PayPal to confirm your card is active. The amount will be refunded as soon as the verification process is over. You will also need a billing address.

How to link bank account to PayPal

To get more out of the platform, you need to connect it with your bank. This means that you will be able to fund it and withdraw any amounts directly to your banking provider. Here is the procedure that you should follow:

The first step should be a PayPal login.

Navigate to the homepage.

Once here, tap on the Link your Bank Option.

Enter the bank name, code, and account number.

Once you initiate the process, it should take less than 30 seconds if you entered the correct details.

How to make PayPal account in the Philippines without credit card

Navigate to the signup page and select the account type.

Provide your basic information.

Set a strong password.

Follow on-screen instructions to complete the process.

You will be redirected to your homepage immediately after you are through with this procedure.

How to send money through PayPal

You can make payments to anyone with an email address even if they do not have a PayPal Philippines account. Use the steps below:

Login into the platform: Connect to the internet, open your browser, head to the login page, and provide all the necessary credentials. Tap on Send & Request option: This is at the top bar menu. Enter the recipient email address: Confirm to make sure that you have entered the correct details. Specify the exchange rate: Choose the recipient currency, and also yours then tap on the change button. Key in the shipping address: This is similar to a billing address. Tap Continue: Follow all the instructions outlined on the screen on how to send the funds.

How can I withdraw funds from PayPal in the Philippines?

You need to login to the dashboard

Head to the Wallet section.

Once here, you will be able to see your account balance. You cannot transfer or withdraw an amount that beyond this amount.

Again, you should have linked your bank account with your PayPal.

Tap on Transfer Money then select your credit/debit card.

The operation takes a few minutes to hours, so be patient.

How to delete PayPal account: A step by step procedure

First, transfer all the funds in your PayPal to your bank.

Initiate the procedure of account deactivation by going to the settings section

Click on the Account Options button

Click on Close your Account" button. On a business account, this option is located next to your Account Type details.

PayPal Philippines contacts

If you experience any unusual transaction delays, technical difficulties, or you have questions and complaints, reach out via the following contacts:

Phone number: +1-402-935-2050

+1-402-935-2050 Active hours: 6:00 AM PT to 6:00 PM PT Monday toSunday

You can a live chat with one of their representatives using their message centre. You should be logged in for this to be possible.

A PayPal account is like a digital wallet that helps you make any transaction worldwide. The payment method is secure, convenient, and saves you some time as you do not need to enter your card details every time you are transacting. Whats more, it is free and fast to open as well as set up a new account.

READ ALSO: PLDT Fibr plans 2020: review

Source: KAMI.com.gh
Neurons that carry signals from a fruit fly's wings to its brain are stained fluorescent purple in the image above. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that flies sleep more when they can't fly, possibly because sleeping helps them adapt to a challenging new situation. Credit: Krishna Melnattur

Flies that cannot take to the air respond by sleeping more as they learn to adapt to their flightlessness, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings, published May 8 in Science Advances, suggest that sleep may be an evolutionary tool that helps animals adapt to challenging new situations.

"We know that sleep is involved in creativity and insight," said senior author Paul Shaw, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience. "Have you ever slept on a problem, and when you wake up you've found the answer? Anxiety keeps people up at night, but if you find yourself in a dangerous environment, or in a situation that you don't know how to deal with, sleep may be exactly what you need to respond to it effectively."

Fruit flies' sleep looks a lot like people's. Baby flies need a lot of sleep, but as they get older, their need for sleep diminishes. Flies become more alert with caffeine and drowsier with antihistamines. And if you keep a fly awake one day, it will sleep more the next.

These similarities suggest that the sleep habits of flies might shed light on the sleep habits of people. To explore the relationship between challenging circumstances and sleep, Shaw and staff scientist and first author Krishna Melnattur, Ph.D., took away flies' ability to fly.

Baby flies must expand their wings in the first half hour or so after emerging from pupal cases, or their wings will not develop properly. The researchers placed some newly emerged flies in tiny containers so they could not expand their wings, and they genetically modified other flies so that the insects' wings failed to expand. Both scenarios rendered the young flies permanently flightless. The researchers also grounded older flies by disabling their wings. In all cases, faced with the inability to fly, the animals slept more than usual.

In subsequent experiments, the researchers traced the neurological circuit that signals to the brain that the wings aren't functioning and triggers the impulse to sleep more.

"When we identified the neurons that were activated when we cut or glued the wings of adult flies, they turned out to be the same neurons involved in the normal developmental process of wing expansion after emergence," Melnattur said.

The fact that wing injury and normal wing development are linked to sleep through the same neurological circuitry makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, the researchers said. The circuit is active in young flies because their developing brains need sleep as the animals expand their wings, learn to fly and begin to navigate the world around them.

"And then the whole circuit can get reactivated later in life when something happens that forces a fly to adapt to a new normal," Shaw said. "Suddenly, its brain needs to be as flexible as when it was young. It can no longer fly, but it still needs to get food, it needs to compete for mates, it needs to avoid dying. We think that sleep amplifies the brain plasticity the fly needs to survive."

Shaw and Melnattur are planning experiments to determine whether increased sleep helps flightless flies survive. Their findings also may provide clues to why some people sleep more than others and why some sleep disorders arise.

"There's huge variation in sleep time among people," Shaw said. "Some people need five hours a night; some need nine. Sleep is an ancient process, and we've evolved mechanisms to change our sleep-wake balance to help us meet our needs. If these mechanisms get inappropriately activated, say by a traumatic event that triggers post-traumatic stress disorder, it can create a situation in which you're sleeping too much or too little and it's no longer matching up with your needs, and then you have a sleep disorder."

Explore further Amino acid in fruit fly intestines found to regulate sleep

More information: "Disrupting flight increases sleep and identifies a novel sleep-promoting pathway in Drosophila" Science Advances (2020). Journal information: Science Advances "Disrupting flight increases sleep and identifies a novel sleep-promoting pathway in Drosophila"(2020).
By Azernews





Ayya Lmahamad

A court in Baku has arrested for four months head of Imishli district Executive Authorities Vilyam Hajiyev on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement, local media reported on May 6.

Among his crimes are issuing illegal permits to leave homes amid the strict stay-at-home order and embezzling social aid intended for the poor and money for unemployed.

Hajiyev was detained after a special operation carried out by the State Security Service in the building of the Imishli Executive Authorities on May 5.

Investigation has revealed that Hajiyev ordered to seize some funds at the disposal of the executive power under the pretense of social assistance, as well as to issue fake certificates to some citizens for free movement in violation of the special quarantine regime.

He also embezzled money that the state transferred to payroll cards for those who lost their jobs during the quarantine period and low-income citizens.

It is also assumed that a certain part of the state funds allocated for repair and construction works, including the construction of the administrative building of Imishli district, was cashed in and embezzled by Hajiyev.

Moreover, through his subordinates Hajiyev extorted money from officials of local executive authorities and other state structures, as well as citizens engaged in individual business in the district under various pretexts.

Vilyam Hajiyev was dismissed from his position upon the presidential order on May 6. He is charged under articles 308 (exceeding the authority), 179 (attribution) and 331 (receiving a bribe).

The arrest followed the May 5 operation against six local officials in three districts  Sabirabad, Agjabadi and Tartar - who were detained on the similar charges.

The head of the Bilasuvar district, Mahir Guliyev, was arrested on April 30 for four months on charges of embezzlement, abuse of power, and bribery.

It should be noted that President Ilham Aliyev urged fight against corruption, especially those in the districts amid the spread of COVID-19 in the country while receiving the newly-appointed Prosecutorr-General on on May 1.

Azerbaijan first introduced special quarantine regime on March 24 and since April 5, residents are required to obtain SMS permits to leave their homes.
The cruise industry has taken a beating during the coronavirus crisis -- on-board outbreaks, refusal of port access and now no clear idea of when ships can sail once again. While the passengers have headed home, the journey drags on for tens of thousands of crew members who are stranded at sea aboard their vessels, with no end in sight. Many are no longer being paid because their contracts ended; some have no internet access; tensions are flaring; and some have even filed suit against their employers. "We are prisoners. I need help. We need help," said Caio Saldanha, a Brazilian DJ who works on the Celebrity Infinity, which is in limbo somewhere between Florida and the Bahamas. "We need to fight to go home," the 31-year-old musician told AFP. Saldanha shares a cabin with his 29-year-old girlfriend Jessica Furlan, who hosted on-board activities for passengers. On March 13, US authorities issued a no-sail order as the virus crisis ramped up. Ships with passengers offloaded them -- some more easily than others. But most crew members were required to remain on board. And now they're stuck. There are more than 100 ships carrying over 70,000 crew in or near US territorial waters or ports, the US Coast Guard says. "We are desperate to get home," said Furlan, who noted that they spent three weeks confined to their cabin, and then stopped getting paid on April 24. - No free internet for some crew - Those who keep the ships running -- sailors, cleaners and cooks, for example -- are still getting paid, but anyone whose job was to entertain passengers is out of luck. Other employees had completed their contracts, so they are not getting paid, either. The cruise lines provide room and board, but crew must pay for anything else -- even toothpaste and soap. Some have to pay for WiFi. "We do not have free internet -- from one point of view, I do understand, but from the human point of view, I cannot," said Verica Brcic, who manages the spa on the Maasdam, operated by Carnival subsidiary Holland America. Brcic was transferred on March 29 to the Koningsdam, which is meandering along the US West Coast with 1,100 personnel from eight different ships. "Humans need to stay in contact" with family and get news from home, said the 55-year-old, who is from Serbia. Brcic has no idea when she might get home. She hasn't been on dry land since early March. A 52-year-old musician who works for Princess Cruises (also a Carnival subsidiary) says he too has to pay for WiFi. He also says there is not enough food to go around. "I feel like I'm in forced confinement," said the musician, who asked not to be named, or for AFP to even say which ship he works on, for fear that his employer would retaliate. - 'Roller-coaster of emotions' - The major cruise lines stand accused of failing to do enough to get their staff home, ostensibly to save money on pricey charter flights -- a claim the companies deny. Royal Caribbean says the issue stems from the fine print of their agreement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That agreement says cruise companies are liable -- in both criminal and civil court -- if the crew fails to follow the rules of disembarkation to the letter. "We are happy to do all the things they requested, but the criminal penalties gave us (and our lawyers) pause," Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said in a May 3 letter to crew seen by AFP. Bayley then wrote that Royal Caribbean would sign anyway, because "the importance of getting you home is so great." Lauren Carrick, a British dancer on the Infinity who shares a cabin with her boyfriend, wants to know why the process is taking so long for Royal Caribbean, which owns Celebrity Cruises. "It's just a roller-coaster of emotions," the 29-year-old Carrick told AFP. "It's really tiring and exhausting. At nighttime, I can't sleep. My mind is constantly going to like, 'When am I going to get home?'" But not everyone is in a huge rush. Some crew members feel safer at sea and fear that all the publicity is going to hurt the companies that pay their bills. "It is complex and very frustrating for those of us that love our jobs," said a 42-year-old South African food and beverage manager for Carnival. He said keeping the crew on board was costing more than the charter flights would, and that it was simply "very difficult to repatriate certain people to certain destinations." "That fault cannot lie with the cruise lines -- it lies with bodies like the CDC," he said on condition of anonymity. - It's complicated - Bayley says that of its 25,000 employees on board ships, more than 1,000 of them say they want to stay. For those who want to get home, he says, it's complicated. "Our crew come to us from more than 60 countries. Each country has rules and regulations for who can travel home, and how, and when," Bayley wrote in his letter. Some countries are not even accepting their own nationals, he said. Carnival is making "strong progress" in getting its employees home "via air charters and our own ships," spokesman Roger Frizzell told AFP. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) told AFP that so far, there have been a total of 2,789 confirmed cases of COVID-19 onboard 33 cruise ships, among passengers and crew. Last month, employees of Celebrity Cruises filed a class action lawsuit accusing the company of negligence. This week, the family of an Indonesian crew member filed a wrongful death suit against Royal Caribbean. This photo provided by Brazilian DJ Caio Saldanha shows his cabin on the Celebrity Infinity cruise ship. He says he feels like a prisoner on the ship where he works, with no news about when he can go home Caio Saldanha (L) and Jessica Furlan, both from Brazil, are currently on board the Celebrity Infinity, with no news about when they can leave Holland America Line's MS Koningsdam -- seen here in Rotterdam in May 2016, on the eve of its dedication ceremony -- is now off the US West Coast, with 1,100 crew from eight different ships Lauren Carrick (L), a 29-year-old British dancer, and her fianc Joe Harrison -- seen here in San Juan, Puerto Rico -- are aboard the Celebrity Infinity, and also want to get home Carnival says it's making "strong progress" towards getting its crew members home -- its Panorama cruise ship is seen docked in Long Beach, California on March 7, 2020
WASHINGTON, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- This morning, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it will require its employees to wear face masks while performing screening operations. We appreciate TSA Administrator Pekoske's leadership on this issue as the safety and well-being of passengers and employees is the top priority of U.S. airlines.

The TSA's decision comes on the heels of A4A's member passenger carriers voluntarily announcing that customer-facing employees and passengers will be required to wear a cloth face covering over their nose and mouth throughout the journey  during check-in, boarding, in-flight and deplaning.

While requiring facial coverings for TSA officers is an important and necessary step, we encourage the TSA and U.S. airports to similarly require facial protection for all travelers, in keeping with CDC recommendations. This would ensure needed consistency for the duration of the passenger journey and instill greater confidence for the traveling public that the airlines, airports and federal government are prioritizing their health and safety.

We look forward to continued collaboration with the TSA as we all work to ensure the safety and well-being of travelers.

For more on how U.S. airlines are responding to COVID-19, please visit www.AirlinesTakeAction.com.

ABOUT A4A

Airlines for America (A4A) members are Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, FedEx, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and UPS. Air Canada is an associate member.

A4A advocates on behalf of the leading U.S. airlines, both passenger and cargo carriers. A4A works collaboratively with industry stakeholders, federal agencies, the Administration, Congress, labor and other groups to improve aviation for the traveling and shipping public.

For more information about the airline industry, visit our website airlines.org and our blog, A Better Flight Plan, at airlines.org/blog.

Follow us on Twitter: @airlinesdotorg.

Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/AirlinesforAmerica.

Join us on Instagram: instagram.com/AirlinesforAmerica.

SOURCE Airlines for America

Related Links

www.airlines.org


'As Churchill recognised, war is nothing but a catalogue of blunders.' Photo: David Savill/Getty

Records tell us it was 4.45am when the phone rang on General Bradley's bedside table at HQ near Kassel, Germany, It was his boss, General Dwight D Eisenhower, calling from France.

"Brad," Eisenhower told him. "It's all over."

Nazi Germany had surrendered at 2.41am. The tragedy of World War II in Europe had ended.

The call was made on May 7, 1945 - 75 years ago; the party started the next day, VE Day.

According to historian Martin Gilbert, on that day in Newport News, Virginia, a ship docked carrying three sisters who were the first survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp to land in the US.

He wrote it in his book: 'The Day the War Ended'.

They were Isabella, Regina, and Berta Katz, of Kisvarda, Hungary. Their mother was murdered at Auschwitz.

"In our battered being we carried the innocent, charred souls of millions of children, women and men," Isabella recalled. "And we thank this America, this best of all countries, for putting its healing arms around our weeping hearts."

While war correspondent Hal Boyle, writing from Germany, noted: "It has been a long and bloody trail. It has drained much from the men . . . much from their bodies, and much from their spirit."

Today, with much of the world still in lockdown, there is a notable absence of a superpower with either the stature or the will to "wrap healing hands" around broken hearts.

Writing recently in the London 'Independent', Robert Fisk took issue with politicians for appropriating the term 'war' in the context of confronting the pandemic.

While acknowledging both 'real' war and viral war (the Covid variety) produce casualties, they should not be compared.

'Real' wars are about conflict, about humans versus humans.

The potential harm we can do to each other should never be lost sight of, and is what gives dates like today such significance.

Out of World War II we got the United Nations and the World Bank, and Nato. There was recognition of the value of close ties and common interests.

Threats can bring us together or drive us apart, depending on how we react. Alliances were made which were undeniably responsible for saving millions of lives and delivering the longest, most-secure period of peace Europe has known.

Sharing responsibility and working together was in everyone's interest. Once again, there is a real danger of economic implosion.

There is a need to co-operate to protect mass loss of life and livelihoods. We must find an international sustainable path to recovery. Europe has a moral responsibility to lead by example.

Today, we recall the terrible consequences of division. Even in the darkness, stoicism and sacrifice prevailed when Europe was at breaking point.

Such traits will need to be resurrected as we manage menacing adversity. But, as Churchill recognised, war is nothing but a catalogue of blunders. We must take every care not to repeat them.
Thursday was going to be a normal day for people living in RR Venkatapuram village near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. But, even before they could wake up, a deadly gas leaked from a chemical factory nearby and jolted them out of their sleep.

The pre-dawn disaster - it struck at 2.30 am - led to the death of 11 people and left more than 1,000 struggling for breath.

Video from news agency ANI showed emergency workers in the area rushing to help victims, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented.

A number of victims lay unconscious streetside, as some volunteers fanned them and others rushed to carry them into ambulances. The scene evoked memories of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy that left at least 4,000 people dead and another 500,000 injured when methyl isocyanate leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Madhya Pradesh capital.

The leak was so intense that it turned into a fog and only around 9.30 am could we understand what exactly it was as the thick fog that formed in the area cleared, news agency PTI quoted district collector V Vinay Chand as saying.

The gas spread to villages over a five kilometre radius.

As rescuers rushed to take people to the hospital, many others were seen gasping for breath as they tried to flee, disoriented by the vapours. No one could breathe. I couldnt see anything for some time, Vijay Raju, a local resident, said by phone. For a moment, I thought I would die.

Narendra, another villager, said he sensed something was wrong after he woke up in the middle of the night. Around 2.30 am, I woke up as my skin was itching. I opened my eyes but felt a burning sensation. I sensed some danger and woke up my family, he said.

State authorities and officials from LG Polymers said they were investigating what caused the leak but a preliminary situation report by district officials said the trigger was a malfunction in equipment, which caused the temperature to rise and the organic compound styrene - normally a liquid - to vaporise.
The one-week remembrance ceremony of the late Kumawood actor, Bishop Bernard Nyarko, will be held at their family house at Ashaley Botwe-Lakeside near the Police Station and Pakoso  Asokore Mampong in Kumasi this Saturday.



The brother of the late actor, Isaac Nyarko, who made this known, said the date and venue for the final funeral rites for the late actor, who joined his ancestors last Saturday after a short illness, would be announced.



He mentioned that the ceremony would be used to celebrate the late actors achievement in the Ghanaian movie industry.



In other not to flout the ban on social gatherings, the ceremony was strictly by invitation, he said.



In an interview with SVTV, Isaac Darko mentioned that the one-week remembrance ceremony would be a gathering of only family members and few invited guests.



We would love everyone to come, especially Bishop Nyarkos fans, but because of the ban on social gatherings, we are forced to do it privately and strictly by invitation. We should not break the law, because we are all under the law. We are not preventing anyone from attending the one-week observation but we have to respect the law and the Presidents directives, he said.



The late Kumawood actor died of cancer on Saturday, May 2 at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital  Ridge Hospital.



He was a member and associate pastor of Grace Redemption Chapel.



Some of the movie icons such as Abraham Davis, aka Salinko, Nana Ama MacBrown, Mercy Asiedu, Kwadwo Nkansah aka Lilwin, Yaw Dabo and a host of others broke into tears when the death of Bishop Bernard Nyarko was announced.



Many others took to social media to pay tribute to the actor and shared some of their fondest memories of him.

Source: Daily Guide









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May 8, 2020 GORDON LAUDS RED CROSS MOVEMENT'S EFFORTS IN FIGHTING COVID-19 ON WORLD RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT DAY 2020 On the occasion of the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day this year, Philippine Red Cross (PRC) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Senator Richard J. Gordon recognized the significant role and work of volunteers and staff of the 191 national societies of the Red Cross who are tirelessly working and fighting the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that already afflicted more than 3.8 million individuals worldwide as of Thursday, May 7. "There is a lot of reasons why we must applaud, not because we're tapping ourselves in the back, but we recognize the strenuous effort of vision, the values that we have, the volunteerism that we excel in. And that creates solidarity so powerful that we know, we can prevail," Gordon said. In the Philippines, the PRC continues to be at the forefront in addressing COVID-19 and it has been actively helping the government to stop the spread of the virus since it was first detected. One of the major efforts of the PRC is the establishment of its own molecular laboratory located at its headquarters in Mandaluyong City. "We have to keep on clapping because we want to give hope to one another, we want to gain strength from one another, and above all, we must make sure that the hope and the strength that we have translates to hope and strength for the people we serve," said Gordon.
If Moderna's coronavirus vaccine proves to work, the company anticipates working "very closely"with the U.S. government to determine who will get the first doses, CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Friday.

The company announced Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration cleared its potential vaccine for a phase 2 trial, what the company called a "crucial step." Moderna is ramping up its manufacturing capacity so it can rapidly distribute doses if the vaccine proves effective against the virus and safe for humans.

Even so, the company won't immediately have enough for everyone, Bancel said.

"We will all be supply constrained for quite some time, meaning we won't be able to make as many product as will be required to vaccinate everyone on the planet," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Last week, Moderna announced a 10-year partnership with Swiss drugmaker Lonza to accelerate production of the experimental vaccine. Bancel told CNBC at the time that the company hopes to begin manufacturing its potential vaccine "as early as July."

He added that with the partnership, the company hopes to be able to manufacture about 1 billion doses per year. There are more than 7.6 billion people on the planet, according to the U.S. Census' world population clock.

Bancel said Friday that the company will collaborate with the U.S. government to determine who receives the first doses.

"In the case of the U.S., we anticipate to work very closely with the government and with key medical officials to decide who gets the vaccine in the first batch. And then when you have the next batch to ship to the government, how do we allocate it between health-care workers, people who are high risk and different geographies where you have more cases," he said.

BARDA, which is a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, last month awarded Moderna up to $483 million in funding to accelerate development of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

The potential vaccine, which was developed by researchers at Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, became the first candidate to enter a phase 1 human trial in March. The company has not published the results of the phase 1 trial yet but received federal approval to start a larger phase 2 trial soon. Bancel said the phase 3 trial will hopefully begin in the early summer.

The vaccine candidate uses synthetic messenger RNA to inoculate against the virus. Such treatments help the body immunize against a virus and can potentially be developed and manufactured more quickly than traditional vaccines.

The race to develop a vaccine is intensely competitive and investors are watching closely for signs of progress on treatments and vaccines. Bancel said it will take more than one company to beat back the coronavirus, which has infected more than 3.8 million people around the world and killed at least 270,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

"No one company can help the entire planet," he told CNBC last month.
After over a month-long hiatus, ash immersion rituals have resumed at Haridwar from Friday onwards.

People were seen carrying urns of ashes from the wee hours on Friday to the sanctum sanctorum of Brahma Kund at Har-Ki-Pauri Ganga Ghat. Local priests, too, resumed work and conducted the ash-immersion rituals.

According to priests, normally in Haridwar, about 2000 to 5000 people arrive daily for ash-immersion rituals, post-cremation rituals and Pitra Karmakand (forefathers soul-related rites) which had been disrupted due to the nationwide lockdown affecting their livelihood.

Har-Ki-Pauri is considered to be an ancient place with religious significance. It is believed that nectar of the gods had fallen here after a tug-of-war between deities and demons, as per Hindu mythology.

Haridwar district administration, however, has specified that only two persons and a driver are allowed to accompany an urn to be immersed at Har-Ki-Pauri Ganga Ghat.

Cabinet spokesperson Madan Kaushik said that adherence to the guidelines issued by the local administration and health department regarding Covid-19 preventive measures like wearing of face masks, social distancing and time-bound return to their respective home destinations was a must for carrying out the rituals.

Terming the decision as a step in the right direction, office bearers of Ganga Sabha, the main managing body of Har-Ki-Pauri Ganga Ghat, said ash immersion should have been allowed a fortnight ago.

Ash immersion rituals are part of ancient tradition and customs which help in providing salvation (moksha) to the departed soul. Its quite sad that after funeral rites people had to keep urns of the deceased for quite some time, but now the government has taken the right decision to allow it again, said Pradeep Jha, president Ganga Sabha.

Haridwar priests, who had last week submitted a memorandum to the state government demanding the lifting of the prohibition at Har-Ki-Pauri, were quite busy as people with urns turned up at the Ghats from Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR region, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and even beyond.

Akhil Bharatiya Yuva Teerth Purohit president Ujjwal Pundit said the lockdown has severely affected their livelihood as they primarily depend on last rites related rituals and special prayers for the deceased.

There are nearly 2000 priests in Haridwar involved in ash immersion rituals for several generations.

Meanwhile, the ashram and dharamshala owners have demanded the opening of some eateries and tea stalls at Har-Ki-Pauri for people coming from other states.

We have been waiting for more than a week to get the permission, finally Uttarakhand government has granted the same. We have been traveling for the past seven hours. We have reached Haridwar and it is overwhelming that finally, we will be able to immerse the ashes in the Ganga, said Vijay Singh from Haryana.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
by Stefano Mosca

It is reasonable to put on hold the Eucharist because of the coronavirus, but it is equally important not to consider it normal, as if one could do without the sacrament. Forgetting the Eucharist leads to corruption and violence. The opposite rebuilds personal and social life as the fate of two villages shows. Here is the second part of the testimony of the missionary in the Philippines.

Lakewood (AsiaNews)  In order to contain the spread of the coronavirus, governments in many countries, from the Philippines to Italy, have banned public Masses. Fr Stefano Mosca, a PIME missionary in the Philippines for 17 years, understands the reasons for this decision, but believes that without the Sunday Eucharist, Christian social life risks falling apart.

As parish priest in Lakewood (Zamboanga del Sur, Mindanao), Believers without the Eucharist have entered a survival mode for a while, and this absolutely cannot become normal. The experience of two villages where taking the Eucharist has reshaped life is a case in point. This is the second part of his testimony. For the first part, click here.

Although I am worried about my people, unlike my brother parish priest in Kumalarang, who hands out the Eucharist on the street, I talked it over with the local mayor and police in order to celebrate three Masses every Sunday in the parish church in Lakewood for all Christians in the centre and the villages.

The parish church is wide, well-ventilated, and open walled with iron gates. With people respecting the distances of two metres and wearing a mask, it can accommodate up to 120 worshippers for Mass.

After we got written authorisation, we celebrated the first three Masses last Sunday, 3 May, but very few participated. Not even the people in the centre, very close to the church, came to the service. This made me realise one thing: I am committed to talk and beg left and right for permits, but my people, who have not received the Eucharist for two months, have not yet understood that Christian life is not really the same as one that is well nurtured. The coronavirus has become a good excuse for many Christians to avoid coming regularly to Mass and communion.

Truth be told, many did not even come before, but now they have found the right excuse. These Catholics lead a dubious Christian life. Many allow themselves to be easily corrupted by politicians to obtain privileges and favours. They become ruthless in business, moneylenders, racists against tribals. Some are shopkeepers who cheat by selling everything twice as much in this period of crisis, pushing many poor people to the brink of hunger because they cant buy their products at inflated prices. They dont receive the Eucharist and these are the fruits of their Christian life.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life. Yet many of my Christians are witnesses of events of change, of renewal that have occurred in their villages thanks to the Eucharist, but these are easily forgotten.

In two villages, Pinoles and Baking, people did not come to church. In Pinoles the chapel was closed for three years. In the church in Baking you only saw a few old women, no men and no whole families; sometimes only teenagers and not always.

At one point, the two villages elected a captain, a village chief who turned out to be a criminal. He killed his political opponents mercilessly and with impunity. He did not talk to people, but lorded it over them using the rifle. In the village, with everyone drunk; stabbings and fights with deaths occurred a regular basis. People were terrified, afraid of leaving their homes. Breaking-ins were commonplace with thieves holding families hostage until they got what they wanted. Police were careful not to intervene.

Some Christians came to complain to the priest and I told them: All this is normal in a village where Christians have not eaten the Eucharist for years, where the chapel is closed, where farming, business, is now your God. Go back to church with your husbands, eat the Eucharist regularly, and this hell will soon end.

I conducted more Masses in the chapels. Once a week, those who want can take part in the evening Mass in their chapel in addition to the monthly Sunday Mass. Many people, even many men, came back to eat the Eucharist on a regular basis.

The criminal captains fell out of favour; the new politicians are all Catholics, Church-going people, always at Mass on Sunday, attentive to the needs of the people. They often contact me to talk things over as to what to do for the village. There are no more drunken killings and thieving. The two villages are now at peace and there is a good atmosphere of brotherhood also with the tribals and other religious groups. What miracles the Eucharist can perform in the heart of men and in society!

This is why I repeat that whilst it is reasonable to suspend the communion for the faithful in this long period of quarantine, I strongly believe that eating or not eating the Eucharist every Sunday are not the same thing. Believers without the Eucharist have entered a "survival" mode for a while, and this absolutely cannot become normal.

Normality must mean eating the Eucharist in order to be strong in a life of faith, charity and hope which otherwise weakens under the devils blows. For me, this is the real crisis of today: a Christian life that is on hold under given circumstances, but hoping that it will not be entirely extinguished.
Over 360 people returned to India from the United Arab Emirates on Thursday night on two planes as the government began the first leg of a massive repatriation programme involving 12 countries and 15,000 passengers. Karnataka, meanwhile, reversed its decision to stop special trains for migrants and said it intends to run daily services from Friday to May 15.

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Covid-19 update: In U-turn, Karnataka govt allows migrants to go back in special trains

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India kicks off op to fly back citizens, 363 evacuees from UAE land in Kerala

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Govt okays home, hotel isolation for milder Covid-19 patients

Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients with mild symptoms can stay in hotels and service apartments in case they dont have space in their own residences to confine themselves in isolation, according to the Union health ministrys revised guidelines on home quarantine for Covid patients. Read more.

Covid-19 peak likely to hit between May and August: AIIMS director

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Madhya Pradesh brings in labour reforms amid Covid-19 crisis

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Not every virus mutation is issue of concern, say experts

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77 inmates, 26 officials test Covid-19 positive in Mumbais Arthur Road prison outbreak

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India set to lead post-pandemic baby boom: UN

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CORVALLIS, Ore. -- In the ongoing struggle to address health care disparities in rural communities across the U.S., a recent Oregon State University study found that the perfect partner may be hiding in plain sight.

The grange, founded in 1867 and officially titled the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, is a community-based organization that is likely familiar to anyone who's spent time in a small town or attended a county fair. In addition to political advocacy on behalf of farmers, the grange's missions around community and family also align closely with the goals of public health.

OSU's study, recently published in the Journal of Community Health, reviewed scientific literature that mentioned the grange, in both medical and agricultural publications. Researchers also pored over the grange's own materials to assess the organization's key messages for the past two decades.

A significant portion of those publications dealt with the study's domains of health and health care, social cohesion and community context, economic stability -- including food instability -- and the neighborhood and the built environment.

"It's this overlooked source that's been there this whole time. They've been in the community for more than a hundred years," said Veronica Irvin, assistant professor in OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences and one of the authors of the paper. "They have community support, they have physical space, they have similar missions to public health -- it's this natural partner that we've just not met up with."

Compared with big cities, rural communities have less access to health care services. The populations are generally older than urban populations; the towns have fewer walking paths and other places dedicated to physical activity; and despite being centered around farms, many rural areas are termed "food deserts" because of limited availability of healthy foods.

Those issues are all relevant to grange members, said Susan Noah, master of the Oregon State Grange and co-author of the paper.

"Everyone is becoming more and more conscious of what it means to be a healthy society, especially as it relates to food and agriculture," she said.

While individual granges have different areas of focus, they all have physical buildings equipped with kitchens and classroom space, which has allowed them to partner on several health initiatives, including blood drives, mental health awareness classes and Alzheimer's caretaker education programs. In Philomath, the Marys River Grange has hosted a low-cost medical clinic for farm workers.

Now, researchers and grange leaders hope the new findings will spur greater collaboration with health care providers, including as communities start to reopen from COVID-19 shutdowns.

As with most fraternal organizations, the grange's membership is aging. But it's working to adapt and bring in new people, Noah said. There's no longer a requirement that members be actively involved in agriculture, and many granges are now focusing on sustainable practices, growing your own food and eating local. Some are offering yoga and jazzercise classes.

Noah sees the grange playing an important role in helping communities recover from the social isolation caused by COVID-19, as well as potentially becoming a source of trusted, evidence-backed information for members with questions about the virus.

Lead author Lilly Anderson, a 2019 OSU master's in public health graduate, says more coordination between the grange and public health organizations could help avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and allow them to work in tandem more often.

"This very well-established and trusted community resource is in a position to be an excellent partner for public health in rural areas where we desperately need it," she said. "I think if we combined resources and gave them some much needed publicity for their good work, we could really increase our outreach in these areas."

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Warren Jeffs, 64, was the notorious president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous Mormon sect, who was placed on FBIs Ten Most Wanted List for arranging marriages between adult followers and underage girls in Utah

One of the women who helped bring cult leader Warren Jeffs down is opening up on life in the shadowy polygamist church where she was forced to share a husband with 60 other women, as the once-isolated Utah town controlled by the group slowly returns to normalcy.

Rebecca Musser, 44, was one of the key witnesses to shed light on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sect in Utah and take down its notorious leader Warren Jeffs, 64, in 2006.

He was charged with arranging marriages between adult men in the church with underage women, multiple counts of rape, sexual assault of a child, and incest and was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.

Now, Musser opening up on the horror she faced while in the cult, where she was married to Jeff's predecessor prophet Rulon Jeffs when she was 19 and he was 85, and had to share him with 63 other women.

'He was 85 and I was 19. I just resigned myself to the fact that was my fate, to surrender to it. It was horrifying. This is a man of God and yet he is doing this to me,' she says in a Dateline special entitled Unbreakable set to air Friday.

Rebecca Musser, 44, was one of the key witnesses to shed light on the abuses taking placed in the cult and her testimony in multiple states landed Jeffs behind bars with a life sentence

Musser was married to then-church leader Rulon Jeffs (together above) when she was 19 and he was 85. She was one of his 64 wives. 'I just resigned myself to the fact that was my fate, to surrender to it. It was horrifying. This is a man of God and yet he is doing this to me,' Musser says in a Dateline special set to air Friday on her marriage

She said after her husband passed away Warren, Rulon's son, came into power as the church's President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator, she realized she needed to escape.

'When [Rulon] did die that is when Warren made his move. Warren was appeasing the questions with youve been so faithful, here is a beautiful new bride for you,' Musser recounts.

After Rulons death Warren gave Musser an ultimatum  to marry him or choose another husband. He told her 'Whoever you marry, I will break you and train you to be an obedient wife,' he said according to People.

'Then it hit me, you can leave. And I just thought finally, its over,' Musser said to Dateline.

Musser cried as she drove through Hildale, Utah where the FLDS church used to run

Today the Short Creek area in Utah has seen a mass exodus of Jeffs' followers after his arrest and public scandal. 'The majority of the FLDS about 90 percent are not in Short Creek anymore,' local Andrew Chatwin (above) said in an exclusive clip shared with DailyMail.com

Days later Musser slipped past Warrens guards and scrambled over the wall of the Mormon compound and fled.

She made her way to Oregon to the apartment of one of her brothers who had left the group, and started a new life.

In 2006 when Warren was placed on the FBIs Most Wanted List she testified against him in courtrooms in Texas, Arizona and Utah, sharing intimate knowledge of the cults inner workings and secrets, and helped get him placed behind bars.

In 2002 after her husband passed away and Warren told her she had to marry again she decided to leave. 'Then it hit me, you can leave. And I just thought finally, its over,' Musser said. Pictured above surrounded by other wives

Musser testified against him in courtrooms in Texas, Arizona and Utah, sharing intimate knowledge of the cults inner workings and secrets, and helped get him placed behind bars. Warren Jeffs pictured at his sentencing in November 2007

The special sees Musser return back to the quiet Mormon compound in Short Creek, Utah.

Today the Short Creek area in Utah has seen a mass exodus of Jeff's followers following his arrest and public scandal.

'Its tough to be back. It brings up a lot of things that are still really raw,' Musser says through tears.

'The majority of the FLDS about 90 percent are not in Short Creek anymore,' local Andrew Chatwin said in an exclusive clip shared with DailyMail.com.

A series of court rulings led local officials to retake control of the town out of the hands of the church.

'They've been told not to cooperate with the courts, and they would rather walk away from their homes than to cooperate,' Chartwin said.

A view today of Hildale, Utah pictured above showing how it's sparsely populated

In 2017 Hildale, Utah elected their first non-FDLS mayor in the town's 100-year history Donia Jessop and new businesses including bars started to open, such as this one above

However, there are still remnants of FLDS members such as this 'Pray and Obey' message on the facade of this Hildale home

How Short Creek used to look: Short Creek was once a silent, farming area dominated by FLDS church members. Under the reign of the Jeffs, men were seen surrounded by their multiple wives in head to toe traditional dresses and all activities revolved around the church

Today Short Creek is a far cry from the silent, farming town where men would be seen surrounded by their multiple wives in head to toe traditional dresses and all activities revolved around the church.

In 2017 Hildale, Utah elected their first non-FDLS mayor in the town's 100-year history Donia Jessop.

'It startin' to be a lot warmer. People wave to you. The fences are comin' down. What I've been tellin' people, we're livin' in the aftermath of the Jeffs'. And now we're here cleaning up and rebuilding,' Chatwin proudly said.

Unbreakable airs Friday at 9pm EST on Dateline NBC.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Research involving Queen Mary University of London suggests that currently the public should not fear contracting COVID-19 from hospital staff, who appear to be at low risk of infection by patients.

These are the early results from research with Barts Health and UCL. The initial findings, published in correspondence to The Lancet, show that infection among healthcare workers at present is more likely to reflect general community transmission than exposure within a hospital.

The researchers are collecting samples from over 400 staff at St Bartholomew's Hospital displaying no coronavirus symptoms. Blood tests and nasal swabs are taken at weekly intervals.

Because of strict Health and Safety Executive rules regarding the handling of infectious materials, the samples are being processed in a special containment laboratory at the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, which is normally used to study HIV.

This lab is supported by the Rosetrees Trust and The Medical College of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital Trust, and the sample processing is being performed by a small team of volunteers mainly composed of former postdoctoral scientists and current Ph.D. students, including Dr. Corinna Pade, Dr. Meleri Jones, Ph.D. student Mr. Joseph Gibbons and Dr. Wing-Yiu Jason Lee.

Aine McKnight, Professor of Viral Pathology at the Blizard Institute, who is leading the team, said: "Ideally, we need to take blood samples not only from people with infections, but also from people before they become infected and continue to sample them as they become infected and the disease progresses. Each sample would provide a snapshot of the virus's attack and the body's response to it.

"This will offer insights into which people develop the most severe infection, enable testing of promising new diagnostic methods, identify new targets for drug treatments and vaccines and improve our understanding into immunity and viral transmission.

"If we act quickly, we can capture the progression of COVID-19 in the volunteers, delivering a unique insight into the disease. But in the current phase of the pandemic that is a race against time."

Prof James Moon said: "Our research indicates that in the past 2-3 weeks, despite high numbers of patients with COVID-19 in our wards and intensive care units, rates of staff infection have fallen so much that it is unlikely the staff are being infected by patients.

"This low level of infection amongst healthcare staff should reassure patients and visitors that, as the pandemic recedes, infection from healthcare workers without symptoms is unlikely to present major risk."

With those NHS staff showing symptoms of COVID-19 self-isolating at home, the research found the proportion at work with the disease but no symptoms is very low.

The rate of asymptomatic infection amongst hospital staff fell from 7% to 1% after the UK-wide lockdown was introduced, in line with the general London population.

The research team believe the data reinforces the case for background population surveillance and regular testing of healthcare workers, switching to the testing of all staff, even with no symptoms, if general infection rates rise.

Prof Moon said: "Public fear of hospitals is currently high, with the risk that patients with serious and treatable diseases present too late to prevent adverse outcomes. Our findings show that currently the rate of asymptomatic infection among hospital staff more likely reflects general community transmission than in hospital exposure."

Prof Noursadeghi, from UCL, who is also involved in the research, said: "Tracking this epidemic will require ongoing monitoring of infection rates in both symptomatic and asymptomatic people in the general population. Our data suggest that routine screening of all health care workers without symptoms may not be necessary whilst infection rates in the general population are falling. If they begin to rise again, regular testing of health care workers irrespective of symptoms should be considered to protect these keyworkers and their patients."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

More information: Thomas A Treibel et al. COVID-19: PCR screening of asymptomatic health-care workers at London hospital, The Lancet (2020). Journal information: The Lancet Thomas A Treibel et al. COVID-19: PCR screening of asymptomatic health-care workers at London hospital,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31100-4
The size of the IMF financial support for Ukraine will not change, according to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry.

Considering the large-scale global financial and economic crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19 and general economic uncertainty about the duration and intensity of the pandemic, the IMF has changed its approach to the duration of programs with countries and offers to continue cooperation with Ukraine on a shorter Stand-By Arrangement, the ministry wrote on Facebook.

At the same time, negotiations with the International Monetary Fund are currently underway. The ministry noted that the programs modality (EFF or Stand-by) is still under discussion.

According to the ministry, the main difference between these programs is the term of their implementation: Stand-by is designed for 1.5 years, while EFF for 3 years.

The Ukrainian government plans to finalize negotiations with the IMF next week, the ministry stressed.

As Ukrinform reported, negotiations between the IMF and Kyiv aim not at securing a three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for Ukraine, but at achieving the conditions for launching the 18-month Stand-by Arrangement.

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In Retrospect: News from the Jan. 20, 1922 and Jan. 19, 1972 Souderton Independent
Photo: Contributed

During this pandemic, many of us are taking extra steps to disinfect our hands, countertops, tools and other objects. Not surprisingly, hoarders made this more difficult for all of us by clearing the shelves of hand sanitizer and many cleaning products.

In response, many people have taken to the internet to find ways to repurpose household products into disinfectants. But keep in mind that some of these household chemicals are hazardous materials that can react to form serious health hazards.

Unfortunately, the statistics show a recent increase in poisonings and exposures with chemicals such as bleach and hand sanitizers. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, two of the main exposures that have increased are inhalation of fumes from bleach and other cleaners, and alcohol poisoning in children under five years old from accidentally consuming hand sanitizer.

Photo: Figure from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Photo: Figure from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The alcohol poisoning in young children can be avoided by simply remembering that hand sanitizer is hazardous to our health and treating it as such. Now that breweries and other facilities have ramped up production of hand sanitizer, there will be more of it left within hands reach for ourselves, but unfortunately also in reach of small kids to sample. Hand sanitizer contains ethanol (the alcohol spirits), and it may also contain methanol (wood alcohol, a byproduct of fermentation that can harm us) and isopropyl alcohol (an ingredient added to discourage consumption of the ethanol). If you use a magnifying glasses and squint, you will see a label on every bottle of hand sanitizer that says KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

The story with household cleaners is a bit more interesting. To check if we are seeing more of these types of exposures in Canada, I called the BC Drug and Poison Information Centre. They told me that, yes, they are seeing an increase in exposures to household cleaners, but the cause is usually inappropriate mixing of household chemicals such as bleach and vinegar. Such household chemistry experiments cause all sorts of noxious fumes that are then inhaled. Moreover, these mixtures are unnecessary; the CDC has simple instructions to make disinfectants by mixing bleach and water on this web page.

In laboratories, we use fume hoods to suck fumes away from our faces, and we wear rubber gloves, lab coats and safety glasses when handling these chemicals. If you are mixing these chemicals at home (even with water), try to mimic these controls  work in a well-ventilated area (outdoors is best) and wear rubber gloves and safety glasses.

If you or others are accidentally exposed to any of these chemicals, call the BC DPIC at 1-800-567-8911 or 911. But lets take all the steps we can to avoid that in the first place.
As a row between West Bengal and the Centre over the states efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) escalates, officials of the Union government said on Friday that the region was failing to conduct adequate tests and grappling with confusion and mismanagement over identifying hot spots and containing them.

The Centre and the state government, led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, have exchanged allegations over the criteria for reporting deaths from the infection, and while While Bengal says the Centre is trying to politicise a public health crisis, the Union government maintains that state officials are ignoring repeated warnings to step up fight against the disease.

A Union government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the state was not even conducting 250 tests daily, as mandated by the Centre for Covid-19 hotspots, while neighbouring Odisha was testing between 500 to 1,000 people every day.

The state has 540 identified containment zones and 10 districts are falling in the red zone. Instead of sharpening focus on these zones, the West Bengal administration is quibbling over the number of containment areas alleging that the Centre is overestimating such areas, another senior Union official said, asking not to be named.

The Centre holds daily review meetings with different states on their Covid-19 preparedness. On Thursday, during the meeting with West Bengal, only one state official was absent, according to a person present at the meeting.

As district magistrates of the red zones did not attend the meeting, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan inquired if they would be joining at all, the person added on condition of anonymity. The lone West Bengal representative, Saumitra Mohan, MD of the National Health Mission, said he wasnt immediately able to contact the DMs.

Even as the Centre has started running special trains to send back stranded migrant workers to their states, the West Bengal government has not yet put in place any standard operating procedures (SOP) for the exercise, another official said. The issue was raised again on Thursday and Mohan was asked to convey the urgency for SOP to senior officials in the state.

The Centre also pointed out that a proper door-to-door scrutiny in the containment zones was not happening in the state. There were also reports of lax rules in sealing containment zones in many areas, especially in the congested areas of north Kolkata.

We have told them that it is of vital importance to conduct tests for Surveillance for Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI)/Influenza Like Illness (ILI), which should be intensified in unaffected districts and districts that have not reported cases for the last 14 days, said a senior official.

Leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state have argued that the Centre failed to send adequate numbers of Covid-19 testing kits, which resulted in low level of testing. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) maintains that there is no problem of testing kits supply to the state.

An interministerial central team (IMCT), which visited West Bengal to assess the Covid-19 situation recently, said there were discrepancies in reporting of cases in the state. In its final status report submitted to the West Bengal government, IMCT also raised questions on the state governments claim that it surveyed five million people.

A senior Union official said that due to the lack of cooperation from the state, the central team was forced to use Google Maps to find their way to hospitals or other spots for surveillance.

Despite repeated requests for a statement, Mohan did not offer any comment.

Trinamools general secretary Partha Chatterjee, however, has accused the Centre of politicising issues and warned the Centre against mixing politics with administration at a critical juncture in the public health crisis.

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Theres no question that predication existed for the FBI to talk to Flynn, said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency and the executive editor of Lawfare. I think this brief makes selective arguments as though they represent the totality of conditions, in order to make completely reasonable, fully supported investigative decisions seem as if they were illegitimate or even unlawful.
Following in the footsteps of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat on Friday announced that it was exempting projects from all but three labour laws in the state in an attempt to attract investment after the lockdown.

Except for laws pertaining to the payment of minimum wages, following safety norms and adequate compensation for workers in case of industrial accidents, no other provisions of the labour law would apply to all new companies that wish to operate in the state for at least 1,200 days, and for those that have already been operational for that period, Chief Minister ...
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) walks through Statuary Hall to the House Chamber for President Donald Trumps State of the Union address in the Capitol in Washington on Feb. 4, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

House Intelligence Committee Releases Transcripts From Russia Investigation

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released transcripts of interviews from its Russia investigation in 2017 and 2018 after House Republicans earlier in the week called for their release.

The committee released more than 6,000 pages of documents from its investigationa total of 57 transcripts from interviews, as well as additional relevant material.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the committees chairman, said in a statement that he believes the transcripts hold damning information and evidence.

The transcripts include interviews with President Donald Trumps associates, including his son Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner; former chief executive for the Trump campaign Steve Bannon; Roger Stone; Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale; and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

There were also interviews with figures linked to the Obama administration, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power; former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice; and former Obama counselor and Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta.

The transcripts release comes after Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees alleged that Chairman Schiff is blocking the release of these transcripts and called for access to them in a letter on May 5.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said in a letter to Schiff on May 4 that 53 transcripts can be released without any concerns of disclosing classified material.

Richard Grenell at Tegel airport in Berlin on May 31, 2019. (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

Grenell added that he was also willing to release the transcripts directly from his office to ensure we comply with the unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts. The 53 transcripts are now available on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) website.

At the bipartisan request of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence [HPSCI], the Intelligence Community reviewed all transcripts for classification and made appropriate redactions, Grenell told Fox News on Thursday. HPSCI voted unanimously in [September] 2018 to publicly release these transcripts, and it is long past time that these are released.

The House Intelligence Committee announced in January 2017 that it was investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, including possible links between Russia and any political campaigns. The committee concluded the probe in March 2018 after interviewing more than 73 witnesses and reviewing more than 300,000 documents, and said that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians, the committee said in its preliminary summary of the findings (pdf). The final report (pdf) of its Russia investigation was released in April 2018. The committee also said it agreed with the Intelligence Communitys assessment (pdf) that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections, but not with the idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a preference for then-candidate Donald Trump.

A separate investigation under former Special Counsel Robert Mueller that concluded in April 2019 also did not find evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

Prior Concerns Over Potentially Classified Material

Grenell noted in his May 4 letter to Schiff that the House committee sent the transcripts to the ODNI in November 2018 for an interagency classification review to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of classified information.

The ODNI did not share the transcripts with the White House during the classification review processthis accorded with Schiffs demand in March 2019 that under no circumstances must the transcripts be shared with the White House, President Trump, or any persons associated with the White House or president, Grenell noted.

In April 2019, the ODNI determined that certain transcripts had been identified as having White House equities that needed White house review, and long-established Executive Branch review procedures for both classified information and executive privilege interests require ODNI to refer these transcripts to the White House. By June 2019, the ODNI had identified that at least 10 transcripts may include information that implicate White House equities.

In a letter to Schiff in September 2019, the White House noted that it was very concerned about the House Intelligence Committees threat to release potentially classified material without appropriate Executive Branch review  Such a measure could risk exceptionally grave damage to the national security.

A House Intelligence Committee spokesman spoke to Fox News on Wednesday, accusing the ODNI of having carried out a protracted classification review.

It also appears the White House has now abandoned its improper insistence on reviewing key transcripts, which the Committee appropriately rejected, the spokesman said.

Read More House Intelligence Investigation Concludes No Collusion Between Trump and Russia
Securly Hits Key Milestone, Announces Free Student Safety Audit for all US School Districts These are thousand students that are alive today because of us.

24x7 Student Safety Monitoring

Securly was the first web filter in education to provide 24/7 monitoring of all students to assess their wellness and mental health levels. Securlys Filter and Auditor products allow the school district to monitor what kids are searching for on Google, saying to each other on Facebook, Twitter or email, watching on YouTube, browsing on the web or sharing via docs and drive. Filter and Auditor not only monitor and log activity, but also use sentiment analysis AI algorithms to scan and flag messages for signs of self-harm, bullying, violence, and suicidal thoughts. Once flagged, trained student safety analysts from the 24 operations team review and assess the messages for imminent danger of student distress. Alerts flagged by analysts as moderate to high risk are alerted to school districts with an email notification. When an alert is identified as extreme-risk, Securlys analysts call and text designated contacts from the district to alert them of the situation - enabling districts to intervene in real-time and in many cases, save a students life.

By the end of last year, Securly also enhanced its artificial intelligence algorithms with a proprietary At-Risk student wellness-scoring system. At-Risk Student Wellness Scores supplements Securlys offerings by providing a holistic view of each students online activity by analyzing students web searches, website URLs browsed, emails, social media posts, YouTube videos and searches, and more. From there, the algorithm compiles a comprehensive score for each student, across all these channels and over many weeks and months, giving a picture of their overall online wellness. The features algorithm operates at a speed that far surpasses human analysis, enabling Securly to pinpoint a single student out of thousands that needs immediate intervention and help, and alert schools and staff right away.

Key Student Safety Milestone - 1000 Lives Saved

Since it was announced back in September 2017, Securlys 24 service has now been deployed in hundreds of school districts across the country and has scanned over 150,000 flagged messages last year itself.

7 p.m. PT April 30th 2020:



Hwo to kill yourself because your parnets hate you?

My family is a mess and I want to kill myself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods

With the above activity alerts, Securlys 24 service saved its 1000th life - reaching a key milestone for cumulative total lives saved of students that were in the process of actively committing or planning a suicide.

I am personally very proud of this milestone as it represents a thousand lives that we were able to make a meaningful dent in - these are thousand students that are alive today because of us, said Kathy Boehl, Director of Securlys 24x7 student-safety operation.

Free Student Wellness Audits for All 130,000 Schools across United States

With May as the Mental Health Awareness Month, Securly is making available its 24 service, powered by the same At-Risk Student Wellness Scores technology, to perform a free audit for student wellness for all the school districts across United States.

School districts participating in the free audit will first be set up with Securlys Filter and Auditor product free trials to start monitoring and flagging activity across the district over a period of 30 days. During this period, the At-Risk algorithms will correlate AI triggered alerts across multiple channels for the entire school district and surface the most urgent incidents to the 24x7 team for immediate notifications to the participating districts. After this, student safety analysts from the 24 team will compile a customized report for the school district showing up to 30 days of student safety risks found - including cyberbullying, self-harm, violence, and abuse. Finally, one of Securlys student safety experts will schedule a call with the district to review the report and answer any questions the district may have.

Vinay Mahadik, co-founder and CEO of Securly, adds, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we were wondering how Securly could give school districts visibility into how bad the situation is out there, and show how technology can help preempt the next severe incident. The student safety audit is Securlys attempt at letting all the school districts across the country experience how human-assisted AI can keep their students safe.

School districts receive the student safety assessment for free, including a report and a call to review the findings with Securlys student safety experts.

The 30-day free audit is available to school districts by emailing 24-audit@securly.com

About Securly

Securly, the leader in K-12 student safety, has a mission to keep students safe and productive at school and at home. The company offers the most comprehensive end-to-end student safety and device management solution for K-12 districts. Wherever digital devices are used, Securlys cloud-based products work to filter content, manage apps, ensure compliance, alert schools to cyberbullying and self-harm, while engaging teachers, students, and parents. Securlys automation and AI sentiment analysis, combined with 24/7 human monitoring by trained safety experts, protect over 10 million students each day. Securly is headquartered in San Jose, California with offices across three continents.

For more information, visit https://www.securly.com


Arcadia Publishing, which specializes in books on local history, has acquired River Road Press, a publisher of books on New Orleans and the surrounding areas.

As part of the acquisition River Road Press founder and publisher Scott Campbell will join Arcadia and take over as publisher of its Pelican Publishing imprint, a New Orleans-based general publishing house founded in 1926, which was acquired by Arcadia Publishing in 2019. Prior to founding Road Press in 2014, Campbell worked as director of sales at Pelican for more than a decade.

The River Road and Pelican publishing programs are both noted for books focused on New Orleans, Louisiana and Southern culture and under the direction of Campbell, the River Road backlist will be merged with the Pelican Publishing list.

Campbell said, Having spent a decade at Pelican, I have the deepest appreciation for its unique role in New Orleans culture. Im gratified to be working again with the Pelican team, and Im looking forward to working closely with new colleagues at Arcadia.

Arcadia president and CEO David Steinberger noted that Campbell spent a big part of his career with Pelican. He added: I couldnt be more pleased that this innovative company will join with Pelican, which has such an esteemed legacy of publishing in New Orleans. Im delighted that Scott is rejoining us to lead Pelican Publishing forward.


MEXICO CITY  The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data.

The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nations biggest city and, by extension, the country at large.

But that has not happened. Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals in Mexico City say the reality of the epidemic is being hidden from the country. In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor, splayed on mattresses. Elderly people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds, while patients are turned away to search for space in less-prepared hospitals. Many die while searching, several doctors said.

Its like we doctors are living in two different worlds, said Dr. Giovanna Avila, who works at Hospital de Especialidades Belisario Dominguez. One is inside of the hospital with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is.
The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today conferred one of their newest honors, the Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Focused on the Care of Older Adults, on two experts:

Rasheeda Hall, MD, a board-certified nephrologist and assistant professor of medicine at Duke University; and

Kah Poh (Melissa) Loh, MBBCh, BAO, a board-certified internist, hematologist, and oncologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Following the cancellation of the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting due to COVID-19, Dr. Hall and Dr. Loh both will be presented with the Arti Hurria Memorial Award for their innovative research at the AGS 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21; May 13-15 in Chicago, Ill.).

"Dr. Arti Hurria, the namesake for this award, built so many important bridges between geriatrics and other specialties," notes Sunny Linnebur, PharmD, FCCP, FASCP, BCPS, BCGP, AGS board chair. "In forging connections not just to other specialties but also between researchers, clinicians, patients, and caregivers, Dr. Hall and Dr. Loh have built admirably on the legacy Dr. Hurria launched and the AGS continues to celebrate."

"Potentially Inappropriate Medications (PIMs) and Risk of Adverse Outcomes in Older Adults with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)" (Rasheeda Hall, MD)

For her research--now featured in a special supplement for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), Dr. Hall and colleagues from Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore evaluated a concern long central to geriatrics expertise: The risk for adverse outcomes when using potentially inappropriate medications, especially for older adults with chronic kidney disease.

The kidneys play a key role in helping our bodies process medicines, and chronic kidney disease can impede their work and increase the risk for adverse effects (the medical term for serious issues or side effects associated with medication). In their study, Dr. Hall's team looked at data from more than 3,900 adults enrolled in the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study to determine whether potentially inappropriate medications--so named because they may have an improper balance of benefits and harms for certain groups, including older adults--were associated with mortality, falls, hospitalization, or worsening chronic kidney disease.

The use of potentially inappropriate medication increased considerably with age: 58.5 percent of patients under 65 used one or more such medication, with figures rising to 64.2 percent for those between the ages of 65 and 70 and 69.5 percent for those 71-years-old or older. In all age groups, the most common potentially inappropriate medications (identified using the AGS Beers Criteria) were omeprazole, clonidine, and ibuprofen. In looking at patient data, Dr. Hall and her team also concluded that adults with chronic kidney disease taking multiple potentially inappropriate medications had increased risk for hospitalization, death, and falls irrespective of age.

A physician-scientist with expertise in geriatric nephrology, Dr. Hall has structured much of her career to design, test, and implement new models of care that target dialysis (a standard treatment for those with kidney failure). Dr. Hall has been awarded a Grant for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists' Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) award and a Paul B. Beeson Career Development Award, both from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). She also received a 2019 AGS Health in Aging Foundation New Investigator Award for work presented at a past AGS Annual Scientific Meeting.

"Association Between Caregiver-Oncologist Discordance in Length-of-Life Estimates for Patient and Caregiver Satisfaction" (Kah Poh Loh, BMedSci, MBBCh, BAO)

In her work also published in the JAGS supplement, Dr. Loh and colleagues from the University of Rochester in N.Y., Rutgers University in N.J., and Alfred Health in Australia looked at the unique connections between caregiver optimism, health professional pragmatism, and satisfaction with care in geriatric oncology. Links between the three are important: Caregiver confidence often leads to overestimates for a patient's length of life, which in turn can lead to frustration with the health system and dissatisfaction with the level of perceived support someone receives from a care team.

In their study, Dr. Loh and her team identified more than 380 pairs of caregivers and oncologists and asked them to estimate remaining lifespan for an older friend or family member receiving cancer care. Caregivers also completed a questionnaire regarding their satisfaction with the oncologist's communication at periodic intervals between four weeks and six months after the study began.

More than 270 pairs of caregivers and oncologists disagreed about a patient's estimated length of life. Interestingly, patient survival appeared to influence the effect discord had on caregiver satisfaction with an oncologist's communication. For patients who survived cancer treatment, caregivers still rated oncologist communication favorably, even when both parties disagreed about lifespan. Conversely, for patients who died, caregivers tended to report greater frustration with provider communication when the caregiver's lifespan estimate differed substantially from an oncologist's prediction.

As an oncologist, Dr. Loh is no stranger to these conversations--but, as a geriatric oncologist, her training and expertise reflect the nuances of how those conversations can change as we age. With a long-term goal of developing behavioral interventions to improve outcomes for older adults living with cancer affecting the blood, Dr. Loh has received considerable support for her work from noteworthy influencers in the U.S. and abroad, including the U.S. National Cancer Institute (K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award) and the prestigious Wilmot Cancer Institute (Wilmot Cancer Research Fellowship Award) at the University of Rochester.

Like Dr. Hall and Dr. Loh, Dr. Hurria--namesake of this award--championed AGS programs connecting colleagues outside geriatrics to the rewards of supporting health, safety, and independence for us all as we age. Dr. Hurria, who passed away in 2018, believed in the need to infuse geriatrics principles across all specialties. The Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Focused on the Care of Older Adults is one of several honors conferred by the AGS at its Annual Scientific Meetings. The award recognizes the accomplishments of junior and mid-career clinician-investigators in general internal medicine and its specialties. Chosen from hundreds of research presentations submitted to the AGS, the Hurria join our other award winners in representing healthcare leaders who champion care for older adults. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.

###

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for more than 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

The Health in Aging Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Who are Focused on the Care of Older Adults

Arti Hurria, MD, namesake of this award, joined the AGS in 2006 and championed some of our most influential programs connecting colleagues outside geriatrics to our principles, and to the rewards of supporting health, safety, and independence for us all as we age. Dr. Hurria, who sadly passed away in November 2018, believed in the need to infuse geriatrics into all specialties. She not only put that belief into action but also became a model for making it a priority across clinical care, research, and education. The Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Who are Focused on the Care of Older Adults recognizes the geriatrics-focused accomplishments of junior and mid-career clinician-investigators in general internal medicine and its specialties. Chosen from a review of hundreds of research presentations, the Hurria Awardee presents ground-breaking scholarship on the geriatrics aspects of their specialty in a special plenary session at the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting.

About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting

The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. Following the cancellation of the 2020 gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 3,000 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene next year from May 13-15 (pre-conference program on May 12), in Chicago, Ill., to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.
Punjab health and family welfare minister Balbir Singh Sidhu handed over 100 packets of homeopathic medicine to JR Chaudhary, president of Mohali Senior Citizen Council, on Friday.

Balbir Singh Sidhu, Punjab health and family welfare minister (ht file photo)

The packets consisted doses of homeopathic medicine Arsenium Album 30, recommended by the National Advisor Indian Institute of Homeopathic Physicians (IIHP).

Last week, Punjab government had issued an advisory which recommended using Arsenium Album 30 for three days to boost the immunity amid the Covid-19 pandemic. It had also directed all the Government Homeopathic Dispensaries in the state to distribute the medicine among the public.

Sidhu said, Providing best healthcare to the senior citizens is our priority. Also, the IIHP had distributed over 3.5 lakh bottles in a week.
A number of organizations have stepped in to fill the void. The first and best known is the Innocence Project, which initially focused on innocence that can be proven through DNA testimony. Other nonprofit groups have joined this effort, some of which take on cases involving false eyewitness testimony  like Mr. Elkings  or discredited theories like arson science or shaken-baby syndrome.

Over the last decade, prosecutors offices themselves have stepped in by creating conviction integrity units, which investigate convictions obtained by their own offices. This movement is not a red-state or blue-state phenomenon: a number of the earliest and most active offices were in Texas, and they now exist in a majority of states.

Five months ago, I quit my own job as a federal prosecutor to found St. Louis Countys version of a conviction integrity unit, which we call the Conviction and Incident Review Unit. In the three months since weve started accepting applications, we have received dozens, and it is with a sinking heart that I recognize that we will soon have hundreds. The amount of hours it will take to review and investigate them is staggering, but my team and the prosecutor who heads my office, Wesley Bell, are committed to seeking justice.

In a development that may surprise some, I have received nothing but support from the other prosecutors whose offices line the hallway where I sit  or used to sit, before we were all confined to our houses. The vast majority of prosecutors, like the vast majority of police officers, know that the conviction of an innocent man, or a conviction obtained through perversion of the justice system, hurts all of us. On my second day, my next-door office neighbor brought me flowers.

And yet, there is a void at the top. The Department of Justice  with one narrow, geographic exception  does not have an entity to investigate wrongful convictions in the federal system. (The U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia, which serves as the local prosecutor for Washington, D.C., does have such an office.)

Now, is it possible that federal prosecutors are simply more careful, and dont need a conviction integrity unit because they never wrongfully convict anyone? As a former federal prosecutor, I would love to believe in my own infallibility. (Many of us already do, as the joke goes.)

But many or most wrongful convictions are not a result of deliberate misconduct or lack of care or judgment. They are the result of witnesses who lie or who are never found, of defendants who plead guilty out of fear of a long prison sentences, or of missed or misunderstood evidence that only now has come to light because of new technology.
IDEXX-Made OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RNA PCR Test Kit Secures FDA Emergency Use Authorization

By HospiMedica International staff writers

Posted on 08 May 2020



Image: Illustration of a 2019-novel coronavirus (nCoV) virion (Photo courtesy of Alissa Eckert, MS/CDC).

IDEXX Laboratories, Inc.s (Westbrook, ME, USA) subsidiary, OPTI Medical Systems, Inc. (Roswell, GA, USA), has been granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the US FDA for its OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR laboratory test kit for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.



The OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test kit is based on real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which provides detection of the viral RNA in the sample. It is designed for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA extracted from nasopharyngeal swabs, oropharyngeal swabs, bronchoalveolar lavage and sputum samples. The OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test kit detects human RNase P as an internal sample control and endogenous nucleic acid to control for sample addition, extraction and amplification. The test kit provides results in approximately 23.5 hours and has been validated on commonly available qPCR instruments by the Institut Pasteur of France.



"OPTI Medical Systems, IDEXX's medical diagnostics business, can now support critical medical COVID-19 testing efforts, enabled by IDEXX's extensive expertise in PCR test development and manufacturing. We have validated the OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test kit with existing laboratory customers and are advancing our initial distribution to select certified laboratories using common PCR platforms," said Olivier te Boekhorst, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of OPTI Medical Systems, IDEXX Water, and IDEXX Livestock, Poultry and Dairy.



"The OPTI SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Test has an easy workflow with simple pipetting steps, making high throughput testing easy for medical technologists to perform. This minimizes errors and allows for effortless scalability," said Dr. Hayley Webber, Technical Director, Molecular Diagnostics at NorDx Laboratories.



"This advancement is a true reflection of our talented global team coming together and leveraging innovation across our organization to bring a diagnostic solution to support COVID-19 testing during this unprecedented pandemic," said Jay Mazelsky, President and Chief Executive Officer of IDEXX Laboratories.






After Prime Minister Scott Morrison released his three-step plan for relaxing coronavirus restrictions on Friday, almost all states announced moves to get life back to normal.

But leaders in Victoria and New South Wales, the nation's most populated states, refused to make changes and said most rules will be in place until June - even though there have only been four coronavirus deaths across Australia in the past week.

Their stubbornness means more than half of Australians are still banned from leaving their homes (except for 'essential' reasons) under some of the toughest restrictions in the world.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejilkian said she 'wouldn't be making any changes for the weekend' no matter what national cabinet agrees.

Instead, she intends to release her plan on Sunday, which won't be in place until Friday. These include having five visitors over, rather than two, and opening cafes and restaurants for up to ten customers at a time.

But why the delay?

With one million jobs lost and the economy bleeding $4billion a week, premiers Daniel Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian need to realise there is no higher priority than ending lockdown.

One million Australians are depending on state leaders to relax lockdowns so they can work once more. Pictured: Centrelink queues

It will be up to the states and territories to decide when outdoor gatherings can resume. Pictured: Surfers' Paradise

A 'roadmap' showing the way out of lockdown was presented to Australians on Friday. Pictured: Volleyball on Sydney's Bondi Beach in March

Ms Berejiklian's decision to gradually restart NSW schools from Monday is welcome - but the firm belief of the nation's top doctors is they should never have been closed in the first place.

Cafes and restaurants, which the federal treasurer wants open as soon as possible, will be allowed just 10 patrons at a time, making it nonviable for many to re-open.

Outbreaks are not a reason to slow things down Prime Minister Scott Morrison

It seems the state government which all but destroyed Sydney's after-dark economy with the 2014 lockout laws is finishing what it started.

The outlook is even bleaker in Victoria where fishing is still banned and family members living apart are prevented from visiting each other.

Labor Premier Andrews, whose party is backed by powerful teachers unions, has even refused to let children go back to school, causing untold damage to their education and keeping parents from work.

The federal education minister's accusation that he showed weak leadership over schools foreshadows further clashes with the Australian government if he refuses to relax restrictions fast enough.

Swimmers are seen at the Nightcliff Swimming Pool in Darwin. The Northern Territory allowed outdoor non-contact sport from May 1

Under the first step, gatherings of up to ten people will be allowed and cafes and restaurants can re-open with a maximum of ten people at one time

With one million jobs lost and the economy bleeding $4billion a week, premiers Daniel Andrews (left) and Gladys Berejiklian (right) need to urgently prioritise ending lockdown

It is true that both states have recently suffered local outbreaks - at a carehome in Sydney and an abattoir in Melbourne.

But as the Prime Minister said today: 'Outbreaks are not a reason to slow things down. Outbreaks are going to happen.'

Properly managing inevitable clusters is part of the national plan to end lockdown, so they cannot be used as an excuse for delay.

And both premiers should stop referencing the death toll in the US and the UK as a scare tactic to keep Australians in their homes and make themselves look good.

The comparison is false.

With a vastly lower population density, warmer weather and more hospital beds per person, the virus was never going to affect Australia as badly as those countries.

Even Australia's biggest city, Sydney, is around 80 times less densely populated than New York and around 15 times less than London.

The lockdowns - together with shutting the borders - have been crucial to Australia's success in flattening the curve and buying time to build up the health system.

But now we have enough masks, ventilators and beds, and have significantly suppressed the virus, the lockdowns have served their purpose.

Mr Morrison's plan to have a COVID-safe economy by July will get 850,000 Australians back to work - but only if state leaders comply.

If they do not, it is the ordinary working Australians - not the six-figure politicians or their public servants - who will suffer.

As one Daily Mail Australia reader said: 'It's easy for people making good money to say stay at home. But if I can't work, I can't feed my kids.'

It's time to think about the waitresses, the flight attendants and shop workers who've had their lives turned upside down.

It's time to move towards an end of lockdown.
The United States on Friday prevented a vote in the UN Security Council on a resolution on the coronavirus pandemic, apparently because it made implicit mention of the World Health Organization, diplomats said.

The text, under negotiation since March, called for a worldwide cessation of hostilities in conflict zones so governments can address the pandemic.

The United States blocked a procedure that would have led to a vote on the resolution, the diplomats said.

President Donald Trump has been sharply critical of the WHO over what he calls its mishandling of the global health crisis and suspended US funding of the UN agency.
Major Anuj Sood, scholar and daredevil soldier, had finished his Kashmir tenure and would have been home had COVID-19 not come in the way.

He did not live to be old enough, but he lived the soldier's life to the fullest, reveals Archana Masih/Rediff.com.

IMAGE: Akriti Sood, Major Anuj Sood's wife, holds the Tricolour at her husband's funeral in Chandigarh, May 5, 2020. Photograph: PTI Photo

Major Anuj Sood was in the habit of excelling.

He excelled in school, then at the National Defence Academy and in all the courses he undertook in his eight-year journey in the Indian Army.

When he lost his mother to cancer in 2011 in the final term at the NDA in Khadakvasla, he went home for a few days for the funeral. On his return, he immersed himself in training and went on to better his performance.

Even as a trainee-cadet at the academy, he was already an accomplished second-generation army officer -- he stood out in training, academics and conduct. He was a stickler for rules to the point of exhaustion.

He was called the 'feedback machine'. Whenever instructors asked for feedback, he would be the first to answer.

Not only was he a topper in academics throughout the six-terms -- which ex-NDA graduates would agree is no easy feat -- he was good at drill and was part of the equestrian team.

On the glorious day when he graduated from the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun, he marched out as the parade's senior under officer.

Always amongst the top band of performers, it was only natural that he had the privilege to select the regiment of his choice. The young officer chose the Brigade of the Guards, one of Indian Army's oldest and most decorated regiments.

IMAGE: From left: Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh and Lance Naik Dinesh, all from the Brigade of Guards regiment, and Jammu and Kashmir Police Sub-Inspector Shakeel 'Qazi' Pathan. Photograph: PTI Photo

Last Saturday, May 2, the young Major made the supreme sacrifice alongside his Commanding Officer, Colonel Ashutosh Sharma, Naik Rajesh, Lance Naik Dinesh from the Guards Regiment and Sub Inspector Shakeel 'Qazi' Pathan of the J&K Police.

For a nation already reeling under an unprecedent health crisis, the news brought greater shock.

The pictures of the two wives gnawed the soul. Mrs Sharma saluted her husband with her head held high, eyes shut tightly to hold back tears. Mrs Aakriti Sood lovingly looked at her husband for the last time as he lay inside the coffin.

Commanding Officer Colonel Sharma and Company Commander Major Anuj Sood launched a search and cordon operation as soon as being informed about a hostage situation in Changimulla village in Handwara.

The men had to quickly move into the village where two terrorists had held a family hostage inside a two-storied house.

Counter-terrorism operations inside built-up areas are among the most difficult missions. Speed is of essence.

"In conventional warfare, secrecy is critical because you need to move troops to a particular point and time is on your side. Here, it is not so. If you delay, civilians lose lives," says a soldier who has had his boots on the ground in the Kashmir Valley.

Military scholars dealing with terrorism will plainly tell you that if the people are not on your side and don't feel strongly for a cause, terrorism can never be eliminated however many bullets and weapons you use.

"That essence has been taught to troops engaged in counter-terrorism. Indian soldiers have always helped people at the peril of their own lives," says the soldier.

That May evening in Handwara, Indian soldiers did that to the peril of their lives to rescue civilian lives.

Major Sood had been deputed for two-and-a-half years to the Rashtriya Rifles, a counter-terrorism force deployed in Kashmir.

It has several battalions drawn from different regiments of the Indian Army. Officers and men are deployed into the Rashtriya Rifles after induction training where they are taught nuances of operating in terrorist-infested terrain in high altitudes and at sub-zero temperatures.

The situation is difficult, dangerous and delicate, sometimes exacting a heavy price from the Indian Army as it guards the Line of Control to prevent Pakistani terrorists from crossing over into India.

The melting of the snow in the summer opens up blocked infiltration routes and hots up the LoC. The maximum infiltration attempts take place in the summer months.

Hundreds of terrorists cross the LoC in repeated attempts with many dying in the bargain when confronted by the Indian Army, but a handful succeed in getting through.

Life is of no consequence to these cadres and their leadership Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain, one of the most experienced generals to operate in the Valley with a deep understanding of Kashmir, wrote on Rediff.com on the evening of the Handwara operation.

IMAGE: Akriti Sood, Major Anuj Sood's wife, mourns near his coffin during his funeral. Photograph: PTI Photo

Pakistan-bred and trained terrorists, usually as young as 17 or 18, dangerously radicalised, pumped up with drugs, cross over to J&K to play out Pakistan's diabolic, dirty and bloody designs.

This year alone, over 50 terrorists have been eliminated by Indian security forces.

The operation to rescue hostages in Handwara had continued for one-and-a-half days. In the true ethos of the Indian Army, the commanding officer and company commander led from the front.

After engaging with the terrorists from outside, the team entered a cowshed adjacent to the house after a considerable lull in gunfire. They came under heavy fire after rescuing the civilians and all communication link was lost.

Two days later, the fallen soldiers were cremated with military honours, their sacrifice upholding the traditions of their battalion.

All officers serve tenures in Kashmir. The core of the Rashtriya Rifles is comprised of such young officers who cut their teeth while serving in dangerous field postings along the LoC.

Soldiers who have served in the Valley will tell you how they hold their field postings in J&K closest to their hearts.

"Kashmir is very addictive. It is a love-hate relationship, more love than hate. It is a toxic love. Someone who has bled there, sweated there, walked the entire mountains, drunk the water of the Jhelum can only know how deep that emotional attachment is. You feel for the people, you feel for the land. It is amazing," says a soldier with long experience of serving in the Kashmir Valley.

IMAGE: Major Anuj Sood's family members at his funeral. Photograph: PTI Photo

Major Anuj Sood, scholar and daredevil soldier, had finished his Kashmir tenure and would have been home had COVID-19 not come in the way.

He had been posted to his unit in Gurdaspur and had looked forward to spending time with his wife who had resigned her job in Pune to be with him.

The couple had spent a total of two-and-half months together after their marriage in 2017 after which he was posted to Kashmir.

"He was a daredevil and his professional acumen commanded a lot of respect from his jawans," remembers a friend.

In an Instagram post, Major Anuj wrote what a soldier's life meant to him.

'When you are older, the only thing that matters is that you had courage and honour. Lose those things and you won't die any quicker, but you will be less than the dirt on your boots. You will still be dust, but you will have wasted your short time in the light.'

Major Anuj Sood did not live to be old enough, but he lived the soldier's life to the fullest.
OWOSSO, MI -- People on Thursday gathered in support of Karl Manke, the Owosso barber who has made headlines recently for continuing to cut hair in defiance of Gov. Gretchen Whitmers executive order to remain closed due to coronavirus concerns.

Although most protesters were Owosso residents, others travelled from different counties to attend. Rebecca Mead, of Flint, came to gift Manke a donation of an unknown amount.

If my grandpa (who is a veteran) was alive today, he would have had me drive him here to get a haircut, said Mead. So I did it in honor of my grandpa and in support of Karl, (also) a former vet.

More than two dozen protesters waved their American flags to the sound of patriotic tunes and blaring horns from cars passing by.

I feel like Im in prison, said Muskegon resident Renea Knight, 48. As (a person) who was in the military, I know what its like to obey authority and for the first two months we did exactly what (politicians) asked us to do.

Manke stayed inside the barbershop where he continued to cut hair.

For more background on Manke, read the stories below:

Owosso barber confirms he was ticketed by police for opening shop
Unable to wait for the pandemic to end and seeing revenue drop to zero, businesses have been trying every method to earn money in the Covid-19 crisis.

Prior to Tet, the farm of Phan Tan in Dong Thap province, could bring revenue of VND4-5 billion a month from the sale of poultry eggs. But since February, Tan has incurred a loss of VND2 billion a month because of Covid-19.





I think I can hold out for two more months. After that, I will have to stop farming if the epidemic continues, Tan said.



Tans poultry farm is one of the 10 biggest in the Mekong Delta, providing 50,000 fowls and ducks a month to the market.

Of this, 70 percent is exported to China. But the market has stopped consuming Tans products since the Covid-19 outbreak. Tan still has to collect products from local farmers under contracts he signed with them before.

Unable to wait for the pandemic to end and seeing revenue drop to zero, businesses have been trying every method to earn money in the Covid-19 crisis.

Many farms have stopped operation because of big losses. Some of them reported a loss of VND4-5 billion, he said. Fortunately, I decided to scale down the fowl herd in February. This helps me exist."

Duy Tan Plastics, one of the biggest household-use plastics manufacturers, has also suffered heavily from Covid-19.



When the epidemic broke out in China, Duy Tans managers were not worried about the companys prospects because it imports materials from South Korea and other markets. However, things became worse when the epidemic broke out in South Korea.



Meanwhile, domestic demand has decreased as people are buying mostly essential goods. Duy Tan began facing difficulties in 2019, when domestic consumers tried to restrict the use of plastic products to protect the environment. The situation has become worse because of Covid-29.



Most enterprises have been hit hard by the epidemic. A survey by the Committee for Private Economic Sector Development (Committee IV) of 1,200 enterprises in different business fields found that 74 percent of enterprises may go bankrupt if the epidemic lasts six months.



Dang Hong Anh, chair of the Vietnam Young Entrepreneur Association, said businesses need to escape the holding mode, or they wont be able to exist.



Anh said if businesses have minus profits, they will have to use reserve funds to maintain cash flow.

They need to survive the crisis, because if they lose capital and lose liquidity, they will lose everything. They also need to prepare resources to recover in the post-crisis period. If they dont have resources, they will miss opportunities.



Nguyen Van Than, chair of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said the association and its members are cooperating with agencies to maintain production, seek new markets and material supply sources, and minimize dependence on one market.

Kim Chi

Losses a roadblock to SCIC divestment plans at Quang Ninh Thermal Power The losses reported by Quang Ninh Thermal Power JSC will make it harder for State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) to divest the company this year.
The Bombay High Court on Friday



directed the Nagpur district collector and the Maharashtra government to hear and decide expeditiously representations made by liquor shop owners seeking permission to open their establishments in the city amid the lockdown for the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Justice R B Deo of HC's Nagpur bench was hearing a petition filed by an association of wine merchants and liquor shop owners challenging an order passed by the Nagpur district collector prohibiting sale of liquor.

The petition, filed by the Maharashtra Wine Merchants Association, said liquor shops across the country have been allowed to operate while it is still not being permitted in Nagpur as the civic body has issued a notification imposing revised lockdown norms here on par with Mumbai and Pune regions.

The petition said the notification issued by Centre on May 2 permitted standalone shops and liquor shops to remain open, except in containment areas.

"However, on May 3, the Nagpur civic body issued a notification directing for a revised lockdown to be imposed in the city on par with Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Pune Metropolitan Region. Based on this, on May 4, the district collector and the state excise department issued an order restricting the sale of liquor within the city," the petition said.

The petitioner's advocate, Shyam Dewani, on Friday informed the court that the state excise commissioner has permitted the opening of liquor shops, subject to enforcement of strict norms of social distancing.

Dewani sought permission to withdraw the petition and file representation before the state government and the Nagpur district collector.

The court permitted this and directed the petitioner to file the representation within a day and said the same shall be decided by the concerned authorities expeditiously and by May 12.

The petition had sought for the restriction order to be quashed and for a direction to allow the petitioner members to open their liquor shops.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The five southern states source 10-15 per cent of their revenue from excise duty on liquor but account for nearly half of the total consumption, a report said.

The financial position of these states is precarious as the coronavirus lockdown completely dried up this crucial liquidity tap for them in April.

The five southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala together consume as much as 45 per cent of all liquor sold in the country, the report by Crisil said.

"The denizens of this quintet quaff as much as 45 percent of all liquor sold in the country annually. But not a drop was sold in April, and given the dire state of their revenues, these states have been anxious to make good the losses by opening up the vends," it said.

While Tamil Nadu and Kerala top the list in revenue percentage terms at 15 per cent each, for Kerala the tax on liquor is its single largest revenue source.

The revenue share is 11 per cent each for Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and 10 per cent for Telangana, shows the report. Delhi is at number three when it comes to liquor revenue share with 12 per cent of tax revenue, but its citizens swig only 4 per cent of the national intake.

Tamil Nadu has another distinction -- it is the single largest consumer of liquor in the country, guzzling as much 13 per cent of national sales, closely followed by Karnataka with 12 per cent.

Andhra quaffs 7 per cent of the national intake, followed by Telangana (6 per cent) and Kerala (5 per cent). While all other states have high population, when it comes to Kerala, despite being home to only 3.3 crore people, it draws the highest revenue because among the five states it charges the highest tax rate on liquor.

However nationally, Maharashtra charges the highest rate, but draws only 8 per cent of its tax revenue from liquor -- primarily because it is the most industrialised state and has many other sources of income -- and also consumes only 8 per cent of the national intake despite being the second most populous state.

Twelve states -- the five southern ones, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan -- account for 75 per cent of liquor consumption in the country.

But uncorking the bottled spirit will also be a problem for these 12 states as they contribute to more than 85 per cent of all COVID-19 infections/deaths as well.

Maharashtra alone contributes 31.2 percent of all cases, followed by Delhi (10 per cent), Tamil Nadu (7.6 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (7 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (5.9 per cent).

Among these 12 states, Kerala has the lowest national average in this at under-1 per cent, the report said. Maharashtra shuttered liquor vends in Mumbai and the rest of MMR region after opening them for a day earlier this week.
New Delhi, May 8 : With the number of coronavirus cases in the country climbing to 56,342 on Friday, the Union Health Ministry said that "we have to learn to live with the virus" and that "it is a difficult battle, we need everyone's cooperation".

Addressing mediapersons, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary at the Health Ministry, said, "We have to learn to live with the virus. We need to introduce certain behavioural changes to implement these (social distancing) practices." The response from the Health Ministry came after a sudden spurt in the number positive cases in the past few days when the tally crossed the 3,000-mark each day.

"A total of 3,390 new cases and 103 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours till 8 a.m. on Friday," Agarwal said.

Responding to a query over AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria's recent comment that Covid-10 cases will peak in India in June-July, Agarwal said, "If we follow the required dos and don'ts, we may not reach the peak in number of cases and our curve may continue to remain flat." According to the Health Ministry, 16,540 Covid-19 patients, which is about 29.36 per cent of the total cases, have recovered so far, while in the past 24 hours, 1,273 people have been cured.

The total number of confirmed cases in India is 56,342. Out of this, 37,916 are active cases while 1,886 people have succumbed to the dreaded virus so far.

"In 216 districts, no positive case has been detected. In 42 districts. no new case has been detected in the last 28 days, while 29 districts have not reported any case in the last 21 days," the Health Ministry said.

It added that 3.2 per cent of the total active cases are on oxygen support, 4.2 per cent in ICUs and 1.1 per cent on ventilator support.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Cadila Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest privately held pharma companies in the country, shut down its formulations manufacturing plant in Ahmedabad on Thursday after more than two dozen of its employees tested positive for the new coronavirus.

A senior government official said late on Thursday that five employees had tested positive for COVID-19 six days back, while 21 others tested positive this week.

"We had collected samples of 30 employees of Cadila on May 5, and 21 of the samples returned positive a day later," said Arun Mahesh Babu, the District Development Officer of Ahmedabad.

He added the plant was ordered to be shut down on Thursday, 95 employees had been quarantined and sanitization work at the site had begun.

The incident comes just days after India began to ease some of its lockdown restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the new coronavirus. Ahmedabad, however, is one of the more badly affected cities in India and has moved to tighten restrictions this week.

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 a statement, Cadila Pharmaceuticals said, "Recently, 26 of our employees from our Dholka manufacturing facility tested positive for COVID-19. Following this, we have closed our operations on our own."

The company also said it is cooperating with the local administration to ensure the safety and security of its facility and surroundings.

Besides Dholka, Cadila Pharmaceuticals has manufacturing facilities in other parts of India and in Ethiopia. The company is a major producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) - the key ingredients used in making a drug.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-07 23:04:00|Editor: huaxia

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TOKYO, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Coronavirus cases in Japan increased by 95 to 15,574, with the pace of new infections showing signs of slowing, according to the latest figures from the health ministry and local authorities Thursday evening.

The figures included 23 new infections in the capital, with the Tokyo metropolitan government confirming the number has remained below 100 for a fifth successive day, dropping well below the April 17 peak of 201 cases.

The nationwide death toll from the pneumonia-carrying virus now stands at a total of 603, including those from a cruise ship that was quarantined in Yokohama near Tokyo, the latest figures showed.

In a bid to reduce the spread of infections, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday extended the nationwide state of emergency until the end of May.

Abe said Wednesday that he will consult with experts on May 14 and consider if the emergency period can be lifted at an earlier juncture based on varying factors including the rate of new infections and the capacity of the health care system.

The Japanese leader also said that the government is trying to come up with an "exit strategy" from the restrictions imposed on the public as a result of the virus pandemic amid rising calls from the public for such a plan to be announced expeditiously.

Some local prefectures, however, have expedited this process for their regions and crafted their own roadmaps.

Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura said earlier this week that the region has seen the spread of the virus slowing down due to the efforts over the past month of the people.

He said his prefecture will offer an "Osaka model" as an alternative to the central government's yet-to-be-confirmed exit strategy, so the people would have a clear "target" to work towards for the further easing of restrictions.

The Osaka model, Yoshimura explained, mandates that the number of new virus cases with unclear infection routes should drop to below 10 per day, while the rate of positive test results remain under 7 percent. In addition, the beds available in hospitals for people with severe symptoms of the virus should not top 60 percent capacity.

If the three conditions are met for seven straight days, the Osaka prefectural government will decide on May 15 whether to lift restrictions and allow businesses to reopen in a phased manner.

Whereas Osaka has a clear model for lifting restrictions put in place under the state of emergency, widely seen as a psychological boost for the people in the prefecture, Tokyo, meanwhile, although the infection rate has dropped, is lagging behind in making clear its exit strategy.

"It is not easy to find the way out and we should never let down our guard or get caught napping. It is our responsibility to draw a roadmap for the future, balancing both human life and the economy," Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Tuesday.

As for Tokyo, still the epicenter of Japan's outbreak, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased to 4,771 confirmed infections, accounting for more than one-third of all COVID-19 cases across the nation, followed by Osaka Prefecture with 1,706 infections.

Kanagawa Prefecture, meanwhile, has recorded 1,141 infections, Saitama Prefecture 932 infections, Hokkaido Prefecture 928 infections, while Chiba Prefecture has recorded 867 cases of COVID-19, according to the latest figures Thursday evening.

The health ministry also said there are currently a total of 304 patients considered severely ill and are on ventilators to receive respiratory assistance or have otherwise been admitted to intensive care units for medical treatment.

The ministry also said that in total, 5,797 people have been discharged from hospitals after their symptoms improved, according to Thursday evening's figures. Enditem
The first batch of 54 Haryana residents stranded in Singapore due to the Covid-19 situation arrived at New Delhis Indira Gandhi International airport Friday morning.

The Air India flight (AI381) from Singapore had 234 passengers onboard, all of whom were found asymptomatic during the screening at the airport, officials said.

As many as 67 returnees, including four from Punjab, five from Rajasthan, three from Chattisgarh and one from Orissa were quarantined in Haryana.

As many as 132 were quarantined at New Delhi and 35 sent to Uttar Pradesh. The second flight (AI 1242) with 165 on board including Haryana residents from Dhaka in Bangladesh will arrive at New Delhi on May 9 afternoon (3 pm). The third flight (AI 926) from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia carrying 145 passengers, including Haryana residents, will arrive on May 10 at 8 pm.
Lately, the most-blocked terms pertain to the virus. Blacklisting during the pandemic has kept more than 1.3 billion ads from being displayed next to content featuring the word coronavirus on websites, according to the ad verification firm Integral Ad Science. That has had a devastating effect on ad-dependent news organizations, many of which have been forced to lay off workers at a time when the pandemic has dominated coverage.
Burma Myanmar Muslims Jailed For COVID-19 Rules Breach

Tapae Mosque in Mandalay has been closed since early April like many other places of worship in the city. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

Mandalay  Chanmyatharzi Township Court in Mandalay has sentenced 12 Muslim men to three months imprisonment for defying the ban on gatherings amid COVID-19 preventive measures.

U Kyaw Zwa Lin, the spokesman for the court, said the men were gathered at a house in Aung Pin Lae, Chanmyatharzi Township, in April for prayers.

Twelve adults were sentenced to three months imprisonment under the Natural Disaster Management Laws Article 30(a). They were sent to Obo prison, said U Kyaw Zwa Lin.

According to the court, the prayer service was organized by Aung Pin Lae residents, who were arrested on April 10.

Two under-18s in the group were transferred to the childrens court.

The Natural Disaster Management Law carries jail terms of up to one year.

In Tanintharyi Region, the authorities are seeking legal advice from the courts to charge the organizers of a funeral of a 83-year-old Buddhist monk of Sinphyu village in Yebyu Township.

The funeral in early April was attended by over 200 residents.

As of Friday morning, Myanmar has had 176 coronavirus cases with six deaths. The government has been encouraging people to stay at home where possible and urging the use of face masks and social distancing when they go out. The government has banned gatherings of more than five people until May 15 to curb the spread of coronavirus.

In Yangon, the two Christian pastors and their followers who held a religious gathering are facing the same charges since April 14.

At the service organized by the pastors, at least 80 people, including Pastor Saw David Lah, tested positive for coronavirus and there have been two deaths.

You may also like these stories:

Military, Govt and Private Medics Staff Makeshift COVID-19 Hospital in Myanmar

Health Certificates Required to Enter Mandalay Religious Sites as Myanmar Struggles With COVID-19

Myanmar Pastors Face Prosecution for Defying Ban on Religious Gatherings Amid COVID-19
A sign in St. Matthew's Thrift Shop along Main Street in Santa Monica. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Most big California counties are not close to meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom's strict standards that would allow a wider reopening of the economy, including dine-in restaurants and shopping malls, a Times data analysis found.

Newsom announced Thursday a series of benchmarks each of California's 58 counties would need to reach to significantly reopen faster than the statewide standard. Can the county show that people have stopped dying from the coronavirus? Have new cases fallen to a manageable level? Can officials adequately test people? Do they have enough detectives to track down newly infected people? And do they have enough medical supplies?

The Times conducted an analysis to see which counties could pass just the first two criteria  whether deaths have stopped in the past 14 days, and whether there is no more than one case per 10,000 residents in that same time period. Most of California failed that test.

In fact, 95% of Californians live in counties that don't meet that standard, The Times analysis found. Not a single county in Southern California nor the San Francisco Bay Area met the criteria.

The 24 counties that did meet the criteria, for the two-week period that ended Thursday, are all in Northern California and most are sparsely populated.

The three largest counties meeting both criteria are Placer County, population 380,000, northeast of Sacramento; Santa Cruz County, population 274,000, south of San Jose; and Butte County, population 227,000, in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada.

With the exception of Santa Cruz County, all 24 counties are north of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and the Yosemite Valley.

Only 2 million of California's 39.1 million residents live in these counties.

The failure of most California counties to meet the criteria demonstrates just how persistent the coronavirus is in the Golden State's most populous areas. The Times analysis found that 92% of Californians live in counties that in the last two weeks have recorded at least one death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Story continues

The criteria need to be met only by counties wanting to move faster than the statewide pace of reopening. While California entered the first part of Phase 2 of Newsom's reopening plan Friday, its effect statewide was limited  only allowing lower-risk businesses to open for curbside pickup, like florists and stores selling books, clothes, music, toys and sporting goods. The easing applied only to counties without stricter local rules.

Counties that meet the criteria in the latter part of Phase 2 could allow people to dine inside restaurants and head into malls.

Newsom suggested Friday that the guidelines would be later modified on a statewide basis, allowing larger counties hit hardest by the outbreak to also reopen more broadly.

"Over the next few weeks, we'll be making subsequent announcements for the entire state, not just those that meet those more restrictive criteria," Newsom said.

California has recorded more than 63,000 cases and more than 2,600 deaths. Urban areas have seen a greater toll than many smaller communities.

Los Angeles County, California's most populous and home to one-quarter of the state's population, has suffered the highest death toll of any county for the last two weeks. Its 622 deaths were 61% of all the deaths recorded in California from COVID-19 during that time period. Another 51 deaths were reported in L.A. County on Friday.

Riverside County comes up second, recording 92 fatalities in the past two weeks. Riverside County's health officer, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, has been locked in a contentious standoff with some other county officials who are demanding he rescind orders requiring people to wear facial coverings in public and stay at least six feet away from others.

Nine other counties had death tolls in the double digits over the last two weeks: San Diego County, with 65; Santa Clara County, 32; Orange County, 30; San Bernardino County, 31; Alameda County, 21; San Mateo County, 17; Tulare County, 18; Stanislaus County, 14; and San Francisco, 11. In all, there were 26 counties that have reported at least one death in the past two weeks, in counties home to 36 million people.

Eight counties  with a combined population of 1 million  have met the standard of no deaths in the last two weeks, but have rates of new cases higher than the state's cutoff for a speedier reopening. The worst hit county in this category is Kings County in the San Joaquin Valley, with 13 new cases per 10,000 residents  just above L.A. Countys rate of almost 12 cases per 10,000 residents in the past two weeks.

Kings County is the site of a large coronavirus outbreak at a meat packing plant in Hanford, where at least 138 have been infected, according to the Fresno Bee.

The others with disease rates that exceed the state standard include Mariposa County, home of Yosemite National Park, with eight new cases per 10,000 residents. Three other counties have between two and three new cases per 10,000 people: Mono County, home to the Mammoth Mountain ski area; San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast, and Merced County in the San Joaquin Valley.

Newsom said he understood theres a deep anxiety; people are feeling a desire to reopen," but that the criteria for counties to reopen at a pace faster than the statewide standard was based on what public health experts advised. California has recorded an average of 500 deaths a week for the past four weeks.

He said officials need time to make sure authorities build up robust capacity to test people and train a workforce of disease detectives to investigate new cases  and identify their close contacts  as California reopens.

Its no small task. In Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara County health officer, Dr. Sara Cody, this week said she foresees a need to create an expanded disease detective team twice the size of the local public health department. Cody said officials are looking at having county, city and school district employees do the work, as well as volunteers.

Currently, the Bay Areas most populous county can investigate 25 new cases a day  and thats adequate right now because most people are staying at home. But once shelter-in-place orders are lifted and people start leaving home more often, Santa Clara County will likely need to investigate 75 cases a day.

The manpower needed is enormous in L.A. County, where an average of 900 cases a day have been reported in the last week. Not only do each of those newly infected people need to be contacted, but so do each of their close contacts, which have averaged eight before the stay-at-home order was implemented and now average five.

Newsom said businesses and venues in a higher risk category, Phase 3  like hair and nail salons, gyms, movie theaters, churches and weddings  could see a reopening in the coming months. Churches have been a notable site for coronavirus outbreaks worldwide, and Newsom has said a nail salon was the site of California's first confirmed spread of the coronavirus in the community.

Phase 3 is not a year away. It's not six months away. It's not even three months away. It may not even be more than a month away. We just want to make sure that we have a protocol in place to secure customer safety, employee safety and allow the businesses to thrive in a way that is sustainable," Newsom said.

As for the rest of Phase 2, Newsom said he hoped he could move all of California into the next phase, while allowing some regions to be stricter if they decide that's needed. "We hope to be making announcements on a consistent basis, over the next few weeks, moving everybody into this next phase," Newsom said.

Times staff writers Phil Willon and Alexandra Wigglesworth contributed to this report.
LONDON - Now that the first waves of infections and deaths have peaked and lockdowns are being lifted, scientists around the world have begun to skirmish over which countries have pursued the best strategies to protect their people. One of the most contentious confrontations has been between leading infectious-disease specialists in Sweden and Britain, who each claim their approach is right.

The two countries went in two very different directions. After a weeks-long delay, Britain ordered a strict lockdown in late March. Sweden has glided along with much more relaxed, voluntary guidance, trusting its citizens to use their common sense and maintain reasonable social distancing.

London has been a ghost town, its economy shattered like most. But all through March, April and early May, you could still dine at restaurants in Stockholm or drink a cold Pilsener on a sunny patio bar. Swedish children go to elementary and middle school. Shops and gyms, factories and yoga studios are open - often thronged. Throughout the pandemic, life has looked much more "normal" in Sweden.

Leaders of Sweden and Britain both claim they have been "guided by the science" - and both countries have seen soaring numbers of deaths.

So are scientists in both countries wrong? Or right, but in different ways? Or is it too soon to know what is really going on?

The former chief epidemiologist for Sweden, Johan Giesecke, an internationally recognized expert who advises the World Health Organization, has been blasting away at the British government's abrupt decision to reverse itself and mandate a complete lockdown on March 23.

Initially, Britain signaled it would pursue a go-slow approach to allow the pathogen to circulate more widely and begin to create what virologists call "herd immunity."

"Our aim is not to stop everyone getting it. You can't do that. And it's not desirable, because you want to get some immunity in the population. We need to have immunity to protect ourselves in the future," Britain's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said March 12.

Giesecke says Britain was on the right path, alongside Sweden. But it all came to a full stop with the appearance of a "famous paper" by epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and his Covid-19 Response Team at Imperial College London, published March 16. Ferguson and his team are seen as a gold standard by many epidemiologists, and their paper contained jaw-dropping numbers.

Giesecke argues that Ferguson's mathematical simulation shocked the British government and persuaded it to do "a 180-degree U-turn" and to panic.

The Ferguson model was quickly embraced at the highest levels on both sides of the Atlantic, first by Downing Street and then the White House.

If nothing at all were done to stop this novel virus from infecting a previously unexposed population, then 510,00 people in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States would die in a tsunami of infections that would overwhelm each country's hospitals, Ferguson's group asserted.

But Britain was never going to do nothing.

Instead, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government first proposed a middle way, with less-than-drastic measures, a "mitigation" strategy much like the one Sweden has pursued.

Ferguson and his modelers, however, warned that even such a mitigation strategy, which focused on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread, meant that 250,000 would still die in Britain. Public health officials quickly imagined thousands of breathless patients succumbing in hospital parking lots, as emergency room physicians were forced to ration access to ICU beds and precious ventilators.

And so Johnson's government ultimately went with a full lockdown, an all-in attempt to suppress the spread of the virus as much as possible. Those who support lockdowns say the main thing Britain did wrong was wait too long, giving the virus a significant head start.

Giesecke has been unusually blunt in calling the Ferguson model "not very good" and "overly pessimistic." He noted it was neither peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal and said in a webinar briefing conducted by Chatham House, the London-based think tank, that he thought someone should write a book about "how a not very scientific paper changed the policy of an entire country."

In an interview with The Washington Post, Giesecke said the Imperial College forecasts were almost hysterical and the Ferguson paper so fundamentally flawed by debatable assumptions - for example, the percentage of people who were asymptomatic but still infectious - that "it loses all value" as a predictive tool.

Scientists fight all the time, but this debate among top-flight infectious-disease modelers in Stockholm and London is eyeball-grabbing because it has burst into the open via Twitter and Zoom chat, and think-tank teleconference and on YouTube, most prominently in a duet of interviews conducted for the online magazine UnHerd.com by its editor, Freddie Sayers.

In that interview, Ferguson fired back at his Swedish critics, claiming that "the majority of epidemiologists in the world support my position." Even in Sweden, some scientists charged that their government was "playing Russian roulette" with the population.

Ferguson countered that the Swedish government made "a decision most other countries would not tolerate," meaning to let the virus run more free. He said of Giesecke, "He's basically saying we should allow all these old people to die - because he doesn't believe we can keep these measures in place."

Ferguson said that "Sweden is still seeing increases in deaths and cases" and that Sweden's mortality rates were "approaching New York City," which has seen the greatest overall fatalities in the United States so far. He said Britain, by contrast, "acted in time to keep the nation from being overwhelmed."

Ferguson, who did not respond to requests for an interview with The Post, had been guiding Britain through its epidemic until this week. (He gave up his role with the British government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which has been steering policy, after the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported he had broken social distancing measures by meeting with his married lover at his home. Ferguson has acknowledged making an "error of judgment.")

The British prime minister is certainly a convert to Ferguson's forecast. In Johnson's first news conference after being stricken by the virus, which almost killed him, he argued that Britain avoided "an uncontrollable and catastrophic" epidemic that could have caused half a million deaths, and he cited Ferguson's worst-case-scenario numbers.

President Donald Trump, too, has alluded to the Ferguson forecasts, boasting of the millions of lives he claims his policies have saved.

The pandemic remains far from over. But at this moment, Britain's death toll of more than 30,000 is the highest in Europe. Meanwhile, deaths in Sweden are the highest in Scandinavia, with 3,000 killed by the virus so far. Britain's population is 66 million, and Sweden's is 10 million.

Comparing the two countries, Britain is reporting 460 deaths per million people. Sweden is at 298.

It's unclear whether there are cultural, demographic or geographic factors that might make Giesecke's approach more suitable for Sweden than Britain or some other countries.

But the World Health Organization has suggested that Sweden is not an outlier. "If we are to reach a 'new normal,' in many ways Sweden represents a future model," Mike Ryan, the WHO's top emergencies expert, said last week. "What it has done differently is that it really, really has trusted its own communities to implement that physical distancing."

Britain has bet that it bought enough time by lockdown to protect its National Health Service and prepare itself for a possible second wave, by ramping up testing, tracing and quarantines for the sick.

Giesecke argues that the virus is essentially unstoppable, until either herd immunity is reached (when two-thirds of a population has been infected and is producing antibodies) or an effective vaccine is widely available, perhaps nine to 18 months from now, according to the most hopeful projections. In a letter to the British medical journal Lancet, Giesecke wrote that "everyone will be exposed" and that strict lockdowns only push severe cases into the future.

Giesecke said both Britain and Sweden failed their elderly citizens by letting the virus run rampant in nursing and care homes, where deaths might account for as much as a third of totals.

"We've failed. We've all failed to protect them," Giesecke said.

The Swedish epidemiologist says that yes, of course, imposing a strict lockdown will slow the spread of infections for a while.

"But then, what next?" he asked. Giesecke said no democratic society can remain in lockdown for many months or years. Their economies cannot withstand it, and the public won't allow it.

Asked why Britain and other countries went with hard lockdowns, Giesecke said political leaders want to show leadership - force, decisiveness, strength. He said that "people aren't stupid" and that if you tell them it's important to keep their distance or wear masks or wash their hands, they will.

Yet it is clearly not easy for everyone to obey the guidance all the time.
A Russian influencer who is marrying her 20-year-old stepson posted a picture of herself with him 13 years ago when he was aged seven hoping to win support - but it backfired instead.

Instead of persuading people to support her, Marina Balmasheva, 35, attracted a storm of protest when she shared the before-and-after photo on Instagram with her 420,000 followers.

Marina, who hails from the western Russian region of Krasnodar Krai, lived with her husband Alexey, 45, for over 10 years before the relationship ended in divorce.

The new man in her life is her ex-husband's 20-year-old son, Vladimir.

Marina Balmasheva, 35, who is marrying her 20-year-old stepson Vladimir has posted a photo of what they both looked like 13 years ago when her now-fiancee was just seven (pictured left then, and right, now)

The popular Russian blogger is gearing up to marry her stepson after recently divorcing his dad. Pictured, with her former husband Alexey, 45

In the controversial Instagram post, Balmasheva shared a snap of her posing next to little Vladimir 13 years ago when he was just seven-years-old.

Alongside the photo, she included a more recent picture of the happy couple cuddling.

'You never know how life will turn out and when you will meet a person who makes you smile,' Maria recently commented.

'I know that some will judge us, others will support us, but we are happy and wish you to be as well.'

The blogger recently said: 'I know that some will judge us, others will support us, but we are happy and wish you to be as well.' Pictured, with her 20-year-old stepson

Many of Maria's followers were shocked by her recent Instagram post and said it was immoral to start a relationship with the child that she had helped to raise. Pictured, the blogger

Marina revealed that she wants to have children with Vladimir (pictured together) and that they are currently planning their wedding

Marina added she is very much in love with Vladimir, and the couple are helping to raise three of his five siblings, according to reports.

She reportedly adopted her ex-husband's five children when they were together, but the youngest one, who has Down syndrome, continues to live with the father.

Marina revealed that she wants to have children with Vladimir and that they are currently planning their wedding.

Many were left outraged following the post and said it was immoral to start a relationship with the child that she had helped to raise.

Netizen 'SvetlanaNakhshumova' commented: 'What shocks me most is that this boy grew up before her very eyes.'

Others went on to make crude comments about her ditching an older man for a younger model.
New York City will soon assemble an army of more than 1,000 disease detectives to trace the contacts of every person who tests positive for the coronavirus, an approach seen as crucial to quelling the outbreak and paving the way to reopen the hobbled city.

But that effort will not be led by the citys renowned Health Department, which for decades has conducted contact tracing for diseases such as tuberculosis, H.I.V. and Ebola.

Instead, in a sharp departure from current and past practice, the city is going to put the vast new public health apparatus in the hands of its public hospital system, Health and Hospitals, city officials acknowledged on Thursday night after being approached by The New York Times about the changes.

The decision, which Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at his daily briefing on Friday, puzzled current and former health officials, who questioned the wisdom of changing what has worked before, especially during a pandemic.
We hadnt done a big family trip for years and years, and this one was really special, with our two oldest about to go off on their own, Bob Maxwell said. Maybe well all travel again sometime, but its really the end of an era. Austin tried to rebook us, but no other dates would work.
Kuwaiti officials on Friday announced the death of an Egyptian physician who had contracted the coronavirus, the first doctor to pass away from the disease in the Gulf nation.



Kuwaiti Health Minister Basel Al-Sabah said that Tarek Hussiein Mekhaymar, an ENT physician at Kuwaits Zein Hospital, had passed away due to complications from the virus.



According to Kuwaiti media, Mekhaymar, 62, was on the medical frontlines in combating the virus in the Gulf country.



Sources told Kuwaits Al Rai that Mekhaymar died in intensive care several days after he was first placed in isolation, having tested positive for the virus.



He had been working in Kuwait for over 20 years, they added.



Kuwaits coronavirus case toll reached 7,208 on Friday, according to state-run Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA).

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Project Lift-off: that is the term for restoring the travel industry to some version of normality, and allowing frustrated travellers some freedom. There are five key messages that would-be adventurers, and the tourism industry, want from the prime minister in his speech on Sunday evening. And there is one that they dread.

1 You may now visit locations up to 60 miles away

The French will extend their horizons to 100km (62 miles) on Monday, as part of their staged easing of lockdown. A similar limit in the UK would open up a wide range of possibilities: a large majority of people will be able to reach the seaside, which will help dozens of extremely hard-pressed coastal resorts. The ability to access national parks will nourish the appetite to travel while at the same time allowing social distancing.

The Irish government, which has already published a detailed road map for lifting restrictions, plans on 18 May to open tourism sites (eg carparks, beaches, mountain walks etc) where people are non-stationary and where social distancing can be maintained. But the limit for citizens is just 20km (12 miles).

Road traffic has plummeted in recent weeks as Britons have been advised to travel only for essential journeys (Getty)

2 No restrictions on off-peak use of trains, trams and buses

The railway industry currently says: In line with government advice, you should only be travelling if you are a key worker or it is essential for you to do so. If you must travel, always practise social distancing.

This could be eased as part of Project Lift-off. As people go back to work, commuter services will need careful management of numbers. But allowing non-essential workers to use public transport between, say, 10am and 3pm and again after 7pm would allow day tourism to begin  and provide some desperately needed income for transport operators.

3 Museums and galleries may open if they can maintain proper social distancing

With strict protocols in place, many cultural institutions could recommence their crucial role of enlightening and entertaining tourists and locals. Measures to ensure social distancing and minimising infection could include pre-booking slots online, following a prescribed route and with a strict time limit.

4 Hotels, caravan parks and campsites are no longer restricted to key workers

The vast majority of places to stay are still locked shut. Yet some accommodation providers say they could open while implementing a range of safety measures, allowing a gradual and gentle return to the new normal for domestic tourism to begin.

The measures employed at newly opened German hotels include making face coverings mandatory for both guests and staff in all public areas of the hotel, meals either a la carte or room service and the maximum capacity in a lift is two  except for family groups.

5 The Foreign Office is lifting its blanket warning against non-essential travel anywhere in the world, indefinitely

The governments current travel advice has the effect of preventing mainstream tour operators running trips, and invalidates the holidaymakers insurance.

Coronavirus has left the travel industry on life support (Getty)

The travel industry wants either a series of rolling dates  for example until 31 May but possibly extendable  or, better still, replacing it with country-by-country advice that reflects national policies on flights and quarantine.

After all, they say, it was introduced in response to the sudden spread of flight and travel bans, which have now settled down; if Sweden is prepared to receive visitors from the UK, why should we not be able to go there?

No-go: Mandatory 14-day quarantine for everyone arriving in Great Britain by air, sea or rail, with monitored self-isolation within a single dwelling

Even if British travellers could leave for Greece, Portugal or Sweden for a summer holiday, such a move would effectively wipe out outbound tourism for as long as it remains in force. Who would go to Amsterdam for a weekend or Corfu for a week if they faced yet more lockdown just as measures for the general population were being eased?

If the Irish self-isolation rules are emulated, the experience would be far more restrictive than the lockdown rules in Britain: All passengers arriving to Ireland from overseas are expected to self-isolate for 14 days on entry into the state. Self-isolation means staying indoors and completely avoiding contact with other people.

You may be contacted during the 14 days following your arrival in Ireland to verify that you are self-isolating.

Britains inbound travel industry, too, believes that a prime asset for attracting tourists in the months ahead is the absence of restrictions on arriving visitors  which might go some way to mitigating the immense reputational damage that the UK has suffered as a safe place to holiday.
Ukraine is ready to start spurring its economy and is interested in deepening international cooperation.

This was announced by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal during a meeting with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Italian Republic to Ukraine Davide La Cecilia and a delegation of representatives of Italian companies operating in Ukraine, the Government portal informs.

As noted, the Head of Government thanked the participants for creating and preserving jobs.

"After the quarantine is over, we expect to hold a meeting of the Ukrainian-Italian Council for Economic Cooperation and organize a joint business forum as part of the visit of Prime Minister of Italy Giuseppe Conte to Ukraine this year," said Denys Shmyhal.

Ambassador of the Italian Republic to Ukraine Mr. Davide La Cecilia, in turn, added that Ukraine is of interest for investors.

"Italy is one of Ukraine's first commercial partners at the global and European level, and we have set a goal of increasing investment and deepening economic cooperation," said Mr. Davide La Cecilia.

The parties agreed to intensify cooperation in various areas of the economy, in particular, in the development of energy, agribusiness and infrastructure.

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LUDZIDZINI  As much as Eswatini is fighting the coronavirus outbreak, other aspects of life, in particular the economy, must go on.



This was the message from His Majesty King Mswati III yesterday, who addressed the nation for the first time since he commanded the partial lockdown 41 days ago, on March 27, 2020.



The King said while the country continued to fight the pandemic, a balance should be struck, which was why government had introduced the eased partial lockdown.



He said while the health of the citizens was important, emaSwati needed to go back to work to try and fend for their families.

He said during the time when families were asked to stay at home, parents were still expected to make a living for their families and provide for their children.



Effects



As we try to fight the virus by staying at home, there are other negative effects which came with it because this meant that there was no production, which also brought negative effects to the country, he said.

He said as a result, that was why the country had decided to ease the partial lockdown in order to try and revive parts of the economy. He, however, emphasised that the eased partial lockdown was not a gateway for people to start operating in a business as usual manner because that would have dire effects.



It does not mean now that we have eased the partial lockdown people should start thinking that the virus is no more and they can go around conducting themselves as they please, he said.

The King said it was important that all emaSwati adhered to the World Health Organisation and Ministry of Health guidelines by ensuring that they wore a mask, practised social distancing and washed their hands with soap and water.



He said these were the guidelines which all workers had to follow as the restrictions were relaxed. He said it was not just Eswatini alone which had started relaxing the rules in order for the economy to be revived, but other countries around the world were also ensuring that both the health of the people and the economies were revived at least to their previous standings.

We want a healthy nation which will go out and restore the economy, he said.



The King stated that the countrys economy in the recent past had not been one which has been doing well, however, just before the coronavirus struck there were indications that it was on its way to stability.

Hhawu yase iyachamuka le outbreak levele ubona kutsi kuchamuka kwayo kusibuyisele emuva kakhulu kunakucala, he said in vernacular.



Loosley translated to the coronavirus outbreak had set back the country to an even worse position than it was before.



Revive



He said as emaSwati tried to revive the economy, this should be done in a very clever and strategic manner. On one hand we are fighting the virus, but on the other we must ensure that the economy is also revived, he stated.

He emphasised on the importance of following all the health guidelines in order for emaSwati to be able to contain the virus.

He emphasised that people at work should ensure that there was social distancing in order for the cases not to spike.



On Wednesday, the Prime Minister, Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini, announced that the country would ease the partial lockdown and seven more businesses, including the manufacturing sector, would be allowed to operate, but on strict WHO and Ministry of Health guidelines.



Government also said clothing shops would be allowed to operate three days a week, including furniture shops which would operate on a similar basis.
U N secretary-general Antonio Guterres has called for an "all-out effort to end hate speech globally" amid what he called a "tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering" unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Guterres added that anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.

He said on Friday that migrants and refugees have been demonised as sources of the virus and denied medical treatment.

Mr Guterres went on: With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable, he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres / AFP via Getty Images

And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.

Mr Guterres begged political leaders to step in and asked civil society bodies to help people develop "digital literacy" to deal with a time when extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.

The media and social media organisations should "remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content" from their output, he added.

Mr Guterres also said that everyone should stand up against hate speech "and take every opportunity to spread kindness."

The UN secretary-general warned in April that the coronavirus was "fast becoming a human rights crisis," with "structural inequalities" blocking access to public services for some.

Student Jonathan Mok was attacked in London earlier this year / Facebook

His words come after it was revealed that hate crimes against people of Chinese background had risen nearly threefold in the first three months of 2020.

Hate crimes against the Chinese community numbered 267 between January and March this year, nearly three times as many as in the same period in 2019 and 2018, a Sky News Freedom of Information request to British police forces found.
Hundreds of people in Kasese, a town in western Uganda, were left homeless after flash flooding swept through the town on May 6, according to local news outlet PMLDaily.com.

The Nyamwamba, Mubuku, and Nyamugasani rivers in western Uganda burst their banks, cutting off access and flooding towns including Kasese and Ibanda, reports said.

In Kilembe, rescuers attempted to save approximately 200 patients who were trapped in a hospital, BBC reported. Severe flooding also affected parts of Kenya, Somalia, and Rwanda, the report said.

Ugandas New Vision reported that the cause of the flooding was torrential rains in various parts of the country, especially the Rwenzori, Elgon, Lake Victoria, and Kigezi regions.

Footage filmed by Nakaiza Daisy, a resident of Kasese, on May 6 shows people running from water from the Nyamwamba river as flooding swept through the town. She filmed large swells from the raging river and the flood zone that destroyed several buildings on May 7.

Please credit: Benon Nsereko. Credit: Benon Nsereko via Storyful
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say it is too early to reopen amid the pandemic and fear more lives will be lost as states race to get back to business.

Worrying research from ABC News and Ipsos reveals a staggering 64 percent of Americans are resistant to easing coronavirus lockdowns now and believe the threat of a renewed spike in cases and deaths far outweighs the toll stay-at-home orders are taking on the economy.

Only around a third - 36 percent - feel confident that an immediate reopening is worth it to reduce the burden on the economy.

This comes as more businesses reopen their doors Friday as several governors continue to relax lockdowns - even though states are yet to meet standards set out by the White House for when it is safe to do so.

The poll highlights how the pandemic is fueling a burgeoning divide among Americans as drastic differences in opinions are seen across political parties, genders and ethnicities.

Worrying research from ABC News and Ipsos reveals a staggering 64 percent of Americans are resistant to easing coronavirus lockdowns now and believe the threat of a renewed spike in cases and deaths far outweighs the toll stay-at-home orders are taking on the economy

Deep chasms have been emerging between Republican and Democrat voters in recent weeks, as conservatives have donned their Donald Trump merchandise and MAGA banners to take to the streets in protest against stay-at-home orders they say quash their freedom as American citizens.

On the other side stands the largely Democrat counter-protesters who insist lockdowns are critical to saving lives in the long run.

And the research shows the partisan divides run deep, with almost all - 92 percent - Democrats saying they are against an immediate reopening compared with only around a third - 35 percent - of Republicans.

Independent voters are also swaying toward keeping the economy shuttered for longer, with just 36 percent supporting an immediate reopening and 63 percent opposing such a move.

The poll also highlights a key difference in opinion between genders, with almost three-quarters - 72 percent - of women saying they do not believe opening the country reopening is worth it due to more lives being lost, compared to 54 percent of men.

More than three-quarters - 77 percent - of Americans said they are concerned about becoming infected

But despite concerns that states are reopening too soon, the data shows mixed attitudes toward the development of a vaccine for COVID-19

Ethnicity also plays a part, with 84 percent of non-white Americans taking the view that it is not worth reopening the nation now compared to only half - 52 percent - of white Americans who have this view.

Non-white communities have been harder-hit by the pandemic.

Several lawmakers and community leaders have been sounding the alarm over the disturbing trend for the virus ravaging African American and Hispanic communities, with many people linking the worrying trend to the higher rates of essential workers in these groups.

Last month, CDC analysis found that African Americans made up a shocking 42 percent of those killed by the virus despite making up just 21 percent of the population in the areas analyzed.

Over the last eight weeks, the majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of Trump's handling of the crisis, with his approval rating hovering in the low-40s except for one week in March when it rose to 55 percent

In New York City, the epicenter for the crisis, black people are twice as likely to die from coronavirus as white people, according to shocking data from the city's Health Department as of April 16.

Across all demographics, fears of contracting the deadly virus hold strong, according to the ABC and Ipsos poll.

More than three-quarters - 77 percent - of Americans said they are concerned about becoming infected.

But despite concerns that states are reopening too soon, the data shows mixed attitudes toward the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.

One-quarter - 25 percent - of Americans said they would not be likely to get vaccinated, even if a safe and effective vaccine was developed.

Medical experts said this is not linked to political allegiance but rather rooted in pre-existing opinions on vaccinations.

Anti-lockdown demonstrators at a Michigan rally on April 30 calling for an end to stay-at-home orders

A female protester in California wears a MAGA hat Thursday. Deep chasms have been emerging between Republican and Democrat voters in recent weeks, as conservatives protest against stay-at-home orders they say quash their freedom as American citizens

'There's always been an anti-vaccine group of individuals that are going to refuse vaccines no matter what,' Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert, and a professor of medicine, epidemiology and global health at Emory University told ABC News.

'The question is, how do they impact other people. You always have a sense of anxiety that this is a new vaccine. Is it safe? Is it effective.'

He added: 'But if a vaccine is safe, then the problem that you run into is complacency.'

The poll was carried out on May 6 and 7, as the national death toll surpassed 70,000 and states continued along their paths to reopening.

Approval of President Trump's handling of the pandemic continued to be lacking this week, as more than half - 57 percent - said they disapprove of his management while just 42 percent approve.

An Arizona store reopens last Friday. Several US governors have started easing their states' coronavirus lockdowns and let businesses and the economy reopen

Shoppers visit the reopen International Mall in Tampa, Florida, Wednesday. States are relaxing rules despite repeated warnings reopening too soon could be devastating to human life

Over the last eight weeks, the majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of Trump's handling of the crisis, with his approval rating hovering in the low-40s except for one week in March when it rose to 55 percent.

The vast majority of Republicans - 87 percent - said they approve of the president's leadership this week, compared to just 8 percent of Democrats.

This week Trump said he trusted the governors to make the right decisions about reopening, while it also emerged CDC guidance for reopening had been shelved.

'The governors have great power as to that, given by us,' Trump told reporters Thursday.

'We want them to do that. We rely on them. We trust them. And hopefully they are making the right decisions.'

He added that he supported Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his push to reopen: 'Texas is opening up and a lot of places are opening up. And we want to do it, and I'm not sure that we even have a choice. I think we have to do it. You know, this country can't stay closed and locked down for years.'

The Trump administration shelved a 17-page Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guide containing step-by-step advice to help local authorities reopen for business safely just days after it was set to be published.

The report - supposed to be published last Friday - 'would never see the light of day,' a CDC official told the Associated Press.

Several US governors have started easing their states' coronavirus lockdowns and let businesses and the economy reopen, despite repeated warnings reopening too soon could be devastating to human life.

White House guidelines recommend states can begin easing lockdown restrictions when they have seen a 14-day trajectory in new cases or positive test rates.

But at least 17 reopening states including Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah have not seen this downward trend, according to analysis by the Associated Press.

Some states have even reopened while daily cases and positive test rates for the deadly virus have continued to climb.
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The filing comes as the global luxury goods sector is heading for a stunning collapse this year due to coronavirus lockdowns.



By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

AP Retail Writer

NEW YORK  Neiman Marcus has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the first department store chain and second major retailer to be toppled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The move by the 112-year-old storied luxury department store chain was announced Thursday and follows the bankruptcy filing by J.Crew on Monday. Experts believe there will be more to come even as businesses start to reopen in parts of the country like Texas and Florida.





. . .
India realizes how careful it needs to be. So far, perhaps because of weeks of strict lockdown, the country has been spared the waves of death that the United States and other nations have endured. India has reported around 60,000 coronavirus infections and 2,000 deaths, relatively few for a population of 1.3 billion.

It helped that India was quick to close its airspace, in March, to international arrivals, although in recent days the country has suffered a series of deadly accidents as it has moved to ease some restrictions.

So the government is walking a fine line: trying to bring home citizens without bringing home the virus. After arriving, all passengers will be sent to quarantine facilities for 14 days.

Many regional governments are setting up isolation facilities. In Mumbai, the financial capital, the government said it was keeping 3,343 rooms in 88 hotels for quarantine purposes.

But the list is long  really long.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians have registered with embassies around the world for repatriation. Many of them have lost jobs. Others are simply unable to fly back any other way, with the airspace virtually closed.

Some need to come back to earn a living, or to help a sick relative. And as colleges and universities have shut across the globe, hundreds of thousands of young Indians have been left stranded, far from home.

The Indian news media said the evacuations could take months and would be bigger than the last major effort of this kind, a 1990 airlift that evacuated about 170,000 Indians from the Persian Gulf, just before the first Gulf War.
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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 19:06:16|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Over 84,200 students in their final year of junior high school in Beijing will resume class starting from Monday, May 11 as the COVID-19 epidemic is under control, the municipal education commission said Friday.

Over 13,200 teachers will also return to classrooms, said Li Yi, spokesperson of the commission.

Li said junior three students are more in number and also younger, so more detailed management measures will be taken to prevent infection.

On April 27, nearly 50,000 senior students of high schools in Beijing returned to campus to start their postponed new semester. Enditem
Report Confirms Dramatic Improvement in Economic Potential With Larger Scale and Earlier Development of Iron Cap Deposit

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 7, 2020) - Seabridge Gold (TSX: SEA) (NYSE: SA) announced today that it has filed a NI-43-101 technical report at www.sedar.com for its 100%-owned KSM project located in northern British Columbia, Canada entitled "KSM (Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell) Prefeasibility Study and Preliminary Economic Assessment Update, NI 43-101 Technical Report" with an effective date of April 30, 2020 (the "Technical Report"). The Technical Report contains the Preliminary Economic Assessment (the "2020 PEA") confirming the potential for a dramatic improvement in project economics by incorporating the recently expanded, higher grade Iron Cap deposit into mine plans. The Technical Report also includes the current Preliminary Feasibility Study which remains in effect. Results of the new study were announced on April 27, 2020 (see the Company's news release and addendum filed on SEDAR on April 27, 2020).

2020 PEA Highlights

After Tax NPV at a 5% discount rate of US$6.0 billion using Base Case three-year average price assumptions of US$1,340/oz gold, US$2.80/lb copper and foreign exchange rate of US$0.76 per C$1.00:

44 year mine production plan capturing 19.6 million ounces of gold and 5.4 billion pounds of copper from the measured and indicated categories plus an additional 20.8 million ounces of gold and 13.8 billion pounds of copper from the inferred category:

Life of mine recovered production of 27.6 million ounces gold and 17.0 billion pounds copper:

170,000 tonne per day processing rate capturing 2.4 billion tonnes (Bt) of mill feed, or only 30% of the total mineral resource:

4.0-year payback on US$5.2 billion initial capital:

Average annual pre-tax Free Cash Flow of US$1.45 billion from 1.3 million oz gold and 265 million pounds copper produced per year during the initial 5 years of production:

Life of mine average operating cost of negative US$472 per ounce of gold produced, net of copper and silver by-product revenues:

Life of mine total cost of US$4 per ounces of gold produced, inclusive of all project capital and net of copper and silver by-product revenues;

57% reduction in mine waste rock compared to the approved EA;

33% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from mine operations compared to the approved EA.

Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk noted that the 2020 PEA was undertaken to assess an alternate approach to developing KSM by incorporating a much larger Iron Cap block cave mine earlier into the production schedule. "The benefits of incorporating Iron Cap into mine plans at an early stage have exceeded the upper end of our expectations, not only for the improvements in projected economics but also for the reduction in environmental impact. The PEA is based on Iron Cap's inferred resource estimate but we are very confident these resources will upgrade to higher categories with further drilling as they have in the past at the project's other deposits. We therefore think the new Technical Report gives investors a compelling view of the project's potential," Fronk said. "These PEA economic projections, if achieved, would rank KSM among the best large-scale producing mines in the world."

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

The new Technical Report incorporates the work of a number of industry-leading consulting firms. These firms and their Qualified Persons (as defined under National Instrument 43-101) are independent of Seabridge and have reviewed and approved this news release. The authors of the Technical Report are listed below along with the names of their employers:

Kirk Hanson, MBA, P.E. of Wood Canada Ltd.

Alan Keylock P.Eng. of Wood Canada Ltd.

James Gray, P.Eng. of Moose Mountain Technical Services

Michael Lechner P.Geo. of Resource Modeling Inc.

Ross Hammett P.Eng. of Golder Associates Ltd.

Graham Parkinson P.Geo. of Klohn Crippen Berger Ltd.

Neil Brazier, P. Eng. of W.N. Brazier Associates Inc.

Hassan Ghaffari, P. Eng of Tetra Tech, Inc.

Jianhui (John) Huang, Ph.D., P.Eng. of Tetra Tech, Inc.

William E. Threlkeld, P.Geo, P.G. of Seabridge Gold Inc.

Brendon Masson, P.Eng. of McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd.

Derek Kinakin, M.Sc., P.Geo., P.G. of BGC Engineering Inc.

Rolf Schmitt, P. Geo of ERM Consultants Canada Ltd.

Seabridge Gold holds a 100% interest in several North American gold resource projects. The Company's principal assets are the KSM and Iskut properties located near Stewart, British Columbia, Canada and the Courageous Lake gold project located in Canada's Northwest Territories. For a breakdown of Seabridge's mineral reserves and resources by project and category please visit the Company's website at http://www.seabridgegold.net/resources.php.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, nor their Regulation Services Providers accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

All reserve and resource estimates reported by the Corporation were calculated in accordance with the Canadian National Instrument 43-101 and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Classification system. These standards differ significantly from the requirements of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

This document contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This information and these statements, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements" are made as of the date of this document. Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect current estimates, predictions, expectations or beliefs regarding future events and include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the estimated amount and grade of mineral reserves and mineral resources and the potential to upgrade inferred resources to higher resource categories; (ii) estimates of the capital costs of constructing mine facilities and bringing a mine into production, of sustaining capital and the duration of financing payback periods; (iii) the estimated amount of future production, both ore processed and metal recovered; and (iv) estimates of operating costs, life of mine costs, net cash flow, net present value (NPV) and economic returns from an operating mine. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects", "anticipates", "plans", "projects", "estimates", "envisages", "assumes", "intends", "strategy", "goals", "objectives" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

All forward-looking statements are based on Seabridge's or its consultants' current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. The most significant assumptions are set forth above, but generally these assumptions include: (i) the presence of and continuity of metals at the Project at estimated grades; (ii) the geotechnical and metallurgical characteristics of rock conforming to sampled results; including the quantities of water and the quality of the water that must be diverted or treated during mining operations; (iii) the capacities and durability of various machinery and equipment; (iv) the availability of personnel, machinery and equipment at estimated prices and within the estimated delivery times; (v) currency exchange rates; (vi) metals sales prices; (vii) appropriate discount rates applied to the cash flows in the economic analysis; (viii) tax rates and royalty rates applicable to the proposed mining operation; (ix) the availability of acceptable financing under assumed structure and costs; (ix) anticipated mining losses and dilution; (x) metallurgical performance; (xi) reasonable contingency requirements; (xii) success in realizing proposed operations; (xiii) receipt of permits and other regulatory approvals on acceptable terms; and (xiv) the successful conclusion of consultation with impacted Treaty and First Nations groups. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Many forward-looking statements are made assuming the correctness of other forward-looking statements, such as statements of net present value and internal rates of return, which are based on most of the other forward-looking statements and assumptions herein. The cost information is also prepared using current values, but the time for incurring the costs will be in the future and it is assumed costs will remain stable over the relevant period.

By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates assumptions and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions and estimates expressed above do not occur as forecast, but specifically include, without limitation: risks relating to variations in the mineral content within the material identified as mineral reserves or mineral resources from that predicted; variations in rates of recovery and extraction; the geotechnical characteristics of the rock mined or through which infrastructure is built differing from that predicted, the quantity of water that will need to be diverted or treated during mining operations being different from what is expected to be encountered during mining operations or post closure, or the rate of flow of the water being different; developments in world metals markets; risks relating to fluctuations in the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar; increases in the estimated capital and operating costs or unanticipated costs; difficulties attracting the necessary work force; increases in financing costs or adverse changes to the terms of available financing, if any; tax rates or royalties being greater than assumed; changes in development or mining plans due to changes in logistical, technical or other factors; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; risks relating to receipt of regulatory approvals or the conclusion of successful consultation with impacted First Nations groups; changes in regulations applying to the development, operation, and closure of mining operations from what currently exists; the effects of competition in the markets in which Seabridge operates; operational and infrastructure risks and the additional risks described in Seabridge's Annual Information Form filed with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com ) for the year ended December 31, 2019 and in the Corporation's Annual Report Form 40-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR (available at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). Seabridge cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive.

When relying on our forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to Seabridge, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Seabridge does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by Seabridge or on our behalf, except as required by law.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Rudi Fronk"

Chairman and CEO

For further information please contact:

Rudi P. Fronk, Chairman and CEO

Tel: (416) 367-9292 Fax: (416) 367-2711

Email: info@seabridgegold.net

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55540
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has recommended implementation of an eight-point formula to revive the Indian economy and reduce the financial stress caused by the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

The Congress on Friday released the recommendations in a statement attributed to the former party president and Wayanad MP a few hours after he expressed his opinions on the governments Covid-19 containment efforts in a digitised live chat session.

Gandhis statement questions why the Centre had not announced a second fiscal relief package for individuals and businesses like other prominent economies in the west.

In India, the government has been dragging its feet on announcing an economic package targeting vulnerable groups like farmers, migrant labourers and daily wage earners as well as industry clusters like travel and tourism, automobiles, retail, etc. that have been severely damaged, the statement says.

The longer the government delays announcing this package the more the pain will grow, it adds.

The statement then goes on to offer the contours of an economic stimulus package that has emerged during an internal consultative process in the Congress party.

Here is a summation of the main recommendations listed in Gandhis statement.

1. Income Support- Extend income support to at least 13 crore poorest households. Transfer Rs 7,500 preferably to each household. Even if only Rs 5,000 is transferred to each of the 13 crore poorest households, then it will only amount to Rs 65,000 crore, which we can and must afford.

2. MGNREGA- 100 days of guaranteed employment under the scheme should be doubled to 200 days. Close to 28-30% of our population now resides in urban areas where a programme like MGNREGA should be introduced.

3. Food Security- Ensure food security for even 11 crore people outside the PDS. Please ensure delivery of 10 kg food grains (rice or wheat) 1 kg pulses and 1 kg sugar to every individual for a period of next six months.

4. Agriculture and Farmers  Empower and support the Anndata farmer by transferring Rs 10,000 as urgent economic support to each of the 8.22 crore PM KISAN Yojana accounts. Purchase every ounce of food grains at MSP and remove GST on fertilizers, pesticides and agriculture equipment immediately.

5. MSMEs- 6.25 crore MSMEs generate over 11 crore jobs. Give 1 lakh crore Wage Protection Scheme and 1 lakh crore Credit Guarantee Scheme to MSMEs. Give six months interest subsidy as equal to six months of interest on loan taken by SMEs.

6. Large Industries  Similar credit guarantee and interest subsidy facilities must be extended to big businesses as well. This will ensure that the value chain survives and no layoffs happen.

7. Shopkeepers- Except for hotspots, retail supply chains should be restored to bring relief to around 7 crore shopkeepers.

8. Migrant labour  I am deeply disturbed and saddened by trains being cancelled and migrants being forced to stay back in some states. They are not bonded labour and should be allowed to return home according to their own free will.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19
May 08 : Tens of thousands of people have been walking home from India's big cities after losing their jobs because of a lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus since late March and yesterday, a train ran over migrant workers sleeping on the track, killing at least 14 of the group, who were apparently on their way to their home villages.

B-Town celebs such as Amyra Dastur and Alankrita Shrivastava took to their social media profiles and slammed the authorities and government for such an irresponsible act.

This should have NEVER happened. The lockdown was implemented on 24/03/2020 without any plans to take care of the ones who would be the most affected.

Negligence at its peak!

We need to see where the relief fund is being distributed. #EnoughIsEnough

Unforgivable. https://t.co/ZbsRCFCu5e  Amyra Dastur (@AmyraDastur93) May 8, 2020

Actress Amyra Dastur shared, This should have NEVER happened. The lockdown was implemented on 24/03/2020 without any plans to take care of the ones who would be the most affected. Negligence at its peak! We need to see where the relief fund is being distributed. #EnoughIsEnough Unforgivable

Can only feel shame at how we are treating the labour force of our country. Stripping them of all rights and all dignity. History will not forget. We have blood on our hands.  Alankrita Shrivastava (@alankrita601) May 8, 2020

Filmmaker Alankrita Shrivastava wrote, Can only feel shame at how we are treating the labour force of our country. Stripping them of all rights and all dignity. History will not forget. We have blood on our hands

Its been reported that the train driver tried to stop the freight train when he saw the labourers on the tracks in the western state of Maharashtra. The migrant labourers travelling to Chhattisgarh were crushed by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad.

Under the lockdown, all public transport has been suspended so migrant workers heading home often have to walk long distances to get there. The government has extended the lockdown until May 17.

The opposition and activists have criticised the government for not helping the workers in reaching their respective homes across the countries.
The UK can expect to enjoy a sunny Saturday before a sharp drop in temperatures on the final day of the bank holiday weekend.

People will be able to enjoy the warm weather  with forecasters predicting 24C in Manchester and potentially even 26C in London  on their daily walks while the country faces another weekend in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

Northern and central parts of England could reach up to 23C on Saturday, with southern areas peaking at 25C, a Met Office spokesperson told The Independent.

Despite the sunshine forecast for the country, there could still be some scattered, potentially heavy showers across Wales, the Midlands and possibly the northeast, John Griffiths said.

The warm weather is set to follow Fridays sunny bank holiday, which saw people celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

Dominic Raab has warned the public not to linger outside and to keep following the UKs lockdown measures, despite the good weather forecast over the long weekend.

The foreign secretary said on Thursday: For the moment it is really important, particularly as people look towards a warm bank holiday weekend, that we continue to follow the guidance in place at this time.

However, the weather looks set to get colder after the sunny start.

There will be a marked contraction on Sunday with temperatures, tumbling down by 10C or more, John Griffiths from the Met Office told The Independent.

He said London was looking closer to 17C compared to highs of 26C on Saturday, while in places like Plymouth and Southampton in the far south, temperatures could reach highs of 19C on Sunday.

Elsewhere, Manchester could peak at 13C as the long weekend draws to a close, he said.

The outlook for Scotland on Saturday is wetter, the Met Office website said. Rain across Scotland will edge slowly southwards, turning to snow on hills as it becomes much colder. Elsewhere [it will be] very warm with sunny spells, but a few thundery showers breaking out, forecasters wrote.

Cardiff can expect sun, high temperatures and possibly some thundery showers, with similar conditions elsewhere in Wales on Saturday.

Scattered showers could also fall across northern England at the start of Sunday, with winds picking up throughout the morning.

It is mostly outbreaks of light rain, the Met Office spokesperson said, mostly across northern and eastern parts of the north in parts of Lancashire and Greater Manchester.

The showers will move down through the midlands and towards the south as the day goes on.

It will be increasingly windy across southern areas throughout the course of the day, Mr Griffiths said, which will make it feel a lot colder as we move into the late afternoon and evening in more central and southern areas.

The UK has been in lockdown since March over the coronavirus outbreak, with people told to stay inside unless it is essential and public gatherings of more than two people banned as part of efforts to contain the virus.

Additional reporting by Press Association
An aphorism of online life goes: Every day, the internet picks a hero and a villain, and you hope that neither one is you.

On Wednesday, the villain was a conservative editor named Bethany Mandel, who tweeted, in what Im guessing was a moment of extremis, You can call me a Grandma killer. Im not sacrificing my home, food on the table, all of our docs and dentists, every form of pleasure (museums, zoos, restaurants), all my kids teachers in order to make other people comfortable. If you want to stay locked down, do. Im not.

Naturally, people did indeed call her a grandma killer. For a while the phrase was a top-trending topic on Twitter. But despite her callous language, I couldnt help feeling a stab of sympathy for Mandels anger and exasperation. It is only natural that after almost two months of something like house arrest, people are starting to lose their minds. The president of the United States and much of the Republican Party are signaling that all this suffering is unnecessary, a prim sort of virtue signaling. And theyve squandered the time bought by the sacrifices of the citizenry, so there is no national plan for a safe reopening. The lockdowns thus seem to have no clear endpoint.

In a functional country, the federal government would be assuring people that all theyve given up has been necessary and not in vain. In this one, its every state  and, in some cases, every person  for themselves. As Andy Slavitt, a senior health care official in the Obama administration, tweeted earlier this week, the Trump administration has essentially decided, Its a long and difficult road and after we climbed halfway we decided it was too hard and decided to roll back down the Hill.
IndiGo will cut salaries of senior employees from May onwards and also implement a "limited, graded leave without pay program" for them during the months of May, June and July, its CEO Ronojoy Dutta said on Friday.

The aviation sector has been hit hard due to the suspension of all commercial passenger flights during the coronavirus-induced lockdown in the country which began on March 25. Bookings for flights have been cancelled till further orders. "While we had paid employee salaries in full for the months of March and April, I am afraid that we are left with no ...
South Africa: Home Affairs urged to procure protective equipment

The Department of Home Affairs has been directed to urgently procure personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline officials.

This follows visits by members of the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs to various Home Affairs offices across the country.

It was reported that a number of offices, especially in the Limpopo, Western Cape and Mpumalanga provinces were closed, due to the shortage of PPEs and thermometers.

PPE equipment is required to ensure that frontline officials are able to deliver services in a safe environment.

In addition, PPE forms part of the necessary and required tools used in adhering to the Department of Health and World Health Organization (WHO) protocols in fighting COVID-19.

Chairperson of the committee, Advocate Bongani Bongo emphasised the importance of procuring personal protective equipment using National Treasury Instruction No.05 of 2020/21, which sets out emergency procurement procedures in response to the National State of Disaster.

The major preoccupation of the committee is to ensure that Home Affairs offices are open and that people get identity documents that are required to access the recently announced social assistance interventions by the state, said Bongo on Thursday.

Despite the closure of some of the offices, the committee welcomed a report that the work of issuing death certificates, to enable families to bury their loved, ones was done.

Automated Biometric Information System

The committee has also raised concerns on the capacity challenges experienced by the department in its information and communications technology (ICT) branch.

The committee emphasised that the implementation of the Automated Biometric Information System and e-Visa regime is dependent on the department with a state-of-the-art information services branch.

The committee said the department, together with the State Information Technology Agency must heighten their work towards resolving the connectivity challenges that have impacted on service delivery.

It said that this will have a direct impact on the implementation of innovative information technology interventions.

The implementation of the e-visa regime will be necessary when the countrys tourism sector kick-starts after the lockdown, a move which will be essential as a post-lockdown economic recovery strategy.

The end of the lockdown period presents an opportunity for the department to implement the e-visa system and contribute positively to the countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Bongo said.

Border Management Agency

Regarding the Medium-Term Strategic Framework, the committee welcomed the commitment to the incremental establishment and operationalisation of the Border Management Agency (BMA) intended to secure the borders of the country.

The committee, since its inception, highlighted the significance of the BMA for coordination of the management of South Africas ports of entry, and as a tool for the security of borders.

Action on Lindela Repatriation Centre

Meanwhile, the committee has welcomed the swift action by Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, in dealing with the contracted security company at the Lindela Repatriation Centre, where 37 illegal foreigners have escaped.

The committee welcomes the suspension by the private company of the security guards that are alleged to have left early from work. The committee has committed to visit Lindela Centre to listen to the concerns alleged to be raised by detainees at the centre, said Bongo.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2020-05-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
A trade agreement between the United States and China, according to the American President Donald Trump is still valid. "The China trade Deal is completely intact. Hopefully, they will comply with the terms and conditions of the agreement shall continue to be, tweeted Trump on Monday. Previously, a comment of a close employee of the White house had suggested that the interim agreement was valid, what the markets were closed on Monday evening had responded.

Peter Navarro, Director of trade and manufacturing policy at the White house, told the TV station Fox News in an Interview to a question about the trade agreement with China: "It's over." On demand, the AP news Agency, Navarro said, however, his answer had been taken out of context and have to do with the agreement.

The government of Trump sees the Chinese efforts to contain the Coronavirus is extremely critical. Trump has made, China repeated for the pandemic responsible, which is why questions about the future of trade stemming from that cooperation.

In January, Beijing and Washington had agreed on a provisional trade agreement to reduce tensions in the dispute over punitive tariffs. China agreed to buy large amounts of American goods.

Updated Date: 23 June 2020, 19:20
A mother has revealed her heartbreak at not being able to hold her newborn daughter after giving birth while battling coronavirus.

Florette Johnson, from Florida, was forced to FaceTime her daughter while she stayed on a ventilator to fight for her life.

The new mother explained in a Facebook post that she went into hospital on April 4 with a persistent cough and difficulty breathing.

When she got to the hospital, she was told she had pneumonia, and she then tested positive for Covid-19.

Florette Johnson, from Florida, was forced to FaceTime her daughter while she stayed on a ventilator to fight for her life. She is pictured in hospital

Florette had to FaceTime her daughter, with a NICU nurse holding her phone, as she couldn't hold her child

Writing on Facebook, she said: 'I didnt know how serious this was. They brought me up to labor and delivery, then moved me to another section due to fear of the virus. Next day I went into labor.'

Although Florette was desperate to avoid a Cesarean her poor health forced her to re-consider.

She continued: 'My oxygen was dropping. Every time I took a breath in, I would cough over and over.

'I was taken back to labor and delivery, due to my breathing i was prepped me for a C-section, at this time I was already 10cm [dilated].'

But while she was being prepared for the operation, she felt a contraction and started to push.

'I closed my eyes and asked God for the breath and strength to push, the doctor was shocked. 30 minutes later, my Angel was born' she shared.

However, unlike other new mothers, Florette was not able to hold or even see her newborn baby girl, who was quickly whisked away to the NICU.

'They immediately took her away. I did not get to see her clearly or touch her. The doctor called for help because my breathing became worse,' she explained, while explaining that she had to go into intensive care straight after the birth because her condition had worsened.

Florette is pictured at 36 weeks pregnant, happy and healthy. But contracting Covid-19 forced her into labor

Florette is pictured early in her pregnancy. In a Facebook post, she thanked her friends and family for praying for her

'The doctor called for help because my breathing became worse. She and three others rushed me to ICU,' she wrote.

'When I get there they took all kinds of tests. My coughing got even worse.'

To make matters all the more upsetting, Florette was still not able to see her baby girl, and was forced to interact with the newborn for the first time over FaceTime, for fear that she might infect her daughter with coronavirus.

'Only way I able to see my baby is FaceTime with the NICU nurse,' she said.

Medics then told Florette she was dying.

'My RN [registered nurse] came in my room and put a chair beside me with tears in her eyes told me in other words that I was dying,' she said.

'My oxygen was lower than 60 and getting worse, the pneumonia took over my lungs.

'She asked did I want to call anyone. So I asked her to call my husband.

In a heartwarming post, Florette shared her story on Facebook, where it has since gone viral

'The nurse shared the bad news with him and brought the option of the ventilator that it will buy me some time and help.

Florette then had three-way call with her mother, and husband who was with her other children.

She then sent a text to her family a friends, but explained that they didn't know she was saying goodbye.

'They prepped me for the ventilator and while doing so I asked the Dr.P what was my chance of waking up, his response, "1/100,"' she said.

Florette then fell into a coma, but miraculously survived.

'I was put under Wednesday and woke up Monday,' she revealed.

'God allowed me to still be here. In that time I cant tell you how many people were on their knees praying. I want to thank EVERYONE that prayed for me and my family.

Her post has now gone viral, being shared more than 15,000 times and 28,000 likes.
Some staff members of a private hospital in Noida protested outside a residential society, whose residents have accused them of risking people with coronavirus as its two health care workers tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday.

Over three dozen staffers of the Felix Hospital in Sector 137 protested in the evening outside the Ajnara Daffodil, where a 41-year-old female resident was detected with the novel coronavirus infection on May 5, according to an official report.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

A representative of the society, however, said it was not desirable for health care workers to assemble in that manner knowing well that the sector is a containment zone and the matter could have been resolved amicably.

D K Gupta, a doctor and chairman of Felix Hospital, said two of his staff members tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday and one of them, a nurse, had come in contact with the female patient in the residential society on April 27.

The nurse had gone to the society to attend to a third-stage cancer patient because of an emergency. That patient had earlier been travelling to Delhi for treatment. Now some residents of the society are blaming the nurse and our hospital of being carriers of the infection, when actually the nurse got infected from the patient, Gupta told PTI.

After the Ajnara Daffodil resident was found positive for coronavirus, our nurse was also tracked through contact tracing and other people who had come in her contact, including our staff, were quarantined and then tested. Now two of them have been found positive for coronavirus, he said.

The doctor said his hospital was now mulling filing a complaint with the police over some residents of the society falsely claiming that 80 per cent of his staff was infected with the novel virus.

We have a staff of more than 300 people at Felix Hospital and claiming that 80 per cent of them are infected with Covid-19 is just not correct. They are putting it out on social media and everywhere. We will file a police complaint against them, Gupta said.

D P Juyal, President of the Apartment Owners Association of Ajnara Daffodil, said the protest gathering was dispersed by the police soon.

Who infected whom is a matter on which more clarity is needed and is controversial. However, assembling in a crowd like this and raising slogans is not desirable at a time like this because this sector is in a containment zone already and it adds to the risk, he told PTI.

Today two of the hospital staff have been found infected with the virus and you cannot stop anyone from raising concern over the safety of the people. The hospital officials could have called us and the matter could have been solved amicably over a dialogue, Juyal added.

Meanwhile, the society remains sealed with in and out movement restricted in view of the coronavirus case there.

Notably, the Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday approved the UP Public Health and Epidemic Disease Control Ordinance, 2020, which protect corona warriors (frontline workers against Covid-19) such as doctors, paramedical staff, sanitary workers, and police personnel by making actions against them as punishable acts.

Those misbehaving with healthcare workers, paramedical staff, police personnel or sanitation workers in Noida and Greater Noida may land in jail for up to seven years along with having to cough out a fine up to 5 lakh, according to the law.
A New York man is facing fraud charges after he conned several people into buying stolen test kits for the coronavirus and then never gave them the results, the authorities said on Thursday.

The man, Henry Gindt II, 34, sold the test kits for as much as $200 each through his telemedicine website YouHealth, which served as a front for the scheme, according to a newly unsealed criminal complaint in the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.

Investigators said that Mr. Gindt had misrepresented himself as being connected with a certified lab that would send people their results after those customers collected nasal specimens with a swab.

Along with the test kits, customers received questionnaires about their symptoms and prepaid shipping labels for the bogus lab, according to the authorities, who said they had been tipped off by a resident of Western Pennsylvania who received an email from Mr. Gindt advertising the home test.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday expressed grief over the death of migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh in a train accident in Aurangabad district and announced a financial aid of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday expressed grief over the death of migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh in a train accident in Aurangabad district and announced a financial aid of Rs 5 lakh each to their families.

At least 14 migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, who were sleeping on rail tracks, were crushed to death by a goods train near Karmad station in Aurangabad district in the early hours of Friday.

Two other labourers were injured in the accident.The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks to reach Bhusawal from Jalna, 40km from Karmad, on way to their villages in Madhya Pradesh.

They slept off on the tracks due to exhaustion, an official said.In a statement, Thackeray expressed grief over the tragedy and said the aid of Rs 5 lakh to each of the families of the deceased will be given from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.He said the cost of medical treatment of the injured would be borne by his government.

Thackeray said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places."Arrangements will be made soon. Labourers should not lose patience," he said.After learning about the tragedy, Thackeray spoke to Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta and railway officials to get details about what happened.These labourers were employed in a steel manufacturing plant in Jalna, a neighbouring district of Aurangabad in central Maharashtra.

Special shramik trains are being operated from different parts of the state to ferry stranded migrant workers to their native places.Thackeray appealed to migrant workers not to put their lives at risk and stay at shelter camps till travel arrangements are made for them."The state government is in constant touch with the Railway ministry.

A train will start from Mumbai, too, soon.I appeal to workers not to put their lives at risk ."Shelter camps for the stranded workers are being operated by district administration. Arrangements for food and medicine have been made in these camps."Don't leave the camps till you are informed about train schedule," Thackeray said in the statement.
This article by Jared Keller originally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues.

A former airman was shot and killed by Indianapolis police officers this week following a car and foot chase that he broadcast on Facebook Live prior to his death.

Dreasjon "Sean" Reed, 21, was reportedly shot and killed by members of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department while running from officers after a car chase Wednesday evening, the IMPD said in a statement.

Reed was an active-duty airman first class in the 3P0 security forces career field, serving for just nine months and last stationed at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas as a student before his separation in November 2017, according to service records obtained by The Associated Press.

IMPD assistant chief Chris Bailey stated Wednesday that officers were on their way home from work when they observed Reed driving recklessly, pursuing the driver for several minutes before a subsequent foot chase that ended in a "confrontation" between the officers.

According to Bailey, "shots were fired," with Reed believed to have shot first. A later IMPD statement referred to an "exchange of gunfire" but "did not mention who fired first or whether a gun was recovered," according to The New York Times.

The Facebook video, apparently recorded by Reed, shows the former airman during both the car and foot chases with police, before shouting and popping sounds are heard in the background.

Thousands of people were watching the video when Reed was shot, according to The New York Times, and a responding detective's comment was also reportedly broadcast live on Facebook: "I think it's going to be a closed casket, homie."

The Facebook video prompted major protests in downtown Indianapolis on Thursday over allegations of racial bias in the incident, with activists noting that Reed, who is African-American, never appeared in possession of a firearm in the course of the video.

Reed's father Jamie told The Associated Press that he was "crushed" by the video.

"It just shows me that we're not really being protected and served. We're being hunted," he told reporters at Thursday's protest. "My son was a great son. I love him to death. He was just a typical young adult like anybody else. He didn't deserve to die like that."

-- This article originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter.

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Liquor will be costlier in Himachal Pradesh as the state cabinet, chaired by chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, on Friday decided to impose a Covid-19 cess.

Now 5 per bottle would be charged on country liquor, 10 per bottle on Indian Made Foreign Liquor, 5 per bottle on beer made in India, 25 per bottle on foreign imported liquor and 10 per bottle on Indian wine or cider.

The Cabinet also decided to hike import fee on all kinds of spirits used by the industries for manufacturing sanitisation products from 10.50 per bulk litres to 15 per bulk litres.

The Cabinet gave its nod to increase the curfew relaxation daily to seven hours from five hours.

With a view to provide 120 days minimum assured unskilled employment guarantee to every household of the urban local bodies, the Cabinet gave its consent to implement Mukhya Mantri Shahri Ajeevika Guarantee Yojana in the state. This would help strengthen urban infrastructure and provision of quality civic amenities in urban local bodies. A sum of 25.20 crore is expected to be spent under this programme.

In order to boost the employability of youth of the state and enhance their employment prospective, the Cabinet gave its nod for setting up of Centre of Excellence at Waknaghat in Solan district under ADB funded programme as a specialised centre for high-end training in tourism, hospitality sectors and IT sector.

The Cabinet sub-committee constituted for post Covid-19 economic revival made a presentation before the Cabinet regarding its recommendations for expediting developmental works, mobilisation of resources and possible support to different sectors.

The Cabinet sub-committee also gave its recommendations on plugging revenue losses due to mining operations and for fast-tracking forest clearances.

It also appealed to all state government employees and employees of state PSUs/boards/universities etc. for the generous contribution to the SDMA Covid-19 State Disaster Response Fund.
Economic ties between Hungary and Australia are closer than ever, with bilateral trade reaching a record-high 100 million dollars in the first two months of the year, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

Hungary firmly supports that a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia be signed with no delay, Szijjarto said after a video conference with Australian counterpart Marise Payne.



We expect Brussels not to slow down free trade negotiations during the pandemic either, he added.



Szijjarto noted that under a recent contract Hungarian oil and gas company Mol will store 50 kilotonnes of Australian strategic natural oil reserves outside Australia.



Talks are underway on increasing this volume, he added. This clearly demonstrates that international economic cooperation is worth developing even during the pandemic, he said.



Despite the geographical distance between Hungary and Australia, the two countries are facing similar challenges, he said. The Australian government has also taken strict measures to flatten the curve of the novel coronavirus, and enabled its health services to cope with the pandemic. At present it is cautiously easing the restrictions while strictly assessing the consequences, he added.



Szijjarto said they agreed that nothing would be the same after the pandemic is over and that the consequences should be drawn. It must not be allowed in the upcoming period that an entire continent remains dependent on others in terms of production capacities for protective equipment, he said.



MTI Photo
San Antonio police are looking for the suspects who stabbed two men near the Bexar County Jail Friday morning.

Police responded to the 900 block of Houston Street just after 3 a.m., where they found a 33-year-old man suffering from stab wounds to the upper torso, police said.
Union Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur on Friday said the government is fully supporting Rajasthan in this time of crisis but the state is "hiding facts" about the help received from the central government,



In April, the Centre provided financial assistance of Rs 4,685 crore to the Congress government in Rajasthan, Thakur said during a video conference with state BJP leaders.

Of the total amount, Rs 2,753 crore was transferred under tax transfer, Rs 741 crore under state disaster fund and Rs 503 crore under GST compensation, he added.

During the meeting, Thakur also took suggestions from small and medium enterprises, professionals and businessmen for better operation of the economy during COVID-19 crisis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WATERLOO  Three more Cedar Valley residents have died from COVID-19 while an outbreak at a Waterloo long-term care facility has worsened.

While Black Hawk County Health Department officials reported just 28 new cases of the disease between Thursday and Saturday morning, the report indicated three more people had died. No new deaths were reported Saturday.

The county has now confirmed 1,731 total cases and 24 deaths since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The Iowa Department of Public Health said Saturday nearly 650 more people tested positive for COVID-19 statewide and there were 21 more deaths across the state through Saturday morning. Through May 9, 11,671 Iowans had tested positive for the virus and 252 had died. Another 5,011 people had recovered.

At least some of the Black Hawk County deaths appear to be related to outbreaks at long-term care facilities.

Harmony House in Waterloo had reported 62 residents and staff had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the latest information release by IDPH.

Friendship Village, which operates several nursing, assisted living and independent senior housing buildings in Waterloo, had lost four residents to the virus, according to updates provided by the center on Facebook and its website.

The emotional roller coaster ride continues, Friendship Village president Lisa Gates said in a Facebook post Thursday.

In addition the deaths, which had been confined to the Pavilion care facility, two more residents tested positive for COVID-19 at the Lakeview Landing building.

Both were immediately moved to the Pavilion, Gates said. The concern now is that the infection has spread to both health center buildings.

She also noted 21 employees were quarantined after testing positive, but no Friendship Village staff members have died to date. Some have recovered and are able to return to work.

No other Black Hawk County long-term care centers had reported outbreaks based on the IDPH definition of having three or more residents whove tested positive within a single building.

But Western Home Communities in Cedar Falls reported Thursday that confirmed cases included two residents and four employees of Deery Suites nursing home; two employees at Windhaven assisted living; one resident at Thalman Square assisted living; and one employee at Windermere independent living.

New Aldaya Lifescapes in Cedar Falls had reported one resident and five staff with positive tests through Wednesday. Ravenwood Specialty Care in Waterloo reported a week ago that one resident and two employees had contacted COVID-19.

The IDPH reports also included outbreaks at Bartels Lutheran Home in Waverly, which had 29 total cases among staff and residents; Premier Estates of Toledo, with 52 total cases; and Westbrook Acres in Tama County, which reported 21 cases.

On Friday, Iowa saw a fourth straight day of double-digit deaths from coronavirus with 12, and state health officials reported another 398 cases.

There were 407 Iowans hospitalized (with 34 admitted in the past 24 hours) for coronavirus-related illnesses and symptoms with 164 being treated in intensive care units and 109 requiring ventilators to assist their breathing.

Those hospitalized included Aquarius Bunch, a 27-year-old Waterloo nursing home employee who is pregnant with her second child. Bunch drove herself to the hospital about two weeks ago after initially being advised to quarantine at home and seeing her condition worsen, family friend Tiffany Young said.

Bunch was airlifted to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, where she was placed on a ventilator. Relatives worried that Bunch was near death last week and that her child would have to be delivered through an emergency procedure, Young said. But her condition has improved and she might be released within days.

I know her mom and her cousins, and they have been devastated. Aquarius is down there by herself. She has the tube down her throat so she just waves on video calls, Young said. They thought that they almost lost her last week.

Young, 42, is a neighbor of two Waterloo duplex tenants who died of the coronavirus last month after an outbreak at a Tyson Foods plant that infected more than 1,000 workers.

Ryan Foley of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
He had the constitutional right to remain silent, but he chose not to, and then he lied. Defense lawyers across the country will surely leap at the chance to seek similar concessions on behalf of their clients, and we are eager to see Mr. Barr apply this standard in thousands of other cases where the defendant is not a friend of the presidents.

Mr. Trump, his original explanation for firing Mr. Flynn notwithstanding, promptly crowed that his former aide was an innocent man who had been targeted by the Obama administration. He said Thursday in an Oval Office appearance that the officials involved in the Russia investigation and the Flynn case were guilty of treason and would pay a big price.

Its hard to overstate how dangerous this is. It is a small step from using the Justice Department to protect your friends to using it to go after your political enemies. In other words, watch out, Joe Biden.

It is, of course, entirely in character for Mr. Trump, who lavishes praise on autocrats and dictators around the world. He is now emulating them, using the Justice Department to protect his friends, in the belief that he can do so with impunity. As long as Mr. Barr leads the Justice Department, he can.

The attorney general is supposed to work for the American people, not as a personal fixer for the president. Instead, from the day he took the job, Mr. Barr has worked to provide cover for Mr. Trump. He provided a misleading account of the Mueller investigations findings; he overrode his own attorneys sentencing recommendations for another of Mr. Trumps criminal cronies, Roger Stone; he assigned new investigators to sniff out misconduct by the Mueller investigation; and he weighs in publicly on the purported wrongdoing of those involved in that investigation, none of whom have been charged with any crimes.

Career prosecutors who have dedicated their lives to the rule of law and the independent administration of justice are left to wonder what theyre supposed to do now. (Shortly before the Justice Departments filing, Brandon Van Grack, the prosecutor who led the case against Mr. Flynn, announced his withdrawal from the case.)

Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, called Thursday A black day in D.O.J. history. Hes right. Our institutions have withstood corruption and malfeasance at the highest level, until now. With William Barr at the right hand of Donald Trump, that is no longer assured.
By Hugh Bronstein

BUENOS AIRES, May 8 (Reuters) - Argentine markets were filled with uncertainty as the market opened on Friday, with the government's deadline for bondholders to agree to its debt restructuring offer only hours away.

The Economy Ministry's proposal to restructure about $65 billion in "unsustainable" sovereign bonds was set to expire at 6 p.m. (2100 GMT) in Buenos Aires with no indications of a deal with creditors or an extension of the deadline on the horizon.

"The market is pessimistic about the chances of a deal being reached today," said Gabriel Zelpo, director of Buenos Aires economic consultancy Seido.

"There were no significant advances since the initial proposal. Lets see if the government decides to improve the proposal and extend the negotiation time," he added.

Some major holders have balked at Argentina's proposal to impose big cuts in coupon payments, a three-year payment hiatus and a push back of maturities into the next decade. The offer was unveiled in the middle of last month.

"There clearly needs to be some upfront cash flow relief but this doesnt necessarily rationalize three years of no payments," said Siobhan Morden, head of Latin America fixed income strategy at Amherst Pierpont Securities in New York in a Friday note.

The bond revamp is part of a broad restructuring with creditors, including the International Monetary Fund and Paris Club of country-to-country lenders. The government says its ability to pay creditors is extremely limited as Argentina was already in recession before going on lockdown against the coronavirus pandemic on March 20. Since then the economy has shriveled.

"Overall, it is unclear to us if an understanding will be reached," Citi said in a note to clients.

"The final outcome remains very uncertain to us," it said.

Argentine country risk as measured by JP Morgan's Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus was virtually unchanged when the market opened on Friday at 3,311 basis points over safe-haven U.S. Treasury bonds. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein, additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New york; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday expressed hope that trading of rupee-dollar derivatives contracts in India will generate huge volumes, given the world class business environment and competitive tax regime at GIFT-IFSC.

The minister on Friday launched INR-USD futures and options contracts on the two international exchanges -- BSE's India INX and NSE's NSE-IFSC, at GIFT-IFSC in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

"Given the world class business environment and competitive tax regime at GIFT-IFSC, it is expected that trading of INR-USD contracts may bring volumes to India," she said.

The finance minister opened the trading facility by ringing the bell electronically through video conference.

Trading volumes on India INX have been growing phenomenally ever since the exchange commenced trading activities in January 2017, BSE said in a statement.

With a cumulative trading volume of USD 822 billion since launch and international debt medium-term note (MTN) program of about USD 48 billion, India's INR-USD derivative is expected to attract more participants to the IFSC and make India INX a leading centre for raising capital for issuers across the globe, it said.

In a separate statement, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) said introduction of rupee derivatives in IFSC is crucial for the development of Indian financial markets.

"Rupee derivatives in IFSC would help in creating a vibrant forex market in India. This will also play an important role to bring the offshore rupee market back to India and strengthen price discovery in Indian markets," it said.

The major participants in rupee derivatives contracts at NSE IFSC shall include Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs), corporations, IFSC Banking Units (IBUs) trading members, global banks and non-resident Indians, it added.

IFSC platform offers access for the international investors and non-resident participants who currently participate in INR trading in various offshore markets and shall offer such participants an additional trading venue at par with the other offshore market platforms.

Long trading hours and USD settlement at IFSC would also help to improve access for overseas participants and this shall in turn help these participants in hedging their rupee exposures effectively at IFSC.

"We welcome today's launch of Rupee Dollar derivatives trading from the International Exchanges at GIFT IFSC. This new reform will enable India to become a net exporter of financial services, being in sync with the vision of GIFT City as a platform for onshoring financial services business, presently being lost to other financial centres across the world," GIFT City MD and Group CEO Tapan Ray said.

With the launch of INR-USD derivatives, the trades that have migrated to other international financial centres will now return, he said, adding, India International Exchange already trades 22 hours a day and the INR-USD futures and options contract will also be available for 22 hours to all participants across the globe.

To provide a single window regulatory institution which would accelerate the development of India's first IFSC at GIFT City, the government established an International Financial Services Centres Authority to regulate all financial services in International Financial Services Centres (IFSCs).

Currently, banking, capital markets and insurance sectors in IFSC are regulated by multiple regulators -- the RBI, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), and Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai).

The then finance minister Arun Jaitley in February 2018 proposed a unified regulator for the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at GIFT City in Gujarat.

GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) has been set up by the state government as India's first IFSC that brings together world class infrastructure, connectivity, people and technology on a single platform for businesses across the world.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., conducts a news conference in the Capitols Rayburn Room where she took questions from reporters working offsite because of the COVID-19 pandemic on Thursday, May 7, 2020.

The price tag on the next plan could reportedly approach the $2 trillion cost of the unprecedented emergency package passed in March. While Democrats have not released a specific framework of the bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated it could include funding for state and local governments, money to test for and trace Covid-19, relief for the U.S. Postal Service and another direct payment to Americans, among a range of other provisions.

Democrats are working to finalize their next relief proposal, as U.S. Covid-19 cases continue to rise and government data show unemployment soared to levels unseen since the Great Depression as businesses across the country shuttered in April. On a caucus call Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told members that he hopes the House will vote on the bill next week, according to a Democratic leadership aide. He told lawmakers currently out of Washington that they would get 72 hours' notice before they have to come back for a vote.

House Democratic leaders aim to vote on the next coronavirus rescue bill as soon as next week, as Republicans in the Senate and White House downplay the need for urgent legislation to blunt the health and economic damage from the pandemic.

"With millions of Americans out of work and millions more suffering, we must act with courage, strength and urgency to provide the support that the American people need to protect their lives and livelihoods," the California Democrat said in a statement Friday responding to the April employment report, which showed the U.S. lost more than 20 million jobs as the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7%.

Republicans have not showed the same urgency to pass another rescue plan, as they grow wary of massive federal spending and generally push for a swifter economic reopening than Democrats have backed. Democrats could therefore pass legislation without GOP input, making its path to approval in the GOP-controlled Senate more difficult.

On Friday, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow told reporters that talks with Congress on another rescue plan may not resume until later this month.

"We've kind of paused as far as formal negotiations go," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not ruled out another relief bill. However, he has called for it to include liability protections for businesses as they start up again during the outbreak  a provision Democrats oppose.

The Kentucky Republican has also expressed skepticism about more aid for states and municipalities, a priority for Pelosi.

"But now we need to carefully begin to reopen our economy," he told Fox News Channel on Thursday. "That may or may not involve another rescue package. It could well happen. But we need to be more measured in going forward and see how much growth and reinvigoration we can get out of beginning to reopen the economy."

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New Delhi, May 8 : Even as the number of coronavirus cases witnessed a surge in the last few days, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday sent over one lakh face masks to Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow to help it deal with the pandemic.

"Priyanka Gandhi has sent over one lakh face masks to Lucknow today," a senior Congress leader told IANS. "Uttar Pradesh Congress media coordinator Lalan Kumar said she has sent one lakh face masks and has also played an important role in ensuring cooked meal and ration to over 47 lakh people in the state".

He said state party workers will start distribution of masks from Saturday.

Kumar said Priyanka Gandhi, who is also party in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, had earlier sent medicines to several other districts. Priyanka Gandhi has been active in Uttar Pradesh amid the nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

The Congress leader further said that the party has formed several WhatsApp groups under the guidance of Priyanka Gandhi, where party workers are receiving requests from the people in need.

"Following requests from the people, Congress workers are providing food, medicines and ration in several districts such as Lucknow, Hapur, Ghaziabad, Agra, Fatehpur and Prayagraj," he said.

The Congress is running community kitchens in 17 districts and the party has helped over four lakh migrant workers, he said.
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department moved Thursday to drop charges against President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a stunning reversal that prompted fresh accusations from law enforcement officials and Democrats that the criminal justice system was caving to political pressure from the administration.

The unraveling of Flynn's guilty plea for lying to the FBI came after senior political appointees in the Justice Department determined lower-level prosecutors and agents erred egregiously in the course of special counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said that "after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information . . . the government has concluded that [Flynn's interview by the FBI in January 2017] was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn," and that it was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis."

The Justice Department's abandonment of the Flynn case is a political windfall for Trump, who had already declared that he was considering a pardon for his former adviser. The Justice Department's decision means he won't have to become personally involved in the Flynn case.

Trump fired Flynn in February 2017, and when he pleaded guilty, the president tweeted: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

On Thursday, Trump told reporters that Flynn was "an even greater warrior" and called the senior FBI and Justice Department officials who pursued him "human scum." The president's lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said Mueller "should be ashamed of the conduct of his agents and lawyers that he allowed."

Through a representative, Mueller declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department did not brief the White House on the decision to move to dismiss the case.

It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to seek to undo a guilty plea, and comes just months after Attorney General William Barr pressed prosecutors in another of Mueller's cases to soften their sentencing recommendation for the president's friend and former political adviser Roger Stone.

"Attorney General Barr's politicization of justice knows no bounds," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "Overruling the Special Counsel is without precedent and without respect for the rule of law."

Shortly before the Justice Department abandoned Flynn's prosecution, the line prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, formally withdrew - just as the Stone prosecutors had.

In the new filing, Timothy Shea, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote that "continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice," but current and former law enforcement officials said the decision was a betrayal of long-standing Justice Department principles. Shea, who was tapped by Barr to lead the U.S. attorney's office, was the only lawyer to sign the filing; no career attorneys affixed their names to it.

"Another pillar in the foundation of the Department of Justice and the rule of law has fallen," said one federal prosecutor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because that person was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. "The justification for this move is not credible, and it may be used by criminals in the future to escape legitimate prosecution."

Gregory Brower, a former U.S. attorney and former senior FBI official, said the move shows Barr is intent on overturning much of the work done by former FBI director James Comey, a longtime target of the president's wrath.

Flynn's defense team "came up with this idea that, it doesn't really matter what happened," said Brower. "The truth here is - and this is from the defendant himself - that he did in fact lie to the FBI about a very serious matter."

Flynn was one of the first and highest-ranking Trump aides to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller's investigation. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to making false statements about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States before Trump had taken office and as the FBI was attempting to ascertain whether anyone in Trump's campaign had coordinated with Russia to influence the election's outcome.

After Mueller's probe ended in March 2019, Flynn changed course, hired new lawyers and began fighting to undo his plea deal. The retired general sought to void his conviction by arguing that he was the victim of a partisan conspiracy by prosecutors, federal investigators and even his initial attorneys. His new defense team also alleged he was insufficiently represented by one of Washington's most prominent law firms, Covington & Burling, when he entered his guilty plea.

Barr in January directed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of St. Louis to review the case's handling by the federal prosecutor's office in Washington, which took over Mueller cases last year. Jensen made the final recommendation.

"Through the course of my review of General Flynn's case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case," Jensen said in a statement. "I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed."

In an interview Thursday on CBS News, Barr said the Justice Department was duty-bound to dismiss the case because prosecutors could not establish a crime had been committed.

"People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes," he said.

He disputed the implication that he was doing Trump's bidding - "No, I'm doing the law's bidding," he retorted - and said he was ready to take criticism for the decision.

"I'm prepared for that, but I also think it's sad that nowadays these partisan feelings are so strong that people have lost any sense of justice," Barr said.

Thursday's filing blames a handful of former senior FBI officials for what Shea declared was an unjustified pursuit of Flynn. The filing mentions internal communications between the FBI's former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, his close aide Lisa Page, and former case agent Peter Strzok - all of whom have faced criticism for other conduct - and argues that those conversations show the FBI investigation of Flynn, dubbed Operation Razor, should not have existed at all.

"The frail and shifting justifications for its ongoing probe of Mr. Flynn, as well as the irregular procedure that preceded his interview, suggests that the FBI was eager to interview Mr. Flynn irrespective of any underlying investigation," the filing contends.

The filing asserts that the government could not prove Flynn lied, but more important, cannot show his statements were relevant to an ongoing investigation because the FBI was winding down its case against Flynn before suddenly deciding to interview him about his phone calls. Legal analysts and those involved in the case vigorously dispute both assertions.

In a statement, the FBI said that it has cooperated fully with the review of Flynn's case, and that FBI Director Christopher Wray "remains firmly committed to addressing the failures under prior FBI leadership while maintaining the foundational principles of rigor, objectivity, accountability, and ownership in fulfilling the Bureau's mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution."

Comey, now an outspoken critic of Trump, tweeted that the Justice Department "has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership."

In a lengthy statement, McCabe defended the FBI's actions and said the development "has nothing to do with the facts or the law - it is pure politics designed to please the president."

Aitan Goelman, a lawyer for Strzok, said the idea that the FBI did not have a good reason to conduct a counterintelligence investigation "is preposterous."

The filing came one day before a court-mandated deadline for the Justice Department to answer defense allegations of misconduct prompted by the Barr-ordered review. The government's motion to dismiss the case must be reviewed by a judge, who could press the government for a further explanation.

Flynn, 61, was a senior Trump campaign foreign policy aide who went on to serve 24 days as national security adviser, the shortest tenure on record. He was fired from the White House in 2017 for misstating the nature of his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, senior White House aides, federal investigators and the news media.

In his plea, Flynn admitted he was in touch with senior Trump transition officials before and after his communications with Kislyak. The pre-inauguration communications with Kislyak involved efforts to blunt Obama administration policy decisions on sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel, according to his plea. He also admitted misstating his lobbying work for the government of Turkey.

The move to withdraw charges against Flynn came as new details emerged about his efforts to conceal the nature of his conversations with Kislyak.

White House adviser Hope Hicks testified to House investigators in 2018 that Flynn had sought to enlist her and other Trump aides in backing Flynn's false claims that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

Hicks said Flynn did so after questions about his Kislyak call were raised in a January 2017 Washington Post op-ed column by David Ignatius, according to a transcript released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee. Flynn emailed Hicks, his then-deputy K.T. McFarland and others saying the Ignatius report "is not accurate, what can be done?" Hicks testified.

"I didn't know that it was a lie at the time," Hicks said, "but I think, based on the reporting that we've seen since then, it would appear that he was not being truthful."

Flynn faced up to a five-year prison term under the charge, but in exchange for his cooperation with investigators eyeing the Trump campaign, Mueller's team initially recommended probation as a possible sentence.

Once Mueller's probe ended, however, Flynn changed course and accused the FBI and prosecutors of manufacturing the case against him.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected those arguments, but Flynn still sought to take back his plea.

Prosecutors have previously rejected any government misconduct in his case. They argued his allegations had no relevance to the sole charge to which he pleaded guilty, and the main focus of that charge, lying about his Kislyak contacts.

In recent days, Flynn had elevated attacks on law enforcement, citing newly unsealed documents turned over by Jensen's review to the defense showing that the FBI was about to close the investigation into Flynn in early 2017 until new evidence prompted them to keep it open.

Flynn also seized on notes turned over in the review showing that FBI officials discussed in advance how to handle the January 2017 interview with Flynn about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States before Trump took office.

A page of handwritten notes show that before the Flynn interview, FBI officials discussed the possibility that he would lie to them, given that he had already apparently denied to other White House officials that he had discussed sanctions against Russia weeks earlier in phone calls with Kislyak.

"What is our goal?" the notes said. People familiar with the case said the notes were written by E.W. Priestap, the FBI's former assistant director for counterintelligence. "Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"

Priestap also wrote that the FBI should "protect our institution by not playing games."

As conservatives seized on those notes last week as evidence that Flynn was railroaded, Trump cranked up his public support for Flynn, calling him a war hero and saying he would consider rehiring him.

Flynn had admitted that he knowingly lied to the Justice Department in foreign lobbying disclosure filings about whether he and his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, had acted as agents for the Turkish government, but his new, more aggressive defense blamed that and shoddy work by his past lawyers.

The Jensen review came after Barr named Shea, a top aide to the attorney general, to serve as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, taking charge of both the Flynn and Stone cases.

Shea's filing Thursday acknowledged that Sullivan previously deemed Flynn's lies as "material" to the investigation, but argued that he did so "based on the Government's prior understanding of the nature of the investigation, before new disclosures crystallized the lack of a legitimate investigative basis for the interview of Mr. Flynn."

- - -

The Washington Post's Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
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Talos Energy Inc. (NYSE:TALO)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call

, 11:30 a.m. ET

Contents:

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Talos Energy First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

I'd like to turn the conference over to Sergio Maiworm, Vice President of Finance, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Sergio L. Maiworm -- Vice President --Finance, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Speakers on the call today are Tim Duncan, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Shane Young, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in yesterday's press release and on our Form 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2020, filed with the SEC yesterday. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligations to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

During this call, we may present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAP measures was included in yesterday's press release, which was filed with the SEC and which is also available on our website at talosenergy.com

And now I'd like to turn the call over to Tim.

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Sergio. I look forward to discussing are results for the quarter as well as recent developments with the company and the industry. The combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated sudden drop in global demand across all sectors of the economy have rapidly resulted in an unprecedented situation for our industry. The environment is challenging, but it is a challenge we are working every day to meet and emerge as an even stronger and better-positioned company that before. Our first and foremost priority is always the health and safety of our employees, our contractors and the community. In recent weeks, we bolstered our offshore HSE procedures to include daily temperature scans, consistent use of face masks and social distancing in their daily work and health surveys and other advanced screening techniques as we onboard new crews. To date, we have not encountered any COVID-19 cases among our offshore workforce. We also quickly moved our corporate staff to work-from-home status. As various jurisdictions in which we operate begin to reopen, we stay vigilant to continue to protect our people, their families and our broader network of suppliers and partners in the community. I still believe Talos is well positioned to weather this current commodity downturn.

As I mentioned in our last call, we entered March with the right ingredients to manage an abrupt decline in oil prices. We have low leverage, high liquidity, robust hedges and minimum long-term commitments. With our recently expanded asset portfolio following the closing of our acquisition, our asset base is more diverse and resilient than ever with a broad production base across the asset life cycle, highly competitive margins and a flexible portfolio of opportunities that utilize our infrastructure, allowing us to generate material free cash flow in the first quarter and still remain free cash flow positive for the full year 2020, even at current strip prices in combination with our hedges. With respect to the acquisition, that transaction closed on February 28 of this year. The transaction brings interest in numerous high-profile Gulf of Mexico assets, such as Marmalard, Odd Job and Claiborne. It also substantially increases our exposure in our Mississippi Canyon core area while introducing new partnerships with other high-quality operators throughout the Gulf of Mexico. At closing, we benefited from the free cash flow adjustment from the effective date of July 1, 2019, which reduced our cash consideration at closing. We also used our equity to finance a large part of the transaction, with the number of common shares issued to the seller being fixed when we signed the contract in December of 2019. For the last 12-month period ending March 31, 2020, these acquired assets generated an average daily production of just over 19,000 barrels equivalent a day and continue to produce an average of 19,700 barrels equivalent a day in the first quarter of 2020. The transaction is also providing encouraging near term upside, such as the successful drilling of the Claiborne #3 development well that was recently announced. We expect that well to be online by midyear this year. You've also seen the announcement of an impactful third-party discovery in the region, Equinor's Monument discovery, that may unlock value from our offsetting primary term acreage that we acquired in the transaction that is on trend with this announced discovery.

However, as we entered March, the markets deteriorated during the spread of COVID-19 and the associated government-mandated economic shutdown, and we've rapidly responded to the evolving situation by reducing our capital spending and deferring or canceling growth projects, reducing our operating costs and reducing our G&A expenses. When considering the assets we currently own, on a pro forma basis, our capital budget is now 40% lower than the capital program across the same set of assets in 2019. On a similar basis, total operating and G&A costs are down 15%, and we expect to continue to find more savings as we work with our suppliers and service providers. We expect to continue to benefit from our strong hedge book throughout the year, and we have continued to opportunistically add additional hedges. Looking forward to the second quarter and second half of 2020, we will continue to execute on our adjusted and reduced capital plan, which focuses on previously committed or already commenced projects that remain attractive even in the current environment. Each of these projects utilizes existing infrastructure that we either operate or have access to. That allows for a quick turnaround to production, leads to improved margin profile within our own infrastructure and increases the collateral value of our portfolio, resulting in the best possible liquidity position to withstand any uncertainty with respect to the direction of the commodity markets.

So with that backdrop, let's turn to our highlights of the quarter. And as a reminder, all figures include one-month of results from the recent acquisition. Production for the quarter totaled 58,100 barrels equivalent a day. Production in March was 70,300 barrels equivalent a day. The 58,100 barrels equivalent a day ties to an EBITDA which remains strong at $148 million, inclusive of hedges. Capital expenditures for the quarter, inclusive of P&A, totaled approximately $73 million and included a $7.6 million Seismic change of control expenditure from our 2018 Stone Energy transaction. We have positive $0.27 adjusted earnings per share, continuing a trend of six straight positive adjusted EPS quarters. Free cash flow for the quarter totaled approximately $49 million and was our third straight quarter of solid free cash flow. As we move into the second quarter, the flexibility provided by a broader and more diverse portfolio gives us more optionality to respond to the current price environment while maintaining a healthy production base. In recent weeks, we've initiated production shut-ins in several fields in order to either accelerate previously planned maintenance and upgrade activities or reduce production where it makes sense to do so in the near term. The company has not yet encountered any required production shut-ins resulting from midstream or storage capacity constraint. Approximately half of the current shut-ins are driven by the acceleration of various maintenance and other activities planned throughout 2020, which should better position the company later in the year as prices improve. Importantly, we are continuing to monitor the market environment and work with other operating partners from our in our nonop assets regarding additional potential shut-ins and production planning in the near term. As mentioned in our earnings release, Talos recently took delivery of both a Helmerich & Payne platform rig as well as the Transocean Discoverer Inspiration drillship. Both rigs are conducting previously planned relatively low-risk projects, including the Kaleidoscope exploitation well near our Green Canyon 18 platform, the hookup of our Bulleit discovery and then our Tornado waterflood project. Upon completion of these projects, Talos currently plans to release the rigs, utilizing the flexibility from our short-term contract.

While we focus on the immediate environment and best positioning our business for the near term, we're also continuing to advance our Zama discovery toward a final investment decision as we push the delivery of our engineering and design work. In the coming weeks, we expect completion of a key regulatory step to declare Zama a shared reservoir, following by a directive and the time line from the government to complete unitization. We are continuing to progress on the project to reach FID as soon as possible, and we look forward to moving our world-class discovery to the next phase and eventual first oil.

I'll now turn it over to Shane to discuss the details of our financial results.

Shannon E. Young -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Tim. I'd like to provide some further details on our financial performance during the quarter. In the first quarter, we continued to maintain strong margins, low leverage and good liquidity, which included the impact of our acquisition of assets, which we closed on February 28. As prices declined in the second half of the quarter, our strong hedge book began to provide material cash flow benefits, helping to sustain strong EBITDA margins of over 80%.

Highlighting a few key results for the quarter. As Tim mentioned, Talos generated production of 58,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first quarter of 2020, including one-month of results from the assets acquired in the ILX transaction. For the month of March, we produced over 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, including the impact of the transaction after closing. The company received an average realized price of just under $45 per barrel of oil, roughly in line with the average WTI prices over the same period.

Talos generated adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of $148 million, representing a margin of $28 per barrel of oil equivalent and an 81% of operating revenue. Talos generated free cash flow for the quarter of approximately $49 million, after capex of approximately $73 million. We closed the quarter with a liquidity position of $593 million, including $486 million available under the company's RBL credit facility and approximately $107 million of cash on hand. The company also ended the quarter with a conservative leverage position of approximately 1.2 times LTM EBITDA on a pro forma basis, inclusive of a full 12 months' impact from the acquired assets, calculating EBITDA in accordance with our credit agreement.

Talos has recently begun its next biannual borrowing base redetermination process and, as is the normal course, expects to announce results around the end of the month. Clearly, bank pricing has come down in the current environment. But we have supportive partners in our bank group, our assets have performed well, and we have solid reserve adds to the borrowing base. Our early read is that while we will see some reduction in the borrowing base, it will be very manageable as it relates to maintaining strong liquidity, and it will be more than sufficient in the current market environment. One reason it was nice to go into the downturn with $600 million of liquidity was to be positioned to absorb some volatility.

Following our initial 2020 financial guidance provided on February 18 this year, global demand for oil deteriorated substantially, resulting in a dramatic drop in crude prices. As a result, Talos has responded by aggressively reducing 2020 capital and operating costs, including deferring or eliminating noncommitted capital projects, reducing LOE and G&A expenses and other cost-saving measures. In aggregate, we have taken over $200 million of capital, operating and overhead costs out of the system for 2020 and reduced capital alone by approximately 40% relative to pro forma 2019 levels. The impact of these project deferrals and approximately 6,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of temporary outside operated shut-ins has been roughly 8% on production for the full year. And we feel we will remain cash flow positive for 2020 at current commodity prices, inclusive of our hedges. Finally, Talos continues to benefit from its strong hedge book throughout 2020. For the remainder of 2020, the company currently has approximately 10.3 million barrels of oil hedged or over 80% of our expected oil production for the remainder of the year at a weighted average price of $47.29 per barrel. We have recently added gas hedges to our book for both the second half of 2020 and the full year 2021 and feel good about where we are on gas as well.

With that, I'd like to hand the call back over to Tim.

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Shane. In closing, we're pleased with our financial performance for the quarter. On a broader level, despite the immediate commodity market backdrop, we must take stock that we are a stronger, more diverse and better-positioned company than this time a year ago. We successfully appraised and advanced a world-class international discovery. We consistently executed operationally with a busy drilling and development calendar, and we completed a major acquisition that significantly increased our production reserve base and inventory for the future. We've done all this while maintaining a consistent low leverage profile, increasing liquidity and better positioning the company for the current environment we now find ourselves in. And we've quickly responded with the reallocation of capital and significant cost reductions.

Even though, we expect a pullback for the entire industry, including Talos, in the second quarter, we're still focused on generating positive free cash flow for the year, inclusive of our hedges, even if the current strip holds. Our team has deep experience in our basin through multiple commodity cycles, including successfully navigating the 2015 and 2016 downturn, and we are confident in our employees, our assets and our ability to persevere despite the abrupt shift in oil prices in the near term. While we continue to take prudent steps and prepare for any environment in the coming months and year, I still believe that Talos is in a position to thrive as we look toward the future.

And with that, we'll now open up the line for Q&A.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today will come from Jeff Grampp with Northland Capital Management.

Jeff Grampp -- Northland Capital Management -- Analyst

Morning, guys.

Sergio L. Maiworm -- Vice President --Finance, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Hey, Jeff.

Jeff Grampp -- Northland Capital Management -- Analyst

Hey. Tim, I was hoping I appreciate the remarks on Zama, and I know that's kind of fluid and, ultimately, kind of hard to predict. But can you, as best as you can, kind of walk us through timing of next events? And in particular, I guess, wondering, when does the decision ultimately need to be made on operatorship to allow you guys to kind of continue to move forward to FID?

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Right. Yes. Well, look, thanks for the question. And by the way, I hope you're doing well out there in California. But the case in Mexico has always somewhat been the same. We knew when we went down there that our role is going to be important. Obviously, it's an oil-producing nation. It relies on oil revenue as part of its treasury, and we knew we had to execute and we had to execute well. And we think we've done that. And now we've kind of entered this space because of the discovery that will be certainly maybe even bigger than we thought, and part of that discovery, we believe, goes on to that lease next door. We had an obligation under our contract to make this filing that we call an Aviso. It lets the government know that by our analysis, after the appraisal that we believe we have a shared reservoir. It feels like common sense. But look, it's a filing we had to make. We made that filing with SENER, which is the equivalent of the energy department down there. Obviously, there's a technical element to that filing. So then they lean on CNH, which is the technical regulator and the leasing regulator, who then renders a decision on our information of, yes, that is or isn't in a shared reservoir. Now these are filings that we would make, Jeff, if it was BP on the other side or Shell and BP on next door leases. So this part of it doesn't have really anything to do with Pemex specifically being our neighbor.

Now along the way, we've been talking with Pemex. We have a preunitization agreement with Pemex. I would call that kind of a parallel process, and that has its own cadence. I've talked about that in the past. It has its own speed. Certainly, COVID slows that down. It's a culture where face-to-face is helpful. So in the interim, we're going through these filings. We believe the CNH will render a decision fairly quickly that it's a shared reservoir, which then takes that back to SENER. And then SENER says, look, we formally want to see you guys engage and wrap up this unitization discussion process. So there's a little more, I would say, government emphasis on wrapping up the process then maybe there would be if we were just normally, through normal business practices, trying to negotiate the unit.

So again, hopefully not too confusing, but we've been running down these parallel tracks. Those parallel tracks are going to merge into something that the government has an expectation we try to wrap up. Now that doesn't mean it gets wrapped up in four and six weeks, Jeff, it could take anywhere between three and six months to wrap that up. And that does push maybe the FID to where we wanted it to be maybe in the middle of this year toward the end of the year. It's just a reality of: one, the negotiations; two, I think, the inconveniences and inefficiencies of COVID. It just kind of is what it is. Now once we get that wrapped up, the process is then, and I think we've had graphics to show this, we file our development plan because, again, you want to file the development plan as a partnership. And then part of what unitization does, it pulls that partnership together. We file that development plan that has a ruling, and then you've reached FID and you start construction. So we've always said it's around 2.5 years post FID to construct and get to first oil. That's that to me is less uncertain, if you will. It's always been about pulling this process and pulling this partnership together kind of in the unitization.

And so the progress is, I think, we're seeing a little more tightening from a government process so that we don't have just simply an independent negotiation, you have something that's coming together with a little bit of oversight, which we think is just net helpful through the process.

Does that answer your question?

Jeff Grampp -- Northland Capital Management -- Analyst

Got it. Yes. Super helpful. And then my follow-up on the shut-ins and the deferred production that you guys are looking to implement in 2Q. Can you guys just talk what's assumed in guidance in terms of bringing that shut-in production online? I assume the accelerated maintenance is pretty straightforward and that will come on when that's done, but what are you guys kind of seeing on the shut-in front?

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. It's interesting. I'm sure it's a hot topic as you go around the portfolio of companies you cover. And I would tell you, just when you think about it offshore, it's, actually, maybe just a little bit trickier. Onshore, obviously, they've got a lot of things they think about. They think about their basis differential, they've got onshore wells, their proximity to their handling facilities is pretty quick and pretty short. When we go offshore, you have a different range of assets. You can have a subsea well that flows 20 miles that might just have variable costs. You could have a platform that you operate that's got 40 people on it that has a higher fixed cost. And so we shut-in offshore all the time. We have downstream maintenance issues if we have a third-party pipeline shut-in, if we have to shut in for a named storm. So we're not unfamiliar with shutting in. I think shutting in for extended periods of time, as you think about our reservoirs, is something you have to think about in terms of the long-term health of the reservoirs. But we do it every 2.5 years in the Phoenix deal for dry dock.

But I do think our fixed cost structure tends to be a little higher. Now there are areas for us where we have production handling agreements to create revenue in our facilities. So the Phoenix area, our Pompano area, Green Canyon 18. We actually have revenue we get by handling third-party production that drives down our breakeven, that's helpful. But I think the overarching emphasis is on liquidity. Are these decisions to shut in liquidity accretive? Are they liquidity enhancing? And it's not those calculations really vary from asset to asset offshore, I would say in a more complicated way than they do onshore. And I think because of that, as things start to rebound, I suspect you'll see these decisions to bring offshore assets back up quicker than maybe you will see on onshore where they just have a little more flexibility. So we expect, and which is why we try to do make our best attempts in our guidance, we expect to, obviously, see quite a bit of shut-in in May. Those may persist through June. We would expect some of those we would expect things to start running a little closer to normal in the second half of the year.

Jeff Grampp -- Northland Capital Management -- Analyst

I appreciate the time. Tim, thank you.

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

All right, thanks for the question.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Marshall Carver with Heikinen Energy Advisors.

Marshall Carver -- Heikinen Energy Advisors -- Analyst

Yes, good morning and Thank you for the updates, and I'm glad that you don't have any COVID cases in the company, that's good to hear. I guess, my question, you've had that prudent reduction in spending and really a rapid response this year reducing your spending quite a bit from the original guidance to now. How should you've given guidance around 2020 production, how should we think about the lower spend this year is impacting next year? I know you haven't given any guidance for next year. But how should we any color you have on that? And do you have as a follow-on to that, do you have a maintenance capex that we should think of for your company?

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Well, look, I think on the maintenance question, I would almost argue, you're looking at it in the new guide, if you will. Again, less, obviously, shut-ins that when you think about building a budget, you don't think about those shut-ins as a general matter. So if you look again, I think what I talked about in the transcript and in the earnings release and in my quote, if you look at the assets we own, let's just take March because March was kind of a clean rate with the assets that we purchased, you think about those assets and pull those assets back to 2019, I think that, that total capex spend and you would have to reconcile this with our capex and then our announcement deck, Marshall, but I think I would take you to about $600 million. And so now you have the midpoint of this updated guidance somewhere around $360 million, $370 million, so that's where you get to the 40%. If not for the if not for some of the shut-ins that obviously are here for various reasons and the dramatic drop in oil price, you would be somewhere around a flat number. So that gives you maybe a little color around maintenance.

But thinking forward to next year, here's what I would tell you, we and I think we've talked about this in the past and maybe I've talked about it in previous calls, you think of our capital program somewhat like a tower and you stack in the obligations. And obviously, there's some P&A we have to do every year, we can try to have some flexibility around that. But there's some compliance related to P&A offshore, that's a certain part of our program. In a full year, maybe that's 12% to 13%. As we pull some back, move the timing around, maybe it's 8% to 10%. There might be some other things that we spend money on, but we pull a lot of that back. So we're going to pull back the G&G. We're going to pull back some of the leasing, maybe have some minimum dollars in there. We you noticed, in the first quarter, we had a previous G&G payment on Seismic related to the merger in Stone in 2018. So there might be a little bit of that in the system. We do like to do asset management. That's typically been somewhere around 15% of our capital program because those help the profitability of our assets. They help us manage P&A. You know what those are, Marshall. They're are kind of recompletion, changing out pumps, things of that nature. So that asset management stays in there.

And then we get to the drilling. And look, as much as we like to explore, and trust me when I say we like to explore, we know we have to pull some of that back when we're in a softer commodity environment. Obviously, those are the first things that we had to cancel and, hopefully, just defer, frankly, from this year to next year, we might have to defer those further. And it's one of the reasons we try to keep contracts short, so we don't find ourselves forcing ourselves into wells that you ought to defer, which, again, is the exploration stuff. What we try to keep in the system are those things where we're utilizing our infrastructure in a very quick way. And so the Bulleit well, we found it, we're hooking it up. The well we're drilling on Green Canyon 18 with a platform rig, if we have success, we're immediately hooking that up. The waterflood project is a well that kind of immediately has impact. And the reason we do that is because we're taking either reserves that aren't booked that we think are low risk or we're taking reserves in PUD, and we're putting those into the proved development category to kind of raise the collateral value of our assets. And that's one thing, I think, Marshall, we're constantly focused on, isn't just low leverage, it isn't just liquidity, but to maintain that liquidity, do we have a reserve base that's highly developed, it's got high collateral value that we can work with our bank group?

And so those investments, to the extent we can keep them in, are going to stay in. And that recipe is going to be repeated depending on the environment next year. So you can kind of guarantee that those key elements we're going to keep in are probably going to stay. And the question is, will we get the price support to add back some of the elements that, obviously, we needed to cancel this year.

Did that make sense?

Marshall Carver -- Heikinen Energy Advisors -- Analyst

Yes. Okay. Yes, thank you very much.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Seeing no further questions, this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Tim Duncan for any closing remarks.

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Right. Thanks, operator. Look, we want to thank everybody for joining the call. We know there was an array of calls this morning as all of us are putting out our guidance in a similar time frame. Certainly, it's unprecedented times. It's we've navigated several of these cycles before. We have a team in place that is used to this. This one clearly is different. Everyone is working as hard as they can. We feel very good about the position we're in. We feel good about our response to the crisis, our commitment to keeping our folks and our community safe, but we're also mindful of making the right decisions to keep this company in the right footing that it makes it through this crisis and, frankly, comes out the other side in a position to flip from defense to offense.

And so we're going to keep working very hard. We appreciate your support of the company, and thanks for participating in the call.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Duration: 28 minutes

Call participants:

Sergio L. Maiworm -- Vice President --Finance, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Timothy S. Duncan -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Shannon E. Young -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Jeff Grampp -- Northland Capital Management -- Analyst

Marshall Carver -- Heikinen Energy Advisors -- Analyst

More TALO analysis

All earnings call transcripts
On May 8, 1945, President Harry Truman went on the radio at 9 a.m. and delivered the news that the people of Syracuse, as well as the rest of the nation, had been waiting for.

This is a solemn but a glorious hour, Truman declared. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations The flags of freedom fly over all Europe.

He called upon all Americans to stick to his post until the last battle is won in Japan and called for a national day of prayer to be observed on Sunday, May 13, which was also Mothers Day.

Truman told a news conference that he thought Mothers Day was an appropriate time to celebrate the victory.

What follows are a series of stories gathered from Syracuse newspapers around that momentous Mothers Day in 1945.

The front page of the May 8, 1945 Post-Standard announces the surrender of Germany, ending World War II in Europe.

SYRACUSE HOMES AND CHURCHES CELEBRATE MOM AND VICTORY

On May 13, 1945, throughout Syracuse, the celebration of mothers and victory in Europe were combined.

Florists reported heavy business in flowers and plants, the Herald-Journal reported, and the stores did a large business in gift items.

The role that mothers played in the great American victory were observed.

The entire city joined in honoring the mothers of Syracuse as a class which had made a tremendous contribution to the war effort, besides furnishing the men who are fighting the battles.

Sermons at churches services played up the theme of womens service during the war, with titles like Modern Model Mother, What Mothers Can Do for the Nation and Memories of Mother.

Despite the joyous emotions over the German surrender, the day was still tinged with melancholy for moms whose sons were still in harms way overseas.

An example of this was Mrs. Charles Teachout of 310 East Avenue in East Syracuse.

The Herald Americans Virginia Charles wrote:

Shes spending Mothers Day with out her children. And for Mrs. Charles Teachout its normally a big day. She has four sons to see to that. But this time theyre away at war, one in every branch of the service.

Marine PFC. Kenneth was in the South Pacific and Jean was in the Army.

Seamen Walter enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and was already a veteran in the South Pacific campaigns.

Corp. Charles of the Air Force was in between wars after serving in Europe for two years he was currently at a replacement camp in South Carolina.

(Teachout also had three brothers in the service. Two had been wounded.)

MOM CAN TAKE IT

On May 12, 1945, the day before Mothers Day, the Herald-Journal ran the following salute to World War II mothers as an editorial:

The fighting mother neither looks nor acts like the idealized figure of song and story, but she is exactly the same. She still tries to hold things together.

The mothers of the world have been holding the old planet together while the men they have borne have been tearing it apart.

They have fed and clothed the worlds children as they could, they have taken over mens work to help furnish the sinews of war to their fighters.

The mother agony in this war staggers the imagination. The mother of stalwart sons, who never looks without wondering if indeed these men could have been the babies she cherished, goes through her own peculiar form of torture when her sons face danger and death. It is worse for her than for them because she never can realize that they are able to bear hardship, even like herself. Instinctively she still would protect them.

Mothers of millions of men feel a weight lifted this Mothers Day just to know that the shooting has stopped in Europe. Their boys are back on the ground. They are no longer to push back on the ground. They are no longer fighting to push back a desperate enemy. There will be thousands of messages from overseas, the gist of which will be Be home soon. That is the best Mothers Day message any woman could receive.

The grief of those whose sons will never return from those battlefields cannot be measured. The crushing anxiety of those whose boys will be called to further duty in the Pacific war still remains. Mother still will carry on her own particular load.

Mothers of sons on battle fronts, mothers of babies already fatherless, mothers who must comfort and sustain daughters left to war widowhood, still face the endurance test.

As thy day is, so shall thy strength be, the motto for mothers.

Translated into G.I. this means Mom can take it.

A GENERALS THANKS TO A NORTH SYRACUSE MOM

Mothers Day rates attention, the Herald-Journal wrote on May 14, 1945. Even from a general.

Brigadier General M.M. Beach, of the 53rd Troop Carrier Wing in the European Theater of Operations, took it upon himself to write the mothers of each of the men serving under him.

This included Sgt. Jerrold Finger, who served as a crew chief. He had gone overseas in December 1943.

His mother, who lived at 316 Chestnut Street in North Syracuse, received this note from Beach on Mothers Day 1945.

It has been my duty to provide for the welfare of your son and, as Mothers Day approaches, I know you will be happy to know he has played his part well in the great success of the war effort thus far.

To you, his mother I take this opportunity to say thank you, and extend to you, from my officers and men, best wishes for a Happy Mothers Day and for the speedy return of your son.

MISLABELED MOTHERS DAY GIFT

Private Francis LaFleche decided to send a bunch of war trophies he had acquired back to his mother, Heather, of South Crouse Avenue.

To send his package home, LaFleche had to classify his articles. So, he wrote down one milk pitcher.

His mother must have been surprised when she opened the box and saw a sugar bowl there instead. One wonders if when Private LaFleche returned home his mother explained the difference between a milk pitcher and a sugar bowl

Other trophies in the box included a Nazi flag, a belt, a long knife, saltshakers, a hand-worked centerpiece and a set of drinking glasses with swastikas on them.

A BELATED MOTHERS DAY

For the 237 soldiers from the Syracuse area who were being held as prisoners of war when the fighting stopped in Europe, Mothers Day came and went.

On May 23, 1945, ten days after the holiday, almost half of Syracuse POWs in Germany were released.

Staff Sergeant Raymond Sokolowski, whose parents lived on Willis Avenue, was one of them.

He had entered the service in September 1942 and arrived in Europe in October 1943. He was pilot and became a prisoner on Feb. 4, 1944 after his plane was shot down on his 15th mission.

As soon as he was liberated from his prison camp, his first words home was to his mother.

Love to the best mother in the world. Hope to see you soon.

READ MORE

1920: Dressed in their own homemade disguises, two female inmates escape from Auburn Prison

The Condemned: A new true crime podcast by syracuse.com

1881: Hundreds witness Onondaga Countys final legal hanging

1970: How 2 Baltimore kids, age 7 and age, started walking to school and ended up in Solvay

This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-427-3958.

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Shainu Mohan By

Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state governments effort to set up a centralised waste-to-energy plant, which will be used to power the entire operations of the upcoming Vizhinjam International Seaport project in the state capital, has sparked widespread protest from local residents even amid the lockdown. Earlier, a similar attempt by the government to set up the waste plant at the ecologically sensitive Perimangala was dropped following disapproval by the local people.

The project

According to officials, this would be the first port-based power project in the state. The plan is to set up an Integrated Solid Waste Management Project with a waste-to-energy plant at Vizhinjam. The Port Department has leased out 15 acres of its land at Vizhinjam under its possession to Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), the agency roped in by the state government to implement the waste to energy project.

Bengaluru-based Zontra Infratech Pvt Ltd is the frontrunner for the project. KSIDC will be sub-leasing the land to the company setting up the plant with a minimum processing capacity of 300 tonnes per day for a period of 27 years.A senior official associated with the project said that following the decision of the State Level Monitoring Committee chaired by the chief secretary constituted by the state government to monitor the implementation of the waste-to-energy plants, they have invited yet another Request for Proposal (RFP) under the Swiss Challenge method to find other global players with better technologies.

The company taking up the project will have to set up the plant under Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) basis at Vizhinjam under PPP mode.According to officials, only 3,500 tonnes of the total 10,000-tonne solid waste generated in the state per day are disposed of scientifically.

This would be the first port-based power project in the state. The energy generated from the plant would be used to operate the port. The project is in the initial phases and protesting without knowing the relevance of the project is unnecessary, said the official. As per the proposed technology, municipal waste would be pelletised and used to generate energy.

The integrated waste management project is for the Thiruvananthapuram cluster which covers Thiruvananthapuram corporation, Attingal, Nedumangadu, Neyyattinkara and Varkala municipalities and Venganoor, Kalliyoor, Balaramapuram, Parassala and Poovar panchayats.

Vizhinjam not a feasible location

Kovalam MLA M Vincent alleged that the state government is implementing the project without the consent of the local people and claimed that the project is shady. The government is trying to implement the project discretely without holding discussions with the local people or elected representatives under the cover of the lockdown. The financial bid was opened and the pre-tender meeting was held. The land for the project is being leased out for a minimal amount. It is an unsolicited proposal and the authorities are trying to implement it in a highly sensitive area without proper social or environmental impact studies, said Vincent. He said that Vizhinjam is not a feasible location for setting up the plant.

With the port coming up, Vizhinjam is one of the fast-developing areas in the district. Kovalam is an international tourism destination located very close to the port and by setting up the plant, the government will be destroying the rich tourism potential of the area and other future developments, said Vincent.

Vizhinjam councillor N A Rasheed said that there is stiff resistance from the part of local people. The government will face strong protests and it would be impossible to go ahead with the project without convincing the public. We are totally in the dark about the project and none of the authorities informed us about the plant being planned here, said Rasheed.However, the official said that the project is being planned and implemented to support the local bodies.

We havent officially signed the agreement. There will be several levels of discussions before going ahead with the project, which will be implemented complying with the municipal solid waste rules. All the procedures are transparent. The project will be implemented only after getting all the mandatory clearances including the nod from the local body councils, said the official.

in a nutshell

The Port Department has leased out 15 acres of its land to Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation to implement the project. The plant will have a minimum processing capacity of 300 tonnes per day.
Recently, a grass-roots doctor in east China's Jiangsu province used his official WeChat account, "Super Doctor Ding, to publish an open letter from a nurse who had helped in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, the former epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

In the letter, the nurse recalled the experience of tens of thousands of medical staff who came from across the country to help Wuhan.

The translation of the letter is as follows:

Open letter to President Trump

Dear President Trump,

How are you doing? I am a nurse in China from the pneumology department of a hospital. I previously helped in Wuhan. The memory of 42,000 medical workers helping Wuhan and our local colleagues working around the clock to save lives is still very vivid! I wanted to write you a letter and tell you some of the stories that happened in Wuhan.

The day I left for Wuhan happened to be Chinese New year's Eve, which is just like Christmas Eve in the United States. This is the most important day for family reunions in China. However, as I am a medical worker, it is my duty to save lives. With this in mind, I, along with 42,000 medical staff from all over China, said farewell to our families and rushed to Wuhan from all directions to save lives.

The epidemic was very threatening. At first, our medical supplies were very tight. In order to save money, we rarely took off our protective clothing to get some air, even if we were already sweating and feeling dizzy and nauseous. So I sympathize with the doctors in the United States when I read news saying that they can only use plastic bags as protective clothing. I was deeply saddened to see the families of American medical workers who had lost their loved ones holding pictures and crying bitterly.

The hardest days are now over. What gratifies me most is seeing more and more patients being cured and discharged from the hospital, especially the elderly. We took care of every elderly person as if they were our own parents. We never gave up on them. More than 3,600 elderly patients over the age of 80 have been cured in Hubei province. I am really happy and proud, because they had worked hard for the lives we have today, and I have the opportunity to do my best for their lives today.

In Wuhan, we did our best to treat patients, from a senior citizen of 108 years old to a little baby who was only 30 hours old. It is our duty to save lives. Life is above all else!

Mr. President, this is the true story of what happened in Wuhan.

I know that at this moment, many Americans are suffering because of the virus. Many American medical workers are fighting on the front line, and there are many unknown people caring for others in different ways. I salute them! Best wishes to the American people!

A nurse who helped in Wuhan.

May 4, 2020
Both exchange greetings ahead of the 75th anniversary of Nazi defeat in WWII, emphasizing on the "histroic alliance" between the countries

Moscow: US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed progress in combating the coronavirus pandemic along with arms control issues and oil prices in a phone call Thursday, the White House and the Kremlin said.

The White House said Trump spoke with Putin to commemorate and reflect upon the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.

The Kremlin noted in its readout of the call that the two leaders exchanged greetings ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in World War II, emphasizing the historic significance of the WWII alliance between our peoples that allowed (us) to defeat the common enemy.

It said that if Russia and the U.S. follow the spirit of their wartime alliance they could score successes in dealing with such issues as ensuring strategic stability, fighting terrorism, settling regional conflicts and combating epidemics.

The White House said the two leaders discussed progress on defeating the coronavirus pandemic, with Trump reiterating that the United States is working hard to care for Americans at home and is also ready to provide assistance to any country in need, including Russia.

Trump said that in the phone call I suggested if they need ventilators, wed love to send them some. At the appropriate time well do that.

The Kremlin didnt say if Putin accepted the U.S. offer, but it said in the past that Russia would be grateful to the U.S. if it proposed assistance.

Russian authorities made it a top priority to secure ventilators, but it remained unclear how many of the machines the country has now and whether the number is sufficient.

Russia sent a batch of medical supplies to the U.S. last month.

On arms control, Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race, the White House said.

The only U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement still standing is the New START treaty, signed in 2010 by the presidents of the day, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. The pact limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.

Russia has offered to extend the New START that expires in February 2021, while the Trump administration has pushed for a new arms control pact that would also include China. Moscow has described that idea as unfeasible, pointing at Beijings refusal to negotiate any deal that would reduce its much smaller nuclear arsenal.

The Kremlin said that Trump and Putin also discussed the situation in the global oil market. It noted the positive effect of the OPEC+ agreement reached thanks to coordinated efforts by the U.S. and Russian presidents that helped stabilize oil prices.
Cocaine, guns, cash and drug-selling equipment were found in a home by sheriffs deputies as they sought to arrest a man wanted for felony crimes.

The Oakland County Sheriffs Office reported that deputies arrived at about 4 p.m. to the Pontiac home with a report of a 40-year-old Pontiac man there who was wanted with an outstanding felony warrant. The arrest occurred on the 800 block of Inglewood Avenue, which runs north from Cesar Chavez Avenue between Kennett Road and Baldwin Avenue.

Deputies saw the man and he saw them, running into the house.

Deputies knocked on the door and yelled verbal commands for the subject to exit the residence, the sheriffs office reported. The subject failed to comply causing deputies to force entry into the residence where the subject was arrested.

Inside the home, deputies recovered suspected narcotics, prompting the involvement of the offices Narcotic Enforcement Team.

Cocaine, packaging material, scales, several firearms, and a large amount of cash was seized subsequently to the execution of a search warrant, the sheriffs office reported. The suspect was transported and lodged at the Oakland County Jail after he was interviewed.
As was learned in the previous four stories in this series on Tennessees key role in getting the 19th Amendment ratified 100 years ago, many people, including several from this area, made important contributions.

Abby Milton from Chattanooga was a woman leader in the statewide suffrage movement, and 24-year-old state representative Harry Burn from McMinn County helped break the tie during the special Tennessee session that ultimately voted for ratification.

However, somewhat lost in the basic highlights of this story of how Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the amendment was that three of the four state legislators from Chattanooga and Hamilton County voted for it, too.

And their votes counted as equally as did Mr. Burns!

So, while the Chattanooga Public Library was still open for on-site visitors before the coronavirus pandemic temporarily closed it, I looked up some information on these mostly forgotten men.

And since I did not have many photographs other than copies from old papers, I decided this week to try to find their Chattanooga grave markers at three different cemeteries, an effort that ended up being harder than I realized and was not completely successful.

But first, the story of these men. The one person who voted against ratification  or voted nay  was state Rep. James O. Martin, a Democrat who represented what was called the district of Hamilton-2.

Born in 1858 in Meigs County, he came to Chattanooga in 1882, and became involved in business with E.R. Betterton, who at one time had a distillery. He was also later involved in the casket and coffin business, was a shareholder in Hamilton National Bank (which years later was taken over by First Tennessee, now First Horizon) and owned a lot of property in Hamilton County.

Politically, he also was wide reaching. He had served for 18 years on the old Chattanooga City Council/Board of Aldermen before it became a commission form of government. In 1918, he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives.

He had evidently been a victim of the influenza outbreak of 1918 and was still weakened from it in the summer of 1920, but that did not keep him from taking what was described in his Chattanooga Times obituary as a valiant opposition to the suffrage ratification.

Although then in feeble health, he remained throughout the session and had a part in the strenuous measures taken in the determination to save the Tennessee Constitution from annulment and violation by the governor and lawmakers, the writer stated in trying to show Mr. Martins or the papers perspective.

Death came a short time later on Christmas Day in 1921 at his Cedar Street home following a paralyzing stroke the previous November. He was 63. Following a service at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, he was buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

Also dying not long after the session was Charles E. Lynn, a Republican from Hamilton-1, who had voted for ratification during the tense House session on Aug. 18, 1920. A native of Ohio, Mr. Lynn came to Chattanooga before the turn of the century and became involved in real estate. He was an early and longtime resident of East Chattanooga.

While continuing to serve in the legislature after voting for ratification, he was asked to serve as a manager with the U.S. Veterans Bureau. As a result, he was forced to resign from the legislature due to a conflict of interest that might result.

At the time of his death in December 1922, a former House colleague, Hays Clark, praised his values and character as a politician, saying Mr. Lynn could stand above petty partisanship. Though a Republican in politics, he would as quickly support and did support many Democratic measures if he believed that those measures were for the best interest of his people, Mr. Clark said.

Following a service at Manker Memorial Methodist Church in East Chattanooga, which is still standing but is now New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, he was buried at Greenwood Cemetery.

While the previous two had entered politics through the common route of becoming successful in the business community, the lone Tennessee state senator from Hamilton County in 1920 had a little different background.

Finney T. Carter, a Republican from what was called Tennessees 8th District, had actually been a newspaper printer for the Chattanooga News and had been active in local union work. He had also helped publish a labor publication.

Always active and interested in politics as an adult and reportedly not afraid to express his opinions, in 1918 he was elected to the Tennessee Senate and soon found himself involved in the 1920 special session over the 19th Amendment. While the House vote was tight, the Senate vote on Aug. 13 was lopsided in favor of ratification, 25 to 4, with the help of Sen. Carters aye/yes vote.

As was the case with Rep. Martin and one of the other legislators, Mr. Carters obituary references his role in the 1920 vote. It said that for years he enjoyed boasting that he had cast the deciding vote for the amendment, but he also clarified his actual stance, later humbly saying he was personally opposed to ratification.

But the people of my county favor it, so my vote goes for the amendment, he said of his thinking at the time.

He had later worked for the Chattanooga Times and at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., before his death in January 1954 at the age of 66. He was buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga.

The last legislator involved, Leonidas Dewitt L.D. Miller, was perhaps the best known of the four into the later part of the 20th century and had the most unusual life, even though he came into politics through that other popular route of being a lawyer.

Mr. Miller had come to the Wauhatchie (Lookout Valley) part of Chattanooga at an early age from Warren County, and once worked as an office boy for lawyers Joe Clift and W.H. Cummings after dropping out of school. He later got a law degree from the Chattanooga College of Law and in 1918, at the age of 24, he was elected to the state House of Representatives.

Of his role in voting for the ratification of the 19th Amendment as a Democrat from the Hamilton-3 district, his obituary said he played a key role and had also apparently helped Tennessee women get more voting rights in earlier legislation. He took a leading part, introducing the bill granting women the right to vote in all municipal and presidential elections, it said.

It is not clear if the story is talking about the ratification of the 19th Amendment or perhaps the state law allowing women to vote in certain elections, as was highlighted in the first story in this series regarding some women from Lookout Mountain voting before 1920.

Mr. Miller went on to serve as a Circuit Court judge from 1930 to early 1955, and initially also handled criminal cases. He uniquely also became a writer of numerous detective stories for magazines, basing most of them on actual crimes.

And at the age of 19, this apparent Renaissance man had also gained some real experience as a cowboy working as a ranch hand in Texas. He was also was a widower and single father at a young age before remarrying.

The member of First Cumberland Presbyterian Church died in early 1964 at his home at 260 Glenwood Drive at the age of 79. He was buried at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Although he had many interesting experiences in his life, he, like the three other local legislators, probably never experienced any more personal excitement than what occurred in August 1920 at the state capitol in Nashville.

* * * * *

This week, I decided to try and visit all the four legislators graves, since they were all buried in Chattanooga. Although I had tried to track down graves before of people I have written about, I forgot how daunting a task that could sometimes be just to find one.

While the Chattanooga National Cemetery is an easy place to find graves due to its great cataloguing, with numbers placed even on the markers, it is very much the exception, I learned.

On Tuesday, I drove over to St. Elmo to Forest Hills Cemetery, which probably has more prominent and well-known Chattanoogans than about any other final resting place. And it is also better at documenting grave locations than most local cemeteries.

But it is not perfect, as I found out. I had looked online where Finney T. Carter and L.D. Miller were buried, and I thought I could easily find where their graves were. I first spent about 20-30 minutes walking around looking for Mr. Millers grave to no avail, and then tried to find Mr. Carters.

The latter is located in Section D, but I could not tell where from the numbering system on the online map. I then walked around that section for a good 30 minutes as well, continuously repeating to myself in a not-so-happy-tone that this was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

However, I went back and looked at the larger map by the cemetery office that did have numbers. So, I went back and pretty easily found Mr. Carters grave just behind the police and firemen memorial marker and graves.

As an interesting footnote that you can sometimes learn from visiting a cemetery site, Mr. Carter was apparently married to Emma Carter, who died in 1959. She must have had a previous husband, Charles White Sr., who died during that ratification year of 1920 at the age of 33 and is buried on her other side.

As I left, I stopped by the cemetery office and learned I had been earlier looking for Mr. Miller Jr.s grave instead of his father.

But later while looking back at the Forest Hills site online, I realized Mr. Miller Sr. was buried in Section C. So, not to be outdone, I decided to try and find his grave again on Wednesday. I also called Mt. Olivet Cemetery and Greenwood Cemetery to get grave locations of the other two former legislators, with plans to stop by those places.

With the help of the woman in the Forest Hills office, I had a general idea of where the grave was, so I headed to a back part of Section C. But I still spent another 20 or so minutes pacing  somewhat angrily  looking for it.

But then I somewhat surprisingly found it among a group of mostly much older burial sites. He was evidently buried by himself and his flat grave marker is much more modest than expected of a former judge, writer and significant legislator. It is even getting slightly covered by a bush.

It does feature the symbol of the judicial scales of justice, however.

I then headed over to Mt. Olivet Cemetery, a Catholic-affiliated cemetery just off Ringgold Road near the Bachman Tubes. I called the man in the office, who kindly came out and showed me Mr. Martins grave less than 100 yards from the office.

He was the lone nay voter among the Hamilton County delegation, but I said yes with excitement over the ease of finding his grave, with, of course, the help of the staff member. Mr. Martin has an impressive family plot featuring a large cross and a statue of Jesus with his arms open. At the bottom is the name Martin.

Mr. Martins actual flat grave marker appears to be getting a little weathered and damaged. Next to him is his wife, Nancy, who died in 1947. His daughter had married a Casey, and their graves are apparently nearby.

After not being there more than 10 minutes and finally breathing a sigh of relief over finally locating a grave without difficulty, I headed to my last stop  Greenwood Cemetery.

Located off Greenwood Road a mile or so northeast of the Wilcox Tunnel, out-of-the-way Greenwood Cemetery is not easy to find. And as I found out, some of the graves are pretty challenging to locate, too.

I had called a very nice woman at the office, and she said he was buried in Section C, and that she would leave me a map on the door in case she was gone when I got there.

A maintenance person was there when I pulled up by the cemetery office, and he handed me the envelope after I told him what the woman was going to do.

So, I headed back down a gravel road to Section C in a back part of the cemetery. It was a sloping hill about 75 yards by 30 yards and did not have a lot of grave markers, so I figured finding his grave would be as easy as finding the one at Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

I was wrong. I went back and forth for about 30 or 40 minutes checking out every grave in this very quiet and seemingly forgotten area surrounded on the lower end by deep woods, and I never found his grave. There were two or three markers that were quite weathered, but they did not look like his, and I found one or two flat places covered with leaves and mud, but I did not try to see if a marker was below them.

As a historical digger who likes to see completeness in my searching, I was quite disappointed as I drove out the gate of this seemingly lonely cemetery where some of my paternal relatives are also buried, although I was uplifted by the sight of a hawk by Greenwood Road.

I called the cemetery back on Thursday morning, and this time a man answered, and he told me that they had no other details and that area was actually where a number of people whose families could not afford markers were buried. But that did not seem like the accomplished Mr. Lynn.

He also said they would have probably made a notation if he had been re-interred elsewhere.

So, for now I am left to wonder where lies the well-respected and well-liked Mr. Lynn.

But at least his and the other legislators contributions to the 19th Amendment have been well documented, and information on them is easier to find 100 years later on this significant anniversary.

* * * * *

To see the previous story in this series, read here.

https://www.chattanoogan.com/ 2020/4/10/407294/John-Shearer- 19th-Amendment.aspx

* * * * *

Jcshearer2@comcast.net
WARNING  DISTRESSING CONTENT: A father and son have been charged two months after their alleged murder of a man they pursued in a ute after spotting him running down a street in their neighbourhood.

Gregory McMichael, 64, and his 34-year-old son Travis McMichael, are facing charges of murder and aggravated assault two months after the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery, 25.

The elder McMichael previously told police that he and his son chased after Mr Arbery because they suspected him of being a burglar in Brunswick, in the US state of Georgia.

Gregory (left) and Travis (right) McMichael were charged with murder two months after Mr Arbery's death. Source: Glynn County Police Department

He told police he suspected the runner was the same man filmed by a security camera committing a break-in, so he and his son grabbed guns and began a pursuit in a ute.

Two calls made to police before the shooting have since been released by the New York Post, revealing neither of the callers gave legitimate reasons the man was doing anything wrong.

Video of the incident shows a black man jogging on the left side of a road and a ute parked in the road ahead of him, with one of the men inside the utes tray and the other standing beside it.

The runner crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck before a gunshot sounds.

The runner is then shown grappling with a man in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle before a second shot can be heard, and the runner is seen punching the man.

A third shot is fired at point-blank range, with the runner staggering a few feet before falling face down.

Local prosecutors did not press charges against the father and son, sparking the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to step in and arrest them after widespread public outrage.

This should have occurred the day it happened. Theres no way without the video this would have occurred. Im just glad the lights shining very bright on this situation, Akeem Baker, one of Arbery's close friends in Brunswick, said.

Story continues

Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead while jogging in broad daylight. Source: Nine News/New York Post

The outcry over the killing reached the White House, where President Donald Trump offered condolences Thursday (local time) to Arberys family.

Its a very sad thing. But I will be given a full report this evening, Trump said in the Oval Office.

At a news conference before the arrests were announced on Thursday, Republican Governor Brian Kemp told reporters he was confident state investigators would find the truth.

Earlier this week, I watched the video depicting Mr Arberys last moments alive. I can tell you its absolutely horrific, and Georgians deserve answers, Mr Kemp told reporters.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the slain man's father, Marcus Arbery, said it was outrageous that it took so long for arrests to be made.

This is the first step to justice. This murderous father and son duo took the law into their own hands. Its a travesty of justice that they enjoyed their freedom for 74 days after taking the life of a young black man who was simply jogging, he said in a statement.

With Associated Press

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.
Tom Hanks washed up on the beach of an island in a scene from the film 'Cast Away', 2000. (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)

When youre a director off the back of a string of hits, or one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, then it used to be generally accepted you could use that clout to try something a little different.

So it was that Forrest Gump, Back To The Future, Contact and  yes!  Death Becomes Her director Robert Zemeckis started to circle a film called Cast Away. His Gump star Tom Hanks was on board too, both as producer and leading man. Hanks, too, had conceived the original idea and set the wheels in motion.

Thus, on the surface, all this looked pretty conventional. A star wants to make a new $90m movie when his last few films had been seismic hits? Fox readily agreed to write the cheque, in partnership with DreamWorks.

But there was a fundamental difference in the approach to the movie, that meant that both studios would need to wait for its movie. Furthermore, its star would have to go through an exhaustive process, thatd lead to everything shutting up shop to accommodate it.

Read more: How we made Gladiator

No major Hollywood film since has attempted anything quite like.

Background

Tom Hanks, Sally Field and director Robert Zemeckis attend the "Forrest Gump" Hollywood Premiere on June 23, 1994. (Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

The story of the film, as you probably know, sees Tom Hanks in the lead role of Chuck Noland (the very character name is a gag, fact fans: C No-land). Hes a systems analyst for Federal Express  FedEx to its friends  who is on a flight to sort out a problem in Malaysia, when the plane crashes. Chuck thus finds himself stranded on a desert island, with no obvious way home, and little chance of rescue.

To go lightly spoiler-y, the film then follows Chuck as he finds himself stuck on the island for far longer than anticipated. Thus, to get that across, and the passage of time in the film, Tom Hanks opted for a drastic approach to getting the physicality of his performance right. To accommodate this, he and Zemeckis proposed a schedule that would see the first chunk of the movie shot in three separate pieces.

Tom Hanks' Chuck finds friendship in the shape of a volleyball called Wilson in Cast Away. (20th Century Fox/DreamWorks)

The initial filming  the early material in the movie  was completed first. For these scenes, Hanks would bulk up, adding 23kg (50lbs) of weight to his body. Then, once the necessary material was in the can, filming stopped for a full year. This was to allow for Hanks to shift that weight, and also to spend 12 months growing the beard that we see his character sport throughout the middle of the movie. A fine forest of facial hair, too.

Story continues

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson (Photo by Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Then there was a further pause in filming of four months, to get the shape of the movies back end in place too. In all, the physical photography of the movie was spread over a period of two years and change.

Impact

There were two indirect ramifications of such an unusual approach.

The first concerned Hanks himself. In 2013, he revealed that he had Type 2 diabetes, and thinking was immediately rife that the dramatic weight changes involved in his work had a part to play. Cast Away was one of the highest profile examples of this, but hed also add weight for his role in A League Of Their Own, and lose pounds for his Oscar-winning turn in Philadelphia.

Tom Hanks in Cast Away. (20th Century Fox/DreamWorks)

Looking back in the aftermath of his diagnosis, hed admit hed been an idiot where weight was concerned, and no longer takes roles that involve physical, dramatic weight fluctuations.

Film two

The other ramification of the Cast Away schedule, though, is the existence of a whole other film.

Robert Zemeckis, very much in his workaholic phase, was taken with the idea of slotting in a whole other film during the year-long wait for Tom Hanks to get back into shape. Turns out thats exactly what he did.

Separately to Cast Away, a screenplay from Sarah Kernochan had come to the attention of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg was keen for this to be a project at his DreamWorks studio, and as such asked Zemeckis  who hed worked with on the Back To The Future trilogy  if his old friend was interested.

Norman (Harrison Ford) and Clair Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) try to unravel mysterious events in What Lies Beneath directed by Robert Zemeckis. (Getty Images)

Zemeckis liked what he saw, and figured the more contained production of What Lies Beneath  most of the film is shot in a house  could be achieved in his Cast Away downtime. Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer duly signed up to star in the film, and it was shot in New York and California between August and January 2000.

Zemeckis had form for juggling two films at one, of course, having shot Back To The Future Part II and Part III back to back, jetting from the edit suite of the former to the location for the latter each week. And in this case it was the film that he started shooting last that made it into cinemas first.

What Lies Beneath was released in the summer of 2000, to considerable success.

Releases

Tom Hanks in Cast Away. (20th Century Fox/DreamWorks)

Just five months after that film debuted, Cast Away washed into cinemas. The extraordinary production, volleyball and all, was ready in time for Christmas, and would prove to be an even bigger hit.

Given that Tom Hanks is the only person on screen for the vast majority of the movie, he was understandably at the heart of the films acclaim, picking up a further Oscar nomination for his work, albeit losing the Best Actor gong this time to Russell Crowe for Gladiator. It was Hanks fifth nomination, and hed have to wait until this years A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood for his sixth.

Read more: Actors who refuse to watch their own movies

20 years on, the sheer logistics of making two live action movies at once have dissuaded many people from tackling the idea since. Its occasionally seen that a director will take on an animated film alongside a live action project  George Miller and Tim Burton, for instance  but even then, few are tempted to take the plunge.

Which makes Cast Away  and to a slightly lesser extent What Lies Beneath  something of a standout.

Both, as a consequence, get to enjoy their 20th birthday party this year.

Cast Away is streaming on NOW TV.
Twenty years ago, as a lowly adjunct professor, I taught crisis management for Harvard in China. My memories, and some qualms about doing so, have flooded back as the world ponders whether Chinas political system enabled the viruss spread by discouraging local officials from reporting bad news. During those executive education programs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, I hoped that my colleagues and I might help nudge the Chinese system toward greater openness. But even back then  at a time when China was ascending to the WTO and optimism reigned among us globalists  our experiences of the country left me with doubts.

How to handle crisis was part of the curriculum when the Harvard Kennedy School struck a deal with the Beijing government to provide public-management education for local officials from across China. I have no idea whether the mayor of Wuhan was in the group I helped teach, but its quite possible. Our goal was to expose local and regional officials to Kennedy School-style techniques, which combine technocratic policy analysis with political leadership. It didnt take long to see that the schools dedication to fostering freer societies was going to be tested in the weeks a group of faculty spent at Tsinghua, thanks to what I understood to be the cooperation of the opaquely named Organization Department of the Central Committee.

It was above my pay grade to question whether the school should have entered into such a relationship in the first place. As I reflect, its possible that we planted some seeds for a freer society  but its just as likely that we helped provide legitimacy for a totalitarian government.

My role was to teach classes by the famous Harvard case method, in which narratives (cases) framed political or policy decisions to be discussed and argued over. Open debate alone represented the possibility of progress for China, or so I told myself. Of course, we were using cases set in other countries, in order, we hoped, not to upset Chinese government officials.

Story continues

One such case directly foreshadowed the coronavirus pandemic. It dealt with Hong Kongs response to the bird-flu epidemic of 1997, and it was meant to provoke discussion about how officials speak to the public at times of crisis: Can reassurance and candor be reconciled?

The central figure in the case was Hong Kongs public-health commissioner, Margaret Chan, who went on to become the head of the World Health Organization. When it was revealed that live-market chickens were the likely cause of the bird flu, Chan told Hong Kong residents, I eat chicken every day. Eventually, Hong Kong chose to kill every chicken in the territory, a decision widely judged to have saved the world from the illness. Our students mocked Chans statement as the Hong Kong public had, thus opening the door to the idea of accountability for public officials and citizen influence over public policy, both foreign concepts in China. And because the story had a relatively happy ending, another essential principle was made plain: Its possible to make mistakes in handling a public-health crisis but they are best openly acknowledged and corrected.

Despite such promising signs, the program, it turned out, also took some ominous turns that made clear the serious limitations of outside efforts to reform China  and foreshadowed the COVID-19 crisis.

I recall specifically our discussion of a case I wrote myself, about police corruption in La Paz, Bolivia. It tells the story of a reform-minded mayor of La Paz dealing with a largely illiterate and corrupt local police force. The mayor, Ronald MacLean, who went on to co-found Transparency International, considered a variety of ways to weed out the corrupt from the force and motivate the rest. But his approach was not embraced by the class. One official had a dramatically different and revealing perspective. The mayor, he said, should simply assemble a secret army of replacement police and, without warning one morning, have them swoop in and take over, replacing all the current cops, who would be brought up on charges. Might that not spark popular resentment? Would police work improve? The questions did not resonate.

Id never encountered that sort of response to the La Paz case before, although Id taught it around the world. The important thing, it seemed, was for the Chinese governments middle managers to demonstrate to officials higher up the food chain that the corruption problem was contained. In the Peoples Republic, the people really didnt play a role in the governments thinking. Arguably, the same systemic weakness could be seen in the belated response in Wuhan. Secrecy is a feature, not a bug, of the CCP system, and it has real consequences.

As the class went on, it became clear that Harvards involvement had unforeseen effects on the enterprise we were all engaged in. Chinese officials would now be able to boast of having been trained by Harvard professors, and local officials who were participating were getting the message that the Communist Party had, in some sense, the approval of Harvard. Whats more, officials from the Organization Department  the HR branch of the Party Central Committee  were in the class, likely evaluating the hand-picked up-and-comers who were our students on grounds of political correctness. Over time, we noticed that participants were looking to senior officials for guidance as to what to say.

Of course, one never knows what seeds one plants, perhaps even over informal dinner discussions. I recall quietly citing the work of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, finding that economic growth is more likely to be sustained over time in democratic societies. Perhaps the right person was listening. But I fear not: Cooperation between Harvard and the Chinese Communist Party government continues today, even as it is increasingly clear that the country is becoming less, not more, free.

Yale, NYU, Duke, and UC Berkeley, among other prestigious American universities, have also established campuses in China. As a recent Department of Education complaint about universities reporting income from China makes clear, there is big money involved: Yale alone may, according to the DOE, have failed to report $375 million in overall foreign financial support. So, too, is there the risk that intellectual cooperation is a one-way street, as seen in the recent case of a Harvard chemistry professor charged with lying to federal officials about being paid to share his research with the Chinese government. But the greatest risk of all may be selling legitimacy to an illegitimate regime.

More from National Review
A driver was killed and his passenger was hurt in a crash Wednesday night in West Linn, police say.

West Linn police said the driver, a 22-year-old man, crashed near 11th Street and Leslies Way. He died at the scene.

His passenger, a 21-year-old woman, was taken to a hospital with injuries that didnt threaten her life, according to police.

Speed appears to have factored into the crash, police said. No other cars were involved.

No information about the circumstances of the crash has been released, and the people involved have not been publicly identified.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
The first class of Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship Awardees launched their research in novel directions that may lead to the next breakthroughs in cancer research. Nine brilliant young scientists will apply their quantitative skills to design innovative experiments and interpret massive data sets that may help solve important biological and clinical problems. The awardees were selected by a distinguished committee of leaders in the field.

Each postdoctoral scientist selected for this unique three-year award will receive independent funding ($240,000 total) to train under the joint mentorship of an established computational scientist and a cancer biologist. Damon Runyon has created this new funding mechanism to encourage quantitative scientists (from fields such as mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering) to pursue careers in cancer research. This support will help create an elite cadre of computational biology leaders trained in quantitative and biological sciences--scientists who are capable of traversing both worlds with ease and are comfortable speaking both languages fluently.

"Because this is in essence a new field at the nexus of traditional cancer research and data science, it is critical to draw fearless and brilliant young computational scientists to these problems to drive the field forward," said Aviv Regev, PhD, of the Broad Institute and inaugural Chair of the Quantitative Biology Fellowship Award Committee.

2020 Class of Quantitative Biology Fellows

Jeremy Copperman, PhD, with mentors Daniel M. Zuckerman, PhD, and Joe W. Gray, PhD, at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland

Cancer cell populations within a tumor are often diverse, and the dynamic shifting of cell state plays a major role in treatment resistance and cancer metastasis. Dr. Copperman is utilizing tools from statistical physics and modern machine learning to predict how subpopulations of cancer cells continuously adapt to survive and eventually metastasize to other organs in the body. Using time-resolved single-cell imaging and molecular measurements to inform data-driven models, he aims to develop predictive whole-cell modeling and optimal control strategies for heterogeneous cellular populations.

Tal Einav, PhD, with mentors Jesse D. Bloom, PhD, and Jonathan W. Yewdell, MD, PhD, at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle

Dr. Einav is focusing on how the human immune system, with its millions of different antibodies, protects us against a range of assaults from pathogens such as influenza to rapidly evolving cancers. Recently, researchers have designed antibodies to help the body fight cancer, infection and other diseases. These efforts have only begun to tap into the potential of developing antibody mixtures. By understanding the collective action of multiple antibodies, this research will investigate how the immune repertoire can be bolstered to better combat diseases.

Siting Gan, PhD, with mentors Joan Massague, PhD, and Dana Pe'er, PhD, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York

Dr. Gan focuses on brain metastasis in lung and breast cancer, a major cause of death for these patients. She is applying the latest single-cell technologies and developing computational tools to dissect how tumor cells interact with resident brain cells to mediate the progression of metastasis. This research aims to better understand the formation of brain metastasis which may lead to new therapeutic strategies for prevention.

Vitor Mori, PhD, with mentors Jason H.T. Bates, PhD, DSc, and C. Matthew Kinsey, MD, at University of Vermont, Burlington

New technologies in the last decade have enabled chemotherapy to be delivered directly to lung tumors in contrast to systemic delivery that affects the whole body. Although recent studies have shown a partial or complete response ratio of 71% with significantly fewer side effects for patients treated intratumorally with cisplatin, optimal delivery strategies are debated. Dr. Mori is modeling cisplatin pharmacodynamics following injections, taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment. This research aims to optimize injection strategy to enhance targeting tumor cells while reducing side effects.

Denis Schapiro, PhD, with mentors Aviv Regev, PhD, and Peter K. Sorger, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston

Dr. Schapiro is developing methods to uncover patient-specific biomarkers that can guide therapeutic decisions for melanoma. He will collect data using miniaturized devices that enable complex measurements of tumors before and after they are exposed to drugs. Using new computational algorithms, he hopes to discover the cellular and molecular features associated with drug responsiveness and resistance to guide treatment options in patients.

Collin Tokheim, PhD, with mentors X. Shirley Liu, PhD, and Eric S. Fischer, PhD, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston

Unlike traditional drugs that bind and block the activity of key proteins in cancer cells, a new generation of drugs can eliminate proteins by hijacking the protein degradation machinery within cells. Dr. Tokheim is developing computational models that can identify degradable proteins that are linked to the development of human cancers. By leveraging big data from thousands of tumor profiles and a novel statistical and deep learning model, he will conduct an unbiased search for candidate proteins that can be verified experimentally. This research may lead to the development of drugs targeting protein degradation as a potent and selective way to treat a variety of human cancers.

Shou-Wen Wang, PhD, with mentor Allon M. Klein, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston

Many blood cancers, including leukemia and multiple myeloma, arise when early blood-forming cells do not develop properly. These aberrant cell fate choices cause abnormal blood cells to grow and divide uncontrollably. By combining lineage tracing, single-cell RNA sequencing (scSeq), and computational analysis, Dr. Wang aims to first develop a theoretical foundation and then build computational pipelines that reliably infer the order of events in cellular differentiation from these datasets. The results of this research may empower other biologists to systematically map out cell fate choice in their preferred systems. Applying the tools developed here to study perturbed blood formation (hematopoiesis) may also accelerate progress in understanding blood cancers.

Runmin Wei, PhD, with mentors Nicholas Navin, PhD, and Ken Chen, PhD, at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston

Dr. Wei is focusing on inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), an aggressive disease subtype without known genetic signatures. This suggests that IBC could be highly heterogeneous (the cells within a tumor are genetically diverse), and the tumor microenvironment (the environment surrounding a tumor) may be important for disease progression and therapeutic resistance. He is developing a computational toolkit to characterize the IBC tumor spatial heterogeneity and tumor microenvironment. He will leverage cutting-edge deep learning approaches to associate histopathology findings from tumor samples with single cell spatial sequencing information. This project will provide a better understanding of IBC initiation, progression and therapy responses at a molecular level.

Hang Xu, PhD, with mentors Christina Curtis, PhD, and Calvin Kuo, PhD, at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford

Chromosome instability (CIN), pervasive in human cancers, impacts tumor evolution and therapy response. On one hand, CIN may inactivate a tumor suppressor gene or activate a tumor oncogene and speed up the generation and evolution of cancer cells. Alternatively, CIN may induce destructive genomic changes that result in frequent cell death and impair tumor growth. Dr. Xu is investigating the overall effect of CIN on cancer progression using mathematical modeling and computational simulation coupled with a powerful 3D organoid system. She hopes to elucidate the role CIN plays in cancer evolution and lay the groundwork for novel treatment strategies for these tumors.

###

DAMON RUNYON CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

To accelerate breakthroughs, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation provides today's best young scientists with funding to pursue innovative research. The Foundation has gained worldwide prominence in cancer research by identifying outstanding researchers and physician-scientists. Twelve scientists supported by the Foundation have received the Nobel Prize, and others are heads of cancer centers and leaders of renowned research programs. Each of its award programs is extremely competitive, with less than 10% of applications funded. Since its founding in 1946, the Foundation has invested over $375 million and funded more than 3,750 young scientists. Last year, we committed nearly $22 million in new awards to brilliant young investigators.

100% of all donations to the Foundation are used to support scientific research. Administrative and fundraising costs are paid with revenue from the Damon Runyon Broadway Tickets Service and our endowment. For more information visit damonrunyon.org

CONTACT

Meghan McCurdy

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FARMINGTON  With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to spread through northwest New Mexico, several San Juan College faculty and staff members are encouraging local residents to contribute to a supply donation drive for the Navajo Nation that begins this weekend.

Community members are being asked to donate a variety of items May 8 through 16 at the drop-off site on the college campus, 4601 College Blvd. in Farmington, or make a monetary contribution online at www.nndoh.org/donate.html. The items needed include liquid hand soap, paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, nonperishable food, bottled water, baby formula, diapers, baby wipes, and dog and cat food.

English professor Danielle Sullivan first floated the notion of conducting the drive, but she said people from departments across the college jumped in to help make it happen.

It started off as just as an idea I had, she said. But I was lucky enough to get support from the college.

Sullivan said she and her colleagues work with many Navajo students, and it is clear that people on the nation are suffering heavily from the spread of the coronavirus. She said for the second time in two days, she recently was contacted by a student seeking an extension on the due date for a paper because she had just lost a loved one to the virus.

Sullivan said examples like that make classwork seem like a trivial thing when the family members of some of her students are battling life-and-death situations.

There are a lot of people concerned about whats going on with their Navajo neighbors, she said.

The items that are donated for the drive will be loaded into the San Juan College semi-trailer, which will be parked near the pottery studio between the West Classroom Complex and the Henderson Fine Arts Center. Donations can be dropped off:

3 p.m. to 6 p.m. May

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 9

3 p.m. to 6 p.m. May 11 through May 14

1 p.m. to 4 p.m. May 15

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 16

Sullivan emphasized that the drop-off site will be contactless, with donors being asked to remain in their car and open their trunk so volunteers can retrieve the items, according to a press release from the college. If they wish, donors may remove the items first and get back in their car before the volunteers arrive to pick them up.

The press release states Navajo Nation officials have asked that only the items on the aforementioned list be donated for the safety of those handling the supplies. The donations will be delivered on May 18.

Donations to the drive are tax deductible, according to the release, and helpers will be taking the names and addresses of any donor who wishes to be sent a receipt. The Navajo Nation will send those receipts at a later date.

Sullivan encouraged local residents to support the drive.

Were all feeling very powerless in this time of COVID-19, and this is a chance to do something about it, she said.

For more information about the drive, call TheWantToHelpLine at 505-566-4210.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com.



2020 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
New Delhi: Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat lashed out at the Vijay Rupani-led Gujarat government on Friday for not accepting migrant workers from the state who are stranded in Mumbai for months amid the coronavirus lockdown.

The senior Congress leader tweeted on Friday morning hitting out the BJP-ruled government in the neighbouring state, underlining the latter is not allowing the return of the migrant labourers despite the grand old party sponsoring the travel expenses as per instructions of party chief Sonia Gandhi.

The issue of migrant workers stranded in the state is getting serious by the day. @INCMaharashtra is ready to pay for the travel expenses of migrants wanting to go back to Gujarat. It is unfortunate that despite this the Gujarat govt is not accepting them (SIC), Thorat said in his tweet.

The Maharashtra Cabinet Minister added that the Gujarat government has not allowed 1, 200 Gujarati migrant workers stranded in Mumbai to go their village in Samkhiyali, Kutch.

However, Thorat also alleged that along with Gujarat, states of Odisha, Karnataka and West Bengal have, too, denied migrant workers from their states to return.

Apart from Gujarat, Odisha, West Bengal and Karnataka governments are also not accepting their own citizens stranded in Maharashtra, Thorat said.

The Maharashtra Congress on Thursday said that it has borne the cost of travel of as many as 4,627 migrant workers returning to their states from different parts of Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, the Gujarat government sent home more than 70,000 migrants stranded in the state on 65 'Shramik Special' trains in the last seven days, making it the largest movement of workers from any state on the special services being run during the nationwide lockdown to combat the coronavirus.

India is currently grappling with a severe migrant workers' crisis following the Union government imposition of a nationwide strict lockdown by suspending all public transport and sealing the inter-state borders.

A report released by the Save Life Foundation on Thursday revealed that at least 42 migrant workers died in road accidents while attempting to return home during the coronavirus lockdown.

The report details road crashes that took place since the lockdown was announced on March 24 till May 3. A total of 140 people died in road accidents across India during this period -- and 30% of these deaths were of migrant workers who were walking, or trying to reach their home states by hiding in buses and trucks. The report says eight of the migrant workers died after being hit by trucks and speeding cars.
Popular lifestyle expert, Reno Omokri took to social media to give reasons for the hate shown towards people of other religions needs to stop.

Sharing his knowledge with his followers, Reno Omokri stated that the religion one practices today is mostly as a result of being born into it.

Also Read: When You Post Your Problems On Social Media, 4 Things Are Likely To Happen: Omokri

The lifestyle expert cum evangelist, in a lengthy post, urged his followers to stop hating people of other religions, even if that religion is an opposing one to the faith they practice.

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See his full post below:

1-The vast majority of humanity are unaware that they are the product of other peoples choices. If you were born in Saudi, you would be a Muslim. If you were born to Jewish parents in Jerusalem, you would probably be a Jew#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #ReligiousProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

2-Less than 1% of Earths population chose their religion. Geography chose for them. And throughout their lives, those choices are reinforced by indoctrination. From cradle to grave, most of humanity are mere programmed robots#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

3-I am reminded of a book,The Pirate, by Harold Robbins. A Jew who lost his wife in a desert sandstorm, gave his son to an Arab family so the child would not die. The boy grew up to become a fanatical Muslim who was against Jews. #FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

4-So stop hating people of other religions as yours. I take myself for example. With the strong love I have for God, if I were a Muslim, I would go to ANY extreme allowed by my religion, to project my faith. Thats the programming#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

5-Last year, I was in Nepal and Cambodia, where I mingled with Buddhist priests. If I had been born in either country, who would have taught me Christ? These were descent men who feared God, but believed Him differently than I. #FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

6-That I follow Christ today, is due to rejecting my mums Catholicism, and my dads Anglicanism. I read Scripture and Quran and chose Christ. Maybe because God called me. How many of Earths 7 billion people have that luxury?#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

7-I visited Ethiopia 7 times in 2019. With the pure Christianity I saw there, I had serious doubts that Christians and Muslims really understood their religion. Without Ethiopia, both Christianity and Islam would not have survived#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

8-If I hate those other religions, and call them infidel, as programming would have me do, theyf hate me and reject Christ, who is the ONLY way. But if I understand them, theyd open up, and perhaps want to understand my Saviour#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

9-As a Christian, you dont have the luxury of hating anyone, because Christ did not come to Earth to die for Christians. He came to die for the whole world. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son-John 3:16#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

10-That is why I appreciate men like @APOSTLESULEMAN. Born a Muslim. Studied to be a Malam. Read of Christ in Quran. Bought a Bible. Read it. Was unsatisfied. Learnt Greek and read it in original Greek and gave his life to Christ#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

11-Christ did not come to establish a religion. He came to reestablish mans direct fellowship with God. Unknown to many so called Christians, the wisemen who visited Christ as a baby included Arabs and Persians. None was a Jew!#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

12-I can say I believe Scripture from Job (the first book in Scripture is not Genesis. It is actually Job) to Revelation, because I investigated religion. But if you know nothing about other religions, how can you truly believe?#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020

13-In His lifetime, Christ mixed with Samaritans, Syrophoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Persians and possibly Edomites (Herod was an Edomite). And Scripture had this testimony about Him He went around doing good-Acts 10:38#FreeLeahSharibu #RenosNuggets #WorldProgramming  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) May 8, 2020
(Photo : Tingshu Wang on Reuters ) [BREAKING] COVID-19 UPDATE: WHO Confirms Wuhan Market's Role in Outbreak; Pangolins Cure Coronavirus? (Photo : Image by World Wildlife Fund ) [BREAKING] COVID-19 UPDATE: WHO Confirms Wuhan Market's Role in Outbreak; Pangolins Cure Coronavirus?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed the connection of the controversial Wuhan Market in China, with the spread of Coronavirus in the world. The agency has said that the market had a clear role in spreading the disease but clarified that no tangible evidence is yet released supporting this claim.

Meanwhile, scientists have found out that scaly-skinned mammals. Pangolin-- another traditional Chinese delicacy-- have its tolerance against acquiring the virus. Is this the key to a Coronavirus cure?

ALSO READ: COVID-18 UPDATE: Patients with Severe Vitamin D Deficiency are More Likely to Have Major Coronavirus Complications

Chinese market plays role in the outbreak, says WHO

On Friday, May 8, the world health agency confirms the all-time rumor of the Wuhan market spreading the virus.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert on food safety and zoonotic viruses that cross the species barrier from animals to humans, has said that the wholesale market in central China was shut down due to the main purpose of stopping further spread of the virus.

The official, though, clarifies that there is still no enough evidence pointing out the exact connection of the market into spreading the deadly disease.

"The market played a role in the event, that's clear. But what role we don't know, whether it was the source or amplifying setting or just a coincidence that some cases were detected in and around that market," said him.

It was not clear whether the animals that were sold in the market or infected humans at the market started the outbreak.

WHO trusts China to experiment in Wuhan

As expected, Embarek did not comment on the allegations against China and the said Wuhan lab that allegedly started the disease.

"What is important, what would be of great help, is to get hold of the virus before it adapted to humans, before the version we have now. Because then we would better understand how it adapted to humans, how it evolved," he said.

He also said that China may have to start the investigation involving this case.

"In terms of investigations, China has most probably, most likely, all the expertise needed to do these investigations. They have a lot of very qualified researchers to that," he added.





Pangolin: The secret to Coronavirus cure?

While WHO finds the reason behind the spread of the virus, most scientists are now more focused on finding the cure against the virus.

A study published in Frontiers in Immunology suggests that another Chinese delicacy called Pangolins may contain the real cure against the disease.

In the study, pangolins appeared to have tolerance against the Coronavirus that most humans get infected with. It doesn't imply that this mammal cannot be infected with Coronavirus at all, but its effect perhaps reduced when transferred to these scaly anteaters.

"Our study suggests that pangolins respond to coronaviruses differently from other mammals including humans," co-author Dr. Leopold Eckhart, of the Medical University of Vienna, told Newsweek. "We believe that the defense against RNA viruses, such as corona and influenza viruses, may be decreased in intensity or altered in its timing in pangolins."

At the same time, scientists warn that since this is not yet proven, another type of virus may happen if pangolins will be instantly used as treatment against the virus.

ALSO READ: [VIDEO] CORONAVIRUS: Social Distancing Not Enough With 6 Feet As New Footage Shows COVID-19 Can Spread Up To 12 Feet Through Coughing

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 23:16:48|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said here on Friday that the opening of the border between his country and Germany after the coronavirus lockdown is getting closer.

"At present, the infection rates of the coronavirus in Austria are lower than in Germany. Therefore I also assume that the border with Germany will open before the summer," said the chancellor at a press conference.

The Austrian government has almost been in daily contact with its German counterpart on the issue, according to local media. Opening border is not only important from a tourist point of view, but would also make life a lot easier for many families and business travellers separated or hindered by border controls.

Earlier this week, Austria extended border controls with its neighbouring countries, including Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic and Slovakia until May 31 due to the coronavirus. Enditem
Virgin Media customers are making even more complaints about connection problems despite the company announcing a new merger with O2 worth 31billion yesterday.

Website Downdetector reported yet another spike in reported Virgin Media complaints over the past 24 hours, with 490 people reporting network inactivity at around 1.22pm on Thursday.

While the number of complaints decreased significantly throughout the night, it rose again on Friday morning with 200 calling in to complain at 11.52am. Half of the complaints surround issues involved cable internet connectivity.

Virgin Media broadband users are making even more complaints about network issues they are facing in lockdown

Data from Downdetector shows nearly 500 complaints came in shortly after 5pm on Thursday night, and despite this number decreasing significantly overnight, more complaints have been recorded on Friday morning

The website also ranks the company in first place in their 'weekly outage top 10' list ahead of the Call of Duty video game and rival networks O2, BT and Sky.

These issues continue to frustrate members of the UK public all over the nation, with a significant number of complaints coming from the south east of England, including London.

Furthermore, complaints are regularly being made in other major cities, including Bath, Cardiff, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds and Edinburgh.

A significant portion of complaints have come in from south east England, including London, while other major UK cities are facing Virgin Media connectivity problems

Frustrated customers have also taken to social media to vent their frustrations at the Virgin Media team.

One disgruntled user said: '@virginmedia hi. I sent a tweet to you yesterday morning about issues with internet connection and I've not had any response. Now my internet, TV and phone are completely dead! Your online test says there are no issues but this clearly isn't true!'

@RoastedTatties said: '@virginmedia internet down in south Leeds area, it's been on and off unreliably for the last week and a half to two weeks. Resetting the router each time isn't doing anything until the services are back on your end, other virgin routers going down at the same time near me'

Another customer added: '@virginmedia are there broadband issues in the CR2 area? As my connection is as sketchy as the UK's government with the handling of the Coronavirus pandemic'

Virgin Media users have taken to social media to vent their frustration about their connection problems

The problem have affected customers in cities all across England, including Leeds

Some have even managed to compare the issues with another frustrations they have in lockdown

When asked for a comment on the outage, a Virgin Media spokesperson said: 'Our broadband services are running as normal - there is no widespread issue with our network.

'If customers are experiencing individual connectivity issues they can contact our customer service team for assistance.'

The latest spike in complaints comes a day after Virgin Media announced they revealed they would be merging with O2 in a 31billion deal.

The deal will help put together a mobile business in O2 with Virgin's broadband service, with those behind the merge saying it will speed up the roll-out of 5G networks in the UK.

In a press release yesterday, where they announced the company's Q1 2020 financial results, Virgin Media's CEO Lutz Schuler said: 'Despite these tough and challenging times, Virgin Media remains in a strong position with a clear strategic focus and direction as well as a wholehearted commitment to keeping the country connected and our people and customers safe.

'Our aim to become a national connectivity champion is continuing to gain momentum.'
UW Spring Faculty Meeting May 14

Acting President Neil Theobald will host the University of Wyomings spring 2020 faculty meeting Thursday, May 14, at the conclusion of the UW Board of Trustees regular meeting.

The faculty meeting, which will take place via the WyoCast system, is expected to begin at about 4:45 p.m. The WyoCast link is https://wyocast.uwyo.edu/WyoCast/Play/49899ca3519e40f1bc14b6f7d02d324b1d.

Theobald will present 2019-2020 academic year highlights.
They followed the women for another two years and included subsequent births up to October 2016. Just over 43 per cent (15,325 women) tried for another IVF-conceived child. Their median age was 36, and 73 per cent had frozen embryos from the egg retrieval that created their first baby. For these women, the chances of having a second IVF baby ranged from 61 per cent (a conservative estimate) to 88 per cent (the optimal estimate) after six cycles. For fresh embryos, the range was 51-70 per cent. Frozen embryos collected when the women were younger were more likely to be successful compared to fresh embryos. Couples whose infertility was due to a factor affecting the male partner also had a greater chance of success.

The older the mother, the lower the chances. Loading For women aged 30-34, the chances of having a second IVF baby after one cycle was 48 per cent with frozen embryos and 43 per cent with a fresh cycle. After three cycles, 69-90 per cent would take home their second baby from a frozen embryo, and 62-74 per cent from fresh ones. Women aged 40-44 had a 29 per cent chance of having a second baby with frozen embryos from their first cycle and 12 per cent with fresh embryos, Professor Chalmers said. The conservative figure assumes that women who didn't return for more IVF treatment would have no chance of achieving a second baby if they had continued treatment, and the optimal estimate assumed these women would have the same chance of a live birth in a particular cycle as women who had continued treatment.

The range between the two offers women a realistic idea of the true success rates, the authors said. "For older women, the findings are still reassuring that even in the 40-44 age group the chances of having a second baby through IVF using your own eggs are good, not very good, but still good," Professor Chalmers said. "But it's best not to wait too long," she said. Kristy Pownall gave birth to her daughter Grace seven weeks ago. Just like her two-year-old brother, Noah, Grace conceived via a frozen embryo. The siblings are also "rainbow babies" - children born after the loss of an unborn child. Noah was conceived after Kristy and her husband Andrew lost her first baby, Amelie, at 20 weeks, and Grace was conceived after Ms Pownall miscarried. "At my age [42 years old] I feel very lucky to have two babies. Babies I have wanted for many years," Ms Pownall said.

When she went back to try for a second IVF baby, she didn't cycle through the feelings of hopelessness and anxiety she had felt in the years of IVF treatment before having Noah. Kristy and Andrew Pownall with their children, Noah, 2 and Grace, who were both conceived through IVF. Credit:Janie Barrett "Back then I had all this worry when I would think 'if I cant have a baby, if I cant be a mother, what would my life look like?," Ms Pownall said. "Now we just really enjoy every moment we have with Noah and Grace." Sydney fertility specialist and study co-author Dr Devora Lieberman often talks with her patients about the possibilities of having multiple children before they have conceived.

"We have moved away from talking about one baby to talking about what your ideal family size looks like," Dr Lieberman said. She said the findings did not take into account all individual factors that can affect a woman's chances, such as the duration of infertility, body mass index and smoking status. "Ultimately the decision to try for another baby is for the patient, her doctor, and considers all the medical and non-medical factors," Dr Lieberman said. Dr Karin Hammarberg, an IVF academic and senior research fellow at Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, said the study gave women and couples the hard data they wanted. "The way IVF is promoted you would think everyone has a baby the first go  it's much more useful for patients to know that it is quite possible they might have to have three cycles, what their chances may be and give them the courage to come back," Dr Hammarberg said.
In this regard, Defense Minister Walter Martos mentioned that many people have the disease but not the symptoms. Thus, they are considered asymptomatic . "These citizens and those who have minor symptoms will be isolated in their homes or in a different establishment, such as the Pan American Village , where they must be quarantined ," he expressed.

El presidente @MartinVizcarraC informa sobre la situacion del Estado de Emergencia en el #Dia54 y las acciones que realiza el Gobierno para contener la propagacion del COVID-19. En vivo: https://t.co/jXYNpRKGpE https://t.co/H4j31avRml
BASF India provided an update with reference to the receipt of demand notices from Commercial Tax Department, Karnataka for the periods 2006-2010, 2010-13, 2014-15 and 2015-16 (Notice) by treating the stock transfers of the Company's Mangalore Plant as interstate sales to dealers and its subsequent stay for the periods 2006-2010, 2010-11 & 2014-15 by the Hon'ble Karnataka Appellate Tribunal.

The company has now received demand notice for the further period i.e. 2013-14 from the Commercial Tax Department, Karnataka aggregating to Rs. 85.19 crores (including interest & penalty) by treating the stock transfers of its Mangalore Plant as interstate sales to dealers.

The Company is in the process of filing its detailed reply/submission/appeals in response to the said Notice.

The Company, based on the legal assessment, does not consider these stock transfers as interstate sales and is taking all the necessary legal steps to defend the matter.

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May 08, 2020 / 11:00 PM IST

The novel coronavirus pandemic has spread across 187 countries and territories. Today is the forty-fifth day of Indias nationwide lockdown, which has been extended till May 17. Restrictions have been eased, especially in non-hotspot areas.

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in India stand at 56,342. The death toll from the outbreak in India is at 1,886. Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi have reported

the highest number of cases. A massive exercise to evacuate Indians stranded abroad begins today.Globally, there have been over 38.4 lakh confirmed cases of COVID-19. At least 2.69 lakh people have died so far. The United States, Spain, Italy, UK, France and Germany are the most-affected countries. Catch the latest updates here:
Northern Berkshire Union Hires Director of Pupil Services

CLARKSBURG, Mass.  The Northern Berkshire School Union on Wednesday night voted to hire Stephanie Pare as the new director of pupil services. She accepted, pending contract negotiations.

The members of the School Committee called it a tough choice between two highly qualified candidates but opted 9-1 to promote internally to replace the retiring Debra Rosselli, who spent 11 years in the post.

The decision came after more than an hour of interviews with finalists Pare and Amanda Brooks-Clemeno and another half hour or more of discussion.

Committee members  some who indicated they had been leaning the other way  were influenced by the knowledge that Pare has already been working with the administrative team and had received votes of confidence from teachers and support staff.

"I think her dedication to our union over the last 14 years working here, to me that's something I just think is very important," said NBSU Superintendent John Franzoni. He felt Brooks-Clemeno was a strong candidate and would do well in whatever she did next, "but I feel confident that Steph will be a good fit with our team and the admin team as well as bringing her knowledge that she has been so successful in Florida to the other schools."

Pare has worked in special education for 17 years and is currently special education teacher and special education director assistant at Gabriel Abbot Memorial School in Florida, one of the four NBSU schools with Clarksburg, Monroe and Emma Miller in Savoy. She began her career at Drury High School in North Adams and then went to Abbott after earning her master of special education from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She also holds a master education in literacy and reading through the Reading Institute at Simmons College.

"The reason I'm looking at this position is I'm ready to take the next step, I feel it would provide me an opportunity to reach out and help more kids, and that's the biggest part of special education is being able to help kids," she said.

Pare had been working on her administrator license but hit a bump with the state Department of Education would not allow the mentor hours she had accumulated because her mentor did not hold the correct license. She's now working with a retired superintendent and special education director to complete her hours.

She said her grant writing experience included being the Title 1 coordinator for the four-school union and has worked with the business administrator to ensure it was managed properly.

In response to questions, she said meaningful inclusion means that the child is a full participant in the class with materials modified to ensure that takes place.

"It may involve pre-teaching, reteaching specific strategies around the questions that are expected from a child to ensure you're meeting their goals," Pare said. "Inclusion is a big part of what I feel is important. I've worked really hard on that model.

"As a director, I think a lot of professional development and working with the team comes in ... a lot of times it's easier to have a student out of the room and teach them. But it's not always best for the student: They need to learn in that group environment. And it takes teamwork and planning and strategies, and it's case by case."

Pare also said training for teachers is a large part of developing strategies for working with children with social emotional issues.

"Mr [E. Jon] Friedman (the school adjustment counselor) has a lot of ideas but it's finding a way for him to incorporate some of that and using those resources, and then providing training that is meaningful and is directly related to what you're seeing in the classroom," she said. "We have been using the crisis prevention model, and using that across the board, but really emphasizing the importance of the needs of the child. Children don't want to misbehave they don't want to act out, and how can we take them from where they are and give them a safe place to discuss it."

She said she is familiar with the education evaluator process, having taken training in it and going through it herself.

"I think a lot of ways to offer feedback is through mentorship and offering suggestions and being willing to work with that person to give ideas and support," she said. Pare also didn't see an issue with leading the people she'd been working side by side with until now.

"I think the most important part is to make teachers feel heard and respected in their ability to reach out and to reach out yourself and start that communication."

The school union has been interested in developing a parent advisory council and Pare said she had been involved in a "quasi" advisory council last year. Four or five events had been set up to invite parents into the schools to being talking about what they would be able to do.

"I don't think it went beyond that. But I think that a great place to start is to get parents in and get them talking about different ideas, and then working with the staff in the building," Pare said, adding that every school knows at least one parent who would be willing to participate. "This is what it would take, and and starting somewhere."

Pare said she would spend time in the schools regularly to get to know the children and try to keep the paperwork to off hours. Franzoni pointed out that the position would now be year-round, meaning much of that work could be done during summer.

Brooks-Clemeno is a special education teacher in the Hoosac Valley Regional School District. She earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard College, a master of business administration from Fordham University and attended the MCLA Leadership Academy. She is also chair of the Worthington School Committee.

Springfield schools before joining the Collaborative for Educational Services in its Department of Youth Services for eight years. She was later a teacher coordinator, which she described as a hybrid administrator educator, with at least 50 percent of her students having special education needs. She began with the Hoosac Valley High's behavior program about three years ago.

"I thought that my skills and my mindset were much better based for special ed administration," she said. "This is not an easy job ... but I think that with my analytical and business background, with my experience on school committee and with my deep educational experience, I think that I can bring a lot of ideas and vision to this particular position in this particular district."

Her priorities, she said, would be to see how the school closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic had affected students, particularly how students with disabilities were managing remote learning.

She envisioned doing a listening year and would keep contact with teachers and administrators through regular meetings, possibly held over a platform like Zoom, as well as meeting with related service providers and special education teachers on a regular basis.

"I find that when everyone's talking to each other, when everyone has the same message, it's the best way to go," she said.

Brooks-Clemeno said she has been doing self-assessments and evaluations for a decade. She also thought it important to help parents understand their children's often confusing individualized education plans and she spoke about a collaborative process in leadership, preferring that to any micro-managing.

"I think it's very important also as a leader to listen and to be quiet," she said. "To really understand all the nuances of what's going on so I don't want anyone to think that, you know, should I be afforded this amazing opportunity that I would come and swinging, ready to burn down the house, so to speak."

Brooks-Clemeno spoke at some length about social/emotional trauma, saying she would institute a multi-tiered support system over a three-year period of assessment, program selection and then implementation. This would require teacher buy-in to be successful, she said.

"We're educating the whole child so we can't ignore or push away or pretend that those things don't exist," she said. "And I think that it's important to acknowledge that and find whole district wide ways to address that."

A number of committee members remarked on Brooks-Clemeno's obvious passion and background, others to Pare's knowledge of the school district and proven work ethic. The fact that Pare had strong backing by many who worked with her in the district became an obvious factor in her selection.

"She described herself as visionary and assertive, I think that that's very true about her and I think those qualities could bring some changes or new ideas present, said Rowe School Committee member Susan Zavotka of Brooks-Clemeno. "I think one, promote from within. If there's always the concern of status quo, but if we're happy with the status quo that's not a bad thing. So I think those are things to think about."

Clarksburg School Committee member Eric Denette thought they were both very strong but was really impressed with Brooks-Clemeno's vision and response to the social/emotional question. He would cast the lone vote for her.

Business Administrator Jennifer Macksey said she was looking for someone who can support the administrative team.

"I really am looking for a colleague who can keep up with deadlines and support me in my deadlines, as well as I can support the person in this position," she said. "And I think we really need someone who's going to give this position 120 percent, because we have a lot of development on that side of the house that needs to be to be done."

Franzoni echoed her statements, saying the school union had been developing a strong team with the hiring of Macksey last year and the addition of Josh Arico as information technology director.

"I just think that they're both obviously strong as we've established," he said. "We're very fortunate as we have been throughout. I feel like there have been, in my two years, very strong pools for positions that we've had to fill. I think that obviously both are qualified candidates."

However, he said, Pare would be his choice based on his knowledge of her work, his desire to reward achievement with advancement and the strong endorsement from Florida Principal Heidi Dugal.

"I think that both are strong candidates," said Florida School Committee member Carla Davis-Little. "I know there's a lot of people in the other school districts that don't know Stephanie, that haven't worked with her. I think that it could be a very good relationship. As a parent is how I know her best, and I always felt very good, being able to turn to her and go to her throughout the year of my kid's meetings. So I will vote for Stephanie."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:27:26|Editor: huaxia

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KHOST, Afghanistan, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Three police officers, including a provincial police chief, were killed in an overnight bomb attack in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province, the provincial governor confirmed on Friday.

"Brigadier General Sayyed Ahmad Babazai, Khost provincial police chief, his office assistant and a police officer were martyred following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in Nadar Shah Kot district at around 11:00 p.m. (local time)Thursday," Governor Mohammad Halim Fidai told Xinhua.

They were travelling along a dusty road to respond to a Taliban attack in Zain Khel locality before the police vehicle being struck by the home-made IED, the official said.

"One police officer was wounded and the police vehicle was destroyed in the explosion," the official added.

The governor blame enemies of peace, a term referring to the Taliban militant group, however, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

The Afghan security forces' casualties have risen recently as they struggle against a surge in attacks across the country.

Militants in Afghanistan have intensified their activities during last two months, even after a peace deal was signed between the United States and the Taliban in Doha and a joint declaration was issued by the U.S. side and the Afghan government in late February.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Afghanistan in mid February, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has frequently called on the Taliban to agree on a cease to facilitate peace talks and most importantly the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, but clashes continued in the conflict-ravaged nation. Enditem
MIDDLETOWN  One of many messages of hope that teens being cared for at the states psychiatric facility recently chalked on campus to thank therapists and others for their life-changing efforts was stars cannot shine without darkness.

The girls are using their creative skills with such messages to transcend as well as work through their traumas to praise others as the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.

We are all a little broken, but broken crayons color, too! is another message shared with chalk.

These youth, under the care of the Department of Children and Families Albert J. Solnit Center South in Middletown, cope with mental illness and/or behavioral problems, and are working with art therapists at the facility to express positive feelings during a fraught time.

Most recently, the 13- to 17-year-olds took on a project that had them chalking sidewalks on the grounds as part of their therapy and to boost employees morale.

A lot of times, people say your trauma, your experiences, are in your body. They need to elicit that and get that out, explained Heather Cassella, a rehabilitation art therapist. It could be the movement of a brush, it could be the sensory act of touching soft clay. Repetitive movements are very soothing and relaxing to do and also to look at and witness.

Art can free the expression of these patients dealing with painful memories and circumstances.

Most of the youth present with a complex series of psychiatric and psychosocial vulnerabilities, so, for the vast majority of them, chronic developmental trauma has been a thread throughout their lives, said Frank Gregory, superintendent of DCFs Solnit South facility.

Many have made their way through multiple systems over the course of their young lives, such as child welfare and juvenile justice. Most have been very involved in various service systems for quite some time, Gregory said.

The teens shared their sentiments through sayings as well as drawings of fish, stars and flowers after staff left for the day. They wanted to surprise Solnit administrators when they arrived the next morning.

John Fontanez, assistant rehabilitation therapist, gave the girls some positive quotes he thought they might use. Instead, every one chose to share their values.It was incredible, he said.

In the midst of managing their own anxieties and struggles, these young people were focused on what they could give to others, Gregory said. Their creativity was directed toward sending a message of hope and encouragement to other people. To me that was a really significant aspect of what theyve done.

The positive renderings were meant to be a reminder that art heals, Cassella said.

Its a nonverbal form of expression for kids who have trouble verbalizing or arent aware of certain feelings associated with the traumatic experiences theyve had, she explained. Thats a big part of what we do here to overcome some of the stuff theyve experienced.

Sometimes, Cassella will draw along with the teens. Theyll start watching me and want to mimic, and then were engaging. Its really a powerful way to connect.

She also works alongside clinicians assigned to the unit.

Many havent been able to access their creative talents in some time because of their sometimes lifelong strife. It helps to build that trusting relationship for them to be able to open up, and talk about the tough stuff, she said.

They also took part in another art project to thank first responders at Hartford Hospital as well as the DCF main office in Hartford. The medical facility uses a parking lot on Hudson Street facing the state building, Gregory said.

Thank-you hearts, quotes and cards allowed the girls to express gratitude to Solnit workers, and let them know were OK, during the pandemic, Fontanez said. In this way, art is used as a form of communication.

It helps them overcome their fear, feelings of abandonment, and develop other coping skills, that can be used after they are discharged, he said.

After these exercises, Cassella and the girls held an in-depth discussion about the project and associated feelings.

Every one in the group could relate to that, she said. They also spoke deeply about it, and how they have their own issues, and are independent individuals, but in the end, theyre all able to function just like anyone else.

When some doubt their talents, Cassella is there to support them.

They always bring up Im no artist, and I tell them everybody is an artist. Everyone has some creative heart in them. You dont have to be able to draw something bigger than a stick figure to write positive messages and scribbles and things, she said.

Thats beautiful. They dont realize thats enough sometimes, Cassella said.

For information, visit bit.ly/35FlgTb or portal.ct.gov/dcf.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- Google is donating $100,000 to a coronavirus relief fund for families in Southeast Michigan.

The group GiveDirectly is raising money to donate to Ann Arbor and Detroit families impacted by COVID-19, the nonprofit announced in a news release. Funds will specifically aid those enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Googles Ann Arbor and Detroit employees are committing $100,000, which will provide $1,000 to 100 families.

Our families and communities are facing tremendous challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thats why a giving spirit and relief efforts are more important than ever, Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor said in a statement. The initiative from GiveDirectly and our local Google Michigan offices can help provide critical support to those most in need. We appreciate and thank businesses for coming together and stepping up like this.

Google has been providing funds to GiveDirectly to support cash transfers since 2012, totaling more than $10 million, the group said in a news release. Employees can double the impact of their individual contributions to the COVID-19 relief fund by using their employee donation match benefits.

This has been an especially difficult time for Detroiters as we were among those struck hardest in the country by the COVID-19 pandemic, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said in a statement. But were getting through it by working and coming together. Efforts like this initiative led by Google are essential to helping overcome the impacts of this virus. Its another example of the ways that companies and individuals are taking extra steps to provide necessary support for our community and Detroiters every day.

Southeast Michigan was hit the hardest across the state. Washtenaw County has had 1,140 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 77 deaths, according to the states latest cumulative report, which was updated at 3 p.m. on Thursday. Detroit alone has had 9,566 cases and 1,147 deaths; Wayne County has had 8,101 cases and 865 deaths; Oakland County has had 7,624 cases and 789 deaths; and Macomb County has had 5,876 cases and 678 deaths.

Google also donated $25,000 to the United Way of Washtenaw County to help provide services and support to anyone impacted by the virus.

Anyone interested in the campaign to help Southeast Michigan families can donate here.

Ann Arbor Art Fair canceled due to coronavirus

Ann Arbor Subway restaurant reopens amid coronavirus closures

Ann Arbor moves forward with sidewalk gap filling, street resurfacing projects

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.
P olice have released CCTV footage of a man they want to trace after an NHS doctor was attacked on her way home from work.

The 37-year-old victim, who has not been named, was taken to hospital with cuts, bruising and injuries to her mouth, including a broken tooth, after she was pushed to the ground from behind.

Scotland Yard said there is nothing to suggest the doctor was targeted because she worked for the NHS and are keeping an open mind about the motive for the attack.

Her attacker had been following her since she boarded a train at the Shadwell Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station in east London on the evening of April 17.

She tried to lose the man by getting off in Canning Town before reboarding, but he mirrored her movements and was still tailing her when she disembarked at Royal Victoria station.

The man police want to identify in connection with the attack / Met Police

Police said she asked two strangers to walk with her but was approached from behind and pushed to the ground in Butchers Road, while she was on the phone to police, after they parted ways.

Detectives have released CCTV footage of a man they want to identify in connection with the assault.

The suspect is described as a black man, aged around 20, who was wearing grey jogging bottoms, a grey hooded top under a dark jacket and a dark cap at the time of the attack.

Police also want to speak to any witnesses, including the two men who walked with the victim.

Detective Constable Alister Kim said: We have no reason to believe that the victim in this case was targeted specifically because she was a doctor or working for the NHS.

However, we would urgently seek the publics help in identifying this man. The victim was subjected to a frightening ordeal, having been followed along the transport network by this suspect who did not leave her alone, even after she sought help from members of the public and made a call to police.

I am appealing to anyone who may have seen any part of this incident, either at Shadwell DLR station, on the DLR itself, or when the victim got off and walked to Butchers Road from Royal Victoria station.

Or did you perhaps see the actions of the victim as she got off and back on the train at Canning Town, followed by the suspect?

"In particular we are very keen to speak to the two witnesses who helped the victim on her journey home.

CCTV footage shows a man walking in Commercial Road near its junction with Sidney Street prior to the incident. If anyone recognises this man I would urge them to get in touch.

No arrests have been made.

Anyone with information is asked to call 101 reference CAD 6121/17 Apr, tweet @MetCC or contact the charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or crimestoppers-uk.org.
He was remanded out of custody to May 19 on his own cognisance. The prosecutor, Mr Terrence Chakabuda said on May 4 at around 11AM, the accused person spotted the complainant walking in the CBD and he stopped him.
The U.S. Army has found itself in an embarrassing situation after spending a billion dollars to buy two Israel Iron Dome missile defense batteries. The problem is the army refuses to put their Iron Dome systems into service because Israel refused to turn over the source code for the novel anti-rocket/mortar system. The army says it needs the source code in order to make Iron Dome part of the army air defense system. There is no such integrated system and if there were you would not need the source code but merely an API (Application Programming Interface) that provides the software links between one system and others.

The army also expressed doubts about being able to use Iron Dome in other countries, like Iraq or Afghanistan, without source code. But Israel has sold dozens of Iron Dome batteries to export customers like Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, India, Romania and Singapore with possible sales to NATO, South Korea and (very discreetly) Saudi Arabia. The sale to the Czech Republic was contingent on Iron Dome being capable of integration into the NATO air defense system, which includes many different systems. That is being done with an API. The sale to Singapore, like the possible (or already completed) sale to Saudi Arabia was handled confidentially so as not to anger nearby Moslem nations. Singapore has Malaysia and Indonesia to worry about and Saudi Arabia has a lot more potentially offended Moslem neighbors. Such sales are not entirely secret. Iron Dome cannot be disguised as something else and one Moslem nation, Azerbaijan, has already openly purchased Iron Dome with no ill diplomatic effects. The sale to the Czech Republic means Iron Dome would be integrated with nearby NATO nations who use American air defense systems.

U.S. Army officials protest that their situation is somehow different and it is. There is some disagreement over how and why this situation is different. The U.S. Army has long been criticized for neglecting air defense. This was true and there were practical reasons for that attitude. The U.S. Air Force gain air dominance, which is one step up from air superiority, towards the end of World War II. Thus from 1945 to now, no one has been able to seriously damage U.S. ground forces from the air. American troops have suffered losses from airstrikes, but these were friendly fire incidents when air force jets were called in to provide close air support. Until the development of smart bombs such air support always involved some risk to the troops being supported. After the Cold War ended in 1991 American ground forces found themselves increasingly vulnerable to missile and rocket attacks. The air domination provided by American airpower was less effective against all the missiles and rockets and the army was increasingly pressured by the public (via Congress) to develop more effective defenses against this new threat from the air. The army procurement system has not got a great record in situations like this and is especially resistant to obtaining foreign systems, even ones like Iron Dome that have been combat proven and an obvious solution to a very real problems with defending American bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere against the kind of weapons Iron Dome have proven it can handle.

At this point, the army, under pressure from Congress, says it will put the two Iron Dome systems into service. The Dome Batteries wont arrive until later in 2020 and then a hundred or so soldiers have to be trained to operate the equipment. Normally that would mean the American Iron Dome batteries would not be ready for use until 2021. The army admits that, if called on, their Iron Dome batteries, or at least one of them, could be ready to deploy before the end of 2020.

There is still the mystery over why the U.S. Army so is intent on trying to force Israel to turn over the source code. The U.S. has already successfully tested the Iron Dome systems it obtained earlier for evaluation. The Israelis point out that they have not shared Iron Dome source code (and a lot of other similar stuff) with anyone. In addition, the U.S. has been much less successful at keeping secrets than Israel. The U.S. Army is under pressure to use Iron Dome in places like Iraq where American bases are being hit with rockets fired by Iran-backed Iraqi militias. Israel even modified Iron Dome in 2016, at American request, so that it could also shoot down UAVs.

Now the Americans plan to hold a competition to evaluate other systems that can do what Iron Dome does. The problem is that are no other such systems and the Israelis fear the U.S. wants the Iron Dome source code so they can reverse-engineer it and create a competing U.S. made system.

What makes Iron Dome unique, other than the fact that it works, is the use of two radars to quickly calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. But if the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area one (or often two to be sure) $50,000 Tamir guided missiles are fired to intercept the rocket. This and the fact that the Iron Dome fire control system can track hundreds of incoming missiles at once makes the system cost-effective. So far Iron Dome has shot down about 85 percent of the rockets it calculated were headed for populated areas. The Tamir missiles used by Iron Dome weigh 90 kg and have a range of 70 kilometers against rockets, mortar shells and artillery shells up to 155mm. Iron Dome can also shoot down aircraft and helicopters (up to 10 kilometers/32,000 feet altitude). The Iron Dome software includes the capability to quickly integrate a new map that indicates areas that must be protected and other areas where the rocket or shell can be allowed to land harmlessly. Export customers have been satisfied with how this works. Some critics have cast doubt on the actual effectiveness of Iron Dome. Yet property and humans losses plunged precipitously once Iran Dome was in service and the people being protected were satisfied.

There have been competing systems. In 2008, while Iron Dome was still being developed and several years away from entering service, Hamas in Gaza was increasing the number of rockets and mortar shells fired into southern Israel. At that point, several hundred rockets and mortar shells a month were fired into southern Israel. Many Israelis had noted that the Americans and British were already using an effective anti-rocket system; C-RAM. This is a modified version of the U.S. Navy Phalanx system, which was originally designed to protect warships from anti-ship missiles. As originally designed, you turned Phalanx on whenever the ship was likely to have an anti-ship missile fired at it. The Phalanx radar can spot incoming missiles out to about 5,000 meters, and the 20mm cannon is effective out to about 2,000 meters. With incoming missiles moving an up to several hundred meters a second, you can see why Phalanx is set to automatic. There's not much time for human intervention, which is why the Phalanx has to be turned on and set to automatically detect and shoot at incoming missiles. But weapons engineers discovered that Phalanx could take out incoming 155mm artillery shells as well. This capability is what led to C-RAM. Israel considered buying C-RAM to provide some protection towns on the Gaza border but decided against it because Iron Dome was close to being operational, which occurred in 2011.

Since 2003 there have been two major Phalanx mods. In one, the Phalanx was adapted to use on land, to shoot down incoming rockets. This was done by using a larger artillery spotting radar, which directs Phalanx to fire at incoming mortar shells and rockets. Not all the incoming stuff is hit, but nearly 80 percent of it is, and every little bit helps. The second mod was for shipboard use, and changes the software so the Phalanx can be used against small boats, especially those of the suicide bomber variety.

In 2007 Britain bought a C-RAM system to protect its airbase in southern Iraq. A C-RAM Phalanx system, which can cover about four kilometers of border, costs $8 million and was effective in defending bases. What it could not do effectively was defend long borders Israel had to guard in the north (Lebanon and Syria) and south (Gaza).

C-RAM uses high explosive 20mm shells that detonate near the target, spraying it with fragments. By the time these fragments reach the ground, they are generally too small to injure anyone. At least that's been the experience in Iraq. The original Phalanx used 20mm depleted uranium shells, to slice through incoming missiles. Phalanx fires shells at a rate of 75 per second. Another advantage of C-RAM, is that it makes a distinctive noise when firing, warning people nearby that a mortar or rocket attack is underway, giving people an opportunity to duck inside if they are out and about.

The first C-RAM was sent to Iraq in late 2006, to protect the Iraq Green Zone, the large area in Baghdad turned into an American base. It was found that C-RAM could knock down 70-80 percent of the rockets and mortar shells fired within range of its cannon. Not bad, since it only took about a year to develop C-RAM. Meanwhile, another version, using a high-powered laser, instead of the 20mm gun, was in development but never achieved enough effectiveness to enter service. By 2008 there were nearly 900 Phalanx systems in use, including some on Israeli warships. Most have not gotten these software mods that enable the cannon to knock down rockets and shells, as well as incoming anti-ship missiles.

Since 2011, when Iron Dome entered service, Israel has made progress in developing Laser Dome, a shorter range (two kilometers) Iron Dome that uses laser beams instead of rockets. Laser Dome is meant to reinforce Iron Dome, not replace it. A longer range (over 100 kilometers) missile has been developed for Iron Dome that enables one battery to protect a larger area. Laser Dome would be used against key targets that might be subjected to an overwhelming attack by a hundred or more rockets at once. Iron Dome cannot launch enough missiles to defend against such an attack, but Laser Dome could handle it since it can fire far more laser beams than Iron Dome can fire longer range missiles.

The key to Iron Dome success is its software and U.S. insistence on having access to it is seen as proof of how essential, and valuable that software is. The Israelis want to keep the secret.
A political crisis is rocking Poland over the presidential elections scheduled for May 10. Poland is currently under lockdown to limit infection during the coronavirus pandemic. In-person balloting would violate distancing orders. Opposition candidates for the presidency have been unable to campaign, even as incumbent President Andrzej Duda dominates media coverage. Opinion polls suggested fewer than one-third of voters planned to vote under these conditions.

Not surprisingly, the opposition called for the elections to be delayed. The government refused.

The solution? The governing Law and Justice party (Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc, or PiS) proposed switching to mail-in postal voting. It introduced a bill in parliament on April 6, about a month before the election. PiS refused to delay the elections, on the grounds that the situation may be worse in the autumn, and claimed the pandemic does not constitute an emergency.

The result? After the initial announcement of the postal ballots, it quickly became clear that a series of conflicts, missteps and delays made fully free elections on May 10 impossible, according to the Chief of the Polish Electoral Commission. The election has not been postponed, contrary to news reports. Instead, it now appears an election will take place on May 10 - but will also be invalid, thanks to a questionable compromise between two leading politicians. Poland's electoral commission then announced it was unable to conduct the election, so that the government would have to hold it instead.

Confused? Here's what happened.

- Both parliament and the governing party are split

The opposition charges that the PiS postal ballot proposal was yet another anti-democratic manipulation. It wanted the elections to be postponed, but not changed in format. Opposition parties have called for a declaration of a "state of natural disaster," which would allow the government to postpone the elections until August. Opposition parties also charge that the ballot law is open to abuse and fraud. They also allege that PiS is not to be trusted, given their earlier stripping of the courts of their autonomy in the name of "decommunization" as well as PiS attacks on the media and their political opponents.

PiS itself is now in danger of splitting over the elections. It won in 2015 with a majority that allowed it to rule without coalition partners. When this government was reelected in 2019, however, the upper chamber (the Senate) went to the opposition, and the PiS parliamentary majority is dependent on two electoral alliances, each of whom hold 18 seats.

Jarosaw Gowin, the leader of one of these groups and the minister of education and deputy prime minister in the PiS government, has resigned. He opposes the postal voting law, and instead proposed a compromise that would extend Duda's term by two years and would then lead to another election. PiS leader Jarosaw Kaczynski was reportedly furious - but could do little, since Gowin's faction holds enough seats to block the proposed election law, and other laws.

Duda is favored to win the election, and the office of the president in Poland is far less powerful than in the United States or other presidential systems. Nonetheless, this is a critical election for PiS: Even though the party holds a majority in the parliament, it does not have the 3/5 majority that would allow it to overturn a presidential veto. With the next parliamentary election scheduled to take place in 2023, an opposition president could stymie government proposals for the next three years.

- Postal ballots are no easy fix

Poland's opposition parties and legal experts questioned the legality of the postal ballot proposal. Voting by mail sidesteps the Electoral Commission, the official administrator of Polish elections, and instead hands over the administration to the Postal Office.

The head of the Electoral Commission, Sylwester Marciniak, emailed local governments asking them to make voters' personal data available to the post office. Local officials immediately criticized the move, calling it unofficial and possibly illegal. Several local governments, included major cities such as Krakow, announced they would refuse to comply with the request, citing concerns over data privacy and the legality of the request. The opposition also charges that it is illegal to organize the vote without passing the election law first. And even if the postal ballot goes ahead, the opposition charges it won't be possible to count the votes before the runoff round scheduled for May 24.

Nonetheless, the government has printed the ballots - creating further controversy. Newspapers immediately reported that the contract went to a private firm, with previous experience in commercial fliers but with no capacity to ensure the security of the ballots. A few days later, copies of the ballots were leaked, and a livid presidential candidate demonstrated how easy it would be to copy them and submit multiple votes. Not surprisingly, even PiS politicians openly worried that the election would be a "farce."

- The opposition strikes back

The opposition used the one institutional weapon at its disposal: to delay voting on the bill in the Senate for the 30 days allowed by law. The Senate eventually took up the discussion of the bill, and rejected in on Tuesday.

In a bizarre turn, Gowin and Kaczynski met on Wednesday and arrived at a compromise agreement three days before the elections. Yes, Poland would hold the election as planned on May 10. The Supreme Court would then declare the elections null and void. New elections will take place later in the year, in July or August, without a declaration of state of emergency.

The move was met with relief from the opposition - and immediate criticism that the two politicians do not have the authority to impose this solution. The Electoral Commission then announced on May 7 that since it did not have the legal authority to print the ballots, it was unable to run the elections, leaving the PiS government in charge of an election it planned to invalidate.

- All the authoritarian commitments, half the competence?

PiS has often been compared to the authoritarian ruling party in Hungary, Fidesz. Under the guise of emergency measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, Fidesz has recently passed laws that give extensive (and indefinite) decree power to the prime minister, consolidating its hold on power in Hungary.

Critics have accused PiS of having the same authoritarian aims. Yet the controversy asround the presidential elections in Poland suggests that shared opportunities and goals are not enough to push through institutional change: political competence matters just as much.

- - -

Grzymala-Busse (@AnnaGBusse) is Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies at Stanford University.

For other analysis and commentary from The Monkey Cage, an independent blog anchored by political scientists from universities around the country, see www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage
Residents of Midland Medical Lodge with COVID-19 were transferred to Midland Memorial Hospital because officials determined the facility was not completely isolating infected residents, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Larry Wilson said Thursday.

Hospital officials announced earlier this week that residents of the nursing home who tested positive for the coronavirus or who were believed to have the virus would be transferred from the lodges isolation unit to the hospital. Wilson expanded during a press briefing Thursday on the reason these residents were transferred.

It was determined by the health department, in working with the rapid response team, that the facility was not completely isolating the infected patients, or residents well, he said. Its in their best interest to clear it out, clean it up, get the infection under better control and move forward from there.

Midland Memorials CEO Russell Meyers said that the decision was driven by interactions with the state. The lodge previously released a statement saying they had voluntarily activated the Texas Health and Human Services Rapid Response Team.

That team is providing training for lodge staff on infection control practices and using personal protective equipment, as well as doing a deep cleaning of the facility, Meyers said Thursday.

When asked to comment on Wilsons remarks, a representative for Midland Medical Lodge said Wilson would be clarifying his statements. She did not specify what required clarification.

The Reporter-Telegram asked Wilson if he would like to revise his comments. He said he wanted to clarify that Midland Medical Lodge made the decision to transfer their residents but said he did not recall saying anything inaccurate during the press briefing.

Keri Powell, an administrator with Midland Medical Lodge, said in a statement that they activated the rapid response team for staffing assistance to best care for our patients and we transferred our infected residents to the hospital for further care.

The nursing facility has been the source of the most significant outbreak in Midland County, with 58 known positives as of Monday, including 23 staff members and 35 residents. The city of Midland Health Department confirmed the eighth death of a resident at the facility on Thursday, as well as an additional resident and additional employee who have tested positive.

There are 27 residents from Midland Medical Lodge who are inpatients at the hospital, according to Meyers. He said there are 28 total patients in MMHs COVID-19 unit and three patients in their critical care unit.

As the COVID-19 unit has a capacity of 30 beds, the influx of lodge residents has put that unit nearly at capacity. Meyers said the hospital already has created a plan for responding to a significant increase in coronavirus patients.

There are multiple steps that can be taken to assign more beds, as patients need them, if the outbreak continues to grow, he said.

He said they are not anticipating more residents will be transferred from the lodge, but it is a fluid situation and that can change from minute to minute.
Kristi Nix

A Missouri City nursing home confirmed 37 residents tested positive for COVID-19 Friday. Park Manor Quail Valley is owned by HMG Healthcare, which operates 24 facilities in Texas and the United States. New COVID-19 testing protocols were recently launched at all their locations, according to CEO Derek Prince.

In a proactive step, HMG Healthcare began baseline testing all residents, patients, and employees for COVID-19 this week. As we have all seen with this virus, people can be infected and contagious while exhibiting no symptoms. Our nursing facilities, with communal settings and a frail, compromised population, present a delicate setting for care and treating this novel virus. Testing everyone in our facility, allows us to properly isolate and quarantine our residents and employees, Prince said in an email Friday. We are notifying all family members and responsible parties regarding our testing protocols and will continue to work with our state and local officials as testing results come in.
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (PANA) - Seven new cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease were recorded here Thursday, taking to 736 the overall number of people infeted since March 9, the government information service (SIG) said
As a former cottager who now lives full-time in cottage country, I have been following the debate on whether or not cottagers should stay away from cottage country during the COVID-19 pandemic with great interest.

Yes, cottagers pay high property taxes; I can attest to this fact. But these taxes dont fund the medical lifelines for the tax-paying base in cottage country. The main concern that the full-time residents of these communities have been expressing is the severe lack of health-care facilities and emergency medical care. Health care is a provincial and federal responsibility, not a municipal responsibility. Premier Doug Ford needs to step up to the plate and fund sufficient hospitals and medical clinics in the rural areas of the province. Listen to the concerns being expressed by the full-time residents and stop creating divisions between law-abiding citizens through your off the cuff remarks.

How about setting up temporary COVID-19 clinics in these areas to address the concerns?

Be proactive, not divisive.
Foy & Gibsons red-brick buildings in Collingwood dates to the 1930s.

Originally the manufacturing base for Foy & Gibson, which had a department store in Smith Street, its now home to Lasalle College International (LCI), a privately operated design school with 28 campuses worldwide.

Before there was a flight of stairs, now theres a dramatic flexible atrium space. Credit:

LCI, at 150 Oxford Street, Collingwood, is the first of its Australian campuses.

Offering photography, fine arts, communications, interior design, graphic design and fashion design, the spaces, like the disciplines taught, are not firmly delineated.
Around the world, cornavirus antibody testing is being embraced as a way to identify people who may be immune to the virus. A medical worker shows a rapid antibody test kit at a school converted into a mass testing facility in Manila, Philippines. Read more

Suddenly, getting a test to see if youve been exposed to the coronavirus and have antibodies to it is almost as easy as getting a flu test.

Vybe urgent care centers are the latest to jump on the immune-response testing bandwagon. All you need is a telemedicine consultation, a blood draw at one of the nine centers in Philadelphia or Delaware County, and several days of patience for results to come back.

But there are lots of caveats. The length of antibody protection  assuming there is some  is unknown. Scores of antibody tests, some totally unreliable, have been allowed on the market by regulators. And depending where and how you access an antibody test, you may be charged about $100, despite a new federal law designed to make coronavirus testing available with no cost-sharing.

Vybe CEO Peter Hotz readily acknowledged the uncertainties, and Vybes website explains some of them. But we believe theres a public health value in doing this to get at answers to some of those questions, he said Friday.

To help you decide whether testing makes sense, lets unpack the caveats.

The promise of antibody testing

Up to now, COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, has been diagnosed by complex molecular tests that look for the virus genetic material in nasal swab samples.

On Saturday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the first antigen test for rapid early diagnosis of COVID-19. Antigens are produced by the virus early in an infection and prompt an immune response. The test can detect the antigens in samples collected from swabs swiped inside the nasal cavity, the FDA said in a statement.

Antibodies are a key part of the immune response triggered by viral antigens. Antibody tests look for three types of types of immune proteins  abbreviated IgA, IgM, and IgG  that are produced more than a week after a coronavirus infection sets in. Experts believe that even people who have mild symptoms, or none, get some level of immune protection. Judging from coronaviruses that cause common colds, the protection could last a year or so.

The hopes are that widespread antibody testing could track the scope and spread of the epidemic, identify people who could safely go back to work, and help recruit people to donate their antibody-laden blood to treat severe COVID-19 cases. Although the research to support these hopes has barely begun, testing is proliferating because time is of the essence.

Were not telling people, If your antibody test is positive, go out and mingle,  said Hotz, who had a positive diagnostic test and is waiting for his antibody test results. All of us have to continue to suppress this virus [with social distancing] because theres a lot we dont know.

The perils of antibody testing

In mid-March, the FDA weighed the urgency of the coronavirus crisis against the stakes of imperfect antibody testing and decided to let companies market their tests without even a cursory review. That led to a flood of unreliable and fraudulent tests, which forced the FDA to backpedal.

The agency announced Monday that companies would have to submit their validation data within 10 days and earn the agencys emergency authorization. Leading diagnostic companies  including Cellex, Ortho Clinical, and Autobio Diagnostics  had already gotten emergency authorizations.

But just because a test has been validated in a lab  using infected blood samples and uninfected control samples  doesnt mean it will be reliable in real-world, clinical use. Test results can be thrown off by antibodies from common cold-causing coronaviruses (a problem called cross reactivity), or because the levels of IgA and IgM have fallen off. Some big companies, notably Abbott Laboratories and Roche Diagnostics, have opted to test only for IgG, the antibody that is produced later in infection and stays robust longer.

A Bloomberg News reporter who had symptoms of COVID-19 but no diagnostic test decided months later to find out if he had antibodies. The contradictory results  two positive tests, two negative tests  left him in doubt.

Another problem: Even tests that are near perfect in the lab are not very good if the prevalence of infection in the community is low, meaning only a small fraction of people  1% to 5%  has been exposed to the virus. Most experts estimate thats the range of coronavirus prevalence, except in hard-hit places. (A prevalence study in New York City recently found that a quarter of residents have antibodies to the virus.)

Why does prevalence matter? Because if few people have what a test is looking for to rule in or rule out a condition, then the chances for error are magnified. Based on the lab accuracy of a test and the prevalence of the condition, biostatisticians can calculate the probability that real-world results will be wrong, either by telling people who are negative that theyre positive (the positive predictive value), or telling people who are positive that theyre negative (the negative predictive value").

AllCare, a chain of urgent care centers in Maryland and Virginia, took the unusual step of explaining these confusing statistical concepts and providing a comparative review of coronavirus antibody tests being sold by big manufacturers.

Positive predictive value for the same exact test varies from virtually useless/dangerous to very helpful, depending on how many people have had the virus in the population being tested," the AllCare coronavirus webpage explains.

The profits of antibody testing

When the pandemic hit, the government wanted to make sure that people with insurance, as well as people who are poor, uninsured, or without primary care doctors, could get diagnostic and antibody testing with no out-of-pocket costs.

Measures designed to ensure that are part of a new federal law, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, and part of rule changes made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).

While supply shortages have limited coronavirus diagnostic testing, antibody testing is increasingly accessible. A big reason is that LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics  which each have thousands of storefront service centers across the United States  are fast becoming dominant players in this niche. LabCorp says it is using the Abbott and Roche antibody test platforms. Quest says its using Abbott and Euroimmun test platforms.

Vybes urgent care centers are among the customers.

"Were working with LabCorp and a little bit with Quest, Hotz said.

But consumers may still wind up being charged for antibody testing, either because they choose to  or dont realize that free testing is mandated.

 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.

Quest, for one, is marketing its test directly to consumers for $119 plus a $10.30 service fee. Sonora, a Quest partner in Arizona, is doing the same thing for $99. The consumer goes online, requests the test, then a Quest-contracted doctor orders it after making sure its appropriate. (Antibody testing cant be done until at least 10 days after COVID-19 symptoms go away.)

Quest is touting this as consumer-initiated.

We understand that individuals can have COVID-19 testing fully paid by their health plan or the government, Quest spokesperson Kimberly Gorode emailed. For some paying out of pocket, it may come down to convenience and privacy. Consumer-initiated testing ... provides convenient, online access to quality, physician-guided testing paid for by the consumer.

Does charging consumers for testing skirt federal rules? An FDA media relations person said: Ask CMS and the Department of Health and Human Services. Media relations persons at CMS and HHS repeatedly emailed that they were working on" getting answers.

After almost two weeks, they still had not succeeded.
They have been married for almost five years.

And Mark Wright sweetly admitted that he was his wife Michelle Keegan's 'biggest fan' while interviewing her for his Heart radio show on Thursday.

The radio presenter, 33, was chatting to Michelle about the new series of her comedy Brassic and joked that it was 'strange' to be interviewing his wife.

Sweet: Mark Wright sweetly admitted that he was his wife Michelle Keegan's 'biggest fan' while interviewing her for his Heart radio show on Thursday

The couple discussed Michelle's Brassic character Erin, who Mark admitted he 'loved' as well as all of the other roles she has played in the past thorough her career.

He said: 'I love Erin, see when you're married to an actor, you have to see all these different characters they play so I've had Tina McIntyre from Corrie, I've had Tina from Tina and Bobby, I've had Georgie Lane from Our Girl, now I've got Erin.

Mark then joked: 'I have to remember all their different traits, otherwise I get in trouble for not taking enough notice.'

Power couple: The radio presenter, 33, was chatting to Michelle about the new series of her comedy Brassic and joked that it was 'strange' to be interviewing his wife

Lavishing his other half with praise, he said: 'No, I don't really, I love everything my wife does of course...

'I'm her biggest fan and this is a little bit strange interviewing my wife for the radio, but why not, we're in the same house, I'm working from home and she's here!'

The couple tied the knot in 2015 after meeting three years previous through mutual friends on a holiday to Dubai.

Love: The couple discussed Michelle's Brassic character Erin, who Mark admitted he 'loved' as well as all of the other roles she has played in the past thorough her career

They have spent much of their marriage in a long-distance relationship while Mark filmed for Extra in America while Michelle lived in the UK.

The former TOWIE star has since moved back to Blighty permanently and the couple recently moved into their dream 1.3 million home together.

Michelle has most recently starred as Lance Corporal Georgie Lane in army drama Our Girl, which she spent four months filming for in South Africa.

Romance: Lavishing his other half with praise, he said: 'No, I don't really, I love everything my wife does of course...'
Italy was in the grip of one of the most draconian lockdowns due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Authorities clamped down in the north of the country in February and then extended restrictions in early March to the entire nation. So what does the future hold for Italians who seek a return to normality?

In Italy, the number of confirmed dead from the coronavirus is expected to exceed 30,000. Aside from the pain, shock and horror of the past 10 weeks, it is clear there will be other lasting effects.

Italians across the country have not seen a single newscast that has not focused all of its reports on the pandemic, whether to give the latest figures of dead or newly infected, or to discuss the impact on the economy, or to address how the scientific community is working to find a way to fight the disease.

Psychological shift

Now that the country has started to gradually ease the lockdown, not everyone has been so eager to go back to their old lives.

Many have become used to staying in the comfort zone of their homes and have organised their domestic lives so that it co-exists well with their work from home.

Many say they quickly adapted to the silence outside their windows and to talking to their neighbours on their balconies.

Twenty-five percent of Italians are still fearful of contracting the virus and are anxious at the idea of getting on public transport, even if they are wearing masks and gloves, and in spite of being aware that only a limited number of people are allowed on at a time.

These feelings are expected to linger for many months. Psychologists say people that are more easily adaptable (like young people) will find it easier to return to their old lives but are also likely to take less precautions at a time when the coronavirus is far from having been defeated.

Adults who were able to continue with their jobs throughout this time will also find it easier as this aspect of their lives did not really change very much.

Many elderly people have not seen their children and grandchildren for months, and may not yet be able to see them for some time. The different conditions in which people have had to live their isolation will certainly have different psychological effects, namely if a person was on their own, if they tested positive, became sick, or lost a loved one.

Ghost towns

People who did not suffer any of these situations during their isolation will find it easier to return to the streets and resume their lives.

The lasting mark that will undoubtedly stay with Italians is having seen their cities, towns and villages like never before: completely devoid of life.

The pictures of the Colosseum in Rome with no tourists or no lines outside the Uffizi Museums in Florence and the Venice canals with no gondolas will stay in people's minds here forever, as will the pictures of the army trucks taking away hundreds of dead bodies in the northern Italian town of Bergamo.

The image that will likely be the most impossible to delete from memory for Italians the one of Pope Francis praying on his own in an empty Saint Peter's Square on Easter Sunday.
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San Francisco, 8 May 2020: The Report Smart Diapers Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By End User (Babies, Adults), By Region (North America, Europe, APAC, CSA, MEA), Competitive Landscape, And Segment Forecasts, 2019 - 2025

The global smart diapers market size is expected to reach USD 11.4 billion by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2019 to 2025, according to a report by Grand View Research, Inc. Introduction of smart wearables is driving manufacturers of this industry to focus on developing diapers integrated with sensors, which will enable the caregivers to take effective care of the babies and old people.

Geriatric population also contributes significantly to the market demand. Old age homes, healthcare institutions, and clinics having elderly people are also prominent customers expected to drive the market over the forecast period. Possibility of infections such as inflammation of urethra in the aging population is one of the constraints to the market growth. In order to protect and reduce the possibilities of infectious diseases, companies are providing solutions by introducing apps, sensors, and Bluetooth devices.

Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 5.7% from 2019 to 2025. Most of the new entrants are coming up with new technologies applicable in sensors, thereby driving the market in the region. Increasing population and nuclear families in this region are the major factors boosting the regional market growth. Taiwan, Korea, and Australia are considered to be the emerging markets for this product. High birth rates in Asia Pacific and the Middle East countries are expected to provide growth opportunities for the market.

North America and Europe hold a dominant share in the global market owing to increasing preference for technology driven products that make life easier for consumers having busy schedule and lifestyle.

Key players operating in the global market include Alphabets Verily, ElderSens, Pixie Scientific, SINOPULSAR, Monit Corp., Opro9, Simativa (Australia), Abena Nova, Indiegogo, and Smartipants. Some of the key players in the market are focusing on supplying the diapers with smart new sensors, which are well updated with technologies, such as Alert plus. Companies such as Alphabets Verily and Pixie Scientific are considered to be the prominent companies in the market.

Access Research Report of Smart Diapers Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-diapers-market

Further key findings from the study suggest:

Based on the end user, the babies segment is expected to account for a share of 57.2% by 2025

North America dominated the market and accounted for 34.1% share of the overall revenue in 2018. This trend is projected to continue over the next few years

The smart diapers market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness significant growth due to increasing awareness among consumers and growing population in India, South Korea, and China

The industry is highly competitive due to the presence of main players including Abena Nova; Simativa; Sino pulsar technology Inc.; Alphabets Verily; Pixie Scientific; Monit Corp.; Opro9; and ElderSens

Various manufacturers are focusing on new product launches and technological innovation to estimate existing and future demand patterns according to the needs of babies and adults, who cant help themselves to change the diapers when required.

Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/homecare-and-decor

Grand View Research has segmented the global smart diapers market on the basis of end user and region:

Smart Diapers End User Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2015 - 2025)

Babies

Adults

Smart Diapers Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2015 - 2025)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Central & South America

Middle East & Africa

Access Press Release of Smart Diapers Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-smart-diapers-market

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.

For More Information:www.grandviewresearch.com
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: It was like the first few drops of rain after a long spell of drought. Drinkers across Tamil Nadu, but for Chennai, thronged State-run liquor shops on Thursday when they opened after a gap of over a month and a half. Like petrichor, the ever-familiar scent of alcohol that had been erased from public memory wafted again in the air, bringing back sweet memories for aficionados and horrible ones for family members of alcoholics.

Drinkers could not suppress their joy. One was seen praying to bottles with folded hands. Another did a tiny pooja in front of an open store. A third was seen talking to a TV crew on the importance of being a responsible drinker, by maintaining social distance. In stark contrast, Thursday opened up old scars for family members of alcoholics, quite literally in many cases. In Alanganallur of Madurai district, a teenage girl set herself on fire after attempts to stop her alcoholic father from returning to his old ways failed.

The girl Archana (18), and her mother Parameshwari who jumped in to save her, are battling for life at the GRH in Madurai. Several stores in Madurai and Delta districts witnessed protests by the anti-liquor lobby  comprising activists and politicians. In Virudhunagar, 50 people staged protest with black flags against opening of shops. An outlet in Sellur area of Madurai and four in Nagapattinam were forced to close down by a similar group of protestors.

In Thanjavur, two outlets had to be shut down after flower vendors staged protest. When we cannot return to work, why must alcohol alone be sold? Is that really necessary? they asked. In Dharmapuri, protestors blocked the entrance to a liquor store by dumping boulders, sandbags and garbage in front of it. Despite the hindrances, thousands queued up across stores in serpentine lines to end the de facto prohibition. The scorching sun and long wait did not deter them.

Some went to the extent of bursting crackers and cutting cakes. Their parties were cut short by the police. Later in the day, a series of crimes across districts were attributed to drunk behaviour. A 40-year-old man was found dead in Tiruchy, and the only clue police had was that he was drunk. Two siblings were arrested in Tiruchy for murdering a daily wage labourer. Though police say there was previous enmity, the fact that all three of them had consumed alcohol hogged the attention.

In Virudhunagar, a 24-year-old man was arrested for beating his sister to death. While he was already upset with his 21-year-old sister for having a boyfriend, police suspect alcohol could have been a trigger for him to commit the crime. In Tirunelveli, a 40-year-old man killed his mother over a property dispute. He too was drunk during the time of the incident. In Tiruchy meanwhile, drinkers pointed out a crime allegedly being committed by the makers instead of consumers.

I waited patiently all these days despite illicit brew being available freely. But, when I finally bought my favourite brand at my neighbourhood TASMAC outlet, the booze tasted funny. This is not what you expect after waiting this long, said Rajeshwaran, a disappointed customer.

Drinkers in Chennai did not get even that, as shops did not open in the city. The city drinkers, as a result rushed to neighbouring districts outside its police limits. But all that drive was a waste. They had to return empty-handed, as the cops outsmarted them by checking ID for address proof.
The Ruby Princess, a cruise ship linked to hundreds of cases of COVID-19 in Australia, arrived in Manila Bay, in the Philippines, on May 7, with 214 Filipino crew members aboard awaiting testing for the virus.

Helicopter footage shows the Philippine Coastal Guard flying over the ship to oversee its arrival into the bay.

The Coast Guard said the vessel had 214 Filipino crew members aboard who were scheduled to be tested for COVID-19.

At least 13 other cruise ships were also in the anchorage area of Manila Bay.

An estimated 21 deaths from coronavirus and 700 cases of virus in Australia have been linked to the ship, according to news reports. Credit: Philippine Coast Guard via Storyful
Over 250 British nationals departed Nigeria for the United Kingdom on Friday on a special return chartered flight organised by both governments, an official said Friday evening.

The plane had earlier brought back 200 Nigerian nationals from the UK via the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.

In a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Friday, the British High Commissioner for Nigeria, Catriona Laing, said this was the eighth repatriation flight organised for Britons wanting to return from Nigeria, since the closure of Nigeria airports on March 23 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I am so pleased we were able to help Nigerians get back to Nigeria whilst also helping more British nationals return home to the UK. We work around the clock to support British nationals who remain in the country.

I want offer a huge thank you to the Nigerian government for their support and assistance in arranging these flights. The strong cooperation we have had from our Nigerian partners demonstrates the enduring bonds between our two countries, she said.

She said the British High Commission had been working with the Nigerian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Transportation and Aviation, others to arrange the flights.

She said the UK will continue to work closely with the Nigerian government in the future, not just on flights for stranded travellers in both our countries, but on fighting COVID-19 and building a better future for Nigeria.

Pandemic

Since the deadly coronavirus broke out across the globe, many countries have shut down their borders and airports.

Most governments have also been engaged in a flurry of efforts to bring back their nationals stranded in other nations.

The first batch of repatriation involving Nigerian nationals took place on May 6 with an Emirates flight that returned 265 persons to Abuja.

The flight had to return to Dubai a few minutes after take off after a woman, who gave birth on board developed complications.

Nigerias foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, during the presidential task force briefing on May 7 said more repatriations were expected to be undertaken in the coming days.
13-time Grammy nominee Katy Perry announced to her massive 307.6M social media following on Thursday that her next song Daisies will be released by Capitol Records on May 15.

'The music must go on!' the expecting 35-year-old exclaimed.

The first single off Katy's untitled sixth studio album was written by herself, Jon Bellion, and Jacon Kasher, and produced by The Monsters & Strangerz.

'The music must go on!' 13-time Grammy nominee Katy Perry announced to her fans on Thursday that her next song Daisies will be released by Capitol Records on May 15

'She's coming!' The first single off the expecting 35-year-old's untitled sixth studio album was written by herself, Jon Bellion, and Jacon Kasher, and produced by The Monsters & Strangerz

Perry's disappointing fifth studio album Witness reportedly only sold 162K pure albums in the States in 2017.

The Santa Barbara-born pop diva first hinted at the name of her new track by promoting $49 'The Geli' daisy sandals from her shoe line with 10% proceeds going to Baby2Baby.

Daisies clearly hold deep significance for Katy as her fiance Orlando Bloom popped the question on Valentine's Day 2019 with a daisy-shaped, $5M Neil Lane engagement ring.

Perry (born Katheryn Hudson) welcomes her first child - a daughter - this summer with the 43-year-old Englishman, who has a nine-year-old son Flynn with his ex-wife Miranda Kerr.

'Daisies are the friendliest flower!' Katy first hinted at the name of her new track by promoting $49 'The Geli' daisy sandals from her shoe line with 10% proceeds going to Baby2Baby

Symbol: Daisies clearly hold deep significance for Perry as her fiance Orlando Bloom popped the question on Valentine's Day 2019 with a daisy-shaped, $5M Neil Lane engagement ring

Baby on board! The Santa Barbara-born pop diva welcomes her first child - a daughter - this summer with the 43-year-old Englishman, who has a nine-year-old son Flynn with his ex-wife Miranda Kerr (pictured April 30)

Busier than ever! Katy next performs remotely at the four-hour festival SHEIN Together, which livestreams this Saturday at 1pm PST in the e-retailer's app

The beaming bride and mother-to-be next performs remotely at the four-hour festival SHEIN Together, which livestreams this Saturday at 1pm PST in the e-retailer's app.

The UN/WHO COVID-19 benefit also features performances from Lil Nas X, Rita Ora, and Doja Cat; as well as appearances from Hailey Bieber, Madelaine Petsch, and Yara Shahidi.

Katy has been remotely judging the 18th season of American Idol - airing Sundays on ABC - from the safety of her home since April 26.

Perry earns an eye-popping $25M per season of the formerly Fox singing competition, according to TMZ.

Airing Sundays on ABC! Perry has been remotely judging the 18th season of American Idol from the safety of her home since April 26 (pictured Sunday)

Also airing this Sunday on ABC! The beaming bride and mother-to-be will also sing Baby Mine from Dumbo on the The Disney Family Singalong: Volume II

The Never Worn White songstress will also sing Baby Mine from Dumbo on the The Disney Family Singalong: Volume II, which also airs this Sunday on ABC.

John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Halsey, Jennifer Hudson, Ben Platt, Idina Menzel, Miguel, and Chloe x Halle will also perform their remote renditions on Disney classics.

The Disney Family Singalong raises funds for Feeding America, an organization that has been using its resources to help provide aid to those affected by COVID-19.
DAKOTA CITY -- Local leaders offered a mixture of optimism and unease as Tyson Fresh Meats on Thursday reopened its Dakota City plant following an outbreak of COVID-19 among its workers.

Tyson idled its largest beef plant for six days to give it a deep cleaning and to test all of its 4,300 employees.

The company refused to disclose how many workers tested positive for the virus. Those who did are not to return to duty until health officials deem them say to do so, company officials said.

Due to absenteeism, the plant is running at less than half its normal production, Tyson spokeswoman Liz Croston told the Journal on Thursday.

"We will gradually and carefully increase production to ensure the continued safety of our team members, their loves ones and our community," Croston said in an email.

The employees' test results were sent to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, which will then forward the data to the Dakota County Health Department.

It's unclear if the new batch of test results have started showing up in the county health department's daily numbers. On Thursday, the department reported 32 new cases, raising its total 1,046. Five residents have died from the virus, including at least two Tyson workers.

With a population of just 10,000, Dakota County has the third most cases among Nebraska's 93 counties, and one of the highest rates per capita in the nation.

Rod Koch, mayor of neighboring South Sioux City, said Thursday he supports Tyson resuming production, having taken preventative measures he believes are sufficient to avoid further contagion among the workers.

"I'm glad that they shut it down for the amount of time that they did, I think that gave them a chance for a deep cleaning, and for everybody to get tested," Koch said Thursday. "From what I've been hearing, that's enough time for any virus that could be in the plant, to be eliminated."

Koch said "independent teams" have inspected the plant to monitor workers for illness and to ensure they are social distancing.

"I think, right now, with the changes they've made inside the plant, with the requirement of having temperatures taken when you come in every day, masks, and the separation pods, I just think they've gone the extra mile to get this thing as safe as possible," Koch said. "I don't have a problem with them coming back with everything that they've done. Anything short of that I probably would not have been in support of it."

State Sen. Jackie Smith, a Democrat who represents a district in neighboring Sioux City, said she's uncomfortable with the level of secrecy surrounding how many workers have become infected. She resumed her call for an independent body to oversee the plant's re-opening.

"I think it's too soon, and I don't think they've been transparent enough. It makes me very nervous," said Smith, who suggested a variety of agencies, including OSHA, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture or even the University of Nebraska, that might be able to independently oversee how the plant is operating.

Though the plant is outside her district, Smith noted many workers live in Sioux City and may have inadvertently contributed to the virus' spread in Woodbury County, which has also experienced a rapid increase in COVID-19 infections. As of Thursday, Iowa's fifth largest county had 1,426 positive tests and seven deaths.

Sioux City Mayor Bob Scott suggested Tyson may have felt compelled to reopen by President Donald Trump's executive order last week requiring meatpackers to keep operating under provisions of the Defense Production Act.

"I don't think they have a lot of options, I mean, the president ordered it, number one, and number two, hopefully they've learned quite a bit and they've got their plant cleaned up and probably have done some things to socially distance their employees," Scott said. "I'm sure they have."

As of April 30, at least 669 workers had tested positive for the virus, according to a source who spoke to the Journal on the condition of anonymity. Scott suggested workers may now be resistant to the virus, though scientific evidence of acquired COVID-19 immunity has, to date, been rather spotty in the absence of clear data.

"A lot of their people have, unfortunately, have been affected by this, and they say that if you have, you have more of a resistance to it," Scott said. "So I think that in and of itself will probably help a lot to stop the spread."

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The health of an older mother isnt worth compromising by taking the risk of physically interacting with her, not even on her special day. I suggested to my own mother a visit at her home, with me standing in her garage as she remains inside her house. She suggested a virtual meeting instead with my entire family using the Zoom video platform.
By Express News Service

GUWAHATI: The Assam government has directed the police not to allow the entry of anyone travelling from West Bengal into the state unless there is an emergency.

"I don't want to comment on the situation in West Bengal because that is not my jurisdiction. But we have advised the police department not to grant permissions to vehicles originating from West Bengal. The police will issue permission only on extreme humanitarian grounds, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

"We will be extra careful while allowing people to enter Assam from West Bengal. Of course some people, including patients, will be granted permission on extreme humanitarian grounds," he said.

ALSO READ | After doctor tests positive, 386 other doctors, health workers quarantined in Guwahati

Two people in Assam had tested positive for COVID-19 after their arrival from West Bengal.

The Minister appealed to the people from Assam, wherever they were, to help the government by not visiting the state.

"To save Odisha, Odisha government has appealed to its people not to come to the state. I appeal to the Assamese to stay wherever they are and help the state to come out of the situation. If you come, you have to follow the COVID-19 protocols. I appeal to you to study the situation and then, take a call, he added.
A proposed protected designation for a local temple could complicate a $9 million deal between a luxury student housing developer and the oldest Reform Jewish congregation in New York.

The Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board proposed in February that Temple Concord be labeled a protected site. The congregations leaders said the 109-year old sanctuary of the temple is worth saving, but the rest of the building is not historically significant. The decision on this historic designation will be up to city lawmakers at Mondays Common Council meeting.

Despite the fact that the congregation is in support of the buildings sale, community members and preservationist organizations are against losing parts of the historical temple to make room for the proposed 202-bedroom student apartment building in its place.

Temple Concord, built in 1911, was added to the National Registry for Historic Places in 2009. In the span of 70 years, three additional structures were built onto the original temple: a social hall and classroom in 1929, a school and administrative office in 1960 and the Benjamin M. Berinstein memorial chapel in 1997.

We dont think that the entire building is historic, said Ken Steiger, president of Temple Concords Board of Trustees. Its more hysterical what some are saying needs to be protected. Literally, the roof is falling in. Its absurd.

Temple Concord Rabbi Daniel Fellman said he did not understand why the Landmark Board decided to change the proposal to designate the entire building as a protected site. He said the board may not have a full grasp of the buildings components.

The entire synagogue community and the developer have agreed that the sanctuary is pristine and an important piece to preserve, said Fellman. The additions are not exactly historical nor worth preserving.

Preliminary drawing by Cube3 Architects and presented to the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board shows proposed 7- and 8-story student housing development at the Temple Concord site at 910 Madison St. in Syracuse. The developer is Landmark properties of Athens, Georgia.

Fellman said Landmark Properties has worked with the congregation to understand which pieces of the temple need to be preserved, and will allow them to gather in the sanctuary after the building is sold. Though the sale to Landmark Properties is still in the works, designating the entire building a protected site could complicate it, he said.

The main motivation to sell the temple is financial, said Steiger. The congregation has an annual budget of $1 million, which their revenues do not match. This has caused them to run on a deficit for the past 20 years and forced them to dig into their endowment, he said. This years deficit is around $400,000.

Steiger said the sale of the temple is a matter of life and death for the congregation. Without the sale, he said, they could run out of money in less than three years.

This is existential," said Steiger. Without the sale of this building, it will be very difficult to continue on in the way we are structured now. It would require drastic changes to how we function, the services we provide and the people that are involved. It would greatly change the character of Temple Concord.

Steiger attributes the congregations financial issues to decreasing religious participation. According to Gallup research, church, mosque and synagogue membership has dropped 17% in the past 20 years.

If the entire temple were to receive the designation, development proposals could still move forward, said Heather Lamendola, city zoning administrator. Since Temple Concord is a part of the National Registry for Historic Places, a local protection designation legally needs to be considered, she said. The temples designation determines which department the developers proposals go through.

Kate Auwaerter, city preservation planner, said the Landmark Preservation Board uses a set of four criteria looking at defining features and history of a property to decide if it gets a protected designation.

[A protected site] is of enough importance to the community that it should receive extra protection in terms of what happens to the property, Auwaerter said.

The Syracuse Common Council received a series of letters from community members and organizations in support of the entire temple getting a protected site designation in advance of last Mondays meeting.

Grant Johnson, president of the Preservation Association of Central New York, said in a letter that the temple serves as a visual, social, cultural and religious landmark for the community. The loss of any part of the building would be detrimental to the neighborhood and be an immense cultural loss, he said.

Johnson wrote that the building also qualifies for federal historic tax credit for 40% of qualifying expenses because the citys population is under 1 million and the poverty threshold is 30.5%.

The importance of this building to the streetscape and city cannot be understated. Johnson wrote.

The Board of Managers at Madison Court, an apartment building across the street from the temple, said the neighborhood surrounding Syracuse University has a character and significance that needs to be preserved. They said that other historic sites near SU to tax revenue for the area.

Their letter noted the historical significance of the building to the congregation. Temple Concord is home to the ninth oldest Jewish congregation in the country. Members of the congregation have included prominent figures such as Marshall Street namesake Louis Marshall, and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel has visited the historic temple.

The Board also worried about the effects of the proposed development project to replace the temple, including increased traffic and destruction of natural light to their building. The project would be at least the seventh major apartment complex in the area

We have seen history demolished too many times in the city of Syracuse, to the detriment of the overall fabric of the city and character of commercial and residential areas, the Board said. Worthwhile preservation will be our legacy.

The Common Council delayed the vote on the protected designation at last Mondays meeting. Councilor Khalid Bey said the general consensus of the council was to support what was best for the congregation and the developer. Auwaerter called this decision an appropriate middle road.

Bey said that restrictions on properties such as a protected designation can cause difficulties for developers.

We've been in situations where developers have been dissatisfied because their hands are tied to renovate is not as free as it normally is, Bey said. It oftentimes is more expensive.

The council currently is set to vote on the temples designation at their next meeting on Monday. Bey said it was rare for a developer and a seller to be on the same page in a case like this.

Despite the temple's history, Steiger said selling it is what is best for the longevity of the congregation.

This sale to us is paramount, Steiger said. Once the sale goes through, the developer is going to do what it wants, but the plan is to preserve the historic aspect of it. The part that puzzles us is why anyone who knows all of this thinks it shouldnt go through.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 22:28:37|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A Zambian banker acknowledged the huge role China is playing in Zambia's infrastructure construction, energy, tourism and agriculture sectors, which contributed to the socio-economic development of the east African country.

Helen Lubamba, acting managing director of Stanbic Bank Zambia, made the remarks at a Webinar on the COVID-19 impact on the Zambian and Chinese business sectors on Friday.

"China is a significant funding partner both for the government and private sectors," Lubamba said, "It is critical that we join hands and find ways to manage and climb this COVID-19 storm."

She called for continued partnerships between the two countries and advised them to engage in sustainable business activities that positively impacted the economy.

Lubamba applauded China for its contribution to Zambia's foreign exchange and business continuity plans as "the largest off-taker of copper, our main product and other commodities."

She said while China has invested significantly in Africa and is one of the continent's major trading partners, there was still room for more considering existing trade and investment opportunities in Africa.

"In Zambia, we are encouraging more diversification, value addition and job creation related to investments from China," she said.

Zambia is currently on partial lockdown with economic and social activities significantly being slowed down. Enditem.
A view of Highway 1, the Ma'aleh Adumim-Jerusalem road, from the West Bank area known as E1, with Jerusalem's Mount Scopus seen on the horizon, Dec. 10, 2019.

(JNS)-A U.S. Staate Department spokesperson said on Monday that the United States remains ready to recognize Israel's annexation of territory in the West Bank, but expects Israel to continue negotiations with the Palestinians.

"As we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognize Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the vision [U.S. President Donald Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" Mideast plan] foresees as being part of the State of Israel," the AFP quoted the spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson added however that this support would be "in the context of the government of Israel agreeing to negotiate with the Palestinians along the lines set forth in President Trump's vision."

According to the terms of the unity agreement reached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main rival, Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party, the issue of extending Israeli sovereignty can be brought to the Knesset for a vote on July 1 at the earliest.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that it was up to Israel whether or not to annex territory in Judea and Samaria, and the Jordan Valley, and that discussions on the issue are taking place through private channels with the Israeli government.

The Palestinians have refused to negotiate with the Trump administration.

The Arab League will convene an urgent virtual meeting this week to discuss Israel's annexation plans, according to the AFP.
The TestDirectly platform ticks every box. Having a system that is fully integrated with our laboratory information system from patients self-registering, scheduling, testing, and reporting, makes the direct-to-consumer market a breeze.

Safe reopening calls for testing enough people to determine which cities and states can safely recommence their activities and stay that way. Performing enough tests is one of the essential steps before a state or a business can reopen. Another requirement is that test results be returned more quickly so that those who test positive for COVID-19 can be isolated and the community spread of the virus can be stopped. According to industry experts, the longer these tests sit without a diagnosis, the less likely they are to be accurate. That could lead to tens of thousands of people believing they've tested negative only to be asymptomatic carriers. Analysis by the Rockefeller Foundation concluded that the U.S. should test 3 million people a week, close to the estimate of 3.2 million tests proposed by Harvard researchers and STAT.

"It's a needle in a haystack problem. You have to do a continuous screening of people  there's no way around it. This is the new norm," said LigoLabs CEO Suren Avunjan, who recently launched the TestDirectly platform, a new direct-to-consumer portal that can help solve the problem of additional testing, safe and easy collection, tracking of specimens, and the quick return of results. The software can integrate with laboratories and distribute workload and capacity based on availability and guarantee quick turnaround times as well as increase the capacity of the network to cover up to 25 percent of the nations testing needs.

As of today, our network of labs has reached daily capacity of 35,000 COVID-19 tests. We are actively increasing the total capacity by introducing new labs to the network, setting up more instruments, and leveraging pooling methodology. We are targeting a daily capacity of 250,000 tests within the next 60 days, Avunjian added.

TestDirectly facilitates safe and easy sample collecting and processing. The platform covers the entire lifecycle for drive-through processing of COVID-19 testing, increasing accessibility, and it eliminates risks of exposure for patients and healthcare providers.

The TestDirectly platform supports nationwide laboratory coverage creating a network to help load balance and increase testing capacity in an effort to assist the publics safe return to normal activities. The platform provides full visibility into the network of participating laboratories and distributes specimens to labs based on priority and available capacity for quick turnaround time.

Additionally, TestDirectly eliminates paperwork and manual processes and enables patients to self-register, select a local collection facility, and book an appointment, all from the comfort of their computer or mobile device. Tests can be done in local drive-throughs using a blood test (antibody) or swab test (PCR). The platform ensures safety by producing a QR code thats used at the time of collection and provides prompt notification of results as soon as the laboratory finalizes the report.

Orders received online are distributed among partner laboratories depending on their current workload. Dozens of labs are already using the software. In one case, Northwest Pathology Group entered into a high-volume partnership with state authorities in Florida and Illinois to deliver the necessary testing the two states require. The daily workload of over 18,0000 specimens from just these two accounts is split amongst the network of laboratories to meet the service-level agreement.

The TestDirectly platform ticks every box. Having a system that is fully integrated with our laboratory information system from patients self-registering, scheduling, testing, and reporting, makes the direct-to-consumer market a breeze. We have been able to scale our capacity to 10,000+ COVID-19 tests per day. Ease of use and safety for both patient and lab makes this system a must-have, said Jennifer Bull, Northwest Pathology Groups Director of Operations.

The service is available via referrals from local general practitioners or corporations wanting to test their workforce prior to allowing them back into their office spaces, and the platform allows organizations to select a testing protocol in order to continually maintain a safe working environment.

There are plans for the TestDirectly software to be used for purposes other than COVID-19 and antibody testing in the near future, and development for new testing tracks is already underway. TestDirectly was founded by LigoLab, a Los Angeles-based provider of a laboratory operating platform that works in 100+ facilities nationwide and has to date been interfaced with 453 laboratory analytical instrument types.

LigoLab waived its instrument interface fees for client labs and has decided to waive licensing fees for implementation, hosting, and licensing of its laboratory operating platform for new laboratories that want to partner up with the company to further increase testing capacity for COVID-19. The offer to help is good through the end of June 2020. Software integration with a new lab takes anywhere from a couple of days to a week.

LigoLab Information System is a leading provider of innovative end-to-end healthcare software for laboratories, servicing 100+ facilities nationwide. As a comprehensive enterprise-grade solution, the LigoLab LIS & RCM Laboratory Operating Platform goes beyond the core workflow and provides all the supporting modules a laboratory needs to grow with maximum efficiency. LigoLab's mission is to help laboratories reduce errors, and to scale their operations and revenues.

PR-contact:

michaelk@ligolab.com

Michael Kalinowski (310-227-7503)

PR & Communications at LigoLab and TestDirectly
WHILE several companies have been forced to allow their employees to work from home (WFH) amid the Covid-19 crisis, such setup may not work well in the Philippines. Blame it on poor connectivity.

WFH is not sustainable in the Philippines for many reasons, property analyst David Leechiu said, citing the poor telecommunications connectivity as a top problem.

Reliable internet connection is the lifeblood of a WFH setup.

Demand for data has surged in recent weeks as most people stay home amid strict quarantine measures to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Based on Speedtest Global Index, the Philippines ranked 116th in the world for mobile speed and 104th for fixed-line internet during March 2020.

Average mobile and fixed broadband speeds in the Philippines still fall below the global average.

In March 2020, the countrys average mobile internet download speed of 14.24 megabits per second (Mbps) was far below the global average of 26.12 Mbps.

Average download speed of 23.80 Mbps for fixed line internet was also slower than the global average of 57.91 Mbps.

The Philippines is aiming to boost internet access quality with the introduction of a third major telco player, which can challenge the duopoly of PLDT and Globe.

Other factors

Aside from connectivity, distractions at home and lack of convenience also make remote work even more challenging.

It is simply too hot (to work from home) because 70 percent of households do not have roof insulation nor air-conditioning nor access to clean water, the Leechiu Property Consultants founder said.

He also suggested the potential rise of corporate fraud in a WFH system.

Corporate fraud will accelerate significantly because in WFH, there is very little supervision and therefore there is more risk for fraud and corruption across all levels, he said.

Looking forward, Leechiu said that once companies start going back to their normal operations, demand for office space could significantly pick up.

For some companies, the social distancing has required more office space. For instance, companies with a thousand people usually occupy 6,000 square meters of office space. Once lockdown measures are lifted, many companies will observe social distancing at the workplace.

(This) will require them to need 9,000 to 12,000 square meters temporarily, while social distancing is necessary. So, this will create more demand, Leechiu said.
Two people died in capital Tehran while 22 others are injured, according to state media.

Two people have died and 22 others were injured as they fled their homes in a panic following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that hit northern Iran early on Friday (20:18 GMT on Thursday), according to state media.

Among the dead were a 21-year-old woman in Tehran who suffered heart failure, and a 60-year-old man in the city of Damavand, east of the capital, killed by a head injury, officials said.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the epicentre of the earthquake was at Damavand, just northeast of the capital, at the depth of 10km (6.2 miles).

One resident in the Iranian capital told Al Jazeera that the shaking of the ground felt very strong.

Images posted on social media showed people huddled in the streets of Tehran in the middle of the night, as they tried to escape from the quake.

People are coming out into the streets after a 5.1 richter earthquake just hit near Tehran. Aftershocks are possible. An official in #Irans National Crisis Org has told people to maintain social distancing as they get out of their homes. pic.twitter.com/5E0oYc9MfJ  Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) May 7, 2020

There were several mild aftershocks, but no serious damage from the quake that struck after midnight on the border of the provinces of Tehran and Mazandaran, authorities said.

Boulders were also seen blocking the roadway leading to the mountainous Damavand area.

Many people in Tehran have left their homes out of fear of possible aftershocks.

Officials urged people who spent the night outdoors to observe social distancing to limit spread of the coronavirus that has killed nearly 6,500 and infected more than 103,000 in Iran.

They assured the public there was no shortage of petrol as people rushed to gas stations to fill up after the quake.

Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, where earthquakes occur often and are destructive.
More than 70 tonnes of medical and personal protective equipment flown in a month ago from Wuhan in China - the original epicentre of COVID-19 - has yet to clear Australian customs.

The Age has confirmed that the April 8 flight from Wuhan to Sydney was not a government-to-government arrangement, but privately arranged by a consortium of Chinese-Australian businessmen, including a meat trader connected with Cedar Meats, the Victorian abattoir at the centre of the state's largest COVID-19 outbreak.

A cargo plane carrying more than 70 tonnes of personal protective equipment and ventilators arrives in Sydney on April 8. Credit:AAP

Australian Border Force confirmed on Friday that it was still investigating the cargo of a charter flight from Shanghai-based Suparna Airlines and whether it complied with the requirements of the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The Victorian government confirmed eight more cases of COVID-19 connected to the Cedar Meats abattoir on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 71.
Rivers state Governor Nyesom Wike has warned residents of Port Harcourt and Obio/akpor LGA against defying the lockdown order his government imposed in these LGAs in a bid to curtail the spread of Coronavirus.

The Governor specifically warned against flouting government directives on lock down order.

In a statement released by Paul Nsirim, the state Commissioner for Information and Communications on Thursday May 7, residents of the mentioned local governments were told that vehicles seized during the lockdown period will be auctioned.

The statement reads;
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The State government has been trying to land investments from across the globe in the post-Covid era. In a sincere attempt in this direction, IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao held a video conference with the members of the European Business Group (EBG) on Thursday and advised them not to look elsewhere as there could be no better investment destination than Telangana.

Several ambassadors and senior representatives of industries in the country participated in the video conference in which he requested them to study the pro-industry climate in Telangana. He pointed out that the State was the best bet for them in a scenario that would see dramatic changes in the post-Covid age.

Rama Rao pointed out that Telangana has set international standards with its industrial policy -TS-iPASS - and has a good ranking for its Ease of Doing Business (EoDB). He also said he would meet the industry and trade organisations soon to explore the possibilities of investments in Telangana. He sought the help of ambassadors in his endeavour.

Telangana has necessary the action plan for those who want to invest in India. Though there is diverse opinion about Indias EoDB ranking, the State has set international standards for attracting investments. Telangana is the real investment destination and it is given the EoDB ranking separately, Rama Rao averred.

The State government was not only taking steps to attract investments, but taking suitable measures for smooth conduct of business by various industrial houses by launching an innovation ecosystem which comprises T-Hub, V-Hub and T-Works.

Invest in TS, KTR tells companies

Even in the Covid era, there was a lot of scope for investments, he said, pointing out that the governments and industries should review their priorities in the post- Covid era. When several companies were rethinking on shifting their investments, India could land a major chunk of it, Rama Rao said, The Telangana government will make every attempt to grab this opportunity and attract investments from various other countries, he added.

The Minister explained to the ambassadors that Telangana was at present on top position in pharma, life sciences, IT, defence and aerospace, textiles and other sectors. He requested the industrialists and ambassadors to consider investing in Telangana in these sectors.
She's become one of Australia's most successful reality stars since shooting to fame on Richie Strahan's season of The Bachelor back in 2016.

But longtime fans of Keira Maguire may have trouble recognising her these days following years of cosmetic enhancements that the 33-year-old has undergone.

In a number of recent Instagram posts, the social media influencer looks like a completely different person compared to her former self.

Who's that girl? Keira Maguire looks completely different in recent social media posts (right) compared to her days on The Bachelor back in 2016 (left)

Keira has spent over $35,000 on transforming her appearance over the years, from injectables like Botox to getting breast implants and porcelain veneers.

The Bachelor villain previously told NW magazine that she 'always wanted to be perfect'.

She wanted to get plastic surgery for more than 10 years, but was motivated to finally go under the knife after watching herself on TV.

'The first night I watched [The Bachelor] I was sitting there like, "Ew, this is f****d." My nose is just so bad on camera,' she told the publication in December.

Transformed: In a number of recent Instagram posts, the 33-year-old social media influencer looks like a completely different person compared to her former self

That's different! Longtime fans of the star may have trouble recognising her these days following years of cosmetic enhancements that she's undergone

This led to the single socialite going under the knife for a nose job in 2017.

The following year, Keira got a boob job, taking her A cup breasts up to a more sizable C cup.

'I think, although people can look at me like [I'm superficial], these changes make me happy and they make me feel like me,' she told NW magazine after her surgery.

'The first night I watched the show I was sitting there like, "Ew, this is f****d." My nose is just so bad on camera': Keira was motivated to go under the knife after watching herself on The Bachelor in 2016. (Pictured)

'It's not all about looks, but if you can enhance something or improve something, I'm all about it.'

That year, the reality star also got a shiny set of porcelain veneers from celebrity dentist Dr Dee.

She's also had laser skin treatments, vampire facials, botox, lip fillers and eyebrow tattoos.

Before and after! In 2018, she got lip fillers before filming the first season of Bachelor In Paradise, but she ended up regretting the trout part and getting the fillers dissolved after filming.

Mortified: She told news.com.au at the time that she 'mortified' by the 'horrendous' results of her lip fillers and still gets upset whenever she sees photos of herself on the show (pictured)

While Keira is happy with most of her enhancements, she does have one surgery regret.

In 2018, she got lip fillers before filming the first season of Bachelor In Paradise, but she ended up regretting the trout part and getting the fillers dissolved after filming.

She told news.com.au at the time that she 'mortified' by the 'horrendous' results and still gets upset whenever she sees photos of herself on the show.
The embassies of Russia and Ukraine in Vietnam have signed memoranda of agreement on Wednesday with Vietnam's biggest listed firm Vingroup for the future transfer of 2,400 invasive ventilators manufactured by the firm.

Two models of ventilators produced by Vingroup  the VFS-410 and the VFS-510  will be donated to the countries.

Russia will receive 1,000 VFS-410 ventilators and 500 VFS-510 ventilators, while Ukraine will get 600 VFS-410 ventilators and 300 VFS-510 ventilators, according to the consensus.

Delivery will be made between May 15 and August 30.

The two made-in-Vietnam ventilator models are manufactured completely within the Vingroup ecosystem, boasting a localization rate of up to 70 percent.

The VFS-410 and VFS-510 have been assessed by quality management and health bodies in Vietnam to ensure strict compliance with relevant standards for use in Vietnam.

The two models of ventilators are expected to not only meet the current domestic demand for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment equipment but also prove useful for local intensive care units in the future with long-term value and efficacy, said Nguyen Nhat Quang, vice-chairman and CEO of Vingroup.

Quang revealed that the company is working to accelerate the delivery and support Russia and Ukraine in conducting quality control procedures to adhere to the respective countries' criteria.

The firm looks forward to the shipment of the products after requisite certificates of quality are obtained.

This shows Vingroup's gratitude to the two countries for their close connection with the startup phase of the group as well as their strong bonds with Vietnam and its people, Quang said.

Vingroup was founded in Ukraine in 1993 as a dried foods producer by Pham Nhat Vuong, who is currently the group's chairman.

The company started operations in Vietnam in the early 2000s and sold its Ukraine business to Nestle in 2009, according to the Vietnam Investment Review, a news site run by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The group said last month it would start producing ventilators for the Southeast Asian country's fight against the new coronavirus and would be able to produce up to 55,000 units a month at its existing automobile and smartphone factories.

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Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Berlin, Germany  Fri, May 8, 2020 16:57 621 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d0de2 2 World Germany,spy-agency,coronavirus,Wuhan-coronavirus,wuhan,COVID-19,Origins,pandemic,health Free

A German intelligence report casts doubts on US allegations that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory and says the accusations are an attempt to divert attention from US failure to rein in the disease, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was "a significant amount of evidence" that the coronavirus had emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute US intelligence agencies' conclusion that it was not man-made.

Spiegel said Germany's BND spy agency had asked members of the US-led "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance for evidence to support the accusation. None of the alliance's members, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, wanted to support Pompeo's claim, it said.

An intelligence report prepared for German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer concluded that the US accusations were a deliberate attempt to divert public attention away from President Donald Trump's "own failures".

A German government spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Trump has said he has evidence the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab, but he has declined to elaborate.

US deaths from the coronavirus exceeded 75,000 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with mixed messages from the White House and state governments on how to slow the rate of infection.

Deaths in the United States, the epicenter of the pandemic, have averaged 2,000 a day since mid-April.
The Mexican government said Wednesday that at least 108 Mexicans have died of complications related to COVID-19 in the United States, more than half of those in New York.

The actual number could be higher, because Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the figures only include deaths reported to its consulates.

Some 11 million Mexicans live in the United States, about 4.5 million without legal status.

The statement said 86 Mexicans had died in New York. The next highest figure was seven in Illinois. It also said it had seen an increase in reported infections of Mexicans in the U.S., but did not provide data.
Ex-Wikimart CEO Klenin gets suspended prison term in $1.8 embezzlement case

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

12:31 08/05/2020

MOSCOW, May 8 (RAPSI)  The Golovinsky District Court in Moscow has passed a 3-year suspended prison sentence on ex-CEO of Russian online trading platform Wikimart Andrey Klenin in a criminal case over embezzlement of 124 million rubles (about $1.8 million) owned by iMoneyBank, the courts press-service informs RAPSI on Friday.

The suspended prison sentence is to be followed by a 2-year probation term, the press-service adds.

Klenin has been found guilty of aiding and abetting a serious embezzlement.

According to mass media reports, in 2016 Klenin instructed his subordinates to seek a 124 million-ruble loan in iMoneyBank. Investigators believe the banks ex-chairman of the board Igor Volchikhin knew Wikimart would not be able to return the borrowed sum; nevertheless, he approved the deal and later embezzled the money.

In 2017, the Moscow Commercial Court ruled iMoneyBank bankrupt as demanded by Russias Central Bank.

Wikimart is a Russian online trading center established in 2008; it served as a platform for goods of such large retailers as Detskiy Mir, Lamoda, Citylink, Eldorado. The center ceased its operations in 2016.
Technavio has been monitoring the packaged coconut water market and it is poised to grow by USD 3.88 billion during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 16% 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/20200507006173/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Packaged Coconut Water Market 2020-2024 (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. All Market Inc., Amy Brian Naturals, C2O Pure Coconut Water LLC, Chi, GraceKennedy Ltd., National Beverage Corp., PepsiCo Inc., Purity Organic LLC, Taste Nirvana International Inc., and The Coca Cola Company are some of the major market participants. The expansion of organized retailing 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.

The expansion of organized retailing has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Packaged Coconut Water Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Packaged Coconut Water Market is segmented as below:

Product Packaged Flavored Coconut Water Packaged Plain Coconut Water

Geography North America Europe APAC South America MEA



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=IRTNTR43456

Packaged Coconut Water Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our packaged coconut water market report covers the following areas:

Packaged Coconut Water Market Size

Packaged Coconut Water Market Trends

Packaged Coconut Water Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies increasing awareness about the health benefits of coconut water as one of the prime reasons driving the packaged coconut water market growth during the next few years.

Packaged Coconut Water Market 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the packaged coconut water market, including some of the vendors such as All Market Inc., Amy Brian Naturals, C2O Pure Coconut Water LLC, Chi, GraceKennedy Ltd., National Beverage Corp., PepsiCo Inc., Purity Organic LLC, Taste Nirvana International Inc., and The Coca Cola Company. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the packaged coconut water market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Packaged Coconut Water Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist packaged coconut water market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the packaged coconut water market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the packaged coconut water market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of packaged coconut water market vendors

Table Of Contents:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by Product

Market segments

Comparison by Product

Packaged flavored coconut water Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Packaged plain coconut water Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by Product

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

North America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024

APAC Market size and forecast 2019-2024

South America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

MEA Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market Drivers, Challenges and Trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

All Market Inc.

Amy Brian Naturals

C2O Pure Coconut Water LLC

Chi

GraceKennedy Ltd.

National Beverage Corp.

PepsiCo Inc.

Purity Organic LLC

Taste Nirvana International Inc.

The Coca Cola Company

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

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/20200507006173/en/

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As a candidate for president in 2016, Donald Trump said he wanted to put a stop to our nation's "endless wars."

It's a notion that can resonate with Democrats and Republicans alike, given all that's happened, or hasn't happened, since our invasion of Afghanistan late in 2001 and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Neither turned out to be a resounding success. Not to put too fine a point on it.

There's always been a surefire path to end any war: surrender. Trouble is, then the other side wins. And bad as that can be in a shooting war, it's another story entirely when the enemy is an invisible microbe.

Who could have guessed that as president, Trump would be looking to stop our war on a global pandemic -- by surrendering.

Trump, by urging various states to reopen their economies before they are ready when doing so will likely put many more people at great risk, is effectively saying that the war on COVID-19 is over and done, even though the disease is still raging. Does he actually think that the citizens are so naive, so gullible, that they'll believe that COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has been vanquished if he says it has? Such nonsense may have worked for The Donald when he was playing loose with the facts in the real estate business in New York City, but it isn't going to snow the citizenry when it comes to today's pandemic.

On Tuesday, Trump had intimated that hed soon be winding down the coronavirus task force. Just a day later, he announced that a repurposed task force would remain in place indefinitely. Guess he saw the polling on his thoughts about getting rid of the group.

But now -- it's an election year, don't you know -- the task force won't be charged with controlling the coronavirus, but will instead, wait for it, work on getting the economy roaring as businesses open again.

Its been the governors, including Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, whove led the way on protecting the citizenry. And it will be the governors who will lead on the next phase. The governors have the peoples trust, and know their own states. Meanwhile, Trump is flailing about and prematurely declaring victory in a war on a virus that isnt moved by his tweets.
Deadpool 2 has been fined almost $300,000 by a health and safety watchdog over the on-set death of stuntwoman Joi Harris in August 2017.

Harris, 32, was killed when she was thrown from the motorcycle she was riding through a plate-glass window while filming a stand-in scene for actress Zazie Beetz on location in Vancouver, Canada.

WorkSafeBC, the Canadian equivalent of OSHA, imposed the fine on TCF Vancouver Productions LTD for failing to provide a safe workplace for Harris, Deadline.com reported on Thursday.

Tragedy: Deadpool 2 has been fined almost $300,000 by a health and safety watchdog over the on-set death of stuntwoman Joi Harris in Vancouver, Canada, in August 2017

An investigation by WorkSafeBC previously found that Harris's death was the result of a freak accident after the experienced motorbiker continued traveling beyond a planned stopping point on the set, striking a concrete curb and being thrown through the window of a building.

She had not been wearing a safety helmet as Beetz's character Domino was not wearing one in the scene. She died on impact and production was immediately halted.

WorkSafeBC, however, found five violations of the Workers Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation by the production company including instructing Harris not to wear a helmet.

Stunt gone wrong: Harris, 32, was thrown through a plate-glass window when the motorcycle she was riding struck a concrete curb while filming on location. She was killed on impact

Harris had been standing in for actress Zazie Beetz (pictured) and was not wearing a safety helmet, one of five workplace violations found to have contributed to the 'freak accident'

In a statement, the agency said: 'The primary purpose of an administrative penalty is to motivate the employer receiving the penalty  and other employers  to comply with occupational health and safety requirements and to keep their workplaces safe.'

Before joining the Deadpool 2 crew, Harris was the first African-American woman licensed to actively compete in American Motorcyclist Association races.

Deadpool 2 starred Ryan Reynolds as the Marvel Comics character and was released in movie theaters in May 2018.
EAGLE BUTTE -- Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chair Harold Frazier answered a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs challenge to the tribes Covid-19 highway checkpoints with an April 30 challenge of his own.

In a missive to Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Darryl LaCounte, Frazier penned the latest chapter in a month-long spat that the checkpoints sparked between the two over the BIAs federal trust responsibility to native nations and its intromission in sovereign tribal decisions.

It all started in early April when the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST) set up traffic checkpoints on U.S. Highway 212, on the east and west borders of the reservation, in an attempt to help prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus in tribal jurisdiction.

"Thank you for taking a sudden interest in the roads on the Cheyenne River Reservation": Days after Chairman Harold Frazier led tribes in seeking resignation of @ASIndianAffairs Tara Sweeney, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began asking questions about #Coronavirus checkpoints. pic.twitter.com/LWbdeNavix  indianz.com (@indianz) April 30, 2020

Several weeks later, LaCounte issued a letter to Frazier, warning that the tribe cannot legally close or restrict travel on U.S. 212 without first consulting with the state

The federal appointed official wrote that if South Dakota had not agreed to the checkpoints, CRST may be in violation of U.S. law and that failure to immediately reopen the highway for motorists may have serious consequences. He did not explain what those consequences would be.

In a strongly worded response letter, Frazier immediately told LaCounte that he was making erroneous assumptions based on a lack of correct information and that the tribe in fact hadnt closed any roads.

We are simply regulating travelers entry onto the reservation in an attempt to prevent, reduce, and track the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus here on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, wrote Frazier.

Many tribes feel the need to take more aggressive measures than states to protect tribal members and residents, as the novel coronavirus has disproportionately affected some Native American communities across the country. This may be especially true for the nine reservations in South Dakota, which is one of only five states that have not issued a shelter-in-place order.

Frazier told LaCounte the tribe has hundreds of roads that are in dismal condition on our reservation. They are not maintained properly by the BIA.... So why is the BIA suddenly concerned about a supposed state road that happens to run through our reservation? he chided.

The roads you should be concerned about are BIA routes on our reservation, not a supposed state highway.

Frazier also wrote that the BIAs claims that CRST had not consulted with South Dakota about the checkpoints was false.

The state has indeed been consulted. Gov. Kristi Noem and I have had text and voice conversations since the beginning of the Covid-19 public health crisis. Additionally, we sought -- and received -- assistance and input from the South Dakota Department of Transportation in setting up the checkpoints.

Contact Justine Anderson at justinekanderson@gmail.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today

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Sixteen migrant labourers were crushed to death early on Friday by a goods train in Maharashtra after they fell asleep on the tracks.

The accident happened between Jalna and Aurangabad in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.

The migrant labourers, who had been walking for several kilometres, were sleeping on the rail tracks when the mishap occurred, the railway officials said.

Watch: Over 15 migrant labourers crushed by goods train in Aurangabad

According to railway officials, the workers were walking towards their home state Madhya Pradesh after they lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Most public transportation has already been cancelled due to the lockdown.

These workers had started from Jalna to go to Bhusawal (both in Maharashtra) - a distance of 157 kilometres - and had planned to go to their native places Umariya and Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, which is about 850 kilometres away.

According to railways, they left Jalna at 7 pm on Thursday and initially walked on road and later onto the track towards Aurangabad. After walking for about 36 kilometres, these workers started feeling tired and sat on the track between Karnad and Badnapur railway stations for taking some rest. They gradually went into deep sleep.

It was at 5.22 am that the approaching goods train ran over these labourers, the railways ministry said in a statement. The driver tried to stop the train but couldnt do so in time, it added.

The injured have been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital, said Ch Rakesh, chief public relation officer (PRO), South Central Railway.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he is anguished by the loss of lives in the Maharashtra train accident.

Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided, PM Modi tweeted on Friday.

Condoling the deaths of the workers, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that he is shocked by the news.

I am shocked at the news of migrant labourers being crushed to death by a goods train. We should be ashamed at the treatment meted out to the builders of our nation. My condolences to the families of those killed and I pray for the early recovery of the injured, Gandhi tweeted in Hindi.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal too expressed grief and said relief work is underway and an inquiry has been ordered.

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Turkeys daily COVID-19 death toll drops to 57

Turkeys Health Minister Fahrettin Koca confirmed the latest COVID-19 figures in his daily update on Twitter on Thursday.

The daily death toll dropped to 57 as the total number of fatalities hits 3,641.

There were 1,977 new cases, taking the total number of cases to 133,721.

4,782 people have recovered from the virus over the past 24 hours.

The number of people in intensive care units also dropped again to 1,260 with 665 patients remaining intubated.

In the same period, over 30,395 additional tests were conducted.

Turkey has tested almost 1.5 million citizens for the virus, the minister added.

The minister said following a Coronavirus Science Board meeting on Wednesday, that Turkey has completed the first phase of its fight against the pandemic, adding that the country will adapt to a new normal.

The pandemic is under control but the realities of the virus have not changed. Your homes remain the safest place against the virus.





Sources:

https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/turkeys-daily-covid-19-death-toll-drops-to-57/news

https://covid19.saglik.gov.tr/

Mayor Karaca, There are 21 positive cases in Fethiye

In a press release yesterday, Fethiye Mayor Alim Karaca talked about the numbers of COVID-19 positive patients in the area and how Fethiye should continue the fight against the virus.

In his statement, the Mayor confirmed there has been a total of 21 positive cases in Fethiye and a total of 247 positive cases across Mugla.

He went on to say, The number of cases is stabilizing and if we continue to take precautions and follow the hygiene rules, we could see an end to the 21 positive cases in one month and save our district from this virus.

So far, we have distributed 140 thousand masks to our citizens. We will distribute 70 thousand masks in the coming days

Speaking about the lifting of the travel restrictions and weekend curfews, the mayor said:

I believe that the curfew should continue for another month and we wanted the city entrances to be blocked until the end of the May holiday. Entries from metropolitan areas to our district are risky and our citizens should be very careful.

We want the curfew to be implemented again by our government after this week.

Mayor Karaca touched on tourism saying,Our tourism stakeholders and business owners are in a difficult situation. We reassured our citizens at the recent Extraordinary Assembly Meeting. We postponed solid waste, rents, and occupation fees. We made a promise that we will support our people and craftsmen and we will continue to support them.

All inspections currently in place will continue

Source: https://gercekfethiye.com/baskan-karaca-fethiyede-21-pozitif-vaka-var/27219/?fbclid=IwAR0_gFoDcFzq-4JRtYVNknXa6TJ4Zg_Z-jrXVlWphVR7TwtUD3JwNRUErBs

Barbers and hairdressers happy to be back in business after 50-days

Barbershops and hairdressers across Turkey will reopen next week after a 50-day hiatus as part of the countrys measures to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The Interior Ministry issued guidelines ahead of the expected opening of barbershops and beauty salons from May 11.

The shops will operate on an appointment only basis, customers will have to sit apart from each other, and both clients and stylists will be required to wear masks.

Barbers will be allowed to cut hair but shaving at the barbershop is banned until the outbreak ends.

Only half the number of seats at the shop will be occupied at a time.

Requests have been sent to municipalities regarding disinfection of all barbershops and hairdressers before the reopening.

Seats will be disinfected after catering to a customer and equipment will be sterilized. Instead of cloth towels, he said, they will use anti-bacterial wipes.

Barbers are expected not to raise prices.

10 teams from Fethiye Municipality are currently disinfecting registered barbers and hairdressers to enable them to start serving from Monday.

Sources:

https://www.dailysabah.com/business/turkish-barbers-happy-to-be-back-in-business-after-50-day-hiatus/news

https://gercekfethiye.com/fethiyede-berber-ve-kuaforler-dezenfekte-edildi/27228/

UK confirms PPE sent by Turkish officials meets standards

A UK government statement confirmed earlier comments on Thursday by Turkish officials that PPE sent by Ankara had met all safety expectations.

Some media reports claimed that a large sum of gowns purchased by a private company were labelled as not meeting British standards.

A UK government statement confirmed earlier comments on Thursday by Turkish officials that PPE sent by Ankara had met all safety expectations.

The statement said that since a private company was unable to fill the order for medical supplies, the Turkish government stepped in and provided 68,000 PPE.

All of the PPE provided by the Turkish authorities had passed the quality tests, the statement added.

UKs ambassador to Turkey, Dominick Chilcott, in a tweet also said the claims circulating on British media on Turkey provided PPE being unusable are untrue and the equipment are suitable for use in the NHS.

READ: UK confirms PPE sent by Turkish officials meets standards

Fethiyes Tribute to VE Day

Today, people across the UK have marked the 75th anniversary of VE day amid the coronavirus pandemic.

READ: VE Day celebrations: The UK marks 75th anniversary

Many of you may remember the Remembrance Day service that took place outside the Municipality office in Hisaronu.

The service was arranged and led by local resident Tony Benham with daughter Mia who translated the service into Turkish.

READ: A day of remembrance for Fethiye

Here in Fethiye, Mia recorded her own tribute to VE day.

Global statistics

There are now 3,950,798 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, of which 1,359,728 have recovered. The number of fatalities stands at 271,809.

Source: Worldometer.

Follow Fethiye Times on social media for regular updates.

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Todays featured image: Looking across the bay towards Fethiye by Lyn Ward
Press freedom advocates say Chinas censorship of a letter co-authored by 27 European Union ambassadors that contained a reference to the origins of the coronavirus is another example of how the lack of press freedom in the country has caused problems for the world.



A sentence in the EU letter, which referred to China as the point of origin of the outbreak, was deleted when it was published in the Wednesday edition of the English language newspaper China Daily to mark the 45th anniversary of the groupings diplomatic ties with China.



The full version, which appeared on the websites of EU embassies to China, said the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months, has meant that our pre-existing plans have been side-tracked.



But the edited version published in state media omitted the words, in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months.



Chinas censorship



The European Union Thursday expressed regret but seemed to accept the edit.



China has state-controlled media. There is censorship, that's a fact, EU foreign affairs spokesperson Virginie Battu-Henriksson said in Brussels. But she said agreeing to the letters censored publication meant the bloc could engage the Chinese on other key EU issues, including climate change, human rights and the pandemic response.



Cedric Alviani, head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) East Asia bureau, said the incident showed that China repeatedly takes advantage of the media systems in western democracies to control narratives in its favor, while using its state media to mislead the world.



We call on the democracies to resist and never ever to compare the Chinese propaganda media with independent media that respect journalism ethics, Alviani told VOA.



Alviani was referring to comparisons made by the U.S. State Departments Bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs.



No comparisons



The bureau Thursday tweeted that last night, @washingtonpost [The Washington Post] carried Amb Cuis [Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai] Op-Ed because thats what freedom of the press looks like. Also last night, [U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser] Matt Pottingers speech on Weibo [Chinas equivalent to Twitter] disappeared within 5 minutes because thats what censorship looks like.



In his Washington Post op-ed, Cui called for an end to the "blame game" over the pandemic, saying allegations blaming China for the outbreak's spread risked "decoupling" the world's two largest economies.



He said, "it's time to focus on the disease and rebuild trust between our two countries... and restart the global economy."



In his Monday speech, Pottinger praised whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang and several citizen journalists, calling them the true torch carriers of the spirit of the May 4 Movement, which ushered in a modern China a century ago.



Alviani said Chinese media, which works as the party states mouthpiece and never hesitates to exercise censorship, are no comparison to free and independent press in the West.



He also cautioned readers against Cuis opinions in The Washington Post, which he believed are in no way fair, reliable and fact-based. Instead, he described the opinion as propaganda from a regime that constantly violates the press freedom.

Chinas double standards



Michael Chugani, a columnist in Hong Kong, said the EU letter, Pottingers speech and Cuis opinion in The Washington Post are some of the many examples of Chinese medias double standard.



Chugani, in his Thursday column in the Economic Journal, argued that China is the global king in abusing free market rules because it has, time and again, weaponized its economy to achieve political aims.



For example, China banned Norwegian salmon for years when Norway awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010, he said.



That abuse also applies to Chinas press freedom, he told VOA in a written reply.



The Chinese government has increasingly applied ruthless persecution of independent journalists.



Longest jail term



One recent example is Chen Jieren, a former state media journalist-turned anti-corruption blogger who was sentenced to 15 years in prison last Thursday  the longest sentence ever handed down to a journalist under the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping.



Reporters Without Borders has called for Chens release, denouncing his sentence as "a throwback to the practice of the Maoist and is clearly designed to set an example and ensure that no Chinese journalist dares to question the regime again."



Chen, who was convicted of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, extortion and blackmail, illegal business activity, and bribes, was given a fine of $990,000 after a court in Hunan province concluded that he had taken more than that amount in bribes.



The court said Chen has used the information network to publish false and negative information attack and vilify the party and the government.



Chinese Human Rights Defenders also urged Chens release, saying in a statement that his punishment sends a chilling signal to his peers.



Journalist or fraud?



But Li Datong, a former colleague of Chens at China Youth Daily, called the anti-corruption blogger a fraud.

Hes not a legitimate journalist. Hes basically a hooligan. Its inappropriate to portray him as the embodiment of justice because much of what he had done was profit driven. He has a questionable integrity, Li said.



Li, however, agreed that theres little room for Chinese independent journalists to freely report as the authorities have tightened controls on the press and speech freedom.



Admitting that its hard to judge if accusations against Chen are legitimate, RSFs Alviani remained convinced that his sentence is too harsh.

What is sure is that Chen Jieren had denounced the corruption of some members of the [Communist] party. And for that, he shouldnt be punished with such a harsh sentence, he said.



I want to add that, in China, a prison sentence of such a length equals to a death sentence because of the very poor quality of the Chinese prisons, he added.



Chen was arrested after he disclosed alleged corruption by local party officials in Hunan in mid-2018.


BOSTON, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Simmons University today announced that it will unveil a fully online and reimagined undergraduate offering to complement its traditional on campus experience that will be ready for new and returning students on September 1, 2020.

The new program will accelerate Simmons' digital transformation strategy and mission to educate the next century of learners, while also enhancing access. Hundreds of courses from the existing Simmons catalog will be intentionally redesigned for online delivery with a blend of synchronous and asynchronous coursework, in partnership with global education technology leader 2U, Inc. These high-quality online courses will enable returning students to continue their studies in the event the campus is not fully open in the fall, while also providing non-traditional prospective students the chance to pursue a Simmons degree fully online.

As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to evolve in Boston and around the world, Simmons University will look to the state and city leadership and public health experts to determine when and how students can safely return to campus. No matter where students are this fall, Simmons will be ready to continue delivering the academic excellence they expect and deservewhether in-person or online.

"Institutions that can be nimble, innovative, and forward thinking in this difficult moment will be best positioned to thrive in the future, and we believe Simmons will emerge from the pandemic stronger as a result of the commitment and strategic direction we're taking today," Simmons University President Helen G. Drinan said. "We're confident - given the ingenuity, talent, and support of our faculty, and our long track record of successfully educating graduate students online over the past decade - that we can leverage this opportunity to better fulfill our mission and continue to deliver a world-class online education to the broader Simmons University community."

The new online program will ensure continuity and quality and complement Simmons' signature undergraduate experience focused on women's leadership and empowerment. Simmons remains committed to bringing students back to campus as quickly as possible this fall, while prioritizing the health and safety of students and the broader campus community.

"This is a path forward that will distinguish Simmons among its peer institutions and ensure its long-term sustainability. By investing in a world-class online undergraduate option, Simmons can expand access to a broader array of students and emerge from these uncertain times as a stronger and more competitive institution," said Simmons University Board of Trustees Chair Regina M. Pisa.

Returning undergraduate students and incoming first year students can expect the majority of their fall courses to be available in an engaging and dynamic digital format. The University is prioritizing continuity for all of its major courses of study to ensure that students can continue to access a high-quality experience with little disruption in their planned coursework in the fall should the campus not be fully open.

In addition to an intentionally designed online academic experience, students and faculty will have access to the same robust support services they have always received, as well as meaningful opportunities for relationship-building and personal growth. By leveraging 2U's technology platform to expand its undergraduate offerings online, Simmons will not only be able to attract a larger and more diverse student body, but make its high-quality education more accessible and affordable to those who otherwise would be unable to participate in Simmons' traditional on campus undergraduate experience.

"In this next chapter of our digital transformation, we will lead with the excellence that has defined our mission and institution for over a century. Crossing boundaries to create new opportunities is one of the university's core values, and we are committed to delivering 'Simmons quality' academic rigor in online education across our programs. With the strong foundation we've built with 2U already in place for online graduate education, we know our faculty will be equipped with the tools to develop high-quality online undergraduate curricula that drives significant student engagement and learning outcomes," said Simmons University President-elect Lynn Perry Wooten.

The launch of a comprehensive online undergraduate option is a natural evolution for the University, which has been a longtime leader in this space. Simmons has worked in close partnership with 2U for nearly a decade to develop and deliver high-quality online graduate degree programs across critical fields like nursing, social work, and public health, educating more than 3,000 students from the Greater Boston region and around the nation. Students pursuing Simmons' online graduate degrees have experienced the same transformative learning experiences and consistently excellent pedagogy in the online environment as their on-campus counterparts, allowing them to make a real and meaningful impact in their local communities.

"We know there is high demand for a Simmons education, particularly given its unique emphasis on the liberal arts, leadership, and professional preparation," added Drinan. "By expanding our platform and reach, we hope to offer the Simmons experience to prospective students and populations that are unable to participate in our traditional on campus experience."

More information on Simmons' online undergraduate experience is available within President Helen Drinan's open letter to the campus community and at Simmons.edu.

About Simmons University

Located in the heart of Boston, Simmons is a respected private university offering more than 50 majors and programs for undergraduate women and graduate programs open to all on campus, in blended formats, or entirely online in nursing and health sciences, liberal arts, business, communications, social work, public health, and library and information science. Founded in 1899, Simmons has established a model of higher education that other colleges and universities are only recently beginning to adapt: the combination of education for leadership in high-demand professional fields with the intellectual foundation of the liberal arts. The result is a Simmons graduate prepared not only to work, but to lead in professional, civic, and personal life  a vision of empowerment that Simmons calls preparation for life's work. Follow Simmons on Twitter at @SimmonsUniv , and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/school/simmons-university/ .

Media Contact

Laura Wareck, Director of Media Relations

[email protected] | c: 978-660-9587

SOURCE Simmons University

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Uber Technologies Inc laid off hundreds of office-based staff in Egypt on Wednesday as the ride-hailing firm made wider cuts amid the fallout from the new coronavirus, one current and two former employees said.

The former employees, both of whom lost their jobs on Wednesday, and one employee who retained her post, said they had been told that about 40% of staff in Uber's Egypt offices had been laid off.

That was out of a total headcount of 650-700, they said.

Follow latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic here

It came as Uber announced it would cut about 3,700 full-time jobs globally, affecting 17% of its employee count.

An Uber spokesman declined to share details of the layoffs in Egypt but said a total of 46 countries had been affected by the changes.

Egypt, with a swelling population of more than 100 million, is the biggest market in the Middle East for ride-hailing services and has been among Uber's top 10 markets globally.

The country has taken a series of measures to curtail the spread of the new coronavirus, including a night curfew and the closure of schools and mosques.

However, the government has stopped short of imposing a lockdown, and taxis have continued to operate during the day.
The UN on Friday accused the Islamic State group and others in Syria of exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to step up violence on civilians, describing the situation as a "ticking time-bomb".

United Nations rights chief Michelle Bachelet lamented a surge in violence in the country already ravaged by nearly a decade of conflict.

"We are receiving more reports every day of targeted killings and bombings from one end of the country to the other, with many such attacks taking place in populated areas," she said.

The rights chief highlighted that the surge in violence comes as the world is focused on halting the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed nearly 270,000 people worldwide.

"Various parties to the conflict in Syria... appear to view the global focus on the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to regroup and inflict violence on the population," she said, voicing particular concern at an uptick in attacks claimed by IS jihadists.

"The deteriorating situation is a ticking time-bomb that must not be ignored."

The UN rights office said it had documented at least 35 civilian deaths in April due to attacks involving improvised explosive devices (IED), compared to seven a month earlier.

Since the start of March, it said there had been 33 IED attacks, including 26 in residential neighbourhoods, while seven other attacks hit markets.

- 'Give peace a chance' -

The rights office said that nearly all of the registered IED attacks had occurred in northern and eastern parts of the country under the control of Turkish armed forces and their allies, or the opposing Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

It pointed in particular to a fuel-truck bomb that exploded on April 28 in a market in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, which it said killed 51 people, at least 29 of them civilians.

"Syria has been wracked by violence for nearly a decade resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and displacement of millions," Bachelet said, lamenting that "countless families have been traumatised, and numerous cities, towns, villages and individual homes have been destroyed."

"If the current patterns of violations and abuses continue to spread and escalate, there is a risk the country will enter another spiral of extreme and widespread violence committed with impunity by all parties to the conflict," she warned.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 380,000 people since 2011 and has forced more than half of the country's pre-war population from their homes.

Bachelet backed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's call for a global ceasefire amid the pandemic, and urged all sides in Syria's conflict to abide by the call.

"I urge all those continuing to fight, kill and displace the battered and beleaguered Syrian people to step back, and give peace a chance."

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FILE - In this Feb. 20, 2020, file photo, a member of the U.S. Air Force stands near a Patriot missile battery at the Prince Sultan air base in al-Kharj, central Saudi Arabia. The U.S. is pulling two Patriot missile batteries and some fighter aircraft out of Saudi Arabia, an American official said Thursday, May 7, amid tensions between the kingdom and the Trump administration over oil production. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. is pulling two Patriot missile batteries and some fighter aircraft out of Saudi Arabia, an American official said Thursday, amid tensions between the kingdom and the Trump administration over oil production.

The official said the decision removes two batteries that were guarding oil facilities in Saudi Arabia but leaves two Patriot batteries at Prince Sultan Air Base in the Saudi desert, along with other air defense systems and jet fighters.

The decision scales back the American presence in Saudi Arabia just months after the Pentagon began a military buildup there to counter threats from Iran. About 300 troops that staff the two batteries would also leave Saudi Arabia, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

The move comes as the U.S. has sent Patriot systems into Iraq to protect American and allied troops there, who came under an Iranian missile attack earlier this year. The Army has a limited number of the systems, and they routinely must be brought home for upgrades.

Two other Patriot batteries that are in the Middle East region are also heading home to the U.S., in a planned redeployment for maintenance and upgrades.

It's not clear, however, whether the ongoing oil dispute or the struggle to parcel out the much-coveted Patriot systems was the key factor in the U.S. decision to pull systems out of the kingdom.

Asked about the move Thursday, President Donald Trump said, Were making a lot of moves in the Middle East and elsewhere. We do a lot of things all over the world, militarily weve been taken advantage of all over the world."

He didn't provide details, but added, "This has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. This has to do with other countries, frankly, much more.

When Saudi Arabia ramped up oil production and slashed prices this year, Republicans accused the kingdom of exacerbating instability in the oil market, which was already suffering because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Story continues

The volatility and price crash in oil hurt U.S. shale producers, leading to layoffs in the industry, particularly in Republican-run states.

Some Republican senators warned in late March that if Saudi Arabia did not change course, it risked losing American defense support and facing a range of potential levers of statecraft such as tariffs and other trade restrictions, investigations and sanctions.

The U.S. official said a THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense system will also remain in Saudi Arabia. The THAAD complements the Patriots by providing a defense against ballistic missiles traveling outside Earths atmosphere.

The Saudi government and the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State-run media in the kingdom similarly did not immediately acknowledge the troop removal.

The Pentagon announced last year that it would begin deploying forces and Patriot batteries to Prince Sultan Air Base, a former U.S. military hub. The move was one of the more dramatic signs of Americas decision to beef up troops in the Middle East in response to threats from Iran.

When Gen. Frank McKenzie, top U.S. commander for the Middle East, visited the base earlier this year, the American troop presence had grown to roughly 2,500. At the time, McKenzie told reporters with him that the base was a key strategic location, but that continued presence of troops and weapons there would depend on other national security needs around the world.

Tensions with Iran escalated throughout last summer and fall, as the U.S. blamed Tehran for using mines to target oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz and for attacking Saudi oil facilities. Violence peaked when the U.S. carried out a drone strike in Iraq that killed Qassem Soleimani, Irans top general.

In response, Iran on Jan. 8 fired ballistic missiles at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 troops were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

At the time of the attack, the U.S. had no Patriot defenses at those bases because it judged other locations, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf, to be more likely Iranian targets. After the attack, the U.S. decided to move Patriots into Iraq to give troops more protection from missiles.

Tensions with Iran remain high. Its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was involved in a tense incident in the Persian Gulf last month. The Guard's small boats repeatedly came dangerously close to U.S. warships, crossing in front of them multiple times. And the Guard is believed to have briefly seized control of a Hong Kong-flagged oil tanker.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Its been six weeks since passengers from Mobile last ordered pitchers at the Carnival Fantasys RedFrog Rum Bar. This was supposed to be the heyday for Mobiles cruising business. Last fall, the city signed its longest deal with Carnival since the cruise line first returned to Alabama waters in 2016.

The port is well positioned to draw customers from around the Southeast but, now, it's unclear how long it will be before tourists flock to the city for their chance to eat one of Guy Fieri's cheeseburgers at sea.

Mobile taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $3.4 million in annual expenses if its downtown terminal remains empty while Carnival Cruise Line works itself out of a coronavirus-era funk.

According to city figures provided to AL.com, Mobiles annual debt payments on the cruise terminal are around $1.9 million. The city had been paying off the debt by utilizing revenues from wharfage and parking fees by having the 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy docked in downtown Mobile. The cruise ship, which last sailed out of Mobile in mid-March, left Alabama last month and is now part of a fleet of vessels returning crew members to their home countries.

The ship is currently docked in Miami and is scheduled to sail to Panama. There is no timetable for its return to Mobile.

Before the coronavirus, money was flowing into the citys coffers from Carnival Fantasys regular sailings to the Yucatan Peninsula. The city estimates that during the last fiscal year  which ended on Sept. 30, 2019 -- the terminal generated close to $6 million in gross revenues. Net incomes were $2.8 million, after $3.1 million of the revenues were used to pay off terminal-related expenses, according to city figures provided to AL.com. The expenses were not itemized.

A city spokesman said the reduction of expenses at the terminal have not been fully planned. The city estimates those terminal-related expenses  such personnel and operations costs  will be reduced by about one-half, or slightly under $1.6 million.

The unexpected and escalating costs for the city underscores the uncertainty for the cruise industry that has been ravaged by the virus.

Which ships are they going to use (in the future)? Dont know, said Stewart Chiron, a longtime cruise industry expert who is known as the Cruise Guy.

He added, What ships are they not going to use? Dont know. What will board procedures be like? I dont know. What will it be like on board? It is all conjecture. Right now, the reality is, when could Carnival restart in Mobile? It may not be until 2021, realistically. Right now, sailings have been canceled up until July 31, overall. Where they are going from there is anyones guess.

Mobiles pitch: Drive to us

Mobile officials are making their pitch to Carnival, once again, in hopes of luring a ship back to the cruise terminal. Its an eerily similar situation the city has found itself in again after having been left without a cruise ship for five years, between 2011-2016, when Carnival opted to leave Mobile citing concerns about high prices for sailing out of the northern Gulf of Mexico and an inability to raise ticket prices.

Mobile inked a three-year deal with Carnival in October 2019. It was the first time that Mobile and Carnival had entered in an agreement beyond a 1-year ever since cruising returned to Mobile in 2016 following a five-year hiatus. The Carnival Fascination, which was built in 1994, is expected to replace the Carnival Fantasy and begin cruising out of Mobile in January 2022.

Carnival resumed sailings from Alabama in November 2016.

Vacationers look out over the Mobile River on Wednesday from the Carnival Fantasy's Sun Deck. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com)

This time around, all but three cities  Miami, Port Canaveral and Galveston  face an uncertain cruising future. Carnival is planning to restart vacation voyages by Aug. 1, aboard eight vessels leaving those three cities. The Carnival Fantasy is not part of the itinerary. Mobile is joined by other cities like New Orleans, Charleston, Tampa, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, and Seattle that are without a Carnival cruise ship for the time being.

The delay in cruising is giving the city time to ramp up a strategy to convince the Miami-based company to return a ship to Mobile sooner than later.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, in an April 9 letter to Carnival, highlighted the citys strengths as a unique drive market and compared it with New Orleans, saying that the coastal Alabama port city is in a closer proximity to large populations of higher income households that love to cruise than the Big Easy. Stimpson, in his letter, noted that cruisers are likely to be more interested in sailing from Mobile without the negativity and health concerns of flying.

The citys letter also included a host of statistics comparing Mobile with New Orleans, where the Port of New Orleans was the homeport for two Carnival ships before coronavirus  the 2,980-seat Glory and the 2,974-seat Valor. Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and Disney also provided cruises from New Orleans.

The city provided Carnival an analysis showing so-called heat maps that contrasted the driving distances for households of a certain income range. Households with an income of $150,000 or greater -- the largest household per income value measured  showed that Mobiles port had more potential customers within driving distance than New Orleans. From a driving distance of 750 miles, Mobile could better capture 5.3 million customers within the household income range, while New Orleans is at 4.9 million.

Reid Cummings, director of the Center for Real Estate & Economic Development at the Mitchell College of Business at the University of South Alabama, performed the analysis and provided it to Visit Mobile in an effort to illustrate the proximity Mobile is for people to drive to for a cruise. Mobiles largest metropolitan markets for cruising are in Atlanta, Biloxi-Gulfport, Birmingham and Chattanooga.

David Clark, president & CEO with Visit Mobile, said the city will highlight to Carnival and other cruise operators its access to Southern and Midwest cities by car as an easy drive to market for cruising at a time when commercial aviation is grounded and is expected to have a slow restart.

When you look at where we market to up the I-65 corridor up to Memphis, Chattanooga and Atlanta, its a great population demographic and we know that a lot of people arent wanting to jump on a plane (once the coronavirus pandemic subsides), said Clark. We feel were positioned well and we want to market that.

Challenging times

No one knows for certain when Carnival might bring its ships back to Mobile and elsewhere.

The Carnival Fantasy is one of 18 Carnival vessels rendezvousing in the Bahamas in the coming days while final plans are put into place to sail nine of the ships to repatriate more than 10,000 healthy crew members to their home countries. According to a Carnival spokesman earlier this week, the plan for the Carnival Fantasy is to return crew members to Panama.

The industry has been hard hit during the coronavirus pandemic, and though Carnival recently announced its return to sailing, the bad news keeps coming. Norwegian Cruise Lines recently raised $2 billion to stave of bankruptcy concerns, and other cruise lines have yet to provide itineraries about their return to sailing. A U.S. House committee is launching an inquiry into Carnivals health and safety practices stemming from outbreaks that occurred on cruise ships in February, and two Democratic Senators are calling for a similar probe within their chamber.

And even though Carnival is interested in restarting sailings on Aug. 1, there are no guarantees. Government regulators have issued warnings about taking cruises as concerns about diseases spreading within the close-knit quarters of a cruise ship have escalated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on April 15, extended a No Sail Order for cruise ships for 100 days out of concern over a risk of infection. That order is set to expire on July 24, unless the CDC director rescinds or modifies the ruling, or if the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary calls off the public emergency.

I think the cruise industry is in for some very challenging times ahead, said Ross Klein, a sociologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland who studies cruising and operates the cruisejunkie.com website. It is likely to take three to five years for cruising to return to where it was in 2019, and that largely depends on COVID-19 being contained. In the interim, I expect some cruise lines to disappear, others to merge, and for older (less efficient) ships to be retired or repurposed.

Unchartered waters

Surrounded by Azalea Trail Maids, Mobile Better times: Mayor Sandy Stimpson announces on Monday, July 31, 2017, that Carnival Cruise Line has agreed to a one-year contract extension with the city. (Lawrence Specker/LSpecker@AL.com)

Carnival Fantasy is the oldest ship in Carnivals eight-vessel fantasy-class of cruise ships. It has been in operations for 30 years, last receiving upgrades in 2016 and 2019.

In April 2019, the city hired Miami-based Cruise and Port Advisors to provide consulting services aimed at keeping Carnival sailing in Mobile.

Steve Cape, a travel agent in Mobile, said he believes Carnival might be better off deploying less than 100% of its fleet this fall, noting that its current timeline coincides with the heart of hurricane season. Cruising out of Mobile, under the current schedule, would not start until at least Sept. 1.

Chiron, the Cruise Guy, also said that 2021, could be the realistic restart for cruising out of Mobile depending on demand.

He suggested people currently booked for cruises and who are worried about whether or when Carnival will restart sailings should leave it alone and wait for Carnival to announce cancellations.

What is happening is they are giving 125% future cruise credits, so this way they can get additional bonuses, said Chiron. The point is to let the cruise line cancel. You can take the refund or future cruise credit and rebook it at a future time.

Chiron, who has closely watched and scrutinized Mobile and Carnivals relationship in years past, said hes convinced city leaders are working hard to make sure the cruise ship returns.

I know how important this has been over the years to the city of Mobile, and I know aggressively and hard they worked to get (the cruise ship) back after losing it for years, Chiron said. I bet the farm that they are in contact with them. Theyd like Carnival to be in contact with them as well to provide them updates.

He added, This is unchartered waters. No one has been in this situation since modern cruising began in the mid-60s. The industry has never shut down completely.
Washington:

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump today attacked his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by calling her 'queen of corruption' and predicted "destruction of this country from within" if she is elected as the president.

"We're going to be talking about the queen of corruption," Trump said at election rally in Des Moines Iowa,



"If Hillary Clinton becomes president you will have, you will have terrorism, you will have problems, you will have, really, in my opinion, the destruction of this country from within," Trump told a cheering crowd as he launched another scathing attack on his Democratic rival.



Clinton, 68, has been leading in all national polls for the past one week. If elected, she would be the first woman president of the United States.



"She's pretty close to unhinged and you've seen it...sheis like an unbalanced person," Trump alleged. Over the past several months, Trump has been attacking Clinton by using different words like "crooked" and "devil".

Another rally Friday night in Wisconsin, Trump alleged that Clinton is a monster. "In one way, she's a monster. In another way, she's a weak person. She's actually not strong enough to be president. So she's got both," he alleged. "She will be a disaster. She will be so bad for our country and we can't let it happen," Trump said.

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BRIDGEPORT  School officials have tentatively chosen July 1 and July 2 as graduation dates for the roughly 1,200 seniors in the citys public schools, Acting Superintendent Michael Testani said Friday.

Details are still being ironed out, but the superintendent said strict guidelines will be in place to protect those participating.

We will hold some sort of graduations in a responsible and healthy and safe way, Testani said during a virtual town hall on Mayor Joseph Ganims Facebook page. It will look a lot different than past graduations, obviously, because of the pandemic. Were going to try to make it as special as possible.

The superintendent said students and their families will be contacted via phone, email and texts when details have been determined, but asked them to check the school districts website as well.

As details emerge we will get those out, Testani said.

The graduation plans will not cover charter and parochial schools, Testani said, but school officials will share them with other schools if they want to use them as a guide.

The public high schools governed by the Board of Education are Central, Harding, Bassick, Fairchild Wheeler and Bridgeport Military Academy.

Testanis announcement came days after Gov. Ned Lamont ordered schools to be closed for the rest of the school year.

As much as we were holding on to hope that we could possibly get our kids and our families back into the buildings, even for just one more goodbye, thats not going to be an opportunity that were going to have this year, Testani said.

Distance learning has been a challenge, the superintendent said, but educators are doing the best they can and will continue to do so through June 17.

Students unable to access distance learning can pick up printed materials every two weeks. The next pickup dates are Monday and Tuesday.

In addition, all students from kindergarten through eighth grade can pick up a book pack at schools donated by Scholastic.

The packs contain four grade-appropriate books with activities to get students thinking about what theyve read  and the low-tech learning could also have other benefits.

Its a great learning tool. Its also a great way for kids to get off screens, Testani said. One thing that we know with this stay-home (order is) that many of our kids are not only academically engaged with technology, but again with their friends and family, theyre on technology pretty much 24/7. This could be detrimental to kids long-term.

Details are also being worked out for a summer school program that will likely be done virtually, he said. In addition, report cards will be sent out Monday for the third marking period and can be picked up at schools if needed.

We want to make sure that we keep a normal school year for kids and we celebrate all their successes, Testani said. We miss them and we miss having them interacting with our staff every day.
Russia Discusses With Turkey Delivery of Extra S-400 Systems - Defence Cooperation Agency

Sputnik News

12:46 GMT 07.05.2020

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Moscow and Ankara discuss the composition and the time frame for the delivery of an additional batch of the Russian S-400 air defence systems, the head of the Russian Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation, Dmitry Shugayev, has said.

"The issue of an additional batch of S-400 for Turkey remains on the agenda. We are coordinating the composition, the delivery time frame and other conditions. Negotiations are ongoing today, and we hope to reach agreement in the foreseeable future," Shugayev has told the National Defence magazine.

Earlier this month, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Ankara was unable to deploy the S-400 air defence systems as planned due to the ongoing pandemic.

In 2019, Russia fulfilled its first contract for delivering four divisions of S-400 to Turkey, with the total cost reaching $2.5 billion. The contract envisions an option for one more regimental batch.

At the same time, the US has strongly objected Turkey's decision to buy the Russian air defences and then advised it against deploying them in April, repeatedly threatening the country with sanctions.

The US claims that S-400s are incompatible with the NATO defence grid despite previously not opposing Greece purchasing its predecessor, the S-300.

A Sputnik

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed anguish over the death of 16 migrant workers in a train accident in Maharashtra's Aurangabad. He said all possible assistance is being provided.

At least 16 migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district on Friday morning.

In a tweet, the prime minister said, "Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation".

The workers were returning to Madhya Pradesh and had been walking along the tracks. They later slept on the rail tracks due to exhaustion.

The labourers, officials said, all worked at an iron factory in Jalna and were headed back to Madhya Pradesh amid the coronavirus lockdown.

Aurangabad SP Mokshada Patil told News18 that the workers were walking from Jalna to Bhuvasal, a distance of nearly 170km, to catch a train to return home. They had stopped near the track to take rest after covering a distance of around 45 km.

The Railways said it has ordered an inquiry into the incident. "During early hours today after seeing some labourers on track, loco pilot of goods train tried to stop the train but eventually hit them between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Parbhani-Manmad section," the ministry said.
I am a trained youth leader for health and advocate regularly for increased domestic resources for enhanced malaria responses and health system strengthening. At a recent meeting in Addis Ababa, (Fig 1) we advocated through the Ghana Embassy and African Union for more political commitments towards malaria responses.

2:30am GMT mid-week and I can barely sleep.

I have been awake for the past hour and a half, thinking about global health. I have lost sleep over the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating impact on other public health issues, especially malaria.

I brace myself for the day ahead especially now that I mostly work from home. I have decided to spend the entire month of April getting to know what it is like to be a health worker during these times. This means I will be paying visits to various health centers in the Sekondi-Takoradi district within the Western Region of Ghana.

I step out of the house at 8:00am without getting enough sleep.

As I walk past my neighbors, I realize everyone has got a face mask on, from the market trader to the flashy banker. Wonderful. Messaging and advocacy is working here, an area where the number of COVID-19 cases is increasing steadily. Who would take a risk and do otherwise?

My first stop is at the outpatients section of the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital, this facility serves as the referral center for the Western Region of Ghana. I meet up with the senior nursing officer on duty. She says to me

As hospitals fill up and more and more people get infected daily, medical staffs have to endure long hours, intensifying conditions and the looming fear of contracting the virus themselves.

We are at the end of our strength," adds a doctor who came out of retirement to help at the hospital.

"We do not have sufficient resources and especially staff, because apart from everything else, the staff are beginning to get sick."

Another nurse tells me Rev Lucky, its not been easy at all, some of us, our own family members are scared to have interactions with us, our husbands are very careful when they are around us.

You can clearly see the struggle these workers go through each day but at the same time you sense commitment and passion as they add their efforts to a national response.

The Senior Nursing Officer tells me, she will do this over and over again, given the chance. Admirable.

I respond to these comments by urging the nurse and doctor to consider malaria interventions concurrent with COVID-19 because immune systems weakened by untreated malaria will struggle more with COVID-19.

Community leaders and chiefs are key stakeholders in our fight against malaria, and so I end my visit at the hospital and decide to do a follow up visit to the traditional leader, the Chief of Apremdo, a community in the Western Region that has recorded high cases of malaria in recent years. We had met earlier in March.

As we navigate through issues regarding malaria, its hard not to talk about the impact of COVID-19. At the end of the encounter, I realize the head way I have made, as he sets up a meeting with the malaria focal person in the region. We talk about linkages between COVID-19, malaria and malnutrition and how as he talks to the community he should emphasize good sanitation, hygiene and proper nutrition, and so on to build wellbeing and resilience in these COVID-19 times. He assures me of complying.

Its around 4:30pm, its late and I say goodbye. I feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that I can count on this traditional leader as an ally in health advocacy, community mobilization, and engagement.

I glance at my watch and its 4:45pm and I head home.

Not all days are the same though with this level of success.

A week ago, when I met the Head of the Public Health Division for the region to discuss strategies to address malaria, I was informed the Public Health Unit had suspended all malaria interventions and all attention was focused on COVID-19.

Sadly this is not just a Ghana thing; its the current tune the entire world is singing.

In all my interactions I ensure I adhere to all the safety protocols as I ensure social distancing and also I make sure I have my nose mask on, as much as it very uncomfortable sometimes, its important to lead by example.

As my COVID-19 journey progresses, I am learning to act like an advocate but think like a virus.what does this mean;

Diseases ignore borders. Borders separating countries are meaningless to diseases. While there is the urgent need to act locally there is the danger of failing globally. My voice should cross borders.

Distractions are an opportunity to lose sight of real danger and that is what COVID-19 is teaching me. As political dis-engagements and diplomatic spats continue the virus wreaks havoc everywhere. Every minute spent on arguing and blaming is a minute wasted on finding solutions. I will try to be focused at all times.

Nothing makes a virus happier than misinformation. Confusing and inconsistent information has characterized this pandemic. Facts, clarity and consistency of information should drive my work.

I am likely to lose more sleep in my work as a youth leader for health but I am encouraged by allies, influencers and motivators I meet along my journey including the support from Hope for Future Generations.

I will continue to follow up on visits and actions agreed upon.

I know what it is like to lose hope, so in my life as a health advocate, I aspire to be that thread of hope for someone else.

BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE, I am doing my part, I hope you do too!
The all-women Nirbhaya Squad of the Jaipur police has been distributing sanitary pads in COVID-19 containment zones in the city during the ongoing lockdown.

The Nirbhaya Squad, in collaboration with Jaipur Padman, assessed the problems of women living in curfew-hit areas due to the novel coronavirus and joined hands to distribute sanitary pads free of cost.

The joint team has so far distributed 3,000 packets of sanitary pads to the needy women living in containment zones of the walled city area.

The bike-borne squad was formed last year with women trained in martial arts for warding off any threat faced by women in school, colleges, malls or at bus stops. The team of 80 women constables has been taking out flag marches in the curfew-hit areas to give message of social distancing and staying home.

We came to know about the problem that women were facing due to the lockdown which is in force from last over a month. A few social workers also joined the movement. Distribution of sanitary pads was difficult in curfew-hit areas so we took help of the Nirbhaya Squad, a member of Jaipur Padman group, Ashish Parashar, said.

He said that it came to the fore that men were reluctant to buy sanitary pads from medical shops for women members of their families in slum areas. He said that Additional Superintendent of Police of Nirbhaya Squad Sunita Meena immediately came in support to distribute sanitary pads.

The team has already been distributing essential items in the containment zones. Health of women is equally important so the team is helping the group of social activists in the cause, Meena said.

Rajasthan has reported 95 deaths due to the novel coronavirus so far with total 3,400 positive cases in the state. Curfew has been imposed in the walled city area of Jaipur. The entire state has been under lockdown since March 22.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. )

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A couple, wearing masks, was walking south along the dirt Santa Fe Trail in north Colorado Springs. A cyclist was pedaling north on the recreational trail, which ranks among our citys treasures.

The couple and the cyclist were 15 feet apart as they approached. As the cyclist drew close, the couple stepped 20 feet away, turned their heads and covered their masked mouths.

This is extreme caution.

Hour later, the cyclist walked into Walmart, where a sign requiring masks for customers was displayed prominently on the front door. Several unmasked customers, mostly youthful, roamed the aisles. Several unmasked shoppers, mostly youthful, were seen the next day roaming through Sprouts grocery store.

This is lack of caution.

In our strange coronavirus spring, the cautious and incautious must find a way to dwell together. Those terrified of the virus coexist with the skeptical. Those who believe COVID-19 death counts are understated make conversation with those who believe COVID-19 death counts are exaggerated. Those who want stay-at-home orders extended wave across the street at neighbors who yearn to roam free for drinks at bars and meals at restaurants.

I ask those who roam mask-free through stores to consider these truths:

You look indulgent and reckless. You stand out. You arent worried about your health. Thats obvious. But, please, show proper concern for the health of others, especially our most vulnerable.

Americans excel in many realms, but disagreement might rank as our greatest talent. We can disagree, it seems, on anything. And, trust me, we will find multiple ways to quarrel over handling the coronavirus crisis.

But we can agree on these crusades:

Lets eradicate those murder hornets.

And lets wear masks while shopping. Everyone. Young and old. Cautious and incautious.

Skeptics of the might of coronavirus represent only a minority slice of America, but they have a gift for making noise. Letters to the editor in The Gazette are dominated many days by skeptics. Skeptics/protesters have gathered at state capitols in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. (A local skeptic protested my use of the word stormed to describe the capitol gatherings.)

Some of the protesters arrived armed, which was clearly meant to intimidate. Some waved Confederate flags.

At the Wisconsin capitol in Madison, speakers complained that police declined to install portable toilets for the convenience of those who attended the rally. Gov. Tony Evers had refused the organizers application for a permit.

But those making noise are clearly in the minority.

A national Yahoo News/YouGov poll in late April revealed over 70 percent of Americans, regardless of political party, are more concerned about lifting restrictions too quickly than lifting them too slowly.

A Colorado poll released this week revealed similar views. A survey by Democratic firms Keating Research, OnSight Public Affairs and Mike Melanson found 68% of Colorado residents support the new safer-at-home order with 21 percent against the measure. In the same poll, 80 percent of respondents favored requiring face masks for those shopping and working.

The message is clear: The majority of Americans, and Colorado residents, understand taking aggressive action against the coronavirus saved lives. Those actions carried a massive cost. Small business owners were devastated. Grandparents missed seeing their grandchildren. Loneliness multiplied.

And the march of death was slowed.

We cant remain this locked down forever. I get that. You have to eat. I have to eat. We must crawl back toward some semblance of normal.

But as we crawl, this much is clear:

When you go shopping, no matter your age or view of the might of The Virus, wear a mask.
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NEW YORK - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration. That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agencys decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, in Washington, as Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

NEW YORK - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration. That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agencys decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste.

You have the greatest fighting force against infectious diseases in world history. Why would you not use them? said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan.

The complaints have sounded for months. But they have become louder following repeated revelations that transmission-prevention guidance crafted by CDC scientists was never adopted by the White House.

The latest instance surfaced Thursday, when The Associated Press reported that President Donald Trump's administration shelved a CDC document containing step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the current pandemic.

The administration has disputed the notion that the CDC had been sidelined, saying the agency is integral to the administrations plans to expand contact tracing nationwide.

But it's clear that the CDC is playing a much quieter role than it has during previous outbreaks.

The nation's COVID-19 response has seen a strange turn for the CDC, which opened in 1946 in Atlanta as The Communicable Disease Center to prevent the spread of malaria with a $10 million budget and a few hundred employees. Today, the agency has a core budget of more than $7 billion  a sum that has been shrinking in recent years  and employs nearly 11,000 people.

The CDC develops vaccines and diagnostic tests. Its experts advise doctors how best to treat people, and teach state, local and international officials how to fight and prevent disease. Among the CDC's elite workforce are hundreds of the worlds foremost disease investigators  microbiologists, pathologists and other scientists dispatched to investigate new and mysterious illnesses.

President Donald Trump gestures during a White House National Day of Prayer Service in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 7, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In 2009, when a new type of flu virus known at the time as swine flu spread around the world, the CDC held almost daily briefings. Its experts released information on a regular basis to describe the unfolding scientific understanding of the virus, and the race for a vaccine.

The federal response to the coronavirus pandemic initially followed a similar pattern.

CDC first learned in late December of the emergence of a new disease in China, and the U.S. identified its first case in January. In those early days, the CDC held frequent calls with reporters. It also quickly developed a test it could run at its labs, and a test kit to be sent to state health department labs to detect the virus.

But February proved to be a disaster. The test kit was flawed, delaying the ability of states to do testing. A CDC-run surveillance system, meant to look for signs of the virus in people who had thought they had the flu, was slow to get off the ground. Officials at the CDC and at other federal agencies were slow to recognize infections from Europe were outpacing ones from travellers to China.

But politically speaking, one the most striking moments that month was something that the CDC  in the eyes of public health experts  got perfectly right.

In late February, Dr. Nancy Messonnier  a well-respected CDC official who was leading the agency's coronavirus response  contradicted statements by other federal officials that the virus was contained. Its 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, she said.

Stocks plunged. President Donald Trump was enraged.

The White House Coronavirus Task Force moved to centre stage. Vice-President Mike Pence took control of clearing CDC communications about the virus. CDC news conferences stopped completely after March 9. Messonnier exited the public stage.

CDC Director Robert Redfield continued to keep the low profile he's had since getting the job. Two other task force members  Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force co-ordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health  became the task force's chief scientific communicators.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, center, accompanied by National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, right, testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on the coronavirus on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, March 3, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Health experts have praised Fauci, but they say CDC's voice is sorely missed.

At the White House briefings, they (CDC) should be talking about antibody tests and if they work. How long do people have the virus if theyre infected? What are the data for that? The issue ought to be front and centre. These are the questions CDC can answer, said Dr. James Curran, a former CDC star scientist who is now dean of Emory University's public health school.

The government has continued to look to CDC officials for information and guidance, but there have been repeated instances when what the agency's experts send to Washington is rejected.

In early March, administration officials overruled CDC doctors who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, the AP reported.

Last month, USA Today reported that the White House task force had forced the CDC had to change orders it had posted keeping cruise ships docked until August. The post was altered to say the ships could sail again in July, the newspaper reported.

And last week, officials nixed CDC draft guidance that was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

The 17 pages of guidelines were never approved by Redfield to present to the White House task force, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They were only discussed at the task force level once the drafts leaked publicly, and no decisions about them were ever made.

Still, the CDC guidelines were the subject of intense debate at the upper echelons of the White House. Some officials saw them as essential to helping businesses and other organizations safely reopen.

Others, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, did not believe it appropriate for the federal government to set guidelines for specific sectors whose circumstances could vary widely depending on the level of outbreak in their areas, according to a person familiar with the discussion. What was necessary for a coffee shop in New York and one in Oklahoma was wildly different, in their view.

They worried about potential negative economic impact from the guidelines, and some aides expressed doubts about whether the government should be prescribing practices to religious communities.

The decision not to issue detailed sector guidance is also in keeping with the White Houses strategic decision to leave the specific details of reopening to states. While Trump had at one point claimed absolute authority to detail how and when states open, hes adopted a largely hands-off approach as more and more states begin to lift lockdowns.

Trump suggests his decision is in keeping with the principles of federalism, but White House aides acknowledge that it also lessens the political peril for the president  who has come under pressure from conservative allies, particularly in states that havent experienced wide outbreaks, to swiftly reopen the country.

On a conference call Thursday afternoon with the House members on the White Houses Opening Up America panel, lawmakers in both parties pressed the White House to release sector-specific guidance of the sort currently held up by the administration.

There was clear bipartisan support for the need to have CDC guidance and the need to have best practices," said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla.

The CDC did not respond to a Thursday request for an interview with Redfield.

In a recent interview with the AP, the agency's No. 2 administrator, Dr. Anne Schuchat, was asked to address reports that CDC recommendations were being ignored in Washington.

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She paused, and then replied slowly.

The CDC is providing our best evidence-based information to policy makers and providing that on a daily basis to protect the American people," she said, without further comment.

___

Dearen reported from Gainesville, Florida. Miller reported from Washington.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect the proper spelling of the last name of Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla.
On this 75th commemoration of VE Day it is simultaneously difficult and easy to talk about heroism, always a troubling concept. All around us global leaders and the media are deploying war metaphors and lifting heroes aloft  scientists, doctors and nurses, front line workers  in response to the global pandemic. Indeed, by current sentiment, were all heroes, just by recognising one anothers humanness. And keeping a distance from it.

Several groups of WW2 veterans and their supporters are continuing campaigns for more robust public recognition of their contributions to the allied victory. Veterans of Caribbean origin are raising funds to install a memorial in honour of their service at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Polish veterans, were it not for the cancellation of this years London VE Day Parade, would have marched in the celebrations, a correction to a longstanding slight.

Another group of over 10,000 African servicemen, 50 per cent of whom were enlisted from Nigeria, and who served in battle against Japanese forces in Burma, are rarely even mentioned.
As the quarantine drags on, and on... and on, more celebrities are taking their beauty management into their own hands  or in Chris Pratt's case, into the hands of his beloved and pregnant wife Katherine Schwarzenegger.

Pratt, 40, took to his Instagram Stories on Thursday to document his haircut journey, with a gritty-teethed selfie with an unmade-up Schwarzenegger, 30, smiling behind him.

Chris's hair is awry and growing every which way in the photo, with Katherine at the ready holding electric clippers next to his head.

Here they go: Chris Pratt took to his Instagram Stories on Thursday to document his haircutting journey at the hands of his beloved and pregnant wife Katherine Schwarzenegger

'Here we go! Time to chop it off!' the Guardians Of The Galaxy star wrote in bold white text over magenta at the top of the image.

The next image already showed Chris with his new 'do, a comical and begrudgingly impressed look on his face.

'Must admit! Pretty damn good work by my wifey,' read that caption, which also tagged Katherine for her amateur barbering skills.

Happy customer: The next image already showed Chris with his new 'do, a comical and begrudgingly impressed look on his face

The Jurassic World actor finished off the trio of haircut-related shots in his Story with a more proper, head-on photo.

He labeled that one with the hashtag #quarantinehaircut, along with a string of appreciative emojis.

It must be said that Pratt's social media appearances of late have been looking somewhat scruffy and overgrown, but in today's world, that is certainly no cause for alarm.

At-home barbershop: The Jurassic World actor finished off the trio of haircut-related shots in his Story with a more proper, head-on photo

Katherine and Chris, meanwhile, are still basking in the glow of their recent wonderful news made public last month  that the pair are expecting their first child together.

While this will be Katherine's first child, Chris is already dad to seven-year-old son Jack, whom he shares with ex-wife Anna Faris.

Pratt was married to Faris from 2009 until 2018, and married Schwarzenegger, the daughter of the former California governor, the following year.

It must be said: Pratt's social media appearances of late have been looking somewhat scruffy and overgrown, but in today's world, that is certainly no cause for alarm
Dhaka, May 8 : Bangladesh authorities on Friday said that some 280 Rohingya refugees were being ferried to an uninhabited remote island after being found adrift at sea.

A Bangladesh Navy official told Efe news they spotted an overcrowded vessel carrying the refugees around 30 km south of Saint Martin's island late Wednesday.

"We have given them some food and drink. They are being taken to Bhasan Char Island," said the official, adding that they acted under directions of the government.

Earlier this week, the authorities reported having sent over two dozen Rohingya refugees to an uninhabited remote island after they entered the country in small boats following weeks at the sea.

These Rohingya sent to the remote island are believed to be part of a group of 500 women, men, and children, who - according to human rights organizations - were stuck in the Bay after Malaysian authorities pushed them away.

Moreover, on April 16, Bangladesh authorities rescued 396 Rohingya who were trying to enter the country in a boat from the southern coast, after 58 days at sea.

UN bodies have expressed serious concern regarding reports of refugees adrift at sea and warned against a repeat of the 2015 crisis, when thousands of migrants were stranded from overcrowded boats in international waters.

"Five years on from the 2015 'boat crisis' in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, in which thousands of refugees and migrants in distress at sea were denied life-saving care and support, we are alarmed that a similar tragedy may be unfolding once more," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, International Organization for Migration and UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

"We are deeply concerned by reports that boats full of vulnerable women, men and children are again adrift in the same waters, unable to come ashore, and without access to urgently needed food, water and medical assistance," it added.

Bangladesh had earlier stressed it would not accept any more Rohingya as its priority was now to protect the refugee camp area from the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Later, the government decided to take the refugees to Bhasn Char Island, where it claimed to have built 1,440 housing structures to shelter some 100,000 people, as a part of a project started in 2017 to relocate Rohingya refugees.

The island, usually hit by monsoon floods, emerged from the sea about a decade ago. It covers an area of about 40 sq.km and is accessible only by boat.

However, the government's initial plan of relocating the Rohingya to the flood-prone island had been halted in February amid criticisms from rights groups, who asked the authorities not to replace one humanitarian crisis with another.

Nearly 738,000 Rohingya refugees are living in camps in Bangladesh since August 25, 2017, following a wave of persecution and violence in Myanmar that the UN has described as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide.
Last week saw the newest first-quarter earnings release from South Jersey Industries, Inc. (NYSE:SJI), an important milestone in the company's journey to build a stronger business. Revenues were US$534m, 11% below analyst expectations, although losses didn't appear to worsen significantly, with a statutory per-share loss of US$1.09 being in line with what the analysts anticipated. Earnings are an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance, look at what the analysts are forecasting for next year, and see if there's been a change in sentiment towards the company. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.

Check out our latest analysis for South Jersey Industries

NYSE:SJI Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Following the latest results, South Jersey Industries' six analysts are now forecasting revenues of US$1.60b in 2020. This would be a credible 4.6% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to jump 47% to US$1.47. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$1.59b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.52 in 2020. So it looks like there's been a small decline in overall sentiment after the recent results - there's been no major change to revenue estimates, but the analysts did make a small dip in their earnings per share forecasts.

The consensus price target held steady at US$30.38, with the analysts seemingly voting that their lower forecast earnings are not expected to lead to a lower stock price in the foreseeable future. That's not the only conclusion we can draw from this data however, as some investors also like to consider the spread in estimates when evaluating analyst price targets. There are some variant perceptions on South Jersey Industries, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$37.00 and the most bearish at US$23.00 per share. These price targets show that analysts do have some differing views on the business, but the estimates do not vary enough to suggest to us that some are betting on wild success or utter failure.

Story continues

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. We would highlight that South Jersey Industries' revenue growth is expected to slow, with forecast 4.6% increase next year well below the historical 15%p.a. growth over the last five years. Juxtapose this against the other companies in the industry with analyst coverage, which are forecast to grow their revenues (in aggregate) 4.4% next year. So it's pretty clear that, while South Jersey Industries' revenue growth is expected to slow, it's expected to grow roughly in line with the industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that the analysts downgraded their earnings per share estimates, showing that there has been a clear decline in sentiment following these results. They also reconfirmed their revenue estimates, with the company predicted to grow at about the same rate as the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at US$30.38, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for South Jersey Industries going out to 2022, and you can see them free on our platform here..

Before you take the next step you should know about the 4 warning signs for South Jersey Industries (1 is a bit unpleasant!) that we have uncovered.

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.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 13:51:59|Editor: huaxia

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by Peerzada Arshad Hamid

NEW DELHI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on Friday continued evacuating people around the chemical plant that leaked toxic gas, leaving at least 11 dead besides taking hundreds ill.

Police officials denied reports about renewed leak from the LG Polymers plant but said the evacuation was part of precautions.

According to officials, work on evacuating people up to five-kilometer radius was going on.

"The police are working on evacuating people up to a five-kilometer radius from the plant," a police official said. "Several people have started moving out on their own."

Early on Thursday when people were asleep gas leak from the chemical plant in Visakhapatnam jolted them out of their sleep.

People complained of irritation in eyes and some gasped for breath.

Television footage showed emergency workers in the area rushing to help victims, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented. Several victims lay unconscious roadside, as some people fanned them while others rushed to carry them into ambulances.

"I could feel the itchiness in my eyes. The air was heavy with pungent smell of gas," said Jaikumar Santhan, a local who lives about 400 meters from the spot. "I was feeling drowsy and slightly breathless."

Santhan alerted his wife and both of whom rushed outside. To their surprise, they saw panic-stricken people in neighbourhood struggling for breath and calling for help.

"There I sensed the danger that something has happened," he said.

Although a large number have been admitted to hospital, officials said most of them will be able to recover.

"The gas that leaked is called Styrene. This gas is poisonous in the sense that could immediately cause irritation, redness of eyes, shortness of breath, vomiting, nausea and asphyxia," Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation said.

"The plant has been shut down with immediate effect. We are providing drinking water and food to the evacuated people so that they are not exposed to the poisonous gas anymore. More than 350 people are there in hospitals taking treatment and most of them are stable."

Gummalla said the government has ordered an enquiry into the incident.

The incident evoked memories of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy that left at least 3,787 people dead and another 500,000 injured when methyl isocyanate leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

LG Polymers said in a statement it was investigating the cause of the incident and was looking at ways "to provide speedy treatment" for those affected.

Locals said the gas leak also killed around two dozen domestic animals, including cows and buffaloes.

On Thursday evening, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy reached Visakhapatnam and held a review meeting on the gas leak with the district officials. He announced monetary compensation for the victim families, besides support to the victims undergoing treatment in the hospitals.

The chemical plant, which makes polystyrene products, was being reopened after India began to relax a nationwide lockdown imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of the COVID-19.

Meanwhile, an environmental think tank in New Delhi, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), stated that over three tonnes of styrene gas leaked into the air from one of the storage tanks at the LG Polymers factory in Visakhapatnam and quickly spread into nearby areas on Thursday.

"What seems to be the case is that the plant management, in its haste to restart the plant, ignored the protocol of doing maintenance of the plant before resuming operations. This, combined with the lack of proper storage of the gas - not maintained at the temperature required - and faulty fixtures could have resulted in the accident," CSE said. Enditem
It was a muted affair as French President Emmanuel Macron led national commemorations marking 75 years since the end of World War II in Europe. He solemnly laid a wreath by General Charles de Gaulles statue in Paris, before rekindling the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

With ceremonies drastically scaled down due to the coronavirus, there were no schoolchildren or flag-bearers on hand to join the moment that was closed to the public but broadcast live on television.

Former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy joining a small entourage of dignitaries that included the prime minister, the minister for the armies and the mayor of Paris. However the absence of veterans was salient.

Veterans' groups disappointed

Le Souvenir Francais, an association responsible for maintaining the memory of soldiers who died for France, had been pushing for flag bearers to be allowed.

Its president, Serge Barcellini, described the national commemoration as a totally disembodied ceremony.

Victory in Europe is a public holiday in France, and each year on 8 May the countrys local communes hold their own wreath-laying services attended by citizens both young and old.

This year, those commemorations were closed to the public, with mayors and prefects given strict instructions not to allow more than 10 people at any ceremony.

Some mayors asked residents to lay flowers, poems or drawings at the foot of monuments to the fallen.

A new way to celebrate

The Eiffel Tower was decorated with the colours of the French flag, while a limited tribute to the wartime fallen was paid by the National Assembly.

On his Twitter account, Macron encouraged French people to participate in the day by decking out their balconies in the national colours: red, white and blue.

Historians, NGOs, veterans groups and students involved in VE preparations have also found new ways to mark the anniversary of peace in Europe.

A virtual concert is being staged in the fortified western coastal city of Saint-Nazaire, which was under heavy Nazi occupation and was not liberated until the last day of the war in 1945.

Story continues

Virus derails events across Europe

In Britain, three days of celebration  including a procession of war veterans through London  were cancelled, with British people instead invited to watch a re-broadcast of Winston Churchill's speech and an address from the Queen, as well as to participate in a two-minute silence.

In Berlin  where 8 May was declared a one-off public holiday for this years milestone  most people will also be marking the day from inside their homes.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to lay a wreath at the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny, while Berlin's Brandenburg Gate is expected to be lit up.

Russia's traditional Victory Day military parade, which was to be attended by Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping, has been postponed.

This week Europe Remembers, run by the Liberation Route Europe Foundation, has been offering a platform for people to virtually converse with veterans and civilians who lived through the six year conflict. It includes a series of live streams of conversations in English, Dutch, French and German.

Many people dont know, or have never had the chance to speak with someone who can share first-hand accounts of life during WWII, said the foundations managing director, Remi Praud.

This is especially true for younger generations, so weve organised a series of video calls with people who can describe what living through the war was like for them.

"Some of them lived through the war as children, others were adults, and we have civilians and ex-service people taking part from many places in world.
The future of department store chain Lord + Taylors four Connecticut stores has grown uncertain amid reports this week that the retailer is planning to liquidate its 38 stores inventory as soon as they re-open from temporary shutdowns sparked by the coronavirus crisis.

Lord + Taylor is working with liquidators to help manage going-out-of-business sales and is preparing to permanently close all its stores once the merchandise is sold, according to sources cited by Reuters. The retailer had been considering other actions, including a bankruptcy filing.

Outside funding or other assistance might still emerge to save the business, Reuters also reported.

So far, Lord + Taylor has not publicly confirmed its long-term plans. In Connecticut, it operates stores at a standalone building in Stamford and at the malls in Danbury, Trumbull and Farmington.

A message left Friday for Lord + Taylor was not immediately returned. The business was acquired last year by fashion-rental specialist Le Tote for about $70 million from Saks Fifth Avenue owner Hudsons Bay Co.

Thomas Madden, Stamfords economic development director, declined to comment on the store at 110 High Ridge Road.

Trumbull officials were aware that Lord + Taylor might liquidate its stores, said Trumbull First Selectman Vicki Tesoro. Among preparations for major changes at the Westfield Trumbull mall, the towns Planning and Zoning Commission approved in October 2018 a zone change that allows more entertainment uses, limited housing and other adaptations at the shopping center.

We are in regular contact with the mall management and we will continue to work in partnership to support the businesses there and a vibrant vision for the future, Tesoro said. Again, we dont like to see any business close or anyone lose their job. We do feel that the Lord + Taylor site ... at the mall is a prime location on that property. We believe that if they do close permanently, there will be interest in that location.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said Friday that he had not heard from Lord + Taylor about its long-term plans for the store at Danbury Fair mall.

Earlier this week, J.Crew Group and Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy, highlighting the ominous outlook for many brick-and-mortar retailers amid the disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both retailers plan to avoid liquidation. In Connecticut, J. Crew has stores in Greenwich, New Canaan, New Haven and Westport, while its location at the Stamford Town Center mall closed last year. There are no Neiman Marcus locations in the state, with its closest establishment in White Plains, N.Y.

Lord + Taylors struggles are longstanding. In January 2019, it shuttered its flagship store in Manhattan, ending a 104-year run for the midtown establishment. The property was sold for $850 million to co-working firm WeWork and partner Rhone Capital.

Making that kind of decision was challenging, but the reason that we did it was based on building a more financially solid foundation, then-Lord + Taylor President Vanessa LeFebvre said in an interview last year. Ultimately, it gives you the freedom to focus on the suburban stores.

While it has shrunk its store count, the business has invested heavily in Connecticut. In late 2016, it completed a nearly two-year renovation of the 157,000-square-foot Stamford store.

The womens shoe department was expanded by more than 3,500 square feet, to nearly 13,000 square feet. The jewelry department was doubled, to some 4,500 square feet. And the dress department nearly doubled to almost 8,000 square feet.

At this point, we believe that Stamford represents, quite frankly, the bread and butter of who Lord + Taylor is, LeFebvre said. A freestanding store is where we can have a more intimate relationship with our customers.

Julia Perkins and The Associated Press contributed reporting to this article.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott
Raffles Financial est une societe etablie a Singapour avec un bureau a Hong Kong qui fournit une gamme de services de conseil financier. Raffles Financial est enregistre aupres de la Monetary Authority of Singapore en tant que conseiller en financement des entreprises exonere. Contrairement aux grandes banques d'investissement et aux consultants financiers independants, Raffles Financial propose des services personnalises de conseil, d'arrangement et d'ancrage des investisseurs en matiere de cotation en travaillant avec des professionnels de l'audit, du juridique, de la fiscalite et de la banque. Raffles Financial a l'intention d'etendre ses activites en investissant dans des entreprises qui repondent a ses criteres et directives d'investissement.

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.
Read more: AIA Singapore welcomes two new robotic hires

The insurer will implement the first phase of the service in mid-May, through the interactive Point of Sale (iPoS) platform for financial planners. Customers purchasing selected new ILAS policies will undergo a financial needs analysis and risk profile assessment. Based upon the result of the risk profile assessment, the service will then provide reference portfolios to customers, helping them with their first investment choices under their new ILAS policies.

In the second phase, AIA Hong Kong plans to extend the service to various electronic service platforms.

There are many investment options under ILAS, covering various geographical areas and asset classes, said Leo Cheung, chief wealth management officer of AIA Hong Kong & Macau. Everybody has a different risk tolerance level. Through our pioneer Robotic Investment Choice Service in insurance industry, we can fully cater to diverse investment needs of customers in ILAS products. Even for customers whose risk assessment scores differ merely by one point, we can still provide different, highly personalised reference portfolios to help them select their investment choices. For customers who are interested in an investment option of a particular asset class or investment market under ILAS, this brand new service can also offer best-in-class fund for reference, helping customers build long-term investment portfolios that suit their needs.
HISTORY

LONDON 1945

by Maureen Waller (John Murray 12.99, 560pp)

Twenty-four hours of manic rejoicing flanked at both ends by years of queuing and hardship: thats the overwhelming impression given by Maureen Wallers superbly well-researched and detailed portrait of London in 1945, reissued in paperback to commemorate todays anniversary of VE Day.

It really happened: the dancing in the streets exactly 75 years ago.

Total strangers kissed, middle-aged ladies climbed to the top of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, boys lit bonfires in the streets and burned effigies of Hitler. We want Winnie! We want Winnie! chanted the thronging crowds under the balcony where the Prime Minister was due to give a victory speech.

Maureen Waller's portrait of London in 1945, has been reissued in paperback to commemorate this year's anniversary of VE Day. Pictured: Celebrations in London on May 8, 1945

A man selling Churchill badges in front of the National Gallery shouted: Churchill for sixpence! Worth more! And at long last it was possible to crowd into a pub without having to push through a thick blackout curtain, described by one man as like getting mixed up in the skirts of a nun.

In front of Buckingham Palace, the 15-year-old Harold Pinter pinched the bottom of a pretty girl in the crowd, only to be knocked unconscious by the girls boyfriend. As the Royal Family came out on to the balcony, one little girl remarked to her mother: I just wish Hitler had heard the cheering.

Trade was brisk in Mayfair, too. The veteran prostitute Marthe Watts took home 49 clients that day.

London was one great eruption of ecstasy and relief. Yet the grocery shopping still had to be done. Todays supermarket queues might seem tedious, but in 1945 it could take all morning to secure 1 lb of potatoes and some greens.

Your Best Friends Today Are Your Feet was one of the many slogans drummed into the heads of exhausted housewives. On VE Day, they queued with a string bag in one hand and a Union Jack in the other.

To put that momentous day into context, Waller opens her book by plunging us into the freezing dawn of the year  reminding us what Londoners had just been through, and of the difference between a V1 flying bomb and a V2 rocket.

Both doled out death indiscriminately, but at least with a V1 you heard something, even if the noise did cut out just before the explosion. V2s, travelling supersonically at 3,000 mph and taking just four minutes to get from Holland to London, simply killed you and half your street with no warning.

After VE Day rationing and queuing grew worse as the country had been bankrupted by war. Pictured: Celebrations in London on May 8, 1945

Bombs with slippers on, Londoners called them. Fronts of whole terraces were pulled off, revealing families sitting dead at their tables. Waller gives us a stark glimpse of the traumatic work of those who cleared up the aftermath. Proper jigsaw puzzle, said one mortuary attendant whose job it was to reassemble bits of bodies for burial.

By May, the amount of glass needed to replace the windows in Battersea, Wandsworth and Lambeth alone was 9 million square feet  enough to cover Clapham Common.

On the night of VE Day, 1,200 people were still sleeping in underground stations  and many dreaded going back to their home lives of lonely drudgery.

LONDON 1945 by Maureen Waller (John Murray 12.99, 560pp)

I shall certainly miss all the friends I have made when we leave, said Mrs Johnson of Gospel Oak, sleeping at Belsize Park Tube. And Ive only had one cold in the five years Ive been here.

When life didnt get better after VE Day  if anything, the rationing and queuing grew worse as the country had been bankrupted by war  even normally upright people turned to the black market and petty crime.

There was a sharp rise in female shoplifting. Dorothy Roberts was the cami knickers thief of Oxford Street. Like many, shed had enough of the shortage of underwear due to the lack of rubber for elastic.

It was a heyday for spivs and racketeers, too. The Suitcase Gang, run by a Navy deserter, simply went to the guards van of trains and changed all the luggage labels to Mrs Annie Harris of Islington High Street.

Soon trainloads of evacuated children started trundling back to the capital: eight trains per day, each carrying 1,000 evacuees. Out of 56,000 returning children, 19,000 had no home to go back to, due to death, divorce or abandonment by feckless parents who had disappeared to avoid paying the billeting fees.

By contrast, the pressure was on for wives to look pretty for their returning husbands. But the grim reality, after the initial euphoria of returning fathers arriving at the prefab door, was grey-faced couples sitting in silence, having grown apart. It was as if a wall had grown between us, one husband remarked.

The wives couldnt adjust to their hardened servicemen husbands stubbing out their cigarettes on the floor; the husbands couldnt adapt to their prematurely grey-haired wives no longer being the quiet, simple housewives they had first married.

Nothing, though, could take away the joy of that one glorious day, May 8, a day of pure relief and of hope for a better world.
Photo: @ChiefPalmer / Twitter

Vancouver Police responded to a rather bizarre call in Oppenheimer Park Friday afternoon.

VPD Chief Adam Palmer tweeted about a rather strange discovery on May 8, after police responded to a call of a man with a machete in Oppenheimer Park. He writes that officers discovered four replica guns, two machetes, and an axe with nails in it. In addition, they found an eight-foot-long boa constrictor.

Palmer playfully adds that, "You can't make this stuff up."

BC Housing has circulated a memo to people living in the park about the need to vacate the grounds by 6 p.m. Friday.

If people dont leave the park voluntarily, police may be called upon to enforce the evacuation order, said the memo.

Two weeks ago, the B.C. government unveiled a plan to move close to 700 homeless people from camps in Vancouver and Victoria into hotels, motels and community centres.

The plan was activated by a ministerial order under the Emergency Program Act that set tomorrow (May 9) as the deadline to clear Oppenheimer and Victorias Pandora Avenue and Topaz Park.

The order still stands for Oppenheimer but the government announced Friday that it extended the deadline to May 20 for the Victoria encampments to close.

All campers at Oppenheimer were offered housing, as of Friday, said Shane Simpson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, at a news conference Friday afternoon.

Were still hopeful that people will take that offer this afternoon, but weve been very, very clear with people that the park is going to close and that staying there is not an alternative or an option, Simpson said.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 14:46:08

Global leader in technology services expands international footprint and strengthens capabilities in EMEA and Asia Pacific regions

SAN ANTONIO , May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rackspace today announced the launch of strategic initiatives to meet the increasing international demand for cloud technology services. According to an IDC forecast1, by 2022, over 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a mix of cloud infrastructure needs, with the global COVID-19 outbreak reinforcing the critical importance of business agility and scalability.



Rackspace strategies to address this cloud increase include strengthening its position in the Asia Pacific region with a new office opening in Auckland, New Zealand, as well as an increased investment across the Netherlands and Nordics region.

The Auckland office will complement Rackspaces current APJ presence with other locations across Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore.

Rackspace continues to invest in the APJ region, with our mission to be the best technology services company in the world, said Sandeep Bhargava, Managing Director, APJ. We have seen significant growth over the last six months with customers embracing our unbiased expertise in their cloud journey.

As part of Rackspaces broader global expansion plans, the investments reinforce its commitment to ensuring Fanatical Experience across these regions, particularly at a time when organizations are looking to cloud solutions for greater efficiencies and disaster relief recovery. According to a recent survey by 451 Research2, 51% of enterprises expect to see major disruption to their business within six months.

Rackspaces New Zealand-based team will be overseen by Ian Kerr, recently appointed as Country Manager, New Zealand. The Netherlands and Nordics office will continue to be managed by Bert Stam, who was recently promoted from Sales and Marketing Director NE to General Manager for the region.

"Now more than ever, customers are looking to get to the cloud faster to take advantage of cost optimization and business continuity benefits, said Kevin Jones, Rackspaces CEO. Rackspaces investments and hiring plans around the globe speak to our commitment to meet and exceed growing customer needs.

Rackspace will recruit within the Netherlands and Nordics in 2020 and continue to provide consultancy expertise, aiming to double the size of the business in the next three years. With over 125,000 established customers globally, Rackspace can now offer additional support to its existing customer network, and also foster and strengthen new channel relationships.

The growth in our local Professional Services team has allowed us to successfully support customers in region with on the ground experts, said Martin Blackburn, Managing Director, EMEA. Cloud technology is experiencing continuous growth across a number of industries in the Netherlands and Nordics and were committed to providing best in class support for customers in the region.

Rackspace also received recognition this year as a Great Place to Work in its United Kingdom and Netherlands offices. This expansion follows the recent additional leadership and investments in the Middle East to enhance its regional support of hundreds of customers, market growth and maturity of cloud technology.

About Rackspace

Rackspace is a global technology services company dedicated to accelerating the value of the cloud during every phase of customers digital transformation. As a recognized Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for the last four consecutive years, we are uniquely positioned to manage applications, data, security and multiple clouds worldwide. Passionate about customer success by delivering Fanatical Experience, we provide unbiased expertise with proven results across all the leading technologies. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace has 40 global data centers and over 125,000 clients across 100 countries.

1 IDC Press Release, IDC Expects 2021 to Be the Year of Multi-Cloud as Global COVID-19 Pandemic Reaffirms Critical Need for Business Agility, March 2020

2 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, Press Release, Businesses Bracing for Major Disruptions from COVID-19 according to 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, March 2020

Contact:

Mikala Ferguson

Rackspace

mikala.ferguson@rackspace.com

210-550-6452
Delek US Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DK) shareholders are probably feeling a little disappointed, since its shares fell 4.0% to US$19.68 in the week after its latest quarterly results. Results overall weren't great; even though revenues of US$1.8b beat expectations by 11%, statutory losses ballooned to US$4.28 per share, substantially worse than the analysts had expected. Earnings are an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance, look at what the analysts are forecasting for next year, and see if there's been a change in sentiment towards the company. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

See our latest analysis for Delek US Holdings

NYSE:DK Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Following the recent earnings report, the consensus from seven analysts covering Delek US Holdings is for revenues of US$6.17b in 2020, implying a disturbing 31% decline in sales compared to the last 12 months. Per-share losses are expected to explode, reaching US$5.51 per share. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$5.70b and losses of US$1.56 per share in 2020. While this year's revenue estimates increased, there was also a loss per share expectations, suggesting the consensus has a bit of a mixed view on the stock.

There was no major change to the consensus price target of US$21.82, with growing revenues seemingly enough to offset the concern of growing losses. Fixating on a single price target can be unwise though, since the consensus target is effectively the average of analyst price targets. As a result, some investors like to look at the range of estimates to see if there are any diverging opinions on the company's valuation. The most optimistic Delek US Holdings analyst has a price target of US$60.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$11.00. With such a wide range in price targets, analysts are almost certainly betting on widely divergent outcomes in the underlying business. As a result it might not be a great idea to make decisions based on the consensus price target, which is after all just an average of this wide range of estimates.

Story continues

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. These estimates imply that sales are expected to slow, with a forecast revenue decline of 31%, a significant reduction from annual growth of 16% over the last five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the same industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 8.1% annually for the foreseeable future. It's pretty clear that Delek US Holdings' revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to note is the forecast of increased losses next year, suggesting all may not be well at Delek US Holdings. They also upgraded their revenue estimates for next year, even though sales are expected to grow slower than the wider industry. There was no real change to the consensus price target, suggesting that the intrinsic value of the business has not undergone any major changes with the latest estimates.

Keeping that in mind, we still think that the longer term trajectory of the business is much more important for investors to consider. We have estimates - from multiple Delek US Holdings analysts - going out to 2022, and you can see them free on our platform here.

You still need to take note of risks, for example - Delek US Holdings has 3 warning signs (and 1 which is concerning) we think you should know about.

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.
May 8 (Reuters) - Potbelly Corp said on Friday it is unable to file its quarterly report with the U.S. SEC by the May 8 deadline due to the COVID-19 crisis, adding to the restaurant chain's pandemic-led woes.

Chicago, Illinois-based Potbelly said the closure of its headquarters and staff reductions has resulted in its inability to meet the deadline, according to its regulatory filing. (https://bit.ly/3baaLZe)

The company said it now expects to file the report no later than June 22.

Closure of dine-in areas and restrictions on movement have severely dented sales at restaurants, including Potbelly's, forcing it to warn of impact to its financials in the first and future quarters.

Potbelly, along with millions of small and mid-sized businesses, snapped up the initial Payroll Protection Program (PPP) funding of $350 billion in less than two weeks.

After public pressure, Potbelly and other public companies returned federal rescue loans aimed at small businesses to help them protect payroll. Potbelly said it would continue to seek alternatives to support its employees.

The company also said on Tuesday it is likely that it will be unable to continue to comply with certain covenants contained in a credit facility with JP Morgan.

Potbelly, which had fully drawn the available capacity of $40 million under the revolving credit facility on March 17, also said it is in discussions with the bank about potential changes to the covenants as well as temporary waivers. (Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
Mumbai, May 8 : Divyanka Tripathis parents celebrated their wedding anniversary on Friday, and the actress called them "an example of unadulterated love".

She shared a candid photo of her parents which she found "irresistible to post".

"For a generation that doesn't express much but is an example of unadulterated love...this picture was irresistible to post.

#HappyAnniversary Mummy Papa. @neelam.tripathi121 @narendranathtripathi30 #NazarNaLage," Divyanka captioned the photo in which her parents are having a romantic moment.

Meanwhile, Divyanka has been enjoying the quarantine time with husband Vivek Dahiya. The two are quite active on social media. Among their most popular posts is the video of Divyanka giving Vivek a haircut.
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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were left tickled pink by stories of Churchill's 'secret' birthday message to his son when they chatted to Second World War veterans about their VE Day memories.

Champagne was flowing when Prince William, 37, and Kate Middleton, 38, made a video call on Wednesday to residents of an East Sussex care home to listen to them reminisce about the day the war ended in Europe on May 8 1945.

William praised the efforts of the wartime generation, and told them: 'Because we can't be together, everyone's still thinking of you all today, and are very proud of everything you've all achieved.'

Kate revealed Prince George and Princess Charlotte have been asked by their teachers to learn Dame Vera Lynn's famous wartime anthem.

She said: 'The school has set all the children a challenge and they're currently trying to learn the lyrics to the song We'll Meet Again... so it's been really lovely having that playing every day.'

Prince William, 37, and Kate Middleton (right), 38, during a video call with veterans James Pyett, 95, and Thelma Hobden from Mais House (pictured right), a Royal British Legion Care Home in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, on Wednesday

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (right) listed to the stories of veterans Charles Ward, 101, and Jean Hull (pictured left) from Mais House, a Royal British Legion Care Home in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

The residents had started their VE Day celebrations early, and when the royal couple asked what they would do when the Covid-19 outbreak was over, the sprightly group said they would hold VC Day - 'Victory over Coronavirus'.

With a glass of bubbly nearby, Charles Ward, the oldest resident at Mais House, a Royal British Legion care home in Bexhill-on-Sea, joked about how he served tots of rum to fellow servicemen on VE Day.

'We were in Greece at the time, and I had to go round early in the morning with rum for all the men,' he said with a laugh.

William replied: 'I bet you were the hero of the time there Charles, delivering rum out to everybody.'

Mr Ward, aged 101, had a varied military career during the war and, after first being called up into the London Irish Rifles, he later served in North Africa before joining the Special Operations Executive to encrypt, or cipher, messages from British agents parachuted into France and Italy.

The veteran, from South Kirkby in Yorkshire, told the Cambridges about working on 'secret' messages from wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.

Prince William praised the efforts of the wartime generation and reassured them that while we can't be together due to the coronavirus pandemic, everyone is still thinking of them today. Pictured, with Kate Middleton

The duke said Valerie Glassborow, Kate's paternal grandmother, was a civilian member of staff at the wartime code-breaking centre Bletchley Park, where her twin sister Mary was also employed.

The duchess, who was just one of a number of royals who have chatted to veterans this week, said: 'It's so sad that she's not here today, as I would love to speak to her more about it.'

Mr Ward later described the correspondence he received from the wartime leader, saying: 'The message came from Churchill, I had to decipher it, re-encipher it and send it to his son in Yugoslavia to say, 'Happy Birthday'.

'And then there was another one from the son to Churchill himself to say congratulations on your speech in Parliament.

'When I told William and Kate that story, they giggled.'

The residents began VE Day with a religious service performed by a minister on a balcony, to maintain lockdown rules, before they were entertained by a comedian and historian - in character as Churchill - and enjoyed a lunch washed down with more champagne.

Mais House went into lockdown before the Government issued social distancing rulings, has remained virus free and has been receiving supplies of personal protection equipment for staff, said Sue Barnes, the registered home manager.

Charles Ward and Jean Hull, alongside Susan Barnes, from Mais House, a Royal British Legion Care Home in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, during a video call with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Resident James Pyett, 95, also chatted to the royals and they quizzed him about his experiences of the Blitz.

The family of the veteran, who served as a driver with the Royal Corps of Signals during the war, were bombed out of their Limehouse home in the East End of London, but when they sought refuge in Bournemouth they found themselves targeted again by the Luftwaffe.

The 95-year-old said: 'I was blown up and put in hospital and my father said, 'Right, if we're going to be bombed here, we're going back to London'.'

Mr Pyett said his family were given a home in Clapham, south London, adding: 'We moved in on a Saturday afternoon and we were bombed out on the same Saturday night.'

He and his father were left covered in dirt after the roof fell in and they went to find his mother, who had sheltered from the attack in an air raid shelter.

William and Kate laughed when the 95-year-old said: 'My mother took one look at my father all covered in soot and dust and she said - and she was a real Cockney woman - 'I knew we bloody well should have stayed in Bournemouth'.'

The 95-year-old was in the Netherlands on VE Day, returning to his unit's base in Ghent, Belgium, and 'when we got back, we had a whale of a time', he said with a laugh.
Murel Wayne Dodson, 72, of Crossville, Tennessee, much loved father, brother, grandfather, uncle, and friend, died May 7, 2020, after an extended illness.

Mr. Dodson was preceded in death by his mother, Essie Dell Wilson Dodson and father, Willie Tillman Bill Dodson.



Survivors include his daughters, Charlotte Gaston and Contessia Woods; five granddaughters, Alycia Gaston, Michala Woods, Ashlann Woods, Contessia Woods and Raygan Woods; brother, Willie G (Thelma) Dodson; sister, Charlene Dodson Nowell; mother of his children, Reta Norris Becton; nieces and nephews, Gena (Tim) Jackson, Susan (John) Whittenburg, Christopher (Kathy) Dodson, Val Nowell, Scott Nowell and Todd Nowell; many great nieces and nephews, and a great number of extended family members and close friends.



Murel excelled in helicopter school in Fort Rucker, Al., prior to his deployment to Vietnam in 1967 with the 269th Combat Aviation Battalion. He served with distinction and attained the rank of Sergeant E5 before he was honorably discharged in 1968.



After completing his service, Mr. Dodson moved from his hometown to Chattanooga, where he would raise his family and live the rest of his life. He worked briefly with Atlas Chemical before beginning his career with Signal Plating in 1971 where he became an owner/partner and worked until his retirement in 2003.



Murel was a country boy at heart. He grew up on his family farm where he developed a love for hunting, fishing, and the outdoors. He was a very hard worker, but equally enjoyed relaxing by working in his yard and on his motorcycles. He loved his four wheelers, drag racing, and was an avid NASCAR fan. Murel loved music and reading; his favorite book was his Bible. He was a self-taught student of history and philosophy and never shied away from a spirited conversation or debate on any topic. He is dearly loved and his humor and charm will be long remembered and terribly missed.



Memorial services will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 16, in the Valley View Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home. Graveside services, with military rites, will be held at a later date at the Chattanooga National Cemetery.

Please share your thoughts and memories online at www.ChattanoogaValleyViewChapel.com.

Arrangements are by Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory & Florist, 7414 Old Lee Highway, Chattanooga, Tn. 37421.


WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Friday he has drawn historic lessons from an unusual source, none other than Richard Nixon  but then he quickly argued he hasn't followed all the examples of the only U.S. president to be forced to resign his office.

In a phone interview with the program "Fox & Friends," Trump said, "I learned a lot from Richard Nixon  dont fire people."

Later in the interview, he went on to stress the differences between himself and Nixon. But Trump has fired people. His 2017 dismissal of FBI director James Comey became a big part of investigations into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election.

More: Nixon, Clinton, Trump: Why is the political 'fire extinguisher' of impeachment more common?

More: Trump's Ukraine call and Nixon's Watergate increasingly drawing parallels as scandal erupts

Trump, who denied accusations that he fired Comey in an effort to cover up alleged cooperation between his campaign and the Russians, also said Friday Nixon made a mistake in firing a number of aides who wound up providing evidence against him.

Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.

Trump has also fired people who were under investigation over their possible ties to Russia. That group includes former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI; that case was dropped by Trump's Justice Department on Thursday.

In his Fox interview, Trump wound up stressing his differences with Nixon, including another denial that his campaign colluded with Russia.

"Number one, he may have been guilty," Trump said of Nixon. "And number two, he had tapes all over the place. I wasnt guilty. I did nothing wrong, and there are no tapes. But I wish there were tapes in my case."

Critical historians found Trump's history a little off base, and said he should be emulating more successful presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"So he basically studied Richard Nixon so that he could learn how to get away with things," tweeted historian Julian Zelizer. "Wish he had focused more on FDR to understand how to fix things."

Story continues

Aaron David Miller, a political analyst and author of The End of Greatness: Why America Cant Have (and Doesnt Want) Another Great President, said Trump should read up on other predecessors, such as Harry Truman.

"That Trump is invoking Richard Nixon  a president who undermined the very constitutional system he was sworn to protect  to explain away his own efforts to subvert rule of law is really quite stunning," Miller said. "As Truman said about Nixon  he may have read the Constitution; but he didnt understand it. Same might be said of Trump."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump said he 'learned a lot' from Richard Nixon (but did he?)
A couple weeks after the coronavirus lockdown began, a petition appeared on change.org, calling on the Poetry Foundation to establish a $5 million emergency fund to support the poetry community. The authors of the petition, the founders of a small publishing house, reasoned the sum would amount to about 2% of the well-endowed Foundations assets. The Poetry Foundation doused the idea a few weeks later, issuing a brief statement noting that while it already has contributed $25,000 to the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, it would not be making new commitments. The Chicago-based organization said it has a mandate to support its own headquarters and operations. But that endowment was valued at $257 million in 2018. Signers of the petition say it must do more for poets and writers right now. Read more here. Jen Day
Academy Award winner Robert De Niro revealed that he wants to play the role of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In his recent interview with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Hollywood icon was asked who he would want to portray if there would be a movie about the COVID-19 crisis.

NYC Governor Cuomo Gains A Fan

Right off the bat, De Niro mentioned: "I guess I'll play Cuomo," referring to the 62-year-old politician whose popularity continues to rise as he actively leads NYC against the devastating health crisis.

"The Irishman" star declared his admiration towards the politician while shading U.S. President Donald Trump.

"He's doing what a president should do," he told Colbert.

De Niro has been vocal about his dislike with the current president and even compared Trump and the NYC governor.

"I could see [a President Cuomo]. I am for Biden and want everything to go well for Biden, but at least we have a person who is very capable, a very capable backup if you will ... he's doing a great job, he's doing what any president should do," De Niro added.

An Anti-Donald Trump?

The "Dirty Grandpa" actor shared his frank political views against Trump, saying that America "could have survived" the coronavirus pandemic "if the idiot" -- referring to the U.S President -- had only done the right thing.

The 45th U.S. president gained criticisms regarding his actions on the ongoing pandemic, saying that the administration ignored the early effects of COVID-19 in America.

Multiple reports pointed out that Trump did not take the crisis seriously and has been downplaying the threat.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Approves Robert De Niro

Following De Niro's interview, Governor Cuomo virtually appeared in the same CBS show and was told about the Academy Award winner's answer about the possible pandemic movie.

"De Niro, I am a big De Niro fan," the politician told Colbert. "He is just phenomenal. The breadth of his ability, I mean, just look at all the roles he's played. He can do anything, right? Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, he can do comedy... how 'bout Taxi Driver?"

He also joked about playing the role of De Niro as Travis Bickle in the 1976 neo-noir psychological thriller film "Taxi Driver" in his next press conference.

"You talkin' to me?" Gov. Cuono said while imitating De Nir o's character.

"Oh, boy, that'd be a treat. I'm a big De Niro fan. He's a genius," Cuomo added.

The 62-year-old New York native politician was named as one of the most progressive governors after he became the face of coronavirus competence in the U.S. government.

He was praised for updating his fellow New Yorkers by providing daily briefings as he lays out hard facts and avoids sensationalizing information.

The state's three-term Democratic governor impressed the public on how he handled the situation given that New York is now considered as the epicenter of COVID-19 pandemic, having over 320,000 positive cases and nearly 20,000 fatalities.
MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio

Criminal simulation: Engle Road

Police went to Motel 6 at 4:24 a.m. May 4 for a report of a counterfeit $100 bill that was used to pay for a room. The front desk worker said a guest in a room had recently paid for a night with the $100 bill. She gave him correct change. She then examined the bill and noticed it was obviously fake.

Police spoke to the guest. He said his mother had been paying for the room, but she cannot continue it. He said he asked his boss for a $100 advance on his paycheck. He said he did not know the name of the company or any details about it.

He said he met his boss at 11:30 p.m. May 3, where he received the $100 bill. He then went to the motel to pay for his room.

Police asked him about the change he had received. He originally said he gave it to his girlfriend and that she had spent it in the 10 minutes before police arrived. His girlfriend, however, said he never gave her any money. He then admitted he had the money and returned it.

The counterfeit bill was taken as evidence. The two gave police written statements about the incident.

Possession of narcotics: Forest Oval

Police and the fire department went to a home at 2:17 p.m. May 3 for a person who was overdosing. The homeowner said he had found a man in the house struggling to breathe and called 911. The man was unresponsive. The fire department administered Narcan. He began breathing and was transported to the hospital. Police processed the evidence and cited the man.

Fraud: Lucerne Drive

A resident told police May 1 that he had lost $2,899 in a scam. He said his brother creates websites for $1,000. His brother, who lives in India, was contacted by a man who said he needed a person in the United States to send the money for his project. The residents brother then asked him to cash a check for him.

The victim, however, thought it was odd after receiving all the details. The victim eventually provided his address in order to receive the $1,000 check. He, however, received one for $2,899. He then told his brother about the larger check.

A man then contacted the victim and said he needed to send the extra money to a consultant. The victim again felt this was odd. He told his brother he would not send him any money. However, the victim spoke often with the other man and eventually agreed to cash the check and send all the money to him. He was given a routing number and an address in Maryland.

He cashed the larger check and sent the money. He learned the check was bad after it was processed. He contacted the banks wire team and made a claim.

Disturbance: Bagley Road

Police were sent at 1:15 p.m. May 1 to the Taco Bell area after a man struck a woman inside a car. The car, however, had left before police arrived.

Police found the car speeding on Interstate 71 in the high-speed lane. They stopped the car, which had two men inside. The driver had an active warrant and a suspended license. He also was not wearing a seat belt. The passenger did not have a valid drivers license.

The two said the drivers brother and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight, which they broke up. The couple were told they could no longer ride in the car. They said that is when they drove away.

Police asked the driver to get out of the car and saw a bulge near his belt line. The driver said it was a bag of marijuana. He was placed in the cruiser.

The passenger was patted down and placed in a cruiser. The cars inventory showed a black jacket that contained some type of narcotics. Police searched the passenger and found a small bag of marijuana in a pocket. The passenger said the jacket belonged to the driver, who initially denied it, but then admitted it was his.

The two received various additional charges.

Read more from the News Sun.
Dwayne Jones and his crew of staff and volunteers at the Galveston Historical Foundation were antsy, feeling like they ought to be busy with plans for their annual Historical Homes Tour as they normally would any spring.

So Jones decided, why not go virtual? Video calls are being used in a variety of formats for work meetings, happy hours and even mini concerts, so its hardly a stretch for a homes tour to go online.

For nearly 50 years, Southeast Texas families have spent Mothers Day weekend touring other peoples homes, and theyll be able to again this year even if its in a form that conforms to the new boundaries dictated by the coronavirus pandemic, Jones said.

From 1-5 p.m. on Saturday, the GHF will conduct four home tours live on its website  galvestonhistory.org  and at facebook.com/galvestonhistory. In between each of those tours, Jones and others will give talks. Jones will talk about the islands architecture and history; renowned architectural historian Stephen Fox will talk about the work of Houston architect John Staub, who designed three homes on the island; and a third presentation will be given by Plein Air Southwest, the juried art competition and show.

This is the 48th year for the GHF Historical Homes Tour, but Jones said that they could have an in-person tour later in the year if health conditions allow. The event usually draws up to 5,000 visitors depending on the weather and the homes on the tour.

Whats important is that the tour connects people to our island and our history, Jones said. Sometimes it makes them want to buy a house here and have their own experience living in Galveston.

Tom and Nancy Dalys second home in Galveston  the William and Mary Margaret Moody III House  is one of the four homes on the tour. Docents will lead tours in some of the homes, but the Dalys are taking on the task themselves.

More Information Galveston Virtual Home Tour The first two weekends in May generally are reserved for Galveston Historical Foundation's crazy popular Historic Home Tours, This year's 46th annual event is going virtual. You can get a sense of the island's rich architectural history by visiting facebook.com/galvestonhistory from 1-5 p.m. Saturday. The programming will include live walkthroughs of historic homes, lectures and presentations by historians and architectural experts. If you enjoy the presentation, consider making a donation to the foundation at galvestonhistory.org. See More Collapse

Other homes on the tour include two homes in the 900 block of Winnie, the James and Louise DeForest House (1883) and the McKinney-McDonald House (1890). The DeForest home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and is considered one of the islands best examples of Victorian architecture to survive the Hurricane of 1900.

The Charles and Estelle Miller House (1899) is the fourth home for the event, and its one that had suffered damage in a fire and was purchased and renovated by the GHFs Residential Revolving Fund. Some 30 percent of the home had to be reconstructed and it required a new roof and foundation stabilization; when the extensive renovation is done, the home will be sold.

The Dalys main home is in Braeswood Place in Houston, and they use their Galveston place for weekend visits for themselves, their children and grandchildren.

Designed by John Staub and built in 1938 for Bill Moody III and his second wife, the home sat vacant for a decade before the Dalys bought it in 2015. It hadnt been touched in a long time, prompting the Dalys to replace wiring and plumbing, do some exterior masonry repairs, replace the kitchen and completely remodel three of the homes six bathrooms. (Three others got partial makeovers.)

It was a beautiful but neglected building and was going to be a challenge, and I bit at the bait, said Tom Daly, a retired architect, of buying the house and embarking on an extensive renovation. Its a good example of (Staubs) work  not as extravagant as some of his big Houston houses, but its all beautifully done.

Daly described the home as a 1930s Hollywood house with Art Deco features, including a grand staircase inside.

It was built in 1938 for a whole different world with servants and formal living and dining. The kitchen was created for the cook  not for the people who lived there, Daly said. It was created as an upper middle class fancy house for people who lived with help. It not only had to be fixed materially, but reworked a bit to our kind of life today.
The staff at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science continues to create content online while stay-at-home orders are in effect.

In fact, some of the highlights include being able to view the movies screened at the planetarium.

Those movies include The Little Star that Could, Legends of the Night Sky  Orion and Legends of the Night Sky  Perseus and Andromeda.

Of course, you wont get the same feel as being in the dome theater, says Jim Greenhouse, the museums space science coordinator. There are plenty of opportunities to watch these amazing videos.

While the museum has been closed for the past seven weeks, Greenhouse says, the renovation of the planetarium is moving forward.

Renovations on a few other exhibits are in the works.

Weve taken advantage to get caught up with the work we couldnt get to on any given day, he says. It seems like were busier now.

The museum also is presenting the program Invite an Educator, which is offered for teachers. Various topics for all grades and interests can be requested by teachers from museum experts as part of a virtual curriculum.

The topics include:

 Our Cosmic Address  a fun lesson discussing our place in the universe using the latest images and discoveries.

 Tiny Titans  about baby dinosaurs, using the objects and content of the on-site exhibit Tiny Titans, Dinosaurs, Eggs, and Babies.

 Ask a Paleontologist  details are at the suggestion of the teacher.

 Meet the Bisti Beast  a really cool big, meat-eating dinosaur, a cousin of T. rex, found in New Mexico. Includes images of the animatronic dinosaur Bella and scientific images of the actual skull found in the Bisti Badlands.

More information can be found at nmnaturalhistory.org.

Inside this weeks Venue are also reviews of Netflixs latest films, Becoming and Hollywood, on Pages 4 and 6.

On Page 15 is an interview with a member of the duo Dos Gatos, the latest musical act featured in the Department of Cultural Affairs series Our Fair New Mexico.

I thank you again for turning to Venue and the Albuquerque Journal for your news.

Onward to another week.

Respectfully,

Adrian Gomez

Venue editor
The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has expressed its concerns about Aarogya Setu, a coronavirus disease (Covid-19) tracking mobile application developed by the National Informatics Centre.

On Thursday, the SJM said it has written to the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) and to the Union Ministry for Health & Family Welfare, flagging concerns about allowing e-pharmacies, including Aarogya Setu Mitr, to sale medicines in the country.

A government-owned web application should not be allowed to undertake an activity, which is against the law. There are over seven lakh chemists in the country, who will be severely affected by allowing e-commerce platforms to sell medicines, said Ashwani Mahajan, national co-convenor, SJM.

On Monday, the government allowed the sale of medicines and also seeking medical advice on Arogya Setu while launching the Aarogya Setu Mitr portal.

The platform, developed on a public-private partnership model between the government and Swasth Foundation, Project StepOne, Tata Bridgital Health and Tech Mahindras healthcare initiative Connectsense Telehealth, offers teleconsultation services and doorstep delivery of medicines and laboratory test results.

The portal collects the users IP address, postal code and mobile phone device details. Companies such as 1mg, Dr Lal Pathlabs, Metropolis, SRL Diagnostics and Thyrocare are engaged for doorstep laboratory tests, while Netmeds, PharmaEasy, 1mg, and Medlife have been chosen to deliver medicines and laboratory test results.

A government official, who is involved with the app and its backend operations, said that as public health was the primary motive of the app, telemedicine was the intended logical next step. We wanted to offer a 360-degree solution to users under lockdown restrictions. The Centre has identified the sale of medicine on e-commerce sites as an essential service, the official said.

Yash Aggarwal, legal head of South Chemists and Distributors Association in New Delhi, also criticised the move. He cited a December 2018 Delhi high court order that stayed the online sale of medicines without a valid licence. Its illegal to sell drugs online. On March 26, the Union health ministry allowed the doorstep delivery of drugs with some conditions making the online sale of medicines legal in the country, Aggarwal said.

Prashant Tandon of 1mg, whose company is delivering laboratory test results and medicines on doorsteps, said that they do not have access to a patients data. The data management for e-pharmacies are defined and violations invite action. The e-pharmacy can assess the prescription, and theres a clear audit trail for digital transactions. The regulator can track the sales of medicines on our platforms transparently, which some offline sellers, however, dont maintain, Tandon said.

He said that e-pharmacies are not allowed to sell schedule X drugs. Schedule X drugs such as narcotics are not sold online, as the draft rules on e-pharmacies dont allow them, he said.

Aggarwal also pointed out that when users click on the link on the Aarogya Setu Mitr portal to purchase medicines, it takes them to an external website, which is owned by a private firm.

There are security and privacy issues as well. How can we allow classified information about a person to be collected by a private company? Agarwal asked, demanding that the government immediately suspend the sale of medicines online.

In a letter to Principal Scientific advisor K Vijay Raghavan and NITI Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant, Aggarwal said, The notification issued by the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare leaves no doubt that home delivery was never allowed under the Drugs and Cosmetic Rules, 1945, and e-pharmacies are functioning against the law before the notification was issued. However, even this notification has not given them a legal right to operate and home deliver the medicines.

This notification is valid only in extraordinary times such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Mostly pharmacies act as aggregators, which are not allowed under the notification as a valid licence needs to be issued under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945. The delivery of medicines also has to be done by a licensee in the same revenue district, which further makes it clear that these rules are not meant for e-pharmacies, the letter added.
Pompeo will visit Jerusalem to see Benjamin Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz on Wednesday.

The United States Department of State said on Friday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week for a brief visit, a trip thats expected to focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus plans to annex portions of the occupied West Bank.

Pompeo will make the lightning trip to Jerusalem to see Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz on Wednesday as the Trump administration tries to return to business as normal by resuming governmental travel and reopening an economy devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak. The State Department formally announced the trip more than a week after plans for it first surfaced and a day after some Israeli media outlets reported it.

Pompeo will discuss US and Israeli efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as regional security issues related to Irans malign influence, spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. The US commitment to Israel has never been stronger than under President [Donald] Trumps leadership. The US and Israel will face threats to the security and prosperity of our peoples together. In challenging times, we stand by our friends, and our friends stand by us.

Alone among most governments, the Trump administration has said it will support the annexation of occupied West Bank territory claimed by the Palestinians for an eventual state as long as Israel agrees to enter peace talks with the Palestinians.

Pompeo and his small travelling party will need exemptions from Israels own virus restrictions that bar foreign visitors from entering and require returning Israelis to self-quarantine for 14 days. Pompeo will be on the ground in Israel for only several hours on Wednesday before returning to Washington, DC from his first overseas trip since making an unannounced visit to Afghanistan in March.





His arrival will coincide with the swearing-in of Israels new government, which is expected to occur on May 13.

After battling to a deadlock in three inconclusive elections over the past year, Netanyahu and his chief rival, former army chief Gantz, last month agreed to form a joint government.

Under the deal, Netanyahu will serve as prime minister while Gantz will hold the new position of alternate prime minister, giving each side effective veto power over the other. The pair agreed to trade positions after 18 months.

Their emergency government is meant to focus on the coronavirus crisis over its first six months. But their coalition agreement also permits Netanyahu to introduce an annexation proposal to the government after July 1, even if Gantz objects.

Annexation advocates believe they have a narrow window to redraw the Middle East map before Novembers US presidential election. They also believe it would give Trump a boost with pro-Israel voters, particularly the politically influential evangelical Christian community. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, has said he opposed unilateral moves by Israel in keeping with what had been decades of US policy prior to Trump.

A banner depicts Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White party, and Israel Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of Blue and White partys campaign ahead of an election, in Tel Aviv, Israel [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

The annexation agreement says that any step must be coordinated with the US while also keeping regional stability and peace agreements in consideration.

Netanyahus plan to annex portions of the West Bank has been met with harsh criticism from nearly the entire international community, including Washingtons European allies and key Arab partners, with the prominent exception of the US. Trumps much-vaunted Middle East peace plan allows for the possibility of US recognition of such annexations provided Israel agrees to negotiate under the framework of the proposal that was unveiled in January.

That plan calls for the creation of a Palestinian state but gives it limited autonomy on a fraction of the land it has sought. The Palestinians have rejected the proposal outright.
SPRINGFIELD  Even though schools have been closed for nearly two months, students have still been able to receive free meals every day through a collaboration between the Springfield Public Schools and Sodexo.

The districts food service provider has handed out half a million meals including breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack for all seven days of the week.

During a School Committee meeting on Thursday Superintendent of Schools Daniel Warwick said what the district has achieved is unprecedented.

Over half a million meals, nobody has done anything like that in Massachusetts, he said.

Warwick credited Sodexo with leading the free meal program.

Sodexo has gone above and beyond our expectations of how we would continue providing meals to our students during these unprecedented times, said Warwick. Some families actually depend on school for meals for their children and it has been a tremendous resource for these families to have this service available.

Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said its important to provide educational tools for students, but also care for their well being.

It is so vital that we continue to provide for our students and families not only educationally but just as important, nutritionally too, he said.

After hearing of the districts efforts on the news Deans Beans Organic Coffee based in Orange made a $5,000 donation to the food service program. The School Committee approved the donation on Thursday during its meeting.

Thats a very nice gesture, said School Committee vice-chair Christopher Collins. Ive very impressed because they approached us on their own, they are not even a Springfield based company. They heard we were feeding our kids and they wanted to help.

School Committee member Denise Hurst said she knows the owners of the company.

They are amazing people and Im so thrilled to hear about their donation, she said.

The meals are served Monday through Friday at 17 schools across the city including Boland, Bowles, Brookings, Chestnut Middle School, Commerce, Dorman, Glickman, Indian Orchard, Kensington, Liberty, Lincoln, Milton Bradley, Rebecca Johnson, Sumner, Talmadge, Warner and Washington schools. Parents, guardians or grandparents may pick up meals for their students. Identification is not required of anyone picking up meals for students.

Meal service provided by Sodexo is available to not only Springfield Public Schools students but to students from all schools in Springfield and from surrounding communities. The fresh fruit program will last as long as funding is available.

Related content:
Normal People star Paul Mescal once starred in an advert for sausages, and its led to his fans seeing him in an entirely different light.

Mescal, who has shot to fame as brooding Connell in the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooneys bestseller, made his acting debut in the advert, which screened across Irish television throughout 2018.

It sees him playing an ordinary Irish teenager who, upon eating a Denny sausage, is inspired to seize the day and travel the world.

But while it initially appears to have inspired him to head to Bali, he instead ends up travelling to the local County Mayo town of Ballyhaunis.

While Normal People marked the first time many viewers had seen Mescal, the Denny advert made him slightly recognisable to Irish audiences, who were thrown off upon watching the series.

Genuinely cannot watch Normal People without thinking about the Ballyhaunis Denny sausages, one viewer wrote on Twitter.

Another added: The fella that plays Connell in Normal People was so familiar to me but now I realise hes in the Denny ham ad for Bali/Ballyhaunis CRYIN.

Others have suggested that only true Mescal fans know of his meaty origins.

If you didnt want Paul Mescal at his Denny sausages then you dont deserve him at his Normal People, read one tweet.

Speaking to The Independent, Mescal revealed that he had personal parallels to Connells trauma, and was nervous about portraying his depression on-screen.
(all in US$ unless otherwise noted)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alio Gold Inc. (TSX, NYSE AMERICAN: ALO) (Alio Gold or the Company) today reported its first quarter 2020 results.



Q1 2020 Highlights and Recent Key Developments

Q1 2020 Consolidated Gold production 1 of 16,406 ounces at cash costs 1,2 of $1,276/oz produced.

of 16,406 ounces at cash costs of $1,276/oz produced. Announced a merger with Argonaut Gold (Argonaut) on March 30, 2020.

Closing of the sale of the San Francisco Mine to Magna Gold Corp. (Magna Gold) on May 6, 2020.

Florida Canyon Q1 2020 operational metrics continue to improve; 30% more gold deposited, and 21% more gold produced versus Q4 2019.

Cash and cash equivalents of $10.4 million, and net working capital 3 of $41.5 million as of March 31, 2020.

Our focus, like everyones, recently has been on the health and safety of our employees, contractors and communities in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Mark Backens, President and CEO. We have been heartened to see the resiliency of our people during this challenging time, and we are hopeful that the measures enacted over the past few months have made a positive impact on minimizing the damage to our communities, people and business. I am particularly impressed that during this challenging time, our team at Florida Canyon was able to turn in another record performance in terms of health and safety, as well as from a production standpoint. In Q1 2020, we had zero lost-time incidents across the organization and delivered a TRIFR of nil. In addition, this quarter Florida Canyon deposited 30% more gold and produced 21% more gold than Q4 2019. Since Q2 of last year we have more than doubled our daily mining movements and set a record this quarter by mining over 57,000 tonnes per day. This quarter we also announced a merger with Argonaut Gold which will result in the creation of a larger, stronger and more financially robust intermediate gold producer. We would encourage all securityholders to vote in favour of the arrangement in advance of the Annual and Special Meeting on May 20th.

Production and Financial Summary from continuing operations

($ thousands, except where indicated) Three months ended

March 31

2020 2019 Gold produced (ounces) 11,182 12,263 Gold sold (ounces) 9,901 12,201 Metal revenues ($) 15,571 16,081 Loss from operations ($) (1,445 ) (229 ) Loss and comprehensive loss ($) (2,096 ) (381 ) Loss per share, basic ($) (0.02 ) (0.00 ) Cash flows (used in) provided by operating activities a,b ($) (3,013 ) 2,525 By-product cash costs 2 (per ounce produced) ($) 1,276 1,076 AISC 4 (per ounce produced) ($) 1,472 1,267 By-product cash costs 2 (per ounce sold) ($) 1,313 1,094 AISC 4 (per ounce sold) ($) 1,534 1,278 Average realized gold price per gold ounce c ($) 1,582 1,307 a After changes in non-cash working capital

b Includes cash flow from discontinued operations

c The average realized gold price includes realized (loss) gain on derivatives

Florida Canyon Mine (100%-owned)



The Companys focus is on finalizing the ramp up of operations at Florida Canyon.

The Florida Canyon Mine was acquired through the acquisition of Rye Patch which was finalized on May 25, 2018. Florida Canyon is a past-producing mine, which was restarted by Rye Patch in 2017, with commercial production declared on January 1, 2018.

During Q1 2020, the Florida Canyon Mine produced 11,182 ounces of gold and 6,722 ounces of silver, a 21% and 8% increase, respectively, compared to Q4 2019. Mining capacity continues to meet expectations, setting an all-time record in Q1 2020. The average tonnage mined per day increased by 41% and 84% compared to Q4 2019 and Q3 2019, respectively. These increases were largely driven by the new loading and hauling equipment that was phased into production over Q4 2019. Further gains in future mine production are expected as more efficient mining areas are made available. During Q2 2019 and Q3 2019 when production was severely impacted by low fleet availability, mining areas were reduced in size resulting in loss of efficiency. Mining activity during Q4 2019 and Q1 2020 has focused on improving the configuration, access and size of the mining areas to increase productivity and efficiency, which is the primary factor for the increase in waste mining during Q1 2020.

Ore placed on the pad during Q1 2020 was in line with Q4 2019. Ore processed during Q1 2020 increased by 30% as a result of a 35% higher grade compared to Q4 2019. Metallurgical recovery continues to meet expectation.

Total operating costs per tonne processed remains low at $7.01 per tonne, within 3% of the record $6.79 per tonne achieved in Q4 2019.

The construction of the new heap leach pad (SHLP II) continued to advance during Q1 2020. Capital expenditures for SHLP II totalled $4.1 million during Q1 2020 or 27% of the total planned project capital budget. On a cash basis, expenditures were $1.4 million and were funded by the $15.0 million debt facility by Sprott. At the end of Q1 2020, the overliner crushing was 80% complete, 45% of the collection piping and overliner was placed and cut to fill activities were complete. During March 2020, dry stacking of ore began and permit to leach was submitted to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. Subsequent to Q1 2020, the permit was received, and leaching activities on the first cell of SHLP II were initiated on April 24, 2020.

San Francisco Mine (100%-owned)

Processing of the low-grade stockpile ceased mid-December 2019. During Q1 2020, operations at the San Francisco Mine were focused on the recovery of residual ounces in inventory on the pad. Gold production during Q1 2020 totalled 5,224 ounces.

Cash flow from operations during Q1 2020 were used to pay down existing payables.

The Company entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to sell the San Francisco Mine during March 2020. On May 6, 2020, the Company completed the sale with Magna under the terms of the definitive share purchase agreement. The San Francisco Mine has been reclassified as an asset held for sale and a discontinued operation for financial statement purposes.

Financial performance

Please refer to the Company's financial statements, related notes and accompanying Management Discussion and Analysis for a full review of the Florida Canyon and San Francisco operations and Ana Paula Project. These documents can be viewed on the Companys website at www.aliogold.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov.

About Alio Gold

Alio Gold is a gold mining company. We are focused on the safe and profitable production of gold from our cornerstone asset, the 100% owned Florida Canyon Mine in Nevada, USA. The Company also owns the development stage Ana Paula Project in Guerrero, Mexico.

Footnotes:

1) Production and costs include the Florida Canyon Mine and the San Francisco Mine.

2) Non-GAAP Measures: Cash cost per gold ounce and cash cost per gold ounce on a by-product basis.

Cash cost per gold ounce and cash cost per gold ounce on a by-product basis are non-GAAP performance measures that management uses to assess the Companys performance and its expected future performance. The Company has included the non-GAAP performance measures of cash cost per gold ounce and cash cost per gold ounce on a by-product basis throughout this document. In the gold mining industry, these are common performance measures but they do not have any standardized meaning. As such, they are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers.

Management believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, certain investors use this information to evaluate the Companys performance and ability to generate cash flow. Accordingly, presentation of these measures is to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.

The cash cost per gold ounce produced is calculated by dividing the operating production costs by the total number of gold ounces produced. The cash cost per gold ounce produced on a by-product basis is calculated by deducting the by-product silver credits per gold ounce produced from the cash cost per gold ounce produced.

The cash cost per gold ounce sold is calculated by dividing the operating production costs by the total number of gold ounces sold. The cash cost per gold ounce sold on a by-product basis is calculated by deducting the by-product silver credits per gold ounce sold from the cash cost per gold ounce sold.

Cash cost per gold ounce is calculated for the San Francisco Mine and the Florida Canyon Mine in the same manner as on a consolidated basis.

Cash cost per gold ounce produced on a by-product basis and cash cost per gold ounce sold on a by-product basis for Q1 2019 have not been restated.

For further details, refer to the Companys Management Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019.

3) Net working capital is calculated by deducting current liabilities from current assets.



4) Non-GAAP Measure: All-in sustaining cost per gold ounce.

All-in sustaining cost per gold ounce (AISC) is a non-GAAP performance measures that management uses to assess the Companys performance and its expected future performance. In the gold mining industry, these are common performance measures but they do not have any standardized meaning. As such, they are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers.

The Company has adopted an all-in sustaining cost per ounce on a by-product basis performance measure which is calculated in accordance with the guidance note issued by the World Gold Council. Management uses this information as an additional measure to evaluate the Companys performance and ability to generate cash.

All-in sustaining costs on a by-product basis include total production cash costs, corporate and administrative expenses, sustaining capital expenditures and accretion for site reclamation and closure costs. These reclamation and closure costs represent the gradual unwinding of the discounted liability to rehabilitate the area around Florida Canyon and San Francisco at the end of their mine lives. The Company believes this measure to be representative of the total costs associated with producing gold; however, this performance measure has no standardized meaning. As such, there are likely to be differences in the method of computation when compared to similar measures presented by other issuers.

AISC calculated for the Florida Canyon Mine and the San Francisco Mine excludes corporate and administrative expenses and accretion for site reclamation and closure.

AISC per gold ounce produced on a by-product basis and AISC per gold ounce sold on a by-product basis for Q1 2019 have not been restated.

For further details, refer to the Companys Management Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements and information contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable U.S. securities laws and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, which we refer to collectively as forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements and information regarding possible events, conditions or results of operations that are based upon assumptions about future economic conditions and courses of action. All statements and information other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as seek, expect, anticipate, budget, plan, estimate, continue, forecast, intend, believe, predict, potential, target, may, could, would, might, will and similar words or phrases (including negative variations) suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook.

Forward-looking statements in news release include, but are not limited to, statements which relate to future events. Such statements include estimates of future gold prices, current and future gold production at the San Francisco Mine and the Florida Canyon Mine (the Mines), the LOM of the Mines, revenue and cash flows generated by the operation of the Mines, operating, capital, cash, closure and all in sustaining costs associated with the Mines, gold grades and recovery at the Mines, mining rates, strip ratios at the Mines and future taxes payable by the Company and its subsidiaries; the Mines mineral resource and reserve estimates; and estimates, forecasts and statements with respect to mine plans and designs, including with respect to the replacement of the Florida Canyon mining fleet, the expansion to the leach pad and key infrastructure around the crushing circuit at the Florida Canyon Mine and the benefits expected to be derived therefrom, and planned activities to improve reliability and operating efficiency and reduce operating and sustaining capital cost requirements at the Florida Canyon Mine, as well as the potential benefits of the proposed merger with Argonaut.

Such forward-looking statements are based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including, but not limited to: the successful completion of development projects, planned expansions or other projects within the timelines anticipated and at anticipated production levels; the accuracy of gold price, production, revenue, capital expenditure, cost, reserve and resource, grade, mining, strip ratio, recovery, mine life, net present value, and tax estimates and other assumptions, projections and estimates made in respect of the Mines; that mineral resources can be developed as planned; interest and exchange rates; that required financing and permits will be obtained; general economic conditions, that labour disputes, flooding, ground instability, fire, failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate are as anticipated and other risks of the mining industry will not be encountered; that contracted parties provide goods or services in a timely manner; that there is no material adverse change in the price of gold, silver or other metals; competitive conditions in the mining industry; title to mineral properties costs; and changes in laws, rules and regulations applicable to the Company. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance or achievements, or industry results, to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. The Company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained herein.

Some of the risks and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release herein by reference include, but are not limited to: decreases in the price of gold; competition with other companies with greater financial and human resources and technical facilities; maintaining compliance with governmental regulations and expenses associated with such compliance; ability to hire, train, deploy and manage qualified personnel in a timely manner; ability to obtain or renew required government permits; failure to discover new reserves, maintain or enhance existing reserves or develop new operations; risks and hazards associated with exploration and mining operations; accessibility and reliability of existing local infrastructure and availability of adequate infrastructures in the future; environmental regulation; land reclamation requirements; ownership of, or control over, the properties on which the Company operates; maintaining existing property rights or obtaining new rights; inherent uncertainties in the process of estimating mineral reserves and resources; reported reserves and resources may not accurately reflect the economic viability of the Companys properties; uncertainties in estimating future mine production and related costs; risks associated with expansion and development of mining properties; currency exchange rate fluctuations; directors and officers conflicts of interest; inability to access additional capital; problems integrating new acquisitions and other problems with strategic transactions; legal proceedings; uncertainties related to the repatriation of funds from foreign subsidiaries; uncertainties regarding COVID-19; no dividend payments; volatile share price; negative research reports or analysts downgrades and dilution; and other factors contained in the section entitled Risk Factors in the Companys annual information form dated March 30, 2020, and filed on the Companys SEDAR profile.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, you are cautioned that this list is not exhaustive and there may be other factors that the Company has not identified. Furthermore, the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements included in, or incorporated by reference in, this news release if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as otherwise required by applicable law.

For further information, please contact:

Mark Backens

President & CEO

604-682-4002

info@aliogold.com

Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) nor the New York Stock Exchange American accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Police have dropped an investigation into former fashion student Darren Grimes, who appealed against 20,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission - Jeff Gilbert

Police have dropped an investigation into two prominent Brexit campaigners accused of breaching spending rules during the referendum campaign.

In 2018 the Electoral commission said that Alan Halsall, of Vote Leave, and Darren Grimes, founder of pro-Brexit youth group BeLeave, failed to declare a payment related to the campaign.

The watchdog said that BeLeave "spent more than 675,000 with (Canadian data firm) Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave".

This spending took Vote Leave over its 7 million legal spending limit by almost 500,000.

Vote Leave paid a 61,000 fine, but denied wrongdoing, while Mr Grimes won an appeal against his 20,000 fine in July.

The Commission also referred the pair to the Metropolitan Police but on Friday it was revealed that the investigations had now been dropped.

A spokesman for the Leave campaigners said: "The Metropolitan Police has written to Vote Leave board member Alan Halsall and BeLeave founder Darren Grimes to confirm that it will not be acting on allegations made against them by the Electoral Commission and various Remain campaigners.

"This marks the end of a two-year ordeal for both individuals."

Mr Grimes, 26, said the development called into question whether the Electoral Commission was "fit for purpose".

He had insisted since the allegations were first made that he was "completely innocent" of making false declarations in relation to the 680,000 donation.

In a statement, Mr Grimes, a former fashion student originally from County Durham, said: "The Metropolitan Police has found, after investigation and consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, that there is no case to be answered.

"Once again the Electoral Commission has been found to be part of the mob, a quango out of control that isn't policing elections so much as punishing Leavers who have the temerity to win them.

"My ordeal at the hands of the kangaroo court that is the Electoral Commission is now over, but questions must now be asked of whether that body is fit for purpose."

Story continues

Mr Halsall, the responsible person for Vote Leave, said he was "delighted to have been exonerated" and thanked the police for their "professional" investigation.

"I was very disappointed that my colleagues at Vote Leave and myself were never given the opportunity of making our case in person to the Electoral Commission before being fined and reported to the police," he added.

"It seems a rather unusual way of conducting an inquiry into such matters that only the so-called whistleblowers who made these allegations are interviewed by the regulator."

A spokesman for the Met said an investigation into the Electoral Commission's allegations against Vote Leave and BeLeave, submitted on July 17 2018, was handed over in October to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

"On Tuesday, March 3 preliminary advice was received from the CPS," said the force spokesman.

"This advice has now been duly considered and no further action will be taken."
Why it matters: Samsung this week said it has been working on a mobile-first money management platform over the past year and is nearly ready to unveil it to the masses. With the smartphone industry reeling, now would be the ideal time to roll out an alternative revenue stream to help stabilize its business.

The first step in getting there, the company said, is through a partnership with Social Finance, Inc. (SoFi for short). Together, theyre planning to launch an innovative debit card this summer thatll be backed by a cash management account. Additional details will be shared in the coming weeks, were told, so for now, were left to speculate.

Its been nearly five years since Samsung launched its mobile payment and digital wallet service to compete with Apple Pay. More recently, the companys Cupertino-based rival launched its own credit card backed by Goldman Sachs. Google is also reportedly working on its own smart debit card and Huawei has already shared plans for its own branded credit card.

Should this category of tech + finance really take off, it stands to reason that Samsung wouldnt want to miss out on it. And given the impact that Covid-19 has had on the smartphone industry (one of Samsungs top earning segments), it only makes sense that the South Korean tech giant is looking for alternative streams of revenue during this uncertain time.
Iowa Senate Passes Ag-Gag Bill to Stifle First Amendment Rights

Amid National Emergency, Trump to Strip Ocean Protections

Residents File Petitions to Create New Clean Energy Programs for Edison and East Brunswick

During Pandemic EPA Aims to Hamstring Clean Air Protections

Department of Public Works Proposed Regulations for New Dispute Resolution Process Just More of the Same

Court Rejects Meatpacker Efforts to Kill Lawsuit Over Slaughterhouse Pollution in South Platte River

NRDC: Trump Tries to Throw Out Environmental Reviews While Nation in Crisis

Trump's Executive Order Ignoring Core Environmental Laws is an Egregious Authoritarian Act

Groups Sue EPA For Unlawfully Using Clean Water Act To Let Factory Farms Pollute Secretly
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He who does not wish to speak of capitalism should remain forever silent about Nazism  I quoted West Germany's Max Horkheimer just few months ago discussing the disastrous, cynical and absolutely unnecessary attempts towards the equation of communism with Nazism, of fascism and anti-fascism.

Right than  in that text  I also borrowed from yet another Frankfurter, Herbert Marcuse on the self-entrapment of Western society. Back in 1960s, it was him labelling as repressive tolerance if someone in future ever considers a dangerous and ahistorical equitation between Nazism and anything else, least with Communism. Regrettably enough, that future of de-evolution started pouring in by 1990s  culminating with the current Covid-19 iron fist.

Umberto Eco  in his ur-fascism of 1995  of course, didn't see the entire world arrested on one pathogen, one narrative about it, one solution mandated for all, along with suppression of any debate about it. Back then in mid-1990's, Eco didn't visualise it but he well sensed where it might but should never go: Trivialisation of our important contents will brutally hit us back. (Immunisation of herd  as tirelessly agitated via media, inevitable ends up in herd loyalty: From pandemia to plundermia. 1930s are powerful reminder: From Reichstags Fire to Kristallnacht and on, and on, and on.)

Here we are today; 75 years after the glorious Victory Day, fighting (again) invisible enemy within. Therefore, the antifascist fundaments of modern Europe are today relevant more than ever. This is not our (political) choice, it is the only way to survive. Surely, any equitation attempt is a beginning of infection. And immuno-fascism, be it of 1930's or of 2020's always starts with silence, which is both an acceptance and accomplice. In vain a self-comforting excuse; Wir wussten nicht (it was others, not us).

To prevent it, revisiting the most relevant chapters of our near history is worth of doing:

No llores porque ya se termino, sonrie porque sucedio[1]

In fact, the 1930s were full of public admirations of and frequent official visits to an Austrian-born Hitler. It was not only reserved for the British royal family (e.g. Edward VIII), but for many more prominents from both sides of the Atlantic (e.g. Henry Ford). By 1938 in Munich, this 'spirit of Locarno' has been confirmed in practice when French President Daladier and British PM Chamberlain (Atlantic Europe) jointly paid a visit to Germany and gave concessions  practically a free hand  to Hitler and Mussolini (Central Europe) on gains in Eastern Europe (Istria, Czechoslovakia and beyond). Neither Atlantic Europe objected to the pre-Munich solidification of Central Europe: HitlerMussolini pact and absorption of Austria, following a massive domestic Austrian support to Nazism of its well-educated and well-informed 719,000 members of the Nazi party (nearly a third of a that-time total Austrian electorate), as well as a huge ring of sympathizers. In a referendum organised by the Austro-Nazis a month after the Anschluss, 99.7% of Austrians voted 'Yes' to annexation.[2]

By brokering the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression deal between Berlin and Moscow, but only a year after the Munich-shame  in 1939 (incl. the stipulations on Finland, Baltic states and Poland), Stalin desperately tried to preempt the imminent. That was a horror of an uncontrolled expansion of Central onto Eastern Europe and closer to Russia  something already largely blessed and encouraged by Atlantic Europe.[3]

This chapter would be definitely one of the possible spots for a thorough examination, if we only wish to diligently elaborate why Atlantic and Scandinavian Europe scored so much of Nazi-collaboration while Eastern and Russophone Europe opposed and fiercely resisted.[4]

For some 300 years, Russia and the Ottomans  like no other European belligerents  have fought series of bitter wars over the control of the Black Sea plateau and Caucasus  sectors, which both sides (especially the Ottomans) have considered as geopolitically pivotal for their posture. Still, neither party has ever progressed at the battlefield as to seriously jeopardize the existence of the other. However, Russia has experienced such moves several times from within Europe. Three of them were critical for the very survival of Russia, and the forth was rather instructive: the Napoleonic wars, Hitler's Drang nach Osten, the so-called 'contra-revolutionary' intervention,[5] and finally the brief but deeply humiliating war with Poland (1919-21).

In absence of acceptance, quest for the strategic depth

Small wonder, that in 1945, when Russians suffering over 20 millions of mostly civilian casualties (practically, an extermination of the entire population in many parts of the western Soviet Union), and by far the heaviest continental burden of the war against Nazism  arrived on wings of their tanks and ideology to Central Europe, they decided to stay.[6] Extending their strategic depth westwardssouthwestwards, and fortifying their presence in the heart of Europe,[7] was morally an occupation. Still, it was geopolitically the single option left, which Stalin as a ruthless person but an excellent geo-strategist perfectly understood.

Just a quick look at the geographic map of Europe would show that the low-laying areas of western Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe are practically non-fortifiable and indefensible. Their topography exposes the metropolitan area and city of Moscow to an extreme vulnerability. So, the geostrategic dictatum is that in absence of any deep canyon, serious ridge or mountain chain, the only protection is either a huge standing army (expensive and badly needed in other corners of this vast country) and/or an extension of the strategic depth.

Indeed, if we truly want to elaborate on why Atlantic and Scandinavian Europe bred so much obedience and Nazi-collaboration (with Central Europe) and largely passively stood by, while Eastern and Russophone Europe (solely) fiercely resisted and fought, we should advisably examine the financial, moral, demographic and politico-military cost-benefit ratio of the WWII, too. The subsequent, sudden and lasting Cold War era has prevented any comprehensive scientific consensus. The unbiased, de-ideologized and objective view on the WWII was systematically discouraged. Soviets consistently equated Nazism and imperialism while the US, for its part, equated fascism and communism. Until this very day, we do not have a full accord on causes and consequences of events in years before, during and after the WWII.[8] Therefore the paradox  the holocaust denial is a criminal offense, but all other important things surrounding Nazism and its principal European victims; Slavs and their states, are tentative and negotiable, elastic and eligible for a periodic political re-engineering.

The same applies to the comparative analysis of the economic performance of East and West.[9] E.g. was the much-celebrated Truman's Marshall aid to the post-WWII western Europe, originally meant to be the US reimbursement to the Soviets for the enormous burden they took throughout the WWII  the financial assistance that was repeatedly promised by Roosevelt to Stalin, but never delivered past his death in spring 1945? Saturated by the Nazi Germany beyond comprehension, the Soviet Union was rebuilding alone itself and Eastern Europe, while the moderately damaged Western Europe got  including Germany  a massive, ideologically conditioned, financial help.

In a nutshell; if we disaggregate Europe into its compounding historical components, it is safe to say the following: The very epilogue of both WWs in Europe was a defeat of the Central (status quo challenger) against Atlantic Europe (status quo defender). All this with the relatively absent, neutral Scandinavian Europe, of Eastern Europe being more an object than a subject of these mega-confrontations, and finally with a variable success of Russophone Europe.

Finally, back to Franco-German post-WWII re-rapprochement.

Obviously, that was far more than just a story about the two countries signing d'accord. It truly marked a final decisive reconciliation of two Europes, the Atlantic and Central one. The status quo Europe has won on the continent but has soon lost its overseas colonies. Once realizing it, the road for 'unification' of the equally weakened protagonists in a close proximity was wide open. This is the full meaning of the 1961Elysee.

(End of the last, 3nd Part)

Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic

Vienna, 09 MAY 2020

[email protected]

[1] Much quoted line of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; from Spanish: 'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened'.

[2] In his luminary piece, Rolf Soderlind states: unlike other countries occupied by the Nazis in the ensuing WWII, Austria embraced the March 12, 1938 invasion with an enthusiasm that surprised the Germans and which still affects the country. The role as victim-turned-accomplice in Hitler's crimes against humanity was a taboo for decades after the war in Austria After all, Hitler was born in Austria, which historians say was the cradle of Nazism at the start of the century. Hitler merely took the ideas with him to Munich and, later, Berlin. No wonder that a disproportionately high number of Austrians, including war criminals such as (Adolf) Eichmann and (Ernst) Kaltenbrunner, took active part in the systematic exterminations of Slavic peoples, Jews, Romas and other racially or politically 'impure' segments, manly from the Europe's East. Austrian Nazis, quickly proving to be even more brutal than their ruthless German masters, hit the streets after the invasion to intimidate, beat up and rob mainly Jews but also to settle the account with Social Democrats and Communists -- their political opponents.  describes Soderlind. This was not on Hitler's orders. It was a spontaneous pogrom. It was popular among Austrians to go after the Jews,'' says Gerhard Botz, professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna. On the account, American journalist Shirer reported: For the first few weeks the behaviour of the Vienna Nazis was worse than anything I had seen in Germany,'' and concludes: there was an orgy of sadism.'' A day after, already by March 13, 1938, Jews and other racial or political 'inappropriates' were forced to scrub the pavements and clean the gutters of the Austrian capital, the elegant cafe society that was world-wide admired as a stage for classical music, wise humanity and a shining example of Baroque architecture. As they worked on their hands and knees with jeering storm troopers standing over them, crowds gathered to taunt them,'' Shirer wrote. While the Nazi Party was banned in post-war Austria, most veteran Nazis were highly educated people who found a new career in politics and government. Professor Wolfgang Neugebauer says: They could not remove the entire leadership, because then the state would no longer be able to function. Even in the first government of Social Democratic Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in 1970s, four ministers were former Nazis Chancellor Franz Vranitzky in a speech to parliament in 1991 became the first Austrian leader to admit that his country was a servant of Nazism. Interestingly, German and Austrian leaders apologized to Israel (or generally to Jews) repeatedly, but not really to the peoples of Eastern Europe who were by far the largest Nazi victim. Illuminating the origins of wealth of Central Europe, Neugebauer admits: ''It was not until 1995 (time when all three Slavic multinational states have undergone the dissolution, and disappeared from the map, rem. aut.) that Austria started paying compensation to surviving victims of Austrian Nazi aggression. In the same fashion, Germany  considered as the Europe's economic miracle  in essence an overbearing Mitteleuropear that dragged world into the two devastating world wars, is a serial defaulter which received debt relief four times in the 20th century (1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953). E.g. by the letter of London Agreement on German External Debts (Londoner Schuldenabkommen) over 60% of German reparations for the colossal atrocities committed in both WW were forgiven (or generously reprogramed) by their former European victims.

[3] It should be kept in mind that for the very objective of lebensraum policy (character and size of space needed for Germanophones to unhindered, live and prosper), the Jews, Roma and behavioristic minorities were the non-territorial obstacle. However, Slavs and their respective Slavic states in Eastern Europe were the prime territorial target of Hitler-led Central Europe's 'final solution'. Therefore, no wonder why so much fifth column crop among Slavs. For the speeding and smoothening of the lebensraum objective, Quisling was needed as PM in Norway, but Slavic quisling-elites were cattled in each and every of that time major Slavic states  useful idiots in Poland, in Ukraine, in Czechoslovakia, in Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, etc.).

[4] One of the possible reasons was a fact that the Atlanstist nobility, wealth-clans and dynasties were mingled and intermarried with those same from Central and Scandinavian Europe. That was only sporadic in case of Eastern Europe, and totally absent in case of Russophone Europe.

[5] The 6-year-long insurgencies was largely financed and inspired by Western Europe as an overt 'regime change' intervention. It came at the time of the young Bolshevik Russia, and it subsequently saturated the country, bringing the unbearable levels of starvation and hunger up to cases of cannibalism. It took away 5 million mostly civilian lives, and eventually set the stage for a 'red terror'.

[6] The same applies to the Atlantic (Anglo-French and American) lasting occupation of Central Europe, which along with the Soviet one was the only guaranty for the full and decisive de-Nazification of the core sectors of continental Europe.

[7] With the politico-military settlement of the Teheran and Yalta Conference (1943), and finally by the accord of the Potsdam Conference (1945), the US, UK and the SU unanimously agreed to reduce the size of Germany by 25% (comparable to its size of 1937), to recreate Austria, and to divide both of them on four occupation zones. The European sections of the Soviet borders were extended westwards (as far as to Kaliningrad), and Poland was compensated by territorial gains in former Eastern Prussia/Germany. The Americans and Britons in Potsdam unanimously confirmed the pre-WWII inclusion of the three Baltic republics into the Soviet Union, too. Practically, Russians managed to eliminate Germany from Eastern Europe (and of its access to central and eastern portions of Baltic, too), and to place it closer to the Atlantic Europe's proper.

[8] Sadly enough, most of the popular Atlantist literature or movies elaborating on topics of the WWII are biased and misleading on the role of the Red Army, and are generally disrespectful towards the enormous suffering of the Soviet and Yugoslav peoples at that time.

[9] Comparing and contrasting the economic performance of East and West, many western scholars in 1950s and 1960s argued that the Soviet socio-economic model is superior to that of its western archrival. The superpower's space-race was usually the most quoted argument for this claim. Indeed, some dozens of Soviet space-race victories were so magnificent that it was impossible to hide them, as the ideological dictum would suggested. E.g. the first orbiting satellite (Sputnik 1, 1957); the first animal, the first man, and the first women in orbit (Laika 1957, Gagarin 1961, Tereshkova 1963); the first over-24 hours stay in space (Titov, 1961); first images of the dark side of moon (1959); the first man-made device to enter the atmosphere of another planet, and to achieve the soft landing on Venus and images sent from there (Venera 4, 1967; Venera 7, 1970); the first space-walk (Leonov,1965); the first space station (Salyut, 1971); the first probe to ever land on Mars (Mars 3, 1971); the first permanently manned space station including the longest stays in space (Mir, 1989-99), etc.

Author is professor in international law and global political studies, based in Vienna, Austria. His 7th book From WWI to www. 1918-2018 is published by the New York's Addleton Academic Publishers last winter.
Gandhinagar:

Chief Minister designate Vijay Rupani on Saturday resigned as the Gujarat BJP chief. Rupani on Saturday met Gujarat Governor OP Kohli to stake claim to form the new government, a day after he was elected by BJP MLAs as their leader. After staking claim, BJP state in-charge Dinesh Sharma announced that Rupani will take oath on Sunday at 12.40 PM.



Rupani, Sharma, Deputy Chief Minister designate Nitin Patel, and other state leaders met the Governor. However, incumbent chief minister Anandiben Patel was absent.



We have told the Governor that the BJP Legislature has endorsed the names of Vijay Rupani as new Chief Minister and Nitin Patel as Deputy Chief Minister, Sharma said after the meeting.



The Governor has given his go ahead for the oath taking ceremony which will be held tomorrow at 12.40 PM, Sharma said.



He, however, evaded a direct reply to a question on why Anandiben was absent when party leaders went to stake claim, and only said, She was present when she resigned. Today those who have been chosen are present.



The party also did not gave a clear indication on who all shall be taking oath with Rupani and Patel, saying all those details are being worked out.



On Friday, in a dramatic turnaround the BJP central leadership decided on the name of Rupani to replace Anandiben as the chief minister of the state, instead of Nitin Patel who was front-runner for the post till the last moment.



Anandiben had insisted that her confidante Nitin Patel should be made the chief minister of the state, while Shah had firmly wanted his nominee Rupani to be on the top post.



As a compromise formula, Rupani was made the Chief Minister, while Patel was declared as Deputy Chief Minister after intervention of central BJP leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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A controversial health unit order barring cottage owners who live outside Haldimand-Norfolk from using their vacation homes in the two counties remains in force ... for now.

The order issued by Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, Haldimand-Norfolks chief medical officer of health, threatens a $5,000 daily fine for violators and has drawn the ire of cottagers who say they are unfairly being kept from enjoying their own property.

The Long Point Ratepayers Association has appealed the order, arguing that it singles out Haldimand-Norfolk cottagers.

We are calling for the cancellation of Dr. Nesathurais order so that our members are treated the same as all other Ontarians with a cottage, said association president Karen Deans.

Nesathurai defended the move as consistent with provincial physical-distancing requirements to stay at home and avoid non-essential travel to limit the spread of COVID-19.

I think the vast majority of people will respect the order, Nesathurai said. Its about saving lives and ultimately improving the health of a community that is not well-resourced to manage a large outbreak of COVID-19.

But in a memo to the provinces health units dated May 3, Ontarios chief medical officer of health said that expressly forbidding cottage occupancy was a stretch, even if the public health rationale behind Nesathurais order was sound.

My current recommendation is to not prohibit access to secondary residences through legal order, but to continue to provide communications that discourage their use, Dr. David Williams wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Spectator.

While he advised other health units not to follow Nesathurais lead, Williams did not countermand the order issued in Haldimand-Norfolk.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford expressed skepticism that residents could be kept away from their vacation homes in Haldimand-Norfolk.

How do you tell people who are paying the taxes, paying the bills for the vast majority of the people there, to stay home? Ford said. Do you have enough bylaw officers (and) police to support this? The answers no, you dont.

But after a conference call with cottage country mayors, the premier changed his tone.

We had a really wholesome discussion with the mayors and I fully understand what theyre facing day in and day out, Ford told reporters on Thursday.

The premier asked cottage owners to limit their visits unless they needed to maintain their properties, and to bring their own supplies to avoid the need to shop locally.

This isnt going to be the typical May 24 weekend. Im asking you, please, dont bring a whole whack of people up, Ford said. Lets all work together and well get through this. Theres going to be many more weekends where we can go up there and have a great time. Right now, just respect the rules.

Nesathurai said political calculations play no part in his decision-making, but there is political fallout to manage for Haldimand Mayor Ken Hewitt and his Norfolk counterpart, Kristal Chopp, who were both on the 90-minute call with the premier.

Haldimands cottage country extends from Nanticoke to Lowbanks along the shore of Lake Erie. Hewitt said asking cottagers to stay away runs counter to all his political instincts to support local economic development and champion the region as a tourism destination

Its completely surreal to tell people Dont come and dont spend your money here, Hewitt said.

All the mayors in the smaller communities are desperate because they want to see their communities open up for the summer. But with that, one misstep can throw all that summer revenue out the door.

Hewitt said years of provincial cutbacks means Haldimand-Norfolks health-care system cant easily handle an unusually large influx of patients.

In the event that we end up with a burst of cases in this pandemic, we dont have the infrastructure to meet that demand. Thats the concern for our health unit, he said.

Nesathurai explained that the order allows for people within Haldimand-Norfolk to use their vacation homes because those residents are deemed less of a health risk than people travelling to the region from urban centres like Toronto, where there are more COVID-19 cases.

Irate property owners have called the mayors office to complain.

As a cottage owner, I can appreciate that, Hewitt said. (Nesathurais) position is: If I can save one life, its a good decision.

Hewitt agreed with Fords point that enforcing the health units order is a large challenge.

Its no different than the premier today asking the public to make the conscious decision to stay away from their cottages, Hewitt said. You can put all these orders and bylaws in place, but if nothings enforced, then nothing changes.

The mayor said he is more concerned with the health risk posed by the day-trippers who flooded Port Dover and Dunnville over the weekend.

Cottagers, in my opinion, are going to behave just the same as they would in their homes, Hewitt said.

I dont see cottagers to be as much of a threat to the community as those coming for the day and not social distancing.
Staff Sgt. Maurice Gosney was just a name carved on a white cross until a young Dutch historian went in search of the fallen American soldier's face.

Killed in an ambush near the German village of Sulzfeld on April 11, 1945, Gosney is one of more than 10,000 American servicemen and women buried or memorialised at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the southern Netherlands town of Margraten.

A Dutch-based band of volunteers is now on a mission to put faces to all those names.

It's a way of bringing history alive and of expressing their enduring gratitude to the Allied forces that liberated the Netherlands from five years of brutal Nazi occupation.

Historian Sebastiaan Vonk's Faces of Margraten project, founded six years ago, already has uncovered photos of some 7,500 of the war dead.

They were due to be displayed next to graves in Margraten this week as Europe commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in the continent.

But coronavirus restrictions forced the closure of Margraten and cancellation of the event.

Much to the disappointment of Gosney's niece, Kristin Wright.

Wright, from St. Louis, Missouri, had already booked tickets to bring her 85-year-old mother to visit Gosney's grave this week. She had to cancel the trip, but is already looking ahead.

Now we say, 'well, it's a great goal for next year.' We'll be there next year," she said in a Skype interview.

Wright's mother was just 10 when Gosney was killed by a sniper's bullet, but she still has fond memories of her brother from before he went away to fight in Europe.

He would always joke with her and pretend like he was hanging her up on the clothesline to dry. So that's like a real big memory, Wright said.

He called her 'squirt.' And in the letters that he wrote home, he would mention 'how's squirt doing in school?' things like that.

Wright learned about Vonk's project two years ago when she visited Margraten.

Since then, she has sent photos to Vonk and in return she's gotten a sense of her family's history coming alive.

Just a few days ago, her sister brought her parents around and they sat in Wright's back yard reading a book by a former member of Gosney's army unit that described the ambush and his death.

It was a really, really emotional thing, she said.

Vonk's work is not the only expression of Dutch gratitude to the Allied soldiers.

All of the graves at Margraten have been adopted by locals who regularly visit and bring flowers to the fallen Americans, buried in foreign soil thousands of miles from their families.

Vonk, 27, adopted one of the graves when he was just 13 and his fascination for the war and in particular the role of American soldiers grew from there.

He still visits the grave he adopted, of Lawrence Shea, an American infantry corporal from Brooklyn killed a little over a month before WWII ended in Europe.

I think everyone will have a different thought in that moment when they stand in front of a grave," Vonk said.

"For me, it's really a moment of reflection.

A rare moment these days, as the hunt for photos has proved very time-consuming.

Volunteers in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United States trawl through newspaper archives, libraries and genealogical sites, and contact families to track down photos.

One serviceman's picture was found recently because he was featured in a newspaper story about drivers caught in a speed trap.

Vonk and the other volunteers still have some way to go to track down pictures of all the Americans at Margraten.

In total, 8,301 are buried there and another 1,722 have their names inscribed on the Walls of the Missing.

The project has earned admiration from the U.S. ambassador in the Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra.

On Monday, Hoekstra asked Vonk to join him in laying a wreath at the graves in the tiny rural village of Opijnen of eight crewmen from an American B17 bomber shot down over the Netherlands on July 30, 1943.

What Sebastiaan does by putting a face with every grave, it's also that every face, every individual, will never be forgotten, Hoekstra said.

It's just awesome to see the thinking, the creativity and the initiative that he and his organization have taken. Wright's family is a case in point.

She said they rarely talked about Gosney's death until their visit to Margraten and involvement with Vonk's project.

It just made it all so present, she said.

And it created (an) unbelievable opportunity in my mind for our family to then kind of open up the box and start talking about this, and finding out more and making connections.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the future of the Grogans Mill shopping center still unknown after the closure of the anchor grocery store Randalls in mid-February, speculation about what is next for the oldest shopping center in The Woodlands is a frequent topic of discussion among neighborhood residents.

Worried residents grew more concerned in late April when a large team of professional surveyors showed up at the shopping center and began extensive mapping and surveying of the entire center, including surrounding roads. The firm worked daily from late April and was still on site on Wednesday continuing the work.

The firm, Gratia Geomatics, began doing intensive surveying of the entire shopping center the week of April 23. Teams from the Texas-licensed surveying firm were mapping out every utility, building and geographic and topographic feature on behalf of The Woodlands Development Co., said Isidro Xavier Garza, president of Gratia Geomatics.

The Woodlands Development Co., a subsidiary of The Howard Hughes Corp., owns a large church-like building called the education center on the north end of the shopping center that is connected to The Woodlands Resort via walkways and partially closed maintenance paths.

Garza said his firm was hired by the development company to map out the shopping center for an unknown possible Howard Hughes project. His teams of surveyors have worked on both Howard Hughes-owned property at the education center as well as many other areas of the mall not under their ownership. They also mapped roads around the center, including Switchbud Lane and South Millbend Drive.

We are (working for The Woodlands Development Co.). Weve been out there working on several projects, (mapping) out utilities and other work, Garza said in an April 30 telephone interview. We are usually not privy to any of their plans. Well go out and verify facts on the ground and report it back to them.

Standard work

Lorrie Parise, a spokesperson for The Woodlands Development Co. and the Howard Hughes Corp., confirmed that the teams from Gratia Geomatics were hired by the development company, but she said their teams were only doing routine work at the education center land the company owns. She denied Garzas comments about mapping their entire center. She also said the shopping center was owned by other people and companies, not The Woodlands Development Co.

Jim Carman, president for the Houston Region of The Howard Hughes Corp., said the teams were part of standard work at The Woodlands Resort.

We have no development plans, Carman said in an email to The Villager. Currently, we are doing standard work at The Woodlands Resort, which is owned by The Howard Hughes Corporation.

Because the ILUD  initial land use designation  for the shopping center gives primary control of the use of the land to The Woodlands Development Company, any changes to the center are are contingent on Howard Hughes approval.

The potential changes would need to be approved by the townships Development Standards Committee with some agreement from other local businesses as well. The center has nine independent businesses such as the Shell gas station, Dairy Queen and Becks Prime restaurant.. There has been no plans for replacing the Randalls as of May 6 and one business, New Lotus Moon, has temporarily closed but the owner is selling her stock online.

Thorny issue

During a February meeting of The Woodlands Townships Ad Hoc Economic Development Committee, the issue of the future of the shopping center was discussed briefly.

Township Director Bruce Rieser said during the meeting that replacing the Randalls is a thorny issue.

The problem in Grogans Mill is bigger than just the grocery store closing, Rieser said in early February 2020. It is a (shopping) center with multiple owners, which creates another issue. We are concerned, but there is not much the township (Board of Directors) can do other than encourage people and highlight the issue.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Still no news on possible Randalls replacements in Woodlands

Another Woodlands Randalls location also closed in the Panther Creek Village Center on Feb. 15.

Township President and General Manager Don Norrell said during the same February meeting that due to ownership issues, the use restrictions on the site and market issues facing grocery stores, that a resolution of concerns was unlikely in the immediate future and what would replace the Randalls and when would not be resolved soon.

At this point, were in an information gathering phase, Norrell said. This is not a 60 to 90-day process. It will take a while. There needs to be patience.

During Director Ann Snyders late-February presentation on the shopping center at the Grogans Mill Village Association meeting, she told attendees that Carman and Howard Hughes do not want an empty center.

Do I come with news of a new store? No. It will take time as we move forward, Snyder told the GMVA group in February. Ive met with Jim Carman (of Howard Hughes) and others. They do not want an empty (shopping) center. It is a concern of everyone. Something needs to be done.

jeff.forward@chron.com
Donald Trump and Mike Pence were tested for Covid-19

US President Donald Trump and vice-president Mike Pence have tested negative for coronavirus.

They were tested after a member of the US military who worked at the White House was found to have been infected.

A White House spokesman said the military official was identified by CNN as a personal valet to Mr Trump.

Great

"We were recently notified by the White House medical unit that a member of the United States military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus," the spokesperson said.

"The president and the vice-president have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health."

Mr Trump has now been tested at least twice for coronavirus.

A test on April 2 came out negative.

On April 3, the White House said anyone expected to be near Mr Trump or Mr Pence would be given a rapid Covid-19 test out of an abundance of caution.
President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus as Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listens. Read more

NEW YORK  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration. That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agencys decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste.

You have the greatest fighting force against infectious diseases in world history. Why would you not use them? said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan.

The complaints have sounded for months. But they have become louder following repeated revelations that transmission-prevention guidance crafted by CDC scientists was never adopted by the White House.

The latest instance surfaced Thursday, when The Associated Press reported that President Donald Trump's administration shelved a CDC document containing step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the current pandemic.

The administration has disputed the notion that the CDC had been sidelined, saying the agency is integral to the administrations plans to expand contact tracing nationwide.

But it's clear that the CNC is playing a much quieter role than it has during previous outbreaks.

The nation's COVID-19 response has seen a strange turn for the CDC, which opened in 1946 in Atlanta as The Communicable Disease Center to prevent the spread of malaria with a $10 million budget and a few hundred employees. Today, the agency has a core budget of more than $7 billion  a sum that has been shrinking in recent years  and employs nearly 11,000 people.

The CDC develops vaccines and diagnostic tests. Its experts advise doctors how best to treat people, and teach state, local and international officials how to fight and prevent disease. Among the CDC's elite workforce are hundreds of the worlds foremost disease investigators  microbiologists, pathologists and other scientists dispatched to investigate new and mysterious illnesses.

In 2009, when a new type of flu virus known at the time as swine flu spread around the world, the CDC held almost daily briefings. Its experts released information on a regular basis to describe the unfolding scientific understanding of the virus, and the race for a vaccine.

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

The federal response to the coronavirus pandemic initially followed a similar pattern.

CDC first learned in late December of the emergence of a new disease in China, and the U.S. identified its first case in January. In those early days, the CDC held frequent calls with reporters. It also quickly developed a test it could run at its labs, and a test kit to be sent to state health department labs to detect the virus.

But February proved to be a disaster. The test kit was flawed, delaying the ability of states to do testing. A CDC-run surveillance system, meant to look for signs of the virus in people who had thought they had the flu, was slow to get off the ground. Officials at the CDC and at other federal agencies were slow to recognize infections from Europe were outpacing ones from travelers to China.

But politically speaking, one the most striking moments that month was something that the CDC  in the eyes of public health experts  got perfectly right.

In late February, Dr. Nancy Messonnier  a well-respected CDC official who was leading the agency's coronavirus response  contradicted statements by other federal officials that the virus was contained. Its 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, she said.

Stocks plunged. President Donald Trump was enraged.

The White House Coronavirus Task Force moved to center stage. Vice President Mike Pence took control of clearing CDC communications about the virus. CDC news conferences stopped completely after March 9. Messonnier exited the public stage.

CDC Director Robert Redfield continued to keep the low profile he's had since getting the job. Two other task force members  Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health  became the task force's chief scientific communicators.

Health experts have praised Fauci, but they say CDC's voice is sorely missed.

At the White House briefings, they (CDC) should be talking about antibody tests and if they work. How long do people have the virus if theyre infected? What are the data for that? The issue ought to be front and center. These are the questions CDC can answer, said Dr. James Curran, a former CDC star scientist who is now dean of Emory University's public health school.

The government has continued to look to CDC officials for information and guidance, but there have been repeated instances when what the agency's experts send to Washington is rejected.

In early March, administration officials overruled CDC doctors who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, the AP reported.

Last month, USA Today reported that the White House task force had forced the CDC had to change orders it had posted keeping cruise ships docked until August. The post was altered to say the ships could sail again in July, the newspaper reported.

And last week, officials nixed CDC draft guidance that was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

The 17 pages of guidelines were never approved by Redfield to present to the White House task force, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They were only discussed at the task force level once the drafts leaked publicly, and no decisions about them were ever made.

Still, the CDC guidelines were the subject of intense debate at the upper echelons of the White House. Some officials saw them as essential to helping businesses and other organizations safely reopen.

Others, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, did not believe it appropriate for the federal government to set guidelines for specific sectors whose circumstances could vary widely depending on the level of outbreak in their areas, according to a person familiar with the discussion. What was necessary for a coffee shop in New York and one in Oklahoma was wildly different, in their view.

They worried about potential negative economic impact from the guidelines, and some aides expressed doubts about whether the government should be prescribing practices to religious communities.

The decision not to issue detailed sector guidance is also in keeping with the White Houses strategic decision to leave the specific details of reopening to states. While Trump had at one point claimed absolute authority to detail how and when states open, hes adopted a largely hands-off approach as more and more states begin to lift lockdowns.

Trump suggests his decision is in keeping with the principles of federalism, but White House aides acknowledge that it also lessens the political peril for the president  who has come under pressure from conservative allies, particularly in states that havent experienced wide outbreaks, to swiftly reopen the country.

The CDC did not respond to a Thursday request for an interview with Redfield.

In a recent interview with the AP, the agency's No. 2 administrator, Dr. Anne Schuchat, was asked to address reports that CDC recommendations were being ignored in Washington.

She paused, and then replied slowly.

The CDC is providing our best evidence-based information to policy makers and providing that on a daily basis to protect the American people," she said, without further comment.
While in Mumbai, Anirudh Dave is worried about the health of his parents who are in Jaipur, but most of all about how to calm the two restless souls from stepping out of their house during these Covid-19 times.

Mom and dad get quite restless. Stopping them from stepping out is a task. So, my sister and I try doing certain things to keep them engaged. This is the situation that a lot of senior citizens staying alone are facing. Almost every alternate day, my father is like Do minute baahar se kuch saaman leke aa jaata hoon, kuch nahi hoga, and I have to calm him down, says Dave of Patiala Babes fame.

Now his parents are a part of a senior members group, and keep themselves engrossed with housie and antakshari, with other members over video calls. Ive taught them how to do group chats and even play online chess. I also send videos and ask them for feedback, he adds.

As far as work is concerned in the post-lockdown times, Dave shares his thoughts about how showbiz will be affected. Talking about the uncertainty that looms large, he adds, I dont know whether Ill get the right kind of offers, and if the remuneration would be as good as it was before. There are several guidelines to be followed.But hes ready to face it, and says with conviction, Jab Mumbai aaye thhe tab bhi to kuch nahi thha, wahan se shuru karke agar yahaan tak pahuche hai to aage bhi kar paayenge.

Meanwhile, the 33-year-old has found a unique way to help those in need, apart from supporting people with food and money -- by recharging phones. Bahut logon ne bola ki phone mein paise nahi hain aur woh apne parivaar ya doston ke haal puch nahi sakte... Staying connected is important, he explains.

Unlike a lot of celebs, Dave doesnt believe in urging people to donate towards a cause as he feels those who want to, will do it anyway. Not everyone is using social media wisely. Many people are politicising or communalising things on various platforms. Thats wrong right now, adds the actor, who has returned to his childhood joys of penning poetry and playing the mouth organ these days.

In between I lost touch with them and now Im pursuing them again, says Dave, who may even consider releasing a book of poems in future.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

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New Delhi, May 8 : Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which has Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Chairman, is considering to buy a minority stake in Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL) digital unit Jio Platforms, sources close to the development said.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is among the largest sovereign wealth funds, manages over $320 billion in assets.

This deal would add to the three marquee investors who have already invested in Jio --Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista. Jio has raised a staggering $8 billion at a time when the world is in tumult because of the coronavirus pandemic.

After the Facebook (FB) and Silver Lake stake sale in Jio Platforms (JPL), RIL on Friday announced a deal to sell a 2.23 per cent stake in Jio Platforms (JPL) to Vista Partners for $1.5 billion. This takes the total equity flow into JPL to $7.95 billion for a total equity sale of 13.45 per cent.

Another Saudi entity, Saudi Aramco reports earnings next week and comments are expected about continued due diligence. RIL, in its analyst call, had highlighted that due diligence is ongoing regarding Aramco's proposed 20 per cent stake purchase in RIL's petroleum and petrochemical business.

While three investors have come in there are expectations of "similar sized deals" in Jio.

PIF, on its website say it wants to become the world's largest sovereign fund by a mix of domestic and international investments. In 2015, the mandate of the PIF was overhauled with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Chairman and the PIF to report to the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA).
The pass of people from five flights  Copenhagen, Alicante, Milan and two flights from Madrid took place

Almost 800 passengers were processed at checkpoint Kyiv in Boryspil Airport as the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported.

Totally, the pass of people from five flights  Copenhagen, Alicante, Milan and two flights from Madrid took place. After the landing, the border guards held the temperature screening of the passengers. No people with fever were detected. Any of passengers complained about health state, the message said.

One person from the Copenhagen flight went to the observation in a particular place.

All passengers registered at the app and obliged to stay in self-isolation at the mentioned addresses. The border guards checked the registration in the app.

Yesterday, the passengers' traffic through Ukrainian border slightly increased in comparison with the previous day, almost 14,000 crossed the border, the service stated.

On May 4, more than 350 Ukrainians returned to their homeland from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

As of May 8, the number of Covid-19 patients in Ukraine has reached 14,195. Over the last 24 hours, 504 new cases were registered. The number of fatal cases males 361. 2,706 patients recovered.
In few areas is the disconnect between law and practice so striking as in nursing homes. Enforcement seldom amounts to more than a slap on the wrist. When inspectors find that a facility has violated regulations designed to protect residents, states rarely impose a fine. The home is simply directed to correct the situation, and states often dont confirm that the corrections have been made. The rare fines are usually small and toothless. The average nursing home fine dropped from $41,260 in 2016, President Barack Obamas last year in office, to $28,405 in 2019  after the industry pushed for a change in the way penalties are calculated  according to Kaiser Health News. Fines on that scale are not changing behavior in the way that we want, Ashish Jha, the incoming dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told Kaiser. Moreover, experts widely agree that, simply to avoid neglect, nursing homes must provide slightly more than four hours of nursing staff time per resident per day, yet most provide less.
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Being at substantial risk of complications of diabetes such as cardiovascular disease or renal failure

Type 2 diabetes requiring insulin

Poor control of blood sugar levels despite taking multiple medications

Severe forms of obesity (BMI >60) or less severe obesity if there are at least three co-morbidities including liver, respiratory, renal or cardiac disease.

Need weight loss and/or metabolic improvement for other time-sensitive treatments such as organ transplants.

Standard access to bariatric and metabolic surgery can be reserved for patients who are unlikely to deteriorate within six months, but these patients need to be optimized using intensive medical treatment to maintain optimal control.

Professor Francesco Rubino, chair of bariatric and metabolic surgery at King'sKing's College London and a consultant surgeon at King'sKing's College Hospital, said: "In times of limited resources, patients with the greatest risk of harm from the untreated disease should be identified and prioritized for timely-access to the treatment they need. The misconception that bariatric surgery is a ''last resort'', the widespread stigma of obesity and inadequate criteria for patients'patients' selection can penalize candidates for surgical treatment of obesity and diabetes." "Social distancing policies and lockdown might limit adherence to lifestyle interventions such as a healthy diet and physical exercise, which can worsen the health of affected patients. Compared to non-surgical treatments, bariatric and metabolic surgery leads to greater long-term weight loss, reduction of cardiovascular risk, remission of diabetes and can improve survival.Professor Paul Zimmet, from Monash University, Honorary President of the International Diabetes Federation and a co-author of the study, said: "These operations are called "elective" because they can be scheduled in advance, not because the treatment they provide is less necessary. Metabolic surgery is a potentially life-saving treatment for selected obese persons with type 2 diabetes." "Experts from the DSS recommend the following to have access to surgical treatment within 90 days:The group also recommends mandatory COVID-19 screening pre-operatively for all patients considering metabolic surgery. Despite the theoretical higher risk of contagion for staff, the study found laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery remains the best approach, but appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) should be used.Source: Eurekalert
The U.S. Air Force's spacecraft known as X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is preparing to launch once again this May from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its sixth mission, and for once, the public is given a slight idea of what its mission will be.

Disclosing X-37B's Mission

This is somewhat of a surprise, especially since the public does not really know what the spacecraft is for and what it does since the Air Force has been secretive with the unmanned craft's missions and fueling different speculations and theories among the general public and anyone without high-security clearance.

Nevertheless, it is believed that the spacecraft is focusing on technology experiments on sensors and satellites, according to Newsweek.

Now, for the first time, people won't have to speculate that much as some of the reasons behind the missions were disclosed.

In a webinar hosted by the Space Foundation this Wednesday, Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, who appeared alongside General John W. Raymond, said that the Air Force's Rapid Capability Office had joined forces with both the Air Force Reserve Research Lab and the US Space Force to launch a mission that will maximize the spacecraft's "unique capabilities."

The Space Force will be responsible for the unmanned craft's launch, operations while it is in orbit, as well as its landing.

Read Also: SpaceX's Starship SN4 Passes Engine Test Says CEO Elon Musk

Hosting More Experiments Than Before

She also disclosed that the launch will take place on May 16 and that this is an important mission that will host more experiments than any of the previous flights X-37B took, including a couple of NASA experiments.

"One is a sample plate evaluating the reaction of select significant materials to the conditions in space. The second studies, the effect of ambient space radiation on seeds. A third experiment, designed by the Naval Research Laboratory, transforms solar power into radiofrequency microwave energy, then studies transmitting that energy to Earth," Barrett explained.

The seed experiments and the sample plate are for NASA, the Air Force said.

In addition, the mission, which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 (OVT-6) and Space Force-7, will be deploying a FalconSat-8, which is a small satellite that was developed by the US Air Force Academy with the sponsorship of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The small satellite will be conducting several experiments while it is orbiting in space.

It has already carried out five separate experiments on its own in the past, according to LiveScience.

Read Also: A Black Hole is Hiding in a Star System Visible to the Naked Eye, Astronomers Say

The Mystery of the Spacecraft

The X-37B program first began in 1999, but it wasn't until around a decade later in 2010 that it first launched.

In total, it has already spent 2,865 days in orbit after its five missions, which included a record of 780 days in orbit from its last mission that just ended last October.

Apparently, there are two X-37B spacecraft that are owned by the Air Force.

The US military uses them to test out a variety of technologies in the space environment and then return the gear back to the surface for the analysis, but most of the payloads that are being launched are classified, thus why the spacecraft and its missions are shrouded in mystery.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Amid a continuing rise in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19, the Union Health Ministry on Friday said people should "learn to live with the virus" while the nationwide tally of confirmed infections crossed 57,000 and the death toll neared 1,900.

The ministry also reeled off various datasets, including those showing a rising number of infection-free districts and an increasing recovery rate, to suggest success of the government's strategy in the COVID-19 fight, even as it sought "a behavioural change" and everyone's support in this massive challenge.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, however, admitted there has been no success yet in breaking the virus chain and said his government may seek deployment of central forces, if needed, to allow police personnel to take rest in phases. The state tops the nationwide tally for confirmed cases as well as deaths.

A large number of new cases were reported during the day from various cities in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, while Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha also reported rise in their tallies. However, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh reported only one fresh positive case each.

The economic cost of the COVID-19 fight and the ongoing nationwide lockdown also appeared rising manifold with Moody's Investors Service projecting India's economic growth at zero per cent for the current fiscal. It also said that a high government debt, weak social and physical infrastructure, and a fragile financial sector face further pressures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to experts, industrial and other business establishments may also face a huge labour shortage once they resume operations after the lockdown, which has been in place since March 25 and is scheduled to continue till May 17. Lakhs of migrant workers have either left for their native places or are in the process of doing so, including by trains and buses arranged by central and state governments.

There are also worries that the virus spread may grow further in newer areas following these movements, while a large number of Indians stranded abroad have also begun returning home in special flights.

During a press briefing on the COVID-19 situation, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said, "As we talk of relaxations to the lockdown and of migrant workers returning back to their respective homes, there is a big challenge in front of us that we also have to learn to live with the virus."



"And when we are talking about learning to live with the virus then it is very important that the guidelines that are there on saving oneself from the virus are adopted in the community as a behavioural change," he said.

It is a big challenge and the government needs the community support for it, Agarwal added.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had also recently said the people will have to be ready to live with the novel coronavirus and that time has come to re-open the city.

Agarwal said there has been a reduction in the doubling time of COVID-19 cases in the country from 12 days till two days ago to 10 now because of the spike in cases at some places, but asserted that the peak of the disease can be avoided if the prescribed do's and don'ts are followed.

According to the daily morning update from the ministry, a total of 3,390 COVID-19 cases and 103 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours till Friday 8 AM, taking the total number of cases to 56,342 and death toll to 1,886.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by different states and union territories till 6.30 PM showed that nearly 57,500 have tested positive so far across the country. This marks an increase of nearly 5,000 since Thursday morning.

Close to 17,000 COVID-19 patients have also recovered so far, giving a recovery rate of more than 29 per cent. The worldwide recovery rate has been hovering around 33 per cent for the past few days.

Since its outbreak in China last December, more than 38.6 lakh people have been found to be infected with this virus, while over 2.7 lakh have lost their lives. Nearly 13 lakh people have recovered so far, including about 2 lakh in the US.

In India, big urban centres across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi have been reporting large numbers of positive cases.

While rising numbers were reported from Mumbai, Nashik, Thane and Aurangabad, among other places, in Maharashtra on Friday as well, Tamil Nadu saw its tally rising by 600 to cross the 6,000-mark while its death toll also rose to 40.

On the outskirts of the national capital, Noida reported its first death while its tally of confirmed cases rose to 214.

Gujarat reported 390 new cases, taking its tally to 7,403, while the death toll also rose to 449 with 24 more patients dying in the last 24 hours.

Giving the district-wise situation of coronavirus cases, Agarwal said there are 216 districts in which no COVID-19 case has been reported till date.

On May 1, the ministry had divided 733 districts in the country into three zones -- 130 in red, 284 in orange and 319 in green.

Agarwal said 42 districts have had no fresh cases in the last 28 days while 29 districts have reported no new case in the last 21 days. Also, 36 districts have not registered any fresh cases in the last 14 days and 46 districts have had no fresh cases in the last seven days, he said.

In Kerala, which reported one solitary case during the day, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the state has flattened the COVID-19 curve.

He also said the state needed to be careful to avoid another wave of the deadly virus but asserted it was ready to fight it in such an event.

Among other people, several paramilitary personnel have also contracted the virus and one CISF official posted in Kolkata succumbed to COVID-19 on Friday. The number of active cases of the infection in the five paramilitary is more than 530, while thousands have been placed under preventive or clinical quarantine, officials said.

A total of five paramilitary personnel have died so far of COVID-19, two each from BSF and CISF and one from the CRPF.

Maharashtra's Health Minister Rajesh Tope said Mumbai should see a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases in the next 15-20 days.

Separately, a panel of experts, formed to suggest ways to revive Maharashtra's economy, hit by the COVID-19 crisis and the resultant lockdown, submitted its report to the government during the day.

Several states have been taking steps to shore up their resources, including by levying higher taxes on fuel and liquor.

After Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and several others, Himachal Pradesh government has now decided to impose a 'corona cess' on liquor sales, while Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy also said the territorial administration was mulling imposition of special COVID-19 tax on liquor to wriggle out of the current fiscal crisis.

The Madras High Court, however, ordered closure of liquor shops in Tamil Nadu a day after they were reopened, but allowed sale of liquor through online and door delivery till the end of the lockdown.

The Supreme Court also asked states to consider non-direct contact or online sales and home delivery of liquor during the lockdown period to prevent the spread of coronavirus on account of crowding at the shops.

Liquor shops were allowed to be opened in the third phase of the lockdown, which began on May 4, subject to compliance to social distancing and other guidelines issued by the government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nearly 600 inmates and staff have tested positive for the coronavirus amid an outbreak at a federal prison complex in Santa Barbara County, officials reported Thursday.

As of Thursday, 574 inmates and 25 staff members had confirmed cases of the virus at prison facilities in Lompoc, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

At the low-security Federal Correctional Institute, Lompoc, which reportedly began testing all inmates this week, nearly half of the inmate population had tested positive for the virus as of Thursday - 541 of 1,162, according to the BOP website.

Two inmates at the medium-security U.S. Penitentiary, Lompoc, have died from complications related to the virus, the BOP reported. As of Thursday, 33 inmates and 14 staff had confirmed cases of the virus at that facility.

Visitation to both facilities is suspended until further notice, according to the prison websites. The FCI Lompoc website states inmate use of telephone and email stations is suspended until May 18 to prevent transmission of the virus by touching keyboards and phone handsets.

Santa Barbara Countys public health department reported that of 109 new confirmed cases in the county Thursday, 100 were at the Lompoc prison complex.

On Tuesday, the BOP announced it was opening a hospital care unit inside the Lompoc complex that includes 10 double-occupancy, acute care treatment rooms. In a release, the BOP said that the complexs first inmate case was confirmed March 31.

Based on the size of the inmate population, the epidemic curve projected a high volume of cases, which would require a level of hospitalization the local community would be unable to meet, the BOP said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The outbreak at FCI Lompoc is the second-largest in the federal prison system; Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institute in San Pedro had 633 active cases of the virus among inmates and staff, with six deaths among inmates, as of Thursday, according to the BOP website.

Overall, 2,646 federal inmates and 244 staff at BOP facilities have tested positive for the virus, with 44 deaths among inmates, according to the BOP site.

Matt Kawahara is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mkawahara@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @matthewkawahara
The future of San Francisco restaurants could see dining rooms spill out onto parking spaces, alleyways and public plazas  thats the hope of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and the idea is already gaining support from city leaders.

Theres a range of things that the city should be exploring doing for restaurants as we reopen. Trying to activate public space to allow for social distancing makes a ton of sense, said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.

When restaurants reopen their dining rooms as shelter-in-place restrictions gradually lift, Gov. Gavin Newsom has suggested theyll likely have to cut their capacity in half. That would be a devastating blow to restaurateurs, who already operate with notoriously slim profit margins.

Looking for ways to help restaurants survive those restrictions, the restaurant association sent a memo to San Francisco officials last week requesting they temporarily allow restaurants to place tables and chairs in open spaces around their businesses, including parking spaces; nearby street space such as alleyways or commercial corridors; and neighborhood plazas such as Union Square. The memo also requested the city waive existing permit fees for outdoor seating through 2021, which could allow restaurants to expand or add sidewalk patios.

The association compared its proposal to the Slow Streets program, which closes certain public streets to through traffic so they can be used for recreation during shelter-in-place orders.

We would like to see a similar initiative for restaurants and cafes to promote the economic vitality of our local communities. By allowing and encouraging restaurants to be active outside of their traditional indoors spaces, we can create a safe and welcoming environment during this unprecedented time, read the memo.

It makes sense to Supervisor Aaron Peskin.

I think we can take that same model and turn it into a restaurant economic recovery package, Peskin said of Slow Streets. He also noted the San Francisco Italian Heritage Parade in North Beach already transforms parking spots into outdoor dining areas every year.

The effort will likely require a mix of legislative action by supervisors and implementation by individual agencies such as the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is in discussion with Peskin on the issue.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

We are actively working with key partners to best support the (restaurant) industry, said SFTMA representative Erica Kato by email.

Kato noted that SFMTA recently began allowing certain grocery stores and restaurants to convert street parking into temporary loading zones because of the rise in takeout and delivery.

Peskin said he hopes the city can enact some of these changes by June. Mandelman expects some parts of the approval process, such as waiving permit fees for outdoor dining, could be accomplished relatively quickly, but others, such as allowing restaurants to spread out onto streets, could take time.

Itll vary by neighborhood, by street, in the same way Slow Streets makes sense on some streets but not on others, Mandelman said. If there is a bright spot to this whole pandemic, it is that its pushing us to explore new approaches and new ways of doing things.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
We desis have it tough. The effort that we have to put in just to get a pint of beer in our hands seems to be a Herculean task these days. Apart from the ungodly long lines, social distancing mandate and the corona fees that many excise departments are charging nowadays, there is also the fact that a lot of wine and liquor shops have run out of our preferred brands.

 ANI

Truly, buying a decent bottle of gin, or even something as basic as a beer is becoming a task.



And then there is a village in Germany, which is giving away 2600 litres of beer for free to its local residents.

 iStock

No thanks to the coronavirus and the ongoing lockdown the world over, tourism all over the world has come to a standstill, which has resulted in a number of hotels and bars in some of the most touristy places to go vacant. This, in turn, has caused them to cancel their regular orders for supplies, like food items, and well alcohol.

 iStock

A brewery in the village of Willingen, Germany, which brews light and dark beer, had a large batch of beer with themselves, unsold. Since they could not keep the beer in their tanks as it would not just spoil the beer, but also damage the tanks, they had to get rid of it. Instead of throwing it away, they decided to give it away for free.

 iStock

Speaking to Reuters, the owner of the brewery, Franz Mast, said, We had hoped to give away about 143 gallons (541 litres) of beer. But that was gone within an hour. So we decided to give the rest of the beer away as well, about 690 gallons (2,611 litres). Better than discarding it, right.

 Winery

The people who had come to collect their free beer did so in a very disciplined manner while observing all the guidelines that social distancing dictates, properly. According to Mast, some of the patrons even left with a couple of buckets and boxes back home

Germany is renowned its export quality beer and has ties with renowned beer brands all across the world. German breweries supply beer to some of the most popular beer brands in the world, who sell them after rebranding them as their own.

 iStock

And then there is the Oktoberfest.

 iStock

The Deutsche Brauer Bund or the German Brewers Federation believe that for years to come, Oktoberfest may have to be put on hold. If this turns out to be true, not only will this be a significant departure from an institutionalised tourism event, it may be an indicator of how tourism as we know it might change.
Ithaca police are investigating shots reportedly being fired after an argument near downtown Ithaca, according to police.

Officers responded to the 300 block of South Cayuga Street at 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday after multiple reports of shots being fired in the area, police said.

They found witnesses who said they heard what sounded like an argument and then gun shots, according to police.

A dark-colored sedan was seen leaving the area after the gun shots, police said.

No one was injured, police said.

Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati via the Signal app for encrypted messaging at 585-290-0718, by phone at the same number, by email or on Twitter.
In the face of this global threat, the US should abandon its maximum pressure strategy against Iran and lift sanctions.

As COVID-19 continues to wreck lives and livelihoods across the globe, some countries, such as the United States, seem to be suffering the consequences of this deadly pandemic more than others, largely due to the shortsightedness of their governments.

Indeed, President Donald Trumps reluctance at the outset of the pandemic to take the necessary measures to stem the spread of the virus in his country led to the US having the worlds largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. So far, more than 1.2 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and some 76,000 others have lost their lives to this highly infectious disease.

Iran is another country that was hit particularly hard by the pandemic. According to official figures, there are more than 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Iran and some 6,500 people have succumbed to the disease. Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad, however, have cast doubts over these figures, saying the real numbers of cases and deaths are likely even higher than reported.

The Trump administration, seemingly in denial about its own shambolic response to the crisis, tried to blame the pandemics high toll in Iran on the incompetence and corruption of the Iranian government. The Iranian leadership indeed made some mistakes in its handling of this public health emergency, such as initially underestimating the threat posed by the virus and failing to close the countrys borders in time. It is, however, impossible to claim that the Iranian government is solely responsible for the devastation the pandemic has caused in the country.

Ever since Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and embarked on a maximum pressure strategy against Iran some two years ago, the Islamic Republic has been under strict economic sanctions that limit its ability to trade with other nations. These sanctions, which choked of Irans oil exports, crippled its economy and practically pushed it out of the international banking system, made it impossible for the country to swiftly take the necessary medical, economic and social measures to protect its citizens from the coronavirus.

The role US sanctions have played, and continue to play, in the devastation caused by the coronavirus in Iran led to renewed discussions on the effectiveness, legality and legitimacy of sanctions not only in Iran and the US, but also across the world.

Political leaders, diplomats, defence officials, experts, civic organisations and activists from Asia to Europe have urged the Trump administration to ease its sanctions against Iran to help the countrys fight against coronavirus and help save hundreds of thousands of lives.

In Iran, the government admitted that the sanctions make it difficult to obtain vital medical supplies and equipment to treat COVID-19 patients and called for their immediate lifting. Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, for example, tweeted that the US has moved from economic terrorism to medical terror by declining to lift the sanctions after the beginning of the outbreak in Iran in mid-February, and urged the international community to stop aiding war crimes by obeying illegal and immoral sanctions.

There have also been widespread calls for the lifting of sanctions in the US. Nine US politicians, including former Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, for example, sent an open letter to the Trump administration asking for sanctions relief for Iran amid the COVID-19 crisis. The New York Times, meanwhile, published an editorial calling for the easing of sanctions.

But there have also been calls within the US for the sanctions to not only remain in place, but also to be tightened during this time of crisis. A cluster of right-wing think tanks in Washington, led by The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and American Enterprise (AEI), for example, have been aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to escalate militarily towards Iran and tighten sanctions amid the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, published an editorial claiming it is no time to end Iran sanctions. We have seen similar think pieces published in other reputable American media organisations, such as Foreign Policy and Bloomberg.

For now, the Trump administration seems to be heeding the calls from right-wing figures and institutions to use the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to double down on its maximum pressure policy against Iran. So far, Washington has not only blocked Irans attempt to get a loan of $5bn from the World Bank to combat COVID-19, but it also further tightened its sanctions on the country. On May 6, he vetoed a US Congress resolution that would have terminated the presidents power to use armed forces in hostilities against Iran.

Trump appears to be eager to please Saudi Arabia and Israel, the primary supporters of his administration in the Middle East, by increasing pressure on Iran during this global crisis. Moreover, amid the pandemic, he seems more confident than ever before that the economic sanctions would eventually force Iran to return to the negotiating table in a weak and desperate position. He also likely believes by hardening his stance against an adversary during this difficult time, he can rile up his support base, encourage jingoism, and increase his chances of being re-elected in November.

But the US president is known for making major U-turns when it suits his political needs and desires. If Iran continues to stand tall in the face of increasing economic, political and diplomatic pressures, Trump may decide that easing the pressures on the country, and paving the way for peace may be more beneficial for his political future. He can point to the ongoing humanitarian emergency in Iran caused by the coronavirus pandemic to explain this about-turn. This way, he can claim that he sorted out the Iran problem without admitting that his maximum pressure policy failed to deliver the desired results.

It is impossible to ascertain which one of the two paths the most unpredictable US president in living memory is going to follow. If Trump continues to follow the advice of conflict-hungry hawks in Washington and the Middle East, we can see a military escalation between the US and Iran in the coming months. This outcome would not only further devastate an already conflict-ridden region, but also exacerbate Irans coronavirus crisis.

But Trump can still change course and use the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity for humanitarian diplomacy.

As a first step, he can remove the sanctions on Irans financial institutions and allow the country to receive at least a portion of its oil revenue. This would allow the Iranian government to swiftly buy the medical equipment and drugs it needs to treat coronavirus patients.

Then he can allow Iranians living in the US to send money and medical goods to their families back home  this would help elevate many Iranian families from poverty and help Irans fight against the pandemic.

Next, Trump can greenlight a prisoner swap between the two countries, and end the suffering of hundreds of families who are worried about the wellbeing of their loved ones during the pandemic.

As the final step in a COVID-19 humanitarian diplomacy package, Trump can allow for the normalisation of relations between the American and Iranian peoples. By allowing the private sector entities, and private citizens, in the two countries to interact normally, Trump could trigger a surge in American-Iranian partnerships in many sectors, including medical research and development.

All this would not compromise the negotiating positions of the two governments, but would encourage them to move towards peace rather than war.

The novel coronavirus pandemic is the most serious public health threat our world has faced in a century. It made the inhumane and unjust sanctions the US has imposed on Iran deadlier than ever. The Trump administration should immediately change course and lift the sanctions on Iran before it is too late. If it fails to do so, the consequences for millions of Iranians will be dire.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
SENATOR Paul Gavan says the reported outbreak of Covid-19 at Hanrattys Hostel is further proof the system of Direct Provision is not fit for purpose.

He was speaking after a resident contacted Limerick Leader claiming there were a number cases in the Glentworth Street refugee centre.

It is very worrying, but the living conditions under the Direct Provision system where strangers often have to share rooms in cramped conditions always makes the spread of infection in such centres more likely, the Sinn Fein senator said,We know from Doras Luimni that residents in Hanrattys are concerned and asking to be moved. I support the efforts of Doras to secure vacant accommodation at the University of Limerick, and would call on the Department of Justice to act without delay.

The majority of the centres 100 residents  predominaltly asylum seekers  were assessed for the deadly condition last Wednesday, and a number of people returned positive tests the following day.

They were taken to isolation units on Thursday and Friday. 

An ambulance, and a number of health workers, dressed in protective suits, were seen outside the centre/

A resident in the facility at Lower Glentworth Street - who did not wish to be identified - said: "We are scared. We are waiting to see if there any more results. I'm worried myself. Two people who tested positive come from my landing. So it's a big thing. I have an underlying condition too."

Testing was carried out after a number of residents expressed their concerns to management.

John Lannon, the director of the migrant rights organisation Doras Luimni said they have huge concerns at the risk of a coronavirus outbreak in Direct Provision centres.

"Many like Hanratty's are overcrowded, with people who are strangers to each other made to share rooms in cramped conditions, with little option throughout the centre for social distancing. We have been providing hand-sanitiser to residents since the beginning of the outbreak, but what needed to be done was to move people out to other accommodations around Limerick, at least for the duration of Covid-19, so that unrelated individuals are not sharing bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms," he said.

Doras Luimni had been looking at securing vacant university accommodation in an effort to reduce the number of people in a room. The Department of Justice did not comment.
The AAP government told the Delhi High Court on Friday that till April 9 it had disbursed Rs 19.8 crore to 39,600 workers registered with the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare (BOCWW) Board as relief package during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The Delhi government further said that it has provided old age pension of Rs 3,000 per month to retired construction workers through the board.

However, the relief has been provided only to the workers registered under the BOCWW Act as mandated under the statute and rules framed thereunder, it informed a bench of Justices Manmohan and Sanjeev Narula which listed the matter for further hearing on May 20.

The court was hearing a PIL seeking registration of all construction workers in the national capital under the Act so that all of them can get the benefit of the one-time relief package of Rs 5,000 being provided to each labourer.

The plea by social activist Sunil Kumar Aledia has contended that only a small section out of the over 10 lakh workers in the city are registered under the laws regulating their welfare and service conditions and thus, a huge chunk of the labourers are not getting benefits actually meant for them.

Delhi government additional standing counsel Sanjoy Ghose and advocate Urvi Mohan, appearing for the Board, told the court that only a worker who has been engaged for 90 days or more in a year is eligible for registration under the Act and can be provided the relief package.

On the issue of registering the unregistered workers, the Board has claimed that due to the lockdown, there are administrative and manpower hurdles in carrying out registration or renewal of the same as physical presence of the worker is required.

It would also be difficult to maintain social distancing norms if such an exercise is carried out, the Board has said in its reply.

"To do away with the requirement of physical presence or opening of the office, the necessary upgradation or change in IT structure would be required, which is not feasible during the lockdown," it further said.

It also said that during the lockdown itself, the Board processed the registration applications of 7,242 workers that were pending with it and disbursed the one-time relief package to them also.

"Thus, a total of Rs 19.8 crore has been given as relief to 39,600 registered construction workers," it said.

On the issue of registration, the Board said it had sent letters to over 7,000 contractors to furnish details of workers employed by them, but only 210 of them have responded.

It also said that efforts are being made to launch an online application portal for convenience of the workers to get themselves registered.

The petition by Aledia has contended that despite collection of over Rs 2,000 crore under the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act in the names of lakhs of workers, only around 37,127 construction labourers who are registered are getting the benefits.

It has also claimed that there has been gross under-registration of construction workers in the national capital since 2015.

The petition has contended that the lockdown has led to work and wages being denied to the labourers and the relief granted by governments, through direct benefit transfers or orders to pay wages, are not available to those not registered.

It has further contended that due to lack of responsibility by employers, governments, and concerned departments, these workers have been left to fend for themselves and also deprived of the mandated benefit of crores of funds collected in their names.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON - The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block a ruling that requires the Justice Department to give Congress certain secret grand jury material from Robert Mueller III's special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in March cleared the way for Congress to access certain secret evidence from Mueller's investigation in one of a set of separation-of-powers lawsuits between House Democrats and the Trump administration.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court on Thursday that if it does not put the order on hold, the government will have to disclose those materials Monday, "which would irrevocably lift their secrecy and possibly frustrate the government's ability to seek further review."

He said lawyers for the House had agreed to a one-week extension while the court considered the Justice Department's request.

The House Judiciary Committee went to court in July before the formal start of its impeachment proceedings involving President Donald Trump's alleged effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, now the presumptive nominee to challenge Trump in November. A divided District Circuit found the House was legally engaged in a judicial process that exempts Congress from secrecy rules that typically shield grand jury materials from disclosure.

Mueller's report found insufficient evidence to conclude the Trump campaign encouraged Russia's interference, and neither concluded the president had obstructed justice nor exonerated him. The Justice Department released a redacted version of Mueller's report, and said it would provide congressional leaders with the full report minus the grand-jury materials. It said Attorney General William Barr lacked discretion to release that information.

Although Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February, House Democrats have told the District Circuit that their investigation into possible misconduct by the president is ongoing, and that the grand jury material will inform its determination of whether Trump obstructed Mueller's investigation and whether to recommend new articles of impeachment against the president.

"The current pandemic notwithstanding, the Committee's investigation is not 'dormant.' The Committee continues to exercise its investigative and oversight responsibilities; its staff are ready and able to review the requested grand jury materials as soon as they are provided by DOJ; and the Committee remains able to convene formal hearings to further its investigation," House Democrats told the D.C. Circuit in a recent filing.

In its 2-1 opinion, the District Circuit said grand jury records are court records - not Justice Department records - and have historically been released to Congress in the course of impeachment investigations involving three federal judges and two presidents.

The House Judiciary Committee's "need for the grand jury materials remains unchanged. The Committee has repeatedly stated that if the grand jury materials reveal new evidence of impeachable offenses, the Committee may recommend new articles of impeachment," wrote Judge Judith Rogers, who was joined by Judge Thomas Griffith.

"Courts must take care not to second-guess the manner in which the House plans to proceed with its impeachment investigation or interfere with the House's sole power of impeachment," wrote Rogers.

Judge Neomi Rao dissented, saying the House Judiciary Committee lacks legal grounds to ask the court to enforce a subpoena for the grand jury materials. Rao would have returned the case to district court to determine whether the committee can still show its "inquiry is preliminary to an impeachment proceeding and that it has a 'particularized need' for disclosure."

Francisco said that was one of the problems with the circuit court's decision. He said the Supreme Court needed to weigh in on a case with substantial constitutional questions and that neither it nor another appeals court has directly addressed whether a "judicial proceeding" includes a Senate impeachment.
Just the other day, we had told you about rumours doing the rounds that makers of Pushpa are spending a whopping amount of Rs 6 crore for a 6-minute action sequence. Well, we must say that even amid the lockdown, the core team is completely focused on the action-thriller. Every minute detail, including Allu Arjun's appearance in the movie, is being taken care of very well.

As per the rumours, director Sukumar is taking special care regarding the actor's look, costumes, and body language. It is said that the makers are soaking Allu Arjun's costumes in tea and are washing them off after a few days, in order to get a natural grubby look. It is to be noted that the role taken up by the Stylish Star is challenging as well as unusual, from his conventional roles in the past. Therefore the director is leaving no stone unturned to make the most-promising film of the year a huge success at theatres. The makers are getting a lot of time to check errors in the content and take care of the actor's look and presentation on screen, thanks to the lockdown. Of lately, it was also rumoured that Sukumar has dropped the plan of hiring Thailand stunt choreographers, to cut down the expenses amid the Coronavirus pandemic.

Pushpa will revolve around red sandalwood smuggling, wherein Allu Arjun will appear in an intense rough and avatar of a lorry driver. Karnataka's crush, Rashmika Mandanna will essay the role of a forest officer in the high-octane thriller. Earlier, Vijay Sethupathi was supposed to feature as a police officer in the movie, but the actor backed off from the project, owing to creative differences with the makers. Sandalwood star Dhananjay was then roped in to reprise the role. Pushpa is bankrolled jointly by Mythri Movie Makers and Muttamsetty Media, with music composed by Devi Sri Prasad.

Allu Arjun's Pushpa: Sukumar to Spend a Whopping Amount For A Few Minutes Action Sequence?

No Stylish Dance Moves For Allu Arjun In Pushpa? Here Is The Reason!

Pushpa: Allu Arjun Will Not Romance Rashmika Mandanna But THIS Actress
Jenni 'JWoww' Farley and Paul 'Pauly D' Delvecchio, Jr., nearly 'banged' on Thursday's epic episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.

The longtime friends, who met 11 years ago while taping the original Jersey Shore series, had long been interested in each other, but the timing was never right.

But at castmate Angelina Pivarnick's New Orleans bachelorette party, their flirtation revived itself, with both of them saying they wanted to have sex with each other.

In bed: Jenni 'JWoww' Farley and Paul 'Pauly D' Delvecchio, Jr., nearly had sex on Thursday's epic episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation after flirting heavily at a strip club

At a strip club, Pauly D, 39, joked that he would pay 'infinity' for a lap dance from Jenni, 34, and offered to give her his bank account and routing number.

'I don't need your routing number,' Jenni returned. 'Just you.'

They stumbled back to their hotel with the cast and climbed into bed together, as their friends cheered them on, hoping they'd hook up.

'No disrespect,' Pauly told Jenni. 'You're amazing. You smell amazing. You look amazing.'

Bachelorette party: Pauly and JWoww ended up in bed together during the bachelorette party

Good question: The flirting started with Pauly asking JWoww, 'How much for a lap dance?'

Jenni was interested, yet wary as she'd made a move on Pauly months before, only to be shut down. She'd also just gone through a bad breakup and a divorce.

She kissed Pauly on the cheek and they went their separate ways, still curious and frustrated.

Their Jersey Shore roommates booed.

Old friends: Jenni kissed Pauly on the cheek and they went their separate ways, still curious and frustrated

'Green light's there, people!' Deena Cortese, 33, said to the cameras. 'Let's just do some sex!'

Pauly and Jenni had a lot of history together. During Jersey Shore's first season, in 2009, they kissed and crawled into bed together, where Pauly showed Jenni his pierced privates.

'You don't understand how bad I want you,' Pauly told her then.

Do it: 'Green light's there, people! Let's just do some sex!', Deena Cortese, 33, said to the cameras

Longtime flame: Jenni was shown getting up close and personal with Pauly in a throwback clip

In New Orleans, Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino, 37, watched as the two of them rekindled that old flame.

'I'm starting to pick up on season one vibes between JWoww and Pauly D,' he marveled.

Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi, 32, loved it, saying, 'I feel like everyone wants Jenni and Pauly to be a thing. And so do I.'

Vibes back: 'I'm starting to pick up on season one vibes between JWoww and Pauly D,' said Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino

Earlier that day, Jenni had flown into New Orleans for the bachelorette party, unaware that the men were there.

She was furious with Vinny Guadagnino, 32, for not telling her that her ex-boyfriend, ZacK Carpinello, 24, had aggressively hit on Angelina, 33, last season.

She'd only learned the truth when she saw it on TV, and felt 'betrayed,' because Vinny had downplayed the incident.

She's back: Jenni had flown into New Orleans for the bachelorette party, unaware that the men were there

But to everyone's surprise, she played it cool, saying, 'Right now, I feel like it's best just to ignore the situation, be fake and happy and smile. Princess Diana with a fake tan.'

At dinner that evening, everyone toasted Angelina's upcoming nuptials.

Jenni made a point to tell Angelina how glad she was to be her bridesmaid.

The bachelorette: The crew was in New Orleans for Angelina Pivarnick's bachelorette party

'Oh s***,' Angelina said to herself, realizing she'd forgotten to tell Jenni she'd replaced her after the two of them fought about Zack.

Vinny, who'd had his ups and downs with Angelina, confessed that he used to look at her and think 'that's a cool girl. I'll never get a girl like that.'

'I knew it!' Angelina told the cameras. 'He's in love with me. I think when I walk down the aisle, he's going to be like, ''My chance is officially over.''

Cool girl: Vinny, who'd had his ups and downs with Angelina, confessed that he used to look at her and think 'that's a cool girl. I'll never get a girl like that'

Knew it: 'I knew it! He's in love with me,' Angelina told the cameras

The guys then commandeered the party, with Pauly walking down Bourbon Street yelling, 'I got the bachelorette with me!'

The cast proceeded to get very drunk, and Vinny and Jenni had a talk and resolved matters.

'I just felt, honestly, just blindsided,' Jenni told him, adding that she'd been especially embarrassed for having gone after Angelina when it was Zack's fault.

Famous street: The guys then commandeered the party, with Pauly walking down Bourbon Street yelling, 'I got the bachelorette with me!'

'You have every right to be mad at me,' Vinny admitted, as he and Jenni then made up.

After that, everyone's spirits were higher, and Jenni and Pauly started flirting with each other.

'You should date Pauly,' Angelina told Jenni. 'Just f*** him and that's it. For my party, I want to see it.'

Making up: Jenni was initially mad at Vinny but cooled off when she saw him

Every right: 'You have every right to be mad at me,' Vinny admitted, as he and Jenni then made up

'Am I still allowed to your wedding?' Jenni asked.

'We need to talk about that,' Angelina replied, breaking the bridesmaid news to her.

Jenni said she understood, but moaned, 'In 96 hours, my void was filled.'

Dating advice: Angelina told Jenni that she should date Pauly

The gang turned into the Penthouse Club, a strip joint they were thrilled about.

Once inside, Jenni gave a lap dance to Snooki, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, 34, got one from a professional, and Angelina walked onstage and jumped on a pole.

'It's my bachelorette! I can do what I want!' she insisted.

Strip club: Once inside the strip club, Jenni gave a lap dance to Snooki, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, 34, got one from a professional, and Angelina walked onstage and jumped on a pole

'That's somebody's wife!' Pauly told Ronnie, gleefully. 'That's somebody's fiancee!'

Vinny watched, mesmerized, as a stripper lit her breasts 'on fire,' then leaned down and blew out the flames.

'This is literally the best strip club I've ever been to in my life,' he swore.

Staying back: Ronnie Ortiz-Magro laughed as The Situation talked about temptation

On fire: Vinny was impressed as a stripper lit her breasts 'on fire,' then leaned down and blew out the flames

In the midst of it all, Pauly asked Jenni for a lap dance, telling her, 'I got a Black Card.'

Jenni told him that she would charge him 'zero,' making the '0' sign with her hands.

The cast then found Snooki passed out at a bar, and helped her home.

Worth it: Pauly hit on JWoww at the strip club

'You know, these strippers couldn't shine JWoww's shoes,' Pauly was going on. 'If me and JWoww hooked up, it would be a movie.'

In a group confessional, Deena said to Pauly, 'He wants to f*** Jenni,' and Pauly agreed: 'I do.'

'I'm definitely Team PWoww,' Mike cracked. 'Let's make it happen.'

Group talk: In a group confessional, Deena said to Pauly, 'He wants to f*** Jenni,' and Pauly agreed: 'I do'

At the hotel, Pauly clambered into bed with Jenni, ignoring Snooki in the next bed over.

'To see Jenni hook up with Pauly, that would be like watching greatness happen all over again,' Vinny happily considered. 'That would be like if Michael Jordan wanted to play one more game with Scotty Pippen.'

Pauly told Jenni how amazing she was, and Jenni said she loved him 'too much.'

Passed out: Snooki was passed out while Pauly and JWoww were in the next bed

Jenni and Pauly flirted some more, but eventually separated, acknowledging that it was weird Snooki was in the room and everyone was waiting for them.

'Boooo!' everyone cried as Jenni left them again and got in bed with Snooki.

'Jenni, f*** Pauly!' Vinny implored her.

No go: Jenni and Pauly flirted some more, but eventually separated, acknowledging that it was weird Snooki was in the room and everyone was waiting for them.

'I'd love to,' she shouted back.

'Can we get lights out?' Pauly yelled, crawling back into JWoww's bed.

Once it was dark, Pauly went over to Jenni on Snooki's bed and said, 'JWoww, I will never disrespect you like that. You know that, right? I will never do anything that would jeopardize anything.'

Listening in: Vinny Guadagnino put his ear to the door to listen in on Pauly and JWoww

'You're the sweetest,' Jenni said, kissing him on the cheek, before Pauly headed to his room.

'When I get that green light, I'm gonna f*** the s*** out of you,' Pauly teased as he left her.

Jenni told Angelina she had tried to pursue things with Pauly in New York City seven months before, but at his hotel he'd shut the door on her, effectively ending it.

Lights out: Pauly several times asked the camera crew to turn down the lights

'Obviously that was terrible,' she said in a confessional. 'I would have totally went in and done dirty things with Pauly.'

Angelina wasn't going to let the matter rest, and told Pauly that Jenni would have hooked up with him.

Pauly revealed that he had thought about making a move on her after one of his DJ shows, but wasn't sure what the protocol was.

Missed opportunity: Angelina wasn't going to let the matter rest, and told Pauly that Jenni would have hooked up with him

Protocol matter: Pauly revealed that he had thought about making a move on Jenni after one of his DJ shows, but wasn't sure what the protocol was

'And then I slept on it, and dude swooped in,' he added, referring to Zack.

He also wondered what would happen if they did have sex and she got back together with Zack.

'Not your problem,' Vinny offered.

No problem: 'Not your problem,' Vinny offeredwondered what would happen if they did have sex and she got back together with Zack Carpinello

'I'd feel that way if she wasn't my family,' Pauly pointed out.

Vinny and Angelina went back to talk to Jenni, who remained unmoved but said in a confessional, 'I would be very open to talking to Pauly, but he hasn't shown that effort yet.'

Both of them were going to Angelina's wedding stag, and the cast hoped something might happen there.

'The perfect ending to the Jersey Shore romcom would be if Jenni and Pauly ended up together,' Vinny mused.

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation will return next week on MTV.
President Emmanuel Macron lays a wreath of flowers during a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day (Charles Platiau/Pool via AP)

Europe has marked the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces in low-key fashion because of coronavirus lockdown restrictions across the continent.

The big celebrations planned were either cancelled or dramatically scaled back, and people across Europe were asked to mark the moment in private.

There were no mass gatherings, no hugging or kissing, but the day of liberation was commemorated a

Unlike the UK, Victory Day is a traditional public holiday in France but it was clearly far more sombre this year with the country under a strict coronavirus lockdown.

Small ceremonies were allowed at local memorials as the government granted exceptions to restrictions following requests from mayors and veterans.

President Emmanuel Macron led a small ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. He laid a wreath and relit the flame of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, on a deserted Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris.

Mr Macron was accompanied by former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, each carefully observing social distancing. Mr Macron used a hand sanitiser after signing the official register.

He also laid a wreath at the statue of one of his predecessors, Charles de Gaulle, the general revered for leading the French Resistance from London after France had fallen in 1940.

He urged people to display flags on their balconies to honour the resistance fighters and the Free France forces.

Although VE Day is a very different occasion in Germany, it is considered a day of liberation too.

Expand Close German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a wreath-laying ceremony (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a wreath-laying ceremony (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters via AP)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top officials laid wreaths at the memorial to victims of war and violence in Berlin, standing in silence as a trumpet played on an empty Unter den Linden boulevard.

The corona pandemic is forcing us to commemorate alone, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. He recalled that, on May 8 1945, the Germans were really alone and morally ruined.

We had made an enemy of the whole world, he said in a nationally televised address, adding that 75 years later we are not alone.

Mr Steinmeier underlined Germans responsibility to think, feel and act as Europeans in this time of crisis and to confront intolerance whenever it emerges.

We Germans can say today that the day of liberation is a day of gratitude, Mr Steinmeier said. Today, we must liberate ourselves  from the temptation of a new nationalism; from fascination with the authoritarian; from distrust, isolation and enmity between nations; from hatred and agitation, from xenophobia and contempt for democracy.

If we dont keep Europe together, in and after this pandemic, we will prove not to be worthy of May 8, he said.

Ms Merkel spoke with Mr Macron, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone to mark the moment.

Russia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, saw tens of millions of casualties during the war. It marks VE Day on Saturday.
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Microscopic image of cell nuclei of cultured cells. HOXD13 condensates are labelled in red. The DNA is stained in blue. Credit: MPI f. Molecular Genetics/ Shaon Basu

Repeats of individual building blocks within proteins are the cause of many hereditary diseases, but how such repeats actually cause disease is still largely unknown. Researchers in Berlin investigated how repeat elongations lead to the disease synpolydactyly, and have found that the attractive forces between the mutated proteins cause them to change their behavior in fine droplets in the cell. This mode of action could explain many other hereditary diseases.

Five fingers on each hand, five toes on each footthe entire symmetry of our body is controlled by the HOX genes during development. This group of genes is of fundamental importance for the structure of the developing embryo along the body axes.

A defect in the HOXD13 gene can, for example, lead to surplus and fused fingers, a developmental disorder known as synpolydactyly (Greek: syn "together," polys "many," and daktylos "finger"). The molecular processes that lead to the disease were unknown until now.

A team led by Denes Hnisz and Daniel Ibrahim at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has discovered that the mutation leads to the production of proteins with altered chemical properties. HOXD13 proteins form tiny droplets called condensates together with other molecules, but the composition of the droplets is altered and, as a result, the protein's regulatory functions are impaired. This genetically driven change in condensate composition could be a new mechanism underlying hereditary diseases, the team of scientists reports in the scientific journal Cell.

Protein droplets defeat random chance

But why do proteins accumulate in droplets? "In a salad dressing, vinegar forms small droplets in the oil, and in a similar way certain molecules in the cell combine to form proteinaceous droplets, called condensates," says Denes Hnisz, one of the senior authors of the study. Due to their chemical properties, the molecules attract each other and separate from their environment.

The phenomenon occurs for practical reasons, says Hnisz. "To read a single gene, the cell needs 300 to 500 proteins. If this gigantic machinery had to assemble in the right time and place by pure chance, it would take around 10 billion yearsin other words, forever." That is why the cell bundles key molecules it needs for specific tasks into little, droplet-like packages.

Attractive forces determine droplet composition

Like the components of a smoothie, the proteins in condensate droplets of cells clump up differently depending on their chemical composition. Credit: MPI f. Molecular Genetics/ Chrysos Designs

Molecules such as the HOX proteins are composed of different segments, some of which have a relatively rigid three-dimensional structure, while others, called "intrinsically disordered regions," are soft and floppy. "These molecular tails hang out of the proteins like cooked noodles," Hnisz says. "We believe they are crucial for the formation of cellular condensates."

HOXD13 has a tail that contains a large number of alanine amino acids in a row. "In patients with synpolydactyly, the alanine tail is expanded from a healthy sequence of 15 residues by at least another 7 residues," says developmental biologist Daniel Ibrahim, who specializes in genetically induced skeletal malformations. HOXD13 mutations in synpolydactyly were first reported by geneticist Stefan Mundlos in 1996 and who is currently working at the MPIMG, but the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease remained a mystery.

Altered molecules have different behavior

To investigate how the tail extensions of HOXD13 affect the function of the protein, Shaon Basu, one of the study's two lead authors, first mixed HOXD13 molecules of different lengths with other proteins required for its function. The modified protein displaced the binding partners from the dropletsthe longer the tail, the more pronounced the effect. The researchers demonstrated this behavior in cells using high-resolution microscopy, working with colleagues at Freie Universitat Berlin.

But does the altered composition of cellular condensates affect the function of HOXD13? "We examined embryos of mice with an extended HOXD13 gene, which develop synpolydactyly just like human patients," says Ibrahim. In these embryos, the condensate droplets in the cells of developing limb buds had a different composition than in mice without the genetic modification. The limb buds possessed fewer of the interdigital cells that usually occupy the space between the fingers and that disappear later. "It could be possible to alter the composition of mutant condensates with chemical compoundslike a drug," says Basu. "I think that there is a real and fascinating chance that we could eliminate pathogenesis by fixing the disease mechanism one day."

Mechanisms relevant for other diseases

HOXD13 is not the only protein that has a molecule tail that influences its behavior in condensates and its function. Computational biologist Sebastian D. Mackowiak, who is the study's lead author along with Shaon Basu, analyzed another 1,500 human gene regulatory proteins with molecular tails and was able to identify seven types of tails with different chemical properties. Around 300 gene regulatory proteins, like HOXD13, have a high alanine content in their tails. The researchers then altered the number of alanine residues of some of these proteins and found that the modifications led to alterations of condensate composition and the impediment of the protein's functions in the cell.

The work is a triumph for Hnisz and his colleagues. Condensates in the form of small cellular balls were first described by microscopists decades ago, but until recently their functional significance was doubted by many. "The fact that condensates are directly related to the development of a disease can no longer be denied," says Hnisz. "It is absolutely plausible that many other diseases are also caused by the altered composition of cellular condensates."

Explore further Droplets are key to cells' dynamic activities

More information: Shaon Basu et al. Unblending of Transcriptional Condensates in Human Repeat Expansion Disease, Cell (2020). Journal information: Cell Shaon Basu et al. Unblending of Transcriptional Condensates in Human Repeat Expansion Disease,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.018
Commonwealth Bank will temporarily close 114 branches in the hope of surviving the downturn amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Australian banking giant confirmed more than 500 staff members would be reassigned after a dramatic reduction of in-person visits to branches.

The bank would not tell Daily Mail Australia which branches would close.

A Commonwealth Bank spokesman said: 'Visits by customers to bank branches have fallen more than 50 per cent in some branches as people follow social distancing and lockdown requirements.

'Transaction volumes in branch have dropped significantly as a result while there has been a large increase in customers doing their banking online.'

Commonwealth Bank (pictured) will close 114 branches to survive the coronavirus downturn

'This means we will temporarily close a number of branches across the country, primarily in metro areas,' the spokesperson said.

Commonwealth Bank said most of the branches it was shutting down would be within 5km of an open bank.

'We are stepping up our support for customers by planning to reassign, from May 7, about 500 branch staff to our call centres and online operations,' the spokesperson said.

Customers were encouraged to use the location tool on the Commonwealth Bank website to find if their local branch was open.

Several Commonwealth Banks have closed across regional New South Wales including a branch in Thirroul, in the northern suburbs of Wollongong, and a branch in Dubbo mall.

A branch has also closed in Mittagong, in the Southern Highlands region, and one in Wingham, near Taree.

ANZ, NAB and Westpac banks have also shut dozens of branches amid the pandemic and redistributed staff to work online.
Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) - Two suspected drug smugglers were shot dead as they tried to cross into Rwanda from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday night
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Mike Pence, meet hot mic. The vice president got roasted on Twitter, on TV and by the campaign of Joe Biden after being caught by a live microphone jokingly offering to carry empty boxes "just for the camera" into a nursing home treating coronavirus cases. The offer, seemingly made in jest, came during a photo opportunity for media on Thursday at the the Woodbine Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Alexandria, Virginia. This happened a day before a Pence aide tested positive for coronavirus, and on the same day that news broke that a personal valet for President Donald Trump also tested positive for the virus, which causes Covid-19.

Video stills show Vice President Mike Pence at a health facility in Arlington, VA on May 7th, 2020. CSPAN

During the visit, Pence did lug some boxes off a van which appeared to contain something to the front door of the health facility, which was about 15 feet away. With him was Seema Verma, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Pence, who like other visitors outside the facility was not wearing a mask, at one point walked back to the van after several round trips, where there were some other cardboard boxes remaining. "Those are empty, sir," Pence was told by a worker, according to video. Pence replies, "Well, can I carry the empty ones? Just for the camera?" drawing laughter from people around him. The worker replied: "Absolutely." "They're a lot easier," the worker added. But Pence didn't actually carry the empty boxes, video shows. He closed the van door and then walked away.

Video stills show Vice President Mike Pence at a health facility in Arlington, VA on May 7th, 2020. CSPAN

ABC late night show host Jimmy Kimmel unloaded on Pence for even making the empty offer, which the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" star featured on his show Thursday night. "Mike Pence pretending to carry empty boxes of PPEs into a hospital is the perfect metaphor for who he is and what he's doing: A big box of nothing, delivering another box of nothing," Kimmel cracked. Kimmel later Friday posted a backhanded apology to Pence on Twitter, writing, "It would appear that @vp was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt." "The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth," Kimmel wote. A spokesman for the Democratic presidential campaign of Biden ripped Pence for the comment in a scathing Twitter post. "No, Mike Pence, the health care heroes on the frontlines don't need you to carry the empty boxes 'just for the camera,'" wrote the spokesman, Matt Hill. "There are more than 75,000 Americans dead, so they don't need your jokes  they need the personal protective equipment that is going to save lives. Twitter U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey, tweeted, "You would be hardpressed to find a better metaphor for the comically malicious incompetence of this failed government." Tweet A spokeswoman for the vice president did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment on the video. Pence's photo op came as nursing homes have been desperately asking for PPE from the federal government.
Egyptian historian Khaled Fahmy, professor of modern Arabic studies at Cambridge University, will give an online talk on Friday, 8 May, at 2:30 pm GMT (3:30pm Cairo time), about the "history of quarantines in 19th century Egypt, and the science behind it, the state's interest in it, the position of religious scholars about it, and people's reaction to it."

Fahmy will give the talk via a live zoom event. To join the Zoom event, email: [email protected]

The talk is related to Fahmy's latest book, In Quest of Justice, which was released in 2018 and provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period.



The book shows how the state affected those subject to it, and their response. It illustrates how sharia was actually implemented, how criminal justice functioned, and how scientific-medical knowledge and practices were introduced.

You can find a review of the book here.

In Quest of Justice is Fahmy's second book on medicine and law in modern Egypt, after Al-Gassad Wal Hadatha (The Body and Modernity: Essays in the History of Medicine and Law in Modern Egypt) (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 2004) (in Arabic), which was translated by Sherif Younis.

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At the Univesrity of Jyvaskyla sexual selection in fish have been studied using model species like zebrafish. Credit: The University of Jyvaskyla/Johanna Hippelainen

In many fish species body size plays an important role in sexual selection. Large individuals are preferred mating partners because they can enhance offspring survival by providing better quality resources than small individuals. While large females and males are often favored by sexual selection, fishing targets and removes these reproductively superior individuals. Academy Research Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkila discusses in her recent literature review the implications fisheries selection might have on sexual selection, individual reproductive success and population viability.

Sexual selection depends on the advantage certain individuals have over other conspecifics. It creates important filters for reproductive success and can consequently increase fitness and population viability. A large male can provide more intensive care for the developing offspring than a small male and is therefore preferred by a female. A large female salmon, on the other hand, is more fecund than a small one and attracts multiple males. Sexual selection in fish has been studied using model species, such as the guppy, zebrafish and three-spine stickleback.

"Zebrafish females prefer a large male as a mating partner and releases more eggs for him compared to a small male. In some species females also produce higher quality eggs towards large males," says Academy Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkila from the University of Jyvaskyla.

Fisheries often remove the largest individuals from the population, thus working in the opposite direction of sexual selection. The effects of fisheries selection on sexual selection has received relatively little attention.

"Studying mate choice in natural conditions can be challenging," says Uusi-Heikkila.

Therefore, the mating systems of many commercially valuable fish species are poorly known, perhaps excluding cod and salmon. Experimental studies have revealed a great deal about cod mating systems. Salmon, on the other hand, spawn in their home rivers, where it is easier to observe mate choice and mate competition compared to the great depths of the oceans where many commercially important fish species spawn.

Uusi-Heikkila points out that we should focus more on how size-selective fisheries affect fish mating systems, how persistent these effects are and how this might affect population growth, viability and resilience.

"Large females and males often have higher reproductive success than small ones. Thus, size-selective fisheries may impair population growth. It is tempting to think that sexual selection could buffer the adverse effects of fishing and rescue exploited populations. This is not going to happen if there are no large females and males left. Overall, if fishing reduces body size variation in a population, sexual selection cannot operate effectively," concludes Uusi-Heikkila.

Explore further Exploring why males are larger than females among mammals

More information: Silva UusiHeikkila, Implications of sizeselective fisheries on sexual selection, Evolutionary Applications (2020). Silva UusiHeikkila, Implications of sizeselective fisheries on sexual selection,(2020). DOI: 10.1111/eva.12988
Ritwika Mitra By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Aarogya Setu app has raised questions about civil liberties, said experts after a French ethical hacker on Wednesday tweeted raising concerns on a potential security issue in the mobile application.

Hi @SetuAarogya, A security issue has been found in your app. The privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake. Can you contact me in private? said the post by the alias Elliot Alderson.

Following Aldersons tweet, a statement by Aarogya Setu team said no data or security breach was identified and that there was no compromise on any personal or sensitive data.

However, it thanked the ethical hacker on engaging with us.

Vrinda Bhandari, a lawyer specialising in privacy and technology, said the biggest concern is that Aarogya Setu does not have a legislative framework.

Cyberlaw expert Pavan Duggal said the app did not comply with the IT Act 2000 and of the specific parameters of cybersecurity and privacy.

When an outsider ethical hacker is repeatedly telling you there is a problem in your app, it would not be wise to disregard such inputs. The government needs to have a harmonious balance between protection of national interests in the war against COVID-19 and protection of civil liberties, Duggal said.
She rose to fame in 2019 after appearing on Love Island.

And Lucie Donlan showed her support for co-star Maura Higgins by wearing one her her new daring pieces from her Ann Summers swimsuit line on Friday.

The stunning surfer, 22, looked sensational in the racy costume that plunged to reveal her very ample assets and showcased her toned figure.

Sizzling: Lucie Donlan showed her support for co-star Maura Higgins by wearing one her her new daring pieces from her Ann Summers swimsuit line on Friday

The tiny swimsuit was encrusted with crystals and featured very revealing cut-out sides.

Lucie posed on a sandy beach in her hometown of Newquay, Cornwall, with her blonde wavy tresses pulled away from her face into her hands.

To accompany the snap, the reality star wrote: 'The strongest action for a woman is to love herself, be herself & shine amongst those who never believed she could..'

Showing support: The stunning surfer, 22, looked sensational in the racy costume that plunged to reveal her very ample assets and showcased her toned figure

Below a discount code she shared: 'Always supporting my girl @maurahiggins #womensupportingwomen'

It comes after it was reported that Maura has become a millionaire after securing a huge money deal with Ann Summers.

The Irish beauty, 29, has been working with the lingerie giant since appearing on the 2019 series of Love Island.

It has been claimed that Maura has earned 500,000 from both Boohoo and Ann Summers for her collections with the companies.

Ka-ching! It comes after it was reported that Maura has become a millionaire after securing a huge money deal with Ann Summers (pictured modelling her latest bikini collection)

The former grid girl has also reportedly bagged 250k from Bellamianta and 150k from her stint on Dancing On Ice in January

A source told The Sun: 'Maura will be lapping up the fact Love Island is cancelled this summer.

'Given the winter series failed to produce any real stars, she can continue to secure the most lucrative brand deals.

'Shes a canny operator and knows she has a shelf-life, but Maura is definitely maximising her current popularity.'

Stunning: The Irish beauty, 29, has been working with the lingerie giant since appearing on the 2019 series of Love Island

MailOnline has contacted a representative for Maura and Ann Summers for comment.

It comes after Maura showed off her new Ann Summers swimwear collection to Instagram on Wednesday.

The Irish beauty, 29, set pulses racing as she displayed her toned figure in an 'Itsy Bitsy' purple bikini.

Sizzling: It has been claimed that Maura has earned 500,000 from both Boohoo and Ann Summers for her collections with the companies

Maura styled her brunette locks into a wet slicked back look, she added a slick of glamorous make-up and oversized silver hooped earrings.

She penned alongside the photo: 'This little "Itsy Bitsy" purple beauty from my @annsummers collection has just landed online.'

Posting her discount code, she added the hashtags: '#stayhomestaysexy #bemoremauraswim2020.'

Maura's new swimwear collection, called More Maura Swim, combines her own taste with the lingerie giants' classic styles.

The sizzling snap comes after Dancing On Ice star Alexander Demetriou confirmed he had separated from wife Carlotta Edwards last week.

The professional skater, 28, took to Instagram Stories to confirm the news and revealed to his followers that it had been a 'tough time' for him.

Sad: The news comes after Dancing On Ice star Alexander Demetriou confirmed he had separated from wife Carlotta Edwards last week (pictured in November 2019)

It comes amid weeks of speculation that their four-year marriage was on the rocks after reports that Alexander became 'besotted' with Love Island beauty Maura.

In a statement posted on Instagram stories, Alexander said: 'I'm sorry I have been quiet on social media recently but it's been a tough time personally for me.

'Carlotta and I have separated. Although it saddens me that we can no longer be together, I feel this is best for both of us.

His statement: The professional skater, 28, took to Instagram stories to confirm the news and revealed to his followers that it had been a 'tough time' for him

'I'm looking forward to what the future will bring but in the meantime let's all stay home and stay safe.'

While Alexander went public with a statement, Carlotta, 30, has remained silent, and has instead been hauled up in Calgary, Canada with her family.

A friend of the former couple recently told their marriage troubles 'came as a shock', as they were so close before the last Dancing On Ice series.

'Besotted': It comes amid weeks of speculation that their four-year marriage was on the rocks after reports that he became 'besotted' with Maura

A source spoke to The Sun about the visit, saying: 'Everything has seemed fine and her family thought they were having a good time.

'No one in her family suspected anything was up between them, so obviously this has all been quite a shock.'

Responding to speculation linking Maura and Alex, Curtis Pritchard recently revealed that Maura forbid him from coming to watch her skate with Alex and that he's sure nothing 'more' happened between the pair.

Forbidden: Curtis Pritchard recently revealed that ex Maura forbid him from coming to watch her skate with Alex and that he's sure nothing 'more' happened between the pair

Curtis, 24, told The Sun: 'I have no proof that anything more has happened between them. I don't like to think about it.

'I don't want to look back over the past few months for warning signs. But it's not nice to read about her relationship with Alex and to see pictures of them together.

'I went to her first three shows, but after that she asked me not to come. She said she had terrible nerves and it was easier without me there. I just accepted that. I wasn't concerned about there being anything romantic between her and Alex.'
The petty tyrant Warren Wilhelm (that's Bill de Blasio's real name) who is currently mayor of New York City, not content with scapegoating Jews for the spread of the coronavirus, has now gone to war against the First Amendment. Fox News reported Wednesday that de Blasio and his NYPD commissioner, Dermot Shea, "stated outright this week that people are not permitted to gather for protests in public due to the coronavirus pandemic." Apparently, Mayor Wilhelm thinks he is in 1930s Berlin. But this will not stand. On Thursday, I filed suit against de Blasio and Shea for violating my First Amendment right to freedom of assembly.

De Blasio and Shea adopted their breathtaking authoritarian measure in full knowledge that they were violating the United States Constitution. "You're talking about some of the values we hold in the highest regard in this country and certainly in this city, the right for people to gather, the right to free speech and the right to protest," Shea said Monday. "But now comes the bad news, we're in a pandemic and executive orders have been issued, these are laws that have been passed down through executive order to keep people alive, while we greatly, greatly respect the right of people to protest, there should not be protests taking place in the middle of a pandemic by gathering outside and putting people at risk."

Shea's statements are in brazen violation of the First Amendment and reveal that Shea, and de Blasio as well, understands the Constitution about as much as he respects it. For his part, the mayor said: "People who want to make their voices heard, there are plenty of ways to do it without gathering in person." He called upon people to "use all the other tools you have to get your point across but avoid anything that might put other people in harm's way."

No. The Constitution does not carry any clause rescinding these rights if the powers that be decide that exercising them would put people in harm's way. These liberties are not granted by government to then be rescinded at the will and whims of government officials. These liberties are given by G-d and possessed by the people, and they are guaranteed against government interference by the Constitution.

In other words, the Constitution explicitly and definitively rules out the action de Blasio and Shea have taken. The complaint, which was filed yesterday by my attorneys, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), is a beautiful thing. It states that "this case seeks to protect and vindicate fundamental liberties that citizens of the United States enjoy free from government interference." It notes that the Constitution guarantees a right to protest, including the freedom of speech, and that de Blasio and Shea, "through the adoption and enforcement of executive edicts, have suspended this fundamental right in the City of New York."

The complaint notes that "the right to freedom of speech is not a right to catharsis. It is a right to meaningfully protest and assemble in public in order to change public policy. The most effective way to exercise this right is to organize and participate in a large public protest." But de Blasio and Shea have infringed upon this freedom as well.

The stakes in this lawsuit are extremely high. In fact, they couldn't be higher. As the complaint notes, "John Adams warned that 'Liberty once lost is lost forever.' All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Through this Complaint, Plaintiff Geller challenges Defendants' suspension of the First Amendment. There is no justification, pandemic or otherwise, for a government official to revoke this fundamental right of the people."

The purpose of the suit is to "protect and vindicate fundamental constitutional rights. It is a civil rights action brought under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. 1983, challenging Defendants' restriction on Plaintiff's right to engage in peaceful protests and protected speech in public forums in the City of New York."

I'm seeking a declaration that Defendants violated my clearly established constitutional rights as set forth in the complaint, as well as a declaration that the restriction that de Blasio and Shea have placed upon the First Amendment violates the United States Constitution and 42 USC 1983. I'm asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining the enforcement of this First Amendment violation and nominal damages for the past loss of my constitutional rights.

If we lose, it's no exaggeration to say the Constitution, and our freedom, is dead. We must win, and we will win.

Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI); publisher of The Geller Report; and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Image: Public Advocate Bill de Blasio via Flickr.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 07:31:26|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- New data showed that more than 33 million Americans have filed for jobless claims as COVID-19 continues to ravage economy, indicating the scope of damage to the labor market, while suggesting the historic wave of layoffs seems to be receding.

In the week ending May 2, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits decreased by 677,000 from the prior week to 3,169,000, the fifth weekly decline in a row, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Thursday.

The breadth of job losses is "stunning," Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, a major accounting firm, wrote in a recent blog. "They spanned virtually every industry and income category."

"Hiring screeched to a virtual halt," Swonk said. "Posting for new jobs on all the major job websites plummeted between 30 percent and 40 percent in March and April."

As COVID-19 shutdowns rippled through the workforce, initial jobless claims spiked by 3 million to reach a record 3.3 million in the week ending March 21, then doubled to reach a record 6.87 million in the week ending March 28.

After that, figures have been declining, though still at historical high. Initial jobless claims totaled 6.62 million in the week ending April 4, fell to 5.2 million in the week ending April 11, dropped to 4.4 million in the week ending April 18, and then declined to 3.8 million in the week ending April 25.

The new BLS report also showed that the four-week moving average, a method to iron out data volatility, decreased by 861,500 to reach 4.2 million.

Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana, recently told Xinhua that the jobless claims data points to "a deceleration of the huge losses from early April."

"The slowing losses indicate the bulk of job losses may be behind us," Hicks said. "As the economy begins to re-open, these losses will continue to slow."

Dozens of states have rolled out reopening plans in late April, with Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas among the first to allow certain nonessential businesses to resume operations.

As the U.S. economy witnesses its biggest slump since the global financial crisis, with massive job losses within weeks, the potential economic recovery following reopening could be welcoming news for many.

White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett recently told Fox News that every U.S. state will mostly reopen by the end of May, and most forecasters predict an economic rebound in the second half of the year.

According to a recent projection from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, partially reopening would increase GDP on June 30 by 1 percent year-on-year, to a 10.7 percent contraction. About 4.4 million jobs would be saved, although a total of 14.0 million jobs still will be lost between May 1 and June 30.

Fully reopening would boost GDP on June 30 by about 1.5 percentage points year-on-year compared with not reopening, the model showed. Almost all net job losses between May 1 and June 30, over 18 million, would be avoided.

The potential economic recovery following the reopening, however, doesn't come without a price. According to the Wharton model, partially reopening would cause 45,000 additional deaths by June 30 relative to not reopening. Fully reopening would lead to an additional 233,000 deaths.

"The evidence strongly backs the aggressive initial shelter-in-place orders," Hicks told Xinhua. "However, as we learn more about the disease, easing some of those restrictions seems wise."

Hicks also warned that a second wave of infections would be "very damaging to the economy."

The new jobless claim figure came one day after payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported that private companies in the United States shed around 20.2 million jobs in April amid COVID-19 fallout.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 15.1 percent for the week ending April 25, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from the previous week's unrevised rate, the BLS report showed.

The U.S. unemployment rate for April, to be released on Friday, is expected to rise to 16.1 percent, up from 4.4 percent in March, according to economists recently surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Horrigan, president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, wrote in an analysis that unemployment rate could surpass 20 percent in April, with the assumption that all individuals who lost their jobs between March 15 (just after the March reference week) and April 18 (the end of the April reference week) are classified as unemployed in April.

A nearly perfect proxy for this is the total number of initial jobless claims for each of the intervening weeks, which is 26.5 million, Horrigan noted.

"Assuming no decline in the size of the labor force from March to April (162.9 million) and that the 7.14 million unemployed in March remain unemployed in April, this yields an implied unemployment rate of 20.6 percent," he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 17:20:43|Editor: huaxia

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LONDON, May 8 (Xinhua) -- British lawmakers were warned Friday that they may face stiff punishments if they break remote voting rules in the hybrid House of Commons during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The House of Commons is currently operating a hybrid system with only a handful of lawmakers in the chamber, while other MPs participate in key Commons proceedings remotely via video links.

It means politicians can not use the traditional method of voting where they are counted one-by-one as they vote on new laws or other parliamentary measures by walking through a voting lobby.

The House of Commons Procedure Committee warned on Friday that if the MPs attempt to get others to cast their votes under the remote system they are likely to be severely punished by parliamentary authorities.

"The remote voting system is not as secure as a system where an MP must vote in a division lobby in person. Until a reliable form of biometric authentication can be introduced over all devices likely to be used for remote voting, the present system is unlikely to be suitable as a permanent replacement for lobby voting," the committee said in a report.

House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has the power to re-run a vote if system issues have compromised, it said.

Next week, lawmakers will debate renewing the temporary coronavirus procedures, with a recommendation that any extension should last until June 3. Enditem
Since the announcement of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) lockdown, a huge number of migrant workers have left their places of work for their homes. There is no official count on the number, but estimates suggest that it could be about half a million. According to Parliamentary records, India has about 100 million migrant workers. How could an executive decision, so wide in its repercussions, fail to account for such a large number of its own citizens?

It may have answers in our political discourse  especially the migrants place in it. Because they are on the move, they are never treated as a vote bank. It is now a pejorative reference to a captive electorate that historically votes en masse, usually pegged to allegiance to their caste (or class in the West), religion, and colour. Antithetical to that group are swing voters, who show no such fidelity, are hard to woo and hard to keep, but ultimately decide the elections outcome.

Indias migrant workers are neither a vote bank nor a swing vote  most of the time, they cast no vote at all. That exacerbates their vulnerabilities more than factors such as earnings in which they greatly outstrip their peers back in the village. The Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 requires the casting of votes at the place of registration. A vote, however, can be transferred, but the process is not that simple. By the time the formalities are completed, or the next election comes around, the migrant may have moved to another city in search of the next opportunity. In cities such as Mumbai, the dominant nativist agenda discourages migrants from enrolling or transferring their votes to the megacity. Political leaders dont tailor their agendas to address migrant workers concerns. Even mainstream parties such as the Bhartiya Janata Party or the Congress did not subsume the migrants enfranchisement as an agenda in their manifesto for the last general election.

The Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, which aimed to protect migrant workers interest, served its cause well for its first decade of operation. But in 1990-91, when India faced its greatest pre-Covid-19 economic crises, labor laws were significantly watered down to allow for the rapid industrialisation. Trade union politics that had hitherto brought out successful politicians  George Fernandes, for example  were forced to find other biddings. Indias employee provident fund has a mere 45 million active users across private and public establishments. Despite the 1979 Act requiring the creation of a central registry of migrant workers, the Union labour minister told the Parliament a year ago that the government maintains no such database.

Freedom to move freely, live and settle in any part of India is guaranteed as a fundamental right under Article 19 of the Constitution. Interstate movement of the workforce is not only the lifeline of the Indias famed demographic dividend but also a dividend of federalism where state governments compete with each other on socioeconomic policies to attract more skilled workforce.

In the now legendry case of Indira Gandhi v/s Raj Narain, the Supreme Courts Justice HR Khanna had opined that free and fair election is an essential element of a democracy  with successive judgments emphasising on that principal. But how free is an election that effectively disenfranchises nearly 8% of its population for the simple fault of exercising their fundamental right to migrate within the country?

A 2015 Tata Institute of Social Sciences report correlated that states with higher rates of migration are associated with lower voter turnouts. In order to facilitate electoral participation of migrant workers, the report called for a national consultation on early voting, postal ballot, proxy voting, and electronic voting  early and alternative voting systems widely used in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Palagummi Sainath, the founder of the Peoples Archive of Rural India, has suggested that, to include the migrant votes, elections should be timed with the harvest season. It has precedence. The Election Commission of India has in the past made successful voting provisions for Kashmiri migrants, Jammus Talwara migrants, and Mizorams Reangs.

Nothing can justify the exclusion of the tens of millions of our own citizens from the political bargain of India. Migrants should fight to port their votes wherever they go, and we, in solidarity, should corral for those rights.

Kabeer Shrivastava is advocate, Delhi High Court

The views expressed are personal
By Trend





The price of Azeri LT CIF Augusta, produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) oil field, amounted to $31.33 per barrel on May 7, which is $1.86 more compared to May 6, Trend reports with reference to the source from country's oil and gas market.

The price of Azeri LT FOB Ceyhan amounted to $30.28 per barrel on May 7, which is $1.84 more compared to May 6.

Azerbaijan has been producing Azeri LT since 1997 and exporting it via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and Baku-Supsa Western Export Pipeline, as well as by rail, to the Georgian port of Batumi.

Azerbaijan also sells its URALS oil from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, delivering it through the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline.

The price of URALS with shipment from the port amounted to $28.93 per barrel on May 7, which is $2.05 more compared to May 6.

The cost of a barrel of Brent Dated oil, produced in the North Sea, amounted to $25.1 per barrel, indicating an increase of $2.08.
- A woman took to social media to share photos of her ruined ID book and she tagged Home Affairs

- She revealed the dogs ate her ID book and now she has been struggling to get help

- Her post attracted attention of netizens who respond with hilarious messages

A woman, simply identified as Refilwe, sent a message to Home Affairs on Twitter in which she hilariously tried to explain what happened to her travel document.

She claimed her dogs ate her ID book and she had applied for a smart ID.

READ ALSO: Hilarious video of 'drunk' man insisting he only drank water cracks up netizens

READ ALSO: Maria actresses Madam Vicky, Kanini go head to head in these 12 glamorous photos

Refilwe who hails from South Africa said the smart ID was ready but every time she showed up at the offices, workers had excuses.

"Dear @HomeAffairsSA. I just wanted to let you know that the dogs ate my ID book. My smart ID card is ready at Edenvale branch but they have been either offline when I went to fetch or they are having labour issues," she wrote.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Mmoja wa wagonjwa waliohepa baada ya kupatikana na coronavirus aaga dunia

Netizens were somehow amused by the post and some of the Twitter CSI agents zoomed in on the thumb seen in the photos.

Twitter user, @cheritykay, commented: "Give that dog a pat on the back. When were you going to change it."

Another tweep, @VACTERL_Dad, added: "Carry the dogs with you wherever ID is required."

@drfmkhonto, said: "It seems like the dog also ate your thumb in frame three."

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New Delhi, May 8 : The core energy business of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) could be staring at a multi-year slump, but "repositioning as a consumer/technology company" should continue to support stock price, according to US brokerage, JP Morgan.

After the Facebook (FB) and Silver Lake stake sale in Jio Platforms (JPL), RIL has announced a deal to sell a 2.23 per cent stake in Jio Platforms (JPL) to Vista Partners for US $ 1.5 billion. This takes the total equity flow into JPL to $ 7.95 billion for a total equity sale of 13.45 per cent.

"We expect the news flow and expectations of 'similar sized deals' to continue to drive near-term stock outperformance as it allows investors to look through near-term earnings weakness", JP Morgan said in a research.

Media reports talk about sale of the Asian Paints stake which the company has not yet confirmed this. Media reports have talked about RIL looking to sell down its five percent stake in Asian Paints which would have a market value of $ 989 million.

The report said that next week Saudi Aramco reports earnings and comments are expected about continued due diligence. RIL in its analyst call highlighted that due diligence is ongoing regarding Aramco's proposed 20 per cent stake purchase in RIL's O2C business.

J P Morgan said that the core energy business could be staring at multi-year slump, but "repositioning as a consumer/technology company" should continue to support stock price.

"While we build in a sharp recovery in refining and petchem, the global outlook is increasingly for a muted recovery, given the global overcapacity and large hit to demand, even as we come out of COVID-19. The sharp fall in crude makes the gasifier and India gas investments non-accretive", it said.

"However Retail, Jio, the FB investment with WhatsApp partnership and, now, the comments about another potential investor in Jio Platforms provide valuation support and a case for further re-rating, in our view, as they allow investors to look beyond the near-term earnings weakness", it added.

Morgan Stanley in a report said that RIL had previously highlighted in its earnings announcement that it had investor interest in Jio Platforms similar to the investment made by Facebook.

"We continue to see balance sheet deleveraging as one key pillar of our OW rating on RIL as the company continues to deliver its balance sheet via stake sales in subsidiaries, rights issues and slowing down new investment", it said .

Vista Equity Partners is a US private equity fund that invests in technology and enterprise software, with more than US $57 billion of capital commitments.

In a research report, Bernstein said that Reliance has focused on balance sheet deleveraging with the investments in Jio Platforms and rights issue.
Planning for any future pandemics should be free from 'political interference', academics have suggested. (Picture: Richard Pohle/The Times /PA Wire)

Planning for any future pandemics should be free from political interference, a group of academics have suggested.

Researchers from Glasgow Caledonian University, the Cass Business School in London, Nottingham University and Vlerick Business School in Belgium proposed a new body that works independently, similar to the Bank of England, to deal with preparing for pandemics.

The Department of Health has been found wanting during the coronavirus outbreak, a paper by the researchers said, and they suggested that early warnings of the threat of Covid-19 had been missed, leaving workers facing unprecedented risks on a daily basis, due to the inadequacy of their governments approach to preparation.

The researchers said that: independent responsibility for national future preparedness should be handed to the NHS free from political interference.

Proposing the new independent body, they said: The stability of the UKs financial system is based on the Bank of England remaining free from day-to-day political influence, having specific statutory responsibilities for regulation across multiple domains.

It is time that national emergency preparedness, resilience, and response to transboundary risks follows suit via a public body with governance arrangements similar to those of the Bank of England.

This public body would be enshrined in law, with the NHS pandemic preparedness and resilience responsibilities falling under its umbrella.

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

The report, published in the Journal of Risk Research, described a lack of urgency by the UK government and its agencies to ramp up their preparedness and systemic resilience in the face of early mounting evidence and warnings from mid-January following events in China.

Story continues

It added: It is perhaps no coincidence that countries such as South Korea, which learned concrete lessons from its severe experience of Sars in 20022003, have been better at both anticipating and containing COVID-19.

The researchers said while the UK had carried out preparedness tests for possible pandemics such as Exercise Cygnus, the findings of them were clearly never acted upon in a meaningful way.

They added that the mild consequences of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic in the UK meant the resilience of response plans was not thoroughly tested and if it had been, stockpiling of PPE and ventilators would have been taken more seriously.

The paper said: There can be no substitute for actionable and feasible emergency preparedness and resilience plans, devoid of short-term politicisation.

Ultimately, it doesnt matter if youre a national health provider or a Texan supermarket chain.

If you dont invest in developing resilience through financial resources and strategic direction, your likelihood of success is reduced. To paraphrase the Chinese proverb, without rice, even the cleverest cannot cook.

Lead researcher Dr Cormac Bryce, of Cass Business School, said: The warnings to prepare were there for those willing to look and act for years. 

Coronavirus: what happened today
As Gov. Kate Brown laid out her plan this week for Oregon to slowly reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, she said people should wear face masks in public to be considerate of others.

But what about wearing goggles?

A new study by University of Hong Kong researchers, published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, found that the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, can infect both the upper human airways and conjunctiva (the cells lining the surface of the eye), and that SARS-CoV-2 is much more efficient than SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in infecting human airways and the conjunctival surfaces of the eye.

The SARS (SARS-CoV), or severe acute respiratory syndrome, outbreak in 2003 spread to two-dozen countries and killed about 800 people before it was contained. The current novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread across the globe and is known to have caused the deaths of nearly 300,000 people so far.

We found that SARS-Cov-2 is much more efficient in infecting the human conjunctiva and the upper respiratory airways than SARS, with virus level some 80 to 100 times higher, one of the new studys authors, Dr. Michael CW Chan, told the South China Morning Post. This explains the higher transmissibility of COVID-19 [the illness caused by the novel coronavirus] than that of SARS. This study also highlights the fact that eyes may be an important route of SARS-CoV-2 human infection.

The results of the new University of Hong Kong study, which used cultured tissues from the upper respiratory tract and eyes, highlight the importance of washing hands frequently and avoiding touching or rubbing the eyes.

Read the study.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Anyone who has toured our states natural wonders knows why its called Alabama, the Beautiful."

As proof, we made a list of 13 gorgeous waterfalls you can visit in Alabama. (Note: This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list. There are hundreds of gorgeous falls in Alabama. You can find additional lists of Alabama waterfalls at AlaPark.com and WorldWaterfallDatabase.com.)

And just for funsies, we listed the states longest waterfalls in the last slide.

Chewacla Falls, Chewacla State Park, Lee County

Alabamawaterfalls.com says, Chewacla Falls is just downstream of the spillway formed by the dam at Chewacla State Park south of Auburn and is just a short walk from the parking lot using Deer Rub Trail.

DeSoto Falls (John Dersham |Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourism)

DeSoto Falls, DeSoto State Park, DeKalb County

One of the states largest falls, especially after rain. Find the parks main entrance at 7104 DeSoto Parkway NE, Fort Payne, 256-845-5380.

Dismals Canyon (Kelly Kazek | kkazek@al.com)

Rainbow Falls, Dismals Canyon National Natural Landmark, Franklin County

This privately owned preserve is open to the public for hiking and camping. Entrance is at 901 Alabama Highway 8, Phil Campbell, 205-993-4559.

Grace's High Falls drops 133 feet into Little River Canyon near Fort Payne. (AL.com file)AL.com

Graces High Falls, Little River Canyon National Preserve, DeKalb County

Alabamawaterfalls.com says, Graces High Falls is officially the tallest waterfall in the state of Alabama inside Little River Canyon National Preserve but the water flow is pretty seasonal. Get map coordinates here.

Holmes Chapel Falls, Bankhead National Forest, Winston County

Alabamawaterfalls.com says, Holmes Chapel Falls offers a scenic drop into a bowl carved into the sandstone that is so familiar to regulars in Bankhead National Forest. The hike is relatively flat and enjoyable along the creek to the main fall, with moss and boulders around every turn. Get map coordinates here.

Little River Falls. (DeKalb County Tourism via AL.com)

Little River Falls, Little River Canyon National Preserve, DeKalb County

NPS.gov says: Little River Canyon Visitor Center off Highway 35 next to the bridge in Gaylesville, Alabama (the bridge is the boundary between Gaylesville and Fort Payne). This is the first stop to make on your scenic tour of the park entering from the north. The formation of Little River Canyon begins here with the 45-foot waterfall.

Noccalula Falls in Gadsden. (John Dersham | Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourism)

Noccalula Falls, Noccalula Falls Park, Etowah County

This gorgeous drop is a popular attraction inside the state park. Visitors can also ride a train and tour a pioneer village. Park entrance is at 1500 Noccalula Road, Gadsden, 256-549-4663.

Peavine Falls, Oak Mountain State Park, Shelby County

Alapark.com says Peavine Falls is an approximately 65-foot-tall, spring fed waterfall located at the top most ridge in Oak Mountain State Park. Park entrance at 200 Terrace Drive, Pelham.

Kayakers race down Short Creek Falls near Lake Guntersville. (AL.com File)bn

Short Creek Falls, Lake Guntersville, Marshall County

Alabamawaterfalls.com says: Short Creek Falls is a 20-foot falls near Lake Guntersville in Marshall County. The upper put-in for Short Creek kayaking is where Martling Road crosses the creek. But for pedestrians, Hustleville Road crosses Short Creek just 100 yards or so above the falls.

Coldwater Falls in Tuscumbia's Spring Park. (Joe Songer | AL.com)

Coldwater Falls, Spring Park, Colbert County

NorthAlabama.org says: The man-made Coldwater Falls was constructed with over 2,000 tons of sandstone and today sees more than 4.3 million gallons of water flow each day. For information, call 256-386-5670.

Turkey Creek Nature Preserve near Pinson. (Joe Songer | jsonger@al.com)al.com

Turkey Creek Falls, Turkey Creek Nature Preserve, Jefferson County

TurkeyCreekNP.com says: Turkey Creek Nature Preserves 466-acres are home some of the most stunning and unique beauty found anywhere in the Southeast. Visit the preserve at 3895 Turkey Creek Road, Pinson.

Welti Falls, Cullman County

UPDATE: A reader says Welti Falls is currently privately owned and is CLOSED to the public. Do not visit. Find more information at Alabamawaterfalls.com.

Walls of Jericho Falls, Walls of Jericho Canyon, Jackson County

Alltrails.com says: Walls of Jericho Trail is a 9-mile heavily trafficked out and back trail located near Scottsboro, Alabama that features a waterfall and is rated as difficult. The trail offers a number of activity options and is best used from March until October. From Scottsboro, take US 72 West approximately 4.8 miles to Alabama Highway 79. Turn right on to Alabama 79 and travel north approximately 26 miles to the hiking trail parking lot (you will pass horseback trail parking lot).

Heres a list of the states 10 longest falls, according to WorldWaterfallDatabase.com (map coordinates available by clicking the link to each one):
Britain's economy is heading for the worst annual contraction of the modern era, and one of the worst drops in history, the Bank of England estimates.

Threadneedle Street's latest report estimates the UK's gross domestic product will shrink 14 per cent this year, with a 25 per cent hit in the second quarter of 2020.

King Charles I: The economic collapse is still short of the plunge in 1629, the first year of his period of "personal rule". Credit:New York Times

The predictions show the devastating impact of COVID-19, which has led to a virtual shutdown of vast swathes of the economy. Here's how those estimates measure up with centuries of British economic history.

The Bank of England's best estimates for historic GDP growth show such a drop would leave 2020 among the worst years in English or British economic history - with the 14th biggest fall in GDP since 1270 (the earliest year for which there is an estimate).
Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted: "Politicians need to wear masks too! Proud of the recent work @kcmohealthdept has been doing to support pop-up testing throughout our community. Thank you!"

*Choice* we do not need to. Those masks do absolutely nothing.

"Again, the virtue signaling regarding the usage of a mask has grown to a fever a pitch the last several days. However, please be aware of CDC guidelines concerning mask usage. Surgical masks and homemade masks do not offer adequate protection."

"Thank you Mayor for being a leader during this crisis. Apparently not all elected officials are up to the task."

You forgot to wear one during your press conference ...#JustSayin

RECENT KANSAS CITY HEADLINES REPORT RESTAURANT CONFUSION AND RESISTANCE TO THE 10-10-10 PLAN!!!

Kansas City Public Radio Daze Over COVID Flip-Flopping

Without Consistent Official Guidelines, Kansas Citians Make Their Own Rules For Returning To Restaurants, Gyms And Salons A growing number of states are starting to reopen, including Kansas and Missouri. According to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, a majority of Americans are comfortable going to a grocery store. But most say they don't support reopening retail shops, hair salons, restaurants, or other businesses - at least, not yet.

Biz Bargains With City Hall

KC considers dropping 10% occupancy limit for restaurants Kansas City is considering dropping its 10% occupancy limit for restaurants. Instead restaurants would keep tables six feet apart.At Pizza 51, they were actually measuring the distances between their patio tables.Table separation, not an occupancy restriction, has been their preference."We have the opportunity to properly distance folks in that sense versus a percentage," said Jason Pryor, owner of Pizza 51."In a minute, I'll take that.

Westport Demands Workaround

Westport businesses could expand to sidewalks, streets with city approval KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Westport Regional Business League is hoping to help its area small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down many Westport businesses, and several business owners told 41 Action News that Kansas City's 10/10/10 rule will prevent them from making any money.

THE CHANGE IN POLICY AND SO MANY CONTRADICTORY MESSAGES HAVE CLEARLY CONFUSED LOCAL BIZ WHILST THE SOFT REOPENING EVOKES HARD FEELINGS!!!

A late evening social media message from Mayor Lucas sparked surprising push back from fans and followers.Here's the local connection toTo be fair, the Mayor earned plenty of support but right now these comments stand out more than most . . .Opt-in reaction . . .Efficacy argument . . .Accolades for leadership by example . . .Watchful local contradiction . . .More importantly and still causing debate and contradictory mandates . . .Here's a myriad of info on the sordid topic that's exceptionally important given that. . .Accordingly . . .We welcome the advice and analysis of our blog community that might hopefully help sort out the situation.Developing . . .
Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site.

Update: On May 12, 2020, Wink sent an email to customers announcing that it has moved the deadline for users to start paying a monthly fee for its services to May 20, instead of the original deadline of May 13.

This article was originally published on May 7, 2020.

TEST PAGE!! Otherwise, the Wink hubs will stop workingalong with many smart home devices connected to them. (If a device has its own app for controlling it, such as a Ring video doorbell, it will still work.)

The news will have come as a shock to users of Winks first-generation smart hub who believed the promise on the packaging: no monthly fees or subscriptions. Especially if they didnt read the companys terms of service, which states that Wink reserves the right to interrupt the Services with or without prior notice for any reason or no reason and that Wink has the right to change and/or eliminate any aspect(s) of the Services as it sees fit in its sole discretion.

Bill Fitzgerald, privacy policies researcher at CRs Digital Lab, says that while, technically, Wink is abiding by the terms of service, those rules are completely outside what most people think of as whats normal and acceptableor even possiblewhen they buy something.

Justin Brookman, CRs director of consumer privacy and technology policy at CR, agrees: Wink is going out of their way to differentiate their product, saying right there on the box: no fees,  he says. A company cant just change its mind later. People reasonably relied upon that promise when buying the product. Its a bait and switch.

Wink customers arent happy. We found Matthew Eccles, a user from Syracuse, Utah, on the Wink subreddit.

When Wink announced the move to subscription, it wasnt about the money as much as it was the perceived ransom [they] were wanting, and it felt like extortion as they were going to kill our smart homes in seven days, Eccles told CR. A business giving a customer seven days to pay up or else. That hit me hard. Eccles estimates he has spent over $1,300 on Wink products and compatible devices.

Story continues

The first-generation Wink Hub and Wink Hub 2 cost $70 and $100, respectively, but Wink users can easily spend much more by connecting additional Wink accessories and third-party devices to their system.

This announcement is just the latest pothole in what has been a very bumpy road for Wink. The company launched in 2014 and was sold off to other companies twice, finally becoming part of the i.am+ tech company founded by rapper Will.i.am.

While Wink managed to survive, its rollout of new products slowly fizzled out. The last major product the company released was a DIY home security system called Wink Lookout, in late 2017. By last fall, The Verge reported that the company hadnt paid employees in seven weeks and that its customer support phone line was dead at the time.

Neither Wink nor i.am+ returned requests for comment for this story.

Consumer Reports tested the Wink Lookout system last year as part of our new home security system ratings, but when our testing was complete, the Wink Lookout system was out of stock at major retailers and it was unclear when it would again be available for purchase. As a result, we never published its ratings. (It earned a Very Good rating overall.)

What to Do If You Own a Wink Hub

If you want to stay with Wink, you need to update your Wink smart home hub to the latest firmwareany hub running firmware below version 4.1.23 will be permanently disconnected from the Wink network as of May 30, 2020. Then sign up for a subscription on Winks website by May 13. You can still sign up after May 13, but your Wink system will stop working until you subscribe.

If you want to switch to another smart home hub, you should first disconnect your devices from the Wink hub. If you don't and the May 13 deadline passes, you can instead reset each device individually and then set them up with a new hub. There are a handful of other smart home hubs you can use, such as Samsung SmartThings, Hubitat, and Vera Control. Theyre priced from $30 to $250.



Switching hubs requires that you connect all your smart home devices again, but at least for one Wink user, Bobby Bonestell, its worth the trouble. He told us: I am now shopping for alternative smart home automation solutions and hoping to find and receive the replacement ASAP, in the middle of a global pandemic, not because of the subscription price which Wink is asking but because I feel betrayed by Wink after investing in their hardware, recommending it to friends and colleagues, and seeing all of their products with the text No Monthly Fees written right on the box.

Editors' Note: This story has been updated with information regarding how to set up smart home devices with a new hub.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright  2020, Consumer Reports, Inc.
A week after it was announced that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are coming out a tell-all book, "Finding Freedom," that was supposed to hit shelves this August was reportedly cancelled by its publisher.

According to reports, their supposed tell-all will go "beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghan's life together." It will also include insider knowledge from those who are close to the Sussexes.

But with its reported cancellation came a new movie that is reportedly about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's period in life where they exit the royal family.

Lifetime announced that it is currently developing a third film about Meghan and Prince Harry to be aired on their network.

The working title is reported, "Harry and Meghan: Escape the Palace," which is all about the couple's drama with the royal family.

According to the network, it would tackle "the couple's controversial conscious uncoupling from the crown after the birth of their son, Archie."

The third movie of the Harry-Meghan movie franchise will talk give royal watchers a glimpse of how they are as new parents and of course, how they have coped with the pressures of being public figures that later led to their ultimate decision to "forge a new life on their own terms."

While no other details were announced about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's movie, it's likely to capture all events that followed during their son Archie's first year of life, which also includes the fallout within the royal family and their move to Canada and then later to California.

The third film follows 2018's movie, "Harry and Meghan: A Royal Romance," which explored Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's blossoming relationship, which later led to their highly publicized wedding.

In 2019, the sequel "Harry and Meghan: Becoming Royal" was also released and detailed the untold joys and challenges of life inside Britain's famous family during their first year of marriage.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's biography were written by royal correspondents Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand. Early this year, the duo was able to secure a private interview with both Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, as per Deadline, but representatives of the couple denied any involvement.

Cancelled Harry-Meghan Book?

Several royal fans who were excited to get the book placed a pre-order on Amazon but only to had their orders cancelled.

As per Dickie Arbiter, Queen Elizabeth II's former press secretary, "I pre-ordered this on Amazon last week and yesterday was told the publishers had cancelled the order. Anyone else had this problem?"

Fans who pre-purchased the book revealed that they also had the same issue, with one Twitter user sharing an email sent from Amazon, where they explained that their pre-order of the book had been cancelled as well.

In the email, it said, "The publisher has cancelled the release of the item in the order below, and we have cancelled your pre-order. You won't be charged for the items that are cancelled."

Authors of the book responded to the social media users that questioned why the publisher, Harper Collins, decided to pull out.

But it turns out, there was just some problem with the Kindle listing.

"I've just been told there was an error with the Kindle listing on Amazon UK. If you search for the book again and reorder it, should be fine."

Scobie even responded to Arbiter, saying, "Apparently, Amazon put the US Kindle listing on the UK site, so they had to correct it. All fixed now. (Also, thanks for supporting!)

READ MORE: Meghan Markle Meltdown: Duchess Pressured Prince Harry with Outrageous Demands for Archie's Birthday?
Although both live in the same town, Amy McCullough and Gina Malec have never met.

They could have passed each other in the local grocery store or attended the same event and never knew the other existed.

But through the power of social media and a desire to help the Class of 2020 at Washington Township High School, the two have formed a unique bond and joined forces on a project they hope brings nothing but smiles and a true sense of what community is all about.

"Whenever you have something that touches your heart, you can find a common ground with someone you've never met," Malec said.

The two created a Facebook page - Washington Township Adopt a Senior 2020. It gives parents, friends and family an opportunity to create tribute posts for their seniors, with anyone then being able to adopt a student and show that they are not forgotten or alone due the circumstances surrounding the coronavirus outbreak with small gifts, treats, etc.

"I saw that some other towns were doing it and it really caught on," McCullough said. "I had a lot of trouble at first because I'm really not Facebook savvy and it wasn't going well. I was in a panic with all of these people joining and then one woman reached out and told me the post wasn't showing up. I didn't know what to do.

"(Malec) got online and asked if she could help get me through it. She doesn't have a senior, yet took so much time to get it all set up. The first day, I started to get nervous again because no senior parents were posting. Two days later, it just took off; it exploded. Everyday, tons are added."

Olivia Gamble, left stands with her mother Amy McCullough on the porch of their home in Washington Township. McCullough joined forces with Gina Malec to create a Facebook page to help honor and recognize seniors in Washington Township.

Malec, who saw a similar project was being done at her alma mater (Maple Shade), was interested in seeing if it was also being run in her hometown. A teacher in the Deptford School District, she was eager to lend a hand.

"I feel so much for these kids, I wanted to help," she said. "I was asking around and saw the post that Amy made. We collaborated to create the group. I don't know her but I was willing to help right away because I know it can make a difference.

"I have a special place in my heart for these kids. As a teacher, I want to make it better for the students. My high school years were great, and senior year was awesome. All of these rites of passage that these kids are missing, my heart breaks for them. We wanted to do something to help lift their spirits."

Since late Saturday, the page has generated better than 700 members. Seniors have been adopted almost immediately, some by more than one person. Parents are asked to write a post and add a few photos, basically a short resume.

"People just want to help, they want to do something positive," said McCullough, whose daughter, Olivia Gamble, is a senior and has been adopted. "It's amazing. I didn't think people would care this much. Everybody is dealing with something, but this has blown me away. People realize just how important it is to a senior.

"This does make the seniors feel special, that they don't have to feel so alone."

McCullough said the school district is doing all it can for its senior class. Dates have been set aside in June, July and August to make up some of the events if restrictions are lifted.

Until then, this is one way to let seniors know the community is there for support.

"They're missing out on a lot of stuff, trying to keep up with their studies and some are even working, too," Malec said. "This isn't going to make up for missing prom or walking at graduation, but hopefully it will brighten their day and bring some joy.

"A lot of people have been looking to help the Class of 2020, not just in our town but all over. I'm excited to see the reactions and grateful that it's picking up. It's hard to reach every person, but were trying to reach as many as we can.

When you give people an opportunity to step up to the plate, most of the time theyll do it. Some people dont even know these kids. Its really been awesome to see.

Have you seen an inspiring story in your community during this troubling time? Tell us about it. See more uplifting stories in #TogetherNJ.

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.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Kevin Minnick may be reached at kminnick@njadvancemedia.com.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday (May 8) issued a non-bailable warrant against an Aam Aadmi Party legislator Prakash Jarwal and his close aide Kapil Nagar in connection with the suicide of a private practitioner in the Neb Sarai area of the national capital last week. The police has launched a search for the AAP leader, who continues to be on the run.

Meanwhile, Prakash Jarwal, who is booked on abetment charges in the doctor's suicide case, has moved an anticipatory bail in Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court. The court has fixed the hearing on May 11 on the MLA's plea. He has submitted that he shall be co-operating with the police authorities in the investigation.

The body of Dr Rajinder Singh, a private practitioner in Durgapuri area in south Delhi, was found on the roof of his house on April 17 morning by his tenant. He was also involved in the supply of Delhi Jal Board water through tankers since 2007. The bereaved family claimed that the accused had got Dr Rajinder's tankers removed from water supply service and also prevented clearance of dues of a large sum of money from the Jal Board.

In a statement issued to the media, Jarwal claimed that he was innocent and had not talked to or met the deceased in the last 8-10 months. Jarwal said that after a sting operation by two TV channels in 2017 against the tanker mafia, the name of Dr Rajinder had also cropped up. Dr Rajinder was blacklisted and his tankers removed from water supply thereafter, he alleged.

The Aam Aadmi Party leader said that he was ready for any probe into the matter, adding that his political rivals had earlier too tried to embroil him in controversy but he had come out clean.
The National Commission for Women on Friday sought a detailed action taken report from the Haryana police after a migrant woman was allegedly gang-raped by two people in the state's Hisar district.

According to a media report, a migrantwoman was gang-raped by two people in a village in Hisar on May 2.

The NCW said it is concerned about the safety and security of woman and despite the enactment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, crimes against women continue to occur.

"In view of the above, the commission has written to Manoj Yadava, Director General of Police, Haryana with a copy to Superintendent of Police in Hisar, for a detailed action taken report be sent to the commission at earliest," the NCW said in a statement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
HRW calls exclusion of Ahmadiyya from commission absurd, while sect leaders warn it could lead to greater persecution.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has termed the Pakistani governments exclusion of members of the Ahmadiyya religious movement from a commission on safeguarding the rights of minorities absurd, while sect leaders have warned it could lead to greater persecution of members resident in the South Asian country.

The Ahmadis are among the most persecuted communities in Pakistan and to exclude them from a minority rights commission is absurd, said Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW, a US-based rights group, in a statement on Friday.

Keeping Ahmadis off the commission shows the extent to which the community faces discrimination every day.

Earlier this week, the Pakistani government established the National Commission on Minorities (NCM), an interfaith body aimed at increasing religious tolerance and addressing issues of persecution in the country of 220 million people.

Pakistan is home to more than half a million Ahmadis, who have been declared non-Muslim under Pakistans constitution since 1974 for their belief in the sects founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, being a subordinate prophet to Islams final prophet, Muhammad.

Members of the sect believe they are Muslim, and, as such, a community spokesperson told Al Jazeera they did not wish to be a part of the commission, but that dragging them into the argument had increased threats of violence.

They never approached us or contacted us about this, said Saleemuddin, the spokesperson.

We never requested this  our principled stand is the same as before and we will not join such a commission.

Saleemuddin said debate over the issue  an emotive subject for many in religiously conservative Pakistan  had resulted in greater threats to the Ahmadi community.

What it does is put the community more in danger, he said.

The campaign that has been launched after that, no one has spoken to the community and we have become even more vulnerable.

They do not fall in the definition of minorities

Members of the Ahmadiyya sect were initially part of the governments plans for the commission, but after the religious affairs ministry objected on April 15, their representation was removed.

On May 5, when announcing the official formation of the commission, Information Minister Shibli Faraz said Ahmadis were to be excluded because they do not fall in the definition of minorities.

The back-and-forth on the issue prompted the religious affairs minister, Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, to accuse Ahmadis of not recognising the constitution, a charge community spokesperson Saleemuddin denied.

The governments position is clear that it can only include a group or party in the countrys constitutional bodies after that group recognises the constitution, Qadri said.

Declaring your reservations or objections to a certain constitutional amendment, does that make you a traitor? said Saleemuddin.

The constitution gives me a right to believe myself to be whatever I am. If you have declared us non-Muslim for the purposes of law and constitution, fine, but I have the right to believe what I am myself.

Ahmadis routinely face widespread discrimination in Pakistan, with members of the sect denied service at shops or businesses if they identify themselves.

Specific provisions of Pakistans strict blasphemy laws make it illegal for them to refer to themselves as Muslims, or to their places of worship and call to prayer by the equivalent Islamic terms. The country has also seen numerous targeted attacks against members of the community.

Saleemuddin warned that fiery debate over the issue on nationally aired television news channels risked inflaming tensions further.

Day by day, life is becoming even more difficult for us, he said.

We are so restricted socially, and anyone who is branded an Ahmadi it becomes impossible for them to live [in that area]  if they need to do a business, go for groceries, or anything.

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeeras digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.
Technavio has been monitoring the sparkling red wine market and it is poised to grow by USD 216.16 million during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of about 4% 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/20200508005010/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Sparkling Red Wine 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 highly fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Accolade Wines, Azienda Agricola Ca' de Noci, Azienda Agricola La Battagliola, Bird in Hand Winery Pty Ltd., Charlie Echo, Domaine Chandon Inc., G Patritti Co. Pty Ltd., Luis Pato, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Pernod Ricard SA are some of the major market participants. The benefits of red wine 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.

Benefits of red wine has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Sparkling Red Wine Market 2019-2023: Segmentation

Sparkling Red Wine 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=IRTNTR32147

Sparkling Red Wine 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 sparkling red wine market report covers the following areas:

Sparkling Red Wine Market Size

Sparkling Red Wine Market Trends

Sparkling Red Wine Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies the expansion of the online distribution channel as one of the prime reasons driving the sparkling red wine market growth during the next few years.

Sparkling Red Wine Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the sparkling red wine market, including some of the vendors such as Accolade Wines, Azienda Agricola Ca' de Noci, Azienda Agricola La Battagliola, Bird in Hand Winery Pty Ltd., Charlie Echo, Domaine Chandon Inc., G Patritti Co. Pty Ltd., Luis Pato, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Pernod Ricard SA. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the sparkling red wine market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform

Sparkling Red Wine Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023

Detailed information on factors that will assist sparkling red wine market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the sparkling red wine market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the sparkling red wine market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of sparkling red wine 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

Increasing distribution of wines through duty-free retail stores

Rising trend of wine tourism

Expansion of online distribution channel

PART 11: VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Overview

Landscape disruption

Competitive scenario

PART 12: VENDOR ANALYSIS

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Accolade Wines

Azienda Agricola Ca' de Noci

Azienda Agricola La Battagliola

Bird in Hand Winery Pty Ltd.

Charlie Echo

Domaine Chandon, Inc.

G Patritti Co. Pty Ltd.

Luis Pato

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

Pernod Ricard SA

PART 13: APPENDIX

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

Definition of market positioning of vendors

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/20200508005010/en/

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More than a dozen women held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Bakersfield have been released after they held a hunger strike amid coronavirus concerns, an advocacy group said Thursday.

ICE officials released at least 15 women from the Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Kern County, according to Centro Legal de la Raza, an Oakland-based legal organization that represents some of the women who were released.

A coalition of attorneys that included the San Francisco public defenders office and the ACLU filed a lawsuit in April calling on ICE to release inmates from Mesa Verde and Yuba County Jail. The lawsuit alleged crowded and unsanitary conditions.

The litigation led to release of some women detained at Mesa Verde, but despite the urgent risk to their lives, many were still being denied release, said Susan Beaty, an attorney at Centro Legal. The persistency of the hunger strikers on the inside and the mounting public pressure coming from the outside is what pushed ICE to use its authority to release them.

The release follows weeks of protests and a hunger strike among the women in the facility who said they were unable to follow health guidelines like physical distancing, putting them at risk of COVID-19.

We could die here, said Donovant Grant, who is still detained. We cannot do social distancing, and people are coming in and out every day. I see so many different faces.

A 57-year-old man, Carlos Escobar-Mejia, died Wednesday of COVID-19 as the first person to succumb to the disease in ICE custody. He was treated at a hospital but had been detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, ICE said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The men and several women are still detained at Mesa Verde, and advocacy groups remain concerned about those who are still in custody, said Tania Bernal of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.

Now ICE has shown us that this is something within their authority to accomplish, Bernal said. Its up to us to pressure them to do so.

Anna Bauman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: anna.bauman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @abauman2
NEW YORK  Tony Vaccaros mother died in childbirth, and at a tender age he also lost his father to tuberculosis. By age 5, he was an orphan in Italy, enduring beatings from an uncle. As an American GI during World War II, he survived the Battle of Normandy.
by Dan Titus | Bucks Correspondent | Fri, May 8th 11:01am EDT

According to Connor Letourneau of the SF Chronicle, the Warriors have been "preparing for years to make a bid for [Giannis] Antetokounmpo." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Fantasy Impact:

Antetokounmpo is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2021 season. The Bucks will have the first opportunity to re-sign Antetokounmpo under a new five-year deal that could be worth $254 million, via the super-max extension. The article mentions that the Greek Freak and the Bucks are on "good terms" but there will be no shortage of suitors if the Greek Freak declines his player-option. Should Antetokounmpo opt for free agency, the Bucks will have to determine to whether to trade their franchise player for assets or let him walk. The Warriors would likely have to part with Andrew Wiggins, three first-round draft picks, and additional assets to haul in the all-star forward - but hey, anything is possible if Giannis could be hacked.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday agreed to cooperate closely on measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, including the development of drugs and vaccines, Japan's top government spokesman said.

Abe and Trump held talks by phone for about 45 minutes from around 10:00 a.m. (0100 GMT), Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

"Two leaders exchanged views on each country's COVID-19 situation, steps to prevent further spread of the virus, development of medicine and vaccines and measures for reopening the economies," Suga told a regular news conference.

"They agreed to continue their tight cooperation."
Seoul (AFP) - North Korea condemned the South Friday for holding military drills, saying the situation was returning to before the diplomatic rapprochement of 2018, as leader Kim Jong Un -- whose health was the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks -- reached out to traditional ally Beijing.

Kim sent Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic communication congratulating him for China's "success" in controlling the novel coronavirus epidemic, the state news agency KCNA reported.

The nuclear-armed North has closed its borders to try to protect itself from the disease that first emerged in its giant neighbour, and insists it has not had any cases even as the virus has swept across the world.

Kim told Xi he was as pleased with China's successes as his own, KCNA reported, adding he "sent militant greetings to every member of the Communist Party of China".

Rumours swirled for weeks about Kim's health after he failed to appear at the April 15 celebrations for the birthday of his grandfather, the North's founder -- the most important day in the country's political calendar, until he reappeared at the weekend at a factory opening.

Kim's temporary disappearance triggered a series of unconfirmed reports and fevered speculation over his condition, while the United States and South Korea insisted they had no information to believe the conjectures were true.

China is the North's key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid.

Pyongyang's nuclear talks with Washington have been largely at a standstill since Kim's summit with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi broke up without a deal more than a year ago.

The North's relations with Seoul have since entered a deep freeze, despite Kim holding three summits with the South's President Moon Jae-in in 2018.

Pyongyang lashed out at Seoul on Friday for holding air-sea military drills in the Yellow Sea this week.

"Everything is now going back to the starting point before the north-south summit meeting in 2018," a defence ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by KCNA.

The exercise "awakened us once again to the obvious fact that the enemies remain enemies all the time", he said, adding the situation "demands a necessary reaction from us".
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday (May 8) disposed of petition of students from private colleges seeking fee rebate in the wake of coronavirus lockdown that led to loss of jobs and salary deduction of many parents.

The apex court asked the petitioners' advocate how the colleges will run if it failed to receive fees. From where will the colleges give salary to their employees, the court asked.

The petitioner also requested the court to order the college administration to allow some relaxation to students but the top court refused to make any direction saying that they should talk to the concerned university.

The students' plea was based on the fact that due to the COVID-19 lockdown, industries are suffering huge losses. Companies are cutting their employees' salary and millions have already lost their jobs. The central and state governments have already appealed to private schools not to increase the fees of children.

Notably, many parents have lost their jobs during the lockdown. In such a situation, they are not able to pay the hefty fees of their children studying in private colleges. The petition sought to draw the Supreme Court's attention to this issue but the top court refused the plea.
LOYALIST terrorists in Northern Ireland have issued threats against journalists working for the Sunday Life and Sunday World newspapers.

A number of reporters were visited by police officers in the early hours of Friday morning with warnings of imminent attacks.

At least one journalist was told of a planned under-car booby trap attack while staff at the two Sunday titles - both owned by Independent News and Media (INM) - were warned they are at risk of immediate attack.

The development comes just weeks after the first anniversary of the New IRA murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry.

The PSNI is taking the threat seriously and officers have been in contact with the journalists concerned.

It is understood the threats emanate from the breakaway South East Antrim UDA.

Police have confirmed they are in receipt of information that indicates a planned and co-ordinated campaign of intimidation.

Peter Vandermeersch, Publisher at INM, said: We will, of course, work with the police to ensure our staffs safety. Threats against journalists should not be tolerated in any free society.

"Today marks the 75thanniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and an important element in that victory was ensuring freedom of speech for subsequent generations. It is depressing that thugs still believe they can silence the press through intimidation. The Sunday World and Sunday Life will continue to publish stories that shed light in dark corners.

Seamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, expressed grave concern at what he described as another attempt to intimidate and silence journalists.

He said: This threat is being taken seriously by the PSNI, by the company and by the staff.

This is an extremely worrying development and will be viewed with great concern by all journalists in Northern Ireland.

Free press is a corner stone of democracy and it is essential that journalists are allowed to work without fear or intimidation.

In 2001 Sunday World reporter Martin OHagan was murdered by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) paramilitaries. The loyalist group targeted the journalist as he walked home with his wife. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.
Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi spoke to the media through video conferencing on Friday morning. Rahul Gandhi spoke about the problems posed by the growing crisis of corona virus and lockdown.

Rahul GandhiCongress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the government should inform the public about the policy of opening lockdown and deposit money directly in the account of the workers.

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Rahul Gandhi said that the pace of corona in India could accelerate even after June-July. Rahul Gandhi said that Congress has decided to give some suggestions to the government. He said that now is the time to announce relief package for small traders and prepare for opening lockdown.

Rahul Gandhi said that now the government should tell what is happening, the public should be told when the lockdown will finally open. It is important to let people know in what situation the lockdown will open.

File PhotoThe Congress leader said that the state government and the district administration should be part of the central government and work together on the strategy. He said that now it is necessary to open the lockdown.

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He said that the government should put money in the hands of the people with the help of justice scheme to help the migrant workers, which would cost Rs. 65,000 crore.

PhotoThe Congress leader said that the government was thinking that the situation would get worse if it started spending money fast but the government needed to take the risk now as the money had to reach the grassroots level.

He said that the Chief Ministers had told us about the condition of their states and they were not getting any money from the Center. The situation in the country is not normal. Rahul Gandhi said that today there is no RSS, Congress or BJP, everyone has to stand up and fight like an Indian.
Accompanied by an assortment of plastic doodads  a flamingo, an elf, a mariachi and a humanoid jack-o-lantern  Winnie Byrnes looks out the window of the Sunrise assisted living facility and sees her family.

Her daughter Laurel and Laurels son Liam visit the Cinco Ranch facility as they have often during the coronavirus pandemic: standing just outside Winnies window and talking via cellphone. Sometimes Laurel walks to Sunrise accompanied by Sandy, Winnies beloved dog.

I feel for others with parents in assisted living facilities that are high-rises, Laurel says. Shes in a one-story building. So it works.

Winnie has been at Sunrise about two years. Prior to the pandemic, Laurel and her cousin would visit regularly with a folding table, a home-cooked dinner and a deck of cards for a night of poker. But such interaction has been impossible for nearly two months. And this Mothers Day, like many other mothers, Winnie wont be able to physically connect with her family, as social distancing policies keep visitors outside.

Because Winnie has struggled with memory issues, Laurel says, The one blessing is her sense of a time frame isnt there anymore. She doesnt realize how long shes been there.

But Laurel still plans to make it the closest visit possible for the family, including her father George, Winnies partner of more than 66 years. Laurel has three other children, so shes hoping to get the rest of the family teleconferenced in during the day for what will be a heartfelt if unorthodox Mothers Day.

Normally wed be going to their house or do something here at our house, Laurel says. A big dinner with the grandkids. But Im going to try to drop some things at the door for her, and well do the best we can.

I think shes appreciated us just showing up and saying hi, even with our faces behind masks, Liam adds. So well certainly make the most of it on Mothers Day. We have a lot of plans to stop by, have my siblings pop in by video chat and say hello. It will be a little different, but shell get to have some good conversations and see everybody.

As a government-recognized holiday, Mothers Day celebrates its 106th year in 2020. The day has evolved greatly since it was formalized by Anna Jarvis more than a century ago. Jarvis, in fact, spoke against its commercialization in her later years. Without question this Mothers Day will be unlike any in its American history, as families navigate social distancing practices as best they can amid a pandemic.

Despite an economic slowdown, the tills will ring  or more aptly click  as Americans spend a record amount on Mothers Day. The National Retail Federation estimated Mothers Day as a $25 billion holiday in 2019, up $2 billion from the previous year. Based on a survey conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics in early April, consumers are expected to spend on average $8 more than last year. A $26.7 billion Mothers Day is projected.

Admittedly the look of it will be different, as many Americans are loath to leave their homes. Flowers and cards remain viable options at brick-and-mortar retailers since grocery stores and pharmacies have remained open during the pandemic. But online options are increasing in availability. Etsy reported an 86 percent increase in searches for Mothers Day cards between 2019 and 2020. Its offerings include cards to be shipped and cards that can be downloaded and printed at home.

While the business of Mothers Day continues its upward trajectory, the actual connection and appreciation Jarvis envisioned a century ago remains fraught as families figure out ways to reconcile celebration with social distancing.

Over the past few months, Helaine Parks has spent so much time with her son Shawns family that he built a Murphy bed so she can stay overnight at the house when their visits run long.

Helaines husband, Terry, died unexpectedly last October.

They met when he was 16 and she was 17, says Shawn, a music instructor who owns the Bojangles Music School. Theyd been together nearly 50 years  complete opposites who canceled each other out every election since Nixon. But they made it work. Just a beautiful example of how to treat a soulmate, something their kids all noticed.

A retired schoolteacher, Helaine has helped with home repairs  including a nasty process of stripping layers of linoleum from some hardwood floors  and also looked after the son of Shawn and his wife Elisabeth, Guy, nearly a year-and-a-half, and Elisabeths older son, Gus, 7.

It was really sweet they fixed the place for me, she says.

All the first things that first year have been difficult, she says. Its just not the way it was supposed to be. But I have such wonderful kids calling me to make sure Im OK, telling me to come live with them.

She has four children in the Houston area and they have children of their own. So navigating Mothers Day will prove as difficult as other days during this period of quarantine as family members try their best to interact while also taking precautions to protect those who may be more vulnerable to infection.

This familys ability to connect has been further compromised during the pandemic. Elisabeths sister, a physician, often has her mother, Deborah Williams, take care of her son.Because one daughter has a higher risk of exposure, Williams has limited her contact with the Parks family.

On Easter, she went to the Parks home early and hid some eggs for the boys to find as she watched from across the street.

That aspect of it breaks my heart, Shawn says. Debbie has kept her distance and she understands why she needs to do it because my sister-in-law is at a higher risk. So Im very aware of the sacrifices my mother-in-law is making for my mother. How selfless shes been as a mother and a grandmother.

I try to focus on being grateful for what we have, Elisabeth adds. I like having more time to hang out with Gus and Guy. But my sister is my best friend, and I miss her and my mom.

Gus also spends long weeks with his father during the summer. He returns from one of those visits on Mothers Day.

Thatll be the best part of my day for sure, Elisabeth says.

Shes planning to drop little gifts on her mothers front steps. Theyll all make calls to family, grill some food and appreciate each others company during a strange time.

The grandchildren have been the one thing that brings a smile to my face, Helaine says. They are the point of it all. And its fun to be around them.

Right, Shawn says. Then, he can barely say it without a chuckle: Now get back to work on the floor, Mom.

andrew.dansby@chron.com
Dr Frederick Yao Mac-Palm, Chief Executive Officer of the Citadel Hospital; Donyo Kafui, alias Ezor, blacksmith; Bright Alan Debrah, Freight; Colonel Samuel Kojo Gameli; Corporal Seidu Abubakar; Lance Corporal (L/C), Sylvester Akankpewu; and Johannes Zipki with the Signal Unit of the Ghana Armed Forces have been granted bail.

The eight are to report to the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) twice a week as well as deposit their passports with the Court's Registry.

It was the first time all the accused persons had appear before the Court presided over by Justice Samuel K. Asiedu, an Appeals Court Judge sitting in as an additional High Court Judge after their committal proceedings on March 3, 2020.

Already, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Benjamin Agordzo has been granted a self-recognisance bail of GH500,000.00 by an Accra High Court presided over by Justice Charles Ekow Baiden, whilst Warrant Officer Class Two Esther Saan has also been granted bail by another High Court.

Only ACP Agordzo, WOI Saan, and Colonel Samuel Gameli were in Court on Friday when the case was called as the rest had been remanded into prison custody and were not in court due to the observance of the COVID-19 protocols.

They have been charged together with Warrant Officer II Esther Saan, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Benjamin Agordzo and L/C Ali Solomon with offences including conspiracy to commit treason, treason, conspiracy to possess explosives, arms and ammunitions and possession of explosives, arms and ammunitions without lawful authority.

All ten accused persons were supposed to be present at the Court for their pleas to be taken. They are expected back on June 5.

Mr Victor Kwadjoga Adawudu, counsel for Dr Mac-Palm, Kafui, Debrah, Akpa, Abubakar, and Akankpewu in appealing for bail said his clients were not flight risk.

He stressed that especially, the soldiers among them had the Provost Marshall monitoring every movement of them, and also that they had been in custody for almost a year and by law are innocent until proven guilty and so that remand should not be used as a way of punishing them.

He said his clients had been publicized as being wicked so they were determined to appear before court to prove their innocence and their family members who are people of substance would stand surety for them.

Mr Tony Lartey, lawyer for Zipki said his client would not run because Ghana's borders were closed due to COVID-19, adding that his client was Asthmatic and had High Blood Pressure which was getting worse and if not granted bail would not live to see the end of the trial.

Miss Hilda Craig, a Senior State Attorney in opposing the bail said they would not appear before court to stand trial when granted bail.

The Kaneshie District Court on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, committed the ten accused charged with treason to the High Court to face trial.

Mrs Eleanor Kakra Barnes-Botchway, the presiding judge, committing them said the Court after listening to the Prosecution, their counsel, as well as examining the facts, among other documents was overwhelmed with the evidence and said there was the need for them to answer the charges at the High Court.

She therefore remanded them into prison custody except Mr Agordzo who was on bail, but Colonel Samuel Kojo Gameli, a senior military officer and Warrant Officer Class One Esther Saan, alias Mama Gee, are also currently on bail but had not been able to meet the bail conditions.

The facts are that Mac-Palm, Kafui, Debra, ACP Agordzo is a police officer and the rest officers of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).

They were all members of the Take Action Ghana-a Non-Governmental Organisation, incorporated by Mac-Palm in 2018 and that the group planned to demonstrate against the government as well as overtake it, so Mac-Palm contacted Kafui, a resident of Alavanyo to manufacture arms for that purpose and he produced them.

They also held meetings to facilitate the process and drew a map covering the Flagstaff House, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, 37 Military Hospital, Burma Camp to facilitate their movements.

Colonel Gameli was said to have promised to give his support before, during and after the planned event and when Kafui brought the 22 explosives, six pistols, three grenades and five ammunitions, Mac-Palm accommodated him, adding that all took place from June 2018 and September 2019.

The Prosecution said Mac-Palm was said to have also provided a quantity of substance which when inhaled, would make one sleep for an hour, thus upon a tip-off, Mac-Palm was arrested on September 19 and the rest subsequently.

---GNA
Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - Botswana has commenced easing COVID-19 (coronavirus) restriction to allow the country to return to normal after five weeks of a nationwide lockdown
Photo taken on Jan. 20, 2019, shows former U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus delivering a speech during a celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the establishment of China-U.S. diplomatic relations, in Los Angeles, the United States. (Xinhua/Qian Weizhong)

"They knew it was wrong, but they didn't stand up and say anything about it. They felt intimidated."

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus said that the U.S. government's anti-China rhetoric reminded him of the McCarthy era.

"The administration's rhetoric is so strong against China. It's over the top. We're entering a kind of an era which is similar to Joe McCarthy back when he was red-baiting the State Department, attacking communism," Baucus said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday.

"A little bit like Hitler in the 30s. A lot of people knew what was going on was wrong. They knew it was wrong, but they didn't stand up and say anything about it. They felt intimidated," he said.

Photo taken on April 19, 2019, shows Max Baucus, former U.S. ambassador to China, speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2019 Penn Wharton China Summit in Philadelphia, the United States. (Xinhua/Yang Chenglin)

"And now in the United States, if anybody says anything reasonable about China, he or she feels intimidated, afraid his head is going to be chopped off. And back in the 30s in Germany is very similar. People who were responsible in the U.S. and especially responsible in Germany couldn't speak up," the former U.S. ambassador continued.

"I worry that some of that's happening now, and it's very dangerous. And I think it's in part because the Republican administration, Donald Trump, realizes that the economy is not doing well, probably because of the coronavirus and therefore they have to pivot, they have to blame somebody and they're blaming China. And it is very difficult to get back on track after the election, whoever's elected," he added.

Photo taken on Jan. 28, 2014, shows U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) testifying during his confirmation hearing to be the U.S. ambassador to China before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States. Max Baucus, President Barack Obama's pick for the new American ambassador to China, earlier promised to work hard to improve Sino-U.S. relationship, which he called as "one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world." (Xinhua/Zhang Jun)

When asked about if his comparison between the current atmosphere in Washington and that in Germany in 1930s was "provocative", Baucus clarified that "I think we're moving in that direction, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but there are a lot very responsible people in America who know that this China-bashing is irresponsible, and we're going to pay a price the more it continues."

Baucus served as U.S. Ambassador to China under the Obama administration from 2014 to 2017. Before that he was a Senator from Montana for nearly 36 years.

As COVID-19 deaths continue to increase in the United States, some individuals in the Trump administration have tried desperately to deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China.

A screenshot of Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai's opinion piece published on the website of The Washington Post on May 5, 2020. (Xinhua)

In an opinion piece published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai called on some U.S. politicians to end the blame-China game and focus on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic that killed over 74,000 Americans as of Thursday afternoon.

"It is time to end the blame game. It is time to focus on the disease and rebuild trust between our two countries. As President Abraham Lincoln called for 'the better angels' in his inauguration speech, I hope that the wisdom of preceding generations will guide us to choose the right side of history and work for our shared future together," Cui said.
My school district, Spring Branch ISD, recently scrapped its previous plan of holding a virtual graduation ceremony in mid-June and an in-person, indoor ceremony at the end of July and has instead decided to have a series of outdoor graduations at the start of June. Many other area districts have adopted a similar plan, per the government's recent announcement. Even the city of Houston, it seems, has jumped on this bandwagon as well, planning an outdoor, city-wide high school graduation ceremony on June 5. Although I am confident these decisions were made in the hopes of giving seniors like me the best possible end to our senior year under these circumstances, and I am sure student safety is a top priority of every official involved in planning these events, I do not believe these new plans successfully ensures either of these conditions.

There are 510 seniors in my graduating class this year. The logistics of accommodating so many socially distancing seniors and their families at a graduation ceremony for just one day are already remarkably challenging. Coordinating a safe, socially distanced gathering at every high school in Houston, many of which have senior classes much larger than 510, is extremely challenging. Add to that equation the fact that we seniors were abruptly cut off from our friends and have had little contact with anyone outside our immediate families for what will have been over two months by early June, and you have significant potential for a dangerous situation.

It is unfeasible  impossible  to prevent hundreds of human-contact-starved seniors from ignoring their instincts to gather together and hug their friends as soon as theyre near each other.

Already, Ive seen classmates on my school Zoom calls (our only connection to what school used to be) who are over at their friends houses. If people are traveling in order to be together now, then there is hardly any likelihood that they will restrain themselves when they are already in the same place. Its the natural reaction to finally being reunited with people we care about and is ultimately inevitable. And we cant expect overworked and outnumbered faculty members to ensure that every single senior stays at least 6 feet away from others; the resources just arent there, and it isnt safe or fair to ask faculty members to take on that extra duty of policing seniors. The solution, therefore, is to hold off on an in-person graduation.

At this time, we are not seeing a consistent drop in COVID-19 cases in Houston. That means we dont have the virus under control, and we cant be sure well be safe if we gather together at the start of June, no matter what rules we try to impose. These planned June ceremonies will also be happening less than three weeks after the planned reopening of many Texas businesses  much too soon to have solid data on the effects of this reopening on the health of Houstonians.

And what about those students who may be at higher risk for severe symptoms from the virus or who may live with people who fall in that category? There is absolutely no way they can feel safe attending one of these ceremonies so early in the process of returning to life as we knew it; are they simply to be ignored? We need solutions to benefit all Houston high school seniors, not just those who are at lower risk of complications.

Additionally, seniors have already lost many of the end-of-year traditions they have looked forward to for years, but the few opportunities for normalcy that still remain  being able to enjoy a postponed prom in some cases; starting college on campus in the fall  are reliant on everyone staying safe and staying separate. If we are too rushed in our efforts to return to the status quo, we could face another spike and jeopardize what chances we have of ending our senior year the way wed hoped. Yes, I want to be able to celebrate the class of 2020s achievements alongside my friends, but I want to do it safely; an earlier outdoor graduation isnt worth it if it means Im putting the people I care about at risk.

I know that the officials making these decisions only want the best for us students, and I am grateful for their efforts. I hope they can see, however, that the best thing for us students (and our faculty members, and our families) is to wait a little longer. Please, Houston school and city leaders: postpone the graduation ceremonies until we have enough data to know students are safe. Make a choice to help limit the spread of the virus rather than giving it the opportunity to grow even faster, and to give us seniors a send-off that is safe as well as meaningful.

Tanner is a senior and valedictorian at Stratford High School.
Hyderabad, May 8 : Depressed over the postponement of their marriage due to the ongoing lockdown, a couple in Telangana's Adilabad district committed suicide on Friday, police said.

Pendur Ganesh (22) and Soyam Seethabai (20) ended their lives by consuming pesticides in an agricultural field in Kannapur village in Narnoor mandal, about 300 km from the state capital.

According to police, Ganesh, a farmer and a girl from the same village were in love with each other for a couple of years. Their engagement took place a few months ago and the marriage was scheduled for last month.

However, both the families decided to postpone the marriage due to the lockdown. The lovers were upset over this.

As the lockdown in Telangana was recently extended, the couple was further depressed due to the uncertainty over their marriage.

"Both the families say they took the extreme step due to postponement of the wedding. Their bodies were found in a field. We have shifted them to government hospital in Utnoor for autopsy," said Narnoor Sub-Inspector M. Vijay.

The police official said a case of death under suspicious circumstances was registered and an investigation was launched.

The lockdown, which began in Telangana on March 22, has resulted in the postponement of thousands of weddings. The government has banned gatherings for marriages to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
South Pacific island nations have dodged the worst ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, but now face a stark choice between a risky reopening to tourists and economic collapse. Today countries all over the world are weighing when to ease restrictions that would save jobs but risk the virus running amok. But the tradeoffs are perhaps starker in the South Pacific islands than almost anywhere else on Earth. Most of these postcard-perfect archipelagoes have been spared outbreaks that would instantly overwhelm their barebones health systems. Around a dozen Pacific island nations remain virus-free, most of them remote dots in the ocean that sealed their borders when they saw the carnage COVID-19 was causing elsewhere in the world. One notable exception is Fiji, where 18 cases have been reported although the authorities hope to be able to declare the islands virus-free later this month. But the economic impact of the pandemic has been devastating. Communities across the region rely heavily on tourism -- in some places as much as 50 percent of GDP -- that comes from parts of the world where COVID-19 has been actively spreading. Since the crisis began, flights have stopped, hotels have been abandoned, and revenue has dried up. "When Australia closed its borders to international travel, our resort went to zero income in three days," Elizabeth Pechan, co-owner of Vanuatu's The Havannah resort, wrote in a recent blog post. In Vanuatu alone, 70 percent of tourism jobs have reportedly disappeared. And the already impoverished nations have no US Treasury or European Central Bank to race to the financial rescue. Still, an idea to include the islands in a quarantine-free travel "bubble" with Australia and New Zealand -- where infection rates are low -- is getting only a cautious welcome. "There's a huge risk if COVID finds its way into Pacific island nations that are currently untouched," said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after recent talks with her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. - 'Ingenious idea' - "(We) believe that little pockets like ourselves, currently free of the virus and working with other like-minded countries in the region, exercising caution, should be able to reopen," said Cook Islands Tourism chief executive Halatoa Fua. But he stressed the bubble would need to come with stringent safeguards. Many of the islands already suffer from high levels of diabetes and heart disease that could make any coronavirus outbreak especially dangerous. Chairman of the Palau Visitors Authority Ngirai Tmetuchi said the idea was worth exploring "but we'd have to read the fine print and evaluate the risks". The island's Tourism Minister F. Umiich Sengebau said in the absence of direct air links with Australia and New Zealand, it made more sense for his country to pursue a bubble arrangement with Taiwan. Palau is one of the few nations to have diplomatic relations with Taipei. "This is an ingenious idea that we must consider for a country like Taiwan, which has done a very good job in handling of COVID-19 pandemic," he said. "This is mutually beneficial given the tourists from Taiwan want to visit Palau for leisure and Palauans go to Taiwan for medical treatments and some leisure time as well." Elsewhere, the immediacy of the pandemic threat has put such plans firmly on the backburner. "Right now, the Solomons Islands government's priority is to finalise preparedness and response requirements such as in-country testing and facilitate repatriation of stranded citizens within the region," a spokesman for Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said. With total eradication in Australia, New Zealand or Taiwan unlikely, the ability to trace, treat and isolate any outbreak will likely be key. Australia on Friday announced plans to boost COVID-19 testing in places where there is no domestic capacity at all and where only a handful of intensive care units exist. In a signal of the scale of the challenge, Marshall Islands Health Secretary Jack Niedenthal said it was too early even to consider the idea of a bubble. "Even just responding with a 'maybe' could cause a lot of unnecessary anxiety with our people," he said. Fiji hopes to be able to declare the islands virus-free later in May Some Pacific nations such as the Cook Islands are looking at the idea of a quarantine-free travel 'bubble' with other virus-free areas Fiji and other Pacific island nations rely heavily on tourism
Treating coronavirus patients with blood thinners could help boost their prospects for survival, according to preliminary findings from physicians at New York Citys largest hospital system that offer another clue about treating the deadly condition.

The results of an analysis of 2,733 patients, published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, are part of a growing body of information about what has worked and what has not during a desperate few months in which doctors have tried dozens of treatments to save those dying of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Valentin Fuster, a physician in chief at Mount Sinai Hospital and one of the studys authors, said in an interview that the observations are based only on a review of medical records and that more rigorous, randomised studies are needed to draw broader conclusions, but that the results are promising.

My opinion is cautious, but I must tell you I think this is going to help, he said. This is the opening of the door for what drugs to use and what questions to answer.

Since March, when the pandemic hit Europe and the United States, doctors have been reporting mysterious blood clots, which can be gel-like or even semisolid, in a significant subset of coronavirus patients. Autopsies of patients who died of respiratory arrest have shown that some had unusual microclots in their lungs rather than the typical damage expected. And last month, doctors reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on five unusual cases of Covid-positive people in their 30 and 40s experiencing large strokes.

The Mount Sinai study focused on hospitalised patients treated at its five branches from 14 March through 11 April. Among patients who were not on ventilators, those treated with blood thinners died at similar rates to those who did not get blood thinners. But they lived longer  a median of 21 days compared to 14 days.

For patients on ventilators, the difference was more significant. About 63 per cent of patients who did not receive the medications died compared with 29 per cent who received the treatment.

Another critical finding of the study is that giving blood thinners to these patients appears to be relatively safe. There was not a significant difference in the most dangerous side effect of anticoagulants  bleeding  in those who were on the drugs versus those who were not.

As a result of the analysis, Fuster said, the hospital system changed its treatment protocols several days ago to begin giving patients with Covid-19 higher doses of blood thinners.

Deepak Bhatt, a professor at Harvard Medical School who specialises in interventional cardiology, called the paper a very important study with the blood issues in Covid-19 patients having evolved from just a suspicion to a well-recognised complication of the virus. What we are figuring now is what do we do now that we know in terms of treatments, he said.

Thomas Wakefield, head of vascular surgery for Michigan Medicine, said the anticoagulant heparin, which was used in some patients, probably has two mechanisms among others that contribute to the good results seen in the study. He said some data suggest heparin may interfere with entry of the virus into cells through spike proteins, and that heparin may also be able to decrease the inflammatory effects of the cytokine storm in patients with severe infection.

Doctors caring for the sickest coronavirus patients confront a limited arsenal of treatments. On 1 May, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the antiviral drug remdesivir in patients who are hospitalised and seriously ill.

But trials of other treatments, including those involving hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug touted by President Trump, have been stopped because of a lack of efficacy and concerns about toxicity. In late April, scientists reported that an arthritis drug made by Regeneron and Sanofi that had drawn enthusiasm from investors early on produced disappointing results in clinical trials.

Anticoagulants  first discovered more than 100 years ago and available in pills, injections and IVs  have been a key building block of treatment plans for weeks at many medical centres, prompted by discoveries about how the virus attacks the human body and an increasing recognition of blood-related complications in coronavirus patients.

A number of medical societies, including the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis and the American Society of Haematology, have put out guidance recommending the use of blood thinners for some Covid-19 patients, but the advice has taken a conservative approach. Its a delicate balance between clotting and bleeding, especially when patients are as sick as some of the ones who have Covid-19, said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine.

A week ago, we were making some educated guesses on how to prevent blood clots, he said. This is the first time we have seen data that says higher doses may possibly be effective and safe.

Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association, agreed the Mount Sinai study was encouraging but urged caution. He said there may be other explanations for why the treated group had better outcomes unrelated to the blood-thinning drugs.

Elkind said: People are rushing to get answers for the good reason that we are in the midst of a crisis, but we need to make sure we are not jumping ahead of the evidence.

Fuster said Mount Sinai is beginning a trial this week that will include 5,000 patients who will be randomized into treatment groups to try to get more definitive information. Many unknowns remain about the blood thinners, including the best dosage and timing, and whether patients with Covid-19 who are not sick enough to be hospitalised and are dealing with their illness at home would benefit from taking the medication.

The Washington Post
Australia will lift its coronavirus lockdown restrictions in a three-step process, prime minister Scott Morrison has announced  as his government aims to remove all curbs by July.

The country imposed strict social distancing measures and closed its borders in March, credited with drastically slowing the number of new infections of Covid-19.

With fewer than 20 new infections each day, Mr Morrison said Australian states and territories on Friday agreed a road map to get almost one million people back to work.

You can stay under the doona forever, the prime minister told reporters, using an Australian word for duvet. Youll never face any danger. But weve got to get out from under the doona at some time.

Restaurants and cafes currently limited to takeaway services will be allowed to reopen, but with a maximum of 10 patrons at a time, under the first stage of the plan.

Stage two will see gyms, cinemas and galleries allowed to reopen, although businesses will only be able to have 20 customers at a time. States that have closed their borders would also start to allow some interstate travel, Mr Morrison said.

Stage three will permit gatherings of up to 100 people, see the reopening of nightclubs and allow employees to return to their offices. All interstate travel will be allowed, along with some limited international travel, including flights between Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Morrison said it will be up to the countrys individual states and territories to decide when to begin implement each stage, with each step likely to be separated by four-week transition.

Despite the staggered easing, he warned the country should still expect further outbreaks.

Australia has had fewer than 7,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and fewer than 800 people are still sick with the disease. Almost 100 people have died.

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While the country has been hailed for successfully containing the disease and preventing local hospitals being swamped by coronavirus patients, the lockdown measures have still taken a devastating toll on the economy.

On Friday Australias central bank predicted the country is facing its biggest economic contraction on record, forecasting the economy would shrink by 10 per cent in the first half of the year.

Despite the government subsidising the wages of about 6 million Australians that keeps them out of unemployment statistics, about 10 per cent of the countrys labour force is also expected to be without a job this year.

Mr Morrison said the government expects about 850,000 people will be able to return to work once the exit plan is implemented.

The prime minister told reporters he hopes most workers  will be back in the workplace once step three is introduced.
New York

James Madison High School in Brooklyn has some alumni you've probably heard of, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Judge Judy, and the musician Carole King.

Now, all of a sudden, the 750 graduating seniors at James Madison are just a little bit famous, too. Administrators and staff members at the school have printed out their yearbook headshots, laminated them by hand and hung them on the fence surrounding the school.

Jodie Cohen, principal of James Madison High School, is especially in touch with the needs of this year's seniors because her son, Aidan, is one of them.

One of the largest high schools in New York City with 3,800 students, James Madison has seniors going to Yale and Harvard, among other colleges, as well as students with special needs who will begin training programs for jobs in retail and other industries.

Cohen said if it's safe, they'll hold a barbecue for seniors in August, when they will receive their pictures and yearbooks.

Janelle Moe, a senior, said some of her teenage classmates were embarrassed to have their pictures up on the fence, but she thought it was great.
Danish museums, amusement parks and cinemas will be allowed to reopen from June 8, the government said on Friday, after it struck a deal with parliament on how restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 could be eased further.

In the third phase of its reopening plan, Denmark will also increase the maximum number of people allowed to meet in public to between 30 and 50, up from a 10-person limit, it said.

Danish shopping malls, schools for the oldest students and restaurants will be allowed to reopen in the coming weeks said the government late on Thursday as it enters the second phase of reopening after curbing the spread of the virus.

The third reopening phase would only take place if the number of infected and hospitalisations did not "increase more than expected," a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said.

Night clubs, music venues and gyms would remain shut until the fourth phase of the reopening which is expected to start by the beginning of August, it added.

Denmark was among the first countries to restrict public gatherings and close schools, restaurants and bars in a lockdown that quickly helped curb the spread of the virus, meaning it was also one of the first European countries to open up again.

So far, 10,083 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Denmark, a country of 5.8 million people, and 514 have died of the disease, according to data from health authorities.
Indian-American Senator Manka Dhingra has been appointed as a member of a bipartisan committee in the Washington State Senate to address the state's long-term economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

The formation of the seven-member bipartisan Special Committee on Economic Recovery was announced by Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig on Wednesday, a press release issued by the Washington Senate Democrats said.

This bipartisan committee will lay the groundwork and help lead our state in addressing the economic impacts of the virus through effective and innovative solutions to this unprecedented challenge, Billig said.

The committee will consist of four Democrat and three Republican senators. Democratic senators include David Frockt, Manka Dhingra, Christine Rolfes and Rebecca Saldana and Republicans include senators Randi Becker, Tim Sheldon, while one member is yet to be named.

"Honoured to be selected to serve on this Special Committee on Economic Recovery. This is an opportunity to hear from experts across the country to make bold changes in order to create opportunities for success for all Washingtonians," Manka Dhingra, Senator for Washington's 45th Legislative District, tweeted.

Dhingra, 47, is an Indian-American attorney and the first Sikh elected to any state legislature in the US.

The committee will hold its first meeting in June and is tasked with making recommendations on COVID-19 recovery legislation for the next year's 2021 legislative session, or before that if lawmakers are called back into the session this year.

The purpose of this select committee is to look deeply at the ways in which the pandemic has structurally changed our state and regional economies, and to make recommendations on how we can come out stronger on the other side for workers and the businesses that employ them, David Frockt, who will head the committee said.

The goal is to have this committee work together, without partisanship, in order to drive innovative, forward-looking ideas that can help the people in every corner of this state recover and prosper, he said.

It will hold work sessions in the coming months to hear from experts in a variety of fields, look at what other states are doing to recover from the outbreak and identify innovative ways to rejuvenate Washington's economy and communities throughout the state, the release said.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, the US is the worst-affected country in the world, with over 1.2 million confirmed cases and more than 75,000 deaths.

The Washington state has so far reported over 16,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 800 fatalities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Advancing care for older people across health specialties, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today announced that two expert researchers--Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, MSc, an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in N.Y.; and Nazema Siddiqui, MD, MHSc, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.--will receive the 2020 Jeffrey H. Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties. Originally slated for presentation at the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting--now cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic--the awards will be presented to Dr. Dharmarajan and Dr. Siddiqui at the AGS 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21) in Chicago, Ill. (May 12-15, 2021).

"As we work to advance geriatrics expertise, we need to break down silos and build professional collaboration across specialties," notes Sunny Linnebur, PharmD, FCCP, FASCP, BCPS, BCGP, AGS board chair. "Working at the crossroads of geriatrics and other important specialties, Dr. Dharmarajan and Dr. Siddiqui are modeling the way not only to better collaboration but also to better care."

"Palliative Radiation Treatment in Older Adults with Brain Metastases: Benefit or Burden?" (Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, MSc)

For her work originally slated for presentation at #AGS20 and now profiled in a special supplement from the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), Dr. Dharmarajan and colleagues from across the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai looked at whether a certain form of palliative radiation therapy (a form of cancer treatment intended to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life) was associated with more benefits or burdens for older adults with certain types of cancer. For their work, the team looked at data from more than 28,000 patients with breast, lung, or gastrointestinal cancer and a diagnosis of brain metastases (which means that cancer has spread, or metastasized, to the brain from its original location). Of those patients, 20 percent were 75 years old or older, and more than 52 percent received a form of palliative radiation treatment known as "whole brain radiation therapy" (WBRT). More than 80 percent of patients receiving WBRT completed treatment.

Compared with younger patients, those 75-years-old and older were less likely to be offered palliative WBRT and more likely to stop WBRT prematurely. People over age 75 also experienced a higher rate of mortality within six months of completing radiation therapy. According to Dr. Dharmarajan and her colleagues, results suggest that WBRT as a palliative option frequently goes unfinished and can be associated with worse outcomes in older adults with cancer that has spread to the brain. More research is needed to identify patients likely to benefit from this type of a palliative option.

"Urinary Microbiome in Menopausal Women with Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections" (Nazema Siddiqui, MD, MHSc)

In her research also featured in the JAGS supplement, Dr. Siddiqui and colleagues from Duke, Oregon Health and Science University, and the University of Virginia turned a critical eye to one of healthcare's most pervasive concerns for older women: Recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs).

Specifically, Dr. Siddiqui and her team looked at the role different treatment options might play in the "urinary microbiome," the medical term for the bacterial environment found in our urinary system (including normal/healthy levels of bacteria, as well as bacteria that can contribute to recurrent UTIs). These options include topical vaginal estrogen (a cream or ointment applied to the vagina to improve levels of estrogen, a hormone that declines during menopause and which many believe impacts levels of urinary-tract bacteria) and antibiotics (the standard treatment option for most bacterial infections, including UTIs).

Analyzing sterile urine samples from 65 women, the research team found that a specific type of bacteria known as Lactobacilli was found in the urinary microbiome of all women, but there were higher amounts in women without UTIs. For example:

35 percent of women with recurrent UTIs had moderate to large amounts of Lactobacillaceae when they were treated with topical vaginal estrogen and daily antibiotics.

44 percent of women with recurrent UTIs had moderate to large amounts of Lactobacillaceae when they were treated with topical vaginal estrogen but without daily antibiotics.

By comparison, 56 percent of women without recurrent UTIs (also known as the "control group") had moderate to large amounts of Lactobacillaceae.

There were also trends towards different species of Lactobacilli recovered in women taking daily antibiotics. Interestingly, the team was also able to use a new research technique known as Bayesian graphical compositional regression to identify smaller clusters of microbiome differences in women from the three groups above. These results point to subtle but important differences in bacteria, which may change our thinking about how and why UTIs recur, and our approaches to treatment by extension. Those differences are important, since UTIs remain among the most common bacterial infections for women, accounting for nearly 25 percent of all infections and ranking high among those infections most likely to reoccur.

The Silverstein Memorial Award is one of several honors conferred by the AGS at its Annual Scientific Meeting. The 2020 award recipients--all of whom will be honored at #AGS21--include more than 20 healthcare leaders representing the depth and breadth of disciplines championing care for older adults. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.

###

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for more than 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

The Health in Aging Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Jeffrey H. Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties

The Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties recognizes emerging researchers across health care committed to careers in aging. Their geriatrics-focused work in surgical and other medical specialties helps to advance the unique care we all need as we age.

About the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting

The AGS Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier educational event in geriatrics, providing the latest information on clinical care, research on aging, and innovative models of care delivery. Following the cancellation of the 2020 gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 3,000 nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physician assistants, social workers, long-term care and managed care providers, healthcare administrators, and others will convene next year from May 13-15 (pre-conference program on May 12), in Chicago, Ill., to advance geriatrics knowledge and skills through state-of-the-art educational sessions and research presentations. For more information, visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrics.org.
Two men have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the February shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested on Thursday evening and were booked into the Glynn County Jail.

"Based on our involvement in this case...within 36 hours we secured warrants, that speaks volumes for itself to the probable cause in this case," said GBI's Director Vic Reynolds at a press conference on Friday morning.

Cellphone video showing the moment Arbery was killed has prompted national outrage since surfacing online on Tuesday afternoon, but his mother said she can't bring herself to watch it.

"I don't think I'll ever be in a mental state where I can actually watch the video. I had others that watched it that shared what they saw and that just was enough," Wanda Cooper-Jones told ABC News in an interview that aired Thursday morning on "Good Morning America."

In the 28-second video, Arbery, who is black, can be seen jogging around a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick on a sunny afternoon on February 23. The footage ends with three loud gunshots.

MORE: Cellphone video shows a Georgia jogger allegedly ambushed by 2 gunmen

Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, who are both white, told police they grabbed their guns and hopped in their truck to pursue Arbery after seeing him running in their neighborhood, because they believed he was responsible for several recent burglaries. The father claimed his son got out of the truck holding a shotgun and was attacked by Arbery, according to a police report obtained by ABC News.

PHOTO: Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, right, in a photos released on May 7, 2020, after their arrest in Georgia. The father and son have been charged with murder in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery. (Glynn County Sheriffs Office)

The two men tussled over the firearm before Arbery was shot, as seen in the cellphone video, which was allegedly taken by a bystander.

Two prosecutors recused themselves from investigating Arbery's murder citing conflicts of interest since Gregory McMichaels is a retired Glynn County police officer and investigator with Brunswick's district attorney's office.

Story continues

Tom Durden, the district attorney for the Atlantic Judicial Circuit, was assigned the case in the middle of April by the state's attorney general. Durden brought in the GBI to investigate on Tuesday evening, Reynolds said.

The McMichaels were charged with felony murder and aggregated assault charges.

Reynolds said on Friday there will be no hate crime charges. "There is no hate crime in Georgia," Reynolds said, adding, "Georgia is one of I think four or five states left in the union that doesn't have any hate crime."

PHOTO: Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was allegedly killed by a father and son while jogging on Feb. 23, 2020. The FBI and DOJ are investigating the case and a grand jury is expected to decide if charges should be filed. (Courtesy The Arbery family)

The GBI is also investigating who leaked the cellphone video onto social media and threats against the Glynn County Police Department.

Arbery, who lived in Brunswick, one town over from where the McMichaels reside, was pronounced dead at the scene by the Glynn County coroner. No weapons were found on him, according to the police report.

"I'm managing, it's really hard," Arbery's mother told ABC News Thursday. "It's really been hard."

"Its outrageous that it has taken more than two months for Ahmaud Arberys executioners to be arrested, but better late than never," Ben Crump, an attorney representing the family, said in a statement. "This is the first step to justice. This murderous father and son duo took the law into their own hands."

MORE :African American family mourns 4 loved ones as COVID-19 racial disparities exposed

Prior to the pair's arrest, Cooper-Jones told ABC News she believed authorities hadn't taken them into custody because Gregory McMichael had a lengthy career as an investigator in the Brunswick district attorneys office before recently retiring.

"I think that they don't feel like he was wrong because he was one of them," she said.

After the video circulated on social media Tuesday, a large crowd of protesters marched through the neighborhood where Arbery was killed. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations announced Wednesday that it was opening its own probe into the Feb. 23 incident.

PHOTO: Wanda Cooper-Jones appears on 'Good Morning America,' May 7, 2020. (ABC News)

S. Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys representing Arbery's family, demanded answers Thursday morning and had asked for the immediate arrests of Gregory and Travis McMichael.

"Prosecutors will need a grand jury in order to formally indict these men, but that has nothing to do with actually going out and arresting the men seen on camera murdering a 25-year-old unarmed black man," Merritt told ABC News in an interview that aired Thursday on "GMA."

"The prosecutors actually have the option, if they so chose to, to directly indictment and skip the entire grand jury process," he added. "It's something that happens all the time in our legal system, and this would certainly be an appropriate moment."

The McMichaels' attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment Wednesday, and the McMichaels themselves did not return phone calls.

Arbery would have turned 26 years old on Friday. Cooper-Jones described her late son as humble, kind, well-mannered and beloved by his family and peers.

"Ahmaud didn't deserve to go the way that he went," she said.

ABC News' Kelly McCarthy contributed to this report.

Father and son charged with murder of unarmed black man Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
In a massive development, the Trump administration on Thursday, May 7 was reported to have shelved to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on reopening the United States as the White House coronavirus taskforce, headed by vice-president Mike Pence, found it's advice 'very restrictive'.

According to reports, the CDC had prepared a 17-page draft recommendation on 'Reopening America', which included guidelines on how businesses, schools, and other organisations should reopen in the months ahead but the White House has sent it back. Media reports suggest that the White House task force wanted each state to make their own decisions based on data and response efforts and has put the onus on governors.

Read: Donald Trump's Valet Tests Positive For Coronavirus; US President Again Tests Negative

US President Donald Trump on Thursday, May 7 announced the reopening of the country again and promised to 'rebuild the greatest economy anywhere in the world'.

"This is a big moment in our history because we are opening up our country again. People are coming out, they are starting to go around and see what's happening, they have been short of shut down as the expression goes but we are opening up our country. People want our country to open up. Now, we want to do it in a safe way, we wanna make sure safety, you know all about social distancing and washing your hands and all of the things that we are supposed to do," Trump said in a video message released by the White House.

Read: 'No Life Worth Losing To Add One More Point To Dow': Biden Shames Trump's Economy Rhetoric

"And something I think that's important to say because I have been okay at this kind of thing - our economy, it's going to come back very very strong. You know we built the greatest economy anywhere in the world, nobody even close. Greater than China by far, greater than anybody, nobody was even close. I did it once, we are gonna do it again and it's gonna be just as strong by the time we have it done and it's gonna be a lot sooner than anybody would understand. We are gonna have an incredible next year and I look forward to it," Trump added in the one-minute-long video.

This is a big moment in America's history: opening up our Country again and rebuilding the greatest economy anywhere in the world  pic.twitter.com/RnCun2HxN6  The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 7, 2020

Read: White House COVID-19 Task Force Not Disbanding, Trump Says 'it Will Continue Indefinitely'

Coronavirus in the US

Trump on Thursday said he will be tested daily for coronavirus after a US Navy member who is part of his personal valet tested positive for the disease. According to reports, the US President along with vice president Mike Pence and certain high-level White House officials will now be tested for COVID-19 infection on a daily basis.

Trump has been facing a lot of criticism from health experts, who feel his administration is opening up the economy too soon as the country still remains the worst affected in the world with over 76,000 deaths and more than 1.2 million cases.

Trump has slammed his critics in media, who he feels are creating hysteria around the disease outbreak by spreading 'fake news'. Experts believe that Trump administration's hurry to reopen the economy is due to the upcoming presidential polls in November. According to reports, more than 3 million Americans have applied for unemployment claims so far, highest in US history.

Read: Trump Calls Americans 'warriors', Says 'some People Will Be Affected Badly' As US Reopens

(Image Credit: AP)
Tom Fitton, president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which said it is suing the Pennsylvania Department of State and Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties, claiming they are not following proper procedures to remove inactive voters from registration rolls. Read more

With the Nov. 3 presidential election less than six months away, Clout expects President Donald Trump and his allies to stoke conspiracy theories about voter fraud, just as they did ahead of the 2016 election.

Consider Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group that frequently files lawsuits and makes public pronouncements that sync with the presidents agenda while claiming to be nonpartisan about it all.

The group sued Bucks, Chester and Delaware Counties last week, saying they dont make reasonable efforts to remove inactive voters from their rolls. The Pennsylvania Department of State was also sued.

Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections, declared Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton after filing the lawsuit, which offered no evidence of voter fraud.

See the sleight-of-hand? Fitton injects the specter of voter fraud in a way that requires no evidence to prove it is happening. Thats the trick: getting people talking about voter fraud.

The lawsuit contends that Bucks County removed just eight names from the voter rolls in 2017 and 2018 while Chester County removed five and Delaware County removed four.

Bucks County, in a response to Judicial Watch in March, said it removed 14,050 active or inactive voters in 2018 alone. Chester County, in a letter to the group in December, said it removed 33,655 names from the voter rolls in 2017 and 2018.

Those documents are now attached to the lawsuit.

Delaware County did not respond to Judicial Watchs threats but told Clout it removed 31,561 active or inactive voters from the rolls in 2017 and 2018.

Christine Reuther, an attorney and Democrat elected to Delaware County Council last year, suggests the lawsuit is more about politics than policy. Democrats won control of the three counties in the lawsuit in the last election.

The three counties represent 14% of the states registered voters. Add Philadelphia and Montgomery County, where Democrats were already in control, and one out of three registered voters lives in the southeastern corner of the state.

Trump lost all five of those counties in 2016 but still won critical swing-state Pennsylvania by less than 1%.

Reuther notes her county follows the same voter rolls procedures Republicans used when they were in charge.

They may have thought they could intimidate us or we were in less of a position to defend ourselves," Reuther said about Judicial Watch. They will find that is a mistake.

Fitton dismissed that as a hysterical political response and said the suit is not motivated by party control.

Thats just silly," he said. I didnt know about the counties flipping one way or another. I dont know who runs the counties.

Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, asked about the lawsuit in a recent state Senate hearing, said, We 100% dispute" Judicial Watchs allegations.

A March letter from Boockvar to Judicial Watch, offering an online link to accurate voter removal reports, is also attached to the groups lawsuit.

Fittons response? Tell it to the judge.

This isnt our first rodeo, he said. "And Pennsylvania has a big issue. This will be a statewide issue in theory if were able to get the results we want. Every county will be subject to having to follow the rules.

Republicans ready to rumble for RNC seat

Clout last week predicted a bruising battle for the Republican National Committee seat held since 1998 by Bob Asher, a Montgomery County candy manufacturer. This week, former Delaware County GOP Chair Andy Reilly made it official.

 READ MORE: Someone wrote mean stuff about John Dougherty in a letter. His lawyer calls it a smear document.

Reilly, the partys secretary and head of its Southeast Caucus, wrote Monday to state committee members declaring his candidacy for the seat. He didnt mention Asher by name but salted his letter with plenty of not-so-subtle digs.

For our party to succeed over the next four years, our national committeeman must serve the interests of State Committee, our party chair and our candidates  not the other way around, Reilly wrote.

He heaped praise on Lawrence Tabas, the state partys new chairman from Philadelphia, who declined to comment on rumors that he is backing Reilly.

Scott Wagner, the partys volatile 2018 nominee for governor, was not so reticent. He sung Reillys praises to Clout while declaring himself for anyone but Bob Asher in the race.

He has a 20-year history for undermining Republican elections, said Wagner, who holds a grudge due to Ashers lack of support in 2018.

Asher says hes focused on the election of Republicans from Trump on down, and refuses to engage in anything he finds disruptive to that effort.

Politicians, prison, and the pandemic

Clout continues to track which corrupt Pennsylvania politicians get sprung early from prison due to the coronavirus and which remain behind bars.

 READ MORE: Republicans to Pa. voters: Mail-in ballots are good. And also very dangerous.

Former Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Herbert Vederman, imprisoned on charges tied to gifts he gave former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, was released Friday from a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y. to serve the rest of his two-year term on house arrest.

Other Democratic pols still seeking early release are former Philadelphia Deputy City Commissioner Renee Tartaglione, sentenced for bleeding more than $2 million from a publicly funded mental health and addiction nonprofit she operated; former Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, imprisoned for extorting campaign contributions from contractors seeking city business; and ex-Traffic Court official William Hird, caught in the ticket-fixing scandal that shuttered the court.

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this column.
Neiman Marcus Group filed for bankruptcy after efforts to manage its crushing debt load unraveled amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic.

The Chapter 11 filing in Texas gives the Dallas-based luxury retailer a break on its debts by letting it stay in business while management works out a recovery plan. Any turnaround will be complicated by the fact that its stores were shut and its workers furloughed to help stop the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak. Most of its workers were sent home in April.

Neiman Marcus manages more than 40 namesake stores across the U.S., two Bergdorf Goodman stores in Manhattan, two dozen Last Call locations and a Mytheresa in Germany. The latter is a brick-and-mortar version of its fast-growing Mytheresa online merchant.

Most of the company's department store rivals also suspended operations because of the virus, at a time when the whole industry was already ground down by years of shopper defections to online merchants.

Neiman Marcus has been trying to simultaneously spend more on luring customers while taming its debt load, with mixed success. Borrowings ballooned after its 2013 leveraged buyout to Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The company reached a deal with creditors last year that put off the due dates on some of its debt to buy time for a turnaround.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

It also shuffled Mytheresa to a place in its capital structure that put the business beyond the reach of creditors, creating hard feelings with some bondholders that still linger.

The chain "has struggled for years to adapt among ongoing secular changes facing the department store sector, a circumstance that has deteriorated because of the operation disruptions from the coronavirus and recessionary conditions," S&P analyst Mathew Christy wrote in an April 22 report.
Chicago:

A Pakistani-American couple has claimed that they were removed from a US-bound flight as an on board crew member felt uncomfortable after noticing that they were sweating, saying Allah and texting.

Nazia and Faisal Ali have accused Delta Air Lines of Islamophobia for throwing them off their flight from Paris to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nazia, 34, had removed her sneakers, finished sending a text message to her parents and was putting on headphones and settling into her seat for the nine-hour flight from Paris to Cincinnati when a Delta Air Lines crew member approached her and husband, Faisal.

A flight crew member had complained to the pilot that she was uncomfortable with the Muslim couple, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

The woman was wearing a head scarf and using a phone, and the man was sweating, she allegedly told the pilot.

The flight attendant also claimed that Faisal tried to hide his cell phone and that she had heard the couple use the word Allah. The pilot contacted the ground crew and would not take off until couple was removed.

We had been in our seats for 45 minutes, Nazia said yesterday in the Cincinnati area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The ground agent said, Can you step out with me? Wed like to ask you a few questions. So I said, Do you want us to get our things? And he said, Yes, please grab all of your personal belongings. Youre not going to be on this flight, Nazia said recounting the July 26 incident.

They were interrogated by a French police officer about their stay in Paristhe couple had been enjoying a brief holiday in the capital city for their 10th wedding anniversary, media reports said.

After the interrogation, the officer said he had no problem with them and there was nothing else he could ask the couple.

In the wake of the couples removal from the flight, the Muslim advocacy group has filed a religious profiling complaint against Delta Air Lines to the US Department of Transportation

We call on the US Department of Transportation to conduct a thorough examination into the prevailing practices of major American air carriers, including Delta Air Lines, and to develop policy guidelines on the objective factors that are to be considered when determining that a passenger may legally be removed from a flight, CAIR-Cincinnati attorney Sana Hassan said.

The Delta Airlines, in a statement, said, Delta condemns discrimination toward our customers in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or gender.

As a global airline that brings hundreds of thousands of people together every day, Delta is deeply committed to treating all of our customers with respect. Delta continues its investigation into this matter and will issue a full refund of these customers airfare, it said.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Smoke rises from LG Polymers plant, the site of a chemical gas leakage, in Vishakhapatnam, India, on May 7, 2020. (AP Photo)

More Evacuations Near Indian Factory After Fatal Gas Leak

HYDERABAD, IndiaIndian authorities evacuated more people from villages near a South Korean-owned chemical factory where a gas leak killed 12 people and left about 1,000 struggling to breathe.

Authorities said the evacuation was precautionary, but it triggered panic among people overnight that another gas leak was occurring.

No, there was not another leakage, National Disaster Response Force spokesman Krishan Kumar said on May 8.

Factory owner LG Chem said it asked police to evacuate residents because of concerns that rising temperatures at the plants gas tank could possibly cause another leak. The company said it was injecting water into the tank and applying other measures to keep temperatures under control.

People affected by a chemical gas leak are carried out of a truck to an ambulance in Vishakhapatnam, India, on May 7, 2020. (AP Photo)

A state administrator in the district, Vinay Chand, said authorities flew in chemicals from a neighboring state to neutralize the gas completely before allowing people to return to their homes.

Expert teams were checking the factorys vicinity for any aftereffects of the gas leak. Residents of five villages are waiting for a clear signal to return to their homes, Chand said.

The initial evacuations on Thursday affected about 3,000 people.

The death toll rose to 12 on Friday with one person dying at a hospital, P.V. Sudhakar, a doctor, said.

Chand said 316 people were being treated in hospitals and were in stable condition. State police chief Damodar Gautam Sawang said 800 people were released after treatment on Thursday.

A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) soldier is fitted with gear before he proceeds to the area from where chemical gas leaked in Vishakhapatnam, India, on May 7, 2020. (AP Photo)

The chemical styrene, used to make plastic and rubber, on Thursday leaked from the LG Polymers plant on the outskirts of the eastern coastal city of Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state while workers were preparing to restart the facility after a CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus lockdown was eased.

The leak was suspected to have come from large tanks left unattended over the past six weeks.

Our initial information is that workers were checking a gas storage tank when it started leaking, said Industries Minister M. Goutham Reddy.

Videos and photos from the area showed dozens of people lying unconscious in the streets, arms open wide with white froth trailing from their mouths. People fled on foot, on motorbikes and in open trucks as police officers, some wearing gas masks, rushed to get people out of their homes.

The scene evoked bitter memories of the Bhopal industrial disaster in 1984 that killed at least 4,000 people and injured another 500,000, many of them with chronic health problems today, according to the government.

Firefighters walk with oxygen cylinders outside LG Polymers plant, the site of a chemical gas leak, in Vishakhapatnam, India, on May 7, 2020. (AP Photo)

The blanket of gas spread about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles), sickening people in at least four villages. The leak was stopped by 8 a.m. Thursday, officials said.

A neurotoxin, styrene gas can immobilize a person within minutes of inhalation and be deadly at high concentrations.

LG Chem Ltd. is South Koreas largest chemical company and produces a range of industrial products, including petrochemicals, plastic, and batteries used in electronic vehicles. It is part of the family-owned LG Corp. conglomerate, which also has an electronics arm that globally sells smartphones, TVs, and personal computers.

South Koreas Foreign Ministry said Friday its ambassador to India had expressed regrets and condolences over the gas leak. A ministry statement said the South Korean government is closely monitoring efforts to handle the aftermath.

LG Chem began operating the plant in Vishakhapatnam in 1997 and its Indian operation is one of the leading manufacturers of polystyrene and expandable polystyrene in the country. The Vishakhapatnam plant has around 300 workers.

The bowl-shaped coastal city in Andhra Pradesh state is an industrial hub known for frequent gas leak accidents. In December 2019, a leak from a pharmaceutical company killed two people.

We have not learnt from our past mistakes, said E.A.S. Sarma, a former senior state official, referring to the 1984 Bhopal gas leak.

Considered the worlds worst industrial accident, the leak of methyl isocyanate at a Union Carbide India pesticide plant prompted successive Indian governments to pledge to improve safety standards. But many similar accidents, although on a smaller scale, continue.

By Omer Farooq

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The first youth held at the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center tested positive Thursday for the coronavirus, according to a memo obtained by cleveland.com.

The memo written by Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Deputy Administrator Thomas Rehnert said that two inmates on Thursday were tested after showing symptoms of the virus, and that one tested positive.

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court spokeswoman Mary Davidson did not return a message seeking comment.

Rehnert wrote that others housed in the same area as the youth who tested positive and the second who showed symptoms will quarantine in their rooms. Trips to the restroom and shower will be permitted, the memo said.

All youths in the detention center will be given face masks, Rehnert wrote. The Cuyahoga County Board of Health is conducting contact-tracing to see if anyone came into close contact with the youth who tested positive.

Rehnert recommended that all employees where N95 face masks when possible, or another kind of face mask while in the detention center.

The positive test comes three days after the first detention center employee tested positive for the virus. Four other employees, including one detention officer and three court employees were ordered to self-quarantine after working closely with the employee who tested positive.

Advocates in March called on the release of youth from juvenile detention centers and juvenile prisons across the state as the coronavirus started spreading throughout the state.

The Juvenile Justice Coalition, Ohio ACLU and Policy Matters Ohio all wrote to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and asked for the release of inmates who do not pose a risk to the public. The groups wrote that jails and prisons are particularly concerning because youth cant socially distance and the enclosed environment could cause the virus to spread rapidly.

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court officials released some inmates and began refusing to jail juveniles charged with misdemeanor crimes or low-level non-violent felonies in an attempt to keep the centers population down.

In the Ohio Department of Youth Services Cuyahoga Hills youth prison, the facility is on lockdown after 21 youth tested positive for coronavirus. Three so far have recovered. Nine employees of the Highland Hills facility also tested positive and was has recovered, according to the state.

Read more from cleveland.com:

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center employee tests positive for coronavirus

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center rejecting kids arrested for misdemeanors due to coronavirus

Advocates want Ohio officials to release some juvenile inmates amid coronavirus pandemic
May 8, 2020 -- A study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found that black subjects who were exposed to highly segregated neighborhoods in young adulthood exhibited worse performance in cognitive skills in mid-life. The findings are published online in JAMA Neurology.

Until this research, there had been little information on the association of racial residential segregation and cognitive function.

"Our findings support the notion that long-term exposure to residential segregation during 25 years of young adulthood is associated with worse processing speed as early as midlife," said Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. "This outcome may explain black-white disparities in dementia risk at older age."

The researchers analyzed data from 1,548 black participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, which focuses on the development and determinants of cardiovascular disease. Participants were ages 18 to 30 at baseline in 1985 and prospectively followed over 25 years.

Measurements of racial residential segregation across six follow-up visits from the 25-year study, were categorized as high, medium, and low segregation. Cognitive function was assessed at year 25 of the ongoing, multicenter, study.

Cognitive performance was measured using three different tests representing distinct domains of cognition, including the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST), a subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

Earlier studies by Zekie Al Hazzouri and colleagues had supported growing evidence that maintaining cognitive function is a lifelong process and that several of the most important risk factors may begin earlier in the life course.

"Studies examining racial residential segregation in the context of cognitive function are limited, and thus our findings contribute to an important yet sparse literature," observed Zeki Al Hazzouri. "More importantly, our research indicates that policies that address segregation and the uneven distribution of resources, may be beneficial for reducing inequities in cognitive performance."

###

Co-authors are Michelle Caunca and Tali Elfassy, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami; Michelle Odden, Stanford University; M. Maria Glymour and Kristine Yaffe, University of California, San Francisco; Kiarri Kershaw, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University; Stephen Sidney, Kaiser Permanente; and Lenore Launer, National Institute on Aging.

This work was supported by grant K01AG047273 from the NIA, NIH, and grant F30NS103462 from the NINDS, NIH; contracts HHSN268201300025C, HHSN268201300026C, HHSN268201300027C, HHSN268201300028C, HHSN268201300029C, and HHSN268200900041C from the NHLBI, NIH; the Intramural Research Program of the NIA; and intra-agency agreement AG0005 between the NIA and NHLBI.

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.
LOS ANGELES, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A new five-part documentary series, ASIAN AMERICANS, is set to air on May 11th and 12th on PBS stations nationwide. Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an affiliation of five civil rights organizations, is promoting the documentary as the most comprehensive look at Asian Americans in history and remarks on the similarities in the fight for education equality between communities of color.

The television series chronicles the fastest growing racial/ethnic group's history in the United States and examines the role Asian Americans have played in shaping America. More specifically, the Asian American-led series explores the impact Asian Americans have had on the country, from the first wave of 1850s Asian immigrants to modern refugee crises to the fight for desegregation and education equality.

"Although Asian Americans have significantly shaped national identity through educational change, most Americans may be unfamiliar with such efforts," says Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director and President of Advancing Justice  Los Angeles and who championed the need for such a comprehensive documentary.

Kwoh continued, "It is fitting the documentary launches this month during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month because there is so much people do not understand about our culture and how much we are woven into the fabric of this country's historical tapestry."

Conversely, many Americans may be familiar with the well-known 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, in which justices overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine and unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Before Brown v. Board of Education, Jim Crow laws barred African Americans from sharing public families such as schools, buses, and bathrooms with white Americans. Becoming a cornerstone of the Civil Rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education paved the way for real change through legislation like The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which began the process of earnest desegregation, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968.

However, lesser-known challenges to segregated schools and equity in access to public education had begun decades before. About 70 years prior to Brown v. Board, Chinese students had been legally barred from attending public schools outside of San Francisco's Chinatown.

A Chinese couple, Joseph and Mary Tape, decided to challenge this exclusion after a San Francisco school district refused to admit their daughter to an all-white school. In the landmark Tape v. Hurley (1885), the California Supreme Court declared unlawful the exclusion of a Chinese American student from public school based on her ancestry. Although Tape v. Hurley guaranteed children of Chinese descent access to public schools in California, the Court said nothing to threaten the prevailing "separate but equal" doctrine that justified segregation, that is until Brown v. Board in 1954.

There are stark educational parallels between African American and Asian American history. However, it is worth noting that whereas African American children were regarded as U.S. citizens, Chinese American children were regarded as foreigners. Monumental cases like Tape v. Hurley that shaped American education are also forgotten in U.S. history, which ASIAN AMERICANS seeks to highlight and incorporate back into American consciousness.

A full K-12 education curriculum will bring this historical significance and more to light with engaging digital content from the series. Through the new curriculum, the history of the Asian American experience will be available for current and future generations and for all communities of color to explore the history, contributions, and complexities of Asian Americans.

ASIAN AMERICANS is a production of WETA Washington, D.C. and CAAM for PBS, in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Flash Cuts, and Tajima-Pena Productions  the company behind Who Killed Vincent Chin? and No Mas Bebes. For more information on each episode, please visit pbs.org. Press materials and photography can be found on the PBS Pressroom.

About Asian Americans Advancing Justice

Asian Americans Advancing Justice is a national affiliation of five leading organizations advocating for the civil and human rights of Asian Americans and other underserved communities to promote a fair and equitable society for all. The affiliation's members are: Advancing Justice | AAJC (Washington, DC), Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus (San Francisco), Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, Advancing Justice - Atlanta, and Advancing Justice - Chicago.

Contact: Michelle Boykins, [email protected], (202) 296-2300 ext. 0144

SOURCE Asian Americans Advancing Justice

Related Links

https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/asian-americans-advancing-justice-affiliation


Shaheed Al Hafed (Sahrawi refugee camps), 2 May 2020 (SPS) - A total of 154 tons of solidarity aid was delivered Friday by the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA) to the Sahrawi refugees on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan.



The operation was chaired by Minister of Solidarity, Family and Womens Affairs Kawther Krikou, accompanied by CRAs head Saida Benhabiles.



The caravan set off from the headquarters of the province of Tindouf towards the warehouses of the Sahrawi Red Crescent (CRS).



The Algerian ministerial delegation was welcomed by Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali, before handing this aid over to Sahrawi Prime Minister Bouchraya Beyoun and CRSs head Yahia Bouhbini.

In a statement to the press, Krikou said that this solidarity gesture from Algeria to the Sahrawi people, which isnt the first, shows once again the Algerians spirit of solidarity towards their Sahrawi brothers, which is part of an ongoing aid program to this brotherly people, notably in this holy month of Ramadan coinciding this year with the Covid-19 pandemic.



Algerias solidarity with the Sahrawi people is not new, but emanates from an unchanging conviction through which the Algerians have shown their determination to continue their solidarity and cohesion with the Sahrawi brothers, said the minister.



The minister said this aid comprises basic foodstuffs, in addition to about 263,100 units of medical and pharmaceutical equipment of prevention from Covid-19, including masks, gloves, rapid test kits and disinfection products. (SPS)



062/SPS/APS




The shut down hasnt slowed The Jewish Federation one bit. Here are a few examples of what is going on in the community:

 The Jewish Academy of Orlandos online school has been outstanding. The curriculum, the teacher interaction, and the special exercise programs throughout the week are providing students with a quality education along with fitness and fun.

 The Federations RAISE continues to thrive, with employees attending weekly Lunch & Learn social skills and work training classes. The first RAISE Family Reunion was held online, and the RAISE Your Glass monthly team-building was held via Zoom with great success. Coming up next week will be an online Cooking Demonstration as part of the RAISE Lunch & Learn program. When RAISE employees return to their jobsites, they will be even better employees than before.

 The Holocaust Center hosted an incredible online interview between a mother and daughter. The mother is a Holocaust survivor and hundreds of people including a tremendous amount of high school and middle school students attended and participated. Its amazing the reach the Holocaust Center has, especially in these challenging times.

 Central Florida Hillel continues to recreate the campus experience with a virtual model. Their weekly programs, coffee dates, and social interactions ensure students at UCF and Rollins College continue to feel that they are part of their community.

 Area synagogues and rabbis continue to provide Shabbat services and learning opportunities on a weekly basis. Using virtual tools, the spirituality and ruach makes sure Jewish life is vibrant and meaningful.

 JFS Orlando and the Federation are working together to ensure those with food needs are taken care of. If you know of anybody who needs food, please either have them contact JFS or you can contact the Federation directly (The Federation at 407-645-5933 or info@jfgo.org and JFS Orlando at 407-644-7593.)The shut down hasnt slowed The Jewish Federation one bit. Here are a few examples of what is going on in the community:

 The Jewish Academy of Orlandos online school has been outstanding. The curriculum, the teacher interaction, and the special exercise programs throughout the week are providing students with a quality education along with fitness and fun.

 The Federations RAISE continues to thrive, with employees attending weekly Lunch & Learn social skills and work training classes. The first RAISE Family Reunion was held online, and the RAISE Your Glass monthly team-building was held via Zoom with great success. Coming up next week will be an online Cooking Demonstration as part of the RAISE Lunch & Learn program. When RAISE employees return to their jobsites, they will be even better employees than before.

 The Holocaust Center hosted an incredible online interview between a mother and daughter. The mother is a Holocaust survivor and hundreds of people including a tremendous amount of high school and middle school students attended and participated. Its amazing the reach the Holocaust Center has, especially in these challenging times.

 Central Florida Hillel continues to recreate the campus experience with a virtual model. Their weekly programs, coffee dates, and social interactions ensure students at UCF and Rollins College continue to feel that they are part of their community.

 Area synagogues and rabbis continue to provide Shabbat services and learning opportunities on a weekly basis. Using virtual tools, the spirituality and ruach makes sure Jewish life is vibrant and meaningful.

 JFS Orlando and the Federation are working together to ensure those with food needs are taken care of. If you know of anybody who needs food, please either have them contact JFS or you can contact the Federation directly (The Federation at 407-645-5933 or info@jfgo.org and JFS Orlando at 407-644-7593.)
Pilot is seen getting some first-aid before being airlifted to the hospital. An IAF spokesperson said the Mig-29 aircraft was on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar. (Image: Amlan Paliwal)
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit. (AP)

Washington: The woman who alleges presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 said in a video interview on Thursday that he should withdraw from the White House race.

Tara Reades comments in an interview with former NBC and Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly came six days after Biden said in his first public remarks about the alleged incident that it never happened.

You and I were there, Joe Biden. Please step forward and be held accountable, Reade said in a portion of the interview posted on Twitter by Kelly. You should not be running on character for the president of the United States.

Asked if Biden should withdraw from the race, Reade said: I wish he would, but he wont.

Responding to Reades latest interview, Bidens deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said on Thursday that more and more inconsistencies keep emerging in Reades account.

Women must receive the benefit of the doubt, Bedingfield said in an emailed statement. At the same time, we can never sacrifice the truth. And the truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity.

The statement did not address Reades call for Biden to drop out of the race.

Reade, who worked as a staff assistant in Bidens U.S. Senate office from December 1992 to August 1993, has accused Biden in media interviews of pinning her against a wall in 1993, reaching under her skirt and pushing his fingers inside her.

Biden, 77, who will be the Democratic nominee to face Republican President Donald Trump, 73, said in a MSNBC interview last week that Im saying unequivocally it never, never happened.

Reade was one of eight women who last year came forward to say Biden had hugged, kissed or touched them in ways that made them uncomfortable, though none accused him of sexual assault. Reade publicly accused him of the assault on a podcast in March.

Several news outlets that have published Reades account, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have interviewed a friend who said Reade told her about the alleged assault at the time. Another friend told the Times that Reade told her in 2008 about a previous traumatic incident involving Biden. Reades brother also confirmed parts of Reades account to The Intercept and the Post.

Reade, 56, told media interviewers she complained at the time about sexual harassment, though not sexual assault, to three of Bidens Senate aides. The Biden campaign released a statement from one, Marianne Baker, who said she never received any report of inappropriate behavior in nearly 20 years of working for Biden.

The Post and Times interviewed the other two aides, both of whom told the newspapers they had no recollection of Reades complaint.

Biden last week asked the Secretary of the Senate to make public any records containing a complaint or other documents relating to Reades allegation, if they exist. The Senate denied the request because of confidentiality requirements.

Some prominent Democratic women including U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senator and former presidential rival Elizabeth Warren have defended Biden, who was President Barack Obamas vice president.

Reade, who describes herself as a Democrat and supporter of Vermont senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, has hired the New York law firm of Wigdor LLP, which has represented some of the alleged sexual assault victims of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, to represent her.

The firm said in a statement on Thursday that partner Douglas Wigdor supported Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign but that the firms representation of Reade has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel, and that is exactly what we will provide, the statement said.
A political activist and former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Timi Frank, on Thursday, accused the Major General Muhammadu Buhari-led administration of gross insensitivity to the pathetic plight of Nigerians stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frank in a statement in Abuja, insisted that a situation where the recent 256 Nigerians evacuated from the United Arab Emirates were made to pay for their flight tickets shows a government that is past caring for its distressed citizens.

The Bayelsa-born political activist, said it is unbecoming for a supposed democratic government to turn a deaf ear to the agonizing cries of its trapped citizens wherever they may be across the globe, especially at a time of extreme stress.

He lamented that the Federal Government is about to mete a similar wicked treatment to other Nigerians stranded in the United Kingdom and China by asking them to pay for their flight tickets if they want to return home.

While stranded Nigerians at this period of ravaging pandemic need all the help they can get as they have since exhausted their resources due to overstay, stranded Nigerians in China are in a most precarious situation.

Apart from the grievous ordeal Nigerians stranded in China have undergone in the hands of the Chinese security forces, the Federal Government through the Minister of Foriegn Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, has told them that their return tickets are no longer valid and that they have to cough out N700,000 if they want to return home.

This is double jeopardy! No Nigerian should be treated like a slave or an alien by his home Government. Where is the pride of being a Nigerian?

A government that cannot fulfill its first constitutional obligation which is to guarantee the welfare and security to its citizens, especially those that have been caught up in faraway lands by a global pandemic is no longer worthy of that appellation.

When the French, American and UK Governments evacuated their nationals from Nigeria, they did not ask individuals to pay for return flight tickets.

They conveyed them freely back home because they know that they owe their citizens an obligation to extricate and bring them home whenever they are faced with imminent danger abroad.

Why is Nigeria crying of paucity of funds to render a Constitutional duty to innocent citizens caught up in an emergency in foreign lands with all the money it has received from individuals and corporate organizations as palliatives to mitigate the harsh effects of the national health emergency?

Besides, the 256 evacuees from Dubai on Wednesday would still be there due to lack of hotels or conducive space to quarantine them for the mandatory 14 days on arrival but for the Lagos State Government that decided to shoulder that responsibility.

This Government needs to wake up and at least treat Nigerians decently. Leaving Nigerians to turn beggars abroad as a result of the pandemic is not only a national disgrace but a display of monumental incompetence.

It is shameful for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to claim that palliatives are really destined for Nigerians here in Nigeria.

Does that mean that Nigerians endangered in diaspora having been cut off by this pandemic become less Nigerian and therefore unworthy of help in the thinking of the Federal Government?

He insisted that it is the sole duty of the Federal Government to display needed empathy by genuinely helping stranded Nigerians to seamlessly return home during this global war against an invisible enemy.

He added that the National Assembly must for once jettison its rubber stamp toga and strictly monitor all anti-pandemic programmes already initiated by the Federal Government to ensure that the war chest already amassed against the Coronavirus pandemic is transparently administered.
Tottenham star Son Heung-min has completed his mandatory three-week military service in South Korea, with the Spurs forward reportedly boasting the best performance of all the trainees who had been taking part.

According to information published by the Korea Herald , the attacker finished as one of only five individuals to receive an award at the Marine Corps training camp graduation ceremony on the southern island of Jeju.

While the exact scores of the trainees were not revealed, officials were quoted as saying that Son finished top out of a total of 157 people.



The Premier League ace arrived at the camp on April 20 for a period of three weeks, with his military service having previously been delayed after the 27-year-old inspired his national team to a gold medal at the 2018 Asian Games.

During his time back in his home nation, Son participated in a program that included shooting and bayonet skills, chemical, biological and radiological training, individual fighting skills and medical training. It is said that Son scored a perfect 10 out of 10 in the shooting discipline.

He received the Pilsung prize which is one of five types of awards for best performers, a Marine Corps officer said, as quoted by the Korea Herald . Pilsung, which translates as certain victory, is the battle cry of the South Korean Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.

All the courses were judged in a fair and strict manner, and his military training officers have said he went through the training faithfully, the official added.

 Heung-Min Son has completed his mandatory military service in South Korea. He is due to return to London next week. Congratulations, Sonny. See you soon! #THFC  #COYS pic.twitter.com/ldacJRm4j8  Tottenham Hotspur (at ) (@SpursOfficial) May 8, 2020

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OTTAWA  In politics, as in everything, the pandemic has sparked a widespread reimagining  about the role of government, about the holes in our social safety net, about what we can accomplish together.

It has exposed some ugly realities, such as the troubling situation in long-term care homes that have emerged as hot zones for COVID-19. It has proved that the Employment Insurance system is out of step with todays workforce. It has stirred questions about globalization and whether international supply networks are truly a virtue in times of desperate need. It has spurred plodding bureaucracies, known for their cautious approach to issues, into impossibly speedy policy decisions to rush aid to Canadians. And its left Canadians with a deficit hangover.

In these and many other areas, the pandemic has laid bare problems and blown up old ways of doing things.

The question now for politicians and policy-makers is whether they return to the status quo or seize on the pandemic to correct, reform and make better. Here are several ways government services and programs could be different:

Seniors

The issue: The pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in Canadas long term care sector, where both public and privately operated facilities have suffered from staff shortages, lack of training and lack of personal protective equipment. Residents  and a handful of employees  of long term care facilities have accounted for more than 80 per cent of COVID-19 deaths.

The future: Better infection control measures, including the ability to physically distance residents, and providing dignified living conditions and proper hygiene have been identified as priorities.

But experts say all levels of government must also address bigger issues, such as inadequate and uneven pay levels for personal support workers, and the lack of national standards for care, working conditions and accessibility.

There have been calls for Ottawa to take control of the sector by bringing it under the umbrella of the Canada Health Act.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, relying on York University research said the COVID-19 pandemic showed public health services must be broadened to include nursing homes, which it says should be non-profit. It wants an end to privatized nursing care, and praised B.C. for effectively making all seniors home workers into public employees; as the epidemic grew, that province raised workers wages to union rates and ensured they were offered full-time work in a single home.

The National Institute on Aging, based at Ryerson University, urges governments to consider a radical shift, one that would see more money spent to support an aging population with home- or community-based care, as opposed to care delivered in buildings housing large numbers of seniors. It points to countries like Denmark as success stories.

Child care

The issue: Women were disproportionately side-swiped in the economic fallout from the pandemic. COVID-19 shutdowns hit first and hardest in areas where women predominantly work: education and child care, retail, personal services and restaurants.

Any hopes for a recovery will stall as long as there are unclear provisions for safe child care and safe school spaces to enable women to get back into the workforce.

Its women who went home, said economist Armine Yalnizyan. She says the experience in New Zealand shows they wont come back, even when their governments say come back, because its unclear that the schools and the child care systems are sufficiently staffed.

Like seniors care, child care is a provincial responsibility, and theres a patchwork across the country. Childcare is delivered in homes and centres run by a mix of for-profit and non-profit employers, or the public sector. Its plagued by low levels of pay and high staff turnover. Outside of Quebec, the lack of public funding makes it very expensive for parents.

The future: Martha Friendly, executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, warns many child-care centres have shut down and laid off staff because they were unable to carry costs in provinces where parent fees dried up during the lockdown. She is tracking provincial responses, but its not yet clear how much space has been lost.

She says Ottawa must set clear standards for child-care delivery based on the Public Health Agencys review of research on risks to children and caregivers. Provinces are muddling along, she said, but theyre all over the map.

The pandemic makes clear the federal government needs to play a greater role. It might mean tying federal funds more directly to services, to ensure the creation of a publicly funded system that can survive a crisis like a pandemic.

Germany is a federation too, and it has a lot bigger national role in child care, Friendly said. We are not suggesting the federal government boot the provinces out. I think they should work with the provinces much more collaboratively but the federal government needs to be a player.

Yalnizyan says the argument is an economic and social one. If you dont do something, youre actually looking at a prolonged recession. If you keep women at home, household incomes fall. If you wait for too long to do something, people cant afford the rate of child care thats out there (and) you have to subsidize it, she said.

If you think this is just another economic downturn that simply needs some shovel-ready stimulus at the end of it to get back to whatever you think is normal, you are not watching what is happening.

Government bureaucracy and decision making

The issue: Once federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments realized the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, they moved with unusual speed. At the federal level, the public service designed and began rolling out massive economic relief measures for workers forced to stay home, for students unable to find summer work, and for provinces struggling to address needs in hospitals and long-term care facilities. Billions of dollars were shovelled into programs with little preparation, including some that required tweaking after being announced.

But once the crisis passes  or at least stabilizes  will Canadians tolerate a return to slower-moving public policy?

The future: Canadas public service has been grappling with these issues for some time. Some elements within the bureaucracy  notably some of the new digital governance shops  have been advocating move fast, break things approach, with a higher risk tolerance than the public service has traditionally been comfortable with.

Lori Turnbull, the director of Dalhousies School of Public Administration, said that theres a hope for the public service to incorporate the positives of the federal governments COVID-19 response  speed, risk tolerance, nimbleness  into a post-pandemic world.

Hopefully well be able to maintain the positive things that weve learned even when were not in a crisis time, said Turnbull, who worked in the Privy Council Office during Trudeaus first term. The difficulty I see with that is the existence of crisis, and the sense that we cant be necessarily as methodical as we used to be  that attitude is being fed by the sense of urgency and crisis.

Turnbull said that if senior public servants embrace a more nimble approach to public policy, the crisis could produce lasting benefits for the bureaucracy. But she cautioned that theres another shoe to drop  right now, Ottawa is focused on pushing out economic relief. Before the end of COVID-19, that bill will come due, and Canadians will have to pass judgment on the totality of the governments response.

Domestic production

The issue: For a generation, many countries have increasingly relied on overseas manufacturing and global supply chains for critical supplies such as medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. COVID-19 has demonstrated the fragility of those relationships  from the United States attempting to block 3M from exporting personal protective equipment to Canada, to drug supplies being threatened by outbreaks in India and China.

But how should Canada adapt to a world of rising protectionism, in which countries move to be less dependent on global trade? Are Canadians prepared to pay more for goods and services in a less globalized world?

The future: Its less a question of if Canadians will pay more, and more a question of how they will adapt, according to former Liberal policy adviser Robert Asselin.

Asselin and Sean Speer, a Conservative who advised the Harper government, co-authored a report proposing a new Canadian industrial policy. They argue that in a time of rising protectionism and questioning of postwar free-trade tenets, Canada needs to play to its strengths while recognizing the global trade we depend on is facing severe challenges.

The world has changed. Weve moved from a world order that worked pretty well for Canada  and were basically moving this to a managed-trade era, where basically the U.S. and China are going at each other, and this will have huge implications for Canada, Asselin said.

Theres a reason these things were made in China, right? The labour costs were lower, they were very efficient in doing these things, shipping these things, and we were happy to go to Walmart and buy these things.

Asselin and Speer advocate for Canada to retool its industrial capacity to excel where it can, especially in the new intangibles economy. That includes areas such as data management, intellectual property and brands  think the federal governments investments in artificial intelligence.

But if the tide of protectionism and self-sufficiency rises, you should probably brace for spending more at Walmart.

Employment Insurance

The issue: A wave of unemployment has laid bare the shortcomings of Canadas Employment Insurance system, which is ill-equipped for the workforce of today.

The future: When tens of thousands of Canadians were suddenly unemployed, Ottawa pointedly didnt rely on the EI system to deliver assistance. Instead, it created the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), which is universal, simple and has delivered funding fast.

That, some say, should be the model for a revamped EI system going forward.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has criticized EI for its overly harsh qualifying rules, especially for workers in contract and part-time jobs. Fewer than 40 per cent of those who were unemployed in 2018 got EI benefits, and the rates are lower still for self-employed and part-time workers, the centre says.

Though these shortcomings were known, there was no impetus for bold reforms. Until now.

Without the necessity of a new system, there was more tinkering, It really took a crisis to crash the entire EI system (and) forced us to rewrite it in a way that was built for 2020, not the 70s, said David Macdonald, the centres senior economist.

Macdonald says the government should use the crisis to bring EI more in line with the principles of the CERB.

That would see a minimum payment, perhaps $500 a week as paid by the CERB. It would cover gig workers. It would be fast. It would have universal eligibility rules rather than a patchwork that relies on local unemployment rates.

No more EI regions where different rules apply to different regions. Its just standard across the country, much easier to understand, he said.

Macdonald said eligibility should be expanded to include workers who decline to return to work because of concerns for workplace safety. Otherwise, he said, there are a lot of workers coming up that will have a choice between their health and their income.

Deficits

The issue: Ottawas pandemic spending spree to keep individuals and businesses afloat during the economic shutdown has pushed the deficit to $252 billion, according to the Parliament Budget Officer, a figure thats certain to climb higher.

The future: A post-pandemic deficit will hang over federal decision-making.

Ottawas deficit fight in the 1990s brought funding cuts. Will Canada emerge from this health crisis into a period of austerity this time around?

That would not be smart move in the short term, according to Rebekah Young, director of fiscal and provincial economics at Scotiabank Economics.

Young cautions that ill-timed austerity measures to control the deficit could depress economic activity and ironically, produce even bigger deficits. I think were a couple of steps away from what could we do to rein in the deficit and debt, she said.

The biggest risk for federal finances is the pace of the economic recovery. Nursing that recovery will likely require even more spending, targeted at getting people back to work.

Right now, we are in crisis mode. As soon as we get out of that mode, the next priority is stimulating-growth mode, Young said.

On balance, we may need to spend more but shifting away from social expenditures to growth-enhancing ones, getting the infrastructure rolled out, she said.

The budget officer says the combination of higher spending and a sharp drop in GDP will push the federal debt-to-GDP to 48.4 per cent in 2020-21. Thats up sharply from 30.8 per cent in 2018-19, but well below the 66.6 per cent of GDP level in 1995-96.

While the deficit fight of the 1990s did involve expenditure cuts, it was a growing economy that ultimately shrank the debt-to-GDP ratio. Thats likely to be the solution this time around, too. Once the budgetary measures expire and the economy recovers, the federal debt-to-GDP ratio should stabilize and then start declining under precrisis fiscal policy settings, the budget officer noted.

There are caveats. Young says the spending measures were vital to prevent even greater economic hardships, a depression-type scenario. But as the economy returns to normal, those measures should be dialed back, she said. We cant continue providing very, very generous supports beyond the immediate crisis.
Its only a matter of time before Michigans economy will fully reopen. To help businesses prepare, the Midland Daily News will host a free, 45-minute webinar at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 13 titled Crisis Marketing The Grand Reopening with Hearst Media.

This webinar is being brought to our area free of charge by Hearst in an effort to help our local area businesses navigate through these tough times. We see it as an opportunity to give back to the community, said Ed Fritz, regional advertising director for Hearst Midwest, which includes the Midland Daily News.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk told employees in an e-mail sent overnight that the electric vehicle maker would attempt to restart production at its U.S. car plant in Fremont, California, on Friday afternoon.

Tesla's HR boss, Valerie Capers Workman, sent a separate e-mail to U.S. employees on Thursday night with additional details. She said Tesla's Fremont plant will resume "limited operations" Friday, bringing back around 30% of employees normally working on a shift.

It's not clear from the executives' emails how Tesla would be able to manufacture vehicles in Fremont with a reduced headcount.

While many remain on furlough, those employees called back must complete video training on new safety protocols meant to keep them safe from Covid-19, Workman said.

In the CEO's more brief communication, Musk cited a shift in health orders in the state. He wrote:

"In light of Governor Newsom's statement earlier today approving manufacturing in California, we will aim to restart production in Fremont tomorrow afternoon. I will be on the line personally helping wherever I can. However, if you feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so. These are difficult times, so thanks very much for working hard to make Tesla successful!"

California's order does not override county-level health orders. Alameda County, where the plant is located, has a shelter-in-place order effective through May 31, according to the county Public Health Department website.

CNBC reached out to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and the Fremont Police Department for further information. Representatives were not immediately available to comment.

Read the entire HR e-mail from Tesla to its U.S. employees:

To: U.S. Employees

From: Valerie Capers Workman

Date: May 7, 2020 [time stamp redacted]

Subj. HR Update

Hi Everyone,

The State of California released new guidelines today permitting certain critical infrastructure including manufacturing to gradually resume operations. This includes Tesla's Fremont factory and supporting manufacturing facilities. Additionally, Alameda County, where the Fremont factory is located, states in its shelter in place order FAQs that distributed energy resource manufacturing, which includes electric vehicles, solar, and battery storage, is permitted to operate.

I know many of you are excited to get back to work, as we are too, and I am confident we are well-prepared to do so safely and in alignment with all government precautions. At all facilities, we've enhanced our already robust safety strategy in accordance with our Return To Work Plan, which we have reviewed extensively with Alameda County, and you will be receiving a video training from EHS which we ask you to complete promptly when assigned. It is critical that you comply with and follow all required safety protocols. If you do not follow these protocols you will be sent home on Unpaid Leave. If you are sick or have concerns with safely coming to work, please stay home. You may use your available PTO or if you have none, may take the time as unpaid without penalty. We respect your decision.

Starting tomorrow, May 8, 2020, limited operations will resume at the Fremont factory starting at 30% our normal headcount per shift. You will be contacted via email or phone by your manager or HR with details on your specific start date and time. Our Gigafactories in Nevada and New York have also begun limited operations as approved by their respective states. Similarly, Sales, Service and Delivery as well as Energy operations have been gradually coming back online on a state-by-state basis.

For those who have returned to work throughout the U.S. or have been called back to work, we look forward to your return. Look out for a call or email from your manager or another Tesla representative with details about your start date.

If you are on furlough and have not yet been called back to work or contacted, we hope to get you back to work soon. You will remain on furlough until you hear from your manager and can continue to apply for unemployment benefits and Tesla will continue to provide your health benefits.

If you have been working at home, and have not been called back to work, please continue to work from home.

If you are an hourly California employee and we were required to cash out your PTO under California law due to the furlough extension, you will be given the same number of unpaid days off as your accrued, unused PTO.

Don't hesitate to reach out to your HR partners or [e-mail redacted] with any questions.

Thank you for all you do to ensure the success of our company!

Valerie

[Contact information redacted]




University Town Center is emblematic of retail outlets, restaurants, hair salons and other businesses around the country that have started to reopen, even though a deadly virus with no cure or vaccine is circulating widely. More than half of all states have eased some restrictions on businesses or movements put in place because of the novel coronavirus over the past two weeks. In many of these states, including Florida, the number of people confirmed to have the virus is increasing and testing continues to lag behind  falling short of the White Houses recommendations on when a state should reopen.
KYODO NEWS - May 8, 2020 - 02:22 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

The Japanese government and ruling parties are considering drafting a second extra budget for fiscal 2020 to further help small and medium-sized businesses and people affected by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, sources close to the matter said Thursday.

Last week, parliament enacted a 25.69 trillion yen ($240 billion) extra budget for fiscal 2020 through March next year to finance an emergency package aimed at aiding the economy and people hit hard by the virus.

The envisaged drafting of the second supplementary budget will come under an extended state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday.

According to the sources, the second extra budget is aimed at funding assistance for rent payments of cash-strapped businesses and people.

Other areas that the supplementary budget is likely to cover are government subsidies for unemployment and financial support for university students.

Many students are reportedly facing difficulty in paying apartment rent or tuition, with some even dropping out of school because they cannot earn money from part-time jobs amid the coronavirus outbreak. Restaurant owners and other retailers have cut part-time jobs due to social-distancing steps urged by the government.

The state of emergency, which was originally set to expire on Wednesday, will last until May 31 in an effort to ensure the number of newly reported infection cases will fall further and not strain the medical system.
Trump argues that anything less than complete immunity from all criminal processes could hinder his performance of his duties and stigmatizes the President in ways that will frustrate his ability to effectively represent the United States in both domestic and foreign affairs. Leave aside the grandiose idea that a president  the head of one branch of one of the nations many governments  must represent, whatever that means, the nation in the complex, churning spontaneity of its domestic life. Nevertheless, the privilege Trump asserts, if validated by the court, would exacerbate the obnoxious tendency of presidents to think of themselves as, and to be perceived as, trailing clouds of glory.
The court has given Evers administration until 4 p.m. Friday to file a response to Fabick and Chapmans case, but still hasnt decided whether to take it on. It could have a decent chance of gaining traction. Conservative justices who control the court 5-2 questioned the legality of the order during oral arguments in the legislators case.
Visual conceptual picture of the new manned spaceship. (Photo provided to China News Service)

The trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship, which was launched by the Long March-5B in its maiden flight on Tuesday, has successfully made its re-entry to Earth and returned to its designated landing site at 1:49 pm Friday, China's Manned Space Agency announced. After a flight of two days and 19 hours, re-entry capsule of the new spaceship smoothly returned to the Dongfeng landing site in the desert of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday, under the precise direction of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center. The new spaceship, which is designed with the aim of supporting China's future manned landing mission on the moon, took an unprecedented large elliptical orbit with an apogee of 8,000 kilometers and a perigee of about 400 kilometers, according to the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center. During its in-orbit flight, the spaceship adopted a brand-new autonomous orbit control and guided return system.

The trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship, which was launched by the Long March-5B in its maiden flight on Tuesday, has successfully made its re-entry to Earth and returned to its designated landing site at 1:49 pm Friday, May 8, 2020, China's Manned Space Agency announced.(Photo provided to China News Service)

The trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship, which was launched by the Long March-5B in its maiden flight on Tuesday, has successfully made its re-entry to Earth and returned to its designated landing site at 1:49 pm Friday, May 8, 2020, China's Manned Space Agency announced.(Photo provided to China News Service)

The trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship, which was launched by the Long March-5B in its maiden flight on Tuesday, has successfully made its re-entry to Earth and returned to its designated landing site at 1:49 pm Friday, May 8, 2020, China's Manned Space Agency announced.(Photo provided to China News Service)
James Phelps understands the challenges of feeling isolated. He said it comes from his own experience growing up gay in rural Oregon. Thats why when businesses and organizations across the country began shutting down nonessential services amid the coronavirus pandemic, Phelps was worried.

As the interim executive director of Q Center, a community-based organization providing LGBTQ support and activity groups in Portland, Phelps was concerned about the in-person services many in his community had come to rely on.

There was a point early on  where I was wondering which is more dangerous: Somebody coming to a group and potentially being exposed to a virus or somebody who is coming to the Q Center for a Narcotics Anonymous program that is keeping them sober for another day, and the risk of them starting to use again because of the isolation, Phelps said.

Once a decision was made to pause Q Centers in-person services  which range from a transgender veterans meetup group to an LGBTQ seniors chair yoga class  Phelps said he knew it was important to transition them into virtual spaces.

PFLAG National's

As social distancing continues in many parts of the country, many LGBTQ support groups and centers, like the Q Center, have turned to online platforms to continue their services. Though the process has come with a unique set of challenges, the move has opened up opportunities for organizations to reimagine how they can connect with those they serve.

Michael Alexander-Luz, the lead youth therapist at SunServe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which provides a variety of programming and support groups for LGBTQ youth and their families, said that there was never a moment where we thought about pausing our services.

We know that our services are life-saving for the kids and the parents that we work with, he said. So we immediately said, OK, how do we do this virtually?

Jennifer Timmerman (Courtesy Jennifer Timmerman)

Jennifer Timmerman regularly attends one of SunServes parent groups and said the transition from in-person meetup to video conferencing has been smooth.

Story continues

If anything, I feel like since we're sitting in our homes, we're almost more honest with each other, she said. Even though this is the most stressful time that most of us have ever been through, you need your people. You need to be able to talk to each other, to listen to each other's stories and to just kind of lean on each other.

Kathryn Gonzales works as the operations and programs director for Out Youth in Austin, Texas, and has helped transition its LGBTQ youth programming to virtual platforms. Some of the group activities now done virtually include story times and writing workshops. This entailed not only figuring out logistics, like internet bandwidth, but also making sure that virtual sessions were as secure as possible. Since Out Youth also offers counseling services, this meant ensuring its Zoom account was HIPAA-compliant.

Our No. 1 duty is to the safety and protection of every member of the Out Youth family, Gonzales said. So, keeping that in mind, not only did that inspire this idea that safety meant going virtual as quickly as possible, it meant when we were virtual, we kept everyone safe.

For some organizations, finding activities that best use virtual platforms has helped make events more accessible.

Katie Wang is on the steering committee of API Equality-LA in Los Angeles, which advocates for LGBTQ Asians and Pacific Islanders and was initially surprised by the strong interest in virtual sessions. Wang has since helped facilitate virtual activities like emotional check-ins, game nights and open mic nights.

It's always been the geographical thing of L.A. of how people are so spread out, Wang said And so, it's hard for people to come to things in person. I think we're getting people who normally couldn't come to stuff and are getting activated and feeling like they're able to participate and get involved.

However, Wang noted for those living in situations where they feel unsupported, virtual sessions from home can create a challenge.

Jessica Baker works as the lead organizer for API Equality-LA and hopes that going virtual will be incorporated into the organizations long-term plans for community outreach and support.

This shouldn't just be something that stops once social distancing has eased, Baker said. A lot of queer trans Asian Pacific Islander organizations should take this as a signal that we should really increase our accessibility by continuing these virtual events and finding a way to engage our members.

A PFLAG member in Lincoln placed hearts on their windows. (PFLAG)

In Lincoln, Nebraska, Kristin Grosskopf also sees an opportunity to reach people that may otherwise be reluctant to attend an in-person meeting. As an active member of PFLAG Lincoln, which has been supporting the citys LGBTQ community for over 30 years, Grosskopf recently helped organize the chapters first virtual meeting.

I have over the years taken calls from people in more rural areas who are too far away to come here, so this will open up a huge opportunity for them, Grosskopf said.

Grosskopf also noted some people may feel too timid to attend an in-person meeting.

I've had people tell me, I came to the parking lot three different times before I had the courage to actually come in the building, Grosskopf said. So, Zoom will take away some of those barriers.

As the executive director of the national PFLAG organization, Brian Bond said he and his team have worked to support local chapters by launching PFLAG Connects, a program that aims to provide local groups like PFLAG Lincoln with the tools to bring the organizations LGBTQ support, education and advocacy into the digital space. This includes hosting a weekly live streaming event to help engage people on Facebook and YouTube.

Nothing will ever replace an in-person PFLAG hug and the support you get from those individuals in that room, Bond said. However, this is the best option right now  the safest option. It also may very well allow more doors to be opened. And honestly, just save more kids lives and keep more families together.

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She had noted his keen appreciation for music and thought he had missed his calling by not being in the music industry. So for his 30th birthday, she offered to pay for music lessons for the instrument of his choice. To her surprise, he said he always wanted to learn to play the bagpipes.
WeChat is monitoring messages sent by international users to help identify content that might need to be preemptively censored in China.

The popular text messaging app keeps a database of censored or potentially inflammatory content that it uses to automatically filter messages for Chinese account holders.

The company keeps this database up-to-date by scanning messages sent between account holders outside of China to preemptively tag new images or other content that might be considered inflammatory by the Chinese government.

The popular chat app WeChat reportedly monitors international chat exchanges to identify and tag content to censor for Chinese account holders

The system was documented in recent tests conducted by The Citizens Lab, a Canadian public policy institute at the University of Toronto.

'I would urge international users to consider that, as you use this platform, youre actually helping to strengthen digital repression in China,' Citizens Lab director Ron Deibert told the South China Morning Post.

Past reporting has shown that WeChat maintains an active blacklist of around 500 keyword combinations that will automatically be blocked in messages with Chinese account holders.

For example, a message that mentions Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital credited as the COVID-19 whistleblower, will likely be blocked if the intended recipient is a Chinese account holder.

To try and learn how WeChat builds this blacklist, they tested how the app responded to their attempts to send a new illustration of Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned writer and activist sometimes described as 'China's Nelson Mandela.'

According to The Citizens Lab, the app maintains a database of blacklisted keyword combinations and an index of 'hash' codes attached to images or files that should be censored. The hash codes appear to come, in part, from scanning international messages

In one message thread with only account holders from outside China, they sent an image of Liu Xiabo that arrived intact, but was assigned a particular 'hash' code by WeChat.

When the researchers sent the same message to a group thread that included a Chinese account holder, they found that WeChat used the 'hash' code generated from their earlier thread of international users to identify and remove the image.

They used image editing software to change the content of the image itself in several ways, but ensured it still had the same 'hash' code in the image file, but WeChat still automatically blocked the image to Chinese users based on the hash code alone.

The Citizens Lab tested the feature by sending a new illustration of imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo to a goup of international users. They found WeChat generated a new 'hash' code for the image and used it to censor the image when later sent to a Chinese user

'If users [of WeChat] werent concerned before, they should be very concerned now and re-evaluate the risks of using this application,' Deibert said.

In a statement to the South China Morning Post, a WeChat spokesperson said the company takes the report seriously, but, 'with regard to the suggestion that we engage in content surveillance of international users, we can confirm that all content shared among international users of WeChat is private.'

The company didn't address any of the report's specific claims but said, 'our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in each country in which we operate.'

A spokesperson for WeChat said they take The Citizen Labs' report seriously but insisted 'our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in each country in which we operate'

According to Sarah Cook, a research analyst at the think tank Freedom House, the report has ominous implications.

Cook warned that WeChat's tools could be used for 'identifying certain users and creating a portfolio about them, [or] feeding other aspects of the [Chinese Communist Partys] transnational repression apparatus.'

'This is going to amplify calls for greater scrutiny, especially in the United States, of WeChat,' Cook said.
Rotunda Rumblings

Cut and color: May 15 is the day that day spas, hair and nail salons and barber shops can reopen. Restaurants and some bars will open in two phases -- the first on May 15, with outdoor patios and the indoor areas on May 21, cleveland.coms Laura Hancock reports. Gov. Mike DeWine, who doesnt plan to hold a briefing on Friday said to expect an announcement on daycare facilities on Monday.

Hungry for more: Distancing, barriers, no self-service buffets. Those are a few of the changes diners can expect when restaurants reopen. Cleveland.coms Marc Bona and Anne Nickoloff have details.

Wash, rinse, repeat: You can finally trim that quarantine flow youve got going next week, but there are some new rules that salons and spas will have to follow, cleveland.coms Seth Richardson reports. Most of them involve the usual suspects like social distancing, but with more intense sanitization standards like cleaning chairs and beds before and after every use. Oh, and that nice waiting room experience will now take place in your car.

Healthy warning: DeWine teed off on Ohio House Republicans on Thursday while elaborating on his promise to veto a bill that would limit the authority of his office to issue public-health closures, cleveland.coms Andrew Tobias writes. We are in the middle of an emergency now, he said. ....I dont understand why anyone would think this is a great time to be changing the law, to be taking away the power of the executive branch to protect people.

Risk assessment: DeWine acknowledged that coronavirus cases will go up as a significant part of the economy reopens, cleveland.coms Mary Kilpatrick writes. Let me just state the obvious, DeWine said. The risk is up. The more contacts we have, the more that we do, the more risk there is.

Daily data: Ohio has over 22,000 coronavirus cases, Hancock reports. To see the breakdown by county, cleveland.coms Rich Exner has a map and other details.

Nursing home deaths: At least 499 patients of long-term care facilities such as nursing homes have died from the coronavirus, according to the Ohio Department of Healths weekly nursing home report issued late Wednesday. As Exner reports, that means that those facilities have accounted for 41% of the deaths statewide. His story details COVID-19 cases by facility, but the state only released the death details by county.

Jobless numbers: More than 1.1 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment in the past three weeks -- more people than the prior three years combined, cleveland.coms Evan MacDonald reports. Across the U.S., 33 million people have filed claims.

Coronavirus boosts gun sales: Personal safety concerns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic have made gun sales explode nationally and in Northeast Ohio, cleveland.coms Sabrina Eaton reports. At Summit Armory in Bath Township, owner Tim Ostrander reports business in his four-year-old store has hit record levels.

Giving it up: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Thursday his office will return $4.6 million to the state to help offset an expected budget deficit. The amount, of some of which includes unused local government grants the attorney generals office oversees, equals about 5% of the general revenue funds the AG gets from the state.

Meeting of the minds: Ohio Auditor Keith Faber on Thursday convened a webinar with five other Midwest state auditors to discuss the fiscal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One thing that came out of the talks: Faber said he likes an idea from the Indiana state auditor to borrow money to help local governments deal with short-term cash flow issues. What we wanted to hear was whats going on in other states... and share best practices, he said.

Cover-up: Whether or not to wear masks was an unofficial partisan issue at the Ohio General Assembly on Wednesday, with most Republicans opting not to wear them and Democrats putting them on. State Rep. Mike Skindell, a Lakewood Democrat, proposed a resolution on Thursday that would amend House rules to require masks, with some exceptions, for anyone age 2 or older whos attending official House proceedings.

On board/not on board: Champaign County GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who argued that a panel the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is creating to oversee the coronavirus crisis is actually a Democratic plot to discredit President Donald Trump, was appointed to the new panel on Thursday by House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Eaton writes.

Gonzalez on task (force): McCarthy also named Rocky River GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez to a new GOP task force that will examine Chinese threats to the United States. The stakes are too high to sit idly by, McCarthy said in announcing the task force, which will produce a comprehensive report with legislative recommendations by October.

Buckeye Brain Tease

Question: What Ohio Democratic Party leader and Civil War opponent accidentally killed himself by pointing a gun he thought was unloaded at himself and pulling the trigger?

Email your response to capitolletter@cleveland.com. The first correct respondent will be mentioned in next weeks newsletter.

Thanks for responding to last weeks trivia question:

Ohio in 1803 became the nations 17th state. After the 13 colonies, which states were Nos. 14, 15 and 16?

Answer: Vermont in 1791; Kentucky in 1792; Tennessee in 1796.

Capitol Letter reader Michael Farley of the Columbus suburb of Worthington and vice president of government affairs and general counsel of the Ohio Insurance Institute was the first to send in the correct answer.

Birthdays

Friday: Ex-U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant (1941-2014)

Saturday: Paul Peters, legislative aide to state Rep. David Leland

Sunday: State Rep. Jim Butler, Micah Derry, director of Americans for Prosperitys Ohio chapter

Straight From The Source

I will ask Fran. That will be a Fran call. I dont know the answer to that question.

-Gov. Mike DeWine, when asked if and when he and First Lady Fran DeWine will go out to eat when restaurants re-open for sit-down service.

Capitol Letter is a daily briefing providing succinct, timely information for those who care deeply about the decisions made by state government. If you do not already subscribe, you can sign up here to get Capitol Letter in your email box each weekday for free.
Let's pray for the right lifting of lockdown Let's pray for the right lifting of lockdown



As the Government prepares to announce its plans for the lifting of lockdown, Call To Prayer invites the Christian community to pray for divine guidance.

It also invites Christians to join in praying that the Church will respond in the best way to the changed situation in which we are living.



For the Government



Lord, we pray for Boris Johnson and the Government as they prepare to lift the lockdown.



Father, we ask that you give them wisdom for the way forward.



We praise you, Lord, that your plans and purposes for the United Kingdom will be fulfilled and that the destiny of the United Kingdom will come to pass. Amen.



For the Church



Father, we thank you for your Church and for all that you are doing during this time. We pray for the leaders who have had to adapt to doing things differently.



We pray for everyone to embrace what you are doing in this season. We thank you that you are reaching so many via the Internet and social media.



Lord, thank you for the unity we see across all denominations.



We bless the body of Christ to be one body, one force, one weapon in the hands of Almighty God in Jesus name. Amen.



If you haven't seen it already, you may want to watch the united blessing prayer from UK churches here:



www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtll3mNj5U



Image by Queven from Pixabay

Eldred Willey, 24/04/2020
In this Thursday, April 23, 2020, photo, dancer and choreographer Netta Yerushalmy speaks to the other participants on her computer during a zoom dance rehearsal in her living room on the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York. The number of daily video meetings on Zoom skyrocketed from 10 million in January to more than 300 million at the end of April. (Photo | AP)

New York: New York states top prosecutor on Thursday announced that the company Zoom would improve security measures, after flaws were detected as the video conferencing platform soared in popularity amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The agreement wraps an investigation launched in March by New York Attorney General Letitia James into vulnerabilities in the California-based companys software.

In a statement, James said Zoom would institute new security measures for the millions of users using the platform, including enhanced privacy controls.

The company also agreed to conduct regular risk assessment and software code reviews to detect vulnerabilities.

The number of daily video meetings on Zoom skyrocketed from 10 million in January to more than 300 million at the end of April.

But a Zoom-bombing phenomenon sparked warnings about lax security, as virtual intruders interrupted religious ceremonies, remote classes and other Zoom gatherings.

In some cases, pornographic images popped up.

James said Zoom would take steps to prevent those breaches as well as end its user data-sharing partnership with Facebook.

The platform is to improve privacy controls for free accountsusers avoid a monthly fee for meetings 40 minutes and underalong with education accounts for K-12 students.

All hosts will now be able to control access to conferences with a required password for those attempting to access a meeting.

Our lives have inexorably changed over the past two months, and while Zoom has provided an invaluable service, it unacceptably did so without critical security protections, James said in the statement.

This agreement puts protections in place so that Zoom users have control over their privacy and security.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Como Secondary College students handed corporal punishment, teacher under investigation by Education Department. Credit:Education Department website

Boys aged 11 and 12 were forced to kneel outside on concrete in the middle of the night, holding their pillows with their arms outstretched and were yelled at if they dared to move after being rowdy at a school camp.

The corporal punishment was handed down to the Year 7 Como Secondary College students for being "persistently disruptive", according to a school teacher who their parents had entrusted with their childrens' care during a school camp.

The group of boys were among 143 students on their 'transition camp' at Point Peron on March 9 when some of them became disruptive in the middle of the night.

As punishment, a female science teacher made all the boys, as well as those trying to sleep, go outside and kneel on the concrete in a line while holding their pillow with their arms outstretched in front of them.
Friday, May 8th, 2020 (12:01 am) - Score 3,030

Concerns are growing that Northern Irelands long awaited 165m Project Stratum, which originally hoped to extend superfast broadband (30Mbps+) to cover around 97,000 extra premises, may shun many rural villages due to a decision that could see it only focus on areas with a larger population. But the project team denies this.

At present data from Thinkbroadband indicates that around 89% of premises in Northern Ireland can access a superfast service, which is the lowest level of such coverage in the United Kingdom. On the flip side 44% can access a full fibre (FTTP) network, which is up sharply from 35.42% at the end of 2019 and represents the highest level of such coverage in the UK.

NOTE: Ultrafast (100Mbps+) coverage is 55% but, thanks to Ultrafast (100Mbps+) coverage is 55% but, thanks to Virgin Media , that isnt too different from the rest of the UK.

Sadly N.I doesnt have many alternative network (altnet) ISPs to choose from  even though Fibrus has recently entered the market in quite a big way (here)  and thus most of their existing fixed full fibre and gigabit-capable network coverage exists thanks to efforts by Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media.

However commercial investment will only get you so far and so Project Stratum was created. The majority of funding for this stems from a 2017 deal between the Conservative UK government and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to secure the support of their MPs (didnt that work out well..), which included 150m to help provide ultra-fast broadband. A further 15m came from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).

Despite this, the official project later scrapped any talk of ultrafast and began discussing the need to bring superfast (NGA) connectivity to 97,000 poorly served premises. The expectation was that the local Department for the Economy (DfE) would announce a contract award sometime during Spring 2020, but that was before COVID-19 sent everybody into lockdown.

The project has so far experienced a rather bumpy road toward creation and it looks like that trend may be set to continue. A councillor for the Fermanagh and Omagh District, Adam Gannon, has been told by the Northern Ireland Assembly that Project Stratum will now only apply to areas with a population of 1,000 or more (here).

Cllr Gannon said: In Erne West I think the highest population is Derrylin, in the village itself where you have 600-700. You could very well be excluding the whole of west County Fermanagh on those numbers. I think it doesnt go far enough at all.

At this point we dont know whether the figure is more of a general expectation or a strict requirement, but wed hope the former because it doesnt make too much sense to strictly exclude communities based purely on size. One reason for this is because as you build fibre around the country then that cable will pass some smaller communities too (i.e. incidental coverage), where such deployments can become more viable.

In researching for this article we also noted how the DfE now mentions that it will only aim to deploy NGA infrastructure to approximately 78,500 premises (a fair bit lower than the previous target) and the contract award is now anticipated in late September 2020, rather than the spring.

The reason for that change from 98,000 to 78,500 is due to a data refresh, which was undertaken in January 2020 by several broadband operators (i.e. their commercial coverage will reach further than expected). The Open Market Review (OMR) has been amended to confirm (here). Nevertheless it seems likely that, given the current political focus, whatever gets deployed will probably still be FTTP.

UPDATE 15th May 2020

Weve had a response from Nigel Robbins, Broadband Project Director (DfE), which appears to refute the suggestion made by Cllr Gannon, albeit with the caveat that we wont know the final outcome until a contract has been awarded.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 8, 2020 / Skeena Resources Limited (TSXV:SKE) (OTCQX:SKREF) ("Skeena" or the "Company") announces that the Board of Directors granted 4,200,000 incentive stock options to directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company, subject to TSX Venture Exchange acceptance. The incentive stock options have a term of 5 years, expiring on May 8, 2025 or upon departure of the option-holder. In accordance with the Company's existing incentive stock option plan, and TSX-Venture Exchange Policy 4.4 "Incentive Stock Options", option-holders are entitled to exercise any vested stock options for a period up to 90 days following their resignation or departure from the Company. Incentive stock options vest over two years with one third of the incentive stock options vesting immediately, one-third after 12 months and one-third after 24 months. After vesting, each incentive stock option will allow the holder to purchase one common share in the Company at a price of C$1.12. Shares issued in conjunction with the exercise of these incentive stock options will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of grant.

About Skeena

Skeena Resources Limited is a junior Canadian mining exploration company focused on developing prospective precious metal properties in the Golden Triangle of northwest British Columbia, Canada. The Company's primary activities are the exploration and development of the past-producing Eskay Creek gold-silver mine. The Company released a robust Preliminary Economic Assessment in late 2019 and is currently focused on infill and exploration drilling at Eskay Creek to advance the project to Pre-feasibility. Skeena is also exploring the past-producing Snip gold mine.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Skeena Resources Limited,

Walter Coles Jr.

President & CEO

Cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements

Certain statements made and information contained herein may constitute "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and the United States securities legislation. These statements and information are based on facts currently available to the Company and there is no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements and information may be identified by such terms as "future", "anticipates", "believes", "targets", "estimates", "plans", "expects", "may", "will", "could" or "would". Forward-looking statements and information contained herein are based on certain factors and assumptions regarding, among other things, the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, the realization of resource and reserve estimates, metal prices, taxation, the estimation, timing and amount of future exploration and development, capital and operating costs, the availability of financing, the receipt of regulatory approvals, environmental risks, title disputes and other matters. While the Company considers its assumptions to be reasonable as of the date hereof, forward-looking statements and information are not guarantees of future performance and readers should not place undue importance on such statements as actual events and results may differ materially from those described herein. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or information except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CONTACT:

Walt Coles Jr.,

President & CEO

Kelly Earle, Vice President Communications

Email: kearle@skeenaresources.com

Tel: (604) 684-8725

SOURCE: Skeena Resources Limited

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589118/Skeena-Announces-Grant-of-Incentive-Stock-Options
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has donated protective items to the Western Regional Branch of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to help combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.



Takoradi, May 8, GNA - The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has donated protective items to the

Western Regional Branch of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to help combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.



The items donated included; hand washing stations, boxes of hand sanitizers, gallons of liquid soap, gallons of rubbing alcohol, boxes of face masks, tissue papers, and washing bowls.



Mr Charles Cromwell Nanabanyin Bissue, Western Regional Secretary of the NPP who presented the items said since the media was the Fourth Estate of the Realm, it was imperative to protect them in the wake of the global pandemic.



He said it was in this regard that the party saw it necessary to support them so that they would continue to educate and inform the public on the COVID-19 pandemic.



Mr Bissue called on Ghanaians to adhere to all the measures and protocols put in place by the World Health Organization and the President to support the fight against the spread of the deadly disease.



Mr Moses Dotsey Aklobortu, Chairman of the Western Regional GJA, receiving the items applauded the NPP regional team for the gesture.



He stressed that the media, both print and electronic, thrive on advertisements but with the outbreak of COVID-19, economic activities have gone down drastically thereby, setting the media industry back financially.



Mr Aklobortu noted with concern that the situation has made it difficult for some media houses to pay their workers and be in business.



He, therefore, appealed to the government to help the media industry to stay in business by including it in the financial support package for companies and businesses.



The chairman charged the media to continue to give accurate reportage on the COVID-19 pandemic to ease fear and panic among the public.

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.

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After 16 migrant workers sleeping on railway tracks were mowed down by a goods train, Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety Shailesh Pathak has written to the Railway Board Chairman, calling for abundant caution and requesting him to issue instructions to ensure that such an accident does not recur.

The 16 people, walking back home during the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, were killed after a goods train ran over them near the Karmad railway station in Aurangabad district in Maharashtra on Friday morning.

The Commission of Railway Safety, which investigates all serious rail accidents and clears all rail projects, also said that now that such an incident of migrant or other persons walking along the tracks leading to consequent deaths have come to notice, all-out efforts must be made to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future.

"Under such circumstances, as an abundant precaution, it is essential that all railway personnel connected with train operation, maintenance and patrolling activities should be cautioned to immediately communicate any such occurrence of persons walking along the track, if noticed by them, to the nearest station so that necessary action like Caution Order to all passing trains (can be taken)," he said.

In his letter to Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav, he also said that this protocol is already part of duties of all railway servants under the Indian Railways (Open Line) General Rules, 1976.

"In view of the aforesaid, it is requested to immediately issue suitable directions to all Zonal Railways to avoid recurrence of such unfortunate incidents in future," he said.

The Commission of Railway Safety comes under the civil aviation ministry and investigates all railway accidents.

The railways has already ordered a probe under Ram Kripal, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Central Circle, who will hold an independent inquiry into the accident, the Railway Ministry announced.

Sources said that what is being probed is the role of patrolmen who are tasked with keeping trespassers away from tracks and also alert the nearest station about any incident.

While the railways does not treat these incidents as "railway accidents" and terms runover cases as "trespassing", there have been instances in the past where it has offered ex-gratia to the next of kin of a victim on sympathetic grounds.

In the 2017 Elphinstone bridge collapse incident in which 23 people were killed and 39 injured in Mumbai, the railways had given ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of those killed in the incident, Rs 1 lakh for those seriously injured and Rs 50,000 to people who suffered simple injuries.

The railways has not yet announced any ex gratia in the Aurangabad accident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As city and provincial officials begin to loosen the COVID-19 restrictions that have kept residents close to home for much of the past two months, transit users are expected to start trickling back to the TTC to work, shop, and get around. But the transit network they return to will look very different than the one they left before the lockdown.

Preventing the spread of the virus on the TTC, which before the pandemic carried about 1.8 million people a day on crowded vehicles and packed platforms, will be a tremendous challenge if transit demand returns to anything approaching normal levels before a vaccine for the disease is widely available.

Experts and other jurisdictions have pursued ideas like directing all passengers to wear masks, modifying stations to allow for social distancing, and asking employers to stagger shifts in order to push travel demand outside of traditional rush hours.

Every single one of those things, and more, are on the table and under active discussion, said Mayor John Tory at a press conference Tuesday.

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said the agencys plans have yet to be finalized, but are being drafted in co-operation with Toronto Public Health and the citys Office of Recovery and Rebuild. Green said the agency is looking for strategies that allow for a safe, gradual or phased return of our customers.

Heres what riders can expect as the TTC gears up for the recovery.

Extending existing measures

The TTC has already instituted policies to keep riders and employees safe during the pandemic, including closing off some seats on vehicles, cleaning vehicles and stations more frequently, and implementing rear-door boarding on buses.

For at least the early stages of the recovery, transit agencies will need to continue those type of measures in order to give the public a comfort level that they can ride the system, said Paul Skoutelas, president of the American Public Transportation Association, a non-profit that represents North American transit organizations.

Green said that as ridership returns the TTC will assess all the measures we have put in place and determine when it is safe to change practices.

Face masks

Officials in New York state and Quebec have issued recommendations for riders to wear masks while on public transit, while hard-hit Spain has made face coverings mandatory for passengers.

The TTC has not directed its riders to wear masks, and Green said any directive to do so would have to come from government or public health officials, not the transit agency.

Skoutelas said instructions for passengers to wear masks should be strong recommendations rather than mandatory rules, which would be hard for agencies to enforce. I dont think we want to create more friction between an operator and a rider, he said.

Crowd control

Phil Verster, president of Metrolinx, the provincial agency that oversees GO, said the organization will be installing a huge number of markings and decals at its stations in the coming weeks  especially the normally busy hub of Union Station  to aid with social distancing. Extra staff will be deployed to help marshal people to spread out throughout the station, he said.

Green said the TTC has deployed floor markings on Union Station subway platforms, as well as interchange stations and stops at the end of lines.

Changing travel patterns

Just as wider society needs to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections, transit agencies need to flatten the peak period curve to prevent crowding during the busiest times of day, said Amer Shalaby, a University of Toronto professor who studies transportation modelling.

He cited a recent, non-peer reviewed study about Washington, D.C.s Metro system that found that each one of the 270,000 people who use the subway during a normal morning rush hour has the potential to interact with about 1,200 other people, creating perfect conditions to rapidly spread the virus throughout the riding population.

Shalaby said pushing transit demand away from traditional rush hours would need to be a collaborative effort between employers and government, which could change shift times or ask employees to work from home, as well as transit agencies, which could lower fares in less busy times of day.

Green said the TTC is in discussion with municipal officials about strategies to shift demand away from rush hour, but requests for employers to alter work hours would have to come from the city.

Increasing capacity

The crisis has caused TTC ridership to plunge to 15 per cent of normal volumes, but the agency has continued to operate about 85 per cent of its regular service, a level its planners calculate is slightly more than required to allow passengers to practice social distancing.

Marco DAngelo, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, a non-profit advocacy group for the nations transit systems, said it will be crucial for agencies to ramp up service as economic activity resumes and people start riding again.

Financial constraints could make that difficult, however. The TTC has estimated its losing $90 million a month during the crisis, and plans to layoff 1,200 employees.

With Canadian cities facing crippling economic shortfalls as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, DAngelo said the TTC and other agencies urgently need federal support to maintain adequate service levels, so what vehicles do run are not crowded.

The TTC expects to operate on its new reduced schedules until at least the end of August, but Green said the agency has planned service in a flexible way so that we can scale up service on short notice, if required, over the summer.

Passenger limits

The TTC has not instituted hard passenger caps on vehicles, but Green said the agency is trying to allow no more than 10 to 15 people on its buses at a time. If passenger loads exceed that, drivers may switch to drop off only mode.

According to Green, for the moment the subway and streetcar networks still have enough room to accommodate more riders while allowing for social distancing.

But the TTCs ability to add enough service to keep crowding at safe levels is limited, and normal service simply wont be possible while the virus remains a threat. Our normal planning standards envision full vehicles. Obviously, that is not possible in the immediate or medium terms, Green said.

The city is preparing for the TTC to operate at reduced capacity during the recovery. The ActiveTO plan the mayor unveiled Wednesday includes a proposal to install bike lanes that mirror major TTC routes, in order to create a safety valve for the transit system.

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation for the Star. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr
The five southern states source 10-15 per cent of their revenue from excise duty on liquor but account for nearly half of the total consumption, says a report.

Photograph: ANI Photo.

The financial position of these states is precarious as the coronavirus lockdown completely dried up this crucial liquidity tap for them in April.

The five southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala together consume as much as 45 per cent of all liquor sold in the country, the report by Crisil said on Thursday.

"The denizens of this quintet quaff as much as 45 per cent of all liquor sold in the country annually. But not a drop was sold in April, and given the dire state of their revenues, these states have been anxious to make good the losses by opening up the vends," it said.

While Tamil Nadu and Kerala top the list in revenue percentage terms at 15 per cent each, for Kerala the tax on liquor is its single largest revenue source.

The revenue share is 11 per cent each for Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and 10 per cent for Telangana, shows the report. Delhi is at number three when it comes to liquor revenue share with 12 per cent of tax revenue, but its citizens swig only 4 per cent of the national intake.

Tamil Nadu has another distinction -- it is the single largest consumer of liquor in the country, guzzling as much 13 per cent of national sales, closely followed by Karnataka with 12 per cent.

Andhra quaffs 7 per cent of the national intake, followed by Telangana (6 per cent) and Kerala (5 per cent). While all other states have high population, when it comes to Kerala, despite being home to only 3.3 crore people, it draws the highest revenue because among the five states it charges the highest tax rate on liquor.

However, nationally, Maharashtra charges the highest rate, but draws only 8 per cent of its tax revenue from liquor -- primarily because it is the most industrialised state and has many other sources of income -- and also consumes only 8 per cent of the national intake despite being the second most populous state.

Twelve states -- the five southern ones, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan -- account for 75 per cent of liquor consumption in the country.

But uncorking the bottled spirit will also be a problem for these 12 states as they contribute to more than 85 per cent of all COVID-19 infections/deaths as well.

Maharashtra alone contributes 31.2 percent of all cases, followed by Delhi (10 per cent), Tamil Nadu (7.6 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (7 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (5.9 per cent).

Among these 12 states, Kerala has the lowest national average in this at under-1 per cent, the report said.

Maharashtra shuttered liquor vends in Mumbai and the rest of MMR region after opening them for a day earlier this week.
Photo: (Photo : gofundme.com)

Amber Rose Isaac, 26 years old, died last month while giving birth to her first baby boy, Elias. Days before her death, Isaac tweeted about dealing with incompetent doctors.

Bruce McIntyre III, Isaac's partner, said that he had noticed that Isaac's platelet level had been decreasing since February. However, she was unable to see a doctor in person because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic even though she was already in her third trimester. The solution was having her appointments over Zoom.

McIntyre said that when his partner, Isaac, who was black and Puerto Rican, first tried calling her doctors at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx to consult them about her low platelet level, they ignored her.

Family Thinks it's 'Preventable'

McIntyre finally said that what happened to his partner could have been 100 percent preventable. He also shared his sentiments with the discrimination between white and black and said that if Isaac was a white mother, she would have gotten more attentive care and would not have been neglected.

In late April, Isaac was admitted to the hospital where doctors confirmed that she had developed HELLP syndrome. It is a pregnancy-related complication that can be fatal if left untreated.

Just a few days earlier, she tweeted about how she could not wait to write a tell-all about her experience during her last two trimesters dealing with incompetent doctors at Montefiore.

Once Isaac was at the hospital, doctors induced her labor for more than a month ahead of her due date, and she was rushed into an emergency C-section.

Neither McIntyre nor Isaac's mother was allowed to join her in the hospital because of the restrictions following the precautions due to the pandemic.

Isaac then died alone after having given birth to her newborn son, Elias.

Maternal Mortality Issue

Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, Founder and President of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, expressed her dismay to what happened to Isaac. According to her, Isaac was a beautiful young woman who fell through the big, gaping hole of the healthcare system.

Dr. Joia also said that Isaac was not the only one and that it was the story of the black maternal mortality issue across the United States.

According to a study conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in New York City alone, black women are eight times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.

The Montefiore Medical Center only said in a statement that any maternal death is a tragedy and that their hearts go out to Isaac's family.

McIntyre shared how he cannot bear to imagine what Isaac had gone through, and how hard it is now that she was gone. He also said that Isaac never even got to meet and see their child. McIntyre even remembered Isaac being so thrilled about having their child.

A GoFundMe page has been set up in Isaac's honor to cover the costs of her funeral service and to help McIntyre with raising his newborn son.
Washington: US House Republicans are forming a taskforce to investigate China's role in the spread of the new coronavirus as their party broadens its attempt to put a focus on the actions of the government in Beijing.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy smiles. Credit:AP

"China's cover-up directly led to this crisis," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said. "It follows the same threatening pattern of behaviour we have seen from the Chinese Communist Party for years, something that has long been a bipartisan consensus in Washington."

Separately, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that as the virus spread, the Communist Party sought to "cover it up" and is turning on Chinese lawyers, activists and others trying to get at the truth.

He also said the Senate soon will take up legislation aimed at punishing China for its treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority while urging President Donald Trump to sanction "those responsible" for the repression.
Gyms, pools and boot camps could soon reopen as Scott Morrison announced a three step plan to east lockdown restrictions.

During the first phase Australians can expect to take part in boot camps and exercise with up to 10 others in public spaces. They can also expect pools to reopen.

In stage two fitness fans can go to indoor gyms with less than 20 people at one time.

Stage three will see the full-scale reopening of gyms with more than 20 people.

Pictured: Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a three-step plan to ease coronavirus restrictions in Australia

Gyms are included in step two of a three step plan to bring Australia out of lockdown restrictions.

Step one of the plan includes allowing five visitors in people's houses and ten people gathering in public and at businesses.

Restaurants, cafes, and shops will also open.

Other public places such as libraries, community centres, playgrounds, and boot camps with ten people are allowed.

Pictured: The three-step plan to ease coronavirus restrictions in Australia

In step two the limit on crowds is increased to 20 people in houses, public places, and businesses.

Gyms will reopen under this stage along with cinemas, beauty salons, galleries, and amusement parks.

Some interstate travel will be allowed and camp grounds and caravan parks will open again.

'It was encouraging to hear Scott Morrison specifically mention gyms are the next cab off the rank,' said Fitness Australia chief executive Barrie Elvish.

The health and fitness industry association has been working with state governments to develop a framework for the safe reopening of gyms, Mr Elvish added.

'Exercise and maintaining a regular fitness routine play an important role in keeping our mental and physical health in balance,' Mr Elvish said.

'We are very happy to see outdoor and then indoor activity playing a key role in each of the roadmap stages.'

The National Cabinet aims to have Australia moved through all three stages by July this year

In step three of the schedule gatherings of up to 100 people are allowed.

Australians working remotely will also return to businesses under this step.

The bans on interstate travel will also be removed allowing Australians to move between states and territories.

It will be up to the state governments to decide on specific schedules for implementing each step of the outline.

Australia's Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy speaks during a press conference following a National Cabinet meeting on May 8, 2020
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Vilnius, Lithuania, May 8, 2020  Belarusian authorities should reinstate the accreditations of journalists Aleksey Kruchinin and Sergey Panasyuk and allow them to report freely and safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On May 6, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry cancelled the accreditations for both journalists, which Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoliy Glaz said was because their employer, Russian public broadcaster Channel One, disseminated information that did not correspond with the reality, according to news reports. Glaz did not name any specific examples of such information, according to those reports. However, in his most recent broadcast from Belarus aired May 6, Kruchinin reported that the countrys COVID-19 death toll may be significantly higher than the official statistics.

Kruchinin, a Russian national, works as a reporter for the broadcaster, and Panasyuk, a Belarussian national, works as a camera operator, according to those news reports. Channel One posted a statement yesterday calling the accusation absolutely groundless.

Kruchinin told Belarussian news website Tut.By that authorities ordered him to leave Belarus, and said yesterday that he was already in Russia. He said he was not officially deported and can re-enter Belarus, but not as a journalist. Panasyuk is allowed to stay in the country but cannot work as a journalist, according to Tut.By.

Stripping journalists of their accreditations and barring them from covering the news is not only censorship, but a public health risk, said Gulnoza Said, CPJs Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. Belarusian authorities should allow journalists Aleksey Kruchinin and Sergey Panasyuk to cover the coronavirus pandemic and all other news in the country without fear of reprisal.

CPJ called Glazs office, but a representative who answered the phone declined to comment.

Kruchinin in his May 6 broadcast reported from a cemetery showing many new graves, and spoke to local residents who said their family members had died with coronavirus symptoms but were not listed as confirmed deaths from the pandemic.

Belarus has reported 19,255 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 112 deaths, but has reported no new cases in recent days, according to the World Health Organization.

CPJ called the Russian Foreign Ministrys press office, but the person who picked up the phone refused to comment.
As Pennsylvanias coronavirus death toll increased Thursday by more than 300, Gov. Tom Wolf extended a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions by another two months, saying residents should not have to worry about losing their homes during the pandemic.

The state Supreme Court first suspended evictions in March, but its order was set to expire Monday. Wolf signed an executive order Thursday extending the moratorium to July 10.

Meanwhile, with 24 lightly impacted counties already set to emerge from some pandemic restrictions, Wolf, a Democrat, said he plans to lift his stay-at-home orders and allow retailers and other kinds of businesses to reopen in more counties. An announcement on which counties will see shutdown relief was expected Friday amid persistent complaints from Republicans that Wolf is moving too slowly to reopen Pennsylvania's economy.

Wolf and Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a fellow Democrat, jointly announced the eviction moratorium, saying it advances public health efforts to quell the virus outbreak by allowing people to stay at home.

"No one should have to worry about losing their home during this health emergency," Wolf said at a video news conference. "This executive order takes one more burden off people who are struggling and gives them more time to get back on their feet."

A board member of one of the state's largest landlord groups blasted the extended moratorium, saying it gives tenants the ability to live rent-free without consequence for many months.

Robert Levin of HAPCO Philadelphia, which represents 2,000 property owners in the city, said mom-and-pop operators will be hard pressed to keep up with taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and mortgage payments without the ability to enforce lease agreements.

"These people are going to lose their properties, they're going to lose their nest eggs, they're going to lose their investments," he said.

Wolf noted that renters and homeowners are still required to make monthly payments. But he called on landlords to work with tenants through the crisis.

"If you're a landlord, we understand you're going through a tough time, too, but so are your tenants," Wolf said. "Practice forbearance here. That's the decent, human thing to do."

Rachel Garland, managing attorney for the housing unit at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said some renters haven't gotten their unemployment money yet.

"Many tenants were worried: "What if I haven't gotten unemployment?' Once you get an eviction filed against you, that is a mark on your record and that makes it difficult to get quality housing in the future," she said. "It's helpful to have the extra buffer in terms of time without worrying about people getting taken to court."

New unemployment program website working

Self-employed people, gig workers and others not normally eligible for unemployment compensation were supposed to be able to start filing backdated claims Thursday under a new federal benefits program being administered by the state.

But the rollout was rife with complaints, and some applicants reported glitches that prevented them from completing the process.

Sarah Downing, a self-employed massage therapist in Doylestown, told The Associated Press that she logged onto the system Thursday morning to file weekly claims for the first time, only to get an error message that said she was "not totally unemployed"  even though she's not worked since March 17 because of the business shutdown. She was unable to file. Many other applicants reported the same issue.

"People are desperate at this point," Downing said in a phone interview. "How are you supposed to survive indefinitely on lockdown without making any money?"

The Department of Labor & Industry offered no immediate explanation for the problems reported by some applicants.

Since March 15, more than 174,000 people have applied to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which is being administered by the state's unemployment compensation office. The state began accepting applications April 18 but wasn't able to pay benefits while it built out the system.

Work on the system was completed Thursday morning, and the Department of Labor & Industry said it was fully operational.

A record 1.7 million Pennsylvanians have filed for regular unemployment compensation since mid-March as the pandemic, and the state's efforts to contain it, caused economic devastation.

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Akin Abayomi

The Lagos State Ministry of Health said on Friday that Akin Abayomi, the commissioner for health in the state, has not tested positive for COVID-19 as being rumoured.

Tunbosun Ogunbanwo, the director of public affairs of the ministry, said the news making rounds on social media platforms that the commissioner was positive is fake.

He said Mr Abayomi is in perfect health and free from the coronavirus infection.

A news emanated on social media on Thursday saying the commissioner had tested positive to COVID-19.

This was shortly after Mr Abayomi tweeted that 10 persons associated to the Lagos State House at Marina tested positive to the virus.



The attention of the Lagos State Ministry of Health has been drawn to fake reports making the rounds that the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi has tested positive to COVID19 infection.

We hereby urge the public to disregard this absolute falsehood and fabricated report in its entirety. This is the hand work of mischief makers who are out to create unnecessary panic and fear amongst the populace, Mr Ogunbanwo said.



Prof Akin Abayomi is hale and hearty, in good health and has continued in his capacity as the Deputy Incident Commander of the COVID-19 Lagos Intervention to coordinate activities and response in order to break the chain of transmission of the infection in Lagos, he added.

Verify news



The ministry urged citizens to rely only on the official and verified communication channels of the Lagos state government, including the Ministry of Health for all COVID-19 related news and information.

Mr Ogunbanwo implored Lagos residents to stop sharing unconfirmed news.

Lagos recorded 183 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the total cases in the state to 1,507.

A total number of 406 patients have also recovered from the infection in the state, while 33 deaths have been recorded.
Here is a selection of people who have begun new roles with a selection of companies and organisations, including LEON Ireland, Esri Ireland, Mastercard, LauraLynn, William Fry and Empathy Connects.

Adrian Crean has been appointed as a non-executive director of LEON Ireland, the Naturally Fast Food brand launched into the Irish market in May 2019. He brings over 20 years of foodservice experience, notably as MD of McDonalds Restaurants in Ireland from 2011 to 2017. He has also been managing director of Rocket Restaurants Group, and chief brand and strategy officer for Applegreen. As of February 2020, LEON has two Dublin city restaurants, in Temple Bar and Millennium Walkway. The company has an ongoing commitment to open 20 restaurants and create 600 jobs by 2023. To date, LEON has raised 3.6m investment to fund the Irish launch and rollout plans.

Ellen Scully has been appointed as digital marketer with Esri Ireland, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist. She was previously digital marketing executive with the Irish Institute of Digital Business. She will lead campaigns like the Esri Ireland ArcGIS for Schools scheme, offering free digital mapping software to primary and secondary schools across the island of Ireland. She will optimise digital and social media content and advertising campaigns, producing and distributing the Esri Ireland customer newsletter, as well as leading Esri Ireland events, and analysing and monitoring the performance of digital marketing campaigns. She holds an MSc in Digital Marketing and a BSc in Multimedia from DCU.

Mark Barnett has been named as president of Mastercards European business, based in Brussels, succeeding Javier Perez, who retires at the end of the year. Mr Barnett was previously the companys divisional president for the UK, Ireland Nordics and Baltics. He joined in 2003 and has held roles including leading their payments consulting business for Europe and then globally. He brings 20 years of experience in retail banking and payments. He will lead the direction of all aspects of the firms business in Europe. Mastercards European business covers 53 countries, serving over 950m people through partnerships with retailers, financial institutions and businesses.

Kerry McLaverty has been named as CEO of LauraLynn, Irelands childrens hospice, providing support and palliative care for children with life-limiting conditions and their families across Ireland. A longstanding member of the team, she initially joined the physiotherapy department in 2012, and rose to head of operations in 2016. She has 15 years experience as a healthcare professional in the healthcare sector, not-for-profit and voluntary sectors. Her healthcare management and leadership skills are underpinned by an extensive clinical background in physiotherapy and paediatrics, along with strong clinical research and teaching experience as a former annual lecturer at RCSI and within the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists (ISCP).

Matthew Cahill has been appointed as head of structured finance and debt capital markets with law firm William Fry. Matthew is returning to Ireland after 25 years working in this highly specialised area in London, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. He has been a partner at leading law firms Clifford Chance and Sidley Austin. Matthew is from Cork and holds a BCL from NUI Cork. William Frys managing partner, Bryan Bourke, said: We look forward to our clients and teams benefiting from Matthews arrival. The firm has 300+ legal and tax professionals and 460+ staff in Ireland. The firm has offices in Dublin, Cork, UK, and USA.

Stephen Rust has been appointed as MD of Empathy Connects, the new shopper research unit at marketing firm Empathy in Dublin. HE joins from V360, part of Visualise Group, where he was joint MD. Empathy and V360 have also formed a strategic partnership which will see the two firms formalise their relationship to provide complementary services to their respective clients. The partnership between Empathy and V360 is an evolution of a seven-year relationship which has seen them work together on a wide range of projects for clients such as Bord Bia, Kerryfoods and Freshways Food Co., in addition to Pharma Focus, a syndicated research service for the Irish Pharmacy industry.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Package liquor stores are asking New Mexico to reimburse a portion of their licensing fees amid the public health orders that have kept them from operating  a request state officials say they will consider.

More broadly the stores are questioning the fairness of having to close while larger out-of-state competitors, such as grocery and convenience stores, remain in operation.

In a letter to the states Alcoholic Beverage Control division, attorney Mark Rhodes, who represents the Independent Liquor Retailers of New Mexico, said package stores have been unable to use their liquor licenses or sell tens of millions of dollars in inventory since the mandated closures of nonessential businesses in March.

At a minimum, he said, the state should reimburse the stores fees for each day of the closure.

Adam Derizotis, chairman of the Independent Liquor Retailers, said the new group formed after the mandated closures and will advocate for the industry, which includes more than 170 stores throughout the state.

Members of the organization include the owners of Kokoman and Susans in Santa Fe; Jubilation, Kelly, Quarters and Paradise in Albuquerque; and other establishments.

Everybody in this group is a multi-generational New Mexican family who has their entire life savings or livelihood wrapped up in their business, said Derizotis, who owns Zia Liquors in Farmington. Were not big corporations.

Bernice Geiger, a spokeswoman for the state Regulation and Licensing Department, said the state is considering the partial reimbursement of annual fees. But making a decision on refunds may be premature at this point, she said, given that the length of the closure isnt known yet.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams administration ordered the closure of nonessential businesses in late March to limit the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. Grocery stores, pharmacies and limited number of other businesses were allowed to stay open as essential businesses.

The governor has repeatedly said the public health orders, while painful, treat businesses equally based on the kind of services they offer, not their size or ownership.

The liquor retailers say the effect of the orders  even if not intended  is that their competitors can sell beer, wine and other alcoholic drinks while the package stores cant.

The stores are also unable to offer curbside pickup like other retailers because of prohibitions in the states liquor laws  a change that would require legislative action.

The governor last year vetoed a bill that would have allowed the home delivery of beer and wine with food orders.

Andrew Vallejos, the states director of Alcoholic Beverage Control, said in a recent letter to liquor licensees that their cooperation with the rules will help keep New Mexicans safe.

We know it has been hard on businesses, he said, but we look forward to that point where we will be able to safely reopen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin achieved a major landmark of 20 years at the helm, on May 7, 2020, involving in a tremendous change witnessed by the former Soviet state. The former KGB officer was serving as the Prime Minister when President Boris Yeltsin abruptly resigned on December 31, 1999, naming Putin as acting President amid pending elections.

Putin won his first presidential election on March 26, 2000, by a slim margin but suffered a blow to his image within months due to the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea. The submarine had a crew of 118 members onboard and no one survived the accident. The Russian Presidents first comments came after four days of the accident and denied delays in rescue operation.

The first term of Putins presidency was marred with controversies related to Chechen militants and the arrest of Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky whose supporters said it was nothing but the punishment of meddling in politics. However, Putin came back for a second term in 2004 with an overwhelming majority on the back of oil prices boom leading to the rise in living standards.

In a step to centralise the power, Putin scrapped direct elections for regional governors, paving the way for Kremlin to decide on appointees. While his regime brought social stability and economic progress, it came at the cost of press freedom and democracy at large, something his critics deemed indispensable.

In 2006, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a strong critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya, was killed in Moscow and another critic Alexander Litvinenko died in London after reportedly being poisoned with a radioactive substance. An inquiry by UK authorities later found out that Litvinenko was murdered by Russian spies.

Putin had to step down from the presidential position due to the constitutional limitations on more than two consecutive terms, but the Russian leader chose to serve as Prime Minister and his ally Dmitry Medvedev became the President. He returned as President after winning the elections in 2012 with Constitutional amendment now increasing president's term of office from four to six years.

Russia joins WTO

One of the major achievement of Putin came as Russias formal joining on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after 18 years of rigorous negotiations. Russia also successfully hosted the Winter Olympic Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. In the biggest East-West showdown in the post-Soviet era, Russian forces annexed Crimea from Ukraine and a referendum upheld the annexation to join Russia.

In 2018, Putin was re-elected with a landslide victory with a mandate to stay in the office until 2024 but the latest sweeping reforms have given the Russian leader an option to run for two more terms. The proposal was sent to the Russian Constitutional Court which cleared it to let Putin stay in power beyond term limits. The referendum on the proposal was set to be held on April 22 but was postponed due to the rising cases of coronavirus in the country.

Read: Russia Passes Bill Allowing Putin To Stay In Power Past 2024

(Image: AP)
The global premium cosmetics market is expected to grow by USD 44.2 billion as per Technavio. This marks a significant market slowdown compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. However, steady growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 6%.

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Technavio has announced the latest market research report titled Global Premium Cosmetics Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

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Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Premium Cosmetics Market Analysis Report by Distribution channel (Offline and Online), Product (Skincare products, Fragrances, Color cosmetics, Hair care products, and Others), Geography (Europe, APAC, North America, South America, and MEA), and the Segment Forecasts, 2020-2024".

https://www.technavio.com/report/global-premium-cosmetics-market-industry-analysis

The market is driven by innovation and portfolio extension. In addition, the increased demand for premium skincare products is anticipated to boost the growth of the premium cosmetics market.

The growth in disposable incomes across the world is increasing the preference for premium products among consumers. This is encouraging vendors to introduce innovative and professional products containing superior quality ingredients. These products are priced higher than the regular skincare products. Also, the introduction of such products is leading to the expansion of product portfolios of vendors. Therefore, the increasing vendor focus on innovation and portfolio expansion is expected to drive the growth of the global premium cosmetics market during the forecast period.

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Major Five Premium Cosmetics Companies:

Amway Corp.

Amway Corp. operates its business through segments such as Nutrition, Beauty, Home, and Energy and Spot. The company offers a wide range of premium beauty cosmetic products under the brand, Artistry.

Beiersdorf AG

Beiersdorf AG operates its business through segments such as Consumer and tesa. The company offers anti-aging luxury skincare products under the brand, La Prairie.

Coty Inc.

Coty Inc. operates its business through segments such as Luxury, Consumer Beauty, and Professional Beauty. The company offers premium cosmetic products under brands such as Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Chloe, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Tiffany and Co, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Davidoff, Burberry and Miu Miu, Lancaster, and philosophy.

L'Oreal SA

L'Oreal SA operates its business through segments such as Consumer Products, L'Oreal Luxe, Professional Products, and Active Cosmetics. The company offers a wide range of premium cosmetics under brands such as Lancome, Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Shu Uemura, Yue Sai, Clarisonic, Ralph Lauren, Diesel, Cacharel, Maison Margiela, LOreal Professionnel, Kerastas, and others.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton operates its business through segments such as Wines and Spirits, Fashion and Leather Goods, Perfumes and Cosmetics, Watches and Jewelry, and Selective Retailing and Other activities. The company offers premium brand perfumes and cosmetics under the brand, Sephora.

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Premium Cosmetics Market Distribution Channel Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024)

Offline

Online

Premium Cosmetics Market Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024)

Skincare products

Fragrances

Color cosmetics

Hair care products

Others

Premium Cosmetics Market Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024)

Europe

APAC

North America

South America

MEA

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report

Related Reports on Consumer Staples Include:

Global CBD Infused Cosmetics Market Global CBD infused cosmetics market by product (skincare, make-up and haircare, fragrances, and others) and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

Global Mineral Cosmetics Market Global mineral cosmetics market by product (makeup, skin care, and hair care), distribution channel (offline, and online), and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

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While the president has met with governors to signal that America is ready to "reopen" amid the coronavirus pandemic, moving faster than public health officials have warned, he has instead found that the virus has reached the White House, while the number of infections in states that have eased quarantine measures continues to climb, against the president's own guidance.

On Friday, Donald Trump revealed that a second White House staffer, the press secretary for vice president Mike Pence, has tested positive for the coronavirus. The news briefly halted the departure Mr Pence's flight to Iowa as those that had been in contact with the aide deplaned, according to reports.

Katie Miller, who also is married to the president's adviser close Stephen Miller, was diagnosed following reports that Mr Trump's valet has also tested positive for Covid-19. Their diagnosis means that much of the West Wing has been exposed to the virus.

Meanwhile, the president joined eight Second World War veterans for a brief wreath-laying to mark 75 years since VE Day. White House officials described the veterans as choosing nation over self by taking part in the ceremony.

The president also called into Fox News on Friday morning, a day after the Department of Justice dropped its case against Michael Flynn despite his guilty plea for lying to the FBI during the course of a two-year congressional investigation into Russian interference in the president's campaign in 2016.

During a string of rambling answers, he made a wild and unsubstantiated claim that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had tried to undo his 2016 election win, and as catastrophic job losses were announced, said he would bring back the US economy.

He also suggested that Sean Hannity, the controversial Fox News host, should be given the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage, a day after telling reporters who earned the accolades for their coverage of the Russia scandal to return theirs.

His appearance on the network followed unprecedented unemployment reports that morning, revealing more than 20 million Americans had lost their jobs last month and an unemployment rate nearing 15 per cent.

The latest figures show that record unemployment has effectively wiped out economic and job gains made over the last decade, which the president has touted during his term.

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Trump 'would send an army, not two mercenaries', to invade Venezuela

Billionaire Melinda Gates grades Trump administration D-minus

Trump spox accuses FBI of "manufacturing" crime against Michael Flynn

Trump sends mixed signals on economy: 'We have to start all over'

Al Gore attacks Trump's coronavirus strategy as 'botched reopening'
Even as some states take steps to reopen businesses, our nation continues to face public health, economic and fiscal crises that could endure for some time.

These crises are neither red nor blue; they are red, white and blue. The novel coronavirus does not distinguish between Democrats or Republicans or between blue states and red states, nor do its economic and fiscal impacts.

There is no shortage of critiques of the relief bills Congress has enacted, including critiques made by mayors and other state and local elected officials.

Now Playing: Mayor Nirenberg answers the question: "What keeps you up at night?" Video: mySA

However, it is important to step back and note that Congress acted quickly and decisively to address this crisis in a bipartisan manner and on a scale commensurate with the challenge our nation faces. Nevertheless, Congress should continue to take bold action  including broad fiscal assistance to state and local governments  to ensure the coronavirus does not lead to a long recession.

Despite strong rainy day funds, high bond ratings and lean staff-to-resident ratios, Texas cities are far from immune from the fiscal pain inflicted by this virus. Through no fault of our own, we are facing dramatic shortfalls in revenue.

These shortfalls are projected at the same time we are seeing increased demand for core local government services while also looking to help struggling small businesses and families. If the economy is slow to rebound, we could face additional sales tax shortfalls in the next fiscal year, along with reduced property tax revenues. In addition, we fear a possible decline in utility ratepayer revenue that is critical to maintaining water and sewer infrastructure and servicing water and wastewater revenue bonds.

These shortfalls are why we are united in respectfully requesting that Congress provide direct and flexible fiscal assistance to state and local governments. Absent such assistance, our balanced budget requirements mean we will have to reduce staff and cut services.

Beyond the adverse impact on our communities, these cuts will exacerbate the economic downturn our nation is experiencing. State and local government spending  on schools, police, firefighting, emergency medical services, water and sewer accounts for approximately 20 million jobs across the nation and 15 percent of gross domestic product. If state and local governments are forced to reduce staff and cut services, we will be undermining fiscal and monetary economic stabilization efforts at the federal level, lengthening and deepening any economic downturn. In addition, we may be forced to cut services  health inspections, building inspections, public safety and clean water  that we often take for granted but that businesses large and small rely on.

We appreciate that Congress recognized the importance of fiscal assistance to state and local governments when lawmakers crafted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in late March. The CARES Act and the three other relief bills Congress enacted have been critical to helping Americans. However, the state and local funding Congress included in the CARES Act leaves out the vast majority of American cities and the Americans who live in them. In addition, it lacks the flexibility that cities will need to overcome this crisis.

We fully agree that emergency fiscal assistance should not be used to cover pre-crisis fiscal gaps or to address long-term structural problems such as underfunded pensions. However, it should be easy for Congress to include safeguards to ensure state and local governments use any fiscal assistance funds to address shortfalls due to the economic impact of the novel coronavirus and for coronavirus response efforts.

Unfortunately, many state and local governments across the nation have already announced job cuts and service reductions and many more are on the horizon. It is imperative that Congress act quickly and forcefully. Recent history provides a good example of what otherwise awaits. In the wake of the Great Recession a decade ago, state and local governments shed over 600,000 jobs and slashed services. In addition to the streets not paved, water and sewer pipes not upgraded, and schools not modernized, economists broadly agree that these cuts exacerbated that economic downturn and lengthened the economic recovery. We hope history does not repeat itself.

Ron Nirenberg is mayor of San Antonio. This op-ed was submitted in conjunction with 14 other Texas mayors.
Google has also rolled out a new feature to Lens that allows users to know how certain words are pronounced.

Google has added a cool new feature to its image recognition tool, Google Lens, that is aimed at helping users transition their notes from their notebooks to their personal computers seamlessly. The company has added a "Copy to Computer" feature to Google Lens that enables users to copy their handwritten notes directly onto their PC screens.

Up until now users could use Lens to copy and paste text from their paper notes and documents to their smartphones. Now, the company is bringing the same functionality to the laptops and personal computers.

To use this feature, users need to ensure that they have the latest version of Google Chrome and Google Lens app on Android or the Google app on iOS. In addition to that, they need to ensure that they are logged into their PCs and their smartphones using the same amount.

Once that is done, all users need to do is follow this path: Point your smartphone camera at your handwritten notes > highlight the text on-screen that you want to copy > select copy > open the document on your PC where you want to paste the notes > hit paste.

Apart from this feature, Google has also rolled out a new feature to Lens that allows users to know how certain words are pronounced. To do this, users need to select the text with Lens and tap the new Listen button to hear it read out loud.

Lastly, the company has also added another feature to Lens that enables users to look up for new concepts quickly. "Now, with in-line Google Search results, you can select complex phrases or words to quickly learn more," Google explained in a blog post.

Google has rolled out the Lister feature onto Android devices and it is expected to arrive on iOS soon. As far other features are concerned, they are available in the Google app on iOS and the Google Lens app on Android.
Photo: (Photo : Instagra/ggroomefan)

Rupert Grint and his longtime love, Georgia Groome welcomes their first child, said People.

The couple's representative said that the couple welcomes their baby girl, and they are asking everyone to respect their privacy at this special time in their life. This good news comes one month after a rep of Grint and Groome announced that they were going to be new parents.

In April, a rep said that the couple is excited to announce they are expecting and is asking the people for some privacy. On April 9, Grint and Groome were seen shopping for supplies during the lockdown. Both wore casual clothes with Grint wearing a dark jacket and a green cap, and the 28-year-old "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging" actress wore black leggings and a black T-shirt.

Rupert Grint and Georgia Groome's Private Relationship

The couple was dating since 2011 and has kept their relationship profile low, which is why many of their fans are not aware of their status until a few years later when a throwback photo of them was seen in social media. A fan said alongside her tweet with a 2018 old photograph that she was shocked to know when she found out that Georgia from "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging" has been going out with Ron Weasley since 2011. Last summer, there were rumors that Grint and Groome were married when they were photograph wearing matching gold rings. The actor's spokesperson told The Sun that there was no ringing of bells that happened.

Rupert Grint Shows Appreciation to Frontliners

The "Harry Potter" alum surprised a local midwife with a video chat amid the coronavirus pandemic. In April, he appeared together with Miriam Margoyles, who played Professor Sprout in the "Harry Potter" film franchise, at a Home Special edition of the "One World Together in the UK. He showed his appreciation for a 33-year-old midwife named Sam Halliwell, who is working as a frontline during the health crisis at Birmingham Women's Hospital in England.

According to Metro, the actor told Halliwell that he was very inspired when he heard her story because it is "very Gryffindor behavior," then he thanked her.

Rupert Grint on Becoming a Dad

The cast of Apple TV+ Series "Servant," Rupert Grint shared with The Guardian in 2018 about his feelings about being a dad. He said that he felt strange upon turning 30 years old because he felt like he is not ready, and he does not know what the future holds for him. He just said that he would go with the flow and keep playing interesting characters to see what happens next.

Adding to that, he said that he would like to settle down and have kids of his own soon. The 31-year-old actor even joked about naming his future son after his screen name in "Harry Potter" saying that the name "Ron" is quite a good name. However, the probability of him naming his son as such is low because it is tough to pair a one-syllable first name to his surname Grint.
YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. The Delegation of the European Union to Armenia and the EU member states accredited to Armenia issued a joint statement on the occasion of the Europe Day.

Armenpress presents the statement:

On the 9th of May we mark Europe Day  and this year it is the 70th Anniversary of the historical Schuman Declaration. In a speech in Paris in 1950, Robert Schuman, then French foreign minister, set out his idea for a new form of political cooperation in Europe, which would make war between Europe's nations unthinkable by building the European integration process on a set of fundamental principles and values, and by pooling resources. On the 75th Anniversary of the end of WWII, - the greatest catastrophe in Europes history  we pay the highest respect to the millions of victims, as well as celebrate peace, reconciliation, unity, solidarity and cooperation  the underlying values of the European Union. Staying united, extending a helping hand, supporting our partners in Armenia is of utmost importance during the COVID-19 crisis. The focus on the future and the determination to improve peoples lives is what guides our relations that are expanding and strengthening. The current challenging situation has tested our enhanced partnership and has proven its rigour and future potential for resilience and modernization.
Asansol: Finding no other option to return back to his hometown during coronavirus lockdown, a rickshaw puller named Kishore Sau decided to cover the distance between Varanasi and Howrah by pedaling his rickshaw.

Even after 40 days of continuous pedaling, Kishore Sau, is still stuck at the Duburdhi check post in West Bengal's Asansol. He left Varanasi on March 28 after the lockdown announcement was made.

Kishore was able to reach the Jharkhand-West Bengal border after 8 days of continuous pedaling. However, the police located at the Duburdhi border did not allow him to move further and sent him to the nearby quarantine centre.

After staying in quarantine for a month, Kishore made several requests to the police after which he is now allowed to move further. Kishore had covered approximately 700 kilometers in his rickshaw and needs to cover 250 kilometers more to reach his hometown.

The rickshaw puller complained about the facilities provided in the quarantine centre and said that his family is in great worry as it is taking him a lot of time to reach home. He also shared the disappointment of being stopped for around 30 days after he reached his home state.

He is a resident of Bali in Howrah and took the decision of returning home in his rickshaw after he couldn't find any other medium of transport to travel back home after the lockdown in the country.
New Delhi, May 8 : The Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare on Friday said that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has got approval from the National Ethics Committee for the trail of convalescent plasma therapy to assess its effectiveness in the treatment of COVID-19.

Speaking at a press conference, Joint Secretary of the Union Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said, "ICMR has received approval for Project PLACID - Phase-II Open-Label Randomised Controlled Trial from the COVID-19 National Ethics Committee." Agarwal also said that under this project, the ICMR will conduct trial in 21 hospitals to assess safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma on COVID-19 patients. The 21 hospitals include 5 hospitals from Maharashtra, 4 from Gujarat, 2 hospitals each from Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and 1 hospital each in Punjab, Karnataka, Telangana and Chandigarh.

The convalescent plasma therapy aims at using antibodies from the blood of a recovered Covid-19 patient to treat those critically affected by the virus. As on Friday a total of 16,539 people have defeated novel coronavirus and have recovered from the disease. The recovery rate has improved to 29.36 per cent, said Agarwal.

The total tally of novel coronavirus cases in India stood at 56,342 including 3,390 new cases and 103 new fatalities.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A man was arrested in Surat city of



Gujarat on Friday for allegedly beating up a migrant from Jharkhand over booking of train tickets.

While opposition Congress claimed that accused Rajesh Verma is a BJP worker, the ruling party denied it.

A video of the incident which took place outside the accused's office went viral on social media.

"Vasudev Verma, who hails from Jharkhand, had given money to Rajesh to buy train tickets for his native state," said assistant commissioner of police A M Parmar.

"Rajesh beat up Vasudev after he went to the collect the tickets on Thursday and they had a heated argument. We have arrested Rajesh," the ACP said.

The Congress alleged that Rajesh was a BJP worker and fleecing helpless migrant workers who wanted to go home by Shramik Special trains.

But the BJP said he had nothing to do with the party.

"Rajesh Verma is not a BJP worker. The party has not asked any of its workers to book tickets. The party has nothing to do with this," said Surat BJP president Nitin Bhajiawala.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The number of coronavirus cases in Maharashtra rose to 19,063 with 1,089 new cases being detected on Friday, 784 of them in Mumbai alone. The death toll due to the pandemic in the state rose to 731, with 37 deaths reported during the day, said a health department statement, adding 169 patients were discharged after recovery.

With cases in the state increasing daily by leaps and bounds, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray refuted rumours that the Indian Army will be called in to Mumbai to manage the crisis. The state capital reported 25 deaths on Friday while Pune had 10.

But the state government, if necessary, might ask for "additional manpower" from the Union government to give respite to the police in Mumbai who are working round-the-clock, Thackeray said in a live webcast. He also admitted that the "chain" of infection has not been broken in the state yet.

The number of infected persons in Mumbai currently stands at 11,967 and the death toll at 462, according to a statement from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.

As Mumbais crisis continued to grow, the state government on Friday shunted out BMC Commissioner Pradeep Pardeshi for his failure to help arrest the spread of the pandemic.

Asking people not to believe rumours, Thackeray said the government may ask for "additional manpower" from the central government, if needed, in order to give rest to police personnel.

"This doesn't mean that Mumbai will be handed over to the Army. Police personnel are tired after working round-the clock, some have fallen sick and a few of them have succumbed to the virus. They need rest," he said.

Thackeray said the relaxation of lockdown after May 17 depends on how far people maintain discipline and follow rules.

"We have to come out of the lockdown one day or the other. We can't be staying permanently like this. But to come out of this sooner, you need to follow rules and maintain discipline of social distancing and use face mask," he said.

Thackeray admitted that even though the extent of the spread of the virus has been contained, there has been no success in "breaking the virus chain". But he assured citizens that Mumbai has adequate medical infrastructure for treatment of COVID-19 patients.

Although the number of coronavirus cases was rising, the number of patients who are recovering is also high, he pointed out. With 154 patients being discharged from Mumbai hospitals on Friday, the number of recovered patients grew to 2,589.

If needed, medical facilities at central government institutions in the city will be used as isolation centres, he added.

So far, 2,12,350 people have been tested for coronavirus in Maharashtra. There are 1,139 containment zones while 2,39, 531 people are in home quarantine and 13,494 in institutional quarantine.

Pune has reported 1,938 positive cases and 132 deaths, Thane city 724 cases and eight deaths, Navi Mumbai 716 cases and four deaths, Kalyan Dombivali 284 cases and three deaths, Mira Bhayander 192 cases and two deaths, Vasai Virar 194 cases and nine deaths, Panvel 132 cases and two deaths, and Malegaon 450 cases and 12 deaths.

(With inputs from PTI)
Christianity is belonging to a people, to a people chosen by God for freedom. If we do not have this consciousness of belonging to a people we would be ideological Christians, with a small doctrine of affirmation of truth, with an ethics, with a morality "or considering ourselves" an elite ".

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  May the Lord bless artists, because artists make us understand what beauty is and without beauty the Gospel cannot be understood. Let's pray again for the artists." This Pope Francis invitation to prayer at mass celebrated this morning at Casa Santa Marta, in the homily he commented on the passage from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 13, 13-25). In it, Paul, having arrived in Antioch in Pisidia, goes to the synagogue and tells the history of the people of Israel and proclaims Jesus, our Saviour.

When Paul is invited to speak in the Synagogue of Antioch, to explain this new doctrine, namely, to explain Jesus, to proclaim Jesus, Paul begins by talking about the history of salvation. What is there behind Jesus? There is a history, a history of grace, a history of election, a history of promise. The Lord chose Abraham and went with His people. At the beginning of the Mass, in the hymn of the beginning, we said: When You advanced, Lord, in front of your people and opened the way and walked next to your people, close to your people. There is a history of God with His people. And because of this, when Paul was asked to explain the reason for faith in Jesus Christ, he doesnt begin from Jesus Christ; he begins from the history. Christianity is a doctrine, yes, but not only. Its not just the things that we believe: it is a history that brings this doctrine, which is Gods promise, Gods Covenant, to be chosen by God.

Pope Francis insisted: Christianity isnt just ethics. Yes, truly, it has moral principles, but one is not Christian with just a vision of ethics. It is more. Christianity is not an elite of people chosen for truth. This elitist sense that then goes on in the Church, no? For instance, I am of that institution, I belong to this movement, which is better than yours . . . than this, than that. Its an elitist sense. No, Christianity isnt this: Christianity is belonging to a people, to a people chosen freely by God. If we dont have this awareness of belonging to a people we are ideological Christians, with a little doctrine of affirmation of truth, with ethics, with a morality  thats fine  or with an elite. We Christian feel part of a group; the others will go to hell or, if they are saved, its by Gods mercy, but they are the rejected . . . And so on. If we dont have an awareness of belonging to a people, were not true Christians.

Therefore, from the beginning Paul explains Jesus as belonging to a people. And many times, many times, we fall into this partiality; we are dogmatic, moral or elitist, no? The sense of elitism does so much harm and we lose the sense of belonging to the holy faithful people of God, which God chose in Abraham and has promised, the great promise, Jesus, and made him go with hope and made a Covenant with him; the awareness of being a people.

If someone asked me: For you, what is the deviation of Christians today and always? What are, for you, the most dangerous deviations of Christians? I would say, without a doubt: the lack of memory of belonging to a people. When this is lacking, dogmatisms, moralism, ethicalism, elitist movements come. The people are missing. A sinful people always, we are all so, but that is not generally wrong which has the scent of being a chosen people, which walks behind a promise and which has made a Covenant, which perhaps it doesnt fulfil, but knows it.

Ask the Lord for this awareness, that we are a people, may Our Lady who sang beautifully her Magnificat (Cf. Luke 1:46-56); may Zechariah who sang his Benedictus so beautifully (Cf. vv. 67-79), canticles that we pray every day, in the morning and in the evening. Awareness that we are a people: we are the holy faithful people of God that, as Vatican Council I, then II say has in its totality the scent of faith and is infallible in this way of believing.
Shareholders might have noticed that Genworth Financial, Inc. (NYSE:GNW) filed its first-quarter result this time last week. The early response was not positive, with shares down 9.7% to US$3.06 in the past week. It was an okay result overall, with revenues coming in at US$2.0b, roughly what the analyst had been expecting. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what expert is forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analyst latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.

Check out our latest analysis for Genworth Financial

NYSE:GNW Past and Future Earnings May 8th 2020

Taking into account the latest results, Genworth Financial's one analyst currently expect revenues in 2020 to be US$7.75b, approximately in line with the last 12 months. Prior to the latest earnings, the analyst was forecasting revenues of US$7.89b in 2020, and did not provide an earnings per share estimate. Overall it looks like Genworth Financial is performing in line with expectations, giventhe analyst has updated their numbers and there's been no real change to next year's forecast following these results.

Intriguingly,the analyst has cut their price target 5.3% to US$4.50 showing a clear decline in sentiment around Genworth Financial's valuation.

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. One more thing stood out to us about these estimates, and it's the idea that Genworth Financial'sdecline is expected to accelerate, with revenues forecast to fall 1.8% next year, topping off a historical decline of 1.3% a year over the past five years. Compare this against analyst estimates for companies in the wider industry, which suggest that revenues (in aggregate) are expected to grow 3.0% next year. So while a broad number of companies are forecast to decline, unfortunately Genworth Financial is expected to see its sales affected worse than other companies in the industry.

Story continues

The Bottom Line

The clear take away from these updates is that the analyst made no change to their revenue estimates for next year, with the business apparently performing in line with their models. On the plus side, there were no major changes to revenue estimates; although forecasts imply revenues will perform worse than the wider industry. Furthermore, the analyst also cut their price targets, suggesting that the latest news has led to greater pessimism about the intrinsic value of the business.

One Genworth Financial broker/analyst has provided estimates out to 2021, which can be seen for free on our platform here.

You should always think about risks though. Case in point, we've spotted 1 warning sign for Genworth Financial you should be aware of.

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.
Actor Joanne Froggatt says she would love to star in the sequel to the 2019 film adaptation of the British period series "Downton Abbey".

The 39-year-old actor, who has played Anna Bates in the series and movie, said a second part would be "nice", but it would have meet the audience's expectations.

Asked about the possibility of a sequel, Froggatt told Collider, "It would be nice. I know there's definitely talk of a second movie, and it's lovely 'cause we wouldn't even be able thinking about it, if the first one hadn't gone down as well as it had."



"As long as we can keep the same level of standards and make it something that the fans want to watch, then why not," she added.

The actor said the project will also depend on the availability of the cast and crew.

"But it depends on whether, logistically, it can come together or not. Everyone's off doing different things.

"Everyone's got different jobs, here and there, but none of them are happening, at the moment. We'll have to just wait and see, but it would be lovely to do a second one," she said.

In January, creator Julian Fellowes said a follow-up to the show's film adaptation will be in the works once he finished writing "The Gilded Age".

The HBO series was expected to begin filming in March but owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the team is now hoping to start shooting later this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on a $10 shampoo and conditioner available from Coles supermarkets, claiming it leaves their locks the 'softest' and 'shiniest' they've ever been.

One woman said she is 'stockpiling' the budget brand MONDAY Haircare after she discovered it on sale in her local Coles and bought it on a whim.

'I thought if it's useless at least the bottles are cute,' she wrote.

'But I am so pleasantly surprised. My hair is so soft and light and I'll definitely be going back for more.'

Shoppers are rushing to get their hands on a $10 shampoo and conditioner available from Coles supermarkets, claiming it leaves their locks the 'softest' and 'shiniest' they've ever been (MONDAY Haircare pictured after use)

A woman posted on Facebook, where she said she is 'stockpiling' the budget brand MONDAY Haircare (pictured) after she discovered it on sale in her local Coles and bought it on a whim

The woman wasn't the only person who has tried the New Zealand-born brand with huge success.

Some said they have just bought it, and it's 'amazing', while others said it's the 'best stuff I've used in a while'.

'I have six bottles in my cupboard I love it so much, so I won't be running out anytime soon,' one woman wrote.

Another added: 'I love it. My thin hair feels like it has life and isn't dead and flat!'

The shampoos and conditioners don't have 'nasty' ingredients like parabens and Sodium lauryl sulfates (SLS), which you'll often find in cheap, shop-bought products (MONDAY pictured)

MONDAY Haircare offers four different types of products: 'Smooth' for frizzy and dry hair, 'Repair' for damaged and stressed hair, 'Sensitive' for an irritated and dry scalp and 'Volume' for 'thin and lifeless hair'.

Each product has been specially formulated to target that particular hair type, and all of the shampoos and conditioners boast natural ingredients such as coconut fruit extract, jojoba oil, shea butter and artichoke extract.

On top of this, the items don't have 'nasty' ingredients like parabens and Sodium lauryl sulfates (SLS), which you'll often find in cheap, shop-bought shampoos and conditioners.

'MONDAY's formula is second-to-none, boasting 11 amino acids and a variety of essential plant extracts,' product description on the website states.

'We created four different shampoo and conditioner formulations to cater to all types of hair  from straight to curly, dry to damaged and everything in between.'

Each item also comes housed in a stylish pink bottle, which is perfect for your shower shelf.

All of the shampoos and conditioners boast all-natural ingredients such as coconut fruit extract, jojoba oil, shea butter and artichoke extract (MONDAY pictured after use)

While many have been impressed with the shampoo, there are some who have asked how it can be so affordable when it claims to be 'salon-quality'.

Similar bottles often set back shoppers upwards of $50 or $60.

'For too long big brands have dominated the haircare market, and we thought it was about time someone did something about that,' the founders explained.

'Team MONDAY is committed to working in ways that help reduce costs, so we can pass these savings onto customers.

'We've partnered with an industry-leading manufacturing facility, so our products are made at scale, while still using true salon-quality ingredients.'

On the MONDAY website, the products all boast an impressive five-star rating, where many have shared their delight at how good the products are (MONDAY pictured after use)

On the MONDAY website, the products all boast an impressive five-star rating, where many have shared their delight at how good the products are.

'I'm a hairdresser and I'm so blown away with this shampoo and conditioner. My hair hasn't felt this clean in ages,' one reviewer posted.

'I got my hair done two days ago, and the hairdresser was shocked with how smooth and shiny my hair was,' another added.

MONDAY was created by the New Zealand entrepreneur Jaimee Lupton, specifically because she was fed up with spending big on her love of beauty.
MADISON HEIGHTS, MI  The man sentenced to prison for storing hazardous waste at a Madison Heights facility will be leaving prison short of his one-year sentence because of the risk of the coronavirus.

Gary Sayers, who is in his 70s, was sentenced to a year in prison last fall for illegally storing hazardous waste at Electro-Plating Services.

Sayers, who is being held at a federal prison in West Virginia, will be placed on home confinement under a U.S. Justice Department policy that's being applied to certain older inmates during the virus pandemic, the Associated Press reports.

Electro-Plating was shut down by state regulators in 2016 due to the mismanagement of industrial waste, according to AP.

In late December, drivers on Interstate 696 saw a brightly colored goo seeping through a concrete barrier along the shoulder. It apparently migrated through soil from Electro-Plating.

A judge on Thursday said the site can be demolished.

READ MORE

Michigan company illegally stored hazardous waste, its president is headed to prison

Industrial site that oozed toxic green goo onto Detroit highway to be demolished

Toxic ooze onto Detroit-area highway raises questions about $2M EPA cleanup and oversight
Wyness leaves legacy of film

Derek Wyness (1945-2020) Derek Wyness (1945-2020)

One of the driving forces behind a golden era of film-making in the Silver City during the 1970s has been lost to Broken Hill.

Derek Wyness died on Thursday, April 30. He was aged 75.

Derek was born on January 31, 1945, in Wanganui, New Zealand, where he went to school before training as a teacher at the Auckland Teachers College.

He escaped to Broken Hill where, as well as an accomplished artist, he was art teacher at the Broken Hill High School and later at Willyama High School.

At various times over the next few decades, he was a casual teacher at the primary and high schools in Broken Hill and Menindee.

After marriage to Angelika in Germany, he taught in Luton (UK), explored the US and came back to Broken Hill for a short time on the way to live in Tasmania.

He ended up working at Gove (Qld), a year or so in NZ but the magnet of Broken Hill brought him back to see friends before going to live in Tasmania.

During these travels, Oska, now living in Adelaide, was born in Townsville and Sascha, now living in London, was born in Broken Hill.

A year or so was spent in Adelaide en route to live in Tasmania and Derek drove car carriers across the country.

He loved being on the road and had some hair-raising tales about wet unsealed roads, roos, cattle, mechanical failures and outback characters.

Derek came back to Broken Hill and was one of the driving forces that brought the film industry to Broken Hill in the 1970s. The advertising industry followed. Many films and advertisements used Derek for set design, location and logistics and at times he filled in as an extra.

Derek is listed in Amazons Internet Movie Database, with his filmography including acting roles in A Town Like Alice and Mad Max 2 and work in the art department on The Year of Living Dangerously, The Blue Lightning, Spirits of the Air - Gremlins of the Clouds, The Time Guardian and Fortress.

More recently he was involved in documentaries including Archaeologist of the Wasteland and Beneath the Outback Sun, among others.

The film industry took him to Disneyland in Japan and the Gold Coast in the 1990s and he came back to Broken Hill again, presumably on the way to live in Tasmania.

Derek had many talents, especially with his painting, sculpture, films and extraordinary creativity, his mechanical skills and his ability to use all sorts of bits and pieces to build a film set from his extensive hoardings.

He was a master in improvisation and had an incredible general knowledge, memory, recall and vocabulary.

At times, he edited books and recently had a regular task of editing a fortnightly press release. He was very clever with words and was very quick with word games and jokes accompanied by a grin and a sparkle in his eyes.

He was a big man with a big heart, didnt have a harsh word to say about anyone, his doors were always open and many people came to visit and ended up staying a few days to enjoy his roasts, reds and company.

Derek died peacefully in his sleep. He was remembered in a private service with an appropriate celebration of his life amongst friends at a date to be announced. He never got to live in Tasmania despite travelling the world and traversing much of Australia.
Employers could be held liable for workers who contract coronavirus on the job, lawyers say.

As restrictions ease and workers prepare to return to offices, employers are being warned they need to adhere to the health guidelines or they face serious legal trouble.

Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Liberty Sanger said even in a pandemic, employers must provide a safe workplace and if they ignore hygiene and social distancing guidelines, they could be sued by employees who suffer long-term impacts.
It has been said that when America catches a cold, Black America gets the flu. As our nation continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, this adage is more true than ever. Yes, all Americans are in this struggle together, but African Americans, and other communities of color, are facing a disproportionate share of this pandemics pain.

The data speaks for itself. In Indiana and across the nation, our Black and Brown communities have seen higher infection rates, hospitalization rates and fatality rates from COVID-19. As of May 1, African Americans  while making up 9.8% of our states population  disproportionately represent 15.2% of all COVID-19 cases and 16.8% of all deaths from COVID-19.

And this isnt by chance.

After centuries of systemic inequality and discrimination, it is inevitable that our communities are hit harder. Preexisting health conditions suffered more often by African Americans, like heart disease, hypertension and asthma, make us more susceptible to severe complications from viruses like COVID-19. Unfortunately, a higher uninsured rate among African Americans makes it more difficult for us to get tested and obtain treatment. Additionally, the dense urban neighborhoods that many call home means COVID-19 has spread at an extremely rapid rate here. Moreover, a disproportionate share of the jobs deemed essential by state and local governments  nurses, transportation employees, sanitation workers and grocery store workers to name just a few  are held by African Americans. This reality dramatically increases the likelihood that African Americans are exposed to and contract COVID-19. All of these factors and more have created a perfect storm that has been devastating for Black America.

Unbelievably, as infections and deaths continue to climb higher by the day, some leaders are prematurely declaring victory over the virus and planning to reopen their respective states and jurisdictions far too early. In Georgia, for example, where the heavily African American southwest part of the state continues to see some of the highest death rates in the nation from COVID-19, Gov. Brian Kemp has already allowed large sectors of the economy to reopen. A recent headline in The Washington Post was stark, For Black folks, its like a setup: Are you trying to kill us? Its difficult not to conclude that Gov. Kemp is ignoring the plight of his fellow Georgians most affected by COVID-19 and dismissing the advice of health and scientific experts.

We cant let the same story unfold here in Indiana, or anywhere else in America. Though Black people have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, we must work to ensure that our nations response going forward does a better job of protecting and helping the Americans who have shouldered a disproportionate share of illness, misery, grief and economic disruption.

Im working hard to achieve this goal. Late last month, Congress passed an additional emergency relief package totaling nearly $500 billion dollars. It provides more supplies for our health care workers, more money for testing and additional funds for small businesses that have traditionally been overlooked by big lenders, such as women- and minority-owned businesses and community development financial institutions (CDFIs).

Im also engaging in ongoing conversations with fellow Hoosiers about this issue. Just a couple weeks ago, I was honored to participate in a virtual town hall hosted by this very publication that focused on COVID-19s impact on Indianapolis African American community. I was joined by Dr. Virginia Caine, director of Marion County Public Health Department; Inez Evans, president and CEO of IndyGo; and Dr. David Hampton, deputy mayor of neighborhood engagement for Indianapolis. I want to thank them all for a wonderful discussion and for their tireless work on behalf of our community.

Though times are extremely tough right now, theres still good news. For example  the efforts and advocacy of hard-working Hoosiers, like the public servants mentioned above, give me hope that our city is in good hands.

I also know that African Americans have consistently survived unimaginable indignities and perils that would have overcome others. We lean on the strength of our ancestors and rise above the struggles weve experienced. Through centuries of unspeakable hardship, we have never stopped working to make this country a more equitable and compassionate society for people of color, and for all of our fellow Americans. This unshakeable spirit is on full display during this crisis. Though were not out of the woods yet, I believe we will emerge stronger, and this trial will ultimately strengthen our continuing work to achieve equality for all.

Rep. Carson represents the 7th District of Indiana. He is a Member of the Congressional Black Caucus and one of three Muslims in Congress. Rep. Carson sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, where he is chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation. Contact Rep. Carson at carson.house.gov/contact.
The Rivers government has directed its attorney-general and commissioner for justice to auction all vehicles that were impounded for violating the states lockdown directive.

The government also warned residents of ward 20, Amadi-Ama in Port Harcourt local government area (LGA) and Mgbuosimini, Rumueme in Obio/Akpor LGA to desist from flouting the directives on lockdown.

In a statement by Paulinus Nsirim, the state commissioner for information and communications, the state government said it would deal decisively with any residents found guilty of such action.

It directed those interested in the auctioned vehicles to get more details in some selected newspapers.

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Government will deal decisively with the residents of these areas if they are found to default again, it said.

Anyone parading exemption letters except the one issued by the Governor is doing so at his or her own risk as such permits are invalid.

The Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice has been directed to auction all the vehicles that violated the lockdown order.

Members of the public who are interested to buy the auctioned vehicles are to watch out for details in The Sun, The Nation and Vanguard Newspapers.

Nyesom Wike, governor of the state, had earlier directed that any hotel or taxi found operating during the lockdown should be impounded and auctioned.
PHOENIX  Grand Canyon Education Inc. (LOPE) on Thursday reported first-quarter net income of $71.4 million.

On a per-share basis, the Phoenix-based company said it had net income of $1.49. Earnings, adjusted for amortization costs, were $1.53 per share.

The for-profit education company posted revenue of $221.7 million in the period.

For the current quarter ending in July, Grand Canyon Education expects its per-share earnings to be 89 cents.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $179.7 million for the fiscal second quarter.

Grand Canyon Education shares have dropped 8% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $88.10, a decline of 26% in the last 12 months.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on LOPE at https://www.zacks.com/ap/LOPE
US Military Loses Second Drone Near Niger Due to Mechanical Failure, Pentagon Spokesperson Says

Sputnik News

15:58 GMT 07.05.2020

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US military lost an armed remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in the African country of Niger due to a mechanical malfunction, a Pentagon spokesperson stated.

"An armed US Africa Command remotely piloted aircraft was lost near Agadez, Niger, 23 April", the officer said. "Initial reports indicate the RPA experienced mechanical failure. The RPA was not lost due to any hostile action".

US forces secured the drone and its ordnance, the official added.

The Pentagon official said that RPA operations are conducted in Niger to assess the security situation and monitor violent extremist activity. He called these operations, carried out in coordination with local authorities, "critical" to counter-terror activity in Niger.

The statement comes after pictures of the downed drone began circulating on social media.

Agadez is the site of a recently constructed military base that houses armed drones for surveillance, reconnaissance and combat against terrorists, according to US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

This is the second US drone lost in Niger this year. In February another RPA crashed near Agadez. The military also blamed mechanical failure then.

 Sputnik

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South Korean hit drama Crash Landing on You (CLOY) gained popularity in the Philippines as one of the top romantic K-drama series in 2021. With its unique and entertaining storyline, lovable characters, and electrifying romance, action, and comedy, it easily caught the hearts and attention of K-drama lovers.

Image: canva.com (modified by author)

Source: Original

What makes this television series a must-watch? Well, this masterpiece is the second-highest rated drama on Korean television. Additionally, its last episode set a new record when it comes to tVN's viewer ratings, surpassing the previous record-holder, Goblin. What is there to expect in the Crash Landing on You episodes?

Crash Landing on You plot

The top series takes on the theme of forbidden love and crafts it into a modern Romeo and Juliet. However, instead of the Montagues and Capulets, it depicts the lives of a South Korean billionaire and CEO, Yoon Se-Ri, and North Korean Special Forces Unit Captain, Ri Jeong-Hyeok.

Because of the strict division of North and South Korean territory, the pair would never have met under normal circumstances. However, as if brought by destiny, Yoon Se-Ri crashlands in the North Korean Demilitarized Zone after her encounter with a hurricane while paragliding in South Korea. This is where she meets Captain Ri Jeong-Hyeok.

Image: youtube.com, giphy.com (modified by author)

Source: UGC

The following episodes unravel two different cultures (North and South), as Captain Ri and his team try to find a way to secretly get Se-Ri back to Korea without any officials finding out. To ensure her safety and to keep her identity hidden, Se-Ri comically finds herself trying to fit in with North Korean life.

Image: youtube.com, giphy.com (modified by author)

Source: UGC

The many twists and turns of the plot are revealed as the story progresses. As expected, Captain Ri and Se-Ri were falling in love, but at the same time, their lives were almost always in grave danger. Will their forbidden romance be able to survive the difficulties and pressures of family, reputation, truth, and their country?

Crash Landing on You review

Crash Landing on You director, Lee Jung-Hyo, gave the audience the ride of their life with the many ups-and-downs of the CLOY series' story. It is a perfect mix of drama, romance, action, and even comical laugh-out-loud moments.

Aside from the well-written story, the main and supporting actors of the drama did a wonderful job giving life to their characters. Hyun Bin and Son Ye-Jin's perfect chemistry gave viewers a heart-thumping thrill and at the same time, the feeling of heartbreak as the story progressed.

Image: youtube.com, giphy.com (modified by author)

Source: UGC

It was not only the lead characters that were well-received by the audience. The charming and comical crew of Captain Ri played a big role comically and emotionally, as well as Se-Ri's newfound friends in the village. Kim Jung-Hyun and Seo Ji-Hye's tandem also stole the spotlight with their unusual pair and character development.

Image: youtube.com, giphy.com (modified by author)

Source: UGC

Out of the many great points of the series, it gained the most applause for its sincere and warm portrayal of what it's like to live in a North Korean village. They were able to do this with the help of Kwak Moon-Wan in their writing team, a defector from North Korea, and now film adviser and screenwriter.

Crash Landing on You ending explained

With the ongoing tension between their countries, Se-Ri and Captain Ri endure being away from each other without any means of communication. However, the highly-rated Crash Landing on You ending shows that although they cannot be together in their own countries, they have their happy ending in Switzerland.

Image: youtube.com, giphy.com (modified by author)

Source: UGC

The pair sincerely believed that as long as they keep visiting Switzerland every year, they are bound to cross paths like the many times they did before. Se-Ri worked hard to organize musical performances while supporting disadvantaged children. Meanwhile, Captain Ri trained to be a pianist representative for the National symphony orchestra.

It was the day when Se-Ri was paragliding in Switzerland that Captain Ri took the wrong train and ended up meeting her again. From that fateful encounter, the lovable pair spent their best days every year together in Switzerland.

Crash Landing on You cast

Here are the most prominent characters to look forward to in CLOY:

1. Hyun Bin (Captain Ri Jeong Hyeok)

Image: twitter.com, @PARKSEOJOONI

Source: Twitter

Actor Hyun Bin gives life to the character Captain Ri Jeong-Hyeok, a North Korean Elite and the captain of the Special Forces Unit. Captain Ri is seen as a quiet and somewhat mysterious character but is also a very kind, patient, and considerate person. He is a skilled soldier and pianist who does his best to help Se-Ri return to Korea.

2. Son Ye-Jin (Yoon Se-Ri)

Image: twitter.com, @Kdrama_ahjumma

Source: Twitter

Actress Son Ye-Jin plays the character of Yoon Se-Ri, one of the richest of the rich in South Korea. Not only is she from a distinguished family, but she is also the CEO of her own fashion and beauty company named Se-Ri's Choice.

The wealthy heiress finds herself stranded in North Korea, stripped of her reputation and any legal means of going home. She seeks the help of Captain Ri and his team to help her get back home.

3. Kim Jung-Hyun (Goo Seung-Jun)

Image: twitter.com, @rijinaaaaaa

Source: Twitter

The ever-so-charming character Goo Seung-Jun is played by the outstanding actor Kim Jung-Hyun. In the series, Goo Seung-Jun is a handsome yet cunning con-man who scammed Se-Ri's older brother. In an unexpected turn of events, he finds himself seeking refuge in North Korea and crosses paths with Seo Dan, Captain Ri, and Yoon Se-Ri.

4. Seo Ji-Hye (Seo Dan)

Image: twitter.com, @LiberalMolang

Source: Twitter

Actress Seo Ji-Hye brings elegance and beauty to the series as she plays the character Seo Dan, a musician, and North Korean Elite. Unlike Captain Ri, Seo Dan lives a glamorous life in the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, where her mother is the owner of a top department store.

Throughout the series, Seo Dan is the center of an unrequited romance with Captain Ri despite their arranged marriage.

5. Oh Man-Seok (Cho Cheol-Gang)

Image: twitter.com, @JLoveUrself

Source: Twitter

Hiding behind his respected position in the North Korean Armed Forces' Security Bureau, Cho Cheol-Gang is the principal villain of the story. Actor Oh Man-Seok plays this sly character behind numerous criminal and corrupt operations.

In order to conceal his wrongdoings, Cho Choel-Gang goes against the justice-seeking Captain Ri and even tries to harm Se-Ri.

Crash Landing on You Netflix

Do not miss out on this masterpiece and catch the complete 16 episodes on the streaming service Netflix. Each episode is around an hour and 10 to 30 minutes long, with the finale episode being almost two hours long. It is also available for download on the service.

If you are looking for the next top rated K-drama to add to your watchlist, then Crash Landing on You deserves a spot for sure. Get on the RiRi couple trend and catch the story of the star-crossed lovers, Se-Ri and Captain Ri.

Source: KAMI.com.gh
President Donald Trump insisted this week there is no shortage of personal protective equipment amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but nursing home workers in Pennsylvania say facilities were caught off-guard in terms of supplies and have yet to catch up.

We were never prepared; most longterm care facilities werent and still arent, said Artinese Malachi, an SEIU union LPN in Pittsburgh. The SEIU represents 45,000 healthcare workers in Pennsylvania at 109 nursing homes.

We feel every day when we go to work that were going to war with a butter knife and a bathing suit, she said. How could we not be prepared? How come were still not prepared?

Malachi spoke on a media call Friday organized by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party which included Lehigh Valley Congresswoman Susan Wild and SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania President Matt Yarnell.

The call follows a news conference Wednesday in the Oval Office, where a nurse said PPE availability was sporadic.

Sporadic for you but not sporadic for a lot of other people, Trump said, adding I have heard that they are loaded up with gowns now. We had empty shelves and empty nothing because it wasnt put there by the last administration.

Last week, the White House Coronavirus Task Force announced FEMA will coordinate two shipments, totaling 14-day supplies of personal protective equipment, to more than 15,000 Medicaid- and Medicare-certified nursing homes across the country.

When COVID came and hit, we didnt have proper PPE, Malachi said. Most of us in our facilities prayed, keeping our fingers crossed that it wouldnt come, that it wouldnt hit us, that it wouldnt hit our homes and our families.

Nursing home staff going to work do not have proper PPE, call participants said, despite what federal officials say.

Were forced to work with the bare basics of protection on an already taxed staff, thats now even shorter because staff (are) sick and residents are sicker. Theyre dying every day, and were hearing that its getting better and its going away, Malachi said.

Its not just workers calling for more supplies. Adam Marles, CEO of LeadingAge PA, a statewide advocacy organization for long-term care facilities, previously said the single biggest problem for nursing homes right now is the lack of PPE and access to COVID-19 testing.

Emotional as she spoke about residents dying daily, a lot without family members present, Malachi said it feels like officials forgot the most vulnerable people.

Were forgotten, and we will never let them forget again, she said.

Tina Siegel, who has worked in longterm care for the past 35 years and currently works in Clarion County, said her facilitys management have tried to get PPE, but the company that owns them have not been able to get enough.

Workers have N95 masks, but they dont fit properly. Staff were each given four N95 masks and have been asked to wear them five times before they can be thrown away, she said.

Siegel said at end of her shift, she takes off her N95 mask, puts it in a brown paper bag and rotates to the next mask.

It doesnt matter how soiled they are in between, we have to wear them five times, she said.

The women did not identify where they work, Yarnell said, given the heightened amount of scrutiny and frankly retaliation towards workers.

We dont want to put any more stress on these folks who are trying to get through this crisis, Yarnell said of not revealing the workplaces.

The timeline and access to PPE and testing has been mishandled by the Trump administration, Wild said. There is a need for adequate PPE for nursing home workers and regular testing with timely results.

Frankly, it is a matter of life and death, Wild said.

Some of FEMAs PPE deliveries may not make it to facilities for weeks, possibly not until July, Yarnell said, and thats way way way too late and really a travesty.

Looking forward, Wild said healthcare heroes need more than accolades for their work.

They need policies and actions that will actually get them through this crisis, she said. This administration should have had a pandemic response team in place, our nursing homes should have had adequate PPE before now, we should have had a national paid leave plan prior to this moment, and certainly we should not have nurses and healthcare workers using personal time off in order to mitigate risk to their patients if a child or family member is sick...workers need to be able to stay home and prevent the further spread of the disease."

Wild tried to have paid leave for healthcare workers included, but it was a group that was omitted, incredibly, from protection from the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

I want to see paid leave for healthcare workers in our future COVID-19 bills, Wild said.

Wild also wants to see enforceable COVID-specific OSHA standards to keep employees safe and hold employers accountable.

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Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
In an attempt to prevent smuggling of liquor from neighbouring states during the lockdown, Maharashtra has sealed its borders with them and deployed adequate manpower at a dozen checkposts, an official said on Friday.

The move by the excise department has come in the wake of lifting of certain coronavirus-induced curbs, which included allowing reopening of liquor shops.

As the demand for alcohol has increased in Maharashtra, there is a possibility of liquor smuggling by inter-state organised syndicates, the official said.

Considering the threat from such syndicates, the excise department has deployed its flying squads and vigilance teams in districts located along the borders with neighbouring states, he said.

To avoid any smuggling activity during this period, we have increased our vigil on 12 checkposts and sealed borders with adjoining states, he said.

This will help in curbing illegal transportation of liquor or spirit, the official said.

With the help of local police, the excise department has initiated action against persons involved in smuggling and transportation of liquor, he said.

Since the lockdown came into force in late March, at least 4,829 offences have been registered for illegal liquor transportation and 438 vehicles seized, he said.

Besides, at least 2,104 persons have been arrested so far in such cases, the official said, adding liquor and other material worth Rs 12.63 crore have been seized since the shutdown.

The excise department has started a control room, where people can provide information related to illegal manufacturing or sale of liquor, he said.
Coronavirus crisis: How Epidemic Disease Act, 1897, made its way to the Indian government

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, May 08: In April, the Centre amended the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897, that made attacks on healthcare workers a non-bailable offence. The government had invoked the Act in March to fight coronavirus outbreak in the country.

However, the Act that origins from the colonial-era empowers the state governments to take special measures and prescribe regulations in an epidemic. It also defines penalties for disobedience of these regulations.

Why the need of Epidemic Disease Act was felt?

On January 28, 1897, Council member J Woodburn tabled the Epidemic Diseases Bill during an outbreak of bubonic plague. The plague, that rooted in Bombay, gradually extended to other parts of the country and seemed to the government expedient that some measures should be promptly taken before the disease has attained large proportions elsewhere to hold it in check.

Covid-19 positive cases in India rises to 56,342; Death toll at 1,886

The Bill also noted that several municipal bodies and other local governments had the power to deal with such situations but felt those were "inadequate". The then government was also concerned that several countries were alarmed by the situation in India, and Russia had speculated that the whole subcontinent might be infected. This Bill later called for special powers for governments of Indian provinces and local bodies, including to check passengers of trains and sea routes.

How was the Bill passed?

A Select Committee headed by James Westland submitted its report the very next week, on February 4, 1897, and the Bill was passed the same day, after a series of discussion.

The lockdown challenge and how the poor need to cope with education

Epidemic Diseases Bill was passed amid concerns of spreading the diseases, with crowds from Bombay having reached places all over India. However, the government was very particular about Calcutta, as it was then the capital of India.

What has changed in the Act?

On April 22, an ordinance was called in where the Cabinet amended the Act to say that commission or abetment of acts of violence against healthcare service personnel shall be punished with imprisonment for a term of three months to five years. It also imposed fine of Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh. In case of causing severe hurt, imprisonment shall be for a term of six months to seven years and with fine of Rs one lakh to Rs five lakh.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The National Weather Service in Cleveland has issued a freeze warning in effect from 11 p.m. Friday to 11 a.m. Saturday for all of northern Ohio.

The forecast calls for freezing temperatures on Friday night as lows dip to the mid 20s, NWS said.

Frost and freezing conditions are expected to kill crops and other sensitive plants, and could damage unprotected outdoor plumbing, according to NWS.

NWS recommends taking steps to protect outdoor vegetation. To prevent freezing and possible bursting of outdoor water pipes, the pipes should be wrapped, drained or allowed to drip slowly, NWS said. Residents with in-ground sprinkler systems should drain them and cover above-ground pipes to protect them from freezing.

The National Weather Service in Cleveland has issued a freeze warning (purple) in effect from 11 p.m. Friday to 11 a.m. Saturday.

The warning is in effect for counties including Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Medina, Summit, Portage, Trumbull, Ashtabula, Lorain, Erie, Huron, Lucas, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky, Hancock, Seneca, Huron, Wyandot, Crawford, Richland, Ashland, Wayne, Stark, Mahoning, Marion, Morrow, Holmes and Knox.

Read more: Snow showers possible: Northeast Ohios weekend forecast
If youre looking to satiate your sweet tooth cravings for bubble tea or milk tea drinks, but youre being a responsible citizen by practising social distancing at home, we know where you can get a shot of sweetness without leaving the comforts of your couch.

There are a few options available for delivery on the GrabFood, Deliveroo and Foodpanda apps, so get your fingers ready for some major ordering!

Bear in mind, some of these brands may have multiple outlets and carry different menu items, so it is advisable for customers to visit the app to look out for the menu they can order according to the area they live in.

WanTea

Bubble Tea. (PHOTO: WanTea)

Opened late last year at Oxley Tower, WanTea was one of the few shops to be affected by the last Circuit Breaker tightening measures on 21 April. But fret not boba buddies, WanTea is available on the Foodpanda app.

I Love Taimei

I Love Taimei Brown Sugar Fresh Milk. (PHOTO: I Love Taimei)

Taiwanese snack store I Love Taimei is serving bubble tea but customers have to purchase food items like fried chicken with their drinks.

Taiker Song

One Not Enough bubble tea. (PHOTO: Taiker Song)

Taiwanese restaurant Taiker Song not only serves bubble tea, theyve amped it up with an alcoholic version called One Not Enough, which is blended with kahlua. Order it with egg toast or oyster mee sua for a fulfilling meal.

Joy Luck Teahouse x Kams Roast

Pearl of The Orient. (PHOTO: Kam's Roast)

Joy Luck Teahouse, in collaboration with Kams Roast, will be doling out the authentic milk tea by the renowned Kam Kee Cafe. Customers can enjoy the milk tea on its own, or with their unique Hong Kong-style bubble tea (called Pearl of the Orient), which comes with a generous amount of brown sugar tapioca balls. You can even choose to add marine collagen to the bubble milk tea! Search for Kams Roast on your desired delivery apps.

Route 65 Bar + Kitchen

Route 65 burger combos. (PHOTO: Route 65)

Route 65 Bar + Kitchen has come up with a major burger combo we didnt think anyone wouldve thought of: burger sets that come with a side of french fries and a Route 65 Bubble Milk Tea. Their combos start from S$9.90 and there are nine different flavours of burgers you can order from. Free islandwide delivery applies for orders of more than S$50.

Story continues

I.tea Singapore

Fulfil your bubble tea cravings with a variety of options from i.tea Singapore. Not only that, why not add some smoothie or yoghurt to your order while at it?

Emma Soft Serve x Menya Kokoro

(PHOTO: Emma Soft Serve x Menya Kokoro)

This is one collaboration we didnt see coming - wash down a delicious bowl of ramen from Menya Kokoro with a bubble tea from Japanese sweets brand Emma Soft Serve - now available for islandwide delivery on Grabfood.

Customers can order Menya Kokoros signature Mazesoba  al dente noodles with Japanese-style, specialty slow-braised minced meat sauce - from S$9.80 onward and pair it with a Hojicha Latte with Pearls or KoKuto Matcha Latte with Pearls from S$3.80.

For islandwide delivery, diners can place their orders by calling +65 6443 1727 (100AM) or +65 6261 2428 (Plaza Singapura). A minimum order of S$25 is required, and a delivery fee of S$5-S$12 applies. Customers can enjoy free delivery with a purchase of S$80 and above, subject to availability.

Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks

1981 Boba Milk Tea. (PHOTO: Shihlin Street Snacks)

You may crave for their signature and juicy XXL Crispy Chicken, but did you know, you can now order three types of bubble tea from the Taiwanese chain Shihlin Street Snacks? Try their Brown Sugar Fresh Milk Boba, 1983 Boba Milk Tea and Honey Fresh Green Tea, starting from S$3.70 onwards.

The drinks are available for islandwide delivery and takeaway at EastPoint Mall, Far East Plaza, Northpoint City and IMM. Islandwide delivery is charged at a fixed rate of S$4.99 with a minimum order of S$30.

Monga Fried Chicken

Black Dragon. (PHOTO: Monga Fried Chicken)

Mongas Taiwanese Brown Sugar Bubble Milk Teas are still available for islandwide delivery and walk-in orders at Monga SingPost Centre. Do note that the bubble teas cannot be purchased as a standalone item and must be purchased with food - think Fried Chicken Skin and Sweet Potato Fries with Plum Powder.

There is free islandwide delivery with a minimum order of S$30. Place orders at least one day in advance to secure delivery slots. WhatsApp call or message the shop at +65 8896 5136.
Three men have been arrested for alleged sex-related crimes in the city of Collegedale, and it all started on a dating app called Plenty of Fish.

On March 24, Collegedale Police responded to a home in a neighborhood off of University Drive, in the citys South District, after it was discovered that a juvenile had met an adult male online and provided him with her home address.

The 16-year-old alleged victim stated that she had met a man identifying himself only as Nick on a dating app called Plenty of Fish, and invited him to her home early in the morning of March 24. After he arrived, she informed him that she was only 16. She claimed he then became aggressive and allegedly forced her to have sex with him.

Investigators were able to identify the victims alleged assailant as Nicholas Josh Acup, a 23-year-old Missouri resident that had been in town temporarily for a job. However, that was not all the detectives discovered.

The investigation soon revealed two other persons that also had encounters with the minor alleged victim through the dating sites Plenty of Fish and Tinder. Kevin Ornelas, 19, of Ooltewah and 21-year-old John Louisdor of Chattanooga were both identified, interviewed, and arrested on multiple sexual exploitation of a minor-related charges.

Ornelas and Louisdor are now out on bond. Acup is in custody in Missouri on the Collegedale warrant and in the process of being extradited back to Tennessee for the offense of statutory rape.
The Government on Friday continued the Vande Bharat Mission, facilitating repatriation of Indians, who were stranded in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Singapore due to the travel and transport curbs imposed around the world to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Follow latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic here

The Air India and Air India express aircraft brought back citizens from Dubai to Chennai, Dhaka to Srinagar, Singapore to Delhi, Riyadh to Kozhikode and Manama to Kochi. An Indian Navy ship  INS Jalaswa  also departed from Male for Kochi on Friday with nearly 700 returnees, who were stranded in Maldives. The ship is expected to reach Kochi on Sunday.

An Air India aircraft was initially scheduled to fly from London to Bengaluru on Friday, repatriating some of the Indians stranded in the United Kingdom. The flight has now been rescheduled to Sunday, due to delay in COVID-19 tests for the crew of the aircraft. Three more Air India aircrafts are likely to land in Bengaluru bringing in Indians stranded in Singapore and United States by May 15, when the first phase of the Vande Bharat Mission will come to its end.

The first flight on the second day of the mission brought to Delhi 234 citizens, who were stranded in Singapore. It was followed by another from Dhaka to Srinagar, with 168 Indians, mostly students of the medical colleges in Bangladesh. The Air India aircraft on Friday also brought home Indians stranded in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Manama (Bahrain).

The government launched the Vande Bharat Mission on Thursday, with two Air India Express aircraft bringing in 363 citizens from Dubai and Abu Dhabi to Kozhikode and Kochi.

Sources in New Delhi said that altogether 64 flights with approximately 15,000 returnees from 12 foreign countries onboard were expected to land at 14 airports across India during the first phase of the Vande Bharat Mission till May 15. A total number of 27 flights would take off from the Gulf during the first phase of the mission  eleven from the UAE alone, five each from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and two each from Bahrain, Qatar and Oman.

The first phase of the mission would see altogether seven Air India flights bringing in Indians stranded in Bangladesh. The flights will land in Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. Besides, 14 flights would bring in citizens from the South-East Asian nations  five each from Singapore and the Philippines and four from Malaysia, sources in New Delhi said.

The government planned seven flights from four airports in the United States New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco  by May 15. Seven more flights would take off from London, bringing in stranded citizens from the United Kingdom, sources said.
A thief has bitten off all his fingers and a toe after being taken into custody.

Petr Stuchlik, 38, appeared in Southport Magistrates Court yesterday via video link with two fingers heavily bandaged and the rest remaining as stumps.

The Gold Coast man still had his thumbs and the top of his head was covered with a large white bandage, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

Petr Stuchlik (pictured), 38, bit off all his fingers and a toe while he was in custody. He caused $20,000 worth of damage when he fell through the roof of a Southport store in February

Stuchlik, who immigrated to Australia from the Czech Republic as an infant, assaulted three prison officers over a three-day period.

He also caused $20,000 worth of damage when he fell through the roof of a Southport store in February.

Stuchlik stole $250 cash and two watches before breaking through the shop's door with a fire extinguisher.

Defence lawyer Demi Quadrio, of Gatenby Criminal Lawyers, said: 'He was sleeping on the roof when he fell in.'

Asbestos dust fell onto hundreds of pairs of shoes and made the products unsellable.

The majority of the damage was covered by insurance except for a $2500 excess.

The court was also told Stuchlik was in custody last September for a string of theft and break in offences.

On September 16 he lashed out at a corrective services officer and over the next two days he hit and punched officers who entered his cell

Stuchlik left the officers with bruises and abrasions and was released on parole in October.

Ms Quadrio told the court he assaulted the officers because Stuchlik thought he was going to be restrained for a long period of time.

'He maintains that he was left in shackles and said he wasn't able to go to the bathroom and was left to wet himself,' she said.

The court was told Stuchlik had taken the matter to the Crime and Corruption Commission.

Ms Quadrio also said Stuchlik had mental health problems.

Stuchlik was sentenced to 24 months in prison to be eligible for parole on September 21.

Magistrate Kerry Magee said she took into account a mental health report where an expert commented that Stuchlik may have exaggerated his symptoms.

She also noted the coronavirus pandemic was making time in custody more difficult.
Tunis, Tunisia (PANA) - Tunisia was Thursday officially removed from the list of countries blacklisted by the working group of the European Union fighting against money laundering and terrorism financing, the EU Commission said here
Scientists have reprocessed images of Jupiters moon Europa (pictured) taken by NASAs Galileo spacecraft in 1998. The stunning enhanced-color pictures will be used to prepare for the agencys upcoming Europa Clipper mission. Europa has one of the youngest surfaces in the solar systembetween 40 to 90 million years, on averagedue to Jupiters gravity, which constantly stretches, compresses, and resurfaces the moons icy crust.

The planet Mercury is finally getting its own NASA advisory group. MExAG, the Mercury Exploration Assessment Group, will consist of planetary scientists who will advise NASA on the future Mercury exploration missions. NASA has similar advisory groups for Venus, the Moon, Mars, the outer planets, and small bodies like asteroids and comets. Learn more about why we explore Mercury at planetary.org/mercury.

Tom Cruise will film a movie aboard the International Space Station. NASA has yet to provide more details, but its likely Cruise plans to hitch a ride to the station via SpaceXs Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA is working to make the station more available for commercial opportunities, as part of a larger plan to rely on private companies for human spaceflight in low-Earth orbit, allowing the agency to focus on sending astronauts back to deep space.

Correction: Last weeks Downlink mentioned a launch date of May 2020 for the European Space Agencys JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft. The launch is in fact planned for May 2022, and will arrive at the Jupiter system in 2029.

China completed a critical test of the rocket that will launch its future space station modules and next-generation crew spacecraft. The rocket, the Long March 5B, blasted a prototype version of the crew capsule to Earth orbit. It is expected to perform a high-speed reentry on 8 May to test the vehicles heat shielding, similar to NASAs Orion crew module test in 2014.
Marion J. Faber in 2009, when she retired from Swarthmore College Read more

Marion J. Faber, 76, of Swarthmore, a retired professor of German and the humanities at Swarthmore College, died April 30 of complications from pancreatic cancer at her home.

During a three-decade career ending in 2009, Dr. Faber was a prolific scholar, translator, and teacher. She was an expert in the Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart and the German philosopher-poet Friedrich Nietzsche.

Dr. Faber introduced generations of students to German culture and language. A gifted and enthusiastic teacher, she loved her students, and they adored her in return, Swarthmore College president Val Smith said in a statement.

Born in Los Angeles, Dr. Faber was the daughter of immigrants from Russia and Romania. She played the piano as a child and later brought the same discipline used in mastering an instrument to her intellectual pursuits.

She went to Hanover, Germany, as a high school exchange student in 1960. She returned home eager to learn about its castles, classical music, and sense of history, she told family.

Dr. Faber returned to Europe twice to conduct scholarly work. She earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate from Harvard University.

In 1979, she joined Swarthmores faculty as a teacher of German literature and culture. She developed interdisciplinary courses. During her tenure with the Swarthmore Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, it doubled in size and put a greater emphasis on cultural courses.

Im the luckiest person on earth to have landed at Swarthmore, Faber said in the Spring 1990 Swarthmore College Bulletin, the schools alumni magazine. It fits me to a T. I most appreciate the students  they give me energy. Theyre intellectually enthusiastic and serious, witty, and a pleasure to teach.

A large part of Dr. Fabers contribution to her field came in the form of German-to-English translations.

Her 1982 translation of author Wolfgang Hildesheimers Mozart was a finalist for an American Book Award. She also translated the poet Sarah Kirschs The Panther Woman in 1989, and translated and edited Friedrich Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil in 1998. The book was first published in 1886.

But it was a 1984 translation of another Nietzsche work that brought Dr. Faber acclaim. With the colleges then-humanities librarian Stephen Lehmann, she translated Human, All Too Human, a book of Nietzsches aphorisms on women, art, religion, and politics. The project took three years.

Nietzsche has a bare, sparse manner that hadnt been captured in [another 1907] translation, Dr. Faber told the Phoenix, the colleges student newspaper. We tried to be truer to the spirit of the original text.

Besides her academic duties, Dr. Faber was associate college provost from 1989 to 1992. She helped create a new-faculty orientation program, co-chaired a committee on child-care for faculty and staff, and ran a program that pushed for a strong minority presence at liberal arts colleges.

In 1996, Dr. Faber wanted to know what it was about the German culture that enabled the Nazis to carry out the mass killing of Jews during World War II. It finally became important for me as a Jew  [and] as a teacher of German, she said, to take the bull by the horns.

She designed a multidisciplinary course in which she looked at Romanticism as a possible source of Nazi ideology, and raised a fundamental question: Could the Holocaust have happened anywhere else, and was there something unique to German culture that caused it?

Teaching with Marion expanded my intellectual horizons; I still assign readings and materials to which she introduced me, said Robert Weinberg, a Swarthmore professor of history and international relations.

Dr. Faber retired in 2009. Her final translation was the 2019 In This Hour: Heschel's Writings in Nazi Germany and London Exile, edited by Helen Plotkin.

She is survived by Stephen Hannaford, her husband of 44 years, daughters Rachel and Dinah Hannaford, and three grandchildren.

A memorial service will be later.

Memorial donations may be made to the Chester Childrens Chorus or to HIAS Pennsylvania.
The vice presidents spokesperson, Katie Miller, has become the second White House aide to test positive for coronavirus.

Ms Miller is the wife of Donald Trumps senior adviser Stephen Miller, increasing chances of the virus coming into closer proximity to the president after his personal valet tested positive this week.

During a meeting with congressional Republicans, Mr Trump said he has not come into contact with Ms Miller but that she had spent some time with Mike Pence.

Shes a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, Mr Trump said. And then all of the sudden today she tested positive. She hasnt come into contact with me. Shes spent some time with the vice president.

Mr Pences flight to Iowa was delayed on Friday morning while members of his staff who had been in contact with Ms Miller were deplaned from Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews, a senior administration official told NBC News.

The White House medical office is identifying additional staff that have been in contact with Ms Miller, while some have already been tested.

She had reportedly shown no symptoms and tested negative on Thursday before testing positing on Friday morning as part of the White Houses routine testing.

This is why the whole concept of tests arent necessarily great, Mr Trump said.

The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test where its good and then something happens and all of the sudden. She was tested very recently and tested negative, and then today I guess for some reason she tested positive.

But theyve taken all of the necessary precautions. I understand Mike has been tested, vice president, and he tested negative.

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the White House had put in place guidelines that the coronavirus task force put forward to keep the building safe.

Which means contact tracing, all of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers, we are now putting in place here in the White House, so as America reopens safely the White House is continuing to operate safely, Ms McEnany said.

The White House began daily testing after a personal valet to Mr Trump tested positive to Covid-19 on Thursday. A member of the US Navy, the valet worked in the West Wing serving the president his meals, drinks, ironing clothes and shining his shoes.

When asked how much exposure Mr Trump has had to the valet, Ms McEnany said they have taken precautions to protect the president.

The same guidelines that our experts put in place, we clean the facility, we social distance, we keep people six feet away from one another, so weve done every single thing that Dr Birx and Dr Fauci have asked us to do, she said.
Arizona reversed course on Thursday and resumed a partnership with epidemiologists whose projections suggest the state may be moving too rapidly to reopen businesses as cases of the novel coronavirus mount.

The turnaround, after a public outcry, marked the latest chapter in a skirmish over data and public policy that reflects the anguished national debate over how to incorporate scientific expertise to protect both lives and livelihoods during a pandemic that has killed more than 75,000 Americans and thrown 33 million out of work.

Cara Christ, the state's health director, told the academic experts in an email Thursday that she had halted their work "out of respect to the your time."

"However, given your willingness to continue, we would be grateful for the ongoing partnership," she wrote in correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post. "I have instructed my team to ensure you have continued access to the data and to be available to answer any questions."

That was welcome news for the epidemiologists and statisticians who had developed the projections.

"We are really looking forward to resuming our work," said Joe Gerald, an associate professor at the University of Arizona and one of the participants from his school and Arizona State University.

The team, initially assembled in March, received word Monday from a statistics chief at the Arizona Department of Health Services that their work was being halted, and that access to the confidential data underpinning their analysis was revoked.

The abrupt notice came hours after the state's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, had accelerated plans to reopen Arizona - saying he would ease restrictions on restaurants, among other businesses - on the eve of President Donald Trump's visit to the state.

Details of Ducey's phased reopening appear to clash with the predictions of the academic experts, who expect the state's peak of cases to arrive in mid-May. The governor's plans also are at oddswith nonbinding White House guidelines that recommend states delay reopening most nonessential businessesuntil they have seen a downward trajectory of cases over a 14-day period.

The statistics chief, Steven Bailey, wrote in his email that the partnership might resume with the onset of flu season, while a spokesman for the governor denied that the decision to halt the modeling was connected to the state's gradual reopening.

But the move to sideline academic professionals alarmed experts nationally, and drew rebukes from Democratic lawmakers.

"The governor's choice to disregard the science that should be the basis of Arizona public health policies - and the White House's guidelines for reopening - is concerning and disappointing," Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., told The Post on Wednesday.

A Ducey spokesman, Patrick Ptak, said the initial decision had been made by Christ, the health director, "after reviewing all of the data."

Chris Minnick, a spokesman for the health department, said the work had been suspended because the task had been completed. "Our initial request for the team was to produce the model that they delivered on April 20," he said.

But initial correspondence from the health department stated the modeling "will need to be continuously updated and adjusted as new data comes in."

On Thursday, the university experts heard directly from Christ. "Thank you for helping us ensure the health and wellness for all Arizonans, we appreciate you!" she wrote.

Gerald, the University of Arizona professor, said the latest email brought "extremely welcome news."

He and other team membershad indicated earlier they would seek to continue their work, but the lack of data access created barriers, Gerald said. In addition to modeling the spread of the virus, the academics were involved in making projections for hospital demand and equipment use.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., who had assailed the earlier move to end the analysis, praised the state's decision to resume the partnership.

"Now, we must ensure the modeling team's research and findings are actually reflected in the governor's covid-19 strategy," she said.
A new COVID-19 testing site at the U.S. Army National Guard Armory in Valparaiso, 1502 Linwood Ave., is one of 20 new state testing sites in a joint partnership between the Indiana State Department of Health and OptumServe Health Services. Its hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Across Indiana, 30 more are scheduled to open within two weeks.
Amazon warehouse workers in California say the company refuses to comply with the state's law guaranteeing paid sick leave for food workers during the coronavirus crisis.

Governor Gavin Newsom extended the state's sick leave policy to allow two weeks of paid leave for food workers  including "workers at warehouses where food is stored"  to prevent transmitting the virus if they get sick. The law applies to companies with at least 500 workers in the US.

But the retail and tech giant has told its workers that the executive order doesn't apply to its warehouses, according to The Guardian, which revealed that workers who asked the company's human resources staff whether the law applies to them and were told that it does not.

Workers in Inland Empire in southern California, where Covid-19 cases have been identified in six Amazon warehouses, told The Guardian that the policy has forced many workers to decide between exposing themselves to Covid-19 or losing work.

The region houses several large warehouses for shipping and logistics from some of the largest retailers in the US, including Amazon and Walmart.

Amazon recently ended its unlimited unpaid time off policy, which allowed workers during the onset of the pandemic to leave work without losing their job  whether to care for a sick family member or for childcare  though they wouldn't be paid in that time.

In a statement, Amazon said the company has "complied with all requirements" from the state.

The company's policies have been targeted in a series of unprecedented strikes among retail and warehouse workers over the last several weeks, as workers organised to demand stronger workplace protections, including personal protective equipment, hazard pay and guaranteed paid leave.

Some workers, such as former Amazon warehouse employee Christopher Smalls in New York, have been fired after speaking out.

Mr Smalls was sacked during a walkout in March staged in protest of conditions at the company's Staten Island facility after an employee had tested positive for Covid-19.

In a statement, Amazon said he was fired for "putting the health and safety of others at risk and violations of his terms of his employment" and "violating social-distancing guidelines" at the warehouse.

At least 29 workers from the facility became ill, including an employee who recently died from an illness related to the virus.

The worker was last on-site on 5 April and was positively diagnosed on 11 April.

A group of Amazon workers has tallied at least 500 other cases among employees across 125 facilities in the US.

Following company-wide complaints and allegations that Amazon "failed" its workers, vice president and engineer Tim Bray resigned last week.

In a lengthy letter to Amazon staff, Mr Bray said the firings of workers is "designed to create a climate of fear" in the warehouses.

"I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistle-blowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19," said Mr Bray, who had worked for Amazon for more than five years.

"Firing whistle-blowers isn't just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets," he said. "It's evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

Amazon saw an explosion in revenue over the first quarter of 2020, but CEO Jeff Bezos told shareholders that company's net income fell 31 per cent and shares fell by roughly 5 per cent as Amazon spent more to address the spike in delivery orders.

"Because of the failings of our employers, many of our fellow employees have contracted this deadly virus and some have died," Mr Bray wrote. "Although there have been some changes in company policies, they are not enough to adequately protect us."
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Among the many uncomfortable truths revealed by the coronavirus pandemic is, apparently, this: America cant build anymore. Faced with an unprecedented emergency, U.S. factories have struggled to make even relatively simple products such as swabs, masks and protective gear.

This is more surprising than it seems. While millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost over the past two decades as low-end production has shifted to Asia, real output in U.S. manufacturing hovers around all-time highs. American manufacturers dominate high-tech sectors such as wide-body aircraft and semiconductors.

Worrying signs have been mounting, however. The Boeing Co.s troubles with the 737 MAX revealed deep problems in its engineering culture. Intel Corp. has seen the timeline for shipping its latest process node slip continuously. And, after a much-publicized decision in 2013 to start assembling the Mac Pro in Texas, Apple Inc. has struggled to scale up its plant. The fumbling U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic suggests something more fundamental is broken.

In a widely circulated recent essay, Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen blamed Americas inability to build on inertia and a failure of will. Theres more to it than that. Technology is essentially three things: tools (such pots, pans and stoves); explicit instructions (such as patents and recipes); and process knowledge, which can also be described as tacit knowledge or technical experience.

The first two are easy to observe and measure; the third is most important. You can give someone a well-equipped kitchen and highly detailed recipes. But, if he has never cooked before, he may not be able to prepare even a simple dish.

In a typical production process, there are a million-and-one things that cant be written down. Process knowledge is thus represented by an experienced workforce, which circulates best practices and figures out new ways of doing things. These workers manifest in industrial clusters, or what economist Brad DeLong calls communities of engineering practice.

Story continues

One of these is Andreessens Silicon Valley, where the success of the semiconductor industry spawned further triumphs in telecommunications, software and the consumer internet. Knowledge there circulates easily through tight-knit production networks consisting of academics, talented managers and a large engineering work force. An earlier example was Detroit, where a clustering of railroad engineers and machine-tool experts in the early 20th century established the conditions for assembly-line production of the automobile.

While Silicon Valleys star still shines, Detroits has long faded. The production networks that once sustained so much process knowledge have disappeared along with the car factories. That means that theres now much less skilled talent at hand if a company wants to scale up or retool production.

By contrast in China, a vast pool of experienced engineers and a culture of nimble manufacturing have allowed companies to quickly shift production to critically needed goods during this crisis. Manufacturers such as BYD Co.(an automaker) and Foxconn (an electronics assembler) have helped to quadruple Chinas mask production since the beginning of the pandemic. Taiwanese companies, which make machine tools and can draw on deep pools of manufacturing expertise, were reportedly able to increase mask production tenfold.

Learning to build again will take more than a resurgence of will, as Andreessen would have it. And the U.S. should think of bolder proposals than sensible but long-proposed tweaks to R&D policies, re-training programs and STEM education.

What the U.S. really needs to do is reconstitute its communities of engineering practice. That will require treating manufacturing work, even in low-margin goods, as fundamentally valuable. Technological sophisticates in Silicon Valley would be wise to drop their dismissive attitude towards manufacturing as a commoditized activity and treat it as being as valuable as R&D work. And corporate America should start viewing workers not purely as costs to be slashed, but as practitioners keeping alive knowledge essential to the production process.

The U.S. government has a crucial role to play. Bills winding through in Congress to re-shore some of the medical supply chain should be only the start. For too long, tax laws have encouraged offshoring; its time for political leaders to remove the excuse for manufacturers not to bring production back home.

The U.S. should also learn from Chinas playbook. The U.S. is a major market for many of the products it would like to make more of, such as jets, medical equipment and high-end electronics; it should leverage its enormous domestic market as an incentive for firms to localize production. While most semiconductor manufacturing now takes place in Asia, for instance, theres no reason why the U.S. shouldnt be a bigger producer given its deep bench of talent and how much tech companies are spending on building data centers.

A vigorous political push  accompanied by an even minimal imitation of Chinas program of state-guided procurement, localization requirements and cultivation of a deep labor pool  could help rebuild the American industrial base. Thats a tall order. This crisis, though, should have made abundantly clear how urgent the task is.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Dan Wang is the Beijing-based technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 01:04:49|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Ruth Sikeita has nostalgic memories of her childhood when elephants and other iconic wildlife species roamed her ancestral village located near the Amboseli National Park that straddles Kenya-Tanzanian border.

The 26-year-old mother of two used to marvel at the sight of the giant land mammals as they grazed in the nearby forests or open grasslands at a time when local communities co-existed peacefully with wildlife.

Sikeita is a member of young female rangers from the nomadic Maasai community affectionately referred to as "Team Lioness "who are on the frontline of protecting wildlife at the vast Amboseli ecosystem, in spite of disruptions triggered by COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya's tourism sector.

"My day job involves protecting wild animals and ensuring their habitat is safe. We have been on a lockdown in our camps because of COVID-19 but we are not afraid of the disease since we are not interacting much with the outside world," Sikeita said.

The former kindergarten tutor joined team lioness in February 2019 and her nomadic roots gave her a head start when it came to protecting wild animals in their natural habitat.

Sikeita said that her passion for protecting wildlife developed at an early age when her village was put on the world map thanks to countless films that showcased iconic species that ranged from giant mammals to discreet carnivores.

"We literally coexisted with animals back in the day. I remember seeing elephants and buffaloes make strides in the forests where we fetched firewood. I was convinced the creatures had a special place in my life," said Sikeita.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted negatively on wildlife conservation thanks to diminished tourism revenue, will not dissuade her from lending support towards protection of the rare species.

"My desire is to protect wildlife, reduce conflicts with communities and eliminate poaching regardless of the challenges we are going through due to COVID-19 disease," said Sikeita.

She is among eight young Maasai women who belong to team lioness fronted by conservation group, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to serve as the first line of defense for wildlife amid threats like poaching, human-wildlife conflict and encroachment on their habitat.

The female community rangers have also devised innovative ways to curb retaliatory attacks on carnivores by herders aggrieved by loss of their livestock.

James Isiche, IFAW's regional director for East Africa, said that promoting the welfare of the pioneer cadre of female community wildlife rangers in the Amboseli ecosystem is key to ensure they protect the wildlife despite COVID-19 risks.

"We are taking every care to ensure that team lioness and all the rangers are kept safe and healthy through observing the government of Kenya and WHO safety protocols," said Isiche.

He said the female rangers are providing a crucial link between communities and managers of conservation groups operating within the Amboseli wildlife corridor amid reduced activities occasioned by COVID-19 disease.

Sharon Nankinyi, a 20-year-old member of team lioness who was also born and raised in a village adjacent to Amboseli National Park, said it has been an exciting experience since becoming a community wildlife ranger in February 2019.

"I find it thrilling every dawn when we wake up, engage in some physical exercises and later conduct patrols inside the park. We usually check on the general condition of the animals and report on the sick ones," said Nankinyi.

She said that wearing green uniform that provides a camouflage for the female rangers has given them confidence to venture into the wildlife sanctuaries.

"We have made a significant contribution to anti-poaching efforts by obtaining intelligence from local community," said Nankinyi, adding that COVID-19 disruptions have not diminished her passion for wildlife protection.

Nankinyi said her colleagues have responded positively to the lockdown occasioned by the viral respiratory disease and always huddle together to share memorable stories about an encounter with a wild animal.

Soila Komiando, a 20-year-old female ranger said that joining team lioness early last year was a game changer since she is now able to meet her basic needs and support her relatives.

The high school graduate said besides acquiring skills in wildlife conservation, the female rangers have also challenged patriarchy that has often stood in the way of progress among girls from nomadic communities.

"We are helping communities improve their relationship with wildlife and have challenged the notion that protection of animals in the wild is a preserve of men," said Komiando. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 16:09:59|Editor: huaxia

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told one lie to cover up another in his continued attacks against China over its handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday.
DISRUPTIONS to the water supply are being reported in three communities across Limerick this Friday.

Irish Water has said customers will likely have their supply disrupted due to a burst water main in Lisnagry, plus an interruption to the reservoir near Doon, and pump station works at Knocklong.

#IWLimerick: Repairs to a burst water main may affect supply to Annacotty Industrial Estate, Lisnagry and surrounds until 6pm today.  Irish Water Care (@IWCare) May 8, 2020

The repairs to the water main at Lisnagry will likely see supply disruptions to customers here, and its surrounding area, as well businesses at the former Ferenka factory in the Annacotty Industrial Estate.

Its anticipated works will be completed by six oclock this evening, but following this the State utility has warned that supply may take up to three hours to fully return to all affected properties.

Elsewhere, an interruption in the reservoir at Carrigmore may cause supply disruptions here, plus in Doon, Oola and other surrounding areas . Its anticipated repair work will be complete by 6pm, with the supply expected to take up to three hours to return to impacted properties.

And in Knocklong, works at the areas pump station caused supply disruptions.

However, these are now complete, and its anticipated all customers will have their supplies back working again.
BANGALORE, India, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In dynamic circumstances where the responses may be unclear and unpredictable, cognitive computing is used to mimic the human thought process using computerized models. Cognitive computing technology communicates in human language and helps experts make informed decisions by understanding the nature of unstructured data.

The global cognitive computing market size in 2018 was estimated at USD 8.869 Billion and is expected to hit USD 87.391 Billion by 2026, rising at a CAGR of 31.6 % from 2019 to 2026.

Some of the significant factors that are expected to increase the cognitive computing market size are increased adoption rate, growing number of large and complex data, growth in computing platforms including cloud, mobile, and data analytics. Furthermore, the need for retail, healthcare and financial organizations to optimally study large volumes of information in real time, is expected to increase the cognitive computing market size.

The report focuses on the prospects for growth, constraints, and market analysis. The research utilizes Porter's five forces analysis to understand the impact of various factors on the cognitive computing market. Such factors include supplier bargaining power, competitive intensity of competition, the threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and buyer bargaining power. The study also considers the effect of the novel COVID-19 pandemic on the cognitive computing market and provides a detailed assessment of the expected demand fluctuations.

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TRENDS INFLUENCING THE COGNITIVE COMPUTING MARKET SIZE

The rise in Artificial Intelligence penetration and integrated cloud platform is expected to boost the cognitive computing market size.

Demand for cognitive systems in large companies is growing, and this is projected to grow in SMBs because of cloud-based services. As cloud-based delivery reduces the expense of delivering cognitive computing within the enterprise, the increased demand for cloud-based services is consequently growing. IBM Watson, a leading player in the cognitive computing industry, plans to launch a cloud-based Watson Analytics service in the coming years that would improve the adoption of cognitive computing through the cloud. In developing countries, cognitive computing is gaining traction. This professional cloud-based services component is expected to serve as a catalyst for the growth of global cognitive computing market size.

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has also increased the growth momentum of the cognitive computing market size with its diverse applications in the development of the interactive software platform.

The market growth can be hindered by the high cost involved in the deployment of cognitive computing systems, and issues related to government and regulatory compliances.

The increase in concern among the business organizations looking at a large volume of information to project the risk associated with any measured initiative is more instrumental in accelerating the growth of the cognitive computing market size.

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COGNITIVE COMPUTING MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

During the forecast period, the healthcare and life sciences segment is projected to expand at the highest CAGR. These companies are implementing cognitive computing technologies to improve patient care and provide online access to health records for patients. Such technologies provide organizations in the healthcare and life sciences with cost-effective and flexible infrastructure to capture and process vast amounts of diverse data forms.

COGNITIVE COMPUTING MARKET REGIONAL TRENDS

On the basis of region, North America holds the largest cognitive computing market share for sales. The cognitive computing sector field is experiencing major developments in North America. Factors contributing to the growth of the North American cognitive computing market are the rising advancement of various technologies in the region and the growth of various market players in the cognitive computing field.

Cognitive computing in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region is projected to increase at the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to technology companies' investments in major APAC countries such as China, Japan, and India. Furthermore, the growing digitalization, adoption of advanced technologies for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), and policy regulations and initiatives are expected to drive the cognitive computing market share in the APAC region.

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KEY PLAYERS OF THE COGNITIVE COMPUTING MARKET ARE

IBM Corporation,

Google Incorporation,

Microsoft Corporation,

Nuance Communications Inc.,

3M ,

, Hewlett Packard (HP),

Statistical Analysis System (SAS),

SAP,

Tibco Software

Oracle Corporation

Others.

MARKET SEGMENTATION

The market is segmented on the basis of technology, application, end-user, deployment type and geography.

By Technology

Natural Language Processing

Machine Learning

Automated Reasoning

Others

By Deployment Type

On-Premise

Cloud

By Enterprise Size

Large Enterprises

Small and Medium Enterprises

By Industry Vertical

Healthcare

BFSI

Retail

Government & Defense

IT & Telecom

Energy & Power

Others

By Region

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

Germany



France



UK



Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific

Japan



China



India



Rest of Asia-Pacific

LAMEA

Latin America



Middle East



Africa

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SIMILAR REPORTS :

Cognitive Computing Technology Market

In 2019, the global Cognitive Computing Technology market size was USD 8.254Billion, and by the end of 2026, it is projected to reach US$ 29.550 Billion, at a CAGR of 19.8 percent in 2021-2026.

Cognitive computing is carried out through a computer-generated model imitating the human thought process and cognitive capacity in the form of simulation on a specialized platform.

This study focuses on the global status of cognitive computing technology, future forecasts, opportunities for growth, key market, and key players. The aims of the study are to present the advancement of cognitive computing technology in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Central & South America.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-3T2090/global-cognitive-computing-technology

Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market

The global Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market size was USD 1.938 Billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 6.711 Billion by the end of 2026, at a CAGR of 19.3 percent in 2021-2026.

Primary drivers for the growth of Healthcare Cognitive Computing Market size include knowledge proliferation of structured and unstructured data, developments in data mining and analytics technologies, expanded use of cloud computing, and demand for personalized healthcare services.

This study focuses on the global status of Healthcare Cognitive Computing, future forecasts, opportunities for growth, key market, and key players. The aims of the study are to present the advancement of cognitive computing technology in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Central & South America.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-35P2192/global-healthcare-cognitive-computing

Natural Language Processing (NLP) Market

The global Natural Language Processing (NLP) Market size was USD 486.4 Million in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 1.748 Billion by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 20.1 percent in 2019-2025.

This study focuses on the status of the global natural language processing (NLP), future outlook, growth potential, key market, and key players. The aims of the study are to address the progress of natural language processing (NLP) in the USA, UK, Germany, and Canada.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-35C2296/covid-19-impact-on-global-natural-language-processing-nlp

Machine Learning Market

The global Machine Learning Market size was USD 1.625 Billion in 2019 and is forecast to reach USD 13.760 Billion by the end of 2026, at a CAGR of 35.3 percent in 2021-2026.

Machine learning is an artificial intelligence (AI) application that provides systems with the ability to learn and improve automatically from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on creating computer programs that can access data and use it to learn on their own.

This study focuses on the status of global Machine Learning, future outlook, growth potential, key market, and key players. The aims of the study are to address the progress of natural language processing (NLP) in the USA, UK, Germany, and Canada.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Othe-4R214/machine-learning

Cognitive Analytics Market

The global Cognitive Analytics Market size was USD 2.208 Billion and is projected to reach US$ 10.240 Billion by the end of 2026, at a CAGR of 24.3 percent in 2021-2026.

It is projected that the healthcare and life sciences industry will have the largest cognitive analytics market share in 2017. Cognitive analytics helps organizations in the healthcare and life sciences industry to accelerate medical developments, improve clinical trials, and enhance implementation, improve diagnosis and care management.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-27W1577/global-cognitive-analytics

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing Market

This report studies the size (value and volume) of the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing market by participants, countries, product types and end industries, historical data for 2014-2018, and forecast data for 2019-2025.

The Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing Market report also studies the global competitive environment, market drivers and patterns, opportunities and challenges, threats and barriers to entry, distribution channels, distributors, and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.

View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Othe-0C241/artificial-intelligence-and-cognitive-computing

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Tamil Nadu on Friday recorded 6,009 coronavirus COVID-19 positive cases, with 600 new cases in the state, said Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar. He added that a total of 2.16 lakh samples have been tested so far including 13,900 samples tested on Friday.

The mortality rate in the state is .68 per cent. Tamil Nadu has so far witnessed 40 deaths. With 391 new cases in Chennai, total cases in the state capital reached 3,035.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in a high-level meeting with Vijayabaskar reviewed the situation, actions being taken and preparedness for management of COVID-19 in the state. Vardhan appreciated the dedication in combating COVID-19. He informed about the present situation in the country and the steps taken by the Centre to combat COVID-19 so far.

Vardhan appreciated the work done and the dedication shown by frontline health workers, Anganwadi workers, police and paramilitary personnel who are working beyond the call of duty in the interest of nation. He reminded to provide them preventive medicines and immunity boosters along with testing as and when required.

It was reiterated that attention needs to be accorded to the provisioning of non-COVID essential health services such as immunisation drives, TB case tracing and treatment, providing blood transfusion for dialysis patients, treatment of cancer patients, ANC of pregnant women, etc. It was also stated that the Ayushman Bharat-Health & Wellness Centres could be used for screening for hypertension, diabetes and three types of cancers.

Telemedicine and tele-counselling could be used for a larger population in view of the lockdown. He advised to keep adequate stock of essential medicines and informed that helpline number 104 in addition to 1075 can be used for Grievance Redressal for non-COVID essential services, and for informing regarding the availability of these services etc. Adequate measures for prevention of vector-borne diseases also need to be taken.

Dr Harsh Vardhan also spoke to the DM of Tamil Nadu and discussed in detail the status and management of COVID-19 in the districts. He also added that such meetings will help in working more cohesively and also help in filling gaps, if any, and to understand and address the issues more closely and clearly.
CAIRO  In conjunction with a report published April 30 by the France-based International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers that stated that Egypt's exports from liquefied natural gas increased by 150% in 2019, Egypt said it was ready to expand the production of natural gas from the eastern Mediterranean, which are the stage of political disputes between Cairo and Ankara.

However, Egypt seems desperate to achieve another increase of its liquefied natural gas exports, in light of the rapid spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.

The Ministry of Petroleum announced April 21 that gas production has started from two new wells: one in the Zohr field, located in the eastern Mediterranean Shorouk 9 concession block, with a production capacity of about 390 million cubic feet of gas per day; and the second in Baltim South West 7 concession area, with a production capacity of about 140 million cubic feet of gas per day, with the aim to increase Egypt's daily production of gas by 7.4%.

Ahmed Abbas, economic researcher at the Istanbul-based Egyptian Institute for Studies, told Al-Monitor that halting production from new wells to reduce expenses in light of the country's economic crisis caused by the pandemic was a logical step, especially since Egypt had suspended liquefying and exporting natural gas.

The Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS), representing the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum, announced in an official statement April 27 the failure of a settlement agreement to re-operate the Damietta liquefaction station with Italian-Spanish company Union Fenosa Gas, the foreign partner (with 80% shares) of the Egyptian government in the station.

In 2013, operations were suspended at the Damietta station due to the Egyptian governments inability to cover its shares of the partnership dues. A settlement agreement to re-operate the station faltered in April because EGAS could not meet some of the conditions stated in the agreement, including paying some dues, due to the coronavirus outbreak, as per the statement of the Ministry of Petroleum and EGAS.

On April 21, newspapers close to the Egyptian state quoted anonymous sources as saying that Shell company  which has the largest share (36%) in the Idku station complex for liquefaction  suspended in March exports of liquefied gas shipments to its contractors due to the low global price and drop in demand resulting from the pandemic. The US gas price dropped to $1.63 per million British thermal units, which is the lowest average gas price in 10 years.

An informed source in the Ministry of Petroleum told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the failure to re-operate the Damietta liquefaction station and the halting of the export of liquefied gas from the Idku complex due to the low global price are two temporary measures or conditions related to the global markets failure due to the virus outbreak.

He pointed out that this should not affect production rates from the fields discovered in Egypt, because Egypt will resume liquefaction and exports when markets stabilize sooner or later.

The source added that the production operations from the fields have their accounts independent of the liquefaction and export operations. He noted that stopping production or not expanding it in the exploration areas will incur many losses for the state and its foreign partners, because the state and companies will bear the wages of workers in exploration areas and maintenance of the equipment in the absence of production.

However, Abbas believes that Egypt is expanding production in the Zohr field and the eastern Mediterranean region to provoke Turkey, especially since the Shorouk area, which houses the Zohr field, is located on the Egyptian-Cypriot maritime borders that Turkey does not recognize. He added, Egypt ignored the rights of the Turkey-backed Republic of Northern Cyprus, and perhaps Turkey's own rights in areas that Egypt considered purely Cypriot areas.

The Cypriot government condemned in an official statement April 21 Turkeys activity in the Cypriot waters, after Turkey sent a surveying ship for gas exploration and drilling. Turkey also announced in early April its implementation of maritime military exercises on virtual targets in the Mediterranean.

Shaker Mustafa, international relations researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Studies, believes that Egypt's increase of natural gas discovery in the eastern Mediterranean, even in light of the economic recession and the disruption of liquefaction and export agreements, may actually aim to enhance the influence of Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean to rival the Turkish influence and protect Egyptian rights.

Mustafa told Al-Monitor that an agreement between Egypt and Cyprus in 2014 made Egypt a partner in some hydrocarbon (natural gas and oil) reservoirs that extend along the Egyptian-Cypriot maritime borders. The agreement angered Turkey, which did not object to border demarcation agreements between Egypt and Cyprus or try to drill for gas in Cypriot waters since 2003, until the signing of the partnership agreement [between Egypt and Cyprus] in the hydrocarbon reservoirs in 2014, he added.

Esra Elonu, a Turkish journalist close to the Turkish regime, had claimed in a tweet  which she later deleted  that the protests that broke out against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in September 2019 can stop if Sisi would accept to negotiate with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on eastern Mediterranean gas. Yassin Aktai, one of Erdogan's key advisers, retweeted the post, which many Egyptian newspapers and observers considered evidence that Turkey was supporting and inciting Egyptian leaders and those who called for the protests against Sisi, most notably Egyptian actor and contractor Mohamed Ali.

Mustafa added that Turkey was perhaps hoping to enter the Cypriot waters if the international community recognized its ally, Turkish Cyprus, and its rights to Cypriot waters. However, These hopes were diminished due to the Egypt-Cyprus agreement to share hydrocarbon reserves. The agreement can be binding for Turkish Cyprus, even if it becomes internationally recognized, he said.

In December 2014, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu commented on the agreements between Greece, Egypt and Cyprus regarding the investment of the Mediterranean's wealth, saying that any agreements concluded between the Mediterranean countries without Turkey will not be recognized by his country. He added, It indicates bad faith from those countries and that would increase tensions in the region.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pledged in the same month that Ankara would not allow Greek Cypriots to excavate natural resources in the Turkish Cypriot waters and monopolize those resources for themselves. He said, The Mediterranean is our sea too and no one can close it in our face.

Rashad Abdo, economist and head of the Egyptian Forum for Economic and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor that the expansion of gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean may not be due to any political factors, rather economic ones.

He said, The decision to expand exploration and production depends on the willingness of the Egyptian government, in partnership with foreign companies such as Eni and BP. Liquefaction and export operations depend on the same factor, but in partnership with foreign partners such as Shell. For that reason, perhaps some partners support production expansion while others believe liquefaction and exports should stop.
The Haryana government has decided to extend by another six weeks the duration of parole or interim bail granted to convicted prisoners in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As many as 3,817 prisoners were released last month on interim or regular bail, parole or extended parole. The state government decided to release convicted prisoners with up to seven years of sentence and undertrials liable to get as long jail terms on conviction.

Foreign prisoners, however, are not included in this. Also, prisoners convicted in cases like drug smuggling, rape, acid attack are not among those released.

The decision to release the prisoners had been taken in accordance with the Supreme Court's directive to decongest crowded prisons to prevent them from becoming fertile ground for spread of the coronavirus, Jails Minister Ranjit Singh Chautala said.

A high-powered committee under Justice Rajiv Sharma of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and comprising Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Haryana, Vijai Vardhan and DGP (prisons) K Selvraj in its recommendation had on May 5 stated readmitting around 4,000 prisoners released on parole or interim bail back into the jails at this stage is a huge risk.

The committee was formed on the directive of the Supreme Court, dated March 23, which passed the order for decongesting prisons in view of the pandemic.

"Readmitting of such a large number of inmates at this point is likely to increase the risk of the COVID-19 infection to the existing inmates and will defeat the whole objective of releasing inmates on parole/interim bail.

"In this background, it would be appropriate to extend the parole period of the convicts for another six weeks from the date of their first surrender," the committee said.

Initially too, the parole was granted for six weeks.

For undertrials, who were allowed 45-days interim bail, extendable to 60 days, the duration of interim bail has been also extended by six weeks from the date of their surrender.

COVID-19 test and 14 days quarantine for prisoners returning from interim bail, parole or furlough will be mandatory.

The test for prison staff returning after availing leave on emergent grounds, will also be mandatory. Staff will be allowed to join duty only on receipt of COVID-19 negative test report and fitness report from the medical officer of the jail, the committee has said.

On April 19, a jail warden posted in Gurgaon district had tested positive for the infection after he returned from leave from his hometown in Bhiwani district.

Meanwhile, taking into consideration extreme and exceptional health status of an undertrial woman prisoner, who is eight months pregnant and at the Jind district jail, bail was granted to her for 12 weeks, officials said.

The representation was filed by her husband in the matters, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi, May 8 : Around 15,000 Indian nationals evacuated by the Central government from 12 countries are expected to land in India in next one week.

Official sources told IANS that the Ministry of External Affairs has developed a dynamic online platform on which requests received by Indian Missions from Indian nationals wishing to return are regularly being uploaded.

So far, sources said, 67,833 requests for repatriation have been registered. These include, requests from 34 per cent of all 22,470 students, 30 per cent of all 15,815 migrant workers, 9,250 short-term visa holders faced with expiry of visas, 5,531 with medical emergency or seeking treatment for terminal illness, 4,147 tourists stranded abroad, 3,041 pregnant women and the elderly and 1,112 of those required to return due to death of a family member.

The largest number of requests came from Indian nationals of Kerala with 25,246 applications, followed by Tamil Nadu (6,617), Maharashtra (4,341), Uttar Pradesh (3,715), Rajasthan (3,320), Telangana (2,796), Karnataka (2,786), Andhra Pradesh (2,445), Gujarat (2,330) and Delhi (2,232).

Sources said 64 Air India flights carrying Indian nationals will land at 14 airports across India during from May 7-15. On Thursday, 181 passengers from Abu Dhabi and 182 passengers from Dubai have already returned in four Air India flights to Kochi and Kozhikode respectively. On Friday, 234 Indian nationals returned from Singapore to Delhi and 168 from Dhaka to Srinagar. All passengers from UAE underwent rapid anti-body tests before departure.

Official sources said, 27 flights will take off from the Gulf region next week with 11 from UAE (including the two that have already landed), five from Saudi Arabia, five from Kuwait, two from Bahrain, two from Qatar and two from Oman. From the neighbourhood, seven flights will take off from Bangladesh (including the one that has already landed) carrying passengers bound for Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

Similarly, sources said, 14 flights are scheduled to bring Indians from South-East Asia, with five flights each from Singapore (including the one that has already landed) and the Philippines and four from Malaysia.

Seven flights have been allotted for evacuation of Indians from four airports in the US -- New York, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. Another seven flights have been assigned for passengers in London in the UK.

Sources said Indian nationals are expected to land at 14 airports across India in ten flights arriving in Delhi, nine in Hyderabad, nine in Kochi, four in Kozhikode, one in Trivandrum, one in Kannur, nine in Chennai, one in Trichy, five in Ahmadabad, four in Mumbai, three in Srinagar, four in Bengaluru, one in Lucknow and one in Amritsar.

INS Jalashwa has set sail on Friday, May 8, from Male to Kochi with approximately 700 returnees on board, sources said. INS Magar, is expected to set sail from Male with 200 returnees on May 10 to reach Kochi on May 12. Depending upon requirements, both ships will make another journey from Male to Tuticorin subsequently, sources said.
[May 08, 2020] Pennsylvania American Water Announces $10,000 Donation to Lawrence County Community Action Partnership

Pennsylvania American Water announced today that it selected Lawrence County Community Action Partnership (LCCAP) to receive a $10,000 donation for its support of COVID-19 relief efforts in southwestern Pennsylvania. "There has never been a more critical time in our country to support one another or lend a charitable hand to our communities and our neighbors in need," said Mike Doran, president of Pennsylvania American Water. "We know our customers, employees, and neighbors have all been personally impacted by this public health emergency. While we continue working around the clock to provide essential water and wastewater services to 2.4 million people across the Commonwealth, we also want to support the important work of the non-profit organizations helping people get through this emergency through meals and social support services." LCCAP is responding to a newly emerged need to feed the most vulnerable senior citizens, disabled adults, and low-income families with children who are isolated in their homes in compliance with the COVID-19 recommendation to self-quarantine so as not to be exposed to the coronavirus. "On behalf of the City of New Castle, I want to thank Pennsylvania American Water for their generous donation. Hundreds of families throughout New Castle are experiencing a myriad of hardships, and access to affordable food is definiely at the top of the list," said New Castle Mayor Chris Frye. "This contribution will help alleviate the stress families are feeling as a result of income loss due to COVID-19."



LCCAP is providing a week's worth of meals to 200 at-risk seniors and disabled adults. Meals and other supplies such as diapers, wipes, formula, baby food, toilet paper, and other household supplies are provided to more than 100 vulnerable families each week. "During these uncertain and critical times, LCCAP is pleased to partner with Pennsylvania American Water to help ensure that disadvantaged and homebound people of Lawrence County overcome obstacles, such as the instability of food supplies and other basic needs," said LCCAP CEO Tom Scott. "Serving these needs is only accomplished through partnerships, with the generosity of organizations such as Pennsylvania American Water."

Pennsylvania American Water and the American Water Charitable Foundation have together pledged $100,000 to COVID-19 relief efforts across the Commonwealth. Additional announcements are forthcoming, including grants to be awarded as part of the Foundation's COVID-19 Response Fund. LCCAP reaches out to low-income people in Lawrence County to address their multiple needs through a comprehensive approach that develops partnerships with other community organizations and involves low-income clients in the agency's operations. LCCAP administers a full range of coordinated programs designed to have a measurable impact on poverty. Pennsylvania American Water, a subsidiary of American Water (NYSE: AWK), is the largest investor owned water utility in the state, providing high-quality and reliable water and/or wastewater services to approximately 2.4 million people. With a history dating back to 1886, American Water is the largest and most geographically diverse U.S. publicly traded water and wastewater utility company. The company employs more than 6,800 dedicated professionals who provide regulated and market-based drinking water, wastewater and other related services to 15 million people in 46 states. American Water provides safe, clean, affordable and reliable water services to our customers to make sure we keep their lives flowing. For more information, visit amwater.com and follow American Water on Twitter (News - Alert), Facebook and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005082/en/

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Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday paused a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to turn over to Congress secretive materials produced in connection with former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The order is procedural and was not opposed by the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which is expected to ask the Supreme Court to ultimately require the Department of Justice to hand over the documents.

Roberts' action comes one day after the Trump administration asked the top court to temporarily halt a March ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordering the Justice Department to hand over Mueller's grand jury materials.

Without Roberts' order, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the Justice Department would have had to turn over the records on Monday.

Grand jury materials, which are generally protected from disclosure, can be ordered released by a court in connection with judicial proceedings. House Democrats successfully argued before a panel of the D.C. federal appeals court that an impeachment trial qualifies as judicial proceeding.
DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates on Thursday called on all Libyan parties to commit to the U.N.-supervised political process to end the war, while at the same time saluting the eastern Libya based-army led by General Khalifa Haftar.

The UAE statement did not comment directly on Haftar's declaration on Monday that his army would take power, ripping up a 2015 political agreement that has been the basis for all international peacemaking efforts.

The UAE "commends the Libyan National Army for conducting anti-terror operations," a statement by the Emirati Foreign Ministry said, expressing "its categorical rejection of the Turkish military intervention" in support of the rival, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA).

The statement expressed the UAE's support for a political solution based on the Berlin conference, calling on "all parties to commit to the political process under the supervision of the United Nations."

Responding to the UAE's statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hami Aksoy said the remarks were an attempt by the UAE to "hide their two-faced politics" and said it was providing aid to "putschists" in Libya.

Turkey backs the GNA, Libya's internationally recognised government, and has signed a military cooperation agreement to help it repel an Haftar's offensive. Ankara has repeatedly urged world powers to stop supporting Haftar's forces, which it deems "putschists."

"The UAE's actions disrupting international peace, security and stability not just in Libya, but all the region, including Yemen, Syria and Africa, are well known to the international community," Aksoy said in a statement.

"We call on the UAE leadership to avoid taking a hostile stance against our country and to know its place," he said, and added that solving the Libyan crisis hinged on backing the GNA and adhering to the 2015 political agreement.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Dubai and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Editing by Alison Williams and Matthew Lewis)
American comedian Gilda Radner said motherhood is an act of infinite optimism. As our nation grapples with the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, I suspect many Australian mothers will find it hard to be infinitely optimistic this Mothers Day.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

Even before COVID-19 upended our lives, Australian mothers faced significant challenges. At work, they confront the motherhood penalty, suffering substantial wage penalties and trading away career progress. At home, they shoulder a double burden, picking up the bulk of the domestic work.

Last years Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey showed that two-thirds of working-age couples are now dual earners. Yet women still do most of the unpaid domestic and care work at home. Women spend 64.4 per cent of their average weekly working time on unpaid care work compared to 36.1 per cent for men. For every hour of unpaid care work done by men, women do one hour and 46 minutes.

The impact of COVID-19 has made womens lives even tougher. With many schools closed due to lockdowns, Australian mothers are now carrying a quadruple load, adding home-schooling and the mental labour of worrying to the daily juggle of paid work and unpaid care responsibilities. That is, if they still have a job.
'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Fight Against Nazi Germany?

By Robert Coalson May 07, 2020

On February 24, 1943, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft with serial number 42-32892 rolled out of a factory in Long Beach, California, and was handed over to the U.S. Air Force.

On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. From there, it flew 5,650 kilometers to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, one of some 14,000 aircraft sent by the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II under the massive Lend-Lease program.

This particular C-47 was sent to the Far North and spent the war conducting reconnaissance and weather-monitoring missions over the Kara Sea. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. On April 23, 1947, it was forced to make an emergency landing with 36 people on board near the village of Volochanka on the Taimyr Peninsula.

On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. The others were never found.

The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk.

"I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. It is our living history. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia."

An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. Overcoming massive defeats and colossal losses over the first 18 months of the war, the Red Army was able to reorganize and rebuild to form a juggernaut that marched all the way to Berlin. But the Soviet Union was never alone: Months before the United States formally entered the war, it had already begun providing massive military and economic assistance to its Soviet ally through the Lend-Lease program.

From the depths of the Cold War to the present day, many Soviet and Russian politicians have ignored or downplayed the impact of American assistance to the Soviets, as well as the impact of the entire U.S.-British war against the Nazis.

A Soviet report by Politburo member Nikolai Voznesensky in 1948 asserted that the United States, described as "the head of the antidemocratic camp and the warrior of imperialist expansion around the world," contributed materiel during the war that amounted to just 4.8 percent of the Soviet Union's own wartime production.

The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War."

Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory."

Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. Most famously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."

Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.

"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."

The Lend-Lease act was enacted in March 1941 and authorized the United States to provide weapons, provisions, and raw materials to strategically important countries fighting Germany and Japan -- primarily, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. In all, the United States shipped $50 billion ($608 billion in 2020 money) worth of materiel under the program, including $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union. In addition, much of the $31 billion worth of aid sent to the United Kingdom was also passed on to the Soviet Union via convoys through the Barents Sea to Murmansk.

Most visibly, the United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks.

However, the real significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort was that it covered the "sensitive points" of Soviet production -- gasoline, explosives, aluminum, nonferrous metals, radio communications, and so on, says historian Boris Sokolov.

"In a hypothetical battle one-on-one between the U.S.S.R and Germany, without the help of Lend-Lease and without the diversion of significant forces of the Luftwaffe and the German Navy and the diversion of more than one-quarter of its land forces in the fight against Britain and the United States, Stalin could hardly have beaten Hitler," Sokolov wrote in an essay for RFE/RL's Russian Service.

Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper.

Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft.

The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.

In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease.

"It should be remembered that during World War I, the transportation crisis in Russia in 1916-17 that did a lot to facilitate the February Revolution [which lead to the abdication of the tsar] was caused by a shortage in the production of railway rails, engines, and freight cars because industrial production had been diverted to munitions," Sokolov wrote. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union."

The Lend-Lease program also sent tons of factory equipment and machine tools to the Soviet Union, including more than 38,000 lathes and other metal-working tools. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production.

American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots.

"In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats."

In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid- tip-the-balance-in-soviet-fight-against -nazi-germany/30599486.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.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 09:47:32|Editor: huaxia

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PYONGYANG, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A military spokesperson of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) lashed out at the recent military exercise carried out by Seoul, calling it a "reckless move" and "grave provocation," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday.

"This is a grave provocation which can never be overlooked and this situation demands a necessary reaction from us," KCNA quoted the spokesperson as saying.

According to the report, the South Korean military staged a joint military drill on Wednesday "in the hotspot waters in the West Sea of Korea" with the involvement of more than 20 fighters and storm boats.

Such a reckless move does not help the efforts to defuse tension on the Korean Peninsula, KCNA said, adding that "everything is now going back to the starting point before the north-south summit meeting in 2018."

The DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in the border village of Panmunjom on April 27, 2018.

The two sides signed the Panmunjom Declaration, agreeing to complete denuclearization and begin a new era of peace. The Kim-Moon meeting was the third inter-Korea summit and the first in 11 years. Enditem
SARASOTA, Fla., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- After coming off one of the most successful years in its history, Data Masons continues to execute its growth strategy by staffing two new critical positions. Despite the negative impacts of coronavirus, Data Masons is seeing demand from large organizations as they seek to move away from legacy embedded EDI solutions to advanced cloud integration platforms that increase an enterprise's efficiency and expand visibility across its entire supply chain. The coronavirus pandemic is highlighting the importance of strong supply chain management and the benefits of cloud computing. According to Molly Kelly, Vice President of Operations, "Now is the ideal time to invest in Data Masons' future."

Grant Beresford, the new Vice President of Sales, has over 20 years of experience in enterprise software sales and leadership. Earlier in his career, Grant led Microsoft's West Region to unprecedented growth, giving him unique and vital insight that will serve Microsoft partners and Dynamics clients. "I see tremendous potential in Data Masons' industry-leading solution due to the unique architecture and strength of our relationship with the Dynamics partner channel."

Annie Worth also joins as the new Senior Director of Marketing and Communications. Annie has been working in strategic marketing roles for over 15 years, including, most recently, directing the marketing departments for a cloud and IT infrastructure company and a data quality software company.

Many companies have decided to take this time of uncertainty or reduced production to invest in their infrastructure with plans of adopting a cloud-based integration platform that will digitally transform their entire value chain and yield significant improvements. Grant Beresford and Annie Worth will be instrumental in identifying these companies and facilitating the process of moving them expeditiously from consideration to implementation.

"Our employees play a crucial role in our ability to support our customers at a superior level. We are fortunate to be able to maintain existing staffing levels while adding these new positions during the crisis. It's important to continue plans to grow our business and improve service levels for clients who now face unexpected challenges. Hiring these two positions does just that," says Kelly.

Improving the efficiency of supply chain activities and increasing a firm's competitiveness are more crucial than ever. Data Masons is committed to providing exceptional service, technology, and support to its clients. The addition of Grant and Annie to the Data Masons team will help Data Masons expand its reach and positively impact more organizations that can benefit from EDI Made Simple.

About Data Masons

Since 1996, Data Masons has specialized in EDI Made Simple, offering cloud-based and on-premise EDI solutions that can integrate with any partner or platform in a secure environment with no customizations. It is a leading EDI solution provider for companies using ERP platforms including Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP, and Dynamics NAV. Data Masons' product flexibility and expert service options have made it the ideal partner to deliver high-performance business-document integration, with more than 1,500 global customers, including Clorox, FILA, The Hershey Company, Breville, Shopbop (a subsidiary of Amazon), Citizen Watch, Zippo, and more. Data Masons is a privately held company headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, with international offices in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Sydney, Australia. Datamasons.com

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I and many others dont think that Sean ORourke should have to retire... come on RTE, wake up and give Sean an extension to his contract immediately.

Sean is a unique interviewer and this comes over clearly in his personality. He, being cool, calm and collected, brings to the listener, as if it were, a feeling that its you being interviewed.

Here is an example of his skills as an interviewer, in a detailed interview about Covid-19 with Dr Mike Ryan of the World Health Organisation.

At the end of that interview, as Dr Ryan was leaving, Sean asked Dr Ryan: What neck of the woods in Ireland are you from?

Between Cully in Sligo and Castlebar in Mayo, was the answer.

This is the same area where both JJ Jennings (the author of The Big Stone) and his friend John Healy (Irish Times journalist and author of No One Shouted Stop) came from.

Finally, next up to reach the age of 65, in January 2021, is the RTE Liveline presenter Joe Duffy.

Interesting times ahead, I might say?

Edward Mahon

Clonskeagh, Dublin 14

Allotments play a key role for many and should be reopened

I passionately believe that all allotments should be reopened immediately.

They are working units producing healthy food for people of all ages. They are also sacred spaces for being in nature during these Covid times.

Allotments are of huge importance in terms of mental and physical health, now more than ever.

Most holders go to have some time to themselves to grow, plant, harvest and be close to the earth.

It is well known that tending plants and being in the outdoors boosts the immune system and calms the nerves.

These sunny days are providing lots of free vitamin D and all are beneficial for combating Covid.

Theres nothing like harvesting your own food and sharing with friends and family. It has a feel-good factor beyond measure.

Social distancing is easily achieved as most allotments have a natural barrier of fencing and spacing between them.

A rota system could be established whereby the numbers visiting would be staggered over the day.

Jane Coulson

Ashford, Co Wicklow

What order will we be living under when this crisis is over?

After having accompanied then-US president Richard Nixon to China in 1972, David Rockefeller penned an article for the New York Times extolling their political system and stating that this will be the way forward, but as yet the world is not ready to embrace it.

With the arrival of the Covid-19 virus, has the New Normal replaced the New World Order?

Into one where social distancing and genetic passports will be the new way of life long after the virus has been eradicated, which could earn you credits for being a model citizen and demerits if you upset the social order, leading to curtailment, fines and imprisonment?

The motto out of chaos shall come order seems very apt in this situation.

The only question being, whose order?

John Finegan

Bailieborough, Co Cavan

Recovery offers a chance to right the wrongs of the past

The Irish Independent (Editorial, May 6) is right to state that China and America dont need to indulge in finger pointing at a time when global unity is much needed.

World leaders should brush aside all their differences.

And they should delve deeper into an era of social solidarity, morality and altruism instead of discord and enmity.

The world has endured glaring inequities, intolerable injustices, food insecurity, unemployment, famine, child poverty and malnutrition that blight peoples lives and impede their chances of survival.

And this epoch has proved unequivocally that the world is indivisible.

Its one where a bat flapping its wings in Wuhan could ignite a global health emergency worldwide.

Its time to configure international institutions.

And to build a much more harmonised world.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London, United Kingdom

How do TDs manage to dodge our hair-raising problems?

Could those immaculately groomed and styled TDs who we see on our television screens please tell us where we can get the same?

Geoff Kell

Blessington, Co Wicklow
The legendary vocalist Axl Rose of Guns N Roses caused quite a stir on Twitter when he called out US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

The American musician is not very regular on social media and his sudden flare-up against the politician left many stunned.

Its official! Whatever anyone may have previously thought of Steve Mnuchin hes officially an a*****, Rose tweeted.

Roses vulgar comment rattled the Mnuchin, causing an altercation of sorts.

While it is not clear what provoked Rose, his post quickly went viral on social media, prompting a response from Mnuchin, who tweeted, What have you done for the country lately?.

What have you done for the country lately?  Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) May 7, 2020

The problem with the response was that Mnuchin used the flag of Liberia initially before deleting his tweet and responding again with the American flag. Screenshots of his first tweet went viral causing quite a bit of embarrassment because Rose spotted it and had a line to say there as well!

Now deleted and tweeted again, this time with the flag of the United States of America () rather than Liberia (). pic.twitter.com/Af6wj8W9gF Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) May 7, 2020

"My bad I didnt get were hoping 2 emulate Liberias economic model but on the real unlike this admin Im not responsible for 70k+ deaths n unlike u I dont hold a fed gov position of responsibility 2 the American people n go on TV tellin them 2 travel the US during a pandemic," he tweeted.
(Natural News) Former President Ronald Reagan once observed that Americans are never more than one generation away from tyranny.

His deeper meaning, of course, is that our Constitution may be endearing but our liberties and our freedoms must be constantly and jealously guarded, lest they be taken from us.

That seems to be happening a lot lately, and the excuse were being given is coronavirus.

Readers may recall earlier this week, a judge, angered by a Dallas salon owners opening of her business and refusal to follow a state-issued stay-at-home order, called her selfish and sentenced her to seven days in jail and levied a fine in the thousands of dollars after she refused to apologize for her behavior.

But shop owner Shelley Luther wasnt trying to be non-compliant just for the sake of it, though she should never have to beg a court of law in America to give her permission to make a living, even during a viral outbreak.

She reopened her shop April 24 in defiance of the order because her finances were collapsing, as were those of her stylists, and they all have mouths to feed.

I couldnt feed my family, and my stylists couldnt feed their families, she told the court.

I have much respect for this court and laws. I have never been in this position before and its not someplace that I want to be, she continued. But I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that Im selfish because feeding my kids  is not selfish.

I have hair stylists that are going hungry because theyd rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision but I am not going to shut the salon.

At that, she was immediately remanded to the custody of the Dallas County jail, where there are currently 248 inmates who have tested positive for coronavirus.

Which, in and of itself is an oddity, considering all of the judges and Left-wing prosecutors who are letting legitimately dangerous people out of jail claiming that it is somehow safer for them in society (where the virus is).

Were losing our freedoms

In any event, the legal clown show was all too much for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

He issued an executive order Thursday that retroactively eliminated jail time for any citizens who violate the stay-at-home order. That freed Luther and will allow her to reopen her business.

Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical and I will not allow it to happen, Abbott said in a statement.

That is why Im modifying my executive orders to ensure confinement is not a punishment for violating an order. This order is retroactive to April 2nd, supersedes local orders and if correctly applied should free Shelley Luther.

As some county judges advocate for releasing hardened criminals from jail to prevent the spread of COVID-19, it is absurd to have these business owners take their place, he added.

It absolutely is.

But this kind of stuff is beginning to happen all over the country, and mostly in blue states and cities. Orders are being extended, while tens of millions of Americans continue to be out of work  with no hope of going back soon.

Some business owners who were forced to close down will never reopen, so those jobs (and that income) will be permanently lost until they can be replaced by new ones.

And what happens if coronavirus comes back next fall? Are we going to go through this all over again?

President Trump was right. Our country is not built to be shut down. We can reopen and do so safely. So that is what we must do now, before this anti-American madness spreads.

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

Disrn.com
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Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 8, 2020 18:53 620 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd6d9656 1 Business IA-CEPA,Australia,trade-agreement,investment,Trade-Minister-Agus-Suparmanto Free

Indonesia and Australia have agreed to implement the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) on July 5, according to the Indonesian Trade Ministry.

Indonesia ratified the partnership agreement in late February.

In a virtual meeting with my counterpart, [Australian Trade, Tourism and Investment] Minister Simon Birmingham, we agreed to implement the IA-CEPA as soon as possible because it is important for the two countries to help with post-COVID-19 recovery, Trade Minister Agus Suparmanto said as quoted in a statement on Friday.

Under the agreement, Indonesian exports to Australia will get zero tariffs. Likewise, most of Australias exports, including live male cattle, frozen beef, dairy products and sugar, may enter Indonesia without any duties. The Trade Ministry expects the export of some Indonesian products to Australia, such as automotive products, timber, textiles, electronics and communication tools, to increase despite recording a US$3.2 billion trade deficit last year.

The pandemic, which has infected over 3.7 million people worldwide and at least 13,100 people in Indonesia, is slowing not only trade but also investment between countries.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) to Indonesia declined 9.2 percent year-on-year to Rp 98 trillion ($6.5 billion) in the first quarter of the year, according to data released on April 20 by the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM).

Despite relying heavily on household spending to grow the economy, Indonesia seeks to attract more investment from Australia through the IA-CEPA, especially in the higher education, vocational education, healthcare, construction, energy, mining and tourism sectors.

In the first quarter of the year, foreign investment from Australia reached $86 million with 321 projects, according to BKPM data.

We hope businesses, including small and medium enterprises, from both countries can reap the benefits from the IA-CEPA to spur trade and investment between the two countries, Agus said.

The ministrys international trade cooperation director general, Imam Pambagyo, said Indonesia was preparing ministerial regulations on tariffs and the issuance of certificates of origin, in addition to providing state institutions with updates on the latest developments of the agreement.
The village of Cedar Bluffs will come together for a parade this Sunday  all while social distancing.

The Cedar Bluffs Community Pop Up Parade will be from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. The public is invited to bring their vehicles to the west entrance of the St. Matthew Lutheran Church parking lot at 300 S. Second St. around 1 p.m. to drive along Main Street.

Well get them lined up and then our mayor, Chris Lichtenberg, is going to lead the parade, organizer Noelle Ptomey said. We are just trying to keep people kind of spaced out and kind of separated, but also follow our usual route of just going up Main Street, and were going to do a couple streets in town.

Ptomey said the event began after she received a call last week from a member of the community who wanted to hold some sort of event with so many people staying inside due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We got some other people on board and thought we could pull this off following all of the health departments guidelines: the 6 to 10 feet apart, the hand-washing and just staying separate, but also being together, she said. We had seen so many of these parades on Facebook, so we thought maybe this would be something that we could do that would be a little bright spot in this time thats been kind of difficult for so many.

Ptomey first moved to the village in 2012 with her husband, Harlan, who is superintendent of Cedar Bluffs Public Schools, and their two children. She said the community occasionally has parades for major events such as homecoming.

They have done things from time to time, but this is something that they havent done in a while, she said.

Because of the quick turnaround for the parade, Ptomey said the free event will be run casually, as well as rain-or-shine. While people with classic cars or old tractors are encouraged to attend, she said anyone is welcome to join in.

Were asking that people dont have a long trailer just because well be making lots of turns on corners that might not allow for that, she said. We want this to be a fun family event for people, but also just safe.

The Cedar Bluffs senior class has been invited to the parade to act as its honorary grand marshals, and the Cedar Bluffs Fire and Rescue Department will roll out its new truck as well.

Participants are also encouraged to bring signs and wear costumes, Ptomey said.

We thought, why not be silly? Why not try to have some fun? she said. So dig up your best quarantine outfit or pull out those old Halloween costumes and put them on.

Ptomey said community members who dont plan on taking part in the parade can also park along Main Street to spectate or watch from their homes.

Especially with Mothers Day, if you have a mom you want to give a shout-out to, make a sign and put it in your yard or along the route, she said. Wed love to see those.

Even with the event having just been announced this week, Ptomey said shes received positive feedback from those in the community who plan to attend.

I think people are really looking forward to a way to celebrate something amid this time thats so confusing, she said. And we have had lots of text messages from people that are just so excited about it, and were hoping that we can maintain some order because we are just trying to do this spontaneously.

Ptomey said she felt the parade was so important due to human nature, which she said makes people want to be part of a community.

When youre isolated, that can be hard on a person, she said. And so I think for me personally, this event is going to be a way that we can be together separately, that we can celebrate something fun and silly and just kind of remember the importance of being in a community.

Participants can enter the parade ahead of time by calling or texting Ptomey at 402-604-0229 or Julie Roumph at 402-720-3290.

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A neurologist physician in Iran says that 25 COVID-19 patients in one hospital had strokes, indicating that the virus played a role in developing blood clots.

Doctor Farzad Ashrafi who works in a hospital in Tajrish, in the northern part of the Iranian capital Tehran, told a local TV news channel that close to half of these patients were under the age of fifty.

There are 1,700 COVID-19 patients in the Tajrish hospital, according to Ashrafi.

A doctors association in Iran dealing with strokes announced an increase in the number of strokes in hospitals recently. Iran has more than 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases so far.

The spokesperson of Irans health ministry Kianoush Jahanpour also said last week that health officials have received reports about thrombotic brain attacks among some COVID-19 patients.

There have been reports at least since last month in world media about this phenomenon. Some doctors say that there might be a viral cause for blood clots developing among coronavirus-stricken patients.

Australias ABC news, among others, has reported on these cases. Thomas Oxley, an Australian doctor who is now at New Yorks Mt Sinai Hospital told the network that medical science might have just discovered a new mechanism of stroke.

Dr. Oxley says the virus might be interacting with blood vessel walls and quickly developing blood clots. He adds that this is something very new in medicine.

Iranian health officials have not released any comprehensive data on such cases, except the report about the Martyrs Hospital in Tajrish.
Kyle Sandilands has been keeping busy during the coronavirus lockdown, learning a variety of new skills in just a few weeks.

Speaking on The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Friday, the 48-year-old radio host revealed he had taught himself to play the piano, speak Spanish and sculpt pottery.

He admitted he'd never had any real interest in learning another language before the pandemic, but decided to give it a go because he didn't have anything better to do.

Master of everything: Kyle Sandilands has been keeping busy during the coronavirus lockdown, learning a variety of new skills in just a few weeks

He chose to learn Spanish because he finds it 'very hard to communicate' with his Spanish-speaking housekeeper and groundskeepers at his home in Los Angeles.

Rather than learning the basics, however, Kyle told co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson he was focusing on a few choice phrases.

Kyle has learned how to say, 'Good morning, my name is Kyle and I'm very rich,' 'I love eating Buenos. I have at least five a day,' and 'My favourite thing to do is watch Law and Order in my undies.'

Multi-talented: Speaking on The Kyle & Jackie O Show on Friday, the 48-year-old radio host revealed he had taught himself to play the piano, speak Spanish and sculpt pottery

He also knows how to say, 'Jackie must be eating lots at home. She looks like a boombalada.'

Meanwhile, Kyle has been learning to play the piano, and reckons he hasn't been doing too badly so far even though he's still 'not great'.

And he couldn't resist tricking Jackie, who was broadcasting from home, by pretending to play one of the demo songs on his keyboard.

'This guy is a genius!' Kyle couldn't resist tricking Jackie, who was broadcasting from home, by pretending to play one of the demo songs on his keyboard

Jackie, 45, was initially convinced it was Kyle playing the song, only to realise he was having her on.

'Oh my God! I was blown away! My jaw dropped. I was like, "This guy is a genius! He's been right all along, he is a genius,"' she said after discovering it wasn't him playing.

The shock jock then proceeded to actually play The First Noel, revealing it had taken him four days to learn.

'It's really easy... I'm ready for Carols By Candlelight,' he said proudly.

I'm ready for Carols By Candlelight': The shock jock then proceeded to actually play The First Noel, revealing it had taken him four days to learn

Kyle has also been learning how to sculpt pottery, albeit with little success.

He brought in a pottery wheel and began to make an ashtray while Unchained Melody, made famous by the film Ghost, played in the background.

But he soon became frustrated and yelled at his producer to 'turn that bloody music down'.

While Jackie was impressed by Kyle's efforts, she urged him to focus on just one new skill instead of trying to be a 'jack of all trades'.
Oil prices are poised for a second weekly gain in a row despite the harrowing jobs report released on Friday morning.

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Friday, May 8th, 2020

The U.S. Labor Department reported a loss of more than 20 million jobs in the month of April. The unemployment rate surged to 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Still, stocks rose. Investors saw positive news after the U.S. and China backed away from trade tensions.

Oil rally may be going too far. Oil prices have doubled in a little more than a week on mounting supply shut-ins and hopes of a demand rebound. But analysts are warning that the newfound optimism is premature. Even following a gradual resumption of economic activity, demand may remain below the 2019 level for years to come, Commerzbank analysts said.

IHS Markit: Oil production to fall 17 mb/d in Q2. IHS Markit estimates that global oil production will fall by 17 mb/d in the second quarter, the largest decline in history.

North America cuts 1.7 mb/d. U.S. and Canadian oil production is on track to decline by 1.7 mb/d by the end of June, according to Reuters. When prices went negative it really accelerated some of the cuts, Allyson Cutright, director at Rapidan Energy Group, told Reuters.

Vitol says peak demand may arrive sooner. Russell Hardy, the head of oil trading firm Vitol, suggested in an interview with Reuters that the pandemic could accelerate the date of peak demand, due to permanent scars in jet fuel demand and pushes for cleaner air. But he also suggested that todays downturn will tighten the market in the years ahead due to supply erosion.

Premium: What Will OPEC Do Next?

Occidental wants to cut debt. Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) has hired investment bank Moelis & Co. to help it trim its $40 billion debt pile. Oxy reported a $2.2 billion loss on Tuesday.

Plastic boom ends. The oil industry has funneled billions of dollars into plastics in recent years, but a lot of projects are now running into trouble.

Shale drillers hint at fracking restart at $30. Diamondback Energy (NYSE: FANG) and Parsley Energy (NYSE: PE) suggested that if WTI moves up to $30 per barrel, they may resume drilling and completion activities

Suncor cuts dividend by 55 percent. Suncor Energy (NYSE: SU) slashed capex and also cut its dividend by 55 percent.

Offshore still has some interest. The oil majors are cutting spending and shutting in production around the world, but are still committed to investing in large offshore projects in South America.

Can idled wells easily be restarted? On earnings calls, multiple oil executives expressed uncertainty about how quickly and pain-free shuttered oil wells can be restarted. When you shut in wells, especially for a long period of time, you have a lot of surprises, Clay Bretches, an executive vice president at Apache Corp., told analysts on an earnings call. Some of them are good and some of them are bad.

Premium: Why It Makes Sense To Short Oil

Middle East oil producers look to renewables. Solar power is the cheapest kilowatt-hour in the Middle East, Benjamin Attia, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told Bloomberg. Solar can meet most of the electricity demand growth going forward in much of the Middle East. Globally, renewable deals are still moving forward despite the crisis in energy markets. The IEA said that renewables will be the only source of energy to grow this year. Im feeling strangely positive because Im in renewables. If I was in chemicals or aviation or shipping, then I wouldnt be, Mortimer Menzel, a partner at Augusta and Co, a clean energy advisory firm, told the FT.

Devon Energy loses $2.8 billion. Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN) lost $2.8 billion in the first quarter and the driller said its second-quarter production would fall by 10,000 bpd.

Nigerian oil revenues vanish. Nigerias oil revenues have mostly disappeared, with prices fetched for Nigerian crude falling to $10 per barrel or less. Oil accounts for half of the countrys revenue, and the government is now collecting very little from oil sales. Nigeria has taken out $3.4 billion in loans from the IMF.

Frac sand miners hit hard. Frac sand mines are closing down, laying off workers and cutting output. The obvious answer, Blake Gendron, an oilfield analyst with Wolfe Research, told Reuters, is rapid consolidation.

Halliburton lays off 1,000 workers. Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) laid off another 1,000 workers this week, which comes weeks after the company furloughed 3,500 workers.

Saudi Arabia raises price, but keeps discount. Saudi Arabia raised the price of its Arab Light cargoes to Asia to $5.90 below the benchmark price, a sign that Riyadh is still fighting for market share. But for cargoes to the U.S., the price traded at a premium, as Saudi Arabia wants to avoid confrontation with Washington.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
DENVER, Penn., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- For well over a century, the partnership of commercial art and groundbreaking technology has propelled American companies to global prominence by means of advertising signs. Whether depicting popular mascots like Mobil's Pegasus and Sinclair's Dino, or the neon-illuminated likenesses of automobiles and gasoline logos, signage is a classic form of Americana that shows off the best of our nation's ingenuity.

Circa-1940s Harbor Petroleum sign, $40,000-$60,000; Rebel Oil double-sided sign, $15,000-$25,000 Rare 1930s Satam twin 2.5-gallon cylinder Mo4 visible gas pump in Texaco livery, 108in high. Restored with very high-quality paintwork. Estimate $15,000-$25,000

Advertising collectors from coast to coast, and beyond, revel in the opportunity to bid in Morphy Auctions' exciting Automobilia & Petroliana sales, the next of which is scheduled for May 13-14. While Morphy's continues to comply fully with state and federal guidelines for businesses during the pandemic, the auction is primed and ready to run with the precision of a finely tuned Ferrari. A beautiful, fully illustrated catalog appears on Morphy's website, and all forms of remote bidding are offered, including absentee, phone, and live online through Morphy Live. Private gallery previews are available by appointment only.

More than 800 premium-quality examples of gas, oil and automobile-related collectibles are lined up and waiting to step into the spotlight on auction day. The breakdown includes 530 signs, 35 gas pumps, 46 gas pump globes, 51 cans, 30 license plates, and dozens of additional items.

Among the top signs in the sale is an elusive circa-1940s porcelain sign that advertises Harbor Petroleum Products, of Long Beach, California. Boasting 8.9+ condition, the eye-catching sign exhibits outstanding color and high gloss with an image of a Boeing 314 Clipper airplane coasting over water. Estimate: $40,000-$60,000

Another acknowledged rarity is 72-inch (dia.) double-sided round porcelain service station sign issued by Rebel Gasoline & Motor Oil. In 8.75+ condition, it bears the image of a Confederate Flag with the brand name "REBEL OIL" emblazoned on both sides. Estimate: $15,000-$25,000

The neon section is led by two outstanding signs, including one that promotes Pacific Bait & Tackle. With Art Deco styling and letters that illuminate in four colors on each side, the focal point is a painted, neon-outlined fish leaping from a neon-detailed body of water. This visually appealing West Coast sign is expected to reach $15,000-$25,000 at auction. The second neon highlight is a Shell Gasoline porcelain sign that Morphy Auctions' founder and president Dan Morphy describes as "one of the best examples of its type that we've ever offered." Estimate: $9,000-$13,000

Displaying perfection from every angle, a restored 1930s Satam twin 2.5-gallon cylinder Mo4 visible gas pump is hand-painted in Texaco livery and stands 108 inches high. It is complete with its original handle, two original cylinders, and very nice original brass tags. "There are no apologies needed for the condition of this pump. The restoration work was completed to an extremely high standard," said Dan Morphy. Estimate: $15,000-$25,000. Additionally, a finely restored Wayne 50 illuminating showcase gas pump has a Super Shell one-piece cast globe, Shell side decals, and central glass shelving. Estimate: $12,000-$20,000

Of the 30 license plates in the sale, the most valuable is a 1906 porcelain plate #1, the very first one issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Absolutely unique and authentic, it is one of only a few true #1 license plates in existence from any of the United States. Estimate: $20,000-$40,000

Morphy's Wednesday/Thursday, May 13-14, 2020 Automobilia & Petroliana Auction will start at 10 a.m. ET. For additional information, call 877-968-8880 or email [email protected]. View the catalog online at www.morphyauctions.com.

Media Contact:

Sarah Stoltzfus

877-968-8880

[email protected]

SOURCE Morphy Auctions

Related Links

http://www.morphyauctions.com


Gov. Tom Wolf has said that he will be ready to identify a second group of Pennsylvania counties for the first step of a staged economic reopening and partial relief from statewide stay-at-home orders Friday, positioning them to join the 24 counties that officially made the move to Wolfs yellow stage earlier today.

The decision has consequences since, in a separate action Thursday, Wolf extended his coronavirus stay-at-home orders for the rest of the state until June 4.

So PennLive, ever looking forward, took a fresh look at new case incidence rates - the most publicly-discernible of the Wolf Administrations metrics - through Wednesday May 6 and heres the hard truth: For most of us in south central Pennsylvania - including Harrisburg, Carlisle and Lancaster - it looks like were staying in the red zone.

Administration officials have stressed that the case threshold is not the only thing in this decision. It also depends on proximity to outbreak areas, the capacity of hospitals and health systems in the area, and other factors.

But as you can see from the map above, taking the case data as a start, the prognosis looks much better for southwestern Pennsylvania, the Laurel Highlands and some other counties just west and north of the Capital Region.

If the governor is taking an aggressive approach, he might also consider Perry and York counties in South Central Pennsylvania, which have dipped below the new case-threshold for the last two weeks. Perry, in fact, has consistently been below the threshold since it was established last month.

But to handicap it, it appears that the most of the state Department of Healths southwest region: Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties; and Blair, Bedford and Fulton counties just to the east of them are the best candidates to start reopening.

All 13 of those counties not only have new case rates over the last two weeks that fall below the 50-new-cases-per-100,000-resident threshold that the administration has set as one of its guideposts; several of them also have case rates that are lower than some of the counties that were included in Wolfs first wave last week.

For much of this southwest quadrant of the state, the pandemic has really been someone elses story.

Allegheny, home to Pennsylvanias second-largest city in Pittsburgh, has never seen a big surge of COVID-19 cases, according to health officials there, and - as the geographic hub of the region - it is well-positioned to meet a rise in cases should that happen.

This would leave Beaver County as the sole outlier in western Pennsylvania, which has seen its case incidence rate dramatically inflated by a severe COVID-19 outbreak at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Brighton Township, where more than 300 residents are said to have tested positive for coronavirus.

But Wolf and state Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine have consistently said they will not carve out self-contained locations like nursing homes or prisons from a countys overall case totals because of the movement of staff and contractors in and out of such facilities.

Wolfs decision seems to be harder for four other counties that meet the new case incidence threshold as of Thursday: Perry (23.8) and York (43.2) counties in south central Pennsylvania, and Susquehanna and Wyoming counties in the northeast.

The problem for both Perry and York is that again, as of Thursday, they are both surrounded by counties that, while close, havent yet met the 50-case threshold on a consistent basis. In his first reopening announcement last week, Wolf refrained from lifting stay-at-home orders in counties that would have become reopening islands.

The issue for Susquehanna (34.7) and Wyoming (37.3) counties in the northeast, meanwhile, is that they abut counties like Lackawanna, Luzerne and Monroe counties that have seen some of the highest per capita rates of infection in the state through the pandemic.

Three other counties, Carbon (53.0), Mifflin (52.0) and Wayne (50.6), just popped back over the 50-case threshold on Thursday, so they too appear to be on the bubble.

Even if Wolf yellow lights just the first 13 counties mentioned here, that will be a significant stride for the state as a whole.

Where the first 24 counties combined for just 11.9 percent of Pennsylvanias population, the 13 southwestern and Laurel Highland counties alone would add another 2.7 million residents to the yellow zone. When their entry was official - likely sometime next week - that would leave 4.2 million Pennsylvanians, or 32.7 percent of the total population, in the early stage of the reopening.

Its also worth repeating, yellow is just a necessary first step on the journey to a new normal; it is far from the destination. A much broader reopening that could include things like a resumption of organized sports, public concerts and church services will occur when a county or region moves to green.

The pandemic, to this point, has sickened 52,915 Pennsylvanians, and it is being blamed for 3,416 deaths.

The Wolf administration, to this point, has not disclosed any hard, case incidence markers for what it will take for an area to go green. The governor and Levine have both said that will also require demonstrated capabilities in coronavirus testing, contact tracing, and safe quarantining of those exposed to infected persons.
SINGAPORE, May 6, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - CloserStill Media has announced that its Singapore Technology portfolio (Cloud Expo Asia, Cyber Security Expo, Big Data & AI World, Smart IoT Singapore, Data Centre World, eCommerce Expo Asia and Technology for Marketing Asia) has been named a finalist for Best International Show - Asia Pacific in the annual AEO Excellence Awards 2020.The AEO excellence awards represent the best that the events industry has to offer and showcases the amazing achievements from within the industry.CloserStill Media's Singapore Technology portfolio comprises of 7 leading enterprise technology tradeshow and conferences, and in 2019, welcomed 21,897 (BPA-audited) in attendance at Marina Bay Sands - a 27.8% growth from 2018. The annual event enabled attendees to source from over 450 technology leaders like Citrix, Cisco Meraki, Google, Huawei, IBM, Oracle, & SAP; and gain insights into the most pertinent technology issues from global experts in the public and private sectors.Of being shortlisted, Mr. Andrew Kiwanuka, Managing Director of Cloud Expo Asia said, "We're truly delighted to be named as one of the finalists for this highly contested and prestigious industry award. This reflects the continued growth and successful development of our international Tech trade show brand. The nomination also recognizes the significance the event now holds for the Tech community in Asia."CloserStill Media is also shortlisted in the following categories for the AEO Excellence Awards:- Best International Show - Europe: Frankfurt Tech and Paris Tech- Best International Show - Americas: DevLearn 2019- Best UK Tradeshow Between 2,000sqm - 8,000sqm: The Clinical Pharmacy Congress- Best Conference: The Clinical Pharmacy Congress- Organiser Team of the Year: CloserStill Operations TeamFor more information on Cloud Expo Asia, Singapore and its co-located events, visit www.cloudexpoasia.comAbout CloserStill MediaCloserStill Media specialises in international professional events chiefly in the technology markets, across five global territories. Its portfolio includes some of the UK's fastest-growing and award-winning events including Cloud Expo Europe and Data Centre World. Having delivered unparalleled quality and relevant audiences for all its exhibitions, CloserStill has been repeatedly recognised as a leading innovator with its teams and international events winning multiple awards in Europe and Asia including Best Marketing Manager - four times in succession - Best Trade Exhibition, Best Launch Exhibition, and Rising Star - two years in succession - among others. For more information, visit www.closerstillmedia.com.For media enquiries, kindly contact Nic-cole Chia at n.chia@closerstillmedia.com.Source: CloserStill MediaCopyright 2020 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The princess paid tribute to veterans and all peoples of the former USSR

Daughter of Queen Elizabeth II addressed Ukrainians amid 75-th anniversary of Victory Day PA

Princess Anne (daughter of Queen Elizabeth II) addressed Ukrainians and other peoples of the former Soviet republics on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Victory Day and the end of World War II in Europe. The relevant statement was published by the British Embassy in Kyiv.

"It is extremely important for us to celebrate the incredible sacrifice made by the peoples of the former Soviet Union. Hardly anyone fought more bravely or suffered more for the sake of victory," the statement said.

It is worth noting that today, on May 8, Ukraine celebrates the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. A memorable date always falls on May 8 - the anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945.

As we reported earlier, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has honored the memory of those killed in World War II.

He laid flowers at the Eternal Flame on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

"The head of state visited Milove settlement which is divided by the border between Ukraine and Russia. In Milove, the president visited the memorial complex Ukraine - to the liberators," the statement said.
The Supreme Court has ruled the liquidator of a company is personally liable for Bank of Ireland's costs of a failed appeal by the company against a finding the bank had a claim in the liquidation.

The five-judge court today upheld a Court of Appeal (COA) decision that Anthony Fitzpatrick is personally liable for legal costs incurred by the bank in opposing the COA appeal by Eteams International.

The proceedings were initiated in the name of the company but should have been brought in the name of the liquidator and the appeal was brought on the instruction of Mr Fitzpatrick, Mr Justice John MacMenamin, giving the judgment, said.

The proceedings under section 280 of the Companies Act 1963 "should never have been brought in the name of the company" and were "fundamentally flawed" from the outset.

A statutory application under Section 280 can "only" be brought by a liquidator, creditor or contributory of the company and "no satisfactory explanation" had been given for the liquidator adopting what, prima facie, was "an unlawful course of action" under section 280.1, he said.

The proceedings were not only irregularly initiated but continued in the company's name where, on the basis of some past experience, Mr Fitzpatrick should have had awareness of the issue himself, he said.

Mr Justice MacMenamin said:

There comes a point when perseverance in litigation becomes pertinacity in error.

There was no evidence for the court to draw inferences of bad faith or outright misconduct, he said.

There was also a "dearth of evidence" in areas which potentially might have had a significant bearing on the merits of one side or the other and the court had no information regarding what assets had been gathered in on an overall basis in relation to the company, which appeared to have been a small enterprise.

The Supreme Court, he concluded, would uphold the COA finding Mr Fitzpatrick is personally liable for the bank's costs in the COA on the basis the company had no legal standing to bring the case and, from an early date, the liquidator had "ample warning" the bank intended to render him personally liable.

The liquidator cannot have recourse to the assets of Eteams for the purpose of satisfying the costs order, he added.

Mr Fitzpatrick was appointed liquidator to Eteams in 2013 when it went into voluntary liquidation.

Before liquidation, Eteams entered into a debt purchase agreement (DBA) with BOI under which the bank agreed to purchase debts owed to the company by former customers. When Eteams later went into liquidation, a decision was made to challenge the bank's claim to monies it had collected.

That High Court challenge was brought in the name of the company. It was argued the DBA was actually a loan secured on the company's debts and therefore not a true sale of those debts to the bank and the latter's interests in the debts was to be treated as security, not ownership.

It was claimed, because the agreement had not been registered as a charge as would have been required under the Companies Act, the bank's claim against the liquidator was void.

In a significant judgment in 2017, the High Court decided the agreement was not invalid arising from not having been registered and dismissed the case.

The High Court finding was upheld by the Court of Appeal, which also, on foot of findings the company lacked legal standing to bring the appeal and the liquidator ought properly to have been the applicant, directed the costs of the appeal should be borne by the liquidator personally.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a further appeal only on the issue of whether the COA's costs decision was correct.
In 1988, a group of South Fork naturalists formed a membership organization called the South Fork Natural History Society, better known as SOFO. The objective of this organization was to increase public awareness about the past, present, and future of eastern Long Islands natural history and to share their joyful experiences of exploring and learning with others in the community. SOFO used to operate out of a small building referred to as the Nature Clubhouse where children gathered to examine different species, research for school projects, and just hang out. The Clubhouse served as a prototype...
Across Canada, we are witnessing unprecedented levels of public investment in response to COVID-19. The federal government has unveiled an economic stimulus package, the scale of which hasnt been seen in generations. At the provincial level, governments are injecting huge sums into their economies to protect jobs, help hard-hit sectors and support vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by this crisis.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

Across Canada, we are witnessing unprecedented levels of public investment in response to COVID-19. The federal government has unveiled an economic stimulus package, the scale of which hasnt been seen in generations. At the provincial level, governments are injecting huge sums into their economies to protect jobs, help hard-hit sectors and support vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by this crisis.

Even some Conservative governments, such as Doug Fords in Ontario, are following a road map that calls for investment over cuts, in order to protect our economies.

Meanwhile, in Manitoba, the government has doubled down on austerity measures, cutting public services and jobs at a time when Manitobans need support and economic stimulus most. This short-sighted approach threatens to jeopardize the future health of Manitobas economy and its people.

In other provinces, governments have provided rent assistance, enhanced funding to hard-hit sectors such as health care and front-line social services, topped up the wages of chronically underpaid long-term care workers, and provided additional funding to support vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities, people who are homelessness and victims of domestic violence.

By comparison, the Manitoba government has been woefully inactive, failing to offer meaningful support to workers, families and small businesses. For example, the province has ignored calls for paid sick time for all workers, rental assistance and income supports, especially for those living on income assistance and those who have been laid off or had their hours reduced.

Numerous local commentors and experts have exposed the failures of the austerity approach. In a recent article, policy experts from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Manitoba) outline why the Manitoba government response is entirely at odds with standard economic theory. Economists have pointed to lessons from history that show increased spending, not government cuts, is the way through this pandemic.

The centres calculations reveal the Manitoba government is employing questionable economics at best, or fear-mongering at worst.

Even conservative voices, including Shiu-Yik Au  an assistant professor at the University of Manitobas Asper School of Business, and Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party member  have challenged this thinking, noting that austerity measures could trigger a further economic slump. In a recent opinion piece, he noted that a provincial budget is not the same as a household budget: "Every dollar that the province saves is a dollar (or more) that someone else in the province will not earn."

He warns that Manitoba should avoid "the dangerous short-term path of austerity and cutbacks, as this will only lead to greater economic problems." Instead, as most economists agree, he suggests the Manitoba government should spend more to help our most vulnerable during this pandemic: the sick, the elderly, the poor and our brave essential workers.

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Such economic analyses raise concerns about how Manitoba will get through this crisis, but also about how it will fare afterwards.

The proposed austerity measures will hurt Manitobas workers, service providers and users, and businesses today, but they will also hinder the provinces ability to recover from the crisis. The critical services that are on the chopping block, and the workers who keep them running, will be needed once the restrictions are lifted, perhaps more than ever.

The Pallister governments preoccupation with the provincial deficit is myopic, and it threatens to destabilize Manitobas economy in the long term. The government is prepared to starve its own public institutions at a time when it should bolster them and support the economy in ways that will make it more resilient after the crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the value of our public and social services, fair wages and benefits for all workers, of protecting our societys most vulnerable, and eliminating inequities. Now is the time to invest in them.

But Manitoba has chosen a different path  one that makes the province an outlier in the country, and it is Manitobans who will unfortunately pay for this short-sightedness.

Larry Brown is president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
The owners association of a high-rise in Vaishali withdrew a notice asking doctors and healthcare workers living in the complex to stay in Delhi until the end of the Covid-19 lockdown after the measure was strongly criticised on social media.

The Neelpadam Kunj Apartment Owners Association issued a communication on May 7 for stopping the entry and exit of doctors and healthcare workers from May 10, and asked them to make temporary arrangements for staying in Delhi while the lockdown is in force.

The association withdrew the notice within hours after it was criticised by netizens on Thursday night following its circulation on social media. It issued another communication in which it said its advisory notice was issued on the evening of May 7, 2020 by mistake and has been withdrawn in the night of May 7, 2020.

The associations office-bearers said their communication to residents was based on a notification issued by Ghaziabads municipal commissioner to his zonal in-charges on May 5.

The municipal commissioners notification had said the zonal in-charges should get in touch with RWAs and local councillors and request doctors and healthcare workers, who live in Ghaziabad and work in Delhi, to make arrangements for their stay in the national capital during the lockdown.

We had issued a letter on Thursday evening on the basis of the letter issued by the municipal commissioner. But our letter was withdrawn on Thursday night and another letter was issued about the withdrawal of our first letter. We didnt have clarity about the letter from the municipal commissioner, which was in the form of an appeal and non-binding, said Ram Tiwari, president of the board of managers of the association.

He said about 35 families live in Neelpadam Kunj, one of the oldest high-rises in Ghaziabad that comprises 568 flats.

Our first letter was also in the form of an advisory and never implemented. It was to be implemented from May 10. But no doctors or paramedical staff or healthcare workers were stopped from our side. We have one positive case in our high-rise and the patients family members have tested negative and returned home. This is why the administration sealed a portion of the building, Tiwari said.

Other owners associations and RWAs have not implemented the municipal commissioners appeal. The controversy started after Ghaziabads chief medical officer NK Gupta wrote a letter on April 30 with the heading appeal to municipal commissioner Dinesh Chandra.

Guptas letter came in the wake of a number of Covid-19 cases in Ghaziabad attributed to medically acquired infections. Other cases in Ghaziabad are also related to doctors and healthcare workers getting infected and their neighbourhoods being sealed.

On May 5, Chandra forwarded Guptas letter to his zonal in-charges. He maintained his letter was an appeal and RWAs and councillors were to make humble appeals to doctors and healthcare workers. He told HT on Thursday the letter was issued in public interest and wasnt binding.

We have also reiterated this to the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Ghaziabad. The appeal is non-binding. But it was issued with an intention to prevent people in high-rises from getting infected through medically acquired infections, Gupta said, adding 25% of cases in the district are linked to medically acquired infections.

The IMAs office-bearers will hold a meeting with the Ghaziabad district magistrate on Friday to discuss the issue.

Doctors and healthcare personnel are taking best possible precautions about infections. We feel the issue should have been taken up at the government level (UP and Delhi governments) to make arrangements for doctors and healthcare workers and should not have been publicised. It should have been for other people involved in providing essential services, said IMA Ghaziabad president VB Jindal.

We dont want such a stigma which may be seen as discrimination. We feel RWAs or councillors shouldnt be given powers to restrict doctors, he added.

The Ghaziabad district magistrate had issued orders for strict sealing of the border with Delhi and cited six positive cases that emerged after local residents travelled to the national capital. On April 26, the district magistrate issued an advisory to commuters going to Delhi to leave Ghaziabads borders by 9am and come back only after 6pm.

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Richwood, TX (77531)

Today

Partly cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers during the evening giving way to periods of light rain overnight. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. Low 44F. SW winds shifting to N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
The coronavirus hotspots in Maharashtra are likely to see an extension in the lockdown, which is scheduled to end on May 17.

We cannot rule out the possibility of an extended lockdown at this stage but it is too early to comment on it as there are still 10 days left for the current lockdown to get over, news agency ANI quoted an official in Chief Minister Uddhav Thackerays office as saying.

Maharashtra is the worst affected state, accounting for almost one-third of all Covid-19 cases in the country with the tally nearing the 18,000-mark on Friday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Mumbai and Pune are the worst affected zones with cases from both cities inching towards 15,000.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray called an all-party meeting with state leaders on Thursday and continued day-long meetings with senior government officials in the state to assess the rising numbers in these cases.

Senior leaders cutting across party lines, like BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray attended the meeting.

Others who tok part in the video-conference were Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi President Prakash Ambedkar, Peasants and Workers Party chief Jayant Patil, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi leader Hitendra Thakur, AIMIM leader Imtiyaz Jaleel, CPI-M leader Ashok Dhawale, Peoples Republican Party chief Jogendra Kawade, Rashtriya Samaj Party chief Mahadev Jankar, RPRI leader Rajendra Gavai, Jansurajya Shakti Party leader Vinay Kore and others.

Thackeray, however, expressed confidence that the coronavirus pandemic in the state will be curbed by the end of this month. He said at the meeting that the Union government was cooperating with the state and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was easily available for discussion and guidance.

The opposition leaders who attended the meeting assured that they were with the government during this crisis, the CMO statement said.

A central team held meeting with Thackeray on Thursday and suggested that more people should be placed in institutional quarantine.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 15:24:21|Editor: huaxia

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Customers are seen at a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia, May 8, 2020. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday announced a three-stage plan to lift Australia's coronavirus restrictions. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

CANBERRA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a three-stage plan to lift Australia's coronavirus restrictions.

Following a meeting of the national cabinet comprised of the prime minister and state and territory leaders, Morrison on Friday afternoon announced the plan to restart Australia's economy by July.

Morrison said it would be up to state and territory governments to decide when each stage comes into effect.

"Today, National Cabinet agreed a three-step plan and a national framework to achieve a COVID-safe economy and society," he said.

"It is our goal to move through all of these steps to achieve that COVID-safe economy in July of this year."

Under stage one, restaurants and cafes will be allowed to re-open and Australians will be allowed to have up to five visitors in their home and gather in groups of 10 outdoors.

The maximum gathering size will be increased to 20, some interstate travel will be allowed and gyms, cinemas, galleries and beauty parlours will re-open under stage two.

All interstate travel will be allowed, pubs re-opened and maximum gathering sizes increased to 100 under stage three.

According to the Treasury, more than 850,000 jobs will be restored by stage three.

Morrison said that it would be a gradual process and that Australians should expect more outbreaks as the restrictions are lifted.

"In this plan, we walk before we run," he said.

"We know we need to be careful to preserve our gains, but we also know that if we wish to reclaim the ground we have lost, we cannot be too timid.

"There will be risks, there will be challenges, there will be outbreaks, there will be more cases, there will be setbacks."

"Not everything will go to plan."

The national cabinet will review the progress of each stage in every state and territory every three weeks.

Morrison was joined by Brendan Murphy, the chief medical officer, who said that 50 percent of the new cases in last week were related to clusters in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW).

"This is what we expect to see and what we'll continue to see and that's not such a concern if we're getting on top and managing these outbreaks as we have in those two cases," Murphy said.

"Six out of eight states have had multiple days of zero cases. But they all know that that doesn't mean the virus isn't still in their community and all of us have to be very careful as we move forward."

Murphy said that the three-step program relied on the Australians continuing to follow social distancing rules and maintaining high standards of personal hygiene.

"We could lose the battle that we have won so well, so far," he said.

"Every Australian has to do their bit."
The Omanhene of Berekum, Daasebre Dr. Amankona Diawuo, says the only COVID-19 case recorded in the Bono region recently should serve as a wake-up call to all residents in the area to strictly adhere to the safety protocols announced by government.

The Omanhene is worried that some residents of the area, drivers and operators of tricycles, popularly called pragyia, do not seem to attach maximum seriousness to the observation of COVID-19 safety protocols.

Daasebre Dr. Amankona Diawuo, who is also a Surgeon at the Regional Hospital in Sunyani, said in an interview in his palace at Berekum in the Bono region that discussions are underway between the Police and the Berekum Traditional Council to possibly arrest and sanction any resident of the area who flouts the COVID-19 safety protocols, especially in relations to the wearing of nose-mask and the observation of the physical distancing.

This is to ensure that nobody infects other people in the town unknowingly.

Berekum is one of the largest cities in the Bono region where tricycles, popularly known as Pragyia are the major means of transport within the area.

The Bono Regional Co-ordinating Council recently banned the operations of pragyia in the region but lifted the ban after about a month and instructed that each tricycle should carry a maximum of two passengers, who together with the operator must be in nose-mask at all times but this does not seem to be working as expected.

A visit to the Central Business District of Berekum, showed that a good number of passengers and operators of Pragyia were not wearing nose-mask, a situations which the Omanhene of the area, Daasebre Dr. Amankona Diawuo finds worrying.

He told our correspondent that it is about time residents realized that the Coronavirus disease is real and can infect anyone, regardless of ones status in society.

He said punitive measures will soon be taken against any resident in the area who is caught moving around town without wearing nose-mask.

Meanwhile, the Omanhene has presented assorted items worth over Twenty-three Ghana cedis to the Berekum Municipal and Berekum West District offices of the Ghana Health Service for distribution to the various health facilities in the two districts.

The items included a thousand pieces of nose-masks 600 bottles of hand-sanitizer, ten boxes of hand gloves, 12 pieces of infrared thermometer and ten packets of tissue paper and ten gallons, 20 veronica buckets, among others.

Daasebre Dr. Amankona Diawuo promised to make similar donations from time to time as part of his contributions toward the fight against COVID-19.
An unrepentant Airbnb superhost has been jailed for repeatedly raping a vulnerable teenager staying at his apartment, as his victim struggles with the ongoing trauma.

Nicholas David Weston was found guilty of four counts of rape of the 19-year-old woman over the horror stay at his apartment in Melbourne's CBD in November 2017.

The 43-year-old denied raping the young woman and claimed it was consensual sex but a jury rejected his argument.

"Her life ... has been reshaped by your vile criminality," County Court Judge Frank Gucciardo said on Friday.

Weston was jailed for eight years and must serve at least five years and three months before he is eligible for parole.
3 1 of 3 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Show More Show Less 2 of 3 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Police are asking for the public's help locating a Spring girl who has been missing for over a month.

Lauren O'leary, 15, disappeared on April 7 and is thought to be in the company in a juvenile male, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
WASHINGTON  U.S. auto safety regulators will not require automakers to recall 56 million additional Takata air bag inflators, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Thursday, saying the devices do not pose a safety risk like the Takata devices implicated in previous deadly accidents.

An auto safety group criticized the decision and blasted the agencys complete lack of transparency.

NHTSA said it will keep monitoring the inflators to ensure they do not pose a safety risk. In 2016, it ordered the recall of another 40 million Takata inflators and said it would review by the end of 2019 whether another 56 million air bags with a desiccant or drying agent needed to be recalled.

Those previous recalls involved Takata air bag inflators that could explode when deployed, sending deadly metal fragments flying in a defect linked to at least 25 deaths and almost 300 injuries worldwide.

Automakers in the United States have recalled more than 60 million inflators, and the number worldwide was more than 100 million by 19 major automakers, the largest auto industry safety recall in history.

NHTSA said separately Volkswagen AG will recall 370,000 vehicles with Takata inflators with the drying agent in phases starting at the end of 2020.

NHTSA has said long-term exposure to high heat and humidity degrade the inflators, making them more prone to deadly ruptures. It said it has reviewed reports of extensive testing of the inflators in making the decision and said a group testing inflators will keep track of their performance in the field.

David Kelly, who heads a Takata testing group, said after 30 years of predicted aging, none of the studied inflator designs and propellant combinations predicted detrimental effects, except those subjected to the most severe conditions and vehicle temperature.

The Center for Auto Safety noted that some automakers so far have repaired less than 50% of recalled vehicles for Takata inflator defects. The group said it is impossible to know whether to trust the NHTSAs latest decision based on the complete lack of transparency.

Separately, NHTSA is still reviewing petitions from General Motors Co to avoid recalling more than 6 million vehicles with Takata inflators. GM has said such a recall could cost $1.2 billion.

Takata filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2017, after the company agreed to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing to resolve a U.S. Justice Department investigation.

Prosecutors in Detroit charged three former senior Takata executives with falsifying test results to conceal the inflator defect but none of the Japanese nationals have appeared in a U.S. court.
As Texas announced plans to reopen hair salons and barbershops Friday, hair stylists across Montgomery County prepared to welcome customers with a few changes.

OK, today were ready, Great Clips Manager Cindy Mendez said wearing a face mask after disinfecting the Conroe salon, planning out set up, spacing out stations and reviewing four pages of rule and recommendations provided by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

Normally Great Clips in Conroe at the H-E-B location off Texas 105 sees an average of about 600 customers a week.

When the doors open again at 10 a.m. on Friday, customers will find signs with CDC guidelines and will be asked to check in online and use the Great Clips App available in app stores and Google Play. The app is already available and being updated to let customers see a countdown for their turn.

Expecting to go through several capes due to the changes and eager to see customers again, Mendez shared customers will be required to wear a mask to keep both themselves and others safe. There will also be no shampoo and beard trims at this time.

While some beauty services have increased prices, Mendez said Great Clips has kept its haircuts at the same price, which is $15 for a haircut. The price is $13 for a child and senior.

As the concerns grew about the pandemic, business began to slow to only about an estimated 150 customers a week, staff said. But the staff, who had to go on unemployment when the franchise decided to close on March 20, asked for patience and understanding.

Mendez, who manages four locations, said 90 to 100 percent of the staff returned, however some have delayed returns due to day cares being closed. She said there are on average about 4-10 stylists per store and about 72 stores in the Houston area. Some states have already seen 100 customers a day.

The owner of 10 of the Great Clips franchise locations in the Houston area, including shops in Conroe and Montgomery, Adriana Hinojosa of Sugarland, said the economic impact for all her shops has been tremendous.

At the Conroe shop, being closed for seven weeks translates to approximately $60,000 in lost revenue, she said.

This is a huge impact for a small business owner like me, Hinojosa, who co-owns the businesses with her husband, said. I have hopes to be able to recover, however it is not going to be a short-term process. It will take time to adjust to the new normal and fully understand how this pandemic will affect us in the long term.

There are additional costs associated with the current situation such as PPE for employees and longer processes of sanitation and disinfection that will reduce the efficiency of the shop which will effect revenue.

At the corner of Montgomery and South Bell Street in Willis, a single sheet of notebook paper is posted on the door of Willis Mastercuts with a handwritten message in all caps.

Due to the Coronavirus by law we cant open until further notice, sorry, the message reads with a sad face drawn at the end next to a will return sign.

Across the street, a John Wayne cardboard stand up guards the door of Charles and Darlenes Barber & Style. Above it a red and white swirled barber pole promotes Look Better and Feel Better.

The barbershop has offered men and boy haircuts since 1976. Today, a new sign has been placed in the store front window announcing it will reopen again May 8. The colorful poster lays out seven New Barber Rules written in marker, including appointments, no family and friends, and talk to mirror and look at mirror.

Lets keep you and I both healthy for the duration of COVID-19, the signs states with an exclamation point.

On Texas 75, Ashton Carter, 29, unlocks the customer entrance at the back of The Style Shop in Willis on her way to clean. Her mother owned the small shop for 35 years until Carter bought it three years ago. But a few months ago, the walk-in customer count dramatically began to drop. The salon went from being booked, to the owner sitting an hour or two between only about three to four customers each day.

The shop closed March 26.

Being closed is hard because we dont have sick days or time off, if were not working, we dont get paid. End of story, Carter said.

Now the salon is already booked out five weeks, she said grateful for loyal customers. It will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. There will be no color corrections for now. Walk-in customers are asked to call before going in. Masks and sign-in is required for customers. The salon plans to clean between customers and asks for patience as the community gets through the pandemic together.

At the worst, Ive made color kits for people to do root touch ups at home, she added. I dont know anybody who hasnt waited patiently for us to open back up. Were going to see that in the next month or two months with how packed we are going to be. Im thankful for that. Its been hard but it will be alright.

mellsworth@hcnonline.com
Migrant workers are like nowhere people. Yet, they are everywhere. From high-rises to highways, who builds them? It is a silent army of migrant workers, working day and night with no job security, no social safety net, and poor living conditions  yet, theirs are not the names we see on the billboards or the foundation stones of these shining symbols of Indias economic progress. From domestic helps to drivers, from the vegetable seller to the roadside food stall or kirana store owners  their names are not on any payroll or pension plans or tax registers and yet, remove them and life in urban and semi-urban areas would be paralysed. Like now.

Invisible, taken for granted, they are treated with indifference in the best of times and callousness and cruelty in the worst, as the spectacle of migrant workers walking hundreds of miles on hot and dusty roads to go back home showed. It evoked the words from the Woody Guthrie song, I aint got no home in this world anymore. For some of them, this proved to be literally and tragically true, whether due to death or the hostile reception they faced back home. They left their homes in search of a better life, to support their families back home. Yet, their adopted homes did not own them up when the chips were down.

Perhaps the human tragedy involved here will not move everyone equally. Even if the human plight does move us, some may take a more pragmatic point of view  what matters most is dealing with the public health crisis first, and then restarting the engine of growth.

Now, what is this engine of growth? You might think that it is capital accumulation  new machines and factories  and productivity growth  better technology and organisational methods. But capital cannot generate output on its own  it needs labour. In a country like India, it comes mainly through migrant labourers from rural areas. The engine of growth runs on the fuel of migrant labour, which moves from less productive sectors like agriculture to more productive sectors like manufacturing and services. Without this fuel, the engine will sputter and stop because of upward pressure on wages in the limited pool of local labour markets.

What drives the flow of migration is the prospect of better opportunities in urban areas. Interestingly, research on migration shows that there is, in fact, significant under-migration compared to the potential labour supply from rural areas. The main factor cited is risk-aversion. While average incomes are lower in rural areas, villagers can eke out a living easily and rely on strong informal safety nets based on social networks. Very poor households may be unwilling to incur the financial and psychological costs of migration and brave the subsistence risk of things not panning out. The horrifying experience of migrant workers during this crisis will only magnify such fears and reinforce the tendency towards under-migration.

What does this imply for the post-lockdown period? Could we simply press a button and restart the engine of growth, as Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, seems to suggest for the United States (US) economy? Bernanke said that the current economic crisis is closer to a major snowstorm or a natural disaster than to a 1930s-style Depression, which came from problems of human institutions and monetary and financial shocks. So, he has predicted a sharp recession and a quick recovery for the US.

Whether Bernankes prediction about the US is right remains to be seen, but his logic does not apply to a developing country like India where informal institutions and social networks play a much larger role in the economy than in a developed country. While trust and reputation are important in every economic sphere, these are the only currency in the informal sector where there are no contracts and regulations, and hiring is based on word-of-mouth referrals (think, for example, how domestic workers are hired).

Therefore, social networks play a big role as reputation in the community acts as a bond against potential malfeasance or low productivity. But trust takes time to build, as do social networks once they are disrupted. Therefore, the assumption that after the crisis subsides, things will return to normal and an unlimited supply of labour will flow in from the countryside is unrealistic. Wages will have to rise significantly, and networks that underpin informal labour markets will have to reform for the process to resume.

Employers are clearly seeing the writing on the wall. Therefore, we see attempts like the construction industry lobbying a state government to cancel trains to stop migrant workers from heading back home.

The same logic of the market that is often invoked to say there are no free lunches when talking about relief packages for the poor, also says the only way to induce labour to work is through improvement in wages and living and work conditions, not coercion. And given that 90% of the Indian workforce is in the informal sector with no job security or benefits, the safety net provided by the government must be strengthened to attract migrant workers back after this ordeal.

At the minimum, this would involve making ration cards portable so that migrant workers are covered by the public distribution system (PDS) and committing significantly more resources (than in the relief package announced earlier) to direct cash transfers and to the PDS. There are no free lunches. The economy will not move forward unless the migrant workers come back.

Maitreesh Ghatak is a professor of economics at the London School of Economics and director, Development Economics Programme, STICERD

The views expressed are personal
Bishop Gerald Glenn, founder and pastor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Va., disregarded the authorities urging the public to practice social distancing. He held an in-person service on March 22, telling the congregation, I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus and that he was going to keep on preaching unless Im in jail or in the hospital. During an Easter Sunday address, it was announced that Glenn died of covid-19. Four family members  his wife, two daughters and one son-in-law  all contracted the virus as well.
Top US and Chinese trade officials agreed to meet obligations under a trade deal despite tensions over the coronavirus.

Top United States and Chinese trade representatives pledged to create favourable conditions for the implementation of the Phase 1 trade deal signed earlier this year and with the US saying both sides expected obligations to be met.

Chinas Vice Premier Liu He talked with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone on Friday (Beijing time), according to a statement from Chinas Ministry of Commerce. They also agreed to maintain communications.

The discussion occurred while tensions between the two countries are escalating, exacerbated by a war of words over US criticism of Chinas handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

US President Donald Trump and other top officials have blamed China for the deaths of hundreds of thousands from the outbreak and have threatened punitive action, including possible tariffs and shifting supply chains away from China.

The two sides agreed there was good progress made to meet the phase one agreement and that they expect to meet the obligations under the deal, the US Treasury Department and Trade Representatives office said in a statement after the call.

The US Trade Representatives office also said both sides also agreed that in spite of the current global health emergency, both countries fully expect to meet their obligations under the agreement in a timely manner.

The negotiators also agreed that good progress was being made on creating governmental infrastructures to make the Phase 1 trade deal a success, the US office said.

Under the deal, China agreed to increase its purchases of US goods from a 2017 baseline by $200bn over two years, with about $77bn in increased purchases in the first year and $123bn in the second year.

But the coronavirus, which emerged in China late last year, has dealt a sharp blow to Chinese demand and its economy is only starting to recover.

The two countries will continue to hold required meetings under the trade agreement via conference call on a regular basis, the US office said.
SAULT STE. MARIE, MI  A public university in the Upper Peninsula plans to begin its new academic year with students back on campus on Aug. 10, which is two weeks earlier than originally planned.

Lake Superior State University announced its plans for the early in-person term on Thursday, May 7. The semester will end before Thanksgiving. The spring term is expected to start on Jan. 19, giving students an eight-week break, the news release said.

The strategy that students could come to campus and complete their course work before the Thanksgiving break became very attractive in terms of safety because students will not be returning to school after visiting family at the start of the cold and flu season, the school said.

The university also plans to shift spring break to remain in continuous operation for the spring term, which is planned for Jan. 19 to April 30, the release said. This will minimize the risk associated with spring travel, the university said.

With about 2,000 students, LSSU is the smallest public university in Michigan. The university is in Chippewa County, which has reported two confirmed case of COVID-19 coronavirus, and no deaths related to the virus.

Paramount in university planning is the overriding principle that students, faculty, and staff feel safe and secure in the environment, LSSU President Rodney S. Hanley said in a statement. We will do everything possible to protect our students, their families, and the university community in our endeavor to deliver a meaningful fall campus experience.

Michigan Technological University and Northern Michigan University, both also in the Upper Peninsula, will also open with in-person classes this fall.

READ MORE:

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Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan
Texas State Parks will resume limited overnight camping beginning May 18, Texas Parks & Wildlife announced. However, parks will only honor existing reservations for now, to prevent overcrowding and continue social distancing.

After careful consideration, we are taking this additional step towards returning to normal operations in our parks by resuming some overnight camping at Texas State Parks, Executive Director of TPWD Carter Smith said in a statement. As overnight campers are welcomed back to their favorite natural spaces, our team will continue maintaining the cleanliness of frequently used facilities such as campsites, cabins and restrooms to ensure that visitors, volunteers and staff can continue to enjoy Texas State Parks safely.
In March, as the novel coronavirus began to spread across San Antonio, health officials realized they had a problem.

The Metropolitan Health District had a small staff of epidemiologists who were responsible for investigating outbreaks of food-borne illnesses and communicable diseases. But it was nowhere near large enough to keep up with the volume of new coronavirus infections growing by the day.

In each case, the department would need to conduct contact tracing  compile the infected persons recent movements to determine who else might have been exposed to the virus.

The effort can be time-intensive, so Metro Health began pulling in employees from other programs, raising the number of city employees devoted to coronavirus contact tracing to 17.

It also sent call-outs for volunteers to local colleges and universities, which had shuttered to prevent spread of the virus. Dozens responded, and now, a small army of public health, medical and nursing students are quietly aiding San Antonios response to the pandemic.

Behind the scenes, 70 trained volunteers have called hundreds of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus, sussing out their recent movements and interactions with others.

More for you No homeless person in S.A. has tested positive for COVID-19

As physical distancing restrictions ease and people re-enter public life, such work will continue to play an important role in tamping down any resurgence of the virus.

If we dont do it, we will quickly get to thousands of cases, said Cherise Rohr-Allegrini, an epidemiologist and public health consultant whos serving on the local advisory panel for lifting stay-at-home orders. If we do it now, when we have less than 20 new cases per day, its totally manageable.

On ExpressNews.com: Doctors didnt think she would survive COVID-19. More than a month later, she walked out of the hospital

The number of city staff and volunteers devoted to contact tracing could potentially be more than doubled to 175, should the number of cases begin to rise again, said Rita Espinoza, chief of epidemiology for Metro Health.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

Any expansion of contact tracing in San Antonio  which is approaching 2,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus  would be guided by local infection rates, she said.

The challenge here is the volume, she said. Usually, we dont have this number of cases, when you look at some of our other communicable diseases that we follow.

The idea behind contact tracing is simple: Find out who might have been exposed to someone infected by the virus and notify them so they can be isolated from others as soon as possible.

Contact tracing, long integral to public health efforts, cant undo exposures that already have occurred. But it can break chains of transmission by seeking to prevent another generation of infections.

The whole concept is to minimize increased transmission, or to reduce the transmission. Break that cycle, Espinoza said. As we move forward and as people continue back to regular activities, it will still be important to identify these individuals who have been exposed.

Already, contact tracing has led to important developments in local efforts to contain the coronavirus.

In early March, Metro Health launched a contact tracing investigation after a woman from China who had been quarantined at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland was released from the hospital with a low level of the virus in her system.

Epidemiologists quickly tracked the womans movements to a hotel near San Antonio International Airport and to North Star Mall, where she ate at the food court and shopped at several stores.

On ExpressNews.com: She was released from a hospital in San Antonio with coronavirus still in her system. Weeks later, she doesnt appear to have infected anyone.

Although no infections ultimately were linked to the woman, who by that point appeared recovered from COVID-19 and likely no longer was infectious, the incident brought the virus to San Antonians attention early on.

After local officials released the results of the contact tracing to the public, the mall temporarily shut down for deep cleaning.

About a month later, contact tracing of a large COVID-19 outbreak at Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center found that staffers there had also worked at other facilities in the area, raising the possibility of transmission to other nursing homes.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

The discovery allowed health officials to keep a close eye on those facilities, which ultimately did not report coronavirus infections of their own.

Instead of that exponential growth, were trying to catch it before it gets too far away from us, Rohr-Allegrini said.

Rohr-Allegrini likened contact tracing to a blend of journalism and detective work. Successfully gathering information involves establishing trust and a rapport with the person, as well as jogging his or her memory with details, such as what the weather was like that day.

Contact tracers need to be able to listen carefully to what a person is saying and ask targeted follow-up questions to determine potential exposures.

They initially focus on contacts within a persons inner circle  household members, co-workers, friends, neighbors  and widen the investigation as necessary.

On ExpressNews.com: A last resort against COVID-19: A ventilator wasn't enough for this 30-year-old patient, so S.A. doctors improvised

Andrea Valadez, who is finishing up her masters degree in public health at the San Antonio campus of the UTHealth School of Public Health, began helping with Metro Healths contact tracing efforts in April. Valadez, 26, who previously worked for the health department doing case management for women infected with hepatitis B, was in a good position to assist with coronavirus investigations.

Twice a week, she dons a face mask and drives to a building at Brooks. For hours at a time, she makes initial contact tracing calls from an office, rather than in person, because of the contagious nature of the virus.

The interviews can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the complexity of the case. She fills out forms, logging the number of contacts and duration for each, and creates a timeline of the persons movements, starting two days before the onset of symptoms.

Particular attention is paid to interactions that could have exposed people who are vulnerable to severe complications from the virus, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing health problems.

Shes found most of the exposures shes examined have occurred through workplaces and household contacts.

Valadez said she has been surprised by how cooperative most people are, as some of the questions might feel invasive. At times, contact tracing for other diseases can be like pulling teeth, she said, but not so with the coronavirus.

Its something that everybodys aware of right now, and people are understanding the importance of it, she said.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Valadezs school. She is enrolled at the UTHealth School of Public Healths San Antonio campus.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Lauren, become a subscriber. lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
NEW YORK and TORONTO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. ("iAnthus" or the "Company") (CSE: IAN,OTCQX: ITHUF), which owns, operates, and partners with regulated cannabis operations across the United States, announces the resignation of Mark Dowley from its Board of Directors. Mr. Dowley joined the Company on December 5, 2019 as part of the formation of the Company's independent Board of Directors, which includes Joy Chen, Diane M. Ellis, Michael P. Muldowney, and Robert M. Whelan, Jr.

"On behalf of the entire iAnthus team, I want to thank Mark for his contributions as we navigate through these unprecedented times," said Randy Maslow, iAnthus President and Interim CEO. "Mark is one of the most savvy business and marketing strategists. As a founder and Chairman of Art and Science Partners, Mark brought keen insights on strategic brand planning, creative strategy and execution. The entire iAnthus team wishes Mark our best in all his endeavors."

About iAnthus

iAnthus owns and operates best-in-class licensed cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensary facilities throughout the United States, providing investors diversified exposure to the U.S. regulated cannabis industry. Founded by entrepreneurs with decades of experience in operations, investment banking, corporate finance, law and health care services, iAnthus provides a unique combination of capital and hands-on operating and management expertise. iAnthus currently has a presence in 11 states, and operates 33 dispensaries (AZ-4, MA-1, MD-3, FL-14, NY-3, CO-1, VT-1 and NM-6 where iAnthus has minority ownership). For more information, visit www.iAnthus.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in iAnthus' periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should, our vision" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements relating to the Company's future financial performance, business development, and results of operations.

Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. iAnthus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and iAnthus does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

SOURCE iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc.

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Bloomberg photo by Brent Lewin.

Toronto-Dominion Bank said it expects to record about C$1.1 billion ($800 million) in loan-loss provisions for its U.S. retail division in its fiscal second quarter, the result of the coronavirus pandemic's economic impact.

The Toronto-based lender also will have about C$600 million of set-asides tied to U.S. credit cards that consist primarily of its retailer partners' share of provisions for credit losses, Toronto-Dominion said Friday in a statement. Those are fully offset through corporate non-interest expenses and won't have an impact on earnings, the bank said. Its U.S. credit-card retail partners include Target Corp. and Nordstrom Inc.
The NSW police watchdog has found officers who unlawfully strip searched children at music festivals, an Aboriginal boy on the street, and other victims of illegal procedures, didn't understand the law and lacked the training to abide by it.

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission urged NSW Police to adopt a firm policy on exactly when strip searches should be conducted after one officer conceded to a public inquiry all 19 strip searches he conducted at a festival may have been illegal.

Police were found to have broken the law multiple times during the strip search of a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy in a regional town.

The government oversight body also criticised police over the lack of privacy they provided people being made to undress, and dismissed notions that the belief that many festival patrons concealing drugs in internal cavities amounted to enough reasonable suspicion to search.

Officers' reliance upon festivalgoers becoming nervous when confronted by police and sniffer dogs was equally problematic, the commission found.
The term Chinese virus has been labelled hate speech by San Antonio's city council.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who put forward the now-passed resolution, blamed the use of the terms Chinese virus and Kung Fu virus for a rise in hate speech during the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Texas city will now ask its citizens to 'report any such antisemitic, discriminatory or racist incidents to the proper authorities for investigation', according to San Antonio's WOAI-TV.

US senator Ted Cruz blasted the decision as 'nuts'. He added that the council were acting like 'a lefty college faculty lounge'.

In a tweet on Thursday he wrote: 'This is NUTS. SA City Council behaving like a lefty college faculty lounge, triggered by Chick-fil-A & the words "Wuhan virus".

Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who put forward the now-passed resolution, blamed the use of the terms Chinese virus and Kung Fu virus for a rise in hate speech during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured, San Antonio city council in session

'If they want to investigate someone, start with NYT & CNN who both repeatedly (and rightly) referred to it as 'the Chinese coronavirus.'

It comes after US president Donald Trump sparked criticism by referring to Covid-19 as the Chinese virus. Trump responded to complaints by saying he just meant the term geographically and would stop if it bothered Asian-Americans.

'It's not racist at all,' Trump said during one press conference after a reporter asked why he kept using the term. He added: 'It comes from China, that's why.'

Explaining the decision, Mayor Nirenberg revealed 'there has been a rise in hate speech throughout the course of this pandemic'.

He said: 'Our efforts must meet the indiscriminate nature of COVID-19 with empathy and compassion for all our neighbors.'

City councilors voted 11-0 in favor of the resolution.

One Chinese restaurant, the Golden Star in the city's downtown area, has been hit particularly badly by racist abuse, according to Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales.

US senator Ted Cruz (pictured on January 23) has slammed the city council's decision to stop use of the term, adding that the council were acting like 'a lefty college faculty lounge'

She said: 'It's been in operation for almost 90 years. They have been the victims of hate speech and hate crimes, with vandalism and that sort of thing on their property.'

Asian-Americans have reported 650 racist attacks over the course of a week in March, according to online reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate.

'The data from our reporting center - both the numbers and the self-reported narratives - clearly reveal that Asian Americans are being racially profiled as threatening, disease-carriers,' said Russell Jeung, Ph.D., chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

'Not only are Chinese Americans blamed and mistreated, but Asian Americans of other ethnic backgrounds are also.'

Senator Cruz called the decision to label the term Chinese virus as 'nuts' as he blasted the San Antonio city council

Anyone in the city who faces racism or hate speech is encouraged to 'report any incidents to the proper authorities for investigation'

As of Wednesday there were 33,912 positive coronavirus cases in Texas and 925 people in the state had died of the disease

Reports range from attackers spitting and coughing over their victims, to being refused rides in Ubers or Lyfts and being told to leave shops.

As of Wednesday there were 33,912 positive coronavirus cases in Texas and 925 people in the state had died of the disease.

It comes after Texas Governor Greg Abbott was recorded admitting that reopening Texas amid the coronavirus pandemic will lead to more infections.

Abbott announced in a media briefing last week that the state would 'strategically' allow businesses such as malls, movie theaters and restaurants to run at 25 per cent capacity and said 'it's only logical to see there would be an increase in the number of people that test positive'.

But in a Friday call with lawmakers Abbott directly linked the reopening to the spread of COVID-19, while stating that his goal was not to eliminate the disease but only get the number of reported cases reduced.

'How do we know reopening businesses won't result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?' Abbott is heard asking in the audio obtained by The Daily Beast.

'Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopeningwhether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of societyin the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It's almost ipso facto.'

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his plan to reopen the state's economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, Tuesday, May 5

Malls reopened Tuesday with increased health and safety measures in place. Texas' stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic expired and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott eased restrictions on many businesses

The authenticity of the conversation, first reported by The Quorum Report, with members of the state legislature and Congress was confirmed by the governor's spokesperson.

In the recording Abbott goes on to admit that he is not aiming to eradicate the virus in the state and knows that allowing people to gather again will cause the infection rate to spike.

'The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility is for transmission,' Abbott continued. 'The goal never has been to get transmission down to zero and never can be to keep transmission down to zero.'

He added: 'There's always going to be, with a rapidly transmittable disease like this, there will always be a level of transmission. And even when you have an immunization come out, there will be a transmission rate for COVID-19.'

Texas shutdown March 20 and from Friday Abbott will allow beauty salons to reopen. Next Friday gyms can reopen.

Despite earlier stating that the actual infection rate is likely to increase, Abbott stated that his priority was to see a decrease in the number of people who test positive.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is briefed backstage before entering a press conference announcing Abbott's plan to reopen the state's economy amid the coronavirus pandemic

Beachgoers enjoy a day of sunshine at Galveston Beach on May 2, in Galveston, Texas after beaches opened on May 1

Protesters called for an end to the lockdown outside the Texas State Capital building on April 18 in Austin

'The goal is to reopen using strategies that are proven strategies that can continue to contain the spread of COVID-19,' Abbott explained. 'These are strategies that have been proven effective in the state of Texas for the past month and a half.

'This may come up in answer to a future question, but the main thing that we look forand this is the primary number that I've seen doctors and epidemiologists useis that what we want to see is a reduction in the percentage of people who test positive.

'If we can continue to achieve that, that means that we have COVID-19 under the control that we need. And that's what we're looking to achieve.'

Abbott has focused on having a thousand more people recovered than active cases. In a media briefing Tuesday he said the trend in more recoveries than active cases was going for the fourth day in a row.

Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Manny Garcia said in a statement: 'Republicans are not here to protect you or your family. Governor Abbott finally admitted that prematurely opening Texas is going to lead to more cases and more deaths. Republicans are putting our families lives at risk so their billionaire donors can get richer. What Texas Republicans say in public yet again doesnt match what they say in private.

Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Manny Garcia

'It is absolutely shameful Governor Abbott wont face the press, take the tough questions, and admit the deadly risks of his decisions. He knew people would die after reopening Texas and now he needs to own it.'

Progress Texas responded in a statement: 'Gov. Abbott is trying to normalize an increase in cases to make people think the illnesses and deaths are not surprising. He wants to say this isn't news. Really?

'There is no bigger news than a government leader confessing to us that there will be an increase in illnesses and deaths from his actions. Texans are concerned for their families, neighbors, and communities, yet Gov. Abbott plows ahead while following orders from Donald Trump.'

A representative for Abbott said the governor has maintained his stance from the audio since the beginning, adding that 'as we begin to open up, we will see flare ups, whether we open now or three months from now'.

The spokesperson, John Wittman added: 'The key is ensuring we are able to contain that spread, which is where contact tracing comes into play.'

However in past interviews Abbott had claimed the increase in infection rate would be because of increased testing.

In one interview Abbott said that 'when you begin to reopen, there can be spikes or increases in those who test positive for COVID-19'. 'This is nothing to be worried about,' he said. 'In part, because we will be doing far more testing in the future than we have in the past and that alone will identify more people testing positive.'

In Texas Wednesday morning there were 33,912 coronavirus cases and 925 deaths.

Dallas and HarrisHouston counties were worst affected with more than 4,000 cases and Harris-non-Houston county had more than 3,000 cases.

It was closely followed by Tarrant, Bexar, Fort Bend and El Paso counties which all had more than one or two thousand cases.

The reopenings come after protests from people claiming the lockdowns are a violation of their rights.
Heritage Florida Jewish News is accepting nominations for the 2020 Heritage Human Service Award, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando in August.

For more than 30 years, individuals who have made major, voluntary contributions of their talent, time, energy and effort to the Central Florida community have been honored with the selection and presentation of this award, said Jeff Gaeser, editor and publisher of the Heritage. Last years recipient was Dick Weiner. Former recipients have included Stuart Farb (2010)), Burt Chasnov (2008), and Bob Yarmuth (2004).

According to Gaeser, Each recipient chose their own path, but made considerable and long-lasting contributions to the Jewish community. Nominees for the 2020 award are individuals who do not look for recognition, but perform tikkun olamrepairing the worldout of internal motivation.

Nominations should be emailed to news@orlandoheritage.com with the subject Human Service Award, or typed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and sent by mail to Heritage Florida Jewish News, Human Service Award, 207 OBrien Road, Suite 101, Fern Park, FL 32730. Included should be the name and phone number of the nominee, a documented list of his or her accomplishments, and the name and phone number of the nominator(s).

The Heritage is accepting nominations until Friday, June 26.
A 40-year-old migrant



worker was on Friday found dead in a quarantine centre in Ganjam district where he was lodged after returning from Surat in Gujarat, a police official said.

The deceased was kept at the quarantine centre set up at Dhunkapada high school in Polasara block since Tuesday after he arrived from Surat in a train, Ganjam Superintendent of Police Brijesh Kumar Rai said.

A police team rushed to the quarantine centre and launched an inquiry into the death of the migrant worker while the body was sent for post-mortem.

The exact cause of the death will be known only after getting the post-mortem report, said the SP.

Polsara MLA Srikant Sahu visited the house of the deceased and also held discussion with officials about the incident.

COVID-19 positive cases have been found among migrant workers who have returned to the district from Surat, officials said.

At least 43 persons tested positive for COVID-19 in the district on Friday, officials said.

Migrant workers from Odisha, who were stranded in Surat city due to the lockdown, have been returning to the eastern state by buses and trains after the Centre allowed their movement.

Nearly three lakh Odia workers mostly from Ganjam district are engaged in diamond cutting, textiles and other works in Surat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prosecutors in Istanbul charged seven people today over their alleged involvement in a former auto executive-turned-fugitives daring escape from Japan.

Four pilots and an airline official are accused of illegally smuggling a migrant, which can carry a sentence of up to eight years in prison, Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Two flight attendants are also charged with failing to report a crime.

Carlos Ghosn, a former chairman of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi automaker alliance, stands accused of financial misconduct in Japan, which he denies. Japanese authorities allege he underreported his income by tens of millions of dollars when he served as head of Nissan, and used company funds for his personal use.

After his arrest in 2018, Ghosn spent months in a Japanese prison before he was released on a $14 million bail. His trial in Japan was scheduled for April.

Exactly how he managed to escape house arrest and flee to Beirut is unclear, although Ghosns wife has denied reports that he evaded 24-hour surveillance while concealed in a musical instrument case.

Turkish prosecutors allege he first flew from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul before getting onto a Beirut-bound charter plane in December.

Shortly afterward, the Turkish company MNG Jet said two of its planes were used illegally in Ghosns escape and that an employee falsified records to exclude Ghosns name from flight manifests. The seven suspects were detained Jan. 2.

Once he turned up in Lebanon, Ghosn issued a statement saying he had escaped injustice and political persecution. Ghosn is a citizen of Lebanon, which doesnt have an extradition treaty with Japan.
A car that was allegedly speeding in outer Delhis Mundka on Wednesday evening ran over three peopletwo 10-year-old boys playing on the street and a meat seller who tried to come to their rescuethe police said.

The car dragged the two boys for a brief distance and they died on the spot while the 22-year-old meat seller succumbed to his injuries at a hospital, A Koan, deputy commissioner of police (outer district), said.

The driver, 43-year-old Udayraj (identified by his first name only), abandoned the car and fled the spot, but the police apprehended him later. The public thrashed his friend, Rajeev (identified by his first name only), who was in the car, before the police could rescue him. Rajeev, who works at a footwear manufacturing unit, was drunk. The car driver, however, was sober, a police officer said.

The family members of one of the dead boys are daily wage labourers. His parents are so poor that they dont have money to even buy food, let alone arrange an ambulance or any other vehicle to take his body to the burial ground. The local police took his body for burial in their emergency response vehicle (ERV) and pooled in money to provide the family with ration to help them for a few weeks, DCP Koan said.

The other boy lived with his family in the Lekhram Park neighbourhood of Mundka, the same area where his friend lived.

Around 3.30pm on Wednesday, the two boys were playing on the street in Murga Market near their home when a speeding Maruti Celerio car ran over the boys. A meat seller, Mahesh, who was near his shop at that time ran to save the boys, but he also ended up getting mowed down by the car, another investigator said.

The police said the car juddered to a stop and Udayraj abandoned his vehicle and friend to escape from the scene. He left an allegedly inebriated Rajeev behind.

The three victims, meanwhile, were rushed to a hospital, but they couldnt be saved.

At Rajeevs instance, the police were able to arrest Udayraj. The duo had driven into Delhi from Bahadurgarh via an offbeat road. They were found to have flouted lockdown rules and have been booked under the Indian Penal Code Section 188 (disobedience to order promulgated by a government servant), the officer said.

Udayraj, meanwhile, has additionally been booked for causing death due to negligence and rash driving, the DCP said. He runs a factory and lives in the nearby Geetanjali Enclave.

While the families of one of the boys and Mahesh were able to cremate them, the second boys family had to approach the police for help. Apart from providing them with our ERV to take his body to the burial ground, the local police also pooled in 7,000 for their ration. We have also promised to pay their rent in the coming months, Surendra Sandhu, station house officer of Mundka police station, said.

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United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ahunna Eziakonwa, talks to Africa Renewals Kingsley Ighobor on COVID-19, its impact on African economies and how the UN is assisting. Here are excerpts:

Africa Renewal: What is the impact of COVID-19 on Africa so far?

Ms. Eziakonwa: Well, it has become clear now that COVID-19 is not just a health crisis, it is also a development pandemic as well, with catastrophic impacts globally and especially in Africa. Even before COVID-19 hit, there were many development challenges in Africa. Some countries such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are emerging from conflict.

In the Sahel region, countries are battling violent extremism. We have socio-economic challenges in the Lake Chad region and in the Horn of Africa after a locust invasion that compromised food security. We already have many healthcare problems on the continent, HIV and AIDS being one of them. And it is not long ago that West Africa had to deal with Ebola, which also crashed economies and health systems and institutions in affected countries. Recovery for affected countries was ongoing.

The other side of that is that prior to COVID-19, Africa was seen as emerging. Despite the problems in some parts of the continent, a sense of promise and hope was starting to develop, with some of the highest performing economies being on the continent. We had a sense of an emerging demographic of young industrialists, people in financial technology developing mobile money. And we had recently signed the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)agreement, which also boosted the confidence of the continent as a serious place for investment. The COVID-19 pandemic is shattering that hope, that promise, and that confidence.

By the numbers: Impact on economic growth

We have seen the UN Economic Commission for Africa revise projections downwards, showing growth contraction of up to -2.6% from over 3% growth. This could push up to 27 million people into poverty. We have now a region that is stripped of its own sources of financing for development. Oil prices that were already low have tumbled yet over 40% of Africa's exports is in that industry. Countries like Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon that are key exporters of oil are really suffering. Also, prices of commodities such as coffee and cocoa are now projected much lower than previously, and overall trade has dropped by at least 30%.

We have reduced remittances, which are a key source of household incomes and a major share of GDP in Africaranging from 5% of GDP to 23% in countries like Lesotho and more than 12% in the Comoros, Gambia and Liberia. The air transport sector that provides opportunities for a lot of small and medium enterprises and employs 6.2 million people on the continent, has been hit hard. And then of course we see Africa's strongest companies and industries already showing distress.

We see a lethal combination of these losses. FDI could crash perhaps up to -15%. We don't know the full extent of COVID-19 impact, but projections look extremely severe for the continent.

Is it time to panic?

Panic is never a word that should accompany good leadership and a spirit of resilience. If Africa goes into panic, it weakens. It must resolve to fight. So, despite the COVID-19 rising numbers, it's time to get serious on how to get ahead of the curve. We now have over 20,000 confirmed cases in Africa. However, African countries still have a fighting chance because we had a bit of a head start compared to other regionsa chance to either get ahead of the curve or flatten the curve.

This is why it is important to take seriously the mitigation efforts, boosting the health centres, making sure protection exists for health workers. While we need to ensure that Africa is following the rest of the world in adopting social distancing measures, these have to be adapted to the African context. We need to make sure that such measures do not alienate the poorer members of society

How is the UN is helping out?

The UN system has come together under the leadership of the Secretary General Antonio Guterres who recently released a framework for addressing socioeconomic impact of this pandemic. This is, an umbrella platform to bring all the different strands together, recognizing that this is not just a health or economic crisis but has a multi-dimensional impact on countries.

So, WHO is leading on health response and FAO on food insecurity because people are hungry and malnutrition is rising. The humanitarian side is led by OCHA. And then you have the socio-economic impact that UNDP has been asked to lead. The socio-economic piece is particularly important for Africa because we are talking about shuttered economies. UNDP is leading the socio-economic impact recovery aspect at the country level, supporting countries to first generate evidence of impact and then make informed decisions on how to tackle it.

What areas will UNDP focus on to help countries recover from this pandemic?

Another area we are helping countries with is recovery. How do countries rebuild better, stronger, cleaner and greener?

What is happening now is unpredictable, uncertain and dynamic. We must understand how COVID-19 is impacting different parts of society: youth, women, the vulnerable groups, and so on. It means looking at climate change opportunities.

We are helping governments get all necessary information and to devise recovery strategies. We are also helping governments to stay in business. This crisis has led to the lockdown of governments. How then do they continue to operate and work virtually? In some cases, UNDP has helped to develop business continuity plans and provided digital tools to government so that they can continue to operate.

UNDP is also helping countries activities around health systems. In the area of social protection, the measures in place need to include the protection of the vulnerable in the society. So, we are helping conduct assessments to see who is vulnerable and who needs what. For example, in Burkina Faso, after a lockdown because their numbers were rising, UNDP helped the government devise a plan to keep markets open, because those markets are critical to livelihoods. So how do you continue market activities safely? So, these are the key pillars of our intervention at the national level. At the regional level, we are supporting the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which the African Union has appointed to be at the front of the response.

For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus
Small businesses in Queensland who have missed out on state government coronavirus relief may see another injection of cash soon.

Both the NSW and Victorian governments have offered $10,000 grants to struggling small businesses that have been decimated by the coronavirus lockdowns.

Queensland cafes and restaurants can offer takeaway food only at the moment. Credit:Glenn Hunt

The Queensland government launched a $500 million loans scheme in April, but funding was snapped up fast, leaving hundreds, if not thousands of businesses, without relief.

When quizzed on Facebook about the possibility of Queensland cash grants, Labor backbencher Megan Scanlon hinted an announcement was on the way.
An MiG-29 fighter jet belonging to the Indian Air Force crashed in Punjab. The jet crashed in Chuharpur village after it developed a technical glitch. The MiG-29 burst into flames soon after it crashed into a field in the village.

The fighter jet was on a training mission near Jalandhar. There has been no casualty so far. The MiG-29 pilot ejected safely and was subsequently rescued by a helicopter, stated the Indian Air Force.

One Mig-29 aircraft airborne on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar met with an accident. The aircraft had developed a technical snag&the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft. A Court of Inquiry has been ordered:Indian Air Force (IAF) pic.twitter.com/EPwKNoqtbn - ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2020

"On 08 May 20, at 10:45 am, one MiG-29 aircraft airborne on a training mission from an Air Force base near Jalandhar met with an accident. The aircraft had developed a technical snag and the pilot ejected safely as he was unable to control the aircraft. The pilot has been rescued by a helicopter," a statement issued by IAF said.

The air force stated that a Court of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident.

Also read: After Vizag gas leak, boiler blast in Neyveli Lignite unit leaves 8 injured in Cuddalore

Also read: Vizag gas tragedy: Andhra Police dismisses reports of second leak, says regular maintenance work
NLC India fell 0.46% to Rs 43.70 after the company said eight workers were injured in a fire accident at the TS II power plant in Neyveli, Tamil Nadu.

NLC India said the fire broke out at one of the boilers at the TS II power plant at Neyveli at around 5 pm on Thursday (7 May). The accident resulted in burn injuries to two regular employees and six contract workers. The fire was brought under control by the fire wing of CISF unit of NLCIL.

Following the incident, two other generating units of 210 MW capacity each have also been shut down and these units will be restored for power generation only after all safety aspects have been taken care of which is expected to be completed shortly, the company said in a statement.

The company said it has constituted a six member committee headed by a general manager to enquire into the incident and give its findings at the earliest for taking further necessary action.

NLC India had resumed operations at Neyveli mines from 8 April 2020 onwards.

On a consolidated basis, the company reported a 15.03% rise in net profit to Rs 398.75 crore on a 2.13% rise in net sales to Rs 2,742.60 crore in Q3 December 2019 over Q3 December 2018.

NLC India is a 'Navratna' government of India company in the fossil fuel mining sector in India and thermal power generation. It annually produces about 30 million tonne lignite from opencast mines at Neyveli in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India and at Barsingsar in Bikaner district of Rajasthan state.

The Government of India holds 80.70% stake in the company as on 31 December 2019.

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NEW YORK, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young (www.say.org) is thrilled to announce its first-ever LIVE Virtual Benefit Under One Moon on Friday, May 15, 2020 at 6:00 PM EST. This free, live stream event will be simulcast on Facebook Live (@sayorg) and YouTube (SAYorg), to raise crucial funds in support of SAY's life-changing programs for young people who stutter. Under One Moon promises to be a star-studded spectacular of great friends, surprise appearances, and inspiring performances.

Celebrity friends currently scheduled to appear include Everett Bradley, Alex Brightman, Frank DiLella, Brandon Victor Dixon, Rachel Dratch, Victor Garber, Heidi Gardner, Mariska Hargitay, Peter Hermann, James Monroe Iglehart, Alex Lacamoire, Helen Mirren, Greg Naughton, Kelli O'Hara, Krysta Rodriguez, and many more, sharing a virtual stage with the kids of SAY.

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, SAY took immediate action to offer remote online access to all in-person programming to comply with social distancing regulations, and then quickly began to reimagine essential fundraising events. "It was pivotal for us to connect with our community and reassure them that SAY was here and we would never stop working to support and uplift them. Our fundraising events are an integral part of our ability to service young people who stutter and their families, so our first live virtual benefit, Under One Moon, was born," says SAY's Executive Director, Noah Cornman. SAY's expanded social media outreach has included daily Camp SAY Morning Songs on Instagram Live, featuring frequent guest appearances by several of the organization's celebrity supporters. "The incredible public response we've received to Morning Song really helped spark the idea for this exciting live stream benefit," Cornman notes.

It is fitting that Under One Moon will premiere during National Stuttering Awareness Week, running from May 11-17, 2020. NSAW was conceived to shine a global light on stuttering, a complex fluency disorder that touches over 70 million people worldwide, including 5% of all children. "Children who stutter often face daily ridicule, teasing and bullying, and resort to silence to hide their stutter. Many will withdraw from peers, teachers, and society, leaving them feeling isolated and alone," states Travis Robertson, SAY's Vice President of Programming. "This live stream virtual benefit has the potential to reach a global audience, so we are excited to celebrate the voices of young people who stutter with the world! And to help these amazing kids understand that nothing should hold them back from anything they dream of doing. National Stuttering Awareness Week is an opportune time for that message to truly resonate.''

Proceeds from Under One Moon will help SAY provide vital programming for kids and teens who stutter, including Camp SAY, Camp SAY Across the USA, Speech Therapy, Confident Voices creative arts curriculum, and the newly launched Washington DC-based SAY: DC. "SAY would not be the organization it is today without the support of so many amazing people. The funds raised by Under One Moon will help keep SAY's life-changing, and life-saving programs available to every child who stutters. And that's more important now than it ever has been," Cornman adds.

SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides support, advocacy and life-changing experiences for young people who stutter, ages 3-18. Since 2001, SAY has offered comprehensive and innovative programs that address the physical, social, and emotional impacts of stuttering. Through summer camp, regional day camps, speech therapy, and creative arts programming, SAY builds a community of acceptance, friendship, and encouragement where young people who stutter can develop the confidence and communication skills they need to thrive. To date, no child has ever been turned away due to a family's inability to pay.

To learn more about SAY's live stream virtual benefit, Under One Moon, visit www.SAYBenefit.org.

SOURCE The Stuttering Association For The Young

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www.say.org


President Akufo-Addo in his fifth address to the nation on containing the COVID-19 pandemic directed the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Community Water Systems, and private water tankers to supply water free of charge to all communities.

Except for communities in the Adaklu Kodzobi Electoral Area, which are being supplied with water by GWCL, about 70 communities in the District are relying on dams and rivers some, said to have dried up.

Mr Moses Eworvor, Assemblyman for Hlihave Electoral Area told the Ghana News Agency that people from Davanya and Hekope in his area had to travel to Mafi Kumase, a distance of 15 kilometers daily to buy water for use.

He described the situation as alarming and said it was having an adverse effect on their economic activities.

Mr Nat-Lord Kofie, Assemblyman for Goefe said the situation was not different in his area as the dam they were relying on had dried up completely, making it difficult for them to have access to potable water.

He said though there was a borehole at Goefe, it could not serve all the communities in the area.

Mr Eli Keti, Assemblyman for Kpetsu said when he contacted GWCL for assistance, he was told that they only served their customers but could give them free water if they brought their water tanker.

Mr. Phanuel Kudi Assemblyman for Waya said they were relying on River Tordzie as drinking water and for other domestic uses.

Mr Eworvor said when he contacted the District Assembly for its water tanker to draw water from GWCL for his community, he was told the community would have to pay GH300.00 per trip and also allegedly give the driver GH 50.00 because he was not an employee of the Assembly.

Mr Phanuel Donkor Kadey, the District Chief Executive told the GNA that the tanker service by the Assembly was free and that, "the GH350.00 was only for fuel for the tanker."

The Assemblymen appealed to the Assembly to take a second look at the condition attached to the tanker and provide water to the communities to help stop the spread of COVID-19 as directed by the President.

---GNA
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Tekashi 69 just broke the record for Instagram Live viewers as he broadcast an epic rant on Friday following his release from jail last month.

Two million people tuned into to listen to the 24-year-old rapper (real name Daniel Hernandez) as he defended his decision to cooperate with federal authorities in the racketeering case against him and the Nine Trey Bloods gang.

Tekashi is now under house arrest and even showed off an ankle monitor in his new music video for GOOBA, which he also dropped Friday.

He's back: Tekashi 69 just broke the record for Instagram Live viewers as he broadcast an epic rant on Friday after his release from jail

In his livestream Tekashi danced to Bad Boys while toying with a pair of handcuffs, seemingly poking fun at his incarceration.

He also admitted to being a snitch, questioned who he should be loyal to, and bragged about his money and music, claiming 'Im the biggest artist in the world'.

The rainbow-haired artist also dropped his first track since being imprisoned along with an appropriately colorful music video for song GOOBA.

It features plenty of women twerking and Tekashi showing off a massive shark pendant around his neck. His ankle monitor is also seen on his right leg.

'Still the king': Tekashi bragged about his 2M viewers shortly after his livestream

His Instagram rant and music drop came after rapper Meek Mill hit out at the New York rapper, writing on Twitter: 'I hope that rat going live to apologize to the people he told on or the victim..... Yall forgot that fast a rat killed nipsey he wasnt suppose to be on the streets!

'Thats the only thing ima day [sic] because hes dead... left his baby mom and child like a coward as targets!'

Meek was referring to Eric Holder, the man accused of murdering his friend Nipsey Hussle last year, who was allegedly also a 'rat'.

Rainbow boy: The artist then dropped the music video for his new track GOOBA

Under house arrest: He showed off his ankle monitor in the video

New bling: Also showcased in the video was Tekashi's massive shark pendant

Tekashi responded tweeting: 'Imagine having a newborn baby come into the world & be pressed about a Mexican with rainbow hair.'

Tekashi 69 got released from prison early last month and is on supervised release.

For the first four months, he'll have a GPS monitor and he will only be allowed to leave the home to seek medical treatment or visit his attorney.

A judge granted his request to be released from jail to avoid getting infected with the coronavirus.

Snitch: The rapper is back with a bang after being jailed on racketeering charges. He ended up getting just two years after a plea deal agreement for testifying against his fellow members of the Trey Nine Gang

Court documents also revealed he was granted his release because the judge felt he wasn't a threat to society and because he had served most of his sentence already.

Tekashi 69 was convicted on racketeering charges, and he was facing a possible life sentence in prison.

But in February 2019, the rapper reached a plea agreement for testifying against fellow members of the Trey Nine Gang.

Curves: Scantily clad dancers show off their moves in the video

Rap star: A dancer dripping in colorful paint twerks for the camera

As a result, he was sentenced to serve just two years in prison, 13 months of which was already served, and he was slated to be released in August on good behavior but now he's a free man after his successful petition for early release due to the spread of COVID-19.

The rapper burst onto the scene in 2017 with his first single Gummo, which peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts.

He released his first mixtape Day 69 in 2018 and his first studio album Dummy Boy in 2018.
New Delhi, May 8 : Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund on Friday issued an unconditional apology to SEBI for its President and CEO Jenny Johnson's recent statement where she indicated that the Indian market's regulator sudden change in guidelines were responsible for the shutting down of six fund mutual fund schemes.

In a statement, the fund house further said Johnson was quoted out of context in some media reports, "which diluted the essence of her response".

It said that headlines and articles "erroneously" suggested that Johnson stated that the SEBI's guidelines on unlisted securities were the main reason for the decision to wind up the schemes.

"This is neither factually correct, nor substantiated by the comments made during the conference call. We deeply regret any misunderstanding this may have caused," it said.

During a recent analyst call, Franklin Templeton's President & CEO said that SEBI's directive of capping mutual funds' exposure to unlisted non-convertible debentures (NCD) at 10 per cent, "orphaned" about one-third of their funds as the unlisted NCDs could not be trade anymore.

The fund house said that Johnson had provided the general background concerning Franklin Templeton's experience in the Indian market as it existed before Covid-19. The reference to the regulations around unlisted securities was intended to be a part of these background statements to provide context to an audience unfamiliar with Indian markets, it added.

"We deeply regret any unintended slight this may have caused to the esteemed offices of SEBI whom we have always held in the highest regard and unconditionally apologize for the same," the Franklin Templeton statement said.

The statement, comes after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) late on Thursday advised Franklin Templeton Mutual fund to focus on returning money to investors, in the context of winding up six of their debt schemes.

SEBI also said that a section of the media has reported quoting the company that tightening of norms for investment in unlisted debt by SEBI was one of the factors that added to pressure on theirdebt schemes which resulted in winding up of their schemes.

"In the current scenario, Franklin Templeton should focus on returning the money of investors as soon as possible," SEBI said in a statement.
An Accra High Court has granted bail to eight persons accused of being part of a plot to destabilise the country and overthrow the government.



Each of the eight persons was granted bail in the sum of Gh10 milllion with two sureties to be justified, by the court, presided over by Justice Samuel Asiedu, a Justice of the Court of Appeal with additional responsibility as a High Court judge.



With the justification, the sureties must show prove that they have proprieties worth the Ghc10 million bail sum .



The eight accused persons are Dr Frederick Mac-Palm, the man accused of masterminding the alleged plot, Colonel Samuel Kodzo Gameli, Donya Kafui, Bright Alan Debrah Ofosu, Johannes Zipki, Corporal Seidu Abubakar, Lance Corporal Ali Solomon and Corporal Sylvester Akanpewon.



As part of the bail conditions, the court also ordered the accused persons to deposit their passports to the registrar of the court and also report to the police twice every week .



The eight were granted bail following an application by their lawyer, Mr Kodzoga Adawudu.



The bail was opposed by the prosecutor, Ms Hilda Craig, a Senior State Attorney



The eight are part of a group of 10 people accused of being part of Take Action Ghana (TAG), a group the state accused of plotting to destabilise the country and overthrow the government.



Two other accused persons - Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dr Benjamin Agordzo and Warrant Officer (II) Esther Saan Dekuwine are already on bail.



Committed to stand trial



On March 3, 2020, the Kaneshie District Court committed the 10 accused persons to stand trial at the High Court.



The trial is expected to start on June 5,2020 with the empaneling of a jury .



Charges



Dr Mac-Palm, Kafui, Debrah, Dekuwine, Abubakar, L/Cpl Akanpewon and Zikpi have been charged with conspiracy to commit treason felony and treason felony, while Dr Mac-Palm and Kafui have been separately charged with conspiracy to possess explosives and ammunition without lawful excuse and possession of explosives and ammunition without lawful excuse.



Col. Gameli and ACP Dr Agordzo have been charged with abetment to treason felony.



Alleged killing of President



The facts of the case as presented by Ms Craig was that TAG plotted to destabilise the country and overthrow the government.



The prosecution claimed that, as part of the plot, Dr Mac-Palm, who is accused of being the mastermind of the plot, Kafui and Debrah planned on kidnapping the President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of Parliament and the Chief of the Defence Staff and also force the President to announce his overthrow.



Again, there were discussions on whether or not to kill the President in the process of overthrowing the government, she said.



The prosecutor added that in June 2018, the security agencies picked up intelligence that the accused persons, under the auspices of TAG, had planned to overthrow and take over the government.



According to her, as part of the plan, Col. Gameli recruited Zikpi, who was a signal specialist with the GAF, to help jam the radio signals of the National Communications Authority.



TAG, she said, planned to jam all radio stations, with the exception of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.



The prosecutor said in furtherance of the plot, Dr Mac-Palm invited Kafui, who was a blacksmith at Alavanyo, to Accra to manufacture explosives and pistols for



With regard to ACP Dr Agordzo, she said he donated GH2,000 to TAG to aid its cause and also drafted a speech for Dr Mac-Palm to be read at the planned demonstration by TAG.





Source: Daily Graphic









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TOKYO, May 8, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Limited and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.together accomplished an industry-leading landmark by successfully completing a 5G NR data call with a multi-gigabit connection using 5G sub-6 GHz carrier aggregation(1). The connection was established using non-standalone architecture, aggregating a non-contiguous spectrum on 3.5 GHz (n78) and 4.9 GHz (n79) bands. The companies achieved this milestone utilizing a Fujitsu 5G New Radio (NR) base station and a 5G smartphone form factor test device powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System.Achieving more than 3 Gbps speeds(2) using sub-6 GHz spectrum, this connection is the companies' first demonstration of 5G carrier aggregation, which builds upon the history of Qualcomm Technologies' technical successes such as the first 5G data connection on a modem chipset, the first 5G mmWave over-the-air call, the first 5G data call over-the-air using spectrum sharing and a recent Voice-over-NR call. The Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System can support peak speeds up to 5 Gbps by aggregating 200 MHz across select 5G sub-6 GHz bands. 5G sub-6 GHz carrier aggregation provides operators with greater flexibility to boost 5G performance utilizing their diverse spectrum assets, allowing them to improve network capacity and performance. 5G carrier aggregation helps to improve 5G speeds and reliability in challenging wireless conditions, allowing consumers to experience smoother video streaming and faster downloads."This milestone with Fujitsu allows us to unlock 5G's potential for seamless and pervasive connectivity," said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "As the world's leading wireless innovator, Qualcomm Technologies continuously develops solutions that enhance the end-to-end network experiences people rely on every day, and we're proud to collaborate with Fujitsu to demonstrate the benefits carrier aggregation brings to 5G and consumers.""Our successful completion of this 5G carrier aggregation data call exemplifies Fujitsu and Qualcomm Technologies' collaborative, long-term approach to leading the evolution of 5G," said Masaki Taniguchi, Senior Vice President, Mobile System Business Unit,Fujitsu. "We are excited to elevate the use of 5G carrier aggregation to bring benefits for both operators and customers, and look forward to future work with Qualcomm Technologies to enhance what's possible for 5G networks."As more operators enable support for 5G carrier aggregation, they will be able to rely on the Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems and Fujitsu's network infrastructure solutions to improve network capacity and performance by taking advantage of non-contiguous spectrum assets. Carrier aggregation is an important feature in the evolution of 5G networks to enhance system capacity, boost reliability in weak signal conditions, and deliver higher peak speeds - improving user experiences in existing applications and enabling new use cases in the future.Commercial devices featuring carrier aggregation capabilities and powered by the Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System are expected to be available later this year. For more information visit qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-x55-5g-modem.(1) Carrier Aggregation Technology to combine multiple spectrum bands by aggregating component carriers (CC). Throughput enhancement is achieved through the resulting increase in bandwidth.(2) Achieving more than 3 Gbps speeds In non-standalone mode of operation; two CC carrier aggregation in Japanese Sub-6 GHz spectrum bands (bandwidth: 2CC x 100MHz/CC, 4-layer, 256-QAM, TDD 8:2 (DL:UL), sub-carrier spacing: 30KHz)About QualcommQualcomm is the world's leading wireless technology innovator and the driving force behind the development, launch, and expansion of 5G. When we connected the phone to the internet, the mobile revolution was born. Today, our foundational technologies enable the mobile ecosystem and are found in every 3G, 4G and 5G smartphone. We bring the benefits of mobile to new industries, including automotive, the internet of things, and computing, and are leading the way to a world where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly. Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering, research and development functions, and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business.About FujitsuFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 132,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (Code: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.0 trillion yen (US $36 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.:Pete Lancia, Corporate CommunicationsPhone: 1-858-845-5959E-mail: corpcomm@qualcomm.comMauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Investor RelationsPhone: 1-858-651-1387E-mail: ir@qualcomm.comSource: Fujitsu LtdCopyright 2020 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
A Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) official posted in Kolkata has succumbed to COVID-19, officials said on Friday.

He is the second CISF official to die of coronavirus.

The Assistant Sub Inspector rank official was posted at the Indian Museum security unit of the force in West Bengal's capital city.

On Thursday, a CISF head constable posted at the Mumbai international airport had succumbed to the virus.

This the fifth death from the disease in paramilitary or Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) that work under the command of the Union home ministry.

There have been two deaths each in the CISF and the Border Security Force and one in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

The 1.62 lakh personnel strong force tasked primarily to guard civil airports in the country and vital infrastructure in the aerospace and nuclear domain has 32 active cases of the pandemic till now, as per officials.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WATERLOO REGION  People waiting patiently to reschedule surgeries that were postponed to free up hospital beds will have to wait a little longer.

Hospitals are still weeks away from resuming non-urgent surgeries, Health Minister Christine Elliott told reporters on Thursday after the province released a framework to help hospitals begin planning for the gradual resumption of scheduled surgeries and procedures.

Timelines will vary from hospital to hospital, and the resumption of surgeries will be based on certain criteria, including having a stable supply of personal protective equipment and an adequate number of beds available.

Premier Doug Ford said by pausing these procedures, more than 5,000 acute care beds were opened up in preparation for an expected surge in COVID-19 cases. When surgeries resume, the most urgent cases will addressed first, like cancer and cardiac procedures, he said.

As a province, weve been very successful in creating capacity to ensure that resources are there when patients need them, said Nicole Craven, the director of surgical programs at Cambridge Memorial Hospital.

In mid-March, Ontario hospitals began ramping down elective surgeries. During the month of April, only 244 surgical procedures were done at Cambridge Memorial. This is down roughly 81 per cent from the same month last year, where 1,316 procedures were done.

The surgeries completed now are only the most urgent in nature, where the patients condition is life-threatening, Craven said.

These non-urgent elective surgeries include a range of conditions, from joint replacements, to treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome, and to some cancer treatments.

These are elective cases and while not ideal that people arent having their surgery when it was planned, it should not be life-threatening, Craven said.

As the province looks at easing restrictions on these procedures, we need to ensure that our bed capacity remains in place to care for covid patients. When surgeries resume, theyll likely be procedures that dont require patients to stay in hospital overnight.

Before that happens, Craven said shell need to be able to pull staff back who have been redeployed to support in-patient units within the hospital and at the assessment centre.

At Grand River Hospital, around 820 procedures are typically done every month. The hospital is looking at rescheduling approximately 800 backlogged cases for each month surgeries were deferred.

St. Marys General Hospital in Kitchener normally does around 840 elective procedures a month, but that number has dropped closer to 150 a month during this pandemic. Another five to eight surgeries a week are still being done through the emergency department.

Leisa Faulkner, acting vice president of patient services and chief nursing executive, said theres a lot to look at in developing a plan to resume elective surgeries.

Where are the priorities? Where are the long wait lists? What are the pressure points? she said. The surgical team will play a key role in prioritizing the steps to tackle the growing backlog of procedures.

To complicate matters, this planning will have to be done in the context of caring for patients with COVID-19, ensuring physical distancing measures remain in place and PPE remains fully stocked.

Although the backlog of cases will be significant, the most urgent cases will be prioritized, said Val Spenler, the surgical program medical director at St. Marys.

Were anxious to get our patients cared for, but ultimately, we have to do it in a manner that is safe and well thought out.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The city of Cleveland agreed to pay a combined $18 million to three men who spent decades in prison for a 1975 killing they did not commit and said they were the victims of a police department that would do anything to close a case, even at the expense of innocent black men.

Rickey Jackson, Wiley Bridgeman and his brother Kwame Ajamu reached the settlement during an 12-hour mediation held Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster. The payments, which will be split up through April 2023, will end the lawsuits each man filed for the time they spent behind bars.

The men, now in their 60s, were convicted of murder in 1975 for the shooting of money order collector Harold Franks at what was then the Fairmont Cut Rate Store at Fairhill and Petrarca roads on the citys East Side. The trio maintained their innocence and were cleared in 2014. Jackson had served 39 years in prison and was believed at the time to have served the longest amount of time behind bars of anyone wrongfully convicted of a crime.

Ajamu, with tears frequently streaming down his face, said during a video news conference Friday, that they were accepting the settlement because "we now know that you have no other reason and no other recourse but to tell the world that you wronged three little black boys 45 years ago.

While thanking his lawyers Terry Gilbert and Jacqueline Greene of Friedman & Gilbert, Ajamu expressed gratitude but did not downplay the long fight he, his brother and friend undertook to clear their names.

Money cannot buy freedom and money certainly does not make innocence, said Ajamu, who in addition to Gilbert and Greene was also represented by attorney David Mills.

The settlement is the largest reached in the state of Ohio in a police misconduct case, Jacksons attorneys at the Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy said in a news release. Under an agreement the trio has to divvy up the settlement, Jackson will get 40 percent - or $7.2 million - and Bridgeman and Ajamu will split the rest, Jacksons lawyer Elizabeth Wang said in an interview.

Wang said that Jackson, who is now married and has a child on the way, is looking forward to the future.

What is 39 years of your life worth? Wang said. Nobody can put a number on that. No amount of money that can compensate them for what they went through.

A spokeswoman for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A jury in August 1975 found Jackson, Bridgeman and Ajamu, then known as Ronnie Bridgeman, guilty of murdering Franks. They were also convicted of trying to kill store owner Anna Robinson. Cuyahoga County prosecutors relied on the eyewitness testimony of young Eddie Vernon to prove their case.

A judge sentenced the men to death, though the sentences were reduced to life in 1978 when the state enacted a short-lived moratorium on the death penalty.

Nearly 40 years later, Vernon recanted his testimony and judges overturned the mens criminal convictions. Vernon, who was 12 years old when Franks was killed, said in 2014 that city detectives pressured him to lie on the witness stand, which included threats to jail his parents, and that police manipulated him.

Bridgeman, 65, and Jackson, 63, were released in 2014 with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project, which obtained Vernons recantation. Ajamu, 62, was paroled in 2003. The story of the murder and the work done to secure their freedom was chronicled in a book written by Kyle Swenson, now a reporter for The Washington Post who covered the case for the alternative weekly Cleveland Scene.

After their names were cleared, the men sought compensation. The state paid millions of dollars for the time they spent behind bars through cases filed in the Ohio Court of Claims.

The men also filed suit in federal court in 2015 against the city and former detectives for what they said was a culture of racist and unethical cops who would often do anything to close a case. Several of the officers named in the suit have since died.

Senior U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko dismissed the trios lawsuits in 2017, but a federal appeals court revived most of the claims in a ruling in March 2019. It said a jury should decide, among other issues, whether former Cleveland police detective Frank Stoiker withheld and fabricated evidence during a homicide investigation that led to the mens convictions.

They also said there was enough evidence to continue their case on the policies and training police had in the 1970s and for how officers handed over evidence favorable to defendants, known as Brady material.

The day the appeals court issued its decision, Bridgeman was behind the wheel of a car that struck and killed a construction worker in University Heights, police said. Bridgeman kept driving until he struck a telephone pole and was hospitalized after the crash, according to authorities.

A county grand jury indicted Bridgeman in May 2019 on charges of aggravated vehicular homicide, vehicular assault and stopping after an accident. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on bond.

The men were set to take their lawsuits to trial in July.

Gilbert noted during the news conference that there have been a spate of other cases, both in Ohio and across the country, where men who spent long stretches of their lives behind bars were later cleared, and said prosecutors and judges should take those claims seriously.

Forty-five years later, we now can say that we have some sense of completion and justice in this case, Gilbert said.

Read more:

Man exonerated of 1975 murder indicted in fatal hit-and-run crash in University Heights

Man who crashed, seriously hurt construction workers in University Heights, served 37 years in a wrongful conviction

Trio can take Cleveland police to trial after serving prison time for 1975 murder they didnt commit, court says

Judge says Cleveland not liable for three men who wrongfully served decades in prison

Brothers who were wrongfully imprisoned for 1975 murder file suit against city of Cleveland

Exonerated Ricky Jackson is Clevelands newest millionaire

Ricky Jackson leaves prison: "The English language doesnt have the words to express how Im feeling right now.''
India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

State-run liquor shops to close in Tamil Nadu

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 08: The Madras High Court has ordered the Tamil Nadu government to close all liquor shops in the state, in the wake of the growing number of coronavirus cases. However, Tamil Nadu is expected to move the Supreme Court at the earliest against the lower court's direction.

The decision comes hours after the Supreme Court advised to consider indirect sale, home delivery of liquor to ensure that there are no crowds at the alcohol stores.

Noting that there were huge crowds before the shops and no social distancing was maintained, a bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Satyanarayana passed the order on a miscellaneous petition filed by advocate G Rajesh, besides a plaint from Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM).

The bench said there was total violation of its interim order issued on Wednesday, when it declined to stay a government order allowing resumption of sale of Liquor through the latter's outlets.

Besides the guidelines issued by the state government and the TASMAC, the sole retailer of liquor in Tamil Nadu, were also violated, it said.

However, the court allowed online sale of liquor and door delivery till the lockdown to check spread of coronavirus was over.

The court had earlier issued guidelines for the sale of liquor through neighbourhood shops. It had ordered a six-feet gap between those queuing up to buy liquor, capping the sale to two bottles per person. It had also asked the state government to check the Aadhaar cards of buyers.

This would ensure that social distancing norms are followed, the court also said.

We will not issue orders, but states should consider home delivery or indirect sale of liquor to maintain social distancing, the Bench comprising, Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and B R Gavai said.

After liquor stores were allowed to open, huge crowds were witnessed outside the stores. Several shops had to be forcibly closed as social distancing norms had been flouted. In several places, the police also had to resort to lathi charge.

Opposition leaders DMK chief MK Stalin and actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan had slammed the K Palanisamy government, saying the opening of liquor shops will lead to further spread of the virus.

With over 6,000 coronavirus cases including 40 deaths, Tamil Nadu is the fourth worst-hit state in the country. On Friday, the state reported three deaths and 600 cases in 24 hours.
Mumbai: Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Thursday said that 487 policemen have tested COVID-19 positive in all over the state ever since the nationwide lockdown came into force on March 24.

Mr Deshmukh in his tweet said, "487 police personnel have tested positive for COVID-19 since the lockdown."

Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh on Thursday visited J.J. Marg police station in south Mumbai, which is the most affected police precinct in Maharashtra, with 26 policemen, including 12 officers, testing positive for COVID-19. As many as 233 policemen in Mumbai have contracted the deadly infection so far, of which three have died.

Also read: Corona cases in India rise at alarming rate after BSF, police personnel test positive

While interacting with his officers, Singh said, The morale of the police force is high. The police have won the battles against underworld, mafia and terrorists during the 26/11 attacks. Similarly, we will win our battle against this invisible enemy.

In a series of tweets, the home minister also said that there is a steady rise in the number of calls regarding COVID-19 on the police helpline number 100.

The minister added as many as 85,309 calls have been received on the number so far.

The NCP leader also said that 3,10,694 passes have been issued for essential service providers and those caught in emergencies till now. The minister said that 2,24,219 people have been isolated in the state for possible exposure to the coronavirus and 649 were found to be violating the quarantine.

"The state govt's running 4,738 relief camps where 4,35,030 migrant labourers have been given refuge with food & necessities. 1,281 offences have been registered for illegal transport," he said on the micro-blogging site.

The minister added that as many as 96,231 offences have been registered under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code since the lockdown was imposed, leading to 18,858 arrests and seizure of 53,330 vehicles.

"Cumulatively Rs 3,56,81,994 have been collected in fines from offenders. There've been 189 instances of assaults on policemen," Mr Deshmukh said
President Barack Obama speaks as Vice President Joe Biden listens during a White House meeting in Washington on June 13, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Obama Knew Details From Wiretapped Flynn Phone Calls, Surprising Top DOJ Official: Documents

Outgoing President Barack Obama revealed in early 2017 that he knew details from phone calls incoming Trump administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn made, surprising one of the Department of Justices top officials, according to newly released documents.

The department on Thursday moved to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn that rested on the phone calls.

Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time, recalled meeting with Obama at the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, along with a number of other officials, including then-FBI Director James Comey.

After dismissing everyone but Yates, Comey, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and then-Vice President Joe Biden, Obama told them he had learned of the information about Flynn and the lieutenant generals discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Kislyaks phone calls were being wiretapped by government officials, allowing them to hear what Flynn told him.

Obama told the group he didnt want additional information about the matter but wanted to know whether the White House should, in light of the information, treat Flynn differently.

Yates was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time, special counsel Robert Mueller team members who interviewed her wrote in a report about the interview.

Yates told them that she didnt know what Obama was talking about but figured it out based on the conversation. She did not know who told Obama about the details. She recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, a centuries-old law thats never been successfully prosecuted.

FBI Director James Comey testifies as Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates listens during Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 8, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Flynn was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration. The president fired him for alleged insubordination.

Comey told members of Congress in March 2017 that he briefed then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the wiretapped phone calls in late December 2016 or early January 2017.

Clapper briefed Obama, Biden, and Obamas senior team about the calls and other related matters in the first week of January, Comey said. The onetime FBI director said he briefed it to Clapper before Clapper briefed Obama.

We did not disseminate this [redacted] in any finished intelligence, although our people judged was appropriate, for reasons that I hope are obvious, to have Mr. Flynns name unmasked, Comey said, according to a newly declassified transcript.

Unmasking is a term used by intelligence officials for revealing the name of a U.S. citizen.

The two documents were released on May 7 by the Justice Department as part of its motion to dismiss the case against Flynn.

Andrew McCabe, the former acting director of the FBI, said in his book that Clapper verbally briefed Obama on the Flynn phone calls after being briefed by Comey.

Clapper told Congress, though, in another newly released transcript, that he did not brief Obama on Flynn-Kislyak calls.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, stands with National Security Adviser Lt. General Michael Flynn at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is holding meetings on Dec. 21, 2016. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The Department of Justice moved Thursday to dismiss the case against Flynn, arguing the Jan. 24, 2017, interview was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBIs counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn.

The investigation itself was no longer justifiably predicated, said Timothy Shea, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in the motion to dismiss. The FBI had, in the Bureaus own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an absence of any derogatory information,' he added.

Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying during the interview but recently moved to withdraw his plea.

Because the interview wasnt done as part of a legitimate investigation, we feel really that a crime cannot be established here, Attorney General William Barr told CBS on Thursday.

The call in question with Kislyak contained nothing inconsistent with the Obama administrations policies, and  was in U.S. interests, he said.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) will meet this morning to consider testing every resident in direct provision for Covid-19.

The latest figures show there are 164 cases of the virus in asylum seeker accommodation, up from 88 last Saturday.

A further 29 people with Covid-19 have lost their lives, bringing the death toll to 1,403, while there are 22,385 confirmed cases.

Chief medical officer Tony Holohan, said today's meeting will look at prioritising testing in direct provision centres.

He said direct provision is "location where we think we have a continuing challenge" and that NPHET will consider how they can prioritise testing "and other response capacities" available.

Dr Holohan said that priority testing is also being considered for meat factories where cases have been detected.

He said "some specific focus" will be given to new areas of infection after "the nursing home work that has been done in course of the past couple of weeks."

NPHET will also discuss the rules in place for people arriving into the country, after it emerged a third of passengers did not give their quarantine plans to authorities.

Yesterday Ireland recorded its lowest level of new confirmed Covid-19 cases in 47 days as the chief medical officer declared the project to suppress the disease a success.
[May 08, 2020] Lancaster Pollard's Aaron Becker to Lead Seniors Housing & Healthcare Production Efforts Post-Merger

ORIX Real Estate Capital (OREC), the combined company of Lancaster Pollard, RED Capital Group, and Hunt Real Estate Capital, announced that it has appointed Aaron Becker as head of production for Seniors Housing and Healthcare. Based in the firm's Philadelphia office, Becker will lead Seniors Housing and Healthcare origination efforts for the newly merged firm. Together, the company offers a comprehensive suite of specialized capital solutions for multifamily, affordable housing, seniors housing, and healthcare real estate. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005323/en/ Lancaster Pollard's Aaron Becker to Lead Seniors Housing & Healthcare Production Efforts Post-Merger (Photo: Business Wire) Prior tobeing named head of production, Becker was regional manager in the Northeast for Lancaster Pollard, and served as a banker for nearly a decade. During that time, the Northeast team closed approximately 150 transactions totaling $2.8 billion across the entire capital platform.



"Aaron is the right person to lead our Seniors Housing and Healthcare team into this new era," said James P. Flynn, CEO of OREC. "His experience in business development and proven leadership make him the ideal choice as we launch a series of initiatives that will enable us to better support the needs of seniors owners and operators in this COVID-19 environment." In addition to serving as the national head of production, Becker will lead the East Coast team serving senior living clients. Lancaster Pollard veterans, Casey Moore, Doug Harper, and Quintin Harris, will also expand their leadership roles, with Moore and Harper leading the West, and Harris leading the Midwest.

"The qualities that distinguish our seniors business and made us the top U.S. lender in this sector will serve our clients well during the crisis and its aftermath," said Becker. "No other company in seniors finance has invested the time, thought, and resources to create a team that is so highly trained and a platform that is so specifically tuned to meet the needs of its clients." ORIX Real Estate Capital ORIX Real Estate Capital (OREC), the combined company of Lancaster Pollard, RED Capital Group, and Hunt Real Estate Capital, provides specialized capital solutions for multifamily, affordable, seniors and healthcare real estate together with its affiliated companies. OREC is a subsidiary of ORIX Corporation USA, the U.S. subsidiary of ORIX Corporation, a publicly owned, Tokyo-based international financial services company. For more information, visit www.orixrealestatecapital.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005323/en/

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In an abrupt about-face, the Justice Department said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation.

The action Thursday was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn admitted as much, pleading guilty before later asking to withdraw the plea, and he became a key cooperator for Mueller as the special counsel investigated ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 political campaign.

Thursday's action was swiftly embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the outrageous case and last week pronounced Flynn exonerated," and it is likely to energise supporters of the president who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as a cause.

Trump praised Attorney General William Barr for abandoning the prosecution of Flynn.

Bill Barr is a man of unbelievable credibility and courage and he's going to go down on the history books," Trump told Fox & Friends on Friday.

Trump said that if Barr had been his first attorney general, there would never have been a Russia probe.

He would have stopped it immediately, Trump said. Democrats, however, have complained that Barr is excessively loyal to the president.

Attorney General Barr's politicisation of justice knows no bounds," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. She accused Barr's department of dropping the case to continue to cover up for the president."

Shortly before the filing was submitted, Brandon Van Grack, a Mueller team member and veteran prosecutor on the case, withdrew from the prosecution, a possible sign of disagreement with the decision.

After the Flynn announcement, Trump declared that his former aide had been an innocent man all along. He accused Obama administration officials of targeting Flynn and said, I hope that a big price is going to be paid.

Going further, he said of the effort to investigate Flynn: It's treason. It's treason.

In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said that after reviewing newly disclosed information and other materials, it agreed with Flynn's lawyers that his interview with the FBI should never have taken place because his contacts with the Russian ambassador were entirely appropriate."

The US attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, formally recommended dropping it to Barr last week, the course of action publicly recommended by Trump, who appointed Barr to head the Justice Department.

Barr has increasingly challenged the federal Trump-Russia investigation, saying in an interview last month that it was started without any basis.

In February, he overruled a decision by prosecutors in the case of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and adviser, in favour of a more lenient recommended sentence.

Jensen said in a statement that he "briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.

The department's action comes amid an internal review into the handling of the case and an aggressive effort by Flynn's lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution.

The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was improperly trapped into lying when agents interviewed him days after Trump's inauguration.

None of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had misled the FBI.

In recent months, Flynn's attorneys have levelled allegations about the FBI's actions and asked to withdraw his guilty plea.

A judge has rejected most of the claims and not ruled on others, including the bid to revoke the plea.

Earlier this year, Barr appointed Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis, to investigate the handling of Flynn's case.

As part of that process, the Justice Department gave Flynn's attorneys internal FBI correspondence, including one handwritten note from a senior FBI official that mapped out internal deliberations about the purpose of the Flynn interview: What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired? Other documents show the FBI had been prepared before its interview to drop its investigation into whether he was acting at the direction of Russia.

Later that month, though, as the White House insisted that Flynn hadn't discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, FBI officials grew increasingly concerned by Flynn's conversations with the diplomat and kept the investigation open to question him about that.

Two agents visited him at the White House on January 24, 2017.

But Thursday's filing, signed by US Attorney Tim Shea, says the FBI had no basis to continue investigating Flynn after failing to find illegality.

It says there was nothing on his Russia calls to indicate an inappropriate relationship between Mr Flynn and a foreign power.
New Delhi:

In more trouble for Vijay Mallya, a non-bailable warrant was today issued against him in a 2012 cheque bounce case by a Delhi court which said that coercive steps were required to ensure his appearance.

Metropolitan Magistrate Sumeet Anand passed the order for bringing Mallya in court on November 4, with the direction that the non-bailable warrant be sent to him by Ministry of External Affairs as he is reportedly in London.

The court noted that despite repeated orders, Mallya did not appear in the court and it was inevitable for the state machinery to intervene and ensure his presence.

The trial court had summoned Mallya as accused following a complaint by DIAL, which operates the capitals IGI Airport, claiming that a cheque for Rs one crore issued by Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) on February 22, 2012 was returned to them a month later containing remarks fund insufficient.

DIAL had filed four cases in June 2012 against Mallya over KFAs cheques totalling Rs 7.5 crore not being honoured. The grounded airline had issued the cheques towards payment for services availed by them at the IGI airport here.

Mallya, Chairman of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, is facing action after defaulting on over Rs 9,000-crore loan from 17 banks.

Late last month, he had skipped appearance before a PMLA court in Mumbai in connection with a money laundering probe against him in alleged bank loan fraud case.

Mallya had left the country in March and is currently said to be in the UK. Several cheque bounce cases have been filed against him.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday claimed Gen. Mike Flynn was the victim of an FBI 'trap' when the former national security advisor lied to investigators about his Russia contacts.

McEnany endorsed the new position of the Justice Department overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr, which on Thursday suddenly decided to stop prosecution in a politically charged case that had been going on for more than a year after new internal FBI documents were uncovered.

'It is encouraging to see that justice finally prevailed. As we move forward as a country, it's important to take these revelations very seriously in order for Americans to have faith in our justice system,' said McEnany.

She read a long statement  it ran almost 1,300 words  to reporters inside the White House. Most of them were wearing masks after a second official working at the White House tested positive for the coronavirus.

'The interrogation of Michael Flynn was not an inquiry. Make no mistake, it was a trap,' new White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a long speech at the top of her press briefing Friday. On Thursday the Justice Department dropped its case against Trump's former national security advisor

She praised ordinary FBI agents, but accused senior bureau officials of misconduct. 'It appears they might have existed to manufacture' a crime. She said they had 'no predicate for any investigation of any crime.'

She said federal investigators 'appeared to paint a target on the back of general Michael Flynn.'

Flynn would ultimately plead guilty to lying to the FBI during the January 2017 interview about his contacts with Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

She went after fired FBI Director James Comey, as well as intelligence chiefs who have become a target of President Trump.

'The intelligence community was hunting for evidence against General Flynn, evidence they did not find,' she intoned.

She also blasted FBI officials for their discussions of bringing to bear the Logan Act, which bars American citizens from negotiating with a foreign adversary to the U.S. outside of government authority.

She said they 'came up with a new absurd theory that Flynn might have violated the Logan act, a statute from 1799 that in its 200 years of existence had never been used to convict an American citizen but it was resurrected in the case of lieutenant General Michael Flynn.

Trump himself last year brought up the law and said former Secretary of State John Kerry should be prosecuted for contacts he has had with Iran, with whom he negotiated a nuclear deal.

'Thats a violation of the Logan Act, and frankly he should be prosecuted in that,' Trump said.

'The interrogation of Michael Flynn was not an inquiry. Make no mistake, it was a trap,' she said.

During his guilty plea, Flynn also admitted he failed to register as a foreign agent when he worked on behalf of the Turkish government while advising Trump's campaign. He got paid $500,000 for his work.

She went after favorite Trump targets, including former FBI official Peter Strzok, even using a label the president often employs: calling him a 'Trump-hater.'

Her long discourse came hours after President Trump unloaded on his critics Friday morning, criticizing 'dirty politicians and dirty cops' who went after Michael Flynn, vowing they would 'pay a big price.'

The president, in his nearly hour long interview on 'Fox & Friends,' also said he 'learned a lot' from President Richard Nixon.

But Trump spent the first 20 minutes of his interview railing against those who prosecuted his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his call during the transition with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.

The guilty plea was a deal he struck with Robert Mueller's investigators to avoid prosecution on a slew of other accusations, including lying about taking money from Turkey while he was working for the Trump campaign.

Flynn's attorneys have spent months trying to withdraw the plea, alleging federal prosecutors acted in 'bad faith' and that he was forced into a trap when he was interviewed by FBI officers.

The Justice Department Thursday filed a motion to dismiss the charges with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over the case and has a reputation for fierce independence.

Judges generally grant such motions, but Sullivan could demand answers from the department about its reversal or even deny the motion and sentence Flynn, a less likely scenario.

Salute: 75 years since the guns stopped in Europe, Donald Trump led a salute to those who fell - 416,800 from the United States - at the National World War II Memorial

Stark reminder: 4,000 gold stars at the memorial mark the 400,000 Americans who lost their lives in World War II,m starting with those who died at Pearl Harbor

President Trump said he learned a lot from Richard Nixon, including 'don't fire people'

Sullivan at a 2018 hearing expressed 'disgust' and 'disdain' toward Flynn's criminal offense, saying: 'Arguably, you sold your country out.'

Flynn celebrated by tweeting a picture of his toddler grandson Travis reciting the pledge of allegiance with the words 'justice for all.'

On Fox & Friends Friday morning, Trump launched a new barrage against a largely unnamed combination of those involved in the prosecution of Flynn, who he had Thursday called 'human scum.'

'It was a very dangerous situation what they did. These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and dumb horrible people, and hopefully they're gonna pay a big price someday in the not too distant future,' he said on the show.

Trump went on to say he learned a lot from President Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency in 1974 after tapes he made in the Oval Office revealed he knew about the plans to break into the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate building.

'I learned a lot from Richard Nixon: don't fire people,' Trump said, referring to the infamous 'Saturday Night Massacre,' where Nixon's attorney general and number two at the Justice Department quit rather than follow Nixon's directive to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break in.

'I learned a lot,' Trump continued, noting he was glad he didn't fire anyone, a likely reference to his desire to have Special Counsel Robert Muller fired during the Russia investigation. Mueller found no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

'I study history, and the firing of everybody. I shouldn't in one way, but I'm glad I didn't because look at the way it turned out. They're all a bunch of crooks and they got caught.

'But I learned a lot by watching Richard Nixon, of course, there was one difference - one big difference - number one he may have been guilty and number two he had tapes all over the place. I wasn't guilty I did nothing wrong and there no tapes, but wish there were tapes in my case. But learn a lot from Richard Nixon,' the president said.

But Trump did say he was glad he fired James Comey, who was FBI director during the agency's Flynn investigation.

'The one person I did a very good thing in firing was the dirty cop Comey. And when I fired him the whole thing blew up,' he said.

Trump argued if he hadn't, he'd be out of office.

'Had I not fired him I probably wouldn't be speaking to you right now, other than maybe I'd be talking to you about the private sector, because I'd be in the private sector,' he told the hosts of 'Fox & Friends.'

Trump argued that his firing of Comey revealed the FBI's work to - he claims - have him removed from office. During the 2016 campaign, the FBI conducted a counter intelligence investigation to see if Russia was working with the Trump campaign to help get him elected.

A Justice Department look into that decision revealed exchanges between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, married FBI agents having an affair and working on the counter intelligence investigation. Trump has repeatedly attacked two as part of a deep state conspiracy to keep him from winning the Oval Office.

He went after them again in his interview on Friday.

These were crooked people, he said and went on to brag he was draining the swamp of the deep state.

One of the things is we have to take out and expose and take out - the deep state. That's been one of the things - you know - drain the swamp. I had no idea this was like this, he said.

Additionally, Trump indicated his unhappiness with current FBI director Christopher Wray and praised Attorney General Bill Barr.

Trump is reportedly unhappy that Wray hasn't done more to investigate Comey's tenure at the bureau.

'Lets see what happens to him. The jurys still out with regard to that,' the president said of Wray.

But said Barr has 'done an unbelievable job. Bill Barr is a man of unbelievable credibility and courage and he's going to go down to the history books.'

Trump said the 'jury is still out' on FBI director Christopher Wray amid reports he is unhappy with his bureau head

Attorney General William Barr (left) said on Thursday that he decided to dismiss the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (right) because the lies he told the FBI were 'not material to a legitimate investigation'

The president has long advocated for Flynn's vindication and has unloaded on law enforcement officials since the case was dropped.

Trump on Thursday criticized what he said was a 'plot' against him shortly after the dramatic move to drop the case against Flynn, which will have to be approved by a federal judge.

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over the case and has a reputation for fierce independence.

Judges generally grant such motions, but Sullivan could demand answers from the department about its reversal or even deny the motion and sentence Flynn, a less likely scenario.

Sullivan at a 2018 hearing expressed 'disgust' and 'disdain' toward Flynn's criminal offense, saying: 'Arguably, you sold your country out.'

Flynn celebrated by tweeting a picture of his toddler grandson Travis reciting the pledge of allegiance with the words 'justice for all.'

Trump reacted in the Oval Office by saying Flynn 'was an innocent man' and attacking his critics as 'scum' before going to a ceremony for the National Day of Prayer.

"When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?"



Barr: "Well, history is written by the winners [smug laughter] so it largely depends on who's writing the history."



These people are comic book villains. Cartoonishly evil. pic.twitter.com/9yHF31xW3m  Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 8, 2020

'Now in my book he's an even greater warrior,' the president said. Trump said he would reach out to Flynn at the 'appropriate' time.

'I think he's a hero. It's a scam. It was a scam and a hoax. I think he's a hero, the general,' Trump said.

'I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they're dishonest, crooked people. They're scum and I say it a lot, they're scum, they're human scum. This should never have happened in this country,' Trump inveighed after hearing the news.

Trump cast the Flynn prosecution in terms of investigations of himself.

'He is a great gentleman. He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president,' Trump said.

He lashed out at the Obama administration over the prosecution, which was begun by career prosecutors before he took office and continues.

'The Obama administration Justice Department was a disgrace and they got caught. They got caught. Very dishonest people. But much more than - it's treason, it's treason,' Trump said.

Barr said he doesn't know how history will judge him because 'history is written by the winners' hours after the Justice Department said Thursday it was dropping its criminal case against fired Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Barr on Thursday defended the decision not to pursue charges against Flynn, who had pleaded guilty in court to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador during the Trump transition.

The attorney general told CBS News that while Flynn did lie, the false statement was not 'material to a legitimate investigation.'

'It's on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on,' Barr said.

'They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.'

Barr said that at the time Flynn pleaded guilty, he did not have information that has since come to light that 'has a bearing on whether there was a legitimate investigation.'

The attorney general said that FBI investigators 'essentially' entrapped Flynn so that he would lie.



On CBS Evening News Barr claimed that he wanted to uphold 'one standard of justice' and that he was not doing Donald Trump's bidding.

'There's only one standard of justice. And I believe that this case, that justice in this case requires dismissing the charges against General Flynn,' he said.

'I'm doing the law's bidding. I'm doing my duty under the law, as I see it.'

Celebration: The former three-star general marked the Justice Department move by posting a video of his grandson reciting the pledge of allegiance

Trump says Sessions wasn't man enough to handle Russia probe During the Russia investigation, President Donald Trump publicly criticized then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself. Sessions recused himself after failing to reveal contacts with Russian officials during his Senate confirmation hearing. Trump repeatedly pushed Sessions to reverse his move and then end the Mueller probe. Trump ultimately fired Sessions after the 2018 election. The president made it clear on Friday in his 'Fox & Friends' interview he is still angry at Sessions, who is running for his old Senate seat in Alabama. President Donald Trump criticized his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not 'being a man' and calling the Russia investigation a 'hoax' 'Jeff Sessions was a disaster. I made him. I didn't want to make them Attorney General, but he was the first senator to endorse me. So I felt a little bit of an obligation. He came to see me four times just begging me to be Attorney General. He wasn't, you know, to me, equipped to be to be Attorney General, but he wanted and wanted and wanted it. He was from a state that I love, Alabama,' Trump said. 'He was so bad in his nomination proceedings. I should have gotten rid of up there. He knew less about Russia than I did,' Trump added. He then criticized Sessions for not 'being a man' and calling the Russia investigation a 'hoax.' 'Jeff was just very weak and very sad. And when the name Russia was mentioned - just the word Russia. He immediately - instead of being a man and saying this is a hoax - he recused himself,' he said. Advertisement

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the Russia probe.

He also admitted to failing to register as a foreign agent due to his lucrative work for the Turkish government while serving as a campaign advisor to the Trump campaign.

Trump said of Flynn, whom he fired and who cooperated with Mueller's investigators while facing prosecution: 'I'm very happy for General Flynn. He was a great warrior and he still is a great warrior. In my book, he's an even greater warrior.'

Democrats however slammed the move.

'President Trump doesnt care about you. He doesnt care about your health. He doesnt care about your family. He doesn't care about testing. He just cares that his cronies are taken care of,' Schumer tweeted.

Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment of Donald Trump, said that Flynn was not exonerated by the move and added: 'But it does incriminate Bill Barr. In the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history.'

Nadler tweeted: 'Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case.'

And Rep. Eric Swalwell said: 'The decision to overrule the special counsel is without precedent and warrants an immediate explanation.'

The move is a sudden reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller's prosecutors pressed the case against Flynn, which had attracted special interest from Trump since the beginning. He asked former FBI director James Comey about letting the case go, Comey testified in Congress.

According to Comey's notes, Trump also said of his national security advisor: 'The guy has serious judgment issues.'

The move, which must still be approved by the judge overseeing the case, comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview.

Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as he investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the case 'after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.'

The documents were obtained by The Associated Press.

The Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn's interview by the FBI was 'untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn' and that the interview on January 24, 2017 was 'conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.'

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, recommended the move to Attorney General William Barr last week and formalized the recommendation in a document this week.

'Through the course of my review of General Flynn's case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,' Jensen said in a statement.

'I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.'

But the lead career prosecutor on Thursday abruptly withdrew from handling the case.

Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack did not provide an explanation for why he was withdrawing from the case in a court filing.

Van Grack also on Thursday withdrew from handling other cases for the Justice Department, according to court filings. A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Van Grack's departure comes less than three months after Attorney General William Barr said he was appointing Jensen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the Justice Department's handling of the case.

Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia's ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office, marking one of the first cases to emerge from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Flynn's defense team, led by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, had frequently attacked Van Grack's integrity as part of a broader effort to convince a judge that the FBI framed and entrapped Flynn.

That pressure increased last week, after partially redacted documents turned over to Flynn's defense and then made public in the court record showed more about the FBI's thinking ahead of its interview with Flynn.

The decision is certain to be embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the case and last week pronounced Flynn 'exonerated,' and energize supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as something of a cause celebre.

Robert Mueller's team retraced Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, and what he told Trump officials about them

WHO ARE THE 'HUMAN SCUM'? THE TARGETS IN TRUMP'S SIGHTS Donald Trump did not say exactly who the 'human scum' were but here are those he likely meant JAMES COMEY FORMER FBI DIRECTOR Why he's 'scum': Trump claims Comey was part of a plot to invalidate his presidency and have him removed from office with 'bogus' claims of Russian collusion. Comey briefed Trump on the 'golden showers' dossier and Trump accuses him of being involved in leaking it What Trump's done: Fired him then rage tweeted for almost three years demanding Comey is prosecuted for 'treason'; called him 'sick' and 'twisted' What has happened: Nothing. Comey made millions from tell-all memoir and speaking fees. Now actively speaks out against Trump ANDREW McCABE FORMER DEPUTY AND ACTING FBI DIRECTOR Why he's 'scum': Oversaw probe into Mike Flynn and arranged FBI interview with him. Continued Russia probe after Comey was fired What Trump's done: Demanded 'treason' charge and insinuated McCabe should get death penalty What has happened: McCabe was internally investigated for unauthorized media disclosures about the Clinton probe, subject to a recommendation he be fired which was rejected; he chose to retire and Jeff Sessions found a way to fire him the day before his resignation to remove some pension rights. DOJ then tried to convince two grand juries to bring lying to federal agent charges and failed. He is now cleared and suing the DOJ for firing him. IG report cleared him of political bias PETER STRZOK EX-FBI COUNTER-TERRORISM AGENT Why he's 'scum': Ran Crossfire Hurricane probe into Trump-Russia while exchanging anti-Trump messages with married FBI lawyer lover Lisa Page, then moved on to Mueller probe. Texts included notorious 'we'll stop it' message about Trump becoming president. Revealed to have ordered Flynn probe kept open when case agent wanted to close it. Interviewed Flynn and according to Trump and supporters 'tricked' Mike Flynn into lying to the FBI What Trump's done: Rage tweeted about Strzok and Page, demanded treason charges, impersonated them having sex at a a rally What has happened: Texts were part of Inspector General probe into FBI and DOJ and Trump-Russia. Strzok was escorted from FBI HQ when it was published in June 2018, stripped of his security clearance, questioned by Congress and fired in August over the recommendation of the internal discipline branch. Remains married despite affair and is suing for wrongful termination LISA PAGE FORMER FBI LAWYER Why she's 'scum': Exchanged anti-Trump texts with lover Peter Strzok while she offered legal advice to the Russia probe and then the first stages of the Mueller probe. Wrote 'she just has to win now' of Hillary Clinton and 'this man cannot be president.' What Trump's done: Rage-tweeted about 'lovely Lisa Page,' accused her of being part of 'witch hunt' and demanded treason charges. Mimicked her having an orgasm to a rally in Minneapolis What has happened: Resigned from the FBI and is now suing over the release of her texts, prompting disclosure that they were ordered to be published by then deputy AG Rod Rosenstien by having journalists invited to see them at night. Remains married JAMES CLAPPER OBAMA'S DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE Why he's 'scum': Has repeatedly voiced view on TV that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia. Trump appears to accuse him and Comey of being part of pre-emptive 'plot' to have Trump removed from office if he won the election, and claims he 'withheld evidence' on Flynn What Trump's done: Rage-tweeted repeatedly demanding treason charges or other unspecified prosecution What has happened: Nothing. Clapper's evidence to House inquiry into Trump-Russia revealed that he told them under oath that he 'never saw direct empirical evidence' of collusion Advertisement

But it may also add to Democratic concerns that Attorney General William Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months has sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

'This is outrageous!' fumed House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler on Twitter. 'Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case.'

Tweeted former FBI director James Comey: 'The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.'

Although the prosecutor did not reveal his reasons for withdrawing, the case echoed developments in the Roger Stone case in February. Four federal prosecutors took themselves off the case after Barr and the Justice Department to lower a prison sentence of up to nine years.

Barr is also saying a broader look at the origins of the Russia probe and alleged FBI misconduct.

According to the Mueller report, Flynn had multiple contacts with Russia's then-ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition, when the Obama administration was still steering foreign policy.

They communicated on the explosive topic of U.S. sanctions but in place over election interference and the invasion of Crimea.

'On December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him that Flynn's request had been received at the highest levels and Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to the request,' according to the report.

Flynn after public denied having discussed sanctions with Kislyak. According to the Mueller report, 'Flynn repeated that claim to Vice President-Elect Michael Pence and to incoming press secretary Sean Spicer.'

It was his lie to Pence that Trump and the White House cited as the reason Trump fired him after just weeks on the job. The false statements 'alarmed senior DOJ officials, who were aware that the statements were not true.'

'Those officials were concerned that Flynn had lied to his colleagueswho in turn had unwittingly misled the American publiccreating a compromise situation for Flynn because the Department of Justice assessed that the Russian government could prove Flynn lied,' according to the report.

FBI documents related to the investigation of Michael Flynn reveal that the bureau was planning to close a probe in early 2017 of whether he was a Russian asset due to a lack of 'derogatory' evidence.

Documents unsealed late last month show FBI officials discussed whether to get Flynn 'to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired' during a bureau interview with the former Trump national security advisor about Kislyak.

A January 4, 2017 FBI memo described an FBI look at Flynn to see if he was 'wittingly or unwittingly' involved in activity on behalf of Russia. It noted pubic reporting on Flynn's trip to Russia where he attended a dinner with Vladimir Putin.

The FBI reached out to another agency whose name was blacked out, and it found 'no derogatory information' on Flynn. An additional agency also turned up no derogatory information.

Barr's approval is just the latest time when the loyalist has acted to facilitate Trump's moves against the Russia probe and its fallout.

He infuriated Democrats by issuing his own letter summarizing the Mueller report after obtaining it, while Trump described it as a complete exoneration.

Barr tapped a career US attorney to look at FBI conduct.

And although he urged Trump to stop commenting publicly on the Flynn case, the department's actions provided a result in line with what the president wanted.

Barr defended the move on Flynn in an interview with CBS to air Thursday night. 'I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There's only one standard of justice. And I believe that ... justice in this case requires dismissing the charges against Gen. Flynn,' he said.
BALTIMORE - As the coronavirus rampaged across the U.S. economy, it slashed a cruel path of job losses, reduced hours and hardships for Americas most vulnerable workers.

The 20.5 million jobs lost in April fell disproportionately on African Americans, Latinos, low-wage workers and people with no college education. Fridays jobs report from the government  the worst on record  exposed the deep seams of inequality within the worlds wealthiest nation and the threat they pose to an eventual economic recovery.

The paradox is that if the economy is to fully bounce back, those same workers will need to be restored to jobs at restaurants, hotels, offices, factories, warehouses, medical facilities and construction sites. The flow of commerce hinges on their ability to deliver packages, cook meals, run clinics, provide public transportation and clean and maintain buildings. And their income, though typically low, supports the consumer spending that fuels most U.S. economic activity.

This represents a huge loss for the productive capacity of the economy, said Stephanie Aaronson, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. The economy is smaller and grows much less quickly when these workers are isolated from employment.

African Americans are more likely to die from the virus. Latinos and non-college graduates are heavily concentrated in low-wage occupations, including jobs that have helped keep the nation fed and safe during the pandemic. Those groups were also among the first to lose their jobs as the economy crashed at a speed unrivaled in modern American history.

For April, while the overall U.S. unemployment reached 14.7%, the rate for African Americans was 16.7%. For Latinos, it was an all-time high of 18.9%. For workers with only a high school diploma, a record 17.3%. For immigrants, 16.5%.

By contrast, the unemployment rate for white Americans was 14.2%. And just 8.4% of college graduates  who often enjoy the flexibility to work from home  were unemployed.

Latinos likely suffered disproportionately from the layoffs because they are more likely to work in the leisure and hospitality sectors  at hotels, restaurants and bars  where job cuts have been especially brutal, noted Gbenga Ajilore, an economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank .

This shows that when the economy recovers, we have to be intentional about tackling the structural barriers that limit the employment outcomes of these groups, Ajilore said.

The vast magnitude of the layoffs has laid bare the inequalities that endured long before the viral outbreak.

President Donald Trump frequently highlighted the job gains achieved by minorities during his first three years in office, pointing to them as evidence that his administration was bridging the nations wealth gap. But the pandemic has shown that the 11-year expansion did not provide much financial cushion to these workers, many of whom are now struggling to buy food and pay their housing bills.

Among them is Erika Romero, a native of El Salvador who abruptly lost her job last month as a janitor at the Postal Square Building in Washington. Romero was left without health insurance or the ability to pay most of the monthly mortgage on the Maryland home she shares with her husband, their two daughters, her adult son and both sets of grandparents.

Her husband had his daytime job reduced to three days a week, and his overnight cleaning job was cut. She has received one unemployment check so far, not nearly enough to support her substantial family.

Where am I going to look for work in this epidemic? said Romero, who lives in the United States on a temporary protected status after an earthquake struck El Salvador. Its just unfair.

More than 100 members of Romeros union have died of the coronavirus, and 20,000 others have lost jobs, according to the local Service Employees International Union, which represents 175,000 janitors, security guards, doormen and other property service workers. Many lack legal status in the United States, said Jaime Contreras, vice-president of the local union.

Those workers cant apply for unemployment, he said. They dont get the stimulus money. They are left in the dark. To me, that is a huge mistake because this pandemic knows no legal status.

Seven of the countrys top cleaning companies are pushing Congress for payroll protection in the form of grants and tax credits. They warn that it could take weeks or months to rebuild their workforce at the very time when demand for professional cleaning could surge as schools, stadiums, gyms and other public spaces re-open.

The last thing we want to do is have to rebuild the skilled network back up just as we get more demand, said Josh Feinberg, chief strategy officer for ABM Industries, a contract cleaning company.

Many minorities who work in the construction sector and restaurant industry, for example, have developed specialized skill sets. Last month, construction companies cut a stunning 975,000 workers, a record monthly loss.

At the same time, retailers cut 2.1 million jobs. Administration and waste services dropped 1.5 million. Restaurants and bars shed an unprecedented 5.5 million jobs.

Alex Tellez was working as a bartender and server at a Chicago steakhouse when he was told by a manager in mid-March to file for unemployment aid. Born in Mexico, Tellez had steadily moved up in the restaurant industry over 23 years, earning up to $60,000 year to support his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 5. But now he has fallen several thousand dollars into credit card debt to support his immediate and extended family.

Tellez, 43, is considering a career change. He doesnt see how the restaurant industry can survive a future with social distancing rules and precautions in place indefinitely.

As a bartender, I cant serve you unless youre one or two feet away from me, he said. It breaks my heart that I might have to leave. I love being in the industry. Its a passion of mine.

-

Olson and Anderson reported from New York.
MELBOURNE, Australia  Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that other Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children but failed to take action, an Australian government inquiry found.

That conclusion was reached in 2017 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which issued a lengthy report on the victimization of children within the Catholic Church and other institutions in Australia. But its findings about Cardinal Pell were redacted from the original report to avoid prejudicing potential jurors in the cardinals pending trials on sexual abuse charges.

Cardinal Pell, who had been the Vaticans chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old boys in 1996, making him the highest-ranking Catholic leader to be convicted of a crime in the churchs sexual abuse crisis. But Australias highest court overturned the conviction last month, saying that there was a significant possibility that he was not guilty.

That decision cleared the way for the release of the Royal Commissions findings about Cardinal Pell from its 2017 report, which were made public on Thursday.
UMMC-GTEC selects scholar from The University of Southern Mississippi

Fri, 05/08/2020 - 08:30am | By: Karen Bascom

JACKSON, Miss.  Eight doctoral students from four Mississippi universities have been selected as members of the second cohort of the Robert Smith, M.D. Graduate Scholars Program as part of the Jackson Heart Study Graduate Training and Education Center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC-GTEC) in Jackson.

The second cohort of UMMC-GTEC scholars consists of three students from UMMC, three students from the University of Mississippi, one student from Mississippi State University, and one student from the University of Southern Mississippi.

USM student Roxanne Watts (counseling psychology) will join seven other doctoral students to embark on the research opportunity beginning with a summer institute schedule for July 27-31, 2020. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the years summer institute will have an online format.

Part of the broader National Institutes of Health-funded Jackson Heart Study, the largest community-based study of cardiovascular disease risk factors in African Americans, UMMC-GTEC is a two-year research training and mentoring program. Designed for doctoral and health professional students who are considering careers in cardiovascular health sciences, the didactic program allows students to participate in the research process alongside mentors from leading research institutions.

Dr. Marino Bruce, professor and director of faculty development in Department of Population Health Science in the John D. Bower School of Population Health at UMMC is the new principal investigator and co-director for UMMC-GTEC. Before coming into this role, Dr. Bruce was research associate professor of medicine, health and society, associate director of the Center for Research on Mens Health, and director of the Program for Research on Faith and Health at Vanderbilt University where he also served as the first science director for UMMC-GTEC.

Research training and mentoring the next generation of scientists from underrepresented backgrounds is a critical component of the effort to reduce health disparities in the United States while improving the health of all populations, Bruce said. Dr. Bettina Beech, the original principal investigator for UMMC-GTEC, has cast a bold vision for our scholars to work with some of the nations top biomedical researchers to contemplate and contribute to the scientific literature. I am honored to follow Dr. Beech in this role and to elevate the legacy of excellence in research, training, and mentoring that she established at UMMC and in Mississippi.

Applicants for the program must be doctoral and health professional students at Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, University of Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi or University of Mississippi Medical Center. The applicant must be an individual from a group identified by the National Institutes of Health as underrepresented in the biomedical, clinical, behavioral and social sciences. They must also be a United States citizen or permanent resident.

Mississippi has been a rich source of talent, creativity, and innovation for our nation and UMMC-GTEC is designed to invest in promising doctoral students who are interested in careers in biomedical

research, Bruce said. Our goal is to help develop a cadre of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds who can have distinguished careers in cardiovascular science in particular and health science in general.

Dr. Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the new co-director of UMMC-GTEC. Dr. Thorpe is an original member of the UMMC-GTEC investigator team and succeeds Dr. Keith Norris. At the Bloomberg School of Public Health, he is co-director of Johns Hopkins Alzheimers Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research, deputy director of Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions and director for the Program for Research on Mens Health. Dr. Thorpe has established a distinguished record of minority aging and health disparities research across the life course focusing on racial and socioeconomic health disparities, particularly among men in the United States.

Complementary to the scholars existing graduate training, this program will create a diverse community of scholars who will embrace all aspects of the research process to prepare evidence-based information to inform health-promoting strategies and policy relevant solutions for all residents of Mississippi, Thorpe said.

The two-year program will provide an intense research training and mentoring experience. Scholars commit to attending a five-day summer training institute for two consecutive summers, one mid-year meeting, quarterly webinars and traveling to a Jackson Heart Study Vanguard Center at Johns Hopkins University. One of the benefits is that scholars will have regular interaction with senior researchers and mentors throughout the program. Mentors will help the scholars learn how to write peer-reviewed manuscripts, conduct analyses, and make scientific presentations.

The 2020-2022 cohort of the Robert Smith, M.D. Graduate Scholars Program also includes; Nicole Reeder (food Science, nutrition, and health promotion, MSU); Alexcia Carr (pharmacy, UM); Cellas Hayes (pharmaceutical sciences, UM); Rashun Miles (social welfare, UM); Maria Jones-Muhammad (neuroscience, UMMC); Jamarius Waller (medicine and experimental pharmacology and therapeutics, UMMC); and Torrye Evans II (medicine, UMMC).

A native of Terry, Smith is one of Mississippis heroes of health care. He is nationally respected for his leadership as the founder of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. As part of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, this organization successfully pressured health care institutions across the South to expand access to health services for and end unequal treatment of African Americans. He founded Mississippi Family Health Center in 1963 and remains a practicing physician today.
The Ghaziabad administration issued an advisory for doctors and paramedical staff working in Delhi to stay there and not travel home daily. The advisory was called discriminatory by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), but that did not stop a condominium in Ghaziabad from doing just that.



Instagram Screengrab

The apartment owners association (AOA) of Neelpadam Kunj cited a letter from Ghaziabad municipal corporation commissioner, Dinesh Chandra, in its notice, which said, 'We respectfully appeal to our fellow residents, who are doctors, paramedical staff and working in different hospitals in Delhi to make a temporary arrangement of their stay in Delhi till the lockdown period and attend their duties from Delhi-based residence only. As we are already staying in a government-sealed complex, we have to implement this at the earliest date. Hence, we will stop the exit and entry of doctors and paramedical staff who are residing in NPK from early morning of Sunday onwards'.

Quickr

The IMA came out with a statement against the letter and said it would not be accepted, The RWA (Resident Welfare Association) does not have any right to stop any person from coming to his residence. It is an infringement of ones right and a punishable offence. To say that the doctor or paramedical staff is at risk of spreading corona in the public is highly condemnable. Are you (district authorities) pitting RWA against the doctor? the statement said.

IMA treasurer, Navneet Kumar Verma, was quoted as saying by TOI, "This will encourage the society to see doctors with contempt. RWAs will selectively target doctors and paramedical staff and prevent them from coming to their home and obstruct their work. Instead of this, the administration should have urged the Delhi government to make arrangements for its employees. We would also like to question if only healthcare staff are bringing coronavirus from Delhi to Ghaziabad."

Representative Image/Reuters

Chief Medical Officer, NK Gupta, said that it is just an advisory and is not binding to anyone, however the letter issued by AOA states that it will stop the entry and exit of doctors.

The advisory seems to have given people a reason to discriminate against doctors and para medical staff - the very people who are on the frontlines every day, fighting to save lives, sometimes even at the cost of their own.
Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Two youths in L.A. County juvenile detention tested positive for the novel coronavirus this week after officials began testing newly booked detainees, authorities said Thursday.

The juveniles, both of whom are asymptomatic, have not been in contact with other youths, said Adam Wolfson, communications director for the L.A. County Probation Department. One was admitted to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, the other to Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, Wolfson said. Their ages were not released.

Nineteen probation employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, including seven assigned to Nidorf Hall, but Thursday marked the first time juveniles had been known to have the virus. All of the employees who contracted the virus have since recovered and returned to work, Wolfson said.

County officials began testing newly sentenced youths Monday, he said, adding that 30 juveniles have been tested in total.

The two youths who tested positive this week will be isolated from the general population of each juvenile hall, and probation employees working with them are "receiving enhanced personal protective equipment as well as infection control training" from county health officials, Wolfson said.

As part of efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, the average daily population of California's juvenile detention system fell by about 1,000 youths between late February and late April, state records show. In L.A. County, the number of youths in custody has fallen from 819 on March 1 to 550 as of Thursday, a drop of roughly 33%.

Still, some advocates and attorneys have called for a wider release of juveniles for fear conditions in L.A. County's juvenile halls and camps remain ripe for an outbreak.

Last month, a petition was filed with the California Supreme Court asking for the release of juveniles with health conditions that place them at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus, as well as those being held on either a probation violation or failure to appear in court. A hearing in that case is scheduled for Monday.
Ever since its inception in 2006, Raj Thackeray and his party has always been on the forefront to agitate against outsiders in Maharashtra.

Mumbai: As the migrant workers make a beeline to leave Maharashtra during the lockdown, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray has raked up his anti-migrant issue once again. There should be restrictions on the entry and exit of outsiders in Maharashtra henceforth. This is the right time to register all migrants under the State Migration Act, he has said.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had called up an all-party meeting on Thursday to discuss the measures for curbing the spread of coronavirus in the state. During the meeting, the MNS chief made several instructions to the State Government regarding the migrants issue. The humanitarian way is of no use to settle such issues every time, he said.

I have said in the past that the migrants will be the first to desert the state in case of any crisis and my words are now coming true. The migrants, who have left the state, should not be allowed back in Maharashtra without thorough health check-up, said Raj Thackeray.

This is the right time to register all migrants under the State Migration Act. It will solve the entire mess that has been created till now, he added.

The MNS chief said that the departure of migrants will open up new job opportunities for the local youths in Maharashtra. To ensure that industries and factories in the state should not close down due to lack of labourers, state youths should be informed about the job opportunities so that they will act as a substitute for the migrants. Many a times, youths from regions like Vidarbha and Marathwada are not aware of the job opportunities. They should be informed about the jobs, he said.

Ever since its inception in 2006, Raj Thackeray and his party has always been on the forefront to agitate against the outsiders in Maharashtra, prominently the North Indians. Operating on the sons of the soil motto, the party has been demanding that the local youths should be given priority in jobs in Maharashtra ahead of migrants.
Pence denounces Va. officials beyond the pale punishment of church that held in-person service

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Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday denounced Virginia officials for punishing a congregation whose pastor was threatened with jail or a fine for holding an in-person worship service of 16 people on Palm Sunday.

Pastor Kevin Wilson of Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island was cited by officials for holding a worship service on April 5 that had 16 people in attendance.

On an episode of The Brian Kilmeade Show on Wednesday, Pence said that even in the midst of a national emergency, every American enjoys our cherished liberties, including the freedom of religion.

The very idea that the Commonwealth of Virginia would sanction a church for having 16 people come to a Psalm Sunday service when I think the church actually seats about 250 was just beyond the pale, the vice president said.

We are going to stand by men and women of faith of every religion in this country and protect, even in this challenging time, protect their freedom of religion.

Pence also commended Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice for siding with the church as it sues Virginia over the threat of being punished for holding the service.

I'm truly grateful for Attorney General Barr standing by religious liberty, he continued. I wanted to speak out in favor of the DOJ's action.

On Palm Sunday, Wilson was served a summons for holding a church service that violated a state order prohibiting gatherings of more than 10 people and carried a possible punishment of jail time and/or a fine of $2,500.

In response, Wilson filed a lawsuit against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, arguing that the order unfairly targeted his congregation, even when they followed social distancing guidelines.

Absent emergency relief from this Court, Lighthouse, its pastor, and all members and/or attendees will suffer immediate and irreparable injury from the threat of criminal prosecution for the mere act of engaging in the free exercise of religion and going to church, read the suit.

Indeed, if Lighthouse, its pastor, or its members do not subscribe to what Governor Northam has prescribed as orthodox in a worship service, they risk becoming criminals in the Commonwealth.

Lighthouse and its pastor are being represented by the Liberty Counsel, a conservative law firm that often handles religious liberty cases on behalf of churches.

Northam has clearly discriminated against Lighthouse Fellowship Church which provides essential physical, emotional and spiritual services to the community, said Matt Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

We must balance the First Amendment with protecting the health and welfare of people but picking an arbitrary number of 10 people for every church is not the answer.

The DOJ announced on May 3 that it had filed a Statement of Interest in the suit, supporting the churchs motion for an injunction pending an appeal in the case.

Plaintiff has demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim under the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution that the Commonwealths executive orders have prohibited religious gatherings at places of worship, even with social distancing and personal hygiene protocols, while allowing comparable secular gatherings to proceed with social distancing, read the statement of interest, in part.

It thus becomes the Commonwealths burden to demonstrate that it has compelling reasons to treat Plaintiff differently than similar non-religious businesses, and that it has pursued its objectives through the least restrictive means.
Court rejects Mutharikas bid to scrap annulment of controversial elections last May, paving way for a July rerun.

Malawis Supreme Court on Friday in a unanimous decision upheld an earlier court ruling that annulled President Peter Mutharikas narrow election victory last year.

A new election will now be held on July 2, for which three candidates, including Mutharika, filed their nomination papers this week.

The Constitutional Court in February cited widespread, systematic and grave irregularities when it annulled the vote that returned Mutharika to power in the southern African nation last May.

Mutharika, 79, and the electoral commission later appealed the Constitutional Courts decision.

In its ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court said, The various breaches undermined the duties of the Malawi Electoral Commission and grossly undermined rights of voters. None of the candidates obtained a majority.

It added that the electoral commission should not have appealed, as doing so showed it was taking sides.

The conduct of the electoral commission left a lot to be desired, Justice Frank Kapanda said. There was a lack of seriousness and incompetence.

Reporting from Harare, Al Jazeeras Haru Mutasa said the top court found Mutharikas appeal clearly unprofessional and embarrassing.

Mutharika has always said last years presidential election was free and fair but the Constitutional Court said there just too many irregularities and some results were changed using typewriter or correction fluid.

In his appeal, Mutharika said the judges had erred in law.

We find that the first appellant [Mutharika] was not duly elected to the office of the president, said Kapanda, one of seven judges who read out the ruling in the capital Lilongwe.

Nomination filed

On Thursday, Mutharika filed his nomination papers for the July rerun alongside his new running mate Atupele Muluzi, the 41-year old son of former President Bakili Muluzi, who ruled Malawi from 1994 to 2004.

Together we will be the bridge to the future, together we will win this election, the president told supporters in the city of Blantyre.

Only three of 10 expected candidates have presented credentials to run in the upcoming poll.

Opposition figures Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima filed their nomination papers on Wednesday.

Mutharika was declared the winner of the disputed elections with 38.5 percent of the vote.

Chakweras Malawi Congress Party came a close second, garnering 35 percent, while Chilimas United Transformation Movement came third with 20 percent.

The two parties have joined forces under Chakweras banner to maximise their chances of unseating the president.
HONG KONG  On the day Hong Kong celebrated the easing of coronavirus social distancing rules, a scuffle broke out in the city's legislature that led to at least one lawmaker being dragged out on a stretcher, while police pepper-sprayed journalists at a nearby protest.

Friday's chaos was a return to the political confrontation that defined Hong Kong over the past year, and a harbinger of another summer of discontent as divisions deepen between a ruling pro-Beijing minority and others who want the Chinese Communist Party out of the city's affairs.

With public health concerns over the COVID-19 outbreak fading  Hong Kong recorded zero cases Friday, for the 12th time in the past 19 days  the territory is bracing for pro-democracy protests to return to the streets and a sharp rise in political tensions ahead of legislative elections in the fall.

The spark for the tussle was a dispute over the leadership of a crucial committee in Hong Kong's legislature. The House Committee has been unable to function for months, gridlocked over whether it should be led by pro-Beijing lawmaker Starry Lee or democrat Dennis Kwok.

The paralysis has meant that several pieces of legislation  including a contentious bill that would criminalize mocking the Chinese national anthem  have been held up. Beijing's offices that oversee Hong Kong affairs warned that pro-democracy lawmakers were engaged in "malicious filibustering" and were using "dirty tricks" to stall the work of the legislature.

Several pro-democracy lawmakers on Friday attempted to stop Lee from chairing a meeting of the committee, accusing her of abusing her power. Both sides engaged in a shouting match that descended into physical altercations, according to live-streamed videos of the proceedings. Security guards moved to expel several pro-democracy lawmakers, while one, Andrew Wan, was carried away on a stretcher after falling and injuring himself.

Separately, a handful of pro-democracy protesters gathered in the financial district to bring back a common form of protest last year  singing and chanting in shopping malls at lunchtime  before they were dispersed by police. Video footage showed student reporters pepper-sprayed by officers, and others were fined for taking part in the gathering.

The scenes appeared to set the tone for the next few months, which will likely be defined by political protest and upheaval. They were also a throwback to the same period last year, when lawmakers similarly fought  literally  over a now-shelved bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

That proposal, seen by the pro-democracy camp as evidence of Beijing's increasing interference in Hong Kong, unleashed eight months of sometimes violent political unrest that resulted in thousands of arrests and upended life in the Chinese territory.

Hong Kong plans to hold legislative elections in September, which could rework the political balance in the city in the favor of anti-Beijing democrats. Experts say the Chinese Communist Party is determined to avoid a result similar to last year's local elections, where pro-democrats who want to uphold autonomy for Hong Kong swept a majority of seats.

Beijing, meanwhile, has continued to dig in. This week, the Chinese government's top political office in Hong Kong described anti-government protesters as a "political virus" and accused them of seeking independence for the territory.

Beijing promised to preserve Hong Kong's high level of autonomy and distinct way of life compared with mainland China until 2047, a half-century after it regained sovereignty from Britain. But in recent times the central government has accelerated a clampdown in the financial center.

Last month, China's top officials in Hong Kong asserted that they were not subject to a constitutional provision that explicitly prohibits Beijing's involvement in local affairs.

____

The Washington Posts Tiffany Liang contributed to this report.
Montgomery County Womens Council of Organizations (MCWCO) Board of Directors annually host a Women of Distinction Luncheon at The Waterway Marriott in The Woodlands to honor designated, extraordinary volunteers in the community. Previously scheduled for Friday, May 1, the luncheon was canceled, but the 32 Women of Distinction will still be honored.

The Women of Distinction luncheon was formed in 1990 to bring light to the volunteer community as a nonprofit. Any 5013 nonprofit operating in Montgomery County can become a member of MCWCO. Each year the member organizations gather to honor their "Women of Distinction." She is recognized for the numerous hours, unyielding commitment, and loyal dedication she has provided their agency. This year a video was made highlighting the 2020 Women of Distinction and can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/55u6YkhFU0w

As president of the Montgomery County Womens Council of Organizations, I would like to congratulate all of the ladies that are the 2020 Women of Distinction, said Carol Gooch, Executive Director of Montgomery County Association of Business Women (MCABW). This was our 30th year and it was going to be a very special luncheon to honor these ladies, but due to the COVID-19 virus, we were unable to have our May 1 luncheon. These ladies have given their time, resources, and skills to volunteer in our community to help improve the quality of life in Montgomery County. Thank you to our 2020 Women of Distinction.

The honorees that have been selected as Women of Distinction for 2020 are as follows:

 Kathy Igercich- Canopy Cancer Survivorship Center

 Misti Jeter-CASA Child Advocates of Montgomery County, Inc.

 Heather Nehila -Children's Books on Wheels

 Jamie Meche- Community Assistance Center

 Renee Atkinson- Cypress-Woodlands Junior Forum

 Randie Morton- Executive Womens Alliance

 Karen Lonon- FAITH Fighting Cancer in Montgomery County

 Lisa Van De Walle- Family Promise of Montgomery County, Texas

 Noelle Jahncke- The Will Herndon Research Fund

 Geni Garrison - Interfaith of The Woodlands

 Allison Tinker- Junior League of The Woodlands, Inc.

 Courtney Galle - Leadership Montgomery County - Texas

 Tracy Cassady- Love Fosters Hope

 Janie Macklin- Memorial Hermann, The Woodlands Hospital Auxiliary

 Bethany Bielamowicz - Montgomery County Association of Business Women (MCABW)

 Amy Lampman - Montgomery County Food Bank

 Pat Bruen - Montgomery County Republican Women (MCRW) - Texas

 Andrea Byrd- Montgomery County Women's Center

 Lori Ivey - National Charity League, Inc., Bluebonnet Chapter

 Kimberly Bowman- National Charity League Laurel Chapter

 Emily Gogineni -National Charity League, Inc., The Woodlands Chapter

 Stephanie Teed- The Pavilion Partners

 Nicole Harrison - Rotary Club of The Woodlands

 Amber Scheer - The Breast Cancer Charities of America

 Cassie Miller- The Giving Gown Foundation

 Susan Vreeland-Wendt - The Woodlands Arts Council

 Tammy Schroder - The Woodlands Charities, Inc.

 Sondra Ruhman- The Woodlands Children's Museum

 Kerri Bigler - The Woodlands United Methodist School

 Ann Herbek - The Woodlands Republican Women

 Laura Josefsen - Women Inspiring Supporting Entrepreneurs (WISE)

 Katrina Savage - YES to YOUTH - Montgomery County Youth Services

Each of the Honorees will receive an award and a Certificate of Appreciation for their outstanding commitment to volunteering from Congressman Brady and Sen. Creighton very soon.

Jennifer Landers, Executive Director of Community Assistance Center, highly recommends MCWCO as a way to stay connected to local businesswomen through networking opportunities that strengthen relationships to ultimately benefit the entire community. The WOD Luncheon is an excellent opportunity for CAC to highlight one of our dedicated ladies serving our community through the programs and services we offer to our neighbors in need.

Jamie Meche was the honoree for CAC. I am very humbled and honored that CAC would consider me for doing something I lovingly do for the seniors in the community. Thank you, CAC, for allowing me to follow my passion and partner with you!

Women of Distinction always sparkle and shine even in the most difficult times! Congratulations to all the 2020 Women of Distinction! Sign up your nonprofit organization to become a member at www.mcwod.org.
A mobile gaming addict was found dead inside his apartment with signs he was electrocuted after charging his phone and playing with it at the same time.

Delivery company employee Tinnakorn Rattanauppaphan, 32, had the smartphone plugged in to an extension cable while using it at his rented room in Nan, northern Thailand.

He had been missing from work for two days which caused worried among his friends who went to check on him last Friday.

They found him lying still on the mattress below a window. When they tried to wake him he was unresponsive so they contacted the police. Officers believe Tinnakorn had been dead for two days.



They suspected that he was electrocuted to death as they found burn wounds on both of his swollen hands that were touching the phone and charger cable.

The deceaseds friends Kriatipong Riankham, 29, and Wutthipong Penharn, 26, said their friend had no enemy or problems but only that he spent most of his free time playing on his phone games.

They said: We started to worry after he had been absent from work for a couple days, which was unusual for him.

He never mentioned having any stress or problems but he had always spent his free time playing online games on his phone.

The police sent the body for a post-mortem examination and labelled the death as an accident in their initial report.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Samran Wongchaiya said: Our initial investigations show that there was no trace of fighting or anything that suggests suspicious activity.

So we believe that he was electrocuted to death as he had signs of electrocution and the cause is also consistent with the testimonies of his friends and family that he spent a lot of time playing mobile games.

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As states begin to lift restrictions on employers in various segments of the economy, MEMIC, a Portland, Maine-headquartered workers compensation insurance specialty company, has released an employer guide for safety procedures.

The MEMIC Pandemic Recovery Safety Planning template includes forms to assist with preparation, training and documentation and is available to all employers.

Planning is the operative word when bringing people back to the workplace, said Karl Siegfried, senior vice president of Loss Control at MEMIC, in a company press release. We know the thousands of employers we insure want to protect their people as they regain their footing. Rushing the process without planning can undermine their long-term goal of remaining open and serving their customers.

Siegfried emphasized that employers need to concentrate on hazard identification, communication and training, as well as sanitation, distancing, compliance and exposure tracing.

Of all the activities required to bring people back to work safely, communication and training are the most important, he said in the release. Persistent communication helps create understanding and emphasizes expectations of safe behavior. Training helps co-workers recognize hazards and, as important, it builds a culture of accountability to one another. And, should a co-worker be diagnosed, it is essential that all contacts at work be documented and acted upon as described in the template.

MEMIC is urging all employers to adopt the guidelines and to share the material provided with their customers and vendors as soon as possible.

Whether in manufacturing, education, health care or hospitality, there are fundamental steps we all need to take to avoid a resurgence of this coronavirus, Siegried said in the release. To that end, our template is available to everyone to help do it safely.

The MEMIC Group includes MEMIC Indemnity Company, MEMIC Casualty Company, and parent company Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company. As a superregional workers compensation specialty insurer, The MEMIC Group holds licenses to write workers compensation in 46 states. In addition to its headquarters in Portland, Maine, the group maintains offices in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.

Source: The MEMIC Group

Topics Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance Training Development
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me (Matthew 10:37).

Does Jesus hate families? Why would he make such a drastic and harsh statement? After all, Jesus had a mother and father and even brothers. (Maybe it could be easy to not love his brothers sometimesbut mom?) Clearly there is more to this verse and its important to understand what Jesus means.

Jesus is not saying dont love your family. Jesus is not anti-family. Jesus loves families and loves people. Many times when he was walking the earth he would see crowds and the Bible says he would have compassion on them. This compassion flowed from a heart full of love. Also in Matthew 15 and 19, Jesus reminds the Pharisees and a rich young ruler to honor your father and mother. We know that Jesus doesnt want you hating or not loving your family.

The Hierarchy of Love

When you consider this verse of Scripture, there are three words that stand out. Those words are more than me. When you understand those words, this verse can come into focus quickly. This concept starts in the Old Testament with the first of the ten commandments

You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3).

Right off the bat when giving instruction to his people, the nation of Israel, God establishes a principle: He must be first. Your love for him must be first. Dont love anyone more than me. Dont put anything before me. I must always be your first love. For anyone to put anything or anyone before God is idolatry. Jesus was simply confirming what God had said before.

There was an instance where Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment. Here was Jesus reply:

Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:37-40).

Notice in these scriptures the hierarchy of love. It all starts with loving God first, more than anything or anyone. Jesus was saying if I cant be your first love then you cant follow me. I know this is a hard saying but he has to occupy that position. Jesus must the center of your life and everything needs to flow out of that. If anything else is at the center, then that thing becomes the lord of your life and that will not work.

In Revelation 2 Jesus gives a message to the church in Ephesus. After commending the church for their deeds, hard work, endurance, and perseverance he proceeds to make an astonishing statement:

Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love (Revelation 2:4).

This church had left their first love, Jesus. The next words from Jesus are even more shocking:

Remember therefore from where you have fallen (Revelation 2:5).

When something or someone other than Jesus occupies the position of your first love, you have fallen from a secure place to a dangerous place. If you have found yourself there, then do whatever you must do to return Jesus to that position of first love.

Why First Love Matters

Here are four reasons why God demands and deserves the place of first love in your life.

1. He Created You

God knit you together in your mothers womb. He is the one who formed you and shaped you. He gave you your creativity, your talents, your gifts, and all of your abilities. It all comes from him. Loving him first is one way of showing appreciation for him making you the person you are.

2. He Saved You

We were all born in sin. We were all separated from God, and honestly God could have left us in that condition, but he didnt. Because he so wanted to be in fellowship with us, he sent his son to win us and redeem us back to him. This act alone deserves our commitment to make him the most important person in our lives.

3. He Loves You

John 15:13 declares Greater love has no one than this: to lay down ones life for ones friends. We also see in Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Because God has poured out such extreme love for you and I, because he has gone to such great lengths to display how much he loves us, he has earned the right to be the first love in your life.





Photo credit: Getty Images/Estradaanton



4. He Has Good Planned for You

Ephesians 2:10 declares For we are Gods handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Before you were ever born, God had good works planned for your life. He has your best intentions at heart. Not only does he have good plans, but he has the ability to make them come to pass, for those who love him. Remember Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (emphasis added).

God has nothing but the best planned for you both now and throughout eternity. This is why you need to love him first and more than anyone else.

A Way to Remember

In our house we have a simple saying about organizing how we prioritize our time, but it also works with how we prioritize our love as well. Here it is:

God, Family, Career, Ministry

Love God more than anything else. Love you family because those are the ones you are responsible for. Love you career because that is how you take care of your family. Youre your ministry because that is how you serve God, his people and advance the message of the gospel. (By the way if you dont agree with the order I will gladly have a conversation with you about it).

Jesus passage in Matthew is all about the way you order your life and who will get the all-important seat on the throne of your heart. There is only one throne and only one person can sit on it. Because of his great love for you and all he has done for you, Jesus needs to be seated on that throne. He requires it. He deserves it. Hes earned it. Make Jesus the Lord of your life and the object of your first love and let everything else flow out of that.

Photo credit: Getty Images/oscarhdez
In a daring operation, a joint team of Indian Air Force and the Army on Friday rescued six crew members of an Mi-17 military helicopter from a snow-capped mountain at an altitude of 15,500 feet in North Sikkim, officials said.

The Mi-17 medium-lift transport helicopter of the Indian Air Force made an emergency landing near Mukutang in Sikkim on Thursday due to inclement weather.

"The Indian Army and the IAF helicopters in tandem with troops on ground execute a daring rescue of stranded air crew from an altitude of 15,500 feet in inclement weather in Sikkim," an Army official said.

All four aircrew of the IAF and two Indian Army personnel on board the chopper that made the emergency landing were safe, officials said.

The helicopter was on a routine air maintenance sortie from Chaten to Mukutang and it sustained damage in the incident, the officials said.

The IAF has already ordered an investigation into the emergency landing of the Mi-17 chopper.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, this week echoed the Trump administrations push to abolish the World Trade Organization, which many conservatives see as a relic in an outdated global economic system that does not serve the interests of the United States.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said it was necessary to be part of global decisions to curb the coronavirus if there was any hope of stopping its spread in the United States. That is how the country has dealt with other worldwide threats over the last 100 years, he said.

There is a moral imperative to U.S. leadership in the global arena right now, Mr. Menendez said in a statement.

The plan that Mr. Menendez and other Democratic senators filed on Thursday is unlikely to be approved in its current form, given that no Republicans, who hold the majority in the Senate, publicly back it. Rather, Democrats may hope that it serves as a blueprint for public debate on how the United States could more actively engage with other nations and international bodies, including the World Health Organization and at the United Nations Security Council.

The legislation calls for creating a trust fund at the World Bank to help nations develop response plans for future epidemics and pandemics; working with the European Union to develop a Covid-19 vaccine and to discourage Chinese and Russian disinformation about the virus; and promoting stability in foreign currencies and the American dollar.

The plan also would require the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development to adopt several new policies during the current crisis, including to protect Americans abroad from the virus and help them return home, and restarting the process of resettling refugees in the United States.

Perhaps no one decision has cast as much doubt on the Trump administrations commitment to a global coronavirus response as the funding freeze for the World Health Organization.
Many startups will need to reinvent themselves in order to stay afloat in a tough economy. Photo: Le Toan

A number of venture capital and fund investors are still pouring capital into the Vietnamese startup market to capitalise on long-term growth. In particular, Japans Hiroshima Venture Capital has launched 1 billion ($9.3 million) fund that will invest in local startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises in the country.

Meanwhile, Vietnams accelerator ThinkZone invests $250,000 into five startups comprising beauty service platform iSalon, home healthcare services for babies Bluecare, household tasks support platform Housecare, software-as-a-service platform Hachium, and Airiot, a compact Internet of Things product.

Vietnam-based e-commerce enabler Onpoint has recently raised over $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Kiwoom Investment and Daiwa-SSIAM Vietnam Growth Fund 2 LP.

Daniel Muller, head of Finance at Amanotes, a mobile game publisher based in Vietnam, said that venture capital and fund investors see the country as a very attractive investment destination. This is due to its favourable demographics and economy, the opening up of the business environment, and the relative progression in tourist and business rankings.

Investors that are based throughout Asia have woken up to the potential that Vietnam offers as they overfish other markets and regions, he said.

According to Muller, Vietnam has seen tremendous growth in the tech scene over the last few years. This is all thanks to encouraging governmental policies and free trade agreements. The increasing emergence of new technology as well as a young, active workforce are also major attractions to the nations startup scene.

Furthermore, plenty of tech-focused startups in Vietnams e-commerce, fintech, e-learning, AI, and cloud-based services have received global recognition and investment. To put this into perspective, from 2017 to 2019, the country experienced a six-fold increase in the investment value of technology deals.

In its Southeast Asia Tech Investment 2019 report, Cento Ventures, a venture capital firm specialised in under-invested emerging digital markets, pointed out that investment in Vietnam-based startups increased enormously. In 2019, this investment was worth $741 million, making up 18 per cent of the country-specific capital deployment, a huge jump over 2018 where it only accounted for 4 per cent, or $284 million. Also for the first time, investment in Vietnamese tech startups last year exceeded that in Singapore, to rank second in Southeast Asia.

Dang Duc Thanh, director of the Start-up Success Institute, said that the pandemic has created an opportunity for startups to disrupt the market, with customer behaviour switching from offline to online channels. He noted that since the outbreak, these firms have introduced a variety of technological products such as remote training, express delivery, and online grocery services to meet the local market demand.

Ravi Saraogi, co-founder and president of voice AI startup Uniphore APAC spoke at length about the situation. We believe that Vietnam has taken various measures to successfully minimise the spread of the virus. This is a difficult time but also an opportunity for businesses to plan their next move, one of which is to power themselves with technology that can be agile and flexible for such scenarios, said Saraogi.

When social distancing is encouraged and a normal lifestyle seems like a luxury, we can see consumers moving to digital channels for products and services, Saraogi continued. This indicates there will be a change in consumer behaviour even after things get back to normal. Digital will be the new normal.

According to Muller from Amanotes, with the internet economy experiencing a growth rate of 40 per cent in 2020, Vietnam is the perfect location to nurture and develop tech-based initiatives, compared to neighbouring countries such as Indonesia or the Philippines.

Despite the impact of the pandemic, we feel that this could be a golden opportunity for tech companies to transform, breakthrough, and prosper in the digital sphere, said Muller. Vietnam has witnessed a sharp growth in online socio-economic activity since March, and we are confident that the numbers will continue to soar in the near future.

To become successful, he recommended that startups keep the pace of change, embrace cutting-edge tech, learn from the global best practice, maintain the cultural positioning of Vietnam, and show the world your fun side.

Vietnams startup scene is fast becoming a darling for venture capital funds and investors, but the ongoing health crisis will be a test of how the burgeoning industry can survive. One example is bus booking platform Vexere, which succeeded in raising money from Asian funds such as Woowa Brothers and Access Venture last year. Vexere has so far dealt with its lack of financial strength to stay afloat, but after bus companies halted operations during the nationwide social distancing campaign, the firm has struggled with a major loss in revenue.

The import-export and domestic delivery industries have also suffered significantly. Loglag, a logistics startup, is feeling the pinch on the back of lost revenue. In the first quarter of 2020, it earned only a third of its income in the same period last year. To survive the pandemic, the company has been forced to reduce 30 per cent from staff salaries, and marketing strategies have been put on hold to cut costs. Additionally, other businesses who work with Loglag have requested extending debt payments, as they are also experiencing hardships.
photo: Melanie Dunea

Emma Straub is the author of the bestselling novels The Vacationers, Modern Lovers and Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures and the story collection Other People We Married. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her novel All Adults Here (Riverhead, $27) is reviewed below.

How have you been weathering the coronavirus crisis as both the owner of a temporarily shuttered bricks-and-mortar bookstore and an author with a new novel out?

How much time do you have? To be totally honest, mostly I've been weathering it as a mom, which helps because I don't have time to obsessively read the news or be too scared, because I have to build Legos and dance and read books. My husband does the lion's share of the work at the store always, but especially now. And as an author, I feel aware of how lucky I am to already have an audience, and to know that I'll likely be able to have other chances for big publications, whatever that looks like in the future. My heart really goes out to the debut authors who are publishing books right now: to have worked for years to get here, and to find themselves in this land out of time. Even though we are surrounded by unfathomable tragedy and sadness, it's hard not to be able to celebrate.

Speaking of your new book, what was the genesis of All Adults Here?

I wanted to write a book about cheese! That's really how it started, though as soon as I started outlining, I realized it wasn't about cheese. (There is cheese in the book, but only a little.) As ever, I'm interested in family dynamics, but with this book, I started from a new place--I now have two kids, and my parents are in their late 70s, and it's a whole different world. Of course, a book is never about what you think it's going to be about. Sometimes I think you don't know what a book is really about until you're finished.

In All Adults Here, one of your characters thinks, "So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn't matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being." Do you believe this is true, and if so, how did that realization come to you?

Ha, you caught me! I do believe that the formative experiences we have as kids, and our relationships with our loved ones in particular, do squish your brain into a particular shape, and it pretty much stays there until you start examining your habits. Therapy is good for that. And it's never too late--not for any of us--to do better, to get things right, to try harder, to change.

You have some great, withering lines in All Adults Here; I think my favorite is the reference to "stores for women who had reached the chenille-tunic stage of life." Is there an author whose biting wit inspires you, and would you balk at being referred to as a "comic novelist"?

I'm delighted every time anyone thinks I'm funny--small children, strangers in the bookstore, anyone who reads my books. And most of my favorite writers are funny--Jane Austen, Colson Whitehead, Lorrie Moore, Tom Perrotta, Meg Wolitzer--even if their books aren't thought of that way. It's just like choosing a person to spend time with, really--wouldn't you rather spend time with someone funny?

Your father, Peter Straub, is best known as an author of horror literature. I'm sure he inspired you to become a writer, but have you ever considered writing genre fiction?

Oh, I tried. I tried to write a mystery novel, I tried to write a fantasy novel. Those are very, very hard, and require a clarity of vision that I certainly did not possess in my 20s. I may try again someday. Who knows? But writing a good genre novel is like being able to speak another language. I respect those authors too much to assume I could do it.

You have kids. You write books. You own a bookstore with a children's section. Surely you have a few ideas for kids' books kicking around in your head?

You better believe it! Children's book editors: call me--I have a few ideas that I think are genuinely good. But, of course, as with genre fiction, I would be moonlighting in genius territory, and I don't fool myself that my books would be anywhere near as profound as the books by the people I love: Carson Ellis, Mac Barnett, Christian Robinson, Zachariah OHora. There are so many incredible picture book writer/illustrators working now. I feel lucky that I get to spend so much of every day reading kids' books.

How has being an author changed your approach to bookselling, and how has being a bookseller changed your approach to writing?

When we opened, being an author meant that I had direct access to scores of writers, and could e-mail or text them and ask them to do an event. Now I try to play by the rules, and book things through the [publishers'] event grids, but actually, right now, in the midst of the pandemic, I do feel a bit like I've reverted to that spirit of oh-I'll-just-do-it-myself, whatever it is, because I'm at home with my kids and the store feels like an idea rather than a place. (Have I mentioned that this is a funny time to do interviews? It is!) But more long lasting, I hope, is the way that bookselling has changed my approach to writing. I imagine there are two main camps for writers who work in bookstores: one group is overwhelmed by the volume and breadth and sparkle of all the new books that come out every week, and one group is inspired by the same. I, very happily, find myself in the latter category. Whether I have time to work is another matter. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer
Gov. Kate Brown announced that she would begin lifting her sweeping coronavirus stay-home orders and change the rules of social and economic engagement across the state.

The reopening will be phased in geographically. Starting today, each of Oregons 36 counties can submit plans demonstrating that they can meet seven public health criteria.

The criteria include declining levels of COVID-19 hospital admissions over a 14-day period; minimum levels of testing and contact tracing capacity; adequate hospital surge capacity, quarantine facilities and personal protection equipment; and finalized sector guidelines from the state to communicate to individual businesses.

Read how the new guidelines affect: retail stores | salons and tattoo parlors | restaurants and bars | outdoor recreation | sporting events | large gatherings, including concerts and festivals

Here are more developments to know Friday:

ENFORCEMENT: Oregon businesses that flout the governors reopening rules could be fined, state officials say. Some places of worship will be allowed to host gatherings of fewer than 25 people. But 10 Oregon church leaders sued the governor, saying they want to worship without restrictions.

DISTANCING: The governor so far hasnt mandated wearing masks in public. Instead, she advised to be kind and smart when considering whether to wear face coverings. Separately, a top Oregon public health official stood by her statement that people with no symptoms are unlikely or certainly less likely to spread the new coronavirus, despite studies finding the contrary.

ECONOMY: Nearly 382,000 Oregonians have filed for jobless benefits during the first seven weeks of the pandemic, approaching 1 in 5 workers altogether.

CASES: More than 70,000 Oregonians have been tested for the illness since the state confirmed its first case. Nearly 3,000 of those people have tested positive, and 121 have died.

TESTING: Oregon State University researchers went door to door in Corvallis offering coronavirus tests. School officials wont say how many people tested positive, but estimate the infection rate was 2 in 1,000 residents. Meanwhile, state public health officials say coronavirus antibody tests are too unreliable to analyze for public health purposes.

STATE: Coronavirus cases in Oregon prisons continue to rise, but the testing rate remains low. Staff at some prisons are now offering tests to any inmate who wants one. The Oregon Lottery has responded to the pandemic recession with plans to cut jobs and pay.

CANCELED: This years Oregon State Fair is canceled, following Browns ban on large gatherings. Washington County Fair also was also called off.

FYI: The Oregon National Guard will conduct F-15 Eagle flyovers Friday in Oregon and Southwest Washington to salute frontline workers caring for coronavirus patients.

#TEAMOREGON:

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-- The Oregonian/OregonLive

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[May 08, 2020] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP, a Leading Securities Fraud Law Firm, Announces Investigation of CytoDyn Inc. (CYDY) on Behalf of Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM"), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, today announced that it has commenced an investigation on behalf of CytoDyn Inc. ("CytoDyn" or the "Company") (OTC: CYDY) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of the federal securities laws. If you suffered a loss on your CytoDyn investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information here or contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, via email [email protected] or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com to learn more about your rights. On April 27, 2020, CytoDyn issued a press release indicating it had submitteda "Biologics License Application ('BLA') to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Leronlimab as a combination therapy with HAART for highly treatment experienced HIV patients."



Then, on May 7, 2020, CytoDyn announced that its BLA for Leronlimab "will be considered completed after the clinical datasets are submitted on May 11, 2020." On this news, the Company's share price fell as much as $0.225, or more than 7%, during intraday trading on May 8, 2020.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Whistleblower Notice: Persons with non-public information regarding CytoDyn should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC (News - Alert) Whistleblower Program. Under the program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Charles H. Linehan at 310-201-9150 or 888-773-9224 or email [email protected]. About GPM Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP is a premier law firm representing investors and consumers in securities litigation and other complex class action litigation. ISS Securities Class Action Services has consistently ranked GPM in its annual SCAS Top 50 Report. In 2018, GPM was ranked a top five law firm in number of securities class action settlements, and a top six law firm for total dollar size of settlements. With four offices across the country, GPM's nearly 40 attorneys have won groundbreaking rulings and recovered billions of dollars for investors and consumers in securities, antitrust, consumer, and employment class actions. GPM's lawyers have handled cases covering a wide spectrum of corporate misconduct including cases involving financial restatements, internal control weaknesses, earnings management, fraudulent earnings guidance and forward looking statements, auditor misconduct, insider trading, violations of FDA regulations, actions resulting in FDA and DOJ investigations, and many other forms of corporate misconduct. GPM's attorneys have worked on securities cases relating to nearly all industries and sectors in the financial markets, including, energy, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, real estate and REITs, financial, insurance, information technology, health care, biotech, cryptocurrency, medical devices, and many more. GPM's past successes have been widely covered by leading news and industry publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times (News - Alert), Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, the Associated Press, Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and Money. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200508005455/en/

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New York City has opened a 'disaster morgue' in Brooklyn, using refrigerated trucks in Sunset Park to store bodies as the city's morgues struggle to copy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The solution is being seen as longer-term, and is designed to ease the pressure on funeral directors who have become overwhelmed, with the number of deaths in New York City now over 14,000, with a further 5,300 probable deaths.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examinar said this week that the morgue is located on Brooklyn's 39th Street Pier, where over 50 trucks are parked.

The Brooklyn 'disaster morgue' on sunset park pier, pictured on May 6 with the statue of liberty looming behind the trucks through the fog

Hospital personnel are pictured behind a barricade as they move a body onto a refrigerated overflow trailer outside the Brooklyn Hospital Center on May 7

A spokesperson for the Mayor's office said that many of the trucks are currently empty, but needed to be parked somewhere.

Not all the bodies kept in the trucks will be victims of the coronavirus, the spokesperson added.

The city has proven to be the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, experiencing at least one-fifth of the country's more than 71,000 total fatalities.

With the deaths occurring in a relatively short space of time, funeral homes' ability to get on top of the number of funerals and cremations needed has been severely strained, as has their capacity to store bodies beforehand.

According to CNN, funeral homes have been turning down cremations because they have been unable to store bodies, and have been placing them in refrigerated trailers.

A hearse arrives at the sunset park temporary morgue, where 50 refrigerated trucks are currently parked. Reportedly, not all the trucks are full

The temporary morgue in Brooklyn, pictured with a back-drop of the Manhattan skyline

Michael Lanotte, executive director of the New York State Funeral Directors Association, said the trucks would ease the pressure on the city's funeral industry.

'The additional morgue operating hours will also help funeral directors by providing them with evening hours for transfers, since they spend the vast majority of the daytime hours conducting funerals, making arrangements and answering calls from families seeking their services,' Lanotte said.

The morgue will reportedly be open until 10:30 p.m. each day.

Earlier in the crisis, city official announced that potter's field for the poor and unclaimed on Hart Island, the jail system's public burial ground, would be used to bury victims of the coronavirus.

In an attempt to ease public fears over mass burials, Mayor Bill de Blasio responded on twitter, saying: 'There will be no mass burials on Hart Island. Everything will be individual and every body will be treated with dignity.'

Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York, April 9

On March 29, Dailymail.com reported that dozens of hospitals around the city were using refrigerated trucks as makeshift morgues to deal with the crisis.

The last time that New York City deployed a fleet of makeshift morgues outside hospitals was in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The citys medical examiners office needed the refrigerated morgues to store the body parts found in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

A temporary morgue using refrigerated trucks is set up outside of the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

The city's desperate struggle to keep with the coronavirus deaths was brought to attention last week when police discovered around 100 bodies in two rental trucks outside a Brooklyn funeral home.

Authorities found two unrefrigerated U-Haul box trucks being used to store the bodies outside of Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in Flatlands after neighbors filmed body bags being dragged into them in recent days.

There were as many as 50 corpses being stored in each truck, according to ABC News, as the facility struggled to keep up with the overwhelming surge of bodies due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Police found the bodies in various stages of decomposition.

The owner told city officials that its freezer had stopped working and they were forced to use the trucks as storage while bodies awaited burial or cremation.

'For weeks already, there have been trucks constantly outside unloading bodies. You could smell the death,' Jay Fredo told New York Daily News. 'Some of them have been dropped. I know it's a pandemic, but this is crazy. It's sick.'

A casket is moved outside the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in Brooklyn, on April 30. Almost 100 bodies were found in non-refrigerated trucks outside of the funeral home

No criminal charges were brought but the home was cited for failing to control the odors.

The facility was able to obtain a larger, refrigerated truck later in the day, the official said, and workers suited up in protective gear could be seen in the afternoon transferring bodies.

'I saw 15 bodies in the U-Haul box truck stacked up on one another, and more in the other,' one officer told the New York Daily News. 'They stored them right out on the street.'

A member of staff told ABC that there were a further 30 to 40 bodies inside and some were being kept on the floor.

'This funeral home is over-capacitated with human remains and that is true,' said Dr. David Penepent, a funeral director who teaches at SUNY Canton and was brought in by the state to help.

'He got overwhelmed with the number of remains that he had and he didn't know what to do and I'm here to assist him in this operation.'
The coronavirus pandemic will change many aspects to the way in which India is run, with analysts predicting both an increase in state power and the isolation of Muslims.

In early April, the Indian government launched a contact tracing app that processes users' travel history, symptoms and location data to calculate their risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Called Aarogya Setu, which means "bridge to health", the app has been downloaded by more than 90 million Indians who have uploaded their personal health information and granted authorities access to their locations.

The government now says the app is now mandatory for all employees, public or private," said parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party. "On what basis it could issue such an instruction to non-government employees is far from clear.

Not having the app is a punishable offence and people have already been fined 1,000 Indian rupees (12 euros).

All those without the app on their smartphones can be booked. It is up to the judicial magistrate then to decide if the person should be tried, fined or let off with a warning, said Akhilesh Kumar, a police officer from Noida, a New Delhi suburb.

But lawyers and free speech activists argue the app does not have adequate data protections and is open to exploitation by the government, which could use it to trace people's movements.

In a tweet, the French ethical hacker Robert Baptiste, who goes by the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, warned the app is unsafe  revealing he was able to break through its security to learn that several people in the prime minister's office and the army headquarters had fallen ill.

The biggest casualty of this concentration of power is human rights," said SY Quraishi, a former chief election commissioner. "Overnight citizens are converted into 'subjects' and are compelled to surrender their rights in the name of larger public good.

Under normal circumstances, such policy measures would have been subjected to scrutiny by the legislature and judiciary, but the coronavirus outbreak has overridden the usual checks and balances.

As Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy wrote recently: Pre-corona, if we were sleepwalking into the surveillance state, now we are panic-running into a super surveillance state.

As India steps up its use of surveillance drones and facial recognition, the government's health care app has now added to Big Brother's world.

An excuse for hate speech

The coronavirus contagion has increasingly been used to fuel anti-Islam sentiments in India, with the Muslim community shunned and abused after the missionary organisation Tablighi Jamaat was linked to hundreds of cases of Covid-19.

This stigmatisation will continue and will probably take a more vicious turn in the coming months and years," said Navaid Hamid, the president of the All India Muslim Majlis. "After all, it is the project of the ruling party to make Muslims second-class citizens.

Since the 2014 election of Narendra Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, Hindu-Muslim tensions have steadily escalated, leading to beef bans and the lynching of Muslims.

We have already got a glimpse of the hate campaigns against the community last month," said Zafarul Islam Kahn, chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission. "This project to put us in place will take on a sharper edge.

New rules for businesses

Immeasurable damage has been done to India's tourism, travel and the hospitality industries by a virus that, by all estimates, could become a seasonal event. Those sectors are now focused on a new wave of security measures.

Moving forward, technology will play a significant role in ensuring one goes through a machine that disinfects you before you enter hotels and offices," said Farhat Jamal a former hotelier. "Tech interventions will create minimum physical touch points in hotels.

Hotel chains have already begun revamping their existing service protocols and standards for guests. One hotel chain has embarked on an Indian project dubbed "We Care", which will entail new standard operating procedures for staff and guests.

Equally, the legal sector will undergo a transformation, with judges, lawyers and litigants to adapt to a new normal of virtual courts.

Some high court judges in Delhi and Punjab and Haryana have completely dispensed with paper - digitising, scanning and e-filing documents.

Lastly, the pandemic will profoundly change the way businesses are run, and fundamentally alter management practices. Industry leaders believe firms will increasingly allow - and even encourage - employees to work from home.

As one IT head, Lalit Kumar, put it: We're seeing the coronavirus ushering in a new way of working in India and I think it's about time."
The spread of the coronavirus across the globe from China was either a terrible mistake on the part of the Chinese or probably it was incompetence, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday. "It (coronavirus) could have been stopped at the point. It could have been stopped right at the source.

It would have been easy to do, but something happened," he told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House. "Either they made a terrible mistake -- probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid and they did not do the job that they should have done. It is too ...
DENVER, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gates Industrial Corporation plc (NYSE: GTES), a global manufacturer of innovative, highly engineered power transmission and fluid power solutions, today announced that the Company will participate in the virtual 2020 Goldman Sachs Industrials & Materials Conference on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Ivo Jurek, Chief Executive Officer, will present at 12:10 p.m. eastern time.

To access a webcast of this presentation, please visit the Events & Presentations section of the Gates Investor Relations website at investors.gates.com, and click on the event webcast link.

About Gates Industrial Corporation plc

Gates is a global manufacturer of innovative, highly engineered power transmission and fluid power solutions. Gates offers a broad portfolio of products to diverse replacement channel customers, and to original equipment ("first-fit") manufacturers as specified components. Gates participates in many sectors of the industrial and consumer markets. Our products play essential roles in a diverse range of applications across a wide variety of end markets ranging from harsh and hazardous industries such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and energy, to everyday consumer applications such as printers, power washers, automatic doors and vacuum cleaners and virtually every form of transportation. Our products are sold in 128 countries across our four commercial regions: the Americas; Europe, Middle East & Africa; Greater China; and East Asia & India.

Contact

Bill Waelke

(303) 744-4887

[email protected]

SOURCE Gates Industrial Corporation plc
UPDATE: Father and Son Bail Denied in Shooting Death of Ahmaud Arbery After Outcry

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  More than two months after a black man was fatally shot while running through a Georgia neighborhood, the white father and son arrested in the case were arraigned on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault Friday.

The investigation by local authorities had seemed stalled until this week, when a video of the Feb. 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery was shared widely on social media, prompting outrage across the nation.

All that matters is what the facts tell us, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said Friday, noting that his agency brought charges a day after it was brought into the case. Reynolds said every stone will be uncovered in the investigation.

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Addressing the question of racial intent, Reynolds noted that Georgia has no hate crime law. That has prompted many civil rights activists to call for a federal investigation.

Arrest warrants for Gregory and Travis McMichael filed in court Friday confirmed, as the initial police report stated, that Travis McMichael pointed and discharged a shotgun  at Ahmaud Arbery. But there were no new details.

In a letter to Glynn County police in early April, a prosecutor previously assigned to the case outlined reasons he believed there was insufficient probable cause to issue arrest warrants in the case. Waycross D.A. George E. Barnhill argued that the McMichaels actions were legal under Georgia laws on citizens arrests, the open carry of guns and self-defense.

The McMichaels told police they pursued Arbery, with another person recording them on video, after spotting him running in their neighborhood. The father and son said they thought he matched the appearance of a burglary suspect who they said had been recorded on a surveillance camera some time before.

Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she thinks her son, a former high school football player, was just jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood before he was killed.

Arbery would have turned 26 on Friday, and a crowd of several hundred people, most wearing masks, sang Happy Birthday in his honor outside the Glynn County Courthouse. Many expressed frustration at the long wait before arrests were made and fears that the justice system will fail them.

The work is just beginning, John Perry, president of the Brunswick NAACP chapter, told the crowd. We cant stop now. We cant lose focus and weve got to make sure the prosecution gets done.

Anthony Johnson, 40, said Arbery was his neighbor for about a decade. He said he wants to see the McMichaels get the same treatment in the legal system as black defendants.

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Just arresting them, that aint doing nothing, Johnson said. We want them convicted. We want them sent to prison for life.

Gregory and Travis McMichael made their first, brief court appearances Friday afternoon.

The father and son, both wearing orange jumpsuits, appeared individually from jail on a videoconference screen in the courtroom of Magistrate Judge Wallace Harrell. Inmates arent appearing in person because of the coronavirus.

The judge spent roughly a minute reading each man his rights and the charges faced. A Superior Court judge will have to decide whether to grant them bond.

The McMichaels spoke only when asked to confirm their names. Neither had attorneys representing them in court. No further hearing dates were scheduled.

The felony murder charges against Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, mean that a victim was killed during the commission of an underlying felony, in this case aggravated assault. The charge doesnt require intent to kill.

A murder conviction in Georgia is automatically punishable by life in prison, either with or without the possibility of parole. A prosecutor can also seek the death penalty in a murder case if certain aggravating circumstances exist.

A GBI news release said the McMichaels confronted Arbery with two firearms. During the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery.

Some of the encounter was apparently recorded in two 911 calls, with a dispatcher trying to understand the problem.

Theres a black male running down the street, the caller says.

I just need to know what he was doing wrong, the dispatcher responds, in part.

In a second call six minutes later, someone can be heard yelling Stop.  Dammit. Stop. Then, after a pause, Travis!

Gregory McMichael retired last year as an investigator for Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson; the connection caused Johnson to recuse herself. Barnhill then got the case before recusing himself under pressure from Arberys family because his son works in Johnsons office.

Tom Durden, the outside prosecutor overseeing the case, had said he wanted a grand jury to decide whether charges are warranted, but Georgia courts are still largely closed because of the coronavirus. Durden said Friday that he wont bow to public pressure from one side or another.

The leaked video shows a black man running at a jogging pace. The truck is stopped in the road ahead of him, with one of the white men standing in the pickups bed and the other beside the open drivers side door.

The running man attempts to pass the pickup on the passenger side, moving just beyond the truck, briefly outside the cameras view. A gunshot sounds, and the video shows the runner grappling with a man over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle. A second shot can be heard, and the runner can be seen punching the man. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. The runner staggers a few feet and falls face down.

They did not arrest the killers of Ahmaud Arbery because they saw the video, Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the slain mans father, Marcus Arbery, told The Associated Press on Friday. They arrested the killers of Ahmaud Arbery because we saw the video, the public saw the video and it went viral. It was shocking. People were astonished.

The outcry over the killing reached the White House, where President Donald Trump offered condolences to Arberys family.

Trump said Friday on Fox News Channel that hed seen the video.

Its a heartbreak  very rough, rough stuff, Trump added. Justice getting done is what solves that problem. Its in the hands of the governor and Im sure hell do the right thing.

______________________________________________________________________

Glynn County, GA  On May 7th, 2020, the GBI arrested Gregory McMichael, age 64, and Travis McMichael, age 34, for the death of Ahmaud Arbery. They were both charged with murder and aggravated assault. The McMichaels were taken into custody and will be booked into the Glynn County Jail.

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Brunswick, GA when both Gregory and Travis McMichael confronted Arbery with two firearms. During the encounter, Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery.

This case is being investigated in partnership with District Attorney Tom Durden.

On May 5th, 2020, District Attorney Tom Durden formally requested the GBI investigate the death of Ahmaud Arbery. The Kingsland Office initiated an investigation on May 6th, 2020.

On April 29th, 2020, the Glynn County Police Department (GCPD) requested that the GBI investigate allegations of threats against GCPD and individuals involved in the active investigation.

On the morning of May 5th, 2020, GCPD requested the GBI investigate the public release of video related to Arberys death.

These investigations are all active and ongoing. If anyone has information related to these cases, please contact the GBI at 1-800-597-TIPS (8477).
By Michael R. Griffinger

I was two months shy of my 9th birthday on VE Day, May 8, 1945. Despite my young age, World War II was very real to me. Family and friends of my family were involved in the war effort, one way or another, and had been from the start.

I was very aware of the rationing imposed on all of us, including numerous food items and gas, for which we needed a sticker with a letter on it placed on our cars windshield, designating our priority (or lack thereof) to fill our tank. We saved bacon fat in a tin can, wrapped aluminum linings from cigarette packs in a ball, and jumped on other tin cans to flatten them  all to turn in the appropriate authorities to be used in munitions or other wartime needs.

We had blackout curtains and air raid drills. We memorized the silhouettes of German airplanes in case we spotted them over our New Jersey home. We were aware that German submarines had been spotted off the Shore.

We had family in France some of whom had gotten out in time, others who didnt but stayed to fight with the Free French underground. We read V-mail from the soldiers and sailors we knew, which came to us on sepia-colored paper that looked like a waterlogged photostat with shrunken print, with blacked-out portions by the censors.

We saw houses with shingles in the windows designating homes of Gold Star Mothers who had lost a child in the war. We saved our allowances and took them to school to buy war bond stamps and pasted them in a booklet until they totaled $18.75, which could be turned in for a $25 war bond that matured 10 years later.

But these experiences and minor privations were insignificant compared to what was going on in Europe. Our lives went on with great normalcy. We went to school, men and women went to work, we played on the playground or rode our bikes  we were relatively unaffected. The war was far away.

However, we knew what was happening over there. Continental Europe was under the oppressive and often vicious rule of Hitlers forces. At the movie theaters, we saw the newsreels of the bombing of England, and particularly of London, in preparation for Hitlers invasion of that country, which fortunately never came once he had turned his attention to the attack on Russia.

But the devastation of the terrible, non-stop bombing by Hermann Gorings Luftwaffe took an enormous toll on that country and its people. In 1940-41, hundreds of bombers escorted by fighters flew missions dropping multi-ton bombs, incendiary bombs that started innumerable fires and bombs that were even able to pierce through air raid shelters and kill the people who had sought refuge there.

More than 40,000 civilians were killed during the Blitz and 60% of the houses in London were destroyed. Buckingham Palace was bombed 16 times. We have all seen the documentaries and movies that have recounted those devastating days. Yet the English people not merely persevered but demonstrated uncommon unity and resilience. Inspired by Winston Churchills extraordinary oratory, they endured, fought the fires, rebuilt their homes and churches and never surrendered.

On VE Day, church bells rang and people gathered to celebrate the end of the war. We drove downtown to East Orange and Newark and joined hundreds of cars honking and waving, passing happy people throwing confetti and hugging. Our country, like England and the many countries that fought the German invaders, was united in its struggle to defeat an evil enemy. It was an unforgettable time and an unforgettable day.

Today we have a new, insidious enemy in the coronavirus. Again, our country is called upon to unite behind the common goal of defeating this enemy. Even during World War II there were dissenters to our policy to join Europe in fighting Hitler, but as we as a country learned what the Third Reich stood for, the correct policy path to follow became clear. Surely, on the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the message is once again clear what we must do to reach our own VC Day, victory over the coronavirus. Hopefully, all of us will follow that path.

Michael R. Griffinger lived in West Orange during WWII. He has been an attorney with Gibbons PC in Newark for 50 years.

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Welcome to Poll Watch, our weekly look at polling data and survey research on the candidates, voters and issues that will shape the 2020 election.

Two months after the coronavirus shuttered much of the United States economy, the outbreaks impact  on jobs, health care, food access and much more  is growing only more severe, according to a growing body of polling and social science data.

But heres what else the polls are telling us: Americans are generally uninterested in returning to normal, and they tend to believe federal health experts, who continue to warn against a swift reopening of the economy.

President Trump said this week that he was eager to get our country open again, adding, People want to go back, and youre going to have a problem if you dont do it.

But more than two-thirds of respondents said in a Pew Research Center poll out Thursday that they were more concerned that state governments would reopen their economies too quickly than that they might take too long  roughly on par with past responses to the same question.
GENEVA, Switzerland, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kalexius has been recognized as a premier managed legal service provider in the latest Chambers and Partners rankings.

The ranking focuses on Alternative Legal Service Providers, ranging from dedicated LPO companies to the Big Four's legal operations, and their added value for in-house legal departments. Chambers' research highlights that "today's clients are increasingly turning to more boutique platforms such as [] Kalexius" for high-value and high-volume work such as contract remediation projects or vendor contract management.

Kalexius Founder & CEO Nicolas Leroux explains:

"We are in a unique position to bridge the gap in the legal market between traditional law firms and legal staffing agencies. We allow our clients to focus on their core remit while relying on Kalexius' expertise and efficiency for volume-intensive tasks. We take on large-scale projects and regular workflows to support major financial institutions and other multinationals faced with an increasingly complex regulatory environment and headcount pressure."

The Kalexius method combines people, process and technology to achieve a seamless delivery of complex and long-term projects.

During Chambers' research, Kalexius' clients praised the firm for its responsiveness, availability and practicality.

"Our success stems from our people," Leroux adds. "Our services are run by lawyers for lawyers. We speak the same language so nothing gets lost in translation and we deliver optimal results. We are proud to be recognized by our peers and the legal sector and we are deeply grateful for our clients' trust and loyalty."

This is Kalexius' first ranking by Chambers and Partners.

About Kalexius

Founded in 2011, Kalexius is based in Geneva, Switzerland and operates globally with offices in seven countries. Kalexius offers managed legal services, challenging assumptions about law departments and building innovative and agile solutions that deliver real business impact through revenue acceleration, risk mitigation and cost-reduction. Key practice areas include financial services, intellectual property, regulatory & compliance and corporate work. More information at www.kalexius.com.

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Support to Construction of Pyongyang General Hospital Brisk in DPRK

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK

Pyongyang, May 7 (KCNA) -- A hot wind of support to the Pyongyang General Hospital under construction is sweeping the DPRK.

Following March when a ground-breaking ceremony for the hospital construction was held, South Phyongan, South Hamgyong, North Hwanghae, Kangwon, Ryanggang and other provinces sent to the construction site a lot of utensils and tools and materials in April to contribute to hastening the construction.

Officials of ministries and national institutions, too, have frequented the construction site with badly-needed materials.

Worker Jo Myong Jin of Chosan County, Jagang Province, did a distinguished patriotic deed in supporting the hospital construction. Following him, officials and working people of various units including the Korea Minye Corporation and the North Phyongan Provincial Land and Environmental Conservation Bureau have shown their sincerity to the construction.

The modern Pyongyang General Hospital being built on the picturesque bank of the Taedong River will be completed on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea. -0-

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Boris Johnson today urged coronavirus-hit Britain to take inspiration from the 'heroic' generation that won the Second World War.

In a heartfelt tribute to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the PM said the efforts against the Nazis had 'saved freedom', adding: 'We owe them everything.'

He said Britons 'triumphed over every ordeal and hardship' during the war, and the country now needed the 'same spirit of national endeavour'.

The stirring words, in a video message issued by Downing Street today, came as the country commemorates the historic day in 1945 when war officially ended in Europe.

However, events are taking place across the country in line with 'social distancing' guidelines as the coronavirus lockdown continues.

The world-famous Red Arrows have flown over London, while RAF Typhoons will soar over Edinburgh, Cardiff and Bristol in magnificent displays.

In a heartfelt tribute to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, Boris Johnson said the efforts of the wartime generation had 'saved freedom', adding: 'We owe them everything.'

The PM's VE Day video message in full 'Seventy five years ago, the people of this country celebrated victory against Hitler's aggression. In cities scarred by enemy bombing, the crowds gave thanks for a national exertion greater than anything else before or since. What our country and our allies did was to save freedom. 'Britain and the Commonwealth and Empire were the only nations who fought Hitler from the first day of the Second World War to the last without being defeated and occupied. For a whole year, 1940-41, we stood alone against him, the last barrier to his tyranny. If we'd gone down, then it wasn't just our country that would have been destroyed, but liberty and democracy everywhere. 'But we did not fail: thanks to the heroism of countless ordinary people, who may be elderly today, but who once carried the fate of freedom itself on their shoulders. Across the world, our soldiers, sailors and airmen fought the Nazis with courage, ingenuity and stubborn endurance. 'On the home front, women defended out cities against air raids, worked the factories, ran the hospitals and broke enemy codes. People of every age, race and background came together in one supreme effort, and they paid a grievous price, with over 450,000 British people laying down their lives. 'And yet they triumphed over every ordeal and hardship and because of their victory, hundreds of millions of people live in peace and freedom today. The countries who we fought are now among our closest friends, and most of Europe has enjoyed 75 years of peace. We are now engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus, which demands the same spirit of national endeavour. 'And that means we can't hold the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past. But all of us, who were born since 1945, are acutely conscious that we owe everything we most value to the generation who won the Second World War. Today we celebrate their achievement, we remember their sacrifice and we take pride in being their compatriots. We are a free people because of everything they did, and our gratitude will be eternal.' Advertisement

Prince Charles had led a national two-minute silence at 11am, and the Last Post will be played from the top of the country's four highest peaks.

Meanwhile, families are being urged to post pictures online of their 'street parties' - with the hastag #StayAtHomeParty.

In a video addressing the nation this morning, the PM said: 'Seventy five years ago, the people of this country celebrated victory against Hitler's aggression.

'In cities scarred by enemy bombing, the crowds gave thanks for a national exertion greater than anything else before or since. What our country and our allies did was to save freedom.

'Britain and the Commonwealth and Empire were the only nations who fought Hitler from the first day of the Second World War to the last without being defeated and occupied.

'For a whole year, 1940-41, we stood alone against him, the last barrier to his tyranny. If we'd gone down, then it wasn't just our country that would have been destroyed, but liberty and democracy everywhere.

'But we did not fail: thanks to the heroism of countless ordinary people, who may be elderly today, but who once carried the fate of freedom itself on their shoulders.

Across the world, our soldiers, sailors and airmen fought the Nazis with courage, ingenuity and stubborn endurance.'

Mr Johnson pointed out that it was not just those actively involved in fighting who contributed to the victory.

'On the home front, women defended out cities against air raids, worked the factories, ran the hospitals and broke enemy codes. People of every age, race and background came together in one supreme effort, and they paid a grievous price, with over 450,000 British people laying down their lives,' he said.

'And yet they triumphed over every ordeal and hardship and because of their victory, hundreds of millions of people live in peace and freedom today.'

Mr Johnson said the European countries Britain fought 'are now among our closest friends'.

And urging the current generation to draw strength from the past, he said: 'We are now engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus, which demands the same spirit of national endeavour.

'And that means we can't hold the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past.

'But all of us, who were born since 1945, are acutely conscious that we owe everything we most value to the generation who won the Second World War.

'Today we celebrate their achievement, we remember their sacrifice and we take pride in being their compatriots.

'We are a free people because of everything they did, and our gratitude will be eternal.'

The video came alongside a letter to Second World War veterans, in which Mr Johnson wrote: 'Please allow us, your proud compatriots, to be the first to offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered.'

Boris Johnson (pictured in Westminster Abbey) has thanked veterans whose efforts to defeat a 'ruthless enemy' would 'always be remembered' on the 75th anniversary of VE Day

Mr Johnson wrote: 'But please allow us, your proud compatriots, to be the first to offer our gratitude, our heartfelt thanks and our solemn pledge: you will always be remembered'

This VE Day marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe (pictured, blind war veterans clapping for carers outside Blind Veterans UK, East Sussex)

VE Day will be marked with small commemorations in Parliament, with Speakers of both the Commons and the Lords expected to offer tributes (pictured, in New York)

Britain announced 539 coronavirus victims on Thursday, as the UK's official toll rose to 30,615

Mr Johnson wrote: 'We are engaged in a new struggle against the coronavirus which demands the same spirit of national endeavour that you exemplified 75 years ago'

Tributes to veterans of the world war have come from across the political spectrum, echoing Mr Johnson's words of gratitude (pictured, a V-shaped victory party in Brockley, London)

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the British government opted to move the early May bank holiday - usually held on the first Monday of the month - to May 8 to allow the UK to mark the 75th anniversary of the 1945 Victory in Europe celebrations.

But the ban on mass events, brought in on March 23 to stem the spread of the virus, means the celebrations will be more low-key than initially anticipated.

The Conservative Party leader labelled the NHS 'invincible' in its fight against Covid-19 in a speech following his own release from intensive care last month, having suffered from coronavirus symptoms.

Tributes to veterans of the world war have come from across the political spectrum, echoing Mr Johnson's words of gratitude.

The Prime Minister praised those who served on the front line and those involved in the home front effort, adding: 'Our celebration of the anniversary of the victory might give the impression that Hitler's downfall was somehow inevitable. You know better'

The ban on mass events means the celebrations will be more low-key than initially anticipated (pictured, 94-year-old Doug Farrington in his front room window in Oldham)

The Prime Minister described those involved in the struggle to defeat Nazism as 'quite simply the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived' (pictured, 1945 queuing for rations)

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, in a video message to be released today, will highlight the legacy of 'those that rebuilt and renewed our country after the war'.

He will single out the NHS, the welfare state and the 'recognition of human rights'.

'In normal times we would be paying tribute to their achievements in street parties, in gatherings and events at the Cenotaph,' he will say.

'This year we can't do that, this year we can't be together. We commemorate those who stood together for a better future.

'We remember their service, and also their sacrifice.

'We also pay tribute to those that rebuilt and renewed our country after the war. Based on their values they built a better future.'

Sir Ed Davey, acting Liberal Democrat leader, said: 'This anniversary we must honour the sacrifices made and recommit to ensuring that international cooperation and hard-won peace across Europe is protected so that we may never suffer the death and destruction of World War Two again.'

Sir Keir Starmer will highlight the legacy of 'those that rebuilt and renewed our country after the war' (pictured, injured musicians dancing in London to celebrate VE Day)

The Conservative Party leader labelled the NHS 'invincible' in its fight against Covid-19 in a speech following his own release from intensive care last month

VE Day will be marked with small commemorations in Parliament, with Speakers of both the Commons and the Lords expected to offer tributes.

They will be followed by a wreath laying service in Westminster Hall, led by the Speaker's Chaplain to coincide with the two minutes' silence at 11am.

A trumpeter from the Band of the Scots Guard will sound the Last Post.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is due to read extracts from a speech given by Winston Churchill in the Commons on May 8, 1945, in which he announced the surrender of Germany, bringing the Second World War to an end in Europe.

In the evening, the Queen will deliver a personal address from Windsor Castle.

It will be broadcast on television at 9pm, the same time her father, King George VI, gave a radio address in 1945 to mark the cessation of hostilities on the continent.
Fifty-two lived in Oak Lawn; 26 in Chicago Ridge; 23 in Bridgeview; 21 in Homewood; 18 in Chicago Heights; 17 in Orland Park; 16 each in Harvey, Country Club Hills and South Holland; 15 each in Palos Heights and Matteson; 13 in Burbank; 11 each in Hazel Crest; 10 in Park Forest; eight each in Markham, Richton Park, Evergreen Park and Blue Island; seven in Dolton; six each in Flossmoor, Tinley Park and Palos Hills; five each in Lemont and Crestwood; four each in Riverdale, Midlothian and Calumet Park; three each in Frankfort, Palos Park, Lansing, Justice, Steger, Robbins, Oak Forest, Calumet City and University Park; two each in Hickory Hills, Sauk Village, East Hazel Crest and Olympia Fields; and a single resident each in Alsip, Burnham, Thornton and Hometown.
Inquests into the deaths of National Health Service (NHS) workers from COVID-19 will be barred from addressing government failures in providing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).

Mark Lucraft QC, the chief coroner for England and Wales, issued guidance at the end of April stating that an inquest would not be a satisfactory means of deciding whether adequate general policies and arrangements were in place for provision of PPE to healthcare workers.

An inquest into the death of an NHS medical worker for coronavirus may be held if there is reason to suspect that some human failure contributed to the person being infected with the virus, Lucraft stated. The coroner investigating the death may need to consider whether any failures of precautions in a particular workplace caused the deceased to contract the virus and so contributed to death.

Members of the clinical staff wearing Personal Protective Equipment PPE care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, Tuesday May 5, 2020. (Neil Hall/Pool via AP)

But, an inquest is not the right forum for addressing concerns about high-level government or public policy, he said (emphasis added).

The official guidance indicates that the government is set on covering up its failure to properly equip NHS staff, even as deaths among health and social care workers continue to soar. As of 9 a.m. on May 7, at least 195 health and social care workers had died of COVID-19, according to Nursing Notes.

An investigation is already underway into the death of Dr. Peter Tun, a doctor specialising in brain conditions, who died of COVID-19 only weeks after asking hospital management to provide him and his team with PPE. His requests were ignored, as there were not currently any confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases in his unit. It is unclear whether the investigation will look into the availability of PPE at the time of Dr. Tuns death.

While many medical personnel have consistently reported that they have been forced to work without suitable protective equipment, hospital management has attacked those who protest against their conditions, repeatedly insisting that there was sufficient PPE available.

After a frontline nurse at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital wrote a letter to the World Socialist Web Site describing the appalling conditions they faced at work, hospital management and the Royal College of Nursing union attacked the nurses claims in the local newspaper. The Bournemouth Daily Echo quoted them stating there was no shortage of PPE and that existing guidelines on PPE were fit for purpose because they met Public Health England (PHE) guidelines.

The frontline nurse responded, Current guidance from PHE is that full PPE for nurses and doctors is only necessary if you are treating COVID-19 patients in ICU and patients having Aerosol Generating Procedures (AGP). They state that full PPE is not necessary when we are treating COVID-19 patients elsewhere in the hospital. As I wrote, these instructions from the UK government are in breach of World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.

One example cited was that WHO recommends health workers wear a medical mask, gown, gloves and eye protection (goggles or face shield) when providing direct care to COVID-19 patients. But PHE guidelines replace the gown with a flimsy apron, and eye protection can be worn based on a risk assessment.

The reality is that systematic underfunding, privatisation efforts and efficiency savings have left the NHS perilously ill-equipped to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, with many hospitals lacking supplies of even the most basic PPE. Between 2013 and 2016, Tory cuts to the NHS reduced PPE stockpiles by 40 percent.

Widespread public anger at the governments failure to provide protective equipment to health care workers grew after a BBC Panorama documentary at the end of April, Has the Government Failed the NHS?, exposed the criminal lack of preparedness to face the pandemic and the governments attempts to cover this up. As the WSWS commented:

Using documents from within the NHS supply chain, the investigation rips apart ministers claims to have provided 1 billion items of PPE in March and April. More than half of these items are surgical gloves, with each individual glove counted as a separate piece of PPE in most cases. The second largest stock of items is for plastic aprons, described by one Accident and Emergency doctor as What youd expect a dinner lady to wearit does nothing. Items like cleaning equipment, waste bags, detergent and paper towels are also counted as PPE in the official figures.

A study by the British Medical Association (BMA) revealed that around half of medical professionals have had to source their own PPE for personal or departmental use. Fifty-seven percent of GPs (general practitioners) and 34 percent of hospital doctors have had to buy their own equipment to protect themselves at work, according to the survey of 16,000 doctors.

The BMA survey revealed that 65 percent of doctors felt only partly, or not at all, protected from COVID-19 in their workplaces. This has had a severe impact on the mental health of medical workers, with one in four reporting increased levels of mental distress, including depression, anxiety and burnout.

Deborah Coles, the director of the charity Inquest, condemned the chief coroners instructions not to look into PPE shortages, saying, Bereaved families legitimately ask whether failures in the provision of safety equipment played a part in the deaths of their loved ones.

It follows that coroners should, where appropriate, examine this question. In the absence of a public inquiry inquests will play a vital role in identifying systemic failings in the protection of frontline workers. This scrutiny is key to learning lessons and holding people to account in order to prevent future deaths.

Confirming the governments disregard for the lives of health care workers, lawyers advising the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have recommended the inclusion of no responsibility clauses in the governments compensation plan to the bereaved families of NHS workers.

At the end of April, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that a meagre 60,000 would be paid to the families of health care workers killed by COVID-19. This will do nothing to make up for the huge emotional and financial loss to their relatives. The inclusion of no responsibility clauses makes clear that this minimal payout is an attempt to buy the silence and compliance of families who have lost loved ones and to head off any future legal action against the authorities. Any payment would come with a legal warning that the government accepts no liability for the death.

According to Paul Joseph, lecturer in Health Care Law and Ethics at Swansea University, writing in The Conversation, compensation claims will likely require the signing of a settlement agreement, which would be worded to settle any current claims, or which resolve all future claims that could be brought against the DHSC. These are typically included as a long addendum (often around 10 pages) at the end of the document signed by the payment claimant.

While the government has stated that their no liability clauses would not explicitly prevent those who receive the 60,000 payment from pursuing further legal action, the legal warning lays the groundwork to fight any negligence cases brought against the government for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

While these death-in-service payments will likely cost the government less than 10 million, payouts to families who win a negligence case against the government could run into the hundreds of millions. Legal experts told openDemocracy that just the costs of fighting liability claims could be as high as 100 million.

In a further vindictive move, the bereaved families of frontline NHS staff will not automatically receive the payment but will have to apply and undergo a verification process conducted by NHS Business Services Authority to assess if they meet eligibility criteria. According to the DHSC, an occupational and situational test will have to be passed, and families will need to be able to prove that their deceased relative had been working with coronavirus patients in the 14 days before their symptoms emerged and that coronavirus was the cause of death.
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that officials at the southern border have expelled more than 20,000 unauthorized migrant adults, families and children from the U.S. under a broad public health order issued in late March in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Citing the emergency directive by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), border officials sent more than 14,000 migrants to Mexico or their home countries in April, according to new government data. In the last 11 days of March, more than 6,400 were expelled under the order, which the administration says allows officials to bypass laws and policies that govern the processing of migrants and asylum-seekers, including children who arrive at the border without their parents or legal guardians.

Officials relied on the emergency authority under the CDC order to quickly remove the vast majority of migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border without documents last month. More than 90% of the adults, families and unaccompanied children encountered by Border Patrol in April were expelled.

Most of the 15,862 migrants encountered by Border Patrol last month were single adults, but 604 families and 734 unaccompanied minors were also processed. Officials did not immediately say how many of these families and children were processed under the CDC order, but government data suggests most of them were expelled.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, charged with caring for unaccompanied migrant minors, received only 58 children from border officials in April, according to the data obtained by CBS News. In March, including the 11 days under the order, border officials referred 1,852 children to the agency. Since the office has continued releasing minors to sponsors in the U.S. during the pandemic, less than 1,650 children remained in its care this week  a population level not seen since late 2011.

Outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ciudad Juarez

A migrant child in the "Remain in Mexico" program speaks on the phone while waiting with his parents at the Paso del Norte border bridge to reschedule their immigration hearings amid the coronavirus outbreak, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on April 21, 2020. Reuters

Story continues

The administration has argued that the CDC directive, which cites a World War II-era public health law, is critical to contain the spread of the coronavirus inside the U.S., saying potentially infected migrants could overburden medical institutions along the borderlands. Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan reiterated on Thursday that the order is not part of the administration's immigration agenda, but rather a measure to safeguard public health.

"This is not about immigration," Morgan told reporters during a remote briefing.

Advocates, however, disagree, saying the administration is accomplishing something it has sought to do for years: restrict access to humanitarian protections for unauthorized migrants who arrive at the border. Since officials are processing most of them under public health law, migrants could be denied the opportunity to apply for humanitarian programs, like asylum, that are enshrined in U.S. immigration law.

Thelma Garcia, an immigration attorney in the Rio Grande Valley, the most heavily patrolled sector of the U.S.-Mexico border, said the CDC directive is being used to deny migrants access to America's asylum system.

"There are still problems in Central America. People are still fleeing. Once they cross the border into the U.S., nobody knows anything about them because they are deported so quickly. And I'm sure there's a lot of people in there with some good claims that should not be removed," Garcia told CBS News. "But they are using the pandemic as an excuse not to follow the immigration and asylum laws."

The CDC order was first issued on March 20 and renewed late last month for another 30 days. Morgan did not confirm whether it will be extended yet again beyond the current May 20 end date, saying health officials will make that determination. But he said the public health risk posed by processing large numbers of migrants persists, citing the growing coronavirus cases in Mexico.

More children diagnosed with illness possibly linked to the coronavirus

Trump says he was "surprised" by Fauci's comments about reopening states and schools

Supreme Court considers electoral college case in last day of remote arguments
The packaging from a disposable oropharygeal swab sampler and the instructions from a COVID-19 self-administered test kit provided by the Department of Health and Social Care are seen on May 08, 2020 in London, England.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

A New York man has been charged with mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy over a scheme to sell stolen coronavirus tests without ever providing results, federal prosecutors said.

An FBI agent busted the scheme after buying one of the tests and tracing it to a lab in Georgia, which confirmed the tests had been stolen.

Henry Gindt II, 34, was arrested Thursday and has not yet made a plea.

The federal government has been cracking down on coronavirus-related fraud and scams for weeks, including schemes to sell fake coronavirus test kits or fake coronavirus cures.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A New York man is facing federal fraud charges after authorities said he sold stolen coronavirus test kits to people who thought he worked at a certified lab, then never provided any results.

Henry Gindt II, 34, was charged May 4 with mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit mail or wire fraud, according to a newly unsealed criminal complaint.

Gindt was arrested Thursday, after an FBI agent bought one of the tests for $195. The agent initially posed as a customer having difficulties finalizing the online payment, then Gindt told him over the phone that a Georgia lab would process the test.

But no tests were ever processed, according to a statement from federal prosecutors in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Instead, Gindt charged customers between $135 and $200 under the guise that he was connected to a certified lab, the prosecutors alleged.

According to the FBI agent, the stolen tests came from an unnamed lab in Georgia, which confirmed that a former executive had stolen 50 tests. The lab told the FBI it had no affiliation with Gindt.

Gindt has not yet made a plea, and it's unclear if he has retained a lawyer.

The federal government has been cracking down on coronavirus-related fraud and scams for weeks. The US Food and Drug Administration, for instance, has sent a number of warning letters to companies pushing bogus coronavirus "treatments," such as teas, tinctures, or essential oils.

Story continues

The Justice Department has also pursued similar charges against the owner of a website that sold fake coronavirus test kits.

"Let this be a message to anyone who wants to scam our fellow citizens during this pandemic: the Department of Justice will take swift action to disrupt your scheme and then we will arrest you," US Attorney Scott Brady said in a statement. "Gindt tried to profit from the pandemic by selling stolen test kits and services without ever delivering the promised results. Instead, we shut him down and now he is facing prison time."

Read the original article on Insider
Bleeding cash

German airline giant Lufthansa confirmed Thursday that it is in talks for Berlin to offer support worth nine billion euros ($9.7 billion) in exchange for a 25-percent stake in the company, as the coronavirus batters the world's carriers.

The "stabilisation package" under discussion with the Federal Economic Stabilisation Fund (WSF) launched in March would include "a silent participation and a secured loan", Lufthansa said.

"The conditions are currently being discussed. A stake by the German government in the company's share capital is also part of the negotiations."

A 25-percent stake in the group would put Berlin in a position to block decisions by Lufthansa management, allowing it to shape corporate strategy.

Earlier Thursday, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier had told tabloid-style daily Bild Lufthansa was part of Germany's "family silver" and that Berlin aimed to avoid a "fire sale" of valuable firms.

Meanwhile Bloomberg news reported that some members of Altmaier and Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU parliamentary group were holding up talks with opposition to a direct government stake in Lufthansa.

"The negotiations and the process of political decision-making are still ongoing," the airline said in its statement.

'Not some idiot'

Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr has previously warned that the group is bleeding cash and might have to declare insolvency.

Like airlines worldwide, Lufthansa and its subsidiaries that include Swiss and Austrian Airlines have been essentially grounded and face an uncertain future once operations are fully up and running again.

In April, Spohr said the group was carrying fewer than 3,000 passengers daily compared with a pre-pandemic average of around 350,000 a day.

"We are losing about a million euros in liquidity reserves per hour. Day and night. Week by week," Spohr said.

Around 700 of its roughly 760 aircraft are currently parked at airports and more than 80,000 of its 130,000 staff are on part-time work schemes.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), junior partner in Merkel's ruling coalition, has warned Lufthansa it cannot expect a blank cheque from Berlin.

"The state is not some idiot that will just hand over money and have no say after that," SPD deputy Carsten Schneider told the daily Die Welt on Monday.

In particular, he ruled out dividend payments to Lufthansa shareholders if the company received state aid.

But Lufthansa directors have warned that without such aid they could declare insolvency to benefit from a grace period during which they could try to sort out the group's finances.

That might mean job cuts, especially given that Spohr has said there are now 10,000 too many staff given the state of Lufthansa's operations.

Swiss authorities have already agreed to guarantee loans of up to 1.2 billion euros to Lufthansa, while Austrian Airlines has asked the government in Vienna for 767 million euros in state aid.

Explore further Lufthansa hopeful on deal for German state aid

 2020 AFP
Burma Myanmar Military Re-Arrests Rakhine Civilians After Court Release

Five residents of Sar Pyin Village in Rakhine State charged under the Counterterrorism Law. / Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services Office

SITTWE, Rakhine StateFive residents of Rakhine States Taungup Township detained on terrorism charges were discharged by the local court on Thursday due to lack of evidence, only to be arrested again minutes later.

In April, five residents of Sar Pyin Village in Taungup were summoned for investigation by police and officials from the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, and later charged under the Counterterrorism Law for alleged ties to the Arakan Army (AA).

The five remanded in custody until the remand against them expired on Thursday and they were brought to trial, where the court ruled that they should be released due to lack of evidence. Within minutes of being released, they were detained again for alleged involvement in local bombings, according to relatives.

My bother and others were released by the court today due to lack of evidence, Ma San San Tint, the younger sister of detainee U Pyone Cho told The Irrawaddy on Thursday. We were waiting as we thought they would be released after police procedures were done. But we learned later that they were arrested on another charge and remanded into custody.

U Pyone Cho is a member of the Arakan National Party (ANP), a Rakhine political party which holds the majority in the Rakhine State parliament.

At first, they were arrested for allegedly soliciting support, raising funds and supplying food [for the AA]. Less than half an hour after they were released due to lack of evidence, they were charged for [crimes related to] bomb explosions and remanded into custody, said U Pe Kywe, vice-chairman of the ANPs Taungup chapter.

The township court has said the five civilians can only be detained until Monday. According to the chief of the Taungup Township Police Force, Police Major Than Naing, the Tatmadaw opened the new case against the five residents to investigate whether they are connected with recent bomb explosions in the township.

There have been bombings in Taungup. We are investigating if [the detained residents] are connected with them. The first case was opened under the Counterterrorism Law and this case is also opened under the same law, but I cant say which articles. We have to seek legal advice [from the township legal office] and open the case under the articles they suggest, Police Major Than Naing told The Irrawaddy.

The Tatmadaw said in a statement on April 6 that based on the interrogation of four AA members arrested in Ann Township, the military arrested the five Sar Pyar residents for having ties to the AA and handed them over to the police in line with legal procedures.

Security has been tightened up in Taungup due to tensions between political parties in the township, according to local residents.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.

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LITERATURE

Shakespeare in a Divided America

James Shapiro

Faber & Faber, $39.99

James Shapiro has illuminated the world with those historical background books, 1599 and 1606, that detail political and social happenings in the years when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and King Lear respectively. Now he turns the tables on himself to indicate what we can learn about America from its abiding obsession with Shakespeare. He ranges fascinatingly from John Quincy Adams surprisingly dim view of Desdemona, to the way Steve Bannon, that mad mastermind behind Trumps election, saw how the viability of a strongman could cut through ideology despite his awful adaptation of Coriolanus.

Howard Keel appears in the film of Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, his version of The Taming of the Shrew. Credit:

Its the sometimes annoying book of a Bard obsessive. Did American embrace Shakespeare because of his affinity with the King James Bible, Shapiro asks. No, they embraced both  very different  things because of their English inheritance.

Still, its a bit amazing to hear how that eminent abolitionist and former president Adams could not only believe that Desdemona was a wanton trollop who got her just deserts for falling in love with a blackamoor but intimate this to the visiting English actress Fanny Kemble (a very just judgement upon her for having married a n-----). Kemble herself married a Southern slave owner and said Iagos I hate the Moor would sound better with a Southern drawl substituting the n-word.
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

TOKYO  Yukio Okamoto, a Japanese diplomat and adviser to prime ministers who was one of the most effective advocates for Japans alliance with the United States and the countrys increased role in international politics, died on April 24. He was 74.

Mr. Okamoto, a native of Kanagawa Prefecture, died in a Tokyo hospital of pneumonia brought on by the novel coronavirus, his office said on Friday.

Image Yukio Okamoto in 2015. Credit... Kyodo, via Getty Images

Urbane, with a precise command of English, Mr. Okamoto helped steer the American-Japanese relationship through some of its most difficult times. He was assigned to manage the partnership between the two countries in the 1980s, when they were competing for the mantle of global economic leadership while also banding together over their shared apprehension of the Soviet Unions influence in Asia.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 20:27:25|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Fisheries and Cooperatives on Friday closed open-air livestock markets along the borders with Somalia and Tanzania to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Anne Nyaga, chief administrative secretary for agriculture, said the open-air markets will remain closed indefinitely in order to boost containment measures against the disease.

"Prudent supervision and compliance to the set market protocols by stakeholders has remained a concern in the continued operation of livestock markets," Nyaga told reporters in Nairobi.

Nyaga said the decision to shut the markets was informed by realization that all the nine COVID-19 cases that have so far tested positive in Wajir County in northeastern Kenya were imported from Somalia.

She urged livestock traders to adhere to COVID-19 protocols for livestock markets that include social distancing, hand washing and wearing of face mask.

"We have noted that despite being sensitized, stakeholders are too slow to adhere to measures that have been put in place, hence the closure," said Nyaga.

She said that the markets will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have the capacity to enforce the protocols and ensure full compliance before reopening.

Nyaga said that the closure does not affect slaughterhouses in the areas and that the supply of meat will continue uninterrupted. Enditem
Briefing Pany on the COVID-19 fight in Vietnam, NA Chairwoman Ngan said Vietnam has basically pushed back the pandemic.

For her part, Pany said Vietnams experience in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is an invaluable lesson for all countries and Laos in particular. The Lao leader thanked the Vietnamese Party, State, and people for providing timely support to Laos in its fight against COVID-19.

As Chair of the 41st AIPA General Assembly, NA Chairwoman Ngan called on the ASEAN Community to uphold a sense of solidarity and offer mutual support to each other to cope with the pandemic.

In a cohesive and responsive spirit, she affirmed that the Vietnamese legislature will do everything it can and partner with AIPA member parliaments to ensure its success as AIPA Chair in 2020 for the sake of peace, safety, and prosperity in each nation.

The top Lao lawmaker expressed her support for the sharing of experience between AIPA member parliaments in the fight against COVID-19, as Ngan wrote in a letter sent to the heads of AIPA member parliaments on March 30.

She believed that the Vietnamese NA will successfully organise the 41st AIPA General Assembly in the coming time.

The Vietnamese leader took the occasion to invite Pany to attend a meeting of ASEAN-AIPA leaders at the 36th ASEAN Summit scheduled for late June in the central city of Da Nang. The Lao leader accepted the invitation with pleasure.

Regarding the construction of the NA House - a gift from the Vietnamese Party, State and people to Laos - both sides agreed to allow an additional 100 highly-skilled workers from Vietnam to take part in completing the work, with equipment to be imported and the remaining interior design to be completed shortly.

They expressed their determination to complete the project in December 2020 or early January 2021 to celebrate the 11th National Congress of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party.

The two leaders also pledged to continue discussing issues of mutual concern via phone talks at an appropriate time in the near future.
When Tom Quinn and Tim League formed the film company Neon in 2017, they shared at least one mission: Even as Hollywood was being upended by the streaming giant Netflix and questions regarding the viability of bricks-and-mortar movie venues, they vowed that their films would always play in theaters.

"We built our whole business on the power of cinema in theater," Quinn said, noting that League is the founder of the Alamo Drafthouse chain. "That's everything to us, it's everything that we've put into our release strategies, it determines every film that we buy."

Neon's biggest breakthrough to date  Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite," which won best picture and best international feature film at the Oscars  exemplified Quinn's philosophy of filmgoing, which means "the communal experience of going to a theater and committing yourself to a filmmaker's vision wholeheartedly for one or two hours with no breaks." So when most American theaters closed in March, just as Neon was preparing to release its Sundance acquisition "Spaceship Earth," Quinn faced a quandary.

"It seems like a very distant memory that we were at the Academy Awards celebrating 'Parasite,' which was a historical Academy Award for my favorite filmmaker in the world and his masterpiece, but was really about the power of cinema." Just a few months later, he says, "That's no longer possible. And for us, we've never released a film that wasn't built around the sacred and committed power of theaters and exhibition."

Some of Quinn's fellow distributors are hanging on to their movies until they can play in theaters: A24, which had just released Kelly Reichardt's period drama "First Cow" when theaters shuttered, decided not to release the film as a streaming title. Sony Pictures Classics won't release any new movies digitally.

In the wake of coronavirus closures, small distributors like Kino Lorber, Oscilloscope, Film Movement and Music Box Films have seized an opportunity to release their films as digital links, often through art-house and independent theaters that have accepted a chance to earn some revenue and keep their homebound audiences engaged.

It's an experiment that Quinn watched with interest and, after some soul-searching, decided to join. "... it's more important than ever that we do our job and bring new films to market. ... How do you do that in a virtual world with any semblance of the power of what we've done in the last few years? "

On Friday, "Spaceship Earth," a documentary that chronicles the two-year Biosphere 2 experiment in closed-system, self-sustained living, will open virtually across a number of on-demand platforms. Neon has also pursued partnerships with theaters, bookstores, restaurants and museums that will provide links to the film on their websites. And "Spaceship Earth" will be shown in a handful of drive-ins that are open for business.

Quinn is banking on "Spaceship Earth's" timeliness: What could be more relatable right now than a movie about a historic experiment in self-quarantining? But he's also aware of some recent streaming success stories: Oscilloscope's "Saint Frances," which had just opened in theaters when they were forced to shutter, has made around $100,000 as a virtual release, reaching a much wider audience than would have been able to see it on the big screen. Similarly, "Bacurau," a quirky political satire from Brazil that began streaming in mid-March after a brief theatrical run in New York, has earned Kino Lorber far more than it would have in a traditional theatrical revenue-share model, according to Chairman and CEO Richard Lorber.

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One reason Lorber was able to pivot so quickly was that, nine months ago, he had launched Kino Now, an on-demand service that would be an "art house iTunes," allowing patrons to stream or download one of the company's 3,000 foreign and indie titles. Now, that entity has become host to the company's new virtual cinema initiative Kino Marquee, which Lorber sees as a form of "filmanthropy," but also a means of self-preservation for theaters.

"The scourge of art houses is the limitation of the number of screens," Lorber explains. "Very few have more than two or three screens, some even only have one. Distributors like ourselves often have films that open strongly but get bumped in a week because the theaters have calendars and commitments to other companies to play their films at a particular time." Virtual cinema, he notes, gives theaters a way to hold movies indefinitely. "We've moved from a screen-scarcity environment to screen plenitude. It's almost a world of infinite screens."

Not everyone is convinced that virtual cinema is a sustainable long-term strategy. Andrew Carlin, director of theatrical distribution at Oscilloscope, is wary of theaters creating a two-tiered system, whereby they save their main auditoriums for the Sony Classics, A24s, Searchlight Pictures and Focus Features of the world, and send films from smaller companies like his into the virtual ether.

"It's already a struggle getting on screens in some of these markets," Carlin says. "So if there's effectively no need to get these smaller companies on screen, it would make what is already a challenging business even more challenging."

For now, Lorber believes, virtual cinema has provided a useful tool for the post-lockdown reentry period. "... when theaters do reopen, a sold-out show will be a theater that's half full," he says. "So we think theaters will still probably want to have some supplemental income. The possibility of duplex releases  some combination of virtual and physical  gives them that option."
When San Franciscans were first asked to don masks as the Spanish flu of 1918 raged through the city, the idea was met with patriotic fervor.

Even before the mandatory order was approved by supervisors on Oct. 24, 1918, The Chronicle reported, 4 out of 5 citizens were already wearing face coverings on the streets.

A week ago I laughed at the idea of the mask, local Red Cross Chairman John A. Britton told a reporter. I wanted to be independent. I did not realize that the cost of such independence was the lives of others.

That sentiment would change to outright defiance in the months that followed.

Today, San Francisco is a progressive model of compliance during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. But a century earlier it more closely resembled the hotbeds of conflict that weve seen today in Michigan and Oklahoma. Mask slackers were hauled into court by the hundreds, a health official shot an unmasked protester, and an Anti-Mask League formed  with meetings that drew thousands.

Mayor James Rolph, the Board of Supervisors and health officials were in lockstep when they ordered mandatory masks in public. At that point, there were 385 deaths in San Francisco related to the influenza, a number that would increase tenfold.

The first few days were filled with bright stories about mask fashion and do-good volunteer groups sewing for the cause. But by the end of the first week, there were signs of defiance.

The Chronicle reported on Nov. 2, 1918, that 175 were arrested, including some who were wearing their masks draped over their chins while they enjoyed their morning pipe. While most pleaded ignorance and paid a $5 fine, a vocal mask opposition was also emerging.

The Chronicle 1918

John Raggi, arrested on Columbus Avenue, said he did not wear a mask because he did not believe in masks or ordinances, or even jail, The Chronicle reported. He now has no occasion to disbelieve in jails. He is in the city prison.

Mask-related defiance became violent. A Chronicle story headlined Three Shot in Struggle with Mask Slacker, gave a detailed account of health department inspector Henry D. Miller confronting mask-less blacksmith James Wiser, who was on a street corner telling a crowd they are the bunk!

At the door of the store the blacksmith struck Miller with a sack containing a large number of silver dollars, and then knocked him to the ground, The Chronicle reported. While being pummeled, Miller drew his revolver, and four shots rang out.

No one died, but two bystanders were hit. Both men were arrested.

Later in the year, a small bomb was found addressed to Dr. William C. Hassler, a sort of Dr. Anthony Fauci-type figure during the pandemic. It was filled with glass and buckshot and came with a note that said compliments of John.

Nicole Meldahl, executive director of the San Francisco history group Western Neighborhoods Project, said there was already turmoil happening in the city and state, pointing to the 1916 and 1917 bombings of the Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco and the governors mansion in Sacramento. Tensions peaked after labor leader Thomas Mooney was convicted of the first bombing, in what looked like a rigged trial.

Just as were seeing now, a crisis  whether that be war or whether that be a pandemic  it just kind of exposes the cracks in the system, Meldahl said.

Victory was declared over the virus in late November. When the influenza returned in January, protests became more organized by the new Anti-Mask League, which advertised in newspapers and rented spaces that could seat thousands.

There was a Tea Party-like fervor to the league, and their central argument. When the virus returned, city leaders had capitulated to business leaders, refusing to close churches and theaters as they did in the fall  effectively protecting corporate interests, while forcing common citizens to don masks.

At the same time, the league offered mostly personal attacks, not practical alternatives. And topping its list of allies was disgraced former San Francisco Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz, who had been convicted of extortion and jailed after the 1906 earthquake and fire.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

The Chronicle reported that the first meeting drew 2,000 spectators. Meldahl said the league chairwoman was Emma Harrington, an attorney, activist and the first woman to vote in San Francisco in 1911.

People had just had it, Meldahl said. They had spent years under war rationing, sending their sons off to war, sending their daughters off to war. And then you fold all this in with an ambitious woman who was trying to move her way up, and kind of a scheme-y local politician who found a way to stick it to Rolph.

The Chronicle 1919

Unlike the present-day leaders in Stillwater, Okla., where a mayor reversed the citys mandatory mask plan as a response to threats, San Francisco of 1919 made no concessions.

After the first meeting, public comments from Hassler and other officials seemed directed at the league.

We cannot in this matter pay any attention to any public agitators against the mask for the obvious reason that the question is one of public health and not of like or dislike of the mask, said Arthur H. Barendt, president of the San Francisco Board of Health.

On Jan. 15, 1919, the day before masks were reinstated, public health officials reported 510 new influenza cases and 50 deaths. By Jan. 26, that number was down to 12 new cases and four deaths.

Hassler lifted the order altogether on Feb. 1, 1919, perhaps not coincidentally the day that the Anti-Mask League imploded at a final meeting. Harrington was voted out as chair. She protested the new chairwomans legitimacy, and the meeting ended in abrupt darkness.

I rented this hall, Anti-Mask League member William Scott said, and now Im going to turn off the lights.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicles pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub
New Delhi, May 8 : In what can be a breather to many who are troubled by the excessive meddling of Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and certain government bodies, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has asked concerned the District Magistrates and the DCPs on Friday to ensure that all the permissible economic activities get underway.

"It has been brought to the knowledge of the government that several acuities duly allowed as per DDMA order dated 03.05.2020 and revised guidelines of MHA enclosed there with, are not being allowed by different government authorities as well as RWAs etc. on their own accord, which is contrary to the spirit of the aforesaid guidelines/orders," read the DDMA order.

Here, all DMs and DCPs of Delhi Police are ordered not only to "sensitise about the instructions but also strict compliance of the same, in 'letter and spirit', it added.

Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev issued the order after complaints poured in of excessive interference of RWAs who were creating hurdles in the smooth functioning and arbitrarily stopping of activities like maids or plumbers to earn their living, creating problems for both them as well as many of the residents.
With Hizbul down, Pakistan gives special emphasis to Lashkars TRF

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: With the Hizbul Mujahideen leadership down after the killing of Riyaz Naikoo, Pakistan is giving special emphasis to a new group called The Resistance Force that was launched in March 2020.

The first time that the agencies got to know about this group was in March 2020, when the police busted a module of The Resistance Front." The module was busted on May 23, 2020 at Sopore and it was found back then, it was linked to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba.

Eliminating Naikoo: How the math went wrong for this dreaded terrorist

While the module was busted, its activities on the social media and Telegram channel continues unabated. A senior security official tells OneIndia that this group is the Lashkar-e-Tayiba which is operating under a new name. It is an age old trick of these groups to change names so that there is an element of surprise for the security agencies.

The group, however, indulges more in propaganda activity. On the groups, the members speak about the need to increase the resistance in Jammu and Kashmir, especially after the Centre on August 5, 2019, withdrew the special status.

The group also known as the JK Fighters is very active on the social media. During the raid in Sopore, the police arrested Ahtisham Farooq Malik, Shafqat Ali Tagoo, Musaib Hassan Bhat and Nisar Ahmad Ganai. A police official who questioned the four said that they were reporting to their handler in Pakistan. He goes by the name Andrew Jones and on the group, he operates under the ID of Khan Bilal. The group is called as TRF/JK Fighters-The Resistance Front.

Officials say that the group is used to recruit local youth for terror-related activities, especially in north Kashmir. There are messages on the group, which clearly instigate the locals into taking up arms and fighting the Indian forces.

The importance of eliminating Kashmirs dreaded terrorist Riyaz Naikoo

The busting of the module in Sopore came in the nick of time. The persons who were arrested had received a consignment of arms from one Kabeer Ahmed Lone. They had collected it and handed it over to Farooq Malik in Kupwara. They were also in the process of receiving a consignment of six AK-47 rifles. During the interrogation, the arrested terrorists said that the plan was on accumulating the arms. They had also drawn up a hit list of prominent personalities, including politicians and were planning targeted hits, investigations also revealed.

Intelligence Bureau officials say that this group has cropped up for a variety of reasons. The Hizbul Mujahideen, the local outfit in J&K is on the verge of a shut down. With most of its top leaders killed by the security forces, the group has not been able to draw inspiration among the youth.

Further the infiltrations have been successfully stopped to a large extent by the Indian Army, despite Pakistan violating the ceasefire several times in a bid to provide cover fire to these terrorists. There are nearly 300 terrorists of both the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad along the border waiting to infiltrate. The launch pads were activated by Pakistan in the last week of March, but these terrorists have not found much success.

With the infiltrations getting tougher and the top terrorists in the Valley being cleaned up, The Resistance Front was launched.

Top Hizbul terrorist, Riyaz Naikoo killed

Sources say that the members of this front had not planned any attack immediately. They were in the process of securing arms and ammunition and stocking them first. They were also in the process of recruiting a large number of youth and radicalising them. The agencies are on high alert and are carefully scrutinising the activities of this group both on the ground as well as the social media, the source also added.
A late-season polar vortex is expected to bring rare spring snow and record colds across much of northeast US for the Mother's Day weekend.

The National Weather Service has freeze watches and warnings as a low-pressure system pulls frigid Canadian air south into the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf of Main.

The polar vortex is expected to bring rain, thunderstorms, snow and record low temperatures as far south as the Gulf Coast.

National Weather Service meteorologist Peter Mullinax wrote in his short-range forecast that the arctic blast will make for a chilly and blustery weekend for most eastern regions, with measurable snowfall possible in the Northeast and Great Lake.

Snowfall is expected to begin over parts of the Great Lakes on Friday, into the Ohio Valley by the evening and overnight in central Appalachia and parts of the Northeast towards New England by Saturday.

"Numerous freeze watches and warnings have been posted from the Midwest to the Northeast with record low temperatures possible over the weekend, most notably Saturday morning," Mr Mullinax said.

"Snow could fall heavily at times with several inches of accumulating snowfall possible in the northern and central Appalachians. Temperatures will moderate slightly but remain well below normal across much of the eastern US on Mother's Day."

The record low temperatures could stretch from Caribou, Main, in the north to the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley in the south.

The polar vortex first came to prominence after terrorising the northeast during the North American cold wave in 2013, before returning in early 2019.

It is a mass of low-pressure cold air that is constantly circulating above the Arctic by a jet stream of wind, which can drop south into North America, Europe and Asia when that jet stream weakens.

Spring snow is extremely rare, with no measurable May snowfall in Massachusetts since 2002 and none in Boston since 1997, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Dunham.

Mr Dunham told the Associated Press that forecasts predicted as much as two inches in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts, an inch in southern New Hampshire and western Connecticut, and rain with snowflakes in Boston.

While upstate New York could see an inch of snow, New York City and the Hudson River valley would mostly see rain.

On the west coast, meanwhile, near-record heat conditions are expected to continue.
(GETTY)

Cronos Group (CRON.TO)(CRON) expects Canadas cannabis market will be choppy for the next six months to a year as COVID-19 impacts sales channels.

However, the ongoing pandemic could prove more disruptive to the Toronto-based companys U.S. CBD business, which relies in part on brick-and-mortar retailers forced to close their doors for the foreseeable future.

We do have many retail partners, over 900. A lot of those are closed right now, chief executive officer Mike Gorenstein said on the companys first quarter earnings call on Friday morning. While some of that has shifted to online platforms, a lot of these are boutiques that dont have an online platform. So there could definitely be pressure in Q2.

Cronos American revenue totalled US$2.2 million in Q1, compared to US$6.2 from outside the U.S.

The company sells its high-end Lord Jones CBD line through premium outlets in the U.S., including SoulCycle, Neiman Marcus, and Sephora. The upscale line has gained traction through celebrity endorsements. Products span CBD oil, as well as skincare, bath items and edibles.

Despite our readiness to adapt to the changing landscape, both near and long-term, consumer behaviour does not always shift as easily, Gorenstein said. We believe the beauty category could have lingering impacts in regard to product trials and purchasing as consumers in the skincare category typically like to try it in retail before they buy.

In Canada, the company said while its long-term view of the market remains unchanged, COVID-19 is expected to present challenges in the coming months that will vary across the provinces due to differing policies.

In the next six months to a year, I think things will be choppy, Gorenstein said. We have begun to see a contraction in demand as cannabis stores in various provinces have been either closed or going through changes in how they are forced to operate.

The Toronto-based company reported net sales of US$8.4 million in its first quarter of 2020, up from US$3.0 million a year ago. Cronos booked a loss of US$6.5 million, versus a profit of US$1.6 million in the prior-year period. The company also booked an adjusted loss of US$40.7 million in the quarter ending March 31, compared to a US$10.1 million loss a year earlier.

Story continues

Cronos incurred an US$8 million writedown of dried flower and extracts that it blamed on fixed prices negotiated prior to price compression in the Canadian market. The impairment follows a US$24 million inventory writedown in the prior quarter. The company said it expects additional writedowns, but declined to give further guidance.

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.

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Ujjain:

Over 30 madrasas in Ujjain have refused to accept the food that comes as mid-day meals for the students, alleging it was an attempt to defile their faith.

The providers of mid-day meals used to be the Iskcon Temple since 2010, which catered to schools in the city. Administration of the madrasas, however, refused to accept food from Iskcon any longer.

Parents of Muslim students believe the trust used to offer the food to Hindu gods before sending them to schools, which is unacceptable to some.

When the tender of Iskcon ended in July 2016, suppliers BRK Foods and Ma Parvati Foods were roped in to provide the mid-day meals but madrasas have declined to accept food from either of them.

BRK supplies mid-day meals to 315 schools, out of which 56 madrasas have turned down their offer.

Parents of the madrasa students have also threatened to remove their children from madrasas who accept food from the present suppliers. They have demanded that meals be cooked in the madrasas themselves instead of being brought from outside.

However, when contacted, the official administration denied the reports saying madrasas rejected the meals as the students are used to a different kind of food. The matter is currently under examination.

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US Senate failed to override President Donald Trumps veto on a resolution that was meant to curtail the power of Commander-in-chief to wage war without congressional authorisation. While the majority of votes, 49-44, were in favour of the resolution but fell short of the required two-thirds majority of 67 votes in Senate.

Trumps action against Tehran in January that led to the killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani escalated the tension between the two nations to a new height. Several Democrats called for legislation to curb the powers of the US President for waging a war without congressional approval.

Later, Tim Kaine, Virginia Senator and member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, introduced war powers resolution which was passed by the House, 227-186, to prevent further escalation of hostilities with Iran without congressional authorization. However, Trump vetoed the resolution calling it insulting and said that it was introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win the presidential elections by dividing the Republican Party.

We live in a hostile world of evolving threats, and the Constitution recognizes that the President must be able to anticipate our adversaries next moves and take swift and decisive action in response. Thats what I did! the US President had said in a statement.

Read: Donald Trump's Valet Tests Positive For Coronavirus; US President Again Tests Negative

'Fully authorized by law'

Justifying his actions against Iran, Trump said that he took a decisive action to eliminate Soleimani and Iran retaliated by launching a series of missiles at US forces stationed in Iraq. Highlighting zero fatalities, Trump asserted that the strike against Soleimani was fully authorized by law, including by the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 and Article II of the Constitution.

The few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands, said Trump.

Reacting to Trumps veto, Kaine said in a tweet that the US President doesnt understand the Constitution that hes sworn to uphold and protect. The Virginia Senator added that Trump views everything, including the coronavirus death toll and the prospect of war, through the lens of himself.

Read: 'No Life Worth Losing To Add One More Point To Dow': Biden Shames Trump's Economy Rhetoric

(Image: AP)
The last few weeks, governors across the country have been competing to see who will come up with Covid-19 isolation and treatment facilities fastest.

Most of all this has been PR for the cameras, but some governors have fast tracked existing projects just in case they are needed sooner.

Machakos governor Alfred Mutua opened and highly publicized a makeshift tent hospital at the Machakos stadium. Well, most of it was just ill equipped beds but the headlines are what mattered.

No word on whether it has ever been used for the intended purpose, but going with the few number of infections in the country, I doubt.

Mutua would then go one to receive major flack when photos of his new office surfaced. The imposing structure is modeled after the White House, but looks more like Nairobi State House.

I thought it was a great investment on his part, considering it is expected to remain standing for probably hundreds of years. And also going with the eyesores other governors have been building for more money, in the name of an office. And this is before counting those who lease their offices from commercial buildings at exorbitant prices.

Anyway, back to Covid.

Muranga governor Mwangi wa Iria also seeking his time in the limelight, declared that he would build an ICU unit at the main county hospital in a matter of days.

It became his passion project, and he was on the ground on most days supervising works.

After 19 days, the 35-bed ICU facility was unveiled.

I put ICU in quotes because it is not equipped to provide intensive care for very sick patients.

From pictures making their way online, the only thing we can spot is beds with bedside monitors. These are used to display the patients vital signs.

There is also what looks like a couple of ventilators in the whole facility, and some resuscitating bags.

Simply put, this facility cannot cater for 35 ICU patients as advertised. A single ICU bed fully equipped costs upwards of Sh10 million.

But thats not the point. Machines and equipment can always be added later as the money becomes available.

What Im most concerned about is the building itself. It is one of the ugliest newly constructed buildings Ive seen in a long time.

It is a cross between a high school dormitory and a market.

From the outside it looks more of a cattle slaughter house or a public bath house, or a large scale chicken shed. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about it.

I would personally have to be heavily intoxicated to approve such a design.

Mwangi wa Iria could have gotten a pass, had Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi not unveiled his Covid facility in his county.

Sure, the Kilifi one looks like it had been in the works long before the pandemic, but the timing of the launch just exposed Wa Irias ineptness.

The building has the hallmarks of a modern hospital. A hospital that will stand for years and still be desirable to look at decades from now. Sure with the right equipment, either of these facilities can treat an ICU patient. But there is a strong case to bulldoze one of them.

This is not the first time were talking about the lack of a design language in Kenyas institutions.

3 years ago we compared the monstrosity Kenyatta University built in the name of a hospital, to a hospital built by the University of Ghana. The difference was day and night.

Have a look.

Kenyatta University Hospital

University of Ghana Medical Centre

Were left wondering whether we have no capable architects and landscapers in Kenya.

Or maybe our governors and decision makers are so inept they cant bring themselves to build anything for prosperity.

Probably the only exception being Alfred Mutua and Wycliffe Oparanya.
Spanish police arrested a Moroccan man on Friday suspected of planning a terror attack in the name of the Islamic State group during Spain's coronavirus crisis.

Spain's Civil Guard said that the arrest carried out in Barcelona was aided by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Morocco's state security forces.

The Civil Guard said that they had been watching the suspect for four years but that his process of radicalization had been accelerated during Spain's lockdown that started in mid-March to control its COVID-19 outbreak.

Investigators suspected the man had been motivated by calls made by IS for followers to carry out attacks in their countries of residence. Police said the suspect had made public declarations of his allegiance to IS and hatred for Western countries on social media.

Investigators feared he was planning an attack, perhaps using a knife or with a vehicle, in Barcelona after observing him breaking virus confinement rules to move around the city, possibly searching for a target.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The return of over 200 workers from Bihar to work in Telangana triggered a war of words between the RJD and the BJP on Friday, with the opposition party leader Tejashwi Yadav accusing the state government of forcing the labourers to migrate during a lockdown.

But the Bihar BJP hit back at Yadav, charging him with playing "Twitter politics" from Delhi instead of hitting the ground back home and serving the people in the hour of need.

Magistrate Alok Ranjan Ghosh said 222 workers from Khagaria and neighbouring districts, who had been stuck since their return for Holi, departed for Telangana on Thursday aboard trains which had brought over 1,000 workers from the southern state the previous night.

Yadav seethed at the workers returning to Telangana to resume work at rice mills and blamed the Bihar government's policy of "forced exodus for the reverse migration".

The leader of opposition also attacked Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, calling him "an immigrant from Rajasthan" who has, in the 15 years of sharing power with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, reduced Bihar into a source of cheap labour.

While all states are bringing their people back, those at the helm of affairs in Bihar are in a self-congratulatory mood for driving out its migrant workers, Yadav alleged.

Modi has hailed the development as a recognition of Shram Shakti (the power of labour) of Bihar. On Thursday, he claimed workers from many parts of the state were preferring to resume work, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, and the rice mill workers had been incentivized by the Telangana government with a special package.

The state BJP, in turn, criticised Yadav for sitting in Delhi during a pandemic.

"We thought Tejashwi Yadav goes to Delhi for lessons in political science from Manoj Jha (RJD Rajya Sabha member and Delhi University academician), but it seems he is interested in economics as well," said BJP spokesman Nikhil Anand in a statement.

But he would have done better to go to Sushil Modi who has handled the finance portfolio for a decade and a half, Anand said, adding, "Instead he is making a fool of himself by resorting to fanciful terminology like forced exodus and reverse migration."



Every day migrants from other parts of the country are returning to Bihar in droves and they are being welcomed and taken care of by the state government, he said.

"But Tejashwi Yadav seems unable to understand that this does not mean the state government will start putting hurdles in the way of those who wish to return to their workplaces elsewhere," the BJP spokesman added.

A spat has been on for quite some time between the states ruling dispensation and the opposition over the fate of migrants, who have been rendered jobless, even homeless, and vulnerable to the highly contagious coronavirus, in the wake of the lockdown.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
London, May 8 : UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that his government will use "maximum caution" when considering lifting the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

Johnson is due to announce plans to ease restrictions in the country on Sunday, which would come into force from Monday, reports Efe news.

A spokesman for the leader said he told his Ministers in a cabinet meeting: "We are not going to do anything that risks a second peak. We will advance with maximum caution in order to protect the NHS and to save lives.

"We will be guided at every step by the science and the data and we will closely track the impact of any easing of the social distancing measures and will not hesitate to tighten the rules if required." The government is due to re-evaluate the containment measures, which have been in place since March 23, and is likely to extend them for another three weeks.

There have been numerous reports in the British press speculating about how the restrictions might be relaxed.

Some media reports have said that Johnson could announce that some economic sectors will be allowed to resume their activity and citizens will be allowed to go out more than once a day for exercise.

Downing Street has acknowledged that the lockdown, in place to help slow the spread of infections, is having a big impact on the economy but that this effect could be even worse if there is another rise in infections.

The UK's economy could shrink by 14 per cent this year, the worst recession on record, and unemployment levels could reach eight per cent, according to estimates by the Bank of England on Thursday.

It was also announced on Thursday that Notting Hill Carnival will be cancelled this year for the first time since it began in 1966.

The annual celebration in west London usually takes place at the end of August and is the biggest street festival in Europe with more than one million attendees.

The UK currently accounts for the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Europe and second-highest in the world behind the US.

As of Friday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the country stood at 207,977, with 30,689 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The pandemic is unlikely to take a summer vacation, according to new University of Toronto-led research  a study that suggests weak impacts of warm weather on COVID-19, but strong reassurance that social distancing works.

The scientists compared epidemics in 144 countries, states and provinces worldwide, and found that global latitude and local temperature were not associated with the spread of COVID-19. But public health measures, including school closures, bans on mass gatherings, and physical distancing, made a significant impact  and the more measures, the better.

The results, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), will be surprising and disappointing to some scientists and many policy-makers, who hoped that the newly emerged infectious disease would behave like the flu and be diminished by warm weather.

This question is a really important thing to consider, especially being in a northern place where we have seasons, says Dionne Gesink, a professor of epidemiology at U of Ts Dalla Lana School of Public Health and co-author of the new study.

Theres always this outstanding question: Will things get better when summer comes  or will they get worse as it gets colder? It helps us in public health predict how to move forward.

In the study, the researchers assembled 144 jurisdictions with an outbreak of COVID-19 for comparison. Over seven days in early March, the researchers collected information on each of those places: the state of their outbreaks, but also their geographic latitude, mean temperature, humidity, and any public health measures they implemented, like school closures and bans on gatherings.

Then the researchers came back 14 days after the beginning of that observation period to see how each jurisdiction had fared. The lag was to give measures time to take effect, since the virus has an incubation period: public health interventions take two weeks to show their effects.

(Countries with epidemics that were much more advanced in March, like China, Iran and South Korea, were excluded from the analysis. Big countries like Canada and the U.S. were broken into individual provinces and states. All had at least 10 cases.)

Seasonality is a feature of many, if not most, infectious diseases. Turning the heat up or down often has a big effect on transmission. But researchers dont fully understand why: for influenzas summer dip, debates still rage over whether the driver is temperature, humidity, solar radiation, or schools being dismissed  or all of these together.

The researchers found that humidity seemed to have a very weak effect on COVID-19 transmission, although that effect disappeared in more complex analyses of the data. But temperature and latitude were not associated with epidemic growth.

A lot of people implicitly or explicitly  also my colleagues sometimes  believe seasons will fix this, says Dr. Peter Juni, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of Toronto and St. Michaels Hospital and another of the papers co-authors.

But theres a big difference between the influenza virus and the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Juni notes.

We all have partial immunity against influenza, but no immunity against SARS-CoV-2. This is the real danger: SARS-CoV-2 doesnt need favourable conditions.

As more people acquire COVID-19 and recover from it, building immunity in the population, these seasonal effects may become more marked, says Dr. David Fisman, another co-author and Dalla Lana School of Public Health epidemiologist.

But right now, the virus doesnt need the environmental help, because its doing just fine feasting on susceptibles.

Out of the 144 jurisdictions, 38 had implemented public health interventions. The researchers found a strong association between countries that had instituted these measures in the seven-day observation period and slowing of transmission two weeks later.

The sacrifices that people are going through and the hard work that the community is doing to shut down COVID is  based on the best available data  making a big difference, says Fisman.

This paper lends support to the hypothesis that climate conditions will have a small impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission relative to social distancing, says Micaela Elvira Martinez, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research. Martinez called the research approach very sensible and a good way to use the available data.

The study, however, couldnt disentangle what role each individual public health measure played, since most countries instituted all of them at once or in quick succession. While the study suggests that school closures had an impact, it cant resolve one of the most difficult policy questions governments are struggling with: how much transmission will tick upwards again if schools are reopened.

Its a bit of an intractable problem, it feels like right now, says Gesink. Obviously were going to have to get really creative.
Some 78 individuals, believed to have come into contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19 in the Jaman North District of the Bono Region have been quarantined.

The confirmed case involves a 27-year-old Togolese national who entered the country, together with nine others, using an unapproved route.

They were subsequently arrested by personnel of the Ghana Immigration Service after which their samples for Coronavirus testing were taken.

Out of the 10, one tested positive.

Bono Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Kofi Issah who disclosed the quarantining of the traced contacts, also urged residents to continue to adhere to all safety protocols to further prevent the spread of the disease.

The commercial drivers who drove them as they were apprehended were also sent to the court in Berekum. Let me clarify that 61 of the 78 are those in Sampa, 17 are in Berekum. The first time they went to court, they got down from the vehicles. The second time they went to court, they were the last case to be called but nobody knew their status.

Some people may have cleaned up the courts after they had left and we know how long the virus can stay on surfaces. So all these 17 include some of the people in the court and others who came into contact with them one way or the other, Dr. Issah said.

Residents live in fear

Residents of the town say they are living in fear after the first case was recorded.

Some residents who spoke to Citi News noted that they have started observing some of the safety measures to keep them safe.

The situation here is very difficult, we are all scared, and the protection here is not tight because we don't have masks here and even if you were to find one to buy it would be the one made with African prints. There are no sanitizers here too. You can't even find some to buy so we are really terrified.

The fact is that we are scared, we are near the border; we shop with them, we run our businesses together and we keep getting close to them. Now that a case has been recorded, I am at home and I will not be going out because I don't know who has it.

The Bono Region became the 13th out of the country's 16 regions to record a case of the virus on Thursday, May 7, 2020.

In that update by the Ghana Health Service, 372 new infections were recorded thereby increasing the countrys COVID-19 case count to 3,091.

The number of recovered persons is 303 while the death toll remains at 18.

Ghana has so far conducted a total of 137,924 tests.

The Greater Accra Region remains at the top of the case count list with 2,579 cases, followed by the Ashanti Region with 165 and the Eastern Region with 95.

It, however, leaves only three regions  Savannah, Ahafo and Bono East, with no confirmed cases.

---citinewsroom
Fourier Intelligence, a Shanghai, China-based robotics startup, completed a Series B+ funding round in excess of tens of milions of yuan.

Qianhai FOF, a Shenzhen-based equity financing firm, acted as the sole investor in the deal. The investment added to the Series B round of financing announced in July 2019, led by Shenzhen Guozhong Capital Management Co., Ltd., IDG Capital and Volcanics Venture, among other players.

The proceeds from the Series B and Series B+ rounds, estimated at close to RMB 100 million (US$14.11m), will mainly be used to spur R&D, facilitate marketing efforts and formulate an intelligent rehabilitation ecosystem.

Founded in 2015 by Alex Gu, founder and chief executive, Fourier Intelligence is a designer and developer of mass-market rehabilitation robotics. Over the past few years, the company has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with top players in the global rehabilitation scene, including but not restricted to Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the University of Melbourne, ETH Zurich, to establish joint labs.

FinSMEs

08/05/2020
AUSTIN, Minn., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE: HRL) invites you to participate in a conference call with Jim Snee, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer, and Jim Sheehan, executive vice president and chief financial officer, to discuss the company's second quarter financial results. The company will issue its earnings press release before the markets open on Thursday, May 21, 2020, and will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. CT (9:00 a.m. ET).

WHEN: Thursday, May 21, 2020





8:00 a.m. CT (9:00 a.m. ET)



WEBCAST: To listen to a live webcast of the conference call, go to the company's website, http://www.hormelfoods.com, click on Investors, and you will find a link to the webcast.



PHONE: Dial toll-free 888-254-3590 at least 10 minutes prior to the call.





From outside the United States, call 720-543-0214. Please note: all dial-in participants should quote the conference ID of 7355932 to access the call.



If you have difficulty accessing the call, please contact:

PGI

Reservations Line

(888) 563-4743



AUDIO REPLAY: To listen to a replay of the conference call, go to the company's website, http://www.hormelfoods.com, click on Investors, then click on News & Events and you will find a link to the webcast.

About Hormel Foods  Inspired People. Inspired Food.

Hormel Foods Corporation, based in Austin, Minn., is a global branded food company with over $9 billion in annual revenue across more than 80 countries worldwide. Its brands include SKIPPY, SPAM, Hormel Natural Choice, Applegate, Justin's, Wholly, Hormel Black Label, Columbus and more than 30 other beloved brands. The company is a member of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, was named on the "Global 2000 World's Best Employers" list by Forbes magazine for three straight years, is one of Fortune magazine's most admired companies, has appeared on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's "The 100 Best Corporate Citizens" list for the 11th year in a row, and has received numerous other awards and accolades for its corporate responsibility and community service efforts. The company lives by its purpose statement  Inspired People. Inspired Food.  to bring some of the world's most trusted and iconic brands to tables across the globe. For more information, visit www.hormelfoods.com.

Investor Contact Media Contact Nathan Annis Wendy Watkins (507) 437-5248 (507) 434-6352 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Hormel Foods Corporation

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LOS ANGELESSexArt.com on Friday introduced Marc Rosewood to its roster of directors with the debut of his two-part series, Dreamcatcher, now available on SexArt.com.

Starring Evelyn Claire and Emma Starletto, Dreamcatcher tells the tale of a girl and her sexual fantasies coming to life, shot in Rosewood's signature style with the aesthetic of classic Southern California as the backdrop.

I am thrilled to be making my adult directorial debut for SexArt.com, Rosewood said. I came to them with a wild idea to make a two-part film shot in LA that captured the soul of this tremendous city. They gave me the creative freedom to bring this vision to the screen with a fantastic cast and I could not be more proud to finally share Dreamcatcher with the world.

Rosewood, who comes to SexArt with an accomplished mainstream film background, approached this project with the same attention to detail as all of his other cinematic works.

The storyline is key," he said. "To me these films are about the sensuality of our imaginations and how we are truly empowered to make our dreams reality. I look forward to exploring these and other themes in future Dreamcatcher films."
A Palestinian family in Gaza wearing protective masks prays on the first night of Ramadan in their home because of the closure of mosques due to coronavirus restrictions, April 23, 2020.

TEL AVIV (JTA)-On Friday, the first day of Ramadan, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem was virtually empty. A handful of masked worshippers kneeling on prayer rugs, distanced several feet apart from one another, listened to an imam who stood atop an 18-foot wooden pulpit.

"We ask God to have mercy on us and all of humanity and to save us from this lethal pandemic," the imam said.

The ban on mass communal prayer in Israel and the Palestinian territories is among the sobering restrictions accompanying Islam's holiest month, during which Muslims fast during daylight hours and typically pray, feast and socialize with extended families at night. Israel's emergency coronavirus measures have closed mosques, shuttered shops and implemented nighttime curfews in many Muslim-majority cities.

But many of Israel's 1.5 million Arab citizens say it's nowhere near enough. Ahead of the monthlong holiday, a period during which families often celebrate together in the dozens or hundreds, most Arab-Israeli towns and villages fear a coronavirus peak is still ahead-and some are making an unprecedented plea for more government intervention.

"The Israeli government can't leave our villages in a state of chaos," said Mudar Yunes, who heads the local council in the northern Arab-Israeli town of Arara and chairs the association of Arab local councils.

Out of desperate worry that the coronavirus will ravage Arab towns over the next month, he has been asking for help from bodies normally regarded in his town with suspicion: the Israeli police and the army.

Yunes is petitioning for more patrol cars, more Home Front Command soldiers to deliver groceries to the elderly, and other forms of manpower to break up large and potentially dangerous Ramadan gatherings.

"We don't want them coming in just when we have protests, with violence, but to come in and make order," Yunes said. "There are lawbreakers, who need to be taken care of."

The Purim example

The pandemic hit Arab-Israeli cities and towns some three weeks later than the rest of Israel, and it remains relatively contained there for now, according to government data. Israel in total has reported more than 15,400 cases of COVID-19 and 202 deaths. There are 809 confirmed cases among the Arab population, according to the emergency committee monitoring the coronavirus crisis in Israel's Arab community-but that's likely a modest number, as it does not include mixed Jewish-Arab cities or eastern Jerusalem, which is home to more than 350,000 Arabs.

The Purim holiday, which brings Jewish communities together for a night of feasting and partying, has been identified as a key spreader of the virus among Jews around the world. It took place in early March, just as the COVID-19 virus was picking up speed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used that evidence as justification for locking down the country on the eve of Passover earlier this month.

"On Purim, the virus spread. I'm telling you now clearly, Pesach will be not be Purim. Every family will do Pesach with their immediate family," Netanyahu said.

A "war room" in the northern Arab town of Shfaram hosts daily discussions between the Committee of Arab Mayors and Ayman Sayyaf, head of the Interior Ministry's Coronavirus Directorate for the Arab population. Following a meeting of Netanyahu and municipal leaders from large Arab towns, the ministry announced on Thursday that Israel would distribute an emergency aid package of 55 million shekels (about $15.6 million, including 30 million shekels in food coupons) to 73 Arab local authorities.

"We want, first and foremost, to safeguard your lives," Netanyahu said Friday in a Ramadan video tweet. "For the sake of saving your lives and for the sake of your loved ones, and for your and everyone's future, celebrate with your nuclear family, and only with them."

Testing is sparse, but social contact is not

Testing, however, remains few and far between, with only a handful of mobile clinics dispersed throughout Arab areas.

"Our estimations show that we have fewer infections than in the Jewish sector, but I hope we're not deluding ourselves," Mamoun Abd Alhay, the mayor of the Arab town of Tira, told Channel 12 News in early April. "Either way, the number of tests needs to be significantly increased in order to find out what's really going on."

Since a reported leveling off of cases in recent days, Israel has launched an exit strategy. But as drive-thru testing sites are only arriving now in Arab towns, new epicenters of contagion are emerging.

Among them is Deir Alassad, an impoverished village in the Galilee. The first transmission there is believed to have come from a rabbi and kosher supervisor who worked alongside village residents in a local chicken slaughterhouse. The town's first coronavirus-related death was reported on Sunday.

The likelihood of infection within an extended family is particularly acute among Arabs, who live alongside several generations within a single household, especially in traditional villages. A report by the Israeli Health Ministry found that in the northern cities of Umm al-Fahm and Jisr al-Zarqa, 78 percent of confirmed coronavirus cases were within the same family, while smaller communities like Bir al-Maksur and Maghar found 100 percent of the cases within the same family.

Thabet Abu Rass, a resident of the central village of Qalansuwa in central Israel and the co-executive director of Abraham Initiatives, an NGO that promotes Jewish-Arab partnerships, has applauded some government initiatives. In a Facebook campaign, he praised the official Israeli directive for all stores, except for pharmacies, in Muslim-majority towns to remain closed from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. throughout the month of Ramadan.

But Abu Rass said that as Israel loosens its restrictions in the coming weeks, it could exacerbate an already simmering restlessness among Muslims who are entering their third month of lockdown.

There is also the economic angle: Studies show that about half of all Arab Israelis live under the poverty line and all have a lower life expectancy than their Jewish neighbors.

With the long-term risks in mind, Hanady Azoni, a bakery owner in the central Arab town of Jaljuliya, said that most of his neighbors are committed to social distancing over the holiday.

"The feelings this year are strange, there's tons of disappointment and frustration," Azoni said. "But the month of Ramadan is important to us as a month of worship and prayer and fasting, more than any business."

"We are not ready to deal with this kind of crisis"

Muslim community and religious leaders have taken it upon themselves to intensify restrictions in the hope of discouraging people from congregating. Since March, the Muslim Islamic authorities have made the "painful" decision to keep the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque closed to worshippers, according to a statement by the Jerusalem Waqf, which oversees management of the compound. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, Muhammad Hussein, advised against the public sighting of the crescent moon, which is used to estimate the start of the holy month.

Via WhatsApp groups, communities are rolling out piecemeal campaigns to get news updates and instructions, and organize food deliveries to those who must go into quarantine. But with often shoddy internet connections and mostly an internet-averse elderly population, the message isn't always delivered.

On Friday, Abu Rass said that around a hundred people were gathered outside the local mosque in his village of Qalansawa. Among them was his 75-year-old neighbor, a retired teacher who has gone to the mosque five times a day on a regular basis and had not yet received updates about the ban on communal prayer during Ramadan.

"Jews, in large part, were in the army, they live an emergency life because of the wars," Abu Rass said. "We are not serving in the army, we are not ready to deal with this kind of crisis, our local municipalities are not strong enough and don't have the experience."

Since the coronavirus lockdown began last month, domestic violence has risen in the Arab community and many children have also stopped receiving education, as a third of Arab-Israeli children don't own the computers needed for remote learning.

Despite the challenges, Abu Rass thinks this time could lead to increased cooperation between Arabs and the Israeli government.

"Arabs are knocking on the doors of the country, struggling for equality and integration," he said. "This is an opportunity to build trust."
Figure 1: Comparison between two scenarios: With lock down, test and contact tracing and without test and contact tracing. The orange line shows the number of ill people in the scenario with contact tracing, and the blue line shows the number of people in quarantine. The dotted line shows the number of people ill in the scenario without tracing infection. The X axis is % of the Danish population. Credit: Niels Bohr Institute

COVID-19 is presently impacting the entire world and different approaches to stopping the epidemic are tested around the globe. As weeks pass by, we learn more and more about this little virus, which affects our everyday lives and our world so much. In the biocomplexity section at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, the researchers are busy applying methods from the physics of complex systems to examine how the epidemic is best handled. The, by now, well known and simplest manner is the "lock down," which we've been going through during the months of March and April. It is also the most expensive, it proved to be efficient, something we couldn't know before testing it. But there are many ways of calculating and forecasting the development of the epidemic, and the researchers in biocomplexity and complex systems explain one of them here, as well as some of the most prevalent concepts presented in the media.

Agent based mathematical models

At the Niels Bohr Institute, we work with many methods, one of them being the so-called agent-based models, in which individual persons are surveyed, as they meet other persons and possibly contract the disease. This is contrary to usual epidemic-models, in which only effects on population-level can be examined. These models allow, through data on individual person's networks, for the examination of a wider class of strategies. Especially the behavior of individual persons, like how many friends or family members they are around, their daily routines of movement and the like. The usual epidemic-models are far less detailed and won't allow us to catch the effect of all the individual changes in behavior we are all making these days.

We have worked closely with the effect of contact-tracking and quarantine. Preliminary calculations from the NBI group indicate that you can reduce the top of the epidemic with app. 50%, if using simple contact tracking and 5 day isolation of recent contacts to a confirmed sick person. As long as the infected person is in isolation at home, he/she doesn't contribute significantly to spreading COVID-19.

The effect of this "contact and quarantine" strategy is illustrated in Fig 1.

The figure compares the number of infected in a situation in which society is opened up completely to a situation where contact tracing is applied simultaneously with a complete opening. It is important to note that the number of infected can be kept further down still, if we maintain some of the infection reducing measures we know already, such as hand hygiene and limiting large assemblies. Contact tracing is not a measure to be applied alone.

Agent-based models are universal tools

Other strategies to limit the spreading of the disease can also be examined with agent-based models. Vulnerable groups of people can be isolated in order to protect them from the disease and to reduce the need for intensive care significantly. Preliminary simulations indicate that if all persons above the age of 60 reduce their social contacts with 75%, it reduces the maximum pressure on intensive care units to only a third. If grandparents on top of this choose to isolate themselves from their grandchildren, it most likely reduces the need for intensive care with another 50%.

The goal above all else for any strategy to limit the spreading of the disease is, of course, to ,reduce the pressure on health care systems, when the epidemic peaks. A telling fact for the importance of these calculations of the COVID-19 epidemic is that if nothing was done, the need for intensive care beds would be app. 10.000, - and our capacity is only app. 500.

The uncertain parameters for the disease

If you would like to understand the many uncertain predictions in the media these days, it is a great advantage to know the most important parameters for the COVID-19 epidemic. Below the three most important parameters are explained.

The growth rate of the disease

The growth rate is directly linked to the probability of infection when two people meet. The growth rate quite simply says with how many percent the epidemic grows per day. This parameter is estimated from the number of hospital admission in Denmark. Globally it is best estimated from the growth in the number of mortalities per day. Internationally the level in each country was 20% - 40% in the beginning of the epidemic, - highest in Italy and Spain. A percentage this size is characteristic for the exponential growth of an epidemic out of control. Physical distancing and lock down is all about limiting the amount of contacts, by which this rate should decline.

The infection pressurethe famous R

R describes the average number of persons infected by each infected individual. R is proportional to the probability of infection when two people meet. R is calculated from the growth rate and the time it takes from a person is infected until he/she infects again. This timeslot is still uncertain, but estimated to be between 3 and 7 days. The shorter the interval, the smaller will R be. A small R number is good, as it results in a lower maximum for the epidemic, and it becomes easier for a population to reach herd-immunity. With R = 2, in principle we "just" need to halve our social contacts to reach R = 1 where the epidemic starts to die out. With R = 4 we'd have to reduce our social contacts four times as much. Our general behavior would have to change significantly, if R is bigger. This is why different values of R mean so much for how models ar calibrated, and for how we should evaluate our lockdown in March. The best assessment right now is that the infection pressure R fell from app. 3 to app. 0.7 during our lockdown.

The dark figure

The dark figure is an indication of how many more infected individuals there are, than what we know of. It depends on how and how much we test, and will vary from country to country. Serum tests, showing if people have produced antibodies against the disease are very useful, because they will tell us how many have had the disease. The dark figure is not important for predictions in the beginning of an epidemic, but it is extremely important later, in order to assess where we are in the duration of the epidemic. A large dark figure will say that the disease is less dangerous and that we are closer to herd-immunity. The Norwegian authorities estimate that the dark figure is so high that only 3 in 1000 will die when infected.

These parameters are used in epidemic models of all types, so not only in agent-based models. When we wish to examine strategies depending on networks and social behavior, the agent-based models are particularly useful. As more precise data become available, we hope to be able to produce even better models, yielding more precise predictions of the development of the epidemic.

Explore further The importance of timing in restrictive confinement
HIZME CHECKPOINT, West Bank (Reuters) - Heart surgery is a trial for anyone, and especially for a young child. It was even harder for Hamza Ali Mohammad, as the two-year-old Palestinian had to undergo the procedure in Israel while his family was kept away by coronavirus closures. He was reunited on Thursday with his mother, who whisked him into her arms after he arrived in a van, escorted by medical personnel, at a checkpoint on the boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank.

HIZME CHECKPOINT, West Bank (Reuters) - Heart surgery is a trial for anyone, and especially for a young child. It was even harder for Hamza Ali Mohammad, as the two-year-old Palestinian had to undergo the procedure in Israel while his family was kept away by coronavirus closures.

He was reunited on Thursday with his mother, who whisked him into her arms after he arrived in a van, escorted by medical personnel, at a checkpoint on the boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank.

With tears in her eyes she hugged him close and kissed his cheeks.

A resident of the Palestinian hub city Ramallah, Mohammad was born with life-threatening congenital heart disease that required he be operated on as a baby.

Follow-up surgery was performed in February under Save a Childs Heart, an Israeli-based volunteer organisation that seeks to improve paediatric care in developing countries.

But whereas normally such a patient's parents would be on hand, Khetam and Issam Dar Ali Mohammad were cut off from their son.

Looking in on his siblings in Ramallah, they were unable to travel back to the hospital as Israeli and Palestinian authorities sealed the boundary to prevent a coronavirus spread.

"The whole medical team ... became his parents," Dr Ahmed Amer, a paediatric resident at Wolfson Medical Center, where Mohammad's open-heart surgery took place, said in a statement.

Amer, a member of Israel's Arab minority, took the lead in communicating with the boy and updating his parents by phone.

"We did not keep him alone for a minute. A child his age and in his condition needs to be hugged and loved in order to recover and get stronger, and thats exactly what we all gave him."

(Reporting by Dedi Hayoun, Saed Hawari and Lee Marzel; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
With more 500 central paramilitary personnel contracting the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), the government has earmarked AIIMS Jhajjar for treatment all personnel testing positive for the infection, officials familiar with the development said.

The decision was taken Friday during a meeting chaired by home minister Amit Shah with the director generals of all paramilitary forces  the Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo-Tibet Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).

The number of total positive cases in paramilitary forces touched 530 Friday with 30 new cases reported in BSF and 12 in ITBP. The BSF now has the highest number of Covid-19 cases at 221, followed by 161 in CRPF, 94 in ITBP, 35 in CISF and 17 in SSB. A CISF jawan, deployed at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, succumbed to the disease Friday, taking the number of casualties to five.

One of the officials cited above said all paramilitary jawans, who were hitherto referred to ITBP hospital in Noida, and Safdarjung Hospital and Ram Manohar Lohia hospital in Delhi, will be sent to AIIMS Jhajjar where a dedicated team of doctors will look after their treatment.

A majority of the jawans in BSF, ITBP and CRPF have contracted the infection in Delhi while performing law and order duties, while rest of the cases have been reported from Tripura, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Expressing concern over the pace of Covid-19 spread in the paramilitary forces, also called CAPFs (central armed police forces), Shah instructed all director generals to ensure that contact tracing of affected jawans and testing facilities are augmented and everyone follows the safety guidelines prescribed by the Union health ministry.

Shah told the chiefs of forces that Modi government is not only concerned over the spread of Covid-19 but is making all efforts to ensure safety, security and well-being of all CAPFs, according to statement released by the Press Information Bureau.

He also enquired about the situation regarding security personnel affected by the virus in each of the CAPFs as well as persons who were found to be asymptomatic.

Shah also asked the director generals to ensure timely payment of terminal dues, including ex-gratia, insurance, etc., in case of a casualty.
The major components of the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery are predominantly localized to apical adherens junctions where they influence cell behavior and may play a putative role in tumor suppression

Epithelial cells are held together and connected by several different types of structures that form cell-cell contacts. One of these structures, found near the top surface of the cell, is the adherens junction. This junction is critical for organ development, tissue architecture and cell function; disruption of adherens junctions can lead to inflammatory bowel disease, disorders of the skin and hair, and certain types of cancer.

Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) who study adherens junctions have identified the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery, a biological process that regulates gene expression, as a critical interacting complex that influences epithelial cell biology. Their results, published on Apr. 7 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, showed that the RNAi machinery is predominantly localized at adherens junctions in normal colon epithelial cells but is mis-localized in colon cancer.

"This goes against the dogma in the field that the core components of the RNAi machinery localize either in the nucleus or the cytoplasm. When you look at tissues, it is so dominant at the apical junctions and a very strong feature of the colonic epithelium," said Antonis Kourtidis, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology and associate member of Hollings Cancer Center, who studies adherens junctions in cell behavior and disease.

The Kourtidis Lab focuses on the intersection of cell-cell interactions and RNA biology. Previous work from Dr. Kourtidis has shown that in Caco2 cells (a human intestinal epithelial cell line), the adherens junction protein PLEKHA7 (pleckstrin homology domain containing A7) recruits numerous RNA-binding proteins including members of the core RNAi machinery. At the adherens junction, the RNAi machinery regulated the processing and function of tumor suppressing microRNAs (miRNAs). Importantly, when PLEKHA7 was depleted, the RNAi machinery was mis-localized, several of these miRNAs were dysregulated, and the cells became more tumorigenic.

The Kourtidis Lab decided to build on these past findings in this current paper. "How physiologically relevant is this to either normal tissues or to disease," asked Kourtidis. "In this paper, we wanted to see what holds true for the colonic epithelium."

Examination of primary colonic epithelial cells and of normal colon tissues confirmed that the RNAi machinery co-localized with PLEKHA7 at adherens junctions; however, both PLEKHA7 and the RNAi machinery were mis-localized in human tumor samples at all stages of disease. Junctional localization of PLEKHA7 and the RNAi machinery was also lost in several human colon cancer cell lines. Interestingly, it was noted that PLEKHA7 in these cell lines was mis-localized due to increased activity of the human kinase Src, a well characterized proto-oncogene and promoter of colon cancer. Pharmacological inhibition of Src restored junctional localization of PLEKHA7 and the RNAi machinery in one of the human colon cancer cell lines, hinting at a potential mechanism of regulation.

Building on that potential mechanism, the Kourtidis lab examined another human colon cancer cell line in which PLEKHA7 was downregulated. Turning on expression PLEKHA7 in these cells restored localization of the RNAi machinery at the adherens junction, increased the levels of tumor suppressing miRNAs, and suppressed tumor growth in a mouse model. Together, these data suggest that PLEKHA7 and the junctional localization of the RNAi machinery may play a tumor suppressive role in epithelial cells.

"We still haven't nailed the tumor suppressing function. Every indication that we have so far suggests that this is the case, but we really need to confirm this in more specific mouse models," said Kourtidis.

In summary, localization of the RNAi machinery to adherens junctions is a predominant feature of healthy colon epithelium. Furthermore, the localization and activity of the RNAi machinery is disrupted in colon cancer. Kourtidis pictures this mechanism acting like a guardian, at least to some extent, of epithelial homeostasis.

Kourtidis says there's still a lot left to learn, but he's looking forward to it. A major question that remains is determining how this system is regulated. Because Src inhibition restored localization of the RNAi complex only in some cancer cells but not others, the Kourtidis lab is looking at different mechanisms regulating the localization of PLEKHA7 and the RNAi machinery. Furthermore, looking downstream at how the miRNAs that are dysregulated when the system is perturbed contribute to disease progression is an essential question that needs to be answered.

Interestingly, PLEKHA7 has been shown to be downregulated or mis-localized in human breast and kidney tumors, and Kourtidis thinks that this is a phenomenon important for epithelial homeostasis. Epithelial cells can lose their identity when the RNAi machinery is lost or mis-localized, and restoration of the RNAi machinery localization (or the downstream miRNAs) could serve as a brake on tumor progression.

###

About MUSC

Founded in 1824 in Charleston, MUSC is the oldest medical school in the South, as well as the state's only integrated, academic health sciences center with a unique charge to serve the state through education, research and patient care. Each year, MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and 700 residents in six colleges: Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. The state's leader in obtaining biomedical research funds, in fiscal year 2018, MUSC set a new high, bringing in more than $276.5 million. For information on academic programs, visit http://musc.edu.

As the clinical health system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest quality patient care available while training generations of competent, compassionate health care providers to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Comprising some 1,600 beds, more than 100 outreach sites, the MUSC College of Medicine, the physicians' practice plan and nearly 275 telehealth locations, MUSC Health owns and operates eight hospitals situated in Charleston, Chester, Florence, Lancaster and Marion counties. In 2019, for the fifth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health the No. 1 hospital in South Carolina. To learn more about clinical patient services, visit http://muschealth.org.

About Hollings Cancer Center

The Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina is a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center and the largest academic-based cancer research program in South Carolina. The cancer center comprises more than 100 faculty cancer scientists and 20 academic departments. It has an annual research funding portfolio of more than $40 million and a dedication to reducing the cancer burden in South Carolina. Hollings offers state-of-the-art diagnostic capabilities, therapies and surgical techniques within multidisciplinary clinics that include surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation therapists, radiologists, pathologists, psychologists and other specialists equipped for the full range of cancer care, including more than 200 clinical trials. For more information, visit http://hollingscancercenter.org.
Tuolumne County Government View Photo

Sacramento, CA  Those interested in turning low or no-value wood from Tuolumne County forests into a business opportunity can tap a new $17 million program.

On Wednesday, officials at the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC), and Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) provided details of the program. It is intended to help reduce the burning of forest waste by incentivizing small businesses, nonprofits and public entities, including federally recognized Tribes to access loans earmarked for those finding alternative uses for the waste woods.

Among the caveats, interested applicants must already be located in or moving to the county and provide new, permanent job opportunities, predominantly for low- and moderate-income individuals.

The nexus for the monies is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provided Community Development Block Grant  National Disaster Resilience funding to HCD as a way to show how expanding biomass-based businesses could make Tuolumne County more resilient as it continues to rebuild from the devastation of the 2013 Rim Fire.

HCD and SNC partnered to lead the effort, establishing a new Biomass Utilization Fund, which is being used to encourage using forest biomass to help increase community and forest resilience.

Seeking To Create A Sustainability Model

This funding for loans will go far to meet the states goal of creating resilience in the county and can serve as a model that can be replicated in other parts of the state, explains Jennifer Seeger, HCDs Acting Deputy Director for HCDs Division of Financial Assistance.

HCD and SNC have an agreement for RCAC to manage the fund. Applications are now being accepted through June 12. Those received after that time will be evaluated based on the availability of funds. Loan recipients must document job creation and expend all funds by April 30,2022.

Were thrilled to be working with RCAC on this program to boost the restoration economy in Tuolumne County, states SNC Executive Officer Angela Avery. SNC is hearing from communities across the Sierra Nevada that the timing couldnt be better to invest in job creation and forest resilience.

RCAC is honored and enthused to manage the loan making process for this important endeavor to further Tuolumne Countys resilience and rebuilding effort. We have a number of business loan products that we believe will complement Biomass Utilization Fund resources and further the goal of creating jobs for county residents, adds RCAC Chief Executive Officer Suzanne Anarde.

More information about the loans and application materials are available by clicking here. RCAC and SNC are also hosting a May 12 webinar for interested parties to learn more. To register click here or call 916 447-9832, ext. 1429.
Visa just connected to Africa's most powerful mobile payments network. The global financial services company and Kenyan telecom Safaricom  operator of the M-Pesa mobile money product  announced a partnership today on payments and tech.

The arrangement opens up M-Pesa's own extensive financial services network in East Africa to Visa's global merchant and card network across 200 countries.

The two companies will also collaborate "on development of products that will support digital payments for M-Pesa customers," according to a Safaricom release. The partnership is still subject to regulatory approval.

Safaricom's M-Pesa app is arguably the most recognized fintech product in Africa and has become a global case study in using mobile money to increase financial inclusion.

On a continent that is still home to the largest share of the worlds unbanked population, Kenya has one of the highest mobile-money penetration rates in the world. This is largely due to the dominance of M-Pesa in the country, which stands as Africas sixth largest economy. Across Kenyas population of 53 million, M-Pesa has 24.5 million customers and a network of 176,000 agents. The product's mobile money market share in the country has hovered above 75% for years.

M-Pesa Sector Stats 4Q 2019 per Kenya's Communications Authority

Since launching M-Pesa in Kenya in 2007, Safaricom has expanded the product to additional East African countries and added to the platform financial options, such as lending and small business services.

M-Pesa is as ubiquitous to Kenyan culture as Coca-Cola is in the U.S. The product's easy to use and allows transfers and payments on any basic mobile phone via SMS .

Image Credits: Getty Images

The details are still vague, but Visa and Safaricom also said they will use the partnership to facilitate online commerce. The two payment providers aim to "offer an expanded set of mobile e-commerce capabilities to merchants and consumers by enabling secure and convenient cashless payment solutions," according to a Visa release sent to TechCrunch.

Story continues

Visa has been on a VC and partnership spree with African fintech companies over the last year. The company announced collaborations with payment startups Paga and Flutterwave and invested $200 million in Nigerian financial services provider Interswtich. In its 2020 Investor Day presentation, Visa named working with the continent's payments startups, in particular, as part of its strategy to expand on the continent.

As one of the most well-capitalized and profitable companies in Kenya, Safaricom is no startup. But the reach of its M-Pesa network will certainly give Visa an extended presence in Africa. The partnership will also expand the global financial services offered to Safaricom's large East African consumer and small business network.
Julio Ayala first felt the ache in his bones during back-to-back shifts behind the wheel of a delivery truck and a janitor's mop. By the time he returned to his East Boston apartment one evening last month, a fever had seized his large frame.

The Salvadoran immigrant called in sick the next day. When his longtime partner, Idalia, made him food, the barrel-chested 45-year-old had no appetite. Then Julio lost his sense of smell and taste.

As a cough began to rattle his broad chest, Idalia begged him to get tested for the novel coronavirus.

"Go to the hospital," she recalled telling him repeatedly. "Don't stay here."

Each time, however, he refused.

Across the country, thousands of people infected with the lethal virus are staying home even as their conditions deteriorate. Some are unsure if they have covid-19 because of a lack of testing and the evolving list of symptoms linked to the disease. Others underestimate the toll the illness will take on them.

Yet many stay home not out of confusion or overconfidence, but fear.

Fear that hospitalization will bring financial ruin.

Fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will find them.

Fear that they will die alone in an unfamiliar place, rather than in their own bed, surrounded by loved ones.

Those anxieties run deepest in poor, minority and undocumented communities, which have been ravaged most by the pandemic.

For Julio, who had temporary protected status and permission to work in the United States, ICE posed a threat not to him but to his undocumented partner and her 15-year-old son. Mostly, he feared what a trip to the hospital would mean for a family already struggling to pay the rent.

"He was worried about the bills," said Idalia, who asked The Washington Post to use her middle name for fear of deportation.

On the evening of April 10, Julio's cough became a painful wheeze, she said. This time, when she implored him to go the hospital, he agreed.

"Manana," he said. Tomorrow.

He wouldn't make it there.

- - -

Since the start of the pandemic, the coronavirus has been quietly killing thousands of Americans in their own homes.

When Patricia Dowd fatally collapsed in her San Jose, California, kitchen on Feb. 6, the death of the healthy 57-year-old was initially attributed to a freak heart attack.

There were only a dozen known coronavirus infections in the United States at the time, and it would be three weeks before a Seattle, Washington, hospital patient would be announced as the country's first coronavirus fatality.

But when an autopsy was completed on Dowd last month, the cause of death was revealed as covid-19.

The findings upended the pandemic's timeline in the United States and underscored a startling fact: the virus wasn't just killing people in emergency rooms or ICUs.

According to official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 7 percent of covid-19 deaths through April 28 occurred at home, compared with 73 percent in hospitals and 19 percent in nursing facilities or hospices.

But an investigation by The Post found that many covid-19 deaths went uncounted in March and early April: There were nearly twice as many additional deaths in the United States as were publicly attributed to coronavirus at the time. Data from local governments suggest that many of those additional deaths were people dying at home of covid-19.

In Santa Clara County, where Dowd lived, at-home deaths were up 17 percent in March compared with a year earlier, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

In the District of Columbia, where deaths outside of hospitals have spiked by 74 percent, at least three people with covid-19 have died at home.

And in New York City, where the number of people dying at home has increased tenfold, at-home deaths make up 3 percent of confirmed covid-19 deaths but a quarter of those suspected to stem from the disease.

Though data remain scarce on those who die at home of covid-19, their ranks include the old and young; the frail and fit; the ill-prepared and health-care professionals.

Some, like Dowd, succumbed early in the pandemic without ever realizing they had covid-19. Others suspected they had the deadly virus but died without knowing for sure.

On Long Island, a 99-year-old died at home after being unable to get tested.

In Palm Beach, Florida, a 33-year-old nurse's test came back inconclusive. Two weeks later, her husband found her lifeless on the couch.

And in Columbia, South Carolina, Tim Liszewski had been awaiting his test results for a week when the fever that had hovered around 102 degrees suddenly dropped. But when his fiancee came downstairs the next morning, she found the 60-year-old liberal political activist slumped near his computer. Both of them, she later learned, had covid.

"We never considered going to a hospital because we didn't have shortness of breath or tightness in the chest," Maris Burton told The Post, adding that Liszewski had been in touch with doctors. "It was never, 'Oh my god, you're about to die. Let's get you out of there.' "

Since his death, the CDC added many of his symptoms - shaking chills, headache, loss of smell and taste - to its list of covid-19 indicators.

Burton, who recovered from the disease, said she was glad the man she was due to marry later this month didn't go to the emergency room.

"He still would have died," she said. "But he would have died at the hospital, alone."

When Donald Starver's test came back positive on April 1, the former city official in Rochester, New York, kept the results to himself. A fit and independent 56-year-old who never married and had no children, he only reluctantly told his sister he wasn't feeling well.

"I told him to go to the hospital, but he said the hospital was for people who were more sick than he was," Kelly Starver said. "My brother was, 'I'm strong, I'm a man, I've never been sick, I can handle this.' "

Kelly, a nurse in their hometown of Pittsburgh, made him call every six hours.

"The last time I spoke with him, he said, 'My fever has finally broken. I think I've finally turned the corner,' " she recalled.

But when she didn't hear from him for two days, she asked police to do a welfare check. His landlord found Donald dead in his bed on April 16.

When Kelly drove to his home a few days later, she found the test results and a pillow stained with mucus.

"I had hoped that he just went to sleep," she said. "But I now know that's not the case."

- - -

When the alarm on Julio Ayala's cellphone rang each morning at 5 a.m., the big man would try to roll out of bed without waking Idalia and head to the kitchen for coffee and his daily insulin injection. Then it was off to his back-to-back jobs.

They had met on Idalia's first day in the United States, in 2008, when her head was still full of dreams of getting her G.E.D., learning English and buying a house.

She was 22, with raven hair, no papers and an abusive ex-husband in El Salvador.

He was 28, with the bald head and bulky physique of a Hollywood heavy.

"He looked like a bad guy," she recalled with a laugh.

But when she saw him again at a party a few days later, his first words to her betrayed a gentle soul.

"Dance with me," he said, taking her hand and teaching her bachata. They went out the next day, then again a few days later. Soon she had moved into his apartment in East Boston, a working-class Hispanic neighborhood near Logan International Airport. Though they never officially married, they began calling each other husband and wife.

The easier life she had imagined in America never quite arrived, however. She worked at a series of restaurants, where she said bosses sometimes used her undocumented status to stiff her out of meager wages.

Julio was able to work legally but sent much of his earnings to his mother and a daughter in El Salvador. Idalia also supported two children back home. And even after she brought her son to the United States about five years ago, the couple continued to rent a spare bedroom to a friend of Julio's.

In early April, Idalia overheard the friend worry he'd caught the coronavirus from a co-worker at a chicken plant, she said. But when Julio asked if he was sick, the friend denied it.

A few days later, Julio came home feeling sore and feverish.

The virus tore through him with incredible speed, she said. In little over a day, he lost his appetite and ability to smell or taste. His stomach became upset, and he began to cough.

Idalia soon developed the same symptoms. She urged Julio, who had health insurance, to get tested. But he worried a trip to the hospital would leave the family strapped with debt.

On April 10, three days after getting sick, he drove them to a convenience store to pick up bottles of Ensure. But he felt faint, she said, and they had to rush home.

That night, Julio finally agreed to go to the hospital.

But the virus would not wait. Julio woke up at 1:30 a.m. complaining that he felt like he was "suffocating."

Idalia put Vicks VapoRub on his chest to help him breathe. But when she put her arms around him, he shrugged her off. She turned away from him and fell asleep.

She woke up three hours later to the sound of his alarm, ringing and ringing.

- - -

On a breezy Saturday afternoon in late April, Idalia covered her face and stepped outside for the second time since Julio's death.

The first had been a trip to the hospital with her son to get tested.

Now she was walking to collect Julio's ashes.

The sky, normally screaming with planes over Logan, was quiet. The streets were clear - emptied by a pandemic that had hit East Boston harder than any other part of the city.

After nearly two miles, she arrived at the Ruggiero Family Memorial Home, where an employee handed her a cardboard box and apologized for her loss.

On the way home, Idalia sat on a bench, staring at the ships in the harbor and wondering how the center of her life now fit in the palms of her hands.

It had been two weeks since she had heard his alarm and called 911, compressing his large chest as the operator instructed. Two weeks since the paramedics had tried to revive him on the bedroom floor.

Two weeks since the funeral home employees had arrived in hazmat suits and taken him away.

Julio was one of 70 people the funeral home had buried or cremated in April, more than three times normal, according to director Joe Ruggiero. About 90 percent were suspected covid-19 cases.

"We are definitely seeing that a lot of people dying at home are from poorer backgrounds," he said, adding that many were immigrants whose families would normally send their bodies overseas but now could not if covid-19 was involved.

Julio's death had come early in the pandemic, before the funeral home had been able to acquire new protective equipment.

"It was scary, man," Ruggiero recalled of stepping into the apartment in a hazmat suit he'd been saving in case of a tuberculosis outbreak. "It's not the way you want to treat someone's loved one."

The death also stood out among the dozens he'd handled recently because of what came afterward.

"The whole house got infected," Ruggiero said.

Idalia tested positive. So did her son. So did a cousin of Julio's who had stopped by the day he died.

So did their landlord, who had helped Julio and Idalia install a new kitchen faucet a few days earlier.

So did the landlord's wife, who is recovering at home while her husband remains in the hospital in critical condition. Their son-in-law wound up on a ventilator for 20 days.

The cascade of infections left Idalia feeling both angry and guilty: angry at Julio's friend, who she blamed for allegedly bringing the virus into their home, and guilty for unwittingly infecting others.

Above all, she felt alone.

She rarely saw her son, who stayed in his room playing video games his stepfather had bought for him. She hadn't hugged the tall, quiet 15-year-old since they had gone into quarantine.

She was even cut off from Julio.

Because they had never married, she had no access to his bank accounts or life insurance benefits, even as she was arranging his cremation.

Donations would ultimately cover the funeral home costs but not their rent. Idalia had been jobless since the pandemic shuttered the restaurant where she had worked.

Would she stay in the apartment where everything reminded her of Julio?

In the end, the decision was made for her.

When she arrived home with his ashes, she put them on the nightstand next to the bed they'd shared and started making dinner.

But while she was cooking, she was distracted by thoughts of Julio. Suddenly, there was smoke in the kitchen and sirens in the distance and the landlord's daughter angrily standing at the door.

"It's your fault that my family is in the hospital," the woman said, according to Idalia. "You are the ones that brought illness into this house."

The landlord's daughter declined to comment.

Idalia began giving away Julio's belongings and packing her own. She found a relative willing to let her and her son move in for a short time.

Then she lifted Julio's ashes from the nightstand beside the bed where he died and left.

- - -

The Washington Post's Julie Tate and Emma Brown contributed to this report.
Llamas antibodies are also easily manipulated and can be fused with other antibodies, including human's, and remain stable.

Winter is a four-year-old chocolate-coloured llama with spindly legs, ever-so-slightly askew ears and envy-inducing eyelashes. Some scientists hope she might be an important figure in the fight against the coronavirus.

She is not a superpowered camelid. Winter was simply the lucky llama chosen by researchers in Belgium, where she lives, to participate in a series of virus studies involving both SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome). Finding that her antibodies staved off those infections, the scientists posited that those same antibodies could also neutralize the new virus that causes COVID-19. They were right and published their results Tuesday in the journal Cell.

Scientists have long turned to llamas for antibody research. In the past decade, for example, scientists have used llamas antibodies in HIV and influenza research, finding promising therapies for both viruses.

Humans produce only one kind of antibody, made of two types of protein chains  heavy and light  that together form a Y shape. Heavy-chain proteins span the entire Y, while light-chain proteins touch only the Ys arms. Llamas, on the other hand, produces two types of antibodies. One of those antibodies is similar in size and constitution to human antibodies. But the other is much smaller; its only about 25 percent of the size of human antibodies. The llamas antibody still forms a Y, but its arms are much shorter because it doesnt have any light-chain proteins.

This more diminutive antibody can access tinier pockets and crevices on spike proteins  the proteins that allow viruses like the coronavirus to break into host cells and infect us  that human antibodies cannot. That can make it more effective in neutralizing viruses.

Llamas antibodies are also easily manipulated, said Dr Xavier Saelens, a molecular virologist at Ghent University in Belgium and an author of the new study. They can be linked or fused with other antibodies, including human antibodies, and remain stable despite those manipulations.

This antibody is genetic characteristic llamas share with all camelids, the family of mammals that also includes alpacas, guanacos and dromedaries.

Sharks have these smaller antibodies, too, but they are not a great experimental model, and are a lot less cuddly than llamas, said Daniel Wrapp, a graduate student affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin and Dartmouth College, and a co-author of the new research. Saelens said that llamas are domesticated, easy to handle and less stubborn than many of their camelid cousins, although, if they dont like you, theyll spit.

In 2016, Saelens, Wrapp and Dr Jason McLellan, a structural virologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and other researchers looked to llamas  and, specifically, Winter  to find a smaller llama antibody that could broadly neutralize many different types of coronavirus, McLellan said.

They injected Winter with spike proteins from the virus that caused the 2002-03 SARS epidemic as well as MERS, then tested a sample of her blood. And while they couldnt isolate a single llama antibody that worked against both viruses, they found two potent antibodies that each fought separately against MERS and SARS.

The researchers were writing up their findings when the new coronavirus began to make headlines in January. They immediately realized that the smaller llama antibodies that could neutralize SARS would very likely also recognize the COVID-19 virus, Saelens said.

It did, the researchers found, effectively inhibiting the coronavirus in cell cultures.

The researchers are hopeful the antibody can eventually be used as a prophylactic treatment, by injecting someone who is not yet infected to protect them from the virus, such as a health care worker. While the treatments protection would be immediate, its effects wouldnt be permanent, lasting only a month or two without additional injections.

This proactive approach is at least several months away, but the researchers are moving toward clinical trials. Additional studies may also be needed to verify the safety of injecting a llamas antibodies into human patients.

There is still a lot of work to do to try to bring this into the clinic, Saelens said. If it works, llama Winter deserves a statue.
New Delhi: Japan has become one of the first few countries to reach out to India for resuming economic activities at the earliest. Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu had a 30-minute long phone conversation with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on May 7, where he asked India for "cooperation for resumption of activities of Japanese companies in India." This comes as India enters day 45 of the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown, which will continue for another 10 days.

According to sources, India responded to the request saying that it values the contribution of Japanese companies in the country and assured that their issues will be addressed. "We understand there have been some disruptions. We are working with the companies to address their concerns. As we go into post-lockdown gradually, depending on the Covid-19 situation, solutions to their issues will be found."

There are almost 1,500 Japanese companies in India. The total number of registered Japanese companies in India till October, 2018 was 1441. Almost half of these companies are engaged in the manufacturing sector. The year 2017-2018 also saw an almost 5 per cent growth of Japanese companies and businesses in India.

Haryana has the maximum number of Japanese companies in the country followed by states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

After the phone conversation with his Japanese counterpart, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had tweeted to say they dwelled on economic recovery challenges including supply chain resilience.

India is hoping to take advantage of the negative sentiments prevailing against China since the outbreak of coronavirus as countries like Japan have said they may want to pull out investments from China. Under such circumstances, stepping up measures to ensure smooth resumption of businesses will be important now.

The Gujarat government said that it has already written to political and business authorities in Japan, inviting them to shift their commercial units and operations from China. In fact, it has announced a $2.2 billion economic stimulus package to help Japanese manufacturing units move out of China.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh has passed an ordinance, "Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020" to exempt all establishments, factories, and businesses from the purview of all but four labour laws, for three years. This is to boost investment in UP in a post Covid-19 scenario.

Although, lockdown 3.0 has seen the Ministry of Home Affairs tweaking guidelines in a manner that economic activities can resume gradually but businesses have already suffered losses due to the lockdown.

On the other hand, despite being hit quite early by Covid-19, Japan didnt go for full lockdown measures. An emergency was announced and then extended till May 31 but public transportation and air traffic remained functional. The argument for not opting for a full lockdown was that shutting down economic activities would make it impossible for people to make a living.
Heres one measure of the uncertainty engulfing Bay Area universities as they contemplate how to resume instruction in the fall: Stanford might pitch tents and move some classes outdoors.

Thats one scenario the schools provost, Persis Drell, acknowledged during an online conversation last week with the campus community. As she put it in conveying Stanfords approach during the coronavirus pandemic, Absolutely nothing is off the table.

This includes wandering outside to teach. Stanfords sprawling campus, medium-size student body and temperate climate make outdoor classes a realistic consideration.

We are actually discussing whether tents might be a possibility for instruction in the fall, Drell said, to take advantage of the weather and the fact that being outside is actually quite beneficial in terms of stopping the spread of the disease.

Stanford and other Bay Area colleges  after moving classes online in mid-March and committing to that model through the summer  now find themselves in deep conversations about the fall, with a mix of in-person and online instruction emerging as the most likely option. Drell, in a Faculty Senate meeting last month, also mentioned possibly starting the academic year in winter quarter (and skipping fall quarter).

Stanford expects to make a decision sometime in June, according to school spokesman E.J. Miranda. The first day of fall classes is scheduled for Sept. 21.

Most local schools are on the semester system and will begin classes in mid-August, barely more than three months from now. So the urgency to develop plans is growing, even with the fallout from the crisis constantly evolving.

Robb Willer, a Stanford professor of sociology, pyschology and organizational behavior, suggested he and other faculty members are amenable to creative ways to keep the university running smoothly.

I think it's important that plans for resuming in-person instruction accommodate more risk-averse faculty and students who may wish to opt out and continue distance learning, Willer wrote in an email Thursday. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Outdoor instruction, for example, would somehow have a Zoom option, and some classes would continue online.

St. Marys struck the most optimistic tone in peering toward the fall semester. School president James A. Donahue posted a letter to the campus community recently in which he stated SMC is planning to welcome students back to campus and conduct in-person courses this fall.

Donahue cushioned his declaration by noting St. Marys will follow the best public health practices and local, state and federal regulations. So even the most well-intentioned plans could change, in other words.

Still, the schools average class size of 20 students gives school officials hope of bringing students back to campus.

As a university with small class sizes that facilitate innovative approaches, Donahue wrote, we will be able to develop appropriate models for modifying the learning environment that adhere to social distancing guidelines.

At least one St. Marys faculty member, mathematics professor Jim Sauerberg, would welcome a return to classroom instruction, if feasible. This springs abrupt move to online classes, not especially popular among college students, also magnified the challenges for professors.

Everybody hopes to be in person, Sauerberg said. One of the interesting things for me as a faculty member is, weve heard for years about the coming online revolution and how much better online education would be. And old dinosaurs who wanted face-to-face instruction are stuck in the mud.

The sudden shift was not ideal, because it was done quickly, but it showed the shortcomings of online education. Even in a subject like mine, learning is really about communication, and communication works best when its one-on-one. I can see your face and gauge your understanding of whats happening, and you can see my face and my reaction to what youre saying.

So while well teach online in the fall if worst comes to worst, its not the ideal education.

Schools also must tackle the complicated challenge of reopening campus housing before they can resume in-person classes. This will require programs for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, and also for isolating students who test positive for the virus.

That probably will lead to less dense housing configurations at St. Marys, according to Donahue, and the possibility of students who live in the area commuting from home.

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.

Heres what other local colleges are saying about their fall plans:

UC Berkeley: Chancellor Carol Christ expects the school to adopt a hybrid plan, with some classes in person and others online. Campus officials will make a final decision by mid-June, she said this week, and the school intends to have a semester in the cloud for students who cannot come to campus.

Christ reiterated that Berkeley, like other UC campuses (and most colleges nationwide), is not considering tuition refunds even if instruction remains online. The estimated budget impact on the school resulting from the coronavirus pandemic is about $200 million, according to an email Christ sent last month to faculty and staff.

San Jose State: Provost Vincent Del Casino, in an interview last month with The Chronicle, said, Were really looking right now to get as much of our catalog as possible in an online format. Del Casino wants to maintain maximum flexibility, he said in an April 30 email to students, if physical distancing requirements limit face-to-face instruction.

Del Casino, in The Chronicles interview, indicated San Jose State also is considering using outdoor space for some classes.

San Francisco State: School president Lynn Mahoney, in an April 27 post, acknowledged physical distancing may require continuing much of our instruction remotely. She added, We recognize that some learning is best done in person, and we are working hard to make it possible for experiential learning to take place in the fall.

USF: School president Paul J. Fitzgerald hopes to begin the fall semester with as much in-person instruction  as is safely possible. Fitzgerald, in a May 4 message, also cautioned of the need to include a robust infrastructure for testing, tracing and isolation for all USF campuses and activities.

 Cal State East Bay, Sonoma State and Santa Clara also responded to The Chronicles inquiries about their fall-term plans. All three schools are weighing their options but have not yet made a decision.

Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick
 Flash

A webinar focusing on Chinese-French cooperation and global governance in the post-COVID-19 era was held on Thursday. Experts and scholars from the two countries held extensive and in-depth discussions on topics such as global crisis responses and reforming world governance.

Both China and France greatly value both their dignity and sovereignty as well as international cooperation. On one hand, the two countries need to guarantee their sovereignty. On the other, they also should enhance political cooperation, said former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in his keynote speech.







Raffarin also noted that multilateralism needs to be reshaped and transformed to adapt to the current global situation, while multilateral institutions should be reformed to make world governance more efficient and regional. There is plenty of room for China and France to cooperate in the field of reforming multilateral institutions.

In the situation whereby the world economy has declined sharply, personnel exchanges blocked, and international relations have been turbulent due to the outbreak of the pandemic, China and Europe should enhance exchanges and dialogue, and promote trust and cooperation to jointly tackle challenges, said Kong Quan, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the CPPCC and former Chinese ambassador to France.

Du Zhanyuan, president of China International Publishing Group, explained that the pandemic has made us more aware of the importance of global governance and cooperation between China and France. Globalization will not come to an end. Globalization requires cooperation, inclusiveness, unity, as well as firm commitment and determination. Du hoped that an exchange and cooperation platform can be built through a series of webinars to strengthen the sharing of knowledge and safeguard achievements of global cooperation in fighting the pandemic.

Joel Ruet, president of the French think tank Bridge Tank, said that the world governance today is being tested, and the seminar has allowed experts from the two countries to seek joint solutions in the fight against the virus.

Zhu Guangyao, a counselor of the State Council of China and former vice finance minister, anticipated that the economic disruption caused by the pandemic could be more serious than that of the 2008 financial crisis.





"A deep economic slump and financial crisis are unavoidable, but the trend of global peaceful development will not change due to the epidemic situation. The key question now is how to better maintain the peaceful development of the world  which will require the joint efforts of all the countries around the world," he insisted.





Zhu stressed that the epidemic would have a considerable impact on globalization in four aspects: the security of industrial and supply chains, the relocation of health and pharmaceutical industries, the coordination of policies, and the development of the digital economy.





He urged countries around the world to stand united in preventing not only the virus but also economic depression.

Faced by rising protectionist sentiments, former UN Assistant Secretary-General Brice Lalongde warned that unilateralism brings no good to the world economy and is especially detrimental to the global collective action necessary for fighting the pandemic.





Lalongde believes the best way to stabilize the global economy is to coordinate through international organizations and global thinks tanks. He also hopes this seminar will shed light on the future of sustainable development.

To achieve strong sustainability in the future, Pascal Petit, a professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, pointed out that the world needs multilateralism and globalization. The outbreak may pose challenges to global economic growth but will not cause globalization to reverse, he said.





"Despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, this could be an opportunity to create a new start for the world to get out of this crisis and turn to green development," he suggested.

Edmond Alphandery, former French finance minister and the chairman of the Euro50 Group, noted that climate change is still a common challenge facing the whole world, which requires continued efforts amid the COVID-19 outbreak.





"Right now, despite the challenges caused by the epidemic, we must not stop our fight against climate change. I think we need to contribute more than ever to reduce carbon emissions," he said.

The webinar was co-hosted by the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies and the Bridge Tank.
Hundreds of such migrant workers in Mumbai walked in the blistering heat along the eastern express highway with their belongings on their head.

If I have to die, I would rather be near my parents when I die. I dont want to die here.

Those were the words of Ramodar, an 18-year-old boy in Mumbai, desperate to go back home in Uttar Pradesh and see his parents. He worked as a carpenter in the financial capital of India. But the past 45 days under lockdown have been tantalisingly cruel for him. I would get my hopes up of going home every time the deadline of the lockdown came close, he said. And every time the lockdown got extended. I want to see my parents. I dont know anything else.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi first announced a three-week nationwide lockdown on 25 March to contain the spread of coronavirus. It has since been extended thrice. On 1 May, when the government prolonged the lockdown further to 17 May, Ramodar lost patience. I have not earned anything for two months, he said. My parents have sent some money so I do not go hungry. But they are not millionaires. They are farmers working hard for every rupee. I cannot continue to take money from them. I feel guilty.

Living in one of the slums of Bandra, Ramodar packed his belongings on Thursday morning and set off on foot. Except he was not alone. Hundreds of such migrant workers in Mumbai walked in the blistering heat along the eastern express highway with their belongings on their head. They wore a mask to protect themselves from the coronavirus. But the mask could not conceal their frustration, desperation, and helplessness.

If the state is not going to arrange any transport, we will walk back home, said the determined Ramodar.

On 29 April, the Ministry of Home Affairs had issued an order allowing the movement of migrant labourers stuck away from home.

Click here for Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates

In order to get back home, the migrant workers in Mumbai are supposed to collect a form from the local police station, fill it up with their details and destination state. The initial order also demanded the workers get a health certificate stating they do not have influenza-like symptoms. But when that led to further chaos, the state government said the workers would instead be screened before the journey. Once they submit their details, they are supposed to wait for the call from the police station.

But the workers have no faith in the governments plan. I stood in queue until 2 in the morning, just to submit my form to the police station, said Ramodar. There is no assurance when we would be able to board the train home. I do not trust anyone. We are poor people. Nobody listens to us.

The workers he walked with vehemently nodded in agreement. We could walk, we could hitchhike. We will see what happens, they said.

However, Ramodars home is in the district of Basti in Uttar Pradesh, which is 1,500 kilometres from Mumbai. A simple search on Google Maps shows it would take him more than 300 hours to reach on foot. In other words, if he walked without a minutes break, it would take him 13 days to see his parents.

But after just over three hours of walking, Ramodar and hundreds of others were stopped at Vikhroli checkpost. The police told them they are not allowed to pass, and that they should wait for the call from their local police station. But the workers were in no mood to listen.

We sometimes get food, sometimes we do not, Anup Kumar, another resident from Uttar Pradesh, tried telling the police. We have to depend on charity for survival. We have no money. Please let us go.

Kumar turned towards me and said, Can you explain them the condition we are in? There is no dignity in living like this. It is humiliating.

I asked Kumar what he planned to do in his village, for he migrated to Mumbai because there is lack of work back home in the first place. I will farm, or work as a labourer in somebodys farm, he said. I know farm work is also reducing. But I do not want to think about that right now. At least I wont have to depend on somebody else for food in my village. We would cultivate our crops and consume them. We will manage. I will be around my people.

The workers said they might consider coming back to Mumbai later. But certainly not for a while. Is it not obvious to want to be with family during a disaster? asked Ramodar. Even if I got two meals a day, I would still want to go back. Why do I have to explain or justify my wish to see my parents?

The exasperated workforce made their agonising case to the overworked police force. The police, though, had to follow orders. The workers sat down on the pavement, determined to carry on. A nearby flyover provided a bit of shade.

One of the policemen took out his lathi and planted it on the calf of one of the workers. The others started scrambling to avoid being beaten up.

I took out my mobile phone to shoot the proceedings. The police, realising a reporter is on the spot, restrained themselves from beating the migrant workers up. Two of the hostile police officers walked up to me and asked me to delete the photos and videos. When I refused, they mellowed down. "How are five of us supposed to control a crowd of 500? We don't get any joy in doing this," a policeman said. They are not listening to us. You tell them to go back. They might listen to you. This happened yesterday as well.

There was only one way the standoff was going to end. And it ended with migrant workers walking back to where they had come from. Dejected, they picked up their belongings and began their arduous return. The only option for them was to wait for the call from their local police station, and board a special train to get back home. The call better come soon. Because the workers are on edge.
The European Union has offered an aid package of more than USD 163 million to cash-strapped Pakistan to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and to boost the country's economic and security developments, the EU mission here said in a statement.

Pakistan has reported 25,837 coronavirus cases and 594 deaths, the health authorities said on Friday.

Androulla Kaminara, the EU Ambassador to Pakistan, met Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday to reiterate the 27-member economic bloc's commitment to support Pakistan during and beyond the COVID-19 crisis, according to a statement by the EU.

She presented the 26 billion Pakistan Rupees (over USD 163 million) COVID-19 package that the EU has put together in support to Pakistan, according to the statement



It said that the EU was directing more than 26 billion Pakistan Rupees (over USD 163 million) towards the short and medium term response in the emerging health crisis in Pakistan and into strengthening the preparedness of Pakistan's people for its social and economic impact, with a specific focus on the most vulnerable.

Ambassador Kaminara and the Prime Minister also discussed how Pakistan and the EU can further benefit from a stronger political partnership in light of the political, economic and security developments.

A longstanding friend and partner of Pakistan, the European Union stands side by side with Pakistan as the country faces the extraordinary challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaminara said.

The Prime Minister briefed the ambassador on the government's vision and action to fight COVID-19.

Ambassador Kaminara lauded the governments' efforts, including the scale-up of the Ehsaas programme for the most vulnerable and poor. She pointed out the opportunities of the partnership with the EU as major trade partner and key donor in Pakistan.

The package and the EU's overall long-standing support to Pakistan are to be seen in addition to EU Member States' generous co-funding of the lending and operational capacity of multilateral institutions currently assisting Pakistan and numerous other countries around the world in addressing the crisis, according to the EU.

The cash-strapped Pakistan government has been implementing austerity measures to improve the country's finances. The country's foreign currency reserves had dropped to a four-month low at USD 10.97 billion on April 10, 2020.

On May 6, the Asian Development Bank and Pakistan finalised a USD 305 million emergency COVID-19 loan to help the country buy medical equipment and disburse money to poor women.

Last month, Pakistan had received an emergency loan of USD 1.39 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and an aid of USD 200 million from the World Bank (WB).

While the IMF loan was to boost Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the WB aid focused on supporting preparedness and emergency response in the health sector.

The virus has also adversely hit the country's economy. On Tuesday, Pakistan requested the members of G-20 nations for debt relief with a commitment of not contracting new non-concessional loans except those allowed under the IMF and World Bank guidelines.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Junior Gold Miners Ready To Run

Both Gold and Silver Futures have been struggling to rally above recent high levels since the start of the global stock market collapse related to the COVID-19 virus event. Yet, the Junior Gold Miners appear to be telling us the Precious Metals market is boiling hot.

Gold, the bell-weather safe-haven asset, initially collapsed when the US stock market started the massive selloff in late February 2020, then recovered to higher price levels near $1785 recently. Since reaching these levels, Gold has stalled into a sideways price flag near major resistance.

Silver, on the other hand, is trading near $15.60 and has yet to really recover to anywhere near the levels it had achieved in early January 2020 (near $18.60).

Well, GDXJ, the Junior Gold Miners ETF, is suggesting a very strong price rally is taking place that may push both Gold and Silver substantially higher. Key resistance exists near $46.50. Once broken we believe a very strong price rally will take place pushing GDXJ price levels to $51 or $52. After that, a brief downside rotation will potentially retest the $47 to $48 levels before an even bigger upside rally takes place. What is even more important is that we believe this big breakout move could start as early as next week, May 12th or after.

Before you continue, be sure to opt-in to our free market trend signals before closing this page, so you dont miss our next special report & signal!

GDXJ Daily Chart

This GDXJ Weekly chart highlights the same price pattern and shows why we believe the upside price breakout could be a massive new trend. The Deep price low setup because of the COVID-19 virus event creates a very big price range for any future price advancements. That $24 price range, if applied to price levels before the breakdown event near $41, may suggest GDXJ could rally to levels above $65 over the next few weeks or months.

GDXJ Weekly Chart

Concluding Thoughts:

We believe the upside rally in both Gold and Silver recently is a very good indication that the sideways price channel that has plagued precious metals recently may be ending. If precious metals prices begin to rally, then GDXJ will break the upper $46.50 resistance level and begin a new upside price rally clearing the resistance setup before the virus event began.

Get ready, this could be a very big move higher for Junior Miners and it could align with our May 8th through May 12th global market inflection point prediction.

If you are using our free public research for your own trading decision-making and/or using it as an opportunity to find and execute successful trades, please remember you are the one ultimately making the decisions to trade based on our interpretation and free research posts. We, as technical traders, will continue to post new research articles and content that we believe is relevant to the current market setups.

If you want to improve your accuracy and opportunities for success, then we urge you to visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com to learn how you can enjoy our research and our members-only trading triggers (see the first chart in this article). If you are managing your retirement account or 401k, then we urge you to visit www.TheTechnicalInvestor.com to learn how to protect your assets and grow your wealth using our proprietary longer-term modeling systems. Our goal is to help you find and create success  not to confuse you.

Our researchers will generate free research on just about any topic that interests them. As technical traders, we follow price, predict future price moves, tops, bottoms, and trends, and attempt to highlight incredible setups that exist on the charts. What you do with it is up to you. Visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com/FreeResearch/ to review all of our detailed free research posts.

In closing, we would like to suggest that the next 5+ years are going to be incredible opportunities for skilled traders. Remember, weve already mapped out price trends 10+ years into the future that we expect based on our advanced predictive modeling tools. If our analysis is correct, skilled traders will be able to make a small fortune trading these trends and Metals will skyrocket. The only way youll know which trades to take or not is to become a member.

Chris Vermeulen

www.TheTechnicalTraders.com

Chris Vermeulen has been involved in the markets since 1997 and is the founder of Technical Traders Ltd. He is an internationally recognized technical analyst, trader, and is the author of the book: 7 Steps to Win With Logic



Through years of research, trading and helping individual traders around the world. He learned that many traders have great trading ideas, but they lack one thing, they struggle to execute trades in a systematic way for consistent results. Chris helps educate traders with a three-hour video course that can change your trading results for the better.



His mission is to help his clients boost their trading performance while reducing market exposure and portfolio volatility.



He is a regular speaker on HoweStreet.com, and the FinancialSurvivorNetwork radio shows. Chris was also featured on the cover of AmalgaTrader Magazine, and contributes articles to several leading financial hubs like MarketOracle.co.uk

Disclaimer: Nothing in this report should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. Technical Traders Ltd., its owners and the author of this report are not registered broker-dealers or financial advisors. Before investing in any securities, you should consult with your financial advisor and a registered broker-dealer. Never make an investment based solely on what you read in an online or printed report, including this report, especially if the investment involves a small, thinly-traded company that isnt well known. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report has been paid by Cardiff Energy Corp. In addition, the author owns shares of Cardiff Energy Corp. and would also benefit from volume and price appreciation of its stock. The information provided here within should not be construed as a financial analysis but rather as an advertisement. The authors views and opinions regarding the companies featured in reports are his own views and are based on information that he has researched independently and has received, which the author assumes to be reliable. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content of this report, nor its fitness for any particular purpose. Lastly, the author does not guarantee that any of the companies mentioned in the reports will perform as expected, and any comparisons made to other companies may not be valid or come into effect.

Chris Vermeulen Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Top Republican senators urged US President Donald Trump on Thursday to suspend all new guest worker visas for 60 days and certain categories of new guest worker visas, including H-1B, for at least a year or until unemployment figures return to normal levels.

The unemployment figures in the US have reached an all-time high due to the coronavirus pandemic. The letter has been signed by Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley and Josh Hawley.

"As you know, more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment coverage just since mid-March, and approximately one-fifth of the American workforce is currently out of work. This is a stunning difference compared with the historically-low nationwide unemployment rate of just 3.5 per cent in February this year," they said in their letter to the president.

The letter, dated May 7, specifically calls for suspension of all non-immigrant guest worker visas for the next 60 days, followed by a continued suspension of certain categories of new non-immigrant guest worker visas for a year or until the national unemployment figures return to normal levels.

"To protect unemployed Americans in the early stages of economic recovery, we urge you to suspend all non-immigrant guest worker visas for the next 60 days," the senators said.

Exceptions to this suspension should be rare, limited to time-sensitive industries such as agriculture and issued only on a case-by-case basis, when the employers can demonstrate that they have been unable to find Americans to take the jobs, the senators wrote.

After 60 days, the senators urged Trump to continue to suspend new non-immigrant guest workers for a year or until the national unemployment figures return to normal levels, whichever comes first.

"That suspension should, at a minimum, include H-2B visas (non-agricultural seasonal workers), H-1B visas (specialty occupation workers) and the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program (extension of foreign student visas after graduation). We also urge you to suspend the EB-5 immigrant visa program, effective immediately," the lawmakers wrote.

The H-1B work visa for foreign technology professionals is highly popular among Indians and a large number of Indians also opt for the EB-5 investors visa.

The senators argued that there is no reason why unemployed Americans and recent college graduates should have to compete in such a limited job market against an influx of additional H-1B workers, most of whom work in business, technology or STEM fields.

"Temporarily suspending the issuance of new H-1B visas would also protect the hundreds of thousands of H-1B workers and their families already working in the United States -- workers who could otherwise be subject to deportation if they are laid off for more than 60 days," they said.

"Of course, appropriate exceptions could also be crafted to the H-1B program suspension to allow for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who wish to come to the United States to assist in combating the coronavirus pandemic," the senators wrote.

Additionally, the United States ought to suspend its Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, which allows foreign students in the country to extend their stay after graduation for one to three years to get "experience in the field" by taking jobs here, they wrote.

In 2019, more than 223,000 former foreign students had their OPT applications approved or extended. While the merits of such a programme are subject to debate, there is certainly no reason to allow foreign students to stay for three additional years just to take jobs that would otherwise go to unemployed Americans as the country's economy recovers, the lawmakers said.

The senators also urged Trump to remove the EB-5 visa from the exemptions in his Presidential Proclamation issued on April 22, at least until real reforms are adopted.

The EB-5 programme has long been plagued by scandal and fraud, and criticised as effectively functioning as a pay-for-citizenship scheme in many cases. There is no reason that the programme should receive preferential treatment as opposed to other green card programmes for employment-based immigrants, the lawmakers said.
Iran posted items on Facebook in an attempt to sway American voters taking part in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, it has been claimed.

A report by the media analytics firm Graphika shows several posts on the social media giant which are said to have been fabricated by Iran in an effort to boost the candidacy of Ron Paul and sabotage the chances of Mitt Romney.

The alleged campaign was years before the Russian Internet Research Agency was alleged to have launched a widespread disinformation campaign through social media in an attempt to influence the 2016 elections.

The Iranian effort is alleged to have been undertaken by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, according to Graphika researchers.

The report claimed that IRIB ran more than 300 active, fake accounts that contained content about global politics.

In March of last year, Facebook said it shut down more than 2,600 fake accounts linked to Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo and aiming to influence political sentiment in various parts of the world.

Iran is alleged to have used fake accounts on Facebook in an attempt to sway American voters during the 2012 Republican presidential primary. The image above shows Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on April 9

It has been alleged that Iran tried to boost the candidacy of Ron Paul (right) while being critical of his rival, Mitt Romney (left)

It was the latest effort by the leading social network to shut down 'inauthentic' accounts on Facebook and Instagram seeking to influence politics in the US and elsewhere.

The accounts blocked in the four countries were not necessarily centrally coordinated but 'used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,' said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy for the company.

But the Graphika report alleges that Iran was involved in disinformation tactics through Facebook as far back as the 2012 Republican primary race.

Several posts from that year show cartoons in support of the GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The posts cited Pauls criticism of Israel, a country that Iran considers its sworn enemy.

The Iranians are also said to have posted messages critical of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and current United States senator from Utah.

Unlike Paul, Romney, who eventually won the nomination but lost to the incumbent, Barack Obama, was a vocal supporter of Israel.

The Iranian Facebook campaign is also alleged to have posted content about the Occupy Wall Street movement as well as links to stories about police brutality and racial strife in America.

A media analytics firm claims that Iran tried to help Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul during the 2012 GOP primary

The firm, Graphika, claims that the Iranian government mounted a disinformation campaign through Facebook with the aim of sabotaging the candidacy of the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney

Iran is also said to have posted about the Occupy movement, according to Graphika

An Iranian government spokesperson told NBC News: The Iranian government does not engage in cyber warfare.

Iran, itself a victim of US and Israeli cyber attacks, the Stuxnet virus, a cyber attack against Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, is one dangerous example.

Cyber activities Iran engages in are purely defensive and to protect against further attacks on Iranian infrastructure.

Besides, the US, not Iran, has been one of main member-state opponents of a universal ban of using the cyber warfare in the UN and beyond.

During the 2016 elections, the Russian government allegedly masterminded a widespread disinformation campaign aimed at sowing dissension in the United States.

Russia has denied the allegation.

The Russian effort was the subject of an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The probe by Mueller raised questions as to whether Russia was aided in its efforts either by members of the Trump campaign or their supporters.

Muellers investigators concluded that there wasnt enough evidence to implicate Trump associates with conspiring with Russia.
M ay is a savvy, retired teacher and lives in leafy, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. When lockdown began in late March, she received the official text from the Government regarding new rules about staying at home to prevent the spread of the virus.

Two days later, May received another text informing her she had left the house twice the day before and now had to pay a fine of 35.

The text looked so official and even showed the sender as the Government even though I realise now it wasnt," she says. May was frightened and with the situation being so new, she paid the amount. An hour later it dawned on her that this wasnt right and she called her son about it.

Her card details had been used minutes after she sent this payment but thankfully, the card was cancelled before any serious damage was done. I wanted to do something for our road as I didnt want this to happen to anyone else, May says. As a result, she started a WhatsApp group for her neighbours to make others aware of such scams.

In a time where we are all looking for accurate information on how to cope, scams like these, as well as misinformation campaigns, have proliferated. Alongside defrauding attempts from cyber criminals, there has also been a wide variety of misleading health advice circulating. Fortunately there are key ways to stay safe, secure and informed from cyber crime and disinformation campaigns.

Here is a handy checklist to ensure that you dont become a victim:

Protect yourself against fraud and cyber crime

Just take a breath

Dont rush in and hand over bank details or personal information. Taking a moment to think over what youre being asked for can stop fraud.

Update your devices

Check that you have the latest software, apps, operating systems and security updates on ALL your devices. And update them regularly.

Dont click the link

It may seem tempting to click on a link  especially if it sounds like a good offer. But it could be a phishing email.

Dont be afraid to challenge

Its perfectly OK to refuse requests for your money or details if you are at all suspicious. Only criminals will try to rush you.

Dont reveal your passwords

Banks will never ask for your full password or pin. Neither will they or the police ask you to withdraw money or transfer it to another account.

Contact the organisations direct

If you get an email, text or phone call check that its genuine by using a known number or email address to contact organisations directly.

If you think you have fallen victim to a scam, contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud. Report suspicious texts by forwarding the original message to 7726, which spells SPAM on your keypad. For further information go to sharechecklist.gov.uk

Be wary of misleading heath advice

Verify medical advice

In a time of heightened fear, its natural for people to want to do what they can to protect their health, but safe medical advice will always be confirmed by the NHS, Public Heath England, and the Government on their respective websites.

Detecting misinformation

Social media and communication channels are rife with stories, tips and warnings  often untrue or taken out of context  that have served to ignite further worry and fear about the current crisis. Stick to trustworthy sources and take viral statuses, voice memos, and anonymous texts with a pinch of salt.

Buying and making protective equipment

There has been an increasing number of cases in which people have been sold products including face masks and hand sanitiser from retailers that turn out to not exist. Buy from established, trusted places, and avoid homemade recipes for hygiene products.
Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pences press secretary and the wife of President Trumps senior adviser Stephen Miller, has tested positive for the coronavirus, senior administration officials confirmed Friday.

Pence, who leads the federal governments coronavirus task force, was set to travel to Des Moines, Iowa, Friday, but his plane was delayed nearly an hour as word of Millers diagnosis was relayed to the vice president, Bloomberg reported.

Miller was believed to have been in contact with six other staffers who were scheduled to take the flight and who were removed from the plane at Andrews Air Force Base out of an abundance of caution, the vice presidents office said.

Pence had not been in recent contact with Miller, according to the vice presidents staff. Her marriage to Stephen Miller took place in February.

On Thursday, the White House reported that one of President Trumps personal valets had also tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

In Iowa, which Pence has called a success story in the fight against the virus, the vice president was planning to urge the resumption of in-person church services. Pence will also meet with grocery and agricultural business leaders to talk about possible disruptions in the nations food supply.

As of Friday, more than 11,000 people in Iowa had tested positive for COVID-19, and 243 had died from it. A recent jump in cases in Des Moines has city leaders concerned. More than 100 people are currently hospitalized in Polk County, which includes Des Moines.

Our community spread of the virus remains high, Karl Keeler, president of MercyOne Central Iowa health care, told the Associated Press. We have a lot of work to do.

Vice President Mike Pence at a meeting about the coronavirus response on Thursday in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)

While the number of cases of COVID-19 continues to rise, especially outside the New York metropolitan area, Trump floated the idea on Tuesday of disbanding the coronavirus task force. Hours later, he reversed course, saying he had no idea how popular the task force is until actually yesterday.

Story continues

Both Pence and Trump tested negative for the virus after learning about the positive result for the presidents valet, the White House announced. They and other White House staffers are now being tested daily.

The president has said he has no intention of wearing a mask to protect against infection by the coronavirus. Pence did not wear a mask on his recent tour of the Mayo Clinic, in defiance of the hospital rules.

We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement Thursday. The President and the Vice President have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health.

Pences office said that he is tested on a daily basis and that Miller was not accompanying the vice president to Iowa.

_____

Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

Read more:
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-08 03:01:02

UNNC is One of the Most Valuable Universities, Is It Worthwhile?

University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Laura Hong

Digital assistant

Laura.hong@nottingham.edu.cn

University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) is the first sino-foreign university in China with English-only courses. It is listed in the top one percent ranking universities worldwide. As referred by one of our students whos majoring in Finance, Accounting, and Management, KUO, Pin-Yu, To compare the quality of teaching here and similar universities overseas, UNNC is definitely worth it - with the complete English-teaching environment and its fabulous ways to benefit me in my future career. UNNC is considered as an elite university for its wonderful teaching quality, rather than the cost of its tuition fee, therefore I can assure you that you will not regret your choice to study here.

Apply for UNNC, a chance to be at a prestigious university?

UNNC combines superior disciplines of University of Nottingham (UoN) with the actual needs of local socio-economic development. It introduces a series of international first-class degree courses, and implements a teaching evaluation system that is entirely consistent with UoN. Students graduated from UNNC receive the exact degree from the UoN. This could not only save the cost of studying abroad, but also allow students to accumulate experience, form contacts with students across the world, experience the local culture, and cultivate a world-wide life perspective.

General Scholarships:

We hope to encourage more applicants from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to experience our fantastic study environment, therefore we have released scholarship offers as follow:

Nottingham Global Scholarship

Nottingham Global Full scholarship: 100,000RMB.

Nottingham Global Half scholarship: 50,000RMB.

Awarded to 4 applicants for each scholarship.

Ningbo Government Scholarship

For HMT Undergraduate students: 20,000RMB.

For HMT Postgraduate students: 30,000RMB.

Awarded to 5 applicants for each scholarship.

Ningbo Government Scholarship for Non-degree Students

Ningbo government offers non-degree students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan a scholarship up to 6,000RMB per person.

University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) Mobility Scholarships

This scholarship will be awarded to exchange and study abroad students. The winners will be awarded a one-off payment of 6,000RMB each.

The deadline of applying for all of the scholarships is by May 31, 2020.

* Please note that students are eligible to receive one entry-based Nottingham scholarship award and one progression-based award during their academic study at UNNC. Should students be considered for two awards, the highest award will be automatically granted.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200507005
Nagpur: The youngest of the Eulers Spoilers is no more. He was 103. Indian mathematical genius, Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande, who along with his mentor late RC Bose and their colleague late ET Parker disproved way back in 1959 an 18th century mathematical conjecture, passed away at Vijaywada on April 21, bringing curtains to a glorious chapter from the world of statistics and mathematics.

He is survived by his three children, grand and great grandchildren, a community of his students, and a body of phenomenal work that would continue to illuminate many a pathway.

For the tribe of mathematicians, the tall and deeply thoughtful Shrikhande was a doyen, who spent a century dedicated to the cause of his discipline  in path-breaking research and teaching  and whose contributions to the field of combinatorics and statistical design theory are unparalleled.

The humble man shot into fame six decades ago along with Bose and Parker at the University of North Carolina (UNC) when they disproved the 18th century Swiss mathematician Leonard Eulers conjecture, showing orthogonal Latin squares corresponding to oddly even numbers (except 6)  numbers such as 10, 14 that, like 6, left a remainder of two when divided by four  did exist.

For that, the trio came to be known as Eulers Spoilers.

It took 177 years for the conjecture to be falsified, a development that found its way on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday, April 26, 1959, exactly 61 years ago.

Legend is that the Czar of Russian asked Leonard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, this question: Six different regiments have six officers, each one holding a different rank. Can these 36 officers be arranged in a square formation on the parade ground so that each row and column contains one officer of each rank and one from each regiment?

The mathematical inquiry was, whether the orthogonal Latin squares of the order 6 existed. For years, the prodigious mathematician pondered over the puzzle and said no.

A Latin square is a Sudoku-like rectangle with equal number of rows and columns with symbols or numbers occurring only once in each row and column. It had been around for ages. For instance, Choi Seok-Jeong (1646-1715), a Korean mathematician, used orthogonal Latin squares of order 9 to construct magic squares  where the entries in rows and columns add up to the same number.

When superimposed on one another, the Mutually Orthogonal Latin Squares or MOLS give rise to a grid of order-pairs in which every order-pair appears exactly once in the whole grid.

Then, just before his death, Euler conjectured in 1782 that in fact no orthogonal Latin squares existed for oddly even numbers. In 1901, a French mathematician named Gaston Tarry proved that this (n = 6) was indeed impossible by checking all possible cases. But Eulers conjecture that orthogonality was impossible for all oddly even numbers remained unresolved. Until 1959, when the trio suddenly solved this problem that had baffled the mathematicians for almost two centuries.

What began with Parkers study on the construction of some sets of MOLS, was expanded by Bose and Shrikhande in their paper titled Falsity of Eulers Conjecture about the non-existence of two MOLS of the order 4t+2, and thereafter began a feverish correspondence between the three.

Their collaboration culminated in a paper that proved that orthogonal Latin squares of all orders other than 6 and 2 did exist. Bose, Shrikhande and Parker had bridged geometry, combinatorics and statistics, to disprove the 178-year-old conjecture from what began as an exploration into building of MOLS and balanced incomplete statistical block designs for practical agriculture experimentation.

Today, Latin squares and balanced incomplete block designs have wide ranging applications  from clinical trials of medicines to complex communication systems.

The techniques the Eulers Spoilers developed and subsequent works of Shrikhande have become an important part in the study of statistical design theory and combinatorics  a field of math that looks to combine different things and explores whether certain combinations are possible at all, and if so, what combinations are the most appropriate given certain constraints.

The trios result proving Euler wrong was announced at the 557th annual meeting of the prestigious American Mathematical Society in New York in April 1959.

On April 26, the NYT featured the trios work and noted that they were fondly known among their colleagues as Eulers Spoilers.

In his biography much later, Shrikhande shared that the man at the reception of the hotel where he stayed then curiously showed him the newspaper and asked if he was the man on the front page, to which Shrikhande had smiled and said, yes. The man replied: You must have done something big; NYTs front page can't be bought for even millions of dollars.

Shrikhande and Bose were, at the time, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in the Department of Mathematical Statistics, which had been founded in 1946 by the statistician Harold Hotelling (18951973). Bose had been a faculty there since 1949, and Shrikhande, who had joined for a PhD in 1947, was Boses first PhD student  his journey until that point had been arduous. He came from very humble financial background.

Born in Sagar, in the then Central Provinces and Berar (now Madhya Pradesh) in 1917, Shrikhande did his BSc (Honours) from Nagpur's Government Science College (now Institute of Science) and later went to the Indian Statistical Institute at Kolkata, then headed by the legendary statistician, PC Mahalanobis, to hone his statistical skills under his mentor R C Bose.

In 1947, he went on a scholarship for further study to the North Carolina University in the US where Bose had joined as a professor in 1949. Shrikhande did his PhD in Discrete Mathematics, also known as Combinatorics, involving the study of Matrices, a subject that was completely new to him. But he finished his study in one year, an indication of his sharp mathematical intellect.

Studying with Bose was a turning point in his life, he would note later.

For, it was Bose who showed that a complete set of mutually orthogonal Latin squares is essentially the same as a finite projective plane; he later introduced Shrikhande to the theory of statistical design of experiments, a field where Latin squares proved to be more than amusement.

In 1978, Shrikhande retired, but continued to teach for some years at Nagpur University.

He was tall, quiet, and very British-like, Dr Siddharth Kane, the just retired Vice Chancellor of the Nagpur University, said. Kane did his Masters in Statistics from the post graduate department of the Nagpur University in 1980-82, when Shrikhande taught him. A brilliant but modest man.

Kane recollected that before entering his class, Shrikhande would smoke a cigarette, pondering quietly over his topics, and then hold his students in rapt attention through his lectures.

You would find very few students today to grasp his theorems, Kane said. I am very proud that I was his student; he left a deep impression on all his students.

In an article on the occasion of Shrikhandes centenary celebrations, Navin Singhi, one of his Ph.D students in 197273, remembered his teachers simplicity and unassuming style.

He used empty envelopes left from incoming mails for writing research papers. He almost never used normal paper or notebook to write down, the article quoted Singhi as saying.

Singhi, who retired in 2014 at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, himself collaborated with his mentor in a lot of work in Combinatorics.

Another student observed: I was never ridiculed even if I made a mathematically wrong statement.

Shrikhande founded the department of statistics at the Institute of Science at Nagpur in 1955 before taking up the Chapel Hill position in US where 1959 proved to be a turning point. He returned to India in 1960, to join the Benaras Hindu University, which he left in 1963 to found the Department of Mathematics and UGC Centre for Advanced Study in Mathematics at the University of Bombay.

His son, Mohan, a renowned combinatorist himself, retired from the Central Michigan University in 2015. After his wife Shakuntalas demise in 1988, Shrikhande lived with his children in the US and returned to India in 2009 to spend the rest of his life at an Ashram for the underprivileged girls run by one of his grandchildren. Bose and Parker died in 1987 and 1991, respectively.

Shrikhande published another landmark paper in 1959 on what has come to be known as the Shrikhande graph, which has connections to algebra, group theory and topology.

His graph is known for the beautiful format it takes, says Arun Muktibodh, retired Head of the Department of Mathematics at Nagpur's Mohata Science College.

Graphs have applications in various fields like management, electronics and computer science.

Its important to preserve his memory and work for generations, said Muktibodh, who produced a documentary on him two years ago. The film titled Eulers Spoiler: A Living Legend is archived by the film society of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. With some fresh edits it will be on YouTube soon, he said. Thats how new generations will know about the man and his work.
Brandeisians win prominent grants and fellowships

Brandeis undergraduates and recent alumni have been awarded some of the most prestigious academic scholarships and fellowships available this spring.

Each academic year, the Academic Fellowships team, which includes director Meredith Monaghan and assistant director Elizabeth Rotolo, guides hundreds of Brandeis students and alumni interested in pursuing fellowships in finding the best opportunities to supplement their academic experience, identifying sources of funding, and helping them develop competitive applications.

Even in difficult times, Brandeis students and alumni are creative and bold as they strive toward excellence in the classroom and beyond, Monaghan said. Despite being physically distanced from one another right now, Brandeisians remain connected, collaborating with faculty and staff on research projects, senior theses, and applications for fellowships and internships. These meaningful relationships are part of what make Brandeis so special, and enable our students to make lasting connections and invaluable contributions to the world.

The following students have been awarded fellowships and scholarships:

Shinji Rho '21 has been named one of only 396 Goldwater Scholars nationwide. A junior pursuing a dual BS/MS in biochemistry with a minor in chemistry, Rho has maintained a 4.0 GPA every semester while also working in microbiology professor Jeff Gelles' lab on an independent research project spanning more than two years. She has also served as a teaching assistant for organic chemistry and general chemistry lab, and was a recipient of a Division of Science Summer Research Grant, the Giumette Academic Achievement Award and the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Scholarship. In addition, Rho is a certified EMT for BEMCo and the layout designer for The Justice. Rho intends to pursue a doctoral degree in cancer biology en route to a career in cancer research.

The Goldwater Scholarship fosters outstanding students in their sophomore and junior year to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. It is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields. Rho is the 22nd Brandeis undergraduate student to have earned this distinction since 1989, and the fourth in the last seven years.

Micah Pickus '20 has received a Boren Scholarship to study Russian language in Kazakhstan beginning in January 2021. Pickus is majoring in Russian studies with minors in politics and Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and is writing his senior honors thesis on the importance of nuclear modernization to Putin's domestic and foreign policy. He participated in the Russian Language Immersion Program through Middlebury College in the summer of 2018 and has won a grant from the Melikian Center to continue his language study through Arizona State University this summer. Pickus has also worked at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and at the Matlock Archives in Durham, NC, conducting research in both English and Russian. He intends to work as a Russian language analyst in the service of the U.S. government and its citizens, with a focus on arms control and Russian influence in the Middle East.

Boren Scholarships provide up to $20,000 to U.S. undergraduate students to study abroad in areas of the world that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad. Pickus is the fifth recipient of the Boren Scholarship from Brandeis in the last 10 years.

Troia Reyes-Stone '17 was named a Marshall Scholar in December. With the scholarship, Reyes-Stone plans to pursue a master of science degree in evidence-based social intervention and policy at Oxford University, and a master of public policy degree at the London School of Economics. Troia graduated summa cum laude with dual majors in International and Global Studies (for which she earned highest honors) and East Asian Studies, along with a minor in Politics, and she also participated in the Brandeis in The Hague program, where she focused on human rights and conducted an internship at Parliamentarians for Global Action. While at Brandeis, Troia volunteered as an English tutor for immigrant Latina mothers while completing a senior thesis on the Kellogg Briand Pact, which was an extension of research conducted in her junior year as part of the highly selective Schiff Undergraduate Fellows Program. After graduation Troia spent a year in Mexico through the Fulbright Bi-National Internship Program, where she worked at Solcargo, a Mexican corporate law firm, and took classes at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM). After her Fulbright grant, Troia spent a year working as a Legislative Fellow on Capitol Hill for Representative Matt Cartwright, and more recently became a Press Assistant at the House Democratic Caucus.

The Marshall Scholarship is one of the most prestigious scholarships for American citizens, funding students who wish to pursue graduate study in the United Kingdom. Troia Reyes-Stone is the fifth Brandeisian to win a Marshall Scholarship.

The following alumni were awarded grants through the Fulbright program:

Riley Sandberg '15 has been awarded a Fulbright Research grant to Germany, where she will work with the Talking Robots Group in the Multilinguality and Language Technology Lab at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), to study how social robots can be used to provide tailored, one-on-one second language lessons to migrant and native German-speaking children. After graduating cum laude with a degree in psychology, Sandberg worked in the Education Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and in several different research positions at the University of California, Los Angeles, including the CONNECT Center for Innovation in Elementary Education. After the grant, Sandberg hopes to bring educational best practices for social robots back to UCLA, which will inform their work with migrant children, and guide future avenues of research in partnership with the DFKI. Longer-term, she intends to pursue a doctoral degree in human-computer interaction with an emphasis on educational technology and cultural and linguistic differences in human-robot interactions.

Tremaine Smith '17 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) to Sri Lanka. While at Brandeis, Smith majored in African and African American studies and education studies, was a member of the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program, a coordinator for the Brandeis Bridges program, a family engagement and community outreach intern with Waltham High School, and a recipient of the Karpf & Hahn Peace Grant. He has also worked as a camp counselor in Turkey, served as a school and community resource volunteer with the Peace Corps in South Africa, and taught English in China. After his Fulbright year, Smith intends to pursue a joint JD/MA in international affairs, and hopes to work with the U.S. Department of State in order to influence cultural and educational programming.

Additionally, seven students and alumni were named alternates for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program:(ETA, Thailand),(Research, Russia),(ETA, Taiwan),(ETA, Thailand),(Research, Latvia),(ETA, Mexico), and(Research, Netherlands).
Its been nearly two months since various people around the world are working from home due to COVID-19.

While some are truly enjoying themselves, while also being very productive, many are tired due to extreme work loads and juggling home chores with office work, especially with kids around. All of us however, are dying to step out of our homes, even if for work.

Reuters

However, it looks like Google employees are going to wait a little longer to return to their desks. It was announced at an all-hands meeting that employees would likely be working from home until the end of the year, as per a Business Insider report.

According to a report by The Information, current work from home policy that Google is adhering to will remain active till June 1st. The Information's report further revealed that the return to the office would be done in a gradual, incremental way.

Google's work from home directive

According to Pichai, employees who need to return to the office wont do that before June or July, claims the report. Moreover, they will be putting emphasis on the safety measures, with an entirely different in-office experience.

Google isnt the only silicon valley company to have extended the work from home till the end of this year. Social media giant Facebook also announced that it will be mostly opening its offices by July 6. They however have stated that employees have the option to continue working from home until the end of 2020 if they wish to do so.

Reuters

Zuckerberg said in a statement, We know that most people can't work from home as easily as many of our employees can. We also know that when society does eventually start re-opening, it will have to open slowly in staggered waves to make sure that the people who are returning to work can do so safely and that we minimize the possibility of future outbreaks.

If Google and Facebook have taken the plunge in ensuring employee safety by giving them an option to work from home till end of 2020, how long before most companies who can operate away from office will also start offering such long-term work from home scenarios.

What do you think about extending work from home? Tell us in the comments below.
She said broadband infrastructure was just as important as the paving of Interstate 69. Its crippling, if as a state we dont take care of it, she said.
After a family of four was placed in quarantine, Bashar al-Assad warned Syrians of the economic consequences that the country faces writes Zaman Al-Wasl.

The Syrian Health Ministry has put a family of four in quarantine after the father tested positive for the novel coronavirus, local news site said on Wednesday.

The confirmed case was reported in the district of Kafr Batna in the eastern enclave of Damascus.

So far, 45 coronavirus cases have been recorded in Syria with three deaths and 127 recovered cases, according to the World Meters data group.

Bashar al-Assad warned on Monday of a catastrophe in war-battered Syria if the easing of lockdown measures against coronavirus is mishandled.

Assad said Syria was in a transitional phase from the lockdown but warned of grave economic challenges that would outlast confinement, AFP reported.

In tandem with the health challenge, the other challenge during the coronavirus pandemic is the economic challenge, Assad said.

With the pandemic, citizens from different segments of society have been forced to choose between hunger and poverty or illness.

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.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday condoled the death of 16 migrant labourers after being run over by a goods train in Aurangabad and said one should be ashamed of the treatment meted out to "nation builders".

Sixteen migrant workers sleeping on rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra on Friday morning.

In a tweet in Hindi, he said, "I am shocked at the of the killing of labourers after being crushed under a goods train. We should be ashamed of the treatment being meted to our nation builders. My condolences to the families of those killed and I pray for the early recovery of the injured".

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also termed the incident as extremely sad and disturbing and demanded that adequate compensation be given to the families of those who died.

"During the nation-wide return of labourers, the incident that took place in Aurangabad is extremely sad and disturbing," she said.

In a tweet in Hindi, she said the lockdown has "destroyed" the lives of the poor.

"They have no means to make a living. All the families who suffered in this incident should get compensation and all possible help," she said.

The workers were returning to their home state Madhya Pradesh and due to exhaustion slept on the rail track, a police official said. PTI SKC



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DETROIT -- A day after the state confirmed the temporary field hospital at the TCF Center hospital will pause operations for the time being, officials said a total of 39 patients were treated at the facility during the nearly four weeks it was operational.

We really see this as a best-case scenario, said Michelle Grinnell, spokesperson for the TCF Regional Care Center.

The facility was built out to hold approximately 1,000 beds for the treatment and recovery of COVID-19 patients in southeast Michigan and began accepting patients on April 10. Less than a month later, the facility discharged its last patient on Wednesday. The hospital maxed out at fewer than two dozen patients being cared for at one time. The total number of patients falls in line with what other temporary field hospitals have experienced across the country, Grinnell said.

While it may appear as though the hospital was not as necessary as initially thought, Grinnell says a few factors played into the lack of patients going to the TCF Center. For one, local hospitals were able to safely shift patients between facilities. Another factor was citizens following stay-at-home orders and properly engaging in social distancing when out in public. The exponential growth of cases in the region early in April slowed down throughout the month and the caseload did not overwhelm local health care systems as anticipated.

At the time the decision was made, it really was the best option for the information we had on hand," Grinnell said. Thankfully the need for that many beds didnt come to fruition."

While the field hospital may be paused for now, Grinnell says the facility will remain in place in case there is another surge of cases and more beds are needed in the future. For the time being, the Suburban Showcase Center in Novi will remain open as a field hospital. That facility has treated eight COVID-19 patients since it opened.

The majority of the cost of the field hospital will be covered by FEMA, according to the state. The funds were provided through a reimbursement grant with 75% federal cost-share and 25% applicant cost-share, meaning the state would have to cover 25% of the costs. However, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has asked the federal government to waive the states 25% so the entire cost of the TCF Center and Suburban Showcase renovations would be covered by FEMA.

The state has not received a bill from FEMA for the cost of the renovations, according to Grinnell, and the total cost for the project is unknown at this time.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

READ MORE

Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus

Friday, May 8: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

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From closing restaurants to requiring masks, Gov. Whitmer has issued 69 executive orders in 56 days

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Hopefully, this can show my students that they can accomplish what they want, he said.

Initially, Cambambia did not want to be a teacher, until he started substitute teaching and realized how important teachers are. He remembered his days in Waco ISD schools and the educators who made an impact on him.

I realized teachers can have impactful moments with students and make a difference, he said. I just want to empower my students.

Waco High special education teacher Julie Richardson went to her campus Thursday, expecting to collect donations for a fellow teacher whose child is sick. When another teacher asked her to talk outside, Richardson followed her out, where she saw a crowd gathered, cheering for her Secondary Teacher of the Year award.

Richardson said she was shocked and humbled and that it is a huge honor to receive the award because her work as a special education and credit recovery teacher is to help students who may have behavioral issues or who may not perform well on state standardized tests, which earn schools recognition for high scores.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Ilkin Seyfaddini  Trend:

The US Government supported Uzbekistan's efforts to eliminate the consequences of the partial destruction of the Sardobin water reservoir in Syrdarya region, Trend reports via Uzbek media.

In particular, USAID has allocated $100,000 to purchase and distribute essential supplies to families affected by the disaster.

"I express my sincere condolences to the residents of Syrdarya Region. The US Government is proud to support the families affected by this tragedy," said US Ambassador Daniel Rosenblum.

By providing these funds, the US government will assist Uzbekistan in its crisis response and recovery efforts by distributing food and other critical supplies to needy families who were evacuated from their homes after a dam breach.

In addition to supporting immediate relief efforts, USAID is working with the government of Uzbekistan to diversify the country's economy and increase regional trade, address serious health threats, and build the government's capacity to meet the needs of its people, Rosenblum said.

The dam built several years ago at the Sardobin reservoir broke on May 1, 2020 in Syrdarya region. Several villages close to the dam were flooded, about 70,000 people were evacuated from the site, and mud flows reached the border of Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, on May 7, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Uzbekistan have arrived in Maktaaral district of Turkestan region of Kazakhstan to help eliminate the consequences of the flood.

More than 30,000 people were evacuated in Turkestan Region.

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
Police officers examine the railway track after a train ran over migrant workers sleeping on the track in Aurangabad district in the western state of Maharashtra, India, on May 8, 2020. (Stringer/Reuters)

14 Migrant Workers Stranded by Coronavirus Crushed on Train Tracks in India

NEW DELHIAt least 14 Indian migrant workers stranded without work, sleeping on the train tracks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were ran over and killed by a train on Friday, while apparently attempting to return to their home villages, the railway ministry and media said.

Tens of thousands of people have been walking home from Indias big cities after losing their jobs because of a lockdown to contain the spread of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, since late March.

The driver tried to stop the freight train when he saw the labourers on the tracks in the western state of Maharashtra, the railway ministry said, adding it had ordered an inquiry.

I have just heard the sad news about labourers coming under the train, rescue work is underway, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said on Twitter.

Under the lockdown, all public transport has been suspended so migrant workers heading home often have to walk long distances to get there.

The government has extended the lockdown until May 17.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
Ben Affleck was spotted wearing half of his co-star turned girlfriend Ana de Armas' broken heart pendant on Friday.

The two-time Oscar winner, 47, arrived at her home in Venice without any jewelry on, but later left her place with the gold pendant around his neck.

While wearing a friendship necklace is usually reserved for giddy youngsters, the Batman star appeared proud while wearing a piece of his heart around his neck.

Getting serious: Ben Affleck was spotted wearing half of his co-star turned girlfriend Ana de Armas' broken heart pendant on Friday

Matching: The Cuban bombshell has been spotted a few times wearing an identical gold pendant to her beau; pictured in the necklace two weeks ago

Before meeting up, The Way Back actor was seen carried an iced tea to his date with the 32-year-old beauty.

While the couple are frequently seen walking their beloved pups together, the Deep Water co-stars opted to soak up some quality time without their furry friends.

As he strolled down the tree-lined street, Affleck wore a cobalt blue leather jacket, jeans, matching trainers and a grey t-shirt.

Ready for romance: The actor was spotted arriving at Ana's home on Friday morning without any jewelry on

The Cuban bombshell has previously been spotted donning an identical gold pendant, which are traditionally worn by best friends to signify long-lasting companionship.

On their outing, she maintained her effortlessly chic style in a maxi skirt and white top.

Unlike her man, who safely covered his mouth with a cloth face mask, the Golden Globe nominee opted against wearing any protective gear.

Strolling: The Knives Out star maintained her effortlessly chic style in a maxi skirt and white t-shirt around her neighborhood

The father-of-three, who shares Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, eight, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, and his new woman became a public item after shooting their upcoming erotic thriller based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith.

In Deep Water, the real-life lovebirds play Vic and Melinda, a married couple who adopt a look-the-other-way attitude to adultery so they can stay together.

In the novel, Melida's string of affairs eventually eats away at Vic to the point he begins murdering his wife's lovers.

Heating up: They're frequently seen packing on the PDA during loved-up outings in Los Angeles and went Instagram official last month on her 32nd birthday

Leading man: For the outing, Affleck sported a cobalt blue leather jacket, jeans, matching trainers and a grey t-shirt

Before the coronavirus lockdowns began they holidayed together in Costa Rica and Cuba.

They're frequently seen packing on the PDA during loved-up outings in Los Angeles and went Instagram official last month on her 32nd birthday.

Jennifer is copacetic with Ben dating Ana, according to an UsWeekly source who clarified: 'Jen has completely moved on from Ben in a romantic sense.'

Celebrating together: Ben threw his lady love a birthday party when she turned 32-years-old

The insider dished: 'She considers him a friend, thinks he is a good dad to their children and respects him. She is happy in her own life and supportive of him and happy for him and his relationship.'

Last month, the outlet reported the Peppermint star, who has been quietly dating Cali Group chairman John Miller since May 2018, was working with Affleck 'to prepare the kids' for meeting the Blade Runner 2049 actress.

The Gone Girl lead was reportedly 'understanding' of her hesitation of introducing his new flame, who is 15 years his junior.
08.05.2020 LISTEN

Thomas Akwasi Owusu-Afriyie, Nephew of Otumfo Osei Tutu II, his former Private Secretary and first in line to the Golden Stool, Sakumono/Tema Community 18/Ghana

"When I was eighteen I left for Hamburg in Germany. I got married to my first wife, have three children, lived there for nineteen years, was German citizen until I married my second wife and moved to New York City with her destroying my German passport.

In Germany, I worked in the Security business e.g. being Security Officer for Mercedes-Benz factory in Bremen. After the death of the old Otumfo, someone around former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder found out who I am. It was in 2000, the times of the World Exhibition in Hannover when a Representative of the German Chancellor asked me to meet him in the Police Headquarters at Berliner Tor in Hamburg. I was made the offer the German Government would help me to sit on the Golden Stool but I refused the offer. I mentioned my Uncle in London is the next Otumfo by our Ashanti tradition and declined the offer. For me to get an audience with the King is very difficult as by our believe the challenger to the throne often comes from within the family. For you as a German, it would be even easier to meet him as you are not a threat to him. By Chancellor Gerhard Schroders offer, it became clear to me Germany and Europe want to influence the situation in West-Africa especially manage the influx of Migrants with a German on the throne. What was not successful than I am sure plans are with them one day to take immediate control over our affairs from within our territory.

Does it not make you wonder that NGOs of your society in Europe do not tackle the real problem why they are here, the immense corruption...in the end causing all our social problems? Ask yourself: WHY? Our corruption benefits you, people, very well...and you know it!

UK Prime Minister David Cameron blackmailed our late President Atta Miles by refusing AID support unless Ghana would accept Homosexuality as normal. President Mills wisely enough said he rather manages the country without UK money than accepting Homosexuality in his country. David Cameroon, like all other Presidents and Prime Ministers, never asked to stop corruption in exchange for financial support...do you know that? We operate six camps for witches each 400-700 witches strong and have fetish priests using humans for sacrifices seeing that some of our Pastors and Politicians are being taken to Benin to fetish priest to be empowered by evil spirits...and you Whites do not force us to stop such practices in exchange for help? When we took IMF loan for 10 years fiscal and structural discipline on our side was part of the deal. Once the time expired we got back to our old own style of mismanaging the country.

It is you, the White People, that are not doing the right things rather ignoring our wrongdoings and take advantage of it so that you can stay in power over us while my people on the ground are suffering for nothing in the middle of everything we were blessed with in abundance.

By the way, it was President Kuffour that messed up my life!"
Normal People stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal have revealed their plans beyond the hit BBC drama and admitted that they 'haven't heard anything' about a potential second series.

Fans have been clamouring for another instalment since the show aired earlier this month but the pair were not giving away any hints about whether a follow-up could be in the pipeline.

Replying to questions from Lauren Laverne on the BBC Radio 6 Breakfast Show about a future series, Paul, 24, who plays Connell, said: 'I don't know, if there is, we haven't heard anything about it.'

Dynamic duo: Normal People stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal have revealed their plans beyond the hit BBC drama and admitted that they 'haven't heard anything' about a potential second series

He added that although the current COVID-19 crisis was difficult for people in creative industries he had been fortunate enough to line up projects beyond his role in Normal People.

The 25-year-old said: 'I'll hopefully be doing a film towards the end of the summer, lockdown and coronavirus pending but hopefully, it will be very exciting.'

Daisy, who was cast as Marianne, also said that she too had fallen on her feet: 'I was set to start something before we went into lockdown and luckily that's still fully going ahead so I know that at some point I'll work again, which is nice.'

Teasing: Replying to questions from Lauren Laverne on the BBC Radio 6 Breakfast Show about a future series, Paul, 24, who plays Connell, said: 'I don't know, if there is, we haven't heard anything about it.'

'I'm not going to be happy until they announce that there's going to be a second series': Fans have been urging BBC bosses to begin filming on the next instalment

Normal People, which is based on the best-selling novel by Sally Rooney, tells the tale of teenagers Marianne and Connell from opposite ends of the class divide in Ireland.

It follows them from their school days in Country Sligo through to University at Trinity College, Dublin, and fans have been urging BBC bosses to begin filming on the next instalment.

One person wrote: 'Normal People was such a roller coaster, please make a second series @bbcthree.'

A second fan added: 'Can there be a second series of Normal People! It's one powerful story line with every emotion and feeling portrayed! Absolutely loved it #NormalPeople #bingewatch.'

And a third commented: 'I'm not going to be happy until they announce that there's going to be a second series of Normal People.'

Normal People author Sally Rooney was dubbed the voice of a generation after she became the youngest ever writer to win the prestigious Costa prize at just 27 for the story.

The novel, released in 2018, became a New York Times and international best-seller.

In 2019 the title beat Michelle Obama's Becoming to be named Book of the Year at the annual British Book Awards.

Shocked: Normal People star Paul, who plays Connell was left stunned on Thursday as James Corden revealed on Twitter that the Sally Rooney adaptation 'changed my life'

It comes after Paul was left stunned as James Corden revealed on Twitter that the Sally Rooney adaptation had changed his life.

Retweeting the presenter's post, Paul, wrote 'WTF IS HAPPENING' as he struggled to take in his overnight fame.

The Late Late Show host, 41, took to Twitter on Thursday afternoon to heap praise on the teen sex drama that has had everyone talking.

Big fan: Retweeting the presenter's post, Paul, 24, wrote 'WTF IS HAPPENING' as he struggled to take in his overnight fame

In an impassioned post, alongside a trailer of the show, James penned: 'Underplaying the impact of Normal People on @hulu has had on me for just a moment.

'I honestly think it may have changed my life. Its the best show I've watched in so long.'

Going on to praise Paul and co-star Daisy Edgar Jones, whom plays his love interest Marianne Sheridan, he continued: '@DaisyEdgarJones and @mescal_paul are extraordinary. It's ALL extraordinary x.'

Appreciation post: The Late Late Show host, 41, took to Twitter on Thursday afternoon to heap praise on the teen sex drama that has had everyone talking

Overwhelmed by James' praise, Paul retweeted the message alongside the caption: 'WTF IS HAPPENING', clearly astounded by the level of fame he reached.

He also replied to the tweets itself, writing: 'Wow! Thank you so much!'

While Daisy, 21, also replied, saying: 'That is so kind thank you!!!!!'

It comes shortly after Paul revealed shock at becoming an overnight heartthrob as he joked he'll 'disappoint' people when they meet him in person.

The actor said it was the 'last thing he ever expected' as he discussed the reaction to the BBC series and his character Connell during a recent interview with Grazia magazine.

Surprise!It comes shortly after Paul revealed shock at becoming an overnight heartthrob as he joked he'll 'disappoint' people when they meet him in person

Chuffed: He also replied to the tweets itself, writing: 'Wow! Thank you so much!' while Daisy, 21, also replied, saying: 'That is so kind thank you!!!!!'

When quizzed about the attention he has received since the adaptation of Sally Rooney's bestselling novel aired last week, he said:

'When people meet me in person they'll be disappointed, people are taking that from the character of Connell, and that's something I actually never thought he would be.

'It was genuinely the last thing I was expecting, so I haven't formed an opinion on it yet, I suppose.'
During the coronavirus pandemic, pets and pet owners have had to adjust to a temporary new norm. Vet visits have become curbside, at-home grooming disasters have been endured and humans have been spending much more time at home with their animals. This has led to a renewed feeling of closeness between owners and their pets, experts said.

In the beginning of the pandemic, James Bias, executive director of the Connecticut Humane Society, said the main concern was a possible shortage of PPE and a surge of orphaned pets to shelters.

"We [feared] we would suddenly be inundated with pets of people who were in the hospital or couldn't care for there animals," he said.But that did not happen. Some shelters have had to scale back and rely on foster homes for animals, but the disaster that was feared did not happen. In fact, adoptions have continued.

[Pets] tend to be a really good emotional safety net, said Bias. After 9-11 our adoptions increased by 30 percent. Even when COVID-19 hit, adoptions were happeningit feeds a strong nurturing need. You have a pet to stabilize you emotionally. For many people who have had to be socially distant, their pets kept them going.

Experts also agree that being home with pets all day has led to a heightened understanding of pets needs and wants. As owners pay more attention to their companions, they are quickly able to address what their pets need  whether its a snack, grooming or even just playtime.

Dawn Lowery, a trainer who owns One Smart Dog in Shelton said she has received calls from people noticing behavioral tics in their dogs that they'd never known, because they'd rarely been home all day on a typical weekday.

The flip side of that, however, is too much attention. We've seen the cartoons of the dogs flat on the floor, exhausted from all their walks, she said, adding that dogs typically sleep 14 hours a day.

As changes and adjustments happen in real time, the question is: What will happen in the future? Bias said, "In the future we will protect and preserve what we've learned the past couple months."

We spoke to pet experts around Connecticut to find out which aspects of pet ownership they think will be forever altered and what will go back to normal. >> Click through to see what they said.



Additional reporting by Michael Fornabaio
Theres a study from 2014 which I find myself thinking about a lot these days. Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, behavioural scientists at the University of Chicago, gave out $US5 Starbucks gift cards to commuters on that citys train system one morning in exchange for participating in a simple social experiment.

One group was charged with talking to the stranger next to them on the train. Another group was told to observe standard big city norms, which as we know dictate never engaging with anyone in public, ever.

Before the experiment began, most of the participants expressed a feeling of dread about interacting with their seat mates. They thought their ride would be more pleasant in solitude, and worried about how difficult it would be to get a conversation off the ground.

It turns out that casual social interactions, even with  or perhaps especially with  people we will never see again, can lift our spirits.

Incredibly though, not a single person was snubbed. Most of the discussions were pleasant. And the commuters who talked to a stranger consistently reported a more positive experience than those who sat in silence.
Banana bread has become the most popular recipe searched for on the BBC as home bakers whip up loaves amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The 'Brilliant banana loaf' tops a list of the website's most-searched recipes between March 23, when Boris Johnson put the country into lockdown, and April 30.

A further 13 of the top 20 most popular recipes were cakes, biscuits or desserts - including brownies, cakes, cookies and cheesecakes.

The six remaining recipes in the top 20 included comfort foods such as Yorkshire puddings, chilli con carne, spaghetti carbonara, cheese scones and easy bread.

All the top 10 viewed videos on the website were baking or bread-related.

Banana bread has become the most popular recipe searched for on the BBC as home bakers whip up loafs amid the coronavirus pandemic (left) with brownies in second place (right)

Yorkshire puddings, which came in third place, were the only savoury food in the top eight

Top 20 recipes on bbcgoodfood.com in lockdown 1. Brilliant banana loaf recipe 2. Best-ever chocolate brownies 3. Best Yorkshire puddings 4. Classic scones with jam & clotted cream 5. Easy pancakes recipe 6. Classic Victoria sandwich recipe 7. Yummy golden syrup flapjacks recipe 8. Lemon drizzle cake 9. Chilli con carne 10. Vintage chocolate chip cookies 11. Easy white bread 12. The best spaghetti Bolognese 13. Easy chocolate cake 14. Cupcake recipe 15. Cheesecake recipes 16. Strawberry cheesecake in 4 easy steps recipe 17. Ultimate spaghetti carbonara 18. Classic cheese scones 19.The best apple crumble 20. Hot cross buns Advertisement

How to make BBC's Brilliant Banana loaf PREP: 15 MINS COOK: 40 MINS EASY CUTS INTO 8-10 SLICES A cross between banana bread and a drizzle cake, this easy banana loaf recipe is a quick bake that can be frozen and is great for using up overripe bananas Ingredients 140g butter, softened, plus extra for the tin

140g caster sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

140g self-raising flour 1 tsp baking powder

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

50g icing sugar

handful dried banana

chips, for decoration Method 1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. 2. Butter a 2lb loaf tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment. 3. Cream 140g softened butter and 140g caster sugar until light and fluffy, then slowly add 2 beaten large eggs with a little of the 140g flour. 4. Fold in the remaining flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 2 mashed bananas. 5. Pour into the tin and bake for about 30 mins until a skewer comes out clean. 6. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then remove to a wire rack. 7. Mix 50g icing sugar with 2-3 tsp water to make a runny icing. 8. Drizzle the icing across the top of the cake and decorate with a handful of banana chips. Advertisement

Classic scones (left) and easy pancakes (right) were also in the top five most searched recipes, coming fourth and fifth respectively

A classic treat! Victoria Sponge was the sixth most requested recipes as Brits looked to whip up the traditional treat while stuck inside

And there were more than three million page views on bread-related content on BBC Good Food in the first two weeks of lockdown.

The biggest trend for bread making was sourdough, with 115,000 related page views on the website - up 900 per cent on last year, according to BBC Good Food.

BBC Good Food's latest magazine is out now

The website saw a new increase at 10pm in users searching for flapjacks, banana bread and muffins, suggesting a jump in night time bakers.

As a whole, cake recipes were looked at 215 per cent more and the easy baking content is up 687 per cent.

Lily Barclay, editor of bbcgoodfood.com, said: 'Baking is such a calming activity which can help you focus and take away the stresses of the day, so it's no wonder we're seeing activity on the website post 10pm as people use baking as a coping mechanism.

'The motion of stirring, beating, and kneading can be meditative and the results are very rewarding, which is why we are seeing a surge in people wanting to learn new baking skills.

'At bbcgoodfood.com, we are working hard to support our audiences, offering tips, tricks, and recipe adaptations as we aim to bring people together and provide comfort, reassurance and guidance in any way we can.'
It is also planned to halve the production of electricity at Ukraine's hydropower plants

Open source

The Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection of Ukraine has revised the forecast for the balance of electricity for 2020, completely abandoning supplies from Belarus, as well as Russia, as Radio Liberty reports.

Earlier, the Lithuanian government has repeatedly called on Ukraine to refrain from importing electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant, which is being built near the border with Lithuania.

According to the document held by journalists, the total volume of electricity supplies from Belarus in 2020 is planned in the amount of 150 million kWh. This volume dried up in January, February and April.

It is also reported that due to a decrease in electricity consumption caused by quarantine, 11 out of 15 power units of all Ukrainian nuclear power plants are currently operating in Ukraine; the rest are being repaired or put in reserve to ensure that all power units operate at or near the nominal level.

At the same time, it is planned to halve the production of electricity at hydropower plants in Ukraine and increase its own exports to Poland and Moldova.

The purchase of electricity abroad has repeatedly been the subject of a heated debate in the political and economic circles of Ukraine. The ban on energy imports from Belarus and Russia was demanded by the parliamentary opposition, former ministers and some experts. Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged to create an anti-crisis energy headquarters to restore order in the energy market.

As a result, state-owned company Ukrenergo announced termination of electricity supplies during quarantine (until April 30), but two days before the expiration of this decision, the ministry changed the forecast balance, in which the temporary measure became permanent, now it will be valid until at least the end of the year.

As we reported, the Supervisory Board of Naftogaz-Ukraine appointed Otto Waterlander to the post of Chief Executive Officer.
With the humans of West Bengal under virus lockdown, tigers in the Sundarbans mangrove forest in the eastern Indian state are coming out to play, with park rangers Thursday reporting a jump in sightings of the big cats.

The Sundarbans, straddling West Bengal and neighbouring Bangladesh, is the world's biggest mangrove forest and home to the majestic and endangered Royal Bengal tiger.

"Sighting of tigers has gone up... after the lockdown," said Sudhir Das, director of the Sundarbans tiger reserve, referring to the nationwide restrictions in place since late March.

In normal times, forest officials catch a glimpse of the big cats no more than twice a week, Das said.

But with the lockdown ending tourist traffic and grounding the noisy motorboats and launches that usually ply the region's waterways, they are now sighting tigers "up to six times" a week, he added.

The number of the big cats at the UNESCO World Heritage site has also gone up to 96 in the Indian part of the territory, up from 88 in 2018, according to the West Bengal state forest department which unveiled the latest headcount on Wednesday night.

Officials counted as many as 43 female tigers and 11 cubs using over 700 pairs of all-weather night-vision camera traps.

The Sundarbans is spread over 10,000 square kilometres (around 4,000 square miles) and derives its name from Sundari trees found abundantly in the region.

India is home to around 70 percent of the world's tigers. Last year, the government said the tiger population had risen from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,967 in 2018.

The government credited the increase in numbers to a strict ban on hunting and awareness drives in villages.

Despite the uptick, the increasing number of human-tiger conflicts due to shrinking habitats remains an area of concern for conservationists.
For some readers take-up of the app was seen as a trust barometer, and one leap of faith too many in uncertain times.

But Professor McLaws was no lone voice with her questions about privacy and why a foreign company, Amazon, was paid to store the data.

As for privacy concerns, lzward wrote: "People have no issues shopping online and giving all their details, but they're nervous of losing their privacy? I understand if you're a corporate high flyer or a government spy, but c'mon people - we're just regular aussies. Seriously ..."

For many readers responding to the article, downloading the app was a no-brainer - a sentiment summed up by Brad with his comment: "I downloaded the app the first day it became available. Of course, nothing is perfect but it will be a tool to help against the fight. The decision was easy ... all I had to do was think of the scenes we saw in Italy, mass graves in New York and recurrent lockdowns. The app will be an emergency warning system to save others and you, some day."

tsndavies wrote: "Trust needs to work both ways; the government has asked for a lot of trust for their decisions during this crisis but has been very reluctant to give us the full details on either the app or the modelling behind the shutdowns. The app sounds great in theory; but I think the government will have more success if it starts treating us like intelligent adults, which most of us are."

DukeofWoyWoy- NSW Central Coast: "Was it a rushed tender from the Australian government that saw Amazon win, or was Amazon the only corporation that responded or was invited to tender? A lot of questions, with very few answers."

Privacy and trust issues aside, there were also doubts about the effectiveness of an app that, using Bluetooth, only logs when users come within 1.5 metres of others for 15 minutes or longer, and how well the technology worked on some phones, particularly older phones and iPhones.

angusmrobinson wrote: "The problem with the App principally is that it is 'not fit for purpose' because it only works for people in personal contact for 15 minutes, which is an absurdly long period of time. It will not, for example, identify a 'one to one' contact for a pedestrian confronting an infected cyclist or jogger who will, through the extent of breathing activity, be in a high state of infection emission. Other contacts eg. at a checkout counter only last generally less than one minute."

alanthom was exasperated by the process: "Tried to download it ... failed. Updated phone software (on my prepaid phone that cost something like $50). Tried again ... failed. More updates later and I get a message that claimed that my phone was too old. I reckon there are a lot of would-be downloaders out here in a similar position to myself."
Privately-held real estate investment firm Cain International has signed an agreement with the Oberoi Group for the operation of 23 serviced residences in Mayfair in London.

The deal represents the Oberoi Group's debut in Europe, the hotel group said in a statement.

Due for completion in 2022, the branded residences at South Audley Street will offer exceptional living at the heart of one of the most attractive and sought-after locations in prime central London, the statement said.

"We are excited to bring The Oberoi brand to London in partnership with Cain International. The iconic building in the heart of Mayfair is a perfect complement to an Oberoi branded property," The Oberoi Group Executive Chairman P R S Oberoi said.

Founded in 1934, The Oberoi Group owns and operates 33 five-star hotels and luxury resorts across India, Indonesia, Morocco, Mauritius, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Microsoft this week revised the schedule for rolling out a Chrome browser extension to Office 365 customers, which at one point would have forced users to switch to the company's own Bing search engine.

Rather than deliver the Chrome add-on to version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus between February and July, the Redmond, Wash. developer will instead begin adding it to Google's browser this month as part of version 2005, with a finish date yet to be determined.

Microsoft did not offer a reason for the new schedule  unlike for other instances where it has cited the coronavirus pandemic for calendar changes  but it certainly needed more time after it had reversed itself in February.

Critics pressured Microsoft to drop forced search change of Chrome

At the top of the year, Microsoft quietly announced that it would change the default search engine of Google's Chrome to Bing  Microsoft's own search service  on PCs running Office 365 ProPlus, the productivity applications that serve as the heart of enterprise-grade Office 365 subscriptions.

(As of April 21, Office 365 ProPlus was re-branded Microsoft 365 Apps, part of a larger renaming effort.)

The change of Chrome's default search was required to implement Microsoft Search, which when tied to an Office 365 account lets users look up company information  internal documents stored on OneDrive or SharePoint, for example  from the browser's address bar. That functionality had already been baked into Microsoft's own Edge browser, which not surprisingly also tapped Bing as its search default.

Customers wasted little time panning the move, calling it everything from "browser hijacking" to "malware" for the sneaky way Microsoft proposed to make Chrome a Bing-dependent application. Within a few weeks, Microsoft backtracked, saying it would not automatically deploy the add-on with Office 365 ProPlus.

Details of exactly what Microsoft would do, however, remained cloudy until this week.

Was 2002, now 2005

According to Microsoft, it will start providing the offer-the-extension with newly-installed and upgraded Microsoft 365 Apps version 2005  the May update  rather than version 2002. The add-on will first be offered in late May to Windows devices that have been set to receive the Monthly Channel builds. Systems that receive Monthly Channel (Targeted) builds  which give customers an early look at the Monthly update, typically a week before that's issued  should see the add-on hit Chrome by the middle of this month.

Unlike earlier this year, that's as far as Microsoft's latest schedule went. Both Semi-Annual Channel and Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) were listed as "to be determined" by Microsoft in the wide-ranging support document on the Chrome add-on.

Note: The next slated Semi-Annual Channel upgrade for Microsoft 365 Apps should be version 2008, an August release.

Microsoft also described under what conditions and how the use-Bing add-on would be installed to Chrome. As critics demanded when the company broached the subject, customers must opt in to receiving the Chrome extension; the Microsoft 365 Apps administrator does that by checking a new box in the admin center.

Another requirement: an unnamed background service that runs behind the scenes, looks in the admin center and then installs the extension if it "sees" the checked box. The background service is installed automatically  it's actually the part that Microsoft will deploy this month to Monthly Channel and Monthly Channel (Targeted) builds  across the board. Once on the Windows machine, the service sits, waits and sniffs out the admin center box's status.

The service will be added only to PCs joined using Active Directory, Microsoft said. "The background service is not installed if the device is joined only to an Azure Active Directory (AAD) domain," Microsoft said.

The support document included instructions on how to prevent the background service from being installed in the first place, and described how to remove it once it had gotten into Windows.

Suspicious minds might wonder whether, once the background service is in place, Microsoft could, at some future point, circumvent the opt-in of the checked box. Yet it's hard to see how Microsoft could automatically offer the add-on to large numbers of Windows devices managed by customers that want the extension without such a service. Cynics and the paranoid can, of course, use Microsoft's instructions to remove the service.

Microsoft re-confirmed that it still plans to craft a similar add-on for Mozilla's Firefox browser. "Support for the Firefox web browser is planned for a later date," the company noted.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 8)  Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia appealed on Friday to separate the rising COVID-19 cases in Cebu City from the situation in Cebu province, in her hopes of placing the province under general community quarantine (GCQ) after May 15.

Garcia said they dont have any jurisdiction with Cebu City because it has its own charter, as prescribed in Republic Act No. 3857 signed into law in 1964.

Section 29 of the Local Government Code also states that highly urbanized cities, such as Cebu City, and independent component cities shall be independent of the province.

I do hope when the IATF decides upon the lifting or the continuance of the ECQ, they would closely scrutinize the difference between the situation of the province of Cebu and the city of Cebu, said Garcia.

The Cebu governor also cited the distinction on the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Cebu province and Cebu City.

She reported the province of Cebu has only 39 confirmed COVID-19 cases, while Cebu City has 1,435 infections of the virus.

Garcia added that among the 39 COVID-19 infections in the province, 24 are from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center.

With that kind of perspective, we do hope that Cebu province will be allowed to transition into general community quarantine, said the governor.

Garcia assured the provincial government is still implementing strict border controls in Cebu province to further avert the virus.

In Cebu City alone, two areas have been placed under total lockdown due to the spike in cases of the viral illness. These are Sitio Alaska in Barangay Mambaling, and Sitio Zapatera in Barangay Luz.

Experts from the World Health Organization arrived in Cebu province today to help medical frontliners in fighting the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, Garcia called for an enhanced countryside development in Cebu as the province prepares for a possible shift to GCQ on May 15.

She called on Cebu-based businessmen to prioritize building agricultural farms to better equip the province in future calamities and health emergencies.

I would wish that Cebu would be able to attain a level of self-sufficiency, said Garcia.
Marine Atlantic

Marine Atlantic has suspended its Argentia-North Sydney ferry service for the remainder of the 2020 summer tourism season.

"As everyone continues to work hard to flatten the curve and battle COVID-19, the demand for leisure and tourism travel to and from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is not expected to recover in the coming weeks," the company said in a news release Friday morning.

"With travel restrictions in effect throughout Canada, these trends are expected to continue into the summer season."

The Argentia to North Sydney service generally runs from mid-June to mid-September, aimed primarily at leisure travelling and tourism.

The company said there will continue to be a minimum of two crossings per day on the Port aux Basques-North Sydney route, and there will be no changes to commercial and passenger rates for the remainder of the fiscal year.

"If traffic demand warrants, the corporation also has the ability to add additional capacity," the news release reads.

Provincial ferries

Premier Dwight Ball said Friday some restrictions on provincial ferries will be eased Monday, following the province's move to Alert Level 4 of its reopening plan.

Service on provincial ferries will no longer be restricted to only essential travellers. However, the provincial government is encouraging ferry users to travel as infrequently as possible to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Ball said it's still recommended passengers wear non-medical masks.

Fred Hutton/CBC

Meanwhile, some restrictions will remain in place, including limiting passengers to 50 per cent of a ferry's regular capacity and requiring passengers to remain in their vehicles during crossings.

Ferry schedules implemented as a result of the pandemic will continue to allow enough time for cleaning, says the provincial government.

Passengers without vehicles, who travel in the passenger lounges, will still be required to practise physical distancing of at least two metres from other passengers and will not be permitted to travel in lounges when physical distancing is not possible.

If at any point the province reverts to Level 5, all previous restrictions will be reinstated.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
A new safer at home order reopening restaurants and bars, gyms, salons and churches in Alabama will go into effect Monday, May 11.

Gov. Kay Ivey announced the changes to the safer at home order during todays Montgomery press conference. The new order will remain in place until May 22.

Todays order will hopefully provide another round of hope for all of us, Ivey said, noting more people in the state had filed for unemployment in the last six weeks than the previous two years.

Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, a leading proponent for reopening the state, thanked Ivey and State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris for leveling the playing field for small business owners and employees by allowing restaurants, gyms, barber shops, and other job providers to resume operations.

Countless employers and workers who simply want to return to their jobs have reached out to me through email, texts, and social media over the past several weeks, and I have passed along their concerns and shared their frustrations, he said. Even with increased testing, the percentage of positive COVID-19 cases in Alabama has declined or remained stable since early April. Evidence clearly indicates that the worst is behind us.

On May 15th, our current Safer at Home Order is set to expire. However, today I am announcing that we are amending and EXPANDING the list of what reopens under the #SaferAtHome Order. https://t.co/veNQimvNv4#TogetherAL @ALPublicHealth 2/9  Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) May 8, 2020

Changes

Lifts the ban on group sizes of 10 or more. Effective May 11, all non-work related gatherings of any size that cannot maintain a six-foot distance between people from different households are prohibited. This covers church gatherings, though Ivey urged houses of worship consult the Alabama Department of Public Healths Guidelines for Places of Worship.

Restaurants, bars and breweries may reopen as long as they limit the party size to no more than 8 people and maintain at least 6 feet between people seated at different tables, booths, chairs and stools. Self-service by guests at drink stations, buffets or salad bars is prohibited.

Gyms and other athletic facilities such as fitness centers and commercial gyms, spas, yoga, barre and spin facilities can reopen with social distancing and hygiene measures in place. Access must be limited to 50 percent of normal occupancy and employees must wear masks.

Close-contact providers, such as salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors and nail salons may reopen with social distancing and hygiene in place.

Gathering size limits for the beaches are eliminated as long as people maintain a 6-foot distance between people from other households.

Not changing

Daycare facilities are limited to 12 children or less per room.

Retail stores must maintain their 50% occupancy rate.

Still closed: Night clubs, bowling alleys, arcades, concert venues, theaters, auditoriums, performing arts centers, tourist attractions such as museums, racetracks, indoor childrens play areas, adult entertainment venues, casinos and bingo halls.

Still prohibited: Sports that involve interaction with another person closer than 6 feet; activities that require use of shared sports equipment; and activities on commercial or public playgrounds.

Other orders

Also, on Friday, Ivey issued two different emergency proclamations related to the coronavirus pandemic, the first designed to protect healthcare workers and businesses from lawsuits and the second related to the July 14 primary runoff election.

The first order covers reasonable protections from the risk and expense of lawsuits for businesses and healthcare providers that comply with or reasonably attempt top comply with applicable health guidance.

In a statement, Ivey said the step is needed to protect businesses as Alabamas economy looks to restart.

I want to do everything within my authority to protect businesses as Alabamas economy gets up and running again. As we resume operations, the very last thing a business owner needs to worry about is a frivolous lawsuit from responding to COVID-19, Ivey said. Let me be clear, this in no way shields them from serious misconduct. If someone knowingly abuses the public during a time of crisis, they should be held accountable and prosecuted as such.

The second proclamation gives probate judges more flexibility related to the July 14 primary runoff election, such as reducing the number of poll workers or conducting poll worker training remotely. The same order cuts read take for electric coops seeking to obtain emergency loans.
A top German court's ruling that the ECB must carry out a "proportionality assessment" before purchasing government debt is "laughable" and threatens the central bank's independence, the chairman of Societe Generale told CNBC.

Germany's constitutional court on Tuesday threatened to block fresh purchases of German bonds through the European Central Bank's public sector purchase program (PSPP), a stimulus package implemented by the bank to buy up government debt and keep borrowing costs low across the euro zone.

The court ruling, which ordered the German government to ensure the ECB carried out an assessment of its sovereign debt purchases, could see the German Bundesbank exempted from the scheme.

A proportionality assessment would involve proving the ECB's PSPP was economically necessary and did not overstep the central bank's core price stability mandate.

"The court is asking the central bank to show that it took into its decision the proportionality principal," Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, chairman of Societe Generale and a former member of the ECB's executive board, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Friday.

"Frankly, to think that the ECB did not do that is laughable  there is plenty of research, of reports, of statements, that clearly show the ECB doesn't just meet in five seconds and say 'let's just raise rates or cut rates' out of the blue. There is a very deep analysis, discussions, arguments, and sometimes disagreements."
Press Release

May 8, 2020 Gatchalian files resolution seeking inquiry on COVID-19 impact on basic education Senator Win Gatchalian is seeking a Senate inquiry that would assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country's basic education system. Senate Resolution No. 391, which calls for an inquiry in aid of legislation, aims to guide government response that would mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on schools. The inquiry would also help identify recovery and transition measures that would create a sustainable and resilient education system in time of emergencies. Classes in all levels at the National Capital Region (NCR) were first suspended from March 10 to March 14 following the first local transmission of COVID-19 in the country. The declaration of a Luzon-wide Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) on March 16, however, led to the early culmination of school year 2019-2020, which forced schools nationwide to dispense with the giving of final examinations. According to Gatchalian, the COVID-19 pandemic not only interrupted learning for the country's 28,451,212 learners from pre-primary to tertiary levels. The health crisis also aggravated the plight of vulnerable and marginalized learners and the existing disparities within the education system. Gatchalian added that students confined to their homes face other risks such as poor nutrition, mental health problems, and increased exposure to violence and exploitation. "Hindi lamang natin sisikaping makabangon ang ating sistema ng edukasyon mula sa naging epekto ng COVID-19, kailangan nating patatagin ang kakayahan ng ating mga paaralan na ipagpatuloy ang pagbibigay ng dekalidad na edukasyon sa panahon ng mga krisis at sakuna," said Gatchalian, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture. "Higit sa lahat, kailangan din nating ihanda nang maigi ang mga mag-aaral sa tinatawag na new normal na sistema ng edukasyon," he added. One of the first steps that the Department of Education (DepEd) did to ensure continued learning delivery is the launch of DepEd Commons, an online platform that aims to support alternative learning modalities. While the platform has more than 5 million users to date, DepEd acknowledged that not all learners have internet connection and available devices for online learning. In developing its Learning Continuity Plan, DepEd eyes the use of other platforms and tools such as radio, television, and printed packets to reach all learners, especially those in the 'Last Mile Schools' or those that have multi-grade classes, with less than ?ve teachers, and a student population of less than 100 learners where most of whom are indigenous people. Gatchalian emphasized, however, the need to prepare learners, parents, and teachers to accept learning from home as the new norm, noting that these sudden shifts can cause additional stress and confusion. Gatchalian also acknowledged the need to help private institutions. According to the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), an umbrella organization of 2,500 institutions, 409,757 private school teachers and personnel are receiving either reduced or no pay because of school closures. Around 15.5 percent of students enrolled in elementary and high school are enrolled in private schools, according to DepEd. ### Gatchalian: epekto ng COVID-19 sa sistema ng edukasyon pag-aaralan ng Senado Hinimok ni Senador Win Gatchalian ang Senado na suriin ang epekto ng COVID-19 sa sistema ng edukasyon sa bansa, kasunod ng inihain niyang Senate Resolution No. 391. Layon ng naturang resolusyon na makapagbalangkas ng solusyon ang gobyerno sa mga problemang kinakaharap ngayon ng sektor ng edukasyon dahil sa pandemya at patatagin ang mga institusyon nito. Unang sinuspinde ang mga klase sa National Capital Region o NCR noong Marso 10 hanggang Marso 14. Ito ay matapos makumpirma ang unang local transmission ng COVID-19 sa bansa. Noong ideklara ang Enhanced Community Quarantine o ECQ sa Luzon noong Marso 16, maagang tinapos ng mga paaralan sa bansa ang school year 2019-2020. Ipinagpaliban na rin ng mga paaralan ang pagsasagawa ng mga huling pagsusulit. Ayon kay Gatchalian, hindi lamang naantala ang pag-aaral ng mahigit dalawampu't walong milyong (28,451,212) mag-aaral mula pre-primary hanggang kolehiyo dahil sa COVID-19. Pinalala rin nito aniya ang mga hamong kinakaharap ng sistema ng edukasyon pati na rin ng mga mag-aaral na nangangailangan. Ayon pa sa mambabatas, nanganganib ang mga mag-aaral na naiwan sa kanilang mga tahanan na makaranas ng kakulangan sa nutrisyon, mga problema sa mental health, karahasan, at pang-aabuso. "Hindi lamang natin sisikaping makabangon ang ating sistema ng edukasyon mula sa naging epekto ng COVID-19, kailangan nating patatagin ang kakayahan ng ating mga paaralan na ipagpatuloy ang pagbibigay ng dekalidad na edukasyon sa panahon ng mga krisis at sakuna," ani Gatchalian, Chairman ng Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture. "Higit sa lahat, kailangan din nating ihanda nang maigi ang mga mag-aaral sa tinatawag na new normal na sistema ng edukasyon," sambit pa ng mambabatas. Isa sa mga unang hakbang na ginawa ng Department of Education o DepEd upang siguruhin ang pagpapatuloy ng edukasyon ay ang paglunsad sa DepEd Commons, isang online platform para sa distance learning. Bagama't may mahigit limang (5) milyong Pilipino ang naitalang gumagamit nito, inamin ng DepEd na hindi lahat ng estudyante ay may internet o gadget para sa online learning. Kasalukuyang bumubuo ang DepEd ng Learning Continuity Plan na gagamit ng ibang plataporma tulad ng radyo, telebisyon, at printed packets upang maturuan ang lahat ng mag-aaral sa bansa. Kabilang dito iyong mga nasa 'Last Mile Schools' na madalas ay hindi lalagpas sa lima (5) ang bilang ng mga guro. Madalas ding hindi tataas sa isang daan(100) ang bilang ng mga mag-aaral nito kung saan karamihan ay nabibilang sa mga indigenous peoples. Ayon pa kay Gatchalian, kailangang sanayin ang mga mag-aaral, mga magulang, at mga guro sa 'learning from home' na sistema dahil ito na ang magiging paraan ng pagtuturo sa ilalim ng 'new normal.' Aniya, kailangan ang pagsasanay na ito upang hindi magdulot ng stress at kalituhan ang mga pagbabagong magaganap. Kailangan din aniyang bigyan ng tulong ang mga pribadong paaralan. Ayon sa Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), isang samahan ng mahigit dalawang libong (2,500) pribadong paaralan, mas mababa o wala nang tinatanggap na sahod ang mahigit apat na raang libong (409,757) guro at kawani sa mga pribadong paaralan. Nasa mga pribadong paaralan ang mahigit labing-limang (15.5) porsyento ng mga mag-aaral sa elementarya at high school sa buong bansa. ###
As of now, it is too early to talk about the opening of the entry-exit checkpoint in Donbas, as the deadlines are tied to the lockdown in Ukraine. This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to Luhansk region, RBC-Ukraine reports.

According to him, today it is too early to talk about the opening of checkpoints on the demarcation line.

"I will tell you frankly, it is hard for me to talk about the terms now because they are related to the quarantine measures that are taking place in our country. Both Stanytsia Luhanska and Zolote are parts of our country. This is all information about entry-exit checkpoints there is," Zelensky remarked.

As we reported earlier, according to Ukrane's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine should gradually withdraw from the lockdown as a premature end may have shocking consequences.

"If we return to the usual rhythm of life tomorrow, it is potentially plus 120,000 deaths by the end of the year. That is why the easing of the quarantine cannot be premature," he said.
Small hospitals going through bankruptcy are suing the Small Business Administration, arguing it is unlawful for the federal government to deny them loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.

Why it matters: Allowing bankrupt hospitals access to PPP loans could keep their doors open, and could force the federal government to reverse its stance and allow other bankrupt firms to get PPP loans.

Driving the news: Faith Community Health System, a small rural hospital in Texas that filed for bankruptcy in February, sued the SBA Thursday.

The hospital wants to apply for a $2.4 million PPP loan to pay staff and remain open while it goes through bankruptcy and handles the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the SBA says bankrupt companies will not be approved for the bailout money because of their "high risk."

Faith Community argues the government agency doesn't have the authority to exclude bankrupt firms from PPP funding because the law doesn't spell out those eligibility requirements.

The big picture: Courts are starting to take hospitals' side.

A bankruptcy judge in Maine said the funding was a "grant of aid necessitated by a public health crisis," and that two hospitals that sued the federal government are entitled to PPP loans.

A separate bankrupt hospital in Vermont also should be eligible for PPP funds, a judge ruled this week.

The bottom line: Rural hospitals have been in dire straits for years, and for those that are on the precipice of or are going through bankruptcy, they may be eligible for this bailout funding despite SBA exclusions.
Turkey's Assyrian 'Doctor of the Poor' Succumbs to Coronavirus

A Christian doctor who was hailed as "the doctor of the poor" after being cleared by Turkish authorities of wrongdoing has died of COVID-19 in Istanbul. Murat Dilmener, who died on Sunday at 78, was the first Syriac Christian employed as a professor in a medical school in Turkey.

According to the Turkish daily HArriyet, Dilmener, a specialist in internal medicine, "contributed greatly to the training of many students at the Istanbul Medical Faculty."

Dilmener was born in 1942, in Mardin, Turkey, a center for the Syriac Orthodox Church. He volunteered for initiatives in the churches of his community in both Mardin and Istanbul.

In 2004, Turkish authorities opened an investigation about Dilmener and 135 other doctors who had treated poor patients without permission and free of charge at a public hospital in Istanbul, according to Fides, the news service of the Vatican's Pontifical Mission Societies. The accusations made against the professor of having stolen public funds to support that initiative were later disproved.

After that incident, Turkish media began calling Dilmener "the doctor of the poor."

"We lost one of our precious teachers due to coronavirus infection," the dean of Istanbul University's Medical Faculty, Dr. Prof. Tufan TAkek, tweeted May 3. "I wish our teacher mercy from Allah."

Fides reported that hundreds of doctors, students and workers from the University of Istanbul's medical school attended a commemoration for Dilmener at the university, ignoring the social distancing measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.
A heroic schoolteacher who led many pupils to safety during the Aberfan disaster has died at the age of 86.

Rennie Williams was a teacher at Pantglas Junior School in the Welsh village the in 1966 when a coal tip slid down the mountainside engulfing the school.

She helped children to escape the tragedy where 144 people were killed, including 116 children.

Gareth Jones, one of Mrs Williams' former pupils who was six-years-old at the time, said her 'quick thinking' saved his life.

Heroic schoolteacher Rennie Williams, (right) who led many pupils to safety during the Aberfan disaster has died at the age of 86. Gareth Jones, one of Mrs Williams' former pupils who was six-years-old at the time, said her 'quick thinking' saved his life (left)

Mrs Williams (far left, pictured with other teaching staff) was a teacher at Pantglas Junior School in the Welsh village the in 1966 when a coal tip slid down the mountainside engulfing the school

He said: 'It was the last day of term, but then the disaster struck.

'At the time, we and she didn't know what happened.

'She put a desk against the wall by the window - and a chair on top of that - and helped many children to escape the disaster that way. I was one of the first ones out.

'I think that lady deserved a big medal for saving our lives and personally, for saving my life.

Gareth Jones, a survivor of the disaster, pictured age six with his father (left). He says Mrs Williams (right) saved him and others by placing a desk and a chair next to a wall with a window

'She was an absolutely fantastic lady. I met her again many, many years later and she was fantastic... always had time for you.'

Mrs Williams continued to teach at Pantglas Junior School until she retired, and in the years that followed she returned a number of times to work as a supply teacher.

Gareth believes he was one of the first survivors to be brought out.

'I'm just thankful I'm here, it was the quick thinking of my teacher that she got us out.'

Aberfan, South Wales, circa October 1966: Picture shows the mud and devastation caused when mining spoil from the hillside high above the town behind came down

October 23 1966: Aberfan Disaster, rescue work continued in the devastated village

Devastating: In minutes, the village had lost half of its children, including many of those in this image

Rennie was teaching at the Pantglas school in Aberfan on October 21, 1966 and later returned to teaching at the Ynysowen primary school at built for the surviving children.

At the time, she said: 'I just like working with the children.'

She told of her experience at that fateful Friday, the last day of term.

She said: 'We were just taking register and carrying on as normal.

Broadcaster John Humphrys reporting from the Aberfan disaster in October 1966

The Queen and Prince Philip visiting Aberfan. October 29 1966, eight days after the disaster

'Then I heard a terrible noise that I thought must be the caretaker moving furniture around in the hall. Of course it wasn't.

'Some of my children were injured by bricks and debris because they were in the hall paying their dinner money.

'But we managed to bring them out of the school safely and into the playground.

October 21, 1966 9.15am: Shocked residents are drawn from their homes by a thunderous roar as the coal tip slides down the mountain. (Pictured: a reenactment of the disaster from episode three of season three of The Crown)

Pantglas Junior School: Some of the 240 pupils were given that night's homework. Some 116 children and 28 adults died as a result of the Aberfan disaster (Pictured: A reenactment from The Crown)

The terrible event remains etched in national memory more than 50 years later (Pictured: A Pantglas School teacher faces a looming dark wave in a reenactment from The Crown)

'Even after we got our children to safety and sent them home, we had to stay. The doctors asked us to help.'

Her son Paul said: 'She will be missed by everybody that came into contact with her.'

One of nine children, Rennie Williams is survived by her sister Val, her son Paul, two grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Parents' accounts of the disaster, written in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster:

Mothers bound by grief: 50 years on from Aberfan, the haunting stories of survivors and how parents of the 116 schoolchildren crushed by a coal tip found solace by meeting every week since

116 children and 28 adults died when big coal waste tip slid down mountain

Parents had waved their children off to school - unaware of tragedy to hit

Now many of them have spoken about the horrific day and their losses

By Jenny Johnston for The Daily Mail

Marilyn Brown collapsed when they told her that her ten-year-old daughter Janette would never come home from school. She vividly recalls sliding to the floor, begging to be allowed to see her child but being told it was for the best that she didn't.

'I cried and I cried and I cried,' she tells me. 'And I don't think I've cried since, no, not even at the funeral. I can't cry. I don't know why. It's not as if it isn't there. It is. I can feel it, a big lump in my chest.

'I sometimes think if I had been able to cry, it would have got rid of that lump.'

That makes half a century of being unable to cry. Janette was one many of the tiny victims of the Aberfan disaster, where a massive coal waste tip slid down the mountainside in the Welsh mining village, engulfing the primary school and killing 116 children and 28 adults.

Tragedy: It will be 50 years ago next week since the Aberfan disaster, where a massive coal waste tip slid down the mountain in the Welsh mining village, killing 116 pupils and 28 adults

Rescue: Jeff Edwards, who was eight at the time, was the last to be rescued from the school

Devastating: In minutes, the village had lost half of its children, including many of those in this image. Now, some of the survivors and parents of those who lost children have spoken

The last time Marilyn saw her daughter was when she stood on the doorstep, waving her off. 'She hadn't wanted to go to school that day,' she remembers. 'It was a holiday coming up and she just didn't want to go.

'My husband Bernard got quite cross with her. 'Come on, Janette, you have to go.' I remember watching her go up the street, and waving, then coming back inside thinking: 'Thank goodness for that, I can have my tea and toast now.' But I'd hardly sat down at the table to eat it when it happened.'

'It' was one of the most shocking disasters in British history, and one which still seems too monstrous to fathom.

The children of Aberfan had grown up in the shadow of the towering No 7 tip  a man-made mountain made up of a quarter of a million tonnes of coal waste and rocks dumped by the National Coal Board.

They used to play in the stream which ran under the giant tip, catching tadpoles and sliding down the lower slopes, unaware that their playground would one day become their tomb.

At 9.15am on October 21, 1966, however, tip No 7, swollen by heavy rain, started to slide. With an almighty roar, which locals at first put down to a blast of thunder or a low-flying plane, it crashed down the mountainside, engulfing everything in its path, including Pantglas Primary School, where lessons had just begun.

In minutes, the village had lost half of its children.

It was a catastrophe that the whole country shared, being perhaps the first national disaster to be played out in front of TV cameras. Everyone over the age of 60 will shudder at the memory of those indelible images as desperate parents clawed through the mud with their bare hands.

Haunted by memories: Marilyn Brown collapsed to the floor in floods of tears when they told her that her ten-year-old daughter Janette would never come home from Pantglas school

Victim: Marilyn's daughter Janette (pictured) was aged 10 when she was killed in the tragedy

Now, the cameras have returned for two documentaries, one for the BBC and one for ITV, and younger generations will perhaps learn of Aberfan for the first time.

What's immediately clear as the survivors tell their stories  some who have never spoken about it before  is how the passing of time does nothing to dilute the horror.

In the BBC programme, which is one of the most heart-breaking pieces of television you are ever likely to watch, former miner and part-time fireman Allan Lewis provides a haunting account of reaching four little girls, all still at their desks, and their teacher, who was still standing in front of them. All were dead.

A child's pigtails immediately reminded him of his own daughter, aged four at the time. 'I was sobbing,' he remembers. 'The tears were running down my cheeks. The overman who was behind me said: 'Do you want to be relieved?' I took a deep breath then: 'No, no, I'll carry on.' '

Flashbacks: Jeff Edwards (pictured in recent years) said he is still haunted by the disaster

Then there is the testimony of the children themselves  the ones who, by some miracle, came out of the school alive.

Karen Thomas is only here to tell the story because of one woman. The Pantglas dinner lady Nansi Williams was just one of the heroes of that day.

When the school started to shudder she realised something terrible was happening, and told the children closest to her (who had been bringing her their classes' dinner money) to get on the ground. She then flung herself on top of them.

Fifty years on, Karen tells of those terrified children pinned beneath Mrs Williams, unaware that she was dead. Karen still calls her 'Mrs Williams' today, rather than Nansi, that childhood respect intact.

'The five of us were shouting. We were calling out her name and the boys were saying 'just pull her hair if you can reach her' to try and wake her up. We just thought she was sleeping or unconscious. It didn't enter my head that she was dead on top of us.'

Undated photo of Jeff Edwards, a survivor of the 1966 Aberfan disaster and who was the last person to be pulled still alive from the rubble of his school

Some haven't spoken publicly at all since the disaster, which makes the testimonies of men such as Len Haggett, a retired fireman, all the more moving.

In the BBC programme, Len is reunited with Dave Thomas, one of the children he did manage to pull out alive, albeit with an ear hanging off and with three fingers missing.

Len's abiding feeling at that moment? 'Elation, without a shadow of a doubt', but overall, he has had to live with searing regret that he did not manage to save more.

Perhaps the most poignant account comes from Jeff Edwards, the last child to be brought out of Pantglas Primary School alive.

There is a famous picture of him being carried from the building, his shock of white hair still vivid through the blackness.

'I still can't see a hospital blanket without it all coming back,' he tells me. 'I'll be watching Casualty or Holby City and they will wrap someone up, and it sets me off.'

The memories flood back, sometimes without any reason. 'Sometimes, out of nowhere, I'll be able to smell the smell,' he says. 'Anyone who has lived in a mining community will know that smell, but I'd get it in the middle of London. I mean, it wasn't there. It was in my head, but it was still so real.'

Sad: Residents of the Welsh mining village attend a mass funeral for the victims of the tragedy

The massive coal waste tip slid down the mountainside in the Welsh mining village, engulfing the primary school and killing 116 children and 28 adults. Pictured: Volunteers on the site

Jeff had just picked a new library book (The Adventures Of Tintin, he remembers) and walked back to his desk, when the tragedy started. His teacher, Michael Davies, had started to chalk up on the board, when there was a 'rumbling, rumbling, rumbling', as if a jet plane was going overhead.

'The teacher said 'it's only thunder, it will go soon', then the next thing I remember was waking up and hearing shouts and screams.'

Jeff was trapped, pinned under his desk and alive only because he happened to be in an air pocket. Those around him, including Mr Davies, had died instantly.

Just by his shoulder, he realised, with mounting panic, was the little girl who sat beside him in class. Her head was 'right next to my face, really. I could see she was dead. There was no doubt about that.'

All our friends were gone, you see. I lost my cousins, my friends. No one talked about it at the time, but you couldn't escape it either.' Survivor Jeff Edwards

For two hours, Jeff was pinned down like this, and for 50 years he has tried to escape the images he saw that day. 'I can't get away from her,' he says, of that girl whose face, increasingly puffy in death, haunts his dreams.

'I still see her sometimes. I can't stop it all coming back.'

In so many ways, Jeff has been a shining example of human endurance. Although he moved away from Aberfan as a young man, he returned to the area after a stint in London and went on to become a mayor of nearby Merthyr, pouring all his efforts into securing a future for the youth of the town.

But he has also suffered disturbing flashbacks, and still has bouts of depression. 'When they come on me, I just have to go to bed and let it pass,' he says. Others too, talk of the burden of 'survivors' guilt'. Bernard Thomas was ten on the day, and although he escaped 'with just cuts and bruises', he tells me that he, like Jeff, 'lost my childhood that day'.

The Aberfan he grew up in was a dismal one. 'All our friends were gone, you see. I lost my cousins, my friends. No one talked about it at the time, but you couldn't escape it either.'

Families and residents of Aberfan attend a mass funeral for the victims following the tragedy

Coffins arriving at the cemetery during the funeral of 82 victims - 81 of them children - of the Aberfan coal tip disaster. The victims died when a mass of coal slurry flooded the local school

Bernard never married, and has had a difficult life since. He struggled with alcohol issues. 'I do wonder if it would have been different, had it not happened. Would I have got married? I don't know.'

The ITV programme focuses on the women of Aberfan and their vital role in keeping the community alive.

The group Aberfan Young Wives was set up just weeks after so many of the mothers involved had buried their children. Those children, Marilyn Brown tells me, had been due to take part in a community show. The rehearsals had taken part in Marilyn's living room.

'Oh those are some of the loveliest memories I have, of Janette and her friends all singing and dancing around the room. They were going to sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, I remember.

'After it happened, no one thought any more about the show but one day the Reverend Pembleton came to me and said: 'Marilyn, why don't you put on a show, for the children?' I was taken aback. I couldn't think of who would want to come, or whether any of the other parents would support the idea.

'But when we put it to them, they jumped at the idea. And the children who did take part, well, they just loved it.' The community rallied, and came out in droves to support the surviving children on that stage.

The Aberfan disaster was a catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil-tip that engulfed a school

It was the start of Aberfan's long recovery. Every week following it, the mothers (of both the living and the dead children) would meet. They called themselves the Aberfan Young Wives. And this group are, astonishingly, still meeting today. 'We took a decision to lose the 'Young' from our title though,' laughs Marilyn.

'In the early days no one knew what to do. No one talked about the children. If you met another family in the street you'd just nod and go on.

'This gave us a place where we could just talk about our children if we wanted, or not talk about them if we wanted, but where people understood.

'We'd hold events, go on trips, have fun, actually. People were afraid to have fun, but you have to, don't you? Life has to go on.'

Volunteers are pictured working to safeguard the coal tip in the 1960s to prevent further slides

She's an extraordinary woman, who has rebuilt her own life through sheer determination. She says she had little choice. 'I had another child, you see. I had Robert. He came out of that school, and I had to go on for him.'

It was Robert, six at the time, she screamed for on that day, when the news was broken that Janette had died. 'I kept saying 'I want Robert, I want Robert' and when they brought him to me I just held onto him for dear life.'

We talk a little of whether the women of Aberfan coped better than the men. 'Oh Bernard cried, yes, lots. He took it very badly. You only had to say her name and he would break down.

'Maybe that's why I didn't. I felt I had to stay strong. I don't know. I really don't know why it is.'

The scene inside the Pantglas Junior School after it was wrecked when the coal tip collapsed

The moving mountainside of coal sludge after the disaster at Aberfan on October 21, 1966

Marilyn never did get to see her daughter's body and that is still something that pains her. 'I wanted to and my father, who had gone with Bernard to identify her, said no, I shouldn't. He said she only had a tiny mark on her forehead, and that she was sleeping, but you do still wonder, don't you? But I must not go there.'

She went on to have two more daughters, is now a proud grandmother and asks me to stress that she has had 'despite everything, a very happy life'.

'You never get over it, and you never forget. I mean, she would be 60 now and you think: 'What sort of person would she be? What would she have done?' But, my goodness, you are so grateful for all that you do have.'

There are pictures of Janette all over the house. She has a favourite one ('the last one she had done at school') on the wall by her bed.
Phot from the website of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

JIUQUAN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The return capsule of the trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship successfully returned to the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 1:49 p.m. (Beijing Time) Friday, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

The test was a complete success, the agency said.

Following the instructions from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, the experimental spaceship applied the brake and entered the return orbit at 12:21 p.m., and its return capsule separated with its service capsule at 1:33 p.m.

At 1:49 p.m., the return capsule landed safely. The search team found it in a timely manner and confirmed that the capsule structure was intact.

China launched the trial version of the new spaceship without a crew by the Long March-5B carrier rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's island province of Hainan on Tuesday.

The experimental spaceship flew in orbit for two days and 19 hours, during which it carried out a series of space science and technology experiments, said CMSA.

It also tested key technologies including the heat shielding and control during its re-entry into the atmosphere, as well as multi-parachute recovery and partial reuse, CMSA said.

The new-generation manned spaceship is an advanced space transport vehicle adapted to multiple tasks. It can be used not only in low-Earth orbit missions to support the construction of China's space station but also for deep-space exploration, such as manned lunar exploration, CMSA said.
Ms Belinda Vuur, President of the Lassia-Tuolu Junior High School (JHS) Girls Club has pointed out to parents that investing in the education of the female child was equally beneficial to them as educating the male child.



She lamented how most parents support the education of the male child but neglect the female child due to some outmoded cultural beliefs that the female child belonged to another family.



Ms Belinda who spoke during the Community Child Protection Teams (CCPTs) learning event at Wechiau in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region, urged parents to give equal attention to the education of the female child too, stressing on the saying that "If you educate a girl, you educate a whole nation".



On teenage pregnancies, she noted that a girl of adolescent age needed a lot of things to take care of herself and appealed to parents to endeavour to provide the needs of their female adolescent children to prevent unscrupulous men from taking advantage of their situation.



The President also advised her colleagues to eschew materialism and be patient with their parents as they worked to provide their needs.



"Materialism will only bring problems that will destroy your future forever", she emphasized.



Ms Belinda noted that child marriage would only destroy the future of these girls as they were not physically mature and economically empowered to be able to support their families, hence, risked being turned as slaves in their marital homes.



She appealed to parents to endeavour to educate or ensure that their girls acquired some self employable skills before marriage.



"Early child marriage may only bring you the parent short term comfort, which can never be compared to the benefits one will get from an educated and employed girl who has been given out for marriage", she said.



She appreciated the fact that not every girl could make it academically, and recommended Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to them to take advantage and learn a trade to help themselves before going into marriage.



Ms Belinda also cautioned parents to be vigilant on the movement of their girls as schools observed the close down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding it would not only prevent them from contracting the disease but also avoid unwanted pregnancies.



Mr Moses Dramani Luri, the Executive Director of the Social Initiative for Literacy and Development Programme (SILDEP) noted that child marriage was very high in the region particularly the Wa West District, hence, the formation of the Girls Advocacy Clubs and the Community Child Protection Teams (CCPTs) to help advocate to bring the situation under control.



The Girls Advocacy Clubs and CCPTs across the Sissala East Municipality, Sissala West and Wa West Districts were formed and empowered by the Girls Advocacy Alliance (GAA) project being implemented by SILDEP in collaboration with Plan International Ghana with funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.



The project has four thematic areas- child marriage, commercial sexual exploitation, child abuse and gender-based violence, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and employment.

Source: GNA









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Ayan Mukerji's multi-starrer Brahmastra has delayed its shoot completion and therefore its release, quite a few times. It looks like the film, starring Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and Mouni Roy, may be delayed yet again due to the Coronavirus lockdown.

However, reports have surfaced stating that Ayan is going to have the VFX portions of the movie completed amid lockdown. He has reportedly hired a London based agency to work on these portions, with enormous care being taken to prevent leaking of scenes from the footage.

A Mid-Day reported quoted a source as saying, "A big portion of the footage has been despatched to the London crew in order that it will probably start engaged on the visible results on this interval. Conscious that outsourcing the job and sharing the content material can enhance the chance of the movie being leaked, Ayan needed solely a core crew of specialists engaged on it. The director handpicked a five-member crew who're the one individuals in possession of the footage."

Brahmastra was scheduled for theatrical release on December 4, but a 20-day schedule of the film was disrupted due to the lockdown.

Recently, rumours were afloat that Alia and Ranbir having taken a pay cut due to Brahmastra having exceeded its budget. However, producer Karan Johar rubbished the rumours and requested the media to not make assumptions about the happenings in the film fraternity, and look forward to only official information.

Brahmastra marks rumoured couple, Alia and Ranbir's first big-screen appearance together. The film is a fantasy drama.

ALSO READ: Karan Johar Reacts To Reports Of Team Brahmastra Taking Pay Cuts Amid Lockdown

ALSO READ: Ranbir Kapoor-Alia Bhatt's Brahmastra: The Cast Gets A New Addition!


Citizens of Bihar have a dual task at hand. Currently in the midst of braving a draining global pandemic, they might have to elect a government within six months. Studies show that the psychological impact of Covid-19 on voters may result in a conformist attitude that may help a more conservative political view.

Apart from other factors, elections in India are contested on the loud pretense of development and more realistically on the basis of silent engineering of caste. The one state for which the latter holds rock-solid firm is Bihar. However, this year psephologists are also accounting for the psychological impacts of the unprecedented situation.

Will psychological footprint favour an ideology?

Pandemics are generally unprecedented for a generation. They take a serious toll, for the masses, mostly on the mind. Also, human brains are evolved for socialisation. Any attempt at quarantine for an extended period of time can put individuals off the grid.

There have already been reports of the pandemic resulting in heightened anxiety, with immediate effects on mental health. However, the constant feeling of threat may have other, more insidious, effects on psychology of people.

Studies show that the fear of contagion leads individuals to become more conservative and less accepting of experimentation. They prefer quietly falling in line, however long, rather than taking on eccentricity. Daily reminders of the dangers associated with the disease and its lessening proximity may even sway political affiliations.

Mark Schaller, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, wrote that humans evolved a set of unconscious psychological responses  which he has termed the behavioural immune system  to act as a first line of defence to reduce contact with potential pathogens during a pandemic.

The disgust response is one of the most obvious components of the behavioural immune system. For example, when individuals avoid things that smell bad or food that they believe to be unclean, they are instinctively trying to steer clear of potential contagion.

The behaviour is similarly portrayed in people's preferences for policies. Any institution, political or otherwise that promotes and safeguards the behavioural immune system finds automatic popularity among the masses during uncertain times such as the one that presently exists.

The term of the present Bihar Assembly ends in November. In March, the poll panel had deferred Rajya Sabha elections to 18 seats due to the coronavirus outbreak. No fresh dates have been announced yet.

The Election Commission has taken note of changes made by South Korea in procedures while holding its parliamentary polls amid the coronavirus outbreak and said it will consider modifications as required and suited to the Indian context wherever elections need to be held amid Covid-19.

Meanwhile, studies and polls in America have also shown clear connection with the pandemic and political inclinations.

A February 2020 poll in the United States have shown that attitudes to Covid-19 risk are closely tied to voting behaviour, with Republicans showing much less concern about the outbreak.

According to a study published in 2009 named "Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives" when people with liberal attitudes experienced physical threat their political and social attitudes became more conservative.

In another study, during an H1N1 flu epidemic, researchers reminded people of the dangers of the flu virus and then asked them their attitudes towards immigration, after which they were asked whether they had been vaccinated against flu yet. Those who hadnt received their anti-flu shot were more likely to be anti-immigration than the ones who felt less threatened.

There is a similar situation currently laying out in Bihar. With migrant workers returning home in large numbers, in many villages across the state, inhabitants and local leaders have barricaded the entry and exit points of villages, and placed posters that say: Outsiders are not allowed.

There have also been several cases where villagers have reported workers to the Police on their return.

It is only fair for experts to link fear with immediate political inclination. Whether that will eventually impact the elections is for future times to tell.

The more profound effects may not have anything to do with [the behavioural immune system] but more directly to do with the perception of just how well government officials are or are not responding to the situation, wrote psychologist Mark Schaller.

Will parties be able to set political pitch for show of strength?

Added to this, against the tradition of noisy, mega rallies in Bihar, this time both Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance and the opposition may have to be satisfied with a watered down version of them or devise an ingenious way to influence voters.

Campaigns to reach out to voters and strengthen political presence in multiple constituencies have been put on hold across all parties.

Tejashwi Yadav's 'Berozgari Hatao Yatra' was forced to stop. Yadav has been holding rallies across the state to corner Chief Mister Nitish Kumar on the dismal state of employment in Bihar. He is currently the leader of opposition in the state assembly and is the former deputy chief minister.

A two-day training session of the RJD leaders and members scheduled for March 14-15 was also cancelled. Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan has also had to put a stop to his 'Bihar First, Bihari First yatra.

BJP is also missing out on the opportunity to expand the party's reach in the state. March, April and May were crucial to the BJP as the party had planned multiple programmes and events in these three months. However, due to the lockdown, these events could now stand cancelled.

Data from surveys conducted by Lokniti, a research programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), shows that final campaign period is critical for parties in India.

A substantial section of the Indian electorate decides whom to vote for during the campaign period or just on the eve of voting. In the National Election Study 2014 (NES 2014), about one-fifth of respondents revealed they decided whom to vote for during the campaign period, while 27% said they made up their mind either on election day or just a few days before.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

The total number of coronavirus-infected people in Uzbekistan has reached 2,314, Trend reports on May 8 with reference to the Ministry of Health.

To date, 1,656 patients have fully recovered in the country, 10 have died.

Uzbekistan recently declared Jizzakh, Kashkadarya and Navoi regions were declared free from COVID-19.

Uzbekistan has divided the country's regions and cities into "zones" of red, yellow and green colors, depending on the coronavirus infection level in the given area.

The "red" zones include Karakalpakstan, Andijan, Namangan, Fergana, Samarkand, Tashkent region, Bukhara, Syrdarya.

The "yellow" zones include Surkhandarya, Khorezm, Tashkent city.

The "green" zones include Navoi, Jizzak, Kashkadarya.

In the "green" zones, free movement of cars and motor vehicles without special stickers is allowed. In "red" and "yellow" zones personal transport movement is allowed in certain hours (from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM and from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM, GMT+5).

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 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
Majority of residents in Akwa Ibom State are not complying with the government directive on the use of face mask, the government has said.

The Akwa Ibom government recently issued an order, making it mandatory for residents to wear face mask whenever they are in public to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The Commissioner for Information in the state, Charles Udoh, said in a statement on Friday that people were wearing the mask wrongly, while others exchange or share it with friends and family members.

The statement was issued by a director in the ministry of information, James Edet, on behalf of the commissioner.

It should be noted that face mask is a personal item and should therefore, not be shared with anyone, the statement said.

Local production of face mask has surged in Akwa Ibom since the government made it compulsory for residents. Vendors now hawk various kinds of face masks at road intersections in Uyo.

READ ALSO:

For public safety, face masks should not be tried on before purchase from vendors, the government statement said. Locally made face masks should be washed, sun-dried, and ironed after each use.

The Akwa Ibom government eased the lockdown from April 4, but then introduced a dust-to-dawn curfew, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily.

The ban on religious and social gathering, and funerals are still in place, however. Markets are opened only three times a week  Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.

There are 17 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Akwa Ibom as of April 7.
TROY, N.Y.  The Troy Waterfront Farmers Market is slated to hold its first outdoor market on May 16.

The good news is that the outdoor farmers market is returning to Troy for our twenty-first season, Zack Metzger, market president opined.

However, this version of our market will be different than in previous years. It will be smaller-with an emphasis on food, not festival-and will include many new safety protocols, Metzger explained on the altered look.

During talks with market management over the past month, officials from the Rensselaer County Health Department and the City of Troy acknowledged the essential nature of the market but raised concerns that its popularity as a regional attraction could pose a challenge to social distancing protocols.

According to market organizers, they say theyve addressed those concerns with a plan to reopen on a smaller scale in a new temporary location with a focus on essential products, and expand in size and scope later as the COVID-19 pandemic dissipates.

The market has worked hard during this crisis to find ways to make sure local food gets into the hands of its customers. Farmers markets are pivotal in the regional and local food access network, linking local produce to local consumers in a healthy and safe way, supporting the local agricultural economy and providing food access for SNAP/EBT customers, Steve Ridler, TWFM manager remarked.

Overall, farmers markets are an even safer and more sustainable option than supermarkets and grocery stores. Troy Waterfront Farmers Market feels strongly that we can safely operate in the existing COVID-19 environment as shown by many other markets across the state and country and we are ready to return outdoors, Ridler noted.

Recently the market implemented TWFM Online, a web-based store and contact-less pickup system in neighboring Green Island. The online order and pickup service will continue in tandem with the outdoor market, Ridler said, which will distribute customers between two locations and provide valuable options to suit varying needs of customers.

So, how do these plans on paper come to fruition in real-time?

On May 16, the first outdoor market will be held in the Russell Sage College parking lot at First and Division streets.

Initially, the number of booths will be limited to 25 and will be spread far apart with some smaller vendors sharing a booth. The layout will require customers to follow a one-way traffic flow and respect the importance of social distancing.

Dogs will not be allowed in the market, save for the exception of service dogs.

No more than 50 customers will be allowed in the market area at any time, which will accommodate about 100 customers per hour.

Hours will be expanded from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., making for an 8-hour long market to allow more customers.

Free parking will be available on city streets and in Russell Sage lots on River Street.

Customers will sign up online for time blocks in advance and will wait in designated areas with taped markings on the sidewalk and street to indicate proper social distancing. There will be a limited stand by line for those who do not reserve a time slot. Staff and volunteers will also help manage the line for the safety and comfort of those waiting.

Customers must wear masks to enter the market. Masks will be available on site.

Wash stations and hand sanitizer will be available throughout the market

Customers are being encouraged to pre-order from their preferred vendors, using the contact information provided on the markets website.

All vendors will wear masks and gloves and use hand sanitizer.

Products will be pre-packaged when at all possible.

Customers will not handle food until their purchase is completed.

Tokens will not be issued at the Market Information table and will not be accepted by vendors.

Provisions will be made to accommodate SNAP/WIC/FMNP.

Prepared food vendors will be at the market, initially limited in numbers, and only serving prepared food to go with no cooking on site. Beverages will not be available for consumption on site.

There will be no music, community tables, or sitting area, and congregating will not be permitted. Customers must move through the market swiftly and leave when they are finished shopping.

Full details on the market reopening, including the vendors who will be attending, how to book a market time, and all the guidance and rules for operation will be updated on the markets website at www.troymarket.org. This site also provides details of where to find vendors and includes a new interactive regional map.

Its worth noting that our last indoor market coincided with the start of Governor [Andrew] Cuomos New York Pause order and our outdoor market will begin the day after that order is scheduled to be reviewed. As an essential business, our goal has always been to be part of the solution to containing the spread of COVID-19 and be a key part of re-opening the economy of our state, county, and city, Ridler commented.

Were taking a phased-in approach and working with community partners at all levels to keep everyone safe and healthy. Were going to try this configuration, see how people behave and respond with any adaptations and alterations in real-time, Ridler added.

A smooth reopening could see the market expand initially on Sage property first and subsequently to its traditional location along River Street and Monument Square later in the summer.

We are aware of the important role the farmers market plays in the downtown economy, Ridler said.

But in order for us to return to Troy safely, we first have to open in an area that we can carefully manage, Ridler added.

The markets temporary location at Russell Sage College is three blocks south of Monument Square. Marketgoers can easily walk or drive to the shops and restaurants downtown as they reopen.

Russell Sage College is delighted to partner with the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market to make healthy, locally grown food available while practicing safe social distancing to protect the public health, Chris Ames, President of Russell Sage College commented on the partnership.

We are pleased to welcome back the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market under a limited reopening to protect the health of customers, vendors, and residents. The Troy Market is an essential part of our local economy and food network, providing Troy families and visitors direct access to local farm-grown food. We have worked closely with market organizers and County Department of Health to ensure new rules and guidelines will be implemented to protect public health while providing access to fresh food and supporting local farmers, Troy Mayor Patrick Madden said.

This small-scale reopening of the Troy Market with a temporary downtown relocation, expanded hours, online ordering, and extension of pickup options will enable effective management of customers to ensure social distancing can continue and reduce the potential spread of COVID-19. Customers must wear a face mask when visiting the market and observe all rules and regulations from market management, Madden continued.

With the cooperation of vendors, customers, and local officials, we can ensure this important amenity can operate safely and effectively during this challenging time for our city, county, and state, Madden added.

Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin also welcomed the return of the market to downtown Troy.

We look forward to the return of a great Troy and Rensselaer County attraction, the Troy Farmers Market, as we also enjoy spring and ready for a return to some of the activities and events that give us our quality of life, McLaughlin opined.

The county Health Department and the market and city and business leaders have worked together in a cooperative and collaborative approach to bring the market back in some form. We look forward to the return of the market on May 16, McLaughlin added.

In addition to the live market, TWFM Online allows customers to place orders for pickup at Carioto Produce Distribution Center located at 80 Cohoes Ave., Green Island. For the time being the Wednesday Market is on hold and starting May 17, pickup will be on Sundays to allow the market staff to work the outdoor market on Saturdays.

One can access TWFM Online from https://troymarket.org or directly at https://troymarket.localfoodmarketplace.com

Customers are advised to check back with TWFM Online weekly as the number of items for sale will increase and change continuously as different crops come into season and more vendors join the web store.

Customers can also shop the Carioto online retail store for other products that can be ordered and picked up on the same trip. The link to that site can be found at: https://carioto.company.site/
By Express News Service

KOLKATA: A coronavirus-infected ASI-rank CISF officer, who was deployed in Indian Museum in Kolkata, succumbed to the virus on Friday. The CISF authorities have sent 33 others, who were staying at the barrack along with the officer, to quarantine centres.

The CISF ASI was admitted to Calcutta Medical College and Hospital where he died.

"DG#CISF & all ranks are deeply saddened on the tragic loss of our #CoronaWarrior ASI/Exe Asit Kumar Saha of CISF Unit Indian Museum Kolkata who laid his life at the altar of duty battling COVID-19 infection. We express heartfelt condolences to the grief-stricken family members," CISF tweeted.

The Indian Museum authorities have asked all its employees not to come to the office. The CISF was deployed at the museum last year to secure its premises.
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador has reinstated aquaculture licences at southern Newfoundland sites where 2.6 million salmon died in sea pens last year.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/5/2020 (621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An Atlantic salmon is seen during a Department of Fisheries and Oceans fish health audit at the Okisollo fish farm near Campbell River, B.C. Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2018. Newfoundland and Labrador has reinstated aquaculture licenses at southern Newfoundland sites where 2.6 million salmon died in sea pens last year.THE CANADIAN PRESS /Jonathan Hayward

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador has reinstated aquaculture licences at southern Newfoundland sites where 2.6 million salmon died in sea pens last year.

Fisheries Minister Gerry Byrne suspended licenses at 10 sites owned by Northern Harvest Sea Farms sites in October after the company failed to disclose full and timely information about the mass mortality event.

The licenses were reinstated after reviews by Memorial University's Marine Institute and MAMKA, a marine management partnership between two Newfoundland Indigenous groups.

The Marine Institute concluded that unusual evironmental conditions, including high water temperatures over several days and low oxygen, were responsible for the salmon deaths.

Images of the messy cleanup around the pens and slow public disclosure of information prompted environmental and regulatory concerns about aquaculture in the province.

The department says MOWI, which owns Northern Harvest Sea Farms, is preparing for future events by looking into deeper nets, developing contingency plans to improve response times and updating its waste and environment management plans, among other measures.

The provincial government has updated its aquaculture policy to compel companies to publicly disclose disease and abornomal mortality events in a timely manner.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2020.
A country with its own recent history of migration could soon find itself at the centre of Europes refugee crisis.

Tirana, Albania  They came in their thousands overnight, wearing tattered clothes, some carrying children. Braving sub-zero temperatures they clambered on foot across the snowy, craggy terrain of the Albanian mountains. Meanwhile, more children died on Europes shores as yet another boat carrying around 60 refugees capsized in the Adriatic Sea after colliding with an Italian navy vessel trying to stop it entering Italian waters.

Such reports were commonplace throughout the 1990s as tens of thousands of Albanian refugees fled the collapsing Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and subsequent lawlessness in the Adriatic state.

Today, the political landscape in Albania has settled somewhat, yet a little over 100km away on the Greek-Macedonian border tens of thousands of mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees continue to amass.

The recent closure of the Balkan route and the rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis in Greece is leading many to wonder if Albania is about to see the migration flow divert through its territory, prompting renewed scenes of struggle over land and sea in yet another frontier of Europe.





Entering Albania through Greece, the terrain seems hostile  jagged mountains, sudden abysses and dense woodland stretch out to the horizon and signs along the motorway warn of bears and wolves.

But some observers, like Vassilis Nitsiakos, a professor of history at the University of Ioannina, in northern Greece, think that the 280km border is penetrable to those with the right information.

I have walked across that border illegally many times. I go with my students, Nitsiakos laughs. Last summer we drove 20 minutes to the border near Konitsa in Greece, then after two hours we were in Albania.

Its a very historical path, thousands of Albanian migrants have used it and still do, coming to work in Greece by day, and go back to their village at night. We didnt see any police, nobody cares. Its an open secret, the authorities tolerate it. So if the refugees today knew about it, they could do it. The question is, do they have a way out of Albania?

The border crossing of Krystallopigi, between Greece and Albania [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Details continue to be hammered out over the deal reached on Tuesday between the European Union and Ankara, which would see all refugees and migrants reaching the Greek islands returned to Turkey. But, in the meantime, it is inconceivable that the mounting numbers on the Macedonian border could willingly be taken back, or remain in a state of suspended animation, far from their desired destinations in northern Europe.

But even if refugees manage to penetrate Albanian territory, does the impoverished country possess the infrastructure to accommodate them?

For Marie-Helene Verney, speaking to Al Jazeera in UNHCRs Tirana office, the answer is a resounding no.

They have military barracks on the southern border  they say they are ready to be used as accommodation but they are not. They are understaffed and under-resourced. There is a real question mark here. Imagine, there are thousands people in Greece and as soon as you look at Albania, after a few hundred the capacity is overwhelmed very quickly.

Then what happens? The Albanian government has been extremely reluctant to engage publicly in any planning because they say if we talk about it to the media, then refugees will start to come. But we tell them, they will come whether you plan or not.

There is humanity  then there is law

At Karrec, Albanias only detention centre for irregular migrants, located at the end of a winding uneven road outside a suburb of the capital Tirana, the tiny scale of the countrys capabilities becomes apparent.

Albania has a re-admission agreement with Greece, where migrants captured across the border can be returned after 14 days. But when Al Jazeera visited the facility it was empty. The only evidence of previous occupants was some abandoned clothes hanging on a washing line and Arabic graffiti scrawled on the walls of the prayer room.

Marie-Helene Verney from UNCHR indicates the possible migrants routes in Albania [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Sitting in his office, centre director Gezim Goci casts a wary eye at a TV broadcasting fuzzy news footage of refugees on the Macedonia border. Rain lashes at the window and thunder shakes the room. Goci starts to reminisce and draw historical comparisons to todays refugee flows.

My family is from eastern Albania. During the Kosovo war in 1999 the state was not functioning, so we opened our houses to our brothers coming across the border. And when I see these young people from Syria, I feel for them, he says.

But there is humanity, and then there is the law. Back in the times of the dictatorship, there were many armed guards and surveillance on the border, but that was to stop us from leaving!

The prayer room at the detention centre in Karrec [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Albanias own history of migration

From 1941 to his death in 1985, Albania was ruled by the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha. His paranoid belief that foreign powers were intent on invading the country caused him to turn Albania into a pariah state, sealed off from the rest of the world, a North Korea of the Balkans.

One of the visible legacies of his tyranny are the hundreds of thousands of bunkers he ordered to be built throughout the country, from the top of mountains to beaches and downtown squares. Many still remain, but these days enterprising Albanians prefer to blow them up to harvest the steel, while young couples use their intimate confines for romantic assignations.

Albania has a history of multidimensional emigration.

The brutal Hoxha regime and its collapse produced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

A second wave came in 1997, during the countrys transition to a market economy, when vast swaths of the population became impoverished almost overnight as their money disappeared in a system of crooked pyramid investment schemes.

Subsequent suspicion of the government erupted into civil unrest, which became deadly after weapons depots were looted and clashes between police, opposition and armed criminals who took over whole cities left thousands dead.

Clothes left to dry in a room at the detention centre in Karrec [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Despite subsequent political reforms and Albanias candidate status for membership of the European Union, the country has pockets of poverty and a GDP per capita under $5,000, according to the World Bank.

Ironically, these conditions have forced tens of thousands of Albanians to use the Balkan route themselves to reach northern Europe.

In 2015, Albanians were second only to Syrians in the number of asylum applications lodged in Germany (54,762). Berlin has since deemed Albania safe and begun deporting people back en masse to the predominantly Muslim nation of three million.

Since the escalation of the refugee crisis in Europe last summer, a photo has been circulating on social media. It depicts a large vessel partially obscured by thousands of human bodies with people dangling over the top, climbing up ropes from the port and some even falling into the sea. It has been been said to both depict Syrian refugees in Greece in 2015 and Europeans fleeing World War II for North Africa. In fact, it shows neither. It is a photo of the notorious Vlora vessel, full of Albanians, docking in the southern Italian port of Bari in 1991. On a sunny day in March 2016, the sea laps gently on the deserted beach at Zvernec, near the city of Vlora. Police sources told Al Jazeera that in the past two months, two inflatable boats had been found nearby, but could not speculate on their possible intended use.

Gezim Goci, the director of the detention centre in Karrec, points out possible migrant routes in Albania [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Alba Cela, the deputy director of the Tirana-based think-tank, the Albanian Institute of International Affairs, says the Adriatic has long been a channel to ferry drugs and cigarettes to Italy, but the chance of profitable human cargo may be too tempting for the gangsters to resist.

Albania spent a lot of effort fighting speedboat trafficking to Italy and we even had to pass strict laws. For instance, there was a complete moratorium on speedboats for years, even for fun it was not permitted to own one.

Now if you have refugees trapped here, of course they will rekindle the interest of organised crime organisations to smuggle them to Italy. It would be hard, but not impossible. It is a small coast but it has its own hidden spots that are hard to control. You cannot rule it out.

The crossing from the Albanian coast to Italys southern region of Puglia is 50 miles, significantly further than the distance from Turkey to the Greek islands, which in some parts is barely four miles but has claimed more than 400 lives this year alone.

Im afraid of the sea, but Im desperate

Hannah, 21, a Syrian student from Damascus, is currently entering her second week stuck on the Macedonian border. After enduring the worsening conditions in the vastly overcrowded camp only to be told the route is now shut, she says she is exploring other options.

I might try the Albania way to Italy. Im afraid of the sea, but Im desperate. I would try anything. Even another Mediterranean death trip.

Mountains over the city of Gjirokaster. The Albanian route would be difficult merely because of geography [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, 9,295 refugees and migrants have arrived by sea in Italy during 2016 but almost all left from the North African coast.

Refugee flows are often determined by the size of the trail blazed by those preceding them, which so far in Albanias case is minimal. According to UNHCR estimates, 1,400 mostly Syrian refugees crossed into Albania in 2014; in 2015 it was 2,600.

There is a widespread perception among many of the refugees questioned by Al Jazeera that entering Albania is a dangerous option, which requires the use of merciless smugglers.

The imam

Gentjan Mara, the imam of the Shtish-Tufine mosque in Tirana, has seen the dark side of this perilous route.

After several years living in Syria, including witnessing in 2011 the early eruptions of revolution in Daraa, Mara moved back with his Syrian wife and son to Albania, which hosts a tiny Syrian community of around 35 families.

Imam Gentjan Mara and his son, in front of the mosque in the neighbourhood of Babrru, Tirana [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Last year, Amal, a 56-year old child psychologist made her way through Turkey and Greece after several of her family members were killed by an air strike in Daraa.

On Greeces northern border her journey to be reunited with her husband in Germany was cut short after the smuggler she used to show her the way demanded more money. When Amal refused, she was pushed into a gorge. She broke both of her legs as she fell.

Mara tells her story: She crawled into Albania through the woods for hours, but luckily met a shepherd who called for help. She was taken to hospital for extensive surgery, and then we hosted her like family in our house for two months. Its my personal conviction that, even though Albanians do not have much to offer, they cannot ignore people who need help.

Amals misfortune continued as her efforts to reach Germany through legal methods failed. So she again turned to smugglers. Wheelchair bound, she was led out of Albania through Kosovo and up the Balkan route until finally, exhausted, she arrived in Dusseldorf last month.

Gezim Goci, the director of the detention centre in Karrec, with a list of those detained there [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Despite last year appearing to favour the idea of welcoming refugees into his country, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama hardened his stance in February. Citing the behaviour of other European countries as an influence, he told local media: We have neither the conditions, nor the strength, nor the enthusiasm to save the world while others close their borders.

But for Mara, Syrian refugees fleeing the sixth year of tumultuous conflict are destined to find sanctuary.

Before the war, Syria was a country which hosted many refugees from all over the world, he says. So now Allah will ensure that the Syrians are welcomed elsewhere.

In pictures

Refugees prevented from entering the camp of Idomeni, on the Greece-Macedonia border [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

Afghan refugees on the railway tracks at Idomeni [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]

A Libyan and an Algerian in Viktoria square, Athens, hope to continue their journey through Albania [Nicola Zolin/Al Jazeera]
Some of the more popular conferencing platforms are not catered for true education, Photo: Le Toan

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education to a major degree, forcing schools across the globe to take classes online. Deciding on a piece of software that would serve as the backbone of their operations has been difficult, not least because institutions and individual teachers had to adopt what is essentially a new modus operandi and thus were lacking a great deal of information and know-how to assess their alternatives. Additionally, like any business, cash-strapped education institutions were reluctant to move towards heavy investment into software and infrastructure meant for use as a stop-gap for the duration of the pandemic.

These considerations turned most to online conferencing software, which did not cover the entirety of their needs, but came mostly free. The most popular choices, Zoom and Skype, indeed rose to dominance for their cost-effectiveness and easy convenience for educators  many of whom are elderly and easily overwhelmed by the plethora of new features to master in a subscription-based, dedicated e-learning solution. Months after switching to online teaching, however, educators and learners alike are starting to point out shortcomings with their software of choice.

Intended for one-on-one or small group video conferencing, the free versions of Zoom and Skype are mostly used by Vietnamese educators for their video chat functions. While some screen sharing and online presentation functionality is built in the software, educators who speak little English or find it difficult to locate these functions hidden under sub-menus rarely use them and so remain inaccessible.

Vietnamese teachers and students often complain about low quality video or audio quality (a common concern for Skype), as well as the limited presentation boards falling short of their needs stemming from teaching habits ingrained over the course of many years.

Demanding crystal clear audio and video quality and seamless functionality from free software can be considered unreasonable at the best of times. There is a strong case to be made that paid applications would offer guaranteed bandwidth for streaming, and paid online teaching solutions could very well live up to expectations  at a significant price.

Domestic solutions

But there may be a game-changer. Vietnams three ICT giants of VNPT, Viettel, and FPT have all spotted the gap between supply and demand and have come out with their very own dedicated online teaching suites which they offer completely free of charge, at the very least for the duration of the pandemic.

Since early February, VNPT has rolled out its e-learning product which features live-streaming classes, uploading pre-recorded classes, and online testing in a tight bundle so that teachers and students do not need to keep switching between applications and can stay on top of their tasks easily. Moreover, VNPT E-learning also provides more than 20 different solutions such as e-portals for schools, and e-school reports, among others.

To sweeten the offer, VNPT is offering the application for free and offers free 3G and 4G data to access the system. To date, the application has more than 40,000 users across the country.

Similarly, Viettel has jumped into the fray with the ViettelStudy social network for learning that offers very similar features. ViettelStudy offers curricula for students in primary, secondary, and high schools, and puts no limit on the number of students and teachers. People who wish to share their knowledge with students can register and begin teaching once the apps consultant council verifies their credentials.

Discussing the moves with VIR, Nguyen Ngoc Linh, deputy general director of Viettel Solutions, the operator of ViettelStudy, said that since February about 3.38 million new accounts have been opened on the social network. The total number of visitors has reached eight million to date, while the number of page visits hit 160 million. Besides that, teachers have created about 80,000 online courses and about 26,000 schools have registered to teach through the platform.

ViettelStudy was developed under the commitment between Viettel and the Ministry of Education and Training regarding ICT firms helping out the education sector during the pandemic, students and teachers can use the app for free for as long as the health crisis lasts.

FPT has also stepped up the promotion of its very own FPT.eLearning which it developed in 2015. Along with numerous schools, FPT.eLearning is used for training by Prudential Vietnam with about 600,000 users, Merck Vietnam (200 users), and Vietnam Airlines (6,000 users). All three software feature an easy-to-navigate interface and offer integrated whiteboard where teachers can make notes for students to copy, as well as share lecture slides and documents prepared in advance.

Another key advantage for Vietnamese users is that the software is written in Vietnamese language, which makes it more accessible than international software.

While Zoom, Skype, and other conferencing tools have filled in a vital role by enabling education institutions and students to carry on during compulsory social distancing, thus making enormous contributions to health and security across the globe, they were a choice of compromise between cost and efficiency. However, local educators no longer need to compromise.

Security and performance

A major issue with the most popular online conferencing software is undoubtedly security: just last week, the globes primary conferencing tool Zoom was shaken to the core by news that data of 500,000 Zoom accounts were circulating on the dark web for sale at the price of 20 US cents per account. Users trust in Zoom dropped further when the representative of the company affirmed that it sent data of online calls to China. The two most crucial issues for Zoom, as reported by laodong.vn, are that meeting IDs are randomly generated but not password protected; and that the meeting content is not encrypted after the meeting is over, making it easily accessible by unauthorised visitors.

To date, Singapore, Taiwan, and New York have asked schools to stop using Zoom due to security and privacy risks. Furthermore, along with the education sector, technology groups including Google, Tesla, and Space X also ordered their staff members to stop using Zoom.

Similarly, the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications has directed local schools to give priority to local applications, right after news that half a million Zoom accounts were on sale. While many may scoff at claims that locally-developed software is more resilient than other globally-available software, there are merits to choosing local.
BRIDGEPORT  A man who was hospitalized with COVID-19 since the beginning of March was released from the hospital Thursday to return home, hospital officials said.

The 21-year-old man was hospitalized at St. Vincents Medical Center, a Hartford HealthCare medical facility.
Glynn County district attorney Jackie Johnson prevented officers from making arrests after the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in February, two county commissioners told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.

The police at the scene went to her, saying they were ready to arrest both of them. These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation, said Commissioner Allen Booker. She shut them down to protect her friend [Gregory] McMichael.

Commissioner Peter Murphy concurred, saying that when police turned to Johnsons office to inform them of intent to arrest McMichael, police were told not to make the arrest.

McMichael, 64, a retired investigator who worked in Johnsons office, was arrested on Thursday along with his son Travis McMichael, 34, and charged with murder in the February 23 shooting of Arbery. Video of the incident in which the McMichaels, who are white, shoot and kill Arbery, who is black, sparked national outrage.

Gregory McMichael told investigators that he believed Arbery resembled a burglary suspect who had recently been in the neighborhood. McMichael and his son drove after Arbery in their pickup truck calling on him to stop, and eventually shot him with a .357 Magnum and shotgun. Arbery was unarmed, according to attorneys for his family.

Johnson recused herself from the case shortly following the shooting, and did not respond to the Journal-Constitutions request for comment.

More from National Review
BUCKHEAD, GA  With schools closed the rest of the academic year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Patch wanted to acknowledge graduating high school seniors. If you'd like to add your graduate, fill out the form here. The list is growing daily, and well continue to update.

BUCKHEAD:

School: Atlanta Girls School

Student: Zoey Poole

Plans: Zoey will be attending Parsons School of Design in New York for college

Shout Out: We are beyond proud of everything you have accomplished! So excited for your future! We love you! Love Mom and Dad.

School: Lovett School

Student: Duncan Park

Plans: Attending The University of Notre Dame

Shout Out: We are so proud of you Duncan and can't wait for your next exciting chapter to begin! Go Irish!

School: The Westminster Schools

Student: Joel Tyson-Lee Williams

Plans: Attending Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, majoring in Music Business Industry

Shout Out: Joel , the bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11, states, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. We congratulate you on your accomplishment of completing twelve years of academic achievement. Your future will be even brighter because your steps are directed towards the plans He has for you. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Kudos for a job well done, continue to achieve, continue to lead and always, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding, in all of your ways, acknowledge Him and he will direct your path."

School: The Westminster Schools

Student: Sarah Grace Allen

Plans: Attending Smith College as a recruited athlete for Crew

Shout Out: We are so proud of all of your amazing accomplishments and of the incredible person you are. We love you!

School: Henry W. Grady

Student: Zoe Spangler

Plans: University of Kentucky

Shout Out: Congratulations Zoe! We are so proud of you and know you will continue to reach for the stars. Love, Mom, Zach, Dad & Lauren, Paige and Blair.

Story continues

School: Maynard Jackson High School

Student: Christian Martin

Plans: Christian will be attending University of Georgia - Athens to major in International Marketing

Shout Out: Congratulations Christian! Love Auntie Wanda, Dionne & Kaila

School: Benjamin E. Mays

Student: Joyclyn Marie Weems

Plans: She will be joining the workforce and applying for college.

Shout Out: Joyclyn is fighting diabetes and thyroid and going to school and working. Im so proud of her for being so strong through her obstacles.

School: Benjamin E. Mays

Student: Tervell Johnson

Plans: He will be attending the Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech)

Shout Out: Congratulations Tervell! Keep working hard and pursuing your dreams.





This article originally appeared on the Buckhead Patch
Jaideep Ahlawat Completes A Decade In Bollywood, Reflects On Making It In The Industry Without A Godfather
Dakar, Senegal, May 6, 2020  Early April, Speak Up Africa, a strategic communications and advocacy not-for-profit organization dedicated to catalyzing leadership, enabling policy change, and increasing awareness for sustainable development in Africa, launched the Stay Safe Africa campaign. This campaign aims to empower communities and individuals to take simple and proven preventative measures to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Africa.

Around the world, COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the health of citizens, as well as national and global economies. At present, in Africa, there are 43,343 confirmed cases, 1,761 deaths and 14,343 recoveries. Several risk factors mean the virus could spread quickly across the continent. High population densities, communal living, frequent and close contact between generations, as well as the constrained access to water and washing facilities all increase the likelihood of coronavirus infections and fatalities.

A co-ordinated Africa-led approach to slow the spread of COVID-19 is crucial to address the continents uneven access to tools and services and respond to Africas diverse cultural landscape. In April, to mobilize and manage funds from the public and private sector as well as individuals in Africa and to further strengthen the continents response to the pandemic, the African Union and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched the Africa COVID-19 Response Fund. Many countries from South Africa to Senegal via Nigeria and Kenya have announced the creation of solidarity funds. While these funds will serve primarily a national agenda, the virus knows no borders. And because the average citizen with disposable income can give small amounts of money, our best bet to fund the Africa CDC, in times of economic hardship, is to pool our resources. adds Carl Manlan, COO of the Ecobank Foundation.

The Stay Safe Africa campaign incorporates messages and advice tailored for African communities and leadership, accounting for language, literacy and cultural barriers. It is vital that individuals across Africa take responsibility to protect themselves, their families and their communities, by following the recommended prevention measures. As Africans, we must come together, with distance, and realize the importance of protecting ourselves from COVID-19 and act quickly, highlighted Yacine Djibo, Executive Director of Speak Up Africa.

As the world comes together to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to ensure that essential services and operations continue to protect the lives of people affected by malaria, Neglected Tropical Diseases, vaccine preventable diseases and in need of improved access to adequate sanitation.

The campaign is open to all partners, journalists, civil society organizations and communities to adopt and support and all assets to help support the campaign are available at StaySafeAfrica.org in both English and French. Now more than ever, we must acknowledge the importance of communications and digital communities, leverage information, unite across the board and stand together, says Eloine Barry, CEO of Africa Media Agency.

COVID-19 is a deadly disease that poses an immediate threat to the African continent and has the potential to take many lives. It is crucial that coronavirus transmission in Africa is restricted as quickly as possible to prevent a surge in cases and deaths, which would have a devastating impact on Africas already strained health systems.

The current pandemic is a striking reminder of the need for stronger health systems. This is a prime opportunity to take measures aimed at social protection and sustainable financing of the health sector, underlines Dr. Magda Robalo, Minister of Public Health of Guinea Bissau.

For prevention measures to be effective, the time to act is now.
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Daisy Lucidi got her start in Brazilian broadcasting in radios earliest days, climbing on a box to reach the microphone and reciting poems at age 6. She became a well-known radio figure and then familiar to later generations of Brazilians who watched her on wildly popular telenovelas.

Ms. Lucidi, who parlayed that popularity into a career in politics, died on Thursday at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro. She was 90. The cause was Covid-19, her grandson Luiz Claudio Mendez said.
Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 8, 2020) -ZEN Graphene Solutions Ltd. (TSXV: ZEN) ("ZEN" or the "Company") reports on the following corporate activities and agreements:



Warrants Extension

ZEN will be applying to the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") for approval to extend the expiry date of 655,848 common share purchase warrants. On June 22, 2018, the Corporation completed a private placement issuing 1,311,693 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.55 per Unit. Each Unit was comprised of one common share in the capital stock of the Company and one-half () of one purchase warrant (a "Warrant"), with each whole such Warrant exercisable into one common share at an exercise price of $0.80 per common share until June 22, 2020.

The Company is proposing to extend the expiry date of the warrants by an additional 12 months to June 22, 2021. All other terms and conditions of the warrants will remain the same. The proposed extension of the expiry date is conditional upon the receipt of approval from the Exchange.

Shares for Debt Agreements

ZEN has also entered into an agreement to issue 115,711 Common Shares to settle an aggregate amount of $45,200 owed to AGORA Internet Relations Corp. All securities issued in exchange for debt will be subject to a hold period from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The Company also reports the issuance of shares in connection with its previously announced shares for debt agreement with Alphabet Creative. The Company issued 47,222 common shares at a deemed price of $0.36 per common share in settlement of a debt of $17,000 owed by the Company. The common shares issued in connection with the shares for debt agreement were subject to a hold period until May 1, 2020, in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Stock Option Grant

The Board of Directors of ZEN has also granted stock options ("Options") today, to its directors and certain officers, employees and consultants. These Options are exercisable for an aggregate of 750,000 Common Shares, at an exercise price of $0.40 per Common Share for a period of five years from the date of grant. Each director of the Company was granted 50,000 options which will vest as to one-third (1/3) on the date of grant, one-third (1/3) after six months of the date of grant and one-third (1/3) after 12 months of the date of grant. The remaining 500,000 options issued to officers, employees and consultants will vest as to one-third (1/3) on the date of grant, one-third (1/3) on the first anniversary of the date of grant and one-third (1/3) on the second anniversary of the date of grant.

About ZEN Graphene Solutions Ltd.

ZEN is an emerging graphene technology solutions company with a focus on the development of graphene-based nanomaterial products and applications. The unique Albany Graphite Project provides the company with a potential competitive advantage in the graphene market as independent labs in Japan, UK, Israel, USA and Canada have independently demonstrated that ZEN's Albany Graphite/Naturally PureTM is an ideal precursor material which easily converts (exfoliates) to graphene, using a variety of mechanical, chemical and electrochemical methods.

For further information:

Dr. Francis Dube, Chief Executive Officer

Tel: +1 (289) 821-2820

Email: drfdube@zengraphene.com

To find out more about ZEN Graphene Solutions Ltd., please visit our website at www.ZENGraphene.com. A copy of this news release and all material documents in respect of the Company may be obtained on ZEN's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.ca.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements. More particularly, this news release contains statements concerning the acceptance of the engagement of Storyboard by the TSX Venture Exchange and the anticipated monthly fees payable to Storyboard. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Although ZEN believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. ZEN 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. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55612
When Argentinian blues guitarist Daniel De Vita was hired to perform with Wexford songwriter Finch Ferox in Qatar in early March, he didn't expect it would ultimately end up with him being stranded in Enniscorthy as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking to this newspaper, he said events took an unexpected turn, resulting in him living with local musician and promoter of the Blackstairs Blues Festival, John Murphy, and his family.

'I was hired to play in Qatar as a back-up musician when the pandemic [occurred],' he said.

Having to leave Qatar, Daniel had to fly back to Ireland and, from there, hoped to get connecting flights back home to Argentina.

However, the Argentinian government shut its borders and didn't allow anyone back in, so when Daniel arrived in Ireland on March 15, his luck ran out the next day when the Argentinian government shut its borders to anyone coming in.

'Because they did that, I couldn't go back to Argentina,' said Daniel.

He intended flying to Spain and from there getting a flight to Buenos Aires, however, it didn't work out. 'There were no flights from Europe to Argentina.'

Daniel had gotten to know Finch Ferox [Sinead Hayes] through his appearances at the Blackstairs Blues Festival in Enniscorthy and when she asked him to back her in Qatar he was delighted to do so.

'We began playing in February and we had gigs every day except Sunday and Monday and it was good,' he said.

'Through the Blackstairs Blues Festival, I got to know John and Sinead and we got chatting and that is how I came to play with her,' he added.

While Daniel has been here, the Argentinian ambassador passed away and that didn't help matters. However, Daniel said his country's embassy wasn't helping a great deal anyway even prior to that.

'They wouldn't answer my calls and they were slow to respond to my emails as well,' he said.

'They did contact me to say talk to the airline but the airline told me to talk to the embassy so I was like caught in the middle of nowhere.'

He said things improved slightly over the last few days as the Argentinian government has slowly begun to allow people back in to the country.

'The government slowly began to put people on a list but they were obviously prioritising pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly,' he said.

'Because I am 32, healthy, and have a place to stay here with John, I am not registered as priority,' he added.

However, Daniel does suffer from clinical depression and panic attacks and when he notified the authorities about this, things changed.

'I am supposed to be on a flight from London to Buenos Aires next week,' he said.

He spoke of the affect that the global pandemic has had on the mental health of people in general and, from his own perspective, the fact that he is not in control of his own destiny is what's the most difficult to deal with.

'I am used to touring for two-and-a-half months once or twice a year, but the main difference is that when I go usually, it's my choice, but in this case it's not up to me,' he said.

'There is uncertainty now, and not knowing an awful lot about Covid-19 and with the government regulations, it's added another element and that is difficult,' he added.

Daniel said that not knowing for sure he will be able to fly back home brings its own pressure.

'If someone could say "you will be back in Buenos Aires in three months", that would calm me down a lot but it's the not knowing that is the problem,' he said.

'Hopefully, the flight next week will work out.'

He said that while he understood the Argentine government adopting an approach of restricting access to people from outside the country the fact it refused entry to its own citizens was 'hard to take'.

'I would expect them not to take in people from other countries but to not take in their own citizens is extreme,' he said.

'However, they are slowly and steadily starting to take citizens back into the country so we'll see.'

While he may be stranded it hasn't stopped him focusing on his music and with a new album due to imminent release, he hopes to release two singles over the coming weeks to promote the full album which he expects to go on sale in July.

'I am about to release a new record but I am just not going to be playing music live for a while,' he said, with regard to the current worldwide public health restrictions and how they have impacted on his work.

'I would just say the year 2020 is gone for me and most musicians,' he said.

'However, I think people are all trying to adapt and people are doing a lot of Facebook and Instagram gigs but I always preferred to face a live crowd,' said Daniel.

'However, I don't think we have any choice,' he added.

'People are adapting but it's not the same thing as performing live.'

He said his preference for live performance is such that even if he was playing in a pub with nobody listening, it's more attractive than playing online.

He also feels that it's the same for people listening because there is an appeal to experiencing a live gig that cannot be replicated online.

'It's not the same as having loud guitars and drums and the feedback of the crowd.'

To promote his album, Daniel will be releasing two singles in May and June and they will be followed by the album release.

His father was interested in blues and Daniel grew up immersed in the genre, however, it was his mother who noted that he was spending too much time in front of a computer playing games and she said he was going to have to get more productive and active.

'I was about eleven when she said I was spending too much time playing video games and she said you will have to do something else,' he said.

One guitar later and Daniel found his calling: 'She pretty much forced me to play in the beginning and that made me the person I am today,'

Daniel books all his own gigs and while in the beginning it was a labour-intensive task, he said the more touring he has done the more good contacts he has made all over the world.

'For the first couple of tours I sent loads of emails and WhatsApp messages but you meet people at festivals and make contacts and now if I want to book gigs in France or Poland I know people I can contact and they will do it and it makes it easier,' said Daniel.

While he is well versed at performing in a solo acoustic capacity Daniel prefers the excitement and intensity of a full band.

'Some people prefer the intimacy of a small, jazzy type gig, and I can adapt to whatever situation arises but I just do what I have to do.'

One other setback he suffered since arriving here is that his phone has died and that means it's a little more difficult to stay in touch with his family and to arrange his flight back to Argentina.

However, he has received great support from John Murphy and his family and he is appreciative of that.

It's been a long road for the talented bluesman and while he fully intends playing again at the Blackstairs Blues Festival, for the moment, he just wants to get home
Federal regulators have slapped the troubled New Jersey nursing home where 17 bodies were discovered on Easter Sunday in a makeshift morgue with $220,235 in fines and penalties, finding failures in infection control practices in a facility where COVID-17 has so far claimed at least 66 lives.

Andover Subacute Rehabilitation Center in Sussex County was also cited by U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for lapses in patient care, amid the deadly outbreak.

CMS, however, made no reference or discussion to the bodies being temporarily stored on site, after a surge in deaths overwhelmed administrators over the holiday weekend.

New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Thursday that a National Guard deployment will bring 22 soldiers to the nursing home as soon as Friday to help provide care. New admissions have been barred by the state, and the facility was ordered last month to retain a new infection control specialist and other key personnel.

Andover Subacute consists of two separate buildings. Andover I is a smaller, low-rise facility, where 13 people have died from the coronavirus. Andover II, a larger two-story complex, is set up for dementia and Alzheimer patients and those with mental health issues. To date, 53 people have died there. The CMS enforcement action was focused on Andover II.

The owners must now submit a so-called Plan of Correction for the deficiencies cited by CMS inspectors within ten calendar days.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist., who has been pushing to get the National Guard into Andover Subacute as well as the states VA nursing homes, had pressed early for an investigation into the situation at Andover in the days immediately after the Easter incident.

I am absolutely disgusted and heartbroken for the residents, staff, and families about the conditions this CMS inspection has uncovered, Gottheimer said. The loss of life and the circumstances that so many of the residents faced are a complete tragedy.

Carol Novrit, administrator of the Sussex County Department of Health and Human Services told NJ Advance Media that the CMS report confirmed the countys suspicions about conditions in the facility, calling them deplorable.

The report underscores that the facility really requires assistance, and the state now has seen fit to provide the intervention and resources,Novrit said.

CMS inspectors went to the facility on April 21, after the first reports of more than a dozen bodies being stored unclaimed made national headlines. According to a letter sent to administrators, the survey found the facility was not in substantial compliance.

An inspection report, which has yet to be publicly released, noted failures in proper infection control practices that had the potential to affect all residents in the facility through the development and transmission of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

But the survey, according to the congressmans office, found patients with elevated temperatures and no documented clinical assessment or follow-up from medical staff. A patient under investigation COVID-19 was also found to have been being placed in a room with a resident who was asymptomatic. After the patients test came back positive, the resident was only then moved to a different room.

One staff member was observed with a face mask positioned below both her nose and mouth, down below her chin, in close proximity to eight other staff members, as she loudly called out assignments and instructions.

Multiple instances of insufficient protective equipment usage was also cited.

Sussex County Freeholder Anthony Fasano said what the inspection uncovered was horrifying and inexcusable.

The conditions that many of our residents face in this facility were completely outrageous and unsurprisingly non-compliant with federal regulations, according to this report, he said. My prayers are with the residents, staff and families who have been impacted by this terrible crisis.

According to current county data, the Andover Subacute II facility currently has 133 residents and 54 staff members who have tested positive for COVID-19.

In a statement, Chaim Mutty Scheinbaum, 37, the CEO of Alliance Healthcare of Lakewood, which owns the facility, said Andover Subacute I and Andover Subacute II were separately licensed long-term care facilities with separate patient populations, but both have implemented similar protocols to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Federal regulators with CMS have been conducting a nationwide review of long-term care facilities to review their infection control protocols. The review of Andover Subacute I concluded that the facility was in compliance with applicable guidelines. CMS noted areas of improvement for Andover Subacute II, but determined that the facilitys remediation plan was acceptable as fatalities continue to drop at the facility, Scheinbaum said. We look forward to continuing our cooperative relationship with CMS and the New Jersey Department of Health as we, and nursing home patients and staff across the country, continue to battle this deadly virus.

In addition to Andover, Scheinbaum owns nursing homes in Pennsauken and Cinnaminson in New Jersey, and two other nursing homes in Pennsylvania, those records show. In its last inspection by CMS, Andover II was rated just one out of five stars, or much below average. Andover I ranked slightly better, with three out of five stars, or average.

Last year Andover Subacute received $22.3 million in state Medicaid funding. With a daily Medicaid rate of $206.83 at Andover I, and $192.56 at Andover II, the nursing home this year to date has so far received $7.9 million in Medicaid payments, according to the state Department of Human Services.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com.

More:

Four more Berks Heim nursing home residents have died from COVID-19

Faced with 20,000 dead from coronavirus, nursing homes seek shield from lawsuits

Calls to uncover secret COVID-19 numbers at some Pa. nursing homes grow louder
We want people to be safe when they go to work; we want people to be safe when they go to school. We want people to be safe in all their activities, and they want to know that others have been tested around them so that nobody is without an opportunity to get a test.
As many Michigan businesses sit idle during the coronavirus pandemic, only 28% of business owners are positive their business will survive the pandemic, while 14% said theyre either likely to go out of business or close to it, per a late April survey.

The Small Business Association of Michigan surveyed about 1,300 small business owners in the state, finding 44% of them aren't open right now and 60% have laid off at least one employee.

The data doesnt come as a surprise to many small business owners, like Phil Anglin, longtime owner of Rhinos Hometown Pub in Plainwell and The Richland Pub in Richland.

"I already know of a few that have closed, Anglin said. Were just not built to go months and months and months without revenue or with limited revenue.

The economic impact from the pandemic is like nothing Anglins ever seen  saying the closest blip for him was when smoking was banned in restaurants.

Ive never felt (as) helpless, as a business owner, Anglin said. When you take away our ability to make decisions  it changes your entire outlook. I literally cannot make a living. And it has nothing to do with my skill set.

Michigan restaurants to Gov. Whitmer: We want to reopen May 29

Entrepreneurs are naturally optimistic people, SBAM President Brian Calley said. So 14% of owners saying their business might not survive the pandemic is a big deal, he said.

Thats really, really bad, Calley said. We have to make sure that it doesnt turn out that way. The idea of 14% of small businesses failing in such a short period of time would really be a disaster for our communities."

SBAM is sharing best practices with business on how to be safe, once allowed to reopen. Its also advocating for Michigan to safely restart the economy, Calley said. SBAM Chairman Milan Gandhi is on Gov. Gretchen Whitmers Michigan Economic Recovery Council.

"Over the long term, there's no substitute for actually being in business," Calley said. "We have to figure out how to live with (COVID-19) and operate with it."

Even people who know their small business will survive are worried.

Ginny Sherrow owns the Fenton Winery and Brewery, which tried doing takeout services when the dine-in ban started, but eventually couldnt justify it. The business hosts weddings and other events, many of which are being canceled or postponed.

"We're 100% (sure) that we're reopening," Sherrow said. "It's just going to take a long time to recover."

Fenton Winery and Brewery already has a COVID response plan in place, and is ready to reopen with new precautions immediately, once allowed, Sherrow said.

While some businesses are now allowed to reopen, there's fear the economy could have a longer-term impact on their operations. Even a small dip in consumer confidence can be a big deal for small businesses, Calley said.

Coronavirus precautions wont be too cumbersome for businesses like Mid-Michigan Asphalt Paving, said secretary Courtney Winter, whose brother started the 10-employee business in 2007.

The business was shut down initially for most of its jobs, Winter said. The company mostly does residential driveways, small parking lots and paving for pole barns  jobs not usually considered essential.

"The feeling for us  it could still hit a month or two down the road, if people just aren't comfortable with the economy," Winter said. "We weren't hit hard from the get-go. But now it's just an ongoing thing."

While many businesses are ready to restart with new precautions in place, there could be some pushback from others.

Per the SBAM survey, 38% of business owners havent and dont plan to deep clean their facility, while more than half said its not appropriate for regulators to require personal protective equipment or health screenings for employees at a business of their type.

Michigans stay-at-home order and ban on opening places of public accommodation  like restaurants, casinos, libraries and theaters  are set to expire at the end of the day on May 28.

COVID-19 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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Related stories:

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This Michigan moms side-gig as a delivery driver has been a saving grace. But, restaurants are paying a price.

Michigan restaurants to Gov. Whitmer: We want to reopen May 29

Michigan is in Phase 3 of 6 in coronavirus response and recovery, governor says

From closing restaurants to requiring masks, Gov. Whitmer has issued 69 executive orders in 56 days

5 things to know about Michigan Gov. Whitmers extended stay-at-home order

Michigan restaurants projected to lose $1.2B in April, survey indicates
No return to normality for 'several years'

Air France-KLM on Thursday announced a first-quarter loss of 1.8 billion euros and warned of more woe to come as the coronavirus pandemic decimates international travel.

The group said it did not expect to reach pre-crisis levels of passenger demand "before several years".

Chief executive Benjamin Smith was quoted in a statement as saying the company was working on "a renewal plan" that was likely to include staff cuts.

The Franco-Dutch airline said it had suffered a net loss of 1.8 billion euros ($1.94 billion) in the first three months of the year, more than five times its 324-million-euro loss in the first quarter of 2019.

The group highlighted 455 million euros in "over hedged" fuel purchases that were never used as the pandemic collapsed demand for oil and hence prices which tumbled to more than 20-year lows before recovering slightly.

Its first-quarter result underscored the effect of the virus crisis which hit France in full in March, with a nationwide lockdown implemented on March 17.

Second quarter figures risk being even more disastrous with most planes now stuck on the tarmac as international travel grinds to a virtual standstill.

Chief financial officer Frederic Gagey told a conference call that the airline had even started the year "very well in January and February".

French deputy transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari told France 2 television that Smith had hinted at "more voluntary departures than direct job cuts" at the airline.

Rival British Airways has announced plans to shed 12,000 jobs and United Airlines is looking to eliminate 3,450.

'Slow capacity resumption'

The group noted "a strong performance at the start of the year with passenger unit revenue up 0.8 percent" at the end of February.

"March 2020 however was strongly impacted by the expansion of the virus and consequential globally imposed travel restrictions to counter the spread of the COVID-19 virus."

The group said that 10.5 percent of its capacity had been suspended in the quarter.

But looking ahead, capacity was forecast to be 95 percent lower in the second quarter than in the same period a year earlier, before easing back slightly to a still hefty 80 percent drop in the third.

The group predicted "a progressive lifting of border restrictions in 2020, enabling a slow capacity resumption" in the summer, but also "a prolonged negative impact on passenger demand, not expected to recover to pre-crisis levels before several years."

Air France is to benefit from seven billion euros in French loans either from or backed by the state along with an expected two to four billion euros in aid from the Dutch government.

The European Commission has given its green light to the package.

The French government has insisted that the help is "not a blank cheque" and is dependent on the airline notably becoming greener by reducing carbon emissions, using more modern aircraft and cutting domestic routes.

Explore further British Airways parent dives into huge quarterly loss

 2020 AFP
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-09 01:55:51|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday that his country will have to accept tough conditions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to get out of its deteriorating financial situation, a local media outlet reported.

"We may have to accept tough conditions suggested by the IMF in return for its financial support, which falls in the interest of the our country by encouraging us to make brave decisions," Aoun was quoted as saying by Elnashra, a local independent newspaper.

The president also said he will discuss with the IMF the losses Lebanon has to suffer for hosting a big number of Syrian refugees.

"The cost of hosting refugees reached 25 billion U.S. dollars until 2018," he said, adding the closure of Syrian borders has caused Lebanon a total of 43 billion dollars in losses.

Lebanon has submitted an official request to the IMF for funds for restructuring its public debt and implementing necessary reforms in the country. Enditem
PHOENIX  A Sun Lakes man reported missing has been found dead after an apparent mountain bike accident, according to authorities.

Maricopa County Sheriffs officials said the body of 67-year-old James Robert Ozzie Wells was located Wednesday afternoon near a canal south of Sun Lakes with a crashed bike nearby.

Sheriffs officials told Phoenix radio station KTAR-FM that foul play isnt suspected in Wells death.

Wells was thought to have taken his bike out Monday night to ride at the San Tan Mountains.

His family reported him missing Tuesday morning. They told KTAR that Wells liked to ride his bike at night to avoid the heat.
Notice was served in court yesterday on a Croatian national to stay away from an art college building in Cork and not to harass staff at the premises.

In a previous case, it emerged that the respondent was trying to gain access to a portal to another dimension where he would be safe from demons.

Barrister Cian Cotter brought the application before Judge Helen Boyle at Cork Circuit Court against Ante Brekalo, aged 26, who allegedly broke into the CIT College of Art building at Grand Parade, by the Nano Nagle pedestrian bridge.

Mr Cotter said Mr Brekalo trespassed at the building on April 27 and that this followed three previous incidents of trespass dating back to June 17, October 10 and October 13, last year, he said.

Judge Boyle granted the injunctive relief sought by the CIT, requiring the respondent not to attend at the premises or harass staff.

The judge adjourned the case for mention in a weeks time. Mr Cotter said he was aware that the accused had been a resident of a mental health services unit in Cork and that he would write to the director of that facility, notifying him of yesterdays injunction against Mr Brekalo.

Previously, at a criminal trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court Mr Brekalo, who is in his mid-20s, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to seven different charges.

The jury took only a few minutes to deliver a verdict that he was not guilty by reason of insanity on all seven counts.

All of the counts related to the same place  CIT Crawford College of Art and Design at Grand Parade, Cork.

He was charged with burglary whereby he allegedly trespassed with intent to attempt to cause criminal damage or to cause damage on December 18, 2017, December 29, 2017, and again on January 4, 2018.

Tom Creed, defending, read from a background psychiatric report on the accused during that October 2018 trial to the effect that Mr Brekalo was so agitated on one of the occasions that it required five gardai to arrest him.

Mr Creed said that the defence accepted the facts outlined by the prosecution of the defendant breaking into the art college and resisting arrest in the manner described.

Mr Creed read from Dr Ronan Mullaneys background report on the accused which gave details of the psychotic condition of the accused that made him unable to refrain from committing the act.

He became convinced that it was through the art college that he could gain access to a portal to another dimension and that he would be safe from demons in this dimension.

Mr Creed said Dr Ronan Mullaneys report showed that the defendant suffered from severe schizophrenia, complicated by a history of cannabis use resulting in bizarre persecutory feelings.
Millions of nurses walk from room to room and patient to patient constantly pumping sanitizer dispensers, at least 100 times a shift, leaving their hands irritated and raw. Most nurses are not provided personal hand sanitizers to carry with them while working throughout their day. Furthermore, at the end of their day, they often leave healthcare facilities, agencies, and their in-home patients, still without their own bottle for protection. Having their own unrationed supply of gentle disinfectant would make all of the difference for our angels of mercy.

Producing hand sanitizer in bulk is usually done by large manufacturing companies. So, what do Sopiea Mitchell, Cosmetic Chemist/Owner of 3toZEN, Marsha Harrison, Marketing Consultant, Leslie Silket, the President of Nurse's Children Foundation, and NFL's own Omar Bolden have in common? This passionate small but mighty group known as Hand to Hand Coast to Coast, launched a GoFundMe campaign that produces and delivers soothing-formulated hand sanitizers directly to nurses for free.

"We all look for ways to make a difference and we all have something to give. Each of us play a vital role in this project and we know that at the end of the day, it's about taking care of our nurses because they take care of us." Sopiea Mitchell, Hand to Hand Coast to Coast

This Nurse's Week, Hand to Hand Coast to Coast needs your donation. Our nurses need the proper equipment to fight this war. Let's honor our nurses. Every $1 donated equals 1 bottle of Nurses Care hand sanitizer that will be formulated, packaged and delivered to nurses across the U.S. With millions of nurses in need, let's get it in their hands.

To Donate and help fast-track this project delivery, go to:

gofundme.com/f/one-million-hand-sanitizers-for-our-nurses.

About Hand to Hand Coast to Coast

Hand to Hand Coast to Coast is a caring group of dedicated individuals donating their time, skills, and efforts to raise funds for raw materials to produce 1M Nurses Care hand sanitizers and distribute them to nurses throughout the nation. The team's production manager is cosmetic chemist Sopiea Mitchell, Owner of 3toZEN. The campaign's marketing project manager and consultant, Marsha Harrison is joined by graphic designer, Lori Winter of Explore Creative and radio personality Keith Koo at Silicon Valley Insider. For nurse networking and outreach the team relies on Leslie Silket, President of Nurse's Children Foundation. To round out the team is Omar Bolden, Cornerback and member of the Super Bowl 50 winning Denver Broncos. He has experienced the effects of how the coronavirus disease can devastate lives and is using his voice to raise awareness.

The team is managing their campaign through GoFundMe Hand to Hand Coast to Coast. With a goal of 1M hand sanitizers for U.S. nurses, donate to https://www.gofundme.com/f/one-million-hand-sanitizers-for-our-nurses and follow them @handtohandcoasttocoast. There are millions of nurses in need; let's get it in their hands.

Media Contact: Marsha Harrison

Tel510-289-9358

email[email protected]

SOURCE Hand to Hand Coast to Coast
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday offered condolences to the families of those killed in the Aurangabad train accident and said that he is pained beyond words at the loss of lives in the mishap.

Pained beyond words at the loss of lives due to a rail accident in Maharashtra. I have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal, concerned authorities in the central govt and railway administration to ensure all possible assistance. My condolences with the bereaved families, Shah tweeted today.

At least 16 migrant labourers were killed and five others injured when a freight train ran over them between Jalna and Aurangabad, informed Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) of South Central Railway (SCR) on Friday.

The injured have been shifted to Aurangabad civil hospital. The mishap occurred early today in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.

As per Railways officials, the migrant labourers hailed from Madhya Pradesh and were walking home from Maharashtras Jalna and after walking for about 36 km, they had stopped to take rest when they fell asleep.
Construction work has resumed across more than 200 projects in Delhi-NCR but real estate developers say the biggest challenge they face is that almost 50 percent of the workforce may return to their villages and construction work may get further delayed by six months to a year.

The government on May 4 extended the nationwide lockdown to contain novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, by two more weeks. Construction activities in urban areas have been limited to in-situ construction, where workers are available on site and no workers are required to be brought in from outside, and construction of renewable energy projects, the guidelines said.

The government has also permitted labourers to return to their hometown.

Real estate developers stopped construction works on sites following the nationwide lockdown imposed from March 25 to contain the pandemic.

The government on April 15 had relaxed guidelines in lockdown 2.0, permitting some construction activity in non-COVID-19 hotspots starting April 20. However, these builders would have to ensure strict social distancing guidelines and were applicable to projects construction workers were locally available on the site.

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

Under the new guidelines, contractors along with developers will need to ensure that social distancing is maintained at sites and will need to find ways and means of achieving it. For basic hygiene and safety precautions, companies can regularly sanitise sites and provide labourers with masks, soap and sanitisers for washing hands frequently.

Secretary, housing and urban affairs ministry, Durga Shanker Mishra tweeted that work on the construction of 2,800 flats under slum development project of Delhi Development Authority in Kathputli Colony has commenced in these testing times when the whole country is under lockdown because of the spread of COVID19 pandemic.

We are looking at absorbing more manpower from within Delhi and have requested for transfer of skilled workers languishing in shelter camps. We are maintaining the highest standards of safety, hygiene and well-being. Structure and finishing have been started simultaneously and if we are able to manage even current level of workers availability, we may offer possession for the first batch for possession within 120 working days subject to availability of external infrastructure, said Navin M Raheja, CMD, Raheja Developers Ltd whose company is constructing the project.

All construction sites across the country will have a COVID-19 marshal or a nodal officer to ensure that health, sanitation and hygiene measures are being followed.

Mishra also said in his tweet that detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guidelines for construction sites have been chalked out. All construction material arriving at the site will be kept idle at the designated site for three days. Thereafter, packaged material and pipes, fittings will be disinfected to curb the spread of the virus among workers, he tweeted.

Bathroom and toilet usage has been scheduled to avoid crowding. There is a strict ban on the usage of gutka, tobacco, pan and meals are to be consumed at designated areas on the sites. Workers or engineers will have to pay a hefty fine if they do not abide by these rules, he tweeted.

Checklists and audits will be conducted on a daily basis. Only 50 percent of the engineering staff is allowed at the site and they would need to commute by their private vehicles. Entry of unnecessary visitors is strictly prohibited, he tweeted.

Mandatory thermal scanning of everyone entering the construction site will also be done, the SOPs said.

NAREDCO-Uttar Pradesh President RK Arora told Moneycontrol that construction has resumed in projects in Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway.

Construction has restarted at our sites in Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway from May 5. As many as 4,500 labourers are working across our sites, he said.

The company has taken all precautions and is complying with the SOPs stipulated by the district administration for the safety of the workers such as thermal scanning of body temperature, wearing masks, mandatory sanitation sprays for workers and maintaining social distancing norms, he said.

However, he said a lot of migrant workers may want to return to their native place following the central governments permission. This is our biggest fear and if that happens, projects may get delayed by almost a year, he said.

The Noida Authority has granted permission to 17 group housing builder projects with 3,100 labour, 34 other industry or commercial construction with 2,200 labour and 30 Noida Authority projects with around 650 labour, Noida Authority sources said.

As many as 55 real estate projects had applied for permission to Greater Noida Authority to resume construction work and 51 of them have been given the nod to restart work at their sites.

In Ghaziabad, the administration issued guidelines for resuming construction work on May 4. Gaurav Gupta, President, CREDAI NCR, said Ghaziabad administration has issued standard operating procedures (SOPs) under which permission to restart construction would be issued online. In some sites, COVID marshals will also be deputed.

"Around 40 projects have been granted permission to restart construction in Ghaziabad," Gupta said.

Ghaziabad Development Authority has decided to appoint COVID marshals at construction sites in the city to ensure that norms specified by the health department and the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) directed by the Authority are being adhered to.

Construction has been permitted only for labourers residing within the site. We have conducted medical tests on all our labourers and are complying with all the guidelines and observing social distancing norms, he said.

Our biggest worry is that almost 50 percent labourers wish to return to their hometown and that would delay the project further, he said.

The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) has also allowed work to resume at 60 construction sites, provided workers reside on the premises and social distancing norms are followed, CEO VS Kundu had told Moneycontrol.

Around 60 sites have been given permission to restart construction in Gurugram. The chief consideration was that labour should be staying on the premises and they should not be transported, Kundu, who is also additional Chief Secretary of Haryana, said.

Parveen Jain, Vice Chairman, NAREDCO and CMD, Tulip Infratech Pvt, told Moneycontrol his firm received GMDAs permissions to restart work at three sites.

As many as 500 labourers are currently residing across the three sites. The biggest challenge is to retain them now. We had a total of 800 before the pandemic broke out, Jain said.

Jain said availability of cement was proving to be a big challenge. It (a bag of cement) is currently retailing at Rs 350 per bag. We have requested the government to step in and resolve the matter, he said, adding there should be no supply chain hindrances or it would lead to another six months of delay.

Before the lockdown, a bag of 50-kg cement retailed for Rs 180.

Signature Global Group has been granted permission to resume construction across 17 projects in Gurugram and Karnal, said Chairman Pradeep Aggarwal, who is also the chairman of ASSOCHAM National Council on Real Estate, Housing and Urban Development.

According to KPMG, total construction projects worth more than Rs 59 lakh crore are under development, most of which would have been impacted severely by COVID-19. The Indian construction sector employs over 49 million people, close to 12 percent of the nations working population. Further, it has a multiplier effect on nearly 250 allied industries.
The trial on appeal of the four Iwacu(one of the last independent media in Burundi) journalists arrested on 22 October 2019 in Boubanza province, northwestern Burundi, while covering a surprise incursion by a group of Burundian rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo, took place on 6 May.

For more than two hours, the lawyers of the four journalists tried to prove that the prosecution case was empty.

The prosecutor has never been able to prove that the journalists had any contact with rebels. In the first instance, the lack of evidence had led to the charges being reclassified. Initially accused of complicity, the journalists were finally found guilty of attempted complicity in undermining state security.

For the journalists lawyer, Mr. Clement Retirakiza, the accusation is unfounded. He is therefore asking for an acquittal.

The four journalists were sentenced at first instance last January to two and a half years in prison and a fine of one million Burundian francs (482 euros) each for attempted complicity in undermining state security.

Several human rights and free expression organizations are also calling for the release of journalists in Iwacu and denouncing the pressure exerted by the authorities on the press.

The judges now have 30 days to give their verdict.
First they wandered the empty city streets, then they partied in North Beach, one even took a beach day at Kirby Cove in Marin to enjoy the view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Now they've taken to the rooftops.

Increased coyote sightings have been an unexpected consequence of San Francisco's two-month coronavirus shutdown. With less people on the streets and more space to roam, the native wild dogs have enjoyed the opportunity to reclaim the city.
Courtesy of Milieu

Milieu magazines spring Designer Showhouse, postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, has been rescheduled to 10 a.m.-4 p.m. June 6-7 and June 13-14. Theyll observe safe social distancing, admitting guests in small increments.

The 7,400-square-foot Edwin Lutyens-style home at 3736 Del Monte in River Oaks, was built by Jennifer Hamelet of Mirador Builders. Top designers from the U.S., Canada and Europe  including Kathryn Ireland, Lisa Fine, Carol Glasser and Jennifer Vaughn Miller  will design the interiors. Milieu, a luxury shelter and lifestyle magazine, was founded in 2013 by Houston interior designer Pamela Pierce. The showhome event will benefit Clayton Dabney for Kids with Cancer, a group that provides assistance to families with children who have cancer.
After a three-day stoppage,the



Shramik special train services resumed on Friday ferrying over 3,500 migrant labourers stranded in Bengaluru to their home states.

The resumption of train services from the state led to a rush among migrant labourers in Mangaluru too with hundreds of workers staging a protest in front of the central railway station there demanding that they be sent home.

Three trains -- two bound for Lucknow, capital city of Uttar Pradesh, and one for Danapur in Bihar, commenced their journey today,the South Western Railways (SWR) said.

"Today, the Shramik Special to Lucknow departed at 4.25 pm from Chikkabanavara station with 1,200 passengers on board, second one left Malur at 5.45 pm carrying 1,200 adults and seven children to Danapur (Bihar) and the third train to Lucknow departed from Malur at 7.55 pm with 1,198 passengers on board," the SWR said in a statement.

The SWR had run eight train services for migrant workers before abruptly stopping it on Tuesday on the direction of the State government.

The direction came after the builders called on Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa highlighting their plight that their projects would come to a halt if the migrant labourers were allowed to go back home.

After coming under sharp criticism, the government finally agreed to operate the Shramik special trains to the northern and eastern states but preferred seeking the consent of the states where these migrant labourers belong to.

According to Revenue Minister R Ashoka, whose department is overseeing the movement of migrant labourers, consent was sought from 11 states out of which six have not yet responded.

"We have booked 16 trains from Bengaluru from May 8 to May 15 to send migrant workers to 11 states but so far only five states have given us permission while other six have not given their consent," Ashoka told reporters in Bengaluru.

According to the minister, states which have not given permission to run trains ferrying migrant workers are Jharkhand, Manipur, Tripura, Rajasthan, Odisha and Gujarat.

"But, we have booked trains to these states (which have not given approval).So there is no basis behind the allegation that we are forcibly holding back the labourers," Ashoka said.

Despite an assurance that the government was keen to send the labourers back to their state, fear persisted among the labourers in the State that they may not be allowed to go back to their home states.

Hundreds of migrant labourers at a construction work site in Bengaluru claimed that they are being kept confined at the place and appealed to the government to send them back to their native places.

The workers also alleged the living conditions were difficult at the site in Anchepalya on Tumakuru Road where a huge township is coming up and flagged health concerns besides lamenting that they have not been paid wages since the coronavirus lockdown began.

"We are 1,800 workers here.We are living in extreme difficult conditions.

We have to stay inside rooms," said Kumar Mandal from Bokaro in Jharkhand, appealing for arrangements to send them back.

The migrant labourers made a video on their plight showing the deployment of police and them being 'confined' at the construction site.

Mandal made an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to let them go home.

"I urge Modiji and the Chief Minister here to let us go home at the earliest," he said.

The Jharkhand worker said no health check-up was being conducted for those at the site.

Another labourer claimed none of the workers have been given any cash ever since the lockdown was enforced in March.

"We don't have cash.The builder has confined us here and is not letting anyone go out.

Thankfully he is giving us food but that alone is not sufficient.We want to go back home," the labourer said.

The about the resumption of train services from the state led to a rush among migrant labourers in Mangaluru too.

Hundreds of migrant workers belonging to northern states staged a protest in front of the Mangaluru central railway station demanding that arrangements be made for them to return to home towns.

The crowding of workers at the railway station is learnt to be prompted by a social media post which went viral giving false information that free special trains have been arranged for workers, sources said.

More than 700 workers residing at Surathkal, Nanthoor, Kulur and Derebail near here reached the station by foot.

The workers, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand stayed put at the station and refused to disperse, despite appeals by police, who rushed to the spot, to leave.

Police quoted the migrants as saying that they were stuck in the city without jobs, money and adequate food and that they were even willing to walk to their home states if the special trains were not operated immediately.

The workers, who initially refused to disperse, went away only after city police commissioner P S Harsha assured them that arrangements will be made for their travel back home within three days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This, she explains, is a return to her roots. In her early 30s, shes moved back to Los Angeles (specifically to a metaphorically ideal, ramshackle cabin on a crumbling hillside in Laurel Canyon), and is using this time while I wait for my next life to start to call up her childhood and discover how she became a woman in love with conflict.

Image The table of contents is a veritable whos who of the people who have let Danler down. Credit... 1

Danler tries to impose structure onto this wide-webbed life story, which ranges from her birth right up to the writing of this book. Its first section, Mother, details the woman who raised two daughters alone, working 40 hours a week as a secretary, helplessly attached to the bottle, and eventually the victim of a crippling brain aneurysm. Somewhat down on her luck, Danlers mother was raised with the grit and sense of taste to always elevate herself above her station. Mason Pearson hairbrushes, an extravagance that started with my great-grandmother Adelaide and has made its way to me, still remind Danler of the time her mother hit her with one across the cheek.

In the next section, Father, come the travails of her once-successful aerospace engineer father, who fled her life when she was 3 but took her back in again in high school, only to leave her with no real supervision, but plenty of NyQuil and Ambien to lull herself to sleep. He is, she learns from her aunt at age 8, a cocaine addict, albeit a charming one.

The third and final section is devoted to the Monster, a married man with whom Danler has been carrying on an uncertain love affair. Hes a jerk. (Theres real pleasure to be found in imagining him reading Stray.) The table of contents is a veritable whos who of the people who have let Danler down.

The question Danler seems to be asking of herself in Stray is: Am I a victim or a perpetrator? Or: How does a victim become a perpetrator? Certainly, tales of her mother yanking her hair and screaming in her face (You think youre special? You think youre the only one who wants to die?) are alarming, even for a jaded reader of the most perturbing memoirs. But Danler in turn inherits her parents genes for self-destruction and self-regard. She wants the Monster to reveal their affair and leave his wife. As a teenager she pushes her mother down the stairs. When her younger sister confronts her, in adulthood, about having abandoned her with their negligent if not malignant parents, the author hisses at her to stop crying and tells her to get out of this house if you really feel that way.
CENTRALIA, Wash., May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first quarter of 2020, author Steven Craig's book "ALL PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR" received recognition as the NUMBER ONE SELLER for the publisher Hellgate Press. The book chronicles the true story of the grounding and near-sinking of the Coast Guard Cutter Jarvis off the coast of Alaska in November of 1972 and the heroic efforts that saved the ship.

Book Cover Steven Craig, author

The two-year research effort involved interviewing over thirty-five of the former crewmembers along with review of over five-hundred documents. Reviews have been outstanding with over two-hundred positive comments on various internet social websites.

Excerpt:

With Jarvis homeported in Honolulu, the local newspapers were reporting daily updates on the status. Upon her return to Honolulu, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin interviewed both the Executive Officer, Commander Ken White, and Ensign James Richardson. As reported by the newspaper, Ensign Richardson recalls:

"We were in seas 35 to 40 feet high. A 70-knot wind was off our starboard quarter. We were rocking with a tilt of about 35 degrees. Our bridge is 44 feet high, but the tops of the oncoming waves appear to be up to our feet. The engine room was flooded. We were adrift. We were taking a pounding, and a lesser crew would have seen it go to the bottom. All through this, there wasn't a single complaint from anyone in the 170-man crew, even though most worked eighteen-hours a day for a three-day stretch." The ship's executive officer, Commander Ken E. White of Honolulu, said: "The ship was down on its knees." Both White and Richardson painted a picture of a gallant crew and captain laboring under tremendous stress. The cutter had been caught by high winds while riding at anchor in Dutch Harbor."

Book may be purchased through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, retail book stores, or direct from the author at [email protected]. Website: www.stevenjcraigbooks.com

Media Contact:

Steven Craig

360 480 7764

[email protected]

SOURCE Steven Craig
Thousands of migrants have been stranded all over the world where they face a heightened risk of COVID-19 infection, the head of the UN migration agency International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said.

IOM Director-General Antnio Vitorino said that more onerous health-related travel restrictions might discriminate disproportionately against migrant workers in future.

Health is the new wealth, Vitorino said, citing proposals by some countries to introduce the so-called immunity passports and use mobile phone apps designed to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

In lots of countries in the world, we already have a system of screening checks to identify the health of migrants, above all malaria, tuberculosis HIV-AIDS, and now I believe that there will be increased demands in health controls for regular migrants, he said on Thursday.

Travel restrictions to try to limit the spread of the pandemic has left people on the move more vulnerable than ever and unable to work to support themselves, Vitorino told journalists via videoconference.

There are thousands of stranded migrants all over the world.

In South-East Asia, in East Africa, in Latin America, because of the closing of the borders and with the travel restrictions, lots of migrants who were on the move; some of them wanted to return precisely because of the pandemic, he said.

They are blocked, some in large groups, some in small, in the border areas, in very difficult conditions without access to minimal care, especially health screening, Vitorino said.

We have been asking the governments to allow the humanitarian workers and the health workers to have access to (them), he said.

Turning to Venezuelan migrants, who are believed to number around five million amidst a worsening economic crisis in the country, the IOM chief said thousands have lost their jobs in countries like Ecuador and Colombia and are returning back to Venezuela in large crowds without any health screening and being quarantined when they go back.

In a statement, the IOM highlighted the plight of migrants left stranded in the desert in west, central and eastern Africa, either after having been deported without the due process, or abandoned by the smugglers.

The IOM's immediate priorities for migrants include ensuring that they have access to healthcare and other basic social welfare assistance in their host country.

Among the UN agency's other immediate concerns is preventing the spread of new coronavirus infection in more than 1,100 camps that it manages across the world.

They include the Cox's Bazar complex in Bangladesh, home to around one million mainly ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar, the majority having fled persecution.

So far, no cases of infection have been reported there, the IOM chief said, adding that preventative measures have been communicated to the hundreds of thousands of camp residents, while medical capacity has been boosted.

Beyond the immediate health threat of COVID-19 infection, migrants also face growing stigmatization from which they need protection, Vitorino said.

Allowing hate speech and xenophobic narratives to thrive unchallenged also threatens to undermine the public health response to COVID-19, he said, before noting that migrant workers make up a significant percentage of the health sector in many developed countries including the UK, the US and Switzerland.

Populist narratives targeting migrants as carriers of disease could also destabilise national security through social upheaval and countries' post-COVID economic recovery by removing critical workers in agriculture and service industries, he said.

Remittances have already seen a 30 per cent drop during the pandemic, Vitorino said, citing the World Bank data, meaning that some USD 20 billion has not been sent home to families in countries where up to 15 per cent of their gross domestic product comes from pay packets earned abroad.

Vitorino, in a plea, urged to give the health of migrants as much attention as that of the host populations in all countries.

It is quite clear that health is the new wealth and that health concerns will be introduced in the mobility systems - not just for migration - but as a whole; where travelling for business or professional reasons, health will be the new gamechanger in town.

If the current pandemic leads to a two or even three-tier mobility system, then we will have to try to solve the problem the problem of the pandemic - but at the same time we have created a new problem of deepening the inequalities, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Known for its open houses during Ramadan, the Muslim communitys Virtual Reflections on the Power of Prayer During the Pandemic event will be one of dozens across the nation. It will feature faith-based speakers, a video about the groups 100 years in America, narrated by community member Mahershala Ali, and appearances by local elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Sean Casten and DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, according to Iftekhar Ahmad, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Chicagos director of public affairs.
The meeting started with the moderator fixing his hair, the second participant sanitizing her hands and the third checking his microphone. It could have been a normal online work meeting, but for one difference.

The call was between actors Ben Stiller and Cate Blanchett and author Khaled Hosseini, all of whom are Goodwill Ambassadors for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Whilst light-hearted in tone, the message  about what the private sector can do to support refugees during this global health crisis  was serious.

OK. Great. Hope you are all feeling good today. Its such a weird weird time, said Stiller, when everyone was in place.

COVID-19 has impacted millions of people but refugees are amongst the most vulnerable. Many live in overcrowded camps and lack access to soap and water. To support them, UNHCR is delivering front line protection and working against the clock to prevent the spread of the virus, but they cant do it alone.

In the meeting, the three explained the three ways that companies can help.

"Employees expect companies to provide direction and inspiration."

Blanchett got the ball rolling, describing how companies can get their staff involved through employee giving programs and other engagement tools.

In these difficult times employees expect companies to provide direction and inspiration and support to the community, said actor Blanchett.

Next up was author Hosseini, who said companies could use their communications channels, social media platforms and advertising space to share useful information about COVID-19 and spread messages of solidarity with refugees.

Stiller cut to the chase with point number three: Donations! Businesses can provide vital support by giving funds and in-kind donations. This contribution will provide lifesaving assistance  medical care, hygiene supplies and shelter to help protect those forced to flee.

Many companies have already stepped up their support for refugees during the crisis.

Microsoft has set up an employee campaign to raise awareness and ask for donations towards UNHCRs COVID-19 emergency response. Microsoft will be matching all donations in the US.

Sony Corporation has donated US$ 3 million through the Sony Global Relief Fund for COVID-19.

WeTransfer and H&M Group have opened up their communication channels to UNHCR to help share important messages of support, kindness and solidarity to their millions of customers and followers.

But more can be done. If you want to know more about how your company can support UNHCR in its efforts to protect refugees from the threat of COVID-19, please click here.
How do you make sure your best cutter doesnt leave, taking customers with him?

Simple: never let him meet the customers.

Ive always been aware that Smalto, the Parisian tailor, had an unusual system in its cutting room. Unlike most tailoring houses, their fitter and the cutter are different people, with the former meeting the customer, taking their measurements, and conducting fittings - then passing the information onto the cutter.

To most, this would seem to introduce a needless layer of communication, and possible confusion*.

Indeed some tailors emphasise their proximity to their coatmakers, or the fact they trained as coatmakers themselves, because it helps control the next step in the process (between cutter and coatmaker).

At Smalto, however, ex-head cutter Kenjiro Suzuki says the system was deliberately set up in different levels, so that the fitter maintained all customer relationships.

In fact slightly creepily, he suggests it might not be a coincidence that some of the staff were deaf or mute. The head cutter before him was deaf and mute, and two other members of the team were mute. Its hard to set up a competing tailor shop if you cant talk.

More prosaically, the set-up was also aimed at consistency. Smalto is known for having royal clients in ex-French colonies, and the King of Morocco routinely ordered 100 to 200 suits per visit.

A segmented system, more akin to a production line, is better able to make every suit the same. Unlike smaller tailors such as Camps de Luca (where Kenjiro also worked), where its more common for a single coatmaker to make the whole jacket (apart from perhaps the finishing).

As a side note: never trust a brand which boasts either that each garment is made by a single master, or that the making is purposefully divided among specialists. Neither is necessarily better.

As a factory manager once told me, Its the execution that makes the quality, not the system. But thats a much more boring story for a journalist.

Actually, all of this is something of a side note. I hope youll forgive me: the colourful things are often found down the cracks of the facts.

This article is intended to introduce master Japanese tailor Kenjiro Suzuki (above), and his wife and team, who are running a superb operation in Paris.

As is usual, I am covering them now because Im in the process of having a piece made - or rather have been, for the past 18 months - and can therefore offer more in-depth coverage of the style and service.

That style is quite similar to Smalto, as you might expect. Most obviously, there is the same fish mouth or closed notch on the lapel.

Readers might recognise the term from my Camps de Luca grey two-piece suit, but Kenjiros notch is actually cut rather deeper, making it more dramatic and perhaps attention grabbing.

He is also varies his style more. For example, he has developed a more classic open-notch style at the request of an English client, and sometimes cuts the lapel flatter and larger. The gorge can shift up and down too.

You can see examples of all of those below. These are taken from the Collection section of Kenjiros website, which is unusual in showing a really large number of styles - currently 68 of them. More tailors should have galleries like this.

Kenjiro cuts a fairly padded, sharp jacket, in a similar line to Camps and Smalto. However, it is a touch shorter than others, and certainly a touch closer in fit than Smalto, which tended to larger, boxier jackets.

Smalto preferred a heavy canvas, and quite a straight fit, says Kenjiro. It was a hard look to get wrong, to be honest, with a lack of shape in the waist. I prefer something a bit more contemporary and fitted.

Among Kenjiros other experiments are a belt he sometimes makes for trousers, in the same cloth. I dont like the style myself, but it is distinctive.

Kenjiro is older than you might think, given his boyish looks and ever-present smile: hes 44 years old, with 22 years in the industry.

Kenjiro moved to France in 2003, having studied at a tailoring school in Japan and worked as a pattern maker at Chiaki Tamura. In Paris he trained at LAcademie International de Coupe de Paris, while interning at Arnys and Lanvin.

He was at Arnys together his wife, and they both moved to Camps de Luca in 2005. He switched to Smalto in 2007, was head cutter from 2009 to 2012, and set up on his own in 2013. His wife left to join him when the business was large enough to support them both.

He has moved once since then, into a new space on Rue de Penthievre, just around the corner from the Cifonelli store on Rue du Faubourg St Honore.

It is there these pictures were taken. The workshop is on the ground floor, which is unusual, and means you walk between the two rows of tailors as you enter (three pictured higher up this post).

But upstairs is a beautiful, bright room, decorated with some lovely bolts, a big side-lit mirror and accessories that Kenjiro recently started offering.

The suit Kenjiro is making me is a blue cotton - the same 9oz Holland & Sherry cotton I used to make my double-breasted suit with Musella Dembech. Ive loved how that cloth has worn in.

Full review on the suit itself in a few weeks.

Kenjiros suits start at 4800. He currently travels to Japan regularly, and plans to start coming to London.

*The exception, perhaps, being those Savile Row tailors where the salesperson takes measurements during some trunk shows, because the cutter cant be everywhere at once. In that case, the degree of understanding between the two is crucial - but can still work well, with Brian Lishak and Richard Anderson being a good example.

Photography: Alex Natt @adnatt
- The government made it mandatory for everyone walking in a public place to wear a face mask

- The measure was meant to curb the spread of coronavirus among individuals

- Majority of Kenyans, however, said they only wear the masks to avoid police arrest and not for protection purposes

- As of May 8, Kenya had recorded 532 cases of COVID-19 and 29 fatalities

- Most of the cases were transmitted locally from one person to another

A new opinion poll has revealed a majority of Kenyans only wear face masks to avoid being arrested by the police, and not for personal protection.

The government had made it a crime punishable by law for anyone found walking in a public place without wearing a face mask during the coronavirus crisis.

READ ALSO: Kenyan newspapers review for May 8: Quarantine centres turned into lodgings

Kenyans running to beat the dusk to dawn curfew and avoid police arrest. Photo: Lemiso Sato.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Nilimpa DP Ruto mikakati ya kampeini, Mutahi Ngunyi asema

A poll conducted by TUKO.co.ke between Thursday, May 7 and Friday, May 8, established that 93% of Kenyans wear face masks to avoid police arrest while only 7% wear them for personal protection against the virus.

"Do you think Kenyans are majorly wearing face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19 or being arrested by the police? TUKO.co.ke posed.

Out of the 1, 600 respondent, 1, 488 (93%) said they wear masks to avoid arrests while only 112 (7%) said they do it as a safety measure.

This revelation is not only shocking but also an absurd revelation going by the soaring numbers of coronavirus in the country.

As of May 8, Kenya had recorded 607 positive cases of COVID-19 and 29 fatalities.

Most of the cases were transmitted locally from one person to another, hence the need for responsible citizens to take precautionary measures seriously.

Unfortunately, majority of Kenyans disregarded the directives and were engaging police officers in a cat and mouse game.

Some openly defied the orders on social media and even during live TV interviews.

Those who shared views on the poll's comment section blamed the government for doing little to educate the public about the dangers of the virus and how to deal with it.

Some even jokingly said they did not see any difference between the police and the dreaded virus.

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.

A Poor Kenyan Has No Rights: Couple who lost a hand in a Chinese company and got fired Follow up | Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
A total of nine pachinko parlors in Osaka and Tokyo have reopened despite the ongoing state of emergency in effect due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, reports TBS News (May 7).

According to the Osaka Prefectural Government, a parlor in Sakai City and two others in Osaka City were open on Thursday.

A line of patrons formed outside the parlor in Sakai before it opened. In footage shown by the network, the patrons were seen standing a meter or so apart from one another.

At a parlor in Osaka Cityas Asahi Ward, customers were instructed to use hand sanitizer, wear breathing masks and wash their hands. Their temperatures were taken upon entry, reports the Mainichi Shimbun (May 7).

After various measures were taken by the prefectural government last month, all parlors in the prefecture were closed as of April 30.

Meanwhile, at least six parlors reopened in Tokyo. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government described the reopening of the parlors as aextremely unfortunate.a

Since the crowded parlors pose a high risk for infection of the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, they are subject to the recently revised New Influenza Special Measures Act.

On Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe extended the nationwide state of emergency until May 31. The previous period ended on Wednesday.

Over the past few weeks, data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has shown the number of infections has dropped to about one third of its peak last month.
Three McDonald's employees in Oklahoma City suffered gunshot wounds when a customer opened fire because she was angry that the restaurant's dining area was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, police said Thursday.

Gloricia Woody, 32, was in custody after the Wednesday night shooting on four counts of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, said police Capt. Larry Withrow.

It was not known if Woody has an attorney, Withrow said.

Woody entered the restaurant's lobby and was told the dining room was closed for safety reasons, Withrow said.

"(Woody) was asked to leave but refused," leading to a physical altercation between Woody and one employee," according to Withrow.

"The suspect was forced out of the restaurant by employees. She reentered the restaurant with a handgun and fired approximately three rounds in the restaurant," Withrow said.

One employee was shot in the arm, one suffered a shrapnel wound in the shoulder area and another employee was struck in the side by shrapnel. The employee who fought with Woody suffered a head injury during the altercation, police said.

Two of the employees are 16 years old and the others are 18, Withrow said. He did not know which employees were wounded by the gunfire.

Police initially said two employees were struck by gunfire.

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the employees were expected to make a full recovery.

The shooting comes amid tensions over restrictions because of efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic, as well as how people are responding to ongoing efforts to reopen portions of the United States shut down by the virus.

Tensions have escalated into violence elsewhere in the country.

This week, a woman, her adult son and husband were charged in last week's fatal shooting of a security guard who refused to let her daughter enter a Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan, because she wasn't wearing a face mask to protect against transmission of the coronavirus.

 Associated Press

History channel series to feature Bill Clinton

The History channel says former President Bill Clinton will help shape and be a part of an upcoming documentary series on the American presidency.

During an announcement of programming plans on Thursday, the network said the series will "explore the history of the American presidency and the struggle for a more perfect union."

It is being produced internally by the History channel and is expected to air in early 2021.

History says it has signed with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to make presidential miniseries on Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Goodwin's signing comes after "Washington," released earlier this year, became the most-watched miniseries on cable over the past three years.

The Roosevelt project is being made by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, History said.

- Associated Press

Court: 'Comedians' is Seinfeld's show

Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" was his creation despite copyright claims by a one-time collaborator who helped direct the first episode, an appeals court said Thursday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled against writer Christian Charles in a five-paragraph written order upholding a decision by Judge Alison J. Nathan.

It concluded a case over a popular show that debuted in 2012, originating as an online streaming program that was distributed by Sony Pictures Television through Crackle before being sold to Netflix in 2017.

Days ago, Seinfeld told reporters while promoting his new Netflix special, "Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill," that he might be finished with it after 11 seasons and 84 episodes.

Charles said in his February 2018 lawsuit that he worked with Seinfeld on projects for nearly two decades, including on American Express commercials and the documentary "Comedian."

The lawsuit sought $150,000 for each infringement of a copyright Charles obtained with a slightly different title: "Comedians in Cars Going for Coffee."

Seinfeld's lawyers said Charles only sued after learning Netflix had allegedly paid $750,000 per episode.

 Associated Press
Whats new? Somalia is highly vulnerable to both the COVID-19 virus and the socio-economic dimensions of the crisis. Its first cases of infection have also appeared at a time of heightened political tension over forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

Why does it matter? Opponents of the president worry that he might exploit virus fears to put off elections, as a way of staying in office past his terms expiry. Any attempt to reschedule the contests without consulting the presidents rivals would meet with heated objections  and possibly violence.

What should be done? The presidents administration should take no unilateral step regarding the planned elections. Instead, it should seek to reach consensus with both opposition politicians and regional officials on electoral timetables and procedures.

I. Overview

Somalia might be less prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic than almost any other country in the world.

With one of Africas most fragile health care systems, millions of internally displaced people and a bureaucracy still recovering from state collapse and civil war, Somalia might be less prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic than almost any other country in the world. The coronaviruss onset risks undermining Somalias recent progress toward debt relief, and it could also tempt the Al-Shabaab insurgency to step up attacks. To make matters worse, the virus broke out at a particularly inopportune time in Somali politics: tensions are running high among the central government, opposition groups and the countrys semi-autonomous regions, or federal states, including over preparations for elections (parliamentary polls are due by November 2020 and a presidential vote by February 2021).

The Somali government should take care not to add a political crisis to the public health emergency. The authorities should resist the temptation to unilaterally extend the electoral calendar or amend voting rules, steps their rivals would almost certainly contest, perhaps violently. Instead, they should forge consensus on how and when to conduct the vote and call a truce in their other disputes with federal states.

II. A Highly Vulnerable Country

How badly Somalia will be hit by the coronavirus remains unclear. The country reported its first case, a student returning from China, on 16 March, but the number of known infections is still low at 928. Grounds for hope exist that Somalia may escape the type of outbreak that has overwhelmed some Western health systems. Somalias population is young  the median age is eighteen  and few foreigners visit the country due to persistent insecurity, including the battle against the Al-Shabaab insurgency centred in the south. That said, the current low figures likely reflect a lack of testing, and public health experts express concern that so many of those who can get tested show up positive. Moreover, official figures, even if low, are rising fast. Cases have increased tenfold since mid-April, and there are worrying signs of community transmission beyond the capital Mogadishu. The outbreak has not spared political elites. A regional minister from the Hirshabelle in south-central Somalia has died after contracting the virus, while two other regional officials are in quarantine after contact with persons believed to be infected.

The country could suffer enormously were a major outbreak to occur. The limited testing means that for now it is impossible to know the true extent of the viral spread. The World Health Organization (WHO) rates Somalias public health system as one of the weakest across the globe. One study prior to COVID-19s onset ranked Somalia as the country most vulnerable to infectious disease in the world. An estimated 2.6 million of the 15 million-strong population are uprooted by war, with many living in crowded camps. The displaced are concentrated around cities like Mogadishu, where the majority of coronavirus cases have been reported thus far. A major eruption could take a terrible toll. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the mortality rate from the crisis may already be far higher than official reports indicate, with medics and gravediggers saying they have seen a surge in deaths over the past few weeks.

Already reeling from the worst locust invasion in a generation, the country must now contend with a coronavirus-related drop in remittance income.
(Newser)  Critics are accusing the NYPD of using social distancing enforcement to target minority communities in the same way they did under the "stop-and-frisk" policy. According to data obtained by CBS2, the force recorded around a million social distancing enforcement contacts between March 16 and May 5, leading to 368 summonses and 120 arrests. Almost 68% of those arrested were black, 24% were Hispanic, and less than 7% were white. In Brooklyn, 35 out of 40 people arrested were black, four were Hispanic, and one was white. Critics have noted that on the same days when police broke up gatherings and made arrests in minority neighborhoods, officers handed out masks to mostly white visitors to city parks and left groups of sunbathers undisturbed, the New York Times reports.

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Jennvine Wong, a Cop Accountability Project Attorney at the Legal Aid Society, tells Time that police have been "aggressively enforcing [social distancing] in neighborhoods which are traditionally over-policed to begin with." In one controversial encounter, officers punched two men who were filming them making social distancing arrests. Mayor Bill de Blasio has rejected the stop-and-frisk comparison. He tweeted Thursday night that enforcement is saving lives, but added: "The disparity in the numbers does NOT reflect our values. We HAVE TO do better and we WILL." Advocatesand the NYPD's main unionargue that the police shouldn't be used to enforce social distancing. "We can't police our way out of a pandemic," Wong says. (Read more New York City stories.)
The geologic record is exactly that: a record. The strata of rock tell scientists about past environments, much like pages in an encyclopedia. Except this reference book has more pages missing than it has remaining. So geologists are tasked not only with understanding what is there, but also with figuring out what's not, and where it went.

One omission in particular has puzzled scientists for well over a century. First noticed by John Wesley Powell in 1869 in the layers of the Grand Canyon, the Great Unconformity, as it's known, accounts for more than one billion years of missing rock in certain places.

Scientists have developed several hypotheses to explain how, and when, this staggering amount of material may have been eroded. Now, UC Santa Barbara geologist Francis Macdonald and his colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder and at Colorado College believe they may have ruled out one of the more popular of these. Their study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There are unconformities all through the rock record," explained Macdonald, a professor in the Department of Earth Science. "Unconformities are just gaps in time within the rock record. This one's called the Great Unconformity because it was thought to be a particularly large gap, maybe a global gap."

A leading thought is that glaciers scoured away kilometers of rock around 720 to 635 million years ago, during a time known as Snowball Earth, when the planet was completely covered by ice. This hypothesis even has the benefit of helping to explain the rapid emergence of complex organisms shortly thereafter, in the Cambrian explosion, since all this eroded material could have seeded the oceans with tremendous amounts of nutrients.

Macdonald was skeptical of this reasoning. Although analogues of the Great Unconformity appear throughout the world -- with similar amounts of rock missing from similar stretches of time -- they don't line up perfectly. This casts doubt as to whether they were truly eroded by a global event like Snowball Earth.

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Part of the challenge of investigating the Great Unconformity is that it happened so long ago, and the Earth is a messy system. "These rocks have been buried and eroded multiple times through their history," Macdonald said.

Fortunately, the team was able to test this hypothesis using a technique called thermochronology. A few kilometers below the Earth's surface, the temperature begins to rise as you get closer to the planet's hot mantle. This creates a temperature gradient of roughly 50 degrees Celsius for every kilometer of depth. And this temperature regime can become imprinted in certain minerals.

As certain radioactive elements in rocks break down, Helium-4 is produced. In fact helium is constantly being generated, but the fraction retained in different minerals is a function of temperature. As a result, scientists can use the ratio of helium to thorium and uranium in certain minerals as a paleo-thermometer. This phenomenon enabled Macdonald and his coauthors to track how rock moved in the crust as it was buried and eroded through the ages.

"These unconformities are forming again and again through tectonic processes," Macdonald said. "What's really new is we can now access this much older history."

The team took samples from granite just below the boundary of the Great Unconformity at Pikes Peak in Colorado. They extracted grains of a particularly resilient mineral, zircon, from the stone and analyzed the radio nucleotides of helium contained inside. The technique revealed that several kilometers of rock had been eroded from above this granite between 1,000 and 720 million years ago.

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Importantly, this stretch of time definitively came before the Snowball Earth episodes. In fact, it lines up much better with the periods in which the supercontinent Rodinia was forming and breaking apart. This offers a clue to the processes that may have stricken these years from the geologic record.

"The basic hypothesis is that this large-scale erosion was driven by the formation and separation of supercontinents," Macdonald said.

The Earth's cycle of supercontinent formation and separation uplifts and erodes incredible extents of rock over long periods of time. And because supercontinent processes, by definition, involve a lot of land, their effects can appear fairly synchronous across the geologic record.

However, these processes don't happen simultaneously, as they would in a global event like Snowball Earth. "It's a messy process," Macdonald said. "There are differences, and now we have the ability to perhaps resolve those differences and pull that record out."

While Macdonald's results are consistent with a tectonic origin for these great unconformities, they don't end the debate. Geologists will need to complement this work with similar studies in other regions of the world in order to better constrain these events.

The mystery of the Great Unconformity is inherently tied to two of geology's other great enigmas: the rise and fall of Snowball Earth and the sudden emergence of complex life in the Ediacaran and Cambrian. Progress in any one could help researchers finally crack the lot.

"The Cambrian explosion was Darwin's dilemma," Macdonald remarked. "This is a 200-year old question. If we can solve that, we would definitely be rock stars."
Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 8, 2020) - Benton Resources Inc. (TSXV: BEX) ('Benton' or 'the Company') regrets to announce that Bill Harper, director and chairman of the Company's audit committee, passed away unexpectantly from a heart attack earlier this week at the age of 71. Bill is survived by his wife, daughter and son.

Stephen Stares, President and CEO commented, "We are deeply sorry to have learned of Bill's passing and extend our thoughts and prayers to his family and everyone who knew him. Bill, as a CPA and a consummate professional, provided the Company with his knowledge and expertise over the past 12 years and he will be dearly missed."

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Resources Inc.,

"Stephen Stares"

Stephen Stares, President

About Benton Resources Inc.

Benton Resources is a well-funded Canadian-based project generator with a diversified property portfolio in Gold, Silver, Nickel, Copper, and Platinum group elements. Benton holds multiple high-grade projects available for option which can be viewed on the Company's website. Many projects have an up-to-date 43-101 Report available.

Parties interested in seeking more information about properties available for option can contact Mr. Stares at the number below.

For further information, please contact:

Stephen Stares, President & CEO

Phone: 807-475-7474

Email: sstares@bentonresources.ca

Website: www.bentonresources.ca

Twitter: @BentonResources

Facebook: @BentonResourcesBEX

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements."

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55597
MIAMI (AP)  As much as $110 million in U.S. funding for disease prevention in Latin America as well as U.S. support for Venezuelan migrants has been thrown into doubt as part of President Donald Trump's decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization over its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Rep. Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complaining that freezing funds for the Pan American Health Organization threatened to worsen the plight of Venezuelans suffering at the hands of Nicolas Maduro.

We believe it is dangerous and shortsighted of the Trump Administration to pause U.S. funding for the life-saving work by PAHO in Venezuela, the New York Democrat wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Rep. Albio Sires, chairman of the subcommittee focused on Latin America.

PAHO said this week that the U.S. had suspended its contributions as an extension of Trump's funding freeze for the WHO.

But two U.S. officials cautioned that no final decision had been made. One said the next U.S. payment isn't due until late May and an exclusion for PAHO is being discussed. Both officials insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Washington-based PAHO is unique in that it is both a regional office in the Americas for the WHO but also a separately run institution that predates by almost a half century the creation of the United Nations agency. Only about a third of its funding comes from the WHO, with the rest provided by its 35 member states, of which the U.S. is by far its largest contributor, responsible for 60% of its overall budget. Currently the U.S. owes PAHO $110 million in assessed contributions for 2019 and 2020.

The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would not comment.

Engel in his letter said he was dismayed to learn that $12 million in U.S. funding for PAHO to conduct diagnostics and tracing for the coronavirus in Venezuela and among Venezuelan migrants in Colombia was on hold.

Story continues

He said U.S.-supported efforts inside Venezuela had saved lives and prevented the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. He said a PAHO-backed measles vaccination program supported by $3.4 million in USAID funding enabled 9 million Venezuelan children to get shots and paved the way for a 90% decline in measles cases from 5,800 in 2018 to less than 600 in 2019. He cited studies indicating as many as 94% of Venezuelans are living in poverty and 7 million need humanitarian assistance.

PAHO also declined to comment, pointing instead to comments by Dr. Carissa Etienne, who heads the organization, saying that Trump's freeze in funding for the WHO had been extended to include U.S. funding for PAHO.

Over the years we have enjoyed a very firm collaboration and technical support from the U.S. government, Dr. Carissa Etienne said in remarks to journalists Tuesday. This mutual collaboration between the U.S. and PAHO has stood the test of many, many years and it is our hope that we can continue to work in this vein to insure that health and well being come to the majority of people in the Americas.

Trump two weeks ago halted funding to the Geneva-based WHO, arguing that it had mimicked Chinese assurances about the coronvairus' spread, wrongly opposed travel restrictions at the start of the outbreak and was slow to declare the outbreak a global pandemic.

Many philanthropists like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg joined European and African leaders and health experts in criticizing the decision, calling it ill-timed.

PAHO is one of the few ways the U.S. is able to channel aid to Venezuela since it doesn't recognize Maduro and has no functioning embassy in Caracas.

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, PAHO was also key in brokering contact between Venezuelan health officials and their counterparts in Colombia to discuss ways to stop the virus' spread among millions of poor Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years and who are expected to overload Colombia's already overburdened health system if the pandemic worsens. Like the U.S., Colombia doesn't recognize Maduro.

Maduro has consistently rejected U.S. offers of humanitarian aid, calling them an underhanded attempt to destabilize his rule. The opposition has been similarly reluctant to work with Maduro officials to distribute the aid that has trickled in from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Roman Catholic Church and other sources, seeing it as a tool of coercion.

But over the past year, as efforts to unseat Maduro have stalled and social conditions have worsened, the opposition has quietly eased its objections to working through the socialist government in the belief that regular Venezuelans will benefit and to prepare for eventually assuming power itself one day. One opposition official called the cooperation a necessary evil.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
A short but sweet message from a woman in California to her brother in Iowa was finally delivered  more than 30 years after it was sent.

In December 1987, Anne Lovell sent her older brother Paul Willis a postcard. On the front was a photo of Lovell in front of a waterfall, and on the back was a note: "A picture is worth 1,000 words...Happy Holidays! Love, Ann."

Somewhere between San Francisco and Willis' home in Thornton, Iowa, the postcard went missing. Willis didn't find this out until a few days ago, when the card finally made it to his mailbox. Lovell had never asked him if the postcard arrived, because "we just assumed everything in the mail went through," she told CNN.

The postcard was sent for a second time on April 29 in Des Moines. Willis called his local post office for more information, and was told that many locations are doing deep cleans because of the coronavirus, and that's likely how it was found and dropped back into the mail. Willis told CNN he and Lovell "were both really excited about it. It was one of those sort of fun things that happened."

More stories from theweek.com

7 scathing cartoons about America's rush to reopen

Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame is running for Congress, and her launch video looks like a spy movie trailer

The U.S. reportedly didn't take up a January offer that would have led to the production of 1.7 million masks per week


World Red Cross Day is celebrated every year on 8 May to draw attention to the humanitarian activities carried out by Red Cross and its affiliate organisations.

World Red Cross Day is celebrated every year on 8 May to draw attention to the humanitarian activities carried out by Red Cross and its affiliate organisations.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) strives to provide aid to people affected by war and conflict and has over 20,000 staffers spread across 100 countries.

Red Cross members have been working tirelessly amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Conflict hasnt stopped because of coronavirus. And neither have we, Red Cross tweeted.

Why it is celebrated

The day is celebrated to appreciate the work put in by the Red Cross to help civilians, women, children, detainees, internally displaced peoples, migrants, refugees, the differently-abled, and those seeking asylum.

8 May is the birth anniversary of Red Cross founder Henry Dunant. The Swiss humanitarian won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

The Red Cross Society has won the Nobel Prize thrice: in 1917, 1944 and 1963. No other organisation has won the Peace Prize more than the Red Cross.

How it is celebrated

ICRC New Delhi has praised the staff and volunteers on the occasion of Red Cross Day for working relentlessly to safeguard communities from the dangerous consequences of COVID-19.

The Indian Red Cross Society, which was founded in 1920, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

With the coronavirus pandemic affecting lives worldwide, the situation of people who have been victims of war or conflict has become even trickier.

ICRC has been drawing attention to the people living in camps or those who do not have access to clean water through their social media handles.
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The State Department announced Friday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week, confirming Wednesday's Axios report.

Why it matters: This will be Pompeos first trip abroad since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It will come on the day Israel's new government is slated to be sworn in.

Israel has strict travel restrictions for people entering the country, including two weeks of isolation.

That will not apply to Pompeo, who will be the first senior foreign official to visit since the rules came into effect.

Dr. William Walters, the State Departments deputy chief medical officer, said in a briefing with reporters that all medical precautions around the trip had been coordinated with the Israeli government, and Pompeo is not expected to enter quarantine.

Walters said everyone who will accompany Pompeo on his flight to Israel will be tested for COVID-19 two days before, and will wear a mask during the trip. Meanwhile, everyone who will come into contact with the U.S. delegation will be checked for symptoms.

Walters said Pompeo was being checked by doctors on a daily basis. He noted that the secretary of state would only be participating in meetings in controlled settings, and would not interact with the general population.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Schenker stressed that the Israeli government had invited Pompeo, and said discussions had been underway before the date was set for Israel's new government to be sworn in.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare MSP of Rs 2,902 per quintal for paddy, along with Rs 100 per quintal incentive bonus to check stubble burning.

In a letter to Prime Minister, Amarinder said the state has already written to Ministry of Agriculture recommending a Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 2,902 per quintal for paddy, as calculated by the Punjab Agriculture University, as against last year's MSP of Rs 1,835 per quintal.

"Given the need to ensure food safety in the time of the present pandemic, it is imperative that farmers may be given the appropriate price signal by announcing a remunerative MSP for paddy," a government release quoted the chief minister as saying.

He noted that Punjab is successfully moving towards meeting its target of wheat procurement, notwithstanding the challenges imposed by the lockdown and health safety concerns of social distancing.

Post wheat procurement, paddy transplantation in the state is scheduled to commence in mid-June and may be required to be slightly advanced due to shortage of labour in the state, Amarinder said.

Noting that "it is unlikely that we will see much seasonal labour coming from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for paddy transplantation due to COVID-19," the chief minister expressed concern at serious challenges this could pose for farming operations in the paddy season, besides leading to escalation in labour costs.

He further underlined the importance of providing a non-burning bonus to farmers at the rate of Rs 100 per quintal to defray their expenses in handling of paddy straw, thus preventing burning of paddy stubble.

In this context, he also pointed to the Supreme Court's directions, asking the Centre and states to work out an incentive structure to overcome the problem of paddy stubble burning.

"This monetary incentive deserves to be announced ex-ante, i.e. along with the MSP, to allow farmers to prepare for its management and for the state to work towards proper implementation," Amarinder said.

The bonus would also help incentivise the desired behaviour and encourage farmers to move to better and ecologically sustainable farm practices, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It recalls a talk by the great Spanish director Carlos Saura, who came to the Kennedy Center after the fall of the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. At the time, Mr. Saura had just come out with his film Mama Cumple Cien Anos, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the best foreign language film category. He had to avoid the censors for most of his moviemaking career. Mr. Saura predicted (accurately as it turned out) that Spanish filmmakers would stop being as creative as they were formerly because they did not have to fight against Francos censors.
Update: These 13 counties will reopen next.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has extended the states coronavirus stay-at-home order until June 4.

Twenty-four counties will still move into the yellow phase of Wolfs reopening plan at 12:01 a.m. Friday, so the extension only applies to the remaining counties, all of which continue to be in the red phase, which is otherwise known as the complete stay at home order.

The news is mostly a formality, as it re-ups an order Wolf originally signed on April 1. For counties in the red phase, only life-sustaining travel is allowed, face coverings must be worn to enter any life-sustaining business, and large gatherings are not permitted while social distancing is required.

Wolf is expected to hold a news conference Friday to announce the next wave of counties that will be moved into the yellow phase at a to-be-determined date. It is being described as aggressive mitigation as opposed to a complete stay-at-home order, and allows for gatherings of up to 25 people, while child care centers and some other businesses that were previously closed because Wolf classified them as non-life sustaining can reopen. Restaurants and bars must continue to only fulfill takeout or delivery orders, while retail operations can open, though curbside or delivery is preferred. Places like gyms and casinos cannot reopen in the yellow phase. Social distancing is still expected.

The 24 counties moving into the yellow phase at 12:01 a.m. Friday include Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Montour, Northumberland, Potter, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga, Union, Venango, and Warren.

More coronavirus coverage:
Things were going well for Davanagere until all hell broke loose this week.

Hubballi: From out of nowhere Davangere and Belagavi districts have emerged as the corona hotspots of Karnataka. Of the 48 fresh positives recorded in the state on Friday, more than half were from these two districts.

The worrisome aspect of this for health officials is that almost all these samples were taken from people before relaxation of the lockdown on May 4, not after. Officials are now worried what effect a lighter lockdown regimen might have on the spread of the epidemic.

The border district of Belagavi now has 83 coronavirus cases plus one death. Davangere has witnessed a sudden rise of positive cases to reach a like number with four deaths occurring in the span of just one week. In both districts, the virus has spread to people in all age groups ranging from 5 to 60.

Exasperated that people have not been following social distance, Davanagere deputy commissioner Mahantesh Bilagi has clamped a brutal lockdown regimen on Davanagere town, sealing it off almost entirely. Liquor sale continues to be prohibited till May 17.

"It has become inevitable to adopt tough measures. Sale of liquor is prohibited in 45 wards of the Davangere Municipal Corporation and 15-20 villages in the taluk. All business establishments will remain closed in the city. The people should stay indoors, said Bilagi.

In Belagavi, the corona attention is on one village, Hirebagiwadi in Belagavi taluk, where there are no less than 47 cases.

Hirebagewadi has a population of 35,000. The virus was brought to the village by a 20-year old young man who attended the Tablighi Jamaat religious congregation at Nizamuddin in New Delhi. With 46 more positives turning up in quich succession, the officials are preparing to test everyone in Hirebagewadi.

Photo: Karnataka health minister B Sriramulu has visited district hospital in Dharwad to inspect Corona cases on Friday.
A 48-year-old randy pastor, Otobong Emerson, who allegedly abused four children, aged between six and 11, has blamed the act on the devil.

The suspect was to said to have repeatedly had carnal knowledge of the kids between December 2019 and February 2020.

He was said to have confessed his illicit act to the General Overseer of his church, who later handed him over to the police for investigation and prosecution.

He said: it is the work of the devil, he pushed me because I just find myself sleeping with the girls.



I felt guilty every time I did it. So, I decided to approach my General Overseer to confess my sins. It was then he handed me over to the police.

Spokesman for the State Police Command, DSP Chidi Nwabuzor said. the Gender Unit investigated a multiple case of defilement against one Pastor Otobong Emerson, aged 48, of Believers Ministry Church Incorporated, No. 146, Upper Owina, off Evbuotubu, Benin City.

The suspect made statement and confessed to the crime. The case has been charged to court and the suspect remanded in police custody and to appear in court on adjournment day on 11th June, 2020.

Also, the police had arrested a couple for selling their two months old baby to one Felicia Imaguomaruomwan for N300,000.

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Al Gore has attacked Donald Trump for overseeing a botched reopening of the United States which will cause the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

The former vice president said Mr Trump was selfishly trying to re-energise the economy in order to boost his re-election efforts later this year.

It seems as if he may be recklessly rolling the dice hoping that he can goose the economy just enough in the third quarter of this year to enhance his re-election prospects, Mr Gore told CNN.

I think that we are seeing the start of a botched reopening.

The president was engaging in magical thinking, hoping Covid-19 would miraculously disappear so lockdown restrictions can be swiftly relaxed, Mr Gore added.

Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Show all 11 1 /11 Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A demonstrator shouts next to two masked security guards at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan during a protest against stay-at-home orders AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed members of a milita group at the state Capitol building in Lansing, Michiga, during a protest against coronavirus lockdown measures REUTERS Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester at the state Capitol in Lansing holds a sign comparing Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to Adolf Hitler during a demonstration against coronavirus lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan An armed protester takes part in a demonstation against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign saying 'Bill Gates is evil' at a demonstration against stay-at-home orders at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire philanthropist, has warned of the dangers of viral pandemics AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against stay-at-home orders AFP/Getty Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a pro-Trump sign at a demonstration against lockdown measures outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan Armed protesters take part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester holds a sign reading 'Every job is essential, get workers back to work safely now' during a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan over lockdown measures AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester with a US flag painted on her face takes part in a demonstration at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan against lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic AFP via Getty Images Armed protests against stay-at-home coronavirus measures in Michigan A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds up a sign reading 'Stay Free' during a demonstration against lockdown measures at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan AP

Then he will try to divert the blame for the extra tens of thousands of Americans who the doctors tell us will die as a result of this, the Democrat statesman grimly predicted.

Mr Trump has sporadically called for states to lift their coronavirus lockdowns over the past weeks and in recent days has even admitted he expected more people to die as a result.

Therell be more death, he told ABC News. Its possible there will be some because you wont be locked into an apartment or a house. We cant sit in the house for the next three years.

Some states, notably Georgia, have already begun allowing businesses, including cinemas and restaurants, to reopen. There have also been growing protest movements, often organised by right-wing libertarian groups, against the lockdown.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has produced a detailed report guiding state officials for how to safely and gradually reopen, but the White House has blocked its publication.

Mr Gore, who was just a handful of votes in Florida from claiming the presidency himself in 2000, told CNN Mr Trump had failed as the nations leader.

Honestly, he has failed as president. Particularly on this challenge. The warnings were ignored. And then, he failed to mobilise the resources of the federal government to straighten out this testing catastrophe. And now, I think we are in grave danger.

 Texas governor says reopening businesses will help coronavirus spread

Instead of taking responsibility for guiding America through this crisis, Mr Trump has sought to shift the blame to the Chinese or even Barack Obama, Mr Gore said, adding that Trump should reach out beyond his political base and show empathy with those who are suffering and grieving.

It is unfathomable to me  and Im sorry to get wound up  but I see what hes doing and it is the complete opposite of what the United States of America needs in the presidency right now, Mr Gore concluded.
An American woman living in the UK has left social media users around the world horrified by her recipe for 'hot tea.'

Nearly a week ago, Michelle, a mother-of-three, uploaded a TikTok video in which she broke down how she makes 'hot tea' using powdered instant tea mix, Tang orange drink mix, instant lemonade, sugar, and a couple of spices.

Her video has quickly gone viral, with many viewers  especially those in the UK  expressing dismay at her complicated, unconventional take on a drink that usually just requires tea leaves and hot water.

Viral: An American woman living in the UK has left social media users around the world horrified by her recipe for 'hot tea'

Making the rounds: Michelle, a mother-of-three, uploaded a TikTok video in which she broke down how she makes 'hot tea,' employing her twin daughters to help her mix it

How-to: They mix one cup of instant tea, two cups of Tang, what appears to be a half cup of Country Time lemonade, two cups sugar, two teaspoons cinnamon, and one teaspoon cloves

'I get a lot of questions about hot tea, so I'm gonna show you what this American girl likes as hot tea,' she says in the video.

With the assistance of her twin daughters, she mixes together one cup of Lipton instant tea, two cups of sugary Tang, what appears to be a half cup of Country Time lemonade, two cups sugar, two teaspoons of cinnamon, and one teaspoon of cloves.

The resulting mix of powder fills a large bowl. She then fills a mug up with water, microwaves it, and adds a few teaspoons of drink mix.

'And that's what I like for hot tea!' she says with a smile.

In another video about the tea mixture, Michelle says that the recipe makes enough to last 'all winter long.'

'I get a lot of questions about hot tea, so I'm gonna show you what this American girl likes as hot tea,' she says i

Making a cup: She then fills a mug up with water, microwaves it, and adds a few teaspoons of drink mix

Making in bulk: Michelle says that the recipe makes enough to last 'all winter long'

'This is not like I'm making it to drink in one day. It's gonna make a huge batch. We all enjoy drinking it,' she says.

'It's not your typical British Yorkshire tea,' she adds, calling it 'Russian tea.'

But Brits, Russians, and others from around the world are pretty upset about the mixture.

'I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE HORRIFIED!!!' one Twitter user said, sharing the video.

'Where the tea? All I saw was sugar and flavoured sugar,' wrote another critic.

'This is wrong. From UK,' wrote another, while one more commented: 'I'm Russian and that's not Russian tea at all.'

The horror! Social media users have been pretty upset about her recipe

'You seem a nice person and your daughter is lovely. Okay, so you know I'm not a hateful person I can now reveal I hated that monstrosity you created,' wrote yet another. 'It has about as much connection to tea as coughing does to coffee. Hideous.'

'Every last English cell in my body died,' said another.

Several American chimed in too, insisting that this is not how people in the US drink tea.

Michelle went on to admit as much, writing: 'The tea is a southern thing in the US. Other states probably would not claim that as tea.'

She also posted a follow-up video reacting to the negative comments, in which she said, 'I got a lot of hate on this video. A lotta lotta hate.

'But I've never been referred to as "Satan" over tea,' she quipped.
Reliance Jio Might Bring UPI App On JioPhone; In Talks With NPCI News oi-Priyanka Dua

Reliance Jio is likely to bring a new payment option on its Jio phone. The company is reportedly in talks with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to bring UPI on its platform as most of its users are using Jiophone, which runs KaiOS.

In fact, the telecom operator is already working with NPCI. This development comes at that time when NPCI is looking at increasing the reach as the adoption of the platform has gone down. It is also expected that this deal is expected to help the people in tier I, II, and III cities.

"They have been working on the NPCI library, which essentially brings the payments screen where one puts a password after initiating a transaction. They need to build this through the NPCI library separately because of the different operating systems, which has few non-Jio Apps," a source close to the development was quoted by Economic Times.

Reliance Jio Plans To Expand Its Reach In Digital Platforms

However, Reliance Jio is yet to make an official announcement on this front. But still, it is true that the operator is expanding its reach in the digital platform. It is worth noting that Jio also has its store, where it is offering apps like JioVideoCall, JioPay, JioGames, JioSaavn, MyJio, JioTV, JioCinema, and JioXpressNews. Besides, Jio has joined hands with Facebook to launch JioMart.

"The work has been going on before the Facebook deal was announced. It is moving at a fairly good pace. It would be a big boost for all stakeholders - UPI network and payment apps," source added. Notably, the sources did not disclose the timeline for availability.

Apart from that, the company is also planning to bring the Aarogya Setu application on the Jiophone. The Aarogya Setu app, which identifies the risk of getting COVID- 19, has already downloaded by 9 crore people, and now it is expected to cross the 11crore mark soon. The government has asked its employees to download this app. Also, the app is mandatory for private employees as it will help you to check the risk. The app is already available in ten languages, and it asked your details like travel history, name, age, and gender.

.

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 08, 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 obligations which are due and payable to CIC on May 15, 2020 and May 19, 2020.



Reference is made to the announcement of the Company dated February 19, 2020 (the "Announcement"). Capitalized terms used herein, unless otherwise defined, shall have the same meanings as those defined in the Announcement. On May 8, 2020, the Company and CIC have entered into an agreement (the 2020 May Deferral Agreement) pursuant to which CIC agreed to grant the Company a deferral of (i) deferred cash interest and deferral fees of USD $2.0 million (the 2020 May Deferral Amount) which is due and payable to CIC on May 19, 2020 under the 2019 Deferral Agreement; and (ii) approximately USD $0.15 million of management fee (the 2020 Q1 Management Fee) which was due and payable on May 15, 2020 under the Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement. The effectiveness of the 2020 May Deferral Agreement is subject to the Company obtaining the requisite acceptance thereof from TSX.

The terms of the 2020 May Deferral Agreement are substantially similar to the terms of the 2020 February Deferral Agreement and the principal terms of the 2020 May Deferral Agreement are as follows:

Payment of the 2020 May Deferral Agreement Amount will be deferred until June 20, 2020, and the 2020 Q1 Management Fee will be deferred until they are repaid by the Company.



As consideration for the deferral of these amounts, the Company agreed to pay CIC: (i) a deferral fee equal to 6.4% per annum on the 2020 May Deferral Amounts, commencing on May 19, 2020; and (ii) a deferral fee equal to 2.5% per annum on the 2020 Q1 Management Fee, commencing on May 15, 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 May Deferral Agreement.





The Company and CIC agreed that nothing in the 2020 May Deferral Agreement prejudices CICs rights to pursue any of its remedies at any time pursuant to the 2019 Deferral Agreement, Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement and 2020 May Deferral Agreement, respectively.

Story continues

The Company anticipates that a deferral will be required in respect of the payments due and payable in June 2020 under the 2019 Deferral 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 TSX accepting the Companys notice application in respect of the 2020 May 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. 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
But the showdown has prompted Mr. Reeves to come out swinging at lawmakers.

Its a terrible tragedy, he said in a recent appearance on Fox News Sunday, accusing lawmakers of trying to conduct a power grab during the middle of an emergency.

He added at a recent news conference that he was poised to veto the legislation and bracing for the dispute to go to court.

Still, lawmakers argued that it was their role to appropriate government money, with House Speaker Philip Gunn saying that Mississippi does not have a one-man-makes-the-decision system.

The governor says that by letting him spend the money, he can get it where it needs to go more quickly, Mr. Gunn said before the vote last week. That makes for a good sound bite, but what voice does that give to our citizens in the decision-making process?

On Thursday, the governor and top lawmakers announced that they had hammered out a deal in which the Legislature would appropriate the funds and the governor would administer it.

State lawmakers across the country contend that their position, often representing districts with fewer than 100,000 people, gives them the most direct line to the wishes of voters.

Those small constituencies, political analysts said, have also made state legislatures a natural habitat for political outsiders, extremists and a wider range of views. In many states, legislatures are known for a persistent flurry of one-off proposals that have little chance of advancing but nevertheless grab eye-rolling headlines and light up social media.
Indian security forces clashed with angry residents who flouted a pandemic lockdown in the city of Ahmedabad on Friday as the country saw a surge in coronavirus deaths and cases that is predicted to worsen. While authorities have insisted that the crisis is under control in the country of 1.3 billion people, experts have warned of an increasing toll despite a six-week old nationwide lockdown. The stay-at-home orders are being eased in many areas of India, but have been toughened in Ahmedabad and other cities in the western state of Gujarat, which has become one of the country's worst pandemic hotspots. Seven hundred paramilitary troops patrolled Ahmedabad and the other main cities of Surat and Vadodara in a bid to keep people off the streets. Virtually all stores have been ordered to stay closed for at least a week. Trouble erupted late Friday when hundreds of people breached the lockdown. Police said "a mob" hurled stones at them and they responded with tear gas and baton charges. At least 15 people were detained. Another 22 coronavirus deaths -- taking the total in Ahmedabad to 343 -- and 269 cases were reported in the city on Friday. The city, which has a population of about 5.5 million, accounts for about 20 percent of the 1,886 deaths reported in India and 10 percent of the 56,300 nationwide cases. With the poor suffering mounting hardship and businesses complaining, the government faces increasing pressure to ease the world's biggest lockdown that started on March 25 and is currently due to end on May 17. - Train hospitals - But it is also battling a spike in cases in major cities like Mumbai, New Delhi and Ahmedabad. More than 5,150 railway carriages have been put in place at 215 stations in main cities to be used as coronavirus isolation wards on wheels. The first patients could board them next week. The number of deaths has doubled to about 100 a day in two weeks. The number of cases is doubling about every 10 days, down from 12 a week ago. Experts say the number of cases is almost certainly higher because of the low number of tests carried out and incomplete reporting of deaths. While the number of deaths is low compared to the United States and the worst-hit European nations, health specialists say India's pandemic curve may only peak in June-July. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan told AFP though that India has still battled the coronavirus better than many richer countries through the lockdown and other "stringent intervention strategies". "India has surprised the world by handling the COVID-19 crisis in a more mature way than some of the most developed countries," Vardhan said. "Given all the constraints, India has worked with speed, scale, determination and decisiveness," he insisted, highlighting how preparations started soon after China reported the coronavirus to the World Health Organization in January. "I think that all of our strategies paid off and we prevented India from slipping into the third stage of transmission which is commonly referred to as community transmission," he said. Community transmission is where infections have no clear source. Vardhan said that in terms of hospitals prepared for patients, staffing, testing and the hunt for a vaccine, "I think India is moving at jet pace to ensure that we can meet any eventuality." Gujarat police detain a man after he threw stones at them during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown in Ahmedabad on May 8, 2020 Police in Ahmedabad, where stay-at-home orders are being tightened, on May 8, 2020 Police patrol in India's Gujarat state earlier this week during a nationwide coronavirus lockdown
In the penultimate episode of How to Get Away With Murder Season 6, Connor Walsh and Michaela Pratt took the stand to testify against Annalise Keating. In light of a surprise witness, an explosive blowout with his former professor, and a bombshell revelation involving his husband, fans theorize that Connors potential fate might be the most heartbreaking of the other characters.

[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains information revealed in How to Get Away With Murder Season 6 Episode 14.]

Jack Falahee | Richard Cartwright

Connor Walsh takes deal to testify against Annalise Keating

Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King) and Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee) were arrested for the murder of their friend and confidential informant, Asher Millstone (Matt McGorry), as their professor, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), fled to Mexico under the name Justine.

Fearing a life sentence in prison and believing Annalise left them to fend for themselves, the two agreed to an immunity deal where they had to confess their involvement in all the murders stemming from Sam Keatings to put their former professor behind bars.

They both made sure each other had the same deal before signing. After the esteemed defense attorney was arrested for possessing false documentation, she and co-counsel Tegan Price (Amirah Vann) figured out the other charges she would face and realized her former students flipped.

Therefore, she asked Connor and Michaela to come over where she recorded them confessing they felt coerced to take the deal. Annalise played the recording, causing the prosecution to drop the death penalty and resulting in the arrest of the Keating 2.

The two were offered new deals, and both lied to each other that they turned it down. However, Connor accepted the agreement, which included five years for himself and immunity for husband Oliver Hampton (Conrad Ricamora), as well as Michaela, who negotiated probation and no jail time.

As the series finale gets closer, the twists get bigger. Don't miss #HTGAWM tonight at 10|9c. pic.twitter.com/MZClMTReUD  How To Get Away ABC (@HowToGetAwayABC) May 7, 2020

Connor and Michaela both perjured themselves on the first day of Annalises hearing as they falsely claimed they covered up Sams murder under the direction of their professor.

However, surprise witness Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza) dropped a bombshell during her testimony and revealed Annalise had nothing to do with her late husbands death.

Connor Walshs heartbreaking fate by the end of How to Get Away With Murder

One Reddit fan explained in a lengthy post how much Connors potential fate just hurts. The user claimed the law student most likely chose to lie on the stand to protect his husband as it wouldnt make sense for him to turn on Annalise given all the guilt hes experienced in the past six seasons.

Additionally, Connor is the least guilty of anyone and wanted a boring life after Sams murder. However, he got blackmailed into returning in the second season and then became complicit in the fourth season due to Oliver.

Annalise is not holding back. #HTGAWM pic.twitter.com/QFzOG5teFU  How To Get Away ABC (@HowToGetAwayABC) May 8, 2020

The user also touched on his now-defunct relationships with Annalise and Michaela as he and his former professor became very close while working on the Supreme Court case together.

However, she tore into him on the stand and alleged he only married Oliver to look like a good person, an accusation that hurt the tech genius as the fan-favorite couple might part ways.

CONNOR THE ONLY ONE GOING TO JAIL WHILE THE ACTUAL MURDERERS AREN'T IM SICK TO MY STOMACH #HTGAWM pic.twitter.com/WDrRUa7pmZ  maz (@Iewyndavis) May 8, 2020

Additionally, he and Michaela had each others backs for years, but she lied to him regarding her better deal. Therefore, potentially being the only one to go to jail when Connor didnt kill anyone is hard to accept for many fans.

Its also heartbreaking for some because viewers have watched the traumatized law student attempt to be normal, discover his purpose to become a lawyer, find a family in his friends as well as the love of his life, only to potentially lose everything because he wanted to save someone he genuinely loves.

How to Get Away With Murder finale airs Thursday, March 14, 2020, at 10 p.m. EST on ABC.
TORONTO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc. ("Supreme Cannabis" or the "Company") (TSX: FIRE) (OTCQX: SPRWF) (FRA: 53S1) today announced that it will be providing its third quarter financial results for the three and nine months ended March 31, 2020 before markets open on May 15, 2020.

About Supreme Cannabis.

The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc., (TSX: FIRE) (OTCQX: SPRWF) (FRA: 53S1), is a global diversified portfolio of distinct cannabis companies, products and brands. Since 2014, the Company has emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing, premium plant-driven lifestyle companies. Supreme Cannabis' portfolio of brands caters to diverse consumer experiences, with brands and products that address recreational, wellness, medicinal and new consumer preferences.

The Company's brand portfolio includes, 7ACRES, Blissco , Truverra, Sugarleaf and Khalifa Kush Enterprises Canada . Supreme Cannabis' brands are backed by a focused suite of world-class operating assets that serve key functions in the value chain, including, scaled cultivation, value-add processing, centralized manufacturing and product testing and R&D. Follow the Company on Instagram , Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn and YouTube.

We simply grow better.

Forward-Looking Information.

Certain statements made in this press release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information may relate to anticipated events or results and other statements that are not historical facts. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof, and the Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.supreme.ca/


Donald Trump says he believes the coronavirus was accidentally leaked from a Wuhan laboratory but has provided no proof. Intelligence agencies in the United States and Australia say they have no hard evidence. The Australian government says it's most likely that the virus was transferred from an animal to humans at Wuhan's wet market. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to be walking back from his previous strong statements.

Some are treating Trump's claim as without basis and we wait to see if he can back it up. In the meantime, it's unwise to dismiss the accidental lab leak hypothesis. Here's why.

Note first that it's not a conspiracy theory; it's an accident hypothesis. And we should not mix up the claim of an accidental leak of a naturally occurring virus with the claim that the virus was constructed or manipulated in a laboratory to become more potent. Genetic analysis has disproved the latter.

The main evidence pointing to a lab leak, all of it circumstantial, comes from research published by Chinese scientists before Beijing shut them down. On January 29, an article written by Chinese researchers was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It concluded from an analysis of 425 coronavirus patients that 55 per cent of cases diagnosed before January 1 were linked to the South China Seafood Market, leaving 45 per cent who had no apparent contact with the market.
Amid labour shortage caused by ongoing exodus of migrant workers, the Punjab government has decided to advance the start of paddy transplantation by a week from June 20 to June 13.

The matter was discussed by the state cabinet on Friday and approved by chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who is also in-charge of the agriculture department. A notification in this regard is likely to be issued on Saturday.

Officials said the decision has been taken to facilitate staggered paddy sowing in view of the Covid-9 pandemic, when labour is scanty and social distancing protocol has to be maintained.

Additional chief secretary (development) Viswajeet Khanna said the issue was discussed threadbare and the decision to advance paddy transplantation was taken due to shortage of labour.

However, the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), which drives the research related to the crops, has been educating farmers to prepare for start of transplantation at the stipulated time (June 20).

The PAU was not in favour of changing the transplantation schedule keeping in view the acute fall of sub-soil water table across the state.

Water is important, but we also cant afford to jeopardise a seasons crop when we are passing through tough times as a pandemic has engulfed the entire world, Khanna said while talking to HT.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal had demanded advancement of paddy transplantation to June 1.

Gunbir Singh Sodhi, a farmer from Ferozpur, said, We are facing acute shortage of labour. We are not getting labour to transplant paddy saplings. Most of the labourers have left for their home states. We have asked the government to advance paddy transplantation by three weeks.

PAU vice-chancellor (V-C) BS Dhillon told HT that due to the unprecedented scenario, it was decided to take a chance this time with early transplantation. This shouldnt be made a yearly practice as water is precious, he cautioned.

By an estimate of the state agriculture department, 12.5 lakh labour heads are required to sow paddy in 30 days.

Paddy is a major kharif crop in the state, which is expected to be sown over 70 lakh acre in the coming season.

DSR VARIETY ON NOT MORE THAN ONE-THIRD AREA

The agriculture department also decided that out of the total area under paddy in the coming season, direct seeding rice (DSR) variety should not be sown over more than one-third area. No doubt, trials with DSR variety have shown good results, but the total area with the new method cant be more than one-third of the total cultivated area. We have to be on a safe side, said Khanna.

1,386 WHEAT STUBBLE FIRES IN TWO DAYS

Meanwhile, a sudden spurt in cases of wheat stubble burning on Thursday and Friday took the number of farm fires in the state to1,615 so far. As many as 722 cases of stubble burning were reported on Thursday, followed by 664 on Friday. We never imagined the cases would rise so fast and farmers wouldnt understand the gravity of situation, especially when coronavirus has also spread its tentacles, said Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) member secretary Krunesh Garg.

On Friday, most of the farm fire cases were reported from southwest Punjab: Bathinda (104), Barnala (85), Ferozepur (67), Mansa (48), Hoshiarpur (32), Kapurthala (28), Ludhiana (26), Patiala (23), Muktsar (21) and Fazilka (18).

Additional chief secretary (development) Viswajeet Khanna said he has asked deputy commissioners to act tough against the errant farmers.
The Railways on Friday took to social media, urging people not to squat, walk or indulge in any activity on the tracks after 16 migrant workers were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district.

The migrant workers were sleeping on rail tracks while returning to Madhya Pradesh amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

The Railways also warned people that although regular passenger trains were not in operation, the migrant special trains, parcel and freight trains were running on the rail network.

This announcement has been made on the railway ministry's Twitter handle as well as on TV channels as scrolls.

The decision to make these announcements comes after Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety Shailesh Pathak wrote a letter to the Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav, calling for abundant caution and requesting him to issue instructions to ensure that such an accident does not recur.

The Commission of Railway Safety, which investigates all serious rail accidents and clears all rail projects, also said now that such an incident of migrant or other persons walking along the tracks leading to consequent deaths have come to notice, all-out efforts must be made to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future.

South Central railway in a statement said the driver of the train had seen the sleeping men and had even tried to wake them up by honking but failed to save their lives.

Due to the lack of congestion on their routes, the average speed of freight trains have increased by 66 per cent during the lockdown. The Railways has ordered a probe into the incident.

Sources said questions are also being raised as to why railway personnel patrolling the area did not spot the men on the tracks and alert the next station as per protocol.

Despite the railways running migrant special trains since May 1 and ferrying almost three lakh migrants since then in more than 251 trains, many of them have started their journey home on foot or bicycle, saying they could not wait for their turn any longer due to lack of food and employment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hon Frank Fuseini Adongo, MP for Zebilla and Deputy Upper East Regional Minister

08.05.2020 LISTEN

The ghanareport.com on Wednesday 6th May, 2019 published a list of 39 Members of Parliament (MPs) who have never spoken on the floor of the House in 2019, according to the hansard. Of the 39 MPs, 31 are with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP). Five female MPs in Parliament made the infamous list.

Some 23 first-term MPs also did not speak on the floor while two despite being in their fourth term in Parliament did not utter a word during proceedings.

At least five names on the list are ministers or deputy ministers  including deputy minister for Roads and Highways Anthony Karbo, Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Hon. Frank Fuseini Adongo and recently promoted a Minister of State at the Ministry for the Interior, Byran Acheampong

However, briefing newsmen at the forecourt of the Zebilla district library where the MP for Zebilla constituency and Deputy Upper East Regional minister Hon Frank Adongo Fuseini was supposed to commission the district library for use, concern youth of the district said the Member of Parliament Hon Frank Fuseini Adongo is the only MP who has brought unprecedented development to the constituency.

They explained that the MP has brought a facelift to the district and for that matter the constituency.

According to the youth, they don't mind if their MP does not speak in Parliament or spoke in 2019 but what they do know is that their MP is an agent of development that God has sent to the constituency. They indicated that what they wanted is development and jobs and the MP is doing exactly that.

They asked the Hon MP to remain calm since they will vote massively for him to go back to Parliament come December 7 for him to bring more development to the constituency.

They highlighted the following as achievements of the Hon MP within three (3) years in office for Zebilla Constituency. This they say is clear evidence of fair redistribution of state resources for the benefit of all.

1.Rehabilitation of District Library

2.Donation of Medical Equipment to Binaba Health Center

3.Fabricated 320MetalDual Desk for Basic Schools

4.41 Boreholes from 1Million Dollar 1Constituency

5.Worked with Well Construction Ltd and have drilled over 15 boreholes in the Constituency example Zebilla Natinga,Gabuliga Primary,Anosgoor ,Binaba,Sheega in Kusanaba, Biringu etc

6.Distributed 2000 mathematical sets for 2019 BECE candidates

7. Financial support to over 500 students in various schools within the Constituency.

8.Donation of an Ambulance To Zebilla Health Directorate to enhance health care delivery

9.Lobbied for the construction of 6 unit GNPC block and Office at Zebilla SHS

10.3 Unit Classroom block from GETFUND underway in Zebilla SHS

11.Scholarship from Scholarship Secretariat for Student to Study Medicine at UDS and others at various tertiary institutions across Ghana

12.Assisted Students to gain admission to well resourced secondary schools in Ghana

13.Medical support to procure artificial legs for 4 people in the district

3 basic school students

1 woman

14.Freeee remedial classes for 2019 NOV/DEC candidates(200+ beneficiaries).

15. Mechanized Water projects for the following

Binaba Market

Sapeliga Market

Zebilla Market

Tanga etc

16.1Village 1Dam at Zebilla dam expansion,Teshie Dam,Lamboya

17.Over 300 youth in NABCO

18.Over 200 youth in Youth in Afforestation

19.Over 150 employed during the limited teachers' recruitment for both Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff without looking at party belongings since some NDC members were part

20. Recruitment into Fire Service, Immigration, Police etc

21.Local government recruitment

22.New Vehicle for Police Service to help fight crime in the district

23.Community Police Personnel (70+)

24. Upgrading of Kukore to Boya to Boya Kpalsako through Tanga Kpalsako to Sakom to Kuboko ActionAid junction. It is one of the best roads within the region

25.Ultra Modern Maternity block at Zebilla District Hospital.

26.Rehabilitation of Binaba Health Center

27.Rehabilitation of Zebilla District Court

28.Rehabilitation of Education Office ,Zebilla.

29.Rehabilitation of Timonde Health Center

30.Extension of electricity to Tanga,Tang Dabote,Wiiga,Tang Kpalsako,Gozesi,Bugore and adjourning communities.

31.Farmer support programs

32.Successful implementations of planting for food and jobs in the district etc etc

33. School Feeding Program increased from 21 in 2016 to 75 in 2020. Over 50 schools have been added creating both direct n indirect jobs

34. 1 Constituency 1 Ambulance

35. Agric sector and COCOABOD recruitment

ETC
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has torpedoed hope of international travel returning any time soon.

Mr Morrison announced a three-step plan to relax coronavirus restrictions on Friday, giving Australians a timeline about when life will return to normal.

The current national baseline rules will be relaxed in three stages, with less risky activities such as sport and dining out starting before more dangerous ones such as clubbing and going to the cinema.

However, international travel was not included in the stages as Mr Morrison said reopening the borders was not even on his radar.

'There's nothing on our radar which would see us opening up international travel in the foreseeable future,' he said.

'There are already some very, very minor exceptions where the Border Force can provide an exemption for outbound travel. But that's in areas like facilitating development aid in third countries and things like that. It's a very limited set of circumstances.'

Australians will be holidaying at home fo rthe foreseeable future (pictured: a woman returning to Sydney)

International terminals will remain empty as Scott Morrison destroys any chance of flights resuming

International travel could be off the cards until at least 2021 and Tourism Australia has already put a plan in motion to inspire Australians to take a holiday in regional areas hard-hit by both the bushfires and the coronavirus lockdown.

Mr Morrison said interstate travel should resume during stage three, which should be implemented by July.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is confident that domestic operations could return to normal by July.

On Wednesday he said the flying kangaroo has become the envy of the aviation world given the country's low infection rate and interstate travel market.

'I don't think there is any other airline in the world that has a market that is more positive than what we have,' he told reporters.

Two women drag their suitcases from the airport to a bus after returning from Cambodia

The current national baseline rules will be relaxed in three stages, with less risky activities such as sport and dining out starting before more dangerous ones such as clubbing and going to the cinema

While the airline will stay grounded for another two months, he said the carrier will remain on stand-by for a short notice return if the situation eases faster than expected.

'Australia has done an amazing job of flattening the curve and we're optimistic that domestic travel will start returning earlier than first thought,' he said.

But Mr Joyce also warned 'we clearly won't be back to pre-coronavirus levels anytime soon.'
Ten Bangladeshi nationals were



arrested from Rajnagar village near the Indo-Bangla border on Friday for entering the country without any valid documents, police said.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team raided a house in the village and arrested the 10 Bangladeshis on Friday morning.

Director General of Police Rajiv Singh said that the arrested persons revealed during interrogation that they had entered the Indian territory in search of job about six-seven months back.

One of the arrested Bangladeshis, who was identified as Md Masud Rana told reporters that "After the lockdown was announced, we could not manage any job here, so we were trying to return to our country".

Meanwhile, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Border Security Force (BSF) Tripura Frontier on Friday claimed that border smuggling and infiltration had come down drastically during the lockdown period.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The northeastern province of Quang Ninh is planning to build a riverside road connecting with the Ha Long-Hai Phong-Hanoi expressway.

Ha Long Bay - a popular destination in Quang Ninh province )

Construction of the 51.4km road is scheduled to commence in 2021.

The project is expected to meet the development requirements of Quang Yen, Uong Bi and Dong Trieu, thus creating a driving force for the western region of Quang Ninh.

Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Van Thang said the road will be designed with six lanes in 2021-2026, then expanded to 10 lanes.

Quang Yen, Uong Bi and Dong Trieu form an economic corridor in the west of Quang Ninh.

Quang Yen has the potential to develop services, seaports, logistics, urban areas and high technology, which are expected to draw a large number of domestic and foreign investors in the near future.

The connection of the three localities with the Ha Long-Hai Phong-Hanoi expressway will also contribute to the development of seaport and logistics systems on the waterway from Quang Yen to other key areas in the north.

Strategic investors such as Vingroup, Amata, Foxconn and TCL are carrying out large-scale research projects in Quang Yen such as the green Ha Long urban areas and Amata industrial park.

They are also planning to implement projects in Uong Bi and Dong Trieu./.VNA
TORONTO, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Converge Technology Solutions Corp. ("Converge" or "the Company") (TSXV:CTS) (FSE:0ZB) (OTCQX: CTSDF) is pleased to announce that it will release the results for its first quarter for the period ended March 31st, 2020 on Wednesday, May 13th, 2020 after market close. The Company will subsequently hold a conference call on Thursday, May 14th, 2020 at 8:30am EST hosted by Shaun Maine, Chief Executive Officer and Carl Smith, Chief Financial Officer. A question and answer session will follow the corporate update.

Conference Call Details:

Date: Thursday, May 14th, 2020

Time: 8:30 AM Eastern Time

Participant Dial-in Numbers:

Local  Toronto (+1) 416 764 8609

Toll Free  North America (+1) 888 390 0605

Germany  08007240293

United Kingdom - 08006522435

Conference ID: 60564007

Recording Playback Numbers:

Toronto (+1) 416 764 8677

Toll Free  North America (+1) 888 390 0541

Passcode: 564007

Expiry Date: Thursday, May 21st, 2020 at 11:59pm

A live audio webcast and archive of the conference call will be available by visiting the Company's website at https://convergetp.com/investor-relations/. Please connect at least 15 minutes prior to the conference call to ensure time for any software download that may be needed to hear the webcast.

About Converge

Converge Technology Solutions Corp. is a North American IT Solution Provider focused on delivering industry leading solutions and services. Converge's regional sales and services organizations deliver advanced analytics, cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services offerings to clients across various industries. The Company supports these solutions with talent expertise and digital infrastructure offerings across all major IT vendors in the marketplace. This multi-faceted approach enables Converge to address the unique business and technology requirements for all clients in the public and private sectors. For more information, visit convergetp.com.

SOURCE Converge Technology Solutions Corp.

Related Links

https://convergetp.com/


Tests recently completed at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Department of Environmental Studies, under the supervision of Charles Gerba, PhD have shown that over 99% of Human coronavirus 229e that comes into contact with Livinguard treated textiles are destroyed. The Livinguard mask is a multi-barrier mask composed of three separate filtration layers. When used in combination, the Livinguard multi-barrier mask provides protection of over 99.99%. Details on the scientific research can be found here .

Livinguard is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the results of the testing. Although Livinguard face masks are not yet available for sale in the US or cleared by the FDA, Livinguard is confident they will find the results reliable and agree that the technology's application to masks and textiles will be beneficial, especially during this global pandemic.

Masks treated with the Livinguard technology are available throughout the world with current manufacturing in Portugal, Israel, Sri Lanka, Jordan, UAE, India, and China. In the U.S., Livinguard treated masks are expected to be available in the next few weeks. ReadyOne, a manufacturer of battle dress for the U.S. Military out of El Paso Texas, will manufacture Livinguard certified masks.

Dr. Gerba, Professor of Microbiology, Virology, and Immunology, known as "Dr. Germ" for his abundant testing of germs on nearly every surface humankind might touch, said: "Livinguard textile technology holds promise in the fight against COVID 19."

Sanjeev Swamy, Founder and CTO of Livinguard, said: "We are enthused and grateful to be able to offer a powerful tool in the fight against coronavirus. The unique characteristics of Livinguard will provide users with an unprecedented level of safety. This is particularly important as shelter-in -place orders are eased."

The principle underlying the technology is its ability to destroy microorganisms upon contact, including bacteria and viruses, and to do so continuously and permanently. Unlike alternative metal-based solutions, Livinguard's technology has been found to be nontoxic to both skin and lungs. This has countless applications and endless possibilities for permanent hygiene across a broad variety of consumer products and numerous industries such as: medical, personal hygiene and care, air filtration and others. Details on the technology can be found here.

Reusable & washable

Face masks using the Livinguard technology are washable and reusable. Each mask can be used up to 210 times, with no compromise on efficacy. Since the Livinguard face mask is free of metals and does not leach, it is kind to skin as well as the environment. More information on their use can be found here .

Face masks using the Livinguard technology are currently being produced and sold by several companies in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, including by Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH). Numerous countries in these regions have already approved the face mask as a reusable N95 anti-viral, anti-bacterial face mask. Procter & Gamble was among the first companies to buy FHH's Fine Guard brand of masks to equip its employees in China.

"We are so proud to partner with Livinguard and bring this breakthrough technology to protect the world's consumers. We are working hard to maximize the availability of Fine Guard masks treated with Livinguard technology and are already looking into new product developments with Livinguard such as gloves and disposable wipes," said James Michael Lafferty, CEO FHH.

About Livinguard AG

Livinguard is an innovative and environmentally friendly hygiene technology platform based in Zug, Switzerland. As the first company in the world to empower textiles and other materials with self-disinfecting properties, it licenses its patented technologies to companies from various industries to improve the health and well-being of consumers. Livinguard AG operates in Switzerland, Germany, USA, Singapore, Japan, India, and South Africa.

www.livinguard.com

About Dr. Charles Gerba

Dr. Charles Gerba is a Professor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Gerba, or Dr. Germ, as he is also known, has an international reputation for his methodologies of pathogen detection in water and food, and pathogen occurrence and risk assessment in households. He has authored several textbooks, more than 500 journal articles, and has been featured on numerous television programs and magazines.

SOURCE Livinguard
Liberias Catholic Bishops have called on the countrys security agencies to uphold human rights as authorities go about enforcing a government-imposed lockdown aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19.

English Africa Service  Vatican City

In a statement issued by Liberias National Commission of Catholic Justice, Peace and Caritas (NCJPC), on behalf of the Bishops, the prelates commend the government for measures aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic. They, however, stress the importance of acting within the confines of the law.

Security agencies need to uphold human rights

The Liberian legislature approved President George Weahs request to declare a state of emergency and imposed a 60-days COVID-19 lockdown. Liberia has 189 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Liberia (CABICOL) is concerned about growing cases of human rights violations by various security agencies in Liberia. While recognising that during a state of emergency, individual rights may be suspended, the Bishops warn of a situation that could get out of hand. They cite several documented cases of violations that were captured in video recordings gone viral.

The Bishops further insist that the dignity of every person must be upheld and protected at all times.

Bishops condemn threats against the media

The Liberian prelates also denounced threats targeting the countrys media made by government officials. They criticised, in particular, the countrys Solicitor General who publicly threatened media houses with closures.

We would like to remind the government and its functionaries, that the Constitution has not been suspended" and therefore infractions must be dealt with in a civilised manner, said the Bishops.
Keep your distance. On paths and trails, stay at least six feet from other people and dogs. When walkers or runners approach, step off the path and allow them to pass. Even better, find a field where you and your dog wont have to pass anyone. Jackie Moyano, a trainer and founding member of Behavior United in Silver Spring, discourages on-leash meetings  now or ever. Its an unnatural way for dogs to greet each other, and the tension on the leash can contribute to bad manners. In her training, Moyano has dogs look to their humans for a treat when they see a dog they dont know. If a stranger asks about saying hello to your dog, this is an easy time to practice saying, Not right now, thanks for asking, without the stigma of being unfriendly. Not all dogs love other people or other dogs, Moyano says, Even after we go back to not social distancing, we should be in the mind-set of giving dog space if they want it.
Demonstrators at Hoag Memorial Hospital in 2013 protest its decision to ban abortions at the behest of its Catholic business partners. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

There may not be many reasons for optimism in American healthcare just now, but one glimmer of hope has emerged in Orange County, Calif., where a prestigious hospital says it's fed up with the Catholic Church's restrictions on healthcare.

Hoag Memorial Hospital of Newport Beach, which was founded as a Presbyterian institution in 1952, is suing to extricate itself from a partnership it entered with a Catholic hospital system in 2012.

The deal was controversial from the start, in part because the Catholic partners imposed an abortion ban on Hoag's doctors even though they'd been promised that the deal would have no impact on their practices.

Usually, in hospital mergers there are two sides at the negotiating table. When one of the partners is a Catholic system, there's an outside third party that has long-term influence  the bishops.

Lois Uttley, MergerWatch

Now Hoag's management has awakened, if belatedly, to the effect on patients.

"It has become increasingly clear that Presbyterian beliefs, values and policies have been compromised due to restrictions within the larger Catholic system, and those constraints impinge upon the valid exercise of those Presbyterian beliefs, values and policies," Hoag says in a lawsuit aimed at dissolving the partnership with Providence St. Joseph Health, which runs 51 hospitals and hundreds of other medical facilities in seven western states.

The increasingly stringent rules being enforced by Catholic bishops on affiliated hospitals, the lawsuit adds, "signals the possibility, if not likelihood, of a growing divide on key issues that also affect the delivery of care" by Hoag.

The lawsuit was filed May 4 in Orange County Superior Court, after it became clear that Providence would resist the hospital's efforts to dissolve the partnership. Providence asserts that Hoag's action would "negatively impact patient care, diminish resources and medical expertise available to Orange County."

Story continues

The case could mark the end of a sordid chapter in California healthcare, and a beacon for those concerned about the spreading encroachment of discriminatory Catholic doctrines into American healthcare practices.

Hoag's entry into the Catholic healthcare system was born in an atmosphere of deceit.

In August 2012, Hoag and what was then St. Joseph Health System, a Roman Catholic chain with five hospitals in Orange County, announced a corporate partnership in which both entities would "retain their individual identities and faith affiliations  Presbyterian and Catholic, respectively."

At the time, Hoag's medical staff was repeatedly and explicitly assured that nothing in their practice would change due to the partnership. Instead, just weeks after the deal was made final in early 2013, abortions were banned at Hoag.

Hoag Chief Executive Robert T. Braithwaite and then-Chairman Gary McKitterick made things worse by implying that they ended abortions at the hospital because Hoag doctors didn't perform enough to maintain "clinical excellence" in the procedure, and therefore patients were better off having them done elsewhere.

Hoag's OB/GYN staff properly took that as an insult. Eight Hoag OB/GYNs wrote an open letter in response informing Braithwaite and McKitterick that they didn't know what they were talking about. "We are experts in providing the 'full array of reproductive family planning services' to which they refer as lacking at Hoag," they wrote.

The truth, as I reported at the time, was that St. Joseph had made the abortion ban a condition of the partnership agreement.

According to Richard Afable, who had negotiated the deal as Hoag's then-CEO and became CEO of the partnership and a St. Joseph executive upon its completion, adherence by Hoag to St. Joseph's own ban on abortions was sacrosanct  required of ourselves and anyone that we [St. Joseph] would work with.

"They really sprung it on us," recalls Jeffrey Illeck, an Orange County OB/GYN who signed the open letter.

Many in the local community also objected, in part because of Hoag's history as an independent local institution. "If you live in this area, you go to Hoag," says Lynne Riddle, a retired federal bankruptcy judge and Newport Beach resident who was among the critics of the deal.

The abortion ban at Hoag underscored Catholic hospitals' unwillingness to compromise on religious strictures. These are set forth in the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care, issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which bars abortions, distribution of contraceptives and sterilization procedures such as tubal ligations at Catholic hospitals.

Non-Catholic affiliates are generally subject to a "Statement of Common Values" that also bans abortions. Both give local bishops authority over medical care in the facilities. Both also limit end-of-life options for patients.

The inherently discriminatory nature of the directives helped sink a proposed affiliation between UC San Francisco and Dignity Health, a major Catholic chain, last year, and has been an obstacle in some other arrangements.

But it's unusual, though not unprecedented, for the church rules to create a schism between existing partners, as has happened at Hoag.

In 2010, a nonsectarian hospital in Tucson dissolved a two-year trial merger with a Catholic system a year early, after administrators refused a doctor permission to perform an emergency termination for a patient suffering a miscarriage. The woman had to be taken to a hospital 80 miles away. (She survived.)

Catholic practices have cast a larger shadow over U.S. healthcare as Catholic hospital systems have grown. In 2016, according to the nonprofit MergerWatch, 4 of the 10 largest hospital chains in the U.S. were Catholic, accounting for 1 out of every 6 acute care hospital beds.

Providence St. Joseph is the fourth-largest Catholic system and the seventh-largest hospital chain overall, according to Lois Uttley, formerly the director of MergerWatch and currently director of the Womens Health Project at Community Catalyst, a healthcare advocacy group.

"Usually, in hospital mergers there are two sides at the negotiating table," Uttley told me. "When one of the partners is a Catholic system, there's an outside third party that has long-term influence  the bishops."

California's approval of the Hoag-St. Joseph partnership in 2013 marked a low point in the tenure of the attorney general of that era, Kamala Harris, who essentially waved the deal through with inadequate guarantees of Hoag's independence.

Harris required that Hoag maintain all its existing women's health services for at least 10 years  except for "direct abortions" (a term derived from Catholic doctrine that has no medical significance).

These could be ended as long as "alternative providers" were accessible somewhere within Hoag's service area, which stretched 50 miles along the coast from Long Beach to Dana Point and inland as far as Anaheim.

In March 2014, about a year after her initial approval, Harris revised the deal, extending the maintenance-of-service period to 20 years and stating explicitly that Hoag was not to become subject to the ethical and religious directives. The new agreement ended her investigation of Hoag's alleged noncompliance. St. Joseph merged with the much larger Providence Health in 2016.

In its official response to the Hoag lawsuit, Providence stated, "Our relationship has been strong since 2012."

But it's hard to imagine how anyone could have written or distributed that line with a straight face.

The Hoag lawsuit and a June 2019 resolution passed by the Hoag board lay out in chapter and verse the hospital's growing discontent with its affiliation starting as early as 2015.

"The benefits for which Hoag agreed to give up some level of autonomy...were never achieved," the lawsuit states. "The record, moreover, details significant frustration with the lack of progress" toward Hoag's goal of strengthening its service to its local population.

The lawsuit mentions "repeated inquiries from Hoag Board members related to the failure to achieve any meaningful objectives." It became clear to the Hoag board that Providence's goal was to keep the hospital within its system as "a captive affiliate."

Rather than being a member of a partnership devoted to the local community's healthcare, Hoag found itself reduced to just another entity in a big regional system.

Last June the board, in consultation with the heirs of George Hoag  a former J.C. Penney investor and executive whose family foundation helped launch the hospital  voted unanimously to extricate the hospital from Providence's control and become merely a "voluntary partner" of the big system.

What will happen next at Hoag remains unclear. Providence says it will challenge Hoag's right to exit the partnership. "As a legal matter, the affiliation is a permanent one," Erik G. Wexler, CEO of Providence's Southern California unit, told me by email, "and Hoag does not have any unilateral right to disaffiliate without the agreement of the other parties."

The case shows that it's "difficult for hospitals to extricate themselves from deals that look really sweet at the outset," says Amy Chen, a senior attorney for the National Health Law Program.

Rebuilding services, moreover, may be harder than tearing them down in the first place. Hoag's management hasn't charted a road map of what services or approaches will change once it's again independent.

"We haven't been told we'll be able to do abortions again," Illeck says, "but I assume that's part of what we'll be able to do again." The change will also remove an uncertainty that long existed over how Catholic influence at Hoag could expand.

"One of our fears when all this happened was, you're taking away our abortion rights now, but what's going to happen in five or 10 years? Now, that's not going to matter."

If Hoag succeeds, it will strike a blow for healthcare unencumbered by religious or ideological obstacles.

"It's essential," Riddle says, "that everyone really feel how important it is to have a medical system that respects who you are and what your needs are and with your physician deciding what treatment is best for you."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 10:52:52|Editor: huaxia

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SUVA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Fiji Airways, Fiji's national carrier, on Friday has extended all its international flight suspensions to the end of June due to the prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a statement by Fiji Airways on Friday, the national carrier also expects to reduce its scheduled services in July as the COVID-19 crisis continues to decimate travel demand.

In March, the airline announced the suspension of all its international flights until the end of May.

Fiji Airways' Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andre Viljoen said that even with tentative schedules for July, any resumption of flights will depend on the easing of border restrictions and return of demand.

While the near-term outlook remains bleak, the airline remains flexible and will be ready to launch services as soon as practical, he said, adding that the extension by a month is a "difficult but necessary decision," given the uncertainty that will be surrounding the June operating environment.

"We totally understand measures placed by the governments to protect borders. While the near-term outlook remains bleak, we remain flexible and will be ready to launch services as soon as practical," said Viljoen.

"Airlines around the world are adjusting schedules accordingly. We will continue to assess the situation and may reduce capacity further if required. The outlook remains bleak, and we are preparing for the worst while hoping for the best."

Fiji's Civil Aviation Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said earlier that Fiji Airways had to make tough decisions due to the reduced passenger numbers and global travel restrictions.

According to the minister, reduction in flights has resulted in the airline implementing Leave Without Pay of four weeks between April and June for all employees. All senior management are taking a 35 percent pay cut.

Viljoen said these are necessary measures to navigate through the crisis as global border control measures make it nearly impossible to continue scheduled operations.

He also announced that the airline will work with all staff and employee organisations, as the company re-assesses its manpower requirements in light of the suspension decision.

The decision to suspend all its international flights, part of the airline's efforts to deal with the COVID-19 impact, is the most stringent scale back in Fiji Airways' 68-year history. Enditem
COVID-19: PM should de-centralise the system says Rahul Gandhi

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 08: The government needs to be more transparent on the lockdown exit plan, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said.

With regard to migrant labour, Rahul Gandhi said that take the idea of NYAY and start putting money directly into the houses of the poor. It would cost Rs 65,000 crore. Each one needs Rs 7,500, he also said.

As daily wagers they have no choice and hence the money has to be given, he also said.

We need to have empathy with the migrants. The states should interact and the Centre has to oversee it.

We need to build a wall for the poor and also create financial support for them. Many companies are going to go down. Hence it is important to protect these daily wage workers, Rahul also said.

If your big businesses are not firing then the MSMEs will go down. There is a link between large businesses and small businesses. Hence support has to be given to both. Hence, it is important to protect all as everything is inter-linked.

Businesses are collapsing and the economy is collapsing. There is a view in the government that if we move too fast and spend too much money, we may create a problem with the rupee. We have to move aggressively now, Rahul Gandhi also said.

We have to start the engine and the more time we take, the more we will suffer, he also said.

In my view, it is not enough to have only a strong Prime Minister. We need strong Chief Ministers, strong district administration, the Congress leader also said.

Speaking about the zones, he said it should be created at the state levels and not at the Central level. The District Magistrates and the Chief Ministers should make these zones as they have the information, he also said.

On the Arogya Setu app, Rahul said it should be made an open source. There should be transparency in the application, he also said.

He further said that to fight this problem, we need to have a de-centralised Centre. Chief Ministers of Congress-led states have been complaining that they are not getting money from the Centre, he also said. We can give them inputs, but we cannot force our suggestions on them.

The Prime Minister has to de-centralise the system. The power cannot lie with the PMO alone. If we have to exit the lockdown, it is necessary to eradicate fear from the minds of the people.

The lesser you sensationalise and the more you speak about the reality, it would be better, Rahul said while advising the media. COVID-19 is fatal for 1 per cent of the people and it is the duty of the PM and the media to tell the people. If this is not done, then people will not come out of their homes, he also said.

He also said that he does not believe that the Centre is giving the states funds. The Congress CMs have told us that they have not been given the funds and I am sure that this is the case with the BJP ruled states as well, he said.

It is not right to stop migrant labourers. However when we send them back, we need to ensure their safety. They should be tested and sent back, but stopping them from returning home is inhuman, Rahul Gandhi also said.
A Mumbai-based young and growing digital agency The Craft Tank, skillfully nabbed the social creative and digital mandate of the blooming cosmetics brand Swiss Beauty.

In a market that has way too many options, Swiss Beauty, a fast-growing name in cosmetics, aspires to improve the talk and usage of its world-class products amongst the audience. But with the current pandemic limiting its play to mainly digital mediums, itll be up to the skillful team at The Craft Tank to make an impression for the brand online.

With agencies on #WFH mode amidst the quarantine situation, the team of dreamers at The Craft Tank effectively converged and pitched from home, to win over hearts at Swiss Beauty. The agency has big plans to increase the reach and quality of content for Swiss Beauty in the market, and revamp the brands overall digital presence through targeted social media influencer activities, media spends, marketplace website banners and more. The young agency has also incorporated the execution of photo & video shoots amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, with the help of its in-house media creation team. While its still not decided, The Craft Tank has also put its hat in the ring for the brands website creation.

Amit Kumar and Mohit Kumar, Directors at Swiss Beauty Cosmetics, said, The Craft Tank is a promising young agency, whose fresh take on our brand has been a crucial factor in us choosing them as our creative partner. At a time when everyone is working from home, they have shown us how well they work as a team and nothing deters them from delivering only the best. A clear understanding of what we need to do as a brand and what the steps should be to reach the next level, have come out spectacularly from them.

Kedar Shet, CEO and Co-founder at The Craft Tank, expressed his enthusiastic ambition while saying, Pitching and winning the creative mandate for a new client during a critical period like this sure does teach you that doing creative work is more than a place or manner. We at The Craft Tank, are thrilled to take on this adventure with Swiss Beauty. We look forward to captivating the audiences attention and in-turn converting them into loyal customers of Swiss Beauty.
photo VNA

The US ambassador to Vietnam Daniel J.Kritenbrink told VIR that Vietnam has done an exemplary job of adopting substantial measures to contain the outbreak of COVID-19 within its borders.

The measures that Kritenbrink mentioned includes adopting a whole-of-government approach by mobilising resources from all sectors, drawing the technical input of international partners, developing evidenced-based guidelines and training healthcare and laboratory professionals to implement these guidelines down to the local level, proactively identifying cases and their contacts and monitoring them for additional signs of disease, and communicating proactively by providing information through a public website and text messages.

Danny Lee, former director of Community Affairs Development in the ASEAN, was in Nanning in February when the disease was at its peak in China, before witnessing first-hand his mother land of Singapore fighting against the virus. He told VIR, As ASEAN chair, Vietnams sterling performance in controlling the outbreak will be a stamp of confidence in the countrys products. It will also raise confidence in investors looking for a well-managed economy to put their money in. Lees evaluation has been proven by continuous large orders of Vietnamese-made medical equipment from the US, Germany, and Israel.

On April 23 around 1.5 million Vietnamese masks, equal to 40,000 tonnes, were shipped to Germany. In person at the airport to receive the masks, Lorenz Caffier, Minister of the Interior and Europe of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, told media that his ministry had used tax money responsibly by ordering the masks from Vietnam.

Earlier, US president Donald Trump sent a tweet to say thank you to friends in Vietnam after 450,000 Made-in-Vietnam protective suits landed in Dallas, Texas.

Along with masks and protective suits, coronavirus test kits from Vietnam that have received quality certification from both Europe and the World Health Organization have also been exported to dozens of countries around the world.

During the pandemic, the Vietnamese government and businesses have demonstrated to the world their ability of analysing, predicting, operating and making decisions to cope with difficulties, Do Cao Bao, a member of FPT Corporations Board of Directors, told VIR.

According to Bao, the mask diplomacy campaign, along with medical protective suits and high quality test kits, is a beautiful image proving that Vietnam is a friendly, kind, and trustworthy partner. Many analysts have commented that Vietnam will benefit greatly from this diversification because it has proven to be friendly while ensuring economic efficiency for Western companies which may choose Vietnam for their first option for seeking a reliable reloation, Bao said.

So far, the Vietnamese government has presented 550,000 masks to European countries suffering the most damage from the disease; 300,000 masks to the US and Japan; 500 test RT-PCR real-time COVID-19 kits to Indonesia, and $100,000 of test kits along with other medical equipment to both Laos and Cambodia.

Despite being a small country with limited resources, Vietnam continues to carry out good deeds, demonstrating its responsibility at a time when it is also taking on the roles of United Nations Security Council non-permanent member and ASEAN chair this year.

On April 27 the Mothership, one of the largest digital platforms in Singapore, ran an article on COVID-19 and Vietnams remarkable performance in handling the crisis thus far. The article pointed out Vietnams disadvantages of a long border with China and having limited resources but added, Vietnam is quietly winning its war against the virus. Highly appreciating Vietnams measures in battling the outbreak, the article added that the world can learn lessons from this quietly-successful Southeast Asian country.
YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian visited today the Yerablur Military Pantheon on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the liberation of Shushi, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

President Sarkissian laid flowers at the tombs of National Hero of Armenia, Hero of Artsakh, first defense minister of Armenia Vazgen Sargsyan, National Heroes of Armenia Monte Melkonyan, Jivan Abrahamyan, Commander Andranik, as well as the memorial wall dedicated to those Armenians fallen for the freedom and independence of the Homeland.

President Sarkissian paid a tribute to the memory of the fallen heroes with a moment of silence.

Today I visited the heroes of our liberation fight. Symbolism is very deep: how did it happen that 28 years ago on the same day our people made an important victory, one of the most important victories of the liberation fight by liberating Shushi. If we compare the liberation of Shushi with the Second World War, it was the same as the battles in Stalingrad and Kursk. They just broke the logic of war and opened a path to victory, the President told reporters.

Talking about the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the President remembered that 300,000 Armenians were killed for the sake of that victory. Unfortunately, today, these 300,000 Armenians do not have a tomb in Armenia, but their memory is with us. 300,000 out of the 600,000 Armenians, who were fighting, have been killed. Our people gave more than 100 heroes of the Soviet Union, five marshalsAnd this was not proportionate: a small nation, five marshals, more than sixty generals, Armen Sarkissian said. Surely, it was impossible to defeat that people because that people were one of the leaders in the anti-fascism fight, and surely it was also impossible to defeat that people in the liberation battle.

The names of none of these 300,000 Armenians, fallen 75 years ago, will be forgotten. During the whole period of the liberation fight, and especially today, both the organizers of the Shushi liberation, the fallen heroes and those who live today, no matter where they are, what position they hold, what they do, whether are with their families or went to Shushi, they all are heroes. Such heroism doesnt grow old, its endless. We are truly a victorious people both in the Second World War and the liberation fight.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin could face a leadership challenge when parliament convenes on May 18, after House Speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof said Friday that he had approved a motion proposing a confidence vote.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 94, on Monday submitted a one-page legislative proposal seeking a decision on whether his successor commands the confidence of a majority of the lawmakers.

The motion  is accepted to be brought to a parliamentary meeting in the future, said Mohamad Ariff, referring to Mahathirs proposal.

Mohamad Ariff, in a statement, said that as speaker of the Lower House he had to study and ensure all motions put forward fulfill and abide by the standing orders.

Whatever consideration and decision by the speaker of the Lower House must be fair and uphold the integrity of the House, said Mohamad Ariff.



However, it was not immediately clear whether parliament would undertake a no-confidence vote against Muhyiddin when it convenes on May 18 for the first time since his government came to power in early March.

Muhyiddin, who will turn 73 this month, did not issue a reaction to the statement by the speaker, but posted a picture on his Facebook page on Friday showing him receiving a phone call from U.S. President Donald Trump, during which the two leaders discussed bilateral cooperation.

In the conversation lasting about 30 minutes, President Trump and I also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the approaches taken by both countries, Muhyiddin said.

We also stressed the importance of cooperation among the international community to ease the effects of the pandemic on the well-being of the people in the world and the global economy, he added.

Malaysian health authorities reported 68 new coronavirus infections with no fatalities on Friday, taking the cumulative cases to 6,535 with 107 deaths. On the other hand, almost 76,000 COVID-19 deaths and 1.3 million infections have been recorded in the United States, officials said.

Mahathirs move came less than three months after he was lost power to Muhyiddin, his former political ally. He made the legislative proposal two months after telling a local newspaper, Sinar Harian, that it was impossible to challenge Muhyiddin, saying the premier had been strengthening his position by awarding incentives to other politicians.



Now he is the government. He can afford to offer incentives to many. Some of my supporters have switched allegiances to him; they have been made ministers, Mahathir said. So now to bring a motion of no confidence is impossible.

In an interview with The Australian newspaper on Friday, the two-time former prime minister said he took the move without being motivated by revenge or hubris.

I am 94 and in two months I turn 95 and I have no ambition to become PM, he said, just hours after Mohamad Ariff gave permission for Mahathirs no-confidence motion to be tabled on May 18.

Meanwhile, the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) on Thursday selected Anwar Ibrahim, who once served as Mahathir's deputy, as its parliamentary opposition leader, according to the state-run news service Bernama.



Lex Radz and Nisha David in Kuala Lumpur contributed to the article.
GAIL said it had refuted the provisional assessment orders of DoT and sought its withdrawal.

New Delhi: State-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd has told market regulator SEBI that it did not consider DoT's notice seeking Rs 1.83 lakh crore in past dues as material event warranting disclosure to stock exchanges as the amount in the provisional assessment was considered not payable.

Replying to a notice by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) over non-disclosure of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) assessment orders/demand notices, GAIL on 6 May said the demand was not legally tenable.

"The amount assessed in provisional assessment orders are not payable, being unrelated matter to the terms and conditions of the IP-II licence obtained by the company and hence are also legally not tenable," the company in a regulatory filing disclosing the communication with SEBI.

GAIL said it had refuted the provisional assessment orders of DoT and sought its withdrawal.

"Accordingly, the event(s) of receipt of provisional orders was not considered material to be disclosed," it said.

The DoT sent a notice to GAIL soon after the 14 February hearing in the Supreme Court on dues owned by telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

The Supreme Court''s original ruling in October last year led the DoT to demand Rs 1.47 lakh crore in unpaid dues on licence fees and spectrum usage charges from telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

Its demand related to a 14-year-old dispute regarding the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR), which the Supreme Court agreed should include all kinds of income generated by the telcos.

Alongside, the DoT also raised a demand of over Rs 3 lakh crore from non-telecom PSUs such as GAIL, Oil India and PowerGrid for telecom licences these firms had primarily acquired for internal communication purposes.

For GAIL, the DoT assessed an outstanding of Rs 1,83,076 crore towards annual licence fee in respect of IP-II Licence. This included interests and penalty.

GAIL management, the filing said, was of the view that the "assessment orders/ demand notices received from DoT are not found material as per the GAIL Policy for determination of materiality and disclosure and therefore same does not require disclosure to the stock exchanges within 24 hours from the receipt."

SEBI had on 5 May issued a "caution letter" to GAIL for non-disclosure of material events/information.

The regulator said listing regulations require companies to disclose material information as soon as reasonably possible.

"This caution letter is being issued after considering the company''s explanation on the matter. The company is advised to place this letter before its board of directors and disclose the same to the stock exchanges. You are also advised to disclose the reason of non-disclosure of the assessment orders/demand notices within the stipulated timeframe," it wrote.
A school trustee shared her struggle with mental health as she condemned her suspension from the Winnipeg School Division board.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/5/2020 (620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A school trustee shared her struggle with mental health as she condemned her suspension from the Winnipeg School Division board.

In a virtual meeting Monday, the board voted to suspend Cindy Murdoch, Ward 5 trustee, until the end of the school year. Chairman Chris Broughton cited a breach of the trustee code of conduct; he declined to provide further comment due to "privacy interests."

"At the end of the day, theres a standard to which trustees are held  with any public figure, there's a standard to which theyre held, and trustee Murdoch, in the opinion of the board, hasnt met that standard," Broughton told the Free Press Friday.

The rare suspension was made two weeks after Murdoch briefly went missing. Police reported she had been found safe on April 21.

Murdoch released a statement Friday afternoon in which she explained her challenges with mental health and said the onset of COVID-19 has resulted in a reduction of the supports she has relied on since autumn. She said she informed the division she would be seeking help on April 21 and has since been participating in residential treatment.

"Far too often people with disabilities and mental-health challenges are disregarded as not being up to standard and are rejected to protect the image of an organization," she said in a prepared statement, adding that she believes her efforts to overcome her personal challenges should be a "a source of inspiration, not condemnation."

Her temporary release comes in the middle of the school divisions annual Healthy Minds Week, an initiative to recognize and promote mental-health literacy.

Murdoch said she plans to champion mental-health supports in the division when she returns after June 30. There is a need for the School Board and Public Schools Act to be modernized to address the growing needs of community members mental health, she added.

When contacted again later in the day, Broughton said the board made its decision based on the "complete picture" and that some of the information considered would be inappropriate to disclose.

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A suspension, which can last up to three months, is one of the most severe actions a board can take to reprimand an elected member. Less-severe options include censuring a trustee and barring a member from a meeting or committee.

In 2015, former Winnipeg School Division trustee Mike Babinsky received an unprecedented suspension after an investigator found he was involved in an ongoing harassment campaign of a senior staffer.

Throughout the latest suspension, constituents can contact any other board members with their questions, himself included, Broughton said. For the time being, Murdoch will be barred from attending meetings, receiving correspondence and engaging with community members as a trustee.

Murdochs suspension adds to two other vacant board positions. A byelection to elect representatives for Wards 3 and 4 was postponed, owing to COVID-19 disruptions.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
W ere all saying it but there really is no substitute for the dark, cramped cavern of a comedy club.

But, while we cant get our fix of that, we can make sure were seeing through the days with at least a little bit of laughter  or, in the case of the comedians below, a lot.

Theres no shortage of comedy specials out there, so were going to help narrow it down a bit. From straight stand-up to character comedy and a bit of music, here are some of the funniest shows we recommend you tuck into now:

Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room

Josh Knox

Katherine Ryans daughter wanted her bedroom to have glitter on the walls. When she gave this brief to the builder, he was reluctant to carry it out, and voiced an (unsolicited) opinion that no man will want to live here. Thats fine by Ryan; as long as her very fancy Violets happy. She told the Standard in an interview that maybe the way I live my life generally upsets some people sometimes, so my life is a glitter room. In this special, shes sharp and masterful, firing off jokes in all directions at breakneck speed.

Where to watch: Netflix

Mae Martin: Us

A whole legion of new Mae Martin admirers join us after the runaway success of her Channel 4 show Feel Goods first series (you can still watch that here). The stand-up show that it grew out of  Dope  was filmed as part of Netflixs Comedians of the World series. Definitely go and check that out, but if you want to start slightly further back, head over to Soho Theatres on demand site, which holds Us, her fantastic 2017 show about sexuality, loneliness and identity.

Where to watch: Soho Theatre On Demand

Rob Delaney: Jackie

American-born Rob Delaney has been living in London since he and Sharon Horgan co-created Catastrophe, one of the best TV comedies of recent years. It affords him the perspective of someone who understands the intricacies of life in the UK, but also the ridiculousness. In Jackie, he shows just the sort of pessimistic, wry outlook that suits someone who lives here and loves it, despite everything. Hes shocking, hilarious, disgusting and devastating all in the space of minutes.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime

Jayde Adams: Serious Black Jumper

Long-term fans of Jayde Adams will know her for the glitz and glamour, the costumes, props and musical numbers. Dont worry, shes still got all of that in her wardrobe, but for her latest show, she picked out a different item of clothing: the Serious Black Jumper, or the uniform of a celebrity who wants to be seen as a successful independent woman. Now you know its a thing, youll never be able to stop noticing black turtlenecks in TV appearances. Her show tackles feminism, body image, social media influence and compassion.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime

Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

There arent many comedians who perform stand-up while seven months pregnant  a point Ali Wong makes hilariously in Baby Cobra, while demonstrating the difference between male and female comedians parenting. Theres a lot of raunchy sex talk, but what makes her such a special comedian, in both this hour and her next Hard Knock Wife, is her honesty. She jokes about her miscarriage when she was pregnant with twins, a line she manages to toe deftly. She makes you feel able laugh about something thats difficult to laugh at  now, thats something to admire.

Where to watch: Netflix

James Acaster: Repertoire

Silviu Nutu Vegan Joy

Whoever came up with the idea to film all of James Acasters R-titled stand-up shows at once deserves a medal. Recognise, Represent, Reset, and the addition of Recap, which ties them all together, show a comedian at the pinnacle. Who else releases four stand-up specials in one go? Its easy to fall for the self-effacing, unassuming character Acaster presents, but this is an expertly crafted and precise collection of material that, at times, becomes even poetic. Put a couple of hours aside, and watch them all at once.

Where to watch: Netflix

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

This was the show that defined a year in comedy. Back in 2017, Hannah Gadsby performed Nanette as her swan song to the world of stand-up, intending on bowing out after its last run. But her searingly powerful hour, which stretched most audiences definitions of what they understood stand-up to be, due to a dramatic gear-shift midway through the show (no spoilers here). It proved so successful that she won the Edinburgh Comedy Award, toured the show, filmed it for Netflix in 2018 and returned with another hour, Douglas, which has also been filmed as a special. Youll have to watch it to find out why; you wont regret it.

Where to watch: Netflix

Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah

Tiffany Haddish is carried on stage on a chair supported by four buff men, while singing Hava Nagilla, to open her comedy special Black Mitzvah. It sets the tone. Now a film-star, some could be forgiven for not knowing that Haddish has well over a decade of stand-up experience under her belt. But not anymore, shes arrived and is getting the recognition she deserves. In this special she goes into what it means to be a Black, Jewish woman, taking us through her life in an all-singing, all-dancing show.

Where to watch: Netflix

Christopher Bliss: Writing Wrongs

Christopher Bliss is a well-meaning fool, and genius creation of comedian Rob Carter. Hes the best author in his village and easily turns out two or three novels a day (aspiring Booker Prize-winners, pay attention). In Writing Wrongs, hes happy to share his expertise by reading from his own book, Get A Brain, published by Rymans, and critiquing the works of others. We challenge you to find any other comedy specials featuring the excellent line, read a book, Karl Marx! Its fantastically funny, but the real charm is Carters absolute command as a character comic.

Where to watch: NextUp Comedy
TANZANIA, Tanzania - The United States on Friday objected to a proposed U.N. resolution on the coronavirus pandemic after diplomats said it had agreed to compromise language with China that didnt directly mention the World Health Organization, an issue of growing dispute between the worlds two major economic powers.

The U.S. objection to the Security Council resolution drafted by France and Tunisia reflects rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

It also leaves the U.N.s most powerful body impotent on reacting to the greatest crisis facing the world  and unable to back Secretary-General Antonio Guterres March 23 call for global cease-fires to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, which diplomats said all 15 Security Council members agree on and is the main point of the resolution.

But the United States and China, both veto-wielding permanent council members, have been at odds for almost seven weeks over including a reference to the World Health Organization.

President Donald Trump suspended U.S. funding to the WHO in early April, accusing the U.N. health agency of failing to stop the virus from spreading when it first surfaced in China. He said it must be held accountable, accusing the WHO of parroting Beijing.

China strongly supports the WHO and insisted the agencys role in tackling the pandemic be included in any resolution, diplomats said. The U.S. insisted on making no mention of the WHO and including a reference to transparency on COVID-19, which China opposed.

The French-Tunisian draft resolution that was reportedly agreed on Thursday night by both countries and sent to all council members for any objections before 2 p.m. EDT Friday included what diplomats believed was compromise language acceptable to both countries.

Without mentioning the WHO, the proposed resolution would have emphasized the urgent need to support all countries, as well as all relevant entities of the United Nations system, including specialized health agencies, and other relevant international, regional, and sub-regional organizations, in line with their respective mandates, to enhance co-ordination and assist in the global fight against COVID-19.

There is also no direct reference to transparency, but Guterres has called for transparency in the coronavirus crisis, and the draft resolution would welcome all efforts and measures proposed by the secretary-general concerning the response to the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to conflict-affected countries, in particular his appeal for an immediate global ceasefire.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions on the resolution have been private, said senior U.S. officials objected to the agreed text and blocked its approval.

A U.S. State Department official blamed China on Friday for repeatedly blocking compromises that would have allowed the council to move forward, saying it is insisting on using the resolution to advance false narratives about its response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

The goal of the resolution should be support for the secretary-generals call for a cease-fire, the official said, and in our view, the council should either proceed with a resolution limited to support for a cease-fire, or a broadened resolution that fully addresses the need for renewed member state commitment to transparency and accountability in the context of COVID-19.

The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. and other council members indicated negotiations will continue.

The draft resolution demands immediate cease-fires in major conflicts that are on the Security Council agenda, from Syria and Yemen to Libya, South Sudan and Congo, and calls for all parties to armed conflicts to engage immediately in a durable humanitarian pause for at least 90 days to deliver aid.

The draft, obtained by The Associated Press, says these measures do not apply to military operations against the Islamic State and al-Qaida extremist groups and their affiliates.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose country is on the Security Council, told an informal council meeting on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe that the councils silence on todays most pressing challenge  the fight against the COVID pandemic  is deafening.

So, on this historic date, let us finally unite behind the secretary-generals call for a global cease-fire, Maas said.

Frances foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who also addressed the council meeting by video, said that because the coronavirus crisis is also a threat to our collective security, we should, without further delay, give clear support to the secretary-generals call for a humanitarian truce in all armed conflicts and quickly adopt the draft resolution put forward by France and Tunisia.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported there were 54,238 confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus in all 67 counties as of 12 p.m., May 8, 2020. There are at least 3,616 reported deaths from the virus.

Click the image to see a data page including an interactive maps for the state. (Please click the link in the previous sentence if you cant see the image)

Click here for a ZIP code breakdown of cases provided by the Pa. Department of Health.

The state is also providing detailed hospital and respirator data here for desktop users and here for mobile users.

PennLive is monitoring the new cases over a two-week period, part of the Wolf administrations criteria for reopening the state. A map and a database for these are below. If you cannot see either embed, please click here for the map and here for the database.

Below is a map of the current reopening status of Pennsylvania counties. Please click here if you cannot see that map.

Adams County

154 positive cases and 1,785 negative results with 5 deaths.

Allegheny County

1,455 positive cases and 18,913 negative results with 119 deaths.

Armstrong County

55 positive cases and 819 negative results with 3 deaths.

Beaver County

479 positive cases and 2,380 negative results with 78 deaths.

Bedford County

28 positive cases and 303 negative results with 1 death.

Berks County

3,190 positive cases and 6,713 negative results with 168 deaths.

Blair County

28 positive cases and 1,314 negative results.

Bradford County

37 positive cases and 862 negative results with 2 deaths.

Bucks County

3,750 positive cases and 10,426 negative results with 331 deaths.

Butler County

192 positive cases and 2,695 negative results with 6 deaths.

Cambria County

40 positive cases and 1,785 negative results with 1 death.

Cameron County

2 positive cases and 76 negative results.

Carbon County

192 positive cases and 1,260 negative results with 16 deaths.

Centre County

117 positive cases and 1,173 negative results with 1 death.

Chester County

1,728 positive cases and 6,493 negative results with 176 deaths.

Clarion County

23 positive cases and 547 negative results with 1 death.

Clearfield County

24 positive cases and 556 negative results.

Clinton County

37 positive cases and 316 negative results.

Columbia County

307 positive cases and 782 negative results with 20 deaths.

Crawford County

20 positive cases and 745 negative results.

Cumberland County

414 positive cases and 1,989 negative results with 31 deaths.

Dauphin County

764 positive cases and 4,550 negative results with 37 deaths.

Delaware County

4,680 positive cases and 11,122 negative results with 382 deaths.

Elk County

5 positive cases and 211 negative results with 1 death.

Erie County

113 positive cases and 2,503 negative results with 2 deaths.

Fayette County

84 positive cases and 2,130 negative results with 4 deaths.

Forest County

7 positive cases and 33 negative results.

Franklin County

452 positive cases and 3,475 negative results with 11 deaths.

Fulton County

7 positive cases and 121 negative results with 1 death.

Greene County

27 positive cases and 511 negative results with 1 death.

Huntingdon County

117 positive cases and 409 negative results.

Indiana County

75 positive cases and 860 negative results with 5 deaths.

Jefferson County

7 positive cases and 368 negative results.

Juniata County

93 positive cases and 196 negative results with 1 death.

Lackawanna County

1,114 positive cases and 3,157 negative results with 113 deaths.

Lancaster County

2,122 positive cases and 9,281 negative results with 165 deaths.

The county is reporting 222 deaths as of 1:15 p.m. May 8. Those deaths are in the following municipalities

Christiana: 12 deaths

Columbia: 3 deaths

East Cocalico Township: 3 deaths

East Hempfield Township: 14 deaths

East Lampeter Township: 1 death

Ephrata Township: 1 death

City of Lancaster: 4 deaths

Lancaster Township: 99 deaths

Lititz: 22 deaths

Manheim Township: 42 deaths

New Holland: 2 deaths

Paradise Township: 1 death

Penn Township: 4 deaths

Providence Township: 1 death

Rapho Township: 6 deaths

Salisbury Township: 1 death

Warwick Township: 2 deaths

West Donegal Township: 1 death

Three non-residents also passed away in Lancaster County.

Lawrence County

69 positive cases and 873 negative results with 7 deaths.

Lebanon County

797 positive cases and 3,055 negative results with 16 deaths.

Lehigh County

3,140 positive cases and 8,459 negative results with 114 deaths.

Luzerne County

2,347 positive cases and 6,133 negative results with 120 deaths.

Lycoming County

109 positive cases and 1,337 negative results with 4 deaths.

McKean County

6 positive cases and 226 negative results with 1 death.

Mercer County

70 positive cases and 900 negative results with 2 deaths.

Mifflin County

50 positive cases and 807 negative results.

Monroe County

1,198 positive cases and 3,249 negative results with 63 deaths.

Montgomery County

5,037 positive cases and 20,110 negative results with 515 deaths.

Montour County

50 positive cases and 2,983 negative results.

Northampton County

2,390 positive cases and 7,500 negative results with 153 deaths.

Northumberland County

118 positive cases and 777 negative results.

Perry County

34 positive cases and 342 negative results with 1 death.

Philadelphia County

14,384 positive cases and 34,385 negative results with 833 deaths.

Pike County

422 positive cases and 1,430 negative results with 21 deaths.

Potter County

4 positive cases and 95 negative results.

Schuylkill County

113 positive cases and 618 negative results with 5 deaths.

Snyder County

33 positive cases and 250 negative results with 1 death.

Somerset County

32 positive cases and 831 negative results with 1 death.

Sullivan County

1 positive cases and 48 negative results.

Susquehanna County

86 positive cases and 375 negative results with 13 deaths.

Tioga County

16 positive cases and 332 negative results with 1 death.

Union County

40 positive cases and 631 negative results with 1 death.

Venango County

7 positive cases and 286 negative results.

Warren County

1 positive cases and 201 negative results.

Washington County

121 positive cases and 2,595 negative results with 4 deaths.

Wayne County

113 positive cases and 618 negative results with 5 deaths.

Westmoreland County

413 positive cases and 5,645 negative results with 30 deaths.

Wyoming County

28 positive cases and 224 negative results with 2 deaths.

York County

753 positive cases and 8,286 negative results with 13 deaths.

This data is compiled from the Pa. Department of Health. The state will not be providing recovery data at this time.

Several counties have released their own data maps. Information reported at the county level may not be consistent with the state numbers. Those counties include:

Some medical systems have begun releasing discharge data. Those medical systems include:

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.
At least 16 migrant workers in a group of 20 were killed after a cargo train ran over them who were sleeping in the rail tracks in Maharashtra's Aurangabad this morning.

The migrants were walking from Jalna to Bhusaval, 157 km apart.

Four survivors, who are in shock, are being counselled by the police. The fifth survivor has been admitted to hospital with injuries, a report by NDTV said.

These Rotis of those 15 migrants lying on the track where they were crushed by train.. this breaks your heart. Walking hundreds km in a hope to reach their homes.. but meeting this. #Aurangabad pic.twitter.com/AX4GeguITN  Paresh Rawal fan (@Babu_Bhaiyaa) May 8, 2020

The migrant labourers walking to reach their homes in Madhya Pradesh were run over by a goods train early in the morning in Maharashtra's Aurangabad. pic.twitter.com/mDUxYqbtdV  pramod pathare (@pramodpathare11) May 8, 2020

Aurangabad:15 migrants run over by goods train; The migrant labourers walking to reach Chhattisgarh were run over by a goods train in early in the morning. This is the direct result of the Brutal & insensitive lockdown. Govt has blood on its hands https://t.co/rNG4YCyJnP  Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) May 8, 2020





The Railways Ministry tweeted that after seeing some people on the track, the driver of the cargo train tried to stop but couldn't do so in time.

During early hours today after seeing some labourers on track, loco pilot of goods train tried to stop the train but eventually hit them between Badnapur and Karmad stations in Parbhani-Manmad section

Injureds have been taken to Aurangabad Civil Hospital.

Inquiry has been ordered  Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) May 8, 2020

Police said another two workers were injured in the accident in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The news agency said the workers were walking to their home state of central Madhya Pradesh after they lost their jobs when the country went into a strict lockdown on March 25 to control the coronavirus pandemic. Most public transportation was canceled.

Representational Image/PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was anguished by the loss of lives in the rail accident and he promised assistance to hundreds of thousands of workers stranded across the country.

Extremely anguished by the loss of lives due to the rail accident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. Have spoken to Railway Minister Shri Piyush Goyal and he is closely monitoring the situation. All possible assistance required is being provided.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 8, 2020

Earlier this week, the government started trains to carry stranded labour to thier home states.

But there haven't been enough to ferry all the workers and a large number of them choosing to walk to tho their villages.




YEREVAN.  Yes, yesterday the head of the Bright Armenia party faction invited me to have coffee, I accepted the invitation, I went down to my former office where Mr. Marukyan is now sitting. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this in his speech in the National Assembly Friday, referring to his closed meeting with the opposition Bright Armenia faction on Thursday.

"I have directly said, 'Yes, Mr. Marukyan, we all have reason to suspect that you and your activities, all that psychological, moral violence, and ultimately, physical violence are an integral part of the plan to use physical violence," Pashinyan added.

To note, Edmon Marukyan, chairman of the opposition Bright Armenia party and head of the Bright Armenia faction in parliament, on Thursday told reporters that he and Pashinyan had spoken only about foreign policy and the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) issue.
"In these difficult times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many drivers are facing financial difficulties and are having trouble paying for their insurance bills. Fortunately, more and more car insurance companies are willing to help their customers ", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director

Most car insurance companies are returning billions of dollars to their customers. This happens because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics show that travel dropped about 50% since shelter-in-place restriction began. Drivers can expect to receive relief anytime between now and June, depending on the insurer. No matter the method the insurer chooses to offer the relief, it will be automatically applied to the customers' accounts.

Car insurance companies are offering money-back in three different ways:



Refunds. Car insurance companies like Allstate, Liberty Mutual, American Family, AAA, Nationwide, and others are offering refunds ranging from $50 per covered vehicle to 15-25% of a customer's premium.

Credits. This is another method used by car insurance providers to offer relief to affected customers. Major insurance providers like State Farm, Geico, MetLife, Mercury Insurance, and USAA are among those who are giving credits between 15 and 25%.

Temporary premium reductions. Some insurance providers are helping their customers by offering a temporary premium reduction for the months of April and May. Among those providers, there is Farmers Insurance.

For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.
People ride a motorcycle while a container ship passes by at Keelung port in northern Taiwan

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's exports, a key gauge of global demand for gadgets, fell slightly for a second month in April and the government said the second quarter would be tough due to the coronavirus pandemic and renewed concerns over U.S.-China trade friction.

Exports dropped 1.3% from a year earlier to stand at $25.24 billion in April, the finance ministry said. A Reuters poll had forecast an annual drop of 1%.

In March, Taiwan's exports slipped 0.6%, but they have risen 2.4% on the year so far in 2020.

The ministry said strong demand for telecommuting amid the coronavirus outbreak and advanced chips was offset by weakening global consumption for products from textiles to minerals.

Taiwan, whose largest trading partner is China, warned of "limited" growth prospects for the island's exports in the first half, adding that lingering concerns over U.S.-China trade could add to the uncertainty.

Taiwan's May exports were expected to range from a decline of 4% to 6% on the year, Beatrice Tsai, head of the ministry's department of statistics, told reporters.

She said it would be "difficult" for exports to maintain growth in the second quarter and the ministry will need to "significantly" trim its earlier forecast of a yearly growth of 2.5% for the period due to gloomy global economic outlook.

While Taiwan has so far prevented a rapid spread of the disease without a total lockdown, the government has repeatedly warned of an uncertain trade outlook and is rolling out an economic stimulus package worth T$1.05 trillion ($35 billion).

It has also pledged to lure manufacturers to move production home from China, saying returning investment to Taiwan from China would reach over T$320 billion this year and give a boost to its economy.

Last month, Taiwan downgraded its growth forecast for this year to between 1.3% and 1.8%, from 2.37% in February.

In neighbouring China, exports unexpectedly rose in April for the first time this year as factories raced to make up for lost sales due to the coronavirus pandemic, but a big fall in imports signalled more trouble ahead as the global economy sinks into recession.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee, Emily Chan and Ben Blanchard; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
The United States is facing a political and economic challenge like nothing it has seen in nearly 100 years.

Mass unemployment on a scale that recalls the Great Depression has erased the economic gains of the past decade and now threatens to linger for years, fueling social discord and shaking an already polarized political system.

Almost overnight it seems, the U.S. economy, which just two months ago boasted abundant jobs and soaring stock values, has become a shambles. Not since at least World War II has a smaller share of the U.S. population been employed, according to government records that begin in 1948.

The unique character of this economic collapse, triggered by an ongoing public health crisis, may lead to an enduring decline in the demand for labor. While the pandemic rages, companies are developing new ways to operate with fewer people, replacing the lost labor with machines that are impervious to illness.

An early example is Carrier Global, a manufacturer of heating and air-conditioning systems, which has implemented social distancing rules on its assembly lines. Technicians who once worked shoulder-to-shoulder are now spread out along a conveyor belt. The resulting gaps may soon be filled with new machines.

"Where you had people spaced out three feet and you want to get them spaced out six feet, probably the spacing in between you will see, I think, a trend towards robotics overall," David Gitlin, Carrier's chief executive, told CNBC Friday.

Older workers, a steadily rising fraction of the labor force in recent years, face special challenges. The coronavirus is particularly deadly for them, leading President Trump earlier this week to suggest that teachers aged 60 and above "should not be teaching school for a while."

Young people graduating this spring into a gale of joblessness will likely see their lifetime earnings depressed as a result of the poor labor market. That's what happened to their predecessors who graduated into the double-dip recession of the early 1980s.

Political stability, too, will be tested. In the 1930s, before publicly funded social insurance insulated most workers against the vagaries of the market, the Great Depression's chronic joblessness gave rise to fascism in Germany, Spain and Italy.

The Depression's political consequences were less severe in the U.S., according to David Kennedy, emeritus professor of history at Stanford University. American culture proved more resilient, confining extremists like the antisemitic Father Charles Coughlin and Sen. Huey Long of Louisiana to the societal fringes.

"Are these institutions, norms and political systems as resilient today? Boy, that's anybody's guess," said Kennedy, author of "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. "The political environment today is more toxic, indeed septic, than in the 1930s."

Believing that today's highly polarized country will prove as impregnable, Kennedy said, might be "wishful thinking."

The 2008 global financial crisis spawned fierce political movements on the left and the right. As unemployment rose to a October 2010 peak of 10%, Occupy Wall Street filled the streets of New York and Washington with protestors. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist, capitalized on a surge of progressive sentiment to mount a strong presidential primary bid in 2016.

Populist sentiment on the right, meanwhile, fueled the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, which ultimately severed that country's 40-year membership in the European Union, as well as the unlikely political rise of reality television star Donald Trump.

"I have no doubt that the resentments, fears and grievances that people are experiencing right now are going to shape our politic for the next generation very much as what happened after 2008," said Ron Chernow, author of popular biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and Alexander Hamilton.

The current circumstances are extraordinary. Barely 51% of the population is employed, the lowest mark since records began, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

More than 23 million workers are without a job. In February, just 5.8 million lacked work.

The good news is that 78% of the unemployed say they expect to be recalled to their old jobs, once the pandemic ebbs. If that happens, the economy could recover quickly.

A greater share of temporary layoffs historically has meant a faster economic rebound, according to recent Goldman Sachs research.

"If we're right about the temporary layoffs, then people will go back to work fairly rapidly," Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters Friday. "Not all of them, mind you. But a good chunk."

Still, there are reasons to worry. More than one-quarter of the jobs that vanished in the past two months were in the leisure and hospitality sector, which have been battered by the pandemic. Fears of catching the sometimes fatal respiratory illness covid-19 are especially acute in industries with plenty of customer contact such as hotels, theme parks and restaurants.

The conditions imposed in some states that are re-opening for business make it unlikely that large numbers of those jobs will quickly return. Some jurisdictions are limiting restaurants to 25% of their capacity, which imperils their ability to operate.

Naomi Pomeroy owns Beast, a fine-dining restaurant in Portland, Oregon, and a cocktail bar called Expatriate, right across the street. The venues had been profitable for a dozen years before the pandemic, she said. But without greater government financial support, she does not anticipate an early recall of her 30 workers.

"It's really not looking good," she said. "We're in a bad place here."

Pomeroy's experience may be indicative of the pandemic's lasting imprint upon the labor market. In a working paper released this week by the University of Chicago's Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, a trio of economists concluded that "42% of the recent pandemic-induced layoffs will result in permanent job loss."

That would mean nearly 12 million permanent vacancies, according to the study by a pair of economists from Stanford University and one from the University of Chicago.

Most economists expect a sharp rebound in employment starting in the third quarter. But high unemployment is likely to persist for years. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expects the unemployment rate at the end of next year to be 9.5%.

Jason Furman, who was one of President Obama's top economic advisers, said he does not expect the jobless rate to dip below 5% until 2028.

For some groups, the pandemic represents the latest in a long series of setbacks. Males between 25 and 54 years old -- what economists call "prime age" workers -- have lost ground in every recession since the 1960s. In 1960, more than 97% of men in that category were active members of the labor force, either working or looking for a job.

For 60 years, the figure has declined in each recession and failed to regain its previous peak when the economy began growing again. "In every economic recovery since the 1960s, they've never recovered their losses," said Furman.

Indeed, the lesson of earlier downturns is: patience.

In the Great Recession, it took more than six years for the number of working Americans to return to the January 2008 peak of 138.4 million. Long after the stock market had begun a steady march upwards, unemployment remained unusually high.

Likewise, it took the labor force four years to regain its February 2001 peak after the recession that began one month later. And in the double-dip recession of the early 1980s, employment hit 90.9 million workers in March of 1980. Almost three and a half years later, following an up-and-down cycle, there were still fewer Americans working.

What Karl Marx once called "the reserve army of the unemployed" will likely keep wage growth in check as the recovery inches forward.

"There are massive economic consequences to layoffs," said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "You can have a really long-lasting negative impact on earnings."

College students who will graduate in the spring almost certainly will encounter the worst job market in at least a decade. Based on the experience of those who started work during earlier recessions, they are likely to face lower starting salaries than people who graduate during booms, according to research by economist Till Van Wachter of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Those shortfalls last for up to a decade.

Today, the worst is not yet over. First-time unemployment claims in the weeks after the Labor Department completed its labor market survey remained high. So next month's unemployment rate will sting.

At the White House Friday, Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, said the president had created the "hottest economy in modern history" before the pandemic and would do so again. The rebuilding can't come soon enough for those already suffering from the failure to better manage the pandemic.

"All these people experiencing it have had a whiff of fear," said Chernow. They've had a foretaste of what it's like to be deprived of your normal place in society. That's not something they'll easily forget."
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Minutes before Iftar on Wednesday, Delhi Police Cyber Cell raided Chairman of the Delhi Minority Commission, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khans house. The raid was conducted in connection with a case registered against Khan over his alleged inflammatory remarks made on social media.

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Dr Khans counsel, Vrinda Grover confirmed the news demanding that the enforcement agency act in accordance with law. She also cited Section 160 of the CrPC that mandates that the police cannot compel the attendance of a person above 65 years of age at any place other than their residence for the purpose of investigation and interrogation.

While more than 50 individuals, groups and organizations have condemned action against Dr Khans comments through public letters and posts, Chairman of Popular Front, O M A Salam has spoken strongly against the raid. This action by the Delhi Police has crossed all limits of civil decency, said Salam, accusing the BJP government of using law to harass and crush any type of dissent.

Salam has called it a shameful situation that just a statement by a respected person bearing a statutory position becomes a pretext for police raid in his residence, and that there can be no logical explanation for the raid. It must be noted that Popular Front has been instrumental in countering the ongoing hate speech against Muslims and has filed legal suit against hate speech on social media. Salam opines that such an act of crushing dissent of Muslim voices is a well planned effort of the BJP, a warning to others who are critical of the policies of central government.

Discussing the deteriorating situation of freedom of speech of the Indian minorities, Salam has called upon the civil society to strongly condemn this authoritarian act of raid and stand in solidarity with Dr. Khan.
Cleveland State Community College is planning an encore Virtual TN Reconnect Information session on the heels of the first virtual session held in late April. The newest virtual information session will be hosted by Cleveland State on Tuesday at 12 and 6 p.m.

We were very excited on the response we received for our first Virtual TN Reconnect information session, said Cate Green, director of Recruiting, High School Relations, and Admissions. Over 75 adult students signed up to explore the possibilities of attending college again, and discovering how TN Reconnect can work for them. Its very rewarding to work with adult students reviewing the options they have to begin a new future!

During the information session, attendees can learn more about the Tennessee Reconnect scholarship that covers eligible adults tuition to all programs at CSCC and other affordable educational opportunities, such as Pell grants and the colleges institutional scholarships.

Tennessee Reconnect is a scholarship for adults to earn an associate degree or technical certificate, tuition-free. To be eligible for the Tennessee Reconnect scholarship, you must:

Not already have an associate or bachelors degree

Have been a Tennessee resident for at least one year

Be determined as an independent student on the FAFSA

In addition to learning about Tennessee Reconnect, representatives will be on hand from Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Support Services and the adult-focused Advance Business degree option.

The Advance Business program is the colleges accelerated program that offers students a quick and convenient way to obtain a college degree. This option is suitable for highly motivated and mature adults that are seeking an A.A.S. in Business. Many business students obtain their A.A.S. in 16-18 months at Cleveland State and if they choose to transfer, a bachelors degree in two additional years at a selected four-year college or university.

I want to stress to all of our potential students, that the COVID-19 epidemic does not have to keep our adult student from achieving their dreams, said Natalia Williams, coordinator of Adult Student Services. We are simply doing things differently now, but we are still here to help in any way possible. This virtual information session is a good opportunity to learn more about all of the resources available to students at Cleveland State.

For more information or to RSVP for the virtual Reconnect Information Session, please fill out the form found at mycs.cc/reconnectinfo For more information on Cleveland State, visit clevelandstatecc.edu.






A former winner of the Great British Bake Off has reportedly been banned from a Waitrose store after accusations of shoplifting.

Frances Quinn, 38, won the show in 2013 and was suspected of not paying for her shopping by undercover store detectives, who stopped her.

Police were called to the scene in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, on April 28 and Ms Quinn agreed to hand the items back, including flour and eggs.

Frances Quinn, 38, from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, has been banned from a Waitrose store in her town. She won the Great British Bake Off in 2013 with a three-tiered wedding cake

A spokesperson confirmed a 38-year-old woman from that area has been banned from entering the Waitrose store.

Leicestershire Police said: 'A woman had entered the shop and was detained when she tried to leave without paying for goods.

Ms Quinn has not received a criminal record as a community resolution means she accepted the offence

'She admitted her involvement to officers and the matter was dealt with by way of a community resolution.'

Ms Quinn, who won the Great British Bake Off with a three-tiered wedding cake was interviewed by officers, reported The Sun.

She has not received a criminal record as a community resolution means Ms Quinn accepted the offence and Waitrose are happy with the outcome.

Waitrose said: 'We respect the privacy of our customers.'

Ms Quinn won the fourth series of Great British Bake Off while it was still on BBC, beating Ruby Tandoh, 21, and Kimberley Wilson, 30.

She claimed contestants faced a gruelling filming schedule, sometimes baking for thirteen hours in a row and being interviewed eight times a day.

Ms Quinn told Cosmopolitan: 'You haven't really got a life other than. No social life. That was the most stressful time. We had to get a train down on the Friday and we'd have a wake up call at 5am, we'd be in the tent at 7am.

A spokesman for Waitrose in Market Harborough, Leicestershire (above) declined to comment

'We'd wrap filming at about 8pm and then it would be the same again the next day. I'd get back at about midnight on the Sunday. It's not just a two hour bake with a few buttercups.'
It looks like Love Island Australia will be returning for a third season.

While the Channel Nine series suffered low ratings last year, its huge online presence has gained interest from the network's biggest rival.

Nine had been keeping the final verdict for the dating reality show 'up in the air' for months, but TV Tonight has reported Channel Seven wants to pull the rug out from under them and buy the rights to the popular dating series.

Changing things up? Channels Nine and Seven are warring over Love Island Australia season three... after suffering consistently low ratings last year. Pictured: Cartier Surjan and Adam Farrugia

More than 40 per cent of Love Island Australia's total audience tuned in on Nine's online streaming service 9Now last year, making Love Island a hot commodity.

According to TV Tonight, Seven are hoping to grow the audience of their own streaming service 7Now.

The publication reports that Seven wants to swoop in and snatch up rights to Love Island Australia, as well as the UK version of the series.

However, production would likely not start until next year amid the coronavirus pandemic.

New home? Nine had been keeping the final verdict for the dating reality show 'up in the air' for months, but TV Tonight has reported Channel Seven wants to pull the rug out from under them. Pictured: Jessie Wynter and Todd Elton

'The ongoing health crisis has meant Love Island Australia is unable to go into production this year,' Nine told TV Tonight.

The spokesperson added: We continue to work through where, when and how the next season of the show can be filmed in 2021.

'We will make further announcements when those plans are confirmed.'

Seven has yet to comment on the reports.

While Nine confirmed host Sophie Monk would return to the villa in their 2020 programming launch last year, it is unclear whether plans have changed amid the pandemic.

Unknown: While Nine confirmed host Sophie Monk would return to the villa in their 2020 programming launch last year, it is unclear whether plans have changed amid the pandemic

It is unknown whether Sophie would be able to move across to Seven if a deal is made.

Last year, the show grasped a modest rating of 494,000 during its premiere on October 7 - but figures dropped to 240,000 by the fourth episode.

In comparison, Married At First Sight's lowest ratings record this year was a metro audience of 950,000. However, it often reached more than one million viewers (five-city metro) per episodes.

Despite disappointing numbers, Love Island Australia attracts a young audience coveted by advertisers and is a huge hit on social media.
At Lovell's Records in Whittier, manager Ruben Cortez prepares some online orders for pickup. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The congratulatory and confusing calls came flooding in Thursday for Ruben Cortez, 36, manager of Lovells Records and Tapes in Uptown Whittier.

Man, I had probably around 20 to 30 calls from people asking me if the store was open or telling me they were happy and they couldnt wait until tomorrow when they could finally walk inside, Cortez said. I had to tell people that the store wasnt opening for people to come in, but just allowing for pickups. A lot of people didnt understand.

This is how the first day went as some businesses across California were allowed to open on Friday. It was limited, halting and a bit confusing. But merchants said they were grateful to connect with customers directly, even with all the social distancing rules and other safeguards.

Despite the confusion, the message of curbside pickup was getting through to some patrons as Cortez had five orders confirmed an hour before his shop was set to open. Its great, Cortez said. Weve been fortunate to have good business through social media, mostly Instagram, and now people have been asking for the pickup service.

While Cortez said his ideal would be to open up, he credits the community, from La Habra, La Mirada, Montebello, Pico Rivera and Whittier for rallying to save Lovells, which he contends has been in its same location since 1965. Lovells walls and counters are bursting with vinyl albums spanning genres from rock and indie rock to hip-hop and underground.

The store also has a large collection of DVD movies, as well as rock posters that draw onlookers to stare through its large front window.

David Fernandez and Yolanda Gallegos sit with coffee from La Monarca Bakery in Whittier, which was open for takeout orders on Friday. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Montebello resident Ralph Rodriguez, 60, stopped by with a bag of vinyl albums he was donating to the store. Rodriguez, who claims hes a weekly visitor, knocked to see if would be allowed to come in, before eventually being directed by Cortez to hand over the bag at the entrance door.

Both men were wearing masks. Rodriguez took a look inside the shop while handing over the bag, then stepped back, turned around and walked down Greenleaf Avenue with some mixed emotions.

Story continues

This place has so much history and I just wish I could come in, Rodriguez said. At least its still in business.

Uptown Whittier resident Katrina Woerner, 37, was busy juggling three care packages in one hand and a steaming hot cup of coffee from local shop Mimos in the other as she entered Pour Le Bain Bath Shop on Greenleaf Avenue on Friday morning.

It was still 90 minutes before the business was set to open for curbside service, which is designated from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Woerner, who helps run the family enterprise, was preparing gift baskets for pickup.

The Mothers Day packages included a variety of goodies  essential oils, body washes, soaps, etc.  that she felt were much more personal than other gifts.

Its a great advantage to be able to come down and pick up a personalized gift for your mother rather than just by getting her something off the internet, Woerner said. Were really excited about this opportunity.

Pour Le Bain had survived primarily on internet and social media orders that were all mailed. Woerner said the bath shop already had a few pickup orders in the queue and expected more activity as customers became aware of the policy.

This helps, Woerner said, at least until we can open up.

Woerners store was one of a few that took advantage of the new curbside service option as many other businesses along what is a normally bustling Greenleaf Avenue in Uptown Whittier remained closed.

A clothing boutique directly across the street from Le Bain chose not to open, instead asking customers on a posted message to continue making purchases through the stores website.
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Kansas City mayor amends rule forcing churches to record names of churchgoers

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Mayor Quinton Lucas has amended an executive order that required churches, businesses and organizations deemed "nonessential" to record the names of anyone who entered their buildings and stayed for more than 10 minutes.

On Monday, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, amended his 10-10-10 coronavirus rule issued last week that allowed businesses, houses of worship and other institutions deemed nonessential by the government to reopen at 10% of their original capacity or 10 people, whichever is greater.

After receiving pushback against the name-reporting requirement, the mayor made it optional. Churches and businesses are no longer required to supply the government with the names and contact details of people who entered their buildings and stayed there for more than 10 minutes. The mayor said he instituted the policy so health department officials could track and "isolate" people in case a facility became the site of a COVID-19 outbreak.

In the interest of public health and in order to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak in the community, those business operations should consider maintaining a record of customers on the premises, the amended rule states. Any information collected under this subsection by the business operation or the Department of Public Health shall remain confidential to the extent allowed by law and be utilized only for public health purposes or to address public health concerns.

It was initially reported that the goal of the reporting requirement was so the government could quickly trace, test, and isolate individuals who the government has reason to believe might have been exposed to the virus at those facilities.

The new order states that religious gatherings such as weddings, funerals, memorial services and wakes can continue as long as there's no more than 10 people or 10% of the buildings indoor capacity or 50 people for outside gatherings.

In the interest of public health and to avoid COVID-19 outbreak connected to a religious gathering, event organizers should consider maintaining a record of attendees where appropriate, the amended order reads. Attendees are not required, however, to provide their names or contact information at any religious gathering.

The order was quickly opposed by the Florida-based Christian legal group Liberty Counsel, which argues that the order is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Although the mayor amended his order, Liberty Counsel asserts that the rule still discriminates against houses of worship in two ways.

First, they are excluded from the essential category and thus subjected to unequal treatment from the beginning, a press release from the organization reads.

Essential operations, including gatherings inside and outside, are exempt from the 10/10/10 rule as well as name and contact recording. Second, religious gatherings for churches and houses of worship conducted outside were limited to no more than 50 people. No other secular outside gathering has this limitation of the 10/10/10 rule, which also includes recording names and contact information of any person who attends.

Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver declared in a statement that the requirement for churches to record the names of attendees was a gross violation of the First Amendment.

Due to the overwhelming public outcry, the Kansas City Mayor reversed course and removed this unconstitutional provision, Staver said. That is the good news. The bad news, which Kansas City must still remedy, is the continued unconstitutional treatment of churches and houses of worship compared to other secular gatherings.

In a statement Tuesday, Lucas reasoned that the city was only asking for businesses and organizations that typically record attendance or reservations to maintain their records in case of an outbreak.

The government will not create or keep any records, Lucas said. Like other outbreaks, from E-coli to measles in our schools, the Health Department is bound to confidentiality as it works with any organization to protect its attendees.

A spokesperson for Lucas told The Kansas City Star that the mayor felt over the weekend that there was a need for clearer guidance expressing the voluntary nature of the requirement instead of engaging in ad nauseam political debate.
The Phase 1 agreement keeps 25 percent tariffs in place on a wide range of imports from China that the Trump administration considers to have strategic or economic value, like cars or nuclear reactor components. It requires China to strengthen intellectual property protection and open its markets to foreign financial services companies.

The agreement also calls for China to increase its imports from the United States by $200 billion this year and next year, compared with levels in 2017, before the trade war began.

The chapter on extra purchases, one of seven chapters in the agreement, mandates specific increases in four categories of Chinas imports from the United States: food, manufactured goods, energy and services.

China has increased its imports of American food since the pact was signed. But its overall imports of other American goods have fallen short of the administrations initial hopes.

Chinas total imports from the United States fell 5.6 percent in the first four months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to Chinas trade data. According to an analysis by Panjiva, Chinas imports in March of the goods it promised to buy in the trade deal were just 44 percent of their target level, and Chinese trade data suggested April might be worse.

Given the economic catastrophe caused by coronavirus, that is no surprise, analysts said.

China is still struggling to recover from its efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, which included shutting vast parts of its industrial machine; its economy shrank for the first time in nearly half a century. The United States is still debating when to end its own lockdowns, which have contributed to the loss of millions of jobs.
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Tillamook County Creamery Association hopes to ease the burden of its workers and Oregon small businesses impacted by the coronavirus outbreak with a $4 million relief package it announced this week.

TCCAs relief effort includes $500,000 toward struggling small businesses in Tillamook and Morrow counties, several five and six-figure donations to various Oregon-based non-profits and increased pay and benefits to its frontline workers.

We believe this extraordinary situation is calling for significant support for business, and its time for us to step up, said Patrick Criteser, TCCA president and CEO.

With stay-at-home orders in place for most markets, demand is strong for many of Tillamooks dairy products. Criteser said its business spiked in March and continued in April. Though demand has slowed a bit early in May, Criteser says sales remain up at around 40 percent.

One of the highlights of the $4 million package is providing increases to its employees by offering premium pay to front-line manufacturing workers and expanding sick leave.

In my mind, these are the heroes going to work every day so we can all be fed while the rest of us are staying at home, Criteser said.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Additionally, TCCA is providing full wages and benefits to workers at the Tillamook Creamery, the visitors center that is temporarily closed. TCCA is also doubling the paid volunteer hours for its employees, and creating a fund that matches employee donations to charitable organizations.

More than $1 million from the package is earmarked for specific Oregon non-profits, including $200,000 to Oregon Food Bank and $100,000 to Oregon Community Foundation.

Criteser said the $500,000 donation toward small businesses in Tillamook and Morrow counties is important because they are such a critical part of economies in these small towns.

As for the popular visitors center in Tillamook, Criteser was uncertain as to when it might reopen, but said I dont expect well be opening any time soon.

On a Saturday during the summer, Criteser says as many as 10,000 people visit the creamery.

Thats not a scenario anyone wants to see right now, he said. When we do start back up, well do it in very cautious phases.  The overall philosophy Ive shared with our employees is were going to take more precautions, and were going to take more precautions longer than is the minimum requirement.

--Nick Daschel | ndaschel@oregonian.com | @nickdaschel

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We are pleased to recognize Dr. Daniel Reznicek as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson

NeoTract, a wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated (NYSE:TFX) focused on addressing unmet needs in the field of urology, today announced that Daniel Reznicek M.D., Pacific Northwest Urology Specialists in Bellingham, WA, has been designated as a UroLift Center of Excellence. The designation recognizes that Dr. Reznicek has achieved a high level of training and experience with the UroLift System and demonstrated a commitment to exemplary care for men suffering from symptoms associated with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), also known as enlarged prostate.

Recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines, the FDA-cleared Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to BPH. The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue.

The UroLift Center of Excellence program is designed to highlight urologists who are committed to educating their patients on BPH and the UroLift System as a treatment option and consistently seek to deliver excellent patient outcomes and experiences.

We are pleased to recognize Dr. Daniel Reznicek as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson, president of the Teleflex Interventional Urology business unit. This achievement has helped many patients experience durable, long-term relief from the burdensome symptoms of BPH while preserving sexual function*1,2.

Over 40 million men in the United States are affected by BPH, a condition that occurs when the prostate gland that surrounds the male urethra becomes enlarged with advancing age and begins to obstruct the urinary system. Symptoms of BPH often include interrupted sleep and urinary problems and can cause loss of productivity, depression and decreased quality of life.

Medication is often the first-line therapy for enlarged prostate, but relief can be inadequate and temporary. Side effects of medication treatment can include sexual dysfunction, dizziness and headaches, prompting many patients to quit using the drugs. For these patients, the classic alternative is surgery that cuts, heats or removes prostate tissue to open the blocked urethra. While current surgical options can be very effective in relieving symptoms, they can also leave patients with permanent side effects such as urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and retrograde ejaculation.

About the UroLift System

The FDA-cleared UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a minimally invasive transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue. Clinical data from a pivotal 206-patient randomized controlled study showed that patients with enlarged prostate receiving UroLift implants reported rapid and durable symptomatic and urinary flow rate improvement without compromising sexual function*1,2. Patients also experienced a significant improvement in quality of life. Over 100,000 men have been treated with the UroLift System in the U.S. Most common adverse events reported include hematuria, dysuria, micturition urgency, pelvic pain, and urge incontinence. Most symptoms were mild to moderate in severity and resolved within two to four weeks after the procedure. The Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines. The UroLift System is available in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. Learn more at http://www.UroLift.com.

About NeoTract | Teleflex Interventional Urology

A wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated, the Interventional Urology Business Unit is dedicated to developing innovative, minimally invasive and clinically effective devices that address unmet needs in the field of urology. Our initial focus is on improving the standard of care for patients with BPH using the UroLift System, a minimally invasive permanent implant system that treats symptoms while preserving normal sexual function*1,2. Learn more at http://www.NeoTract.com.

About Teleflex Incorporated

Teleflex is a global provider of medical technologies designed to improve the health and quality of peoples lives. We apply purpose driven innovation  a relentless pursuit of identifying unmet clinical needs  to benefit patients and healthcare providers. Our portfolio is diverse, with solutions in the fields of vascular and interventional access, surgical, anesthesia, cardiac care, urology, emergency medicine and respiratory care. Teleflex employees worldwide are united in the understanding that what we do every day makes a difference. For more information, please visit http://www.teleflex.com.

Teleflex is the home of Arrow, Deknatel, Hudson RCI, LMA, Pilling, Rusch, UroLift and Weck  trusted brands united by a common sense of purpose

For Teleflex Incorporated:

Jake Elguicze, 610.948.2836

Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations

Media:

Nicole Osmer, 650.454.0504 nicole@healthandcommerce.com

*No instances of new, sustained erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction

1. Roehrborn, J Urology 2013 LIFT Study

2.McVary, J Sex Med 2016

MAC00968-01 Rev A
If you watched the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels cross the state last week to honor health care workers fighting the coronavirus and are eager for another flyover, youre in luck.

The New Jersey Air National Guard is conducting a flyover next week to honor the frontline workers of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 177th Fighter Wing and 108th Wing are partnering in the nationwide Air Force Salutes Flyover event on May 12 (or May 13, for an inclement weather date).

The flyovers will feature three F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 177th Fighter Wing and a KC-135R Stratotanker from the 108th Wing, according to the military units Facebook post.

The flight, which begins at 11:20 a.m., will cover key COVID-19 locations across the state, which includes testing sites, state veteran homes, hospitals and mortuary affairs, the post said. It will last approximately an hour, according to the schedule on the post.

The New Jersey Air National Guard will be conducting a flyover to honor #COVID19 front line workers. The 177th Fighter... Posted by 177th Fighter Wing, NJANG on Friday, May 8, 2020

Residents can watch the flyover at the following times and locations, barring delays due to weather, air traffic, or maintenance:

11:30 a.m. -- Sea Girt

11:35 a.m. -- PNC Arts Center

11:40 a.m. -- Millstone

11:45 a.m. -- NJ Convention Center

11:46 a.m. -- Menlo Park

11:48 a.m. -- Kean University

11:48 a.m. -- University Hospital

11:49 a.m. -- Expo Center

11:51 a.m. -- Bern County College/Paramus

12:01 p.m. -- Vets Haven North

12:07 p.m. -- New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs

12:13 p.m. -- Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital

12:32 p.m. -- Atlantic City Convention Center

The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds fly over Camden City to honor coronavirus responders, Tuesday, April 28, 2020.Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The New Jersey Air National Guards flyover follows the one conducted by the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels last Tuesday, in which 12 military aircrafts crossed the state to salute health care workers. The flights passed by five cities in three statesNewark, New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia and Wilmington.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com.
Egged on by big business, Indias far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is pressing to reopen the economy so that sweatshop exploitation of the working class can resume at full throttle, even as the number of COVID-19 cases is surging.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced May 1 that Indias 40-day lockdown, which was set to end May 3, would be extended a further two weeks till May 17. However, he also vowed that there would be a further easing of restrictions across much of the country, so as to allow the resumption of much of commerce and industry. Modi justified his promised gradual easing by cynically invoking the plight of Indias workers and toilerstens of millions of whom have lost their jobs and all incomeand by touting the claim that the lockdown has proven largely successful in checking the spread of the virus.

In reality, the situation remains perilous. COVID-19 cases and deaths are surging overall, and there are a number of major local outbreaks, including in the slums of Mumbai, any of which could rapidly lead to a catastrophic loss of life, due to the comprised health of Indias malnourished poor, the countrys densely populated slums, and its ramshackle public health system.

Stranded students from various districts wait for transport to travel to their hometowns in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Between May 1 and 6, confirmed COVID-19 cases rose by more than 15,000, from 37,257 to 52,987, while deaths jumped from 1,223 to 1,785 an increase of 45 percent.

These figures, it need be emphasized, gravely underestimate the true spread of the highly contagious virus, since India from the beginning of the pandemic has severely rationed COVID-19 tests. In a country of 1.37 billion people, India has conducted little more than 1 million tests. In per capita terms, India, according to statista.com, had performed as of yesterday, just 984 tests per million inhabitants, only a tiny fraction of the per capita tests administered by all other countries with more than 50,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. On a per capita basis, Turkey has performed 14 times more tests than India, the US more than 24 times and Germany 32 times.

The governments push to reopen the economy, coupled with its failure to mobilize societys resources, beginning with the assets of the tiny strata of rich and super-rich who monopolize Indias wealth, to provide essentials to working people during the lockdown and strengthen the countrys health system, all but ensure that the current upswing in COVID-19 infections and deaths will tragically prove to be only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Under the new phase in Indias lockdown, travel by air, rail, bus, and urban subway systems, and between states is to resume. Educational institutions are to remain closed.

As part of its preparations to reopen the economy, the government has divided the countrys 733 districts into three zones, depending on their supposed exposure to the virus.

130 districts have been labelled hotspots or part of the Red Zone, because they have high rates of COVID-19 infections.

The Orange Zone is currently comprised of 284 districts where the government claims no cases have been detected for a fortnight. However, the accuracy of such claims is in serious doubt, given the low-level of testing.

319 districts with no fresh COVID-19 cases for 21 days comprise the Green Zone.

The movement of taxis and rickshaws at 50 percent capacity is to be allowed in the orange and green zones, but prohibited in red zone districts

However, even in the so-called red zone, much of industry, especially important exporters, are already allowed to operate. Those exempt from the lockdown include companies in Special Economic Zones, industrial estates/townships, IT hardware manufacturers, the jute industry, and manufacturers of packaging materials.

Government propaganda claims that only employers that follow strict social distancing and other safety guidelines will be allowed to operate. But Indias employers, with the full complicity of the central and states government, are notorious for their wanton disregard for occupational health and safety regulations.

Underscoring how the corporate elite prioritizes profits over workers lives, India records a high number of industrial accidents and workplace fatalities in normal times. According to a study by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), around 48,000 people die at work in India every year.

Yesterday, eleven people were killed and 350 hospitalized as the result of a chemical-plant gas leak in Visakhapatnam, an industrial center in Andhra Pradesh. The plant was in the process of resuming production after the lockdown.

On Sunday, Modi congratulated and saluted frontline healthcare workers, who he dubbed the corona-warriors. While hundreds of doctors and other medical personnel have gotten sick as a result of the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and hospitals are crippled by the lack of equipment and personnel, Modi sent Indian Air Force combat jets and transport aircraft over various state capitals to drop flower petals on hospitals treating COVID-19 patients.

The governments attitude to the countrys workers and toilers is exemplified by its callous treatment of tens of millions of migrant workers and other day-labourers who have been provided, at most, with starvation-ration relief during the lockdown.

Before being herded into crowded, makeshift internal refugee camps by the police, millions of migrant workers, rendered jobless and often homeless by the governments ill-prepared and sudden March 24 lockdown announcement, attempted to return to their native villages on foot walking hundreds of kilometers.

On April 2, police found fourteen migrant laborers travelling over 1,200 km from Nashik to Lucknow in the belly of a cement-mixer truck. A shocking video that quickly went viral showed several workers emerging from inside the mixer, clutching bags and small bundles of their belongings to their chests, after police stopped the vehicle on suspicion.

Less than two weeks into lockdown, the Right to Food Campaign reported that at least 270 people had already died due to hunger, exhaustion, state violence, suicide prompted by the loss of all income, and inability to access healthcare.

Millions of migrant workers are now stuck in crowded camps, hundreds of kilometers away from their homes, without money or resources to purchase the most basic of necessities.

The filthy and cramped camps resemble India's notorious jails, with security officials harassing the migrant workers, while state authorities largely leave it to NGOs and other charities to provide them with food.

Facing increasingly vocal opposition from the migrant workers, the BJP government announced on May 1 that trains would be arranged to send the workers home. However, it soon emerged that the workers will have to pay their own fare, which for many is an impossibility. The state government in Kerala, which is led by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist), has, for example, asked poor workers to pay the base fare of 875 rupees for being ferried to Jharkhand, India Today reported.

Going home will not end their misery. A report published last week by volunteer group Stranded Workers Action Network (Swan) based on distress calls from 16,863 migrant workers, said that 64 percent had less than 100 rupees (about US $1.30). 99 percent of those who were self-employed said they had no earnings during the lockdown period, while 78 percent of those who worked for wages had not received any pay.
tzahiv/iStockBy CHRISTINA CARREGA and AARON KATERSKY



(NEW YORK) -- In the last seven weeks, the NYPD has arrested and issued summonses for almost 400 people, mostly blacks and Latinos, for allegedly violating social distancing and other violations, newly released data shows.



Demographic data for social distancing enforcement by the NYPD between March 16 and May 5 was published on Friday after videos posted on social media last weekend raised questions over whether police are enforcing consistently in neighborhoods of different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.



The statistics showed that 374 summonses were issued for allegations likely to spread disease and to violate emergency measures. Of those who received the summonses, 193 are African American, 111 are Hispanic, 51 are white, 14 are Asian and three are American Indian.



In Brooklyn, 206 summonses were issued including 121 from 12 alleged social gatherings. In the Bronx, 99 summonses were issued including 42 at five social gatherings.



"We have to make sure that we are impartial in how we enforce the law," Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Thursday during an internal question-and-answer session. "We have a couple videos that people think otherwise."



Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said his office is "reviewing allegations of excessive force during recent Brooklyn arrests and will investigate these incidents to determine if disciplinary recommendations or criminal charges are warranted."



The NYPD insisted it does its work "evenly and fairly" though one official conceded some of what is depicted on the videos is troubling.



"We're not targeting any particular neighborhood," said Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North. Still, he conceded during a Thursday call with reporters "we had a tough weekend" and "none of these videos look great."



The city also reported that 120 arrests were made during the same time period.



Gonzalez's office released an analysis on Thursday of the social distance-related arrests that were made in Brooklyn between March 17 and May 4.



The analysis, first reported by the New York Times, showed that of the 40 people arrested during that time period, 35 were African American, 4 were Hispanic and 1 was white. The arrests were made in neighborhoods -- Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cypress Hills and East New York -- which have large concentrations of blacks and Latinos.



"We do not accept disparity. Period," said Mayor Bill de Blasio at his daily press briefing on Friday, adding, "It's also important to note that some of the data that went out originally included arrests that were not actually related to social distancing, or summonses, that were related to other types of offenses. So that just needs to be clarified."



The more than three dozen arrests in the prosecutor's report were charged with obstructing governmental administration and other offenses.



Some of the arrests expected to result in desk appearance tickets while others were expected to be formally processed into central bookings, a law enforcement source said.



"Our office declined prosecution of all 40 as part of our COVID policy," according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office which has declined to prosecute low-level offenses that don't jeopardize public safety during the pandemic.



In Queens, roughly 20 arrests related to alleged failure to comply with the city's social distancing mandate were made. Of those arrests, 16 were African American or Hispanic, two were Asian and two were white.



Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz told ABC News on Friday that her office will not prosecute social distancing arrests. "Nobody wants a health crisis to fuel a criminal justice crisis," said Katz, who contracted COVID 19, but has fully recovered.



"We respect the challenges that the men and women of the New York City Police Department face in policing during this pandemic and the dangers that they face every day in keeping our city safe," said Katz. "That being said, we are committed to nondiscriminatory and even-handed enforcement of all laws, not just social distancing laws. The health, safety and rights of all New Yorkers from every community are our priority."



Meanwhile, the Staten Island District Attorney's Office has arrested anyone related to social distancing, said Ryan Lavis, a spokesman for the office on Friday.



Maddrey said he is still reviewing the videos along with body camera and surveillance footage to determine what, if any, discipline is warranted.



Maddrey added that the NYPD is concerned the videos undermine the work officers have been doing as coronavirus has changed the priorities of policing.



"We've been giving out masks, we've helped create food banks, we've been part of giving out tablets so kids can do their school work, we've been assisting at funerals," Maddrey said.



Maddrey also agreed with critics that officers enforcing social distancing should themselves wear a mask.



"Our officers have a duty to the community to wear their masks as often as they can. We have to be fair and we should be wearing a mask as we address that."



"We will give more training to our officers, clearer protocols and make sure each of our neighborhoods are treated equally," de Blasio said on Friday. "That being said, we are going to use NYPD to keep people safe, specifically when fighting this pandemic."



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
William and Kate chat with residents of a care home as they celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day (BBC/Kensington Palace)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were left tickled pink by stories of Churchills secret birthday message to his son when they chatted to Second World War veterans about their VE Day memories.

Champagne was flowing when William and Kate made a video call on Wednesday to residents of an East Sussex care home to listen to them reminisce about the day the war ended in Europe on May 8 1945.

William praised the efforts of the wartime generation, and told them: Because we cant be together, everyones still thinking of you all today, and are very proud of everything youve all achieved.

Kate revealed Prince George and Princess Charlotte have been asked by their teachers to learn Dame Vera Lynns famous wartime anthem.

She said: The school has set all the children a challenge and theyre currently trying to learn the lyrics to the song Well Meet Again so its been really lovely having that playing every day.

The residents had started their VE Day celebrations early, and when the royal couple asked what they would do when the Covid-19 outbreak was over, the sprightly group said they would hold VC Day  Victory over Coronavirus.

Expand Close Kate and William share a joke with care home residents Charles Ward and Jean Hull. BBC/Kensington Palace / Facebook

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With a glass of bubbly nearby, Charles Ward, the oldest resident at Mais House, a Royal British Legion care home in Bexhill-on-Sea, joked about how he served tots of rum to fellow servicemen on VE Day.

We were in Greece at the time, and I had to go round early in the morning with rum for all the men, he said with a laugh.

William replied: I bet you were the hero of the time there Charles, delivering rum out to everybody.

Mr Ward, aged 101, had a varied military career during the war and, after first being called up into the London Irish Rifles, he later served in North Africa before joining the Special Operations Executive to encrypt, or cipher, messages from British agents parachuted into France and Italy.

The veteran, from South Kirkby in Yorkshire, told the Cambridges about working on secret messages from wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.

Expand Close King George VI and the Queen Mother survey bomb damage at Buckingham Palace  care home residents told William and Kate about air attacks they had suffered (PA) PA / Facebook

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The duke said Valerie Glassborow, Kates paternal grandmother, was a civilian member of staff at the wartime code-breaking centre Bletchley Park, where her twin sister Mary was also employed.

The duchess, who was just one of a number of royals who have chatted to veterans this week, said: Its so sad that shes not here today, as I would love to speak to her more about it.

Mr Ward later described the correspondence he received from the wartime leader, saying: The message came from Churchill, I had to decipher it, re-encipher it and send it to his son in Yugoslavia to say, Happy Birthday.

And then there was another one from the son to Churchill himself to say congratulations on your speech in Parliament.

When I told William and Kate that story, they giggled.

The residents began VE Day with a religious service performed by a minister on a balcony, to maintain lockdown rules, before they were entertained by a comedian and historian  in character as Churchill  and enjoyed a lunch washed down with more champagne.

Mais House went into lockdown before the Government issued social distancing rulings, has remained virus free and has been receiving supplies of personal protection equipment for staff, said Sue Barnes, the registered home manager.

Expand Close Care home residents James Pyett and Thelma Hobden were chosen to have an online chat with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. BBC/Kensington Palace / Facebook

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Resident James Pyett, 95, also chatted to the royals and they quizzed him about his experiences of the Blitz.

The family of the veteran, who served as a driver with the Royal Corps of Signals during the war, were bombed out of their Limehouse home in the East End of London, but when they sought refuge in Bournemouth they found themselves targeted again by the Luftwaffe.

The 95-year-old said: I was blown up and put in hospital and my father said, Right, if were going to be bombed here, were going back to London.

Mr Pyett said his family were given a home in Clapham, south London, adding: We moved in on a Saturday afternoon and we were bombed out on the same Saturday night.

He and his father were left covered in dirt after the roof fell in and they went to find his mother, who had sheltered from the attack in an air raid shelter.

William and Kate laughed when the 95-year-old said: My mother took one look at my father all covered in soot and dust and she said  and she was a real Cockney woman  I knew we bloody well should have stayed in Bournemouth.

The 95-year-old was in the Netherlands on VE Day, returning to his units base in Ghent, Belgium, and when we got back, we had a whale of a time, he said with a laugh.
In many fish species body size plays an important role in sexual selection. Large individuals are preferred mating partners because they can enhance offspring survival by providing better quality resources than small individuals. While large females and males are often favored by sexual selection, fishing targets and removes these reproductively superior individuals. Academy Research Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkila discusses in her recent literature review the implications fisheries selection might have on sexual selection, individual reproductive success and population viability.

Sexual selection depends on the advantage certain individuals have over other conspecifics. It creates important filters for reproductive success and can consequently increase fitness and population viability. A large male can provide more intensive care for the developing offspring than small male and is therefore preferred by a female. A large female salmon, on the other hand, is more fecund than a small one and attracts multiple males. Sexual selection in fish have been studied using model species, such as guppy, zebrafish and three-spine stickleback.

- Zebrafish female prefers a large male as a mating partner and releases more eggs for him compared to a small male. In some species females also produce higher quality eggs towards large males, says Academy Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkila from the University of Jyvaskyla.

Fisheries often remove the largest individuals from the population, thus operates in the opposite direction than sexual selection. The effects of fisheries selection on sexual selection has received relatively little attention.

- Studying mate choice in natural conditions can be challenging, says Uusi-Heikkila.

Therefore, the mating systems of many commercially valuable fish species are poorly known, perhaps excluding cod and salmon. Experimental studies have revealed a great deal about cod mating systems. Salmon, on the other hand, spawn in their home rivers, where it is easier to observe mate choice and mate competition compared to the great depths of the oceans where many commercially important fish species spawn.

Uusi-Heikkila points out that we should focus more on how size-selective fisheries affect fish mating systems, how persistent these effects are and how this might affect population growth, viability and resilience.

- Large females and males often have higher reproductive success than small ones. Thus, size-selective fisheries may impair population growth. It is tempting to think that sexual selection could buffer the adverse effects of fishing and rescue exploited populations. This is not going to happen, if there are now large females and males left. Overall, if fishing reduces body size variation in a population, sexual selection cannot operate effectively, concludes Uusi-Heikkila.

###

The study was funded by the Academy of Finland.

Link to the article in Evolutionary Applications: https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12988

More information:

Academy Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkila, silva.k.uusi-heikkila@jyu.fi

Communications officer Tanja Heikkinen, tanja.s.heikkinen@jyu.fi, tel. 358 50 581 8351

The Faculty of Mathematics and Science:

https://www.jyu.fi/science/en

Twitter: jyscience
(CNN)  A man in Nigeria was sentenced to death via the popular video conferencing app Zoom this week, sparking condemnation from rights groups who described the ruling as inhumane.

At a virtual court hearing on Monday, Olalekan Hameed was found guilty of murdering his mother's employer in 2018 and was sentenced to death by hanging.

A judge at a court in Lagos delivered the ruling to Hameed, who appeared remotely from prison via Zoom, along with his lawyer and prosecutors who also joined the hearing remotely, justice ministry spokesman Kayode Oyekanmi told CNN.

Hameed, who denied the charge, remains in prison, Oyekanmi said. CNN was trying to reach the suspect and his lawyer for comment.

The court held the session via Zoom to comply with the state's social distancing guidelines to curb coronavirus.

Amnesty International Nigeria Director Osai Ojigho slammed the country's use of the death penalty and questioned why Monday's hearing couldn't be delayed.

"We know many courts are exploring how they can continue cases virtually, but the challenge is how much thought has been given to the process for virtual court sittings," Ojigho said. "In this case, could this sentencing not be delayed to another time?"

"Can we say justice was seen to be done in this case, did the public have access to this session? It's worth exploring if the processes that led to the virtual sitting followed the principle of natural justice and a fair hearing."

Oyekanmi declined to respond to criticism of the hearing, as did a spokeswoman for the Lagos state judiciary.

Amnesty International is calling for the the death penalty to be abolished in Nigeria, where there are nearly 3,000 people on death row, according to Ojigho.

State governors in Nigeria have to authorize executions before they're carried out, but some have refrained from doing so in recent years, Ojigho said.

"No one wants to be held [accountable] for ending someone's life, from the pattern we see. If the government has an internal struggle and is hesitant to sign death warrants, why don't we take it off the books?" Ojigho said.

This story was first published on CNN.com "A man was sentenced to death via Zoom in Nigeria, sparking criticism from rights groups"
On trips to his neighborhood 7-Eleven during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal notices local newspapers coming off the shelves.

I can tell you the people are picking up these local papers as well as the national papers, Neal said in an editorial meeting with The Republican and MassLive on Zoom Thursday.

But local news outlets throughout the country, particularly in small and midsize markets, have been hit hard by the coronavirus, which has forced businesses to shutter and consumers to stay home  and advertising dollars to dry up in an industry that was already struggling before the pandemic.

While many local news outlets can seek forgivable small business loans through the Coronavirus Aid, Recovery and Economic Security (CARES) Acts Paycheck Protection Program, many newspapers, radio and television stations are ineligible because they belong to larger networks or conglomerates with several hundreds or thousands of employees spread across the nation.

Neal said he feels very strongly that coronavirus relief funding should support local media.

He said its a chance to highlight local newspapers, smaller outlets and reporters whove done on-the-ground reporting. He added that if there was ever a time that demonstrated the importance of facts, it is now.

Neals comments are aligned with nearly two dozen lawmakers who last month pushed for the fourth COVID-19 relief package to include funds for local media.

Led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, 19 Democratic senators wrote to Senate leadership on April 8 to note that communities across the country have seen the further decimation of this important industry as local publications have stopped printing and laid off staff in the last few weeks.

Local news plays an indispensable role in American civic life as a trusted source for critical information, a watchdog for government and corporate accountability, and a building block of social cohesion, the senators wrote. Local journalism has been providing communities answers to critical questions, including information on where to get locally tested, hospital capacity, road closures, essential business hours of operation and shelter-in-place orders. Reliable local news and information has been critically important during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet it has become more scarce. Any future stimulus package must contain funding to support this important industry at such a critical time.

Any provision should aid outlets who make a long-term commitment to high quality local news, the senators added.

In a joint statement last month, the News Media Alliance, National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association and Americas Newspapers called on Congress to ensure PPP funding was made available to news outlets and to provide the Small Business Administration and Department of Health and Human Services between $5 billion and $10 billion in direct funding for local media advertising that would be evenly distributed to local media in communities of all sizes.

An aide to Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana  who along with other Republicans introduced an antitrust relief bill earlier this year that could help local newspapers compete for advertising revenue against larger companies  told Axios that he was focused on ensuring local media can obtain paycheck support through relief already approved in the CARES Act.

The Columbia Journalism Review, in a study on newspaper closures between 1996 and 2015, found that not having reporters around covering municipal spending wound up costing taxpayers money. Local government borrowing costs significantly increased in counties where a newspaper had shuttered, CJR wrote.

Our evidence indicates that a lack of local newspaper coverage has serious financial consequences for local governments, and that alternative news sources are not necessarily filling the gaps, CJR added.

Facebook announced in late March that it would invest $100 million in local news amid the pandemic, including $25 million in emergency grant funding through the Facebook Journalism Project, and $75 million in marketing to news organizations around the world.

Google, without detailing amounts, launched a Journalism Emergency Relief Fund last month to support small and medium-sized organizations producing original journalism for local communities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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A Delhi Court on Friday issued non-bailable warrant (NBW) against AAP MLA Prakash Jarwal in connection with the case of alleged suicide of a doctor in south Delhi's Durga Vihar last month.

A senior police official said that the NBW has been issued by Saket Court against the MLA and co-accused Kapil Nagar.

A 52-year-old doctor had allegedly committed suicide in Durga Vihar in south Delhi on April 18, holding Jarwal responsible in his suicide note, following which police had registered a case against the legislator on charges of extortion and abetment to suicide.

Jarwal, who represents Deoli assembly constituency, on Friday moved a Delhi court seeking anticipatory bail in a case.

The court has put up the matter for hearing on May 11.

The application, filed through advocate Mohd Irshad, claimed that the MLA had no direct or indirect contact from the doctor in the recent past and the allegations in the FIR that he extorted money from the deceased and his family are false.

The plea claimed that Jarwal has become the sacrificial victim of an indefensible political vendetta amid urgent medical crisis emerging in the city.

He has been falsely implicated in the case and was willing to cooperate with the police in the investigation as when he will be called by them, it said.

It further said that Jarwal, being a public representative of the constituency Deoli, is looking after the relief measures being carried out by the Delhi Government due to Covid-19 pandemic.

In the FIR, it is alleged that the deceased was threatened, intimidated for extortion by the accused (Jarwal) and Kapil Nagar(co-accused).

The deceased was a doctor and also running the business of the water tanker in collaboration with Delhi Jal Board since 2005, the FIR said.

It is alleged in the FIR that since the accused used to extort money from the deceased on a monthly basis through his so called henchmen Kapil Nagar and other people. When the deceased refused to give the money to him, he allegedly threatened him and using the power he (accused) managed to get the tankers removed from the Delhi Jal Board and also used his influence to stop the payments of pending bills, the bail plea said.

The plea further said that Jarwal filed an RTI through his advocate in the Delhi Jal Board to know about the facts related to water tankers issue involved and its reply suggested that no water tanker has been engaged in the name of the deceased in the last one year, April-2019 till March 2020.

It is also apparent from the reply of RTI application that the tankers in the name of the deceased were disengaged due to the illegal acts of his own which was caught on camera in a sting operation... The allegation against the accused holds no water in the light of the blatant exposure of the illegal activity of the deceased, which may have been the compelling circumstances for the Delhi Jal Board authorities to take action against him," the plea claimed.

The Delhi Police had on Thursday questioned Jarwal''s father and brothers in connection with the case.

Rajendra Singh allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his house on April 18. Singh''s son Hemant told the police that his father ran a clinic in Durga Vihar and was also in the business of water supply with the Delhi Jal Board since 2007.

A suicide note was recovered from Singh''s house, alleging that Jarwal was responsible for his death.

A case of extortion and abetment to suicide had been registered against Jarwal, one Kapil Nagar and others at the Neb Sarai police station based on a complaint by Hemant.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Australians are being warned not to use an anti-malarial drug once hailed by Donald Trump as a coronavirus 'game-changer'.

More than 6,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine have been seized by the Australian Border Force since January.

Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria and and certain auto-immune diseases.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has issued a warning to Australians not to consume the drug.

If incorrectly used, the drug could cause sudden heart attacks, irreversible eye damage and severe depletion of blood sugar which can cause comas.

More than 6,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine have been seized by the Australian Border Force since January

Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria and and certain auto-immune diseases (a consignment seized by ABF)

TGA issued an alert to medical professionals on March 24 which advises them on increased restrictions when prescribing the drug.

'ABF officers are on the lookout for consignments of this drug, along with all other prohibited imports and exports,' ABF Acting Commander Susan Drennan said.

'Anyone considering further unauthorised imports will be wasting their money.

'Whether its individuals wanting to self-prescribe, or criminals aiming to sell the drug on the black market, our officers have the technology, skills and innovative processes to detect and disrupt their illegal importations of pharmaceuticals such as this.'

Trump has repeatedly hyped the prospects of hydroxychloroquine - although he notably toned down his comments boosting the drug recently.

Trump staged a White House event last in April with former patients who recovered from a coronavirus infection, including some who were treated with hydroxychloroquine.

'So you took the hydroxy?' he asked a former patient. 'Why did you take the hydroxy? Why did you do that? You saw it on television?' Trump asked.

In March, he called it a 'a very strong, powerful medicine', adding that it 'doesnt kill people'.

If incorrectly used, the drug could cause sudden heart attacks, irreversible eye damage and severe depletion of blood sugar which could leave you in a coma

In March, Trump called the drug a 'a very strong, powerful medicine', adding that it 'doesnt kill people'

On March 21, Trump tweeted: 'HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) ...be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE!' Trump wrote.

More U.S. veterans sickened by coronavirus who were treated with the malaria drug Trump touted for treating the disease died than did patients who were given the usual supportive care, a study revealed.

And the results suggested that the drug, hydroxychloroquine, provided no benefit to the patients who received it.

The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Virginia paid for the work.
Later this year there are plans to commemorate two men who left a lasting impression on the whole fabric of Ardee - Sean O'Carroll and Patrick Tierney, both of whom were taken from their homes and shot dead on November 30, 1920. As a tribute to them, two streets were renamed in their honour in the mid Louth town - but who were O'Carroll and Tierney and how did they die.

In 2012, Sean King, Rosemary King, Matt Duffy and David Higgins produced a document that detailed much of the debate at the time.

Media reports at the time stated that O'Carroll and Tierney were taken from their homes by 'armed and uniformed men' and were part of a 'black list' - with up to 40 names and it stated that all the men on it were 'wanted'.

Sean O'Carroll was a teacher and was living in lodgings. He was taken from the house and brought to a spot near the railway station where he was shot with a revolver.

His cries attracted the attention of local residents who carried him to a house and summoned a doctor and a priest. He died shortly afterwards.

Tierney, who was also aged between 30 and 35, was the son of a local farmer. He was taken a short distance from his house and killed.

Other homes were also targeted, the house of Michael Grace in Castle Street searched, along with the offices of solicitor JJ Lynch, Michael McGinn, Catherine Gibney from Castle St and Patrick Keeley, egg and poultry merchant.

James Farrelly from Clogherhead was active in the Republican movement and lived on Railway Street. He had spent time in Frongoch in Wales.

On the night of the murders, he heard the shots and escaped down the railway line, the Black and Tans coming to search his home just minutes later.

He would later become a Captain in the Free State army. He became post master in Ardee up to his death in 1948. His son was noted local historian Vincent Farrelly.

A military court of inquiry was held in private into the O'Carroll and Tierney murders and the solicitor for the men was ejected as he objected to the proceedings.

A few days later, both men were laid out - side by side - in the church and large crowds assembled to recite the Rosary.

Mr O'Carroll's mother came from Belfast to journey home with her son's body

Both men received the ultimate honour in 1951 when the Drogheda Independent reported that two streets were re-dedicated to both men.

Railway Street and Tisdale Street were rc-named O'Carroll Street and Tierney Street respectively in memory of Captain Sean O'Carroll and Quartermaster Patrick Tierney of the I.R.A.

The Ardee Brass and Reed Band headed a torchlight procession to Railway Street where two minutes silence was observed, after which the band played " Faith of our Fathers " and the National Anthem. The same ceremony was then carried out in Tisdale Street.

Mr. Eugene Kavanagh, N.T., Marlboro Street, Dublin, Brigadier in the I.R.A.. in dedicating the two streets, said:-"We come here to-night as fellow Irishmen and women to commemorate the memory of two young Irishmen who laid down their lives that we might be free.

'It is 31 long years ago since that terrible night, when the blood of these men was shed so that you, the people of Ardee and Ireland, might enjoy the freedom which we possess to-day.

'It is also fitting that the band should play "Faith of our Fathers" for these men fought and died for physical and religious freedom. They knew of Ireland's fight down through the ages: they had the will to win, and gave their lives for their high ideals. Their comrades are here tonight to pay homage to them. One comrade I would like to mention in particular, the late Mr. James Farrelly, who recently died. We are proud of them and I hope the people will fight for the Faith as these men have done."

Continuing. Mr. Kavanagh said:- "I welcome on this platform Dr. P. J. Steen who was medical officer to the Brigade and who was ready at any time I called on his services to attend a wounded comrade. I would also like to pay tribute to the late Dr. Lyons, Bishop of Kilmore, and the late Joseph T. Dolan. These men braved the murder gang to render what assistance they could to the unfortuante men.

'In honour of the supreme sacrifice made by Sean O'Carroll and Patrick Tiemey I now, on behalf of you people of Ardee, dedicate Sean O'Carroll Street and Patrick Tierney Street." (

Mr. J. T. O'Kelly, Rogerstown, Chairman, Ardee Unit Old I.R.A said that the old I.R.A. felt something should be done to commemorate the sacrifice these two young men have made-a p e r p e t u a 1 memorial.'

Senator James T. McGee said:-'If I was asked to comment on what has been said here, I would add to the tributes paid to the memory of Scan O'Carroll and Patrick Tierney if that was possible. I was not in the vicinity of Ardee on that night 31 years ago (Mr. McGee was arrested a week previously and interned in Ballykinlar) when the blood of our two young men stained the soil of their own beloved country. Their greatest reward is that their memory will live forever.

'The Commissioners having agreed, the old I.RA. have to-night taken one step forward to commemorate the memory ol these two men. It is also intended to erect a memorial in the town when the necessary funds have been raised.

'I would like to say here that Martin Tierney is the person responsible for having Castleguard Textile Co. in Ardee. Finally I would appeal to the younger generation to learn and be faithful to the ideals for which Sean O'Carroll and Patrick Tierney died.

Others on the platform were Mr. Thomas Keelan, Detective Branch, Dublin Castle (Commandant, I.RA.), Mr. Patrick J. Kearney, Housing Officer, Louth County Council, Mr. Martin Tierney, Dr. P. J. Steen.
A 72-YEAR-OLD County Limerick man is stepping up to the mark by walking 100,000 steps to raise money for Clionas Foundation

John Loftus, Clarina, is approaching the 20th anniversary of a kidney transplant. He has represented Ireland at British, European and World Transplant games and shows no sign of slowing down.

John, throughout his life, has been exceptionally generous towards worthy causes. A man noted for giving back, using his uncanny ability of innovation and reinvention and by combining these qualities he came up with a novel idea.

He is going to walk the not inconsiderable distance of 100,000 steps in the week starting on Monday, May 11, while keeping safely within the 2km radius from his house. Encouraging him along the way will be his wife Trish, daughter Tara and grandson Jack.

John and supporters are hoping to raise funds for Clionas Foundation, a charity very close to his heart.

The Limerick-based charity provides financial support nationwide to families of seriously sick children to help with the non-medical costs of caring for their child. These costs can include but are not limited to accommodation, transport, car-parking, childcare and specialist equipment.

Cliona's have supported 782 families over the past 13 years including 36 already this year.

We know that Clionas income has been severely diminished with the cancellation of numerous fundraising events and really need support to help them continue to relieve the financial pressure these families are under.

This pressure is even more significant now for these families with reduced household income during this coronavirus crisis. I just want to do what I can to help Clionas continue their great work, which really makes a difference. If collectively we can raise enough to help a few families it would be just fantastic, said John.

You can support Team John Loftus by donating online on his Go Fund Me page by searching for John Loftus or by contacting him at 087 2541126 or email john@midwestmentoring.ie
As a nation in lockdown commemorated VE Day, here is something to ponder. In the midst of the Second World War, policy makers in Britain and around the world were planning for the peace.

In the darkest hours, while life and death decisions were being taken on the battlefield, blueprints designed to create a better world were drawn up.

On the global stage, the foundations of the post-war order were being laid through the creation at Bretton Woods in 1944 of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, with Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes at the centre of events.

At the US State Department, diplomats were working on the Marshall Plan for rebuilding a devastated Europe.

In the midst of the Second World War, while life and death decisions were being taken on the battlefield, blueprints designed to create a better world were being drawn up

In Britain, the Beveridge Report of 1942 laid out five pillars on which reconstruction should be based ending want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.

A feature of the current pandemic is how ill-prepared the country has been for such a crisis, despite extensive war gaming.

Similarly, the resilience of corporate Britain and the economy also has been shown to be wafer thin. The banking system has been strengthened with counter-cyclical buffers as a result of the 2008-09 financial crisis. This repair misfired at first because of boardroom obsessions with quarterly profits, dividends, share buybacks and the holy grail of bloated pay and bonuses.

As this country and the rest of the world moves towards an easing of lockdown there is no better time to start thinking about a new Beveridge  a social and economic settlement  for the post-Covid era.

Beveridge is a great example of Whitehall taking the lead. The report, which formed the basis of the cradle-to-grave social model, was a compendium of papers from across government pointing to how shortcomings in social policy might be fixed.

The experience of Covid-19 so far already gives us guidance. War gaming and stress testing for emergencies is one thing, but is useless if recommendations are ignored.

The big excuse for the public sector doing nothing  such as stockpiling protective equipment, firing up capacity for testing and supporting manufacturing capacity for ventilators at home  is austerity.

Shrinking the size of the state and giving the private sector priority is at the core of capitalism. But failure to build resilience into essential services is negligent.

It is the more wicked in the health sector in Britain because we are blessed with life sciences leaders  such as Astrazeneca, GSK, Smith & Nephew and Unilever  who could be brought closer into the tent. On the economic front we need to switch from Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case.

In the search for efficiency in running the economy and business, all the buffers against the unexpected have been removed leaving the UK super fragile to economic shocks. It is among the reasons why it is hard to buy into a V-shaped recovery.

In social terms, the country needs to move to a well funded social insurance system for older Britons and in the interim, state support has to be far more generous. Universal Credit offers a start towards a system of universal basic income  a much bigger safety net to protect the vulnerable.

In education we must prioritise technical education, better preparing young people and the economy for the digital world which has been a vital prop during the pandemic.

All of these ideas and many more are out there in the think-tanks and buried in Whitehall. The nation needs a post-Covid czar who understands the workings of Whitehall to urgently pull all of this together and recreate the better Britain for which the heroes of VE Day fought.
Australian consumer organisation CHOICE has put popular dishwashing detergents to the test to find the top performing products on the market.

The supermarket tablets, capsules, gel and powder were rated based on their cleaning performance against egg yolk and red wine stains and value for money.

Of the 25 products tested, Earth Choice Dish Tablets ($16.20) came out on top, with the highest score of 77 per cent.

Consumer organisation CHOICE has revealed the top performing dishwashing detergents, including Earth Choice Dish Tablets, Supermarket-owned labels Coles, Woolworths and Aldi

The top 10 dishwasher detergents 1. Earth Choice Dish Tablets ($16.20) - 77% 2. Coles Ultra Plus+ Advanced Clean Lemon Fresh Tablets ($6) - 73% 3. Woolworths Shine 10 In 1 Dishwashing Tablets ($4.50) - 73% 4. Aldi Logix Complete 10 In 1 Dishwasher Tablets ($4.25) - 72% 5. Fairy Platinum All In One Dishwasher Capsules ($7) - 72% 6. Finish Powerball Quantum Ultimate Lemon Sparkle ($17) - 72% 7. Aldi Logix Platinum 18 In 1 Dishwasher Tablets ($7.69) - 70% 8. Coles Ultra Complete Clean Lemon Fresh Tablets ($5) - 70% 9. Finish Powerball Quantum Tabs Lemon Sparkle ($14) - 70% 10. Finish Powerball Quantum Tabs Original ($14) - 70% Advertisement

The dishwashing tablet was able to tackle the dirtiest dishes, removing egg yolk at 89 per cent and red wine at 61 per cent.

Supermarket-owned labels Coles Ultra Plus+ Advanced Clean Lemon Fresh Tablets ($6) and Woolworths Shine 10 In 1 Dishwashing Tablets ($4.50) finished runner up, scoring 73 per cent.

Aldi Logix Complete 10 In 1 Automatic Dishwasher Tablets ($4.29) scored 72 per cent, alongside Fairy Platinum All In One Dishwasher Capsules Lemon ($7) and Finish Powerball Quantum Ultimate Lemon Sparkle ($17).

Four brands scored 70 per cent, including Aldi Logix Platinum 18 In 1 Automatic Dishwasher Tablets ($7.69), Coles Ultra Complete Clean Lemon Fresh Tablets ($5), Finish Powerball Quantum Tabs Lemon Sparkle ($14) and Finish Powerball Quantum Tabs Original ($14)

Earth Choice Dish Tablets ($16.20) came out on top

Aldi Logix Complete 10 In 1 Automatic Dishwasher Tablets ($4.29) scored 72 per cent, alongside Fairy Platinum All In One Dishwasher Capsules Lemon ($7) and Finish Powerball Quantum Ultimate Lemon Sparkle ($17)

Four brands scored 70 per cent, including Aldi Logix Platinum 18 In 1 Automatic Dishwasher Tablets ($7.69) and Coles Ultra Complete Clean Lemon Fresh Tablets ($5)

The judges recommended the top 10 products out of the 25 tested.

Woolworths Shine Dishwasher Powder Concentrate ($4) received the lowest score of 38 per cent, followed by Aldi Logix Automatic Dishwasher Powder 2 X Concentrate ($3.69) and Earth Choice All In 1 Dish Tablets ($8.19) both at 39 per cent.

'It doesn't matter how good your dishwasher is if the detergent you use performs poorly,' the experts said.

'Switch to a good quality detergent and you'll notice better cleaning performance straight away, without needing to upgrade your expensive appliance.'
The parents of three Kalyan students, pursuing their MBBS course from Kyrgyzstan, have appealed to the government to bring their children back home amid the coronavirus crisis.

Kalyan Shiv Sena corporator Ravi Patil on Friday spoke to the chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray and Thane guardian minister Eknath Shinde on the issue. There are 203 students from Maharashtra, who are stranded in the Central Asian country.

The parents are worried as Kyrgyzstan is not mentioned in the central governments list of countries from where the armed forces will get the stranded Indians. Some parents from my ward had called me asking for help. I have requested the CM to look into the matter as there are around 203 students from Maharashtra who are studying there as per a list compiled by the students, said Patil.

The parents of the students claimed that due to the pandemic, the institutes have been closed in Kyrgyzstan, but students are attending online classes and giving exams.

My son Pratik, who is in his second year of MBBS course, said students cant move out of the campus due to the lockdown. They are worried about getting back to India after the exams. There is no proper process undertaken to ensure they return home. We want our government to take the issue up and make arrangements for their return, said Titwala resident Sunil Diwan, 50, Pratiks father.

Another parent claimed that his son is facing difficulties in finding food as there are no shops in his area.

Students are unable to get timely supplies as there are no such shops around. My son told me they filled up some forms. But there is not clarity about their return, said Ravindra Waje, 51, a resident of Kalyan (East), whose son Deepak, 24, is in his fourth year of MBBS degree at Osh University.
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) on Friday said it has launched an integrated online platform that will provide end-to-end sales experience for prospective buyers amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the new initiative -- Own-Online, a customer can finance, insure, exchange, accessorise and own a company vehicle, in four simple steps, from the comfort of their homes, the auto major said.

"With our pre and post purchase online solutions already in place, reimagining the car purchase experience was a logical next step for us," M&M CEO Automotive Division Veejay Nakra said in a statement.

In the recent times, online has been a preferred purchase channel across categories and going forward, the online purchase of vehicles is set to gain more traction, he added.

"We are ready to lead this change in automotive retail by providing many industry-first experiences to our customers," Nakra noted.

Under the initiative, the customers can personalise their vehicles, instantly generate an exchange, get finance and insurance quotations and make booking payment, making the car ownership journey end-to-end and online in the true sense, the company said.

M&Ms pan-India network of over 270 dealers and 900 plus touchpoints is integrated with the Own-Online platform through back-end technology and process cohesion, it added.

Dealerships have upgraded their procedures and processes and are trained to minimise physical contact, it noted.

Besides, the company is also taking additional precautions across the customer interaction processes such as test drives, document collection and vehicle delivery to ensure high hygiene standards are maintained, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sea Wife is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage. It nods to, but does not fully embrace, the conventions of suspense. For instance, we readers know from the opening pages that something has happened to Michael Partlow, the husband of the pair. The tip-off is that his wife, Julia Partlow, is back on dry land  indeed, taking refuge on the floor of a bedroom closet  trying to steel herself to leave their house in Connecticut: If I were to go out, to start walking around and seeing people again and going to the grocery store and getting on with it, invariably what someone would ask me is, Do you wish youd never gone? Thats not the Didja have fun? type of inquiry that a sojourn at sea usually incites.
Express News Service

BENGALURU: "ADAAB, the whole world is gripped by coronavirus and most important in the fight against it is correct news and information," Manal Shakeel, doing her PhD in Biology, tells her Urdu audience on YouTube. She is among the 15 researchers from National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, who are reaching out to the vernacular audience with information on the spread of Covid-19, while trying to dispel myths around it.

The team goes with the belief, that as scientists, it is a part of our responsibility to communicate science. Taking a leaf out of the initiative of one of their peers, Aditya Asopa who started making videos in Marwari about COVID-19 in order to spread awareness in regional languages, students proactively began contributing and came up with a YouTube channel Matrabhasha Vigyani which went live on May 3

These researchers have thus far made videos in Assamese, Bangla, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Marathi, Marwari, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil and Urdu. The plan is to reach deep into the countrys towns and villages, using a visual medium, and reach out to people ascredible sources -- scientists. Manal told TNIE that they are trying to cater to people for whom native language might be the primary source of information.

We will talk about why the virus has such a blowout that the whole world is in its grip, cover the basics of what this virus does and how it affects the body. A crucial part is busting myths, since we have so many of them floating around, said Manal. In the grand scheme, this may become a source for popularising and communicating science, said Aditya, another researcher.
YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. Parliament Majority Leader Lilit Makunts has apologized on behalf of the My Step bloc to citizens who witnessed the brawl in parliament.

She said she believes the incident is a result of a provocation made by Bright Armenia (LHK) opposition party. Makunts said she thinks LHK started the provocations after parliament passed the Stolen Asset Recovery bill, which LHK turned down.

First of all, on behalf of My Step faction I would like to apologize to all our citizens who witnessed the incident. On behalf of My Step, I feel very sorry that the faction gave in to provocations, she said.

Makunts said the LHK has been attempting for already a few weeks to embroil and provoke My Step into such incidents

She emphasized that there is no justification for the incident.

At the same time, I would like to note that the Bright Armenia faction is bringing to parliament not their own agenda, but the agenda of some unclear, outside hooligan groups, Makunts said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Data from millions of cell phones show how spring break was a catalyst for the pandemic in Quebec

Nael Shiab





By

As Canadian authorities are thinking about using geolocalized data from cell phones to track the spread of the coronavirus, Radio-Canada got access to the data from 7.9 million cell phones across the country. Our analysis shows how Quebecers multiplied their movements at the worst possible moment: during spring break and at a time when health authorities were still underestimating the presence of COVID-19 in the province.

In mid-March, Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced that the province would be put "on pause." Many companies were left with little to do. This included Drako Media, a company that specializes in mobile marketing. "Our activities came grinding to a halt," explained the company's co-founder, Laurent Elkaim. "So we asked ourselves if we could share our data to better understand what is going on." This included sharing 6.7 billion location points from 7.9 million cell phone users in Canada.

The data was provided for free. It had been anonymized and aggregated before being shared with us, out of respect for each individual's privacy. The precise locations and the phone identification numbers were never shared with us. From this data, we created models to observe the movements across provinces, regions in Quebec and boroughs in Montreal. We conducted our analysis independently. Our methodology can be found at the end of this article.

Movements between provinces Filter here : Urban centers Options for the number of cases Cumulative total Logarithmic scale

From Feb. 2 to Feb. 23, weeks before the beginning of the pandemic in Canada, 133,000 Canadians travelled from one province to another each day. There was a significant uptick in movements between the country's most populated provinces, Quebec and Ontario. These provinces will also become the most affected by the virus.

At the end of February, movements continued to increase and hit their peak on March 6, right in the middle of Quebec's spring break. At this point in time, the virus had already travelled half way around the world, from China to Canada. There were already 49 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada. But the situation was already far worse: there were eight times more Canadians infected than reported.

Epidemiological reports published weeks later by Statistics Canada show that 395 Canadians were already infected at that time. Of that number, 142 were community cases: they had not travelled or had been in contact with anyone who had travelled recently. In other words, the virus was already spreading from person to person in Canada.

"This data shows how significant spring break was on the number of people infected in Quebec." - Benoit Barbeau, professor in biological sciences and virology expert from UQAM

"People weren't really aware that they were carriers," he explains. "So as they travelled between provinces and regions, they came into contact with other people and they likely transmitted the virus."

On top of all of the movements within Canada, there are on average 165,000 travellers that enter the country from abroad every day. Epidemiological reports show that hundreds of them brought the virus home. International borders would only be shut two weeks later.

Should provincial borders have also been closed? "I believe that provinces that were the most affected had a responsibility to limit the propagation of the virus and stop it from spreading to other provinces," adds Benoit Barbeau.

On March 13, confinement measures started to be announced and the amount of movements dramatically dropped. However, the number of people infected continued to rise.

Travel between Quebec's regions Filter here : Urban centers Options for the number of cases Cumulative total Logarithmic scale Because of their proximity and small area, Laval and Montreal are considered as a single entity.

During the first three weeks of February, 343,000 people travelled from one region of Quebec to another each day. As spring break began, Quebecers started travelling even more. On March 6, the amount of movements between regions doubled. The vast majority of movements were people coming in and out of the greater Montreal area, which would become the epicenter of the pandemic in Quebec.

On this same day, Quebec had only tested 306 people for the coronavirus, most of them travellers coming back from abroad. Yet, on average, 23,000 travellers come back into the province every day. The virus had already been detected in over 94 countries. And community spread had already started occuring, as documented by La Presse on April 4.

"We saw a significant increase in cases two weeks after spring break. Two weeks is roughly the time before an infected person develops symptoms." - Nima Machouf, epidemiologist and lecturer at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal

Today, one in two cases in Quebec are Montrealers, even though they only represent one out of every five Quebecers. "When I saw the concentration of cases at the beginning of April, I told myself we have to close Montreal, we have to protect the regions," says Nima Machouf. Public health authorities, who have access to even more information, should have realized this earlier, she believes. "It's an island. It would have been easy to close off and people would have understood."

The government preferred to restrict travel between certain regions that were considered more vulnerable, for example ones with higher concentrations of seniors. The gradual reopening of those same areas started on May 4.

Movements between Montreal boroughs Filter here : Urban centers Options for the number of cases Cumulative total Logarithmic scale Note that the number of cases per borough and demerged cities was not available before March 29, 2020.

In Montreal, the peak of movements between boroughs and demerged cities can been observed on March 12, the day before Premier Legault announced one of the first confinement measures. Montrealers seemed to be conscious of the dangers of spreading the virus and started to reduce their movements within city limits.

At this point in time, Montreal only had three confirmed cases. But each day, more than 600 planes were landing or taking off from the airport. Half were travelling within Canada, the other half were international flights. "This was our biggest mistake," says Nima Machouf. "This is where the virus came from. We should have told travellers to go into quarantine." It was only on March 16 that air travel ground to a halt.

On March 25, Montreal authorities revealed for the first time the number of confirmed cases in each borough. The extent of the problem could be seen: the propagation of the virus was widespread in the city. At the time of publication, businesses were allowed to reopen in all areas, except in the greater Montreal region.

What about privacy issues?

"This data and your analysis demonstrate the gaps and the failures in some of the measures implemented," says Benoit Barbeau. "This type of data is even more important because we are anticipating new waves of infected people in the near future."

Radio-Canada and Drako Media have anonymized all the data to make it impossible to retrace a cell phone user's identity. However, a dozen institutions and companies have offered their expertise to provincial and federal governments to create applications that would trace contacts between infected people and other people.

For this expert, the source codes for the applications should be shared and verified. The effectiveness of the application should also be demonstrated. He also believes that collecting geolocalized data would be a mistake. He says following a person's movement is extremely invasive and this data is only accurate from five to 10 meters above the ground.

"Bluetooth is a technology that is less risky," believes Sebastien Gambs. This type of signal can, for example, connect wireless headphones to a phone. It works at short distances. It could be used to detect cell phones users that are near an infected person's cell phone. But in order to respect privacy, such a system should be on a voluntary-basis and the anonymity of participants should be guaranteed. "The goal is to know if you might have been exposed, therefore increasing your risk of contracting the virus. It is not to find someone to blame."

In any case, Canadians need to think twice before accepting applications that can trace an individual's movements. "Normally, it is a temporary solution," says Sebastien Gambs. But we are now talking about second and third waves. So if such a system is put in place, it is very likely that it will stay and that it could lead to more surveillance in the future." He gives the example of anti-terrorism laws that increased the government's surveillance powers in the early 2000s, but then stayed in place for several years. The difference this time, is that the threat is viral.

Methodology The data was provided by Drako Media, with the help of their analyst Gabriel Mongeau. This company receives the latitude and longitude of the phones through applications installed on cell phones. Their sample contains data from 7,889,466 devices in Canada (21% of the population), including 1,652,389 in Quebec (19% of the population) and 702,665 in Montreal (34% of the population). Individuals must explicitly agree to share their location with an application before their data is collected. The accuracy is the same as a GPS, with a margin of error of five to 15 metres. In order to divide the country into different zones, we used Canada Post's forward sortation areas. These areas correspond to the first three characters of postal codes. There are 1,620 in Canada. We defined movement by detecting a cellular device in two different regions on the same day. To calculate movements between provinces, we compiled the movements between forward sorting areas located in two different provinces. We applied the same logic for travel between health regions and between cities and boroughs related to Montreal. Only areas with a minimum of 100 incoming or outgoing movements were considered in our analysis. To estimate the number of Canadians who travelled, we multiplied the number of trips in our data in proportion to the population of Canada, Quebec and Montreal. In some cases, the location data is incorrect and the devices all return the same latitude and longitude. We have seen this type of error in Alberta, in particular. To avoid including anomalies in our analysis, we filtered out the sorting areas whose traffic suddenly doubled in 24 hours. These regions represented 4% of the total and their exclusion did not change the general trend in Quebec and Montreal.

Nael Shiab data journalist, Francis Lamontagne designer, Melanie Julien editor. With the contribution of reporter Melanie Meloche-Holubowski for the translation.
Jung Hoon reported to work and was mobbed by the press at the entrance area. He was surprised to see Park Soo Chang as he called him from the crowd. He warned Jung Hoon that he would have a big headline in the future about him.

Director Chang advised Jung Hoon to see her in the office. She showed him the newly released book "The Man Who Cannot Forget." The details that relate to him are the same except his full name. He felt disappointed about what happened and stayed quiet as he sat on his chair.

Ha Kyung showed Ha Jin the articles written by the media about Jung Hoon. Ha Jin saw the articles and read about the book. She felt sad seeing the story, which included her meeting Professor Yoo.

Tae-eun went to the police and reported what happened. He submitted and provided all the details with his plan to sue his father. Tae-eun asked forgiveness from Jung Hoon as to what his father did. He forwarded Jung Hoon's medical records to his father every time he asked for it. Little did he know that his father had been using it to complete his book.

At the end of Jung Hoon's news-live telecast, he saw Ha Jin at the station waiting for him. Ha Jin packed a box of fruits as they went for a picnic late at night. Jung Hoon thanked her for understanding about the published book and his illness.

Park Soo Chang released a live stream video and revealed a story about Seo Yun and Ha Jin, who were batchmates and best friends. He insisted that Jung Hoon knew all about Seo Yun and Ha Jin's friendship and continued romantic relationships after Seo Yun died. The public was made to believe what Park Soo Chang said and made harsh statements about Jung Hoon and Ha Jin.

Reporters visited Jung Hoon and Ha Jin's house to get any statements, but the couple chose to stay quiet. On her way home, Ha Jin was surrounded by the media, but thanks to Jung Hoon, she was safe as she walked toward her house. They spent the night eating food that Ha Jin likes and watched a movie all night.

Ms. Park and Ha Kyung received a lot of cancellations from the sponsors and new projects. They all canceled their contract due to the controversy. One movie that remains with the offer for Ha Jin is for a US-based location.

The news network advised director Choi to take out Jung Hoon from the news live telecast and change a new reporter. Jung Hoon heard about director Choi's position at stake, so he tended his resignation letter instead of Choi losing her job. He contacted Ha Jin and informed her about it. She felt depressed and did not sleep the whole night, thinking about what happened.

The next day, Ha Jin advised Ha Kyung that she will accept the offer to make the movie based in the US. She decided to end her relationship with Jung Hoon. He felt sad but respected her request.

Two years later, Jung Hoon became a city desk reporter. He now works in the field and covers news with the rest of the reporters. Ha Jin stayed in the US after her movie was released. There were plans for her next movie offering that she will appear together with other Hollywood stars.

Director Choi asked Jung Hoon to cover the news live and appeal for his comeback. She thinks that people don't care about his past relationships and would like to watch him on live TV again.

Jung Hoon planned to visit and spend time with his father. On his way to their old house, the car stopped as the traffic light signaled stop. Across the other lane, Jung Hoon saw a familiar face. A car passed the other side of the road, and he saw Ha Jin driving a red car.
LINCOLN  For its 29th season, the Jazz in June concert series will present five evenings of online jazz to be streamed from the comfort and safety of ones home, according to a press release.

This years series, presented by the Cooper Foundation, will feature Nebraska artists who have fewer opportunities to perform during the coronavirus pandemic.

The lineup includes:

 June 2: Mesonjixx  a soul jazz artist from Omaha

 June 9: Andrew Wray  a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student drummer and composer who performs electronic jazz

 June 16: Madeline Reddel Quintet  a vocal jazz group featuring Husker students and alumni

 June 23: Andrew Janak Trio  led by a professor of jazz at Doane University, who earned his doctoral degree from Nebraska

 June 30: Jackie Allen and Hans Sturm  a vocal-bass duet and hometown favorites

The series will run from 7 to 8 p.m. CST at facebook.com/jazzinjuneunl. Beyond the performances, free shareable online arts education videos will be provided.
KYODO NEWS - May 8, 2020 - 23:10 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

The outbreak of the new coronavirus has sent the number of passengers on domestic and international flights plunging more than 95 percent from a year earlier during Japan's Golden Week holidays, Japanese airlines said Friday.

Faced with stay-at-home and business closure requests under the current nationwide state of emergency declaration, the number of domestic flight passengers fell to 124,000, down 95 percent, during the holiday period from April 29 to May 6. Travelers on international flights dropped by 98 percent to 8,700, partly due to travel restrictions imposed by countries amid the epidemic.

The Golden Week holidays are normally a time for people in Japan to return to their hometowns or take trips.

All Nippon Airways Co. said that during the period, a total of 45,228 people, down around 96 percent from last year's long holiday, and 6,591 people, down around 97 percent, took domestic and international flights, respectively.

Japan Airlines said a total of 47,646 people, down around 95 percent from a year earlier, and 2,030 people, down about 99 percent, boarded domestic and international flights.

The seat occupancy rates dipped below 20 percent on many flights during the period, with ANA seeing a 19 percent drop and JAL a 15 percent fall, according to the airlines.

The virus has also affected railway passengers.

Data from six major railway companies in the country showed Thursday that the number of passengers on shinkansen bullet and limited express trains during this year's Golden Week holidays plunged 95 percent from a year earlier.

The figure was the sharpest decline for the period since their establishment in 1987 through the privatization of the former state-owned railway company.
Harvard Law School appears to cancel anti-homeschooling summit amid pandemic

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An invite-only anti-homeschooling conference that was to take place at Harvard Law School appears to have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform conference was sponsored by the Harvard Law School Child Advocacy Program and in cooperation with a number of anti-abuse groups. It was designed to convene leaders in education and child welfare policy, legislators and legislative staff, academics and policy advocates, to discuss child rights in connection with homeschooling in the United States.

The focus will be on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal or no oversight. Experts will lead conversations about the available empirical evidence, the current regulatory environment, proposals for legal reform, and strategies for effecting such reform.

The elite law school has not made an official announcement of the cancellation but invitees were reportedly emailed directly regarding the change of plans. Corey A. DeAngelis, director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation, tweeted on Friday both a screenshot and direct link to a Facebook update from the Coalition of Responsible Home Education, a group that was invited to present at the event, stating that the conference was no longer happening. The CRHE Facebook post has been taken down.

The apparent cancellation comes following a widely-circulated article in Harvard magazine calling for a presumptive ban on all homeschooling. The article featured an interview with Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who opined that children have a right to a "meaningful education" and that homeschool environments can be abusive contexts that warrant state intervention. Bartholet cited as typical the experience of Tara Westover, whose harrowing homeschooling ordeal among Idaho survivalists is recounted in Westover's memoir, Educated.

"The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18?" the professor asks in the interview.

"I think thats dangerous. I think its always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.

Bartholet elaborated in the interview that some of the parents who homeschool their children are "extreme religious ideologues" who question science and are in favor of white supremacy and female subservience.

Her comments drew criticism from many, including Harvard graduates.

Following the fallout, the professor said in a recent interview with The Harvard Crimson, Theres no way Im for indoctrinating children in some universal majority culture.

I think parents absolutely have the right to raise their children within their own religion," she added. "I just dont think parents have a right to isolate their children from the larger culture.

In a Tuesday email to The Christian Post, Mike Donnelly, senior counsel at the Home School Legal Defense Association, said that "Bartholets closed conference, apparently now canceled, was aimed at discovering strategies to infringe on the freedoms of homeschooling families and only invited participants who agreed with their narrow and unsupported views about the homeschooling community."

He noted that her comments in the Harvard magazine illustrate the elitist mentality that parents cant be trusted to raise democratic citizens.

"We see a robust homeschooling movement as a vital part of any pluralistic free society," he said.

With schools closed across the nation due to the coronavirus pandemic, HSLDA said it is seeing an uptick in interest in homeschooling.

"With virtually all children suddenly schooling at home, HSLDA has created www.mompossible.org as a resource for all parents confronting school closings," Donnelly said. "Crisis schooling is different from typical homeschooling, but we have seen a noticeable increase in people talking about not sending their children back to school in the fall. Whether it's 1% or 10%, it seems pretty likely that there will be an increase in the number of children homeschooling this year."
Schaumburg had a big turnout for its three-day giveaway of masks. The event started with seniors Wednesday, continued with residents whose last names start in the first half of the alphabet Thursday and concluded with the last half of the alphabet Friday.
YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan had a video talk with President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda, the PMs Office told Armenpress.

The officials exchanged views on the actions taken in both countries, as well as in the world to fight the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In this context they both appreciated the support provided by the EU to the Eastern Partnership states and in particular to Armenia.

Pashinyan introduced the Lithuanian President on the process and priority directions of the Armenian governments reforms. President Gitanas Nauseda highly valued the determination of the Armenian authorities to implement reforms. He expressed his support to the reforms policy, as well as readiness to provide expert assistance.

Both sides highlighted boosting the bilateral economic cooperation agenda in such situation. In particular, they emphasized the importance of resuming the direct flights. The Armenian PM and the Lithuanian President also touched upon the Armenia-EU relations agenda.

The officials also exchanged invitations on paying official visits.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Germany's borders will remain closed until 15 May. Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer is in favour of maintaining border checks despite harsh criticism.

According to the German minister, the border checks are part of the successful handling of the virus crisis. Border regions including the Moselle valley are less enthusiastic about the closures.

A number of CDU and SDP politicians such as the Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, urged Seehofer to put an end to the border checks after more than 7 weeks. Germany's government is nevertheless not backing down.

The photos published on this site are subject to copyright and may not be copied, modified, or sold without the prior permission of the owner of the site in question.

Opposition against border checks is gaining momentum in the border regions. Cross-border workers often face long traffic jams, families are torn apart, and profits of shops are dwindling. Several protests will be staged on Saturday, which marks Europe Day.

Belgium is yet to announce an end date to border checks. Discussions with French officials are also still ongoing. France's government announced last Thursday that the exceptional measure would be extended until at least 15 June.

LCGB trade union: "The EU, one of the first victims of the health crisis"

According to trade union LCGB, the EU was one of the first victims of the ongoing virus crisis. Union representatives demand the immediate reopening of the borders. If this step is impossible, the reopening should at least be prepared, the union said in a statement this Friday.

The union also demanded a cross-border concept for the handling of pandemics, a joint recovery plan, and a strong message against nationalism and populism.
A Naxal, carrying a reward of Rs 1



lakh on his head, was injured in an encounter with security forces at a forest in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh on Friday, police said.

The Naxal was later arrested and will be produced in a local court on Saturday, police said.

The skirmish took place this morning when a joint team of security forces was out on an anti-Maoist operation in the jungles along the border of Bijapur and Dantewada districts, Dantewada Superintendent of Police Abhishek Pallava told PTI.

Personnel belonging to District Reserve Guard (DRG), Special Task Force (STF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) from both the districts were involved in the operation, he said.

When the patrolling team was cordoning off the forest between Hurrepal and Bechapal villages under Mirtur police station limits, the exchange of fire broke out between the two sides, he said.

"During the search of the spot later, a Maoist was found with a bullet injury on his leg," he said.

He was given primary treatment at the encounter spot, after which he was shifted to a local hospital where doctors gave necessary medication to him, but said that he does not need hospitalisation, he said.

The injured Maoist has been identified as Baman Muchaki, who was active as Hurrepal Janmilitia Commander of Maoist and carrying a reward of Rs 1 lakh on his head, Pallava said.

He was allegedly involved in several Naxal incidents in the area, the SP added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Air India flight from Bangladesh to Srinagar, carrying 167 stranded passengers including all medical students from Jammu and Kashmir, will leave for India at around 11 am on Friday. The students expressed gratitude towards the Central government and the Indian Embassy in Bangladesh for finally heading home. Khadiya Rasheed, one of the students at a college in Bangladesh, said, Thank you so much for our evacuation, we are happy to reach our homes, my college and the Indian Embassy both helped us, they were helping us continuously.

Another student said, I would like to thanks the minister of external affairs, and the Indian Embassy here who are evacuating us in such difficult circumstances. I highly appreciate that they made the evacuation as soon as possible, our college administration and local friends too helped us.

The people had to register online and the embassy would then send the tickets through e-mail. The High Commission of India in Bangladesh took to Twitter and said, The First Batch of Indian Students have arrived at the airport for boarding Air India flight home to India. They are being assisted in completing the formalities by the embassy.

Also Read: Maharashtra: Train runs over 14 migrant workers between Jalna and Aurangabad

Also Read: After Facebook, Silver Lake, US-based Vista Equity Partners picks 2.32% stake in Reliance Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore

As coronavirus pandemic continues, the repatriation is being carried out under Indias massive evacuation effort named Vande Bharat Mission, which began on Thursday. Air India plans to operate 64 flights till May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Also Read: Vande Bharat Mission: Stranded overseas Indians see a ray of hope as first flight from UAE takes off, INS Jalashwa reaches Maldives

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
UW Employees, Students Encouraged to Receive COVID-19 Test if They Are Sick

Members of the University of Wyoming community are encouraged to be tested for the novel coronavirus COVID-19, if they are exhibiting symptoms of the infection.

Albany County public health officials note that there now is capacity at local health care facilities to conduct such testing. Previously, testing generally had been limited to those showing symptoms whod had contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 -- or those who were extremely ill.

The symptoms include cough; shortness of breath or difficulty breathing; fever; chills; muscle pain; sore throat; and loss of taste or smell.

Testing should be done by appointment with local health care providers, rather than by drop-in visits. UWs employee health care insurer, Cigna, covers out-of-pocket costs associated with testing through May.

UWs Student Health Service remains open and available to all eligible UW students. For students with symptoms of concern, the clinic can perform COVID-19 testing using nasopharyngeal swab tests, which are sent to the Wyoming Department of Health. The clinic provides telehealth visits to students physically located in the state of Wyoming for whom a telehealth visit is appropriate, and can provide limited phone consultations to students out of state. The clinic also sees students for visits that require in-person evaluation or treatment. There is no charge for office visits with the clinics medical providers or nursing staff, including telehealth or phone visits.

Students should call for appointments. Student Health Service is open Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-noon and 1-5 p.m. Students who have health concerns outside of regular business hours are asked to call the front office number, (307) 766-2130, and select the after-hours nurse line option for further evaluation and care recommendations.

UW employees and students are encouraged to observe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to protect themselves and others. These include avoiding close contact; washing your hands often; covering your mouth or nose with a cloth face cover when around others; and cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces.

To date, there have been eight confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Albany County, but there are no known connections with UW.
[May 08, 2020] The Global Smart Thermostat Market is expected to grow from USD 623.47 Million in 2018 to USD 2,587.94 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.54%

NEW YORK, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05871421/?utm_source=PRN







The positioning of the Global Smart Thermostat Market vendors in FPNV Positioning Matrix are determined by 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) and placed into four quadrants (F: Forefront, P: Pathfinders, N: Niche, and V: Vital).



The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Smart Thermostat Market including are Ecobee Company, Energate Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Schneider Electric, Texas Instruments Limited, Control4 Corporation, Emerson Electric, Lennox International Inc., Nest Labs, Inc., and Siemens Corporation.



On the basis of Deployment, the Global Smart Thermostat Market is studied across Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee.



On the basis of Application, the Global Smart Thermostat Market is studied across Commercial, Industrial, and Residential.



For the detailed coverage of the study, the market has been geographically divided into the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The report provides details of qualitative and quantitative insights about the major countries in the region and taps the major regional developments in detail.



In the report, we have covered two proprietary models, the FPNV Positioning Matrix and Competitive Strategic Window. The FPNV Positioning Matrix analyses the competitive market place for the players in terms of product satisfaction and business strategy they adopt to sustain in the market. The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitie 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 acquisitions strategies, geography expansion, research & development, new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth.







Research Methodology:

Our market forecasting is based on a market model derived from market connectivity, dynamics, and identified influential factors around which assumptions about the market are made. These assumptions are enlightened by fact-bases, put by primary and secondary research instruments, regressive analysis and an extensive connect with industry people. Market forecasting derived from in-depth understanding attained from future market spending patterns provides quantified insight to support your decision-making process. The interview is recorded, and the information gathered in put on the drawing board with the information collected through secondary research.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:

1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on sulfuric acid offered by the key players in the Global Smart Thermostat Market

2. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments in the Global Smart Thermostat Market

3. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets for the Global Smart Thermostat Market

4. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new products launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Global Smart Thermostat Market

5. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players in the Global Smart Thermostat Market





The report answers questions such as:

1. What is the market size of Smart Thermostat market in the Global?

2. What are the factors that affect the growth in the Global Smart Thermostat Market over the forecast period?

3. What is the competitive position in the Global Smart Thermostat Market?

4. Which are the best product areas to be invested in over the forecast period in the Global Smart Thermostat Market?

5. What are the opportunities in the Global Smart Thermostat Market?

6. What are the modes of entering the Global Smart Thermostat Market?



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05871421/?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.



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A New Orleans man who has been fighting for release since his double murder conviction was overturned walked out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on Thursday, defying prosecutors who tried to keep him locked up in lieu of $8 million bail.

Darrill Henry left prison one day after the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to his release.

He will be subject to a curfew, ankle monitoring and drug tests while he awaits a possible new trial in the June 2004 double murder of an elderly seamstress and her daughter in the 7th Ward. But the release ends defense attorneys' fears that he would catch coronavirus during the outbreak in the state prison system.

I never lost faith that this day would come, Henry said in a statement released by his lawyers at the Innocence Project. I appreciate what everyone has done to fight to bring me home.

Henry, 44, was met at the prison gates by his 22-year-old son Darrill Guitroz, his lawyers said. In a photo released by the Innocence Project, the two men embrace while wearing face masks.

Henry was convicted nine years ago in the brutal slaying of 89-year-old Durelli Watts and her daughter, 67-year-old Ina Claire Gex. Prosecutors relied almost entirely on eyewitness testimony to support their allegation that Watts was stabbed and set on fire, and her daughter shot, during an apparent robbery on Duels Street.

DNA under fingernails revives appeal for man in elderly New Orleans woman's murder Eight years ago, a New Orleans jury convicted Darrill Henry of stabbing a prominent 7th Ward octogenarian to death and fatally shooting the da

A jury spared Henry the death penalty, but they handed him two first-degree murder convictions and with them a life sentence.

Defense attorneys mounted a challenge to the eyewitness testimony that floundered before the U.S. Supreme Court. But Henrys chances on appeal were revived when new DNA technology allowed for the analysis of another mans biological material under Watts fingernails.

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Ad hoc Criminal District Court Judge Dennis Waldron cited that DNA evidence when he overturned Henrys murder convictions in March. His ruling to toss the convictions is still on appeal.

Separately, Waldron said Henry could be released if he posted $400,000 bail. The sum appeared to be out of reach for the indigent Henry. But his relatives surprised the judge by fundraising enough to post a commercial surety bond.

New Orleans prosecutors, who like the victims' family maintain that Henry was the killer, filed an appeal to stop his release.

Double murder conviction tossed by judge, New Orleans man remains in Angola prison Three weeks after a judge in New Orleans overturned the double-murder conviction of a man based on new DNA evidence, defense lawyers and prose

Henrys lawyers said he deserved to prepare for a potential retrial as a free man, citing the threat of COVID-19. At Angola, 79 inmates had tested positive for the coronavirus through Thursday. Five state prisoners have died of the disease.

Prosecutors initially called Henrys virus fears overblown. Once the coronavirus spread widely, they suggested that it might be impossible to release him. The state also cited the victims' family's ardent opposition.

The District Attorneys Office won an early round at the Louisiana Supreme Court, which sent the case back to Waldron for a reconsideration of the bail. But the high court this week declined to block his release after Waldron added conditions like the ankle monitor and curfew, and a prohibition on trips to the French Quarter or out of Orleans Parish. The judge rejected a request from prosecutors to raise the total bail amount to $8 million.

Prosecutors didn't immediately comment.
Long term investing works well, but it doesn't always work for each individual stock. We really hate to see fellow investors lose their hard-earned money. For example, we sympathize with anyone who was caught holding China Oceanwide Holdings Limited (HKG:715) during the five years that saw its share price drop a whopping 81%. And some of the more recent buyers are probably worried, too, with the stock falling 48% in the last year. More recently, the share price has dropped a further 13% in a month. Importantly, this could be a market reaction to the recently released financial results. You can check out the latest numbers in our company report.

We really hope anyone holding through that price crash has a diversified portfolio. Even when you lose money, you don't have to lose the lesson.

View our latest analysis for China Oceanwide Holdings

China Oceanwide Holdings wasn't profitable in the last twelve months, it is unlikely we'll see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.

Over half a decade China Oceanwide Holdings reduced its trailing twelve month revenue by 10% for each year. That's definitely a weaker result than most pre-profit companies report. So it's not that strange that the share price dropped 28% per year in that period. We don't think this is a particularly promising picture. Ironically, that behavior could create an opportunity for the contrarian investor - but only if there are good reasons to predict a brighter future.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

SEHK:715 Income Statement May 8th 2020

This free interactive report on China Oceanwide Holdings's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

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A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 9.2% in the twelve months, China Oceanwide Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 48%. 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. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 28% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 3 warning signs with China Oceanwide Holdings (at least 2 which don't sit too well with us) , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies we expect will grow earnings.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on 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.
Hundreds of migrant labourers on



Friday thronged the Railway station here on Friday on learning that the Karnataka governnment would be operating special trains to their home states and demanded that they be immediately sent back, police said.

The workers, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkahand stayed put at the station and refused to disperse, despite appeals by police, who rushed to the spot, to leave.

Police quoted the migrants as saying that they were stuck in the city without jobs, money and adequate food and that they were even willing to walk to their home states if the special trains were not operated immediately.

On Thursday, the Karnataka government decided to deploy special trains from May 8 to send back the workers to their homes and sought approval of nine states for the process.

They were informed that Karnataka intended to run two trains a day to these states till May 15 for ferrying the thousands of migrant workers, stranded in the city and other districts due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

The fresh move came two days after the government withdrew its request to the railways to run special trains for the migrants within hours of making it on Tuesday.

Eight special trains had ferried migrant labourers to their home states from the Bengaluru division before the cancellation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
You dont have to have read Normal People, the bestselling novel from Irish writer Sally Rooney, to fall in love with its TV counterpart, Normal People on Hulu. (Although, for the record, this PureWow editor read the book and loved it, too.) The series follows Marianne and Connell, two teenagers living in a small town in Ireland, exploring their sexual identitiesand their unexpected will-they-wont-they chemistry with one another.

As Marianne, Daisy Edgar-Jones gives a captivating performance. From the first scene, we were hooked on the show, and also on her. But where have we seen her before? Or is this set to be her breakout role? Weve got the scoop on Daisy Edgar-Jones, up-and-coming star.

1. Who is Daisy Edgar-Jones?

Well, of course, shes an actress, but one you probably dont know all that well. At 21-years-old, shes appeared in a variety of still-under-the-radar shows including War of the Worlds and the recent Cold Feet reboot, but always in a supporting role. Its likely that her performance in Normal People will be a career-defining one, especially given that the series centers almost exclusively on her character Marianne and her relationship with Connell. (Also, in an exciting turn of events, Edgar-Jones was actually a massive fan of the book before she landed the part, according to an interview with InStyle. Her mom even read it as part of her book club.)

2. Where did she grow up?

Edgar-Jones grew up as an only child in Muswell Hill in Northern London. Her mom worked as a TV editorwith Irish roots, which helped her a lot when it came to Mariannes accentand her dad as a TV documentary producer. Edgar-Jones discovered her interest in acting at a fairly young age after she decided to try out for a school play. When I was young in primary school, I was very average at subjects, she said in an interview with Woodhouse College magazine. I wasnt really good at anything, just in the middleand quite shy. Then, when I was in year five, we did a school playand it was the first time I remember people saying, Wow, that was really good. I thought, Oh, Im good at something! It seemed acting was just the thing that I was best at.

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3. Did she study acting?

Yes! She actually auditioned and was accepted to the prestigious National Youth Theatre in the UK at the age of 14. (For reference, Dame Helen Mirren, Daniel Craig and Colin Firth are just a few of the schools notable alums.)

4. Is she dating anyone?

Also yes! Edgar-Jones is dating Tom Varey, an actor best recognized for his role as Cley Cerwyn in season six of Game of Thrones. Hes also the reason she heard about the role of Marianne on Normal People in the first place. According to an interview in The Hollywood Reporter, Edgar-Jones overheard Varey on the phone helping an actor-friend record an interview tape for the very same role. About a month later, she was invited to audition for the exact same partand got it. (As for any hard feelings between her and Vareys actor friend, she said there werent any. Its strange when youre both actors, she told THR.)

5. Any other fun facts about her?

According to InStyle, she loves to cook. (I made a very good five-spice pork the other day, which I was very proud of, and a sausage and sweet potato and red onion-like thing.) She also has acting aspirations beyond the small screen. She told Woodhouse magazine: Ultimately, Id love to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and do Shakespeare properlyto perform at The Globe would be amazing. But I think to be a working actor is good enough for me. Just to make a living at it, because its what I loveso to be able to do it as a career is my ambition, even its just little parts here and there on radio or whatever...well see.

RELATED: 50 Binge-Worthy TV Shows and Where to Watch Them
As South Africa enters another week of the national lockdown the world and business as we know it, is changing dramatically. One certain thing however is that we have entered unchartered waters and only innovative and adaptable businesses will survive.

John Lombela

Moving forward

Embrace a new normal

Stay afloat and grow

Review your business model (traditional brick and mortar or internet-based?)



If traditional business, provide an internet-based offering adaptable to some or all your products or services, and if internet-based, increase your online presence by leveraging on existing online tools to be more engaging with your audience and finding new buyers, while bringing back loyal buyers.





If traditional business, provide an internet-based offering adaptable to some or all your products or services, and if internet-based, increase your online presence by leveraging on existing online tools to be more engaging with your audience and finding new buyers, while bringing back loyal buyers. Learn about new technologies and acquire new skills. Learn everything about digital marketing and internet customer reach for building a loyal customer digital footprint.





Target and retarget customers based on their needs as you go about learning what they need allowing you to adjust your offerings accordingly.

Reality is that Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) are the ones at the highest risk amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the governments effort to lessen the impact through the various stimulus packages and measures being implemented.With an estimated 120,000 spaza shops and businesses operating in the informal sector, townships will have the most casualties because these businesses are vulnerable to external shocks. Unlike the businesses in the formal sector, a large majority dont have reserves, nor the resources needed to navigate through this pandemic. To add more salt to the wound unemployment will also increase as companies retrench employees to survive.John Lombela, investor, tech entrepreneur, founder and managing director of Cryptovecs Capital, notes that Covid-19 has created an unprecedented situation and every entrepreneur regardless of the industry they operate in, is negatively impacted because the economy came to an abrupt standstill.South Africa eased the regulations in order to restart the economy, but this isnt a quick fix as many will still need to measure its impact before they can be fully operational.Businesses are scrambling to adapt but its not all doom and gloom. The pandemic has created numerous opportunities and forced businesses to address their weak points and reevaluate their stance on remote working and changing the way they do business. Its also shone the spotlight on cracks and forced others to either pull up their socks or go back to the drawing board.Lombela says that crises are cyclical, and there will be another pandemic in the future.However, accelerated this may seem, entrepreneurs, need to learn how to be agile and not stagnate. They need to be able to pivot quickly and embrace new realities and be able to offer new services and or products as demand changes. Innovative entrepreneurs are those who are quick at identifying new opportunities during a crisis. As much as businesses are leaning towards business relief funds and the smaller players looking towards the bigger player to assist.He adds that smaller players cant expect the bigger player to assist - case in point being the recent rescue of Edcon - they are also rolling with the blows as some are facing bankruptcy, while others are at a total standstill like the events industry and large corporations with a global presence that have requested immediate payment relief from numerous entities offering business relief funds and payment holidays as well as facing laying off employees.What businesses need to do both large and small, is to renegotiate all of their financial engagements with all of their stakeholders across boards. With regards to employees, businesses need to arrange for extra credit facilities, relaxing their tax obligations and other instruments to allow them to pay employees and remain afloat for at least the next three months.Now, more than ever before, traditional brick and mortar businesses are on a brink of total collapse because keeping staff at offices no longer makes sense.Decision-makers are being forced to revisit and remodel working at the office or away from the office to save costs and use resources more efficiently.The upside of this pandemic is that businesses are now seeing the value of embracing technology and implementing policies that benefit and protect both the organisationand employees working remotely.The real lesson though is that businesses need to unlearn and relearn in order to remain relevant in todays economy.We will see an introduction of new ways of working while embracing technology and relying on internet-based technology. Most businesses that rely on internet today can function remotely. Everything that requires mass gathering can be handled remotely or through video conferencing to reduce costs and improve on resources efficiencies. But of course, face-to-face meetings will remain an essential part of our lives for new relationships buildings, etc.Covid-19 has also changed the way we interact with each other as wearing masks can become a new norm in business meetings. Businesses, especially those in the informal sector need to rotate, pivot, and innovate. Constantly learn new skills. Stay connected online, not to read about Covid-19 but to learn about new skills that will make you a subject matter expert post the crisis and during the crisis.Entrepreneurs who seize the opportunity can see an increase in their revenues if they implement their business models well leveraging the digital infrastructure, thus stimulating the digital economy somehow. During every crisis there are always opportunities on the other side of the crisis.Businesses need to review their internal policies and figure out how they can leverage tools and technology at their disposal to transform how they currently do businesses. Most of those that rely on face-to-face interactions can leverage technology today to realize how that can improve their business during a crisis like this pandemic. Experiment new things, introduce new services, monitor and adjust.The buzz words are Internet! Technology! Social media! Digital wallet for digital banking transactions! Zoom conferencing or similar tools to be connected. Covid-19 has made the business world realise that electricity, internet and internet-related tools are an important commodity.Businesses need to implement processes that can improve on collecting data smartly for further processes because data collected can help significantly in creating new business models that can be used in the medical, insurance, telco and even banking sector.This is another opportunity for entrepreneurs to investigate, because it creates new business models out of the crisis. For example, launching a Blockchain-based application to efficiently track the truthfulness of Covid-19 infected people while collecting data about themselves to be used in other verticals that will benefit them and other third-party businesses.Here are a few tips to help entrepreneurs remain afloat and learn and grow:It might seem as though there is no end in sight but together, we will get through it. It will not be the way we are used to, but a new normal is what we will have to become accustomed to.
An accumulator is a pressure storage tank, which supplies a specific amount of fluid that is under pressure. This fluid is later unconstrained to perform a specific operation in the hydraulic system. The fluid, which is stored via an external source that can either be piston, spring, gas, and fluid. Oil accumulators are used for different purposes, comprising noise reduction as well as pulse dampening. These accumulators are available in different shapes as per the customization.

Increasing safety concerns and various environmental threats related with oil & gas exploration activities are expected to enhance the growth of the oil accumulator market. Fast exhaustion of crude oil reserves has prompted key players to take up new exploration developments to survive up with increasing demand. Furthermore, technical challenges faced by the manufacturers to produce accumulators to suit the appropriate application coupled with stringent environmental regulations may hamper the oil accumulator market growth.

The bladder segment is expected to dominate the global oil accumulator market the forecast period. The dominance of the market is attributed to increasing demand for bladder accumulators owing to the exploration and production spending and its wide usage in a blowout preventer applications. High investment in onshore and offshore activities by emerging economies will be booming the oil accumulator market. It has high durability compared with other types.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/4026

Blowout Preventer & Well Head Control is expected to lead the global oil accumulator market owing to its usage in wide application of accumulators. These accumulators possess the capability to operate blowout preventer & wellhead control in case of a power failure, which is one of the key drivers for its dominance the global oil & gas accumulator market in the Forecast period.

The up to 6,000 psi is estimated to contribute a major share in the oil accumulator market in 2017. The major contribution is driven owing to it is useful for the application of multiple units in place of a single unit to reduce the idle time during production or drilling. Rising investments in the oil & gas industries are increasing the growth of the oil accumulator market.

The report provides a detailed overview of the oil accumulator market including regional analysis information. Geographically, North America is expected to share a significant share of the growth in the oil accumulator market. The growth is attributed to digitalization in the oil & gas industry, and shale gas exploration in this region. The US and Canada are the countries, which are estimated to contribute a large amount of share in the oil accumulator market. Furthermore, Asia Pacific is projected to lead the oil accumulator market owing to the rapid industrialization and the increasing presence of the oil and gas industries in this region.

Make an Inquiry before Buying: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/checkout/4026/Single

The Middle East and Africa are also contributing share in the oil accumulator market owing to the presence of the oil and gas industry and the increasing investment in the oil sector.

The report gives a clear representation of the current market scenario of oil accumulator market, which includes projected market size in terms of value and volume, pestle analysis, Porters analysis factors in the market.

The Scope of the Report for Global Oil Accumulator Market

Global Oil Accumulator Market, By Type

Bladder

Piston

Diaphragm

Global Oil Accumulator Market, By Pressure Type

Up to 6,000 Psi

Above 6,000 Psi

Global Oil Accumulator Market, By Application

Blowout Preventer & Well Head Control

Offshore Rigs

Mud Pumps

Global Oil Accumulator Market, By Geography

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

South America

Key players Operating in Global Oil Accumulator Market

Eaton Corporation

GE Oil & Gas

Nippon Accumulator Co., Ltd.

Parker Hannifin Corp.

Bosch Rexroth USA

Technetics

Hydac International GMBH

Tobul Accumulator Inc.

Accumulators Inc.

Airmo Inc.

Bolenz& Schafer Gmbh

Hydril Pressure Control

Hannon Hydraulics

Hydac International Gmbh

Pressure Technologies

Freudenberg Sealing Technologies

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/4026
Photo: (Photo : Screenshot from Instagram post of @kensingtonroyal)

Kate Middleton, the royal mom of three, got candid while sharing how challenging it was to get George excited about his own schoolwork when he has Charlotte's "cooler" assignments as a comparison.

Kate said they have stuck into homeschooling again. Her son, George, 6, gets very upset because he just wants to do all of Charlotte's projects. According to her son, Charlotte's spider sandwiches projects are way cooler than his literacy works.

And just like everyone else, the royal family gets to contact their relatives online. Kate mentioned that her three children, George, 6 years old, Charlotte, 5 years old, and Louis, 2 years old, have all been able to see their relatives more often than usual through FaceTime and video chats.

She also said that it was really hard and that they have not done a huge amount of FaceTime and video calls before. But with today's situation due to the pandemic, they were obviously doing all those things a lot more now, and frankly, it all turned out great.

While Kate and her family have been getting in a lot of quality time as a family of five as they isolate at their country home in Norfolk, Kate admitted that it had been hard for her and her husband, Prince William, to help their children understand their situation and the complexities of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Kate said that even though it is difficult to explain to their young ones about what is currently happening, her children's schools are being great at supporting and helping them.

Aside from her children's homeschooling, Kate also talked about the launch of her new community photography project, "Hold Still", in which she invites people all over the U.K. to submit a photo that they have taken during this pandemic to reflect the resilience, bravery, and kindness that people are experiencing while in lockdown.

Kate said that the idea of "Hold Still" came from people's stories of bravery and strength amid the pandemic. She added that through such a project, they will be able to showcase those kinds of stories, as well as share a moment in which everyone can relate to.

Kate revealed that she had already taken a few photos that fit the criteria. Last month, she shared a photo of her youngest son, Prince Louis, making rainbow-colored paintings in support of National Health Service (NHS) workers and other essential workers battling the coronavirus pandemic across the country.

Kate also shared that just about last week, she posted a photo of her daughter, Princess Charlotte, making food deliveries to their neighbors in Norfolk.

Kate is hoping that through this community photography project, "Hold Still", people will be able to share what they have been going through, through pictures. She also added that there are stories that can also be expressed thoroughly through visual presentation, hence the photography community project. Kate is also looking forward to people being inspired by those collections of photographs.

You can submit your photo for "Hold Still" until June 18 at npg.org.uk.
Thousands of families across England will get the chance to learn sign language in the comfort of their own homes from today (Friday) as part of Deaf Awareness Week (4-8 May).

Organised by the National Deaf Childrens Society, video sign language classes will be released every Friday for 12 weeks, teaching everything from colours and days of the week to communicating as a family.

The aim is to tackle loneliness and isolation during this challenging time for many deaf children and their families.

Each class will cover a different topic, including vocabulary and conversation related to family life so parents and children can learn together.

Classes are running in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with a different tutor for each, meaning families in England can learn specific English signs.

The first video will introduce the fingerspelling alphabet, while later videos will cover topics like items around the home, colours and days of the week.

All the content has been produced remotely as part of the charitys effort to provide resources and support for the families of deaf children.

Families can tune in to the pre-recorded classes via the charitys YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi6DvQHbWiFqcQuNabqMO6w

Carla Rose-Hardman, Family Programmes Manager at the National Deaf Childrens Society, said:

These are very challenging times for families with deaf children and they can feel isolated and lonely if theyre struggling to communicate. These free classes aim to break through that, helping families to learn British Sign Language together in their homes and have some fun along the way.

Many deaf children benefit from using sign language and when families learn together, it helps them to communicate and express and understand the complex feelings that are part of growing up.

Family conversations, jokes and activities will also become much more inclusive, which boosts a deaf childs confidence and wellbeing.

We hope that everyone who takes part enjoys increasing their knowledge and expanding their British Sign Language vocabulary.
SALEM -- Police say the man recovered from the Battenkill River near Washington County's Route 61 accidentally drowned while fishing.

Washington County sheriff''s investigators said the body of William G. Rose, 78, of Hickory Hill Road, Shushan, was recovered Wednesday. He was pronounced dead at the scene, the officials said Thursday. They are continuing to investigate.
TBILISI, Georgia - Georgias Foreign Ministry on Friday recalled its ambassador in Kyiv after the former Georgian president was appointed to lead an advisory body in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday put Mikheil Saakashvili in charge of the executive committee of the National Reform Council.

The move angered Georgia, where Saakashvili was president from 2004-2013. In a statement Friday, Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani pointed out that Saakashvili has been convicted by a Georgian court and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

That is why we have made the decision to recall Georgias ambassador in Ukraine, Temuraz Sharashenidze, for consultations in Tbilisi. I want to emphasize that despite this regrettable decision, we are not considering termination of diplomatic relations between our countries or overlooking our strategic partnership, Zalkaliani said.

A Georgian court in 2018 convicted Saakashvili on abuse of power charges that he and his allies described as politically motivated. Saakashvili was initially hailed for streamlining the government and fighting corruption, but his popularity was eroded by a crackdown on protests and the 2008 war with Russia that led to the loss of two separatist provinces.

Zelenskiy on Friday said Georgias decision to recall the ambassador was a mistake and vowed not to reciprocate.

We have great relations with Georgia, with the Georgian nation. No matter what, we will not recall our ambassador back to Ukraine for any consultations, Zelenskiy said.

Saakashvilis appointment marks a remarkable political comeback for the former Georgian leader.

He started a new political career in Ukraine in 2015 when then-President Petro Poroshenko appointed him governor of the Odessa region. The two fell out a year later, and the president stripped Saakashvili, who led anti-government protests, of Ukrainian citizenship.

Zelenskiy, the comedian who unseated Poroshenko in last years election, quickly restored Ukrainian citizenship for Saakashvili.
In 2011, CCCS pioneered the development and use of online course materials, referred to as Open Education Resources (OER), which has allowed their institutions to offer students free virtual textbooks for thousands of courses, referred to as zero textbook cost (ZTC) courses. The results of this groundbreaking work have been tremendous to students and to higher education providers across the nation.

In Fall 2019, over 26,000 CCCS students enrolled in course that offered OER, saving over $2.3 million in textbooks costs. With more and more OER materials being produced each year, CCCS expects to double savings for students in 2020.

"Textbook costs should never be a barrier between students and their college dreams," said Joe Garcia, chancellor of the Colorado Community College System. "We are changing how students access college through OER and ZTC. Through innovative and caring staff and faculty across CCCS, we are making a dramatic difference in the lives of over 30,000 students by saving them $4 million in textbook costs."

"Programs like OER are critical for students," said Alana Lipscomb, Pikes Peak Community College student. "It's one less barrier for us to reach our end goal, which is graduation."

CCCS continues to break new ground in developing OER and ZTC courses. The State of Colorado has invested $1.5 million in grants to Colorado faculty and institutions. Since 2018, CCCS has been awarded nearly $600,000 in grant funds to support the development of OER.

This investment in OER at CCCS means that colleges will continue to be more affordable for students for years to come.

About the Colorado Community College System

The Colorado Community College System (CCCS) is the state's largest system of higher education, delivering more than 1,000 programs to over 125,000 students annually through 13 colleges and 40 locations across Colorado. Our open access mission ensures all Coloradans who aspire to enrich their lives have access to quality higher education opportunities. The System Office provides leadership, advocacy and support to the colleges under the direction of the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education (SBCCOE). Join us in changing the way Colorado goes to college.

SOURCE Colorado Community College System

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cccs.edu


Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-08 19:57:32|Editor: huaxia

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A COVID-19 patient is wheeled out from an EHPAD (Housing Establishment for Dependant Elderly People) in Epinay sur Seine near Paris, France, on April 22, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

The first suspected cases of COVID-19 infection in France could date back to Nov. 16 last year, a hospital in eastern France said. Before this announcement, the first COVID-19 infection cases officially recorded in France were on Jan. 24, 2020.

PARIS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The first suspected cases of COVID-19 infection in France could date back to Nov. 16 last year, some nine weeks earlier than the official record of the country's first confirmed cases, a hospital in eastern France said Thursday.

"Doctor Michel Schmitt, head of the medical imaging department at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Colmar, has reviewed 2,456 chest scans performed between Nov. 1 and April 30, for all reasons (cardiac, pulmonary, traumatic, tumor pathologies)," said the hospital in a press release.

A suspected patient of COVID-19 is transferred to an EHPAD in Epinay sur Seine near Paris, France, April 22, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

The typical scans compatible with COVID-19 infection have been also reviewed in a second then a third reading by two other experienced radiologists. According to this retrospective study, the first cases of contamination with COVID-19 were thus identified from Nov. 16 in this hospital, it said.

Albert Schweitzer hospital added that it has launched a collaboration with France's National Center for Scientific Research to start an epidemiological exploitation of these results.

Before this announcement, the first case of COVID-19 infection in east France was officially identified in late February. It involved a 36-year-old man who returned from a trip to Lombardy, then hotspot of the epidemic in Italy.

A giant mask is seen on a residential building in Saint-Mande, near Paris, France, on May 2, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

The first COVID-19 infection cases officially recorded in France were on Jan. 24, 2020 relating to individuals who had recently arrived or returned from China.

France on Thursday registered 178 new deaths caused by the novel coronavirus, taking the tally to 25,987. As hospitalization data continued to slow, the government said on Thursday that the country would start to unwind the nearly-two-month anti-coronavirus lockdown from Monday. 
She has graced covers of Vogue across the globe.

And Kaia Gerber added another string to her bow recently, as she made her debut as the cover girl for Vogue Italia in the May edition of the high fashion magazine.

The model, 18, posed in two dramatic looks shot by the same photographer for Vogue and L'uomo, as she took part in the magazine's 'gender fashion experiment'.

Wow! Kaia Gerber added another string to her bow recently, as she made her debut as the cover girl for Vogue Italia in the May edition of the high fashion magazine

The magazine explained that the special project combines the two magazines in a 'game of mirrors between male and female, straddling the pages of the outlets.

For the Vogue cover, Kaia sported a frilly black form-fitting dress that featured a slit up one leg, flashing her honed pins to perfection.

Her short hair was styled out messily and she sported a bronzed and dewy complexion complete with a statement cat-eye.

Kaia's look was styled with a pair of grey knee-high socks and a pair of chunky black sandals, while accessorises were kept to a minimum.

Work it: The model, 18, posed in two dramatic looks shot by the same photographer for Vogue and L'uomo, as she took part in the magazine's 'gender fashion experiment'

In her second look, Kaia oozed androgynous chic in a three piece suit which included a quirky Mickey Mouse themed waistcoat.

Kaia's cropped locks were worn in a choppy, loose style and she sported light touches of make-up including a subtle smokey-eye.

Kaia was photographed by Karim Sadil and styled by Max Pearmain for both looks.

Vogue Italia explained the experiment on their website and said: What if two magazines, a female and a male, choose to combine their voices for a conversation on gender in fashion and society?

'Vogue Italia and L'Uomo this month are on newsstands together with interviews, stories, complementary photo shoots. In a game of mirrors between male and female, straddling the pages of the two newspapers.

'Leafing through them you can see two pairs, symmetrical and not. A portrait and a self-portrait.'

Another one for the books: Kaia Gerber took to social media on Saturday to share her latest Vogue Italia cover with her fans

Earlier this month, Kaia took to social media to share the stunning photos and send her gratitude to the publication.

'New cover for @vogueitalia and @luomovogue by @karimsadli,' she began.

'i am so proud to be part of a project that crosses gender boundaries #together thank you to all the incredible people who made this possible, this means the world to me.'
For Ghanas music industry to thrive, Reggie & Bollie said players in the industry must do away with just sitting and talking about the challenges of the industry.



The duo suggested stakeholders should rather learn to get up and act in order to solve the problems of the industry.



The duo made the statement as part of an alliance for change campaign to save the music industry amid COVID-19 pandemics setbacks.



Ghanas music industry is currently one of hardest hit industries due to the impact of COVID-19. Major shows have been cancelled among other problems.



For a very long time, stakeholders have been complaining about lack of proper structures and poor nature of the industry, but no pragmatic measures have been taken by both industry players and governments to rescue the industry.



Reggie & Bollie believe the power is in the hands of the industry players.



Just sitting and talking wont solve the problems in Ghana music industry. The time to act is NOW!!! Something must change, the duo advised on Twitter.

Source: Daily Guide









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Twin Rivers President and CEO Bob Snyder Retires; Tim Lowe to Assume Interim Role

Tim Lowe to assume leadership role in an interim capacity.

May 8, 2020 - Twin Rivers Paper Company President and CEO Bob Snyder has retired.

Brian McAlary, VP Development, Technical & Export Sales for Twin Rivers, confirmed to PaperAge that the company's Board of Directors has appointed Tim Lowe to assume Snyder's role in an interim capacity.

Lowe served as CEO of Twin Rivers from 2013 - 2016.

In a letter to customers, Lowe said, "We thank Bob for his impact on our business. He was instrumental in the acquisition of the four legacy Burrows Paper mills and Mondi Group Pine Bluff pulp and paper operation, both of which increased manufacturing capability and access to new markets. He also added more talent to our product development and process engineering teams and directed strategic capital into the operations to enhance our overall product quality.

"The insight and expertise he gained from an exceptional 50-year career in the pulp and paper industry contributed to our growth and success as a specialty paper company."

Lowe will serve in the interim role until a successor to Synder is found.

About Twin Rivers Paper Company

Twin Rivers Paper is an integrated specialty paper company that produces specialty packaging, technical, label and publishing papers as well as softwood lumber. Operations are located in Maine, New York, Mississippi and New Brunswick with headquarters in Madawaska, Maine. For further information, visit: www.twinriverspaper.com .

SOURCE: Twin Rivers Paper Company and media outlets
Pakistan rejects India's move to broadcast weather reports on PoK

International

pti-PTI

Islamabad, May 08: Pakistan on Friday rejected India's move to begin broadcasting weather reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), terming it as a "legally void" action to change the status of the region.

State-owned broadcasters Doordarshan and All India Radio from Friday began broadcasting weather reports on Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit in PoK in their prime-time news bulletins.

Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement that like the so-called political maps issued last year by India, this move is also legally void, contrary to reality, and in violation of the relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions.

India in November last released fresh maps showing PoK as part of the newly created Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, while Gilgit-Baltistan is in the UT of Ladakh following the bifurcation.

The Ministry of Home Affairs released the new map of India depicting the two UTs with PoK 'capital' Muzaffarabad within the geographical boundary of the country. This is another mischievous Indian action in support of a spurious claim and further evidence of Indias irresponsible behaviour, it said.

The FO also said that no illegal and unilateral steps by India can change the status of Jammu and Kashmir. Such moves by the Government of India cannot prejudice the inalienable right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people, it said.

Pakistan would urge India not to make baseless assertions and to abstain from misleading the world community through unfounded claims, according to the statement.

The move by the state-owned broadcasters comes after the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Regional Meteorological Centre started including cities under PoK in its forecasts, a departure from its earlier format.

The IMD has started including Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad, which are parts of PoK, under the Jammu and Kashmir meteorological sub-division since May 5.
WASHINGTON, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 10, 2020, a historic day for Chinese Americans and our nation when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed 151 years ago with the unique contribution by early Chinese immigrants, United Chinese Americans (UCA) is partnering with a coalition of communities and organizations nationwide, such as Salvation Army, U.S.-China Restaurant Alliance and TCL, to launch "Chinese American Food of Love Day" to kick off a month-long celebration of Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage.

In a historic first, from May 10 till the end of the Heritage Month, Chinese communities in all 50 states and over 100 cities will work together to prepare food for fellow Americans in need, and will organize food drives for food banks all across the country. "This is a time when all Americans must do everything we can to help those in need, as the needs are historic and everywhere," says Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate.

This event continues the ongoing Chinese community's untiring efforts to provide relief and charitable support to the people and institutions hit hardest by COVID-19. As of today, Chinese Americans in great numbers have participated in the relief efforts, raising and contributing tens of millions of dollars worth of PPEs and other support to fight the pandemic. "I am so proud of the Chinese American community and UCA for stepping up to show we are one country and one people united in a common cause," says Congresswoman Judy Chu, chair of Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Echos Haipei Shue, president of UCA, "I have rarely seen in my lifetime our community this much engaged and mobilized to help. Literally every Chinese community and every Chinese American organization is trying to help."

On May 9 at 12pm noon ET, a day before Food of Love Day, Congresswoman Chu, Congressman Lieu, former Ambassador and Governor Gary Locke, 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and award-winning performing artists Abigail Washburn and Fei Wu will join the Chinese community for an online rally to kick off the "Chinese American Food of Love Day."

This week, Congresswoman Chu will introduce a House Resolution honoring Chinese American community for its unique contribution during the pandemic and recognizing "Chinese American Food of Love Day" on May 10, 2020.

Throughout history, minority groups have faced discrimination, and they are often singled out during epidemics. Today there is an alarming rise in anti-Asian hate incidence. To combat hate, Chinese American community chooses love, and responds with compassion for our fellow Americans. "We are all in this together" is a resounding slogan resonating across all Chinese American communities now.

Founded in 2017, UCA is a nationwide nonprofit federation and a community civic movement, inspired and dedicated to empowering Chinese American communities to fight for a better world.

SOURCE United Chinese Americans (UCA)

Related Links

ucausa.org